concerning the Eucharist, by which the Reformers of that age were not a little bewildered. Four principal theories are adverted to as then broached; and on the first of these, so memorable in the history of the Papacy, it is remarked :

The doctrine (Transubstantiation) does not, as vulgarly supposed, contradict the verdict of the senses, since our senses can report nothing as to the unknown being which the schoolmen denominated substance, and which was alone the subject of the conversion.'

Had this hypothesis been devised by some modern 'Doctor ' of Divinity', we believe that Mr. Hallam would have disposed of it with that easy contempt which he has shewn for that order of persons. It certainly is not true, that the Being which the schoolmen denominated substance, is so strictly unknown, as to be beyond the reach of a verdict from the senses. The language of the hierarchy on this point, has been rendered studiously definite; declaring, that the substance of the bread and wine is converted into the substance of the body and blood of Christ. Now with respect to the real and entire body and blood of Christ, the senses surely have their verdict to give, and one that will not be suspended, when a human being is called upon to recognize a substance of that quality and of that quantity in the priestly wafer. Thus definite, thus grossly, monstrously definite, is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church; and as to any private subtilties invented by solitary schoolmen, they are matters with which the Protestant controvertist has nothing to do. The jargon of those disputants respecting what they call the primary and secondary properties of matter, is about as unintelligible as the dogma to which it is applied, and does nothing toward explaining it.

Mr. Hallam professes, that he does not see how errors with respect to the Eucharist should have any influence on the moral conduct of men, or even on the general nature of their faith; and he deems it a matter worthy of special observation, that the denial of Transubstantiation should have been made the test of orthodoxy so generally in the early stages of the Reformation. There is a Doctor of Divinity', for whom Mr. Hallam and some others will probably entertain a more cordial respect when they know him better, who will explain this mystery, though his own times were two centuries earlier than those of Cranmer. Wycliffe, adverting to the zeal of his contemporaries in support of this unintelligible dogma, describes it as the product of Satan, and represents the arch-fiend as musing thus with himself:'Should I once so far beguile the Church by aid of Anti-christ my vicegerent, as to persuade them to deny that this sacra'ment is bread, and to induce them to regard it merely as an accident, there will be nothing then which I may not bring them

'to receive, since there can be nothing more opposite to the Scrip'tures or to common discernment.' It was the determination of the priesthood, not to relinquish a jot of their empire; and it was natural that their pressing questions should relate to tenets which were at once the offspring and the stay of their ascend

ancy.

With respect to the state of the civil constitution under the youthful Edward and his sanguinary successor, it may be said, that most of the old evils remained. The power of the Crown was certainly less, but a greater licence was assumed by the court factions. The influence of the Commons, however, was obviously extending. A statute obtained by the lower house under Edward, to divest the law of treason of that barbarous laxity which the merciless tyranny of his father had given to it, bespoke the increase of their authority, of their wisdom, and of their moral feeling. Nor is it strictly true, as stated by Lord John Russell, that Mary' found it an easy matter to revive the 'ancient worship'; nor, as stated by Mr. Hallam, that she succeeded, as the first of her dynasty, in laying a tax on cloth without consent of parliament. That tax was introduced to prevent an evasion of what had been legally imposed on the material in a different state. It must be admitted, however, that so important a modification of the law ought to have proceeded from the legislature, and not from the court. With respect to the restoration of popery, it is affirmed by Noailles, the French ambassador during the reign of Mary, that a third of the House of Commons opposed the repeal of Edward's laws concerning religion. Sixteen days were occupied in what the Queen herself describes as contention, sharp disputes, and great labour, before that object could be achieved. The counties also of Norfolk and Suffolk, which placed her on the throne, and which, in the language of Mr. Hallam,experienced from her the usual ingratitude and good faith of a bigot', were chiefly Protestant. The discontent excited by her treachery and cruelty, was so far augmented by her marriage with Philip, and by the general decline of the kingdom, that, before her death, the national sentiment became changed. The hereditary aversion to France, had given place to an abhorrence of Spain; and a war with the latter kingdom became popular through several generations, because considered as an attack on the strong-hold of papistry. Her first two parliaments were dissolved for refusing compliance with her wishes; the third was far from being altogether submissive; and the old method of securing a majority for the court in the lower house by reviving decayed boroughs, and by en

See the Speeches of Hakewell and Yelverton, Howell, II. 407519.

franchising others, was resorted to more freely by Mary, than by any one of her predecessors.

Hence, though the religion of the most enlightened in that age retained but too much of the old leaven, and though many causes of necessity operated to keep a large, and especially the agricultural portion of the people attached to the semi-paganism of their forefathers, we are still disposed to think, that the restoration of Popery under Mary, was a work of quite as much difficulty as the re-establishment of Protestantism under Elizabeth. On the accession of the latter princess, the prelates who had gone round with so many changes, and who had been so active in the recent persecutions, discovered some sense of decency, by declining a renewal of their protest against Rome. But the new queen soon became sensible that the loss of the Bishops was more than supplied by the zeal and unanimity of the Commons. Indeed, it is hardly to be questioned, that the means employed by the Marian party to render the Catholic ascendancy complete and perpetual, were to be the principal cause of the overthrow which so speedily followed, and of that bondage in which their descendants had been so long and so easily retained.

During the long reign of Elizabeth, laws of increasing severity were enacted against them; not that their power had increas ed, for that declined regularly with every year of her influence;' but, as the inadequacy of their own resources became more evident, they resorted with greater constancy and desperation to the business of intrigue with foreign powers, and to all those artifices which elude the usual machinery of governments. Mr. Hallam remarks, that

The restraints and penalties by which civil governments have at various times thought it expedient to limit the religious liberties of their subjects, may be arranged in something like the following scale. The first and slightest degree, is the requisition of a test of conformity to the established religion, as the condition of exercising offices of civil trust. The next step is to restrain the free promulgation of opinions, especially through the press. All prohibitions of the open exercise of religious worship appears to form a third and more severe class of restrictive laws. They become yet more rigorous, when they afford no indulgence to the most private and secret acts of devotion or expressions of opinion. Finally, the last stage of persecution is to enforce, by, legal penalties, a conformity to the established church, or an abjuration of heterodox tenets. The statutes of Elizabeth's reign comprehend every one of these progressive degrees of restraint and persecution. And it is much to be regretted, that any writers worthy of respect should, either through undue prejudice against an adverse religion, or through timid acquiescence in whatever has been enacted, have offered for this odious code, the false pretext of political necessity. That ne cessity, I am persuaded, can never be made out; the statutes were in

many instances absolutely unjust, in others not demanded by circumstances, in almost all prompted by religious bigotry, by excessive apprehension, or by the arbitrary spirit with which our government was administered under Elizabeth.' Vol. I., pp. 180-182.

It is always pleaded by the apologists for these enactments, that they were never intended to be generally enforced. But Mr. Hallam is disposed to doubt, whether persons known to have offended against them were often allowed to escape. This writer has also animadverted upon the representation made by such apologists, that the persons whose adherence to the doctrine of the Pope's deposing power brought them to the block, suffered, not on account of religion, but because guilty of treason. It certainly is one thing, to believe that a sovereign ought not to be allowed to reign, and another, to become active with a view to deprive him of his throne. The act is the proper object of human legislation; the sentiment is not; and a mind of ordinary discernment and ingenuousness will be in no danger of confounding the one with the other. Still, it ought not to be forgotten, that, in this case, the connexion between the thought and the deed is so intimate as to be almost inevitable.

Nor is it in her conduct towards the Roman Catholics alone, that the Virgin Queen has left her admirers some serious difficulties to explain. Her policy in relation to the Puritans, has preferred a much larger demand on their ingenuity. She was the adversary of both; and nothing but their unconquerable aversion to each other could have saved her from the control of their united strength. It would be idle to pretend, that there was any comparison to be made between the loyalty of the two parties; but, unfortunately, the Puritans, who were the chief stay of her throne as a Protestant sovereign, were less the object of her favour than the partisans of Rome. The latter, amid all their conspiracies against her, appear to have possessed some qualities which linked them in a closer degree with her sympathies. According to one class of writers, the case of the Puritans is very simple, and in no way disreputable to her Majesty. The Queen, we are told, was not only a sincere Protestant, but was prepared to brave the greatest dangers in the cause of the Reformation. Her conduct with respect to the church, was the wisest that could have been adopted, as it consulted the prejudices and the claims of the whole, in preference to those of a part. The Puritan theory, on the contrary, was by no means suited to the general aspect of religious parties; and as their object was not the mere toleration of their own peculiarities, but their exclusive establishment by the sword of the magistrate, the conduct of the Queen and of the prelates, in allowing them to indulge their humour for a considerable time, is worthy of the highest praise. And if other measures were at length had recourse

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to, it was not until disorders which threatened the overthrow both of the church and the constitution, had rendered them necessary as the means of self-preservation.

Such is the substance of Bishop Maddox's reply to Neal. The reader is accordingly to believe, that the Queen, and Parker, and Whitgift, were very lenient, harmless people; and that nothing but the most insolent and seditious conduct on the part of the dissatisfied, could have brought upon them that coercive discipline which was so foreign to the nature of the rulers. But to this tissue of sophistry and falsehood, we could reply, that if the sincerity of Elizabeth's protest against the political delinquencies of Popery is admitted, her dissent from any thing very material in its theology and modes of worship, may be seriously doubted; and that to swell the number and power of the Catholics at the period of her accession, and to represent the Puritans as a small and feeble party, is an old artifice, and one which betrays either the Bishop of Worcester's want of information, or his indifference to truth. It may also be safely affirmed, that the fixed Protestantism of the more efficient, if not of the more numerous portion of the people, at that crisis,-of many in the first council of the Queen, and of others among the more influential of the scholars and clergy,-was such as to call aloud for a more complete reformation; and accordingly, that the almost retrograde movement of the Anglican church under Elizabeth, when compared with its state under Edward, and its very imperfect renovation in most things, when compared with the reformed churches of the Continent, are not to be traced to the temper of the times, but to the temper of the Queen; aided as it was by the pontifical power involved in her supremacy, and by the timidity of certain dignified ecclesiastics and statesmen, who, to avoid the frown of their mistress, proved unfaithful to themselves. The prayer of the Puritans, too, was not for the establishment of their peculiarities, but generally, that observances which their opponents admitted to be indifferent, might not be insisted on as necessary. During the first seven years of Elizabeth, the reasonableness of this claim was indirectly acknowledged. But, at the close of that period, all connivance was abandoned, and the ominous character which the controversy subsequently assumed, arose principally from the measures which were then adopted. The doctrine of the prelates respecting the church of Rome, as being a true church of Christ, came to be regarded with suspicion, and at length with abhorrence; the practice of appealing to the Scriptures as a rule of faith only, and not as a directory of discipline, was more loudly censured; the statute which had vested a single person with power to decide, through the aid of certain commissioners, on all articles of faith and all matters of ecclesias