CHAPTER IV

OPPOSITION, PURITAN AND ROMANIST

LAUD as archbishop was confronted by two obvious dangers, the opposition of Puritans and the opposition of Romanists. When these have been considered, it will be well to sketch the work which he actually accomplished and the position of the Church of England during his primacy. Puritanism in 1633 was practically an organised party, though it had somewhat indefinite limits. It traced all its "schism and sauciness" back to the days when Cartwright was confronted by Hooker, and when the Martin Marprelate tracts made vulgar mock of Church institutions. To destroy the episcopal constitution of the Church, as it had been destroyed under John Knox in Scotland, was the aim of the leaders of English Puritanism in 1633, as of their predecessors eighty years earlier. In the eyes of the State the position had little changed.

Puritanism as a party.

The policy

Stewarts in

The policy of the Stewarts in the treatment of the Puritans was simply a continuance of that of Elizabeth. James had an almost insane dread of political plotters and anarchists, and he had a very deep-seated belief in the wisdom of the of his mighty predecessor. His terrors too were relation to encouraged by the creatures of the court; and he theirs. fell readily into the policy, which commended itself also to his theological sympathies, of setting a watch on the nonconformists' agencies by the State. It was not the Church that was anxious to persecute. There is proof that every stir of episcopal activity had its origin in the court. It was James, not the bishops, who originated the maxim,

CHAP. IV

THE PILGRIM FATHERS

337

"No Bishop no King," and proceeded to draw from it a very definite course of action which was intended to defend the monarchy through an assertion of inquisitorial powers on behalf of the Church. Charles held the same opinions on the politics of Puritanism as his father, and he showed from the beginning of his reign that he was in favour of no tolerance.

Perhaps the best example that can be given of the views of the majority of the Puritans and of their consequent divergence from the National Church is to be found in the history of those who left England for conscience sake, and after settling temporarily in Amsterdam and Leiden eventually sailed for Virginia. With the action of these men may be compared the speeches of Lord Saye and Sele, concerning the Liturgy of the Church and upon the bishops' power in civil affairs, both of which were answered by Laud.

The Pilgrim fathers.

With regard to the "Pilgrim fathers" it is not very easy to speak. They have been dealt with in their place in an earlier volume of this history of the English Church. Of the theological opinions of the more distinguished members two very different views might be obtained. We might hold that their objection to the Church was, like that of the Millenary Petitioners, a sincere and earnest repulsion from all that belonged to the historic and continuous Christian society. Bastwick blames their moderation. He writes in 1646: "The extremist extent of their desires reached but to the removal of all the Ceremonies and Innovations; the taking away of the service book [Book of Common Prayer]: and the pulling down of the High Commission Court (which was called the Court Christian, though it was rather Pagan), and the removal of the Hierarchy, root and branch; and the setting up and establishing of a godly Presbytery throughout the kingdom." And with this may be compared the declaration written at Leiden early in 1618, that "we do wholly and in all points agree with the French Reformed churches, according to their public Confession of Faith.""

But, on the other hand, we may form a very different conclusion, when we find a declaration from the same conscientious men that they assent wholly to the Thirty-nine Articles, and that they acknowledge the Episcopal authority.

There is a significant addition to each clause of this document which shows that the real danger to the pilgrims, and the real opposition which they were anxious to deprecate, came from the king and the State. It is indeed difficult to arrive at a clear conclusion from the evidence afforded of the somewhat elastic consciences of these good folk. We may, however, admit that they had a rooted aversion to lawn sleeves; for they were very angry with Master Blackwell because he obtained the Puritan Archbishop Abbot's blessing on his voyage.

Another aspect of the controversy with the Puritans is vividly represented by two of Laud's answers to the speeches of one of their prominent champions.

Lord Saye and Sele was an obstinate and eccentric nobleman with that curious and unwarranted confidence in his own judgment, and that ignorant contempt for the troversies opinions and the birth of other people, which sit so characteristically upon some reforming peers.

Laud's con with Lord

Saye and

Sele.

Both

the speeches of his to which Laud thought fit to write answers were made after the archbishop was imprisoned, and when he was unable to answer for himself in debate in the House of Lords; and there was a special meanness in such an attack as Lord Saye's, when the object of it was standing trial for his life.

The first speech "touching the Liturgy" was divided into three parts: (1) a contemptuous account of Laud's origin and career; (2) a plea for extemporary rather than written forms of public worship; (3) a vindication of himself and his friends from the charge of separatism. To the first point the archbishop had a very dignified reply; and indeed the matter does not concern us. The birth of an archbishop neither justifies nor condemns his theology. To the two other points there was more need to reply, and it is not without interest to-day, when we have been told that there could have been no dissent but for Laud, to observe the form the reply took. First, there was a vindication of the right of the Church to ordain set forms of prayer. The apostles certainly had power, and exercised it, to enjoin doctrine, and used a form of ordination by imposition of hands, and a "form of wholesome words." And, indeed, "no question can be made but

IV

LAUD AND LORD SAYE AND SELE

(1) In its religious

aspect.

39

that the Church of Christ had and hath still as much power to ordain a set form of prayer as any of these things." Lord Saye and Sele said that the use of fixed forms of prayer made men preach but poorly. There have been at different times many reasons given for bad sermons: this of Lord Saye's was a strange one in a church of great preachers and of fixed forms, and Laud had no difficulty in showing its absurdity. Again, would not learned bishops be better employed in making prayers of their own than in repeating those of other people? Laud answers this too, and sums up by saying, "The question is not whether a negligent set form of prayer, or a good form of set prayer negligently and without devotion offered up to God (as too often they are, God help us), be better than other prayers, carefully composed and devoutly uttered; but simply whether a good set form of prayer (such as the Liturgy of the Church of England is) be made so evil, only by the enjoining of it, as that therefore the service itself ought to be refused." It was, indeed, a strange contention to which Lord Saye had brought himself that because forms, lawful in themselves, had been enjoined by public authority, they must be rejected by the individual conscience.

The question of separatism brings us still more clearly into the region of modern controversy. Lord Saye and Sele assumed the position that by adherence to the Universal or Catholic Church was meant nothing more than the holding of the chief articles of the Christian faith, that there was no schism but in rejecting them, and that every particular church and congregation might do as it pleased in the matters of order, of liturgy, of worship. Two lines of argument may be taken up in answer to this: (1) The lawful demand of authority upon the individual conscience; (2) the practical impossibility of differing in order and worship from the Church without also departing from the faith. Both these Laud emphasises. It is absurd to deny that you separate when history and the evidences of men's eyes and ears are against you. "I humbly conceive that it is certain that he, whoever he be, that will not communicate in public prayer with a National Church which serves God as she ought, is a separatist. But the Church of England, as it stands established by law, serves

God as she ought; therefore, my lord, by his general absenting himself from her commands in prayer, is a separatist."

This is a logical and complete answer. You must allow those who have adhered to a continuous historic religious body to define what they mean by separation from Separatism. it; and churchmen considered Lord Saye and his school to be separatists. It was as easy to show that Brownists and Independents had in many cases departed from the faith and indeed, that all Anabaptists and Brownists "agree that the Church of England is unchristian"; and it was a good occasion for a stern condemnation of Calvinism. "Almost all of them say that God from all eternity reprobates by far the greater part of mankind to eternal fire, without any eye at all to their sin. Which opinion my very soul abominates. For it makes God, the God of all mercies, to be the most fierce and unreasonable tyrant in the world. For the question is not here, what God may do by an absolute act of power, would He so use it upon the creature which He made of nothing; but what He hath done, and what stands with His wisdom, justice, and goodness to do." Laud knew at least how to go to the root of the matter, and in this answer he puts it very clearly that the Puritan position was nothing else than this-that the Church government of the day was unchristian and the Church wrong in fundamentals.

The second speech of Lord Saye's which Laud answered was his oration against the bishops on the Bill for taking (2) In its away their votes in the House of Lords. The political archbishop's answer was a defence of the historic aspect. ministry. (1) He sketched the history of the priesthood in the Old Testament, showing its Divine sanction and its continuous succession, and the place of the priesthood in temporal affairs. "Nothing of like antiquity can well be more clear than that four thousand years before, and under the Law, the priests, especially the chief priests, did meddle in and help manage the greatest temporal affairs." (2) He discussed the bearing of the Old Testament on Christian usage. (3) He defended the historic order of Episcopacy"It is the constant and universal tradition of the whole Church of Christ, which is of greatest authority next to Scripture itself, that bishops are successors of the apostles