CHAPTER III.

PRESBYTERIANISM ODIOUS TO TYRANTS.

"PROTESTANTISM," writes Carlyle,“ was

a revolt against spiritual sovereignties, popes and much else. Presbyterians carried out the revolt against earthly sovereignties."

Queen Elizabeth detested "presbytery" because it held principles inconsistent with allegiance to her crown.

"She knew that the church of Geneva, which the Puritans declared to be their model, was not only essentially republican, but could not be perfectly established except in a republic."

"The Presbyterian clergy," writes Mr. Hallam, "individually and collectively displayed the intrepid and haughty spirit of the English Puritans. Though Elizabeth had, from policy, abetted the Scottish clergy

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in their attacks upon the civil administration, this connection itself had probably given her such an insight into their temper as well as their influence that she must have shuddered at the thought of seeing a republican assembly substituted for her faithful satraps, her bishops, so ready to do her bidding."

King James detested "presbytery." In Scotland, indeed, he had professed himself an enthusiastic Presbyterian. In the general assembly, with uplifted hands, in a rapture of enthusiasm, he exclaimed:

"I bless God that I was born in such a time as in the light of the gospel, and in such a place as to be king in such a Kirk, the sincerest Kirk in all the world.

"I charge you, my good people-ministers, elders, nobles, gentlemen and baronsto stand to your purity, and I, forsooth, as long as I brook my life and crown, will maintain the same against all deadly."

But when, having become king of England as well as of Scotland, he had crossed the

border, "he found," to quote the words of Hallam, "a very different race of churchmen, well trained in the supple school of courtly conformity, and emulous flatterers of both his power and his wisdom."

to waver.

In this state of things the king soon began His despotic instincts taught him where his interests lay. And while in this transition state it is said that one of his sturdy old chaplains, who feared God too well to be overmuch afraid of kings, treated His Majesty one Sabbath morning to a sermon on a text after his own name, James first, sixth (James was the first of England and the sixth of Scotland): "He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed."

But the sermon did not save the king. On the second day of the Hampton Court Conference, while the learned and excellent Dr. Reynolds was speaking, Bancroft, bishop of London, fell on his knees and begged the king to stop the schismatic's mouth. As

Reynolds proceeded King James broke in, exclaiming in his profane way:

"You are aiming at a Scots' presbytery, which agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council. Then Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus. Then Dick shall reply and say, Nay, marry, but we will have it thus; and therefore I say, The king shall decide."

Then turning to the sycophants that fawned. on him, he added: "I will make them conform or I will harry them out of the land, or else worse-only hang them, that's all."

On the third day the king advocated the high commission, inquisitorial oaths, and Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, exclaimed:

"Your Majesty speaks by the especial assistance of God's Spirit."

And Bancroft, bishop of London, fell on his knees and said:

"My heart melteth for joy because God hath given England such a king as since Christ's time hath not been."

Charles I., a thorough despot, hated presbytery.

The thought is brought out by Bancroft where, incidentally, he speaks of "The political character of Calvinism, which with one consent and with instinctive judgment the monarchs of that day feared as republicanism, and which Charles I. declared a religion unfit for a gentleman," etc.

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"Show me," said Charles, "any precedent where presbyterial government and regal were together without perpetual rebellions. And it cannot be otherwise, for the ground of their doctrine is anti-monarchical."

The king had a congenial instructor in his chaplain, Peter Heylin, D. D., who wrote a work under this title: "Aerius Redivivus; or, The History of the Presbyterians, containing the Beginning, Progresse and Successes of that Active Sect, their Oppositions to Mo