The movement thus communicated by Luther knew no pause nor end. It soon ceased to be a merely national excitement caused by local circumstances, and became the one great overwhelming question of the time. Every thing was brought into its vortex: however distant might be its starting-point, to this great central idea it was sure to attach itself at last. Involuntarily, unconsciously, unwillingly, every government found that the Reformation formed part of its scheme and policy. One nation, and one only, had the clear eye and firm hand to make it ostensibly, and of its deliberate choice, the guide and landmark in its dangerous and finally triumphant career. This was England,--not when under the degrading domination of its Henry or the heavy hand of its Mary, but under the skilful piloting of the great Elizabeth, the first of rulers who seems to have perceived that submission to a foreign priest is a political error on the part both of kings and subjects, and that occupation by a foreign army is not more subversive of freedom and independence than the supremacy of a foreign Church. Hitherto England had been nearly divided from the whole world, and was merely one of the distant satellites that revolved on the outside of the European system, the centre of which was Rome. She was now to burn with light of her own. The Continent, indeed, at the commencement of the Reformation, seemed almost in a state of dissolution. In 1529 disunion had attained such a pitch in the Empire that the different princes were ranged on hostile sides. At the Diet of Spires, in this year, the name of Protestant had been assumed by the opponents of the excesses and errors of the Church of Rome. At the same time that the religious unity was thus finally thrown off, the Turks were thundering at the Eastern gates of Europe, and Solyman of Constantinople laid siege to Vienna. France was exhausted with her internal troubles. Spain came to the rescue of the outraged faith, and made heresy punishable with death throughout all her dominions. While the Netherlands, against which this was directed, was groaning under this new infliction, disorder seemed to extend over the solid earth itself. There were earthquakes and great storms in many lands. Lisbon was shaken into ruins, with a loss of thirty thousand inhabitants; and the dykes of Holland were overwhelmed by a prodigious rising of the sea, and four hundred thousand people were drowned.