網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

Hopk. If your lordship will deal thus hardly with us, we must give up our places.

A. If you do give them up, I can furnish them with as sufficient men as you are, and yet conformable.

B. Rochester. There are many learned men who are now in want of livings. These will fill up their places.

A. You of Sussex have been accounted very disorderly and contentious; and her majesty hath been informed of you; and I mean to proceed strictly with you.

U. My lord, the ministers of Sussex have been as well ordered as any in the kingdom, until one Shales came among them, and broached certain points of popery and heresy, which hath been the cause of all those troubles.

A. It would have been a wonder, if you had not been quiet, seeing you have all done as you pleased, without the least controul: the devil will be quiet so long. Why do you not accuse the man? and you shall see how I will deal with him.

1

B. Roches. What were his points of popery and heresy? . U. My lord hath been informed of these things already. A. I remember you found fault yesterday with holydays.

B. Have we not as good reason to maintain the holy-days established by law, as you have to make them when you please?

Hopk. We make no holy-days.

B. What do you else, when you call the people together unto sermons on working-days?

Hopk. When we have sermons, the people go to work before sermon, and return to work after sermon, as on other days: but to do this on the holy-days, they might be presented and punished, as hath been lately witnessed.

A. I see whence you have most of your doubts. Mr. Cartwright and I might have been better employed, especially he, who began the contest. If you have any more doubts, propose them now, seeing there are so many of the bishops to answer them.

H. In the rubric before confirmation, salvation is ascribed to baptism. For whosoever is baptized, is said to be undoubtedly saved.

A. Is there any such thing in the book?

H. Yes, my lord, those are the words.

This statement is incorrect. Mr. Cartwright did not begin the con test; but Whitgift himself engaged first in the controversy.-See Art. Cartwright.

A. Let us see the book.

Hartwell. They are the last words of the rubric.

A. The meaning of the book is to exclude the popish opinion of confirmation, as if it were as necessary as baptism. Therefore, those who have been baptized have all outward things necessary to salvation, even without confirmation.

H. The words may be taken in another sense, and, therefore, may not be subscribed without some deliberation.

Dean. I wonder you do not subscribe, seeing there is nothing in the second article which is not in the third, and you are willing to subscribe the third.

U. We have subscribed to the third already; and seeing all things contained in the second are contained in the third, we desire you to be satisfied with that subscription.

B. Not so.

Norden. How do your lordships understand these words, "Receive the Holy Ghost, for the office of a priest ?"

A. Not imperatively, but optatively; and this speech is much the same as that other, " I baptize thee," &c.

66

B. We cannot give the Holy Ghost.

B. Roches. Do you not think, that when we use these words, we do communicate something?

if we

U. I think not, my lord. For persons return from you no better furnished, than when they came unto you, may form our opinion from their practice.

A. We hope you are now resolved, and will now subscribe. You are unlearned, and only boys in comparison of us, who studied divinity before most of you were born.

U. We acknowledge our youth, my lord, and have no high opinion of our learning. Yet we hold ourselves sufficiently learned to know and teach Jesus Christ, as the way of salvation.

Hopk. If we subscribe under such interpretations, our subscription may become dangerous to us hereafter, when no interpretation may be allowed; therefore, we desire some protestation.

[ocr errors]

. A. I will admit no protestation.

Dean. Come, Mr. Hopkinson, subscribe. My lord will favour you much, and help you against your adversaries. Hopk. We must be better advised, Mr. Dean.

A. Go into the garden, or elsewhere, and consider of this matter, and return here again.

These divines having retired for some time, after consultation among themselves, they returned and consented

to subscribe, on condition that their subscription should not be required to any thing against the word of God, or contrary to the analogy of faith; and that it should not be extended to any thing not already contained in the Book of Common Prayer. Also, to avoid all cavilling, Mr. Underdown protested, that the book of consecration did not belong to them, and that they could not subscribe to it; yet he acknowledged the ministry of the church to be lawful. To these conditions the archbishop and bishops agreed; and the ministers accordingly subscribed. Afterwards, Mr. Underdown having requested that the cross in baptism might not be urged, the conversation was briefly renewed, as follows: A. You must use the cross, or the statute will reach you.

Hopk. Because it is intended as a significant sign, and is a new mystery in the church, we take it to be contrary to the second commandment.

A. Remember, it is required in the rubric.

N. It seemeth hard that the child must be asked whether it believe, and will be baptized.

A. The child is not asked, but the godfathers.

N. The godfathers and godmothers are several; therefore, if this were the meaning of the book, the number should be altered.

U. There are in our county many more of our brethren suspended for not subscribing. We beseech you that they may enjoy the same benefit, if they will subscribe as we have done.

A. I am content.

B. Roches. Are there any more who have refused?
U. Yes, my lord; there are above twenty in all.
B. Are there so many in your county?

German. There are some who have subscribed, and are greatly troubled in mind for what they have done. What do you think they had best do?

A. Let them come to me, and I hope to satisfy them.*

In the conclusion of the above conference, Mr. Underdown and his brethren were dismissed, when they returned home; and December 11th, being assembled in open court at Lewes, they were publicly released from their suspensions, where the business ended.

* MS. Register, p. 401-406.

Mr. SANDERSON was minister at Lynn in Norfolk, and troubled for his nonconformity. In the year 1573, he was charged, together with the people of the town, with having impugned the Book of Common Prayer. This was, indeed, a sad crime in those days. February 8th, in that year, the following articles were exhibited against him in the ecclesiastical court:

1. "That he had called the curate of the place, a dumb an

2. That he said the curate would not say the morning prayer, but would bid the popish holy-days, and say the popish service (meaning the common prayer) for those days.

3. "That, January 17th, he declared in the pulpit, that they who formerly employed their labours, and their goods, for the benefit of their poor and afflicted brethren, were now become judges over them; they sat in judgment upon them; and, like the Galatians, had received another gospel. 4. That he exhorted the people to pray unto God, to change the heart of the queen's majesty, that she might set forth true doctrine and worship.

5. “That he said the apostle Paul would have contention for the truth, rather than suffer any inconvenience to enter into the church of God.

6. "That, January 24th, he said, that if either bishops, deans, or any others, or even an angel from heaven, preached any other doctrine than that which he then preached, they should hold him accursed, and not believe him.

7. "That he called the appointed holy-days, Jewish ceremonies; and the churching of women, Jewish purifications; and said, that many persons made the queen's laws their divinity.

8. "That, February 7th, he said in his sermon, that unpreaching and scandalous ministers were one principal occasion of the present dearth."+

Upon the examination of Mr. Sanderson, though we do not find what penalty was inflicted upon him, one Francis Shaxton, an alderman of the place, accused him of having delivered these opinions and assertions in two of his sermons, and even said he heard them, when, in fact, he was in London at the very time when the sermons were preached.

.

"On Christmas-day last," says the Bishop of Norwich, in his letter to Archbishop Parker, "some of the aldermen went to church in their scarlets, and some would not; some opened their shops, and some shut them up; some eat flesh on that day, and others eat fish." Surely, then, it was high time to punish these rebellious people!-Strype's Parker, p. 452. + MS. Register, p. 191.

[blocks in formation]

In the year 1583, Mr. Sanderson's name is among those of the Norfolk divines, being upwards of sixty in all, who were not resolved to subscribe to Whitgift's three articles.*

JOHN HILL was minister at Bury St. Edmunds, and, for omitting the cross in baptism, and making some trivial alteration in the vows, was suspended by the high commission. Not long after receiving the ecclesiastical censure, he was indicted at the assizes for the same thing. Upon his appearance at the bar, having heard his indictment read, he pleaded guilty. Then said Judge Anderson, before whom he appeared, what can you say that you should not suffer one year's imprisonment ?+ Mr. Hill replied, "the law hath provided that I should not be punished, seeing I have been already suspended for the same matter, by the commissary." Upon this, the judge gave him liberty to produce his testimonial under the hand and seal of the commissary, at the next assizes. Accordingly, at the next assizes, his testimonial was produced and read in open court, when his discharge as founded thereon according to law being pleaded by his counsel, he was openly acquitted and dismissed.

Notwithstanding his public acquittance in open court, at the Lent assizes in 1583, the good man was summoned again by the same judge, and for the same crime. When he appeared at the bar, and heard the charges brought against himself, he greatly marvelled, seeing he had been already discharged of the same things. He was obliged to attend upon the court many times, when being known to be a divine of puritan principles, nothing more was done than he was always bound to appear at the next assize. At length, however, the judge charged him with having complained of their hard usage. And, surely, he had great reason for so doing. To this charge Mr. Hill replied, “I have

*MS. Register, p. 436.

+ Sir Edmund Anderson, lord chief justice of the common pleas, was a most furious and cruel persecutor of the puritans. He sat in judgment upon Mary, Queen of Scots, in October, 1586; and the next year presided at the trial of Secretary Davison, in the star-chamber, for signing the warrant for the execution of that princess. His decision on that nice point was, "That he had done justum, non juste; he had done what was right in an "unlawful manner, otherwise he thought him no bad man." "This was excellent logic," says Granger," for finding an innocent man guilty. upon the queen's order, and no-order, he was obliged to find him guilty, upon pain of being deprived of his office."-Biog. Hist. vol. i. p. 235.

But

« 上一頁繼續 »