But his martyrdom, it is said, redeemed everything.  It is extraordinary that so much ignorance should exist on this subject.  The fact is that, if a martyr be a man who chooses to die rather than to renounce his opinions, Cranmer was no more a martyr than Dr. Dodd.  He died solely because he could not help it.  He never retracted his recantation till he found he had made it in vain.  The Queen was fully resolved that, Catholic or Protestant, he should burn.  Then he spoke out, as people generally speak out when they are at the point of death and have nothing to hope or to fear on earth.  If Mary had suffered him to live, we suspect that he would have heard mass and received absolution, like a good Catholic, till the accession of Elizabeth, and that he would then have purchased, by another apostasy, the power of burning men better and braver than himself.

We do not mean, however, to represent him as a monster of wickedness.  He was not wantonly cruel or treacherous.  He was merely a supple, timid, interested courtier, in times of frequent and violent change.  That which has always been represented as his distinguishing virtue, the facility with which he forgave his enemies, belongs to the character.  Slaves of his class are never vindictive, and never grateful.  A present interest effaces past services and past injuries from their minds together.  Their only object is self-preservation; and for this they conciliate those who wrong them, just as they abandon those who serve them.  Before we extol a man for his forgiving temper, we should inquire whether he is above revenge, or below it.

Somerset had as little principle as his coadjutor.  Of Henry, an orthodox Catholic, except that he chose to be his own Pope, and of Elizabeth, who certainly had no objection to the theology of Rome, we need say nothing.  These four persons were the great authors of the English Reformation.  Three of them had a direct interest in the extension of the royal prerogative.  The fourth was the ready tool of any who could frighten him.  It is not difficult to see from what motives, and on what plan, such persons would be inclined to remodel the Church.  The scheme was merely to transfer the full cup of sorceries from the Babylonian enchantress to other hands, spilling as little as possible by the way.  The Catholic doctrines and rites were to be retained in the Church of England.  But the King was to exercise the control which had formerly belonged to the Roman Pontiff.  In this Henry for a time succeeded.  The extraordinary force of his character, the fortunate situation in which he stood with respect to foreign powers, and the vast resources which the suppression of the monasteries placed at his disposal, enabled him to oppress both the religious factions equally.  He punished with impartial severity those who renounced the doctrines of Rome, and those who acknowledged her jurisdiction.  The basis, however, on which he attempted to establish his power was too narrow to be durable.  It would