156

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XIV.

JG89.

which, even if there had not been a single dissenter in thekingdom, might well haA’e been received with favour. For theChurch had, in her sixth Article, declared that the canonicalbooks were, and that the Apocryphal books were not, entitledto be called Holy Scriptures, and to be regarded as the rule offaith. Even this reform, however, the High Churchmen weredetermined to oppose. They asked, in pamphlets which coveredthe counters of Paternoster How and Little Britain, why countrycongregations should be deprived of the pleasure of hearingabout the ball of pitch with which Daniel choked the dragon,and about the fish whose liver gave forth such a fume as sentthe devil flying from Ecbatana to Egypt. And were there notchapters of the Wisdom of the Son of Siracli far more interestingand edifying than the genealogies and muster rolls which madeup a large part of the Chronicles of the Jewish Kings and of thenarrative ofNehemiah? No grave divine however would haA’eliked to maintain, in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, that it wasimpossible to find, in many hundreds of pages dictated by theHoly Spirit, fifty or sixty chapters more edifying than any thingwhich could be extracted from the works of the most respectableuninspired moralist or historian. The leaders of the majoritytherefore determined to shun a debate in which they must havebeen reduced to a disagreeable dilemma. Their plan was, notto reject the recommendations of the Commissioners, but toprevent those recommendations from being discussed; andAvith this view a system of tactics Avas adopted which provedsuccessful.

The law, as it had been interpreted during a long course ofyears, prohibited the Convocation from even deliberating onany ecclesiastical ordinance Avithout a previous warrant fromthe Crown. Such a warrant, sealed with the great seal, wasbrought in form to Henry the Seventh’s Chapel by Not-tingham. He at the same time delivered a message from the