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scured; but in spite of all it holds on its way; commending itself to right reason; approving itself always simple and glorious; the friend of freedom, of knowledge, and religion; till at last it is established, never to be overthrown. Though angry controversy in trivial matters is always to be deprecated, I cannot be of the opinion of those who dread the issue of a temperate though earnest discussion of questions lying at the foundation of the great matters of truth and order, and of human rights. I know not to what stagnation and tyranny the world and the Church would have been given over, but for such conflicts of principle. Certain it is, that whatever evils may have resulted from such conflicts, much darkness and much corruption would have encumbered the Church without them; much that is fairest in truth would never have been discovered, or being discovered, would have been undervalued and of little use. "There must be heresies," says an Apostle, "that they which are approved may be made manifest among you." There must be discussion-perhaps at times dissension-that what is true and useful and important may be made known. Only it should be remembered that truth and duty-not party ends nor party spirit-should govern the discussion; for "The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." Save for the conflicts of Puritanism, freedom would never have been known; and a sort of religion scarcely in advance of Romanism would have reigned unbroken in England, if not throughout the Christian world.

But these heats of controversy between those who had for conscience sake fled from their native land, could not last for ever. These were transient fires; the principle of love was deep seated within them, an unquenchable flame. The short reign of Mary had not passed away, before these grudges seemed nearly forgotten. In this respect the "sun" did not "go down upon their wrath." Letters of mutual esteem and love passed between the exiles of Geneva and those of Frankfort. With the accession of Elizabeth all promised to forget their former displeasure, and to strive together for a further reform. "We trust," said those who had been so strenuous for the Prayer-Book, "that true religion shall be restored, and that we shall not be burdened with unprofitable ceremonies. And if any shall be obtruded that shall be offensive at our meeting in England,-which we trust will be shortly, we will brotherly join with you to be suitors for the reformation and abolishing of the same." "And I find," says Prince, in his N. England Chronology, "that soon returning to England they were as good as their word."

Having seen Puritanism in its first endurance of suffering, we come now to view it in its activity, girding itself for its first encounters with the spirit of formalism and despotism in the long and rigid reign of Queen Elizabeth.

ᏙᏞ

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Reformation conducted on principles of State policy. Papists to be kept in the Church. High Commission. Things offensive to Papists stricken out of the Liturgy. Plan of keeping Papists in the Church successful. Foresight of the Puritans. Their predictions verified. Original complaints of the Puritans. Progress of their inquiries.

THE accession of Queen Elizabeth, 17th November, A.D. 1558, was regarded by all parties as the signal for a return from Popery to the Reformation. There were circumstances, however, which rendered it difficult to make the change either sudden or complete, had the queen ever so heartily desired it. The offices of the Church were filled with popish bishops and popish priests. A large share of the people were still popish. The Pope had pronounced the queen illegitimate, and incapable of inheriting the throne. In the failure of Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots was the undoubted heir, and both she and the popish sovereigns wanted only a favorable opportunity to assert her title to the throne. Elizabeth saw the difficulties of her situation, and was too politic to risk any commotions by attempting too sudden or too wide a departure from the rituals then in use. This caution arose from a due survey of the dangers, and was deliberately made the rule of the policy to be pursued. hundred years ago, attempted to justify her conduct towards the Maddox, who, a Puritans, transcribes a state paper" of considerable consequence," as he says, laying down" a plan of a Reformation," and containing a survey of the "dangers that were likely to follow." The following are the dangers specified in that survey:

"1st. The Bishop of Rome will be incensed; will excommunicate the queen's highness; interdict the realm, and give it a prey to all princes that will enter upon it.

"2d. The French king and his people will be encouraged to persist more vigorously in the war against declared heretics. "3d. Scotland will have some boldness, and by that way the French king will soonest attempt to invade us.

"4th. Ireland will be very difficult to be stayed in their obedience by reason of the clergy that are associated to Rome.

"5th. Many people of our own will be very much discontented, especially these sorts; (1) Such as governed in the late Queen Mary's reign, and were chosen thereto for no other cause, or were then esteemed for being hot and earnest in the other religion; and now remain unplaced or uncalled to credit;-these will study all the ways they can to maintain the former doings. (2) The Bishops and all the clergy will see their own ruin; and in confession and preaching, and all other ways they can, will persuade people from it. (3) Men which be of the papist sort, who late were in manner all the judges of the law, and justices of the peace, are like to join with the bishops and clergy. (4) Many such as would gladly have the alterations from the Church of Rome, when they shall see, peradventure, that some old ceremonies shall still be left, or that their doctrine which they embrace is not allowed and commanded only, and all other abolished and disapproved, shall be discontented and call the altered religion a cloaked papistry, a mingle-mangle.'"

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These were the prudential reasons avowed, for not being governed solely by the truth and purity of the Word of God in the proposed Reformation, but by considerations of State policy. What sort of standards for doctrine and rituals such a heartless politician as Queen Elizabeth was likely to establish under such circumstances, may be readily conjectured.

There was still another plea for conducting the Reformation rather with a regard to keeping the Papists quiet, than with regard to truth and purity of worship; which plea is thus stated by Maddox, and which, though I have already quoted it, is of sufficient importance here to repeat: "Besides, as the nation in general was popish, it plainly appeared an act of great compassion to many thousand souls, as well as necessary to the queen's safety, and the success of the Reformation, to contrive, if it were possible, such a form of worship, without idolatry, which might KEEP THE POPISH PEOPLE IN THE CHURCH."

Thus the ground of defence and justification relied upon by Bishop Maddox in his work against the Puritans, is the unblushing avowal that the offices of the Church of England were finally settled, not on the ground which Protestants consider purest and most scriptural, but upon the designed and avowed policy of "keeping the Papists in the Church" by retaining just as much of the popish cast, and spirit, and forms, as was "not idolatry;" having due "regard to the essentials of religion;" which were still to be judged of by the politic queen!

Can there be any wonder that there should arise a BAND OF PURITANS, bold enough to express their discontent at being compelled not only to conform in all particulars to rituals and Liturgies established on these principles; but compelled also to sub

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scribe to the same, their unqualified approval as fully consonant
to the Word of God? Was all due to policy, and nothing to
conscience, to the truth, to freedom, and to God?

If the dangers which surrounded Queen Elizabeth might be
pleaded to justify this policy in the beginning of her reign, these
dangers had passed away before her greatest severities against
the Puritans commenced; and while these dangers lasted, the
Puritans chose rather to suffer in quiet, waiving their rights
and enduring everything that could be endured, rather than fail
in patriotism; or than to expose the Reformation to the en-
croachment of foreign powers. That the Puritans ever sided
with the Papist against the Protestant religion, or against the
Protestant government of their country, no well-informed man
will ever venture to assert, till in his party zeal he has bid a long
adieu to truth. When the Puritans stood at last for their rights,
it was no mere resistance to a crooked state policy induced by
dangers or by a stern necessity; but a resistance to tyranny avowed
on principle, and to the settled policy of despotism, founded on no
plea of danger, but on open denial of the rights of conscience.

"So

Besides this policy, which led to the predetermined adherence
to many of the forms and superstitions of Popery, Elizabeth was
by taste and principle much inclined to those superstitions and
forms. HUME has justly said, that "Elizabeth was attached to
the Protestants chiefly by her interests and the circumstances of
her birth; and seems to have entertained some propensity to the
Catholic superstition, at least to the ancient ceremonies."
far was the princess herself from being willing to despoil religion
of the few ornaments and ceremonies which remained in it,"
that she "was rather inclined to bring the public worship still
nearer the Romish ritual; and she thought the Reformation
had already gone too far in shaking off those forms and ob-
servances, which, without distracting men of more refined appre-
hensions, tend, in a very innocent manner, to amuse and engage
the vulgar." "It was with great difficulty (says Neale, on the
authority of Burnet), and not without a sort of protestation from
the bishops, that she would consent to have orders given for
taking away from the churches, such remnants of idolatry as
the shrines, rolls of wax, paintings, and other monuments of
feigned miracles. In her own chapel she kept still a crucifix
with images of the Virgin Mary and St. John; and when
Sandys, Bishop of Worcester, spoke to her against it, she
threatened to deprive him of his bishopric. She would not
part with her altar and lighted candles." "The gentlemen and
singing children appeared" [in her chapel] "in their surplices,
and priests in their copes.""In short, the service performed in
the queen's chapel, and in sundry cathedrals, was so splendid

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and showy, that foreigners could not distinguish it from the Roman, except that it was performed in the English tongue." "By this means, the popish laity were deceived into conformity, and came regularly to church for more than ten years, till the Pope, being out of all hopes of an accommodation, forbad them, by excommunicating the queen, and laying the whole kingdom under an interdict." "She grew so superstitious," says Prince, "that when she was sixty years old, and her decaying nature required the use of meat, she would not eat a bit of flesh for the forty days of Lent, without a solemn license from her own archbishop Whitgift (who depended wholly on her for power to grant it), nor would she be easy with one general license, but must have it renewed every year, for several years."

When we add to these considerations of state policy, and to this tendency of the queen to superstition, the fact that to seven Protestants in her council she chose thirteen Papists, and that the council and queen controlled entirely the establishment of religion, we shall be able to anticipate the sort of Reformation which was likely to follow.

Such were the power, the policy, the taste, the principles, under which the rituals of the English Church were to receive that final establishment, set forth in the Prayer-Book which it is now the fashion to laud as the "sole surviving monument of the Reformation." A strict conformity to that standard was now about to be enforced by the strong hand of power, and every variation to be sought out and punished with inquisitoral severity.

The thoroughly Protestant part of the nation was not in a mood to have anything forced upon them, which, in their estimation, savored of the mummeries or the abominations of Popery. From the dungeons; from the flames that consumed the martyrs in the reign of terror now just over, they had imbibed an absolute horror of everything popish. In the gilded ornaments, pompous ceremonies, and ghostly robes of the man of sin, they had learned to discover the germs of false principles, the latent seeds of a superstition, which, when matured into their full growth and power, and fully ripe, had turned religion itself into an engine of tyranny and murder. They had learned to hate even the garment spotted by the flesh. They could not in conscience give the sanction of their example to the use of ceremonies and utensils inseparably joined, in the common estimation, to the superstitions and abominations of Popery. In retaining the vestments, utensils, and ceremonials so thoroughly associated with Popery, they foretold that the seeds of false doctrine, of superstition, and of Popery itself, would be retained. These

Bishop Brownell, Charge.

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