denied the Papal supremacy; then Parliament, the universities, the cathedral bodies, and the monastic societies had confirmed the denial. But on all these points there are still open and contested questions of fact and argument not requiring discussion here. Another radical question concerned the rights and province of the laity in all that entered into the institutional part of religion, and the oversight and administration of discipline in religious assemblies. There certainly could be no complaint that lay or civil power as represented by the monarch had not exhibited sufficient potency in fettering the ecclesiastical or clerical usurpation. An already quoted Act in the twenty-sixth year of Henry’s reign affirmed that “whatsoever his Majesty should enjoin in matters of religion should be obeyed by all his subjects.” The Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity in the first year of Elizabeth made the Church subordinate to, and dependent upon, the civil power. Thus ecclesiastical authority was restrained by the prerogative of the Crown, while ceremonial and discipline, as approved by the monarch, were left at the dictation of Parliament. But this substitution of the lay power as represented by King or Queen and the Houses of Parliament for the Papal sway, by no means satisfied the Puritan idea and conviction as to the rightful claims of the laity in their membership of the reconstructed Church. Barrow described in the following sharp sentence the summary way of proceeding so far as the laity were concerned: “All these people, with all their manners, were in one day, with the blast of Queen Elizabeth’s trumpet, of ignorant Papists and gross idolaters, made faithful Christians and true professors.” It was said that the people, divided and classed in local territorial parishes, were there treated like sheep in folds. Illiterate, debauched, incompetent, “dumb” ministers or priests assumed the pastorate in a most promiscuous way over these flocks. Membership in the Church came through infancy in baptism. The Puritans wished to sort out the draught of the Gospel net, which gathered of every kind. They claimed that the laity should themselves be parties in the administration of religion, in testing and approving discipline. They believed, too, that ministers should be supported by their congregations, and that the tithes and the landed privileges of the clergy were bribes and lures to them, making them independent and autocratical. Church lands and endowments, they insisted, should be sequestered, as had been the abbeys, nunneries, and monasteries. As soon as Separatist assemblies were associated in England or among the exiles on the Continent, altercations and divisions occurred among them as to the functions and the powers of the eldership, the responsibility and the authority of pastor and covenanted members in discipline.