that leapt up to repel it. Romanists fought side by side with Anglicans and Independents to beat down the arrogance of a Romanist Monarch, when he attempted to execute the Pope's sentence of deposition on their Queen. The Armada was the shock which crystallized the fluid elements in England into solidity; and in the consciousness of the strength of union Elizabeth's subjects forgot how often she had exasperated them by her caprices and her evasions of all decided action. Their amazing success against the Spaniard they attributed to her; and on the medal which commemorated the defeat of the Armada they put the inscription, dux femina facti, "It was a woman that led us to victory." Elizabeth's own medal had a humbler inscription: Deus Alavit et dissipati sunt,-doubtless an echo of the text chosen by the preacher (John Piers, Bishop of Sarum, afterwards Archbishop of York), when she went in state to St. Paul's to give thanks: "Thou didst blow with Thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters."

We must pass on to the other great movement which troubled the Church of England in the days. of Elizabeth, and for many generations after her time. This may be called the Ultra-Reformation, the persistent attempt of the Puritans, who were almost invariably Calvinist in doctrine, to capture the Church of England and reform it past all recognition. Every link which connected it, not merely

with the medieval Church, but with the primitive Church, was to be broken and thrown away, excepting those few features which could be found plainly expressed in Scripture.

There are two views of Puritanism, one favourable and the other unfavourable, which are at best. only part of the truth; and, unless the other side. is supplied, very erroneous opinion must be the result.

The Puritans are sometimes regarded as the champions of liberty. It is said by their friends that they were a standing protest against the despotism in Church and State, and that in the Church they contended for more freedom than was allowed by the Prayer Book. From the same point of view one might say that a rebel is a champion of liberty, because he refuses to be bound by the laws of his country. Yet it is true to say that in the State the Puritans were opposed to arbitrary power, and therefore their influence tended towards political freedom. But in the Church they had no more idea of freedom than the most bigoted Romanist. As Bacon says of them: "These are the true successors of Diotrephes, and not my lord bishops." Religious toleration was still unknown, and assuredly it was not the Puritans who discovered it. were not a party asking for toleration either inside or outside the Church. They demanded that the whole Church should be taken to pieces and reconstructed in accordance with their own narrow prejudices; and they were not prepared to allow to

They

1

others any deviation from this Puritan reconstruction. It was an absolute tyranny which they meant to set up, and did set up when they founded their own Church and commonwealth in America: and tyranny is none the less tyranny because it is exercised by a multitude rather than by one man. No; the Puritans have indirectly helped political liberty; but they have been the strenuous opponents of religious freedom.

Again, the enemies of Puritanism think of it chiefly as a destructive force. This view also is only part of the truth, and therefore may be misleading. Puritanism has been destructive. It overthrew altars, pulled down statues, and broke decorated windows; it condemned the theatre and frowned at amusements; it destroyed the monarchy and ignored the aristocracy; it rejected the liturgy and abolished episcopacy. But Puritanism had also a strongly constructive side. Its aim was to found a State, a religious State. There was to be a commonwealth of saints, in which Christians could grow

1 "The intolerance with which the puritans had been treated at home might at least have taught them a lesson of forbearance to each other. But it had no such effect. It would almost seem as if, true disciples in the school of the high commission and star chamber, their ambition was to excel their former tyrants in the art of persecution. They imitated, with a pertinacious accuracy, the bad example of their worst oppressors; and, with far less to excuse them, repeated in America the self-same crimes from which they and their fathers had suffered so much in England" (Marsden, The History of the Early Puritans, p. 305). This testimony is the stronger, as coming from a fair-minded writer, whose sympathies are on the Puritan side. See p. 415 ff.

up in one prescribed and uniform system, free from all doubts as to what was Gospel truth, and protected against the assaults of all unnecessary temptations. There is an earnestness and reality in this, with which the least puritanical among us can sympathize. It is easy to call them hypocrites; but that does not explain their wide and lasting influence. Hypocrisy cannot sway multitudes as they swayed them; nor suffer for a cause as they suffered. But it is chiefly the intolerance and the destructiveness of Puritanism that we have now to consider.

In Elizabeth's reign there were many English Churchmen who still had an affection for various things in the unreformed religion; and it was a happiness to them to find so many of the old thoughts, and even of the old words, in the new Prayer Book. Again, there were many who, without going all the way with continental reformers, were in favour of thorough reformation; and they were pleased at the breaking down of the rules of compulsory celibacy for the clergy and compulsory confession for the laity, and they liked the doctrinal tone of the Articles and the spirit of personal religion which pervaded the whole book. Were these two large classes of moderate Churchmen to be hurried into Calvinistic Puritanism? To this question Elizabeth gave an emphatic negative, and in this her influence for good was incalculable. It was sometimes despotically exercised, but it was of the utmost service to the Church and nation. In

the general uncertainty and incoherence, she was the one centre of unity, and she secured time for the disconnected atoms to find out their true affinities and combine. Her aim was to reduce the extremes at both ends as much as possible, that the nation might realize its true religious character. From the outside, the Roman attack, urged on by the Pope, Spain, the Guises, and the Jesuits, was the more conspicuous and alarming. But, on the inside, the Puritan assault, favoured by teachers at the Universities, and by not a few among the Bishops and clergy, was the more perilous and the more lasting. The issue to be decided was not, whether leniency might not for a time be shown to those clergy who disobeyed rubrics and left out passages which they disliked in the Prayer Book; nor, whether the Prayer Book itself might not here and there be made more Protestant in tone; but, whether the historic Church of England was to cease to exist, and the religious life of the nation was henceforth to be compressed into the iron system, which Calvin, with an imposing show of logic and of discipline, but with disastrous practical results, had established at Geneva. Of that system some of those who groaned under it said, that it "was little better than Popish tyranny disguised and tendered unto them under a new form." And of Cartwright, the Cambridge professor who took the lead in advocating this system in England, and who was one of Hooker's great opponents, it has been said, "He was unquestionably learned and devout, but his