The Book of Discipline.--A Directory or Book of Discipline was, contemporaneously with the growth of this movement, in course of construction. This took shape about the year 1583, and was in its completed form the joint work of Cartwright and Travers.1 It was revised at a national synod in London in 1584, and put into the hands of Travers "to be corrected and ordered by him." This Book of Discipline was a handbook or Directory of worship and government framed on Presbyterian lines, according to the Genevan model, and has been called "the palladium of English Presbyterianism."

But the fact of chief interest and importance in connection with the Book of Discipline is this, that in the year 1590 it had spread all over England, and was subscribed by as many as five hundred ministers. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the significance of this fact. Five hundred clergymen of the Church of England prayed Parliament that this book "might be from henceforth authorised, put in use, and practised throughout all Her Majesty's dominions." How large this proportion was we may gather from the statement of Neal, endorsed by Hallam, that there were only about two thousand preaching clergymen in the whole kingdom. So that it need not excite surprise when, in 1589, we find Cooper, bishop of Winchester, declaring "that the most part of men" and "all inferior subjects were averse to Episcopacy, and proclaimed their aversion" at every table, in sermons, and in the face of the whole world.”

1 This Directory must not be confounded, as it often has been, with the earlier work of Travers, which was not a Directory at all, but a treatise and vindication of Presbyterian order.

Presbyterians not Separatists.-It must not be supposed, however, that those who subscribed the Book of Discipline had any intention of separating from the Established Church. Their position was probably that of Cartwright, who, although he found much that was objectionable in the Church, did not separate from it himself, nor approved of separation on the part of others. "Though deformed," he said, "the Church of England is still the body of Christ'; without walls, it may be, nevertheless it is a 'city' and a 'vineyard,' though without a 'fence.'" He opposed the contention of Robert Browne, and disavowed all sympathy with his aims and followers. "We are not for an unspotted Church on earth, and therefore, though the Church of England has many faults, we would not willingly withdraw from it." Such was the language employed by those who framed the first Admonition to Parliament.

Though they disapproved of bishops, and believed in the popular election of ministers, they went no further than to urge that the system they favoured should be adopted "by public authority of the magistrate and of our Church," they promising obedience "so far as it may be lawful for us so to do by the publique lawes of this kingdom and by the peace of our Church."

The doctrine of religious liberty not avowed by Cartwright and his party.-Considering the part which the Presbyterian party played afterwards in the day of

their ascendency, it is probably not an unjust or un

charitable judgment to say, as one1 does, that their object was to work in obedience to the Church system already established, by treating it as a mere legal appendage, until the time came when, undermined from below, it might be successfully and entirely overthrown."

A party which had Cartwright as its leader and informing spirit was not likely to err upon the side of moderation, or to grasp at the shadow so long as the substance of power was within its reach. "The disciples of Cartwright now learned," says Hallam, "to claim an ecclesiastical independence, as unconstrained as the Romish priesthood in the darkest ages had usurped."2 "No leader of a religious party," says Mr. Green, "ever deserved less of after sympathy than Cartwright. He was unquestionably learned and devout, but his bigotry was that of a mediæval inquisitor. The relics of the old ritual-the cross in baptism, the surplice, the giving of a ring in marriage—were to him not merely distasteful, as they were to the Puritans at large, they were idolatrous, and the mark of the beast. . . . The absolute rule of bishops, indeed, he denounced as begotten of the devil, but the absolute rule of Presbyters he held to be established by the word of God. For the Church modelled after the fashion of Geneva he claimed an authority which surpassed the wildest dreams of the

1 H. O. Wakeman, M.A., in The Church and the Puritans, p. 47. 2 In his strictures upon Cartwright, Hallam adds the needful caveat: "We are not, however, to conclude that every one, or even the majority, of those who might be counted on the Puritan side in Elizabeth's reign would have subscribed to the extravagant opinions of Cartwright."

masters of the Vatican. All spiritual power and jurisdiction, the decreeing of doctrine, the ordering of ceremonies, lay wholly, according to his Calvinistic creed, in the hands of the ministers of the Church. To them, too, belonged the supervision of public morals. In an ordered arrangement of classes and synods they were to govern their flocks, to regulate their own order, to decide in matters of faith, to administer discipline.' Their weapon was excommunication, and they were responsible for its use to none but Christ. The province of the civil ruler was simply to see their decrees executed, and to punish the contemners of them,' for the spirit of such a system as this naturally excluded all toleration of practice or belief. With the despotism of a Hildebrand, Cartwright combined the cruelty of a Torquemada. Not only was Presbyterianism to be established as the one legal form of Church government, but all other forms, Episcopalian and Separatist, were to be ruthlessly put down. For heresy there was the punishment of death. Never had the doctrine of persecution been urged with such a blind and reckless ferocity. 'I deny,' wrote Cartwright, that upon repentance there ought to follow any pardon of death. Heretics ought to be put to death now. If this be bloody and extreme, I am content to be so counted with the Holy Ghost.'

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The strictures both of Hallam and Green upon Cartwright err, in our judgment, in excess of severity, and the passages from his writings upon which they rely as evidence are susceptible of a much milder construction. when read in the light of their context. But there can be no doubt that Cartwright was a man of uncompromis

ing temper, of an unyielding, not to say intolerant, spirit, and that he succeeded in communicating to his followers much of the infection of this temper and spirit. The prevalence of his opinions and the victory of his party would have been a blow to the cause of religious liberty, hardly less severe than that which it suffered at the hands of Whitgift and the dominant hierarchy of the Church, and it is not without reason (though he may seem to be speaking from prejudice) that Mr. Soames 1 says that Whitgift saved England from a democratical pontificate.

Impermanence of Presbyterianism in England.— It is, indeed, curious, and not a little striking, to contrast the claims made on behalf of the Holy Discipline with its shortlived lease of power, its abruptly ended career, so far as England was concerned. In 1588, John Udall wrote his famous demonstration of discipline, which he entitled, A Demonstration of the Truth of that Discipline which Christ hath prescribed in His Word for the government of His Church in all times and places, until the end of the world. Here comes," says Mr. Arber, "the irony of history in regard to such confident dogmatising. As a matter of fact, the Holy Discipline, in its integrity, and as here defined by Udall, did not last two generations in England." The Presbyterian system took deep roothold in Scotland; but in England it never had more than a struggling, precarious, sporadic existence. It was a

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1 Elizabethan Religious History, by Rev. H. Soames, M.A., p. 557. 2 See introduction to (Rev. John Udall) A Demonstration of Discipline, by Edward Arber, in English Scholars' Library.