Bishop John Hooper
On the site of Bishop Hooper’s martyrdom in Gloucester
He was offered the bishopric of Gloucester after he impressed King Edward VI with his Lenten sermon on Jonah, but John Hooper famously declined the invitation on April 7, 1550. Unless he could be exempted from the use of the vestments specified in the Ordinal (ordination service) that still suggested a Catholic mass and sacrificing priesthood, he would prefer to remain a traveling preacher. Hooper returned from European exile a hyper Protestant, “a man of rigid puritan scrupulosity” (Patrick Collinson). It was said of him that "there was no adiaphora" - no matters of indifference or of secondary importance. This father of Puritanism felt that episcopal vestments convey an importance that bishops shouldn't have in the newly formed Church of England. Like the other reformers, including Thomas Cranmer, Hooper felt that apostolic succession is the succession of apostolic teaching (2 Tim 2:2), not the automatic conveyance of a special grace or character. Priests and bishops are not intermediaries between God and his people, as Roman Catholics say; only Jesus is the Great High Priest. “There is only one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim 2:5). After a month in Fleet Prison for his stubbornness, the passionate preacher for simplicity in worship saw the wisdom of donning vestments for the opportunity to preach the gospel. Bishop John Hooper and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer became trusted friends, and Hooper helped Cranmer think through the theology of the first Books of Common Prayer. He influenced the writing of the Prayer Book in many ways, including the last-minute inclusion of the Black Rubric in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer that states that kneeling to receive communion does not imply any adoration or worship of the Christ in the bread and wine (rather, English reformers understood “real presence” as that which is affectually experienced in the hearts of those who receive the grace of the sacrament by faith). His advocacy for Protestantism in England, of course, meant that he would be burned at the stake by Bloody Mary as a heretic. In 1863 a statue was erected on the site of his martyrdom in Glouchester, ironically showing him wearing a rochet and chimere, the vestments he had protested against so vigorously. Perhaps it would serve the church well today to only consider candidates for bishop who are willing to first spend time in the jail for their deeply held convictions.
Five English Reformers, J.C. Ryle