The Reformation had to do its work in due course, in temporal as well
as in spiritual things, in the visible as in the invisible world;
for the Stuart princes asserted in temporal matters the powers which
the Pope had claimed in spiritual. They, too, would acknowledge the
sanctity of no law above the will of princes—would vindicate, even
with the sword and scaffold, their own powers to dispense with laws.
So the second great revolt of the English nation came, against all
visible earthly sovereignty in things temporal. Puritanism arose,
and Charles went to the block, and the proclamation went forth that
henceforth the nation would have no king but Christ; that he was the
only possible king for the English nation from that time forth, in
temporal as well as spiritual things, and that his kingdom had actually
come. The national conscience was not with the Puritans as it had been
with Henry at the time of the Reformation, but the deepest part of
their protest has held its own, and gained strength ever since, from
their day to ours. The religious source and origin of it was, no doubt,
thrust aside at the Revolution, but the sagacious statesmen of 1688
were as clear as the soldiers of Ireton and Ludlow in their resolve,
that no human will should override the laws and customs of the realm.
So they, too, required of their sovereigns that they should “solemnly
promise and swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England,
and the dominions thereto belonging, according to the statutes in
Parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same; ... that
they will to the utmost of their power maintain the laws of God, the
true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion
established by law.” The same protest in a far different form came
forth again at the great crisis at the end of the eighteenth century,
when the revolutionary literature of France had set Europe in a blaze,
and the idea of the rights of man had shrunk back, and merged in the
will of the mob. Against this assertion of this form of self-will again
the English nation took resolute ground. They had striven for a law
which was above popes and kings, to which these must conform on pain of
suppression. They strove for it now against mob-law, against popular
will, openly avowing its own omnipotence, and making the tyrant’s
claim to do what was right in its own eyes. And so through our whole
history the same thread has run. The nation, often confusedly and with
stammering accents, but still on the whole consistently, has borne the
same witness as the Church, that as God is living and reigning there
must be a law, the expression of his will, at the foundation of all
human society, which priests, kings, rulers, people must discover,
acknowledge, obey.