It is melancholy to see the prelates, who are most renowned as martyrs for the reformation, busied during this most favourable period, in persecuting those whom they called their reformed brethren, about habits and ceremonies, which they confessed to be popish, and occupied with a political conversion of the country, by royal mandates and visitations; when, as they might have foreseen that their time would be short, they should have filled the kingdom with the pure preaching of the Gospel, which might have at least rescued many immortal souls from guilty superstitions, and perhaps prevented the melancholy changes which Mary afterwards effected. But the prelates, intoxicated with supreme power, seem to have thought that men were made Christians by act of parliament.

On the accession of Mary, many of the reformers drank deep of the bitter cup of persecution, which they had been too ready to mingle for others. Cranmer having concurred in attempting to exclude the queen from the succession to the throne, gave her a plausible reason for wreaking on him the bloody revenge, which was sweet to her taste. If any part of his history decisively proves the reality of his religion, it is his death. But Latimer, who had never been recalled to his bishoprick during all the reign of Edward, when such bishops were peculiarly needed, lived the genuine successor of apostles, and died with the unsullied honours of Stephen, the proto martyr. Hooper, the first puritan, was next in excellence, but it is not our design to give the full history of this period, in which twenty-six clergymen, including five bishops, were burnt alive, and two hundred and eighty persons are reckoned to have died martyrs for the protestant faith.

It may perhaps be asked, why so small a proportion of the sufferers was found among the clergy, who, by their station and profession, should have appeared foremost in the ranks, and why so great a majority of the victims were people of the lower classes. The answer is, that not the new converts in the reign of Edward, but the original Wickliffites furnished the martyrs. The deaths of the protestants were, however, in the highest degree honourable to themselves, and their profession; for the fiery furnace evidently purified their spirits. Their lives were not thrown away, but the event proved that it was with a prophetic spirit one of them said, "the burning of our bodies will kindle a light, which by the grace of God, none of our enemies shall be able to extinguish." Though at first the careless multitude beheld with sufficient indifference these infernal tragedies, at length they grew sick of roasted men, and in the following reigns, the protestants improved these scenes to excite such a horror of popery, as no artifice or power could ever afterwards surmount*.

* Warner, vol II. p. 393.

SECTION II.

From the establishment of the Reformation, under Queen Elizabeth, to the Revolution.

ON her accession to the throne,, Elizabeth pushed down with a touch the edifice which her sister Mary had laboured to cement with so much blood. The new queen, however, proved herself the genuine child of Henry, for she commenced by forbidding her subjects to be reformed sooner*, and closed with prohibiting them to reform farther than she chose. After deliberating several weeks, on new year's day, fifteen hundred and fifty-nine, the reading of king Edward's liturgy, with the epistles and Gospel in English was restored. The parliament, which met shortly after, gave to Elizabeth, by the act of supremacy, that authority in the church, which her father wrested from the pope, which she was too politic to undervalue. In this act was introduced a clause empowering her to erect a court, which afterwards became infamous to posterity by the name of the high commission, where not a jury of peers, but commissioners appointed by the crown, took cognisance of the religion of Britonst. As all ecclesiastical persons were obliged to swear to her majesty's supremacy, the conscientious papists were reduced to the necessity of abandoning their situations in the establishment; but of some thousands, no more than two hundred and forty-three had sufficient regard for truth and conscience to make this costly sacrifice‡. * Fuller, b. IX. p. 51. † Warner, vol. II. p. 413. Neale's History of the Puritans, vol. I. 145. New edit,

Yet as these were in all probability, the best of the party, what can we think of those who retained their livings, and of the establishment which contained so many thousand weather-cocks, who after having been reconciled to the holy see under Mary, now relapsed again to protestantism at the beck of Elizabeth? To save appearances, the queen appointed a disputation with the papists, but they, perceiving what umpires would award the palm of victory, suddenly withdrew from the contest almost at its commencement.

A difference of sentiment now began to appear among the reformed themselves. When, during the persecutions of Mary's reign, many English exiles fled to the protestant countries on the continent, a church of these exiles was formed at Frankfort, who availed themselves of the opportunity to carry the reformation further than the British court had hitherto allowed. They abandoned the surplice and the responses of the English liturgy, and chose for their pastor the celebrated John Knox. But when a fresh party of refugees arrived from England, Dr. Cox, who had been tutor to king Edward, offended to see the liturgy, which he had helped to compose, rejected by his countrymen*, disturbed the worship by answering aloud after the minister: the following Lord's-day. one of his partizans ascended the pulpit, and, without the consent of the congregation, read the English liturgy. When, not only the church and its pastor, but the magistrates of Frankfort, had protested against this imperious innovation, Dr. Cox resorted to the mean, ungenerous artifice of accusing Knox as an enemy to the emperor, because he had some years before, when he owed no allegiance to that prince, *Heylin Hist. of Pres. 240.

said in one of his writings, what Dr.Cox himself would not have scrupled, that the emperor was as great an enemy to Christ as was Nero. Knox and his party being thus obliged to leave Frankfort, which was an imperial city, their opponents shortly after divided among themselves. The differences, which thus commenced in exile, were kept alive, when the accession of Elizabeth invited the refugees to return to their native land.

King Edward's liturgy was revised by order of government, and though, to please Elizabeth, it was made less decidedly protestant +, and more palateable to the catholics, especially with regard to the real presence in the sacrament‡, on the twenty-fourth of June, fifteen hundred and fifty-nine, it was established by law, in virtue of an "act for the uniformity of common prayer." A clause was inserted, empowering the queen to ordain further ceremonies and rites, and but for this reserve of power to herself, she told archbishop Parker she would not have passed the act. This statute of uniformity, rigidly enforced, kept the church of England in a state of convulsion for near a century, and defiled her with the foulest stain which can disgrace a religious body, the blood of dissentients.

The English establishment was now settled upon nearly its present form, but there was a considerable portion of the protestant ministers who officiated in the church without approving of its regulations. The surplice, cope, and other vestments of the church of Rome, which Edward had rejected, and Elizabeth recalled, were offensive to many. Hence those who wished to see the church more pure from the relicks

*Fuller, b. VIII. p. 30.
Heylin's History of the

† Warner, vol. II. p. 417. Reformation, p. 283.