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named for the first year by the landgrave and afterward by the synod, and partly of the church in the synodal city of Marburg. The same synodal committee was to superintend and manage the business of the synod when in session. In the selection of this committee, the prince, with the nobility, if present in the assembly, was to have the right of voting; and in its sessions the prince, with such persons as he should introduce, and the nobility favorable to the Gospel, might be present.

This Hessian platform almost extinguishes the idea of clerical power-an idea essential to all the national churches produced by the Reformation, to the Presbyterian no less than to the Episcopal. A Presbyterian system of church government may change the priest into a minister of the word of God, and may deny that there is any cleansing efficacy or sacrificial value in his manipulation of the sacraments; but if it make all preachers, by virtue of their or dination, and independently of their being called to office in a local church, rulers by divine right in the church at large, it simply changes the ruling priesthood into a ruling preacherhood. But there was as little of ruling preacherhood as of ruling priesthood in Francis Lambert's system. The platform which he deduced from the Scriptures recognizes no bishop at large, nor any bishop other than the simple pastor of a parish church. It knows nothing about what is called. the "indelibility of ordination," but affirms that "each pastor and pastor's assistant is appointed for such time only as he shall preach God's word purely and simply, and shall walk worthily," a position which assumes and explains the duty of the assembled believers "to pass judgment on the sentiments of their pastors." It excludes the idea that only members of a clerical order can be chosen to the pastoral office; and, on the contrary, it maintains that "citizens and workingmen, whatever their business may be, if only they are devout, blameless, and instructed, are eligible to the pastorate." It even maintains that men may be preachers without being in

any sense church officers. Where it prevails, there shall be no clerical body, not even a body of pastors, with an exclusive right to speak in the congregation; for it holds that "men without office in the church, being devout and strong in the Scriptures, are not to be forbidden to preach, inasmuch as there is an inward call from God."

Had this scheme been proposed to Luther as an ideal theory of church polity, or as a plan which might be adopted at a later stage of the Reformation, doubtless he would have. most heartily approved it; for the ideal which it portrayed was substantially his own. But when the question of attempting such a polity in the churches of Hesse was submitted to him by Philip, early in the following year, he could not believe that the time had come for building the house of God according to the pattern given in the Scriptures. He advised the prince not to promulgate the plan immediately, but first to appoint capable men over the parish schools and churches; and when a number of these should have come practically and cordially into agreement, and others should be ready to follow them, to introduce the plan by a public ordinance. Thus a certain usage, being first settled, might be elevated into law. Evidently the great Reformer thought that the scheme was a devout imagination not to be realized in that age when so much depended on princely patronage; and that Lambert was only an amiable dreamer.

Luther's advice prevailed, and Lambert's platform of church discipline was set aside to wait for better times. Melanchthon, as well as Luther, thought that the age was not ripe for the emancipation of the churches and the coming in of a simply evangelical church polity. Accordingly, the ordering of ecclesiastical affairs remained in the hands of the reforming landgrave; and his "instructions" to the ecclesiastical visitors, issued after much deliberation, made no mention of local self-governed churches with their several bishops and their synods, but only of parish priests and superintendents. Two years later Lambert died, but not till he had re

newed his testimony with unfailing aspiration. "When shall we have the joy of seeing our churches ordered strictly according to the law of Christ? Where is the power of excommunication, that most essential thing to any church, which so many, in opposition to the plain testimony of the Scriptures, are throwing away ?"

Another year, and instead of provisional officers for the superintendence of the clergy and the parishes, superintendents for life were appointed. Then followed a second assembly at Homberg, by whose advice the duty of admonishing and of excommunicating unworthy parishioners was laid upon pastors only. At last, after thirteen years of such reformation by the secular power with the advice of reforming theologians, the lay-eldership was introduced into the Hessian churches; and the share of each local church (or rather of each parish) in its own government was that it might choose half of the lay-elders in its consistory, the other half being chosen by the magistrate to represent and maintain the dependence of the church on the civil government.

In this last arrangement, “the ideal plan of Lambert vanished away, leaving behind it no enduring fruit."1

1 Congregational Quarterly, July, 1864, p. 276-280; Lechler, "Geschichte der Presbyterial- und Synodal-verfassung seit der Reformation" (Leyden, 1834), 14-21; "Leben und ansgewählte Schriften der Väter und Begründer der reformirten Kirche (Elberfeld, 1861), ix., 41-47. These writers refer to RICHTER, "Sammlung Evangelischer Kirchenordnungen," i., 58 sq., which contains the original document: "Reformatio Ecclesiarum Hassiæ juxta certissimam sermonum Dei regulam ordinata in venerabili synodo,” etc.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ENGLISH REFORMATION AND THE PURITANS.

In England, the twofold character of the Reformation was more conspicuous than in any other country. Elsewhere, as we have seen, that great revolution was effected, under the providence of God, by a concurrence of political with religious forces. Princes and statesmen, or the leaders of petty republics, on the one hand, and reforming preachers and writers on the other hand, were fellow-workers. But in England, more than any where else, the Reformation resembled some great river formed by the confluence of two streams which, like the Missouri and the Mississippi, refuse to mingle though flowing in one channel. On one side, it was a religious movement among the people, an inquiry after truth and salvation, a revolt of earnest and devout souls against the superstition, the false doctrine, and the despotic priesthood that hindered their access to God. On the other side, it was a politico-ecclesiastical revolution, an attempt of king and Parliament to drive out of the kingdom the insolent intrusions and vexatious exactions of the court of Rome, a breaking of what had long been felt as a galling yoke on the neck of a proud people.

Considered as a religious movement, the Reformation in England began with Wycliffe, more than a hundred and fifty years before Luther. Fitly has the stout-hearted Englishman been called "the morning star" of the day which had its sunrise in the sixteenth century. Though protected for a while by some of the most powerful of the nobles, and encouraged by the sympathy of Parliament in his Luther-like attacks on the mendicant orders and the pope, he was not sustained by any adequate political power in his efforts to

evangelize the people. His disciples, under the name of Lollards—a reproachful designation imported from the Continent -carried on his work after his death; and though persecuted, and often giving their testimony in prison and at the stake, they could not be suppressed. The Protestant martyrology of England, long before the age of Luther, is rich in records of their suffering heroism. Their books, multiplied by the slow process of transcribing, were widely, though secretly, distributed; were read with closed doors in many a household and in many a private assembly; and were handed down from sire to son as precious heir-looms. Their itinerant preachers, passing quietly from place to place, and eluding though not always-the vigilance of their enemies, kept alive the tradition of their doctrine, and strengthened the scattered disciples by making them know each other's faith and patience. When the Reformation began on the Continent, Wycliffism or Lollardism was soon lost, or rather perpetuated, in Lutheranism or Protestantism, which found in England a soil well prepared for it.

Considered in the other aspect, namely, as a political or national movement, the English Reformation, at its beginning, had no visible connection with the religious movement among the people. The history of England through the Middle Ages is largely the history of a chronic conflict between the state, as represented by the king and Parliament, and the church, as governed by a foreign potentate, the pope. But that change in the ecclesiastical establishment of the realm which is commonly called by English writers "the reformation from popery," began when Henry VIII., who had written a book against Luther, and had been rewarded by the pope with the title "Defender of the Faith' -a title borne by all his successors-procured the consent of Parliament to his declaring himself the Supreme Head (1534) under Christ of the Church of England, and then constrained the clergy in Convocation to acknowledge his supremacy. Other changes followed. First was the suppression of the

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