Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/617

Rh crosses were cleared from the churches; the use of tapers, holy water, and incense were forbidden; the worship of the Virgin and the invocation of saints was prohibited; belief in purgatory was denounced as a superstition, and prayers for the dead were interdicted; the real or bodily presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the sacrament was denied; the prohibition against the marriage of the clergy was annulled (a measure which pleased the clergy and reconciled them to the other sweeping innovations); and the services of the Church, which had hitherto been conducted in Latin, were ordered to be said in the language of the people.

In order that the provision last mentioned might be effectually carried out, the English Book of Common Prayer was prepared by Archbishop Cranmer, and the first copy issued in 1549. This book, which was in the main simply a translation of the old Latin service-books, with the subsequent change of a word here and a passage there to keep it in accord with the growing new doctrines, is the same that is used in the Anglican Church at the present time.

In 1552 were published the well-known Forty-two Articles of Religion, which formed a compendious creed of the reformed faith. These Articles, reduced finally to thirty-nine, form the present standard of faith and doctrine in the Church of England.

Persecutions to secure Uniformity.—These sweeping changes in the old creed and in the services of the Church would have worked little hardship or wrong had only everybody, as in More's happy republic, been left free to follow what religion he would. But unfortunately it was only away in "Nowhere "that men were allowed perfect freedom of conscience and worship. By royal edict all preachers and teachers were forced to sign the Forty-two Articles; and severe enactments, known as "Acts for the Uniformity of Service," punished with severe penalties any departure from the forms of the new prayer-book. The Princess Mary, who remained a firm and conscientious adherent of the old faith, was not allowed to have the Roman Catholic service in her own private chapel. Even the powerful intercession of the Emperor Charles V.