38. Chapter 34: The Church in England Continues to Ferment, 1558-1689

CHAPTER 34 The Church in England Continues to Ferment, 1558-1689

1. The Reformation in England Is Prolonged

We have seen that the history of the Church in England presents certain peculiarities (ch. 30, sec. 7). One of these is that the Ref­ormation in England was more po­litical than religious, and stressed organization more than doctrine. The continued unrest and change in the Church of England, after the life of the other churches of the Reformation had become more or less settled, is another peculiar­ity. This peculiarity is due to the fact that the mighty influence of Calvin came to be felt strongly in the Church of England a good deal later than in the churches in France, the Netherlands, and Scot­land.

2. The Influence of Calvin Is Felt in England The Elizabethan Settlement of 1563 (ch. 30, sec. 7) did not settle the affairs of the Church in Eng­land. During the persecutions of Bloody Mary many Protestants had fled to Geneva (ch. 30, sec. 6). There these English refugees came under the spell of Calvin. When in 1558 Elizabeth succeeded Mary to the throne of England, they returned, fired with enthusiasm for the ideas and ideals of the great French Reformer. So almost from the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, voices were heard advocating a much more thoroughgoing refor­mation. The Settlement of 1563 did not satisfy them at all. Because they wished to see the Church puri­fied much more thoroughly, these members of the Church of England were called Puritans.

3. The Puritans Desire to Reform the Church of England The Puritans wished to see in­stalled in every parish an earnest and spiritually minded pastor able to preach. They demanded the abolition of the clerical dress then in vogue; of kneeling at the Lord’s Supper; of the ring ceremony at weddings; and of the use of the sign of the cross at baptism. In the clerical dress then in use they saw the claim of the clergy to powers which reminded them of the power of Catholic priests. In kneeling at the Lord’s Supper they saw adoration of the physical pres­ence of Christ as taught in the Catholic doctrine of transubstan­tiation. The ring ceremony at wed­dings signified to them the claim of Catholics that marriage is a sacra­ment. The sign of the cross at bap­tism was to them a Catholic super­stition. They wished to see the Church purified of this old leaven of Catholicism.

Before long they went even further in their demands for the purification of the Church. They wished to see in each parish, elders chosen to exercise discipline. They wished to have the ministers chosen by the people, and the office of bishop abolished. All ministers, they believed, should be on an equal footing. This amounted to a de­mand for the presbyterian form of church government in place of the episcopalian. The leader of the Puritan move­ment was Thomas Cartwright. He was a theological professor in the University of Cambridge. The chief opponent of Puritanism in its early stages was John Whitgift, and through his influence Cart­wright was deprived of his pro­fessorship. Thereafter Cartwright led a wandering and persecuted life, but he continued to labor tire­lessly for the cause of Presbyterian Puritanism.

Although the Puritans objected strongly to the episcopal form of church government and to many of the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, they were strongly opposed to separation from that Church. They wished to stay in that Church and to reform it from within, molding it after the pattern of Calvin’s church in Geneva.

4. The Separatists or Congrega­tionalists Leave the Church of England The Separatists were also Puri­tans, but they were radical. They saw that the process of reforming the Episcopal Church of England from within would at best be long and tedious, if not entirely hopeless. They therefore separated themselves from the Church of England and became known as Separatists or Dissenters. In the matter of church government they believed not only that each local church or congregation is a com­plete church in itself; but also that no church should have anything to say about any other church. Be­cause they believed that all local churches should be independent of each other, they were called Con­gregationalists or Independents.

All Puritans, both those who re­mained in the Church of England and those who separated from it, were Calvinists in doctrine.

5. The Puritans Gain the Upper Hand For almost forty years after the death of Queen Elizabeth the Puri­tans were oppressed and perse­cuted. But in the "Long Parlia­ment" which met in 1640 the Pres­byterian Puritans finally found themselves in the majority. They immediately set themselves the task of "cleaning house." The two chief oppressors of the Puritans — the Earl of Strafford and Arch­bishop Laud — were brought to trial, condemned, and executed by beheading.

King Charles did not like the turn of events. He decided to seize on a charge of high treason the five members of Parliament who were the leaders of the opposition. The House of Commons refused to give them up. The queen then urged Charles to take those five members by force, saying, "Go, coward, pull those rogues out by the ears." The next day the king, attended by an armed force, went to the House of Parliament. The five members had been forewarned, and had left the House and concealed themselves in the city. The king left the soldiers at the door and entered the House alone. He looked around and saw that the five members were not there. "I see the birds have flown," he said, and left.

OLIVER CROMWELL The king now resolved to use military force to compel Parlia­ment to submit. He left London and raised the royal flag at Not­tingham. With this act he plunged England into civil war. On the side of the king were the majority of the nobles and the country gentlemen. Because of their daring horsemanship the king’s men were called Cavaliers. On the side of Parliament were the shopkeepers, small farmers, and a few men of high rank. Because the king’s Cavaliers wore long flowing locks, those opposing them wore their hair closely cropped so that it showed the shape of the head. For that reason they were, in ridi­cule, called Roundheads. The course of the war at first favored the king. One of the gentle­men farmers in the army of Parlia­ment was Oliver Cromwell. With the eye of genius he saw at a glance what was the trouble. Said he to Hampden, who was a Puritan and a member of Parliament, "A set of poor tapsters and town appren­tices cannot fight men of honor successfully."

Cromwell is one of the great characters of history. As colonel of a troop of cavalry he showed great skill and courage. His regi­ment became famous as Cromwell’s Ironsides. It was never defeated. It was composed entirely of "men of religion." They did not swear or drink. They trusted in God and kept their powder dry. They advanced to the charge singing psalms. An army of twenty-one thousand men, patterned after the Ironsides, was organized. It was called the New Model. It was a body of re­ligious enthusiasts such as the world had not seen since the days of the Crusades (ch. 19) . Most of the soldiers of this army were fervent, God-fearing, psalm-singing Puritans. When not fight­ing they studied the Bible, prayed, and sang hymns. The Cavaliers were scattered as chaff before the wind in the Battle of Naseby. The king surrendered; he was tried and found guilty as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and pub­lic enemy, and was condemned to death. On January 30, 1649, Charles I ascended the scaffold in front of the royal palace of White­hall in London, where a great mul­titude had assembled to witness the execution.

6. The Westminster Assembly Does Its Work Well

While the war was running its course, Parliament set itself the task of making changes in the Church. In 1643 it abolished the episcopal form of church govern­ment. It called an assembly of one hundred twenty-one clergymen and thirty laymen to provide a new creed and form of church govern­ment. This Westminster Assembly (so called because it met in West­minster) contained a few Episco­palians and Congregationalists, but the overwhelming majority were Presbyterian Puritans. Since the Scotch were giving aid in the war, a number of Scottish commission­ers were given a seat in the West­minster Assembly; they had no vote, but they exercised a strong influence. The Westminster Assembly turned out to be one of the history making assemblies of the Church. It prepared a Directory of Worship to replace the Episcopal Prayer Book. This order of worship is still used in orthodox Presbyterian and Congregational churches today. The Assembly drew up the confes­sion which has become famous as the Westminster Confession. It was the last of the great creeds of Prot­estantism to come out of the Refor­mation. The Assembly also pre­pared a Larger Catechism, for pul­pit exposition, and a Shorter Cate­chism, for the teaching of children. The Westminster Assembly did its work thoroughly and well. The Westminster Confession and the two Westminster Catechisms are an excellent presentation of Calvin­istic or Reformed doctrine. By 1648 Parliament had accepted these various documents—although certain modifications were made in the Westminster Confession. The Confession was also adopted by the General Assembly of Scotland. The work of reforming the Church in England in the Calvinistic sense was completed in the same year that the Thirty Years War on the continent came to an end with the Peace of Westphalia.

7. Puritan Domination Ends

After its victory at Naseby and the death of Charles I, the army was supreme. It was composed mostly of Independents. Cromwell himself was sympathetic toward Congregationalism. Parliament had decreed that the form of gov­ernment of the Church of England should be presbyterian. But due to the pressure of the army the full establishment of Presbyterianism in England was not possible.

KING CHARLES II LANDS AT DOVER
Religious News Service From 1649-1653 England was a commonwealth or republic. Then Cromwell was made Lord Protec­tor, and England had practically a military dictatorship. Under Crom­well’s rule there was a large meas­ure of religious liberty for all re­ligious bodies, especially for all Non-conformists and Dissenters. Cromwell even befriended the Quakers, who were, generally speaking, hated of all men. Since the beginning of the Civil War, however, some two thousand mem­bers of the Episcopal clergy had been deprived of their means of livelihood and had suffered great hardship.

8. The Restoration Brings Suffering to Puritans and Dissenters On September 3, 1658, Cromwell died. His son Richard could not fill his father’s shoes. The great mass of the English people were dissatisfied under the yoke of rigid Puritanism, and the son of Charles I was brought back to England and crowned king as Charles II. This return of the House of Stuart to the throne of England is known as the Restoration of 1660. The first act of the Parliament chosen after the Restoration was to proclaim a pardon to all who had fought against King Charles I in the Civil War. The only persons excepted were the members of the High Court of Justice which had sent Charles I to the block. Of these, ten were executed and nine­teen imprisoned for life. Most of the others had already fled the country, or made their escape soon after. The body of Cromwell was dug up from its grave in Westminster Abbey and hanged in chains at Ty­burn. This was at the northeast entrance to Hyde Park in London and for centuries was the chief place for the public execution of criminals. After having been thus publicly exhibited, Cromwell’s body was buried at the foot of the gal­lows, along with the moldering re­mains of highway robbers and all other kinds of criminals of the low­est sort. In May, 1662, Parliament, now strongly Anglican, passed a new Act of Uniformity. Some six hun­dred changes were made in the Di­rectory of Worship or Prayer Book, all in the direction away from Pur­itanism. The use of any form of church service other than that pre­scribed in this newly revised Pray­er Book was forbidden. Those who refused to obey were heavily pun­ished. In one single day two thou­sand Presbyterian clergymen who had refused to conform were driven from their parishes and reduced to poverty. The able-bodied among them picked up a scant living by hard labor. The old and the weak soon found rest in the grave. The Scottish Parliament vied with that of England in persecu­tion of the Dissenters. The Cove­nanters, as the Scottish Protes­tants were called, were hunted with bugles and bloodhounds over hills and dales, like so many deer. Those who gathered secretly in glens and caves to worship God were hanged and drowned without mercy.

Among the multitude who suf­fered in England for the sake of their faith was a poor tinker named John Bunyan. He had served against the king in the civil wars.

Later he was converted to Puri­tanism, and became a traveling preacher. He was arrested and convicted of having "abstained from coming to church," and was thrown into Bedford jail—a "squalid Denn." While lingering in that jail for twelve years he wrote his famous Pilgrim’s Progress.

Another Puritan, a man of high rank, excellent education, and rare gifts, was John Milton. In blind­ness, loneliness, and poverty he wrote Paradise Lost, the great Christian epic poem. As a result of persecution the Puritans now became a party out­side the Church of England. They had been a group who wished to stay in the Church of England and reform it. Now they were forced into the position which had been taken by the Separatists. They too had become Dissenters.

During his entire life Charles II swayed between unbelief and su­perstitious Catholicism, but on his death-bed in 1685 he professed the Roman Catholic faith. He was suc­ceeded by his brother James II, who was a professed and earnest Catholic. The new king’s great ob­ject was to restore England to Catholicism. This brings us to the continua­tion of the struggle between Catho­lics and Protestants.