Ground-plan of Durham Cathedral.

styles, see ARCHITECTURE ; see also AMIENS, ANTWERP, BURGOS, CANTERBURY, &c.

Church, RICHARD WILLIAM, Dean of St Paul's since 1871, was born in 1815. He spent a great part of his youth in Italy and elsewhere on the Continent, took a first-class at Oxford in 1836, and soon after was elected to a fellowship at Oriel. From 1853 he held the rectory of Whatley, near Frome. In 1854 he published Essays and Reviews, and thereby took rank almost at once as one of the most graceful and scholarly writers of the day. His university sermons (1876-78) in a volume entitled Human Life and its Conditions (1878), the series of St Paul's and Oxford sermons in The le Pr of Civilisation (1880), and the five St Paul's ons forming The Discipline of the Christian treter (1885), are profound contributions to Zious thought. Other works are his Life of St 4) ar an (1871), an amplification of two essays in his first volume: The Beginning of the Middle Ages 77, an introduction to the series of Epochs of Modern History: Dante: an Essay, with a transla 1 of the De Monarchia by his only son, F. J. reh, a young man of rare promise, who died in 1887; Spenser (1879), and Bacon (1879), two of the best books in the series of English Men of Letters.'¦ Horasional essays or lectures on such subjects as Montaigne, Brittany, Cassiodorus, the sacred joetry of early religions, the Pensées of Pascal and

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Church, STATES OF THE, or PAPAL STATES (Ital. Stati della Chiesa, or Stati Pontifici), a terri tory or group of states in Central Italy, formerly united under one Sovereignty, with the pope for its head. Its extent varied at different times, but in 1859, the last year of its entirety, the area was 15,774 sq. m., the pop. over 3,000,000. It stretched irregu larly from the Po in the north to Naples in the south, and was divided for administrative purposes into twenty districts, including the Comarca of Rome; six legations, among them those of Bologna and Ravenna; and thirteen delegations, including Ancona and Perugia. More general divisions were the Romagna, Umbria, and the March of Ancona. The war of 1859 left the pope only the Comarca of Rome, the lega tion of Velletri, and the delegations of Civita Vecchia, Frosinone, and Viterbo, 4493 sq. m. in extent, with a pop. of about 700,000. The temporal power of the popes originated in a gift of the exarchate of Ravenna by Pepin to Pope Stephen II., and it reached its greatest extent under Innocent III. (1198-1216). The share of the Papacy in the secular affairs of Italy was at no time other than prejudicial to the highest spiritual interests of the Church, yet when the withdrawal of the French garrison of Rome in 1870 led to the final downfall of his temporal power, Pius IX., as the prisoner of the Vatican,' continued to hurl vain anathemas at the head of the king of Italy. See POPE, ITALY, Church-ale, a kind of church festival in old England at which ale was drunk liberally. The name is obviously compounded like bridal = brideale, scot-ale, clerk-ale, bid-ale, &c. The church-ales were usually held upon Whitsuntide, and two persons were chosen beforehand to preside over the feast, and divide out the victuals and drink voluntarily contributed by the parishioners. Sometimes the drink which had been brewed from malt given by the parishioners was sold about Whitsunday at the church for the support of orphans and poor, the repair of the church, and similar objects. The practice of holding church-ales with the corresponding games was denounced by the Puritans, and is not overlooked in Stubbs' Anatomie of Abuses.

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Church Discipline (Disciplina ecclesiastica), the practice of the Christian Church in dealing with such of its office-bearers and members as have by public scandal caused hindrance to its common spiritual life. Its Scripture authority, resting on such passages as Matt. xvi. 19; xviii. 15 (et seq.), is further enforced in Paul's epistles and in the gospel and epistles of John. Under the Decian persecution there was so much apostacy that special rules became fixed for the restoration of the Lapsed (q.v.), which remained in force till the 5th century. But the great strictness with which Penance (q.v.) was enforced led to the opposite extreme: it became customary for penitents to be restored

simply on their producing letters of recommendation (libelli pacis) from persons who had confessed Christ. The Montanists, however, maintained that those who had been once excommunicated should pass their whole life in the status pœnitentiæ, and the Novatians denied that the Church possessed the right to assure the Lapsi of the forgiveness of sins, which only God could grant. The Donatists (q.v.) could not arrest the gradual secularisation of discipline. By the 6th century penances began to be commuted for certain fixed taxes. In the Western Church, after public penances had become rare, other punishments took their place, partly derived from the exercises of earlier asceticism, partly from the usages of Frankish law. The episcopal Missi of Charles the Great combined the functions of a civil and ecclesiastical court, and allowed church punishments to be compounded for money. From the time of Gregory the Great the doctrine of Purgatory (q.v.) had been a dogma of the Church; and Peter Lombard and other scholastics built on it the theory of Indulgences (q.v.), which was confirmed by Clement VI. in | 1343. The extreme punishments in the middle ages were the Greater Excommunication (q.v.) for the individual, and Interdict (q.v.) for the community. The churches of the Reformation held that the power of the keys' belonged to the whole Church, by which it was to be intrusted to the regularly called servants of the Word. They rejected Auricular Confession (q.v.) and the whole system of Satisfactions and Indulgences; restrict ing the sphere of their church discipline to matters of social morality, and its enforcement simply to spiritual admonition and partial or complete exclusion from the sacraments and offices of the Church. The Lutheran Church rejected the Greater Excommunication as a merely secular punishment with which the servants of the Church had nothing to do; but retained the Lesser, simply as a means of moral training. Though Luther and Melanchthon adhered firmly to the participation of the whole congregation in the imposition of excommunication, yet, in consequence of the development of the consistorial system, it passed into the hands of the consistories in the different states. In the 17th and 18th centuries it fell gradually into disuse. The Reformed Church laid greater stress on congregational discipline. Zwingli assigned it to the civil magistrate of the Christian state; Calvin, on the other hand, referred it to the Presbytery (q.v.). In Presbyterian churches it is exercised by the kirk-session-an appeal lying to the presbytery, and from that to the synod and general assembly. The church discipline provided for by the Canons of the Church of England has almost entirely fallen into disuse.

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Church History. The history of the Christian Church includes its external history, which treats of the extension of the Church, and its relation to the state; and internal history, which is concerned with the Church's inner life, doctrine, worship, and constitution. With respect to time, the Church's history is usually divided into three periods-Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. Medieval History may be dated from its establishment in union with the new empire founded by Charles the Great in 800. Modern Church History begins with the Reformation (in the view of Roman Catholic historians, with the Humanistic movement, or the discovery of America). Each of these periods may be divided into two: Ancient Church History, at the complete victory of Christianity over Greek heathenism under Constantine the Great; Medieval, at the culmination of the papal power under Innocent III.; and Modern, at the close of the Thirty Years' War by the Treaty of Westphalia.

CHURCH HISTORY

The first of these periods extends from Christ to Constantine. The beginning of the Christian Church dates from the departure of Jesus Christ from the earth and the Pentecostal effusion of the Holy Spirit (about 33 A.D.), the time when the first confessors of Christ exceeded the limits of a private society, and began to form a public community. Its nucleus was the first Jewish Christian community at Jerusalem under the pillar-apostles' James, Cephas, and John. The spiritual concep tion of the Messiah which the disciples had received from the personal influence of Jesus was sealed on their minds by their faith in his resurrection; and their comprehension of his gospel is seen in the wide aims of their first missions, in their progressive deliverance from legalism, and in the belief that faith is the essential element of salvation. As members were quickly added to the Church, especially from the Jews of the Dispersion (called Hellenists, because they spoke Greek), a beginning of its organisation was made in the appointment of seven deacons, including the Hellenist Stephen, the protomartyr of the Church. The elements of the primitive faith were unified and systematised by the Apostle Paul, the aim of whose life was the conversion of the whole world to Christ. He succeeded in emancipating the Gentile Christian world from the ceremonial law, and in his three great missionary journeys (about 40-58 A.D.) began the evangelisation of Europe. The destruction of Jerusalem (70 A.D.) completed the deliverance of Christianity from Judaism, and gave the Church the consciousness of a world-wide mission. The Judaising Christians were thenceforth an insignificant sect.

The Roman empire maintained the pre-Christian view that there could be no worship of God apart from the corporate life of the state, and, when the early Christian Church refused to take part in the state worship, it became a religio illicita, and was proscribed and persecuted as dangerous to society. To the distinguished and learned Christianity was a gloomy infatuation, to the populace the Christians' contempt for the gods seemed the cause of every public calamity. The tyrannical caprice of Nero charged them with the burning of Rome (64 A.D.), and persecuted them with revolting cruelty. Under Domitian Christianity was punished as a form of high-treason. The first regular decree for legal procedure against the Christians was issued by Trajan. Under the more tolerant rule of the emperors from Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius (117161), the Christian congregations were organised as Collegia tenuiorum ('poor men's guilds'), or Collegia funeraticia ('funeral societies'), and as such enjoyed a sort of legalised existence. The vast cities of their dead in the catacombs of this period nowhere preserve memorials of martyrdom or persecution. The Christians had to suffer many a local persecution, but, apart from the temporary and thoughtless cruelties of Nero and Domitian-who, according to Tertullian, was a piece of Nero for cruelty-they had the toleration, and sometimes the protection, of the emperors. Ranke ascribes such action especially to Antoninus Pius-'the bestintentioned and most peaceable among them, and perhaps not without sympathy for Christianitywhose reign he regards as the culmination of the Roman empire. A consequence of this tolerant bearing of the imperial power was the peaceful behaviour of the Christians, who in general rejected the principles of Montanus, which aimed at the subversion of the state. This condition of affairs came to an end under Marcus Aurelius, who, no longer able to resist the popular outery, suffered a persecution to take place in several provinces.

About the middle of the 2d century the Christian congregations in the Roman empire were consoli

dating themselves into a confederacy, which called itself the 'Great' or 'Catholic' (i.e. universal) Church. By the middle of the 3d century the confederation was accomplished. The Church was now organised with a hierarchical constitution and an elaborately regulated worship, while the New Testament canon was regarded as equally anthoritative with the Old. From 250 the emperors whose political aims were most akin to the traditional policy of Rome struggled for life and death with the growing power. Of the times before Decius Origen testifies (Contra Celsum, iii. 8) 'few and very easy to count are those who have died on account of the Christian religion; and Lactantius says (De Morte Persecutorum, iii. 4), after the acts of the tyrant (Domitian) had been rescinded, the Church was not only restored to her pristine state, but shone forth much more brightly; and, times following when many good emperors beid the helm of government, she suffered no attacks from enemies... But thereafter the long peace was broken. For after many years | the accursed beast (execrabile animal) Decius arose to vex the Church.' Under Decius began the first universal and systematic persecution of Christiarity as a part of the military and religious policy of the state. The sufferings of the Christians continued under Gallus and Valerian till 260, when Gai ienus declared Christianity a religio licita. For forty years the Church had peace, and grew mightily on every side. Diocletian by four edicts of progressive severity, from February 303 to March 304, when he decreed torture for all Christians, put forth a desperate effort to annihilate Christianity in the whole empire. At his abdication (May 305) the horrors of the persecution ended, except in the East, where they were continued without mercy by Maximin Daza. The victory of Constantine in 313 delivered Christendom from this its last and most resentless persecutor.

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After this the Church was distracted with controversies about the views of Origen (394-438), the Apollinarian controversy (362 381), the disputes between the schools of Antioch and Alexandria (381-428), the Nestorian controversy (428– 444), the Monophysite controversy (444 553), the Monothelete controversy (633–680), and the Iconoclastic controversy (726–842). These discussions originated in the Eastern Church, while in the West the theological interest centred on the great conflict between Augustinianism and Pelagianism (412-529). The tyrannical interference of the Eastern emperors in the controversies of the Church, their supremacy in the ecclesiastical councils, and their penal enforcement of doctrinal decrees, led to infinite confusion in the relations between church and state, and prepared the way for the ambitious policy of the popes, and for the final breach between the churches of the East and West.

While these age-long controversies kept the relations of church and state continually strained, Paganism was steadily suppressed. Orthodox Christianity in union with the state soothed the declining years of the ancient empire; but could not prevent the conquest of Rome by Alaric the Goth. Its advance in Persia was checked by political persecution before the advent of Islam, which subsequently overwhelmed the Christianity of the East. In the West, however, Christianity rose with renewed vigour from the ruins of the old empire, by the conversion of the Teutonic and Slavonic nations. The Teutonic conquerors of Gaul and Italy were Christians before their invasion of those countries. The Anglo-Saxon conquerors of England were heathens. A century and a half after their settlement Christian missionaries gained a footing in the south and north, and within a century from the landing of Augustine the English kingdoms had embraced Christianity. In the general declension of political faith under the decaying Roman empire, the social power once held by the officials of Rome had gradually passed into the hands of the Christian bishops. In the lawlessness and disorder of the barbarian invasions, these representatives of the claims of moral order and human brotherhood were the trusted mediators between the conquerors and the conquered, and exercised a constant influence during peace and war. But this great authority over the new nations brought along with it much injury to religion. Discipline declined as the power and wealth of the clergy increased.

The third period of the Church's history extends from Charles the Great to Innocent III. At the commencement of the 8th century,' says Ranke, *on the one side Mohammedanism threatened to overspread Italy and Gaul, and on the other the ancient idolatry of Saxony and Friesland once more forced its way across the Rhine. In this peril of Christian institutions, a youthful prince of Teutonic race, Charles Martel, arose as their champion. By his great victory of Tours (732) a final check was given to the advance of the Saracens in the West, and Christendom and civilisation were rescued from the grasp of Islam. The subjugation of the Saxons by Charles the Great was the toilsome work of thirtytwo years (772 804), and their Christianisation was secured by the castles, towns, mission-stations, and monasteries which the conqueror planted in their country. Under the Carlovingian kings of the Franks from the middle of the 8th century, the temporal dominion of the Papacy was founded. The legend of the Donation of Constantine, 'bestowing imperial power and dignities upon the pope, together with the sovereignty over Rome and all Italy, and the countries of the West, was invented ' at Rome about 730, and embodied in the PseudoIsidorian decretals (about 850). It was contested by few in the middle ages, till Laurentius

Valla demonstrated its untenability. For centuries this clumsy forgery formed one of the supports of the Papacy in its struggle for universal supremacy. The connection between the churches of the East and West had been already loosened by the schism of 484-519 during the Monophysite controversy, and by the iconoclastic policy of the emperors from Leo to Theophilos (717-842). At length the progressive centralisation of the Western Church under the Roman see, to whose authority the 'œcumenical bishops' of Constantinople could not submit, and in the 11th century the transfer by the Bulgarians of their allegiance from Constantinople to Rome, led to a final rupture. The patriarch Photius already in 867 laid down the dogmatic basis of the Schism as consisting in the western deviations from the dogmas, customs, and constitutional forms of the ancient church, especially the addition of the filioque' clause to the creed of Nicea and Constantinople, teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father, but also from the Son. The severance was completed on the 16th July 1054, when the papal legates laid the anathema on the altar of St Sophia in Constantinople.

The growth of Monasticism, from the beginning a lay movement in pursuit of the old ideal of Christian perfection, which men felt that a worldly priesthood no longer represented, entered at first into competition with the clergy, but gradually became subservient to Catholic aims. In the East, where the contemplative life prevailed, the best function of the monasteries was as nurseries of the priesthood, while the monks of the West christianised Germany and Britain, cultivated wildernesses, preserved the classic treasures of antiquity, and were the diligent teachers of the common people. Above all the monastic orders, the Benedictines can claim the glory of conspicuous services to Christian missions and intellectual culture. In the 9th and 10th centuries,' says Gibbon, the reign of the gospel and of the Church was extended over Bulgaria, Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, and Russia.... The admission of the barbarians into the pale of civil and ecclesiastical society delivered Europe from the depredations by sea and land of the Normans, Hungarians, and Russians. The establishment of law and order was promoted by the influence of the clergy; and the rudiments of art and science were introduced into the savage countries of the globe.' In the West, men held that the Holy Roman Empire, consolidated by Charles and Otto the Great, was the embodiment of the ideal state, and that God had two vicars on earth, the emperor in temporal things, and the pope in spiritual things. The analogy of the two,' says Bryce, 'made them appear parts of one great world-movement towards unity; the coincidence of their boundaries, which had begun before Constantine, lasted long enough after him to associate them indissolubly together, and make the names of Roman and Christian convertible.... The Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire are one and the same thing in two aspects; and Catholicism, the principle of the universal Christian society, is also Romanism; that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and type of its universality, manifesting itself in a mystic dualism which corresponds to the two natures of its 'Founder. As divine and eternal, its head is the pope, to whom souls have been intrusted; as human and temporal, the emperor, commissioned to rule men's bodies and acts.' 'In the first half of the middle ages the Church believed herself to be coextensive with the Kingdom of God, the realisation of the noblest ethical ideal, and her servants conceived it their highest duty to labour to make the

whole field of human life subject to her supremacy. Not even the moral declension of the Papacy in the centuries succeeding Charles the Great, espe cially during the sixty years' so-called Pornocracy (904-963), could quench the ardour of the Church's faith in that ideal; and the cloister, purged and strengthened by successive reforms, saved the authority of the Church by uniting in Gregory VII. the monastic ideal of self-renunciation with the ecclesiastical ideal of the conquest of the world. At the great Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III. in 1215, the Catholic Church was at the zenith of its power. Innocent was the sun. and from him the princes of Christendom held their light in fee. The Crusaders, though unable to hold Jerusalem, had enhanced the prestige of the Papacy; and Scholasticism placed its skill and learning at the service of the Church. The Waldenses and Albigenses were to be crushed relentlessly, and the Inquisition was now established for their permanent repression. No persecutions which the Church had ever suffered are to be compared for determined cruelty with those which in this period she inflicted on the heretics of southern France and of the Netherlands. Emperors and kings might contend with Rome for temporal authority; they were ready to decree the burning of heretics as much as she desired. But this unrestricted sway brought its own downfall. After the Papacy in the Avignon sojourn (1305-77) had become the tool of French policy, and after all the contrivances of pious fraud had been resorted to, during the Schism of 1378 to 1409, to fill the coffers of rival popes at Avignon and at Rome, the people began to lose faith in the holiness of the hierarchy, and the ever louder cry for reformation of the Church in its head and members' became irresistible. The Schism of thirty years, during which two popes claimed the same divine prerogative, was the most direct contradiction of the doctrine that had obtained in the Catholic Church since the time of Hildebrand, that the Papacy was the unifying centre of Christendom. The conviction gained ground that even its authority was subject to that of an ecumenical council. In the development of this idea a twofold tendency presented itself. One party, that of Gerson and D'Ailly, which prevailed at the councils of Pisa and Constance, regarded the council as representative only of the hierarchy, and, while recognising the Papacy as a divine institution, aimed at restricting the absolutism of the papal see by the co-rule of a spiritual aristocracy, consisting of the bishops and the doctors of the universities. The other, mainly composed of German theologians, made the first attempt within the medieval Church to undermine the Roman Catholic conception of the Church by a distinction between the ecclesia universalis-the spiritual community of all believers-and the ecclesia Romana, of which the pope was head. The second party regarded this una catholica ecclesia alone as infallible, and held that the council represented not only all classes of the hierarchy, but all classes of Christendom; and that church reform was a duty that fell to the secular power, not only the princes, but also the entire body of the laity. But all the resolutions of the three great reforming councils were made void by the pitiful issue of the Council of Basel in the Concordat of Vienna in 1448, when the fathers of the council recognised Nicholas V., and received the holy father's forgiveness. Thus ended the last attempt towards the reformation of the Church on its old foundations.

At length the teaching of the Lollards and Hussites, the failure of the councils, and the shameless traffic in indulgences; the impotent conclusion of Scholasticism that philosophy and religion might both be true, though contradic

tory; the new art and learning of the Renaissance: the awakening of the spirit of nationality; and the widespread longing of the poor for redress from the exactions of priests and nobleshad prepared men's minds for that great move. ment in the 16th century, which issued in the Protestant churches and in the division of the whole of western Christendom into two hostile camps down to the present day. Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, and Calvin were its greatest leaders. The Reformation called forth a thousand changes in human existence. As it passed from country to country in all northern Europe, it broke the cloister| row, abolished celibacy, confiscated the property of the Church, founded secular schools for the people, stripped the clergy of their privileges; and the | philanthropic duties and the tasks of civilisation, which for centuries had been incumbent on the servants of the Church, it gradually transferred to the state and the community. Where it triumphed, and even where it was successfully resisted, there was no sphere of life in which its influence was not felt. The communistic movement of the Anabap tists, which had been developed in the midst of the religious perplexities of Germany, was crushed in the ruins of Munster in 1535, and with the death of *this prodigal child of the Reformation' passed away the premature political socialism of the Reformation period. The aims of the Papacy, all centred on its Political interests, were wholly irreconcilable with the Reformers' doctrine of the priesthood of all believers and the sole authority of Scripture in matters of faith. The political and humanistic, !period of the Papacy was succeeded by a régime of passionate zeal, under which every nerve was strained to win back the territories which had shaken off the Roman yoke. The resolutions of the Council of Trent (1545-63), subscribed by 255 prelates, separated for ever the Protestant and Catholic churches, and obtained in the latter the authority of a symbolical book.

The Counter Reformation, led everywhere by the Jesuits, and favoured in Germany by the Peace of Augsburg (1555), went on with great success till the mile of the 17th century. It began in Bavaria in 1563, and quickly spread over southern Germany. But it was in France that the revived Roman Catholism of the 16th century won its first great victory, I number of the Religionnaires' or 'Huguenots' in France had, in 1558, amounted to 400,000. From the massacre at Vassy by François of Guise in 1562 to the Massacre of St Bartholomew (August 23-24, 1572, four religious wars had lacerated France, and during the reign of Henry III. there were yet five of these desolating civil wars. The crafty see saw policy of Popes Sixtus V., Gregory XIV., and Cement VIII. secured every advantage afforded by the vicissitudes of the conflict, and it was not till after Henry IV. had gone over to Roman Catholicism that the pope in 1595 recognised him as the king of France. Liberty of conscience was extended to the French Protestants by the Edict of Nantes in 1598. From 1555 the ecclesiastical position of each German territory was dependent on the religions convictions of its ruler, and the members of the Lutheran Church Izad political equality with the old religion;' but the exclusion of the Reformed from that provision d to the isolation of Lutheranism from the great struggles of Protestantism in France, the Netheranis and England. The principle cujus regio, ejus ma, by which subjects should follow the conon of their rulers, unavoidably led, in the ptical condition of Germany in the 16th and en centuries, to the breaking up of the Lutheran (arch into a number of small national churches, and confused the development of Lutheran the

with the dynastic and family interests of several courts. Stability was only attained

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after the fearful struggle of the Thirty Years' War, when, at the Peace of Westphalia, Catholics and Protestants agreed to recognise each other's right to existence. The excellences of the Lutheran Church were the depth and power of its ascetic elements and its religious literature, especially its hymns, the noble expression of German mysticism. But the continuation and political maintenance of the Reformation has been mainly the work of the Reformed or Calvinistic churches. In a time,' says Häusser, when, of all the creations to the Reformation, Europe presented nowhere else any solid or lasting bulwark, the little Genevan state of Calvin sent out year after year its apostles into the world, and was the most dreaded foe of Rome, when nowhere else was there any resistance to her might.' In the Lutheran Church many of the Romish ceremonies were retained, and congregational organisation was neglected; whereas in the Reformed churches the congregations were organised on a democratic basis, that had nothing akin to the traditional principles of monarchical power. With the pas sive resistance of Luther men could not counteract the Caraffas, the Philips, and the Stuarts; that needed a school prepared for war to the knife; the only such school was Calvin's, and it everywhere took up the glove-in France, in the Netherlands, in Scotland, and in England.' Lutheranism has been established in Scandinavia and the countries along the Baltic, while the Reformed Church, which has throughout evinced a more radical character than the Lutheran, has especially prevailed in South Germany, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and Scotland.

In England, Edward VI., the successor of Henry VIII.—who had been recognised by the parliament in 1534 as the only supreme head in erthe of the Churche of England-with the help of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, completed the Reformation. The Common Prayer-book was introduced, and a confession of faith in 42 articles drawn up as the standard of the church's doctrine. After a period of persecution under Mary, the Anglican Church was established under Elizabeth in the closest union with the state. By Elizabeth all ecclesi astical disobedience was regarded as treasonable, and the legislation of her later years was directed against those who took offence at the ritual and the hierarchy, and were known as Nonconform ists. English Puritanism (which may be dated from 1567, when its adherents began to separate from the Established Church) was at first only an opposition to the ceremonial elements which the Church of England still retained after its separation from Rome. The principle of Puritanism was reformation through the members of the church itself, as opposed to reformation originating with the crown. It aimed at the overthrow of the episcopal system, and the establishment of a strict system of discipline in the spirit of Calvin. Under Charles I. the Puritans were severely persecuted, and many of them emigrated to America, and were the early settlers of New England. English Puritanism in alliance with Scottish Presbyterianism gained in the Great Rebellion a complete victory over the monarchy, but in England the fruits of the victory fell to the Independents, who were the most consistent section of the party. The Synod of Dort in Holland (1618-19), which was regarded as an œcumenical council of the churches of the Calvinistic Reformation, had decided the controversy between the Arminians and Calvinists entirely in favour of the latter. The Westminster Assembly (1643-49), called by the Long Parlia ment, drew up the confession of the Puritans, which is closely akin to the resolutions of Dort, and is still the standard in the churches of Scov