orance. Against these, if
judgment have been exercised according to the laws of the realm, we be
without blame. If we have been too remiss or slack, we shall gladly do
our duty from henceforth."[41] Such were the first Protestants in the
eyes of their superiors. On one side was wealth, rank, dignity, the
weight of authority, the majority of numbers, the prestige of centuries;
here too were the phantom legions of superstition and cowardice; and
here were all the worthier influences so preeminently English, which
lead wise men to shrink from change, and to cling to things established,
so long as one stone of them remains upon another. This was the army of
conservatism. Opposed to it were a little band of enthusiasts, armed
only with truth and fearlessness; "weak things of the world," about to
do battle in God's name; and it was to be seen whether God or the world
was the stronger. They were armed, I say, with the truth. It was that
alone which could have given them victory in so unequal a struggle. They
had returned to the essential fountain of life; they reasserted the
principle which has lain at the root of all religions, whatever their
name or outward form, which once burnt with divine lustre in that
Catholicism which was now to pass away: the fundamental axiom of all
real life, that the service which man owes to God is not the service of
words or magic forms, or ceremonies or opinions; but the service of
holiness, of purity, of obedience to the everlasting laws of duty.

[Sidenote: The early Protestants did not bring forward any new scheme of
doctrine,]

[Sidenote: But protested only against a false superstition, and insisted
on the principle of obedience.]

When we look through the writings of Latimer, the apostle of the English
Reformation, when we read the depositions against the martyrs, and the
lists of their crimes against the established faith, we find no opposite
schemes of doctrine, no "plans of salvation;" no positive system of
theology which it was held a duty to believe; these things were of later
growth, when it became again necessary to clothe the living spirit in a
perishable body. We find only an effort to express again the old
exhortation of the Wise Man--"Will you hear the beginning and the end of
the whole matter? Fear God and keep his commandments; for that is the
whole duty of man."

Had it been possible for mankind to sustain themselves upon this single
principle without disguising its simpli