d by Cranmer had from the first been
considered by a large body of Protestants as a scheme for serving two
masters, as an attempt to unite the worship of the Lord with the worship
of Baal. In the days of Edward the Sixth the scruples of this party had
repeatedly thrown great difficulties in the way of the government. When
Elizabeth came to the throne, those difficulties were much increased.
Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of Protestantism was
therefore far fiercer and more intolerant after the cruelties of Mary
than before them. Many persons who were warmly attached to the new
opinions had, during the evil days, taken refuge in Switzerland and
Germany. They had been hospitably received by their brethren in the
faith, had sate at the feet of the great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich,
and Geneva, and had been, during some years, accustomed to a more simple
worship, and to a more democratical form of church government, than
England had yet seen. These men returned to their country convinced that
the reform which had been effected under King Edward had been far less
searching and extensive than the interests of pure religion required.
But it was in vain that they attempted to obtain any concession from
Elizabeth. Indeed her system, wherever it differed from her brother's,
seemed to them to differ for the worse. They were little disposed to
submit, in matters of faith, to any human authority. They had recently,
in reliance on their own interpretation of Scripture, risen up against a
Church strong in immemorial antiquity and catholic consent. It was by no
common exertion of intellectual energy that they had thrown off the yoke
of that gorgeous and imperial superstition; and it was vain to expect
that, immediately after such an emancipation, they would patiently
submit to a new spiritual tyranny. Long accustomed, when the priest
lifted up the host, to bow down with their faces to the earth, as before
a present God, they had learned to treat the mass as an idolatrous
mummery. Long accustomed to regard the Pope as the successor of the
chief of the apostles, as the bearer of the keys of earth and heaven,
they had learned to regard him as the Beast, the Antichrist, the Man of
Sin. It was not to be expected that they would immediately transfer
to an upstart authority the homage which they had withdrawn from the
Vatican; that they would submit their private judgment to the authority
of a Church founded on private judgme