RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Carthusians Cart-wright
rejoined in A Reply e to an Answer e Made of M. Doctor Whitegifte Againste the Admonition to the Parliament, 1573. This was a renewal of the old discussion on a larger scale, going to the roots of difference; Cartwright and the Puritans contending that the church government and the discipline, as well as the doctrine, must be reformed according to the Scriptures. The discussion took a wide range — as to the standard of church government, the choice of ministers, the offices of the Christian Church, clerical habits, bishops, archbishops, the authority of princes in matters ecclesiastical, confirmation, etc. Whitgift replied in A Defense of the Ecclesiasticall Regiment in Englande Defaced by T. C. in his Replie againste D. Whitgifte, 1574, and also The Defense of the Answere to the Admonition, against the Replye of T. C, 1574, pp. 812, folio.
An order for Cartwright's apprehension was issued Dec. 11, 1574; but he fled to the Continent, and became minister of the English congregation of merchants at Antwerp and Middelburg. In 1576 he went to the isles of Jersey and 3. Minister Guernsey, aided the Puritans there in Antwerp, in settling the discipline of their churches, later returning to Antwerp, where he preached for several years. While abroad, he wrote the Second Replie of Thomas Cartwright Agaynst Maister Doctor Whitgiftes Second Answer Touching the Churche Discipline, 1575, and also The Rest of the Second Replie, 1577. He, in 1574, prepared also a preface to the Latin work of William Travers, and translated it under the title A Full and Plaine Declaration of Ecclesiasticall Discipline owt off the Word off God and off the Declininge off the Churche off England from the Same, 1574, which still more embittered his foes. In 1583, at the solicitation of the Earl of Leicester, and Lord Treasurer Burleigh, and a large number of Puritan friends, he undertook to write a confutation of the Rhemish version of the Scriptures, which took him many years; but he was prevented by the ecclesiastical authorities of England from publishing his work. The year before his death, however, his Answere to the Preface of the Rhemish Testament, 1602, was issued; but the work itself, not until 1618, under the title A Confutation of the Rhemists Translation, Glosses, and Annotations on the New Testament, so farre as they containe Manifest Impieties, Heresies, Idolatries, etc., fol., pp. lviii., 761, xviii., Leyden. In 1584 he was invited to the divinity chair in St. Andrews, Scotland, but declined.
In 1585 Cartwright returned to England without the royal permission, and was apprehended by Bishop Aylmer of London and cast into prison, where he remained from April until June, when he was released through the influence of his powerful friends, and the Earl of Leicester 4. Again in appointed him master of a hospital
England, which he had founded at Warwick. His preaching was opposed by his enemies, but without success, until 1590. During this time he went over a great part of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. The latter was published in 1604 under the title Metaphrasis et homiliee in librum Solomonis, qui inscribitur Ecclesiastes, 4to;
the former in 1617, Commentarii succincti et delucidi in Proverbia Solomonis, 4to. He is said to have been the first preacher in England who practised extempore prayer before sermon, although he usually employed forms of prayer. During this period the ecclesiastical conflicts waxed hotter and hotter. The Puritans had been making rapid progress. The first presbytery was organized at Wandsworth within the Church of England in 1572. Classes were rapidly organized in all parts of England, but secretly. In 1583 a rough draft of a book of discipline was drawn up by Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers, and at an assembly held either at London or Cambridge it was resolved to put it in practise. It was revised at a national synod in London (1584), and referred to Mr. Travers "to be corrected and ordered by him." It was then passed around the various classes. It was adopted and subscribed by an assembly of all the classes of Warwickshire in 1588, and then by a provincial synod in Cambridge; and by 1590 the Directory had spread all over England, and was subscribed to by as many as 500 ministers. The episcopal party were greatly alarmed, and determined to arrest Cartwright with the other leaders and to destroy as large a number of copies of the Holy Discipline as possible. A few copies were, however, preserved, two copies in manuscript, one in the British Museum, another in Lambeth Palace, in Latin, entitled Disciplina ecclesiai sacra. These were discussed and the Lambeth manuscript published by F. Paget in his Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker's Treatise, London, 1899, pp. 238 sqq. An edition in English with slight modifications was issued in 1644 by authority of the Long Parliament, entitled A Directory of Church Government anciently contended for, and as farre as the Times would suffer, practised by the first Non-Conformists in the Daies of Queen Elizabeth. Found in the study of the most accomplished Divine, Mr. Thomas Cartwright, after his decease ; and reserved to be published for such a time as this.
The discussion between the Presbyterians and the Prelatists was complicated by the Brownist party and the Marprelate tracts (q.v.), which bitterly satirized the bishops. Cartwright took
strong ground against the Brownists 5. Attitude and their doctrine of separation, and Toward the opposed the Marprelate method of Brownists. controversy; but it was the policy
of the Prelatists to make the Puritans bear all the odium of the weaker and more obnoxious party. Manuscripts of Cartwright against the Brownists are preserved and lately published (see Browne, Robert). In May, 1590, he was summoned before the High Commission, and committed to the Fleet. He and his associates were confronted with thirty-one articles of charges, afterward increased to, thirty-four, besides articles of inquiry. He was willing to reply to the charges, but refused to give testimony against his brethren. He was then summoned before the Star Chamber with Edmund Snape and others; but the case never reached an issue. Powerful friends worked in his behalf, and
Carus Caselius