Note 156 — Chapter IV

The following letter (without signature) illustrates this point: "A new Committee for Religion was appointed to have sat on Monday in the afternoon last, but there being neither meeting nor adjournment, it was left sine die: yet, on Thursday in the afternoon, the Bishops of Lincoln, Durham, Winchester, and Bristol met, where the assistants, attended by some threescore other divines of inferior rank, were present, and many temporal Lords; and many points of doctrine and Church service being questioned, among the rest one Lord said, that it ought to be put out of the creed 'that Christ descended into Hell,' which he did not believe. Yesterday in the forenoon, without any intimation or notice given to the other committees, the same spiritual Lords and divines met at the Bishop of Lincoln's lodging, where, in less than two hours, they condemned, (as I am informed by the Bishop of Bristol, present), about fifty points in doctrine, what they had met with in several treatises and sermons of late printed amongst us. They had culled out a passage of my Lord of Canterbury in his Star Chamber speech, which they say is, that Hoc est corpus meum, is more than Hoc est verbum meum: which the Bishop of Lincoln censured, for that verbum did make corpus; but would not further hear, because his grace was likely to answer it shortly elsewhere."—April 10, 1641. State Papers, Chas. I. Dom.