No More Learning

If any state forms a great regular army, the bordering states
must imitate the example, or must submit to a foreign yoke. But, where
a great regular army exists, limited monarchy, such as it was in the
middle ages, can exist no longer. The sovereign is at once emancipated
from what had been the chief restraint on his power; and he inevitably
becomes absolute, unless he is subjected to checks such as would be
superfluous in a society where all are soldiers occasionally, and none
permanently.

With the danger came also the means of escape. In the monarchies of the
middle ages the power of the sword belonged to the prince; but the power
of the purse belonged to the nation; and the progress of civilisation,
as it made the sword of the prince more and more formidable to the
nation, made the purse of the nation more and more necessary to the
prince. His hereditary revenues would no longer suffice, even for the
expenses of civil government. It was utterly impossible that, without
a regular and extensive system of taxation, he could keep in constant
efficiency a great body of disciplined troops. The policy which the
parliamentary assemblies of Europe ought to have adopted was to take
their stand firmly on their constitutional right to give or withhold
money, and resolutely to refuse funds for the support of armies, till
ample securities had been provided against despotism.

This wise policy was followed in our country alone. In the neighbouring
kingdoms great military establishments were formed; no new safeguards
for public liberty were devised; and the consequence was, that the old
parliamentary institutions everywhere ceased to exist. In France, where
they had always been feeble, they languished, and at length died of
mere weakness. In Spain, where they had been as strong as in any part
of Europe, they struggled fiercely for life, but struggled too late. The
mechanics of Toledo and Valladolid vainly defended the privileges of the
Castilian Cortes against the veteran battalions of Charles the Fifth. As
vainly, in the next generation, did the citizens of Saragossa stand up
against Philip the Second, for the old constitution of Aragon. One after
another, the great national councils of the continental monarchies,
councils once scarcely less proud and powerful than those which sate
at Westminster, sank into utter insignificance. If they met, they met
merely as our Convocation now meets, to go through some venerable forms.

In England events took a different course. This singular felicity she
owed chiefly to her insular situation. Before the end of the fifteenth
century great military establishments were indispensable to the dignity,
and even to the safety, of the French and Castilian monarchies. If
either of those two powers had disarmed, it would soon have been
compelled to submit to the dictation of the other. But England,
protected by the sea against invasion, and rarely engaged in warlike
operations on the Continent, was not, as yet, under the necessity
of employing regular troops. The sixteenth century, the seventeenth
century, found her still without a standing army. At the commencement
of the seventeenth century political science had made considerable
progress. The fate of the Spanish Cortes and of the French States
General had given solemn warning to our Parliaments; and our
Parliaments, fully aware of the nature and magnitude of the danger,
adopted, in good time, a system of tactics which, after a contest
protracted through three generations, was at length successful.

Almost every writer who has treated of that contest has been desirous to
show that his own party was the party which was struggling to preserve
the old constitution unaltered. The truth however is that the old
constitution could not be preserved unaltered. A law, beyond the control
of human wisdom, had decreed that there should no longer be governments
of that peculiar class which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
had been common throughout Europe. 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.

It seems certain, therefore, that, had none but political causes been
at work, the seventeenth century would not have passed away without
a fierce conflict between our Kings and 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 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 therefore, 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 comparatively 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 Kniperdoling, 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 Reformation 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 perfectly 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 ascendancy of the
sacerdotal order was long the ascendancy 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 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, knowing 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 Switzerland
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 civilisation. 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 all 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 condemned as Antichristian numerous dogmas
and practices to which Henry had stubbornly adhered, and which Elizabeth
reluctantly abandoned. Many felt a strong repugnance even to things
indifferent which had formed part of the polity or ritual of the
mystical Babylon. Thus Bishop Hooper, who died manfully at Gloucester
for his religion, long refused to wear the episcopal vestments. Bishop
Ridley, a martyr of still greater renown, pulled down the ancient altars
of his diocese, and ordered the Eucharist to be administered in the
middle of churches, at tables which the Papists irreverently termed
oyster boards. Bishop Jewel pronounced the clerical garb to be a stage
dress, a fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised that
he would spare no labour to extirpate such degrading absurdities.
Archbishop Grindal long hesitated about accepting a mitre from dislike
of what he regarded as the mummery of consecration. Bishop Parkhurst
uttered a fervent prayer that the Church of England would propose to
herself the Church of Zurich as the absolute pattern of a Christian
community. Bishop Ponet was of opinion that the word Bishop should be
abandoned to the Papists, and that the chief officers of the purified
church should be called Superintendents. When it is considered that
none of these prelates belonged to the extreme section of the Protestant
party, it cannot be doubted that, if the general sense of that party
had been followed, the work of reform would have been carried on as
unsparingly in England as in Scotland.

But, as the government needed the support of the protestants, so the
Protestants needed the protection of the government. Much was therefore
given up on both sides: an union was effected; and the fruit of that
union was the Church of England.

To the peculiarities of this great institution, and to the strong
passions which it has called forth in the minds both of friends and of
enemies, are to be attributed many of the most important events which
have, since the Reformation, taken place in our country; nor can the
secular history of England be at all understood by us, unless we study
it in constant connection with the history of her ecclesiastical polity.

The man who took the chief part in settling the condition, of the
alliance which produced the Anglican Church was Archbishop Cranmer. He
was the representative of both the parties which, at that time, needed
each other's assistance. He was at once a divine and a courtier. In his
character of divine he was perfectly ready to go as far in the way of
change as any Swiss or Scottish Reformer. In his character of courtier
he was desirous to preserve that organisation which had, during many
ages, admirably served the purposes of the Bishops of Rome, and might be
expected now to serve equally well the purposes of the English Kings and
of their ministers. His temper and his understanding, eminently fitted
him to act as mediator. Saintly in his professions, unscrupulous in
his dealings, zealous for nothing, bold in speculation, a coward and a
timeserver in action, a placable enemy and a lukewarm friend, he was in
every way qualified to arrange the terms of the coalition between the
religious and the worldly enemies of Popery.

To this day the constitution, the doctrines, and the services of the
Church, retain the visible marks of the compromise from which she
sprang. She occupies a middle position between the Churches of Rome
and Geneva. Her doctrinal confessions and discourses, composed by
Protestants, set forth principles of theology in which Calvin or
Knox would have found scarcely a word to disapprove. Her prayers and
thanksgivings, derived from the ancient Breviaries, are very generally
such that Cardinal Fisher or Cardinal Pole might have heartily joined in
them. A controversialist who puts an Arminian sense on her Articles and
Homilies will be pronounced by candid men to be as unreasonable as a
controversialist who denies that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration
can be discovered in her Liturgy.

The Church of Rome held that episcopacy was of divine institution, and
that certain supernatural graces of a high order had been transmitted by
the imposition of hands through fifty generations, from the Eleven who
received their commission on the Galilean mount, to the bishops who
met at Trent. A large body of Protestants, on the other hand, regarded
prelacy as positively unlawful, and persuaded themselves that they
found a very different form of ecclesiastical government prescribed in
Scripture. The founders of the Anglican Church took a middle course.
They retained episcopacy; but they did not declare it to be an
institution essential to the welfare of a Christian society, or to the
efficacy of the sacraments. Cranmer, indeed, on one important occasion,
plainly avowed his conviction that, in the primitive times, there was no
distinction between bishops and priests, and that the laying on of hands
was altogether superfluous.

Among the Presbyterians the conduct of public worship is, to a great
extent, left to the minister. Their prayers, therefore, are not exactly
the same in any two assemblies on the same day, or on any two days in
the same assembly. In one parish they are fervent, eloquent, and full of
meaning. In the next parish they may be languid or absurd. The priests
of the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, have, during many
generations, daily chanted the same ancient confessions, supplications,
and thanksgivings, in India and Lithuania, in Ireland and Peru. The
service, being in a dead language, is intelligible only to the learned;
and the great majority of the congregation may be said to assist as
spectators rather than as auditors. Here, again, the Church of England
took a middle course. She copied the Roman Catholic forms of prayer,
but translated them into the vulgar tongue, and invited the illiterate
multitude to join its voice to that of the minister.

In every part of her system the same policy may be traced. Utterly
rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, and condemning as
idolatrous all adoration paid to the sacramental bread and wine, she
yet, to the disgust of the Puritan, required her children to receive the
memorials of divine love, meekly kneeling upon their knees. Discarding
many rich vestments which surrounded the altars of the ancient faith,
she yet retained, to the horror of weak minds, a robe of white linen,
typical of the purity which belonged to her as the mystical spouse of
Christ. Discarding a crowd of pantomimic gestures which, in the Roman
Catholic worship, are substituted for intelligible words, she yet
shocked many rigid Protestants by marking the infant just sprinkled from
the font with the sign of the cross. The Roman Catholic addressed his
prayers to a multitude of Saints, among whom were numbered many men
of doubtful, and some of hateful, character. The Puritan refused the
addition of Saint even to the apostle of the Gentiles, and to the
disciple whom Jesus loved. The Church of England, though she asked
for the intercession of no created being, still set apart days for the
commemoration of some who had done and suffered great things for the
faith. She retained confirmation and ordination as edifying rites; but
she degraded them from the rank of sacraments. Shrift was no part of her
system. Yet she gently invited the dying penitent to confess his sins to
a divine, and empowered her ministers to soothe the departing soul by
an absolution which breathes the very spirit of the old religion. In
general it may be said that she appeals more to the understanding, and
less to the senses and the imagination, than the Church of Rome, and
that she appeals less to the understanding, and more to the senses
and imagination, than the Protestant Churches of Scotland, France, and
Switzerland.

Nothing, however, so strongly distinguished the Church of England from
other Churches as the relation in which she stood to the monarchy. The
King was her head. The limits of the authority which he possessed,
as such, were not traced, and indeed have never yet been traced with
precision. The laws which declared him supreme in ecclesiastical
matters were drawn rudely and in general terms. If, for the purpose of
ascertaining the sense of those laws, we examine the books and lives of
those who founded the English Church, our perplexity will be increased.
For the founders of the English Church wrote and acted in an age of
violent intellectual fermentation, and of constant action and reaction.
They therefore often contradicted each other and sometimes contradicted
themselves. That the King was, under Christ, sole head of the Church was
a doctrine which they all with one voice affirmed: but those words had
very different significations in different mouths, and in the same
mouth at different conjunctures. Sometimes an authority which would have
satisfied Hildebrand was ascribed to the sovereign: then it dwindled
down to an authority little more than that which had been claimed by
many ancient English princes who had been in constant communion with the
Church of Rome. What Henry and his favourite counsellors meant, at one
time, by the supremacy, was certainly nothing less than the whole power
of the keys. The King was to be the Pope of his kingdom, the vicar
of God, the expositor of Catholic verity, the channel of sacramental
graces. He arrogated to himself the right of deciding dogmatically what
was orthodox doctrine and what was heresy, of drawing up and imposing
confessions of faith, and of giving religious instruction to his people.
He proclaimed that all jurisdiction, spiritual as well as temporal, was
derived from him alone, and that it was in his power to confer episcopal
authority, and to take it away. He actually ordered his seal to be put
to commissions by which bishops were appointed, who were to exercise
their functions as his deputies, and during his pleasure. According to
this system, as expounded by Cranmer, the King was the spiritual as well
as the temporal chief of the nation. In both capacities His Highness
must have lieutenants. As he appointed civil officers to keep his seal,
to collect his revenues, and to dispense justice in his name, so
he appointed divines of various ranks to preach the gospel, and to
administer the sacraments. It was unnecessary that there should be any
imposition of hands. The King,--such was the opinion of Cranmer given in
the plainest words,--might in virtue of authority derived from God, make
a priest; and the priest so made needed no ordination whatever. These
opinions the Archbishop, in spite of the opposition of less courtly
divines, followed out to every legitimate consequence. He held that his
own spiritual functions, like the secular functions of the Chancellor
and Treasurer, were at once determined by a demise of the crown. When
Henry died, therefore, the Primate and his suffragans took out fresh
commissions, empowering them to ordain and to govern the Church till the
new sovereign should think fit to order otherwise. When it was objected
that a power to bind and to loose, altogether distinct from temporal
power, had been given by our Lord to his apostles, some theologians of
this school replied that the power to bind and to loose had descended,
not to the clergy, but to the whole body of Christian men, and ought
to be exercised by the chief magistrate as the representative of the
society. When it was objected that Saint Paul had spoken of certain
persons whom the Holy Ghost had made overseers and shepherds of the
faithful, it was answered that King Henry was the very overseer,
the very shepherd whom the Holy Ghost had appointed, and to whom the
expressions of Saint Paul applied. [3]

These high pretensions gave scandal to Protestants as well as to
Catholics; and the scandal was greatly increased when the supremacy,
which Mary had resigned back to the Pope, was again annexed to the
crown, on the accession of Elizabeth. It seemed monstrous that a woman
should be the chief bishop of a Church in which an apostle had forbidden
her even to let her voice be heard. The Queen, therefore, found it
necessary expressly to disclaim that sacerdotal character which
her father had assumed, and which, according to Cranmer, had been
inseparably joined, by divine ordinance, to the regal function. When the
Anglican confession of faith was revised in her reign, the supremacy
was explained in a manner somewhat different from that which had been
fashionable at the court of Henry. Cranmer had declared, in emphatic
terms, that God had immediately committed to Christian princes the whole
cure of all their subjects, as well concerning the administration of
God's word for the cure of souls, as concerning the administration of
things political. [4] The thirty-seventh article of religion, framed
under Elizabeth, declares, in terms as emphatic, that the ministering
of God's word does not belong to princes. The Queen, however, still had
over the Church a visitatorial power of vast and undefined extent. She
was entrusted by Parliament with the office of restraining and punishing
heresy and every sort of ecclesiastical abuse, and was permitted to
delegate her authority to commissioners. The Bishops were little more
than her ministers. Rather than grant to the civil magistrate the
absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the Church of Rome, in
the eleventh century, set all Europe on fire. Rather than grant to the
civil magistrate the absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the
ministers of the Church of Scotland, in our time, resigned their livings
by hundreds. The Church of England had no such scruples. By the royal
authority alone her prelates were appointed. By the royal authority
alone her Convocations were summoned, regulated, prorogued, and
dissolved. Without the royal sanction her canons had no force. One
of the articles of her faith was that without the royal consent no
ecclesiastical council could lawfully assemble. From all her judicatures
an appeal lay, in the last resort, to the sovereign, even when the
question was whether an opinion ought to be accounted heretical, or
whether the administration of a sacrament had been valid. Nor did the
Church grudge this extensive power to our princes. By them she had been
called into existence, nursed through a feeble infancy, guarded from
Papists on one side and from Puritans on the other, protected against
Parliaments which bore her no good will, and avenged on literary
assailants whom she found it hard to answer. Thus gratitude, hope, fear,
common attachments, common enmities, bound her to the throne. All her
traditions, all her tastes, were monarchical.
Loyalty became a point
of professional honour among her clergy, the peculiar badge which
distinguished them at once from Calvinists and from Papists. Both the
Calvinists and the Papists, widely as they differed in other respects,
regarded with extreme jealousy all encroachments of the temporal power
on the domain of the spiritual power. Both Calvinists and Papists
maintained that subjects might justifiably draw the sword against
ungodly rulers. In France Calvinists resisted Charles the Ninth: Papists
resisted Henry the Fourth: both Papists and Calvinists resisted Henry
the Third. In Scotland Calvinists led Mary captive. On the north of
the Trent Papists took arms against the English throne. The Church
of England meantime condemned both Calvinists and Papists, and loudly
boasted that no duty was more constantly or earnestly inculcated by her
than that of submission to princes.

The advantages which the crown derived from this close alliance with
the Established Church were great; but they were not without serious
drawbacks. The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from the first been
considered by a large body of Protestants as a scheme for serving two
masters, as an attempt to unite the worship of the Lord with the worship
of Baal. In the days of Edward the Sixth the scruples of this party had
repeatedly thrown great difficulties in the way of the government. When
Elizabeth came to the throne, those difficulties were much increased.
Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of Protestantism was
therefore far fiercer and more intolerant after the cruelties of Mary
than before them. Many persons who were warmly attached to the new
opinions had, during the evil days, taken refuge in Switzerland and
Germany. They had been hospitably received by their brethren in the
faith, had sate at the feet of the great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich,
and Geneva, and had been, during some years, accustomed to a more simple
worship, and to a more democratical form of church government, than
England had yet seen. These men returned to their country convinced that
the reform which had been effected under King Edward had been far less
searching and extensive than the interests of pure religion required.
But it was in vain that they attempted to obtain any concession from
Elizabeth. Indeed her system, wherever it differed from her brother's,
seemed to them to differ for the worse. They were little disposed to
submit, in matters of faith, to any human authority. They had recently,
in reliance on their own interpretation of Scripture, risen up against a
Church strong in immemorial antiquity and catholic consent. It was by no
common exertion of intellectual energy that they had thrown off the yoke
of that gorgeous and imperial superstition; and it was vain to expect
that, immediately after such an emancipation, they would patiently
submit to a new spiritual tyranny. Long accustomed, when the priest
lifted up the host, to bow down with their faces to the earth, as before
a present God, they had learned to treat the mass as an idolatrous
mummery. Long accustomed to regard the Pope as the successor of the
chief of the apostles, as the bearer of the keys of earth and heaven,
they had learned to regard him as the Beast, the Antichrist, the Man of
Sin. It was not to be expected that they would immediately transfer
to an upstart authority the homage which they had withdrawn from the
Vatican; that they would submit their private judgment to the authority
of a Church founded on private judgment alone; that they would be afraid
to dissent from teachers who themselves dissented from what had lately
been the universal faith of western Christendom. It is easy to conceive
the indignation which must have been felt by bold and inquisitive
spirits, glorying in newly acquired freedom, when an institution younger
by many years than themselves, an institution which had, under their own
eyes, gradually received its form from the passions and interest of a
court, began to mimic the lofty style of Rome.

Since these men could not be convinced, it was determined that they
should be persecuted. Persecution produced its natural effect on them.
It found them a sect: it made them a faction. To their hatred of the
Church was now added hatred of the Crown. The two sentiments were
intermingled; and each embittered the other. The opinions of the Puritan
concerning the relation of ruler and subject were widely different from
those which were inculcated in the Homilies. His favourite divines had,
both by precept and by example, encouraged resistance to tyrants
and persecutors. His fellow Calvinists in France, in Holland, and
in Scotland, were in arms against idolatrous and cruel princes. His
notions, too, respecting, the government of the state took a tinge
from his notions respecting the government of the Church. Some of the
sarcasms which were popularly thrown on episcopacy might, without much
difficulty, be turned against royalty; and many of the arguments which
were used to prove that spiritual power was best lodged in a synod
seemed to lead to the conclusion that temporal power was best lodged in
a parliament.

Thus, as the priest of the Established Church was, from interest, from
principle, and from passion, zealous for the royal prerogatives, the
Puritan was, from interest, from principle, and from passion, hostile to
them. The power of the discontented sectaries was great. They were found
in every rank; but they were strongest among the mercantile classes in
the towns, and among the small proprietors in the country. Early in
the reign of Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House of
Commons. And doubtless had our ancestors been then at liberty to fix
their attention entirely on domestic questions, the strife between the
Crown and the Parliament would instantly have commenced. But that was
no season for internal dissensions. It might, indeed, well be doubted
whether the firmest union among all the orders of the state could avert
the common danger by which all were threatened. Roman Catholic Europe
and reformed Europe were struggling for death or life. France divided
against herself, had, for a time, ceased to be of any account in
Christendom. The English Government was at the head of the Protestant
interest, and, while persecuting Presbyterians at home, extended a
powerful protection to Presbyterian Churches abroad. At the head of the
opposite party was the mightiest prince of the age, a prince who ruled
Spain, Portugal, Italy, the East and the West Indies, whose armies
repeatedly marched to Paris, and whose fleets kept the coasts of
Devonshire and Sussex in alarm. It long seemed probable that Englishmen
would have to fight desperately on English ground for their religion and
independence. Nor were they ever for a moment free from apprehensions
of some great treason at home. For in that age it had become a point of
conscience and of honour with many men of generous natures to sacrifice
their country to their religion. A succession of dark plots, formed by
Roman Catholics against the life of the Queen and the existence of the
nation, kept society in constant alarm. Whatever might be the faults of
Elizabeth, it was plain that, to speak humanly, the fate of the realm
and of all reformed Churches was staked on the security of her person
and on the success of her administration. To strengthen her hands was,
therefore, the first duty of a patriot and a Protestant; and that duty
was well performed. The Puritans, even in the depths of the prisons to
which she had sent them, prayed, and with no simulated fervour, that she
might be kept from the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion might be
put down under her feet, and that her arms might be victorious by sea
and land. One of the most stubborn of the stubborn sect, immediately
after his hand had been lopped off for an offence into which he had been
hurried by his intemperate zeal, waved his hat with the hand which was
still left him, and shouted "God save the Queen! " The sentiment with
which these men regarded her has descended to their posterity. The
Nonconformists, rigorously as she treated them, have, as a body, always
venerated her memory. [5]

During the greater part of her reign, therefore, the Puritans in the
House of Commons, though sometimes mutinous, felt no disposition to
array themselves in systematic opposition to the government. But,
when the defeat of the Armada, the successful resistance of the United
Provinces to the Spanish power, the firm establishment of Henry the
Fourth on the throne of France, and the death of Philip the Second,
had secured the State and the Church against all danger from abroad,
an obstinate struggle, destined to last during several generations,
instantly began at home.

It was in the Parliament of 1601 that the opposition which had, during
forty years, been silently gathering and husbanding strength, fought
its first great battle and won its first victory. The ground was well
chosen. The English Sovereigns had always been entrusted with the
supreme direction of commercial police. It was their undoubted
prerogative to regulate coin, weights, and measures, and to appoint
fairs, markets, and ports. The line which bounded their authority over
trade had, as usual, been but loosely drawn. They therefore, as usual,
encroached on the province which rightfully belonged to the legislature.
The encroachment was, as usual, patiently borne, till it became serious.
But at length the Queen took upon herself to grant patents of monopoly
by scores. There was scarcely a family in the realm which did not
feel itself aggrieved by the oppression and extortion which this abuse
naturally caused. Iron, oil, vinegar, coal, saltpetre, lead, starch,
yarn, skins, leather, glass, could be bought only at exorbitant prices.
The House of Commons met in an angry and determined mood. It was in vain
that a courtly minority blamed the Speaker for suffering the acts of
the Queen's Highness to be called in question. The language of the
discontented party was high and menacing, and was echoed by the voice
of the whole nation. The coach of the chief minister of the crown was
surrounded by an indignant populace, who cursed the monopolies, and
exclaimed that the prerogative should not be suffered to touch the old
liberties of England. There seemed for a moment to be some danger that
the long and glorious reign of Elizabeth would have a shameful and
disastrous end. She, however, with admirable judgment and temper,
declined the contest, put herself at the head of the reforming party,
redressed the grievance, thanked the Commons, in touching and dignified
language, for their tender care of the general weal, brought back to
herself the hearts of the people, and left to her successors a memorable
example of the way in which it behoves a ruler to deal with public
movements which he has not the means of resisting.

In the year 1603 the great Queen died. That year is, on many accounts,
one of the most important epochs in our history. It was then that both
Scotland and Ireland became parts of the same empire with England. Both
Scotland and Ireland, indeed, had been subjugated by the Plantagenets;
but neither country had been patient under the yoke. Scotland had, with
heroic energy, vindicated her independence, had, from the time of Robert
Bruce, been a separate kingdom, and was now joined to the southern
part of the island in a manner which rather gratified than wounded her
national pride. Ireland had never, since the days of Henry the Second,
been able to expel the foreign invaders; but she had struggled against
them long and fiercely. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
the English power in that island was constantly declining, and in the
days of Henry the Seventh, sank to the lowest point. The Irish dominions
of that prince consisted only of the counties of Dublin and Louth, of
some parts of Meath and Kildare, and of a few seaports scattered along
the coast. A large portion even of Leinster was not yet divided into
counties. Munster, Ulster, and Connaught were ruled by petty sovereigns,
partly Celts, and partly degenerate Normans, who had forgotten their
origin and had adopted the Celtic language and manners. But during the
sixteenth century, the English power had made great progress. The half
savage chieftains who reigned beyond the pale had submitted one after
another to the lieutenants of the Tudors. At length, a few weeks before
the death of Elizabeth, the conquest, which had been begun more than
four hundred years before by Strongbow, was completed by Mountjoy.
Scarcely had James the First mounted the English throne when the last
O'Donnel and O'Neil who have held the rank of independent princes kissed
his hand at Whitehall. Thenceforward his writs ran and his judges held
assizes in every part of Ireland; and the English law superseded the
customs which had prevailed among the aboriginal tribes.

In extent Scotland and Ireland were nearly equal to each other, and were
together nearly equal to England, but were much less thickly
peopled than England, and were very far behind England in wealth and
civilisation. Scotland had been kept back by the sterility of her soil;
and, in the midst of light, the thick darkness of the middle ages still
rested on Ireland.

The population of Scotland, with the exception of the Celtic tribes
which were thinly scattered over the Hebrides and over the mountainous
parts of the northern shires, was of the same blood with the population
of England, and spoke a tongue which did not differ from the purest
English more than the dialects of Somersetshire and Lancashire differed
from each other. In Ireland, on the contrary, the population, with the
exception of the small English colony near the coast, was Celtic, and
still kept the Celtic speech and manners.

In natural courage and intelligence both the nations which now became
connected with England ranked high. In perseverance, in selfcommand, in
forethought, in all the virtues which conduce to success in life, the
Scots have never been surpassed. The Irish, on the other hand, were
distinguished by qualities which tend to make men interesting rather
than prosperous. They were an ardent and impetuous race, easily moved
to tears or to laughter, to fury or to love. Alone among the nations of
northern Europe they had the susceptibility, the vivacity, the natural
turn for acting and rhetoric, which are indigenous on the shores of the
Mediterranean Sea. In mental cultivation Scotland had an indisputable
superiority. Though that kingdom was then the poorest in Christendom,
it already vied in every branch of learning with the most favoured
countries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food were as wretched as
those of the Icelanders of our time, wrote Latin verse with more than
the delicacy of Vida, and made discoveries in science which would have
added to the renown of Galileo. Ireland could boast of no Buchanan or
Napier. The genius, with which her aboriginal inhabitants were largely
endowed' showed itself as yet only in ballads which wild and rugged as
they were, seemed to the judging eye of Spenser to contain a portion of
the pure gold of poetry.

Scotland, in becoming part of the British monarchy, preserved her
dignity. Having, during many generations, courageously withstood the
English arms, she was now joined to her stronger neighbour on the most
honourable terms. She gave a King instead of receiving one. She retained
her own constitution and laws. Her tribunals and parliaments remained
entirely independent of the tribunals and parliaments which sate at
Westminster. The administration of Scotland was in Scottish hands; for
no Englishman had any motive to emigrate northward, and to contend with
the shrewdest and most pertinacious of all races for what was to be
scraped together in the poorest of all treasuries. Nevertheless Scotland
by no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which is
connected, but not incorporated, with another country of greater
resources. Though in name an independent kingdom, she was, during more
than a century, really treated, in many respects, as a subject province.

Ireland was undisguisedly governed as a dependency won by the sword. Her
rude national institutions had perished. The English colonists submitted
to the dictation of the mother country, without whose support they could
not exist, and indemnified themselves by trampling on the people among
whom they had settled. The parliaments which met at Dublin could pass no
law which had not been previously approved by the English Privy Council.
The authority of the English legislature extended over Ireland. The
executive administration was entrusted to men taken either from England
or from the English pale, and, in either case, regarded as foreigners,
and even as enemies, by the Celtic population.

But the circumstance which, more than any other, has made Ireland to
differ from Scotland remains to be noticed. Scotland was Protestant. In
no part of Europe had the movement of the popular mind against the Roman
Catholic Church been so rapid and violent. The Reformers had vanquished,
deposed, and imprisoned their idolatrous sovereign. They would not
endure even such a compromise as had been effected in England. They had
established the Calvinistic doctrine, discipline, and worship; and they
made little distinction between Popery and Prelacy, between the Mass and
the Book of Common Prayer. Unfortunately for Scotland, the prince whom
she sent to govern a fairer inheritance had been so much annoyed by
the pertinacity with which her theologians had asserted against him the
privileges of the synod and the pulpit that he hated the ecclesiastical
polity to which she was fondly attached as much as it was in his
effeminate nature to hate anything, and had no sooner mounted the
English throne than he began to show an intolerant zeal for the
government and ritual of the English Church.

The Irish were the only people of northern Europe who had remained true
to the old religion. This is to be partly ascribed to the circumstance
that they were some centuries behind their neighbours in knowledge. But
other causes had cooperated. The Reformation had been a national as well
as a moral revolt. It had been, not only an insurrection of the laity
against the clergy, but also an insurrection of all the branches of the
great German race against an alien domination. It is a most significant
circumstance that no large society of which the tongue is not Teutonic
has ever turned Protestant, and that, wherever a language derived from
that of ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this day
prevails. The patriotism of the Irish had taken a peculiar direction.
The object of their animosity was not Rome, but England; and they had
especial reason to abhor those English sovereigns who had been the
chiefs of the great schism, Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. During
the vain struggle which two generations of Milesian princes maintained
against the Tudors, religious enthusiasm and national enthusiasm became
inseparably blended in the minds of the vanquished race. The new feud
of Protestant and Papist inflamed the old feud of Saxon and Celt.
The English conquerors meanwhile, neglected all legitimate means of
conversion. No care was taken to provide the vanquished nation with
instructors capable of making themselves understood. No translation of
the Bible was put forth in the Irish language. The government contented
itself with setting up a vast hierarchy of Protestant archbishops,
bishops, and rectors, who did nothing, and who, for doing nothing, were
paid out of the spoils of a Church loved and revered by the great body
of the people.

There was much in the state both of Scotland and of Ireland which might
well excite the painful apprehensions of a farsighted statesman. As yet,
however, there was the appearance of tranquillity. For the first time
all the British isles were peaceably united under one sceptre.

It should seem that the weight of England among European nations ought,
from this epoch, to have greatly increased. The territory which her new
King governed was, in extent, nearly double that which Elizabeth had
inherited. His empire was the most complete within itself and the most
secure from attack that was to be found in the world. The Plantagenets
and Tudors had been repeatedly under the necessity of defending
themselves against Scotland while they were engaged in continental war.
The long conflict in Ireland had been a severe and perpetual drain on
their resources. Yet even under such disadvantages those sovereigns had
been highly considered throughout Christendom. It might, therefore, not
unreasonably be expected that England, Scotland, and Ireland combined
would form a state second to none that then existed.

All such expectations were strangely disappointed. On the day of the
accession of James the First, England descended from the rank which she
had hitherto held, and began to be regarded as a power hardly of the
second order. During many years the great British monarchy, under four
successive princes of the House of Stuart, was scarcely a more important
member of the European system than the little kingdom of Scotland had
previously been. This, however, is little to be regretted. Of James the
First, as of John, it may be said that, if his administration had been
able and splendid, it would probably have been fatal to our country,
and that we owe more to his weakness and meanness than to the wisdom and
courage of much better sovereigns. He came to the throne at a critical
moment. The time was fast approaching when either the King must
become absolute, or the parliament must control the whole executive
administration. Had James been, like Henry the Fourth, like Maurice of
Nassau, or like Gustavus Adolphus, a valiant, active, and politic ruler,
had he put himself at the head of the Protestants of Europe, had
he gained great victories over Tilly and Spinola, had he adorned
Westminster with the spoils of Bavarian monasteries and Flemish
cathedrals, had he hung Austrian and Castilian banners in Saint Paul's,
and had he found himself, after great achievements, at the head of fifty
thousand troops, brave, well disciplined, and devotedly attached to his
person, the English Parliament would soon have been nothing more than
a name. Happily he was not a man to play such a part. He began his
administration by putting an end to the war which had raged during
many years between England and Spain; and from that time he shunned
hostilities with a caution which was proof against the insults of his
neighbours and the clamours of his subjects. Not till the last year of
his life could the influence of his son, his favourite, his Parliament,
and his people combined, induce him to strike one feeble blow in
defence of his family and of his religion. It was well for those whom he
governed that he in this matter disregarded their wishes. The effect of
his pacific policy was that, in his time, no regular troops were needed,
and that, while France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Germany swarmed with
mercenary soldiers, the defence of our island was still confided to the
militia.

As the King had no standing army, and did not even attempt to form one,
it would have been wise in him to avoid any conflict with his people.
But such was his indiscretion that, while he altogether neglected the
means which alone could make him really absolute, he constantly put
forward, in the most offensive form, claims of which none of his
predecessors had ever dreamed. It was at this time that those strange
theories which Filmer afterwards formed into a system and which became
the badge of the most violent class of Tories and high churchmen, first
emerged into notice. It was gravely maintained that the Supreme Being
regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government,
with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of
primogeniture was a divine institution, anterior to the Christian, and
even to the Mosaic dispensation; that no human power, not even that
of the whole legislature, no length of adverse possession, though it
extended to ten centuries, could deprive a legitimate prince of his
rights, that the authority of such a prince was necessarily always
despotic; that the laws, by which, in England and in other countries,
the prerogative was limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions
which the sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume;
and that any treaty which a king might conclude with his people was
merely a declaration of his present intentions, and not a contract of
which the performance could be demanded. It is evident that this theory,
though intended to strengthen the foundations of government, altogether
unsettles them. Does the divine and immutable law of primogeniture admit
females, or exclude them? On either supposition half the sovereigns of
Europe must be usurpers, reigning in defiance of the law of God, and
liable to be dispossessed by the rightful heirs. The doctrine that
kingly government is peculiarly favoured by Heaven receives no
countenance from the Old Testament; for in the Old Testament we read
that the chosen people were blamed and punished for desiring a king, and
that they were afterwards commanded to withdraw their allegiance
from him. Their whole history, far from countenancing the notion that
succession in order of primogeniture is of divine institution, would
rather seem to indicate that younger brothers are under the especial
protection of heaven. Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob
of Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse nor Solomon of David
Nor does the system of Filmer receive any countenance from those
passages of the New Testament which describe government as an ordinance
of God: for the government under which the writers of the New Testament
lived was not a hereditary monarchy. The Roman Emperors were republican
magistrates, named by the senate. None of them pretended to rule by
right of birth; and, in fact, both Tiberius, to whom Christ commanded
that tribute should be given, and Nero, whom Paul directed the Romans to
obey, were, according to the patriarchal theory of government, usurpers.
In the middle ages the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right would
have been regarded as heretical: for it was altogether incompatible with
the high pretensions of the Church of Rome. It was a doctrine unknown
to the founders of the Church of England. The Homily on Wilful Rebellion
had strongly, and indeed too strongly, inculcated submission to
constituted authority, but had made no distinction between hereditary
end elective monarchies, or between monarchies and republics. Indeed
most of the predecessors of James would, from personal motives, have
regarded the patriarchal theory of government with aversion. William
Rufus, Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry the Fourth, Henry the
Fifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third, and Henry the Seventh, had
all reigned in defiance of the strict rule of descent. A grave
doubt hung over the legitimacy both of Mary and of Elizabeth. It was
impossible that both Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could have been
lawfully married to Henry the Eighth; and the highest authority in
the realm had pronounced that neither was so. The Tudors, far from
considering the law of succession as a divine and unchangeable
institution, were constantly tampering with it. Henry the Eighth
obtained an act of parliament, giving him power to leave the crown by
will, and actually made a will to the prejudice of the royal family
of Scotland. Edward the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a
similar power, with the full approbation of the most eminent Reformers.
Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to grave objection, and
unwilling to admit even a reversionary right in her rival and enemy
the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament to pass a law, enacting that
whoever should deny the competency of the reigning sovereign, with the
assent of the Estates of the realm, to alter the succession, should
suffer death as a traitor: But the situation of James was widely
different from that of Elizabeth. Far inferior to her in abilities and
in popularity, regarded by the English as an alien, and excluded from
the throne by the testament of Henry the Eighth, the King of Scots was
yet the undoubted heir of William the Conqueror and of Egbert. He had,
therefore, an obvious interest in inculcating the superstitions notion
that birth confers rights anterior to law, and unalterable by law. It
was a notion, moreover, well suited to his intellect and temper. It soon
found many advocates among those who aspired to his favour, and made
rapid progress among the clergy of the Established Church.

Thus, at the very moment at which a republican spirit began to manifest
itself strongly in the Parliament and in the country, the claims of the
monarch took a monstrous form which would have disgusted the proudest
and most arbitrary of those who had preceded him on the throne.

James was always boasting of his skill in what he called kingcraft; and
yet it is hardly possible even to imagine a course more directly opposed
to all the rules of kingcraft, than that which he followed. The policy
of wise rulers has always been to disguise strong acts under popular
forms. It was thus that Augustus and Napoleon established absolute
monarchies, while the public regarded them merely as eminent citizens
invested with temporary magistracies. The policy of James was the direct
reverse of theirs. He enraged and alarmed his Parliament by constantly
telling them that they held their privileges merely during his pleasure
and that they had no more business to inquire what he might lawfully
do than what the Deity might lawfully do. Yet he quailed before them,
abandoned minister after minister to their vengeance, and suffered them
to tease him into acts directly opposed to his strongest inclinations.
Thus the indignation excited by his claims and the scorn excited by
his concessions went on growing together. By his fondness for worthless
minions, and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny and
rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His cowardice, his
childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person, his provincial accent,
made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments
there was something eminently unkingly. Throughout the whole course of
his reign, all the venerable associations by which the throng had long
been fenced were gradually losing their strength. During two hundred
years all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the exception of
Henry the Sixth, had been strongminded, highspirited, courageous, and of
princely bearing.