The English Reformation differed in one most essential point, be it for good, be it for evil, from all the other Reformations of Europe. It was distinctly a constitutional movement, carried out from the commencement to the close by the constituted authorities of the land. It was not forced on the rulers by a burst of popular enthusiasm, stirred by some great preacher; nor on the other hand, and on this point we often do it scant justice, was it forced by the rulers on a careless or unwilling people. In the first and second Parliaments of Elizabeth, the House of Commons was far in advance both of the Lords and of the Queen. It was fairly the movement of the nation acting through its political organs. Hence it had a character of compromise here in England which it bore nowhere abroad. Various interests had to be conciliated, as is inevitable in government under a mixed constitution like ours. The laggards had to be thought of as well as the vanguard. Catholics as well as Puritans had to be considered in every bill that was passed through Parliament; and thus our cumbrous incoherent Church system, the child of policy and compromise, was shaped and grew. This method was the parent of many miserable evils. The monarchical and aristocratic influence was altogether too potent. Had the House of Commons under Elizabeth been free to carry out its judgment, a Church might have grown up pure, noble, beautiful, compared with the present, and might have spared the nation some of the sorest pains of Nonconformity. A hint of what might have been possible we see in the curious account of the Church at Northampton in 1571; and still more perfectly in the first draft of the Constitution of the Hessian Church. But then the result would have been gained most probably, and none knew it better than Elizabeth, at the cost of a tremendous and premature civil war. The key of Elizabeth's policy, and the secret of the great work which she accomplished, was that beyond even Cecil she was a national politician. But on the whole, and in the long run, we are bound to confess that the evils were not without at any rate some counterbalancing advantages. It is always thus with all great human institutions and movements. More or less of evil mingles with the good in all of them; and even in those in which the evil seems largely to preponderate, there are always some elements of blessing to be set in the opposite scale.