Having thus shown the opinions of the prelates regarding the constitution and ceremonies of the Church of England, let us now show the opinions of the inferior clergy: And here one fact may stand for all. In the year 1562, a petition was presented to the lower house of convocation, signed by thirty-two members, most of them exiles, and the best men in the kingdom, praying for the following alterations in the service of the Church of England: 1. That organs might be disused, responses in the " reading psalms" discontinued, and the people allowed to sing the psalms in metre, as was the custom on the continent, and had also been practised by the English exiles, not only when there, but after they had returned to their native land, and as was also the case among the Puritans when they non-conformed to (for they never seceded or dissented from) the Church of England, of which they could never be said to have been bona fide members. 2. That none but ministers should be allowed to baptize, and that the sign of the cross should be abolished. 3. That the imposition of kneeling at the communion should be left to the discretion of each bishop in his own diocese; and one reason assigned for this part of the petition was, that this posture was abused to idolatry by the ignorant and superstitious populace. 4. That copes and surplices should be disused, and the ministers made to wear some comely and decent garment, (such as the Geneva gown, which all the early Puritans wore.) 5. That, as they expressed it themselves, "The ministers of the word and sacraments be not compelled to wear such gowns and caps as the enemies of Christ's gospel have chosen to be the special array of their priesthood.' 6. That certain

words in Article 33, be mitigated, which have since been omitted altogether. 7. That saints' days might be abolished, or kept only for public worship, (and not, as was then the case, for feasting, jollity, superstition, and sin,) after which ordinary labour might be carried on.

This petition was eventually withdrawn, and another very much to the same purpose substituted for it. This second petition prayed for the following alterations:-1. That saints' days be abolished, but all Sundays, and the principal feasts of Christ be kept holy. 2. That the liturgy be read audibly, and not mumbled over inaudibly, as had been done by the massing priests. 3. That the sign of the cross in baptism be abolished as tending to superstition. 4. That kneeling at the communion be left to the discretion of the ordinary. 5. That ministers may use only a

surplice, or other decent garment in public worship, and the administration of the sacraments. 6. That organs be

removed from churches.

After a protracted and vigorous debate, these articles were put to the vote, when forty-three, most of them exiles, voted that the petition be granted, and only thirty-five against it; thus leaving a clear majority of eight in favour of a further reformation. When, however, proxies were called for, only fifteen appeared for, while twenty-four appeared against the petition, being, on the whole, fiftyeight for, and fifty-nine against, leaving a majority of one for rejecting the prayer of the petition.*

There is one point mentioned in the minutes of convocation, an extract from which is given, both by Burnet and Cardwell, which must be kept in view, to enable us to arrive at a correct conception of the sentiments of those who voted against the above articles. In the minute, it is distinctly mentioned, that the most of those who voted against granting the prayer of the petition, did so, not upon the merits, but only from a feeling that since the matters in debate had been imposed by public authority of parliament and the queen, it was not competent for convocation to take up the subject at all. Thus, the motion for which they really voted was, not that the abuses complained of should be continued, but that the convocation had no power to alter them. A second section of those who voted against the articles, was composed of those who had held cures under Edward, and had a hand in the public affairs of his reign, and who, having remained in England during the reign of Mary, had not seen the purer churches on the continent, and regarded the reformation of Edward as sufficiently perfect. A third section of the majority consisted of those who held benefices under Mary, and who were of course Papists in their hearts, and would therefore vote against any further reformation. After we have thus analyzed the parties, and weighed, instead of numbering, the votes, and when, besides, we bear in mind that a majority of those who heard the reasoning upon the matters in dispute, voted for further reformation, it is easy to see on whose side truth and justice lay.

There is, besides, another point to which Dr. Cardwell

* Strype's An. i. 500-6. Burnet iii. 454, 455. Records, Bk. vi. No. 74. Collier, vi. 371-3. Cardwell's Hist. of Conf. 117120.

has called our attention,* which we regard of the very highest importance, and to which, consequently, we call the special attention of our readers. It is this, that although, since the time of Burnet and Strype, it has been always said that the number of those who voted for the Articles was fifty-eight, yet, when we count them fairly, they are fifty-nine, precisely the number who voted against them. Now, if we give the prolocutor (the same as our moderator,) a casting vote, Nowell, dean of St. Paul's, who was prolocutor of that convocation and voted in favour of the Articles, and would of course give his casting vote on the same side, this would give a majority in favour of further reformation.

But how are we to account for the fact, that, if thus the numbers were equal, that fact should not be known to the members? We should be glad to hear of any other way of solving the difficulty; but the only mode of doing so that occurs to us, is to suppose that Parker or the queen had recourse to the artifice employed by Charles I. in the Scottish parliament, viz., concealed the roll and declared that the majority was in their favour, while it was against them, as was clearly seen when the original came into the hands of the public. That Parker was capable of the manœuvre, no man who knows his character can for one moment question: and that Elizabeth would feel at the least as little scruple in doing so as Charles I., he that doubts may consult the note at the foot of the page.†

*Cardwell's Hist. of Conf., p. 120, note.

In 1559 a bill passed through parliament authorizing the queen to restore to their former cures, such of the returned exiles as had been unlawfully deprived; that is, by Mary on account of their Protestantism. "Yet," says Strype, (Annals i. 99,) "I do not find it was enacted and passed into law." It must therefore have been clandestinely suppressed by Elizabeth, who both hated and feared the Protestantism of the exiles. She acted very much in the same way in regard to the re-enacting of Edward's statute in favour of clerical marriages, (Ibid. 118.) The convocation of 1575, among other articles of reformation, breathing the spirit of Grindal who was just then raised to the primacy, passed the following, that none but ministers lawfully ordained should baptize, and that it should be lawful to marry at any period of the year: but Elizabeth cancelled both, (Strype's Grindal, 290-1.) We need not, however, multiply instances in which Elizabeth exercised this power, as it is admitted on all hands, that she both claimed and exercised it. (Cardwell's Documentary Annals, ii. 171-2, note.) The case most in point is the following, along with the liberty we have already seen she took with the first draft of the liturgy.

From this induction of facts, it is most abundantly manifest that the prelates and the great majority of the leading members of the lower house of convocation, were decidedly in favour of a further reformation. It only further remains to finish this branch of our argument, that we show the feelings of the leading statesmen of the kingdom. This may be done in the following passage from one who is certainly a competent enough witness so far as knowledge is concerned, and whom no one will accuse of any partiality towards the Puritans. After stating that several of the bishops were in favour of the Puritans, Hallam* on to say,

66

goes

They" the Puritans, "had still more effectual support in the Queen's council. The Earl of Leicester, who possessed more power than any one to sway her wavering and capricious temper, the Earls of Bedford, Huntington and Warwick, regarded as the steadiest Protestants among the aristocracy, the wise and grave Lord Keeper Bacon, the sagacious Walsingham, the experienced Sadler, the zealous Knollys, considered these objects of Parker's severity (the Puritans) either as demanding a purer worship than had been established in the Church, or at least as worthy, by their virtues, of more indulgent treatment. Cecil himself, though on intimate terms with the archbishop, and concurring generally in his measures, was not far removed from the latter way of thinking, if his natural caution and extreme dread, at this juncture, of losing the

Our readers are aware of the controversy as to how the celebrated clause, ("The Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith,") crept into the Twentieth Article of the Church of England, when it occurs neither in the first printed edition of the Articles, nor in the draft of them which was passed by convocation, and which is still in existence, with the autograph signatures of the members. It is now the universal belief that Elizabeth inserted this clause, as well as cancelled the whole of the Thirty-ninth Article, whose title sufficiently indicates its contents, viz. "the ungodly (impii) do not eat the body of Christ in the sacrament of the supper," a dogma which Elizabeth, who believed in transubstantiation, could not admit. (See Lamb's Historical and Critical Essay on the the thirty-nine Articles, p. 35, &c. Cardwell's Hist. of Conf. 21, 22, note. Cardwell's Synodalia, i. 38, 39, note. Cardwell's Doc. An. ii. 171, note. Bishop Short's Sketch, &c. 327, note.) The person who could thus act was certainly capable of falsifying the votes of convocation, 1562.

* Constitutional Hist. of England, i. 256, 257.

Queen's favour, had permitted him more unequivocally to express it."

Mr. Hallam by no means does full justice to the sentiments of Cecil. No one can read his correspondence with the Puritans, and his private letters to the prelates, without being satisfied that that great statesman fully concurred in all the general principles of the former.

In regard again to

“The upper ranks among the laity, setting aside courtiers and such as took little interest in the disputes," these, says Mr. Hallam, "were chiefly divided between those attached to the ancient Church, and those who wished for further reformation in the new. I conceive the Church of England party, that is, the party adverse to any species of ecclesiastical change, to have been the least numerous of the three, (that is, Puritan, Popish, and Anglican,) during this reign, still excepting, as I have said, the neutrals who commonly make a numerical majority, and are counted along with the dominant religion. The Puritans, or at least those who rather favoured them, had a majority among the Protestant gentry in the Queen's days. It is agreed on all hands (and is quite manifest) that they predominated in the House of Commons. But that house was (then) composed, as it has ever been, of the principal landed proprietors, and as much represented the general wish of the community when it demanded a further reform in religious matters, as on any other subjects. One would imagine by the manner in which some (that is unscrupulous high churchmen) express themselves, that the discontented were a small fraction, who, by some unaccountable means, in despite of the government and the nation, formed a majority of all the parliaments under Elizabeth and her two successors."

Who now, then, constituted the real Church of England party? Elizabeth chiefly-a host in herself-aided by all the Popish, immoral and irreligious persons in the kingdom, whether lay or clerical.

Lest our readers should fancy that we have been all this time describing merely the transition state of the Church of England before she became fully organized as she is now established,—a state which is interesting in the present day only as it serves to indicate to a philosophic inquirer, in the same manner as a fossil does to a comparative anatomist the bygone condition of some primeval state of society;-in order to prevent such a mistake, we beg