guide. Calvinism became, if not the progenitor, yet the nursing-mother of Puritanism.

This movement in England towards the Genevan Reformation was greatly accelerated and strengthened by special circumstances. On the accession of Mary, and the triumph of the medieval party, multitudes of the most active Reformers fled to the Continent. Geneva, and other Swiss and Rhine towns, were the refuges of these Protestant emigrés; and in this manner they came into immediate contact with Calvinism, learned its religious and ecclesiastical spirit of independence, became accustomed to the imposing outline of its doctrine and the simple severity of its ritual, and, in many cases, adopted firmly its constitutional principles. In these years the influence of Calvin's personal character and mental power was at its height; no single man exercised such a sway within the sphere of Protestantism; and all who were brought near it carried away ineffaceable traces of the spirit which it represented and embodied.

In tracing this connection between Puritanism and Calvinism, it is necessary to notice, that it was an ecclesiastical, still more peculiarly than a doctrinal sympathy, that united them. So far as doctrine was concerned, there was no division as yet in the Church of England. It might be too much to say that the English Church was in the sixteenth century universally Calvinistic in its theology. Such an assertion would not allow for those Catholic peculiarities of thought which have always distinguished the highest divines of this Church, and given a certain breadth and freedom to their dogmatic views, even when these were most closely allied to the technical modes of Calvinistic opinion, Jewell and Hooker, for example,

while coinciding with this opinion in their doctrinal conclusions, are yet far more than Calvinists in a certain comprehensiveness and genial width of view. But if not exclusively or rigidly Genevan in doctrine, even under the primacy of Whitgift, the Church of England was yet so far from finding any cause of quarrel in this doctrine, that it embodied it substantially in its thirty-nine articles; while Whitgift's wellknown Lambeth articles remain to testify how far more closely he and others were prepared to bring the creed of the Church of England into conformity with the Genevan theology in its most extreme forms.

The cause of quarrel, therefore, was not in this source, but in an entirely different one. It was the disciplinal and not the doctrinal element of the Genevan Reform which, carried back to England, planted the seed of widening discord in English Protestantism. Nay, it was something far narrower in its beginning than even any general question of church discipline. Never has a great movement in a civilised country sprung from a more trivial cause. It is like tracing some gigantic river, renowned for the great cities along which it has swept, the hurrying interests which it has borne on its bosom, and the scenes of struggle and associations of interest which mark its course, to its source in some streamlet, noisy but insignificant. In its outset, Puritanism brings us face to face with no vital interest,

Hooker's criticisms on these articles mark very well the difference indicated in the text between the characteristic theology of the Church of England and Calvinism. The comprehensive mind of Hooker, with its broader and more genial survey of theological literature, at once detected the narrowness of the proposed articles, and nothing can show better than his remarks the fine balance of his spiritual judgment. Whitgift's mind was acute and powerful, but narrow and polemical in comparison with Hooker s.

with no grand circumstance of dogmatic or spiritual earnestness; it seems a mere petty though violent contention between rival bishops; yet it grew into a great creed, a significant principle, a systematic and triumphant policy. It did so because it masked, from the very first, principles of the broadest distinction. The "vestiary" controversy was the mere shaft into the mine in which slumbered elements of the most powerful opposition ready to burst into flame.

It will conduce to the clearness and interest of our succeeding pages to mark briefly the progress of the controversy to the point at which our sketches begin. Up to this point, Puritanism had run through two distinct stages of its career. In the first stage, which may be said to close with the reign of Elizabeth, it continued very much such a contest as it began-a contest in the main regarding church order and ceremony-in which we can trace sufficiently the opening of a deeper issue of principles, but during which it still seemed possible that these principles might find some peaceful solution. In the second stage, which lasted during the reign of James, and that of his son, to the eve of the memorable parliament so associated with the triumphs of Puritanism, the controversy, while still largely retaining its ecclesiastical character, took at the same time a higher and wider range. Starting from the defined basis of the Millenary petition, it became mingled. in the course of these reigns with new and exciting interests, both theological and political, and gradually passed into a great party conflict-a wide schism of thought and feeling, of manners and policy. In the ninety years that fill up the interval, a quarrel as to the dress of bishops had grown into an incurable oppo

sition of faith and an antagonism of constitutional principle which could only settle itself by the sword. A case of casuistry, in which prelate had encountered prelate in the antechamber of Edward VI., had waxed into a national crisis, and was fast assuming the proportions of a civil struggle.

The appointment of Hooper to the see of Gloucester in 1550, marks the well-known rise of the Puritan controversy. After his nomination, he refused to be inducted in the, customary robes of the Romish priesthood, which had never been abolished. Hooper had lived abroad, and was the friend of Bullinger. His natural sensitiveness regarding the idolatrous character of the rites of the Church of Rome, had been quickened and exaggerated by his residence in Switzerland. He was an able and earnest man, a powerful and untiring preacher, but possessed of a scrupulous and somewhat vehement temper. He not only refused to wear the robes, but he considered himself bound to preach vehemently against them. Cranmer and Ridley, especially the latter, interposed in behalf of Episcopal order; and the dispute became so hot and intolerable, that Hooper was confined by order of the Privy Council, first to his house, and then to the Fleet. The young king, who at first sought to mediate in the controversy, it is said, at length "grew very angry with Mr Hooper for his unreasonable stiffness."

Two eminent foreign divines, Peter Martyr and Bucer, filled at this time the respective professorships of divinity at Oxford and Cambridge. Their counsel was sought in the case, and both strongly advised

"He preaches four, or at least three times every day."-Letter of his wife to Bullinger, 1551. BURNET, iii.

Hooper to abandon his scruples; not that they approved of the vestments-Martyr, in fact, expressed a wishthat they should be abandoned-but because they did not consider their use in any way sinful or entitled to interfere with admission into his office in the usual manner. Hooper was not immediately moved, but at last he consented to a compromise. He, submitted to wear the robes at his consecration, and to appear and preach in them at least once. Afterwards, he was to be at liberty to do as he liked.

Hooper's episcopate thus contentiously began, terminated ere long in martyrdom. In the sight of the. cathedral to which he had been consecrated four years before, he and Ridley, his old opponent, suffered together. Their differences had all vanished in the glory of the testimony which they then rejoiced to render to their common faith. They had been "two in white," in the quaint and touching language of the message that passed between them at the awful moment of their fate; but they were now one in red."

The excitement of the "vestiary" controversy was not extinguished in the flames of Hooper's martyrdom. For a while, it necessarily sank out of sight during the more serious dangers that menaced Protestantism in the reign of Mary. But the spirit out of which it sprang continued to live on and to gather strength. The national return to Romanism, and the ease in many respects with which the transition was made, only proved to many minds an incentive to de

These robes, besides the surplice, consisted in the chimere, a long scarlet robe, worn loose down to the foot, and the rochet, a white linen vestment covering the shoulders. These garments, adapted from those of the Jewish priesthood, were held by the Church of Rome to be emblematical of the sacrificial efficacy of the Christian priesthood; and hence their peculiar obnoxiousness to the Puritan.