rd which
represented the Royal Supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, the
Commission was now turned into a permanent body wielding the almost
unlimited powers of the Crown. All opinions or acts contrary to the
Statutes of Supremacy and Uniformity fell within its cognizance. A right
of deprivation placed the clergy at its mercy. It had power to alter or
amend the statutes of colleges or schools. Not only heresy and schism
and nonconformity, but incest or aggravated adultery were held to fall
within its scope; its means of enquiry were left without limit, and it
might fine or imprison at its will. By the mere establishment of such a
court half the work of the Reformation was undone. The large number of
civilians on the board indeed seemed to furnish some security against
the excess of ecclesiastical tyranny. Of its forty-four commissioners,
however, few actually took any part in its proceedings; and the powers
of the Commission were practically left in the hands of the successive
Primates. No Archbishop of Canterbury since the days of Augustine had
wielded an authority so vast, so utterly despotic, as that of Whitgift
and Bancroft and Abbot and Laud. The most terrible feature of their
spiritual tyranny was its wholly personal character. The old symbols of
doctrine were gone, and the lawyers had not yet stepped in to protect
the clergy by defining the exact limits of the new. The result was that
at the commission-board at Lambeth the Primates created their own tests
of doctrine with an utter indifference to those created by law. In one
instance Parker deprived a vicar of his benefice for a denial of the
verbal inspiration of the Bible. Nor did the successive Archbishops care
greatly if the test was a varying or a conflicting one. Whitgift strove
to force on the Church the Calvinistic supralapsarianism of his Lambeth
Articles. Bancroft, who followed him, was as earnest in enforcing his
anti-Calvinistic dogma of the divine right of the episcopate. Abbot had
no mercy for Erastians. Laud had none for anti-Erastians. It is no
wonder that the Ecclesiastical Commission, which these men represented,
soon stank in the nostrils of the English clergy. Its establishment
however marked the adoption of a more resolute policy on the part of the
Crown, and its efforts were backed by stern measures of repression. All
preaching or reading in private houses was forbidden; and in spite of
the refusal of Parliament to enforce the requirement of th