adequate conception of the higher and wider interests which their struggle against an exclusive sacerdotalism involved. Protestantism is the religion of reasonableness as opposed to the religion of authority, and the Protestant who puts an infallible book or an infallible creed in the place of an infallible Church is disloyal to the principles of the Reformation, if not to the practice of the Reformers. The practice, we may admit, was not uniform or consistent; but the men who most powerfully impressed the infant Churches of the Continent were the Luthers and the Calvins. It was the same in Scotland. Maitland represented the spirit of criticism, Knox the spirit of dogma; yet it cannot be said that Maitland was more successful than Erasmus.

Sainte Aldegonde-a man of versatile ability, a poet, an orator, a theologian, a fine scholar, an acute diplomatist-was one of the most accomplished leaders of the Protestant revolt in the Netherlands; yet even Sainte Aldegonde was vexed and irritated by the tolerant temper of William the Silent. "The affair of the Anabaptists," he wrote on one occasion, "has been renewed. The Prince objects to exclude them from citizenship. He answered me sharply that their yea was equal to our oath, and that we should not press this matter unless we were willing to confess that it was just for the Papists

to compel us to a divine service which was against our conscience. In short, I don't see how we can accomplish our wish in this matter. The Prince has uttered reproaches to me that our clergy are striving to obtain a mastery over consciences. He praised lately the saying of a monk who was not long ago here, that our pot had not gone to the fire as often as that of our antagonists, but that when the time came it would be black enough. In short, the Prince fears that after a few centuries the clerical tyranny on both sides will stand in this respect on the same foooting."

Wise and memorable words! The Prince was not mistaken; in the highest sense-as a vindication, that is, of the rights of reason and conscience, as a protest against a sacerdotal monopoly, as well as against an incredible superstition-the Reformation failed,-nowhere more conspicuously than in Scotland. The Reformers did not loose the bonds of superstition: they banished one incredibility to replace it by another. And the Church of Knox was as arbitrary, as domineering, as greedy of power, as the Church of Hildebrand.

We are now told that the conjunction was inevitable; it was the sixteenth century, not the nineteenth; the age needed a Luther and a Knox. A conservative reformation undertaken

by Erasmus or Maitland could not have successfully resisted the inevitable Catholic reaction. This is the argument, as I understand it; but we are not informed how far the Catholic reaction was rendered "inevitable" by the Calvinist and the Iconoclast.

A

When Mary returned to Scotland in August 1561, what may be called a provisional government was in existence. The fabric of Catholicism had been shaken-not shattered. The citizens of the burghs were Protestants. certain number of the greater and lesser barons were "earnest professors." But there were great Catholic nobles, and the new ideas had not reached the rural and Highland districts. In the populous towns the monastic buildings had been wrecked. The patrimony of the Church. had been secularised; but the alienations were frequently nominal, and if Catholicism had been restored, the revenues would have been recovered, and applied to the purposes of religion. So far as a Parliamentary Convention could disestablish and disendow the Church, it had been disestablished and disendowed; but statutory definitions do not always correspond with the fact, and what was legally dead might yet be politically and practically alive. There was a want of authority everywhere, and the force which was strong at the centre became weak, if not im

potent, before it reached the extremities. The new ecclesiastical organisation was yet in its infancy. Knox was a power in himself; but he was still an eruptive and revolutionary power;1 and except in the towns he had no considerable following. The nobles, with a few exceptions, were careless, if not cold. It was exceptionally a period of transition, and the next few years would determine what impress the Church and the nation would take. Mary, during these years, was the central figure; but the real struggle, as we shall see, lay between Knox and Lethington.

The ecclesiastical policy which Maitland pursued may be defined in a sentence. He was strenuously opposed to whatever would render a religious peace between England and Scotland, between Elizabeth and Mary, difficult or impracticable.

The Confession of Faith had not been approved by Elizabeth. Its bitter Calvinism was little to her taste, and Cecil would probably have been pleased if its sanction by the Estates had been postponed to a more convenient season. Maitland had done what he could to mitigate its austerity; but he probably regarded the abstract

1 Knox once tried to persuade | not listen to him.-National Elizabeth that he was a moder- MSS. of Scotland, iii. 45. ate reformer; but she would

propositions of theology with indifference, and it was only where it trenched upon civil rights and duties that he insisted on its revision. Maitland, no less than Elizabeth, was keenly opposed to theocratic government; the Church was very well in its place; but a parliament of preachers would have been simply intolerable. The Church of Rome had been an imperium in imperio: for this among other reasons the Church of Rome had been abolished. It appeared to Maitland, as it appeared to Elizabeth, that the ecclesiastical society which undertook to exercise temporal as well as spiritual lordship, must become a focus of sedition, and consequently a danger to the State; and that any proposal, however modestly disguised or studiously veiled, to override the law of the land by the law of the Church was to be steadily resisted. Knox was eager to have the Book of Discipline accepted by the lords; but Maitland's opposition to a scheme, involving a domestic inquisition and a social censorship, could not be overcome.

Maitland's position, on the other hand, as regards Mary's Catholicism, though constantly misunderstood and misrepresented, is not less clear. It was not to be expected that Mary would be persuaded to join a Calvinistic and Presbyterian Church. But the Church of Elizabeth was in a different position; the English Church could