The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker: The life and acts of Matthew Parker

of the chief there, and sat with Parker's next successor, viz. Archbishop Whitgift. In short, these histories of the affairs of our Church, and the lives of some of the chief Prelates of it, set forth of late by me, will mutually illustrate and supply one another. And it must be noted, that in the said Annals and Grindal's Life will be found much more of our Archbishop's story, omitted here to avoid repetition. To the reading therefore of them I refer the reader.

There were three great Metropolitans that presided in the province of Canterbury during Queen Elizabeth's reign. The Lives of the two former, viz. Parker and Grindal, by God's permission and assistance, I have wrote, and now published to the world. Dr. Whitgift was the third, equal to both his predecessors in right godly and episcopal qualifications and endowments. And so much business occurring in his government, and such difficulties in preserving the Church in its primary constitution, happening; and so great wisdom, diligence, steadiness, courage, (and yet gentleness intermixed,) accompanying all his orders and actions; that it is pity but that (besides those brief notices that Sir George Paul hath appositely given of him) a just account of his life and acts also might be writ by some able pen. Whereby not only a due honour might accrue to that Archbishop's memory also, but that the present and future age might become better acquainted with the chief affairs of this Church of England for the last twenty years of that long and happy reign.

But to draw to a conclusion: what the observing reader sees in this and my other historical volumes, may justly reconcile a high respect and esteem both to the Church of England and its hierarchy of Archbishops and Bishops. The godly Prelates had the toil and trouble of the spiritual government, accompanied with continual discouragement, slander, and detraction. But maugre all envy and opposition, by their vigilancy, and patience, and learning, our reformed Church was happily settled and maintained. And we enjoy the blessed fruits of their labours, viz. deliver

ance from gross superstition, opportunities of Christian knowledge, the freedom of the Gospel, and singular means of grace and salvation.

And all these spiritual advantages are conferred upon us in the communion of this Church of England. The blessings of which Church I choose to express in the words of one of the most eminent and learned Bishops of those times, in a sermon preached at the Queen's chapel; "For Cooper, Bi"the truth of doctrine according to the word of God; for Winton, "the right administration of the sacraments; for the true an. 1588. "worship of God in our prayers, laid down in the Book of "Service; (since the Apostles' age unto this present age "of the restoring of the Gospel ;) there was never Church "upon the face of the earth so nigh the sincerity of God's "truth, as the Church of England is at this day." And when Martin Marprelate, taking notice of this passage in his sermon, had called him flattering hypocrite for these words; he took occasion, in a book afterwards written by him, to say, "that he would justify what he had said Admonit. "to be true upon the danger, not of his living only, but of People of "his life also, against any man that would withstand it. England. "And that he did think, that not any learned man that

"favoured the Gospel, though he misliked some things and

persons now, would reprove it." Though the foresaid foul-mouthed libeller for this called that venerable and godly Prelate desperate Dick, and, shameless, impudent, wainscot-faced Bishop: which rude words he meekly bore.

To which I will subjoin the judgment of another later very learned, wise, and good Bishop in our times, now deceased; expressing thus his sense of the Reformation and this Church: "There was no reformation in the world, "that was more orderly begun, more regularly pursued, " and more stedfastly maintained, than ours. It is a "Church, which was watered with the blood of the Re"formers, and hath for this hundred years [he might “have added many more] been still upheld by the un"wearied endeavours of those that were in place among "us. Again, it is a constitution that we have had good

to the

"experience of, and have seen how it hath kept its ground, "and bid such constant defiance to the Church of Rome, "that they have not been able to run it down with all their "prowess c," [I may add, nor policy.] And a further ample experience of this, to the lasting honour and reputation of this Church, we had some years after this sermon was preached; viz. in the trying reign of King James II.

"And further, as to the opinion and esteem this consti"tution hath always had abroad among impartial persons "and learned Protestants, it is looked upon as the top of "the Reformation; and to which in difficult cases others "have made their appeals. It hath been honoured by our "friends, feared by our enemies, and contemned by none "but ourselves at home."

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