In the meantime, the spiritual courts were full of business. "Every week," says Neale, " one or another of the Puritan ministers was suspended or deprived; and their families driven to distress: nor was there any prospect of relief; the clouds gathering thicker every day, and threatening a violent storm."

These "Puritan ministers" were the early ministers of Massachusetts Bay; and the ministers of the people who came through the forests to settle the towns on the Connecticut, and on the shore of Long Island Sound. The colony at Plymouth had lived, and others began to think of freedom to worship God in New England. "The sun shines as brightly in America," said they, "let us go." We shall leave our native land; we shall encounter perils and distress: but we and our children shall have FREEDOM TO WORSHIP GOD.

XV.

TIMES OF ARCHBISHOP LAUD.*

King and Prelates combine against the liberties of the People. Popish ceremonies and utensils. Images, pictures of God the Father. Communion tables turned into altars. Natural tendency of prelatic principles to corruption and persecution. Their fruit on a broad scale, and for a thousand years. Original idea of “A Church without a Bishop, a State without a king.”

At the coronation of Charles, a novelty had been introduced by the officiating prelates, which struck the minds of his Protestant subjects with alarm. The king sitting with his crown and royal robes, the officiating bishop in the name of his brethren, recited to him the words of this charge: "Stand and hold fast from henceforth the place to which you have been heir by the succession of your forefathers, being now delivered to you by the authority of Almighty God, and by the hands of us, and all the bishops the servants of God. And as you see the clergy to come nearer to the altar than others, so remember that in all places convenient, you give them greater honor; that the mediator of God and man may exalt you on the kingly throne to be a mediator betwixt the clergy and laity; that you may reign for ever with Jesus Christ the king of kings and lord of lords."

King Charles never forgot this lesson. His constant aim was to uphold and aggrandize the clergy. His queen, Henrietta, a woman of exquisite beauty and blandishments, and possessed of an unbounded influence over the mind of her husband, was a papist. It pleased her to see papists raised to authority and favor. It pleased her to see the Church of England adopting the rituals and doctrines of Rome; it pleased the king, it pleased Bishop Laud. Why should any favor be shown to the

* I employ in this caption the most honorable designation of the man—the one by which he is now ordinarily known; intending, however, to embrace the whole time of his ascendency. He became archbishop in 1633. He was made Bishop of St. David's in 1621; afterwards he was translated to the See of London. His actual supremacy in church affairs began in October, 1627, upon the sequestration of Archbishop Abbot.

Puritans, who set themselves so stoutly against popish doctrines and ceremonies, as well as against the absolute prerogatives of the king? Why should the king trouble himself with parliaments, that dared to question and resist the prerogatives which he held not from the British Constitution, but indefeasibly, and unlimited, from God?" In return for Charles' indulgence towards the Church," says Hume, "Laud and his followers took care to magnify on every occasion the regal authority, and to treat with the utmost disdain all puritanical pretensions to a free and independent constitution." But while these prelates were so liberal in raising the crown at the expense of public liberty, they made no scruple of encroaching themselves on royal rights the most incontestible, in order to exalt the hierarchy, and to procure to their own order, dominion, and independence. All the doctrines which the Romish Church had borrowed from some of the Fathers, and which freed the spiritual from subordination to the civil power, were now adopted by the Church of England, and interwoven with her political and religious tenets. A divine and apostolical character was insisted on preferably to a legal and parliamentary one. The sacerdotal character was magnified as sacred and indefeasible. All right to spiritual authority, or even to private judgment, was refused to "profane laymen.'

In one word, it was a conspiracy between the prelates and the king, against the civil and religious liberties of the people. Nothing but the civil war that followed, prevented the nation from being carried back into the chains of popery, and into an unlimited and hopeless despotism.

A few specimens will serve to show the character of the superstitions introduced by Laud. "St. Katharine's church having been repaired, was suspended from all divine service till it should be consecrated again. On Sunday, 16th January, 1630, Bishop Laud came, with a procession, to consecrate it. At his approach to the west door of the church, which was shut and guarded by halberdiers, some who were appointed for the purpose, cried with a loud voice, Open, open, ye everlasting doors, that the king of glory may come in.'" As soon as Laud en

tered the doors, he fell down upon his knees, and with eyes lifted up, and his arms spread abroad, he said, "This place is holy; the ground is holy; in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I pronounce it holy." Then walking toward the chancel he took up some of the dust and threw it into the air several times. When he approached near the rail of the communion table, he bowed toward it five or six times; and returning, went round the church with his attendants, saying the 100th, and then the 19th Psalm, as prescribed in the Roman Pontificale. He then read several collects, in one of which he prayed "That all who

should thereafter be buried within the circuit of that holy and sacred place, may rest in their sepulchre in peace, till Christ's coming at judgment, and may then rise to eternal life and happiness." Then sitting under a cloth of state in the aisle of the chancel near the communion-table, he took a written book in his hand, and pronounced curses upon those who should thereafter profane that holy place." At the conclusion of each curse he bowed to the east, and said, "Let all the people say amen." When these curses, about twenty in number, were ended, he pronounced in like manner, blessings upon all who had any hand in framing and building that sacred and beautiful edifice, and on those who had given, or should hereafter give any chalices, plate, ornaments, or other utensils; and at the end of every blessing, he bowed to the east, and said, "Let all the people say amen." Then followed the sermon and the sacrament. The consecration of the elements he performed in the following manner; "As he approached the altar, he made five or six low bows; and coming to the side of it where the bread and wine were covered, he bowed seven times; then * he came near the bread, and gently lifting up the corner of the napkin beheld it; and immediately letting fall the napkin retreated hastily a step or two, and made three low obeisances. His lordship then advanced, and having uncovered the bread, bowed three times as before; then laid his hand on the cup, and letting it go, he stepped back and bowed three times toward it; then came near again, and lifting up the cover of the cup, looked into it, and seeing the wine he let go the cover again, retired back, and bowed as before, after which the elements were consecrated."*

He consecrated St. Giles' Church in the same manner. It had been repaired, and in part rebuilt; and divine service had been performed, and the sacraments administered in it for some years. But upon Laud's accession, he interdicted the Church from divine service till it had been re-consecrated. Several other churches and chapels were in like manner shut up, till they had been consecrated after the same fashion.

Laud now set himself to introduce into the churches the ornaments and trappings of Popery. To support the enormous expense of repairing and beautifying St. Paul's, he raised money by "compositions with recusants, commutations of penance, exorbitant fines in the Star-Chamber and High Commission; insomuch that it became a proverb that St. Paul's was repaired with the sins of the people;" nor was the work much more than begun, when, after the expenditure of more than half a million of our money, the civil wars arrested its progress.

The zeal of the people in the Reformation had destroyed many

* Neale.

of the Popish ornaments in the churches. Yet many remained; and Laud would have the others restored. In the Cathedral of Canterbury, there yet remained the images of the Twelve Apostles, and of Christ, together with the images of sundry Popish saints. On the windows were placed images of the Virgin Mary, inscribed, "Hail, Mary, Spouse of God." Besides these, there were pictures of God the Father, and of the Holy Ghost. In the Cathedral of Durham were carved images; and among them an image of God the Father. The dignitaries of the Cathedral had procured copes of Mass priests with crucifixes and images of the Trinity upon them. They had consecrated knives to cut the sacred bread; and lighted candles upon the altars on Sundays and saints' days. On Candlemas day they had no less than 200 of these, of which 60 were upon and about the altar."

The repairing of these paintings and images, was considered by many as the signal of an open return to essential Popery. Many among the most moderate, thought that these decorations tended to image worship, and that they were directly contrary to the homily on the peril of idolatry. Some ministers preached against them; others ventured to remove them; and in return fell under the vengeance of Laud and the High Commission. Ruinous fines, a prison, or recantation, awaited all who ventured to open their lips against these things. Some were arraigned and punished for the very texts on which they preached; and no doubt it was very easy to find passages in the Bible containing no very obscure inuendos against such doings. One preached on Numbers, xiv. 4: "Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt." Another, on 1 Kings, xiii. 2: “And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord, and said, O ALTAR, ALTAR." Such persons reaped the reward of their temerity in Newgate. Says Hume: "Not only such of the clergy as neglected to observe every ceremony, were suspended or deprived by the High Commission; oaths were by many of the bishops imposed upon the churchwardens; and they were sworn to inform against any who acted contrary to the ecclesiastical canons." Some were whipped; some confined in a dark dungeon a whole winter, chained to a post in the middle of the room, with irons on their hands and feet; having no food but bread and water, with a pad of straw to lie on; and they were not released, but on condition of taking an oath and giving a bond not to preach any more, and to depart from the kingdom within a month, never to return.

Henry Sherfield was tried, May 20, 1632, in the Star-Chamber, for taking down some painted glass out of one of the windows of St. Edmund's Church, in Salisbury; in which were seven pictures of God the Father, in form of an old man in a blue and red coat, with a pouch by his side: one represented him as creating