The question, therefore, was not whether our polity should undergo a change, but what the nature of the change should be. The introduction of a new and mighty force had disturbed the old equilibrium, and had turned one limited monarchy after another into an absolute monarchy. What had happened elsewhere would assuredly have happened here, unless the balance had been redressed by a great transfer of power from the crown to the parliament. Our princes were about to have at their command means of coercion such as no Plantagenet or Tudor had ever possessed. They must inevitably have become despots, unless they had been, at the same time, placed under restraints to which no Plantagenet or Tudor had ever been subject.

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and its

It seems certain, therefore, that, had none but political The Recauses been at work, the seventeenth century would not have formation passed away without a fierce conflict between our Kings and effects. their Parliaments. But other causes of perhaps greater potency contributed to produce the same effect. While the government of the Tudors was in its highest vigour an event took place which has coloured the destinies of all Christian nations, and in an especial manner the destinies of England. Twice during the middle ages the mind of Europe had risen up against the domination of Rome. The first insurrection broke out in the south of France. The energy of Innocent the Third, the zeal of the young orders of Francis and Dominic, and the ferocity of the Crusaders whom the priesthood let loose on an unwarlike population, crushed the Albigensian churches. The second reformation had its origin in England, and spread to Bohemia. The Council of Constance, by removing some ecclesiastical disorders which had given scandal to Christendom, and the princes of Europe, by unsparingly using fire and sword against the heretics, succeeded in arresting and turning back the movement. Nor is this much to be lamented. The sympathies of a Protestant, it is true, will naturally be on the side of the Albigensians and of the Lollards. Yet an enlightened and temperate Protestant will perhaps be disposed to doubt whether the success, either of the Albigensians or of the Lollards, would, on the whole, have promoted the happiness and virtue of mankind. Corrupt as the Church of Rome was, there is reason to believe that, if that Church had been overthrown in the twelfth or even in the fourteenth century, the vacant space would have been occupied by some system more corrupt

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still. There was then, through the greater part of Europe,
very little knowledge; and that little was confined to the
clergy. Not one man in five hundred could have spelled his
way through a psalm. Books were few and costly. The art
of printing was unknown. Copies of the Bible, inferior in
beauty and clearness to those which every cottager may now
command, sold for prices which many priests could not afford
to give. It was obviously impossible that the laity should
search the Scriptures for themselves. It is probable there-
fore, that, as soon as they had put off one spiritual yoke, they
would have put on another, and that the power lately exercised
by the clergy of the Church of Rome would have passed to a
far worse class of teachers. The sixteenth century was com-
paratively a time of light. Yet even in the sixteenth century
a considerable number of those who quitted the old religion
followed the first confident and plausible guide who offered
himself, and were soon led into errors far more serious than
those which they had renounced. Thus Matthias and Kniper-
doling, apostles of lust, robbery, and murder, were able for a
time to rule great cities. In a darker age such false prophets
might have founded empires; and Christianity might have
been distorted into a cruel and licentious superstition, more
noxious, not only than Popery, but even than Islamism.

About a hundred years after the rising of the Council of
Constance, that great change emphatically called the Re-
formation began. The fulness of time was now come. The
clergy were no longer the sole or the chief depositories of
knowledge. The invention of printing had furnished the
assailants of the Church with a mighty weapon which had
been wanting to their predecessors. The study of the ancient
writers, the rapid development of the powers of the modern
languages, the unprecedented activity which was displayed in
every department of literature, the political state of Europe,
the vices of the Roman court, the exactions of the Roman
chancery, the jealousy with which the wealth and privileges
of the clergy were naturally regarded by laymen, the jealousy
with which the Italian ascendency was naturally regarded by
men born on our side of the Alps, all these things gave to the
teachers of the new theology an advantage which they per-
fectly understood how to use.

Those who hold that the influence of the Church of Rome in the dark ages was, on the whole, beneficial to mankind may yet with perfect consistency regard the Reformation as

an inestimable blessing. The leading strings, which preserve and uphold the infant, would impede the fullgrown man. And so the very means by which the human mind is, in one stage of its progress, supported and propelled, may, in another stage, be mere hindrances. There is a season in the life both of an individual and of a society, at which submission and faith, such as at a later period would be justly called servility and credulity, are useful qualities. The child who teachably and undoubtingly listens to the instructions of his elders is likely to improve rapidly. But the man who should receive with childlike docility every assertion and dogma uttered by another man no wiser than himself would become contemptible. It is the same with communities. The childhood of the European nations was passed under the tutelage of the clergy. The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority. The priests, with all their faults, were by far the wisest portion of society. It was, therefore, on the whole, good that they should be respected and obeyed. The encroachments of the ecclesiastical power on the province of the civil power produced much more happiness than misery, while the ecclesiastical power was in the hands of the only class that had studied history, philosophy, and public law, and while the civil power was in the hands of savage chiefs, who could not read their own grants and edicts. But a change took place. Knowledge gradually spread among laymen. At the commencement of the sixteenth century many of them were in every intellectual attainment fully equal to the most enlightened of their spiritual pastors. Thenceforward that dominion, which, during the dark ages, had been, in spite of many abuses, a legitimate and salutary guardianship, became an unjust and noxious tyranny.

From the time when the barbarians overran the Western Empire to the time of the revival of letters, the influence of the Church of Rome had been generally favourable to science, to civilisation, and to good government. But, during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in

I.

CHAP.

I.

intellectual torpor, while Protestant countries, once proverbial
for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skill and
industry into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes
and statesmen, philosophers and poets. Whoever, know-
ing what Italy and Scotland naturally are, and what, four
hundred years ago, they actually were, shall now compare
the country round Rome with the country round Edinburgh,
will be able to form some judgment as to the tendency of
Papal domination. The descent of Spain, once the first
among monarchies, to the lowest depths of degradation, the
elevation of Holland, in spite of many natural disadvantages,
to a position such as no commonwealth so small has ever
reached, teach the same lesson. Whoever passes in Germany
from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality, in Swit-
zerland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant canton, in
Ireland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant county, finds
that he has passed from a lower to a higher grade of civilisa-
tion. On the other side of the Atlantic the same law prevails.
The Protestants of the United States have left far behind
them the Roman Catholics of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The
Roman Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while the
whole continent round them is in a ferment with Protestant
activity and enterprise. The French have doubtless shown
an energy and an intelligence which, even when misdirected,
have justly entitled them to be called a great people. But
this apparent exception, when examined, will be found to
confirm the rule; for in no country that is called Roman
Catholic, has the Roman Catholic Church, during several
generations, possessed so little authority as in France. The
literature of France is justly held in high esteem throughout
the world. But if we deduct from that literature all that
belongs to four parties which have been, on different grounds,
in rebellion against the Papal domination, all that belongs to
the Protestants, all that belongs to the assertors of the
Gallican liberties, all that belongs to the Jansenists, and all
that belongs to the philosophers, how much will be left?

It is difficult to say whether England owes more to the
Roman Catholic religion or to the Reformation. For the
amalgamation of races and for the abolition of villenage, she
is chiefly indebted to the influence which the priesthood in
the middle ages exercised over the laity. For political and
intellectual freedom, and for all the blessings which political
and intellectual freedom have brought in their train, she is

chiefly indebted to the great rebellion of the laity against the priesthood.

The struggle between the old and the new theology in our country was long, and the event sometimes seemed doubtful. There were two extreme parties, prepared to act with violence or to suffer with stubborn resolution. Between them lay, during a considerable time, a middle party, which blended, very illogically, but by no means unnaturally, lessons learned in the nursery with the sermons of the modern evangelists, and, while clinging with fondness to old observances, yet detested abuses with which those observances were closely connected. Men in such a frame of mind were willing to obey, almost with thankfulness, the dictation of an able ruler who spared them the trouble of judging for themselves, and, raising a firm and commanding voice above the uproar of controversy, told them how to worship and what to believe. It is not strange, therefore, that the Tudors should have been able to exercise a great influence on ecclesiastical affairs; nor is it strange that their influence should, for the most part, have been exercised with a view to their own interest.

Henry the Eighth attempted to constitute an Anglican Church differing from the Roman Catholic Church on the point of the supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in this attempt was extraordinary. The force of his character, the singularly favourable situation in which he stood with respect to foreign powers, the immense wealth which the spoliation of the abbeys placed at his disposal, and the support of that class which still halted between two opinions, enabled him to bid defiance to both the extreme parties, to burn as heretics those who avowed the tenets of the Reformers, and to hang as traitors those who owned the authority of the Pope. But Henry's system died with him. Had his life been prolonged, he would have found it difficult to maintain a position assailed with equal fury by all who were zealous either for the new or for the old opinions. The ministers who held the royal prerogatives in trust for his infant son could not venture to persist in so hazardous a policy; nor could Elizabeth venture to return to it. It was necessary to make a choice. The government must either submit to Rome, or must obtain the aid of the Protestants. The government and the Protestants had only one thing in common, hatred of the Papal power. The English Reformers were eager to go as far as their brethren on the Continent. They unanimously

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