but had not
declared that form of church government to be of divine institution. We
have already seen how low an estimate Cranmer had formed of the office
of a Bishop. In the reign of Elizabeth, Jewel, Cooper, Whitgift, and
other eminent doctors defended prelacy, as innocent, as useful, as what
the state might lawfully establish, as what, when established by the
state, was entitled to the respect of every citizen. But they never
denied that a Christian community without a Bishop might be a pure
Church. [6] On the contrary, they regarded the Protestants of the
Continent as of the same household of faith with themselves. Englishmen
in England were indeed bound to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop,
as they were bound to acknowledge the authority of the Sheriff and of
the Coroner: but the obligation was purely local. An English churchman,
nay even an English prelate, if he went to Holland, conformed without
scruple to the established religion of Holland. Abroad the ambassadors
of Elizabeth and James went in state to the very worship which Elizabeth
and James persecuted at home, and carefully abstained from decorating
their private chapels after the Anglican fashion, lest scandal should
be given to weaker brethren. An instrument is still extant by which the
Primate of all England, in the year 1582, authorised a Scotch minister,
ordained, according to the laudable forms of the Scotch Church, by the
Synod of East Lothian, to preach and administer the sacraments in
any part of the province of Canterbury. [7] In the year 1603, the
Convocation solemnly recognised the Church of Scotland, a Church in
which episcopal control and episcopal ordination were then unknown, as a
branch of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ. [8] It was even held that
Presbyterian ministers were entitled to place and voice in oecumenical
councils. When the States General of the United Provinces convoked at
Dort a synod of doctors not episcopally ordained, an English Bishop and
an English Dean, commissioned by the head of the English Church, sate
with those doctors, preached to them, and voted with them on the gravest
questions of theology. [9] Nay, many English benefices were held by
divines who had been admitted to the ministry in the Calvinistic form
used on the Continent; nor was reordination by a Bishop in such cases
then thought necessary, or even lawful. [10]

But a new race of divines was already rising in the Church of England.
In their view t