no ratified means of grace, still less does she regard it as a civil contract, as remembering, also, that in it is signified the spiritual marriage and unity of Christ and his church, and that male and female God joined together; that whilst she does not enforce, on pain of damnation, confession to the priest, or hold the act to be essential to the forgiveness of the sin, she, nevertheless, solemnly exhorts such persons as have a troubled conscience, and know not how to quiet it, to go to a minister of God and open to him their grief, that they may receive from him the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice. With such discretion did our Reformers retain the good which was in the Church of Rome whilst they rejected the evil, putting the one in vessels to be kept, and casting the other away; with such temper did they refuse to be scared by the abuses of past times, or the scrupulosities of their own, into narrowing needlessly that ground on which they invited a nation to take its stand, and which they well knew must be broad to admit of it. And so it came about, that a form of faith and worship was conceived which recommended itself to the piety and good sense of the people; to which they reverted with gladness of heart when evil times afterwards compelled them to abjure it for a season; towards which, those who have since dissented and withdrawn from it have so often seen occasion (or if not they, their children, after them,) to retrace their steps, and tacitly to acknowledge that whilst they sought meat for their lust, they had rejected angels’ food. God grant that a church which has now for nearly three centuries, amidst every extravagance of doctrine and discipline which has spent itself around her, still carried herself as the mediator, chastening the zealot by words of soberness, and animating the lukewarm by words that burn--that a church which has been found on experience to have successfully promoted a quiet and unobtrusive and practical piety amongst the people, such as comes not of observation, but is seen in the conscientious discharge of all those duties of imperfect obligation which are the bonds of peace, but which laws cannot reach--that such a church may live through these troubled times to train up our children in the fear of God, when we are in our graves; and that no strong delusion sent amongst us may prevail to her overthrow, and to the eventual discomfiture (as they would find too late to their cost) of many who have thoughtlessly and ungratefully lifted up their heel against her! CHAPTER XI. HOOPER.--PURITANS.--EXPECTATIONS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS.--EDWARD’S DEATH.--LADY JANE GREY.