[154] Fuller's Church History, iii. 415.
[155] Laud's Works, iii. 241.
[156] The following letter (without signature) illustrates this point: "A new Committee for Religion was appointed to have sat on Monday in the afternoon last, but there being neither meeting nor adjournment, it was left sine die: yet, on Thursday in the afternoon, the Bishops of Lincoln, Durham, Winchester, and Bristol met, where the assistants, attended by some threescore other divines of inferior rank, were present, and many temporal Lords; and many points of doctrine and Church service being questioned, among the rest one Lord said, that it ought to be put out of the creed 'that Christ descended into Hell,' which he did not believe. Yesterday in the forenoon, without any intimation or notice given to the other committees, the same spiritual Lords and divines met at the Bishop of Lincoln's lodging, where, in less than two hours, they condemned, (as I am informed by the Bishop of Bristol, present), about fifty points in doctrine, what they had met with in several treatises and sermons of late printed amongst us. They had culled out a passage of my Lord of Canterbury in his Star Chamber speech, which they say is, that Hoc est corpus meum, is more than Hoc est verbum meum: which the Bishop of Lincoln censured, for that verbum did make corpus; but would not further hear, because his grace was likely to answer it shortly elsewhere."—April 10, 1641. State Papers, Chas. I. Dom.
[157] I say almost, because the practice of sitting, while singing hymns, which was common in Nonconforming places of worship when I was young, may still linger in some quarters.
[158] The following query appears respecting marriage:—
"Whether none hereafter shall have licences to marry, nor be asked their banns of matrimony, that shall not bring with them a certificate from their Minister that they are instructed in their Catechism."
[159] The specified alterations are: "I give thee power over my body;" "knowing assuredly that the dead shall rise again;" and "I pronounce thee absolved;" instead of the well-known forms so often objected to.
I have gone fully into an account of what was proposed to this Committee, not only because it may have a particular interest for those who are active in promoting a revision of the Prayer Book, but because there are such diversified statements in relation to the subject in our historians. Compare Fuller, Collier, and Neal. Neal presents his condensation of the papers with inverted commas, as if placing before the reader the original documents. (In other cases, too, he gives his own abridgment in this fashion, so as to mislead the student.) An entire copy of the proceedings of the Committee may be found in Cardwell's Conferences, p. 270, taken from Baxter's Life and Times, Part i. 369.
[160] Neal, ii. 465.
[161] See Journals for March 9th, 10th, 11th, and 22nd. May says, "Doctors and parsons of parishes were made everywhere Justices of Peace, to the great grievance of the country, in civil affairs, and depriving them of their spiritual edification."—Hist. of Long Parliament, 24.