The Critical History of the Puritans continued.—
History of the Mar-prelates.

THE Ecclesiastical domination had early under Constantine assumed the form of a Monarchy, and even in that day the elevated seat of the Bishop was called a throne.^[1] Every thing relating to Episcopacy is regal.  The house of a Bishop is a palace, as his seat is a throne ;  the crosier is a sceptre ;  the mitre a crown ;  and in the inauguration of a Bishop, he is said to be enthroned.  From the Spiritual court are issued Writs in the Bishop’s and not in the King’s name, and the Court of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction has its Chancellor.  A Convocation of Bishops is an Ecclesiastical Parliament, consisting of an Upper and a Lower House, where the Archbishops and the Bishops form the Aristocracy, and the Commons of the Clergy are represented by their Deputies.  In England their title of honour is only that of “Lord.”  Archbishop Grindal said that though he was thus saluted, he did not consider himself “Lordly.”  The Non-conformist Dr. Sampson, petulantly retorted “If you whom policy hath made a great Lord be not lordly, you are a Phoenix.”

The Ecclesiastical polity seemed always to conform itself to the Civil.  It was now attempted to change that Ecclesiastical polity, the growth of fifteen centuries.  Cartwright in England maintained that the Church of Christ was to be regulated by the standard of the Holy Scriptures ;  as in the Apostolical state “gold and silver they had none.”  Archbishop Whitgift, in reply, denied that any particular government was laid down in the Gospel ;  it was therefore to be inferred that the Church discipline was to accord with the Civil Government.  That Apostolical simplicity even to rudeness, which was adapted to its infancy, had gradually enlarged its authority and splendour as the Church grew to its maturity under the protection of the Civil Magistrate.  We perceive here that two able men arguing by two opposite standards of judgment, may open an interminable controversy ;  so that in spite of reason and philosophy, there must inevitably exist two opposite parties.  The last argument indeed may remain with either, as accident shall determine.  It is that distinguished argument called the Ultima Ratio Regum, equally potent at Geneva or London ;  the Bishops under Elizabeth punished the Puritans, the Puritans under Knox and Calvin expelled the Bishops ;  and thus the sword cut the knot which their fingers could not untie.

When the Presbyters of Calvin reminded the Episcopalians of Apostolical times and of primitive Christianity, reproaching their gorgeous State and usurped Jurisdiction, they were reproaching not Bishops, who, were but men, but the natural progression in human affairs, when men cease to be villagers, and become citizens.  The primeval church was built up with unhewn trees, when Christians were peasants ; ^[2] were we therefore to demolish the cathedral, the magnificent work of art and wealth, when the Christian empire embraced all Europe ?  Thus too the pilgrim pastor whose sole revenue was drawn from the alms-box, was changed into the Lord of his diocese.  Churches were endowed as well as consecrated, and ecclesiastical lands became as inalienable, in justice, as the lands of any citizen.

The penury and humiliations of a primitive Bishop might have reduced the Ecclesiastical order to the contempt of the people, who are no reverencers of a brotherhood unguarded by the ensigns of their authority, and dependant on the spare bounty of a parish.  The Episcopal order may be considered as a community of the learned ;  their independence is at once the stimulus of their ambition, and the guarantee of their literary repose and their literary exertions.  On the contrary principle we see how the Apostolical Presbyters of Scotland, early dispersed in remote solitudes, exiled from the living sources of knowledge, are thrown out of their age.^[3] The nineteenth century has often witnessed in the rude pastor of Knox, the fierce ungovernable spirit of his master combined with the traditional prejudices of his own rude parishioners.

Actuated however by a principle of retrogression, these new levellers would have converted a cathedral into a conventicle, and a bishop into a parish-priest, exacting the equality of Democracy in the Ecclesiastical Monarchy.  The Bishops in the reign of Elizabeth were startled at the novel and extraordinary inquiry whence they derived their power and their superiority ?  They were not only astonished but were equally unprepared to answer an inquiry, which they hardly knew how to treat.

When Henry the Eighth assumed the supremacy of the Church, in freeing the nation from the Papal yoke he not only invested himself with the inflexibility of the Papacy, but had adroitly fitted the novel yoke to the haughty neck of the prelacy of England.  The Sovereign now no longer dreaded a rebellious, or a rival power, in his own Hierarchy.  No future Becket could stand at the foot of the throne, more a sovereign than he who sate on it.  Priestly domination was under the control of the King, and the patronage, or the creation of Bishops, being placed in the royal prerogative, Episcopacy was now but a graft on the strength of the Monarchy.

The English Bishops derived their authority and dignity from the election of the Sovereign.  The royal supremacy remained unquestioned.  On this subject it is curious to observe that Rome in its plenitude of power was equally jealous of this regal privilege.  Inculcating that the Pope alone was the sole head of the Church appointed by Heaven, all the minor orders of the priesthood devolved from the pontifical institution.  Against this doctrine as degrading to their sacred dignity, often had the bishops struggled.  At the Council of Trent they disputed for their independence with the warmth of reformers ;  the Gallican church partly emancipated itself from their despotic pontiff.  An Italian bishop having once inscribed on a missive that he was bishop by “the grace of God,” this presumed “divine right” was treason in the Roman ecclesiastical polity ;  and the enraged Pope exclaiming that “the grace of God was never bestowed on fools,” instantly, to show this reformer that he owed his bishoprick to quite a different source, unbishopped the bishop.

The memorable controversy now opened on the authority of the Bishops and Presbyters.  It was denied that any superiority was known in the days of Apostolical equality ;  Bishop and Presbyter denoting the same office, were but different terms for the same identical character, and therefore there could be no ordination from a superior, and no subordination in the whole order.  This mode of opinion went to establish the entire independence of the Presbyters, freed from the sovereignty of Episcopacy.

Hitherto the Anglican Bishops had contented themselves by deriving their title and office from the royal grant.  Bancroft, to put an end to this novel assumption of parity, suddenly took a higher flight, by founding Episcopacy on a divine right.^[4] He assumed that an uninterrupted succession of bishops had been preserved from the time of the Apostles.  It was the very position in other words, on which pontifical Rome had settled her own divine authority, and holds the keys of St. Peter in a perpetual reversion.

From this doctrine it resulted, that if no man could be a priest without the ordination of the Bishop’s hands, all the unordained Presbyters were reduced to laymen, incapacitated for ministerial functions, or subordinate to the Bishops.

This assumption of the divine right of Episcopacy troubled legal heads who looked on it suspiciously as an infringment of the royal prerogative.  Was the crosier to divide dominion with the sceptre ?  The boldness of the claim even startled the Presbyters—and in their terror of the divine right of Episcopacy the Puritans at Court attempted to bring the Bishop himself into a premunire.  But Bancroft had reserved his after-blow, maintaining that the divine right of Episcopacy was by no means derogatory to the royal supremacy, since it was that very supremacy which confirmed it.  The novelty of the doctrine, even Whitgift admitted, was what he wished rather than what he believed to be true.

In this history of human nature, it is worthy of observation, that those very Presbyters who at first had so stiffly opposed the jus divinum of Episcopacy, which seemed fatal for them, at length assumed it themselves !  Bancroft, the High-church Episcopalian, and Cartwright the Presbyter from Geneva, alike agree in elevating the Ecclesiastical jurisdiction above the temporal power ;  both aimed at the same predominance.

This, in regard to the Puritans, still more remarkably appeared when their distant day of triumph arrived, and the divine right of the Presbytery was transferred to themselves, while the rejected Bishops of England, such was the mighty change ! were reduced to become themselves vagrants and Non-conformists !  When Presbyters sat in Parliament the jure divino was debated, in their Assembly of Divines at Westminster, for thirty tedious days.  Many protested against it, dreading the arbitrary government of these Evangelicals pretending to a divine right ;  it seemed a spurious theocracy.  The calm sense of Whitelocke by a subtile inference attempted to induce them to adjourn the interminable debate to some distant day.  “If this Government,” said this judicious statesman, “be not jure divino, no opinion of any Council can make it so ;  and if it be jure divino it continues so still, though you do not declare it to be so.”  The learned Selden on his Erastian principles, insisted on the supreme authority of the civil magistrate which this divine right of Presbytery was supplanting.  He tired out this whole assembly of Presbyters, perpetually confuting them in their own learning, by appealing to the original text, instead of their “little gilt pocket-Bibles” to which they were incessantly referring.  This Presbyterian Assembly of Divines however obtained their “divine right” by a majority among themselves, but having to refer the decision to the Commons, they lost their divine right in the House.  It is a curious fact that the priests of the Calvinian government, who should have been the oracles of their lay-members, having only obtained their present eminent situation at Westminster by intrigue, and for a state-purpose that was to destroy Episcopacy, were only on tolerance ;  so that the true genius of the Presbyterial government was reversed ;  for now the Laymen held their ascendency over the Priests.  In all political constitutions there are unlucky changes which legislators hardly ever foresee.  The Assembly of Divines were at this moment entirely under the thumb of their politicians in the Commons, their lay lords and masters !  A Parliamentary anecdote has been recorded of these times.  The Presbyters attempted to carry their question by a very early attendance in a thin House.  Glyn and Whitelocke perceiving their drift, delayed the resolution, each speaking for a long hour, till the House filled.^[5]

The times however in the following year became more ticklish—and the Scottish Presbyterian army in 1645 was near enough to create both fear and love among the parties.  The Presbyterial Government was allowed a probation, as a civil institution, to be reversed or amended ;  both Houses at the same time declaring that “they found it very difficult to make their new Apostolical settlement agree with the laws and government of the kingdom.”^[6] The spiritual sword once placed in the hands of those who presumed they were acting by divine appointment, it was soon seen, that the laws of the land, were no laws to those who claimed “the keys of the kingdom of Heaven.”^[7]

Knox and Cartwright, at the earliest period of the Calvinistical democracy, had attempted to raise the spiritual over the temporal power, for although it seemed that they were aiming only to dethrone Bishops under Elizabeth, by a more circuitous way they were attempting the subjugation of the Sovereign under “the holy Discipline,” as afterwards they sought to reduce Charles the First to a King of “the Covenant.”

It is remarkable that in a government founded on the principles of Democracy, the style that it gradually assumed became regal.  It described its acts by perpetual allusions to the potency, and the ensigns, of absolute Monarchy.  The first English Puritans abound with such expressions as “the advancement of Christ’s sceptre” — “this divine government” — “the tribunal, or the throne of Jesus.”  This style became traditional among the latest of the race.  In a modern volume of the Lives of the Covenanters, we find such expressions as “Christ then reigned gloriously in Scotland” — “The Crown-rights of our Redeemer” — “The throne of the Lamb” — and “Christ’s regalia.”  In the army of the Covenanters in 1639 every captain had his colours flying at his tent, bearing this inscription in letters of gold “Christ’s Crown and Covenant.”^[8] Vicars the Parliamentary chronicler called the army of the Earl of Essex, “Christ’s army royal.”

The great father of Puritanism in England appeared in the reign of Elizabeth.  Thomas Cartwright was a person of some eminence and doubtless of great ambition, which in early life had been hurt by the preference which the Queen had shown to his opponent at a philosophy act in the University of Cambridge.  Elizabeth had more critically approved of those lighter elegancies in which the grave Cartwright was deficient.  He had expatriated himself several years, and returned from Calvin endowed with a full portion of his revolutionary spirit.  Again was Cartwright poised against Whitgift the Queen’s Professor of Divinity.  As Cartwright advanced his novel doctrines, Whitgift regularly preached them down, but to little purpose, for whenever Cartwright preached they were compelled to take down the windows to make entrances for the confluence of his auditors.  Once, in the absence of Whitgift, this master of novel doctrines so powerfully operated on the minds of the youths of the college, in three sermons on one Sunday, that in the evening, his triumph was declared by the students of Trinity rejecting their surplices as papistical badges.  Cartwright was now to be confuted by other means.  The University condemned him to silence, and at length performed that last feeble act of power—expulsion !  In a heart already alienated from the established authorities, this could only envenom a bitter spirit;  Royalty he personally disliked, and the University had insulted him ;  the new forms of his religion accorded with his political feelings.

Cartwright does not scruple to declare his purpose.  While the Puritans were affecting to annihilate the Church of England as a remains of the Roman Supremacy, they proposed to establish one according to their own fancy, by which all Sovereigns should consider themselves, as “nourrisses or servants under the Church ;  so they must remember to subject themselves unto the Church ;  yea, as the prophet speaketh, to lick the dust of the feet of the Church.”^[9] Explicit !  Yet Cartwright in a joint production with Travers, another very eminent person, the domestic Chaplain of Cecil and the popular Lecturer at the Temple, warmed by the genius of his associate is still bolder ;  they insist that “the Monarchs of the world should give up their sceptres and crowns unto him (Jesus Christ) who is represented by the officers of the Church.”^[10] Still more explicit, and more ingenious, we may listen for a minute to the whole art of political Government.  “The world is now deceived that thinketh that the Church must be framed according to the Commonwealth, and the Church government according to the civil government, which is as much as to say, as if a man should fashion his house according to his hangings, whereas in deed, it is clear contrary.  As the hangings are made fit for the house, so the Commonwealth must be made to agree with the Church, and the government thereof with her government ;  for as the house is before the hangings, therefore the hangings, which come after, must be framed to the house, which was before ;  so the Church being before there was any Commonwealth and the Commonwealth coming after, must be fashioned and made suitable to the Church: otherwise God is made to give place to man, Heaven to earth.”^[11] About eighty years after, these saints ruled England, and in their ordinance 1646, covered the land with their classes, synods, and general assemblies.

From the Church, it is scarcely a single step to the cabinet.  The history of these Puritans, exhibits the curious spectacle of a great religious body covering a political one: such as was discovered among the Jesuits, and such as may again distract the empire in some new and unexpected shape.

Cartwright employs the very style which a certain class of political reformers long after have used.  He declares that “an establishment may be made without the magistrate,” and he told the people that “if every hair of their head was a life, it ought to be offered for such a cause.”  It was not therefore strange that such notions should create a faction among the people, which assumed the expressive designation of “The Mar-prelates.”  These new doctrines of Cartwright echoed in their clamour.  One of these Revolutionists is for “registering the names of the fittest and hottest brethren, without lingering for Parliament.”  Another exults that “there are a hundred thousand hands ready.”  “What a stroke,” he cries, “so many would strike together!” A third tells, that “we may overthrow the Bishops and all the Government in one day, but it will not be yet in a twelvemonth and a half!”^[12]

This was the sanguine style of “the London Corresponding Society;” and to run the parallel still closer, the whole frame and constitution of the Genevan discipline might have served as the model of the modern conspiracy.

A stream of libels ran throughout the nation, under the portentous name of Martin Marprelate.  This extraordinary personage in his collective form, for he is to be split into more than one, long terrified Church and State.  He walked about the kingdom invisibly, dropping here a libel and there a proclamation ;  but wherever Martinism was found, there Martin was not.  He prided himself in what he calls “pistling the Bishops,” a very ambiguous term, but according to his own vulgar orthoepy, he pretends it only meant “Epistling them.”  Sometimes he hints to his pursuers how he may be caught, for he dates “Within two furlongs of a bouncing Priest,” or “In Europe,” while he acquaints his friends who are so often uneasy for his safety, that “he has neither wife nor child,” and prays “they may not be anxious for him, for he wishes that his head might not go to the grave in peace.”  — “I come with the rope about my neck, to save you, howsoever it goeth with me.”

His press is interrupted, and Lambeth seems to breathe in peace.  But he has “a son, nay five hundred sons,” and Martin Junior starts up.  “Why has my father been tongue-tied these four or five months ?  Good nuncles (the Bishops) have you choked the gentleman with a fat prebend or two ?  I trow my father will swallow down no such pills, for he would thus soon purge away all the conscience he hath.  Do you mean to have the keeping of him ?  What need that ?  A meaner house than the Tower, the Fleet, or Newgate, would serve him well enough.  He is not of that ambitious vein that the Bishops are, in seeking for more costly houses than ever his father built for him.”  Another of these “five hundred sons” declares himself to be “his reverend and elder brother, heir to the renowned Martin Mar-prelate the Great.”

Such were the mysterious personages who for a long time haunted the palaces of the Bishops and the vicarages of the Clergy, disappearing at the moment they were suddenly perceived to be near.  Their invectives were well farced for the gross taste of the multitude.  The Mar-prelate productions were not the elevated effusions of genius ;  the authors were grave men who affected the dialect of the lowest of the populace to gain them over in their own way.  They were best answered by the flowing vein of the satirical Tom Nash ;  and Martin becomes grave after having swallowed some of his own sauce, and taken “his pap with a hatchet,” administered to these sucklings of sedition.^[13]

Never did sedition travel so fast, nor hide itself so closely ;  for the family of Martin employed a moveable press, and as soon as it was surmised that Martin was in Surrey, it was found he had removed to Northamptonshire, while the next account came that he was showing his head in Warwickshire.  Long they invisibly conveyed themselves, till in Lancashire the snake was scotched by the Earl of Derby with all its little brood.

This outrageous strain of ribaldry and malice which Martin Mar-prelate indulged, obtained full possession of the minds of the populace.  These revolutionary publications reached the Universities, for we have a grave admonition in Latin addressed to those who never read Latin.^[14] Who could have imagined that the writers of these scurrilities were scholars,^[15] and that their patrons were men of rank ?  Two knights were heavily fined for secreting these books in their cellars.  The libels were translated, and have been often quoted by the Romanists abroad and at home, for their particular purpose, just as the revolutionary publications in this country have been concluded abroad to be the general sentiments of the people of England ;  and thus our factions always serve the interests of our enemies.

Cartwright approved of these libels, and well knew the concealed writers, who indeed frequently consulted him.  Being asked his opinion of such books, he observed that “Since the Bishops and others there touched, would not amend by grave books, it was therefore meet that they should be dealt withal to their further reproach, and that some books must be earnest, some more mild and temperate, whereby they may be both of the spirit of Elias and Eliseus,” the one the great mocker, the other the more solemn reprover.  It must be confessed that Cartwright here discovers a deep knowledge of human nature.  He knew the force of ridicule and of invective.  The art of libelling is no inefficient prelude to revolutionary measures ;  and it will be found often to have preceded them.

But it was not only by a moveable press, unceasing libels, and other invisible practices, that this faction menaced the quiet of the State, it is evident by proclamations, and by frequent letters, from the Ministers of Elizabeth, that the Queen was more alarmed at the secret and mysterious correspondence of its members.

The secret meetings of this party, we are told, had at first begun in private houses ;  they afterwards assembled in woods and fields, till these assemblies became periodical, and were held at stated places.  These meetings were kept up very secretly, their appointments being only made known to those who belonged to the quarter in which they were held.  Some Scottish fugitives, at length, introduced their “discipline,” and conspiracy now took a wider circuit and moved in more intricate ways.  The holy discipline as it was termed, branched out into the forms of a dangerous confederacy against the Government ;  and though religion alone constituted their plea, yet the result was perfectly political ;  for some of their leaders had urged not to keep themselves in corners, but to show themselves publicly to defend the truth.

The whole kingdom was subdivided by these Puritans, and placed under a graduated surveillance.  A national synod, or national assembly was to be their Parliament, to consist of delegates from the provincial synods.  The provincial synods were assemblies of delegates from the classes ;  every province consisted of twenty-four classes.  And these classes were spread through all the shires of England.  Provincial synods were busied in Warwickshire, in Northamptonshire, in Suffolk, in Essex ;  the line of communication was unbroken.  This Nile of Insurrection, in casting its waters over the land, seemed to have many a dark source—it was at Cambridge, or at Warwick, places where Cartwright often abode, or at London where Travers and others sate in a synod.  Their places of meeting were changeable, and only known to their own party, and they were rather to be discovered by their removals, than by their meetings.  Such secret societies, and such clandestine practices warranted the alarms of the cabinet of Elizabeth.

Among other devices they made a survey of the number of churches, and of persons in every parish.  What was concluded in the classical associations was sent upwards through the others, till the whole centered in their provincial assemblies, which finally were determined by synods or meetings in London.  These were of the greatest authority under the guidance of Cartwright, Travers, and others whose names have come down to us.  The synods of London alone ratified the decrees of the subaltern governments, and from the synods of London alone emanated the orders which regulated the members through every county.

The Puritan faction however affirmed that their whole system was solely directed to the reformation of the Church, and the establishment of the Presbyterial discipline.  But they were betrayed by the depositions of some faithless brothers ;  such as one Edwards whom Bancroft thus designates, “then of that faction but now a very honest man.”  Possibly the ministers of Elizabeth had employed that usual prevention of treason in sending a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or what the French revolutionary police termed a mouton, among this saintly flock ;  for unquestionably to the eye of the statesman, the political design of the synodical discipline assumed all the menacing appearances of an organized conspiracy.  The civil magistrate was allowed to share in the common equality, but should he refuse “admonition” he was to be excommunicated ;  nor was the Sovereign less exempt than the ordinary magistrate, in this democracy of priests and elders.  This Presbyterial government with all the exterior of a popular assembly, proved to be the horriblest tyranny which ever afflicted a community.

This monstrous government was not conducted without policy.  The people at large were not as yet to be stirred up until they were better instructed in “the discipline ;”  but the maturer and more daring spirits were to be privately encouraged.  When they ambiguously mentioned in this Book of Discipline that “other means” besides petitioning the Sovereign and the Parliament were to be resorted to for the advancement of their cause, they found this peculiar phrase more difficult to expound, than did the royal council.  They not only insisted on the independence of the Church, but they declared that the chief magistrate was only a member of the church, as any other citizen.  Their true design, and they were sanguine of its success, appeared in some intercepted letters.  When one of the more innocent class, objected to their proceedings in reviling the Anglican church and the difficulty of beating into the heads of the common people, their new reformation, an eminent Puritan replied “Hold your peace! since we cannot compass these things by suit, nor by dispute, it is the multitude and people which must bring them to pass.”  As is usual in all similar conspiracies the fiery spirits had assumed that their “reformation cannot come without blood ;”  and those who afterwards manifested to the world that they were willing to shed theirs, could not be expected to exact less from their adversaries.

Neal, the historian of the Puritans, as an apology for their proceedings, urges that “they had for several years peaceably waited for the consent of the Magistrate ;  but if after all, the consent of the Magistrate must be expected before we follow the dictates of our conscience, there would have been no Reformation in the Protestant world.”  Neal does not deny the secret design of this great confederacy, and excuses it on the plea of conscience.  The conscience of these saints then was to put the contemptible yoke of a Presbytery on the neck of a great people, and while they were combating with the usurpations of the Court of Rome were converting their Father-land into the same “Kingdom of Priests.”  Milton in his anger denounced them;

“New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.”

“That is,” says Warburton, “more domineering and tyrannical.”  It was indeed only a dethronement of the same class of Priests to transfer the same plenitude of power to another race under a different designation.

About sixty years afterwards these very Puritans triumphed and exhibited to the astonishment of Europe their singular government.  They were constructing the constitution of England by the Judaic model.  The observance, or the non-observance, of the Code of Moses, occasioned perpetual confusions among these modern Israelites, till some of their politicians hesitated to adopt what was not found expedient ;  but they ever appealed to the laws of Moses when they thought proper to insist on their perpetuity.  We therefore know what this party designed to have done, by what they did.

It seemed extravagant in the days of Elizabeth when the writer of one of the intercepted letters advised “Let us take our pennyworths of them (the Bishops) and not die in their debt!” Another more humanely apprehended that “The Commonwealth would be pestered with a new race of beggars—in the Bishops and the Deans and all the Churchmen ejected from their offices.”  Such sanguine politicians only anticipated the event which occurred under Charles the First!

* Cave’s Primitive Christianity, c. vi. part i. 140.

2 A very ancient church of this rude construction is still existing at Grinsted in the neighbourhood of Chipping-Ongar.

3 In the speech of the honest Sir Benjamin Rudyard he foresaw the consequences of this state of humiliation of the Clergy.  “If we pull down Bishopricks and pull down Cathedral churches, in a short time we must be forced to pull down Colleges too ;  for scholars will live and die there as in cells, if there be no considerable preferment to invite them abroad.  This is the next way to bring in barbarism ! to make the Clergy an unlearned contemptible vocation, not to be desired but by the basest of the people.”

4 Neal points to Bancroft’s famous sermon at Paul’s cross in 1528 for this assumption.  There neither Mr. Hallam, nor myself, have discovered it.  The anecdote however told of Whitgift, which the reader will shortly find, confirms the notion that the doctrine though novel, was well known.  Lord Bacon has also observed that this notice was then newly broached, in his Tract on the Controversies of the Church of England.

5 Whitelocke’s Memorials, 106.  Both these members received the thanks of many “for preventing the surprisal of the House, upon this great question.”

6 Neal’s Hist of the Puritans, iii. 249. 8vo.

7 Ibid. iii. 242. 8vo.

8 Lives of the Scots’ Worthies, Preface.—Stevenson’s Hist. of the Church and State of Scotland, ii. 729.

9 Cartwright’s “Defence of the Admonition.”

10 See a “Full and plain declaration of Ecclesiastical discipline.”—185.

11 Defence of the Admonition, 181.  The same feeling is perpetuated among the Puritans ;  thus the Independent Cotton Mather observes that the description of the whole world by the first-born of all historians, (by which we must infer that the Egyptians had no historians before Moses,) is contained in one or two Chapters, but the description of the Tabernacle occupies “seven times as many chapters.”  And the reason of this difference is he thinks, that the Church is far more precious than the world, which indeed was created for the use of the Church.  Thus the great science of Politics is reduced to a Tabernacle Government ;  this was the true secret of “the fiery Puritans” as Fuller distinguished the class.—Cotton Mather’s Introduction to Magnalia Christi Americana, 84.

12 Madox Vindication, 255.

13 The title of one of Nash’s pamphlets, against the Marprelates.  These libels, which enter into our national history, are of the greatest rarity.  Some of these works bear evident marks that “the pursuivants” were hunting the printers—a number of little Martins were disturbed in the hour of parturition, for we have the titles of imperfect works.  The curious collector may like to learn that there once existed, and probably may yet be found, a Presbyterian edition of these Martinisms.  I find mention of it in Bancroft’s “Dangerous Positions.”  “For fear that any of these railing pamphlets should perish they have printed them altogether in Scotland in two or three volumes, containing three and forty of the said libels.”—Bancroft, p. 46.

14 Anti-Martinus sive monitio cujusdam Londinensis ad adolescentes utriusque academiae contra personatum quendam rabulam qui se Anglice Martin Mar-prelate, &c. 1589,—4to.

15 John Penry, one of the most active of these writers, was hanged.  The learned Udall perished in prison.  Udall denied that he had any concern in these invectives, but in his library some manuscript notes were considered as materials for Martin-Mar-prelate, which Udall confessed were written by “a friend.”