penal laws may not be arrested.]

When, therefore, the chair of St. Peter was filled by a new occupant,
and language of the same smooth kind began again to issue from it, the
English government could not for so light a cause consent to arrest
their measures, or suspend the action of laws which had been passed from
a conviction of their necessity. Whatever might become of French
marriages, or of the cession of a corner of the Netherlands and a few
towns upon the coast in exchange for a gaudy title, the English
Reformation must continue its way; the nation must be steered clear
among the reefs and shoals of treason. The late statutes had not been
passed without a cause; and when occasion came to enforce them, were not
to pass off, like the thunders of the Vatican, in impotent noise.

[Sidenote: The martyrdoms of Catholics and Protestants analogous to
deaths in battle.]

Here, therefore, we are to enter upon one of the grand scenes of
history; a solemn battle fought out to the death, yet fought without
ferocity, by the champions of rival principles. Heroic men had fallen,
and were still fast falling, for what was called heresy; and now those
who had inflicted death on others were called upon to bear the same
witness to their own sincerity. England became the theatre of a war
between two armies of martyrs, to be waged, not upon the open field, in
open action, but on the stake and on the scaffold, with the nobler
weapons of passive endurance. Each party were ready to give their blood;
each party were ready to shed the blood of their antagonists; and the
sword was to single out its victims in the rival ranks, not as in peace
among those whose crimes made them dangerous to society, but, as on the
field of battle, where the most conspicuous courage most challenges the
aim of the enemy. It was war, though under the form of peace; and if we
would understand the true spirit of the time, we must regard Catholics
and Protestants as gallant soldiers, whose deaths, when they fall, are
not painful, but glorious; and whose devotion we are equally able to
admire, even where we cannot equally approve their cause. Courage and
self-sacrifice are beautiful alike in an enemy and in a friend. And
while we exult in that chivalry with which the Smithfield martyrs bought
England's freedom with their blood, so we will not refuse our admiration
to those other gallant men whose high forms, in the sunset of the old
faith, stand transfigured on th