erian should abridge his
heaven-born prerogative. The doctrine of Papal superiority to temporal
sovereigns was as odious to him as Puritan rebellion to the hierarchy of
which he was the chief. Moreover, in his hostility to both Papists and
Presbyterians, there was much of professional rivalry. Having been
deprived by the accident of birth of his true position as theological
professor, he lost no opportunity of turning his throne into a pulpit and
his sceptre into a controversial pen.

Henry of France, who rarely concealed his contempt for Master Jacques, as
he called him, said to the English ambassador, on receiving from him one
of the King's books, and being asked what he thought of it--"It is not
the business of us kings to write, but to fight. Everybody should mind
his own business, but it is the vice of most men to wish to appear
learned in matters of which they are ignorant."

The flatterers of James found their account in pandering to his
sacerdotal and royal vanity. "I have always believed," said the Lord
Chancellor, after hearing the King argue with and browbeat a Presbyterian
deputation, "that the high-priesthood and royalty ought to be united, but
I never witnessed the actual junction till now, after hearing the learned
discourse of your Majesty." Archbishop Whitgift, grovelling still lower,
declared his conviction that James, in the observations he had deigned to
make, had been directly inspired by the Holy Ghost.

Nothing could be more illogical and incoherent with each other than his
theological and political opinions. He imagined himself a defender of the
Protestant faith, while hating Holland and fawning on the House of
Austria.

In England he favoured Arminianism, because the Anglican Church
recognized for its head the temporal chief of the State. In Holland he
vehemently denounced the Arminians, indecently persecuting their
preachers and statesmen, who were contending for exactly the same
principle--the supremacy of State over Church. He sentenced Bartholomew
Legate to be burned alive in Smithfield as a blasphemous heretic, and did
his best to compel the States of Holland to take the life of Professor
Vorstius of Leyden. He persecuted the Presbyterians in England as
furiously as he defended them in Holland. He drove Bradford and Carver
into the New England wilderness, and applauded Gomarus and Walaeus and
the other famous leaders of the Presbyterian party in the Netherlands
with all his soul and str