were to be virtually re-written and narrowed to suit the views of either party, the progress of principles of toleration would be retarded by a distinctly backward step. The tendency of the age was on the side of the Arminians, and under favourable circumstances their theology might have gained ground even amongst the uneducated classes. This, however, was not to be. Causes combined to bring on a struggle between Arminians and Calvinists. In the first place, James' foreign policy, together with the advances Catholicism was making on the Continent, caused theology or ceremonies that had the smallest appearance of a Romish tendency to be regarded with aversion and suspicion by the nation. In the second place, the High Church party became definitely formed and began to play a definite part in politics. Men who upheld high sacerdotal doctrine, such as is found in the Convocation Book of 1606, rejected the personal religion of Calvin for the new theological tenets. James himself, who, as years passed on, had in all questions relating to Church and State been attracted to the side of the holders of the theories of Divine Right, was carried along with the stream, and adopted the theology that was now becoming distinctive of the same party. Men, again, who found that their views on questions of doctrine and Church government were not accepted by the nation, began, in all points at issue between the King and the Parliament, to take up a prominent position as supporters of the prerogative. The High Church party, therefore, could reckon on no friends in the House of Commons. Almost every member opposed them, either as theologian or lawyer or politician.

With the accession of Charles all possibility of compromise between Arminians and Calvinists was destroyed. James, in spite of the change in his own theological views, had to the last maintained a fairly neutral attitude between the two parties. His more narrow-minded son, with the spirit of a partisan, joined the side which supported him in politics. For his use was prepared a list of the names of clergymen, marked P. and O., signifying Puritan and Orthodox. He named a committee of five bishops, all High Churchmen, to decide whether Montague's Appello Cæsarem' was in accordance with the doctrine of the Church of England. Laud appeared by his side as the political leader of the High Church party, whose views, doctrinal and political, were forced in a most offensive manner upon the attention of the nation. The Calvinists were plainly told that they were intruders into the fold, and that the party now in power were the true interpreters of the Articles. Obedience to the commands of princes

was inculcated as the chief duty of subjects, and refusers of a forced loan were guilty of impiety, disloyalty, and rebellion.' Abbot, the Primate of England, for refusing to license a sermon containing these last tenets, was suspended and his jurisdiction handed over to four High Church bishops.

The Commons, in answer to this programme, attacked leading members of the High Church party as teachers of false doctrine and disturbers of Church and State. It was not, however, until the session of 1629 that they proposed in so many words to silence the whole body of Arminian preachers and writers. Shortly before the meeting of Parliament, Charles had published the Thirty-nine Articles with that Declaration attached to them which still stands in the Prayerbook. He virtually said to the Commons: You must admit that Parliament has no claim to interfere in the government of the Church; you must submit to any ritual observances Convocation imposes; you must accept any interpretation Convocation lays upon the Articles. On the other hand, we undertake to silence preachers and writers upon disputed points of doctrine, Arminians as well as Calvinists; but we offer you no guarantee that we will be impartial in our judgments. High Churchmen will judge offenders, and you must trust implicitly to their sense of justice. The Declaration was received by the Commons as a gauntlet of defiance. It was, indeed, exactly suited to knit firmly together the extremes of the Opposition. The mere politician, who might have acquiesced in a policy of silence on disputed points of doctrine, was offended with the claim of freedom from Parliamentary control made for the Church; the mere fanatic, to whom at the moment the suppression of false doctrine was the point of importance, was offended with what he took to be a proposal to silence his party and give liberty of speech to his opponents. Intended, as it probably was, to facilitate agreement between the King and the Parliament, this Declaration was as thoroughly unstatesmanlike a document as the hand of minister ever drew.

The Commons met it by denying that Convocation could impose doctrine or discipline upon the laity without consent of Parliament, and demanding that Arminian tenets should be suppressed and their holders discountenanced and ejected from high office in Church and State. It is easy to call this simply a policy of suppression of unpopular opinion, but the leaders of the Commons certainly would not have been content to describe it themselves as such. The suppression of Arminian doctrine undoubtedly was regarded by them as a

means for the preservation of liberty. Even a man so strongly influenced by religious feelings as Eliot always looked on the question from its political side. If he desired unity of religion, it was because he believed that the tenets of Roman Catholics and of Arminians alike were productive of injurious consequences to the State. Nor is it sufficient answer to say that the political views of the High Churchmen were not necessarily a result of their doctrinal tenets. This might or might not be the case, but at the time they were held by the same men, and the only way to suppress the one was to suppress the other. They were undoubtedly incompatible with free institutions. England was not short of men intelligent enough to foresee that if the crown might on every occasion of presumed necessity replenish an empty exchequer without asking the consent of the nation, Parliaments would in the course of time cease to be summoned, or if summoned meet merely to ratify royal decrees. The Constitution could not stand still; advance it must, either in the direction of an absolute monarchy or of a free government. Charles, therefore, might have no intention of subverting liberty, yet had he been permitted to govern on these principles and transmit them in security to his successors, the history of freedom slowly broadening down from precedent to precedent' must have been relegated to the Utopia of unfulfilled possibilities. Nor was there, we must remember, any question of moral suasion here. The preacher who had dared to assert, what hundreds were thinking, that the contributor to the forced loan was guilty of impiety to his God and treason to his country, would have paid the penalty of his boldness by a life-long imprisonment, if not a traitor's death. Need we wonder that the Commons sought to silence the preacher who informed his hearers that the king's demands could not be resisted without danger of eternal damnation, though every of those circumstances 'be not observed which by the municipal law is required'?

In addition to these purely political motives which might lead men who had no sympathy with the doctrinal views of the Calvinists to join with them in demanding the suppression of Arminians, there was further the strong aversion naturally felt by lawyers and country gentlemen to the principles of Church government maintained by the same party. The small degree of intellectual liberty the High Churchmen were willing to admit was not likely to counterbalance in the minds even of tolerant men the danger of putting the nation under the yoke of a clerical assembly. Selden doubtless had not forgotten the suppression of his History of Tithes' and the

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uncourteous manner in which his opponents had replied to his arguments, while they forbade him to reply to their own. think, indeed, that Mr. Gardiner is inclined to lay too much emphasis on the liberality of the High Church party. It was, no doubt, an advance that the range of dogmatism should be restricted, but at the same time it must be remembered that the toleration which they exercised had no kinship with that toleration which allows the free expression of opinions held to be false. They only allowed men to think for themselves on points on which they held that doubt was admissible. There was indeed nothing special to the Calvinists in the idea of silencing opinions held to be false or, in other words, unpopular opinions. The High Church minority held exactly the same idea. They could not conceive, Buckridge, Laud, and Howson wrote to Buckingham, what use there was ' of civil 'government in the commonwealth, or of preaching and external 'ministry in the Church, if such fatal opinions as some which 'are opposite and contrary to those delivered by Mr. Montague are and shall be publicly taught and maintained.' Their proposed compromise of silence on disputed points of doctrine was aimed solely at the suppression of Calvinistic dogma that was distasteful to themselves. Allowing that they could treat in an impartial manner preachers who disregarded the king's Declaration, the silence they imposed on their own pulpits was to them a matter of indifference, if not of advantage. The higher branches of theological teaching were, in their opinion, not fitted for a popular auditory. The people were to follow the guidance of their spiritual pastors, but not to take part in controversies too deep for their uninstructed minds. It must be remembered, moreover, that the High Churchmen were entire masters of the situation; for though numerically weaker, in position they were far stronger than the Calvinists. They were supported by the king, and practically all important ecclesiastical offices, not to mention civil offices, were at the king's disposal. The Court of High Commission, as well as the Star Chamber, was theirs to work in whatever manner they pleased. In short, had time as well as power and patronage been at their command, the policy they adopted was eminently suited for the advancement of their own views and the quiet eradication of Puritan doctrine.'*

Of course the House of Commons was the very reverse of

The case of Samuel Ward before the High Commission is a good illustration of the manner in which the system of silence on doctrinal questions affected Puritan preachers. Calendar of State Papers,' Dom. Ser., 1635-1636.

a tolerant assembly. It was composed mainly of Calvinists, who had as little idea as their opponents of allowing the free expression of opinion which they regarded as

erroneous.

Yet it was with the House of Commons rather than with the Bishops that the hope of a more liberal policy in the future lay. For while Convocation was a clerical assembly representing the views of a small minority, the House of Commons was at least a lay assembly representing the views of the majority of the nation. When that majority was out of danger, it was possible that the Commons would cease to persecute the minority. From this point of view the attitude. taken up by the Commons in 1641 is worth observing. Lawyers and statesmen then turned the weight of their indignation against the late system of church government. They attacked the ecclesiastical courts, the doctrine of the Divine Right of Episcopacy, the withdrawal of causes in which the clergy were interested from the ordinary temporal jurisdiction, the endeavours of some of the bishops to introduce a blind dependence of the people upon the clergy and of the clergy upon themselves, the political importance given to the clergy, their seats upon the benches at the sessions of the peace, their seats in the Star Chamber, their seats at the Council Board, the appropriation of the word Church' to Convocation, together with the claim of Convocation to make laws for the nation, illustrated as this had been by the canons of 1640, which imposed an oath on clergymen and, in some cases, on laymen, and required ministers to read four Sundays in the year at morning prayer certain statements concerning the Divine right of kings and the duty of passive obedience. On the other hand, the doctrinal question, which had aroused so much fervour twelve years earlier, received hardly more than a passing notice. At first we might suppose that while Laud had failed in gaining acceptance for his idea of conformity in ritual and his principles of Church government, he had yet succeeded in dulling the edge of the people's appetite for the discussion of disputed points of doctrine. But this was not the case. Though the most zealous Calvinists had left the country for New England, yet the flame of theological controversy burst out amongst preachers and people as strongly as ever. The cause why the suppression of erroneous opinion had become a matter of indifference to a majority of the House of Commons must be sought elsewhere. In 1628 and 1629 the free expression of Arminian doctrine was understood to imply the suppression of Calvinism, the introduction of new forms of ritual, the exclusion of Parliament from the entire