The Church, the Falling Away, and the Restoration

by J. W. Shepherd

The people of England were coming to the conclusion that Elizabeth must be queen, or civil war would result. It seemed also assumed that she would be a Protestant. Many things contributed to create such expectations. The young intellectual life of England was slowly becoming Protestant. “This was especially the case among the young ladies of the upper classes, who were becoming students learned in Latin, Greek and Italian, and at the same time devout Protestants, with a distinct leaning to what afterwards became Puritanism.” The common people had been showing their hatred of Roman Catholicism, and “images and religious persons were treated disrespectfully.” It was observed that Elizabeth “was very much wedded to the people and thinks as they do,” and that “her attitude was much more gracious to the common people than to others.” The burning of Protestants, and especially the execution of Cranmer, had stirred the indignation of the populace of London and the south countries against Romanism, and the feelings were spreading throughout the country.

The accession of Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, to the throne, gave new life to the Reformation. As soon as it was known beyond the sea, most of the exiles returned home, and those who had hid themselves in the houses of their friends began to appear; but the public religious service continued for a time the same as Mary left it—the popish priests still celebrated mass and kept their livings. None of the Protestant clergy who had been ejected in the last reign were restored; and orders were given against all innovations without public authority. The only thing Elizabeth did before the meeting of Parliament was to prevent pulpit disputes.

Elizabeth was crowned on January 15, 1559. The bishops swore fealty to the new queen, but took no part in the coronation of “one so plainly a heretic.” Her first Parliament passed a new act of supremacy in which the queen was declared to be “the only supreme governor of this realm, as well in spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal.” While not proclaimed as “Supreme Head of the Church,” all the drastic powers claimed by Henry VIII were given to her. It may even be said that the ecclesiastical jurisdiction bestowed upon her was more extensive than that given to her father, for schisms were added to the list of matters subject to the queen’s correction, and she was empowered to delegate her authority to commissioners, thus enabling her to exercise her supreme governorship in a way to be felt in every corner of the land.

The same Parliament passed the “Act of Uniformity,” which threatened all non-conformists with fines and imprisonment, and their ministers with deposition and banishment. When the provisions of the act began to be enforced, a number of the non-conformist ministers who demanded a greater purity of the church (hence the name Puritan), a simple, spiritual form of worship, a strict church discipline, and a Presbyterian form of government, organized separate congregations in connection with presbyteries, “and a considerable portion of the clergy and laity of the Established Church sympathized with them. The rupture was widened in 1592 by an act of Parliament that all who obstinately refused to attend public worship, or led others to do so, should be imprisoned and submit, or after three months be banished, and again in 1595 when the Presbyterians applied the Mosaic Sabbath laws to the Lord’s day, and when Calvin’s doctrines of predestination excited animated disputes.”

In our study of the Reformation we have found that the pretentions of Roman Catholic infallibility were replaced by a not less uncompromising and intolerant dogmatism, availing itself, like the other, of the secular power, and arrogating to itself, like the other, the assistance of the Spirit of God. The mischief from this early abandonment of the right of free inquiry is as evident as its inconsistency with the principles upon which the reformers had acted for themselves.

Hence under the Protestant banner there arose sectarian churches, professing to take the Bible alone as their rule of faith and practice, when assailing the claims of Rome, and yet binding by creeds, unknown to the Bible, all embraced within their folds; till Protestantism becomes as creed-bound as Romanism. Taking into view the larger results of this inconsistency, they bring under notice the Lutheran Church, the State churches of England and Scotland, as well as non-conformist churches which have arisen from them.

Bible interpretation by the dogmatic and mystic methods even before the death of Luther, but more intensely afterward, made the Lutheran churches a very Babeldom. Then came “Forms of Concord,” made obligatory, each one resulting in further discord. Lutherans acknowledge the head of the State as the supreme visible ruler of the Church. The supreme direction of ecclesiastical affairs is vested in the councils or boards, generally appointed by the sovereign termed “consistories,” consisting of both laymen and ministers. The Lutheran established churches are so interwoven with the State as to be usually dependent on it. They are almost destitute of discipline, and, in some places, exclude dissent. Dr. Schaff says:

The congregations remained almost as passive as the Roman Church. They have, in Europe, not even the right of electing their pastor. They are exclusively ruled by their ministers, as they are ruled by the provincial consistories, always presided over by a layman, the provincial consistory by a central consistory, and this again by the minister of worship and public instruction, who is the immediate organ of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown.

Add to this infant baptism and infant membership, and then you have the world in the Church, and a state of things, if not so bad as that of Rome, yet as completely unlike the apostolic churches, and as wide a departure from what must result from surrender to the Bible alone and submission to Christ and his apostles as it were possible to reach.

The Reformation in England was fraught with immense blessings to the world at large, the advantage of which the English people now enjoy. But in England’s so-called Protestant Church there is no trace of the three fundamental principles enunciated by the reformers: