It is unnecessary to speak of the reign of Bloody Mary. Of course the reformatory laws of Edward were repealed, and Romanism was once more triumphant; but only for a season. Her reign was short--of only five years’ duration--and perhaps by the persecutions which characterized it was in one respect the means of advancing the Protestant cause more vigorously than would have been possible if Edward had continued on the throne. It is doubtful whether, in the progress of that gradual abandonment of Romish doctrine and Romish forms upon which Edward had entered, the ritual prescribed by him would not have been finally divested of enough of its objectionable features to make it acceptable to the whole body of reformers. But on the accession of Mary, Protestants were forced in large numbers into exile, and subjected in other lands to new and potent influences. The current of Protestantism which flowed toward the Continent to escape her persecutions became divided there by the opposite teachings of Frankfort and Geneva, and flowed back after the accession of Elizabeth in separate streams, one to buoy up and sustain the English Church with all the forms with which the new Queen had invested it, and the other to sweep away, if possible, every vestige of Romanism in its ritual. The contumacy of John Hooper was but a single Puritan wave, which met a yielding barrier and disappeared. With the return of the exiles from Geneva a new tide of Puritanism set in, with an ocean of resolute thought behind it, which no royal hand could stay. It began its career, as was the case with Hooper, with a simple protest against forms of worship--a protest which, when conformity was demanded by the bishops, gradually extended to a denial of the power which demanded it. The more urgent the demand, the greater the resistance, until at last, like blows on yielding metal, which only serve to weld and harden it, persecution converted objection to a ritual into a conscientious contempt of prelatical power. Nor did it stop here. The sword which had been sharpened for the necks of the Catholics became two-edged in the hands of Elizabeth, and was wielded with equal force against nonconforming Protestants. Barrow and Greenwood and Ap-Henry felt it to-day, and to-morrow the Romish priests Ballard and Maud suffered a martyr’s death. To-day the death of Mary was demanded to protect a Protestant throne from the insidious attacks of Philip of Spain, and to-morrow Thomas Settle and Peter Wentworth were sent to prison to quench the spirit of Protestant liberty, which threatened the foundations of ecclesiastical power.