sectarianism. Pious Church folk of one way of thinking cannot bring themselves to attend the churches devoted to the other way. In the selection of summer quarters it has long become important to ascertain beforehand the doctrines espoused, and, as a consequence of such doctrines, the ritual maintained by the local clergy. This is not a matter of mere preference, as a Roman Catholic may prefer the Oratorians to the Jesuits; it is, if traced to its source, traceable to the altar. In some churches "of the English obedience" there purports to be the visible sacrifice; in other churches of the same ostensible communion no such profession of mystery or miracle is made. It is impossible to believe that a mystery so tremendous, so profoundly attractive, so intimately associated with the keystone of the Christian Faith, so vouched for by the testimony of saints, can be allowed to remain for another hundred years an open question in a Church which still asserts herself to be the Guardian of the Faith. If the inquiry, What happened at the Reformation? were to establish the belief that the English Church did then in mind and will cut herself off from further participation in the Mass as a sacrifice, it will be difficult for most people to resist the conclusion that a change so great broke the continuity of English Church history, effected a transfer of Church property from one body to another, and that from thenceforth the new Church of England has been exposed to influences and has been required to submit to conditions of existence totally incompatible with any working definition. of either Church authority or Church discipline. THE ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT1 T 1920 HAT restless crew (of whom I am one) who are, for one reason or another, feverishly interested in trying to find out, as best they can, having themselves no access to the Vatican archives, what really did happen in England at the Reformation, and are never weary, though often disgusted with that great drama, will pounce upon this book of Father Pollen's with eagerness and peruse its pages with avidity. The character of the author stands so high for honesty of purpose and historical straightforwardness, no less than for learning and industry, that even the most determined of Protestants, if only he is in love with the facts of the case, need be under no secret apprehension whilst reading_this book, though its Preface is dated from "Farm Street." It is, no doubt, written from what I will call, being anxious to avoid giving offence as long as possible, the Roman Catholic point of view. Had it seemed to be otherwise suspicion must at once have been roused. Each one of us has of necessity (like a tin soldier) a stand of his own, from which The English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth: A Study of their Politics, Life, and Government. By J. Hungerford Pollen, S.J. From the Fall of the Church to the Counter-Reformation, 1558-1580. (Longmans, 21s.) if he tries to jump off he will only succeed in falling down. Years ago there dwelt in a Scottish borough the mother of one of its Parliamentary members; a delightful old lady who dated from the "Disruption" of 1843. She kept on her drawing-room table a work, then of repute beyond the Tweed, called The Ten Years' Conflict, and one Saturday night a theological student, who was taking the services the next day, strolled up to the table, and laying hands on the volume, remarked in a staccato voice: "An excellent history, though, of course, written from the Free Church point of view." 66 Young man," broke out his indignant hostess, "whilst here you will do well to remember that everything in this house is looked at from the Free Church point of view." Father Pollen's book begins with the accession to the Throne of Queen Elizabeth, and opens thus: When Elizabeth came to the throne she found herself face to face with the venerable Church which St. Augustine had founded close on a thousand years before, which had grown with the people and had become an integral part of the national life. The laws of the Church ranked with the laws of England, if not above them, for it was to Rome that the final appeals were made. Her Bishops were among the greatest lords of the land, and were then holding some of the highest offices under the Crown, while the Clergy governed and taxed themselves. The Church, moreover, derived still further power from her intimate communion with the other great Churches of Christendom, while the Pope, the common head of the Faithful, was in a special way her loving father and powerful protector. Yet all was not well with that great body. Five-and-twenty years before she had fallen with the fall of her King, and shameful had been the facility with which she had capitulated. This is a fine and even appetising opening, and makes no disguise of its point of view. In Farm Street everything is looked at from the Roman point of view, but if history be honestly written, whether it be of the "Disruption " of the Scottish Church in 1843, or of the process men call the "Elizabethan Settlement," the historian's personal point of view only adds zest to his narrative and emotion to his pen. It would be impossible in a limited space to do justice to this book, and I will only try in a very cursory manner to set down some of the aspects of the exciting drama which Father Pollen exhibits in the course of his detailed narrative of twenty years. And first must be named the demoralisation wrought throughout the land by the Tudor tyranny during the reigns of Henry, Mary, and Elizabeth. Henry dethroned the Pope, but continued to burn for heresy. Mary restored the Pope, and continued to burn for heresy. Elizabeth was excommunicated by the Pope, and hung as many priests as she could lay hands on for treason. Henry robbed the Church, and his devout daughter Mary confirmed the robbery, and quieted the thieves in their sacrilegious possessions. Elizabeth, not content with the loot of the old Church, levied heavy toll upon all that was left of the property of her new one. Absolutism in the realm of Faith and Morals and Ecclesiastical Law bore a sway as undisputed as it was disastrous. Henry destroyed the foundations of the old Church with a "Hoc volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas " ; and Mary restored them, as Father Pollen says, " by an exercise of the same royal power which had previously abrogated it,' and as for Elizabeth, she begins her reign with a proclamation forbidding all preaching, either by Catholic or Protestant, "as the question of religion was to remain untouched until it was decided in Parliament," and what a Tudor Parliament was we do not need to be told. Our author, naturally enough, is interested in the question: What was the religious feeling of the country in 1559? He thinks the great mass of the population, at all events outside London, was Catholic at heart-and who can doubt that in a kind of way vast numbers of honest folk still would have wished to cling to the service of the Mass and other ceremonies of the old religion? On rare occasions, not perhaps without instigation, these pious folk indicated their attachment to these old forms by overt acts of disorder. None the less, it is true, as Father Pollen not only admits but affirms, that indifference both in the ranks of the clergy and the laity prevailed: Nowhere now could you see Mass, nowhere sacraments, nowhere profession of Catholicity. The great Church had collapsed almost like a house of cards; and, saddest of all, the great mass of the clergy had allowed themselves to be impressed into the enemies' army. Unwilling but submissive, they read the schismatical homilies from the altar at which they prayed according to a rite which in their hearts they condemned. There is no getting away from the shame of this great defection (p. 39). The same puzzle has lately arisen in the late Russian Revolution, where the Greek Church seems to have collapsed like another house of cards. Did the Russian moujik really care for 66 Holy Russia "? However, as our author is soon able to point out, it is one thing to pull down a Church, to hang its priests, and forbid its Sacraments, and another to destroy it and the melancholy that took |