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her wishes. Most of the eminent foreign divines on the continent, whom they consulted, counseled them to remain in the Church, and not desert their offices, but to labor patiently to effect the reforms to which the Queen would not then consent. But many of the clergy did not conform to the obnoxious parts of the ritual. This occasioned much disorder in worship, and, as the Puritans were not at all disposed to follow their own ways in silence, it gave rise also to much contention. The Queen resolved to enforce uniformity, and required her bishops, especially Parker, to prosecute the delinquents. At length, the Puritans began to organize in separate conventicles, as their meetings were styled by their adversaries, in order to worship according to the method which they approved. They were numerous; their clergy were learned and effective preachers, and both clergy and people were willing to suffer for the sake of conscience. The cruel, but ineffectual, persecution of them, darkens the reign of Elizabeth, especially the latter part of it. Among the other ends for which the Puritans were always zealous, were stricter discipline in the Church, and an educated, earnest ministry, to take the place of the thousands of notoriously incompetent clergymen.1

If Hooper was the parent of Puritanism in its incipient form, a like relation to Puritanism, as a ripe and developed system, belongs to Thomas Cartwright, Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. About the year 1570, he began to set forth the principles respecting the polity of the Church and the proper relation of the Church to the State, which formed the creed of the body of the Puritan party afterwards. The first point in his system is that the Scriptures are not only the rule of faith, but also the rule for the government and discipline of the Church. They present a scheme of polity

1 The objections of the Puritans to the Anglican Ritual are stated and explained by Neal, History of the Puritans, I. ch. v.

from which the Church is not at liberty to depart. The second point is that the management of Church affairs belongs to the Church itself and its officers, and not to civil magistrates. Cartwright held to the old view of the distinction between ecclesiastical and civil society. While the magistrate may not dictate to the Church in matters pertaining to doctrine and discipline, he still is bound to protect and defend the Church, and see that its decrees are executed. Cartwright was no advocate of toleration. In his system, Church and State are indissolubly linked, and there must be uniformity in religion. But what that system of religion and worship shall be, which it belongs to the magistrate to maintain, it is for the Church in its own assemblies, and not for him to decide. Moreover, Cartwright contended that the system of polity which the Scriptures ordain is the Presbyterian, and that prelacy is, therefore, unlawful.

This was, of course, a blow at the Queen's Supremacy, as it had been understood and exercised. It is true that Elizabeth disclaimed the title of Head of the Church and called herself its Governor. The thirty-seventh Article, which was framed under Elizabeth, expressly denies to the civil magistrate the right to administer the Word or the sacraments. But her visitatorial power had no defined limits. She did not hesitate to prescribe what should be preached and what should not be, and what rites should be practiced and what omitted, in a style which reminds one of the Byzantine emperors in the age of Justinian. She was not satisfied with disposing of ecclesiastical possessions at her will. Sir Christopher Hatton, one of the Queen's favorites, built his house in the garden of Cox, the Bishop of Ely; and when he attempted to prevent the spoliation, she wrote him a laconic note, in which she threatened with an oath to "unfrock" him if he did not instantly comply with her behest. She forbade, in the most peremptory manner, the meetings of clergymen for

discussion and mutual improvement, called " prophesyings." When Archbishop Grindal objected to her order and reminded her that the regulation of such matters belongs to the Church itself and to its bishops, she kept him suspended from his office for a number of years. The doctrine of Cartwright annihilated such pretensions. But the controversy which it opened upon the proper constitution of the Church, especially upon the questions relating to episcopacy, was destined to shake the English Church to its foundations. He found a vigorous opponent in Whitgift; and there were not wanting many other learned and eager disputants on each side. Before the end of Elizabeth's reign a division appeared among the Puritans, through the rise of the Independents. They took the ground that national churches have no rightful existence. They differed from the other Puritans in being Separatists. According to their system, as it is explained later by John Robinson, their principal leader, the local Church is independent; autonomic in its polity; its members being bound together by a covenant; its teachers being elected, and its discipline managed by popular vote. The Independents did not recognize the Church of England, in its national form, as a true Church; but the separate parish churches organized under it, might be true churches of Christ. Their prime fault was the neglect of discipline, in consequence of which some other proof of Christian character must be required, besides membership in them. During the reign of Elizabeth, the Independents had acquired no considerable power, although they were the victims of cruel persecution.

About the end of the sixteenth century, a new turn was given to the Puritan controversy by the great work of Hooker, the treatise on Ecclesiastical Polity. The

1 Hanbury, Hist. Memorials relative to the Independents (3 vols. London, 1839). Waddington, Congregational Church History from the Reformation to 1662. (London, 1862.)

elevated tone of this work, combined with its vigorous reasoning and its eloquence, seemed to take up the controversy into a higher atmosphere.1 Hooker endeavors to go to the bottom of the subject by investigating the nature of laws and the origin of authority. One of his fundamental propositions is that the Church is endued with a legislative authority by its Founder, within the limits set by Him. It may vary its organization and methods of worship, and it is shut down to no prescribed system. He holds that Episcopacy is an apostolical institution, and is the best form of government; but he appears to think that the general Church, "as the highest subject of power," is not absolutely bound to adhere to this system. Since the Church is thus an authorized lawgiver, it is factious to disobey the regulations which the Church establishes, where they do not contravene the laws of its Founder. Hooker identifies Church and State, considering the two as different aspects or functions of one and the same society. The supremacy of the king over the Church is the logical corollary. It is remarkable that he answers the complaint that Christian people are deprived of a voice in the choice of their officers, by bringing forward the theory of the social compact, the same theory as that which Locke afterwards presented. In truth, this theory is one of the cardinal principles of Hooker. It is a government of laws, and not a despotism, which he advocates both for the State and for the Church. His conception of a limited monarchy was one not agreeable to the theory or practice of the Tudors. But he curiously applies this theory to justify such customs as the control exercised by patrons in the appointment of the clergy.

As we look back to the beginnings of the Puritan controversy in the reign of Edward and at the accession of

1 The temper of Hooker may be judged from the following noble sentence: "There will come a time when three words, uttered with charity and meekness. shall receive a far more blessed reward than three thousand volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit." Ecclesiast. Polity: Preface.

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Elizabeth, it seems plain that the questions were those on which good and wise men among the Protestants might differ. Half of the nation was Catholic. The clergy were of such a character that out of ten thousand not more than a few hundred chose to leave their places rather than conform to the Protestant system of Edward. A great part of them were extremely ignorant, and an equal number preferred the Roman Catholic system to any other. How can the people ever be won from popery, the Puritans demanded, if no very perceptible change is made in the modes of worship and in the apparel of the ministry? If the distinctive emblems and badges of popery are left, how shall the people be brought out of that system, and be led to give up the whole theory of priestly mediation? But the state of things that moved one party to adopt this conclusion, had an opposite effect upon the judgment of their opponents. Protestantism may fail altogether, they argued, if it breaks too abruptly with the traditional customs to which a great part of the nation are attached. Better to retain whatever is anywise compatible with the essentials of Protestantism, and wean the people from their old superstitions by a gentler process. Hold on to the apparel and the ceremonies, but carefully instruct the people as to their real significance. Thus the true doctrine will be saved; and, moreover, the religious life of the nation will preserve, in a degree, its continuity and connection with the past. The tract of Lord Bacon on the "Pacification of the Church," which was written in the reign of the successor of Elizabeth, is a calm and moderate review of the Puritan controversy, in which both parties come in for about an equal share of censure.1 He complains of the Puritans, among other things, for insisting that there is one prescribed form of discipline for all churches and for all time. He asserts that there are "the general rules of government: but for 1 Bacon's Works (Montagu's ed.), vii. 61 seq.