shalt be lawfully appointed thereunto." The form of subscription was to be modified so as to be an approval of "the doctrines, worship, and government established in the Church of England, as containing all things necessary to salvation," and a promise not to bring in "any doctrine contrary to that which is so established," or to disturb the peace of the Church. Kneeling at the Eucharist and the use of the cross in Baptism, with bowing at the name of Jesus, were to be left indifferent, or taken away. In a case of a review of the Liturgy and Canons" for the satisfaction of dissenters,” the liturgy thus altered should be read in public by every one admitted to preach and his assent to the lawfulness of its use and his conformity to its requirements exacted. The Baptismal Service was to be so changed as not to assert the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. The Confirmation office was to be altered so as not to imply any special gift of grace as resulting from the laying on of hands. The Burial Service was no longer to express "a sure and certain hope" for the departed. The responsal prayers were to be omitted. The Pater Noster and Gloria Patri and the prayer "Lord have mercy upon us" were to be used but once at a single service. The Communion office was to be wholly omitted when there was no celebration. The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels were to be confined to certain holydays. The

Commination, the Visitation office, the Apocryphal Lessons, the Old Version of the Psalms, and the hymns in the Ordinal were to be omitted. Changes were to be made in the Catechism. Protestants were to have liberty for public worship in houses built by themselves. The names of such teachers and such congregations were to be registered. Legal penalties were to be removed; fines and parish duties under certain circumstances were retained. Providentially this scheme, in behalf of which the energies of the great Sir Matthew Hale were for a time enlisted, was defeated in the House of Commons. The failure of this proposed comprehension was followed by new vigor in the enforcement of the penal laws. The Non-conformists were now assailed in print by argument and abuse; and in 1670 the second Conventicle Act was passed, which, though enforcing milder penalties, was more harassing and vexatious than the Act which it superseded. Two years later the king issued his "Declaration of Indulgence" dated March 15th, 1672. This Declaration recognized the ascendency of the Church, and exacted conformity from all its ministers. It suspended all the penal laws against all sorts of dissentients from the Church, granting full permission for the public meetings of all Protestant Dissenters, and for the Romish worship in private houses as well. Tol

eration was now offered at the cost of abandon ing the rightful supremacy of Parliament. The Presbyterians, by their leading divine, Dr. Manton, thanked the king. Dr. Owen, in behalf of the Independents, addressed the throne in language comparing the dissolute Charles II. to the King of heaven, since by "his power, wisdom and goodness he relieved the minds of his peaceable subjects from fear, distress, and distracting anxieties." The House of Commons, however, could not be cajoled nor deceived. Aware of the intrigues of the Court with Louis XIV. of France to destroy and divide Holland and to bring in again the Romish religion in England, the members of the Lower House, especially those from the country, sturdily opposed the insidious act of the king. After an interchange of protests and remonstrances, the king again yielded. A Test Act making it impossible for a Romanist to hold office was agreed to, and the Non-conformists were again left to the operation of the penal laws. An effort for their relief, originated in the Commons, was lost by some misunderstanding with the Lords; and schemes for their comprehension again proved futile. It must be remembered that in all these measures of severity against those who refused conformity, the Parliament was the originator, and zealous enforcer, of these harsh enactments. They were stated and defined by

statute law. The voice of public opinion supported them, and the great body of the nation. believed in their necessity.* "It is the natural consequence of restrictive laws," says the philosophical Hallam, "to aggravate the disaffection which has served as their pretext, and thus to create a necessity for a legislature that will not retrace its steps to pass still onward in the course of severity." +

It was in consequence of the return of the Church and the nation to the Catholic principles of the Anglican Reformation that the final separation of the Puritan element of the establishment, first as Non-conformists and at length as Presbyterian dissenters, took place. Those who refused to accept the terms proposed in the Act of Uniformity and thus declined to conform to the laws and rule of the Church for a time maintained a position of non-conformity in the Church. The eight hundred or more ministers who vacated their livings on St. Bartholomew's day were less than one-tenth of the clergy of the land. Some of these established separate congregations of Presbyterians, or Independents, or of some other of the sects growing out of the Puritan moveSome possessed means of their own and

ment.

* Vide Canon Perry's History of the Church of England, ii., 410, 411.

+ Const. Hist., ii., 49.

lived in retirement on their private fortunes. Some returned to the avocations they had ere intruding themselves into the Church's pulpits, while a considerable number, either wholly or in part laying aside the ministerial character, continued in lay communion with the Church. In the interval between the passage of the Act of Uniformity and the beginning of the eighteenth century, the greater part of the Non-conformists who were not in sympathy with the principle of the Independents or Anabaptists became Presbyterian separatists. The intermediate position at first assumed between communion with the Church and occasional conformity and open and avowed separation could not be long maintained.

They soon ceased to be what they had been at the first, "The Reformist Faction in the Church of England," a title applied to them by the early Separatists, when they not only gathered congregations but instituted and ordained a new ministry distinctively Presbyterian. "Ordination was separation," as Lord Mansfield at a later day told Charles Wesley. But it was not till twelve years after the restoration of the Episcopate, and ten years after the passage of the Act of Uniformity, that a public Presbyterian Ordination. took place in England. As the first ideal of the Puritan party was a reformation of the existing Church and not a withdrawal from that Church,