Protestant martyr of English Reformation.
Hugh Latimer (181k) by J. C. Ryle (1868AD) pdf (145k) docx (66k) zip (47k)
HUGH LATIMER, one of the most distinguished of the
English reformers, was born at Thurcaston in Leicestershire in the year
1490, some say 1491. His father was a yeoman with a “farm of three or
four pounds by the year at the uttermost,” on which, according to his
son’s account, he plentifully maintained “half a dozen men,” sent the
young Hugh to school, married his sisters “with five pounds, or twenty
nobles a piece,” and moreover, “kept hospitality and gave alms to the
poor.”
Trained up in a happy country home, Latimer retained something of the
yeoman and rustic all his days. He was taught by his father all manly
exercises, and especially the use of the cross-bow “God’s gift to the
English nation above all other nations”— “how to draw, how to lay his
body on the bow, and not to draw with strength of arms, as other nations
do, but with the strength of the body.”
About fourteen years of age he was sent to Cambridge, where he proved a
diligent and able student. In 1509, whilst yet an undergraduate, he was
chosen fellow of Clare Hall; in the following January he took his degree
of B.A., and proceeded to that of M.A. in July, 1514. Up to this time,
and some time after this, he continued an adherent, and even a zealous
adherent of the old faith—“I was as obstinate a papist,” he says, “as
any in England.” Soon after this, however, he came under the influence
of Bilney, who had already from his independent study of the Greek
Testament imbibed the reformed doctrines. Bilney had marked the zeal of
the young Romanist, especially on the occasion of his taking the degree
of bachelor in divinity, when he lectured against Melancthon and his
opinions. He sought his company, and by his private confessions of his
own views and feelings, awakened a new spirit in Latimer. “So from that
time forward,” he says, “ I began to smell the Word of God, and forsook
the school doctors and such fooleries.” “Whereas before,” adds Fox, “he
was an enemy, and almost a persecutor of Christ, he was now a zealous
seeker after him.”
Latimer now began to advocate the new doctrines in Cambridge, with the
same energy that he had espoused the old ones. “He preached mightily in
the university, day by day, both in English and
ad clerum, to the
great admiration of all men, who aforetime had known him of a contrary
severe opinion.” The result of Latimer’s preaching was greatly to excite
the doctors and monks at Cambridge, “who flocked against Mr. Latimer on
every side.” Many were touched by his stirring words, and “brought from
their evil works, as pilgrimage and setting up of candles, unto the work
that God commanded expressly in his holy scripture, and to the reading
and study of God’s Word.”
The date of Latimer’s conversion is supposed to be about 1521. His
activity became so obnoxious to “divers papists in the university,” that
they made a “grievous complaint” against him, and he was summoned,
first before the bishop of Ely, and then before Wolsey, who held a
conference with him, detailed in Strype’s Memorials, and dismissed him
with permission to preach such doctrines as he represented he alone
preached. “If the bishop of Ely cannot abide such doctrine,” were
Wolsey’s emphatic words of parting, “you shall have my license, and
preach it unto his beard, let him say what he will.” Some time after
this, he is believed to have preached his two remarkable sermons “On the
Card”—the earliest of his sermons we possess, and in some respects, the
most singular from their quaint, and keen, and plain exhortations.
When Henry VIII. began to get uneasy as to his matrimonial connection
with Catherine of Arragon, and appealed to the universities on the
subject, at the instance of Cranmer, Latimer was one of the divines
appointed to examine into the lawfulness of the connection. His
decision in the king’s favour was the means of introducing him to Henry,
and he was appointed one of the royal chaplains in 1530. In the
following year he received also from the king the living of West Kington
in Wiltshire. His reforming activity in this parish, as formerly in the
university, raised up a host of enemies against him, and he was summoned
before convocation, and compelled to make certain retractations, the
exact force of which has been disputed. At length, however, on the
accession of his friend Cranmer to the primacy, Latimer was made bishop
of Worcester in 1535; and in the following year he opened convocation
with two memorable sermons, in which he inveighed strongly against
abuses in the church and advocated reformation, that it might be saved
from destruction. He continued in his bishopric, labouring to secure
such reforms as he felt urgent, till the year 1539; when Henry gave
himself to the side of the reaction headed by Gardiner and Bonner, the
party of the nationalists, as they have been recently called in our
historical literature. The result of this was the passing of six
articles, rendering it penal to deny the characteristic doctrines of
Romanism, and undoing the work of the fourteen articles passed in the
year 1536. Latimer resigned his bishopric, and entered into privacy. He
was soon sought out, however, and “molested and troubled” by the
bishops; and in 1546, before the close of Henry’s reign, he was cast
into the Tower, where he remained till the new reign.
On the accession of Edward VI. he was restored to liberty, and again,
and more vigorously than ever, resumed his preaching. His sermons during
the whole of Edward’s “blessed” reign, became one of the chief impulses
of the Reformation, that then rapidly advanced. Latimer, however, was
content with the influence which he thus exercised as a preacher, and
refused to be reinstated in his bishopric, although its offer was made
to him at the generous instance of the House of Commons. His weak
health, and disinclination for state affairs, no doubt led him to
decline so flattering an offer. He not the less, but all the more,
laboured to spread the light of gospel truth throughout England;
preaching incessantly, now in London, now in Lincoln, now before the
young king in Whitehall Gardens, as the well-known picture represents
him, and now before the duchess of Suffolk at Stamford.
On the lamented death of Edward he was imprisoned, first in the Tower,
and then at Oxford, along with Cranmer and Ridley. After various delays
he was tried and condemned to the stake. Fox gives a pitiful and
touching account of his appearance before his persecutors, wearing “an
old threadbare Bristol frieze gown girded to his body with a penny
leather girdle, his Testament suspended from his girdle by a leather
sling, and his spectacles without
a
case hung from his
neck upon his breast.” He suffered along with Ridley, 16th of October,
1555, “without Bocardo gate,” on
a
spot opposite
Balliol college, now marked by a splendid martyrs’ monument.
Latimer’s character excites our admiration by its mixture of simplicity
and heroism. He is simple as a child, and yet daring for the truth,
without shrinking or ostentation. He is more consistent than Cranmer,
more tolerant than Ridley, if less learned and polished than either. His
sermons are rare specimens of vigorous eloquence, which read fresh, and
vivid, and powerful now, after three centuries. The humorous Saxon scorn
and invective with which he lashes the vices of the time are, perhaps,
their most noted characteristics; but they are also remarkable for their
clear and homely statements of Christian doctrine, and the faithfulness
with which they exhibit the simple ideal of the Christian life, in
contrast to all hypocrisies and pretensions of religion. In all
things—in his sermons, in his reforms, in his character—Latimer was
eminently practical. He contended for no novelty of doctrine or
ecclesiastical polity, but for what he believed to be the old truth of
the Church of England before it was overlaid by Romish error, and its
ancient simplicities before it yielded to the spirit of avarice and the
pride of power. He is not memorable, like Luther or Calvin, for the
superiority of his intellectual abilities and the story of his
character; but he is truly great in the simplicity, honesty, and
pure-minded evangelical energy of his labours and life.
The
new Parliament assembled June 8 [1536AD]; and was mainly occupied with
those legislative enactments which were rendered necessary by the
divorce and execution of Queen Anne [Boleyn].
On
June 9, there was also assembled the first Convocation since the
overthrow of the Papal Supremacy. It was a great occasion, and Cranmer,
determining to make the most of it, had wisely selected Latimer to
preach the opening sermon. No better choice could have been made in
England; no preacher saw more clearly the many gross abuses that still
remained to be reformed; no one could denounce them with happier irony
or more unsparing severity. The complexion of the time called for
boldness, and Latimer was not likely to err through excess of timidity.
All the associations of the place would add strength to his invective.
Four years before, he had stood at the bar, accused of heretical
teaching; and in front of him, as he spoke, there sat conspicuous the
men who had sought his life, and who were the determined defenders of
those abuses that had so long tainted and depraved the religion of the
country. Urged by so many impulses, the preacher rose to the greatness
of the occasion; and his eloquence, bold as that of the old Jewish
prophets, stirred the heart of the English nation to its very depths,
He selected as his text the parable of the unjust steward, a sufficient intimation of the character of the coming sermon. The parable naturally led him to speak of the duties of the clergy, and to inquire whether they had been faithful in discharging them or not. The time had been when Latimer ran an imminent risk of being burned for venturing to insinuate the charge of unfaithfulness against the clergy; but now the rulers of the Church, who had been chiefly in fault, must listen in silence to words such as have been but seldom uttered in the ears of Convocation. [extract from biography “Hugh Latimer” by R. Demaus, p. 189-190.]
Sermon of the Plough (197k) preached at Paul's Church, London, 1548AD pdf (103k) zip (33k)
With 1548 Latimer's active career as a preacher was resumed. "On January 1," says Stow, in his chronicle, "Doctor Latimer preached at Paul's Cross, which was the first sermon by him preached in almost eight years before; for at the making of the Six Articles, he, being Bishop of Worcester, would not consent unto them, and therefore was commanded to silence, and gave up his bishopric. He also preached at Paul's Cross on January 8, where he affirmed that whatsoever the clergy commanded ought to be obeyed; but he also declared that the "[true] clergy are such as sit in Moses' chair and break not their Master's commandment, adding nothing thereto nor taking anything therefrom; and such a clergy must be obeyed of all men, both high and low. He also preached at Paul's on the fifteenth and on the twenty-ninth of January."
Fortunately we know something more of this famous
series of sermons than appears in the meagre summary of the simple
chronicler. The last of the four has been preserved, and is well known
to all lovers of English literature as the Sermon of the Plough. On the
whole there is, perhaps, no better specimen extant of Latimer's style of
preaching. The train of thought is more continuously sustained than in
most of his sermons, while there is the same earnestness, the same
honest condemnation, not of errors in opinion merely, but of sins in
action, the same wit, the same quaint felicity of expression, the same
power of apt and familiar illustration, the same discursiveness when any
practical duty could be enforced, that mark all his best sermons. These
were the virtues that charmed his audience in those days; and three
centuries have not deprived them of their power to touch all honest and
intelligent readers. The Sermon of the Plough has been so frequently
reprinted as to be almost hackneyed; yet in a biography of Latimer it
would be inexcusable to omit altogether some extracts from so
characteristic a specimen of his eloquence as a preacher. [extract
from biography “Hugh Latimer” by R. Demaus, p. 189-190.]
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