by the alliance of this ecclesiastical assumption with the claim for a divine right inherent in the Sovereign apart from the nation1; by the practical comment upon these assumptions which was offered by the tyrannical injustice of the courts of the Star Chamber and High Commission; by the claim of the clergy in their Convocations to determine alone (as in the Canons of 16042 and of 16393) all matters of the organisation of divine worship and of moral discipline for the whole nation; by a refusal to listen to the voice of the laity as expressed in Parliament; by the introduction of

work of Anglican Divinity which asserted and argued the necessity of the apostolical succession to constitute a church. Without episcopacy there can be no lawful ordaining of ministers, and, by consequence, no lawful administering of the Word and Sacraments.'

1 See the Canons of 1606, commonly called Bishop Overall's Convocation Book (given in Cardwell's 'Synodalia,' p. 330), which asserted the divine right of the King in such an extreme manner that even James I. saw that their publication would make him ridiculous, and refused to sanction them.

"The chief part of these Canons relate to matters of public worship and the discipline of the clergy; but these were points of vital importance in the beginning of the 17th century. There are canons also on schools and universities, matters of matrimony and of wills, which affected the general body of the laity. "The publication of the Canons in 1604,' says Cardwell (‘Synodalia,' p. 585), * added greatly to the causes of disquiet which already existed in the Church of England. They were strongly opposed on legal grounds. Up to this period the cause of the church was successfully defended by Archbishops Whitgift and Bancroft; from this time it sensibly and constantly declined.'

3 The parts of the Canons of 1639 which excited most discontent were (1) The canon (v) against sectaries, requiring that all who objected to the Prayer Book, or wrote against it, or did not attend the church service, should be sought out and presented to the bishop to be punished. (2) The Etcetera Oath,' which was to be administered to all the clergy, and which bound them never to assent to any change in the government of the church by archbishops, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, &c.,' as then established. (3) Canon vii, 'On certain ceremonies,' which prescribed bowing towards the east on entering and leaving the church. These canons were passed after Parliament had been dissolved, the Convocation at the same time granting a benevolence to the King (the Parliament having refused any money grant) to enable him to carry on a war against the Scotch.

The Commons protested against the Canons of 1604, refusing a conference

principles which seemed, not without reason nor without actual examples, to lead back to Romanism; and by the insistance upon these in a blind and obstinate temper, even up to the moment when the nation was on the verge of civil war. When the Parliament, as the great lay synod of the nation, attempted resistance and remedy, the House of Commons was dissolved, the King resorted to illegal means to raise money, and the Parliamentary constitution, the pledge of Christian liberty and brotherhood, was held in abeyance for eleven years1; to all of which the clergy gave their active consent. Is it to be wondered at that Puritanism grew bitterer and more sectarian? or that in the Civil War, in which the King and the clergy were ranged together against the liberties of the country, moderation and justice disappeared?

And yet it is clear that Puritanism, in the extreme form which it was driven to assume, was by no means the dominant power from the first, even in the progressive part of the nation. It was only by degrees, and unwillingly, that the Parliamentary leaders yielded to it. The lives and experience of Pym, of Hampden, of Eliot, of Dering, and of Milton, shows this quite clearly. They began as a constitutional opposition within the Church system, the forms of which they

with the Convocation, and passed a bill, which was cut short only by a prorogation declaring that no such canons could be enacted without the consent of Parliament. Lingard, vi. 26.

1 1629-40. The Commons in 1629, before adjourning, passed a resolution, directed against the arbitrary proceedings of the King and the clergy, that they who make innovations in religion, or who enact or pay subsidies not granted by Parliament, are enemies of the kingdom.

admired, while of its culture they not only partook but were the choicest examples. Even when, in the year 1827, Parliament resisted the claim made by Laud through the Royal declaration prefixed to the Articles of Religion, that the Convocations should regulate questions of doctrine, its language was that of a body of churchmen expressing themselves with firmness but with moderation. We claim,' they said, for the truth that sense of the Articles of Religion which by public act of the Church of England and by general and concurrent exposition of the writers of our Church hath been delivered to us.' It seems clear that, if Parliament had been allowed in a constitutional manner to settle these questions, it would have settled them with moderation. The fatal fault, the constant provocation to violence, lay in the claims of the clergy and the King, which were in all cases extreme and short-sighted, and in many cases actually illegal. That they acted conscientiously we need not doubt, as Becket acted conscientiously in his struggle for the immunities of the clergy. But, as Becket's struggle and death only adds a pathetic tone to our condemnation of the forgery of the false decretals, on which he relied as having a divine sanction, so do the executions of Charles and of Laud to our condemnation of the false system of clerical power on which they depended, and for which they died.

The ideal of the nobler minds who eventually supported the Puritan cause was an England ruled by the laws of God, united and free. There is nothing to 1 Perry's 'History of the Church of England,' i. 396.

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make us doubt that the pursuit of this ideal would have left room for the development of all that was noble and refined in the nation. Pym and Hampden were two of the most cultivated gentlemen of their day. But both unity and freedom were destroyed by the King and the clergy, and men were driven into a sterner and more morose frame of mind. It would be wrong to judge the King and the clergy by the standard of political knowledge to which we have attained. Yet foresight, and a just apprehension of facts and tendencies, are the qualities rightly required in rulers; and such a just apprehension was not impossible in the days of Pym and Eliot, of Falkland and Chillingworth, of Cromwell and, we may add, of Hobbes. The blame must be thrown on that false idea of the Christian Church, which takes it for a separate society, having a sanction different from that of the general community, a society established mainly, if not solely, for worship and its adjuncts; and which attributes exclusive power in this society to the clergy. The Puritans, indeed, shared both these ideas to some extent. To many of them the substitution of one form of religious worship for another, of the Genevan model or of independency for the Episcopalian and liturgical system, was of more importance than justice; and the discipline which such men desired to establish would have been more irksome if less truculent than that of the old Church system. When, therefore, deprived of the checks exerted by the opposite party, and driven into an extreme position, those who had fought for constitu- . tional liberty were left to rule under the direction of

a dominant Puritanism, they also became a sect, with a limited ideal differing from that of the nation, often hypocritical, often oppressive; and the nation welcomed the Restoration as giving a promise of a state of things more consonant to its true aspirations.

Puritanism, then, passed away. But, as with the other experiments we have described, though its body was dead, its soul lived on. Beneath the superficial orgies of the Restoration might be found a nation serious, industrious, and resolved to be free. Beneath the wave of persecution in which Puritanism seemed to have been submerged, was a living Puritanism, which created a state of unrest until it was recognised by the Revolution settlement. Then the liberties for which the Puritans had fought arose from their graves and asserted themselves. Even the Cavalier Parliament of 1661 had acquiesced in most of the great constitutional principles, the denial of which had occasioned the Civil War1. All government or jurisdiction by the King alone, or by the clergy without the subsequent sanction of Parliament, was definitely condemned. The attempts of Charles the Second to evade the principle of the national sovereignty and of James the Second to override it were successfully resisted and finally overcome by the Revolution; nor has this principle ever since been seriously questioned. The constitutional enthusiasm of Burke, or Fox, or Hallam, the liberty of America, the Reform Act of 1832, are all the direct consequences of the Long Parliament and the Revolution. In this all England has acquiesced. The

1 Green, History of English People,' ch. ix, sect. vi, first paragraph.