A

SHORT INSTRUCTION

INTO

CHRISTIAN RELIGION

BEING

A CATECHISM

SET FORTH BY

ARCHBISHOP CRANMER

IN MDXLVIII:

TOGETHER WITH

THE SAME IN LATIN,

Translated from the German by

JUSTUS JONAS

IN MDXXXIX.

OXFORD,

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

MDCCCXXIX.

3.

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PREFACE

THE present volume consists of two parts. The first contains the treatise, which is commonly known by the name of Cranmer's Catechism: the second, the same work in Latin, from which the former was translated. It is singular that bishop Burnet should have been ignorant of the real author of this Catechism, and should have ascribed it to Cranmer himself. Thus he says in his History of the Reformation, without taking any notice of its being a translation, "The next

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thing Cranmer set about was, the publishing "of a Catechism, or large instruction of young persons in the grounds of the Christian religion" and still more strongly at the end of the account which he gives of the Catechism; “It "is plain that he had now quite laid aside those singular opinions which he formerly held of the "ecclesiastical functions; for now, in a work "which was wholly his own, without the concurrence of any others, he fully sets forth their "divine institution b." This mistake is noticed in

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66

OF

THE EDITOR.

a Part II. book I. vol. II. p. 145. ed. 1829. b Ib. p. 147.