Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/170

 I S 6 REIGN OF ELIZABETH [CH. 53- gladly come to some understanding with other sove- reigns on these matters. As to the reunion of Christen- dom, there was nothing for which she was more anxious. There would be no difficulty with her. She had told Cardinal Chatillon that whatever he and his party might think of the abomination of going to mass, she would herself sooner have heard a thousand than have caused the least of the million villanies which had been com- mitted on account of it. 1 Remarkable words, throwing the truest light now attainable upon the spiritual convictions of Elizabeth. They might be called wise from the modern point of view, to which varieties of religious forms seem like words in different languages expressing the same idea. For men to kill each other about a piece of bread ap- pears, when so stated, the supreme culmination of human folly. Yet Knox and Coligny were, after all, more right than the Queen of England. The idol was nothing, and the thing offered to the idol was nothing ; but the mass in the sixteenth century meant the stake, the rack, the gibbet, the Inquisition dungeons, the Devil enthroned upon the judgment-seat of the world, with steel, cord, and fire to execute his sentences. Chapin meanwhile continued to sue for an agree- 1 'Et quant a cb.ercb.er 1'union de 1'Eglise, Dieu sc,avoit qu'ello avoit souvcnt envoye devers FEmpereur pour Fen soliciter, et qu'elle ne s'y nuulroit jamais opiniastre ; mesmes avoit diet a M. le Cardinal Chatillon quc quoique on tint en leur religion pour une grande abomination d'aller a la Messe, qu'elle aymeroit mieulx en avoir ouy mille que d' avoir cste cause de la moindre mechancete d'ung million qui s'cstoient commises par ces troubles." La Mothe auRoy, December 10 : Depcches, vol. ii.