Church, and raised their own Presbyterian discipline upon its ruins, retained the arguments of their forerunners the nonconformists in favour of unity; though they had so entirely forsaken their practice, and accomplished that work of destruction, which they would have prevented. If they may be allowed to declare the ground of their own hostility to the Church, and the principles by which they were guided in compassing its ruin; it will not be difficult to prove, out of their own writings, that ground to be untenable, and those principles erroneous. They were bold and intrepid advocates for Christian liberty and the right of private judgment; as long as the authority of the Church remained to set due bounds to that liberty, and to prevent the judgment of individuals from disturbing the peace and good order of the whole body. But no sooner had they succeeded in overturning this salutary power, and establishing their own supremacy in its place, than these unwearied upholders

q See Note CXIX. Appendix.

of liberty of conscience were at once rimpressed with a very strong sense of the evils of schism; they clearly saw the necessity of maintaining ecclesiastical discipline, and the duty of submission to pastors and teachers.

s

To her enemies then the Church of England may safely appeal for proof, that she is not the author of those offences which have been laid to her charge. They will declare, that she has preserved inviolate the faith committed to her trust; that neither does her form of government, nor the ceremonial she has appointed, nor the liturgy she has enjoined, contain in it that which cannot be maintained without sin. The expediency of many of her forms, and much of her practice, they were indeed strenuous in denying: they upheld their own newly devised model of presbyterial discipline, as more nearly conformed to primitive practice; they extolled their own modes of worship as more scriptural, their extemporaneous prayers as I See Note CXX. Appendix. • See Note CXXI. Appendix.

more edifying; and they scrupled not, in, the heat of an ungoverned zeal, to vilify and defame those who checked their irregularities, and prevented their innovations: but further than this they were not prepared to go and as they have left upon record in their writings the sinfulness of that disunion, which by their conduct they promoted; so have their descendants, who reduced to practice those principles of separation which they had taught them, no less forcibly defended the necessity and lawfulness of spiritual authority; no less convincingly proved the mischiefs and the guilt of schism.

The Church of England however, though in her adversity she sank under the efforts of her rebellious children, could not be tempted in her returning prosperity to: imitate the intolerance, with which they had exercised their temporary power.

Fully determined to keep that committed to her trust, she neither bartered truth for safety in the hour of peril, nor lost sight of Christian moderation in maintaining that truth in the day of her exaltation.

It was her earnest desire to live peaceably; but she knew that her first duty was to preserve her purity: and while her anxiety not to put a stumbling block in the way of her members, induced her cautiously to refrain from unnecessarily straitening the terms of her communion; she was not to be tempted, by any visionary schemes of unattainable unity, to sacrifice the sacred deposit, of which she was the appointed guardian. She well knew that in the present state of the world, "it must needs "be that offences come;" and that the guilt would rest on those who were their authors it was her care therefore neither to cause nor to perpetuate them by unwarrantable stiffness, or unscriptural propositions. And it will not be difficult to shew, that her constant love of peace, and her unwearied efforts to obtain and restore it, as fully vindicate her from the charge of throwing obstacles in the way of reconciliation; as her very enemies, by their own confession, exculpate her from having driven them to the necessity of revolting from her government.

II. The efforts of the Church of England to promote unity were coeval with her own Reformation. As soon as Cranmer was able to turn his thoughts from the pressing necessities of his own spiritual charge, to the general state of the Protestant cause, he made 'overtures to the principal foreign Reformers on this interesting subject. It was his wish to unite all the Protestant establishments both in doctrine and discipline; and had circumstances permitted the accomplishment of his views, the Church would have been brought to a nearer resemblance to the primitive model, than had ever been contemplated by the other Reformers. His labours at home prove what would have been the result of his success and when we consider the mischiefs and the miseries which an agreement in fundamental points of doctrine, and the adoption of an uniform plan of ecclesiastical government would then have prevented; we cannot sufficiently lament,

25.

t See Strype's Cranmer, b. ii. c. 15. b. iii. c. 24,