A Brief Declaration of the Lord's Supper. By Nicholas Ridley.
Edited, with Introduction, Notes, and Life of the Author, by H. C. G. Moule, D.D. (Seeley and Co.)—Dr. Motile discharges a pious duty to the great divine who has given a name to the Hall over which he presides at Cambridge. Ridley was a gentleman by birth, a man of kindly temper (though unhappily a partaker in the had business of Joan of Kent), and of more than ordinary learning. His academical career was distinguished, for he was made Master of his college before he was forty. Some of his English writing, notably his farewell to his college, Pembroke, is remarkably beautiful. His personality is presented in a very attractive way in Dr. Moule's memoir. The "Brief Declaration" itself is illustrated with much interesting matter in the notes and appendices. Of this nothing is more remarkable than the epitome of the tractate written by a French monk, Ratramnus (commonly called "Bertram"), in the ninth century. It was the perusal of this work that turned Ridley's opinions from Transubstantiation to the belief in a Spiritual Presence. And it was Ridley who influenced Cranmer. Anglican doctrine, as it stands between the materialistic teaching of the medimval teachers and the bare commemorative theory of the Zuinglians, owes much to Ridley, and, through Ridley, to Ratramnus, a divine not only held orthodox in his time, but much consulted as an authority. Here is a specimen of his argument : "If, as some hold, nothing is here in figure, all is verity, then faith does nothing, for nothing spiritual is done. But faith is the evidence of things not seen; so faith would have no function here. And it is absurd to take bread for flesh and wine fez. blood ; nor is that a mystery, when nothing is secret."
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