Thus, at the very moment at which a republican spirit began to manifest itself strongly in the Parliament and in the country, the claims of the monarch took a monstrous form which would have disgusted the proudest and most arbitrary of those who had preceded him on the throne.

tinction between hereditary and elec- | aspired to his favour, and made rapid tive monarchies, or between monarchies progress among the clergy of the Esand republics. Indeed most of the tablished Church. predecessors of James would, from personal motives, have regarded the patriarchal theory of government with aversion. William Rufus, Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry the Fourth, Henry the Fifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third, and Henry the Seventh, had all reigned in defiance of the strict rule of descent. A grave doubt hung over the legitimacy both of Mary and of Elizabeth. It was impossible that both Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could have been lawfully married to Henry the Eighth; and the highest authority in the realm had pronounced that neither was so. The Tudors, far from considering the law of succession as a divine and unchangeable institution, were constantly tampering with it. Henry the Eighth obtained an act of parliament, giving him power to leave the crown by will, and actually made a will to the prejudice of the royal family of Scotland. Edward the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a similar power, with the full approbation of the most eminent Reformers. Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to grave objection, and unwilling to admit even a reversionary right in her rival and enemy the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament to pass a law, enacting that whoever should deny the competency of the reigning sovereign, with the assent of the Estates of the realm, to alter the succession, should suffer death as a traitor. But the situation of James was widely different from that of Elizabeth. Far inferior to her in abilities and in popularity, regarded by the English as an alien, and excluded from the throne by the testament of Henry the Eighth, the King of Scots was yet the undoubted heir of William the Conquerer and of Egbert. He had, therefore, an obvious interest in inculcating the superstitious notion that birth confers rights anterior to law, and unalterable by law. It was a notion, moreover, well suited to his intellect and temper. It soon found many advocates among those who

James was always boasting of his skill in what he called kingcraft; and yet it is hardly possible even to imagine a course more directly opposed to all the rules of kingcraft than that which he followed. The policy of wise rulers has always been to disguise strong acts under popular forms. It was thus that Augustus and Napoleon established absolute monarchies, while the public regarded them merely as eminent citizens invested with temporary magistracies. The policy of James was the direct reverse of theirs. He enraged and alarmed his Parliament by constantly telling them that they held their privileges merely during his pleasure, and that they had no more business to inquire what he might lawfully do than what the Deity might lawfully do. Yet he quailed before them, abandoned minister after minister to their vengeance, and suffered them to tease him into acts directly opposed to his strongest inclinations. Thus the indignation excited by his claims and the scorn excited by his concessions went on growing together. By his fondness for worthless minions, and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny and rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person and manners, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently unkingly. Throughout the whole course of his reign, all the venerable associations by which the throne had long been fenced were gradually losing their strength. During two hundred years all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the single exception of the unfortunate Henry the Sixth, had been strongminded, highspirited,

The se

between

courageous, and of princely bearing. and new controversies of still greater Almost all had possessed abilities above importance were added to the old subthe ordinary level. It was no light jects of dispute. thing that, on the very eve of the de- The founders of the Anglican Church cisive struggle between our Kings and had retained episcopacy as an ancient, their Parliaments, royalty should be a decent, and a convenient ecclesiastical exhibited to the world stammering, polity, but had not declared that form slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, of church government to be of divine trembling at a drawn sword, and talk-institution. We have already seen how ing in the style alternately of a buffoon low an estimate Cranmer had formed and of a pedagogue. of the office of a Bishop. In the reign of Elizabeth, Jewel, Cooper, Whitgift, and other eminent doctors defended prelacy, as innocent, as useful, as what the state might lawfully establish, as what, when established by the state, was entitled to the respect of every citizen. But they never denied that a Christian community without a Bishop might be a pure Church. On the contrary, they regarded the Protestants of the Continent as of the same household of faith with themselves. Englishmen in England were indeed bound to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop, as they were bound to acknowledge the authority of the Sheriff and of the Coroner: but the obligation was purely local. An English churchman, nay even an

the Church and the Puritans becomes wider.

In the meantime the religious dissensions, by which, from the paration days of Edward the Sixth, the Protestant body had been distracted, had become more formidable than ever. The interval which had separated the first generation of Puritans from Cranmer and Jewel was small indeed when compared with the interval which separated the third generation of Puritans from Laud and Hammond. While the recollection of Mary's cruelties was still fresh, while the power of the Roman Catholic party still inspired apprehension, while Spain still retained ascendency and aspired to universal dominion, all the reformed sects knew that they had a strong common interest and a deadly common enemy. The animosity which they felt towards each other was languid when compared with the animosity which they all felt towards Rome. Conformists and Nonconformists had heartily joined in enacting penal laws of extreme severity against the Papists. But when more than half a century of undisturbed possession had given confidence to the Established Church, when nine tenths of the nation had become heartily Protestant, when England was at peace with all the world, when there was no danger that Popery would be forced by foreign arms on the nation, when the last confessors who had stood before Bonner had passed away, a change took place in the feeling of the Anglican clergy. Their hostility to the Roman Catholic doctrine and discipline was considerably mitigated. Their dislike of the Puritans, on the other hand, increased daily. The controversies which had from the beginning divided the Protestant party took such e form as made reconciliation hopeless;

"All

* On this subject, Bishop Cooper's language is remarkably clear and strong. He maintains, in his Answer to Martin Marprelate, printed in 1589, that no form of church government is divinely ordained; that Protestant communities, in establishing different forms, have only made a legitimate use of their Christian liberty; and that episcopacy is peculiarly suited to England, because the English constitution is monarchical. those Churches," says the Bishop, "in which the Gospell, in these daies, after great darknesse, was first renewed, and the learned men whom God sent to instruct them, I doubt not but have been directed by the Spirite of God to retaine this liberty, that, in external government and other outward orders, they might choose such as they thought in wisefor the state of their countrey and disposition dome and godlinesse to be most convenient of their people. Why then should this liberty that other countreys have used under anie colour be wrested from us? I think it therefore great presumption and boldnesse that some of our nation, and those, whatever they may think of themselves, not of the greatest wisedome and skill, should take upon them to controlle the whole realme, and to binde both

prince and people in respect of conscience to alter the present state, and tie themselves to a certain platforme devised by some of our neighbours, which, in the judgment of many wise and godly persons, is most unfit for the state of a Kingdome.”

English prelate, if he went to Holland, But a new race of divines was conformed without scruple to the es- already rising in the Church of Engtablished religion of Holland. Abroad land. In their view the episcopal the ambassadors of Elizabeth and James office was essential to the welfare of a went in state to the very worship which Christian society and to the efficacy of Elizabeth and James persecuted at the most solemn ordinances of relihome, and carefully abstained from gion. To that office belonged certain decorating their private chapels after high and sacred privileges, which no the Anglican fashion, lest scandal human power could give or take away. should be given to weaker brethren. A Church might as well be without the An instrument is still extant by which doctrine of the Trinity, or the doctrine the Primate of all England, in the year of the Incarnation, as without the 1582, authorised a Scotch minister, or- apostolical orders; and the Church of dained, according to the laudable forms Rome, which, in the midst of all her of the Scotch Church, by the Synod of corruptions, had retained the apostolical East Lothian, to preach and administer orders, was nearer to primitive purity the sacraments in any part of the pro- than those reformed societies which had vince of Canterbury.* In the year rashly set up, in opposition to the 1603, the Convocation solemnly recog-divine model, a system invented by nised the Church of Scotland, a Church men. in which episcopal control and epis- In the days of Edward the Sixth copal ordination were then unknown, as and of Elizabeth, the defenders of the a branch of the Holy Catholic Church Anglican ritual had generally contented of Christ.t It was even held that themselves with saying that it might Presbyterian ministers were entitled to be used without sin, and that, thereplace and voice in ecumenical councils. fore, none but a perverse and undutiWhen the States General of the United ful subject would refuse to use it when Provinces convoked at Dort a synod of enjoined to do so by the magistrate. doctors not episcopally ordained, an Now, however, that rising party which English Bishop and an English Dean, claimed for the polity of the Church a commissioned by the head of the Eng-celestial origin began to ascribe to her lish Church, sate with those doctors, services a new dignity and importance. preached to them, and voted with them | It was hinted that, if the established on the gravest questions of theology. Nay, many English benefices were held by divines who had been admitted to the ministry in the Calvinistic form used on the Continent; nor was reordination by a Bishop in such cases then thought necessary, or even lawful.§

Joseph Hall, then dean of Worcester, and afterwards bishop of Norwich, was one of the

commissioners. In his life of himself, he says: "My unworthiness was named for one of the assistants of that honourable, grave, and reverend meeting." To high churchmen this humility will seem not a little out of place.

§ It was by the Act of Uniformity, passed after the Restoration, that persons not episcopally ordained were, for the first time, made incapable of holding benefices. No man was more zealous for this law than Clarendon. "This was new: for there had been many, and at present there were some, who possessed benefices with cure of souls and other ecclesiastical promotions, who had never

Yet he says;

worship had any fault, that fault was extreme simplicity, and that the Re formers had, in the heat of their quarrel with Rome, abolished many ancient ceremonies which might with advantage have been retained. Days and places were again held in mysterious veneration. Some practices which had long been disused, and which were commonly regarded as superstitious mummeries, were revived. Paintings and carvings, which had escaped the fury of the first generation of Protestants, became the objects of a respect such as to many seemed idolatrous.

No part of the system of the old Church had been more detested by the received orders but in France or Holland; and these men must now receive new ordination, which had been always held unlawful in the Church, or by this act of parliament must be deprived of their livelihood which they enjoyed in the most flourishing and peaceable time of the Church"

the

Reformers than the honour paid to ness which would shock many who, in
celibacy. They held that the doctrine our age, are reputed Calvinists. One
of Rome on this subject had been pro- clergyman, who took the opposite side,
phetically condemned by the apostle and spoke harshly of Calvin, was
Paul, as a doctrine of devils; and they arraigned for his presumption by the
dwelt much on the crimes and scandals University of Cambridge, and escaped
which seemed to prove the justice of punishment only by expressing his
this awful denunciation. Luther had firm belief in the tenets of reproba-
evinced his own opinion in the clearest tion and final perseverance, and his
manner, by espousing a nun. Some sorrow for the offence which he had
of the most illustrious bishops and
priests who had died by fire during
the reign of Mary had left wives and
children. Now, however, it began to
be rumoured that the old monastic
spirit had reappeared in the Church of
England; that there was in high quar-
ters a prejudice against married priests;
that even laymen, who called them-
selves Protestants, had made resolutions
of celibacy which almost amounted to
vows; nay, that a minister of the es-
tablished religion had set up a nun-
nery, in which the psalms were chaunted
at midnight, by a company of virgins
dedicated to God.*

given to pious men by reflecting on the
great French reformer. The school of
divinity of which Hooker was
chief occupies a middle place between
the school of Cranmer and the school
of Laud; and Hooker has, in modern
times, been claimed by the Arminians
as an ally. Yet Hooker pronounced
Calvin to have been a man superior in
wisdom to any other divine that France
had produced, a man to whom thou-
sands were indebted for the knowledge
of divine truth, but who was himself
indebted to God alone. When the
Arminian controversy arose in Hol-
land, the English government and the
English Church lent strong support to
the Calvinistic party; nor is the Eng-
lish name altogether free from the
stain which has been left on that party
by the imprisonment of Grotius and
the judicial murder of Barneveldt.

Nor was this all. A class of questions, as to which the founders of the Anglican Church and the first generation of Puritans had differed little or not at all, began to furnish matter for fierce disputes. The controversies which had divided the Protestant body But, even before the meeting of the in its infancy had related almost exclu- Dutch synod, that part of the Anglican sively to Church government and to clergy which was peculiarly hostile to ceremonies. There had been no serious the Calvinistic Church government quarrel between the contending parties and to the Calvinistic worship had on points of metaphysical theology. begun to regard with dislike the CalThe doctrines held by the chiefs of the vinistic metaphysics; and this feeling hierarchy touching original sin, faith, was very naturally strengthened by the grace, predestination, and election, gross injustice, insolence, and cruelty were those which are popularly called of the party which was prevalent at Calvinistic. Towards the close of Dort. The Arminian doctrine, a docElizabeth's reign, her favourite prelate, trine less austerely logical than that of Archbishop Whitgift, drew up, in the early Reformers, but more agreeconcert with the Bishop of London and other theologians, the celebrated instrument known by the name of the Lambeth Articles. In that instrument the most startling of the Calvinistic doctrines are affirmed with a distinct

*Peckard's Life of Ferrar; The Arminian Nunnery, or a Brief Description of the late erected monastical Place called the Arminian Nunnery, at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, 1641.

able to the popular notions of the divine justice and benevolence, spread fast and wide. The infection soon reached the court. Opinions which, at the time of the accession of James, no clergyman could have avowed without imminent risk of being stripped of his gown, were now the best title to preferment. A divine of that age, who was asked by a simple country gentleman what the Arminians held, an

swered, with as much truth as wit, | had, from the primitive times, comthat they held all the best bishoprics memorated the resurrection of her and deaneries in England.

king, the rebel general who gave the blood of a queen to the dogs, the matron who, in defiance of plighted faith, and of the laws of eastern hospitality, drove the nail into the brain of the fugitive ally who had just fed at her board, and who was sleeping under the shadow of her tent, were proposed as models to Christians suffering under the tyranny of princes and prelates. Morals and manners were subjected to a code resembling that of the synagogue, when the synagogue was in its worst state. The dress, the deportment, the language, the studies, the

Lord, into a Jewish Sabbath. They While the majority of the Anglican sought for principles of jurisprudence clergy quitted, in one direction, the in the Mosaic law, and for precedents position which they had originally occu- to guide their ordinary conduct in the pied, the majority of the Puritan body books of Judges and Kings. Their departed, in a direction diametrically thoughts and discourse ran much on opposite, from the principles and prac-acts which were assuredly not recorded tices of their fathers. The persecution as examples for our imitation. The which the separatists had undergone prophet who hewed in pieces a captive had been severe enough to irritate, but not severe enough to destroy. They had been, not tamed into submission, but baited into savageness and stubbornness. After the fashion of oppressed sects, they mistook their own vindictive feelings for emotions of piety, encouraged in themselves by reading and meditation a disposition to brood over their wrongs, and, when they had worked themselves up into hating their enemies, imagined that they were only hating the enemies of heaven. In the New Testament there was little indeed which, even when perverted by the most disingenuous amusements of the rigid sect were exposition, could seem to countenance regulated on principles not unlike those the indulgence of malevolent passions. of the Pharisees who, proud of their But the Old Testament contained the washed hands and broad phylacteries, history of a race selected by God to be taunted the Redeemer as a sabbathwitnesses of his unity and ministers of breaker and a winebibber. It was a his vengeance, and specially com- sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to manded by him to do many things drink a friend's health, to fly a hawk, which, if done without his special to hunt a stag, to play at chess, to wear command, would have been atrocious lovelocks, to put starch into a ruff, to crimes. In such a history it was not touch the virginals, to read the Fairy difficult for fierce and gloomy spirits to Queen. Rules such as these, rules find much that might be distorted to which would have appeared insupport suit their wishes. The extreme Puri- able to the free and joyous spirit of tans therefore began to feel for the Old Luther, and contemptible to the serene Testament a preference, which, per- and philosophical intellect of Zwingle, haps, they did not distinctly avow threw over all life a more than monaseven to themselves; but which showed tic gloom. The learning and eloquence itself in all their sentiments and by which the great Reformers had been habits. They paid to the Hebrew lan-eminently distinguished, and to which guage a respect which they refused to they had been, in no small measure, that tongue in which the discourses of indebted for their success, were reJesus and the epistles of Paul have come down to us. They baptized their children by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors. In defiance of the express and reiterated declarations of Luther and Calvin, they turned the weekly festival by which the Church

garded by the new school of Protestants with suspicion, if not with aversion. Some precisians had scruples about teaching the Latin grammar, because the names of Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo occurred in it. The fine arts were all but proscribed. The solemn peal of the organ was superstitious.