III. Then he, [Grindal, I suppose,] According to whatever SECT. manner you will. Properly speaking, Baptism, or the sacrament of faith, may not be called faith; and so neither Anno 1551. the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, according to that reason, is the body and blood of Christ. The Marquis of Northampton produced a place out of Cyprian, and it is in the sermon de Unctione. Let the place be read. "The Lord gave in the table bread and wine, in the 66 cross," &c. In which place Watson laboured after a wonderful manner. The first antithesis, viz. "The Lord gave bread," he lightly passed over; he insisted on the following words, namely, "That Christ should teach the Apostles, that "they in like manner might teach the people, how bread "and wine is flesh and blood;" for otherwise, saith he, if bread and wine are only signs, he might easily teach this. That way he wrested that which followeth. Cheke. He saith not how they were changed, but how they were: but bread and wine by no means can be the body and blood of Christ, unless after a sacramental and significative manner. And therefore afterward he saith, the things that signify, and the things signified, are to be reputed under the same names. That place also of Augustin was objected, lib. iii. Of the Christian Doctrine; Si flagitium aut facinus, &c. It is a figurative speech; and therefore it was urged, it was a figurative speech to eat the flesh of Christ, John vi. and therefore the words of the Supper are figurative. Feckenham acknowledged this place to be difficult, yet to it, it might thus be answered; Augustin saith, Videtur præcipere facinus, "He seemed to command a wicked "deed;" but indeed in these words no wickedness is commanded. And Augustin in another place hath it, "It is "forbid in the law to eat the blood of living creatures; "but to us it is commanded, not to drink the blood of a "living creature, but of Christ himself." Cheke. See therefore how you endeavour to invert St. IV. CHAP. Augustin's opinion; for he gathereth, that it is a figure from thence, that he seemeth to command a wicked deed, Anno 1551. and therefore he subjoineth, " Therefore it is a figure." Car succeeds Cheke lecture. Watson said, that the speech was proper, as it pertaineth to the true eating of Christ; but figurative, as it belongeth to such things as follow in Augustin, viz. when it is taken for the imitation of the passion, and remembrance of the death of Christ. But this answer was shewn to repugn sufficiently to the scope of Augustin, who makes the whole speech to be tropical; not proper, but tropical: for, saith he, "in the 86 proper sense he seemeth to command a wicked deed.” Another place was produced out of the same book in these words, " As it is the part of servile infirmity to fol"low the letter, and to interpret signs for things, so to "interpret the signs unprofitably is the part of extravagant error." 66 Watson answered, that Augustin speaketh there of the signs of the Old Testament; but when he had read the place, where it speaks manifestly of Baptism and the Eucharist, he again gainsaid somewhat, I know not what. And the most rose up, that here might be an end. SECT. IV. Resigns his Greek Professorship. Gets Leland's MSS. CHEKE had hitherto held the place of the Greek lecin the Greek ture in Cambridge, conferred upon him by his old master, King Henry VIII. though I suppose he substituted somebody else to read in his stead, who seems to have been Nicholas Car, Fellow of Trinity college; who now, the 12th day of October this year, being an exquisite Grecian, was appointed to succeed Cheke in that lecture, by order of the Privy Council, and that by procurement, as it seems, of Cheke himself. It was Cheke's practice (in order to the furnishing up an excellent library for the King) to procure as many IV. Leland's pa pers for the Athen. 69, 70. MSS. as he could of learned men, into his possession, for SECT. King Edward's use. Thus, as he got the papers and books of Dr. Martin Bucer, after his decease the last year, so he did Anno 1552. those of John Leland, the antiquarian, this, upon his death, which happened in April 1552. And all the MSS. and collections, (as we are told by a late author,) with many Procures other matters of moment belonging to Leland, by virtue of a commandment from the King, were brought into Sir King, John Cheke's custody, for the use of that King's library; Oxon. p. and which the King seemed to have a right and title to, since Leland had been employed by the King's father to make those collections out of the libraries of the dissolved monasteries and elsewhere, and had a salary allowed him for that purpose, and other preferments granted him. That author adds, that not long after, our Cheke (it must rather be his son Henry, who was Secretary to the Council in the north under Queen Elizabeth) gave four volumes of these collections to Humphrey Purefoy, Esq. one of the said Council, whose son, Thomas Purefoy of Barwel in Leicestershire, gave them to the antiquarian Will. Burton of Lindley in the same county, anno 1612, who made use of them in his description of Leicestershire. And many years after by his gift they came at last to be safely lodged in the public library at Oxford. Lastly, the same author tells us, that some other of these collections, after Cheke's death, came into the hands of William Lord Paget and Sir William Cecil. A Now we are speaking of the King's library, it may not Keepers of the King's be amiss to note here, that the keeper of it was the library. learned and ingenious Roger Ascham, preferred to it by Cheke's means, with an honourable salary: and after him Bartholomew Traheron, preferred afterwards in this reign to be Dean of Chichester. For Ascham being now abroad, as was shewed before, Cheke thought good he should resign this place to some other that could daily attend; and recommended the said Traheron to Ascham, who shewed himself willing he should succeed him, whom, he said, he loved upon many accounts; and that he should the more easily sick. CHAP. suffer himself to be shut out of that library, [however IV. highly he esteemed the place,] for the sake of so worthy Anno 1552. a man to be let into it. This was in January 1550. Cheke falls It had been a very crazy time in England by reason of dangerously the sweating sickness that raged the last year, and by fevers before and after that, whereby very many persons were cut off, and some escaped very hardly, after that they had been brought even to the gates of death: and as Haddon, Cheke's dear friend, was one of these the last year, so Cheke himself must have his turn this. His distemper (under which he laboured in May) brought him exceeding low. The King and all good men were extraordinarily concerned for him, knowing how useful a man the nation was in danger of losing; the King inquired of the physicians every day how he did, who, not able to conquer the malignancy of the distemper, at last told the King the heavy news, that there was no hope of his life, and that they had given him over as a man for another world. But the pious King had not only recommended his schoolmaster to the care of his physicians, but also to the heavenly Physician, whom in his devotions he earnestly implored to spare his life; and upon his prayers such a strange assurance was impressed in his mind that Cheke would recover, that when the doctors (as was said) despaired of him, the King made this surprising reply to them; "No," said he, "Cheke will not die this time; for "this morning I begged his life in my prayer, and ob"tained it." And so it came to pass; for towards the latter end of the month of May he recovered. This was attested (saith Fuller) by the old Earl of Huntingdon, bred up with the King in his young years; who told it to Cheke's grandchild, Sir Thomas Cheke of Pyrgo, aged near eighty years, anno 1654, who then, it seems, made a relation of it to the said Fuller. His recovery was looked upon as a public blessing, and all good men rejoiced at it. Bishop Rid- Bishop Ridley, in a letter to the Secretary, speaking of Lever, their him, added, " in whose recovery God be blessed." Mr. Lever, a very learned and pious preacher, wrote to Ascham, Recovers. ley and joy at it. IV. (of whom we have spoke before,) now at Villacho in Carin- SECT. thia, and in his letter prayed to God, that England might be thankful for restoring such a man again to the King. Anno 1552. "And I am firmly persuaded," said he, " that God wist "and would we should be thankful, and therefore be"stowed this gift upon us. He trusted," as he went on, "that God's wrath was satisfied in punishing divers or"ders of the realm for their misorder, having taken away 66 many singular ornaments from them, as learning by the "death of Bucer, counsel by Denny, nobility by the two young Dukes [of Suffolk, who died very shortly after one another of the sweating sickness,] courtship by gen“tle Blage, St. John's college by good Eland; but if “learning, counsel, nobility, Court, and Cambridge, should "have been all punished at once by taking away Mr. "Cheke, then I should have thought our wickedness had "been so great, as cried to God for a general plague, in depriving us of such a general and only man as he.” 66 66 66 SECT. V. Cheke at Cambridge. Departs thence to the King. Places conferred on him. Commence Athen. I FIND him this year at Cambridge, gone thither, I suppose, to enjoy his native and beloved air after his sickness; and taking perhaps the opportunity of the King's progress this summer, to go to his residence upon his Provostship in King's college. Now at a Commencement, (as we are Cheke distold,) Sir John Cheke did the University the honour to putes at a make himself a part in the learned exercises then per- ment, formed; for when one Christopher Carlile, whose office it Oxon. p. was to keep a divinity act, maintained the tenet of Christ's 111. local descent into hell, our learned man in disputation opposed him. This seems to have been done by consultation, and the argument resolved on, on purpose to meet with the Popish doctrine of the limbus patrum; that is, an apartment of hell, where, they say, the ancient patriarchs and good men before Christ were detained, and |