proceedings, the king summoned the twelve judges into the Star Chamber, and demanded their judgments upon three questions; there were present the Bishops of Canterbury and London, and about twelve lords of the privy council. The lord-chancellor opened the assembly with a sharp speech against the Puritans, as disturbers of the peace, declaring that the king intended to suppress them by having the laws put in execution;* and then demanded, in his majesty's name, the opinion of the judges in three things: Q. 1. "Whether the deprivation of Puritan ministers by the high commissioners, for refusing to conform to the ceremonies appointed by the last canons, was lawful?" The judges replied, "that they had conferred thereof before, and held it to be lawful, because the king had the supreme ecclesiastical power, which he has delegated to the commissioners, whereby they have the power of deprivation, by the canon law of the realm, and the statute 1st Eliz., which appoints commissioners to be made by the queen, but does not confer any new power, but explain and declare the ancient power; and therefore they held it clear that the king without Parliament might make orders and constitutions for the government of the clergy, and might deprive them if they obeyed not; and so the commissioners might deprive them, but that the commissioners could not make any new constitutions without the king. And the divulging such ordinances by proclamation is a most gracious admonition. And forasmuch as they [the Puritans] have refused to obey, they are lawfully deprived by the commissioners ex officio, without libel, et ore tenus convocati." Q. 2. "Whether a prohibition be grantable against the commissioners upon the statute of 2 Henry V., if they do not deliver the copy of the libel to the party?" The judges replied, "that that statute was intended where the ecclesiastical judge proceeds ex officio, et ore tenus." Q. 3. "Whether it be an offence punishable, and what punishment they deserved, who framed petitions, and collected a multitude of hands thereto, to prefer to the king in a public cause, as the Puritans had done, with an intimation to the king, that if he denied their suit, many thousands of his subjects would be discontented?" The judges replied, "that it was an offence finable at discretion, and very near to treason and felony in the punishment, for it tended to the raising sedition, rebellion, and discontent among the people." To which unaccountable resolution all the lords agreed.† By these determinations the whole body of the clergy are excluded the benefit of the common and statute law; for the king without Parliament may make what constitutions he pleases : his majesty's high commissioners may proceed upon these constitutions ex officio; and the subject may not open his complaints to the king, or petition for relief, without being finable at pleasure, and coming within danger of treason or felony.‡ * Crook's Reports, Mich. term, 2 Jac., part ii., p. 37, parag. 13. †The reader is referred to Vaughan's Stuart Dynasty, vol. i., p. 139.—C. This (as Dr. Warner well observes) was making VOL. I.--H н Before the breaking up of the assembly, some of the lords declared that the Puritans had raised a false rumour of the king, as intending to grant a toleration to papists; which offence the judges conceived to be heinously finable by the rules of common law, either in the King's Bench, or by the king in council; or now, since the statute of 3 Henry VII., in the Star Chamber. And the lords severally declared that the king was discontented with the said false rumour, and had made but the day before a protestation to them that he never intended it, and that he would spend the last drop of blood in his body before he would do it; and prayed, that before any of his issue should maintain any other religion than what he truly possessed and maintained, God would take them out of the world. The reader will remember this solemn protestation hereafter. After these determinations the archbishop resumed fresh courage, and pursued the Puritans without the least compassion. A more grievous persecution of the orthodox faith, says my author, is not to be met with in any prince's reign. Dr. John Burgess, rector of Sutton Colefield, in one of his letters to King James, says the number of Nonconformists in the counties he mentions were six or seven hundred, agreeable to the address of the Lincolnshire ministers, hereafter mentioned.* The whole clergy of London being summoned to Lambeth, in order to subscribe over again, many absconded, and such numbers refused, that the Church was in danger of being disfurnished, which awakened the court, who had been told that the Nonconformists were an inconsiderable body of men. Upon this surprising appearance, the bishops were obliged to relax the rigour of the canons for a while, and to accept of a promise from some to use the cross and surplice; from others to use the surplice only; and from others a verbal promise that they might be used, not obliging themselves to the use of them at all; the design of which was to serve the Church by them at present, till the universities could supply them with new men; for they had a strict eye upon those seminaries of learning, and would admit no young scholar into orders without an absolute and full subscription to all the articles and canons. Bancroft, in a letter to his brethren the bishops, dated December 18, 1604, gives the following directions: "As to such ministers as are not already placed in the Church, the thirty-sixth the king absolute in all ecclesiastical affairs, without Buckinghamshire Lincolnshire 9 Staffordshire 17 Hertfordshire. 20 Surrey 14 17 21 28 Wiltshire 31 Devon and Cornwall. 51 Northamptonshire In the twenty-four counties above mentioned and thirty-seventh canons are to be observed; | Rotterdam, the Hague, Leyden, Utrecht, and and none are to be admitted to execute any ec- other places of the Low Countries, where Engclesiastical function without subscription. Such lish churches were erected after the Presbyterias are already placed in the Church are of two an model, and maintained by the States accord sorts: 1. Some promise conformity, but are ing to treaty with Queen Elizabeth, as the unwilling to subscribe again. Of these, foras- French and Dutch churches were in England. much as the near affinity between conformity Besides, the English being yet ir possession of and subscription gives apparent hopes that, be- the cautionary towns, many weat over as chaping men of sincerity, they will in a short time lains to regiments, which, together with the frame themselves to a more constant course, merchants that resided in the trading cities, and subscribe to that again, which by their prac- made a considerable body. The reverend and tice they testify not to be repugnant to the Word learned Dr. William Ames, one of the most of God, your lordship may (an act remaining acute controversial writers of his age, settled upon record of such their offer and promise) re- with the English church at the Hague; the spite their subscription for some short time. 2. learned Mr. Robert Parker, a Wiltshire divine, Others, in their obstinacy, will yield neither to and author of the Ecclesiastical Policy, being subscription nor promise of conformity; these disturbed by the High Commission, retired to are either stipendiary curates, or stipendiary lec- Amsterdam, and afterward became chaplain to turers, or men beneficed; the first two are to be the English regiment at Doesburgh, where he silenced, and the third deprived." He adds, died. The learned Mr. Forbes, a Scots divine, "that the king's proclamation of July 16, 1604, settled with the English church at Rotterdam, admonishes them to conform to the Church, and as Mr. Pots, Mr. Paget, and others did at Amobey the same, or else to dispose of themselves sterdam and other places. and their families some other way, as being men unfit, for their obstinacy and contempt, to occupy such places; and besides, they are within the compass of several laws.” But the greatest number of those who left their native country for religion were Brownists,* or rigid Separatists, of whom Mr. Johnson, Ainsworth, Smith, and Robinson were the leaders. Mr. Johnson erected a church at Amsterdam after the model of the Brownists, hav teacher. These two published to the world a confession of faith of the people called Brownists, in the year 1602, not much different in doctrine from "The Harmony of Confessions," but being men of warm spirits, they fell to pieces about points of discipline;† Johnson excommu The Puritans who separated from the Church, or inclined that way, were treated with yet greater rigour. Mr. Maunsel, minister of Yar-ing the learned Mr. Ainsworth for doctor or mouth, and Mr. Lad, a merchant of that town, were imprisoned by the High Commission, for a supposed conventicle, because that on the Lord's Day, after sermon, they joined with Mr. Jackler, their late minister, in repeating the heads of the sermon preached on that day in the church. Mr. Lad was obliged to answer upon oath certain articles without being able to ob- *These conscientious exiles, driven from their tain a sight of them beforehand, and, after he own country by persecution, instead of meeting with had answered before the chancellor, was cited a hospitable reception or even a quiet refuge in Ho.up to Lambeth to answer them again before the land, were there "loaded with reproaches, despised. high commissioners upon a new oath, which and afflicted by all, and almost consumed with deep poverty." The learned Ainsworth, we are told, lived he refusing without a sight of his former an- upon ninepence a week and some boiled roots, and swer, was thrown into prison, where he contin- was reduced to the necessity of hiring himself as a ued a long time without being admitted to bail. porter to a bookseller, who first of all discovered his Mr. Maunsel, the minister, was charged farther skill in the Hebrew language, and made it known to with signing a complaint to the lower house of his countrymen. The Dutch themselves, just emerParliament, and for refusing the oath ex officio, ged from civil and religious oppression, looked with a for which he also was shut up in prison without jealous eye on these suffering refugees. And though bail. At length, being brought to the bar upon a ly than the ecclesiastic to toleration, does not appear the civil power, commonly in every state more friendwrit of habeas corpus, and having prevailed with to have oppressed them; the clergy would not afford Nic. Fuller, Esq., a bencher of Gray's Inn, and a them an opportunity to refute the unfavourable relearned man in his profession, to be their coun-ports generally circulated against them on the ausel, he moved that the prisoners might be dis- thority of letters from England, nor receive their concharged, because the high commissioners were fession of faith, nor give them an audience on some not empowered by law to imprison, or to ad-points on which they desired to lay their sentiments minister the oath ex officio, or to fine any of his majesty's subjects. This was reckoned an unpardonable crime, and, instead of serving his clients, brought the indignation of the commissioners upon himself. Bancroft told the king that he was the champion of the Nonconformists, and ought, therefore, to be made an example to terrify others from appearing for them; accordingly, he was shut up in close prison, from whence neither the intercession of his friends nor his own humble petitions could obtain his release to the day of his death.* This high abuse of Church power obliged many learned ministers and their followers to leave the kingdom and retire to Amsterdam, *Pierce's Vindication, p. 174. before them; but with a man at their head of no less eminence than James Arminius, judged that they ought to petition the magistrate for leave to hold their assemblies for the worship of God, and informed against them in such a way as might have render ed them the objects of suspicion. "They seemed evi dently," it has been remarked, "to have considered them in the same light in which serious and conscientious dissenters from the religious profession of the majority will ever be viewed, as a set of discontented, factious, and conceited men, with whom it would be safest for them to have no connexion."-Ains. worth's two Treatises on The Communion of Saints, and An Arrow against Idolatry, printed at Edinburgh, 1789, pref., p. 15-17.—ED. A late writer, who appears to have accurately Mr. Neal as incorrect in his account of the debates investigated the history of the Brownists, represents which arose among them. The principal leaders of | * Others say that he obtained this conference, and ice they in this manner put an end to his life. He so confounded the Jews that from pique and maldied in 1622 or 1623, leaving an exemplary character for humility, sobriety, discretion, and unblamable virtue.-See an account prefixed to his two treatises, p. 60, 62.-ED. nicated his own father and brother for trifling | acknowledgment he would desire; but Ainsmatters, after having rejected the mediation of worth, though poor, would accept of nothing but the presbytery of Amsterdam. This divided the a conference with some of his rabbies upon the congregation, insomuch that Mr. Ainsworth and prophecies of the Old Testament relating to the half the congregation excommunicated Johnson, Messias, which the other promised, but not havwho, after some time, returned the same com- ing interest enough to obtain it, and Ainsworth pliment to Ainsworth. At length the contest being resolute, it is thought he was poisoned.* grew so hot that Amsterdam could not hold His congregation remained without a pastor for them; Johnson and his followers removed to some years after his death, and then chose Mr. Embden, where soon after dying, his congrega- Canne, author of the marginal references to the tion dissolved. Nor did Mr. Ainsworth and his Bible, and sundry other treatises. followers live long in peace, upon which he left Mr. Smith was a learned man, and of good them and retired to Ireland, where he continued abilities, but of an unsettled head, as appears some time; but when the spirits of his people by the preface to one of his books, in which he were quieted he returned to Amsterdam, and desires that his last writings may always be tacontinued with them to the day of his death. | ken for his present judgment. He was for refiThis Mr. Ainsworth was author of an excellent ning upon the Brownists' scheme, and at last little treatise entitled "An Arrow against Idol- declared for the principles of the Baptists; upon atry," and of a most learned commentary on the this he left Amsterdam, and settled with his five books of Moses, by which he appears to have disciples at Ley; where, being at a loss for a been a great master of the Oriental languages proper administrator of the ordinance of bapand of Jewish antiquities. His death was sud- tism, he plunged himself, and then performed den, and not without suspicion of violence, for it the ceremony upon others, which gained him is reported that, having found a diamond of very the name of a Se-Baptist. He afterward emgreat value in the streets of Amsterdam, he advertised it in print, and when the owner, who was a Jew, came to demand it, he offered him any this party were the two brothers Francis and George Johnson, Mr. Ainsworth, and Mr. John Smith, who had been a clergyman in England. Three principal subjects of controversy occasioned dissensions in the Brownist churches. The first ground of dissension was the marriage of Francis Johnson with a widow of a taste for living and dress, particularly unsuitable to times of persecution: his father and his brother opposed this connexion. This occasioned such a difference that the latter proceeded from admonitions and reproofs to bitter revilings and reproaches, and Francis Johnson, his colleague Ainsworth, and the church at length passed a sentence of excommunication against the father and brother. Mr. Neal, it seems, confounds this unhappy controversy with another that succeeded to it, but distinct from it, between Francis Johnson and Ainsworth. It turned upon a question of discipline; the former placing the government of the Church in the eldership alone, the latter in the Church, of which the elders are a part. This dispute was carried to an unchristian height, but, according to Mr. John Cotton, of New-England, who was the contemporary of Johnson and Ainsworth, and had lived amid the partisans of each side, they did not, as Mr. Neal represents the matter, mutually" of an unsettled head." This language seems to inexcommunicate each other, but Ainsworth and his company withdrew, and worshipped by themselves after Johnson and those with him had denied the communion. In the interim of these debates, a schism had taken place in the church, headed by Mr. John Smith, who advanced and maintained opinions similar to those afterward espoused by Arminius; and besides his sentiments concerning baptism, to which Mr. Neal refers in the next paragraph, several singular opinions were ascribed to him; as, that no translation of the Bible could be properly the Word of God, but the original only was so; that singing set words or verses to God was without any proper authority; that flight in time of persecution was unlawful; that the new creature needed not the support of Scriptures and ordinances, but is above It seems that the accusers of Mr. Smith have forthem; that perfection is attainable in this life, &c. gotten the progressive nature of the changes he underThere arose against him a whole host of opponents; went. "For a man," he himself remarks, "if a Turk, Johnson, Robinson, Clifton, Ainsworth, and Jessop. to become a Jew, if a Jew, to become a papist, if a His character as well as his sentiments were attack-papist, to become a Protestant, are all commendable ed with a virulence of spirit and an abusive language that discredit the charges and expose the spirit of the writers. See some account of Mr. Ainsworth, prefixed to a new edition of his two treatises, p. 27-42; and Crosby's History of English Baptists, vol. i., p. 3., &c, and p. 265, &c.-ED. This is said on the authority of his opponents only, who, from the acrimony with which they wrote against him, it may be reasonably concluded, might be ready to take up a report against him upon slender evidence. His defences of himself and his opinions have not been, for many years, to be met with; but the large quotations from them in the writings of his opponents afforded not the least intimation, either in the way of concession or justification, of his having done such a thing; the contrary may be rather concluded from them. The first ground of his separation from the Established Church was a dislike of its ceremonies and prescribed forms of prayer; he afterward doubted concerning the validity of baptism administered in a national church; this paved the way for his rejecting the baptism of infants altogether, and adopting immersion as the true and only meaning of the word baptism. His judgment on doctrinal points underwent similar changes. Hence, Mr. Neal has called him a man sinuate a reflection on Mr. Smith: whereas it is an honour to any man; it shows candour, ingenuousness, an openness to conviction, and sincerity, for one to change his sentiments on farther inquiry, and to avow it. A lover of truth, especially who has imbibed in early life the principles of the corrupt establishments of Christianity, will continually find it his duty to recede from his first sentiments. Bishop Tillotson justly commended his friend Dr. Whichcot; because while it is customary with learned men at a certain age to make their understandings, the doctor was so wise as to be willing to learn to the last; i. was of an unsettled head.-Crosby's History of the English Baptists, vol. i., p. 65, &c. Account of Mr. Ainsworth prefixed to his two treatises, p. 41.-ED. he changes, though they all befall one and the same person in one year, nay, if it were in one month; so that not to change religion is evil simply; and, therefore, that we should fall from the profession of Puri tanism to Brownism, and from Brownism to true Christian baptism, is not simply evil, or reprovable braced the tenets of Arminius, and published certain conclusions upon those points in the year 1611, which Mr. Robinson answered; but Smith died soon after, and his congregation dissolved. Mr. John Robinson was a Norfolk divine, beneficed about Yarmouth, where being often molested by the bishop's officers, and his friends almost ruined in the ecclesiastical courts, he removed to Leyden, and erected a congregation upon the model of the Brownists.* He set out upon the most rigid principles, but by conversing with Dr. Ames, and other learned men, he became more moderate; and though he always maintained the lawfulness and necessity of separating from those Reformed churches among which he lived, yet he did not deny them to be true churches, and admitted their members to occasional communion, allowing his own to join with the Dutch churches in prayer and hearing the Word, but not in the sacraments and discipline, which gained him the character of a semi-separatist; his words are these:† "We profess, before God and men, that we agree so entirely with the Reformed Dutch churches in matters of religion, that we are willing to subscribe to all and every one of their articles, as they are set down in The Harmony of Confession.' We acknowledge these Reformed churches for true and genuine : we hold communion with them as far as we can; those among us that understand the Dutch language frequent their sermons; and we administer the Lord's Supper to such of their members as are known to us, and desire it occasionally." This Mr. Robinson was the father of the Independents. This difference among the Puritans engaged them in a warm controversy among themselves about the lawfulness and necessity of separating from the Church of England, while the conforming clergy stood by as spectators of the combat. Most of the Puritans were for keeping within the pale of the Church, apprehending it to be a true church in its doctrines and sacraments, though defective in discipline, and corrupt in ceremonies; but being a true church, they thought it not lawful to separate, though they could hardly continue in it with a good conscience. They submitted to suspensions and deprivations; and when they were driven out of one diocess, took sanctuary in another, being afraid of incurring the guilt of schism by forming themselves into separate communions. Whereas the Brownists maintained that the Church of England, in its present constitution, was no true Church of Christ, but a limb of antichrist, or at best a mere creature of the state; that their ministers were not rightly called and ordained, nor the sacraments duly administered; or, supposing it to be a true church, yet as it was owned by their adversaries [the conforming Puritans] to be a very corrupt one, it must be as lawful to separate from it as for the Church of England to separate from Rome. The conforming Puritans evaded this consequence by denying the Church of Rome to be a true church; nay, they affirmed it to be the very antichrist; but the argument remained in full force against the bishops, and that part of the clergy who acknowledged the Church of Rome to be a true church. It is certainly as lawful to separate from the corruptions of one church as of another; and it Mr. Henry Jacob was born in Kent, and edu- is necessary to do so, when those corruptions cated in St. Mary's Hall, where he took the de- are imposed as terms of communion. Let us grees in arts, entered into holy orders, and be- hear Archbishop Laud, in his conference with came precentor of Christ Church College, and the Jesuit Fisher. "Another church," says his afterward beneficed in his own country at Cher- grace, " may separate from Rome, if Rome will | iton. He was a person thoroughly versed in separate from Christ; and so far as it separates theological authors, but withal a most zealous from him and the faith, so far may another Puritan. He wrote two treatises against Fr. church separate from it. I grant the Church Johnson, the Brownist, in defence of the Church of Rome to be a true church in essence, though of England's being a true church, printed at corrupt in manners and doctrine. And corMiddleburgh, 1599, and afterward published ruption of manners, attended with errors in the "Reasons taken out of God's Word, and the doctrines of faith, is a just cause for one parbest Human Testimonies, proving a Necessity of ticular church to separate from another." His reforming our Churches of England, &c., 1604." grace then adds, with regard to the Church of But going to Leyden, and conversing with Mr. Rome: "The cause of the separation is yours, Robinson, he embraced his sentiments of dis- for you thrust us from you, because we called cipline and government, and transplanted it into for truth and redress of abuses; for a schism England in the year 1616, as will be seen in its must needs be theirs whose the cause of it is; proper place. the wo runs full out of the mouth of Christ, even against him that gives the offence, not against him that takes it. It was ill done of those, whoever they were, who first made the separation [from Rome]; I mean not actual, but casual, for, as I said before, the schism is theirs whose the cause of it is; and he makes the separation who gives the first just cause of it, not he that makes an actual separation upon a just cause preceding." Let the reader carefully consider these concessions, and then judge how far they will justify the separation of the Brownists, or the Protestant Nonconformists at this day. in itself, except it be proved that we have fallen from true religion."-The Character of the Beast, Epistle to the Reader, p. 1. * Boyle's Dissuasive, p. 177. +"Profitemur coram Deo et hominibus adeo nobis convenire cum ecclesiis reformatis Belgicis in re religionis ut omnibus et singulis earundem ecclesiarum fidei articulis, prout habentur in Harmonia Confessionum Fidei, parati sumus subscribere. Ecclesias reformatas pro veris et genuinis habemus, cum iisdem in sacris Dei communionem profitemur, et quantum in nobis est, colimus. Conciones publicas ab illarum pastoribus habitas, ex nostris qui norunt linguam Belgicam frequentant: sacram cœnam earum membris, si qua forte nostris cœtibus intersint nobis cognita, participiamus." Life of Whitgift, p. 566. § Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 394. This year [1605] was famous for the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, which was a contrivance of the papists to blow up the king and the whole royal family, with the chief of the Church as well as the State, and might thereProtestant nobility and gentry, November 5th, fore be taken by all such Roman Catholics as the first day of their assembling in Parliament. did not believe the pope had power to depose For this purpose a cellar was hired under the kings, and give away their dominions. AcHouse of Lords, and stored with thirty-six bar-cordingly, Blackwell, their superior, and most rels of gunpowder, covered over with coals and fagots; but the plot was discovered the night before, by means of a letter sent to Lord Monteagle, advising him to absent himself from the house, because they were to receive a terrible blow, and not to know who hurt them. Monteagle carrying the letter to court, the king ordered the apartments about the Parliament House to be searched; the powder was found under the House of Lords, and Guy Faux with a dark lantern in the cellar, waiting to set fire to the train when the king should come to the house the next morning. Faux being apprehended, confessed the plot, and impeached sev-red on them, the free access they had to his pereral of his accomplices, eight of whom were tried and executed, and among them Garnet, provincial of the English Jesuits, whom the pope afterward canonized. The discovery of this murderous conspiracy was ascribed to the royal penetration ;* but Mr. Osborne,† and others, with great probability, say that the first notice of it came from Henry IV., king of France, who heard of it from the Jesuits, and that the letter to Monteagle was an artifice of Cecil's, who was acquainted beforehand with the proceedings of the conspirators, and suffered them to go to their full length. Even Heylin says that the king and his council mined with them, and undermined them, and by so doing blew up their whole invention. But it is agreed on all hands, that if the plot had taken place, it was to have been fathered upon the Puritans; and, as if the king was in the secret, his majesty, in his speech to the Parliament November 9th, takes particular care to bring them into reproach; for, after having cleared the Roman Catholic religion from encouraging such murderous practices, he adds, the cruelty of the Puritans was worthy of fire, that would not allow salvation to any papists. So that, if these unhappy people had been blown up, his majesty thinks they would have had their deserts. Strange! that a Puritan should be so much worse than a papist, or deserve to be burned for uncharitableness, when his majesty knew that the papists were so much more criminal in this respect than they, not only denying salvation to the Puritans, but to all who are without the pale of their own church. But what was all this to the plot? except it was to turn off the indignation of the people from the papists, whom the king both feared and loved, to the Puritans, who, in a course of forty years' sufferings, had never moved the least sedition against the state, but who would not be the advocates or dupes of an unbounded prerogative! The discovery of this plot occasioned the drawing up the oath of allegiance, or of submission and obedience to the king as a temporal sovereign, independent of any other power upon earth; which quickly passed both houses, and was appointed to be taken by all the king's subjects; this oath is distinct from the oath of supremacy, which obliges the subject to acknowledge his majesty to be supreme head of the † Osborne, p. 448. * Rapin, vol. ii., p. 171. of the English Catholics, submitted to the oath, though the pope absolutely forbade them on pain of damnation; which occasioned a new debate, concerning the extent of the pope's power in temporals, between the learned of both religions. Cardinal Bellarmine, under the feigned name of Tortus, wrote against the oath, which gave occasion to King James's Apology to all Christian Princes; wherein, after clearing himself from the charge of persecuting the papists, he reproaches his holiness with ingratitude, considering the free liberty of religion that he had granted the papists, the honours he had confer All son at all times, the general jail delivery of all Jesuits and papists convict, and the strict orders he had given his judges not to put the laws in execution against them for the future.* which was true, while the unhappy Puritans were imprisoned and fined, or forced into banishment. The Parliament, on occasion of this plot, appointed an annual thanksgiving on the 5th of November, and passed another law, obliging all persons to come to church under the penalty of twelve pence every Sunday they were absent, unless they gave such reasons as should be satisfactory to a justice of the peace. This, like a two-edged sword, cut down all Separatists, whether Protestants or papists. To return to the Puritans; the more moderate of whom, being willing to steer a middle course, between a total separation and absolute conformity, were attacked by some of the bishops with this argument: "All those who wilfully refuse to obey the king in all things indifferent, and to conform themselves to the orders of the Church authorized by him, not contrary to the Word of God, are schismatics, enemies to the king's supremacy and the state, and not to be tolerated in church or commonwealth. "But you do so Therefore, you are not to be tolerated in church or commonwealth.” The Puritans denied the charge, and returned this argument upon their accusers: "All those who freely and willingly perform to the king and state all obedience, not only in things necessary, but indifferent, commanded by law, and that have been always ready to conform themselves to every order of the Church authorized by him, not contrary to the Word of God, are free from all schism, friends to the king's supremacy, and to the state, and unworthy in this manner to be molested in church or commonwealth. "But there are none of us that are deprived or suspended from our ministry, but have been ever ready to do all this; therefore we are free from schism, friends to the king's supremacy, and most unworthy of such molestation as we sustain." This being the point of difference, the Puritans offered a public disputation upon the lawfulness of imposing ceremonies in general; and in particular upon the surplice, the cross in bap*King James's Apol., p. 253. |