able to guide and to use, but which they were powerless "They builded better than they knew."

to arrest.

No one understood less than Elizabeth herself the real meaning of the Reformation, or cherished a more undisguised contempt for the zeal of the Reformers and the religious temper of the nation, a force which she failed completely to estimate, nevertheless to this more than to any other cause she owed the stability of her throne and the splendid success of her administration. It was the spirit of Puritanism which answered to her appeal when she invoked the aid of her people against Philip and Spain. The defeat of the Armada was the triumph of Protestantism, and, unwilling as she was to assume the title, Elizabeth became henceforth its recognised head. Yet Elizabeth had not only no sympathy with the doctrines of the Reformation, she resisted their introduction as tending to create dispeace in the Church and nation. In her judgment they emanated from the brain of a number of noisy and impracticable zealots.

It is sometimes said that up to the time of Elizabeth the English people as a whole were indifferent to the Reformation, and the change that came over them during her reign was due rather to the revulsion inspired by the atrocities of the previous reign than to any change of conviction in its favour. But this is an opinion that appears to rest upon no trustworthy basis. It is a saying of Burke that he did not know of any method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people. It was peculiarly difficult in those days to estimate the prevalence or gauge the strength of public sentiment. The fact is, the Reformation in England languished, so far as it did

languish, for want of leaders. The people had no leaders to stir up their sympathies on its behalf, still less to kindle their enthusiasm. Imagine what would have been the fate of the Reformation in Germany without Luther, in Switzerland without Calvin, in Bohemia without Huss, in Scotland without Knox. In England, however, the Reformation had no prophet, no preacher, no herald deserving of the name. If Wyclif had been alive he might have stirred England from end to end as Luther stirred Germany with his trumpet-blast. But no Wyclif was forthcoming. Such prophet as it had was found in the person of Cranmer. He may not have been the despicable poltroon that Macaulay describes him, but he certainly had not the stuff of which heroes and Reformers are made. Hooper and Ridley, and Latimer and Taylor, and Jewel and Fisher and More were men of infinitely more grit and principle, but it was as much as they could do to resist the tyranny and encroachments of the papal power without leading a popular crusade in favour of the Reformation. It is no small proof of the growth of popular feeling in its favour, that notwithstanding Elizabeth's dislike of Protestantising zeal, and her determination, if possible, to stamp it out, yet the Reformation continued to grow and strengthen its hold upon the nation.

Puritanism was its offspring, and soon Elizabeth discovered that she had to reckon, not only with Reformers, but with Puritans. She imagined that persecution would exert a salutary repressive influence upon these mutinous spirits. As might have been expected, it produced the opposite effect. It made them more unbending and

formidable than ever. It enlisted the sympathy of the people on their side. In the words of Macaulay: "It found them a sect, it made them a faction." "The power of the discontented sectaries was great. They were found in every rank, but they were strongest among the mercantile classes in the towns, and among the small proprietors in the country. Early in the reign of Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House of Commons." "The same impulse which had carried millions away from the Church of Rome, continued to carry them forward in the same direction. As Catholics had become Protestants, Protestants became Puritans.”

It was a great disappointment to Elizabeth that even her bishops could not be depended on to give effect to her policy, and their Protestant convictions were continually thwarting her. The persecutions of the previous reign had sent not a few Protestants into exile, and they had come back affected by, if not actually inoculated with, the tenets of Calvin and the Genevan form of worship. The leaven of their influence had spread among all sections of the nation. "The English Reformers were eager to go as far as their brethren on the Continent. They unanimously condemned as antichristian numerous dogmas and practices to which Henry had stubbornly adhered, and which Elizabeth reluctantly abandoned."

The influence of the Bible.-It would be difficult to discover a more striking coincidence, one that answers more perfectly to the idea of special overruling providence, than the occurrence of the Reformation

and the invention of printing. There is no reason in the nature of things why the latter should have been delayed to the end of the fifteenth century. The art of writing was in use among the Egyptians long anterior to the time of Abraham, and it would seem as if the transition from writing to printing ought to have been effected without much difficulty, yet written characters had been in the possession of the world for five or six thousand years before printing was ever heard of. It was in the year 1474 that the first printing-press was erected in Westminster by William Caxton, an event which "did" more for England than all the battles of kings or the statutes of Parliaments." The time was indeed most opportune. The introduction of printing synchronised with the Renaissance, that wonderful intellectual awakening which has caused the fifteenth century to be styled the "age of discovery of the world and of man." As might have been expected, it gave to the New Learning a mighty impulse. It contributed to the spread of knowledge through all sections of society, and the clergy, who had hitherto kept the key of knowledge in their own hands, at the beginning of the fifteenth century found that the laity were in no wise inferior to them in this respect. At the same time it put into the hand of those who attacked the abuses and corruptions of the Church a most formidable weapon, which they were not slow to use. This helped the cause of the Reformation immensely. But undoubtedly the chief service which printing rendered to the cause of truth and liberty was the multiplying of copies of the Bible. Until the reign of Henry VIII. the Bible had existed only in manuscript

form. This was the translation (a translation of a translation, be it remembered) of Wyclif. After the death of Wyclif and the plague of Lollardism had been stamped out, or supposed to have been stamped out, by the energy and vigilance of the Popish party, the use of the Bible was rigidly proscribed, and according to a statute of Henry v. it was enacted that all who read the Scriptures in their native tongue should forfeit land, cattle, life, goods, they and their heirs for ever.

It was in the year 1525 that William Tyndale brought out his edition of the New Testament. His version of the Scriptures and reprint of the tracts of Wyclif, though printed in Germany, soon found their way into England. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where the New Learning had established itself and been the means of producing a widespread intellectual and religious awakening, became the seed-plot of this new heresy, and here it found a congenial and fruitful nidus.

The dream of Erasmus was at last realised. A translation of the Bible had appeared which the weaver might repeat at his shuttle and the ploughman might intone at the plough. The edition of 1540 was called the Great Bible, and there was prefixed to it a preface by Archbishop Cranmer; and from this circumstance the Great Bible is often, but improperly, called Cranmer's Bible. This is the Byble apoynted to the use of the churches." This Bible was sold at 13s. 4d., "unless Cromwell would give the printers exclusive privileges, when it might be sold for 10s." This would represent a much larger sum in those days than in ours-about the value of £6. “The story of the supremacy," says Mr. Green, " was graven in