of Rome time and opportunity to turn those sovereigns against the papal authority, and mature the plans of those engaged in the great revolt? But, whatever reluctance Clement VII. justly felt to countenance adultery, to sanction lust, to inflict the cruelest of all injuries on a lawfully wedded and faithful wife, the circumstances were altogether different in the case of Elizabeth. She was elevated to the throne without opposition; she had given no offence to religion or scandal to morals; and for the sake of peace and quiet in her dominions, and with the view of maintaining amicable relations with her, the court of Rome might have ratified her people's choice, when there was no child of the deceased queen, or of her mother, prejudiced by Elizabeth's accession to the throne. Elizabeth's council, it is stated, was constituted with a view to the reformation of religion: but while the negocia tions with Rome were pending, and the deliberations of that council going on, she prohibited by proclamation all preachings and wranglings about religion, and even shut up some of the churches to prevent violent reforming theologians from dealing damnation on all who differed from them. Elizabeth's change was a bit by bit reform, carried on stealthily and closely till the Book of Common Prayer, which had been committed to Dr. Parker and others for remodelling, was set forth anew, and within three months of her coronation the mass was abolished, and the liturgy in English established by act of parlia ment. The two latter objects were effected (it is said by Sir. R. Baker*) by a majority of six votes only. The next month the queen's supremacy was proclaimed, and the oath of supremacy tendered to the Catholic bishops. All who refused it were deprived of their sees, and other prelates appointed by her, and the month following images were removed from the churches, and were publicly broken and burnt. Thus "the Reformation" progressed, and the consequence of these changes was in a short time a general confusion in matters of religion. The same means which Henry employed to get his supremacy legalized, Elizabeth employed to get hers confirmed by a statute,—she packed a parliament. * Chron. p. 472. 66 Dr. Heylin states, that certain lords and gentlemen had the management of elections in their several counties, amongst whom none appeared more active than the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Arundel, and Sir William Cecil." When the question of supremacy was propounded to parliament, "it seemed to be a thing abhorrent even in nature and polity, that a woman should be declared supreme head of the Church of England." There is a very remarkable speech of Bishop Heath, who had filled the office of chancellor, in opposition to the measure, given in full, and published from a manuscript copy of it, in the Historical Collections." (p. 162.) There never was an argument on this subject so ably put as that of Bishop Heath. It is impossible to follow it, step by step, in its logical positions and deductions, without being persuaded of the mischievous results of this measure. 66 "First," he said, "by relinquishing and forsaking the Church or See of Rome, we must forsake and fly from all General Councils : "Secondly, from all canonical and ecclesiastical laws of the Church of Christ: 66 Thirdly, from the judgment of all other christian princes: "Fourthly, and lastly, we must forsake and fly from the holy unity of Christ's Church, and so, by leaping out of Christ's ship, we hazard ourselves to be overwhelmed in the waves of schism, of sects, and of divisions.' The four General Councils, on which he relied as received by the Roman Pontiffs, were the Nicene, the Constantinopolitan, the Ephesian, and Chalcedon Councils. But all opposition to the measure was in vain; the packed parliament passed the measure, the queen was declared supreme head of the Church of England. From that time she freely exercised her supremacy, making and unmaking doctrine. A convocation that was held at this time made a declaration of their judgment on certain points, for submission to parliament, expressive of their opinions, that the Sacrament of the Eucharist was still to be retained; the Real Presence to be declared, in the consecrated Host, but no longer having the substance of bread and wine, and to be held a propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead; that the government of the Church was in the successors of Peter, and that ecclesiastical jurisdiction belonged only to the legitimate pastors of the Church. These Articles were presented to the Upper House, but were made of no account. The bishops, who were now reduced to the number of fifteen, made a stand against the Liturgy. They were called on by the Council to conform, but all refused with one exception, the Bishop of Llandaff; whereupon they were deprived of their sees. Many of the clergy also refused, and were stripped of their benefices. "It was at this time," says McGeoghegan, "that the bishops displayed a firmness truly apostolic."* It is curious to observe how much more strenuously the prelates and superior clergy, in the reign of Elizabeth, resisted the renunciation of the Pope's authority, than they had done in the reign of Henry. Did this arise from their experience of the evils of the usurpation? By the deprivations of these prelates and pastors, a sufficient number of qualified persons to supply the sees and cures was not to be found. Hence arose the monstrous evils connected with the existence of an ignorant, insolent, dissolute clergy, which all the historians and other writers of the time speak of. The first acts of the new prelates and pastors, it is said by the Queen's injunctions, were the removal of all the images and crosses out of the churches. Those taken out of the London churches were burned in St. Paul's churchyard, Cheapside, and other places in the city, and in some of them the copes, vestments, and cloths of the altars.† This bewilderment of public opinion in England, in respect to all religious matters, consequent on three great changes within a compass of twelve years, was such as might be expected. Henry assumed the supremacy of the Church, the enjoyment of first fruits and tithes, renounced the Papal authority, suppressed convents, appropriated their funds, but maintained the mass, the seven sacraments, the prayers for the dead, and invocation of Saints. Edward abolished the mass, authorized a book of Common Prayer in English, demolished altars, shrines, and images of saints, changed the ordinances respecting the Sacrament of the Eucharist, spoiled the churches of the Histoire d'Irelande, Tom. 2. Cap. 40. secular clergy, and reduced the seven sacraments to two. Mary restored all things to the Church of Rome, except the plundered property and confiscated estates of the Church and convents not vested in the Crown, and reduced the ecclesiastical jurisdiction to Papal obedience. Elizabeth resumed the supremacy, first fruits, and tithes, suppressed the mass, auricular confession, the consecration of the host, renounced all the leading doctrines of the Church of Rome, sought to establish uniformity of Protestant doctrine, and one unvarying book of Common Prayer, by means of a code of laws, the bloodiest and most barbarous that ever was enacted in any Christian land. Pope Pius V. had long strenuously endeavoured to conciliate the friendship of Elizabeth, and induce her to return to the old religion; but finding all his efforts were in vain, in 1570 he issued a bull of excommunication against her, and from that time Elizabeth may be said to have commenced her frightful career of blood, for the promotion of her views, of religious reformation. It would seem at that time as if Divine retribution had sent this schism over Europe for the scourge of the people of every realm where it came, by fomenting strife, encouraging fanaticism, exciting hate, and driving men to dip their hands in blood, with the name of God upon their lips and the fury of devils in their hearts. Knox and his disciples were blowing the coals of persecution in Scotland, violent commotions were then raging in that country. In France there was a war of religion, carnage in the provinces, and a massacre in the metropolis. In 1572, nearly 12,000 Protestants, it is said, were butchered in cold blood in the latter country. In Germany, the Reformers in various places were at daggers drawn. In the Low Countries, the war between the Spaniards and the Dutch, had more in it of the bitter character of a religious war, than of a struggle for the acquisition of liberty, or the maintenance of despotic power. In Ireland, where all battles are fought that affect great interests in England, where the decisive battle of civil and religious liberty was fought in 1829, the bloody battle of the Reformation was raging likewise upwards of three hundred years ago. In England itself, such discord and distractions arose as had never before been in that country; a complete change in the course of a few years, was effected in the habits and dispositions of the people. The epithet of merry, was no longer applicable to that country. There was neither peace nor plenty in the land. Poverty and crime began to make rapid strides. The sports of the people were cried down by the evangelical preachers. Other spectacles and pastimes began to be made familiar to them, the burnings in the market-places of crucifixes and images, frequent executions, and violent contentions in sacred places between preachers and teachers of contrary opinions in religious matters. These barbarities and unseemly excesses were chiefly the work of the returned clergy from Geneva, and the foreign disciples of Calvin who had been received in England, and with singular fatuity on the part of the Reformers, had been suffered to build up their independent Presbyteries along side the Episcopal Church," as if it was practicable to set up a republic within the precincts of a monarchy." In the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, the Calvinists gave as much trouble to Elizabeth, as they and the Anabaptists had done to Luther; enough of trouble and tribulation of spirit, to cause all thinking men of both persuasions to question whether their acts have been beneficial or otherwise to mankind. The Calvinist, or Puritan faction, was espoused and protected by the most dissolute, grasping, and vicious man in England, the Earl of Leicester, the paramour of "the Virgin Queen." time, engrossed nearly all the offices in the State, and preThis man, at one ferments in the Church. Heylin says he was insatiable in his avarice, and sacrilegious beyond all other men of his time in his rapine. Such was the man latter days," the Puritans, extolled to the seventh heaven. the Saints of the But though they courted this influential profligate, many of them reviled the Queen herself, and preached, prayed, and wrote pamphlets against her. openly prayed "that God would either turn her heart, or One of their ministers put an end to her reign. 66 They wanted to set up a new form of Ecclesiastical policy, and were prepared in the execution of their scheme, * Heylin, p. 244. |