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How often, and how falsely, it has been alleged that the Puritans were only struggling for political pre-eminency; that it was a mere contest of will, to determine which party should impose their own peculiar forms and opinions upon the others! What a strange mode these men adopted to gain political power! To give themselves up to poverty, imprisonment, fines, banishment or death, and to continue thus to suffer from generation to generation! It was indeed true, that, seventy years afterwards, when nothing was left the nation but victory or the entire loss of freedom, the friends of liberty with one consent rallied round the Puritans, its oldest and most unconquerable defenders. Then the strife was not by the Puritans alone, but by all men who stood for their liberties. But for two entire generations, the Puritans, as such, only stood and suffered for conscience' sake alone. Long after this time, even as late as the reign of King James, a work of Dr. Ames, entitled "English Puritanism," thus declared the principles and demands of the Puritans: "All that we crave of his majesty and the state, is, that with his and their permission, it may be lawful for us to worship God according to his revealed will; that we may not be forced to the observance of any human rites and ceremonies; so long as it shall please the king and parliament to maintain the hierarchy or prelacy in this kingdom, we are content that they enjoy their state and dignity; and we will live as brethren among the ministers that acknowledge spiritual homage to the spiritual lordships, paying them all temporal duties of tithes, and joining with them in the service and worship of God so far as we may without our own particular communicating in those human traditions which we judge unlawful. Only we pray that the prelates and their ecclesiastical officers may not be our judges; but that we may stand at the bar of the civil magistrate; and that if we shall be openly vilified and slandered, it may be lawful for us, without fear of punishment, to justify ourselves to the world; and then we shall think our lives and all we have, too little to spend in the service of our king and country."*

But the queen and archbishop pressed on. There must be entire conformity, or ruin to those who opposed. It may well be left to our American public to judge what right the queen had to impose such things upon her Christian subjects; and how the bishops could be justified in allowing themselves to be made the instruments of imposing with such fearful rigors, things which, in the judgment of so many intelligent and godly people, were absolutely sinful. But no man could be a bishop in those days without yielding this submission to arbitrary power.

In obedience to the queen, the Commission now forbade all

*Neale.

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preachers throughout the realm, the exercise of their office without a promise under the hand of each, of an absolute conformity in all things. Archbishop Parker cited the Puritan clergy of London to Lambeth, and threatened them. The Puritan clergy sent him "a humble supplicatory letter," protesting before God that it was a bitter grief to them to be obliged to refuse obedience. They pleaded the ancient and primitive toleration of a variety of rites and forms; they pleaded the injunction of Paul respecting things indifferent; "Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not." "Let every one be fully persuaded in his own "All men," said they, I mind." cannot look upon the same things as indifferent; if, therefore, these habits seem so to you, you are not to be condemned by us; on the other hand, if they do not appear so to us, we ought not to be vexed by you. ** Wherefore we most humbly pray, that a thing which is the care and pleasure of the Papists, and which you have no great value for yourselves, and which we refuse not from any contempt of authority, but from an aversion to the common enemy, may not be our snare and crime."* But the archbishop brought them before the court of High Commission, and told them peremptorily that they should conform to the habits, i. e. wear the square cap and no hats, in their long gowns; wear hoods in the choir, and communicate kneeling, in wafer bread, or suffer punishment. Some declining to promise this, were sent to prison. Others, who would not enter into bonds to wear the square cap, were deprived of their office and benefices.

The clergy of London were now called before the High Commission. A man clothed cap-à-pie, in their priestly garments, was placed before them. The bishop's chancellor said to them from the bench, "My masters and ye ministers of London, the council's pleasure is that ye strictly keep the unity of apparel like this man who stands here canonically habited with a square cap, a scholar's gown, priest-like, a tippet in the church, and a linen surplice; ye that will subscribe, write volo [I will]; those that will not subscribe, write Nolo [I will not]. Be brief; make no words: Apparitor, call over the churches; and ye ministers and masters, answer presently under penalty of contempt."

Sixty-one subscribed; thirty-seven refused and were presently suspended. Archbishop Parker said, "He did not doubt, that when the ministers had felt the smart of poverty and want, they would yet comply, for the wood was yet green."

The secretary of state declared he could not keep pace with the archbishop. Grindal relented. The Bishop of Durham declared he would rather lay down his office than suffer such

* Neale.

proceedings in his diocese: but the archbishop was above him, and pressed on.

The Court of High Commission now required every clergyman having the care of souls, to take an oath, that he would be obedient: I. To all the queen's injunctions by letters patent; 2. To all letters from the lords of the privy council; 3. To the articles and mandates of his metropolitan; 4. To the articles and mandates of his bishop, archdeacon, chancellor, &c., &c.,— in a word "to be subject to the control of all his superiors with patience." "To gird these injunctions the closer," says Neale, "there were appointed in every parish four or eight censors, spies, or jurats," who "were under oath to take particular notice of the conformity of the clergy and of the parishioners; and to give in their presentments when required; so that it was impossible for an honest Puritan to escape the High Commissioner."

These were but the beginnings of the milder measures of the queen and the hierarchy to put down the spirit and principles of the Puritans. And yet Maddox, so famous for his work against the Puritans, extols the purity, the moderation, and the dear regard for liberty, exercised by "Mother Church." He makes it the very ground of his argument that the Puritans were treated with unmerited mildness, consideration, and forbearance: that the bishops only used their legitimate powers; and used them not only with a moderation greatly to be commended, but which should have subdued and won the Puritans into a meek and grateful submission!

The persecution went on against the non-conforming ministers, till a fourth part of the ministers were suspended;* among whom were the principal preachers, at a time when not one minister in six could compose a sermon. Many churches had to be closed for want of ministers to officiate. The secretary wrote to the archbishop to supply the churches, and release the prisoners; but "His grace," says Neale, "was inexorable, and had rather the people should have no sermon or sacraments, than have them without the surplice and cap." The archbishop replied, that when the queen put him upon what he had done," he told her that these precise folks would offer their goods and their bodies to prison rather than relent; and her highness then willed him to imprison them." He confessed that many parishes were unserved; but said that when he had sent his chaplains to serve in some of the great parishes, they could not administer the sacraments, because the officers of the parish had provided neither surplice nor wafer bread-that he had had many churchwardens and others before him; but that he was fully tired; for some ministers would not obey their suspensions, but preached in defiance of them."†

The secretary and archbishop wrote to Grindal, Bishop of London, to fill up the vacant pulpits; but he replied that it was impossible, there being no preachers; all he could do was to supply the churches by turns; which was far from stopping the murmurs of the people. Such was the state of things in London, where the mild Grindal, having a true concern to promote the preaching of the Word of God, would not act against the ministers further than he was compelled by superior power. In other parts of the kingdom, the queen's injunctions were rigidly executed, and the state of things was worse.

The suspended ministers having vainly endeavored to procure toleration from the queen and bishops, now (A. D. 1566) tried the novel and anti-monarchical mode of spreading their cause before the people. With the throne was power; but there was another tribunal-that of reason, of public enlightened sentiment-from whose decision, if they could not at present gain redress, they might at least find comfort. They gave to the press, "A Declaration of the doings of those ministers of God's word and sacraments, who have refused to wear the upper apparel and ministering garments of the Pope's Church." They showed that neither prophets nor apostles used distinctive garments; but that the linen garment was peculiar to the sacrificing priest, whose office and work was entirely diverse from that of apostles or Christian ministers; that this distinction of garments did not obtain generally in the Christian Church till after the rise of Antichrist; that these garments had been abused to idolatry, sorcery, and all kinds of conjuration; that the popish priests can perform none of their pretended consecrations of holy water, transubstantiation, or conjurations of the devil out of possessed persons or places, without a surplice, an alb, or hallowed stole; that the use of these garments is an offence to weak Christians, leading them into superstition and sin; that at best they are but the commandments of men, and that they came within the rule of the apostle, "Why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, after the commandments and doctrines of men? Touch not, taste not, handle not:"—and that even supposing the garments to be indifferent, yet they ought not to be imposed, because it was an infringement of that liberty wherewith Christ had made them free.

The bishops answered this appeal. The Puritans rejoined. Thus was the issue laid before the bar of truth and reason, with the whole universal people for a jury. What was the consequence? Puritanism spread as if both parties had been engaged in scattering brands of fire.

The bishops left the field of argument, and resorted to authority. They procured a decree, 1, That no person should

print or publish against the queen's injunctions, set forth, or to be set forth, or against the meaning of them: 2, That no person shall sell, bind, or stitch such book;-and by various provisions of this sort, they endeavored to silence the declaration of those principles which neither their arguments had been able to resist, nor their former persecutions to repress.

So long as the Puritan ministers were allowed to preach, they had been acknowledged to be the most conscientious, laborious, and efficient preachers in the kingdom. And many, after they were deprived, braving all dangers, travelled up and down the country, preaching wherever people could be gathered to hear. "The Puritans," said Burleigh [one of Queen Elizabeth's ministers of state], "are over-squeamish and nice, yet their careful catechising and diligent preaching diminish the papistical numbers." And Bancroft, the American historian, has justly said that "The party thus persecuted were most efficient opponents of Popery;" and that "but for the Puritans, the old religion would have retained the affections of the multitude. If Elizabeth reformed the court, the ministers whom she persecuted reformed the commons. THAT THE ENGLISH NATION BECAME PROTEST-V ANT, IS DUE TO THE PURITANS." "How then," he asks, "could the party be subdued? The spirit of brave and conscientious men cannot be broken. No part is left but to tolerate or destroy."

It was now eight years since Elizabeth ascended the throne. The only prospect before the Puritans what of a surrender of their liberties; an entire submission to despotic power; a giving up of the truth to a gradual relapse into the errors and superstition and bondage of a scheme of religion little better than Popery; or to make a stand: to worship God according to their conscience, whatever consequences might ensue. They had attended the parochial churches as long as their consciences and the fury of their persecutors would allow. Multitudes had gathered round their old deprived ministers for instruction, counsel and comfort; often had these ministers spoken to them the words of eternal life, and often had they joined in prayer to God.

At length the question arose: shall we worship God according to his Word? shall we enjoy the ordinances enjoined by Christ? These are our ministers; they have been unjustly deprived by the secular power. Shall they break to us the bread of life? or must we return and submit to what we cannot submit without violating our conscience, betraying the truth, proving traitors to freedom and to God, or must we be cut off for ever from Christian ordinances?

Long and prayerful were these deliberations. The conclusion was, that they ought to meet to worship God, and to keep the ordinances enjoined by Christ. Their pastors were already