use intelligent and orderly methods of displacing it. The lack of unity, ecclesiastically and dogmatically, in Congregationalism, moreover, prevented the concerted action which Presbyterianism was able to bring to bear in the attack upon the Established Church.

In spite of the inadequacy of its ecclesiastical organization, or perhaps because of it, the whole group is characterized by a religious enthusiasm and intense religious fervor that are foreign to the Anglican Church, and in great part to Presbyterianism also. It is this intensity of religious feeling, as distinct from intellectual conviction of the truth of theological dogma, rather than the championship of their own Congregational polity, that lies at the basis of their condemnation of others. Toward Catholics this antagonism goes to great lengths. The expressions of denunciation and invective reach a heat even more fervid than that of the most enthusiastic Presbyterian. "That most dreadfull Religion of Antichrist, the great enemye of the Lord Ihesus, and the most pestilent adversary of the thrones of kinges and Princes"1 was so much an object of horror that language seemed to fail to express the depth of their abhorrence. Here, too, lay essentially the cause of their denunciation of the Anglican Church. Although their attacks, like the attacks of Presbyterians, are directed against the ceremonies, the government, the officials, the courts, and the abuses of the Church, there is in their polemic a note of burning zeal that sometimes almost reaches the height and earnestness of the most fierce denunciations of the prophets of Israel.

This emotional intensity is interesting. It is the very stuff from which religious intolerance is made. Curiously enough, and unusual in the history of religion, it is a fervor, however, which is essentially liberal and tolerant as compared with contemporary religious opinion.

1 Burrage, English Dissenters, vol. II, p. 82; Waddington, Penry, pp. 113, 114. Cf., however, the language of the Second Scotch Confession of 1580 (Schaff, Credo III, pp. 480 et seq.). Luther too went pretty far in this way.

... It is to no purpose that her Maiesties subiectes should bestowe their tyme in learning, in the study and medytation of the word, in reading the wrytinges and doinges of learned men and of the holy Martyrs that have bene in former ages, especyally the wrytinges published by her Maiesties authorytie, yf they may not without danger professe and hold those truthes which they learne out of them, and that in such sort, as they are able to convince all the world that will stand against them, by no other weapons then by the word of God. . . . Imprysonment, yndytementes arraignmentes yea death yt selfe, are no meet weapons to convince the conscyence grounded upon the word of the Lord, accompanied with so many testimonies of his famous seruantes and Churches.1

Whether one agrees with the religious opinions of Browne, or indeed with Christianity itself, one must recognize an earnestness here, even in their anger against other forms of their religion, which is comparable to the anger of their Master against the scribes and Pharisees. The spirit of Christ's "Woe unto ye scribes and Pharisees" was in the utterances of those Congregationalists, who denounced their fellow Christians as He denounced his fellow Jews for the abandonment of the true principles of religion, truth, and uprightness, and substituted rites and ceremonies and the incidents and unessentials of organization. It is sometimes difficult to tell whether Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, and even Catholicism were most concerned about diversity from the truths which they believed religiously essential or about diversity from their particular form of worship. Congregationalism was intolerant of such substitution of form and ritual for the truths of the religion of Jesus Christ as they saw them. Because this was true, the attacks of Congregationalists were directed against the ecclesiastical organization of Anglicanism, and against the connection between the State and the Church which had established and maintained the Anglican organization; and the grounds of that attack were religious, not merely ecclesiastical, as some 1 Penry's "Confession and Apology," Burrage, English Dissenters, vol. II,

writers maintain. Congregationalism was not fighting essentially for the creation of a new form of ecclesiastical organization. Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism as we know them in the United States would not have been exterminated by Congregationalists, nor would Catholicism itself, except as it claims to be the only agent of salvation 4 upon earth. Their tolerance, however, did not extend to the permission of life and the protection of the State for the agnostic and the atheist, or those who denied such essential elements of the Christian faith as the Triune character of the Godhead and the everlasting damnation of sinful men. Their zeal made them more intolerant of such crimes against traditional Christianity than was Anglicanism, for their religious feeling was of primary importance and had not sunk into the background of an ecclesiastical system.

Congregationalists were chiefly subject to condemnation by the government, the Establishment, and the Presbyterians because they attacked the current theory that governmental unity was dependent upon ecclesiastical and religious unity. This position necessarily undermined the favorite doctrine of the age in regard to the headship of the sovereign over the Church.1 Such tenets were, to the minds of the average Elizabethan Englishmen who occupied positions of trust in Church and State, utterly irreconcilable with political loyalty to the Queen and to the nation. Protestations of submission and loyalty could not convince them. Further, the Congregational system of church organization was essentially democratic and brought Congregationalists in for a persecution more relentless than that directed against the followers of Cartwright;3 monarchical and aristocratic antagonism to democratic sentiments regarded them as more dangerous. The development of an

2

1 Hooker, Ecc. Pol., bk. vIII, chap. 1, sec. 2; Parker Corresp., no ccl; Burrage, English Dissenters, vol. I, p. 101; vol. II, pp. 28, 63, 64, 78.

2 Burrage, English Dissenters, vol. II, pp. 78, 79.

Elias Thacher and John Copping were hanged in 1583 for "dispersinge of Browne's bookes.".

economic and intellectual aristocracy, interested in forwarding social and economic movements antagonistic to its own supremacy, is a matter of comparatively recent growth. In Elizabeth's day and for long after, religious and secular aristocrats were opposed on grounds of economic interest to all movements which looked to the populace for the creation of a church.

A second fault is in their manner of complaining, not only because it is for the most part in bitter and reproachful terms, but also because it is unto the common people, judges incompetent and insufficient, both to determine anything amiss for want of skill and authority to amend it.1

Congregationalism could hope to win from the powers of the realm no such freedom of worship as was granted to the foreign congregations in London and elsewhere,2 for Con-gregationalists were not so important commercially, industrially, and politically as were these refugees; and could not, it was thought, safely be allowed exemption from laws binding on all Englishmen.

1 Cranmer's letter to Hooker, Hooker, Ecc. Pol., bk. v, App., no. ii, p. 65; cf. Whitgift, Works, vol. I, p. 467.

2 S. P., Dom., Eliz., vol. xxIII, no. 67; Parker Corresp., nos. cxli, cxcvi, and note i, ccxlv, ccxlvii, cccxxii; Burrage, English Dissenters, vol. II, p. 118. 3 Burrage, English Dissenters, vol. 1, p. 118.

CHAPTER VIII

CONCLUSION

THE reign of Elizabeth is not altogether an encouraging field to the idealist seeking in the past for the first rays of the light of tolerance. Catholics were fined, imprisoned, suffered death. Protestants who refused to accept the existing régime endured hardships no less severe. Government compelled adherence to its own Church and that Church stood for no great principle of religious freedom. In the realm of religion no commanding personality stands as the leader or the embodiment of his age; still less as a beacon light to the thought of succeeding ages. Two ecclesiastics alone, Fox and Hooker, are known to-day outside the halls of theological learning: the one as the author of a work which has perpetuated religious and theological bitterness founded upon falsehood and bigotry; the other remembered for the literary style of his prose, but for no great contribution to religious thought or feeling. No single voice was raised to free the minds of men from the restraints of theological and ecclesiastical dogma. The sovereign herself stood for no heroic principle of power or right. Her vices even were not impressive. Her genius for deceit gave her a certain distinction even in a Christendom skilled in lying; but Elizabeth's accomplishments were so petty in positive statesmanship demanding bold imagination and vision as to excite no wonder by their courage and audacity. No statesman under her formulated a bold and striking national religious policy which left his name impressed upon the institutions of his creation. Bickerings hardly worthy. the name of religious struggles; an expedient policy so abject as almost to deny the existence of principle; repression without the excuse of a burning faith in an abstract ideal;