example of the other nations
which have embraced the doctrines of the Reformation." Cecil, I say,
and his colleagues might naturally entertain this expectation, and might
without absurdity make preparations for an event which they regarded
as in the highest degree probable. But we, who have seen this system in
full operation from the year 1560 to the year 1845, ought to have been
taught better, unless indeed we are past all teaching. Two hundred and
eighty-five years has this Church been at work. What could have been
done for it in the way of authority, privileges, endowments, which has
not been done? Did any other set of bishops and priests in the world
ever receive so much for doing so little? Nay, did any other set of
bishops and priests in the world ever receive half as much for doing
twice as much? And what have we to show for all this lavish expenditure?
What but the most zealous Roman Catholic population on the face of the
earth? Where you were one hundred years ago, where you were two hundred
years ago, there you are still, not victorious over the domain of the
old faith, but painfully and with dubious success defending your own
frontier, your own English pale. Sometimes a deserter leaves you.
Sometimes a deserter steals over to you. Whether your gains or losses
of this sort be the greater I do not know; nor is it worth while to
inquire. On the great solid mass of the Roman Catholic population you
have made no impression whatever. There they are, as they were ages ago,
ten to one against the members of your Established Church. Explain this
to me. I speak to you, the zealous Protestants on the other side of the
House. Explain this to me on Protestant principles. If I were a Roman
Catholic, I could easily account for the phenomena. If I were a Roman
Catholic, I should content myself with saying that the mighty hand and
the outstretched arm had been put forth, according to the promise, in
defence of the unchangeable Church; that He who in the old time turned
into blessings the curses of Balaam, and smote the host of Sennacherib,
had signally confounded the arts of heretic statesmen. But what is
a Protestant to say? He holds that, through the whole of this long
conflict, during which ten generations of men have been born and have
died, reason and Scripture have been on the side of the Established
Clergy. Tell us then what we are to say of this strange war, in which,
reason and Scripture backed by wealth, by dignity, b