the growth of heresies, contrary to the faith of Christ and his Holy Spirit; still a foretaste of the speculative imaginations of the next century. Another against disturbing the congregation in the time of sermon; a practice afterwards so common, and of which Bishop Bull’s debate with the brawling Quaker is a characteristic instance.[474] A third, for the better regulation of singing in churches; not, indeed, absolutely forbidding the use of music, but reducing it to much greater simplicity; a concession, as far as it went, to the same party, who would willingly have ejected all organs, and allowed no psalmody whatever, but such as was strictly congregational.[475] Meanwhile the secret of this growing strength of the puritan cause is discovered in other allusions, contained in the same injunctions, to the penury of the church, and the ignorance of its ministers; the natural effect of the late pillage and misapplication of its revenues: for here we encounter, not without some feelings of humiliation, such provisions as these (_ex pede Herculem_): that no priest shall marry without permission given by the bishop and two justices of the peace living next to the place where the woman hath made her most abode before marriage, nor without the good will of her parents or next kinsfolk; or, for lack of such, of “_her master or mistress where she liveth_.” And again, that “such as are but _mean readers_ shall peruse over before once or twice the chapters and homilies, to the intent they may read to the better understanding of the people, and the more encouragement of godliness.” This is a glimpse of a sad picture; but it is such as the sketch given in a former chapter[476] of the condition of the clergy under King Edward must have prepared us to expect. The Reformation was still too recent an event, and had been effected by means too violent, for the great good that was in it to have developed itself. The fountain had been thoroughly troubled, and time was wanting for it to defecate, as well as an infusion, perhaps, of some fresh elements that should expedite the process of precipitation. These Cranmer would have supplied had he been allowed to complete his own idea. But his untimely death, and the selfish passions of men too strong for him, thwarting him whilst he lived, scanted the Reformation of much that should have belonged to it, and consigned it to posterity a noble but still an unfinished work--a work in which there is every thing to admire, and yet something to desiderate.