Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/352

 338 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 55. "When driven from legitimate trade, the English mer- chants, instead of flying at the Government as the Spanish ambassador had hoped, flew upon the spoils of those who forced them to abandon it. They swarmed out over the world, treating it like Pistol, as the oyster which their sword would open. Their rights were in their cannon, their title to their booty in their strength to win it. Careless of life and careless of justice as Alva's warriors themselves, they were their fit antagon- ists in the great battle between the dying and the rising creeds. But there was another form, quieter, purer, nobler far, in England in which the new ideas were developing themselves, and that was Puritanism. The Church of England was a latitudinarian experiment, a contrivance to enable men of opposing creeds to live together with- out shedding each other's blood. It was not intended, and it was not possible, that Catholics or Protestants should find in its formulas all that they required. The services were deliberately made elastic ; comprehending in the form of positive statement only what all Christians agreed in believing, while opportunities were left open by the rubric to vary the ceremonial according to the taste of the congregations. The management lay with the local authorities in town or parish : where the people were Catholics the Catholic aspect could be in ado prominent; where Popery was a bugbear, the people were not disturbed by the obtrusion of doctrines which they had outgrown. In itself it pleased no party or section. To the heated controversialist its chief merit