As early as the year 1547, he taught, in his first sermons at St Andrews, that no mortal man could be head of the church; that there were no true bishops, but such as preached personally without a substitute; that in religion men were bound to regulate themselves by divine laws; and that the sacraments ought to be administered exactly according to the institution and example of Christ. We have seen that, in a solemn disputation in the same place, he maintained that the church has no authority, on pretext of decorating divine service, to devise religious ceremonies, {103} and impose upon them arbitrary significations.[156] This position he also defended in the year 1550, at Newcastle, and on his subsequent appearance before the privy council at London. It was impossible that the English church, in any of the shapes which it assumed, could stand the test of these principles. The ecclesiastical supremacy, the various orders and dependencies of the hierarchy, crossing in baptism, and kneeling in the eucharist, with other ceremonies――the theatrical dress, the mimical gestures, the vain repetitions used in religious service, were all condemned and repudiated by the cardinal principle to which he steadily adhered, that, in the church of Christ, and especially in the acts of worship, every thing ought to be arranged and conducted, not by the pleasure and appointment of men, but according to the dictates of inspired wisdom and authority. He rejoiced that liberty and encouragement were given to preach the pure word of God throughout the extensive realm of England; that idolatry and gross superstition were suppressed; and that the rulers were disposed to support the Reformation, and even to carry it farther than had yet been done. Considering the character of the greater part of the clergy, the extreme paucity of useful preachers, and other hinderances to the introduction of the primitive order and discipline of the church, he acquiesced in the authority exercised by a part of the bishops, under the direction of the privy council, and endeavoured {104} to strengthen their hands, in the advancement of the common cause, by painful preaching in the stations which were assigned to him. But he could not be induced to contradict or to conceal his fixed sentiments, and he cautiously avoided coming under engagements, by which he must have assented to what, in his decided judgment, was either in its own nature unlawful, or injurious in its tendency to the interests of religion. Upon these principles, he never submitted to the unlimited use of the liturgy, during the time that he was in England,[157] and refused to become a bishop, or to accept a parochial charge. When he perceived that the progress of the Reformation was arrested, by the influence of a popish faction, and the dictates of a temporizing policy; that abuses, which had formerly been acknowledged, began to be openly vindicated and stiffly maintained; above all, when