But it is submitted to the consideration of the candid reader, whether any hesitancy existing in the mind of a minister of the gospel, on any one of these, or any similar point, would not be enough to justify his declining, at whatever apparent sacrifice of usefulness or emolument, to give his deliberate assent to the propositions contained in Whitgift’s Articles. The law of sincerity binds not to a partial but to a universal obedience. A deep reverence for truth, and a peculiarly tender conscience, are obviously just the qualities most likely to have insured a refusal. Cruel and mischievous indeed must have been the policy which thus demanded an unqualified acquiescence in so heterogeneous a mass of propositions, holding out a premium to the temporizing and careless to fritter away the eternal boundaries of right and wrong. {85} If the separation which took place among the professed Christians of Beccles at this early period may be designated a schism, the charge does not attach to Mr. Fleming, and those who, probably, seceded with him, but to the parties by whom they were rejected. “Schism is a thing bad in itself, bad in its very nature; separation may be bad or good according to circumstances.” Separation is not necessarily schism; “for while it may be occasioned by crime, it may be occasioned by virtue; it may result in those who depart from intolerance attempted, or intolerance sustained, from the pride of faction, or the predominance of principle, attachment to party, or attachment to truth. A schismatic, in short, _must_ be a sinner, on whichever side he stands; a separatist _may_ be more sinned against than sinning.” {86} Mr. Fleming was a separatist, he was so by compulsion; but he was not a schismatic: and protestant dissent in Beccles was pure in its source; for it must in justice be traced not to a factious disobedience to the higher powers, but to an act of moral heroism, elicited by the despotism of Queen Elizabeth and the severity of a protestant archbishop. CHAPTER IV. Rise of the Brownists; persecuted—James I.—Millenary petition; Brownists imprisoned and exiled—Robinson; father of the Independents—Jacob establishes the first English Independent church—Book of Sports—Bishop Harsnet—Laud—Bishop Wren’s Articles of Visitation—William Bridge retires to Holland—Returns on the change of affairs—Formation of Independent churches at Yarmouth and Norwich—Cromwell.