and crosses, vocal and instrumental music, with all the old popish garments; it is not therefore to be wondered, that in reviewing the liturgy of King Edward, no alterations were made in favour of those who now began to be called Puritans, from their attempting a purer form of worship and discipline than had yet been established. ... The book was presented to the two houses and passed into a law. ... The title of the act is 'An act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service in the Church, and administration of the Sacraments.' It was brought into the House of Commons April 18th, and was read a third time April 20th. It passed the House of Lords April 28th, and took place from the 24th of June 1559." _D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 1, chapter 4._ ALSO IN: _G. Burnet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England., volume 2, book 3._ _P. Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata: Elizabeth, Anno 1._ ENGLAND: A. D. 1559-1566. Puritanism taking form. "The Church of England was a latitudinarian experiment, a contrivance to enable men of opposing creeds to live together without shedding each others' blood. It was not intended, and it was not possible, that Catholics or Protestants should find in its formulas all that they required. The services were deliberately made elastic; comprehending in the form of positive statement only what all Christians agreed in believing, while opportunities were left open by the rubric to vary the ceremonial according to the taste of the congregations. The management lay with the local authorities in town or parish: where the people were Catholics the Catholic aspect could be made prominent; where Popery was a bugbear, the people were not disturbed by the obtrusion of doctrines which they had outgrown. In itself it pleased no party or section. To the heated controversialist its chief merit was its chief defect. ... Where the tendencies to Rome were strongest, there the extreme Reformers considered themselves bound to exhibit in the most marked contrast the unloveliness of the purer creed. It was they who furnished the noble element in the Church of England. It was they who had been its martyrs; they who, in their scorn of the world, in their passionate desire to consociate themselves in life and death to the Almighty, were able to rival in self-devotion the Catholic Saints. But they had not the wisdom of the serpent, and certainly not the harmlessness of the dove. Had they been let alone--had they been unharassed by perpetual threats of revolution and a return of the persecutions--they, too, were not disinclined to reason and good sense. A remarkable specimen survives, in an account of the Church of Northampton, of what English Protestantism could become under favouring conditions. ...