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John Wesley and the Church of England . By Frank Baker. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970. ix + 422 pp. $14.50.

Despite its general title, this work discusses English Reformation views of history almost exclusively. The brief sketch of Continental views in the first chapter is too greatly simplified in order to bring all writers, magisterial and radical, within the same broad framework, and this framework is then too loosely related to the major English figures—Tyndale, Bale, and Foxe—whom Williams treats. But the three core chapters of this slim volume do contain much of value. Tyndale, the 'father' of English Reformation history, never wrote history per se, though his works, like those of Luther, contain a recognizable historical theory. In The Practice of Prelates (1530), he asserted that England had been the object of a conspiracy led by the popes at Rome and thus created a "blue print for the full-scale model later to be built by Bale and especially by Foxe" (p. 27). Further, in re-assessing England's medieval past, Tyndale was able to place Wycliffe and the Lollards in a favorable light, while his humanistic training led to the discovery and preservation of historically important materials. John Bale's years at Cambridge coincided with those of Cranmer, Latimer, Matthew Parker, and Tyndale himself, by whom Bale was deeply influenced. Less an historian than a polemicist, Bale nevertheless must be credited with the first major attempt to write a Protestant history of England, Acts of the English Votaries (1546). Like his mentor, Bale exalted the Lollards while expressing his strongly nationalistic sympathies. Finally, John Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1544, Latin; 1563, English) reveals the influence of Tyndale and Bale, even while surpassing their contributions. More than a first-rate apologist, Foxe used sound historiographical principles which have weathered adverse opinions of the nineteenth century to make him one of the most enduring authors of English ecclesiastical history. Foxe placed his martyrs in a universal scheme wherein they became evidence for the covenant <*ween God and his chosen people, the British. Williams does not, strangely, mention in this context the De regno Christi (1551) by Martin Bucer, then resident at Cambridge. A final chapter cites concomitant development of religious nationalism in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland (Davies, Buchanan, and Ussher), and sketches the fate of Reformation historiography down to the nineteenth century. All these British writers, Williams notes in summary, operate within the traditional universal Christian history. As on the Continent, particulars might be altered by the new interpretations, but the framing members of the world-view remained intact. Though English Reformation history seems too self-contained in Williams' depiction, he has provided a highly useful introduction for the general reader.