Protestantism in England From the Times of Henry VIII - James Aitken Wylie

knowledge, and this measure was as necessary now
as in the days of Edward. A great retrogression in
popular intelligence had taken place under Mary;
the priests of Elizabeth's time were as grossly
ignorant as those of Edward's; the majority were
Papists at heart, and if allowed to preach they
would have fed their flocks with fable and Romish
error. Those only who were known to possess a
competent knowledge of the Word of God were
permitted to address congregations in their own
words; the rest were commanded to make use of
the sermons which had been prepared for the
instruction of the nation.
These homilies were golden cups, filled with
living waters, and when the people of England
pressed them to their parched lips, it well became
them to remember whose were the hands that had
replenished these vessels from the Divine
fountains. The authors of the homilies--Cranmer,
Ridley, Latimer--though dead, were yet speaking.
They had perished at the stake, but now they were
preaching by a thousand tongues to the people of
England. Tyrants had done to them as they listed;
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