Diarmaid MacCulloch, Ph.D.: "Thomas Cranmer," Ch. 6: A “Reformed” Church...

185-191. The making of the Bishops’ Book, the informal title for the Institution of a Christian Man resulted from an assembly in winter 1537, c. 18 Feb, summoned by Crumwell. A “gossipy Scottish Lutheran Alesius Alexander” was an eyewitness and published an account from Germany later in 1537. He recalls Crumwell meeting him on the street and inviting him to the Parliament House. Cranmer gave an opening speech seeking something to quell theological controversies, noting the failure of the Ten Articles. Also, Alesius gets a role in speaking and argues for 2 sacraments which stirs the pot. The partisans split into two predictable groups. Cranmer asked whether sacraments justifies or faith, offering a string of patristic quotations. Stokesley is hot after 7 sacraments while 3 were the contenders; this was the major concern of the Papal conformists. Written and unwritten verities is in play as the two sides battle it out. While discussing 7 sacraments, 3 remain with a “Lutheran tone” (190) with similarities, Null claims, to phrases from Melancthon’s 1535 Loci Communes (dedicated to Henry in 1535) and the Wittenburg Articles brought back to England in 1536 by Foxe. Prof. Mac believes that Cranmer’s research team began his Common Places between 1536 and no later than 1538, the “anchor of his omnivorous theological reading.”

 

191-197: The synod opened but committees and sub-committees seemed to have done the work. The product was fully of “evangelically-flavored” overtones. Marshall’s primer of 1535 pushed the Bishops’ Book further from Lutheranism to the Strassbourg-St. Gall axis. The Ten Commandments followed the second of two views: to wit, separating the 1^st and 2^nd commandments, giving an iconoclastic push, something didn’t bother Luther (images). Various drafts and fragments exist. Gardiner described the process as “spatchcock ecumenism.” They worked from spring through summer 1537. Cranmer wrote ebulliently to Bullinger on 3 April that the King and other nobles were more open and were listening. Cranmer was unhappy about the compromises in the Ten Articles. The Matthews’ Bible was making progress with Crumwell and Cranmer with the evangelical printer, Richard Grafton, supervising the Antwerp publication. Cranmer is elated: “…assuring your lordship for the contentation of my mind, you have shewed me more pleasure herein, than if you had given me a thousand pound” (197). Latimer was upbeat too on this point.