Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

THE

ANGLICAN REFORMATION.

[ocr errors]

THE origin of Puritan nonconformity, its ample warrant, and complete justification, will be found in the character and proceedings of Queen Elizabeth, the principles on which the Anglican Church was at first based, and the means by which it was finally established.

Elizabeth was one of those persons whose character it is difficult to portray, because it consisted of elements apparently irreconcilable. She possessed the peculiar characteristics of both sexes in almost equal proportions. She had all the masculine energy and enlarged capacity of a strongminded man, with all the caprice, vanity, and obstinacy of a weak-minded woman; while the circumstances in which she was placed had a direct tendency to develope and mature all the elements of her character. She was suspicious by nature, by education, and by necessity, and despotic by temperament, by habit, and by policy. Thoroughly and intensely selfish, she made all the means within her reach minister to her own interests; utterly insensible to the miseries she might occasion to the instruments of her will, or the objects of her policy.† Impatient of contradiction,

* Puritans and nonconformists were, at first, the common titles of those who were subsequently called Presbyterians, while Brownites, sectaries, and separatists, were the ordinary appellations of those who are now called Independents. See Pierce's Vindication of the Dissenters, pp. 147, 189, 205, 206, 213, 215, 223. Hanbury's Eccl. Memorials of Independents, i. 3, 5, et passim.

"My good old mistress," says Sir Francis Bacon to King James, in 1612, "was wont to call me her watch candle, because it pleased her to say I did continually burn; and yet she suffered me to waste almost to nothing." (Wordsworth Eccl. Biog. iv.

not less from the strong than the weak points of her character, she quelled, with equal imperiousness, all opposition to her will, and crushed a refractory spirit in prelates, parliaments, and privy council, in Puritans, Papists, and populace, with as iron a rigour as was ever displayed by Henry VIII.

It was only by the favourable circumstances in which she was placed, and by the dexterity with which she regulated her personal deportment, as well as her general policy, that such a character, which could conciliate no love, enkindle no gratitude, and excite no sympathy, could inspire those feelings of national homage of which we know she was the object. Her life, to many of her Protestant subjects, appeared the only barrier against the return of Popery and persecution; and therefore, for their own protection, they not only tolerated the strong measures of her government, but admired her prudence, and promoted her plans. Parsimonious to an extreme in granting salaries or pensions to her servants from the royal treasures, she was munificent in rewarding, if not her ministers, at least her minions, by donations from the estates of the Church; and thus she secured the applause of those-and they are always a numerous party-who look more to the value of the gift, than the legitimacy of the source whence it is drawn. Theatrical, yet imposing, in her carriage; magnificent, though coarse in her tastes; thoroughly English in her feelings, and successful in her enterprises, she won and retained the admiration of those (always the mass in every nation) who are impressed only through their senses, judge merely by results, and admire power and splendour, without looking too curiously into the source whence the one is derived, or the objects to which the other is directed. It was part of her policy not to demand taxes from her parliaments, lest they might attempt to canvass her measures, and control her proceedings;* while from the very same policy she directed the most judicious

70, n.) She kept Sir Francis Walsingham at Paris, because she found him serviceable to her purposes, till his health was completely shattered, and his fortune utterly impoverished; nor could all his petitions and representations to herself and her council, obtain either an accession to his income, a respite to his labours, or a recall from his embassy. See Strype's Annals. iii. pp. 339, 340.

* Bishop Short's Sketch of the History of the Church of England. 2d edit. Sect. 429, 467.

ANGLICAN REFORMATION:

OR

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

BUT

HALF REFORMED.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW,
JANUARY, 1843.

PHILADELPHIA:
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION.

« AnteriorContinua »