nd. The king found that it
would be impossible to go on without supplies, and he accordingly
concluded, on the whole, to call a Parliament. He was in serious
trouble. Laud was in serious trouble too. He had been indefatigably
engaged for many years in establishing Episcopacy all over England,
and in putting down, by force of law, all disposition to dissent from
it; and in attempting to produce, throughout the realm, one uniform
system of Christian faith and worship. This was his idea of the
perfection of religious order and right. He used to make an annual
visitation to all the bishoprics in the realm; inquire into the usages
which prevailed there; put a stop, so far as he could, to all
irregularities; and confirm and establish, by the most decisive
measures, the Episcopal authority. He sent in his report to the king
of the results of his inquiries, asking the king's aid, where his own
powers were insufficient, for the more full accomplishment of his
plans. But, notwithstanding all this diligence and zeal, he found that
he met with very partial success. The irregularities, as he called
them, which he suppressed in one place, would break out in another;
the disposition to throw off the dominion of bishops was getting more
and more extensive and deeply seated; and now, the result of the
religious revolution in Scotland, and of the general excitement which
it produced in England, was to widen and extend this feeling more than
ever.

He did not, however, give up the contest, He employed an able writer
to draw up a defense of Episcopacy, as the true and scriptural form of
Church government. The book, when first prepared, was moderate in its
tone, and allowed that in some particular cases a Presbyterian mode of
government might be admissible; but Laud, in revising the book, struck
out these concessions as unnecessary and dangerous, and placed
Episcopacy in full and exclusive possession of the ground, as the
divinely instituted and only admissible form of Church government and
discipline. He caused this book to be circulated; but the attempt to
reason with the refractory, after having failed in the attempt to
coerce them, is not generally very successful. The archbishop, in his
report to the king this year of the state of things throughout his
province, represents the spirit of non-conformity to the Church of
England as getting too strong for him to control without more
efficient help from the civil power; but whether it woul