that he should have liberty to call back whatever statement he might afterward desire to revoke), he said, "I hold it is full of errors, and the form of it disagreeable to the Scriptures."

In opposition to the notion which makes marriage a sacrament, and some priestly intervention essential to its sacredness, he denied that marriage is "any part of the minister's office." He held that the contract between the parties to be thenceforward husband and wife made them one under the law of God, and that their mutual consent, expressed before faithful witnesses-though in the case referred to he had offered prayer-needed no priest or minister to make it an indissoluble bond.

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When he was asked whether the Church of England-the institution represented before him at that moment by the High Commission Court-was a true established church of God," he answered, "The whole commonwealth is not a church." When urged with the question in another form: "Do you know any true established church in the land ?" he answered, "If I did, I would not accuse it unto you." As governed by bishops, and by the laws then enforced, it was "contrary to Christ's word."

Of the sacraments in the national establishment, he said, "They are not rightly administered, according to the institution of Christ; nor have they the promise of grace:" "If you have no true church, you can have no true sacraments." Yet he held that there was no need of baptizing again those who had received baptism in the establishment. While he was "no Anabaptist," "differing from them as far as truth is from error," his own boy, a year and a half old, had received the name Abel without its being given to him in baptism; "because," said the father, "I have been in prison, and can not tell where to go to a reformed church, where I might have him baptized according to God's ordinance."

To the question, "Do you not hold a parish to be the church ?" he answered, "If all the people were faithful, hav

ing God's law and ordinances practiced among them, I do.” A church would then be constituted by "the profession which the people make;" and, as for its government, "every congregation of Christ ought to be governed by that presbytery which Christ hath appointed." To him the presbytery which Christ hath appointed was not the Genevan or classical presbytery which the Puritans would introduce in place of the existing establishment, but a congregational presbytery-the "pastor, teacher, and elder" in each congregation of Christ. The church thus constituted," people and presbytery," would be Christ's church, and ought to practice God's laws, and "correct vice by the censure of the word." But "what if the prince forbid them ?" Then "they must, nevertheless, do that which God commandeth."

That phrase," the censure of the word," pointed toward excommunication. Queen Elizabeth had been excommunicated by the pope; might not this church government according to the New Testament do the same thing? In reference to the presbyterial government which the Puritans were endeavoring to establish, this was a very grave question; for, under that system, the queen, instead of being by virtue of her own crown and her baptism the supreme governor of the Church of England, would be a simple member of the church, on the same level with every other baptized Englishwoman. The crucifix in her private chapel might be complained of to the session or consistory of the parish. As a woman, she could sustain no ecclesiastical office, not even that of lay elder. She might be excommunicated by the consistory, and her appeals to presbytery, synod, and general assembly might be in vain. "If the prince offend," said the examiners to Greenwood, "may the presbytery excommunicate him ?" His answer was, "The whole church—not the elders may excommunicate any member of that church, if the party continue obstinate in open transgression." Even if the prince should have become, by free consent and mutual covenant, a member of that church," there is no exception of

persons." If our queen should become a voluntary member of that voluntary church, "I doubt not her majesty would be ruled by the word."

The queen's supremacy in ecclesiastical matters would vanish, and no place be found for it. Each congregation of worshipers freely consenting to be ruled by the word of God would be self-governed under Christ; for "the Scripture hath set down sufficient laws for the worship of God and the government of the church, so that no man may add unto it nor diminish from it." The queen "is supreme magistrate over all persons, to punish the evil and defend the good;" but "Christ is the only head of his church, and his laws may no man alter."

Having given this testimony, the confessor was sent back to the prison.

1 Brook, "Lives of the Puritans," ii., 24-28. The story of Barrowe and Greenwood before the High Commissioners is told briefly by Neal, i., 201, 202, and more at length by Hopkins, iii., 460–469.

CHAPTER VII.

CONTROVERSY UNDER DIFFICULTIES.-NATIONALISM, CONFORMIST AND PURITAN, AGAINST SEPARATISM.

HAD not John Bunyan been shut up to dream in Bedford jail, he would never have found time to write the "Pilgrim's Progress." His influence would have been limited and transient in comparison with what it has been for two hundred years, and will be for centuries of years to come. Witnesses for liberty and truth may be imprisoned; but ideas that have life in them find wings and fly abroad. The word of God is not bound.

It does not appear that Barrowe or Greenwood had written any thing for publication before Archbishop Whitgift took them under his tutelage, and set them to study in prison the argument for a National Church, governed by the queen through her bishops and her High Commission. In due time the fruit of those studies began to appear. While the years of their imprisonment were passing, and while the published account of their bold answers at their several examinations was provoking inquiry and discussion in various places, Barrowe-though often he could not "keep one sheet by him while writing another"-found means and opportunity for 'the writing of a book, sheet by sheet, which, notwithstanding the restrictions on the press, was printed in Holland, and began to be circulated in England (1590). It was entitled "A Brief Discovery of the False Church," and was subscribed "by the Lord's most unworthy servant and witness, in bonds, Henry Barrowe." To intimate the relation between the new establishment and the old, it bore upon its title - page the motto (from Ezekiel xvi., 44): "As the mother, such the

daughter is." While it exposed in the most unsparing fashion whatever Puritanism had found fault with in the established government and imposed liturgy of the National Church, it went farther and deeper; and-more explicitly, perhaps, than ever Robert Browne had done-it assailed the foundation-principle of every national church, however conformed to the Puritan ideal.

The author of that book was aware of the peril to which he was exposing himself. "The shipmasters," said he," the mariners, merchantmen, and all the people that reign, row, and are carried in this false church, will never endure to see fire cast into her they will never endure to suffer loss of their dainty and precious merchandize; but, rather, will raise up no small tumults and stirs against the servants of God, seeking their blood by all subtle and violent means, as we read in the Scriptures their predecessors have always doneaccusing them of treason, of troubling the state, schism, heresy, and what not. But unto all the power, learning, deceit, rage of the false church, we oppose that little book of God's word, which, as the light, shall reveal her as the fire, consume her as a heavy millstone, shall press her and all her children, lovers, partakers, and abettors, down to hell; which book we willingly receive as the judge of all our controversies, knowing that all men shall one day, and that ere long, be judged by the same."

Professing small respect for what Roman Catholic and Anglo-Catholic theologians call "the notes of the church," he proposes a more excellent way. Let us, for the appeasing

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See Hanbury, i.,

39-47.

It was printed in quarto, pp. 263. 2 The time is short' to run the race of Christianity, even when we have entered on it: how necessary, then, is it that we should endeavor to find speedily, as well as certainly, the arena in which it is to be run. It is with such views that theologians in various ages have endeavored to lay down rules for the discrimination of Christ's church by a comparatively short and intelligible process, and these rules are styled notes or signs of the church.”Palmer, "Treatise on the Church" (New York, 1841), i., 45.