Queen, the Council, the Nobility, the Commons is renewed. Let them give the case a fair hearing, or procure a free conference about it. The Queen is besought to take the defence of this matter upon her, "and to fortify it by law." For though the orders be and ought to be drawn out of the book of God, " yet it "is her majesty that by her princely authority should see every "of these things put in practice, and punish those that neglect "them." Practical ways of setting forward the desired changes are indicated; amongst others that "her majesty and other that have "the gift of benefices are to be desired to depart with it, that in manner as afore the choice of the minister may be free." And so the Second Admonition draws to a close, with prayer to God, with ascription of praise, and, last of all, with a text of warning : "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man "soweth, that shall he also reap." The little tract or pamphlet (Certain Articles, &c.) with which the volume ends had come anonymously into Cartwright's hands, and he "thought good to impart it" to the Christian reader. It is even more bitter and scurrilous than anything that has preceded it. It appears from Strype's Annals1 that Archbishop Parker had had extracts made from the First Admonition, possibly with a view to Whitgift's answering it. These extracts had come into the hands of a Puritan writer, and he prints a number of them with short, scornful comments on them. He adds but little to the delineation of the Puritan position, and he writes without any especial weight, Cartwright not knowing who he was; but one point is noteworthy. With regard to the assertion that the authors of the Admonition would not have the ministers tied "to any form of prayers invented by man," he answers, "Utterly "falsified. There is no such thing meant, that there should be 'none at all, but that this of theirs ought not to be tolerated. "A form of prayers they deny not. Nay, we do use one in our "congregations, and the same that all reformed Churches do." A suggestive note is added to the list of misprints in the volume: "The cause of which faults (good Christian reader) and some "other things not published, which we meant and mind to pub"lish God willing, is the importunate search of Day the Printer ་་ 1 Bk. i. ch. 20, and Appendix, No. xix. "and Toy the Bookbinder, assisted with a pursuivant, and some "other officers at the appointment of the bishops1." Such were the proposals for reformation which were being pressed upon England during the period with which the student of Hooker is most closely concerned; and a true estimate of them is essential to the full appreciation of Hooker's work. The intemperance with which they were expressed should not be allowed to obscure their real importance. Intemperate language hindered a movement in the sixteenth century far less than it does now; and the demands made in the Admonitions were soon to receive a more scholarly form, and to be set to work in a more business-like way. The Admonitions were fortunate in their opportunity for making a wide stir; for the recent rebellion in the north, the Pope's Bull for the release of the Queen's subjects from their allegiance, the rumours of invasion and revolt, the activity of papal agents in England, and the massacre at Paris all helped to prepare a welcome in uncritical minds for any scheme which promised to remove whole Antichrist both head and tail"; while flagrant abuses among Churchmen2 gave a rightful power to the cry for real and effective discipline. It is clear that the Admonitions, unworthy as they were to represent a serious and religious movement, speedily laid hold upon the public mind and took a place of great importance among the contending forces of the day. The rapid spread of the book has already been noticed. All efforts to check its printing and circulation were baffled; it seems to have been the special theme of inquiry when certain Puritans were brought before the Council and before the Ecclesiastical Commission in 15733; Field and Wilcox, who had been imprisoned for their share in it, found people resorting to them "as in Popery they were wont to run on Pilgrimages"," while Cartwright was no less in request; it was openly upheld "as the true Platform of the Sincere and Apostolical "Church" by two preachers whom the Bishop of London had incautiously invited to preach at St. Paul's Cross, and ineffectually tried to arrest after their sermons; and when a royal proclamation, bearing date June 11, 1573, required that all copies of 1 Cf. Strype's Life of Parker, iv. 9, ad init. 2 Cf. Strype's Life of Parker, iv. 19 (anno 1572). 3 Strype's Life of Parker, iv. 23. the Admonition and of books in defence of it should be brought in to the Bishop of the Diocese or to the Privy Council, the Bishop of London wrote to the Lord Treasurer that not one book had been brought in to him in the prescribed period1. Clearly the Admonitions did not need the voluminous controversy which they provoked between Whitgift and Cartwright to secure prominence in the agitation, the talk, the history of Hooker's time. Amidst a medley of matters widely different in importance there stand out certain points which were steadily characteristic of the fully developed Puritan position; and they show the reality of that which Hooker resisted on behalf of the English Church. Four such points seem to be of eminent significance. 1. The first is the demand for equality of ministers. The title or office of a Bishop may be retained, but only as synonymous with that of Pastor or Teacher. The order of Bishops is held to be contrary to the Scriptures; the act of Ordination is to be the act of the Ministers and Elders; and no minister is to use or challenge any authority outside his own charge, savethrough the action of the Synod of which he may be a member. There are to be only two sorts of ministers, namely Pastors and Teachers, equal in dignity, differing only in work. 2. Secondly, all members of the Church are to be subject to the discipline of the Consistory. The aim of this discipline is the bridling of those who are disorderly; its authority is to be enforced, if necessary, by excommunication; contempt of it should be sharply punished by the civil magistrate, whose action in regard to the affairs of the Church should be directed by the decisions of the Church 2. 3. Thirdly, the breach with the past is to be complete. The English Church as it is is to be detested with a perfect hatred ; those who were priests under Henry VIII and Mary ought to be utterly removed; the prescript order of service taken out of the Mass Book ought to go, with all that recalled the worship of the unreformed Church. 1 Strype's Parker, iv. 26, 24. But cf. Neal, i. 261. 2 This claim, which is sufficiently indicated in the Admonitions (v. supra, p. 48), is further developed in the work next to be considered, the Full and Plaine Declaration of Ecclesiasticall Discipline. In regard to the authority and action of the Consistory the Puritans would probably not have hesitated to recognize Geneva in Calvin's time as showing what they meant. 4. Fourthly, no ordinance can stand in the Church unless it is expressly appointed in Scripture. Nothing must be done but that for which the express warrant of God's Word can be adduced. The scheme thus characterized was to be established and enforced by the authority of the Crown; it was to supersede the existing Church of England; it was to be the defined and authorized form of religion for the Queen's subjects; and neither the temper of the times, the nature and affinities of the scheme, nor the language of its champions promised much liberty of divergence from it.-There may have been much that was faulty in the arguments, the policy, the motives of those who opposed it, as well as much that was sincere and excellent in the enthusiasm of those who contended for it; the time was a time of tangled strife, and primary importance was often attached to subordinate matters; the points in controversy were multitudinous, and there was much misplacing of emphasis, and some stood out stiffly when they might have yielded wisely, and others claimed the shelter of authority for selfish interests and indefensible abuses. But through all the confusion and misunderstanding the ultimate question at issue in the Puritan controversy of Hooker's day was not whether the Prayer Book should be altered here and there, nor whether larger allowance should be made for those who resented its requirements. It was a question which presupposed the conviction that the religious life of a nation. must have a uniform expression; it was the question whether the religious life of England should be expressed in the continuance of the historic Church of England, or in a system such as Calvin had established at Geneva. It was said above that the Platform displayed in the Admonitions was soon presented after a more scholarly fashion. The wide influence and the curious history of the treatise in which this was done may warrant some length in the description of it. About two years had passed since the publication of the Admonitions-years of wide and varied activity in the cause of change, and of strenuous efforts to enforce conformity. In 1574 there appeared in two forms a little volume entitled Ecclesiastica especial strenuousness. Cf. Neal, i. 269. The Queen seems at this period to have pressed matters forward with Disciplinæ et Anglicanæ Ecclesiæ ab illa aberrationis plena e Verbo Dei et dilucida explicatio :-Rupellæ, excudebat Adamus de Monte. MDLXXIIII: or, A Full and Plaine Declaration of Ecclesiasticall Discipline owt off the word off God, and off the declininge off the Churche off England from the same: Imprinted MDLXXIIII. Both the Latin original and the English translation were printed abroad. The author's name was concealed; but the Latin treatise was confidently and steadily attributed to Walter Travers1; while the Preface attached to it was believed to be the work of Thomas Cartwright, who has been also credited with the English translation 3. The title-page of this translation (1574) bears no printer's name, nor indication of the press, and the volume is very rare. A second edition of this translation, somewhat carelessly prepared, was printed at Geneva in 1580; and it is probably to this edition that Bancroft, in his Survay (p. 180), and Whitgift, in his letter to Beza 5, refer; and in 1617 it appeared again, with somewhat more careful revision though far less attractive type, from some unnamed press. But meanwhile, in 1584, there had been a far more conspicuous and important issue of the book. Towards the end of 158 the Cambridge University Press, after more than fifty years of abeyance, was, by the sanction of the Chancellor, Burghley, in spite of the vehement antagonism of the Stationers' Company 1 Cf. Whitgift to Burghley in 1584 (Strype's Whitgift, i. 344), an Epistle to the terrible Priests (Martin Marprelate, 1588), p. 35, ed. 1843; Sutcliffe, A Treatise of Ecclesiasticall Discipline, pp. 102, 178 (1590); Opinions of the Chief Justices, in regard to the practices of certain Puritans (1590) in Strype's Whitgift, App. vol. iii. p. 236; Whitgift to Beza, 1593, ibid. ii. 165; Bancroft, A Survay of the Pretended Holy Discipline, pp. 73, 190, 236 (1593). The belief seems to have been prevalent and unchallenged in controversy, and may probably be accepted as true; although in a copy of the Latin edition of 1574, sold in the Napier sale at Sotheby's in London, March, 1886, was a note : "Laurentius "Tompsonus Oxoniensis theologus "doctissimus est hujus libri author, 1574" (v. Cat. Bodl. Libr., Tomson). Cf. Keble's Hooker, i. 59, note 1. 2 Cf. Sutcliffe, A Treatise, &c., pp. 5, 178; Strype's Whitgift, App. to bk. iv. No. iii. marginal note; Strype's Annals, anno 1584, p. 285; J. B. Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, vol. ii. p. 302; B. Brook, Memoir of Thomas Cartwright, p. 243 Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, vol. ii. pp. 263, 631, 632. It contains, between the Preface and the treatise, A Table or Short View of all Ecclesiastical Discipline ordeined by the Word of God. This is given in the 1617 reprint, but not in the copies of the Latin of 1574 and of the English of 1580 which the present writer has seen. |