'In every sense a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him. A man's, or a nation of men's.' Yet we find Hume writing to Robertson that if the divine were willing to give up his Mary, the philosopher was willing to give up his Charles, and there would at least be the joint pleasure of seeing John Knox made completely ridiculous. 'Who,' writes Robertson to Gibbon, 'is Mr. Hayley? His Whiggism is so bigoted, and his Christianity so fierce, that he almost disgusts one with _two very good things_!' Christianity was then only a good thing when it had good things to offer to pluralists of the Warburtonian order. Yet these two garbled and distorted narratives are still the most widely known versions in England. Little wonder, therefore, is it that Carlyle should ask, 'I would fain know the history of Scotland; who can tell it me? Robertson, say innumerable voices; Robertson, against the world. I open Robertson; and find there, through long ages too confused for narrative, a cunning answer and hypothesis--a scandalous chronicle (as for some Journal of Fashion) of two persons: Mary Stuart, a Beauty, but over light-headed; and Henry Darnley, a Booby who had fine legs. Thus is History written.' In England, the Reformation took place in a way quite different from that in which it was effected in Scotland. The strong hand of Henry VIII. piloted the nation for a time through a crisis, and for a space at least it would appear that the nation was content to surrender its religious conscience into the hands of the king. He attempted, says Macaulay with perfect truth, to constitute an Anglican church differing from the Roman Catholic on the point of the Supremacy, and on that alone. There can be little doubt that to the court of Henry the king was the head of both church and state, and that the power of the keys temporal as well as ecclesiastical resided in the Crown. So far did Cranmer carry out this idea that, regarding his own spiritual functions as having ceased with the death of Henry, he renewed his commission under Edward VI., and for mere denial of the Act of Supremacy More and Fisher were sent to the block. It is true that Elizabeth was induced to part with a good deal of this exaggerated prerogative, yet she still exercised such a domineering and inquisitorial power as threatened to unfrock any refractory creature of her creation. It was natural, therefore, that the church created almost exclusively by the will of the Crown should for her rights and privileges rest entirely upon the Crown. The people had never been consulted in her creation, and it was to the Crown alone that the clergy could look. Her constitution, her traditions, and her government were all monarchical; and if, at first, she was moderate in her tone of adulation, it was easy to see that, led largely by interest, she would begin to assert the divine origin of the powers of the king, with the deduction of 'no bishop, no king' and of