for the church a supremacy above all other religious societies. However they might fluctuate and decay, he was perfectly secure. It was the business of the state, not his, to see that the church sustained no damage; to prevent any attack upon its outworks, and put down the promulgators of schism from within. It was a comfortable doctrine; it saved a world of thought, of labour, and of reading; better than all, it saved him from the necessity of forming a judgment on the difficult problems sometimes thrown in his way. It is pleasant to have others to think and provide for you; it is especially pleasant when thought and labour bring with them no other reward than "laborious days," and the imputation of singularity.

There did, indeed, happen times when the church ran off the accustomed rails, and this state-support became oppressive. The yoke, which bore equally on the necks of both animals in the straight furrow, fell in rougher ground with disproportioned weight on the shoulders of the smaller beast. It was hard for the nonjuring clergy in the reign of William III. to stand up and hold their own against the whole bench of bishops; still more hard when the whole weight and influence of the crown were thrown into the scale of the stronger. Then the clergy began, if not to disavow the royal supremacy, at least to question its true and legitimate limits. The same authority which seemed unfavourable to dissent when it pleaded for liberty of conscience, was equally unfavourable to the exercise of the same liberty on the part of the clergy. Their strength was to sit still. The moment they attempted to stir a hand's-breadth beyond the established formularies of the church, the moment they attempted to walk alone, without recognising the support of the state, that moment they received unmistakable warnings of their helplessness. The Church of England claims in its Articles the right of every individual church "to decree rites or ceremonies" as it shall think needful; and the state indorses that claim. It claims authority to determine what is right or wrong in "controversies of faith;" and the state, with equal complaisance, sanctions that authority. It denounces the man who is cut off from the unity of the church as "a heathen and a publican;" and the state has not a word to say against so wholesome and so charitable a doctrine. But the moment the church attempts to put these abstractions into practice, the state steps in with its Act of Supremacy; and woe to the unhappy churchmen, singly or collectively, who, deluded by these fair promises, should venture to act upon them. With authority to decree rites and ceremonies, rites and ceremonies have remained precisely as they were more than three centuries ago. The whole nation

has been torn with controversies of faith, almost without intermission, from the Reformation to the present hour; but the church has never ventured to interpose an authoritative voice in these matters. And as for denouncing a dissenter as "a heathen and a publican," we take it that a jury of twelve enlightened citizens would very soon show the denouncers how far such advice was allowable. In fact, the state-support is very much like Sancho Panza's state-physician in his island of Barataria. "He had hardly put one bit into his mouth, before the physician touched the dish with his wand, and then it was taken away by a page in an instant. Immediately another with meat was clapped in the place; but Sancho no sooner offered to taste it, than the doctor with the wand conjured it away as fast as the first." Any actual exercise of authority on the part of the church is neutralised by the state, whether it relates to doctrine or to ceremonies; and therefore, like Sancho Panza, compelled to solace his hunger, in the absence of more savoury and substantial dishes, "with a hunch of bread and some four pounds of raisins," the action of the church rises no higher than to a crusade against pew-rents or the recommendation of thanksgiving for a plentiful harvest.

Sooner or later the whole subject will provoke, as it has long since demanded, grave consideration. Not that, in the present distracted state of religious parties, we are anxious to see those restrictions removed from the independent action of the church, which would be inevitably turned to inischief, and end in its total ruin. But, as we have stated, we are brought face to face with the practical difficulties of the question by the case of Bishop Colenso. As the law now stands, the church can pronounce no judgment on the Bishop of Natal. It has no jurisdiction over him or any other bishop, heretical or orthodox. He may write and preach as much Hoadleyism or neologianism, or any other ism, as he pleases. The church is absolutely powerless. Long before the Reformation the right of punishing a bishop had been vested solely in the pope. The Act of Supremacy transferred this, with other ecclesiastical privileges, to the crown; and we might live to witness the anomaly of a bishop, ordained to drive away false doctrine, maintaining it in his own person, without any power in the church to restrain or to punish it. In fact, the time cannot be long distant when a much greater amount of freedom of opinion will be claimed both by bishops and clergy. In the rapid advance of art and science, it is impossible that theology alone can remain stagnant. It is equally impossible for the clergy of the Church of England, brought up at the universities, accustomed to the broader and profounder views which a philology unknown to the sixteenth century

has opened to mankind, to remain satisfied with the theological axioms of the Reformers, often based on a total misapprehension of the original language of the New Testament, and always more or less crippled by those narrow habits of thought in which they had been trained. Of the Fathers of the Reformation, as they are called, to whom we are indebted for the Articles and Homilies of the Church of England, who is there that would now be quoted as an authority in any great question of ecclesiastical history, of philology, of philosophy, or even of theology? It is impossible to turn over a single page of their writings and not be struck with the total absence of power and originality. Even in the most learned, such as Cranmer, the learning consists mainly in scraps and commonplaces from the Latin Fathers, or miserable translations of the Greek, valued solely for their apparent efficacy in the pending controversy against Catholic opponents, but indicating the smallest possible familiarity with the true spirit of antiquity. It is impossible that the clergy can be long content to walk in the theological gyves of the sixteenth century. And unwilling as the Church of England may be, and, in its present relations with the state, unable to grapple satisfactorily with the question, the time is not far distant when it must be prepared to reconsider its past decisions on many theological difficulties, and claim for itself and its adherents a greater liberty of expression and of action.

Of the history of that Act, which has produced such important consequences, and modified the whole existence of the Church of England, we should have been glad had Mr. Froude furnished us with a little more explicit information in his history of Henry VIII. To us it is far more interesting, and in itself infinitely more important, than Anne Boleyn's robes or the feuds of the Geraldines. Whose genius was it that upset the traditions of fifteen centuries, and devised an organisation without parallel in ancient or in modern times? Who first conceived the bold idea-not of a parity of power between the spiritual and temporal jurisdictions, not Warburton's figment of an imperium in imperio, not modern Anglicanism, watching to steal a feather out of the tail of the imperial eagle, -but a transfer of the whole authority of the church from a spiritual to a temporal ruler? Who was it that, with one stroke of the pen, to use the phrase of Bishop Andrews, "transubstantiated Henry VIII. into the pope," and converted the church from an independent rival to a ready and submissive dependent on the state? With all the papers and documents before him needful for the satisfaction of such an inquiry, we should have been glad if Mr. Froude had availed himself of his precious opportunities; if he had told us by what steps

the authors of such a policy arrived at this result,-how they emancipated themselves from the long prejudices of ages,-how they ventured, not only in the teeth of Roman Catholic tradition, but of that new ecclesiastical liberty then awakening in the breasts of Continental reformers, to set up an ecclesiastical headship which was neither old nor new, foreign nor Anglican, Catholic nor Puritan. Whose ingenious brain conceived, who shaped into practical form, this alliance between church and state, wherein both should seem to be equal, but one in reality was extinguished? Was it the natural consequence of English constitutional tendencies? Was it the inevitable result of English Protestantism? Did it find acceptance with the mass of the people from its own intrinsic excellence, or was it forced upon them as a state necessity by the subtle ingenuity of Cromwell, or the iron resolution of Henry VIII.? Every man who cares to read the history of those times feels at once that this is the question, this is the keystone of the Reformation; all other topics dwindle into insignificance beside it. This is the real point at issue between the advocates of the old and the new system; this, and not purgatory, not pilgrimages, not transubstantiation; not what Mr. Froude seems ever and anon to suppose, the different degrees of loyalty and morality in Romanist and Protestant. There were men as loyal and pure-hearted as More whose consciences would not suffer them to acknowledge that Henry VIII. was "Head of the Church;" there were men as vulgar and worldly as Bonner, leaders of rebellion, like the Bigots, the Husseys, and the Constables, who were ready to die themselves, or at least put others to death, in defence of the king's supremacy. The coronations of kings and queens, the pomp of Cardinal Pole's ceremonials, even the death of the unhappy monks of the Charterhouse, sink into nothing in comparison with this. They were but temporary; they scarcely stirred the hearts of men familiarised with such spectacles, and too much occupied with their own griefs and perplexities to spare much sympathy for others. This, on the other hand, has spread its broad shadow across the range of centuries. It has fallen like a thing of evil on Puritans and Romanists alike. If it brought More and Fisher to the scaffold in the reign of Henry, it wrung the hearts and wasted the life-blood of Cartwright and the Puritans in the reign of Elizabeth. If it hung like a sword over the head of the Tudor bishops, and prevented all relapse to Rome, it equally drove out from the pale of the national church every conscientious nonconformist, who was a zealous Protestant in every thing with the exception of this one article. It kept the church obedient to the sovereign and to the first principles of the Reformation, but it effectually

prevented all organic expansion, whatever the circumstances of the times.

We do not hope to throw much light upon these topics; a full elucidation of them must be left to the historian of the Reformation. The acts which transferred to the king the supreme headship of the church made it treason in any one to dispute or to doubt it in writing or conversation. Further than this, and with a stretch of arbitrary power unknown even in the darkest times, it was not necessary to prove any overt offence against the statute; it was enough to involve a man in the penalties of high treason if, when examined by oath ex officio, his answers were not deemed satisfactory by his judges. Such powers concentrated in the hands of one man, or one set of men, could hardly escape abuse even in the most peaceful and regular times. But the great minister of Henry VIII. whose genius conceived these measures, and whose ability directed them, was, as Mr. Froude tells us, beyond the passions and temptations of ordinary statesmen. The severities occasioned by them might be bitter, but they were in his estimation. necessary and salutary. He entertains a charitable hope that these powers were not abused, and that those who passed these measures were not "betraying English liberties in a spirit of careless complacency." He finds a necessity for these proceedings and excuse in the insecurity of the times; and as Romanists had been persecutors in the days of their ignorance, he reconciles himself with a sigh to the righteousness of this retaliation "the even hand of justice was but commending the chalice to the lips of those who had made others drink it to the dregs. They only were like to fall under the Treason Act who for centuries had fed the rack and the stake with sufferers for opinion." In the present condition of historical literature we are not so unreasonable as to expect that no materials should escape the notice of the historian, which can throw light on his inquiries. A few years only have elapsed since the judicious liberality of the Master of the Rolls has thrown open to the student the true sources of English history, and many years must still elapse before those sources can be fully explored. But when Mr. Froude wrote his history there were materials within his reach which we think he ought to have consulted; materials of which ample use had been made by Sir Henry Ellis-we mean Cromwell's own correspondence, formerly in the State-Paper Office, now at the Record Office. The authenticity of these letters cannot be disputed. They furnish the most complete insight into the life and history of this wonderful man.

* History of England, ii. 330.

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