136 PURITANISM

the primacy of Whitgift to considerable dimensions,
and become a f(jrce that had to be reckoned with.
" In my conceit," said Sir Walter Ealeigh, in a speech «
lie delivered in Parliament in 1580, "the Brownists are
■ \yorthj to be rooted out of the Commonwealth ; but what
danger may grow to ourselves if this law pass, it were
fit to be considered. For it is to be feared that men not
guilty will be involved in it. . . . If two or three
thousand Brownists meet at the sea, at whose charge
shall they be transported, or whither will you send them ?
I am sorry for it. / am afraid there are near twenty
thousand of them in England, and when they be gone
who shall maintain their wives and children ? " ^

Dissenters and Separatists. — A certain degree
of confusion on the part of those who have treated of
the germinal upspringings of Independency would, we
think, have been avoided if they had kept more clearly
before their minds the fact that during and after the
Eeformation (and to some extent, as we have seen, even
before) there were three classes of Dissenters or Sepa-
ratists.
1st. Those who dissented from the Established Church
because of its corruptions, but still clung to it in the
hope that the leaven of its apostasy might be purged away.
2nd. Those who dissented from the Church for the
same reason, but had abandoned all hope of possible
reformation, and so justified their secession from it.
3rd. Those who dissented from the principle^ of an
Established Church as being opposed to the whole spirit
' D'Ewes' Journal, p. .517.
