The Queen did dislike and persecute the Puritans, not, I think, so much because they made war on the surplice, liturgy, and divine right of bishops, as because they were at heart opposed to all absolute authority both in State and Church, and when goaded by persecution would hurl even kings from their thrones.  It is to be regretted that Elizabeth was so severe on those who differed from her; she had no right to insist on uniformity with her conscience in those matters which are above any human authority.  The Reformation in its severest logical consequences, in its grandest deductions, affirms the right of private judgment as the mighty pillar of its support.  All parties, Presbyterian as well as 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 Medicis 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-fe, 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 things which the Puritans sought to sweep away—­the music of the choir, organs, and chants, even the holidays of venerated ages—­are now revived by the descendants of the Puritans with ancient ardor; showing how permanent are such festivals as Christmas and Easter in the heart of Christendom, and how hopeless it is to eradicate what the Church and Christianity, from their earliest ages, have sanctioned and commended.