solutions of celibacy which almost amounted
to vows; nay, that a minister of the established religion had set up a
nunnery, in which the psalms were chaunted at midnight, by a company of
virgins dedicated to God. [11]

Nor was this all. A class of questions, as to which the founders of the
Anglican Church and the first generation of Puritans had differed
little or not at all, began to furnish matter for fierce disputes. The
controversies which had divided the Protestant body in its infancy had
related almost exclusively to Church government and to ceremonies. There
had been no serious quarrel between the contending parties on points of
metaphysical theology. The doctrines held by the chiefs of the hierarchy
touching original sin, faith, grace, predestination, and election,
were those which are popularly called Calvinistic. Towards the close of
Elizabeth's reign her favourite prelate, Archbishop Whitgift, drew
up, in concert with the Bishop of London and other theologians, the
celebrated instrument known by the name of the Lambeth Articles. In that
instrument the most startling of the Calvinistic doctrines are affirmed
with a distinctness which would shock many who, in our age, are reputed
Calvinists. One clergyman, who took the opposite side, and spoke harshly
of Calvin, was arraigned for his presumption by the University of
Cambridge, and escaped punishment only by expressing his firm belief in
the tenets of reprobation and final perseverance, and his sorrow for
the offence which he had given to pious men by reflecting on the great
French reformer. The school of divinity of which Hooker was the chief
occupies a middle place between the school of Cranmer and the school of
Laud; and Hooker has, in modern times, been claimed by the Arminians
as an ally. Yet Hooker pronounced Calvin to have been a man superior
in wisdom to any other divine that France had produced, a man to whom
thousands were indebted for the knowledge of divine truth, but who was
himself indebted to God alone. When the Arminian controversy arose
in Holland, the English government and the English Church lent strong
support to the Calvinistic party; nor is the English name altogether
free from the stain which has been left on that party by the
imprisonment of Grocius and the judicial murder of Barneveldt.

But, even before the meeting of the Dutch synod, that part of the
Anglican clergy which was peculiarly hostile to the Calvinistic Church
government and