a68 PROTESTANTISM. [Χ. a hold which was never to be relaxed ; or, as in Scotland, bysweeping away the old fabric altogether. The ancient right of territorial ownership was weakened, and thé process of secularisation, which was in Germany completed at the peace of Westphalia, set the seal of legality on the status quo. Protestantism had done its utmost to shift the balance of power. Yet, as I said before, it had really done little more ν than produce a cross division in the conflicting parties. Where Protestantism was an idea only, as in Spain and Italy, it was crushed out by the Inquisition ; where, in conjunction with political power and sustained by ecclesiastical confiscation, it became a physical force, there it was lasting. It is not a pleasant view to take of the doctrinal change to see that, where the movement towards it was pure and unworldly, it failed ; where it was seconded by territorial greed and political animosity, it succeeded. But so it has been with many of the changes by which in the long run both Church and world have been benefited. In the case of the English reformation, it is certain that without the redistribution of monastic estates the change must have been long delayed, and might have been suddenly and permanently reversed. Anarchy and confusion were imminent under the puritan rule of Edward VI, as well as under the papal reaction of Mary. If Elizabeth and her advisers had leaned to either, the flood must have poured in ; unsympathetic as is the Elizabethan Church rule, little as we can find to love among the men whom she set up as Fathers to the Church, it was their strong rule that saved England from revolution far more dangerous, far more calamitous, than all the mistakes, the terrors, the persecutions, the reactions, of the so-called rebellion and revolution periods of the seventeenth century. But again the subject is one that tempts to too wide digression : only, after what I have said, whether you agree with me or no, you will see why I have thought it better to