Ebook King and Parliament

Now this is exactly what happened. This personal spirit led men into a new religious belief. When in the latter half of the sixteenth century the Church of England,as established bylaw in Elizabeth's day, failed to satisfy some earnest thinkers, they adopted the extreme Opinions of the continental Protestants. This new religious force was called in derision Puritanism. The men who held it wished to purify the church of all that reminded them Of a hated Popish past — Of bishops, of ceremonies and ritual, even of sacraments. Elizabeth, while relaxing wherever possible the bonds of discipline, yet refused to allow to individual consciences any depar ture from the church system she had established, either in the direction of Roman Catholicism or of the advanced Protestantism of the Continent. SO the Puritans were punished for not conforming to the national church, no less than were the Roman Catholics. Some obeyed and accepted the Prayer-book and Episcopacy; Others shook the dust of England from their feet and went abroad. Thus there were two new spirits or forces in the land which must some day become antagonistic to each other — the national and the personal Spirit. The Tudor govern ment had set itself to use the first and curb the second.