octrine of
nationality to the doctrine of Catholicism. In the teeth of the
pretensions which the Church advanced to a uniformity of religion in
every land, whatever might be its differences of race or government, the
first Protestants had advanced the principle that each prince or people
had alone the right to determine its form of faith and worship. "Cujus
regio" ran the famous phrase which embodied their theory, "ejus
religio." It was the acknowledgement of this principle that the Lutheran
princes obtained at the Diet of Spires; it was on this principle that
Henry based his Act of Supremacy. Its strength lay in the correspondence
of such a doctrine with the political circumstances of the time. It was
the growing feeling of nationality which combined with the growing
developement of monarchical power to establish the theory that the
political and religious life of each nation should be one, and that the
religion of the people should follow the faith of the prince. Had
Protestantism, as seemed at one time possible, secured the adhesion of
all the European princes, such a theory might well have led everywhere
as it led in England to the establishment of the worst of tyrannies, a
tyranny that claims to lord alike over both body and soul. The world was
saved from this danger by the tenacity with which the old religion still
held its power. In half the countries of Europe the disciples of the new
opinions had soon to choose between submission to their conscience and
submission to their prince; and a movement which began in contending for
the religious supremacy of kings ended in those wars of religion which
arrayed nation after nation against their sovereigns. In this religious
revolution Scotland led the way. Her Protestantism was the first to draw
the sword against earthly rulers. The solemn "Covenant" which bound
together her "Congregation" in the face of the regency, which pledged
its members to withdraw from all submission to the religion of the State
and to maintain in the face of the State their liberty of conscience,
opened that vast series of struggles which ended in Germany with the
Peace of Westphalia and in England with the Toleration Act of William
the Third.

[Sidenote: The Exiles.]

The "Covenant" of the lords sounded a bold defiance to the Catholic
reaction across the border. While Mary replaced the Prayer-Book by the
Mass, the Scotch lords resolved that wherever their power extended the
Common Prayer shou