Roman, Gallican, and later mediaeval forms in the ordination of priests, and the services were brought back to a form fundamentally the same as that of the older Roman books.

With the creeds and with the apostolic succession of the ministry, the whole ancient sacramental system of the Church was in essence retained, while also freed from mediaeval innovations. In Confirmation the primitive laying on of the bishop's hand was again made of paramount importance. Penance was freed from the incubus of indulgences. Extreme unction, instead of being used chiefly as an aid to the dying, became a means towards the recovery of the sick, as enjoined in the New Testament. And the chalice, which in some parts of the Continent had only been finally withdrawn from communicants in the fifteenth century, was restored to all the faithful.1 In one and the same system new learning and light were united with the language and teaching of ancient saints and Fathers. In substance, though not in every detail, this system corresponded with the faith and practice common to the whole Catholic Church in East and West before the great schism of the eleventh century. And that is a common ground, a basis, which will have to be seriously considered in any comprehensive scheme for the future reunion of Christendom.

Time and patience would have commended these English services to the people, when reverently performed and wedded to the beautiful Church music of the Tudor period. Haste and impatience hindered their acceptance; and the arbitrary manner in which changes were enforced was noticed by Bucer, one of the most moderate of the foreign reformers, who observes, 'all is done by ordinances, which

1 For the history of the withdrawal of the chalice, see Julius Smend, Kelchversagung und Kelchspendung in der abendländischen Kirche, p. 27 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1898), and Edm. Martene, De antiquis ecclesiae ritibus, tom. iii (1737), p. 489.

the greater part of the people obey very grudgingly'. The majority of the people did obey, but the mind of many seems to be revealed in the articles drawn up by the rebels in the west of England. They say nothing about the Pope or indulgences. They want Mass without any one communicating with the priest except at Easter. They want the eloquent old ceremonies of Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday. They want the reserved Sacrament to be hung over the high altar, and there to be worshipped. They want celibate priests. And they say 'we will not receive the new Service, because it is but like a Christmas game'. They did not like English at the altar. To them it savoured of mummery, for it made them think of the mummers playing St. George and the Dragon as they still do in some country villages at Christmas. Cranmer poured upon these luckless rebels the vials of his learning. He was correct when he said that ancient canons forbid priests to separate from their wives, correct when he maintained that ancient rules required the laity to communicate at least three times a year, and that the canon of the Latin Mass implies the communion of the people as well as the communion of the priest. And he was quite correct when he affirmed that in Italy the holy Sacrament was not hung up in a pyx above the high altar, a custom which had become common in France and England in spite of the canonical rule that the reserved Sacrament should be kept in an aumbry in the wall.1

= Rapidly the religious confusion grew worse. The vacillation of Cranmer, blown about by every wind of doctrine from the Rhine, the publication of a second Prayer Book before the people were accustomed to the first, the

It was revived in the seventeenth century in the gorgeous chapel erected at St. James's for Queen Henrietta Maria. 'Behind the altar was a dove holding the Blessed Sacrament.' See Johanna H. Harting, Catholic London Missions, p. 9 (Sands & Co., London, 1903).

destructive controversial propaganda encouraged by the Government, the rapacity and hypocrisy of the Duke of Northumberland, combined to make religious peace impossible. And when the boy king died and Mary came to the throne, the nation was willing to be reconciled with Rome. Mary, however, wanted more than peace with Rome. At first she had been disposed to show clemency towards her restive Protestant subjects. But the rising in Kent under Sir Thomas Wyatt in 1554 made her think that clemency was a mistake; and there is another reason which must be taken into account. She expected a child, and no child arrived. Tortured by disease and disappointment, she sought to propitiate God. She was half a Spaniard, and deep in the heart of a Spaniard is the belief that in religion and in politics there cannot be an honest compromise, and also the belief that physical suffering is a punishment from God. In Spain and Portugal the burning of Jews was a solemn normal function, an ‘act of faith'. And to Mary the burning of heretics seems to have been a real 'act of faith', an oblation to the Almighty. Between three and four hundred victims of lower rank and four bishops suffered this appalling death. And Mary died neglected by her foreign husband, hated by the English people, and only successful in disseminating sympathy for the opinions which she longed to extirpate.

Elizabeth (1533-1603) saw the necessity of steering a middle course. In the language of the Book of Proverbs we may say that her royal heart is unsearchable. Her beauty, her Byzantine splendour of attire, her immense physical endurance, her English energy and Welsh duplicity, her fluent French and Latin, help to create in our minds an impression of one of the greatest of queens and most finished of actresses. We know that she liked a learned, and disliked a married clergy, that she wished the Church to be governed under the royal supremacy by its proper

convocations, that she was resolved not to allow England to come under the Papacy again, that she disliked Knox and Calvin. But we cannot tell the exact relation of the religion of her heart to the religion of the father whom she frequently resembled.

Elizabeth's task was difficult. She tolerated the introduction of the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI, but tried to deprive it of its Protestant sting by combining the new formula for giving the holy communion with the older Catholic words of administration, and she secured the nominal restoration of the Mass vestments. The vast majority of the clergy acquiesced in the use of this English rite. But the new bishops soon compromised with regard to the vestments. She repudiated the title of Supreme Head of the Church, knowing that it was equally distasteful to men of the most opposite religious convictions. But Parliament, though not the Church, reasserted it in the plainest terms. Papal authority was abolished and an offensive phrase about the Bishop of Rome's 'detestable enormities' was expunged from the Litany. Clergymen and office-holders might be required to swear that the Pope's authority was nothing, and if any one advisedly upheld that authority he was to forfeit his goods. Legally the Roman Catholics were at the Queen's mercy. But she was too wise to hurry, and for some time the new oath was not tendered to the judges and hesitating priests were treated with forbearance. If the country could have been preserved from entanglements abroad, the malcontents and their immediate descendants might have been soon absorbed into the existing Ecclesia Anglicana.

Scotland,

Such isolation, however, was impossible. France, the Netherlands, and Spain provided a problem which had to be solved if England was to be saved. It was a problem of which politics formed the web and religion the woof. With consummate sagacity Elizabeth and Cecil

began by cutting the connexion between France and the majority of the Scottish people, with the result that the nation which in 1550 was grateful to France had in 1560 transferred its friendship to England. The Pope sent to Elizabeth a courteous letter by the hands of a nuncio. Philip of Spain suspected that this move was the result of French intrigue and persuaded the Pope that he had made a mistake. The nuncio was stopped at Brussels and the breach between England and Rome became a little wider. A second nuncio was sent with Philip's approval, but was stopped on his way by Cecil's work, and Elizabeth refused to send bishops to the Council of Trent. The Council reopened, 1562, and that year Pope Pius IV forbade attendance at English Mattins and Evensong, without even considering the lawfulness of attendance at holy communion. The next year, 1563, the English Thirty-nine Articles of Religion were passed by a Convocation of the province of Canterbury. Like the decisions of Trent, the Thirty-nine Articles are not free from ambiguity but nevertheless powerfully contributed to a consolidation of doctrine. They adroitly avoid all distinctively Lutheran or Calvinist doctrine, and though less defiant than the Forty-two Articles of the previous reign, they cannot be accused of seeking reunion with Rome by retrogression towards mediaevalism.

So the knocks and blows went on, but still Pope Pius IV, a genial diplomat, did not anathematize the Queen of England. There came the long duel between Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots, the imprisonment of Mary in England in 1568, then the rising of Roman Catholics in the north of England, its failure followed by the murmurs that if only the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth the rising would have been better supported. The Pope was now Pius V, the zealous and austere pontiff for whose election Charles Borromeo had laboured. He decided that