even in their day, were alarmed by a new kind
of political Antichrist; that "Caesarean Popery" which Stubbe
so much dreaded, and which I have here noticed, p. 358.
Luther predicted that as the pope had at times seized on the
political sword, so this "Caesarean Popery," under the pretence
of policy, would grasp the ecclesiastical crosier, to form a
_political church_. The curious reader is referred to Wolfius
_Lectionum Memorabilium et reconditarum_, vol. ii. cent. x. p.
987. Calvin, in his commentary on Amos, has also a remarkable
passage on this _political church_, animadverting on Amaziah,
the priest, who would have proved the Bethel worship
warrantable, because settled by the royal authority: "It is
the king's chapel." Amos, vii. 13. Thus Amaziah, adds Calvin,
assigns the king a double function, and maintains it is in his
power to transform religion into what shape he pleases, while
he charges Amos with disturbing the public repose, and
encroaching on the royal prerogative. Calvin zealously
reprobates the conduct of those inconsiderate persons, "who
give the civil magistrate a sovereignty in religion, and
dissolve the Church into the State." The supremacy in Church
and State, conferred on Henry VIII., was the real cause of
these alarms; but the passage of domination raged not less
fiercely in Calvin than in Henry VIII.; in the enemy of kings
than in kings themselves. Were the _forms_ of religion more
celestial from the sanguinary hands of that tyrannical
reformer than from those of the reforming tyrant? The system
of our philosopher was, to lay all the wild spirits which have
haunted us in the chimerical shapes of _nonconformity_. I have
often thought, after much observation on our Church history
since the Reformation, that _the devotional feelings_ have not
been so much concerned in this bitter opposition to the
National Church as the rage of dominion, the spirit of vanity,
the sullen pride of sectarism, and the delusions of madness.

[358] Hobbes himself tells us that "some bishops are content to hold
their authority from _the king's letters patents_; others will
needs have somewhat more they know not what of _divine
rights_, &c., _not ac