THE EXCLUSIVE CLAIMS OF ها PUSEYITE EPISCOPALIANS TO THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY INDEFENSIBLE: WITH AN INQUIRY INTO THE DIVINE RIGHT OF EPISCOPACY AND THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION: IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO THE REV. DR. PUSEY. BY JOHN BROWN, D. D. MINISTER OF LANGTON, BERWICKSHIRE. TO WHICH IS PREFIXED AN ARTICLE ON THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION From the Edinburgh Presbyterian Review. PHILADELPHIA: PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION. 1844. 544523 I45 7881 THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION.* THE origin of Puritan nonconformity,† its ample warrant, and complete justification, will be found in the character and proceedings of Queen Elizabeth, the principles on which the Anglican Church was at first based, and the means by which it was finally established. Elizabeth was one of those persons whose character it is difficult to portray, because it consisted of elements apparently irreconcilable. She possessed the peculiar characteristics of both sexes in almost equal proportions. She had all the masculine energy and enlarged capacity of a strong-minded man, with all the caprice, vanity, and obstinacy of a weak-minded woman; while the circumstances in which she was placed had a direct tendency to develope and mature all the elements of her character. She was suspicious by nature, by education, and by necessity, and despotic by temperament, by habit, and by policy. Thoroughly and intensely selfish, she made all the means within her reach minister to her own interests; utterly insensible to the miseries she might occasion to the instruments of her will, or the objects of her The article on the Anglican Reformation is from the Presby. terian Review of January, 1843. † Puritans and nonconformists were, at first, the common titles of those who were subsequently called Presbyterians, while Brownites, sectaries, and separatists, were the ordinary appellations of those who are now called Independents. See Pierce's Vindication of the Dissenters, pp. 147, 189, 205, 6, 213, 215, 223. Hanbury's Eccl. Memorials of Independents, i. 3, 5, et passim. |