Church of Rome is either of God or else a malignant Church. If of God, where Christ is truly taught and the sacraments rightly administered, how can we disburden ourselves of forsaking that Church with which we ought to be one and not to admit any separation? If you answer that it is a malignant Church, then we of this realm have never received any benefit of Christ, since we have received no gospel, no faith, no sacraments other than were sent us from Rome. Holy Eleutherius sent Faganus and Damianus in the time of King Lucius. Holy Gregory sent Augustine and Mellitus. And now Paulus Tertius lately sent Cardinal Pole to restore the faith which Eleutherius and Gregory planted. If the Church of Rome be a malignant Church, we have been deceived; for the doctrine must be of the nature of the Church whence it comes. Now, with regard to this supremacy and spiritual government. Have you power to say to the queen Tibi dabo claves? Have you power to bid her Pasce, pasce, pasce? Have you power by act of Parliament to bid her Confirma tuos fratres? Can you empower her to excommunicate and minister spiritual punishment? Can you make a woman supreme head of the Church?" Thus Heath, arguing as if the title of supreme head had been to be renewed by Parliament instead of taken away, and as if the supremacy had been now wrongfully transferred from a foreign personage who never had it, and newly given to the English sovereign; whereas the act only professed "to restore to the crown the ancient jurisdiction over the estate ecclesiastical and spiritual.” Bishop Scot of Chester also spoke against the bill on the third reading. "I reverence," said he, "the work of the noblemen to whom this bill has been committed; Treasurer Winchester, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Westmoreland, Shrewsbury, Rutland, Sussex, and Pembroke, the Marquis Montague, Lords Clinton, Morley, Rich, Willoughby, and North, and the Bishops of Exeter and Carlisle; for there is nothing in the bill as to altering the service in the Church, and the due administration of the holy sacraments; they will not suffer it; and they have mitigated the extreme penalties mentioned in the bill for gainsayers for their charity and pity toward the poor clergy of this realm. But unity is to be maintained in the Church, as order and concord in the civil State. Every village has one constable, every hundred one head constable, every shire one sheriff. All the constables are under the head constable, all the head constables are under the sheriff, and all the sheriffs are under the prince. So in the Church. Every village has a priest, every city has a bishop, every

province has a metropolitan. All the priests are under the bishop, all the bishops are under the metropolitan, and all the metropolitans are under the pope.

"Head governor of the Church cannot be applied to any temporal prince. Our Saviour Christ neither gave spiritual authority to princes nor diminished their temporal authority. It will be objected against me that the texts that I have quoted to this end, against the supremacy of princes, make nothing for the primacy of Peter; that the texts concerning Peter refer to the other Apostles equally, or refer to him alone and not to his successors. But consider this, that the succession of Peter alone continues in the Church, not the succession of any of the other Apostles; that the same dangers of infidelity and heresy that were in Peter's days ceased not in the days of his successors, so that the places that refer to Peter refer to his successors, and it was provided that it should always be known where Peter's faith was to be sought and found, if it were anywhere lost. How otherwise shall we stay ourselves wavering in this our time? At this present there be thirty-four sects of opinions in Christendom, all differing from the Catholic Church, and yet all constantly challenging Christ to be their Foundation by Scripture, and all confessing Christ to be the Son of the living God, in the words of Peter's confession. I think then that by the Stone was meant Peter and his successors, to whom men may safely cleave, as it has been seen for fifteen hundred years and odd. By the evangelical voice of our Saviour, and by no councils or synods, was this authority of which we speak given to the Holy See, as is declared in the preface of the council Nicæa.

"The Greek Church continued under Rome eight hundred years, fourteen times has it returned to Rome, and now that it is departed from Rome, it has fallen into extreme misery. So Germany, so Poland, so Denmark: look at the calamities of these countries, in which, however, no prince has ever taken upon him to be called supreme head. They are departed indeed from Rome, but their departure diminishes not the authority of Rome, more than the loss of Normandy or France or Scotland takes away the imperial authority of England, but that it is an imperial crown still. It is alleged that it was by a provincial council or assembly of the clergy of the realm of England that the authority of the pope was abolished, and some inculcate this against us as a matter of great weight. But no provincial or particular council can make a determination against the universal Church of Christ.

And the learned men who were the doers of that, as many as are dead repented of their act before they died, and those that live have openly revoked the same. The doctrine of our adversaries is not yet fifty years old. If a man should ask them of whom they learned it, they would say of the Germans. And of whom learned it the Germans? Of Luther. And of whom learned it Luther? He shall answer for himself. In one of his books he says that such things as he taught against the mass and the blessed sacrament of the altar he learned of Satan the devil. At whose hands it is like that he received the rest of his doctrine. Luther acknowledges the Devil to be his schoolmaster in divers points of his doctrine."

87. Arguments against the Act for Uniformity

Against the other great measure, the Act for Uniformity, which restored the English service, the oration of Feckenham, the only abbot in this, the last abbot that sat in any Parliament, repeated with some emphasis several arguments that had not been unheard before. King Lucius and his fabulous embassy, and the Roman emissaries, Damianus and Faganus, came out again, and the alleged antiquity of the papal doctrine. "Here are two kinds of religion propounded, the one fourteen hundred years old, the other here set in a book to be received and established by authority of this Parliament, and to take effect next midsummer. Which of these is the more steadfast and agreeable with itself? Is it that which has a new book devised every other year, every new book according to the sincere word of God, and never a one of them agreeing in all points with the other?" He went on to point out, not with extreme accuracy, the differences between the First and Second Book of Edward. And he ended with a lamentable description of the disorders, the lawlessness, the running before the law, which marked the new religion. "Which of these religions breeds the more humble and obedient subjects? In good Mary's days the people lived in order, and ran not before the law. There was no spoiling of churches, no pulling down of altars, and blasphemous treading of sacraments under foot, and hanging up of the knave of clubs in the place thereof. There was no scotching and cutting of the face and legs of the crucifix and image of Christ; no flesh eating and shambles kept in Lent and days prohibited. In Mary's days the subjects, especially the nobility, knew the way to churches and chapels, there to begin the day with prayers;

but since the coming of Elizabeth our dear lady and queen, all things are turned upside down by the preachers and scaffordplayers of this new religion. Obedience is gone, humility is abolished, chastity and strict living denied." But Feckenham's recollections were perhaps of more value than his arguments.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Beesly, Queen Elizabeth, chap. ii. Froude, History of England, Vol. VII, chap. i. Gneist, History of the English Constitution, chap. xxxiii. Makower, Constitutional History of the Church of England. Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History. Gee, The Elizabethan Clergy. The Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, chap. xvi, for the Anglican Settlement.

CHAPTER VIII

EUROPE AND ENGLAND IN THE ELIZABETHAN AGE

No one can hope to understand the domestic politics of Queen Elizabeth's reign without reference to the political and ecclesiastical events and movements on the Continent. The CounterReformation, the untiring and ceaseless activities of the Jesuits in England, and the papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth threatened the foundations of the settlement reached in the English Church and State. Dangers from uprisings called forth by the possibilities of foreign intervention led to persecutions out of harmony with the original policy of the queen. Political plots helped to bring Mary Stuart to the block, and the conflict with Philip of Spain drew English sailors out into the high seas, thus contributing to the founding of England's world trade and empire. The most remarkable attempt to trace the relation between English politics and continental affairs is by Professor Seeley in his two volumes on the Growth of English Policy. In the third chapter of his first volume he gives a concise and illuminating description of the religious situation in the second half of the sixteenth century.

1. Elizabeth and English Insularity1

Elizabeth stood in a singular degree disconnected from the royal caste. Never have we seen a sovereign so completely English. Not only was she English by birth on both sides, but her relatives were all English, and no foreign prince or princess anywhere existed who could count kinship with her. That a sovereign so isolated should reign over England for forty-five years was a fact of great Seeley, Growth of British Policy, Vol. I, Part I, chap. iii. By permission of the Cambridge University Press.