pany for pay at the former rate. All answered in the affirmative, with the exception of one, who, still demanding an increase, was stripped of his uniform, and drummed out of the Factory.* A religious phantom, which had haunted the English from their first connexion with India, now frightened the factors of Anjengo. A shade more tolerant than the Dutch, who had expelled Don Clement Joseph, Bishop of Cochin, from his diocese, they had offered him an asylum, and were shocked to find that he was but a viper in their bosom, seizing the opportunity to pervert the minds of their European soldiers. That these men should embrace with impunity the creed of Guy Fawkes could not be permitted, and yet there seemed objections to direct persecution; so they were arrested on a charge of being spies and revealing the secrets of the settlement to other Europeans. In vain the Bishop protested that they were loyal and peaceable subjects, and implored that they might be released. His application was rejected, "as a compliance might in all probability be a means of converting a great many more of our protestants, which in time may prove of dangerous consequence to the settlement." The Chief and his Council, resolving to make an example, sent them as prisoners on board an English ship, bound for Bombay. This, they wrote, "it is to be hoped, will deter all others from adhering to the doctrine of Romish priests, which they have endeavoured to propagate with great assiduity of late, among the garrison soldiers and gentlemen's slaves, though not so fortunate as to succeed in their diabolical schemes." The bishop, determining to do all he could for his converts, under the pretence of visiting a Portuguese ship courteously asked the Chief for a boat, with the real object of persuading the captain of the English ship to set the prisoners at liberty; but was told that all the boats were engaged. Disgusted with such treatment, he withdrew for a time from the settlement, taking with him many of his Indo-Portuguese flock. It is curious to observe that there was after this quite a religious panic in the Factory, and that some protestants, fearing lest after their demise their families might be perverted by Roman missionaries, provided against it by special clauses in their wills.† In the Diary of Anjengo we notice the last traces of that excessive vulgarity which disfigures the mediæval, much more than the most ancient, records of the Company. The manuscript-written, it should be observed, not by a clerk, but by the European secretary himself, and signed by the Chief and Council-abounds with such * Anjengo Diary, December 1746. † Anjengo Diary, 11th November 1751. passages as the following:-" The other boat was a cruizing to the southward; we found in her a letter from a black fellow the French keeps at Caletche;" "the moors are a preparing an army; "five sail of men-of-war were a fiting out to releive Commodore Bennett ;""the king is a going to a feast;" "we were let known" of a certain event. Everywhere the natives are designated "black fellows"; what we now call a native apothecary was with the Factors "a black doctor"; a regiment of sepoys was "a black regiment," or "a black battalion," and, using a curious form of elliptical expression, they always styled the letters of native correspondents "black advices." Indeed this epithet black was long afterwards applied to natives even in official documents, and, as Mill indignantly remarks, Sir Elijah Impey could find no better title than "black agents" for the native magistrates and judges of India. ART. II.--THE PRINCIPLES AND METHOD OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. The Holy Bible.-Authorised Version. THE Reformation was the great work of the sixteenth century. It far transcended indeed the limits of that age. It was the inevitable result of a state of things long antecedent to its actual ebullition. Its direct or indirect influence upon the character and fortunes of our race will be distinctly traceable to the end of time. And in a far more limited point of view-looking only to the immediate transactions, occasionally at least, included under the name-the Reformation was hardly complete by the year 1600. The century that had witnessed its birth closed amidst the convulsive struggles that in its maturity it had evoked. It had still to accomplish triumphs, sustain defeats, run out into excesses, endure the renewed trial of persecution from its enemies, and the more cruel danger of division and strife among its friends. But few of its later incidents were without their counterpart in the preceding Unity and variety of the movement. 237 period. And its great battle for existence had been fought out, not only on the theatre of the world at large, but in the separate States of Europe. It had already disclosed incontrovertily its general character and tendencies. It had asserted its position as one of the great and abiding agencies in modern society, one of the most powerful levers of modern civilisation. On the whole, the Reformation may be considered not only to have arisen, but to have culminated, during the sixteenth century. Its ostensible and most familiar character is that of a revolution in religion. And in this point of view it had a general aim,-to remove from the Church and the theology of Western Christendom the accretions and parasitical outgrowths of the middle ages, and to restore them (as far as might be) to their pristine simplicity and purity. And to a certain extent it had a general standard-the Bible; as the authorised and universally accredited account of Christianity from its origin. So far the Reformation was one movement. But it was also several. For although its proper subject-matter was theological, yet, from the impress left by medieval Sacerdotalism upon almost every sphere of human activity, and from the inevitable correspondence, interdependence, sometimes absolute identity, among every Christian people, of secular and spiritual interests, the Reformation also amounted to, or was inextricably bound up with, a most important political, social, moral, literary, even æsthetic crisis. As such it shared, more or less, the vicissitudes of political circumstances, and the varieties of social and individual organisation and development. Hence its special character, course, and ultimate fate, considered in this simply temporal aspect, differed greatly in different countries, and among various sections of the same community. But again, even as a religious movement, and with reference to its effect upon the constitution, creed, worship, discipline, of the Christian Church, in the several countries where it established its sway, it was by no means homogeneous. It is unnecessary here to particularise the numerous causes of this divergence, though it may be doubted whether, on the whole, the differences at the time prevalent among the "Reformed" were wider than may be fully accounted for by the very dissimilar spirit in which they addressed themselves to the fundamental question of the Reformation, and the very unequal resources they brought to bear upon it. The solemn problem they were called upon to solve may be thus formulated:-Given, on the one hand, the Bible; on the other, the present state of the Christian World: how can the latter be best brought into essential conformity with the express injunctions or implied sanctions of the former? This, again, involved two questions, (1.) What was to be the nature and extent of the desired Reform? (2.) By whom, as combining the authority, the proficiency, and the will, requisite for so arduous an undertaking, was it to be carried into effect? None denied the absolute and immediate necessity for a Reformation. But the first steps taken in this direction naturally extended only to the amelioration or removal of the most pressing and glaring evils. All could see that the licentiousness of the Clergy, and of the Popes themselves, the exactions of the Roman Curia, the inordinate wealth and arrogance of the Ecclesiastics, were wrong and pernicious. Nor did it require any great amount of penetration or learning to discover that the virtual autocracy long assumed by the Popes over the whole Latin Church, over National Churches, National Sovereigns, particularly in connection with the unscrupulous employment, for the confirmation of that autocracy, of the fearful weapons of Excommunication and Interdict, were equally opposed to the letter and to the spirit of the Gospel, as well as to the recognised course of early Church History. Towards the close of the Middle Age, a growing, at length an imperious, desire was felt for a General Council of the Church, as the proper representative assembly or Constitutional Senate of Latin Christendom. By this convention ecclesiastical abuses were to be taken into consideration, and searching remedies to be forthwith applied. Such a Council did at last meet. At Constance, and again at Basle, papal and sacerdotal immorality, and the extravagant claims of the Holy See engaged deep attention. Much was attempted, something done for the improvement of the Church, if not for the immediate promotion of evangelical religion. The hierarchical reform was in a fair way of accomplishment; but was thwarted, and finally miscarried, mainly through the opposition of the Popes. The successors of St. Peter indeed, both then and subsequently, were the great obstacles to a Reformation. And Adrian VI., who offered a single and bright exception to their general policy, Papal supremacy abolished. 239 succumbed almost instantaneously under the magnitude and fearfulness of the task that must devolve upon a " Reforming Pontiff." Meanwhile in England, repeated, and to a great extent successful, attempts had been made by legislative enactments and other means to resist the papal tyranny, and to lessen the several evils above adverted to. In the time of King Henry VIII., the Conciliar Reform of the whole Latin Church was for the present hopeless. The need of a Reformation was more than ever felt. But the "Defender of the Faith," whatever indications he might have given (and he had given such) of an inclination to restrict the immunities and power of the clergy, was at first too zealously, passionately, devoted to the Holy See, for the friends of the inevitable movement to expect any countenance from him. It was not only in his matrimonial relations, however, that "Bluff King Hal" experienced a total revulsion of feeling, and perplexed the world by the characteristic energy with which he pursued opposite lines of conduct. In the present case, it certainly was not without considerable provocation (whatever estimate we may nevertheless form of his personal character and consistency in the matter) that he became, from a chivalrous. champion, so resolute and successful an opponent of the power which his predecessors had so often held in check-the power which was still limited by the inexorable statutes of Provisors and Præmunire. In the history of the divorce litigation, or in the character of those who conducted the proceedings on the part of the Pope, were epitomised and exemplified most of the glaring abuses that had called forth so much complaint and opposition from former English Sovereigns and Parliaments. The king now once more shared, personified, perhaps exaggerated, the strong and hereditary national instinct of jealousy and animosity against papal intervention in the affairs of his kingdom, and against the innumerable evils it entailed. The patience that had so long sought to palliate the mischief was at length exhausted; and it was determined to cut it away root and branch-to remove the source of it. Thus the general circumstances of the times, the personal temper and inclinations of the king, and the national character, co-operated to produce this unsparing attack upon papal and sacerdotal assumption, cupidity, corruption. The attack itself was, of course, in some respects, much more sweeping than the hierarchical reforms advocated at Constance and Basle. Yet, as in those cases, it was no mere revolt, no purely wanton exercise of power. It was conducted according to another and extremely, though not (as has been often assumed) exclusively, VOL. VI.-NO. II. 31 |