The subject in hand was the pretended Reformation: the Duchess observed the scandalous and abominable effects of it;—that an inordinate lust was one principal cause of the separation; that the Reformation itself was begun by worldly interests in the Duke of Somerset, and carried on by the ambition of Queen Elizabeth. Have the examples produced by our author on the contrary side any thing to do with a Reformation? Suppose, in the first place, that she had never read nor heard any of those things concerning Pope Alexander, or the advancing of nephews by profusion of the church treasure; the first is very possible, and she might interpret candidly the latter. But make the worst of it; on the one side there was only a male administration of a settled government, from which no state, either spiritual or temporal, can always be exempt; on the other side, here is a total subversion of the old church in England, and the setting up a new; a changing of received doctrines, and the direction of God’s holy spirit pretended for the change; so that she might reasonably judge that the Holy Ghost had little to do with the practices of ill popes, without thinking the worse of the established faith: but she could never see a new one erected on the foundations of lust, sacrilege, and usurpation, without great scruples whether the spirit of God were assisting in those counsels. As for his method of enquiry, “Whether there was not a sufficient cause for the Reformation in the church? Whether the church of England had not sufficient authority to reform itself?” and, “Whether the proceedings of the Reformation were not justifiable by the rules of scripture and the ancient church?” I may safely join issue with him upon all three points, and conclude in the negative,—that there was no sufficient cause to reform the church in matters of faith, because there neither were, nor can be, any such errors embraced and owned by it. The church of England has no authority of reforming herself, because the doctrine of Christ cannot be reformed, nor a national synod lawfully make any definitions in matters of faith, contrary to the judgment of the church universal of the present age, shewn in her public liturgies; that judgment being equivalent to that of a general council of the present age. And, for the third point, the proceedings of the Reformation were not justifiable by the rule of scripture, according to the right interpretation of it by the fathers and councils, which are the true judges of it; nor, consequently, by the rules of the ancient church. But Calvin’s excuse must be your last refuge; _Nos discessionem a toto mundo facere coacti sumus_: “We are compelled to forsake the communion, or to separate from all the churches of the world.”