is session, besides the
attainder of Lord Seymour, regarded ecclesiastical affairs, which were
now the chief object of attention throughout the nation. A committee
of bishops and divines had been appointed by the council to compose
a liturgy; and they had executed the work committed to them. They
proceeded with moderation in this delicate undertaking; they retained
as much of the ancient mass as the principles of the reformers would
permit: they indulged nothing to the spirit of contradiction, which
so naturally takes place in all great innovations: and they flattered
themselves, that they had established a service in which every
denomination of Christians might without scruple concur. The mass had
always been celebrated in Latin; a practice which might have been deemed
absurd, had it not been found useful to the clergy, by impressing the
people with an idea of some mysterious unknown virtue in those rites,
and by checking all their pretensions to be familiarly acquainted with
their religion. But as the reformers pretended in some few particulars
to encourage private judgment in the laity, the translation of the
liturgy, as well as of the Scriptures, into the vulgar tongue, seemed
more conformable to the genius of their sect; and this innovation,
with the retrenching of prayers to saints, and of some superstitious
ceremonies, was the chief difference between the old mass and the new
liturgy. The parliament established this form of worship in all the
churches, and ordained a uniformity to be observed in all the rites and
ceremonies.[*]

* 2 and 3 Edward VI. c. 1.

There was another material act which passed this session. The former
canons had established the celibacy of the clergy; and though this
practice is usually ascribed to the policy of the court of Rome, who
thought that the ecclesiastics would be more devoted to their spiritual
head, and less dependent on the civil magistrate, when freed from
the powerful tie of wives and children, yet was this institution much
forwarded by the principles of superstition inherent in human nature.
These principles had rendered the panegyrics on an inviolate chastity
so frequent among the ancient fathers, long before the establishment of
celibacy. And even this parliament, though they enacted a law permitting
the marriage of priests, yet confess in the preamble, "that it were
better for priests and the ministers of the church to live chaste and
without marriage, and it were