IV. SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS

CONDITION OF BRITAIN WHEN THE WEST-
MINSTER ASSEMBLY WAS CONVENED.

The English Revolution was in effect begun by the Reformation and the principles of truth which were triumphant in politics and religion in the middle of the 17th century were disseminated through Britain by the scattering abroad of the Sacred Scriptures in the English tongue. If, however, we seek some formal point of departure, or definite fountain-head for a great stream, we may find it in the lectures of Cartwright, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, delivered in 1570. In these lectures prelacy, ecclesiastical vestments, and various things in which the Anglican Church was declared to be nearer Rome than the Bible, were denounced, as was the low standard of piety accepted by the Church. As an essential element of the movement thus inaugurated, side by side with the demand for a freer, more spiritual and more scriptural Church, went a demand for deliverance from despotism in the State, the removal of political abuses, the recognition of the rights of the subject and the authority of the parliament as a representative assembly. In short, the party siding with Cartwright is immediately marked as the champion of civil liberty as well as religious truth. But Queen Elizabeth, with that rare sagacity which compared with the true patriotism in her official life, recognized the justice as well as force of the rising tide, and making just concessions to its demands prevented any active antagonism or actual bitterness from arising. Moreover, if in a fit of temper Elizabeth dealt harshly with some especially zealous divine, she cared not a jot for the result, knowing that this same divine in his dungeon would in

unison with his brethren on the outside, earnestly pray for the preservation of her life and health, and invoke every blessing upon her head, inasmuch as though her personal piety might be limited, she was recognized as the true and honest champion of Protestantism and its grandest bulwark against the colossal efforts of Rome to stamp it out by force. In March, 1603, the great queen died, having named in her will as her successor her cousin, James II., of Scotland, the son of that unhappy queen Mary, whom she had sent to the scaffold. Mary's sad fate has obscured through sympathy her many faults, but those of her son are known. to all men. From one of the weakest and poorest thrones in Europe, James was suddenly translated to one of the strongest and wealthiest, without losing his Scottish throne, but combining the two kingdoms under himself as the common head. He discovered also that not only was England greater and richer, but the authority of the throne in England was far greater than in Scotland. And these things seem to have completely turned a head which was never remarkably strong. James was a bundle of contradictions. Uncommonly shrewd and cunning, he was also remarkably silly, so that Henry IV., of France, called him "the wisest fool in Christendom." A learned man, he was not an educated one, so that his teacher said he was a pedant because it was impossible to make anything else of him. In a way zealous for religion and anxious to pose as a theologian and an eminent saint, he yet went so far in his extravagance, buffoonery and love of pleasure as to give rise to suspicions of abominable and debasing practices. However, he conferred a lasting benefit upon his nation and the world in encouraging the magnificent English version of the Scriptures which still bears his name.

Just here we may note that the Bible was the prime factor in the stirring events of the century. It became for a time largely the literature of Britain. It colored the thought, the language, the life and manners of the people.

It dominated everything, and men looking to it for true ideas of religious doctrine and ecclesiastical polity, the shackles of tradition and Popish tyrany being broken, also began to look to it as the source of light as to true theories of civil polity. These things King James was poorly able to appreciate. His experience with the Presbyterians in Scotland had been most distasteful to him. There they were too strong for him, and told him plainly there were two Kings in Scotland, and King James must not tresspass upon the Kingdom of King Jesus. He dissembled with them and declared himself a staunch Presbyterian, and thanked God that Scotland had the soundest and purest Kirk in Christendom. But the mask was quickly thrown off when he came to London. Henceforth he was the implacable foe of Presbyterianism and the champion of Prelacy. "No Bishop no King," was his theory, and the aim of his life being to exalt the throne and exaggerate the royal powers, he hated the Presbyterians as being necessary foes to despotism. And throughout his life he confounded all English, the Puritans with the Presbyterians, being unable or unwilling to distinguish between them.

The term Puritan was first employed by De Dominis, a Romish Bishop, who during James' reign came with quite a flourish of trumpets to England to embrace the Protestant faith. James at once made him an Anglican bishop. But some years later, tempted by the offer of a cardinal's hat, he returned to Rome to become again a Papist, but found himself trapped, as after his second recantation instead of a cardinal's hat he was given a dungeon in the Inquisition, where he died. The English Puritans-so named by this time-serving priest when an active supporter of King James' theories, were some of them evangelical and moderate Prelatists, some inclined to Presbyterianism and others to theories of Independence or Congregationalism in church polity. But to James they were all Presbyterians-suspicious personages, who were not

apt to properly regard the king as supreme in religion and politics alike. The Puritans, finding the ablest and best organized resistance to the encroachments of the throne upon their civil and religious liberty in the Presbyterians, did more and more take their places behind Presbyterian leaders. They objected to many things in their king. His favorites, first Carr, whom he made Earl of Somerset, and enormously enriched out of the public revenues, and then Geo. Villiers, made Duke of Buckingham, and still more prodigally endowed with the peoples' money, being men of evil life pleased them not; nor did other forms of royal extravagance. Still less did they like the determined usurpation of their sovereign. When James on ascending the English throne discovered that appointing powers were his in respect to both ecclesiastical and judicial offices, he exclaimed in delight: "I make Judges and I make Bishops, do I? Then (God's hands) I make Law and Gospel;" and he proposed nothing short of this: A careful student of this period tells us that the king had ever consistently in view three principal objects: Ist, To establish the royal prerogative according to his own principles. 2d, To protect and befriend the Papists in England, provided they lived peacably and took the oath of allegiance. 3d, To express his hatred for the Puritans (whom he regarded as Presbyterians) and to create the same aversisn for them in the nation.

The king wrote theological treaties against Romanism, but displayed a liberality toward Romanists which was in marked contrast with his temper towards the Puritans. He declared that he would not "force the consciences" of the Papists, but he demanded entire submission as to their religion of the Presbyterians, though ever so unwilling-an inconsistency which did not escape notice. Prince Henry, the heir apparent, an amiable and wise prince, had little sympathy with his father's errors, and was disliked by the king and greatly loved by the nation. Dying young, the

bitterness of the people was illustrated in the shocking charge that his father had him poisoned, to open the succession of Prince Charles, whose views on matters civil and religious were more in accord with those of James. Having now an heir apparent who suited him, the king began to make it the most important of all possible affairs of state as to whom the young man should marry. The Protestant princess of Europe being inferior in grandeur and power to the Roman Catholic potentates were ignored now by James, and, heedless of the temper of England and Scotland towards Rome, he sought a Romish princess to be the wife of an English king and the mother of future English princes. Turning to Spain, he proposed to marry Charles to the Spanish infanta, and there followed a most humiliating story to Englishmen. With grief and rage they beheld the King of Spain persecuting and seeking to exterminate their Protestant brethren on the continent, who cried in vain to them for aid, whilst the hope of marriage of the infanta to Prince Charles was held out to King James. They saw the Pope and the Spanish King amusing themselves with James, procrastinating action, and ever inventing fresh reasons for delay, and while England was idle Spanish troops over-rah the Palatinate and chased from his dominions the elector Palatine, a Protestant prince whose wife was King James' daughter. They saw their king failing to help promptly and effectively the Protestants in the critical and terrible thirty years war whilst parlying over the Spanish marriage and agreeing to proposed Romish practices in the royal family; and they saw all these things with ever growing indignation. And when at last the project was abandoned and Charles married a French princess who came with her priests and Romish followers to England, this too, failed to please the Puritans, who felt that Protestantism was still fighting for its life against Rome.

Another source of discontent lay in the favor shown