A church like the Anglican, in which its judges of doctrine confess frankly that really they have nothing to do with Scripture or with truth in settling Church controversies, but simply with the legal, and, therefore, we freely allow, the liberal construction of certain documents settled by the legislative authority of the State centuries ago, would have been regarded with simple horror by the great Mediæval Churchmen, on whose limited views of things we somewhat loftily look down. The belief did then survive in the Church that the Spirit of the Lord is a free Spirit; and that the Church is constituted, not by documents, but by the perpetual presence and manifestation of that Spirit, though it came at last to believe that He dwelt in a shrine so narrow and foul as the Roman Court. This idea the Anglican Church has deliberately renounced, while the Nonconformists have upheld it. The constitution of the Establishment is distinctly not by the Spirit, but by the letter of legal documents; and those in whom the Spirit stirs new energies, and moves to new agencies, have no choice but to pass outside her pale. The great churchmen of Mediæval Christendom--Benedict, Boniface, Dunstan, Anselm, Bernard, Francis--would have found themselves not out of tune with the Independent, John Robinson, when he said to his pilgrims as he sent them forth, that he 'miserably bewailed the state and condition of the Reformed Churches who were come to a period in religion, and would go no further than the instruments of their reformation. As, for example, the Lutherans, they could not be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw; for whatever part of God's will he had further imparted and revealed to Calvin they will rather die than embrace it. And so also you see the Calvinists, they stick where he left them--a misery much to be lamented; for though they were precious shining lights in their times, yet God had not revealed his whole will to them; and were they now living, they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light as that which they had received. I beseech you to remember it, it is an article of your Church Covenant, that you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known unto you from the written Word of God.'... 'I am very confident the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth out of his holy word.'[38]--_Robinson's Farewell Address to the Pilgrims._