ciently acquainted. Meanwhile he treats the Reformation with unpardonable levity, and its leaders with an affectation of contempt which recoils upon himself. He has not shed any fresh light upon any one point connected with the greatest moral revolution that Europe ever witnessed. And he is the less pardonable, because the materials are abundant; and though much has been written on the subject, the field has not been traversed by any master mind. The tone of Mr. Froude may be gathered from his remarks on the disputation held at Westminster, in March 1559, between the Roman Catholics and the Protestant leaders:

"The Protestants," we are told, "were returned refugees; men who had kept prudently out of the way, while their opinions were dangerous to themselves; but had reappeared with security. The true battle on these great questions had been fought and won at the stake. The Aylmers, the Jewels, the Grindals, were not of the metal which makes martyrs; but they were skilful talkers, admirable divines,' with sufficient valour for the sham fight in which they were required only to walk with decorum over the course. They had conviction enough-though Jewel at least had saved his life by apostasy to be quite willing to persecute their adversaries; they were as little capable as the Catholics of believing that heaven's gatekeepers acknowledged any passport, save in terms of their theology; and on the whole they were well selected for the work they had to do."

To undertake the defence of such men as Grindal and Jewel would be a superfluous work. The bold protest which the former of these addressed to the queen, on the subject of public preaching and the Northampton prophecyings, shows that he had a martyr's courage; and the fact that he and Jewel and the rest, with a thousand distinguished Protestants, had fled to Antwerp on the accession of Mary, proves nothing to the contrary. Their mouths were silenced, and their pens too. They had no work to do at home, and they obeyed the Divine command. Persecuted in one city, they fled to another. The martyrs themselves were of three classes. Some felt an imperious call to remain at home and suffer. The flight of some was intercepted, and they were dragged from their concealment to the stake. Some, and indeed the majority, were in humble life, and without the means of seeking shelter in a foreign land. But all suffered with the same alacrity; all received from the Protestants the same tribute of undying reverence and love. The "tournament" was held, by the queen's But we need not command, after the fashion of the times. come down to argue these matters with a flippant writer such as Mr. Froude.

However, the Reformation marched onwards with a firm step. The Popish prelates, including the miscreant Bonner, were very gently dealt with. The most violent only were com

mitted to the Tower; the rest were commanded to remain in London for the present, and to appear daily at the council chamber. The Bill of Supremacy was passed without delay, meeting with little opposition in either house. Elizabeth declined to be called Head of the Church, but with a curious inconsistency she was determined to retain whatever power might be supposed to be conveyed by the obnoxious title. This was easily accomplished by a verbal alteration; and the crown became once more, "in all causes ecclesiastical as well as civil within her dominions, supreme." The title itself, though never formally restored, (as it was not formally abandoned,) has been used by all her successors, except James II., and introduced into several Acts of Parliament. The old statutes against heresy, repealed by Edward VI. and revived by Mary, were again repealed; and the courts were forbidden (let the reader mark the guarded expression) "to proceed against any person for any manner of opinion, except such as had been condemned by the first four general councils, or by the plain words of Scripture, or such as might at a future time be declared heretical by parliament and convocation." Pleading the justification of this well-guarded clause in the Act of Supremacy, it has been asserted on the one hand, and too readily conceded on the other, that the Church of England recognizes the authority of the first four general councils. But let it be observed, that the recognition extends so far only as to forbid the crime of heresy being alleged in our courts of law against any opinions which had not been judged heretical by one or other of the aforenamed councils. This limitation brings heresy, as a statutable crime, within very narrow bounds. No differences of Church government, no schisms that might hereafter arise in the Church of England (and some had already shown themselves in the reign of Edward VI.) could now be punished as heresies. Nothing was a heresy except the gravest errors affecting the nature or unity of the Godhead, the two natures of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the personality of the Holy Spirit: for beyond these nothing is pronounced heresy by the first four general councils. The Act neither asserts nor implies any further reception of the four councils.

The 21st Article of Edward VI., which was re-issued a few weeks afterwards by the Convocation, shows how little disposed were our Reformers to attach importance to the decisions of general councils. Bishop Burnet, though he carelessly speaks of the Church of England as receiving these four councils, places the matter, on the whole, in its true light. "As to the strict notion of a general council, there is great reason to believe that there never was any assembly to which it will be found to agree. And for the four general councils, which this

Church declares she receives, they are received only because we are persuaded from the Scriptures that their decisions were made according to them: that the Son is truly God, of the same substance with the Father. That the Holy Ghost is also truly God. That the Divine nature was truly united to the human in Christ; and that in one person. That both natures remain distinct; and that the human nature was not swallowed up of the Divine. These truths we find in the Scriptures, and therefore we believe them. We reverence those councils for the sake of their doctrine; but do not believe the doctrine for the authority of the councils. There appeared too much of human frailty in some of their other proceedings to give us such an implicit submission to them as to believe things only because they so decided them." (Burnet on Article XXI.)

Our obligation to the first Convocation of Elizabeth no writer of profane history (we restore the word to its old use, when all history was termed either sacred or profane) has yet acknowledged. Mr. Froude is no exception. Indeed, he treats the Reformation itself as if it were some bye-play, which so intrudes amidst more important subjects, that it cannot pass altogether unnoticed. Just as the historian now and then introduces the king's fool or jester saying or doing something which led to consequences more important than the deliberations of his Privy Council. He admits, however, the merit of the House of Commons in their readiness to pass the Act of Supremacy. "Thus," he says, " the broken idol which Pole had so laboriously replaced, was once more flung down from its pedestal. Dagon had fallen at last for ever." The Commission for revising the Prayer-book meets with some favour from his hands; chiefly because he has persuaded himself that their object had been so to frame the constitution of the Church of England, that disloyalty alone should exclude a single English subject from its communion, who in any true sense could be called a Christian; and further, too, so to frame its formulas, that they might be patient of a Catholic or Protestant interpretation, according to the views of this or that sect of the people. This has certainly the merit, great we allow in these days, of being a new discovery. Above all, Mr. Froude rejoices that "the Articles were left in abeyance; and happy would it have been for the Church of England had they never been revived." And the pious Reformers who were dissatisfied, especially with the omission of the Articles, he loads with vulgar abuse. "They gave importance to what was of no importance, they considered exactness of opinion a necessary condition of Christianity. They would have erected with all their hearts a despotism as hard, as remorseless, as blighting as that of the Romanists." Mr. Froude makes an occasional reference to the letters of the " German refugees" to their friends abroad,

after their return home. We shall not attempt to correct his slander by quotations from the "Zurich letters;" but we must express our unfeigned surprise that any public writer who values his own reputation should have ventured on so gross a calumny. As little truth is there in his statement, "that happily they found few among the laity to share their views; and in consequence were not permitted to ruin their own cause." On the contrary, they put their influence with the people to a severe test by their forbearance. Even when, for no other reason that we can discern than to amuse the emperor of Austria, and in a mere freak of wantonness, Elizabeth replaced the two lights on the communion table in her private chapel, the "Genevan refugees," while they express their sorrow that her majesty should make such changes, still express their confidence that all was well. Their anxiety was to restrain the impatience of the Puritans, now growing into a formidable party; and to repress, with severity if other means should fail, the turbulence of the Anabaptists, who had gained a footing in England ever since the reign of Edward VI. Thus they shared in the common lot of moderate, and at the same time highprincipled men; they were hated by the Papists, and distrusted by the impatient zealots of the Reformation. All this, to use their own words, because, when they could not do what they would, they were satisfied, rather than put the Reformation in jeopardy, to do what they could. Within a few years they were persecuted, and at last destroyed, by the extreme party, who said they were only carrying out the Reformation to its full extent that very Reformation which the bishops are here charged with hurrying forward with fanatical zeal, and a hard, remorseless, and blighting despotism.

The poor queen herself fared no better. While her Protestant subjects doubted her sincerity on the one hand, De Quadra, who had now succeeded De Feria as the Spanish ambassador, wrote home that the queen of England had now entirely given herself up to the devil, and would throw away all that she had, her life, her throne, her soul itself, in order to promote the interests of this new heresy with which her subjects were infected! But the Word grew and prospered, for the seed was incorruptible, and that hand that sowed it was the hand of God.

When Elizabeth ascended the throne, England had become little more than a province of Spain. Had Mary survived a few years longer, it is probable that it would have been such in fact. The queen was poor, the realm exhausted, the nobility decayed, the army, though we were then at war with France, wanting in men and deficient in able commanders. Everything was dear; and worse than all, England was divided against itself. "The French king," wrote a correspondent of Cecil's, "bestriding the realm, having one foot in Calais, the

other in Scotland. We have steadfast enemies, but no steadfast friends." Within the period embraced in the first of these two volumes, Elizabeth and her ministers had restored England to its rank in Europe. They had baffled Spain, wrested Scotland from the Guises, and "played with accomplished dexterity on the rivalries and jealousies of the Roman Catholic powers; by skill and good fortune they had brought the Catholics at home to an almost desperate submission;' and now, with the country armed to the teeth, they were able to subsidize the Huguenots, and were fastening themselves once more on the soil of France. And though the expenses of such a policy had been great, the burden of public debt bequeathed by Mary received no increase, and was even slightly diminished. The debased coinage was called in, prices fell in consequence, and confidence returned. We are using Mr. Froude's expressions, but the facts are too well known to be disputed. It was the beginning of a giant's career, and it slackened not at all during the whole of this illustrious reign. When Elizabeth first took up the sceptre, it was to rule over a people no tonly distracted and poor, but semi-barbarous; without a literature, and with a constitution very imperfectly defined. When she laid it down at last, and was gathered to her fathers, England was possessed of a constitution such as the world had never seen and never since has rivalled, of a literature which will never perish, and displayed a refinement of manners which, in all that is essential to real courtesy, has not yet been much surpassed. Many causes conspired to produce these astonishing results. First and foremost we place the Reformation, including those principles of civil government which the Reformation carried with it. So mighty a change was not accomplished all at once, nor without some reaction from time to time. The history of these social changes, more than political intrigues and the foibles of sovereigns, is the history of England; that is, the history of the nation, and of the steps by which, under the guardianship of heaven, she was conducted to unrivalled power, to peace and liberty. It is a large and fruitful theme. As happens in all great reforms, there were men who deprecated every change, and foresaw nothing but calamities; and there were men whose expectations were so utterly extravagant that no reforms could satisfy them. Unfortunately, each of these parties was powerfully represented even amongst the Protestants. Of course, with the Roman Catholics, every change was wrong; for to them every abuse was precious. The vessel of the state was in the circumstances of the ship in which Paul was wrecked; it was in a place where two seas met. Had there been a timid pilot at the helm, and had there not been a favouring gale from Him who "holds the winds in his fists," the Reformation must have perished in