Chap. XIX.} |
In the progress of civilization, the human mind had been steadily tending towards the principle of inquiry and freedom. This principle could not as yet conquer for itself a place in the laws; yet the only ground on which its admission could consistently be refused was abandoned. The Anglican church, which, under the guardianship of authority, had aspired to assert for England unity of faith, as the Catholic church had claimed to assert it for the whole human race, still retained the monopoly of political power; but a statute, narrow, indeed, in theory, and penuriously conceding a limited enfranchisement of mind as a privilege, tolerated dissenters, and opened a career to freedom of religious opinion. With unrelenting zeal, the ‘Protestant’ revolution did, indeed, persecute the Roman Catholics as a defeated tyranny, oppressed them with civil disfranchisements, and left them without allies, exposed to the vindictive severities of legal despotism; but for Protestant liberty and philosophic freedom the victory was decisive.
The ancient monarchical system, which had connected the unity of truth with authority, had also asserted the necessity of order in the state, under the doctrine of the personal, divine right of the king to the sovereignty. This right was maintained by the Catholic church against every power but its own. Protestantism abolished the supremacy of the Roman see; and the monarchical reformers, Luther, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, the homilies of the Anglican church, recognized legitimacy without reserve, and opposing
