from both motives, zealously dwelt upon the deformities which, they maintained, equally stained the doctrine and worship of the church. This spirit not being, latterly, subdued by fears about the church property which the aristocracy had acquired, for in the progress of this reign it was too well confirmed by time to be recovered by any union between the sovereign and the more zealous Catholics, was calculated to bring about a greater change in religion; but it was counteracted, in the mean time, by a terror of wild sects, to whom levelling principles were ascribed, and the evident ambition of the leading clergy who espoused it, as well as by the necessity of entrusting great powers to the executive, both to secure the Queen to the Protestant cause, and to enable her to defeat the designs of the Romish party, encouraged and assisted by foreign princes.

Episcopal government, while it gave considerable livings to a few, left the great body of the clergy in poverty; and, by the system of patronage, and the power of the bishops, defeated the ambitious hopes of the aspiring, who conceived themselves qualified to take a lead in religious affairs. These were more inclined to owe their promotion to the popular suffrage, than to the appointment either of the sovereign or of individual subjects, both from the different kind of qualities likely to recommend them, and from a hope of vast power, and of recovering by popular assistance, the church property, out of the sacrilegious hands that detained it, as well as of exempting their body from

every species of tax. From this, as well as, it is to be hoped, from piety, they maintained that the only true church was the Presbyterian; that the church government of England was unlawful and false, the offices of that church being invented by the magistrate, "and so no members of Christ's body :" "that she” (the Queen) "injured the church to keep the true officers out; that she maimed and deformed the body of Christ; that every Christian magistrate was bound to receive the government by pastors, doctors, elders, and deacons, into the church within his dominions, whatsoever inconveniences might follow from it; that those who withstood it, held it to be lawful for her majesty and the state to bid God to battle against them." "That none could be good and sound subjects that defended the present false, bastardly, unchristian, ecclesiastical establishment-and that they who did so were traitors to God and his word." They therefore insisted that all bishoprics and deanries should be dissolved; that all patronages should be taken from her Majesty and others, and all spiritual offices be filled by popular election, or by their elderships; while they declared it to be sacrilege to detain from the church the property which had belonged to the religious houses: "That the ministers and others of the ecclesiastical function ought to be exempt from paying first-fruits, tenths, subsidies, and other impositions: like as the priests of Egypt were even under a heathen king." That ecclesiastical laws should be made by their synods and assemblies, and ecclesiastical causes, it is

not easy to determine what they would have comprehended under this head, be cognizable only by their eldership, consistories, or presbyteries, then, on appeal, by the provincial courts, and finally, by their assemblies. "That all persons, as well as meaner persons, must willingly be ruled and governed, and must obey those whom God has set over them —that is," observes the writer, supposed to be the Lord Keeper Puckering-"the just authority of ecclesiastical magistrates, and must lick the dust of the feet of the church: That her Majesty, being a child of the church, is subject to censures of excommunication by their elderships as well as any other people: That no man ought to aid, comfort, salute, or obey, an excommunicated person; and, that as long as any person is excommunicated, he cannot exercise the magistracy." This doctrine, by natural inference, arrogated for the church the right of deposing princes and other magistrates, since a sentence of excommunication was attend. ed with that effect; but these preachers expressed their sentiments about deposing princes, by an act of the estates, or parliament particularly, and circumscribing their power, nay, altering the whole frame of the constitution, in language far more unequivocal. Their intolerance

Strype's Annals, Vol. iv. No. 94, et seq. The language of the Puritans against the established ministry, whom they called the supposed ministry, is extraordinary: "Will you come unto them and see what they are? Alas! you can behold here no other sight, but a multitude of desperate and forlorn atheists, that have put the evil day far from them, and endeavoured to persuade their own hearts, that God's holy ministry, and the saving health of men's souls, are matters

may be inferred from the consequences which they wished to attach to excommunication; but they did not stop there. They insisted that the judicial laws of Moses, for punishing certain offences by death, ought to be observed; and that neither prince nor law, could in justice save the lives of wilful offenders, such as, blasphemers

not to be regarded. You shall find amongst this crew, nothing else but a troop of bloody soul-murtherers, sacrilegious church-robbers, and such as have made themselves fat with the blood of men's souls, and the utter ruin of the church. The whole endeavour of which cursed generation, ever since the beginning of her Majesty's reign, hath tended no other way than to make a sure hand to keep the church in bondage; that being bound in their hands, it should not dare, for fear of being murthered, to seek for liberty. Of these men contained within the number of proud and ambitious prelates, our lord archbishop and bishops, god-less and murdering non-residents, profane and ignorant, idol shepherds and dumb dogs, I will say no more in this place but this-How long, Lord, just and true, dost thou suffer thine inheritance to be polluted and laid waste by this uncircumcised generation? O! thou that hearest the prayer," &c.-" with speed thrust out these caterpillars as one man out of our church: and let the memory of them be forgotten in Israel for ever." Strype's Life of Whitgift, p. 346, 347. See also Neal, vol. i. p. 367, for a proof of the virulent invective employed by the non-conformists. Thus spoke the puritans of the bishops, and in this they followed the example of all parties. The papists lamented the decay of all goodness, civil subordination, and learning. "But obedience is gone," said Dr. Feckenham in 1559, "humility and meekness clean abolished, virtuous, chaste, and strait living abandoned, as though they had not been heard of in the realm; all degrees and kinds being desirous of fleshly and carnal liberty, whereby the springalls and children are degenerate from their natural fathers, the servants contentious of their master's commandments, the subjects disobedient unto God and all superior powers." Scott's Somers' Tracts, vol. i. p. 84. The papists called the people " swine, and rude, and rash people." Jewel, p. 391, "It is thought," says Jewel in his answer to Harding, to be the surest fence and strongest ward for that religion, that they" (the people)" should be kept still in ignorance and know nothing.

Mr.

of God's name, conjurers, soothsayers, persons possessed of an evil spirit, heretics (a word which, of course, comprehended all who disputed their discipline, doctrine, or laws,) perjured persons, wilful breakers of the Sabbath-day, neglecters of the sacrament without just reason, (in plain English, those who dissented from them in religious matters,) such as are disobedient to parents, or that curse them, incestuous persons, a daughter committing fornication in her father's house, adulterers, all incontinent persons, saving simple fornicators, and all conspirators against any man's life. Some of the offences enumerated are ridiculous, but attributable to the superstition of the age; the punishment proposed for some others is absurdly severe, and, though some of them are, unquestionably, such as must fall under the rigorous chastisement of the laws in every well governed state, yet

Harding both in this place, and also before, calleth them all dogs and swine, as insensible and brute beasts, and void of reason, and able to judge and conceive nothing," p. 406. "Tertullian saith, the heathens, in the time of the primitive church, were wont to point out, in mockery, the God of the Christians with an ass's head, and a booke in his hand, in token that the Christians professed learning, but indeed were asses, rude and ignorant. And do not our adversaries the like this day against all those that professe the gospel of Jesus Christ? And, say they, who are they that favour this way? None but shoemakers, tailors, weavers, prentices, such as never were in the university, but be altogether ignorant and void of learning." Id. p. 203. The reformers were not behind the Catholics in abuse: even Wickliffe's charges against the popish clergy, that they debauched the wives of the nobles, gentry, &c. "promising to make answer to God for their sins," &c. were revived. Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. iii. p. 112. et seq. See Annals, vol. i. p. 123, in proof of the right which was claimed to depose princes, who, it was said, all owed their title only to election.