A Sermon by Hugh Martin
Isaiah 9:3. They joy before Thee according to the joy in harvest.
There can be no doubt that this prophecy refers to the first coming of Christ. Matthew quotes the verses before the text as, at that time, receiving their fulfilment: “And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; the people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up” (Mt 4:13-16).
The verses following the text, also, contain the well-known and heart-stirring doxology in which the Church is represented as welcoming the birth of her Warrior-Redeemer: “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end.” The increase of the Church at this period of time was wonderful. Messiah assumed the throne of His father David, was inaugurated King of Zion: “Thy King cometh unto thee”. And on His ascension, the kingdom of David threw off its beggarly elements – its earthly, carnal envelope – and stood forth trusting to its spiritual powers alone. It received immense accessions from the middle wall of partition being broken down and the Gentiles being admitted among the Israel of God, and Jesus very largely “saw of the travail of His soul” and “the joy set before Him”.
The prophet’s language, “Thou hast multiplied the nation”, was in fact, verified. And in these circumstances the joy of the Church is described: “They joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil”. First of all, Messiah Himself is joyful: “The King shall joy in Thy strength, O Lord; and in Thy salvation how greatly shall He rejoice” (Ps 21:4). Then the Church, loyal to her Husband, rejoices in His joy, being admitted by Him in His love to share the gladness of His heart: “Thou hast increased unto Him the joy” and now “they joy before thee”. For all warrantable joy, in this world of death and sorrow, is Christ’s joy. All the true joy of the Church is the joy of Christ, her living Head. It is so in this life: “These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (John 15:11). It is so in the life to come: “Well done, good and faithful servant . . . enter thou into the joy of thy Lord”.
Now Scripture gives three views of the joy of the Church, whether it is the joy of Christ personally or of His members, and they are all fitted to show that such joy has its root in sorrow, in suffering, in self-denial and in conflict.
(1.) There is the joy that succeeds travail. Such is Christ’s joy: “He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied”. Such also is the joy of His members: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you” (Jn 16:20-22).
(2.) There is the joy of harvest, which, as we shall see, presupposes sacrifice and self-denial.
(3.) There is the joy of victory, which of course is preceded by conflict.
The text sets Christian joy in the light of the second of these analogies. It is the joy of harvest. We propose to consider Christian joy under that particular aspect.
Now to see what is unique about the joy of harvest, it will be necessary to analyse the idea of harvest. It is a complex idea. Especially when introduced on the principle of analogy into the unseen affairs of the moral and spiritual world, it requires a careful examination before it yields up all the special truths it is suited to convey. At the outset, however, let me show – of course from Scripture, our only source of knowledge – that the idea of harvest (I might almost say the principle of harvest) is eminently applicable to the kingdom of Christ; and hence we may well expect to find the joy of harvest there. There is a real harvest in the Church, and therefore there is the joy of harvest. Indeed, the principle and power of harvest, whatever these may be, are universally present and continually in action in the Church. To illustrate Christian joy by the joy of harvest is not a mere illustration. Nor is it merely a passing expression of the pen of inspiration. The complex and comprehensive idea of harvest is deeply inlaid in the whole scheme of redemption, so much so that it applies: (1) to the Person and work of the Redeemer; (2) to the persons of the redeemed; and (3) to the good works of the redeemed.
(1.) As to the Person and work of the Redeemer,
let us consider this passage in John 12: towards the close of the Lord ministry, “there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast: the same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus”. The disciples convey this request to their Master. Jesus sees in these Greeks the firstfruits of all the Gentile nations, one day to be brought unto Him. He looks forward and sees in anticipation all nations blessed in Him and all nations calling Him blessed. He sees the whole world to be one great and golden harvest field, waving in the plenty and beauty of autumn.
He knew that all this rich ingathering is from His own redemption-work in death, through which alone He could be thus glorified in this world. And He compared His own Person and work to the seed corn from which, through death and burial, there springs again new and plentiful life. Thus He exclaims, “The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The harvest principle has its first and greatest verification in the Redeemer Himself and in the work of the cross.
(2.) Jesus goes on immediately to apply it to His people also.
For certainly this is His design in adding: “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal”. He that so “loveth his life” as to “keep it” – like the husbandman in spring preferring to retain the seed – shall not really keep his life, but rather lose it, as the husbandman by keeping the seed would only bring about famine. But he that “hateth his life” in this world – he who can deal with his life like the husbandman who seems to hate the seed and throws it away from him, parts with it and buries it out of his sight – he shall not lose his life; only he shall really keep his life, even “keep it unto life eternal”. He shall have a harvest of life. Thus the harvest principle applies to the persons of the redeemed.
Yes, it applies to the whole person, to soul and body alike. Exactly parallel to what we have now quoted from John, the soul is specially mentioned in a passage in Matthew: “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (16:25,26). The salvation of the soul is on the principle of harvest. This applies also to the body: “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body”. The resurrection is a harvest. The soul had been quickened, raised and ripened in grace; the body is raised in glory. To the entire person this idea of harvest applies.
(3.) To complete the full range and sweep of its application, as really embracing all that is to be found in the kingdom of Christ, this principle applies to the works of the redeemed, as well as to their persons and to the person and work of their Redeemer.
All their good works are so much sowing, and all their reward is so much reaping. “Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Gal 6:9). “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him” (Ps 126:5,6). Again it is just the harvest. The idea of harvest, whatever that may imply, is all-pervasive in the kingdom of faith.
What then is implied in harvest? Let us analyse it and we shall find that it contains the ideas of: (1) Surrender, (2) Surrender unto death, (3) Life in and by means of death, (4) Abundance of life, (5) Beauty of life, (6) Variety of life.
1. Harvest presupposes surrender.
You surrender the good seed. You give up, as it would seem, all personal interest in it. Apparently, you hate it. You cast it away. Like a thing which you have abandoned and are done with – which you are to make no use of, and turn to no good account – you throw it away from you and bury it in the ground, and there you leave it. You most thoroughly and completely give it up. You make a most entire surrender. This, first of all, is involved in the idea of harvest, and therefore in the joy of harvest.
There was this, very eminently, in Christ. He gave Himself. He made a most complete surrender of Himself – “for us men, and for our salvation”. He surrendered all His own personal rights and claims as the Son of God, the Holy and the Just One. He did not “love” and retain His honours, dignities and glories as the co-equal of the Father. He did not stand upon any of them; He resigned them all. He resigned all personal interest in them. He pleased not Himself – He denied Himself. Nor counting it robbery to be equal with God, He nevertheless made Himself of no reputation. He emptied Himself. Though He were rich, yet for our sakes He became poor.
There is this in the case of His members also. They part with themselves. They give “their own selves to the Lord”. They surrender all personal interest in themselves – all right and desire to call themselves their own. The wicked do not so; they do precisely the reverse. They say, “Our lips are our own,” and they ask, “Who is lord over us?” But conversion revolutionises this. It brings with it the feeling, the resolution, We are not our own – neither in soul nor body; we will glorify God in our bodies and our spirits which are His; we will live, not unto ourselves, but unto Him who died for us, and rose again. We surrender ourselves. We present ourselves to God a living sacrifice.
But this applies also to the good works of the redeemed, as well as to their persons, and to the person and work of their Redeemer. All their good works are offerings, sacrifices, surrendering. And the surrendering must be complete, unreserved, ungrudging: “as a matter of bounty and not as of covetousness”. Here the principle and analogy of harvest come in expressly: “He that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully”; “And God is able to make all grace abound towards you, that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work”; “And let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not”.
In all these cases, then, to which, as we have seen, the idea of harvest applies, there is first of all a surrender. And that surrender is voluntary, unreserved and in faith.
2. In the idea of harvest there is implied, not only the idea of surrender, but of surrender unto death.
Without this, there will be no harvest. “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.” “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.” To this extent is the surrender required, and to this extent is the surrender yielded: where it is complete and genuine, it is even unto death.
This is verified, first, and eminently, in Christ Himself. It was indeed, concerning His own death that He uttered the significant maxim: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone”. When He gave Himself for sinners, it was a giving of the most complete kind: He was giving Himself unto death. Without this, in fact, the surrender would not have been complete or thorough – nor indeed real. In Himself He is the Life – the fountain and the fullness of life. And it is inconceivable that He could surrender Himself, except in death. It would be a contradiction. He would not have been surrendering but, on the contrary, retaining Himself unless He had died. He who was rich as the Fountain of Life could, in that respect, become poor only by dying. He did so. “I lay down My life.” “The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.” That it might not “abide alone”, the Seed Corn fell into the ground and died. He surrendered Himself unto death.
This is verified, also, in His people. Wherever that surrender exists, it will issue in a harvest of life; it is surrender unto death. The old life in sin – which is a life unto self – is given up to be destroyed. It is subjected to the power of the cross, which is a power fatal and deadly to self, to sin and to Satan. The old man is crucified with Christ that the body of sin may be destroyed. Christ’s members share Christ’s death. They are dead indeed unto sin. For it is impossible to surrender myself truly or safely or acceptably unto God, except in Christ. To surrender myself to God apart from Christ is that “fearful thing” which Paul speaks of with trembling – “to fall into the hands of the living God”.
But by faith I conjoin myself with Christ. I surrender myself as He surrenders Himself – at the cross. I surrender myself in and with His surrender of Himself. But His surrender of Himself is in death; so therefore is mine. “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” “Reckon ye yourselves dead indeed unto sin.” “Know ye not that as many of you as were baptized unto Christ were baptized unto His death?” Conversion is the surrender of ourselves unto death.
This is verified, yet again, in the believer’s good works, as well as in his person and in his Lord. If you believably present the sacrifices of good works unto God, you give up all passing, temporal, earthly interest in them. You submit to have no more lot or part in them than Abraham in Isaac when he was about to resign all personal interest in him, and all personal friendship with him, till they should meet on the other side of time and the grave. This is involved in all sincere good works. For instance, you do not – if you observe the Lord’s injunction – invite to your feast those that can “bid you again”, for then a recompense is given you in this life. That is not sowing. That is lending, hoping to be paid again. “But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed in the resurrection of the just.” This is sowing, not lending. This is sowing, not bartering. This is heavenly agriculture, not earthly commerce; for the recompense is on the other side of death – heavenly agriculture, waiting for the great harvest-home.
Yes, death intervenes where harvest comes into play. Sowing is surrendering unto death, looking for recompense on the other side of death. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.” If you surrender it not to death, you may receive it again as what you gave in loan, or gave in hire. But you do not reap, for you did not sow. You did not give up all interest in it on this side of death. And death is necessary – a prerequisite – to harvest. It is so, we have seen, in Christ personally, in Christ’s people and in their good works.
O cursed unbelief, which damns the soul; dishonours God; slights Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God, as if that glorious design of redemption by His blood, the triumph and masterpiece of divine wisdom, were mere foolishness; frustrates the great design of the gospel; and consequently it must be the sin of sins, the worst and most dangerous of all sins, leaving a man under the guilt of all his other sins.
That which ruins souls is not the exercise of moral virtues but their reliance upon them; they use their morality as a shield to secure their consciences from the convictions of the Word, which would show them their sinful and miserable state by nature.
Whether will not a busy devil and a bad heart carry a man?
To whom do you yield your obedience? His subjects and “servants ye are to whom ye obey” (Romans 6:16). It is but a mockery to give Christ the empty titles of Lord and King, while ye give your real service to sin and Satan.
John Flavel
Thomas Cartwright1
2. Minister in Antwerp
The year 1572 also saw the publication of the Admonition to Parliament, a Puritan manifesto in which Cartwright was not involved. Its purpose was to indicate those aspects of the Church of England which required to be reformed. A Second Admonition to the Parliament appeared in November; its purpose was to show how that reformation should be carried out: by setting up Presbyterianism, which the author proceeds to expound. He explains the functions of the various church courts: the consistory (at parish level), the conference (equivalent to a presbytery), above which were to be provincial, national and universal synods.
When Whitgift2 wrote in response, Cartwright entered the fray with A Reply. Within a few months a second edition of the Reply was in print in spite of the royal proclamation which had been issued against it. The printer, John Stroud, was soon to suffer for his pains. Cartwright was writing in support of the Admonition, although he was not entirely satisfied with the use it made of particular scriptures. Cartwright’s learning and the quality of his writing style added to the effectiveness of his arguments. The Reply provoked Whitgift to a further response; within a year his Defence of the Answer came from the press. Cartwright again took up his pen and produced a Second Reply in two parts, one published in 1575 and the other in 1577, although these do not add anything really new to the arguments he used in his first Reply.
Whitgift tries to put both the Puritans and the Anabaptists into the same category, while Cartwright emphasises Puritan opposition to Anabaptism. He further insists that the Puritans did not seek separation from the Church; they merely wanted to reform it further. At the same time Whitgift links the Puritans with the Roman Catholics in their opposition to the Church of England; Cartwright, on the other hand, points out that the Roman Catholics disliked the Book of Common Prayer because it differed from the mass book, while the Puritans were dissatisfied with it because the two books had too much in common. Cartwright was pleading for the further reformation of the Church of England to bring it into line with the Church of the Apostles, which would be to give it a Presbyterian face and to remove everything that had been abused by Rome. But Whitgift, in line with the spirit which has characterised Anglicanism in every age, emphasises the discretion which the Church may exercise in its external order, so that it may hold on to what has been abused by Rome if it seems to have continuing value; he was following the philosophy that anything is permissible in the Church provided it has not been explicitly forbidden by Scripture. At the same time he refuses to see any evidence in Scripture for Presbyterian principles.
Among the Anglican usages to which Cartwright objected were: reading from the Apocrypha, the ceremony of confirmation, the observance of holy days, bowing at the name of Jesus and prayers for the dead. He insisted that the sacraments should not be administered apart from the preaching of the Word, nor should they be administered in private. He believed that sitting was the appropriate posture at the Lord’s Supper as it came nearest to that used by the Saviour and His disciples, though he did not regard it as absolutely essential. He referred to what is known as the Black Rubric, inserted into the 1552 edition of the Prayer Book, under Edward VI, to answer the objections of Knox; it stated explicitly that kneeling did not imply adoration of the elements of bread and wine. Whitgift’s response to this reference by Cartwright may give some indication of his tone: the insertion of the Black Rubric was “to satisfy (if it might be) such quarrellers as you are, and to take away all occasion of cavilling, not for any great fear of adoration” (p 94).3
The main focus of Cartwright’s criticism was Episcopacy, with its system of diocesan bishops. For him, as for the Bible, bishops are identical to presbyters, and all are equal. He believed that in every congregation there should be ruling elders, interpreting 1 Timothy 5:17 as teaching that there are two kinds of elders, “the one which doth govern and teach, the other which governeth only” (p 98). Whitgift’s pragmatic approach leads him to claim that, although there may have been lay elders in the early Church, it was not suitable, or even possible, to have them in every congregation in his time. Curiously, he argued that the Christian magistrate now possesses the authority that elders may have exercised in the apostolic age. Cartwright viewed the office of deacon, not as the lowest level of minister, as in the Anglican system, but as an office-bearer who has responsibility for the poor.
Again Cartwright’s views differed from the Anglican position on the place of the monarch in the Church – that the monarch is, at least nominally, the supreme Governor of the Church. He willingly yielded to Elizabeth full authority as head of state but he insisted that Christ alone is Head of the Church, and the monarch can be no more than a member. He went so far as to say, “That Princes should be excepted from ecclesiastical discipline, and namely from excommunication, I utterly mislike” (p 95). To speak in this way was not to curry favour with the Queen or with those, such as Whitgift, who formed the ecclesiastical establishment of the time. The responsibility of the Church to exercise discipline, and also to restore those who have repented, played a large part in Cartwright’s thinking. And this discipline ought to be in the hands of the eldership, including ministers, while the more difficult cases might be referred upwards to presbyteries, or even synods.
Typical of the reaction to the writings of Cartwright and others who saw the need for a further reformation in the English church was the response of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker. He was concerned that, if the Puritan movement was not forcibly suppressed, England would be faced with a democratic rising that would turn the whole of society on its head; they feared complete anarchy. A proclamation was issued by the Queen in June 1573 commanding that all copies of the Admonition and of Cartwright’s Reply be handed over to the authorities within 20 days. At least in London, the demand was ineffective; no books were handed in. Indeed a fresh edition of 1000 copies of the Reply was printed soon afterwards. However, the printer was arrested and forced by Bishop Sandys of London to subscribe to three points, which included the admission “that Cartwright’s book is neither godly nor lawful” (p 111).
Not surprisingly, a warrant was before long issued for the writer himself. Cartwright had been occupying himself in writing; he also tutored the sons of those who showed him hospitality. But now the only alternative to imprisonment was exile, and Cartwright fled to Heidelberg, a Calvinistic oasis in Germany famous for the Catechism produced by Olevianus and Ursinus. Late January 1574 saw him enrolling as a student at Heidelberg University.
Meanwhile Whitgift had returned to the fray with The Defence of the Answer to the Admonition against the Reply of TC, which appeared the following month. A system of church discipline had already been put in place in Heidelberg and one of Cartwright’s first tasks after coming to the city was to prepare for publication an important Latin book, Concerning Ecclesiastical Discipline, believed to have been penned by Walter Travers, another convinced Presbyterian. Cartwright contributed a preface in which he expresses the hope that, as Her Majesty “is delighted with things that are written in Latin” (p 142), she would read it and understand aright the position which the Puritans in England were promoting. He recognises that his Reply had given offence in certain quarters because it involved personal attacks on Whitgift; this work on discipline, however, concentrates entirely on the issues involved and therefore, Cartwright believed, should offend no one.
One of the great defects of the Elizabethan Church was the high proportion of ministers who could not preach; it gave rise to repeated complaints from the Puritans. One of their responses to the situation was to set up what were known as exercises or prophesyingings, meetings for the exposition of Scripture which must have been effective in spreading Puritan principles. Elizabeth did not approve of them and instructed Edmund Grindal, now Archbishop of Canterbury, to have them suppressed.
Grindal valued the prophesyingings and, while he was willing to prohibit any irregularities associated with them, he refused, in a courageous letter to the Queen, to prohibit the meetings themselves. “I cannot, with safe conscience and without the offence of the Majesty of God,” he told her, “give my assent to the suppressing of the said exercises. . . . Bear with me, I beseech you, Madam, if I choose rather to offend your earthly Majesty than to offend the heavenly Majesty of God.” He even went so far as to ask her to “remember, Madam, that you are a mortal creature”.4 Elizabeth instead instructed the bishops to suppress the prophesyingings. Her action was a severe blow to the Puritan movement. She suspended Grindal and, at the time of his death, he had been only partially restored to his duties.
While the Puritans were particularly conscious of the need to provide spiritual instruction for the people, Elizabeth was a proud woman with no care for the spiritual well-being of her subjects. In the words of an American historian, she “wanted obedience rather than intelligence in her subjects. Popular education bred fantastical notions of equality. Gatherings of clergy smacked of conspiracy against the throne. In vain the reformers pointed out that under her system the only uniformity was that of dull ignorance. To her, cost what it might, ignorance was a small price to pay for docility.”5 But she was ignoring the words of God: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos 4:6).
After leaving Heidelberg, Cartwright spent some time in Basel, and in September 1577 we find him acting as a factor for the English merchants in Middelburg, in the Netherlands, and later in Antwerp. The function of the factor was to supervise business transactions and to see that the money involved reached those to whom it was rightfully due, and an honest man like Cartwright was eminently suitable for the work – certainly when, for the time being, he was not able to follow his calling as a minister. Wealthy merchants were among the most generous supporters of Puritanism.
It seems to be his more settled situation that brought Cartwright to the conclusion in 1578 that marriage was now possible. For his wife he chose Alice Stubbe. Her brother John told a friend that if anyone should “mislike mine act in providing so for my sister, tell him on my behalf that I contented myself with such a husband for her, whose livelihood was learning, who should endow his wife with wisdom and who might leave to his children the rich portion of godliness by Christian, cheerful education”. John Stubbe was the following year to write a very strong pamphlet against the proposed marriage of the Queen to the Duke of Anjou, a French Roman Catholic. He was brutally punished: both his right hand and that of his publisher were cut off. The pamphlet may also have further damaged Cartwright in the eyes of the Queen, although there is no evidence that he took any part in writing it.
About this time, the merchants in Antwerp were urgently seeking a chaplain. Among the men suggested was John Davidson, later to be minister of Prestonpans, near Edinburgh, who was at this time an exile from his own country, but it was Walter Travers who was appointed. It was said that, if Thomas Cartwright was the head, then “Walter Travers might be termed the neck of the Presbyterian party”.6 Travers was ordained in Antwerp in May 1578, according to Presbyterian forms, and the congregation in Antwerp, though considered part of the Church of England, functioned as a Presbyterian body on the local level. In July 1580 Travers returned to England for an indefinite period, and Cartwright was asked to perform his duties during his absence. This earnest Puritan must have appreciated the opportunity to preach the gospel in a congregation where the church order was of a more scriptural nature than he had been used to.
Before long a new Governor of the Antwerp merchants, Christopher Hoddesdon, arrived from England. He was uncomfortable to find Cartwright acting as minister. He knew the Queen’s attitude to Cartwright and did not want to incur her displeasure by showing him favour; on the other hand, he knew that Cartwright was respected in Antwerp and did not want to disturb the congregation by trying to remove him. In the end Travers decided not to return to Antwerp and in his letter of resignation recommended Cartwright as his successor. No permanent appointment was made, but Cartwright continued to preach to the Antwerp congregation until, in 1582, the merchants moved on to Middelburg in Holland, and Cartwright continued to preach to them there until the spring of 1585. During his stay in Antwerp, Cartwright was offered a chair in divinity in the University of Leiden; this was followed by an invitation to become a Professor in St Andrews. But Cartwright declined both offers, feeling a prior commitment to the congregation where he was ministering.
1Last month’s article saw Cartwright appointed Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in Cambridge University in 1569, where he proceeded to deliver lectures on the early chapters of Acts. His forthright advocacy of principles which implied the need for drastic reform in the Church of England led to his dismissal. After spending time in Geneva he returned to England in February 1572.
2John Whitgift, then a Professor of Divinity and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University.
3All references in brackets are to A F Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism 1535 to 1603, Cambridge, 1925.
4Quoted in Jasper Ridley, Elizabeth I, Constable, 1987, p 194.
5M M Knappen, Tudor Puritanism, University of Chicago Press 1965 reprint, p 253. However, it should be noted with thankfulness that Elizabeth’s coming to the throne in 1558 ensured that England again became a Protestant nation.
6Quoted in Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, Clarendon Press 1991 reprint, p 295.