THE ENGLISH CHURCH. CHAPTER XV. Where one particular priesthood has rank in the state, others are not free; and where they all have, the people are not free. So far as the ceremonies of one particular faith are connected with filling any particular occupation, entering into the relations, or enjoying any of the advantages of civil life, there is not religious liberty. It is a fallacious distinction which has sometimes been drawn, that a state may patronize, though it should not punish. A government cannot patronize one particular religion without punishing others. A state has no wealth but the people's wealth; if it pay some, it impoverishes others. A state is no fountain of honour. If it declare one class free, it thereby declares others slaves. If it declare some noble, it thereby declares others ignoble. Whenever bestowed with partiality, its generosity is injustice, and its favour is oppression. W. J. Fox's SERMONS ON THE MISSION, CHARACTER, ONE would have imagined that when the horrors and enormities of that long reign of spiritual slavery which I have been detailing-that of the infamous papal hierarchy-had roused a great part of Europe to scotch the old serpent of Rome; to burst asunder the vile and envenomed folds which she had wrapped round the soul, the life, and liberties of man,-that the reformed churches would have been careful so to organize themselves as to prevent temporal power again enslaving religion. But, in the first place, it is no easy matter to ecape the grasp of regal and political dominion; and in the next, it is rarely the case that men are prepared, after a long sufferance of slavery, to enjoy and secure freedom. To expect this, is to expect that he whose body has been cramped by chains, and wasted by vigils in the dark dungeons of power for years, should at once, on coming out, stretch forth his limbs, acquire in a moment the vigour and elasticity of his muscles, and bound over the hills with the breathing buoyancy of the youthful hunter, to whom every day brings exercise, and with exercise, force and adroitness. It is to expect that the issuer from the dungeon shall bear at once the light of day with an eagle's glance, and regard every thing around him with the perspicuous familiarity of those who have daily walked about in the eye of heaven. Besides, in the exultation of conquest over an old despotism, the populace are always, for the moment, too credulously trusting to the professions of those who pretend to rejoice with them in order to enslave them anew. In a while they wake from their dream of good nature, but it is too late, they are again clasped in bonds, and environed with bars that nothing but the oppressions of ages can corrode, and some far-off out-breaking of popular indignation can dash asunder. Such has been the fate, more or less, of all the reformed churches of Europe; but their fortunes we cannot follow, we must confine ourselves to the Church of England;-the least reformed, the most enslaved of all. The reformation in England was ecommenced and continued, so far as it went, under unfortunate circumstances. It was not the result of such a ripened and irrestrainable enthusiasm of the popular mind as must have thrown down all *N 2 before it; but it was brought about by the arbitrary passions of that monster, Henry VIII.-one of the most libidinous and bloody wretches that ever dis graced a throne. At one moment it was his will, because it suited his pleasure, to be the advocate of the pope; at another, because it was necessary to the gratification of his indomitable desires, his most desperate antagonist. For this he threw off the papal yoke-but not to give the church freedomnothing could be farther from his intentions: it was only to make it his servant and his slave. He declared himself the head of the church of Christ in these kingdoms. What a head for such a church! The despotism of opinion was only changed in name; and it appears to have been the effect of the merest accident that it was changed at all. Everything was on the point of being amicably settled between the British and the Italian tyrant, when it was rumoured at the papal court, that Henry had witnessed a dramatic representation in which that court was ridiculed. In a moment of impolitic passion, the "triple tyrant" thundered against Henry his bull of denunciation, and the breach was made immortal. Heavily and long did the pontiff curse the moment in which he forgot, in his passion, the priest's proper cunning; but his regret was unavailing-England was lost for ever. Edward VI. was a truly pious youth, and was unquestionably desirous of doing what was right; but he was a feeble invalid, and was in the hands of priests, who did with him as they pleased. The liturgy framed for the church in this reign, Elizabeth afterwards revised by her bishops, and brought to that state in which it substantially remains to this day. It was not in the nature of that man in petticoats,that Henry VIII. in a female mask,-to consult the inclinations of the people so much as her own high will, in which glowed all the dominance and all the spirit of the Tudors. Instead of being willing, say Heylin and Strype, to strip religion of the ceremonies which remained in it, she was rather inclined to bring the public worship still nearer to the Roman ritual; and had a great propensity to several usages in the church of Rome which were justly looked upon as superstitious. She thanked publicly one of her chaplains who had preached in defence of the real presence; she was fond of images, and retained some in her chapel; and would undoubtedly have forbidden the marriage of the clergy, if Cecil, her secretary, had not interposed. Having appointed a committee of divines to revise King Edward's liturgy, she gave them an order to strike out all offensive passages against the pope, and make people easy about the corporal presence of Christ in the sacrament. That an imperious woman, who, not finding it accordant with the love of undivided power to marry, was jealous of all who did; who even imprisoned her relatives and maids of honour who presumed to marry, should attempt to prevent the clergy marrying, was not very wonderful: but she did not stop here. Those of her subjects who were desirous of a purer, simpler, more apostolic, and less worldly system of worship; who had fled to the continent from the fire and chains of her sister Mary, and had returned, hoping better things at her hands, she ordered to submit to her royal will! and passed the famous act of Uniformity, by which all her subjects were commanded to observe the rules her bishops had framed, and to take up with such a reformation of the church as she had pleased to give them, with herself as the visible head of the church upon earth. The |