implacable enemies too. He took upon him to bestow benefices, though the real right of patronage lay in others. He called all offending persons before him, whether of the laity or clergy, and compelled them to compound as his officers thought fit."

But this swollen apparition of mortal grandeur was but the creature of the most violent and capricious of men. A breath had made him, and a breath unmade. A single word and he fell headlong, assuredly shaking in his fall the great hierarchy of which he had seemed the most gorgeous pillar and ornament; for the whole system was corrupt and rotten to the core. The wealth of the monastic orders had especially demoralised them. Both the regular and secular clergy were accused of not only spending their time in taverns and gambling houses, but of abandoning in such resorts the very costume which distinguished them from the laity; of wearing daggers, gowns, and hoods of silk and embroidery, and letting

being divided against itself. The most remarkable circumstance, moreover, in this schism is, the very question which has just recently furnished such a fiery theme of discussion in both Romanist and Protestant Churchesthe Immaculate Conception of the Virgin.

The Franciscans, or Grey Friars, were the champions of this doctrine; the Dominicans assumed the opposite position, admitting, however, that the Virgin became entirely purified in her mother's womb; so that the difference of opinion was so little that it might have satisfied any but ecclesiastical combatants. But these two parties divided the whole Catholic community, and thus threw the public into a very blaze of animosity. In vain did the Pope himself endeavour to conclude the strife by stepping forth as the champion of the immaculate dogma. The feud burned on; but the Franciscans, by the sanction of the Vatican, carrying the people with them, the Dominicans resorted to one of those pious

their hair grow long and fall on their shoulders. The interiors of the monastic houses were described as very dens of licentiousness, both in monks and nuns. We have it on the evidence of one of the letters of reproof addressed by Archbishop Morton to the Abbot of St. Albans, that that famous abbey was filled with every species of vice and sensuality. The abbot is declared to have turned out all the nuns of two nunneries under his charge and filled them with women of scandalous character, and that both he and his monks led the most vile lives amongst them; that they besides this kept concubines, who are especially named, and indulged in still more monstrous excesses. He charges them with cutting down the woods, wasting and embezzling the property of the Church, stealing the plate, and even picking out the jewels from the shrine of the patron saint.

Whilst such was the corruption of the clergy-a corruption so complete that no warnings nor censures availed to produce amendment; though the criminal horde was well aware that every day the Reformers were growing in numbers and noting their enormities with vigilant eyesthese infatuated men fell to quarrelling amongst themselves, thus giving the last sign of a falling house, the

frauds so frequent in the Church of Rome, and produced an image of the Virgin, which, besides moving her eyes, shedding tears, rising up and sitting down, also denied the immaculateness of her conception, and declared the Franciscans impostors. The people, overcome by this miracle, at once abandoned the Franciscans; who, however, too well versed in such mysteries, seized the image and exhibited to the public the springs and machinery by which it had been worked. This fatal exposure being made, the four Dominicans who had been most active in the trick, were delivered over to their enemies, the provincial of the order being one of them, and were burned at the stake. The Franciscans triumphed, but the Church received a mortal wound.

With the blind tenacity which often induces falling bodies to assert their prerogatives with an arrogant obstinacy, the Church, in the fourth year of Henry VIII., commenced a daring opposition to the Government, in defence of the benefit of clergy. Henry VII., as we have stated, had limited this much abused privilege, by his statute ordering such laymen as claimed it under charge of murder to be burnt in the brawn of the thumb with the letter M. Henry VIII had a bill introduced into

TO 1603.]

licence of the queen, or of six of her privy council, or of her ecclesiastical commissioners, or the two archbishops, the Bishop of London, the chancellors of the universities, and the bishop and archdeacons of the place where it was produced. All persons were commanded to attend their parish churches under severe penalties. In 1562 the articles of religion of King Edward were reduced from forty-two to thirty-nine. In 1571 they underwent a further revision, and were made binding on the clergy before they could be admitted to orders.

Like her father, the longer she lived the more resolute she became to enforce her own dogmas on the whole body of her subjects. In the twenty-third year of her reign the penalty for non-attendance of the Established Church was raised to £20 per month. In the same year another Act was passed, declaring it high treason to attempt to draw any one to the Church of Rome; and the persons thus drawn were equally guilty of treason, and all their aiders, abettors, and concealers were made guilty of

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special licence from the bishop of the diocese or lieutenant of the county, under penalty of forfeiture of their goods and of the profits of their lands for life; those having no goods or lands to be deemed felons.

But if the atrocities committed by the Roman Catholics in the reign of Mary, and the fears of their recurrence should they regain the power, afforded some plea for these persecutions, what is to be said of the same rigours applied to the Reformers, who simply desired to form their religious opinions on the sacred volume-the divine charter of humanity? Thousands of these, from the earliest days of the Reformation, had claimed this privilege as their plain birthright; and many of those who came back from the Continent on the termination of the Marian persecution, were no little surprised and discouraged to find themselves equally excluded from the exercise of their own judgments by a Protestant queen. They were required to attend the preaching of those against whose doctrines they protested, and suffered the same monstrous fines if they absented themselves. Instead of that "glorious liberty of the gospel" which they had promised themselves, they found themselves required to accept with all homage the cut out and prescribed pattern of opinion dictated by an individual woman, who made a desperate stand against the removal of images from the churches, and practised many Popish ceremonies in her own private chapel. Instead of the

A Friar.

misprision of treason. These arbitrary laws against the freedom of opinion went on increasing in severity. In 1585 an Act was passed, which made traitors of all Jesuits and other Popish priests who had been ordained abroad, and all subjects whatever educated in Papal seminaries who did not immediately return home and take the oath of supremacy. The receivers of any such persons were declared felons without benefit of clergy. Whoever sent money to any foreign Jesuits or priests were liable to præmunire; and parents sending their children to school abroad without licence from Her Majesty, were liable to a penalty of £100. Fresh Acts were added in 1581 and 1593, the former to make void all conveyances of property by Popish recusants,, with the object of escaping the penalties imposed upon them, and to decree that the penalty of £20 a month for nonattendance at church should be levied by distress to the extent of all the offenders' goods and two-thirds of their lands; the latter ordered all Popish recusants above sixteen to repair to their proper places of abode, and never more to go more than five miles from them without

Sanctuary, Westminster.

form of service which the English refugees had established at Geneva, in which there was no Litany, no responses, and scarcely any rites or ceremonies, they were commanded to adopt a form which appeared to them little removed from Popery. The Genevan refugees, who, from their demand for the utmost purity and primitive simplicity in worship, were styled Puritans, would, had they been permitted, have planted a church far more like the church as it came to exist in Scotland than that which was and is established for England. They opposed the claims of the bishops to a superior rank or authority to the presbyters; they denied that they possessed the sole right of ordination, and exercise of church discipline; they objected to the titles and dignities which had been copied by the Anglican Church from the Roman, of archdeacons, deans, canons, prebendaries; to the jurisdiction of Spiritual Courts; to an indiscriminate admission of all persons to the communion; to many parts of the liturgy, and of the offices of marriage and burial, including the use of the ring in marriage; they repudiated set forms of prayers, and the use of godfathers

and godmothers, the rite of confirmation, the observance of Lent and holidays, the cathedral worship, the use of the organ, the retention of the reading of apocryphal books in the church, pluralities, non-residence, the presentation of livings by the Crown, or any other patron, or by any mode but the free election of the people.

But in that age no conception of religious liberty was entertained. The Puritans were as resolute in their ideas of conformity to their notions as Elizabeth was to hers; and had they had the power, would have used the same compulsion. Knox exhibited that spirit of exclusiveness to the extreme in Scotland, even calling for the deposition of the queen as a Jezebel" and 66 an idolatress," because she would not adopt his peculiar tenets and view of things. The Puritans exhibited the same spirit long after in America, where they put to death the Quakers

.

standard of uniformity, according to the bishops, was the queen's supremacy, and the laws of the land; according to the Puritans, the decrees of provincial and national synods, allowed and enforced by the civil magistrate: but neither party were for admitting that liberty of conscience and freedom of profession which is every man's right as far as is consistent with the peace of the civil Government he lives under."

Elizabeth, having the power, compelled all those clergymen who conformed sufficiently to accept livings and bishoprics, not only to conform, but more or less to persecute their brethren. Even men like Parker and Grindal, naturally averse to compulsion, were obliged to do her bidding, till Grindal rebelled and was set aside; but their places were supplied by Sandys, who had himself fled from Popish compulsion, and by Whitgift, who rigorously enforced the laws. Sandys actually sentenced the anabaptists who, in 1575, were burnt at the stake by order of the queen-for to this pass it came: Hammond, a ploughman, being burnt at Norwich in 1579, and Kett, a member of one of the universities, in the same place, ten years afterwards, under Elizabeth.

Pulpit Hour-glass, time of Edward VI.

for the exercise of their faith. In fact, the great and divine principle of the entire liberty of the gospel was too elevated to be arrived at suddenly after so many ages of spiritual despotism, and required long and earnest study of the spirit and example of Christ; severe struggles, and bloody deaths, and incredible sufferings in those who came to see the sublime truth, before the battle of religious freedom was fought out, and all parties could admit the plain fact which had revealed itself to Charles V. after his abdication of the throne, when he amused himself with clock-making: that as no two clocks can be made to go precisely alike, it is folly to expect all men to think precisely alike. "Both parties," says Neal, in his "History of the Puritans," speaking of these times, "agreed too well in asserting the necessity of a uniformity of public worship, and in using the sword of the magistrate for the support and defence of their respective principles, which they made an ill use of in their turns whenever they could grasp the power in their hands. The

Bishop of the Reformed Church.

Such was the state of the Protestant Church at the termination of the period we are now reviewing. The queen discouraged preaching and instruction of the people, allowing many bishoprics, prebends, and livings to be vacant, and receiving their incomes. She declared that one or two preachers in a county was enough, probably fearing the prevalence of the more advanced opinions. Parker in his time had been ordered to enforce strict compliance with the rubric, and numbers of the most eminent and eloquent clergymen resigned their livings and travelled over the country, and preached where they could, "as if," says Bishop Jewell," they were apostles; and so they were with regard to their poverty, for silver and gold they had none." Being, however, continually brought before the authorities and fined and otherwise punished, they determined to break off all connection with the public churches, and form themselves into an avowed separate communion, worshipping God in their own way, and being ready to