Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Beacon Lights of History, Volume 08 - Great Rulers by John Lord
page 57 of 272 (20%)
Episcopalian, sought uniformity; they only differed as to its standard.
With the Queen and ministers and prelates it was the laws of the land;
with the Puritans, the decrees of provincial and national synods. Hence,
if Elizabeth insisted that her subjects should conform to her notions
and the ordinances of Parliament and convocations, she showed a spirit
which was universal. She was superior even in toleration to all
contemporaneous sovereigns, Catholic or Protestant, man or woman.
Contrast her persecutions of Catholics and Puritans with the persecution
by Catherine de Médicis and Charles IX. and Philip II. and Ferdinand
II.; or even with that under the Regent Murray of Scotland, when
churches and abbeys were ruthlessly destroyed. Contrast her Archbishop
of Canterbury with the religious dictator of Scotland. She kindled no
_auto-da-fé,_ like the Spaniards; she incited no wholesale massacre,
like the demented fury of France; she had a loving care of her subjects
that no religious bigotry could suppress. She did not seek to
exterminate Catholics or Puritans, but simply to build up the Church of
England as the shield and defence and enlargement of Protestantism in
times of unmitigated religious ferocity,--a Protestantism that has
proved the bulwark of European liberties, as it was the foundation of
all progress in England. In giving an impulse to this great emancipating
movement, even if she did not push it to its remote logical end,
Elizabeth was a benefactor of her country and of mankind, and is not
unjustly called a nursing-mother of the Church,--being so regarded by
Protestants, not in England merely, but on the Continent of Europe. When
was ever a religious revolution effected, or a national church
established, with so little bloodshed? When have ever such great changes
proved so popular and so beneficial, and, I may add, so permanent? After
all the revolutions in English thought and life for three hundred years,
the Church as established by Elizabeth is still dear to the great body
of English people, and has survived every agitation. And even many
DigitalOcean Referral Badge