the Bishop,
"in which the Gospell, in these daies, after great darknesse, was first
renewed, and the learned men whom God sent to instruct them, I doubt not
but have been directed by the Spirite of God to retaine this liberty,
that, in external government and other outward orders; they might choose
such as they thought in wisedome and godlinesse to be most convenient
for the state of their countrey and disposition of their people. Why
then should this liberty that other countreys have used under anie
colour be wrested from us? I think it therefore great presumption and
boldnesse that some of our nation, and those, whatever they may think
of themselves, not of the greatest wisedome and skill, should take upon
them to controlle the whole realme, and to binde both prince and people
in respect of conscience to alter the present state, and tie themselves
to a certain platforme devised by some of our neighbours, which, in the
judgment of many wise and godly persons, is most unfit for the state of
a Kingdome."]

[Footnote 7: Strype's Life of Grindal, Appendix to Book II. No. xvii.]

[Footnote 8: Canon 55, of 1603.]

[Footnote 9: Joseph Hall, then dean of Worcester, and afterwards bishop
of Norwich, was one of the commissioners. In his life of himself, he
says: "My unworthiness was named for one of the assistants of that
honourable, grave, and reverend meeting." To high churchmen this
humility will seem not a little out of place.]

[Footnote 10: It was by the Act of Uniformity, passed after the
Restoration, that persons not episcopally ordained were, for the first
time, made incapable of holding benefices. No man was more zealous for
this law than Clarendon. Yet he says: "This was new; for there had been
many, and at present there were some, who possessed benefices with cure
of souls and other ecclesiastical promotions, who had never received
orders but in France or Holland; and these men must now receive new
ordination, which had been always held unlawful in the Church, or by
this act of parliament must be deprived of their livelihood which they
enjoyed in the most flourishing and peaceable time of the Church."]

[Footnote 11: Peckard's Life of Ferrar; The Arminian Nunnery, or a Brief
Description of the late erected monastical Place called the Arminian
Nunnery, at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, 1641.]

[Footnote 12: The correspondence of Wentworth seems to me fully to bear
out what I have said in the text. To transc