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unpopularity of their cause, we cannot admit. True, their advocates at the Council board were diminished; but it had been done by death. True, a large portion of the preachers still having charge "acquiesced," and perhaps cheerfully, "in the Established Church as then administered ";" but the hundreds who had been ejected from their livings still remained in the land, their opinions and purposes unchanged, - patronized and sheltered by nobility and gentry. If indeed "a very large proportion of those who at first favored the Puritan cause had gradually withdrawn from it,"3- some by death, some for change of opinion, and some from expediency,—yet we have reason to say that the cause, so far from having waned, had gained above its loss. Dr. Bancroft, in his sermon at Paul's Cross in the year 1589, complained, repeatedly and bitterly, that Puritanism was widely countenanced by men in authority. In the same year most part of men"

Dr. Cooper declared, that "the and "all inferior subjects" were averse to Episcopacy, and proclaimed their aversion "at every table, in sermons, and in the face of the whole world." In the year 1590, it was published broadcast, "that thousands did sigh for the Discipline, ten thousands had sought it, and that the most worthy men of every shire had consented to it." 5 Mr. Hallam indorses the opinion of Persons, the Jesuit, published in 1594, that the Puritan party was more generally favored throughout the realm than

1 Marsden, 235.

Ibid., 236.

* Ibid., 235.

111.

5

"Admonition,” pp. 1, 25, 102,

Heylin's Presb., Book IX. Sec. 2.

....

the Prelatic. But he adds: "I do not quote these passages out of trust in Father Persons, but because they coincide with much besides that has occurred to me in reading, and especially with the Parliamentary proceedings of this reign. ... The Puritans, or at least those who favored them, had a majority among the Protestant gentry in the queen's days. It is agreed on all hands, that they predominated in the House of Commons; but that House was composed, as it ever has 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 subject."1

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But while prosecutions for non-conformity were abated, and non-conformity itself was less obtrusive, Puritanism in another form arrayed itself aggressively against the judicial assumptions of the prelates. They who had suffered from the lawless proceedings of the ecclesiastical tribunals, clergy, nobility, and gentry, each class "too wise to subject their estates and liberties to a number of artful civilians," — woke up the old conflict between these and the common lawyers; remonstrating vigorously against the permission long allowed to the ecclesiastical courts to proceed irrespective of the laws and statutes of the realm, and without the check of prohibitions from the temporal courts. This reformatory crusade commenced, in the year 1598, by obtaining "Prohibitions out of the Common Pleas to stop proceedings, not only in the ordinary courts of the bishops and in the civil

1 Hallam, note on pp. 115, 116.

courts, but in the High Commission Ecclesiastical." This procedure caused great commotion among the bishops and the doctors of the civil law, and drew forth many "motions, discourses, and arguments from year to year." But the movers of these Prohibitions were successful, supported as they were by the clear and constitutional pre-eminence of the common to the canon law; and many causes were thus wrested from the courts of the bishops, and even from the queen's Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The number of Prohibitions increased from year to year during the remainder of this reign; the civilians sunk in business and in repute; the common law was once more instated in its own proper supremacy; and the people were relieved from numberless oppressions which had issued from the bottomless pit of laws having authority perilously uncertain and properties wondrously Protean. This was indeed a Puritan triumph.1

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Thus if our data be correct - Puritanism had lost nothing in numbers, in popular regard, or in courage. Prelacy had lost nothing of its spirit or of its power to persecute for ecclesiastical offences. Puritan and prelate touching matters of conformity -alike rested and were at truce. They rested, for they were tired. They tacitly assented to truce, for to each it was politic. The dawn of the approaching century found them awake again, each girded for a new contest, and rejoicing, like a strong man refreshed, to run the race again.

1 Strype's Whitgift, 521, 537-541. Neal, I. 212.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. — WILLIAM, LORD BURLEIGH.

OPINIONS OF CRANMER, COVErdale, Bullinger, Calvin, AND QUEEN ELIZABETH RESPECTING THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. -THE QUEEN'S EXAMPLE.THE HABITS OF THE PEOPLE ON SUNDAYS. THE CATASTROPHE AT SOUTHWARK. ITS MORAL EFFECT UPON THE PEOPLE. — ACTION IN PARLIAMENT FOR THE BETTER OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH DAY. -THE EFFORTS OF SMITH AND OF GREENHAM FOR THE SAME OBJECT.-DR. BOUND'S BOOK UPON THE SABBATH. THE NEW DOCTRINE GENERALLY RECEIVED BY THE PEOPLE. OPPOSITION OF THE PRELATES.- LORD BURLEIGH'S BODILY INFIRMITIES. HIS LAST SICKNESS, DEATH, AND CHARACTER.

1559-1599.

THE fathers of the English Reformation held to an entire sanctification of the Christian Sabbath. Becon, chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, published a catechism, which must have had his Grace's approval, in which he stated: "To keep holy the Sabbath day is not to cease from bodily labor that thou shouldst .. give thy mind to gallant apparel, to banqueting, to idle talk, to vain pastimes,. but that thou, setting aside all worldly businesses, shouldst the more freely apply thyself to read, hear, and learn the word of God, to pray in the temple with the congregation, . . . . . and, casting away the works of the flesh, wholly exercise thyself in fruits of the spirit." 1

....

Miles Coverdale, while Bishop of Exeter, distin

'Marsden, 242, note.

guished between the Decalogue and the Jewish ordinances added to it as by-laws. He declared that each of the Ten Commandments had existence and binding force before their proclamation from Sinai; and said particularly of the fourth, "The Sabbath did not the Lord here ordain first, but on the seventh day of the creation."1

So Henry Bullinger, of Zurich, whose writings were adopted into the religious literature of Elizabeth's day, -held that the Sabbath was no Jewish institution, but one "that was of old ordained, and given first of all to the ancient fathers, and then again renewed by the Lord and beaten into the memory of the people of Israel." He says further: "The Sabbath is ceremonial so far forth as it is joined to sacrifices and other Jewish ceremonies, and so far forth as it is tied to a certain time. But in respect that on the Sabbath day religion and true godliness are exercised and published, that a just and seemly order is kept in the Church, it is perpetual, and not ceremonial. Now, as there ought to be an appointed place, so likewise must there be a prescribed time for the outward exercise of religion... They of the primitive Church, therefore, did change the Sabbath day, lest they should have seemed to have imitated the Jews and still to have retained their orders and ceremonies. They transgress this commandment that cease not from evil works, but abuse the Sabbath's rest to the provoking of fleshly pleasFor they keep the Sabbath to God, but work to the Devil, in dicing, in drinking, in dancing,

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