Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/83

 Since 1641, Erastian theories of parliamentary legislative supremacy over the church had been developing rapidly. The first months of the Long Parliament’s work had seen attacks by its partisans both on the powers assumed by the episcopal hierarchy, and on the claims of the bishops that their powers were determined by divine right. Lord Brooke and John Milton had argued that episcopacy was an institution, not of divine right, but of human origin merely, and of very questionable expediency. They had condemned the episcopal assumption of divine right as a trespass on the regal power of the king. The redoubtable Smectymnuus had told the culprit bishops that by claiming episcopacy to be a divine institution, and not merely one ordained by the laws of the land, they destroyed all legal foundation for the office. Milton had believed that if the bishops’ claims were allowed, all manner of encroachments on the rightful powers of king and Parliament would follow. The king would be subject to excommunication; Moses’s staff must bow before Aaron's rod. Apart from these dire imaginary consequences of admitting a divine right in episcopacy, the Parliament, it will be remembered, had considered that it had at hand