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England, Church of THE NEW BCHAFF-HERZOG 134
interrupted the preacher who spoke disparagingly of the sign of the cross, and imperiously forced her wishes upon unwilling prelates. But in spite of seeming to approximate the Church of Rome in points of ritual, Elizabeth did not interfere by any public measures with the results of the Reformation of Edward VI. The reduction of the I'ortytwo Articles to thirty-nine (1563), the form which they have ever since retained, did not impair their Protestant character.
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 ;. Struggle Elizabeth's bishops, almost without
Between exception, were Calvinists. It was Anglican- a question of ecclesiastical polity, ism and ritual, and vestments. Many of the Puritanism. 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 Cart wright (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 Whit gift (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 MAR PRELATE TRACTB). The controversy was closed in 1593 by an act of Parliament which made Puritan ism 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
5. Triumph indications of which showed themof High- selves in the Puritan controversies of church the Elizabethan period, with a con-
Principles sequent uncompromising resistance Under to all dissent in ritual and doctrines,
Stuarts. culminating in the repressive legisla tion of Charles II. Under James I. (1603-25), who came from Scotland to England with a cordial hatred of Presbyterianism, the Puritan party was completely humiliated. All the Puritan hopes expressed in the famous Mille nary Petition, signed by eight hundred clergy men, and asking for the removal of " superstitious usages " from the Prayer-Book, etc., were doomed to disappointment; although James won the approval of Churchmen and dissenters alike by the preparation, under his auspices, of the au thorized version of the English Bible which ap peared in 1611 (see HAMPTON COURT CONFER ENCE). James retained relations with the Reformed Churches of the Continent, and sent five commis sioners to represent the Church of England at she Synod of Dort, with instructions to " favor no innovations in doctrine, and to conform to the con fessions of the neighboring Reformed churches." But full sympathy with the Continental churches was hereafter impracticable, and recognition of their orders (as was the case under Elizabeth) impossible, by the High-church views of episcopacy which were spreading, and which, under Charles I. (1625-49) and Archbishop Laud (q.v.; 16335), assumed an extreme form. The latter taught that episcopacy was not only necessary to the well being, but essential to the very existence of the Church. His administration revived, to the Low church and Puritan mind, the ritual of Rome, and displayed so much sympathy with it that he was said to have been offered a cardinal's hat. Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury (1611-35), was a strict Calvinist, but he could not check the growth of the Arminian views advocated by Laud, whose fidelity to his principles brought him to the block in 1645. He and Charles I. have since been re garded as martyrs by a school of Anglicans who reprobate everything that savors of Puritanism as contrary to the Church and to God. Since his day a large liberty of opinion has been allowed and practised in the Church of England on the question of ritual and episcopacy; the High-church views of Laud, and the Low-church views of Parker and Grindal, both having their representatives.During the Commonwealth, the Established Church wag, in fact, a religio illicita, an act of Parliament having abolished episcopacy, 6. The Com- and discontinued the use of the Lit-
monwealth, orgy (Sept. 10, 1642). Puritanism the Resto- triumphed for a time, and the Weatration, the minater Assembly (q.v.) in 1643 esHouse of tablished a Presbyterian kingdom;
Hanover. but in spite of the strong theological intellects which supported it, and in spite of the massive will of Cromwell, who was not a Presbyterian, but an Independent, Puritanism