Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/104

 of their leaders were put to death. The Armada came to the Channel crowned with the papal blessing, carrying a whole host of priests and monks on board, and having loads of instruments of torture used by the Spanish Inquisition. "Sed Deus afflavit et dissipati sunt." God breathed on them and they all were scattered.

Elizabeth was a strong woman, and irreligious though perhaps she was, well skilled in equivocation and lying, as she certainly was, yet she did a good work for England. She has made it what it is to-day by her splendid laws, and it was not without reason that she was lovingly styled "The Good Queen Bess."

Now I have completed the general outline of the work of the Reformation in England. Let us speak for a short time of the benefits of this movement to the Church of England.

The Reformation, for one thing, gave us the Holy Scriptures in our language. It ordered that the services of the Church should be said in our own tongue, instead of in a language which none but the learned could understand. In addition to this there were three other things which the Reformation did for us. It, once and for all, effectually excluded the Pope from claiming any authority over the Church of England. It gave us our magnificent Book of Common Prayer. It also gave us a theological document, the Thirty-nine Articles. I will speak briefly on each of these three benefits, and, for the sake of clearness, I must repeat some things which I have said before.

Instead of the Pope the Sovereign was made the Supreme Governor in England. This decision was only taking us