Note 487 — Chapter VI

Strype's Whitgift, 587. How desirous men not at all connected in faction with the puritans were of amendments in the church, appears by a tract of Bacon, written, as it seems, about the end of 1603, vol. i. p. 387.—He excepts to several matters of ceremony; the cap and surplice, the ring in marriage, the use of organs, the form of absolution, lay-baptism, etc.; and inveighs against the abuse of excommunication, against non-residence and pluralities, the oath ex officio, the sole exercise of ordination and jurisdiction by the bishop, conceiving that the dean and chapter should always assent, etc. And, in his predominant spirit of improvement, asks, "Why the civil state should be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws made every three or four years in parliament assembled, devising remedies as fast as time breedeth mischief; and contrariwise the ecclesiastical state should still continue upon the dregs of time, and receive no alteration now for these forty-five years or more?