Of kindred interest, and of scarcely inferior importance, is the study of THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. For a time, the Church, drunk with too much prosperity, had wandered and grown wanton. For a time, God left her to eat of the fruit of her own ways, and be filled with her own devices. But, “His own possession and his lot He will not quite forsake.” The wrath of man he makes to praise him. The remainder of it he restrains. When the time came that he would have mercy upon Sion, men were not wanting to the work, with holy hearts, and giant hands, and tongues of fire. They took their stand upon the pure word of God. They appealed to the consenting voice of all Christian antiquity. They toiled. They prayed. They bled. They burned. They persevered. They triumphed. The Church, deformed before, was now reformed. She returned to her old principles, and to her “first love.” “We look,” says Joseph Mede,[7] “after the form, rites, and discipline of antiquity; and endeavour to bring our own as near as we can to that pattern.” “If I mistake not greatly,” says Casaubon, writing to Salmasius,[8] “the soundest part of all the reformation is in England; for there, with the study of the scripture, there is the most regard to the study of antiquity.” But I must check myself. I may not enter now upon this rich and tempting field. The time would fail me to tell of Wickliff, and Cranmer, and Ridley, and Latimer, and Taylor, and Rogers, and the glorious host of witnesses for God, that “loved not their life unto the death.” “Methinks that I could trip o’er heaviest soil Light as a buoyant bark from wave to wave, Were mine the trusty staff that JEWEL gave To youthful HOOKER in familiar style The gift exalting, and with playful smile.[9] For thus equipped, and bearing on his head The donor’s farewell blessing, can he dread Tempest, or length of way, or weight of toil? More sweet than odours caught by him who sails Near spicy shores of Araby the blest; A thousand times more exquisitely sweet The freight of holy feeling which we meet In thoughtful moments, wafted by the gales From fields where good men walk, or bowers wherein they rest. Holy and heavenly spirits as they are Spotless in life, and eloquent as wise, With what entire affection do they prize Their new-born[10] Church! Labouring with earnest care To baffle all that may her strength impair; That Church--the unperverted Gospel’s seat; In their afflictions a divine retreat; Source of their liveliest hope, and tenderest prayer! The truth exploring with an equal mind, In doctrine and communion they have sought Firmly between the two extremes to steer; But theirs the wise man’s ordinary lot, To trace right courses for the stubborn blind, And prophesy to ears that will not hear.-- WORDSWORTH, _Ecclesiastical Sketches_.