apparently a Catholic exile, to Burleigh, in which he defends his own position, and speaks of the Catholic Church as 'a surer pillar to lean unto than the changeable, confused doctrine of contrary teachers; yea, or any Act of Parliament which has not long used to judge causes of faith, or prescribe ecclesiastical laws:' showing how the Catholics at that day, as ever since, looked upon the Anglican Church as the creation of Parliament—i.e., of the State.
Again, we have some notes by Lord Burleigh,[1] in which he speaks of 'the sacrifice of the Mass as a thing to be rooted out of the Church as altogether evil,' with answers thereto arguing that it should be tolerated in those who think the Mass to be the service of God, as Christ kept company with Pharisees, and meat offered to idols was not forbidden to be eaten.
Bishop Cooper in his 'Admonition,'[2] answering one of the Martin Marprelate libels, and in particular a charge of committing simony like the Pope, says that 'there ought to be great difference between Christian preachers and writers inveighing against Antichrist and his members, and ministers of the Gospel and zealous professors blaming and reproving the faults of their own bishop and clergy, in the estate of a Church by authority settled. The one part is handled with an earnest zeal and detestation of the obstinate patrons of error and idolatry; the other should be moved only with a charitable sorrow and grief to see preachers of the truth not to declare in life that which they utter to other in doctrine.'
The Bishops, in answering Barrow's (the Puritan's) demand for a conference, say: 'It is no reason that all the Reformed Churches in Europe (acknowledging our Church of England for a sister), the same should be now brought into question at the will and request of a few sectaries.'[3]
Whitgift also, in a letter to Beza,[4] when in the act of remonstrating with him for his interference in favour of the Puritans, says: 'If the labour of some had been employed, not against their brethren that professed one and the same substance of true doctrine, but to the throwing down and beating back the kingdom of the common enemy, the Roman antichrist, it would now have fared better and happier, in his judgment, with the Church of Christ'; and this letter he addresses: 'Ornatissimo atque eruditissimo viro, D. Theodoro Bezæ, fratri et symmistæ suo in Christo charissimo, &c.
