men might think freely, and had means to spread their thoughts abroad, and it soon. became patent that they would not think alike. The wilful monarch who was permitted to be the instrument that commenced the work of Reform in the English Church would fain have retained those doctrines which, in his early days, he had shewn himself ready to defend with his pen. All he desired was to transfer the religious supremacy from the papal hands into his own. Owing to this circumstance it came to pass that the Reformation in England differed from the corresponding movement in other countries. Here it was

a change which for a long time was directed by the monarch, while elsewhere the course which it took depended on the people. Not but that the people of England were anxious enough for the new learning, but what they desired was in many cases opposed to the wishes of the Defender of the faith. So the chronicle of his reign presents a foul record of persecution inflicted on both sections of Christians. Those who longed for more scriptural doctrine in the Church were punished because their views led them beyond the tenets of their imperious ruler, and those who still

clung to the Papacy as their security for union suffered even more for disavowing the Royal Supremacy. The two succeeding reigns were short but very eventful, yet they can hardly be said to have altered much the positions of either party in the great religious struggle. The favour shewn to the Reformers in the first of them was counterbalanced by an equal amount of favour shewn to the foes of Reform in the second. There was much persecution but little progress, and Elizabeth and her advisers appear to have thought this, for in their Act of Uniformity the regulations revert in great part to that state of affairs which existed in the earlier days of her brother's reign. It is from her accession that the Reformed Church may be said to date, and before her rule comes to its close we see that the strife of conflicting parties had grown strong within it.

It is not perhaps surprising that the first difficulties arose on matters of ritual and discipline rather than on points of doctrine. I have already noticed that the Reformation on the Continent was the work of the people rather than of their rulers, and that it consequently differed much both in character and

extent from the changes which had been made in England. From this difference the first troubles arose. Many Englishmen in the late dark days of persecution had lived abroad for fear of their lives. There they became imbued with the foreign notions of reform, and were prepared to go much farther than their brethren in England. To them whatever bore a likeness to that Church from which they had separated was a thing accursed. As such they had seen it put away by those with whom they had of late held close communion. These sentiments they were not slow to avow on their return home in safer times. The vestments of the clergy and the forms of prayer in the English service-books preserved (and we believe wisely preserved) a great deal of resemblance to those of the Church of Rome. The superinduced corruptions of that church had not prevented the retention of much that was primitive and pure. But it is not difficult to understand that, to men who had suffered exile under Romish rule, and been schooled by their residence abroad into such a hatred of Rome as had not yet been felt in England, these points were in the utmost degree repugnant and provoked strong protestations against their continuance.

On the other hand, neither the Queen nor her counsellors had ever seen or desired to see the sterner regulations which these new teachers would fain have pressed upon them. In their eyes to yield to the clamour which was raised against the Church Services seemed to be mere pulling down of the edifice which they had been at such pains to rear. To this they could hardly be expected to consent at the demand of men who offered them nothing definite to place in its stead. Further changes than they had already made they deemed revolutionary, and thus all their agencies were brought to bear against the advocates of simpler ritual and altered service-books. The result was that throughout the latter part of this reign we have an incessant conflict. The Queen and her ministers on the one hand were zealous for the support of things as they were, while the advocates of change strove on the other to assimilate the English to the continental ritual. Saddening and painful is the spectacle, the more so, when we remember that the struggle professed to be for His religion who said, "My peace I leave with you." The rulers were determined to enforce the order which they had laboured to arrange and they saw

no way to do so but by penal enactments. The natural consequences followed. Extreme

measures in the one party generated extreme measures in the other, and they who were at first innovators in religious ritual were soon turned into antagonists of the civil power. We read with little or no surprise, in the writings of one of the most prominent Puritans at that day, sentiments such as these: "As civil magistrates are nourishers, so be they servants unto the Church, and as they rule in the Church so must they remember to subject themselves unto the Church, to submit their sceptres, to throw down their crowns before the Church."* This was strong language to be used in the days of a Tudor queen, and betokens at least as great illiberality in him who wrote it, as there was in those against whom he was inveighing. And it is no solitary specimen. One of the most favourable historians of Nonconformity is compelled to admit on a review of this period that "the capital error of the Puritans was their imperfect acquaintance with the nature of religious liberty.... they were

* Cartwright quoted in Price's History of Nonconformity, vol. i., p. 250.