Reformation itself laid a broad foundation for further changes. In liberating the religious mind of the nation from the despotism of papal infallibility, it provided an effectual barrier to the imposition of any other. Thought became freer. Ecclesiastical unity was destroyed; while a new impulse and direction were given to religious inquiry by the system of church government and doctrines, promulgated by Luther on the continent, which gradually introduced Presbyterianism into England, and established it in Scotland.

Throughout the struggles for ecclesiastical ascendancy which took place during the reigns of Henry VIII. Edward VI. Mary, and Elizabeth, the main question was, whether the pontiff or the sovereign should be the head of the church. The revised Liturgy, while it swept off Transubstantiation, Absolution, Confession, and Mariolatory, retained enough of the spirit of Romanism to shew its affinity with its rites, doctrines, and ceremonial, rather than with Lutheranism. There was, indeed, at that time in the Reformed Church of England, a decided leaning to Episcopacy, and an intense dislike to every other system of church government. Individuals from time to time asserted other principles. The press occasionally made them public ; and the stake not unfrequently exhibited its martyrs to such heresies.

Had tolerance instead of persecution been the spirit of the Reformation, centuries of bloodshed

and strife might have been saved. But it seems to be a law of Providence that truth, like other valuable acquisitions, can only be attained by toil and suffering. It has been most justly observed, that "the times make the men." And never was this saying more fully exemplified than in the determined steadfastness and adherence to religious opinion, in defiance of penalties and suffering, manifested, in turn, by men of every party, and at almost every era, since the Reformation. At that period the country was divided into two religious sections, the Reformed English Church with the sovereign at its head, and the Catholic Church presided over by the pope.

The impetus which had been given to religious liberty by the proceedings of Luther on the continent, and of the English Reformers in this country, led the minds of thinking and speculative men into other channels of reform, and prepared the way for the adoption of those opinions, designated heresies in those times, and treated as such whenever they were offensively asserted, but which then found many advocates, and subsequently called into existence large and flourishing sects, which have since exercised no inconsiderable influence on the religious world. As early as 1572 the Presbyterians had separate societies. In 1610 there was a congregation of Baptists in the metropolis. The Independents trace the advocacy of their form of church discipline to a clergyman of the name of Brown who lived

about 1620. The Quakers spring from George Fox who commenced his ministry at Dukinfield in 1647. And the Unitarians, headed by John Biddle, met for public worship in London in 1651.*

Insignificant as were these beginnings they had great results. They afford glimpses into the workings of the religious mind in England at that period; and while viewing them as the germs of those great conflicts which agitated the future, shaking thrones and changing dynasties, we trace in them the natural consequences of that strong attachment to Protestantism which, awakened by the Reformation, had been strengthened by great national changes favourable to the development of individual thought and mental freedom. Sweden and Denmark, like Germany, Switzerland, and England, had thrown off the Romish yoke. In Scotland, under Knox, there was a deep sympathy with the spirit of Calvin, one of the Genevan Reformers, which shewed itself fiercely hostile to an episcopal hierarchy, before it succeeded in obtaining the establishment of presbyterian forms of church government. The strifes consequent upon these national struggles, aided by a bolder spirit of inquiry which extended itself amongst the people, and gained confidence from printed works, and especially from the perusal of the Scriptures, now circulated in the vulgar tongue, enlightened the minds and invigorated the resolution of men.

* See Ivimey's History of the English Baptists; and Bogue and Bennett's History of Dissenters.

It presented religion to the masses, not as it had been presented by the priests, as as a system of observances, as a ritual, and a creed, which could only be efficacious through their instrumentality, but as a light which every one might approach; as a doctrine which all might understand; as a consolation which all might receive-without either priest or ritual!

The rapid growth of the public mind under the government of the first James and the first Charles in the sentiment of liberty, is only to be explained in this manner. There was a substratum of knowledge, especially on the subjects of civil rule and theological doctrine, which awaited only the upheavings of public opinion to rise above the superincumbent mass, and shew itself to the world. This it was which fitted the nation to cope with those convulsive movements which, in rapid succession, beheaded a king, established a Protectorate, put down Episcopacy, and set up presbyterian government; which, after a few years, again restored monarchy; again bore for more than twenty years the oppressions of a fanatical, weak, and cruel family, until, the forbearance of the nation being exhausted, a peaceful Revolution was accomplished, the dynasty was again changed, and the present reigning family placed upon the throne, pledged to the maintenance of religious as well as civil liberty.

It was the change that took place in the external forms of religion in the kingdom during the Com

monwealth, to which Nonconformity, as one of the established elements of religious life, traces its origin. The hierarchy being deposed as a part and parcel of monarchy, the ruling party set up Presbyterianism as it existed in Scotland. Parliament sanctioned the change. The high-church clergy retiring from their preferments, their pulpits were filled by the Puritans, then a large body of church ministers in some respects resembling the evangelical clergy of the present day, who disapproved of the tendencies of the established religion to Catholicism, and wished to place it more on the footing of the Church of Scotland. It was not, however, without repeated struggles, that Presbyterianism retained the ascendancy. For the Independents, who preferred the congregational system, headed by Cromwell and other parliamentary leaders, opposed the Presbyterians; and with such success did they prosecute their opposition, that, even with the support of several enactments, the Presbyterians were only able to put their system fully into operation in Middlesex and Lancashire. South Lancashire was one of the strong-holds of this party.* There is

"The wild regions of Lancashire presented a place of refuge for the persecuted, both Protestant and Papist, during the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth; and the history of some of the transactions at this early period affords much interesting matter for antiquarian research. In this distant part of the kingdom, the original Puritans probably enjoyed comparative ease, and the platform of discipline, as laid down at Geneva by John Calvin, and afterwards introduced into Scotland by his disciple John Knox, was early received among them. The declaration of the unprincipled James I. relative to sports and recreations on the Lord's-day, was particularly applied to the Puritans of