Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 24: A Monthly Review; July-December, 1888
The consequence has been that the historic presentation of the subject ever Since to general readers has been secular, and not reli gions, or even ecclesiastical. It has been largely overlooked that What the Sixteenth century lacked, the seventeenth supplied. The consciences of the country then came to a settlement of their accounts with one another. The Anglican idea of religion, very traceable in the mind and action Of Elizabeth, of Parker, and Of Cecil, had received scientific form through the works of Hooker. The Roman antagonist had been reduced, by the accommodations Of the Prayer Book and the law, to civil impotence and he only counted, in' the grand struggle under Charles the First, as a minor auxiliary on the royal Side. The Church, as its organisation was worked under Laud, had become a vast and definite force, but it was fatally compromised by its close alliance with despotism and with cruel severities, and in retribution for its sins it shared the ruin Of arbitrary power. In consequence of this association and its result, for nearly twenty years the Puritan element was supreme, and the Anglican almost sup pressed. But when the monarchical instinct of the nation brought about the restoration Of Charles the Second, and the comparative strength of the religious parties came to be ascertained, what had been taken for a minority asserted itself in Overwhelming force, and the ecclesiastical settlement of that epoch, whatever may have been in other respects its merits or defects, expressed the prevailing senti ment of probably at least nine-tenths Of the community.
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