A View of Popish Abuses was written by John Field in 1572, criticising the church services, priests and clergy of Elizabethan England, particularly the Elizabethan Religious Settlement

Elizabethan Religious Settlement

The Elizabethan Religious Settlement was Elizabeth I’s response to the religious divisions created over the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I. This response, described as "The Revolution of 1559", was set out in two Acts of the Parliament of England...

. A Puritan

Puritan

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

 clergyman, Field desired to change the Act of Uniformity 1558 in order to remove aspects of Roman Catholicism that he found unacceptable. A View of Popish Abuses was designed to sway public opinion towards his view.

Contents

Field's main complaints concerned the church services that took place. According to his publication:

• There was little or no discipline in services and parishioners frequently paid little attention, spoke amongst themselves, ate or slept during the liturgy
  Liturgy
  Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...
  
  .
• Congregations were required to kneel at the name of Jesus, which caused lots of noise that obscured the next sentence of the passage being read. This kneeling was not required at the name of God, which Field found blasphemous.
• The 'preaching' in the service was most frequently simply reading, and was carried out as fast as possible. Field accused priests of doing this in order to indulge in "games of Sodom" in the afternoon.
• Field, who believed education was vital, was mortified that the majority of congregations were ignorant of much of the Bible and thought the Gospels more important than the Old Testament
  Old Testament
  The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
  
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• He attacked cathedrals, labeling them "popish dens".

Publication and aftermath

Field's book was published abroad with Thomas Wilcox

Thomas Wilcox

Thomas Wilcox was a British Puritan clergyman and controversialist.-Life:In 1571, with John Field he authored the Admonition to the Parliament, that called for the removal of Bishops and ecclesiastical hierarchy. Wilcox and Field were imprisoned for one year for this...

's Admonition to the Parliament. Both Wilcox and Field were sentenced to a year's imprisonment in the Tower of London

Tower of London

Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the City of London by the open space...

 for the publication and breaking the Act of Uniformity 1558. Field was undeterred and continued to push for greater emphasis on preaching and the removal of Roman Catholic tendencies in the Church of England. It is likely that he penned at least some of the Marprelate Tracts of 1588.

See also

• Elizabethan Religious Settlement
  Elizabethan Religious Settlement
  The Elizabethan Religious Settlement was Elizabeth I’s response to the religious divisions created over the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I. This response, described as "The Revolution of 1559", was set out in two Acts of the Parliament of England...
  
  
• John Field