A Book of Bachelors (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PARSON HENRY SMITH " And though he holy were and virtuous, He was to sinful men not dispitous, Ne of his speeche dangerous ne dign, But in his teaching discreet and benign." Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 517-520. rTHHE reign of Elizabeth saw the completion of the A Reformation in England, so far as the outward discipline and to a certain extent the inward doctrine of the Church were concerned. But no general measure of reform, however carefully devised, suits all of the parties affected; and the reorganization of the National Church was immediately followed by the birth, or rather the manifestation, of Puritanism. The Calvinistic Articles, the Popish Liturgy, and the Arminian clergy, as by law appointed, did not please the sterner reformers, and many eminent preachers refused to take Orders in consequence. The influence of John Calvin was paramount amongst the Protestant Churches wherever they were found; nay, even in England itself, where much of the ceremonial of the Mass was maintained, the theologians at this period were for the most part Calvinistic in tone if not in disciplinary rigidity. When, therefore, Mary of persecuting fame passed away, the refugees, who had taken shelter amidst the reformed congregations of the Continent, returned once more to their native land, where they fondly hoped that the Church would be established on a Presbyterian basis. The English exiles on the Continent, when they set about the task of forming themselves into a Church at Frankfort, out of respect for the German Protestants, who were affording them protection, used a simpler service than the one which had contented them during the brief reign of Edward VI. and at home. Fuller, whose loyalty to the Book of Common Prayer is above suspicion, has sympathetically gi...