Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the view of shortening their sufferings; and all being ready, a blazing faggot was brought and laid down at Ridley's feet. It was at that moment that Latimer addressed to him the prophetic and memorable words, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." Then, as the flames arose, he cried "O, Father of Heaven, receive my soul!" and received the flames as if embracing them. He was next observed to stroke his face repeatedly with his hands, and, as it were, bathed them in the fire. His head then dropped, and he expired with little if any suffering. The sufferings of Ridley were protracted and horrible but at length his body slipped through or fell over the chain to the feet of Latimer, and both were utterly consumed in the fierce heat.

Thus closed the career of Hugh Latimer-a man who claims our admiration for no high attainments or vast capacities of intellect-but who, while he engages our curiosity by some eccentricities of character, wins our entire respect, and acquired the great influence he possessed among the people, from whom he sprung, by his singleness of heart, by his simplicity of purpose, by the entire absence of all suspicion of low or selfish aims, and by the earnest and often dangerous intrepidity with which he dared to reprove freely the vices that lurked in high places, where his clear and unambiguous voice pierced like a blast of keen fresh air through the unwholesome and hot haze that gathered round the throne, and that filled the conclaves and councils of his time. There is perhaps no one man whose death did more to advance the cause of the Reformation in the hearts of the people than that of Latimer. He was exactly the man whom they could appreciate and value: and when, to all his other claims to their love and veneration, the insane folly of the Romish party—which amounted to judicial blindness -enabled him to add the greatness which belongs to the man who yields up his life for a principle, his character received that crowning glory which has ever rendered his memory most dear to the English people. The

commanding talents and exalted genius of Ridley more engage the attention of scholars and educated men; but Latimer has ever been the hero of the Reformation with the great body of the people; and their estimation of him has not inaptly been expressed by the title of "the Apostle of England," which their veneration has conferred upon him,

[graphic][merged small]
[graphic][subsumed][merged small]

JOHN KNOX, the Father of the Scottish Reformation, one of the most remarkable of men, both for what he did and what he was-for his personal character as well as for the great transactions in which he was concernedis notable, among other things, for being an example of that order of ascendant minds in which, whether owing to nature or circumstances, or partly to both, the inherent superiority has not shown itself till comparatively late in life. "Those persons," says Bacon (in his Character of Augustus Cæsar), "which are of a turbulent nature or appetite do commonly pass their youth in many errors; and about their middle, and then and not before, they show forth their perfections; but those that are of a sedate and calm nature may be ripe for great and glorious actions in their youth." This is so far applicable to Knox, that he certainly was not " of a sedate and calm nature;" he was not an Augustus Cæsar, without passions, and all judgment, or rather calculation and

« AnteriorContinuar »