catholic religion only was acknowledged, so that the reformation found the whole nation one flock under one shepherd. Almost every village contained a church, to which the faithful, at stated hours, regularly flocked, for the celebration of the eternal sacrifices, for morning and evening prayer, and for exhortation and instruction. In a multitude of places, the silence of the night was interrupted by pious psalmody. England was covered with edifices raised by the sublimest science, and dedicated to the most noble and most salutary purposes; commerce prospered; agriculture, literature, every useful and ornamental art and science was excellently cultivated, and was in a state of gradual improvement. The monarch was illustrious among the most illustrious potentates of Europe, and held the balance between its preponderating princes: his court was splendid; the treasury overflowed with wealth; there was no debt; and, (one fourth part of the tithes in every place being set apart for the maintenance of the poor *), there was law.

no poor

Such was the temporal prosperity of England when the reformation arrived. Will it suffer on a comparison of it with the condition of England at any subsequent æra? or even with its present?

* Burn's Justice of Peace, title "Poor," sect. L. 1.

XII. 2.

Has England gained by the Reformation in Spiritual Wisdom?

HER great gain, in this respect, is asserted by you in every part of "the Book of the Church:" I shall mention a single fact, then leave yourself to decide on the truth of your own repeated assertion.

From" the Book of the Church," I conclude that you are a sincere believer in the doctrines of the established church of England, as they are expressed in the thirty-nine articles,-the authentic formulary of her faith. You therefore believe all that the roman-catholic church believes respecting the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Divinity of Christ, and the Atonement; but are these doctrines seriously and sincerely believed by the great body of the present English clergy? or by the great body of the present English laity? Do not the former, to use Mr. Gibbon's expression, sign the thirty-nine articles with a sigh, or a smile? Is a sincere and conscientious belief of the doctrines expressed in them, generally considered by the laity to be a condition for salvation?

Indifference to the thirty-nine articles being thus universal, or at least very general, among those who profess themselves members of the established church, must not you, who deem so highly of them, admit that, as the roman-catholic church believes

all that is said in the thirty-nine articles respecting the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Divinity of Christ, and the Atonement,-there existed when the reformation peered, and all these articles were universally believed, more spiritual wisdom in England than exists in her at this time, with her present scanty creed?

Thus the balance, in respect both to temporal happiness and spiritual wisdom, now stands; but if you look at the period between the first introduction of the reformation and its present æra, what years of havoc, what disputed successions of the crown, what wars, what legal murders, what demolitions of magnificent edifices, what destructions of manuscripts, of printed books, of sacred and profane monuments of art; what proscriptions, what confiscations, what calumnies, what imaginary plots, and what other grinding oppressions, in every form, have been often found necessary to extirpate the antient creed, and to introduce and establish the reformation! Surely you will acknowledge that an infinity, both of public and individual misery would have been spared to England, if the reformation had not been carried to the extent to which it was carried:-but,

"Vicisti! et victos tendere palmas "Ausonii videre!"

VIRGIL.

The reformation, and all that is connected with it, are now established by law; and never have a vanquished people more completely submitted to the conquerors, have conducted themselves with

greater propriety, or received alleviations of their condition with greater gratitude, than the romancatholics have done: none of his majesty's subjects are more attached to his government. When we think of past grievances, we bless the hands which have removed so many of them; an angry feeling seldom rises, except when, as in "the Book of the Church," we find our religion traduced, and our ancestors vilified in such a manner, that we should deservedly be thought either more or less than men, if we did not exert ourselves to repel the unmerited aggression.

XII. 3.

Was the Reformation attended by a general Improvement in Morals?

THE primitive reformers themselves assert the contrary:-"We see," says Luther, “that, through "the malice of the devil, men are now more avari"cious, more cruel, more disorderly, more insolent, "and much more wicked, than they were under "If popery*. any one wish," says Musculus, "to see a multitude of knaves, disturbers of the

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public peace, &c., let him go to a city where the

gospel is preached in its purity," (he means a reformed city); "for it is clearer than the light of "the day, that never were pagans more vicious and disorderly than those professors of the gospel †.” "The thing," says Melancthon, "speaks for itself. * In Postil. Dom. part 1; Dom. 2, Adv.

† Dom. 1, Adv.

"In this country, among the reformed, their whole "time is devoted to intemperance and drunkenness, (immanibus poculis). So deeply are the people "sunk into barbarity and ignorance, that many of "them would imagine they should die in the night, "if they should chance to fast in the day *.". Neither was this growth of vice and ignorance confined to foreign kingdoms. "In this nation," says Stubbs †, after he had made the tour of England, "I found a general decay of good works, or "rather a plain defection or falling away from "God.-For good works, who sees not that they," (the papists of former times), "were far before us, "and we far behind them ?"-Erasmus thus describes the fruits of the reformation: he was, indeed, a catholic; but a catholic whom the protestants allow to have been impartial.-He was an eye-witness to the introduction and progress of the reformation; he observed its workings with the eye of a philosopher, and marked them down with the accuracy of a candid and correct historian :"And who," says he, "are those gospel people? "Look around you, and show me one who has "become a better man;-show me one, who, once "a glutton, is now turned sober;-one, who, be"fore violent, is now meek;-one, who, before "avaricious, is now generous;-one, who, before

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impure, is now chaste. I can point out multi

• Ad Cap. 6, lat.

+ Motives of Good Works, with an Epistle dedicatorie to the Lord Mayor of London, an. 1596.