Yet excellent as was the work, it was by no means perfect.

Towards the end of the year 1552, the 1552. archbishop was directed to recast it on a larger scale-which was accordingly done -fresh matter was added-certain amendments made-and titles were now appended to the several divisions. In this form, before the conclusion of the year, Cranmer returned to the Council forty-two articles for the inspection of Convocation, and accompanied them with a letter, in which he recommended that subscription to them should be made obligatory upon the whole clerical body.

To these articles Convocation gave 1553. their consent, and in the spring of the following year the clergy were called upon by royal mandate to subscribe them. These fortytwo articles underwent little or no alteration till their revision by Archbishop Parker, when, by the wise omission of the four last, and some slight alterations in the wording of others, they were republished under the authority of Queen Elizabeth, in nearly the form in which we now receive them.

Thus was the last great work accomplished that was to give adhesion, unity, and stability to the Reformed Church of England, and to sever for ever that heavy chain of bondage and delusion by which she had been bound to the

papal car. "Had those excellent persons (the Reformers,)" remarks Paley, "done nothing more by their discovery than abolished an innocent superstition, or changed some directions in the ceremonial of public worship, they had merited little of that veneration with which the gratitude of Protestant churches remembers their services. What they did for mankind was this-they exonerated Christianity of a weight that sunk it."* The Church, disencumbered of that gorgeous apparel which the vanity of an ambitious priesthood had thrown around her, and stript of those meretricious blandishments which but ill concealed her faded beauty, now shone forth like the orb of day after a long night of storm and darkness-renovated in her discipline -reformed in her doctrine-and simplified in her ritual. "Holiness unto the Lord" was once more inscribed upon her walls-once more could she challenge the respect and love of her children, and claim a name and a place the most distinguished among the purest branches of the Protestant Church.

That so fair a fabric should have arisen out of the rude and disorderly materials that offered themselves to its wise master-builders-that they should have so quickly and skilfully reunited in one harmonious whole, parts so dis

* Address to the Bishop of Carlisle, in his Prin. of Mor. Phil.

jointed, and elements so discordant,-to what can we ascribe a work so mighty-a reproduction so wonderful, but unto the counsel of Him "who spake, and it was done-who commanded, and it stood fast?" How shall we account for the mighty victory of truth over error, accomplished by means so apparently inadequate

overcome long established prejudices and deep-rooted attachments, but by referring all to Him, "who frustrateth the tokens of liars-who turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish ?" For "walk about our

Zion, and go round about her, mark well her bulwarks, consider her towers" and you will behold an edifice (O how unlike what Popery had made it!) now restored to the measure of that "Pattern" after which it was originally founded. "Alike removed from ostentation and meanness, from admiration of ornament, and disdain of it," you will behold her "foundations built upon apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone," you will see her walls cemented with the blood of martyrs, and engraven with the names of saints and confessors-you will behold a Church "retaining so much reverence for ancient customs and ancient forms, as not rashly to abolish them, and only so much as not to adopt them blindly.*"

*Bluut's Hist. of the Reformation.

Three centuries nearly have rolled away since God thus visited his people-and though convulsions have rent the civil polity of England, and the ark of God fell for a time into the sacrilegious hands of ungodly men, yet has the Church remained unshaken by the storms without, and by the treachery of false brethren within. She still continues to lift her head among the nations, and as the depository of the pure word of God stands prominently forward in these stirring times of religious and political excitement, the great bulwark of Protestantism-the hope and glory of Christendom.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls."-Jerem. vi. 16.

IN bringing this sketch of the rise, fall, and restoration of the British Church to a conclusion, the author believes he has most fully established all the points that he proposed to prove that the Church of England is a primitive, apostolical, and independent branch of Christ's Holy Catholic Church-that her antiquity is unquestionable-her priority to the Church of Rome as an established national church, recognised by the State, undoubted-that she was a protestant Church more than 900 years before the Refor