In another passage, Neal states clearly, if not quite fairly, the main points of difference between the church and nonconforming parties under Elizabeth. P. 147. He concludes with the following remark, which is very true. "Both parties agreed too well in asserting the necessity of an uniformity of public worship, and of calling in the sword of the magistrates for the support and defence of the several principles, which they made an ill use of in their turns, as they could grasp the power into their hands. The standard of uniformity, according to the bishops, was the queen's supremacy and the laws of the land; according to the puritans, the decrees of provincial and national synods, allowed and enforced by the civil magistrate; but neither party were for admitting that liberty of conscience and freedom of profession which is every man's right, as far as is consistent with the peace of the government he lives under." [353] Neal, 253, 386. [354] Strype's _Whitgift_, 414; Neal, 373. Several years before, in 1583, two men called anabaptists, Thacker and Copping, were hanged at the same place on the same statute for denying the queen's ecclesiastical supremacy; the proof of which was their dispersion of Brown's tracts, wherein that was only owned in civil cases. Strype's _Annals_, iii. 186. This was according to the invariable practice of Tudor times: an oppressive and sanguinary statute was first made; and next, as occasion might serve, a construction was put on it contrary to all common sense, in order to take away men's lives. [355] "The discipline of Christ's church," said Cartwright, "that is necessary for all times, is delivered by Christ, and set down in the Holy Scriptures. Therefore the true and lawful discipline is to be fetched from thence, and from thence alone. And that which resteth upon any other foundation ought to be esteemed unlawful and counterfeit." Whitgift, in his answer to Cartwright's _Admonition_, rested the controversy in the main, as Hooker did, on the indifferency of church discipline and ceremony. It was not till afterwards that the defenders of the established order found out that one claim of divine right was best met by another.