Internal and External Strength — Safeguarding of Doctrine

Abstract

On November 17th, 1558, Queen Mary died. It was laid down in the testament of Henry VIII that his second daughter, Elizabeth, should be her successor, and, in fact, Parliament recognized her as such. Not so Pope Paul IV, however. On the contrary, he declared her to be unfit for the throne on account of her birth. If Elizabeth had ever had any inclination towards the Roman Church, this attitude made her choose the side of Protestantism without reservation. Hers was not a strongly marked religious spirit, but she was deeply conscious of the significance of the English Church which had been the national church of old, and she wanted, from conviction, to give her support to its independence of papal authority in the spirit of her father, or perhaps, even more in that of her late brother. The Church presented itself to her in its unbroken apostolic and episcopal tradition, but cleansed in the spirit of the Reformation in accordance with scriptural theology. For the rest she had no wish to exercise authority over the Church’s teaching, but only over Church government and hierarchy as “Supreme Governor,” not as “Supreme Head”. She saw no objection, within certain limitations, to a growth in strength of the Reformed elements in her realm, particularly if this would further the material well-being of her people. Sagacious, almost to the point of being cunning, she was averse to extremes, as also to that extreme Puritan Calvinism voiced by the Scottish Reformer, John Knox, who, in his “First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women”, of 1558, claimed for the people (the Reformed people) the unrestricted right to insurrection, and who rejected government by women.