liament, the Head of the Church, and the powers which had previously been claimed and exercised by the Pope, were transferred to the King. But, while the papal authority was rejected, the doctrines of Popery were not discarded. The King was a strenuous believer in transubstantiation, purgatory, sprinkling of holy water, invocation of saints, and other doctrines and rites of the Catholic Church. He exacted as implicit a submission to his will as the Pope himself. Indeed, little more was yet gained, than the substitution of a Pope in England for a Pope in Rome. Henry was of a temper too despotic to permit him to be a friend of the Protestant religion. To a monarch of arbitrary principles, the spirit of Popery is more congenial than that of the Protestant faith. The Catholic system requires an unconditional submission to the authority of man. The first principle of Protestantism is implicit obedience to God alone. The decisions of Councils and the commands of the Pope bind the Catholic ; the will of God, as it is uttered in the Holy Scriptures, is the only rule of faith and practice to the true Protestant.

After the death of Henry, his son, Edward VI. ascended the throne. He was a religious Prince, and a zealous friend of the Reformation. The Church of England was purified from many corruptions during his reign, a liturgy was compiled, and the Protestant religion made a rapid progress in the nation. But some relics of Popery were still retained, and among others, the vestments of the clergy. It was deemed indispensable, that the priests should wear the square cap, the surplice, the cope, the tippet, and other articles of apparel, which were in use among the Popish clergy. Some excellent ministers refused to wear these garments, on the ground that they were associated in the public mind with Popery; were regarded by many of the people with superstitious reverence, and ought, consequently, to be rejected with the other corruptions from which the church had purged herself. It was, unquestionably, very unwise to retain an appendage

renounced his political allegiance, though, in his controversy with Luther, which won for him from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith, he had argued that the primacy of the Pope was of divine right! Histoire du Concile de Trent, livre i. p. 65, Amsterdam edition, 1686.

of the old system, which tended to remind the people of the discarded religion, to irritate the minds of its enemies, while it nourished the attachment to it which some persons secretly retained, and to suggest the obvious conclusion, that as the ministers of the new religion resembled so nearly those of the old, the difference between the two systems was very small. The effect of wearing the popish garments was so manifestly injurious to the progress of truth, that the refusal to wear them was not a trivial scruple of conscience, as it may, at first sight, appear. But the attempt to enforce the use of them, by severe penalties, and by expulsion from office, was unjust; and it led to a final separation of the Protestants themselves into Conformists and Non-Conformists.

After Edward's death, and the accession of Mary, Popery was restored, and scenes of barbarous cruelty and bloody persecution ensued, which have made the name of this Queen infamous. Many hundreds of the Protestants perished at the stake, or in prison, and multitudes fled to Germany, Switzerland, and other countries.

The reign of this fierce bigot was happily short, and Elizabeth succeeded her. The Protestant religion was reestablished, and during her long reign it gained an ascendancy which it has never since lost. Yet Elizabeth possessed the despotic temper of her father.

She had a fond

She perempto

ness for some of the gaudy rites of Popery.* rily insisted on the use of the clerical vestments, and on a strict conformity to all the other ceremonies of the church. The final separation of the Non-Conformists from the Church of England was thus hastened. Those who had fled from England during the reign of Mary, returned, on the accession of Elizabeth, bringing with them an attachment to the purer rites of the Reformed Churches in Holland, Switzerland and France. Most of these exiles, and of the other Non-Conformists, were, nevertheless, willing to subscribe to the doctrines of the Church of England, and to use the liturgy, if they might be permitted to omit the vestments, the sign of the cross in baptism, and some other ceremonies. They disliked the pretensions of the Bishops, and many of them preferred the

* Elizabeth often said, that she hated the Puritans more than she did the Papists. Neal, vol. i. p. 319.

Presbyterian or Independent form of Church government. There were, too, some minor points in the liturgy, to which they objected. But had they been treated with Christian kindness, and allowed, in the spirit of mutual forbearance and charity, to neglect those forms, which they considered as sinful or inexpedient, they would, for the most part, have remained in the Episcopal Church, and England would have been spared the manifold crimes and miseries, which issued in a civil war, and drenched her soil with the blood of her King, and of thousands of her bravest sons.

But the principles of religious liberty were then unknown. The Queen, though for a while she treated the Non-Conformists with indulgence, till her power was fully established, soon announced to them her sovereign pleasure, that they should submit to all the ceremonies of the church. Severe laws were passed by an obsequious Parliament, and enforced, with ready zeal, by servile Bishops. Every minister who refused to conform to all the prescribed ceremonies was liable to be deprived of his office; and a large number of the ablest ministers in the nation were thus expelled and silenced.* In order to enforce the laws with the utmost rigor, a new tribunal was erected, called the

*Neal (vol. i. p. 236) gives the following specimen of the arbitrary manner in which the ministers were treated. It is an account of the examination of the London clergy: "When the ministers appeared in court, Mr. Thomas Cole, a clergyman, being placed by the side of the Commissioners, in priestly apparel, the Bishop's chancellor from the bench addressed them in these words: My masters, and ye ministers of London, the Council's pleasure is, that ye strictly keep the unity of apparel, like the man who stands here canonically habited with a square cap, a scholar's gown priest-like, a tippet, and in the church a linen surplice. Ye that will subscribe, write volo; those that will not subscribe, write nolo. Be brief, make no words." Some of these distressed ministers subscribed for the sake of their families, but thirty-seven absolutely refused. They were immediately suspended from office, and told, that unless they should conform in three months, they should be wholly deprived of their livings. In 1585 and 1586, it was found, by a survey, that there were only 2000 ministers, who were able to preach, to serve 10,000 churches. Bishop Sandys, in one of his sermons before the Queen, told her Majesty, that some of her subjects did not hear one sermon in seven years, and that their blood would be required of some one. Elizabeth thought three or four preachers in a county sufficient. Neal, vol. i. p. 359.

Court of High Commission, consisting of Commissioners, appointed by the Queen. This Court was invested with power to arrest ministers in any part of the kingdom, to deprive them of their livings, and to fine or imprison them at the pleasure of the Court. "Instead of producing witnesses in open court, to prove the charges, they assumed a power of administering an oath ex officio, whereby the prisoner was obliged to answer all questions the Court should put to him, though never so prejudicial to his own defence. If he refused to swear, he was imprisoned for contempt; and if he took the oath, he was convicted upon his own confession."* By this Protestant Inquisition, and by other means, one fourth of the preachers in England are said to have been under suspension. Numerous parishes were destitute of preachers, and so many were filled by illiterate and profligate men, that not one beneficed clergyman in six was capable of composing a sermon.t Thus were

learned and pious ministers oppressed, merely for their conscientious scruples about a few ceremonies, their families were ruined, the people were deprived of faithful teachers, the progress of truth was hindered, the papists were gratified, and a state of irritation was produced in the public mind, which led, in a succeeding reign, to the disastrous issue of a bloody civil war.

Nor was the edge of this intolerance turned against the clergy alone. The people were rigorously required to attend regularly at the parish churches.

Measures like these gradually alienated the affections of many from the Established Church, and convinced them, that there was no prospect of obtaining toleration, or of effecting a further reform in the church. They accordingly separated from it, and established meetings, where the ceremonies were not practised. These Non-Conformists were called Puritans, a term of reproach derived from the Cathari, or Puritans, of the third century after Christ.

The

term, however, was not inappropriate, as it intimated their desire of a purer form of worship and discipline in the church. It was afterwards applied to them on account of the purity of their morals, and the Calvinistic cast of their doctrines.

* Neal, vol. i. preface.

† Neal, vol. i. preface.

This separation occurred in the year 1566. The storm of royal and ecclesiastical wrath now beat the more fiercely on the heads of the Puritans. The history of England, for the succeeding century, is a deplorable narrative of oppression, bloodshed and indescribable misery, inflicted on men and women, of deep piety and pure lives, but guilty of claiming the rights of conscience, and choosing to worship God with different forms from those which the National Church prescribed. No man, of right feelings, can read Neal's History of the Puritans, without sorrow and indignation. Every man ought to read it, if he would understand the reasons why the founders of this country left their native land, to seek an asylum in the wilderness, and if he would rightly estimate the great principles of religious liberty which Roger Williams maintained and defended.

66

The accession of James I. excited the hopes of the Puritans. He had been educated in the principles of the Reformation, and had stigmatized the service of the Church of England as an evil said mass in English."* He had promised, that he would maintain the principles of the Church of Scotland while he lived. But he changed his principles or his policy, after he ascended the throne of England. He then announced the true royal creed, No Bishops, no King. He treated the Puritans with contempt and rigor, declaring that they were a sect "unable to be suffered in any well-governed commonwealth."+ Many of the Puritans, finding their situation intolerable at home, left the kingdom for the continent, or turned their eyes to America for a refuge from persecution.

In the midst of these scenes, Roger Williams was born and educated. His character impelled him to the side of the Puritans. His political principles were then, it is probable, as they were throughout his subsequent life, very liberal; and were entirely repugnant to the doctrines which were then upheld by the court and the dignitaries of the church. James was an obstinate and arbitrary monarch, who inflexibly maintained, in theory and often in practice, those despotic principles, which led his son to the scaffold, and expelled James II. from the throne. A mind, like that of Williams, strong, searching and fearless, would

"Neal, vol. ii. p. 28,

+ Prince, p. 107.