factions of that place, by enforcing a rigorous discipline, he was banished from Geneva. He was again recalled in 1541, when he established a form of Church-discipline, and a consistory, invested with power to inflict canonical censures and excommunications; to which the magistrates and people of Geneva promised obedience. Calvin was a vigorous opponent of the common errors and superstitions; and caused Servetus, who blasphemed against the Holy Trinity, to be put to death. He wrote many commentaries on Scripture. His influence was widely extended throughout the reformed communities by his correspondence. Calvin was a man of great genius, considerable learning, and irreproachable private character; but of a zeal which was too little under the guidance of charity. His position, as the minister of the people at Geneva, was certainly an irregularity and anomaly, as he had never received holy orders. It was only excusable under the difficulties of the times, when the bishops of the Continent were too generally under the influence of the pope, and the adherents of the Reformation were unjustly cast out of the Church, and treated as heretics. It seems to have been held by many persons, and not without some grounds of probability, that in such an extreme case, a Christian community might constitute pastors; although we cannot feel certain that divine grace accompanies such ministrations. It was, perhaps, a reliance on the uncovenanted mercies of God, which consoled many pious men in the unavoidable absence of that lawful ordinary ministry, which was instituted by Jesus Christ, and which has continued by successive ordinations in all ages. Calvin died in 1564.

ULRICH ZUINGLE was born in Switzerland in 1484, and studied at Basil and Vienna; after which he received holy orders, and became successively

pastor of Glaris, and preacher at the abbey of Einseldeln. Having diligently studied Scripture, the fathers and schoolmen, he began to see the corruptions so generally prevalent; and he addressed himself, in the first instance, to the bishop of Constance and the cardinal bishop of Sion, urging them to reform the Swiss churches. Being appointed in 1519 to the principal church in Zurich, he declaimed against the sale of indulgences, and against other common errors. Controversies ensued between Zuingle and the vicar-general of the bishop of Constance, who accused him of heresy and sedition to the magistrates of Zurich. Zuingle and his friends declared "that they did not, either in act or intention, separate from the Church." Zuingle was again accused, in 1522 and 1523, by the Romish party, as a heretic; but he overcame his adversaries in controversy; and the magistrates of Zurich decreed that he should not be molested, and that the clergy should preach nothing except what could be proved from holy Scripture. After this, Zuingle and his friends being entirely separated from communion by the Romish party, they effected various reforms and changes in rites; and they became involved in controversy with Luther on the subject of the holy eucharist. Zuingle seems to have fallen into the error of Berengarius on this point; but it was hoped for a long time that he and his adherents might be brought to a sounder mind. Conferences with this object continued long after his death, which took place in 1531.

CHAPTER XXII.

ON THE BRITISH CHURCHES.

A.D. 1530-1839.

HE Churches of Britain, or England, had now existed for more than thirteen hundred years. Originally (for six hundred years) independent of the Roman see, as being beyond the limits of that patriarchate, they had in later times become subject to its jurisdiction. The invasion of Britain by the Saxons, and the subsequent mission of St. Augustine, by Pope Gregory, afforded the opportunity for extending the Roman power; and Augustine was sent the pall, the emblem of honour and authority, as vicar of the holy see. For many ages, however, we hear little or nothing of any exercise of jurisdiction by the popes in England: the English bishops and kings did not permit appeals to Rome. When Wilfrid, bishop of York, appealed against an English synod which had deposed him from his diocese, and obtained a decree in his favour from the pope, that decree was disregarded in England. Pope Gregory I. had made a regulation in accordance with the canons, that the bishops and metropolitans of England should be always appointed and consecrated in their own country, and had no sort of intention to claim the right of confirming or ordaining them. And accordingly the metropolitans and bishops of our churches were always consecrated without reference to the see of Rome, till the twelfth or thirteenth century. Nor were our bishops summoned to attend synods held by the popes, until about the same period.

At length, from the time of Gregory VII., the papal jurisdiction was pushed into England, as it was into other countries; legates made frequent visits, held councils, exacted subsidies. Appeals, dispensations, mandates, reserves, annates, bulls, and all the other inconveniences of papal usurpation, followed each other in rapid succession; and for four centuries no country in Europe suffered more and with greater reluctance than England. But the popes and the kings of England had, after much disputation, made their agreement, and the Church was their prey.

Religion had become deteriorated in England, as well as in the remainder of the western Church. A spirit of opposition to prevailing errors had been excited by Wickliffe; but he, and his followers the Lollards, advocated several erroneous and seditious opinions: they were condemned by the clergy, and persecuted by the state. The Scriptures, however, were translated by Wickliffe; and thus the way was prepared for religious improvement.

The scruples of Henry VIII. as to the lawfulness of his marriage with Catharine, the widow of his elder brother, led ultimately to the removal of the papal power in England, and to the Reformation. Henry in 1526 commenced negotiations with the pope for the dissolution of his marriage, requesting that the papal dispensation by which it had been contracted might be examined, or declared invalid. But the pope, under the influence of the Emperor Charles V., the nephew of Catharine, protracted the affair, by various expedients, for six years. At length Henry, wearied by the arts and chicanery of the court of Rome, had recourse to an expedient, first suggested by Cranmer, a learned doctor of Cambridge, who was soon after made archbishop of Canterbury,—namely, to consult all the universities of

Europe on the question, "whether the papal dispensation for such a marriage was valid;" and to act on their decision, without further appeal to the pope. The question was accordingly put, and decided in the negative by the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Bologna, Padua, Orleans, Angiers, Bourges, Toulouse, &c., and by a multitude of theologians and canonists. Henry now being satisfied that his marriage with Catharine had been null and void from the beginning, privately married Anna Boleyn, in 1532; and the convocation of the Church of England immediately afterwards declared his former marriage null, and approved that recently contracted.

In 1532 and 1533 the king and parliament of England suppressed by law various usurped or superfluous privileges of the pope. First-fruits, tenths, pensions, annuities, payments for bulls, palls, &c., censes, portions, Peter's-pence, and all the other pecuniary exactions of the court of Rome, were abolished. Bulls of institution to bishoprics or archbishoprics, and palls, were no longer to be sought from Rome. The prelates were (as they had been for twelve centuries) to be elected and ordained in England. All appeals to Rome in ecclesiastical causes were suppressed; and every cause was to be determined finally in England, according to ancient custom. All that great multiplicity of licenses, dispensations, compositions, faculties, grants, rescripts, delegacies, &c., by which the pontiffs had so grievously enervated the discipline of the Church and enriched themselves, was put an end to. Dispensations were in future only to be issued by the primate of England. Thus the various branches of the papal jurisdiction, most of which had been usurped within the four preceding centuries, were removed. The Church of England acquiesced in these pro

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