were headed by Lancelot Andrewes and William Laud. We saw last time that Calvinism was the phase of religious thought which the Puritans chiefly expounded, and their desire was to model the Church of England in accordance with the Calvinistic method of Church government as seen at Geneva. Now a party existed in the Church to oppose this teaching throughout both James' and Charles' reigns. Its object was, as expressed by Mr. Lane, [1]"To resist the advance of Calvinistic principles, as seen in Presbyterianism, by an appeal to history, reason, and Scripture; so as to demonstrate that episcopacy is a divinely ordered form of Church government, that the Church of England in her organization, discipline, ceremonial, doctrine, and liturgy could claim relationship to the Apostolic Church by an unbroken lineage; and that her reforms and repudiation of papal control did not put her out of harmony with other national branches of the Holy Catholic Church." This party continually dwelt upon the fact that the Church of England is an Apostolic Church; that its teaching was Catholic and not Protestant of the type of the Protestant teaching of the Continent which the Puritans in England represented; and that the Church had Sacraments committed to its charge which it was the duty of its ministers to see observed and preserved. The object of this party, in fact, was the very same as that of the Tractarian Movement at Oxford in 1833, which we shall consider in our next Lecture. Men belonging to this party strove hard to teach Churchmen of those restless days that it was their duty to be faithful to their Prayer Book in all its detail. They stood up for episcopacy
- ↑ Lane, Notes on Church History, p.120.
