THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
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 Fortytwo 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 Calyinistic, and 4. 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 in Mary's reign returned strongly prejudiced 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 enforcing uniformity in these matters. The latter, with Bishops Parkhurst and Ponet, not only would have allowed a coordinate authority to the presbyterian system of Geneva, but would have gone even farther. Grindal incurred suspension from his office as primate by disobeying the queen's command to suppress the Puritan " prophesyings," or informal religious harangues. By a royal proclamation these were suppressed, and a royal proclamation had already required the use of clerical vestments. It thus was decided that no unrestricted 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 countenance 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 Tra'cts). 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 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 legislation 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 Millenary Petition, signed by eight hundred clergymen, 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 authorized version of the English Bible which appeared in 1611 (see Hampton Court Conference). James retained relations with the Reformed Churches of the Continent, and sent five commissioners to represent the Church of England at the Synod of Dort, with instructions to " favor no innovations in doctrine, and to conform to the confessions 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.; 1633-45), assumed an extreme form. The latter taught that episcopacy was not only necessary to the wellbeing, but essential to the very existence of the Church. His administration revived, to the Lowchurch 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 regarded 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 was, in fact, a religio illicita, an act of Parliament having abolished episcopacy, 6. The Com- and discontinued the use of the Litmonwealth, urgy (Sept. 10, 1642). Puritanism the Resto- triumphed for a time, and the Westration, the minster Assembly (q.v.) in 1643 es- House 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