government, Utopus having understood, that before his coming among them, the old inhabitants had been so engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they were so divided among themselves, that he found it an easy thing to conquer them, since, instead of uniting their forces against him, every different party in religion fought by themselves. After he had subdued them, he made a law that every man might be of what religion he pleased, and might endeavour to draw others to it by the force of argument, and by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness against those of other opinions, but that he ought to use no other force but that of persuasion, and was neither to mix it with reproaches nor violence; and such as did otherwise were to be condemned to banishment or slavery.

"This law made Utopus, not only for preserving the public peace, which he saw suffered much daily contentions and irreconcilable heats, but because he thought the interests of religion itself required it. And supposing that only one religion was really true, and the rest false, he imagined that the native force of truth would at last break forth and shine bright, if supported only by the strength of argument, and attended to with a gentle and unprejudiced mind; while, on the other hand, if such debates were carried on with violence and tumults, as the most wicked are always the

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most obstinate, so the best and most holy religion might be choked with superstition, as corn is with the briars and thorns."

It is one thing, however, to hold a principle as a correct theory, and another to carry it out in practice. Sir Thomas More was one of the most elegant prose writers of his age, and his works were calculated to minister to that love of reading which then began to prevail. He perished, as is well known, for conscientiously refusing to acknowledge the king's supremacy; but his useful life helped forward the cause of human improvement; and even his opposition to the Reformation was overruled by Providence to the awakening of inquiry and the eliciting of truth.

Of this period Milton says: "When I recall to mind, at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the church; how the bright and blissful Reformation, by divine power, strook through the black and settled night of ignorance and anti-christian tyranny; methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears, and the sweet odour of the returning gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners where profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it; the schools opened; divine

and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten tongues; the princes and cities trooping apace to the new-erected banner of salvation; the martyrs, with the unresistible might of weakness, shaking the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon."

Those who, in reading the lives of the reformers, Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, and Knox, hold that Cranmer was less consistent than these, would do well to remember that Henry VIII. was a very different potentate to any other the reformers had to contend with a tyrant with sufficient learning to make him subtle and dangerous. His idea of a reformation was putting down the pope and setting up himself. He was for the people reading the Scriptures if that led them to ignore the pope's supremacy, and to despise monkery; but if that same reading led them to perceive that king Henry's life was wrong, why then he took the Bible from them, as a dangerous book, unfit for their perusal. He devised doctrinal works for the people that were to supersede the Bible. One of these was entitled, "Articles devised by the King's Highness to stablish Quietness and Unity, and to avoid contentious Opinions ;" another, "A necessary Doctrine and Erudicion for any Christian Man, set forth by the King's Majesty of England." Henry the Eight by the grace of God Kynge of Englande, France, and Irelande, Defendour of the

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Faythe, and in earthe of the churche of Englande, and also of Irelande, supreme head; unto all his faythfull and lovyng subiectes sendeth greetyng." Then follows a preface of six pages, because the humble and holy Harry "perceivyng that in the tyme of knowledge, the devyll (who ceasseth not in all tymes to vexe the worlde) hath attented to return ageyn, (as the parable in the gospel shewith) into the hous purged and clensed, accompanied with seven worse spirites, and hypocrisie and superstition beinge excluded and put away, we fynd entered into some of our peoples hartes an inclination to sinister under standynge of scripture, presumption, arrogancye, carnall libertie, and contention; we be therefore constrained for the reformation of theym in tyme, and for advoiding of such diversitie in opinions as by the said evill spirites might be ingendred to set furth with thadvise of our clergie such a doctrine and declaration of the true knowlage of God and his worde, with the principall articles of our relygion, as wherby all men may uniformely be ledde and taught the true understandyng of that, which is necessary for every christen man to know, for the orderyng of himselfe in this lyfe agreeably to the will and plesure of Almighty God."

Meanwhile we know that books and tracts, explaining the principles of the reformers, got into circulation. Poor Anne Bullen, as yet a merry

maiden in her father's house - Hever Castle, was fond of reading them. Anne Askew, as we have before stated, in her happy studious girlhood, at Kelsay, in Lincolnshire, with a deeper feeling of their truth, was engaged in a similar perusal. And in Kent there was another young girl, Joan Boucher, who was an inquirer after religious truth; and if she did not succeed very clearly in explaining to others what her sentiments really were, yet evidently she trusted in Christ and not in priests; and if she could not learnedly dispute for her religion, she was willing to die for it; which she did, three years after the martyrdom of Anne Askew. No facts are more significant of the spread of a spirit of inquiry, than that, in the castle of the nobleman, and the remote house of the country gentleman, the young female members of the household should be seeking diligently after books, and studying the writings of the learned men of the time.

The pulpit in many places helped this spirit of inquiry. The voice of Latimer had sounded in the ears of thousands-nay more, had carried truth into the inmost recesses of many hearts.

The persecuting spirit of Henry is manifest not only in reference to those who differed from him in religion, but to all who aroused his suspicion or his envy. Hence the fate of the accomplished Earl of Surrey will add, if any thing can add, to