bishop or clergyman; but the still more conclusive argument furnished by
the fact, that no point in the doctrine, discipline, or ritual of our
church, was established except by the power of Parliament, and the power
of Parliament alone--nay, more, that they were established in direct
defiance of the implacable opposition of the bishops, by whom, being
then Roman Catholics, the English Church, on the accession of Elizabeth,
was represented--to which the omission of the names of the Lords
Spiritual in the Act of Uniformity, which is said to be enacted by the
"Queen's Highness," with the assent of the Lords and Commons in
Parliament assembled, is a testimony, at once unanswerable and
unprecedented. We have dwelt with the more anxiety on this part of Dr
Arnold's work, as it furnishes a complete answer to the absurd opinions
concerning the English Church, which it has been of late the object of a
few bigots, unconsciously acting as the tools of artful and ambitious
men, to propagate, and which would lead, by a direct and logical
process, to the complete overthrow of Protestant faith and worship.
Such, then, being the state of things "recognized on all hands, church
government was no light matter, but one which essentially involved in it
the government of the state; and the disputing the Queen's supremacy,
was equivalent to depriving her of one of the most important portions of
her sovereignty, and committing half of the government of the nation to
other hands."

At the accession of Henry VIII., the most profound tranquillity
prevailed over England. The last embers of those factions by which,
during his father's reign, the peace of the nation had been disturbed
rather than endangered, were quenched by the vigilance and severity of
that able monarch; during the wars of the Roses, the noblest blood in
England had been poured out on the field or on the scaffold, and the
wealth of the most opulent proprietors had been drained by confiscation.