mere knaves. It is common in all such cases, that what appears to a man of moderate views to be but a prudent avoidance of unnecessary offence, will seem to a zealot an unworthy sacrifice of truth to mere worldly expediency; and Elizabeth's revisors had certainly one precedent at least for their moderation, in the case of the Preface to Edward VI.'s Ordinal, which, though suggesting and almost implying the necessity of episcopal ordination, carefully abstains from actually asserting it. This document was composed at a time when there was certainly no thought of conciliating Catholics, but there was, on the other hand, a very strong desire to avoid anything like a direct condemnation of the foreign Protestant Churches. The above words may also have been introduced with a view to conciliate the Lutherans rather than the Catholics. One of Elizabeth's bishops, namely, Cheney of Gloucester, is said to have held Lutheran opinions.
Whatever may have been Elizabeth's private tastes and sentiments, there is no room for doubting the fact that her Visitors did, in the latter half of the year 1559, cause the removal of altars, roods, and other similar ornaments from the churches in London generally, and particularly from St. Paul's; and when this fact is taken in connection with the Acts passed in the previous Parliament, and the Injunctions issued by the Queen on her own authority, there can remain no reasonable doubt of the thoroughness of the Reformation in these her first years.
We may criticise Elizabeth's consistency as much as we please in that, while retaining the crucifix in her own chapel, she yet permitted the destruction of roods and altars in Westminster and St. Paul's; but there are small incidents which seem to point clearly to a genuinely
