Page:Church and State under the Tudors.djvu/267

 one. As usual, however, the doctrine which was only now beginning to excite attention continued to spread, and led, as we know, in the following reign, to serious disorders and difficulties. And thus, with the constantly attempted suppression of her adversaries on the one side and the other, in these last years of Elizabeth's reign, the Church of England was more and more differentiating herself from the Roman Church on the one hand, and from the Churches of the Reformation on the other; but as she was forced into this position in the first instance mainly by the individual will of the sovereign, so she has maintained it ever since by close connection with and intimate dependence on the existing civil power for the time being. But the consideration of the total results of Elizabeth's reign may well require a chapter to itself.