suppressed until 1571 a phrase which would certainly have repelled them; but, even when this phrase was omitted, Beza would have approved the formula, and it would have given greater satisfaction at Geneva and Heidelberg than at Jena or Tübingen. A papistical controversialist tried to insert a wedge which would separate a Lutheran Parker from an Helvetic Grindal; but we find Parker hoping that Calvin, or, if, not Calvin, then Vermigli will lead the Reformers at Poissy, and the only English Bishop to whom Lutheran leanings can be safely attributed held aloof from his colleagues and was for a while excommunicate. It was left for Elizabeth herself to suggest by cross and candles that (as her German correspondents put it) she was living "according to the divine light, that is, the Confession of Augsburg," while someone assured the Queen of Navarre that these obnoxious symbols had been removed from the royal chapel. As to "the sacrifices of masses," there could be no doubt. The anathema of Trent was frankly encountered by "blasphemous fable." Elizabeth knew that her French ambassador remained ostentatiously seated when the Host was elevated, for " reverencing the sacrament was contrary to the usages established by law in England."
Another rock was avoided. Ever since 1532 there had been in the air a project for an authoritative statement of English Canon Law. In Edward's day that project took the shape of a book (Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum) of which Cranmer and Peter Martyr were the chief authors, but which had not received the King's sanction when death took him. During Elizabeth's first years we hear of it again; but nothing decisive was done. The draft code that has come down to us has every fault that it could have. In particular, its list of heresies is terribly severe, and apparently (but this has been doubted) the obstinate heretic is to go the way that Cranmer went: not only the Romanists but some at least of the Lutherans might have been relinquished to the secular arm. Howbeit, the scheme fell through. Under a statute of Henry VIII so much of the old Canon Law as was not contrariant nor repugnant to the Word of God or to Acts of the English Parliament was to be administered by the Courts of the English Church. Practically this meant, that the officials of the Bishops had a fairly free hand in declaring law as they went along. They were civilians; the academic study of the Canon Law had been prohibited; they were not in the least likely to contest the right of the temporal legislature to regulate spiritual affairs. And the hands of the Queen's ecclesiastical commissioners were free indeed. Large as were the powers with which she could entrust them by virtue of the Act of Supremacy, she professedly gave them yet larger powers, for they might punish offenders by fine and imprisonment, and this the old Courts of the Church could not do. A constitutional question of the first magnitude was to arise at this point. But during the early years of the reign the commissioners
