VII. DEVELOPEMENT OF THE PURITAN POSITION. (a) Things indifferent not to be enforced Holy Scripture (c) An entirely novel system VIII. THE BOOK OF DISCIPLINE G 2 125 125 126 XII. THE SAVOY CONFERENCE Its primary principles The Exceptions of the Ministers LECTURE III. PURITANISM. No greater mistake could be made than to think that the work of the Reformation was complete when Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558; or when, in 1570, the bull of Pope Pius V was issued, by which he broke off communion with the English Church, and declared Elizabeth deposed, summoning all who were faithful to him to withdraw from her allegiance. Had the Reformation consisted in nothing but pulling down, it would have been a bad day for us. All that had been done hitherto might have resulted in little but the loosening of obligations and the shattering of ideals. It is always easier to pull down than to build. up, to uproot than to plant; and whilst all that is least spiritual finds satisfaction in the former process, the latter must be achieved, if at all, in spite of the tendencies to destructiveness in our nature. I have not attempted to overlook, nor ought we to disguise from ourselves, the fact that many of the forces which combined to "break the bonds of Rome and set us free" were entirely or in part destructive. There were men who appear to have thought that the best way to get at the spirit of religion was to destroy its body, and that the true idea of worship could not be liberated until its form was annihilated. So far they had been, comparatively speaking, unimportant, because all the forces of English religious life had been more or less united in order to abolish what everybody allowed to be an abuse. Now, however, there was to be a trial of strength between the party of order and the parties of upheaval. I say parties of upheaval, because we ought to discern two entirely distinct sections. There was, first, a party which recognized the Church as part of God's enduring order in the world, but desired to purify and to amend it in certain directions, because its constitution and character seemed to them to be, in one way or another, perverted and wrong. And secondly, there were those who conceived that the Church, as they saw it, was nothing but a worldly society, or indeed a synagogue of Satan. Their idea, accordingly, was to "come out of her," to start entirely afresh upon clear |