doubt,-have had no doubt these last twenty-five years-that the close of this century will witness one of the most brutal and devastating wars the world has ever known. I predicted this more than a quarter of a century ago; have again and again asserted the certainty of it until others have taken up the cry, and my assertions, first, last, and to-day, are based upon a careful study of the military and moral phenomena of the nations of the world in this generation, as compared with said phenomena during and preceding any of the great war periods in all past ages of the world. We may shake hands and weep in sympathy, or shout for joy in view of our supposed escape from the bloody chasm here opened to our eyes. It stretches black and hideous all the same. We cannot escape it. Mere mouthing orators on supposed Irish wrongs and American glories do not understand this problem, but I shall live to see the truth of this article vindicated and my prophecy fulfilled. Nations cannot escape the natural results of their actions any more than individual men and, by this law, the justice of Heaven will pull many of our babels about our ears inside of the next five years. WILLIAM HENRY THORNE. CATHOLICISM UNDER ELIZABETH. FROM the reports of the bishops as to the state of religion in the winter of 1564,* we can scarcely be surprised that, to use Mr. Froude's words, "in the spring of 1565, party strife within the Elizabethan establishment had already commenced in earnest. Elizabeth had many times expressed her intention to bring the Church to order," but it was more easy said than done. On the one hand, the royal injunctions for uniformity in the use of the cassock, surplice, priest's cap and wafer-cake drove the more extreme of the Puritan party into open opposition, and "the most frequented of the London churches became the scenes of scandal and riot, or were left without service. The Bishop of Lon dont was besieged in his house at St. Paul's by mobs of raging women, whom he vainly entreated to go away and send their hus * See previous article. Edmund Grindal. bands instead." On the other, it was transparent "that vast numbers of the Catholic clergy were left undisturbed in their benefices, who scarcely cared to conceal their creed;" while, to complete the confusion," on Good Friday (1565) the Queen's Almoner, Guest, the High Church Bishop of Rochester,† preached a sermon before her in the Chapel Royal, in which he again and again defended the Real Presence." It is recorded that, so delighted were some northern gentlemen present to hear the old doctrine proclaimed once more before their sovereign, that, forgetting the sacred character of the place, they burst into vehement applause, shouting loudly: " By God, that is the truth!" "In June, 1565, the Council were unanimous that scarcely a third of the population were to be trusted in matters of religion."‡ The Catholic party had commenced to reassert itself. "In 1560 the recent loss of Calais and the danger of foreign invasion had united the nation in defence of its independence. Two-thirds of the Peers were opposed at heart to Cecil's policy, but the menaces of France had aroused the national patriotism. Spain was perplexed and neutral, and the Catholics had been for a time paralyzed by the recent memories of the Marian persecution, while the Protestants were disheartened; they had gained no wisdom by suffering; the most sincere among them were as wild and intolerant as those who had made the reign of Edward a by-word of mismanagement, and Catholicism recovering, was reasserting the superiority which the * Froude's History of England. It is curious to compare this sermon with Guest's letter to Sir William Cecil nearly seven years before (Strype's annals), in which he expresses strong Protestant opinions. He holds "that ceremonies misused for idolatry ought to be taken away, cites examples to justify the disuse of the sign of the cross, holds processions to be superfluous, thinks that since a surplice is good enough for preaching, it is good enough for the Communion Service, and the use of any other vestment only leads people to imagine that higher and better things are given therein than be given by the other services (baptism or preaching); justifies the disuse of praying for the dead; gives reasons why Communion should be received in the hands, and finally thinks that kneeling or standing at Communion ought to be left to each man's choice! It seems hardly too much to say that Guest, though undoubtedly a man of learning and moderation, was more or less a time server, a convenient echo of the opinions of Cecil or the sovereign, with the latter of whom he was an immense favorite, always complying with her views as to ceremonies, etc., and maintaining the celibate state. + Froude. matured creed of centuries had a right to claim over the half-shaped theories of revolution."* Of Elizabeth's practical retreat before the Queen of Scots in November of the same year, Mr. Froude remarks: "Without a fuller knowledge of the strength and temper of the English Catholics than the surviving evidence reveals, her conduct cannot be judged with entire fairness." The intense love of the masses for the faith which had for nearly a thousand years consoled and mitigated their hard lot is indicated by the remark of Mary Stuart to Rokeby, in June, 1566, "that she built her hopes of winning the hearts of the common people in England by restoring the old religion."+ "In the House of Lords in October, 1566, eleven lay Peers spoke and voted absolutely against admitting the episcopal position of men who had been thrust into already occupied sees." In December, 1566, the Protestant party tried to finally end the ambiguity of the religious position of Elizabeth by introducing a measure to "make subscription to the thirty-nine articles a condition for the tenure of benefices in the Church of England."S Of these renowned formularies of Anglican Protestantism, Mr. Froude remarks: "Strained and cracked by three centuries of evasive ingenuity (they) scarcely embarrass now the feeblest of consciences. In the first years of Elizabeth they were symbols by which the orthodox Protestant was distinguished from the concealed Catholic. The liturgy, with purposed ambiguity, could be used by those who were Papists save in name. The articles affirmed the falsehood of doctrines declared by the Church to be divine, and the Catholic who signed them either passed over to the new opinions or imperilled his soul with perjury;" but although they had been imposed by the convocation of 1562, both Queen and Parliament had refused to sanction them. || The Queen herself now checkmated the obnoxious measure, and on the 2d of January, 1567, Parliament was dissolved. * Froude. + Ibid. + Ibid. § Ibid. | In 1571 the articles, revised by Parker and Jewell, were again ratified by convocation, but Parliament compelled the clergy to subscribe only "such of them as only concern the confession of the true Christian Faith and the Doctrine of the Sacraments." Even then disputes arose, as some copies were printed with, some without the first half of the 20th article “as to the authority of the Church in matters of Faith." The obnoxious clause was, however, finally carried by the High Church party in the convocation of 1604. "At this date the prospects of English Catholics were good. The Queen almost engaged to an Austrian Catholic prince, the recognition (more or less distant) of the Catholic Mary Stuart as Heiresspresumptive, the establishment, with the support of the Catholic Powers, of some moderate form of government by which the Catholic worship would be first tolerated and then creep on to ascendency,"* under the legitimate protection and authority of a powerful Catholic majority in a new and freely elected House of Commons. In the summer of 1567 information was made to the Queen that the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury had sold and divided a huge quantity of plate and vestry ornaments and had particularly exasperated her, and although the Primate had endeavored to explain it away, yet, considering what had happened elsewhere, and that a Protestant Dean had just replaced the old semi-Catholic Wotton, the complaint was probably well founded. In December of the same year (1567) a letter to Lord Pembroke says "that in Lancashire a great number of gentlemen and others of the best sort-reputed to number five hundred-had taken a solemn oath among themselves that they will not come at the Communion nor receive the Sacrament besides other matters concluded amongst them not certainly known but only to themselves." In the beginning of 1568, reports to the Queen show that at that time disguised priests were keeping the faith alive in the northern counties; amongst others, Vance, ex-Warden of Winchester, Marshall, late Dean of Christchurch, etc. Mr. Froude remarks: "The new religion as by law established gave no pleasure to the earnest of any way of thinking. To the ultra-Protestant it was no better than Romanism; to the Catholic or partial Catholic it was in * Froude. + Wotton died in January 1566, at his house in Warwick Lane, aged 72. A number of persons accompanied his funeral from London to Canterbury. He was buried at the east end of the Cathedral, near the tomb of Edward the Black Prince. (Burke.) Mr. Froude includes in this list William Allen, ex-fellow of Oriel, Principal of St. Mary's Hall at Oxford and Canon of York, afterwards Cardinal; but this is a mistake. Allen was in England from 1562 to 1565, but never after the latter date. In 1567 he made a pilgrimage to Rome, and in 1568 he was engaged in founding his English college at Douay on the lines of old Catholic Oxford. Cardinal Allen was a member of an ancient Lancashire family. schism from the communion of Christendom, while the great middle party, the common sense of the country were uneasy and dissatisfied. They could see no defined principle in the new constitution which had borne the test of time, and they were watching with an anxiety which they did not care to conceal the extravagances of the Protestant refugees from the Continent." No sharp line of demarcation then divided, as at present, the Church of England from Continental Protestantism. The celebrated Zurich letters* furnish proof abundant that even those divines of the new religion counted most learned and moderate took their theology from the Helvetian reformers, to whom they apologized with filial submission for the temporary retention of a few shreds of the old ceremonial, declaring, however, without reserve, that they waited but for opportunity to sweep away these "relics of the Amorites forever." In the face of facts, the modern Anglican continuity theory would be simply ludicrous were it not for its mischievous influence on confused and illogical minds, or to those having neither opportunity nor taste for accurate historical investigation. The records of the time and episcopal visitation articles show that the altar stones, consecrated with the holy oil and marked with the five crosses of Christ's wounds, on which for nearly a thousand years the Sacred Victim had been offered from the rising to the setting of the sun, were cast into the dirt with the relics of the saints and martyrs which they covered. The sanctuary was polluted, the daily sacrifice was taken away, the eternal priesthood was replaced by the preaching of Geneva. The material church buildings and outward form of government alone remained, beautiful still, but the deceptive beauty of a corpse in which the heart has ceased to beat and from which the soul has fled forever. Mr. Froude remarks: 'Anglican High Church theology had as yet no general acceptance. Divines like Whitgift, who sought for favor and promotion, professed the theory of the Via Media, but they had no national fol * Published by the Parker society. † At Durham next year the stone of the high altar was taken out of a rubbish heap and replaced by the insurgents. See recent letter of Canon Hobson to "Tablet," on desecration and trampling on one of the ancient altar stones of Exeter Cathedral to the present day. "Secundum ordinem Melchisidec." |