This interpretation was afterwards given in one of the thirty-nine articles, which having been confirmed by parliament, it is undoubtedly to be reckoned the true sense of the oath. Mr. Butler, in his _Memoirs of English Catholics_, vol. i. p. 157, enters into a discussion of the question, whether Roman catholics might conscientiously take the oath of supremacy in this sense. It appears that in the seventeenth century some contended for the affirmative; and this seems to explain the fact, that several persons of that persuasion, besides peers from whom the oath was not exacted, did actually hold offices under the Stuarts, and even enter into parliament, and that the test act and declaration against transubstantiation were thus rendered necessary to make their exclusion certain. Mr. B. decides against taking the oath, but on grounds by no means sufficient; and oddly overlooks the decisive objection, that it denies _in toto_ the jurisdiction and ecclesiastical authority of the pope. No writer, as far as my slender knowledge extends, of the Gallican or German school of discipline, has gone to this length; certainly not Mr. Butler himself, who in a modern publication (_Book of the Roman Catholic Church_, p. 120), seems to consider even the appellant jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes as vested in the holy see by divine right. As to the exposition before given of the oath of supremacy, I conceive that it was intended not only to relieve the scruples of catholics, but of those who had imbibed from the school of Calvin an apprehension of what is sometimes, though rather improperly, called Erastianism--the merging of all spiritual powers, even those of ordination and of preaching, in the paramount authority of the state, towards which the despotism of Henry, and obsequiousness of Cranmer, had seemed to bring the church of England. [161] 1 Eliz. c. 2. [162] Strype's _Annals_, i. 233, 241. [163] Haynes, 395. The penalty for causing mass to be said, by the Act of Uniformity, was only 100 marks for the first offence. These imprisonments were probably in many cases illegal, and only sustained by the arbitrary power of the high commission court. [164] Strype, 220. [165] Questions of conscience were circulated, with answers, all tending to show the unlawfulness of conformity. Strype, 228. There was nothing more in this than the catholic clergy were bound in consistency with their principles to do, though it seemed very atrocious to bigots. Mr. Butler says, that some theologians at Trent were consulted as to the lawfulness of occasional conformity to the Anglican rites, who pronounced against it. _Mem. of Catholics_, i. 171. [166] The trick of conjuration about the queen's death began very early in her reign (Strype, i. 7), and led to a penal statute against "fond and fantastical prophecies." 5 Eliz. c. 15.