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heir fagots and stakes. Over a thousand ministers were ejected from their livings, and such as escaped further persecution fled to the continent. No fewer than two hundred and eighty-eight persons, among whom were five bishops, twenty-one clergymen, fifty-five women, and four children, were burned for religious opinions, besides many thousands who suffered various other forms of persecution. The constancy of Ridley, Latimer, and Hooper has immortalized their names on the list of illustrious martyrs: but the greatest of all the victims was Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. The most artful and insinuating promises were held out to him, to induce him to retract. Life and dignities were promised him, if he would consent to betray his cause. In an evil hour, he yielded to the temptation, and consented to sell his soul. Timid, heartbroken, and old, the love of life and the fear of death were stronger than the voice of conscience and his duty to his God. But, when he found he was mocked, he came to himself, and suffered patiently and heroically. His death was glorious, as his life was useful; and the sincerity of his repentance redeemed his memory from shame. Cranmer may be considered as the great author of the English Reformation, and one of the most worthy and enlightened men of his age; but he was timid, politic, and time-serving. The Reformation produced no perfect characters in any country. Some great defect blemished the lives of all the illustrious men who have justly earned imperishable glory. But the character of such men as Cranmer, and Ridley, and Latimer, present an interesting contrast to those of Gardiner and Bonner. The former did show, however, some lenity in the latter years of this reign of Mary; but the latter, the Bishop of London, gloated to the last in the blood which he caused to be shed. He even whipped the Protestant prisoners with his own hands, and once pulled out the beard of an heretical weaver, and held his finger in the flame of a candle, till the veins shrunk and burnt, that he might realize what the pain of burning was. So blind and cruel is religious intolerance. But Providence ordered that the religious persecution, which is attributed to Mary, but which, in strict justice, should be ascribed to her counsellors and ministers, should prepare the way for a popular and a spiritual movement in the subsequent reign. The fires of Smithfield, and the cruelties of the pillory and the prison, opene
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