lovely and loving nature, a sort of conventional decorum, suited to the demands of Italian manners in his own and in later times." Art also became artificial, theatrical, affected; novelty was mistaken for originality. This might please the superficial; but there are profound abysses in the human soul which will be filled, and demand the sterling, the earnest, the inspired. Such an improvement, therefore, whether in its political or ecclesiastical relations, was insufficient for the time, and Protestantism still had work to do which the Counter-Reformists had failed to conceive; and it readily undertook the spiritual regeneration of the race, while they were contenting themselves simply with the amelioration of manners, and the removal of coarseness from general conversation. The outside of the platter they might clean, but the inside still remained filthy. Protestantism undertook first to purify the internal spirit, and then left that to its natural operation in effecting similar results on the surface for not with merely dead matter, but with living growth, Protestantism was concerned, and knew that nothing could substitute in the tree the want of sap and vital energy. Man was, at all events, to be renewed in the spirit of his will. This, then, was the domain of Protestantism, the glorious task in which it had to labour.

It was not to be expected that Rome would stand idly by, while so great a thing was doing, and not by her. She had staked her existence on producing and preserving external uniformity. This, cost what it might, must therefore be retained. France, Germany, and the Netherlands were in revolt, in a state of rebellion. The Two Tendencies are in manifest opposition, and the Church militant is divided into atagonistic extremes. "Both," say historians, "with equal ardour anticipated victory and dominion." Formerly," says Ranké, "the two parties had been willing to treat with each other. A reconciliation had been attempted in Germany; in France it had been entered on; in the Netherlands demanded: for a while it appeared feasible, and in some places toleration was actually practised. But now the contrasts between the two seemed to stand out more prominently, and with greater show of hostility. They challenged each other, so to speak, throughout all Europe!" Such were their respective attitudes in the years 1578-9.

Only a few years before had a college for the Jesuits been founded by Cardinal Hosius, Bishop of Ermeland, in Braunsberg; in Pultusk and Posen, they were patronised by the episcopate. A Jesuit institution was founded in Wilna, by Bishop Valerian, in opposition to an intended university about to be erected by the Lithuanian Lutherans. The Polish Convocation Diet, however, resolved, in 1573, that no one was to be prejudiced on account of his creed, and the bishops were fain to submit. Nay, so high was the matter carried, that in 1579 the payment of the tithes to the clergy was suspended, whereby 1200 parish priests are said to have been ruined. Rome was amazed-exasperated. But she had compensations in Sweden: there the Second John, having married a Catholic princess, Catherine of Poland, and fond of studying patristic lore, had subjected a considerable educational establishment to two

Jesuit teachers, at which the hopes of Rome so revived, that one Antonio Possevin was sent to effect the thorough conversion of the Swedish monarch. For a while he seemed to succeed, for the king was superstitious and desired papal absolution of his past sins, among which was that of fratricide: having obtained this, he became cold to all further demands on the side of Rome, and suffered himself to be so much impressed with a work of Chryträus on the Augsburg confession, which had been dedicated to him, that there was less and less chance of his risking a Protestant crown by religious apostacy. Besides, Charles of Sudermania, the king's younger brother, was even Calvinist; the ambassadors of Lübeck were decidedly opposed to papal influence: there was, indeed, the queen, and after her death the heir to the throne, on the opposite side; but for the present they weighed little: nevertheless, there was something to expect in the future. England, however, was the Protestant stronghold, and Pope Gregory XIII. neglected not to turn his attention hither. There was Ireland adhering to the old formula, and in England itself more than one half of the nation was yet in favour of the receding system. But the hopes that the pontiff was led to conceive from these circumstances were doomed to sudden extinction. As a substitute for them, a college was established at Douay and another at Rome, under the care of the Jesuits, for the convenience of English Catholics. Into the latter college no one was admitted who did not pledge himself, on the completion of his studies, to return to England and preach there the doctrines of the Romish faith. Two English Jesuits, accordingly, (Parsons and Campion,) returned to their native country, and under various disguises attempted the conversion of British subjects. "They took up their abode," says Ranké, "principally in the mansions of Catholic noblemen; their coming was announced beforehand, but the precaution was adopted of accosting them as strangers on their arrival. Meanwhile a chapel had been got in readiness in the innermost chamber of the house, into which they were conducted, and there they bestowed their benediction on the members of the family assembled to receive them. The missionary usually remained but one night. The evening was employed in religious preparation and confession: the next morning, mass was read, and the Lord's supper administered; after which there was a sermon. All the neighbouring adherents of the Catholic faith attended, sometimes in great numbers. The religion that for nine hundred years had ruled supreme in the island, was again promulgated with all the charms of mystery and novelty. Synods were secretly held; a printing-press was set up, first in a village near London, then in a lonely house in the neighbouring wood: suddenly, once more Catholic works made their appearance, written with all the ability derived from constant practice in controversy, and often not void of elegance: the sensation they produced was the greater, the more impenetrable was the secret of their origin." Many Romanists ceased, we are told, in consequence to attend Protestant worship, and to observe the queen's ecclesiastical laws; and thus the Two Tendencies came into collision—as again, through (as we shall in due course show)

similar tactics, they have done in the present day. Among the evangelical cantons of Switzerland, likewise, they organised like conspiracies, for the express and acknowledged purpose of " bringing back as occasion served, to the true Catholic faith, such of the Bishop of Basil's subjects and others as had become Protestant."

And thus Romanism began to show a renovated front and to assert its ancient dominion, though not without much resistance. Things, however, must at length come a crisis, and ere long they arrived at such in the Netherlands. The Duke of Alva had already, on a former occasion, taken horrible vengeance for the Church of Rome, and, cruel on principle, claimed credit for achieving a master-stroke of policy in disregarding the influence of mercy, and pursuing without remorse a severe system of persecution, which listened to no plea but submission. No wonder that his atrocities had engendered ill blood, and that the population became iconoclastic. The passions of democracy were mingled with those of religion. Ghent, in particular, was the scene of a fierce conflict. Revolutionary proceedings naturally produced a reaction: a hatred grew up to Protestanism in municipalities among the aristocracy and with the clergy, who were placed in peril by the madness of party strife. It ended, however, in a sort of coalition; whereby Romanism was in part restored, and sovereignty supported, by a recognition of constitutional assemblies and public privileges. But the union of the Catholic provinces of the Netherlands with the royal cause, was not without inconvenience; since, in Ranké's opinion, it probably occasioned the northern and wholly Protestant provinces to confederate against the king, and finally to cast away his yoke altogether. And thus terminated the long-standing contention between the provincial rights and the sovereign authority. Had the South and North been united in faith, they would have founded a general republic of the Netherlands; as it was, they were divided.

It is, perhaps, after all, impossible to separate the history of Religion and Politics; the Church and State, indeed, interact perpetually, and mutually modify each other. Protestantism, in the instance before us, shows itself in association with the fierce democracy of the northern states. No doubt different orders of men require different religious conditions. There is much here in which we are disposed to agree with Mr. Maurice.* In the middle classes of this country, at the present day, Democracy and Protestantism find their strongest supporters; while Romanism is suited to the more aristocratic in station, if not in mind. One order of men is, indeed, providentially appointed to conserve the interests of Permanence, the other of Progress: but these principles are twins-nay, live and die together; and, though opposite, need not be contrary; nay, should be alike divided and united by the contrary, like two banks by the intervening stream. If,

* Vide his Pamphlet "On Right and Wrong Methods of supporting Protestantism: a Letter to Lord Ashley, respecting a certain proposed Measure for stifling the Expression of Opinion in the University of Oxford." By F. D. Maurice, A.M., Chaplain of Guy's Hospital, and Professor of English Literature in King's College, London. Parker.

1843.

however, this be true philosophy, it is well to consider these two aspects of the same subject :—

"The rise," says Mr. Maurice, addressing Lord Ashley," of the trading class, and the proclamation of Wickliffe's doctrine, are almost contemporaneous historical epochs. From that time to the present, the truths which constitute Protestantism, those I mean which concern man as a personal being, which assert his individual responsibility and relation to God, and provide that this responsibility and relation shall be realities and not dreams, have been the cherished heir-looms of this order. Through its influence Protestantism has wrought itself into the mind and character of this nation, more than, I believe, into the mind and character of any other in the world. I, who have sympathies with this portion of society which your Lordship cannot have, am bound to remember this fact with pleasure, and to remember, besides, that by it our Saxon life and language were restored to us. But it is safer to acknowledge a stewardship than to boast a possession. The enemies of the middle class may say, but too truly, that it has defiled the principles which have been entrusted to it, with all its evil tendencies, that trade and religion have become miserably confused through its influence. They may say this; but if they do not acknowledge, also, that its faith has alone preserved its evil tendencies from becoming omnipotent over it and over the nation, they exhibit gross ignorance both of history and of passing events. Take away its Protestantism and it becomes a trading class indeed; that and nothing else. And this truth, which has been brought out in our own experience, is, I believe, a universal one. A middle class which is honestly Romanist, there never has been, and never will be, anywhere. Its members will be either struggling for some other form of religion, or they will be entirely infidel.

"The history of the dissenting bodies is a comment upon these remarks, and at the same time receives illustration from them. Their religion is, as they boast, Protestantism raised to the highest power, Protestantism in its essence. If it be possible that any kind of truth is in its highest power when it is isolated from other truths, they are pefectly right in their profession. Mere Protestantism, Protestantism existing, so far as it is possible that it should exist, apart from other elements, constitutes the very idea of dissent. And it is also notorious that dissent has a strong hold upon the trading classes of this country, and has no hold upon any other. Contact with the upper classes destroys it; on the multitudes which form the lowest, it is unable to exert more than the slightest influence. As this system is Protestantism in its highest power, if Protestantism be meant to be a solitary, self-subsisting faith, so it is the religion of the middle class in its highest power, if that class be meant to exist apart from both the others, holding no communion with either, a perpetual barrier between them. Whether either of these conditions be according to the wish of Providence, may be judged, perhaps, better from the actual working of dissent, than from any abstract reasonings. Its founders were, to a great extent, the asserters of the moral existence of the trading class; they were the asserters at the same time of Protestantism as a body of positive principles, set at nought and denied by Romanists, likely to be set at nought and denied, as they thought, by English Churchmen. What sins on their part, or on ours, may have brought them into a separate position, I shall not now enquire. There are grounds enough for confession and humiliation to each; those who feel that the sins of the whole land are their own, ought to confess for both.

"But as soon as non-conformity had ceased to be persecuted, this result was apparent: the class which was brought under its influence, instead of forming one entire of body, was broken into various sects, with the prospect of an almost infinite multiplication. In the first half of the last century, while there was no strong feeling stirring in other quarters, they were quiet, cold, respectable; their ministers contributing their quota of Christian evidences, commentaries, ethical lectures, to the religious literature of the day; their habits at about an equal distance from a high and low morality, their doctrines rapidly tending toward Arianism. Their notion of Prctestantism was, that it meant a deliverance from ecclesiastical tyranny and prescribed forms."

The case quoted by Mr. Maurice, and what we are stating of the sixteenth century in the Netherlands, are parallel. As is Protestantism in the extreme of Dissent to Protestantism in the form of Establishment, so is Protestantism in general to Romanism. We may learn a lesson of Tendency (for this is the great lesson which we are now conning) from the comparison. Should the taste of the aristocratic order (if we must put it so) be in favour of an ornate and symbolic religion, let it be indulged consistently with that of the next order in rank, but not suffered to declare war against it. Would it be politic that the middle and higher classes should be thrown into contest, as two such colliding tendencies? If the question were one of appropriate forms for distinct classes, it might be fairly, perhaps, entertained; but in the way in which it comes before us, it is a claim of exclusiveness and supremacy. It is a demand that the ornate and symbolic (whether superstitious or religious) shall be declared to be the only religion of the Anglican Church, and that there is no salvation out of its pale, and that this only religion shall be imposed upon all classes, and the disobedient be anathematised as heretical and excommunicate. It proposes, therefore, when politically considered, a war of the aristocratic order on the middle classes. Will the former respond to the Jesuitic appeal? No; for they are yet Protestant, though not Dissentant; and would rather recommend the Altitudinarian to reconcile himself with his dissenting brother by the readiest legitimate means, than to make the breach wider by the encouragement of arrogant assumptions. They are Protestant, we say; and, being well instructed in history, are pre-aware of the tendencies which the proposed course of conduct involves. The miseries imposed by the Italico-Spanish army on the Netherlands, would be, in such case, but the type of what would be suffered by the middle classes of this country, in a religious war of Altitudinarian against Latitudinarian, or of Tractarian against both. While, most assuredly, all political relations would be relaxed, and all political contentions confounded in the struggle, in whatever concerned the Church, the Pro-Romanist assailant would be indeed inexorable. Hear what the historian of the Popes says of the conflict in the type, as presented in the Netherlands drama :

"It was not to be thought of, that a church, or even the right of private worship, should be accorded to the Protestants; all the preachers of that persuasion who were caught were hanged. The war was deliberately carried on as a war of religion. This was, indeed, in a certain sense, the most prudent system under the existing state of things: no complete subjection of the Protestants could ever have been effected; while, on the other hand, so decided a line of conduct allied to the Spanish side every jot of Catholicism the provinces contained, and bespoke their spontaneous co-operation. The baillui Servaes of Zealand gave up the whole country of Waes to the Royalists; Hulst and Axel voluntarily surrendered. Alexander Farnese was soon strong enough to contemplate an attack on the great cities; he was already master of the inland country and the coasts. One after the other, Ypres in the month of April, then Bruges, and finally Ghent, where Imbize himself had become a partisan of the reconciliation with Spain, were forced to surrender. Very tolerable terms were granted to the communes in their corporate capacity; they were left, for the most part, in possession of their privileges: only the Protestants were proscribed without