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nates; manufactures do not exist; the communications, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital, where they are good, are deplorable; the provinces- and here I can hardly except the neighbourhood of the capital teem with robbers. The navy, for which the aptitude of the people is remarkable, consists of one vessel: the public debt is not paid: an offer by a company of respectable individuals to institute a steam navigation, for which the seas and shores of Greece offer such innumerable facilities, was declined at the very period of my visit, because it was apprehended that it would be unpalatable to Austria. Bitter, indeed, is the disappointment of those who formed bright auguries for the future career of regenerate Greece, and made generous sacrifices in her once august and honoured cause.' (Pp. 207-209.)

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Lord Carlisle, however, does not despair of the progress of Greece: he points to the material improvement of Athens in the last twenty years, to the high intelligence of the Greek people,—to their capacity for patient and persevering industry,— and to the zeal for education which pierces to the very lowest ranks. Many instances are known of young men and women coming to Athens, and engaging in service for no other wages Ithan the permission or opportunity to attend some place of 'instruction.' We fear that the establishment of a regenerate Byzantine empire is a vision not likely to be realised in our times; but it is difficult to think that the intelligence, energy, and spirit of enterprise which distinguish the Greeks, though they may be often associated with the vices which have grown out of a long habit of slavery, should not, after a time, bear fruits superior to those which can be expected from any Oriental Mussulman community.

ART. VIII.—1. The History of the Early Puritans, from the Reformation to the Opening of the Civil War in 1640. By J. B. MARSDEN, M. A. Second Edition.

2. The History of the Later Puritans, from the Opening of the Civil War, in 1642, to the Ejection of the Nonconforming Clergy in 1662. By J. B. MARSDEN, M. A.

THE

HE rise of what came afterwards to be known as Puritanism in England dates from the very dawn of the Reformation. Our early British schoolmen never spared either the vices of the clergy or the pomp of their ritual services. Wickliffe and the Lollards were on nothing more severe than on the assumption of sacerdotal powers and sacerdotal habits by a Christian ministry. And in Henry VIII.'s time an impulse of change

was no sooner given than its tendencies leant all towards extremes. Had the direction of this impulse been the same in England as elsewhere, we should have doubtless lived at this day under an ecclesiastical system very different from that which now prevails among us. But here the Court took the lead, not the people, and the Court exercised its influence rather to restrain than to press forward ecclesiastical changes. Hence the retention among us of an episcopal form of Church government, which had interwoven itself into the political constitution of the State,of much of the pomp and ceremony of the old worship, of the civil law, with its courts and innumerable abuses, -and of a liturgy taken mainly from that of Rome, ere Rome had fallen into the depths of superstition. Had the people forced the Court into a secession from the Romish Church, not one of these things would in all probability have been retained.

The Reformed Church of England, as Henry VIII. settled it, was a sort of bastard Popery-Popery without the Pope. Its confession of faith remained substantially the same as it had been previously to the rupture. Its hierarchy retained all their former power, with much of their original pride and wealth. Its public worship was conducted upon the ancient principle, and in the Latin language. Instead of seeking authority to exercise their functions from the Roman See, the bishops took out licences from the Crown, and the King became what the Pope used to be-Supreme Head of the Church upon earth. Such a Reformation satisfied nobody. The Papists abhorred it because of the rent occasioned in the veil of the temple; the Protestants were dissatisfied with it as relieving their consciences from none of the burdens under which they had long groaned. With the accession of Edward VI. a new era came in. Born of a Protestant mother, and educated under Protestant guardians, this young prince naturally threw himself into the movement, and pushed forward the work of Reform with as much earnestness as was consistent with due regard to order in the State. He failed, indeed, to keep pace with the wishes of such (and they constitute, perhaps, the majority of reformers in all ages) as, in their zeal to accomplish a favourite end, overlook the necessity of caution in the selection of means. But his measures bore the stamp throughout of that true wisdom which is more intent on achieving a good that shall be permanent than on attaining it quickly. In his day many of the most offensive of the Romish services were abolished. A new book of Common Prayer was compiled; new articles of religion were published; the churches were purged of images and pictures; and the Scriptures freely circulated in an English version. Great

efforts were likewise made to promote sound learning in the Universities. Heretofore neither Hebrew nor Greek had found favour in these seats of the Muses. Indeed the well known proverb, Cave Græcos ne fias hereticus,' had been religiously acted up to so recently as the times of Collet and Stafford. The Regency (for Edward himself was but a child) took vigorous steps to remedy this evil, and invited over Peter Martyr and Bucer to fill the chairs of Divinity, the one in Oxford the other in Cambridge. For all this they received the hearty commendation of the leading Reformers, both of the Continent and of Scotland, between whom and our own Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and Parkhurst, the correspondence was frequent, and of the most confidential nature. Still the leaven of Puritanism continued to work. At a moment when projects were actually on foot for uniting all the Reformed Churches into one-when the Episcopal Church of England was selecting for its theological teachers divines ordained to the ministry by Presbyters-when the Presbyterian Churches of Germany and Switzerland were considering of the readiest means of receiving again the Episcopate from England-when all were convinced that it is neither in ceremonies nor in ordinances, but in the profession of a common faith and a common charity, that true Church-union consists-at this very moment restless spirits were putting in jeopardy, not the peace of the Church of England alone, but the great cause of the Reformation itself, by their bitter hostility to trifles. These men- to whom by and by the nick-name of Puritan came to be applied-seem to have borne, without impatience, a good deal that was really objectionable, both in the national creed and in the national worship. But the retention of copes, stoles, rotchets, and so forth-garments polluted, as they expressed it, by the idolatrous uses to which they were once applied-was, in their opinion, a crying sin; and sooner than be participators in it they were ready to suffer or to inflict martyrdom, according to the turn which the wheel of fortune might take.

To John Hooper- a man of unfeigned piety, but of pre-judices stronger considerably than his judgment-the credit attaches of giving the first decided impulse to the vestiarian controversy. He had been forced, in the previous reign, on account of his adoption of the Reformed doctrines, twice to escape to the Continent, and returning soon after the accession of Edward he was, through the interest of John Earl of Arundel, nominated, in 1550, to the see of Gloucester. He refused to become a bishop, unless his conscience might be relieved by dispensing both with the oath of supremacy and with the habits.

On the former point the King himself is said to have interfered in Hooper's favour. The oath, which used to run in the name of God, of the Saints, and of the Holy Gospels, the young King altered with his own hand; but on the subject of the Episcopal habit Cranmer could not be moved, and the King and the Protector, though equally willing to give way, yielded to the Primate's influence. And now began a series of acts the records of which fill us with astonishment. Hooper was warned, reasoned with, and admonished. He refused to be made a bishop except on his own terms, and was cast into prison. Then came forward Bucer and Martyr, to entreat, in the names of the Reformed continental Churches, that the point might be yielded. At last Hooper's scruples so far gave way that he consented to wear at consecration the robes usually worn by bishops elect on such occasions. But it is doubtful whether he ever appeared in them again. And, as usually happens-particularly when the public mind is in a state of transition on important matters he became forthwith an object of admiration to many and of imitation to not a few.

There can be little doubt that the tendency of the Church during Edward's reign was downwards. Had he survived a few years longer, and his policy undergone no change, in England, as well as in Germany and Scotland, a Church would have probably been established, moderately Calvinistic in its abstract faith, and Presbyterian in its constitution and forms of public worship. The early death of the King put a stop to all this, and led to a revolution even more surprising, because more sudden and complete, than that which, with all his power, Henry had succeeded in effecting. Without a struggle-we had almost said without a remonstrance-the people of England, at Mary's bidding, relapsed into Popery. There had been two formidable rebellions in her father's day, directed avowedly against the new order of things in religion. There was no movement at all in defence of Protestantism when she reintroduced the old system. For even Sir Thomas Wyatt's rising in Kent had much more connexion with the Spanish marriage than with the bringing back of ancient creeds and customs. This consequence, however, followed Mary's movement. Almost all who remained true to the Reformed faith became deeply imbued with Puritanical doctrines. They had borne with impatience the discipline enforced by Protestant bishops under a Protestant government. They learned, by witnessing a continuance of the same system under a Popish government, to associate the idea of persecution more with the Episcopal than with the Regal office. And events had occurred which, by

connecting this prejudice with the rights of Mary and her sister to the succession, stirred up in them feelings out of which much evil was destined by and by to arise. It will be borne in mind that on the death of Edward an attempt was made to seat the Lady Jane Grey upon the throne in virtue of a will which the dying King was understood to have drawn up through zeal for the maintenance of true religion in the land. Lady Jane Grey became in consequence the idol of all who thought deeply and were ready to do or to suffer much for the cause of the Reformation. Upon them, therefore, not without reason, the suspicion fell that they cared infinitely more for certain religious dogmas and customs than for keeping the rightful line upon the throne; and the belief so created did not cease to operate till long after the misfortune against which the Howards had conspired to guard had been removed.

We have nothing to do with the Marian era or its persecutions. Both passed away, and on the 18th November, 1558, Elizabeth ascended the vacant throne. In the January following the ceremony of her coronation took place, and in passing towards Westminster Abbey an English Bible was presented to her at Paul's Cross, which she pressed, with the appearance of great devotion, to her breast. There is no reason to suppose that Elizabeth was guilty of the slightest hypocrisy in this. Like her brother, she was sprung from a Protestant mother. Her claim to be treated as rightful heir to the throne, rested entirely on the validity of the divorce which Protestant divines had pronounced. She would have been untrue to the memory of her mother, and unjust to herself, had she swerved from the faith to which, in some degree, even Anne Boleyn may be said to have died a martyr. Nevertheless, Elizabeth soon discovered that her position, as Queen of England, was one of much delicacy and more danger. It was impossible to deny that a great majority of her subjects, including, perhaps, seveneighths of the clergy, with a considerable number of the nobility, were attached to the religion of Rome. The remainder seemed to be divided, perhaps in nearly equal proportions, between what afterwards became Protestantism of the High Church school and Puritanism. But there was this difference between them. The Puritans made no secret of their determination, as soon as power came into their hands, of avenging the wrongs inflicted upon the saints, by rooting Popery out of the land. The High Church party professed to seek no more than the re-establishment of the true Reformed Church, and made even that point secondary to the profession of personal attachment to the sovereign. There is no telling what course the Queen might

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