could be more amusing to the courtiers of Charles I. and Charles II. than the grotesque portrait of the Puritan-his straight hairhis sorrowful countenance-his affected vocabulary-his whimsical names-his visions-his raptures-his scruples about plum-porridge and black-puddings,-all might furnish ample merriment to the gay and gallant cavaliers. But the joke did not turn out to be on their side in the end; Cromwell knew the force of religious principle, and availed himself of it; he knew that nothing could stand against it when sincerely. (however erroneously) entertained -and that loyalty and relationship, and the chivalry of birth, and whatever else may serve to raise the spirit of a man to high exploits, are as nothing when opposed to it ;—and so it came to pass. We are not defending the extravagances of the puritans; we are merely showing that a principle thus powerful cannot be safely neglected in a nation's counsels-a principle which, under the guidance of a Luther, obscure as he was, insignificant but from the weapon which he wielded, wrought a change in the affairs of men infinitely greater in character, in duration, and in extent, than all which was achieved by the mere force of arms and vulgar conquests of a Francis or a Charles. But to return

Thus did the word of the Lord become precious in those days, for the church establishment continued stationary while the people were multiplying exceedingly. But man is a religious animal, and if those whose duty it is to minister to his natural instinct, fail in that duty, he will minister for himself. Surely the Bristol colliers, down whose sable cheeks the tears worked a visible channel, at the field-preaching of Whitefield, had hearts to be opened before him; but how could they hear without a preacher, and how could any preach except he was sent? Accordingly, Wesley now blew his trumpet (says Mr. Southey), and awakened those who slept. Since that time, sad divisions have been amongst us, both in the church and out of it, for a plentiful crop of tares sprung up with what wheat he sowed, or, we would rather say, caused others to sow; and these divisions have been thrown in our teeth by the declaimers upon Roman Catholic unity, and the croakers over our own want of it; but, after all, we know not whether these divisions are really more various or more virulent than existed in this same infallible church, in spite of its boasted unity. Of the Scotists and Thomists, of the factions for and against the original sin of the Blessed Virgin, of the divers opinions held as to the divine or human appointment of auricular confession, and many other points of difference enumerated by Bishop Jewel, we say nothing; for these, after all, were not, perhaps, questions calculated to divide the church against itself, so as to endanger its safety: neither shall we speak of the Jesuits and Jansenists of later times, though

the

the existence of two such parties shows that even Rome herself had not the power to muzzle mankind upon a subject which, of all others, has been the most fruitful mother of religious discord: -but this we do say, that the schism between the secular and regular clergy, before the reformation, was of a nature to shake the stability of the Roman Catholic church more perilously, than any which has existed since, can endanger our own. Either party was throwing stones at the other at a time when the houses of both parties were made of glass. The indecent contest between the two popes could not have been more prejudicial to the Popedom at large, than was this to the interest of that power in England. The arena of such disputes was usually the tavern, where the clergy of those times very freely resorted in an evening, a practice against which Latimer lifts up his voice, alleging, by way of contrast and example, the shepherds who kept watch over their flocks by night; and the witnesses of such disputes were the pot-politicians of the place, who desired no better diversion than to laugh at the wranglers on either side. Symptoms of the jealousy and ill-blood thus occasioned, among their respective followers, abound in the writers of those times; or if not jealousy of either, mockery of both. In the Sompnowre's tale of Chaucer, the crafty friar apologizes to the wife for speaking (as he pretends) a little plain truth to the good man of the house on the ground of the curate's negligence concerning such matters. • These curates,' says this worthy Pharisee,

"These curates ben so negligent and slow,

To gropen tenderly a conscience,"

and then he adds, with the usual self-complacency of his craft, "In shrift and preaching is my diligence."'

The poet himself, however, thought otherwise of these gentry, leaning (as a courtier was likely to do) to the secular clergy; and whilst in his prologue he depicts his friar as far better acquainted with all the taverns, hostlers, and 'tapsteres' of every town in his neighbourhood, than with the lazar or beggere; and his monk as occupied in venerie, grey-hounds, and pricking and hunting of the hare,' he presents us with his beautiful picture of the Poore Parson of a town,' (a picture which Dryden has imitated, though not, perhaps, improved,)-and happy is the clergyman who can approach, even in this day, to a model so perfectly evangelical. So, again, in a very curious and characteristic dialogue of Erasmus, two Franciscans, on being refused a night's lodging by the parson of the parish, who, as usual, had no great love for such society, are represented as taking refuge with the village publican, "What kind of pastor have you here," quoth one of them to mine

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host of the Dog and Dish,-" dumb, I warrant, and good for little ?" "What others find him, I know not, I find him a very worthy fellow; here he sits drinking all the day long; and for customers, no man brings me better: and now I think of it, I wonder he is not here." "He was not, however, over civil to us." "You have met with him, then ?" "We asked him for a night's lodging, but he bade us begone, as if we had been wolves, and recommended us to try you.' Ha, ha, now I understand; he is not here, because he is aware that you are before him." "Is he a dumb dog?" "Dumb! tut; no man makes more noise in my tap-room-nay, he is loud enough at church, too, though I never heard him preach there. But why waste my words; he has given you proof enough, I fancy, that he is not dumb." "Does he know his Bible ?" "Excellently well, he says, but his knowledge smacks of the confessional; he has it on condition of never letting it go further." "Probably he would not allow a man to preach for him?" "Yes, I'll answer for it, provided you don't preach at him, as a good many of your cloth have a trick of doing."

Many, indeed, did so; and in those fierce invectives which Dante and Petrarch so frequently launch at the corruptions of the church of Rome, they were, perhaps, only practising a lesson which they had learned from the friars. Indeed, nothing could be more disastrous than this schism, for such it may be called; the cathedral clergy, and the cathedrals themselves, suffered exceedingly by it. For those venerable establishments being supported not merely out of the rent of lands attached, this being wholly inadequate, but out of obits, voluntary benefactions, and annual offerings for every household at Pentecost, thence called Pentecostals, when these latter sources of income were withdrawn, as they were, through the malignant influence of the friars, the funds were no longer equal to maintaining the usual number of canons, and scarcely to keeping the buildings in repair. Thus the reformation found the dividends restricted to a few residentiaries, and the edifices themselves in danger of decay. Nor was this all. Even amongst the regulars themselves, there were endless divisions and sub-divisions, calculated to waste their strength, and do injury to their common cause. For these same pestilent friars, not content with wandering about the kingdom under their papal privilege, intruding into the labours of the parish priest, withdrawing the people from his communion, setting up altars of their own, pretending a sanctity of life and assiduity of preaching, which was after a while found false and hollow, but which, for a season, well nigh wrought the ruin of the parochial clergy; not content with all this, they must have their fling at the monks too, contrasting their own voluntary poverty (which lasted just as long as they could not help it) with the luxury of the other orders, and poisoning the minds of the people by sneers against a

class

class of men, corrupt enough, no doubt, but possessing, (in the times, at least, immediately preceding the reformation,) probably, more learning and charity, with certainly far less hypocrisy, than themselves. Nay, more, these very fraternities, (their system carrying disunion along with it, like the modern system of nonconformity,) not satisfied with assailing the clergy and the monks, were ever ready to turn their arms against themselves, as we may see exemplified, amusingly enough, in Pierse the Plowman's Crede'; a fresh sect being ever at hand to supplant a former one, as they successively dropped off from the body politic, like saturated leeches; all alive to the corruptions of their predecessors, and all by degrees sinking into the same state themselves; till the people must have been ready to exclaim with the beggar, whose officious friend would have ridded him of the fleas-for mercy's sake leave them alone, these have done their worst, and are full, you are only making room for others that are hungry and will bite the harder. Neither was there wanted any great matter of difference, to propagate disaffection to an old order and the construction of a new one. The mendicants were persons who would make Mercutio's words good, and literally quarrel with a man who had a hair more or a hair less in his beard than they had.' And why not? This was just as reasonable a ground of dissent then as a surplice has since been; and the colour of a cloakwhite, black, or grey-was just as respectable a shibboleth as many another that has served to separate the dissenter from the church, or one dissenter from another. The unity of the Roman Catholic church, therefore (much as we hear of it), was not such as to give the church of England any just grounds to fear a comparison with it. Indeed, with regard to the latter, the arrow that brings the poison partly brings the cure too. The church of England is weakened by seceders-so she is, but they, in their turn, are weakened by seceders from themselves. A number of individuals amongst the methodists, for instance, determine to wrest the government of the sect from the hands of self-elected preachers, and to qualify them with a mixture of laymen. The attempt is unsuccessful, and forthwith they set up a new connection. But there are restrictions with regard to place and ritual existing in both these bodies, which a third body dislikes; accordingly, they determine to abandon their more lukewarm brethren, and taking the field under the name of Ranters, or Revivers, fully,' as they say, to set out for heaven.' It is true, they are condemned by the methodists, as the methodists are by the church, but it is the mother-crab, who has chosen to walk backwards, chiding her daughter for doing like her.

But further still, for we have not yet done with the unity of the

Roman

Roman Catholic church in England,-another apple of discord was thrown into it by the institution of pope's legates. The clergy of the national church are refractory-they will not have this man (a stranger, probably) to reign over them. He knows little and cares less about their customs, and privileges, and laws. Upon this what does the pope? He persuades the archbishop of Canterbury to become his legate, (the possession of such libe ral, indeed unlimited power, as accompanied this office, was but too tempting a bait,) and thus he rivets the chain; since the pretensions of the legate, being grafted on the rights of the archbishop, take root downwards in this domestic corruption, and bear fruit upwards in still further domestic disunion; for the usurped functions of the legate perpetually interfering with the acknowledged functions of the bishop of the diocese, and neither party being disposed to yield, a constant struggle goes on about wills, administrations, appeals, visitations, and the like, all tending to scandalize the church, where both parties, instead of contending for the faith, seem only employed in contending for the fees. Meanwhile, the pontiff, from his seat on the seven hills, looks on like the anarch old,' enjoying the strife, and forgetful that however such convulsions might confirm for a while his own authority, there was a danger that they might ultimately dissolve the body of which he was the head. This they did partially effect; for it would be difficult, without a reference to this consideration, to account for the vast revolution brought about in the short space of six years, during the reign of King Henry. Doubtless, the people had conceived a disgust at the corruptions of religious professors; though upon this subject we will not enlarge, as it is a moving cause of the reformation, sufficiently trite and acknowledged; but the other, of which we are now speaking, though not less influential, is less observed,-we mean the inconvenience suffered by the people through the disunion of churchmen, a disunion which affected the administration of the law, and the persons and property of individuals.

Doctrines had, probably, in the first instance, little to do with the reformation. Henry lived and died a Catholic, and Cranmer himself had renounced the pope, long before he renounced his belief in transubstantiation. It is true, that riots and insurrections followed the suppression of the monasteries, which may seem to argue that the nation was in favour of the old church: but we must beware of pushing the inference too far. Multitudes of the actually indigent drew their daily bread from those establishments; and for the labouring peasantry, there had been, on the whole, no landlords like the monks. They received of the fruits,' which was in those days a much more convenient mode of payment than money.

They