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§ 15. The work does not appear to have been commenced till 1607, by which time the fifty-four divines originally nominated were reduced, either by death or resignation, to forty-seven. These were divided into six classes, two of which were to meet at Westminster, two at Oxford, and two at Cambridge. The king published a letter of directions. They were to follow the version of the Bishops' Bible as far as possible; to keep the old names of the prophets and holy writers, and the old ecclesiastical words ; to give preference to the meanings of words sanctioned by the early Fathers, to keep the old divisions of chapters; no marginal notes to be put except simply explanatory of the meaning; marginal references to be added. Each man of a company to revise a chapter separately, then all the company to revise it jointly, then the other companies to revise it. If any one company differed from the others, the matter to be settled at a general meeting. On places of special obscurity the opinions of learned men to be asked by letter. Certain divines not employed in the revision to act as general censors of the work. Two of those arranged to commence the work died soon after the beginning of their task— Mr. Lively, professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, and Dr. Reynolds, president of Corpus Christi, Oxford. Reynolds was held to be the most learned man of his day. He had acted as advocate for the Puritans at Hampton Court, but for himself he had no scruples which interfered with a complete conformity. Nay, by desiring formally the priestly absolution provided by the Church of England at his death, he seemed to show that he favoured High Church opinions. Dr. Miles Smith, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, describes in the preface which he wrote to the revised translation the manner of the labours of the divines :- "We did not run over the work with that posting haste the Septuagint did. The work hath not been huddled up in seventy-two days, but hath cost the workmen, as light as it seemeth, the pains of twice seven times seventytwo days and more.3 We were far from condemning any of their labours that travailed before in this kind, either in this land or beyond sea. We never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad a good one, but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against,-that hath been our endeavour and our mark."

§ 16. Posterity has long since decided how well this endeavour was accomplished. The greatest testimony to the excellence of the 1 Cardwell, Doc. Annals, ii. 106-112.

2 Crakanthorp, Defensio Eccl. Ang. pp. 460-2.

3 It is probable that preliminary work was done in the revision before the companies began to meet in 1607. The new version was published in 1611

new version is to be found in the fact, that though it was never "authorised" either by Convocation, the Parliament, or the king, it very soon displaced all other versions by its own intrinsic superiority over its rivals.1

§ 17. Another matter of high importance connected with the history of the Church of England was brought to a successful issue during the primacy of Bancroft. Scotland, convulsed and disorganised in its religious settlement by the work of the Reformation, had long been without the episcopal order and the apostolical succession. The king, who fully appreciated the importance of the divinely-sanctioned constitution of the Church, was anxious to restore this boon to his native land. Titular bishops had continued to be appointed to the sees for secular reasons, but the episcopal character was wanting to them. In 1606, a Parliament held at Perth had restored their temporalities to the titular bishops. Soon afterwards the king invited some of the chief Presbyterian ministers to England, in order that the English divines might argue with them, and, if possible, persuade them to consent to the restoration of episcopacy. They were altogether impracticable and stubborn in their own opinions, but the king continued to press forward the design. At Linlithgow it was agreed that the assemblies should have constant moderators, and that the bishops should be these moderators. A General Assembly held at Glasgow (1610) extended and confirmed their power. The bishops were to excommunicate, induct, and deprive ministers. Oaths of obedience were to be taken to them by those appointed to benefices. Having thus laid the foundation in the assent of the assembly, it was thought by the king that the time had arrived for giving to the Scotch titulars the true episcopal character by consecration. Three of them Spotswood Archbishop of Glasgow, Lamb Bishop of Brechin, Hamilton Bishop of Galloway-were invited to England. A fear was expressed by some of the Scotchmen, lest if they were consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Scotch Church should thus be placed in subjection to the English. To avoid this it was determined that neither of the archbishops should take part in the consecration. Bishop Andrewes, who was to be one of the consecrators, considered that the Scotch divines should be first ordained deacons and priests. This, which was naturally distasteful to them, was overruled on the grounds advocated by Bancroft-namely, that in old times laymen had been frequently invested with the episcopal character per saltum, and that the higher order contained the power. Thus Ambrose, Nectarius, Eucherius, and divers others, had been consecrated when laymen. All difficulties being at length re1 Westcott, History of the Bible, p. 123.

moved, the three Scotchmen were consecrated, October 21, 1610, in the chapel of the Bishop of London, by the Bishops of London, Ely, Rochester, and Worcester.1 The king now issued a high commission for Scotland, and made the bishops commissioners. Instructions were also issued by him for the conduct of the bishops and the administration of ecclesiastical discipline. One important matter, indeed, was lacking in these arrangements. The Church in Scotland as yet had no liturgy, and therefore no uniformity in the performance of divine service. An attempt to introduce this a few years later looked so dangerous, that the design was abandoned. Towards the end of the next reign a serious attempt to introdue a liturgy so excited the people that the episcopacy planted with so much care was overthrown, and Scotland remained without the higher order of the ministry for upwards of a century.

§ 18. Within a fortnight after the consecration of the Scotch bishops, the English primate had breathed his last (November 2, 1610). In an incumbency of six years Bancroft had done much to produce at least an outward conformity, and by his vigorous measures had succeeded in weeding out of the Church of England the most forward and pronounced of those who favoured the Presbyterian platform. He had done this, indeed, at the cost of some apparent injustice in forcing a conscience test upon men who were living quietly; but in the increase of zeal and earnestness, which resulted from his vigorous action, the Church was a considerable gainer. The high claims which the Primate had advanced for Church authority, his contests with the judges and with Parliament, had served to render the Church unpopular, and the dislike beginning to be strongly felt against the king, had attached itself also to the clergy whom he favoured and upheld. This was a serious evil, as the Puritans gained immensely in power and influence thereby, and, upon the whole, it is probable that at the death of Bancroft the Church was really weaker, in its hold upon the country, than it was when he acceded to the primacy.

1 Collier, vii. 365; Heylin's Presbyterians, 388; Spotswood.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

(A) BISHOP OVERALL'S CONVOCA. | neighbours, or that when any such new

TION BOOK.

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It appears that after the 141 canons had been completed, at the next session of Convocation, the king committed to the clergy the task of forming a number of canons on civil government, with a view of justifying in certain cases resistance to authority, and thus the rendering of assistance to revolted subjects of neighbouring princes. He says in his letter to Doctor Abbot: "My reason of calling you together was to give your judgments how far a Christian and Protestant king may concur to assist his neighbours to shake off their obedience to their own sovereign, upon the account of oppression, tyranny, or what else you like to name it. All my neighbours called on me to concur in the treaty between Holland and Spain, and the honour of the nation will not suffer the Hollanders to be abandoned, especially after so much money and men spent in their quarrel. Therefore, I was of the mind to call my elergy together, to satisfy, not so much me, as the world about me, of the justice of owning the Hollanders at this time. (Preface to Overall's Convocation Book.) The divines having this subject entrusted to them proceeded to investigate the origin of government, and its claims to obedience jure divino. They drew up a number of canons, together with the grounds or reasons on which the canons were founded, the purport of which is to give the most absolute right to rulers, and to take away all rights of resistance from subjects. It is even laid down that the Israelites would not have been justified in quitting Egypt had not Pharaoh given his consent. But though they took away all right of resistance from the subject, they nevertheless laid it down as certain that when this resistance had proved successful and a change of government had been effected, the ruler de facto had the same claims to obedience as the ruler de jure. This strange doctrine is set forth in Canon xxviii. : "If any man shall affirm either that the subjects when they shake off the yoke of obedience to their sovereigns and set up a form of government among themselves, do not therein very wickedly, or that it is lawful for any bordering kings to invade their

forms of government begun by rebellion, and after thoroughly settled, the authority of them is not of God, he doth greatly err." This doctrine offended the king in two ways. He thought that it implied that his own title was one de facto and not de jure. "All that you and your brethren have said of a king in possession (for that word is no worse than what you make use of in your canon) concerns not me at all. I am the next heir, and the crown is mine by all rights but that of conquest." And again, by not allowing resistance in any case, and so not justifying England's assistance of the Hollanders, he considered that they had almost made God the author of evil, and declared tyranny to be His authority. The king thus utterly refused to give his sanction to the work of Convocation, and it is probable that the divines themselves were somewhat ashamed of it, as their treatise did not see the light for many years. Singular to relate, it was at last published by Archbishop Sancroft after the Revolution, under the idea, apparently, that it gave support to the principles of the nonjurors. It does, however, exactly the reverse, as it attributes the jus divinum to the de facto government. The book is printed in the "Anglo-Catholic Library.”

(B) CHELSEA CONTROVERSIAL

COLLEGE.

The love of controversy was so strong among the divines of the reign of James, that Matthew Sutcliffe, Dean of Exeter, left by will lands to the amount of £300 a year, and £4000 in addition, for the establishment of a College at Chelsea for the study of controversial divinity. The king approved the scheme, and caused the college to be incorporated by royal charter. The college was empowered to dig a trench to the river Lea, and to erect engines, works, etc., for supplying London with water, A provost, 17 fellows, and 2 historians were appointed; the king issued his letters to the archbishop to stir up the clergy to contribute. The design, however, was not popular. A college was built at an expense of £3000, but this in Fuller's time "stood like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers." The Court of Chancery restored Dr. Sutcliffe's

lands to his rightful heirs, and the college | them.
fell into the hands of the person who had
the title to the land on which it was
built.-(Fuller.)

(C) BISHOP ANDREWES' SERMONS, AND FIELD OF THE CHURCH.

The other to lead to amendment of life, and to good works, the fruit of true repentance. Of the first kind he made a sermon not long since, which was most famous, and though courtiers' ears are commonly so open as it goes in at one ear and out at the other, yet it left an aculeum behind in many of all sorts. And Henry Noel, one of the greatest gallants of those times, sware as he was a gentleman, he never heard man speak with such spirit. Of the second kind I may say all his sermons are, but I will mention but his last that I heard the 5th of last November, which sermon I could wish ever to read on that day."-(Harrington's Brief Survey of the Church of England, p. 145). Dr. Field, Dean of Glou

The sermons of Bishop Andrewes, the most famous preacher of his day, were collected and edited by Bishops Laud and Buckeridge. As to their matter, the sermons are learned, pregnant, exhaustive full of striking thoughts and happy applications. As to their manner, they are in the highest degree peculiar, and altogether opposed to the taste of the present day. The preacher tortures and twists his subject, divides and sub-cester, wrote a treatise Of the Church, in divides, indulges in puns and word-splitting, jumbles together English, Latin, and Greek, often produces effects altogether ludicrous. It is hardly possible to imagine any one listening to these sermons without his risible muscles being sorely tried. Yet there is everything in them belonging to the highest Christian oratory. It is only in the way in which the subject is treated that there is any drawback, and this was the taste of the day. These sermons were greatly admired. The king far preferred Andrewes to all other preachers. Sir J. Harrington, a courtier, and not of a specially religious turn, thus speaks of his sermons: "Two special things I have observed in his preaching that I may not omit to speak of-one, to raise a joint reverence to God and the prince, to spiritual and civil magistrates, by uniting and not severing

It

five books, "to meet the assaults of the Romanists rather than the Puritans." The object of his work is to show that the Church of England has the notes of a true church. The treatise is a very learned and able one, and especially remarkable for its temperate and candid tone. would not, however, satisfy high churchmen, as Dr. Field does not hold the apostolical succession as a necessary note of the church. In his view, in certain cases "the care and charge of the Church may devolve on the Presbyters remaining Catholic, do likewise the ordaining of men to assist them and succeed them in the ministry." One especially valuable part of this treatise is that in which the author exhibits the ground common to the Anglican and Greek Churches, and indicates the desirableness of intercommunion.

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