It was only under the successor of the despotic Henry that Protestantism was really introduced into England; but it there appeared under two different forms, and with two parties in a state of mutual and violent hostility. In England Episcopacy was retained; but in Scotland, the Puritans, the Methodists of those days, had the ascendant. But under Queen Mary, the wife of Philip II., King of Spain, a Catholic re-action took place; and this again was succeeded by a Protestant re-action under Elizabeth, whose steady and inflexible policy alone consolidated the establishment of Protestantism--a policy at whose shrine the head of the unhappy Mary Stuart fell a sacrifice. Thus things proceeded from one extremity to another--from the execution of King Charles I. to the establishment of a Republic, and the absolute sway of a Protector--till amid the various disputes of the Scotch and English Protestants, and the various struggles of national rivalry, the court fell back upon Catholicism. At last, King William from Holland, a century before the breaking out of the French Revolution, gave the final triumph to Protestantism, and brought to maturity the glorious constitution of that island, which has been so repeatedly transplanted, imitated and modified on the Continent and in other parts of the world. On this basis, a thorough Protestant policy was established, which affected even the public and international law of Europe--a policy which has so eminently characterized England in modern times, particularly during the period of her great power, and which was followed, or even accompanied by a Protestant philosophy. I should premise that this Protestantism in philosophy should not by any means be confounded with, but should carefully be distinguished from, the Revolutionary philosophy--from an unbridled anarchy in science and speculation, though the former in its corruption may easily degenerate into the latter. For the modern Paganism--the avowed Atheism of the eighteenth century acquired many more partisans and assumed a far bolder attitude on the Continent, than in the Constitutional island, which even in philosophy oscillates in a sort of artificial equipoise between truth and error.