VI.

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. Maddox, who, a hundred years ago, attempted to justify her conduct towards the 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.'"

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 Litur gies established on these principles; but compelled also to sub

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 レ 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 encroachment 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 observances, which, without distracting men of more refined apprehensions, 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.

robes, utensils, and rituals were, therefore, in their view, not indifferent. It was not that they were self-willed; nor were they with narrow views and bigoted minds fighting against a mere surplice or ceremony;-but they had been taught by bitter experience, to resist first principles;-to take their stand where alone a stand is possible, at the beginnings of the evil, before everything is overwhelmed and swept away by its prevailing flood.

The queen pursued the line of policy which herself with the council had deliberately marked out. For some time the public religion continued as she found it. The popish priests kept on celebrating mass. None of the Protestant clergy ejected in the last reign were restored. Orders were given against all innovations. When some began to use King Edward's service book, the queen prohibited all preaching, and the reading of any prayers save those appointed by law, till the meeting of parliament. The parliament restored to the sovereign the supremacy of the Church; gave to her the nomination of all bishops; and vested in the crown, the power, without any concurrence of Parliament or convocation, to repress all heresies, to establish or to repeal all canons; to ordain, alter, or abolish, whatever religious rite or ceremony, she in her sovereign discretion and pleasure should choose. In order to the due exercise of this power, they gave her authority to institute that arbitrary and uncontrollable Court of High Commission, whose atrocities we shall hereafter have so much occasion to notice.

The queen now instructed her committee of divines to revise King Edward's Liturgy. They were required to strike out all offensive passages against the Pope, and to make the people easy about the bodily presence of Christ in the sacrament. As to the wishes of those who desired a purer worship, no provision was made, or intended to be made, out of regard to these. The petition, "From the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome, and all his detestable enormities, good Lord deliver us," was struck out from the Litany. The Rubric declaring that by kneeling at the sacrament no adoration was intended to any corporeal presence of Christ, was struck out. The old festivals, with their eves, were continued as in the second year of King Edward VI., subject to the queen's pleasure to take them away. Whereas in the revised Liturgy of King Edward, all the garments except the surplice were laid aside, the queen now ordered that the copes and other gear should be restored.

The Book of Common Prayer thus prepared was by parliament established by law; and to its rituals and worship all were required, under penalties adequate to compel anything but conscience, to conform.