the present day, must, as applied to the Church of England, have been both new and startling in Elizabeth's reign, inasmuch as it was, if I mistake not, the first controversial work which dealt with the constitution of the Church, without specific reference to the points in dispute between the Reformed and the Roman Churches. The constant thesis of earlier works had been those differences—the consequent justification of the Reformation, and the substantial unity of the reformed communions in different countries. Here, for the first time, we have a work by a divine of the English Church, in which the Puritans are the avowed adversaries, Rome is practically left out of the account, and, by implication at least, the non-Episcopal Protestant Churches are rated as no Churches at all.[1] The work, as far as can be now judged, took its place for the moment simply as one among the many anti-Puritan polemics of the time; had it been looked on as anything more it could scarcely have failed to arouse the anger, not only of those against whom it was written, but also of the majority of the Churchmen whose cause it espoused. The two controversies—that with the Romanists on the one hand and that with the Puritans on the other—continued with varying degrees of vigour during the rest of the reign and for long years afterwards. It has been held that the adversaries in both cases were persecuted, and that both persecutions were alike blots upon the credit of the English Church. In point of fact, however, so far as they were persecuted at all—
- ↑ The latest notice of Bilson that I have found—viz. that in the Dictionary of National Biography—speaks of his writing generally as 'halting in its logic and commonplace in its proofs.' His theory of Episcopacy, though not uncommon in the present day, was far too thoroughgoing, not only for Jewell and Whitgift before him, but for Andrewes afterwards. (See Appendix, note vi.)
