Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

150
HAMPTON COURT
James, shrewd as ever, had hit the weakness of the
Puritan contention. Religion, he would say, must
needs be a matter which, in its fundamentals, we may
carry in our heads:it cannot be for every man to learn
a long catena or corpus theologies, with its corrections
and its qualifications. The King was reaching towards
the conclusion which the greatest prelate of the age
expressed in after years, " Nor willIever take upon
me to express that tenet or opinion, the denial of the
foundation only excepted, which may shut any Christian,
even the meanest, out of heaven."
Out of the controversies, however, some good did
emerge. The Church Catechism was strengthened
by the addition of the question and answers on the
two chief Sacraments, and it was agreed that the
Bible should be newly translated into English.
Hampton Court has thus a special claim on the
interest of all English-speaking people, for it was
there that the plan was made which gave to literature
and religion the priceless treasure of the Authorised
Version.
The High Commission was last touched on
— a tribunal which no one really liked, bishops
nor lawyers, lay folk nor ministers. It was compared
with the Inquisition, and defended, and restricted.
And nothing happened, as might have
been expected. Besides this came the objections to
the cross in baptism, to the surplice, and little matters
which seem trivial to us to-day. James again had his
flouts and jeers. " You aim at a Scottish Presbytery,