4. Struggle Between Anglicanism and Puritanism

The independence of the National Church being thus permanently settled, it remained only to settle disputes within her own pale. The great question was whether Puritanism should be tolerated. This was a question not of doctrine, for the prevailing doctrinal views were Calvinistic, and Elizabeth's bishops, almost without exception, were Calvinists. It was a question of ecclesiastical polity, ritual, and vestments. Many of the refugees who had fled to the Continent is Mary's reign returned strongly prej udiced against an elaborate ritual, and in favor of the Genevan form of government. Thomas Cartwright (q.v.), Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge, was the ablest exponent of these views (1570). There was no uniformity practised in the conduct of public services and the dress of the clergy. Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, who had died at the stake in 1555; for a long time refused to be consecrated from conscientious scruples against the usual episcopal robes, and Bishop Jewel pronounced the clerical garb a stage dress and a "relic of the Amorites." It is noteworthy that two of Elizabeth's archbishops, Matthew Parker and Edmund Grindal (qq.v.), were averse to enfor cing uniformity in these matters. The latter, with Bishops Parkhurst and Ponet, not only would have allowed a coordinate authority to the preaby terian system of Geneva, but would have gone even farther. Grindal incurred suspension from his office as primate by disobeying the queen's com mand to suppress the Puritan "propheayinga," or informal religious harangues. By a royal procla mation these were suppressed, and a royal proc lamation had already required the use of clerical vestments. It thus was decided that no unre stricted license in the conduct of public worship and clerical dress was to be tolerated. These acts made many of the Puritan clergy see fit to resign their benefices. In Grindal's successor, John Whitgift (q.v.), Elizabeth had a prelate to her hand. The breach between the two parties became wider; and if the Church, on her part, refused to counte nance any dissidence, the Puritans, on their part, became coarse, as in the so-called Marprelate controversy (1588), when they issued scurrilous libels against the queen and bishops (see Marprelate Tracts). The controversy was closed in 1593 by an act of Parliament which made Puritanism an offense against the statute law. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, some Puritans were put to death and others took refuge in Holland, and later in America. See Puritans, Puritanism-

The history of the seventeenth century is marked by the consolidation of the Church of England in spite of a temporary triumph of Puritanism, and by the development of the doctrine of the divine appointment of episcopacy, the first