Here we shall pause for a moment to watch other forces coming into play.
Two ideas of Church reform evolved themselves: one already indicated,--that of separating from simple primitive Episcopacy all prelatical assumptions,--and another, which amounted to a decided revolution in the Church, including the extinction of Episcopacy altogether. While the former rose out of reverence for the Reformation under Elizabeth, combined with disgust at the history of prelatical rule,--the latter had a deeper and wider cause.
When Episcopacy strove to maintain itself in England, after the shock given to ecclesiastical power in the days of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., Presbyterianism made good its position at Geneva under Calvin, and at Edinburgh under Knox. The connexion between the two cities and the two Reformers, and between them both and our own country, everybody knows. The exiles who had found a home, not only on the shores of the beautiful Lake Leman, but also on the scarcely less beautiful banks of the Lake of Zurich, brought with them, when they returned home after the Marian persecution, strong Presbyterian predilections. Calvin, also, exercised a direct influence on some of the English Reformers; and the system of John Knox, in such close neighbourhood as the north of the Tweed, could not fail to affect those who were studying the question, "what ought to be the Church of the future?"
Indications of Presbyterian sentiments in the England of Elizabeth are very numerous.[124] They wrought within the Episcopal establishment without producing a severance. Cartwright was a Presbyterian. He contended for the abolition of archbishops, and archdeacons, and would retain only bishops or presbyters to preach the word and pray, and deacons to take care of the poor. Every Church, by which he meant a "certain flock," was to be governed by its own ministers and presbyters, and these were not to be created by civil authority, but chosen by popular election. The directory of government, found in the study of that eminent Puritan after his death, said to be composed by Travers, is in perfect harmony with this Presbyterian scheme. Certain clerical meetings, under the auspices of Cartwright and Travers, took a decided synodical shape.[125] This element continued in the Church under the Stuarts, notwithstanding the efforts of bishops to extinguish it.[126]