Passionate times followed in religious--or rather in theological--matters,
all through the Sixteenth Century. The fulminations of Luther and the
logic of Calvin set England to discussing and taking sides; and when
Edward VI. came to the throne, he was himself a Protestant, or indeed a
Puritan, and the stimulus of Puritanism in others. But the mass of the
common people were still unmoved, because there was no means of getting at
them, and they had no stomach for dialectics, if there had been. The new
ideas would probably have made little headway had not Edward died and Mary
the Catholic come red-hot with zeal into his place. She lost no time in
catching and burning all dissenters, real or suspected; and as many of
these were honest persons who lived among the people, and were known and
approved by them, and as they uniformly endured their martyrdom with
admirable fortitude and good-humor, falling asleep in the crackling flames
like babes at the mother's breast, Puritanism received an advertisement
such as nothing since Christianity had enjoyed before, and which all the
unaided Luthers, Melanchthons and Calvins in the world could not have
given it.

This lasted five years, after which Mary went to her reward, and
Elizabeth came to her inheritance. She was no more of a religion-monger
than her distinguished father had been; but she was, like him, jealous of
her authority, and a martinet for order and obedience at all costs. A
certain intellectual voluptuousness of nature and an artistic instinct
inclined her to the splendid forms and ceremonies of the Catholic ritual;
but she was too good a politician not to understand that a large part of
her subjects were unalterably opposed to the papacy. After some
consideration, therefore, she adopted the expedient of a compromise, the
substance of which was that whatever was handsome and attractive in
Catholicism was to be retained, and only those technical points dropped
which made the Pope the despot of the Church. In ordinary times this would