rty-Nine Articles (1563); the Queen's Religion.

Four years later, the religious belief of the English Church, which
had been first formulated under Edward VI (S362), was revised and
reduced to the Thirty-Nine Articles which constitute it at the present
time.[1] But the real value of the religious revolution which was
taking place did not lie in the substitution of one creed for another,
but in the new spirit of inquiry, and the new freedom of thought,
which that change awakened.

[1] But the Clerical Subscription Act (1866) simply requires the
clergy of the Church of England to make a general declaration of
assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Prayer Book.

As for Elizabeth herself, she seems to have had no deep and abiding
convictions on these matters. Her political interests practically
compelled her to favor Protestantism, but to the end of her life she
kept up some Catholic forms. Though she upheld the service of the
Church of England, yet she shocked the Puritans by keeping a crucifix,
with lighted candles in front of it, hung in her private chapel,
before which she prayed to the Virgin as fervently as her sister Mary
had ever done.

384. The Nation halting between Two Opinions.

In this double course she represented a large part of the nation,
which hesitated about committing itself fully to either side. Men
were not wanting who were ready to lay down their lives for
conscience' sake, but they do not appear to have been numerous.

Some sympathized at heart with the notorious Vicar of Bray, who kept
his pulpit under the whole or some part of the successive reigns of
Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, changing his theology with
each change of rule. When taunted as a turncoat, he replied, "Not so,
for I have always been true to my principles, which are to live and
die Vicar of Bray."[2]

[2] "For this as law I will maintain
Until my dying day, sir,
That whatsoever king shall reign,
I'll be Vicar of Bray, sir."

Though there was nothing morally noble in such halting between two
opinions, and facing both ways, yet it saved England for the time from
the worst of all calamities, a religious civil war. Such a conflict
rent France in pieces, drenched her fair fields with the blood of
Catholics and Protestants, split Germany and Italy into petty states,
and ended in Spain in the triumph of the Inquisition and of
intellectual death.[1]

[1] S. R. Gardine