be written on the theory of periodical occultation; but he who wishes to trace the descent of religious thought and the practical working of the religious ideals must follow these through all the phases they have actually assumed." All parties alike are prone to forget that their rivals have an historical claim to be in the Church, and that the attempts made by one faction after another to expel their opponents have come to nothing. When the Anglo-Catholics proclaim, through their favourite newspaper, that they intend to drive out the Modernists, and to encourage the Evangelicals to join the Protestant dissenters, they only prove how completely they have lost touch with the realities of the situation.

The conflict has always centred in the question: "What is the seat of authority in religion?" To this question, four answers may be given. The seat of authority may be the Church, the Bible, human reason, or mystical revelation. Since all Christians agree that some authority attaches to each of these four, the important question is, which of them comes first ? Hooker, omitting individual inspiration, or what is now called religious experience, as a separate source, declares : What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that the first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these, the voice of the Church succeedeth." Laud pronounces that all four are necessary" no one of these doth it alone"; and he distinguishes the testimony of the Holy Ghost within us from the work of the natural reason, to which he assigns the negative office of "disproving that which misguided men conceive against " the truth.

The Church and the Bible are two external and historical authorities; where either of them is supreme, reason and illumination have only a subordinate function. The two external authorities became inevitably the watchwords of the fierce conflicts between Catholicism and Protestantism. The authority of both Church and Bible was emphasised in the face of a hostile environment, just as in the early Church the creeds were formed to exclude each error as it arose. In all warfare, the independence of the individual is sacrificed. But as soon as the Church feels itself no longer menaced, the rights of personality are recognised, the demands of the institution are relaxed, and Christianity reverts to what it was at first-an individual and universal religion.

Reason and illumination-philosophy and mysticism-become again the guides of thought and practice. The Platonic tradition, which has always been an integral part of Christianity, by the side of though not independent of the Catholic and Protestant elements, emerges again and produces its characteristic fruits.

The Reformation, which was no sudden revolt, but the culmination of a long agitation for national independence in religious matters, was precipitated by the scandalous moral corruption of the Papal hierarchy, and by the intolerable political claims of the Roman See. It unfortunately brought to an end a promising development of religious humanism, which nowhere took so attractive a form as in England, under the guidance of More, Colet, Erasmus and their friends, the fine flower of the late-blooming northern Renaissance. What happened could not have been averted; rougher hands than those of scholars were needed to burst the shackles which bound Europe to the expiring Middle Ages. But it was a real misfortune that the conditions of warfare, as stated in the preceding paragraph, hardened and narrowed both sections of divided Christendom, just at a time when secular knowledge was advancing from triumph to triumph, with clear eye and confident step. Both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation were reactionary; though they brought the Middle Ages to an end, they were themselves medieval in spirit and method. The Humanists, who had the forward view, declined in influence; two religions of authority fought against each other. The result was that Christianity failed to make the necessary adjustments to growing secular knowledge. Freedom of thought and of speech, as always during war, were branded as treason or rebellion, and a cleft opened between sacred and profane science, which has not yet been closed.

The changes in modern thought to which the Church has been slow to adapt itself have been well summarised by Lecky. (1) The decline in the sense of the miraculous, involved by the new conception of natural law. (2) The growth of new ideas of God, man and the universe, and a consequent new moral movement resulting in the decay of belief in witchcraft, in rejection of religious persecution, and of ghastly notions concerning future punishment. (3) The decline of belief in the guilt of error, and the rejection of an asceticism which had paralysed the progress of mankind. (4) The operation of the rational spirit, which

gradually secularised every department of political life, and formed habits of thought which affected all judgments. (5) The rise of the industrial and democratic spirit in Europe.

These developments were not contemplated at the time of the Reformation. It contained implicitly the promise of an emancipation of the human spirit, which at first was neither fully realised nor welcomed. The sectaries, whether political or mystical, were the step-children of the Reformation, who only came into their own in the days of Cromwell, and then only for a short time. But there were other questions which did not come to the front at first.

For instance, the question of Orders was not much agitated in the sixteenth century. Bancroft, a very able Primate, blamed the Puritans not because they were uncatholic, but because they "walked disorderly." He opposed the re-ordination of Presbyterian ministers. "The ordination given by presbyters," he said, "must be esteemed valid; otherwise it might be doubtful if there was any lawful vocation in most of the Reformed Churches." The political controversy at this time centred in the Papacy, the religious controversy in the Mass. The question about Parker was not whether he was a Catholic priest, but whether he was legally archbishop. It was only the Council of Trent which closed such open questions as the free use of the Bible, Communion in both kinds, the vernacular liturgy, and even the marriage of the clergy. The Reformers, on their side, were mainly concerned to reject the Roman interpretation of three passages of the New Testament: (1) Tu es Petrus; (2) Hoc est corpus meum; (3) Ave Maria plena gratia.

The Reformation in England was effected with singularly little disturbance. Bernard Gilpin, who was ordained under Henry VIII, was unmolested by Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth. Only 200 parish priests were deprived in 1559; 2000 in 1662, and 400 in 1689. "These be not matters for burning," thought the average Englishman. But Tunstall of Durham declared without fear of contradiction that "if the King (Henry VIII) should go about to renew the abolished authority of the Bishop of Rome, he should find much more difficulty to bring it about in his parliament, and to induce his people to agree thereunto, than anything that he ever proposed in his parliament since his first reign."

In the seventeenth century the three historic parties which have ever since divided the Church of England made their appearance, and the conflict now centred on questions of Church government. Many of the Marian exiles had imbibed a strong admiration for Calvin's discipline at Geneva, and after the accession of James I the Puritans headed a parliamentary movement, not primarily ecclesiastical. They professed, however, to find episcopacy unscriptural. In opposition to their movement, a vigorous "Church and King" party arose, under the leadership of Laud, and the theory of the apostolical succession was invoked in defence of episcopacy. The Caroline Laudians emphasised the importance of the sacraments, the idea of the Church, and the value of patristic literature. But the Laudians were never Latinisers; their form of Catholicism was distinctively English, and avowedly Protestant. Laud himself claimed this name both for the King and himself. It was also learned; foreign scholars were not only welcomed in England, but promoted to ecclesiastical preferments, like Voss and his son.

Meanwhile, the party of comprehension and liberal thought was represented by Lord Falkland, Hales of Eton, Chillingworth and Stillingfleet, who prepared the way for the Cambridge Platonists, a small group of scholars and teachers who in troubled times upheld the supreme authority of the rational, moral and spiritual consciousness. Such sayings as: "Sir, I oppose not rational to spiritual, for spiritual is most rational"; "The state of religion lies in a good mind and a good life; all else is about religion; and men must not put the instrumental part of religion for the state of religion," indicate the spirit of their teaching, which, on the intellectual side, was an appeal to the Church to return to her old loving nurse, the Platonick philosophy." It was not their fault that their successors in the next century became rationalists instead of Platonic mystics. As Mr. Richardson says in his excellent little book: "Natural science, with its doctrines of a creative process still proceeding, and a creative force existing within the universe, was required to create the point of view which would make the spiritual theology of the Cambridge Platonists credible and acceptable to the many. The great achievements of the human spirit in the Cambridge Platonists were destined soon to be submerged and forgotten in the recrudescence of religious and political conflict towards the end of the seventeenth century."

Meanwhile, the fissiparous tendency of Protestantism had shown itself in the secession of the Baptists, who may be said to have given almost exclusive attention to the moral consciousness, and of the Quakers, who represent individualistic mysticism. The Unitarians, who represent rationalistic theology, broke off later. These secessions, of which the latest, that of the Methodists, was the most disastrous, have repeatedly weakened the national Church, upsetting the balance of opinion within it, and finally endangering its representative character.

The eighteenth century, from the religious point of view, is a period of rather cold and prosaic common sense, followed by an emotional reaction under Wesley and the Evangelicals. The most interesting figure is not Bishop Butler, whose famous refutation of Deism is a double-edged weapon, which might easily be turned against theistic beliefs generally, but William Law, nonjuror, moralist and mystic, who bridges over the gap between the Cambridge school and the Romantics of the early nineteenth century.

The Romantic movement sprang from literature and philosophy rather than from the Churches. It was the beginning of that lay influence upon religious opinion which has been a marked feature of the last hundred years. The nineteenth century learned more religion from its poets than from its preachers, and more theology from its philosophers than from its divines. It was, in England, the age of amateurs of genius, and our countrymen have always preferred to listen to unprofessional advice; but the influence of the lay prophet is one of the results of Protestantism, and we may hope to see it still further extended.

Romanticism, as Canon Storr says, has the following notes. It recognised the depth and largeness of human nature, and restored their rights to the emotions and affections. It revived the spirit of wonder and the sense of mystery in man and nature. It laid stress on the importance of the imagination. It revealed the treasures of the past in their value for the present, and especially discovered an interest in the Middle Ages, which had been despised as merely barbarous. It created a sense of sympathy between man and nature, a half pantheistic or immanental reverence for the spirit which is " deeply interfused " in all that lives.

It is easy to see that this movement, as soon as it touched