d
there was no fame for an Englishman unless he neglected his maternal
language for the artificial labour of the idiom of ancient Rome. Bacon had
even his own domestic Essays translated into Latin; and the king found a
courtier-bishop to perform the same task for his majesty's writings. There
was something prescient in this view of the national language, by the
king, who contemplated in it those latent powers which had not yet burst
into existence. It is evident that the line of Pope is false which
describes the king as intending to rule "senates and courts" by "turning
the council to a grammar-school."

* * * * *

HIS POLEMICAL STUDIES.

This censure of the pedantry of James is also connected with those
studies of polemical divinity, for which the king has incurred much
ridicule from one party, who were not his contemporaries; and such
vehement invective from another, who were; who, to their utter dismay,
discovered their monarch descending into their theological gymnasium to
encounter them with their own weapons.

The affairs of religion and politics in the reign of James I., as in the
preceding one of Elizabeth,[A] were identified together; nor yet have the
same causes in Europe ceased to act, however changed or modified. The
government of James was imperfectly established while his subjects were
wrestling with two great factions to obtain the predominance. The
Catholics were disputing his title to the crown, which they aimed to carry
into the family of Spain, and had even fixed on Arabella Stuart, to marry
her to a Prince of Parma; and the Puritans would have abolished even
sovereignty itself; these parties indeed were not able to take the field,
but all felt equally powerful with the pen. Hence an age of doctrines.
When a religious body has grown into power, it changes itself into a
political one; the chiefs are flattered by their strength and stimulated
by their ambition; but a powerful body in the State cannot remain
stationary, and a divided empire it disdains. Religious controversies have
therefore been usually coverings to mask the political designs of the
heads of parties.

We smile at James the First threatening the States-general by the
English Ambassador about Vorstius, a Dutch professor, who had espoused
the doctrines of Arminius, and had also vented some metaphysical notions
of his own respecting the occult nature of the Divinity. He was the head
of the Remonstrant