made a stipulation in the Scottish treaty, they yielded to the urgency of the occasion. The anti-episcopal minority, who had been blended hitherto under the common appellation of Puritans, now obtaining the ascendancy, separated into the three different branches of Presbyterians, Independents, and Erastians. Of the two former we shall treat at the conclusion of the present chapter. The Erastians acknowledged, as their leader, Erastus a physician, and native of Baden, who had died in 1583. In a controversy with Beza, he maintained that excommunication, and the whole church power in every Christian state, rested with the secular authority. According to his dis ciples, then, church government, like ceremonies, was left to the discretion of each state; and no spiritual power, no influence saving that of persuasion, such as a lecturer in an university possesses over his pupils, belonged to the sacerdotal character. Lightfoot was an Erastian; and, toge ther with Colman, cited the Hebrew original for the power of princes in ecclesiastical matters..

The Parliament encouraged the Erastians, and kept the Scottish party in check: and when Presbyterianism was at length established, it had a tincture of the principles of Erastus.

1644. In the assembly episcopacy was now without a single advocate; and even the moderate Presbyterians, who would have admitted the mock episcopacy of presidents, had given way to the

Scottish ascendancy. Laud had recently been suspended from his office, benefice, and jurisdiction, for disobeying an act of the two houses, forbidding him to collate to benefices in his gift, unless by their nomination. And as the bishops refused in general to ordain any candidates for the ministry who favoured not the royal cause, a question was now started in the assembly, whether in this exigence ordination might not be conferred by presbyters. An ordinance, prescribing the form of ordination, was accordingly passed by the two houses of Parliament. Ten members of the assembly, and thirteen presbyters of London, seven of which body were to constitute a quorum, were empowered by this regulation to examine candidates for the ministry, and to ordain by imposition of hands*. From this time, during nearly eighteen years, episcopacy ceased to be the established government in England; though, for want of the concurrence of the third branch of the legislature, it was never entirely dissolved: nor, indeed, was it till the year 1646 that the names and dignities of bishops were taken away. The sequestra-tion of prebends took place nearly about the same time; but the names of deans and chapters, and the cathedral service, were fully extinguished only after the death of the King.

* Dr. Bohea, chaplain to the Bishop of Oxford, wrote a tract on the invalidity of the ordination conferred by them. It was never answered,

As the Liturgy, though not formally abolished until the following year, had now for some time been suffered to fall into disuse, no regular mode of worship was at present observed; some wore a surplice, and others a gown and cassock-some paid no regard whatever to the Book of Prayer, and others read what portions of it suited their taste or their purposes. Bishop Kennett writes, that tithes, in these times of trouble, were withheld from such ministers as read the Liturgy; and he might have added, with equal truth, from such also as did not read it. In the mean time fanaticism and hypocrisy exhibited their freaks, in all possible modes of impious absurdity. Fervors, visions, and pretended revelations, almost superseded the authority of the Sacred Volume. The ruin of the church announced the fall of the civil establishment: it led on to that catastrophe which has taught us that, like Saul and Jonathan, -they are lovely and pleasant in their lives, and that in death they cannot be divided.

VIII. 1645. To give a partial check to the extravagances above recited, a DIRECTORY for public worship was issued in January 1645, repealing the -acts of Edward and Elizabeth for establishing the Liturgy. While this syllabus of united prayer en

* In favour of abolishing the Liturgy, it was urged, that it was offensive to churches abroad, and to godly persons at home; that Calvin had pronounced many of its contents, tolerabiles ineptiæ; that the Papists approved of much of it,

joined a certain order for proceeding in the service of the church, it left the ministers at liberty to talk what sense or nonsense they pleased, on all the points prescribed, both in their supplications and their

sermons.

It was, however, found impracticable

to carry this ordinance at once into effect; in some places Directories could not be procured; in others they were wholly disregarded. One man read the whole, another a part of the Common Prayer; a third a form of his own, and a fourth a medley of both, while the highflyers scorned to be confined within the trammels of any direction or form

as confirming them in their idolatrous worship; that it was too long, and prescribed burdensome ceremonies; and that it confined the operations of the Spirit, thus at once excluding able ministers who scrupled to use it, and rendering those who conformed idle and unedifying. Its advocates replied, that no foreign church had signified its dislike to this service in print, and that at home many of the most pious men had approved of it; that Calvin is but one man; and that his expression applied only to that first draught, which afterwards underwent two revisions in the reign of Edward and Elizabeth; that it is charitable and right to comply with the Papists in matters undoubtedly derived from antiquity, though not in what idolatry had superadded; that the users of the Liturgy labour in preaching, catechizing, and study; that the Directory itself hinders not from mental laziness, though it calls for stronger lungs and sides; that the extemporary prayers and preaching of the Puritans occupy nearly as much time as the Liturgy and sermon of the Conformists; that a pruning, not an abolition of ceremonies, was designed by the Reformation; and that even the Directory confines the Spirit as to matter,

whatsoever. To reduce these varieties to some uniformity, the Parliament soon after called in the Prayer Book, imposing a fine on every minister who should refuse compliance with the form prescribed by the Directory, together with intolerant penalties for using the Liturgy in private families. With the same regard to liberty of conscience, about which so violent an outcry had been raised, fines were denounced against all persons among the laity who should refuse to follow the Directory, or who should write or speak in its disparagement. To defeat this plan, the King, by proclamation, 13th Nov. 1645, enjoined the use of the Common Prayer Book, and forbade the admission of the Directory; while he assured the Lords at Oxford, that his determination was firm and unaltered, to live and die for the privileges of his crown, for his friends, and for church government. Under these opposite injunctions, the people were, at this time, not unaptly compared to the waves of the sea, commanded one way by the wind, and countermanded another way by the tide.

By the Directory, all private and lay baptism, and the sign of the cross, were discontinued *. The Lord's Supper was duly to be administered in

* The child was to be presented by its father, or by a friend in the father's absence. The minister was to declare outward baptism to be not so necessary, as that the want of it endangered salvation. Salutations in church are forbidden: a wise direc