elected sovereign of the three kingdoms; though Sweden, adhering to her heroic deliverer, and the heir of her ancient kings, acknowledged alone the sovereignty of Gustavus Vasa (1523). The bull of Leo X., and its bloody consequences, were sufficient to convert Sweden and Denmark to the tenets of the reformed religion. Gustavus enjoyed his sceptre many years in peace (till 1560), and contributed greatly to the happiness and prosperity of his kingdom.

6. As early as 1525, the states of Saxony, Brunswick, Hesse Cassel, and the cities of Strasburg and Frankfort, had embraced the doctrines of the Reformation. Luther had now a species of spiritual control, which he exercised by the medium of a synod of six reformers. His successful example gave rise to reformers of different kinds, whose doctrines were less consonant to reason or good policy. Two fanatics of Saxony, Storck and Muncer, condemned infant baptism (hence termed Anabaptists). They preached up universal equality and freedom of religious opinion; but, with singular inconsistency, attempted to propagate their doctrines by the sword. They were defeated at Mulhausen (1525), and Muncer died on a scaffold; but the party afterwards acquired new courage (1534). They surprised Munster, expelled the bishop, and anointed for their king a tailor, named Jack of Leiden, who defended the city with the most desperate courage, but fell at length, with his party, under the superior force of regular troops (1535). The Anabaptists, thus sanguinary in their original tenets and practices, have long ago become peaceable and harmless subjects.

7. The united power of the pope and emperor found it impossible to check the progress of the Reformation. The diet of Spires (1525) proposed articles of accommodation between the Lutherans and Catholics. Fourteen cities of Germany, and several of the electors, protested formally against those articles; and hence the Lutheran party acquired the name of Protestants. They presented to the assembly at Augsburg (1530) a confession of their faith, drawn up by Melanchthon, which is the standard of the Protestant doctrines.

8. The virtuous lives and conduct of the Protestant leaders, compared with those of the higher clergy among the Catholics, formed a contrast very favourable to the progress of the Reformation. The solemn manner in which the states of Switzerland, and particularly Geneva, had proceeded, in calmly discussing every point of controversy, and yielding only to the force of rational conviction, attracted the respect of all Europe. John Calvin, a Frenchman, becoming a zealous convert to the new doctrines, was the first who gave them a systematic form by his Institutions, and enforced their authority by the establishment of synods, consistories, and deacons. The magistracy of Geneva gave these ordinances the authority of the law; and they were adopted by six of the Swiss cantons by the Protestants of France,

and the Presbyterians of Scotland and England. The ablest advocates of Calvin will find it difficult to vindicate him from the charge of intolerance, and the spirit of persecution; but these, which are the vices or defects of the individual, attach not in the least to the doctrines of the Reformation, which are subject to the test of reason, and can derive no blemish or dishonour from the men who propagated them, or even the motives which might influence some of their earliest supporters. This observation applies more particularly to the subject of the ensuing section.

SECTION VI.

OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND UNDER HENRY VIII. AND HIS SUCCESSORS.

1. WICKLIFFE (b. 1324, d. 1387), in the middle of the fourteenth century, by an attack on the doctrines of transubstantiation, indulgences, and auricular confession, and yet more by translation of the Scriptures into the vernacular tongue, had prepared the minds of the people of England for a revolution in religious opinions; but his professed followers were not numerous. The intemperate passions of Henry VIII. were the immediate cause of the Reformation in England. He had been married for eighteen years to Catharine of Spain, aunt of Charles V., by whom he had three children-one of them, Mary, afterwards queen of England; when, falling in love with Anne Boleyn, he solicited Clement VII. for a divorce from Catharine, on the score of her former marriage to his elder brother, Arthur. The pope found himself in the painful dilemma of either affronting the emperor, or mortally offending the king of England. In hope that the king's passion might cool, he spun off the time by preliminaries and negotiations; but to no purpose. Henry was resolutely bent on accomplishing his wishes. The Sorbonne and other French universities gave an opinion in his favour; and, armed with this sanction, he caused Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, to annul his marriage (1533). The repudiated queen gave place to Anne Boleyn. On this occasion, Wolsey, the minister of Henry, lost the favour of his master, by opposing, as was believed, his darling measure.

2. Clement VII., from this specimen of the wayward temper of Henry, resolved to keep well with the emperor, and issued his bull, condemnatory of the sentence of the archbishop of Canterbury. Henry immediately proclaimed himself head of the church of England. The parliament ratified his title; and the pope's authority was instantly suppressed in all his dominions (1534). He proceeded to abolish the monasteries, and confiscate their treasures and revenues, erecting out of the latter six new bishoprics (Westminster, Oxford, Peterborough, Bristol, Chester, and

Gloucester) and a college (Trinity College, Cambridge). The immoralities of the monks were sedulously exposed; the forgery of relics, false miracles, &c., held up to the popular scorn.

3. Yet Henry, though a reformer, and pope in his own kingdom, had not renounced the religion of Rome: he was equally an enemy to the tenets of Luther and Calvin, as to the pope's jurisdiction in England. Inconstant in his affections, and a stranger to all humanity, he removed Anne Boleyn from the throne to the scaffold (1536), to gratify a new passion for Jane Seymour, a maid of honour, who happily died about a year after. To her succeeded Anne of Cleves (1540), whom he divorced in nine months, to make way for Catharine Howard. She underwent the same fate with Anne Boleyn, on a similar suspicion of infidelity to his bed (1544). His sixth wife, Catharine Parr, with difficulty retained her hazardous elevation; but had the good fortune to survive the tyrant.

4. On the death of Henry VIII. (1547), and the accession of his son Edward VI., the Protestant religion prevailed in England, and was favoured by the sovereign; but he died at the early age of fifteen (1553); and the sceptre passed to the hands of his sister Mary, an intolerant Catholic, and most cruel persecutor of the Protestants. In her reign, which was but of five years' duration, above 800 miserable victims were burned at the stake, martyrs to their religious opinions. Mary inherited a congenial spirit with her husband, Philip II. of Spain, whose intolerance cost him the loss of a third part of his dominions.

5. Mary was succeeded (1558) by her sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, a Protestant, and the more zealous from an abhorrence of the character of her predecessor. In her reign, the religion of England became stationary. The hierarchy was established in its present form, by archbishops, bishops, priests, and deacons-the king being by law the head of the church. The liturgy had been settled in the reign of Edward VI. The canons are agreeable chiefly to the Lutheran tenets. Of the Reformation in Scotland, we shall afterwards treat under a separate section.

SECTION VII.

OF THE DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF AMERICA.

1. AMONG those great events which distinguished the age of Charles V., was the conquest of Mexico by Ferdinando Cortez, and of Peru by the Pizarros. The discovery of America had preceded the first of these events about twenty-seven years; but we have postponed the mention of it till now, that the whole may be shortly treated in connexion.

Christopher Columbus, a Genoese, a man of enterprising spirit, having in vain solicited encouragement from his native state, from Portugal, and from England, to attempt discoveries in the western seas, applied to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, who furnished him with three small ships, ninety men, and a few thousand ducats for the charges of his voyage (1492). After thirty-three days' sail from the Canaries, he discovered San Salvador, and soon after, the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola; whence returning, accompanied by some of the natives, some presents in gold, and curiosities of the country, he was treated by the Spaniards with the highest honours, and soon supplied with a suitable armament for the prosecution of his discoveries. In his second voyage, he discovered the Caribbees and Jamaica (1493). In a third voyage, he descried the continent of America, within ten degrees of the line, towards the isthmus of Panama (1498). To this continent the geographer Americus, who, five years after, followed the footsteps of Columbus, had the undeserved honour to giving his name.

2. The inhabitants of America and its islands were a race of men quite new to the Europeans. They are of the colour of copper, and have no beard. In some quarters, as in Mexico and Peru, the Spaniards found a flourishing empire, and a people polished, refined, and luxurious. In others, man was a naked savage, the member of a wandering tribe, whose sole occupation was hunting or war. The savages of the continent were characterized alike by their cruelty to their enemies, their contempt of death, and their generous affection for their friends. The inhabitants of the islands were a milder race, of gentler manners, and less hardy conformation of body and mind. The larger animals, as the horse, the cow, were unknown in America.

3. To the inhabitants of those new discovered countries, which were believed to contain inexhaustible treasures, the Spaniards, under the pretence of religion and policy, conducted themselves with the most shocking inhumanity. The rack, the scourge, the faggot, were employed to convert them to Christianity. They were hunted down like wild beasts, or burned alive in their thickets and fastnesses. Hispaniola, containing three millions of inhabitants, and Cuba, containing above six hundred thousand, were, in a few years, absolutely depopulated. It was now resolved to explore the continent; and Ferdinando Cortez, with eleven ships and 617 men, sailed for that purpose from Cuba in 1519. Landing at Tabasco, he advanced, though with a brave opposition from the natives, into the heart of the country. The state of Tlascala, after ineffectual resistance, became the ally of the Spaniards; and on their approach to Mexico, the terror of their name had paved the way for an easy conquest.

4. The Mexican empire, though founded little more than a century before this period, had arisen to great splendour. Its sovereign, Montezuma, received the invaders with the reverence

due to superior beings. But a short acquaintance opened the eyes of the Mexicans; and finding nothing in the Spaniards beyond what was human, they were daring enough to attack, and put to death a few of them. The intrepid Cortez immediately marched to the palace with fifty men, and putting the emperor in irons, carried him off prisoner to his camp. The astonished Mexicans submitted to every term, and agreed to redeem their sovereign by the surrender of all the imperial treasures.

Το

5. Velasquez, governor of Cuba, jealous of Cortez, attempted to supersede him, by despatching a superior army to the continent; but the latter defeating his troops, compelled them to join his own banners. In an attack from the Mexicans for the rescue of their sovereign, Montezuma, having offered to mediate between the Mexicans and their enemies, was indignantly put to death by one of his own subjects. The whole empire, under its new sovereign, Guatimozin, was now armed against the Spaniards; and while the plains were covered with their archers and spearmen, the lake of Mexico was filled with armed canoes. oppose the latter, the Spaniards built a few vessels under the walls of their city, and soon evinced their superiority on both elements to their feeble foe. The monarch was taken prisoner by the officers of Cortez; and refusing to discover his treasures, was stretched naked on burning coals. Soon after, on the discovery of a conspiracy against the Spaniards, the wretched Guatimozin, with all the princes of his blood, were executed on a gibbet. This was the last blow to the power of the Mexicans, and Cortez was now absolute master of the whole empire.

6. In the same year (1527), Diego d'Almagro, and Francis Pizarro, with 250 foot, sixty horse, and twelve small pieces of cannon, landed in Peru, a large and flourishing empire, governed by an ancient race of monarchs, named Incas. The inca Atabalipa receiving the Spaniards with reverence, they immediately required him to embrace the Christian faith, and surrender all his dominions to the emperor Charles V., who had obtained a gift of them from the pope. The proposal being misunderstood, or received with hesitation, Pizarro seized the monarch as his prisoner, while his troops massacred 5000 of the Peruvians on the spot. The empire was now plundered of prodigious treasures in gold and precious stones; but Atabalipa, being suspected of concealing a part from his insatiable invaders, was solemnly tried as a criminal, and strangled at a stake.

7. The courage of the Spaniards surpassed even their inhumanity. D'Almagro marched 500 leagues through continual opposition to Cusco, and penetrated across the Cordilleras into Chili, two degrees beyond the southern tropic. He was slain in a civil war between him and his associate Francis Pizarro, who was soon after assassinated by the party of his rival. At this time (1545) the Spaniards discovered the inexhaustible silver mines of Potosi, which they compelled the Peruvians to work for