they
condemned any delinquent, was limited by no rule but their own pleasure.
They assumed a power of imposing on the clergy what new articles of
subscription, and consequently of faith, they thought proper. Though
all other spiritual courts were subject, since the reformation,
to inhibitions from the supreme courts of law, the ecclesiastical
commissioners were exempted from that legal jurisdiction, and were
liable to no control. And the more to enlarge their authority, they were
empowered to punish all incests, adulteries, fornications; all outrages,
misbehaviors, and disorders in marriage: and the punishments which
they might inflict, were according to their wisdom, conscience, and
discretion. In a word, this court was a real inquisition; attended
with all the iniquities, as well as cruelties, inseparable from that
tribunal. And as the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical court was
destructive of all law, so its erection was deemed by many a mere
usurpation of this imperious princess; and had no other foundation
than a clause of a statute, restoring the supremacy to the crown, and
empowering the sovereign to appoint commissioners for exercising that
prerogative. But prerogative in general, especially the supremacy,
was supposed in that age to involve powers which no law, precedent, or
reason could limit and determine.

But though the commons, in their humble petition to the prelates, had
touched so gently and submissively on the ecclesiastical grievances, the
queen, in a speech from the throne at the end of the session, could not
forbear taking notice of their presumption, and reproving them for those
murmurs which, for fear of offending her, they had pronounced so low
as not directly to reach her royal ears. After giving them some general
thanks for their attachment to her, and making professions of affection
to her subjects, she told them, that whoever found fault with the church
threw a slander upon her, since she was appointed by God supreme ruler
over it; and no heresies or schisms could prevail in the kingdom but by
her permission and negligence: that some abuses must necessarily have
place in every thing; but she warned the prelates to be watchful; for
if she found them careless of their charge, she was fully determined to
depose them: that she was commonly supposed to have employed herself
in many studies, particularly philosophical, (by which, I suppose, she
meant theological,) and she would confess, that few w