Another subject that grew out of the differences between the Conformists and Non-Conformists was sprung Thomas Cartwright, in an attempt to establish Calvin's system of church government in England, and which also frustrated all hopes of any compromise. I will give this in the words of Mr. Green:
So difficult, however, was her [Elizabeth's] position that a change might have been forced on her had she not been aided at this moment by a group of clerical bigots, who gathered under the banner of Presbyterianism.
Of these, Thomas Cartwright was the chief. He had studied at Geneva; he returned with a fanatical faith in Calvinism, and in the system of church government which Calvin had devised; and as officer of divinity at Cambridge, he used to the full the opportunities which his chair gave him of propagating his opinions. No leader of a religious party ever deserved less of after sympathy.
Cartwright was unquestionably learned and devout, but his bigotry was that of a medieval inquisition. The relics of the old ritual, the cross in baptism, the surplice, the giving of a rain in marriage, were to him not merely distasteful, as they were to the Puritans at large; they were idolatrous, and the mark of the beast.
His declamation against ceremonies and superstition, however, had little weight with Elizabeth for her primates; what scared them was his reckless advocacy of a scheme of ecclesiastical government which placed the State beneath the feet of the Church. The absolute rule of bishops, indeed, Cartwright denounced as begotten of the devil; but the absolute rule of presbyters he held to be established by the word of God. For the church modeled after the fashion of Geneva he claimed an authority which surpassed the wildest dreams of the masters of the Vatican.
All spiritual authority and jurisdiction, the decreeing of doctrine, the ordering of ceremonies, lay wholly in the hands of the ministers of the church. To them belonged the supervision of public morals. In an ordered arrangement of classes and synods, these presbyters were to govern their flocks, to regulate their own order, to decide in matters of faith, to administer "discipline." Their weapon was excommunication, and they were responsible for its use to none but Christ.
The province of the civil ruler in such a system of religion as this, was simply to carry out the decisions of the presbyters, "to see their decrees executed, and to punish the condemners of them."
Nor was this work of the civil power likely to be light work. The spirit of Calvinistic Presbyterianism excluded all toleration of practice or belief. Not only was the rule of ministers to be established as the legal form of church government, but all other forms, Episcopalian or Separatist, were to be ruthlessly put down. For heresy there was the punishment of death.
Never had the doctrine of persecution been urged with such a blind and reckless ferocity. Cartwright wrote:
"I deny that upon repentance there ought to follow any pardon of death..Heretics ought to be put to death now. If this be bloody and extreme, I am content to be so counted with the Holy Ghost."
The violence of language such as this was as unlikely as the dogmatism of his theological teaching, to commend Cartwright's opinions to the mass of Englishmen. Popular as the Presbyterian system became in Scotland, it never took any popular hold on England. It remained to the last a clerical, rather than a national, creed; and even in the moment of its seeming triumph under the commonwealth, it was rejected by every part of England save London and Lancashire.
But the bold challenge which Cartwright's party delivered to the government in 1572, in an "admonition to the Parliament," which denounced the government of bishops as contrary to the word of God, and demanded the establishment in its place of government by presbyters, raised a panic among English statesmen and prelates, which cut off all hopes of a quiet treatment of the merely ceremonial questions which really troubled the consciences of the more advanced Protestants. The natural progress of opinion abruptly ceased, and the moderate thinkers who had pressed for a change in ritual which would have satisfied the zeal of the Reformers, withdrew from union with a party which revived the worst pretensions of the papacy. (Larger History of English People, book 6, chap. 5, paragraph 31)