Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/75

] whether in Church or State. He misliked the Puritans especially, because he had capacity enough to understand, that if their free opinions prevailed, they would interfere most materially with those prerogatives of absolute irresponsible exercise of power in Church and State, which he so eagerly coveted, and which he claimed as his by what he termed "divine right." At all times, too, and sincerely, we believe, both James, and Charles, his immediate successor, opposed every attempt to make the English Church conform to the pattern of that which Calvin had established in Geneva.

The two parties were at variance in several particulars. The Puritans planted themselves upon the open, naked Bible, as the only safe chart and guide in religious and civil duties and obligations. The defenders of the Church of England, while they freely and fully declared that Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation, and that nothing was to be held a matter of faith but what is contained in or proved from it, claimed that deference was due to the testimony and practice of the primitive Church, and the decisions of the first four or six General Councils. The Puritans scouted at all tradition without exception, as certainly the remnants of popery and superstition: the Church of England men were willing to yield respect to what they deemed primitive tradition and the unanimous consent of the fathers and doctors of the first ages. The Puritans liked well the extent to which reformation had been carried on the Continent; and many of the exiles in Queen Mary's reign came back, on the accession of Elizabeth, full of zeal and determination to try to effect in the English Church a similar thoroughness of reform, and a closer and more perfect union and concord in doctrine and practice with the Calvinistic Churches abroad. The bishops and clergy of the Established Church. steadily opposed all this, for they held Episcopacy to be of divine origin and perpetual obligation; and they counted ceremonies, such as were retained in the Church, as calculated to help forward the cause of truth and godliness. These complained of all ceremonies, as marring the simplicity and purity of the Gospel; those advocated ceremonies as useful and edifying. These denied the need of ordination by a bishop in order to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments; those refused then, and have always refused, to allow any one to officiate in the Church of England unless he first receive orders by the laying on of a bishop's hands.

As might have been expected, sharp contentions ensued, and the breach was widened. King James, counting the Establishment to be his special ally, and the doctrines set forth by the clergy peculiarly adapted to further his pretensions to kingly prerogative, it soon came to be understood that the Puritans were the party opposed to all his extravagant claims to irresponsible supremacy in civil and religious matters. The Puritans were loyal subjects, and devoted to the sustaining the crown and royalty in the regular line of succession. Yet they could not, and did not, deny the tendency of their