132

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. [1534.

the grant rendered it of little value. Emigration was delayed through fear of infringing the rights of a powerful company. The jealousy of the English nation, incensed at the concession of monopolies by the royal prerogative, prompted the house of commons to question the validity of the grant. While the English monopolists were wrangling about their exclusive privileges, the first permanent colony on the soil of New England was established without the knowledge of the corporation, and without the aid of King James.

The Reformation in England. an event which had been long and gradually prepared among the people by the opinions and followers of Wickliffe, and in the government by increasing and successful resistance to the usurpations of ecclesiastical jurisdiction was at length abruptly established during the reign, and in conformity with the passions, of a despotic monarch. The acknowledgment of the right of private judgment, far from being the cause of the separation from Rome, was one of its latest fruits.

In England, so far was the freedom of inquiry from being recognized as a right, that the means of forming a judgment on religious subjects was denied. The act of supremacy, which, in 1534, severed the English nation from the Roman see, contained no clause favorable to religious liberty. It was but a vindication of the sovereign franchise of the English monarch against foreign interference. It did not aim at enfranchising the English church, far less the English people, or the English. mind. The king of England became the pope in his own dominions; and heresy was still accounted the greatest of all crimes. The right of correcting errors of religious faith became, by the suffrage of parliament, a branch of the royal prerogative; and, as active minds among the people were continually proposing new schemes of doctrine, a vindictive statute was, after great opposition in parliament, enacted "for abolishing diversity of opinions." All the Roman Catholic doc trines were asserted, except the supremacy of Rome

1547.] THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.

133

It was Henry's pride to defy the authority of the Roman bishop, and yet to enforce the doctrines of the Roman church. 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." 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 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! 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 awaited the Catholic who denied the king's supremacy, and the Protestant who doubted his creed. The Bible had been widely circulated, and read by every class; in the Bible was found the doctrine, dear to the people, of the unity of the human race, consequently of the natural equality of its members. The study of the Bible foreboded a revolution. In the latter part of his life, therefore, Henry revoked the general permission of reading the Scriptures, and limited the privilege to merchants and nobles. 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, though it sometimes faltered in its progress along untried paths, steadily demanded the emancipation of the public mind.

and

The accession of Edward VI., in 1547, led the way to the establishment of Protestantism in England, and, at the same time, gave life to the germs of the differ

134

ORIGIN OF PURITANISM.

[1547-1552.

ence 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 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 respecting the communion, and esteemed as a commemoration the rite which the Catholics reverenced 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 hairshirt 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, announced the austere principle, 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; Puritanisın, zealous for independence, admitted no voucher but the Bible a fixed rule, which it would allow neither parliament, nor

1550-1558.1

THE PURITANS IN EXILE.

135

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 farther, 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. The Churchmen differed from the ancient forms as little as possible; 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. The unwilling use of them was evidence of religious servitude.

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, 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. For them, compromise was apostasy. The offer of pardon could not induce Hooper to waver, nor the pains of a lingering death impair his fortitude. He suffered by a very slow fire, and at length died as quietly as a child in his bed.

A large part of the English clergy returned to their submission to the see of Rome; others firmly adhered to the reformation, which they had adopted from conviction; and very many, who had taken advantage of the laws of Edward sanctioning the marriage of the clergy, had, in their wives and children, given hostages for their fidelity to the Protestant cause. Multitudes, therefore, hurried into exile to escape the grasp of vin

136 ELIZABETH AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [1558.

dictive bigotry; but even in foreign lands, two parties among the emigrants were visible; and the sympathies of a common exile could not immediately eradicate the rancor of religious divisions. The one party aimed at renewing abroad the forms of discipline which had been sanctioned by the English parliaments in the reign of Edward; the Puritans, on the contrary, endeavored to sweeten exile by a complete emancipation from ceremonies which they had reluctantly observed. But

time, the great calmer of human passions, softened the asperities of controversy; and a reconciliation of the two parties was prepared by concessions to the Puritans. For the circumstances of their abode on the continent were well adapted to strengthen the influence of the stricter sect. Their love for the rigorous austerity of a spiritual worship was confirmed by the stern simplicity of the Swiss republics; and some of them had enjoyed in Geneva the instructions and the friendship of Calvin.

On the death of Mary, the Puritans returned to England, with still stronger antipathies to the forms of worship and the vestures, which they now repelled as associated with the cruelties of Roman intolerance at home, and which they had seen so successfully rejected by the churches of Switzerland. The pledges which had been given at Frankfort and Geneva, to promote further reforms, were redeemed. But the controversy did not remain a dispute about ceremonies; it was modified by the personal character of the English sovereign, and became identified with the political parties in the state. The first act of parliament in the reign of Elizabeth declared the supremacy of the crown in the state ecclesiastical; and the uniformity of common prayer was soon established under the severest penalties. In these enactments, the common zeal to assert the Protestant ascendency left out of sight the scruples of the Puritans.

The early associations of the younger daughter of Henry VIII. led her to respect the faith of the Cath