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accordance with the good will of her subjects, and fostering all forms of thought which did not threaten the stability of her throne. For the future it implied the substitution of mental slavery for mental freedom, of the spirit which urges men to be content with the acceptance of their beliefs from an external authority for the spirit which urges them to base their principles upon inquiry. For some years indeed the Jesuits who arrived in England to dare and endure were but few in number, and most of those few were seized and executed by the government. But the energy of the few who escaped gave force to many who were not members of the Society. First Parsons, and then Gerard, were men of extraordinary ability in the organisation and management of

men.

CHAP.

the

VI.

It was inevitable that two systems so radically oppo- § 17. Persed to one another as the supremacy of the crown and secution of the supremacy of the pope, should come into violent Catholics. collision with one another. Each side tried to make the best of its own cause. The government, when it seized the Catholic missionaries, and imprisoned, tortured, or executed them, announced that it treated them in this manner, not because they preached a false religion, but because they made men rebels to the queen. The Catholic missionaries, on the other hand, announced that they were persecuted not for treason, but for religion. Undoubtedly there was truth on both sides. Whether the missionaries wished it or not, the success of their efforts could not but end in the overthrow of the political as well as of the ecclesiastical authority of Elizabeth. Whether Elizabeth wished it or not, she could not enforce this authority without assailing by violence the conscientious convictions of thousands of her subjects. In the eyes of posterity, Elizabeth's justification is to be found in considerations, the import of which she

CHAP.

VI.

scarcely understood. Against her was the old doctrine that the acceptance of certain definite opinions promulgated by authority was so all-important to mankind, that for the sake of retaining them, men bound to put to death their fellow-men, a doctrine which by exalting submissive assent at the expense of moral and intellectual vigour, tended in the long run to surround itself with a poisonous atmosphere of falsehood and corruption. On her side was the doctrine of which only glimpses had yet been gained, that men are better only for the truths which they appropriate to themselves by effort, and for the earnestness of their moral striving. In proscribing the papal religion, she was not proscribing a form of thought and belief which claimed mere equality with others. She was warring against a tyranny which claimed the right of crushing all independence of judgment under its heel. Undoubtedly there was much which was harsh, much too that was worse than harsh, in the mode in which she prepared her triumph. The treatment of the Catholics, like the treatment of all prisoners, was barbarous, and as special objects of suspicion, the Catholics were subjected to hardships from which others were free. Nor is it possible to doubt that chicanery and fraud entered largely into the plots by which Elizabeth's ministers contrived to give an air of legality to the proceedings by which they dogged Mary Stuart to death. But we are not bound, because we are dissatisfied with the manner in which she acted, to be dissatisfied with the action itself. Elizabeth, in upholding the authority of the crown, was upholding the authority of the State, and in upholding the authority of the State, she was, unlike William Rufus / and Henry I., upholding a truer and nobler authority than that which the Roman missionaries had to offer.

To a limited extent, what was true of Elizabeth's

It

opposition to Rome was true of her opposition to Cal-
vinistic Puritanism. The Puritans, indeed, unlike the
Catholics, appealed, not to external authority, but to the
interpretation of a book by the private judgment of each
individual man. But such had been the influence of Cal-
vin's mind, that they agreed in all essential particulars,
and they sought to impose their creed by force upon those
who rejected it. They declared it to be the duty of the
civil power to prohibit ceremonies dear to large masses
of men, and they were earnestly desirous to organise the
church irrespective of the authority of the crown.
was therefore not without reason that statesmen feared
that the tyranny of an ecclesiastical democracy would be
as great as the tyranny of an ecclesiastical monarchy.
On the other hand, it was impossible for Elizabeth to be
blind to the fact that the spirit of Puritanism was essen-
tial to the success of her struggle against Rome. The
desire to throw off the papal yoke which was in others
a matter of reason or feeling, was, in the Puritan, the
object of consuming passion. To contend with Rome
without his help was to grasp a lance of which the
point had been thrown away. As the most zealous Pro-
testants found their way amongst the ranks of the
clergy, the greater part of the Protestant clergy were
more or less Puritan at heart, and Elizabeth, if she were
to have clerical allies at all, was obliged to make con-
cessions to the Puritans. Her object, therefore, was to
use them in such a way that they might not be dan-
gerous to her own crown, or so offensive to those of
her subjects who did not share their opinions as to
throw them into confirmed opposition.

CHAP.

VI.

$18. beth and

Eliza

the

Puritans.

$ 19. The

Eliza

The Church, as it was moulded at the commencement of the reign, was admirably calculated to serve bethan this end. If some part of its formularies betrays an Church. effort to express discordant thoughts, it owes its strength

CHAP.
VI.

§ 20. Elizabeth and the National Spirit.

to the expression which it gave to the higher and better ideas of either side. There the worshipful spirit of older days was blended together harmoniously with the individuality fostered by the new religious teaching. There the reverent spirit of Catholicism learned to test the traditional belief by the touchstone of history and of reason, whilst the fervour of the self-contained Protestant learned to soften down its asperities by the necessity of co-operating with men of other temperaments. The problem before Elizabeth was, whether she would be able to bring her subjects to accept those forms through which a spirit of united worship and united doctrine might develop itself more fully in time. It was indeed impossible that she should in this succeed completely. Some there would surely be to whom the old papal forms would be all in all, and some to whom the new Calvinistic forms would be all in all. The only wonder is that she succeeded as far as she did with unwilling instruments, at a time when the rising of the European conflict favoured the development of extreme doctrines.

If, indeed, Elizabeth had had nothing but church parties to look to, she would undoubtedly have failed. But even in those days of strong religious partizanship other more mundane interests had weight in the minds of men. Above all, Englishmen cared for the nationality of England. Of all the various church-parties, the Catholics stood alone in looking for direction to a head beyond the seas, and when, in course of time, some of them came to look for temporal aid to the king of Spain, all who did not share their belief turned against them, and many who did share their belief grew lukewarm in its defence. The Puritans who disliked Elizabeth's ecclesiastical proceedings were yet ready to shed their blood in her quarrel against Rome and Spain, like that Stubbs, who, when his hand had been cut off for an attack upon the queen's

government, raised his hat with the other hand, crying, 'God save Queen Elizabeth.' Some men might not like to see the ministers of religion wearing caps and surplices. Other men might not like to see the Communion Service substituted for the Mass. But as soon as the bulk of the nation clearly perceived that each of the various parties insisted on having its own way at the expense of the dissolution of national unity, it rallied round the queen. Gradually, in opposition to the common enemy, the religious forms which, in the beginning of the reign, had hardly any partizans at all, were adopted by the moderate men of all parties, though there were still left many who wished them to be modified.

CHAP.

VI.

§ 21.

Eliza

beth and

sance.

Nor was it only from the moderate men of the various church-parties that Elizabeth obtained support. The spirit of the Renaissance was actively at work amongst the Renaisher subjects, blunting the edge of religious controversy, and sending men in search of earthly beauty and enjoyment, instead of spiritual growth. The Elizabethan literature was but the expression of a deep-rooted feeling. Holding out its hand, as in Spenser, to Protestantism, it was in the main, as in Shakspere and the dramatists, neither Catholic nor Protestant. It kept steadily in view the human side of life as opposed to the religious. It appealed to human motives, to the love of wealth and prosperity, to the human sense of justice, and power, and beauty, and virtue, not to the asceticism of the monk, or the religious self-restraint of the Puritan. It rested on the growth of commercial manufactures and of the general national well-being. The wooden trencher was replaced by the platter of pewter, the smoky hut by the chimneyed house, the rush-covered floor by the soft carpet, and men knew the reason why. They knew that these things had come to England because she had held fast to her national unity, and they decided that whatever

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