the first of Elizabeth. In virtue of her supreme authority she made good all possible defects.*

We have said that it was due to Queen Elizabeth that the Church of England was not reformed according to the wishes of those who were called Puritans. It may be concluded with a moral certainty that the proviso retaining the 'Ornaments' was the work of the Queen. Not one of the divines appointed to revise the Prayer Book could have had any wish for the restoration of the discarded vestments. Sandys, in a letter to Parker, † speaks of the proviso as if it had been inserted without their knowledge. He supposes it meant that no one was to be forced to use them, that in the meantime they were not to be taken away, but to 'remain for the Queen.' She had doubtless some intentions concerning them which were never carried out. It was as much as she possibly could do to get her own bishops to wear ordinary episcopal garments. Strype says that Cox, Grindal, Sandys, and Jewel laboured all they could against receiving into the Church the papistical habits, and that all the ceremonies should be clean laid aside. But they could not obtain it from the Queen and Parliament.' It was a serious question with some of them whether they should undertake the episcopal office even with such ceremonies as were prescribed in Edward's second book. But they decided

to conform rather than to leave the Church in such a time of need.†

We read in Strype and other historians that some of our Reformers wished to introduce the Augsburg Confession, which was more Lutheran than the Articles and Edward's second Prayer Book. But the majority evidently inclined more to Calvin than to Luther. They strove hard with the Queen for the removal of the altars which had been used in the sacrifice of the mass, and to have common tables substituted in their place. They argued that though altars were proper under the Old Testament, when the sacrifices were figurative of Christ's sacrifice, they were improper under the New, when Christ is not to be sacrificed, but His body and blood are to be eaten and drunk after a spiritual manner.

It was not possible (they said) to root out the Romish mass, and all superstitious opinions concerning the same, without abolishing the altar, name and thing. All the Reformed Churches except the Lutheran had taken away the altars, and all our martyred Reformers, as Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Hooper, and Bradford, were strong against them.

* Burnet, vol. i. 249, and Gibson's Preservative,' p. 242. The statutes cited by Coke are 8 Elizabeth, c. 1; and 39 Elizabeth, c. 3.

Strype, vol. i. p. 83.

See Religious Thought in England,' vol. i. p. 43.

In this matter the Queen yielded, and the altars were removed.

The Queen and the bishops were not of one mind about the use of images. At their request they had also been removed, but the Queen showed strong symptoms of a desire for their restoration. Soon after the injunction for their removal she caused a crucifix and lights to be placed on the table in her private oratory. The archbishop remonstrated with her, and Dr. Cox, Bishop of Ely, wrote to her that it was against his conscience to minister in her chapel if they were not removed. The bishop at last, finding the royal supremacy so hard upon him, and yet so bent on things cast out by the Reformation, entreated her to leave such matters to be decided by a synod of the bishops, after the example of Constantine and other great Christian princes. Those who desire the restoration of candles and crucifixes have little for which to thank Elizabeth's bishops, and much for which to thank Elizabeth.

But we proceed. Hitherto there had been no Convocation but the one which opposed the royal supremacy. The first of the reformed met in 1562. The Queen did not put aside Convocations, but she wanted only such as would do what the royal supremacy ordained to be done. Bishop Stubbs, with an innocence which is charming, says that when the Queen was able to collect a Convocation willing to accept her Prayer Book she did her utmost to prevent the Parliament from intermeddling with ecclesiastical law.** During the first three years of her reign she and Parliament, had settled the whole busines for the spirituality,' but when Parliament showed a strong Puritan tendency she had settled the business for Parliament.

The first Convocation was an eventful one, and, like Parliament it was heavily weighted on the Puritan side. The destruction of its records is the saddest loss of its kind in the history of the Church of England. The first business was the Articles of Religion. The archbishop had made some changes in those drawn up in Edward's time, but he left untouched the one which concerned the Church. It began thus: 'It is not lawful for the Church to order anything which is contrary to God's word written.' But before it passed through Parliament the Queen, again putting the spirituality under a debt of infinite obligation, prefixed, or, as it is believed, caused to be prefixed, the clause, The Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith.' But the debt due to the Queen must be mitigated. The Church * Report, p. 143.

which had this supreme power was not the Church consisting merely of the spirituality, but the Church in which Queen Elizabeth was the supreme governor.'

6

Another important business was the rites and ceremonies. Propositions were made by bishops, deans, and archdeacons for petitions to the Queen to dispense with the sign of the cross in baptism, to remove organs, to take away copes and surplices, for which was to be substituted only a side garment,' probably a Geneva gown, to abrogate saints' days, not to make it compulsory to kneel at the communion, and to cause the minister to read the Prayers with his face to the people. In the Lower House, a proposition embracing six of these articles had the votes of forty-three members, with only thirty-five against it. But when the proxies were counted, it was found there were fifteen for, and twenty-four against, so that the measure was lost by a majority of one.

In

Many of the clergy continued to disregard the Queen's injunctions about the habits and ceremonies. Some spoke as if compliance were sinful and against their conscience. Those who persisted in their refusal to conform were deprived of their preferments. The struggle with the Puritans is a new departure in the history of the royal supremacy. Parliament, leaning to the Puritan side, sought further reformation, and asserted its claim to supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs. 1571 a Bill was introduced to make it compulsory on all persons to attend church and receive the sacrament. Sir Thomas Smith defended the Bill, but wished it to be referred to the consideration of the bishops. The Recorder of London answered that matters concerning religion belonged directly to Parliament, that they knew God was to be served as well as the bishops, and that it was in their Parliaments that princes made ecclesiastical constitutions. In the same year a Bill was brought in for further reformation, which was to abrogate all the ceremonies to which the Puritans objected. The treasurer of the Queen's household opposed the Bill on the ground that it was not the business of Parliament to meddle with ceremonies, for that belonged to the Queen, as chief of the Church, who had authority therein.' So many Bills were brought into Parliament for the abrogation of the rites and ceremonies, and they had so many supporters, that the Queen, who hitherto had managed without the clergy, now sent a message that it was her will and pleasure that no Bills affecting religion should be introduced into Parliament till they had first passed Convocation. This alliance between the Queen and Convocation against Parlia

It became

ment she left as a heritage to her successor. closer under James. In the time of Charles a Declaration without date was surreptitiously prefixed to the Articles. It gave the clergy in their Convocation' a power which they never had since the Act of Submission. They were to order and settle any differences about the external policy concerning injunctions, canons, and constitutions. Meanwhile Parliament and people rejected the authority both of King and bishops.

III.

In the preface to his Annals of Elizabeth's Reign,' * Strype says that we ought to understand what our original constitution is, so that we shall not be easily imposed upon, and shall know when we or others go beyond, fall short of, or vary from, the Reformed Church of England.' The royal supremacy in the time of Elizabeth practically meant the supremacy of the lay people. The Queen and Parliament, while they were of one mind, represented the nation. They were also the Church in the sense of the congregation, of which the clergy were only a part. The Reformation was their work, as against the hierarchy. The consecrations of the Elizabethan bishops were valid on the principles of Luther and Calvin, that the Church does not spring from the clergy, but that the clergy derive their functions through the congregation. The vocation of the Reformed Church of England was to guide and unite all Protestant Churches, whether Episcopal or non- -Episcopal. This vocation it has never fulfilled, but has gone gadding after the gods of Greece and Rome. The claim to valid orders' in the hierarchical sense is fatal to its existence. By no possibility can the Church of England ever be made a priestly Church, except by undoing the Reformation, and so overturning the foundation on which it rests.

The times have changed since Queen Elizabeth, and we have changed with them. England has increased in wisdom by the experience of three centuries. But history, it has been said, is philosophy teaching by examples. That treatment of the Church by the strong arm necessary in Elizabeth's time, though not easily understood from our modern standpoint, was according to a law true for all times. The State must be supreme. The great Leviathan, to use the figure of Thomas Hobbes, must exist before it can give the means of existence. It must be free before it can give freedom. Sound politics cannot allow a Church any more than an

* See Strype. vol. ii. p. 63, et seq.

individual to have any authority but that which the State gives or sanctions. Every community, corporation, or individual, must be dependent on the body politic. No Church officers or Church court can exercise jurisdiction, properly so called, in virtue of any commission given, or supposed to be given, from heaven, without the sanction of the Commonwealth. There is a true sense in which might is right, and they that have the sword are above them that have the Word.

The practical question is the amount of liberty which a State can allow a church. The aphorism of a free Church in a free State must always be taken with important limitations. If a Church teaches anything detrimental to morality, or tending to the injury of the Commonwealth, it must be denied freedom altogether. The circumstances of a nation at different times must regulate the degrees of possible liberty. In England we have an Established Church, with other religious bodies not established. The distinction is usually put down as one in kind, but it is essentially one of degree. All are subject to the State, are controlled by it, and in a measure connected with it. The real difference is that the Established Church, through the circumstances of a longer existence, has come into closer connection. It has required more control, and has received what we may call an official recognition. There never was any formal alliance, bond or contract of any kind. The connection is a natural growth. The State of England gives to all Churches very great liberty. It secures property to the non-Established, and it cannot be said to interfere with their creeds, except to interpret them when there is a question of property or civil rights which they cannot settle for themselves. The Established Church has in some respects less liberty, but practically it has no occasion to bring any case before a secular judge, if the parties agree to be satisfied with the judgment of the bishop or any court purely ecclesiastical.

There are circumstances which make it necessary that the Church of England be governed by the law. It is a community possessing vast property, which the State, for its own interests, must control. In all communities there are men whose opinions vary, but the differences are necessarily greater in a great historical Church. If left to self-government the stronger parties could expel the weaker. But the law is impartial. It admits, too, the widest interpretation of the formularies, and thus secures the freedom necessary to embrace the thought of the nation at the different stages of its development.