on to rule over the entire flock, to hold the keys of the
kingdom of heaven, and to confirm their brethren to the end of time.

Besides, a careful study of the origin and genesis of the present
Anglican Establishment is scarcely calculated to predispose any one
particularly in its favour. It is not Catholics only who might be
thought biased upon such a point, but others also who feel this. In
fact, it is precisely impartial men, unaffected by any interest either
way, who most fully realise from what a very shady beginning the new
state of things arose. As Sir Osborne Morgan puts it, "Every student
of English history knows that, if a very bad king had not fallen in
love with a very pretty woman, and desired to get divorced from his
plain and elderly wife, and if he had not compelled a servile
Parliament to carry out his wishes, there would, in all human
probability, never have been an Established Church at all."

This gentleman is a Protestant, and the son of a Protestant clergyman,
so we may be quite sure that he harbours no special leanings towards
us, yet he speaks impartially as one who has not only read history,
but read it without coloured spectacles. Perhaps Lord Macaulay puts
the case as bluntly as any one, and we may as well quote him because
he, too, was no Catholic, and held no brief for the Church of Rome.
This brilliant writer, who was, perhaps, an historian before all
things, tells us that the work of the Reformation was the work, not of
three saints, nor even of three ordinary decent men, but of three
notorious murderers! These are not our words, but Macaulay's, and it
is not our fault if this is his reading of history. We merely summon
him as a Protestant witness. He calmly and deliberately states that
the Reformation was "begun by Henry VIII., the murderer of his wives;
was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother; and was
completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest". Not a very
auspicious beginning, it must be confessed, and scarcely suggestive of
the Divine afflatus. Those who planted the Catholic Church used no
violence, and did not inflict death. No! on the contrary, they endured
death, and their blood became the seed of the Church. And that is
quite another story. In former days every one admitted the present
Anglican Church to be the child of the Reformation. It was, to quote
the Protestant historian, Child, "as completely the creation of Henry
VIII., Edward's Council, and Elizabet