Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/208

188 Yet still the genius of change went onward, caring little for human opposition. To move with it, or to move against it, affected little the velocity with which the English world was swept into the New Era. The truth stole into men's minds they knew not how. The King, as we have seen, began to shrink from persecution, and to shelter suspected persons from orthodox cruelty. The Parliament which would not yet alter the heresy law, tempered the action of it, and was rather contented to retard a movement which threatened to be too wildly precipitate than attempt any more to arrest it.

Next to the Bible, there are few things which have affected the character of the modern English more deeply than the Liturgy. The beautiful roll of its language mingles with the memories of childhood; it is the guide of our dawning thought, and accompanies us through each stage of our life with its chaste ceremonials from the font to the edge of the grave. Having been composed at a period when old and new beliefs were contending for supremacy, it contains some remnants of opinions which have no longer perhaps a place in our convictions; but the more arduous problems of speculation are concealed behind a purposed vagueness which shrinks from definition; and the spirit of the Prayer Book is the spirit of piety more than of theology, of wisdom more than of dogma.

Thus, although as an historical document the Liturgy is valuable as a picture of the minds of the English Reformers, it is with a keener interest that we watch the first germs of it passing into the form with