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VirginiaHuguenot · #12 (**permalink**) 02-07-2007, 04:06 PM

The subject of prophesying exercises came up at the 1604 Hampton Court Conference and lead to a famous quote by King James.

Charles MacFarlane and Thomas Thomson, The Comprehensive History of England; Civil and Military, Religious, Intellectual, and Social, from the earliest period to the supression of the Sepoy Revolt (1861), Vol. II, p. 610:

Quote:

His [King James'] hatred of the northern Presbyterianism, from which he had so lately escaped, and his readiness to identify it with English Puritanism, broke out at every stage of the contest. This was especially the case when Dr. [John] Reynolds, the chief of the Puritan advocates, reckoned the most learned man in England, ventured to propose that the clergy should be allowed to have meetings for prophesying (preaching) in the rural deaneries every three weeks; that such things as could not there be resolved might be referred to the arch-deacon's vistation; and, finally, that all the clergy of each diocese should meet in an Episcopal synod, with the bishop for its president, where they might determine upon such questions as could not be decided in the inferior assemblies. But although this was the nearest approach to Presbyterianism that had been made throughout the controversy, and although it was little else than the modified system of church polity which James had been labouring with such pains to establish in Scotland, it was anything but palatable to the royal disputant, who sharply declared, "I will none of that: I will have one doctrine and one discipline -- one religion in substance and ceremony." "If you aim," he afterwards declared, "at a Scottish presbytery, it agreeth with monarchy as God with the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council, and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus: then Dick shall reply and say, Nay, marry, but we will have it thus: and, therefore, here I must once more reiterate my former speech, 'le roy s'avisera.'" Still fuming with the thought of Presbytery, he thus concluded his strange harangue: -- "Stay, I pray you, for one seven years before you demand that of me, and if then you find me pursy and fat, and my windpipes stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you, for let that government be once up I am sure I shall be kept in breath: then shall we all of us have work enough -- both our hands full. But, Dr. Reynolds, till you find that I grow lazy, let that alone."