5. Work While It Is Day
Rev K M Watkins
One thing is certain. As soon as John Hooper became Bishop of Gloucester in March 1551, he threw himself into doing all that he could for the cause of Christ in his new and wide sphere of labour. That was as well, for soon a radical change for the worse would come over England. In less than two and a half years, Protestant King Edward VI would be dead, and his Romanist half-sister Mary would be on the throne. Hooper would be one of the first to be imprisoned and burnt at the stake.
The night was coming, when Hooper’s labours would be halted. While it was day, he worked with godly zeal, following the example of his Master, who said, “I must work . . . while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work” (Jn 9:4). Hooper’s time was short, and he worked at a rate that seemed to show that he had some presentiment of it. “Hooper’s energy seems rather to have increased than diminished when he arrived to take up his duties at Gloucester”.2 There was no time to lose. John Foxe, the martyrologist, wrote of Hooper at Gloucester that he “did there employ his time . . . with such diligence as may be a spectacle to all bishops. . . . So careful was he in his cure [diocese], that he left neither pains untaken, nor ways unsought,
1This article is based on the fourth part of a paper given at the 2016 Theological Conference. John Hooper, influenced by Zwingli and Bullinger, the Zurich Reformers, had imbibed a more thoroughly biblical approach to reforming the Church than his English colleagues. With great zeal he had written and preached accordingly. Now he was to be put to the test.
2F Douglas Price, “Gloucester Diocese under Bishop Hooper, 1551-1553”, in The Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, vol 60 (1938), p 58.
how to train up the flock of Christ in the true word of salvation, continually labouring in the same.”3
J C Ryle, himself a Church of England bishop three centuries later, made a perceptive point. Other leading reformers in Hooper’s time, such as Thomas Cranmer (Archbishop of Canterbury) and Nicholas Ridley (Bishop of London), were unavoidably preoccupied with matters at the national level, centralised around the King and Parliament, and Cranmer was especially involved in crafting the Church of England’s constitutional documents. Although not entirely free of national duties (including attending the House of Lords), it was left to Hooper in Gloucestershire, over a hundred miles from London, to work at a local level in the daily demands of ministerial life. Ryle wrote, “For really working a diocese, and giving a splendid pattern of what an English Protestant Bishop should be, the man of the times was John Hooper”.4
Hooper could have been held back by allowing a root of bitterness to grow up because of the vestments controversy. Whilst not resiling from his view, he deliberately put it behind him, pressing forwards and focusing on the work in hand. From Gloucester, he wrote to Bullinger in August 1551, saying, “I very properly . . . found fault with the use of them [the priestly garments] in the Church, and contended for their entire removal. . . . But as the Lord has put an end to this controversy, I do not think it worthwhile to violate the sepulchre of this unhappy tragedy.”5
Newcombe sums up Hooper’s attitude perfectly: “Hooper was heading toward a task that would absorb him completely and give him the opportunity to put his ideas into practice in England for the first time and he concentrated on that”.6 Our Reformation Puritan now had a sphere of responsibility in which to implement what he had preached, in his sermons on Jonah, before King Edward. “Hooper hoped to transform his diocese and create a Church in the image of that he had left behind him in Zurich”.7
Unlike many a bishop before and after, Bishop Hooper gave the primary place to preaching. Behind this was not only scriptural conviction, but also the fact that he had reached this place of prominence largely on account of his preaching, and he was not going to neglect it now. Such was his zeal for preaching that his wife, anxious for her husband’s health, pleaded with
3The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed S R Cattley, London, 1838, vol 6, p 643.
4J C Ryle, Five English Reformers, Banner of Truth reprint, 1994, p 50.
5Letter to Bullinger from Gloucester dated 1 August 1551, Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, vol 1, The Parker Society, ed Hastings Robinson, 1846, pp 91,92.
6David G Newcombe, John Hooper: Tudor Bishop and Martyr, Davenant Press, 2009, p 168.
7David G Newcombe, “The Visitation of the Diocese of Gloucester and the State of the Clergy, 1551”, in The Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, vol 114 (1996), p 87.
Bullinger: “I entreat you to recommend Master Hooper to be more moderate in his labour: for he preaches four, or at least three, times a day; and I am afraid lest these overabundant exertions should occasion a premature decay, by which very many souls now hungering after the word of God . . . will be deprived both of their teacher and his doctrine”.8 Foxe recorded, “No father in his household, no gardener in his garden, nor husbandman in his vineyard, was more or better occupied than he in his diocese amongst his flock, going about his towns and villages in teaching and preaching to the people there”.9
But Hooper could preach in only one place at a time. The vast bulk of preaching in his diocese was done by others. We cannot approve the system whereby one minister has ecclesiastical authority over others, but we can applaud the way Hooper sought to use the opportunity for advancing true religion. He could not have been more diligent in this part of his responsibility. He prepared 50 “Articles” of doctrine, which he sent to all the clergy with the aim “that, first and principally, the true and pure worship of God may be restored; and that so many souls, being committed to my faith and yours, may, by our wholesome doctrine and cleanness of conversation, be moved unto the true study of perfect charity, and called back from all error and ignorance, and finally to be reduced and brought unto the high Bishop and Pastor of souls, Jesus Christ”.10
The first article not only set the scriptural foundation for the rest, but also overthrew the false foundation of Romanism: “First, that none . . . do teach or preach any manner of thing to be necessary for the salvation of man other than that which is contained in the book of God’s holy Word . . . and that they beware to establish and confirm any manner of doctrine concerning the old superstitions and papistical doctrine” (LW, p 120). Hooper was strong against the Anabaptists too: “Denying the christening [sic] of infants, and affirming the rebaptising . . . of those which were before baptised in their infancy . . . are very pernicious and damnable” (Article 6, LW, p 121). Carefully distinguishing faith and works, the clergy were to “teach and preach the justification of man to come only by the faith of Jesus Christ, and not by the merit of any man’s good works; albeit that good works do necessarily follow justification, the which before justification are of no value or estimation before God” (Article 7, LW, p 121).
As was to be expected, the articles were practical as well as theological.
8Letter from Anne Hooper to Henry Bullinger, written from London on 3 April 1551, Original Letters, vol 1, p 108.
9Foxe, vol 6, pp 643,644.
10“Visitation Book”, in Later Writings of John Hooper, ed Charles Nevinson, The Parker Society, Cambridge, 1852, p 119. The Articles appear on pages 120 to 129 of this volume, from which the following quotations are taken, labelled LW.
All remnants of Romanism were to be removed, with the altar replaced by a table for the Lord’s Supper. Images were to be removed from windows and walls. Worship was to be conducted with reverence: people were “not to talk or walk in the time of the sermon, communion, or common prayers, but rather to behave themselves godly and devoutly at the same” (Article 47, LW, p 129).
These articles, along with those of others, were precursors of what eventually would become the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles. Some of the phraseology reminds us of the Westminster Standards too. For example: “The sacraments are not of any force by virtue or strength of any outward work of the same . . . but only by the virtue and means of the Holy Ghost working in the hearts of the doers and receivers by faith” (Article 24, LW, p 125).
At the beginning of May 1551, Hooper embarked on his first visitation of the diocese, taking with him 31 “Injunctions” to ensure that the clergy implemented the articles.11 Every quarter of the year, the clergy were required to give a “rehearsal of the contents . . . in Latin or English” of a stipulated book of the Bible: Romans, Deuteronomy, Matthew and Genesis (Injunction 6, LW, p 132). Communicants were required to recite the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer (Injunction 9, LW, p 132).
During the visitation, no fewer than 318 members of the clergy were examined by way of nine questions: three each on the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. Some questions were as simple as where the Decalogue and Lord’s Prayer were to be found in the Bible, how many Commandments there were and who was the author of the Lord’s Prayer. Some clergy could not even answer those questions, but where many failed was reciting the Decalogue and giving Scriptural proofs for the Creed; 168 could not do the former and 218 could not do the latter.
The Gloucestershire clergy were probably no more ignorant than those in other places at this period of the English Reformation. To correct matters, Hooper left them with 27 “Interrogatories and Demands” by which to assess their people’s progress; and the people with 61 “Interrogatories and Examinations” by which to keep their ministers under review.12
In the midst of constant preaching and the visitation, Hooper managed to publish a practical work on Romans 13 in May 1551, expounding Christian duties and responsibilities to public persons such as magistrates, and to all persons in their private capacities.13
Hooper bestowed much effort on ecclesiastical discipline. “There were
11The injunctions appear on pages 130 to 140 of Later Writings.
12These appear on pages 140 to 143, and 143 to 150, respectively of Later Writings.
13“Annotations on Romans 13”, in Later Writings, pp 93-116.
few tools that Hooper had at his disposal to impose the Reformation on a reluctant diocese. But he recognised that exercising such authority as he rightfully had over the courts was one such tool.14 But sanctions could only go so far. If a man was deprived of his office, Hooper had no one to fill the vacancy. He had to work with what he had, and sought to improve the situation as much as possible. Some clergy were still attached to their former Romanist ways; many had been in office since the days of Henry VIII. Under Hooper they had no choice but to comply with Protestantism, but on Mary’s coming to the throne, they happily reverted to Romanism. Ryle tellingly comments, “They were ready to conform to anything, and subscribe anything, so long as they were allowed to keep their livings!”15
Discipline extended to the laity as well. No bishop was more diligent in sitting in his Cathedral’s consistory court than Hooper in Gloucester. One often-recounted case bears repeating. Sir Anthony Kingston was a man of some distinction, with royal connections. Unswayed by this, and convinced that justice applied to the high as well as the low, Hooper rebuked him for adultery. Kingston responded by smiting the Bishop on the cheek. This was reported to William Cecil, Secretary to the King, and Kingston was fined a substantial sum and required to submit to the ecclesiastical rebuke.
In October 1551, the bishopric of Worcester became vacant when its incumbent Nicholas Heath was removed for refusing to subscribe to Protestantism. The vacancy was continuing for too long, and in March 1552 Cranmer reported to Bullinger, “Master Hooper is in such great esteem among us, that he is now appointed Bishop of Worcester”.16 This was effected by dissolving the Gloucester bishopric and combining it with Worcester. Clearly, Hooper’s labours had not gone unnoticed. Ryle comments, “We need not wonder that the Government soon gave him the charge of Worcester as well as the diocese of Gloucester”.17
Hooper began in Worcester as he had in Gloucester, seeking to impose his articles on the clergy, and with a formal visitation to the diocese. No sooner was he away from Gloucester, though, than trouble flared up, with Romanising clergy resisting his Protestant measures. He wrote to Cecil, “The negligence and ungodly behaviour of the ministers in Gloucestershire compelled me to return”.18 Having quelled that, and established trustworthy men
14Newcombe, John Hooper, p 181.
15Ryle, Five English Reformers, p 50.
16Letter of Thomas Cranmer to Bullinger, written from Lambeth on 20 March 1552, Original Letters, vol 1, p 23.
17Ryle, Five English Reformers, p 50.
18Letter to William Cecil from Gloucester dated 6 July 1552, Later Writings, p xviii.
to act as superintendents in Gloucestershire, he returned to Worcester to deal with two traditionalist Canons of the Cathedral, Henry Joliffe and Robert Johnson, who were refusing to subscribe the Articles. In another letter to Cecil we can hear a godly man’s heartfelt longings for better things: “Ah, Mr Secretary, that there were good men in the Cathedral Churches! God then should have much more honour than He hath, the King’s majesty more obedience, and the poor people more knowledge. But the realm wanteth light in such Churches where as of right it ought most to be.”19 In the same letter, we see that the burden of public duty was taking a heavy toll. In comparison, private labours were like playing and private troubles more like taking one’s ease.20
We should also note the godliness of Hooper’s home life. John Foxe wrote, “Though he bestowed . . . the most part of his care upon the public flock . . . there lacked no provision in him, to bring up his own children in learning and good manners; insomuch that ye could not discern whether he deserved more praise for his fatherly usage at home, or for his bishop-like doings abroad: for everywhere he kept one religion in one uniform doctrine and integrity. So that if you entered into the Bishop’s palace, you would suppose yourself to have entered into some church or temple. In every corner thereof there was some smell of virtue, good example, honest conversation, and reading of holy Scriptures. There was not to be seen in his house any courtly rioting or idleness; no pomp at all; no dishonest word, no swearing could there be heard.”21
Foxe wrote from personal experience of Hooper’s liberal hospitality: “Twice I was . . . in his house in Worcester, where . . . I saw a table spread with good store of meat, and beset full of beggars and poor folk: and I, asking his servants what this meant, they told me that every day their lord and master’s manner was to have . . . to dinner a certain number of poor folk . . . and, when they were served (being before examined by him or his deputies, of the Lord’s Prayer, the articles of their faith, and Ten Commandments), then he himself sat down to dinner, and not before”.22
Hooper made second visitations to both parts of his joint diocese. As long as it was day, the Lord’s servant laboured on. He intended to spend six months
19Letter to William Cecil written from Worcester on 25 October 1552, Later Writings, pp xix,xx.
20“There is none that eateth their bread in the sweat of their face but such as serve in public vocation. Yours is wonderful, but mine passeth. Now I perceive private labours be but plays, [and] private troubles but ease and quietness. God help us. Amen.” Later Writings, p xx.
21Foxe, vol 6, p 644.
22Foxe, vol 6, p 644.
in turn in each part of his diocese. But “any plans he had were soon over-taken by events”.23 The night was closing in.