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 own. He asked England to take this view, to recognise its achievements, to value its great possession, to sink minor differences, and put forth its united power for God's glory. The services of the Church, he thought, were intelligible in their simplicity, and had suffered in the past because they had never been suitably displayed. Let them only be fully and fairly performed, and they would of themselves attract and convince. Men would soon understand and love them.

So Laud began his ecclesiastical revival with care for outward things. It was not that he put principles in the background, but he thought that the worship of the Church was the best form of teaching. Argument and controversy had done little; let the voice of devotion be heard, and it would prevail.

"I laboured (he says) that the external worship of God in this Church might be kept up in uniformity and decency and in some beauty of holiness. And this the rather because, first, I found that with the contempt of outward worship of God the inward fell away apace, and profaneness began boldly to show itself."

There was a second reason which weighed strongly with Laud. The strength of Romanism in England lay in the divided condition of the Church.

"I could speak (Laud goes on) with no conscientious person almost that were wavering in religion, but the great motive which wrought upon them to disaffect, or think meanly of the Church of England, was that the external worship of God was so lost, and the churches themselves suffered to lie in such a base and slovenly fashion in most places of the kingdom."