The schism was now complete, and had grown out of such small differences as refusing to bow at the name of Jesus, and to use the cross in baptism.
In our times, the Puritans would have been permitted to worship God in their own way, but they were not thus allowed in the time of Elizabeth. Religious toleration was not then understood or practised; and it was the fault of the age, since the Puritans themselves, when they obtained the power, persecuted with great severity the Quakers and the Catholics. But, during the whole reign of Elizabeth, especially the life of Archbishop Parker, they were in a minority, and suffered--as minorities ever have suffered--all the miseries which unreasonable majorities could inflict.
[Sidenote: Archbishops Grindal and Whitgift.]
Archbishop Grindal, who succeeded Parker in 1575, recommended milder measures to the queen; but she had no charity for those who denied the supremacy of her royal conscience.
Grindal was succeeded, in 1583, by Dr. Whitgift, the antagonist of the learned Dr. Cartwright, and he proved a ruler of the church according to her majesty's mind. He commenced a most violent crusade against the non-conformists, and was so harsh, cruel, and unreasonable, that Cecil--Lord Burleigh--was obliged to remonstrate, being much more enlightened than the prelate. "I have read over," said he, "your twenty-four articles, and I find them so curiously penned, that I think that the Spanish Inquisition used not so many questions to entrap the priests." Nevertheless fines, imprisonment, and the gibbet continued to do their work in the vain attempt to put down opinions, till within four or five years of the queen's death when there was a cessation of persecution.
But the Scottish Solomon, as James was called, renewed the severity which Elizabeth found it wise to remit. Hitherto, the Puritans had been chiefly Presbyterians; but now the Independents arose, who carried their views still further, even to wildness and radicalism. They were stricter Calvinists, and inclined to republican views of civil government. Consequently, they were still more odious than were the Presbyterians to an arbitrary government. They were now persecuted for their doctrines of faith, as well as for their forms of worship. The Church of England retained the thirty-nine articles; but many of her leading clergy sympathized with the views of Arminius, and among them was the primate himself. So strictly were Arminian doctrines cherished, that no person under a dean was permitted to discourse on predestination, election, reprobation, efficacy, or universality of God's grace. And the king himself would hear no doctrines preached, except those he had condemned at the synod of Dort. But this act was aimed against the Puritans, who, of all parties, were fond of preaching on what was called "the Five Points of Calvinism." But they paid dearly for their independence. James absolutely detested them, regarded them as a sect insufferable in a well-governed commonwealth, and punished them with the greatest severity. Their theological doctrines, their notions of church government, and, above all, their spirit of democratic liberty, were odious and repulsive. Archbishop Bancroft, who succeeded Whitgift in 1604, went beyond all his predecessors in bigotry, but had not their commanding intellects. His measures were so injudicious, so vexatious, so annoying, so severe, and so cruel, that the Puritans became, if possible, still more estranged. With the popular discontents, and with the progress of persecution, their numbers increased, both in Scotland and England. With the increase of Puritanism was also a corresponding change in the Church of England, since ceremony and forms increased almost to a revival of Catholicism. And this reaction towards Rome, favored by the court, incensed still more the Puritans, and led to language unnecessarily violent and abusive on their side. Their controversial tracts were pervaded with a spirit of bitterness and treason which, in the opinion of James, fully justified the imprisonments, fines, and mutilations which his minister inflicted. The Puritans, in despair, fled to Holland, and from thence to New England, to establish, amid its barren hills and desolate forests, that worship which alone they thought would be acceptable to God. Persecution elevated them, and none can deny that they were characterized by moral virtues and a spirit of liberty which no people ever before or since exhibited. Almost their only fault was intolerance respecting the opinions and pleasures of many good people who did not join their ranks.