The Puritans and their principles

Front matter

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THE PURITANS

AND THEIR PRINCIPLES.

I

Preliminary Considerations : England before the Times of Wickliffe.

Importance of this discussion at the present day. Misconceptions concerning the Puritans. Views of Hume. Principles not to be measured by the occasion which calls them into debate. Principles of the Puritans not to be appreciated without some knowledge of their times. Plan of this work. England before the times of Wickliffe, . 15

H.

Wickliffe and his Times.

His early life, and writings. Negotiation with Rome. His Principles : Contrast these and modern Puseyism. Persecution of his followers for a succeeding century, . . . .25 in.

Reign of King Henry VIII.

The King and Martm Luther. He assumes the supremacy of the Church. The King's Bible. Articles. " Institution of a Christian man." " Erudition of a Christian man." Only two orders of the ministry recognized as of Divine right, in the days of Henry, or in the succeeding age. Evidence collected by Stillingfleet. The bloody statute. Bible forbidden. Estimate of the Reformation under Henry, ........ 38 viii

CONTENTS.

IV.

Reign of Edward VI.

Persecutions stopped. Doctrinal disputes revived. Book of Homilies. First service book : revised : never satisfactory to the Reformers. Supposed necessity of forming such a liturgy as to keep the Popish people in the Church. Discrepancy between the Articles and Offices. Prayer-Book an equivocal standard: fairly quoted by each of two irreconcileable schemes. The question of a Liturgy. No right anywhere to impose one. Imposed not by the Church, but by Parliament and Council. Uniformity enforced. Reforming the Ordinal. Rise of the Puritans, - . 53

V.

Reign of Queen Mart.

Her Duplicity. Restoration of Popery. Re- ordination of Clergymen ordained by King Edward's Book. Kingdom reconciled to the Pope. Burning of the Reformers. A Puritan Church discovered : its officers burned. Exiles at Frankfort, ... .67

VI.

Queen Elizabeth.

Reformation conducted on principles of State policy. Papists to be kept in the Church. High Commission. Things offensive to Papists stricken out of the Liturgy. Plan of keeping Papists in the Church successful. Foresight of the Puritans. Their predictions verified. Original complaints of the Puritans. Progress of their inquiries, . . . . . . 77

VII.

The Conflict of Principle.

Ultimate scope of Puritanic principles. Means employed to exterminate them. Their rapid spread : nearly prevail in Convocation The Puritans ask only liberty of conscience. Not a struggle for political power. Remonstrances of the Puritans. The separation begins. Persecutions. The nation roused, . . 91

CONTENTS.

ix

VIII.

The Puritans suffering.

New Canons. Supplication to Parliament. Cartwright and Whitgift. Private press. New persecuting act. Brown and the Brownists. Supplication of the Deprived Ministers. Whitgift's inquisitorial articles. Martin Mar-Prelate. Act against separate Worship. Sufferings of the Puritans. Their touching narrative. Roger Ripon. Barrowe. Greenwood. Penry, . .106

IX.

" The Judicious Hooker."

The design and principles of his Ecclesiastical Polity. Its controlling influence over the dynasty of the Stuarts. These principles examined. His doctrine. His notion of the powers of orders, . 124

X.

King James I., and the going to Holland.

Change of James' Principles on his accession to the English throne. Hampton Court Conference. Hundred and forty-one Canons. Extra-judicial decision of the twelve Judges. Gathering of the Pilgrim Church. Flight to Holland, . . . .141

XI.

Question of a removal. Meeting for deliberation. Guiana. Application to the King. The arrangements. Farewell meeting. Parting at Delft-Haven. The Departure. The Mayflower upon the Ocean. The compact. Provincetown harbor. Landing at Plymouth, . . . . . . .153

XII.

The Pilgrims at Plymouth.

Apparent designs of Providence. Contrast between Popery in South America and Protestantism in the North. The fruits of Puritanism in New England. Sufferings of the Pilgrims. The first harvest.

X

CONTENTS.

The first Thanksgiving. New settlers. Famine. Day of Fasting. Return of Plenty, . . . . . . .166

XIII.

The Storm gathering in England.

Vacillating and Irritating Policy of James. Sycophantic bearing of the Bishops. Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance. Attempts of James to establish Episcopacy in Scotland. Assembly of Perth. Change in the King's Theology. Original Calvinism of the English Church. Lambeth Articles. Book of Sports. Perfidy of James, ........ 174

XIV.

Reign of Charles I.

Reaching for a union of Churchmen and Papists. Charles — his High-Church and High-Prerogative notions. Strafford. Laud. Huguenots of Rochelle. Book, of the King's Chaplain. King and Commons appeal to the people. Illegal exactions. The Church Clergy side with tyranny. Overthrow of the Constitution. Cruelties of Laud, . . . . . . . 187

XV

Times of Archbishop Laud.

King and Prelates combine against the liberties of the People. Popish ceremonies and utensils. Images, pictures of God, the Father. Communion tables turned into altars. Natural tendency of prelatic principles to corruption and persecution. Their fruit on a broad scale, and for a thousand years. Original idea of " A Church without a Bishop, a State without a king," . . 203

XVI.

Removals to America, and Founding of the Puritan Churches.

Plymouth a few years after its settlement. Plantation at Cape Ann. Naumkeag. Charlestown. Fleet and Colony of 1629. Tolerant spirit of the Colonists. Salem Church. The Fleet and Colony of 1630. Rapid emigration. Planting of the New England Churches, 216

CONTENTS.

xvn.

Rise of the Civil Wars.

Charles a martyr to his own insincerity and crimes. Attempts to impose a Liturgy upon Scotland. Uproar in St. Giles'. Solemn League and Covenant. The Episcopal War. Charles forced to call a Parliament. Laud impeached. Divine right of Episcopacy discussed. Smectymnuus. Irish Massacre. Appeal to Anns, ........ 229

XVIII.

The Rule and Judge of Faith.

Bishop of Connecticut on the Rule of Faith. " The Scriptures as interpreted by the first two centuries." Dr. Jar vis extends it to five centuries ; others to seven ; to nine ; to eighteen. Who to fix the limit ? Who to declare the interpretation ? Absurdity of the rule. No stable ground between Puritanism and Popery. The Prayer-Book as the interpretation of an interpretation. Impossible to fix the standard of the first two centuries. Episcopalians, on their principles, bound to fix the canons of the Fathers, and to give them to the people. Doctrine of the Bishop of Connecticut contrasted with the doctrine of the Scriptures. The Bible alone the religion of Protestants, . 244

XIX.

On the alleged right to impose Liturgies and Ceremonies.

Illustrated by the Doctrines of Holy Alliance. Enormities in practice. Necessarily a system of usurpation and persecution. Natural rights of Christian congregations. Plea of uniformity. The question not of the expediency of a Liturgy, but of the right to impose one. Canons of American Episcopacy. Limits of Church power, . . . . . . . .258

XX.

On Schism.

Examination of the grounds on which the Puritan Churches are charged as schismatical. The Prelatical Doctrine of Schism tested by Scripture. Singular scheme for restoring a visible Unity. Scriptural view of Schism, ...... 270

XII CONTENTS.

XXI.

The Church.

No National, Provincial or Diocesan Church recognized in the New Testament.

The Church invisible; partly on earth, partly in heaven. The Church on earth, composed of all Christ's people, in all communions ; its members known only to God. The Church as composed of visible organizations. No National, Provincial, or Diocesan organization or authority, recognized in the New Testament. Slater's argument concerning the Churches of Antioch and Jerusalem, answered by Scripture, . 281

XXII.

Materials, Structure and Discipline of a Christian Church. Scriptural authority. The arrangements of Prelacy contrary to Scripture, ........ 289

XXIII.

The Church, as to earthly rule, a Republic, and not a. Monarchy. Observation of distinguished Civilians. Inseparable connection between doctrine and the genius of government. Prelacy incompatible with Christ's injunctions. Claim of Bishops to be irresponsible sovereigns. Republican principles recognized by the Apostles. Popular elections. Mistake with regard to the word Ordain, . . . . . . .299

XXIV.

Officers of the Church.

Extraordinary functions. Men called to a special work Evangelists. Deacons. Bishops. Presbyters, or Pastors. Singular error of the Prayer-Book. Apostles; their office; requisite endowments, . . . . . . . ^ 303

XXV.

Apostles no Successors.

Argument from the name. Epaphroditus, Andronicus, Junia. Argument from the powers exercised. Bishop Onderdonk's argument examined. Laying on of the hands of the Presbytery, . 315

CONTENTS. Xlll XXVI.

Diocesan Bishops.

Timothy not Diocesan of Ephesus. The Angels of the Churches were no Diocesan Bishops. No change of official designation from Apostle to Bishop, . . . . . . 326

XXVII.

XXVIII.

Inferential Presumptions.

High Priests. Priests and Levites. Three Orders. The Apostolic Commission. Claims of Diocesans to be Vicegerents of Jesus Christ, . . . . . . . .350

XXIX.

Episcopal Exclusiveness — its Basis Superstition, . . .359

XXX.

Apostolical Succession, corrupt as a doctrine, false in fact, . 371

XXXI.

Economy of Church Government.

Ordination. Headship of the Church. Episcopacy and Republicanism. Episcopacy in the American Revolution. Reproaches against the Puritans. The tables turned. Comparative tendencies of Puritanism and Prelacy. Conclusion, . .391

I

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.

Importance of this discussion at the present day. Misconceptions concerning the Puritans. Views of Hume. Principles not to be measured by the occasion which calls them into debate. Principles of the Puritans not to be appreciated without some knowledge of their times. Plan of this work. England before the times of Wickliffe.

The Puritans and their Principles : — the permanent importance of those Principles to Freedom, to true Religion, to the present and the eternal interests of Mankind ! To those who dwell amid the graves of a Puritan ancestry, these are subjects which can never be devoid of interest. Nor can I feel — believing as I do that to the principles and labors of these ancestors, under God, we owe our dearest privileges — that the memory of such fathers ought ever to go to decay among their children. I would that no one of our sons or daughters might ever be able to visit our ancient burying grounds, without feeling the blood of the Puritans coursing through their veins with honest exultation ; and their souls rising to God with heartfelt gratitude for the heritage bestowed upon them, through the faith and toils of such an ancestry.

Such a discussion is the more important at the present day, when so many seem scarcely to know what freedom is ; and so many more seem not to know what freedom cost ; and still more, as if unconscious of the principles from which freedom sprung, are ready to think lightly of the motives and wisdom of that noble race of men, by whom, amid so many perils, the civil and religious rights of mankind were so nobly asserted and maintained.

There is further occasion for such a discussion at the present day, when the character of the Puritans is, in certain quarters, so studiously misrepresented, and their principles so perseveringly assailed ; — while a system of doctrine, in all essential respects identical with that of Popery, is so fast rising and spreading in certain quarters of the Protestant world ; and while the system of 'Prelacy which, for a thousand years, and on so broad a scale, has proved itself so uncongenial to the pure Gospel and to reli-

THE PURITANS AND THEIR PRINCIPLES.

gious freedom, is now putting forth its claims with unwonted boldness, and in the most exclusive and supercilious form ; — denouncing us and our Puritan Fathers as rebels and schismatics ; our churches as no churches ; our ministers as sons of Korah Dathan and Abiram ; and all people who do not submit to some Prelatical Hierarchy, as out of the pale of Gospel grace, and given over, like heathen, to the uncovenanted mercies of God.

The principles of our fathers are the principles of truth and freedom : as important now as they were in the days of primitive Puritanism. They are to be maintained, — if either religious truth or religious freedom is worthy to be maintained among men. The conflicts of principle at the present day are simply the old conflicts revived. He who would find the matters now in debate, most fully set forth, and most amply as well as most ably discussed, has only to review the productions of those ancient times. The system now known as Oxfordism, or Puseyism, — which many advocates of Prelacy affect to regard as one of "The Novelties which disturb our peace,"* — is in reality no new thing : it is nothing more nor less than that compound of Arminianism and Popery into which the English Church was fast declining in the days of" the judicious Hooker;" which had attained its maturity, and begun to develope its fruits under the auspices of the persecuting Laud ; and which was again rife and rampant in the days of Queen Anne and George I. It is indeed the genuine Episcopacy of the English Church in its palmiest days, as finally fixed and established under Queen Elizabeth ; and thereunto agree the Offices, though not the Articles of the English Establishment. If there is any difference between the system of those days and modern Puseyism, it is not in fundamental principles, but mainly in the more eager reaching forth of Puseyism towards Rome ; and in the more loving tones of endearment, in which its advocates hail as a true Sister, and even as a Mother, ihat " Mystery of Baeylon the great," which the early British Reformers, as well as the Puritans and the Bible, abhorred as the " Mother of harlots, and abominations OF THE EARTH."

Some have conceived of the old Puritans as ignorant, turbulent, bigoted fanatics. Others have conceived of them as men of lofty attachment to principle, but of narrow and intolerant views: men of truth and daring; men who feared God, and who had tasted deeply of the powers of the world to come, — but unsocial, all made up of sternness and gloom ; men whose austere minds were never unbent in hilarity, and whose countenances were never lighted up by a smile. Those who thus conceive of them have formed their conceptions not from the * The Pamphlets of Bishop Hopkins.

INTRODUCTORY.

true likeness but from a caricature. Of this no one needs anything more to convince him, than to take up what writings are left us of John Robinson, the Pastor of the Pilgrim Church ; of Cotton, of Owen; or to take the journals of Bradford, or Winthrop ; or the works of John Howe 9 the favorite chaplain of Oliver Cromwell: that Howe, from whose works Robert Hall declared that he had learned more than from any other man. These are not the productions of ignorant illiberal men. Such is not the food that ignorance, or fanaticism, or bigotry feeds upon.

By novelists and historians the Puritans have been grossly caricatured. How easily such caricatures, and even direct falsehoods, spread and gain credence, may be readily understood from the errors which we have seen spreading, even in New England, concerning the early history of our fathers. How many people in these United States, and even here in our midst, confidently believe that the famous code entitled " The Blue Laws of Connecticut n once had a place among the statutes of this colony ? Yet our fathers knew nothing about them. They are a sheer fabrication, for which the world is indebted to " Peters' History of Connecticut ;" the work of an Episcopal clergyman of this colony, who, in the beginning of the Revolution, sided with the enemies of his country, and fled from the indignation of his neighbors to England; where he employed his time in writing a history, so full of gross falsehoods, that the greatest charity can imagine nothing better in its defence than to suppose it was not intended to be believed. Yet there were men in New Haven, who, as late as the year 1829, published an edition of that work, " with such affirmation in the preface, as would lead all who are without other sources of information, to believe that what it contains, is irrefragable truth."*

To this caricature of the Puritans, no one has contributed more effectually than the historian Hume. He spares no pains to stigmatize them as " zealots," whose "principles" appear "frivolous," and whose " habits " were ' : ridiculous." Yet Hume is compelled to declare, — what the course of history would have developed, even had he not declared it, — that " the precious spark of liberty had been kindled, by the Puritans alone," and that it is to them that "the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution" With regard to the particular events, — the secondary causes, — which introduced the principles of freedom into the British Constitution, — to which, in spite of the boasted Magna Charta of King John, freedom was an entire stranger up to the dynasty of the Stuarts, — with regard to these secondary causes, Hume is a competent judge. But Hume was a cold-blooded

* See Kingsley's Historical Discourse, a't the two hundredth, anniversary of the settlement of New Haven.

THE PURITANS AND THEIR PRINCIPLES.

infidel ; peculiarly bitter against Christianity in its evangelical and spiritual form. To judge of the principles of evangelical religion as distinguished from a religion of superstitious forms and splendid rituals, Hume was not competent. He could never appreciate the motives of the Puritans. He could not see how the principle of Justification by faith alone, by bringing every soul for himself directly to God, with no reliance on Priestly interventions, while it made every man feel his responsibilities, made him also aware of his rights; and taught him to shake off die despotism of a priesthood whose claims to divine authority rested in sheer falsehood. He could not see how this discovery and vindication of the right to religious freedom, naturally led to the discovery of man's inalienable civil rights, and gave him the spirit to maintain them. He could not appreciate .he principle that wrought in the Puritans ; and hence, in his view, their activity was turbulence, their firmness wilfulness, c heir zeal for the fundamental principles of the oracles of God was fanaticism. Hume saw not what they saw, — freedom, purity, truth, the vindication of the religious and civil rights of man, as the end of their labors aud the reward of their perseverance.

From Hume's sketch of the Reformation, and his delineation of the character of the Puritans, it is most evident, that except the incidental bearing upon civil laws and popular freedom, he *a\v no difference between the superstitions of Popery, and the Reformed religion. With him religion was but an establishment : >.he creation of popular ignorance and credulity: an engine of the government, to be moulded by the civil power into such a form as to render it most subservient to purposes of state. Hence he praises the " slow steps by which the reformation was conducted in England;" he extols that human policy by which " the fabric of the hierarchy was maintained entire ; and the ancient." (viz. the Papal) "liturgy was preserved, so far as consistent with the new principles :" and by which " many ceremonies become venerable from age, and preceding use, were retained." With him, the only question is that of human expediency. Whether the principles of the Gospel be preserved in their purity ; whether impositions inconsistent with the Gospel be laid aside ; whether the Church of God shall be severed from the domination of mere worldly politicians ; whether the Gospel and its ordinances, given by the toils and blood of the Son of God, shall be left as he gave them, pure and simple, with power to secure the great ends for which they were given, rather than so perverted and disguised as to lull men into a false security ; — these are matters for which Hume cares not, and concerning which he makes no inquiry. Concerning the Reformation itself, he rejoices that "the new religion, by mitigating the genius of the ancient

INTRODUCTORY.

superstition, and rendering it more compatible with the peace and interests of society, had preserved that happy medium which wise men have always sought, and which the people have so seldom been able to maintain." Hence, in the Puritans, he sees little else save the turbulent zeal of ignorant and misguided fanatics; breaking the public peace; disturbing the established order; shaking the foundations of civil government; and going to the dungeon or into banishment, in their mad rage against, what he styles, " inoffensive observances, surplices, corner caps, and tippets." If from such a mingling of the elements there comes out the fair product of human liberty, Hume acknowledges the fact, but he accords not to the Puritans the praise. Deep and overwhelming as was the mass of superstitions with which the Papal Beast had loaded Christianity during the accumulating corruptions of a thousand years of darkness, Hume rejoices that so little was changed ; and he ascribes it to " the spirit of contradiction to the Romanists, taking place in this one instance only universally in England, that the altar was removed from the wall, placed in the middle of the church, and was thenceforward denominated the communion table." It did not occur to Hume, or he considered it too trifling to notice, that the Popish altar was a place where the Priest pretended to offer up a propitiatory sacrifice ; and that when the eyes of men were opened to this horrid corruption, which in effect made void the one only and all sufficient sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, it was demanded, of course, that the altar should be removed : since the Gospel now knows no Priest nor altar nor sacrifice. The simplest lessons as well as the fundamental principles of the Gospel demanded that the Priest should be turned into a simple minister ; the altar into a communion table; the sacrifice of the mass, into simple bread and wine ; the symbols, not the substance, of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was on this principle, that when the communion table was afterwards turned again into an altar and placed against the wall, — for the minister once more to seem to act the part of a priest, officiating, with sacerdotal interventions before the altar, with his back to the people, — it was throughout England deemed the symbol of a virtual abandonment of the fundamental doctrine of the Reformation, and a virtual return to popery. Yet so far is Hume from caring for or comprehending the deep principle involved, that he regrets the change from the Romish forms, and can ascribe the turning of the altar into a communion table to no other cause than " the spirit of contradiction to the Romanists!" How poorly is such a man qualified to judge of the principles of the Puritans ! How lamentable that his opinions on these subjects should enstamp themselves on so

THE PURITANS AND THEIR PRINCIPLES.

many minds ; and form, with scarcely a question of their accuracy, the prevailing sentiments of a large portion of the world !

With regard to the true source of English liberty, however, the testimony of Hume is largely corroborated and unquestionable. Says Lord King, " By the independent divines, who were his instructors, Locke was taught those principles of liberty, which they were the first to disclose to the world. As for toleration, or any true notion of religious liberty, or any general freedom of conscience, we owe them not in the least degree to what is called the Church of England. On the contrary, we owe all these to the Independents in the time of the Commonwealth, and to Locke, their most illustrious and enlightened disciple." Lord Brougham speaks also of the Independents, as " a body of men to be held in lasting veneration, for the unshaken fortitude with which, at all times, they have maintained their attachment to civil liberty ; men to whose ancestors England will ever acknowledge a boundless debt of gratitude, as long as freedom is prized among us ; for," he continues, " I fearlessly confess it, — they, with whatever ridicule some may visit their excesses, or with whatever blame others ; they, with the zeal of martyrs, and with the purity of early Christians, the skill and courage of the most renowned warriors, obtained for England the free constitution which she enjoys."

The Puritans have been blamed as contending for frivolous matters ; because the occasions in which these contests originated, were such matters as the imposition of an ecclesiastical habit, a surplice, a tippet, kneeling at communion, or the use of the ring in marriage. But how seldom can the value of a principle be measured by the occasion which calls it into debate ? Should one now attempt to stigmatize the patriots of the American Revolution as turbulent fanatics, because they took the field, suffered their sons to be slaughtered, their land to be wasted and filled with smoking ruins, — and all for a paltry three-penny tax on a pound of tea ; how inadequate such a representation ! How deceptive ; how entirely removed from the truth ! Years of oppression had preceded. Multiplied wrongs had been inflicted. The tax on tea was a trifle ; the principle involved was of untold importance to the welfare of millions yet unborn, and to the liberties of the world. It was no quarrel of avarice or ill-blood on the part of our fathers ; but a war of principle ; whose result has put forward the dial of human freedom centuries in advance of the progress of ordinary times.

Such was the cause of the Puritans. They had suffered grievous and indescribable wrongs. The world had groaned under a spiritual bondage and groped in spiritual darkness, through, the want of a few first principles ; whose loss or un-

INTRODUCTORY.

checked violation results necessarily in darkness and bondage. Bitter was the cup which had been long rilling up ; the last drop made it overflow. The last drop was the occasion on which the debate arose ; not the whole matter in debate. It was not for a cap or a surplice ; nor yet simply against a liturgy, or a hierarchy, that the Puritans contended ; but against spiritual corruption and despotism, and in behalf of religion herself, pure and simple, as she came from heaven.

But if the matters in debate were indeed indifferent, or of small moment, why did the hierarchy and the civil power empty more than half the pulpits in England, and send men and women and children to prison or into banishment, for matters of mere indifference ? This is sheer persecuting tyranny. If the things in debate were indeed indifferent, why did they impose them upon the consciences of good men and true subjects with such fearful rigors ? The Puritans did not deem them indifferent. They never admitted that they were contending for matters of small moment ; but for their rights, for conscience, for the truth ; for their country ; for God.

But these preliminary matters need not farther occupy our attention. We must return to the days of the Puritans, and dwell among them ; hearing their statements, witnessing their distresses, observing the course of events ; and weighing, as we shall be able, the matters that pass under our review.

Justly to appreciate these things, it is indispensable that we take a cursory view of the state of things preceding the rise of the Puritans. We will therefore, in this chapter, briefly glance at a few things more important to be noticed previous to the dawn of the Reformation. In the next, we will review the life and times of Wickliffe, that honored father no less of Puritanism than of the Reformation. The third will bring us to the beginning of the Reformation under the reign of Henry VIII. The fourth will develope its progress under Edward VI. This brief survey complete, we will proceed to sketch the rise of Puritanism, its conflicts with Prelatical usurpations and oppressions, till we cross the Atlantic and land with the Pilgrims on the rock of Plymouth. Then, leaving the Pilgrims in the midst of these labors, we will return to England, and observe the events there transpiring under the reign of James and the elder Charles : till this religious controversy, drawing into itself the great questions of civil liberty and human rights, overturns the established church and the throne together ; despoils the bishops of their mitres, and brings the king to the scaffold. A rapid glance at subsequent events will bring us to the questions at issue between Puritanism and Prelacy at the present day ; and to the vindication of that faith and order, which, in common with our Pilgrim Fathers, we find broadly and solidly based on the Word of God.

THE PURITANS AND THEIR PRINCIPLES.

" England," says Bishop Burnet in his History of the Reformation, " had been for three hundred years the tamest part of Christendom to the Papal authority, and had been accordingly dealt with." We can only give our attention to one or two of the principal events which contributed to give the Pope such resistless sway over the island of our forefathers.

William, duke of Normandy, surnamed the Conqueror, in A. D., 1066, obtained the crown of England mainly through the favor of the Pope ; and various unusual advantages were granted to the See of Rome in return. Further prerogatives were granted to the Popedom, under the reign of that weak and wicked king John, who took possession of the throne A. D. 1190. John quarrelling with his bishops, the Pope took occasion to interfere, and appointed on his own authority an archbishop of Canterbury. John refused to admit the Pope's nomination, and the Pope put the kingdom under an interdict. By the operation of that interdict, " The nation was deprived at once of all the exterior exercise of its religion. The altars were despoiled of their ornaments ; the crosses, the relics, the images and the statues of the saints were laid on the ground : and as if the air itself had been profaned, and might pollute them by its contact, the priests carefully covered them up even from their own approach and veneration. The bells were removed from the steeples and laid on the ground." " The churches were shut. The dead were refused Christian burial, and thrown into ditches on the highways." According to the belief of the times, the nation was cut oft' from God and from heaven. No courage or patriotism could give any man heart to meet the power of such a horrible and mysterious curse. The king was excommunicated : and in those days the excommunicated person lost his civil rights, and was accounted not only an outlaw, but loathsome and accursed. No one, as he feared the like sentence upon himself, and perdition upon his own soul, might afford him a shelter or do him a kindness. The subjects of John were, by the Pope, absolved from their allegiance ; and the kingdom was given to Philip, king of France ; who was required, as a dutiful son of the church, to come with an army and enter upon the possession.