these truly shocking accusations were thus freely dealt around, and all the Heads of Colleges were held up to contempt as so many perjurers, yet no man ever really thought the worse of them, nor did one of them suffer either in person or reputation; in other words, no one really believed the charge. It is singular also, and worthy of remark, that these charges against Cranmer are mostly heard now from the mouths of clergymen of a particular party in the English Church, every one of whom has committed the same offence as Cranmer, only in a more flagrant form than he, and without his excuses, when he has declared his belief in the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.
We must never forget that, to a mind like Cranmer's, versatile and subtle by natural constitution, and trained, and we may also say sophisticated, by a life-long familiarity with every phase and shade of controversial learning, it is almost, perhaps quite, impossible to put a question in a way which will admit of a perfectly unqualified answer, or which will present itself to it for simple denial or affirmation; and when such a mind is accompanied by a temperament naturally nervous and timid, and placed in a body depressed and weakened by age, imprisonment, and ill-treatment, it must be a very immaculate or a very Pharisaical accuser who will dare to cast the first stone at him. Every man is to some extent the victim of circumstances, and every man is to a still greater extent limited by the constitution of mind and body with which he came into the world. These are the facts which make the command that we judge not others as perfect a precept in philosophy as it is a rule in morals, since a really just judgment of another is impossible to man. We may, in many cases, be compelled to pass a judgment, and justified in passing one
