perceive that success was within reach as well as hope. At the same time the temper with which he acted in the High Commission, gave just cause of general offence. Whitgift had left only eight causes in that Court: during Abbot's primacy they increased more than an hundred-fold, and as more causes were unwisely brought under its cognizance, greater severity was shown toward the offenders. It had been Bancroft's practice, gravely to admonish and reprove, but to pass mild sentences;

under Abbot, whose disposition was as austere as his opinions, enormous fines were imposed; and thus a tribunal, which the ablest of British statesmen had deemed it necessary to establish, and of which, while it was administered according to the spirit of its institution, none but the guilty stood in fear, became a reproach to the state, and a grievance to the subject.

415

CHAPTER XVII.

CHARLES I.-TRIUMPH OF THE PURITANS.

THE condition of the Church at James's death was, to all outward appearance, flourishing as its truest friends could have desired. It was looked upon as the head of the reformed churches, honoured by foreign Protestants, and dreaded by the enemies of the Reformation. The world did not contain men of stronger talents, sounder learning, and more exemplary lives than were to be found among its ministers; their worth was soon to be tried and proved in the furnace of adversity, and their works have stood and will continue to stand the test of time. They had maintained their cause with consummate ability against the Papists on one hand, and the Puritans on the other; and their triumph was as complete as their cause was good. But it is not by reason that such struggles are terminated. A fatal crisis, both for the Church and State, was drawing on. The danger, from the time when the Puritans commenced their systematic opposition to the establishment, had been distinctly foreseen and foretold; but the circumstances which brought on the catastrophe, were not to be averted by human foresight.

James had been forced into an impolitic war by a popular clamour, which his unworthy favourite had fomented. That favourite maintained his ascendency when Charles succeeded to a war, conducted as feebly as it had been rashly undertaken, and to an exhausted treasury. The House of Commons refused supplies for a contest which was of their own seeking; and thus at the commencement of his reign Charles unexpectedly found himself at variance with his parliament. His accession had taken place at one of those critical periods to which the political, as well as the human body is subject. The Commons possessed no real power or influence long after they were recognised as one of the three estates of the realm. Even when the power of the feudal nobility had been broken, some generations elapsed before

they became sensible of their strength. They had crouched at the feet of Henry VIII. Elizabeth with a high hand repressed their rising spirit; but even Elizabeth might have failed in this, if her personal qualities and the uniform wisdom of her government had not imposed upon them a profound and well-deserved respect, and if the nation had not been sensible of the blessings which they enjoyed under her singularly favoured reign. Under James, who was not more arbitrary in principle than he was flexible in temper, they began to feel and exercise their power: and when Charles succeeded, they were in a disposition to abuse it.

A crisis had arrived at which it might have been possible, had there been prudence on both sides, to have defined and balanced the constitution, without a struggle. The needful political reform might have been accomplished with less difficulty than had attended our religious reformation, because there was less evil to be corrected. Some grievances there were which cried aloud for redress, some vexations which might easily have been removed, and in redressing them the government would have acquired both popularity and strength. But the men by whom popular opinion was directed, aimed at more than this, and Charles was surrounded by counsellors, of whom some were weak and others treacherous. He used to say it was better to be deceived than to distrust; this opinion he inherited from his father, whose maxim it was that suspicion is the disease of a tyrant. Charles distrusted no one so much as himself; and to that infirmity of purpose was owing that he did not make himself an absolute king, after it was rendered impossible for him to govern as a constitutional one. He had nearly succeeded, when, having gained over to his service one of the best and ablest leaders of the popular party, he tried the experiment of governing without a parliament, and raising, by his own prerogative, the necessary revenues which the Commons had persisted in withholding. The liberties of England would then have been lost, if a stronger principle than the love of liberty had not been opposed to him.

it

During this contention the Puritans had greatly increased in numbers and in audacity. Under Abbot's fatal protection they had got possession of too many churches both in town and country; and the preachers who had thus entered the Church with the desire, if not the design, of betraying it, were power

fully aided by lecturers in London and most other populous places. Because of the superstitions connected with the mass, the Puritans, falling into an opposite extreme, disparaged social prayer and thanksgiving, and attached as much importance to sermons as the Romanists to what they deemed the sacrifice of the altar. They maintained the extravagant and pernicious opinion, that the Scripture had no efficacy unless it were expounded in sermons, the word no vital operation unless it were preached from the pulpit; that prayers and sacraments without sermons, were not merely unprofitable, but tended to farther1 condemnation, and that sermons themselves must be heard, not2 read, for it was through the ear only that they could reach the heart. There was some reason for this assertion; the heavy hand of power might have reached the preacher if he printed his inflammatory harangues, and the empty oratory by which itching ears were tickled, would not have imposed upon men of honest minds and sober understanding, when they examined it at leisure by the test of common sense. The nature of public worship was better understood by the founders of the English Church. They knew that public instruction is only a part of it, and not the most important; and if in the morning there was a sermon or homily for the edification of the elder, they thought that in the afternoon the minister was not less usefully employed in catechizing and examining the younger members of his flock.

In maintaining that preaching was the first duty of the clergy, the Puritans followed the Lollards; it was one of those errors which Bishop Pecock withstood. But it accorded with the temper of the people. Crowds were attracted not less surely by a sermon than by a pageant; and they listened to long discourses with a delight which would be unaccountable, did we not know that the pulpit possessed over the public mind, in those days, the influence which in these is exercised by the press. When Elizabeth wished to prepare the nation for any of her measures, she began by what she called3 "tuning the pulpits." The enemies of the monarchy and of the Church had learnt this policy too; and they perverted also to the furtherance of their purpose, what 2 Ibid. b. v. p. 221., ed. 1632. 3. Heylyn's Life of Laud, p. 153.

Hooker, b. v. 232.

The parochial

in its origin had been an excellent design. clergy had been well provided for by the institution of tithes, till the monastic orders, in their cupidity, deranged the system. They obtained advowsons among other grants from their devotees; the convent to which a living was annexed, receiving the tithes and supplying the parish with one of its own members, or with a stipendiary curate. Less hospitality could be kept up, and the influence of the resident ministers must thus have been diminished; but the property, though diverted from its original destination, remained in ecclesiastical hands, the transfer being from the secular clergy to the regular. At the Reformation it was lost to the Church; the impropriated tithes passed then with the other property of the religious houses into the hands of the spoilers. They used their patronage as unworthily as they had obtained it, bestowing their cures upon such persons as would undertake to serve them at the cheapest rate, who were of course the needy, the ignorant, or the profligate. The scandal thus brought upon the Church became a frequent topic of indignant censure in the writings and discourses of those who had the interests of religion at heart; and at length an association was formed for the purpose of purchasing lay impropriations, and re-annexing them to the impoverished livings from which they had been severed. Large sums were raised by voluntary contributions, and intrusted to a self-constituted corporation of feoffees, consisting of four clergymen, four lawyers, and four citizens, with a treasurer, who, if the others should be balanced in opinion, possessed the casting voice. The persons who bestirred themselves with most activity in this project, and obtained the management of it, were leading men among the Puritans; and it soon appeared what insidious intentions were covered under this specious pretext. Instead of restoring to the parish church the impropriations which they purchased, they employed the revenue in establishing lecturers, (removable at their pleasure, and therefore dependent on them,) in market towns, and especially in such as sent members to Parliament; in supporting schoolmasters to train up youth in puritanical opinions, granting exhibitions at the University to the pupils thus trained, pensioning ministers who had been silenced for