we suppose that conscientious motives, feeble as they are constantly found to be in a good cause, should be omnipotent for evil?  Doubtless there was many a jolly Popish priest in the old manor-houses of the northern counties, who would have admitted, in theory, the deposing power of the Pope, but who would not have been ambitious to be stretched on the rack, even though it were to be used, according to the benevolent proviso of Lord Burleigh, “as charitably as such a thing can be,” or to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, even though, by that rare indulgence which the Queen, of her special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, sometimes extended to very mitigated cases, he were allowed a fair time to choke before the hangman began to grabble in his entrails.

But the laws passed against the Puritans had not even the wretched excuse which we have been considering.  In this case, the cruelty was equal, the danger, infinitely less.  In fact, the danger was created solely by the cruelty.  But it is superfluous to press the argument.  By no artifice of ingenuity can the stigma of persecution, the worst blemish of the English Church, be effaced or patched over.  Her doctrines, we well know, do not tend to intolerance.  She admits the possibility of salvation out of her own pale.  But this circumstance, in itself honourable to her, aggravates the sin and the shame of those who persecuted in her name.  Dominic and De Montfort did not, at least, murder and torture for differences of opinion which they considered as trifling.  It was to stop an infection which, as they believed, hurried to certain perdition every soul which it seized, that they employed their fire and steel.  The measures of the English government with respect to the Papists and Puritans sprang from a widely different principle.  If those who deny that the founders of the Church were guilty of religious persecution mean only that the founders of the Church were not influenced by any religious motive, we perfectly agree with them.  Neither the penal code of Elizabeth, nor the more hateful system by which Charles the Second attempted to force Episcopacy on the Scotch, had an origin so noble.  The cause is to be sought in some circumstances which attended the Reformation in England, circumstances of which the effects long continued to be felt, and may in some degree be traced even at the present day.

In Germany, in France, in Switzerland, and in Scotland, the contest against the Papal power was essentially a religious contest.  In all those countries, indeed, the cause of the Reformation, like every other great cause, attracted to itself many supporters influenced by no conscientious principle, many who quitted the Established Church only because they thought her in danger, many who were weary of her restraints, and many who were greedy for her spoils.  But it was not by these adherents that the separation was there conducted.  They were welcome auxiliaries; their support was too often purchased by unworthy compliances;