which can do most. Injuriæ potentiorum sunt (injuries come from them that have the upper hand). The wrongs of them which are possessed of the government of the Church towards the other, may hardly be dissembled or excused. They have charged them as though "they denied tribute to Cæsar," and withdrew from the civil magistrate their obedience which they have ever performed and taught. They have ever sorted and coupled them with the family of those whose heresies they have laboured to descry and confute. They have been swift of credit to receive accusations against them from those that have quarrelled with them but for speaking against sin and vice. Their examinations and inquisitions have been strait. Swearing men to blanks and generalities (not included within a compass of matter certain, which the party that is to take the oath may comprehend) is a thing captious and strainable. Their urging of subscription to their own articles is but lacessere et irritare morbos ecclesiæ, which otherwise would spend and exercise themselves. Non consensum quærit sed dissidium, qui quod factis præstatur in verbis exigit (he seeketh not unity, but division, which exacteth in words that which men are content to yield in action). And it is true, there are some which (as I am persuaded) will not easily offend by inconformity, who notwithstanding make some conscience to subscribe. For they know this note of inconstancy and defection from that which they have long held shall disable them to do that good which otherwise they would do: for such is the weakness of many that their ministry should be thereby discredited. As for their easy silencing of them, in such great scarcity of preachers, it is to punish the people, and not them. Ought they not (I mean the bishops) to keep one eye open to look upon the good that these men do, but to fix them both upon the hurt that they suppose cometh by them? Indeed, such as are intemperate and incorrigible, God forbid they should be permitted to teach. But shall every inconsiderate word, sometimes captiously watched, and for the most part hardly enforced, be a forfeiture of their voice and gift of teaching? As for sundry particular molestations, I take no pleasure to recite them. If a minister shall be troubled for saying in baptism, "Do you believe?" for, "Dost thou believe?" If another shall be called in question for praying for her Majesty without the addition of her style; whereas the very form of prayer in the Book of Common Prayer hath "Thy servant Elizabeth," and no more: if a third shall be accused, upon these words uttered touching the controversies, tollatur lex et fiat certamen (whereby was meant that the prejudice of the law removed, either's reasons should be equally compared) of calling the people to sedition and mutiny, as if he had said, “Away with the law, and try it out by force:" if these and sundry other like particulars be true, which I have but by rumour, and cannot affirm; it is to be lamented that they should labour amongst us with so little comfort. I know "restrained governments are better than remiss;" and I am of his mind that said, " Better is it to live where nothing is lawful, than where all things are lawful.” I dislike that laws be contemned, or disturbers be unpunished. But laws are likened to the grape, that being too much pressed yields an hard and unwhole me wine. Of these things I must say, Ira viri non operatur justitiam Dei (the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God). As for the injuries of the other part, they be ictus inermium; as it were headless arrows; they are fiery and eager invectives, and in some fond men uncivil and unreveren behaviour towards their persons. This last invention also, which exposeth them to derision and obloquy by libels, chargeth not (as I am persuaded) the whole side: neither doth that other, which is yet more odious, practised by the worst sort of them, which is, to call in as it were to their aids certain mercenary bands, which impugn bishops and other ecclesiastical dignities, to have the spoil of their endowments and livings. Of this I cannot speak too hardly. It is an intelligence between incendiaries and robbers-the one to fire the house, the other to rifle it. And thus much touching the third point. 4. The fourth point wholly pertaineth to them which impugn the present ecclesiastical government; who, although they have not cut themselves off from the body and communion of the Church, yet do they affect certain cognizances and differences, wherein they seek to correspond amongst themselves, and to be separated from others. And it is truly said, tam sunt mores quidam schismatici, quam dogmata schismatica (there be as well schismatical fashions as opinions). First, they have impropered to themselves the names of zealous, sincere, and reformed; as if all others were cold, minglers of holy things and profane, and friends of abuses. Yea, be a man endued with great virtues and fruitful in good works, yet if he concur not with them, they term him in derogation a civil and moral man, and compare him to Socrates or some heathen philosopher: whereas the wisdom of the Scriptures teacheth us contrariwise to judge and denominate men religious according to their works of the second table; because they of the first are often counterfeited and practised in hypocrisy. So St. John saith, that “a man doth vainly boast of loving God whom he hath not seen, if he love not his brother whom he hath seen." And St. James saith, "This is true religion, to visit the fatherless and the widow," &c. So as that which is with them but philosophical and moral, is, in the phrase of the Apostle, true religion and Christianity. As in affection they challenge the said virtues of zeal and the rest, so in knowledge they attribute unto themselves light and perfection. They say, the Church of England in King Edward's time, and in the beginning of her Majesty's reign, was but in the cradle; and the bishops in those times did somewhat for daybreak, but that maturity and fulness of light proceeded from themselves. So Sabinus, Bishop of Heraclea, a Macedonian, said that the fathers in the Council of Nice were but infants and ignorant men; and that the Church was not so to persist in their decrees as to refuse that further ripeness of knowledge which the time had revealed. And as they censure virtuous men by the names of civil and moral, so do they censure men truly and godly wise who see into the vanity of their assertions by the name of politiques; saying that their wisdom is but carnal and savouring of man's brain. So likewise if a preacher preach with care and meditation (I speak not of the vain scholastical manner of preaching, but soundly indeed, ordering the matter he handleth distinctly for memory, deducing and drawing it down for direction, and authorising it with strong proofs and warrants), they censure it as a form of speaking not becoming the simplicity of the Gospel, and refer it to the reprehension of St. Paul, speaking of the enticing speech of man's wisdom. Now for their own manner of teaching, what is it? Surely they exhort well, and work compunction of mind, and bring men well to the question, Viri, fratres, quid agemus? But that is not enough, except they resolve that question. They handle matters of controversy weakly and obiter, and as before a people that will accept of anything. In doctrine of manners there is little but generality and repetition. The Word (the "bread of life") they toss up and down, they break it not. They draw not their directions down ad casus "Men, brethren, what shall we do?" conscientiæ; that a man may be warranted in his particular actions whether they be lawful or not. Neither indeed are many of them able to do it, what through want of grounded knowledge, what through want of study and time. It is an easy and compendious thing to call for the observation of the Sabbath-day, or to speak against unlawful gain; but what actions and works may be done upon the Sabbath, and in what cases; and what courses of gain are lawful, and what not; to set this down, and to clear the whole matter with good distinctions and decisions, is a matter of great knowledge and labour, and asketh much meditation and conversation in the Scriptures, and other helps which God hath provided and preserved for instruction. Again, they carry not an equal hand in teaching the people their lawful liberty, as well as their restraints and prohibitions: but they think a man cannot go too far in that that hath a show of a commandment. They forget that there are "sins on the right hand, as well as on the left;" and that "the word is doubleedged," and cutteth on both sides, as well the superstitious observances as the profane transgressions. Who doubteth but it is as unlawful to shut where God hath opened, as to open where God hath shut? to bind where God hath loosed, as to loose where God hath bound? Amongst men it is commonly as ill taken to turn back favours as to disobey commandments. In this kind of zeal (for example), they have pronounced generally, and without difference, all untruths unlawful; notwithstanding that the midwives are directly reported to have been blessed for their excuse; and Rahab is said "by faith" to have concealed the spies; and Salomon's selected judgment proceeded upon a simulation; and our Saviour, the more to touch the hearts of the two disciples with a holy dalliance, made as if he would have passed Emmaus. Further, I have heard some sermons of mortification, which I think (with very good meaning) they have preached out of their own experience and exercise, and things in private counsels not unmeet; but surely no sound conceits; much like to Person's "Resolution," or not so good; apt to breed in men rather weak opinions and perplexed despairs, than filial and true repentance which is sought. Another point of great inconvenience and peril, is to entitle the people to hear controversies and all points of doctrine. They say no part of the counsel of God must be suppressed, nor the people defrauded: so as the difference which the Apostle maketh between "milk and strong meat" is confounded: and his precept" that the weak be not admitted unto questions and controversies" taketh no place. But most of all is to be suspected, as a seed of further inconvenience, their manner of handling the Scriptures; for whilst they seek express Scripture for everything; and that they have (in manner) deprived themselves and the Church of a special help and support by embasing the authority of the fathers; they resort to naked examples, conceited inferences, and forced allusions, such as do mine into all certainty of Religion. Another extremity is the excessive magnifying of that which, though it be a principal and most holy institution, yet hath it limits as all things else have. We see wheresoever (in manner) they find in the Scriptures the Word spoken of, they expound it of preaching. They have made it almost of the essence of the sacrament of the supper, to have a sermon precedent. They have (in sort) annihilated the use of liturgies, and forms of divine service, although the house of God be denominated of the principal, domus orationis (a house of prayer), and not a house of preaching. As for the life of the good monks and the hermits in the primitive Church, I know they will condemn a man as half a Papist, if he should maintain them as other than profane, because they heard no sermons. In the meantime, what preaching is, and who may be said to preach, they make no question. But as far as I see, every man that presumeth to speak in chair is accounted a preacher. But I am assured that not a few that call hotly for a preaching ministry deserve to be of the first themselves that should be expelled. These and some other errors and misproceedings they do fortify and entrench by being so greatly addicted to their opinions, and impatient to hear contradiction or argument. Yea, I know some of them that would think it a tempting of God to hear or read what might be said against them; as if there could be a quod bonum est tenete,' without an omnia probate 2 going before. This may suffice to offer unto themselves a view and consideration, whether in these things they do well or no, and to correct and assuage the partiality of their followers and dependants. For as for any man that shall hereby enter into a contempt of their ministry, it is but his own hardness of heart. I know the work of exhortation doth chiefly rest upon these men, and they have zeal and hate of sin. But again, let them take heed that it be not true which one of their adversaries said, "that they have but two small wants, knowledge and love." And so I conclude this fourth point. 5. The last point, touching the due publishing and debating of these controversies, needeth no long speech. This strange abuse of antics and pasquils hath been touched before. So likewise I repeat that which I said before, that a character of love is more proper for debates of this nature than that of zeal. As for all indirect or direct glances or levels at men's persons, they were ever in these cases disallowed. Lastly, whatsoever be pretended, the people is no meet judge nor arbitrator, but rather the quiet, moderate, and private assemblies and conferences of the learned. Qui apud incapacem loquitur, non disceptat, sed calumniatur.3 The press and pulpit would be freed and discharged of these contentions. Neither promotion on the one side, nor glory and heat on the other, ought to continue those challenges and cartels at the Cross and other places. But rather all preachers, especially all such as be of good temper, and have wisdom with conscience, ought to inculcate and beat upon a peace, silence, and Neither let them fear Solon's law, which compelled in factions every particular person to range himself on the one side; nor yet the fond calumny of neutrality; but let them know that is true which is said by a wise man, that "neuters in contentions are either better or worse than either side." surseance. These things have I in all sincerity and simplicity set down, touching the controversies which now trouble the Church of England; and that without all art and insinuation, and therefore not like to be grateful to either part. Notwithstanding, I trust what hath been said shall find a correspondence in their minds which are not embarked in partiality, and which love the whole better than a part. Whereby I am not out of hope that it may do good. At the least I shall not repent myself of the meditation. The highest expression of the Puritan view of English Religion in the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth is to be found in the First Book of Spenser's "Faerie Queene." The highest expression of the opposite view is in the " Ecclesiastical Polity" of Richard Hooker. But in verse and prose the 1 "Hold fast that which is good." 2 "Prove all things." 3 "He who speaks with the incapable resolves nothing, but worries only." religious spirit of the time found utterance in many forms. In 1580, when a passing cloud was between Sir Philip Sidney and the Queen, and he was staying at Wilton with his sister Mary' (lately married to the Earl of Pembroke, and then mother to an infant heir of the house), brother and sister worked together at a translation of the Psalms of David into English verse, and the following is one of the versions contributed by the Countess of Pembroke— the same of whom Ben Jonson wrote after her death "Underneath this sable hearse Lies the subject of all verse. Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother; Death, ere thou hast slain another Learn'd and fair and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee." Whiles afflicted, whiles heartbroken, Waiting yet some friendship's token, Some I looked would me uphold,Looked, but found all comfort cold. Comfort? nay, not seen before, When for drink my thirst did call. Oh, then snare them in their pleasures! Down upon them fury rain! Lighten indignation down! Turn to waste and desert plain House and palace, field and town! Let not one be left abiding The next note of the love of God is from the devout Roman Catholic poet, Robert Southwell,5 who in 1595 was hanged for his religion at the age of thirty-three. We have, whatever our opinions, to look back with equal eye upon a time when zeal touched human life as it now does not. It has been calculated that in Elizabeth's reign two hundred and sixty persons were put to death for saying and hearing mass, of whom seventy-three were laymen and three women. In 1579 Matthew Hamont, a wheelwright at Hetherset in Norfolk, was burnt alive at Norwich as an Arian. He and his followers were described by an opponent as men whose "knees were even hardened in prayer, and their mouths full of praises to God." Also at Norwich were burnt for like heresies, John Lewes, in 1583; Peter Cole, of Ipswich, in 1587; and Francis Ket, M.A., of Wymondham, in 1589. An eye-witness of the execution of Francis Ket (the Rev. William Burton), wrote that he had "the sacred Bible almost never out of his hands, himself always in prayer, his tongue never ceased praising of God. When he went to the fire he was clothed in sackcloth; he went leaping and dancing. Being in the fire, above twenty times together, clapping his hands, he cried nothing but Blessed be God! blessed be God!' and so continued until the fire had consumed all his nether parts, and until he was stifled with the smoke and could speak no longer; all which I was witness of myself. But shall we think that the Lord took any delight in the prayers or praises of such a devil incarnate? Far be it from us. A strange and fearful example of a desperate, hardened, and a cursed creature." From such memories of a past phase of civilisation there is but one lesson to be drawn, and that is one of charity. We are of one flesh, with like frailties, and even in the heats of persecution that arise from zeal towards the spiritual life there is blended with human passions a deep sense-like 5 See "Shorter English Poems," pages 258, 259. Southwell's in this poem-that man's body is but a covering to the essential soul:— AT HOME IN HEAVEN. Fair soul! how long shall veils thy graces shroud? Thy ghostly beauty offer'd force to God; It chainéd Him in links of tender love; It won His will with man to make abode; This lull'd our heavenly Samson fast asleep, And laid Him in our feeble nature's lap; This made Him under mortal loal to creep, And in our flesh His Godhead to enwrap; This made Him sojourn with us in exile, And not disdain our titles in His style. This brought Him from the ranks of heavenly quires Into this vale of tears and cursed soil; From flowers of grace into a world of briars, From life to death, from bliss to baleful toil. This made Him wander in our pilgrim weed, And taste our torments to relieve our need. O soul! do not thy noble thoughts abase, Give not assent to muddy-minded skill, Queen Hester was of rare and peerless hue, And Judith once for beauty bare the vaunt; But he that could our souls' endowments view, Would soon to souls the crown of beauty grant. O soul! out of thyself seek God alone: Grace more than thine, but God's, the world hath none. Edmund Spenser, in the year 1580, went to Ireland as Secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, who had just succeeded Philip Sidney's father in the office of Lord Deputy. Spenser had published his "Shepherds' Calendar" in the preceding year, was in London attached by service of the Earl of Leicester, and by friendship to Philip Sidney, and, no doubt, owed to these friends his introduction to the new Lord Deputy, when he was looking for a private secretary. Once introduced, his fitness would be manifest. Lord Grey of Wilton was a friend to The poets,' and in his views upon Church questions he was, like Spenser, a Puritan, bitterly hostile to the Church of Rome. The Pope, in 1576, had issued a bull depriving Elizabeth of her title to Ireland, and releasing all her Irish subjects from allegiance to her. Lord Grey reached Dublin on the 12th of August, and received the sword of office on the queen's birthday, the 7th of September. On the 14th of September a force of six or seven hundred Spaniards and Italians landed in Kerry, and took possession of a fort called Del Oro in Smerwick Bay. The fort, then repaired and re-occupied, had been constructed two years before by James Fitzmaurice, with the help of Spanish and Italian adventurers against the English government of Ireland. Upon this military settlement, that was to be an inlet to foreign support of Irish rebellion, the Lord Deputy himself (accompanied, of course, by his secretary Spenser) marched with a land force of not more than eight hundred men, young Walter Raleigh being among his captains; while Sir William Winter and Vice-Admiral Bingham brought provisions and guns by sea. foreigners defended themselves bravely, and replied, when summoned to surrender, that being there by command of the Pope, who had taken Ireland from Elizabeth, they would keep what they held and win what more they could. When overpowered, they offered to give up the fort and depart as they came; but the Lord Deputy required an unconditional surrender. To the plea of one of their chiefs, that he was sent by the Pope for the defence of the Catholic faith, Lord Grey of Wilton wrote home, "My answer was, that I would not greatly have marvelled if men commanded by natural and absolute princes did sometimes take in hand wrong actions; but that men of account, as some of them made show of being, should be carried into unjust, wicked, and desperate actions by one that neither from God nor man could claim any princely power or empire, but indeed a detestable shaveling of the Antichrist and general ambitious tyrant over all principalities, and patron of the diabolical faith, I could not but greatly wonder." If Edmund Spenser, as private secretary, stood by his chief when he said this, the secretary's mind assented to every word of the Lord Deputy's. For "The Faerie Queene" shows that Spenser could see in the Pope only a "detestable shaveling of the Antichrist," and that the religion of the Roman Catholics was also in his eyes "the diabolical faith." The bitterness of the great conflict of the time is shown by the issue of this enterprise against the fort Del Oro. Lord Grey ended by telling the pleaders for the garrison that, "their fault, therefore, appeared to be aggravated by the vileness of their commander, and that at my hands no conditions of composition they were to expect other than that they should simply render me the fort, and yield themselves to my will for life or death." They yielded for death. Lord Grey wrote, "I sent straightway certain gentlemen to see their weapons and armour laid down, and to guard the munitions and victual that were left from spoil. 1 See "Shorter English Poems," page 209. Then put I in certain bands who straightway fell to execution. There were six hundred slain." Another who was present' reported "the colonel, captains, secretary, camp-master, and others of the best sort saved, to the number of twenty prisoners, and Dr. Sanders' chief man, an Englishman, Plunkett, a friar, and others kept in store to be executed after examination to be had of them. It is confessed that five hundred more were daily looked for to be sent from the Pope and the King of Spain to land here." Such was Edmund Spenser's first notable experience of the public service in Ireland. His age was then about twenty-seven, and he had already begun to write the "Faerie Queene;" for his friend Gabriel Harvey's ill opinion of what he had seen of it is in a letter that was published in June, 1580. In 1581 Spenser was made Clerk of Degrees and Recognisances in the Irish Court of Chancery, and obtained also a grant of the lease of the lands and abbey of Enniscorthy in Wexford, which he transferred, no doubt profitably, at the end of the year to a Richard Synot. In 1582 Lord Grey was recalled, but Spenser remained in Ireland. He was still a Clerk in Chancery till 1588, when he was made Clerk of the Council of Munster. By this time he had received also a grant of land with Kilcolman Castle, in the county of Cork; part of the six hundred thousand acres confiscated from the Earl of Desmond and his followers. Twelve thousand acres in the counties of Cork, Waterford, and Tipperary had been granted to Walter Raleigh, who thus became for a time Spenser's neighbour in Ireland. Raleigh took Spenser to London with him in 1589, when he was ready to present to Queen Elizabeth the first three books of the "Faerie Queene." They were published in London in the year 1590, the next three books not appearing until 1596. In the year after the publication of the first three books of the "Faerie Queene" Spenser received from Elizabeth a grant of £50 a year. This being equivalent to a pension of £300 under Victoria, was substantial reward for a poem containing much that must have pleased her Majesty, Puritan though it was. She could appreciate in the first three books a profound earnestness in the treatment of their several themes-Religion, Temperance, and Chastity-and she would be ready as any half reader of after times to see only herself in Gloriana. She does also pervade the poem; for the "Faerie Queene" is a great spiritual allegory, moulding what Spenser held to be the simple essence of eternal truth for man, in forms that reproduced the life of his own time. His World of Faerie is the Spiritual world. The Faerie Queene Gloriana is the Glory of God, for which and towards which man strives through all his faculties for good. Every such faculty, presented to the mind's eye in one of the shapes then dear to lovers of romance, achieves that triumph over its opposite for which it ever labours by contending with the trials and temptations to which it is most exposed, these also being typified in romance forms as giants, 1 From an unnamed writer to Walsingham, dated Smerwick, November 12th, 1580, among the Irish State Papers. dragons, and so forth. But England-the England of his own day-with its actual aspirations and perils, is never absent from the poet's thought, and his fantastic imagery shapes to our minds constantly the substantial struggle of his time, as seen by the light of his own spiritual life. The Glory of God in England was one with the maintenance of the Reformation by Elizabeth. For her, for it, the souls of the best Englishmen were combating with trial and temptation. As Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" has given to our language a word equivalent to unpractical, and yet in its playfulness of fancy deals most earnestly with hard realities in every line; so Spenser's "Faerie Queene," with all exquisite music of its sage and solemn tunes, "Of tourneys and of trophies hung, Of forests and enchantments drear, shows in that "more" always a combatant Elizabethan Englishman who deals most earnestly with all the vital public questions of his day. Spenser is the Elizabethan Milton. Langland had not the condition of England, and what he felt to be the needs of England, more in mind when he wrote the "Vision of Piers Plowman" than had Spenser when in his allegory of the "Faerie Queene" he uttered his "truths severe by fairy fietion drest." The whole plan of the poem, as far as it was written, will be illustrated in the section of this Library reserved for the illustration of our Longer English Poems. we shall then need to say no more of the first book than is required to explain its relation to the rest of the poem, for its theme is the religion of England, and we have now to dwell on its contents. From a Monument in Whatton Church, Northamptonshire. But He ITH the Red Cross Knight, whom he calls also St. George, Spenser associates his allegory of the heavenward struggle of his country, the adventure of the Reformation, undertaken for the glory of God, incomplete in his own day and in ours. The faerie knight is the spiritual quality in any man or any nation by which we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. first appears clad in the armour described by St. Paul in the sixth chapter of his Epistle to the Ephesians, when he says, "Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God;" and again in the fifth chapter of the first Epistle to the Thessalonians. "Let us, who are of the day, be |