INTRODUCTION. - 55 for the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline, it ought to be taught the people, as occasion shall serve. Some of the more zealous nonconformists about this time, published Martin Mar-Prelate, and other satirical pamphlets.+ They were designed to expose the blemishes of the established church, and the tyrannical proceedings of the bishops. They contained much truth, but were clothed in very offensive language. Many of the puritans were charged with being the authors : as, Udal, Penry, Throgmorton, arid Wigginton ; but the real authors were never known. However, to put a stop to these publications, the queen issued her royal proclamation, ,4 For calling in all schisma- tical and seditious books, as tending to introduce monstrous and dangerous innovation, with the malicious purpose of dissolving the present prelacy and established church." I The flame of contention betwixt the conformists and nonconformists, broke out this year with redoubled fury, when Dr. Bancroft, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, ventured to assert, that the order of bishops was superior to that of presbyters, by divine appointment, and that the denial of it was heresy. This new doctrine § was readily adopted by many, in favour of their high notions of epis- copal ordination, and gave new fuel to the flame of con- troversy. They who embraced the sentiments ofBancroft, considered all ministers not episcopally ordained, as irre- gularly invested with the sacred office, as inferior to the .Romish priests, and as mere laymendi In the year 1590, the persecution of the puritans still raged with unabating fury. Many ofthe best divines were prosecuted with the utmost rigour in the high commission and the star-chamber. Mr. Hubbock and Mr. Kendal, two divines in great repute at Oxford, were cited before Fuller's Church Hist. b. ix. p. 194. The bishops having cried out loudly against Marlin Mar-Prelate, it was prohibited that no person should presume to carry it about him, upon pain of punishment. This the queen declared in the presence of the Earl of Leicester, who, pulling the book out of his pocket, and shelving it the queen, said, " what then will become of me ?" But it does not appear that any thing was done. -Selection Harleim Miscel. p. 157. Edit. 1793. I Sparrow's Collet. p. 173. The first English reformers admitted only two orders of church-offieers, bishops and deacons, to be of divine appointment. They accounted a .bishop and a presbyter to be only two names for the same office. But Bancroft, in his sermon at Paul's Cross, January 12, 1588, maintained, that the bishops of Englandwere a distinct order from priests, and pos- sessed a suporiority over them, jure divino. Mr. Strype thinks that Bancroft published this new doctrine under the instructions of Whitgift.-Strype's Whitgift, p. 292. lj Mosheim's Ecel, Hist. vol. iv. p. 39$.
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