ith much
severity among Nonconformists at home.

The relations, however, of England with foreign Protestant bodies,
though not exactly unfriendly, have been characterised by a good deal of
reserve. The kinship has been acknowledged, and the right of difference
allowed; but belief in the great superiority of English uses,
Nonconformist difficulties, and a certain amount of jealousy and
intolerance, had always checked the advances which were sometimes made
to a more cordial intimacy. In Henry VIII.'s time, in 1533, and again in
1535, overtures were made for a Foedus Evangelicum, a league of the
great reforming nations.[321] The differences between the German and the
English Protestants were at that time very great, not only in details of
discipline and government, but in the general spirit in which the
Reformation in the two countries was being conducted. But an alliance of
the kind contemplated would perhaps have been carried out had it not
been for the bigotry which insisted upon signature of the Augsburg
Confession. Queen Elizabeth was at one time inclined to join on behalf
of England the Smalcaldic League of German Protestants, but the same
obstacle intervened.[322] Cromwell is said to have cherished a great
project of establishing a permanent Protestant Council, in which all the
principal Reformed communities in Europe, and in the East and West
Indies, would be represented under the name of provinces, and designs
for the promotion of religion advanced and furthered in all parts of the
world.[323] Such projects never had any important results. Statesmen, as
well as theologians, often felt the need of strengthening the whole
Protestant body by an organised harmony among its several members,
something akin to that which gives the Roman Catholic Church so imposing
an aspect of general unity. The idea was perhaps essentially
impracticable, as requiring for its accomplishment a closer uniformity
of thought and feeling than was either possible or desirable among
Churches whose greatest conquest had been a liberty of thinking. As
between England and Germany, one great impediment to a cordial
understanding arose out of the differences between Lutheran and
Reformed. So long as the English Church was under the guidance of
Cranmer and Ridley, it was not clear to which of these two parties it
most nearly approximated. In the reign of Edward VI. the Calvinistic
element gained ground--a tendency as much resented by the one party
a