Now, it was this man who was making his royal progress from Edinburgh to London in March, 1603, nearly a year before the gathering of men which we were observing at the opening of this study.Many things happened on the journey besides his falling off his horse several times; but one of the most significant was the halting of the progress to receive what was called the Miliary Petition, whose name implies that it was signed by a thousand men--actually somewhat less than that number--mostly ministers of the Church.The Petition made no mention of any Bible version, yet it was the beginning of the events which led to it.Back of it was the Puritan influence.It asked for reforms in the English Church, for the correction of abuses which had grown under Elizabeth's increasingfavor of ritual and ceremony.It asked for a better-trained ministry, for better discipline in the Church, for the omission of so many detailed requirements of rites and ceremonies, and for that perennially desired reform, shorter church services!
Very naturally the new King replied that he would take it up later, and promised to call a conference to consider it.And this he did.The conference met at Hampton Court in January, 1604, and it was for this that the men were coming from many parts of England.The gathering was held on the 14th, 16th, and 18th of the month.Its sole purpose was to consider that Miliary Petition; but the King called to it not only those who had signed the Petition, but those who had opposed it.He had no notion of granting any favor to it, and from the first he gave the Puritans rough treatment.He told them he would have none of their non- conformity, he would "make them conform or harry them out of the land." Someone suggested that since this was a Church matter there be called a Synod, or some general gathering fitted to discuss and determine such things, rather than leave it to a few Church dignitaries.For the purposes of the petitioners it was a most unfortunate expression.James had just come from Scotland, where the Presbyterians were with their Synod, and where Calvinism was in full swing.He was much in favor of some elements of Calvinism; but he could not see how all the elements held together.Predestination, for example, which offends so many people to-day, was a precious doctrine to King James, and he insisted that his subjects ought to see how clearly God had predestined him to rule over them! But he could not tolerate the necessary logical inference of Calvinism that all men must be equal before God, and so men can make and unmake kings as they need to do so, the matter of king or subject being purely an incidental one.He remembered the time when Andrew Melville, one of the Scotch ministers, had plucked him by his royal sleeve and called him "God's silly vassal" right to his face.So, when some one said "Synod" it brought the King up standing.He burst out: "If that is what you mean, if you want what the Scotch mean by their Synod and their Presbytery, then I tell you at once that I will have none of it.Presbytery agrees with monarchy very much as God agrees with the devil.If you have no bishop, you will soon have noking." He was perfectly right, with reference to the kind of king he meant.These things were to be settled, he meant, by authority, and not by conference.That is the point to which Gardiner refers when he says that "in two minutes James sealed his own fate and that of England forever."[1]
[1] History of England, 1603-42.
