It will be recollected that by them he was required solemnly to acknowledge the queen’s _ecclesiastical_ supremacy; and to declare that the authorized ritual contained NOTHING contrary to the word of God; that he would use it _and none other_ in the public service; and that he believed ALL the Thirty-nine Articles to be agreeable to the word of God. There was no room for evasion, no saving or qualifying clause. However trivial or indifferent the ceremony respecting which conscience paused, still, as nothing is trivial when truth and conscience are concerned, he could not with propriety subscribe. His apparent worldly interest and his desire for usefulness would naturally give him a bias towards conformity, and he would lament that matters so unimportant should be imposed as essential terms of preferment; but to have yielded, would have been to have climbed into the fold of Christ over the barrier of truth, to have held his living by the tenure of a solemn and deliberate falsehood. It is probable that he did not altogether deny the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the queen; though cruelty was already leading many to the conviction that human authority had no proper place in the administration of the kingdom of Christ. But, like the puritans in general, he was, no doubt, deeply impressed with the unscriptural character of popery, and with the mischievous tendency of cherishing any remnant of its idolatrous abominations. The arguments employed against the ceremonies which had been abolished, applied, with equal force, to some which had been retained. The sign of the cross in baptism, the use of the surplice, bowing to the east, and kneeling before the table of the Lord, were as devoid of warrant in the Bible, as the ceremony of following the cross in procession, the use of holy water, ashes, and palms, or the worship of the sacramental wafer. The bishops in the earlier part of Elizabeth’s reign, had looked upon the catholic rites, which had been allowed to creep into the protestant church, as having been only tolerated for a time, and as a blot upon the Reformation, to be wiped off as soon as circumstances would admit. {77a} On the contrary, they were now held up as, each and all of them, essential to the uniformity of religion, and indispensable to the authorized performance of her public services. If Mr. Fleming deemed any one of them contrary to Scripture, as not being conducive to edification, but rather causing offence, {77b} he could not honestly put his signature to the archbishop’s Articles. Turning over, with anxiety and thoughtfulness, the pages of the Book of Common Prayer, to which he was called upon to give so uncompromising an approval, he may be supposed to have noticed such particulars as the following.