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Home King James I and Domestic Affairs The King and Protestant parties The King and Protestant parties; Part 2 |
The King and Protestant parties; Part 2All classes of Puritans, however, were united on certain matters. They were all agreed, for instance, in their detestation of Roman Catholicism. It is difficult for us now to realize the intensity of the feeling of large numbers of Englishmen against the Roman Catholics, or to justify the severity of the laws against them. But we must remember that the persecutions of Queen Mary's reign were still fresh in men's minds (Foxe's Book of Martyrs (first published in 1563) was regarded as a sort of second Bible at this time, and was chained to the desk in a great many Parish churches; its vivid accounts helped to keep alive the memory of the Marian persecutions), that the Roman Catholics had been concerned in various plots against Elizabeth, and that the Armada was looked upon as a Popish Armada, Moreover, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was regarded—quite wrongly—as a plot in which the Pope and the English Roman Catholics as a body were implicated. Then, again, the Roman Catholics were not aiming merely at toleration for themselves; they were a large and increasing body, and they wanted England to become a Roman Catholic country. Lastly, it must be borne in mind that the Puritans looked upon the Pope as Antichrist, upon the ceremonies of the church which he ruled as idolatrous, upon the doctrines—to quote the House of Commons —of Popery as "devilish", and upon its priests as "the cor-rupters of the people in religion and loyalty". They would, indeed, have regarded a return to Roman Catholicism as a moral and religious catastrophe for the nation.Apart from their hatred of the Papacy, the various sections among the Puritans had other views in common. They all opposed the claims of bishops and priests to special powers, and they disliked ornaments and vestments and an elaborate ritual in church. They were all more or less followers of Calvin; that is to say, they believed in predestination, i.e. that some are foreordained to salvation and others are not; and they looked upon the Communion as a commemorative feast in memory of our Lord's death, and not as a special means of grace. Above all, they made the Bible their rule of faith and of conduct; they had an intense feeling of responsibility towards God for all that they did, and all the power which came from the conviction that He was on their side in their struggle against what they thought was wrong. There is, perhaps, one more point to bear in mind in dealing with religious parties in England, and for that matter in Scotland as well. No religious party, whether Roman Catholic, or Arminian, or Presbyterian, desired merely toleration for itself; they all, except perhaps the Independents, desired to persecute those who disagreed with them. Toleration, "that hellish toleration", as a Scottish divine once called it, would satisfy few; each party wanted every other religious party exactly to conform with its own views and practices, or else to be suppressed. It was inevitable that some of the religious opinions held by the Puritans should clash with those held by the Monarchy. Even in Elizabeth's day there was, at times, no little friction. In the early years of her reign had occurred what is known as the Vestiarian Controversy—clergymen with Puritan leanings objecting to wearing the surplice and to certain of the ceremonies enjoined in the Prayer Book. Then, later on, the more advanced Puritans, chiefly at Oxford and Cambridge, had advocated a Presbyterian form of government and had attacked the bishops, with the result that a dozen of them had been sent to jail. Others, again, had organized meetings, called Prophesyings, at which various religious subjects were discussed, and clergymen learnt how to preach sermons. But Elizabeth thought that theological discussion would provoke too much independence of thought; and she much preferred a clergyman to read to his congregation an extract from "the Book of Homilies" (which had been issued at the same time as the Prayer Book) rather than to preach to his congregation a sermon of his own composition—indeed, she thought one or two preachers quite a sufficient allowance for each county. She, therefore, disliked these clerical gatherings and sternly repressed them. And when the House of Commons, in which there was a strong Puritan element, ventured to discuss problems of ecclesiastical government or doctrine, the queen mercilessly snubbed them. |
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