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 theologically and ecclesiastically its only acknowledged adversary. Now we are to see a new foe arise, in the shape of Puritanism, which increased in bitterness as well as in strength in proportion as the danger from Rome became less immediate, until in less than a century it overwhelmed State and Church together. We are concerned with Puritanism in this place simply as its rise affected the relations of the Church with the State, which it did to a greater extent than might have been the case, had the Church been less under the personal control of the sovereign, and had Elizabeth herself been less arbitrary, and less personally disliked it.

Camden gives the year 1568 as the date of the rise of Puritanism, and it was certainly about this time that it became a power with which the Government had to reckon. The thing itself, however, had existed already for many years. Hooper's controversy about the vestments under Edward VI., and, even earlier than this, his letters to Bullinger and others in Henry's reign, show plainly that, almost from the time of the separation, two different tendencies existed among English Protestants. The one was represented by men like Parker and the majority of the Elizabethan bishops, who, while they were in the main thorough Protestants of the Zurich type, yet seem to have been anxious to comprehend as widely as possible, to give as little shock as might be to the prejudices and habits of men, and therefore to change only those forms and ceremonies which they deemed absolutely necessary, and whose feelings of reverence and subordination and order made them anxious to maintain whatever they could of the ancient and venerable rites of the Church's worship. The other party had much less reverence for antiquity,