If Puritanism cared for antiquity it would be possible to make out for it a lineage extending back to the first ages of Christendom. As soon as the Church betrayed symptoms of backsliding, persons arose, jealous for her honour, who recalled her erring children to paths of pristine purity. When, boasting of numbers, the many who were predominant relaxed severity of discipline, and conformed to the world in various ways--a few zealous Novations and Donatists set up a standard of reform. In some cases they proceeded at the expense of charity, and in a narrow spirit; but they aimed ultimately at restoring what they deemed primitive communion. At a later period the name, and some of the ecclesiastical sympathies of the Puritans, were anticipated by the _Cathari_: and in the Lollards and Wickliffites of England, we may trace the spiritual ancestors of the men who revolutionized the Church in the seventeenth century. Several of our Reformers went beyond their brethren in ideas of reform; and in the reign of Elizabeth--particularly amongst those who returned from the continent, where they had been brought into close fellowship with Zwinglians and other advanced Protestants--there were persons holding opinions substantially the same with those adopted by Puritans under Charles I.; and those who had no doctrinal tenets or ecclesiastical preferences to separate them from their contemporaries, but had become somewhat distinguished by objections to certain forms, and more so by superior religiousness and spirituality of life, were, on that account, reproached by laxer men as bigoted precisians. As was natural, this treatment drove such persons into the arms of others who had embraced distinctive views of polity, between which and the strict habits of these new allies there existed obvious harmony. The anti-hierarchical temper of Puritanism, and its presumed favourableness to the broad principles and popular spirit of the British constitution secured for it, on that side, countenance from such as were far from adopting its religious principles. Leicester and Walsingham looked on it with some favour as a counterpoise to prelatical arrogance, if not for other reasons. Burleigh shielded the persecuted from the violence of the High Commission. Raleigh defended the cause in Parliament. Connection with these politicians gave political significancy to a movement originating entirely in spiritual impulses.