e universities and by the convocation in both the provinces, and to
these collective acts the bishops and the higher clergy had added each
their separate consent.

[Sidenote: The clergy comply with the revolution, but inwardly have
little heart for it.]

[Sidenote: They bend before the storm, trusting to time.]

[Sidenote: The clergy are called upon to explain to the people the
changes which have taken place.]

But the government knew too well the temper of the clergy to trust to
outward compliance, or to feel assured that they acquiesced at heart
either in the separation from Rome, or in the loss of their treasured
privileges. The theory of an Anglican Erastianism found favour with
some of the higher church dignitaries, and with a section perhaps of
secular priests; but the transfer to the crown of the first-fruits,
which in their original zeal for a free Church of England the
ecclesiastics had hoped to preserve for themselves, the abrupt
limitation of the powers of convocation, and the termination of so many
time-honoured and lucrative abuses, had interfered with the popularity
of a view which might have been otherwise broadly welcomed; and while
growing vigorously among the country gentlemen and the middle classes in
the towns, among the clergy it throve only within the sunshine of the
court. The rest were overawed for the moment, and stunned by the
suddenness of the blows which had fallen upon them. As far as they
thought at all, they believed that the storm would be but of brief
duration, that it would pass away as it had risen, and that for the
moment they had only to bend. The modern Englishman looks back upon the
time with the light of after history. He has been inured by three
centuries of division to the spectacle of a divided church, and sees
nothing in it either embarrassing or fearful. The ministers of a faith
which had been for fifteen centuries as the seamless vesture of Christ,
the priests of a church supposed to be founded on the everlasting rock
against which no power could prevail, were in a very different position.
They obeyed for the time the strong hand which was upon them, trusting
to the interference of accident or providence. They comforted themselves
with the hope that the world would speedily fall back into its old ways,
that Christ and the saints would defend the church against sacrilege,
and that in the meantime there was no occasion for them to thrust
themselves upon voluntary martyrdom