versy. This
Bishop of Salisbury, who had, however, recanted his Protestant opinions
under Mary, and resumed them under Elizabeth, had published in 1562 his
"Apology of the Church of England," a work of vast research and learning.
Mr. Harding, who had also had the advantage of having been on both sides,
had answered it; and then the battle was arrayed. It was of course mostly
above Anthony's head; but he gained from what he was able to read of it a
very fair estimate of the conflicting theses, though he probably could
not have stated them intelligibly. He also made acquaintance with another
writer against Jewell,--Rastall; and with one or two of Mr. Willet's
books, the author of "Synopsis Papismi" and "Tretrastylon Papisticum."

Even more than by paper controversy, however, he was influenced by
history that was so rapidly forming before his eyes. The fact and the
significance of the supremacy of the Queen in religion was impressed upon
him more vividly by her suspension of Grindal than by all the books he
ever read: here was the first ecclesiastic of the realm, a devout, humble
and earnest man, restrained from exercising his great qualities as ruler
and shepherd of his people, by a woman whose religious character
certainly commanded no one's respect, even if her moral life were free
from scandal; and that, not because the Archbishop had been guilty of any
crime or heresy, or was obviously unfitted for his post, but because his
conscientious judgment on a point of Church discipline and liberty
differed from hers; and this state of things was made possible not by an
usurpation of power, but by the deliberately ordered system of the Church
of England. Anthony had at least sufficient penetration to see that this,
as a fundamental principle of religion, however obscured it might be by
subsequent developments, was yet fraught with dangers compared with which
those of papal interference were comparatively trifling--dangers that is,
not so much to earthly peace and prosperity, as to the whole spiritual
nature of the nation's Christianity.

Yet another argument had begun to suggest itself, bearing upon the same
point, of the relative advantages and dangers of Nationalism. When he had
first entered the Archbishop's service he had been inspired by the
thought that the Church would share in the rising splendour of England;
now he began to wonder whether she could have strength to resist the
rising worldliness that was bound to accom