was objected to in the House of Commons on the grounds that "consciences
ought not to be forced." The same Parliament "refused to bind the clergy
to subscription to three articles on the Supremacy, the form of Church
Government, and the power of the Church to ordain rites and ceremonies,
and favoured the project of reforming the Liturgy by the omission of
superstitious practices."[19:1] In 1572, however, the appearance of
Thomas Cartwright's celebrated _Admonition to the Parliament_ stemmed
the course of religious reform, and produced a reaction of which
Elizabeth and her Primates were not slow to avail themselves. The
establishment, in 1583, of the Ecclesiastical Commission as a permanent
body, wielding the almost unlimited powers of the Crown and creating
their own tests of doctrine, put an end to the wise spirit of compromise
which had hitherto characterised Elizabeth's religious policy. The
"superstitious usages" were encouraged; subscription by the clergy of
the Three Articles, which the Parliament of 1571 had refused to enforce
by law, was exacted; and the non-conforming clergy were relentlessly
harried and persecuted: with the result that the Presbyterians within
and the Puritans without the National Church were temporarily united by
the pressure of a common persecution.

It was Cartwright's political rather than his religious views that
alarmed Elizabeth and her Ministers. As against their theory of a
State-controlled Church, he advocated a Church-controlled State. In
fact, the most arrogant and insolent pretensions of the Papacy were
surpassed by this Presbyterian divine. Of course, all his demands were
based on the authority of Scripture and the ways and customs of the
primitive Christian Church. The rule of bishops he denounced as begotten
of the devil; the absolute rule of presbyters he held to be established
by the word of God. All other forms of Church government were ruthlessly
to be suppressed, and heretics were to be punished by death. For the
ministers of the Church he claimed not only all spiritual power and
jurisdiction, the decreeing of doctrines, the ordering of ceremonies,
and so on, but also the supervision of public morals, under which every
branch of human activities was included. In short, the State, as well as
the individual, was to be placed beneath the heel of the Church. The
power of the prince, the secular power, was tolerated only so that it
might "protect and defend the councils of the