ny who are not
privileged to live among the last results, that this decomposition of
religious faith must be to the detriment of personal and practical
piety. Yet America, in which, of all countries, the Reformation at the
present moment has farthest advanced, should offer to thoughtful men
much encouragement. Its cities are filled with churches built by
voluntary gifts; its clergy are voluntarily sustained, and are, in all
directions, engaged in enterprises of piety, education, mercy. What a
difference between their private life and that of ecclesiastics before
the Reformation! Not, as in the old times, does the layman look upon
them as the cormorants and curse of society; they are his faithful
advisers, his honoured friends, under whose suggestion and supervision
are instituted educational establishments, colleges, hospitals, whatever
can be of benefit to men in this life, or secure for them happiness in
the life to come.

CHAPTER VII.

DIGRESSION ON THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND AT THE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH.

RESULTS PRODUCED BY THE AGE OF FAITH.

_Condition of England at the Suppression of the Monasteries._

_Condition of England at the close of the seventeenth
Century.--Locomotion, Literature, Libraries.--Social and private Life of
the Laity and Clergy.--Brutality in the Administration of
Law.--Profligacy of Literature.--The Theatre, its three
Phases.--Miracle, Moral, and Real Plays._

_Estimate of the Advance made in the Age of Faith.--Comparison with that
already made in the Age of Reason._

[Sidenote: Results of the Age of Faith.] Arrived at the commencement of
the Age of Reason, we might profitably examine the social condition of
those countries destined to become conspicuous in the new order of
things. I have not space to present such an examination as extensively
as it deserves, and must limit my remarks to that nation which, of all
others, is most interesting to the English or American reader--that
England which we picture to ourselves as foremost in civilization, her
universities dating back for many centuries; her charters and laws, on
which individual, and therefore social, liberty rests, spoken of as the
ancient privileges of the realm; her people a clear-headed race, lovers
and stout defenders of freedom. [Sidenote: The social condition produced
in England.] During by far the greater part of the past period she had
been Catholic, but she had also been Reformed--ever, as she will always
be,