you know, still bear rule; and therefore the reins of government are not in the hands of Christ, but in the hands of antichrist. Moreover, as Jesus Christ is the only lawgiver in his church, and he alone has power and authority to appoint its officers, if any king or prince in the world appoint other officers in the church than Christ hath already allowed and appointed, we will lay down our necks upon the block rather than consent to them.”*

Nine ministers of Norwich or its immediate vicinity were suspended about this time, besides numbers in other parts of the kingdom.

These violent proceedings called forth remonstrances from gentlemen of influence in different quarters. One from Suffolk, addressed to the lords. of the council, holds the following language: "The painful pastors and ministers of the word-by what justice we know not are now of late brought to the bar at every assize, marshalled with the worst malefactors, indicted, arraigned, and condemned for matters, as we presume, of very slender moment: some for singing the hymn Nunc Dimittis in the morning; some for turning the question in baptism from the infants to the godfathers, which is only you for thou; some for leaving out the cross in baptism; some for leaving out the ring in marriage; whereunto neither the law nor the law-makers, in our judgment, had ever any regard." †

* Brook, 1. 192.

† Parte of a Register, p. 128, in Brook, 1. 43.

But the queen and many of her bishops and counsellors thought otherwise. They insisted on tithing the mint, and the cummin, and the anise; they demanded an exact and punctilious regard to every external rite, ceremony, and usage of the lawestablished church; while the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, they recklessly disregarded.

A striking illustration of the sensitive bigotry of the queen is furnished by her treatment of the parliament of 1579-80. Early in the session, the commons passed a vote to this effect: "That as many of their members as conveniently could, should, on the Sunday fortnight, assemble and meet together in the Temple church, there to have preaching, and to join together in prayer, with humiliation and fasting, for the assistance of God's Spirit in all their consultations during the parliament; and for the preservation of the queen's majesty and her realms." No sooner, however, was this modest and pious resolution known to her majesty, than she took the alarm, and scenting danger, if not treason, in the measure, ordered her vice - chamberlain, Sir Christopher Hatton, to inform the commons that "she did much admire at so great a rashness in that house as to put in execution such an innovation, without her privity and pleasure first made known unto them." Sir Christopher then moved the house "to make humble submission to her majesty, acknowledging said of fence and contempt, craving the remission of the

same, with a full purpose to forbear the committing of the like hereafter." This was done, and so the matter ended.*

But this movement of the commons furnished a pretence for the queen to exact additional parliamentary protection for her royal prerogative, in the form of a new statute, entitled: "An Act to retain the Queen's Majesty's Subjects in their due Obedience." The fifth section of this act provides "that every person above the age of sixteen years, which shall not repair to some church, chapel, or usual place of common prayer, shall forfeit to the queen's majesty for every month after the end of this session of parliament, which he or she shall so forbear, twenty pounds of lawful English money; and that, over and besides the said forfeitures, every person so forbearing by the space of twelve months, as aforesaid, shall, for his or her obstinacy, be bound with two sufficient sureties, in the sum of two hundred pounds at least, to good behavior ; and so to continue bound until such time as the persons so bound do conform themselves and come to the church." Another section provides that "if any person shall devise, write, print, or set forth, any book, rhyme, ballad, letter, or writing, containing any false, seditious, and slanderous matter, to the defamation of the queen, or to the stirring or moving of any rebellion, or shall cause any such book, rhyme, writing, etc., to be

* Heylyn's Hist. Preb., p. 249; Neal, 1. 371.

written, printed, or published, then every such offence shall be adjudged felony.”

The imperious queen went even beyond what has now been recorded, in humbling this very parliament. The commons being pressed with petitions for the removal of unfaithful, unworthy, and dissolute ministers men that were gamesters on the Sabbath day, drunkards, fornicators, adulterers, felons, bearing the marks of their crimes in their hands and the appointment of faithful men, who would preach the word of God; and being forbidden by her majesty to take any action themselves, ventured to raise a committee to confer with the bishops touching some reformation of the church, and to move her highness in it. Some of the bishops feeling the necessity of reformation in the particulars complained of, joined the commons in a petition to her majesty. She received the petition, and directed Sandys, the archbishop of York

Grindal, of Canterbury, being then "under a cloud” — to call to him three or four bishops to consult about the matter. They agreed on certain reformations, which they "thought good, and could gladly yield" to, and made their report to the queen. She took the report and retained it; and when pressed for an answer, replied that she "was sufficient of herself to deal with the clergy in matters ecclesiastical, and that the parliament-house should not meddle therein, neither could her majesty yield

* Statutes, 23 Eliz. ch. 1, sect. 5, and ch. 2, sect. 1.

unto the alteration of any ecclesiastical law.” * Thus ended the last attempt of the commons to secure some relief for the suffering puritans.

These accumulating acts of ecclesiastical tyranny were more than enough to satisfy some of the puritans' that nothing remained for them but abject submission to the queen's authority in matters ecclesiastical, or open separation from the church of England. Multitudes chose the latter alternative, resolving to worship God agreeably to the dictates of their consciences, enlightened by God's word, and dare the wrath of their despotic and irreligious queen. And to the history of these brave Christians we now especially turn; for among them will be found the men who reasserted the principles of Congregationalism, and finally succeeded, at the cost of great suffering, and even of their very lives, in firmly establishing in England this scriptural and apostolic system of church order and government.

* Neal, 1. 36; Hopkins, 11. 171-80; Sandys' letter to William Chatterton, in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. 1. bk. III. No. 29, Lond. 1779, quarto.