bishops, had been left to their own choice,――if they had not been held back and retarded by a large mass of popishly affected clergy in the reign of Edward, and restrained by the supreme civil authority {107} on the accession of Elizabeth, they would have brought the government and worship of the church of England nearly to the pattern of other reformed churches. If the reader doubts this, he may consult the evidence produced in the notes.[159] Such, in particular, was the earnest wish of his majesty Edward VI., a prince who, besides his other rare qualities, had an unfeigned reverence for the word of God, and a disposition to comply with its precepts in preference to custom and established usages; and who showed himself uniformly inclined to give relief to his conscientious subjects, and sincerely bent on promoting the union of all the friends of the reformed religion at home and abroad. Of his intention on this head, there remain the most unquestionable and satisfactory documents.[160] Had his life been spared, there is every reason to think that he would have accomplished the correction or removal of those evils in the English church, which the most steady and enlightened protestants have lamented. Had his sister Elizabeth been of the same spirit with him, and prosecuted the plan which he laid down, the consequences would have been most happy both for herself and for her people, for the government and for the church. She would have united all the friends of the Reformation, who were the great support of her authority. She would have weakened the interest of the Roman catholics, whom all her accommodating measures could not gain, nor prevent from {108} repeatedly conspiring against her life and crown. She would have put an end to those dissensions among her protestant subjects, which continued during the whole of her reign, which she bequeathed as a legacy to her successors, and which, being fomented and exasperated by the severities employed for their suppression, burst forth at length, to the temporary overthrow of the monarchy, as well as of the hierarchy, whose exorbitancies it had patronised and whose corruptions it had sanctioned and maintained;――dissensions, which subsist to this day; which, though softened by the partial lenitive of a toleration, have gradually alienated from the communion of that church a large proportion of the people, and which, if a timely and suitable remedy be not applied, may ultimately undermine the foundations of the English establishment.