[289] Strype's _Annals_, i. 423, ii. 316; _Life of Parker_, 243, 348; Burnet, iii. 310, 325, 337. Bishops Grindal and Horn wrote to Zurich, saying plainly, it was not their fault that the habits were not laid aside, with the cross in baptism, the use of organs, baptism by women, etc. P. 314. This last usage was much inveighed against by the Calvinists, because it involved a theological tenet differing from their own, as to the necessity of baptism. In Strype's _Annals_, 501, we have the form of an oath taken by all mid-wives, to exercise their calling without sorcery or superstition, and to baptize with the proper words. It was abolished by James I. Beza was more dissatisfied than the Helvetic divines with the state of the English church (_Annals_, i. 452; Collier, 503); but dissuaded the puritans from separation, and advised them rather to comply with the ceremonies. _Id._ 511. [290] Strype's _Life of Parker_, 242; _Life of Grindal_, 114. [291] Burnet, iii. 316; Strype's _Parker_, 155 _et alibi_. [292] _Id._ 226. The church had but two or three friends, Strype says, in the council about 1572, of whom Cecil was the chief. _Id._ 388. [293] Burnet says, on the authority of the visitors' reports, that out of 9400 beneficed clergymen, not more than about 200 refused to conform. This caused for some years just apprehensions of the danger into which religion was brought by their retaining their affections to the old superstition; "so that," he proceeds, "if Queen Elizabeth had not lived so long as she did, till all that generation was dead, and a new set of men better educated and principled were grown up and put in their rooms; and if a prince of another religion had succeeded before that time, they had probably turned about again to the old superstition as nimbly as they had done before in Queen Mary's days." Vol. ii. p. 401. It would be easy to multiply testimonies out of Strype, to the papist inclinations of a great part of the clergy in the first part of this reign. They are said to have been sunk in superstition and looseness of living. _Annals_, i. 166. [294] Strype's _Annals_, 138, 177; Collier, 436, 465. This seems to show that more churches were empty by the desertion of popish incumbents than the foregoing note would lead us to suppose. I believe that many went off to foreign parts from time to time, who had complied in 1559; and others were put out of their livings. The Roman catholic writers make out a longer list than Burnet's calculation allows. It appears from an account sent in to the privy council by Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich, in 1562, that in his diocese more than one-third of the benefices were vacant. _Annals_, i. 323. But in Ely, out of 152 cures only 52 were served in 1560. _L. of Parker_, 72.