Note 554 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 3)

This was the favorite epithet employed by the early reformers in referring to the Mass. Calvin called it “an execrable idol;” Hooper, “a wicked idol.” Bradford—not Governor William, but John, the Smithfield martyr of Queen Mary’s time—terms it an “abominable idol of bread;” and again, “the horriblest and most detestable device that ever the devil brought out by man.” Bland, rector of Adishan, repeated the familiar figure, calling it a “most blasphemous idol;” and Latimer improved upon this by adding the words, “full of idolatry, blasphemy, sacrilege against God and the dear sacrifice of His Christ.” (Blunt’s Reformation of the Church of Eng., vol. ii. pp. 399-402.) The derivation of the Book of Common Prayer, in many of its parts, from the Missal was unmistakable; and naturally the next race of religious reformers applied to the former the same earnest epithets of theological dissent which had before been applied to the latter. Accordingly, in Barrowe’s Brief Discovery of the False Church, we find the Book of Common Prayer referred to as “a detestable idol, ... old rotten stuff ... abstracted out of the pope’s blasphemous mass-book, ... an abominable and loathsome sacrifice in the sight of God, even as a dead dog.” Barrowe was one of the three Separatist martyrs, and as such held in deepest veneration at Plymouth. (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 427-34.) The Book of Common Prayer was therefore undoubtedly looked upon and referred to at Plymouth as Morton says. Indeed, the Lyford schism was in some degree due to its use. (Bradford, p. 181.) That it was, in the early days, also so looked upon and so referred to at Salem and at Boston, is not clear. It is true that in 1629 it was again the cause of the Browne dissension at Salem (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 287), in consequence of which Skelton and Higginson both declared openly “that they came away from the Common Prayer and ceremonies, ... and therefore, being in a place where they might have their liberty, they neither could nor would use them, because they judged the imposition of these things to be sinful corruptions in the worship of God.” (Morton’s Memorial, p. 147.) The Puritans of Boston, however, were not Separatists, and it is open to question whether they at first felt towards the Common Prayer as the Plymouth people felt towards it, and as Morton says. In 1640 Governor Winthrop, it is true, noted it as a thing worthy of observation that his son “having many books in a chamber where there was corn of divers sorts, had among them one wherein the Greek testament, the psalms and the common prayer were bound together. He found the common prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched, nor any other of his books, though they were above a thousand.” (Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *20.) When Governor Winthrop tried and sentenced Morton, however, he was anxious to preserve his connection with the Church of England, and it is very doubtful whether he then looked upon its Book of Prayer as “an idol.” (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. xviii. p. 296.)

As one count in Morton’s indictment of the people of New England, that in the text now under consideration was not only sufficiently well founded, but it was peculiarly calculated to excite Archbishop Laud’s anger. It is unnecessary to say that he was the special champion of the Church of England ritual. To enforce exact conformity to it he regarded as his mission. When the ships loaded with emigrants for New England were, in March, 1634, stopped in the Thames by order of the Privy Council, they were not allowed to proceed on their voyage until the masters bound themselves to have the Book of Common Prayer used at morning and evening service during the voyage. (Council Register, Feb. 21, 28, 1634; Gardiner’s Charles I., vol. ii. p. 23.) This was Laud’s act, and it is more than probable that he was as much influenced by Morton on that occasion as he was subsequently in the matter of Winslow’s imprisonment for having performed the marriage ceremony. (Supra, 69, 93.)