worshipping therein used, out of the which assemblies the Lord our only Saviour hath called us, and still calleth, saying- Come out from among them, and separate yourselves from them, and touch no unclean thing, then will I receive you, and I will be your God, and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord' (2 Cor. vi. 17, 18). So as God giveth strength at this day, we do serve the Lord every Sabbath day in houses, and on the fourth day in the week we meet or come together weekly to use prayer and exercise discipline on them which do deserve it, by the strength and sure warrant of the Lord God's Word, as in Matt. xviii. 16, 17; I Cor. v. 4, 5."

They have suffered for their testimony.

"So this secret and disguised Antichrist, to wit, the Canon Law, with the branches and maintainers, though not so openly 17 have, by long imprisonment, pined and killed the Lord's servants (as our minister, Richard Fitz, Thomas Rowland, deacon, one Patridge, and Giles Fowler, and besides them a great multitude). whose good cause and faithful testimony, though we should cease to groan and cry unto our God to redress such wrong and cruel handling of his poor remnant, the very walls of the prisons about this city-as the Gatehouse, Bridewell, the Counters, the King's Bench, the Marshalsea, and the White Lionwould testify God's anger kindled against this land for such injustice and subtile persecution."

It concludes with a prayer for the Queen: that "she may cast down all the places of idolatry within her land, with the Popish canon law"; may send forth princes and ministers, and give them the Book of the Lord, that they may bring home the people of God to the purity and truth of the apostolic Church; and that she may have "a blessed, long, and prosperous reign, with peace of conscience in this life," and eternal glory in the life to come. The date-1571-is given in the body

of the document.18

Of the twenty-seven persons who signed this appeal, seven appear to have been among the Bridewell prisoners caught at Plumbers' Hall in 1567; Thomas Rowland, the deacon who was dead when the appeal was signed, was one of the seven.19 Five of the Christian names do not correspond, but it was

17 That is, the present Church authorities do not, like the Romanists, openly profess to maintain the Canon Law; but are really the allies of that Antichrist.

18 Waddington, i. 743-744; Congregational Martyrs, 13-14. 19 Rowland is called Bowelande in Parte of a Register.

very possible for the names of the Bridewell prisoners to be erroneously recorded.

Whether the Church was formed before or after 1567 is doubtful. As nothing in the examination of the Plumbers' Hall prisoners suggests that they held any very definite conception of ecclesiastical polity, or attached any importance to "discipline," it is probable that the Church was organised after the prisoners were liberated.

The tradition of this Church survived. In a "Dialogue " printed in 1593, it is stated that " in the days of Queen Elizabeth there was a separated Church, whereof Mr. Fitz was pastor, that professed and practised that cause (meaning Congregationalism) before Mr. Browne wrote for it." 20 Henry Ainsworth, in 1608, speaks of " that separated Church whereof Mr. Fitz was pastor, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign." 21 John Robinson too speaks of "a separated Church in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's days." 22

In earlier times there were secret Christian societies in England which were really Congregational Churches; but these societies were informal associations of devout men and women who met to worship God without any idea of restoring the polity of apostolic times. Richard Fitz and his friends called their society a Church: they claimed to be a Church in the apostolic meaning of the word; they restored the apostolic offices of the pastor and deacon; they attributed to the Church the power of discipline, which Christ declares is possessed by those who are gathered together in His name; they met regularly to exercise this power, and they believed that what they bound on earth was bound in heaven, and what they loosed on earth was loosed in heaven.

The first regularly constituted English Congregational Church of which any record or tradition remains was the Church of which Richard Fitz was pastor; and he died in prison for his loyalty to Congregationalism.

20 Quoted, without reference, by Waddington, Congregational Martyrs, 15-16.

21

Counterpoyson... Mr. Bernard's book entitled The Separatists' Schisme, and Mr. Crashawe's Questions examined and answered

by H. A., 39.

"John Robinson, Works, ii. 57.

V

It seems probable, however, that neither Richard Fitz nor those who were associated with him became Nonconformists for the sake of realising an ideal form of ecclesiastical polity. They thought that the services of the English Church were tainted with Romanism. The Romish vestments and the Romish ceremonies were intolerable to them. They could not, so they believed, continue to worship in the Queen's churches without being guilty of disloyalty to Christ; and therefore they resolved to form a separate congregation. They found the justification of their decision in the great words of Christ-" Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." 23 They discovered that to such an assembly Christ had entrusted most august powers, and that it fulfilled Christ's own conception of a Church.

But the movement began in their irreconcilable hostility to the vestments; this was the origin of their quarrel with the English Church. And it may be urged that if the Queen was tyrannical in enforcing the vestments, the Separatists were narrow and unreasonable in breaking away from the national Church rather than submit to them. It is due to the memory of the Elizabethan Nonconformists to consider the grounds of their resistance.

(1) The very object of the Queen-for, at first, most of her bishops were very cool in sustaining her policy—the very object of the Queen in enforcing the vestments was one of the chief grounds on which the Puritans and Separatists refused to wear them. She knew that the common people who had been educated in Romanism would regard the clergy who wore priestly habits as priests. But the Puritans vehemently denied that they were priests; and they refused to be parties to the policy which was intended to make them appear priests. They maintained that whoever claimed to be a priest, and whoever permitted himself to be regarded as a priest, was guilty of obscuring the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.

(2) When the Queen insisted that the priestly vestments

23 Matt. xviii. 20.

should be worn by all Christian ministers, she raised the great question, Whether any secular ruler has authority to interfere with the regulation of Christian worship. The Puritans-the most moderate of them, as well as the most extreme-refused to concede the authority, and contended that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only Sovereign and Legislator of the Church. They were willing that the Queen should enforce the laws of Christ; but that she had any right to make laws of her own for the faith or discipline or worship of the Church, they peremptorily denied.

The controversy was not a new one. In the time of Edward VI., Hooper, who has sometimes been called the first English Nonconformist, refused to wear episcopal vestments, when he was appointed Bishop of Gloucester; and unless he wore the vestments he could not receive episcopal consecration. The King and his Council were, however, resolved that he should be bishop. They could not remove his scruples by argument, and therefore shut him up for some time in his own house; and when this failed, they put him in the Fleet prison. At last, he consented to a compromise. He engaged to wear the vestments when he was consecrated, when he preached in his own cathedral, and when he preached before the King; but declared that he would wear them at no other times.24

The men that were unwilling to wear the vestments in Elizabeth's time had the sympathy of most of the eminent statesmen who served the Queen-of the Earl of Bedford, and the Earl of Huntingdon, of Walsingham, Knollys, and the Lord Keeper Bacon. Leicester, the Queen's favourite, was among their friends. Cecil was continually remonstrating against the severities of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and begging them to use the Puritans mercifully.

They had among them some of the ablest and most learned as well as the most devout of the clergy. Humphreys and Sampson were distinguished scholars. Some of the bishops who took part in enforcing the Queen's will had felt the difficulties of their brethren whom they now oppressed. Jewel described the vestments as "theatrical habits," and said, that the vestments are "the relicks of the Amorites cannot be denied." Writing in the very year that the Puritan clergy 24 Collier, v. 377-384, 418–419.

in London were deprived, he said, "I wish that all, even the slightest vestige of Popery might be removed from our churches, and above all from our minds." Bishop Sandys, writing in 1559, bitterly lamented that the Popish vestments were still used.25 Bishop Grindal, who shared with Parker the responsibility of depriving the London Puritans, had had scruples himself concerning the vestments and the ceremonies; and in 1556 he wrote to Bullinger, "We who are now bishops, on our first return and before we entered on our ministry, contended long and earnestly for the removal of the things that have occasioned the present dispute." 26 Early in the controversy, all the Fellows of St. John's College, Cambridge, threw off their surplices and refused to wear them any longer. The Fellows of Trinity, with three exceptions, did the same. Mr. Hallam says with perfect truth that the Puritan scruples—

"were by no means confined, as is perpetually insinuated, to a few discontented persons. Except Archbishop Parker, who had remained in England during the late reign, and Cox, Bishop of Ely, who had taken a strong part at Frankfort against innovation, all the most eminent churchmen . . . were in favour of leaving off the surplice and what were called the Popish ceremonies. . . In this early stage the advocates of a simpler ritual had by no means assumed the shape of an embodied faction, which concessions, it must be owned, are not apt to satisfy, but numbered the most learned and distinguished portion of the hierarchy. Parker stood nearly alone on the other side." 27

The reasons that made so large a number of eminent men reluctant to wear the vestments must deserve consideration and respect. They were strengthened by a passion which had a fierce strength in the hearts of the people. In those days the vestments were inseparably associated with the most terrible memories. When the service was held in Plumbers' Hall, it was only twelve years since the martyrdoms under Queen Mary had begun with the burning of Rogers at Smithfield and Hooper at Gloucester. Ridley and Latimer, Saunders, Bradford and Cranmer, soon died the same death. For three years, in town after town, and city after city, the

25 For the opinions of these and other bishops, see Neal, i. 157–160. 26 See Grindal's Letter to Bullinger, in Strype, Grindal, ii. 491, and Zurich Letters: 1558-1579 (Parker Society), lxxiii. 169.

27 Hallam, Constitutional History, i. 175, 179.