the great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich, and Geneva, and had been,
during, some years, accustomed to a more simple worship, and to a
more democratical form of church government, than England had yet
seen. These men returned to their country convinced that the
reform which had been effected under King Edward had been far
less searching and extensive than the interests of pure religion
required. But it was in vain that they attempted to obtain any
concession from Elizabeth. Indeed her system, wherever it
differed from her brother's, seemed to them to differ for the
worse. They were little disposed to submit, in matters of faith,
to any human authority. They had recently, in reliance on their
own interpretation of Scripture, risen up against a Church strong
in immemorial antiquity and catholic consent. It was by no common
exertion of intellectual energy that they had thrown off the yoke
of that gorgeous and imperial superstition; and it was vain to
expect that, immediately after such an emancipation, they would
patiently submit to a new spiritual tyranny. Long accustomed,
when the priest lifted up the host, to bow down with their faces
to the earth, as before a present God, they had learned to treat
the mass as an idolatrous mummery. Long accustomed to regard the
Pope as the successor of the chief of the apostles, as the bearer
of the keys of earth and heaven, they had learned to regard him
as the Beast, the Antichrist, the Man of Sin. It was not to be
expected that they would immediately transfer to an upstart
authority the homage which they had withdrawn from the Vatican;
that they would submit their private judgment to the authority of
a Church founded on private judgment alone; that they would be
afraid to dissent from teachers who themselves dissented from
what had lately been the universal faith of western Christendom.
It is easy to conceive the indignation which must have been felt