comburendo, which had hung up only in terrorem for seventeen years, was taken down, and put in execution upon these unhappy men. The Dutch congregation interceded earnestly for their lives; as did Mr. Fox, the martyrologist, in an elegant Latin letter to the queen,* but she was immovable; so distant was her majesty from the tender spirit of her brother, King Edward.t A little before the burning of these heretics, Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, departed this life: he was born at Norwich, 1504, and educated in Bene't College, Cambridge. In the reign of King Edward VI.* he married, and was, therefore, obliged to live privately under Queen Mary. Upon Queen Elizabeth's accession, he was advanced to the archbishopric of Canterbury; and how he managed in that high sta* "To roast the living bodies of unhappy men," He wrote a book entitled Antiquitates Britantion may be collected from the foregoing history. he says, "who err rather through blindness of judg- nice, which shows him to have had some skill ment than perverseness of will, in fire and flames, raging with pitch and brimstone, is a hard-hearted in ecclesiastical antiquity; but he was a severe thing, and more agreeable to the practice of the Ro-churchman, of a rough and uncourtly temper, manists than the custom of the Gospellers. I do and of high and arbitrary principles, both in not speak these things because I am pleased with church and state; a slave to the prerogative their wickedness, or favour thus the errors of any and the supremacy, and a bitter enemy to the men; but, seeing I myself am a man, I must favour Puritans, whom he persecuted to the length of the life of man; not that he should err, but that he his power, and beyond the limits of the law. might repent. Wherefore, if I may be so bold, I hum- His religion consisted in a servile obedience to bly beg of your royal highness, for the sake of Christ, the queen's injunctions, and in regulating the who was consecrated to suffer for the lives of many, this favour at my request, which even the Divine public service of the church; but his grace had clemency would engage you to, that if it may be too little regard for public virtue,† his entertain(and what cannot your authority do in such cases?), ments and feastings being chiefly on the Lord's these unhappy men may be spared. There are ex- day: nor do we read, among his episcopal qualcommunications and imprisonments; there are bonds; ities, of his diligent preaching or pious example.‡ there is perpetual banishment; burning of the hand, whipping, or even slavery. This one thing I most Countries, quoted in Mr. Lindsey's Second Address | earnestly beg, that the piles and flames of Smith- to the Youth of the Two Universities, p. 230, &c., field, so long ago extinguished by your happy gov- or La Roche's Abridgment of Brandt, p. 168.—Ed. ernment, may not be revived. But, if I may not obtain this, I pray with the greatest earnestness, that out of your great pity, you would grant us a month or two, in which we may try whether the Lord will grant that they may turn from their dangerous errors, lest, with the destruction of their bodies, their souls be in danger of eternal ruin.” "All his topics," says Sir James Mackintosh, referring to this letter, "are not, indeed, consistent with the true principles of religious liberty. But they were more likely to soften the antipathy of his contemporaries, and to win the assent of his sovereign, than bolder propositions; they form a wide step towards liberty of conscience. Had the excellent writer possessed the power of showing mercy, and once tasted the sweetness of exercising it towards deluded fanatics, he must doubtless have been attracted to the practice of unbounded toleration."Hist. of Eng., iii., 170. Dr. Price's Hist. of Nonconformity, vol. i., p. 295.-C. † The remarks of that valuable historian, Gerard Brandt, on these cruel proceedings, are so just and liberal that they deserve to be laid before the reader. 'This severity," says he, "which was not the first that had been practised in England since the Reformation, appeared to many Protestants, who were still under the cross in Flanders and Brabant, both strange and incredible. They lamented that those who not long before had been persecuted themselves were now harassing others for the sake of their religion, and offering violence, with fire and sword, to the consciences of other men, though they had before taught, and that with great truth, that it did not belong to any mortal man to lord it over the consciences of others. That faith was the gift of God, and not to be implanted in the minds of men by any external force, but by the Word of God, and illumination of the Holy Spirit; that heresy was not a carnal, but spiritual crime, and to be punished by God alone; that error and falsehood were not to be overcome with violence, but truth; that the obligation which the children of God lie under is not to put others to death for the faith, but to die themselves in bearing witness to the truth. Lastly, that the shedding of blood for the sake of religion is a mark of antichrist, who thereby sets himself in the judgment-seat of God, assuming to himself the dominion over conscience, which belongs to none but God only."" See Brandt's History of the Reformation in the Low * In this reign he was initiated into the exercise of power and measures of persecution; for in the year 1551 he was put into a commission, with thirty other persons, for correcting and punishing Anabap tists.-British Biography, vol. iii., p. 4.-ED. † Life of Parker, p. 524. "As primate of the Church of England, he com mitted a capital error in not availing himself of the influence of his station to heal the divisions which early ensued. It was in his power greatly to have diminished, if not entirely to have prevented them. But the rigidity of Parker's temper aggravated the wound he should have healed, and thus entailed on his successors the necessity of measures whose cruelty has stamped them with indelible infamy. Mistrusting the stability of his church, he was perpetually alarmed for its safety, and unscrupulously employed in its support every means which force or fraud could supply. The least deviation from the ordinary routine of religious services awakened his suspicions and fears. The simplest and most fervent piety failed to secure his complacency, unless it were clothed in the habiliments which authority had sanctioned, and expressed itself in language borrowed from the offices of his church. That men were advancing in conformity to God, and in benevolence towards their species, failed to interest his mind, if the slightest taint of Puritanism were suspected, or the least irregularity in religious services were known. "Placed in a station of commanding influence, he prostituted his power to the support of the queen's prerogative and the maintenance of ecclesiastical uniformity. To this he sacrificed the higher purposes of his vocation, and set an example of servility in the state, and of despotism in the Church, which Whitgift, Bancroft, and Laud fatally imitated. He had refused submission to the pope, yet he claimed it from others, and enforced the demand with a hardheartedness which penury and weeping innocence could not move. Nor can it be justly pleaded in his defence that his course was shaped by the commands of the queen and her council. In a few in stances this might have been the case, but in gen eral it was otherwise. He was Elizabeth's principal adviser in ecclesiastical affairs. She relied on his churchmanship, and found him ever ready to execute her severest edicts. He rarely, if ever, manifested sorrow when employed as the minister of her wrath; though his joy knew no bounds when he Fuller calls him a Parker indeed, careful to keep the fences and shut the gates of discipline against all such night-stealers as would invade the same; and, indeed, this was his chief excellence. He was a considerable benefactor to Bene't College, the place of his education, where he ordered his MS. papers to be deposited, which have been of considerable service to the writers of the English Reformation.* He died of the stone on the 17th of May, 1575, in the seventysecond year of his age, and was interred in Lambeth Chapel the 6th of June following, where his body rested till the end of the civil wars; when Colonel Scot, having purchased that palace for a mansion-house, took down the monument, and buried the bones, says Mr. Strype,† in a stinking dunghill, where they remained till some years after the Restoration, when they were decently reposed near the place where the monument had stood, which was now again erected to his memory.‡ CHAPTER VI. declaims against the wealth and splendour of the bishops, and speaks with vehemence against their lordly dignities and civil authority. In the convocation of 1562, when the question about the habits was debated, he withdrew, and would not be concerned in the affair; but, upon his advancement to the episcopal order, ke became a new convert, and a cruel persecutor of the Puritans. He was a little man, of a quick | spirit, and of no extraordinary character. The Parliament being now sitting, a bill was brought into the House of Lords to mulct such as did not come to church and receive the sacrament, with the payment of certain sums of money, but it was thought proper to drop it for the present. The convocation was busy in framing articles touching the admitting able and fit persons to the ministry, and establishing good order in the Church.* Thirteen of them were published with the queen's license, though they had not the broad seal; but the other two, for marrying at all times of the year, and for private baptism by a lawful minister, in cases of necessity, her majesty would not countenance. One of the articles makes void all licenses for preaching, from the deatH OF ARCHBISHOP PARKER TO THE dated before the 8th of February, 1575, but pro DEATH OF ARCHBISHOP GRINDAL. vides that such as should be thought meet for that DR. EDMUND GRINDAL, archbishop of York, office should be readmitted without difficulty or succeeded Parker in the see of Canterbury, and charge. This had been practised once and was confirmed February 15, 1575-6. He was a again in Parker's time, and was now renewed, divine of moderate principles, and moved no that by disqualifying the whole body of the faster in courses of severity against the Puritans clergy, they might clear the Church of all the than his superiors obliged him, being a friend to Nonconformists at once; and if all the bishops their preachings and prophesyings. Sandys was had been equally severe in renewing their litranslated from London to York, and Aylmer censes, the Church would have been destitute was advanced to the see of London. This last of all preaching, for the body of the conforming was one of the exiles, and had been a favourer clergy were so ignorant and illiterate that many of Puritanism; for in his book against Knox, who had cure of souls were incapable of preachentitled An Harbour of Faithful Subjects," he ing, or even of reading to the edification of the was sanctioned by her authority to execute the per-service and administer the sacrament in person hearers; being obliged by law only to read the secuting code which he had mainly contributed to form. On the review of his whole behaviour,' says Mr. Hallam, he must be reckoned, and always has been reckoned, the most severe disciplinarian of Elizabeth's first hierarchy, though more violent men came afterward.' Yet it is due to the memory of Parker to observe, that the errors of his administra tion, serious and criminal as they were, sprung naturally out of the system he represented. The Reformed Church of England was unsound at heart. It had its origin in force; it was shaped and moulded by human laws, and could only be maintained by the exercise of an authority unsanctioned by the Word of God. It was based on principles subversive of human rights, and could not fail its supporters in measures which reason condemns, and which revelation represents as destructive of those graces with which God seeks to embellish the human soul. His name will be handed down to the latest posterity as a persecutor of the saints of God."-Dr. Price's Hist. Nonconf., vol. i., p. 291-3.-C. * It should be added, that literature was indebted to him for editions of our best ancient historians: Matthew of Westminster, Matthew Paris, Thomas Walsingham, and Asser's Life of King Alfred. It should also, says Mr. Granger, be remembered, to his honour, that he was the first founder of the Society of Antiquaries in England.—ED. + Life of Parker, p. 499. As a balance to this, the bodies of nineteen or twenty Puritan divines were dug up in Westminster Abbey, and thrown into a pit in the yard: Dr. Trap, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Strong, &c. See, in Strype, what a pompous funeral Parker had ordered for him self.-ED. once in half a year, on forfeiture of five pounds to the poor. The Nonconformist ministers, under the character of curates or lecturers, supplied the defects of these idle drones for a small recompense from the incumbent and the voluntary contribution of the parish, and by their warm and affectionate preaching gained the hearts of the people; they resided upon their curacies, and went from house to house visiting their parishioners and instructing their children; they also inspected their lives and manners, and, according to the apostolical direction, reproved, rebuked, and exhorted them with all long-suffering and doctrine, as long as they could keep their licenses. Thus most of the Puritan ministers remained as yet within the Church, and their followers attended upon the Word and sacraments in such places where there were sober and orthodox preachers. But still they continued their associations and private assemblies for recovering the discipline of the Church to a more primitive standard; this was a grievance to the queen and court bishops, who were determined against all innovations of this kind. Strange, that men should confess in their public service every first day of Lent, "that there was a godly discipline in the primitive Church; that this dis* Strype's Life of Grindal, p. 194. cipline is not exercised at present in the Church of England, but that it is much to be wished that it were restored," and yet never attempt to restore it, but set themselves with violence and oppression to crush all endeavours that way! For the reader will observe that this was one chief occasion of the sufferings of the Puritans in the following part of this reign. Some of the ministers of Northampton and Warwickshire, in one of their associated meetings, agreed upon certain rules of discipline in their several parishes, but, as soon as they began to practice them, the court took the alarm, and sent letters to the new archbishop to suppress them.* His grace accordingly sent to the bishops of these diocesses to see things reduced to their former channel, and, if need were, to send for assistance from himself or the ecclesiastical commissioners; accordingly, Mr. Paget and Mr. Oxenbridge, the two heads of the association, were taken into custody and sent up to London. Of Collectors for the Poor, or Deacons. "Touching deacons of both sorts, viz., men and women, the Church shall be admonished what is required by the apostle; and that they are not to choose men of custom or course, or for their riches, but for their faith, zeal, and integrity; and that the Church is to pray, in the mean time, to be so directed that they may choose them that are meet. "Let the names of those that are thus chosen be published by the next Lord's Day, and after that, their duties to the Church and the Church's duty towards them; then let them be received into their office with the general prayers of the whole Church. Of Classes. Some time after there was another assembly at Mr. Knewstub's church, at Cockfield in Suffolk, where sixty clergymen of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire met together to confer of the Common Prayer Book, and come to some agreement as to what might be tolerated and what was necessary to be refused. They consulted also about apparel, holydays, fastings, injunctions, &c. From thence they adjourned "The brethren are to be requested to ordain to Cambridge, at the time of the next com- a distribution of all the churches, according to mencement, and from thence to London, where the rules set down in the synodical discipline, they hoped to be concealed by the general re- touching classical, provincial, comitial, and assort of the people to Parliament; in these assemblies for the whole kingdom. semblies they came to the following conclu"The classes are to be required to keep acts sions, which were drawn up in an elegant Latin of memorable matters, and to deliver them to style by Mr. Cartwright and Travers, and given the comitial assembly, and from thence to the to the ministers for their direction in their sev-provincial assembly. eral parishes. Concerning Ministers. "Let no man, though he be a university man, offer himself to the ministry; nor let any man take upon him an uncertain and vague ministry, though it be offered unto him. "But such as are called by some church, let him impart it to the classis or conference of which they are members, or to some greater church assemblies; and if the called be approved, let them be commended by letters to the bishop, that they may be ordained ministers by him. "Those ceremonies in the Book of Common Prayer which, being taken from popery, are in controversy, ought to be omitted, if it may be done without danger of being put from the ministry; but if there be imminent danger of being deprived, then let the matter be communicated to the classis in which that church is, to be determined by them. "If subscription to the articles and Book of Common Prayer shall be again urged, it is thought that the book of articles may be subscribed, according to the stat. 13 Eliz., that is, to such only as contain the sum of the Christian faith and the doctrine of the sacraments.' But neither the Common Prayer Book nor the rest of the articles may be allowed; no, though a man should be deprived of his ministry for refusing it. They are to deal earnestly with patrons, to present fit men whensoever any Church falls void in their classis. The comitial assemblies are to be admonished to make collections for the relief of the poor, and of scholars, but especially for the relief of such ministers as are deprived for not subscribing the articles tendered by the bishops; also for the relief of Scots ministers, and others; and for other profitable and necessary uses. "Provincial synods must continually foresee in due time to appoint the keeping of their next provincial synods; and for the sending of chosen persons with certain instructions to the national synod, to be holden whensoever the Parliament for the kingdom shall be called, at some certain time every year.” The design of these conclusions was to introduce a reformation into the Church without a separation. The chief debate in their assemblies was, how far this or the other conclusion might consist with the peace of the Church, and be moulded into a consistency with episcopacy. They ordained no ministers; and, though they maintained the choice of the people to be the essential call to the pastoral charge, yet most of them admitted of ordination and induction by the bishop only, as the officer appointed by law, that the minister might be enabled to demand his legal dues from the parish. In the room of that pacific prelate, Parkhurst, bishop of Norwich, the queen nominated Dr. *Life of Grindal, p. 215. † Fuller, b. ix., p. 135. Freke, a divine of a quite different spirit, who, in his primary visitation made, sad havoc among | and commanded to leave the country; but the the Puritan ministers. Among others that were good man was so universally beloved that the suspended in that diocess were Mr. John More, whole county of Kent almost signed petitions Mr. Richard Crick, Mr. George Leeds, Mr. Thom-to the archbishop for his continuance among as Roberts, and Mr. Richard Dowe, all minis- them. ters in or near the city of Norwich; they ad- "We know, most reverend father," say they, dressed the queen and council for relief, but that Mr. Stroud has been several times beaten were told that her majesty was fully bent to re- and whipped with the untrue reports of slandermove all those that would not be persuaded to ous tongues, and accused of crimes whereof he conform to established orders. The Reverend has most clearly acquitted himself to the satisMr. Gawton, minister of Goring in the same faction of others. "Every one of us, for the diocess, being charged with not wearing the most part, most gracious lord, hath heard him surplice, nor observing the order of the queen's preach Christ truly, and rebuke sin boldly, and book, he confessed the former, but said that in hath seen him hitherto apply to his calling faithother things he was conformable, though he did fully, and live among us peaceably; so that not not keep exactly to the rubric.* When the only by his diligent doctrine our youth has been bishop charged him with holding divers errors, informed, and ourselves confirmed in true relihe answered, "We are here not above half a gion and learning, but also by his honest condozen unconformable ministers in this city [Nor-versation and example we are daily allured to wich]; and if and if you will confer with us by learn- a Christian life, and the exercises of charity; ing, we will yield up our very lives if we are and no one of us, reverend father, hath hitherto not able to prove the doctrines we hold to be heard from his own mouth, or by credible relaconsonant to the Word of God." After his sus- tion from others, that he has publicly in his pension he sent his lordship a bold letter, in sermons, or privately in conversation, taught which he maintained that Christ was the only unsound doctrine, or opposed the discipline, lawgiver in his Church. "If any king or prince about which great controversy, alas! is now in the world ordain or allow other officers than maintained; yea, he has given faithful promise Christ has allowed, we will," says he, "rather to forbear the handling any questions concernlay down our necks on the block than consenting the policy of the Church, and we think in thereunto; wherefore do not object to us so our consciences he has hitherto performed it. In often the name of our prince, for you use it as consideration whereof, and that our country a cloak to cover your cursed enterprises. Have may not be deprived of so diligent a labourer in you not thrust out those who preached the lively the Lord's harvest; nor that the enemies of Word faithfully and sincerely? Have you not God's truth, the papists, may find matter of joy plucked out those preachers where God set and comfort; nor the man himself, in receiving them in? And do you think that this plea will a kind of condemnation without examination, excuse you before the high Judge, I did but be thus wounded at the heart and discouraged : execute the law!'" we most humbly beseech your grace, for the poor man's sake, for your own sake, and the Lord's sake, either to take judicial knowledge of his cause, to the end he may be confronted with his adversaries; or else, of your great wisdom and goodness, to restore him to his liberty, of preaching the Gospel among us. And we, as in duty bound, shall ever pray, &c." Mr. Harvey, another minister of the same city, was cited before the bishop, May 13th, for preaching against the hierarchy of bishops and their ecclesiastical officers; and at a court held at St. George's Church he was suspended from his ministry, with Mr. Vincent Goodwin and John Mapes. Mr. Rockrey, B.D. of Queen's College, Cambridge, a person of great learning and merit, was expelled the university for nonconformity to the habits. Lord Burleigh, the chancellor, got him restored and dispensed with for a year, at the end of which the master of his college admonished him three times to conform himself to the custom of the university in the habits, which he refusing, was finally discharged, as an example to keep others to their duty. About the same time, Mr. Richard Greenham, minister of Drayton, was suspended,‡ a man of a most excellent spirit, who, though he would not subscribe or conform to the habits, avoided speaking of them, that he might not give offence; and whoever reads his letter to Cox, bishop of Ely, will wonder what sort of men they must be who could bear hard on so peaceable a divine. Some time before the death of Archbishop Parker, Mr. Stroud, the suspended minister of Cranbrook, returned to his parish church; but being represented to the present archbishop as a disturber of the peace, he was forbid to continue his accustomed exercises in the Church, * MS., p. 253. Strype's Annals, p. 448. + MS., p. 285. f Pierce's Vindication, p. 97. This petition was signed by nineteen or twenty hands; another was signed by twenty-four ministers; and a third by George Ely, vicar of Tenderden, and twenty-one parishioners; Thomas Bathurst, Sen., minister of Staplehurst, and nine parishioners; William Walter, of Frittenden, and fourteen of his parishioners; Antony Francis, minister of Lamberhurst, and four parishioners; Alexander Love, minister of Rolenden, and eighteen parishioners; Christopher Vinebrook, minister of Helcorne, and nine parishioners; William Vicar, of Tysherst, and ten parishioners; Matthew Wolton, curate of Beneden, and eleven parishioners; William Cocks, minister of Marden, and thirteen parishioners; William Hopkinson, minister of Saleherst, and eight parishioners* Such a reputation had this good man among all who had any taste for true piety and zeal for the Protestant religion! He was a peaceable divine, and by the threatening of Aylmer, bishop of London, had been prevailed with to subscribe with some reserve, for the support of a starving family; and yet he was continually molested and vexed in the spiritual courts. Two eminent divines of Puritan principles * MS., p. 196. died this year: one was James Pilkington, B.D., | and Bishop of Durham; he was descended from a considerable family near Bolton in Lancashire, and was educated in St. John's College, Cambridge, of which he was master. In the reign of Queen Mary he was an exile, and confessor for the Gospel; upon the accession of "Queen Elizabeth he was nominated to the See of Durham, being esteemed a learned man and a profound divine; but could hardly be prevailed with to accept it on account of the habits, to which he expressed a very great dislike; he was always a very great friend and favourer of the Nonconformists, as appears by his letters, and a truly pious and Christian bishop.* He died in peace at his house, Bishop's Auckland, January 23, 1575-6, in the sixty-fifth year of his age; Dr. Humphreys, and Mr. Fox the martyrologist, adorning his tomb with their funeral verses. Ante omnia, that no lay-person be admitted to speak publicly in the exercises. That if any man glance at affairs of state, the moderator shall immediately silence him, and give notice to the bishop. If any man inveighs against the laws concerning rites and ceremonies, and discipline established, he shall immediately be silenced, and not be admitted to speak any more till he has given satisfaction to the auditory, and obtained a new admission and approbation of the bishop. And No suspended or deprived ministers shall be suffered to be speakers, except they shall first conform to the public order and discipline of the Church, by subscription and daily practice. But the queen was resolved to suppress them; and having sent for the archbishop, told him she was informed that the rites and ceremonies of the Church were not duly observed in these The other was Mr. Edward Deering, a Non- prophesyings; that persons not lawfully called conformist divine, of whom mention has been to be ministers exercised in them; that the asmade already; he was born of an ancient and semblies themselves were illegal, not being alworthy family in Kent, and bred fellow of lowed by public authority; that the laity negChrist's College, Cambridge; a pious and pain-lected their secular affairs by repairing to these ful preacher, says Fuller, but disaffected to meetings, which filled their heads with notions, bishops and ceremonies; he was a learned man and might occasion disputes and seditions in and a fine orator, but in one of his sermons be- the state; that it was good for the Church to fore the queen he took the liberty to say, that have but few preachers, three or four in a county when her majesty was under persecution her being sufficient. She farther declared her dismotto was Tanquam ovis; but now it might be, like of the number of these exercises, and thereTanquam indomita juvenca, as an untamed heif- fore commanded him peremptorily to put them er.‡ down. Letters of this tenour were sent to all the bishops in England.† For which he was forbid preaching at court for the future, and lost all his preferments in the Church.§ Archbishop Grindal had endeavoured to regulate the prophesyings, and cover them from the objections of the court, by enjoining the ministers to observe decency and order, by forbidding them to meddle with politics and church government, and by prohibiting all Nonconformist ministers and laymen from being speak ers. The other bishops, also, in their several diocesses, published [in 1577] the following regulations : That the exercises should be only in such churches as the bishop, under his hand and seal, should appoint. That the archdeacon, or some other grave divine appointed and allowed by the bishop, should be moderator. That a list of the names of those that are thought fit to be speakers in course be made and allowed of by the bishop; and the bishop to appoint such part of Scripture they shall treat of. That those ministers that are judged not fit to speak publicly be assigned some other task by the moderator, for the increase of their learning. * Ath. Ox., i., 590. + Fuller, b. ix., p. 109. Life of Parker, p. 380. Strype, in his Life of Parker, says that Deering was disliked of the bishops, because he would tell them of their swearing and covetousness, yet, he adds, that he was given to tell lies. This looks like slander. Dr. Sampson, who knew him well, gives him an exalted character as a man and a Christian, and Granger, in his Biographical History, vol. i., p. 215, observes, "The happy death of this truly religious man was suitable to the purity and integrity of his life."-See Brook's Lives of the Puritans, vol. i., p. 193–211. Strype's Parker, p. 381-429.-C. of strait commandment touching the reformation of Right Reverend Father in God, "We greet you well. We hear, to our great grief, that in sundry parts of our realm there are no small number of persons presuming to be preachers thereunto called, nor yet meet for the same; who, and teachers in the Church, though neither lawfully contrary to our laws established for the public Divine service of Almighty God, and the administration of his holy sacraments within this Church of England, do daily devise, imagine, propound, and put in execution, sundry new rites and forms in the Church, as well by the inordinate preaching, reading, curing of assemblies, and great numbers of our peoand ministering the sacraments, as by unlawfully prople, out of their ordinary parishes, and from places far distant; and that also of some of our subjects of good callings (though therein not well advised), to be hearers of their disputations and new-devised opinions upon points of divinity, far unmeet for vulgar people; which manner of ministrations they in some places term prophesyings, and in some other places exercises; by means of which assemblies, great numbers of our people, especially of the vulgar sort (meet to be otherwise occupied with some honest labour for their living), are brought to idleness, seduced, and in manners schismatically divided among themselves into variety of dangerous opinions, not only in towns and parishes, but even some families are manifestly thereby encouraged to the violation of our laws, and to the breach of common orders, and not smally to the offence of all our quiet subjects, that desire to live and serve God according to the uniform orders . |