THE WAY OF PEACE
AMONGST ALL
PROTESTANTS

Contents

1. The letter from Nicholas Ridley to John Hooper.

2. Some observations upon the letter from Samuel Johnson.

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The letter from Nicholas Ridley to John Hooper.

To my dear Brother and Reverend fellow-elder in Christ, John Hooper, Grace and Peace.

My dearly Beloved brother, and fellow-elder, whom I reverence in the Lord, pardon me, I beseech you, that hitherto since your captivity and mine I have not saluted you by my letters; whereas I do indeed confess I have received from you, (such was your gentleness) two letters at sundry times; but yet at such time as I could not be suffered to write unto you again: or if I might, yet was I in doubt how my letters might safely come unto your hands.

But now, my dear Brother, forasmuch as I understand by your works, which I have but superficially seen, that we thoroughly agree and wholly consent together in those things which are the grounds and substantial points of our religion, against the which the world so furiously rageth in these our days, howsoever in time past in certain bye-matters and circumstances of religion, your wisdom and my simplicity; I grant, hath a little jarred, each of us following the abundance of his own sense and judgement; now I say, be you assured, that even with my whole heart, God is my witness, in the bowels of Christ I love you in the truth and for the truth’s sake, which abideth in us, and as I am persuaded, shall by the grace of God abide in us for evermore.

And because the world (as I perceive, Brother) ceaseth not to play his pageant, and busily conspireth against Christ our Saviour, with all possible force and power, exalting high things against the knowledge of God: let us join hands together in Christ, and if we cannot overthrow, yet to our power, and as much as in us lieth, let us shake those high altitudes, not with carnal, but with spiritual weapons; and withal Brother, let us prepare ourselves to the day of our dissolution; by the which, after the short time of this bodily affliction, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall triumph together with him in glory.

I pray, you Brother, salute in my name, your reverend fellow-prisoner and venerable father, Dr. Crome, by whom, since the first day that I heard of his most godly and fatherly constancy in confessing the truth of the Gospel, I have conceived great consolation in the Lord. For the integrity and uprightness of that man, his gravity and innocency all England I think hath known long ago. Blessed be God, therefore, which in such abundance of iniquity, and decay of all godliness, hath given to us in his reverend old age, such a witness for the truth of his Gospel. Miserable and hard-hearted is he, whom the godliness and constant confession of so worthy, so grave, and so innocent a man will not move to acknowledge and confess the truth of God.

I do not now, Brother, require you to write anything to me again, for I stand much in fear, lest your letters should be intercepted before they come to my hands. Nevertheless, know you that it shall be to me great joy to hear of your constancy and fortitude in the Lord’s quarrel. And albeit I have not hitherto written unto you, yet have I twice (as I could) sent unto you my mind, touching the matters which in your letters you required to know. Neither can I yet, Brother, be otherwise persuaded; I see, methinks, so many perils, whereby I am earnestly moved to counsel you not to hasten the publishing of your works, especially under the title of your own name. For I fear greatly, lest by this occasion, both your mouth should be stopped hereafter, and all things taken away from the rest of the prisoners, whereby otherwise, if it so please God, they may be able to do good to many. Farewell in the Lord, my most dear Brother, and if there be any more in prison with you for Christ’s cause, I beseech you, as you may, salute them in my name. To whose prayers I do most humbly and heartily commend myself and my fellow-prisoners and captives in the Lord. And yet once again, and for ever in Christ, my most dear Brother, farewell.

N. Ridley.

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Some observations upon the letter from Samuel Johnson.

There cannot be a more blessed work, than to reconcile Protestants with Protestants. And a man would think it should be one of the easiest, because we are able to say to them, as Moses did to the two contending Israelites, “Sirs, ye are brethren, why do ye wrong one to another?” The meekest man in all the earth took another course with the Egyptian; but as for brethren, he endeavoured all he could to set them at one again. This is the only design of this paper, in laying before you the example of two Protestant Bishops, who wisely found out the way to put a happy period to their unhappy differences; which are the very same as have been since taken up by Protestants again, after these two good men had laid them down. In the strugglings of Ridley and Hooper, there were two nations struggling in the womb, the two great parties of the Conformists and Non-conformists; for those two persons differed about the self-same matters as we do now; the established ceremonies, the dress of religion, certain bye-matters and circumstances of religion, which Hooper the Non-conformist could not comply with; and Ridley the Conformist, because they were according to law, insisted upon and would not abate. So that in their old differences, we find exactly our present distemper; and therefore in their cure, why should we not also find our own remedy? It is an approved remedy; it cured men who thought one another superstitious and imposing on one side, and stubborn and intolerably wilful on the other side; and yet they came afterwards to believe one another to be, as they really were, upright men on both sides. We have the receipt in these few, but very weighty words:—

“But now, my dear Brother, forasmuch as I understand by your works, which I have but superficially seen, that we thoroughly agree and wholly consent together in those things which are the grounds and substantial points of our religion, against the which the world so furiously rageth in these our days, howsoever in time past in certain bye-matters and circumstances of religion, your wisdom and my simplicity I grant hath a little jarred, each of us following the abundance of his own sense and judgement; now I say be you assured, that even with my whole heart, God is my witness, in the bowels of Christ I love you in the truth and for the truth’s sake, which abideth in us, and as I am persuaded shall by the grace of God abide in us for evermore.”

1. The first consideration which arises from these words, is this:— That the agreement there is amongst Protestants in the main matters of religion, should drown and extinguish all lesser differences. The substance of religion which we all hold, ought in reason to have more power to unite us, than all the “bye-matters and circumstances” in the world to divide us. We have all but one rule of faith and life, one standard of religious worship and practice; which is one and the same English Bible: and why should we not then all be of one heart and one soul? We all believe that there is one God, in opposition to Polytheism. We believe that this God is to be worshipped in Spirit and in truth, in contradiction to Idolatry; without absurdly changing the glory of the incorruptible God into the similitude of a corruptible man, or worshipping our Maker in the form of bread. We all believe in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in whose names we are baptized. We are all taught of God to hope for everlasting happiness through the merits of our only Redeemer, Mediator, and Advocate Jesus Christ the Righteous, who is the author of eternal salvation to all those that obey him. We are all assured by many infallible proofs, that he is gone to heaven, to prepare a place for all his true disciples and followers; and that the heavens must contain him till the restitution of all things; and that therefore he is not in any tabernacles or boxes here below. We all know assuredly, that in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted of him, and that the Church of God is not now limited or confined to the Jewish or to any other nation, but is truly Catholic and universal.

We all believe the two future states of heaven and hell, for the just and for the unjust, and neither our books nor we, know of any other, nor indeed of any other sorts of men; nor do any of us believe one word concerning the profitableness of singing for a soul. In a word, since we are so unanimous in these and many other, the most important truths, shall we fall out about ceremonies, about postures and gestures, about the hat and the knee, about dignifying and distinguishing titles, about garbs or garments, about modes and fashions, and things which are very far from the heart, and many removes from the essence of religion; nay things which are shadows and mere nothings when compared with the substantial matters, wherein we are agreed? Nay further, I am bold to say we are all agreed in these inferior matters of difference and do not know it. For instance, we are all agreed, that kneeling at the Sacrament is no part of our Saviour’s institution; that kneeling at the most solemn prayer that can be, is a fitting posture; that kneeling to the Sacrament in imitation of, or compliance with the popish worship of the host, is absolutely unlawful; and yet we squabble, and will not hear one another out, nor understand one another’s meaning; but scuffle in the dark, when we are all friends and all of a side. In short, all the distance that is between English Protestants, is occasioned by little mistakes and misapprehensions about very little matters, and still they are so much of one mind even as to the matters in difference, that if the Conformists thought the ceremonies popish, they would immediately turn Non-conformists; and if the Non-conformists did not apprehend them to be Popish, they would never have scrupled them. So that they both of them plainly mean the same thing.

Hooper scrupled the ceremonies under the notion of Popish ceremonies, and under the same notion, Ridley would have hated and rejected them. Ridley and the other Bishops said in defence of these ceremonies, “That they were small matters, and that the fault was in the abuse of the things, and not in the things themselves, and that Hooper ought not to be so stubborn in so light a matter, and that his wilfulness therein was not to be suffered.” And would not Hooper himself have passed the same censure upon his own refusal, if he had had just the same thoughts and opinion of the ceremonies? But he thought that a thing in itself indifferent, but having been abused to superstitious purposes, could never after be looked upon as indifferent and innocent; but it must of necessity pass under that notion which common and corrupt usage had put upon it, and that it was spoiled, and had utterly lost its former indifferency. For which reason these “Rites and Ceremonies were offensive to his conscience,” as the King’s grant of dispensation to him, by the advice of the Privy Council, expresses it; but Cranmer and Ridley and the other Bishops were so far determined by the Laws, that the King’s dispensation, granted to Hooper upon that occasion did not take place. Nor indeed was it in their power to admit of it. For being these ceremonies were enacted by Law, and fastened to the Freehold, and made part of the Establishment by the universal consent of the nation, nothing but the same consent could take them away again.

Now therefore the nicety of the difference betwixt them lay in this; whether ceremonies which were once indifferent and had been abused, might be so purged and freed from those abuses, as to become indifferent and fit to be used again. And this is a matter so hard to be decided, that it must be weighed in gold scales, where the very least movement, or even a man’s breath on the one side or the other, is sufficient to incline the balance. For it is with indifferent Ceremonies and usages, as it is with words that are indifferent. The word ballad was once an innocent and inoffensive word, and signified as the word song now does; but the word has been abused and applied to the meanest and most rascally sort of poetry, and has for a long time been taken in the worser sense. Suppose therefore that some men desirous to speak as their fore-fathers did, who called the book of Canticles the Ballad of Ballads, as reverently as we now call it the Song of Songs, should say, that if authority require that this word be used in its first and best sense, why then we may very lawfully and reverently use it in that sense again; because though the word has been abused and ill applied, yet the fault is in the abuse of the word, and not in the word itself. And further, that no man ought to refuse to read that book upon this trifling account, because he dislikes the title of it: especially when a public law has declared, that the selfsame is meant by this title, as if the Dissenter had had the wording of it himself to his own mind, and had called it the Hymn of Hymns. This is the substance of what Cranmer and Ridley said.

On the other hand Hooper’s opinion in this supposed case was, that though our fore-fathers had used that word very religiously and reverently, yet it had since been so corrupted and abused, and had contracted so profane a signification, as no authority could wholly deface, nor could so inoffensively restore the word to be used in religious matters any more, but that sober men would always have a prejudice against it. This was Hooper’s very sense. He looked upon the reformed ceremonies as still retaining a Popish stain. But though a law could not cure his prejudices, yet that, and the higher considerations of doing service in the Church of God, did quite over-rule them; and he wisely complied with those ceremonies, which if he had been left to his choice he would rather have forborne.

Obj.—But now it may here be objected and said, that when the Clergy of the Church of England saw that good men and great men, and the glorious Martyrs of Jesus Christ, such as Hooper was, were offended with these ceremonies, they should have used their utmost endeavours to have gotten them discharged by law, as they were imposed by law, and not have left them to remain as a standing offence, and a perpetual stumbling-block to all others of Hooper’s mind.

Ans.—This I confess would be an objection very much to the prejudice of the Church of England, could it not be truly said, that the Clergy did heartily endeavour to procure this ease to scrupulous consciences, though without success. For all the eminent Bishops of England in Queen Elizabeth’s time, Sandys, Jewel, Horne, Grindal, &c., nay Dr. Cox himself Bishop of Ely, who was the unhappy occasion of all the troubles at Frankfurt, did all of them labour in this point, and could not prevail with the Queen to consent to it: as appears by a heap of their letters, written to Bullinger at Zurich, which is still extant. Which being the remains of those great men, and so noble a monument of the Church of England’s moderation, is very well worth the going thither to see it. But to conclude, make your best and your worst of ceremonies, they are in Ridley’s words, but “circumstances and bye-matters”; they are of as little concern to religion as those meats, which occasioned differences in the Apostle’s times; and they will not bear the charges of falling out about them, either on the one side or on the other.

2. Especially in the second place, when Protestants have somewhat else to do; or, as Ridley’s words are, “when the world so furiously rageth against the grounds and substantial points of our Religion, in these our days.” Is it a time for us to trouble our heads with trivial matters, when the sum and substance of our religion is in danger and lies at stake? For have we not lately seen the Papists laying the Axe to the root of the tree, and the Weekly Representer ridiculing and making sport with our Bible, which is the whole Religion of Protestants? Does he not say that we have as many Bibles as heads, that is to say, that the Bible itself, without their infallible blind guides to interpret it, is wholly useless to us, and every man may as well frame a several Religion of his own head, without any Bible at all? Truly if it be so useless and so mischievous a book as that author has represented it it is not enough to put a stop to the printing of it, but it ought also to be prohibited. Do they not daily make scandalous attempts and efforts against the Trinity of Divine persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in whose names we are baptized; only because we will not also believe in a Breaden God Almighty? In a word, do they not endeavour to wrest all Scripture our of our hands, because we will not receive their false and forged Traditions with the same reverence? Our present business therefore is to lay a dead hold upon our Bibles, and to maintain the grounds and substantial points of our religion, and to suffer circumstances and bye-matters to take their chance. Nay, we ought to be in a readiness to compound for our Bibles, and rather to throw all ceremonies overboard with our own bands, than to endanger the Protestant religion which is infinitely more valuable. And though I know not of any one ceremony enjoined in the Church of England, which is not both lawful and primitive, and of an elder date than Popery; yet because the slovenly Papists have spit in them, and by corrupting and abusing them have endeavoured to make them their own, I hope the wisdom of the nation may hereafter suffer them to be so, especially since all wise Protestants knew very well that we can live without them. And we ought the rather to be of this mind, because,

3. In the third place, we see to what terms of abatement and accommodation that blessed Martyr Ridley, has descended in these following words. “Howsoever in time past in certain bye-matters and circumstances of religion your wisdom and my simplicity I grant have a little jarred, each of us following the abundance of his own sense and judgement.” Ridley had sincerely followed his own great judgement in this dispute; but because that judgement had jarred with the sense of as hearty a Protestant as himself, therefore you see how he undervalues and disparages it. We take it for granted that Hooper was in the wrong, and Ridley was in the right, especially because a law had interposed in that behalf, and yet here it seems that the two contending parties were Hooper’s wisdom and Ridley’s simplicity. A little of these good men’s inward humility, self-denial and mutual condescension would heal our breaches, and compose our differences, much better, than the most strict outward uniformity could. For as the levelling project, to make all men’s estates equal, was only a project for a day, for on the morrow all their estates would have been unequal again: whereas contentment is that standing leveller, which makes every man always as rich as another; in like manner a perfect uniformity in these circumstances and byematters, if it were possible to be attained, would not last long; because as our Church in the preface to the Common Prayer has wisely observed, rites and ceremonies are in their own nature, alterable and changeable according to the variety of times and occasions, whereby they are expedient at one time, and inexpedient at another; for which reason even the same persons, and those the most constant and the farthest from newfangledness, cannot be always alike satisfied with them, much more they will be sure to be liked and disliked by several persons according to their several apprehensions, who must needs differ about them; but on the other hand, a mutual forbearance, allowance, and condescension in these bye-matters, would supply the place of a perfect uniformity to the world’s end.

I must confess, that Ridley says these diminishing things of himself in the absence of the Law, and after those statutes which enacted these ceremonies were repealed, and swallowed up by Popery; for which cause it cannot be expected that the Church of England clergy should make such condescensions at this time as Ridley did, and acknowledge their simplicity in adhering to the Laws. For Laws while they are in being have as much reverence due to them, as is owing to the wisdom of the whole community by which they were made, and nothing else but our pre-engagements to God himself can excuse us from the observance of them; and therefore it cannot be required by the Dissenters in order to that good understanding which I here endeavour and humbly beg there may be amongst Protestants that we should arraign five and twenty statute Laws at once under the infamous name of Draconica; especially when by one of the Draconica, the whole Church of England, and under the covert of the Church of England all the Dissenters in England hold their Bibles. No; every wise and considerate Protestant, though he be not a Nonconformist, would rather lie under all the penalties of Nonconformity, than go about to weaken or undermine the authority of the Laws which secure to all protestants their lives, and a much greater thing than their lives, I mean the Bible, which I say again is the whole religion of all Protestants. As for byematters, they may very well be left where the Law for ages immemorial has lodged all the concerns of he English Church, which is in a lawful English Parliament; whose necessary power in that behalf appears by the very writ, both of their summons, and of their due election; and in the mean time, notwithstanding our different apprehensions about them, let us love one another. And, which brings me to the next point:

4. Let us mutually express ourselves in the following words of the blessed Martyr. “Now I say, be you assured, that even with my whole heart, God is my witness, in the bowels of Jesus Christ, I love you in the truth, and for the truth’s sake which abideth in us, and as I am persuaded shall by the grace of God abide in us for evermore.” Men that love the truth for God’s sake, will love other men for the truth’s sake, which they all profess. And I am satisfied that this was the reason which moved Hooper to seek first to Ridley, and to prevent him with two kind letters, before his present answer was written, for when Hooper saw Ridley, stand up as a champion for the Protestant religion, (whom perhaps formerly in their unhappy differences he mistook to be popishly affected, or not far enough removed from Popery, and too zealous for the rags of Rome, then he writes, then he sends to him, then he consults him as an oracle, and I have often thought, that it must needs produce the same effect in all the sincere and hearty Protestants amongst the Dissenters at this time, when they see the clergy of the Church of England, of whom they have had jealous thoughts, lest they were too much popishly inclined, now approving themselves the defenders and champions of the Protestant cause; which they have maintained with that clearness and strength, that I doubt not but the downfall of Rome will hereafter be dated from the time of their writing. Blessed be God, (must the Dissenters needs say,) that we are so happily disappointed, and that the clergy are not the men we took them to be, but as hearty Protestants as ourselves; and from this day forward we will own, and love them as such.

The Priests and Jesuits, and their assistants have not indeed been wanting to revive and heighten the Dissenters’ old jealousies in this kind, by several late pamphlets, pretending a wonderful agreement betwixt the Church of England and the Church of Rome; and that new popery, as they are pleased to call it, is as bad as the old, or the daughter as bad as the mother, but this is transubstantiation-work, and goes on but heavily, for men will not be outfaced out of their senses. And therefore they have almost dropped the cry of popery, to set up a louder one of persecution; and to lay all the miseries which the Nonconformists have suffered to our charge. But if any body take my right hand, and therewith bruise and batter my left, is my right hand therefore become a persecutor? Is it not really persecuted as well as the other? And has it not a fellowfeeling and a share of the misery? And suppose my left hand were so over-ruled and managed against the right, would it not be the same thing? And would not the design be the same; to mischief, and maim and disable both hands? And after all, would it not be the addition of a scorn to this misery, to accuse or blame either of my hands in this case for hurting its fellow? To conclude, there is a charm in the very naming of Hooper and Ridley, to reconcile Nonconformists and Conformists together; for their differences were alike, their misunderstandings of one another were alike, and the Papists in Queen Mary’s time loved those two Protestants and used them, just alike. For they were both of them so long and miserably tormented in the flames, that they were forced to mingle with their prayers to God these doleful outcries to the people. “For God’s love (good people) let me have more fire,” says Hooper. “For Christ’s sake let the fire come unto me,” says Ridley. Our enemies made no difference between those that are for ceremonies and those that are not; and why should we? Let us rather bless God for the concurring testimony which these good men, though of different persuasions in bye-matters, have both given to the Protestant religion; and let us exceedingly value and prize the free use of our Bibles, which was the purchase of theirs and of the other Martyrs’ blood, according to what Latimer said when he and Ridley were both of them at the stake; “be of good comfort, Mr. Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England, as (I trust) shall never be put out.” And we ought to unite and hold close together, that we may shield and cover this light from the open mouths and impetuous blasts of those who seek to extinguish it, and leave us and our posterity in the old Egyptian darkness.

5. For this is the end and the very use and advantage we are to make of our reconciliation, and of our mutual love and agreement, as we see by the following words of this blessed Martyr: “And because the world (as I perceive, brother) ceaseth not to play his pageant, and busily conspireth against Christ our Saviour with all possible force and power, exalting high things against the knowledge of God; let us join hands together in Christ, and if we cannot overthrow, yet to our power as much as in us lieth, let us shake those high altitudes, not with carnal, but with spiritual weapons.” The world conspires, as Bishop Ridley’s word is, against Christ our Saviour; Regulars, and Seculars, Jesuits and Dominicans, Pope’s men, Council men, and Blackloists, and the rest of that colluvies and gallimawfry of sects of which the Church of Rome is made up, do lay aside all the differences of their several factions, and are confederate against God’s true religion; and though none of them are agreed in other things, yet they are all for extirpating the pestilent northern heresy, and they all march steadily to the same end. And shall not we all then unite in our utmost endeavours to support that true Faith, which they call Heresy? Shall we not be as ready to give one another the right hand of Fellowship, and to join hands together in Christ and for him, when we see how unanimous they are in banding together against him? This is the common concern of us all. For every man has a soul to be saved, one as well as another, every man has an equal share in the Bible? Every man’s stake is the same, and they have all alike interest in their religion; and therefore all the Protestants of England ought to be as one man in the maintenance and support of their religion; and every single man in his several capacity, and according to his power, ought to be as zealous for it, as if he alone were to support it; and he should say to our Saviour and hold to that saying, “though all men forsake thee, yet will not I.” By this means under God we shall preserve our Religion, and transmit it to our posterity at a far cheaper rate, than Ridley and Hooper, and the rest of the blessed Martyrs conveyed it down to us. By this means we shall disengage ourselves from all needless disputes about meats and drinks, and such like things, in which the kingdom of God does not consist, and from those skirmishings which have detained us too much upon the frontiers of religion, without cultivating and reaping the fruit of that Holy Land in that measure as we ought to have done. By this means our private animosities and groundless quarrels will cease, when we all engage in the Lord’s quarrel, as Bishop Ridley calls it in this letter. In a word, by this means we shall be freed from divisions, and those unhappy diversions which have been purposely given us, to hinder us from exercising the power of godliness; both in reforming our own lives, and in putting a stop to that deluge of impiety, which has been let into the nation in order to make way for popery; and we shall have an opportunity to employ our united endeavours in promoting the Gospel, to the high honour of God, and to the edifying of his Church, and the salvation of our souls.

As for the contents of the latter part of this letter, they are of so nice and difficult application, that a man may be soon thought to say either too much or too little of them: for which reason I shall wholly forbear, and leave them to the reader as they are, that he may make his own observations.

Finis.

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Attribution

Transcribed and edited by Ollie Lansdowne for New Whitchurch Press.

Works consulted

Nicholas Ridley with Samuel Johnson, The Way to Peace amongst All Protestants (1688), London: Richard Baldwin

Nicholas Ridley with Samuel Johnson, The Way to Peace amongst All Protestants (1846), London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley