CHAPTER VII

PROTESTANT DISSENT (continued)

THE familiar Presbyterian form of church organization is midway between the aristocratic Episcopalian and the democratic Congregational forms of ecclesiastical polity. The unit of the organization is the presbytery, made up of the ministers and elders of the local churches. Presbytery appoints and inducts the ministers and is the court of appeal for the local congregations. Local management is vested in a consistory session made up of the ministers and elders, subject in some respects to the wishes of the congregation, but, in effect, exercising practically its own discretion. The English system contemplated, also, provincial and national synods to serve for the consideration and settlement of church problems with which the local presbyteries were not competent to deal finally.

For this organization Scriptural authority was claimed. The pattern thus found in the Scriptures was the only right pattern for a Church of Christ; the New Testament made necessary the acceptance and the use of this particular organization.1 There was no place for any other form, no authority equal to the Scriptures for the use of any other ecclesiastical organization. Presbyterian adherence to a particular form of organization, and assertion of a binding Scriptural obligation for its use, resulted in important consequences for the theory of relationship between various churches already existing.

Sharing with the Anti-Vestiarians, the Precisianists, and the authors of the "First Admonition," a hatred for all that was Roman Catholic in ritual and form, this theory, that

1 Whitgift, Works, vol. II, pp. 6, 60, 195, 259; Hooker, Ecc. Pol., bk. III, chap. v, sec. 1; chap. VII, sec. 4.

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the New Testament commanded the use of the Presbyterian organization and condemned all others, gave to the adherents of this party a basis for condemnation of papal organization and Catholic ritual which the Anglican Church and the predecessors of the Presbyterians in discontent in England had lacked. The papal organization and the rites of the Roman Church were damnable and anti-Christian, not simply because of corruption and abuses, but because Christ had established another form of organization and other rites. They applied the test to the Church of England and found it base metal, for the Church of England likes "well of popish mass-mongers, men for all seasons, king Henry's priests, King Edward's priests, queen Mary's priests, who of a truth, if God's word were precisely followed, should from the same be utterly removed." It thus gave ground for a more thorough-going opposition to, and a more utterly irreconcilable intolerance of, all that pertained to Catholicism. There was no need for Presbyterianism to appeal to political policy and national patriotism in justification of its opposition to Rome.

2

Inasmuch as the command of the New Testament to them entailed a religious duty or implied one, since anything not there authorized was, to the Presbyterian mind, unsavory in the nostrils of the Lord, Presbyterianism became the advocate of an intolerant and exclusive theory. It substituted, within the sphere of ecclesiastical organization, the authority of the Scriptures for the authority of reason, drew "all things unto the determination of bare and naked Scripture." The sphere of religious tolerance narrows and expands directly in proportion to the number of things that are added to, or removed from, the sphere of religious

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1 Cartwright, apud Whitgift, Works, vol. 1, p. 317. Cf. ibid., vol. 1, p. 115. In later editions King Edward's priests" was omitted. Cf. Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. III, p. 403.

2 Zurich Letters, no. clxxvii; Whitgift, Works, vol. 1, p. 26, note 3; pp. 180, 183; Hooker, Works, vol. 1, p. 227, note 61.

Hooker, Ecc. Pol., bk. II, chap. VII, sec. I.

necessity. In so far as ecclesiastical polity is brought into the forefront of religious propaganda, it becomes narrow and intolerant. Anglicanism removed ecclesiastical polity from the list of things religiously essential; polity was a matter of indifference to be regulated and changed in accordance with the needs and circumstances of time and place. "... That any kind of government is so necessary that without it the church cannot be saved, or that it may not be altered into some other kind thought to be more expedient, I utterly deny," wrote Whitgift.1 Anglicanism may have been intolerant of diversity in matters of polity and ritual, but it was an intolerance based, not upon a theory that these things were religiously important, but upon the belief that the legal establishment of certain forms by national legislation and the safety of the kingdom necessitated their observance. Apart from the religious question, reason may well decide that enactments by a national assembly based on political necessity are more justifiably insisted on than any dogmatic consideration. By this test Presbyterianism represents a backward tendency in the development of toleration.

The results of this theory of a divinely originated presbytery were not confined to the additional basis given for condemnation of Catholics. All forms of Protestantism not following the New Testament model were open to the same condemnation as the Catholic Church. Lutheranism and Anglicanism were equally detestable. Cartwright went so far as to say, "Heretics" - and by heretics he meant those not Calvinistic "ought to be put to death now," and he backed his extreme statement by the assertion that, "If this be bloody and extreme I am content to be so counted with the Holy Ghost." 2

.. To say that any magistrate can save the life of blasphemers, contemptuous and stubborn idolaters, murderers, adulterers, 1 Whitgift, Works, vol. 1, p. 184.

Cartwright, Second Reply, apud Whitgift, Works, vol. 1, p. 116, note I. Cf. also ibid., vol. I, p. 386.

incestuous persons, and such like, which God by his judicial law hath commanded to be put to death, I do utterly deny, and am ready to prove, if that pertained to this question, and therefore, although the judicial laws are permitted to the discretion of the prince and magistrate, yet not so generally as you seem to affirm, and as I have oftentimes said, that not only must it not be done against the word but according to the word and by it.1

It is, however, in connection with the condemnation of Anglicanism that the results of the Presbyterian ecclesiastical polity are most significant. The Anglican Church did not claim that it followed apostolic practice in church organization; it admitted that it did not. It said the form of organization was not an essential matter. Cartwright's older contemporaries in dissatisfaction were in substantial agreement with the Anglican Establishment upon the essential indifference of ecclesiastical polity, but in so far as they attacked the organization at all, maintained that the Anglican organization was inexpedient. Cartwright united with them in attack upon the resemblance of Anglicanism to Rome.

Remove homilies, articles, injunctions, and that prescript order of service made out of the mass-book. . . . We must needs say as followeth, that this book is an unperfect book, culled and picked out of that popish dung hill, the portuise and mass-book full of all abominations. . . . It is wicked, to say no worse of it, so to attribute to a book, indeed culled out of the vile popish service-book, with some certain rubrics and gloses of their own device, such authority, as only is due to God in his book. . . . Again, when learned they to multiply up many prayers of one effect, so many times Glory be to the Father, so many times The Lord be with you, so many times Let us Pray? Whence learned they all these needless repetitions? is it not the popish Gloria Patri? 2

He attacked the wealth and pomp of the Anglican ecclesiastics, but departed from the position of the Admonishers by maintaining that the Anglican Church was wrong in its 1 Cartwright, apud Whitgift, Works, vol. I, p. 270.

* Cartwright, Second Admonition, apud Whitgift, Works, vol. 1, p. 119, note 6.

very essence.1 New Testament authority necessitated another form of organization, and for the establishment of the new, the Church already established must give way. Theocratic, exclusive Calvinism must be substituted for the merely expedient and comprehensive Episcopalian Establishment. The Anglican Church was an attempt to nationalize the religious organization, with loyalty to the Queen as its fundamental article. The Presbyterian programme was an attempt to create a narrow, national, sectarianism founded upon exclusively Biblical authority. Political needs were a secondary consideration, although it is true that their antagonism to the Papacy served as a strong argument for the observance of that political policy which they deemed most wise for the nation and royal safety — absolute suppression of all Catholics.

From the Presbyterian opposition to Anglicanism, thus based upon Scriptural authority, resulted important consequences in Anglicanism itself. Anglicanism began the formulation, as we have pointed out in a previous chapter, of a divine right theory of episcopacy to meet the claims of Presbyterianism. It abandoned the old basis of its apologetic, expediency and antiquity, and substituted other arguments. This shift took two directions. First, a return, with the Presbyterians, to an exclusively Scriptural authority where authorization of the Episcopal form was found; and second, the development of an entirely new line of argument which based the authority of Scriptures and of religion itself upon reason. The Scriptures could be used by Anglicans in defense of their peculiar organization as forcefully as in defense of the Presbyterian. This appeal was made at first with desire simply to refute the Presbyterian argument that Anglicanism had no Scriptural basis, without implying that, when found, Scriptural authority should be used to maintain an exclusively Episcopalian polity as the

1 Cartwright himself did not believe in, or practice, separation from the Anglican communion, however.