they condemned. The best of them were slow-paced horses, and the slowness of their pace in most cases was the consequence of the strong curb and the tight reign with which the royal charioteer of the Church held in their movements.

The zealous Puritans contended for the complete removal of the surplice and other Papal relics. They were as anxious for uniformity as the rest of the ecclesiastics of that day, but it must be a uniformity purified from Popish corruptions. Their own refusal to wear the vestments and conform to the appointed service, was in some cases tolerated for awhile, through the favor of their diocesans, and hence arose a diversity of order in the parish church exceedingly distasteful to her majesty. In one place of worship might be seen the priest in his surplice officiating at the altar, and administering unleavened cakes to the kneeling communicants; while in another might be found the presbyter in his Genevan cloak, beside a table placed in the body of the church, handing round common bread to the people who stood or sat. Such irregularity was highly offensive to the queen, and she resolved speedily to put an end to it. She was bent on uniformity, and the ecclesiastical authorities were commanded to enforce the law. Nonconformists must not be tolerated: her sovereign authority must not be resisted. Conscience! Her majesty did not seem to be aware there was one in existence save her own.

The Puritans would now have been glad of their prévious scanty toleration: and Humphrey, one of their most learned advocates, addressed the queen, urging that, if she would not yield to her subjects, yet she might of her clemency spare miserable men. "She would not rescind a public decree, yet she might relax and remit it. She could not take away a law, yet she might grant a tolera

tion; that it was not fit to indulge some men's affections, yet it was most fit and equal not to force the minds of men."* But the trifling favor which he sought was refused. Nonconformists were deprived; eloquent tongues were silenced; brilliant luminaries were quenched. Humphrey and Sampson, two of the greatest ornaments the Church possessed, were treated with much severity: the former at length submitted; but the latter, retaining his scruples, lost his church preferment, and, as a special favor, was allowed to be governor of a poor hospital.†

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As the rigorous policy of the queen and the High Church party increased, the views of the Puritans became extended. In the beginning they had contended only for the removal of Popish vestments, and of various corruptions in the Church, and of many relics of Popery; but now they took the high ground, that the imposition of any human ceremonies was an invasion of the rights of conscience. At best they were but human appointments, and came within the Apostle's reproof. Why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances after the commandments and doctrines of men, which all are to perish with the using? Touch not, taste not, handle not.” Supposing the garments were indifferent, (which they did not grant,) yet they ought not to be imposed, because it was an infringement of the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free. It has often happened in the order of Divine providence, that the cause of truth is advanced by the opposition which it meets with. Its advocates, when enduring oppression, are led to inquire more carefully into the extent of the injustice which they suffer, and the grounds of those principles on which they act. Their views of truth expand on such an inquiry; and in the present instance, the Puritans, as they examined their *Strype, Ann. ii. 143. ‡ Neale, i. 226.

† See Note [7].

reasons for peaceably resisting ecclesiastical tyrranny, caught a glimpse of the grand principle, that man ought to have no dominion over the conscience of his brother

man.

The voice of Scripture and reason, which the Puritans had on their side, was what their opponents could not answer; they had, however, power to silence it, and therefore they procured a decree of the Star Chamber forbidding that any person should publish a book against the queen's injunctions, under a pain of three months' imprisonment, and an interdiction of printing any more. All this could not fail to increase the dislike of scrupulous and conscientious minds to the Established Church altogether; and therefore many of the Puritans resolved to separate from its communion, and form a distinct church more in harmony with the principles and precedents of the New Testament. It was not, however, to be expected, from the temper of the queen, and some who were about her, that toleration which had been refused to parties who had still remained in the Church would be extended to them now they had left it. Bitter persecution followed them. They had to worship in woods and fields, and in the private houses of their friends; and one day, when a party of one hundred of them had met in Plummers' Hall for worship, under pretence of celebrating a wedding, their enemies broke into the room, took them in custody, and sent them to the Compter. "Thus began in England," says Sir James Mackintosh, "the persecution of Protestants by their fellow-dissenters from the Church of Rome." Yet this was scarcely the beginning of the career of intolerance in the bosom of Protestantism; it was rather a new manifestation of the spirit which had been growing ever since the accession of Elizabeth.

A bolder champion than the Puritans had had before,

and one who contended for a far more extensive alteration in ecclesiastical affairs, arose in the person of Thomas Cartwright, an advocate for strict Presbyterian government, and for the emancipation of the Church from the dominion of the civil power. He saw that the Church was a spiritual community, that Christ's kingdom is not of this world, that the magistrate's authority over religious matters was an usurpation condemned by the New Testament; and this doctrine, so important to the interests of the Church and religious freedom, he unfolded with uncommon learning, argument, eloquence, and power. Yet, entangled by the prejudices of the age, he still regarded the civil magistrate as a fitting instrument for enforcing truth, but an instrument to be employed only at the Church's discretion. His vigorous mind clearly saw one side of the truth, but could not discern the other. The Church must be free from the trammels of the state-here was a development of half the principle of religious liberty; the civil power must be equally free from the dictation of the Church, and must not be employed as an instrument for her purposes that was the other half, but it remained concealed. Thus, by the powerful pen of Cartwright, the form of religious liberty was but partially evoked, like the fabled horse of Neptune under the trident of the god, struggling to free itself from the earth, in which it was still half buried. Another powerful advocate on the side of Puritanism was Edward Dering. "He was," says Fuller, "a pious man, and a painful preacher ;" and certainly, if the Churchman's anecdote of the Puritan be true, he was as much distinguished by his boldness as by his piety and painstaking; for the historian informs us, that once, when Dering was preaching before the queen, he told her "In persecution under her sister Mary, her motto was ‘tanquam ovis,-like a lamb; but now it might be tanquam

6

indomita juvenca,'-like an untamed heifer." It must be confessed that such a manner of speaking was not the most becoming; but it was not uncommon in those days for Church reformers, when addressing majesty, to indulge in a strain of expression as blunt as the style adopted by courtiers was flattering and servile. In his famous letter to Lord Burleigh, he insists, with much power and eloquence, on the difference between Episcopacy in the days of the Apostles and the Episcopacy of late times; and in some passages,* relative to the political influence possessed by the dignitaries of the English bench, he touches on a principle fatal to the employment of civil power in any way for the support of religion-the very principle overlooked by Cartwright and others, and which, probably, the zealous pleader himself was not prepared to carry out to the full extent of its legitimate application.

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The Puritans were men in earnest. Their reverence for the Scriptures was profound; their zeal in the maintenance of opinions derived from that book intense. Their views on some points might be narrow and one-sided, and their scruples in relation to some things might be carried to excess, but everlasting honor should be paid them for the honesty of their principles and the integrity of their consciences. They ventured," to use their own language, "the loss of worldly commodities, rather than hazard that which no earthly treasure can buy." Their Protestantism was of the most decided kind, resting not on the basis of expediency, but on a well-founded conviction of its Scriptural authority. With all their hearts they hated the system of Popery, and extended their dislike to its external badges and accompaniments. Being themselves released from the tyranny of the apostate church, they wished to abolish every memorial of enslavement to its See Note [8].

† Strype, vol. i. p. ii. 168.