to punish the contemners of them." Nor was
this work of the civil power likely to be a light work. The spirit of
Calvinistic Presbyterianism excluded all toleration of practice or
belief. Not only was the rule of ministers to be established as the one
legal form of Church government, but all other forms, Episcopalian and
Separatist, were to be ruthlessly put down. For heresy there was the
punishment of death. Never had the doctrine of persecution been urged
with such a blind and reckless ferocity. "I deny," wrote Cartwright,
"that upon repentance there ought to follow any pardon of death....
Heretics ought to be put to death now. If this be bloody and extreme, I
am content to be so counted with the Holy Ghost." The violence of
language such as this was as unlikely as the dogmatism of his
theological teaching to commend Cartwright's opinions to the mass of
Englishmen. Popular as the Presbyterian system became in Scotland, it
never took any popular hold on England. It remained to the last a
clerical rather than a national creed, and even in the moment of its
seeming triumph under the Commonwealth it was rejected by every part of
England save London and Lancashire. But the bold challenge which
Cartwright's party delivered to the Government in 1572 in an "admonition
to the Parliament," which denounced the government of bishops as
contrary to the word of God and demanded the establishment in its place
of government by Presbyters, raised a panic among English statesmen and
prelates which cut off all hopes of a quiet treatment of the merely
ceremonial questions which really troubled the consciences of the more
advanced Protestants. The natural progress of opinion abruptly ceased,
and the moderate thinkers who had pressed for a change in ritual which
would have satisfied the zeal of the reformers withdrew from union with
a party which revived the worst pretensions of the Papacy.

[Sidenote: Revolt of the Netherlands.]

But the eyes of Elizabeth as of her subjects were drawn from
difficulties at home to the conflict which took fresh fire oversea. In
Europe, as in England, the tide of religious passion which had so long
been held in check was now breaking over the banks which restrained it;
and with this outbreak of forces before which the diplomacy and
intrigues of its statesmen fell powerless the political face of Europe
was changed. In 1572 the power of the king of Spain had reached its
height. The Netherlands were at his fee