Edward VI and Mary I

The season of reformation in England was about to come to a grinding halt. For Mary, Protestantism wasn't just a heresy, it was the reason for all her woes. And as quickly as she could, as soon as she was Queen, Mary returned England to Roman Catholicism. Bibles were removed from churches. Clergy was separated from their wives.

Quite simply, the national clock was turned back 20 years. It was as if, for Mary, the whole distasteful episode of the reformation had never happened. After so much progress had been made, it would be easy to be discouraged during the reign of Queen Mary. After all, hundreds would die and she'd be known as Bloody Mary.

Hi, I'm Nathan W Bingham and thank you for joining us today on Renewing Your Mind. Despite Queen Mary's fierce and violent opposition to the truth, the Lord was still on his throne. As we'll hear today from Michael Reeves, even though the national clock may have been turned back 20 years, the Lord had other plans for the spread of the Gospel throughout England. Here's Dr. Reeves.

Welcome back. Well, we're going to move on from looking at Henry VIII now, keeping with the big picture, and move on to see what happened next in the reigns of his son, Edward, and his elder daughter, Mary. Now, Henry had left the education of his younger two children, Prince Edward and Princess Elizabeth, to Catherine Parr, his last wife.

By this time, Mary had grown up. She was about 30 years old by this stage, and so she wasn't educated along with Edward and Elizabeth, but Edward and Elizabeth, for them, the finest tutors in the land were found, who by this stage happened to be rather evangelical. And taught by the best, both Edward and Elizabeth grew up to be personally adamant evangelicals. And so when, in 1547, King Henry VIII died, and his son became King Edward VI, England was poised now for a true reformation.

Cranmer was thrilled. At last his wife could come out of her box, and he could set about promoting an unadulterated evangelicalism, because now England had her own young King Josiah. Now, Edward was only nine when he became king, and so his uncle, Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, the Seymour, remember Edward's mother was Queen Jane Seymour, Henry's third wife. Edward Seymour ruled as Lord Protector while Edward was so young. And it was Edward Seymour who, along with the archbishop Cranmer, now set about the work of Protestant reform. Now, you need to know, King Edward was no young dupe in all this.

Edward had a loathing of what he contemptuously called papistry, and for a young boy had remarkably thought through evangelical convictions. Now, for the first couple of years Seymour and Cranmer worked gently so as to acclimatize England to a Protestant future. They didn't want to unnecessarily raise hackles.

And when I say raise hackles, I'm talking about inciting civil war. But a lot did change. So Henry's laws against evangelical beliefs and practices were overturned, allowing clergy to marry.

Cranmer was relieved. People would now receive the bread and wine in communion. Before, ordinary people wouldn't receive the wine, because this was said to be the very blood of Christ. And you don't want someone spilling the blood of Christ on the floor.

But now they would receive both bread and wine. Orders went out for the images of saints to be removed from churches. For altars, altars are places where Christ would be re-sacrificed in the mass. An altar is a place for sacrifice.

Altars would be replaced with tables, which are places for a family meal. And a prayer book in English, the Book of Common Prayer, was written to ensure that in every church service it would be English in language and evangelical in content. Preaching was commanded in English, and many notable preachers such as Hugh Latimer now became household names. And for those clergy who weren't able to produce their own sermons, they simply hadn't been taught how to preach. For them, a book of homilies was written. And this was really a book of off-the-rack sermons that anyone could read out from a pulpit. And you could read it out, and you'd have a faithful explanation of justification by faith alone. And for those who were getting ordained to be ministers, there was a new expectation. Now it was clear being a minister is not about being a priest offering sacrifices.

It's about being a pastor holding out the word of God to people. Therefore, when you were ordained now, instead of being invested with priestly clothes, you'd be given a Bible. Things were changing.

It was far too much for some. And in 1549, there was a popular uprising in the southwest, mainly against the fact that the prayer book was now in English. And this was the sort of thing that made reformers like Cranmer despair, because they thought, here are rebels fighting for a prayer book in Latin that they don't understand.

But such is superstition. In that same year, 1549, John Dudley took over from Edward Seymour as Lord Protector, and he now applied his foot more firmly to the accelerator of the Reformation. Things picked up speed. And at the same time, England became an ideal refuge for a number of continental reformers who are now finding themselves on the run. The Holy Roman Emperor had victorious armies marching through Europe, and so many of them fled across the English Channel to England. For example, Martin Bucer of Strasbourg, he became professor at Cambridge and helped Cranmer write his prayer book. Peter Martyr became professor at Oxford and helped Cranmer rewrite his prayer book. Now, Cranmer wrote two prayer books in this time. If you want the dates there, 1549 and 1552.

But if you don't want the dates, he wrote two, a first and a second. And the differences between these two prayer books show really nicely how the Reformation moves on. So the first one, the 1549 edition, maybe, we don't quite know, maybe it was written deliberately as a sort of stopgap, digestible, easy Reformation theology.

Not too offensive, not too strong. And in any case, there was nothing about transubstantiation, nothing about the Catholic mass, but other than the fact that it was in English, there was nothing much in it that would offend a Catholic. So when you receive the bread in communion, you would hear these words.

The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for you, preserve your body and soul unto everlasting life. Now, that was a Lutheran statement, but a Catholic wouldn't be too offended by that at all. Now, there were no Lutherans coming over from the continent to England, but therefore England has never been particularly affected by Lutheranism. They were really those influenced by Swiss Protestantism that came over. And when some of these men came over, they hated that 1549 prayer book.

It felt too much of a halfway house to them. And whether Cranmer had been planning this in any case or not, or whether his theology had moved on, the 1552 version, the second prayer book, was rather different. Here are the words you'd hear when you're given bread at the 1552 prayer book. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your heart by faith with thanksgiving. Oh, no Catholic's going to be happy with that now.

The Reformation in England had moved on. And one more thing worth noting in Cranmer's prayer book. Here are the opening words for the Communion service. It's a wonderful prayer.

You can make it your own if you want. Here's this opening prayer you'd hear in the Communion service. Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name, through Christ our Lord.

Amen. Now that prayer captures a core Reformation insight. That dealing with the heart is essential to true Reformation, the Reformation of lives. The question of the heart was a crucial element in the Reformation and the pastoral practice of the Reformers and their heirs, because from Luther on, the mainstream Reformers were clear, sin is something deeper than just a bad act, a bad choice to disobey God. No, acts of sin are rooted from deep within.

They come from a radical rottenness in our hearts. And if that's the case, salvation can't simply be about the amending of our external behavior. No, our very hearts need to be dealt with. Our hearts need to be Reformed that we might truly love the Lord our God, treasure him, enjoy him. And so do you see, instead of Cranmer asking God for grace to simply amend our behavior, he asks that the Spirit will cleanse our very hearts deep, deep down, so that we might be changed, renewed to heartily love, enjoy, long to glorify the God we've come to treasure.

A real difference. And that was the sort of theology now being heard in churches across the country, being heard from the pulpits of men such as Hugh Latimer. Then the runaway train of evangelical reform came to a bone-crunching halt to the death of King Edward, aged just 15, in 1553.

Now, fearing it was coming, he wasn't well. Knowing it would be his arch-Catholic half-sister Mary who would come to the throne and undo everything he'd accomplished, Edward hatched a daring plan. He would place and ensure that Lady Jane Grey, a resolutely evangelical cousin of his, would become queen, and she was next in line after Henry's children, after Elizabeth and Mary. She'd become queen before Mary could get there. And so the moment Edward died, Jane was proclaimed queen in London.

All to no avail. Mary in Norfolk swiftly mustered support, and the plan had not accounted for the fact that the people wanted a legitimate monarch more than a Protestant one. Mary entered London and Jane was sent swiftly to the tower and executed. The people wanted the right heir, the true heir of the king, not a Protestant. And even the Protestants, many of them supported Mary, not dreaming how severely she would treat them. Mary, you remember, was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife. Now, Mary had been brought up the unquestioned princess of Henry's Roman Catholic court.

That had been her childhood. And then suddenly she'd been declared illegitimate, no longer a princess, and pressed to renounce her Catholicism when Henry broke with Rome. And so for Mary, Protestantism wasn't just a heresy, it was the reason for all her woes. And as quickly as she could, as soon as she was queen, Mary returned England to Roman Catholicism. Evangelical bishops were removed from their positions. Archbishop Cranmer was removed and replaced with Cardinal Reginald Pole. Bibles were removed from churches. Clergy was separated from their wives.

Quite simply, the national clock was turned back 20 years. It was as if, for Mary, the whole distasteful episode of the Reformation had never happened. And in many ways, England seemed quite willing. There were a few riots against the new order, but there were many who actually seemed relieved. All sorts of Catholic church furniture now seemed to reappear out of the woodwork.

Priestly vestments, images of saints that had been hidden from Edward's purges now reappeared. Clearly, Edward's reforms hadn't been popular with everyone. But it's impossible to wipe out 20 years of history. Things couldn't quite go back to being how they were. But for one thing, all those monasteries, monastic estates, weren't going to get handed back. Because the landowners, well, they might be happy to go to a Catholic mass, but they're not going to hand their land back. And it was simply too late now to pretend that no one had read a Bible in English or heard an Evangelical sermon. And people had begun to have doubts about traditional teaching, so that even if they weren't convinced Evangelicals, they weren't going to spend money on practices, pilgrimages, and so on. They weren't convinced would work. And even if the doubts didn't come from Bible reading, it's very hard for people to take seriously the images of saints when you've seen the great root of Boxley being laughed at. Mary's problem was she knew all would be in vain if she didn't have an heir.

That old problem again. She needed a baby. She needed a husband.

Who should it be? She chose the future Philip II of Spain. You could see why. She'd always been more comfortable in Spanish society, her mother was Spanish, than ever she'd been in English society. And like her, Philip was an implacable enemy of Protestantism. But while people would be prepared to put up with a certain amount of Mary's Catholic clampdown, grisly stories of the Spanish Inquisition made people worried.

And as it happened, their worst fears were realized. Seeing where the wind was blowing, many Protestants fled abroad to places like Calvin's Geneva. Others stayed and decided to operate secretly in large, often very large, underground churches secretly distributing their evangelical literature.

But lying low, those who stayed and didn't lie low were burned. In all, and in stark contrast to the tolerance of Edward's reign, Mary's reign saw some 300 evangelicals burned to death at the stake. And that's not counting the many, many others who died in horrendous conditions in these 16th century prisons.

Now, we need to know after Auschwitz, 300 doesn't sound like that much. For its day, this was a true and terrifying Holocaust. Among Mary's most famous victims were the old Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, that great preacher and Bishop of Worcester, Hugh Latimer, and the Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley. In 1555, Ridley and Latimer were bound back to back and burned at the end of Broad Street in Oxford.

Hugh Latimer, the great preacher, was about 80 years old when this happened. He was the first to die, and he shouted these words through the flames. Be of good comfort, Master Ridley.

Play the man. For we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out. Poor Ridley. He had the wood laid badly around him, and so all his legs burned off before the rest of him was touched.

And the horrible sight apparently moved hundreds to tears and sympathy. Five months later, Thomas Cranmer was burned on exactly the same spot there in Oxford. Now the old Archbishop and architect of so much of the English Reformation, he was now nearly 70. Under extreme duress, he had renounced Protestantism. That was a triumph for Mary's reign. But despite his recantation, Cranmer was seen as such an embodiment of English Protestantism, it was decided he should be burned to death anyway.

That was a decision that would more than undo Mary's victory. Because when the day came, Cranmer refused to read out his recantation. Instead, he stated boldly he was a Protestant, though a cowardly one for having forsaken his principles under such duress. In consequence, he announced, for as much as my hand offended writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished, therefore. And he was true to his word.

When the fires were lit, he put out the hand that had signed his recantation that it might burn first. Having briefly denied his Protestantism, Cranmer thus died with a movingly defiant bravery, and thus died the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury. Now, the unexpected, steadfast courage of so many martyrs, coupled with the sheer brutality of Mary's regime, simply couldn't fail to move the people of England. The burnings seared into the national conscience an association of Rome with tyranny. And Mary's connections with Spain just made these martyrs look like English patriots. So, realising this, the government decided in 1558 to burn heretics behind prison walls, where it wouldn't be seen and offend people anymore.

Happened too late. Had Mary produced children, England would likely have remained officially Catholic. However, what Mary thought was the longed-for pregnancy actually turned out to be stomach cancer. And on November the 17th, 1558, she died, followed within hours by her Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole. In the end, bloody Queen Mary, as she became known.

You understand why. Her cocktail of burnings, Spanish connections, Rome, simply repelled the English from the Catholicism she was seeking to reimpose. And watching it all from abroad, those who were in exile, like in Calvin's Geneva, were more passionate than ever to return and purify England from such things.

And so when Mary died, a white-hot tide of anti-Catholic Protestantism was set to hit the English shore. And we'll see what happened with that in our next lecture. We'll hear that tomorrow on Renewing Your Mind. I'm Nathan W Bingham and I'm glad you're joining us today. All week we have been featuring messages from Dr Michael Reeve's series, The English Reformation and The Puritans.

We've seen how the Lord is sovereign over all things, even matters of politics and society. And we've been encouraged to stand firm and be bold even in our day today. If you'd like to own this complete series, 12 messages in full, we'll send it to you for your donation of any amount. You can give your gift today by visiting renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800 435 4343.

This is a two DVD set, but we'll also give you digital access to both the messages and the digital study guide. So make your donation today at renewingyourmind.org. Tomorrow we begin a new chapter for the Reformation in England with a new queen and the rise of the Puritans. So join us tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. .