The force of those conclusions, which we must, in my judgment, deduce from the language of these articles, will be materially increased by that appeal of contemporary and other early authorities, to which recourse has been had in order to invalidate them. Whatever doubts may be raised as to the Calvinism of Cranmer and Ridley, there can surely be no room for any as to the chiefs of the Anglican church under Elizabeth. We find explicit proofs that Jewel, Nowell, Sandys, Cox, professed to concur with the reformers of Zurich and Geneva in every point of doctrine.668 The works of Calvin and Bullinger became textbooks in the English universities.669 Those who did not hold the predestinarian theory were branded with reproach by the names of free-willers and Pelagians.670 And when the opposite tenets came to be advanced, as they were at Cambridge about 1590, a clamour was raised as if some unusual heresy had been broached. Whitgift, with the concurrence of some other prelates, in order to withstand its progress, published what were called the Lambeth articles, containing the broadest and most repulsive declaration of all the Calvinistic tenets. But, Lord Burleigh having shown some disapprobation, these articles never obtained any legal sanction.671
These more rigorous tenets, in fact, especially when so crudely enounced, were beginning to give way. They had been already abandoned by the Lutheran church. They had long been opposed in that of Rome by the Franciscan order, and latterly by the jesuits. Above all, the study of the Greek fathers, with whom the first reformers had been little conversant, taught the divines of a more learned age, that men of as high a name as Augustin, and whom they were prone to over-value, had entertained very different sentiments.672 Still the novel opinions passed for heterodox, and were promulgated with much vacillation and indistinctness. When they were published in unequivocal propositions by Arminius and his school, James declared himself with vehemence against this heresy.673 He not only sent English divines to sit in the synod of Dort, where the Calvinistic system was fully established, but instigated the proceedings against the remonstrants with more of theological pedantry than charity or decorum.674 Yet this inconsistent monarch within a very few years was so wrought on by one or two favourite ecclesiastics, who inclined towards the doctrines condemned in that assembly, that openly to maintain the Augustinian system became almost a sure means of exclusion from preferment in our church. This was carried to its height under Charles. Laud, his sole counsellor in ecclesiastical matters, advised a declaration enjoining silence on the controverted points; a measure by no means unwise, if it had been fairly acted upon. It is alleged, however, that the preachers on one side only were silenced, the printers of books on one side censured in the star-chamber, while full scope was indulged to the opposite sect.675
The House of Commons, especially in their last session, took up the increase of Arminianism as a public grievance. It was coupled in their remonstrances with popery, as a new danger to religion, hardly less terrible than the former. This bigoted clamour arose in part from the nature of their own Calvinistic tenets, which, being still prevalent in the kingdom, would, independently of all political motives, predominate in any popular assembly. But they had a sort of excuse for it in the close, though accidental and temporary, connection that subsisted between the partisans of these new speculative tenets and those of arbitrary power; the churchmen who receded most from Calvinism being generally the zealots of prerogative. They conceived also that these theories, conformable in the main to those most countenanced in the church of Rome, might pave the way for that restoration of her faith which from so many other quarters appeared to threaten them. Nor was this last apprehension so destitute of all plausibility as the advocates of the two first Stuarts have always pretended it to be.
State of catholics under James.—James, well instructed in the theology of the reformers, and inured himself to controversial dialectics, was far removed in point of opinion from any bias towards the Romish creed. But he had, while in Scotland, given rise to some suspicions at the court of Elizabeth, by a little clandestine coquetry with the pope, which he fancied to be a politic means of disarming enmity.676 Some knowledge of this, probably, as well as his avowed dislike of sanguinary persecution, and a foolish reliance on the trifling circumstance that one if not both of his parents had professed their religion, led the English catholics to expect a great deal of indulgence, if not support, at his hands. This hope might receive some encouragement from his speech on opening the parliament of 1604, wherein he intimated his design to revise and explain the penal laws, "which the judges might perhaps," he said, "in times past have too rigorously interpreted." But the temper of those he addressed was very different. The catholics were disappointed by an act inflicting new penalties on recusants, and especially debarring them from educating their children according to their consciences.677 The administration took a sudden turn towards severity; the prisons were filled, the penalties exacted, several suffered death,678 and the general helplessness of their condition impelled a few persons (most of whom had belonged to what was called the Spanish party in the last reign) to the gunpowder conspiracy, unjustly imputed to the majority of catholics, though perhaps extending beyond those who appeared in it.679 We cannot wonder that a parliament so narrowly rescued from personal destruction endeavoured to draw the cord still tighter round these dangerous enemies. The statute passed on this occasion is by no means more harsh than might be expected. It required not only attendance on worship, but participation in the communion, as a test of conformity, and gave an option to the king of taking a penalty of £20 a month from recusants, or two-thirds of their lands. It prescribed also an oath of allegiance, the refusal of which incurred the penalties of a præmunire. This imported that, notwithstanding any sentence of deprivation or excommunication by the pope, the taker would bear true allegiance to the king, and defend him against any conspiracies which should be made by reason of such sentence or otherwise, and do his best endeavour to disclose them; that he from his heart abhorred, detested, and abjured as impious and heretical, the damnable doctrine and position that princes, excommunicated or deprived by the pope, may be deposed or murdered by their subjects, or any other whatsoever; and that he did not believe that the pope or any other could absolve him from this oath.680
Except by cavilling at one or two words, it seemed impossible for the Roman catholics to decline so reasonable a test of loyalty, without justifying the worst suspicions of protestant jealousy. Most of the secular priests in England, asking only a connivance in the exercise of their ministry, and aware how much the good work of reclaiming their apostate countrymen was retarded by the political obloquy they incurred, would have willingly acquiesced in the oath. But the court of Rome, not yet receding an inch from her proudest claims, absolutely forbade all catholics to abjure her