incident, though a very important one, in the history of the Holy Catholic Church in England. Even we can see-how much more must purer eyes see!—that many things were left undone, and many more were done amiss. Some of them have been amended in later reformations, and others have yet to be. But we find ourselves able to accept this work with all our hearts as part of God's good providence for us, simply because we find that it is like His dealings with His Church in other days and all days-condescending to men's weakness and frailties, and working out His purposes at once through and in spite of all that they do.

VI.

There are, then, two things with regard to the Reformation in England which should always be borne in mind.

(a) It did not turn out in the way that some of its agents expected and desired. The first inrush of a great wave is always higher than the true level which it is to reach, and so it was here. Much that was in the minds of English Churchmen during the period of stress has left no permanent impress upon the Church. Where they would have invented

new institutions instead of restoring and quickening the old, they failed most egregiously, and their work died away. What the Bishop of Durham has said with regard to the Reformation as a whole is eminently true, in a slightly different sense, of the English Reformation-"Its function was to quicken rather than to create, to vivify old forms rather than to establish new"; and it failed "when it arrogated the office not of restoration but of reconstruction 1." And so one by one the novelties designed by innovators were swept away almost as quickly as they were made-new ideas of the relations of the civil power to the Church, crude attempts to enter into relations with foreign protestant bodies, calvinistical tendencies imported from abroad, and cold undevotional methods in public

1 Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection ch. i. § 43. "It would be easy to point out the weakness of the Reformation in itself as a power of organization. Its function was to quicken rather than to create, to vivify old forms rather than to establish new. But however we may grieve over its failure when it arrogated the office not of restoration but of reconstruction, it was a distinct advance in Christian life. Where it failed, it failed from the neglect of the infirmities of man and of the provisions which have been divinely made to meet them. On the other hand, the lessons which it taught are still fruitful throughout Christendom, and destined, as we hope, to bring forth a still more glorious harvest.”

worship-until by the time that the settlement was reached they had been abolished almost entirely. It is therefore nothing to the point to bring forward the extreme tendencies of particular innovations which were made during the period, only to be swept away as soon as made. For the question is not what certain people would have liked the Reformation to result in, but what it actually did result in.

(b) Again, a time of great changes, however good those changes may be in themselves, is not a time of exalted spiritual life; and when a great religious revolution is in progress and men's passions are being unloosed, we must expect to see the results of it in human conduct. Irreligious men are always glad of an excuse for regarding any matter of belief as an open question, and they at once proceed to carry this laxity into the sphere of conduct. This is true, I repeat, however desirable the changes may be in themselves, and the English Reformation is no exception to the rule. The writings, and especially the sermons1 of the

1 See Latimer's sermons, passim, and especially the Sermons preached before King Edward VI; and Haweis's Sketches of the Reformation ch. vii. This latter is a very useful book, and deserves to be far better known.

reformers bear abundant testimony to this; and the reformers themselves are very largely influenced by what is really a feature of their time. For it is well," as the Bishop of London has said, "to abandon all illusions about the sixteenth century. There were strong men, there were powerful minds; but there was a dearth of beautiful characters. A time of revolt and upheaval is a time of one-sided energy, and of moral uncertainty, of hardness, of unsound argument, of imperfect self-control, of vacillation, of self-seeking. It is difficult in such a time to find heroes, to discover a man whom we can unreservedly admire." We may even go further and say that, when found, it is as likely as not that he will side with the old order of things. In that, at least, he has lived and grown; and his experience has taught him that "hitherto hath the Lord helped us"; whereas the new order is, at the best, as yet untried. But at its very worst it may be affirmed without fear of contradiction that the standard of life in England, even if we take the most unpleasing examples, was at least higher than that to be found within the Roman communion, in Italy or elsewhere. And those who attempt to base

1 See the Archbishop Laud Commemoration Book p. 14.

any argument against the English Reformation upon the character, or the beliefs, or the objects of those who were concerned in it must surely be presuming upon the expectation that those to whom they bring such arguments will prove to be ignorant of the history of contemporary European nations.

In a word, then, the only way to see the Reformation as it really was, and to appreciate it at its proper value, is to regard it as a completed whole, and to estimate it as such. For as we have already said, it cannot be regarded as in any sense complete till the Savoy Conference, at the beginning of the reign of Charles II. The usurped authority of the Pope was abolished, no doubt, by 1534, and finally repudiated at the accession of Elizabeth. But it was not till long after this that the Church defined her position as regarded Puritanism, and forbade those to preach in her name who did not believe in her doctrines. It was not till well on in the seventeenth century that, thanks to the preaching of Bishop Andrewes and others, the foreign calvinistic teaching began to disappear before the larger Catholic doctrine of the love of God and the atoning work of Christ for all