ducted 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, 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 hæreticus" 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 onewhen 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 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 consistsat 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-seemed 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 prejudices 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 happensparticularly 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