fast settling down into unity and peace. The Romanists came orderly to church, and found nothing needlessly offensive where the laws were obeyed; nothing which the learned of their own clergy could pronounce heretical, and prove it. The puritan, too, though little pleased with concessions which enabled such to kneel beside him in the house of God, still owned the catholicity of the church he would gladly have improved. Thus both agreed with the same, and so with each other. The first schism of the reformed church was perpetrated by the precisians. Symptoms of it had appeared in 1565; in 1567 a conventicle was discovered in Plummer's Hall, and the congregation apprehended. Cartwright, the Margaret Divinity Professor at Cambridge, began to inculcate his schismatical views in 1570, and soon organized his followers into a sect, which met with so much sympathy from at least two-thirds of the best preachers, that its insolence and rapid propagation are by no means surprising: "It is not," says Buckley, preaching at Paul's Cross in 1571, "a cap, tippet, or surplice only, which are but small matters, and the smallest of many matters which are to be reformed in the church of England; and yet my meaning is not that small account should be made of these things, for hereof I am well assured, that how small soever they seem, they do no small hurt in the church of God; for to clog men's consciences, to hinder the course of the gospel, to breed contentions among brethren, is no small hurt." And then he proceeds to harp upon Jewel's simile, "the grain of the grape that killed Anacreon," and advance the theory which has been echoed by dissent from his day to ours. "When God at the first did restore unto us the comfort of his gospel, then was it a convenient time to have made a right reformation of religion, but our eye was not then single nor our doings simple. Then we drew not out of the book of God a right plat, neither laid we a sure foundation of right reformation; we did not then utterly abolish all superstitious vanities, which now, by God's judgment, are pricks in our eyes and thorns in our sides." Six years afterwards a clergyman in the same pulpit observed,* “I fear me we have yielded too much unto them in retaining divers ceremonies to turn them [the papists], and it will not be, for they are not the better, but the worse; and as it hath done them no good, so it is to be feared that it hath done many of us harm, and they are obstinate still, you should not have so many go to mass else as they do, and mass being so dear too." The answer to this is, that the wise and moderate concessions of the government were never fairly tried. Men who found the actions of devotion to which long use had familiarized them, almost necessary to its exercise, were treated with outrageous contumely; and adiaphorists, who could detect the element of truth indicated by contrary doctrinal statements of contending parties, were universally held worthy of the Laodicean curse. "How many poisoned protestants and maimed professors have we (I mean for opinion, for otherwise who is whole and sound?) You shall have a gospeller, as he will be taken, a jolly fellow, to retain and maintain such patches of popery and infection of Rome, that methinks I see the serpent's subtlety as plain as by the claw you may judge the lion; one holdeth faith justifieth, and yet works do no harm; another saith prayer for the dead is charity, and though it do no good, yet it doth no hurt; * J. White. what will you have me say, the devil go with them? Another verily believes that infants unbaptized and dead cannot but be damned; another crosses me his face, and nose, and breast with thumbs and fingers, and cannot pray but towards the east. . . . but I cannot stand on these points. Take heed to yourselves, and so to your souls; a little leaven sours the whole lump; the least dram in the world, or dreg of man's device, perverts the purity of religion, and utterly poisoneth your profession." The fascinating dream of a church on earth, where intercourse between God and the soul should need no aid from without, and human imperfection should leave no trace on the frame-work of public worship, or the republican fancy of universal equality in things pertaining unto God, had taken possession of great numbers of zealous men, and kept their hearts like a strong man armed. Playfere was a thorough trifler, but he describes this state of mind too justly as exhibited in his generation. "David could wish his utter enemy no greater harm than that Satan might stand at his right hand. Satan stands at a man's left hand when he draweth him by the arm into the old way of atheism; at a man's right hand when he pulleth him by the elbow into the new found way of puritanism. For so blessed Cranmer says, some lose their game by short-shooting, some by over-shooting; some walk too much on the left hand, some too much on the right hand. The first which shoot short and walk too much on the left hand are atheists; these latter which overshoot themselves and walk too much on the right hand are humourists. Of both which St. Austin writes thus:- We must in any case beware and take heed,' says he, ' of the mischievous infection, not only of tares, which are atheists, but also of those branches that have cut themselves off from the Lord's vine, which are humourists. For as Atalanta, ranging out on the right hand to gather up those golden apples which Hippomanes for the nonce threw forth before her, did lose the wager she ran for, no otherwise they which are not thankful to God for the glorious peace and prosperity of his church, but run after every strange-devised discipline, and take up all pretty novelties, as golden apples, which every man lets fall, shall without question miss the mark, and lose the garland of glory.'"+ It might be a too bold assertion that the persecution of papists in Elizabeth's reign was the chief ingredient in that policy which made sectarianism the formidable enemy which it has proved itself in many a juncture to the church of England. Yet there are some grounds for believing it. White's assertion that the papists had not benefited by the moderation of the government was not true. In the early years of Elizabeth, clergy and laity conformed to the changes in the ritual. Of 9400 of the old incumbents, all but two hundred kept their livings, and probably the greater number held no opinions which presented any insurmountable barrier to a permanent coalition. According to Sanders' own account there remained but thirty priests in England * J. White, Sermon at Paul's Cross, 1577. The Pathway to Perfection. Serm. at St. Mary's Spittle, 1573. who refused conformity. Thus there was some foundation for such assertions concerning popery in England as were made by Dr. Fulke in a sermon at Hampton Court in 1570:-"Her credit is cracked not only amongst her enemies, the protestants, but even among her best friends and greatest arch-papists; for I suppose there is none in the world so blind, so superstitious, so devoutly addict in all points to popery as they were thirty or forty years past. Although they close their eyes never so obstinately against the light of God's word, yet some effect of the beams of force will pierce even through their lids, and that they themselves cannot dissemble. Their pardons, their pilgrimages, their legends, who is now so blind that seeth not how the world hath been seduced by these? . . . . One that landed lately at Yarmouth (a seminary priest) before witnesses of good credit testified that if he might be satisfied on two points, concerning the other he would not greatly strive-the pope's supremacy and the real presence." Such an anecdote would to some extent justify a rather ungenerous remark of the same preacher three years later at Aldersgate :-" He that made Adam to lose paradise, he maketh many forsake their native country-him for an apple, them for less than the paring." The bull of Pius, indeed, put an end to much of the compliance above described in those who had not determined to go all lengths with the reformation, and who, justly alive to the guilt of schism, conceived, nevertheless, that they might feel due respect for the primate of the western church without deserting those fanes in which they had been baptized, and where they had knelt from infancy. This bull, however, might have produced little effect, but for two co-operating causes. The irritating language continually vented against papists created something of that dangerous spirit of martyrdom which embosses the shield of passive resistance; and the foreign seminaries were bringing into operaaggressive system, in which fanatical blindness was strangely balanced with generous self-devotion. To the missionaries from these establishments, the best perhaps, certainly the most mischievous, papists of their age, must be traced the formation of the Romish schism in England. tion an "I wis, I wis," said Dr. Overton, in a sermon at the East Grinstead assizes, "there are many cursed calves of Basan abroad, which, since they sucked the bull that came from Rome, have given over all obedience and allegiance both to God and the queen; for before that time they could be content to come to the church and hear sermons, and to receive the sacraments, and to use the common prayer with the rest of the congregation of Christ, and so forth. They were conformable in all respects, and content to do anything that beseemed good Christians to do; but since they sucked that mad bull, they are become even as brainsick calves, froward, stubborn, disobedient, in word and deed, not to be led nor ordered by any reason; and I would it were And yet these, forsooth, cannot be seen nor heard of when time of reformation is. They cannot be heard of at the quarter sessions, nor now at these general sessions, nor when any commission is sitte upon for the redress of such matters. They cannot be espied or heard of at any such time. But when the sessions are passed, we can both hear and see that they have their open meetings and solemn feastings together, sometimes at one house, sometimes at another house, amongst themselves, with all freedom, and liberty, and lustiness, talking and jesting at their pleasure of the state of religion, and so forth. no worse. Whatsoever they list to no good end, I warrant you, not without unhappy meaning, as of late you have had some experience of it westward. I pray God ere it be long we have not like experience here eastward, and all through our own slackness and negligence in looking to these matters." "If you make diligent search," says Dyos, " you shall find fat bulls of Basan of this company in cathedral churches-dumb dogs, and hinderers, as far as they dare, of the gospel of Christ Jesu.... All these men think that they can walk unespied, as though they had Gyges' ring upon them to go invisible by."+ Thus for some time popery survived in the Anglican church much as Wesleyanism appeared in the lifetime of Wesley. But a few of the most violent Romanists refused to join in public worship, and no very searching inquiries were made after ordinary recusants. "Our prince," says Drant, in 1569, "hath yet but strucken one string, and played upon mercy. But if she would now strike upon both the strings, and let her song be of mercy and judgment, then there would be a goodly music in her regiment, and all things would be in a much better tune than they now are." Not many years passed by before the government was provoked into listening to such counsels; for although the parents continued in many instances compliant, their children were so far influenced by the instructions of seminary priests, as to grow up in sturdy recusancy. "You have at this day," says Stockwood, " in this land many young gentlemen not above twenty-four years old, at the most, that are more obstinate and stubborn papists than their fathers. They will come at no church, at no sermons, whereas their parents will do both."§ Painful indeed is the remaining history. A bloody act was passed against the Romish seminary priests and their adherents, and bloodily it was executed ; while a mean, yet stinging, revenge was taken by the proscribed parties, preaching schism in the shape of puritanism and anabaptistry, endeavouring (and at last they succeeded) to break up the English church; and since they could no longer make a tool of it, to poison and destroy. I may also add, that the union of dissenters and papists bound together in unnatural friendship, By hatred and by danger the two hands (a union which the church of England has seen formed again after the lapse of ages,) was visible, notwithstanding all this overflow of indignation, in the sixteenth century. "It is lamentable to see the miserable mingle mangle of them and other sects, as it were, incorporated together, and linked in good fellowship, in this city, yea, in marriage, too; for as for company keeping, familiarity, and affinity, no man thinks anything of it; yet God's cause goes to the ground by it, and such courtesy hath devoured A godly and pithy exhortation made to the judges and justices of Sussex, &c. The first blood was shed at Launceston in 1577. It continued to flow through most of the following eighty years. English Christianity. Wherefore, if God be God, Baal cannot be God, for there is but one God. If our gospel be the true religion, then popery is flat superstition, for there is but one truth; if anabaptists have smelled of the smoke, and been burnt as heretics, why shall these, being in a worse cause, be in a better condition? But that Troy's destiny was to pull in their own enemies, and Israel's folly not to kill the Canaanites, wherefore they that remained were pricks and thorns to their eyes for it, and these we retain will be knives to our throats, I fear me, for they are obstinate persons."* Of the anabaptists, the oldest form of protestant sectarianism, men who thought God had not his due until Cæsar laid down his sceptre,† and the libertines, whose name sufficiently explains their character, it is scarcely necessary to speak. Groups of these, more or less openly avowing their creed or want of a creed, existed in England from the dawn of the Reformation. In the assize sermon already quoted, Overton recites some of their tenets: "But now there be other sects besides these which do very much trouble and disturb the church and civil state, as anabaptists, libertines, and such other like, which would have no commonwealth at all, but yet all things common, which would have no rule nor magistrate amongst the people; but yet would rule and reign above magistrates; which would have no laws, but yet would do what wrong they list, contrary to the law; of which sort are those that stick not to teach out of open pulpits, and to bear men fondly in hand that it cannot be found within the two clasps of the Bible that Christian men may go to law, or sue one another. And what else is this, I pray you, but to overturn all policy and governments, and to have no commonwealth at all? for if we may not use the laws, we must have no laws. If no laws, then no magistrates; if no magistrates, then no obedience; if no obedience, then no order; if no order, then (as I said) no commonwealth at all; but every man may live after his own common will, as he list himself, and as his own spirit shall move him, which is the stinking opinion, and very sink indeed of all anabaptistry. Such men, therefore, must be looked upon; and I am afraid lest the puritans also (as you call them), another sect lately sprung amongst us, do smell shrewdly of this ill-favoured smoke, of whom and of others I thought to have spoken more." "About this time," says Strype, referring to A.D. 1575, "or somewhat before, a sect that went by the name of the Family of Love, began to be taken notice of." Perhaps the industrious annalist might have carried back his reference several years without incorrectness, since, in 1571, Henry Nicholas, their founder, had disciples enough in England to make a translation of his works into English worth publishing. This sect acquired a very bad name, partly perhaps by the worthlessness of those who adopted it as a cloak for gross licentiousness partly from the conduct of disciples, who carried their doctrines J. White at Paul's Cross. † Andrews' Serm., vol. v. p. 130. A.D. 1601. Henry Nicholas's Works, "translated out of Base- Almayne into English," were published in ten duod. vols., 1571. |