expressed his satisfaction that all of them had cordially subscribed the Articles established, and that even in 'those curious points in which the present differences lie,' the disputants were on both sides not unwilling to carry their appeals to that common standard. In respect, therefore, of questions rising out of the Quinquarticular controversy, he ended by the following order: 'We will that all further curious search be laid aside, and these disputes shut up in God's promises, as they be generally set forth to us in the holy Scriptures, and the general meaning of the Articles of the Church of England according to them. And that no man hereafter shall either print or preach to draw the Article aside any way, but shall submit to it in the plain and full meaning thereof: and shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the Article, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense1.' circulation. A document more sober and conciliatory could not well Effects of its have been devised. The clergyman was simply bidden to perform an obvious duty, by abstaining as an honest man from all attempts to torture Articles of Religion till he made them square with his own theories. Yet so factious was the age in which this order was made public, that the passions it was meant to calm and mollify were all the 1 Wilkins, IV. 475. On Dec. 30, 1629, the king published instructions for causing the contents of the Declaration to be put in execution and punctually observed for the time to come: Heylin, ubi sup. Part III. ch. xxii. § 12. 2 The following passage from a 'Declaration' of the King on the dissolution of parliament (March 10, 1628), is a strong proof of his personal earnestness in this matter: 'Having taken a strict and exact survey of our government, both in the Church and commonwealth, and what things were most fit and necessary to be reformed, We found, in the first place, that much exception had been taken at a book, en titled, Appello Cæsarem, or, An Ap- more embittered and inflamed. A group of Calvinistic clergy, in the neighbourhood of London, lost no time in framing a petition to the King, in which they deprecated the restraint he had imposed of late upon the saving doctrines of God's free grace in election and perseverance.' They contended that the 'Declaration' placed them in a very grave dilemma, for that they must either disobey an earthly monarch by attacking the 'Pelagian and Arminian heresies,' or else must, on the other hand, provoke the heavier indignation of the King of kings Himself, by failing to make known the whole counsel of God'.' And in the House of Commons, where the Puritan or Calvinistic party was predominant, and where the members more than once had solemnly averred that the suppression of 'Popery and Arminianism' was one of their own foremost duties2, a debate3 upon the royal Declaration' resulted in the following vote or manifesto: We the Commons in parliament assembled do claim, protest, and avow for truth, the sense of the Articles of Religion which were established by parliament in the thirteenth year of our late Queen Elizabeth, which by the publick act of the Church of England, and by the general and currant expositions of the writers of our Church, have been delivered unto us. And we reject the sense of the Jesuites and Arminians, and all others, wherein they differ from us.' How inconsistent are such protestations with the pretext that the Articles were framed entirely on a Calvinistic hypothesis, it were superfluous to remark at length; for as restrain all opinions to the sense of those Articles, that nothing might be left to fancies and invocations [? innovations]. For we call God to record, before whom we stand, that it is, and always hath been, our heart's desire, to be found worthy of that title, which we account the most glorious in all our crown, Defender of the Faith.' Rushworth, I. App. p. 4. 1 Collier, II. 746, 747. 2 Rushworth, 1. 652. 3 The speeches of Rous and Prynne are full of the most vehement denunciations of Arminianism: Ibid. pp. 645, 647. The latter asserts it to be the duty of a parliament to establish true religion and to punish false, declaring its superiority above the Convocation of Canterbury, which is but provincial and cannot bind the whole kingdom, and adding, with respect to York, that 'it is distant and cannot do any thing to bind us or the laws.' Ibid. pp. 649, 650. the Declaration' aimed at nothing more than to confine the teaching of the clergy to those points which were suggested by a plain and literal exposition of the public Formulary, the wild outcry raised against such principles of exegesis seemed to justify the argument which Montague and others were adopting, when they urged that 'Calvinism' is not accordant with the letter of the Articles, and cannot be deduced from them by any of the rules which judges commonly apply to the interpretation of a legal document'. 1 See Dr Waterland's remarks on this subject: Works, II. 350. CHAPTER X. OBJECTIONS TO THE ARTICLES AT DIFFERENT THE HE earliest symptoms of dislike to the Elizabethan Articles resulted from the numerous scruples of the school or party who, inheriting the predilections of bishop Hooper, aimed at a still further simplification of the rites and ceremonies of the Church. Though many of this earlier race of Puritans could reconcile their deep abhorrence of the surplice and other 'defiled robes of Antichrist' with their acceptance of the thirty-fourth article respecting 'Traditions',' that article was viewed by nearly all the disaffected spirits as a harsh restriction, which they were at liberty to criticise, to cancel, to evade. Accordingly the bill For ministers of the Church to be of sound religion,' which passed, as we have seen, in 1571, was so ambiguously worded either by its framers or promoters in the houses of Parliament, as to serve the turn of the Puritan faction,' and relieve the non-conforming clergy (in their own opinion) from the duty of subscribing to any other Articles, except those which only concern the confession of the true Christian faith, and the doctrine of the sacraments 2.' 1 See above, p. 112, p. 132, n. 3. Other obnoxious Articles were those relating to the consecration of Bishops and the Homilies. Some persons, however, more consistently objected always to the XXXIVth of the Elizabethan Articles, and as early as the Convocation of 1563, proposed that 'the censure of those who disconform may be softened, and let down to a gentler dislike:' Collier, II. 486; Hardwick's Reform. pp. 251 sq. p. 268. Neal, Hist. of the Puritans, I. 267, 268, Lond. 1732; Blackburne, Works, v. 23, Camb. 1804, and below, pp. 227 sq. The Parliament of 1610 urged this distinction expressly on behalf of the Puritans. Neal, II. 83. tions to Parliament, But compromises of this kind did nothing to conciliate The Admonithe virulence of party-spirit, which was rapidly diffused by 1572, the returning exiles on their not infrequent promotion to the ministry of the Church. The 'Admonitions to the Parliament,' of which the first appeared early in 1572, were bold and acrimonious demonstrations of the growing discontent. Incited by a letter of Beza, Calvin's pupil and successor, which was actually appended to the first 'Admonition,' the chief oracles of Non-conformity insisted more impatiently than ever on the need of 'purity of discipline;' understanding, first of all, by that language, the subversion of the English hierarchy, which they regarded as the 'cheefe cause of backewardnesse, and of all breache and dissention'.' But their zeal was not exhausted in denunciations of the bishops, and of 'antichristian rites.' 'Remoue Homylies, Articles, Iniunctions,' was ere long their undiscriminating clamour, and that prescripte Order of seruice made out of the masse-booke':' while defenders of the English Formularies, such as Parker and Burghley, were classed among the enemies of reformation and stigmatised by many as 'great papists".' as well as Some writers have, indeed, contended that the Puritans, opposed to while agitating for 'their conceived discipline, never moved discipline of any quarrel against the doctrine of our Church4;' but the Church. nothing is more certain than that authors of the Admonitions to Parliament and other kindred publications, stood on very different ground; affirming, with as much sagacity as malice, that 'the righte gouernment of the Church cannot be separated from the doctrine.' They maintained consistently that in addition to its ritual deformities, the Prayer-Book was 'full of corruptions";' that in the Ordinal there was one paragraph at least which they had never 1 To the godly readers,' sign. A. 2 Ibid. sign. A. iiij. 3 Parker's Corresp. p. 479. 4 e.g. Bp Carleton, Examination (of Montague's Appeal), pp. 8, 121, Lond. 1626. 5 First Admonition, sign. C. H. A. ples may be found among the Zurich |