therein was, that "chaunting and playing upon organs displeased God sore, and filthily defiled his holy house."*

In the above statement, no account has been taken of the invasion of Christ's authority and of his people's freedom, implied in the requirement of subscription to any human formulary. Nor is it intended to rest the argument upon the most formidable objections to the Common Prayer Book of the English church in particular. Some of those objections relate to doctrines so momentous, sanctioned under circumstances so peculiarly solemn, as to relieve the dissentient altogether from the suspicion of captious trifling.

But it is submitted to the consideration of the candid reader, whether any hesitancy existing in the mind of a minister of the gospel, on any one of these, or any similar point, would not be enough to justify his declining, at whatever apparent sacrifice of usefulness or emolument, to give his deliberate assent to the propositions con

*See Wilton's Review of some of the Articles, passim ; a work to which the writer of these pages is indebted in several instances, and of which he has availed himself the less scrupulously as it has been long out of print.

tained in Whitgift's Articles. The law of sincerity binds not to a partial but to a universal obedience. A deep reverence for truth, and a peculiarly tender conscience, are obviously just the qualities most likely to have insured a refusal. Cruel and mischievous indeed must have been the policy which thus demanded an unqualified acquiescence in so heterogeneous a mass of propositions, holding out a premium to the temporizing and careless to fritter away the eternal boundaries of right and wrong.*

If the separation which took place among the professed Christians of Beccles at this early period may be designated a schism, the charge

* After the lapse of two centuries and a half, the terms of subscription in the Church of England remain substantially the same, with this additional safeguard against evasion, that the subscription is required, by the Act of Uniformity, to be made ex animo. The writer does not feel himself called upon to reconcile this fact with the increased spirit of investigation which characterizes the present age, or with the acknowledged upright character of many of the clergy. It may be conceded that each party is conscientious; but each should bear in mind that there is an essential and unalterable difference between truth and error; and that it cannot be a matter of slight importance whether the one or the other is embraced and propagated.

it

does not attach to Mr. Fleming, and those who, probably, seceded with him, but to the parties by whom they were rejected. "Schism is a thing bad in itself, bad in its very nature; separation may be bad or good according to circumstances." Separation is not necessarily schism; "for while may be occasioned by crime, it may be occasioned by virtue; it may result in those who depart from intolerance attempted, or intolerance sustained, from the pride of faction, or the predominance of principle, attachment to party, or attachment to truth. A schismatic, in short, must be a sinner, on whichever side he stands; a separatist may be more sinned against than sinning."*

Mr. Fleming was a separatist, he was so by compulsion; but he was not a schismatic: and protestant dissent in Beccles was pure in its source; for it must in justice be traced not to a factious disobedience to the higher powers, but to an act of moral heroism, elicited by the despotism of Queen Elizabeth and the severity of a protestant archbishop.

CHAPTER IV.

Rise of the Brownists; persecuted-James I.-Millenary petition; Brownists imprisoned and exiled-Robinson; father of the Independents—Jacob establishes the first English Independent church-Book of Sports-Bishop Harsnet-Laud-Bishop Wren's Articles of Visitation -William Bridge retires to Holland-Returns on the change of affairs-Formation of Independent churches at Yarmouth and Norwich-Cromwell.

THE early puritans, in general, were strongly attached to the principle of a national established church. But some of them were at length prompted, by their sad experience of episcopal domination, openly to seek the substitution of presbyterianism, as a form of church government which promised to preserve the equality of christian ministers, while it maintained their connexion and their authority. Others conceived that if episcopacy trampled on the scriptural rights of the clergy, presbyterianism interfered with

those of the laity, and that both invaded the authority of Christ.* Convictions of this nature flashed across the active mind of a young clergyman named Robert Brown. In 1581, he attracted the notice of Bishop Freke, as a teacher of "strange and dangerous doctrine" at Bury St. Edmunds, where he received so much encouragement, and his opinions were spreading so rapidly, as (in the serious apprehension of the bishop) to "hazard the overthrow of all religion."+

The Brownists differed little from the Church of England in their doctrinal views; but they looked upon her discipline as popish and antichristian, her sacraments and ordinances as invalid; and renounced communion with every church that was not constituted on the same model as their own. They held that as the primitive faith was to be maintained, so also the primitive institutions, as delineated in the New Testament, were to be imitated; and that every congregation of

* Acts xv. 12, 22, 23. 1 Cor. v. 4, 13. Harmer's Misc. Works, 144.

+ Strype's Annals, III, i. 23. [17.]