of Church property, and the manner in which he would deal with it, are bolder than even subsequent reformers, at the height of their success, could have ventured to propound. He would have reduced the Church to the condition of apostolic simplicity. There is a sort of Cobbett-like shrewdness, and a sort of Cobbettlike narrowness, in his views on this topic. In one respect Wycliffe did not treat his own order with common justice; for he argues as if the nobles of the land were more likely to see that priests did their duty, preached the gospel, and led pure lives, than the Church. Careless and pleasureloving as bishops and abbots might be, there was little hope of reform in calling upon the nobility of the day to resume the grants of their ancestors, and constitute themselves the guardians of the property and the discipline of the priesthood. "Think ye, lords and mighty men," he exclaims, "who support priests, how fearful it is to maintain worldly priests in their lusts, who neither know good nor will learn it, nor will live as holy men in their order! For ye may lightly amend them by only telling them that ye will not support them but as they do their duty, live well, and preach the gospel. Then, indeed, they would certainly do this. And think ye, great men, were not this a thousandfold better than to conquer the world? Hereby there should be none cost to you nor travail, but honour to God, and endless good to yourselves, to priests, and to all Christendom; for thus, by reducing the clergy to meekness, and useful poverty, and ghostly travail, as lived Christ and his apostles, sin should be destroyed, and holiness of life brought in," &c. &c. Not finding the gospel, or pure living, in the clergy of the day, did our reformer expect to obtain them through the pious zeal of armed men, whom he would call from the conquest of the world to the inviting task of superintending the "ghostly travail" of the priest?

One marvels how Wycliffe escaped martyrdom. He did everything to secure it. He attacked the mysteries, and he assailed the property, of the Church, the two points on which it is most susceptible. The jealousy

that subsisted between the regular clergy and the monastic and mendicant orders, did something to protect him; but his escape was mainly owing to the fact that he stood almost alone. He had no following as yet. His views were probably regarded less with alarm than with wonder and surprise, as the wild extravagances of an enthusiast. In a subsequent age, when he was recognised as founder of the Lollards, the Church did its best to remedy its error and remissness. His bones were burnt, no doubt with intense regret that they were only bones-no muscle and no nerve upon them.

Unsparing and uncompromising as our reformer was, we have no trace, writes Dr Hanna, of personal quarrels in his history. He lashed the Mendicants, but always as a class. He was in constant battle, but always for the truth. Wherever there was corruption, his hand was raised to strike, but it was vice always that he aimed at. "For a quarter of a century," says our author, "he lived in the stormy atmosphere of controversy. In his invectives he was violent and unrestrained; he lashed with unrelenting severity the ambition, the luxury, the worldliness, the selfishness of friars, prelates, priests. he never, so far as I am aware, was involved in a personal quarrel; he never stooped to personal abuse. No individual friar, priest, or prelate is ever selected to suffer beneath his lash; and though all the vocabulary of abuse was exhausted upon him in return by his irritated adversaries, they have not named a single instance in which he spoke a word that he had to retract, or did a deed for which he had to apologise." Truly a wonderful man was this rector of Lutterworth. "Had he," concludes Dr Hanna

But

"Had he at that early age in which he lived seen but half the length he sawhad he done but half of what he did

had he attacked but one or two of the into action but one or two of the great chief strengths of the enemy, and brought engines of war-our eye had fixed on him as the foremost pioneer of that great host led on by Luther, who, far in advance of all the rest-alone in the thickest of the enemy-had first lifted the war-cry of the

Reformation and commenced the battle. But a century and a half before the ranks mustered under their great German leader, to see this solitary English soldier fighting that battle as he did, taking up every position that was afterwards taken up, using every instrument of war that afterwards was used, assaulting every stronghold that was afterwards assaulted -nay more, advancing in more than one direction further than ever Luther ledalone, deserted, pressing on to the last, not a jot of heart or hope abated, his last strokes his strongest, till he fell, but fell all-confident that he left victory in store

for those who followed. What annalist of the great campaign shall describe to us the place and part in it that such a warrior filled, or who shall weave for us the crown that we would like to plant upon his pale and palsied brow?"-(P. 141.)

The second portion of Dr Hanna's book treats, as we have said, of the Huguenots, or the Reformation in France we are not disposed on the present occasion to enter on that period of history. It is a most complicate and voluminous subject. Nowhere does the Reformation present to us a greater variety of phase, and nowhere is each aspect that it presents more marked and decisive. Do you wish for instances of the fiercest fanaticism, of the most heroic and eager martyrdom, you will find them nowhere more plentiful than in the earlier period of the Reformation in France. Illiterate men are seen banded together, ready to go, hand in hand, through any torture to a thousand deaths, if that were possible. Learned men are seen disseminating their critical views from the university. Political men are seen to throw themselves into the contest, working out, in this religious turmoil, their own ambitious ends. A superstitious multitude are seen inflamed against heretics; they enact and anticipate the September massacres of the Revolution in defence of the Virgin and the saints; every aspect is in the extreme. The greatest levity, the most enormous cruelty, the sternest fanaticism, the most corrupt and selfish of motives, and the most genuine piety and self-sacrifice-all is there, all is evolved as the mingled political and religious drama proceeds in its development. It would be a hopeless task, in the brief space that lies before us,

to say a satisfactory word upon so immense and so entangled a subject. The sketch which Dr Hanna has given us, we have already said, lies under the disadvantage of being too brief; we should do no possible service by attempting to be still briefer.

It

Dr Hanna writes throughout with a courteous and liberal spirit. He would rather go out of his way to find an apology than to frame an accusation. Wherever it is possible, he takes an indulgent view even of that party against which he is naturally opposed. We cannot be surprised, therefore, that when the course of his subject leads him to some mention of the great French reformer, Calvin, we find him somewhat more apologetical than the strict justice of the case appears to us to warrant. would have been wiser to leave altogether untouched that fatal burning of Servetus, of which the world has heard enough, and the circumstances connected with which have now been thoroughly sifted, than to write of it in an apologetic strain which will not bear examination. When you have said that Calvin did but share the error of his age, you have said all. And the only lesson to be learned from the terrible blunder he committed is that which shows us what sort of doctrine or principle it is which leads, by strictest logic, to so cruel an action.

That doctrine or principle is that it is the duty of the magistrate to see to the purity of the faith in the citizen or the subject. And, indeed, men are almost as liable in this present time in which we live as in the age of Calvin, to assume some standard of religious faith, and to assert that it is a legitimate object of the laws to keep every mind as much as possible to that standard. That is truth as they see it-a truth momentous to all mankind, and of vital importance, so they persuade themselves, to human society. They cannot wean themselves from the idea that it should be part and parcel of the law of the land. We alluded at the commencement of our paper to the theory of a universal church based upon the possession of a revelation from Heaven, and embracing the whole human family in one Christian

brotherhood. This theory breaks down, because, notwithstanding the claim to revelation and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, differences of opinion do arise, and convicted errors have appeared. Unmistakable facts contradict the theory. When the Protestants relinquished this theory, and separated themselves from the Catholic Church, they still, each section for itself, claimed to be in possession of a positively revealed truth, upon which further argument was not to be permitted. If religion were founded, they said, on the speculative exercise of human reason, then the same speculative reason might be permitted to modify it in each individual. But it was founded on a positive revelation, and the Protestant had only to read the Book honestly. Each Protestant community felt itself, therefore, authorised to pronounce on truth, and hand it over to the custody of the magistrate. Calvin was in perfect harmony with his own age (and would find many persons at the present day in more complete accordance with him than they themselves suspect) when he called upon the civil magistrate to watch over the purity of the faith. On this painful subject of the execution of Servetus he writes in a letter to Sultzer, dated Sept. 9, 1553, "I avow that I thought it my duty, as far as in me lay, to restrain a man who is more than obstinate and untamable, in order that the contagion might spread no farther. We see how violently impiety everywhere stalks abroad, whence new errors spring up, and how great is the remissness of those to whom God has confided the power of the sword in vindicating the honour of his name. While the Papists are so alert and fierce in supporting their superstitions that they riot in innocent blood, Christian magistrates might be ashamed to show themselves destitute of all spirit in defending the sure truth of God's Word." It would be useless to multiply quotations. The prevailing Protestant sentiment of the time is here very naively express-You Catholics, with great fury and zeal, support error; we Protestants, with more lenient or rarer punishments, support the truth.

ed:

Dr Hanna is very right in as

serting that persecution is practically a matter of degree-that one execution in the republic of Geneva is not an equivalent for the many burnings decreed by the monarchies of France and Spain-and that Protestants, at all events, waited till some overt act of heresy had been committed, and did not hunt out retiring dissentients who were doing all they could to conceal their private devotions. But what can our very amiable author mean by claiming for Calvin the merit of having first attempted "the arduous task of separating wholly the two domains, the civil and the ecclesiastical-each authority left supreme in its own sphere"? If the Christian magistrate was to hold it to be his duty to exterminate error by the sword, of what earthly consequence can it be whether he does this as the servant of the church, or by his own proper authority as such Christian magistrate ?

On the 5th May 1559, the first Synod of the Reformed Church met at Paris. They met at a time when a fierce persecution was directed against themselves. They met to frame a Confession of Faith, and an order of worship, discipline, and government. These came, we are told, originally from the pen of Calvin. Themselves the object of persecution by the civil magistrate, this Synod nevertheless insert the following article in their Confession of Faiththat God "hath delivered the sword into the magistrate's hands, that all sins committed against both the tables of God's law, not only against the second, but against the first also, may be suppressed." Dr Hanna then continues:

"This clause contains the fatal dogma that six years before had sent Servetus to the stake. It being now laid down that both tables of God's law should unitedly form part of the civil and criminal code, and that it was equally obligatory on the magistrate to punish breaches of both, an inexorable logic Let doomed Servetus to be burned. us not misunderstand, however, the Genevese reformer, nor set up that single burning pile of Servetus against the thousands of Spain and France and Holland, as if it proved that the first reformers were as great persecutors as the churchmen of Rome. From

the time of the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, it was the creed and practice of the Roman Catholic Church that all secular powers should be constrained to enforce the sentence of the Church against heretics, and lend their aid to exterminate them. So far from turning the State into a tool of the Church, to be employed in such a way and for such a purpose, Calvin's was the hand that first attempted the arduous task of separating wholly the two domains-the civil and the ecclesiastical-each autho

rity left supreme in its own sphere. The Church's sole instrument, he tells us in his Institutes, is the Word. His last punishment is excommunication, which

he is to use only in extreme necessity."

-(P. 174.)

Dr Hanna would be incapable of writing a disingenuous passage, and he himself has laid the whole truth before his readers; but how did he deceive himself into the notion that he was here framing some apology, claiming some merit, for Calvin? If the sword is to descend on the neck of the heretic, what comfort can it be to him, or to us, to be assured that this is the proper function of the Christian magistrate, and that the Christian Church uses the Word only, and restricts itself to excommunication? Calvin's attempt at the arduous task of separating the two domains, civil and ecclesiastical, leaves the heretic with his head upon the block, and curiously discusses which of the two powers originates the most legitimate order to sever it from his shoulders.

Instead of further bewailing the persecutions that have taken place, it would be the wisest part to note how almost inevitably they have arisen, and against what tendency to commit similar errors we have still to struggle. He who floats with the stream does not feel the force of the current. He who thinks with all around him exclaims that conviction is free, and that no man is constrained either to suffer or to dissemble. Tests, oaths, subscriptions, are of course felt as no burden to those who willingly take them.

In the old heathen time, religion was more an affair of the State than it was of the individual conscience. Its great ceremonies were performed for national safety, or for the com

mon benefit. The religion consisted more of ceremonial than of doctrine, and what private soldier going to the wars would care to pronounce, on his own responsibility, what ceremonies or sacrifices would please the gods? Worship was first social before it was private. There was no motive for disputing the national will on a subject so intimately connected with the national prosperity.

When Christianity became the religion of the majority, it took the place of the old Paganism. How could it have been otherwise? It was the rooted habit to regard religion as a national care-as a national necessity. Men, as a nation, it was thought, must worship God. But the Christian religion is more doctrinal than ceremonial; and during the earliest ages of Christianity we find a fierce struggle going on to determine what dogmas shall compose the religion of the State. Some of the subtlest points of doctrine that could be presented to the intellectif, indeed, they were not altogether beyond the scope of human intelligence-are seen contending together for the mastery. An approximation to unity is obtained by popular fayour to some mystery, or by force of logic, or by imperial influence, or the happy combination of the three. But it is only an approximation. Dispute never terminates. There is never a period when some disputants have not to be argued against, or quelled in a more summary manner. This attempt at unity in a religion that is mainly doctrinal, has never quite succeeded; and, what is evident to the most careless observer, the more people think and discuss, the more hopeless becomes this national unity. It is time that the attempt be altogether relinquished. Let us cease to plague each other by tests, judicial oaths, and subscriptions to articles. Let us fully and finally understand that it is not the province of the magistrate to enforce both "tables of the law "-that the conduct of man to man is the sole object of jurisprudence. By this reticence human society will not forfeit any of the advantages of the religious faith that stirs and lives within it-will rather, we feel per

suaded, receive a larger share of that permeating and moralising influence which results from religion.

We will not dwell longer on a topic which to many of our readers may appear trite and familiar. We will make but one more observation, and then leave them, if they are so disposed, to the perusal of this pleasant historical volume of Dr Hanna.

It is evident that the degree of toleration already attained in Europe has been owing to the successful struggle that Protestantism has been able to make against Catholicism. The majority had, in every country, a manifest disposition to tyrannise over the minority: where the minority could make itself respected by its force and numbers, there, and there only, a toleration ensued. But though toleration depends, in the first instance, on a certain balance of power, or on the relative strength of parties, it does not follow that it must always rest on this coarse and unsatisfactory basis; so that if any one sect should obtain a great predominance, our habits of toleration must cease to exist. Happily, it is the tendency of every progressive people to regard religion more and more as an affair of the individual conscience, less and less as a matter of State interference. A toleration won, in the first instance, through martyrdom and war, becomes wrought into our theory of government. We have made the discovery that a mode of thought may be most excellent, or even essential to society, and

yet not require the fostering aid of legislation, or the rewards and punishments which the law can bestow. We renounce no high or spiritual motives, but, even in very favour of these, we limit the sphere of government to the palpable moralities between man and man. When we say that security to life and property is the legitimate object of the law, we do not mean that man has only to live for his property; we simply assert that the higher part of man's life needs not, and should be altogether manumitted from, the coarse restraints of any species of penal legislation. Such theory of government, though introduced in the rude manner we have described, may be ultimately received on its own proper merits.

Thus every work on the Reformation introduces us to three phases of Christendom: the theory of the universal Church, the theory of a national Church, and that state into which we are settling, in which religion is considered as a subject of instruction only-in which Government judiciously lends its aid by taking advantage of such unanimity as it finds, the attempt at a national unity in religious faith being entirely relinquished. The Established Church of England may now be regarded as a great institution for the religious instruction and religious worship of the people, which opposes itself to no other instruction or worship, except in that most legitimate manner-the surpassing them in excellence.