party was not only rallied, but had turned the tide of battle, and was victoriously pressing upon its enemy." The view which Dr Arnold gives of the parties in England during the sixteenth century--that great epoch of English genius--is remarkable for its candour and moderation. He considers the distinctions which then prevailed in England as political rather than religious, "inasmuch as they disputed about points of church government, without any reference to a supposed priesthood; and because even those who maintained that one or another form was to be preferred, because it was of divine appointment, were influenced in their interpretation of the doubtful language of the Scriptures by their own strong persuasion of what that language could not but mean to say." And he then concludes by the unanswerable remark, that in England, according to the theory of the constitution during the sixteenth century, church and state were one. The proofs of this proposition are innumerable--not merely the act by which the supremacy was conferred on Henry VIII.--not merely the powers, almost unlimited, in matters ecclesiastical, delegated to the king's vicegerent, that vicegerent being a layman--not merely the communion established by the sole authority of Edward VI.--without the least participation in it by any bishop or clergyman; but the still more conclusive argument furnished by the fact, that no point in the doctrine, discipline, or ritual of our church, was established except by the power of Parliament, and the power of Parliament alone--nay, more, that they were established in direct defiance of the implacable opposition of the bishops, by whom, being then Roman Catholics, the English Church, on the accession of Elizabeth, was represented--to which the omission of the names of the Lords Spiritual in the Act of Uniformity, which is said to be enacted by the "Queen's Highness," with the assent of the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, is a testimony, at once unanswerable and unprecedented. We have dwelt with the more anxiety on this part of Dr Arnold's work, as it furnishes a complete answer to the absurd opinions concerning the English Church, which it has been of late the object of a few bigots, unconsciously acting as the tools of artful and ambitious men, to propagate, and which would lead, by a direct and logical process, to the complete overthrow of Protestant faith and worship. Such, then, being the state of things "recognized on all hands, church government was no light matter, but one which essentially involved in it the government of the state; and the disputing the Queen's supremacy, was equivalent to depriving her of one of the most important portions of her sovereignty, and committing half of the government of the nation to other hands."