6 port of civil liberty. She had, moreover, emancipated herself from the supremacy of .the See of Rome, and the popular mind was intently engaged equally in the pursuit of theological truth, and in the application of the organic laws to the maintenance and defence of public and private rights. It was the age of Spenser, Shakspeare, Bacon, and Milton. Poetry had risen from lyric beauty to epic dignity; history, from fabulous chronicle to philosophical argument; and learning, from words and forms, to things and laws. Reasoning from these circumstances, it seemed that the onward progress of society was assured, and that civil and religious liberty were about to be established on broad and enduring foundations. Nevertheless, a reaction had already begun, whose force is even yet unspent. The See of Rome took alarm at the movement of the Reformation, and combined with kings against nations. Henry VIII arrogated to himself the very same spiritual supremacy, which, with the aid of the people, and in the name of Christian liberty, he had wrested from the Pope; and with singular caprice employed it in compelling conformity to the obnoxious faith and worship of Rome, conducted by ecclesiastics who derived their appointments from himself, and held them at his own pleasure. The reign of Mary inaugurated that relapse to Rome, which the caprices of Henry had rendered inevitable. Elizabeth re-installed the Reformation,'but reserved the regal claim to spiritual supremacy. The people resisted all these ecclesiastical usurpations of the Tudors, and they, in retaliation, boldly attempted to subvert the constitutional authority of Parliament. Elizabeth, under the advice of sagacious statesmen, and supported by temporizing churchmen, resorted to the favorite expedient of politicians—compromise. Compromise is a feasible and often a necessary mode of adjusting conflicting material interests, but can never justly or wisely be extended to the subversion of the natural rights or the moral duties of subjects or citizens. Even where a compromise is proper in itself, it derives all its strength from the fair and full consent of all the parties whom it binds. Elizabeth caused the Roman Catholic creed, discipline, and ritual, to be revised and altogether recast, under the direction ot leaders of some of the conflicting sects; and thus a new system was produced, which, as was claimed, stood midway.between the uncompromising Churcb of Rome and equally uncompromising latitudinarian Protestantism. The new system was established by law, and a hierarchy was appointed by the crown, t?> Whose care.it was committed. Absolute and even active conformity was commanded, to be enforced by pains and penalties in special and unconstitutional tribunals, acting without appeal and in derogation of the common law. The new system, whatever might be its religious and ecclesiastical harmony with the Divine precepts, was, in its civil aspects, a mere political institution. It was offensive and odious to a zealous people, who, though divided into opposing sects, agreed in regarding the political authority assumed by the State as a sacrilegious usurpation. The friends of civil liberty also condemned it, as a turning of the batteries that had been won from the Roman See, in the name of Liberty, against the very fortress of Liberty itself. Nevertheless, a portion of the clergy, who had now become dependent on the State, members of the privileged classes, always'disinclined to political agitation, placemen and waiters for places, the timid, the venal, and the frivolous, early gave in their adhesion, and the compromise daily gained wider acquiescence, through the appliances of political seduction, proscription, and persecution. The Church of England was built on that compromise. Incorporated into the constitution with such auxiliary political powers, it must necessarily augment the influence of the throne, and be subversive equally of the civil and religious liberties of the people. A conservative power, a new conservative power, was necessary to prevent that fatal consummation. That power appeared in the form of a bpdy of obscure religious sectaries, men of monastical devoutness, yet retaining the habits of domestic and social life; simple, but not unlearned; unambitious ; neither rich enough to forget their God, nor yet poor enough to debase their souls; content with mechanical and agricultural occupations in villages and
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