he candidly professed beforehand, to maintain the ecclesiastical state as by law established, he promised the reformation of all such abuses as should be there clearly demonstrated to exist *.

III. 1604. In the Hampton Court conference, which continued during three days of the month of January 1604, nine bishops, and an equal number of church dignitaries, maintained a controversy with four eminent puritanical divines. These disputants were all nominated by the royal theologian; and the Puritans had too much reason to augur ill of their cause, when they found themselves opposed to a monarch already pledged to support the hierarchy, and assisted by the elite of his ecclesiastics †.

On the first day of the conference (Saturday, January 14), James opened the proceedings by declaring his great happiness in being brought into the promised land, where he was not, as formerly, braved by beardless boys; and by expressing his wish to be satisfied as to certain points relating to the worship and discipline of the church. He entertained certain scruples, he said, respecting confirmation, which seemed to intimate, that bap

* Strype's Life of Whitgift, p. 569.

+ Strype's Life of Whitgift, p. 571.-Barlow's Account of the Conference." Warner," says the editor of Mosheim, "intimates the caution with which Neale's History should be read. Why, then, did he take from that author his whole, account of the Hampton conference?" It is necessary to correct the mis-statements of both.

tism was not a complete sacrament without it. He wished also to be informed in what particular the Protestant and Popish absolutions differed; and whether the phrase "private baptism" alluded to the privacy of the place (since in that sense it accorded with the primitive church), or rather signified private in regard to the person, a baptism administered by midwives and laymen, which he judged to be altogether inadmissible. His Majesty was not less anxious to learn, by whom, and for what offences, excommunication was denounced; being of opinion that so exceedingly severe a censure should follow only the commission of enormous crimes; and that to pronounce it, should be the province of the bishops, with the aid of the dean and chapter, but by no means that of lay chancellors and commissaries ; and lastly, he was desirous of consulting with his divines, concerning the providing of fit and able ministers for Ireland.

When James had concluded this introductory harangue, Whitgift dropped on his knee, and owned the obligations of the Church to Providence, for having placed a prince so able and sagacious at the helm of affairs. He then assured the King, that confirmation was a primitive usage, but no sacrament, and no completion or corroboration of baptism; referring to the baptismal rubric, with which James expressed himself satisfied. Bancroft subjoined, that even Calvin had

interpreted the verse (Heb. vi. 2), where "the laying on of hands" is mentioned, as a proof of confirmation's having been an apostolic usage, and that he had earnestly wished its restoration in the reformed churches.

Whitgift, having adverted to the forms of confession and absolution inserted in the communion service, a perusal of these banished his Majesty's scruples: nevertheless, for the sake of clear explanation, the assembly resolved, that, to the title "absolution" should be added, in the rubric, 66 or remission of sins." Excommunication in the spiritual courts, for slight offences, was softened into a censure, or other equivalent correction.

The two absolution forms, namely, the general absolution, and that private and particular one occurring in the office for visiting the sick, were both found to be retained by the German reformed churches, and approved by Calvin as free from superstition.

Baptism was admitted to be necessary to salvation; but the Archbishop assured James that no performance of that rite, by women or laics, was allowed by the church; that it was censured by the bishops; and that the rubric lent it no sanction. Bancroft, however, objected, that the compilers of the Liturgy intended to allow baptism by lay-hands in cases of emergency; and that such was the practice of the primitive church, as might be inferred from the passage in the second

chapter of Acts, since the Apostles cannot but have received assistance in baptizing three thousand persons in one day. A debate ensuing, it was left to subsequent deliberation, whether the rubric for private baptism should not be restricted to curates and lawful ministers. Prior to this period it was customary with the bishops to grant baptizing licenses to midwives, because baptism was yet regarded in a Popish light, as in every case the sine qua non of salvation. An oath, however, was taken by these accoucheuses, that they would perform the ceremony only in cases of necessity, and certify the parish curate of every such baptizing t. James now reproved the English divines for insisting too strongly on the indispensable necessity of baptism; while those of Scotland were addicted to the opposite error. He here related a repartee pronounced by him to one. of the beardless boys in that kingdom, who had petulantly demanded, "Does your Majesty suppose, that if I am sent for to baptize a sick child, and refuse to go, that infant dying unbaptized will be damned?"-" If sent for under such circum

Twelve Apostles might, with the greatest ease, baptize three thousand persons in one day. It is but two hundred and fifty to each. I have myself administered the other sacrament in England to nearly that number in one day. Besides, might none of the seventy, or of the deacons, have been present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost?

Strype, Annals, vol. i. p. 537.

stances, you delay the administration of baptism, I think," replied the monarch, "that you will be damned. In short, my Lords," he continued, "I understand, that baptism is necessary to be had, if lawfully to be had, that is, from the hands of lawful ministers, by whom alone, and by no private person in any case, ought that sacrament to be dispensed; not but that I utterly dislike all rebaptization of those whom women or laics may have already baptized. Thus acquiescing in an error which could not now be recalled, he laid down the pure doctrine and the future rule of the church, by citing the commission (Matt. xxviii, 20), "Go, and baptize all nations," as addressed exclusively to authorized ministers. He wisely thought it better, where lawful baptism was not at hand, to leave the unoffending babe to the mercy of the Father of mercies, than to debase a sacred rite by an irregular administration, of which the practice is profane, and the efficacy at least uncertain; better than to suffer the hand of an Uzzah to touch the ark, or the censer of a Korah to offer up unhallowed fire*.

4

* Neale asserts, that the bishops, on the first day of the conference, entreated James to alter nothing at all, lest the Puritans should complain, that till then they had been bound to forms, which were now confessed to be erroneous: one of the many statements of that prejudiced writer, which he fails to substantiate by satisfactory proofs. Galloway, whom he cites, was not admitted the first day; and as to the expression of Dean Andrew, that James played the Puritan notably,