Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 - Various - Страница 2

A "Note" in the Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, published by the Parker Society, p. 91., mentions the existence of an important MS. treatise by Bishop Ridley, which had been unknown when the works of that prelate were collected and published by the Parker Society in 1841. It seems to be desirable that the fact should be placed on record in your most useful publication: the "Note" is as follows:—

"A copy of Bishop Ridley's 'Conference by writing with M. Hoper, exhibited up to the council in the time of King Edward the Sixth,' was in the possession of Archbishop Whitgift: see his Defence of the Answer to the Admonition, A.D. 1574, p. 25. But its existence was unknown (see Ridley's Life of Bishop Ridley, Lond. 1763, p. 315.) in later years, till a copy, slightly imperfect, was discovered in 1844, in the extensive collection of MSS. belonging to Sir Thomas Phillips, Bart."

There is another MS. treatise by Bishop Ridley, that has been missing for nearly three centuries, respecting which I should be glad to offer a "Query:" I allude to Ridley's Treatise on Election and Predestination. The evidence that such a piece ever existed is, that Ridley, in answer both to a communication from prison, signed by Bishop Ferrar, Rowland Taylor, John Bradford, and Archdeacon Philpot, and probably to other letters from Bradford, wrote,—

"Where you say that, if your request had been heard, things, you think, had been in better case than they be, know you that, concerning the matter you mean, I have in Latin drawn out the places of the Scriptures, and upon the same have noted what I can for the time. Sir, in those matters I am so fearful, that I dare not speak further, yea, almost none otherwise, than the very text doth, as it were, lead me by the hand."—Works of Bishop Ridley, Parker Soc., p. 368.

And to this statement Bishop Coverdale, in the Letters of the Martyrs, Day, 1564, p. 65., caused the following side-note to be printed:—

"He meaneth here the matter of God's election, whereof he afterward wrote a godly and comfortable treatise, remaining yet in the hands of some, and hereafter shall come to light, if God so will."

Glocester Ridley, in his Life of Bishop Ridley, 1763, p. 554, states:—

"I never heard that it was published, nor have I been able to meet with it in MS. The great learning and cool judgment of this prelate, and the entire subjection of his imagination to the revealed will of God, make the loss of this treatise much to be lamented."

Could any of your correspondents offer any suggestion, or supply any information, which might throw light on the subject, or might give a clue to the lost manuscript? The treatise referred to might possibly still exist, and, even if without Ridley's name, or in an imperfect state, might yet be identified, either from the handwriting or some other circumstance. Do any of your correspondents possess or know of any MS. on Election or Free-will, of the time of the Reformation, which might possibly be the missing treatise? Things turn up so curiously, in quarters where one would least expect it, and sometimes after more than three centuries, that one would willingly hope that this lost treatise might even yet be found or identified.

T.

Bath.