pression that he has produced, and the double design of the missionary labors of France in the East, and in other parts of the world, is well conveyed in the following significant language of one of the Catholic religious journals of Paris, January, 1843.

"In the East, Catholicism is France: in the East France had formerly the sword with which to protect her missionaries. Now her missionaries and her Christian principles will be the safeguard of her name and of her memory. Yes! France must inundate the East with her principles and her missionaries. The lowest soldiers of the faithful militia are ambitious of the perilous honor of evangelization. Our country has seen the young and intrepid traveller, who is soon going to return and resume in Asia, Christian instruction, and the strife against heresy and schism. Our mission in the East has but just begun. Providence has reserved, perhaps, to those who during eight centuries have kept up the necessary crusade of the sword at the holy sepulchre, a better and more pacific crusade, that of spreading the treasures of learning and science, and thus carrying to the highest point of splendor, the national glory and the glory of God."—L'Univers.

ARTICLE III.

THE ENGLISH REFORMERS AND THEIR PRINCIPLES.

By John Lord,, Boston, Mass.

OUR object, in this article, is, to present the religious movement in England, from the time of Cranmer to that of Baxtertwo reformers who are representatives of the two great religious parties among those who seceded from Rome.

We wish to allude to the great leading characters of a period of intense religious excitement, and to the principles for which they contended.

In England, as in Germany, the Spirit of the Lord moved upon the face of the troubled waters of a new moral reformation. And yet we do not behold the same moral phenomena. The great evils to be removed were the same in both countries, but were to be removed in a different way. The social and political aspects of the two countries demanded a different class of reformers. We behold, in England, no fearless and uncompromising Luther, urged on by the impulses of an earnest nature, and by convictions based on the word of God, to resist, single-handed if necessary, the encroachments of the great Red Dragon, declaring his mind in the language of passionate indignation, bracing himself up to the most daring and revolutionary assaults, overwhelming, by a torrent of invective and sarcasm, the dialectical sophistry of the schoolmen, confounding learned prelates by arguments drawn from Scripture and reason, undaunted before kings, unmoved by the exhortations of friends, indifferent to the anathemas of popes, and giving no rest to his mind, no slumber to his eyes, until he had declared his noble message with all the intrepidity of the ascetic Baptist, and all the dignity of the learned Paul. We see no profound and deeply read Calvin, among the early English reformers, enforcing a discipline of the church on republican principles, successfully assailing all that was venerable in prelacy, and all that was imposing in the ritual of the Romish service, laying down rules with autocratic severity for both rulers and people, inspiring a deep and implacable hatred of the papal ceremonial, and infusing his spirit of civil and religious freedom into all the institutions of his country, and all the inquiring minds of the world. We behold, in the English nation, if in Scotland, no dignitaries of earth, quailing before the noblemen of nature, and receiving their spiritual teachings as the imperative mandates of the Invisible King. At first, we contemplate no great ferment of awakened mind, no furious outbreak of popular rage, no rebellion against the established authorities in church or state. The time came, in the progress of reform, when the whole country was rent with civil and religious commotion. But the Reformation did not arise from the people, nor, until the time of Elizabeth, was there any thing democratic in its character. The people were led on by gradual steps alone, to achieve their religious independence. Nor was it secured until they were generally instructed in the principles of the evangelical faith of Čalvin, and they aroused, by a series of protracted and vexatious

insults and oppressions, to a determined and resolute resistance of the very authorities and institutions which they were anxious t maintain. In England, the first steps to reform were made by the most violent, rapacious and debauched of all her kings, suggested by one of the most unscrupulous ministers that ever rose to power, and defended by one of the most timid and inconsistent prelates that ever filled the see of Canterbury.

The English Reformation, as technically considered, was a mere preparation for the message of succeeding reformers, and is, moreover, a signal example of God's providence in making the passions of wicked men subservient to its high designs. And this is the great moral in the history of the times—the great central truth, indeed, which stands out from the page of all history. Providence is the life of history, as well as the soul of the world. "The burning bush has never yet gone out, nor has the ark of God ceased to float upon the world's waves." ." If there is grandeur in great changes and revolutions, especially in those which ultimately bring good to society, and in which their great actor's seemed to be moved by no lofty principles, that grandeur is chiefly seen in the direction they are made to take by "Him who sitteth in the heavens, and who rideth on the wings of the wind." And he who contemplates the moral changes of the world, without recognizing this great central truth of history, is like one "gazing at the frightful convulsions of nature, with the vacant awe of idolatrous savages, without cognizance of those natural laws by which the material world is regulated, and without reflection on the nature of that awful Being by whose omnipotence those wonders were performed." It is difficult to find, in all the annals of the human race, stronger illustrations of that wrath which is made to praise the Lord, than in the leading events of the reigns of Henry VIII, of Mary, and of Elizabeth. Not even the sale of Joseph to the Ishmaelites, the oppression of the children of Israel in Egypt, their wanderings in the desert, Daniel in the lion's den, nor Mordecai in the snares of Haman, illustrates more fully a superintending power, than the unholy passion of Henry for Anne Boleyn, and his savage rapacity in seizing the lands of the church to enrich his nobles, and find the means of gratifying his own profligate desires.

Who could have predicted, when Henry was writing philippics against Luther, and defending with zeal the interests of the pope, that he would have been the very first of English sove

reigns to rebel against his spiritual master, and pursue a policy fatal to the very church to whose doctrines and ceremonies he was ever attached? Even the unmanly and yielding temper of Cranmer, no less than the unprincipled boldness of his contemporary Cromwell, seemed just what were needed to advance. reformation under such a king as Henry. And the unsparing bigotry of Mary, which encouraged the bloody persecution under Bonner and Gardiner, was overruled for good, by testing the sincerity of the first seceders from the ancient church. The fire of Smithfield "lighted a candle in England, which was never afterwards extinguished;" and the flight of exiles to Geneva and Frankfort, resulted in the better understanding of the doctrines of Christianity, and a more ardent desire to promote a radical reform, both in the doctrines of faith, the discipline of the church, and the worship of Jehovah. Even the irritating policy of Elizabeth, respecting the nonconformists, provoked the most liberai and pious of the nation to resistance, when resistance led to liberty.

Though the Reformation, at first, was the work of great men, rather than a popular movement, still it could not have been carried on by them unless there had been a previous preparation. There had long been, among enlightened statesmen, no slight indignation that the surplus revenues of the realm should only be applied to the wants of the papal treasury. They could not be blinded to the impoverishment of England, in consequence of enormous drains of money, which flowed to Rome in the shape of annats and taxes.

In the universities, the claims of the popes were boldly discussed, and things were called by their right names. Wickliffe had carried on the contest between reason and authority, and, by the temerity of his speculations, had incited many inquiring minds to think boldly. The more intelligent of the laity despised the monks, who swarmed wherever there was money to be extorted, power to be gained, and ease to be enjoyed. Thirty thousand of these religious idlers and vagabond impostors were employed in counterfeiting relics, in forging miracles, and in selling masses for souls. The feeble taper, which their idolatrous hands held out as a light for the misguided people to find their way to heaven, was almost gone out, and this was sometimes entirely hidden in the deep recesses of their gloomy cloisters, or extinguished by the noisome vapors of their bacchanalian revels. Again, the barons looked with jealousy on the

wealth of the superior clergy, who owned half of the lands of England, and who fattened on the spoils of ages, neglectful of those spiritual interests which they professed to guard, and of those Christian duties which they were bound to discharge. They held high offices under government, and could easily consign the unfortunate victims of their resentment to imprisonment and torture, without restraint and without law. And the people themselves, particularly in the cities, enriched by commerce, liberalized by art, and banded together by associations, beheld, with an evil eye, the encroachments of an hierarchy bent on crushing every effort for intellectual independence. The Lollards, too obscure to attract much notice from the great, were nevertheless numerous; and, in their humble sphere, breathed out the spirit of popular indignation against the abuses of a corrupted church. What, to them, was a lofty altar, surmounted with costly vessels of gold and silver? What were wax candles, burning before the sacred crucifix? what the tones of the soleinn organ, swelling through all the recesses of the vaulted roof? What were all the architectural wonders of the ancient cathedral; what the gorgeous dresses of the priest, the ceremony of the mass, the imposing ritual of the service, the transporting music of the choir, when their spiritual cravings were disregarded, and when they retired from the service of Him who dwelleth not in temples made with hands, with dazzled senses, excited imaginations, and no instruction on the great truth of a regenerating gospel? The people perceived, at last, that the church which had sheltered the submissive, was still intolerant of change that it crushed all daring spirits, and was opposed to liberty of conscience, and the rights of private judgment. A spirit of discontent pervaded the nation, and so prepared the way for the efforts of the reformers.

The Reformation was needed to accomplish four things, under which most of the evils of Romanism may be ranged. These were, separation from Rome, the removal of ecclesiastical abuses, the renovation of the doctrines and discipline of the Apostolic age, and the establishment of religious liberty.

The Reformation, at first, was the work of prelates and rulers, and did not become a popular movement, until Elizabeth had resolved it should advance no farther, and had issued an act of uniformity, which required submission to her sovereign will, and her royal conscience, even in those indifferent matters which the Bible and enlightened legislation leave to individual conscience