CHAP. him for disobedience. He commended to the waver VIII. ing emperor the English sovereign as a model for soundness of belief, and anathematized him only for contumacy.1 It was Henry's pride to defy the authority of the Roman bishop, and yet to enforce the doctrines of the Roman church. He was as tenacious of his reputation for Catholic orthodoxy, as of his claim to spiritual dominion. He disdained submission, and detested heresy. Nor was Henry VIII. slow to sustain his new prerogatives. He rejected the advice of the commons, as of "brutes and inexpert folks," of men as unfit to advise him as "blind men are to judge of colors."2 According to ancient usage, no sentence of death, awarded by the ecclesiastical courts, could be carried into effect, until a writ had been obtained from the king. The regulation had been adopted in a spirit of mercy, securing to the temporal authorities the power of restraining persecution. The heretic might appeal from the atrocity of the priest to the mercy of the sovereign. But now, what hope could remain, when the two authorities were united; and the law, which had been enacted as a protection of the subject, was become the powerful instrument of tyranny! establishment of the English church under the king, was inexorably sustained. No virtue, no eminence, conferred security. Not the forms of worship merely, but the minds of men, were declared subordinate to the government; faith, not less than ceremony, was to vary with the acts of parliament. Death was denounced against the Catholic who denied the king's supremacy, and the Protestant who doubted his creed. 1 Fra Paolo, i. 82. 2 Herbert's Henry VIII., 418, 419. 3 Neal's Puritans, i. 55. The THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 277 VIII. Had Luther been an Englishman, he might have per- CHAP. ished by fire. In the latter part of his life, Henry revoked the general permission of reading the Scriptures, and limited the privilege to merchants and nobles. He always adhered to his old religion; he believed its most extravagant doctrines to the last, and died in the Roman, rather than in the Protestant faith.3 But the awakening intelligence of a great nation could not be terrified into a passive lethargy. The environs of the court displayed no resistance to the capricious monarch; a subservient parliament yielded him absolute authority in religion; but the advancing genius of the age, even though it sometimes faltered in its progress along untried paths, steadily demanded the emancipation of the public mind. Jan. 28. The accession of Edward VI. led the way to the 1547 establishment of Protestantism in England, and, at the same time, gave life to the germs of the difference which was eventually to divide the English. A change in the reformation had already been effected among the Swiss, and especially at Geneva. Luther had based his reform upon the sublime but simple truth which lies at the basis of morals-the paramount value of character and purity of conscience; the superiority of right dispositions over ceremonial exactness; or, as he expressed it, justification by faith alone. But he hesitated to deny the real presence, and was indifferent to the observance of external ceremonies. Calvin, with sterner dialectics, sanctioned by the influence of the purest life, and by his power as the ablest writer of his age, attacked the Roman doctrines 1 Turner's England, iii. 140. 2 Ibid. ii. 352. 3 Bossuet, Hist. des Variations, i. viii. c. iii. iv. and xxiv.-xl. Henry's Great Britain, xii. p. 107. CHAP. respecting the communion, and esteemed as a commemoration the rite which the Catholics reverenced VIII. as a sacrifice. Luther acknowledged princes as his protectors, and, in the ceremonies of worship, favored magnificence as an aid to devotion; Calvin was the guide of Swiss republics, and avoided, in their churches, all appeals to the senses as a crime against religion. Luther resisted the Roman church for its immorality; Calvin for its idolatry. Luther exposed the folly of superstition, ridiculed the hair-shirt and the scourge, the purchased indulgence, and the dearly-bought masses for the dead; Calvin shrunk from their criminality with impatient horror. Luther permitted the cross and the taper, pictures and images, as things of indifference; Calvin demanded a spiritual worship in its utmost purity. The reign of Edward, giving safety to Protestants, soon brought to light that both sects of the reformed church existed in England. The one party, sustained by Cranmer, desired moderate reforms; the other, countenanced by the protector, were the implacable adversaries of the ceremonies of the Roman church 1549 It was still attempted to enforce' uniformity by men1552. aces of persecution; but the most offensive of the Ro and man doctrines were expunged from the liturgy. The tendency of the public mind favored a greater simplicity in the forms of devotion; the spirit of inquiry was active; not a rite of the established worship, not a point in church government, escaped unexamined, not a vestment nor a ceremony remained, of which the propriety had not been denied. The spirit of inquiry rebelled against prescription. A more complete 12 and 3 Edward VI., c. i. Statutes, iv. 36-39. Rymer, xv. 181183, and 250-252. ORIGIN OF PURITANISM. 279 VIII. reform was demanded; and the friends of the estab- CHAP. lished liturgy expressed in the prayer-book itself a wish for its furtherance.1 The party strongest in numbers pleaded expediency for retaining much that had been sanctioned by ancient usage; while abhorrence of superstition excited the other party to demand the boldest innovations. The austere principle was now announced, that not even a ceremony should be tolerated, unless it was enjoined by the word of God. And this was Puritanism. The church of England, at least in its ceremonial part, was established by an act of parliament, or a royal ordinance; Puritanism, zealous for independence, admitted no voucher but the Bible-a fixed rule, which it would allow neither parliament, nor hierarchy, nor king, to interpret. The Puritans adhered to the established church as far as their interpretations of the Bible seemed to warrant ; but no further, not even in things of indifference. They would yield nothing in religion to the temporal sovereign; they would retain nothing that seemed a relic of the religion which they had renounced. They asserted the equality of the plebeian clergy, and directed their fiercest attacks against the divine right of bishops, as the only remaining strong-hold of superstition. In most of these views they were sustained by the reformers of the continent. Bucer and Peter Martyr both complained of the backwardness of the reformation in England; Calvin wrote in the same strain. When Hooper, who had gone into exile in 4 3 1 Neal's Puritans, i. 121. Neal's New England, i. 51. 2 So Cartwright, a few years later, in his Reply to Whitgift, 27: "En matters of the church, there may be nething done but by the word of God." In his Sec. Reply, 1575, p. 81: "Et is not enough, that the Scripture speaketh not against them, unless it speak for them." 3 Strype's Memorials, ii. xxviii. 4 Hallam's England, i. 140. c. VIII. CHAP. the latter years of Henry VIII., was appointed bishop of Gloucester, he, for a time, refused' to be consecrated 1550. in the vestments which the law required; and his reJuly. fusal marks the era when the Puritans first existed as a separate party. They demanded a thorough reform · the established church desired to check the propensity to change. The strict party repelled all union with the Catholics; the politic party aimed at conciliating their compliance. The Churchmen, with, perhaps, a wise moderation, differed from the ancient forms as little as possible, and readily adopted the use of things indifferent; the Puritans could not sever themselves too widely from the Roman usages, and sought glaring occasions to display their antipathy. The surplice and the square cap, for several generations, remained things of importance; for they became the badges of a party. They were rejected as the livery of superstition-the outward sign, that prescription was to prevail over reason, and authority to control inquiry. The unwilling use of them was evidence of religious servitude. 1553 to 1558. The reign of Mary involved both parties in danger; but they whose principles wholly refused communion with Rome, were placed in the greatest peril. Rogers and Hooper, the first martyrs of Protestant England, were Puritans; and it may be remarked, that, while Cranmer, the head and founder of the English church, desired, almost to the last, by delays, recantations, and entreaties, to save himself from the horrid death to which he was doomed, the Puritan martyrs never sought, by concessions, to escape the flames. 1 Strype's Memorials, ii. 226, and Repository, ii. 118–132. Hallam, i. 141. Neal's Puritans, i. 108 For |