One Sunday morning in 1550, as Londoners made their way to church, few parishioners knew what surprise awaited them in the sanctuary. It was neither a relic nor another icon of one of the saints. It was something the average layperson had probably never seen before, a copy of the Bible, translated into English. It was a gift—from King Edward VI.

On the eve of Henry VIII’s death, the Anglican Church stood poised for massive change.1 The king’s reforms (undertaken with mixed motives) were insufficient, still masking the pure biblical gospel. Corrupt priests, greedy bishops, rampant theological ignorance, and widespread biblical illiteracy marked sixteenth-century England. The priest and his ceremonies stood as the barrier between the laity and the truth. In J. C. Ryle’s words, the priests “were practically the mediators between Christ and man; and to injure them was the highest offence and sin.”2

At the age of nine, the precocious Edward, son of Jane Seymour, ascended to the royal throne, and ruled under the control of the king’s Privy Council. Having been tutored by evangelicals throughout his youth, Edward developed a love for the Christian gospel. This affinity permitted Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Protector Somerset, who governed the day-to-day operations of the kingdom, to initiate sweeping ecclesiastical reforms. Edward’s reign secured the following gospel advances: a copy of Coverdale’s Great Bible in English in every parish church; the removal of icons and relics in favor of Cranmer’s Book of Homilies with straightforward biblical messages for the clergy to preach; an English liturgy based upon Cranmer’s magnificent Book of Common Prayer3 rather than the Latin mass; and the Forty-Two Articles—an evangelical confession of faith to which parish ministers and ministerial trainees subscribed.4

Edward VI welcomed evangelicals into his court and studiously attended to the preaching of Hugh Latimer, former Bishop of Worcester. With the help of Cranmer and Somerset, Edward reformed the clergy and positioned the people to hear the good news of salvation with clarity for the first time in generations. Richard Morison, one of the many reformed preachers during Edward’s reign, later commented on the rapid pace of reform: a “greater change was never wrought in so short space in any country [since] the world was.”5 Thomas Becon, another English Reformer, called Edward “the true Josiah, that earnest destroyer of false religion, that fervent setter-up of God’s true honor”6 (cf. 2 Kings 22-23).

King Edward VI’s rule demonstrated that corruption, ignorance, and heresy are never irreversible. The Church, no matter how troubled, can be revived by the liberating good news of the pure gospel, biblical fidelity, and faithful preaching. In a subsequent generation, Oxford theologian Richard Hooker remarked of Edward, “He died young, but lived long, if life be action.” May those whose charge is either Church or nation find courage to live similarly “long” lives.
 
Footnotes:
 
1  For an extensive review of the historical context leading to Edward’s religious reforms, see W.K. Jordan, Edward VI–The Young King (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1968), 17-50; 125-154.
 
2  J.C. Ryle, Five English Reformers (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1960), 92.
 
3  See Kairos Journal article, “Uncommon Repentance: The Book of Common Prayer (1552).”
 
4  The most insightful recent biography of Edward VI’s reign is Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch’s The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Refomation (Palgrave/St. Martin’s Press, 1999). In addition to providing more vivid details on Edward’s evangelical sympathies and their impact on kingdom policy, MacCulloch also counters the notion that Edward and Somerset’s iconoclasm was almost universally despised by ordinary people, a thesis advocated by Cambridge historian Eamon Duffy. To the contrary, MacCulloch shows the role of Edward’s success in precipitating a genuinely English version of the Protestant Reformation; pp. 108-115.
 
5  Richard Morison, as cited in MacCulloch, The Boy King, 102.
 
6  Thomas Becon, as cited in J.N. King, Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis (Princeton University Press, 1989), 93.
 
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article adopted from Karios Journal

First Baptist Church is located in Perryville, MD