[16th Cent. On the other hand, the Puritan party, it must be confessed, were not less pertinacious, and indisposed to concession. In one of their addresses to parliament *, we find them praying, that all cathedral churches may be pulled down, where the service of God is grievously abused by the piping of organs, singing, ringing, and howling of psalms from one side of the choir to the other, with the squeaking of chaunting choristers, disguised, as all the rest, in filthy surplices; some in corner-caps and filthy copes, imitating the fashion of Antichrist the Pope, that man of sin and child of perdition, with his other rabble of miscreants and shavelings" they state that these unprofitable drones, or, rather, caterpillars of the world, consume yearly 2500, or 3000l.; and that the cathedrals are the dens of loitering lubbards, the harbours of time-serving hypocrites, &c." When Walsingham, who was himself a moderate nonconformist, proposed a compromise to his party, promising to obtain a dispensation from what they termed the three shocking ceremonies; namely, kneeling at the communion, the cross in baptism, and the use of the hated surplice; they answered in the words of Moses (Exod. x. 26), "There shall not an hoof be left behind;" signifying that their minor objections to the Liturgy, in other rubrics, were still insurmountable, and not on any account to be laid aside.

* Neale, vol. i.

Every church, it may be observed, in reviewing their differences, is at liberty to appoint its own ceremonies; Scripture containing no express ordinance on this head, further than that "all things should be done unto edifying." (Rom. xiv. 19.) Wherever this caution is not observed, the liberty is unquestionably abused: and therefore it is abused by such Christian professors, as employ gaudy, unmeaning, or multiplied ceremonies; these tending to draw off our attention from that pure and spiritual worship, which consists of the homage of the heart, and the regulation of the conduct. If man were a pure intelligence, no ceremonies whatever would be either requisite or proper; but when we reflect that he is composed of body and soul, and that a great part of his knowledge comes through the medium of his senses, we cannot but allow that some accommodation to this compound condition of his nature is advisable, in prescribing a form for the direction of his public devotions. His attention must be fixed and his affections engaged, on the side of religion, by the solemn music, the "dim religious light," and the modest decorations of a church; to which ought to be conformed the grave and decent yestments of those who minister in holy things, That church, then, moves in the precise line of reason, betwixt the total exclusion of ceremonies, and an extravagant use of them, which prescribes such as shall lead attention to God, but not arrest

it on themselves; such as shall appear to be a means for raising the soul to the better performance of worship and duty, without occupying so large a place in the eye, as to be in danger of being regarded as that performance of worship and duty, itself. And of this description are the ceremonies of the church of England; not wholly regardless of chaste and modest ornaments, which may render religion more alluring, yet less magnificent than Jewish pomp, and stopping far short of the raree-show of popery. But if all ornaments of every kind be sinful, why should the Puritans wear a gown and a band?

XIX. The objections of the Puritans relative to church-discipline, were ably combated by the great Hooker, who flourished about the end of the sixteenth century. He was born at Heavy-tree, near Exeter, A. D. 1554, and being patronized by Bishop Jewell, was admitted, in 1567, as a Bible clerk in Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Sandys sent his son to Oxford, for the express purpose of being pupil to Hooker; who, he said, will teach the youth learning by instruction, and virtue by example, Happening to come wet and weary from Oxford, for the purpose of preaching at Paul's Cross in London, he in an evil hour entered a tavern in that neighbourhood, called the Shunamite's House, where the hostess, having gained his favour by her attention, persuaded him to marry the young Shunamite, her daughter Joan, who, unfortunately, proved a silly woman, and a

shrew. It was in compassion for the miseries he endured from this vixen, that Whitgift appointed him master of the Temple. Here he laid the plan of his great work; but the noise and distraction of the situation being unfavourable to study, he solicited his patron the archbishop to remove him; and accordingly obtained the living of Boscomb, in Wiltshire, and afterwards that of Bishop Bourne, in Kent, in which happy quietudes he finished his undertaking, A. D. 1600,

"In the Ecclesiastical Polity the following principles are laid down: 1. The Scripture, though the only standard and law of doctrine, is not a rule for discipline. 2. The practice of the Apostles, as they acted according to circumstances, is not an invariable rule for the church, 8. Many things are left indifferent, and may be done without sin, although not expressly directed in Scripture. 4. The church, like other societies, may make laws for her own government, provided they interfere not with Scripture. 5. Human authority may interpose where the Scripture is silent. 6. Hence the church may appoint ceremonies within the limits of the Scriptures. 7. All born within the district of an established church ought to submit to it: the church is their mother, and hath a maternal power over them. 8. The laws of the church not being moral, are mutable, and may be changed according to the will of its directors *." Neale, vol. i,

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Hooker's chief disquietude, while master of the Temple, was occasioned by his controversy with Travers, the afternoon lecturer, and chaplain to Secretary Cecil. While Hooker maintained in the early part of the day, that the church of Rome, though not a pure and perfect, was nevertheless a true church, and that persons who lived and died in it might be saved, if they first seriously repented of their sins of ignorance; it was affirmed by Travers, who justified his opposition by the example of St. Paul's reproof of Peter, that the church of Rome was no church at all, and that such as lived and died in its communion, could not be scripturally pronounced saved, as they held justification to be in part by works *. The field of this controversy was unfavourable to Hooker: his sermons were controversial and tedious; he strewed no flowers along the path of instruction; his style, though majestic, was hard and perplexed, a crowd of clauses being heaped up in each sentence, before it was brought to a close. Neither was he formed for the pulpit in point of delivery; he was of low stature, and weak in voice; he preserved in preaching, says one of his biographers, who seeks in vain to draw a compliment out of his imperfections, an immoveable fixedness, the emblem of his nind; and “al

* Thus, according to the writer of Hooker's life, the morning sermon spoke the language of Canterbury, the latter that of Geneva.