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 A retrospect of the religious life of En 
 
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A RETROSPECT 
 
 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 
 
RETROSPECT 
 
 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND; 
 
 OB, THE 
 
 CHIJECH, PTJEITANISM, AND FEEE INQTJIET. 
 
 JOHN JAMES TAYLEE, B.A., 
 
 HEMBBB OP THE HISTOBICO-THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OP LBIPSIC 
 
 ** Opportimos iQagniB conatibua transitns rerum." — Taeitua, Hist. I. 81, 
 
 SECOND EDITION, 
 
 RB-ISSUED WITH AN INTBODUCTORY .' CHAPTEE ON EECENT DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES MAETINEAU, LL.D., D.D, 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 TETJBNEE & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 
 
 1876. 
 
 [All BiaUi Baenecl.] 
 
I President White 
 Library 
 
 PRINTED Bt TAtLOft AND dO., 
 lITTtE QDKEN STBEBT, LINCOLN'S IKK IIBLOS 
 
ADDEESS TO THE EEADER. 
 
 In bringing again before the public my late father's work 
 on " The Eeligious Life of England " (the first edition of 
 which appeared in 1845, and the second in 1853), I have 
 sought the means of giving effect to a -suggestion which 
 hafe been made to me, that it should be accompanied by 
 some notice of the changes which have taken place since 
 it was written, so as in a measure to continue the history to 
 the present day without interfering with the character and 
 completeness of the original work. There are but very few 
 whom I could have asked (or indeed should have wished 
 to ask) to render such a service, but in my father's valued 
 friend and colleague Dr. Martineau I have found exactly 
 the helper that I needed. If his preface should be the 
 
ADDBESS TO THE KEADEE. 
 
 means of bringing the book — on its re-introduction to the 
 public — to the notice of a wider circle than it might other- 
 wise have reached, I know that his work of love will be 
 better repaid than by any thanks of mine. 
 
 H. E. OSLER. 
 
 Hampstead, 
 Decemier 1, 1875. 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 Modest as are the pretensions of this volume, it occupies a 
 peculiar, if not a unique position in English literature. The 
 reader who, on closing it, seeks the right place for it upon 
 his shelves, looks in vain for the class to which it belongs. 
 It is not Theology, though treating of the deepest grounds of 
 faith. It is not Ecclesiastical History; for it passes 'by 
 incidents and personages dear to the memory of the Church, 
 and travels freely into State affairs and the vicissitudes of 
 secular society. It is not Biography, though abounding in 
 exact and delicate portraiture. It is not Criticism, though 
 it reviews and estimates a series of writers, English and 
 foreign, from Wycliffe and Chaucer to Ewald and Strauss. 
 It approaches most nearly to the German type of " Oultur- 
 Geschichte ; " yet is still marked out among productions of this 
 kind, by its survey of all culture only in its bearing upon the 
 changing aspects of Religion. This specialty might easily 
 have narrowed the work of any ordinary hand. But an 
 author who discerns the affinity of Eeligion with every side 
 of human nature, and sees all faculties converging towards 
 it in their culmination, is rendered catholic, and not exclu- 
 sive, by a religious aim ; being drawn by sympathy towards 
 every form of higher aspiration, and winning an insight, 
 denied to critical antipathy, into the inner meaning of many 
 an outward extravagance of word or act. In no notices of 
 English ecclesiastical literature and parties have I ever met 
 with the breadth of conception, the unforced justice, the 
 various appreciation of excellence, which, without any loss 
 of fine discrimination, characterise this little volume. The 
 late Mr. Maurice's judgments on men and systems are 
 marked bv a similar comprehensiveness of sympathy ; but 
 
INTBODUCTOBY CHAPTEE. 
 
 they rest so mucli more on subjective than on historical 
 grounds, and their diffusive light is attended with so little 
 shadow, that they do not always help the reader, and some- 
 times endanger his confidence by an overstrained humility 
 and candour. An opposite defect impairs the value of Lord 
 Macaulay's sketches of religious parties in England. 
 Copious in research, and impartial in observation, he traced 
 their origin, learned their language, was familiar with their 
 habits and costumes ; and, having reproduced them in imagi. 
 nation, flung them on' the canvas of his brilliant description. 
 But he was fair to all, because in sympathy with none ,; 
 judging them simply as objective phenomena springing from 
 past thought or passion, he looked at them, not from the 
 interior position which gives their meaning, but from the 
 stage which exhibits their effects. While they must all 
 acknowledge that they receive relative justice at his hands, 
 not one will feel that its true genius or animating idea has 
 been adequately seized and presented by him. If, in quest of 
 this essential key, we turn to the special Church histories 
 in which it is offered to us, we find ourselves in the presence 
 of partisan reporters, and we gain the truth on one side at the 
 expense of missing it on another. The Anglican writer, 
 accustomed to regard his Church as "National," and to 
 identify its history with the course of English life in its re- 
 ligious aspects, moves in an ecclesiastical world of his own, 
 and remains for the most part a stranger to the literature and 
 character of other communities, knowing more of Luther- 
 anism and Anabaptism abroad than of Independency and 
 Quakerism at home, and treating all that does not "enter 
 the parish church as a foreign element outside the current 
 of national history. The Nonconformist, on the other hand, 
 cannot tell the story of his sect without seeing in it the 
 representative of conscience, which has won from the grasp 
 of a reluctant hierarchy the chief liberties of modern 
 England : the genius of the established religion he finds in 
 the Church of the Eestoration: reproached with beino- a 
 disaffected Englishman, he charges his opponent with betng 
 a disloyal Christian, rendering unto Cresar the things that 
 are God's ; and though his reading is less restricted than 
 the Churchman's to the writers of his own communion it is 
 rarely comprehensive enough to emancipate him from narrow 
 formulas and open his mind to wide and genial admirations. 
 
INTEODUCTOEY CHAPTEE. 5 
 
 From all these contracting influence's, the author of this book 
 was exceptionally free. In him a pure and sensitive re- 
 ligious nature responded to every genuine expression of 
 human trust and aspiration, and enabled him to recognise a 
 sweet music and a native speech where others heard only 
 the rude tones of a fanatic jargon. The humiliating cata- 
 logue of aberrations which his ecclesiastical erudition spread 
 before him did not impair his conviction that the human 
 spirit and the Divine are capable of true communion, or 
 weaken his insistence on a free movement of thought and 
 conscience as the condition of its attainment. But individual 
 liberty he valued as a means oi" working out a spiritual 
 consensus of humanity j in which the gains of the past should 
 be enlarged by the experience of the present, yet should 
 interpret and control it. His quick sympathy with generous 
 popular movements bom from some oppression or inspira- 
 tion of the hour, was qualified by the scholar's veneration 
 for history and tradition, and his distrust of every promised 
 morrow that does flow naturally from the hours of to-day. 
 This rare and happy balance of mind enables the author to 
 guide us through the most passionate conflicts of our 
 national history, without misdirecting an admiration or 
 awakening a prejudice. 
 
 Since the publication of this volume, religious change in 
 England has proceeded with marked acceleration; so 
 marked, that the air is filled with vague alarms and vaguer 
 hopes ; and while, on the one hand, anxious Protestants and 
 revolutionary prophets alike forebode for Christianity a near 
 crisis of agony, on the other hand preparation is openly 
 made for a reaction into mediaeval faith and obedience. It 
 is natural for a fresh and eager generation to be struck with 
 wonder at the ferment of thought which agitates it, and to 
 overrate the originality of its, own time. It is born into 
 currents of opinion which are relatively new, and is uncon- 
 scious that the wind has ever set from the same quarter 
 before. But, in fact, all the recent movements of belief and 
 usage are on the lines continuously traced in the following 
 pages, and do but express, in terms of modern life, the same 
 inefiaceable tendences of human nature; the same reve- 
 rence for authority in its three forms, historical, spiritual, 
 rational, and the same difficulty in bringing them all to 
 harmony. 
 
6 INTKODDCTOKY CHAPTER. 
 
 I. The Church. 
 
 i. High Church. 
 
 It is in the Chukch alone that the principle of Tradition 
 has room to work out any unexpected results : and during 
 the last twenty years advantage has been taken of its 
 Catholic origin and its elastic Rubrics, to tra,nsform its ser- 
 vices, and to steal back, through a ritual conspicuously orna;te 
 and secretly symbolic, into the supernatural circle of sacer- 
 dotal doctrine. The issues first raised in the courts be- 
 tween the Tractarians and their opponents had reference to 
 theological teaching. It was for certain published proposi- 
 tions that Mr. Gorham in the West, Professor Jowett at 
 Oxford, and the Essayists "Wilson and Rowland "Williams 
 iu the Court of Arches, were called to account. The result 
 plainly showed a prevailing indisposition to create needless 
 ecclesiastical offences, or to narrow by interpretation the 
 illogical but convenient latitude of the authoritative for- 
 mulas ; and the attempt to put down low doctrine by law 
 Was abandoned for a more effective policy, the embodiment 
 of high doctrine in priestly vestments, in banners, 
 thuribles and processions, in significant gestures, and a 
 service of the "Altar" barely distinguishable from the 
 mass. Hence whatever questions have recently been brought 
 to judicial hearing have had reference, not to teaching, but 
 to the external form of worship. Though the decisions have 
 placed the ceremonial under some legal restraints, prohi- 
 biting the eastward position of the celebrant at the com- 
 munion, and regulating the elevation of the elements and 
 the use of lights at the altar, and though by a special Act 
 of the Legislature new facilities have been created for en* 
 forcing the law, it may be doubted whether the sacerdotal 
 tendency is not too deeply rooted in the history of the 
 Church, and too widely fostered by the piety of dependent 
 minds, to receive any serious check from such agencies. It 
 is not uncommon, with both amiable peace-makers and con- 
 temptuous adversaries, to depreciate the significance of 
 ritualism, by reducing it to a question about the Eesthetics 
 of worship, and pretending that it is but a new dress upon 
 the old and familiar sanctities. But nothing can be more 
 futile than such attempts either to justify or to condemn a 
 
INTEODTJCTOEY CHAPTER. 7 
 
 symbol by expelling from it all. that it means. Copes, albs 
 and chasubles, gold crosses and altar cloths, are no more 
 mere upholstery ; — and genuflection, the lifting of the hands, 
 the turning of the face at the communion, are no more mere 
 gymnastics or deportment, than spoken words are mere 
 exercises of the vocal chords, identical because audible to 
 a sheep and to a man. Notoriously, it, is the ideal signi- 
 ficance of his favourite forms that makes the High 
 Churchman passionately cUng to them, and feel his 
 Christian loyalty itself so involved in his fidelity to them 
 as to justify a disregard of legal inhibition. Nor is there 
 any uncertainty as to the scheme of theological concep- 
 tions which is thus reclaiming its old abode. It is the doc- 
 trines of the Real Presence, of the unbloody sacrifice, of 
 Sacramental Grace, of a supematurally endowed Priesthood, 
 which constitute the soul and sense of this ceremonial re- 
 storation. Wherever it raises its head, the Catholic 
 theory of Christianity is undeniably displacing the Pro- 
 testant. 
 
 But we should greatly underrate the power of this 
 reaction, if we measured it merely by the number of 
 ritualistic churches and priests. Its indirect influence 
 may be traced in modified habits, in a new literature, in an 
 altered tone of devotion, pervading the whole of the Anglican 
 community. Eeligious orders are established as an asylum 
 for those who feel the call of some " Counsel of Perfection ; " 
 and the tension of sacred duty is strained or relaxed accord- 
 ing to the rank of souls. Manuals of devotion circulate 
 extensively, framed upon the Catholic model, and reviving 
 the mediaeval discipline of piety. And numerous Hymn- 
 books have passed into popular use, which reproduce, in a 
 bald and literal way, a childish ecclesiastical mythology, 
 and in their arrangement follow the Breviaries and the 
 Saints' Calendar. Since the High Church movement has 
 passed, for its wider diflusion, into inferior hands, the 
 literary descent has been marvellous, from the graceful 
 and tender poetry of Keble, rich in ideal painting and 
 meditative depth, to the realistic daubs, the mawkish com- 
 mon-place, the poor doggrel, which constitute so large a 
 part of their present Hymnals. But so much the more 
 does the wide acceptance of these books attest the preva- 
 lence of their characteristic ideas in a lower and larger 
 
8 INfEODUCTOET CHAPTEE. 
 
 stratum of religious society. The activity and self-devotion 
 of the sacerdotal party have given it an importance out 
 of all proportion to its numbers. The practice of frequent 
 communioUj the week consecrated in large towns to " Mis- 
 sions " of revival, the attempt at Pananglican union, have 
 originated with its clergy, but have affected a far larger 
 circle. No one who remembers the parochial administra- 
 tion of religion, the tone of the ecclesiastical newspapers, 
 and the prevailing topics of clerical interest, thirty years 
 ago, can fail to admit, that, through the presence of the 
 High Church influence, a sensible change has been wrought 
 in the general complexion of devout thought and feeling, 
 if not of the fluctuating outer congregations of Conformists, 
 at least of the habitual communicants. 
 
 ii. Influence of Mr. Maurice. 
 
 Prom the usual law of social antagonism it might be 
 expected that this wave of Catholic reaction would be met 
 by an intenser movement of Low Church Calvinism. Yet it 
 has not been so. On the contrary, the last quarter of a 
 century has brought no more remarkable clerical change 
 than the softening of the severe " Evangelical " theology, 
 and the rapid disappearance of the once swarming successors 
 of Simeon and Venn. Several causes have compelled them 
 to alter their voice, or to retreat from the front. The as- 
 saults of the " Tracts forj the Times " told upon them with 
 permanent effect, and, in the estimation of competent judges, 
 whether on the intellectual or the spiritual side, disabled 
 them for conducting the resistance to any Romanizing ad- 
 vance. Moreover, the chief need of the age was no longer 
 the same, — the awakening of torpid and careless minds to 
 the sense of inward discord and the means of Divine har- 
 mony. A pantheistic tendency had set in ; and the danger 
 now was of a lapse, on the part of men neither torpid nor 
 careless, from all personal relations with God. In looking 
 through the resources of the orthodox theology for meeting 
 this state of mind, it was obvious that to insist on tlie 
 atoning merits of the Saviour's blood would speak to no felt 
 doubt, and could be of no avail ; but that in the assumption 
 of our nature by the Divine was a pertinent fact, rebuking 
 all dreanis of mere impersonal power. Thus the centre of 
 
INTEODUCTOBT CHAPTER. 9 
 
 gravity shifted from the Cross to the Incarnation : the in- 
 terest which had been concentrated on the Death of Christ 
 as an expiation became diffused over his whole earthly life 
 as a manifestation of the Divine Personality j and the the- 
 ology of Erskine, Maurice^ and Macleod Campbell, which 
 placed this newer conception in the intensest and most 
 attractive light, was forced by grateful disciples out of its 
 modest obscurity, and drew to itself the more spiritual class 
 of minds that had hitherto given vitality to the Evangelical 
 school. It is in this class, undoubtedly, and not in the 
 " No-Popery " Low Church, that we are now to look for the 
 proper Puritan counterpoise within the Establishment to the 
 High Catholic Anglicanism. 
 
 It may seem paradoxical, yet is hardly hazardous, to say 
 that the Maurice theology owes its power not less to its 
 indulgence, than to its correction, of the pantheistic ten- 
 dency of the age. It answers the demand of every ideal 
 philosophy and every poetic soul for an indwelling Divine 
 Presence, living and acting in all the beauty of the world 
 and the good of human hearts. Its " Incarnation " is not, as 
 in other schemes, an historical prodigy, setting its period 
 apart, as an Annus Mirahilis, in vehement contrast with the 
 darkness of an otherwise unvisited world ; but is rather a 
 revelation, by a supreme instance, of the everlasting im- 
 manence of God and his consecrating union with our 
 humanity. The " Evangelical " preachers had worked out 
 an "economy'^ of redemption which they presented as a 
 drama introduced upon the stage of time, with acts defi- 
 nitely localised and dated, and affecting only a select com- 
 pany of observers. It was a sacred story of things that 
 had happened on the earth, and which, now that they were 
 accomplished, a few might apply to their salvation. The 
 new theologians translated Christianity out of time into 
 eternity : they read in the life and death of Christ no scheme, 
 no plot with astonishing catastrophe ; but the symbol and 
 sample of constant Divine life with men, and of human 
 sonship to God, disclosing relations that had for ever been 
 and would for ever be ; only adding now the glad surprise 
 that the sigh for better life, the response of conscience to 
 high appeals, the inward sympathy with all righteousness, 
 are no lonely visions, but the personal communion of the 
 Perfect with the imperfect mind. This lifting of revelation 
 
10 INTEODUCTOEY CHAPTER. 
 
 from a tale of Divine action into an objective manifestation 
 of the Divine life and love in humanity, brings it into con- 
 tact with a far higher order of aflfections. It delivers the 
 heart from the intolerable shadows of Calvinism. It leaves 
 no room for either the passionate fears or the transports of 
 gratitude of which self is the centre. It carries the mind to 
 the source at once of intensest action and of supreme 
 repose in reverent surrender to a Living Inspirer of all good. 
 The type of character formed in this school is accordingly 
 of larger dimensions, of better proportions, and of purer 
 elevation, than the Evangelical discipline usually produced. 
 Both of these parties have been distinguished by a noble 
 philanthropy, not, however, without a characteristic dif- 
 ference in its style and inspiration. It would be unjust to 
 say that the Low Church leaders were indifferent to temporal 
 objects. They have been foremost in the great struggle 
 against slavery j in the creation of reformatories and asylums 
 of refuge for every neglected class ; in claiming needful 
 restrictions on the hours of labour ; nor are any names so 
 frequent as theirs in the administrative lists of the PubHc 
 Hospitals, the City Missions, the Evening Schools. But their 
 care for the conditions of this life springs from their anxiety 
 about the prospects of another. They cannot bear that any 
 soul which has an eternal stake should be lost under de- 
 grading necessities here ; and they insist on securing it the 
 possibility of escaping perdition. It is the vision of things 
 beyond death that quickens their eye of compassion to the 
 shadows and the shame of life, and sends them forth as 
 apostles of rescue. To the Maurice school the world appears 
 under another aspect. It is not a place of banishment from 
 Heaven, or a mere house of call on the way thither ; but is 
 itself the permanent scene of a Divine government, — of an 
 ever-advancing " Kingdom of God," the aims of which men 
 are to make their own, and to pursue with self-sacrificing 
 faith. A consecration thus falls upon the earth as it is, and 
 saves it from borrowing all its interest from another sphere. 
 An ideal of human Society haunts the mind with the per- 
 suasion of a supreme authority, and renders intolerable to 
 the conscience every remediable sorrow, every unrighteous 
 institution, every unbrotherly neglect. Men possessed by 
 this feeling care for the world on its own account, as the 
 Republic of God committed to their charge. Every im- 
 
INTKODUCTOET CHAPTBE. 11 
 
 provement in it is intrinsically welcome to tHem, thougli it 
 convert no soul, but only shed some joy or beauty upon 
 many. Their zeal is not all spent in individualised pity, but 
 is kindled by large hopes of social, national, and inter- 
 national reform, which may make history less sad, and bring 
 the drama of the ages to an issue nearer to the thought of 
 God. Some of the projects suggested by this larger view 
 have failed ; but its general effect on the methods of modern 
 benevolence is not to be mistaken. 
 
 The Maurice theology, which I have treated as suc- 
 ceeding to the Puritan spirituality in the Anglican com- 
 munion, is more often classed under the general name of the 
 " Broad Church," with the Rationalist divinity represented 
 in the volume of " Essays and Eeviews." And there is 
 certainly a precedent for such a grouping in the application 
 of the word " Latitudinarian" in the seventeenth century to so 
 mixed a body of writers as to include together the logical 
 Chillingworth and the mystical More. Yet, beyond the 
 common desire for a wider ecclesiastical comprehension, 
 there is little affinity between the Platonising realism and 
 Johannine genius of Mr. Maurice, and the critical intellect 
 and historical feeling of such writers as Baden Powell, 
 Pattison, Jowett, or even Stanley. His distinctive work 
 has been in the direction of religious depth ; theirs, is that 
 of mental breadth ; and the ^two influences have for the 
 most part worked upon minds of different order, so as rarely 
 to meet in a blended discipleship. 
 
 iii. Broad Chv/rch. 
 
 Though there were liberal clergymen of eminence among 
 his contemporaries, — Maltby, for instance,, and Whately, — 
 the " Broad Church " party took a fresh start from Arnold. 
 His activity, his moral enthusiasm, his wide social influence 
 through his pupils and their parents, his intense sympathy 
 with the anti-Tractarian feeling, his identiflcation with the 
 reforming side in politics, gave an exceptional weight to his 
 opinions, even during his life ; and the shock of sorrow at 
 his sudden death, followed by the marvellous charm of the 
 Memoir and Letters soon after, immeasurably deepened 
 and widened his personal action on his age. His ecclesias- 
 tical latitude was peculiar in its type. It did not arise from 
 loosened orthodoxy, from flexible appreciation of beliefs 
 
12 INTEODUCTOEY CHAPTER. 
 
 otlier than Ms owd, from deep experience of the difficulties 
 of religions problems : it was political rather than theo- 
 logical, springing from his theory of the State, and his 
 intense reluctance to break the Unity of the Nation. Citizen- 
 ship and Church membership were to be co-extensive, and 
 the duties of patriotism and piety to coalesce. This attempt 
 to wed the compactness of the ancient Commonwealths to 
 the complex conditions of modern society and Protestant 
 Christendom, led immediately to consequences at variance 
 with its whole aim. As the State was to be Christian, Jews 
 and others who declined the Christian profession, were to 
 dwell in the land as aliens. As the Public Worship was to be 
 uniform in its basis, and, in order to express the general feeling, 
 must address itself to three Divine Persons, the Unitarians, 
 though deeming themselves Christians, must be lopped off, 
 and left outside with the fevot of foreign faiths. By thus 
 failing to cover cases for which it was bound to provide, the 
 theory was shattered in its first encounter with experience. 
 The power of Arnold lay, however, not in his speculation, 
 but in his life and personality ; especially in that ethical 
 nobleness and elevation which opened the hearts of a whole 
 army of English youths to the recognition and reverence of 
 the true and good, wherever found. The spirit thus 
 awakened soon bore fruits in other fields than he had cul- 
 tivated. Biblical scholarship was not his forte ; and surprise 
 has been naturally felt that, with all his confidence in Nie- 
 buhr's methods of " divination," he never applied his prin- 
 ciples of criticism to the Jewish and Christian records. It 
 was left, however, to his pupil and biographer, in conjunction 
 with Professor Jowett, to carry into sacred literature the 
 careful exegesis and fine historical feeling of which an ex- 
 ample had been given in the edition of Thucydides. In 
 1855 appeared their joint edition and version of the principal 
 Pauline Epistles, copiously annotated, and accompanied by 
 numerous disquisitions. The work, if compared with the 
 best foreign expositions, may not, perhaps, stand quite in 
 the first rank, as an interpretation of the apostle's thought. 
 The preponderance of Classical studies in the education of 
 the English clergy, their prevaiUng neglect of Hebrew and 
 the Semitic literature, and their comparatively late and 
 slight familiarity with the Hellenistic Greek, unfavourably 
 affect their qualifications as commentators on Scripture. 
 
INTEOD0CTOKT CHAPTEE. 13 
 
 Though the two eminent Editors have spared no voluntary 
 labour and learning which could rightly modify for their 
 task the early set of their taste and culture, yet at times the 
 experienced reader may feel that their minds are not fully 
 steeped and tinctured in the Pauline thought, but exhibit 
 it through an invisible film of literary or philosophical light 
 which, while clearing and beautifying it, suffuses it with a 
 colour not its own. But by one capital, merit the work 
 renders a most important service to the progress of a just 
 theology. It shows conclusively what the apostle did not 
 mean ; that the dogmatic statements drawn from his lan- 
 guage overstrain his purpose, — defining more than he in- 
 tended to define, universalisingwhat he left in the particular, 
 pronouncing on theses which were not present to his 
 thought. The reader is so put in possession of the historical 
 and personal situation of St. Paul as to be recalled fi-om the 
 abstractions of modem metaphysical divinity to the concrete 
 scenery, the local life, the party controversies, of the apos- 
 tolic age. He is familiarised with the idea of a gradual 
 change and expansion of the apostle's own theology, and of 
 some illusory conceptions blended with it throughout. And 
 he is led to contemplate the marvellous crises and inward 
 struggles of the " Man of Tarsus " in relation to analogous 
 spiritual experiences in other ages of awakened faith. The 
 appended Essays of Professor Jowett treat the most sensitive 
 and entangled problems of Eeligion with a subtle depth and 
 moral tenderness rarely found within the compass of so 
 large an intellectual view, and often read like the auto- 
 biography of a mind that, in unswerving search for light, 
 has touched the limits of thought, and shrunk from no pos- 
 sibility of feeling. If it be a fault to raise more questions 
 than can be settled, to reason round them, and illumine the 
 immense space in which they lie, without altering their 
 suspense, it is a fault relative only to a time of too large and 
 rambling thought, that sees everything afloat. In dealing 
 with an age and place in the Church which narrows all 
 piety, and crystallises all belief into dogmatic form, and 
 can neither love nor think beyond, there is often a wise 
 reverence in not exactly breaking the tenacious centre, 
 but rather passing out beyond it and showing its latitude 
 and longitude in the wide seas of thought. This service is 
 eminently rendered by the Pauline commentaries of 1855. 
 
14 INTEODTJCTOET CHAPTEE. 
 
 Five years later there issued from the same school a book 
 whichj with far less claim to distinction, has obtained a 
 . greater celebrity, — the " Essays and Eeviews." From the 
 combination of seven writers in its production, and the pre- 
 fatory statement that it was an experiment in the independent 
 treatment of ecclesiastical topics of the time, the book was 
 taken as a sort of party manifesto ; though the absence of 
 concerted plan was conspicuous in the very table of contents, 
 and the writers disclaimed all joint responsibility. The panic 
 occasioned by this idea of a rationalistic conspiracy within 
 the Church invested the volume with an importance out of 
 all proportion to its intrinsic power. No origina,! Essays 
 which seven scholarly and freshminded men would deem 
 worth publishing could well contain less that was startling j 
 and few, if any, of the characteristic opinions advanced 
 were unfamiliar to readers versed in theological literature. 
 But, when scrutinized by the keen eye of detective alarm, 
 the pages seemed to look up with an audacious face, and to 
 abound with suspicious oracles. Where was the glory of 
 Eevelation, if it were to be merged in the Education of the 
 world ? Where, its depositaries, if Scripture were not all 
 authentic? Where, its certainty, if Inspiration were not 
 infallible ? Where, its authority, if the Geologists might 
 call Moses to account ? These were natural questions ; and 
 naturally, in its hour of fear, did ecclesiastical orthodoxy 
 seek shelter from their disturbance in the Courts of Law.- 
 Dr. Lushington's remarkable judgment, that the authen-,- 
 tioity of parts of Scripture might be called in question, also 
 their Inspiration, but not their Canonicity, disappointed the 
 prosecutors' hopes, and saved theological learning from 
 being blindfolded by public law. 
 
 While the ecclesiastical waters were still heaving with 
 this storm of the seven winds, a new wave of disturbance 
 was advancing from the seas of South Africa, and in 1862 
 rolled into the Thames, to the alarm of Lambeth and Fulham 
 and all low-lying Church districts. In that year commenced 
 the publication of the Bishop of Natal's commentaries on 
 the Pentateuch ; in the Introduction to which the story, was 
 told, with noble and characteristic ingenuousness, how the 
 mind of the evangelical missionary, brought into contact 
 with unartificial intelligence, and compelled to think in 
 terms universally human and speak in the vocabulary of 
 
INTEODUCTOKT CHAPTER. 15 
 
 another tongue^ cauglit by sympathy some ot the fresh im- 
 pressions of his scholars, and became sensible of difficulties 
 never felt before in his own formulated beliefs. [Humorists 
 may be allowed to see a pleasant picture in the Zulu con- 
 verting the Bishop; and to enjoy their laugh when the 
 author of a capital manual of arithmetic sets himself sums 
 out of the statistics of Exodus, and proves that the Bible 
 answers are impossible. But, seriously estimated, the one 
 fact is full of moral beauty, and the other of intellectual 
 sagacity. Cultivated minds,'in proportion as they are truth- 
 ful, may often expand more in having to retreat upon first 
 principles than in working out ulterior results. And, for 
 the testing of historical narratives, no method is more ser- 
 viceable than the analysis and comparison of quantitative 
 statements, when they are present in sufficient number to 
 affect the complexion of the story. As successive parts 
 appeared of the Bishop's examination of the Pentateuch, 
 the contemptuous voices 'which greeted it at first fell off into 
 silence : no competent theologians, however hostile, could 
 withhold their admiration from the indefatigable ' industry 
 which had rapidly matured his Hebrew scholarship, and 
 mastered all the elements of the problems under his hand. 
 The conclusions which he reached, while in general agree- 
 ment with those of the most eminent European Hebraists 
 and historical critics, were marked by important distinc- 
 tive features, attesting the independence of his researches ; 
 that the Pentateuch contains a tissue of composite materials 
 widely differing in age, primarily distinguished by the 
 respective Divine Names Blohvm and Jehovah, and com- 
 bined in their present form not simply by post-Mosaic but 
 by quite late hands ; that the Elohistio portions are the 
 more ancient and constitute a continuous history (due pos- 
 sibly to Samuel) stopping at Exodus VI. ; that Deuter- 
 onomy belongs to the time and probably to the pen of 
 the prophet Jeremiah; that the Levitical Law was of 
 gradual growth, some of its provisions being earlier than 
 Deuteronomy, others later than Ezra and Nehemiah; and 
 that the Jehovistic monotheism of the Jews was wrought 
 out into ultimate clearness from other worships of less pure 
 or even strongly contrasted character. 
 
 Opinions which reduced a large portion of the Old Testa- 
 ment to the level of a literature not only of simply human 
 
16 INTBODDCTOBY CHAFTBB. 
 
 origin, but of unhistorical contents, could not but produce 
 great commotion in a Churcli accustomed _t o ask, in suc h, 
 matters, BQJUffihat is tjae ^but w^ S_iaI.ortho^x a nd de - 
 corous. The consequences of his insight and~veracity fell 
 upon the heretical Bishop, in the order of their readiness. 
 It was easiest ,^to_denounce him; perhaps possibletodepose 
 hiKiJ^TSfdesJj_fca_aMwe£_Mffl- The first was Effected at 
 once by inhibition of his preaching in every English diocese 
 which he entered. The second was attempted by the Bishop 
 of Cape Town; who took on himself, as South African 
 Metropolitan, to convene a local Synod, and, after a spurious 
 trial, to pronounce the deprivation of the Bishop of Natal. 
 The third was immediately promised, in the shape of an 
 authoritative Commentary on the Bible, to be contributed, 
 under patronage of the Speaker of the House of Com- 
 mons, by a body of learned and approved Anglican 
 divines; but was delayed in the public commencement of 
 its performance for nine years. The ecclesiastical proceed- 
 ings against Dr. Colenso being wholly null and void, he re- 
 mains by decision of the supreme tribunal the legitimate 
 occupant of his see ; stripped, however, by the Society for 
 the Propagation of the Gospel and by trustees of the Colo- 
 nial Fund, of the revenues for the support of his oflBce ; in 
 the presence of an Episcopal rival, appointed by voluntary 
 election ; and, it is to be feared, unacknowledged by most 
 of the clergy whose labours it is his legal function to super- 
 vise. These personal troubles, endured throughout with 
 singular gentlenessand "3ignity, have not been lightened 
 by his affection and fidelity towards the native population 
 for which chiefly he^lias laboured and lived. An unjust and 
 illegal punishment having been inflicted on one of their 
 tribes and its head, for some insubordinate acts committed 
 a,nd avenged in panic, the Bishop stood up alone, to resist 
 the wrong while there was hope of preventing it, and to 
 expose and reverse it, when it was complete in Africa but 
 unratifled in England. The evidence he brought to this 
 country convinced the Government, as it had convinced him- 
 self; and he returned, with honourable but painful success to 
 a baffled and exasperated community, which felt the presence 
 of his clear-sighted equity as a mortifying reproach. 
 
 That the Colenso episode in our Church history, though 
 seeming to leave its author in a minority of one, will not be 
 
INTBODUCTOET CHAPTEK. 17 
 
 without theological result, is evident from the complexion 
 of the " Speaker's Commentary/' On the one hand, con- 
 cessions are made in it which alter the whole basis of the 
 accepted Biblical divinity. And on the other, they are re- 
 fused on grounds so weak as plainly to indicate the tempo- 
 rary nature of the defence. The Pentateuch can never 
 return to its old position : and the history of Judaism has 
 to be re-written. 
 
 Old Testament researches can only indirectly, however cer- 
 tainly, affect the received theory of Christianity. But, in the 
 midst of the Colenso Controversy, — in 1866, — an anonymous 
 writer, of large historical grasp and great literary power, 
 stepped upon the immediate field of the Evangelical narra- 
 tives, and presented the figure and work of Christ under 
 aspects at once winning to the reverence and shocking to 
 the orthodoxy of the traditional believer. The author of 
 " Bcce Homo," avoiding all prejudgment of problems re- 
 specting the ontological rank and constitution of Christ's 
 person, proposed to approach and delineate his career as an 
 historical phenomenon, and to characterise the impression 
 which his life has produced upon huma,n society- The 
 effort to clear away all media of custom and read the 
 gospels with a fresh natural eye, is in itself commendable, 
 and is sure, when carried out by a mind of quick moral 
 apprehension, to open lights of beauty unmarked before. 
 Accordingly, the author, by many skilful and delicate com- 
 binations, has brought home to himself and to others the 
 features, so gracious, tender, and majestic, of the figure 
 unique in history. Yet his task, under the condition of 
 abstinence from doctrinal assumption, was an impossible 
 one. The intended " historical " picture could only be 
 drawn, either from the objective reality, or from reports of 
 it carefully stripped of all distorting accretions and sub- 
 jective discolouring. It is actually drawn by the artist 
 without any such precaution. He looks, not at the life set 
 in the clear, but at representations of it just as they stand 
 in the Gospels ; where already the image has passed into 
 the doctrinal spectrum, and not always into the same part 
 of it. The particular theory of Christ's nature laid down 
 in the Nicene Creed he does not assume : but that which 
 pervades the fourth Gospel, and that very different one 
 which runs through the first, he does assuma; forgetting that 
 
18 INTBOD0CTOEY CHAPTBB. 
 
 these earlier media intercept the historical view not less than 
 the later, and, where they vary from each other, confuse it with 
 incongruities. Hence, while the title and the apparent pur- 
 pose of the book promise us the interior study of a human life, 
 and many a true pathetic glimpse is really given us, the 
 "Homo" before long disappears, in favour of an artificial- 
 nature upon quite another scale, where our measures of 
 sympathy are lost. To Jesus of Nazareth the author attri- 
 butes forms of self-knowledge which it is difficult to adjust 
 harmoniously in any ideal of humanity ; a voluntary com- 
 mand of indefinite supernatural power ; a foresight of his 
 place in the ages, and the consolidation of Christendom 
 around his name; a consciousness that the new order of 
 society was to be formed by the power of his character, and 
 that attachment to himself must be invited, in order to 
 constitute it and hold it together. It has been often urged, — 
 not surely without justice, — that the sort of self-magnifying 
 and self-assertion in which such an inward experience must 
 speak, must be for ever out of place in beings like our- 
 selves. May we not add, that for us they m^r the beauty 
 of any nature — and all the more the higher it is — to which 
 they are ascribed ? This personal glorification is the result 
 of no impulse of the spiritual man, but of a retrospective 
 reverence in others. Through an uncritical Working up 
 of the evangelic materials, the author sets before us, in 
 the pepson of Christ, a fictitious compound of self-forget- 
 fulneSa and self-exaltation, of faith amid blinding darkness 
 and sight of supernatural vision, of real sacrifice in utter 
 obedience, and show-sacrifice by way of lordly example. 
 No artistic skill in word-painting can provide middle tints 
 to blend these incompatible elements. When you approach 
 the figure to fling your homage before it, its feet are not 
 upon the earth : it hangs in the air, it retreats from your 
 embrace, and a bright cloud absorbs its reality. It is quite 
 otherwise when the author, stepping upon secured historical 
 ground, compares the ancient and the Christian types of 
 civilization, and estimates the moral debt of society to the 
 new law of life and love. With easy command of all the 
 materials for such a comparison, he throws into the strongest ' 
 relief the side of human nature which has been born be- 
 neath the eye of Christ, and has changed all the proportions 
 of our inner and outer experience. 
 
INTEODUCTOEY CHAPTBB. 19 
 
 The enthusiasm with which the "Ecce Homo" was 
 received is one of many signs that the age, no longer satis- 
 fied with its dogmatic instructors, is eager for any compe- 
 tent guide to the real human personality of Christ ; and is 
 grateful to one who can transfer that wonderful but half- 
 faded image to the waiting canvas of modern imagination. 
 This reverential curiosity respecting the " Son of Man," is 
 regarded with impatience by the Low Church party, as 
 symptomatic of failing faith in the " Son of God " : and, in 
 a moment of excitement, the benevolent nobleman who is 
 the acknowledged head of that party, denounced the " Ecce 
 Homo " in terms which might have been deemed intempe- 
 ate, had they not been too rich in infernal imagery to be 
 literally taken. This explosion of anger certainly did not 
 weaken the impression of the book. The second volume, 
 which was to give the doctrinal key to the Hfe exhibited in 
 the first, has not appeared. The delineation, aa it now 
 stands, accords entirely with the conceptions of the older 
 Unitarians, especially of America : but there is nothing to 
 exclude, though nothing to require, a higher type of 
 doctrine. 
 
 As the " Ecce Homo " is anonymous, and is silent on the 
 topics which divide English theological parties, the treat- 
 ment of it as a Broad Church phenomenon is merely con- 
 jectural. But the intellectual mould in which it is cast, is 
 not of the Scottish or the Nonconformist pattern : only in 
 the Church of England could we find a New Testament 
 criticism so immature combined with a general culture so 
 scholarly and large : and the pure and noble English style 
 bears the inimitable stamp of our old Universities. 
 
 The Latitudinarians of the seventeenth century found a 
 centre of union in Lord Falkland's house. If we looked 
 for a corresponding rallying point where we might expect 
 to meet the modern successors of Hales and Chillingworth, 
 we should perhaps fix our eye upon the Deanery of West- 
 minster : only that here the High Church Archdeacon, the 
 Low Church curate, the Presbyterian Moderator, the In- 
 dependent minister, are likely also to be found. Falkland 
 gathered together a private club, to talk of latitude : the 
 Dean of Westminster lays himself out with resolute consist- 
 ency to practice it ; not hesitating to let his venerable Abbey 
 hear the voice, now of an Oxford layman, now of a Glasgow 
 
20 INTKODUCTOET CHAPTER. 
 
 Professor, and now of a Nonconformist Missionary ; or him- 
 self to occupy the pulpit in parishes beyond the Tweed. This 
 courageous openness, in preaching, in writing,in the Convoca- 
 tion debates, and in' social action, contrasts strongly with the 
 reserve of the old latitudinarians, and has greatly strength- 
 ened the liberal wing of the Church of England. Complaint 
 indeed is sometimes heard that its leading preachers do not 
 define their precise theological position : while unshrinkingly 
 rejecting popular errors, they are too reticent as to the form 
 of faith which they preserve. The complaint proceeds 
 from the lingering dogmatic conception of Christian Union, 
 against which it is their purpose to protest. They insist 
 that religious worship and fellowship might be much more 
 comprehensive than it is, and that the obtrusion of dogmatic 
 superfluities is a schismatic act, hurtful to piety and charity, 
 and disguising the true spiritual affinities of men. Their 
 own minds have passed into a region above these hindrances 
 to sympathy; and though they may carry definition to the 
 last refinement in the study, they would surrender them- 
 selves to common trusts and affections in the Church. The 
 possibility of this is precisely what it is their mission to 
 show: and to demand from them that, in its discharge, 
 they shall tell you just where they agree and cease to agree 
 with others, is to ask them to recant and renounce their 
 work. The real weakness of the party lies in the false 
 position siL its clergy. In proportion as they are tru6 
 labourers for the Church of the future, are they less true 
 servants to the Church of the present. The dogmatic 
 engagements and limitations against which they protest are 
 precisely of the kind to which they are committed : and 
 enough is visible of their theology to render it certain, that 
 it would never spontaneously speak in the prayers and 
 creeds of which they are the pubHc organ. The subtle 
 casuistry, the considerations of social expediency and histo- 
 rical development, which reconcile some of the best as well 
 as wisest men of our time to this position, will never con- 
 vince the conscience of simpler type that veracity is not 
 paramount in worship, and that even a suspected disregard 
 of it by the recognised guides of pubUc morals, is" too 
 heavy a price to pay for a quickened pace of liberty and 
 charity. 
 
 It may be doubted whether the divisions in the Church of 
 
INTKODUCXOEY CHAPTEK. 21 
 
 England have really weakened it for either action or resist- 
 ance. The stimulus of new ideas is needful for the vitality 
 of every moral institution : and these have been supplied, 
 and scattered among groups of minds asleep before, by the 
 development of each type of ecclesiastic life. Never pro- 
 bably have more recruits been enlisted and organised for 
 Church work than, during the last twenty years. And 
 though an easy logic insists that a Church must be a failure 
 which, pretending to be One, breaks into factions, yet the 
 argument takes little effect upon Englishmen accustomed to 
 free political strife without loss of national feeling. They 
 rather respect than condemn the inevitable conflicts of 
 opinion; and more readily sympathise with Protestant 
 diversity than, with Romanist uniformity. Though the 
 habitual Church-goers are still not found below a certain 
 stratum of society, yet the actual influence of the clergy is 
 felt considerably lower ; and, through their increased ac- 
 tivity, devotedness, and kindliness, has certainly been ex- 
 tended of late years. On the whole, the Church is probably 
 better secured at the present time in the affections of En- 
 glish people, than at any date since the Revolution. 
 
 II. Pdbitan Nonconioemity. 
 
 Though the Anglican Church embodies in it the con- 
 servative feeling -of the country, while the Nonconformist 
 communities have sprung from the need of keener life and 
 freer movement, it is remarkable that the religious history 
 of England, during its recent stadia, lies almost entirely in 
 the former. The dissenting bodies have doubtless experi- 
 enced some change. But it has been for the most part 
 silent ; marking no crises, producing no "striking episodes, 
 and recording itself in no literature which will be essential 
 to the future historian. The most conspicuous feature in it is 
 found in an altered attitude towards the Established Church, 
 and a more active and united interest in questions of public 
 policy. 
 
 It is curious that John Wesley, who meant to found only 
 a society within his own communion, should have created 
 the only regularly organised ecclesiastical body outside that 
 communion. The Methodists are reaUy governed; have 
 their senate, their hierarchy of officers, their administrative 
 
22 INTEODUCTOKY CHAPTER. 
 
 system, penetrating to every village school and chapel in 
 the land. And this vast structure, which not only touches, 
 but actually shapes the life of a large section of our popula- 
 tion, subsists side by side with the Anglican Church, com- 
 plete in itself, and too content with its own work to be 
 hostile to its neighbour. Among the older bodies of Non- 
 conformists, — the Presbyterians especially, — the effort at a 
 collective organisation faded away after the Restoration ; and 
 they practically fell into the Independent order, subsisting 
 only in detached societies, drawn by habit and sympathy into 
 local groups, but each managing its own affairs. This sole 
 survival of the congregationaUst principle has naturally 
 brought the Independents to the front rank of Noncon- 
 formity, and made its recent history in great measure a 
 development of their ideas. Though they themselves have 
 largely relinquished the impelling thought which moved 
 their forefathers, it has nevertheless determined the track 
 they have taken, and accounts for their present charac- 
 teristics. 
 
 The sharp distinction which Calvinism draws between the 
 elect and the reprobate was imported by the Independents 
 into their conception of Christian association. A church 
 might be called, in their view, a club of saints. To enter it, 
 you must have undergone conversion, and received your call : 
 and, to prevent the intrusion of those who were not " chil- 
 dren of tlhe kingdom," the approaches to it were guarded 
 by vigilant scrutiny into the candidate's spiritual experience 
 and faith. It was the worth of the individual soul in the 
 sight of God, its privileged relation to Him as selected for 
 sanctification, that qualified for admission. Within the 
 sacred circle, all, as alike invested with this qualification, 
 before which every difference vanished, were brethren and 
 equals, a spiritual democracy in all that concerned their 
 fellowship. Outside the circle, thronged the unconverted 
 world; but mingled in the crowd there must be some, dis- 
 tinguishable as yet by no visible or conscious sign, who 
 were to be heirs of grace. To find these and draw them 
 from the multitude, the word must be openly administered 
 to all : and, wherever it was preached, it was right that 
 there should be, around the Church of the chosen few, the 
 mixed congregation of the unconverted. This larger num- 
 ber however were present by invitation or permission, at a 
 
INTEODUCTOEY CHAPTER. 23 
 
 transaction not their own, and could be allowed no voice in 
 affairs quite foreign to their sphere. How should "the 
 natural man " " know the things of the Spirit of Grod j " for 
 " they are spiritually discerned ? " It was impossible to 
 concede to the unredeemed world any share in governing 
 the assembly of the regenerate. Their discipline and 
 order were divinely prescribed in Scripture^ and committed 
 to their own members, under guidance of the Spirit of 
 God. It is for them alone to admit to the Lord's Table, or 
 to exclude from it, and so to define the boundary of the 
 sacred fold. 
 
 What the Communicants are to the Congregation at large 
 in a particular society, that is the whole Church in amation co 
 the State ; the one, the living communion of the " members 
 of Christ ; " the other, the organised form of the mixed 
 multitude throughout. To the former is reserved, by Divine 
 right, the administration of sacred things : aU. other concerns 
 which call for authoritative action are consigned to the 
 latter. The theory which thus divides the temporal from 
 the spiritual is not incompatible with the theocratic concep- 
 tion that the " Saints should rule the World,'' and actually 
 assumed this form among the extreme sections of the 
 Puritans. But it is totally incompatible with any admission 
 that the World may rule the Saints, and has necessarily 
 induced the attempt entirely to separate the two spheres. 
 The Independents are in this country the hereditary repre- 
 sentatives of this theory : and we see only a consistent 
 carrying out of their early principles in their zealous efforts 
 for the " Liberation of Religion from State patronage and 
 control." They are joined in these efforts by many external 
 allies: and the maxims set forth as substantiating their 
 case are often political rather than theological. But it is 
 none the less true that their present devotion to the problem 
 of disestablishment is an historical consequence of their 
 early theology. 
 
 The Anglican's conception of the Church was different. 
 To him regeneration was not the indispensable condition, but 
 the hoped-for consequence of membership. The Church was 
 not a select association of persons already in a state of sancti- 
 fication, and in whom therefore the end of the Christian dis- 
 pensation had been attained ; but the whole body of pro- 
 fessed believers, united for the worship of God and admiuis- 
 
24 INTKODUCTOET CHAPTEE. 
 
 tration of the means of grace. As an institution for making 
 " saints," rather than for setting them apart when ready 
 made, it was necessarily a mixed field, in which " the tares 
 and the wheat " grew together ; nor was it given to men to 
 anticipate " the harvest " which would sever them from each 
 other. When the 19th of the 39 Articles defines " the 
 Visible Church of Christ " to be " a congregation of faith- 
 ful men in the which the pure Word of God is preached, 
 and the Sacraments be duly administered according to 
 Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are 
 requisite to the same'," the word "faithful " means no more 
 than "of the faith," i.e., avowed disciples, not persons holy 
 and regenerate. For in the 36th Article it is affirmed that 
 " in the Visible Church the evil are ever mingled with the 
 good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the 
 Ministration of the Word and the Sacraments," without 
 however taking away the effect of the ordinances. That 
 mixed body therefore which to the Independents was but 
 the outer " Congregation," belonged to " the Visible 
 Church " itself for the Anglican. And with this body the 
 Nation throughout was homogeneous, — indeed identical, — 
 as composed of professing Christians : so that it belonged 
 to the Church, and the Church belonged to it : all English- 
 men were members of it : nor was there any reason why 
 they should not, through their State organisation, deal with 
 its constitution and administer its affairs, as in the case of 
 any other instrument of their common welfare. They are 
 its constituent elements ; and cannot be precluded from 
 settling together their reciprocal duties and the rules suit- 
 able for their combined religious life. 
 
 In this view, not only do the same persons compose the 
 ecclesiastical and the political body, but the functions of the 
 Church cease to be withdrawn from those of the State, as 
 a reserve foreign to its domain, and become simply a 
 special part of them. The State, in short, is an organisa- 
 tion of society for all purposes in regard to which there is 
 a possibility and a need of common life : and no province, 
 marked off by a priori survey, can make good its claim of 
 exemption from jurisdiction. It does not follow that the 
 State would be wise to do all that it is entitled to do. 
 Through r large portion of human action there may be no 
 " need " of a common hfe ; or it may adequately shape itself 
 
INTKODUCTOEY CHAPTER. 25 
 
 into due order. In otlier departments, there may be no 
 "possibility'' of it, and tbe attempt at uniformity may 
 only intensify division. These are good reasons for dele- 
 gating to the play of individual will, or for holding in 
 abeyance, the public powers which, under other conditions, 
 might rightly have been exercised, and at other times have 
 rightly been exercised, by the supreme authority. The 
 Anglican would allow it to be a fair question, whether there 
 is any longer a sufficient unity in English religion to justify 
 the maintenance as National of a Church which has ceased 
 to be so. But the Independents' principle, — that even a 
 unanimous nation must abstain from using its Government 
 organisation for the regulation of Church Order, — will 
 always be addressed to him in vain. 
 
 The difficulty of drawing any boundary Une between the 
 temporal and the spiritual provinces of life was rendered 
 apparent by the attitude of the Independents towards the 
 Government in its first action on the question of Pubhc 
 Education. They knew not whether to approve or dis- 
 approve : and for many years opinion among them wavered 
 and was divided. Was education in the temporal or in 
 the spiritual sphere ? In this country, it was undoubtedly 
 a religious impulse which had created the great mass of 
 elementary schools : they were in connection either with 
 one of two great Societies, supported respectively by the 
 Church and by the Dissenters, or with some particular 
 local congregation : so that the whole system was inter- 
 woven with the Christian philanthropy and devout habits 
 of the land. This, it would seem, was not ground on 
 which the Civil power was at home : if it were once let into 
 the School, how could it be refused admission to the 
 Church ? Both must be voluntary institutions, or neither. 
 Yet, on the other hand, the temporal interests of which 
 the State was guardian were powerfully affected by the 
 ignorance or the intelligence of the population : and if the 
 power which had to punish crime- chose to try its hand 
 rather at preventing it, it appeared pedantic to charge it 
 with overstepping its line, and to insist that it should fold its 
 hands and look on till the evil was committed. A small 
 but important minority supported the Parliamentary grants 
 for Education. The majority denounced them, and de- 
 clined all aid from them, as a betrayal of the " voluntary 
 
26 1NTEOD0CTOET CHAPTER. 
 
 principle/^ In thus screening Education from the pro- 
 faning touch of the State, they treated it as belonging to 
 the spiritual sphere. But they have since changed their 
 voice ; and now demand that the elementary schools should 
 be all Public and all Secular. It is only just to say that 
 in this practical reversal of their policy, they rather correct 
 than contradict their regulating principle. At first, some 
 of them looked on education as a temporal, others as a 
 spiritual, concern. Now, they run the dividing liae of 
 this antithesis through the midst of it, and all agree that 
 it is both ; and, while jealously reserving the religious side 
 of it for private duty and affection, call upon public Law 
 and authority to take possession of its secular province. 
 Thus, they are still true to their traditional conception that 
 the World and the Church must be kept apart; and the 
 field of neither be permitted to overlap the other^s. 
 
 The Independents have too noble a history, and, in 
 studying it, pass through a gallery of portraits too im- 
 pressive, ever to be absorbed in the struggles of the present, 
 or to lose their veneration for the learning and intellectual 
 gifts, which gave force to the virtues of such men as 
 Eobinson and Owen. They have persistently maintained 
 effective institutions for imparting University culture to 
 their ministers ; and of late years have encouraged the 
 more able of them to prolong their studies in some one of 
 the great schools of Germany. In Biblical theology and 
 in Philosophy their attainments are carried, among the 
 regularly trained men, .considerably beyond the standard 
 which satisfies the Church. The natural consequence has 
 been, a very perceptible relaxation of the older orthodox 
 rigour, and the introduction of a type of preaching which 
 would have been heard with grave displeasure by the elders 
 of even the last generation. Without any loss of the fer- 
 vour and spiritual depth of an earlier age, and with un- 
 abated resort to scriptural imagery and expression, their 
 foremost ministers no longer speak in the sense 'of the 
 seventeenth century : they have put new wine into the old 
 bottles : and the bursting has yet to come. There have 
 
 been occasional instances of avowed theological change, 
 
 as Mr. Baldwin Brown's renunciation of the doctrine' of 
 eternal punishment ; and occasional explosions of frightened 
 conservatism, whether ineffectual, as in the attempt to 
 
INTEODUCTORY CHAPTEE. 27 
 
 silence the sweet flowing of "the Eivulet," or crowned 
 with a fatal success, as in the removal of Dr. Samuel 
 Davidson from the College which his learning adorned. 
 But these conspicuous examples afford no measure of the 
 silent movement which is shifting the whole body into a 
 different stratum of the theological atmosphere, and lessen- 
 ing the interval between the Puritan and the Rationalist 
 modes of religious thought. It is not by " disputings in the 
 market place," but by reflection in the study and commu- 
 nings with higher minds, that true conversions are made, 
 and the level of the spirit gains m altitude : and larger 
 changes pass unnoticed in meditative shade than in the 
 midday heat and brilliancy of controversy. If the Inde- 
 pendents are too much tied to the Past to give promise of 
 taking the lead into the Future, yet they evince a ready 
 susceptibility to the quickening powers of the time ; — in Dr. 
 Davidson appropriating its critical erudition and courage ; 
 in Mr. Baldwin Brown, the influence of the Mauince theo- 
 logy ; in Mr. Picton, the operation of scientific theories ; 
 and having, through their popular forms and habits, the ear 
 of a large and active-minded middle class, they may at least 
 become effective distributors of the new thought which 
 they absorb, and prevent the breach so often threatened 
 between the elder and the younger pieties. 
 
 III. Peie Inquiry. 
 
 If Religion be the first awakener of thought, Thought would 
 seem to have played the part of an ungrateful child, and been 
 never tired of rebellion against its parent. Every fresh start 
 of intellectual activity, like that which has carried the natural 
 sciences over their newest stadium, is invariably attended 
 by an outburst of disaffection towards the contemporaneous 
 theological beliefs. Rightly understood, this fact is neither 
 strange nor ill-omened. The permanent springs of religion, 
 — whether in the intuition of Power behind phenomena, or^ 
 in the sense of authoritative Right in action, or in the recog- 
 nition of Beauty in the world, — can only turn what we see 
 and feel into something Divine : they do not create, the|y 
 only interpret and colour the scene, without or within, on 
 which we look : the range and contents of that scene, the 
 order of its parts, the scheme of relations into which it is 
 
28 INTEODtJCTOEY CHAPTEK. 
 
 best thrown, must be determined by other faculties,— of 
 Perception and Understanding,^commissioned to organise 
 wha.t appears not to apprehend what is. The moral and spi- 
 ritual faith in us necessarily accepts from contemporary in- 
 telligence the given universe, whatever it may be ; thinks in 
 the ordinary moulds of thought; yields itself to the ap- 
 proved framework of abstractions; and spreads its consecra- 
 tion over the whole. The intellect which it had sent for- 
 ward under the inspiration of wonder discovers that its pic- 
 ture of the world is inadequate, and works out a new per- 
 spective of its structure, a new program of its relations: and 
 thus strips of their truth many things which lay in the 
 imagination under a light of sacred beauty. That light, how- 
 ever, is no self-light which perishes with the object ; but a 
 radiance eternally abroad, ready to glorify that which suc- 
 ceeds to the vacated place. But, as the substitution takes 
 time, so must the consecration: and a troubled interval there 
 cannot but be, during which the scene itself is confused, 
 and the rays are unsettled, here seeming to be quenched, 
 there to be pursuing the old as it vanishes, and not yet re- 
 posing on the new as it arrives. In a little while it will 
 return to its rest, and illumine a fairer as well as vaster 
 kosmos. The function of the intellect through this process 
 is simply corrective to the devout imagination of men. As 
 the instrument of phenomenal knowledge, it is not the 
 source of religion; or its destroyer ; but the critic of its repre- 
 sentations and modes of conception. In this it performs a 
 friendly ofBce, indispensable to the balance of human pro- 
 gress. To expect from free inquiry any fruits of piety, and 
 to dread from it any triumph of impiety, are alike absurd. 
 It is spiritually neutral ; only, by revising the forms of theo- 
 logic thought, it keeps the sanctities alive for the front rank 
 of human minds, instead of surrendering them to the rear, as 
 a monopoly of the ignorant and weak. 
 
 i. Science and Dogma. 
 
 The recent advance of knowledge respecting the physical 
 history of Man has pressedmuchmore hardlyonthe ti-aditional 
 creed than the astronomical discoveries which, in the seven* 
 teenth century, broke up the Mosaic firmament. Undeni- 
 ably, the structure of Church divinity not only contains a 
 
INTEODUOTOET CHAPTEE. 29 
 
 definite anthropological theory, but rests upon it. The 
 Redemption, which is its substance and its crown, is simply 
 a reversal of the Pall : the Fall is a reversal of the Paradi- 
 siacal state : and this again involves the origin of Man by 
 special creation in a manner which absolutely distinguishes 
 him, in " his first estate," from other living beings on the 
 earth. Parts of this scheme had long been weakened by 
 doubts. The accessory notion that human sin was answer- 
 able for the infiiction of pain and death upon the whole of 
 animated nature was criticized on moral grounds as involv- 
 ing a cruel wrong to innocent creatures ; and was defended, 
 or rather explained away by Bossuet on the cui"ious ground 
 that, according to the Cartesian philosophy, animals were 
 mere automata, and did not feel : they were only made to 
 enact the symbolism of suffering, that the whole aspect of 
 things might be in keeping with the penalty of man.* The 
 geological record furnished an objection less easy to meet, 
 when it exhibited the presence and the extinction of life on 
 earth through incalculable ages before the appearance of the 
 human race. It was possible, however, without serious 
 sacrifice, to limit the consequences of Adam's offence to his 
 own descendants, and let the other creatures be as they 
 were : only, if Death already fell on them in the order of 
 nature, it was difficult to withdraw man from the analogy, and 
 execute him by the moral law. The researches of the last two 
 or three decades have propagated the shock of doubt from the 
 outworks to the very citadel of the whole system. Prom vari- 
 ous sides evidences accumulated which, summed up by Lyell, 
 Lubbock, Prestwich, Tylor, have at once enormously ex- 
 tended the " Antiquity of Man," and established his gra- 
 dual ascent from the lowest conditions of existence ; plainly 
 exhibiting to us not the wreck, but the rudiments, of a 
 higher nature, and leaving no room for the drama of a ruined 
 perfection and a lost Paradise. Parallel with this line of 
 discovery came the speculations of Darwin, carried on with 
 a rare mastery of the methods of induction, and an entire 
 possession of their fair and patient spirit, on the " Origin of 
 Species," and the "Descent of Man :" which appear finally 
 
 * The argument is founded on a miBapprehensiou of Descartes' doctrine of 
 automatism, a misapprehension still constantly repeated. He did not deny- 
 that animals were sentient, but only that they were self-conscious. 
 
30 INTEODTJCTOET CHAPTEE. 
 
 to dispose of the provisional conception of spasmodic crea- 
 tionj and so to link together the types of terrestrial life as to 
 draw even man into the universal relationship^ and assign 
 to him a genesis from some inferior kind. Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer's systematic working-out of the theory of Evolu- 
 tion, now filling it in by happy and ingenious conjectures, 
 now extending it by well-devised abstractions and telling 
 analogies, has greatly confirmed its hold on the mind of an 
 age eager for the largest generalisations. The scientific 
 imagination of the time is accordingly occupied by a natural 
 history of the earth reversing the order, denying the crises, 
 changing the causes, transcending the time -measures, of 
 the accepted story of humanity and its redemption. 
 
 Under conditions so threatening, no resource is legiti- 
 mately left to the orthodox theologian but either to surrender 
 or to deny. Either what he daily teaches is not true, or 
 what he everywhere hears taught is fatal falsehood ; and it 
 is of the first necessity that he decide himself, and enable 
 others to decide between the contradictories. This, how- 
 ever, is the course which he is least apt to take. It is not 
 uncommon to find him, on the first shock, quickly deny, 
 and then slowly surrender, falling in at last with the lan- 
 guage and conceptions which he withstood at first, only not 
 keeping the terms of an honourable submission, but slipping 
 back into the old grooves of thought which were to be 
 erased. More often he lives on, and tekes no notice, telling 
 the old story toJ]5e class'm church which he pregares for 
 confirmation, or spending._his zeal on^the-patiem of a 
 faldstool and the contents of his vestment-room, heedless 
 of the dry rot which is crumbling Tihe main timbers of the 
 temple itself. The school of Mr. Maurice alone is able to 
 make' the necessary admissions. It has always, with Cole- 
 ridge, repudiated the doctrine of birth-sin, and held its 
 " Eedemption " clear of the " FaU." Its theory of the 
 relation between the human nature and the Divine has an 
 experimental ground independent of mythology and tradition. 
 And, beyond the rationalising circle, it is only among its 
 disciples that we find at once the competency and the 
 resolve fairly to weigh the pretensions of modern science, 
 and allow every probable truth its modifying influence on 
 theological ideas. 
 
 Unitarians are not affected by the scientific disproof of 
 
INTKODUCTOEY CHAPTBE. 31 
 
 doctrines already discarded by them. It cannot be unwel- 
 come to them to find their moral and critical pleadings 
 supported and crowned by conclusive physical evidence. 
 If, however, the same evidence which justifies their hetero- 
 doxy should invalidate their Theism, or shake the founda- 
 tion of their Ethics, — and no less than this is aflBrmed by 
 expositors of evolution, — then they also must reconsider 
 their position, and see whether anything remains but un- 
 conditional surrender to material development. 
 
 ii. Scienee and Natural Theology. 
 
 The writers on Natural Theology in the last century 
 proceeded on the mechanical conception of the universe, 
 which the discoveries of Newton and their extension by the 
 French mathematicians had set in the ascendant. In con- 
 formity with this, they . thought of all Causation as a phe- 
 nomenal succession, and of the relation between God and 
 the world as that between the first term and the second of a 
 physical series, — this second summing up in itself the ante- 
 cedents of all that follows. In order to establish the exist- 
 ence of God as "First Cause," they thusbound themselves to 
 find a time when the system of " Second Causes " began to 
 be. Till that was done, this system itself held the field : it 
 could be dispossessed only on proof that it was not the first 
 there, but once was absent, ere yet a prior Power had called 
 it up. Accordingly the older treatises endeavour to prove 
 that matter and its properties cannot always have been, — 
 that the " laws of nature " which prevail among phenomena 
 are themselves phenomena, and have had their birth, — that 
 there is a limit to what " second causes " will account for, 
 beyond which, as in the adaptation of organisms to their 
 media, and the distinction of Species, and the equilibrium of 
 the Solar system, recourse must be had to an extramundane 
 cause. Above all, and latest of all, appeal was confidently 
 made to the recent and apparently abrupt appearance oi 
 Man upon the earth, as inexplicable but as a result of special 
 creation. The literature of Natural Theology has been held 
 in great favour among Unitarians : and so far as they have 
 allowed themselves to depend upon this line of argument, 
 they must certainly be disturbed by the newer Science. 
 
32 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 For there is no longer hope of finding a birth-day for 
 " Matter," for " Laws," for " Species," for planets, or even 
 for Man ; and no longer despair of comprehending all known 
 phenomena within the probable range of an admitted natural 
 order. They must either relinquish their Theism, or amend 
 its fundamental coi^ceptions. 
 
 For the most part, however, this emendation has long ago 
 taken place among Unitarians : and God is conceived, not 
 as " First Cause " prefixed to the scheme of things, but as 
 Indwelling Cause pervading it ; not excluded by " Second 
 Causes," but coinciding with them while transcending them ; 
 as the One ever-living Objective Agency, the modes of which 
 must be classified and interpreted by Science in the outer 
 field, by conscience in the inner. This change of concep- 
 tion is due to the lessened prominence of Mechanical ideas 
 and the advance of Physiology to a dominant position; 
 substituting the thought of Life working from within for 
 that of transitive impulse starting from without. Under 
 this higher form of religious thought, all need entirely 
 ceases of reaching a Creative epoch when the Divine " fiat " 
 first went forth, and prior to which was an eternal solitude 
 of God ; or of finding tasks accomplished which are beyond 
 the resources of the known methods of the world; or of 
 insisting on gaps in the continuity of being which only 
 paroxysms of Omnipotence could overleap : and the break- 
 down therefore of the old proofs on these points leaves the 
 Theism quite unharmed. The modern Science does not 
 even disturb us with a new idea ; for " Evolution " is only 
 growth : it merely raises the question how far into the 
 field of Nature that idea can properly be carried, — a ques- 
 tion surely of no religious significance. If, without super- 
 seding the Divine causality, we can recognise an individual's 
 cycle of development and decline from the embryo to the 
 corpse, and trace a species passing through a range of diver- 
 gent variations, whence can any sudden difficulty spring, 
 on our extending the process to genera differencing their 
 members into species, and similarly to larger groups, till 
 the continuity is complete ? The Unity of the Causal Power, 
 — which is all that the spreading network of analogies can 
 establish, cannot possibly be unwelcome to those who 
 regard it all as the working of One Mind. This thesis of 
 theirs, — that it is Mind, — no physical knowledge can dis- 
 
INTEODUCTOitT CHAPTER. 33 
 
 prove, or can prove. It is intuitively given, in the very 
 idea of Causality itself, and secretes itself behind all the 
 phenomenal masks which in different regions that idea may 
 assume. 
 
 iii. Science and Ethics. 
 
 If the foundation of Ethics is affected by the theory of 
 Evolution, it must be through the derivation of the Moral 
 Sentiments, by hereiditary modifications of nerve and feel- 
 ing, from unmoral conditions. It is no new thing to 
 measure the authority of a faculty by its origin ; to insist 
 on its being intuitive {i.e. unmediated), if you would dignify 
 it ; to show how it is fabricated out of common materials, 
 if you would disparage it. Philosophers who, like Locke, 
 rebelled against the tyranny of pretended axioms, or, like 
 Bentham, against arbitrary oracles of an absolute Moral 
 Sense, have assailed the objects of their dislike with the 
 instrument of analysis, and discredited them by displaying 
 their elements. And if the conscience can be shown to be 
 not even indigenous to the individual at all, but to fetch 
 its rudiments from the struggling impulses and stored 
 up memories of an indefinite line of ancestral brutes 
 and savages, it may be supposed to forfeit all claim to an 
 imperative or Divine prerogative. Here, however, there 
 is a distinction to be observed. It is not the process of 
 growth, which lowers the rank of a faculty in our estima- 
 tion ; but the materials for its growth, when they prove to 
 be, or are alleged to be, from a level far below its own. 
 "Wlen disinterestedness is educed from self-love weaving 
 illusions around itself and mistaking means for ends ; when 
 ideas of right and wrong are explained as contrivances for 
 extorting what we want from others ; when the compunctions 
 and peace of conscience are construed back into the fancied 
 frowns and smiles of spectators ; when the feeling of beauty 
 is said to be composed of agglutinated pleasures of visual 
 and auditory sensation; we certainly are dissatisfied and 
 humiliated by these equations, because we had thought 
 there was something in the whole which we know has no 
 existence in these parts, and which, without conscious de- 
 gradation, we cannot dismiss to the land of dreams. But 
 if the elements were homogeneous with the product, instead 
 
34 INTEODUCTOfiY CHAPTEE. 
 
 of inferior in kind, — ^molecules of the nltimate mass, — 
 there would be nothing in the mere fact of passing^ from 
 an inchoate stage to gradual maturity, which could in the 
 least impair our appreciation of the faculty as it is. Its 
 authority is immediately known to us as a present fact, and 
 does not vanish on our remembering that it is not a first 
 phenomenon, but, like ourselves, has come to be. A natural 
 history it must have, as the function of a growing life : 
 and to know its natural history can take nothing from it. 
 This holds equally, whether the evolution be short or long, 
 comprised within the single life, or continuous through in- 
 definite generations. And it holds equally of every faculty. 
 Were there ground for Moral scepticism in the slow 
 mjituration of conscience, there would be no less for In- 
 tellectual scepticism in the tardy development of Eeason. 
 The Eight and Wrong are assured to our knowledge by the 
 same title as the True and False. 
 
 In this vindication of the modern view of Nature from 
 the imputation of irreligious consequences, more, it must 
 be owned, is saved for it than many of its adherents care 
 to claim. It is certainly regarded, by its chief representa- 
 tives, abroad and at home, as atheistical, or at least as 
 excluding all theology. This is only natural to minds 
 that move entirely within the scientific scheme of concep- 
 tions framed for the phenomenal world, and then force it to 
 serve in ulterior problems where it fails. The path of In- 
 duction, which is so safe a guide through the physical and 
 the historic fields, fades away in the skirting forests of the 
 Infinite, and will lead no one to either the sanctuary of 
 beauty or the temple of worship hid within the silent 
 depths. Of this none are more aware than the men in 
 whom the pure scientific genius appears as only one pro- 
 vince of a larger nature and a richer culture, — men like 
 Herschel, Oersted, Faraday : but it is hid from specialists 
 of every kind ; and above all from the typical favourites of 
 the medical school, whose cleverness early promotes them 
 to the public lecture-room, and enlists them in the produc- 
 tion of our popular scientific literature. The former order 
 of mind contains the latter, as Plato and Aristotle contained 
 Epicm-us, with much more : but, for that very reason, the 
 latter speaks more directly home to the congenial onesided- 
 ness of an age, and the ready tendency of similar intellects. 
 
INTKODTTCTOEY CHAPTER. 35 
 
 There was much in the earlier tJnitarian training to foster 
 the simply logical and inductive intelligencej and to draw 
 together persons in whom other gifts were quite subordi- 
 nate : hence the repute of coldness and dryness which haa 
 always attached to the name. It is not surprising that, 
 from among a people thus formed, some few, both in 
 England and in America, should have lost their moorings 
 of faith in the rise of the scientific tide, and been swept 
 out to sea. There is no religious body that has not simi- 
 iarly lost adherents : and for a long time to come there 
 wiU probably be a cloud of negative skirmishers hovering 
 around every church and harassing its peace. But while 
 they find its weaknesses, they will but consolidate its 
 strength ; and when they have compelled withdrawal from 
 untenable positions, and quickened the vigilance and de- 
 votion of the whole encampment within, their work will be 
 done, and the field of the future will be reopened for the 
 march. 
 
 iv. The Miracles. 
 
 Whoever adopts the modern principle of Evolution ipso 
 facto relinquishes, to the same extent, a certain portion of 
 miracle. For special Divine acts of creation he substitutes 
 the mediation of successive steps of law. By thus re- 
 moving from the physical history of the world every anoma- 
 lous transition, and identifying the Divine agency with the 
 flow of natural order, he leaves the moral history of man- 
 kind without supporting analogies for its alleged "signs 
 and wonders " : and if they are still to hold their place, it 
 will be under an increased stress, and by the unaided force 
 of testimonial evidence. Yet it cannot be said that the 
 growing indisposition to admit, miracles has been counter- 
 vailed by any enhanced appreciation of their historical 
 proofs. On the contrary, under patient and repeated in- 
 vestigation, our synoptical gospels have disclosed enough 
 of their age and composition to leave their testimony 
 anonymous, and take from it any higher guarantee than 
 belongs to a venerable popular tradition. The genuine 
 relics which they doubtless hand down to us from the 
 " sacred year," can be distinguished only by internal 
 evidence, and are mixed with questionable additions, 
 coloured with the spirit and purpose of another genera- 
 
36 INTRODUOTOET CHAPTEE. 
 
 tion. The fourth Gospel there will yet, no doubt, be many 
 efforts to save as an original authority. Proceeding from 
 a single mind, of rare spiritual depth and ideality, it will 
 win its best readers to wish it history. But the verdict 
 pronounced by the author of this volume, in his special 
 treatise on the subject,* is not likely to be reversed : nor 
 would even Mr. Matthew Arnold^ who endeavours to rein- 
 state this gospel, confide in it enough to accept the miracles 
 which it records. The adventurous criticism of such 
 writers as Baur, Schwegler, Volkmar, and Straatman, 
 presents many a false position, many a rash sally, to the 
 attack of keen opponents. It is the habit of the German 
 Professor to overwork his case. But by even cautious 
 students who have followed the researches of the last thirty 
 years it is admitted that new light has been thrown on the 
 Christian affairs of the first and second centuries ; on the 
 struggle between the Petrine and the Pauline gospel, end- 
 ing in the compromise of the Catholic church ; on the 
 development of doctrine respecting the person of Christ; 
 and on the traces which, in its successive stages, this history 
 has left- on the several books of the New Testament. The 
 various attempts which have been made by Hase, Schenkel, 
 Keim, and Renan, to reproduce the figure of Jesus and his 
 work, differ in numerous and important details ; but, in 
 this difference, concur in proving that the sources are not 
 in harmony with one another, and have not the exceptional 
 solidity needful to sustain a supernatural weight. 
 
 The tendencies of scientific and of historical research 
 being thus in the same direction, and meetiag with no 
 adequate counteraction from conservative resistance, a 
 general disposition is manifested, among churches open to 
 ■theologic change, no longer to lay stress on the miraculous 
 elements of early Christian tradition; to regard them as 
 rather weakening than strengthening the authority of the 
 narrative ; and to frame a conception of the origin of 
 Christianity, which shall not be dependent on their ob- 
 jective reality. So well understood is this disposition 
 among the Uberal Protestants of France, that when M. 
 Guizot, with his orthodox majority, determined to force on 
 
 * An attempt to ascertain tlie character of the Fourth Q-ospel, especially in 
 its relfttion to the first Three ; by the late Eev. John James Tayler B.A 
 Second Edition, 1870. Williaras and Norgate, London. '' 
 
INTEODUCTOET CHAPTEE. 37 
 
 a secession, lie had only to impose^ as a condition of fellow- 
 shipj a belief in the events which the Christian Festivals com- 
 memorate at ChristmaSj Easter, and Whitsuntide. Although 
 the introduction of any fresh condition would have been 
 resisted on constitutional grounds, yet the selection of the 
 test was made net without knowledge of its sufficiency, if ap- 
 plied. It would probably have a precisely similar operation, 
 could the experiment be tried among the confreres of M. 
 Coquerel in England and America. In both countries 
 there are doubtless many who are still satisfied with the 
 unyielding historic Christianity of Priestley and of Andrews 
 Norton, which not only maintained the miracles, but built 
 everything upon them : nor is it many years since the 
 author of this volume was sharply attacked by an Irish re» 
 presentative of the older school, for his inability to accept 
 the reports of Christ's bodily resurrection and ascension. 
 Even, however, among the conservative theologians, a 
 significant silence respecting the " signs and wonders," on 
 which they rest indicates that the old emphatic appeal to 
 them is known to be out of keeping with the feeling of the 
 time, and can no longer be hopefully urged. It is not 
 surprising that Unitarians of the elder school regard this 
 state of things with sadness and displeasure, encounter it 
 with earnest protest, and treat it as an apostacy. Such it 
 would actually be, had there meanwhile been no change in 
 the philosophy of religion and the consequent logic of 
 belief. But ia virtue of such a change, miracles had already 
 lost all special religious value, before they fell under critical 
 doubt : and as, on declaring themselves incredible, they had 
 already become indiflerent, they could pass innocently away, 
 and leave the disciple's allegiance precisely where it had 
 long rested. 
 
 V. Non-OhrisUa/n Theism. 
 
 The English conception of Revelation, born of the longing 
 for truth, n(5t for spiritual beauty, or moral perfection, has 
 always carried in it the idea of mfallibility : and in the 
 studies to which it has given rise, the only question has 
 been, where was the oracular seat, in Council, or Pope, or 
 Bible. When the Protestant, inheriting the assumption 
 that it was in the Scriptures, fails on personal research to 
 find it there, he not unreasonably feels that he has been 
 
38 INTEODUCTOET CHAPTEE. 
 
 imposed upon, and flings away a Christianity which does 
 not fulfil the promise made to him in its name. He wants 
 well-accredited statements about Divine things, and a solu- 
 tion of moral perplexitioSj and a code or manual of duties : 
 he is disappointed of them all; and dismisses the religion 
 as a delusive guide. This mode of procedure is the more 
 natural, the more he has lived under the dominant idea of 
 an orthodoxy^ or divinely-given creed, as an essential to 
 right relations with God. Flung off from his old depend- 
 ences, he is driven, if his mind have any depth and spiritu- 
 ality, to begin anew with the problems of Keligion and 
 Duty, and work them out by the -reckoning of Eeason and 
 Conscience upon the data of nature and life. In this way 
 has arisen the pure Theism of P. W. Newman and Miss P. P. 
 Cobbe, — so noble a product of the most capable thought and 
 truest inward experience, that if it only were an historic 
 instead of a private gift, and could come to men as Inspira- 
 tion instead of Keason, it would regenerate the world. 
 This school has added to our literature some volumes which 
 deserve a place among the most select " companions of the 
 devout life." In Theodore Parker's " Discourse of matters 
 pertaining to Eeligion," a cool critic may readily find, as in 
 St. Augustine and in Pascal, the unbalanced judgments and 
 passionate overstatements of an intense nature : but he 
 must be very cool, if he is never caught up by the inspiring 
 power of the book, and carried beyond the bounds of criti- 
 cism into the sanctuary of prayer and tears. F. W. New- 
 man's book on " the Soul," with its happy union of rational 
 and spiritual method, has brought many a wavering mind 
 that was "half a wreck," to safe and quiet anchorage. 
 And though Miss Cobbe, in taking her stand on Kant's 
 " Categorical Imperative," occupies perhaps too narrow a 
 basis for her "intuitive morals," yet this philosophical 
 doubt is soon forgot : for the missing data incidentally drop 
 inj and the scheme of duty and right affection carries its 
 own persuasion with it as it expands : and the .work, in its 
 second part, supplies the fitting prelude of thought to her 
 later volume of devotion, the " Alone to the Alone." 
 
 What influence these writings may have had in stimu- 
 lating the, movement of Indian Theism, and the organisation 
 of the Brahmo Somaj, it would be difficult to define : but of 
 the sympathy and interaction of the Eastern and the 
 
INTHODUCTOBY CHAPTER. 39 
 
 Western thouglit, in th.e aim at religious reforrtij tliere- can 
 be no doubt. Its mission in India is much, more extensive 
 than in England. Here, its chief function is the correction 
 of erroneous belief, which narrows the mental horizon, and 
 limits the natural affections. There, it rises up in protest 
 against forms of superstition which have shaped the habits 
 of society for ages, and set into a fixed type of civilization j 
 which carry in them a taint of deep moral corruption ; which 
 degrade the life of women ; which sanctify the exclusive- 
 ness of class ; and check and baffle at every turn the hopes 
 of social: progress. In the presence and under the challenge 
 of evils so little endurable, the Brahmo leaders fling them- 
 selves upon their work with a prophetic fervour and self- 
 abandonment, with a sustaining enthusiasm -brought from 
 communion with God, with an heroic insistence on purity 
 and simplicity of lifOj which place them in far more im- 
 pressive relations to the society around them than can be 
 claimed for their fellow-believers in the West. Theism 
 here is a product of scepticism : Theism there is a kindling 
 of inspiration. Here it is the clinging to a God not lost : 
 there, the rapture of a God just found. Perhaps the happiest 
 sign for its societies here is their fraternal interest in its 
 representatives there. If anything can charm to rest the 
 ever- creaking logic of distrust, and wake up some uniting 
 harmony of spiritual affection, it may be the appreciated 
 example of a kindred faith free of detaining doubts and 
 kindled with Divine love. 
 
 vi. Ghristicm Theism. 
 
 The ranks of English Theism have been largely re- 
 cruited from the Unitarians : among whom some congrega- 
 tions even have been formed, which abstain from any 
 Christian profession, and use no Christian rite. Trained 
 in a Scripturalism as rigid as that of more orthodox be- 
 lievers, they were liable to the same reaction on finding 
 that the authority which they had trusted was fallible. 
 Amid the varieties of inward wa:pt, there is room for 
 every conscientious and thoughtful experiment : and should 
 it prove that, from the sensitive independence of the age,- 
 the spirit of Christ's religion can best take up its power by 
 escaping from the name, it is the part of true discipleship to 
 
40 INTEODTJCTOET CHAPTEB. 
 
 rejoice that the world is evangelized even under a disguise. 
 MeanwhUej however, there are many Unitarians to whom 
 the discovered fallibility of Scripture brings no shock, and 
 spoils nothing that has been the object of their trust and 
 love ; who had long ceased to look out for any " external 
 authority," or ask for foreign information respecting things 
 Divine ; who expect no help in their approach to God and 
 ascent to higher duty, except through the hierarchy of 
 greater and holier miads ; but who see, in Jesus Christ, 
 the supreme term in that hierarchy, the realization of life in 
 God, the image of a pure and tender humanity made per- 
 fect in weakness and sublime in humiliation by utter self- 
 surrender to His loftiest call. In this aspect his figure 
 looks upon them, with the power of an objective Conscience, 
 still clear and living, scarcely dimmed by its encumbering 
 traditions, and unhurt by fiction because transcending it. 
 They afiect no independence of this spiritual ideal, and 
 decline to part from it. It has rendered possible to them 
 a consciousness of Divine relations, a faith in the re- 
 sources of humanity and the uplifting presence of an 
 Infinite Compassion, and an apprehension of the range of 
 duty, which no private experience, no intellectual speculation 
 would have enabled them to reach. They refuse therefore 
 to quit the line and disown the obligations of the Christian 
 succession ; and conceive that, by identifying their religion 
 by name with the religion of Christ, they mark at once its 
 source and its type with exactitude and simplicity. To take 
 a new name is to profess a new thing. But they make no 
 pretension to render any purer worship than went forth into 
 the night on the mountains of Galilee, and in the garden of 
 Gethsemane ; to fix any higher standai'd of duty than was 
 raised in the saying " Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father 
 in heaven is perfect ; " to aspire to more gracious afiections 
 than those which for ages have brought a consecration upon 
 the " little child," and pity upon the guilty, and prayers of 
 forgiveness upon the persecutor's head. And so organic 
 is the constitution of humanity, that, even if you teach the 
 same truths to-day that have been hetird and lived of old, 
 you will teach in vain if you suppress their age and start them 
 afresh as your own new lights. Their power is not logical 
 and abstract, but comes through human life, — the minds 
 that have held them, the souls they have subdued, the 
 
INTEODUCTOET CHAPTBE. 41 
 
 vestiges they have left on successive times and nations. A 
 religion that declines to be united with the past will hardly 
 avaU to combine men in the present ; in ceasing to be 
 historical, it loses its best hope of becoming social. So 
 long as its life is continuouSj it wiU bear large reformations, 
 to clear it from perishable elements ; and the sacred truth 
 which emerges as the pure residue will concentrate its 
 attraction, and forbid dispersion of the old affections. But 
 to break with the past, and try a new creation, whether by 
 philosophical building up from the foundation, or by 
 eclectic appropriations from the remains of other faiths, is to 
 substitute a school for a Church, and expect, from agreement 
 in individual opinion, the effects of a consensus of human 
 generations J and the very belief which may be thus 
 gained, however right, will have to grow old and 
 win a history, ere it can become a blending spiritual 
 power. The relative persuasiveness of Natural Theology 
 and of a living embodiment of pure Eeligion is strikingly 
 seen in Mr. J. S. Mill's posthumous essays. In speculation 
 he reaches only so dismal a world and so mere a dream 
 of faith, as to depress and even irritate his temper. His 
 eye, changing its direction, falls upon the figure of Christ ; 
 and its uncertain look appears to vanish, and words of 
 reverence succeed, as if some mysterious power passed 
 upon the troubled waters, and left a sudden calm. 
 
 It is the distinctive glory of the Christian Religion that 
 it is a tissue of Personal Affections, sweetening, expanding, 
 exalting human life, by ties of relation with all known ranks 
 of being ; fraternal service to equal men, filial trust towards 
 the " Father in heaven," reverent allegiance to the " Son of 
 Man " who has brought them into open communion. Other 
 systems have had their sublimity of conception, kosmical, 
 metaphysical, poetical ; but here alone have we an organisa- 
 tion of the universe by an omnipresent network of moral 
 sympathies. Unless this glory is to fade, no living object 
 in the associated family of minds must be removed, — either 
 dropped from the series as a superfluous link, or construed 
 from a reality into a dream, reduced from One who thinks 
 and loves to That which blindly necessitates. Eeligion, it 
 has been said, is " Morality coloured with Emotion ; " yes, 
 but the emotion of a dependent mind looking up to a Mind 
 
42 INTBODUCTOKY CHAPTEE. 
 
 is " Moral Idealism ; " yes, but witli eye upon an ideal which 
 has been humanly realised on earth, and for ever constitutes 
 a Divine Perfection in heaven. Take away all objective 
 seat for your inward vision, turn it from a perception into 
 a phantom, let it hang in the air and never have been ; and, 
 though it may raise a sigh, and pour a plaintive music over 
 life, it can inspire no worship and nerve no will. There is 
 a wave of heathen Pantheism sweeping over our time which 
 threatens to obliterate the consciousness of this truth, and 
 to leave us only the phrases of ancient piety with the life 
 washed out, the empty ghosts of the saints' prayer and the 
 martyr's cry. Trust, love, reverence, between person and 
 person, speaking in living communion, and quickening all 
 faithful action, are the central essence of pure Eeligion, and 
 the special gift of Christianity. This gift it is the highest 
 function of spiritual philosophy in our age to protect and 
 hand down with unabated power. 
 
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. 
 
 The idea which possessed my mindj when I first sketched out 
 the plan of this volume, was the desirahleness of embracing in 
 a common point of view, the phenomena of the different re- 
 ligious parties, whose unintermitted strife and sharp contrast 
 of manners and opinions have given such a deep and varied 
 interest to the spiritual history of England, during the three 
 centuries which have elapsed since the Reformation. In pur- 
 suiog this idea, I have tried to discover the governing prin- 
 ciple and understand the characteristic working of each party ; 
 to apprehend their mutual relation; to show how they have 
 occasionally passed off into each other ; and out of their joint 
 operation, to trace the evolution of a more comprehensive 
 principle which looks above the narrowness of their respective 
 views, and, allying itself with the essential elements of the 
 Christian faith, may ia time perhaps devise some method of 
 reconciling an unlimited freedom and variety of the religious 
 life with the friendhness and mutual recognition of universal 
 brotherhood. Such an idea it is more easy to conceive than 
 to execute. The more I have read, the more I have felt the 
 inadequacy of my materials for fuUy developing it; and 
 
VI PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. 
 
 though every fresh inquiry has confirmed me in my general 
 view, I am conscious, that, with ampler opportunities of re- 
 search and more leisure for concentrated thought, T could 
 have produced a more usefiil and satisfactory book. My 
 hope is, that with all its deficiencies, it may still be of some 
 service to that portion of society for which it was immediately 
 designed. 
 
 What I here offer, is little more than a sketch — exhibiting 
 the general outline and prominent features of the historical 
 development of the religious life of England. I make no pre- 
 tension to deep and original research. The facts recited or 
 alluded to, are such as are famUiar to every student of our 
 national history. All that I present of my own, is simply the 
 conception of those facts ; the relation that I have ventured 
 to establish between them; the principles to which I have 
 thought they might be referred; and the inferences which 
 they have seemed to me to yield. I have wished to find out, 
 if I could, the meaning of our religious history. Whether I 
 have in any degree succeeded, the reader will judge. I may, 
 however, state, that I have endeavoured to take my facts from 
 the most authentic sources accessible to me; and that the 
 authorities immediately quoted, are those which I have either 
 read or consulted myself. 
 
 Oujf practical English mind — so different from that of our 
 French and German neighbours — concentrates its interest ou 
 the present. It will very probably be asked, "Why lead back 
 our thoughts to the disputes and struggles of our forefathers? 
 We live in an age of light, and may be pardoned, if we wish 
 to forget the history of their prejudice and absurdity." But 
 is it aU prejudice and absurdity, which the religious history 
 
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. VU 
 
 of the past reveals to us ? There is a wisdom and a Tirtue, 
 which comes and goes with the fleeting generations of menj 
 and which ia its everchangiag manifestations^ shaped though 
 it be by the influences of the age^ it is always instructive and 
 dehghtful to contemplate. We may be — I trust we are — ^ia 
 a course of progressive advancement ; but the present is the 
 daughter of the past— 
 
 " Matre pulctra fiHa pulohrior" — 
 
 and only as the present comprehends and wisely reverences 
 that filial relationship, will she become the mother of a still 
 more beauteous future. 
 
 The fanaticism which disowns the past, is not less ridicu- 
 lous than the superstition of the antiquary which blindly wor- 
 ships it. The opeUj thoughtful miud, desirous to apprehend 
 the great idea of providencCj takes a wide retrospect of the 
 pastj that it may embrace the connection of ages, and discern 
 their subordination to a common plan. Nothing has more 
 contributed to keep up a narrow party feeling, than the limited 
 field of vision on which the mental gaze has been usually 
 fixed. The relations of diflerent religious bodies to each 
 other — ^the controversies between them — the peculiarities of 
 doctrine and practice distinguishing them — acquire an undue 
 and absorbing importance that excludes the light of true wis- 
 dom, from their being looked upon as distinctions founded in 
 the unchangeable nature of things, rather than as historical 
 results, not without a relative value for the individual, and 
 fit subjects for conscientious reflection and comparison, but 
 of which the real nature and significance are only to be un- 
 derstood by reference to the circumstances in which they 
 
Viu PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. 
 
 originated. The revival of a more historical view of the mu- 
 tual relationship of different churches, seasoned with a spirit 
 of philosophical generalization — offers the fairest prospect of 
 extricating our national mind from that abyss of hopeless sec- 
 tarianism, in which our religion and our literature seem at 
 times to be in danger of being for ever engulfed. 
 
 No history has yet appeared, so far as I know, of the ge- 
 neral progress and development of our rehgious life up to the 
 present day. To accomplish such a work adequately, would 
 demand far higher qualifications than I can bring to it. This 
 little volume must be accepted rather as an expression of my 
 wish to see it competently undertaken, than as indicating the 
 unpardonable presumption of attempting it myself. But an 
 imperfect work, if it does not wholly miss its object, may 
 sometimes help to put the general mind in action, and prove 
 the incentive to works greatly surpassing itself. Should any 
 such result hereafter ensue, I shall be perfectly satisfied with 
 the effect of this publication. 
 
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 The first impression of this work being disposed of, the pub- 
 lisher has undertaken to issue a new edition of more conve- 
 nient size and at a reduced price; and the opportunity has 
 been seized to subject the whole to a careful revision. All the 
 more important statements have again been verified; errors 
 pointed out or discovered in the first edition, wherever known, 
 have been corrected : but it is probable, that in a work embra- 
 cing so wide a range of historical particulars, not a few inac- 
 curacies may have escaped the author's vigilance, for which 
 he craves the indulgence of the critical reader. He has not 
 intentionally let them pass unnoticed. Several passages have 
 been re-written; and some amount of fresh matter has been 
 introduced into the notes, which, for convenience of reference, 
 have been removed from the end of the volume, and placed 
 under the text to which they belong. An index of principal 
 matters is now for the first time added. 
 
 The imperfection of form, as well as of execution, with 
 which this volume is justly chargeable, has arisen in some 
 degree from the occasional nature of its origin. To remedy 
 effectually this inherent deficiency, would have involved a 
 
X PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 re-casting of all the materials^ and required an entirely new 
 work ; and for this I have at present neither time nor iacli- 
 nation. I may, however, be permitted to remark, in reply to 
 some friendly criticism on the first edition, that this small 
 volume was never intended to embrace a complete ecclesias- 
 tical history of England from the Reformation, but only to 
 develope three great tendencies that were the immediate re- 
 sult of that event. Hence the condition of the Roman Ca- 
 thoUc Church, which subsisted through the whole of. this 
 period, as a latent residuum from a former state of things, has 
 been wholly passed over. And for the same reason, the efforts 
 and influences of the Moravians and Swedenborgians, as a 
 religious element imported from abroad, and having no origiaal 
 connection with the great Enghsh controversy, were not sup- 
 posed to come within the proper scope of the present inquiry. 
 This limitation should be kept ia view, to pronounce a fair 
 judgment on the book. 
 
 J. J. T. 
 
 August 24, 1853. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 INTEODTJCTOET. pp. 1-28. 
 
 Sect. i. p. 1 — Eelation of the religious history of England to the gene- 
 ral history of the Church. Sect. ii. p. 7 — Sketch of the external his- 
 tory of religious parties in England. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE CHXTECH. pp. 29-87. 
 
 Sect. i. p. 29 — ^Difficulty of defining a Church. Sect. ii. p. 31 — Prepa- 
 ratory changes under Henry VIII. Sect. iii. p. 39 — The Eeforma- 
 tion of Edward VI. Sect. iv. p. 48 — Fixation of the constituent 
 elements of the Anglican Church, after the accession of Elizabeth. 
 Sect. V. p. 58 — General characteristics of the Anglican Church. 
 Sect. yi. p. 61 — ^Erastian and Calyinistic Period. Sect. vii. p. 65 — 
 High Sacerdotal and Eegal Doctrines, and prevalence of Arminian- 
 ism, under the Stuarts. Sect. viii. p. 74 — Influence of Low Church 
 principles after the Eevolution. Sect. ix. p. 82— Modem Period. 
 
 CHAPTEE ni. 
 
 PUKITAJSriSM. pp. 88-170. 
 
 Sect. i. p. 88 — Predominant Idea of Puritanism. Sect. ii. p. 90 — Spirit 
 and Affinities of Lollardism. Sect. iii. p. 93 — Incipient Puritanic 
 Movements. Sect. iv. p. 99 — High Presbyterianism \mder Elizabeth. 
 Sect. v. p. 109 — Qualified Presbyterianism at the close of the six- 
 teenth, and in the first half of the seventeenth, century. Sect. vi. 
 
Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 p. 118— Independency, and the more extreme forms of Puritanism. 
 Sect. Tii. p. 128— Eesnlts of Pimtanism under tlie Commonwealth. 
 Sect. viii. p. 145— Influence of distinguished Teachers on the historical 
 development of Puritanism : Baxter and Owen. Sect. ix. p. 158 
 Anabaptists and Quakers : Else of permanent ITonconformist So- 
 cieties. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 THE CHUECH AND PUEITANISM CONTKASTED. pp. 171-192. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 FEBE INQUIRY, pp. 193-315. 
 
 Sect. i. p. 193— Distinction between the independence of Eeligious So- 
 cieties and the freedom of the Individual Miad. Sect. ii. p. 196 — 
 Evolution of the different elements of Eeligious Freedom, in the 
 course of the seventeenth century. Sect. ui. p. 200 — Eeaction against 
 the doctrines of the first Eeformers. Sect. iv. p. 203 — Eise of Lati- 
 tudinarian principles. Sect. v. p. 210 — ^Efiect of philosophical theo- 
 ries and scientific discoveries. Sect. vi. p. 218 — First School of Eng- 
 lish Unitarianism. Sect. vii. p. 230 — Influence of the writings of 
 Locke. Sect. vui. p. 244 — Christian Eationalism after the Eevolu- 
 tion : Dissenting Academies : Character and position of Doddridge. 
 Sect. ix. p. 267 — Character and tendencies of English Deism, or 
 Freethmking. Sect. x. p. 286 — Influence of Hartley's philosophy : 
 Eevival of the Unitarian controversy by Dr. Priestley. Sect. xi. 
 p. 300 — Orthodox Dissent : Popularity of Channing : Influence of 
 Germany : Powerful organization of Independency. 
 
 CONCLUSION, pp. 316-324. 
 
A 
 
 RETROSPECT 
 
 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 SECTION I. 
 
 RELATION OP THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OP ENGLAND TO THE 
 GENERAL HISTORY OP THE CHURCH. 
 
 CoNPLiCT under some form or other seems an indispensable 
 condition of social progress. The repose and noiformity so 
 ardently desired by some theoristSj are the unequivocal signs, 
 wherever they occur, of a stationary or a declining civilization. 
 Exemption from opposition and questioning relaxes the mo- 
 tives to exertion and brings a torpor over all the faculties. 
 This is especially true of the intellectual and spiritual life of 
 man. Without antagonism — ^mental health, practical wisdom 
 and the constant development of fresh triith are impossible. 
 We have a proof this, i£ we compare the condition and in- 
 fluence of communities, Kke England, Holland, North Ame- 
 rica, and the Protestant States of Germany — ^where mental 
 freedom has been largely enjoyed — with such countries as 
 Austria and Spain, where the priest and the sovereign have 
 combined to crush in its germ every rising of independent 
 thought. Civil and religious freedom are essential to each 
 other's existence. Where one is stifled, the other languishes ; 
 and apart from their blended influence, neither commerce nor 
 art nor genuine science nor a noble literature nor high na- 
 
2 RELATION OF EELIGIOUS HISTORY OF ENGLAND 
 
 tional character can long endure. Whenever we are inclined to 
 deplore the strife and the turbulence which mark the former 
 periods of our history, and the divided state in which, after 
 the contests of centuries, they have left our people at the 
 present day — we should remember, that these things are the 
 indications of an energy and a self-reliance, without which 
 England could never have been what she is, nor occupied the 
 same high place among the nations of theeaxth. 
 
 A right appreciation of the antagonistic tendencies, in 
 whose balanced worldng a nation's vitality resides — supplies 
 a key to the true reading of its internal history. And if our 
 literature, the joint produce of Norman and Saxon influences, 
 is rich, varied and original beyond any other in Europe — if 
 our political experience abounds with ampler instruction, finer 
 examples, and more fortunate results, than that of any society 
 which has grown out of the feudal constitution of the Middle 
 Ages ; — our religious hfe, which stands in a still closer rela- 
 tion to our national character, and, welling up from the deep 
 fountains of the soul, has watered the roots both of our liber- 
 ties and our literature — ^possesses features peculiarly its own ; 
 exhibits struggles not exactly paralleled in any of the countries 
 where the great battle of religious freedom has been fought ; 
 and has terminated in a state of things, at once different from 
 the limited, but, so far as it extends, impartial, toleration of 
 some continental states, and the complete religious freedom 
 and equality of North America. 
 
 The principles which distinguish Christianity from all pre- 
 vious religions, are — spirituality and mental freedom. In its 
 original records no provision exists for the appointment of a 
 priesthood, the determination of a metaphysical creed, or even 
 the regulation of a form of social worship. The refinement 
 and elevation of the human soul, through the power of faith 
 
 and love borne into it by the doctrine and the life of Christ 
 
 constitute the specific work of the Gospel. Everything beyond 
 this, is extraneous, conventional, disciplinary — to be settled 
 by considerations of time and place and practical expediencv. 
 In a few words, Paul has described its true character-^ 
 " where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." On the 
 other hand, Heathenism in all its forms, and not less Levi- 
 tical Judaism, identified religion with national laws and in- 
 stitutions, to which the worship and outward reverence of 
 individuals were expected to conform. Beyond the recoeni- 
 
TO THE GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 3 
 
 tion of these national religions^ the boasted toleration of the 
 Romans never extended. The rights of the individual con- 
 science were overlooked, and seem hardly to have been sus- 
 pected. In this reverence or disregard for personal convictions 
 of religious truth, and in a practice corresponding to it, we 
 discover an essential distinction between the spirit of Christi- 
 anity and the spirit of Heathenism. 
 
 But the vast machinery of the ancient superstition re- 
 mamed, when the superstition itself was professedly re- 
 nounced; and Christianity, already imbued with sacerdotal 
 tendencies, slid into its abandoned forms and usurped its ab- 
 dicated functions, and from them contracted not a little of 
 the spirit by which they were infected. It cannot perhaps be 
 denied, that in the confusion which attended the destruction of 
 the old civilization, the restoration of priestly authority was 
 unavoidable, and might be even necessary to reorganize the 
 scattered elements of society. For ages the forms of Heathen- 
 ism la,y heavy on the mind of Europe, and only here and there 
 the faint pulsations of a true Christian life were perceptible. 
 
 This subjugation of the independence of conscience was not 
 however effected without a struggle, which never entirely 
 ceased. The last vestiges of the Donatist schism in North 
 Africa; which was in principle a resistance to the advancing 
 encroachments of episcopal domination^ were hardly swept 
 away in the tide of Saracenic conquest, when fresh elements 
 of religious excitement and ecclesiastical reform, which had 
 long been silently fermenting, began to circulate actively in 
 Europe soon after the age of Charlemagne. — Cherished by 
 sectaries of various name but kindred principle — Waldenses, 
 Cathari, Albigenses — amid the valleys of Piedmont, along the 
 shores of the Mediterranean, and in the rising cities of the 
 Rhine — they rapidly drew within their influence the young 
 life and blossoming poetry of an awakening civilization, and 
 prepared the mind of Europe for more extensive change. All 
 these sects were distinguished by a spiritual and enthusiastic 
 conception of Christianity, an aversion to the hierarchy, and 
 
 ' The protracted conflict of the Donatists with the African hierarchy, bears 
 considerable resemblance to the Puritan struggle in England — the parallelism 
 extending even to the names which they delighted to give themselves, Deodatus, 
 Deogratias, Quidyultdeus, Habetdeum, hie the appellations Praisegod, Ac- 
 cepted, Grodbehere, etc., assumed by Enghsh sectaries in the eeventeenth cen- 
 tury. See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxsvii., note 95, with Milman's 
 remarks. 
 
 b2 
 
4 RELATION OF 'RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF ENGLAND 
 
 a denial of the claims of the priesthood— but above all by a 
 profound reverence for the Scriptures, of which several ver- 
 sions were already current among them, and which they ap- 
 pealed to, as a standiag witness against the corruptions of the 
 Church, and a faithful record of the spirit and prmciples of 
 the primitive GospeP. This struggle between sacerdotal usur- 
 pation and the unextinguished sense of spiritual rights, runs 
 through the whole of Christian history from the first esta- 
 bhshment of episcopal jurisdiction ia the third and fourth cen- 
 turies, down to the time of Wychffe, Huss, and Luther. It 
 is, in truth, the prolongation of the original conflict between 
 the principle of Heathenism and the principle of Christianity ; 
 nor has it yet reached its termination. 
 
 The religious history of England exhibits only another form 
 of this vital struggle, modified by our insular position and by 
 our national character and institutions. The struggle with 
 us differs from that on the continent, in being mainly a do- 
 mestic and national struggle — not directed, as in Germany 
 and Prance, (except for a short time and to a limited extent,) 
 against a foreign power seated beyond the Alps, but iavohing 
 a conflict of elements within the limits of our own nationality. 
 Tn Germany and in France a similar contest did indeed spring 
 up : but in the former country, it was practically settled by 
 the Treaty of Westphalia^ ; in the latter, violently crushed by 
 the despotic bigotry of Louis XIV. In England the dispute 
 has been prolonged, with little change in the aims and princi- 
 ples of the parties, to the present day. This circumstance con- 
 stitutes, I apprehend, the peeuHarity of our religious history. 
 
 1 On the free sentiments of the Troubadours and their brethren the Minne- 
 singers on the other side of the Bhine respecting religion, their aversion to the 
 Catholic clergy, and their friendly relations -with the sectaries of the time, com- 
 pare Sismondi, De la Litterature du Midi, torn. i. ch. 5 & 6, with ' Lays of the 
 Minnesingers ' by the late Edgar Taylor, pp. 99-101 & 210, and Eaynouard, 
 ' Choix des Poesies Originales des Troubadours,' torn. ii. pp. Isi.-lsiT., and in 
 the same volume p. 73 et seq., specimens of -the ' Poesies des Yaudois.' — Frederic 
 Barharossa and his grandson Prederic II., distinguished patrons of these poets, 
 have both been charged with encouraging the famous book 'De tribus Im- 
 postoribus ;' if indeed any such work then existed. See Bayle, art. Aretin, 
 and Grotius, Oper. iv. p. 502. — Claude of Tm-in, whose prmciples are supposed 
 to have found a shelter in the recesses of the Alps, where they were afterwards 
 taken vip by the Waldenses, died in 840, and thus forms a link between the 
 age of Charlemagne and these later sectaries. 
 
 - See the late Professor Smyth's wise and noble reflections on the Ti-eaty of 
 Westphalia, aa terminating the grand religious warfare of Gtermauy. Lectures 
 on Modem History, vol. i. pp. 336-43. 
 
TO THE GENEKAL HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 5 
 
 For two centuries after the Conquest, our domestic history 
 IS distinguished rather by the strife of races than by a con- 
 tention of principles and classes. By some Becket has been 
 extoUed as a protector of the people against Norman oppres- 
 sion ; but in heart he was a thorough churchman. It is dif- 
 ficult to believe in the pure humanity of his intentions. If 
 he put himself at the head of the suffering Saxon population, 
 and so acquired the reputation of a martyr in their cause^it 
 was in the spirit of a priestly demagogue, to sustain more 
 effectually the pretensions of the Church against the Crown. 
 Towards the close of the Plantagenet line, in the course of 
 the fourteenth century, under the advancing civilization of 
 the long and brilliant reign of Edward III., the discussion of 
 the rights of classes, and of the various social and religious 
 questions connected with them, began to supersede the blind 
 and passionate animosity which had once separated the Nor- 
 man and Saxon races. It was now first, that the spirit of ec- 
 clesiastical reform, in unison with kindred movements on the 
 continent, assumed an earnest and practical character. It is 
 probable indeed, that the pride of Norman descent still pre- 
 dominated in the minds of the great feudal lords and of the 
 higher clergy — prelates and mitred abbots — who sat with them 
 in Parliament; while a Saxon love of freedom and a yearn- 
 ing after independence harboured in the bosoms of the com- 
 monalty. But these opposite feelings were becoming the cha- 
 racteristic of classes — the expression of conflicting principles 
 rather than of national antipathies. In the infeurrectionary 
 movements under Richard II., we find priests among the 
 leaders of the populace, and reverenced as their ministers ; — 
 a proof of the readiness of the people to blend the expression 
 of their wrongs with the sentiments of rehgion, and of their 
 susceptibility of better influences, had such been offered them. 
 These movements were almost wholly political, produced by 
 intolerable oppression — and terminated in no important re- 
 sult. The reformation attempted by Wycliffe originated in 
 purer and more elevated motives ; and with him the history 
 of English Puritanism properly begins. 
 
 Some one word is wanted to express, through its entire 
 course of continuous development, that principle of resistance 
 to the hierarchy which pervades our religious history from the 
 middle of the fourteenth century to the present time. To 
 avoid periphrasis, the term Puritanism, though strictly ap- 
 
6 EEI^ATION TO GENERAL HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 plicable to only one period, may be adopted, as conveniently 
 embracing the religious movements whicli preceded and pre- 
 pared the revolutions of that period, and the modified but 
 analogous effects which have followed them. The history of 
 reUgious parties in England falls, in fact, of itself into three 
 great and plainly distinguished periods : — 1st, that of Lol- 
 lardism — the name given iu the fifteenth century to the prin- 
 ciples of Wycliffe^ — extending from the reign of Edward III. 
 to that of Henry VIII. ; 2ndly, that of proper Puritanism, 
 from the Reformation to the extiaction of the Commonwealth 
 on the restoration of Charles II. ; 3rdly, that of Protestant 
 Dissent, from the Restoration to the present day. 
 
 If we compare these periods with each other, we shall find 
 ia them only different manifestations of a common principle, 
 tempered by the condition of society and the vigour of oppos- 
 ing tendencies. In the first — we witness resistance to an au- 
 thority which no government had yet ventured to disown, and 
 which seemed fast cemented in the general fabric of European 
 civilization; — a struggle, which had nothing but individual 
 conviction and some popular sympathy to uphold it, which 
 the Crown, the Church, and for the most part the Parliament, 
 combiued to crush. In the second — resistance found a sanc- 
 tion and a precedent in the conduct of the Crown and the 
 Parliament. The question no longer respected the principle 
 of resistance, but only the mode and extent of it. Encouraged 
 by such high authority and instinct with all the energy of a 
 new freedom, Puritanism, in the issue of the struggle, ob- 
 tained a temporary ascendency over the hierarchy. In the 
 third — we see Protestant Dissent advancing by painful steps 
 and through many persecutions towards a legal toleration — 
 
 1 The name Lollard or LoHhard (from the G-erman lollen or hiUen, to sing 
 or hum in a low, plaintiTe tone) was first given to a sect, which arose about the 
 beginning of the fourteenth century in Cologne and other cities on the Khiae 
 and in the north of Germany— ia consequence, it is said, of the mournful strains 
 with which it was their practice to accompany the interment of the dead. In 
 the fifteenth century, the name passed over into England, and was apphed by 
 the Cathohcs to the followers of Wyohfle. G-ieseler, Ejrchengesch B 11 3 
 §§ 113 & 124. Guerike, Kirchengesch. §§ 158 & 162. ■ • . . 
 
 The Blench prophets who came over to England at the beginning of the last 
 century, in their ecstasies or fits of rehgious excitement, made a strange hum- 
 mmg noise. See Calamy's account of a Mr. Lacy, one of his flock who had 
 jomed them ; Calamy's Life and Times, vol. ii. p. 97. Puller (TV i IS) de- 
 rives the name from Walter LoUardus, "a German, many years before Wvcliffp' 
 qvasi lolia in ard domini." j'>'""c, 
 
HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES IN ENGLAND. 7 
 
 with, efforts from time to time renewed to gain more freedom 
 and rise to a complete religious equality. — In the ensuing 
 pages an attempt has been made to discover the distiactive 
 principles, and contrast the effects on our national mind and 
 character, of the Anglican hierarchy and of Puritanism — to 
 exhibit their mutual relation — and to trace out of their joint 
 influence the evolution of a third principle, distinct from each 
 — that of free religious inquiry. For the sake of the general 
 reader, and to render future statements more intelligible — I 
 shall occupy the next section of this chapter with a brief survey 
 of the most important events in the external history of our 
 religious progress during the three periods just enumerated. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 SKETCH OF THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES 
 IN ENGLAND. 
 
 I. Wycliffe was a native of the north of England, where 
 the old Saxon character endured in its greatest strength and 
 purity, and whence most of those men came who were dis- 
 tinguished at this period by the boldness of their attacks on 
 ecclesiastical abuses and by their zeal for reformation^ He 
 would have been a remarkable man in any age : but two in- 
 fluences appear early to have imbued his miad with a severe 
 and earnest spirit ; — a close study of the doctrinal system of 
 Augustine, which resulted in an anticipated Calvinism; and 
 the desolation of the great European pestilence, which visited 
 England when he was entering life, and produced a most dis- 
 astrous and demoraHziag effect on society. Drinking deeply 
 iato the spirit of his master, who also wrote under the wide- 
 
 • The spirit of reform and freedom in the TJniTersity of Oxford, during the 
 fourteenth century, was most active among the "Northern men." Huber'a 
 'BngHsh Universities,' vol. i. §§ 41, 44, 45 (Newman's Transl.) The satirical 
 poems of Longland and his imitators, reflecting on the monks and the clergy, 
 which appeared about the same period, are written in the dialect and versifica- 
 tion peculiar to the North. In the civil wars of the seventeenth century, Lan- 
 cashire was the only district in England, except the neighbourhood of London, 
 in which the Puritans succeeded in procuring for their Presbyterian discipline 
 a complete estabhshment. Bolton was called by the CavaUers, the Geneva of 
 Lancashire. Himter's ' Life of Ohver Heywood,' p. 35. Lancashire and the 
 West Biding of Yorkshire are stiU the strongholds of Protestant Dissent, 
 
8 SKETCH OF THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OP 
 
 spread shadow of impending calamity^ just before the over- 
 throw of the Western Empire, he saw in the ravages of 
 disease and the moral disorders accompanying them, clear 
 indications of approaching judgment and the end of the 
 world. His first publication was entitled, " The last Age of 
 the Church." In these gloomy forebodings, and the earnest 
 purposes of reformation which grew out of them, he was con- 
 firmed by strong sympathy with the mystics and prophets of 
 the continent. For the work of a controversialist he was ad- 
 mirably prepared by the severe discipMne to which he had sub- 
 jected his understanding, and by his skill iu the scholastic 
 exercises of the period. The court of Rome, with character- 
 istic policy — to counteract the popular movements of the time, 
 and aUay the rising storm against the monks and clergy — ^had 
 sent out among the lower classes vast swarms of itinerant 
 preachers under the name of mendicant friars. The two 
 orders of Franciscans and Dominicans, which made their ap- 
 pearance at the beginning of the thirteenth century, were 
 rival candidates for the popular favour. It was against the 
 ignorance and baseness of these preaching friars, that the 
 earliest zeal of WycMe was directed. 
 
 So long as he confined his attacks to foreign ecclesiastics 
 who monopohzed the best English benefices, to the grosser 
 corruptions of the clergy, and to the exactions of the Papal 
 ministers — ^he carried along with him the sympathy of the 
 court .and of not a few among the aristocracy. He found a 
 zealous patron in John of Gaunt ; and by Edward III., who 
 subsequently beneficed him, he was sent on a deputation to 
 confer with the papal commissioners at Bruges. He also ac- 
 quired great celebrity as a teacher at Oxford. His doctrines 
 spread into Bohemia^; and the Queen of Richard II., who 
 came from that country, brought with her a disposition to re- 
 spect his character and priaciples. Such influences threw a 
 protection round the person of Wychfle ; and a man more self- 
 ish and ambitious might have turned them to his advantage, 
 without wholly forfeiting his reputation for consistency as a 
 reformer. But his honest, straightforward mind penetrated 
 deeper into the evils of society, and was bent on their eradi- 
 cation. Much of the prevalent wickedness and irreHgion he 
 traced to the hierarchy itself, the very principle of which his 
 reasonings led him to condemn. He preached vehemently 
 1 CoUier, I. 586. 
 
BELIGIOTJS PARTIES. IN ENGLAND. 9 
 
 against the riches and corruption of the clergy, and afiirmed 
 the complete right of the state to resume and re-appropriate 
 their property. He contended, that the influence of the clergy 
 should be derived, not from their sacerdotal functions, but 
 ^om their personal qualities; and that only those priests 
 whose lives were holy and laborious, were entitled to pecu- 
 niary support. In some points he anticipated the principles 
 of the Quakers. Like them, he asserted the unlawfulness of 
 air war; denied the divine institution of tithes, which he 
 would have left to be paid as a voluntary contribution ; and 
 for the splendour and ceremony of the Catholic service, would 
 have substituted an extreme simplicity of worship. 
 
 Among his contemporaries his chief distinction arose from 
 his zeal to spread the knowledge of the Scriptures, which he 
 translated into English, and widely circulated among the 
 people^. In the pulpit his favourite mode of instruction was 
 scriptural exposition, or, as it was then called, postulating. 
 From this circumstance he acquired at Oxford the title- of the 
 Gospel Doctor. His tendencies as a preacher were in direct 
 antagonism to those of the friars, who set the Church above 
 the Gospel, and whose principles were anti-scriptural. To 
 disseminate his doctrines, he associated with himself, in his 
 sphere of pastoral labour at Lutterworth, a number of village 
 missionaries, under the name of " Poor Priests," who had no 
 benefices, and whose life and preaching, he thoughtj would 
 furnish the example of a true Gospel ministry. Some have 
 supposed Chaucer, in his well-known description of the "Poor 
 Parson," to have had these preachers of WycHffe in his eye. 
 It is so far an evidence of general Sympathy in that age with 
 the most prominent of Wycliffe's principles, that there is not. 
 a line throughout that beautiful portraiture, which speaks of 
 devotedness to. the Church ; while it is set forth as the pecu- 
 liar praise of the good man, that 
 
 " Criste's lore and his apostles twelve 
 
 He taught, but first he folwed it.himselve^" 
 
 1 Dr. Lingard quotes Sir Thomas More (Dial. iii. 14) in proof of the existence 
 of English translations of the Scriptures hefore the time of Wychffe. (Hist, of 
 England, 8vo edit. vol. iV. p. 267, note 64.) Dr. Vaughan (Life and Opinions 
 of Wyoliffe, vol. ii. p. 42) says, that these earHer versions were usually guarded 
 by a comment, and that the novelty in Wychffe's case was the translation of 
 the wTiole of the Scriptures, and putting them by numerous transcripts, through 
 the agency of his Poor Priests, into the hands of the laity at large.. 
 
 2 Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 629-30. 
 
 B 3 
 
10 SKETCH OF THE EXTERNAL HISTOKY OF 
 
 Chaucer's tastes and associations, however, connected him 
 rather with the Norman, than with the Saxon, element of the 
 English nation : nor can any inference be drawn as to his 
 participation, ia an earnest and positive sense, with the reh- 
 gious movement of Wycliffe, from the sly and pungent sar- 
 casms against churchmen with which his pages are everywhere 
 interspersed; since the same free tone had for more than 
 two centuries distinguished the lighter French literature from 
 which he drew so large a proportion of his materials^. 
 
 The writings and labours of Wycliffe indicated a purpose of 
 thorough reformation which could not expect much counte- 
 nance from a proud and warlike nobility, and was sure to pro- 
 voke the bitterest hostility of the clergy. He was removed 
 from the chair of divinity at Oxford, and forsaken by his early 
 patron, the Duke of Lancaster. But such was the considera- 
 tion he enjoyed^, that he was allowed to pass the remnant of 
 his days immolested at Lutterworth : although, thirty years 
 after his death, the feeling respecting him had so much 
 changed, that his remains were disinterred and burnt to ashes, 
 and thrown into the river which flows past the town that had 
 been the scene of his labours ^- 
 
 ' See Le Grand's Colleotion of Fabliaux of the 12th and 13th centuries, 
 translated by Way, and Bouterwek's G-eschichte der Englischen Poesie und Be- 
 redsamkeit, I. 67. Wycliffe and Chaucer had a, common patron in John of 
 G-aunt, and some historians have affirmed that an actual fraendship subsisted 
 between the reformer and the poet. (Godwin's Life of Chaucer, III. 55.) But 
 there could have been no deep sympathy between minds cast in so different a 
 mould. The nis comica and hghthearted gaiety of the iPrench character are 
 conspicuous in Chaucer. A Saxon earnestness distinguishes Wycliffe. Chaucer's 
 predilections were for the court and nobihty. Wyoliffe's sympathies were with 
 the people. 
 
 ^ Lingard, toI. ii. 8vo, ch. ii. 
 
 -'' Wycliffe's opinions have been transmitted to us through so prejudiced a 
 medium, that there is reason to beheve many of them have been perverted and 
 exaggerated. It is not difficult, however, from comparing the statements of 
 diBferent witnesses, to obtain a tolerably clear notion of the general spirit and 
 distinguishing features of his system. In essential points, it was an anticipa- 
 tion of the extreme form of the later Puritanism. See ' Life and Opinions of 
 John de Wychffe,' by Robert Vaughan, D.D. Fuller (Church History of Bri- 
 tain, IV. i. 6) gives a list of dangerous and heretical opinions alleged against 
 Wychffe by one of his principal adversaries, Thomas Waldensis. Among these 
 are the following, reported also by other authorities, which may serve to convey 
 some idea of Ins peculiar tenets : — " That Chidst is the sole Head of the Chm-ch j 
 That the Pope is Anti-Christ ; That in the time of the Apostles, there were 
 only two orders of priests, priest and bishop being the same ; That the Church 
 consists of predestinated persons j That all beautiful building of churches is 
 blame-worthy and hypooritioal ; That tithes are pure alms, not due to priests 
 of dissolute life ; That what is not plainly expressed in Scripture, is neglected 
 
RELIGIOUS PARTIES IN ENGLAND. 11 
 
 Various circumstances indicate how widely the principles 
 of Wycliffe had spread. Nor was their influence confined to 
 the lower orders. Many persons of wealth and consideration 
 had embraced them. Collier^, following the statements of a 
 contemporary writer, mentions the names of several knights 
 who were zealously attached to Wyclifie's party ; and tells us, 
 that when a LoUard preacher came into the neighbourhood of 
 any of these gentlemen, they immediately sent out a summons 
 into the surrounding district, and compelled the inhabitants 
 to come and hear ; and then assembling at the appointed hour 
 and place with their armed retainers, planted themselves 
 round the pulpit of the preacher, that he might inveigh with- 
 out fear of interruption or attack, agaiast the superstitions 
 and corruptions of the Church. Many of these preachers 
 were mean persons, of little or no education, who nevertheless 
 well understood their audience, and knew how to work on 
 their feelings. They were aware of the effect that might be 
 produced by the mere change of a word; and in preaching 
 against images, to which they had a strong aversion, — " they 
 called," says Bjiyghton, " our Lady of Lincoln, and our Lady 
 of Walsingham, the witch of Liacobi, and the witch of Wal- 
 singham." In Leicestershire, the scene of WycHffe's own 
 ministry, the new opinions had made such progress, that, ac- 
 cording to the same authority, a man could scarce meet two 
 people on the road, but one of them was a Wycliffite^. In 
 the reign of Richard II. the Lollards submitted to Parliament 
 a remonstrance against clerical abuses, in twelve articles ; in 
 which, among other things, they protested against war and 
 capital punishments, as absolutely unlawful. In this attack 
 on the Church, the Lollards had miscalculated their strength. 
 
 as impertinent by wise men ; That general councils are of no authority ; That 
 &U writers since the thousandth year of Christ, are heretics ; That to bind men 
 to set and prescribed forms of prayer, derogates from the liberty Grod has given 
 them ; That purchased prayers are of no efficacy, but men must hope and trust 
 in their own righteousness ; That infants unbaptized do not perish, since bap- 
 tism does not confer, but merely signifies, grace giren before ; That confession 
 to the truly contrite is superfiuous, and only a device to get at secrets, and gain 
 wealth ; That the prayers of saints are only effectual for the good ; That in 
 causes ecclesiastical and matters of faith, the bishop's sentence may be appealed 
 from to the secular prince; That dominion over the creature is founded in 
 grace ; That God loved David and Peter as much when they sinned, as now in 
 their glory ; That ail things come to pass by necessity— &od not being able to 
 make the world otherwise tha,n it is made, or to do anything which he doth not 
 
 i Eccles. Hist. I. 579. ^ CoUier, I. 580. 
 
12 SKETCH OF THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF 
 
 The fears of the prelates were aroused ; and it was probably 
 on this occasion, that a form of abjuration was tendered by 
 Arundel, archbishop of York, to four Lollards of Nottingham, 
 which they bound themselves to observe, under pain of for- 
 feiting all their property^. 
 
 The accession of the House of Lancaster had an unfavour- 
 able effect on the condition of the LoUards. Henry IV. found 
 it expedient to sustain a doubtful title by courting the favour 
 of the clergy ; and the price of their support was the discou- 
 ragement and persecution of the reformers. His son, Henry 
 v., whom tradition affirms to have been intimate in his youth 
 with LoUards, on ascending the throne, pursued the same 
 policy, and abandoned them to their remorseless enemies. 
 Yet many facts prove, that imder both these sovereigns their 
 numbers and influence must still have been considerable. In 
 Lent, 1409, the Commons presented a bill to Henry IV., for 
 secularizing the temporalities of the clergy ; and when he re- 
 jected their proposal with high displeasm-e, they then pressed 
 for a repeal, or relaxation, of the statute recently enacted 
 against the Lollards ; on which the king replied, that he would 
 rather increase than abate its rigour^. Under these reigns, 
 the prisons were filled with LoUards. For a time, the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford, the original seat of their doctrines, (which, 
 in consequence of various papal buUs, claimed an exemption 
 from the jurisdiction of the primate) afforded them an asylujn : 
 — but, at the instance of the archbishop, these rival claims 
 were brought before Henry IV. ; and he decided against the 
 University. How far, in the comphcation of social interests, 
 their principles were directly involved in the political move- 
 ments of the age, it is difficult to ascertain. Some of Wy- 
 cHffe's views, it must be confessed, were easily susceptible of 
 democratic perversion; and the clergy would studiously ex^ 
 hibit them in the most odious light. It was at the instigation 
 of the clergy, that in the reign of Henry IV. the atrocious 
 act was passed, "De Hceretico Comburendo^" which continued 
 
 ' This was in 1395. The form of abjuration is given in Fuller IV i 40 
 and Collier, I. 596. ' • ' > 
 
 Collier, I. 629. 
 
 According to Fitz-herbert, an ancient lawgiver quoted by Collier (Ecdes 
 
 vr i ^^'^^^' '™-). burning was the punishment for heresy at common law 
 
 betore this tune, though it had never been inflicted till enforced by statute 
 
 Upon this Sir James Mackintosh observes (Hist, of England, I. 356) that such" 
 
 an assertion is easUy made, and with difficulty brought to the test of evidence 
 
RELIGIOUS PARTIES IN ENGLAND. 13 
 
 to deform our statute book till the reign of Charles II. In 
 1412 we find the tipper House, with Prince Henry at its 
 head, concurring in a petition to the king against the Lol- 
 lards^. Under the new act, Sautre, a clergyman, sometimes 
 called the first martyr of English Protestantism, — the lord 
 Cohham, an early associate of Prince Henry, and charged with 
 participating in an insurrection of the time, — and some other 
 persons of inferior rank, — were put to death. The most 
 rigorous measures were adopted to check the difiusion of their 
 principles. In the reigns of Henry V. and VI. it was made 
 penal for parents to send their children to any private teacher, 
 lest Lollard principles should be instilled into them^. Yet all 
 these severities could not amuhilate the party: — they still 
 maintained their " schools," as they called their places of 
 secret meetiag, and their " prophesyings,'^ ia spite of the 
 laws ; and looking back with regret on the comparative tran- 
 quiUity which they had enjoyed under the Plantagenets, they 
 cherished the belief that Richard II. was stiU. alive, and would 
 come back to their relief. 
 
 During the wars of the Roses, the Lollards escaped perse- 
 cution amidst the general confasion; "the very storm," ia 
 the language of Puller, proving "their shelter." At this 
 time, the learning and morals of the clergy had shrunk to 
 the lowest ebb. A contemporary declares, that " a right dis- 
 charge of the functions of a parish priest was almost grown 
 into disuse, and made impracticable." They had become, 
 the prelates especially, marked objects of popiilar odium. 
 During an insurrection, which broke out in the reign of 
 Henry VI., some bishops were driven from their sees and 
 murdered, and their palaces destroyed ; several of&cers of the 
 spiritual courts plundered and killed ; and in Kent and Wilt- 
 shire the inferior clergy cruelly harassed. In the midst of 
 these disorders, Reginald Pecock, bishop of Chichester, a man 
 of enlightened views but of an infirm and irresolute spirit, 
 attempted a moderate and conciliatory course, and tried to 
 wean the Bible-men, as the Lollards were then called, from 
 their extreme proceedings. He appears to have agreed with 
 them in denying the infallibility of the Church, and maintain- 
 
 and, in the lax langtiage of a rude jurisprudence, imported, perhaps, nothing 
 more than that, before the statute, heresy -vrould not, or did not, pass with im- 
 punity." 
 
 1 The petition is given in Fuller, IV. ii. 14. " Fuller, IV. ii. 61. 
 
14 SKETCH OP THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OP 
 
 ing the sufficiency of Scripture. But he was overpowered by 
 his ecclesiastical adversaries, and compelled to recant under 
 circumstances of great humiliation^. 
 
 With the return of peace, the trials and sufferings of the 
 Lollards began anew. Henry VII., like his predecessors, 
 allied himself with the clergy, and secured their attachment 
 by gratifying their bigotry. The fires of persecution were re- 
 kiadled. Those who abjured their principles to escape burn- 
 ing, wore the mark of a faggot on the left sleeve, as a badge 
 of penance for life. A particular part of Smithtield was called 
 the Lollards' Pit, as having been the frequent scene of their 
 executions ; and in the old palace of Lambeth, the Lollards' 
 Tower took its name from the prison where these unhappy 
 men were confined. Puller, who lived in the first half of the 
 seventeenth century, observes, that " the word Lollard had 
 been retained in the statutes since the Reformation, as a 
 generical name, to signify such who, in their opinions, oppose 
 the settled religion of the land." " In which sense," he says, 
 " the modern sheriffs were bound by their oath to suppress 
 them^." But " the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
 Church :" the sect survived the dungeon and the stake ; and 
 the principles which it had diffused, prepared a ready sympa- 
 thy with doctrines which began to be preached under Henry 
 VIII. LoUardism was absorbed in the new life of Protes- 
 tantism ; and the flames which consumed the last of its mar- 
 tyrs, might have lighted the faggots amidst which an incipient 
 Puritanism gave public witness of having inherited its spirit^. 
 
 II. The decisive act which marked the commencement of 
 the Reformation in England, was the transference of the head- 
 ship of the Church from the Pope to Henry VIII. This was 
 an act which satisfied nobody but the king himself and a few 
 of his courtiers. The mass of the nation, including a majority 
 of the nobihty, was stOl Catholic ; and those who had imbibed 
 
 1 Collier, I. 676. PeoooFs opinions are variously represented : but the 
 verses which OoUier says he was accustomed to repeat to those who visited 
 lum m his confinement, indicate doubt respeotmg some fundamental points of 
 the orthodox system. ^ 
 
 " Wit hath wonder that Reason cannot skan, 
 How a Moder is Mayd, and Q-od is Man." ' 
 To which a contemporary made this reply : 
 
 " Leve Eeason, Beleve the Wonder, 
 Belef hath Mastry, and Eeason is under " 
 " Church History, IV. ii. 18. 
 ^ Burnet's Hist, of the Eeformation, I. pp. 27-33, fol. 
 
RELIGIOUS PARTIES IN ENGLAND. 15 
 
 Protestant principles, could not desire that tlie will of the 
 sovereign should fix the standard of faith and worship. 
 Nevertheless, as Henry was popular with his subjects, and the 
 temper of ParHament was subservient, there was a general 
 disposition to conform to circumstances, and acquiesce in the 
 Idng^s ecclesiastical supremacy. The Catholic and Protestant 
 elements of the population were never, therefore, distinctly 
 separated from each other. Few were prepared, like Bishop 
 Fisher and Sir Thomas More, to sacrifice their lives to their 
 principles ; and of the clergy an immense majority, with a 
 Catholic faith and Catholic predilections in their hearts, were 
 iacorporated at once into the new constitution of the English 
 Church^. The more ardent Protestants withdrew to the 
 Continent, or paid the penalty of imprisonment and death at 
 home. Cranmer, more decidedly Protestant ia principle than 
 he ventured to avow, retained by seasonable compliances his 
 influence over the king, and promoted further reformation 
 whenever the opportunity occurred. He represented the new 
 learning, as Protestantism was then called, and Gardiner, 
 bishop of Winchester, the old or Catholicism^; and to the 
 effort to combine these opposite tendencies in one system, 
 which was among the results of Cranmer's deference to his 
 master's will — the Church of England owes that mixed cha- 
 racter by which it is pecidiarly distinguished. Fuller re- 
 marks, that Cranmer and they who "weathered out" vdth 
 him " the tempest of king Henry's tyranny," were the first 
 conformists, and the more zealous reformers who fled beyond 
 the seas, the founders of nonconformity^ ; thus tracing back 
 the great national schism to the very commencement of the 
 Reformation in England. 
 
 Cranmer agreed with Cromwell, whom Henry constituted 
 his vicar-general as head of the church, in deriving all eccle- 
 siastical power from the wiU of the sovereign. Upon this 
 principle they acted together in carrying out their plans of 
 reform, and in their attempt to fix and settle a national sys- 
 tem of religion. Henry's own creed was essentially Catholic ; 
 but he was sensitively jealous of his supremacy; and the 
 limits of his doctrinal system were marked by so fine and im- 
 palpable a line, that the most circumspect could not always 
 discern them, though fearful penalties attended their trans- 
 
 1 Hallam, ConBtitutional Hist. oh. ii. 
 
 2 Lingard, vol. yi. ^ Church Hist. VII. i. 24. 
 
16 SKETCH OP THE EXfEENAL HISTORY OF 
 
 gression on either side. He gave a striking proof of the im- 
 partiality of his ferocious intolerance, when in 1540 he ordered 
 three Lutherans and four Catholics to be dragged to the stake, 
 on the same hurdle for denyiag his supremacy — ^with this 
 nice distiaction in their fate, that the Protestants were to be 
 burnt, and the Catholics hanged^. 
 
 • The principles of the Reformation made great progress m 
 the short reign of Edward VI. ; and had his life been spared, 
 the character of our Church and our Universities would have 
 been very different from what they now are. Articles of faith 
 were drawn up; the entire liturgy, out of which, during the 
 preceding reign, only the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the 
 Ten Commandments had been recited in English, was trans- 
 lated from the Latin; and the service generally was simplified 
 and adapted more to a Protestant taste. Already there were 
 those who, like the earlier Lollards, did not approve of set 
 forms of prayer though sanctioned by Calvia^ biit preferred 
 the mode of public devotion observed in the Protestant 
 churches of the Continent. The iaterval of Mary's reign 
 rendered good, service to Protestantism by putting to a severe 
 test the strength of its principles, and calling forth many 
 illustrious examples of heroic martyrjdom. 
 
 It was not till the reign of Elizabeth that the Church of 
 England was settled on its present foundations, and the op- 
 posing tendencies of Puritanism came out ia full operation 
 against it. Elizabeth inherited the religious principles of her 
 father. She was attached to the forms of the hierarchy : and 
 her faith had more affinity with the Catholic than with the 
 Protestant system. Of all the foreign churches she sympa- 
 thized most with the Lutheran, because it receded less than 
 the Calvinistic and the Zwinglian from the ancient religion*,: 
 whereas those of her subjects who returned from exUe on the 
 death of Mary, and who had met with a more cordial recep- 
 tion abroad among the Calvinists than amoiig the Lutherans, 
 
 ' Neal's History of tke Puritans, 4to, I. 22. 
 
 ' Euller, Vn. ,ii. 18. " Publicam formulam preeum et rituum Ecclesiasti- 
 corum valde probo, ut oerta ilia extet, h, quS, ne pastoribus diseedere in fime- 
 tione sui liceat." Lib. Bpistol. 69, quoted by Fuller. In tke appendix to the 
 ' Catechismus Genevensis,' wbich was put forth by Oalvin in 1545, is a complete 
 rorm of Common Prayer (Preoum Eoolesiasticarum Formula), with offices for 
 the administration of the Sacraments, the celebration of Matrimony, and the 
 Visitation of the Sick. Niemeyer, CoUectio Confess. Eeformat.) pp. 170-190. 
 
 3 HaUam, Constit. Hist. oh. iv. 
 
KBLIGIOUS PARTIES IN ENGLAND. 17 
 
 brought back witb them a spirit of fervid Protestantisnij and 
 an eager desire to carry reformation in England beyond the 
 point to which it had been advanced by Edward VI. Thus 
 the seeds of discord were germinating from the very com- 
 mencement of Elizabeth's reign, and the fruit soon, became 
 visible. The bishops of Elizabeth were content, like Cranmer, 
 to derive their authority from the Crown, the supremacy of 
 which in religious matters was the fundamental article of the 
 new ecclesiastical constitution. The divine right of Episco- 
 pacy was a doctrine not put forth tiU a later period. It was 
 too perilous a question to agitate at a time of recent change, 
 when men's minds were hardly yet familiarized with the great 
 revolution which had occurred. Cast down from its ancient 
 foundation. Episcopacy, exposed and attacked, clung with the 
 instinct of self-preservation to the royal prerogative ; and for- 
 tunately for itself, this was an alliance which the crown was 
 very wi llin g to accept. 
 
 . In the first year of her reign, Elizabeth, at the suggestion 
 of the primate, Parker, instituted the Court of High Commis- 
 sion j by which she united the sovereign power of the State 
 with the Church^ and through which she exercised her su- 
 premacy, as her father, under different circumstances, through 
 the single person of Cromwell. The Queen and her primates, 
 Parker and Whitgift, guided by the same despotic principles, 
 were resolved to enforce uniformity; the Queen expressing 
 more apprehension of the Puritans than of the Catholics. 
 She disliked the interference of Parliament, where Puritan 
 doctrines sometimes found a voice, in matters relating to the 
 Church ; and it was the advice of Whitgitt, that, in all eccle- 
 siastical regulations, she should proceed by canons framed in 
 Convocation rather than by parliamentary statute^. With 
 the increasing stringency of the measures of the High Com- 
 mission, the force of resistance became more intense and un- 
 manageable. The earliest Puritans — among whom were Fox 
 the martyrologist, and Myles Coverdale who had been bishop 
 of Exeter in Edward's time and declined resuming his see on 
 his return from exile — did not wish to consider themselves as 
 separatists, but merely craved exemption from certain forms 
 and ceremonies to which they had a conscientious objection. 
 With the progress of time, however, men's passions became 
 excited on both sides, and the breach grew wider and more 
 1 HaUam, iUd. "■ Neal, I. 306. 
 
18 SKETCH OF THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF 
 
 irreparaMe as the discussion was prolonged.— In the second 
 stage of the dispute, the relation of the two parties to each 
 other was more distinctly marked. The supporters of the 
 hierarchy contended, that the Roman Catholic was a true 
 church, though corrupted; and that, while Scripture was a 
 final standard in poiuts of doctrine, it prescribed no absolute 
 form for discipline and government. On the other hand the 
 Puritans affirmed, that the Pope was Antichrist ; that no com- 
 munion should be maintained with churches acknowledging 
 his authority; and that Scripture exhibited not only a perfect 
 rule of faith, but a complete model of ecclesiastical polity. — 
 In the third stage of the movement under Elizabeth, the more 
 extreme Puritans proceeded to the length of asserting the 
 divine right of the Presbyterian form of church government— - 
 its independency of all civil control — and the duty of Chris- 
 tians to set it up, and conform to it, in defiance of the existing 
 establishment. Some of Elizabeth's courtiers who had at 
 first looked on the Puritans with a favourable eye, abandoned 
 them on their beginning to proclaim such doctrines. 
 
 It is remarkable, that these high notions of ecclesiastical 
 government, as founded on a divine right, should have been 
 advanced by Presbyterians before they were ventured on by 
 the bishops. The bishops were kept in awe by the Queen, 
 who would not allow her supremacy to be questioned. They 
 possessed substantial power and great worldly distinction; 
 and these they were not incUned to put in jeopardy for a 
 theory. Parker, perhaps Grindal, certainly Whitgift — the 
 three first primates of Elizabeth — were Erastians^ iu their 
 views of church government. — Towards the close of her reign 
 when the hierarchy felt itself secure, the divine right of Epi- 
 scopacy began to be asserted by the zealous adherents of the 
 Church, provoked to it in part by the high ground already 
 taken by their adversaries^- In the meanwhile the conflict 
 
 ' The term Erastiau is derived from Erastus, a German physician in the six- 
 teenth century. The fundamental principle of the system seems to hare been 
 this — ^that the Church should exercise no coerciTe and punitive power, except 
 through the ai-m of the civil magistrate — and especially should be restrained 
 from inflicting, by its own authority, the penalty of excommunication, to which, 
 in that age, such a feai-fol importance was attached. This system, which took 
 the Jewish pohty as its model, recognized the Church as only a member of the 
 general body of the State. See the ' Thesis of Erastus, toucliing Excommuni- 
 cation,' translated from the Latin, by the Rev. Robert Lee, D.D., Edinburgh • 
 1844. Also Hallam, Coustit. Hist. II. p. 272, note. 
 
 2 Hallam, Constit. Hist. I. 293, note. 
 
RELIGIOUS PARTIES IN ENGLAND. 19 
 
 between Prelacy and Puritanism was maintained in a fierce 
 warfare of pamphlets and graver productions. The tracts of 
 Martin Marprelate, which produced such a sensation at the 
 time, were showered forth all over the country from an am- 
 bulatory printing-press, which ended its migrations, and was 
 at last discovered and broken up, ia the then remote but 
 strongly puritanical town of Manchester^. Learning and elo- 
 quence were also engaged in the contest. Whitgift and 
 Hooker on one side, Cartwright and Travers on the other, 
 brought the aid of great abilities, extensive acquirements, and 
 imdoubted zeal and sincerity, to the support of their respective 
 systems. — A temporary cessation of controversy — a sort of 
 theological truce — marked the closing years of the Queen's 
 reign. Both parties looked with some anxiety to the influ- 
 ence on their respective interests, of the arrival of a new sove- 
 reign from the north. — But ia the heat of the preceding dis- 
 putes more extreme opinions had been elicited, which denied 
 the divine right and scriptural precedent alike of Episcopacy 
 and of Presbyterianism, and, regarding every association of 
 Christians for worship and edification as a complete church, 
 vested in their separate and independent assemblies all autho- 
 rity for spiritual purposes. Men of these principles, called 
 from their leaders Brownists and Barrowists, were the 
 founders of the system of Independency. Several members 
 of this sect were put to death for their opinions ia the reign 
 of Elizabeth. Numbers fled over into Holland, where they 
 met with a kind reception, cultivated learning, and sometimes 
 taught in the Universities, or became pastors to congregations 
 of emigrants. It was not till a later period that this party 
 acquired a powerful influence ia the ecclesiastical aflairs of 
 England^- 
 
 The expectations of the Presbyterians from the accession of 
 James to the English throne, were speedily destroyed by the 
 result of the conference, held in his presence at Hampton 
 Court, between some of their principal divines and the bishops. 
 James soon renounced the Calvinism in which he had been 
 bred and of which he had once stood forth as the defender^, 
 for Anninianism, which was now becomiag the badge of the 
 prelatical party : and the system of Episcopacy agreed so well 
 with his arbitrary principles of civU government, that he could 
 not long hesitate in preferring it to the democratic platform 
 of Presbyterianism. The reign of James is distinguished by 
 ' Seal, 4to, I. 337. ^ ^eal, I. 436. ' Seal, I. 348, 350. 
 
20 SKETCH OP THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF 
 
 the growth of high episcopal doctriaeSj very different from the 
 principles which had been maintained by Cranmer and the 
 bishops, of Elizabeth. The Church courted a close aUianee 
 with the Crown J while Puritanism found many advocates ia 
 Parliament. It has been noticed^ however^ that for twenty 
 years before the breaking out of the civH wars, the zeal for 
 Presbyterianism had declined ; and that if a moderate Episco- 
 pacy, under the control of Parliament, and with a restriction 
 of the power of the ecclesiastical courts, could have been then 
 estabhshed, the great body of the nation would have been 
 satisfied. But the high churchmen hated Parliament and the 
 common lawyers ; and it has been thought, that the enigma- 
 tical word thorough, so frequently occurring in the correspond- 
 ence of Laud and Strafford, refers to some deep-laid design of 
 overturning their authority, and substituting a more despotic 
 tribunal in its stead^. " But this arrogant contempt of the 
 lawyers manifested by Laud and his faction of priests, led," 
 as Mr. Hallam has remarked, "to the ruin of the great 
 churchmen and of the Church itself." 
 
 The cause of Presbyterianism was revived by the alliance of 
 Parliament with the Scots, who made the establishment of 
 that form of church government a condition of their support. 
 The Westmiuster Assembly of divines became in the main, un- 
 der these influences, a Presbyterian body, though it numbered 
 among its members moderate Episcopalians, Independents, 
 and some lawyers who were Erastians. It had been convened 
 by Parliament to settle the religious affairs of the nation, 
 during the progress of the war, and aspired to the exercise of 
 a co-ordinate authority : but Parliament kept a strict watch 
 over all its proceedings ; confirmed its enactments before they 
 could have force; and never parted with the power of the 
 Keys, as the right of inflicting ecclesiastical censures and 
 penalties was called in the peculiar phraseology of those times. 
 Its intolerance was thus fortunately held in check. Never- 
 theless, it abolished Episcopacy; proliibited the use of the 
 liturgy ; and opposed the concession of a toleration to the 
 Independents. For some years Presbyterianism struggled 
 for ascendency as the established religion of the nation; but 
 owing to the strong resistance which it encountered, and the 
 disordered state of the country, its system of church govern- 
 
 ' Neal, I. p. 715. 
 
 fl^L'^i?^'™"' ^.r'*'*' •^''*- "''■ '^"' P- ^^- S° mtei-pi-eted, we may consider 
 tlu8 ptirase as the counterpart ol root and branch among the Puritans. 
 
RELIGIOUS PARTIES IN ENGLAND. 31 
 
 ment was nowhere carried fully into effect except in Lanca- 
 shire, and less perfectly in London and its vicinity. 
 
 The principles of the Independents were widely spread in 
 the parliamentary army, and acquired political ascendency 
 chiefly through the energy and enterprise of Cromwell. But 
 they had much to recommend them to generous and thought- 
 ful minds ; and not a few of the aristocracy and learned class 
 embraced them. — Among the most eminent of these were the 
 Lord Brookj Sir Harry Vane the younger, Mr. Francis Pierre- 
 pont, Milton, and probably Sir Thomas Fairfax^- They were 
 also diflFiised among the yeomanry of the rural districts, and 
 found numerous supporters in the wealthy and substantial citi- 
 zens of London and other trading towns. In his appreciation 
 of the claims of religious liberty Cromwell was far before his 
 age, and much in advance of the clergy even of his ovni deno- 
 mination. His mind, indeed, seems to have been deeply im- 
 bued with the spirit of toleration. His own religious earnest- 
 ness, though closely bordering on enthusiasm, did not hinder 
 him from looking at this question with the clear and open eye 
 of an unprejudiced statesman. He connived at the use of the 
 liturgy by the deprived Episcopalians ; and when he adopted 
 harsh measures respecting them, it was not on religious but 
 on political grounds^. His severities towards the Papists 
 must be ascribed partly to the same principle, and partly to 
 the general prejudice entertained by all Protestants in that 
 age against the adherents of the old religion. His own feel- 
 ings would have led him to allow the Jews the free exercise 
 of thefr religion iu London^. He protected the person of the 
 
 ' See Mrs. Hutchinson's evidence of Fairfax's Independency, in. her Memoirs 
 of lier husband, p. 268, 4to edit. 
 
 2 " To give the devil his due," says Dr. Q-eorge Bates, an impartial witness, 
 who in the midst of these concessions, does not spare the bitterest charges 
 against Cromwell, " he restored Justice as well distributive as commutative 
 almost to its ancient dignity and splendour; — though the public use of the 
 Service-book was denied to the Episcopal pajty, yet in private houses he allowed 
 them the use of their rites ; — and though the state of the Church seemed now 
 sad and deplorable, yet it is not to be denied, but that milder courses were used 
 than under the rigid tyranny of others (the Presbyterians) that went before." 
 Eise and Progress of the late Troubles in England. London : 1685, 2nd part, 
 pp. 192-93. Bates was in succession physician to Charles I., Cromwell, and 
 Charles II. His work was originally written in Latin, and entitled, ' Elenohus 
 Motuum Nuperorum in AngUa.' Baxter, also no friend to Cromwell, adds • a 
 similar testimony. " I perceived tha,t it was his design to do good in the main, 
 and to promote the gospel and the interest of godliness, more than any had done 
 before him ; except in those particulars which his own interest was against." 
 Narrative of his Life and Times. London : 1696, P. I. p. 71. 
 
 ^ Bates, Bise and Progress, etc. II. p. 211. 
 
23 SKETCH OF THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF 
 
 Unitarian Biddle from the bigotry of the CoimcU, and allowed 
 him a maintenance of a hundred crowns a-year during his 
 exile^. Had Cromwell ruled longer, and been able to found 
 a dynasty, it is possible that his masculine sense and tolera,nt 
 principles might have practically solved not a few difficulties 
 growing out of the actual constitution of our Church and 
 Universities, and that many occasions of strife and uneasiness, 
 not yet disposed of, might have been spared to posterity. 
 
 III. The ascendency of Puritanism terminated with the 
 death of the Protector. The Presbyterians, attached on prin- 
 ciple to monarchy and never cordially acquiescing in the 
 CromweUian rule, united with the Episcopalians to restore the 
 royal family. They hoped now to attain their favourite object 
 of a purification of the national church, and abandoning the 
 high Presbyterian ground, would have been satisfied with the 
 estabhshment of a moderate Episcopacy. Infiuenced by these 
 feelings they placed too implicit a reliance on Charles's De- 
 claration from Breda, which promised liberty to tender con- 
 sciences and led them to hope for a national settlement of re- 
 ligion. But the exasperation of the Episcopal clergy, who felt 
 they had been excluded by the Puritan ministers from their 
 lawful honours and emoluments, was extreme, and only 
 checked by prudential considerations tiU. they could find an 
 opportunity of giving it full effect. Hyde, afterwards Lord 
 Clarendon, was their chief adviser, and a devoted adherent of 
 the hierarchy, the interests of which, in the true spirit of 
 Toryism, he preferred even to those of the Crown^. Under 
 such circumstances all attempts at comprehension were fruit- 
 less. The conference at the Savoy had no other effect than 
 an increased alienation between the parties whom it was pro- 
 fessedly convened to unite. All the influences most active at 
 Court and in Parliament tended to reinstate the Church in its 
 ancient power and dignities, and to depress those who had 
 been the cause of its humiliation. A part of the Act which in 
 the preceding period had abolished the court of High Com- 
 mission, was now repealed, though the court itself was not 
 restored^. The Corporation Act, passed in the first year of the 
 King's reign, by imposing the sacrament of the Lord's Sup- 
 per as a qualification for municipal office, effectually excluded 
 all conscientious Nonconformists from corporations. Besides 
 
 1 Neal, II. oil. iii. p. 471. 
 
 2 HaHam, Constit. Hist. II. p. 467. 
 
 ' Mackintoeh, Hist, of the Bevolution, p. 66. 
 
RELIGIOUS PARTIES IN ENGLAND. ' 23 
 
 this, all the penal statutes of Elizabeth were confirmed by 
 Parliament. 
 
 But the most decisive measure of vengeance, and that from 
 which this third period of our religious history derives its 
 peculiar character, was the Act of Uniformity in 1662, car- 
 ried through Parliament by the influence of the bishops, and 
 zealously promoted by Lord Clarendon. The Upper House 
 would have tempered the severity of some of its provisions, 
 but was overborne by the High Church spirit which predomi- 
 nated ia the Commons. By this Act, which required an " un- 
 feigned assent and consent to all and everything contained 
 and prescribed in and by the Book of Common Prayer," and 
 which in other respects was purposely framed in direct op- 
 position to the known conscientious scruples of the Puritan 
 clergy^, nearly two thousand ministers^ were all at once cast 
 out of their benefices, prohibited from preachhig, and thrown 
 for support on their own resources and the charity of their 
 friends. When the Episcopalians had been deprived by the 
 Long Parliament, for refusing to take the Covenant, a fifth 
 part of the profits of their livings had been reserved for their 
 maiatenance; but no such consideration was now shown for 
 the ejected Presbyterians. 
 
 The effect of this Act was to constitute Protestant Dissent 
 a distinct and powerful element in the composition of English 
 society. Hitherto the great m^ass of the Puritans had che- 
 rished strong feeliags of attachment to the national church, 
 and had only sought its further reformation : they were now 
 forcibly excluded from it — never, as a party, to be incorporated 
 with it again. During the quarter of a century which elapsed 
 from the day of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1662 — the date 
 of the ejectment — ^to the passing of the Toleration Act in 1689 
 after the accession of William III. — the Nonconformists were 
 exposed to every species of persecution and annoyance. In 
 the reign of Charles II., no less than six acts — including the 
 Act of Uniformity and that relating to Corporations — were 
 passed, subjecting them to various restraints and penalties^. 
 They were put without the pale of the constitution ; they were 
 
 1 See the abstract of it in Weal, II. p. 625. 
 
 2 This is about the mean of the extreme calculations on the opposite sides. 
 Baxter states the number of the deprived at 1800. See HaUam, II. 462, note. 
 Hunter's Life of Oliver Heywood, p. 137. 
 
 3 These were the two Conventicle Acts, the Five Mile Act, and the Test Act. 
 Neal, II. p. 695. 
 
24 « SKETCH OF THE EXTEKNAL HISTORY OP 
 
 doomed to struggle for the mere recognition of their pohtical 
 existence : and their religions assemblies to which they attached 
 a conscientious importance and which yielded their highest 
 consolations, were held ia stealth and jeopardy, by the conni- 
 vance of magistrates, and now and then more openly throiigh 
 the questionable indulgences of the Crown. Yet it was during 
 this period of sufferiag and humiliation, that they learned 
 their most valuable lessons, and developed those genuine prin- 
 ciples of religious liberty which have imparted a real dignity 
 and deep significance to their cause. Smarting under the rod 
 of tyranny, they looked beyond the arm immediately wielding 
 it, to the hidden principle which put it in motion ; and they 
 found the root of all persecution in that assumption of infaUi- 
 bility and of right to domineer over conscience, which is not 
 peculiar to any one church, but has uniformly been displayed 
 by all, when placed in circumstances to exercise it. Had 
 Presbyterianism succeeded in obtaiaing an exclusive establish- 
 ment, there is every indication that her rule would have 
 proved as oppressive as that of her rival. Nothing indeed can 
 exhibit a more striking contrast than the spirit of Presbyteria- 
 nism ia the ascendant, and the spirit of Presbyterianism ex- 
 cluded, humbled, and tolerated : and these two periods in its 
 history should be carefully distinguished, when we are speak- 
 ing of that large and important section of the old Puritan 
 party. Baxter's autobiography furnishes a beautiful illustra- 
 tion of the effect of this mellowing discipline on an earnest 
 and noble mind'^. 
 
 At the time of the Restoration, a great majority of the 
 church livings were held by those who ranked as Presbyte- 
 rians but had no objection to a moderate Episcopacy ; some, 
 with stations of dignity in the Universities, by Independents ; 
 and a few by Anabaptists and other sectaries. Out of this 
 number those who could not comply with the terms of the 
 Act of Uniformity, were deprived of their legal maintenance ; 
 and in many instances, carrying with them a large part of 
 their congregations, became the founders of new religious 
 societies, most of which have subsisted to the present time. 
 
 1 Baxter's Life and Times, Part I. § 213. Here occurs that beautiful and 
 truly catholic sentiment : " I can never believe that a man may not be saved by 
 that reUgion, which doth but bring him to the true love of God, and to a hea- 
 venly mind and life ; nor that God will ever oast a soul into heU that trulv 
 loveth him." — p. 131. •' 
 
KELIGIOUS PARTIES IN ENGLAND. 25 
 
 These different parties, thrown by a common misfortune into 
 one class, and comprehended under the general title of Non- 
 conformistSj were still divided among themselves. The Pres- 
 byterians, seeking immediately only the free exercise of theii* 
 worship, did not give up the hope, that through some combi- 
 nation of events, the Church might yet be so enlarged and 
 reformed as to re-admit them to a participation in the na- 
 tional ministry : while the Independents, the Baptists, and 
 still more the Quakers, desired no comprehension, but merely 
 asked for an impartial toleration. These different views had 
 a corresponding influence on their conduct in the confused 
 state of public affairs, and in the anomalous position which 
 all parties political and religious now sustained towards each 
 other. The Church of England had fenced herself round with 
 penal statutes^ for the oppression of the Roman Catholics on 
 one side and of the Protestant Dissenters on the other, and 
 was sustained in her high pretensions by a powerful party, of 
 which at the beginniag of Charles's reign Lord Clarendon 
 was the acknowledged head. The principles of this party 
 were identical with those of Laud. The Church was their 
 idol and bond of union ; and they strove to secure her in a 
 position unparalleled among the Protestant communities of 
 Christendom. Meanwhile the Idng and his brother were 
 Catholics, anxious to seize every opportunity of befriending 
 the religion to which they were attached : — but this was im- 
 practicable, except by measures which brought relief to the 
 Nonconformists, who in their turn were often restrained by 
 conscientious scruples from accepting benefits, which they 
 thought would give encouragement to Popery. 
 
 From this strange mixture of bigotry, prejudice, and craft, 
 resulted a division of interests and a complication of policy, 
 which threw parties into unprecedented relations towards each 
 other. James, on acceding to the throne, pursued his designs 
 with more openness and decision than the late king, and thus 
 accelerated the Revolution. To allure the Dissenters into 
 concurrence with his views, he issued successive Declarations for 
 liberty of conscience, ia virtue of the dispensing power which 
 he affirmed, against express resolutions of Parliament, to be 
 inherent in his crown. All who valued the constitution, and 
 understood the necessary contrariety of religious freedom and 
 civil despotism, perceived the tendency of these measures and 
 were afraid of the ensnaring boon. Some of the court bishops. 
 
26 SKETCH OF THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF 
 
 in their slavish adherence to the maxims of passive obedience 
 and non-resistance, surrendered the Church to the royal will. 
 A few of the Presbyterians, more of the Independents and 
 Baptists, with the Quakers under the guidance of Penn^ — 
 caught by the promises of universal toleration, and led by 
 their peculiar principles to separate the idea of religion from 
 all considerations of civil government— fell into the snare, and 
 publicly thanked his majesty for this exercise of the dispens- 
 ing power. But the better part of the clergy, and the more 
 eminent of the Presbyterians with Howe and Baxter at their 
 head, discerned the danger and stood coldly aloof. ''Thus," 
 says Sir James Mackintosh, "the sects who maintained the 
 piirest principles of religious liberty, and supported the most 
 popular systems of government, were more disposed than 
 others to favour a measure which would have finally buried 
 toleration under the ruins of political freedom^." The acquit- 
 tal however of the seven bishops, put on trial for their refusal 
 to order the reading of the royal Declaration in the Churches, 
 gave very general satisfaction, and indicated a strong deter- 
 mination among men of different parties to uphold the esta- 
 blished Protestantism. 
 
 But this coalition of the Church with the Dissenters, as it 
 originated in fear, so it was but of temporary duration, and 
 gradually ceased, as the apprehensions which had occasioned 
 it, lost their force. In 1689, after the settlement of the crown 
 on William and Mary, the Toleration Act was passed, which 
 first secured a legal existence, with the free exercise of their 
 religion, to the Protestant Dissenters. It embraced the 
 
 ' Sir J. Mackintosh expresses a very high opinion of Penn's character, and 
 ascribes his acceptance of this measure to his simplioity, " Compassion, friend- 
 ship, hherality and toleration led him to support a system of winch the success 
 would have undone his country, and afforded a remarkable proof, that in the 
 comphoated combinations of political morality, a virtue misplaced may produce 
 as miich immediate mischief as a vice." Hist, of the E«volution, p. 171. Per- 
 haps Penn might be unconsciously flattered by his supposed iofluence over the 
 mind of James. Bishop Burnet, who was acquainted with him in Holland, 
 where he had been negotiating with the Prince of Orange on behalf of the king's 
 views, and who, it must be owned, was prejudiced against his mission — speaks 
 of him in different terms. " He was a talking, vain man, who had been long in 
 the king's favour, and had such an opinion of his own faculty of persuading, 
 that he thought none could stand before it ; though he was singular m that 
 opinion, for he had a tedious, luscious way, that was not apt to overcome a 
 man's reason, though it might tire his patience." Hist, of his own Times 1 
 p. 693, fol. edit. ' 
 
 ' Hist, of the Bevolution, p. 167. Compare Neal, vol. ii. ch. xi. 
 
RELIGIOUS PARTIES IN ENGLAND. 27 
 
 Presbyterians, the Independents, and the Baptists— thence- 
 forth known as the Three Denonunations — as well as the 
 Quakers ; but it exempted from its benefits those who im- 
 pugned the doctrine of the Trinity. It would have been more 
 complete, but for the strong prejudices which it had to en- 
 counter. The same bigoted influence defeated all designs of 
 comprehension, which WiUiam and the liberal Churchmen 
 would have gladly entertained. Some clergymen of high 
 principles, refusing to take the oaths to the new government, 
 seceded from the Establishment under the name of Non- 
 jurors. These were the most respectable men of their party. 
 Others holding the same views but less conscientious, re- 
 mained behind, and were mischievously active in the Lower 
 House of Convocation, during the reign of Anne. Through 
 their influence, the Acts against Schism and Occasional Con- 
 formity were passed for the annoyance of Dissenters i. Had 
 such principles long continued predominant, the Toleration 
 Act would have been reduced by successive limitations to a 
 dead letter. The Dissenters did not enter on the tranquil en- 
 joyment of all the benefits secured to them by this Act, tiU 
 the accession of the House of Brunswick. The reigns of the 
 two first Georges were distinguished by a general prevalence 
 of religious peace ^. Amid the quiet cultivation of learning 
 and rational piety, the exercise of public spirit, and a recipro- 
 cation of friendly feeling with many hberal divines who then 
 filled stations of eminence in the Church— Protestant Dissent 
 attained its highest state of social influence and worldly con- 
 sideration. But it was not an age of strong conviction or en- 
 thusiastic enterprise. Doddridge and Lardner represent its 
 spirit among the Dissenters ; Jortin and Herring in the Esta- 
 blishment. — The rapid progress of Methodism among the 
 lower classes, the nearly contemporaneous rise of the evan- 
 gelical party in the Church, the petition of a considerable 
 body of clergymen for relief from subscription to the Thirty- 
 
 1 HaUam, IH. p. 332. 
 
 ^ In 1721, Lord WiUougliby de Broke, Dean of Windsor, brouglit in a Bill 
 for the more effectual suppression of blasphemy and profaneness, by which it 
 was proposed to give additional force to the Act passed ia the 9th and 10th of 
 WiUiam III. commonly called the Blasphemy Act, which affected all impugners 
 of the Trinity. Though several bishops, including Wake the primate, were in 
 favour of the measure, it was lost by a majority of sixty against thirty-one. 
 Calamy's Life and Times, vol. ii. p. 450. Butt's note. Compare the Book of 
 Eights by Edgar Taylor, p. 252. 
 
 c 2 
 
28 EXTEKNAL HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 nine 
 
 ...xx^ Articles, and the open preaching of Unitanamsm by 
 Dr. Priestley and his followers, — are iadications in the latter 
 part of the eighteenth century, of the approach of a more 
 exciting period, when opiaions must again become more 
 widely divergent, and the conflict of minds be kindled anew. 
 The American and French revolutions infused fresh activity 
 into these elements of change, and broke up many relations 
 that seemed firmly knit by the usage of near a century; in- 
 spiaing strong conservatism and a sensitive apprehension in 
 the Church, and an ardent spirit of liberty among the Non- 
 conformists. 
 
 The protracted war with France so fruitful of anxieties and 
 fears, and the important events which crowded in quick suc- 
 cession upon each other in the ensuing years of peace, have 
 calmed down many of these earlier and more speculative ex- 
 citements, and brought graver and more practical questions 
 into view. But the repeal of the disabilities affecting the 
 Catholics and the Dissenters, the new composition of the 
 House of Commons, the proposed reforms of the Church and 
 the Universities, and the rapid increase of the democratic ele- 
 ment in society, — are not events that have been calculated to 
 allay either the hopes or the fears of the two great religious 
 parties which divide the nation j and the Church and the Dis- 
 senters stand now at as great a distance from each other as 
 ever. The old Puritan contest with the hierarchy is still im- 
 decided. In the middle of the nineteenth century we find 
 ourselves yet implicated in some of the deepest questions of 
 the cause for which our forefathers made such noble sacrifices 
 and heroic efforts. Change in the outward show of things, 
 should not bliud us to the identity of principles continually 
 re-appeariug in new forms. We owe, indeed, much to the 
 progress of civilization. It has converted the weapons of 
 annoyance wielded by the hierarchy, from the badge, the 
 dungeon and the stake, into the compulsory demand of a 
 church-rate and the claim of exclusive education. But in 
 its assumption of superiority, its disdain of equal intercourse, 
 its virtual denial of Christian brotherhood, the spii'it of the 
 hierarchy has undergone no change. It cannot be uninterest- 
 ing to investigate the principle, the effects and the apparent 
 tendency of this grand English controversy. Fully to compre- 
 hend the present, we must survey its relations with the past. 
 To attempt this, will be the object of the foUowiug chapters. 
 
29 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 SECTION I. 
 
 DIFFICULTY OF DEFINING A CHURCH. 
 
 Few things are more difficult to define than a church. What 
 constitutes a church ? In the heterogeneous mass of human 
 beings who continue through changing generations to bear 
 its name and observe its usages, how shall we discover the 
 common property which makes it a moral unity and invests 
 it with a distinctive character ? Where shall we look for the 
 genius of a church ? — In the opinions and feelings that may 
 for the time be predominant in it? — or in its recognized 
 creed, ritual and discipline ? — in its invisible soul ? — or in its 
 material organization ? — These difficulties are increased in 
 the case of a church established by law ; Ijecause every esta- 
 bhshment possesses a vast power as such, to attract to itself 
 out of other communions, men of the most opposite views, 
 each of whom finds something in it, to justify his attach- 
 ment to the religion of the State. Still, every religion that 
 is taken into alliance with the government, must possess cer- 
 tain principles of its own, which belong to it independently 
 of that connection, and which modify its operation as an 
 establishment. Very difierent forms of Christianity have 
 been established in England, in Scotland, and in Prussia, 
 though they all partake more or less of the common spirit of 
 establishments. Some persons conform on principle to the 
 established Christianity, whatever it may be; and would be 
 Episcopalians ia England, Presbyterians in Scotland, and 
 members of the Evangelical Church in Prussia. Others, 
 again, have so decided a predilection for Episcopacy, that they 
 adhere to it in Scotland where it is simply tolerated, and in 
 America where it stands on the broad, footiag pi religious 
 equahty with other sects. 
 
 Two things must, therefore, be considered, in examiniag 
 the character and operation of the Church of England : — first. 
 
30 DIFFICULTY OP DEFINING A CHUBCH. 
 
 what it is in itself, regarded as a particular religious commu- 
 nity, held together by certaia Articles and Canons, and by 
 the use of a common Liturgy and Discipline ; and secondly, 
 how these its constituent principles are qualified by its civil 
 establishment. The Church of England is kept under great 
 control by the State ; and this external constraint unavoidably 
 impedes the free and natural development of its ruherent ten- 
 dencies. We see it working in the fetters of its political sub- 
 ordiuation. To detect its genuine character, we must watch 
 its operation in those periods of its history, where it has been 
 left most to itself and enjoyed the greatest freedom of action, 
 or where its latent principles have been most strongly called 
 out in the conflict with hostile agencies. 
 
 And here a question meets us on the threshold of our in- 
 quiry : — what are we to assume as the primary element, the 
 determining principle, of the English hierarchy ? Its Articles 
 and Homilies, or its Liturgy, Canons and Government ? For 
 it will not be denied, that a diflerent spirit pen^ades these two 
 parts of its constitution. — ^Writers on comparative grammar 
 assert, that the characteristic features of a language are more 
 discernible in its structure than in its vocabulary ; — that the 
 genius of the informing mind is more clearly shown in the 
 organism which acts, than in the subject-matter which is acted 
 upon : for the former endures, while the latter is exposed to 
 constant change. We may apply the analogy to the constitu- 
 tion of the Church of England. Its structural arrangements — 
 its organism — must be sought in its Prayer-book, Canons and 
 episcopal discipline : — whereas its Articles and Homilies par- 
 take more of the nature of a foreign substance, grafted as it 
 were on the original stock, which has done its best to assimi- 
 late them to its own constitution, and has caused them very 
 generally to be received in a spirit widely different from that 
 in which they were at first introduced. The liturgy and 
 government of the Church and certain deep feelings of re- 
 verence and attachment cherished by them, have subsisted 
 with little or no alteration for three centuries : but, though 
 the spirit of the Articles and Homilies is Calvinistic, there 
 have been long periods in which the predominant belief of 
 those who subscribed to them, was notoriously Arminian; 
 and the sense in which they should be interpreted, is still a 
 matter of eager controversy betwen the two great parties of 
 the Chxirch. 
 
PREPARATORY CHANGES UNDER HENRY VIII. 31 
 
 SECTIOK II. 
 PREPARATORY CHANGES UNDER HENRY VIII. 
 
 In the reign of Henry VIII. little change was made in the 
 constitution of the Church, but what resulted necessarily from 
 dissolving the connection with Rome, and transferring the 
 ecclesiastical supremacy to the Crown. Cranmer, though de- 
 cidedly Protestant ia heart^, pursued his ends cautiously and 
 indirectly, by always avoiding extreme measures and keeping , 
 on terms with his royal master ; — a subserviency which pro- 
 cured him from his enemies the opprobrious title of a Henri- 
 dan^. In 1533, on the death of Warham, he accepted the 
 primacy, with a reservation that was discreditable to him. 
 He was promoted by the authority of a papal mandate, though 
 an act had already passed, which forbade the procuring of 
 buUs and dispensations from Rome. Its execution was sus- 
 pended at the royal pleasure for the occasion. But he quieted 
 his scruples against taking the oath required by the Ponti- 
 fical, with a previous protest recommended to him by the 
 canonists, that he took it in no sense hostile to his duty to 
 the King, the Church, and his country^. With this act of 
 duplicity, Cranmef entered on his public career. The statutes 
 which took away the supremacy of the pope and substituted 
 that of the Crown, were enacted iu 1534. Many elements 
 however of the German Reformation had already found their 
 way into England; and these, combining with the unextiu- 
 guished tendencies of the native LoUardism, threatened to 
 carry the movement begun, far beyond the point where the 
 king wished- it to cease. BOney, Byfield, Frith, Lambert and 
 other zealous spirits, paid the penalty of their lives for their 
 intrepid exposure of popish errors and corruptions, and their 
 assertion of the new doctriaes. To the death of Lambert, 
 Cranmer himself was a consenting party*- Henry resisted 
 strenuously all popular innovations, and early took measures 
 for fixing the national standard of faith and worship. He 
 
 ' The advice whioli first procured Cramner the &TOur of Henry, was founded 
 on a Protestant principle ; viz. to consult the TTniTersities whether the marriage 
 ■with Catharine were conformable to Scripture, — as, if it were not, no dispensa- 
 tion of the pope could make it vahd. 
 
 ' Strype's Life of Cranmer, p. 67. 
 
 " Burnet, History of the Eeformation, II. p. 128. Colher, Eocles. Hist. II. 
 p. 74. Both agree in condemning his conduct. 
 
 * Strype's Cranmer, p. 65. 
 
33 PREPARATORY CHANGES 
 
 constituted Cromwell his ecclesiastical vicegerent; gave him 
 rank above the primate himself; and invested him with func- 
 tions never before exercised by a layman : so that he assumed 
 in fact a sacerdotal character^ and was addressed by the pom- 
 pous title of " Most Reverend Lord in God." When Crom- 
 well fell, it was one of the charges against him, that he had 
 invaded the prerogatives of the Christian priesthood-^. 
 
 It is important to notice the prominent activity of a lay- 
 .man in the earliest proceedings of the Reformation. By 
 Cromwell some of the most important changes in the religious 
 condition of England, more particularly the visitation and 
 subsequent dissolution of the monasteries, were accomplished. 
 He even took a part more decidedly theological. The Articles 
 of 1536 — the earliest pubhc confession of the English Church 
 — after approval and correction by the king, were first signed 
 in Convocation by Cromwell, as his vicegerent, and then by 
 the two archbishops and the other prelates and inferior clergy, 
 in succession : and somewhat later in the same year, the In- 
 junctions relating to religion were issued in the king's name 
 by Cromwell alone, without consulting the clergy. " This," 
 says Burnet, " was the first act of pure supremacy done by 
 the king. For in all that went before, he had the concurrence 
 of the two Convocations^." 
 
 A small practical work, answering the purpose of an ele- 
 mentary catechism, had been issued by royal authority, under 
 
 > Strype's Eccles. Mem. I. ch. 34, 35.— A letter addressed to CromweU by a 
 monk, during the visitation of the monasteries, begins in the following sti-ain : 
 — " Most reyerend Lord in G-od, second person in this land of England, en- 
 dowed with all grace and goodness," etc., p. 411. 
 
 2 Bm-net, Hist. Eeform. Book III. p. 225. The Articles insisted on the fol- 
 lowmg pomts, as necessary to salvation :— " The acceptance of the whole Bible 
 and the three Creeds; the Sacrament of Baptism, essential for washing away 
 ongmal sm ; the Sacrament of Penance, not excluding the use of auricular Oon- 
 lession; the Sacrament of the Altar verily, substantially, and really containing, 
 under the form of bread and wine, the very body and blood of Clirist, who was 
 bom of the Virgm and sulTered on the Cross; Justification, a perfect renova- 
 tion m Ohnst, but contrition, faith and charity to be included in it." As eon- 
 ducmg to order and decency, though not expressly commanded by Gijd— 
 the use of images and invocation of the saints were not to be forbidden if 
 nghtly understood ; rites and ceremonies might be retained as possessing a 
 spmtual significance ; praymg for the dead in masses and exequies on their behalf 
 was declared a practice good and charitable in itself-if the abuses of the popish 
 doctrine of pm^atory should be clearly put away."-In these Articles, fo^Ct 
 of the seven Sacramen s of the Cathohc Church were passed over ii stoce 
 The Injunctions were intended to enforce the articles and good discichrie 
 among the clergy, who were required by them to set forth perMcaUy To the 
 
UNDER HENRY VIII. 33 
 
 the title of the King's Primer, diuing the preceding yeari. 
 In 1537, the Articles were explained and illustrated in a 
 work entitled, ' The Institution of a Christian Man/ which was 
 drawn up m Convocation, and published by the joint authority 
 of the bishops. It was called, in consequence, the Bishops' 
 Book. It betrays a strong attachment to the old faith, though 
 written with an obvious design of reconciling the Reformers 
 and the doctrinal Romanists or those who differed from the 
 Papists only in the question of the supremacy. It recognizes 
 the seven sacraments, but places those of Baptism, Penance 
 and the Altar, in the first rank. It afBrms that all particular 
 churches are parts of the Church Universal, denying the supe- 
 riority of any one of them over the rest ; and maintains that 
 all bishops are equal in jurisdiction and authority — their 
 powers haviag been communicated to them by Christ, and con- 
 tiaued amongst them in due succession from the Apostles. 
 This claim of a divine right for the episcopal order, indepen- 
 dent of the civU magistrate, indicates the influences under 
 which the work had been prepared. A strong tide of reaction 
 had set in against the measures of Cromwell and Cranmer, 
 which overpowered all resistance. Henry was disturbed and 
 alarmed by the rumours of spreading heresies. The domestic 
 influences which, in the days of Anne Boleyn and Jane 
 Seymour, inclined him to favour the Reformers, had ceased ; 
 and his fickle temper was left exposed to the full force of the 
 representations of the Catholic party. Swayed by them, he 
 gave his consent to the introduction of an Act " for abohshing 
 diversity of opinions in certain articles concerning Christian 
 Religion." The tendency of this celebrated statute, usually 
 called " The Sis Articles," is sufficiently marked by the fact, 
 that Cranmer, in spite of his caution, and though the king 
 had requested him to go out of the House, since he could not 
 vote for the Act, was compelled to protest against it ; while 
 Shaxton and Latimer, to escape the necessity of reading it 
 from their pulpits, threw up their bishoprics. It was, in fact, 
 a re-enactment of the old religion, hailed with joy by all who 
 were averse to the progress of reformation. In the Six 
 
 people the King's supremacy and the usurpation of the Pope. The most im- 
 portant feature in them, was the direction to teach children the Lord's Prayer, 
 the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, in Enghsh. Burnet, Book III., Col- 
 lection of Keeords and Addenda. 
 ' Strype's Eccles. Mem. I. ch. 31. 
 
 c 3 
 
34 PREPARATORY CHANGES 
 
 Articles, the doctrines of transubstantiation, of comnnmion in 
 one kind, of the celibacy of the clergy, of the divine ob%a- 
 tion of vows of chastity, of private masses, and of auricular 
 confession — were distinctly asserted ; the denial of the first, 
 made a capital offence without the power of abjuration ; and 
 any speakmg or writing against the five last, judged felony-^. 
 Only one mitigation of this terrible Act was conceded : parties 
 accused under it, were not brought before the ecclesiastical 
 courts, but were entitled to a trial by jury. Cromwell's fall 
 soon after followed. With him the oflSce of ecclesiastical 
 vicegerent ceased, and the triumph of his enemies, the doctri- 
 nal Romanists, was complete. But in both the parties by which 
 the king's council was now divided, the acknowledgment of the 
 royal supremacy was equally decisive and explicit ; they even 
 vied with each other in professions of subserviency to his will. 
 Gardiner and Bonner, as well as Cranmer, had taken out com- 
 missions, to hold their bishoprics from the Crown, and only 
 during the royal pleasure. It was probably the firmness with 
 which Cranmer adhered to this first principle of the Enghsh 
 Reformation, combined with his consummate tact and policy, 
 that enabled him to maintain to the last his place in his 
 master's favour, amidst the perilous machinations which con- 
 stantly beset him*'. 
 
 The last formulary of belief set forth ia the reign of Henry, 
 was digested out of the answers to certain questions pro- 
 pounded to two committees of bishops and theologians, that 
 had been appoiated by the king, and confirmed by Parliament 
 in 1540. It was entitled, "The Necessary Doctrine and 
 Erudition of a Christian Man;" and has been sometimes 
 called from the way in which it had been prepared, " The 
 King's Book," to distinguish it from" the earlier work " The 
 Institution, or Bishops' Book," which it was intended to su- 
 persede*. In the deliberations which preceded its appear- 
 ance, Craiimer stood almost alone in his clear Protestant view 
 of the various points that came under consideration, and in 
 his strong assertion of the regal supremacy as the only le- 
 gitimate source of ecclesiastical power. On the subject of 
 apostolical authority, he decided against most of his col- 
 leagues, that the Apostles had no command or supremacy 
 over a Christian people, but merely acted as counsellors in 
 
 > Burnet, Hist. Eefonu. I. p. 259. 2 Collier II p 170 
 
 8 Carwithen's Hist, of the Chviroh of England, vol. i. > • i" 
 
UNDER HENRY VIII. 35 
 
 the absence of a Christiaii prince ; maintaining that all Chris- 
 tian princes have the care of their subjects' souls immediately 
 committed to them by God. In the same spirit he argued, 
 that in a land of infidels, a Christian prince may preach the 
 word of God, and also constitute priests ; that the power of 
 excommunication is founded entirely on the positive law of a 
 country, — th&t without that law priests may not, and that with 
 it laymen may, excommunicate^. But he was unable to over- 
 come the strong Romanist feehng of his associates. Denying 
 the supremacy of the bishop of Rome, maintaining the 
 competency of every national church to govern and reform 
 itself, and in the definition of faith as well as on some other 
 topics, pursuing a sort of middle way between the Romish 
 and the Protestant view — ^this work still retained the seven 
 sacraments, (though Cranmer had contended for only two,) 
 together with the tenet of the corporal presence in the 
 Eucharist ; and, on the whole, was more positively Catholic 
 in its tone than the preceding formularies. The " Necessary 
 Doctrine and Erudition" was drawn up with great care and 
 deliberation, and did not make its appearance tUl 1543. Be- 
 fore the close of Henry's reign, the rigour of the Six Articles 
 was abated, though the execution of them was still left de- 
 pendent on the royal will ; and some further measures were 
 taken for the abolition of superstitious practices^. 
 
 The public service of the Church — with the exception of 
 the Creed, the Ten Commandments, some prayers that were 
 taught in the Primer or Catechism, and the litanies used in 
 processions on festival days — was still conducted in Latin. 
 Before the Reformation a difierent ritual called the Use, was 
 observed in difierent parts of the kingdom. Thus the Use of 
 Sarum prevailed in the south of England ; the Use of York 
 in the north ; and the Use of Lincoln in the midland coun- 
 ties ; while South and North Wales followed respectively the 
 
 ' The discuesions preparatory to the pubHoation of the " Neeessaty Doctrine 
 and Erudition," are given in the Appendix to Burnet, Book III. No. xxi. 
 Burnet, vol. i. p. 289, notices the singularity of Oranmer's opinions about 
 ecclesiastical offices, and says — though without stating his grounds for the 
 assertion — ^that he afterwards changed them. Oranmer's knguage on the 
 subject of ecclesiastical authority, seems to have varied at different periods 
 of his life. See Collier, II. p. 198. It should, however, be observed, that, on 
 this occasion, as Burnet has himself remarked, the answers to the questions 
 were framed with great care, and must be regarded as a deUberate expression of 
 opinion. 
 
 2 Collier, II. pp. 188-204. Burnet, I. pp. 286-322. Carwithen, I. ch. to. 
 
36 PREPARATORY CHANGES 
 
 customs of St. David's and of Hereford and Bangor. Of these 
 Uses, that of Sarum was the most widely diffused. It has 
 been asserted, that it was adopted in some part of France and 
 even in Portugal^. To establish imiformity, sometime before 
 the publication of the " Necessary Doctrine and Erudition," 
 the rites and ceremonies of the Church appear to have been 
 brought under review ; and a new impression of the liturgy, 
 according to the Use of Sarum, with corrections and omissions, 
 was issued under royal authority, accompanied by a Rationale 
 to explain the meaning and justify the usage of different parts 
 of the service^. But this liturgy does not seem to have been 
 everywhere introduced; in many churches, the breviaries and 
 missals already in use were retained^. 
 
 The most important event of this reign in its influence on 
 the Reformation, was the sanction given by the king to the 
 translation of the whole Bible into English. Before this 
 occurred, some intrepid scholars, Tyndale, Myles Coverdale 
 and Rogers, thwarted in their plans of serving divine truth by 
 the jealousy of the hierarchy at home, had withdrawn to the 
 Continent, and at different places, under great disadvantages, 
 and amidst frequent perils, had made a version first of the 
 New and then of the Old Testament. Copies of these versions 
 crossed the sea into England ; and though prohibited by the 
 interference of the bishops and ordered to be burnt, still foimd 
 extensive circulation among the people. At length through 
 the influence of CromweU and Cranmer with the king, orders 
 were given for the pubhcation of the entire Scriptures in the 
 vulgar tongue. A Bible called MattheVs, published abroad 
 and founded on the previous labours of Tyndale and Coverdale, 
 was assumed as the basis of the new work ; which was issued 
 in 1539 under Cranmer's name and anthority, and is known 
 as " Cranmer's Bible" or the " Great Bible." This continued 
 the authorized English version, tiU the appearance of the " Bi- 
 shops' Bible" in 1568. Henry fixed its price by proclamation, 
 
 ' ■^^™®^'|, Origines UturgiccB. Dissertation on Pi-imitiTe Liturgies, Sect. xi. 
 The Use of Sarum was of EugKsh origin, having been inti-oduced by Osmund, 
 bishop of that see, in 1078. 
 
 2 CoUier has transcribed the Kationale from the Cotton Library The title 
 of the authorized Ktui-gy was as follows : " Portiforium secundum TJsum Sa- 
 rum, noTiter impressum, et a plurimis purgatum mendis. In quo nomeu 
 Romano Poutifioi falso ascriptum omittitm-, una cum aliis qute Clrristiamissimi 
 ?f. , ^^^ statute repugnant. Excusum Londini per Edvardum Whrtchuroh 
 1541. Uum pnvilegio ad imprimendum soliun." CoUier, II r, 191 ' 
 
 ^ Carwithen, toI. i. ^ f ■ 
 
UNDER HENRY VIII. 37 
 
 and ordered a copy to be procured for every parish church be- 
 fore an appointed day. Bonner who was thenbishop of Lon- 
 don and distinguished by an officious obsequiousness to the 
 royal pleasure, set up six copies fastened with chaias to pillars 
 in St. Paul's^- But the privilege apparently conferred by this 
 ordinance, was soon restrained within very narrow hmits. By 
 an Act passed in 1542 — chiefly, it is said, at the instance of 
 Gardiaer — the reading of the Bible was prohibited to aU under 
 the degrees of gentlemen and gentlewomen ; and the king him- 
 self in the preface to the " Necessary Erudition," had declared 
 that the reading of the Old and New Testament was not ne- 
 cessary for the laity, but that liberty or restraint in this matter 
 must be referred to the laws and government^. 
 
 ^ Strype's Cranmer, B. I. ch. xxi. Lewis's History of English Translations 
 of tke Bible, p. 187, 2nd edit. 
 
 2 Collier, II. 188, 189. — The following may be taken as a brief account of the 
 principal versions of the Scriptures into EngHsh. — ^Wyohfie's is u^jiaUy consi- 
 sidered the first translation of the whole Bible. It was made, not from the 
 Greek, but from the Vulgate, and appeared some time subsequent to 1380. 
 What versions existed in English before his time, is not very clearly ascertained. 
 Sir Thomas More speaks of " translations done of old by virtuous and well- 
 learned men, that befQre Wydiffe's days had been known and seen by the 
 bishop of the diocese, and were used with devotion and soberness by good and 
 Cathoho folk:" but his expressions have been charged with vagueness and a 
 confusion of dates. The dissemination of LoUardism in the fifteenth century, 
 created an earnest desire to have access to the Scriptures in Enghsh. This is 
 evident from, the decree of a Convocation held under archbishop Arundel in 
 1408, which enacted that no unauthorized person should translate any portion 
 of the Bible ; and that no one, without the sanction of the bishop of the dio- 
 cese or a provincial council, should read either in whole or in part any version 
 made in Wyclifie's time or since. The versions made before WychSe's were 
 sometimes in verse, and seem to have been chiefly of those parts of the Scrip- 
 ture that were read in the pubUc service of the church, such as the Psalter and 
 the Grospels. Nearly contemporary with Wychfife's, two other translations are 
 said to ha.ve appeared ;— one, it is supposed, by a foUower of his, named Purvy 
 or Pumay, preceded by a prologue, and distinguished from Wychfife's in being 
 less literal, and aimiag only to give the sense ; the other, by John de Trevisa, 
 a Cornish gentleman and vicar of Berkeley, whom Bale and Fuller represent 
 as joining with WychJFe in strong opposition to the monastic orders. EuUer's 
 Church History, Book IV. Sect. i. ; Lewis's Complete History of Translations 
 of the Bible into Enghsh, 2nd edit. ; and the Historical Account of EngHsh 
 Versions prefixed to Bagster's Hexapla. 
 
 Many of these earher versions, or parts of them, were circulated in ma- 
 nuscript among the Lollards and fio-st Protestants, before Tyndale and his 
 coadiutors undertook the task described in the text. Tyndale's was the first 
 translation of the New Testament into Enghsh direct from the Greek. He 
 commenced soon after a translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew, 
 and executed the Pentateuch and the book of Jonah. In 1535, Myles Coverdale 
 pubhshed the whole Bible in Enghsh, the translation of the Old Testament 
 being his own or adopted by him, that of the New taking Tyndale's version as 
 
38 PRBPABATOKY CHANGES UNDER HENKY VIII. 
 
 In the statute declaring the royal supremacy, provision had 
 been made for 'a reform of the canon or ecclesiastical law, 
 which beiQg of papal origin was unsuited to the present cir- 
 cumstances of the country j and a commission was appomted 
 with that view. The work, however, was not prosecuted after 
 
 its basis In 1537 Tyndale's translations completed from the version of Cover- 
 dale, the whole revised by Rogers, were pubHshed under the title of Matthew s 
 Bible This appears to have been the groundwork of the edition which appeared 
 in 1539, and is usually called Cranmer's Bible-either from havmg Cranmer s 
 preface prefixed, or because it adopted his recension of the New Testament. 
 The psalter of this version (probably by Rogers) is stJl retamed m the Bnghsh 
 Liturgy In the same year, another revision of the same text was issued by 
 Eichard Tavemer, a layman, who devoted himself to theology, and after the 
 fashion of those times, in the lack of good ministers, had a license from the 
 tine to preach. (See Puller's account of his sermon at St. Mary's m Oxford, 
 Chur6h Hist. B. IX. Sect. i. 35.) In 1541, it was brought out by authority, 
 under the title of the " Great Bible," or " Bible of the largest and greatest 
 Volume " " overseen and perused" by Tonstal, bishop of Durham, and Heath, 
 bishop of Eoohester. The versions of Tyndale, Coverdale and Matthews were 
 all first printed abroad. Meanwhile the Bnghsh exiles at Greneva had been 
 employed on another translation of the Scriptures ; and among them were 
 Myles Coverdale and John Knox. This version was first published complete 
 in 1560. A new impression, revised and corrected, was prepared in 1565 ; but 
 its immediate issue was checked, from the bishops demanding too direct a con- 
 trol over it. It was nevertheless reprinted in 1576, and again in 1579. It 
 had no pubho authority, but was much used in private, especially among those 
 who were Puritanically inclined. Archbishop Parker, dissatisfied with the ver- 
 sion commonly in use, designed a new translation ; and under his auspices, 
 what is called the " Bishops' Bible" appeared in 1568. It was only, however, 
 a revision and correction, not a fresh translation. The whole Bible was distri- 
 buted into parcels, and assigned to difiFerent hands. Sandys, bishop of Wor- 
 cester, had a chief share in the work, and the primate liimself superintended 
 the whole. The Bhemish version was made from the Vulgate by Catholic 
 exiles, and chiefly promoted by Cardinal Allen. Its publication began in 1582 
 with the New Testament, at Rheims j but it was not completed till 1610, at 
 Douay. 
 
 In the reign of James, of the two versions in use, the Bishops' Bible being 
 dishted by the Puritans, and the Genevan with its notes, being objected to by 
 the king and the bishops, steps were taken for bringing out a new translation 
 that might satisfy both parties. Some of the leading bishops were at first op- 
 posed to the scheme, but at length, in deference to the king's wishes, the task 
 was commenced. It was a result of ^the conference at Hampton Court. The 
 " Bishops' Bible" was assumed as the basis of the work. Forty-seven transla- 
 lators were appointed by the two Universities and the king ; and very fidl in- 
 structions were dehvered to them. The version was reviewed by twelve scholars, 
 selected out of the whole number of translators. Three years were employed 
 on the undertaking ; and the Bible, in its new form, appeared in 1611. Strype's 
 Lives of Cranmer (B. I. ch. xxi.), Parker (B. III. ch. vi. and xxi,), and \\Tiit- 
 gift (fol. p. 500). Lewis's History of Translations. Newoome's Historical 
 View of Enghsh Biblical Translations. Fuller's Church Hist. B. X. Sect. iii. 
 Account prefixed to Bagster's ' Hexapla,' which is very minute and full. 
 
 In 1657, a committee of Parhameut was appointed to procure a new trans- 
 
THE REFORMATION OF EDWARD VI. 39 
 
 the enactment of the Six Articles; though Cranmer repeat- 
 edly tried to convince the king, that the pontifical code 
 was no longer applicahle to the ecclesiastical condition of 
 England^. 
 
 At the close, then, of Henry's reign — notwithstanding the 
 separation from Eome, and notwithstanding the strong Pro- 
 testant tendencies of Cranmer — the Mass was still celebrated 
 in Latin ; the authorized confession of faith differed in no es- 
 sential particular from the ancient creed; and the papal canons 
 were still in force : — in other words, the Church, though it 
 had changed its head, was in doctrine, ritual and discipline 
 as E/omauist as ever and much less free. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 THE REFORMATION OF EDWARD VI. 
 
 Events took a different turn on the accession of Edward VI. 
 Indeed, the Reformation can hardly he said to have begim be- 
 fore his reign. He had been educated by Coxe, a decided 
 Reformer ; and the protector Somerset warmly espoused the 
 Protestant cause. Cranmer immediately adopted measures 
 for prosecuting his own views. He took out his episcopal 
 conmiission anew from the young king ; and in his speech at 
 the coronation, reminded his sovereign, that his right to the 
 crown was derived immediately from God, and whoUy inde- 
 pendent of all sacerdotal sanction and ceremony. In conjunc- 
 tion with Ridley, he appointed visitors, accompanied by zea- 
 lous preachers of the new faith, to perform a progress through 
 the kingdom, and inspect the different dioceses, and make 
 gradual preparation for more extensive change. This visita- 
 tion appears to have been regulated by the Articles and In- 
 junctions that had been drawn up for a similar purpose by 
 
 lation of tlie Bible. WMtlocke had the chief care of this business, and often 
 consulted with Cudworth respecting it. But the design never came to effect. 
 Lewis's History of Transl. p. 355. Biographia Britannioa, Cudworth [E]. It 
 thus appears, that the early labours of l^ndale, Coverdale and Rogers furnished 
 the basis on which our present authorized rersion rests. Dr. Geddes (quoted 
 byNewcome, p. 181) asserts from habitual comparison, that James's translators 
 have made large use of the &eneva version. 
 1 Oarwithen, I. ch. x. 
 
40 THE ETIFORMATION OF EDWARD VI. 
 
 Cromwell in the preceding reign. — Still there were many cir- 
 cumstances to check the impulse with which the Reformation 
 had proceeded in other comitries. Two elements of opinion 
 were in latent conflict throughout the land ; and restrictions 
 were laid on preaching, to prevent the universal dissensions 
 that must else have broken out. The majority of the nation 
 and the great body of the clergy were attached to the ancient 
 faith ; and though pretty well reconciled to the changes of the 
 late reign, were not very wUling to proceed further. At the 
 coronation, mass was celebrated with the elevation of the host 
 after the old usage^. Cranmer was timid and cautious, always 
 disposed to yield to public opinion. Ridley was averse from 
 the extreme views of the more ardent Reformers, and a firm 
 supporter of the episcopal discipline; so that he has been 
 called the pillar of Protestant Episcopacy^- The two "grand 
 points on which he dissented from the Church of Rome, were, 
 — ^its idolatrous abuse of the Lord's Supper, and the usurpa- 
 tion of the pope. 
 
 To promote their object of gradually inuring the people 
 to a reformation of religion, Cranmer and Ridley pubHshed 
 twelve Homilies on Christian faith and duty, to be read by 
 the curates on Srmdays — composed with the special view of 
 reconciling the moderate Romanists and Reformers, but still 
 insisting on faith as the root of all moral goodness, and on the 
 necessity of Christ's satisfaction to the divine justice to procure 
 the salvation of men. The Romanist party resisted the intro- 
 duction of these Homilies; and Gardiner objected in particular 
 to the Homily " On the Salvation of mankind by Christ only," 
 which was said to be composed by Cranmer. To the Homi- 
 lies they soon after added a Catechism which contained, not 
 in the usual form of question and answer, an exposition of the 
 Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer, the 
 doctrine of the three sacraments of Baptism, the Eucharist,' and 
 Penance, and strong warnings against the sin of idolatry. This 
 Catechism, though published with Cranmer's name in the title- 
 page, asserted more strongly the divine institution of Episco- 
 pacy, and the necessity of reviving the primitive discipline, 
 than was m unison with his language on other occasions^. It 
 
 1 Strype's Cranmer, p. 143. 2 Carwithen, I. p. 269. 
 
 oh Jw "w 'i ^^'^ Catechism is said by Strype (Life of Cranmer, B. H. 
 ch. T.) to be taken from a German ^vork, that had been previouslv turned into 
 Latm. It was diiferent from the Catechism inserted in the First SerriceBoo^ 
 
THE REFORMATION OF EDWARD VI. 41 
 
 bears traces therefore, of the influence that was stUl ascen- 
 dant. They then proceeded to the preparation of the Commu- 
 nion service, as a substitute for the ancient Mass 
 
 In all these works, their principle was avowedly conciliatory 
 and conservative They wished to retain of the ancient doc- 
 trines and formularies whatever was not inconsistent with in- 
 dispensable reform, and to shun the extremes both of the 
 bigoted Papists and of the ultra Protestants. The weight and 
 numbers of the Romanist party, rendered it necessary to make 
 some compromise with them. The most gratifying evidence 
 ot the progress of the Protestant cause was the repeal of the 
 statute of the Six Articles and of the Acts against the Lol- 
 lards , with the renewal of the injunction to set up in every 
 parish church a copy of the Bible, accompanied now by a 
 translation of Erasmus's paraphrase of the New Testament. 
 In the same year it was enacted, that in place of the ancient 
 conge d'ehre, the bishops should be appointed at once by let- 
 ters patent from the Crown, and that they should henceforth 
 exercise no jurisdiction but in the king's name^. 
 
 Their next object was to draw up a book of Common Prayer 
 and other devotional offices. That the establishment of a form 
 of public service should have preceded the pubhcation of ar- 
 ticles of faith — so contrary to the practice of the continental 
 Reformers — is a significant fact in the history of the English 
 Church. It was owing to the caution of Cranmer and the 
 judgment of Ridley, who thought it desirable to reconcile the 
 bulk of the nation to the changes that were proceeding in 
 religion, by the use of a liturgy not too widely divergent from 
 the forms they were accustomed to, before they set forth a 
 public declaration of beUef. It is said, that Cranmer had pre- 
 pared a service of a more decidedly Protestant tone, but that 
 
 of 1549, whicli, so &r as it goes, is substantially the same with that in the pre- 
 sent Prayer Book, containing only the Creed, Ten Commandments, and Lord's 
 Prayer, with the questions and answers pertaining to them — the part relative 
 to the sacraments being added for the first time by bishop Overall, to satisfy 
 the objections of the Puritans, after the conference at Hampton Court in 1604. 
 Both the Catecliisms now mentioned, were again different from a third, which 
 appears to have been sometimes confounded with them — a Latia Catechism 
 entitled, " Calechismus Christianas Disciplinse summam continens," which was 
 issued by royal authority in the last year of king Edward's reign, and after its 
 revisal by No well, Dean of St. Paul's, acquired high repute as a manual of the 
 Protestant faith estabhshed in England, during the reign of Elizabeth. Shep- 
 herd on the Common Prayer, 11. p. 269, note. 
 
 ■ Taylor's Book of Eights, p. 143. ^ Burnet, II. p. 43. 
 
43 THE REFORMATION OF EDWARD VI. 
 
 the Eomanist influence was too powerful in the committee 
 charged with the business, to admit of his procuring its adop- 
 tion. Many of the more zealous Protestants and the Calyi- 
 nistic Reformers generally (though there were exceptions) dis- 
 liked a liturgy ; and the course taken by the divines of Ed- 
 ward's time, while it conciliated numbers who were attached 
 to the old rehgion, distinguished the Church of England by 
 a broad external sign from the Reformed Churches of the 
 continent, and has had a lasting influence on its constitution 
 and character. In the composition of the Prayer Book, a 
 respect for antiquity and established usage — characteristic 
 from the first of the measures of the Anglican reformation — 
 largely predominated. A great part of it was translated from 
 the Latin of the previous CathoHc service, enriched by selec- 
 tions from the ancient Gallican, Spanish, Alexandrine and 
 Oriental liturgies. 
 
 The" English ritaal, exclusive of the occasional offices, con- 
 sists of three principal parts — the Common Prayer for morn- 
 ing and evening (the ancient' Matins and Even- Song), the 
 Litany, and the Communion. In the old Catholic ritual, there 
 were appropriate offices for the difierent canonical hours du- 
 ring the day. Out of these offices the substance of the Com- 
 mon Prayer was composed and abridged — the morning prayer 
 being taken from the Matins, Lauds and Prime — and the 
 evening, from the Vespers and Compline. Parts of both these 
 services are said by Palmer to be found in rituals that were in 
 use before and immediately after the Conquest. — Litanies are 
 characteristic of the Eastern Church, out of which they have 
 been imported into the West, where they were anciently called 
 Rogations or Supplications. They were at first employed iu 
 processions on festival days. We are told by Palmer, that an 
 ancient litany of the English Church, referred by him to the 
 eighth century, contains much the same matter, and iu the same 
 form of petition and response, as that which has been incor- 
 porated into the present Service Book. When it was adopted 
 by the Reformers, the invocations to the saints were omitted^ 
 and it was enriched and embellished by sentiments suited to 
 the altered circumstances of the times. — The eucharistic ser- 
 vice constitutes the proper liturgy, though the name has been 
 extended to every prescribed form of Common Prayer. This 
 was adopted from the Catholic office of the Mass, which was 
 thus converted into a general Communion in both kinds. It 
 
THE REFORMATION OP EDWARD VI. 43 
 
 had been drawn up, as already stated, after much deliberation, 
 betore the other parts of the public service\ and was now in- 
 corporated with the rest. 
 
 The first Service Book of Edward VI. was issued in 1549, 
 and IS distinguished from the several revisions which succeeded 
 It, by a closer approximation to the forms and language of the 
 old CathoUc Missal. It chiefly followed the Use of Sarum, 
 though the customs of York and Hereford were not over- 
 looked^ It commenced the morning service, hke the ancient 
 office for Matms, with the Lord's Prayer. The Communion 
 was described as, "The Supper of the Lord, commonly caUed 
 the Mass ;" and various directions were given about the vest- 
 ments of the priest and his attendants, which were omitted 
 m the subsequent revisions. In the rubric of this part of the 
 service, many Catholic terms remained — corporas (corporale, 
 the linen cloth of the altar, whereon the elements were placed), 
 patin and chalice ; and there was an instruction to put " a little 
 pure and clean water" to the wine. During the prayer — 
 "with thy holy spirit and word vouchsafe to bl + ess and 
 sanct +ify these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that 
 they may be unto us the body and blood of thy beloved Son 
 Jesus Christ" — the priest was to cross the elements. At the 
 same time the rubric added, " these words to be said without 
 any elevation or showing the Sacrament to the people." In 
 the prayer for the church militant, there was a thanksgiving 
 " for the wonderful grace and virtue in all the saints," and 
 "chiefly in the glorious and most blessed virgin Mary, mo- 
 ther of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God." The flesh and 
 blood of Jesus Christ were spoken of, as " holy mysteries," 
 — terms omitted in the later revisions. In the act of com- 
 munion, these words were used — " The body (blood) of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ which was given (shed) for thee, preserve 
 thy body and soul unto everlasting Ufe." 
 
 Nevertheless, strong anti-papal expressions occur in the 
 course of the service. In the litany is a prayer for deliverance 
 " from the bishop of Rome and aU his detestable enormities :" 
 
 ' See Collier's account of the preliminary discussions respecting it, II. p. 243 
 et seq. 
 
 2 Hermann's Consultation is also said to have been used. — Riddle's Eccle- 
 siastical Chronology, p. 358. Hermann was archbishop of Cologne, in the 
 middle of the sixteenth century, and submitted to the subjects of his electo- 
 rate a scheme of reformation drawn up by Bucer and Melanohthon. Schrockh, 
 Kirohengesch. seit der Keformation, I. p. 627. 
 
44 THE REFORMATION OP EDWARD VI. 
 
 and in the exhortations to frequent communion and due pre- 
 paration for it, which are said to have been adapted from the 
 missals of York and Hereford and Salisbury, and other an- 
 cient liturgies — it is strongly urged, that without repentance, 
 and reconciliation to God through the virtue of Christ's pas- 
 sion, the absolution of the priest is unavailing, and that spiri- 
 tual communion of the body and blood of Christ is dependent 
 on penitence and faith. The divided state of public opinion is 
 indicated by its being left to people's own judgment, to use 
 auricular or general confession, as they deem best, without 
 judging other men, and in following the rule of charity^. 
 
 Such were some of the peculiarities of Edward VI.'s first 
 Service Book. After its completion by the committee, it was 
 revised and approved by a majority of the two Convocations 
 of York and Canterbury. It passed the Commons ; but it 
 did not get through the Lords without a protest from several 
 lay peers, and some bishops, three of whom had been mem- 
 bers of the committee^. 
 
 In the meantime, with the progress of the Reformation at 
 home and abroad, the iafluence of foreign Protestants began 
 to be more sensibly felt in England. On all sides there was 
 a tendency towards union, to make head more effectually 
 against the awakened strength of the papal cause, now in pro- 
 cess of active organization during the protracted sittings of 
 the Council of Trent. Cranmer and Melanchthon wished to 
 have convened a meeting of the heads of the Reformed 
 Churches in England. It is said, that neither Calvin nor 
 Bullinger had any invincible objection to episcopacy in itself, 
 and would have gladly entered into closer alliance with the 
 English Church, if they could have obtained the benefit with- 
 out submitting to a papal imposition of hands^. England at 
 this time, as Holland in a later age, seems to have been a ge- 
 neral asylum for the persecuted. During the reign of Ed- 
 ward, there were Dutch, "Walloon, French, Italian, Polish 
 and even Spanish congregations of Protestants in London*. 
 Bucer, Fagius and Peter Martyr, friends of Calvin, came over 
 
 ' Keeling's lAtwgia Britaimicee. The form of communion in Edward VI.'s 
 First Book is given by Shepherd, On the Common Prayer, II. p. 236-255, 
 from Whitchurch's edition. — Compare Hippolytus and his Age, by the ChcTa- 
 lier Bunsen, III. pp. 296-303. 
 
 ^ Carwithen, I. ch. viij. 
 
 ^ Strype's Life of Parker, p. 140, Oxford edit. 1821. 
 Strype'e Cranmer, pp. 234-246. 
 
THE REFORMATION OF EDWARD VI. 45 
 
 from the continent, and lectured on divinity — the two former 
 at Cambridge, and the latter at Oxford; and it is undeniable, 
 that they mtroduced a different spirit fifom that which had 
 hitherto swayed the councils of the English Reformers. The 
 first Service Book was submitted to their criticism; and in 
 1551 Bucer published his animadversions upon it, with those 
 of Calvin and other foreign Protestants, in a long treatise, 
 wherein he strongly urged a further simplification of the Eng- 
 lish service, and the removal of many forms and expressions 
 which in their judgment stUI left it too nearly approximated 
 to the old Popish rituaP. 
 
 Under these influences the second Service Book of king 
 Edward was put forth, in which the English ritual was re- 
 duced nearly to the form in which it now exists. The expres- 
 sions most offensive to the Reformers were taken away or 
 qualified, though many things were stiU left, which they 
 rather tolerated than approved. The Exhortation, Confession 
 and Absolution were now first added, as the commencement 
 of the Morniag Prayer. According to the earlier ritual, the 
 whole service was performed in the choir, and during prayer 
 the priest, whether standing or kneehng, had his face turned 
 towards the altar. This practice was objected to by Bucer 
 and Calvin ; and it was reformed according to the usage which 
 now prevails. Bucer in the same spirit wished to unite the 
 choir with the body of the church, as the separation between 
 them seemed to imply a peculiar sanctity in the clergy and 
 an undue reverence for them — and to convert the altar into 
 a simple table standing east and west^. But this change he 
 could not completely efiect. In consequence of similar sug- 
 gestions, the habits of the clergy, which many Reformers ob- 
 jected to as having a superstitious significance — though not 
 abolished, were simplified^. 
 
 The character of a church may be considered as fairly indi- 
 cated by the light ia which it exhibits the Sacraments, and 
 thfi efiScacy which it attaches to their due administration. 
 Edward VI.^s second Service Book demands in this respect a 
 brief notice. Mr. Hallam has remarked, with the mascu- 
 line sense which distinguishes his judgments*, that there cannot 
 at bottom be more than two opinions respecting the elements 
 
 1 Collier gires the substance of Bucer's objections, II. p. 296 et se%. 
 
 2 Which would reverse the preceding position of the altar. 
 
 3 Carwithen, I. p. 339. * Constit. Hist. I. p. 124. 
 
46 THE REFORMATION OF EDWARD VI. 
 
 in the Lord's Supper; that of Zwingh, which regarded them 
 simply as commemorative symbols; and that of the Papists, 
 which supposed them converted in the sacrifice of the Mass 
 by a standing miracle into the actual body and blood of Jesus 
 Christ; and that the intermediate theories of Luther and 
 Calvin derive an appearance of support only from the use of 
 vague and obscure terms. The policy of the English Re- 
 formers, whose object was to reconcile the bulk of the nation, 
 still essentially Catholic, to as much of the Protestant doctrine 
 as they could bear — ^led them naturally to express themselves 
 on this subject with a studied indeterminateness of phrase, 
 so as to embrace in one form of Communion very opposite 
 views without mutual repulsion. Bucer who exercised much 
 influence on their deliberations respecting the Sacrament, 
 and sided with Calvin in this controversy, possessed just that 
 kind of metaphysical subtlety which fitted him for the task of 
 tracing out shadowy distinctions and combining inconsisten- 
 cies^. Bucer contended, that the words of Scripture must be 
 adhered to, but their meaning not too closely pressed ; since 
 being significant of spiritual mysteries, they are to be under- 
 stood in faith. He afirrmed, that Christ is present with us 
 in the Sacrament, not really and substantially^, (since his body 
 is in Heaven,) but as the bread and wine, exhibitive of his 
 body and blood, are received in faith^. The influence of these 
 views may be traced in the looseness and generality of the 
 language employed in the English Communion Service. The 
 bread and wine are called simply the body and blood of Christ, 
 and represented as the vehicles of a divine Hfe, when they are 
 spiritually received in .penitence and faith; but the rubric 
 distinctly repudiates the doctrine of any corporal presence of 
 Christ. The language of the Catechism respecting the ele- 
 ments, which was added in 1604, is equally vague and general. 
 — To the words of the first Service Book used in the act of 
 communicating, expressions were added in the second, signi- 
 fying that the act was commemorative — " Take and eat this 
 in remembrance that Christ died for thee." The object of 
 the commemoration is declared to be — "Christ's one obla- 
 tion of himself once offered, as a fall, perfect and sufficient 
 
 ' See the discussions between him and Peter Martyr, CoUier, 11. p. 273. 
 
 ^ Healiter et substcmtialiter. 
 ^ententiouB Sayings of Master Martin Bucer upon the Lord's Supper.— 
 Htrype s Cranmer, Append. No. xlvi. 
 
THE REFOKMATION OF EDWAED VI. 47 
 
 sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole 
 world." 
 
 Intimately connected with the Common Prayer and the 
 Communion, are the offices for Catechizing, Baptism and Con- 
 firmation. These appear to have formed origiaally parts of 
 the same office, as the acts themselves immediately followed 
 each other in the ancient church. They were exhibited in this 
 order in the first Service Book, (the materials^ of the two last 
 offices being taken from the Uses of Salisbury and York,) where 
 the rite of Baptism was preceded by an act of exorcism, and 
 the ceremonies of anointing and investiture called the chxism. 
 These relics of Catholic superstition were removed from the 
 subsequent revision, though the prayers still retain some 
 traces of the original character of the service. The funda- 
 mental idea of the office, as it now stands, is that of man's 
 being born in sin, and regenerated and united with Christ's 
 mystical body in Baptism. 
 
 Among other reforms, a committee was appointed to pre- 
 pare a new service for ordaining ministers of the Church. 
 The old usages were laid aside, and imposition of hands with 
 prayer was now adopted as the Scriptural mode. Only three 
 ecclesiastical orders — ^bishops, priests, and deacons — were re- 
 cognized; but they were required to derive their fimctions 
 from episcopal authority^. 
 
 By these labours, including the preparation of forty-two 
 Articles of Paith^, the external framework of the Church of 
 England was completed in the year 1552, when the second 
 Service Book superseded the first by Act of Parliament, 
 though several members of the Upper House temporal and 
 spiritual recorded their dissent. Uniformity was now en- 
 forced with a terrible rigour. No diversity of public worship, 
 or in the administration of the sacraments, or in the appoint- 
 ment of ministers, was tolerated. For the first transgression 
 the offender was to be imprisoned six months without bail; 
 for the second, one year; and for the third, during his whole 
 life. 
 
 1 Palmer, H. p. 174, 202. 
 
 ' N^ubShed tiU May, 1553, just before the king's death. Lamb's Hist. 
 Account of the Thirty-mne Articles, p. 3. 
 
48 FIXATION OF THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS 
 
 SECTION ly. 
 
 FIXATION OP THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS OF THE ANGLICAN 
 CHUKCH, AFTER THE ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH. 
 
 On the accession of Elizabeth, the second Service Book 
 was restored, though there were many dissentients in the 
 Lords ; and the Queen herself who had embraced the Pro- 
 testant cause more from policy than affection, did not give it 
 her cordial approval. Some passages were therefore omit- 
 ted, out of deference to these feehngs, as the petition ia the 
 litany for deliverance from the tyranny of the pope, while 
 others were remodelled according to the form of the first 
 Book. But the substance of the service continued the same. 
 The new rubric directed in general terms, that the chancels 
 of the churches, which the Reformers of Edward's reign had 
 wished to deprive of all resemblance to an altar, should remain 
 as they had been in aU times past; and the ecclesiastical 
 habits, enjoined in the first Service Book and prohibited in 
 the second, were ordered to be resumed. On the whole, the 
 alterations iatroduced at the revision in the first year of Eliza- 
 beth's reign, softened down the harsher expressions of Protes- 
 tant feeling, and tended to bring back the service a step nearer 
 to the Catholic standard. 
 
 The practice which commenced at the Reformation, of 
 reading a portion of the Communion oflBice with the Common 
 Prayer and the Litany, when there is no actual Communion, 
 affords another trace of the derivation of the Morning Service 
 of the Church from the ancient Mass. The eucharistic sacri- 
 fice with the elevation and adoration of the elements, consti- 
 tuted the most important part of the old service. By way of 
 distinction it was called the Canon} ^ This it was found im- 
 practicable to replace every Sunday by an actual distribution of 
 the bread and wine to communicants ; for which however the 
 solitary communion of the priest was no longer admitted as a 
 substitute. The result was the retention of only the intro- 
 ductory and concluding portions of the Communion office : 
 the place once occupied by the sacrificial act, was on ordinary 
 occasions left a blank, after a precedent of the Middle Ages, 
 where the Mass with a similar omission was called Missa Sicca 
 or Missa Nautica^. Bishop Hall has very fairly stated the 
 fact as to the composition of the Liturgy, in his observation, 
 
 ' Canon Missce.—D\i. Cange, G-lossar. in voc. 2 Palmer, 11. p. 164. 
 
OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 49 
 
 that "the English Prayer-book was not taken out of the 
 Mass, but tha,t the Mass was thrust out of the Prayer-book." 
 James I. in his coarse way, while he was yet a zealous Pres- 
 byterian, expressed nearly the same idea when he said, that 
 " the Liturgy was an evil-said Mass in English without the 
 liftings." The last alterations in the Book of Common Prayer, 
 reducing it to its present form, were made after the Re- 
 storation, as the result of the conference which Charles II. 
 had appointed between a select number of Episcopalian and 
 Presbyterian divines. Little was to be expected from the 
 temper in which the parties met. The proposals of the Pres- 
 byterians were abruptly rejected ; and the changes introduced, 
 mostly at the suggestion of High Churchmen, seemed pur- 
 posely framed, as bishop Burnet agrees with Baxter in de- 
 claring— -rather to prevent than facilitate any union of the 
 two bodies^. The peculiar character which the Liturgy took 
 ia the first age of the Reformation, has therefore subsisted 
 unaltered to the present day^. 
 
 » Neal, II. p. 613. 
 
 2 The English Prayer Book has passed through the following revisions. Its 
 basis, aa stated in the text, was the use of Sarmn, — the most widely diffused 
 formulary of the old English Cathoho Bitual. From this was taken in 1549, 
 with various omissions and additions, the First Service Book of Edward VI. 
 This was followed in 1552, by the Second. The revision under Elizabeth oc- 
 curred in 1559, when the prayers for the sovereign and the clergy — taken, it is 
 said, from the Sacrameutary of Gh-egory the Great (Carvrithen, II.), were in- 
 serted. Some slight alterations were introduced by order of James I. in 1604, 
 as one of the results of the conference at Hampton Court. In 1662, according 
 to archbishop Tenison, about six hundred small alterations and additions were 
 made, but not of a kind to remove the scruples of the Presbyterians. At the 
 same time some fresh prayers were added, as those for the 30th of January and 
 the 29th of May, forms to be used at sea, and a new office for the administration 
 of baptism to adults. (Neal, II. ch. vi.) 
 
 A high-churchman, well qualified to give an opinion — the late Alexander 
 Knox — has observed, that these changes, minute and unimportant as they ap- 
 pear, sometimes only affecting the rubrics, have silently, and as it were by 
 stealth, imparted to the Liturgy, and especially to the Communion Service, a 
 more Catholic tone than they possessed previous to this revision ; and that the 
 effect is in a great measure due to the closer study of the Prayer Book by the 
 Episcopalian clergy during their depression, their deeper insight into its pecu- 
 liar character, and their familiar acquaintance with the early fathers of the 
 Church, from whom so large a portion of its materials has been derived. (Re- 
 mains, vol. i. pp. 59, 66.) 
 
 When the question of a Comprehension was under consideration in the reign 
 of William III., some further amendments of the Liturgy were proposed, which- 
 fell to the ground with the Comprehension itself. 
 
 In 1637 a revision of the Liturgy was prepared by Laud, at the command of 
 Charles I., for the use of the Scottish Church.. This Liturgy, the basis of that 
 
 I) 
 
50 FIXATION OF THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS 
 
 Whatever objections may be taken to the Liturgy as a whole, 
 the excellence of particular parts cannot be disputed. Many 
 of its prayers and collects are surpassingly beautifulj models 
 of devotional composition, embodying some grand and holy 
 thought, in diction venerable from its antique simplicity, and 
 steeped in the richest spiritual imction. The deep religious 
 convictions of the early Reformers had a marked effect on 
 their language. It has nothing hollow and artificial. It lies 
 close, as it were, to the thoughts which it utters, and seems 
 the natural overflow of a full soul. All that has come to us 
 from them, bears this character. Even when they took the 
 material from another language, it underwent a change, and 
 appeared to imbibe an element of new life in passing through 
 their minds^; as every one must feel who has compared 
 the richness and deep-toned pathos of many passages in the 
 
 still in use among the Scottish Episcopalians, is said to bear more resemblance, 
 especially in the office of the Eucharist, to the First, than to the Second, Ser- 
 vice Book of Edward VI. It is deserving of notice, that the revisions of 1604 
 and of 1637 were put forth by royal proclamation, without any reference to the 
 resolutions of Parfiament. The temper of the two first Stuarts is conspicuous 
 in the imperious style of both these proclamations. "We will not give way," 
 says James, " to any to presume, that our own judgment, having determined in 
 a matter of this weight, shall be swayed to alteration by the Mvolous sugges- 
 tions of any light spirit." His son adopts a still more insolent tone to the 
 Scottish authorities, who were ordered to announce the new Liturgy at the 
 market-crosses and other public places throughout the realm : — " Our will is, 
 and we charge you straitly and command," — " that our subjects conform them- 
 selves to the said public form of worship, which is the only form which we 
 (having taken the counsel of om- clergy) think fit to be used in Grod's public 
 worship in this our kingdom." — These several revisions of the Liturgy have 
 been recently collected and published together, in a work by the Bev. William 
 Zeehng, entitled, 'Liturgiee Britannicse' (2ud edition, 1851), where for the 
 sake of readier comparison, they are arranged in parallel columns. The two 
 Service Books and other documents relating to the Keformation of Edward VI., 
 form one of the volumes issued by the Parker Society, which has been edited by 
 the E«v. J. Ketley, 1844. Compare the ' KeUquise Liturgies,' aud the ' Frag- 
 menta Litm-gica,' collected by the Kev. Peter Hall of Bath ; also Bunsen's Hip- 
 polytus, III. pp. 310-330, with Appendix, note D. During the conference at 
 the Savoy in 1662, Baxter ofiered for consideration a reformed Liturgy, which 
 he had drawn up for the use of those who objected to the old one. It is given 
 at the end of the first volume of Calamy's Abridgment. It is richly scriptural 
 in its phraseology, and breathes a deep and fervent devotion ; but its long un- 
 broken addresses, so different from the short prayers, the varied forms, and fre- 
 quently interposed responses, of the Anghcau Service Book, have so marked a 
 Puritan character, that it is not sm-prising, it found little favour with those 
 who had formed their taste on the received model, and were resolved on Uni- 
 formity. 
 
 ' No one can be insensible to a certain quaint beauty in the ecclesiastical 
 Latmity. Yet the knguage of the Bomans, so practical and business-like, so 
 
OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 51 
 
 Common Prayer with the cold, hard meagreness of the ori- 
 ginal Latin. 
 
 _ An important element in the constitution of a Church is 
 Its government and discipline. In England, the ancient 
 framework of the Catholic hierarchy was not broken up at 
 the Reformation. The bishops still exercised jurisdiction in 
 their respective dioceses, and retained their seats in the House 
 of Lords ; and the Convocation which represented in its two 
 Houses the whole body of the clergy, was regularly sum- 
 moned with every session of Parliament. But the laws by 
 which the Church had been governed, required essential mo- 
 difications, after it had ceased to be connected with Eome, 
 and become an independent national communion. In the 
 reign of Edward VI. under an Act of Parliament passed in 
 1549^, a commission was appointed, consisting of divines, 
 canonists and common lawyers, to draw up a body of eccle- 
 siastical laws, in prosecution of a design which had already 
 been conceived under Henry VIII. Cranmer was very active 
 in this undertaking ; but the king died before the work could 
 receive his confirmation, and the project was never revived. 
 This compilation, which is still extant, was framed after the 
 model of the Pandects of Justinian. They who have examined 
 it, affirm, that it discovers more of a sacerdotal tendency than 
 
 admirably feshioned to tke purposes of war, and polities, and jurisprudence, 
 never seems an adequate vehicle of those vast and deep ideas of the spiritual, 
 which enter into the very essence of Christianity. It is one proof of the wonder- 
 ful power of this rehgion, that it should have succeeded to such a degree in 
 subduing so refractory an instrument to its own ends, and adapting to the pas- 
 sionate strains of self-reproach and intense devotion, the abrupt and imperious 
 speech of a nation of soldiers. It is impossible to read a page of the Confessions 
 of Augustine, whose earnest spirit has left such deep traces on the language of 
 the whole Western Church, without feeling how great was the change which 
 had taken place since the time of Tacitus and Seneca ; and that, while the mass 
 of individual words continues nearly the same, their collocation and use imply 
 the presence of a new organic agency which had revolutionized the old world of 
 thought, and created a moral scenery altogether different from that with which 
 those great writers were familiar. Still, even in the Iiatin of Augustine, the 
 genius of Christianity seems to live a sort of exHe and captive ; whereas in the 
 German languages, it meets the element designed for it by providence, and finds 
 a congenial resting-place and home. When the old Mass-book was transformed 
 into the English Liturgy, the spiritual element was hberated, and assumed its 
 natural utterance. — On the capacity of Latin for theological and ecclesiastical 
 purposes, see the preface to Woodham's edition of the Apologeticus of Tertul- 
 Han, xxii. xxiii. 
 
 ^ The Commission was not actually nominated till 1551. A preceding Act 
 under Henry VIII. had been passed in 1543. Lamb's Historical Account of 
 the Thirty-nine Articles, p. 2. 
 
 D 2 
 
52 FIXATION OF THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS 
 
 might have been expected from the known principles of Cran- 
 mer, and that it retains much of the substance, and more of 
 the spirit, of the pontifical law^. In 1565, archbishop Parker 
 issued under the Queen's sanction a body of Articles and Or- 
 dinances for regulating the discipline of the clergy, many of 
 whom had scruples about the ceremonies and habits of the 
 Church. — In 1604, a book of Canons which had been collected 
 by Bancroft, bishop of London, out of the Articles, Injunc- 
 tions, and Synodical Acts of the reigns of Edward and Eliza- 
 beth, was passed by both Houses of Convocation and after- 
 wards ratified by the King's letters patent. The last attempt 
 to compile a body of laws for the government of the Church, 
 was ia 1640, on the very eve of the civil war, when Laud 
 produced in Convocation a commission under the Great Seal 
 for altering the old canons and framing new. These canons 
 were of a very arbitrary character,' and became exceedingly 
 obnoxious, especially from the oath enjoined in them against 
 all innovations in. the doctrine and discipline of the Church, 
 which, from the looseness of its wording, has acquired the 
 name of the et cater a oath^. 
 
 It is remarkable, that none of these canons were ever con- 
 firmed by Parliament ; so that, although they have still a kind 
 of authority founded on usage, and regulate the practice of 
 the ecclesia|tical courts, they have no force in opposition to 
 statute and common law^. The Long Parliament denied the 
 power of Convocation to frame laws even in matters of doc- 
 trine and discipline, without the consent of the civil legisla- 
 ture. Originally the two Houses of Convocation formed a 
 sort of distinct estate in the realm, sitting side by side with 
 Parliament, granting subsidies to the Crown, and enacting 
 laws for the government of the Church. These high prero- 
 gatives were gradually restrained by the royal supremacy, by 
 acts of Parliament, and by doctrines established in the courts 
 of common law. It was ruled at last, that the clergj^ could 
 not even tax themselves without parliamentary sanction;, and 
 in the reign of Charles II. the practice of ecclesiastical taxa- 
 
 ' Carwithen, I, x. It was entitled " Reformatio Legmn Ecolesiasticai-um," 
 and put into very correct and elegant Latin by Dr. Haddon, Vnivei-sity orator 
 of Cambridge, assisted by Sir John Oheke. Bm-net (II. p. 196-202) and Col- 
 lier (II. p. 326-333) have given an abstract of its contents. 
 
 2 ColUer, II. p. 793. 
 
 3 See Sir Michael Poster's Examination of the Scheme of Church Power laid 
 down in bishop Gidson's Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglican!, etc. 
 
OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 53 
 
 tion silently expired. Since that time, though Convocation 
 has frequently assembled, its functions have been few and un- 
 important. Its last meeting for business was ia 1717. During 
 the reign of Anne, urged on by the high Tory and Jacobite 
 party, it was mischievously active in attempts to revoke the 
 scanty measure of Toleration conceded at the Eevolution, and 
 to crush every manifestation of the spirit of religious freedomi. 
 The extravagant pretensions advanced by Convocation in 
 the reigns of the first James and Charles, and the efibrts of 
 the clergy to acquire an independent jurisdiction, have justly 
 awakened the jealousy, and called forth the resistance^ of 
 Parliament and the common lawyers. One effect of this 
 conflict has been, to prevent the Church from establishing 
 such a code of discipline, in harmony with the principles of 
 our mixed constitution, as might have conduced to internal 
 order and spiritual efficiency. Considering its wealth, its in- 
 fluence, and its manifold relations to society, the Church of 
 England is confessedly deficient in a well-balanced power_ of 
 self-government. Since the Revolution, its ancient discipline 
 has gone into disuse ; and the canons could not be generally 
 put in force, without coming into collision with the now uni- 
 versally admitted principles of civil and religious liberty. 
 How far such incompetency to the ends of a spiritual insti- 
 tution, does not necessarily result from the conditions of its 
 existing relations to the State, especially when combined with 
 a toleration of Dissenters, is a question worthy of considera- 
 tion. Happily for the peace and freedom of society, the 
 Church cannot act in its corporate capacity without the sanc- 
 tion of Parliament. Parliament has a control over all its 
 movements. It is the subject of the State, made over and 
 bound to it, and holding all its endowments on condition of 
 this subjection. It is disabled for much spiritual good by the 
 very riches and dignities of its secular connection. Some of 
 its best and wisest prelates have deplored this result. Still 
 further to limit its usefulness, what is just and salutary in 
 episcopal control, is impaired by the efiects of state and pri- 
 vate patronage^. 
 
 1 Hallam, Constit. Hist. I. 413, 439 ; III. 324-331. Within the last year 
 or two Convocation has ominously resumed its pretensions ; but it cannot be 
 supposed, that in the middle of the nineteenth century, the laity of the Church 
 of England wiU submit, even in ecclesiastical matters, to the exclusive legislation 
 of the clergy, 
 
 2 See bishop Burnet's Eeflections at the close of the History of his own Times. 
 
54 FIXATION OF THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS 
 
 The theology of the Church, as expressed in its Articles and 
 HomilieSj has yet to be noticed. From the commencement 
 of the Eeformation, England showed a fixed purpose to main- 
 tain the independence of her national position. In this spirit 
 she declined adopting any of the foreign confessions. By an 
 order of Edward VI. and his council, Cranmer and Ridley, 
 assisted by Bucer, Peter Martyr and Cox, drew up forty-two 
 articles declaratory of the faith of the Reformed Church of 
 England. These articles were submitted to the revision of 
 Grindal and Knox, two of the most popular preachers and 
 most zealous Protestants of the time, and were put forth by 
 royal authority a few weeks only before the king died. — These 
 forty-two articles were the basis of the thirty-nine promul- 
 gated in the reign of Elizabeth^. The plain language of the 
 articles themselves, no less than the known principles of the 
 parties engaged in framing them, are conclusive evidence of 
 the Calvinistic spirit in which they were conceived. In the 
 Convocation of 1562, the thirty -rune Articles were finally 
 settled. Parker and Jewel had the chief hand in preparing 
 them. They difier from the forty-two, principally in the use 
 of more temperate language in the denial of the corporal pre- 
 sence, with a view to conciliate the Romanists and please the 
 Queen; and in the omission of some particulars respecting 
 heresies which had ceased to excite apprehension. In 1571, 
 the doctriaal Articles were confirmed, and subscription to 
 them made imperative on all ecclesiastical persons, by parUa- 
 mentary statute. There is no increase of Protestant feeling 
 in these thu-ty-nine Articles ; that had attained its maximum 
 in the symbol of Edward VI. ; and what remains, is rather 
 softened down from the more decided expression of it in the 
 forty-two. Still these Articles, notwithstanding some modify- 
 ing phrases, are in their spirit and intention essentially Cal\in- 
 istic, and utter the sentiments which were almost universal 
 among the prominent Reformers of the age. The chief points 
 of Calvinism are set forth very plainly in the ninth, tenth, 
 thirteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth articles. The two 
 articles on the Sacraments agree in the main with the doc- 
 
 ' The forty-two articles, compared with the thirty-nine, are printed by Bur- 
 net, Hist. Eeform. Collection of Eecords, P. II. B. I. No. 55. They were 
 printed for the first time in Latin and English in tha Appendix to a Catechism, 
 1553. This Catechism is exceedingly rare. Lamb, on the Thirty-nine Arti- 
 cles, p. 7. 
 
OF THE ANGLICAN CHTJRCH. 55 
 
 trine of the Book of Common Prayer^ though conceived in 
 cautious and general terms. The first clause of the twentieth 
 article respecting the Church's power to decree rites and cere- 
 monies, and its authority in controversies of faith, was exceed- 
 ingly offensive to the Puritans, as contradicting their funda- 
 mental principle of the absolute sufiiciency of Scripture. In 
 the reign of Charles I., Burton, a clergyman of that party, 
 declared the clause was not to be found in the original draught 
 of the Articles, and charged Laud and the other prelates, his 
 contemporaries, with having surreptitiously inserted it. Laud 
 retaliated on his accusers, that they had dishonestly omitted 
 it, affirming that it was as great a crime to leave out, as to 
 put in. The question was left in a very dubious and unsatis- 
 factory state, assertion and denial being dictated on both sides 
 more by party feehng than by consideration of evidence. 
 Selden, no favourer of the Church, declared in his Table Talk, 
 that it was most certain, the disputed words were in the Book 
 of Ajticles that was confirmed, though in some editions they 
 had been left out. On the other hand, Mocket, chaplain to 
 archbishop Abbot, who was Puritanically inclined, omitted 
 them in the Latin translation of the Articles which was pub- 
 lished in 1617. What is certain is, that from the time of 
 Laud, they were introduced into all the authorized copies of 
 the Thirty-nine Articles i. 
 
 • Puller (B. IX. S. i. 56-59) speaks doubtfully about this clause, 'leaving it 
 to more cunning state-arithmeticians to decide, whether the Bishops were 
 faulty in their addition or their opposites in s'ubtractton,.' Collier (II. p. 486- 
 90) who goes into the question with his customary clearness and precision, de- 
 cides unhesitatingly in favour of the authenticity of the disputed words. The 
 real facts of the case have been brought to light by Dr. Lamb, late Master of 
 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in his ' Historical Account of the Thirty- 
 nine Articles.' On the accession of Elizabeth, Parker revised the forty-two 
 Articles of Edward TI., and added to the thirty-fourth a clause affirming the 
 power of a particular or national church to make alterations in rites and cere- 
 monies, which had been established by human authority, provided such 
 changes conduced to edification. This revision he submitted to the Convoca- 
 tion of 1562, when the Articles were reduced to thirty-nine. In the following 
 year they were printed by the Queen's authority, in Latin by Eeginald Wolfe, 
 and in EngHsh by Jugg and Cawood. When the articles came under discus- 
 sion of Parliament in 1571, the English copy printed in 1563, was adopted ; 
 and in that same year, they were printed in Latin by Day, and a second time 
 in English by Jugg and Cawood. In the articles passed in the Convocation of 
 1562, Parker's clause about rites and ceremonies is retained, but not the words 
 which now stand at the head of the twentieth article. These first appear in 
 Wolfe's Latin edition of 1563. The explanation is probably this. When the 
 articles had been adopted in the Convocation of 1562, a fair copy was made of 
 them and transmitted to the Queen, who kept them by her a twelvemonth ; 
 
56 FIXATION or THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS 
 
 Two works appeared at the same time with the Articles, 
 designed as a recommendation and exposition of them j 
 Jewel's Apology for the Church of England^, which was un- 
 dertaken at the suggestion of archbishop Parker, and pub- 
 lished at the Queen's command and expense; and the second 
 Book of Homilies, which has been ascribed, though its au- 
 thorship is not certain^, to the joint pens of Cranmer, Ridley, 
 and Latimer. The tone of both these productions is very 
 similar, and plainly shows, they were written under the same 
 influence and for a common object. The Calvinism of their 
 theology is subdued, and chiefly brought out in contrast with 
 the errors of the Papal system. Their controversy is with 
 Eoman Catholics, not with Puritans, who do not seem to have 
 been objects of any solicitude to the writers. Both are de- 
 signed to vindicate the position of the Church of England as 
 a purified and iadependent national communion, and to justify 
 its secession from idolatrous Rome; the Book of Homilies 
 exhibiting the practical, and the Apology the argumentative, 
 
 and it must have been at her suggestion, that the words in question were in- 
 serted in the Latin edition. It is here expressly stated, that the articles had 
 been carefully read and examined by the Queen herself, a statement which oc- 
 curs in no other edition. Under similar influence, the twenty-ninth article is 
 omitted both in the Enghsh and the Latin copies printed before 1571. Dr. 
 Lamb thus sums up the evidence about the introductory clause of the twentieth 
 Article. It is not found : (1) in the Latin MS. signed in the Convocation of 
 1562 ; (2) in the English editions of Jugg and Cawood, 1563 ; (3) in the Eng- 
 lish MS. signed in the Convocation of 1571 ; (4) in the Latin edition of Day, 
 and the EngKsh edition of Jugg and Cawood, both published under the direc- 
 tion of Jewel in 1571. It is found (1) in the Latin edition of Wolfe, 1563 ; (2) 
 in later Enghsh editions occasionally from 1571 tiH the time of Laud. Laud 
 finding it in Wolfe's edition, inserted it in the authorized copies, and hindered 
 the pubHoation ef the Articles without it. Bishop Burnet (Exposition of the 
 Articles, Introd. p. 16) expresses his full behef, that the Latin and English 
 MSS. deposited by archbishop Barter in Corpus Christi CoU. (the same that have 
 now been printed by Dr. Lamb) were authentic Acts of the Convocations of 1562 
 and 1571. The authenticity of this twentieth article was attacked at the be- 
 ginning of the last century, by the celebrated Freethinker, Anthony Coffins, 
 first in a couple of pamphlets entitled ' Briestcraft in Berfection,' and afterwards 
 in his ' Historical and Critical Essay on the Thirty-nine Articles.' Biographia 
 Britannica, Coffins [E] and [K]. 
 
 ^ Jewel's doctrine respecting the Sacraments, is that of the Articles and the 
 Liturgy, which in this point closely sympathize. We are not to regard them 
 as mere ceremonies ; Christ is resdly present in them ; "in baptismo, ut eum 
 induamus ; in coend, ut eum fide et spiritu comedamus, et de ejus came et san- 
 guine habeamus vitam seternam." — p. 9. The distinctive element of Protes- 
 tantism is indicated in the following proposition : " fides nostra mortem et 
 crucem Christi nobis applicat, non actio sacrificuh." — p. 10. Jeweffi Oper. 
 G-enevfe, 1585. fol. Apologia Eoolesise Anghcanse. 
 
 2 Fuller, Book IX. 63. Carwithen's Hist, of the Church of England, vol. ii. 
 
OF THE ANGLICAN CHUECH. 57 
 
 side of the question. Both are written with caution and mo- 
 deratiouj rather than with enthusiasm ; but the racy, vigorous 
 English of the one, and the clear and elegant Latinity of the 
 other, leave a favourable impression of the literary accomplish- 
 ments of the first race of English Reformers. The Homilies 
 and Apology were pubhshed together during the last session 
 of the Council of Trent^. 
 
 ' Previous to the settlement of the Thirty-nine Articles, a provisional form 
 of hehef was set forth by the bishops in eleven articles, at the beginning of the 
 Queen's reign, vrhich the clergy were required to read from their pulpits, on 
 taking possession of their cures, and afterwards twice every year. CoUier, II. 
 p. 463. By the statute of 1571, it is observable, that the clergy "are required 
 to declare their assent to all the Articles which (mly contain the confession of 
 the true Christian faith, and the doctrine of the Holy Sacraments," the word 
 onh) seeming to exclude from this obligation, the Articles relatiag to the Homi- 
 lies and Ordinal, and the Church's power to decree rites and ceremonies, and 
 to decide in controversies of faith ; — although in the canons passed by Convo- 
 cation in the same year, the clergy are bound absolutely to subscribe aU the 
 Articles as a condition of retaining their preferments and cures. These facts 
 indicate a disagreement between the views of ParHament and of Convocation, 
 and betray the influence of a strong Puritanical feeling in the former assembly. 
 Collier, II. 529, 30. Indeed, it is well known, that the terms of the statute 
 were the occasion of a sharp altercation between archbishop Parker and Sir 
 Peter Wentworth, who conferred with his Grace during the progress of the bill, 
 and who told him plainly, the House would not aUow the bishops to decide for 
 them what was agreeable to the Word of God; "for that," said he, "were to 
 make you popes : make you popes who Hst, for we wiU make you none." In 
 the Commons, the bill ran originally thus : "All the Articles which contain," 
 it being supposed that the limitation would in this form be sufficiently distinci 
 and express ; but the Lords, in their amendments, introduced the word onh), to 
 remove aU doubt, though this addition combines awkwardly vrith the preceding 
 all. It is certain, therefore, that the Parhamentary confirmation was limited 
 to the doctrinal articles. Nevertheless, in the Canons of 1604, the 36th re- 
 quires aU ecclesiastical persons to subscribe Three Articles, of which one con- 
 tains a declaration, that the whole of the Thirty-nine Articles are agreeable to 
 the Word of God. So that Parliament ratified the Articles with a restriction^ 
 while the Canons enforced the subscription of " all and every the Articles, being 
 in niimber Nine-and-Thirty," absohdeh/. Thus we see, singularly enough, the 
 hellmn intestinum between Parhament and the Canonists penetrating to the 
 very foundations of our ecclesiastical establishment. As might be expected, 
 parties according to their principles, varied in their interpretation of the extent 
 of the subscription demanded : the Puritans taking it in the parhamentary 
 sense, and at a later period Hoadly and archdeacon Blackbume (in his Confes- 
 sional) contending for the same hberal construction ; the High-churchmen, on 
 the contrary, admitting no distinction between the doctrinal and other articles, 
 and insisting on an unqualified assent to all. In practice, subscription has 
 always been understood to embrace,, in whatever sense, the whole of the Arti- 
 cles. Sir Edward Coke argued, that even the parliamentary statute must be so 
 interpreted. Selden, in his Table Talk (Articles), after observing, that, by the 
 original Act of Parliament, ministers were bound only to subscribe those Arti- 
 cles which contain matter of faith etc., adds — " but latterly, aU were sub- 
 scribed." ChiUingworth on his final acceptance of preferment, signed the 
 
 D 3 
 
58 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 SECTION V. 
 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OP THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 
 
 Such are the elements which enter into the composition of 
 the Church of England, as exhibited separately in its Prayer 
 Book, its Discipline, and its Articles. It remains to inquire, 
 what has been their operation, combined as an organic whole, 
 and viewed in the course of their historical development. 
 How shall we express the individuality which has marked the 
 Anglican hierarchy, since it acquired a fixed character and sub- 
 sistence, and which still distinguishes it from other religious 
 societies ? — If I mistake not, we find its distinctive attributes 
 in a certain assumption of national independence and ascen- 
 dency, kept in check by the power of the State and often 
 greatly neutralized by the influence of enlightened and mode- 
 rate men within its pale, but always perceptibly manifesting 
 itself when circumstances throw it back on its inherent ten- 
 dencies and allow it free scope for action ; in a spirit of domi- 
 nation and exclusiveness ; in a haughty and aristocratical 
 bearing, fitly represented by its episcopal constitution, and 
 betraying equal impatience of the foreign jurisdiction of the 
 Pope and of democratic pretensions at home. Herein we dis- 
 cover the reason of its reluctance to acknowledge the Protes- 
 tant Churches of the Continent, and of its instinctive aversion 
 from the popular elements which entered so laj-gely into the 
 original constitution of those Churches. These tendencies may 
 be ascribed in part to the circumstances of a wealthy and pow- 
 erful establishment ; but they have a deeper source in the spirit 
 of the Prayer Book itself, and in the very nature of episcopal 
 government ; for they do not entirely cease among the Epis- 
 copalians of Scotland and the United States, where the pecu- 
 liar influences of an establishment are wanting. The Church 
 of England displays the pride of an ancient lineage, and has 
 many sympathies with the recollections of feudalism. She 
 claims a high descent and the prescription of a long-estabUshed 
 title. Exulting, in the spirit of the old baronial independence, 
 
 Three Articles required by the 36th Canon of 1604: and in the book which 
 conta,ms his subscription his name appears at the foot of these and the accom- 
 panying words- Ommbus hisoe ai-ticuUs et singuHs in iisdem contentis volens 
 et ex ammo subscnbo," etc. It is hnportant to notice this as Hoadlv 1, J 
 demed the fact. Collier, II. 530, Colssional, 2nd :kTvrot^V^l^ 
 ^. with Bote ; Des Maizeaux, Historical and Critical Account of the Life mTd 
 Wntmgs of ChiUmgworth, p. 64, note Q. and p. 265, note PP. 
 
OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 59 
 
 at the thought of having cast ofif a foreign yoke and purged 
 herself free from the corruptions of Popery^ she still holds her- 
 self aloof with an air of conscious superiority, from the sects 
 of more recent origin which have rapidly shot up into conse- 
 quence at her side. She takes her stand on the principle of 
 authority. Although appealing to Scripture in her funda- 
 mental charter, for her right to exist, she nevertheless autho- 
 ritatively defines the sense of Scripture, and in her practice 
 forbids any one to dispute it. 
 
 These feelings, so characteristic of Anglicanism, (a term 
 which conveniently expresses the predominant spirit or genius 
 of the English Church,) did not originate with the Reforma- 
 tion. The idea of a national hierarchy, one and independent, 
 early took a strong hold of the English mind. Before the 
 popular outbreak of Luther, the bishops of western Christen- 
 dom betrayed a decided purpose to resist the usurpations of 
 their brother of Rome and render him amenable to a general 
 council : and in this conflict of the aristocratical with the 
 monarchical principle, which Mr. Hallam has aptly desig- 
 nated the Whiggism of the Catholic Church, the English 
 hierarchy was not backward to participate. At the Council 
 of Constance in the beginning of the fifteenth century, we 
 find its representatives contending zealously for their na- 
 tional rights^. The regularity with which Convocation held 
 its sessions along with Parliament, and the right of the bi- 
 shops and mitred abbots to sit in the upper House with 
 the lay peers, tended sUently to strengthen the feeling, that 
 the Church was an essential part of the hereditary nationalty, 
 interwoven inseparably with the other branches of the consti- 
 tution. In the beginning of Henry Vlllth's reign, before 
 Cranmer and Cromwell came on the scene, Wolsey designed 
 a general reformation of the monks and clergy in both pro- 
 vinces, and was strenuously supported in this purpose by Fox, 
 bishop of Winchester^. Archbishop Warham, the patron of 
 Erasmus, though never suspected of a leaning to Protestan- 
 tism, but charged, on the contrary, with undue severity to the 
 LoUards, was himself not indisposed to acknowledge the king's 
 supremacy and abate the pretensions of the bishop of Rome^. 
 
 1 HaUam'a Middle Ages, ch. vii. _ , ^ ^, , ttt , a. . nj- 
 
 2 " Cleri, et prfficipufe Monaohiffl." T'ox's Letter to Wolsey. Strype s Memo- 
 rials, Tol. T. Kecords and Originals, No. S, 
 
 3 Strype's Cranmer, fol. p. 15. 
 
60 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 
 
 These circumstances show, that from the heginning of the 
 sixteenth century and previously, there was a feehng m Eng- 
 land not adverse to a renunciation of papal authority, ana 
 friendly to a reform of religious institutions at home, lias 
 feeUng must not be confounded with the native LoUardism, or 
 with the Protestantism imported from Germany ; although the 
 three currents might flow for a time in one channel, while tne 
 direct struggle with popery was in progress. But it was no 
 doubt one cause, aided by less worthy motivesi, ^hich induced 
 the nobiUty and gentry to acquiesce so patiently m the changes 
 introduced by Henry VIII., and at the same time made it so 
 difiacult for Cranmer and Ridley to carry them beyond it : 
 and its deep, latent influence must always be considered, m 
 accounting for the peculiar character of the English Reforma- 
 tion^ Had Mary's reign, with a restoration of the old religion, 
 not intervened, it seems probable, there might have been a less 
 dtecided assertion of Protestantism on the accession of Eliza- 
 beth. Those who might have accommodated themselves to 
 the unbroken ascendency of a Protestant government, which 
 would have found its interest in conciliating them, having 
 accepted preferment under a catholic Sovereign, could not 
 for shame, in the sight of the whole world, again renounce 
 their profession. The refusal of aU Mary's bishops, with one 
 exception, to take the oaths of Supremacy and Uniformity, 
 and their consequent ejectment from the establishment, called 
 at once into action a strong antagonistic power, against which 
 the friends of the Church thought it wise to provide, by sur- 
 rounding her with legal defences and infusing a strong anti- 
 papal element into her articles and constitution. But the 
 mass of the people were not sufficiently awakened and in- 
 structed, to feel any deep interest in the question. Out of 
 
 ' The growth, of luxury and increased expense of living whetted the appetite 
 for ecclesiastical spoliation. A change was taking place in the tastes and habits 
 of the aristocracy, which shows itself in a general raising of rents, an inclosure of 
 common lands, and a proportionate depression of the ancient yeomanry. See 
 an interesting chapter in Strype's Memorials, Tol. ui. pp. 306-333. 
 
 2 Fuller, a moderate Churchman (Church Hist. Book V. Sect. iii. 25-32), 
 assigns the three following justifications of the English Reformation : (1.) the 
 gross corruptions and abuses of Popery ; (2.) the due exercise of the rights of a 
 national Church by the King, with the advice and assistance of Convocation 
 and Parhament, a free and general council being under the circumstances impos- 
 sible ; (8.) the moderation of receding from Rome only in things corrupt and 
 false. Jewel has taken the same ground. Apolog. Ecdes. Anghcan. edit. 
 Genev. fol. pp. 35-37. 
 
ERASTIAN AND CALVINISTIC PERIOD. 61 
 
 9400 of the inferior clergy^ only 177 are said to have thrown 
 up their livings; and except in the secluded districts of the 
 kingdom, especially Lancashire, the CathoUc laity at the com- 
 mencement of EHzaheth's reign, very generally conformed to 
 the established worship i- 
 
 Composed of divers elements, and passing through many 
 revolutions of pohtical affairs, the English Church does not 
 present the same external phasis at every period of its history ; 
 but on closer inspection, we may always discover, sometimes 
 more latent, sometimes more fully developed, the unchanged 
 operation of its inherent principles. Modifications of its out- 
 ward character, resulting from causes which I shall briefly 
 notice, may be traced in each of the four following periods : 
 (1) from the elevation of Cranmer to the primacy, tiU the 
 close of Elizabeth's reign ; (2) during the entire dynasty of 
 the Stuarts; (3) from the Revolution till the latter end of 
 the last century ; (4) from the decline of the old Low Church 
 doctrines, to the present time. 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 ERASTIAN AND CALVINISTIC PERIOD. 
 
 The spirit of a religious institution may be inferred from 
 two circumstances; the theology actually taught by it, and 
 its conception of its relation to the State. The first age of 
 the English Reformed Church was Calvinistic in its theology, 
 and Erastian in its principles of ecclesiastical government. If 
 the precise doctrinal views of Cranmer and Ridley may be 
 open to question, there can be no doubt, that the exiles who 
 returned home on the death of Mary, and possessed the ascen- 
 dant influence at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, and fur- 
 nished her earliest bishops, brought back with them a strong 
 attachment to the Genevan theology^ In accordance with 
 this system the Articles had been framed ; and the Anglican 
 doctrine of the Lord's Supper, though designed to embrace m 
 
 ' Strype's Annals, I. p. 106 ; II. p. 253. Oxford edit. 1824. The visitors ap- 
 pointed at tHs time, reported on their return that two hundred and forty-three 
 clergymen had quitted then: Hvings, mostly of superior station m the Church. 
 Lamb's Hist. Account of the Thirty-nme Articles, p. 12. 
 
 2 HaUam, Constit. Hist. I. p. 549. 
 
62 ERASTIAN AND CALVINISTIC PERIOD. 
 
 the generality of its language a wide range of opinion, bears a 
 close affinity to that of Calvin. In fact, the stern and despotic 
 system of Calvinism, tenacious of principles and intrepidly 
 consequential in applying them, vras not ill-suited either to 
 the temper or to the circumstances of the first race of English 
 Reformers ; and though associated by an accident in the coun- 
 try of its birth, with the democratic platform of a republican 
 Church, had no invincible antipathy to the episcopal dascipUne, 
 which Calvin, it is said, theoretically preferred^. 
 
 Erastianism, as the theory is called, which derives aU ec- 
 clesiastical power from the State, and resolves the Church 
 into a branch of the executive, was the resource on which the 
 Church of England was necessarily thrown, in the first strug- 
 gles of its separation from Popery. The arm of the Sovereign 
 had dissolved the ties of its ancient dependence; and now, 
 conscious of weakness, torn from the hand that had once up- 
 held it, it cast itself with abject servility at the feet of the 
 State, for without the State it was helpless. These Erastian 
 principles maintained their ascendency till the close of the 
 Tudor dynasty. Elizabeth was not a princess to allow them 
 to be forgotten ; and they were in harmony with the views of 
 her chief counsellors. Parker, her first primate, the college 
 friend of Bacon and Cecil, strenuously asserted them. He 
 was at once anti-papal and anti-pmitan, and enforced uni- 
 formity with an inflexible severity. His Erastianism was 
 the result of necessity ; for he had a strong leaven of High 
 Church principles. His pursuits and his tastes were anti- 
 quarian^. He regarded Popery as an encroachment on an- 
 cient doctrines and usages ; and maintaining the identity of 
 the Eeformed Church of England with that which had been 
 at first established in the island, he was solicitous on that 
 account to uphold its national character and independence. 
 His successor, Grindal, had more sympathy with the Puritans, 
 and incurred the Queen's lasting displeasure and his own 
 sequestration, by venturing to oppose the authority of Scrip- 
 ture to her prerogative ^— The principles of Parker were re- 
 vived, and carried out with even greater rigour, by Whitgift. 
 Puritanism in his time, exasperated by harshness and oppres- 
 
 ' Hooter's EocleBiastioal Polity, preface. 
 Palto ^Iss^'"^''' P™™°'^^ of Anglo-Saxon learning and antiquities. Strype's 
 => See his Letter to the Queen. Strype's Grindal, B. II. Appendix No. ix. 
 
EBASTIAN AND CALVINISTIC PERIOD. 63 
 
 sion, assumed its fiercest and most rancorous tone : and the 
 better to restrain its vehemence, he procured enactmeuts in 
 the Star Chamber for subjecting the press to a rigid censor- 
 ship. The Court of High Commission, armed with the power 
 of administering the oath ex officio^, was in that day the great 
 instrument of ecclesiastical tyranny. Yet Whitgift had not 
 always resorted to such means for silencing his adversaries. 
 Before his elevation to the primacy, he had engaged at the 
 instance of Parker, in controversy with Cartwright, one of 
 the most learned and zealous advocates of the Presbyterian 
 discipline. The Erastianism and Calvinism of this primate 
 are undoubted. He published anonymously in London a 
 work of Erastus, on Excommunication^. When Arminian 
 views began to excite controversy at Cambridge, to counter- 
 act them, he put forth a declaration of doctrine in the Lam- 
 beth Articles which exhibited Calvinism in its harshest fea- 
 tures. The Queen was greatly displeased, and the Articles 
 were suppressed^. 
 
 The principles of this earliest school of Anghcanism have 
 been developed, and vindicated agaiast the Puritans, with a 
 calm philosophical breadth of view, and a most majestic elo- 
 quence, in the. celebrated work of Hooker on Ecclesiastical 
 Polity. Setting out from the fundamental position of 
 Erastus, that in a Christian country no distinction should 
 be admitted between Church and State, which are only dif- 
 ferent names for the same society surveyed from opposite 
 
 1 The oatli ex officio compelled an mdiTidiial, brought into coOTt, to answer 
 erery question that should be put to him, though tending directly to criminate 
 or endanger himself; a practice wholly at variance with the principles of Eng- 
 lish law. " This oath," says Blaokstone, (Commentaries, Coleridge's edit. Book 
 III. Ch. xxtU. [447]) " was made use of in the spiritual courts ;" " whereof the 
 High Commission Court in particular made a most extravagant and illegal use ; 
 forming a court of inijuisition, in which all persons were obliged to answer in 
 cases of bare suspicion, if the Commissioners thought proper to proceed against 
 them ex officio for any supposed ecclesiastical enormities. When the High 
 Commission Court was aboUshed by statute, 16 Car. I. e. 11, this oath ex 
 officio was abohshed with it." This statute of Charles I. was confirmed by 
 13 Car. II. Fuller, in his usual quaint way, (Church Hist. Book IX. Sect. vi. 
 51,) has given in parallel columns the argvunents for and against the oath ex 
 offixno, which were put forth respectively in those days by the High Churchmen 
 and the Puritans. 
 
 2 On the authority of Selden, cited by Warhurton in his notes on Weal. 
 
 3 Strype's Whitgift. Collier II. p. 644. Fuller IX. sect, vni., who says, 
 these Articles may be received as an infallible evidence, " what was the general 
 and received doctrine of Englajid in that age." 
 
64 ERASTIAN AND CALVINISTIC PERIOD. 
 
 points of viewi, he argues, that ecclesiastical and civil polity- 
 should always be in the closest harmony with each other; 
 and, as Scripture has laid down no absolute rule respecting 
 them, must be regulated by the exigencies of a particular age 
 and country, in accordance with the general principles of 
 Christianity. In unfolding the great idea of his work. Hooker 
 takes a magnificent range of vision. From the widest laws 
 which embrace the whole universe of being, he descends with 
 an easy and gracefiil sweep to the derived and successive ad- 
 justments of the subordinate divisions of creation, bringing 
 them aU within the limits of one connected and harmonious 
 legislation, and thus impressing on every arrangement that 
 enters iuto the permanent constitution of society, a divine 
 sanction and authority. At the very time therefore that 
 Hooker is defending the principles of Erastus, and anticipat- 
 ing Mr. Locke's theory of the derivation of all government 
 from an imphed consent of the people, he has the appearance, 
 owing to the vast extent of his generalizations, and his con- 
 stant reference of all things to a primal law of God, of con- 
 ceding a divine origin to regal and sacerdotal power ; and thus 
 he announces a transition to the less noble and philosophical 
 doctrines which distinguished the leading churchmen of the next 
 period. He died in the last year of the sixteenth century^- 
 
 1 B. vni. p. 440, fol. 1676. 
 
 2 B. Till. pp. 442, 444, 468. From the peculiar train of Ms reasoning, some 
 have erroneously inferred, that Hooker was an advocate of the jiis diviimm of 
 Episcopacy. James II. ascribed his re-adoption of Roman Catholicism to the 
 impression left on his mind by the preface to the Ecclesiastical PoUty. The 
 three last boots of Hooker's work were not pubhshed till after his death ; and 
 a suspicion was expressed, that they had been tampered with by the Puritans. 
 Mr. Hallam, a very competent judge, declares his beUef in their authenticity 
 from internal evidence. (Constit. Hist. I. p. 299, note.) There seems as much 
 ground for imputing interpolations to the Chui-ch party, as omissions from the 
 original MS., to the Puritans. See Strype's Life of Whitgift, fol. p. 544 ; and 
 the preface to Hanbury's edition of Hooker's works. — ^Hooker's anticipation of 
 Locke may be seen, Eccles. Pol. B. I. 10, where, among other passages, occurs 
 the following : " Laws they are not, therefore, which pxiblic approbation hath 
 not made so ; but approbation not only they give, who personally declare their 
 assent, by voice, sign, or act ; but also when others do it in their names, by 
 right originally, at the least, derived from them. As in Parhaments, Councils, 
 and the hke assembhes, although we be not personally ourselves present, notwith- 
 standing our assent is, by reason of other agents there in our behalf." 
 
HIGH SACERDOTAL AND REGAL DOCTRINES. 65 
 
 SECTioiir vn. 
 
 HIGH SACERDOTAL AND REGAL DOCTRINES AND PREVALENCE 
 OF ARMINIANISM UNDER THE STUARTS. 
 
 A new view of the source of ecclesiastical power, and of its 
 relation to the State, came into vogue under the Stuarts, and 
 was accompanied by a corresponding modification of theo- 
 logical opinion. Indications of such a change had occurred 
 before the Queen's decease. Some have found traces of it in 
 Bancroft's Sermon preached against the Puritans at Paul's 
 Cross ia 1588. There cannot be a doubt, that the tendencies 
 which a protracted struggle with the Puritans, and a deep- 
 felt necessity of repelling one assertion of divine right by 
 another, had been strengthening in the Church, clearly pointed 
 to such a result, and only waited for an opportunity to mani- 
 fest themselves without disguise. Dr. Benjamin Charior or 
 Carier, who had been Whitgift's chaplain, and wrote the in- 
 scription on his monument, withdrew to the Continent on the 
 death of that primate, and was suspected of having changed 
 his religion. He declared however in a letter to archbishop 
 Abbot, that he was no papist, but' merely anxious to heal the 
 breach between the Anglican, and the ancient European, 
 Church, by the establishment of the religion which he called 
 CathoUc. He distinguished between the Protestants and the 
 Puritans of the Enghsh Church; disliked Calvin and Cal- 
 vinism; and disowned all communion with the Reformed 
 Churches of France and the Netherlands, whose members he 
 contemptuously designated Huguenots and Gueux^. His 
 views were evidently an anticipation of the system, soon after 
 maintained by Laud, and in the present day revived by the 
 authors of the Tracts for the Times. For Erastianism this 
 system substituted the divine right of Episcopacy ; and for the 
 doctrines of the Geneva school those which had a nearer affi- 
 nity to Arminianism. Yet it did not enter into any contest 
 with the sovereign, or slide into Popery. On the contrary, 
 it was as much opposed to Popery as to Puritanism. It pro- 
 fessed to be at once Catholic and national ; Catholic in its re- 
 lation to the one universal Church ; national in its close alliance 
 with the Crown. It exalted the regal and the sacerdotal 
 powers in an equal degree; traced them back to a patri- 
 archal origin ; and claimed for both a co-ordinate authority. 
 
 > Strype'8 WHtgift, p. 533, fol. 
 
66 HIGH SACERDOTAL AND REGAL DOCTRINES 
 
 Instead of recognizing with Hooker, the free choice and 
 judgment of man as Hnks in the vast chain of supreme 
 legislation, which carry with them, in their enduring results, 
 the clear evidence of a divine sanction to the thoughttul 
 mind; it assumed, in the outset, a positive institution of 
 authority direct from God, descending unbroken from age to 
 age, independent of human approval and beyond human con- 
 trol. The power actually constituted might, on either theory, 
 be regarded as, in one sense, divine; but the argumentative 
 process through which that view of it was attamed, made a 
 wide diflFerence in its practical bearing on the freedom and 
 progress of mankind. 
 
 From the system which now became ascendant, two infe- 
 rences were naturally deducible ; the doctrine of indefeasible 
 legitimacy in regard to the crown ; and the assertion of an 
 indelible consecration, derived from the apostles, in the priest- 
 hood. These despotic principles met with a cordial reception 
 in the arbitrary temper of the Stuarts, expressed in their 
 favourite adage, "no bishop, no king:" and, combining with 
 the worst elements of our constitution, which had been in- 
 fused iato it from the old Roman law, attracted to themselves 
 a host of zealous defenders in churchmen and civilians^. Ban- 
 croft who had succeeded Whitgift as primate, petitioned 
 against the infringements on the jurisdiction of the ecclesias- 
 tical courts, as closely affecting popular rights^ : and ia the 
 true spirit of a priestly demagogue, availed himself of some 
 recent unpopular enactments, to excite among the people a 
 feeling of dissatisfaction with their parliamentary representa- 
 tives and the judges of the common-law courts.^ These high 
 doctrines were put forth systematically in a series of canons 
 passed by Convocation in 1606*; and their appearance may 
 be taken as an indirect evidence of the growth of popular 
 
 ' See-Allen, on the Rise and Growth of the Prerogative. A great jealousy 
 had sprung up at this time between the common lawyers and the practisers of 
 the canon and ciTil law. The former were attached to the old traditional 
 Uberties of the subject ; the latter were the supporters of the prerogative. 
 When James I. visited Cambridge in 1615, he was entertained by the scholars 
 with a play called Ignoramus, the object of which was to exhibit the common 
 lawyers in a ridiculous light. Fiiller, B. X. Sect. iv. 39. 
 
 ^ In what were called, fi-om a precedent of Edward II. 's time, the " Articuli 
 Cleri." 
 
 ' Strype's Wliitgift, B. IV. Append. No. 41. 
 
 ■* These canons, though circulated among the clergy, were not pubhshed till 
 the close of the century. Hallam, Const. Hist. I. p. 439. 
 
UNDER THE STUARTS. 67 
 
 principles in Parliament and the bulk of the nation. Laud's 
 Conference with the Jesuit Fisher exhibits the views of this 
 rising party, respecting Scripture and the Church. " Accord- 
 ing to Christ's institution/' he says, " the Scripture, where 'tis 
 plain, should guide the Church ; and the Church, when there 's 
 doubt or difiaculty, should expound the Scripture; yet so, as 
 neither the Scripture should be forced, nor the Church so 
 bound up, as that upon just and farther evidence she may not 
 revise that which in any case hath slipt by her^." Yet he 
 denies that " any private man whatever can be judge of con- 
 troversies, which must be referred to the decision of Scripture, 
 interpreted by the primitive Church, and a lawful and free 
 general council determining according to these^." Here we 
 have ambiguities that might breed endless controversy; Pro- 
 testantism in semblance, Catholicism in reality; each to be 
 drawn out and employed in argument, according as the adver- 
 sary was a Eomanist or a Puritan. 
 
 It is remarkable, that the Synod of Dort, to which the 
 Anglican Church had sent representatives in the interest of 
 Calvinism, and which finally condemned the Arminian party, 
 was soon followed by the rapid spread of Ai'minian principles 
 in England^- Possibly this change was promoted by the 
 revived study of the old Greek theology. Greek learning had 
 made great progress in England during the sixteenth century. 
 The Queen herself had cultivated it with ardour. Bishop 
 Cox who was a strict Calvinist, expressed Ms high displeasure, 
 when he found her deeply intent on some fathers of the East- 
 em Church. The theology of Western Europe had been 
 deeply impregnated for a thousand years with the spirit of 
 Augustine's writings; from them, Wycliffe and Luther had 
 imbibed their earliest and strongest religious convictions ; and 
 this circumstance must be allowed its weight, in accounting 
 for the readiness of the popular mind, after the Reformation, 
 to embrace the doctrines of predestination and grace. But 
 the Church of England had put herself in a singular position, 
 midway, as it were, between the old and the new religion of 
 Europe*. Her attention and interest were thus diverted to a 
 remoter branch of the universal Church, which possessed the 
 essential characters of Catholicity, and afforded her a ground 
 
 1 Dedication to King Charles I. ^ Conference, etc., p. 386. 
 
 ^ See a long note of Mr, HaUam's, Const. Hist. I. p. 551. 
 < Tracts for tlie Times, No. 38. 
 
68 HIGH SACERDOTAL AND BEGAL DOCTKINES 
 
 to rest upon, disentangled from modern controversies. In 
 writers of the Anglican communion, especially in tlieir dis- 
 putes with the Romanists, we may often notice a marked 
 sympathy with the Greek Church^- In regard to the doctri- 
 nal points most strongly insisted on by the Puritans, the 
 general sense of the Eastern Fathers was against them. The 
 new learning found a zealous patron in Dr. Lancelot Andrews, 
 bishop of Winchester, a man of profound acquirements in the 
 Oriental languages, but of a cold and ascetic spirit, whose 
 principles had great influence on Laud. These anti-Calvin- 
 istic tenets were so generally entertained by the supporters of 
 the arbitrary measures of the Star-chamber and the Court of 
 High Commission, that any manifestation of them was sup- 
 posed to indicate a feeling unfriendly to civil and religious 
 liberty, and was often brought as a charge against individuals, 
 by zealous members of the House of Commons. ArmiQianism 
 and tyranny were believed to have some secret affinity with 
 each other. Erastianism and Calvinism, which had been the 
 distinguishing marks of the T^glican Church in the last age, 
 now took refuge in Parliament; and those who associated 
 them with the retention of a predilection for the Episcopal 
 discipline, acquired the name of doctriaal Puritans^. 
 
 The change of opinion that was taking place in the Angli- 
 can party, respected chiefly their conception of the Church, 
 and of its ordinances and ministers. The G-reek theology which 
 obtained in that party almost exclusively the name of learning, 
 took away men's thoughts from ^e facts of human nature, to 
 occupy them with mere abstractions, coined ia the wanton 
 idleness of a speculative brain; It was the learning of an 
 enfeebled race and a declining civilization. With the never- 
 failing resource of those who prefer dreaming to active inquiry 
 and free thought, it converted ideas, its own arbitrary con- 
 ceptions of spiritual relations, into objective realities, and fixed 
 them as articles of implicit belief, to the suppression or exclu- 
 
 • Jewel, Apolog. Eccles. Anglican, p. 29. 
 
 2 This name was first given to them by the celebrated Antonio de Dominis, who 
 had been archbishop of Spalato under the A'enetian republic, but, quitting the 
 Church of Rome, came over to England, where he was handsomely beneficed by 
 James I. Afterwards retracting, he died miserably at Eome. See Puller's m- 
 terestmg account of hhn, B. X. Sect. yi. Other learned foreigners, such as 
 Baravia, Casaubon and Isaac Vossius at this time and later obtained preferment 
 m the EngUsh Chm-ch. Casaubon united with Andi-ews in reviving a reverence 
 tor Christian antiquity. 
 
TINDER THE STUARTS. 69 
 
 sion of every independent conviction at variance with them. 
 It was one branch of that baseless philosophy, which the in- 
 ductive logic has swept away from the entire field of natiiral, 
 and from a large and increasing part of the field of moral, 
 science; and the retention of it in theology, by those who 
 embrace the doctrine of Andrews and Laiid and their modern 
 followers, sufficiently accounts for their antipathy to a method 
 of investigating truth, which must effectually destroy its pre- 
 tensions. According to this system, nothing is left to the 
 suggestions of the inward man ; all is outward and prescribed. 
 Nothing may be determined by a fresh inquiry ; everything is 
 authoritatively settled a priori. The present and the future 
 have no value and significance ; progress is forbidden as im- 
 piety; aU things have been already accomplished in anti- 
 quity^. The Church is not a free and spontaneous association 
 of sympathizing minds, but a great indivisible unity, a vast 
 impersonation, endowed with immutable attributes, and pre- 
 serving a sort of mysterious existence through ages, indepen- 
 dent of the actual conduct and opinions of the aggregation of 
 individuals which visibly represents her. She is the hind of 
 the poet, " immortal and unchanged," 
 
 " Without unspotted, innocent -within, 
 She fears no danger, for she knows no sin." 
 
 Derived from this divine entity, of which they are parts or 
 functions, the priesthood and offices of the Church possess 
 the same indelible character and unfailing efficacy, of which 
 nothing human can deprive them. The Sacraments are con- 
 duits of life and immortality to the soul, independent of any 
 appropriation of them by the personal convictions of the reci- 
 pient^, or of any moral fitness in the administrator, if only 
 communicated by those to whose words and acts a peculiar 
 virtue has been imparted by some secret, inexplicable influ- 
 ence, transmitted in regular descent from the Apostles. Apo- 
 stolical succession, Baptism, the Eucharist, Good Works, Di- 
 vine Acceptance — aU form mutually related parts of one 
 compact and self-consistent scheme. Through such channels 
 alone the personal influence and authority of Christ himself 
 pass into his Church; which thus provides in her ritual one 
 great external process of salvation for aU men, conveying to 
 
 ' Tracts for the Times. Bationalism and Catholicism. No. 73. 
 
 2 Pnsey's Scriptural Views of Holy Baptism. Tracts for the Times. H"o. 67. 
 
70 HIGH SACERDOTAL AND REGAL DOCTRINES 
 
 them the elements of a divine life, bringing them into a direct 
 communion with God, declaring the absolution of their sins, 
 and openiug to them the gates of the invisible world. In 
 accordance with such views, the doctrine of the Eucharist was 
 modified by the divines of this school. The first Reformers, 
 though the language of the Communion Service was purposely 
 left vague, evidently conceived it in the Calvinistic spirit, and 
 supposed the participation of the Lord's body to depend on 
 the faith of the partaker; but the notions which now became 
 prevalent, chiefly through the influence of Andrews and Ca- 
 saubon, differed by a scarcely perceptible shade from the Ro- 
 manist theory. Denying a corporeal, they acknowledged a 
 real presence ; they admitted the fact, but would enter iuto no 
 discussion of the mode^- 
 
 A theology of this description, by requiring the prostration 
 of the intellect, was favourable to the designs of tyranny, and 
 entered into ready alliance with the doctrines of passive obe- 
 dience and non-resistance. It combined also more easily with 
 the Arminian, than with the Calvinistic, view of man's rela- 
 tion to God. It ofi'ered salvation to all who would submissively 
 accept it on the Church's terms ; whereas Calvinism demanded 
 a change within, which no external ordiaances could reach, 
 and which left the human soul more directly in the hands of 
 God. Such tendencies might seem calculated to lead back 
 the miud to Popery ; and many of the nobility and the gentry, 
 and some even of the clergy, it is now well known, were re- 
 converted to the faith of their fathers, if indeed they had ever 
 really renounced it. But there is no proof, that either Charles 
 I., or Laud, or any of the leading Churchmen, ever seriously 
 entertained the thought of a submission to Rome^. The adop- 
 
 ' HaUam Const. Hist. cli. Tiii. — It is significant, that the authors of the 
 Tracts for the Times decline appealing to the Reformers of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. They affirm, that in the effort of reform, the first race of Protestant 
 divines lost sight of great truths, which were recovered and reinstated in their 
 just influence, by the Churchmen of the seventeenth century, in whose writings 
 must be sought the true exposition of Anglican theology, developing itself in 
 reaction against Puritan principles. Tracts, No. 81. Mr. HaHam takes the 
 opposite view. Const. Hist. II. p. 86, note. 
 
 ^ When Laud was raised to the See of Canterbury, on the death of Abbot, 
 he was twice offered a Cardinal's hat by an emissary of Rome ; to whom he 
 repKed, " That somewhat dwelt within him, which would not suffer him to 
 accept the offer, till Rome were otherwise than it was." Heylin's Life of Laud, 
 Book IV. p. 253. The context shows, what hopes the Jesuits then entertained 
 of the re-conversion of England. 
 
UNDER THE STUARTS'. 71 
 
 tion of so much that was Catholic in doctrine and ceremony, 
 was rather intended, like the efforts of modem Puseyism, to 
 retain those who from disgust at the opposite extreme, were 
 strongly tempted to throw themselves into the arms of the 
 ancient church of Christendom. 
 
 The overthrow of the Church strengthened the attachment 
 of its adherents to the principles which distinguished them 
 from the Puritans. In Hall, bishop of Norwich^, in Jeremy 
 Taylor^, and even in Barrow^, we may trace the same general 
 features of theology, refined indeed and subdued, which assume 
 a more exaggerated form in the views of Andrews and Laud. 
 It is still the idea of the Church, of its unity and supremacy, 
 and of its title to obedience, which is prominent in their vrri- 
 tings J although the equality and independence of each of its 
 national sections, are strenuously maintained against the Pa- 
 pists. The doctrinal Puritans ceased at length to exist as a 
 party; and many who, like Usher and Sanderson, had once 
 been Calvinists, abandoned their earher tenets for a milder 
 system. 
 
 After the Restoration, the union of high regal and sacer- 
 dotal doctrines, was more firmly cemented than ever. Lord 
 Clarendon was the great supporter of these principles. In his 
 hatred of Presbyterianism, he would almost have placed the 
 Church above the Throne. The views of this High Church 
 party have been expounded by archbishop Bramhall in his 
 "Vindication of the Church of England," which he wrote 
 during exile. In it he argues, that no spiritual jurisdiction 
 is derived from the Crown, but only liberty and power to 
 exercise actually and lawfully, on the subjects of the Crown, 
 the habitual jurisdiction received by the priesthood at ordina- 
 tion. " We hold our benefices," says he, " from the king, 
 but our offices from Christ*." Slavish doctrines were never 
 carried to a more shameless height than under the two last 
 Stuarts. Papists and High Churchmen were rival candidates 
 
 ' Episcopacy by Dwine Bight. 
 
 2 Of the Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy by Divine Institution. 
 
 3 On the Pope's Supremacy, and on the Unity of the Church. 
 
 ■* Bramhall admitted three conditions as the possible basis of an union among 
 aE Christians : (1.) an abatement of the Pope's pretensions to a mere prinai- 
 pium mitatis; (2.) a reduction of the essentials of faith to what they were at 
 the time of the four first General Councils ; (3.) an exclusion of some things 
 which give offence, from the Divine offices, for the sake of peace. Works, fol. 
 DubHn, 1677, pp. 136-7. 
 
73 HIGH SACEbDOTAL AND KEGAL DOCTRINES 
 
 for tte royal favour ; and if the more conscientious Chureli- 
 men unduly exalted the priesthood, the sycophants of the 
 court fell into the grossest Erastianism. Burnet declares, that 
 Parker, bishop of Oxford, a renegade from Independency, 
 went so far as to assert, that "to say the king was under 
 God and Christ, was a crude and profane expression j for 
 though the king was indeed under God, yet he was not under 
 Christ, but above him^," 
 
 Stillingfleet's progress illustrates the spirit of the times. 
 Having passed his youth amidst the excitements of the Com- 
 monwealth, he opened his theological career with a produc- 
 tion distinguished for its moderate and conciliatory tone^. Fol- 
 lowing the track of Hooker, Hales, and ChiUingworth, he 
 denied the divine right of episcopacy ; and contended for an 
 ecclesiastical settlement, in which, by mutual concessions, the 
 points most eagerly contended for by Independents, Presbyte- 
 rians and Episcopalians, might be combined, and to which, 
 when it had once been decided by competent authority, every 
 man should hold himself bound in conscience to conform. 
 StiQingfleet disowned Erastianism, as the restdt of a reaction 
 against the inordinate elevation of Church power, and main- 
 tained that the right of excommunication was inherent in the 
 very nature of a religious society^. His tolerant principles 
 coidd not stand the test of altered circumstances. When the 
 Church was firmly established in its ancient seat, and there 
 was no prospect of any further changes for the relief of Non- 
 conformists, StiUingfleet denounced Separation in the worst 
 spirit of the persecuting edicts of Charles II. ^s reign ; and 
 objected to concession except on terms so hard and offensive 
 as effectually to prevent compliance. He took the high ground 
 of a national establishment, and would admit of no parallel 
 between the two cases of separation from the Church of Rome 
 and separation from the Church of England. The defective 
 
 ^ History of his own Times, I. p. 696, fol. 1V24. Parker was capable of a 
 good deal, and tlie expression, if correctly reported, was offensiTely strong ; but 
 Burnet may have misunderstood him. He may have only meant to assert 
 that the Chui-ch should be subject to the State, in opposition to the fanatical 
 doctrine, that the saints must rule the earth. Disappomted of preferment, 
 Parker afterwards veered round to the opposite view, and maintained doctrines 
 that made the Church independent of the civil power. Sancroft the primate 
 would fain have declined consecrating him, but was afraid ot&pramiimre. 
 
 " Irenicum, or Weapon-Salve for the Church's Wounds. 
 
 * Discourse concerning the Power of Excommunication. Works, fol II nti 
 419-38. ' ■ ^^' 
 
TINDER THE STUARTS. 73 
 
 and inconsequential reasonings of the Dissenters themselves, 
 furnished him with the most specious arguments against 
 them^. Stillingfleet's case was not singular. Even Jeremy 
 Taylor who under oppression had so eloquently vindicated in 
 his Liberty of Prophesying, the rights of conscience, did not, 
 when times changed, commit himself unconditionally to those 
 broad principles, but deemed it necessary to esplaiu in what 
 sense he had once asserted them^. 
 
 The fear of Popery on one hand, iucreased by the known 
 predilections of the Sovereign, and a perpetual strife with the 
 Protestant Dissenters on the other, gave a peculiar bitterness 
 and activity to the exclusive tendencies of the Church of Eng- 
 land, during the two last reigns of the Stuart dynasty. In 
 this state of things, a new school of Anglican divines presents 
 itself to our view. Disgusted with the extremes of wild fana- 
 ticism and priestly arrogance, a set of men had arisen, mild, 
 peaceable, and unambitious, who sought for truth with an 
 open and candid spirit, and studied religion in the blended 
 lights of reason and learning. Not limiting themselves to 
 the textual controversies of Scripture, or weighing with super- 
 stitious reverence the conflicting judgments of Fathers and 
 Councils, they traced out the broad coincidence of Christian 
 truth with the eternal laws of nature and providence, and 
 brought to bear on its illustration and enforcement, all the 
 treasures of heathen poetry and philosophy. Such men were 
 Cudworth, Whichcot, Wilkins and More, who adopted in their 
 studies and practice, the maxims of toleration and free inquiry 
 already enunciated by Chillingworth and Hales. They had 
 no sympathy with the Calvinistic sectaries, but were attached 
 to the Liturgy and Episcopal government. The breadth of 
 their principles, taking in fundamental truths, but neglecting 
 
 ' On the "Unreasonableness of Separation. Works, vol. ii. — StilKngfleet was 
 very anxious (differing in tMs respect widely from Laud) that the Eeformed 
 Churches of the Continent should approve of his conduct to the Dissenters. 
 Appended to his Discourse on Separation, are three letters from Protestant 
 clergymen in Holland and France, which are remarkable for the cautious and 
 almost rcTerential phraseology in which they are couched. They recommend 
 peace and union, and intercede gently for their Presbyterian brethren in Eng- 
 .land. Claude, one of their number, says, that the French Eeformed Church 
 acknowledged episcopal ordination, and that some of their ministers had been 
 ordained by Bnghsh bishops. 
 
 2 Dedication to Christopher, Lord Hatton, prefixed to his work on Episco- 
 
 Eacy. He compares his former conduct to puUing down outhouses, to save the 
 imily from the flames. 
 
 E 
 
74 INFLUENCE OF LOW CHUECH PKINCIPLES 
 
 the vexed points of popular debate, and the comprehensiveness 
 of their charity, embracing good men of all religions, procured 
 them from persons of narrower minds, the name of Latitudina- 
 rians. Some of the most celebrated preachers in the latter part 
 of the seventeenth century, Tillotson, Patrick and Lloyd, had 
 been formed in the school of these eminent men. With these 
 last bishop Burnet had been on terms of the closest intimacy ; 
 and in his History of his own Times, speaks with affectionate 
 warmth of their spirit and character, and his personal obliga- 
 tions to them. They reformed the style of preaching which 
 had been previously in vogue ; and by their pastoral diligence 
 not less than by their acceptableness in the pulpit, recovered 
 great numbers of the citizens of London to the Church. Their 
 extensive popularity enabled them to disseminate among the 
 middle classes, that respect for reason and moderation, which 
 had been conceived in the studious retreats of their teachers, 
 and which contributed to prepare the public mind for the 
 Revolution. 
 
 Their rise and influence announce the approach of a new 
 period^. 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF LOW CHURCH PRINCIPLES AFTER THE 
 REVOLUTION. 
 
 In spite of the corrupting influences of the Court, society had 
 made great progress in the reigns of the second Charles and 
 James. The public mind was aroused to reflection and in- 
 quiry by the speculations of Hobbes and Locke, which grew 
 naturally out of foregoing controversies, and by the surprising 
 discoveries of Boyle and Newton in the yet almost untrodden 
 fields of physical science. The Latitudinarians constituted 
 that party ia the Church, which felt most strongly the in- 
 
 1 Vol i. fol. pp. 186-91. ^Compare Butler's account of this school, in his 
 Memoirs of British Catholics, and Wordsworth's beautiful sonnet on Latitu- 
 dinarianism. Burnet's notice of the Latitudinarians is one of the most interest- 
 ing passages of his very interesting book. He classes StiUingfleet among their 
 pupUs ; but adds, that the publication of his Ireuicum proved a great snare to 
 him ; " for, to avoid the imputations wliioh that brought upon him, he not 
 only retracted the book, but he went into the humours of that high sort of 
 people beyond what became him, perhaps beyond his own sense of things." 
 
AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 75 
 
 fluence of this new direction of thought, and showed most 
 eagerness to bring their principles and practice into harmony 
 with it. Their generous aspirations and their frequent ob- 
 liquities and iaconsistencies equally resulted from this un- 
 availiag endeavour; but the circumstances of the Eevolution 
 gave a prominence and an authority to their principles, which 
 had a visible iafluence on the character of the Church during 
 the greater part of the ensuing century. 
 
 One of the first effects of the intimate connection of this 
 party with the new government, was the appointment of an 
 ecclesiastical commission, to prepare such alterations in the 
 liturgy and rubrics as, approved by Convocation and ratified 
 by the Legislature, might lead to a very general compre- 
 hension of the Protestant Dissenters. Even before the Revo- 
 lution, the dread of Popery had compelled the primate 
 Bancroft to entertain the design of some accommodation with 
 the Nonconformists. The constant state of apprehension 
 and excitement in which the Church had been kept, for more 
 than a quarter of a century by its enemies on both sides, made 
 aU prudent men, while events of great moment and uncertain 
 issue were impending over them, desirous of a more satisfac- 
 tory arrangement with their Protestant brethren, than had 
 resulted from the conferences at the Savoy in 1661. The 
 ecclesiastical commission under William was in truth, there- 
 fore, only the carryiag out of a measure which had been 
 already meditated by the High Churchmen themselves ; and 
 the persons who were most active in it, Patrick, Tillotson, 
 Burnet and Tenison, gave sure prom.ise of a disposition to 
 concede all unessential poiats of difference, for the sake of 
 conciliation. They proposed a new selection of lessons, taken 
 wholly from the canonical Scriptures; they left it to the 
 m.inister's option to substitute the Apostles' for the Athana- 
 sian Creed ; new collects were drawn up, in the first instance 
 by Patrick who excelled in devotional composition, but re- 
 vised and perfected by his associates ; a fresh version of the 
 Psalms was made, more conformable to the original; words 
 and phrases that had been objected to, were collected out of 
 the Liturgy, and others clearer and plainer and less exception- 
 able, proposed in their room. Suggestions were offered for 
 meeting other scruples of the Dissenters, especially in regard 
 to Baptism and Ordination. Had these proposals been 
 adopted, it is probable that the largest portion of the Presby- 
 
 £ 2 
 
76 INFLUENCE OF LOW CHURCH PRINCIPLES 
 
 terians would have been absorbed into the Church, and Non- 
 conformity shorn at once of half its glory and its strength^. 
 But the known principles of the men who were most prominent 
 on the Commission, raised a host of prejudices against theni. 
 The hostility of the lower House of Convocation was invinci- 
 ble; and these projected reforms, with the comprehension 
 that was to be founded on them, never came to effect^. 
 
 Notwithstanding the failure of this design, men of liberal 
 views and friendly to Toleration, were selected for prefer- 
 ment by WilUam and the two first Georges. TiUotson, 
 Tenison, Burnet, Hoadly, and Herring, were prelates of this 
 stamp; nor were there wanting many clergymen in the 
 inferior stations of the Church, of whom the accomplished 
 Pr. Samuel Clarke, the friend and interpreter of Newton, 
 and the learned and candid Jortin, may be selected as diflfer- 
 ent specimens, to partake of their spirit and approve their 
 policy. Never perhaps was moderation of spirit more con- 
 spicuous in the Church of England. Never was a larger 
 share of practical piety combined with learning and good 
 sense. Never were the peculiar features of episcopal arro- 
 gance and exclusiveness more generally kept out of ^iew. 
 Yet they were amiable, intelligent and enlightened, rather 
 than great and high-souled men. We miss the unequivocal 
 expression of genuine elevation of character. Their whole 
 policy was founded on compromise. Tillotson whose many 
 estimable qualities cannot shelter him from the imputation of 
 wealmess and timidity, was always intent on what he called 
 healiag measures and middle ways^ These men, with the 
 best intentions, were entangled in the sophistry and iucon- 
 sequence, inseparable from their efforts to reconcile what 
 Locke calls just and true liberty, with the preservation of the 
 actual establishment. They had accepted preferment ivith 
 the implied understanding of being friendly to the rights of 
 conscience, and they had to justify their position; nor did they 
 always conceal their dislike of those, who could not brinff 
 
 ' Calamy says distinotly " two-thirds of the Dissenters." 
 
 2 Calamy's Abridgment, vol. i. pp. 447-465. Bii-oh's Life of Tillotson, pp. 
 174-184. '^'^ 
 
 3 Ca-lamy'a Life and Times, vol. i. p. 3 ; TiUotaon's Letter to Lord WiUiam 
 KusseU just before his execution (Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. 102) • in which 
 he plainly inculcates the docti-ine of non-resistauce. Burnet took' the «ame 
 view. Another mstanee of TiUotson's weakness is mentioned by CalamV in 
 ma Late of Howe, fol. p. 25. 
 
AFTER THE REVOLUTION. T! 
 
 themselves to take the same accommodating view. By a 
 strange inconsistency they approved of Toleration, while they 
 condemned Dissent. 
 
 Hoadly was the most conspicuous man of the party, and 
 vindicated its principles with the greatest intrepidity. His 
 Sermon on the Nature of the Kingdom of Christ, preached 
 before George I. in 1717, which gave occasion to the cele- 
 brated Bangorian controversy respecting the limits of free in- 
 quiry, asserted religious liberty in the broadest sense, and 
 contaiaed positions which, carried out to their legitimate con- 
 sequences, would not only have required his secession from 
 the Church, but destroyed the foundations of the Establish- 
 ment itself. His own conduct was strangely inconsistent with 
 his principles. In his anomalous position, he had to make 
 good his ground against both the Protestant Dissenters and 
 the Non-jurors. His ' Reasonableness of Conformity,' in an- 
 swer to the statements contained in the 10th chapter of Ca- 
 lamy's Abridgment of Baxter's History, is a reiteration, in 
 milder and more courteous terms, of the arguments which 
 had been already advanced on the same topics by Stillingfleet ; 
 the necessity of supporting one undivided Church, the actual 
 settlement the best attainable, and the duty of acquiescing in 
 it : and it exhibits such specimens of nice casuistry and re- 
 ' fined ingenuity as are unworthy of a noble and honest spirit. 
 He is strong only where his adversaries are weak ; in the 
 argumentum ad hominem, addressed to those who themselves 
 stopped short of the just demands of reason and conscience i. 
 In the course of the Bangorian controversy the views of 
 Hoadly were attacked by the Non-juror, William Law, on 
 narrow grounds indeed, but with straightforwardness and sim- 
 plicity, and the genuine heartiness of tone peculiar to one, 
 who is faithfal to his own convictions, and has attested his 
 value for them by making the sacrifices which they have 
 asked^. Burnet was a man of more earnest character than 
 Hoadly ; but his principles and his position were not less at 
 variance. Early in life, when he was visiting the foreign Pro- 
 testants, he had induced the Church of Geneva to release its 
 
 1 Reasonableness, etc., Lond. 1703. Defence, etc., Loud. 1705. 
 
 2 See his Letters in the 5th toI. of the Tracts respecting the Hoadlyau Con- 
 troversy. If Hoadly may be taken as a &ir sample of the principles that were 
 brought into fashion by the Eevolution, he is not fitted to inspire us with any 
 deep veneration for them. — With a vigorous and manly intellect, a generous 
 and courteous temper, and a sort of constitutional sympathy with the cause of 
 
78 INFLUENCE OF LOW CHURCH PBINCIPLES 
 
 clergy from the Consensus DoctrincB^. It was therefore with 
 some reluctance and embarrassment, that he afterwards un- 
 dertook, at the request of archbishop Tillotson and queen 
 Mary, an Exposition of the Articles . of the Church of Eng- 
 land^. 
 
 But aU this trimming and accommodation led to no result ; 
 the High Church party was not conciliated ; nor were the Dis- 
 senters reclaimed. "What were the prospects in this age of 
 any man who resolved fearlessly to investigate Scriptural 
 truth, are unfolded with admirable clearness and bitter irony 
 in bishop Hare's celebrated Letter to a young clergyman on 
 the difficulties and discouragements attending the study of 
 the Scriptures. His subsequent practice leaves us almost in 
 doubt, whether the advice did not after all express in sober 
 earnestness, his own view of the question, and indicate the 
 spirit that was too widely diffused among the Low Churchmen 
 of the day. Whiston stands forth an almost solitary example 
 of single-minded devotion to the cause of Christian truth, and 
 of heroic willingness to endure all the consequences which its 
 service entailed^. 
 
 But there was another party in the Church, active, impla- 
 cable, and disaffected to the government, aU whose prejudices 
 
 liberty, he was nevertheless deficient in that moral earnestness and magnani- 
 mous fidehty to conscience, which must enter into all our conceptions of a great 
 man. His principles at least cost him nothing. Preferments were showered 
 on him in profusion after the accession of the House of Hanover. He was 
 rapidly advanced in succession to the sees of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury and 
 Winchester ; and Whiston (Memoirs, P. I. p. 244) charges him with having 
 drawn the revenues of the see of Bangor for sis entire years, without ever once 
 seeing that diocese ia his life. Notwithstanding the principles so broadly set 
 forth in his Sermon on the Kingdom of God, he made no scruple of regularly 
 reading the Athanasian Creed ; and in 1724, he refused a prebend in SaUsbury 
 Cathedral to a liberal-minded clergyman, without enforcing a fresh subscription 
 to the Articles. Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 524, and vol. iii. Ad- 
 dit. and Correct, p. 748. It may be said, that in all this he was simply obey- 
 mg the rubric of the Church in which he held office. But the very defence 
 makes the falseness of his position more conspicuous. He used to justify his 
 conformity by saying : " I see that I can still promote the Christian i-eUgion m 
 general, though cramped in some points which I judge not to be very essential 
 to it. This is the rule by which I conduct myself in these matters." MS. of 
 Jones of Welwyn, 1761. 
 
 1 Life, appended to the Histoiy of his own Times, vol. ii. fol. p. 693. 
 
 ^ Confessional, p. 81. 
 
 3 ti the.years 1715, 16, and 17, Whiston formed a society for the promotion 
 
 t ^i'^,'^*'™ Chnstianity, wHoh met weekly at his house, and to which pei-sons 
 
 ot- aU Christian persuasions were equally admitted. Sir Peter King, Dr Hare 
 
 L>r. Hoadly and Dr. Clarke were particularly invited, but never came. Nichols's 
 
AFTER THE REYOLUTION. 79 
 
 yvete wrought up to madness by seeing the individuals whom 
 they hatedj elevated to posts of the highest dignity and influ- 
 ence. Such were the men who' entertained the high notions 
 of kingly and priestly power, that had heen ascendant under 
 the Stuarts, and who associated with them the doctriues of 
 passive obedience aad non-resistance. They were sadly per- 
 plexed by the events which prepared and accompanied the 
 Revolution. Their attachment to the Establishment forbade 
 their supporting James II., when he attacked the independ- 
 ence of the Church by attempting to restore Popery ; yet the 
 principles which placed the Prince of Orange on the throne, 
 were at variance with their whole theory of submission to 
 legitimate rule. The conscientious men of the party, with 
 Sancroft the primate and four bishops. Ken, Turner, Lake 
 and White at their head, refused the oaths of allegiance to 
 the new government, and forfeited their preferments. These 
 were the Non-jurors ; and however false and mischievous we 
 may deem their principles, their conduct is entitled to our 
 respect and sympathy. They suffered for conscience' sake. 
 Many of them were men of sincere piety and unblemished 
 purity of Hfe, who adorned their retirement with a meek and 
 patient virtue^. It is remarkable, that the two writers who 
 protested most energetically against the immoralities which 
 defiled the stage at this period, belong to the Non-jurors; 
 Collier, the ecclesiastical historian, and WUliam Law. In 
 an age of compromise, this party had at least the merit of 
 earnestness and consistency. Law was a writer of great 
 power and extensive influence. Dr. Johnson has acknow- 
 ledged the deep impression made on his mind by his principal 
 work, the Serious Call ; and Gibbon, with no fondness for his 
 principles, has rendered an honourable tribute to his character 
 and genius^- The exemplary bishop Wilson, who with so 
 much wisdom and practical benevolence, in the earher part of 
 the last century, reduced his scheme of primitive Christian 
 discipline to practice, in the secluded diocese of Sodor and 
 Man, without conforming to the political conduct of the Non- 
 Lit. Anecdotes, toL i. p. 500. Whiston's character and situation are delineated 
 with a pathetic truthfaLness in Hare's Letter, referred to in the text, pp. 17, 18. 
 There is an admirable passage on the inefficacy of " trimming methods in mat- 
 ters of religion," in the Confessional, p. 87. 
 
 ' For a farourable view of the spirit and temper of the Non-jurors, see the 
 Memoirs of the Ker. John Kettlewell. 
 
 2 Gibbon's Memoirs of his own Life and "Writings, 4to, vol. i. p. 15. 
 
80 INFLUENCE OF LOW CHURCH PRINCIPLES 
 
 jurors, had imbibed the spirit of the best men of their party. 
 He has been honoured with a place in the Catena Patrum 
 of the Oxford Tractarians, and is numbered amongst their 
 Confessors. If we may reason from the obvious tendency of 
 some passages in his works, the benevolent and simple-minded 
 bishop Berkeley must be considered as belonguig to the same 
 religious and political schooP. 
 
 But the great majority of the High Church men accommo- 
 dated themselves to the new state of things. At the same 
 time they cherished a secret attachment to the exiled famUy, 
 and harassed the government; and by their activity in the 
 lower House of Convocation, thwarted all measures for the 
 relief and conciliation of the Dissenters. Sacheverell was the 
 demagogue of this party ; Atterbury, its representative among 
 the bishops; and its high sacerdotal doctrines and mystical 
 theology were set forth with a great, but misapplied, apparatus 
 of learning in the writings of Brett, and Hickes, and Dod- 
 welP. Some men of a milder temper, who were advanced to 
 eminent stations after the Revolution, continued to assert 
 
 ' See his Discourse of Passive Obedience. His language here is most decided 
 and unqualified : " The least degree of rebellion is, with the utmost strictness 
 and propriety, a sim ; not only in Christians, but also in those who hare the 
 " light of reason alone for their guide." Works, II. p. 15. Berkeley's attach- 
 ment to reUgion as the sole basis of cItiI government, and his abhorrence of the 
 modern free-thinking, are very conspicuous in his Essay towards preventing the 
 Biuin of Great Britain, and his Discourse addressed to Magistrates and Men 
 in Authority. Works, vol. ii. He was too enlightened and philosophical to 
 be a slavish worshipper of sacerdotal tradition, and he adhered to the Hanove- 
 rian government as established de facto ; but, had he lived earlier, his princi- 
 ples must have made him a Non-juror. — Hoadly and Berkeley were men who 
 had no sympathy with each other. Hoadly's mind was marked by strong, 
 worldly sense, exactly fitted to adopt and justify the consequences of a practical 
 measure like the Revolution. Berkeley's was distinguished by a refined dehcaoy 
 of sentiment, and a romantic enthusiasm for the beautiful and good. At queen 
 Carohne's literary parties, where Clarke and Berkeley were constantly opposed 
 to each other in metaphysical gladiatorship, Hoadly always supported the 
 former, and treated Berkeley's philosophy and philanthropy (such as Ms scheme 
 for the conversion of the Americans by the establishment of a college in the 
 Bermudas) as the reveries of a visionary. Berkeley's Life, prefixed to his 
 Works, 4to, p. xviii. 
 
 " Burnet's Own Times, II. p. 603-4. All the notions of Andrews, and Laud, 
 and Bramhall, were maintained by these writers. They affirmed, that there 
 was a proper sacrifice in the Eucharist j they condemned the Boyal Supremacy 
 and the Keformation ; they asserted, that priestly absolution was necessary to 
 give effect to repentance ; and that the Sacraments, administered by persons 
 episoopally ordained in the true apostolic succession, were indispensable to sal- 
 vation ; all who were shut out from them, being left to the uncoveuanted mer- 
 cies of aod; and that consequently all Dissenters, to be admitted into the 
 
AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 81 
 
 High Cliurch principles. Among these were Bull, profoundly 
 versed in patristical learning and a celebrated defender of the 
 Nicene Creed, whom Bossuet regarded as half a Catholici; 
 Wake, who succeeded Tenison at Canterbury, and engaged in 
 a correspondence with some doctors of the Sorbonne, on the 
 possibility of an union between the Enghsh and Gallican 
 churches^; and Gibson, bishop of London, whose exalted 
 ideas of Church power were effectually confuted by an emi- 
 nent constitutional lawyer. Sir Michael Poster. 
 
 Soon after the middle of the eighteenth century, these 
 earlier excitements died away. The Church and the Dis- 
 senters, recovering from the disturbing forces of the Revolu- 
 tion, had settled themselves each on their respective founda- 
 tions, and pursued their separate course. Some highly re- 
 spectable men, brought up among the Dissenters, conformed 
 at the opening of George II. 's reign. They complained of 
 the spirit of imposition that was working in the Noncon- 
 formist body^. The most eminent of these were,- Seeker, 
 afterwards primate of all England, and Butler, far less illus- 
 trious for his elevation to the see of Durham, than for his 
 profound and original writings. No measures, however, for 
 widening the terms of communion and reconciling Dissenters 
 to the Church, were proposed by either of these prelates*. 
 The old idea, once so fondly cherished, of a comprehension, 
 seemed to have vanished among the idle dreams of the past. 
 'No attempts were ever made again to unite the two great re- 
 ligious bodies of the nation ; which assumed thenceforward 
 
 Church, must be re-baptized. Dodwell, though sceptical about the canon of 
 Scripture, went bo far as to contend, that the principle of immortality was in- 
 fused into the soul by baptism duly administered. These doctrines were con- 
 demned in the Upper House of Convocation by a vote of the bishops ; which 
 the Lower House, thinking it struck at the dignity of the priesthood, refused 
 ■to take even into consideration. Burnet, II. p. 604-5. More than a century 
 after this time, we have seen the same doctrines revived by the Puseyites. 
 ' Nelson's Life of BuU. 
 
 2 There is an account of this correspondence by Dr. Maclaine, in the appen- 
 dix to the 4th Volume of Murdock's translation of Mosheim's Institutes, in 
 which he qualifies the unfavovu-able inferences of the author of the Confessional 
 (preface, pp. Ixxiv.-lxxxni. and p. 88, note, 2nd edit.). 
 
 3 Calam/s Life and Times, II. p. 506. 
 
 ^ Seeker was very reserved in the expression of hia opinions ; a strict disci- 
 plinarian in his own Church, and shy towards Dissenters. When Doddridge 
 congratulated him on his elevation to the bench, and hoped that it might lead 
 to a closer union between the Chiu-ch and the Dissenters, Seeker at once dis- 
 couraged the idea. Nichols's Lit. Anecd. III. 748, on the authority of Jones 
 of Welwyn. 
 
 E 3 
 
gg MODEEN PERIOD. 
 
 that fixed attitude of mutual alienation, wliieli they have ever 
 since retained. 
 
 The great bulk of the inferior clergy, weaned at length trom 
 the hopeless cause of the Stuarts, and anxious for preferment, 
 resumed once more their natural hahits of deference to the 
 estabhshed government, and attached themselves to the aris- 
 tocracy, — which had become siace the Revolution, and was 
 every day becoming more, the predominant element in the 
 constitution. The great champion of the Church of England 
 at this period of its history, was Warburton, whose celebrated 
 work on the alliance of Church and State, is an ingenious 
 defence of the actual position of the hierarchy in relation both 
 to the Dissenters and to the government. It endeavours to 
 combine the assertion of principles which could no longer be 
 contested, with the retention of privileges which it was not 
 agreeable to relinquish. It recognizes Toleration; but it up- 
 holds all the legal defences and ancient prerogatives of the 
 Church^. 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 MODERN PERIOD. 
 
 The eighteenth century was distinguished by a widely-dif- 
 fused cTilture and superficial elegance of mind, the result of 
 general tranquiUity and a high material civilization, in which 
 those prominent expressions of strong conviction and deep 
 
 ' Warburton's theory of the Alliance of Church and State, may be thus 
 stated. The Church and the State are originally and 'per se two distinct and 
 independent societies, but essential nevertheless to each other's security and 
 efficiency ; on which account, they voluntarily, and, in the nature of things ne- 
 cessarily, enter into a compact with each other, whereby the Church parts with 
 its supremacy, and submits to the supremacy of the Civil Magistrate ; the State 
 bestowing maintenance, dignity and power on the Church ; the Church enno- 
 bling and sanctifying the State. His theory, therefore, differs from that of 
 Hooker, who considered Chm-ch and State as only different names for the same 
 society, and supposed, that, had they been originally distinct, they must always 
 have continued so ; whereas the Church was, as it ought to be, incorporated 
 vrith the general frame-work of the Commonwealth. It differs also from that of 
 the Puritans, who maintained the original, and necessary, and constant, distinct- 
 ness, of the two societies (so Calvm argued at Geneva, and Cartwright in Eng- 
 land) ; and who founded on that principle their doctrine of the independence 
 and supremacy of the Church, involving all the inconvenience and absurdity of 
 an imperium in imperio, Warbm-ton affii-med, that Hooker was wrong in his 
 
MODERN PERIOD. 83 
 
 feeUng, called out by the conflicts of tho, preceding century, 
 gradually disappeared. The Church of England partook of 
 the general quietude and the absence of all high enthusiasm 
 which characterized the period. Without formally renouncing 
 its ancient standards of faith and worship, it softened down its 
 distinctive features and suppressed the manifestation of its in- 
 herent tendencies. Rather avoiding than seeking any colli- 
 sion with controverted points, it studied ease and repose ; dealt 
 ia truisms and generalities ; and subsided into a calm ethical 
 view of Christianity. The old High Church principles of the 
 seventeenth centuiy were fast disappearing with the Jacobites 
 and the Non-jurors ; and the EvangeHcal spirit was yet ia its 
 infancy. Such was the state of things at the commencement 
 of the reign of George III. But change was already in pre- 
 paration. This negation of all individuality was intolerable to 
 sincere and earnest men. Two tendencies, originating in an 
 opposite view of Christianity, and leading to very different 
 results, the Calvinistic and the Latitudinarian — had begun to 
 display themselves. 
 
 Methodism exhibits the most remarkable phenomenon in 
 the religious history of England, during the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. It had its source and impelling principle in strong re- 
 action against the cold, negative and powerless character of 
 the prevailing religion, blended with a benevolent compassion 
 for the neglected condition of the humblest classes. While 
 Hoadly and a host of speculative theologians were beating the 
 air with abstract discussions on the rights of the inquiring 
 mind, the sad and solemn facts of living and suffering huma- 
 nity were overlooked by them; and myriads of their fellow- 
 creatures were sunk in an abyss of heathenish ignorance and 
 brutality. It is a singular fact, which marks the secret link 
 of spiritual connection between one manifestation of earnest 
 Christianity and another, that the writings which made the 
 first serious impression on Wesley's mind, and first awakened 
 its devotional fervour, were those of the Non-juror Law ; and 
 they produced the same effect on Mr. Venn, though he after- 
 wards embraced a very different theological system^, as one of 
 
 premises, but right in liis conclusion; that the Puritans were right in their pre- 
 mises, but wrong in their conclusion. He insisted on the secular ascendency of 
 the ciurch, and the necessity of a Test-law for its protection; but asserted with 
 equal vehemence what he called the " divine doctrine" of Toleration. He took 
 for the basis of his system, the ideas of Mr. Locke, and adroitly appHed them 
 to the support of an existing institution. 
 1 Tenn's Life by his Son, 
 
84 MODERN PERIOD. 
 
 the earliest Evangelical preachers in the Church of England. 
 The eagerness with which persons of all classes, even the very- 
 highest i, flocked to hear the Methodist preachers, and gave 
 themselves up to the stirring or insinuating appeals that were 
 made to their hearts and consciences hy the stern impassioned 
 Calvinism of Whitfield or the more persuasive Arminiamsm 
 of Wesley, affords the strongest proof of the inefficiency of the 
 Establishment for its high function : whilst the absurd and 
 improvident bigotry with which it disowned the ministrations 
 of pious and devoted men, sincerely attached to its formularies 
 and discipline, gave birth to a vast and compact hierarchy, 
 distinct at once from the Dissenters and the Church, whose 
 manifold relation to the old religious divisions of the country 
 might well deserve a chapter to itself. The disinclination of 
 the higher orders permanently to separate themselves from 
 the national religion, and the exertions of such men as Mr. 
 Wnberforce and Mr. Thornton to place zealous preachers of 
 the doctrines called Evangelical, in the pulpits of the Esta.. 
 blishment, prevented a more extensive secession ; and though 
 accompanied at times with some extravagance and unchari- 
 tableness, brought back into the Church a religious life which 
 had almost disappeared. It cannot be denied that the Evan- 
 gelical party has wrought much good in the revival of personal 
 religion, and meritoriously co-operated with the Methodists 
 and some classes of Dissenters, in labours of piety and benevo- 
 lence. No religious body is competent in itself to the entire 
 work of religious renovation. Great earnestness in what is 
 essentially holy and good, is often shaded with attendant in- 
 firmities. It is sufficient for one who wishes to survey the 
 wide and variegated field of human action and opinion with an 
 open eye and a brotherly spirit, to discover, if he can, the 
 specific task of service, which God has assigned to different 
 classes and sects, and to acknowledge with respect and thank- 
 fulness its faithful and energetic performance. 
 
 Intellect is less contagious than sentiment and feeling. 
 The men who think freely and act independently, -s^iLl always 
 form a small minority. Far less striking and palpable were 
 the results of the effort made by another section of the Chm'ch, 
 to promote fi'eedom of Scriptural inquiry, and to obtain a 
 release from subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles. With 
 this view an association was formed of clergy and laity, who in 
 
 ' See the om-ious and iustructiTe Memoirs of the Life and Times of the 
 Countess of Hmitingdon. 
 
MODERN PERIOD. 85 
 
 1772 petitioned Parliament for relief; but their application 
 was rejected. The Evangelical party, with Mr. Venn and 
 Lady Huntiagdon at their head, opposed the measure with all 
 their influence ; and Mr. Burke, though in general ffiendly to 
 the extension of religious freedom, resisted the concession, 
 and with great force pointed out its iacompatibility with the 
 principles of the Establishment i. The principles entertained 
 by the promoters of this scheme and made the ground of their 
 petition to Parliament, had been exhibited in a work called 
 the Confessional, published anonymously, but known to be the 
 production of archdeacon Blackburne^. This work assumed 
 the preservation of the Establishment; but, as the condition of 
 admission to its ofl&ces, proposed to substitute for subscription 
 to the Articles a simple declaration of belief in the Scriptures, 
 and a promise to make them the rule and standard of public 
 teaching. This was coming as near to the attainment of reli- 
 gious freedom as the retention of the Establishment would 
 permit. But the plan, though specious in theory, is burdened 
 with great practical difficulties. The terms suggested are 
 themselves so vague, that they must have led in usage to an 
 arbitrary limitation, which would have excluded some parties. 
 Viewed abstractedly they do not satisfy the full demands of 
 the rights of conscience. Any one who had studied the history 
 and genius of the English Church, and watched the feelings 
 that were deeply cherished by its most devoted adherents, 
 might have foreseen the reception which the proposal of so 
 sweeping a change would be certain to encounter ; and how- 
 ever groundless these feelings may to some appear, it is still a 
 question, whether it would have been prudent and right, 
 harshly to violate them. In consequence of the frustration of 
 this measure, a few clergymen who were dissatisfied with sub- 
 scription, and among them, that meek confessor, the Rev. 
 TheophUus Lindsey, seceded from the national Church. The 
 mental tendencies of which the petition to Parliament was an 
 expression, no longer finding a vent in the Establishment, 
 henceforth took refuge, where they have been expressed at 
 all, ia the Presbyterian and Anti-trinitarian section of the 
 Dissenters. 
 
 1 Venn's Life, with Lady Huntingdon's Memoirs, II. 286-7. Bm-te's 
 Speeches, Vol. 1. p. 94.- Feb. 6, 1772. ^ „ ^ ^ t ■ • . ., 
 
 2 Its title ran thus : ' The Confessional : or a fall and free Inqun-y into the 
 Bight UtiEty, Bdifioation, and Success of estabUshing Systematical Confessions^ 
 of Faith and Doctrine in Protestant Churches.' The second edition, enlarged, 
 was published in 1767. 
 
86 MODERN PERIOD. 
 
 Since the peace in 1815,— called forth by alarm at the strong 
 measures of civil and ecclesiastical reform, introduced in rapid 
 succession by a liberal government, an intense revival has 
 taken place of the old High Church principles. In 1833, a few 
 individuals holding these sentiments met at Oxford, to agree 
 upon a course of joint action to resist the democratic tenden- 
 cies of the age. Hence the publication of the Tracts for the 
 Times. The deep feeling at the heart of this party, is distrust 
 of popular progress, and aversion to the shallow, vulgar Pro- 
 testantism which courts popular sympathies. But this system, 
 though it has acquired a modern name, is no novelty in the 
 history of the English Church. It is only an exaggerated 
 expression of its inherent principles, called out by vehement 
 reaction. It is the system of DodweU and Leslie, and the 
 Non-jurors at the time of the Revolution; of Bramhall, 
 Laud, Andrews, and Bancroft under the Stuarts. It is not 
 Popish; though some minds have been driven by it into 
 Popery. It loves the old English ritual, and the high sacer- 
 dotal doctrines which have been associated with it ; and avails 
 itself of every grammatical license, to extract from the Articles 
 a sense that is Anti-calvinistic^. This party finds itself in a 
 position unparalleled by any former period of its history. 
 Popular principles have made an immense advance. Moored 
 to the precedents of the past, it sees the strong tide of public 
 opinion flow past it, and is afraid of being swept away in the 
 stream. Its old trust in the Crown is gone ; Parliament is 
 against it ; the aristocracy is divided ; and there is now no 
 exiled Royalty on which it can bestow its sympathies. For- 
 saken by its ancient supports, it has only the Church to lean 
 upon ; and this may account for the display of a stronger feel- 
 ing towards Romanism. 
 
 A retrospect of the history of the Anglican Church demon- 
 strates the utter inefficiency of Creeds, Articles, and a 
 settled form of Prayer, to preserve agreement in belief, or 
 even harmony of feeling, among its members. Three parties 
 exist, and long have existed, within it, devoid of all sympathy 
 vnth each other, but each sustaining a most intimate relation 
 to certain bodies that are external to it. It is encircled by 
 Catholics, by Evangelical, and by what are called Rational, 
 Dissenters. Within it, we recognize the same three elements, 
 the Catholic, the Evangelical, and the Liberal. We have 
 traced the filiation of the Catholic element from Andrews 
 1 See Tract 90. 
 
MODERN PERIOD. 87 
 
 and Laud through the Non-jurors to the Oxford Tractarians. 
 The Evangelicals find their counterpart in the doctrinal Puri- 
 tans of the seventeenth century. Hales, Whichcot, Wilkins 
 and Tillotson are the predecessors and spiritual progenitors of 
 a most respectable, but now, it is to be feared, the smallest and 
 feeblest, party in the Church; the moderate and rational 
 party; attached to truth and science and social progress; 
 friendly to Dissenters; not confounding an Establishment 
 with the vital principles of Christianity, but regarding it as a 
 human instrument for their support. With differences re- 
 sulting from the complexion of their minds or the state of the 
 times, we may assign to this class, in the last and preceding 
 generation, Jortin, Law, Newcome, Shipley, Paley, and Parr, 
 and in the present, Maltby, Whately, and Arnold^. Such 
 men would liberalize the Church, if it were possible. They 
 have no superstitious reverence for episcopacy as such ; they 
 regard it simply as a discipline and an instrumentality for the 
 accomplishment of a great social object. They would gladly 
 make the Establishment express and cherish the religion a£ 
 the nation, and cease to be an instrument of insult and an- 
 noyance in the hands of selfish and ambitious men. But 
 what can we think of the unity of a Church, in which men, so 
 opposite in their views, as Dr. Pusey, archdeacon Hare, and 
 the present most respectable primate of aU England, Dr. 
 Sumner, are equally recognized as ministers, and required to 
 use the same formularies and to sign the same articles? 
 After the debates of centuries, it is yet a matter of dispute, 
 which of the three is the truest son of the Church of England. 
 It is strange that the controversies of the first Reformers should 
 still be left unsolved; and that one half of the Church should 
 deem the other heretical, for preferring the CathoHc or the 
 Calvinistic elements, which may be found in its Prayer-book, 
 its Articles, and its Homilies, 
 
 ' These distinguished men have differed in their conception of an EstahHsh- 
 ment. Paley adopted substantially, with increased liberislity to Dissenters, 
 the views of Warburton. Dr. Whately, as appears from his work on the King- 
 dom of Christ, regards all Churches asvoluntary associations of such individuals 
 as agree in their ideas of faith and worship, and treats the eatabUshment of any 
 one of the number, as a mere social accident. Dr. Arnold, who has expressed 
 his opinions very plainly in the preface to his Roman History (p. ix.), m various 
 passages of his pubUshed Correspondence, and more recently m his posthu- 
 mous Fragment on the Church (appendix, ii. and in.) is anErastian, admittmg 
 no distinction between a Christian Church and a Christian Commonwealth. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 PUEITANISM. 
 SECTION I. 
 
 PREDOMINANT IDEA OF PURITANISM. 
 
 Having attempted in the preceding chapter to describe the 
 constitution and historical development of the Anglican hier- 
 archy, I proceed now to contrast with it the nature and ope- 
 ration of the antagonistic principle of Puritanism. It is from 
 the conflict of these opposing tendencies, that the peculiar 
 character of our religious life results. The spirit of Puri- 
 tanism must not, however, he confounded with the prin- 
 ciples of free inquiry and mental iudependence, which ulti- 
 mately grew out of it, and by those who were capable of 
 reasoning it iato its consequences, might have been seen to 
 be involved in it. The fundamental idea of Puritanism, in 
 all its forms and ramifications, is the supreme authority of 
 Scripture, acting directly on the individual conscience, as 
 opposed to a reliance on the priesthood and the outward ordi- 
 nances of the Church. To realize the standard of faith, 
 worship and conduct, recorded in Scripture, has ever been 
 the object of Puritanism; and to attain that object, in de- 
 fiance of a hierarchy, requires no small degree of self-reliance 
 and decision of purpose. But with Puritanism the raiige of 
 inquiry is shut up within the limits of the written Word. It 
 does not venture to sally forth beyond them, to survey the 
 Scripture under a broader aspect, from some point of view 
 external to it. Where, as with Baxter and others of a later 
 period, the principle of rigid Scripturahsm was less firmly 
 grasped, they approached the confines of the Latitudinarian 
 system, and ceased, to that extent, to be proper Puritans. 
 
 In truth, absolute freedom of inquiry in the present condi- 
 tion of society can be exercised, if at all, by only a few minds. 
 It may belong to individuals ; it cannot belong to the multi- 
 tude. It is one of the latest results of advanced intellectual 
 
PREDOMINANT IDEA OF PURITANISM. 89 
 
 culture. The mass of men will long, perhaps must for ever, 
 continue to recognize a practical rule of faith and conduct some- 
 where or other out of themselves. Puritanism which from 
 its origiQ was rather a product and expression of popular 
 feeling, than the impulse of a speculative intellect, casting off 
 by a spasmodic effort the constraint and oppression of the old 
 sacerdotal yoke, threw itself with implicit trust on Scripture, 
 as a substituted authority ; and opposed the claims of God 
 and Christ to those of uninspired and erring men. The idea 
 was grand and animating. Though it involved assumptions, 
 and drew after it difficulties, not very distinctly apprehended 
 in the first outbreak of reforming zeal, it contained enough 
 of undoubted and most valuable truth, to apply a powerful 
 lever to the public mind in its resistance to the domination of 
 the hierarchy. 
 
 Thus the sufficiency of Scripture is the fundamental postu- 
 late of Puritanism ; the authority of the Church, the ground 
 practically taken by the Anglican hierarchy : and these in- 
 compatible assumptions have been the cause of the uninter- 
 mitted strife between them, through the last four or five cen- 
 turies of our history. Scripture, the record and depository 
 of the free and popular spirit of the primitive Gospel, the 
 Magna Charta of religious liberty, is a standing witness and 
 protest against the pretensions of spiritual despotism. In 
 the spirit which it breathes, we find a reason of the profound 
 reverence for it ever manifested by those, who at different 
 periods have struggled against episcopal tyranny and called 
 aloud for ecclesiastical reform, from the African sectaries 
 who resisted Cyprian and were persecuted by Augustiae, down 
 to the Waldenses, the Hussites and the Lollards of the 
 Middle Ages ; and in the same spirit we detect a motive for the 
 efforts of the priesthood to keep the dispensation of the Word 
 of life in their own hands, and to prevent its free circulation 
 among the laity. The conflict pervades the whole of Chris- 
 tian history, and goes back to the first ages of the Church. If 
 mere antiquity could decide the question at issue, Pxiritanism 
 through its authentic representatives from the earliest times, 
 might at least make out as venerable a pedigree, and establish 
 as clear a line of apostolical descent, as Episcopacy. Taking 
 the word Puritanism in the large sense which has been ex- 
 plained in a former chapter, we may trace the identity of the 
 principle, in all its most striking manifestations, through 
 
90 SPIRIT AND AFFINITIES OF LOLLAKDISM. 
 
 every period of its history, whether oppressed by a Catholic, 
 or in collision with a Protestant, hierarchy. Under all out- 
 ward changes, we shall find, that Scripturalism, a severe 
 morality, popular sympathies, and ardent attachment to civil 
 freedom, have constituted the sign and peculiar distinction of 
 Puritanism. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 SPIRIT AND AFFINITIES OF LOLLARDISM. 
 
 Many points of coincidence at once present themselves be- 
 tween Lollardism and the later Puritanism, especially in its 
 more extreme forms of Independency, Anabaptism, and 
 Quakerism. In the antagonism of minds, as in the collision 
 of bodies, action and reaction are equal. Intolerable tyranny 
 or shameless corruption call forth in resistance to themselves, 
 an overstrained spirituality of devotion and extravagant 
 asceticism. Where the pressure is relaxed, the opposition be- 
 comes less intense. It was under an establishment itself re- 
 formed, still working with the leaven of recent change, and 
 beheved by numbers to be destined to further purification, 
 that Puritanism, in the days of Edward VI. and the first 
 years of Elizabeth's reign, put on a respectful and concUiatory 
 demeanour towards the hierarchy, and aimed at renewal and 
 perfection, rather than destruction. On the other hand, it was 
 in open defiance of the unbroken strength of the Romish 
 priesthood, and in full view of its undisguised avarice and 
 immoralities, that the followers of Wycliffe took their stern 
 measure of ecclesiastical reform. Pursued with implacable ma- 
 lignity by the clergy through the whole course of the fifteenth 
 century, imprisoned, fagoted, and burnt, they planted deep 
 those principles of religious democracy, which were never 
 afterwards eradicated from the mind of the English com- 
 monalty, but, after the lapse of a century, shot up again with 
 new vigour, when the power of the bishops once more became 
 oppressive. The Independents, and not the Presbyterians, 
 derive their origin from the Lollards. 
 
 In perfect consistency with their fundamental principle, the 
 Lollards admitted nothing into their faith, worship, or prac- 
 
SPIRIT AND AFFINITIES OF LOLLARDISM. 91 
 
 tice, which had not the sanction of Scripture. They did not 
 acknowledge the authority of general councils ; and WycliiFe 
 treated aU ecclesiastical writers, since the thousandth year of 
 Christ, as heretics. Their doctrinal system was nearly iden- 
 tical with Calviaism, a form of belief which has always pre- 
 vailed among the Puritans. They held, that the true Church 
 of Christ consists of predestinated persons, and of none else. 
 With this notion they combined the allied doctrines of elec- 
 tion by grace, remission of sins through the satisfaction of the 
 cross, justification by faith, sanctification by the Spirit, and, in 
 a modified sense, without distiactly acknowledgiug its appli- 
 cation to the present relations of society, the obscure and 
 suspicious tenet of " dominion foimded on grace^." It was 
 probably only another mode of stating the doctrine, that spi- 
 ritual must finally prevail over temporal interests in the 
 afiairs of men; and that no power can permanently endure, 
 which is opposed to the wUl of God. It is a literal adoption 
 of PauFs words, that " the saints shall judge the world." The 
 rigorous and consequential intellect of Wyclifie had firmly 
 grasped the doctrine of philosophical necessity, and saw all 
 things under the control of the irresistible decrees of God. 
 
 All these views were closely connected with each other, as 
 parts of a common system; and had their source in the re- 
 action of intense personal religion against the externality and 
 spiritual deadness of the hierarchy; in a deep feeHng, that 
 nothing but the immediate operation of God upon the soial, 
 could extricate men fifom the foul sink of an abounding 
 wickedness and infidelity. Scripture therefore in its hteral 
 simplicity, was eagerly embraced, as a medium of direct inter- 
 course with God and Christ ; from whom alone, iu entire inde- 
 pendence of aU. human aids, a new and higher Hfe was sought, 
 and all blessings temporal and eternal were implored : while 
 the whols apparatus of priestly mediation and church ceremo- 
 nies was cast aside, as thrusting a heathenish barrier between 
 Christ and the individual soul, and obstructing the sole foun- 
 tain of its salvation. 
 
 Doctrines akin to these, have usually been taken up in the 
 first strong, convulsive wrestlings of the human spirit with 
 
 ' Vaughan's Life of Wycliffe. Lingard's Hist, of England, toI. iT. 8vo. 
 This last historian has remarted (ch. ii.) that in the doctrine of dominion 
 founded on grace, there is a mrxtvire of feudal and theological ideas : all pro- 
 perty, being held of God, is forfeited by sin, which is treason against God. 
 
92 SPIK-IT AND AFFINITIES OF LOLLAKDISM. 
 
 inveterate corruption and deep-seated unbelief; and Scriptural 
 authority has been claimed for them, in the burning and im- 
 passioned words of Paul, whose warfare was with the gigantic 
 iniquity of the ancient world. When the faith and morals of 
 mankind have undergone a long and deep decay, nothing but 
 an intense concentration of the soul on God, as the only and 
 immediate source of all spiritual power, with the consciousness 
 which is its result, of an intimate, indissoluble, personal rela- 
 tion to Him — can furnish motives sufficiently powerful, to 
 break the chains of previous habit and association, and throw 
 men at once on a totally new course of life. If every popular 
 belief of wide and enduring diffusion must have some particle 
 of truth for its nucleus, it is perhaps this law of our spiritual 
 being which is expressed, only too absolutely and universally, 
 in the doctrine of " election by grace." The individual must 
 first be purified and renovated, before he can beneficially en- 
 tertain an indiscriminate sympathy with the whole human 
 race. While his process of self-renewal is still in progress; 
 while he feels how difficult and critical it is; how easUy it 
 may be stayed, and frustrated; how awful is the alternative 
 which it involves ; he must keep aloof from the world, as set 
 apart for an object beyond the world, and cannot as yet, with 
 safety to himself, look on the great mass of his fellow-creatures 
 as otherwise than reprobate. Whatever abuses this exclusive- 
 ness may ultimately have led to, it is certainly the fact, that in 
 our own country, the spirit of moral and religious reform 
 began in rigid Calvinism, and gradually softened down into 
 the milder character of Arminianism. 
 
 As with the later Puritans, so with the LoUards, resistance 
 to ecclesiastical tyranny aroused a kindred love of pohtical 
 freedom. If they contended for the liberty of prophesying, in 
 spite of prelatical restrictions; they also asserted, that just 
 government in the magistrate, is the condition of obedience 
 in the people, and that the abuse of power deprives it of its 
 right. The democratic outbreaks in Richard II.'s time had 
 affinities more or less direct with the Lollard doctrines. 
 Though an obscurity invests the charges against Lord Cob- 
 ham, the most eminent of the party in the reign of Henry V., 
 yet the very nature of them, however vague, implies a sup- 
 posed connection between the principles which he was known 
 to profess, and those of civil liberty. 
 
 The spirit of Wycliffe himself was tinged with the gloom of 
 
INCIPIENT PURITANIC MOVEMENTS. 93 
 
 a deep and thoughtful earnestness. His biographer observes, 
 that he has not remarked a single passage in his writings which 
 indicates a sprightly and mirthful state of mind. The work 
 which occupied him was too grand and solemn, to allow him 
 to relax for a moment the rigid bent of his faculties. His 
 followers inherited the same stern and enthusiastic tempera- 
 ment, worked up into fanaticism by unceasiug persecution. 
 How completely all these thiags were the foreshadowings and 
 prolusions of a bolder and more triumphant exhibition of the 
 same principle, which came forth in the seventeenth century ; 
 how entirely Lollardism and the extremer forms of Puritanism 
 are identical; we shall perceive with abundant evidence as we 
 proceed. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 INCIPIENT PURITANIC MOVEMENTS. 
 
 The revolution occasioned by Henry VIII.'s rupture with 
 Rome, affected chiefly the outward relations of the Church, which 
 internally experienced little essential alteration, till the acces- 
 sion of more powerful reforming influences under Edward VI. 
 The act of Henry was only a link in a chain of causes already 
 in active operation. Of the three, religious parties which had 
 existed in England from the time of Wycliffe, we find the 
 exact counterpart — merely substituting the Church of which 
 the king had become the head, for the old Catholic hierarchy 
 — after the Reformation. There were those who adhered to 
 the actual constitution of things, and opposed aU further 
 change — the selfish or timid and peace-loving conservatives; 
 there were others, attached to the forms and discipline of a 
 national Church, but desirous of proceeding further in reforma- 
 tion ; and lastly, those who wished to destroy every vestige of a 
 hierarchy. Some minds are constitutionally averse from change. 
 They resist innovation as long as they can ; but when it has 
 once taken place, and something is fixed, they make the best 
 of it, and stand as firmly by the new establishment, as they 
 did by the old. Men of this disposition temporized under 
 Henry, and acquiesced in the settlements made by Edward 
 and Elizabeth. Abhorring democratic movements and deeply 
 
94 INCIPIENT PURITANIC MOVEMENTS. 
 
 Catholic in all their feelings, they widely spread through the 
 English Church that reverence for tradition and authority 
 which is peculiar to it, and of which we have traced the effects 
 in the preceding chapter. 
 
 Of the two other parties alluded to, loosely comprehended 
 under the name Puritan, and exhibiting in fact only different 
 stages of the same general tendency, the character and opera- 
 tions are yet suf&ciently distinct, to justify us in considering 
 their history separately. The terms Presbyterian and Inde- 
 pendent express a difference of principle respecting the consti- 
 tution of a Church, which makes its appearance soon after the 
 Reformation; and running through the entire history of Non- 
 conformity, has not yet ceased to produce its effects. Those 
 who scrupled to comply in all things with the ritual and canons 
 of the Church, acquired early in Elizabeth's reign, by way of 
 reproach, the name of Puritans or Precisians. It was often 
 given, says Fuller, by the profane to such as manifested any 
 deep sense of religion, although they were strict Conformists^. 
 The objections of such persons at first related chiefly to certain 
 parts of the clerical dress, and some ceremonies retained fi-pm 
 the Catholic service, that were disliked as the outward marks 
 of a superstition which they tended to keep up in the popular 
 mind. Such was the ground taken by the more moderate 
 Nonconformists, who did not go the length of objectiag abso- 
 lutely to episcopal government. In the progress of the con- 
 troversy, exasperated by the harsh measures of Parker and 
 Whitgift, a bolder tone was assumed ; the episcopal hierarchy 
 was denounced as infected with the dregs of Rome ; and it was 
 broadly affirmed, that the presbyterian platform had a warrant 
 fi'om Scripture and a divine right, to take its place, as the 
 form of the national church. The Nonconformists of this 
 class, whether extreme or moderate in their views, were for 
 the most part men of learning, who had enjoyed an university 
 education. Many of them had been in exile in Mary's days, 
 and still maintained a close correspondence with the foreign 
 reformers. In Frankfort, in Zurich, and above all in Geneva, 
 they had imbibed principles which powerfully influenced their 
 conduct on their return home. In the churches which ac- 
 knowledged the authority of Calvin, they experienced a most 
 cordial reception, and with these they entered into the closest 
 intimacy. A division of opinion, however, respecting liturgies 
 1 Church History, Boot IX. sect. i. 67. 
 
INCIPIENT PURITANIC MOVEMENTS. 95 
 
 and episcopal government, took place even among the exiles ; 
 and the "Troubles of Prankforti" were but a prelude to the 
 strife between Conformists and Nonconformists, which was 
 destined to agitate England for more than a century to come. 
 Many circumstances strengthened the influence of the early 
 Puritans. They saw their cause triumphant in Scotland, and 
 Presbyterianism established by the invincible zeal of Knox 
 who had been their companion in exile. The first generation 
 of Elizabeth's bishops treated them for the most part with 
 respect and tenderness, and some had even a lurking sym- 
 pathy with their scruples. Grindal who was primate after 
 Parker, incurred the lasting displeasure of the Queeu for the 
 countenance he afforded them, and his resistance to her des- 
 potic proceedings^. The course of events had placed Elizabeth 
 at the head of the Protestant interest in Europe; and her 
 counsellors were not sorry to strengthen their hands with the 
 influence of a powerful body of men who regarded Catholicism 
 with abhorrence. 
 
 Leicester, KnoUys, and Walsingham, were puritanically in- 
 chned ; Raleigh pleaded their cause in Parliament ; and Bur- 
 leigh sometimes interposed to shield them from the severities 
 of the Court of High Commission^. Jealousy of episcopal 
 pretensions far more than religious zeal, inspired statesmen 
 
 1 A work under this title, " The History of the Troubles of Frankfort," waa 
 published in 1575. The substance of it may be seen in Tuller, Book YIII. 
 sect. iii. 1-29, and Neal, toI. i. pp. 72-78. The exiles at Zurich were attached 
 to the Service Book estabhshed under Edward VI. Those of Frankfort, guided 
 by Enox and others, wished to come nearer to the Genevan model ; but in this 
 they were vehemently opposed by Cox, afterwards bishop of Ely, who was 
 zealous for the English Liturgy. 
 
 2 Those who took Gtrindal's view of the case of the Puritans, were called by 
 the high Episcopalians, Gtriudalizers. Spenser in his Shepherd's Calendar, in- 
 verting the syllables of the name, celebrates Grindal aa " old Algrind," and 
 describes his suspension in the following lines ; July, w. 215-20. 
 
 " Hee is a shepheard great in gree, 
 But hath bene long ypent : 
 One day hee sat upon a bill, 
 
 As now thou wouldest mee ; 
 But I am taught, by Algrind's iU, 
 To love the lowe degree." 
 In the fifth, seventh, and ninth eclogues, Spenser betrays symptoms of Puri- 
 tanical feeling, particularly in his preference of Grindal to Aylmer, bishop of 
 London. See Todd's Life of Spenser, prefixed to his edition of the poet's 
 works, p. xiv. 
 
 3 Strype's Lives of Parker and Whitgifl. Burleigh's Letter to Whitgift in 
 Neal, I. p. 285. 
 
96 INCIPIENT PURITANIC MOVEMENTS. 
 
 and courtiers 'with these sentiments ; but the result was^ that 
 Puritanism acquired the weight and consideration which at- 
 tach to a political body. In doctrine, its adherents agreed 
 entirely with the Establishment : but they desired a simpler 
 ritual and a stricter discipline; and their reverence for the 
 supreme authority of Scripture, made them object to the Eras- 
 tian principle of its subordination to the State. Such was 
 the commencement of the great Presbyterian party. It was 
 powerful from its numbers, its learning, its foreign connections, 
 and the high station of many of its supporters ; it was aristo- 
 cratical rather than popular in its tendencies ; and through 'all 
 its gradations of opinion it clung to the wish for a reformed 
 national church in place of the actual hierarchy. 
 
 While these movements were agitating the upper regions of 
 society, at a lower depth a strong popular fermentation was 
 going on, which had originated long anterior to the Reforma- 
 tion, and was pregnant with effects far more extensive than 
 any as yet distinctly contemplated by the learned. The Gos- 
 pellers who abounded at the commencement of Henry's reign, 
 were the same people with the LoUards ; and this name suffi- 
 ciently indicates their distinguishing principle. They were 
 devoted to the study of the Scriptures, and would sit up aU 
 night to read and hear the word. No expense was spared by 
 them to obtain books, and some were known to give a load of 
 hay for a few chapters of St. James or St. Paul in EngUsh. 
 " But the Word of Truth," says Fox, writing in the days of 
 Elizabeth, " did, notwithstanding, multiply among them ex- 
 ceedmgly. Wherein is to be seen no doubt the man-ellous 
 working of God's mighty power. For so I find and observe in 
 considering the Registers i, how one neighbour resorting and 
 conferring with another, eftsoons with a few words of their 
 first or second talk, did win and turn their minds to that 
 wherem they desired to persuade them, touching the truth of 
 God's Word and his Sacraments. To see their travels, their 
 earnest seeking, their burning zeals, their readings, their 
 watchmgs, their sweet assemblies, their love and concord, 
 their godly living, their faithful marrying with the faithful^ 
 may make us now in these our days of free profession, to 
 blush for shamed" They were very numerous in the midland 
 and eastern counties, where they were often severely perse- 
 
 ' Of the diocese of Lincoln. 
 
 ■ Book of Mai-tyve, II. fol. p. 23. 
 
INCIPIENT PURITANIC MOVEMENTS. 97 
 
 cuted by the bishops. Among other names, they had that of 
 known men and known women, or just fast men; and were 
 mostly persons of humble origin^. 
 
 During the reign of Mary, when the more learned Pro- 
 testants suffered martyrdom or fled beyond seas, these humble 
 Gospellers, sheltered by their obscurity, stiU kept up their 
 secret meetings for worship ; and, in the absence of regularly 
 educated ministers, were preached to by laymen of mean con- 
 dition, such as weavers and wheelwrights^. In the city of 
 London they assembled privily, sometimes in one place and 
 sometimes in another, to escape the pursuit of the officers of 
 justice J and having many adherents among the mercantile 
 and seafaring class, they held their service occasionally, for the 
 sake of greater security, on board the vessels in the river. 
 This London congregation varied in numbers from forty to 
 one or two hundred, and towards the end of Mary's reign 
 greatly increased. It had several ministers ; one of them, Mr. 
 Bentham, who was a learned man and a scholar of Oxford, 
 was made bishop of Lichfield and Coventry on the accession 
 of Elizabeth^- The principles of these people, maintained in 
 the face of danger, were thorough and uncompromising ; their 
 devotion to the Scriptures most ardent; their dislike of the 
 hierarchy and of every approach to it, intense. In the present 
 condition of society, we can hardly estimate the strength of 
 these feelings. What has been withheld or forbidden by an 
 arbitrary and tyrannical power, excites an iuterest and curio- 
 sity, with a dislike of the restraining hand, beyond all bounds. 
 When the Scriptures began to be circulated in English under 
 Henry VIIL, the LoUard tendencies came out in all their 
 force. Old people learned to read, that they might study the 
 Bible ; and young people and children flocked to the churches 
 to hear it. Strype tells an anecdote of a yoimg man, who 
 exposed himself to the deadliest rage of his father, who was 
 a papist, for joining with a fellow-apprentice to purchase a 
 Bible*. Penry, an ardent Brownist, who was executed for his 
 principles under Elizabeth, in a paper addressed to the Queen 
 from Edinburgh, 1593, comparing the mitigated Protestan- 
 tism then established in England with the martyr-like zeal of a 
 
 ' Strype, Ecclesiast. Mem. I. ch. vii. viii. 
 
 2 See an account of two such in Strype, Eccl. Mem., vol. v. eh. xItu. 
 
 3 Fox, vol. iii. p. 774. ■* Life of Crammer, p. 64. 
 
98 INCIPIENT PURITANIC MOVEMENTS. 
 
 former period, expresses a sentiment similar to that already 
 quoted from Fox, and declares his helief, that in all likelihood, 
 if the days of queen Mary and her persecution had continued 
 unto that day, the Church of God in England woidd have been 
 far more flourishing than it then was, and have far surpassed 
 aU the Reformed Churches in the world^. It was this deep 
 popular feeling, working in the heart of society, and owning 
 no distract impulse but unmeasured hatred of prelacy and 
 enthusiastic reverence for the Word of God, which found a 
 wild and turbulent utterance in the tracts of Martin Marpre- 
 late. Many natives of the Low Countries, exiled by religious 
 persecution, had settled in Norfolk and Suffolk as early as 
 1560 ; and meeting with congenial elements .in the native po- 
 pulation, excited a spirit of religious enthusiasm, which spread 
 over that part of England, and has left traces of its influence 
 there to the present day. Early in Elizabeth's reign, a sect 
 appeared in the diocese of Ely, many of whose tenets were 
 irreconcilable with any form of church government, and re- 
 sembled those of the Anabaptists and Quakers^. 
 
 By Puritanism, as already explained, I designate the gene- 
 ral tendency which moved onward, after the settlement of the 
 Church by Ehzabeth, in. the direction of further reform. Un- 
 der that title are comprehended very different manifestations 
 of the rehgious life, all springing originally from a common 
 impulse. The movement was arrested at different stages of its 
 progress, in only a few cases proceeding to its utmost length ; 
 and it thus gave birth to successive waves, as it were, of assault 
 on the hierarchy, each advancing beyond its predecessor, till 
 at length the fabric fell under the joint influence of their 
 repeated attacks. It wiU conduce to the clearer understand- 
 ing of this part of our religious history, briefly to exhibit in 
 
 ' Neal, vol. i. p. 376. 
 
 - Strype's Parker, p. 287. Hanbviry's Historical Memorials of the Indepen- 
 dents. Eeligious peculiarities adhere to certain localities. Edwards in his 
 G-angraena describes the sectaries as very numerous in the eastern counties, and 
 mentions the Isle of Ely as a notorious resort of them. Calamy, at a later 
 period, speaks of Bedfordshire and Essex, as abounding vrith Dissenters of an 
 enthusiastic character, regardless of ordination and a learned education. (De- 
 fence of Moderate Nonconformity, etc., 1703.) Norvrich, and Braintree in Essex 
 have been the seats in the present day of the most vigorous resistance to church- 
 rates. The Baptists were till lately very numerous among the yeomanry of the 
 Weald of Kent. Cheshire, LaneasUre, and Yorkshire, were anciently the strong- 
 holds of Presbyterianism. 
 
HIGH PRESBYTERIANISM UNDER ELIZABETH. 99 
 
 succession the principles and operations of the several parties 
 that were involved in the great Puritanic movement. Of 
 these the Presbyterians or proper Puritans, from their num- 
 bers and social influence, claim our attention first. 
 
 SECTIOlir IV. 
 
 HIGH PRESBYTERIANISM UNDER ELIZABETH. 
 
 Two circumstances distinguished the Presbyterian party at 
 its origin : an attachment to the doctrines and usages of the 
 Calvioistic churches of the Continent ; and a persuasion, that 
 the model of a national Church polity was authoritatively laid 
 down in Scripture. Valuing exceedingly the learning of schools 
 and universities, especially when devoted to the service of 
 divine truth, they nevertheless agreed with the more extreme 
 Puritans and the old Lollards, in a strong dislike of the 
 coldness and formalism of the Estabhshment. Like them they 
 wished to introduce a stricter religious discipline, and a more 
 primitive fervour and earnestness, guided by Scriptural rule, 
 into the Church. But their scruples met with no toleration 
 from the Queen and her most favoured bishops : and thus, 
 while a moderate concession in matters indifferent would have 
 satisfied and reconciled the most eminent among them, they 
 were driven by conscience on the separation they dreaded and 
 abhorred ; and being once released from control, they reasoned 
 out their fundamental ideas consequentially, and set up in 
 opposition to the prelates, the divine right of Presbyterianism. 
 For refusing to perform a few insignificant ceremonies and 
 wear certain garments, the most pious and acceptable minis- 
 ters were deprived of their licenses and suspended from preach- 
 ing. Even the years and virtues and useful labours of Miles 
 Coverdale did not exempt him from this ecclesiastical perse- 
 cution. The consequence was, that, from the want of con- 
 formable ministers, as they were then called, many parishes 
 were left whoUy unprovided; and the Church, defeating the 
 express object of its own institution, was the immediate cause 
 of spiritual destitution throughout the land. In London and 
 many other parts of the country, a large proportion of the 
 laity were puritanical, and shunned the services of a compliant 
 
 f2 
 
100 HIGH PKESBYTBRIANISM 
 
 minister who was willing to do the bishops' bidding, with 
 ahnost as much horror as those of a Papist. 
 
 Among other methods of aiding the cause of evangelical 
 reform and spreading a knowledge of the Scriptures, must 
 be mentioned the prophesyings, a kind of religious exercises, 
 which prevailed chiefly in the counties of Norfolk, Essex, and 
 Northampton, and which afforded, it might have been sup- 
 posed, a harmless and salutary vent for the religious enthu- 
 siasm of the day. In these prophesyings the ministers of a 
 district met at some central place to exercise themselves ia the 
 exposition of Scripture. The Scriptural precedent for such 
 meetings was founded on that text of the Apostle (1 Cor. xiv. 
 31), " Ye may all prophesy one by one, that aU may learn, 
 and aU be comforted;" and being much resorted to by the 
 neighbouring gentry, they proved a great means of diffiising 
 puritanical sentiments. Fuller has described their mode 
 of proceeding^. The junior divine went first into the pulpit, 
 and for about half an. hoiar, treated of some portion of Scrip- 
 ture which had been previously agreed on; and after him, 
 four or five others in the order of seniority dilated on the same 
 passage. At last a divine of more years and experience, ap- 
 pointed on purpose, reviewed in a somewhat longer discourse 
 the preceding exercises, and made his comments on them, 
 solemn prayer terminating, as it had opened, the whole ser- 
 vice. A public refection then followed, at which the time of 
 the next meeting was fixed ; the text assigned ; the preachers 
 appointed ; and the moderator elected. Fuller, with the feel- 
 ings of a Churchman, but not unkindly, has noticed some of 
 the abuses to which these prophesyings led. Modest minis- 
 ters were loth to put themselves forward ; while young men 
 of more boldness than learniag, forgetting their text and 
 launching out into vehement invectives against the discipline 
 and government of the Church, excited great applause and 
 carried off all the credit of the meeting. Thus parties arose 
 among the auditory, some extoUing one minister and some 
 another ; and heat of temper with sharp personal recrimina- 
 tion, accompanied the difference of opinion inevitable among 
 disputatious theologians. But allowing the utmost force to 
 these imputed evils, the prophesyings were a natural expres- 
 sion of the spirit of the time. Their very existence proclaimed 
 the inadequacy of the established system to the religious 
 ' Churoh Hist. Book IX. Sect. iv. 2, 3. 
 
UNDER ELIZABETH. 101 
 
 wants of the community. Under proper guidance they might 
 have become nurseries of a learned and pious clergy. Such 
 was the judgment of no less a person than Lord Bacon. Some 
 of EUzabetFs bishops regarded them with indulgence; but 
 the Queen herself was resolved on their abolition. Parkhurst^ 
 who would fain have tolerated them in the diocese of Norwich^ 
 was obliged to suppress them ; and Grindal's honest and cou- 
 rageous refusal to put them down altogether, cost him his 
 Sovereign's favour, and sequestered him from the functions 
 of the primacy, for the remainder of his lifei. 
 
 Thus the spirit of Puritanism was restricted at every point 
 in its free and natural expression; both within the limits of 
 the ordinary services of the Church, and in the occasional 
 exercises which were designed as supplementary to them : and 
 the necessary consequence was, a proportionate development 
 of resisting force. The Puritans themselves were perplexed 
 and distracted by opposing tendencies ; by their reverence for 
 a national Church and their dread of schism ; and by their 
 persuasion of the Scriptural authority of Presbyterianism. 
 According as the one or the other tendency predominated in 
 their minds, they submitted to the Establishment with all its 
 evils in hope of future reform, or they resolved on separation. 
 This gave occasion to the distinction between conformable and 
 nonconforming Puritans. The former avoided as many of the 
 objectionable ceremonies as they could, by accepting the office 
 of lecturers and of chaplains ia private families, which did not 
 involve parochial duty or the necessity of reading every part 
 of the liturgy. The latter adopted the Geneva service-book ; 
 justified their conduct by that of their predecessors, who had 
 set up separate congregations during exile and ia Queen 
 Mary's days ; and held their meetings for worship in woods 
 and solitary fields, and wherever else they could hope to 
 escape the vigilance of government. The era of this separa- 
 tion is placed by Strype and Neal about the year 1566^. In 
 the following year, about a hundred persons were surprised 
 by the sherifis in Plumbers' Hall, which they had hired, under 
 pretext of a wedding, to hear a sermon and join in the com- 
 munion. Most of them were taken into custody; and the 
 leaders brought up for examination before the chief authorities 
 
 1 His long letter to the Queen, remarkable for its plain speaMng, is given by 
 Puler, IX. iT. 3. 
 
 2 Neal's Hist, of the Puritans, I. p. 154 
 
102 HIGH PRESBYTERIANISM 
 
 of the city and diocese of London. Wecannot he siirprised, 
 that an earnest reUgious spirit thus pent np and irritated by 
 ecclesiastical tyranny, should have become harsh and vehe- 
 ment, and have sometimes vented itself in sallies of coarse 
 invective. But there were men of learning and piety in the 
 movement, who attempted to regulate and organize it. In 
 1572, the very year after Parliament had confirmed the doc- 
 trinal articles by statute^ the first English presbytery was 
 set np at Wandsworth in Surrey, where elders were chosen 
 and a system of rules agreed upon. We find the same efforts 
 gradually spreading into other parts of the country. Under 
 Whitgift's primacy in 1586, presbyterian classes were esta- 
 blished in Warwick and Northampton; where the Geneva 
 Book of Disciphne was subscribed, and a mutual engagement 
 entered into to observe its articles. Cartwright, of whom we 
 shall speak presently, was the first subscriber in the Warwick 
 Classis^. It seems probable, that similar associations were 
 very early introduced into Cheshire and the adjoining county 
 of Lancaster*. 
 
 In 1574, a Directory of Church Government for English 
 Nonconformists was drawn up in Latin by Travers, and 
 printed at Geneva. Ten years afterwards, this first draft was 
 translated iuto English by Cartwright, revised, corrected, and 
 improved, by himself and other divines ; and with a preface 
 from his own hand, was iutended to be published for more 
 general use. The work was seized, as it was going through 
 the press at Cambridge ; and Whitgift ordered all the copies 
 of it to be burnt. Our knowledge of it is derived from a copy 
 which was found in Cartwright's study after his decease*. A 
 brief account of its most important articles may serve to con- 
 vey an idea of the presbyterian system, as it was conceived by 
 
 1 See note \ p. 5'7. Ch. II. Sect. w. = gtrype's WHtgift, B. in. ch. xvii. 
 
 2 See the AdTCrtisement prefixed to Paget'e llefence of Presbyterian Church 
 G-OTemment. London, 1641. We learn from this, that the Presbyterian interest 
 had once been very strong in Cheshire ; there havmg been monthly exercises at 
 Northwioh, Namptwich, Knutsford, Macclesfield, Bowden, Frodsham, Tarporley, 
 and other places, which were "frequented by divers of the renowned gentry." 
 When the Advertisement appeared in 1641, there was already a reaction among 
 the gentry and freeholders, in favour of prelatical government. On the early 
 prevalence of Presbyteriauism in Laucashu-e, see Hunter's Life of Ohver Hey- 
 wood, and Dr. Hibbert Ware's Hist, of the Collegiate Church of Manchester, 
 vol. i. pp. 231-373. * 
 
 ^ It is given at length in the second Appendix to Neal's first volume. 
 
UNBER ELIZABETH. 103 
 
 its first assertors in England, and, so far as the times woidd 
 admit, attempted to be carried into practice^. 
 
 It lays down, as a fandamental position, that, as the pres- 
 byterian discipline is necessary for all times and authoritatively 
 prescribed in Scripture, every other form of Church Govern- 
 ment is unlawful. 
 
 It recognizes the equality in right, order, and form, of aU 
 particular churches; no one having any authority over the 
 rest ; and the presbytery or consistory of each church being 
 composed of the teachers and elders belonging to it, with the 
 minister as president. A distinction is made between pastors 
 and teachers: pastors administer the word and sacraments; 
 teachers are occupied with doctrine. Elders superintend the 
 morals of the church j and deacons have charge of the poor. 
 In these presbyteries is vested the entire government of each 
 particular church ; but in more important matters, the con- 
 sent of the Church at large is required to confirm their acts. 
 Discipline proceeds according to the following scale or mea- 
 sure of penalties : first, reproof, private or public ; then, sus- 
 pension firom the Lord's table; lastly, deposition or excom- 
 munication. 
 
 There must be assemblies of different churches, with power 
 to decide on ecclesiastical matters affecting the churches 
 within their resort ; assemblies of greater number and higher 
 authority, being empowered to reverse the decisions of the in- 
 ferior. Such assemblies are distinguished as Conferences or 
 Synods. Conferences consist of representatives from different 
 churches, both ministers and elders, to be held once in sis 
 weeks. Synods are provincial, national, ecumenical. All 
 that relates to the discipline of particular churches must be 
 determined by the express word of God. All that is synodi- 
 cal, rests indeed on the analogies and general rules of Scrip- 
 ture; but, as it is not positively enjoined, may be modified 
 and changed according to circumstances. It is observable, 
 that the system fails here to carry the Scriptural principle 
 throughout. 
 
 Ministers, having first subscribed the confession of doctrine 
 and discipline, must be lawfully called, and proved competent 
 
 ' In the Warwickshire Claasis to wMoh Cartwright helonged, the book sub- 
 eeribed was entitled, ' The Holy Discipline of the Churches described in the 
 Word of G-od.' From Neal's account of it, I. p. 323, it differed somewhat from 
 that contained in hie Appendix. 
 
104 HIGH PRESBYTERIANISM 
 
 by trial of their gifts ; and after election they must be or- 
 dained by the prayers of the church to which they are called. 
 They can only be ordained (a point on which the Puritans 
 laid great stress) to & particular charge. 
 
 The liturgy or order of public service is as follows : a psalm 
 sung by the whole Church ; a short admonition oi preparation 
 for prayer ; a prayer, including confession^ acknowledgment 
 of Gospel promises, supplication of pardon^ petition for grace 
 both in regard to the general duties of life and a due improve- 
 ment of the present administration of the Word, concluding 
 with the Lord's prayer ; the sermon ; prayer for grace to profit 
 by the word ddivered, with a recapitulation of its chief heads, 
 an iatercession for the Universal Church, and all sorts and 
 conditions of men, and the Lord's prayer; psalm by the 
 whole church ; benediction and dismissal ia some Scriptural 
 form. 
 
 Catechising in a shorter and ampler form, is specially pro- 
 vided for in this directory; and care is enjoined to prepare 
 poor scholars by suitable training in every congregation for 
 future preachers and expounders of the Word. 
 
 Such is an outline of the system which the ancient Pres- 
 byterians under Elizabeth, would have substituted for Epis- 
 copacy. 
 
 This system did not want learned and eloquent advocates 
 to defend it. Of these the most eminent both in themselves 
 and for the distinguished men to whom they were opposed, 
 were Cartwright and Travers. Cartwright was Lady Marga- 
 ret's professor of divinity at Cambridge, and in the judgment 
 of Beza, one of the most learned men of his day. In his 
 lectures at St. Mary's, he boldly maintained the chief positions 
 of Puritanism, and drew such crowds that the windows were 
 taken out to admit the auditors. This was a defiance of au- 
 thority, which the ruling powers in Church and State could 
 not pass over with impunity. He was denied his doctor's 
 degree; prohibited from lecturing; deprived of his fellow- 
 ship ; and expelled the University. He then spent some time 
 among the Reformed Churches abroad ; and at lengih returned 
 home, confirmed in his principles, and prepared to render fresh 
 service to the cause for which he had suffered. In 1572 
 the Puritans, finding remonstrance with the Queen and the 
 bishops fruitless, addressed an Admonition, setting forth their 
 demands, to the Parliament. For this the authors of the 
 
UNDER ELIZABETH. 105 
 
 Admonition were committed to prison; and Whitgift, then 
 Master of Trinity and Vice- Chancellor of the University of 
 Cambridge, was directed by Parker to answer it. Cartwright 
 now stepped forward to defend his imprisoned brethren in a 
 second Admonition, which was replied to by Whitgift ; and 
 thus arose a controversy, in which the arguments for Presby- 
 terianism and Prelacy were arrayed in their utmost strength 
 against each other, by disputants well matched for learning 
 and abilities^- Starting from different premises, it was im- 
 possible they should agree in their conclusions; and they 
 separated therefore where they began. Cartwright appealed 
 to Scripture alone ; Whitgift included with it as authoritative, 
 the practice of the four first centuries. 
 
 Cartwright' s work indicates great vigour of mind, and is 
 written in clear and forcible EngHsh which at this day may be 
 read with pleasure. Without wholly discarding as unimpor- 
 tant, the question about the garments, he took higher ground 
 than the first race of Puritans, and contended for a purer dis- 
 cipline and more scriptural form of Church government. He 
 advanced some doctrines which were quite at variance with 
 the Erastian system of the Court, and might well awaken the 
 jealousy of a sovereign so tenacious of her prerogative as Eli- 
 zabeth. " We ought," says he, " to be obedient unto the civil 
 magistrate which govemeth the Church of God, in that office 
 which is committed unto him, and according to that calling. 
 But it must be remembered, that civil magistrates must go- 
 vern it according to the rules prescribed in his Word, and that 
 as they are nurses, so they be servants, unto the Church ; and 
 as they rule in the Church, so they must remember to subject 
 themselves unto the Church; to submit their sceptres, to 
 throw down their Crowns, before the Church; yea, as the 
 prophet speaketh, to lick the dust of the feet of the Church. 
 Whereia I mean not, that the Church doth either wring the 
 sceptre out of princes' hands, or taketh their crowns from 
 their heads, or that it requireth princes to lick the dust of her 
 feet (as the Pope under this pretence has done); but I mean, 
 as the prophet meaneth, that whatsoever magnificence, or 
 excellency, or pomp, is either in them or ia their estates and 
 commonwealths, which doth not agree with the simplicity and 
 
 \ For thfi details, see Ifeal, vol. i. eh. T., and Strype's Whitgift, B. I. eh. ix. 
 and X. 
 
 r 3 
 
106 HIGH PEESBYTBRIANISM 
 
 (in the judgment of the world) poor and contemptible estate 
 of the Church, that they -will he content to lay down." — " For 
 as the house is before the hangings, and therefore the hang- 
 ings, which come after, must be framed to the house, which 
 was before ; so the Church being before there was any com- 
 monwealth, and the commonwealth comiag after, must be 
 fashioned and made suitable unto the Church^." 
 
 The contrasted features of the Puritanical and Prelatical 
 parties, are well brought out ia the controversy between Tra- 
 vers and Hooker. Travers was lecturer at the Temple, and a 
 very acceptable preacher; for the Inns of Court where new 
 ideas rapidly germinated among the free spirits of the time, 
 were the natural seats of Pmitanism. Travers having many- 
 friends, and some interest at Court (for he was domestic 
 chaplain to Lord Burleigh), an effort was made to promote 
 him to the Mastership. But as he had entered into orders 
 abroad, Whitgift refused to confirm the appointment, unless 
 he would consent to be re-ordained; and when he objected 
 to this. Hooker obtained the preferment. Some disappoint- 
 ment may have given additional sharpness to the controversial 
 spirit, -with which Travers now put forth his own. -views. It 
 was observed, that the forenoon's sermon spoke Canterbury, 
 and the afternoon's Geneva. The dispute proceeding, Travers 
 was suspended from his office. He addressed a supplication 
 to the Council against his suspension, which was replied to by 
 Hooker'^. Travers and Hooker were relatives, and in spite of 
 controversy respected each other^. There is no trace of ma- 
 lignity in the dispute between them ; only the earnestness of 
 strong conviction on both sides; and in Travers, an over- 
 weening persuasion of the certainty of his own principles, and 
 of the duty of others to submit to them. 
 
 The points on which they held opposite opinions, were 
 chiefly three ; predestination, justification by faith alone, and 
 the claim of the Church of Rome to be considered a true and 
 saving Church. On aU these points Hooker leaned to the 
 milder and Arminian view ; while Travers adhered to high 
 Calvinism. The latter seems never to have suspected, that he 
 
 ' A Eieply to an Answer made of Mr. Doctor -Wiitgift against the Admoni- 
 tion to the Parliament. By T. C. 1573. p. 144. 
 
 2 See the Supplication and Answer in the Appendix to Hooker's Ecclesias- 
 tical PoUty, fol. London. 1676. 
 
 " Fuller, Book IX. Sect. vii. 59. 
 
UNDER ELIZABETH. 107 
 
 could himself be in error, while he censured Hooker for per- 
 sisting in it ; and thouglit he had for ever damaged his cause, 
 by declaring there were passages in his sermons on Justifica- 
 tion, " that had not been heard in public places within this 
 land since Queen Mary's days." He discovered the same in- 
 tolerant and impracticable spirit in other matters. He vrished 
 for example, to institute a particular mode of administering 
 tbe Sacrament, at once different from the usage of the Church, 
 which was to receive it kneeling, and from that practised in 
 the Temple (which enjoyed some special ecclesiastical privi- 
 leges), where it was taken sitting, and handed round; and be- 
 cause his own views were not complied with, he refused to 
 join with other clergymen in the celebration of the rite. From 
 a similar perversity of conscientiousness, when Hooker was 
 presented to the Mastership, he fancied it his duty to attempt 
 the introduction of something like a Church. caU; and the 
 evening before Hooker's first sermon, called upon him vrith 
 some friends, to induce him to postpone it, that time might 
 be given for this partial adoption of the presbyterian system. 
 Hooker's very natural refusal was regarded as a sin against 
 the trutb; and for his adherence to his convictions on this 
 and other points, Travers, never suspecting for a moment his 
 own infallibility, made it a point of conscience to admonish 
 him in private, and publicly to preach against him. Travers's 
 style, as it appears in his Supplication, is obscure and involved, 
 a great contrast to that of Cartvmght ; and these imperfec- 
 tions of form are not redeemed by close reasoning or felicity 
 of illustration. His success as a preacher, must have arisen 
 from the vehemence of his manner and the popularity of his 
 topics. On reviewing the controversies of this time, one can- 
 not help wishing, that Hooker and Cartwright, representing 
 the full strength of tbeir respective causes, had been confi-onted 
 with each other. The intolerance of Travers would have been 
 well matched with the arrogant acerbity of Whitgiffci- 
 
 1 Nothing can convey a clearer idea of the difference in the style of preaching, 
 between a Puritan minister and a regular conformable clergyman, or set before 
 us a more distinct image of the tune, than Euller's graphic description of Hooker 
 and Travers. Boot IX. sect. vii. 
 
 " Mr. Hooker his voice was low, stature little, gesture none at all, standing 
 stone-BtiU in the pulpit, as if the posture of his body were the emblem of his 
 minde, unmovable in his opinions. Where his eye was left fixed at the begin- 
 ning, it was found fixed at the end of his sermon : in a word, the doctrine he 
 dehv'ered had nothing but itself to garnish it. His stile was long and pithy, 
 
108 HIGH PRESBYTEKIANISM UNDER ELIZABETH. 
 
 Contemporary with these controversies were decisive indica- 
 tions of a strong fermentation of Puritanical feeling through- 
 out the nation ; and the popular sentiment found a voice in 
 Parliament. In 1584, hiUs were introduced into the Com- 
 mons for abating the power of the bishops and the spiritual 
 courts, and subordinating the canon or ecclesiastical, to the 
 common, law ; for admitting the people to a share in the trial 
 and election of their ministers ; and for associating a presby- 
 tery or eldership with the minister, to manage the spiritual 
 affairs of every parish, subject to an appeal to higher judica- 
 tories. These proposals were followed next year by a biU for 
 the more reverent observance of the Sabbath. Such measures 
 were distinctly expressive of Puritanism. The Queen quashed 
 them by her prerogative. It was on this occasion, that Whit- 
 gift advised Elizabeth to proceed not by statute, but by canon, 
 in her government of the Church^ ; and the fact is to be no- 
 ticed, as already indicating the divergent tendencies which 
 
 rl riving on a whole flock of several clauses before lie came to the close of a sen- 
 tence. So that when the copiousness of his stQe met not with proportionable 
 capacity in his auditors, it was unjustly censured, for perplext, tedious and 
 obscure. His sermons followed the incKnation of his studies, and were for the 
 most part on controversies, and deep points of school divinity. 
 
 " Mr. Travers his utterance was graoefall, gesture plausible, matter profitable, 
 method plain, and his stile carried in it indolem pietaMs — a genius of grace 
 flovring from his sanctified heart. Some say, that the congregation in the Tem- 
 ple ehh'd in the forenoon, and flowed in the afternoon, and that the auditory of 
 Mr. Travers was fer the more numerous, the first occasion of emulation betwixt 
 them. But such as tnew Mr. Hooker, knew him to be too wise, to take excep- 
 tion at such trifles, the rather because the most Judicious is always the least 
 part ia all auditories. 
 
 "Here might one on Sundays have seen almost as many writers as hearers. Not 
 only young students, but even the gravest Benchers (such as Sir Edward Cook 
 and Sir James Altham then were) were not more exact in taking instructions from 
 their chents, than m writing notes from the mouths of their ministers. The 
 worst was, these two preachers, though joined in aiSnity (their nearest kindred 
 being married together), acted vrith different principles, and clashed one against 
 another. So that what Mr. Hooker dehvered in the forenoon, Mr. Travers con- 
 fated in the afternoon." 
 
 After the lapse of more than a century, the same distinction was noticed 
 between the preaching of the Estabhshed clergy and that of the Dissenting 
 ministers. James Peirce, in his Vindication of the Dissenters against Nichols 
 (London, 1718), evidently alludes to it in these words : " H there tu-e any, who 
 use an indecent gesture (aa a man may err on that hand), I wQl not undertake 
 to defend them. But they are in a worse mistake, who would have all action 
 laid aside in preaching, and that ministers should read then- sermons with their 
 eyes fixed upon their notes, without so much as looking, it may be, on the peo- 
 ple."— Part III. ch. xiv. p. 651. 
 1 See his Letter in Neal, I. p. 306. 
 
QUALIFIED PRESBYTERIANISM. 109 
 
 became so marked under the Stuarts, of Episcopacy to ally 
 itself with the Crown, and of Puritanism to seek the aid of 
 Parliament. From this time, after the close of the contro- 
 versies which I have been describing, Puritanism gradually 
 became less of a purely ecclesiastical, and more of a parlia- 
 mentary, movement. That efforts in the way of Church re- 
 form were not uncalled for, is evident from the survey of the 
 spiritual condition of England, contained in a petition addressed 
 by the Puritans to the House of Commons in 1586; from 
 which it appeared, that owing to the number of suspensions, 
 after the Church of England had been estabhshed twenty- 
 eight years, there were only 2,000 preachers to serve 10,000 
 parish churches^. The Universities, the proper sources of a 
 nation's spiritual life, shared in. the general disorganization. 
 Oxford under the corrupt chancellorship of the Earl of Leices- 
 ter, had sunk to so low a state of learning and morals, that 
 Whitgift thought it necessary to devise measures for its reno- 
 vation. Cambridge under the purer direction of Burleigh and 
 Essex, still preserved some taste for studies, and was the seat 
 of the rising controversy between the new Axminian doctrines 
 and Calvinism^. 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 QUALIFIED PEESBYTERIANISM AT THE CLOSE OF THE SIXTEENTH, 
 AND IN THE riRST HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH, CENTURY. 
 
 The closing years of the Queen's reign were marked by a 
 decline of zeal for the proper presbyterian discipline^. Cart- 
 wright himself who since his controversy with Whitgift, had 
 been thrown into the Fleet, for refusing to take the oath ex 
 officio, became more moderate with advancing years, and died 
 peaceably in the hospital at Warwick, of which Leicester had 
 appointed him master. To this change of public feeling 
 various causes may have contributed : experience of utter in- 
 ability to overturn or materially change the existing estabHsh- 
 
 1 NeaJ, I. p. 320. 
 
 2 Strype's Whitgift, p. 318. Huter's EnglisL. Universities, by Newman, I. 
 p. 364. 
 
 3 Strype's Whitgift. 
 
110 QUALIFIED PRESBYTEEIANISM IN 
 
 ment; a more learned and candid appreciation of the scrip- 
 tural evidence on wMch either Preshyterianism or Episcopacy 
 was alleged to standi the rapid spread of principles which 
 took a bolder view, and had as little respect for Preshyterian- 
 isnij as a national system, upheld by the state, as fca- Episco- 
 pacy ; and the tranquillizing expectation of ecclesiastical re- 
 form, from the accession of a Presbyterian sovereign to the 
 throne. It must also be observed, that Preshyterianism, ia 
 its strictest sense, has never been a product of genuine English 
 growth, but whenever it has gained a temporary ascendency, 
 has been imported from abroad. The principles of the Lol- 
 lards led to Independency. Under Elizabeth Presbyterian- 
 ism was brought ia by men who had studied abroad, from 
 Geneva, and supported by the high influence of Calvin and 
 Beza. Afterwards, during. the war, it was forced on the Par- 
 liament who watched its pretensions with the greatest jea- 
 lousy, by the necessities of their alliance with the Scots. 
 From the beginning of the seventeenth, to the middle of the 
 last, century, the section of the Puritans which is historically 
 known under that designation, has been distiaguished, from 
 the Independents and other Nonconformists, through all its 
 doctrinal and social changes, less by an absolute preference for 
 Preshyterianism as such, than by a general attachment to a 
 national establishment of religion, and the wish for such re- 
 forms in the discipline, ritual and doctrine of the Church of 
 England, as would admit of a conscientious conformity to it. 
 Individuals may have been rigid Presbyterians ; but that this 
 was the spirit and governing principle of the party, its history 
 fiilly proves. 
 
 It was the lax disciphne of the Church that peculiarly 
 scandalized the Puritans. With them a pure and godly mi- 
 nistry, the personal sanctity of their pastors, was everything. 
 And these notions, the persuasion, that by their strictness ia 
 the trial and election of their ministers, they secured a large 
 portion of the divine spirit in their churches, led to very ex- 
 traordinary pretensions, which their enemies made use of to 
 disgrace and humble them. Taking Scripture to the strict 
 letter, and beUeviag that presbyterian ordination conferred a 
 divine right and apostolical authority, some of the Puritan 
 ministers affected to cast out devils. In 1597, Barrel, a 
 Puritan minister of Nottingham, was brought before the 
 High Commission, and committed to close confinement, for 
 
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTUEIES. Ill 
 
 pretending to exercise gifts of this description. Bishop Ban- 
 croft's chaplain published an exposure of what he called his 
 fraudulent practices ; but Barrel^ who was weak rather than 
 dishonest, wrote in prison a vindication of himself, and ascribed 
 the power he possessed, to the virtue of the new discipline^. 
 
 The seventeenth century opened with an eager rivalry 
 between the two great religious parties, to secure the favour 
 of the new King. As soon as the Queen was dead, special 
 messengers were despatched by the Puritans and the Episco- 
 palians to inform James of the event^. On his progress to 
 London, the former presented to him the celebrated millenary 
 petition^, in which, it is to be noticed, they disclaimed " affect- 
 ing a popular parity in the Church," and prayed, not for a 
 dissolution, but a reform, of the state ecclesiastical. The re- 
 sult, however, of the Conference between the divines of the 
 two persuasions, which was shortly summoned by James at 
 Hampton Court, put an end at once to the hopes of the 
 Puritans, though they asked only for a redress of particular 
 
 ' See the paxtieulara in Strype's Whitgiffc, p. 495. In the mvestigationB of 
 that age respecting witehoraft, the AngHean clergy appear to have been much 
 less infected with the popular superstition, than the Puritan ministers. One 
 reason might he, that their position made them more independent ; they stood 
 more aloof from popular sympathies. They were, moreover, less wedded to a 
 behef in the strict letter of Scripture. Baxter, in his Certainty of the World 
 of Spirits, affirms the existence of witches, alleging, as proof, the case of great 
 numbers that were executed in Suffolk and Essex in 1645 and 1646 ; on which 
 occasion, Mr. Calamy a celebrated Presbyterian diTine, went along with the 
 Judges on circuit, to hear their confessions, and see there was no fraud or 
 wrong done to them. Seyeral cases of imputed witeherafb occurred in Lan- 
 cashire, in some of which the Puritan ministers incurred ridicule, by their 
 fruitless endeavours to exorcise those who were said to be possessed. See 
 an account of the Smey Demoniac, in Hunter's Life of Oliver Heywood, p. 
 363. Artful men made a profit of the reigning superstition. One Hopkins, 
 about the year 1646 or 7, who is said to have been too much countenanced by 
 the Committees of the Long Parliament, went on a mission of inquiry through 
 the eastern counties, and took to himself the title of Witohfinder General. 
 See a collection of curious narratives, and an exposure of the popular behef, ia 
 an Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft, by Francis Hutchinson, D.D., 
 Chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty, London, 2nd edit. 1720. On the other 
 hand, this was not wholly a question between the Puritan and the Anglican 
 parties. Sir Thomas Brown, GHanvil, and Henry More, who were Churchmen, 
 believed in communications with the world of spirits ; while Owen, Grataker, 
 and Kye, who were Puritans, were very active in opposing the pretensions of 
 LUy, the astrologer. 
 
 2 PuUer, X. i. 13. 
 
 ' It was not actually signed by more than 750 preachers, out of five and 
 twenty counties. Fuller, ibid. 
 
113 QUALIFIED PRESBYTERIANISM IN 
 
 grievances, and desired rather a mitigation, ttan an abolition, 
 of Episcopacyi- This harsh and unqualified rejection of its 
 claims, only gave new vigour to the spirit of Puritanism. 
 Some of the more ardent men of the party, as we shall pre- 
 sently see, embraced the principles of Independency; and 
 not a few sought refuge from ecclesiastial oppression in foreign 
 lands. A much larger number, though non-conforming in 
 many points, were averse from a total separation. These were 
 the source and strength of the great parliamentary action 
 which now commenced against the hierarchy, and are usually 
 described under the general name of Presbyterians. 
 
 The controversy between the Puritans and the Church 
 turned from this time more on doctrine and manners, than 
 on forms of ecclesiastical polity. Calvinism and Ajminianism 
 became the distinguishing tenets of the two parties. Cal- 
 vinism prevailed among the popular leaders of the Commons, 
 who insisted on interpreting the Articles of the Church of 
 England in that sense ; while the bishops brought the aid of 
 their Greek patristical learning to the support of Arminian- 
 ism. Calvinism was viewed by the people as the sign of an 
 earnest personal religion, and of attachment to the cause of 
 freedom and reform. Arminianism was regarded with sus- 
 picion, as clioging to outward observances, tinged with a spirit 
 of servility, and secretly sympathizing with Rome. Some cir- 
 cumstances appeared for a time to favour the cause of Puri- 
 tanism. Prince Henry was suspected of a leaning towards it; 
 The primate Abbot, another Grindal, was well affected to it. 
 The king sent deputies to the synod of Dort, which was a 
 Presbyterian assembly; and his divines supported, on doc- 
 trinal questions, the Calvinists, who overpowered the Armi- 
 nians. On their return, however, James, with his usual incon- 
 sistency, took the Arminian clergy into his especial favour, 
 and discountenanced the Calvinian. As if to make the breach 
 between them irreconcilable, he wounded 'the Puritan con- 
 science in its tenderest point, and offended its deepest feelings 
 of religious propriety, by issuing the Book of Sports, which, 
 in the same declaration, required every one to attend the 
 whole divine service at his own parish church, and authorized 
 
 ' An account of the Conference 18 given by FuUer (X. i. 20), and by Collier 
 (Part II. Book viii.) from the report of Barlow, dean of Cheater, who was pre- 
 sent. Collier gives his reasons for regarding this report as trustworthy. 
 
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 113 
 
 the usual popular games and recreations in the latter part of 
 the Lord's day^. 
 
 The State or doctrinal Puritans^ as those were called, who 
 united Calvinistic sentiments with a preference or toleration for 
 episcopal government, devised methods for the satisfaction of 
 their religious wants, bearing considerable resemblance to the 
 expedients which have since been resorted to by their repre- 
 sentatives, the modern Evangelicals. With a retention of the 
 forms of the Establishment, they combined some of the prac- 
 tices of Nonconformists, particularly the free choice of their 
 minister, and his voluntary maintenance. With this view the 
 Puritans in the larger towns founded lectureships, which might 
 be filled by men who had scruples about the ceremonies and 
 objected to many parts of the Common Prayer. In extension 
 of the same design a society was formed about 1637 for the 
 purchase of lay-impropriations, which were to be vested in 
 feoiFees, and applied to furnish salaries of moderate amount 
 for an active and preaching ministry. The project illustrates 
 the spirit of the time. " It is incredible," says Fuller, " what 
 large sums were advanced in a short time towards so laud- 
 able an employment. Had the design not been obstructed, 
 it was verily believed, within fifty years, rather purchases than 
 money wordd have been wanting^." Similar eflbrts were made 
 by religious laymen at the beginning of the present century, 
 to buy up church livings, and bestow them on evangelical 
 clergymen. The design of the Puritans was defeated by Laud, 
 who dreaded the popularity of the lecturers, and urged the 
 attorney-general to proceed against the feofiees as an illegal 
 society. Pull of fire and energy, awake to aU the greatness 
 of the questions that were engaging the national mind, and 
 finding an unfailing spring of courage in the sympathy and 
 enthusiasm from which they derived their support, and which 
 had placed them in their stations of eminence. — the infiuence 
 of these lecturers from the strong impulse which it gave to 
 the public sentiment, might be compared to that of the mo- 
 dem press j did not the simpHcity and directness of their 
 
 ' The avowed object of the Book of Sports, was to reeoncfle the Papists, who 
 were disgusted at the severity of the prevailing Puritanism. In Lancashire, 
 the population of which was almost equally divided between Puritans and 
 Papists, it was ordered to be read in every parish church. Archbishop Abbot, 
 from his Puritanical feelings, forbade its being read at Croydon, which was his 
 own residence. Neal, I. p. 486. 
 
 2 Church Hist., Book XI. Sect. ii. 6. 
 
114 QUALIFIED PRESBYTERIANISM IN 
 
 earnest appeals to moral and religious feeling, suggest rather 
 a resemblance to the prophets of the Hebrew commonwealth. 
 With much extravagance and fanaticism, they worked sub- 
 stantially for good, as a counteraction to the hierarchy and 
 the court. Their influence was exercised chiefly in the towns, 
 where the topics of the day were keenly discussed, and where 
 they contributed with other causes to maintain that high tem- 
 perature of religious fervour which warmed and strengthened 
 the inner heart of Parliament, and made it capable of an 
 unyielding conflict with tyranny and wrong^. Writers and 
 speakers on behalf of Puritanism found shelter also in the 
 chaplainships of private families ; ia situations at the Univer- 
 sities ; and in livings scattered over the country, where per- 
 sonal consideration, or family connections, or the connivance 
 of the ordinary, permitted them to indulge their scruples with- 
 out molestation. Combined, they formed a large and power- 
 ful body, and sustained by the co-operation of the most 
 thoughtful and virtuous of the gentry and nobility, exerted 
 an immense eflect on the moral condition of the country. 
 
 The feelings of the aristocracy towards the Church, were 
 very diflerent in those days from what they are at present. 
 The deep and serious impressions produced by the Reforma- 
 tion had not yet lost their force. Men of lofty and earnest 
 minds with whom the assertion of religious truth was a duty 
 of the highest moment, refused to comply with the terms of 
 the actual establishment, and employed aU their zeal in pro- 
 moting reform. There was consequently a great deficiency of 
 competent men to fill the offices of the Church, and their 
 place was often supplied by individuals of mean extraction 
 and imperfect education, without high learning, or high cha- 
 
 ' The Lecturers were exceedingly obnoxious to the High Church party. Hey- 
 lyn, in his Life and Death of Laud, speaks of them in the bitterest terms. He 
 says that they were neither lay nor clergy, having no place at all in the prayers 
 of the Church, and compares them to bats and rere-mice, " being neither birds 
 nor beasts, and yet both together," London, fol. 1668, pp. 9, 10. Selden 
 who looked on these matters with a calmer spirit, bears witness to tbe great 
 influence and popularity of the Lectm'ers. "Lecturers," says he, "do in a 
 parish church, what the friars did heretofore, get away not only the affections, 
 but the bounty that should be bestowed on the minister. Lecturers get a 
 great deal of money, because they preach the people tame, as a man watches a 
 hawk ; and then they do what they list with them. The lectures iu Blackfriars, 
 performed by officers of the army, tradesmen and ministers, is as if a great lord 
 should make a feast, and he would have liis cook dress one dish, and his coach- 
 man another, his porter a tliii-d, etc." Table Talk, p. 95. Edinbvu-gli edit. 1819. 
 
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 115 
 
 racter, who took up the ministry for the sake of the subsist- 
 ence which it brought. A strong prejudice was thus created 
 against the conforming clergy, in the minds of many persons 
 of station and breeding. They were looked down upon as 
 ignoble time-servers^ the mere creatures of the State. Selden 
 who speaks with the knowledge of a contemporary, tells us, 
 that, in his days, they were less respected than either the 
 Roman Catholic priests or the Puritan ministers, both of 
 whom claimed an authority ffom Christ; and that for this 
 reason, " the nobility and gentry would not suffer their sons 
 or kindred to meddle with the Church^." Among the Puritan 
 writers of the day we may sometimes notice a certain tone of 
 aristocratical contempt freely mingled with the language em- 
 ployed towards the prelates. Lord Brook who was an Inde- 
 pendent, taunted Laud with his low origin. Milton himself 
 discovers traces of this feeling in some of his bitter invectives 
 against prelaty^ : and when he expresses a wish, in a passage 
 ftJl of the noblest eloquence, that the rich would devote their 
 children to the service of the Gospel, and nobles make then- 
 sons Grod's ministers, that so the necessity for a hireling mi- 
 nistry might be removed, he is only uttering the same senti- 
 ment in another form^- Among the Puritans generally there 
 was a deep and reverential feeling about rehgion, which made 
 them shriik from the thought of prostituting it to worldly or 
 selfish ends. The facts just mentioned, show how widely Pu- 
 ritanical feeling was diSused among the English aristocracy 
 in the earlier part of the seventeenth century ; nor was it till 
 a later period, when this feeling had nearly died out, that 
 church hvings came to be regarded as a provision for the 
 younger sons of good families. 
 
 Had Charles I. not been swayed by the violent counsels of 
 such men as Laud and Strafford, the state of parties at this 
 time renders it probable, that changes might have been intro- 
 duced into the discipline and government of the Church, 
 which would have permanently reconciled to it a vast majority 
 of the nation. How far this result might have been more 
 favourable to truth and liberty than the actual course of 
 
 1 Table Tali, p. 104, Ibid. 2 ji^g ;„ lus Apology for Smectymnuus. 
 
 3 AnimadTersions upon the Kemonstrants' Defence against Smectymnuus. 
 Mr. Macaulay substantially confirms this view of the social position of the 
 Anghcan clergy in the seventeenth century. History of England, vol. i. ch. iii. 
 p. 324. 4th edit. 
 
116 QUALIFIED PRESBYTERIANISM IN 
 
 things^ is a point on which it is more difficult to decide. The 
 aims and principles of the party called Presbyterian^ have 
 been already described. With them the large body of the 
 doctrinal Puritans would have gladly entered into negotia- 
 tions, to promote a reform that would have been satisfactory 
 to both. The great patriots of the Commons, Pym, Hampden, 
 Sir John Eliot and others shared in this spirit; they were 
 opposed to the lofty claims of high churchmen, but were not 
 averse to a mitigated Episcopacy^. Lord Falkland and Hyde 
 himself (afterwards Lord Clarendon) were quite prepared, at 
 the commencement of the dispute with the Crown, to restrain 
 the power of the bishops and the ecclesiastical courts, and 
 thus render the Church more acceptable to the popular feeling. 
 Hall bishop of Norwich and archbishop Usher defended Epi- 
 scopacy in a very moderate and conciliatory spirit, and would 
 have met the Presbyterians half way. Indeed, Usher's scheme 
 of Synodical Episcopacy, approved by Baxter, was only a mo- 
 dified form of Presbyterianism. The spirit of Puller to whose 
 Church History reference has so often been made, pursuing a 
 mean between the extremes of both parties and acutely obser- 
 vant of the follies of each, represents, there is little doubt, the 
 feeliags of a large and respectable body of his contemporaries. 
 
 Parliament from the first assumed the ground, that the 
 power of reforming the Church rested with them ; and they 
 would have mediated between the contending parties. " It 
 belongs to Parliaments," said Mr. Pym in 1628, " to establish 
 true religion, and to punish false. We must know what Par- 
 liaments have done formerly in religion. Our Parliaments have 
 confirmed general councils^." In the exercise of this function 
 it was the object of Parliament, sustained by the great Puri- 
 tan movement without, to settle a reformed national church, 
 sometimes by methods not very consonant to our ideas of the 
 rights of conscience. But when the movement once began, it 
 is wonderful to observe, with "what rapidity men's ideas grew 
 larger on this subject. Of this I shall speak hereafter. 
 
 In 1640 an order passed, that none should sit in Parlia- 
 ment but such as would take the sacrament according to the 
 Church of England. In the grand Remonstrance which the 
 Commons put forth the next year, they declared, it was not 
 their intention to leave private persons or particular con- 
 
 ' Such is Lord Clarendon's judgment of Hampden. 2 jj gal, I. p. 531. 
 
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 117 
 
 gregations to adopt what form of divine service they pleased, 
 but that there should be throughout the whole realm, a con- 
 formity to that order which the law enjoined according to the 
 Word of God^. The Smectymnuan divines who replied to 
 HaU's Defence of Episcopacy, though pleading in the main 
 for Presbyterian government, still kept to the ground of a 
 national religion, and contended not for the overthrow, but 
 for the purification, of the Church^. In the sub-committee 
 appointed by the Lords in 1641, to assist them in considering 
 of ecclesiastical innovations and reforms, we find Twisse, Mar- 
 shall and Calamy, who were Presbyterians, associated with 
 Usher, Williams and Hall, who were bishops; Williams, bishop 
 of Lincoln, acting as its chairman. Even Milton, in his ear- 
 her pieces written at the commencement of the war, in his 
 second book of Reformation in England, in his Reason of 
 Church Government, and in his Apology for Smectymnuus, 
 though vehemently opposed to Prelacy, and handling neither 
 Hall nor Usher with much courtesy, had not yet entirely 
 shaken off the idea of a national church, and of a state main- 
 tenance for its ministers, but with Parliament and the great 
 body of the nation was still friendly both to the presbyterian 
 discipline and to monarchy. The foUy of the King and the 
 interference of the Scots dissipated this spirit of mutual con- 
 ciliation ; brought in again a bigoted and exclusive Presbyte- 
 rianism; and drove parties once more asunder into violent 
 extremes. Yet it has been remarked, that the claim of a jus 
 divinum had been abandoned by the English Presbyterian 
 divines who took their seats in the Westminster Assembly, 
 Nor should the significant circumstance be overlooked, indi- 
 cating a relaxation from the rigid principles of Cartwright and 
 Travers, that the vow or promise required of members of the 
 Assembly on taking their seats, pledged them to maintain in 
 doctrine what they believed agreeable to the Word of God; 
 but in point of discipline, contrary to the ancient principle, 
 left them at liberty to establish whatever might make most 
 for God's glory and the peace and good of his Church^ — But- 
 
 ^ IS^eaL I. p. 642. 
 
 2 Smectjimiuus was an assumed title, made up of the initial letters of the 
 names of its authors— Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, 
 Matthew Newcomen, William Spurstow. j,^, w ^ 
 
 3 The form of this promise and vow is prefixed to most editions ot the West- 
 minster Confession of Paith. 
 
118 INDEPENDENCY, AND THE MORE 
 
 it is time to look back, and trace the rise and progress of new 
 tendencies. 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 INDEPENDENCY, AND THE MORE EXTREME FORMS OP 
 PURITANISM. 
 
 To the first wave of ecclesiastical reform, another had suc- 
 ceeded issuing from a lower depth, which went beyond it. 
 The stern unbending policy of Whitgift, which had broken 
 the strength and diverted the purposes of Presbyterianism, 
 produced a very different effect on those minds, in which the 
 principles of the old LoUardism, a native growth, had taken 
 root. It called them out ia fresh vigour. The origin of 
 Brownism is contemporaneous with the severities of the court 
 of High Commission, directed by Whitgift. Browne, the 
 most conspicuous instigator of this new movement, was a 
 gentleman of good family, educated at Cambridge, and a rela- 
 tive of Lord Burleigh, to whom he was occasionally indebted 
 for protection. He agreed with the later Independents, in 
 regardiag every association of Christians for worship and edifi- 
 cation, as a church complete in itself, competent to the exer- 
 cise of every ecclesiastical function. But his principles were 
 violent and exclusive. He thought a perfect system of disci- 
 phne and government was prescribed in the New Testament, 
 and refused to hold communion, not only with the Chui'ch of 
 England, but with aU other Churches that did not adopt his 
 model. In fact, he viewed the Church of England, in the 
 same Ught as the Puritans generally viewed the Church of 
 Kome — as an institution essentially corrupt, ia which salva- 
 tion was not to be found. After a wandering, unsettled hfe 
 at home and abroad, he died at an advanced age, not respected 
 . by any party, a member and minister of the Church which he 
 had vilified. Many who had embraced his views, withdrew 
 into HoUand, where they found shelter imder the general 
 toleration. In England they were adopted by another gen- 
 tleman, named Barrowe, who signalized himself by a very 
 coarse attack on the Liturgy. Lord Bacon says, that Browne 
 and Barrowe, being gentlemen of education and good connec- 
 
EXTREME FORMS OF PURITANISM. 119 
 
 tionsj disseminated their principles by their free speaking and 
 writing in the Inns of Coiirt and other places of public resort. 
 Their adherents began now to be distinguished by the name of 
 Separatists, from the regular Puritans, whom they denounced 
 as time-servers for resting in a Church which they judged 
 unscriptural. They were often compared by their contempo- 
 raries with the ancient sect of the Donatists ; and Barrowe's 
 language is marked by some peculiarities which afterwards 
 distinguished the Quakers. Barrowe, Greenwood, and Penry, 
 aU of this party, suffered death for their principles ia 1593^. 
 
 But their doctrine did not perish with them. It was soon 
 taken up by men of calmer mind and graver character. Brad- 
 Shaw's Enghsh Puritanism which was published ia 1605, ex- 
 hibits a singular mixture of Erastianism with Independency, 
 in the great power which it gives to the civil magistrate, of 
 redressing the iaternal disorders of Churches; of guarding 
 them against ecclesiastical oppression from without; and of 
 punishing ecclesiastical officers, if they abuse their proper 
 functions and encroach on the civil authority. This tract 
 was produced under the primacy of Bancroft; and it bears 
 clear traces of the conviction which his tyrannical policy was 
 strengthening throughout the nation, that more was to be 
 feared for religious freedom from the ecclesiastical, than from 
 the civil, governors of the realm ^- 
 
 WhUe Bancroft and Laud were pursidng their career of 
 persecution at home, the flourishing States of Holland reap- 
 ing in peace the fruits of their hard-earned freedom, offered 
 to the fathers of Independency, the authors of the new Refor- 
 mation, the same asylum which Frankfort, Zurich and Geneva 
 had afforded to the first Reformers in the reign of Mary. 
 Johnson, Ainsworth, Jacob and Robinson, were the earliest 
 professors of these principles in Holland. There they planted 
 congregations ; devoted themselves to their studies ; and, sur- 
 veying the troubles of their native land from afar, gradually 
 enlarged their ideas and became fully aware of the mischiefs 
 of allying religion with the civil power. At first, their views 
 were very crude and narrow. In a Confession published in 
 1598, they refuse to admit members from another congrega- 
 tion vdthout a certificate of soundness in the faith ; and de- 
 
 ' Hanbury's Historical Memorials of tlie Independents, vol. i. 
 ^ Ueal, I. p. 447, who gives an abstract of the Tract. The element of Inde- 
 pendency is very conspicuous in Ch. II. 1, 2, 3, 4. 
 
120 INDEPENDENCY^ AND THE MORE 
 
 fend the startling position, that it is the duty of princes and 
 magistrates to root out all false ministers and counterfeit wor- 
 ship. It was through a painful and trying novitiate, that the 
 Independent Churches in Holland passed on to a juster sense 
 of religious liberty. Many dissensions, fomented by the 
 spread of Anabaptist principles, disturbed their early career^. 
 Henry Jacob, on his return from exile, became in 1616 the 
 pastor of the first Congregational or Independent Church in 
 England. 
 
 Robinson is usually considered the father of Independency ; 
 and any Church may well be proud of such a parentage. He 
 was educated at Cambridge, and commenced his ministry in 
 connection with the National Church in the neighbourhood 
 of Norwich ; but being thwarted in his plans of usefulness by 
 the ecclesiastical authorities, became for about a year the 
 pastor of a small Separatist Church in the north of Notting- 
 hamshire, with which he finally emigrated to HoUand^. 
 When he first went abroad, his views were exceedingly rigid. 
 Intercourse, however, with Dr. William Ames, who was then 
 resident in that country and for some time professor of di- 
 vinity at Franequer, rendered him more moderate; so that 
 compared with the earlier Brownists, he acquired the cha- 
 racter of a semi-separatist; that is, while maintaining the 
 lawfulness of a separate communion, he did not deny that 
 other Reformed Churches, which held the essentials of faith, 
 were true Churches. This was the proper distinction of Inde- 
 pendency from Brownism. Robinson was pastor of a church 
 at Leyden during the height of the Arminian controversy, 
 and had an opportunity of thoroughly weighing the argu- 
 ments on both sides, by attending the lectures of Episcopius 
 who espoused, and of Polyander who attacked, the doctrines 
 of Arminius. Deeply imbued like all the Puritans of that 
 day, with the spirit of Calvinism, he was urged to answer 
 Episcopius, and executed his task to the great satisfaction of 
 
 > Hanbury, I. p. 98. 
 
 2 This was the church to which Brewster and Bradford belonged, who lieaded 
 the earliest colony of pilgrim fathers to the New World. Cotton Mather 
 (Magnalia, B. I. ch. ii.) says, that their church was first organized in 1602, in 
 the north of England. Mr. Hunter (Critical and Historical Tracts, No. II.) 
 has discovered in the Tillages "of Austerfield and Scrooby, the former a httle to 
 the N.E., the latter to the S., of the town of Bawtiy, the birthplaces respeotiTcly 
 of Bradford and Brewster, and in the manor of Scrooby occupied by the Brew- 
 sters, has probably identified the very house where many of their rehgious meet- 
 ings must have been held. 
 
EXTREME FORMS OP PURITANISM. 131 
 
 those who embraced his view of the question. During the 
 sitting of the Synod of Dort, which was prolonged tiU 1619, 
 he published in Latiu an Apology for the Independent 
 Churches 1- 
 
 The closing years of his ministry were marked by an event 
 of deep and solemn interest. His flock having been reduced 
 by deaths and by marriages into Dutch famUies, its younger 
 members seeing no prospect of a happy settlement in England, 
 and dislikiug the tolerated condition of exiles, determined to 
 seek a new home on the western shores of the Atlantic. In 
 the summer of 1620 they set sail for America. Before they 
 embarked, the venerable man knelt down and prayed with 
 them on the beach ; and in view of the great waters that were 
 to carry them to their fature home, affectionately commended 
 them to the care of heaven. In a previous farewell address 
 he had warned them of the narrow, stationary spirit which was 
 already infecting the Reformed Churches of the Old World, 
 and expressed his full persuasion, that " the Lord had more 
 truth yet to break forth out of his holy word." Under these 
 hallowing influences the pilgrim band went forth to reclaim 
 and beautify the wilderness ; and the spirit thus early infased 
 into them, has survived to the present day amidst great diver- 
 sities of theological sentiment, in the learning and holy enter- 
 prise of a Stuart and a Robinson, as well as in the refined 
 devotion, the exalted humanity and catholic spirit of a Chan- 
 ning and a Ware^. 
 
 Five Independent ministers, who had retired into Holland, 
 Thomas Goodwin, Nye, Simpson, Burroughes and Bridge', — 
 have acquired notoriety from the part they played in the 
 Westminster Assembly of Divines, where their resistance to 
 
 ^ This wort, of wliich a copy exists in the National Libraoy at Paris, bears 
 date 1619. In 1644 it was printed in English. — It is described by an adyer- 
 sary, as 'moderata, doota, brevis.' Memoirs of the Pilgrims at Leyden, by 
 George Siunner, Cambridge (U.S.) 1845. Note E. The collected works of 
 Bobinson, with a biographical memoir prefixed, have been published in 3 vole, 
 by Robert Ashton ; London : 1851. 
 
 2 This report of Mr. Bobinson's farewell address appears to rest on the re- 
 membrance of Mr. Edward Winslow, who was present when it was dehrered, 
 but did not record it till many years afterwards. It is in itself, however, so cha- 
 racteristic, and must have made so deep an impression at the time, that there 
 is every probability, the substance of it has been faithfully preserved. Mr. 
 Sumner's scepticism leaves thus much at least. Mem. of Pilgrims at Leyden. 
 Note P. Mr. Bobinson died at Leyden in 1625. 
 
 2 Goodwin and Nye were at Arnheim in GKielderlandj the other three, at 
 Eotterdain. Hanbury's Memorials of the Independents, II. p. 40. 
 
 G 
 
123 INDEPENDENCY^ AND THE MORE 
 
 the measures of the Presbyterians, procured them the name of 
 the Dissenting Brethren. The Apologetical Narration which 
 they submitted to Parliament in 1643, contains a clear state- 
 ment of their principles ; describes what had been their situa- 
 tion abroad ; and exhibits with great distinctness the points of 
 diflPerence between themselves and the original Puritans. They 
 had formerly been ministers in the national church; and in 
 quitting it, had considered at first only what they call the dark 
 part of the subject — ^the superstitions and corruptions of the 
 established worship ; but during the leisure of their exile, 
 they had proceeded to investigate the light part — ^what was 
 the worship and discipline enjoined by Scripture itself. They 
 found that in the foreign churches, the question of doctrine had 
 engaged more attention than that of discipline ; and that the 
 distinction between vital Christians " having the power of god- 
 liness and the profession thereof," and formal, carnal Chris- 
 tians, was not so much observed by them, as among the 
 Nonconformists of England. But the errors and excesses of 
 the Brownists at home, were a warning on the other hand. 
 " We resolved, therefore," they say, " not to take up our reli- 
 gion by or from any party, and yet to approve and hold fast 
 whatsoever is good in any, though never so much differing from 
 us, yea, opposite imto us." To guide themselves in this search, 
 they acknowledged three especial principles : — (1) the fulness 
 and sufficiency of Scripture, not daring to eke out defective- 
 ness of light in matters divine, with human prudence ; (2) not 
 to make present judgment and practice, a binding law for the 
 future ; (3) to receive as members of the Church, none but 
 such as ail the churches in the world by the balance of the 
 sanctuary acknowledge faithful ; the rules of their judgments 
 beiug of such latitude, as would take in any member of Christ, 
 the meanest, in whom there may be supposed to be the least 
 of Christ ; taking measure of no man's holiness by his opinions, 
 whether concurring with them or adverse to them. 
 
 While contending for the complete and independent exer- 
 cise of ecclesiastical government by each society of Christians 
 withia itself, they did not exclude the advice and admonition 
 of neighbouring churches, or hold their religious assemblies 
 exempt from the notice and censure of Christian magistrates. 
 The officers chosen by each of their churches for self-govern- 
 ment, were — pastors, teachers, ruling elders i. e. not lay, but 
 ecclesiastical, persons, separated for that service, and deacons. 
 
EXTREME FORMS OF PURITANISM. 133 
 
 As a proof, that they did not partake of the narrowness of 
 Brownism, they mentioned, that they had never broken off 
 communion with godly members and miaisters of the Church 
 of England, but had received some such to the Lord's Supper 
 during their exile, and had had their own children baptised in 
 the parish churches. In Holland they had been not merely 
 tolerated, but owned, by their Protestant brethren; who granted 
 them the use of their churches at certain hours of the day, 
 and permitted them to summon their assemblies by the pub- 
 lic bell — a privilege denied to the merely tolerated — and pro- 
 vided " a fuU and liberal maintenance annually" for some of 
 their ministers, with a constant allowance of wine for their 
 communions. The brethren conclude their Apology with the 
 expression of their belief, that God had left the Church of 
 England more unreformed as to worship and government, 
 than the neighbouring churches ; "as having, in his infimte 
 mercy, on purpose reserved and provided some better thing 
 for this nation, when it should come to be reformed, that the 
 other churches might not be made perfect without it^." 
 
 I have extracted these particulars from the Apologetical Nar- 
 ration, in order to convey a more correct impression of the 
 Independency which confronted Presbyterianism in the West- 
 minster Assembly. The statement breathes throughout a 
 liberal, benignant and conciliatory spirit ; and Herle who had 
 
 ' Apologetical Narration, humbly submitted to tlie Honourable Houses of 
 Parliament etc. London, 1643. The high character of the authors of this Nar- 
 ration makes it impossible to doubt the fact which they so distinctly assert, of 
 their friendly recognition by the foreign Churches. Mr. Sumner in the Memoir 
 already quoted, shows indeed the improbabflity of Robinson and his followers 
 having ever had the use of a pubhc church at Leyden, and even prores from 
 church records, that at the time of his death, his congregation must have been 
 in very low worldly circumstances. But the earlier Puritans who settled ia 
 HoUand, enjoyed unquestionably a pubhc recognition and a pubhc maintenance 
 for their ministers (Sumner, Note A). Ames who exercised so powerful an 
 influence over the mind of Eobinson, was professor of divinity at Pranequer. 
 Now it appears from the work of Bradshaw, previously alluded to in the text, 
 that among the Puritans of this date, there was a great leaning towards Inde- 
 pendency. Ames himself is classed with the Independents. Eobinson in his 
 parting address to the pilgrims, disclaims the name of Brownist ; which he 
 would hardly have done, unless his people in general estimation had lain under 
 the stigma of it. It is obvious therefore, that some distinction was made be- 
 tween his case and that of the earlier English churches in HoUand, with which 
 Goodwin and his companions must have chiefly fraternized during their tempo- 
 rary sojourn in the Low Countries. Even with regard to Eobinson himself, it 
 appears that ten years before his death, he was admitted a member of the 
 University of Leyden (Sumner, p. 18 and note D.) which entitled him, with 
 other privileges, to receive a certain aUoswance of beer and vrine duty free. 
 
 G 2 
 
124 INDEPENDENCY, AND THE MORE 
 
 succeeded Twisse as prolocutor of the Assembly, though, him- 
 self a staunch Presbyterian, introduces it with a very friendly 
 prefatory notice to the reader, and expresses the warmest re- 
 spect and affection for its authors. 
 
 It must be borne iu mind, that the questions which most 
 interested the various sections of the Puritan party, related less 
 to doctrine in which they were for the most part agreed, than to 
 the constitution of a true church and the source of ecclesias- 
 tical power. With all the zeal against Romanism, some ideas 
 iaherited from Catholic times, still harboured in the mind, and 
 exercised an immense influence. Among these was the persua- 
 sion, that salvation could only be found within the pale of the 
 true Church ; and that consequently exclusion from ecclesias- 
 tical communion was the greatest calamity incident to man, 
 since it affected his relation to God and his prospects beyond the 
 grave. This fearful power of excommunicatiug and absolving, 
 was called iu the theological vocabulary of those days, as I 
 have before mentioned, the power of the Keys, iu allusion to 
 Christ's language to Peter, Matthew xvi. 19. The question 
 was, where such a power conformably to the directions of 
 Scripture, should be lodged. According to the true theory of 
 Episcopacy, it ought to be placed ia the hands of the bishops, 
 or of priests canonicaUy ordained by them : but iu the Church 
 of England, it was delegated to laymen representiug the bishop 
 ia the ecclesiastical courts ; and this usurpation of an ecclesi- 
 astical ofSce by an unecclesiastical person, was one of the 
 strongest objections urged by the Puritans against her disci- 
 pline. In Presbyterianism, it was vested in the Church Com-ts 
 composed of a mixture of laymen and ministers, and belonged 
 in the last instance to the representation of the whole Church 
 convened in General Assembly. The Independents deposited 
 this power with those who were deemed worthy of Church 
 membership and admissible to the Lord's table, in every sepa- 
 rate association of Christians ; but it was applicable to such 
 association alone, and could not be exercised over any other 
 society. For their system of Church government the Inde- 
 pendents, no less than the strict Presbyterians and the high 
 Episcopalians, claimed a divine right, deduced, as they thought, 
 direct from the injunctions of Scripture. This was the weak 
 side of Puritanism ; but it is one of the many manifesta- 
 tions of that earnest scripturalism, which was its governing 
 principle. 
 
EXTREME FORMS OP PURITANISM. 135 
 
 The Anabaptists, whose tenets had spread into England 
 from Germany at the very beginning of the Reformation (if 
 indeed traces of them might not be found in Lollardism) and 
 who had mingled themselves with the rising Independent 
 Churches in Holland, only carried out still further, and with 
 an unflinching consequentiality, the fandamental doctrine of 
 Puritanism, that every doctrine and practice of the Christian 
 Church must be brought to the literal standard of Scripture. 
 They argued, that if re-ordination be necessary for one who 
 has come out of an impure Church, to constitute a true mi- 
 nister, re-baptism is equally necessary to constitute a true 
 Christian ; and that of such alone a pure Church can be com- 
 posed ; that since baptism was instituted by Christ, as the rite 
 of admission into his Church, it can only fulfil his intention, 
 when administered to those who are capable of making an 
 intelligent confession of faith. On other points of Church 
 government, and in the general spirit of their rehgious life, the 
 Anabaptists nearly agreed with the Independcsnts, and were 
 often confounded with them. 
 
 But the restlessness of the public mind was insatiable. No- 
 thing could arrest the movement now begun. A swarm of 
 sects, most of them issuing from some narrow scriptural con- 
 ceit, and so proclaiming their affinity with Puritanism — came 
 forth under various- names and leaders. The Pifth Monarcihy 
 men, expecting the immediate reign of Christ on earth, re-, 
 vived the dreams of the ancient ChiHasts. An exclusive 
 reverence for Scripture involving a total renunciation of aU 
 traditions and human ordinances, led in its last result to the 
 craving for an authority anterior to Scripture itself. This — 
 the earnest, meditative mind of Pox, retiring in disgust from 
 the hopeless controversies of the rigid ScripturaUsts, looked 
 for in the revelations of the Spirit within, awakened by 
 Scripture, but derived from direct communion with God. He 
 penetrated through the letter, to the living truth which lay 
 under it, and which he saw mirrored in the quiet depths of 
 his own mind. The principles of the Quakers, originating 
 with him towards the close of the war, and exaggerated in 
 the wild vagaries of Naylor, completed the cycle of Puritanic 
 change. 
 
 Tendencies akin to these, have ever manifested themselves 
 in periods of strong religious excitement, when the mind 
 breaks away from the fetters of form and conventionalism. 
 
136 INDEPENDENCY, AND THE MORE 
 
 We trace their influence among the Lollards, the early Ana- 
 baptists, and the Brownists. They stripped Christianity, as 
 far as it was possible, of all outward organization, and re- 
 duced it to a simple influence — the free working of the Spirit. 
 Owning no other tie than that of spiritual brotherhood, the 
 Friends (for so the new society designated themselves) aban- 
 doned the forms retaiaed in other Chiirches; admitted no 
 separate and paid ministry, no ceremonial observances of any 
 kind, no distinction of times and places as more sacred than 
 others; condemned war; refused to take oaths; shunned 
 human tribunals; and renounced the elegant recreations of 
 society. Surrendering themselves up to the immediate guid- 
 ance of the Spirit, they endeavoured to bring back and realise 
 in their life and manners, the condition of the first Christians 
 as described in the New Testament. 
 
 The whole framework of the Church was now undone; 
 and the religious constitution of society seemed about to be re- 
 solved into its first elements. Things were approaching the 
 state in which the Gospel had been originally preached to the 
 world. For the last century there had been a continuous 
 effort to reverse step by step, the process by which the Church 
 had gradually arranged and consolidated its constitution, and 
 grown up into the form and organization of the papal hier- 
 archy. First, the connection with Rome was dissolved ; and 
 national independence was acquired under the sovereign and 
 the bishops. This was the work of the Anglican party ; and its 
 result was the Church of England as constituted under Eliza- 
 beth. The next move was to reduce bishops to the rank of 
 presbyters, and to govern the Church by subordinated assem- 
 blies of pastors and elders; the national unity in religion 
 being stiU preserved. This was the aim of the Presbyterians, 
 who thus got a step further back towards primitive Christi- 
 anity. Then came the Independents who renounced the idea 
 of a national religion altogether ; and while they retained a 
 fixed discipline, a regular ministry, and a due administration 
 of ordinances, approached in their congregational system still 
 nearer to the ancient practice of the Church. Lastly, the 
 Quakers, the Seekers, the Fifth Monarchy men, throwing ofi' 
 the restraint of any definite system, carried away by a wild 
 enthusiasm, and living in the vague expectation of some great 
 approaching change — remind us in the absorbing spirituSism 
 of their views, and in their renunciation of the ordinary con- 
 
EXTREME FORMS OF PURITANISM. 127 
 
 cerns of life, of the description giyen in the Acts, of the infant 
 Church at Jerusalem and terminate this progressive picture 
 of the reversal of the Christian story i. 
 
 This was a strange chaotic scene which different men sur- 
 veyed with different feelings : Baxter and those who Uke him 
 cherished the idea of a national religion, with pain and dis- 
 quietude ; Milton, the younger Vane and a few other minds 
 of the same earnest and thoughtful cast, with trust and hope- 
 fulness, as the presage of future renovation. Milton's prose 
 works afford a fine illustration of the growth and ripening of 
 his opinions on religious subjects, during the exciting scenes 
 through which he passed. In his earliest pieces extending 
 from his Treatise of Reformation to the Apology for Smec- 
 tymnuus, we find him entertaining the general views of the 
 great Puritan party in and out of Parliament. In his Icono- 
 clastes, his Treatise of Civil Power in ecclesiastical causes, his 
 Considerations touching the exclusion of hirelings from the 
 Church, and in his two Latin Defences of the People of 
 England — all produced under the Commonwealth — ^he shows 
 himself a decided republican and Independent, as strongly 
 opposed to Erastianism and Presbyterianism as to Prelaty. 
 In his last piece^ written only a year before his death, when 
 his spirit was mellowed by years, though unbroken by cala- 
 mity and disappointment, and he was gathering in neglect 
 and poverty the fruits of his rich experience, we find him 
 calmly pleading for a general toleration of all Christians, and 
 defining with moderation and charity the ideas of schism and 
 heresy. The Papists alone, from their imputed guilt of ido- 
 latry and the implication of their cause with political interests, 
 he refused to admit within the wide embrace of his Christian 
 love. Of Anabaptists, Arians, Socinians, Arminians, he speaks 
 respectfully, as of persons who may have some errors, but 
 are no heretics; commending their teachers "as learned, 
 worthy, zealous, and religious men, powerful in the Scrip- 
 tures, holy and unblamable ia their lives;" and advancing a 
 plea for the free circulation of their writings. It would have 
 been well for our country if such had been the conclusion not 
 
 1 The Gajigrffina of Edwards, a Presbyterian Mmister, is a bitter attack 
 upon the Sectaries of this time, of whose errors it enumerates 176 different 
 kinds. Three editions of this book had akeady appeared m 1646. 
 
 2 Of true Behgion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what best means may 
 be used against the growth of Popery. 1673. 
 
138 RESULTS OF PURITANISM 
 
 of an individual alone, but of the nation, from the strife in 
 which the worthiest spirits had been else fruitlessly involved. 
 
 SECTIOIir TEI. 
 RESULTS OF PURITANISM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 This dissolution of aU ecclesiastical organization did not 
 take place without strenuous efforts to counteract it. The 
 patriots of the Long Parliament included the Church as well 
 as the State in their measures of reform. Church and State 
 were, indeed, so closely interwoven in the constitution, that 
 they could not be disjoiaed; and it was in that age an un- 
 disputed parliamentary axiom, that the redress of ecclesias- 
 tical abuses belonged in the last resort to the highest civil 
 authority in the realm. With the instinctive aversion of po- 
 liticians to clerical interference, the Parliament had hitherto 
 refrained from calling any ecclesiastical council to their assis- 
 tance (though they had occasionally taken the advice of a 
 select body of divines '^), tiU the necessity of strengthening 
 their alliance with the Scots, compelled them to adopt another 
 course. The Scots were bigotedly attached to their Presby- 
 terian system, and considered its establishment in both king- 
 doms, as the only certain means of accomplishing the objects 
 for which the war had been undertaken. Of the English Pu- 
 ritans, on the other hand, a large proportion would have been 
 satisfied with a purified and mitigated episcopacy^ ; and num- 
 bers, daily increasing, were indifferent to any national esta- 
 blishment whatever. Such different views in two parties who 
 equally felt the necessity of union for their common protec- 
 tion, led to manoeuvre and reservation on both sides. Among 
 the commissioners sent down by the Parhament to treat with 
 the Scots, were Sir Harry Vane, the younger, and PhOip Nye, 
 two men whose consummate poUcy and attachment to the 
 principles of Independency, defeated the deep-laid Presbyteri- 
 
 ' As in the Committee of Aocommodation, 1641. Neal, I. p. 708. 
 
 ' BaiUie, with all his predilection for Presbyterianism, admits that "the 
 leornedst and most considerable part " of England "were fuUie Episcopall," 
 and that of those " who joyned with the Parhament, the greatest and most 
 countenanced part were much Episcopall." Letters and Jom-nals. Edinbureh • 
 1841. vol. u. p. 250. 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 129 
 
 anism of their northern brethren. By inserting the word 
 League, as of more general import, along with that of Co- 
 venant, into the title of the agreement, they kept open a way 
 for a more liberal construction of the treaty between the two 
 nations. The result was, that the solemn League and Co-, 
 venant was subscribed by the English Parliament in the an-, 
 tumn of 1643, and required to be taken by all persons above 
 the age of eighteen years, throughout the kingdom^. 
 
 In consequence of this treaty with the Scots, a parliamen- 
 tary ordinance was issued for convening an assembly of di- 
 vines at Westminster, to regulate the national faith and wor- 
 ship. Throughout these proceedings. Parliament discovered 
 an extreme jealousy of ecclesiastical pretensions. The As- 
 sembly was kept in strict subordination, as an instrument in 
 the hands of Parhament for a particular object. Parliament 
 nominated its members, one or two ministers from each county, 
 to the amount of a hundred and twenty-one ; with thirty lay 
 assessors, ten peers and twenty commoners (among them men 
 of great eminence and different opinions^) who were em- 
 powered to take part in the discussions, and vote with the 
 divines : but the acts of the Assembly had no validity without 
 parliamentary sanction, and it was restrained from the exercise 
 
 ' The following analysis of the Solemn League and Cpvenant wijl exhibit its 
 object and character. The contracting parties declare^ they enter into it, to 
 save "themselTes and their religion from utter ruin and destruction ; " (1) to 
 preserve the reformed religion of Scotland, and to bring about the reformation 
 of religion in England and Ireland, according to the word of G-od, and the 
 example of the best reformed churches, and so; accomplish an uniformity of 
 faith, worship and discipline, in the three Mngdoms ; (2) to aim at the extir- 
 pation of popery, prelacy, superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, etc. ; (3) 
 to preserve the rights and privileges of Parliament, and the hberties of the king- 
 doms ; (4) to defend and preserve the King's person and authority in the pre- 
 servation and defence of religion and Uberty ; (5) to discover all malignants and 
 incendiaries, that have promoted factions and separated the King from his 
 people, and to bring them to trial and condign punishment, as the supreme 
 judicatories of both nations shall determine ; (6) to promote lasting peace and 
 union between the two kingdoms of England and Scotland ; (7) to defend all who 
 enter into the Covenant, and to keep together in upholding it against all' temp- 
 tations i,o desertion or indifference, to promote personal amendment of heart 
 and life, and so turn away the wrath which the sins of the two, nations have 
 brought down upon them ; that encouragement may thereby be given to other 
 nations, suffering under, or in danger of, the like anti-christian tyranny, to enter 
 info the same or like association for the enlargement of the kingdom of Jesus 
 Christ. Fuller, B. XI. sect. ix. 13, who takes exception seriatim to the several 
 articles of which the Covenant consists. Compare Neal, II. pp. 51-54. 
 
 2 In the number were Selden, Whitlooke, the two Vanes, Pym, Pierpont, and 
 Su- Matthew Hale. Neal, II. p. 37. 
 
 G 3 
 
130 RESULTS OF PURITANISM 
 
 of any independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In the com- 
 position of this Assembly, Parliament seems to have aimed 
 at combining the different elements of opinion which then 
 prevailed, so as to realize, as nearly as might be, the idea of 
 a free and general coimcil of the -whole nation. Among those 
 summoned, were Episcopalians; such as were classed under 
 the general name of Presbyterians ; Independents ; and lastly 
 Erastians, who with two divines, Lightfoot and Colman, both 
 distinguished for their great rabbinical learning, formed a 
 powerful party among the lay-assessors. " Thus was this As- 
 sembly," says Fuller, " (as first chosen and intended) a quint- 
 essence of four parties^." BaiUie, who was one of the Scotch 
 commissioners to this synod, has described its proceedings 
 with the graphic vividness of an eye-witness. It first met in 
 Henry the Seventh's Chapel, but owing to the coldness of 
 the weather, (it was in December, 1643) afterwards re- 
 moved its sittings to the Jerusalem Chamber, which was a 
 spacious room, well hung, and comfortably warmed. On 
 both sides of the chamber were raised seats which would 
 accommodate rather more than a hundred persons. At the 
 upper end was a raised platform, with a chair for the pro- 
 locutor; on the floor in front two others for the asses- 
 sors. A table ran down the length of the room, where the 
 two scribes had their papers and writing materials. To the 
 prolocutor's right, on the lowest bench, sat the five Scotch 
 Commissioners, three divines, and two laymen; and behind 
 them, the members of the House of Commons deputed to the 
 Assembly. The space between the chimney and the door was 
 left vacant, and here the Lords of Parliament sat on chairs 
 round the fire. There were generally about sixty divines pre- 
 sent. The business of the Assembly was distributed among 
 three Committees, to one or other of which every member 
 belonged; but no matter could be taken into consideration 
 without a written order from Parliament. These Commit- 
 tees in their afternoon sittings, prepared the business for the 
 following day. The public discussions were from nine in the 
 morning tiU one or two in the afternoon every day except 
 Saturday. The forms of Parliament were strictly adhered to. 
 Every man rose to speak of his own accord ; when two or 
 more rose at once, he had the word for whom there was the 
 loudest call. In the order of debate, the general proposition 
 ' Book XI. sect. ix. 2. 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 131 
 
 was first discussed, and tten the texts of Scripture alleged iu 
 confirmation of it. After debate the question was put, aye 
 or no; and when the majority was doubtful, the numbers 
 were counted by the scribes. No member was alluded to by 
 name, but was addi-essed through the prolocutor, as "the 
 reverend brother who last spoke, or on this side, above or 
 below." BaiUie was much impressed by the order and de- 
 corum of their proceedings, and admired the learning, fluency 
 and clearness of the speakers^. 
 
 Such a spectacle had never before been witnessed in Eng- 
 land, neither has there been any repetition of it siace^. Of 
 all who were interested in the great cause of freedom civil and 
 religious, and who had dared the last extremity in asserting 
 it, the wisest, gravest and best were now convened in solemn 
 amity, to seek by their united counsels and endeavours, in 
 Parliament and the Assembly, the two highest objects em- 
 braced in the social well-being of man ; just and equal govern- 
 ment, and such provision for moral and spiritual culture, as 
 would secure its perpetuity in a race of virtuous and high- 
 principled freemen. They seemed now to be approaching the 
 end, which the truest patriots had sought through the dark 
 and blood-stained contingencies of civd discord ; and . some 
 perhaps were already anticipating a long era of peace and 
 glory for their country. If in looking back on their under- 
 taking from our more elevated point of view, we discern in 
 the conditions of human society, insuperable obstacles to its 
 successful accomplishment, we ought not to be insensible to 
 the patriotic motive which prompted it; nor while we de- 
 plore that perverted earnestness which often took the form of 
 intolerance, to overlook the patient thoughtfulness, the strong 
 religious conviction, and the high moral purpose, which have 
 conferred an immortal reputation on many of the acts of the 
 Long Parliament, and leave no small praise due to the inten- 
 tions and efforts of the Assembly. The great and good men 
 of this greatest period of our national history, attempted in 
 the largeness of their patriotism, directed by views which were 
 then all but universal, to combine objects hitherto found in- 
 compatible; to blend good government and civil freedom in 
 
 > Letter to Spang, London. December Vth, 1643. 
 
 2 "The like of that Assemblie," observes BaiUie, "I never did see, and as we 
 hear say, the like was never in England, nor anywhere is shortlie lyke to be." 
 ibid. n. p. 107. 
 
132 RESULTS OF PURITANISM 
 
 one compact and harmonious fabric with a fixed type of faith, 
 and worship for the entire nation. Most of them seem not to 
 have suspected, that a denial of the fundamental principle of 
 the Reformation was involved in their design. For although 
 there must ever he a close sympathy between Church and 
 State, which will then be most complete, when each most 
 perfectly fulfils its specific object, they pursue nevertheless a 
 separate way towards their common end ; the State embracing 
 men's external relations and demanding, so far as it extends, 
 an uniform embodiment of the general will; the Church 
 which cherishes and expresses the inward life, requiring as 
 necessarily for its healthftd existence, the greatest freedom 
 and variety of action. Any attempt consequently to fix them 
 permanently in a definite outward alliance, retards the pro- 
 gress of both towards that distant unity which in the natural 
 development of society, they may ultimately attain. Devoted 
 to such incompatible objects, it is not wonderful, that the la- 
 bours of the Assembly, however virtuously intended, should 
 have proved in the main a failure. 
 
 When the divines were assembled, being more accustomed 
 to the formalities of scholastic disputation than to the des- 
 patch of pubhc business, they were proceeding, after a pedantic 
 fashion, to encounter their task in strictly logical method; 
 setting out with an investigation of the power and ofl&ces of 
 Jesus Christ, and so descending in due gradation to define 
 the functions of those who bear office in his name. But Par- 
 liament was impatient for practical measures to meet the ne- 
 cessities of the times, and accelerated their prolix delibera- 
 tions. They first agreed on a Directory of Worship in place 
 of the old Prayer-book, the use of wMch was prohibited by 
 Parliament ; and introduced that form of conducting the public 
 services of religion, which still subsists in the Kirk of Scotland 
 and in most congregations of English Dissenters. The adoption 
 of it was enforced by parliamentary ordinance August 23rd, 
 1645^. The Assembly next produced the Confession of Faith, 
 and the Form of Church Government, with the Shorter and 
 Larger Catechisms. The Confession and the Catechisms were 
 confirmed by authority of Parliament ; but it must be noticed, 
 that all the Articles enforcing Presbyterian discipline, were 
 passed over and never acquired validity in England. In Scot- 
 
 1 It was countermanded by a royal proolamatiou from Oxford of Novemlipv 
 13. Neal, II. p. 109. Fuller, XI. p. 10. 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 133 
 
 land, the whole was adopted, and became the basis of the na- 
 tional Church^. 
 
 The Westminster Confession is an elaborate exposition in 
 clear and forcible language, of the Calvinistic theology which 
 was at that time the almost universal belief of the Puritan 
 party. Before the arrival of the Scotch Commissioners, 
 the English divines had commenced a revision of the Thirty- 
 nine Articles, with a view to make the sense of them more 
 decidedly Calvinistic^. But they afterwards abandoned this 
 design, to undertake a new and original work. The scriptu- 
 ral spirit of Puritanism is very conspicuous in the ample re- 
 ferences to the Bible, by which every statement in the Con- 
 fession is sustained. The Catechisms are a reduction of the 
 substance of the Confession, for the purpose of instruction. In 
 the Larger a complete system of practical duty is ingeniously 
 evolved by accommodation and expansion out of the Ten Com- 
 mandments. In spite of its stern Calvinism, there is much 
 to admire in this Catechism. Its language is plain and im- 
 pressive. Its careful adaptation to imbue the mind with the 
 principles of personal holiness and piety, the fulness and ac- 
 curacy with which it explains doctrines believed to be essen- 
 tial, and its earnest, solemn inculcation of the duties of pubHc 
 worship, of Scripture reading, and of private and domestic 
 prayer, attest the conscientious zeal with which the West- 
 minster divines discharged their sacred task, and are in striking 
 contrast with the meagre brevity of the Catechism of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 It would have been well for their reputation, if their laboiu's 
 had terminated here. They had been convened by Parlia- 
 
 ' Hetherington's History of the Westminster Assembly. Edinburgli, 1843. 
 BaiUie was awaie of the influence which predominated in the Assembly, and has 
 remarked in several passages of his Letters, with a singular mixture of shrewd- 
 ness and simplicity, that it was not expedient to force on the question of Pres- 
 byterian government, till the Scots' army had drawn sufficiently near to overawe 
 the discussion. There is a Journal by Lightfoot of the proceedings of the As- 
 sembly, published in the last 8vo edition of his works, which I have had no op- 
 portunity of consulting. A similar MS. Journal by George GtUlespie (one of 
 the Scotch Commissioners) is in existence ; and another ascribed to Dr. Thomas 
 Groodwin, is preserved in Dr. Williams's Library, London. Memoir of BaiUie, 
 appended to his Letters and Journals, p. h. note. If these Journals were pub- 
 lished, we should then possess an Episcopalian and Brastian, a Presbyterian, and 
 an Independent, accoimt of the dehberations of the only Protestant Council 
 that ever met in England. 
 
 2 Neal, II. p. 48. In the Appendix No. I. he has compared the articles so 
 altered with the original Articles. 
 
134 RESULTS OP PURITANISM 
 
 ment to make a national settlement of religion. Sucli an 
 object, if practicable at all, demanded mutual concession and 
 forbearance on aU sides : but it was defeated by the unyield- 
 ing bigotry of the high Presbyterian party, who had been urged 
 to advance the most extravagant claims by the presence and 
 countenance of the Scots. The sectaries of the army who 
 would have acquiesced in the subsistence of a national re- 
 ligion and a public maintenance, had a general toleration for 
 Christians been coupled with it, were far more enlightened 
 and more moderate in their views. The confidence with 
 which the Presbyterians maintained the diviue right of their 
 system, and contended for its exclusive establishment 
 throughout the land, involved them in discord, first with the 
 Parliament who refused to surrender the power of the Keys, 
 and secondly with the Erastians and the Independents who 
 saw that the free exercise of their own principles would be 
 impossible under ±he ascendancy of Presbyterianism. The 
 Independents were a small body, not more than six or seven 
 avowedly ia the whole Assembly ; but the consideration with 
 which they were treated even by the Presbyterians, and the 
 zeal manifested on their behalf ia the Grand Committee of 
 Accommodation appointed by Parliament in 1644, are proofs 
 of the weight attached to their character and abilities, and of 
 the spreading moral influence of their principles^. 
 
 The Independents too had their notions of a jus divinum ; 
 in other words, claimed for their theory of Church govern- 
 ment, the express sanction of Scripture. As they did not 
 object to a comprehension in the national settlement, and to 
 occasional communion with the Presbyterians (for in doctrine 
 the two parties essentially agreed), provided they could secure 
 the fidl exercise of Church power to their separate congrega- 
 tions, and be exempted from the control of the Presbyterian 
 courts ; they had proposed at the opening of the debate, that 
 before any system of government was exclusively decided 
 upon, the claims of Independency should be discussed step by 
 step with those of Presbyterianism. In this way possibly a 
 friendly accommodation might have been efiected. When 
 however this ofier was rejected by the Presbyterians who 
 urged on an immediate vote in favour of their own views, the 
 
 1 Neal, II. p. 206. Coffier, II. p. 838. Baillie attests the "learning, wit and 
 eloquence" of the Independents in the Assembly, II. p. 145 ; and Fuller though 
 an Episcopalian, speats of them in a very kindly spirit. B. XI. ix. 35. 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 135 
 
 Independents changed their course of action ; and leaving the 
 invidious distinction of being the dominant Church to their 
 impracticable brethren, contented themselves with suing for a 
 simple toleration. Even this was contested by the ascendant 
 party, who would nevertheless out of personal regard for the 
 Dissenting brethren, have willingly allowed in their case the 
 fact of toleration, by any indirect expedient which would not 
 have conceded its principle. 
 
 These discassions terminated in no practical result, though 
 they must have aided the progress of jtist ideas on the 
 rights of conscience^. The Independents were shut out from 
 the national establishment, and the Presbyterians were ex- 
 hibited in the odious light of opponents to all toleration. 
 What the latter party aimed at, was the purification of the 
 Church according to a scriptural model. Episcopacy being 
 now to all appearance destroyed^, they had set their heart on 
 Presbyterianism as its substitute ; and since in their view only 
 one form of religion could be established for the whole nation, 
 they looked on toleration as a lax abandonment of the great 
 principle of reform. After they had outvoted the Independ- 
 ents and Erastians on the question of the jus divinum, the 
 Presbyterians remained in undisputed possession of the Assem- 
 bly, which from that time lost all claim to a national repre- 
 sentation. Continually reduced in numbers, sharing in the 
 fortunes of the great civil Court with which it had been asso- 
 ciated, it became at length a sort of Presbyterian rump, and 
 broke up of itself ia April 1653, when the Long Parhament 
 was violently dissolved by Cromwell". The intolerant spirit 
 of the Assembly was only too consistently exhibited by 
 Presbyterians in other parts of the kingdom, who sent up 
 addresses to Parliament agaiast the threatened Toleration, 
 
 ' See the details in Neal, II. pp. 205-210 ; also the Grand Debate concern- 
 ing Presbytery and Independency, London : 1652 ; and the papers giTen in to 
 the, Parliamentary Committee for Accommodation, 1644 j from which Neal has 
 drawn his materials. 
 
 2 Episcopacy had been finally aboKshed, and its property confiscated, by the 
 Parhamentary Ordinances of Oct. 9 and Not. 16, 1646. Neal, II. p. 246. 
 
 3 The remnant of the Assembly had been converted mto a Committee for 
 the examination of ministers, soon after the King's death in 1649. Neal, II. 
 p 333 From the commencement there had been a small Committee ia the 
 Assembly to examine candidates for the Ministry. Certificates were given to 
 the Assemby of their quaUfications ; upon which they were appomted to vacant 
 pulpits, but without ordination, till some form of Church government should be 
 agreed upon. Bailhe's Letters and Journals, II. p. 112. 
 
136 RESULTS OP PURITANISM 
 
 the great Diana, as it was contemptuously called, of the In- 
 dependents^. 
 
 The critical state of the times, the seizure of the King's 
 person by the army, the renewal of the war for his deliverance, 
 and the growing jealousy between the army which a,bounded 
 in sectaries, and the Parliament where Presbyterianism still 
 predominated — exasperated and maddened party feehng to a 
 pitch before unknown. Amidst these excitements the Presby- 
 terians brought the foulest blot on their reputation by the 
 Ordinance against Blasphemy and Heresy, which enacted 
 that for certain specified offences under this head, if the party 
 on his trial should not abjiu^e his error, or if having abjured 
 he should relapse, he should suffer death " as in case of felony 
 without benefit of clergy^." 
 
 ' Mr. Heyrick, a Presbyterian and Warden of the Collegiate Church of 
 Manchester, replying in 1648, to the "Agreement of the People" issued by 
 the Independents, protests against Toleration, as a violation of the Solemn 
 League and Covenant. "We have searched the Scriptures," say the sub- 
 scribers to this memorial, — " and yet we cannot find, that ever such a thing 
 was practised with approbation from God, from the time that Adam was 
 created upon tbe earth." " And therefore we cannot see, how such a kind of 
 toleration sis is endeavoured after in these times, can anyways consist with a 
 thorough reformation according to the Word of God, there being nothing 
 more contrary to reformation than toleration." History of the CoUegiate 
 Church of Manchester, by Dr. Hibbert Ware : vol. i. Appendix to Ch. xix.. p. 
 394. The same spirit is conspicuous in a Tract of 1644, entitled, " Wholesome 
 Severity reconciled with Christian Liberty, or the True Resolution of the present 
 Controversy concerning Liberty of Conscience." The author admits, that 
 good citizens as well as good Christians have strong temptations to embrace 
 the doctrine of Toleration, and then proceeds : " Under these fair colours and 
 handsome pretexts do Sectaries infuse their poison, I mean, their pernicious, 
 God-provoking, truth-defeicing, church-ruinating, and state-shaking Toleration. 
 The plain English of the question is this — ^whether the Christian magistrate be 
 keeper of both tables ; whether he ought to suppress his own enemies, but not 
 God's enemies ; and preserve his own ordinances, but not Christ's ordinances 
 from violation ; whether the troublers of Israel may be troubled," etc. etc. 
 There is no end to Presbyterian invective on the subject of Toleration. Ed- 
 wards quite surpasses himself on this inspiring theme. " A Toleration," says 
 he, " is the grand design of the DevU, his master-piece, and cliief engine he 
 works by at this time, to uphold his tottering kingdom ; it is the most com- 
 pendious, ready and sure way to destroy all rehgion, lay all waste, and bring in 
 all evil ; it is a most transoeudant, cathoUc and fundamental evil for tliis king- 
 dom of any that can be imagined ; as original sin is the most fundamental sin 
 — aU sin — ^having the seed and spawn of all in it ; so a Toleration hath all 
 errors in it, and all evils." Gangrtena : Letters and Narrations, p. 58. These 
 intolerant doctrines made the Presbyterian discipline, wlierever it was esta- 
 bhshed, exceedingly oppressive, and oalhng forth at length a strong reaction, 
 favoured the spread both of Independent and of Episoop^an principles. This 
 was the case in Lancashire. See the work of Dr. Hibbert Ware, already quoted, 
 vol. i. p. 287. Appendix, p. 398. 
 
 2 This Ordinance is dated May 2, 1648. Neal, II. p. 338. The disgrace of 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 137 
 
 In virtue of a Parliamentary ordinance which passed the 
 Lordsj June 6, 1646, Preshyterianism had now hecome the 
 national religion^, although the disordered state of the country 
 prevented the uniform enforcement of its discipline. It was the 
 most completely reduced to practice in Lancashire, where it 
 was virtually established and annually held its provincial Sy- 
 nods at Preston in the centre of the county for fourteen years^- 
 The provincial assemblies of London, besides the weekly 
 meetings of clergy at Sion College, continued to be held half- 
 yearly tni 1655, when they were dissolved'. Presbyterian as- 
 sociations were also formed, though with less order and autho- 
 rity, in other counties. But there was no uniformity. The spirit 
 of the times favoured toleration, and Independent and Baptist 
 churches were set up iu many places. The Presbyterians 
 attached great importance to an educated and duly appointed 
 ministry; and dioring the ascendancy of their discipline, a 
 committee of divines sate weekly in London, to examine such 
 ministers as presented themselves for ordination and induction. 
 Instructions and authority were sent down to the provincial 
 associations for the same purpose, to secure as much regularity 
 as was attainable. The order of proceeding seems in general 
 to have been this : the patron nominated, and the parish or 
 congregation elected, the minister ; who then presented himself 
 with this recommendation to the examining board for ordina- 
 
 originatiBg it does not rest on the Assembly of Divines. The Presbyterian 
 members of the Commons who had abandoned the House while the army was 
 quartered in its neighbourhood, resumed their sittings on its withdrawal ; and 
 ayailed themselves of their superiority in numbers and influence, to enact this 
 measure against heretics, which they had previously meditated, under the sharp 
 stimulus of hatred to the various sects with which the vicmity of the ai-my had 
 recently annoyed them. " This," says Neal with just indignation, "is one of the 
 most shocking laws I have met with in restraint of rehgious hberty, and shows 
 that the governing Presbyterians would have made a terrible use of theur power, 
 had they been supported by the sword of the civU magistrate." 
 
 1 Neal, II. p. 200. ^^ ,. , j 4.,, f u ■ 
 
 2 Prom 1646 to 1660 The province of Lancashire embraced the toUowmg 
 classes:— Manchester, Bolton, Warrington, Blaokburne, Leyland, Preston, 
 West Derbv the Fvlde, and Lancaster. In the Manchester dassis vrere m- 
 cluded the parishes of Manchester, Prestwich, Oldham, Fhxton Eccles, Ashton- 
 under-Line The classical meetings of this division were held m the refectory 
 of the Manchester (afterwards called Chetham) College. A full account of 
 
 Presbyt^anism at this time in ^--''^^,'' X'^,%'^,ZZ^Go7c^Z^ 
 ments and tracts, will be found in Dr. Hibbert Ware s Hist, of the Coll Church 
 SnTester. A rehc of the old Presbyterian organisation stiU subsists m 
 the ProvS Meeting of Presbyterian ministers, amiually held m rotation at 
 different places in Lancashire and Cheshire. 
 
 3 Neal, II. p. 260, 1, and p. 337. 
 
138 RESULTS OF PURITANISM 
 
 tion and induction ; after which he was finally confirmed in 
 his benefice by authority of Parliament^. 
 
 The obstinacy of the Presbyterians and the duplicity of the 
 King, preventing any comprehensive settlement of the great 
 questions of Church and State, threw the chief direction of 
 affairs into the hands of the army, and gave firesh stimulus 
 to the doctrines of the Independents. All public measures 
 affecting religion, which ensued from this time till the death 
 of Cromwell, mark an increasing respect for the principle of 
 Toleration. In the Agreement of the People, put forth as a 
 declaration of the public sentiment not long before the trial 
 of the King, and generally attributed to Ireton, the free exer- 
 cise of their religion by all Christians is particularly insisted 
 on, as an article that shotdd enter into any future constitution 
 of the government. The Engagement which was required to 
 be taken under the Commonwealth in place of the Solemn 
 League and Covenant, and which may be called the Indepen- 
 dent, as the latter was the Presbyterian, oath of allegiance, 
 relaxed much of the preceding strictness, and admitted minis- 
 ters of different persuasions, even some Episcopalians, to 
 church livings. The Presbyterians who were attached to 
 monarchy and zealous sticklers for Church uniformity, very 
 generally refused to take it. But henceforward under all 
 changes of government, so long as the old monarchy continued 
 in abeyance, provision was always made for Toleration, in the 
 sense which the word then bore, as uicluding all who held the 
 fuudamentals of Christianity. 
 
 For the Presbyterian committees which had been appointed 
 under the Long Parliament, to examine ministers before in- 
 duction into livings, Cromwell substituted a select body of 
 divines and laymen chosen by himself and his Council or by 
 Parliament, from the Presbyterians and Independents, with a 
 few Baptists intermixed, who were called Tryers. The func- 
 tions of the Tryers were further extended, in the appointment 
 of a committee for the ejectment of scandalous and insufiS- 
 
 > Neal, II. pp. 69, 105, 139, 201. Comp. p. 460, and Appendix III. p. 860, 
 with Baiilie's Letters and Journals, II. p. 139. Calamy (Continuation, I. p. 
 461-2) giyes a copy of the form of inducting his father, Edmimd Calamy the 
 younger, into the rectory of Moreton, Essex, under the protectorate of Bichard 
 CromweU, with an engraving of the common seal then used by the Commis- 
 sioners for the approbation of public preachers. The instrument is dated 
 Whitehall, AprE 20, 1659. 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 139 
 
 cient ministers and schoolmasters^. The object of Cromwell 
 ia these measures was to keep down the ascendancy of any- 
 one denomination. The opinions of these Tryers and Com- 
 missioners being generally Calvinistic could not fail to have 
 some influence on their approval or rejection of candidates ; 
 but there is no evidence, that worthy and pious men of any 
 denomination, where they did not openly oppose the predomi- 
 nant orthodoxy of the time, were ever refused or deprived by 
 them. John Goodwin, the famous Arminian Independent, 
 complained of their power as more arbitrary than that of the 
 bishops; but Owen who was one of their number, secured 
 Pococke, the Orientalist, although an Episcopalian, in the 
 quiet enjoyment of his cure^. Fuller, the historian, also an 
 Episcopalian, was allowed to pass, on simply declaring that 
 "he made conscience of his thoughts," without giving any 
 particular account of the work of grace on his heart^. Baxter 
 who was strongly opposed to Cromwell's rule and institutions, 
 has borne his testimony to the general impartiahty and effici- 
 ency of the Tryers*. 
 
 Cromwell himself was deeply imbued with Puritanical feel- 
 ing. Protestantism which in his view was the same with 
 Puritanism, he had early learned to associate with the cause 
 of truth, freedom and godliness ; while he looked on every 
 approximation to Popish doctrines and usages, as the sign and 
 harbinger of corruption and tyranny. By these ideas his con- 
 ception of Toleration was determined. Under the same influ- 
 ence, he had formed a design of organizing the whole Protes- 
 tant interest of Europe into a league, to counteract the efibrts 
 of the Propagandists at Rome. The mortal strife between the 
 powers of light and darkness so vividly depicted in the solemn 
 story of the Bible, he saw at work before his eyes in the 
 great ecclesiastical struggle of the age ; and he longed to put 
 himself at its head. His earnest and energetic character em- 
 bodied the spirit of Puritanism in its highest aims, its last and 
 
 ' The first of these ordinances bears date March 20, 1654 ; the second, 
 August 28, of the same year. NeaJ, II. pp. 446 and 452. 
 
 2 Orme's Life of Owen. ^ Neal II. p. 451. 
 
 2 " To give them their due, they did abundance of good to the Church." 
 " They admitted of any that were able serious preachers, and Hved a godly Ufe, of 
 what tolerable opinion soever they were." " So great was the benefit above the 
 hurt which they brought to the Church, that many thousands of souls blest 
 God for the faithful ministers whom they let him, and grieved when the Prela- 
 tists afterwards cast them out again." Baxter's Narrative of his Life and Times. 
 London, fol. 1696, p. 72. 
 
140 RESULTS OF PURITANISM 
 
 grandest ■ development ; and having cruslied Prelacy at home^ 
 he was eager to pursue it to its last retreats abroad, a,nd ex- 
 terminate it from the earth. But with this enthusiastic tem- 
 perament, the source of aU true heroism, Cromwell united a 
 most vigorous and capacious intellect, which could distinguish 
 the interest of religion from the ascendancy of a sect. His 
 mind had been disciplined by the debates in Parliament, where 
 Pym, Hampden, Selden and Whitlocke had discussed the 
 highest questions of Church and State. Many of their clear 
 and dispassionate views he had imbibed, and wrought with 
 statesmanlike tact into the temper of his own more fervid 
 Independency ; and the uniform policy of his own government 
 showed, that he was prepared to put in practice as the basis 
 of a national settlement of rehgion, those doctrines of general 
 toleration which were dawning on the convictions of the most 
 enlightened of his contemporaries, and which far transcended 
 the aims of diviaes of any school. 
 
 There is no proof, that Cromwell ever intended to break up 
 a public maintenance for rehgion, and to throw the support of 
 it entirely on the spontaneous enthusiasm of different sects. 
 The appointment of the Tryers was avowedly designed as a 
 restraint on the license and irregularity which already existed. 
 Individuals here and there, Hke Milton and Vane, may have 
 anticipated what is now called the Voluntary System ; but it 
 had not yet become a distinguishing tenet of the general body 
 of the Independents^. The Independents believing in the jus 
 divinum of their own system, and in the scriptural duty of 
 gathering separate churches, were compelled to plead for tole- 
 ration, and in consistency with their own principles, to concede 
 it to all who were tolerable : and this was the point of view 
 from which some amongst them advanced to wider and juster 
 ideas of rehgious liberty. Could they at once have established 
 their own principles, the example of their brethren in New 
 England, and Owen's treatment of some female Quakers at 
 Oxford", render it only too probable, that they would have 
 
 ' See the 14th article of the Supplement to the Savoy Confession of Faith. 
 
 ^ Orme's Life, p. 192. Owen's extreme dislike of the Quakers is evident from 
 his " Exercitationes Apologetiote adversus hujus temporis Fanaticos." Oxon. 
 1658. Baxter also speaks of them very contemptuously (Life I. § 123, II. § 431.) 
 Sewel (History of the Quakers, p. 90.) has a full account of the proceedings at 
 Oxford t from which it appears, that Owen, then A'^ice-OhanceUor, approved and 
 santioned the extreme severities of the Justices of the Peace, with which the 
 Mayor refused his concm-rence. It must be admitted, however, from Sewel's 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 141 
 
 called in the aid of the magistrate, to uphold the true religion 
 and to punish sectaries. The wisdom on this subject was aU 
 with the laity. Cromwell was much in advance of his clergy. 
 He aimed at balancing by a just and equal pohcy the different 
 religious parties in the State; heaUng their mutual antipa- 
 thies; repressing their exorbitant pretensions: and uniting 
 them all in a peaceful subjection to the laws. When the In- 
 dependents desired to hold a Synod, for the drawing up of a 
 public Declaration of the Faith and Order of their churches, 
 Cromwell unwillingly yielded to this request, as fearing it 
 might separate them further from the Presbyterians^. Epis- 
 copalians and Socinians were equally embraced within his tole- 
 ration. He rescued Biddle from clerical tyranny, and allowed 
 him a maintenance. Usher, we are told by Collier, he treated 
 with particular marks of esteem, and honoured with a public 
 funeral in Westminster Abbey ^. 
 
 The confinement of controversy during the progress of the 
 Puritanic movement mainly to questions of Church govern- 
 ment, and the almost universal recognition of Calvinism as 
 the true doctrine of the Reformation, prevented the sects 
 which had made the greatest advance towards religious free- 
 dom, from understanding the rights of conscience in their full 
 extent, and attaining a clear comprehension of the relations 
 between the Chujch and the civil power. When a committee 
 was appointed in 1654, to decide upon the fundamentals of 
 Christianity mentioned in the Instrument of Government, the 
 Independent divines,- under the guidance of Owen and Thomas 
 Goodwin, produced a formidable hst of articles, which would 
 have excluded aU who were not Trinitarians and Calvin- 
 ists. Baxter who required no more than the Lord's Prayer, 
 the Apostles' Creed, and the Ten Commandments, was re- 
 proached by them with opening a door for the admission of 
 Papists and Socinians^. Goodwin, on presenting the Savoy 
 Confession to Richard Cromwell, addressed him ia language 
 
 own showing, that the Quakeresses themselres had given some provocation. The 
 name Quakers was first attached to this sect, as a nickname, by the Indepen- 
 dents. (Ibid. p. 99.) 
 
 2 Coffier, il. pp. 868-9, and Neal, II. p. 477 and 471. Neal quotes, p. 472, a, 
 remarkable passage from bishop Kennet in attestation of OomweU's toleration 
 
 of the episcopal clergy. , „„ ta ,-. < ii, i. j j- „ 
 
 3 Baxter's Account, etc., Part II. p. 198. Dr. Owen, 'the great doer of aU 
 that worded the articles,' was Baxter's principal opponent. 
 
142 RESULTS OF PURITANISM 
 
 which savoured of the Erastianism of the Long Parliament, 
 as the keeper of hoth Tahles of the Law, the head at once of 
 Chiirch and of State^. Owen on conversing with Lord Claren- 
 don after the Restoration, on Toleration, was asked by him 
 what he would require; when he rephed, "liberty to those 
 who agreed in doctrine with the Church of England^." It is 
 evident, that the greatest men of this period with a few ex- 
 ceptions, though in the way to a just conception of religious 
 liberty, had not yet reached it. 
 
 The Savoy Confession acquaints us with the principles of 
 the Independents, now a numerous and powerful body, under 
 the Protectorate*. It was drawn up in a Synod, composed 
 of representatives of their Churches, laymen and ministers, 
 which held its meetings at the old palace of the Savoy in the 
 Strand. Its labours were not completed tiQ after the death 
 of CromweU. The Savoy Confession stands in the same rela- 
 tion to the Independents, as the Westminster to the Presby- 
 terians. The chief hand in preparing it, is ascribed to Dr. 
 Owen*. The preface is eloquently written, alluding to the 
 disordered times through which the truth had been preserved, 
 and the surprising readiness and unanimity with which in a 
 very short space of time, not more than eleven days, the mem- 
 bers of the Synod had agreed upon their declarations. How 
 little the true principle of the rights of conscience and the 
 spirit of free inquiry were understood by them, is evident 
 from the following passage : — " The authors of this Confession 
 have aU along contended for the exercise, among all Christian 
 states and churches, of forbearance and mutual indulgence to 
 saiats of aU persuasions that hold fast the necessary founda- 
 tions of faith and holiness, though not requiring such latitude 
 of concession on behalf of their own faith, which they conceive 
 to have in all things a Scripture warrant in support of it." 
 What is said on the subject of Church government is very 
 significant. They apprehend their system is conformable to 
 the Scripture rule. " Varieties of opinion," it is added, " on 
 this subject, have led to the conclusion, that no rule is laid 
 down in Scripture, and that it must be left to the ci^dl magis- 
 
 ' Price's Hist, of Konconformity. ^ Orme's Life, p. 800. 
 
 ' Declaration of the Faith and Order owned and practised in the Congrega- 
 tional Churches of England, agreed upon and consented to by their Elders and 
 Messengers at the Savoy, Oct. 12, 1658. London, 1659. 
 
 * See Bright's Apostolical Independency. 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 143 
 
 trate to adopt sucli a form as is most suitable and consistent 
 with civil government. When this persuasion is entertained 
 by civil governors, churches asserting their power and order 
 to he jure divino, can look for nothing better or more honour- 
 able than toleration or permission. The result of this will be, 
 that all who differ from the magistrate and among themselves, 
 standing in equal and a like difference from the principle of 
 such a magistrate, he is equally free to give a like Hberty to 
 them, one as well as the other." If I understand this state- 
 ment aright, it accepts simple toleration as the unavoidable 
 consequence of disagreement between the Church and the 
 civil magistrate respecting the jus divinum, but does not dis- 
 own the principle of establishment in cases where their views 
 coalesce. In the chapter on the Civil Magistrate it is de- 
 clared, that " he is bound to encourage, promote, and protect 
 the professors and profession of the Gospel, to manage civU 
 administrations in the interest of Christ, and to hinder the 
 publication and divulging of errors and blasphemies ; but in 
 such differences about doctrine and worship as befal men of 
 good conscience, who hold fast the foundation, and do not 
 disturb those differing from them, there is no warrant for 
 the magistrate under the Gospel for abridging them of their 
 liberty." In the Declaration of Faith the Westminster Con- 
 fession is closely followed. To the chapter on the Law, another 
 is added on the Gospel, being a collection of various state- 
 ments and indications, scattered up and down the Assembly's 
 Catechism, which is deeply Calvinistic. The part which 
 treats of the Institution and Order of Churches, is separated 
 from the Declaration of Faith, as involving points still con- 
 troverted among the orthodox. The preface to this Indepen- 
 dent Confession breathes a brotherly and concihatory spirit 
 towards the Presbyterians i. 
 
 1 The preface to the Savoy Confession contains the following description of 
 the state of things which had preceded its appearance :— " We have sailed 
 through an cestuation, fluxes and refluxes of great varieties of spirits, doctrines, 
 opinions and occurrences, and especially in the matter of opinions, which have 
 been accompanied in their several seasons with powerful persuasions and temp- 
 tations to seduce those of our way. It is known, men have taken the freedom 
 (notwithstanding what authority hath interposed to the contrary) to vent and 
 vend their own vain and accursed imaginations, contrary to the great and fixed 
 truths of the G-ospel, insomuch, as, take the whole round and circle of delusions 
 the Devil hath in this small time run— it will be found, that every truth of 
 greater or lesser weight, hath by one or other hand, at one tune or another, 
 been questioned and caUed to the bar amongst us, yea, and unpleaded, under 
 
144 RESULTS OF PUKITANISM. 
 
 Notwithstanding the nnquestionable services of Cromwell 
 to religions freedom^ he does not appear to have secured the 
 confidence and attachment of the Sectaries. Owen was alie- 
 nated from him by his suspected design of assuming the 
 crown. Baxter and the bulk of the Presbyterians were 
 attached to royalty ; and most of them had taken the Cove- 
 nant. He did not act enough ia the spirit and interest of 
 any one party, to bind it to himself. Yet had his life been 
 prolonged, he might have overmastered all these difiBculties. 
 Considering the state of parties and the ends for which the 
 war with the Church and the Crown had been undertaken, 
 his death must be regarded as an irreparable misfortune to the 
 cause of rehgious liberty. With him perished every hope of 
 settling the religion of the nation on a liberal and comprehen- 
 sive basis. Only an energy and a vigilance like his, could 
 have subdued and controlled the manifold elements of discord 
 that were at work. When he was removed, these immediately 
 broke out, and there was no one to direct the storm. The 
 republicans wanted unity of purpose and did not carry with 
 
 the pretext (which hath some degree of justice in it) that all should Jiot be 
 bound up to the traditions of former times, nor take rehgion upon trust." It 
 is evident from this, that among those who were classed under the general name 
 of Independents during the Commonwealth, great diversity and great freedom 
 of opinion prevailed, and that one object iu putting forth the Confession, was 
 to give some check to this hcense. The obsei-vation is of some importance in 
 its bearing on the future history of Independency. It is further argued in this 
 preface, that Independency is a more ancient way in England than Presbytery, 
 having been adopted in the first breaking off from Episcopacy, and that the old 
 Puritan Nonconformists, Whitehead, GUby, Eox and others, were inclined to 
 its principles. The following fact in the history of the Westminster Confession, 
 mentioned in this pi-eface, is worthy of notice. Wlien the Articles were pre- 
 sented by the Assembly to Parliament for confirmation, — Ch. 30, on Church 
 Censures, Ch. 31, of Synods, 4th paragraph of Ch. 20, on the Power of the 
 Magistrate to punish offenders against the peace of the Church, and part of 
 Ch. 24, on Marriage and Divorce — were put aside by Parliament, as unsuitable 
 to a confession of faith and involving points on which differences of opinion ex- 
 isted. But the copy, as it came from the Assembly, containing all these arti- 
 cles, being transmitted into Scotland and approved by the aeneral Assembly 
 there, was printed and given to the world in 1647, before the ParUament had 
 declared their resolutions about it, which was not tiU 1648 ; and yet this copy, 
 it is observed, though it had never received the sanction of the EngUsh ParUa- 
 ment, " hath been, and continueth to be, the copy ordinarily only sold, printed 
 and reprmted for these eleven years." This was written in 1659. The cir- 
 cumstance shows, how different were the feelings of the English Pai-hament from 
 those of the zealous Presbyterians both in England and in Scotland. The Par- 
 liamentary copy, the preface says, was in few hands. The full copy accepted in 
 Scotland, was ratified by the Parliament of that coantry in 1649. 
 
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PURITANISM. ,145 
 
 them the sympathies of the people. Richard Cromwell was 
 deficient ia energy and misled by his advisers. The Presby- 
 terians were divided, some adhering to the young Protector, 
 some speculating on the return of the king. 
 
 Among aU these parties, who was equal to the emergency 
 of the occasion? Charles and the exiled royalists remained. 
 The course of events accelerated by the treachery of Monk 
 and the credidity of the Presbyterians, showed but too clearly, 
 that the destinies of this great nation, weak in the very redun- 
 dancy of its strength, without a head to guide it, must inevit- 
 ably pass into their hands. With what result to the most 
 precious interests of humanity, for which the best and bravest 
 had toiled and bled — ^let the sad and disastrous sequel declare. 
 We approach with pain the era of the Restoration ; and turn 
 mournfally from an age filled with high thoughts and noble 
 aims, and bright glimpses of a time of equal justice and reli- 
 gious peace, to a period so darkened vrith dishonour and 
 shame, so stained with persecution and licentiousness, as the 
 reign of Charles. But it must not be supposed, that the 
 struggle of the Puritans was made in vain. Some enterprises 
 are to be estimated from the great idea which they express 
 and strive to realize. Their example, their moral influence, is 
 of infinitely more value than their immediate result. It is by 
 such efibrts incessantly renewed, actuated by the same indo- 
 mitable sense of right, profiting by all past failures, and at 
 each repetition drawing nearer to the desired end^ — ^that society 
 advances step by step towards that happier condition, which its 
 very power of conceiving is an assurance that it must ulti- 
 mately attain : — 
 
 " For freedom's battle once begun, 
 Bequeath'd by bleeding sii-e to son, 
 Though baffled oft, is eyer won." 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS ON THE HISTORICAL 
 DEVELOPMENT OF PURITANISM : BAXTER AND OWEN. 
 
 The character of the Puritanic movement underwent a 
 change in the interval between the Restoration and the Revo- 
 
 H 
 
146 INFLUENCE OF DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS 
 
 lution. The old eflfervescence subsided, and out of it, amidst 
 new circumstances, distinct historical forms were gradually 
 evolved. Deprived of the support of a reforming and patriotic 
 Parliament, crushed and degraded by the insolent triumph of 
 a crown and hierarchy set up anew, Puritanism lost its poli- 
 tical significance, and became every day more exclusively reli- 
 gious. There had been a general disposition on the part even 
 of the more extreme sectaries, to acquiesce in the restoration 
 of the kingly rule, and to recognise in it a providential ap- 
 pointment^ : and this feeling was strengthened through natural 
 re-action and a desire to give evidence of loyalty, by the 
 outbreak of the Fifth Monarchy men under Venner in Lon- 
 don, and the discovery of similar plots ia other parts of the 
 country^ 
 
 The circumstances which preceded the Act of Uniformity, 
 and its provisions, have been already described. What we 
 have now to notice, is its influence on the spirit of Puritanism. 
 Up to that event the principal benefices in the Church of 
 England were held by men who would have gladly entered 
 iato a friendly compromise with their Episcopalian brethren 
 on principles which Usher and Baxter equally approved^, and 
 who had promoted the king's return in the hope that it would 
 lead to a national settlement of religion. With such men the 
 Church was an object of deeper interest than the State ; and 
 whatever might be their theoretical preferences, they would 
 quietly have reconciled themselves to any government which 
 seemed likely to be stable, and promised religious peace. AU 
 these were harshly cast out of the Church by the Act of 
 Uniformity ; compelled to be Separatists ; and forced against 
 their will into an attitude of apparent disaffection to the 
 Crown. To the last they clung to the hope of comprehension. 
 Three opportunities occurred for effecting it, which issued in 
 no result : at the Restoration in 1660 ; after the discovery of 
 the Popish plot in 1678 ; and at the Revolution in 1688*. It 
 was not till every prospect was closed against them, that they 
 
 ' See Barclay's Dedication of his Apology to Chai'les II. 
 
 2 As the Famley-wood plot, near Leeds, in 1663, and YarrrDgton's plot. The 
 Eev. Jos. Hunter (Life of Ohyer Heywood, p. 155, note) expresses a suspicion 
 that these plots were got up by the government and foi-med part of the pohcy 
 of Hyde. For Venner's movement, and the disclaimer of participation in it by 
 the Independents, Baptists and Quakers, see Neal, II. p. 592. 
 
 ■' Baxter's Account of his Life and Times, Part II. § 61-64. 
 
 ■* Calamy's Continuation, vol. i., Dedication, p. liii. 
 
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PURITANISM. 147 
 
 proceeded very unwillingly to collect and organize distinct 
 and independent dmrches. Even then they kept up as close 
 and frequent communion with the national establishmentj as 
 their conscientious scruples would allow. Schism was abhor- 
 rent to their feelings. Many of them, like their ancestors be- 
 fore the war, out of deferential feeling to their mother Church, 
 abstained from the exercise of ordination^. 
 
 The men of this period form the transition-class between the 
 old Puritan of the time of the wars, and the Protestant Dis- 
 senter recognised by the Toleration Act of the Revolution. 
 With them we are immediately connected through the foun- 
 dation of our religious societies, and the possession at this day 
 of many principles and tendencies which they have transmitted 
 to us. The memory of our great-grandfathers reaches back to 
 the time when their personal influence was strong and active in 
 the world. They are our spiritual ancestors — the fathers of 
 English Protestant Dissent. This was the period that wit- 
 nessed the painful ministry, the prolific tongue and pen, the 
 severe and saint-like virtue, sweetened with a holy meekness, 
 of Baxter, Owen, Bates, and Howe in the metropolis ; of Hey- 
 wood, Fairfax, Newcome, Henry, and Plavel in the provinces. 
 Such men, like true prophets of God, lived heroically on their 
 convictions; and' amidst the disquietudes of a troubled and 
 persecuted life, with the court, the priesthood and the magis- 
 tracy leagued against them, giving themselves up to the sin- 
 gle inspiration of faith and duty, strove earnestly to fulfil the 
 solemn vow they had laid on their souls, that they would 
 preach at whatever cost the truths of eternal life to sinful and 
 dying men. 
 
 The various elements involved in the general principle of 
 Puritanism, which had been mixed up and confounded amidst 
 the fluctuations and uncertainties of the war and the Com- 
 monwealth, were more fully drawn out and separated from 
 each other, and impressed with a distinctive character that is 
 not yet effaced, by the writings and influence of eminent men 
 who prominently expressed and embodied them, during the 
 important interval of which I am now speaking. 
 
 Of the great Presbyterian party, Baxter stands forth as the 
 most conspicuous representative. I have already explained, 
 
 ' ETen after the Eevolution, Howe and Bates declined taking part in the 
 ordination of Calamy. Howe first consulted Lord Somers. Calamy's Life 
 and Times, vol. i. pp. 545-80. 
 
 h2 
 
148 INFLUENCE OF DISTINGUISH EU TEACHERS 
 
 that the term Presbyterian, as the name of a party, had ceased 
 to denote exclnsive attachment to that form of Church govern- 
 ment, but embraced all who were not from principle Separa- 
 tists, and who desired a national settlement of religion on the 
 broad basis of purification and reform. In this aim Baxter 
 heartUy concurred. To promote it was the governing principle 
 of his ecclesiastical and doctrinal system. He shunned ex- 
 tremes, and sought a common centre ; and in this respect his 
 mind was essentially eclectic. His chief ground of difference 
 with the Independents was, in his own phrase, " their separa- 
 ting strictness." Under the guidance of this principle Bax- 
 ter's mind became more tolerant, enlarged and catholic, the 
 longer he lived. Its distinguishing attributes were uncom- 
 mon vigour and acuteness, delighting to a fault in the exercise 
 of dialectic subtlety, but combined with remarkable fervour of 
 spirit, great simplicity of purpose, and inflexible honesty. 
 Though he had not enjoyed an University education, he was 
 deeply read in the subjects that were then conceived to belong 
 to divinity, and might have had a higher reputation for learn- 
 ing, had he written less. But the pen was scarcely ever out 
 of his hand. Of his innumerable productions, the far greater 
 part were occasional, and thrown off at a heat for some imme- 
 diate practical object. In the noble earnestness of his cha- 
 racter, he thought less of literary fame than the interests 
 of the human soul^. 
 
 He began his career as a strong Calvinist, with much of that 
 exclusiveness and aversion to those who thought differently, 
 which often marks sincere and ardent natures, in the first 
 warmth of young conviction, before they have had extensive 
 intercourse vrith the world. In the earlier part of his life, 
 during his ministry at Kidderminster, and while he was chap- 
 lain in the army, he was continually involved in controversy, 
 
 1 Baxter's -writings are exceedingly voluminous. The complete list of them 
 occupies nearly twelve octavo pages in Calamy's Abridgment of his Life and 
 Times, pp. 410 — 422. His practical worts were published after his death in 
 four volumes folio. They have been greatly commended by two eminent church- 
 men. Bishop Wilkins said, that Baxter had cultivated every subject he handled ; 
 and Dr. Isaac Barrow has remarked — of his practical writings, that " they were 
 never mended," and of liis controversial, that " they were seldom confuted." 
 
 There is an admirable portrait of Baxter in Dr. WiUiams's Library, Bed- 
 cross Street, London. We seem to read his mind in the pale, meditative features, 
 shaded by the long raven hau- that escapes with Puritan simplicity beneath his 
 skull-cap, and rising with a soft and earnest expression out of the rich, dark 
 ground of the picture — full of thought and sweetness. 
 
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OP PURITANISM. 149 
 
 and showed great zeal in putting down the new doctrines of 
 various sectaries. But deeper acquaintance with his own 
 heart, larger dealings with mankind, and frequent observation, 
 during those unsettled times, of the different aspects of reli- 
 gion to different minds, diverted his thoughts more and more 
 from the form to the spirit of Christianity, and fixed his atten- 
 tion chiefly, the older he grew, on inward rectitude of spirit 
 and practical goodness. His later writings, while they still 
 breathe the solemn fervour and strictness of the old Puritan, 
 break forth here and there into beautiful expressions of a sub- 
 lime and exalted charity, which soars above the narrow divi- 
 sions of the world, and delights to embrace all good men as 
 the children of God. No stronger proof can be alleged of 
 the strength of this catholic spirit, and of his superiority to 
 the ordinary prejudices of the Puritan, than his belief that 
 there might be a true and avaihng Christianity even in the 
 Papist. In the same healing temper he endeavoured to show, 
 in his Catholic Theology^, that the points at issue between 
 the Calvinists and Arminiaus (the great controversy of the 
 time) did not involve such fundamental truths as were the 
 necessary grounds of separation. 
 
 His views of the Trinity (a subject which already excited 
 debate and alienation among Christians) were charged by his 
 distinguished contemporary. Dr. Owen, with deficiency in 
 clearness and precision ; and his own later exposition of them 
 took the form of Sabellianism^. We have already noticed 
 the liberal and comprehensive spirit which he displayed at the 
 discussion on fundamentals in Cromwell's Instrument of Go- 
 vernment. In spite of early Presbyterian bias he was not 
 unfriendly to a moderate episcopacy, in which he hoped good 
 men on both sides might have happily coalesced. He ac- 
 knowledged an element of truth in the several principles of 
 the Erastians, the Episcopahans, the Presbyterians, and the 
 Independents ; nor did he see anything absolutely irreconcUe- 
 able with unity, in the more peculiar doctrines and practices of 
 the Baptists. He would have brought together and combined 
 what was good in each; and have thus endeavoured to realize 
 his cherished idea of a truly national and Catholic Church'. 
 
 ' Published in 1675. 
 
 2 Historical Proofs and Illustrations of the Hewley Case, p. 22. 
 
 3 He has expressed his judgment on the principles of these different parties 
 in his Account of his Life. Part II. § 2-6. 
 
150 INFLUENCE OF DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS 
 
 The same spirit he consistently manifested to the close of 
 his life. When he took out a license to preach after the 
 Indulgence of 1672, it was not under the title of Independ- 
 ent, or Presbyterian, or any other party, but simply as a 
 Nonconformist ; one shut out from the Church by conscience, 
 but stiU hoping for comprehension i. Yet to this moderate 
 and conciliatory view of party differences, which in some 
 men is only the cover of a prudent selfishness, he added a 
 scrupulous honesty and sensitive tenderness of conscience. 
 He declined the bishopric that was offered him at the Resto- 
 ration, till the Church should have been put on such a footing 
 as would accord with his sense of Christian principle. On 
 another occasion, if a story in Burnet is to be credited, he 
 rejected the insidious offers of the government, to which some 
 of his brethren were not equally proofs. He had never 
 
 ^ Calamy's Abridgment of Baxter's Life, vol. i. p. 335. 
 
 ' Burnet's story is as follows. Speaking of the Indulgence in 1672 (Hist, of his 
 own Times, toI. i. p. 308, fol.) he says : " The Duke (of York) was now known 
 to be a Papist ; and the Duchess was much suspected. Yet the Presbyterians 
 came in a body : and Dr. Manton in their name thanked the king for it, which 
 offended many of their best friends. There was also an order to pay a yearly 
 pension of fifty pounds to most of them, and a hundred pounds a year to the 
 chief of the party. Baxter sent back his pension, and would not touch it. 
 But most of them took it. All this I say upon Dr. StiUingfleet's word, who 
 assured me he knew the truth of it. And in particular, he told me, that Pool, 
 who wrote the Synopsis of the critics, confessed to him, that he had had fifty 
 pounds for two years. Thus the Court hired them to be silent ; and the 
 greatest part of them were so, and very comphaut." This statement comes, it 
 must be confessed, from no friendly quarter ; but it is distinct, and ofiered ready 
 means of confutation; and the account of Baxteris quite characteristic. More- 
 OTer, the fact alleged must in all fairness be distinguished from the construc- 
 tion which Burnet puts upon it. There was nothmg in the principles of the 
 Presbyterians of that age, which forbade their accepting a maintenance from 
 the State, if disengaged from conditions at war with their conscientious scruples. 
 Every thing depends on the understanding with which the Court allowance 
 was taken. They may have been too easy and compUant ; but that they took 
 it as a bribe to be silent on the subject of Popery, is only Burnet's interpre- 
 tation. In the eyes of Bm-net, any relaxation of zeal against Popery, would 
 be regarded as a puhKo crime of the deepest dye. Just at that juncture the 
 clergy were maddened by the suspicion of a secret collusion between the 
 Court, the Papists, and the Dissenters ; aU the episcopal pidpits, we are told, 
 being very violent against Popei-y, and in favour of upholding the penal sta- 
 tutes. It is in the highest degree improbable, imd would indicate an amount of 
 V profligacy which neither Burnet nor StUhngfleet intend to insinuate, that any 
 men of eminence among the Dissenters should have acquiesced m any, measures 
 tending to the furtherance of Popery. AVith regard to Indulgences derived 
 from the dispensing power of the Crown, many of them acted on the principle 
 which has been thus expressed by some of then- modern representatives ; " they 
 wisely availed themselves of their undoubted birthright, without inquiring by 
 
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PURITANISM. 151 
 
 courted the powers that he^ and was as little in favour with 
 Cromwell as with the Stuarts. For his free notions of the use of 
 the BiblCj distinguishing the saving truths of Christianity from 
 the Scriptures which contain them, the dispensation itself 
 from its written documents — he was accused by the Indepen- 
 dents of Popery, and of asserting the sufficiency of tradition. 
 Nor can it he denied, that his opinions on this subject dif- 
 fered much from the ordinary Puritanism, and betrayed an 
 affinity both with the views of the Quakers, and with the lati- 
 tudinarian spirit of some of his contemporaries in the Church. 
 His earnest, practical mind revolted from the idle questions 
 that were raised by extreme parties on all sides ; by antino- 
 mian Nonconformists on one hand, and by high mystical Epis- 
 copalians on the other. Sometimes, in the silence of his 
 study, yearning after reality and some positive evidence of 
 usefulness, he longed to exchange preaching and controversy 
 for the adventurous life of a missionary; that he might no more 
 be wearied with words but grapple with facts, and go forth 
 into woods and wildernesses to preach the gospel to the savage 
 and the heathen^. Such was Baxter. The influence of his 
 spirit and example on the next generation of Nonconformists, 
 can hardly be too highly estimated. 
 
 what authority, or from what motive, it had been bestowed." Bogue and 
 Bennett's History of Dissenters, vol. i. p. 211. Baxter, it is weR known, took 
 a different view of this complicated social question. I am not aware, whether 
 any attempt has ever been made to deny t\ie facts alleged by Burnet. Calamy 
 speaks of the matter in very brief and general terms, never once alluding to 
 pensions. He says, " the king's suspension of the penal laws was applauded by 
 some of the Nonconformists, while others feared the consequences ; that, how- 
 ever, they concluded on a cautious and moderate thanksgiving for the king's 
 clemencv and their own liberty, and were introduced by Lord Arlington. 
 Baxter was at first averse to take advantage of this Indulgence, but seeing no 
 hope of better terms, at length procured a Ucense and opened a meeting-house." 
 Abridgment etc. vol. i. p. 335. In a note Calamy observes, that StiUingfleet 
 dated the Presbyterian Separation from this time. Neal (vol. ii. p. 685) 
 mentions the charge of receiving pensions as a report, without any formal denial 
 of the facts ; and the strong, even vehement, language which he quotes from 
 Owen in reply to StiUingfleet, does not meet the exact point of the case, but 
 simply disclaims, more particularly for Owen himself, the remotest intention of 
 granting indulgence or toleration to Papists. 
 
 ' Life, Part I. § 212, where he sums up the results of his spiritual ex- 
 perience. Among other things of the same kind, he has the following remark- 
 able words : " I am not so much inclined to pass a peremptory sentence of 
 damnation upon all that never heard of Christ ; having some more reason than 
 I knew of before, to think that God's dealing with such is much imknown to 
 us; and that the ungodly here among us Christians are in a far worse case 
 than they." 
 
153 INFLUENCE OF DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS 
 
 Agreeing with Baxter in their general view of Chtirch ques- 
 tions, and belonging to the same Puritanical party, but with 
 characters less ardent and earnest, and of manners more 
 gentle, complying and polished — were Bates and Howe. Not 
 hesitating to take the oath required by the Oxford or Five 
 Mile Act, they enjoyed an exemption from many annoyances 
 which visited their more scrupulous brethren ; and although 
 they exercised the functions of Nonconformist preachers, 
 lived on terms of friendship with many persons of distitiction 
 about Court and ia the metropolis, and especially with 
 several divines of the latitudinarian school. Both were men 
 of elegant accomplishments, less exclusively pastors and theo- 
 logians, than most of the Puritan ministers, and kept pace ia 
 their studies' with the general progress of polite and philosophi- 
 cal learning. Bates possessed a large and finely-selected 
 Hbrary which was purchased at his death by Dr. Daniel Wil- 
 liams, and which now forms a part of the well-known collec- 
 tion deposited in Redcross Street, London^. Howe had been 
 educated both at Cambridge and at Oxford. In the former 
 University he was intimate with the Platonic theologians, 
 Cudworth and Henry More ; and at the latter, became Fellow 
 cf Magdalen when that college was under the presidency of 
 Dr. Thomas Goodwin, the Independent. Though disap- 
 proving of the strictness of the Independent discipline, Howe 
 joined Goodwin's church at Oxford; and was afterwards 
 chosen by the Protector under very flattering circumstances 
 for one of his chaplains. In this difficult situation he ac- 
 quitted himself with great prudence and moderation, show- 
 ing kindness to men of all persuasions, and at the same time 
 acting with singular integrity^. On Cromwell's death, he re- 
 
 ' Wilson's Dissenting Churches, vol. ii. Pepys, with no Puritanical pre- 
 dilections, lias expressed his Eidmiration of Dr. Bates's preaching. He stood 
 amidst a crowded audience in the gallery to hear his fereweU discourse at St. 
 Dunstan's on the Sunday preceding St. Bartholomew's-day, and was struck 
 with the moderation of his spirit and the impressiTeness of his deyotions. Diary, 
 Aug. 10 and 17, 1662. 
 
 2 WMle Howe was Cromwell's chaplain, the notion of a particvlar faith 
 m prayer was very prevalent at the Court of Whitehall. Being convinced of 
 the injiirious influence of that belief, Howe determined, the next time it came to 
 his turn to preach before the Protector, to beat down the spiritual pride and 
 confidence which such fancied impressions were apt to produce. " He told me," 
 says Calamy, " he observed, that while he was in the pulpit, Cromwell heard 
 him with great attention, but would sometimes knit his brows, and discover 
 great uneasiness. When the sermon was over, a person of distinction came 
 to him, and asked him, if he knew what he had done, and signified it to bim 
 
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OP PURITANISM. 153 
 
 tained the same office under his son, so long as Eichard con- 
 tinued in power. 
 
 Howe's intimacy with the episcopal clergy and with per- 
 sons of rank, engaged him in the various schemes that were 
 from time to time set on foot for a comprehension ; but his 
 gentle and courteous temper had no more eifect in promoting 
 it, than Baxter's zeal and impetuosity. When this subject 
 was under debate in 1689, Howe published his 'Case of the 
 Protestant Dissenters,' in which he derived a claim for free- 
 dom of worship from the universal law of nature ; and showed 
 that the Dissenters differed from the Church of England in 
 no substantials of worship and doctrine, not objectiug even to 
 its government, if so managed as to attain its acknowledged 
 end. It is significant of the principles then prevalent among 
 the leading Presbyterians, that Howe in proof of his position, 
 that the imposers of thiugs indifferent are the true schis- 
 matics, appealed to the authority of the celebrated Latitudi- 
 narian. Hales of Eton. But this mild, conciliatory spirit 
 was blended with firmness and consistency. Notwithstand- 
 ing his dislike of needless schism, he maintained stead- 
 fastly the broad principles of Christian freedom ; and when 
 the Bill against Occasional Conformity was introduced, he 
 was roused by its injustice to assert the claims of the Dis- 
 senters with more than his usual warmth and energy. His 
 principal work, the Living Temple, indicates in its matter and 
 in its style, the change that was taking place iu the Noncon- 
 formist body. It combines that profound sense and earnest 
 inculcation of personal religion, God living and reigning in 
 the heart, which is so characteristic of Puritanism, with the 
 literary culture and knowledge of recent philosophical systems, 
 which belong to the scholar and the man of the world. Its 
 second part is devoted to a special confritation of the panthe- 
 istic theory of Spiaoza. Howe made a distinction between 
 Scripture as the sole mensura memurans, and confessions of 
 faith as a mensura mensurata, useful as a visible bond of actual 
 communion, and thought the latter should be recognised so 
 
 as his apprehension, that Cromwell would be so incensed upon that discourse, 
 that he would find it very difficult ever to make his peace with him, or secure 
 his favour for the future. Mr. Howe rephed, that he had but discharged his 
 conscience, and would leave the event with God. He told me, that he after- 
 wards observed, Cromwell was cooler in his carriage to him than before." Life 
 of Howe, prefixed to his "Works, fol. p. 8. 
 
 H 3 
 
154 INFLUENCE OF DISTINGUISHED TEACITERS 
 
 far only as they were in the main conformable to Scripture^. 
 He and Bates^ like Baxter^ were zealous for free communion 
 among all visible Christians, of whatsoever persuasion, in 
 things non-essential ; understanding by Christianity, whatever 
 is essential to it whether doctrinal or practical, and by visi- 
 bility, its approvable manifestation in the temper and life. 
 No doubt, the idea of essentials was stiU left undetermined ; 
 but this statement of the case opened the way to a continual 
 enlargement of mind, and marks a healthy direction of re- 
 ligious opinion. 
 
 An afifecting incident occurred in Howe's last illness. 
 Richard Cromwell now advanced in years, emerged from the 
 rural seclusion in which he had long been forgotten by the 
 world, to visit the friend and counsellor of his youth on his 
 dying bed. The old men exchanged much serious discourse 
 and mingled their tears. We may suppose, that they would 
 revert to past scenes, and dwell on the altered relation ia 
 which they were now placed towards each other. The proud 
 and hopeful days of the old Commonwealth came back to 
 their remembrance ; the mistakes and the failures attending 
 its dissolution ; the treachery of the Restoration ; and all the 
 insults and wrongs which had subsequently overwhelmed their 
 broken and discomfited party. Since they stood together on 
 the height from which they had fallen, revolution had twice 
 changed the fortunes of their country; and yet after the 
 lapse of half a century, the old strife continued and the just 
 claims of conscience were stiU unsatisfied. In the presence 
 of so many affecting remembrances, it was natural their 
 minds should be subdued into religious tenderness, when they 
 rose at that solemn iaterview from the evanescence and un- 
 certainty of all worldly grandeur, to the unchanging tran- 
 quillity and glory of the state which both must shortly enter^. 
 
 There were other distinguished men connected with the 
 Presbyterian party during this period ; but I have alluded to 
 the most eminent ; and this brief notice wiE suffice to show 
 what influences were most active amongst them, and at what 
 objects they chiefly aimed. 
 
 A man of a different stamp, more profoundly skilled in 
 
 ' Carnality of Christian Contention ; Preface : 1693. The form of distinc- 
 tion may have been Buggested to Hm by the celebrated one of Spinoza, Natura 
 naturanSj and Natura naturata. Etliic. P. I. propos, xxix. schol. 
 
 2 Calamy's Life of Howe, prefixed to his Works, p. 74. fol. 1724. 
 
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PURITANISM. 155 
 
 human learning, of an intellect more severely consequential 
 and rigidly dogmatic, but less open, genial and comprehen- 
 sive, was Dr. Owen, the celebrated leader of the Independents. 
 The Congregational system had been supported by some great 
 names before his time ; but his numerous writings, high re- 
 putation and great personal influence gave it form and cha- 
 racter, and impressed upon it the peculiar features of his mind, 
 as Baxter transmitted his to Presbyterianism. Owen entered 
 life with the undefined notions respecting Church govern- 
 ment, which were common among the Puritans at the com- 
 mencement of the war, and only gradually embraced the 
 views of the Independents, which had the effect of fixing and 
 deepening his early Calvinism. Cromwell, with the remark- 
 able sagacity which distinguished him and which enabled him 
 to find out the fittest men for all objects, soon discovered the 
 great capacity of Owen and nominated him one of his chap- 
 lains. From Cromwell he received repeated marks of favour 
 and confidence. Having accompanied the army iuto Ireland 
 and Scotland, he was appoiuted on his return in 1651, Dean 
 of Christ Church, and next year Vice-Chancellor of the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford. In this situation he displayed eminent 
 talents for business, with great vigour and decision of cha- 
 racter. He encouraged studies, and maintained discipline 
 with a firm hand; and the fruits of the next generation 
 showed, that there had been no decline of learning under his 
 sway. In 1654 he was returned to Parhament as member 
 for the University, but retained his seat only a short time. 
 During the rising under Penruddock in the West, he took 
 very active measures for the defence of the Commonwealth, 
 and himself raised a troop of horse at Oxford. On his pro- 
 testing against Cromwell^ s assumption of the title of king, a 
 coolness grew up between them, which was never completely 
 removed ; and Richard Cromwell who succeeded his father as 
 Chancellor, removed Owen from the Vice-Chancellorship. 
 
 After the Restoration Owen 6f course shared in the gene- 
 ral disgrace and discouragement of the Puritan party ; but 
 having a considerable private estate, he hved in comparative 
 ease and comfort, and enjoyed the protection and counten- 
 ance of many persons of rank and influence. Lord Claren- 
 don was among the number of his friends. His church in 
 Berry Street was attended by some of the old Commonwealth 
 of&cers, Fleetwood and Colonel Desborough. Dissatisfied 
 
156 INFLTJENCE OF DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS 
 
 with the state of things in the old country, he was at one time 
 preparing to emigrate to New England, where he had been 
 invited to undertake the presidency of Harvard College. An 
 order from the Council prevented his departure. A similar 
 invitation he had received from some academic bodies in 
 Holland. He died in 1683, on the anniversary of his eject- 
 ment under the Act of Umformity ; and though it was still 
 the reign of Charles the Second, such was the respect paid to 
 his memory, that his funeral, we are told, was " attended by 
 sisty-seven carriages belonging to noblemen and gentlemen of 
 his acquauitance, beside many mourning coaches, and gentle- 
 men on horseback^." 
 
 The character and principles of Owen present in several 
 respects a marked contrast to those of Baxter. Each main- 
 tained his own decided view of the great questions of religious 
 truth and liberty, which both had taken up with equal piety 
 and earnestness ; and when the grave had closed over Owen's 
 remains, Baxter paid a hearty and generous tribute to the 
 distinguished worth and rare endowments of one who had 
 been so often opposed to him in life. Owen's congregational 
 principles, though involving by necessary consequence a tole- 
 ration of different forms of worship and church government, 
 at least among Christians, tended rather to encourage narrow 
 and rigid terms of communion within the limits of each par- 
 ticular church. "None," says he, "but those who give 
 evidence of being regenerated or holy persons, ought to be 
 received or counted fit members of visible churches ; where 
 this is wanting, the very essence of a church is lost-." Baxter, 
 on the contrary, abhorring separation and aiming at nation- 
 ality, would have taken in all quiet and visible Cliristians 
 who did not break in on the established church order, from 
 the Papist on one side, to the Socinian on the other. Spiri- 
 tual purity, freedom from all heretical mixtures, was the essence 
 of a true Church in the view of Owen; comprehensiveness 
 was its outward sign and recommendation, in that of Baxter. 
 Owen disapproved of worshipping in the national churches^ ; 
 Baxter never ^^itlldrew from their communion, and only re- 
 curred occasionally to the use of separate assemblies, as a 
 
 ' Orme's Life of Owen. 'Wilson's Dissenting Chm-chcs, toI. i. p. 278. 
 ^ Inquiry into the Origin, etc. of Evangelical Chui-olies, 1681, quoted by 
 Orme, p. 427. 
 3 Onne, p. 360. 
 
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PURITANISM. 157 
 
 necessity that was forced upon him against his will. Baxter 
 as he advanced in Ufe, approached nearer and nearer to Armi- 
 nianism ; Owen retained his Calvinism to the last. Baxter 
 shrank from a very decided assertion of the Trinity ; Owen 
 stood forth in his "Vindicise Evangelicse" to confute the 
 Unitarianism of Biddle^. Baxter was for amalgamating all 
 parties; Owen was a chief promoter of the Savoy Confes- 
 sion which had the direct effect of marking off the Indepen- 
 dents as a distinct hody from the Presbyterians. Baxter in- 
 terpreted the Bible with a breadth and freedom of view, and 
 a contiaued reference to the priority and supremacy of the 
 Spiritj which sometimes bordered on the theology of Pox and 
 Barclay. Owen was rigidly Scriptural ; he was startled and 
 disquieted at the bold views put forth by Brian Walton in the 
 prolegomena and the appendix to his Polyglott, respecting 
 the sacred text, and vindicated its purity and integrity in a 
 special treatise, " Of the divine original and authority of the 
 Scriptures." Owen was deeply versed in the theology of his 
 age and school, and had communed much with his own heart, 
 and narrowly watched the manifestations of the religious life 
 in close spiritual intercourse with various members of the 
 Church. Baxter had warmer sympathies with general hu- 
 manity, and read its indications with a more open and ex- 
 cursive eye. Baxter was distinguished by remarkable sim- 
 plicity of character and directness of purpose; while Owen 
 combined with great spiritual fervour and earnestness, a larger 
 amount of shrewd caution, more knowledge of affairs, more 
 worldly depth and penetration, than usually falls to the share 
 of a student and divine. 
 
 On questions of civil government, the views of these emi- 
 nent men leaned to opposite sides. Baxter was a royahst, 
 and with the intrepid honesty which formed a part of his 
 natiu'c, used his personal influence to prevent people from 
 taking, first the Covenant, and afterwards the Engagement^. 
 Owen betrayed on more than one occasion, notwithstanding 
 the studied prudence and reserve of his language, no unequi- 
 vocal signs of sympathy with the cause of republicanism. The 
 
 ^ He was directed by the Council of State to reply to Biddle's Twofold Cate- 
 chism, 1654. 
 
 2 Calamy's Abridgment, vol. i. p. 104. The second Edmund Calamy, father 
 of the historian, though a Presbyterian, had also never taken the Covenant. 
 Calamy's Life and Times, vol. i. 
 
158 RISE OF NONCONFORMIST SOCIETIES. 
 
 day after Charles's execution, he preached before Parliament, 
 ■without any distinct allusion to the event, on " righteous zeal, 
 encouraged by divine protection." In delivering the funeral 
 discourse for Ireton in Westminster Abbey, he pronounced a 
 high eulogium on the republican hero. The same inference 
 may perhaps be drawn from his warlike preparations in. de- 
 fence of the Commonwealth, when he was Vice-ChanceUor 
 of Oxford ; from his marked disapproval of Cromwell's incli- 
 nation to assume royal power ; and from his active participa- 
 tion in the counsels of the republican officers at Wallingford 
 House, which issued in the deposition of Richard Cromwell^. 
 We trace the different principles of the two men, in the diver- 
 gent tendencies of the Presbyterian and Independent sections 
 of the old Puritan body, of which they were respectively the 
 heads. The Presbyterians were always hoping for compre- 
 hension; the Independents were satisfied iiith a tolerated 
 separation. The former always associated the cause of civU, 
 with that of religious, liberty ; the latter were led by their 
 principles to keep the ideas of Church and State more distinct, 
 and sometimes in an aspiration after extreme spirituality, to 
 overlook their reciprocal action and dependence. Among the 
 Presbyterians, the constant movement of opinion was towards 
 Arminianism and its related doctrines ; among the Indepen- 
 dents we witness an effort in the contrary direction to uphold 
 the primitive Calvinism. We may look on Owen as the 
 founder of rigid, and Baxter of moderate. Dissent. 
 
 SECTION rs. 
 
 ANABAPTISTS AND QUAKERS : RISE OF PERMANENT NONCON- 
 FORMIST SOCIETIES. 
 
 The Presbyterians and Independents constituted three- 
 fourths of the Puritan body at the time of the Restoration. 
 In the interval between that event and the Revolution, tM'O 
 other sects, the Baptists and the Quakers, though inferior in 
 numbers and influence, acquired form and consistency, and 
 
 ' Baxter was charged with having misrepreeeiited Owen in this matter. But 
 he appears to have spoken on good authority, which was not clearly set aside 
 by Owen's iiiends. See Calamy's Ooutinuation, vol, ii, pp. 917-22. 
 
ANABAPTISTS AND QUAKERS. 159 
 
 present thetnselves witli distinct and prominent features to our 
 view. Under one or other of these four divisions nearly all 
 the elements of Puritanic excitement which had been in high 
 action under the Commonwealth and which are enumerated 
 in the lugubrious pages of Edwards's Gangrsena, appear in the 
 course of this period to have gradually settled and adjusted 
 themselves. Other tendencies of opinion which belonged to 
 individuals and were never embodied in a sect, will remain for 
 notice hereafter, as their fruits become more conspicuous 
 towards the close of the century. 
 
 The principles of the Baptists come into view at a very early 
 period in the religious history of England. Mixed with some 
 Quaker peculiarities we trace them first among the Lollards, 
 and afterwards among the Brownists and original Indepen- 
 dents. Out of the Churches of this latter body the Baptists 
 first emerged as a distinct sect. With the usage that distin- 
 guished them from other Christians, they associated various 
 shades of theological opinion, not excluding the reputed here- 
 sies of Anus and Socinus^. From the first we find among 
 them that division respecting the controverted doctrines of 
 Calvin and Arminius, which has subsisted to the present time, 
 in the distinction between Particular and General Baptists. 
 Finding themselves greatly misrepresented, and charged with 
 holding the wild destructive doctrines of the German Ana- 
 baptists, they put forth many confessions of faith and declara- 
 tions of opinion, in the first half of the seventeenth centiuy ; 
 some Arminian, some Calvinistic, but generally expressed in 
 mild, earnest. Scriptural language, and breathing a strong 
 spirit of religious liberty. During the war, they multiplied 
 exceedingly in the army. Many officers in CromweU's regi- 
 ment, and in Monk's when he commanded in Scotland, were 
 Baptists. Lord Brook treated the sect with kindness; and 
 Jeremy Taylor pleaded for them in his Liberty of Prophesying. 
 John Fiennes, son of Lord Say, adopted their views as scrip- 
 tural. Colonel Hutchinson and his accomplished wife, having 
 been induced by the doctrines of some Separatist preachers, to 
 give the subject a close and conscientious examination, came 
 
 ' See Crosby's acooimt of the burning of Edward Wightman. Hist, of English 
 Baptists, vol. i. Appendix, No. I. Neal, I. p. 41. Wallace's Antitrinitarian 
 Biography, I. pp. 5-31. He remarks, (p. 43) " Ajiabaptists and Aria,nizers were 
 in those days regarded as nearly synonymous terms." 
 
160 RISE OF KONCONFORMIST SOCIETIES, 
 
 to the same conclusion^. The Baptists carried to an extreme 
 the principle of separation between Church and State, and 
 took little part in matters simply political. Upon the whole, 
 they appear to have been royalists. They thought Cromwell 
 had deceived them, and betrayed the cause of public liberty ; 
 and it is deserving of notice, that in the remonstrance of a 
 Commonwealth officer with Cromwell on behalf of the Bap- 
 tists in the army, he specially protests against the Protector's 
 imprisonment of Biddle^. The Baptists were among the most 
 determined and consistent advocates of liberty of conscience 
 during this period. Shut out by their peculiar tenets from 
 all chance of comprehension with other religious bodies in a 
 National Church, they had no other resource for the security 
 of their own peaceful existence, than to plead for universal 
 toleration. To this tendency thus forced on them from without, 
 the democratic constitution of their churches, their attaching 
 no essential importance to a regular and separate ministry, 
 and the division of opinion among themselves on some contro- 
 verted points of theology, only gave additional effect. Burnet's 
 testimony is highly honourable to them : " the Anabaptists," 
 says he, " were generally men of virtue, and of an universal 
 charity^. 
 
 Although in their notion of a ministry they held a sort of 
 middle view between the old regular Nonconformists and the 
 Quakers, not objecting to duly educated and salaried pastors 
 where it was possible to maintain them, without deeming 
 them indispensable to the existence of a true Church; and 
 although on this account, many unlearned persons who fol- 
 lowed secular callings, preached in their assemblies ; yet their 
 cause did not want expounders and advocates of a different 
 order, in men who had been educated at the Universities, and 
 
 1 Memoirs of Col. Hutcliinson, II. p. 103-5. 
 
 ^ Croaby, vol. iii. p. 231. This remonstrance is the production of a queru- 
 lous and discontented mind ; but some of its queries indicate just sentiments of 
 religious Uberty. Art. 22. " Whether you may not as justly suffer all to be 
 put in prison that differ from the Church of England, as suffer Mr. Biddle to 
 be imprisoned?" Art. 24. " Whether your Highness will not appear to be a 
 dreadful apostate and fearful dissembler, if you suffer pei-seeution to fell upon 
 the Anabaptists or the Independents, or them of Mr. Biddle's judgment, seeing 
 you promised equal hberty to all ?" Some of the earliest Baptist Confessions 
 of Faith — for instance, that wliicli was published by the followers of Mr. Smith 
 in HoUoud in 1611, and animadyerted upon by Mr. Robinson of Leyden — were 
 decidedly Auti-CalTiuistic. Crosby, vol. i. Appendix, No. IV. 
 
 ^ History of his own Times, I. p. 702. 
 
ANABAPTISTS AND QUAKERS. 161 
 
 who brought to its defence the aids of scholarship. One of 
 the most eminent of these, was John Tombes, B.D., educated 
 at Magdalen HaU, Oxford, a contemporary and opponent of 
 Baxter who has described the controversy between them^. But 
 for the single point of baptism, Tombes would have conformed 
 to the National Establishment, to the discipline and liturgy of 
 which he was strongly attached. With him may be mentioned 
 Hanserd Knollys, Henry Jessy, William Dell, and others, 
 who were University men, and had once held situations in the 
 Church of England^. 
 
 The most interesting and characteristic member of the Bap- 
 tist persuasion at this time, was William Kiffin, a man of 
 humble origin and self-educated, who by native force of intel- 
 lect and win, impregnated with deep religious feeling, raised 
 himself from a condition of the greatest external depression, 
 to wealth and influence and civic honour in the metropolis. 
 With the energy and earnestness of mind which distinguish 
 the English commonalty and which were so strongly brought 
 out in the contests of the 17th century, he united through a 
 long life under circumstances of no ordinary difficulty, to the 
 successful pursuit of commerce, a diligent cultivation of reU- 
 gious knowledge and the functions of a stated preacher. He 
 was the first pastor of a Baptist congregation which still 
 assembles in London. Though he could not escape the gene- 
 ral persecution of the Nonconformists, he rendered on several 
 occasions great service to his denomination, through the in- 
 fluence he possessed with Lord Clarendon, and the two last 
 Stuarts. For the High Church party were disposed to treat 
 some extreme classes of Dissenters vfith more consideration 
 and tenderness than the Presbyterians, whose mmibers ren- 
 dered them more formidable and threw greater weight into 
 the political scale^. To the Baptists of this period belongs the 
 honour of having cherished in their communion, the deep spi- 
 ritual discernment, the vigorous conception, and powerful 
 imagination of Bunyan. 
 
 In 1677, the Calvinistic Baptists published a Confession of 
 Faith, in which they profess to follow the doctrinal statements 
 
 1 Life, Part I. § 138. ^ Crosby, ¥ol. i. and toI. ii. p. 2 et seq. 
 
 ' An interesting biographical notice of EifBn will be found in "WUBOn's Dis- 
 senting Churches, vol. i. His grand-daughter married the grandson of Crom- 
 well ; and from his alliance have sprung the present or recent representatives of 
 the Protector's family. 
 
162 RISE OF NONCONFORMIST SOCIETIES. 
 
 of the Westminster and Savoy Confessions ; but in the ap- 
 pendix they discuss at large the question of infant and adult 
 baptism 1. The General and Particular Baptists stimulated 
 each other to a declaration of their respective tenets and prac- 
 tices. If one section of the body put forth a confession, the 
 other soon after did the same. We have noticed an afl&nity 
 between some usages of the early Baptists a,nd the Quakers. 
 These however led to no union and sympathy, as the two sects 
 assumed a more complete development. On the contrary, the 
 remaining points of difference were only the more strongly 
 insisted on; and the year 1674 was marked by vehement and 
 acrimonious disputes, in which the Baptists attacked the opi- 
 nions of William Penn, and the Quakers sharply retorted, that 
 they had been misrepresented^. 
 
 Of all the forms of Puritanism, that exhibited by the 
 Quakers had arisen under circumstances least calculated to 
 command the respect of ordinary theologians : and, in truth, 
 its first outbreak vras accompanied by such wild and extrava- 
 gant fanaticism, that it is not surprisiag, those who were ac- 
 customed to see Christianity only through the medium of set- 
 tled ordinances and an elaborate system of metaphysical doc- 
 trine, should have looked upon this new sect with mingled 
 contempt and abhorrence. But in its apparent renuncia- 
 tion of all law and reason, it went back to the primitive 
 fountains of religious conviction, and drew from them ele- 
 ments of the deepest spiritual truth, fitted to attract minds of 
 a pure and elevated order. Its extreme simplicity really 
 adapted it to very high mental refinement. Some men of this 
 stamp embraced its tenets in the latter half of the 17th cen- 
 tury. The sanguiue and benevolent Penn, trained in Uni- 
 versity learning, with the most alluring prospects of worldly 
 advancement before him, preferred poverty and expulsion from 
 his father's house, to renouncing that life of Cliristian sim- 
 plicity, which his conscience told him was the life of heaven 
 and God. In the learned and accomplished Barclay, Quaker- 
 ism found an advocate whose calm and luminous exposition 
 of its doctrines is in beautiful contrast with the scholastic 
 subtlety and dogmatism which too generally mark confessions 
 of faith. 
 
 ' An eai-lier Confession had been put forth by divers congregations in London 
 ^ the country, and signed t 
 Crosby, II., pp. 297-313. 
 
 and the country, and signed by tlieir leading members, 164.6. Neal, II. p. 111. 
 
ANABAPTISTS AND QUAKERS. 163 
 
 Barclay had compassed a wide circuit of religious belief and 
 sounded various depths of spiritual experience. Nurtured in 
 Calvinism, lie conceived a fondness for the Romish doctrines 
 during his education at the Scots^ College in Paris ; but on 
 his return to his native country of Scotland, he settled down 
 in the principles of the Friends. The style and execution of 
 the "Apology" are, in one sense, at variance with its conclu- 
 sions. In language exquisitely pure and graceful, the refined 
 utterance of a polished and highly cultivated mind, he con- 
 demns the vanities of human rhetoric, and pleads for a simple 
 reliance on the impulse of the Spirit ; he employs the treasures 
 of learning to demonstrate its worthiessness ; and confates the 
 scholastic divirdty in the syllogistic method. 
 
 The outline of his work was first drawn up in Latin, under 
 the title of Theses Theologies, iu fifteen propositions. These 
 were afterwards enlarged with explanations and arguments, 
 and rendered into English. Its theology stands in a sort of 
 middle point between Calvinism, Arminianism, and Socinian- 
 ism. It acknowledges the fall of all men in Adam, and the 
 necessity of divine grace for their restoration; but sees in 
 Christ the means of universal redemption, the saving spiritual 
 light, " which hghteth every man that cometh into the world," 
 and is at some period or other of their lives, offered to all 
 men, Jews, Heathens, and Christians. It is not, therefore, 
 the outward knowledge of Christ, but the inward reception 
 and formation of him in the heart, which is essential to sal- 
 vation. This iuward light may be resisted or not : where it 
 is not resisted, the subjects of it, being born again and bring- 
 ing forth the fruits of holiness, righteousness, and purity, are 
 justified, yet not by their own will and their own works, but 
 by the grace of God in Christ. They ia whom this spiritual 
 birth has taken place, may attain perfection, in regard to free- 
 dom from actual sin, yet not so as to exclude further growth, 
 or the possibility of future sin. Where the grace of God hath 
 only wrought iu part, there is a possibility of falling from it ; 
 but there may also be such a growth and stability iu the truth, 
 as to prevent a total apostacy. 
 
 Connected with these fundamental ideas, were others that 
 lay more on the surface of the system, and outwardly distin- 
 guished the Friends from the rest of Christendom. They 
 ascribed aU true knowledge of God to the testimony of the 
 Spirit alone, Christ formed in the soul; and regarded the 
 
164 alSE OF NONCONFORMIST SOCIEXIES. 
 
 Scriptures as partly historical^ partly prophetiCj partly an ut- 
 terance of principles; not, however, the fountain itself of 
 truth, but a declaration of that fountain, a secondary rule 
 subordiaate to the Spirit, known only to be Scripture by the 
 inward testimony of the Spirit. For this reason, aU true and 
 acceptable worship can only be offered iu the iaward and im- 
 mediate moving and drawing of God's own Spirit; no man 
 can be a minister without the grace of God, that inward gift 
 and light which is the only true and indispensable ordina- 
 tion ; and the ministry must not be reduced to a trade. Bap- 
 tism and the Lord's Supper which other Christians observe as 
 outward ordinances, can only be taken inwardly and spiri- 
 tually. 
 
 In insisting on the use of a particular habit and a certain 
 mode of address, and in abstaining from the customary salu- 
 tations and innocent amusements of the world, the Friends 
 mistook the form for the essence of their system, and rather 
 violated, than consistently unfolded, the simplicity that was 
 inherent in it. Barclay in common with many sectaries of 
 the time, entertained a belief, that the second advent of Christ 
 (by him understood spiritually) was at hand; and he lays 
 great and frequent stress on the fact, that this solemn event 
 was aimounced, and the true power of the Gospel in prepara- 
 tion for it, brought out, not by the wise and learned, but 
 among poor and illiterate, honest and simple-minded, men. 
 
 The Quakers at the commencement of their career, were 
 constantly charged with Popish tendencies. Barclay often 
 alludes .to the imputation, and Penn was accused of being a 
 Jesuit in disguise. The idea was mainly the result, no doubt, 
 of that insane suspicion of Popery in every novel appearance, 
 which marked the reigns of Charles and James the Second. 
 But in tracing the circle of opinion, extreme tendencies gra- 
 dually appraximate. The Quaker doctrines of perfection and 
 of the justifying operation of the Spirit, bear more resem- 
 blance to Catholic, than to Protestant, theology^. Actually 
 the Friends may have stood at the widest distance from Ca- 
 tholicism, Yet it may be questioned, whether their principle 
 of renouncing all external guidance, and of throwing each 
 man on the suggestions of his own spirit, might not issue, if 
 
 ' Justifioatio Jiyperpliysica. In their adhesion to this view the Mennonites 
 of Holland afford another instance of affinity between the Quakers and the 
 early Baptists. Neudecker's Dogniengeschiohte, § 41, 42. 
 
ANABAPTISTS AND QUAKERS. 165 
 
 it were tried on a large scale, in raising up at last, from the 
 sheer necessity of the case, some great sacerdotal authority, to 
 guide the aimless and fluctuating mass of minds. Such a 
 sense of intellectual helplessness as would probably result, is 
 the very condition which the Catholic priesthood would most 
 desire, for the promotion of its own views. The great desi- 
 deratum in all religious communities is to secure the means of 
 efficient and progressive culture, without the ri^k of priestly 
 domination. Perhaps in guarding against the latter mischief, 
 the Friends have not duly provided for the former object, 
 which is its only effectual counteraction i. 
 
 This development and fixation of principles in the four sec- 
 tions of the Puritan body during the latter half of the seven- 
 teenth century, took place under outward circumstances of 
 the most vexatious and oppressive description. Continually 
 mocked with hollow promises of relief, now favoured by a 
 temporary indulgence, and then visited anew with redoubled 
 persecution, their whole life hung in suspense on the capri- 
 cious humour, and on the result of the conflicting purposes, 
 of the Court and the Parliament. Among themselves too 
 the Nonconformists were not agreed in their aims. Some 
 desired comprehension ; some, indulgence ; some, like Baxter, 
 would have united both. There was but one point in which 
 they all concurred, and that was, a desire to exclude the 
 Papists ; although relief to the Papists was the condition on 
 which toleration was offered them by the Court. Hence the 
 complexity and involution of interests which belong to this 
 period. There was a general absence of the working of broad 
 principles. There was bad faith on the part of those in power ; 
 and in those who were oppressed, there was a want of unity 
 and consistency of aim. Persecution and indiilgence, indul- 
 gence and persecution, in ceaseless alternation, make up the 
 
 1 Besides Barclay's Apology, whioh contains the Quaker theology, scientifi- 
 cally expounded, see Q-eorge Fox's most interesting Journal, which reveals the 
 origin of the sect and throws a very instructive hght on the contemporaneous 
 state of manners and rehgious feeHng (edited by "Wilson Armistead, 2 vols., 
 with notes. London : Cash etc., 1852) ; Penn's Brief Account of the Eise 
 and Progress of the People called Quakers, originally prefixed as a preface to 
 Fox's Journal, 4th edition. London: 1708; Penn's Primitive Christianity, 
 revised, etc., 2nd edition. London : 1699 ; Sewel's History of the Quakers, fol. 
 London ; 1722 (originally written in Dutch, and translated by the author) ; 
 Pennington's Letters, 3rd edition, by John Barclay. York : 1844. For a later 
 phasis of Quakerism, see the journal etc., of John Woohnan, of New Jersey, 
 N.A. "Warrington: 1840. 
 
166 EISE OF NONCONFORMIST SOCIETIES. 
 
 entire history of the time^. Yet a sense of religious duty- 
 withheld the Puritan ministers from laying aside their pastoral 
 functions. The strength of a solemn vow still hound them to 
 
 1 The following 13 a brief account of the laws affecting Protestant Dissenters, 
 with the scTeral Indulgences, during the reigns of Charles and James the Second. 
 After the King's retiu-n, a Declaration drawn up by Clarendon, was issued in Oc- 
 tober 1660, in which among other things, it was conceded for the sake of pacifica- 
 tion ; " that the Ministers should be freed from the subscription required bv the 
 canon, and the oath of canonical obedience, receive ordination, institution, and 
 induction, and eArcise their function, and enjoy the profits of their hvings, 
 without being obhged to it : and that the use of the ceremonies should be dis- 
 pensed with, where they were scrupled." Calamy's Abridgment, Tol. i. p. 152. 
 This Deolai-ation had no other effect than to postpone for a year the law that 
 was afterwards passed, and to prepare the way for the conference between the 
 Episcopalians and the Presbyterians at the Savoy. The Act of Uniformity took 
 effect on the 24th of August, 1662 ; and as the tithes fell due on that day, the 
 actual incumbents were ceist forth wholly unprovided, and their successors came 
 in for the fruits of the livings. In December the same year, the King issued an 
 Indulgence not excluding Papists, many of whom, he said, had deserved well of 
 liim. On this account, it did not take mth the Protestant Dissenters ; and 
 Parliament remonstrated against it. In 1663, a Comprehension was talked of; 
 and the question was much debated among the Dissenters, whether a Compre- 
 hension or an Indulgence would be the more desirable com-se. The latter must 
 include the Papists ; and it was the opinion of some, that the number of ejected 
 Ministers had been purposely made so great, that they might be compelled to 
 ask for Indulgence on these terms, and so incur the odium of favom-ing the Pa- 
 pists. Baxter was not for Comprehension, without Indulgence for those who 
 could not be embraced in it ; nor for Indulgence without an enlargement of the 
 Act of Uniformity, in other words, a wider Comprehension. But instead of 
 either of these measm-es, in Jvme 1663, the Conventicle Act was passed ; which 
 prohibited attendance on any worship but that of the Church of England, imder 
 severe penalties ; conviction for the third time being visited with transportation. 
 Nevertheless the ejected Ministers continued to exercise their ministry privately, 
 till the breaking out of the plague in 1665, when they preached in the forsaken 
 chm-ches of the metropolis. During the plague, the Oxford Aot was passed, 
 which banished five miles from any corporate town, all Ministers who refused 
 to take a certain oath, fi-amed against the known principles of most Noncon- 
 formists. After the fire of London, the Dissenters acquired more hberty, and 
 held pubUe meetings. In 1667, Clarendon fell into disgrace ; and was succeeded 
 by the duke of Buckingham who professed himself a friend to liberty of con- 
 science. The Dissenters were connived at, and went openly to their meetings. 
 Renewed proposals were then made to them by the Lord Keeper Bridgman, 
 about Comprehension, but without any effect. In 1670, the Act against Con- 
 venticles was renewed ; and many eminent Ministers were thrown into prison. 
 The persecution continued thi-ough 1671. Nevertheless the King made them 
 fan- promises, and they were connived at. At the breaking out of the Dutch 
 war in 1672, there was >■■ new Indulgence, including the Papists ; for which 
 the Dissenters cautiously expressed their thanks. A certain niunber of places 
 were allowed to be hcensed for the pubhe worsliip of the Dissenters ; while the 
 Papists were to have the privilege of celebrating Mass in tlieir private houses, 
 without any limitation of places and persons. Alderman Jjove, a Dissenter, 
 was very zealous against it in the Commons ; and ParUament voted it illegal. 
 In 1673, various measm-es for the reUef of Dissenters, and accommodation with 
 the Chm-ch, were defeated. In 1674, the King's hcenses were recalled at the 
 
ANABAPTISTS AND QUAKEKS. 167 
 
 their flocks. So long as the penal laws were in force, they 
 preached to their people in private, and visited them by 
 stealth ; while their retreats were hunted out by informers of 
 the most infamous character i, and their places of meeting 
 broken in upon by a licentious soldiery. Learned and holy 
 men, dragged to the bar of justice for simply preaching the 
 G-ospel, were insulted by magistrates, browbeaten by judges, 
 and laid up in fetid and unwholesome gaols, at that time nur- 
 series of pestilence, and destitute of every Christian comfort 
 and decency, among highwaymen and murderers. When the 
 la,ws were suspended, by a declaration of indulgence, the mi- 
 nisters came forth more openly, and gathered round them 
 large audiences of all ranks. 
 
 suggestion of the bishops, and the persecution was renewed ; Baxter and Dr. 
 Mauton were among the objects of it. In the course of the year, another effort 
 was made towards accommodation ; THlotson and StiUingfleet acting on one 
 side, Manton, Bates, Pool, and Baxter on the other ; but the whole plan was 
 overthrown by the bishops. For an instance of TiUotson's extreme timidity on 
 these occasions, see a letter of his to Baxter, quoted by Calamy, Abridgm. I. 
 p. 343. During the years 1675 and 1676, infoi-mers were rery active, and the 
 penal laws in full force, against the Nonconformists. In 1678, the nation was 
 distracted by what was called the Popish Plot ; and in 1679, the biU for ex- 
 cluding the Duke of York from the succession, having passed the Commons, 
 was thrown out in the Lords by a majority of thirty, of which fourteen were 
 bishops. In 1680, biUs were introduced into the Commons for Comprehension 
 and Indulgence. As it was found these would not pass, another measure was 
 brought in for rcHeving Protestant Dissenters from the penalties imposed on 
 Papists, which was carried in both Houses ; but when the King came down to 
 pass the biUs, this was taken from the table and never heard of again. During 
 the remaining years of this King's reign, from 1681 to 1684, there was an un- 
 remitted continuance of the severities against Dissenters; in consequence of 
 which many Ministers died in prison. The same pohcy was pursued at the 
 commencement of James the Second's reign. In 1685, Baxter was tried before 
 Jefiries for the pubhcation of his Paraphrase on the New Testament, and brow- 
 beaten from the bench with the greatest insolence. lu 1686, the King's dis- 
 pensing power was afifrmed on high grounds by eleven out of the twelve judges. 
 A Dispensation or License Office was set up, where Licenses effectual to stop 
 processes for Nonconformity, might be purchased for fifty shiUiugs. By one 
 of these Licenses through the mediation of Lord Powis, Baxter was released 
 from his fine and discharged from the King's Bench prison. In 1688, James 
 pubhshed a Declaration of general Liberty of Conscience for all persuasions, of 
 which some of the Dissenters quietly and cautiously availed themselves, without 
 faffing into the measures of the Court. The renewal of this Declaration in 
 1688, called forth the resistance of the clergy ; occasioned the imprisonment of 
 the seven bishops ; and prepared the way for the Revolution. See Calamy's 
 Abridgment of Baxter's Life and Times, vol. i. 
 
 1 In the Conformists' Four Pleas for the Nonconformists, published between 
 the years 1681 and 1683, we have from an impartial source, an account of the 
 sufferings and annoyances of the Nonconformist Ministers, and of the conduct 
 and frequent fate of the Informers. 
 
168 RISE OF NONCONFORMIST SOCIETIES. 
 
 During the ravages of the plague, and after the desolations 
 of the fire of London, the Nonconformists pursued their sacred 
 vocation with a quickened ardour and exemplary hiimanity; 
 preaching in the forsaken churches, or setting up temporary- 
 tabernacles of wood to receive their hearers. And yet it was 
 in the midst of these self-sacrificing exertions, while the plague 
 was stiU raging, that the Oxford Act was issued, to interrupt 
 their ministrations. When Clarendon was dismissed, and his 
 place taken by the Duke of Buckingham who professed much 
 zeal for liberty of conscience, it was hoped, that the situation 
 of the Nonconformists would be improved; but with the 
 exception of the Indulgence that was granted at the begin- 
 ning of the Dutch war in 1672, the severities enacted against 
 them went on increasing tiQ the end of Charles the Second's 
 reign. 
 
 James's determination to bring back Popery, through the 
 concession of a general toleration to all persuasions, placed 
 the Dissenters in an embarrassing position, in which their 
 principles and their desire of relief drew different ways. I 
 have already described the course which the wiser among them 
 took^. They availed themselves of the fact of indulgence, 
 without addressing or complimenting the king on its principle. 
 Only a few of the more extreme Disseiiters lost sight of ge- 
 neral considerations, in a one-sided eagerness to secure, as 
 they thought, the freedom of their own worship. Among 
 these the Rev. Mr. Lobb signalized himself, who has acquired 
 the name of the Jacobite Independent^. 
 
 As they felt the increasing improbability of any speedy ac- 
 commodation vrith the Church, the Nonconformists adopted 
 by degrees a more independent mode of action, and assumed 
 
 1 Ch. I. p. 26. 
 
 2 See an account of Lobb, in WilBOn's Dissenting Churches, vol. iii. pp. 436- 
 446. There was a similar approximation of opposite extremes in other instances. 
 Among the cannoneers of Col. Hutchinson at Nottingham Castle during the 
 wars, -was Laurence Colin, a sectary, who was protected fi-om the perseeution of 
 the dominant Presbyterians by Cromwell. His family afterwards rose to wealth 
 and consideration in the town of Nottingham, and were for some time zealous 
 Nonconformists ; but accepting the Indulgences granted by James the Second, 
 they opposed the Revolution, and after that event, became the head of the 
 country or Jacobite party in the town. Life of Col. Hutchmson, vol. i. pp. 202 
 and 340. An American royaHst of the name of Curwen, who came over to 
 England at the brealmig out of the revolutionary war, and whose diary was 
 pubUshed a few years ago, to his astonishment found a Quaker at whose house 
 he lodged in Manchester, a staunch Jacobite. 
 
ANABAPTISTS AND QUAKERS. 169 
 
 the tendencies and habitudes of a permanent, separate, body in 
 the State. They maintained a friendly intercourse with the 
 Protestant Churches of the Continent, and sent their young 
 men to be educated in the Universities of Holland. A few 
 Meeting-houses were erected during this period, but mostly 
 as places of temporary occupation^. 
 
 Through all ages we trace a constant, intimate, sympathy 
 between new developments of the religious principle, and the 
 spirit of commerce. Our own history supplies evidence of 
 this general fact; The strength of Puritanism, although it 
 was not without large support from the ancient yeomanry of 
 the country, lay chiefly in the manufacturing and commercial 
 classes of the great towns. The merchants of London were 
 zealously devoted to the cause of Nonconformity. During one 
 of the Indulgences they set up a weekly lecture at Pinners' 
 Hall, in which they invited the most eminent Ministers to 
 take a part. We have another proof of this relationship in 
 the employment of the Halls of difi^erent Companies, as 
 meeting-places for the first congregations that were gathered 
 in the metropolis. The earliest assemblage of Puritans that 
 was dispersed by the civil power in the reign of Elizabeth, 
 had met in Plumbers' Hall. Salters' HaU, and the Weigh 
 House which was anciently connected with the Grocers' 
 Company, were Meeting-houses of notoriety in London. 
 Wilson in his History of Dissenting Churches, has mentioned 
 more than twenty of these Halls which were at one time so 
 employed ; and of these, some permanently retained the use 
 to which at first they were only intended to be temporarily 
 applied. In CathoHc times these Halls had also possessed a 
 religious character, and were often associated with conventual 
 establishments. They would thus, in the course of social re- 
 volution, have seemed to revert in the hands of the Puritans, 
 to one of the objects for which they were originally designed. 
 They were fitted up with pews, and galleries, and pulpits, by 
 the zeal of the citizens, who thus signalized their devotion to 
 what they deemed the cause of religious truth and freedom. 
 Their form, dimensions, and general appearance, capacious, 
 massive and plain, and venerable for a sort of gloomy simpli- 
 city, have probably furnished the type of the old Dissenting 
 
 ' Baxter's wife, who was a lady of property, erected a Meeting-house for him 
 in Oxendon Street, London, near the Haymarket ; where however he preached 
 but once. Calamy's Continuation, p. 902. Wilson's Dissenting Churches. 
 
 I 
 
170 RISE OF NONCONFORMIST SOCIETIES. 
 
 Meeting-house ; as the raised tribunal and lateral arcades of 
 the Roman Basilica suggested the choifj nave and side-aisles 
 of the ancient Christian church. 
 
 The disputes of the seventeenth century were neutralized, 
 though not settled, in the grand compromise of the Revolu- 
 tion. With that event the age of proper Puritanism expired. 
 Before we proceed to trace the subsequent progress of opinion, 
 it may be advantageous to devote a short chapter to a review 
 of the period now traversed; and to place in a few salient 
 points before the mind, the contrasted features of the two 
 great religious parties, the Church and the Puritans, which 
 we have seen in constant antagonism through the course 
 ofiti. 
 
 ^ This seems the fittest place to notice the gradual expansion of the principle 
 of Toleration, of which the rudiments were first recognized after the EeTolutiou. 
 The following Acts of Parliament exhibit the history of Behgious Liberty for 
 the last century and a half The Toleration Act passed in 1689. It was a 
 result of the Eevolution. It required those who availed themselves of it, to 
 subscribe the doctrinal articles of the Church of England ; it excluded Roman 
 Cathohcs and those who impugned the Trinity, from its benefits ; and it left 
 the Test and Corporation Acts, passed in Charles the Second's reign, wHch 
 made participation ia the Lord's Supper, according to the rites of the Chm-ch 
 of England, a legal qualification for civU office — in fuU force against Noncon- 
 formists. Its provisions, scanty as they were, were limited by the Acts against 
 Occasional Conformity and Schism, whaoh were passed in the reign of Anne ; 
 the former forbidding habitual Dissenters to attend worship and take the Sacra- 
 ment occasionally m the Established Church ; the latter, making it illegal for 
 any Dissenting Teacher to undertake the education of youth. On the acces- 
 sion of the House of Hanover, these last two Acts were repealed. More than 
 fifty years then elapsed, before any farther alteration was proposed in the laws 
 affecting liberty of conscience ; though all direct persecution had ceased, and 
 pubhc opinion had become increasingly liberal in the interval. In 1779, pro- 
 fession of a behef in the Scriptures, with a declaration of being a Christian and 
 a Protestant, was substituted for subscription to the doctrinal articles of the 
 Church, as a condition of enjoying the toleration conceded by law. This amend- 
 ment of the Toleration Act was ftu-ther enforced in 1812, by some provisions 
 for the due registration of places of worship ; but the parties before excluded, 
 were not yet admitted to its benefits, and the clause affecting the Unitarians was 
 atiU preserved. In the following year, Mr. WiUiam Smith, M.P. for Norwich, 
 l^rocm-ed the repeal of this last clause, by which, it was beheved, Unitarians 
 would be put on the same footing with other classes of Dissenters. In 1828, 
 the Sacramental Test was repealed ; and in 1829 the Cathohcs were relieved 
 from their disabilities. The Unitarians however remained liable to a danger 
 which was not anticipated, when the Act for admittiog them to a fuU toleration 
 passed. Inheriting in regular transmission from generation to generation, a 
 considerable amount of property which had been left by their Presbyterian an- 
 cestors for reUgious purposes, it was argued, that their claim to it was vacated, 
 because at the time of such endowments and foundations being created, Unita- 
 rianism was not yet admitted to a toleration. They were in consequence ex- 
 posed to attacks, which rendered the teniu'e of their Chapels and Burial-grounds 
 
171 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CHURCH AND PURITANISM CONTRASTED. 
 
 The primary source of divergency between the Anglican and 
 the Puritan systems, must be sought ia their different con- 
 ception of the standard of j&nal authority in religion. The 
 genuine Puritan acknowledged Scripture only; the Church 
 combined with Scripture, the traditional exposition of its prin- 
 ciples preserved in the concurring judgments of Christian an- 
 tiquity. It was the avowed aim of the Puritans to reduce the 
 Church to the model of primitive usage recorded in the New 
 Testament, without any regard to the changes introduced by 
 time or circumstance. They received the strict letter of Scrip- 
 ture as a final, absolute rule ever applicable ; framed for present 
 and constant use ; standing in close, immediate contact with 
 the exigencies of man's outward life through the revolutions 
 of centuries. On the other hand, the Anglicans regarded 
 Scripture as indeed the original depository of Christian truth, 
 in which its germs, as it were, and first principles were shut 
 up, but acknowledged ecclesiastical tradition as its legitimate 
 expositor. Scripture and Tradition were viewed by them, as 
 equally under the superintending direction of Providence; 
 alike forming a part of the great dispensation of Christianity ; 
 joint witnesses and authorities of Christian doctrine and prac- 
 tice. Of these views, the idea of the Church, as understood 
 by the Anglican party, was a natural result. 
 
 It has been shown ia the foregoing pages, that the first race 
 of English Reformers made a distinction between doctrine and 
 
 inseoure. As the trust-deeds of their forefathers rarely specified doctrines, but 
 were usually conceived in such general terras, as left room for a progressive 
 modiElcation of opinion, an Act was introduced by the Government, and passed 
 in 1844, which secured to Unitarians the possession of property for religious 
 purposes, inherited from their ancestors, on the following principle : that, where 
 the trust-deed does not expressly provide to the contrary, the usage of twenty- 
 five years shall be taken as conclusive evidence of the rehgious doctrine or 
 mode of worship that may be properly taught and observed in any Meeting- 
 house. See Taylor's Book of Eights ; 7 and 8 Vict. oh. 45. Parhamentary 
 Debates on the Dissenters' Chapels Bill. London : 1844. 
 
 i2 
 
172 THE CHUE-CH AND 
 
 discipline; deducing the former from Scripture alone; but 
 admitting -with regard to the latter, in accordance with the 
 Erastianism then prevalent, that considerations of time and 
 place might justly invest the civil power with some control 
 over the form and administration of the Church. The Puri- 
 tans argued, that Scripture was the only standard for discipline 
 as well as for doctrine. In the prolonged struggle with them, 
 the Anglican divines gradually abandoned their Erastian prin- 
 ciples, and bestowed increased importance on Tradition, as the 
 vehicle of a divine right. They could not assert — for Scrip- 
 ture was at hand to confute them — that the idea of the Church 
 in its full hierarchal development, as constituted under Ehza^ 
 beth, could be found in the original teachings of Christ and 
 his apostles : but it might perhaps be argued, with some show 
 of probability, that its elements were there ; and that these 
 had been wrought out by Providence into the form and or- 
 ganization which had subsisted with no material change from 
 the second and third centuries. The spirit of Christ, it was 
 affirmed, had always been present in his Church. This was 
 the fulfilment of his words ; " Lo, I am with you alway, unto 
 the end of the world." The commission entrusted by him to 
 his apostles, had by them been conveyed in an unbroken suc- 
 cession to the bishops through all ensuing ages. In this way, 
 an apostolical authority was claimed for the Church and its 
 episcopal government, in opposition to the di^dne right urged 
 direct from Scripture on behalf of their own system, by the 
 Puritans : and so Tradition, under the provocations of con- 
 troversy, again grew up, even among those who had separated 
 from Kome, into the ranJi of a recognized interpreter of Scrip- 
 ture truth. 
 
 This idea of the Church became a very prominent feature 
 in the development of the Anglican or anti-puritan system, 
 during the seventeenth century. The Church from this point 
 of view was an external institution, which had been corrupted 
 by Popery ; designed to embrace the whole of Christendom ; 
 moulded by the hand of Grod himself into a permanent shape 
 for the preservation and transmission of Christian truth to the 
 end of time. It was a vast apparatus of means ; a visible in- 
 strumentality, connecting heaven and earth, and bringing the 
 elements of truth and the influences of divine grace to every 
 soul included within its pale. Of a Church so conceived, it 
 is the essence to be external; it applies an outward agency; 
 
PURITANISM CONTKASTED. 173 
 
 it demands submission to an outward jurisdiction. Let us 
 clearly apprehend this idea. It suggests the grand distinction 
 of the Anglican Church from Puritanism. 
 
 Externality of character is involved, to some extent, in the 
 very notion of Catholicity. Catholicity, as understood by the 
 Church of England, demands the surrender of individual self- 
 willedness to the expressed consent of ages. Vincentius's cele- 
 brated definition of Catholic truth, quod semper, quod ah om- 
 nibus, quod ubique, imphes that we are to take it from without, 
 instead of looking for it within. It admits of no appeal to 
 personal experience or intellectual idiosyncrasy, but requires 
 men to acquiesce in the general judgment of antiquity tradi- 
 tionally conveyed. 
 
 The doctrine of Apostohcal Succession is another applica- 
 tion of the same fundamental conception of the Church. The 
 title of ministers to preach the Word and administer the Sa- 
 craments, is not conferred by their individual learning, piety 
 and worth, or acquired through the choice and appointment of 
 those who are already professors of Christianity, but possessed 
 in virtue of an external character, transmitted through a long 
 descent from the first depositories of truth. Through such 
 divinely commissioned men the spiritual power of Christ is 
 perpetuated in his Church. It is they, and the faithful, living 
 through their ministrations in communion with the Church, 
 who constitute the mystical body of Christ; and the Sacra- 
 ments of Baptism and the Eucharist are the external means 
 through which the members of the Church are incorporated 
 with it, and preserved in it. According to these views the 
 Sacraments are not symbols merely, signs and tokens of di- 
 vine grace, but its real channels and instruments. By Baptism 
 infants are actually regenerated ; brought within the range of 
 God's covenanted mercy; saved from the consequences of 
 Adam's sin ; and translated from a state of wrath to a state of 
 acceptance and grace. Through this rite they are engrafted 
 into the body of Christ, and imbued with a principle of divine 
 life which they may afterwards by their own efforts unfold and 
 increase. But in the first instance, the recipient is wholly 
 passive ; grace is imparted externally, without any co-operation 
 of faith or will or works ; the act is God's alone, through the 
 hands of his accredited minister. In like manner, with re- 
 spect to the Eucharist, it must be received indeed in faith, but 
 its efficacy is not wholly due to faith. It really communicates, 
 
174 THE CHURCH AND 
 
 in some mysterious mode, the body and Mood of Christ to the 
 recipient, and thereby actually unites him with Christ. Writers 
 of the high Anglican school look upon it as a commemorative 
 sacrifice, " making that effectual," says Overall, " and in act 
 applied to us, wHch was once obtained by the sacrifice of 
 Christ upon the cross, and having reference to the daily and 
 perpetual offering of it by Christ now in Heaven in his ever- 
 lasting priesthood." 
 
 Not all indeed who adhered to the Chm-ch of England, en- 
 tertained these views. There was a large body of doctrinal 
 Puritans who never dissolved their communion with it ; and 
 these, if they could have had their own way, woiild have greatly 
 modified its ritual and discipline. Nevertheless, these high 
 doctrines acquired increasing influence and ascendency during 
 the struggle with Puritanism ; were drawn out of their latent 
 quiescence in the rubric and liturgy, by strong re-action 
 against it ; and expressed most distinctly the tendencies that 
 were opposed to it. We have seen them reproduced at the 
 present day, under a similar stimulus, abhorrence of modern 
 "Dissent, in the Tractarian theology of Oxford. 
 
 With this conception of the government and ritual of the 
 Anglican Church, its doctrinal system was in unison. Cal\i- 
 nism which lays so much stress on the direct, personal agency 
 of Christ, and discredits in the same degree the efficacy of out- 
 ward forms and the mediation of a priesthood, which ascribes 
 salvation to a change wrought in the inward man and values 
 any Church service only as a means of inducing or advancing 
 that spiritual work — ^had no sympathy with the specific tenden- 
 cies of the English hierarchy. It was brought in, as already 
 explained, by a kind of side force in the vast impulse of the 
 first great Protestant movement ; and it has remained as a 
 foreign element, never thoroughly assimilated with the origi- 
 nal system. Prom the time of James I. the character of the 
 English Church may be fairly described in Lord Chatham's 
 celebrated words; that "it has a Calvinistic creed, an Ar- 
 minian clergy, and a Popish liturgy." 
 
 But Catholicity even in its perversion is after all an attrac- 
 tive and beautiful idea. With an undeniable air of haughtiness 
 and of a certain right to command, the Anglican Church stiU 
 expresses a benignant vmiversalism in the general spirit of her 
 administration. If her language confines all covenanted mer- 
 cies to those within her pale, she holds out her hand to every 
 
PURITANISM CONTRASTED. 175 
 
 one who will acknowledge her. Her instrumentality at least 
 is all-embracitig. She does not insist on her laity giving some 
 outward token of their Christianity, before admission to mem- 
 bership, but accepts them as sinners willing to learn and to 
 improve ; offers them the outward means of gTace ; and trusts 
 to time and the continued influence of her services, for form- 
 ing in them the true life of Christianity. In the Anglican 
 view, the Church is not already a society of saints, but only 
 a provision for forming one ; a system of training and discir 
 phne for the heavenly world. Some defects and some excel- 
 lencies equally result from this conception of the nature of her 
 office. We may notice on the one hand, her too great readi- 
 ness to acquiesce in the mere proffer of external means, with- 
 out a sufficient intensity of effort to bring out the spiritual 
 result : on the other, we cannot but approve the prominence 
 usually given m her public ministrations, after the example of 
 her Homilies, to plain, wholesome, practical instruction; her 
 approval of moral excellence, as the surest outward sign of in- 
 ward grace ; and the charitable construction put by her most 
 eminent teachers, superior to the creeds, which they nominallj 
 accept, on the character and prospects of those who in their 
 deviation from the orthodox standard, give evidence of a pure 
 and honest mind^. 
 
 The principle of the Anglican Church (and it has undergone 
 no material change since the seventeenth century) is conser- 
 vative, not progressive. She keeps what she took at the time 
 of her separation from Rome, without carefully sifting its 
 quaUty ; and her limits being once fixed, she neither contracts 
 nor enlarges them. Her deference to authority checks the 
 free investigation of truth. She shrinks from the uncondi- 
 tional acknowledgment of the right of private judgment, With 
 her the consent of antiquity must control and subdue the im- 
 pulses of the iadividual mind. The high Anglican divines 
 treat theChurch, as the majority of Protestants treat Scripture, 
 and the Christianity which they educe from it — as an ultimate 
 fact, the boundary of legitimate inquiry, which must be nei, 
 ther questioned nor overstepped. They admit the right of 
 private judgment, to the extent of examining and determi n ing 
 the claims of the Church, that something more respectful than 
 
 1 Laud's treatment of Hales, described in Clarendon's Autobiography, vol. i. 
 p. 43, contrasts favourably -with the behaviour of Cheynel, a Puritan minister, 
 at the interment of Chillingworth. Neal, II. p. 70. 
 
176 THE CHURCH AND 
 
 bliad, Tinreasoning obedience may be yielded ber ; but seem 
 not to tbink it possible, tbat an bonest inquirer sbould dis- 
 pute ber autbority altogether i- There is gross sophistry in 
 this reasoning ; but the Church is not more iaconsistent than 
 the majority of those who dissent from ber. It is flagrantly 
 absurd to invite free inquiry, and yet resolve beforehand, that 
 any conclusion honestly arrived at, must involve criminality. 
 The freest inquirer may indeed be willing to allow, that there 
 are cases, where an external authority or simple tradition is 
 the best guide that he can follow, and a sufficient ground for 
 compliance in matters of form and usage not condemned by 
 reason and conscience ; but on the nature and claims of tbat 
 authority or tradition, it must stiU be his private judgment 
 that can alone decide. 
 
 The ascendency of traditional authority over private judg- 
 ment is very conspicuous in the public serrices of the Church 
 of England. The forms for every occasion are rigidly pre- 
 scribed. Nothing is left to the feeling, discretion and free 
 judgment of the minister. Every time that ber members lift 
 up their voices in common prayer, they join in the very words 
 which the pious have uttered on the same occasion, week after 
 week, for centuries. There is something, it is true, very solemn 
 and impressive in this consent of successive generations to 
 pour out their deepest wants in the same hallowed strain. 
 The words themselves become consecrated by usage and asso- 
 ciation. But there is a limit to this effect. Experience shows, 
 that it ought to be freely broken with spontaneous utterance. 
 Deadness and formalism are the sure result of the present 
 exclusive practice. The authoritative element is too largely 
 predominant. The officiating priest is almost reduced to a 
 machine ; bis individual mind has no space left, within which 
 it can act. The prayer of the preacher before the sermon, has 
 been confined by rigid disciplinarians among the bishops, to a 
 prescribed form. Even the substitution of modern hymns for 
 the psalms of David and the ancient chants of the Church, is 
 disliked by the stricter Anglicans as symptomatic of a puri- 
 tanical spirit. Thus in the doctrine, the government, the ritual, 
 and the general practice of the Anglican hierarchy, as developed 
 by the controversies of the seventeenth century, and still essen- 
 
 ^ This is the ground taken by Mr. Q-ladstone in his " Church Principles con- 
 sidered in their Results ;" and he has urged it with great force against many 
 Dissenters, in their mode of arguing with Deists. 
 
PURITANISM CONTRASTED. 177 
 
 tially tmalteredj we observe, to how great an extent tradition 
 embodying the judgment of antiquity, has worked with a reve- 
 rence for Scripture, in giving to it its peculiar character. It 
 stands before us as an ancient sovereignty, not formally declia- 
 ing an appeal to fundamental charters and the principles of 
 universal reason, but still grounding its most prominent claims 
 on usage and prescription, and demanding from its subjects 
 the deference and submission that are due to the prerogative 
 of years. 
 
 To these characteristic features of the Anglican Church, 
 Puritanism ia all its more decided and energetic forms, exhi- 
 bits a striking contrast. It discards tradition altogether, and 
 takes its stand on Scripture alone. In their conception of the 
 constitution of a church, the original Puritans or Presbyte- 
 rians, as acknowledging the necessity of a national religion, 
 and repudiating the principle of toleration, receded least from 
 the idea of the hierarchy. But with them, as with the Inde- 
 pendents and the Anabaptists, the alleged practice of Scrip- 
 ture was assumed as the authoritative model or platform. 
 Without the intervention of prescribed forms or ancient rules, 
 and with no respect for the functions of a duly graduated 
 clergy claiming an unbroken transmission of apostolic power, 
 they boldly declared, that they could at once draw nigh to 
 Christ ; and by the purity of their doctrine, the strictness of 
 their discipHne, and the scriptural simplicity of their worship, 
 preserve his spirit in the midst of them, and prove themselves 
 a true Church resting on a divine foundation. To conform 
 even in the miautest points to the scriptural standard, and so 
 to exclude from their faith and practice all human devices and 
 inventions, of which they pointed with horror to the perni- 
 cious consequences ia the Church of Rome ; this was the great 
 idea of the Puritans : and it was from this idea, that they 
 derived for their system the claim of a divine right, and of 
 exemption from the interference of the civil power. In the 
 assemblies of the faithful, convened and administered accord- 
 ing to the scriptural rule, they placed the original source and 
 permanent seat of all Church power. In the exercise of this 
 power they framed a discipline, liable indeed to most dange- 
 rous and inquisitorial abuse, by which nevertheless they pro- 
 posed in aU sincerity to christianize the general mass of society : 
 and through the employment of a penal jurisdiction qualified 
 to inflict the final sentence of excommunication, they aimed 
 
 I 3 
 
178 THE CHURCH AND 
 
 at keeping the members of the Chiirch sound in the faith and 
 exemplary in life. 
 
 This zeal for the conversion and salvation of the indivi- 
 dual soul, though sometimes degenerating into harshness and 
 intolerance, was the distinguishing excellence of the Puri- 
 tan movement. Baxter's parish of Kidderminster which had 
 been previously notorious for its profaneness and profligacy, 
 exhibited a surprisiag reformation under his faithful and ener- 
 getic ministry. In his account of his own life, he speaks of 
 the time and pains which he often bestowed in trying to pro- 
 duce an impression on a single obdurate mind ; and he thought 
 himself abundantly recompensed, if he could witness at length 
 any spiritual result. The Puritan ministers attached an ob- 
 ligation of peculiar sacredness to their ordination vows ; and 
 this feeling was doubtless strengthened by their Cal^inistic 
 principles. They beheved, that the blood of their perishing 
 feUow-creatures would be required at their hands by the great 
 Judge of all ; and that it was the first of all duties, peculiarly 
 incumbent on those who were set apart for the ministry of the 
 Word, to labour unceasingly to call men to God, and save 
 them from everlasting perdition. Hence the pertinacity — to 
 a modern reader seeming almost wrong-headedness and obsti- 
 nacy — with which they piu?sued their miaisterial functions in 
 defiance of the laws, and amidst the most vexatious obstruc- 
 tions and persecutions. The words of Paul were profoundly 
 engraven on their hearts : " woe is unto me if I preach not the 
 Gospel.'" The lives of Baxter, Oliver Heywood, and other 
 Nonconformist ministers, in the time of Charles II., abound 
 with instances of this unflinching faithfulness. This deep con- 
 cern for the spiritual welfare of men irrespective of ceremonies 
 and outward forms, heart acting at once upon heart, continued 
 to the last to distinguish the Puritans, even after they had 
 lost much of their original sternness and fervour. Baxter and 
 the Presbyterians gradually verged towards Arminianism, and 
 would gladly, at the Restoration and afterwards, have entered 
 into accommodation with the Episcopalians. But no good 
 could have come out of a forced and hollow compromise. 
 Tendencies strongly felt and springing from the deepest con- 
 victions of the inward man, are best left to work themselves 
 out freely and honestly into their natm'al results. 
 
 The essential element of Puritanism was developed more 
 boldly and consequentially by the Independents than by the 
 
PURITANISM CONTRASTED. 179 
 
 Presbyterians. They assimilated their churches to the socie- 
 ties of the first Christians. They were assemblies of saints 
 possessing all Church powers within themselves^ and admitting 
 none into communion but those who gave evidence of true 
 conversion. Their conception of a Church was directly op- 
 posed to that of the Anglican party. The Church with them 
 was rather a result than a process ; not instrumental and pre- 
 paratory, but a receptacle for those who had been converted 
 from the world, and were already under the regenerating in^ 
 fluence of the spirit of God. AU Church officers, whether 
 pastors, doctors, or elders, were regarded by them as but the 
 organs and instruments of these societies of the faithful ; not 
 exercising any external authority over them ; but deriving all 
 their power from their own participation in the spirit which 
 filled the bosom of the Church. The sacraments which they 
 administered among themselves, were considered simply as the 
 signs and tokens of their actual communion with Christ, not 
 as the external channels of divine grace into the heart. Inde- 
 pendency did not offer men a Church, as an outward instru- 
 mentality for taking them to heaven j but first of all set at 
 work the interior process of regenerating the individual soul 
 by faith, and then collected a Church out of the results. Here 
 alone, within the renovated heart, was the evidence of Chris- 
 tianity to be found. What this extremer form of Puritanism 
 sought to accomphsh, was not a vast ecclesiastical unity, em- 
 bracing the entire national life in its aim, applying its means 
 and its incentives to all alike, according to the Scripture image 
 holding fishes great and small within its capacious net ; but 
 the sympathetic approximation and gradual coalescence of 
 earnest, regenerated men, growing up iato small religious 
 unions over the face of society, like so many centres of 
 Christian vitahty darting out their influence on every side into 
 the surrounding mass of corrupt and torpid humanity. 
 
 With the earlier developments of Puritanism, Calvinism was 
 invariably associated. Those who finally lapsed into Armi- 
 nianism, had either themselves passed through its severe and 
 purifying process, or inherited the tendencies of Calvinistic 
 predecessors. Two valuable results, not wholly free, it must 
 be confessed, from some qualifying evil, may be traced to this 
 fact. The adoption of the Calvinistic faith led to a rejection 
 of the traditional authority of the Church, and demanded a 
 patient and thoughtful exercise of the understanding ; first. 
 
180 THE CHURCH AND 
 
 to ascertain the fundamental truths of Scripture^ and then^ 
 to reason them out into their consequences. Mrs. Hutchinson 
 has spoken of the unwearied pains of her husband amidst the 
 distractions of a military life, to determine from Scripture and 
 the writings of the most learned commentators, the simple 
 question of haptism^. This process of earnest research under 
 a high sense of responsibility, formed habits of mental indepen- 
 dence, profound seriousness and manly self-reliance. A more 
 important effect was the intense personality, if I may so call 
 it, both of the faith and of the religious life, which the old 
 Calvinistic system exacted and cherished in its adherents. Its 
 convictions were indeed stern and terrific, such as only robust 
 and athletic minds could have endured : but they were real 
 and deep. The forms on which the Church insisted, were de- 
 spised as vain and unsubstantial shadows. With the ever- 
 burning lights of the, Bible in his hand, the searcher descended 
 into the depths of his own spiritual nature, and commenced 
 the work of self-renewal there. He often missed his way, 
 and stumbled on many errors ; but he was earnest at his work, 
 and dug up not a little of the rough and unwrought ore of 
 valuable truth. He came at least to one precious conclusion ; 
 that aU which has enduring worth in man, must proceed from 
 within ; that the outward life can have no beauty and noble- 
 ness, but as the sign of a spiritual purification which has 
 already taken place in the soul itself. 
 
 Some of the best fruits of Puritanism grew out of these 
 principles: its high courage; its stern integrity j its unbending 
 faithfulness; its clear, penetrating, analytic reason; its pure 
 morals. Hence, too, might arise not a few of its follies and 
 extravagancies : its self-willedness and obstinacy; its scrupu- 
 lousness about trifles ; its narrow, intolerant adherence to its 
 own ideas and practices : the unaccommodating strictness of 
 its manners, and its aversion from the innocent recreations 
 of life. But its severe purity was the nurse of the domestic 
 affections. Its homes were blessed with the spirit of conjugal 
 a,nd parental love. Contempt and persecution drew closer the 
 living bonds of the heart. Even the rugged exterior of Crom- 
 well's mind sheltered a spirit of household purity and tender- 
 ness. Ludlow, no admirer of Cromwell, attests the effect 
 produced on his mind at the height of his power, by the death 
 of his favourite daughter. Lady Claypole ; an effect from which 
 1 Menaoire, 4to, pp. 267-71. 
 
PURITANISM CONTRASTED. 181 
 
 he never recovered^ and which undouhtedly hastened his own 
 end^. This most amiable expression of the old Puritan prin- 
 ciplcj stiU subsists in undiminished strength and purity among 
 its worthiest representatives in the Congregationalists of New 
 England. 
 
 The rejection of sacerdotal claims^ and a close adherence in 
 all things to scriptural precedents^ led the Puritans, like their 
 forerunners, the Lollards, to exact very eminent spiritual gifts 
 and a high standard of ministerial faithfulness in their pastors. 
 The minister was greatly magnified and enjoyed vast influence 
 among them. His suitable education and training for his 
 office, followed by satisfactory tests of his proficiency in learn- 
 ing and piety, were poiats on which they laid the greatest 
 stress. But they honoured him for what he was, and for what 
 he did. It was the man, the earnest, conscientious, well-in- 
 structed servant of Christ, that in their view conferred worth 
 and dignity on the office. The office alone, though it might 
 claim a remote derivation from apostolical commission, would 
 never have reconciled them to the services of an ignorant, 
 careless and immoral priest. In the same deep radical appre- 
 ciation of personal religion, and in the conviction that aU ac- 
 ceptable homage should be a direct expression of it, with an 
 invincible prejudice against every relic and every memorial of 
 the Roman Catholic system — originated their general dislike 
 of liturgies and set forms of prayer ; the severe plaianess of 
 their public worship ; and their unsparing removal of all those 
 artistical embellishments, speaking to the imagination through 
 the ear and the eye, with which the ancient Church had con- 
 ferred an outward and symbolical beauty on the mysteries and 
 traditions of its faith. 
 
 The Directory published by the Westminster Assembly, 
 prescribes the form of service still usually observed among 
 Protestant Dissenters. Its chief materials were — ^prayers, in- 
 troductory, general and. concluding, ofiered up ia the minister's 
 own words (for the gift of prayer was held in great esteem by 
 the Puritans) ; lessons from the Old and New Testaments, 
 often followed by an exposition ; hymns sung by the assembled 
 
 ' Ludlow's Memoirs. Vevay : 1699. II. pp. 609 and 607. Wo one can forget 
 Mr. Carlyle's description of Lady Claypole's death-bed and the Protector's 
 deep afliotion, drawn from Thurloe and other contemporaneous authorities. 
 (Letters and Speeches of Cromwell, II. p. 659.) Tor another instance of the 
 strong domestic affection which distinguished the CromweU family, see the 
 account of the death of the Protector's mother, in the same wort, II. p. 310. 
 
183 THE CHUKCH AND 
 
 congregation, without any instrumental accompaniment ; and 
 a sermon of formidable length, scholastic in its form, some- 
 times garnished with quotations in the learned languages, and 
 broken up into a great number of -divisions and subdivisions, 
 in which the idea of the text was opened out and exhausted. 
 In the interval between the Eestoration and the Revolution, 
 the style of preaching lost much of its ancient ruggedness and 
 wild fervour, and became more polished, calm and rational. 
 Oliver Heywood, who retained unabated to the last the cha- 
 racter of an old Puritan, complains of the degeneracy which 
 he remarked in the preaching of the younger ministers some 
 years before his death'-. In the spirit of consistent contra- 
 diction, the Puritans substituted for the holydays and festivals 
 of the Church, which they viewed with a sort of horror, fre- 
 quent fasts, public and private, accompanied by prayers and 
 other rehgious exercises. The Puritan diaries of the time are 
 full of allusions to these fasts. Calamy has described, on the 
 authority of Howe, the enormous length to which the services 
 accompanying them, were often protracted^. The Puritans 
 were all Sabbatarians, and kept the seventh day with a rigid 
 strictness. 
 
 ' Hunter's Life of OKver Heywood, p. 385. 
 
 ^ "He told me," says Calamy (Life of Ho-we, p. 5), "it -was upon those oc- 
 casions his common -way, to tegin about nine in the morning, with a prayer for 
 about a quarter of an hour, in which he begged a blessing on the work of the 
 day ; and afterwards read and expounded a chapter or psalm, in which he spent 
 about three quarters ; then prayed for an hour, preached for another hour, and 
 prayed for about half an hour. After this, he retu-ed, and took some little re- 
 freshment for about a quarter of an hour or more (the people singing all the 
 whUe), and then came again into the pulpit, and prayed for another hour, and 
 gave them another sermon of about an hour's length : and so concluded the 
 service of the day, at about four of the clock in the evening, vrith about half an 
 hour or more in prayer." Baillie (Letters and Journals, 1644, vol. ii. p. 184) 
 gives a similar description. " This day was the strictest that I have seen ia 
 England. Q-enerall Essex sent to the (Westminster) Assembhe, i.e. to entreat 
 that a day of fasting might be kept for hitn. We spent from nine to five very 
 graoiouslie. After Dr. Twisse had begun -with a briefe prayer, Mr Marshall 
 prayed large two houres, most di-vinehe — in a wonderfuUie pathetick and prudent 
 way. After Mr. Arrowsmith preached one houre, then a psalme ; thereafter, Mr. 
 Viues prayed near two houres, and Mr. Palmer preached one houre, and Mr. 
 Seaman prayed near two houres, then a psalme. After, Mr. Henderson brought 
 them to a short sweet conference of the heart confessed ia the Assembhe, and 
 other seen faults to be remedied, and the conveuiencie to preach against aU 
 sects, espeoiaUie Anabaptists and Antinomians. Dr. INrisse closed with a short 
 prayer and blessing." This is truly grapliic! Calamy who only Uved in the 
 next generation, calls this " a sort of service that few could have gone through, 
 ■without inexpressible weariness to themselves and their auditories." In his 
 days the old fervour was already burnt out. 
 
PURITANISM CONTRASTED. 183 
 
 The effect of the two systems^ the Anglican and the Puri- 
 taUj on the moral and religious condition of the people^ has 
 been such as might be expected from their respective principles 
 and tendencies. Whatever partisans may urge^ unmixed good 
 or unqualified evil can be predicated of neither side. The 
 complex and variegated character of our Enghsh population, 
 combining the most diversified elements of social condition, 
 high aristocracy and strong conservatism, extensively inter- 
 wrought with a vigorous popular hfe and a restless spirit of 
 innovation and progress — ^has been one of the results, as it has 
 been in some degree also a condition, of these antagonistic 
 agencies ; and it was then most conspicuous, when they were 
 most vehemently ia opposition. 
 
 The Church with its ample endowments, its titled digni- 
 taries, its territorial iafluence, has ever incUned to be quiescent 
 and stationary, content with holding out its offices to the 
 world, and preserving its hereditary jurisdiction. Puritanism 
 in the exuberance of strong conviction, has overleapt all forms 
 to carry its aid, wherever wanted, to the penitent, afflicted and 
 craving heart. The former has relied on the sober regularity 
 of its ministrations ; the latter, on the prompt energy of its 
 zeal and love. The Church has constantly gravitated towards 
 indifference ; Puritanism has as constantly been impelled by 
 its interior restlessness towards fanaticism. If the lax disci- 
 line of the Church has sometimes tolerated profaneness and 
 levity, the severity of Puritanism has not unfrequently pro- 
 duced hypocrisy. The Church has enforced attendance on her 
 public services, and inculcated reverence for her authorized 
 formularies and duly ordained clergy. Puritanism has encou- 
 raged the free outpouring of every earnest soul in the unpre- 
 meditated prayers of the pulpit, and in the spontaneous exer- 
 cises of domestic and private devotion. In one, we recognize 
 the decorous wisdom of the priest ; ia the other, the fervour 
 of the prophet. The»outward poetry of form, of historical as- 
 sociation, of imaginative conception, of sensuous impression — 
 predominates in the Church. Puritanism draws its inspiration 
 from within, yet appeals to the intellect, and dehghts in ab- 
 stract and logical expression. The Church's independence of 
 the popular will, has given a certain breadth and freedom to 
 its views — a certain calmness and practical moderation to its 
 spirit. Puritanism has kept close to the suggestions of the 
 popular heart, and with all its earnestness and its honesty, has 
 
184 THE CHURCH AND 
 
 not seldom been narrow and perverse. We recognize in the 
 Churcli, the conservator of established order, the champion 
 of law, the patron of the claims of rank and ancestry. Puri- 
 tanism has allied itself with the cause of liberty and progress ; 
 indulged and encouraged popular sympathies; and reserved 
 its highest reverence and admiration for integrity and conscien- 
 tiousness. 
 
 Of course only the prominent points of contrast can be 
 brought out in such a comparison as this. Between the ex- 
 tremes there must naturally have been, as we know there was, 
 a large intermediate class : but the violent and vindictive spirit 
 in which measures were carried against the Puritans on the 
 king's return, almost prevented moderation, and marked off 
 the two great parties in the State by an impassable barrier 
 from each other. Persecution, with a dislike amounting to 
 abhorrence of the free discourse and licentious manners im- 
 ported from France by the Cavaliers — gave a strong tincture 
 of gloom and severity to the language and demeanour of the 
 Nonconformists in the time of Charles the Second. The 
 healthful development of their distinguishing principles was 
 checked or exaggerated by adverse influences. Yet it is from 
 this period, that the most vivid traditions of Puritanism are 
 derived ; with it the names of the great and holy men who 
 were martyrs in its cause, are painfully associated ; and it was 
 then that the religious bodies which have inherited its spirit, 
 were in process of formation. 
 
 The unkindly atmosphere in which it grew, must be taken 
 into account, in estimating its character. The circumstances 
 of the times influenced the style of preaching, and had a cor- 
 responding effect on the studies of the learned. The sermons 
 of the Puritans may be described, generally, as scriptural in 
 their matter, closely spiritual in their application, and in me- 
 thod perfectly exhaustive. They rarely quitted a text till they 
 had resolved it into its elements, and extracted fiom it every 
 conclusion it could yield. Matthew Henry's Commentary 
 furnishes a good example of their customary method of expo- 
 sition. To them the Bible was really the book of books ; and 
 they sought in it all the wisdom of life. But their preaching, 
 though acute and vigorous, often displaying great knowledge 
 of the heart, and well fitted for strong immediate efl'ect, was 
 too rigidly limited in its object, too little discursive in its view 
 of life's duties and prospects, too bare of illustration and 
 
PURITANISM CONTRASTED. 185 
 
 adornment from the fields of philosophy and polite learning 
 — to reach that highest form of Christian eloquence, which 
 takes a permanent place in the classical literature of a nation. 
 In the most eminent Puritan divines, with aU their excellen- 
 cies, we search in vain for passages that will admit of com- 
 parison with the rich sentiment and sweet poetic fancy of 
 Taylor and Hall, or with the amplitude of thought and phi- 
 losophic breadth of vision which we find in Barrow and Cud- 
 worth. Direct operation on the outward and inward life, a 
 profound impression of seriousness on the popular mind, was 
 the simple, conscientious aim of the Puritan preacher. 
 
 The peculiar learning of the Puritans was determined by 
 the same influences as the strain of their preaching. To be 
 well versed in Scripture, and to be capable of probing the 
 depths, quieting the apprehensions, and solving the perplexities, 
 of conscience — constituted in their estimation the highest ac- 
 complishment of a Christian divine. For human philosophy 
 they had little regard, though they employed logical forms to 
 a pedantic excess in their reasonings ; and their general con- 
 tempt of tradition alienated them from minute inquiries into 
 Christian antiquity. This direction of their studies, at first 
 the result of principle and feehng, became afterwards a sort of 
 necessity, when they were excluded from the Universities and 
 the great repositories of literature, and enjoyed diminished 
 opportunities of leisure and research. Scriptural exposition 
 and practical divinity were the pursuits in which they chiefly 
 exercised themselves ; and in these they laboured with good 
 efiect. The writings of Owen and Baxter have never perhaps 
 been surpassed for the force with which they penetrate to 
 "the hidden man of the heart," and the profound acquaint- 
 ance they discover with its infirmities and snares^- The ex- 
 
 ' Arthur Young, a man of science and the world, has shown his value for 
 these two great practical writers, by pubUshing selections from their works. 
 The preface to his Baxteriana (Hatchard, London : 1815) is affectingly impres- 
 sive. Owen was perhaps the greatest scholar among the Puritan divines. His 
 QeoXoyoifiiya iravToSaTrd, swe de Natv/rd, Ortu, Frogresm et Studio vera TJieo- 
 logice (Bremse, 1684) first published after his retirement from all pubhc func- 
 tions in 1661 (Biograph. Britann.) is a work of immense learning, displaying an 
 intimate famUiarity not only with Gtreek and Latin poetry {veterwm poetarvm 
 nsum magnwm esse fateor. praefat.) but also with modem hteratm'e, in which 
 Dante and Chaucer are not forgotten. Though written, as might be expected, 
 exclusively from the Bibhcal point of view, the work is not devoid of a critical 
 spirit. See p. 247. Speaking from his own experience, as Vioe-ChanoeUor of Ox- 
 ford under Cromwell, he complains of the defective constitution of the Academic 
 
186 THE CHUECH AND 
 
 pository works of Poole, Goodwin, Caryl, Manton and Owen, 
 evince the unwearied labour and thought bestowed by the 
 Puritans on the Scriptures; but they exhibit only another 
 form of practical divinity. Spiritual edification is the pre- 
 dominant consideration in them; and they have therefore 
 little in common with the critical and historical spirit of the 
 modern exegesis i. In the meantime, the learning of the 
 Church was taking a wider range. At the same time with 
 these Nonconformist productions, or not long after them, the 
 antiquarian labours of Usher, Stillingfieet and Bingham, the 
 Polyglott of Brian "Walton, (which disturbed the Scriptural 
 sensitiveness of Owen,) the patristical researches of Bull, and 
 the Platonic speculations of Cudworth and More, were given 
 to the world. 
 
 From the phenomena exhibited by Puritanism in its de- 
 pressed and persecuted condition, which exaggerated its na- 
 tural tendencies, it is not fair to conclude, what would have 
 been its settled and permanent character, if in the struggle 
 
 Course, and the too easy admission of youths ■without ability or aptitude for 
 study. At the close of this very learned boot, the Independency of the author 
 appears in all its force. He protests eloquently against national chui-ches 
 (p. 481), and contends that the spirit is a better qualification for preaching than 
 human learning. — The following passage from his ' Grace and Duty of being 
 Spiritually Minded,' ch. ii., furnishes a favourable specimen of his mode of treat- 
 ing spiritual themes : — " Thoughts and meditations, as proceeding from spiritual 
 affections, are the first things wherein this spiritual-mindedness doth consist, 
 and whereby it doth evidence itself. Our thoughts are like the blossoms on a 
 tree in the spring. You may see a tree in the spring so covered with blossoms 
 that nothing else of it appears. Multitudes of them fall off and come to nothing. 
 Ofttimes where there see most blossoms, there is least fruit. But yet there is 
 no fruit, be it of what sort it will, good or bad, but it comes in and irom some 
 of those blossoms. The mind of man is covered with thoughts, as a tree with 
 blossoms. Most of them fall off, vanish, and come to nothing, end in vanity ; 
 and sometimes where the mind doth most abound with them, there is the least 
 fruit ; the sap of the mind is wasted and consumed in them. Howbeit there is 
 no fruit which actually we bring forth, be it good or bad, but it proceeds from 
 some of these thoughts. Wherefore ordinarEy these give the best and sm-est 
 measm-e of the frame of men's minds." Bradley's Select Works of Owen, vol. ii. 
 p. 163. 
 
 ^ The works of the Puritans in this department were immensely voluminous. 
 Those of Thomas Goodwin ai-e contamed in five foho volumes. Dr. Manton' s 
 190 Sermons on the 119th Psalm, the hearing of which is said to have given 
 Bolingbroke his first distaste to rehgion, occupy a folio. Owen's Commentary 
 on the Epistle to the Hebrews, extends through four vols. foho. Caryl's Job 
 fills twelve quartos. These literary phenomena are significant of the body 
 which produced them. They are tokens of that intense scriptvralism — that 
 reverence approaching to superstition for eveiy word and particle of the Bible 
 — which was the great principle of Pm-itanism. 
 
PURITANISM CONTRASTED. 187 
 
 with the Stuarts and the Churchy it had finally carried the 
 day. Nothing can be farther from historical truth than to 
 represent it^ even ia what are deemed its extremer forms, as a 
 simple movement of democratic fanaticism. The leaders of 
 the Presbyterian party belonged to the nobility and landed 
 gentry. Of the Independents, whom some writers at once 
 dispose of in the mass as illiterate enthusiasts, it has been ob- 
 served by Mr. Laing^, the historian of Scotland, that, " con- 
 trary to the progress of other sects, their system was first 
 addressed, and apparently recommended by its tolerating prin- 
 ciples, to the higher orders of social Hfe." It is made a seri- 
 ous charge against the Independents, in Edwards's Gangrsena, 
 that they were distinguished from the Presbyterians by greater 
 attention to dress and appearance, and a less scrupulous con- 
 formity to the manners of the world. " Let a man turn 
 sectary now-a-days," says he, " and within one half year he 
 is so metamorphosed ia apparel, hair, etc., as a man hardly 
 knows him^." The gentlemen of England would have retained 
 their ancient habitudes and knightly bearing under a Crom- 
 wellian dynasty. Hampden followed the chase amidst the 
 beech-woods of his native Buckinghamshire. The Protector 
 himself did not disdain the fashionable pastime of hawking ^- 
 Milton was skilled in every manly and graceful exercise*. In 
 
 ^ Orme's Life of Owen, p. 75. 
 
 ^ At Oxford Owen scandalized the strait-laced by his powdered hair, his ele- 
 gant hand-strings, and the fashionable cut of his Spanish leather boots with wide 
 lawn tops. (Biogr. Brit. Orme, p. 193, who quotes Anthony Wood.) Edwards 
 (Grangrsena, p. 63) thought it shocking profanation in John Groodwin, the Armi- 
 niau Independent, and several of his church, that they should go to bowls and 
 other sports on days of pubhc thanksgiving. " The sectaries," he says, " wear 
 strange long hair, go in fine fashionable apparel beyond their places, feast, ride 
 journeys, and do servile bnainess on fast days." In tliis same collection of gos- 
 sip and scandal, curious for the incidental light it throws on the manners of the 
 times, it is stated, that the Independent Miuisters were very hberaUy supported 
 by their hearers, all classes contributing something, and the richer members pay- 
 ing £15, £20, or even £30 yearly towards their Ministers' maintenance. 
 Pm4 II. p. 14. Edwards's chief opponent was John Groodwin under the name 
 of Cretensis. The language on both sides in the controversy is coarse and un- 
 gentlemanly. On the pastimes of the Puritans, illustrated from their own 
 writings, see "Letters on Puritanism and Nonconformity," by Sir J. B. Wil- 
 liams, pp. 89-94. 
 
 3 Aubrey's Lives of Eminent Men, vol. il. p. 433. 
 
 '' How dehghtfolly his earliest poems reflect the healthy enjoyment of his youth! 
 " Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
 Cheerly rouse the slumbering mom, 
 From the side of some hoar hiU, 
 Through the high wood echoing shrill." 
 
188 THE CHURCH AND 
 
 the Memoirs of Colonel HutcMnson we have a finished picture 
 of the Puritan gentleman, grave, learned, and accomplished ; 
 blending a deep and earnest piety with the courtesies of the 
 world ; capable of high service in the senate and the field, and 
 adorning his rural retreat with the elegant entertainments of 
 books, pictures, and gardening^. 
 
 Some of Cromwell's projected reforms anticipated the ideas 
 of a later day, very few of which have been yet realized. He 
 proposed a better distribution and more equal maintenance of 
 the parochial clergy, which would have spread the means of 
 spiritual culture more effectually through the entire mass of 
 the population. Though possessed of little learniag himself, 
 he knew how to value it iu others, and was surrounded by 
 men, Milton, Howe, and Owen, who would never have suffered 
 him to neglect its interests. He encouraged Brian Walton's 
 great work by allowing the importation of paper for it duty 
 free ; enriched the Bodleian library with valuable manuscripts ; 
 and granted a charter for the establishment of a college for 
 the North of England at Durham, in which Mr. Frankland, 
 afterwards at the head of a Dissenting Academy, was nomi- 
 nated a tutor^. A very remarkable passage in Clarendon dis- 
 tinctly admits, in spite of its obvious malice and perversion of 
 fact, that learning flourished at Oxford under Presbyterian 
 and Independent rule'. It is worthy of notice, that in this 
 
 ' Thia age abounded witt distinguislied excellence in the opposite ranks of 
 tlie grand controversy. Lady Pansliawe's Memoirs (8to, 1829) may be placed 
 by the side of Mrs. Hutchinson's dehghtful work : — a widow in each case re- 
 cording the virtues and services of a high-minded and patriotic husband. 
 
 ^ A draft of this charter was issued by Cromwell in 1657, in accordance with 
 a request which had been addressed to the Privy Council by the gentry and 
 freeholders of the county of Durham in 1650. The College was to consist of 
 a Provost, Fellows, and Scholars ; it was to be maintained out of lands and 
 possessions recently belonging to the Dean and Chapter ; and to be invested 
 with the same privileges and immunities as the old Universities. The laws for 
 its government were to be framed, and might be modified, by the Sovereign and 
 Council of State, or by Visitors appointed by them. Butt gives a copy of this 
 charter, taken from the original in the custody of the Dean and Chapter of Dur- 
 ham, in the appendix to vol. ii. of his edition of Burton's Diary, pp. 111-125. 
 When it was proposed to carry this charter into effect in the protectorate of 
 Eiiohard Cromwell, Oxford and Cambridge petitioned against it. The Provost 
 named in this charter, Pliihp Hunton, M.A., was ejected on St. Bai-tholomew's 
 day, 1662. Butt, ibid. Calamy's Account, etc., II. p. 754. For Mr. Frank- 
 land's connection with this College, see Calamy, II. p. 28 1, and Hunter's Life 
 of Ohver Heywood, p. 243. 
 
 ^ Where he is speaking of the Parliamentary visitation of Oxford in 1647, to 
 enforce the taking of the Covenant, at the time the Earl of Pembroke was made 
 
PURITANISM CONTRASTED. 189 
 
 University, during tte same period, the foundations of the 
 Royal Society were laid in the private meetings of a few cul- 
 tivators of natural science. . Had the changes which Puri- 
 tanism was worldng in the Church, the Universities, and the 
 State, fixed themselves in permanent residts, the sternness of 
 its earliest aspect would have worn off with the return of a 
 tranquil civihzation. The strong religious impulse, of which 
 it was the expression, and which was needed to counteract an 
 extreme of licentiousness, would have produced its natural 
 effect in giving a more earnest and lofty character to the mind 
 of the upper classes, and by drawing them through education 
 and religion into closer 'sympathy with the great body of the 
 people, might have obviated some of the mischiefs resulting 
 from the intimate alliance between the Church and the Ari- 
 stocracy, which began with the Eevolution. 
 
 The influence of Puritanism is often represented as hostile 
 to elegant literature. Its short-hved ascendency, beset with 
 danger and consumed in strife, had indeed little leisure for 
 the soft dalliance of the Muses. But the sublime incarnation 
 of its spirit in the poetry of Milton, must for ever repel the 
 imputation of incompatibility with the very highest form of 
 literary excellence. Even its homely, popular expression in 
 the pregnant allegory of Bunyan, yielded nutriment to the na- 
 tional heart fully as wholesome and generous as the banter of 
 Hudibras, which was the delight of the reinstated RoyaUsts. 
 
 It is a curious speculation, not so remote from the present 
 subject as to forbid a mementos entertainment, what might 
 have been the effect on the subsequent development of our 
 literature, if the triumph of Puritanical principles under 
 Cromwell had been lasting, and prevented the Restoration. 
 Twice in the course of our history has our native hterature, 
 the spontaneous growth of the Saxon element which pervades 
 our whole poptdation and forms the very heart of our national 
 character, been submerged beneath a foreign influence break- 
 Chancellor (Hist, of Eebeffion, Boot X. Oxford edit. 1826, vol. t. p. 482-3). 
 "When it pleased God to bring King Charles the Second back to his throne, 
 he found that TJmversity (not to imdervalue the other, which had nobly like- 
 wise rejected the ill infiisions which had been industriously poured into it) 
 abounding in excellent learning, and devoted to duty and obedience, Httle infe- 
 rior to what it was, before its desolation." Effects must have some relation to 
 causes. During the iuterral to which Clarendon here refers, Owen and Grood- 
 win were Heads of Houses, the former of Ohristohm-ch, the latter of Magdalen ; 
 Cromwell and his son Kiohard were successively Chancellors ; and part of the 
 time, Owen was Tice-ChanceUor. 
 
190 THE CHURCH AND 
 
 ing in upon it from France. The earliest poetry of our nascent 
 English, if we except a few songs and ballads circulated among 
 the lowest classes, was in its form, its spirit, and for the most 
 part even in its materials, essentially Norman. Chaucer and 
 Gower wrote for the court and the nohles, not for the people. 
 Towards the close of the fifteenth century, the genuine English 
 spirit arose, and strengthened by a continual accession of 
 popular elements, in which' religion had perhaps the largest 
 share — brought forth in little more than a century and a half, 
 an exuberance of literary fruit whose rich juice and racy 
 flavour proclaim it the unforced produce of our native soil. 
 Within this period sprang up our national drama, that breath- 
 ing expression of English fife. To this glorious springtime 
 of our country, belong the greatest and most original of our 
 authors, uniting a wild fertility of imagination as yet unbroken 
 by criticism, with a masculine strength of thought—the fathers 
 of our eloquence and poetry, Spenser, Shakspeare, ]\Iilton, 
 Hooker, Raleigh, and Bacon. With whatever party in Church 
 and State they may outwardly be classed, these noble minds 
 are thoroughly Enghsh in feeUng, and instinct with the spirit 
 of progress and mental independence. Their works announce 
 that redundancy of moral and intellectual energy, which 
 vaguely craving after some higher good, but not at one with 
 itself as to the form and measure of it, at length broke out 
 into action and spent itself on civil discord. The movement 
 in this direction ceased with the dissolution of the Common- 
 wealth. On the return of Charles, a second inundation of 
 French influence overwhelmed our manners and our literature. 
 The poetry of "the blind old schoolmaster" was forgotten. 
 The drama of Shakspeare, Massinger, and Fletcher, true to 
 nature and humanity, whose last echoes died away in the 
 feebler genius of Otway — was replaced by the rhyming tra- 
 gedies of Dryden ; and the soul of native inspiration which 
 breathed in our ancient song, expired under the fetters of art 
 imposed on it by a Parisian criticism. 
 
 Such a change could not have occm'red, had Puritanism 
 maintained its ascendency. Milton would have become the 
 immediate model of imitation ; and his influence must have 
 introduced a severer taste and a purer tone of sentiment. At 
 the same time, his scholarlike feelings and healthful mind 
 would have preserved from the ignorant contempt and de- 
 struction of fanatical zeal, the precious remains of our older 
 
PURITANISM CONTRASTED. 191 
 
 literature^ . Even under Puritanical rule, the mind of England 
 would doubtless have been gradually affected by the progress 
 of European ideas ; but the very different relation in which we 
 should then have stood towards France, must have prevented 
 our writers from taking her classical productions as a stan- 
 dard of excellence. Dry den and Pope, in the form which 
 their genius actually assumed, and with the influence which 
 they exerted on the literature of the Revolution, could not 
 have existed. Their vigorous and polished couplet embody- 
 ing sharp epigrammatic contrasts of thought, and their in- 
 imitable art of reasoning in verse, so well adapted to a cold 
 and satirical cast of mind, and so natural an effect of reaction 
 against over-strained enthusiasm, were never in perfect har- 
 mony with the latent sympathies of the people. They floated 
 over the surface of society, but did not penetrate to its living ' 
 depths. 
 
 Before the middle of the eighteenth century, we perceive 
 already a return, though with a lingering respect for the out- 
 ward forms of the school of Pope, towards the poetry of feel- 
 ing and imagination in the lyrics of Collins and Gray and 
 the devotional rhapsodies of Young. Amidst all the inflation 
 of his rhetorical verse, the heart of Thomson was stiU in 
 living contact with nature, and breathed forth occasionally 
 strains of genuine sympathy. The spirit of the last century 
 was indeed essentially prosaic and artificial; but as it ad- 
 vanced, we can perceive in its best poetry — ^in the artless 
 sensibility of Goldsmith, in Mrs. Barbauld's chastened re- 
 ligious fervour and deep Puritan love of truth and freedom, 
 in the true EngHsh feeling and pensive thoughtfulness of 
 Cowper — a deepening tone of earnestness and simpHcity. 
 From that time to the present day, the enthusiasm for our 
 old writers separated from us by the memorable conflicts of the 
 seventeenth century, has been continually on the increase. 
 Imbued with their spirit, the public mind seems now to have 
 fixed its choice on a poetry that springs from a fullness of 
 inward life, that expresses a purpose, and reveals the deep na- 
 tional heart, in preference to the sparkling wit or graceful 
 sentimentality which clothes in elegant verse the conven- 
 tional taste and transitory opinion of the day. 
 
 Had the work of the Puritans endured, the continuous 
 
 1 His lines on Shatspeare, and the genial allusion to the stage in L' Allegro, 
 will recur at once to every reader. 
 
192 THE CHTJECH AND PURITANISM CONTRASTED. 
 
 development of a national HteratTire^ inspired by reality and 
 uttering the strong emotions and convictions of the popular 
 mind, would never probably have undergone so violent an 
 interruption ; and a character, at once more earnest and more 
 refined, more spiritual and more cultivated, would have grown 
 up along with it in the great body of the people. 
 
 As it was, the two parties in the State were driven by 
 violent antagonism into vicious extremes. Puritanism tram- 
 pled upon and harassed by persecuting laws, renounced the 
 world, and took refuge in a fervent, and often a narrow, piety. 
 Its representatives in the next generation, gradually forsaken 
 by the higher aristocracy, shut out from the Universities, and 
 for the most part directing all their energies to practical 
 objects — trade, commerce, civil freedom and scriptural divinity 
 ■ — only by degrees came back to the adoption of wider views 
 of life, and began again to take a share and an interest in the 
 general literature of their country. But though the natural 
 influence of Puritanism was thus broken and perverted by 
 the pressure of outward wrong, it brought many noble and 
 generous principles into circulation, and preserved a sound 
 heart in the most valuable portion of the community. Of its 
 beneficial effects on the middle and lower classes, we become 
 additionally sensible, as we trace more carefully the social 
 progress of the eighteenth century. It kept alive the spirit 
 of religious earnestness, public liberty, and popular improve- 
 ment — those vital elements of the social system, the violent 
 expulsion of which cost France her morals and her faith, and 
 is now producing among its remoter consequences, a succes- 
 sion of revolutions, whose final issue it is impossible to predict. 
 
193 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FREE INQUIRY. 
 SECTION I. 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE INDEPENDENCE OF KELIGIOUS 
 SOCIETIES AND THE FREEDOM OF TH?i INDIVIDUAL MIND. 
 
 In the preceding review of our religious history, we have 
 witnessed a struggle between two different kinds of outward 
 authority for ascendency; that which was urged by the 
 Church in the joint names of Tradition and Scripture ; and 
 that which was urged by the Puritans in the name of 
 Scripture alone. In this struggle, the rights and preroga- 
 tives of societies founded on these different principles, were 
 more regarded than the claims of the individual conscience. 
 It was, indeed, hardly possible in the first effort to obtain 
 religious independence, that the struggle should take any 
 other course. Men had been nurtured in authority, and 
 could not at once cast it off. The belief was all but uni- 
 versal, that the State must rest on a specific religious basis, 
 must be united with some Church ; the only point at issue 
 being, to determine the true Church. It was not at first 
 perceived, how many assumptions, each requiring a separate 
 proof, were involved in this view of the case : — that there 
 must be one true, visible Church, sustained by a. jus divinum ; 
 that the books of Scripture were the sole ultimate criterion 
 of religious doctrine and practice; that the letter of these 
 books was inspired, and carried with it a plenary divine 
 authority. 
 
 Nevertheless, the broad principle involved in the Reforma- 
 tion, of the right of every man to search the Scriptures for 
 himself, produced as its natural consequence — when the bonds 
 of external discipline in the progress of our civil troubles were 
 dissolved — an immense number of sects putting forth the most 
 discordant views, in some of which we can already trace the 
 
 K 
 
194! INDEPENDENCE OF RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES^ AND 
 
 germ of more recent theories. Their appearance was a great 
 scandal to the Presbyterians. Edwards, the modern Epipha- 
 nius, has enumerated with aU the bitterness of his Greek pro- 
 totype and with perhaps as little discrimination, no fewer than 
 a hundred and eighty flagrant heresies then prevalent in Eng- 
 land^. This state of things, so destructive of the traditional 
 order and fixedness on which the mind of a lawyer loves to 
 rest, drew from Selden the significant remark ; that " the two 
 
 ' In Ms Gangrffina, 3rd edit. 1646. The sectaries, he teDs us, howeyer dif- 
 ferent ia their opinions, alL agree in Independency, and in forsaking the com- 
 munion of the Eeformed Churches (p. 7). A m ong the places where Inde- 
 pendent principles had taken root, he mentions especially — ^New England, the 
 Bermudas, Amsterdam, and Hotterdam. (Letters and Narrations, p. 61.) — Of 
 the heresies enumerated by him, the following, as signs of the unsettled state 
 of pubhc opinion, are worth notice (pp. 15-31). (1.) Scripture, not the Word 
 of Gkid ; no Word hut Christ. (4.) As the patriarch^ walked with G-od hy the 
 teaching of God, so should we : half the glory of God is not revealed as yet ; 
 we must wait what he will record in otu: hearts, and in that measure worship 
 him in spirit and truth from the teachings of the Spirit. (5.) AH Scripture an 
 allegory, in which its spiritual meaning is contained. (6.) Penmen of Scripture 
 moved hy their own spirit. (9.) Bight reason the rule of Faith and measure 
 of Scriptm-e. (13.) Free toleration of all consciences, Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, 
 antiehristian : " yea, if it he men's consciences, the magistrates may not punish 
 for blasphemies, nor for denying the Scriptures, nor for denying there is a God." 
 Edward adds in the margin — " Last part hath been spoken by some eminent 
 sectaries." (24.) In the unity of God, no trinity of persons ; doctrine of the 
 trinity a Popish tradition, and a doctrine of Rome. (28.) Chrbt's human 
 nature defiled with original sin as well as ours ; Christ not of a holier nature 
 than we : "in this appears God's Iotc to us, that he will take one of us in the 
 same condition, to convince us of what he is to us, and hath made us to be in 
 him i the beholding of Christ to be holy in the flesh is a dishonour to God, in 
 that we should conceive holiness out of God, and again a discomfort to the 
 saints, that he should be of a more holy natm-e than they, as being no ground 
 for them to come near with boldness to God." (40.) Christ came to declare 
 the love of God, not to procure it for us or satisfy God. (45.) Men may be 
 saved without Christ, if they serve God according to the knowledge God has 
 given them. (167.) There shall be a general restoration, wherein all men shall 
 be reconciled to God and saved ; only saints shall then be in a higher condition 
 than those who do not beUeve. 
 
 Edwards gives an account of some pantheistic doctrines, which he says were 
 on the increase. (Letters and Narrations, p. 112.) He mentions, that at a 
 meeting of sectaries of different persuasions in London, it was professed by some 
 to be the sin of this kingdom, " that the Jews were not allowed the open pro- 
 fession and exercise of their rehgion," and that only the Presbyterians dissented 
 and opposed it (p. 12). Edwards, as I have already stated, had a particular 
 spite against John Goodwin, the Arminian Independent. He calls his congi-e- 
 gation an unclean conventicle ; " Socinian, Armuiian, Popish, Anabaptistical, 
 Libertine tenets being held by himself and many of his people." (Gungrsena, 
 Part II. p. 13.) Upon the whole we obtam from Edwards's confused medley, 
 a tolerably clear insight into some remarkable tendencies of religious opinion, 
 which had sprung up imder the Commonwealth, 
 
FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 195 
 
 words, scrutamini Scripturas, had been the undoing of the 
 world^." But this fermentation of spirits was necessary to 
 the evolution of the great principles, which were distinctly 
 recognized before the close of the century, and gradually in- 
 corporated with public opinion in the course of the next. 
 
 Of these principles, the most important was Free Inquiry, 
 Private Judgment, or Rationalism ; the right of every man to 
 bring the doctrines and institutions of religion to the test 
 of his individual reason, and to adopt or reject them, as he 
 finds them in accordance with it. I do not assert, that the 
 fullest acknowledgment of this principle is all that is needed, 
 to the vital experience of religious influences or even to the 
 right apprehension of religious truths. It wiU appear, I think, 
 that its undue and exclusive predominance was among the 
 causes of the spiritual weakness of the eighteenth century. 
 But it is certainly an indispensable adjunct to the process of 
 religious discipline : in its absence, superstition or fanaticism 
 is inevitable. This principle had established itself in minds 
 of the gi-eatest eminence, the master spirits of the age, at the 
 time of the Revolution; though prejudice and bigotry were 
 still too powerful to aUow its public recognition in the Tolera- 
 tion Act. From that time, it gradually increased in strength; 
 and having been adopted by the most distinguished men both 
 in and out of the Establishment, it allayed the old Puritan 
 controversy, and produced a long interval of religious peace. 
 Not that the spirit of Puritanism was wholly extinct ; but it 
 worked in a latent and quiet way. With the new rationalistic 
 tendencies it did not very readily combine. And yet even 
 where it retained some portion of its ancient fervour, it was 
 indirectly aflected by them ; and its future manifestations were 
 so shaped ^and directed by the intellectual character of the 
 eighteenth century, that what remains to be said of its subse- 
 quent history, may not unsuitably be included in the chapter 
 on Free Inquiry. 
 
 ' Table Talk. 
 
 k2 
 
196 RELIGIOUS FREEDOM I>f THE 
 
 sECTioisr n. 
 
 EVOLUTION OP THE DIFFERENT ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS FREE- 
 DOM, IN THE COURSE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURr. 
 
 The elements of this Rationalism which acquired force and 
 consistency after the Revolution, had been in course of pre- 
 paration during the whole of the preceding century. One or 
 other of them was furnished by every great movement of the 
 time ; to say nothing of the minuter contributions of inferior 
 sects and single minds. It wiU be interesting to trace the va- 
 rious, and apparently opposite, agencies that concurred in the 
 joint result. A singular contrast may be noticed between the 
 progress of free , theological opinion on one hand, and the 
 course of civil liberty and ecclesiastical independence on the 
 other. The most strenuous opposers of human authority in 
 matters of faith, those who, contended most earnestly for the 
 right of unfettered search into the Scriptures, and who receded 
 farthest from the popular orthodoxy — were supporters of the 
 Monarchy and the Church; while the sign of adherence to 
 the Parliament, was a strong profession of Calvinism. We 
 may find a reason for this distinction in the general principles 
 of human nature. The quiet contemplation of truth in its ab- 
 stract relations, apart from the passions of the multitude and 
 the practical interests of life, is favourable to comprehensive- 
 ness of view and an impartial judgment : but at the same time 
 it renders the mind more aware of limitations and exceptions, 
 of the mischiefs of dogmatism, the risks of sudden change, and 
 the necessity for undisturbed leisure and repose to promote 
 knowledge and disseminate just principles. It inspires, there- 
 fore, naturally a cautious and conservative temper^ Characters 
 of a very different motdd are required for the rough work of 
 social revolution. Intense, exclusive conviction, fastened on 
 a single object, and discerning truth and right in nothing else 
 — is the frame of mind, however unbecoming a philosopher, 
 which fits men for vigorous and decided action and leads to im- 
 mediate practical results. It was fortunate for our country, 
 that during the momentous contest which has exercised such 
 a lasting influence on its destiny, both these tendencies, the 
 practical and the speculative, had fuU scope to unfold them- 
 selves. 
 
 First, there was the great principle of Independency, claim- 
 
COURSE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 197 
 
 ing exemption for Christian societies from the control and 
 interference of the State. It is obvious^ however^ that the 
 fullest assertion of this principle is compatible with the esta- 
 blishment of a very harsh discipline and complete spiritual 
 despotism within the limits of each separate society. The 
 churches framed under it^ may become living centres of the 
 bitterest intolerance and darkest theology ; bitter and dark in 
 the same degree that they are responsible to no external juris- 
 diction, and secluded from extensive communion with other 
 Christians. It secures outward freedom, the rights of the 
 society ; but it does not thereby provide necessarily for inward 
 light and progress, or break the fetters of the individual mind. 
 Independency has contributed its element towards the general 
 result of religious liberty ; but it has not done everything. 
 
 Presbyterianism, as represented by Baxter, did not seek 
 absolute emancipation from the State, but rather invited and 
 cherished the connection, as a means of more easily constitut- 
 ing and keeping together a pure national church. It would 
 have tolerated a wide diversity of opinion and usage, and by 
 its good discipline and the concession of a large Christian li- 
 berty, have provided for its own internal growth and develop- 
 ment. But though its aims were generous and its spirit ca- 
 tholic, its conceptions were wanting in precision; the line 
 was vaguely drawn between those who should be admitted 
 into communion and those who should be simply tolerated ; 
 and still more was its definition of Toleration itself defective. 
 Presbyterianism did much for truth ; but it did not work out 
 the whole truth. 
 
 Another tendency displayed itself among the Latitudi- 
 narians. These acute and learned men clearly discerned the 
 inconsistencies of the vulgar Protestantism, while their con- 
 servative spirit and royalist bias held them back from any 
 participation in revolutionary movements. They would have 
 preserved the outward form and discipline of the Church, and 
 upheld its union with the State; but they would also have 
 released the minds of scholars and divines from the ignominy 
 of a disingenuous subscription, and confined the public ser- 
 vice to an enforcement of the fundamental truths and practical 
 duties of Christianity and a simple, Scriptural form of devo- 
 tion. 
 
 Setting out from views, and pursuing a course, quite oppo- 
 site to those of the Latitudinarians, Milton, the younger Vane, 
 
198 RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THE 
 
 and some of the Independents arrived at the same conviction 
 of the rights of the individual conscience and the fatility of 
 the disputes of sects. But these men would have dissolved 
 from the first all connection of the Church -with the State. They 
 would have allowed each separate society of Christians to work 
 out its way independently to the truth. They sought a tmity 
 growing up spontaneously from within, not one that should 
 he imposed artificially from without. Their sympathies were 
 not with monarchy, but with repuhlicanism. They would 
 have had, not a Church embracing all, but a Sta|;e interfering 
 in the exercise of their rehgion with none. These tendencies, 
 so distinct, yet leading alike to a common result, indicate the 
 opposition and confiict of the parties with which they respec- 
 tively originated. One felt the necessity of a weU-disciplined 
 learning and intellect to control and direct ; the other trusted 
 to the free movements of the harmonizing spirit of God. One 
 dreaded the overthrow of the ancient checks and securities of 
 law; the other entertained a generous trust in the impulses 
 of emancipated and ennobled humanity. Schism and fa- 
 naticism might have been prevented by one scheme; more 
 earnestness and zeal would doubtless have been developed by 
 the other. 
 
 In the close connection of religious differences with political 
 parties during the century and a half which followed the Re- 
 formation, men were visibly classed, whatever might be their 
 private sentiments, either with the Puritans or with the Church 
 Perhaps the more sceptical an individual's cast of mind, the 
 more he would feel disposed to yield an outward respect to 
 doctrines and usages already estabHshed. But the age which 
 produced a Bacon, a Raleigh, and a Selden, must have been 
 one of free speculation : and the antipuritanical character of 
 Elizabeth's court would naturally carry this tendency to a 
 licentious excess. As early as 1572 we find the grave and 
 decorous Burleigh complaining of the Queen's own house- 
 hold, as " a coverture for no small number of Epicures and 
 Atheists, because the Court is not comprehended within a 
 parish, but seemeth to be a lawless place^." At the social 
 meetings of wits and scholars in the metropolis, the high 
 questions of Theology and the Church formed a frequent topic 
 of discourse. Selden's Table Talk gives us a good idea of the 
 way in which such matters were discussed. In Sir John 
 ' Strype's Parker, p. 207. 
 
COURSE or THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 199 
 
 Suckling's Session of the PoetSj there is an imaginary descrip- 
 tion of one of thege meetings, where we are introduced among 
 others to the great theological scholars of the day, to Chilling- 
 worthj Hales, Falkland and Selden^ with distinct allusion to 
 their favourite suhjects of speculation^. Sir Walter Raleigh 
 and Hariot who accompanied him to Virginia, and wrote the 
 account of that country in Purchas's Pilgrims, are put down 
 by Aubrey in his collection of the traditions of those times, 
 among the Deists. Such charges are often vaguely made; 
 but this may be adniitted, that Raleigh's writings, though 
 abounding with beautiful expressions of religious sentiment, 
 contain few or no allusions to the positive doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity^. 
 
 Grenerally spealdng, the most eminent men of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, whatever exceptions may be taken 
 to their own theories, spoke reverentially of Christianity and 
 the Scriptures. Bacon in various passages of his works, has em- 
 phatically declared his belief in revelation, and almost ostenta- 
 tiously put forth his orthodoxy. Of Selden, Sir Mathew Hale 
 who was one of his executors has declared, that he was a sincere 
 Christian. Harrington and Sydney with all their republican 
 
 ' Tke couplet on Falkland shows how highly his hterary and theological 
 aeoompHshmenta were estimated by his contemporaries. 
 
 " Though, to say the truth, and Apollo did know it. 
 He might have been, both his priest and his poet," 
 
 2 "Hariot," says Aubrey (Lives, vol. ii. p. 369), "made a Philosophicall 
 Theologie, wherein he cast off the Old Testament, and then the New One would 
 (consequently) have no foundation. He was a Deist. His doctrine he taught 
 to Sir Walter Raleigh, Henry Earle of Northumberland, and some others. The 
 divines of those times lookt on his manner of death (he dyed of an ulcer in 
 his Kppe) as a judgement upon, him for nullifying the Scripture." BetaUing 
 the anecdotes of his time, the same author adds (ibid. ii. p. 519) ; " Ealeigh 
 was scandalized vrith Atheisme; he was a bold ms,n, and would venture at 
 discourse which was unpleasant to the churchmen." — " In his speech on the 
 scaffold," it was said, " he spoke not one wort of Christ, but of the great and in- 
 comprehensible God, with much zeal and adoration, so that," it was concluded, 
 " he was an A-christ, not an Atheist." In Baleigh's Remains is a httle piece 
 called the ' Sceptic' It has no direct religious bearing, but seems to have been 
 only a sort of philosophical exercitation on man's hability to be deceived by 
 his senses. In his ' Instructions to his Son,' his ' Advice to his Father,' hia 
 ' Letter to his Wife' after his condemnation, and throughout his ' History of 
 the World,' there are passages which express strong reUgious feeling. The lines 
 called the ' PUgrimage' contain a more distinct reference to the objects of Chris- 
 tian faith; but, generally speaking, Raleigh's allusions to religion, though fuU 
 of a solemn grandeur and melancholy, turn rather on its general truths than on 
 the doctrines of the Church. Is not this also the case with hie greater con- 
 temporary, Shakspeare ? 
 
200 REACTION AGAINST THE DOCTRINES 
 
 enthusiasm express the same reverential spirit. Even Hobbes 
 upheld Christianity as a beneficial institution^ and maintained 
 communion with the Church of England, when there could 
 be no interested motive for his conduct^. Lord Herbert of 
 Cherbury, a man of far more religious mind, while rejecting 
 the particular revelation of Christianity, afBrmed that the 
 principles of a universal religion, including the belief in a 
 -moral government and a future life of retribution, were im- 
 printed by God on the miads of all men, and that with these 
 principles the doctrines of Scripture ultimately coincided. 
 Christianity, therefore, was not so much disowned by him, as 
 deprived of its special authority, and embraced in a more ge- 
 neral system. It is said, that in his last illness, he wished to 
 receive the sacrament, and applied to archbishop Usher, who 
 refused to administer it. Lord Herbert of Cherbury died be- 
 fore the middle of the seventeenth century. The deistical 
 theory, vanishing for the time in any conspicuous form with 
 him, did not reappear tiU the close of the century. In the 
 interval the inquiries of earnest and thoughtful minds, assum- 
 ing Christianity as a divine fact, turned wholly on the mode 
 of conceiving it, and on the interpretation of the books ia 
 which it is contained. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 REACTION AGAINST THE DOCTRINES OP THE FIRST 
 REFORMERS. 
 
 The externality of the Eoman Catholic system, the bar- 
 rier of sacerdotal and saintly mediation which it interposed 
 between the mind of the believer and Christ, and the stress 
 
 1 See his Life in the Biographia Britannica. Notwithstanding his out- 
 ward adherence to the Church of England, it appears from a very remarkable 
 passage in the last chapter of the Leviathan, that Hobbes, hie many of the 
 most distinguished men of his time, approved of the theory of Independency. 
 Speaking of the successive resolution of the old hierarchy into its constituent 
 elements, first of Cathohcism into Protestant Episcopacy, then of Episcopacy 
 into Presbyterianism, and lastly of Presbyterianism into the " Independency of 
 the Primitive Christians," he adds; "which, if it be without contention, and 
 without measuring the doctrine of Christ by our affection to the person of his 
 minister, is perhaps the best," — assigning very sound and intelligible reasons for 
 this opinion. 
 
OF THE PIBST EEPORMERS. 201 
 
 •which it laid on the merit of mere works, produced an intense 
 reaction among the Reformers, which determined the govern- 
 ing principle of their theology. The avaUableness of faith 
 alone to salvation, and the reconciliation of the elect with God, 
 through the atoning ef&cacy of Christ's blood and the impu- 
 tation of his righteousness, became the great doctrines of the 
 Reformation, equally recognized, with some modifications of 
 detail, in the Lutheran and the Calvinistic churches. The 
 heart exulted in the privilege of direct access to Christ and of 
 unceasing communion with him. Faith was its joy and its 
 triumph. Those high mysteries of the old theology, which 
 had subsided, in the latter period of papal ascendency, into 
 quiet traditional forms of thought, perhaps of mere expression, 
 were now kindled into living convictions which absorbed the 
 entire energy of the religious sentiment ; and every approach 
 to the latent Photinianism and Pelagianism which had once 
 qualified their influence, was shrunk from with horror as the 
 device of Antichrist to bring back the exploded iniquity of 
 Popery. Christ and the Scriptures were the sole founda- 
 tion of human hopes : it was impious to admit a moment's 
 distrust of them. Of the two elements, the divine and the 
 human, which are so wonderftdly combined in the life of 
 Christ, and which account for the different judgments respecting 
 him, the former was elevated into prominence, and the latter 
 kept almost out of view. To exalt faith and give it new merit, 
 precisely those doctrines which are most at variance with the 
 natural reason and moral feeling of mankind — the incarnation 
 of deity, the atonement, election and reprobation, the final 
 perseverance of saints — were most earnestly insisted on as 
 the true orthodoxy. Such was the general character of the 
 Reformed theology : we have an illustration of it in English 
 Puritanism. 
 
 But it was soon perceived by reflecting minds, disgusted 
 with the dogmatism and intolerance of the common herd of 
 Protestant divines, that in shunning one extreme, the vehe- 
 mence of public opinion had only gone into another ; and a 
 return towards a more liberal and moderate system was the 
 consequence. Grotius and Leibnitz — the former the greatest 
 jurist, the latter the most universal scholar and philosopher, 
 of the seventeenth century, are known, to have cherished the 
 hope, that the differences between the old and the new Chris- 
 tianity might be reconciled, and were even charged by their 
 
 K 3 
 
203 REACTION AGAINST THE FIRST REFORMERS. 
 
 enemies -with lieing Papists^. Similar influences were not 
 unfelt in England. The strength of the popular theology was 
 deposited in two main articles : (1.) satisfaction to divine 
 justice by the death of Christ for the salvation of the elect 
 through faith alone, and the reversion in their case of the con- 
 sequences of hereditary corruption ; and (2.) the proper deity 
 of Christ, qualifying him to make this full and effectual atone- 
 ment. These dogmas were mutually related parts of a com- 
 mon system, recommended to the religious feeling of the time 
 by the very wonder and mystery in which they were shrouded^ 
 and which it was deemed irreverent to attempt to penetrate. 
 But to both of them opposition was now beginning to be made. 
 The first was encountered by the Arminians or Remonstrants 
 in Holland, with the concurrence and under the high autho- 
 rity of Grotius. At a still earher period both had been re- 
 jected by a society of learned men in the north of Italy, which 
 was afterwards dispersed by the Inquisition. Among these 
 were the Socini, uncle and nephew, who afterwards sought 
 refuge in Switzerland and Poland. 
 
 The Arminian and Socinian systems were not identical, but 
 they had near affinities and grew out of a common tendency 
 of mind. Both indicated a determination to quit the ground 
 of authority or of mere appeal to enthusiastic feeling, and 
 to bring the doctrines of religion to the test of conscience 
 and the understanding. Arminianism was rather the dictate 
 of moral sentiment ; Socinianism, a product of the reason. 
 Of both these systems the knowledge and the influence came 
 into England immediately from Holland. The Socinians had 
 at various times attempted to settle themselves in Holland ; 
 and although the Calvioistic synods always protested strongly 
 against their toleration, several of them found shelter without 
 being openly recognized among the Arminians. Even before 
 the close of the sixteenth century, many of their writings had 
 been translated and circulated in that country^- There was 
 great religious intercourse and sympathy between Holland 
 and England during the first half of the seventeenth century. 
 
 ' Bayle mentions, to refute, the molignaiit and contradictory imputations to 
 which the moderation of Grotius exposed him. Rivetus was his bitterest enemy. 
 Diet. Hist, et Crit. G-rotius. — Gibbon has described with epigrammatic point 
 the comprehensiye breadth of the creed of Leibnitz, iu hia ' Antiquities of the 
 House of Brunswick.' Miscellaneous Works, 4to. vol. ii. p. 368. 
 
 ^ Bayle, Diet. Hist, et Crit. Socin, notes K. and L. 
 
RISE OP LATITUDINARIAN PBINCIPLES. 203 
 
 Thither the founders of Independency had fled from persecu- 
 tion at home; and there in 1618 the Synod of Dort^ though 
 it decided in favour of Calvinism^ gave, as already remarked, 
 a strong impulse to English theology in the opposite direction. 
 It was at Dort, influenced hy the powerful reasoning of Epi- 
 scopius on John iii. 16, that Hales, to use his own words, " bid 
 John Calvin good night^." 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 RISE OP LATITUDINARIAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 It was in this state of things, while the contest between the 
 Church and the Puritans was every day becoming more vio- 
 lent and implacable, that a small society of learned and intel- 
 lectual men, keeping far aloof from the public strife, often 
 met, before the breaking out of the war, for free religious dis- 
 course, at the seat of Lord FaUdand near Oxford: "whose 
 house," says Hyde who was one of the number, " looked like 
 the University itself, by the company that was always found 
 there^." Lord Falkland was a most accomplished man. In 
 religion, with that high conscientiousness which was one of 
 the noblest attributes of the period, he was so anxious to 
 satisfy himself, by personal examination, on the great ques- 
 tions which then exercised men's minds, that " he read," we 
 iare told by the noble historian, "all the Greek and Latin 
 Fathers, all the most allowed and authentic ecclesiastical wri- 
 ters, and all the Councils, with wonderful care and observa- 
 tion." If Aubrey's account may be trusted, he had passed 
 through somewhat of the same discipline as his friend Chil- 
 lingworth, without taking the same extreme coiu-se : for his 
 mother being a Papist and anxious that her son should be of 
 the same religion, he was early incited to a close study of the 
 controversy between the Romanists and the Protestants. 
 
 What his religious opinions ultimately became, it is not 
 easy to decide. That he always retained his faith in Christi- 
 anity, there is no doubt. From the temper of the men who 
 
 1 ITarmdon's Letter, prefixed to Halfis's Golden Kemains. 
 
 ^ Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, written by himself, Tol. i. p. 33. 
 
204 RISE OF LATITUDINARIAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 joined in these friendly conferences under his roof, we may 
 not unreasonahly infer, that, while they possibly differed from 
 each other in their conception of points of doctrine, they agreed 
 m the acknowledgment of certain broad fundamental princi- 
 ples affecting the heart and life. This, indeed, was the true 
 spirit of Latitudinarianism. It was at Lord Falkland's house, 
 after frequent debates on the leading points of the controversy, 
 that Chillingworth conceived and executed his celebrated work 
 on the ReUgion of Protestants. Falkland, Hales and Chil- 
 lingworth have been called Socinians ; but the term is em- 
 ployed in so loose a way, (the same individual, for example, 
 being charged at once with Popery and Socinianism,) that no 
 great stress can be laid on the statements of such a mere re- 
 tailer of anecdotes as Aubrey. His account of PaMand^s first 
 becoming acquainted with the works of Socinus, is, however, 
 probable in itself, and rests apparently on good authority. 
 Cressy of Merton College Oxford, an Irish dean, and after- 
 wards a Benedictine monk, told Aubrey, in 1669, who men- 
 tions the place and other circumstances of the meeting, that 
 he was the first person who brought over Socinus's books; 
 and that Lord Falkland, coming to him one day and casting 
 his eye on them, was so taken with them, that he borrowed 
 them to peruse. Aubrey dates Falkland's conversion to Soci- 
 nianism from that time^. 
 
 Hales was of a reserved and cautious temper ; always seek- 
 ing some middle point between extremes ; and never disposed 
 to commit himself to any strong dogmatic opinion^. The 
 evidence for the Socinianism of Chillingworth is more satis- 
 factory, though it is still inferential and constructive^. We 
 
 ' Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 348. Wallace's Antitrimtarian Biograpliy, vol. 
 iii. p. 154. On the whole, it is most probable, that Falkland's theology inclined 
 to Socinianism ; though the letter of the Earl of Sunderland in the ' Sidney 
 Papers' (cited by Wallace) seems in its most obvious construction to imply the 
 reverse. 
 
 ' See his ' Confession of the Trinity,' and his sermon ' Of Dealing with erring 
 Christians.' 
 
 ^ In the last edition of the Biographia Britannioa (1793) it is admitted, that 
 Chillingworth, in the latter part of his hfe, became a Socinian. In the passage 
 from the ' Sidney Papers' (vol. ii. p. 669) referred to in the preceding note, 
 he is mentioned as defending Socinianism against Lord Falkland. See Carpen- 
 ter's Eeply to Archbishop Magee, p. 101, note. Dr. Edwards, the Calvinistic 
 defender of the Church of England, quoted by Peirce (Yindicise Eratr. Dissent, 
 in Anglia, p. 154) does not hesitate to class Chillingworth with the Unitarians. 
 TiUotson says, he was considered a Sociniau " for no other cause but his worthy 
 and successful attempts to malie the Christian religion reasonable, and to dis- 
 
RISE OF LATITUDINARIAN PRINCIPLES. 205 
 
 run no risk in trusting Clarendon's account of the principles 
 of these celebrated men, since he could have no inducement to 
 overcharge them with freedom and scepticism. Of Chilling- 
 worth he says, " that in some particulars he allowed himself 
 to be overruled by the judgment of his friends, though in 
 others he still adhered to his own fancy, which was sceptical 
 enough, even in the highest points." He notices his wonder- 
 ftd skill in argument, which excited the admiration of Hobbes, 
 with its retroactive effect on his own mind ; " that his scru- 
 ples were assisted with all the strength of his own reason," 
 so that " he contracted a habit of doubtiug, and by degrees 
 grew confident of nothing, and a sceptic at least in the greatest 
 mysteries of faith." The mind of Hales had less fire and power, 
 but was equally prone to freedom of speculation. The same 
 author tells us of him, that " he had contracted some opinions 
 which were not received, and would often say, his , opinions, 
 he was sure, did him no harm, but he was far from being con- 
 fident, that they might not do others harm ; and therefore he 
 was very reserved in communicating what he thought himself 
 in those points in which he differed from what was received^." 
 The dogmatic spirit of the later Unitarianism has raised 
 questions with respect to the divines of this school, which it 
 was not in the nature of their system to afford them the means 
 of answering. The last thing they thought of, was the propa- 
 gation of a particular doctrine : what they chiefly desired, was 
 to establish certain principles as the basis of universal Chris- 
 tian communion. Nor was their theory wholly new. It had 
 been introduced into England fifty years before by Acontius, 
 a learned Italian, who put it forth in a work entitled, " Stra- 
 tegemata Satanse," which he inscribed to Queen Elizabeth. 
 His plan, according to the representation of an adversary, con- 
 sisted in reducing the Christian doctrine to so small a number 
 of fundamentals, that all sects might be admitted to mutual 
 communion. It was a' complete anticipation of Latitudinaria- 
 nism^. This system accepted Christianity as a divine institu- 
 
 corer those firm and solid foundations upon which our faith is built." Birch's 
 Life of TiUotson, p. 6. The term Socinian was apphed then, as it is still, with 
 extreme vagueness. Cheynell, in his " Eise, Growth and Danger of Sooiniar 
 nism, etc.," London, 1643, charges Laud, Potter, Hales and Chillingworth, 
 with faTouring Arminianism, Socinianism and Popery. Des Maizeaux, " Histo- 
 rical and Critical Account of the Life and Writings of C hillin gworth," p, 275. 
 
 > Clarendon's Life, toI. i. p. 32, 42, 44. 
 
 2 Huio homini scopus fuit, ut ex toto libro apparet, ad tarn pauca necessaria 
 
206 RISE OF LATITUDINAKIAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 tion, sustained by an external authority from the miraculous 
 evidence which attested its origin; hut as Jesus Christ had 
 appointed no authorized interpreter, it left each man to follow 
 Ms own judgment, and regarded all as Christians, who ac- 
 knowledged the rule and obeyed the precepts of Scripture. 
 This was the final conclusion of Chillingworth, expressed in 
 the well-known aphorism ; " The Bible, and the Bible only, is 
 the religion of Protestants." The Latitudinarians, therefore, 
 took a different ground from the High Church, the Puritans, 
 and the Deists. From the two former they differed, in deny- 
 ing that there was any test of orthodoxy for the inquiring 
 mind within the limits of Scripture, once ascertained by the 
 imhroken testimony of ages to he the authentic word of God ; 
 from the latter, in asserting that there was, external to the 
 Christian doctrine itself, such proof of miraculous demonstra- 
 tion in its behalf, as clearly established its divine authority. 
 Hales for example makes the final test of a revelation to con- 
 sist in miracles^. This was a new mode of reasoning, different 
 at least from that which had been current among the Puri- 
 tans. It is in strong contrast with the argument of his con- 
 temporary, Dr. Owen, on the same subject, who maintains, 
 that the self-evidencing power of Scripture truth, is a surer 
 test of divine authority than is afforded by miracles^. 
 
 doctrinam Christianam arctare, ut omnibus sBctis in Christianismo pateret 
 aditus ad mutuam communionem." EivetuB (quotedby Bayle, Aoonce). The 
 learned Joseph Made, who in point of time connecta Aeontius with Chilling- 
 worth and his contemporaries, belonged to the same school. He was antical- 
 ■yinistic ; desirous of peace by not insisting on non-essentials ; and friendly to 
 a union among all Protestants by teeping only to fundamentals. His Hfe has 
 been written by a Latitudinarian diTine, Dr. Jolm Worthington, Master of Jesus 
 College, Cambridge, under the Protectorate. 
 
 ^ See among his " Miscellanies," the article, " How we come to know the 
 Scriptures to be the Word of God." 
 
 2 " Of the Divine Original, Authority, SeK-evidenoing Light and Power of 
 the Scriptures. With an Answer to that Inquiry, How we know the Scripture 
 to be the Word of God." Oxford, 1659. Owen has here argued the point with 
 uncommon force and boldness. We trace in his views the strong Pm-itan 
 hatred of tradition under any form. The substance of his reasoning may be 
 thus stated. " The mu-aoles alleged on behalf of Clu-istianity, are reported in 
 Scripture ; Scripture is the medium through which we receive them ; we must 
 therefore have evidence on other grounds, that Scripture is the Word of God, 
 before we can build our faith on the mu-aeles which it reports." " For the 
 proof," says he, " of the divine authority of the Scriptures, unto bitin or them, 
 who as yet on no account whatever do acknowledge it, I shall only suppose, 
 that by the providence of God, the Book itself be so brought unto him or'them, 
 as that he or they be engaged to the consideration of it, or do attend to the 
 reading of it. This is the work of God's providence in the government of the 
 
RISE OF LATITUDINARIAN PMNCIPLES. 307 
 
 The position taken by Hales and the Latitudinarians of Ms 
 school, was an approach to the rationalistic view of Christianity 
 which gradually prevailed, and which acquired ascendency 
 after the Revolution. One effect of it was the development 
 of a branch of theological inquiry, called the Evidences, which 
 
 world ; upon a supposal hereof, I leave the word with them ; and if it evidence 
 not itself unto their consciences, it is because they are Minded ly the God of 
 this world, which will be no plea for the refusal of it at the last day ; and they 
 who receive it not on this grotmd, will never receive it on any, as they ought." 
 (Sect. 15.) " Abstracting then from the testimony given in the Scriptures to the 
 miracles wrought by the prime revealers of the mind and will of 6rod in the 
 Word ; and no tolerable assurance as to the business in hand, where a founda- 
 tion is inquired after, can be given that ever any such miracles were wrought." 
 (Sect. 17.) " Many writers of the Scripture wrought no miracles, and by this 
 rule their writings are left to shift for themselves. Miracles, indeed, were 
 necessary to take off all prejudices from the persons that brought any new doc- 
 trine from God ; but the doctrine still evidenced itself. The Apostles converted 
 many, where they wrought no miracles. Acts xvi. xvii. xviii. ; and where they 
 did so work, they for their doctrine, and not the doctrine on their account, was 
 received. And the Scripture now hath no less evidence and demonstration in 
 itself of its divinity than it had when by them it was preached." (Sect. 18.) 
 In the fifth article of the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith 
 ("Of the Holy Scriptures") it is declared, that while the testimony of the 
 Church and the intrinsic excellencies of the sacred books are concurrent proofs 
 of the divinity of Scripture, yet the fall persuasion and assurance of its in- 
 fallible truth and divine authority are derived " from the inward wort of 
 the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts." " I am 
 now," says Baxter, " much more apprehensive than heretofore of the neces- 
 sity of well-grounding men in their religion, and especially of the witness 
 of the indwelling spirit : for I more sensibly perceive, that the Spirit is the 
 great witness of Christ and Christianity to the world : and though the foUy of 
 fanatics tempted me long to overlook the strength of this testimony of, the 
 Spirit, while they placed it in a certain internal assertion, or enthusiastic inspi- 
 ration ; yet now I see that the Holy Ghost in another manner is the witness of 
 Christ and his agent in the world : the Spirit in the prophets was his first wit- 
 ness ; and the Spirit by miracles was the second ; and the Spmt by renovation, 
 sanctification, Ulumination, and consolation, assimilating the soul to Christ and 
 heaven, is the continued witness to all true believers." Kehquise Baxterianse 
 (Part I. p. 127). Chilhngworth's view is hke that of Hales, and differs from 
 the Puritan in laying more stress on tradition and miracle. Advising an in- 
 quirer, he says : " Tradition being such a principle as may be rested in, and 
 which requires no other proof," he " would counsel him to rely upon it, and to 
 beheve that the book which we call Scripture, was confirmed abundantly by the 
 works of God to be the Word of God." Answer to Charity maintained by 
 Cathohcs (Ch. iv. § 53). 
 
 There were dififerences, however, among the Puritans themselves. Owen and 
 the Independents generally were more rigid Scripturahsts than Baxter and the 
 Quakers. One other extract from Owen will set his view of Christian evidence 
 in the clearest Kght. (Sect. 27.) " Though I should grant, that the Apostles and 
 penmen of the Scriptures were persons of the greatest indmstry, honesty, integrity, 
 faithfulness, holiness that ever lived in the world, as they were ; and that they 
 wrote nothing but what themselves had as good assurance of, as what men by their 
 
208 RISE OP LATITUDINAMAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 is almost peculiar to modern Protestantism. From the proof 
 of the genuineness and authenticity of the Sacred Books^ and 
 the inferred reality of the miracles and prophecies recorded 
 in them, an external argument is derived for their divine au- 
 thority, which is supposed to compel the assent of the mind 
 to their doctrinal and preceptive contents. A tract by Hales 
 ' On Schism and ScMsmatics ' gives us an insight into the 
 principles of his school. It was drawn from him, in conse- 
 quence of a conversation with a friend on the improper use of 
 the terms heretic and schismatic, and was only intended for 
 circulation among his acquaintance in manuscript. Hales, 
 while he freely communicated his ideas in private circles, was 
 averse to publication ; so that his great reputation, which pro- 
 cured him the title of the ' ever-memorable,' rests now rather 
 on tradition and the deep impression which he made on his 
 contemporaries, than on any extant monuments of learning 
 and ability, at aU proportionate to his extended fame. In this 
 tract he argues, that " they are schismatics who by insisting 
 on unnecessary terms of communion, not prescribed by Scrip- 
 ture, force others conscientiously to separate from them ; and 
 that all liturgies and public forms of service should contain 
 only such matters as aU Christians are agreed in ; there would 
 then be no schism." 
 
 The rise of Latitudinarianism is an interesting and signi- 
 ficant phenomenon. It was plainly the effort of enlarged 
 and contemplative minds, soaring above the narrow aims of 
 the factions which encompassed them, to find a just medium 
 between the divergent extremes of public opinion, and to re- 
 concile mental progress with the preservation of institutions. 
 The founders of the school were amiable, virtuous, and highly 
 
 senses of aeeing and hearing ai-e able to attain ; yet such a knowledge and assu- 
 rance is not a mffident foimdation for the faith of the Church of God : if they 
 receiTed not every word by impiration, and that evidencinff itself unto us, other- 
 wise than by the authority of tkeir integrity, it can be no foundation for us to 
 build our faith upon." (Sect. 27.) Calvin had already taught the same doctrine : 
 " Quod autem rogant : unde persuadebimui-, a Deo fluxisse scripturam, nisi ad 
 eoclesiae decretum confugiamus ? perinde est, ao si quis roget : unde discemus 
 lucem discernere a tenebris, album a nigro, suave ab amaro." " Altius peteuda 
 est hsec persuasio, nempe ab arcano testiuionio spiritus." " Sicuti Deus solus de 
 se idoneus est testis in suo sermone : ita etiam non antea fidem reperiet sermo 
 in hominum cordibus, quam interiore spiritus testimonio obsignetur." " Idem 
 apiritus qui per os prophetarum locutus est, in corda nostra penetret necesse 
 est, ut perauadeat, fidehter protulisse quod divinitus erat mandatum." Instit. 
 I. vii. 2, 4, quoted by Strauss, ' Christhche Glaubenslehre,' I. p, 134, 
 
RISE OP LATITUDINARIAN PKINCTPLES. 209 
 
 intellectual men. We are not conscious of injustice to their 
 memory, in questioning the fitness of their principles for any- 
 deep and lasting influence on society, or in refusiug them a 
 place in the first rank of the guides and instructors of man- 
 kind. Their system, by seeking the evidence of divine autho- 
 rity, that which binds the reason and the conscience, in out- 
 ward sanctions, placed it at too great a distance from common 
 apprehension amidst the researches and conclusions which 
 only the learned coidd pursue and entertain — at the end of a 
 long series of historical testimonies and logical deductions. 
 At the same time the very latitude of opinion which it allowed 
 within the bounds of Scripture, however acceptable to the in- 
 dolent indifierence of speculative men, failed to arrest atten- 
 tion particidarly on any one point of belief and endeavour 
 as specially Christian, and acted with no strong and impulsive 
 effect on the general mind. It was adapted to scholars, but 
 unsuited to the multitude. The Latitudinarianism of these 
 remarkable men was a step in the right direction towards a 
 fuller discovery of religious and social truth; an important 
 link in that chain of successive developments, on which the hu- 
 man mind is borne along towards some grand and comprehen- 
 sive result which has yet to come : but as conceived by them, 
 it can never be considered a final and complete adjustment of 
 the civil and spiritual relations of society. The influence of 
 the system on the minds of its most distinguished adherents, 
 supplies no argument in. its favour. They wanted that clear 
 perception of the right in action, that strong faith and de- 
 cision of purpose, which constitute the truly great character. 
 The irresolution of Falkland, the timid caution of Hales, and 
 the disingenuous compromise by which Chillingworth sullied 
 the brightness of his early fame, appear to great disadvantage, 
 as we look back on them through the rectifying light of time, 
 in contrast with the high-souled enthusiasm of Milton, and 
 the simple-minded, intrepid honesty of Baxter. 
 
210 EFFECT OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 EFFECT OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES AND SCIENTIFIC 
 DISCOVERIES. 
 
 The influence of the earliest Latitudinarians belongs to the 
 first part of the seventeenth century-j previous to the war ; but 
 their principles survived the troubled times which ensued, and 
 gained new force from the iatellectual tendencies that were 
 developed in the midst of social disorganization. I have no- 
 ticedj in a former chapter, the prosperous state of learning and 
 the commencement of the Royal Society at Oxford, under the 
 rule of the Independents. It was at Oxford that Hales, Chil- 
 lingworth, and Falkland had formed their minds : and to the 
 meeting in one centre of principles so apparently discordant 
 as Independency and Latitudinarianism, neither of which could 
 however be without effect on the adherents of the other, we 
 may perhaps ascribe a portion of the mental vigour which dis- 
 tiaguished the period, and which is so conspicuous ia Wilkins 
 and Locke. During the same time, a new spirit, itself the 
 result of previous influences, broke out in the sister Univer- 
 sity. Here, as it has already been shown, before the end of 
 the sixteenth century a reaction against Calvinism had set in ; 
 and this movement, though checked for the moment by Whit- 
 gift, continued silently to gather strength. Latitudiaarianism 
 spread from Oxford to Cambridge, where its principles were 
 zealously espoused. In both places indeed it must be consi- 
 dered as a natural working of the time, strongly expressing it- 
 self through particular minds, rather than properly originating 
 with them. Dr. Whichcote, Provost of King's College, Cam- 
 bridge, a man of great reputation and influence in his day, 
 disgusted with the dry, systematic divinity which had been 
 hitherto in fashion, took a wider view of the nature of religion, 
 and directed the attention of his students to the philosophical 
 writers of antiquity, Plato and Cicero, not excluding the later 
 Platonists^. A new species of theology, less confined by dog- 
 matic particularity, free and all-embracing, and deeply tinc- 
 tured with Platonism, began now to flourish at Cambridge, 
 
 ^ The spiritual affinitiea of the time, which it is so important to notice during 
 this most interesting period, are indicated in the fact of John Goodwin, the In- 
 dependent Arminian and repubhoan, dedicating to "Whichcote his famous work 
 ' Eedemption Redeemed,' in which he attempts to reconcile the doctrines of 
 Calvin with Arminianism. 
 
AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES. 211 
 
 and bore its fruits in the writings of Cudworth and More. 
 Glanville, a kindred spirit, was at Oxford. Cudworth appUed 
 his rich lore and speculative genius to reconcile the doctrines 
 of the Church with his favourite philosophy, and to fix the 
 principles of morality on an immutable foundation. Of his 
 religious views early in life, and of the large, spiritual sense 
 in which he embraced Christianity, we have a noble specimen, 
 teeming with a latent poetry that continually breaks out into 
 passages of genuine eloquence, in a discourse which he preached 
 before the House of Commons in 1647. His object, he tells 
 us in the dedication, "was not to contend for this or that 
 opinion, but only to persuade men to the life of Christ, as the 
 pith and kernel of all religion^." More embodied the doc- 
 trines of this philosophical school in verse. His Song of the 
 Soul, " a Christiano-Platonical Display of Life," which, in the 
 midst of mysticism and extravagance, is still richly fraught 
 with beauties, conveys perhaps a better idea of the religious 
 influences then predominant in the minds of many speciilative 
 men, than productions of a graver character, and is a complete 
 outpouring of the Latitudinarian spirit, breathing a religion 
 " fuU of charity,"— 
 
 ■ Free, large, e'en infinite, 
 
 Not wedged in strict particularity. 
 
 But grasping all in her vast actiye spriglit''." 
 
 ' His great work ' On the Intellectual System of the Universe,' — the iruit of 
 the studies of his Hfe, — was not published till 1678, when he had reached an ad- 
 vanced age. It was designed as a confutation in the Platonic spirit of Atheis- 
 tical necessity and materialism. Its doctrine of a plastic nature, gave rise to a 
 controversy (see the Bibhothfeque Ohoisie, V. iv. VI. vii.) between Bayle and Le 
 Clerc. In 1733 it was translated into Latin by Mosheim, with copious illustra- 
 tions from the treasures of his own neo-platonic lore. From a passage in Cud- 
 worth's preface to this work, we gather the fundamental principle of his Chris- 
 tian beUef. " Scripture faith is not a mere beheving of historical things, and 
 upon inartificial arguments, or testimonies only ; but a certain higher and di- 
 viner power in the soul that pecuharly correspondeth with the Deity." 
 
 2 Book II. canto ui. 6. It was pubhshed in 1647. It has been remarked by 
 one intimately acquainted with the literature of this period, that the noblest 
 specimens of More's poetry are to met with in his prose writings. (Note of 
 Mr. James Crossley to his edition of Worthington's ' Diary and Correspon- 
 dence,' in the thirteenth volume of the Chetham Society's pubUcations, p. 806.) 
 Almost against himself, Mr. Crossley has quoted in the same note two exquisite 
 specimens of More's English and Latin verse. His general remark is however 
 fuUy borne out by the ' Divine Dialogues,' which, in their delightful intersper- 
 sion of the subtlest disquisition with occasional touches of the richest and 
 sweetest fancy, carry the mind back to Plato and forward to Berkeley. How 
 delicious is his description (p. 138, 2nd edit. London : 1713) of the ' fresh even- 
 ing air, wafted through the sides of the arbour, and steeped in the cooUng 
 
212 EFFECT OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 
 
 Tillotson was a student at Cambridge, when these men were 
 in the vernal freshness of their powers, and lived in familiar 
 intercourse with them: but his calmer temperament, intent 
 on the practical and useful, and well disciplined by a close 
 study of the works of Chillingworth, imbibed their large spirit 
 of charity, without partaking of their poetry or venturing on 
 their flights of Platonic speculation, and gave promise from 
 the first of that quiet and moderate rationalism which marked 
 the era of the Revolution^. 
 
 beams of the moist moon, wliose strained light through the shadow of the leaves 
 casts a tremulous chequer on the table'! Compare another passage, p. 144. 
 One of the most characteristic of More's works is his ' Treatise on ImmortaHty,' 
 1659, of which Mr. Crossley gives an interesting account, with extracts, in 
 another note to Worthington's ' Diary and Correspondence,' p. 121. 
 
 ' Burnet's ' Own Times,' I. pp. 187-9. Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. 6. Lati- 
 tudinarianism had several phases ; it had its prosaic and its poetical side. In 
 some it was severely rationalistic ; in others it was highly spiritual and inclined 
 to mysticism. An accoimt of the ' Principles and Practices of the Latitudi- 
 narians in a Free Discourse between two intimate Friends ' (known to be the 
 work of Fowler, who was made bishop of G-loucester after the Bevolution, 1st 
 edit. 1670, 2nd 1671), exhibits the former aspect of this school ; has more of 
 ChiUingworth than of Cudworth in its composition ; and in the unreKeved 
 ilatness of its style, suggests an unfortunate comparison with the 'Divine 
 Dialogues' of More. The writer indicates his theological position by refusing 
 the witness of the Spirit, and denying the self-evidencing Ught of Scripture 
 (pp. 55, 65), though his exceptions should perhaps be understood as applying 
 only to the exaggerated statement of those doctrines. To the list of Platonizing 
 Latitudinarians who belonged at this time to the University of Cambridge, must 
 be added the names of &eorge Bust and John Smith. Bust obtained prefer- 
 ment in Ireland after the Eestoration through the interest of Jeremy Taylor, 
 whose funeral sermon he preached. Smith's ' Select Discourses ' were arranged 
 and put together after his death irom a confused mass of papers and edited by 
 Dr. Worthington, a divine of the same school. Smith's conception of the pro- 
 phetic spirit is highly characteristic. ' When we have once attained to a true 
 sanctified frame of mind, we have then attained to the end of all prophecy, and 
 see all divine truth that tends to the salvation of our souls in the divine light, 
 which always shines in the purity and holiness of the New Creature, and so 
 need no further miracle to confirm us in it ' (Of Prophesie, p. 266). More in 
 a beautiful passage of the ' Divine Dialogues ' tells us in the same spirit, that 
 amidst the " high noise and tempest of prophetic phrases and iconisms rattling 
 about our ears and beating on our fancies, we are to Ue low and couch close, and 
 to Usten to a more still, soft and intellectual voice, conveying a more inward and 
 frugal instruction with it ; " — and " sweetly charming our attention to her more 
 calm and still whispers, while she more safely instructs us in the most true and 
 useful meaning of the prophecies, as much as is sufficient to encourage us to side 
 with truth, and faithftilly to adhere to the interest of the kingdom of Christ,' 
 p. 390. Penington, the Quaker, expresses substantially the same truth as 
 these Latitudinarian divines. Smith and More, when he says, that " the Scrip- 
 tm-es of the New Testament were written to the saints, and cannot be truly or 
 rightly understood or made use of, but as men come into their spii-it and state." 
 (Letter Ixxiv. from Beading Gaol, 1670.)^Mr. Crossley informs us in a note to 
 
AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES. 213 
 
 AlthoTigli there is little affinity between the theories of 
 Platonism, and the cautious induction leading to solid and 
 practical results, which the new philosophy was now beginning 
 to employ in the fields of natural science, for a time the two 
 tendencies concurred in their effect on the mind. They 
 joined in a determined revolt against the old Aristotelian des- 
 potism ; in an effort to free the intellect from a superstitious 
 reliance on mere abstractions, and induce it to open the living 
 fountains of knowledge. There was much in the Baconian 
 interrogation of nature to allure the Platonic appetite for the 
 occult and the mysterious, and to confer a new interest on 
 pursuits which explore the relations of the seen with the un- 
 seen. Among the first revivers of learning in Italy, were 
 some enthusiastic Platonists. Chemistry, Astronomy and 
 Physiology, the most advanced of our modern sciences, 
 emerged, it is well known, from those twilight realms of 
 thought, amidst which stiU flitted the shades of the later Pla- 
 tonism. A system may have value, simply from the new 
 direction which it gives to the mind. The intellectual move- 
 ment excited by Des Cartes and Gassendi on the continent, 
 spread into England, and aided the effect of Lord Bacon^s 
 eloquent exposition of the true principles of scientific investi- 
 gation : and this again contributed to the increase of know- 
 ledge and became the most glorious monument of the time, 
 less perhaps from any positive result which it immediately 
 yielded, than from the new spirit with which it impregnated 
 the minds of all inquiring men. 
 
 Nor was it an age of speculation only. Every day the re- 
 sources of the inductive system were developed by fresh 
 achievements in art and science. If the sixteenth century 
 had produced a vaster erudition, the seventeenth unfolded a 
 clearer appreciation of principles and more efficient powers of 
 original research. The profound philologists who had dug 
 into the past, and brought up out of its depths the buried 
 wisdom of antiquity, were succeeded by workmen of another 
 order, who threw light into the darkness of the future, and 
 marked out the regions which coming generations were des- 
 
 Worthington'a Diary (p. 214) that he possesses a MS. of GrlanviUe in eontimua- 
 tion of Bacon's fragment 'The New Atlantis,' which concludes with a series of 
 characters of the great divines of the day, Cudworth, More, Bust, Smith, Which- 
 cote, etc. Everything relating to the Latitudinarianiam of this time is so inter- 
 esting, that it is to be wished so accomplished an editor would give the MS. to 
 the world. 
 
314 EFFECT OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 
 
 tined to possess and cultivate. The triumphs which the 
 awakened intellect of man had gained over time^ it was now 
 preparing to carry into the boundless empire of space. And 
 what splendid auguries of success presented themselves on 
 every side ! The discoveries of Kepler, Galileo and Harvey, 
 and the inventions of Otto Guericke and Huygens, were so 
 many outposts secured ia the advancing conquest over na- 
 ture, from which still bolder excursions could be made iu 
 every direction. 
 
 Thoughtful men, living in the midst of religious and civil 
 discord, could not fail to contrast the quiet, steady progress 
 of physical science with the hopeless logomachies of divines 
 and pohtical enthusiasts. For two centuries Europe had been 
 the theatre of ceaseless revolution. France, Germany and 
 England had been desolated with intestiae war ; Church and 
 State were convulsed and torn asunder : and yet the questions 
 for which men had fought, were neither settled nor under- 
 stood ; and the controversies of the theologians seemed as far 
 from a solution as ever. Attention was therefore naturally 
 directed to first principles. The true theory of government 
 and society became a subject of deep and earnest study. In 
 the speculations of Hobbes we discern the effort of a cold 
 and subtle intellect to solve the embarrassing problems of the 
 time. FUmer^s patriarchal theory and the republicanism of 
 Sidney's Discourses on Government which were written to 
 confute it, are a manifestation in opposite directions of the 
 same deep-felt want. The Oceana of Harrington addressed to 
 CromweU, which shadows forth the ideal of the true British 
 constitution in Church and State, and Milton's Letter to Monk 
 on the Means of a Free Commonwealth, though produced 
 under very different circumstances, since the former was the 
 fanciful production of learned leisure, and the latter called 
 forth extemporaneously by the strong emergency of the 
 times, ahke bear witness to feelings universally predominant, 
 and show with what earnestness men's minds were then exer- 
 cised on the first principles of social organization. 
 
 In such theories the subject of religion could not but have 
 a part ; and their tendency was to simpliiy and rationalize the 
 conception of it. The mind cast about for some firm ground 
 of reason and moral feeling, on which it could take refuge 
 from the vortex of incessant controversy. A sense of this 
 want gave a wide difiiision to Latitudinarian principles. Glan- 
 
AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOVEMES. 315 
 
 ville, imbued as he was with Platonic spiritualism^ embraced 
 nevertheless with great ardour the principles of the inductive 
 system and associated them with Christian theology. He 
 developed these views in various discourses ; and for his en- 
 deavours to establish the harmony of reason and religion, he 
 received the thanks of the Royal Society^. The Lecture 
 founded by Boyle, that zealous cultivator of natural philo- 
 sophy, was conceived in a similar spirit : it was not to enter 
 into any controversies among Christians, but to defend their 
 common religion against the objections of unbelievers. 
 Bentley who preached the first course in 1693, applied the 
 Newtonian theory of the Universe, then a novelty in the 
 scientific world, to demonstrate the folly of Atheism. Even 
 Baxter's views of the ground and measure of religious faith, 
 were modified by these influences^ 
 
 Harrington both in civil and in ecclesiastical matters was 
 a great worshipper of " right reason," which had become al- 
 ready the accepted phrase. In his Oceana and other writings 
 he attempted to reconcile a national rehgion with freedom of 
 conscience. He took his general idea ffom the distinction 
 between the priestly and the prophetic office ia the Hebrew 
 commonwealth; both which offices, he contended, were 
 necessary and ought to be combined in a well-constituted 
 state. Setting out irom the threefold assumption ; that the 
 Scriptures cannot yield a national religion without a body of 
 learned men skilled in the original languages, to interpret 
 them ; that such a body cannot permanently exist without an 
 assured maintenance and well-appointed Universities for their 
 
 ^ Biographia Britaimioa, Glanville. 
 
 2 " My certainty tliat I am a man, is before my certainty that there is a 
 G-od; quod facit notwm est magis notum." He then proceeds through suc- 
 cessive propositions -with diminishing degrees of certainty down to the truth 
 of particular doctrines and the canonioahieBS of certain hooks ; and concludes 
 thus : " They that will begin all their certainty with that of the truth of the 
 Scripture, as the prmcipvmn cognoseendi, may meet me at the same end ; but 
 they must give me leave to undertake to prove to a heathen or infidel, the 
 being of a &od, and the necessity of holiness and the certainty of a reward or 
 punishment, even while he yet denieth the truth of Scripture, and in order to 
 his beheving it to be true." Kehquise Baxterianse, § 212. 5.' — This passage 
 compared with the extracts in note of sect. iv. exhibits in strong contrast 
 the different character of the minds of Owen and Baxter. Scripture was a 
 aelf-evidenoing prineipmm cognoscendi with Owen. Baxter admitted to a large 
 extent the principle of rationahsm. The same contrast explains, why Owen's 
 object was to gather a number of fwe churches ; Baxter's, to form a compre- 
 hensive one. 
 
316 EFFECT OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES 
 
 education ; and that the majority of a nation have a right, 
 without oppressing others, to satisfy their religious wants in 
 their own way^ ; he proposed, that provision should be made 
 for the support of puhhc worship and religious instruction in 
 every parish, out of the national funds, whether arising from 
 tithes or from any other source ; that on a benefice becoming 
 vacant, the elders of the parish should apply to the University 
 for a successor to it, and after due formahties should elect 
 him their minister, this popular choice conferring on the 
 clergy their sole ecclesiastical authority ; and that while the 
 national worship should be conducted according to a directory 
 enacted by Parliament, the clergy should be l«ft at ftdl liberty 
 to interpret the Scriptures for themselves. Thus was the 
 Levitical or priestly element provided for, on which order, 
 learning and civilization were supposed to depend : but along 
 with this was conceded the full activity of the prophetic ele- 
 ment, and the right to gather independent congregations, the 
 members of which should enjoy the same civil privileges 
 vpith those of the national religion, and be empowered to elect 
 magistrates for the settlement of disputes among themselves, 
 or for bringing their affairs, if they thought fit, before the 
 Council of Religion appointed by Parliament for the defence 
 of liberty of conscience. No Popish, Jewish, or idolatrous 
 assemblies were to be tolerated^. Such was the ideal of a re- 
 ligious society conceived by an English scholai' and gentleman 
 in the time of the Commonwealth^ 
 
 Among the remains of the poet Cowley, is a " Proposition 
 
 1 " A commonwealth is nothing else hut the national conscience ; and if the 
 conviction of a man's private conscience produces his private reUgion, the con- 
 viction of the national conscience must produce a national religion." Oceana, 
 fol. p. 58. 3rd edit. 
 
 2 Oceana, pp. 87, 127, 179. Art of Lawgiving, book iii. cli. ii. p. 449. 
 Pohtical Aphorisms, pp. 505 and 516. 
 
 ^ Harrington largely iutroduced the ballot into the working of his imaginary 
 commonwealth, and thought it an indispensable instrument of pure and good 
 govei-nment. He was a great admirer of the Venetian repubhc, and expressed 
 his belief, that it would endure for ever. Some fine sentiments occur in his 
 Aphorisms ; e. g. " Man may rather be defined a reUgious than a rational crea- 
 ture ; in regard that in other creatures, there may be sometliing of reason, 
 but there is nothing of rehgion." p. 516. In 1659 Baxter wrote liis " Pohtical 
 Aphorisms or a Holy Commonwealth," to confute Harrington's " Oceana," and 
 Sir H. Vane's " Endeavours for a Commonwealth." He thought Harrington's 
 scheme heathenish, and that Vane's encouraged fanaticism ; and was convinced 
 that neither of them would take. In 1670 Baxter recalled his book, thinking 
 it led to misapprehension and only did mischief. EeUquiee Baxterianse, part 
 iii. pp. 71, 72. -i >t 
 
AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES. 217 
 
 for the advancement of Experimental Philosophy/' by the 
 establishment of a College^ from which divines were to be as 
 carefully excluded^ as poets from the republic of Plato. Only 
 the chaplain was to read prayers once a-day and preach and 
 catechize on the Sunday; with the express imderstanding, 
 however, "that he should not trouble himself and his auditors 
 with the controversies of divinity, but teach God in his just 
 commandments, and in his wonderful works^." It must have 
 been feelings allied to these, weariness with the vain jargon of 
 a technical theology, the want of a religion more pure, and 
 loving, and spiritual, and perhaps some leaning towards mys- 
 ticism, also a characteristic of the age, which urged men so 
 highly cultivated and refined as Barclay and Perm, to embrace 
 the principles of the Quakers. These tendencies were experi- 
 enced by numbers who did not make the same outward pro- 
 fession. I have already alluded to the known predilections of 
 Whitlocke, as evinced by his posthumous writings, and of that 
 remarkable woman. Lady Conway, the patroness of Van Hel- 
 mont, and the pupil of More. Of another learned lady of this 
 age, the princess Palatine Elizabeth, granddaughter of James 
 I., we are told that she had many conferences, and maintained 
 a correspondence, with the founders of Quakerism^. The 
 anecdotes which Aubrey has preserved of the poet Davenant 
 and Hales of Eton, both men who had had extensive inter- 
 course with the world, contain curious revelations of the secret 
 working of the public mind. It was the private opinion of 
 Davenant, that a hundred years after his time, religion would 
 come to a settlement " in a kind of ingeniose Quakerism." 
 Hales loved to read Stephanus, one of the FamUists, whose 
 tenets closely resembled those of the Quakers, and was accus- 
 tomed to say, "that some time or other, these fine notions 
 would take in the world^." 
 
 ' Hartlib, to wliom Milton addressed his ' Tractate on Education,' entertained 
 a similar design of establishing a philosophical college. He alludes to it in his 
 correspondence with "Worthington, and still more frequently to a grander idea 
 which he had conceived of a comprehensive society, quaintly designated by Viim 
 Macaria (the Blessed), that vfas to combine in one connected scheme of opera- 
 tion, all the friends of science and religion. Evelyn was smitten with the same 
 idea, and in a letter written to Boyle in 1659, draws out a plan. Worthing- 
 ton's Diary and Correspondence, with the editor's notes, pp. 149 and 163. 
 These various projects are highly significant of the spirit of the age, and must 
 be regarded as manifestations of the working of the new philosophy. The only 
 permanent result of these eiforts was the Eoyal Society. 
 
 2 Worthington's Diary and Correspondence, p. 210, note. 
 Aubrey's Lives, II. pp. 310, 362. The significance of this period of our 
 
 L 
 
318 FIKST SCHOOL OF 
 
 SECTION TI. 
 FIRST SCHOOL OF ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 
 
 While the Latitudinarian spirit was thus spreading among 
 numbers of the learned and philosophical, opinions more posi- 
 tively dogmatic and Scriptural, but equally opposed to the re- 
 ceived ecclesiastical theology, had taken root in various quarters 
 among the people. When the Bible was first dehvered to the 
 multitudes in their native tongue, it is not surprising^ — so clear 
 and distinct is the monotheism of both Testaments^ and so 
 beautifully human Christ's character and intercourse as de- 
 scribed in the New — that, in spite of the efforts of their 
 teachers to impress a particular doctrinal system on their 
 
 reKgious history, and the ohvious tendency of the Latitudinarianism which so 
 extensively pervaded it, have never yet been adequately appreciated. There wafl 
 at that time a deep religious awakening of the human spirit, and a disposition 
 in the host minds on all sides to coalesce in a broad and noble CathoKoism, such 
 as had never existed before, and of which there has been no revival since. It 
 was the momentary gleam of a better day, soon darkened over again by a cloud 
 of bigotry and intolerance thicker than ever. It was one of those lost opportu- 
 nities of the past, of which history furnishes so mom-nful a catalogue. Baxter 
 thus writes to Dr. Bates : ' On this occasion, Mr. Baxter becoimng acquainted 
 with the bishop (Usher), at last he treated with him about the necessary terms 
 of concord between the, Episcopal Divines and the Presbyterians, and such other 
 Nonconfomiists : for you must know that in Worcestershire they had before 
 attempted and agreed upon an Association, in which the Episcopal, Presbyte- 
 rians, Independents, and the disengaged, consented to terms of love and con- 
 cord in the practising of so much of discipline in their parishes as all the parties 
 were agreed in (which was drawn up) and for bearing each other in the rest. 
 Westmoreland and Cumberland and Essex and Hampshire and Wiltshire and 
 Dorsetshire, quickly imitated them, and made the like association ; and it was 
 going on, and Ukely to have been conunonly practised, tiU the return of the bi- 
 shops after broke it. Mr. Baxter at the same time treated with bishop Brown- 
 ing and Dr. Hammond about the terms of the desired concord. But bishop 
 Usher and he did most speedily agree.' From the Baxter MSS. in Dr. Wil- 
 liams's Library, London. Extracted in the Monthly Eepositoiy, vol. xx. p. 287. 
 Adam Martindale, in his very cm-ious and instructive autobiography, speaks 
 of the year 1659 as a season ' When moderation was growne in fashion,' and 
 he tells us, that Mr. Heyrick, at that time Warden of tlie Collegiate Church of 
 Manchester, declared himself, at a much earUer period, somewhere about 1646, 
 on coming down from the Westminster Assembly, " so perfect a Latitudinarian 
 as to afErme that the episcopall presbyterians" (this expression shotdd be 
 noticed) " and independents might all practice according to their owne judge- 
 ments, yet each by divine right." Chetham Publications, vol. iv. pp. 63 and 
 70. — One of the objects in which Harthb and his friend Dm-ajus (whose daughter 
 married Oldenburgh, the secretary to the Eoyal Society and a con-espondent of 
 Spinoza) at this time took the deepest interest, was an attempt to unite all Pro- 
 testants in one Church. Dm-seus, a Scotchman by birth, whose proper name 
 was Dm-y, was almost a fanatic in this cai\ae. 
 
ENGIISH UNITARIANISM. ; 219 
 
 minds, not a few who were wholly unacquainted with the con- 
 troversies of the learned, from merely studying the Scripture 
 and following the dictates of their native sense and feeling, 
 should have renounced the established system, and embraced 
 the principles of Unitarianism. Traces of such views occur at 
 a very early period of the Reformation, and are constantly as- 
 sociated with the tenets of Anabaptism ; the same strict and 
 simple Scripturalism, without any regard to the refined theories 
 of theologians, leading naturally to both conclusions. 
 
 In the reign of Edward VI. a Dutchman, George Van Paris, 
 was burnt to death in Smithfield at the instance of Cranmer, 
 for denying the proper divinity of Christ. Under Mary when 
 the control of the Protestant bishops was suspended, many 
 heresies of a kindred nature broke out among the humbler 
 class of reformers : some denying the godhead of Christ ; 
 some, his manhood; some, the godhead of the Holy Spirit; 
 others, original sin. Arianism, Pelagianism and Docetism, 
 were not unfrequent among the Anabaptists of this time. 
 The orthodox Protestants were greatly scandalized at the pre- 
 valence of these errors, as affording the Catholics an argu- 
 ment against the Reformation. Hence we find strong protests 
 against heresy, put forth with great sincerity, no doubt, but 
 with equal inconsistency, by several of the Marian martyrs^. 
 Some who were believers in the simple humanity of Christ, 
 appear to have been loosely designated Arians. This was the 
 case with Bartholomew Legate, whose tenets are recited at 
 length by Fuller, and who was burnt alive at Smithfield for 
 avowing them in March, 1612. Legate was admirably vCrsed 
 in the Scriptures, a ready disputant, and of unblemished cha- 
 racter ; on which the historian remarks, in his peculiar style, 
 that "the poison of heretical doctrine is nevermore dangerous 
 than when served in clean cups and washed dishes^." In the 
 following month, according to Fuller, Edward Wightman, 
 after sentence by Neile, bishop of the diocese, underwent a 
 similar fate at Lichfield, for a complication of heresies which 
 are all enumerated in the warrant for his burning, and among 
 
 ' See Hutchinson's 'Image of G-ocl, or the Layman's Boot,' dedicated to 
 Cramner ; and PhUpot's ' Jesus is God with us,' an Apology for spitting upon 
 an Arian. Both these works are among the recent pubHcations of the Parker 
 Society. Compare also Strype's Eccles. Mem. II. 114, 348. V. 69-70. Neal, 
 I. p. 41. Wallace's Antitrinitarian Biography, Historical Introduction, vol. i. 
 pp. 3-31. 
 
 2 Church History, Book X. Sect. iv. 6. 
 
 l2 
 
220 FIRST SCHOOL OF 
 
 which are included the incompatible doctrines of Etion and 
 Arius^. 
 
 The prosperous condition of the country during the half 
 century which preceded the ciril wars, its intercourse with 
 Holland, and the universal interest ia theological questions, 
 aroused and opened the public miad, and stimulated to free- 
 dom of thinking even those classes which had no direct parti- 
 cipation in the discussions of the learned. Influences escaping 
 through a thousand apertures from the study and the univer- 
 sity into the world at large, create in it a certain moral and 
 intellectual atmosphere, hy which the mass of ordinary minds 
 is unconsciously affected. Indications are abundant, that du- 
 ring this period opinions at variance with the orthodoxy both 
 of the hierarchy and of the Puritans, were spreading under 
 the names of Socinianism and Arianism, among the people. 
 The fourth of the canons that " were treated and agreed upon 
 in the synods of London and York" in 1640, is expressly 
 directed against Socinianism, and prohibits the importation, 
 sale, or dispersion of books infected with this " damnable and 
 cursed heresy," except iu the case of certain privileged mem- 
 bers of the Church and the Universities, who are specially 
 described. As the learned were thus allowed the use of Soci- 
 nian books, the prohibition must have been designed for the 
 general public, and would never have been framed, had not 
 books of this description been generally sought after. The 
 poet Suckhng, whose sphere was the world, and not the circle 
 of the learned, included an article on Socinianism, in his 
 "Discourse of Religion^." These heterodox opinions were 
 not suppressed by the intolerance of the more powerful sects. 
 Under the Long Parliament the doctrine was openly preached 
 in the city, that " Cljrist was a prophet, and did miracles, but 
 not God ;" and Nye, we are informed, told some divines of the 
 Assembly, that " to his knowledge, the denying of the divinity 
 of Christ was a growing opinion." Edwards says, that tenets 
 of this description found an entrance into some even of the 
 Independent churches^. It was the belief of foreigners at this 
 time, that the Socinian doctrine was widely spread through 
 
 ' The Commission and Wan-ant are given in the Appendix to Crosby's His- 
 tory of the Enghsh Baptists, vol. i. No. 1. 
 
 * I have never seen Suckling's book, but I learn the fact from the twofold 
 allusion to it, by Aubrey, vol. ii. pp. 548, 550. 
 
 ' Gangrsena ; Letters and Narrations, pp. 26, 31, 32 ; Part II. pp. 13, 14. 
 
ENGLISH UNITAMANISM. 231 
 
 the English nation. Dr. Owen writing against it in 1655^ 
 warns his reader^ that " the evil is at the door, that there is 
 not a city, a town, scarce a village in England, wherein some 
 of this poison is not poured forth^." In April 1653 the 
 sheriffs of London and Middlesex were directed by a resolu- 
 tion of the Parliament, to seize all the copies which they could 
 find of the Racovian Catechism (drawn up originally for the 
 use of the Polish Socinians and published at Racow), and 
 cause them to be burned at the old Exchange, London, and 
 the New Palace, Westminster^. 
 
 These facts supply unquestionable proof of an extensive dif- 
 fusion of Unitarian opinion ; but as yet it had assumed no 
 body and prominence. It was rather a latent element of 
 thought silently circulated in books, than an open profession 
 and worship ; for no individual of eminent learning and high 
 character had arisen, to preach it boldly in opposition to the 
 general persuasion of the Christian world. Such an one at 
 length appeared in the person of John Biddle, who to sound 
 scholarship, and an acquaintance so intimate with the original 
 Scriptures, that he could repeat in Greek almost the entire 
 New Testament, united not only a clear and firm belief in 
 the Unitarian doctrine and a dauntless zeal in its behalf, but 
 also a strong persuasion, that he had a mission from hea- 
 ven to propagate it in the world. He gave himself therefore 
 to the work with aU the courage and devotion of a martyr, 
 and sought every opportunity of proclaiming and defend- 
 ing' his views^. His zeal subjected him to persecution and 
 imprisonment, and even his life might have been in danger 
 from the iatolerance stiU ascendant in the national councils, 
 had not Cromwell interposed for his protection. Nevertheless 
 he made many converts especially among the Anabaptists, 
 and gathered a separate church in London. He appears to 
 have been unacquainted with the works of the foreign Soci- 
 nians, and had been led to his conclusions solely by private 
 study and constant meditation on the Scriptures. We may 
 almost describe his system as rudely scriptural. In his strict 
 adherence to the bibhcal letter, he goes the whole length with 
 
 ' Vindioise Erangelicse ; preface to the reader, p. 69. 
 
 ' Dr. T. Eees has prefixed the parliamentary votes to his translation of this 
 Catechism. 
 
 3 See his " Letter to Sir H (arry) V (ane), a Member of the House of Com- 
 mons" 1647, (in which he prayed to be heard before Parliament) in the first 
 TolumS" of the Old Unitarian Tracts. 
 
332 FIRST SCHOOL OF 
 
 Milton in Ms Treatise of Christian Doctrine, and betrays far 
 more sympathy with the principles of Puritanism than of 
 Latitudmarianism. In two Catechisms, published by him 
 in 1654, he maintained that God is confined to a certain 
 place; that he has a bodily shape; that he has passions ; and 
 that he is neither omnipotent nor unchangeable^. . He ad- 
 mitted a Trinity of three divine' persons. Father, Son, and 
 Holy Spirit, but denied their equality or that these three 
 persons were one God. The Father alone he acknowledged 
 as God, in the highest and proper sense. Jesus Christ he 
 regarded as our brother, and having no other than a human 
 nature, "but also our Lord, yea, our God;" and in conse- 
 quence of his divine sovereignty over us, entitled to a subor- 
 dinate worship. The Holy Spirit also he considered to be a 
 person, " the one principal minister of God and Christ, pecu- 
 liarly sent from heaven to sanctify the Church, who by reason 
 of his eminency and intimacy with God, is singled out of the 
 number of the other heavenly ministers or angels, and com- 
 prised in the Holy Trinity, being the third person thereof." 
 The doctrine of Christ-'s satisfaction to divine justice, and 
 that of the two natures in Christ, on which the former doc- 
 trine is built, he rejected, as " a mere device of men, neither 
 expressed ia Scripture, or capable of being solidly deduced 
 from it^." 
 
 Biddle had a great contempt for the scholastic subtleties of 
 the popidar theology. He says, his opponents " endeavoured 
 to delude both themselves and others with personalities, moods, 
 subsistences, and such like brain-sick notions, that have neither 
 sap nor sense in them, and were first hatched by the subtilty 
 of Satan, in the heads of Platonists, to pervert the worship of 
 the true God^." The publication of such opinions caused a 
 great sensation. When the two catechisms appeared, the Pro- 
 vincial Assembly of London, to counteract their effect, issued 
 particular instructions for the education and catechizing of 
 youth; and the Council of State thought them of sufficient 
 importance to direct Owen, the most eminent of the Inde- 
 pendent divines, to prepare a reply to them. Owen obeyed 
 the summons ; and his Vindicise EvangelicEe came out in the 
 
 ' I make tliis statement on the authority of Neal, II. p. 470. 
 ^ A confession of Faith, toucliing the Holy Trinity according to the Scripture, 
 1648. Eeprinted in the first volume of the Unitarian Tracts, 1691. 
 3 Letter to Sir H. V., p. 18. 
 
ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 223 
 
 following year, 1655^. Biddle did not long survive the Resto- 
 ration, but died in 1662, the victim of a close and very severe 
 imprisonment; during which he often comforted himself with 
 the remark, that the work was done; that the truth which 
 Grod had raised him up to profess, was now sufficiently brought 
 to light ; so that there only needed ingenuousness in men, to 
 induce them to embrace and acknowledge it^. Among those 
 who attended on Mr. Biddle's ministry, after he had formed 
 a separate congregation, was a young London apprentice who 
 had been already converted to Arminianism by the preaching 
 of John Goodwin, and whose zeal for his new instructor was 
 so great, that he ventured, young as he was, to apply to Oliver 
 Cromwell for his release from Newgate. Cromwell, pretend- 
 ing surprise but really tolerant at heart, said to him half 
 jocosely, as the story goes, " You curlpate boy, do you think 
 I will shew any favour to a man, who denies his Saviour and 
 disturbs the government^ ?" This youth was Thomas Firmin, 
 
 ^ The title of Owen's book is " Vindiciee ETangelicge, or the Mystery of the 
 Grospel vindicated, and Sooinianism examined, ia the consideration, etc., of a 
 Scripture Catechism of J. Biddle ; and also of the Catechism of Valentinus 
 Smalcius, commonly called the Eacovian Catechism ; with a reply to Grrotius's 
 annotations on the Bible, etc., by John Owen, D.D., etc., Oxford, 1655. Dedi- 
 cated to the Council of State and his Highness." In the epistle dedicatory to 
 the Heads of Houses and other students of divinity at Oxford, Owen states, 
 that Biddle's Catechism had spread into Holland, where it was replied to by 
 several learned men, Amoldus of Franeker , and Maresius, professor at Gro- 
 ningen. The latter had charged the English nation with a general infection of 
 Socinianism. Owen had corrected biTn in a private letter ; although in the pre- 
 sent wort he seems to admit, as is evident from a passage already quoted, that 
 there was some pretext for the charge. Owen remarks of Grotius, that he was 
 suspected of Socinianism, though he leaned in some things to the Bomanists ; 
 and observes of many who were in outward communion vpith the Church of 
 Bome, that they were suspected of being privately Sooinians. What he says of 
 the execution of Servetus, deserves notice, as showing how ill he understood, vrith 
 all his zeal for the rights of gathered churches, the true nature of rehgious 
 liberty. " He is the only person in the world that I ever read or heard of, that 
 ever died upon the account of religion, in reference to whom the zeal of them 
 that put him to death may be acquitted. But of these things God wiU 
 judge." p. 44. 
 
 2 Short Account of the Life of John Biddle, M.A., sometime of Magdalen 
 Hall, Oxford, in the first volume of the Old Unitarian Tracts. . 
 
 3 Birch's Life of Tfllotson, p. 293, who quotes Kennet's Register and Chro- 
 nicle, p. 761, as his authority. Godwin (History of the Commonwealth, IV. p. 
 325) treats the story as a pure fiction, partly from its internal improbabihty, 
 partly from its inconsistency with chronology. As Eirmin was bom in 1632, 
 if vrith Godvrin we place this incident under the year 1655, just before Biddle's 
 banishment to Scilly, it is no doubt exceedingly improbable. But if the im- 
 prisonment referred to be a previous one (for Biddle was several times impri- 
 soned), at the beginning of the Commonwealth, early in 1650, the incident ia 
 
334 riKST SCHOOL of 
 
 who afterwards acquired celebrity among his contemporaries, 
 as an Unitarian and a philanthropist. 
 
 Few lives and characters present a greater contrast than 
 those of Biddle and Firmin, though they entertained the same 
 principles, and were devoted to a common cause. Biddle was 
 a laborious scholar who wrought out his persuasion from as- 
 siduous study. Firmin was a simple citizen, wholly unac- 
 quainted with the learned languages, who embraced his opi- 
 nions, because he felt them rational, and was convinced by 
 his master's instructions. Biddle thought he served mankind 
 by bearing fearless witness to the truth, and encountering re- 
 proach and persecution for its sake. Firmin spent his days 
 in acts of practical benevolence, lived on terms of friendship 
 with the clergy, and never separated himself from the commu- 
 nion of the Church. Poverty and opprobrium, the noisome 
 dungeon, and the lonely rock of exUe were the portion of one : 
 whUe the other accumulated wealth, and enjoyed general re- 
 spect and influence, and passed his leisure in the quiet retreats 
 of pleasant gardens. Biddle's high conscientiousness required 
 men to come out of the churches which he regarded as cor- 
 rupt, and to renounce all outward conformity to the profes- 
 sion of error. The gentle and sanguine temper of Firmin 
 led him to hope, that he could more eflectually disseminate 
 the truth by continuing where he was. If one had the cou- 
 rage of a martyr ; the other glowed with aU the zeal of a pro- 
 pagandist. 
 
 Firmin was charged by those who disliked his prLuciples, 
 with disingenuousness and timidity for remaining a conformist ; 
 and considering the decided nature of his opinions, it woidd 
 doubtless have been more consistent to take another course. 
 But allowance must be made for the influences by which he was 
 surrounded, and the hopes which men of his cast of mind often 
 allow themselves to entertain, of some possible change in the 
 public service of the Establishment. He might shrink from the 
 origination of new societies : and for one with his views, there 
 •was little to irndte sympathy in any section of the Noncon- 
 formists, among whom orthodoxy was yet harsher and more in- 
 tolerant than in the Church. In his days Tillotson, Patrick, 
 Fowler, and other moderate divines of the same school, were 
 popular preachers in the metropolis; and he enjoyed their 
 
 clearly within the limits of possibility, and agrees very well with the characteristic 
 humour of Cromwell. If not true, it is at least ben trovafo. 
 
ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 235 
 
 friendsliipj and was admitted into their society. He was a 
 man, moreoverj of the most extensive henevolence, and raised 
 and contributed large sums for employing and improving the 
 poor, and preventing mendicity^. No doubt he persuaded 
 himself, that by setting up as a sectary, he should at once 
 lose his greatest means of influence, and be deprived of much 
 valuable co-operation. His charity was confined within, no 
 limits of sect or party. He set on foot a subscription for the 
 relief of the deprived Non- jurors, and was only deterred from 
 prosecuting it, by the assiirance that he was aiding the ene- 
 mies of government. When the Protestant refugees came 
 over from France in 1680 and 1681, he collected the funds; 
 and arranged the plan, for their reception and assistance. Por 
 this gratuitous kindness of an Unitarian, some of the French 
 ministers afterwards made an ungrateful return, by giving 
 secret information to the civil and ecclesiastical courts of un- 
 licensed books and heterodox opinions^. Though he did not 
 write himself, he was very active and liberal in procuring and 
 circulating the productions of others, in defence of his doc- 
 trinal views ; and to him, in this sense, it has been often sup- 
 posed, that many of the old Unitarian tracts are ultimately 
 due. To justify his continuance in the Church, he was accus- 
 tomed to give a vague Sabellian interpretation to the language 
 of its public formulary. Towards the close of his life, how- 
 ever, he became dissatisfied with his conduct, convinced per- 
 haps by the proceedings of Convocation, how vain it was to 
 look for any change in the liturgy ; and he was preparing, it 
 is said, to establish congregations for the open profession of 
 Unitarianism, not by way of schism, but only as fraternities 
 in the Church, when death intercepted his design^. 
 
 Firmin's was not a solitary case. Milton's posthumous 
 Treatise on Christian Doctrine, contains ample proof that he 
 too must be classed with the Unitarians of this period. There 
 
 • In 1681 lie pubKshed a Letter on this sntjeet, in which he gave an account 
 of a worihouse that he had established in London. Birch's L&e of TiUotson, 
 p. 293. 
 
 2 Befleotions on Two Discourses by La Mothe, TTnitarian Tracts, vol. ii. 
 
 ^ Life of Firmin, written by an intimate acquaintance, 1698 ; with an account 
 of Mr. Eirmin's religion appended, p. 51. Of Best, Webberley, Lushington 
 and others who Hred about this time, and belong to the first school of English 
 "Unitarianism, accurate notices will be found in the third volume of Wallace's 
 Antitrinitarian Biography. The chief pubhsher of Unitarian works and others 
 of similar character, during the Commonwealth, was Eichard Moone, at the 
 Seven Stars, St. Paul's Church Yard. Wallace, vol. i. p. 156. 
 
 I 3 
 
226 FIRST SCHOOL OP 
 
 is clear evidence^ that from the accession of Charles II. to the 
 Eevolution, in spite of High Chnrch doctrines and the pro- 
 fessed Calvinism of most of the Dissenters, a strong and 
 deepening tmder-cnrrent of theological rationalism was hear- 
 ing some of the most influential minds of the period in an. 
 opposite direction. The Latitudinarianism so prevalent among 
 the clergy, was helieved by many on very plausible grounds, 
 to he only a cover for heterodoxy. Edwards, a Calvinistic 
 defender of the Church of England, boldly asserted, that a 
 large body of the clergy were fast lapsing into Socinianism ; 
 and that they were providentially rescued from it by the im- 
 prudence of the Unitarians, whose fearless promulgation of 
 their doctrine iu aU its strength, occasioned a reaction against 
 it^. William Penn openly attacked the doctrines of the 
 Trinity, Satisfaction, and Imputed Righteousness, and brought 
 his arguments from Scripture testimony and right reason^- 
 This was the very ground taken by Unitarian writers. Penn 
 was answered by one formerly of his own persuasion, who 
 charged him with Deism. The supposed affinity of these 
 views with Deism, was hinted at in a very early stage of the 
 controversy. Those who dishked them, affirmed that they ne- 
 cessarily led to that system ; while those who embraced them, 
 maintaiaed that their general adoption would supersede it in 
 the minds of all good men. 
 
 The anxieties which accompanied the first reign of James II., 
 absorbed every other consideration ; but when the Revolution 
 was once settled, the Unitarian controversy broke out with 
 great activity, giving birth to an immense number of tracts 
 on all sides, and continued to engage the attention of the 
 theological world during the last ten years of the seventeenth 
 centitty. A new interest was imparted to it at the first, by 
 King William's appointment of a commission to consider alte- 
 rations in the rubric and liturgy. In 1693 a treatise in con- 
 futation of the Trinity was widely dispersed, and copies of 
 it sent under cover to members of both Houses of Parlia- 
 ment. It was voted by the Lords an infamous and scandalous 
 libel, and ordered to be burnt by the common hangman ; and 
 the Attorney-General was directed to prosecute its author, 
 
 ' Peirce, Vindioise Fratrum Dissentieiitium iu AugUa, p. 155. 
 
 2 The Sandy Foundation Sliaken, by William Penn, a builder on that 
 Foundation which cannot be moved. London, printed for J. Johnson and Co 
 1812. 
 
ENGLISH TJNITARIANISM. 327 
 
 printer, and publisher. The question was evidently regarded 
 as one of vital importance, from the number of distinguished 
 churchmen who took part in it, and who published explana- 
 tions of the Trinity. Of these, the two most remarkable, as 
 exhibiting the opposite points of theory, were Wallis, SavUian 
 professor of geometry at Oxford, who sacrificed the trinity 
 to preserve the unity, and Sherlock, afterwards Dean of St. 
 Paul's, who for a contrary reason fell into actual tritheism. 
 When Sherlock's treatise first appeared, it was applauded as 
 a master-piece J but it was soon after attacked with much 
 acuteness and great bitterness by South, the celebrated High- 
 Church wit, who though really adopting the views of Wallis, 
 seemed to avoid the extreme errors of both sides, and vindi- 
 cated a theory which from the time of its acquiriag autho- 
 rity in the Middle Ages, had been generally received as ortho- 
 dox in the Church^. The dispute between South and Sher- 
 lock was carried on with so much heat, excited such vehement 
 dissensions in the Church itself between the Nominahsts and 
 Realists, as those who supported the opposite views were called, 
 and drew forth so many sarcastic observations from those who 
 stood by and witnessed the afiray, that it became a downright 
 scandal to religion^. At length Teuison who had succeeded 
 Tillotson at Canterbury, thought it necessary to interfere, and 
 prohibited all allusion to the Trinity in sermons and discourses, 
 except ia Scripture language or terms already recognized by 
 the Church, without any attempt at new modes of explana- 
 tion. Howe, the Nonconformist, engaged in this controversy, 
 and adopted almost the identical idea of Sherlock; but as 
 they differed in the subordinate details of their theory, close 
 agreement in essentials did not prevent some exchange of 
 angry feeling between them. In 1695 Sherlock's exposition 
 of the Trinity was condemned in a solemn decree of Convo- 
 cation at Oxford, as false, impious, and hereticaP. 
 
 ' He admitted that the three divine persons have " no real existence of their 
 own, but are modes, habitudes, or affections of the divine substance — being such 
 in spiritual and immaterial beings, that a posture is to a body." Quoted by Wal- 
 lace, I. p. 264. 
 
 2 It was ridiculed in a well-known ballad of the time, called the Battle Royal ; 
 which is given at length by Wallace, I. p. 351. 
 
 3 Toulmin's Historical View of the State of the Protestant Dissenters from 
 the Eevolution to the accession of Queen Anne, Oh. II. sect. ii. A very fall 
 and accurate account of the Trinitarian controversy in the last ten years of the 
 seventeenth century, derived from contemporary documents, is contained in 
 Wallace's Historical Introduction to his Antitrinitarian Biography. 
 
228 FIRST SCHOOL OF 
 
 This controversy is important from its effects on the general 
 progress of theological opinion. The Unitarians skilftilly used 
 the opportunity which it afforded, of calling attention to their 
 views, and kept the press constantly in action with their puh- 
 lications, though the state of the law still rendered it neces- 
 sary to write anonymously. Their tracts fill several volumes 
 and nearly exhaust the Scriptural argument on the side of 
 the Unitarians, abounding with proofs of learning and acute- 
 ness, conveyed in a clear, condensed and forcible style^. Eeason 
 and Scripture, the true grounds of a Christian's belief, are 
 declared to give no support to the doctrine of the Trinity; 
 which is traced under aU its modifications to the principles of 
 some philosophical school, and so has its roots not in Scrip- 
 ture, but out of Scripture. Thus WalHs's theory is called the 
 Ciceronian Trinity, because justified by an expression found 
 in the writings of the Roman philosopher; Sherlock's, the 
 Cartesian ; Cudworth's, the Platonic ; South' s, the AristoteHan 
 or Peripatetic : while the Trinity of the multitude is resolved 
 into their simple love of mystery^. 
 
 These tracts show, that Unitarianism had now become a 
 proper JEnglish opinion ; since the writers are careful to insist 
 on the several points in which they differed from the foreign 
 Socinians. Socinus and Crell had questioned God's certaia 
 foreknowledge of contingent events : the English Unitarians 
 believed in his absolute omniscience. The foreigners thought 
 he was present every where only by knowledge and power : 
 the English affirmed his essential, personal omnipresence. 
 We see the effect of charges brought against them, in purify- 
 ing their doctrine. They were accused of ascribing the same 
 power and knowledge, and offering the same worship, to 
 Christ, a mere man, as to Almighty God ; but they replied, 
 that they did not pay to Christ the same homage as to God, 
 but something very inferior, no more than what most Trini- 
 tarians themselves paid to the human nature of Christ. They 
 
 ' These tracts fill five or six volumes in smaJl quarto. The three first are the 
 most important ; in the publication of which Fii-min is supposed to have been 
 largely concerned. It is indicative of the slate of the times, that some of these 
 volumes have no date on the title-page, no printer's or pubhslier's name, and no 
 mention of the place of pubUoation. The bibhography of these tracts for those 
 who are cm'ious in such matters, will be found in the Appendix to "WaUace's 
 Antitrinitarian Biography, No. XXIII. Compare the same work, I. p. 358. 
 
 ^ Considerations on the ExpMcations of the Doctrine of the Trinity, etc., 
 written to a Person of Quality. 1693. Ti-aots, vol. iii. 
 
ENGLISH UNITARIANISM. 339 
 
 professed to follow^ not the Polish Socinians, but Mr. Biddle, 
 whom they looked up to as their acknowledged head^. 
 
 Contemporary with this controversy about the Trinity, 
 were discussions on other disputed points of theology, espe- 
 cially on those of Satisfaction and Imputed Righteousness. 
 These had been first excited in the Church by the appearance 
 of Bull's Harmonia ApostoUca^ ; but they were soon warmly 
 agitated among the Nonconformists, the Presbyterians gene- 
 rally taking one side and charging their opponents with 
 Antiaomianism, the Independents the other and accusing the 
 Presbyterians of a tendency to Socinianism. A division in 
 the Lectureship which they had hitherto jointly supported, 
 was the consequence^- In 1690 after the passing of the 
 Toleration Act, a plan of union had been proposed between 
 Presbyterians and Independents, drawn up chiefly by Howe. 
 It was designed, " not as a measure for any national consti- 
 tution, but for the preservation of order in congregations," 
 and was based on the simple knowledge of Scripture as the 
 perfect and only rule of faith, to which the Articles of the 
 Church of England and of the Westminster and Savoy Con- 
 fessions, should be admitted to be agreeable. This measure 
 was defeated by doctrinal jealousies between the two parties*. 
 Questions of this description were not confined to the clergy, 
 but largely interested the laity ; and the discussion of them 
 acted strongly on public opinion and confirmed its rational- 
 istic tendency. 
 
 In the midst of these controversies most of the Protestant 
 Dissenting meeting-houses were built, and the congregations 
 assembling in them, acquired for the first time a permanent 
 form and constitution. On the whole, Socioian opinions were 
 more prevalent in the Church than among the Dissenters ^ 
 Firmin himself was an Episcopalian, warmly attached to the 
 
 ' Before the close of the century, the ITnitarianB appear to have had separate 
 places of worship of their own ia London, the ministers of which were here- 
 tical offshoots from the Presbyterians. Wallace, i. p. 252, who cites as his 
 authority, Leslie's " Socinian Controversy Discussed : London, 1708." Firmin 
 towards the close of his life designed, as we have seen (p. 225), the setting up 
 of a pubUo meeting-place in the metropoh^ for the TJnitarians. 
 
 2 It was an attempt to reconcile the doctrinal views of Paul and James. 
 
 3 Nelson's Life of Bull, pp. 257-276. In these disputes the Dissenters ap- 
 phed to Stmingfleet as an arbitrator. 
 
 ■• Howe's Lite by Calamy, pp. 59-60. 
 
 * Pierce's Tindioise Fratrum Dissentientium, etc., P. II. ch. ii. De Soci- 
 nianismo Eoclesise Anglicance attribute, p. 137. The statement is confirmed 
 
230 INFLUENCE OF THE 
 
 idea of one Catholic indivisible Cliurcli, and had contracted 
 from his Latitudiaarian acquaiatance a strong aversion to 
 separation. 
 
 It may be taken, however, as a proof of the wide and deep 
 influence of the Unitarian and kindred controversies, that 
 the Presbyterians, with a wise foresight, not wishing to anti- 
 cipate the issue of a question that was yet under examiaation, 
 for the most part left the trusts of their meetiag-houses quite 
 open, providing simply for the public worship of God and the 
 teaching of his Holy Gospel : or if any limitations were intro- 
 duced, admitted such only as were necessary to bring the 
 trust within the benefits of the Toleration Act. This was by 
 no means an unimportant phenomenon, to mark the close of 
 the century and accompany the first workings of the Revolu- 
 tion. It showed that the experience of the last age had not 
 been without its effect. 
 
 SEOTiosr VII. 
 
 INFLTTENCE OF THE WRITINGS OF LOCKE. 
 
 In every period remarkable for a critical change in human 
 affairs, some one mind may usually be singled out, that in a 
 more peculiar manner expresses its spirit and embodies its 
 results. If we take CromweU and Milton as representing, 
 one the civil and military, the other the spiritual, element of 
 the Commonwealth ; we may consider Locke as the intellec- 
 tual symbol of the age of the Revolution. Not indeed that 
 he represents the Revolution itself: for it was not brought 
 about by his influence ; and his chief works, including his 
 political tracts, appeared subsequent to it; and as a fact it 
 fell very far below his principles. But his mind in its various 
 forms of religious and philosophical manifestation, supplies 
 the spiritual links which connect the great movements of the 
 seventeenth, with the tranquil progress of the eighteenth, 
 century. His cautious, thoughtful, practical understanding 
 drew a deep moral from the exciting drama of wliich he had 
 
 by Palmer in his Vindication of Dissenting Academies from the attacks of 
 Samuel Wesley. He speaks of " troops of Unitarian and Sooinian writers, and 
 not one Dissenter is found among them." This was in 1705. 
 
WRITINGS OF LOCKK. 231 
 
 ■witnessed tlie closing scenes ; and delivered it to tlie world in 
 short unpretending . treatises filled with, -wisdoni, popidar and 
 attractive at once from their marvellous clearness and sim- 
 plicity and from their ready applicahility to the most import- 
 ant of human concerns. It is perhaps the chief praise of the 
 Revolution, that it furnished an immediate and assured^ 
 though a limited, stage for calling out and exhibiting in pro- 
 gressive expansion, the fruitful principles condensed in the 
 writings of Locke. He was the genius that watched over and 
 guarded the critical period of transition — the solemn " breath- 
 ing moment on the bridge of Time." His education, the ma- 
 terials from which he reasoned, and the influences which di- 
 rected his inquiries, all belong to the age that was then pass- 
 ing away : but his results, his conclusions, and the powerfal 
 sway he was destined to exercise over the human mind, con- 
 nect him with a new age of very different character, of which 
 he was permitted to behold only the commencement. 
 
 His great works, those by which he moulded the opinions of 
 posterity, were the fruit of his latter years. The principles of 
 civil and rehgious freedom which his writings disseminated, if, 
 in passing through his masculine intellect, they lost something 
 of the poetic beauty and speculative grandeur of their original 
 conception in the minds of his predecessors, were stripped of 
 useless adjimcts, reduced to clearness and precision, and put 
 into a shape for being dealt with by practical men in the 
 actual affairs of the world. The subjects of his various works 
 announce the character of his mind, and the kind of service 
 which he was fitted to render to his contemporaries and their 
 descendants. They treat of government, of rehgion, and of 
 the foundations of knowledge in the constitution of the mind. 
 They propose to settle on a rational basis without assumption 
 or theory, those great questions of human well-being, lying 
 at the very foundation of society, conflicting views of which 
 had caused the strife and bloodshed of the preceding century. 
 This was the governing idea of his life; and in reference to 
 this, we must estimate and interpret his works. Their influ- 
 ence on the progress of rehgious opinion, is the immediate 
 object of our present inquiry. 
 
 Locke's history and early connections throw light on the 
 formation of his mind, and the growth of those views which 
 he has developed in his Letters on Toleration, his Essay on 
 the Human tJnderstanding, his Reasonableness of Christia- 
 
232 INFLUENCE OP THE 
 
 nity, and his Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul. He was 
 born of Puritan parents ; and after completing his school edu- 
 cation, was entered of Christ Church Oxford, where Penn 
 was his feUow-student, at the time when Owen was Dean, and 
 the University under the rule of the Independents. At Ox- 
 ford he applied himself to the philosophy of Des Cartes ; but 
 his inclination led him peculiarly to the study of physic and 
 natural philosophy ; and while the Eoyal Society was yet in 
 its infancy, we find him interested in the researches of Boyle, 
 and making observations on the properties of air^- In after 
 life he was brought much under Latitudinarian influence. 
 Whichcote was his favourite preacher ; and the Mend of his 
 age, at whose house he breathed his last, was the daughter of 
 Cud worth ^. His connections with Shaftesbury, to whom he 
 continued steadily attached through aU changes of fortune, 
 introduced him to public affairs, and gave him an insight into 
 the secret springs and working of government. At the re- 
 quest of Shaftesbury, he sketched out a form of constitution 
 for the province of Carohna, in the religious part of which he 
 adopted the principles afterwards more folly expounded in 
 his Letters on Toleration, granting equal favour, protection 
 and civil rights to aU who acknowledged a God, whether 
 Christian, Jews, or Heathens. In this bold suggestion he 
 was before his time ; and the clause which contained it, was 
 against his own judgment expunged^. In 1682 he accompanied 
 his patron into Holland ; and there he remained till after the 
 Eevolution. During his absence he fell under the suspicions 
 of the English Court, and at the King's command was de- 
 prived of his studentship at Christ Church. In Holland he 
 cultivated an intimate acquaintance with Le Clerc and Lim- 
 borch, divines of the Remonstrant school, distinguished for 
 their learning and freedom of thinking, and held weekly con- 
 ferences with them at Amsterdam. Under these influences 
 he completed his Essay which he had commenced many years 
 before, and wrote his first Letter on Toleration. In 1689 he 
 returned to England in the same fleet with the Princess of 
 Orange ; and the fifteen last years of his life, spent chiefly in 
 rural retirement, he devoted to study and composition, in 
 
 ' His obseryations were published at the end of a posthumous work of 
 Boyle's entitled, "A General History of the Air." 
 2 Lady Masham, the wife of Sir Francis Masham, of Oates in Essex. 
 ' Biograpliia Britanu. Locke, note G-. 
 
WRITINGS OF LOCKE. 233 
 
 which rehgion occupied an increasiag share. His Reason- 
 ableness of Christianity and his Commentaries on Paul were 
 ■written during this period. The latter did not appear till 
 after his death. 
 
 The mind of Locke was thus trained up hy a rare union of 
 various influences, such as only an age of Revolution could 
 supply, to survey in the broadest and clearest Ught the great 
 subjects to which he devoted his powers. His native genius 
 at once prudent and sagacious, bold without any tendency to 
 extravagance, and imbued from early years with a deep sense 
 of religion, derived from the different schools of the Inde- 
 pendents and the Latitudinarians, precisely those elements 
 of opinion hitherto uncombined, which enabled it to ap- 
 prehend the true idea of Toleration; so that in him ten- 
 dencies apparently discordant blended in harmonious action 
 and found a common issue. On the other hand, his travels 
 and acute observation of men and things, his intercourse with 
 foreign divines and his large experience of affairs, raised him 
 far above the narrow vision of a mere theologian of the closet ; 
 placed religion before him in its actual relation to society ; 
 and tempered his speculations on Church and State with the 
 comprehensive views and practical wisdom of a statesman and 
 man of the world. It is not often that such qualifications for 
 judging rightly on moral and social topics, meet in one indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 His celebrated Essay was the first undertaken of all his 
 works, and grew from small beginnings, by successive accre- 
 tions in the course of many years, to the form in which we 
 now possess it. He has told us himself, that its origin was ac- 
 cidental, and arose from his being made to feel, in a discussion 
 on another subject, the necessity of ascertaining the grounds, 
 and determining the limits, of knowledge within the mind 
 itsehfi. The importance of a rational foundation for our opi- 
 nions was the suggesting principle of his inquiry : and this 
 idea followed him into all his other speculations ; so that in 
 this sense, the Essay on the Human Understanding may be 
 regarded as the matrix of his subsequent works. In the pursuit 
 of this object, he swept away the entire system of innate ideas, 
 that accumulation of assumptions, in which the philosophy and 
 theology of the past age had taken refuge from the penetrating 
 attacks of reason. He sought for the ultimate source of know- 
 1 In Ms Epistle to the Header. 
 
234 INFLUENCE OF THE 
 
 ledge and ground of certainty, not in abstractions — ^wMeh he 
 treated as gratuitous figments of the mind — ^but in facts of a 
 twofold order, which admitted no dispute ; the impressions of 
 sense, and the suggestions of consciousness. The mind came 
 into the world, he contended, a mere tabula rasa, and derived 
 the ideas which furnish the materials of aU its knowledge, ex- 
 clusively from this twofold experience. It may be questioned 
 whether this view, called out by strong resistance to error in 
 the opposite direction, embraces the entire subject of the 
 mind, and does not rather limit itself to one side of it ; whe- 
 ther it allows enough to the action, not indeed of innate ideas, 
 but of inherent tendencies, some common to the race, some 
 peculiar to individuals and giving birth to all the varieties of 
 genius and character, which control the associations and deter- 
 mine the conclusions of the mind independent of external in- 
 fluence, and on some subjects yield a higher kind of certainty 
 than is attainable by logical deduction from the simple facts 
 of experience. Whether this be so or not, such was not the 
 specific object of the mission of Locke. His business was to 
 expose the pretensions of long-established error; to dissipate 
 a baseless philosophy ; and to clear away the ground for the 
 unencumbered operations of a practical reason. Nor ought 
 he to be blamed, because he saw nothing before him but the 
 work which the age immediately required, and without ex- 
 ceeding the terms attached to it, executed it with great courage 
 and singleness of purpose. The practical restdt of his Essay 
 was this : that knowledge with the dispersion of the false ap- 
 pearances which usurp its name, is only to be gained, by 
 forming clear and determinate ideas in the mind ; distinctly 
 apprehending the relations between them ; and always desig- 
 nating the same idea, once defined, by the same term. 
 
 The bearing of these principles on certain theological con- 
 troversies of the day, was soon perceived. Toland availed 
 himself of them in his " Christianity not Mysterious." The 
 Unitarians at once saw the new strength thus brought to their 
 cause; and StUlingfleet in his Vindication of the Trinity, 
 charged " this new way of ideas," as he contemptuously called 
 it, Tvith undermining the certainty of the greatest truths of 
 religion^. 
 
 . ' A controversy lietween StiUingfleet and Locke was the consequence. The 
 substance of it is inserted in the margin of the Introduction to the Essay, in 
 some editions. 
 
WRITINGS OF LOCKE. 235 
 
 Locke's own faith in Christianity was sincere and rational. 
 In his Essay he has clearly distinguished the provinces of 
 faith and reason ; and fully admitted the possibility of a reve- 
 lation attested by supernatural sanctions, coming in aid of the 
 discoveries of our natural reason, on subjects which he beyond 
 the limits of experience. The times through which he had 
 Uved, filled him with great distrust of the pretensions of en- 
 thusiasm. He has a strong chapter on the subject, in the 
 later editions of his Essay^. It was this feeling which led him 
 to insist the more earnestly on miracles and the completion of 
 prophecy, as outward signs necessary to establish the certainty 
 of a revelation from heaven^. But while he thus conceded 
 the need and the value of that external sanction, he still main- 
 tained, that not only the proof of its having been actually 
 given, but also the credibility and the worth of the doctrine 
 so attested, must be decided in the last resort by reason : since 
 no accumulation of outward testimony could be so convincing 
 as the sense of right and truth within, still less compel assent 
 to any doctrine opposed to it^. He even goes beyond this, 
 and makes the internal, the final criterion of the external, 
 ■ evidence, referring among other passages, for confirmation of 
 this view, to Deuteronomy xiii. 1-5 ; and he says distinctly ; 
 " Even in those books which have the greatest proof of reve- 
 lation from God, and the attestation of miracles to confirm 
 their being so, the miracles are to be judged by the doctrine, 
 and not the doctrine by the miracles*." 
 
 It was in truth the very rationalism of Locke, which at- 
 tached him so strongly to the belief of a particular revelation 
 miraculously witnessed. Only with extreme caution would 
 he admit the possibility of any direct communication between 
 
 ' Book IV. Ch. xix. . 
 
 2 Looke justifies Moses for not heartening to the mward nnpidse to go to 
 Pharaoh, till the miracle warranting it had been confirmed by another. Essay, 
 IV xix § 15. In a posthumous Discourse on Miracles, (London, 1706.) he 
 admits the possibihty of other beings than God, and even beings hostile to 
 God exhibiting appearances which men cannot distinguish from an munediate 
 act of divine power. He makes the evidence of a proper miracle, fitted to prove 
 a divine revelation, consist in its superiority to every other demonstration of 
 knowledge and power, confronted with it, as when the miracles of Moses over- 
 powered the signs of the Egyptian magicians. It is proper to notice this ; as 
 Schlosser in his History of the Eighteenth Century, has misrepresented Locke 9 
 opinions respecting miracles, and so classed him with the Christian deists. 
 
 3 Essay, Book IV. Ch. xviii. xix. 
 
 * Locke's Journal, August and September 1681 ; February 1682. Life, etc., 
 by Lord King, pp. 133-25. 
 
236 INFLUENCE OF THE 
 
 the human soul and God; and every alleged instance of it he 
 subjected to the most rigid scrutiay of reason and Scrip- 
 ture^, A-t the same time he was profoundly conscious of the 
 immense importance of a positive religious sanction to human 
 motives and hopes : and under these opposing considerations, 
 that belief in divine influence and interposition which his phi- 
 losophy all but excluded from the general providence of God, 
 was concentrated by his deep and earnest piety with a redoubled 
 interest in the special dispensations of Moses and Christ, 
 which he regarded as the only certain media of supernatural 
 communications to the human soul. The divine authority, 
 therefore, of these two religions he laboured to establish, inter- 
 nally by a display of the beauty and excellence of their doc- 
 trine, and externally by the proof of miracles and prophecy, 
 on the sure basis of reason. Locke was not the first to pro- 
 mulgate this view of the authority of Christianity. Hales had 
 already encountered the pretensions of enthusiasm on the same 
 ground^. But from his having so clearly laid down the first 
 principles of reason in his Essay, and submitted Christianity 
 to the same rational test as all other truths, almost to the 
 denial of any witness of the spirit within, as well as from the . 
 wide diflPiision which his great name gave to this conception of 
 revealed religion among the divines of the eighteenth century 
 — Mr. Locke may justly be pronounced the Father of English 
 Rationalism. 
 
 He applied these principles in his celebrated apologetic 
 treatise, the Reasonableness of Christianity. It was designed to 
 shew, that aU who receive Jesus Christ as the Messiah, what- 
 ever also they may hold in conjunction with that fundamental 
 tenet, are Christians ; and that Jesus is proved to be that high 
 personage, as well by the subhmity and perfection of his doc- 
 trine and character, as by his miracidous powers and the ful- 
 filment in him of ancient prophecy. Thus the question at 
 issue between the Christian and the Deist, was reduced to the 
 proof of the outward facts on which these exalted claims were 
 advanced. This was taking a broad view of the case, hitherto 
 unusual among theologians, and wonderfully simplified the 
 definition of a Christian. "Whether all difficulties were thus 
 completely surmounted, and the ultimate ground of faith was 
 put in the right place, may be open to question ; but this is 
 
 y, Book IV. xix. § 16. 
 ^ " How we know the Scriptures to be the Word of God :" in his Miscellanies. 
 
WRITINGS OF LOCKE. 237 
 
 not the place to pursue such an inquiry. Mr. Locke's views 
 are noticed here as a sign of the age, as an indication of the 
 bias by which its best minds were beginniag to be swayed. 
 We see in them a clear expression of the Latitudinarian spirit 
 which his mind had so freely imbibed, no longer left vague 
 and fluctuating as in the more imaginative speculations of 
 Cudworth, but brought down into a definite form and reduced 
 to a plain proposition by his direct and simple understanding. 
 The temper of the Church had been recently excited by the 
 Unitarian controversy; and our author's book, divesting 
 Christianity of mystery, and annihilating at a stroke the 
 exclusive pretensions of orthodoxy, could not expect any cor- 
 dial reception among those who had arrayed themselves in 
 defence of the Trinity and its associated doctrines. It met 
 the fate of aU books which exceed the measure of contempo- 
 raneous hberality. The worst designs were imputed to it ; and 
 Edwards made it the object of a direct attack in his " Soci- 
 nianism Unmasked'^." 
 
 Locke's Discourse on Toleration was probably a ffuit of 
 his close intercourse for several years with the Remonstrants 
 of Amsterdam^. It was in HoUand, 1689, that his first letter 
 appeared, written in clear and fluent Latia, and addressed 
 with initials to Limborch^. He afterwards translated it into 
 English for the benefit of his countrymen. Its principles 
 being assailed, he found it necessary to vindicate and still 
 further develope them in two other letters, which greatly ex- 
 
 ' " A Discourse, shewing the nnreasonaMeness of a late writer's opinion con- 
 cerning the Necessity of only one Article of Christian Faith," etc. London, 1696. 
 
 ^ In 1687, Locke formed a society with Le Clerc, Limborch and other friends 
 in Amsterdam, for weekly discussions, " pour lesqueUes," says Le Clerc, " on 
 s'assembleroit tour k tour, tantot chez les uns, et tant6t chez les autres, et oil I'on 
 proposeroit quelque question, surlaqueUe chacun diroit son avis dans 1' Assemble 
 suiyante. J'ai encore les loix, qu'U souhaitoit qu'on obserr^t, ecrites de sa 
 main en Latin." Bibhothfeque Choisie, t. vi. p. 376. 
 
 3 ' Epistola de Tolerantia ad clarissimum Tirum T'A'B-P'T-O'L'A- 
 Scripta aP'A'P'O'I'L'A; i. e. TheologisB apud Eemonstrantes Profes- 
 Borem, Tyrannidis Osorem, Litnbnrgium, Amstelodamiensem ; Paois Amico, 
 Persecutionis Osore, Joanne Lookio, Anglo.' This singular title-page indicates 
 the caution with which he still thought it necessary to write. The work appears 
 to have been composed in the autumn of 1685, when he lay concealed in the 
 house of a M. Teen at Amsterdam, for fear of being delivered up to the King 
 of England. It was first printed at Tergou in 1689. Two impressions of the 
 English translation appeared at London, in the course of 1690. Eibliothfeque 
 Choisie, TI. p. 375. Le Clerc is good authority for that part of Locke's life 
 which was passed in HoUand. 
 
23'8 INFLUENCE OF THE 
 
 ceed in length the first. These again were followed, after an 
 interval of twelve years, by a fourth. But his whole theory, 
 stated with remarkable force and clearness, is contained in 
 the first. He begins with an analysis of the ideas of Church 
 and State ; and on the distinction which he makes between 
 religious and civil societies, as well in their ends as in their 
 means, he founds his theory of their mutual independence and 
 necessary separation. Its seminal principle is contained in 
 this proposition: "That there is absolutely no such thing, 
 imder the Gospel, as a Christian Commonwealth^." The 
 State, as such, knows nothing of religious differences ; it is 
 not a person ; it has no conscience ; and consequently it can 
 have no religion. In these views, we trace the influence of 
 Locke's philosophy. He loved the concrete in all things; 
 and abhorred those personified abstractions in which folly and 
 intolerance are wont to shroud themselves. It followed at 
 once from his fundamental principle, that the magistrate has 
 no right to control, or to notice in the way either of favour or 
 of discouragement, any religious opinions and practices what- 
 ever, so long as they do not interfere vrith the civil order of 
 society. Hence not only aU Christian sects, but Jews, Maho- 
 metans and Pagans, while they keep withiu the limits of civil 
 obedience, are equally entitled to the rights of citizens. To 
 make his argument the more striking, Locke ingeniously sup- 
 poses the case of Christians living imder a Turkish govern- 
 ment. In meeting the objection famished by the Hebrew 
 commonwealth, he argues, that the case of the Jews was a spe- 
 cial one, arising from the intermixture and • mutual assimila- 
 tion of civil and rehgious elements in their theocracy; and 
 that even with them the dependence of political rights on the 
 worship of Jehovah, applied only to their own citizens, in 
 whom apostasy involved treason. To this large toleration 
 Locke admitted only two exceptions ; in the case, first of 
 Atheists, whom he considered unfit for citizenship, as incapable 
 of obligation by oaths and promises ; and secondly of those 
 (he had no doubt the Papists in view) whose principles made 
 them necessarily intolerant of others, and who owed allegi- 
 ance to a foreign power. 
 
 It must be obvious on reflection, that in this scheme of 
 toleration, Locke by excluding Atheists from its benefits, has 
 
 ' Sub ETangelio nulla prorsus est respublica Chiistiana. 
 
WRITINGS OF LOCKE. 239 
 
 failed to establish the complete separation of Churcli and 
 State, and admits the indispensableness of some religion for 
 securing the ends of civil government. He takes for granted, 
 that a sense of moral obligation cannot exist without a distinct 
 religious belief; and invests the State with the very question- 
 able power of penetrating to the inner sanctuary of the soul, 
 and inferring a man's conduct from the assumed absence of a 
 principle necessary to virtue. He requires the State to see 
 that a man has some religion, though he will not allow it to 
 decide which is the true religion, and to establish it. No one, 
 in fact, can doubt, that religion does yield a great support to 
 government and law. When we have resolved the ideas of 
 Church and State into their primitive elements, however neces- 
 sary it may be in the present divided state of the Christian 
 world to keep them distinct, we at once perceive, that there is 
 a close affinity and ready sympathy between them ; that they 
 pre-suppose each other's existence; and are essential to each 
 other's completeness. Never yet, however, has it been pos- 
 sible to regulate their true mutual relation by any outward 
 bond. It would seem, therefore, the most obvious course, to 
 abandon all attempts to fix it by premature legislation; to 
 release the two principles from a constraiued and unnatural 
 alliance ; and to let them, each pursuing immediately its own 
 ends without encroachment on the other's province, grow up 
 into that state of full and healthy development which must 
 impel them from a sense of common need, to enter spontane- 
 ously into a living and cordial union. The apparent impossi- 
 bility of reconciling and combining in one system, the endless 
 diversities of religious belief and religious practice, has driven 
 most men who have any respect for the rights of conscience, to 
 the negative result of separating Church and State. 
 
 A sense of these difficulties doubtless influenced the con- 
 clusions of Locke. In his invaluable treatise, the religious 
 problem which had distracted the mind of Europe since the 
 Reformation, most nearly reached its practical solution. 
 " Narrowness of spirit on all sides," to use his own noble and 
 vigorous language, " has undoubtedly been the principal oc- 
 casion of our miseries and confusions. But whatever have 
 been the occasion, it is now high time to seek for a thorough 
 cure. We have need of more generous remedies than what 
 have yet been made use of in our distemper. It is neither 
 Declarations of Indulgence, nor Acts of Comprehension, 
 
240 INFLUENCE OF THE 
 
 such as have yet been practised or projected amongst uSj that 
 can do the work. The first will hut palliate^ the second in- 
 crease, our evil. Absolute liberty — just and true liberty — 
 equal and impartial liberty — is the thing that we stand in 
 need of ^." 
 
 It was fortunate for the progress of public opinion, that 
 the appearance of Mr. Locke's works so generally iavolved 
 him in controversy. This gave a wider dissemination to his 
 principles, and caused them to be more thoroughly discussed ; 
 and excited an interest and an attention which their intrinsic 
 worth might not else have occasioned. Their influence on 
 the academies and churches of the Protestant Dissenters, 
 then first settling down into a fixed state and constitution under 
 the shelter of the Toleration Act, must have been incalcula- 
 bly great. This effect of them I shall presently notice again. 
 An ardent enthusiasm for religious truth and liberty, was a 
 striking feature in the character of Locke. He loved the 
 simplicity of the primitive Gospel, and wished to see it re- 
 stored. We discern this spirit in some rules which he drew 
 up for a society of Pacific Christians in Holland on the prin- 
 ciples of his own Letters on Toleration^. Among his papers, 
 was found an unpublished Defence of Nonconformity, iu reply 
 to StiUingfleet's Unreasonableness of Separation^ : and al- 
 though to the end of his life, he never dissolved his commu- 
 nion with the Church of England, yet while he resided at 
 Gates, as if to show his total indifference to the sacerdotal 
 sanctions of religion, he generally attended the services of a 
 lay-preacher in the neighbourhood*. 
 
 In his latter years, Locke devoted himseK to a close ex- 
 amination of the New Testament. Watts, in his Horse 
 Lyricse, has alluded with evident satisfaction to the circum- 
 stance, in some lines addressed to Mr. Shute, afterwards Lord 
 Barrington, on a dangerous sickness which threatened the phi- 
 losopher's life^- It is to this period of Scriptural study, that 
 
 ' To the Eeader ; prefixed to the First Letter concerning Toleration. 
 = Life by Lord King, p. 2V3. 3 Ibid. p. 341. 
 
 ' Editor of the Letters on Toleration, 1765, on the authority of persons then 
 living. 
 
 ^ Reason at length submits to wear 
 The wings of Faith ; and lo, they rear 
 Her chariot high, and nobly bear 
 Her prophet to the skies. 
 
 June, 1704. 
 
WRITINGS OF LOCKE. 241 
 
 we are indebted for those Commentaries on the Epistles of 
 Paul, with the Essay for the right understanding of the Apo- 
 stle hy comparing him with himself, which have furnished a 
 model to so many subsequent interpreters, and stimulated the 
 kindred labours of Peirce, Hallett, Benson, and Taylor. A 
 mode of exegesis was introduced by Locke, whoUy different 
 from that which had prevailed among the Puritan divines of 
 the preceding century, who looked immediately to edifica- 
 tion, and neglected the principles of rational criticism and ex- 
 position. With them every text of Scripture was as a voice 
 from heaven, speaking directly to the soul ; and they inter- 
 preted it by the feelings which it spontaneously awakened. 
 The requirements of the context, the purpose and circum- 
 stances of the writer, and the influences of age and country, 
 entered comparatively little into their judgment of the signi- 
 fication of a passage, and were absorbed by the far deeper 
 consideration of their own spiritual state. They threw open 
 their Bibles with as little care or selection, as if they were 
 consulting the sortes sacra; for their eye could not alight 
 amiss. Wherever it fell, it met with some expression, literal 
 or symbolical, of the eternal verities of the Christian faith. 
 The clear and simple reason of Locke perceived at once the 
 source of endless error that was opened by this mode of 
 proceeding, especially in a writer so broken and irregular in 
 his trains of reasoning, so full of latent meaning only to be 
 detected by a thoughtful survey of the general bearing of his 
 discourse, and so fraught with allusions to his age, and coun- 
 try, and situation — as Paul. He constructed his own Com- 
 mentary, therefore, on the principle which he has fully ex- 
 plained in his Essay — of endeavouring to throw himself back 
 into the circumstances and feelings of the writer ; apprehend- 
 ing from this point of view his particular Hne of argumen- 
 tation ; and bringing aU separate phrases and detached ob- 
 servations into connection by their common relation to it. 
 This was rationalizing the Bible. It was putting the inter- 
 pretation of it on the same footing with that of other ancient 
 books. It was employing the aids of history, and the ordi- 
 nary rules of grammar and logic, to find out what the Bible 
 actually said ; where mere feeling and imagination, and notions 
 already in the mind, had been hitherto allowed to decide. 
 These principles were taken up and applied by the most emi- 
 nent English divines of the eighteenth century ; and borrowed 
 
 M 
 
242 INFLUENCE OF THE 
 
 originally from them, gave the first impulse to that system of 
 historical exegesis, which has been cultivated with such im- 
 mense learning, and carried out to such hold results, by the 
 great theologians of Germany. 
 
 It must not, however, he supposed, that this free employ- 
 ment of reason on the contents of Scripture, either weakened 
 the faith or chiUed the devotion of Locke. On the contrary, 
 all his latest expressions of thought are tinged with a tender 
 and earnest piety, as if they came from one who was living in 
 the presence of God, and waitiag for eternity. His death- 
 bed confession of the vanity of life, though it has incurred 
 the sarcasms of less rehgious philosophers, was the beautiful 
 and solemn farewell of a resigned and devoted spirit, losing 
 all sense of its own brief services to truth and humanity in 
 the absorbing thought of God and the vast prospects of im- 
 mortality^. It may be compared with the touching humility 
 of Newton, as he gazed with childlike awe on the infinity of 
 the universe whose deepest secrets he had brought to Ught, 
 and spoke of his own discoveries in it as but the picking up 
 of a few shells and pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean. 
 In an age of great intellectual excitement, when old opinions 
 were fearlessly cast aside and the freest stimulus was given to 
 the pursuit of truth, it is an impressive fact not lightly to be 
 disregarded, that its two greatest philosophers, one leading on 
 the van of moral science, the other conductiag discovery with 
 unexampled triumphs through the physical creation — should 
 have stood firmly and devotedly by the religion of Jesus 
 Christ ; not simply paying it the respectftd homage which is 
 due to a venerable and beneficent belief, but subjecting its 
 history and documents to a thoughtful scrutiny, and conse- 
 crating their high powers to its illustration and defence. 
 
 Locke has left behind him no explicit statement of his 
 doctrinal views. He was too cautious to commit himself to a 
 positive opinion, where there was still room for hesitation; 
 
 ^ Shaftesbury's Characteristics, vol. i. p. 302. Shaftesbury's sentiment is 
 adopted by Conyers Middleton, in a letter to "Warburtou. Worts, 4to, vol. ii. 
 p. 4i75. Locke expressed the sentiment of liis death-bed at the close of a letter 
 which he addressed to Anthony Collins in 1704, the year of his death, to be 
 deUvered after his decease ; " All the use to be made of it is, that this life is a 
 scene of vanity that soon passes avray, and affords no sohd satisfaction but in 
 the consciousness of doing weE, and in the hopes of another life. Tliis is what 
 I say on experience, and what you wiE find to be true, when you come to make 
 up the account. Adieu." 
 
WRITINGS OP LOCKE. 243 
 
 and his Latitudinarian spirit made him averse to creeds. But 
 his Reasonableness of Christianity furnishes conclusive evi- 
 dence, that he attached no importance to what is usually called 
 orthodoxy. We may safely infer, that he was neither a Cal- 
 vinist nor an Athanasian. In some of his controversies, he 
 disowned the name of Socinian. Watts who in the fervour 
 of youthful orthodoxy, though filled with admiration for his 
 genius, had almost hesitated to give him a place in heaven, 
 from the supposed tendency of "that unhappy book," the 
 Reasonableness of Christianity, 
 
 " Where glimmering Eeason with false lustre shines," 
 
 felt relieved from his perplexity by the commentary on 2 Cor. 
 v. 21, which gave him reason to believe, that Locke was no 
 Socinian^. It is not improbable, that with his characteristic 
 freedom from all party bias, he kept his judgment in suspense 
 on some controverted texts. From his Adversaria Theological, 
 which were commenced in 1694, during the heat of the disputes 
 about the Trinity, we may collect some idea of the tendency 
 of his opinions. Here we find arguments and texts weighed 
 against each other in parallel columns, with a preponderance 
 almost uniformly against the orthodox view, and a continual 
 reference to the writings of Biddle. Of his illustrious friend, 
 Newton, there seems no reasonable ground to doubt, that his 
 sentiments were simply Unitarian. Such facts are of import- 
 ance in the history of opinion : but it was the large charity 
 of these eminent men, their love of truth and virtue, and their 
 freedom from a narrow dogmatism, which have given such a 
 value to their example, and entitled them to lasting veneration^. 
 Locke's close and rigorous mode of reasoning on topics, 
 where assumption and dogmatism had been allowed a predo- 
 minant sway, produced a wide and lasting effect. It operated 
 
 1 Lines on Mr. Locke's Annotatious, etc., left behind Tiim at his death. Horse 
 Lyricse, p. 140, with the note. The commentary referred to, has no decisive 
 bearing on the question. 
 
 2 Preserved in Lord King's Life of Locke, p. 337. 
 
 ^ The evidence of Sir Isaac Newton's TJnitarianism in the stricter sense, rests 
 on the explicit statement of an intimate fiiend, who was in office with him at 
 the Mint, Hopton Haynes Esq., himself of the same opinion. See Lindsey'e 
 Sequel to the Apology on resigning the vicarage of Catterick, pp. 18-19 ; also 
 his Historical View of the Unitarian Doctrine, etc., ch. vi. sect. v. The ma- 
 terials at present accessible for forming a judgment on the doctrinal views of 
 Locke and Newton have been collected by Wallace in the third volume of his 
 Antitrinitarian Biography, pp. 399-468. 
 
244 CHRISTIAN EATIONALISM 
 
 both within and without the limits of the Scriptures. In the 
 former case, it created a school of Christian Rationalism, ac- 
 knowledging the reality of a divine revelation ; in the latter, 
 it caUed forth a remarkable display of Deism, or, as it was 
 then called, of Freethioking. Deism professing itself uncon- 
 vinced by the external evidence for the divine authority of the 
 Bible, took its stand on the truths of natural rehgion; and 
 from that point of view, pronounced a judgment on the ori- 
 gin, history and records of Christianity. Locke himself was 
 not involved ia the Deistical movement. Religiously con- 
 servative in all his habits of thought, he saw in the Gospel a 
 positive aid and sanction to all the highest aspirations of man, 
 which Deism destroyed without substituting an equivalent^ 
 To the vindication of Scriptural theology on the principles of 
 reason he devoted the closing labours of his life : but having 
 inculcated and exemplified the freest exercise of the mental 
 powers in the pursuit of truth, it was no more than he might 
 expect, that some of his disciples should turn his own principle 
 against doctrines which he himself revered as true and of the 
 utmost importance. Each of these tendencies, the Christian 
 and the Deistical, which arose out of the new impulse imparted 
 by Locke to moral and religious inquiries, claims a separate 
 notice. Between them they nearly embrace the whole spiri- 
 tual history of the first half of the eighteenth century. 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 CHKISTIAN RATIONALISM AFTER THE REVOLUTION : DISSENTING 
 ACADEMIES : CHARACTER AND POSITION OE DODDRIDGE. 
 
 It has already been shown, that it was the effect of the 
 Revolution to elevate, and bring into immediate connection 
 
 1 " Mr. Locke disliked those authors that labour only to destroy, without 
 establishing anytliing themselves. A building, said he, displeases them; 
 they find gi-eat faults in it ; let them demolish it, and welcome, provided they 
 endeavour to raise another in its place, if it be possible." Costi's Character 
 of Locke in a Letter to the authoi- of Nowoelles de la Hipublique des Lettres. 
 Feb. 1705. Locke's Works, fol. vol. iii. p. 658. 1759. Le Clerc has devoted 
 an article to the memory of his illustrious friend, in the sixth volume of the 
 Bibliothfeque Choisie : iHoge de feu, Mr. Locke. 
 
AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 345 
 
 with the government, that party in the Church whieh was 
 latitudinarian in sentiment, and inclined to a liberal policy 
 towa,rds Dissenters. With these men there was a large party 
 outside the Church, quite ready to sympathize; willing, in 
 fact, to meet them half-way; and by the term Presbyterian 
 which vaguely designated it, expressing little more than its 
 Catholic spirit, and its disposition to own all practical Chris- 
 tians of every persuasion as brethren. This temper had been 
 introduced among jthe Presbyterians by Marshall and Baxter ; 
 it was prolonged into the eighteenth century, by Howe and 
 Calamy and Peirce. Between these two parties there was 
 scarce any intelligible distinction but this ; that the one was 
 established, and the other not. Tillotson and Howe, Hoadly 
 and Calamy, Burnet and Peirce, might almost have changed 
 places, without finding it necessary to modify in any essential 
 point their views of Christianity and the Church : except in- 
 deed, that among the Nonconformists, partly, no doubt, in 
 consequence of their position, there was a closer adherence to 
 the forms and phrases of the old Puritanic Calvinism ; and that 
 Hoadly's Latitudinarianism, with aU his zeal for the Esta- 
 blishment, far exceeded that of his contemporaries. " I know 
 many," says Calamy, "that the world calls Presbyterians, 
 that are of no party." Still more explicitly he remarks on 
 another occasion : " Those, (whether in or out of the Church) 
 whose principles and spirit are against narrowing or straiten- 
 ing the terms of Christian communion, by adding to what our 
 Lord has plainly appointed, are a very considerable and in- 
 creasing number. Let such persons be in the Church, nay, 
 and dignified in it too, and they shall yet be called Presbyte- 
 rians'-." The Tory fox-hunter in Addison's Freeholder, whose 
 religion " consisted in hating Presbyterians," and who loved 
 his spaniel, because " he had once like to have worried a Dis- 
 senting Teacher," thought the neighbouring shire very happy, 
 for having " scarce a Presbyterian in it, except the Bishop^." 
 Such being the relation of a large body of the Dissenters to 
 the most eminent personages in the Church, it may be asked, 
 how it was that no union took place between them. There 
 was an invincible obstacle ; they differed about the lawfulness 
 of the terms of conformity; the Low Chiu-chmen not scru- 
 pling to make the subscription which in the actual state of 
 
 ' Calamy's Defence of Moderate Nonconformity in reply to Hoadly and 
 OUyffe ; 1703, p. 259, Part I. ; also Postscript to P. I. p. 250. ^ j^-q, 22, 
 
246 CHRISTIAN RATIONALISM 
 
 parties, they could not hope to remove or qualify ; the Dissent- 
 ers objecting to it as unscriptural. With the most entire agree- 
 ment, therefore, in their general -yiews, they could not prac- 
 tically approximate : and the Eevolution which strengthened 
 the foundations of the Establishment, only increased their 
 mutual alienation. The Churchmen thought the Dissenters 
 unreasonable and scrupulous; the Dissenters charged the 
 Churchmen with laxity. Constituted as the Church of Eng- 
 land was, and encumbered with such a load of secular inter- 
 ests, the Presbyterians seem at a very early period to have 
 abandoned all expectation of a comprehension. It was an 
 object which they had earnestly desired ; but they now looked 
 upon it as only among the possibilities of a distant future. 
 There is a remarkable coincidence in the language of their 
 leaders, ia referring all hope of such an event to some pow- 
 erful effasion of the divine spirit on men's hearts, which 
 should break up existing parties and re-constitute the Christian 
 world. 
 
 The main controversy between the Church and the greatest 
 part of the Dissenters, related now not so much either to doc- 
 trine or to government, as to the terms of Christian commu- 
 nion. These, it was contended by the Presbyterians, should 
 be simply Scriptural. Calamy has' thus stated the principles 
 of Nonconformity, as they were then conceived : " That all 
 true Church power must be founded on a divine commission" 
 {i. e. derived from a Scriptural precept) ; " that where a right 
 to command is not clear, evidence that obedience is a duty, is 
 wanting; that more ought not to be made necessary for an 
 entrance iato the Church, than is necessary to the getting safe 
 to heaven ; that as long as unscriptural impositions are con- 
 tinued, a further reformation in the Church will be needful, 
 in order to the more general and effectual reaching the great 
 ends of Christianity; and that every man that must answer 
 for himself hereafter, must judge for himself -at present^." 
 Of the ministers of this date in London, scarcely any one but 
 Dr. Daniel Williams, the founder of the library which bears 
 his name, is said to have been an assertor of the jus divinum 
 of Presbyterianism. In Scotland Calamy found that doctrine 
 generally abandoned. The Presbyterians had now taken 
 broader ground. 
 
 ^ Dedication to Protestant Dissenting Ministers, p. xt., prefixed to the Con- 
 tinuation of the Account etc., 1727. 
 
AFTEE THE REVOLUTION. 347 
 
 The spirit prevalent among them, is well illustrated by the 
 case of Dr. Edmund Calamy, one of their most distinguished 
 writers and preachers at the beginning of the last century ; 
 who was descended through his father and grandfather from 
 the old Puritan divines of the Commonwealth, and connected 
 them through his son in a line of unbroken filiation with the 
 Dissenting Minister of modern times. On completing his 
 studies in Holland, he settled privately at Oxford, that he 
 might thoroughly master the question at issue between the 
 Church and the Dissenters, and read attentively the great 
 authorities on both sides. lu spite of worldly allurements he 
 deliberately took his lot with the Nonconformists, and avow- 
 edly in consequence of their freedom from those impositions 
 that were attached to the ministry in the Establishment^. 
 Before he assumed the pastoral office, he would wilhngly, he 
 tells us, have received ordination from a bishop ; " coiild he 
 have found any one that would not have demanded a subscrip- 
 tion and engagement to conformity and a subjection to the 
 present ecclesiastical government^." His contemporary, Peirce 
 of Exeter, though maintaining the validity of Presbyterian 
 ordination, still for the sake of peace would not have objected 
 to a modified Episcopacy, and a partial, well-regulated, use of 
 Uturgies^ : nor would he, on the other hand, have disowned 
 the ministry of those whose ordination he considered less 
 regular, as derived simply from the popular choice, if they gave 
 evidence of suitable qualification in other respects, and showed 
 that Christ was with them*- In this healing spirit he pub- 
 lished a sermon, entitled, " An useful Ministry, a valid one." 
 These concessions indicate a latitude of principle that would 
 have embraced a moderate Episcopacy and a sober Independ- 
 ency within the limits of the same Church. 
 
 As circumstances prevented the Presbyterians from putting 
 their form of church government in practice, they soon ceased 
 to attach much importance to the subject, and in their actual 
 usage became Independents. Thus the whole of their atten- 
 tion was attracted exclusively to the other grounds of their 
 separation from the Church ; especially to their demand of a 
 
 ' Life and Times, Vol. I. 
 
 2 Defence of Moderate Nonconformity, Part I. p. 213. 
 ^ Tindioation of the Dissenters, Part III. ch. w., and oh. i. 
 '' Defence of the Dissenting Ministry and Presbyterian Ordination. London, 
 171V. 
 
248 CHRISTIAN KATIONALISM 
 
 faith and worship more strictly in accordance with the Scrip- 
 ture rule. This led to their general abandonment of all reli- 
 gious testSj beyond a simple acknowledgment of the divine au- 
 thority of the Bible. A subscription to the doctrinal Articles 
 of the Church of England was indeed required by law, to 
 secure the benefits of the Toleration Act ; but we learn from 
 Calamy's example, how even that might be avoided ; for he 
 told a friend, he had never signed them himself, and recom- 
 mended him to take the same course^. Events marked the 
 progress of opinion. Towards the close of the Socinian con- 
 troversy at the end of the preceding century, in the very year 
 of Firmin's death, 1697, the Dissenters with Dr. Bates at 
 their head, requested King William, ia an address presented 
 to him, to shut the press against the Unitarians^ The early 
 part of the eighteenth century also was signalized by pro- 
 ceedings agaiQst Emlyn in Dublin, Peirce and HaUett at 
 Exeter, and others of inferior note^, for expressing autitrini- 
 tarian opiaions. Yet in 1719, when the Exeter case was 
 brought before the London Ministers, we find at their first 
 meeting a majority of four, and at their second a minority of 
 fifty to sixty, refusiag to sign a declaration of belief in the 
 Trinity*. Bradbury, a leader of the Independents, was the 
 great promoter of subscription : the Presbyterians generally 
 were opposed to it. Pamphlets swarmed on the occasion, 
 which exhibited the question under all its aspects, and accele- 
 rated the progress of liberal ideas. 
 
 The efiect of these discussions was not to establish any one 
 doctrinal system, but to assert the exclusive authority of 
 the Scriptures and the right of a free interpretation. The 
 opinions of the great majority of the Dissenting Ministers 
 were still probably orthodox, with a leaning in some towards 
 antitrinitarianism : but the bond of union among the Presby- 
 terians who still formed the largest and most powerful section 
 of the Nonconformists, was the acceptance of the Bible alone 
 as a rule of faith and practice for Christians. Thus a soil 
 was prepared, in which Mr. Locke's philosophy struck a deep 
 root and brought forth a harvest of rationalistic theology. 
 
 1 Fox's Autobiography, quoted in tlie Historical Illustrations of the Hewley 
 case, p. 36. 
 
 ^ Lindsey's Historical account of the Unitarian Doctrine, etc., p. 302. 
 ' Tomlsins of Newington, and Elwall the Quaker. 
 ■* Wilson's Dissenting Chui-ches, III. pp. 517-20. 
 
AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 249 
 
 The Presbyterian theology of this period was in fact the off- 
 spring of an alliance between the new philosophy of Locke 
 and the Scripturalism of the old Puritans. Scripture was 
 accepted absolutely as a divine record, and rested on as an 
 ultimate fact in the researches of the theologian. Locke 
 himself would not have objected to this statement^- One of 
 the most learned works produced among the Presbyterians at 
 this time, is an elaborate proof of the canonical authority of 
 the New Testament^- On that divine record, reason was to 
 be exercised with the greatest freedom and impartiality ; not 
 only in eliciting its contents, but also in establishing their 
 coincidence with those natural truths which the same reason 
 as clearly affirmed. For the prosecution of such studies the 
 Academies of the Dissenters were weU adapted. 
 
 When the Act of Uniformity passed, many of the ejected 
 ministers opened Academies for the teaching of University 
 learning. This was done, not out of rivalry to the old seats 
 of learning, but as a temporary resource ; in the belief, that 
 better times would come, and the restrictions on admission at 
 Oxford and Cambridge, be taken away. It was not unusual 
 for students at these private Academies to enter themselves 
 also at some college in the Universities, where they stiU 
 hoped, that they might hereafter with a change of times take 
 a degree, and have their years of study passed elsewhere duly 
 allowed. This was the advice frequently given to young men 
 by Dr. Owen, who had once fiUed a post of high dignity at 
 Oxford. Graduates moreover at the old Universities had 
 taken an oath, prescribed by a very ancient statute^, that 
 they would not set up any other schools of the higher learning ; 
 and were prevented, therefore, as well by conscientious scru- 
 ples, as by the troubled state of the times, from giving to their 
 Academies a public character. Nevertheless, persons of great 
 
 ' The profound Scripturalism of Locke, the fruit in paxt of his Puritanical 
 education, is strongly expressed in the words, so often quoted, which occur in 
 a letter to his cousin Bichard King, written in 1703, only a year before his 
 death : ' Study the Holy Scriptures, especially the New Testament ; therein 
 are contained the words of eternal life ; it has Grod for its author ; Salvation 
 for its end ; and Truth imfhcmt amy mkctwce of error for its matter.' Bio- 
 graphia Britannioa, Locke [B.B.], where this letter is referred to, as printed in 
 Des Maizeaux's Collection. 
 
 ^ The posthumous work of Jeremiah Jones on the Canon. 
 
 ^ It had reference to the incipient UiiiTersities of Northampton and Stam- 
 ford in the thirteenth century, and was now brought up against the Noncon- 
 formists. 
 
 M 3 
 
350 CHRISTIAN RATIONALISM 
 
 eminence for learning and abilities engaged in these under- 
 takings, and tteir lectures were often attended by pupils of 
 rank. Harley afterwards Earl of Oxford and the celebrated 
 St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, both so conspicuous in the coun- 
 cils of Queen Anne, received a part of their education in the 
 Seminary of Mr. Woodhouse at Sheriff-hales in Shropshire^. 
 
 After the Revolution Protestant Dissenters were recognized 
 by the laws, and their institutions assumed of course an air 
 of greater permanence and stability. Those of their youth 
 who did not resort to the Universities of Holland and Scot- 
 land, continued to pursue their theological studies in the 
 domestic establishments of the more learned of their minis- 
 ters ; of which there were many both in the provinces and 
 in the immediate vicinity of London. Partly the force of 
 usage, partly the old feeling of unwillingness to compete with 
 the Universities, and a still lingering persuasion, that they 
 were not for ever separated from the Church, deterred them 
 from entertaining wider views and combining their resources 
 to found a public College for the general education of their 
 youth. The Institution at Warrington, celebrated by the 
 muse of Barbauld, and adorned by the names of Taylor, Aikin, 
 Priestley, and Wakefield among its teachers, was opened soon 
 after the middle of the last century, and exhibits the first 
 stage of the transition from the old private Academy to the 
 Dissenting College of modern times, with its professors in 
 various departments corresponding to the great divisions of 
 the field of knowledge, and qualified at length through its 
 incorporation with a national University, for the exercise of 
 proper academic functions. 
 
 Looking back on the private Seminaries of our forefathers 
 from our present advanced position, we naturally conclude, 
 that their system of instruction must have been very limited 
 and defective. We cannot conceive, how one tutor could 
 efficiently embrace so many branches of instruction ; while 
 their insulation from the world in some remote province, the 
 smaUness of their libraries, and their want of an adequate 
 philosophical apparatus, would seem to have withheld from 
 the student some of the most essential requisites for the due 
 enlargement and cultivation of his mind. These were im- 
 doubtedly great defects, but they were then of less relative 
 
 1 Toulmin's Historical View of the State of Protestant Dissenters, etc., 
 p. 230, and Appendix, No. V. 
 
AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 251 
 
 importance than they would be now ; and they were counter- 
 balanced by many advantages, especially in the actual circum- 
 stances of the Dissenters. It must not be overlooked, that 
 their Academies were specially designed for the education of 
 ministers. The attention of the pupil was carefully directed 
 to the pursuits which were to qualify him for his sacred vo- 
 cation in life; and with these pursuits, the whole spirit of 
 the establishment and all its domestic arrangements were in 
 unison. The Tutor was always among the most eminent in 
 his denomination for learning and character ; one, who had 
 prepared himself for his task by long previous studies, and had 
 reflected deeply on the chief subject of his lectures. Actiag 
 on his own responsibility and fettered by no code of academic 
 restrictions, he was at liberty to introduce into his instruc- 
 tions all the new ideas of the time, and to examine them with 
 perfect freedom. The very range and variety of the topics on 
 which he was obliged to treat, though it involved much super- 
 ficiality in detail as compared with our standard, had its use 
 in widening and liberalizing his views ; in opening before him 
 a philosophical survey of the general relations of the field of 
 knowledge ; and infusiag into his lectures a spirit of earnest 
 and genial inquiry. 
 
 In these small establishments the personal influence of the 
 Tutor was powerful and direct. Where he was able and po- 
 pular, his mind became the actuating impulse of the whole 
 society ; and under his influence deeper religious impressions 
 and a more ardent devotion to truth and liberty, were often 
 imbibed, than could have been acquired in the promiscuous 
 intercourse and general discipHne of a great University. We 
 possess from different sources, a pretty full account of the 
 ordinary course of instruction in these Semiaaries^- Logic, 
 metaphysics, ethics and natural philosophy, with a due ad- 
 mixture of mathematical and classical reading, prepared the 
 pupil for the higher studies of theology. Though less accurate 
 and profound in certain kinds of learning, this course was fa- 
 vourably .distinguished from that of the old Universities, in 
 being more diversified and Kberal, and keeping a more equal 
 pace with the general progress of knowledge in the world. 
 When Sir W. Jones was a student at Oxford in 1764, there 
 
 ^ BesideB the mformation contained in the Diaay and Correepondenoe of 
 Doddrige, Butler and Sector, both of whom were brought up among the Dis- 
 senters, have left behind them notices of their early Academic studies. 
 
252 CHRISTIAN RATIONALISM 
 
 was a fellow of the same college^ who in reading Locke with 
 his pupilsj passed over all the passages where the philosopher 
 attacks the old system i. It may he doubted, whether a parallel 
 instance could have been produced from a Presbyterian Aca- 
 demy at a much earher period. On the most important sub- 
 jects, the Tutor systematized his instructions under brief heads 
 drawn up by himself, with copious references to works for 
 private study ; so that the lectures of the Tutor were a sort 
 of guide to the reading and reflections of the pupil. The ob- 
 ject was less to impart a mass of information, which might 
 be obtained from books, than to awaken inquiry and incite 
 the mind to think. Speculative studies involving the funda- 
 mental questions of ethics and theology, usually predominated 
 over the historical and purely philological, in the early Dis- 
 senting Academies. Doddridge gives us a very good idea of 
 the usual mode of instruction, in describing the course of his 
 own tutor, Mr. Jennings. He encouraged, we are told, the 
 greatest freedom of inquiry, not according with the system of 
 any particular body of men, but taking sometimes the Calvin- 
 istic, sometimes the Remonstrant, sometimes the Baxterian, 
 sometimes the Socinian view, as truth and evidence might 
 determine him ; his care being to inspire his pupils with sen- 
 timents of Catholicism, and to warn them against a zeal not 
 according to knowledge^- Collins' famous Discourse on Free- 
 thinking was at that time openly circulated in the Academy, 
 and " was agreeable enough," we are informed by Doddridge, 
 "to some of his companions." These Seminaries did not 
 consist exclusively of candidates for the ministry; young 
 laymen intended for the professions and the higher walks of 
 civil life, were often sent to them in preference to the Univer- 
 sities. Even the Church benefited by their fruits. Seeker 
 and Butler, two of its most eminent prelates in the eighteenth 
 century, were educated in the Academy of Mr. Jones at 
 Tewkesbury. 
 
 No institutions at present exist in England, which in their 
 character and general influence can be altogether compared 
 to the old Dissenting Academies. With a strictness of in- 
 ternal discipline, and a regular apportionment of hours to 
 study, almost resembling the conventual system, they com- 
 bined the amenities and sanctities of domestic life. The pu- 
 
 • Life, by Lord TeignmoutK 8to, p. 55. 
 
 ' Doddridge's Correspondence and Diary, toI. i. pp. 155, 198-199. 
 
AFTER THE REVOLUTION, 253 
 
 pils were the inmates of their Tutor's family, who presided over 
 them as a gentleman in the midst of gentlemen. Not mifre- 
 quently the heads of these Academies were persons of good 
 family, who had enjoyed extensive intercourse with the higher 
 classes of society, and who tempered the severe character of 
 the scholar and the divine with the courtesies and accomplish- 
 ments of the man of the world. Considerable numbers of the 
 gentry and a few of the nobility still adhered to the Presby- 
 terian and Independent denominations ; and this circumstance 
 had its effect on the manners and bearing of those who looked 
 forward to exercising their ministry among them. Young men 
 dedicated themselves to the sacred profession under a profound 
 sense of its importance and inherent dignity, and with that de- 
 votional fervour and those strong religious convictions which 
 distinguished the early Nonconformists. These feeliags accom- 
 panied the student to the Academy, where they were cherished 
 in him by the habitudes and influences of the place, and en- 
 tered deeply into all his studies and speculations. Religious 
 exercises formed a large part of the ordinary discipline of the 
 Academy. The Tutor and his pupils, not occupying the cold 
 and distant relationship of professor and student at an Uni- 
 versity, felt themselves daily drawn towards each other by 
 those sacred bonds of prayer which hold together the peace 
 and unity of a Christian household. 
 
 It was iu these retired seats of learning and piety, that 
 the character of the old Protestant Dissenting Minister was 
 formed. Here it acquired that union of intellectual freedom 
 with spiritual earnestness, that catholicity of temper, that 
 devotion to the cause of rehgious truth and civil liberty, and 
 that ardent zeal for the promotion of knowledge and education, 
 which were so widely disseminated by its influence through 
 the middle class of the last century, and gave so strong an 
 impulse to the progress of civilization iu the chief centres of 
 provincial life. In many of the principal tovms of England 
 there are schools and libraries, now exerting very powerful 
 iafluence on society, which date their origin from the early 
 and unbefriended efforts of the Nonconformists. The very 
 insulation of their Academies which was in one sense an evil, 
 contributed to uphold in full activity the principles which 
 separated them as a peculiar people from the world, and which 
 vrould have been overpowered at the old Universities by the 
 superior attractions of the Establishment. Even High Church- 
 
254 CHRISTIAN RATIONALISM 
 
 mea were not blind to the advantages of such a course of dis- 
 cipline, for the fature ministers of rehgion. Nelson in his 
 Life of Bishop Bull, recommends the estabUshment of Semi- 
 naries distinct from the Universities, for the special training 
 of candidates for holy orders '^- 
 
 Dissenting Academies were naturally an object of suspicion 
 and dislike to the Church, as cherishing an interest in oppo- 
 sition to itself. Even TUlotson advised archbishop Sharp to 
 withhold a license from Mr. Frankland's Seminary in the 
 north of England, on the ground that he was violating the 
 oath taken on graduation at the University^- At the be- 
 ginning of the last century there was a sharp controversy 
 on the subject of Academies, between the Rev. Samuel Wesley 
 and the Rev. Samuel Palmer. The former, who was the father 
 of the more celebrated man of the same name, had deserted 
 the ranks of the Nonconformists, and now attacked with ex- 
 treme bitterness the constitution and influence of their Semi- 
 naries^. The latter, who was a Dissenter, vindicated them. 
 The controversy involves matters which are now completely 
 forgotten ; and has little interest for the modern reader, be- 
 yond radicating the social weight of the Dissenters at that 
 time, and the strong apprehension of danger from their Aca- 
 demies, in drawing away great numbers of youth that would 
 else be educated at the Universities*. 
 
 The Protestant Dissenting Ministry never, perhaps, stood 
 higher in public estimation for learning and general accom- 
 phshment, than dming the period that the system of private 
 Academies was in its greatest vigour. The first half of the 
 last century was pre-eminently the age of learning among the 
 Nonconformists. Nor was this distinction confined to one 
 denomination ; it applied to the Independents and to the Bap- 
 tists, as well as to the Presbyterians. Among the Baptists, 
 Dr. John Gale, who had studied in Holland with high repute 
 under eminent divines and phUologers, brought home with 
 him from Leyden and Amsterdam, a great ftind of critical 
 
 ' Life, etc., p. 19. 2 Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. 271. 
 
 ' Letter from a Country Divine to Ms Friend in London, concerning the edu- 
 cation of the Dissenters in their Private Academies, etc., 1703. 
 
 ■* This paper war spread over several years. On the question of the obUga- 
 tion of the University oath, see Calamy's Continuation, vol. i. pp. 177-197 ; 
 vol. ii. pp. 731-735. Touhuin's Historical View, etc., oh. iii. sect, i., and Ap- 
 pendix, No. V. Toulmin has availed himself of MSS. in the possession of old 
 Dissenting famiUes. 
 
AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 355 
 
 learning; and while yet a young man, distinguished himself 
 by a display of extensive acquaintance with Christian anti- 
 quity, in. his answer to Wall's History of Infant Baptism. 
 For some time he was chairman of a society for promoting the 
 knowledge of the Scriptures, which met at Whiston's house 
 in Hatton Garden. Liberal opinions must at this time have 
 been making great progress in the Baptist body. Gale him- 
 self was decidedly anticalvinistic ; and in the discussions at 
 Salters' HaU in 1719 about the Trinity, we find him in the 
 majority of 73 against subscription. His auditory at Paul's- 
 aUey, Barbican, is said to have been one of the most numerous 
 and learned in London. We may conclude, therefore, that many 
 of the intelligent and educated inquirers of that day were 
 attracted and impressed by his representation of the doctrine 
 and practice of the primitive Church. This we know, was the 
 case with Whiston, who joined the Baptist church under the 
 ministry of his successor, Dr. James Foster, whose pulpit ora- 
 tory has been celebrated in a well-known couplet of Pope^. 
 The piety, learning and accomplishments of Watts, are alone 
 sufficient to confer honour on the Independents. 
 
 There was a general disposition among the leading men of 
 the Three Denominations, to merge these sectional distinc- 
 tions in the comprehensive title of Protestant Dissenter. It 
 was a period of earnest eclecticism, in which men brought 
 their learning and thoughtfulness to find out that common 
 truth, which was believed to be dispersed and variously ex- 
 pressed among them all. In spite of the strong hold which 
 the popular orthodoxy had early taken of his poetical tempe- 
 rament. Watts was deeply imbued with this Catholic spirit ; 
 apd we have the authority of Lardner for stating, that his 
 views in his closing years partook of the general tendency of 
 the age towards Unitarianism^. The governing principle of 
 
 1 Crosby's Hist, of English Baptists, vol. iy. pp. 366 et seq. ; Wilson's Hist, 
 and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches, toI. ui. p. 247. Pope's Epilogue to the 
 Satires, 131. 
 
 2 Belsham's Life of Lindsey, p. 219, note. Dr. Lardner m a correspondence 
 ■with the EcT. Samuel Merivale of Exeter (the particulars of which were commu- 
 nicated by the latter to Dr. Priestley, then of Leeds, and to theEev. Dr. Aikin, 
 of Warrington), stated, that Dr. Watts's opinions on the Trinity, at the close of 
 his life were known to very few ; that he had seen some of his papers, and that 
 his last thoughts were completely Unitarian. Erom worts pubhshed during 
 his life-time, it is evident, that Watts deviated from the orthodox doctrine of the 
 Trinity ; and his notions on this subject embroiled hita with Bradbury, the 
 
256 CHRISTIAN RATIONALISM 
 
 Ms mind, which gathered strength as he advanced in life, was 
 the love of all good men, whatever their doctrinal persuasion ; 
 and of this spirit he gave a beautiful instance in the directions 
 left behind him at his death, that his remains should be borne 
 to the grave by two Independent, two Presbyterian, and two 
 Baptist mirdsters^. 
 
 This truthful, catholic spirit of religious inquiry, was not 
 limited to divines. The contemporary controversy with the 
 Deists aroused the interest of all earnest minds, and quickened 
 the desire to place the authority of Christianity on a basis of 
 right reason. Many distinguished laymen. Sir Peter King, a 
 kinsman of Locke, and ultimately Lord Chancellor, Shute, 
 afterwards Lord Barrington, Sir Joseph JekyU, Master of the 
 RoUs, and Haynes, the friend of Newton, and a decided Uni- 
 tarian — ^warmly participated in the learned and enlightened 
 labours of the Nonconformist ministers, patronized and encou- 
 raged them, and sometimes employed their own pens with 
 great effect in the same cause. Rationalistic preaching was 
 decidedly in vogue with a large and influential portion of the 
 public. On this ground we must partly account for the extra- 
 ordinary popularity of Dr. James Foster just alluded to, whose 
 discourses though distinguished rather by a clear and forcible 
 reasoning than by what would now be called eloquence, were 
 eagerly hstened to by a " confluence of persons of every rank, 
 station, and quality — wits, free-thinkers, and clergymen^." 
 Even Doddridge whose genius was of a very different stamp, 
 betrays various signs, particularly in his earlier correspond- 
 ence, of the spirit of the times. He was suspected of verging 
 towards Presbyterianism, (which was already considered less 
 orthodox than Independency) and thought orthodoxy and 
 good sense not always the most intimate friends. In arguing 
 with a Deistical friend, he took the broad rationalistic ground, 
 and admitted that " the perfections of God are the very basis 
 on which the proof of any revelation must be buUt, and that, 
 therefore, any pretended revelation which is contrary to these 
 perfections, does in efiect contradict itself, and subverts its 
 own foundation^." 
 
 Independent, who was rigidly Trinitarian. Wilson's Dissenting Churchesj 
 vol. i. p. 306, note A. j III. p. 526. 
 
 1 Doddridge's Correspondence, vol. v. p. 84. 
 
 2 Dr. Caleb Fleming's Sermon on his Death, p. 15, quoted by Wilaon, Dia- 
 eenting Churches, II. p. 274. 
 
 5 Correspondence, etc. I. p. 169 ; II. p. 311, 430. 
 
AFTEE THE REVOLUTION. 257 
 
 The general object of the predominant theology was to es- 
 tablish the coincidence of Christianity with the principles of 
 natural religion and reason : and the position to be maintained 
 against the Deists was twofold — the evidence from history of the 
 divine authority of the Scriptures, and the intrinsic beauty and 
 reasonableness of their contents. This direction of the public 
 mind introduced a calm, broad, ethical view of the Christian 
 system, as an exposition of divine morality — with little to excite 
 the feelings and act on the imagination. Doctrinal views held 
 no very prominent place in the ordinary style of preaching, and 
 possessed rather a negative than a positive influence — alluded 
 to, if at all, chiefly to disown or explain the harsh and repul- 
 sive features of the old orthodoxy. Any strong expression of 
 dogmatism, as the raUying-point of a party, was neither con- 
 sistent with the unsettled and progressive state of theological 
 opinion, nor with that pervading catholicity of spirit which dis- 
 tinguished the age. The Socinian controversy had nearly died 
 away. In the Church, as well as aimong the Dissenters, the be- 
 lief of great numbers of the learned might be described as Arian; 
 a vague designation, which precluded the necessity of coming 
 to a decision on some ambiguous texts, and embraced every 
 gradation of opinion, from the confines of Athanasianism on 
 the one hand, to the very verge of Socinianism on the other. 
 To the prevalence of this doctrinal system the high name of 
 Dr. Samuel Clarke, the conscientious sacrifices of Whiston, 
 and the martyr-like renown which attached to the characters 
 of Emlyn and Peirce, must doubtless have contributed. 
 
 There is much in the religious condition now described, to 
 excite our sympathy and command oiu: approval. It is a re- 
 freshing spectacle — not often witnessed in the history of Chris- 
 tianity — to see men of difierent denominations agreeing to lay 
 aside their party names, and to assist each other in the pur- 
 suit of a common truth. And if churches were schools of 
 philosophic discussion, or the Gospel were intended to pro- 
 mote abstract speculation, or men generally had leismre and 
 inclination to engage in it — nothing could be imagined more 
 consonant to the ends of such a dispensation, than the spirit 
 which at this time pervaded the theological world. But such 
 a spirit was not adapted to the wants of the multitude ; it was 
 not in harmony with a true conception of the nature and ofBce 
 of religion. FuU of reverence for the new philosophy, and 
 confounding rehgion with science, it applied to the one, with- 
 
258 CHRISTIAN RATIONALISM 
 
 out due discrimination^ processes that belonged to the other. 
 Men were to be reasoned into faith. A certain state of the 
 affections, it was assumed, must inevitably ensue as the result 
 of a logical deduction. Demonstration was the great ambition 
 of the divine. He was to put down by the strong arm of ar- 
 gument the turbulent ebullitions of an insurrectionary under- 
 standing. From a simple postulate, the celebrated Dr. Clarke 
 attempted to deduce, a priori, with mathematical certainty, 
 the natiu'al and moral attributes of God^. 
 
 Two great deficiencies disqualified the theology of this 
 period for producing any deep effect on the popular mind. It 
 did not take sufficient note of those spontaneous suggestions 
 and aspirations — that consciousness of frailty and transgres- 
 sion, and that inherent sense of something more pure and ele- 
 vated, to be struggled after by prayer and a resolute will — 
 which form the materiel, if we may so call it, of the religious 
 sentiment in the human heart : and secondly, it did not pre- 
 sent an object sufficiently distinct and interesting to the faith 
 and spiritual affections of the great mass of men. It was too 
 constantly employed upon the outworks of religion, provtag 
 to people why they ought to believe, and showing them the 
 legitimate way to arrive at the faith ; instead of producing the 
 faith itself in their hearts, by appeals to their inmost cona- 
 tion and deepest sympathies, and teaching them from the wit- 
 ness of their personal experience, what religion is. How could 
 unscholastic minds derive any spiritual nutriment from ab- 
 stract discussions on the divine attributes and the foundations 
 of morals, or from elaborate proofs of the genuineness of the 
 books of Scripture, and of the reality of miracles performed, and 
 prophecies fulfilled, ages ago ? They were craving for some- 
 thing which their imaginations could firmly grasp ; to which 
 their affections could cling ; which they could realize in their 
 daily experience, and verify in their habitual intercourse with 
 the world. This, the smooth, unimpassioned style of preach- 
 ing, which had now taken the place of the rugged but earnest 
 oratory of the old Puritans, could not give. It wanted reality 
 and application; it did not come home to the soulj it did 
 not meet the demands of the inward bfe ; and therefore in its 
 
 ' ' Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of Grod, in answer more parti- 
 cularly to Hobbes and Spinoza.' Warburton supposed his demonstration of the 
 Dirine Legation of Moses " very little short of mathematical certainty." Book 
 I. Sect. i. ^ 
 
AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 259 
 
 general results it was not successful. Such was its predomi- 
 nant character. There were of course exceptions. Doddridge, 
 for instance, was plain, earnest, and forcible in his pulpit ad- 
 dresses, much followed, well understood, and thoroughly relished 
 by the humbler classes. But then Doddridge was remark- 
 able for resisting in this respect the tendencies of the time. 
 He was a student and a great admirer of the Puritan divines. 
 What has been said of the Dissenters, applies even more 
 strongly to the Church during this period; and in both cases it 
 was followed by the same effects — a decline of fervour and zeal, 
 diminished attendance on the public services of religion, and 
 a loss of hold on the popular affection. Before the middle of 
 the century we hear complaints from all quarters of the general 
 decay of religion, and in terms far too precise, in forms far too 
 special, to admit of our understanding this as merely the ordinary 
 exaggeration of religious rhetoric. As early as 1730, Doddridge 
 gave to the world his ' Free Thoughts on the most probable 
 mode of reviving the Dissenting Interest ;' and pamphlets of 
 similar purport and design were put forth about the same time 
 by his contemporaries^- The growing wealth and prosperity of 
 the country under the two first Georges, encouraged a general 
 license of manners which the predominant forms of religion 
 (for Methodism was yet in its infancy) were not strong enough 
 to control. Infidelity and indifference to religion widely pre- 
 vailed ; and this " dissoluteness and contempt of principle in 
 the higher part of the world," with the " profligate intempe- 
 rance, and fearlessness of committing crimes in the lowerV' 
 excited the serious apprehensions of reflecting men. During 
 the closing years of the reign of George II., we flnd Seeker 
 and Butler, in charges to their Clergy, and in occasional Ser- 
 mons — and among the Dissenters, Dr. Leland, in his ' Letter 
 on the Public Past,' 1756^, Towgood, in his ' Serious and Free 
 Thoughts on the Present State of the Church and of Reli- 
 gion*,' and Dr. Chandler, in his 'Case of Subscription, etc., 
 
 ' 'Pree and Serious Remonstrance to Dissenting Ministers, on Occasion of 
 the Decay of Keligion,' by Nathaniel Neal, son of the Historian of the Puritans. 
 Neither this pamphlet nor that of Doddridge have I been able to see. 
 
 2 Expressions in a charge of Archbishop Seeker's. 
 
 3 Prmted in the Supplement to his Eeview of the Deistical "Writers. 
 
 ■• Humbly addressed in a Letter to the Eight Eev. the Bishops, by a Chris- 
 tian. It was first pubhshed in 1755, and is appended to his work on Dissent 
 fcom the Church of England. 
 
260 CHRISTIAN RATIONALISM 
 
 impartially reviewed^' — all uniting, with a remarkable coin- 
 cidence in their representations, to deplore the moral and 
 spiritual condition of the country, and suggesting different re- 
 medies for the eviP- It is worth notice, that these pub- 
 lications allude to the efforts of Catholic emissaries in aU 
 quarters, to recover the people to the ancient faith of Europe^. 
 Of the fact of wide-spread irreligion and great spiritual de- 
 stitution at that time, more than half a century from the settle- 
 ment of the Revolution, there cannot be a doubt ; though dif- 
 ferent parties imputed it to a different cause. Churchmen 
 generally ascribed it to the infliience of the Freethinkers ; the 
 Freethinkers, to the Church itself. Some attributed it to the 
 laxity of principle and latitudinarian spirit iatroduced and re- 
 cognized by the Revolution; others, and especially the most 
 eminent men among the Dissenters, to the failure of the Es- 
 tablishment to carry out the fundamental principle of its Pro- 
 testant constitution, the restrictions on conscience which fet- 
 tered it, and the general suspicion of hollowness and hypocrisy 
 which attached to the clerical office and character*. The Ca- 
 
 ' It appeared in 1'74S. 
 
 ^ To these Tracts, so strongly attesting the general irreligion and licentious- 
 ness of the age, may be added the conclusion of Dr. Hartley's ' Observations on 
 Man,' written about the same time, which solemnly predicts the ruin of the 
 existing states of Christendom from the prevalent corruption of manners, 
 
 ^ A few years afterwards, in 1774, Mr. Lindsey expresses his apprehensions 
 on the same subject, in his FareweE Address to the Parishioners of Catterict. 
 
 '' The spirit of the leaders of the Presbyterians in the first half of the eigh- 
 teenth century, was moderate, concUiatory and hberal. It is well expressed by 
 James Peiree in his ' Defence of the Dissenting Ministry and Presbyterian Or- 
 dination,' p. 60 (London, 1717) : " Though I do not think it indifierent what 
 party a man is of (for he certainly ought to be of that which he beUeves in his 
 conscience is in the right), yet httle stress do I lay upon this, in the matter of 
 eternal salyation ; being fuUy persuaded, that, ' as in every nation,' so in 
 every party, ' he that fears God and works righteousness is accepted of him.' 
 And I can truly say, with the excellent Archbishop TUlotson : ' I had much 
 rather persuade any one to be a good man, than to be of any party or denomi- 
 nation whatever.' So essential do I esteem charity, moderation, and peace to 
 Christianity, that I should very much dishke the Dissenters, if I saw as little 
 of these among them, as I do among the High Churchmen." 
 
 The principle of an EstabUshmeut, conceived in a liberal, comprehensive 
 spirit, was still maintained among them. As with Baxter, reform, not destruction, 
 union rather than separation, was then- aim. In Dr. Samuel Chandler's ' Case 
 of Subscription to Explanatoi-y Articles of Faith, etc' (1748), he holds up the 
 example of the Church of Geneva, as worthy of imitation, and quotes with high 
 approval the speech of J. A. Turretin to the Lesser Council, on the aboUtion 
 of aU subscription. His doctrine is, that submission to Christ as the sole Head, 
 is the only bond of union for Protestant Churches, and one much called for by 
 the growth of infldehty on one hand, and the intrigues of Popish emissaries on 
 
AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 261 
 
 tholics, profiting by the dissensions among Protestants^ threw 
 the blame of all these evils on the Reformation itself, and 
 maintained that they were a necessary consequence of the 
 original separation from Rome. There was perhaps a portion 
 of truth in aU these representations — the last not excluded : 
 but as none of them embraced the whole evil^ none could sug- 
 gest a sufficient remedy. In the meantime^ large masses of 
 society were estranged from religion and given up to vice : 
 and this was enough to prove, that there must be something 
 defective, something unsuited to the feeling and conception of 
 the multitude, in the doctrine or the administration of the 
 predominant religion, or perhaps in both. 
 
 At the time when the rationalistic tendency was widely dif- 
 
 the other. Acknowledging the genius of the English and Genevese Churches 
 to be BO distinct, that the one cannot in all things famish a rule for the other, 
 he still contends, that the former may remOTe some of her enclosures, -srithout 
 shaking her foundations, and open her hosom to receire many now excluded, 
 into her communion and ministry — "by only altering things really alterable, 
 and exceptionable in themselyes, and only taking away a few others, that are 
 inconsistent with true Protestantism, and prejudicial to religion and virtue in 
 the midst of us." p. 179. 
 
 Towgood himself, whose work on ' Dissent from the Church of England' was 
 long regarded as a standard authority, takes the same ground, and declares that 
 the Dissenters, whose views he represents, are no enemies to the Church, but 
 sincerely desirous of a coahtion with it, if it were thoroughly reformed ; and he 
 seems, moreover, to approve of the Protestant Establishrnents of Scotland and 
 the Continent. " The destruction of the Church of England," says he, " is what 
 wc by no means wish" (p. 79) ; and again (p. 245), "I verily beheve, that, if 
 such concessions as a great part of oiu- governors, both in Church and State, 
 would, I presume, think it not unreasonable to make, were made to the Dis- 
 senters, there would be no unbecoming stiffness or aversion shown by the most 
 considerable part of them." Such were the principles of what was then called 
 " Moderate Dissent." Since that time, STonconformity has begun to assume a 
 different ground. It either turns, as with the late Mr. Belsham, chiefly on 
 doctrmal differences with the Church of England, or, as with many Unitarian, 
 and nearly aJl orthodox, Dissenters, it rejects the principle of an Establishment 
 tmder any modification. This latter ground of separation was not, however, 
 entirely disregarded during the period of which I am speaking. In 1737 a 
 Traot appeared under the title of ' Conscientious Nonconformity to every civU 
 Establishment of Eehgion whatever, and to the Enghsh Establishment thereof 
 in particular, considered and defended.' It is in the form of a dialogue between 
 a clergyman and his son who had become a Nonconformist at the University. 
 The Tract is curious, as indicating the contemporaneous state of opinion, and 
 showing, that the best known and most influential of the Dissenters had aban- 
 doned their Calvinism, and become friends to a general Toleration, and were 
 against submission to human tests and standards of Divine Truth. They are 
 described as preaching up morality and practical religion, and distinguished 
 from the Church by laying perhaps more stress on love to Christ, as a principle 
 of action. The author ascribes the decline of their numbers and influence, which 
 was already perceptible, to the great secular attractions of the Estabhshment. 
 
263 CHRISTIAN RATIONALISM 
 
 fused, Watts earnestly contended for a different mode of preach- 
 ing Christianity, and placed the consummating evidence of its 
 divine authority in the testimony of man's own conscience and 
 personal experience^. "A statue," says he, "hung round 
 with moral sentences, or a marble pillar with divine truths 
 inscribed upon it, may preach coldly to the imderstanding, 
 while devotion freezes at the heart." He eloquently vindi- 
 cates " the movements of sacred passion," " life and zeal in 
 the ministry of the word," though they may be " the ridicule 
 of an age which pretends to nothing but calm reasoning;" and 
 he tells us, that he has made it his aim to rescue appeals of this 
 sort " from the charge of enthusiasm, and to put them in such 
 a light as might show their perfect consistence vdth common 
 sense and reason^." 
 
 " See Ms Three Sermons on the Inward Witness of Christianity, or, an Evi- 
 dence of the Truth of the Gospel from its Divine Effects. 1720. 
 
 2 Dedication to his Sermons. The following extracts from Watts's third Ser- 
 mon on " The Inward Witness to Christianity," contain an element of valuahle 
 truth, and resemhle passages in the writings of Cudworth and Channing. "Every 
 true Christian has a sufficient argument and evidence to support his faith, without 
 being able to prove the authority of any of the canonical writings. He may hold 
 fast his reUgion, and be assured it is divine, though lie cannot bring any learned 
 proof, that the book that contains it, is divine too, nay, though the book itself 
 should even happen to be lost or destroyed." — " In the first ages of Christianity, 
 for several hundred years together, how few among the common people were able 
 to read ! How few could get the possession or the use of a Bible, when all sacred 
 as well as profane books niust be copied by writing ! How few of the populace, 
 in a large town or city, could obtain, or could use, any small part of Scripture, 
 before the art of printing made the Word of Grod so common ! And yet mil- 
 lions of them were regenerated, sanctified, and saved by the ministration of 
 this Q-ospel. The sum, and sense, and substance, of this divine doctrine, com- 
 municated to the nations in various forms of speech, and ui different phrases, 
 made a divine impression on their minds, being attended by the power of the 
 blessed Spirit ; and while it stamped its own sacred image on their soula, it 
 transformed their natures into holy and heavenly, and created so many new 
 witnesses to the truth of the Gospel, for it began eternal life in them. Consider, 
 then. Christians, and be convinced, that a Gospel has a more noble inward wit- 
 ness belonging to it, than is derived from ink and paper, from precise letters 
 and syllables, etc." pp. 48-50. (Watts's Sermons, "Vol. I. London, 1772.) The 
 whole of this Third Sermon, though the author does not keep back his strong 
 orthodoxy, is fuU of rehgious wisdom and Christian eloquence. I cannot re- 
 frain from bringing into comparison with it some beautiful passages in Cud- 
 worth's Sermon before the House of Common, 1647. " Though there be never 
 such excellent truths concerning Christ and his Gospel set down in words and 
 letters, yet they wUl be but unknown characters to us, until we have a living 
 spirit within us that can deoypher them j untU the same spirit, by secret whis- 
 pers in our hearts, do comment upon them wliioh did at first indite them. There 
 be many that understand the Greek and Hebrew of the Soriptm-e, the original 
 languages in which the text was written, that never understood the language of 
 
AFTER THE KEVOLXJTION. 263 
 
 Had more of this spirit remained among tlie Dissenters^ 
 associated with sound Biblical learning and general cultiva- 
 tion and guided by good taste, it would have preserved the 
 religious life inherited from their forefathers; retained the 
 affection and sympathy of their people ; prevented the decline 
 of their congregations; and superseded the extravagance 
 which accompanied the revivals of Methodism. Had the 
 Church also encouraged a religious ministration which met 
 the spiritual necessities of the age, she might have guided and 
 tempered it, and kept within her pale thousands that have 
 now perhaps irrecoverably escaped from her control. But 
 such would seem to be the mysterious condition of human 
 
 the Spirit. There is a caro and a spiritus, a flesh and a spirit, a body and a 
 Boul, in all the -writings of the Scriptures. It is hut the flesh and body of divine 
 truth that is printed upon paper, which many moths of hoots and libraries do 
 only feed upon, — many waiting skeletons of knowledge, that bury and entomb 
 truths in the living sepulchres of their souls, do only converse with ; such as 
 never did anything else but pick at the mere hark and rind of truths, and crack 
 the shells of them. But there is a soul and spirit of divine truths that could 
 never yet be congealed into ink, that could never he blotted upon paper, which 
 by a secret traduction and conveyance, passeth from one soul unto another, 
 being able to dwell or lodge nowhere but in a spiritual being, in a hving thing, 
 because itself is nothing but hfe and spirit." " Though the old law work us 
 into some outward conformity to God's commandments, and so hath a good 
 effect upon the world, — yet we are all this while but like dead instruments of 
 music, that sound sweetly and harmoniously when they are only struck and 
 played upon from without by the musician's hand, who hath the theory and 
 law of music hving within himself. But the second, the hving law of the G-ospel, 
 the law of the Spirit of life within us, is as if the soul of music should incor- 
 porate itself with the instrument and hve in the strings, and make them of their 
 own accord, without any touch or impulse from without, dance up and down, 
 and warble out their harmonies."— The secret of all rehgious influence seems to 
 he in the contagion of deep earnestness and genuine conviction. I know, few 
 things finer in the records of the spiritual hfe, than Penn's description of George 
 Fox in prayer. " The inma/rdmess and weight of his spirit, the reverence and 
 solemnity of his address and behaviour, and the fewness and fulness of his words 
 have often struck even strangers with admiration,, as they used to reach others 
 with consolation. The most awful, living, reverent, frame I ever felt or beheld, I 
 must say was his in prayer. And truly it was a testunony he knew and hved 
 nearer to the Lord than other men ; for they that know him most wih see most 
 reason to approach him with reverence and fear." ' A brief Account etc. of the 
 People called Quakers,' p. 108. London : 1708, 4th edition. See also a most 
 solemn and affecting prayer, breathed forth on his deathbed by another sunple 
 and unlearned Quaker, a true follower of George Fox— m the ' Journal of the 
 Life, Gospel Labours and Christian Experiences of John Woobnan, etc. War- 
 rington : 1840, p. 172. On reading such passages as these, one feels how elo- 
 quent beyond aU human utterance, is the language of genume feith, as it issues 
 pure and fresh from the inmost ^depths of the subjected and trustmg heart. 
 yVith facts like these before him, no man can doubt that rehgion is a reality/. 
 
264 CHRISTIAN RATIONALISM 
 
 progress, that whenever two elements of thought and action 
 are indispensable to it, they do not act together and quietly- 
 check each other, but operate alternately. They draw oflf 
 into independent spheres, and carry on what should be theix 
 joint work by action and reaction. Of our country at least it 
 is eminently characteristic, to separate rather than combine, 
 for prosecuting the different, but related and mutually- 
 essential, objects that are embraced in the general weal. 
 Rational and critical inquiry was as necessary as the preserva- 
 tion of the devotional sentiment, to the growth and health of 
 the religious life; and there is no reason in the nature of 
 things, why the two tendencies might not have been asso- 
 ciated, so as beneficially to stimulate and qualify each other. 
 But the Church and the old Nonconformists were attached to 
 their hereditary system and rationalistic style of instruction, 
 and would not meet as they might have done the strong de- 
 mands of the popular mind for more nourishing spiritual food. 
 They kept themselves coldly and proudly aloof, &U of aliena- 
 tion and distrust. The consequence was, that a new spirit 
 arose, which iafected all ranks with a contagious enthusiasm, 
 and absorbed a large portion of the vital strength both of the 
 Dissenters and the Church. Rationalism striking into a nar- 
 rower dogmatic path, was content to gather to itself a small 
 band of earnest and devoted followers, and to live on its own 
 convictions in the hope of better days. 
 
 The first strong working of these divergent tendencies 
 coincides with the most active period of Doddridge's minis- 
 terial life ; and his tender, susceptible spirit, full of devo- 
 tional enthusiasm and aU the poetry of religion, yet withal 
 learned and highly accomplished — was perplexed and embar- 
 rassed by the incompatible claims they made upon him. He 
 had spent his early years amidst rationalistic influences ; and 
 in passing through the usual discipline of a Dissenting Aca- 
 demy, had entered freely iato the religious and philosophical 
 controversies of the time. His temperament, however, had 
 more sympathy with Watts than with the generality of the 
 Presbyterian diviaes ; and that eminent man appears to have 
 exercised great influence over his mind. It was at the in- 
 stance of Watts, that he composed one of the most popular 
 of his works, " The Rise and Progress of Religion in the 
 Soul," which was conceived in a spirit quite at variance with 
 the prevailing rationalism, and placed the seat of religion in 
 
AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 265 
 
 tte conscience and tlie heart. With strong affections and a 
 fervent piety, lie united that love of human praise and 
 sympathy which is incident to such a character, and which 
 prevented him from exhibiting on all occasions the clear 
 decision and fixed purpose essential to the highest form of 
 usefulness. He was himself too learned and too enlightened, 
 not to be fully aware of the value of the contributions that 
 were made by the rational school, to the cause of sacred criti- 
 cism and pure Christianity; and yet personally he felt per- 
 haps a deeper interest in the movements of more enthusiastic 
 and even mystical rehgionists. Count Zinzendorf, Mr. Wesley, 
 and Lady Huntingdon, were among his correspondents ; and he 
 did' not scruple to open his pulpit to the Calvinistic Whitfield. 
 He seems, in short, to have clearly seen, that there was work 
 to be accomplished in society, to which the existing means of 
 religious agency were altogether inadequate, and on which he 
 was willing to assist earnest minds, out of his own denomina- 
 tion, in bringing to bear a new force and a better adapted in- 
 strumentality. For these friendly relations with the Metho- 
 dists, he incurred the displeasure of his old Nonconforming 
 friends, and amongst them of Watts himself. On the other 
 hand, his intercourse with the most eminent of the clergy was 
 highly flattering. Warburton constantly wrote to him in terms 
 of the greatest cordiahty, and asked his advice on points of 
 literature and criticism. He had correspondents at Oxford 
 and Cambridge, and among the bishops. Doddridge's was 
 not a mind to be insensible to such distinctions. Perhaps 
 this influence on him interfered a Httle with perfect simphcity 
 and directness of action. He was anxious to maintain his 
 high position, and tried to keep a middle way between all 
 extremes. Of this character was his suggestion to Arch- 
 bishop Herring, that in place of a complete comprehension, 
 there should be a recognition of the Dissenting Churches as 
 unschismatical, with an occasional exchange of pulpits be- 
 tween the clergy and the Nonconformist ministers^. 
 
 Doddridge's religion consisted so much in feeling, that it is 
 not surprising, it should have placed him, at different times, 
 in positions which to every one but himself seemed incon- 
 sistent. His great work on which he bestowed the best years 
 of his life, the Family Expositor, reflects the character of his 
 mind, and represents the two elements which it was the con- 
 
 1 Correspondence, toI. v. p. 76. 
 
 N 
 
266 CHRISTIAN RATIONALISM AFTER TH33 REVOLUTION. 
 
 stant effort of his life to combine and reconcile — the critical 
 or rationalistic, and the orthodox or sentimental. In his 
 notes and paraphrase, he discovers the well-instructed scholar 
 and divine ; in his reflections and improvement, he too often 
 sinks into the declamatory preacher. His character, as a 
 whole, is amiable and estimable, full of fervour and zeal ; 
 interesting to look back upon, as expressing with vividness 
 and prominence the spirit of his age ; but deficient, it must 
 be confessed, in the higher attributes of mental and moral 
 greatness. Yet in Doddridge, the Protestant- Dissenting 
 ministry reached its culminating point of worldly influence 
 and respectability. Never, perhaps, before or since, did a 
 Nonconformist divine enjoy so extensive a reputation, or 
 meet with such universal respect. He flourished just at that 
 juncture, when parties pretty nearly balanced each other iu 
 the religious world; and his courteous, sympathizing spirit 
 won honourable opinions from them all. From the time of 
 his death, the old form of Protestant Dissent began to decline, 
 and change its character ; and principles which his position 
 and influence had enabled him to keep together in tolerable 
 union, soon after diverged into irreconcileable hostility. 
 
 The religion of feeling, crushed by formalism and rational- 
 ism out of the Church and the old Dissent, was taken up and 
 embodied in Methodism. The origin of this vast sect is 
 entirely due to the imperfections of earlier religious bodies. 
 It represents no great idea; it expresses no principle, hke 
 Puritanism or the Church ; it is a mere outbreak of feeling 
 that was pent up, and wanted free expression ; it was an irre- 
 gular effort to compensate the deficiencies of existiag institu- 
 tions. Attached to the liturgy and disciphne of the Church, 
 and expressing in its two great sections, the Arminian and 
 Calvinistic interpretation of the Articles, it is a reflection, an 
 echo, of the hierarchy among the people. It shows clearly 
 what the hierarchy might have done, and, to retain its place 
 as a national religion, ought to have done. With Dissent it 
 had little in common, but the freedom of its original action, 
 and its appeal to the popular heart. When spiritual life was 
 everywhere languishing, Methodism arose with a new blessing 
 to society in the fresh outpouring of its missionary spirit over 
 the dry and waste places of the earth. Its continuance as an 
 institution, is less perhaps due to the unabated energy of its 
 moral power, than to the skilful organization of its separate 
 
ENGLISH DEISM, OR FUEETHINKING. 267 
 
 societies, and their union under a strong and central autho- 
 rity. As it represents a fact rather than a principle, it be- 
 comes difficult to form any conjecture as to its ultimate 
 destiny. Should the Church ever undergo some great re- 
 form, and bring its ministrations iato harmony with the 
 wants of the people, it would appear most natural, that Me- 
 thodism should be re-absorbed iuto the womb that gave it 
 birth. But should this not be — as Methodism rests on no 
 great historical tradition, and embodies no distinct principle — 
 it is hardly to be conceived, how in its present form, it should 
 be able permanently to maintain its ground in the midst of a 
 growing spirit of intelligence and freedom, diffused through 
 those classes to which it must chiefly look for its support. 
 But we must now direct our attention to a very different 
 phenomenon. 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 CHARACTER AND TENDENCIES OF ENGLISH DEISM, OR 
 FREETHINKING. 
 
 The name Deist is said to have been first assumed by the 
 deniers of revealed religion in France and Italy, about the 
 middle of the sixteenth century^. In the great unsettling of 
 previous opinions, occasioned by the Reformation, it is proba- 
 ble, that deistical principles early took possession of some spe- 
 culative minds, though they were not enough diffused, nor 
 excited sufficient interest, nor possessed perhaps in themselves 
 sufficient power, to form the bond of a sect. Lord Herbert of 
 Cherbury, already alluded to, was the first in our own country 
 to give these principles in a systematic form to the world. 
 BuUt on the assumption of certain innate notions of religion 
 in every human mind, his theory was fundamentally opposed 
 to the philosophy afterwards introduced by Locke. The views 
 of Lord Herbert were taken up at the latter end of the seven- 
 teenth century, by Charles Blount, the second son of Sir 
 Henry Blount, a person of some celebrity in the civil wars^. 
 The son was a young man of ardent, romantic temperament, 
 
 ' Leland's View of Deistical Writers, toI. i. p. 2. 
 2 Aubrey's Lives, II. p. 241. 
 
 N 2 
 
268 CHAEACTEE AND TENDENCIES OF 
 
 not devoid of religious feeling, but wild and extravagant in the 
 indulgence of it. Having conceived a hopeless passion, he 
 deliberately destroyed himself, in the belief that his spirit 
 would pass at once to the bosom of God. He published a va- 
 riety of pieces, which indicate the tendency of his opinions : a 
 translation of part of the Life of ApoUonius Tyanseus, by Phi- 
 lostratus, in the notes to which he draws some comparisons 
 between that sophist and Jesus Christ; '' Religio Laid," 
 which is said to be little more than a translation of Lord Her- 
 bert's treatise with the same title ; " Anima Mundi," or an 
 account of the opinions of the ancients concerning man's soul 
 after this life ; and the " Original of Idolatry," in the preface 
 to which he speaks reverentially of Christ and his rehgion. 
 The work by which he is best known, is a collection of pieces 
 by himself and others, entitled the " Oracles of Reason," 
 pubUshed after his death by a friend, who justifies in a pre- 
 fatory account of the life and death of the author, the act by 
 which he terminated his existence. This posthumous work 
 was printed in 1693^. 
 
 Another deistical writer of the same time, was Toland, a 
 man of extensive reading and considerable ingenuity, but para- 
 doxical and vain, who imnecessarily excited odium, to enjoy 
 the notoriety it procured. He was of Popish extraction ; but 
 early embracing the Protestant faith, he joined the Dissenters, 
 some of whom contributed to his support at the University of 
 Leyden. In 1695, during the height of the Socinian con- 
 troversy, he published his " Christianity not Mysterious," in- 
 tended to show, that there is nothing in the Gospel contrary 
 to reason, nor above it ; and that no Christian doctrine can be 
 properly called a mystery. In this last view he certainly differed 
 from Locke, whose new philosophy was made responsible for 
 all the startling theories that were now promulgated, but who 
 says distinctly in his first letter to StUlingfleet, " I shall always 
 hearken to Scripture, as containing infallible truth, relating to 
 things of the highest concernment ; and I wish I could say, 
 there were no mysteries in it ; I aclmowledge there are to me, 
 and I fear always will be^." Toland was raised into undue im- 
 portance by the attacks upon his book. It was presented by 
 the Grand Jury of Dublin, where he was then residing, the 
 
 ^ EemaiiiB of C. Eloimt, and Leland's View, vol. i. 
 
 - Quoted in the View of BoUngbroke's Philosophy, (ascribed to Warburton,) 
 p. 330. 
 
ENGLISH DEISM, OR FREETHINKING. 269 
 
 Dissenters being great promoters of these intolerant proceed- 
 ings. The book was ordered to be burned by the Irish Par- 
 liament j and the Attorney- General commenced a prosecution 
 against the author, who made a timely escape into England. 
 Some of his subsequent pieces, such as his Amyntor, his Ori- 
 gines JudaicEe, and his Nazarenus, impugned the canonical 
 authority of the books of Scripture, and called forth a series 
 of learned works in. defence of it. Jeremiah Jones's work on 
 the Canon, and Lardner's on the Credibility of the Gospels, 
 were only more remote results of the inquiries which his bold 
 scepticism was the means of exciting. Notwithstanding the 
 apparent tendency of Toland's productions, it should in jus- 
 tice to him be stated, that he professed himself sincerely at- 
 tached to the pure religion of Christ and his Apostles, and 
 declared it was his only wish to exhibit it free from the addi:. 
 tions and corruptions of later times. But he was one of those 
 men who are urged towards scepticism, more by the love of 
 singularity than by the simple desire of truth, and who there- 
 fore lose the credit of whatever ingenuity and originality there 
 may be in their opinions, and incur the reputation of more 
 extreme views than they actually entertain. Toland died in 
 17221. 
 
 Blount and Toland stand distinct from the school of Locke : 
 but there were men of a far higher order, intellectually and 
 morally, formed by his instructions, and largely imbued with 
 his spirit of truthfulness, who went beyond their master's con- 
 clusions and did not with him recognize in Scripture a divinely 
 constituted liinit to the researches of human reason. Such 
 men were Lord Shaftesbury and Anthony Collins. Shaftes- 
 bury was a highly accomplished and virtuous man, whose early 
 education had been entrusted to the care of Locke^. He used 
 the mental freedom in which he had been educated, to adopt a 
 very different philosophy from his instructor. When Locke's 
 Essay appeared, he expressed his dissent from its unqualified 
 repudiation of all innate tendencies in the mind — a doctrine 
 which he thought as objectionable as that of Hobbes^, taking 
 
 ' Memoirs prefixed to a collection of Ws Pieces, 1726. Compare Leland, 
 Tol. L 
 
 2 Loote had been for years attached to the person of his grandfather, the 
 celebrated Chancellor, immortalized in the verse of Dryden. 
 
 5 See two letters of his, addressed to Loeke. King's Life of Locke, pp. 
 183-89. 
 
270 CHARACTEB, AND TENDENCIES OF 
 
 away all natural foundation for moral and religious ideas, and 
 destroying the security of social order. The same views were 
 further unfolded in some " Letters addressed by a Nobleman 
 to a Young Man at the University/' published without his 
 name m. 1716; which are now ascertained to have been writ- 
 ten by him to the son of a domestic, whom he was educating 
 for the Church. The mind of Shaftesbury was earnestly di- 
 rected to moral and religious speculation. His earhest publi- 
 cation was a volume of select sermons by Whichcote, Locke's 
 favourite preacher, which he was at the trouble of collecting 
 from different parties who had taken them down in shorthand, 
 and which he introduced with a preface full of respectful feel- 
 ing towards Christianity. 
 
 It is curious to notice the different influence of the philoso- 
 phy of Shaftesbury and of Locke. The religious deficiencies 
 of Locke's psychological system urged him to seek a compensa- 
 tion in fidl reliance on the external proofs of divine revelation ; 
 Shaftesbury's firmer trust in an immutable principle of faith 
 and duty within the breast, left him more open to scepticism 
 about historical testimony, and made him quicker to perceive 
 any discrepancy between doctrines held by Christians and that 
 implanted sense of right which he revered as the voice of God. 
 These tendencies which naturally drew him away from a tradi- 
 tional religion enforced by outward sanctions, were confirmed 
 by his dislike of the prevalent character of Christian theology. 
 It was studied in a spirit, and placed on grounds, with which 
 his whole cast of thought was at variance. It was too literal 
 and too systematic; it aimed at demonstration through the 
 medium of historical facts. The Characteristics, his principal 
 work, revised by him for publication in the last years of his 
 life, betray undoubted alienation from Christianity as usually 
 conceived. He admired the pure and benevolent spirit of the 
 simple Gospel ; but he could not find certainty in the histori- 
 cal proof of miracles, and was disgusted with the dogmatic and 
 contentious spirit of divines. Yet he seems to have felt the 
 importance of a fixed and definite system of faith for the 
 multitude, and thought with Harrington, there should be a 
 public leading in religion, conjoined with a general toleration^. 
 This conflict between what he imagined to be necessary, and 
 what he felt to be true, has occasionally had an unhappy eflect 
 on his language — mingling expressions of profound reverence 
 
 ' On Entliusiasm, p. 17. 
 
ENGLISH DEISMj OR PKEETHINKING. 271 
 
 for, whatever is established, with covert iasimiations against 
 its sense and reasonahlenesgi. There runs indeed through all 
 his observations on Christian institutions and theology, a tone 
 of latent sarcasm, which one would gladly exchange for a 
 healthful expression of simple-hearted doubt. With this ex- 
 ception, however, an elevated spirit of moraUty and natural 
 religion pervades the writings of Shaftesbury ; and the amiable 
 Mr. Lindsey, in his Conversations on the Divine Government, 
 has ventured to claim him as, in reahty, notwithstanding some 
 free notions, a believer in Christianity^. 
 
 Anthony CoUins was the chosen friend of Locke in his de- 
 clining years. To him the aged philosopher addressed those 
 memorable words, preserved in his correspondence : — " Believe 
 it, my good friend, to love truth for truth's sake, is the principal 
 part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of 
 all other virtues ; and if I mistake not, you have as much of 
 it as ever I met with in anybody." For him, too, he left a 
 letter of affectionate counsels, to be delivered after his decease. 
 There must have been some noble qualities in the mind of 
 CoUins, to secure the confidence and esteem of so clear-sighted 
 and experienced a judge. The works by which Collins ac^ 
 quired notoriety, did not appear till some years after the 
 death of Locke. The love of truth which Locke had remarked 
 in him, not tempered by the conservative caution and judg, 
 ment of his venerable friend, took the form of an extreme 
 freedom of speculation, mingled with a great dislike of the 
 priesthood. 
 
 "When a particular tendency of thought is strongly excited 
 by the condition of society, it spreads like an epidemic ; be- 
 comes a ruling passion in many minds ; and vents its favourite 
 ideas in certain cant phrases which pass for axioms. Such is 
 the history of all sects ; and when the Freethinkers became a 
 sect, they exhibited sectarian weaknesses. In 1713, Collins 
 published without his name, a " Discourse of Freethinking, 
 occasioned by the rise and growth of a sect, called Free- 
 thinkers." Its object was unobjectionable and excellent, being 
 simply to assert, in the most unrestricted sense, the right of 
 every man to use his own judgment in the pursuit of truth. 
 But in his self-abandonment to a favourite sentiment, the au- 
 thor has not altogether escaped that spirit of sect which I 
 have described. His language is often declamatory ; his state- 
 1 Miscellaneous Eefiections, p. 71. ^ ConTersation II. p. 39. 
 
272 CHARACTER AND TENDENCIES OF 
 
 ments want precision, and are tinged ■witli prejudice ; and lie 
 laid himself open to animadversion by frequent inaccuracies, 
 misapprehensions, and hasty conclusions. These were exposed 
 with unsparing severity, in a reply by Dr. Richard Bentley, 
 written in the character of a Lutheran divine, under the as- 
 sumed name of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis. It is impossible 
 not to admire the caustic wit, the masculine vigour and exu- 
 berant learning, of this celebrated piece ; but, with all its in- 
 tellectual excellences, it is not a fair and candid reply. The 
 author runs down his adversary, instead of properly answering 
 him. He destroys his credit, by exhibiting his errors and 
 ignorance in detail, without once encountering the principle 
 of his main argument, and imputes to him opinions and mo- 
 tives which, it was evident from his book itself, that he would 
 disavow. There was enough to condemn in it, without the 
 gratuitous inference of bad intentions. Collins was a man of 
 probity and talent, a sincere theist, led into error by his very 
 passion for speculative truth; and it was an unworthy re- 
 source of controversy, to hold him up to opprobrium as a fool 
 and an atheist. 
 
 In 1724, Collins published anonymously a "Discourse on 
 the grounds and reasons of the Christian Eeligion." His 
 general argument was this: that the New Testament being 
 founded on the Old, as the prophecies contained in the latter, 
 had reference to events near the time of their delivery, they 
 must have been fulfilled in Christ, not literally but mystically 
 and aUegorically ; and that only on this principle of inter- 
 pretation which had long prevailed among the rabbis, could 
 Christianity be shown to be true. These views so contrary 
 to received opinions, called forth a miiltitude of animadver- 
 sions and replies ; which induced the author still further to 
 develope his idea in the " Scheme of Literal Prophecy Consi- 
 dered," accompanied by a review of the preceding contro- 
 versy. In the preface to this last work, he observes, that 
 many of the answers to him were "written with a temper, 
 moderation, and politeness, unusual in theological controver- 
 sies, and becoming good, pious, and learned men;" and that 
 their authors, allowing the subject to have its difficulties, and 
 to be proper for free and public debate, depend only on the 
 force of argument, appeal only to the reason of men for a de- 
 termination, and disclaim all force and other application to 
 the passions and weakness of men, to support and maintain 
 
ENGLISH DEISM, OR FREETHINKING. 273 
 
 the notions they advance^." This was in 1727; and the fact 
 alluded to indicates the progress of more liberal sentiments^ 
 and shows that good had resulted from the bold suggestions 
 of the Freethinkers. Men who wish to examine a subject 
 thoroughly on every side, sometimes propose a view tentatively, 
 to see how far it will carry them, and what result it will yield; 
 and the conclusion which they adopt for the time, in develop- 
 ing that view, must not always be considered as the expres- 
 sion of their settled convictions, nor can be tried by the same 
 standard as the judgments of the practical divine. Some al- 
 lowance, therefore, must be made for the speculations of such 
 Freethinkers as Collins. They may, on the whole, be very 
 extravagant, and yet offer valuable suggestions to the thought- 
 ful inquirer. Their suppression at least would be fatal to the 
 interests of truth. The philosophy of CoUins differed much 
 from that of Shaftesbury, and had more affinity with the prin- 
 ciples of their common master. He defended the doctiines 
 of necessity and materialism. In all the social relations of 
 hfe, Collins is admitted to have been a man of great worth. 
 During many years, he filled the responsible of&ce of Trea- 
 surer for the county of Essex, with a high reputation for in- 
 tegrity and abilities. 
 
 As Collins denied a literal prophecy, so Woolston whose 
 writings attracted notice between the years 1726 and 1730, 
 allegorized the miracles of Jesus, and treated his history, con- 
 tained in the New Testament, as an emblematical representa- 
 tion of his spiritual life in the souls of men^. He attacked 
 particularly the evidence for the resurrection, and gave occa- 
 sion to Sherlock's well-known piece, the " Trial of the Wit- 
 nesses.'' His fanciful notions appear to have been contracted 
 from a study of Origen, and other mystical vmters ; and, as 
 he always declared he was a Christian, some have considered 
 him as a mere enthusiast. He chiefly rendered himself ob- 
 noxious by his abuse of the clergy. Whatever his offences 
 agaiast good manners, his punishment, if iatended for his libel 
 on persons, was unreasonably severe — if for his opinions, in 
 entire contradiction to the spirit of Christianity. He was 
 condemned to one year's imprisonment, and a fine of a hun- 
 dred pounds. The controversy which his writings occasioned, 
 is memorable for having drawn from Lardner an express dis- 
 approval of pains and penalties in support of religion. That 
 1 Preface, etc., p. 4. ^ Leland's View, etc., letter Til. 
 
 N 3 
 
274 CHARACTER AND TENDENCIES OF 
 
 mild and candid apologist would have tolerated great free- 
 dom in the manner of an attack upon it, rather than have re- 
 course to the arm of the civil power for repelling it.— He has 
 stated these views, partly in the preface to his Vindication of 
 Three of Christ's Miracles against Woolston's objections^, and 
 partly in a correspondence with Dr. Waddington, bishop of 
 Chichester, on the subject^. 
 
 The two main supports of the external evidence of a divine 
 revelation — prophecy and miracles — had been thus exposed 
 to successive attacks. The controversy was pursued, on some- 
 what different grounds, by Tindal and Morgan, both of whom 
 classed themselves with the Christian Deists, though their views 
 in other respects were unlike. Tindal, in a work published 
 by him anonymously in 1730, and entitled, "Christianity as 
 old as the Creation, or the Gospel a republication of the Ee- 
 ligion of Nature" — admitted no distinction between natural 
 and revealed religion, but contended that they are, and must 
 be, in all things entirely coincident. The former he regarded 
 as the internal, the latter as an external, revelation of the 
 same immutable will of God; but he denied, in fact, that 
 there can be any external revelation distinct from, still less 
 opposed to, the internal revelation of God's law in the hearts 
 of all mankind^. It is the leading idea of his book, that God 
 cannot change, and that his law from the first was perfect, 
 being the expression of that unalterable and eternal truth and 
 right by which he governs his own acts, and which is obUga- 
 tory on his rational creatures throughout the universe, and in 
 aU states of existence. He repudiates the authority of a 
 traditional religion, and denies the possibility of religious pro- 
 gress and development. In some points, the views of Tindal 
 resemble those of Shaftesbury ; both indicate the same reve- 
 rence for an ideal of faith and duty, set up by God in the 
 inner sanctuary of the human mind, which nothing outward 
 can change or qualify. 
 
 In 1737 appeared the " Moral Philosopher," by Dr. Morgan, 
 who called himself a Christian on the footing of the New 
 Testament — a Christian Deist, as contradistinguished from the 
 Christian Jews. His object was to separate the religion of 
 
 1 Krst published in 1729, and inserted in the 11th volume of the octavo 
 edition of his works, 1788. 
 
 " Given in the Appendix to Kippis's Life of Lardiier, No. I. 
 
 2 Christianity as old as the Ci*eation, oh. vi. 
 
ENGLISH DEISM, OR FREETHINKING. 375 
 
 the New Testament from that of the Old, by which he thought 
 the minds of Christians generally were too much possessed. 
 He admitted the possibility of an immediate communication, 
 of truth from Godj in other words, of divine inspiration; 
 though he argued, that the test of its being such must be 
 sought in the reason of the individual inquirer. He acknow- 
 ledged that this divine light might be traditionally conveyed, 
 with great benefit, to subsequent generations ; siuce the na- 
 tural strength of the human reason was, in his opinion, greatly 
 over-estimated. He thus made a distinction between immediate 
 and traditional revelation. While Tindal therefore contended, 
 that the divine law was as fully revealed in the Creation as 
 in the Gospel, Morgan conceded the possibility of religious 
 growth and development, in the occasional access of fresh mea- 
 sures of spiritual light and influence direct from God. In his 
 hostility to the Old Testament, he was as bitter as Marcion 
 himself; and his attacks upon it drew forth some learned de- 
 fences of the institutions of the Hebrews^. 
 
 The Deistical controversy was still carried on in various 
 pamphlets, which from time to time issued anonymously from 
 the press^. But the greatest sensation was produced by the ap- 
 pearance, nearly about the same time — the middle of the last 
 century — of the posthumous works of two men widely sepa- 
 rated from each other by rank and character. One belonged 
 to the humbler class of society, had no learning, and was of 
 quiet, exemplary life. The other was a nobleman of brilliant 
 powers and elegant accomplishments, restless, factious and 
 unprincipled, who followed the excitement which he loved, 
 with a wild and erratic vehemence at once in the pleasures of 
 the world, in political intrigues, and in daring speculation. 
 These were Mr. Chubb and Lord Bolingbroke. — Chubb's 
 writings leave on the mind an impression of great sincerity. 
 His love of truth was sensitively scrupulous. He would give 
 nothing a place in his convictions, but in proportion to the 
 evidence which he could persuade himself it brought with it ; 
 
 ' Among others, Lowman's DiBsertation on the Civil G-OTcmment of the 
 Hebrews. — I have taken this account of the " Moral Philosopher" from Leland's 
 View, Letter IX., which hears, however, internal marks of raicandid inter- 
 pretation. In the Appendix to Kippis's Life of Lardner, No. IV., there is a 
 correspondence between Lardner and Morgan, on the difficulties ui the intro- 
 ductory chapters of Matthew and Luke, written in a friendly and respectful 
 spirit on both sides. 
 
 2 Leland'a tenth and eleventh Letters. 
 
376 CHARACTER AND TENDENCIES OF 
 
 and from this high conscientiousness of iatellect, stimulated 
 by the rationalism which then so generally pervaded religious 
 inquiries^ he has laid himself open to the suspicion of doubt 
 respecting some truths, with which there is every probability, 
 that his iuward nature was whoUy in unison. He revered 
 Christianity as a moral system, and iucliaed to the opinion, 
 that it was a revelation from God ; though he still referred 
 the test of its truth and divinity to its agreement with the 
 law written on the human heart. In the progress of his views, 
 he removed to a greater distance from the ordinary notions 
 of Christianity, and took up a strong prejudice agaiast the 
 doctrine and character of Paul. His mind appears to have 
 wanted comprehensiveness j he was iacapable of seeing things 
 under more than one poiut of view. He had no sympathy with 
 religious enthusiasm, and his metaphysical views disquali- 
 fied him for doing justice to any character that was under its 
 influence. Inclined to the doctrines of materialism and ne- 
 cessity, he denied the influence of the Spirit and the direct 
 efficacy of prayer, and described virtue as a simple conformity 
 of mind and life to that eternal rule of righteousness which 
 God has immutably fixed. As his character was much re- 
 spected, his writings exercised a wide influence in their day. 
 Their moral tone is admirable. In his Farewell to has 
 Readers, he expresses a hope, that he may be " a sharer with 
 them of the divine favour, in that peaceful and happy state 
 which God has prepared for the virtuous and faithful in some 
 other future world." His Advice to Behevers and Unbelievers 
 is written in the same amiable spirit — earnestly pleading the 
 cause of seriousness and truth, and entreatiug both parties to 
 abstain from reproaches and the imputation of motives i. 
 
 In his Letters on the Study of History, Lord Bolingbroke 
 had, during his lifetime, thrown out opinions which impugned 
 the credibility of the Scriptures, especially of the Old Testa- 
 ment, or at least put it on such grounds, as indicated more 
 suspicion than belief. But it was not tiU after his death, that 
 the whole extent of his alienation from the system of revealed 
 religion, was made known. He wrote so much from impulse, 
 and was so unsettled in many of his views, that it is difficult 
 to obtaia a clear and connected insight into his principles. 
 Warbm-ton maintains^, that it was his great object to sub- 
 
 1 Chul)b's Essays ; Leland, Letters XII. and XIII. 
 ^ Tiew of Bolingbroke's Philosophy, p. 48. 
 
ENGLISH DEISMj OR FREETHINKING. 277 
 
 stitute for the different systems of religion recommended by 
 divines, a First Philosophy, or Naturalism, quoting, in sup- 
 port of this statement, the noble author's own words: "a 
 self-existent Being, the first Cause of all things, infinitely 
 powerful and infinitely wise, is the God of natural theology : 
 and the whole system of natural religion rests on it, and re- 
 quires no broader foundation." IVom Leland's very fall 
 analysis of his philosophical writings, illustrated by copious 
 extracts, we may distinguish the chief points of his system 
 under the following heads : — (1.) a belief in a Supreme Being, 
 as described in the foregoing passage, to the exclusion of any 
 distinct apprehension of his moral attributes, except as in- 
 volved in, and necessarily flowing from, his infinite wisdom 
 and power ; (3.) the government of the world by general and 
 unvarying laws, established at the beginning of creation, 
 without particular providences for individuals ; (3.) the pro- 
 bability, that body and soul are modifications of the same 
 substance, and the consequent doubt whether there be a fature 
 life, — an assumption not needed to justify and explain the 
 present constitution of things, since whatever is, is right ; (4.) 
 a law of duty founded in human nature, so clearly and suffi- 
 ciently discoverable by reason, though obscured by philoso- 
 phers and divines, as to supersede the necessity of any super- 
 natural revelation; (5.) gratitude and resignation, the fittest 
 expressions of that natural worship which is due to the First 
 Cause of all things ; (6.) that it is blasphemous to ascribe the 
 Jewish Scriptures to God, since they contain statements and 
 doctrines inconsistent with his perfections ; (7.) that the reli- 
 gion taught by Christ, in its genuine simplicity, is a pure and 
 benevolent system, usefully confirming by its few and simple 
 institutions, the law of nature; worthy of God, and condu- 
 cive to the well-being of mankind ; but that it must be dis- 
 tinguished from another Gospel, contradictory to it, that was 
 preached by Paul'^. 
 
 In common with many of the Freethinkers, Bolingbroke 
 had conceived a strong dislike to that apostle, and expressed 
 his surprise that Locke whom he greatly admired, should have 
 written a commentary on his Epistles^. In the course of his 
 discursive speculations he took up, at various times, such op- 
 posite ideas, that it is often impossible to say what was his 
 
 1 Leland, vol. ii. pp. 136-139. 
 
 2 Philosophical Works, vol. ii. p. 132. 
 
278 CHARACTER AND TENDENCIES OF 
 
 real opinion : but if he was sincere in the following sentences, 
 he differed from most other Deists, who professed like himself 
 a great respect for the moral worth of Christianity, in urging 
 divines to neglect the internal evidence, and to bend their 
 whole attention on the proof furnished by testimony. "It 
 seems to me," says he^, "that divines should rest the au- 
 thority both of the Old and New Testaments on the proofs 
 they are able to bring of their divine original, and of the un- 
 corrupt manner in. which they have been conveyed down to 
 latter ages, solely." " Reason has been too much employed, 
 where it has nothing to do, and too much neglected where it 
 has most to do. Men have believed implicitly when they 
 should have reasoned, in laying the grounds of faith; and 
 they have reasoned dogmatically when they should have be- 
 lieved implicitly, these grounds being once laid." 
 
 In his metaphysical views he had an evident leaning towards 
 materialism, and professed a great contempt for the reveries 
 of the Platonic school respecting the intrinsic divinity of the 
 human soul^. Bolingbroke was in favour of a national re- 
 ligion, supported by a test and accompanied by a toleration — 
 " rejecting alike," to use his own words, " the principles of 
 Latitudinarians and Rigidists." " To make government," he 
 says, " effectual to aU the good purposes of it, there must be 
 a religion ; this religion must be national ; and this national 
 rehgion must be maintained in reputation and reverence; 
 all other religions and sects must be kept too low to become 
 the rivals of it^." He had early imbibed intense disgust at 
 the scholastic pedantry of the old theology ; but he professed 
 himself quite as little satisfied with the rationalizing theories 
 of the modern divines. When Whitfield commenced his 
 career, Bohngbroke was smitten with the fresh earnestness 
 and native power of his preaching, and was often to be found 
 among his select audience at Lady Huntingdon's. Indeed the 
 good Countess ftdly reckoned on making a convert of him be- 
 fore his death, and had far better hopes of him than of some 
 graver men*. 
 
 With Bolingbroke, the school of English Pi-eethinking, 
 which excited so much attention in the first half of the last 
 
 ' Works, vol. ii. pp. 211, 212. 
 
 2 See the second Essay in his PhUosophioal Works. 
 
 ^ Works, vol. iii. pp. 380-1. Essay IV. 
 
 '' See Memoirs of her Liib and Times. 
 
ENGLISH DEISMj OR PREETHINKING. 279 
 
 century, may he said to terminate. Hume and Gibbon who 
 continued the attacks on Revelation in the same covert way, 
 are connected by their iafluence, and the character of their 
 writuigs, rather with the general spuit of scepticism which 
 had begun to infect the contemporaneous literature of Europe, 
 than with the series of writers just described, whose pecu- 
 liar views stood in the closest relation tp the religious and 
 philosophical controversies of England. The influence of 
 French literature is strongly reflected in the writings both of 
 Hume and of Gibbon. 
 
 It is clear from every iudication of the times which we have 
 been considering, that the principles of the Freethinkers were 
 widely diflFosed through society. Lord Barrington, in his 
 Essay on the Divine Dispensations, speaks of the iacrease of 
 virtuous and serious Deists, which he imputes to the preva- 
 lence of narrow and false views of Christianity; and he ob- 
 serves, with a concession which marks the spirit of his age, 
 that the religion of Deists is a true religion, though it wants 
 the motives and sanctions of Revelation. The many works 
 which appeared iu answer to the Deists, attest the high im- 
 portance that was attached to the controversy. Leland, a 
 learned Presbyterian minister of DubUn, has devoted three 
 octavo volumes to an analysis and refatation of their difierent 
 writings. It is an elaborate performance, but written from 
 the rigidly scriptural point of view, and deficient in candour 
 and openness of spirit. Warburton also entered the field 
 against the Deists, with the tone of bold defiance that was 
 peculiar to him. His "Divine Legation of Moses" was de- 
 signed with a special reference to their theories, and in the 
 prefixed dedication to the Freethinkers, he has attacked with 
 more insolence than charity their principles and their proceed- 
 ings. In some animadversions on a reply by Waterland to 
 Tindal's "Christianity as old as the Creation," Dr. Conyers 
 Middleton gave a specimen of what he thought would be a 
 more satisfactory mode of deaUng with the Freethinlcers. He 
 shows from history, the inadequacy of the simple religion of 
 reason to the necessities of the multitude ; and that in every 
 civilized community there has always been a traditional system 
 of popular faith and worship, distinct from the speculations 
 of philosophical minds ; that where such a system is already 
 established, though mixed with much superstition and folly, it 
 would be wrong to attempt its overthrow, without being pre- 
 
280 CHARACTER AND TENDENCIES OP 
 
 pared to put sometMng better fitted for the purpose, in its place ; 
 that Socrates and the wisest of the heathens always acted on 
 this principle ; and that consequently it must a fortiori he 
 much more absurd and mischievous to endeavour to substitute 
 the simple inferences of reason for a belief in Christianity, 
 which is the best of aU traditional religions, " the best con- 
 trived to promote public peace and the good of society," and 
 acknowledged by Deists themselves " to come the nearest of 
 all others to their perfect law of reason and nature^," Mid- 
 dleton's line of argument leaves it doubtful, whether he him- 
 self admitted, in any sense, a supernatural sanction to Chris- 
 tianity : but he seems at all events, to admit as a fact, that 
 some other principle than reason is needed, to furnish the mo- 
 tives and consolations of the mass of mankind. In their modes 
 of reasoning, and in their general conception of religion, the 
 Deists and the rationalist Divines of this time had much in 
 common. The line must have been vague and arbitrary in- 
 deed, which kept such writers as Middleton and WoUaston^ 
 within the Hmits of Christianity, and put Shaftesbury, Morgan, 
 and Chubb without them. 
 
 The influence of the Enghsh Freethinkers was not limited 
 to their own country. Their writings were read and translated 
 by the French Encyclopedists ; they passed with the literature 
 and philosophy of France into the rising monarchy of Prussia ; 
 and disseminated that spirit of theological rationalism which 
 was encouraged by Frederic the Great, and the remote eflects 
 of which are still working in the mind of Germany. At the 
 very beginning of the eighteenth century, Toland accompanied 
 the Earl of Macclesfield on a mission to the princess Sophia 
 at Hanover, and was afterwards introduced to the Queen of 
 Prussia at Berlin, where he disputed in her presence with the 
 celebrated Protestant divine, Beausobre, on religion^. 
 
 In looking back on the Deistical controversy, a regret arises, 
 that it was not conducted in a better spirit and on broader 
 grounds. There was narrowness and prejudice on both sides. 
 The fundamental conditions of the question were corrupted by 
 the prevailing RationaUsm; since on both sides it was assumed, 
 that religion must have its source in the assent of the imder- 
 standing to a logical conclusion. In their views respecting 
 
 1 Middleton's Worts, 4to, vol. ii. p. 166-177. 
 
 2 Author of ' The Rehgion of Nature Delineated.' Lond : 1726. 
 ^ Calamy's Life and Tunes, toI. i. p. 429, editor's note. 
 
ENGLISH DEISM, OR ERBETHINKING. 281 
 
 the religion of nature, both the Deists and the behevers in 
 Revelation went completely together up to a certain point ; it 
 was in their judgments on the evidence for a supematuxal 
 origin of Christianity, that they moved widely apart. But the 
 Christian divines, by submitting the question to free inquiry, 
 implied that there was room for the entertainment of different 
 opiaions, and ought not therefore to have condemned, as ne- 
 cessarily involving moral obliquity, any conclusion honestly 
 arrived at. For the dispute was not, whether the moral prin- 
 ciples of Christianity were pure and excellent, its doctrine of 
 life and immortahty fuU of consolation and holy influence, and 
 the character of its founder worthy of the highest admiration 
 and love (for this, most, if not all, of the Freethinkers were 
 folly prepared to admit) ; but whether the external evidence 
 accompanying the books of Scripture, was such, as to compel 
 every honest mind, to receive all their statements as histo- 
 rically true, and all their doctrines as of divine authority. 
 Throughout the controversy, the opponents of the Deists too 
 generally assumed their own conclusions on this matter of 
 evidence, not only as right and certain, but as so right and so 
 certain, that any dissent from them indicated a corrupt heart, 
 a biassed will, and an hostility to what was moral and spiritual 
 in Christianity. The two parties occupied a difTerent mental 
 position, and could not understand each other. One party had 
 reached their conclusion, and were astonished that all who 
 were looking for truth, had not come to the same ; the others 
 were stUl in search of theirs, and admitted, perhaps too rea- 
 dily, that only prejudice or self interest could have enabled 
 their adversaries to find one so soon. They stood, therefore, 
 to each other, in the relation of dogmatists and sceptics j and 
 between such parties, we know, there can be little sympathy. 
 
 Men who are in pursuit of truth, pass on from one view of 
 things to another, and support each of them for the time with 
 such evidence as they can command; but these transitions, 
 which are necessary steps toward a final result, wear the ap- 
 pearance of criminal inconsistencies to those who have defini- 
 tively fixed their own opinions. A state of doubt is indeed in 
 itself objectionable, and should be tolerated only as a condi- 
 tion of wise and thoughtful determination at last ; but there 
 are circumstances, in which doubt implies as high moral feel- 
 ing as faith, and the animus with which it is entertained, 
 ought always to be taken into account. What right have 
 
283 CHARACTER AND TENDENCIES OP 
 
 ■we to assume, that Shaftesbury, CoUias, Morgan, and Chuhb, 
 were not as sincere in their desire of truth, as Leland and 
 Warburton? If it be aflfirmed, that their intellectual consti- 
 tution was less fitted for the clear and firm apprehension of 
 truth ; that is no ground for moral imputation, unless it can 
 be shown, that this infirmity resulted from the wilful indul- 
 gence of passion or prejudice. A still greater wrong has been 
 often done to the Freethinkers, by ascribing their caution and 
 reserve in the expression of their opinions, to a secret malice 
 and base disingenuousness. A thoughtful, serious man may 
 question the truth and reasonableness of some opinions, which 
 he perceiyes, nevertheless, to be closely bound up in the minds 
 of multitudes, as things are at present constituted, with many 
 valuable practical convictions. Where he is himself but an 
 inquirer, cautiously stretching out his mind on every side to 
 feel after truth, it may be no more than a justifiable considera- 
 tion of his circumstances and his future peace, not to expose 
 himself needlessly to that storm of prejudice and misrepresen- 
 tation, which an unreserved utterance of all that he regards as 
 probable, would be certain to bring down. But mark the in- 
 justice constantly perpetrated by those who have the public 
 feeling on their side ! They make the honest expression of 
 opinion penal, and then condemn men for disingenuousness. 
 They invite to free discussion, but determine beforehand, that 
 only one conclusion can be sound and moral. Where they 
 should encounter principles, they impute motives. They fill 
 the arena of public debate with every instrument of torture 
 and annoyance for the feeling heart, the sensitive imagination, 
 and the scrupulous intellect, — and then are angry, that men 
 do not rush headlong into the martyrdom that has been pre- 
 pared for them. 
 
 The writings of the old Freethinkers have left no very deep 
 impression on the public mind, and are now seldom referred 
 to, except by the studious and inquisitive. They are unfitted 
 for strong popular influence by the same qualities which dis- 
 tinguished the general theology of the period. They are too 
 cold, abstract and philosophical in their form; they do not 
 interest the afiections ; and the views promulgated in them, 
 lie remote from the familiar conceptions and practical con- 
 cerns of mankind. The awful events which convulsed Europe 
 at the close of the last century, alienated the thoughts of the 
 higher classes from all speculations of this kind. Paine 
 
ENGLISH DEISM, OR FREETHINKING. 283 
 
 clothed the Deistical argument in a more popular dress ; nor 
 were his strong sense and forcible style without their effect : 
 but his writings owed much of their influence to political en- 
 thusiasm, and that hatred of priests and reUgious establish- 
 ments, which pervaded large portions of the middle and lower 
 classes at the time of their appearance. The Deistical contro- 
 versy had worked powerfully ia the general fermentation of 
 ideas which followed the Revolution of 1688, and left behind 
 it results that reappeared in other forms, and secretly influ- 
 enced the future progress of opinion : but its direct effects do 
 not appear to have extended through the latter half of the 
 eighteenth century. Pubhc opinion has been so deeply af- 
 fected by the wonderful scenes that have been exhibited on 
 the theatre of the world, within the last sixty or seventy years, 
 that abstract speculations on religion and government have 
 fallen into comparative disrepute. An historical spirit has 
 sprung up in their place. Inquiry now takes its departure on 
 all subjects from something concrete and actual. Perhaps we 
 may be even going too far in that direction : but we can 
 hardly be mistaken in asserting, that the views of society and 
 its prospects, which now carry with them the approval and 
 sympathy of the greatest number of intelligent and instructed 
 men, assume the existence of some positive religious system, 
 as the basis of a true civilization. 
 
 There is an inherent deficiency in simple Deism, which 
 must for ever preclude it from becoming the prevalent reli- 
 gion of the world. Deism is the religion of the individual 
 reason, isolated and self-relying ; arriving by its own efforts, 
 through the contemplation of second causes, at the idea of a 
 Supreme Intelligence; disdaining the traditions of the past, 
 and taking its independent stand on the knowledge of the pre- 
 sent. Such a rehgion, though many wise and virtuous men 
 have entertained it, is essentially anti-social; for it is remark- 
 able, that while the most extravagant enthusiasm has often 
 given birth to extensive sects. Deism has never yet coalesced 
 into a permanent religious society. It sets out from false 
 data. It seeks the primary element of the religious life in an 
 inference from external phenomena, and admits into its belief 
 only so much as can be deduced, in regular logical sequence, 
 from that fundamental proposition. Faith, therefore, in the 
 proper sense of the word, is excluded ; and rehgion becomes 
 only another name for the chain of inference which is drawn 
 
284 CHARACTER AND TENDENCIES OP 
 
 out, link after linkj silent and solitary, hj tlie reflecting mind. 
 We might as well make a theorem of Euclid, a bond of com- 
 mtmion and sympathy among men, as a religion so conceived. 
 Such is not the true genesis of religion. Religion springs up 
 within us, a spontaneous feeling, an instinctive aspiration, a 
 deep, indestructible consciousness of spiritual power and pre- 
 sence encompassing us on every side, as surely and as neces- 
 sarily in the unfolding of our moral nature, as the sense of 
 right and truth and beauty. All these sentiments — ^the reli- 
 gious, the moral, the aesthetic — are ultimate facts in. our con- 
 stitution. We cannot go beyond them. We must take them 
 as they come to us, conditions attached to the exercise of our 
 faculties. They arise, because they are destined to arise. 
 Reason may show how they have arisen, and explain the mode 
 of their operation, and clear them from pernicious adhesions, 
 and present them with their proper objects. But their origin 
 does not depend on an act of reasoning. They come into 
 operation in obedience to deep-seated and immutable laws, 
 which reasoning may pervert or obscure, but can never wholly 
 annihilate. 
 
 FeeHng and affection, whatever their nature, require an ob- 
 ject and ask for sympathy, long before reason interposes its 
 doubts and suggests its cautions. Reason's office is to guide 
 them to their worthiest objects, and to restrain the intercourse 
 they seek, within the hmits of mental and moral health. The 
 objects of religious feeling and the forms of religious commu- 
 nion, are brought to men's minds, in the first instance, tra- 
 ditionally. So brought, however partially corrupted by su- 
 perstitious influences, they probably furnish some elements 
 of religious faith corresponding to the spiritual want within, 
 which the mind, unaided by external stimulus, could not have 
 produced from itself. Out of these materials, a conscientious 
 reason selects what is purest and best for the inward nutriment 
 of the soul; and as nobler objects are brought one after 
 another within its view, it successively directs to them the 
 homage of the religious affections. But an object there must 
 be — for most, perhaps in some moments for all, minds — exter- 
 nally presented, to raise and quicken their spiritual aspirations, 
 to fix and realize their dim and fluctuating sense of human 
 communion with God. Rites and symbols ha\ e aimed at pro- 
 ducing this effect in the ancient religions, and in the less per- 
 fect forms of Christianity ; but in the simple Gospel, the end 
 
ENGLISH DEISMj OR FREETHINKING. 385 
 
 IS accomplished by the exhibition of a pure and heavenly hu- 
 mamty, by inviting men to repose their trust and sympathy in 
 Christ, as the moral image of the invisible God. Ti-anscend- 
 ing far the ordinary standard of human morality, the embo- 
 died love of God comes forth in the character of Christ to meet 
 our aspirations ; no humanity ever equalled his : yet it holds 
 out to us a virtue that wins the affections, an excellence that 
 is conceivable and imitable. We meet, then, in Christ with 
 an object which is fitted above every other to satisfy our strong- 
 est religious affections ; to associate them with the highest of 
 our moral aims ; and to famish a bond of the holiest commu- 
 nion between aU good minds. In this harmony of all our 
 powers, resulting from faith in him — in this correspondence 
 between what our nature craves and what the Gospel offers — 
 there is an evidence of divine appointment, on which the mind 
 may practically rest. From this, as from a fixed datum, well 
 secured in the experimental convictions of the heart and the 
 conscience, we may proceed, as opportunity offers, to consider 
 such points in the external evidence, as occasion more difficulty 
 or demand a prolonged suspense of impartial judgment. 
 
 These elementary wants of our spiritual nature are over- 
 looked by Deism. It does not provide for them. It labours 
 under deficiencies, which only an historical religion can sup- 
 ply. It wants a visible head ; it has no Christ. It needs some 
 liulf for the human soul, through human sympathies, vdth the 
 unseen God ; a centre of living union ; a bond of universal 
 brotherhood. It has no usages, no institutions, no cherished 
 remembrances j no light from the past, shedding its hallowed 
 lustre on particular spots and recurring seasons, and conse- 
 crating our daily life with the spirit of a sacred poesy. Its 
 doctrines are airy and unsubstantial; fading away into dim 
 abstractions ; remote from the sympathies of warm, living, suf- 
 fering humanity. True, " it is the spirit that quickeneth" — 
 the spirit, that creates the kingdom of God within us : but the 
 Church united with its risen and glorified Head, the Church 
 vrith its social offices and its common voice of thanksgiving 
 and prayer — preserves and cherishes that spirit, and institutes 
 an outward medium of spiritual communion among men. It 
 is no small presumption against Deism's possessing the whole 
 truth and meeting the entire demands of our nature, that it 
 has shown itself incapable hitherto of generating and sustain- 
 ing a Church. 
 
286 INPLITENCE OF HARTLEY'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 SECTION X. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF HARTLEY'S PHILOSOPHY : REVIVAL OF THE 
 UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY BY DR. PRIESTLEY. 
 
 Some of the ablest defenders of Eevelation had ascribed the 
 prevalence of Deistical principles to false and narrow views of 
 Christianity, which obscured its true character, and raised a 
 prejudice against it in the minds of reflecting men. It was 
 observed, that the simplicity, of the Gospel had been overlaid 
 by the constructions of human creeds; and it was believed 
 not without reason, that if the religion of Jesus could be 
 shown to be, in all essential poiats, coincident with that of 
 nature, only giving clearness and a diviae authority to some 
 truths which nature left dim and uncertain, the controversy 
 might be brought to a satisfactory issue, and aU honest inqui- 
 rers reclaimed to the faith. This feeling contributed, -with 
 other causes, to the revival of the Socinian, or rather Huma- 
 nitarian, Doctrine, proper Unitarianism ; which had not been 
 made a subject of general discussion since the close of the pre- 
 cediag century. It has already been noticed, that the opinions 
 of Watts respecting the object of worship and the person of 
 Christ, underwent a change in the latter years of his life ; and 
 Lardner, the great champion of the credibility of the Gospel 
 history, had become an Unitarian, or believer in the simple 
 humanity of Christ i, as appears ffom his Letter on the Logos, 
 as early as 1730. In the meantime, the other side of the 
 orthodox system, in its two principal doctrines of original sin 
 and vicarious satisfaction, was attacked with sound biblical learn- 
 ing and a most powerftd intellect, by Dr. John Taylor, a Pres- 
 byterian minister, first at Norwich, and afterwards professor 
 of Divinity and Morality in the Academy at Warrington^. 
 
 1 Henceforth the term trnitarian will be used in this restricted sense, as con- 
 tradistinguished from Arian. 
 
 2 Taylor's principal works were his Paraphrase etc. on Romans, with a Key to 
 the Apostolic Writings, a Scheme of Soriptvire Divinity, and two Tolumes of 
 Tracts on several important subjects. Taylor's style even in handling critical 
 matters, is singularly impressive and even eloquent. The work on wluoh liis 
 fame chiefly rests, is his Hebrew Concordance in two volumes foUo. It is a 
 proof of the spirit which then prevailed in the Church of England, that in the 
 list of subscribers to this learned work, are found the names of great numbers 
 of the clergy, as well as of the bishops and archbishops of England and Ireland. 
 The work indeed is dedicated to the metropolitans and prelates of the two 
 Churches, in grateful acknowledgment of their generous encouragement of the 
 
INFLUENCE OF HARTLEY'S PHILOSOPHY. 387_ 
 
 But the circumstance which, above all others, gave a pe- 
 culiar turn to theological inquiries in the latter half of the 
 eighteenth century, was the iafluence of the philosophical 
 system of Dr. Hartley, who was horn in the same year that 
 Locke died^, and whose Observations on Man were published 
 rather more, than fifty years after the first appearance of the 
 Essay on Human Understanding. Divines are in the habit of 
 repudiating aU connection with philosophy ; but the sympathy 
 between theological and philosophical theories is too close and 
 too obvious ever to escape notice. The two philosophers just 
 mentioned gave a character not to be mistaken, to the theo- 
 
 undertaking ; and the dedication concludes with the expression of a wish, that 
 ' the Churches of England and Ireland may always be happy in prelates of the 
 same excellent disposition.' Yet it appears from several letters in Doddridge's 
 correspondence, that Taylor's writings from their supposed heretical tendency, 
 were viewed with suspicion and alarm by many of the Dissenters of that time. 
 Among others, John Wesley was much soandahzed by Taylor's accomit of the 
 doctrine of Original Siu. In a letter dated July 3, 1759, Wesley vrished to 
 draw him into controversy on the subject. He addressed him, however, with 
 extraordinary respect, ' as a person of uncommon sense and learning,' and says 
 that to engage in controversy with him, would humanly speating be formica 
 contra Uonem. He adds : ' Take away the Scriptural doctrine of redemption or 
 justification, and that of the new birth, the beginning of sanctiacation, or, which 
 amounts to the same, explain them as you do, suitably to your doctriae of Ori- 
 ginal Sia : and what is Christiajoity better than Heathenism ? Wherein (save in 
 rectifying some of our notions) has the religion of St. Paul any pre-emmence 
 over that of Socrates or Bpictetus ? ' Again, ' Either I or you mistake the whole 
 of Christianity from the beginning to the end. Your scheme has gone tlirough 
 aU England, and made numerous converts. I attack it from end to end : let all 
 England judge whether it can be defended or not.' Wesley's Journal, No. X. 
 1758-1760 In the 2nd vol. of Dr. Taylor's Tracts, is a posthumous reply to 
 Wesley's Remarks on Original Sin. Wesley however was not wantmg m dis- 
 cretion, and knew how to adapt himself to his audience. We leam from his 
 Journal (1770-1773) that on preaching in Warrington, when he observed the 
 young men from the Academy (where Taylor had been Tutor) among Ins audi- 
 enceThe discoursed very pertmently on the use of Reason m relation to Eeh- 
 gion! One other characteristic notice in this curious Journal must not be 
 omitted. In speaking of the Octagon Chapel, then reoen% erected m Norwich 
 for Taylor, as one of the liandsomest meeting-houses m Europe, Wesley won- 
 ders how the plain, simple Gospel can be preached m such a place! The late 
 Dr. Parr, in a Latul inscription to the memory of Dr. Taylor,_has dehneated his 
 character with more discrimmation than he always displayed m compositions of 
 this kind. 
 
 VIBO . INTBaEO . INNOCENTI . PIO 
 
 SCEIPTOBI . GBAEOIS . BT . HBBBAIOIS . HTTBEIS 
 
 BEOBB . EETTDITO 
 
 VBEBl . DIVINI . &BAVISSIMO . INTBEBEBTI 
 
 BBHGIONIB . SIMPHOIS . BT . INOOBEUPT^ 
 
 ACEEBIMO . PBOPraUAIOEI. 
 
 J „ . Farr's Worlcs, vol. iv. p. 565. 
 
288 INFLUENCE OF HARTLEY'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 logy of tte two periods at the head of which they respectively 
 stand. Both were earnest and devout Christians ; both con- 
 tinued through life in communion with the Church of Eng- 
 land ; though their principles were most eagerly imbibed and 
 applied by Dissenters. What Locke was to the school of un- 
 dogmatic rationalism which prevailed tOl the middle of the last 
 century ; Hartley became to Priestley and his associates or 
 followers, who found in the principles of the Hartleian phi- 
 losophy, a support and defence of their peculiar modification 
 of Unitarianism. 
 
 The system of Hartley was a further simplification of that 
 of Locke. The tendencies to materialism and philosophical 
 necessity, and the suggestion of the association of ideas, which 
 had appeared in the writings of the last-named philosopher, as 
 pregnant hints and mere germs of thought, were developed 
 by Hartley into an ampler doctrinal form, and assumed a pro- 
 minent place with a more definite value in his theory of man. 
 Of the two sources to which Locke had traced back all ideas, 
 one was now given up, and all the materials of human know- 
 ledge, behef and sentiment were resolved into the elementary 
 impressions on the senses, out of which, it was maintained, 
 the most refined and disinterested affections of benevolence 
 and piety could be successively evolved, through the trans- 
 forming processes of the aU -pervading law of the association 
 of ideas. According to this system, all that enters into men's 
 mental and moral constitution, is originally external ; and the 
 evidence for the most important truths rests primarily on the 
 depositions of the senses, taken up by the great organic law 
 of association, and wrought out by it mechanically to a given 
 result. It is obvious, how readily such principles coalesce with 
 those views of religion which, distrusting the impulsive sug- 
 gestions of the mind within, look for assurance in the testi- 
 mony of historical facts alone, and place the main hope of a 
 future life on the attested resurrection of Jesus^. The psy- 
 
 ' It ought to be observed, that Hartley, whose excellence of character and 
 exalted piety are worthy of aU veneration, has disclaimed the necessary con- 
 nection of his phflosophioal system with materialism. He would not be so 
 interpreted as to oppose the immateriality of the soul. He seems to have left 
 the question an open one, affirming that the immateriality of the soul has Uttle 
 or no connection with its immortality. Obsei-vations etc. P. I. Conclusion. On 
 the Mechanism of the Human Mind. In Part II. ch. iv. Sect. 3, he gives a cahn 
 and dispassionate, but very satisfactory and encouraging, summary of the natu- 
 ral indications of a future Ufe, showing evidently that he was deeply impressed 
 
REVIVAL OF UNITARIANISM BY PRIESTLEY. 289 
 
 chological tendencies were confirmed by the taste of the age 
 for physical research, to which the rapid progress of chemi- 
 cal discovery and the new powers developed, by mechanical 
 science gave. a peculiar stimulus. Fascinated by the unpre- 
 cedented phenomena which were daily opening upon them 
 with new wonders, the most educated minds of the time dis- 
 covered generally a strong aversion to spiritual contemplation 
 and religious enthusiasm. This is attested by all contemporary 
 records. A reference to the hterary history of that period, 
 would, I believe, show that principles allied to those which 
 Hartley embraced, were widely difflised among reflecting and 
 philosophical persons, who took no part iu theological contro- 
 versies. As more directly affected by such principles in his 
 whole conception of Religion and Christianity, may be men- 
 tioned an eminent and liberal-minded prelate, Dr. Edmund 
 Law, bishop of Carlisle, who was in habits of friendly inter- 
 course with some of the learned and philosophical divines 
 among the, Dissenters^. But the individual who adopted them 
 with the greatest ardour, and allowed them the most direct in- 
 fluence on his entire range of moral and reUgious speculation, 
 
 by their com'biiied fcJrce. In the interval between death and the resurrection 
 he held it probable, that the soul would remain in a state of inaotiTity, though 
 not perhaps of insensibility. He thought, that the Christian revelation gives 
 us absolute assurance of a future state, and regarded all the miracles re- 
 corded in Scripture, and aU the prophecies that have been accomphshed, as so 
 many ' pledges and attestations of the truth of this doctrine.' Prop. Ixxxvii. 
 and xc. 
 
 ' Law's principal work is his ' Theory of ReHgion.' He was also the first to 
 give to the world (prefixed to his translation of Archbishop King's Essay on 
 the Origin of EvU) the Dissertation by Mr. Gray, " On the Fraidamental Princi- 
 ple of Virtue ;" to which Hartley modestly attributed the first suggestion of his 
 own theory. Dr. Law edited the works of Locke, with a preface and a Life of 
 the Author. This edition appeared in 3 vols. 4to, about 1777. Chalmers's Gen. 
 Biogr. Diet. Law. All the writers of this school, including Hartley, combined 
 with their peculiar philosophy, a great reverence for the simple doctrine of Scrip- 
 ture supematuraUy confirmed by miracle and prophecy. See Hartley's Obser- 
 vations on Man, Part II. oh. ii. Of the Truth of the Christian Kehgiou. The 
 opinion for which Law is most remarkable, that of the natural mortahty of 
 man and of his re-creation at the last day by the power which God has bestowed 
 on Jesus Christ, though no doubt favoured by his philosophical tendencies, was 
 an inference, as appears by his copious induction of passages from both Testa- 
 ments, from his interpretation of Scripture language. It appears, that Dr. John 
 Taylor who was one of his correspondents among the Dissenters, acceded to his 
 views on this subject. Protestant dishke of the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, 
 had something perhaps to do with their adoption of these views. See the Dis- 
 course on the Ifature and End of Death under the Christian Covenant, sub- 
 joined to the Theory of Keligion, with the Appendix and Postscript. 
 
390 REVIVAL OP UNITARIANISM BY PRIESTLEY. 
 
 was Dr. Priestley, to whom tlie second school of English Uni- 
 tarianism owes its origin. 
 
 In the same degree that the rationalizing process has been 
 applied to the contents of Scripture, we may observe, there has 
 often been a proportionate effort to draw tighter the outward 
 sanctions of miracle and prophecy; and that the strongest 
 minds have sometimes exhibited the greatest tenacity of this 
 extrinsic support to their faith. Never perhaps was the en- 
 deavour to reconcile the antagonist principles of reason and 
 authority, by keeping the former within, and putting the 
 latter without, the Umits of the written word, carried to a 
 greater extent than in the school of Unitarianism founded by 
 Priestley. He differed from the earlier Rationalists of his 
 country, in the more dogmatic cast of his mind^ . It had been 
 the main object of his predecessors in this field of inquiry, to 
 guard the boundaries of Scripture with such bulwarks, as the 
 learned and conscientious toil of Lardner had enabled them 
 to pile up on every side ; but every mind which once found 
 itself safely entrenched within them, was left to be as re- 
 served or as explicit as it chose, in the declaration of doctrinal 
 belief. The old Presbyterian warfare of the last century, was 
 with creeds of human devising. Its animating spirit was a 
 broad ethical eclecticism and tolerance. Its watchword was, 
 the Bible only. But the mind of Priestley was too earnest 
 and inquisitive, to rest in this vague and negative state. He 
 ■wanted more positive results. Having convinced himself, 
 that only one view of religious truth could be exhibited in the 
 different books of Scripture, and that this was simple Unita- 
 rianism, he claimed for his own conclusion, all the certainty 
 and authority of divine revelation. 
 
 He has thus stated the result of his inquiries, in an Essay 
 on the Inspiration of Christ^. " If there be any truth in 
 history, Christ wrought unquestionable miracles, as a proof of 
 his mission from God ; he preached the great doctrine of the 
 resurrection from the dead; he raised several persons from 
 a state of death ; and, what was more, he himself died and 
 
 ' Under the name Eationalist, I include all those who place the first prin- 
 ciple of religious behef in a logical inference from data external to the mind, 
 rather than in a spontaneous suggestion which springs up loithin the mind 
 through the organic working of its original constitution, and which precedes 
 and underlies every act of proper reasoning ; in one word, who lay the/oM«- 
 dation of faith in ratiocination, instead of intuition. 
 
 ' Theological Kepository, vol. It. p. 456. 
 
REVIVAL OF UNITARIANISM BY PEIESTLEY. 291 
 
 rose again in confirmation of Ms doctrine. The belief of these 
 facts I call the belief of Christianity." He adds, " I think 
 that a great deal is gained by carefully excluding from the 
 essentials of the Christian religion every other opinion what- 
 ever except that of Christ being the Messiah." It appears 
 from these last words, that he regarded his own view of Chris- 
 tianity, as identical with that of Locke, whose language is : 
 " saving faith consists in believing only that Jesus of Nazareth 
 is the Messiah^." But Locke's definition is more general 
 and comprehensive, and therefore more spiritual. Its terms 
 would embrace all who, whatever their opinion respecting the 
 external facts of Christ's recorded history, provided it imply 
 no imputation on his mental soundness or moral purity, are 
 prepared, in full sympathy with the mind, the spirit, that 
 dwelt in him, to accept him as their Messiah — the King and 
 Lord of their moral being''. It is not asserted, that Locke 
 had any doubt of the reality of those facts, or that there is 
 any philosophic objection to the admission of them, as mira- 
 culous, provided we take them in the proper order ; i. e. if we 
 proceed from a faith in what our spiritual consciousness re- 
 cognizes as holy and divine, to the acknowledgment of the 
 outwardly miraculous which an honest historical criticism 
 proves to be inseparably blended with it, instead of setting 
 out from the miraculous, as a mere subject of human testi- 
 mony, with a view to the original production of faith. Dr. 
 Priestley's statement confounds belief as an intellectual act, 
 with faith as a spiritual affection. By making the decided 
 acceptance of certain historical facts, which no accumulation 
 of testimony can bring within the limits of absolute certainty, 
 the indispensable condition of becoming a disciple of Christ, 
 he excludes, as it appears to me arbitrarily and harshly, from 
 the Christian brotherhood, many sensitive and conscientious 
 minds that best understand its spirit and would nobly fulfil 
 its duties^. 
 
 » E«asoiiablenes8 of Christianity. "Works, toI. i. p. 166. 
 
 2 I tliiok I am justified in making this distinction between the Ohristiamty 
 of Priestley and of Locke, on a comparison of the former's assertion, that the 
 behef of certain miraculous facts is the same thing as the behef of Christianity, 
 with the declaration of the latter in his Journal, ah-eady refen-ed to, (Life by 
 Lord King pp 123-25) that ' eren in those books which have the greatest 
 proof of revelation from God-the miracles are to be judged by the doctrine, 
 and not the doctrine by the mu'acles.' ^.^. ^, ,^, . , , . , 
 
 3 If one thine be clear in the New Testament, it is, that the conversion to which 
 Christ summoned men, as the begmning of the Christian life, was a change 
 
 o 2 
 
292 REVIVAL OP UNITARIANISM BY PRIESTLEY. 
 
 Brought up among the Independents, Priestley inherited 
 through them from the old Puritans, a profound sense of the 
 value of Revelation and of the authority of Scripture, which 
 through aU his changes of opinion remained with him unahated 
 to the last, and combining with the singular holdness of his 
 philosophical speculations, gave a very composite character to 
 the general structure of his opinions^. Like Faustus Socinus, 
 
 wrought on their wills and affections. When this is accomplished, through 
 faith, in other words, though deep sympathy with the spirit of Christ, it is 
 altogether a matter of secondary importance, what view be taken of those 
 purely external facts which have no value, but as subservient to the moral 
 effects that are anticipated from a behef in them. Otherwise, the question 
 may reasonably be asked, whether the Jewish rulers who vritnessedthe miracles, 
 and had proof of the resurrection, of Jesus, (who had therefore the required 
 prelvminmies of belief in their minds, though they did not draw the proper 
 inferences from them,) or those devout persons of the present day who, unable 
 to assure themselves of the reality of these facts, still acknowledge with their 
 hearts the intrinsic divinity and holiness of Christ's doctrine, person, and work, 
 would be considered by Christ himself as standing nearest to the end of his great 
 mission to the world. The former possessed at least the data which, according 
 to the usual theory, are indispensable to behef ; the latter, from their intellectual 
 inabUity to grasp them, must, if Dr. Priestley's view be correct, remain necessa- 
 rily unchristianized for ever. Bammohun Eoy and the late Blanco White would 
 come within the last description of persons. 
 
 1 There was a singular mixture of the literal and the boldly speculative in 
 Priestley's view of Christianity. The Puritan and the philosopher were never 
 completely assimilated in him. Nothing could be freer than his notions about 
 inspiration and prophecy, and of Christ's peccabUity and liabihty to prejudice 
 and ignorance. (See his Evidence of Divine Bevelation, Disc. is. Butt's edit, 
 of his works, vol. xv. p. 309, and especially the articles on Inspiration in the 
 fourth vol. of the Theological Bepository, signed Pampliilus, more particularly 
 pp. 208, 436, 442, 445 et seq.) Nothnig could be more arbitrary than hi 
 occasional treatment of statements in the Scriptures, which opposed his own 
 views ; as when he told his friend. Dr. Price, that even if it could be shovm, 
 that the Apostles had taught the doctrine of Christ's being the Maker of the 
 world, he would not have received it (Letters to Price, Works by Butt, vol. 
 xvhi. p. 388) . Yet in one of his conversations with Mr. Belsham, just before his 
 departure for America, he expressed his behef, that the second advent of Christ 
 would occur within twenty years. Belsham's Life of Lindsey, p. 375. It was 
 his firtn persuasion, that those passages in the prophets which speak of the re- 
 storation of the Jews to their native land, would be hteraUy fulfilled, and that 
 the Law would be set up anew with restored splendour and authority in Jeru- 
 salem. See his Letters to the Jews, Works vol. xx. especially pp. 230 and 249, 
 and the remarkable papers in the v. and vi. vols, of the Theological Bepository, 
 signed Hermaa, on the perpetual obligation of the Jewish Bitual. For the 
 indication of the passages in his works containing this singular opinion, referred 
 to perhaps too vaguely and generally in the first edition of tliis volume, I am 
 indebted to a respected friend and former tutor, the Bev. W. Tm-ner, junr., 
 Gliristian Beformer : New series, vol. i. p. 762. To be consistent, Dr. Priestley 
 should have gone farther, or not so far. The line is not drawn with sufficient 
 distinctness between what is authoritative and what may be left to the free de- 
 cision of reason. 
 
REVIVAL OF UNITAMANISM BY PRIESTLEY. 293 
 
 he was disposed to regard a special revelation as the main 
 source of all positive religious belief; laid too little stress on 
 that universal sentiment of dependence on spiritual power and 
 of reverential trust, which is co-extensive with humanity itself; 
 and, I inust think, undervalued the natural arguments for a 
 future Kfe^- The opinion repeatedly occurs in his writings 
 
 ' On this subject, it has been objected, that I have exaggerated Dr. Priestley's 
 views in the first edition. Yet it is evident from a paper communicated to the 
 first volume of the Theological Eepository, p. 236, (Literary Memoirs, relative 
 to a future state, etc., written in the year 1768, by John Buncle, Esq.) where 
 his opinions are represented under the person of Clemens, that at an early 
 period of life he had adopted views not materially difierent from those im- 
 puted to him in the text. The following passage will furnish a proof. ' This 
 would not do with Clemens. His cry was, all-sufficient revelation, — the hoolcs 
 — ^the books, — it is in them only we can learn the doctrines which accord with 
 the attributes of the Deity. In them only we can acquire just notions of a Being 
 omnipotent, infinite in wisdom and goodness ; by them only we are screened 
 from pernicious errors, and can be fuUy satisfied that immortality and glory 
 is to be the rema/rd of those who faithfully obey the gospel. The ioolc of 
 nature is nothing. If that was all we had for a life everlasting, I should never 
 think of a remove from the clods of the valley.' In sect. 5, ch. ii. of the first 
 Part of his Institutes of Sfatural and Kevealed Religion, ' Of the future expec- 
 tations of manMnd,' he has followed pretty closely Dr. Hartley's summary of 
 the natural arguments for a future life ; but he has stated them with far less 
 geniality of feeling, and it is quite evident, that he does not himself attach any 
 great value to them. What else can be inferred from such expressions as the 
 foEowing ? ' It must be acknowledged, that considering only what we know 
 of the constitution of the body and mind of man, we see no reason to expect 
 that we shah, survive death.' He admits in an ensuing sentence, that if the 
 divine attributes require it, G-od can easily revive mind and body, or continue 
 the same consciousness in some other way. p. 95, vol. i. (4th edit.) London : 
 1808. In another place, he says : ' Upon the whole, I cannot help thinking, 
 that there is something in the arguments above recited, which shows that a 
 future life is very agreeable to the appearances of this, though I do not think them 
 so striking, as to have been sufficient of themselves to have suggested the first 
 idea of it.' ' If we had never heard of a future hfe, we might not have expected 
 it.' p. 97. In ch. ni. sect. i. of the third Part of the same work, he remarks, 
 that while' the hght of nature is tolerably clear as to the dMty of man in this 
 life it leaves us under great uncertainty whether we shall survive the grave or 
 not, and sums up his observations in the following terms : ' Such is the sub- 
 stance of what we were able to collect from nature concerning a future state, 
 provided there were any such thing. From revelation we learn the actual cer- 
 tainty of a future state, and have an alsoUte assurance of its being a state of 
 exact retribution.' Vol. ii. p. 238. In the 8th of the Letters to a Philoso- 
 phical Unbehever, the evidence for the fiiture existence ot man does not go be- 
 yond the concession of its possibiUty. No faith could be founded on such 
 premises Our minds are very difierently constituted for the apprehension of 
 truths respecting the invisible. Dr. Priestley's firm belief in the bodily resur- 
 rection of Christ was the circumstance which first gave value and significance to 
 those natural indications of immortahty, which would else have carried little 
 weisht to his mind. There are some (I must confess myself of the number) 
 with whom it is quite otherwise. It is their natural beHef m unmortaUty as a 
 
294 REVIVAL OP UNITARIANISM BY PRIESTLEY. 
 
 and is strongly urged as an argument for Christianity, that 
 the rejection of revelation draws after it, if not logicaily yet 
 as a usual consequence, the abandonment of all deep sense 
 of natural religion. The character of his mind and the direc- 
 tion of his favourite pursuits, led him to seek outward and, as 
 it were, tangible proofs of every doctrine he embraced, and 
 created a distrust in all appeals to feeling and the interior 
 sense of spiritual truth. He asked for demonstration in 
 things which, from their very nature, are incapable of it ; nor 
 was he perhaps sufficiently prepared to admit, that a state 
 of mind, far short of the certainty produced by demonstra- 
 tion, which relies on great spiritual tendencies, and gives itself 
 up with entire trust to God, is favourable to moral culture 
 and discipline, and constitutes the proper element of faith^. 
 His mind was direct and simple, but had little power of 
 adapting itself to the views of other minds, variously modi- 
 fied by the influence of age and nation. He was, therefore, 
 ill-fitted to become the historian of religious opinion ; for he 
 interpreted the monuments of the past by his own philoso- 
 phical ideas, and seemed unable to conceive, that truth could 
 manifest itself under more than a single form. It was an 
 arbitrary limitation of the design of Christianity, to assert as 
 he did, that it consisted essentially in the revelation of a fiiture 
 life, confirmed by the bodily resurrection of Jesus. 
 
 For the stress which Priestley laid on miracle as the only 
 conclusive proof of direct communication from God, the way 
 had been prepared by the writings of his contemporary, Mr. 
 Farmer. That learned writer had completed on another side, 
 the argument from the New Testament for simple mono- 
 great law of God's spiriiTual creation, which renders crediUe to them the feet of 
 Christ's resurrection, and the supernatural evidence of it enjoyed by his dis- 
 ciples. Apart from this natural trust, the historical testimony would not 
 sufBce for their conviction. They cannot but thint, that the tacit influence 
 of this trust, aa an essential part of the deep religiousness of Priestley's mind, 
 lent an authority to mere human testimony, which, left by itself, it would never 
 have been felt to possess. 
 
 ' It has been questioned (Christian Reformer for November, 1845, p. 761,) 
 whether Dr. Priestley ever demanded demonstration in matters of religion; 
 and a passage has been adduced from hia Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever 
 (P. I. Letter i.) to prove the contrary. But in the very next sentence to the 
 passage quoted, as much is stated as seems to me necessary to justify my 
 i-epresentation of the ca«e, ' In some of the cases, liis persuasion (resulting from 
 the evidence laid before him) shall hardly be distinguishable, with respect to 
 its strength, from that which arises from a demonstration properly so called, 
 the difference ieing, as mathematicians say, less than any assignable quantity.' 
 
REVIVAL OF UNITARIANISM BY PRIESTLEY. 395 
 
 theism, by showing that the passages usually supposed to 
 authorize a belief in Satanic and demoniacal agency, ad- 
 mitted another interpretation, and by arguing from these 
 premises, against the opinion up to his time usually main- 
 tained, that well attested and real miracle could only be re- 
 ferred to the immediate agency of the one true God^. 
 
 It is worthy of notice, that while the internal evidence for 
 Christianity, and the experimental test of its divine origin, 
 have remained the same through aU time, and have even re- 
 quired fresh force with the progress of society, the external 
 evidence has undergone continual modification, and been ex- 
 hibited sometimes under one aspect and sometimes under 
 another. Prophecy was the great argument employed by the 
 Apostles and early Apologists. Miracles were also appealed 
 to; but they were less insisted on, because it was believed 
 that evil spirits could perform them : and prophecy was some- 
 times brought to the aid of miracle, to show that it really 
 came from Grod^. This order of proceeding was reversed by 
 Dr. Priestley. Without rejecting the evidence of prophecy 
 (for in some cases he almost fanatically clung to it) he yet felt 
 it weakened at so many points, that his great reliance was on 
 the proof of miracle, especially the great miracle, Christ's re- 
 surrection from the dead. 
 
 With remarkable steadfastness and independence of mind, 
 Priestley adhered to his religious principles and his Christian 
 faith, amidst the almost universal unbelief of the philosophical 
 world. What importance he attached to them, is evident 
 from the unwearied activity of his pen, under all the discou- 
 ragements of exile and the growing infirmities of age, to de- 
 fend and explain the pure religion of Jesus, and to point out 
 the mischievous influences of infidelity. Yet his later writmgs 
 abound with complaints of the prevalence of unbehef Some 
 of his most intelligent and virtuous friends remained uncon- 
 vinced by his reasonings^. If Christianity contain, as we be- 
 
 1 See his Dissertation on Miraclee, and Essay on the DemoniacB of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 a fotmfoteS^ai^onrinihe importance of faith, (Theological Repository, 
 vol iii P 242, 3,) Dr. Priestley thus expresses his opmion respecting unhe- 
 lierers ii Chri^atianity :-" For my own part, I must aoknowkdge that, with 
 reroSt to the generaUty of modern unhehevers, I have no charity for them, ex- 
 cept goodwin- and th^ condition fills me with concern; because I cannot 
 
296 llEVIVAL OF UNITARIANISM BY PRIESTLEY. 
 
 lieve it does, a truth from God, there must have been some- 
 thing defective in his mode of representing it, to account for 
 the small effect of so much virtue and piety and ability em- 
 ployed in its behalf. With the purest purposes and most sin- 
 cerely religious feelings, it must, perhaps, be confessed, that 
 he surveyed Christianity in too limited a poiat of view, and 
 defined it by too rigid an outline ; that he looked at it too 
 much through the philosophy of a particular school, and not 
 sufficiently in the entire breadth of its relations to every part 
 of our complex nature. Hence, he could not comprehend the 
 various points of access it might have to minds differently 
 constituted from his own ; and by restricting to one particular 
 avenue its legitimate approach to them, he might, iu not a 
 few cases, throw up a barrier against their receiving it at all : 
 — and yet he was astonished at their unbelief. 
 
 The most successful advocates of Christianity have taken 
 broader ground, and appealed directly to the moral conscious- 
 ness of the universal heart. Baxter acknowledged " the ia- 
 dwelliag spirit" as "the great witness of Christ and Chris- 
 tianity to the world^." "The great mystery of the Gospel," 
 says Cudworth, " doth not lie only in Christ without us, 
 (though we must know also what he hath done for us,) but 
 the very pith and kernel of it consists in Christ inwardly 
 formed in our hearts. T>l"othing is truly ours, but what lives 
 in our spirits. Salvation itself cannot save us, as long as it is 
 only without us^." Channing too has spoken tridy and elo- 
 
 help thinking, that a very wrong state of mind, a state of mind to which Chris- 
 tianity holds out nothing but a, fearful looJdng-for of judgment, is the cause of 
 their unbelief ; and that nothing is requisite to make them see and rejoice ia 
 the evidences of Christianity, but a truly virtuous and ingenuous disposition. 
 It is with equal truth and much more pleasure, that I must acknowledge, that 
 I cannot think so uncharitably of aU my acquaintance among unbelievers. 
 Some of them, I have aU the reason in the world to think, are men of excellent 
 dispositions, and want nothing but a firm belief of Christianity to make them 
 as perfect as humanity wiU admit." His concluding observation gives perhaps 
 the true view of this interesting subject, and suggests an excellent rule for our 
 judgment and conduct respecting unbelievers: — "As it is expressly asserted, 
 that Christ came ' to bless mankind, in turning them away from their iniquities,' 
 Acts iii. 26, I tliink I am authorized to consider the Christian reUgion as a 
 means to an end ; and therefore, if the great end of it, viz. the reformation and 
 virtue of man, be, in fact, attained by any other means, the bepevolent author 
 of it will not be offended, but rejoice at it, and say, 'He that is not against us, 
 is on cm- part,' Mark ix. 40." 
 
 ' Eeliquite Baxteriance, Lib. I. P. i. § 213. 4. 
 
 ^ Discom-se before the House of Commons, March 31, 1647, p. 26 . 
 
REVIVAL OP tJNITARlANISM BY PKIESTLEY. 297 
 
 quently of that "conviction of tlie divine original of Chris- 
 tianity, which results from the consciousness of its adaptation 
 to our noblest faculties, as the evidence which sustains the 
 faith of thousands who never read, and cannot understand, 
 the learned books of Christian apologists, who want perhaps 
 words to explaia the ground of their belief, but whose faith is 
 of adamantine firmness, who hold the Gospel with a convic- 
 tion more intimate and unwavering than mere argument ever 
 produced^." 
 
 Dr. Priestley stretched the principle of combining the free 
 exercise of reason on the contents of Scripture, with the re- 
 cognition of an outward authority, which made its acceptance 
 as a divine rule obligatory on every unprejudiced mind — to its 
 utmost point. Further progress in that direction was impos- 
 sible. In his system we witness the last results of the rational- 
 istic spirit in its application to the New Testament. The poiat 
 had been reached, at which, unless the mind chose to remain 
 immoveably where he had left it, one only of two alternatives 
 was possible; either to go on into simple Deism, or to fall 
 back on a broader and more spiritual conception of Christianity. 
 That the latter has been almost universally adopted among 
 the churches, which were most deeply affected by his princi- 
 ples, is to be ascribed chiefly to the very seasonable influence 
 of the writings of Dr. Channing. 
 
 I am anxious that the purport of these observations should 
 not be misapprehended. In common with many who hold 
 the distinguishing tenet of Dr. Priestley's theology, the sim- 
 ple unity of the great Being who is revealed to us in the Gos- 
 pel as our Father, I am unable to accept as alone conclusive, 
 the grounds on which he placed the divine authority of Chris- 
 tianity ; nor can I persuade myself, that he either fuUy em- 
 braced its whole design, or rightly apprehended its relation to 
 the human mind and to the expectations excited in us by the 
 constitution and visible tendencies of the Universe. Yet it 
 must not be imagined, that this expression of dissent from 
 some of his views, implies any insensibility to the magnitude 
 of his services in the cause of religious truth, or to the great 
 and heroic qualities of his character. It is a strange fallacy 
 to assume, that we must agree in aU things with those whom 
 we most profoundly revere as men. In steadfastness of Chris- 
 ' Dudleian Lecture on the Eyidenoea of Eevealed Eeligion. 
 
 o3 
 
398 REVIVAL OF UNITAKIANISM BY PUIESTLEY. 
 
 tian principle^ in ardour for truth, in purity of life and sim- 
 plicity of purpose, and in genuine magnanimity and disinte- 
 restedness of spirit, Dr. Priestley stands pre-eminent, and 
 almost without a rival, among the philosophers and men of 
 science whose names shed such a lustre on the close of the 
 eighteenth century. His opinions on some points may be 
 considered as a natural result and expression of the times in 
 which he lived — supplying a link in that chain of connected 
 thought which binds together with a mysterious affinity the 
 successive generations of civUized men. His place was as- 
 signed him by Providence. It is his highest praise to have 
 fiUed it nobly — to have lived for what he believed to be truth, 
 and to have sacrificed wealth and ease and worldly reputation 
 in its defence and pursuit^. 
 
 The theological opinions of Br. Priestley were adopted with 
 no important modification by Mr. Belsham, a man of clear 
 and vigorous intellect, of warm affections, and of a very up- 
 
 ^ Strong aversion to many of Priestley's speculatiTe tenets, and especially to 
 the peculiar philosophy which he so closely interwronght with hia theology, has 
 prevented the deeply religious chajacter of his mind, and the excellent practical 
 tendency of many of his writings, from being duly appreciated. An Unitarian 
 divine of a very different school, who does not conceal his entire dissent from 
 him on several important points, the late Dr. Henry Ware, jun., of Boston, 
 Massachusetts, has done justice to his memory in these respects, in a small 
 volume, entitled 'Views of Christian Truth, Piety, and Morahty, selected from 
 the writings of Dr. Priestley,' Cambridge : 1834. On the influence of these 
 estimable qualities in another field of activity, exhibiting the man of science in 
 the same light as the theologian, a most competent judge has thus expressed 
 himself : " In all thpse feelings and habits that connect the purest morals with 
 the highest philosophy (and that there is such a connection no one can doubt) 
 Dr. Priestley is entitled to unqualified esteem and admiration. Attached to 
 science by the most generous motives, he pursued it with entire disregard to 
 his own peculiar interests. He neither sought, nor accepted when offered, any 
 pecuniary aid in his philosophical pursuits, that did not leave him in possession 
 of the most complete independence of thought and action. Free from all httle 
 jealousies of contemporaries or rivals, he earnestly invited other labourers into 
 the field which he was cultivating ; gave publicity in hia own volumes to their 
 experiments ; and, with true candour, was as ready to record the evidence which 
 contradicted, as that which confirmed, his own views and results. Every hint 
 which he had derived from the writings or conversation of others, was nnre- ' 
 eervedly acknowledged. As the best way of accelerating the progress of science, 
 he recommended and practised the early pubhcation of all discoveries ; though 
 quite aware that, in his own case, more durable fame would often have resulted 
 from a delayed and more finished performance." An Estimate of the Philoso- 
 phical Character of Dr. Priestley, by WiUiam Henry, M.D., F.B.S., etc., read 
 at the first Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 
 at York, 1831. 
 
REVIVAL OF UNITARIANISM BY PRIESTLEY. 299 
 
 right and truthful spirit, the most eminent representative of 
 his school in the last generation of English Unitarians^. To- 
 wards the close of the eighteenth, and at the commencement 
 of the present, century, the controversy excited a very general 
 interest. 
 
 Unitarianism in the last age was maintained in various 
 forms by men of learning and ability. Among these were the 
 rneek and conscientious Lindsey, whose gentle spirit was some- 
 times disquieted by the startling suggestions of his great phi- 
 losophic friend^; the devout and contemplative Cappe, who 
 made the Gospel consist of two parts, the restoration of natu- 
 ral religion by the abolition of the law, and the assurance of a 
 future life by the fact of Christ's resurrection from the dead, 
 and whose theological system, based on the religion of nature, 
 differed therefore materially from that of Priestley ^; and se- 
 veral men connected by birth and education with the Church 
 and the Universities, such as Jebb and Tyrwhitt and Wake- 
 
 ' At the end of his commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 
 Mr. Belsham has exhibited, in a condensed form, his views of the CTideuoe and 
 authority of Christianity. Haying giyen a summary of the contents of the 
 Epistle, he adds : " When we take all these things into consideration, it seems 
 almost impossible to avoid coming to the following conclusions : — First, that 
 this Epistle is geimine; that it was written by Paul himself, and not by an 
 impostor assuming his name : and therefore, Secondly, that the facts stated in 
 this Epistle are trv£, and consequently that the Chnsticm Meligion is of divine 
 original; that the Apostle Paul was fully authorized and amply qualiiied to 
 pubhsh this heavenly doctrine to the world, that he justly challenges the most 
 serious and attentive regard to his instructions, and that (hei/ who reject his 
 testimony, reject it at tTieir peril." — In this statement, faith in Christianity is 
 identified with the inteUectnal act, that assents to the inference from a logical 
 deduction. Eirst, we have the genuineness of the book established ; then, as a 
 consequence, the truth of the facts contained in it ; then, as another, the autho- 
 rity of the Apostle ; lastly, as a result of the whole, the divinity of the reli- 
 gion and the danger of rejecting it. The whole process is external : Faith is 
 founded on authority and enforced by fear. — We are so differently constituted, 
 that it is impossible for one man to say, how the same statement may affect 
 another ; but I find it difficult to conceive, how such an argument could reach 
 the moral and spiritual in man. The views of Watts, Cudworth, Baxter, and 
 even of Owen, when reduced to their essence — seeking the true source of faith 
 in inward feeling and conviction, which external facts only serve to call forth — 
 seem to me to imply a profounder and more experimental acquaintance with 
 human nature. 
 
 2 Belsham's life of Lindsey, ch.viii. .,,„.,.,„ 
 
 ' See his Christian Principles deduced from Scripture, m the Critical Ec- 
 marks II pp. 403-433. " AU the doctrimes, properly so called, the truth of 
 which'is supposed or admitted, or incidentaUy taught in Christianity, are doc- 
 trines of natural religion, and should stand entirely upon that ground. They 
 are all supposed to be known or knowahle, before the promulgation of Chris- 
 tianity. AU that it reveaU, isfaet."—^. 421. 
 
300 ORTHODOX DISSENT. 
 
 field, -who relinquislied the hope of preferment, that they might 
 by their ■writings and example more effectually serve the in- 
 terests of religious truth-"^. The great and good Dr. Price re- 
 tained to the last his Arianism; but he was connected by 
 many ties of sympathy and co-operation with the confessors 
 and champions of Unitarianism. The distinguishing quality 
 of all these men, who were the contemporaries and associates 
 of Dr. Priestley, and shared in the intellectual and moral ac- 
 tivity which he created around him — was a certain simplicity 
 and ingenuousness of mind, which sought for truth as the 
 most valuable of human possessions, and believed that under 
 its purer and stronger influence a new era of virtue and happi- 
 ness would arise on mankind. With such convictions, the 
 feelings of hope inspired by the bright dawn of French liberty, 
 naturally allied themselves, and gave birth to an enthusiasm, 
 not always void of some extravagance, which was a new feature 
 in the calm and intellectual faith of Unitarianism. But ex- 
 cellent and true-hearted were the men of those days ; and ever 
 honoured be their memories ! They lived in a generous faith ; 
 and their bosoms glowed with the purest love of mankind. 
 
 SECTION XI. 
 
 ORTHODOX DISSENT: POPULARITY OF CHANNING : INFLUENCE 
 OF GERMANY : POWERFUL ORGANIZATION OF INDEPENDENCY. 
 
 The bold development of Unitarianism in that section of 
 the Dissenters with which Dr. Priestley had connected him- 
 self, produced some reaction towards a more decided ortho- 
 doxy among those Nonconformists who adhered to their tra- 
 ditional theology. Their condition, moreover, had been influ- 
 enced by other causes, which drew them stiU further aside 
 from the rationalistic tendency. The vehement and pathetic 
 preaching of Whitfield and the two Wesleys had spread its 
 contagion into the churches of the Establishment and the 
 Dissenters. Among the Independents and the Baptists, the 
 constitution of whose societies was readily susceptible of any 
 popular impulse from without, a spirit of zeal and earnestness 
 
 ' Biogi-aiDliical notices of these men vrifl he found in vol. ii. of the ' Lives of 
 Eminent Unitarians,' by Kev. W. Turner, jun., M.A., Loudon : 1843. 
 
ORTHODOX DISSENT. 301 
 
 revived, sometimes bordering on fanaticism, which dissipated 
 the scholastic coldness and formalism of their predecessors, 
 and preserved their churches from the decline already begin- 
 ning to affect them. Learning for the time was less culti- 
 vated; but a strong hold was gained on the popular mind, 
 which gave those denominations a new strength, and is the 
 source of their numbers and influence at the present day. Re- 
 ligious sympathies attracted towards each other the orthodox 
 Dissenters, the Methodists, and the Evangelical members of 
 the Establishment. Partly in conjunction, and partly by se- 
 parate efforts, these different bodies organized those vast asso- 
 ciations for the conversion of the heathen and the distribu- 
 tion of the Bible, which have produced such extensive effects, 
 and impressed so peculiar a character on our modern civihza- 
 tion^. Great also were the energy and perseverance of these 
 same parties, effectually aided by the benevolent Society of 
 Friends, in promoting the measures which put down the slave- 
 trade, and, in the British colonies, finally abolished slavery. 
 In achievements of practical philanthropy, inspired by deep 
 religious enthusiasm, the power of the Evangelical body, both 
 in and out of the Establishment, has been conspicuous. One 
 pleasing feature distinguished the grand movement against 
 the slave-trade, as if the spirit of Christ had converted for once 
 the gaU of theology into the milk of human kindness : — its 
 leaders were of all religious persuasions, and yet acted toge- 
 ther in perfect harmony and with mutual esteem. The Evan- 
 gelical Churchman and the Unitarian fought side by side 
 against oppression, on the floor of the House of Commons,- 
 and in the intervals of the strife, Clarkson and Wilberforce 
 and Smith, Macaulay, Thornton and Stephen took righteous 
 counsel together in the communion of private friendship. 
 
 While such were the aims and endeavours of the religious 
 world, studies of a novel character, springing out of the re- 
 searches of Adam Smith or the theories of Bentham, were 
 beginning to engage the attention of thoughtful and earnest 
 
 1 The Baptist Missionary Society was founded ia 1792 ; the London, in 
 1795 • the Church, in 1800 ; the British and Foreign Bible Society, in 1804. 
 Two earUer Societies— for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1698, and for the 
 Pronasation of the Oospel in Foreign Parts, 1701— originated with the Church ; 
 the latter founded on a Company that had been constituted under the Long 
 Parliament But the operations of these two Societies have not equalled in 
 extent those of later date. See Touhnin's History of Protestant Dissenters, 
 oh. It. 
 
302 ORTHODOX DISSENT. 
 
 men. An enlarged and noble-minded benevolence mingled 
 in the zeal which these and kindred pursuits inspired, and 
 concentrated it on objects of practical good. But if the mind 
 was thus delivered from the entanglements of vain speculation 
 and unfruitful controversy, there was wanting, on the other 
 hand, the attraction of a high moral and spiritual interest, to 
 exclude a certain taint of utilitarianism. It is startling, at 
 least, to observe the indifference of such men as Romilly, and 
 Horner, and Mackintosh, to the religious questions of their 
 day, and while they conformed to the established worship of 
 the country, the cold reserve with which they abstained from 
 identifying themselves with any great religious interest. There 
 must, one would think, have been something deficient or re- 
 pulsive in the contemporaneous theology, to account for the 
 alienation of pure and elevated minds from a subject, which 
 its close affinity with morals and jurisprudence must else have 
 rendered so attractive. A clergy who would have expounded 
 the truths of Christianity, like the late Sydney Smith, in a 
 spirit of manly wisdom and benevolent application to the 
 actual wants of society, without enthusiasm, priestly preten- 
 sion, or doctrinal refinements, would have best met the wishes 
 and satisfied the demands of this order of minds^. 
 
 During the protracted and anxious struggle with France, 
 which interrupted all intercourse with the Continent, theology 
 made no visible progress in England. With few exceptions, 
 original research was abandoned. Even the learned Marsh 
 derived a very large portion of the materials of his valuable 
 writings from German sources. The current divinity of the 
 time was chiefly maintained out of the accumulated treasures 
 of past generations. Old controversies kept their ground. 
 To the same objections repeatedly advanced, the same answers 
 were repeatedly given, year after year, with no very marked 
 result. The various sections of the religious world retained 
 pretty nearly the same relative position and influence, with an 
 occasional exchange of members amongst each other. About the 
 return of peace, the writings of Channing began to be known 
 in this coimtry. His Dudleian Discourse on the Evidences 
 of Christianity, from its luminous exposition of the argument, 
 the condensation and precision of its language, and the deep 
 
 ' A prayer found among the papers of Komilly, and iiiBerted in Ms Life, 
 shows that m his mind a spirit of the sublimest theism was not wanting. Me- 
 moirs and Correspondence, yol. iii. p. 76. 
 
POPULARITY OF CHANNING. 303 
 
 religious feeling wMcli pervaded it, produced a very strong im- 
 pression. From that time till the lamented death of this 
 eminent man, the public expectation -which had been raised so 
 high by the character of his earliest performances, was con- 
 tinually excited and fulfilled by a succession of essays and dis- 
 courses on themes which come ultimately home to men's busi- 
 ness and bosoms — on religion, govemm'ent and literature in 
 their widest sense and application, and on the prospects which 
 futurity holds out of a happier constitution of society. 
 
 Channing was not distinguished by profound acquirements 
 or original research. His strength lay in the purity and fer- 
 vour of his moral feeling, guided by a taste of exquisite deli- 
 cacy, with such an infusion of the poetical faculty, as made 
 him keenly alive to all the influences of beauty, and qualified 
 him vividly to conceive, and warmly enter into, the most 
 varied situations of the human character and heart. Indif- 
 ferent to the outward distinctions of sect and party, he em- 
 braced the whole family of God in a spirit of comprehensive 
 benevolence, and owned the Gospel as a law of universal love. 
 Full of mercy and compassion for error and frailty, he could 
 still even amidst the ruins of guilt, sympathize with the hu- 
 manity which he revered and loved, and hope in the possibi- 
 lity of its final restoration. With exclusiveness, intolerance 
 and persecution, inveterate malignity and hopeless sensuality, 
 he was alone implacably at variance. It was from this inner 
 fountain of love — this fresh spirit of humanity ever active in 
 his heart — that Channing's literary productiveness gushed 
 freely forth, in a style pure, fluent and copious— so beauti- 
 fully,- translucent that it reveals the lightest thought which 
 stirs the depth of the writer's mind— and if sometimes charge- 
 able with turgidity, only betraying that stronger impulse of 
 moral earnestness which lifts it for an instant above the smooth 
 surface of our conventional phraseology. 
 
 It has been urged against Channing's fame, that he pro- 
 duced no great work. His writings were, indeed, all occa- 
 sional • but for that reason they made a profounder impression 
 on his' contemporaries. Addressed to present feelmgs and in- 
 terests and eagerly absorbed by them, they only infused the 
 principles of which they were the vehicle, more deeply into 
 the heart of society. Such has ever been the hterary cha- 
 racter of men who have acted most powerfully on the ge- 
 neral mind of their time : it was that of Wesley; to a large 
 
304 POPULARITY OF CHANNING. 
 
 extent, it was that also of Baxter and Luther. Channing's 
 function was rather that of the prophet, than of the scholar or 
 philosopher. He explored no fresh mine of learned inquiry ; 
 he broached no new theories ; he has not suggested, so far as 
 I know, any one principle for the clearer solution of those dif- 
 ficulties which still embarrass the more recondite questions of 
 morals and theology." But he gave utterance, in tones of such 
 deep conviction and thrilling persuasiveness, to sentiments 
 and aspirations which He folded up in every human breast — 
 that he called out a wide response of sympathy, and made 
 thousands experience, as a fresh communication of religious 
 life, through the kindling medium of his affectionate spirit, 
 the awakened consciousness of principles which had long been 
 slumbering in their hearts, but to which they had become al- 
 most insensible through the mechanical inculcation of a dead 
 traditional form. He drew forth from its depths the hidden 
 man of the heart ; asserted its worth, its nobleness, its in- 
 herent capabilities of good; and with a prophet's influence, 
 making aU things new, brought back Christianity from words 
 and plxrases and doubtful disputations, in which it had well- 
 nigh perished, to become a living power for the renovation of 
 humanity. His scattered pieces have gone out into the world, 
 like so many oracles of the indwelling spirit ; the words of a 
 soul that lived in close communion with God, and saw aU 
 things in the light of his truth ; spoken with immediate re- 
 ference to particular times, and seasons, and persons, and 
 having no common unity but the strong interest which they 
 all express, for the improvement and happiness of mankind. 
 In their collected state, they will witness to future generations 
 the first fresh outpouring of that pure spirit of religion which 
 is destined to raise at last, out of the dry dust of antiquated 
 creeds, the fair and blooming garden of the united family of 
 God. 
 
 The minds of Priestley and Channing were so differently con- 
 stituted, that neither perhaps could have fully understood the 
 other ; and the latter certainly did not, at one time, render 
 full justice to the great merits of his predecessor, as a theolo- 
 gian and a man. Priestley delighted in the clear and definite 
 results of physical science, and unreasonably expected the 
 same in very different regions of inquiry ; Channing loved the 
 grand and vague speculations of general philosophy, and was 
 fitted by nature for the refined and delicate studies of literature 
 
POPULARITY OF CHANNING. 305 
 
 and the arts. Priestley was a materialist and a necessarian, 
 and had a feeling of contempt, which he never disguised, for 
 the abstractions and reveries of the Platonic school ; Channing 
 was as enthusiastic iu defence of the doctrines of free-will and 
 spiritualism, which appeared to him essential to the preserva- 
 tion of morality and rehgion, and was allied by the imagina- 
 tive cast of his genius, to that order of minds which feel them- 
 selves irresistibly attracted towards the "lofty visions" of the 
 philosopher of the Academy. Priestley was disposed to under- 
 rate the value of natural religion, and found, as he thought, 
 in a few weR-attested statements of the New Testament, the 
 only evidence worth consideration of a life beyond the grave ; 
 while Channing saw in the implanted affections and tendencies 
 of our moral being, a natural ground and assTorance for the 
 principles and hopes, which it appropriates, as with a kindred 
 feeling, when presented to it in their purest form by the re- 
 ligion of Christ. In Priestley, religion was a conviction of 
 the understanding; in Charming, it was more a sentiment of 
 the heart. They had only one point of agreement and sym- 
 pathy; their common acknowledgment of the sovereign, un- 
 approachable unity and the infinite goodness of the Supreme 
 Father. 
 
 Channing's writings discover rather an intimate familiarity 
 with the spirit of Christianity, than learned skiU in the in- 
 terpretation of its letter. It is not often, and only when driven 
 to it by the necessities of his subject, that he enters minutely 
 into doctrinal questions ; nor is he perhaps the most satisfac- 
 tory authority to consult, on purely controversial points. His 
 learning was not deep ; his mind lived in the present rather 
 than the past; and he had evidently no natural taste for criti- 
 cal disquisition. In most of his discourses, after he has once 
 announced his text, he soars away into the regions of general 
 thought, and, except in an occasional reference, never allows 
 his reader to get a second glimpse of Scripture. Indeed, the 
 relation of his religious system to the Bible, which he smcerely 
 and fervently reverenced as a vehicle of divine revelations, 
 was somewhat vague and indistinct. With a feeling of sensi- 
 tive conservatism for whatever he had once regarded as sacred, 
 and accustomed to look more within for the evidence of divine 
 authority, than among the testimonies of a remote age— he 
 appears to have rested in the general conclusion, that the 
 writings of the Old and New Testament convey to men the 
 
306 INFLUENCE OF GERMANY. 
 
 teachings of the Spirit of Godj and that he was fully justified 
 in employing reason fearlessly to estabUsh the agreement be- 
 tween them and his own inherent sense of right and truth. 
 So far as I know, he has never attempted to settle the funda- 
 mental question, how far our individual feeUng of what is 
 right and true, must give way to the clearly ascertained pur- 
 port of the doctrine of Scripture. The earnest and devotional 
 character of his mind was wholly adverse to the wild and 
 gratuitous scepticism, which has infected so much of the theo- 
 logy of the Germans. Nevertheless he had a quick and ready 
 sympathy with the free and open spirit, and the readiness to 
 appreciate every sincere and pure-hearted manifestation of hu- 
 manity, whether in literature or in religion, which pervades 
 the studies of that learned and contemplative people. He 
 does not appear to have been acquainted with their language, 
 or in any instance to have drawn directly from their stores 
 of erudition and philosophy ; yet his writings — ^perhaps in his 
 own country — certainly among the Unitarians of England — ■ 
 have contributed to prepare the public mind for more truly 
 estimating the scholarship, and comprehending the intellect, 
 of Germany, and furnished a medium of transition from the 
 school of Priestley, which on nearly every point is at war with 
 them. 
 
 It is interesting to trace the mazy windings of the stream 
 of opinion. The principles of English Freethinking pene- 
 trated into Germany, as I have already remarked, at an early 
 period of the eighteenth century. They were in harmony 
 with the views of the most distinguished of its sovereigns, 
 Prederick II. of Prussia, under whose iufluence the Deutsche 
 Bibliothek became a similar receptacle for the free discussion 
 of religious questions at Berlin, with the Encyclopedie at Paris. 
 As yet however the theology of the Germans maintained in 
 general its orthodox and conservative character. To uphold 
 it in this position by the aid of solid learning, was one of the 
 objects contemplated in the foundation of the University of 
 Gottingen by George II. in 1735. Mosheim and J. D. Mi- 
 chaelis, two of its earliest ornaments, were essentially ortho- 
 dox. Semler was one of the first who threw a bolder spirit 
 of doubt into sacred criticism and ecclesiastical history. Be- 
 fore the close of the century, two very remarkable men pro- 
 duced a deeper and more lasting impression on the state of 
 religious opinion in Germany. These were Lessing and Kant. 
 
INFLUENCE OF GERMANY. 307 
 
 The former was an elegant scholar and a man of the world ; 
 the latter a recluse philosopher, who hegan and ended his 
 days in Konigsberg, but from that remote quarter exerted 
 an influence which pervaded for a time every realm of Ger- 
 man thought. Kant passed through the moral law, which he 
 accepted as a positive, ultimate fact in human nature, to the 
 belief of a God as a necessary influence required for its com- 
 pletion. His belief was ia fact, therefore, a priori j or at least 
 a corollary from an iatuitive proposition. Religion with him 
 grew out of, and finally resolved itself into, an immutable and 
 absolutely perfect moral law. How these views must have 
 modified his conception of Christianity, will occur to every 
 one. Yet he had a strong sense of the practical value of 
 Christianity ; and thought its historical origin and scriptural 
 form well fitted to act beneficially on the great mass of minds. 
 It ought, however, he contended, to be so interpreted and ad- 
 ministered, as to make it yield with iacreasiag clearness the 
 higher principles involved in it, and render it a discipline of 
 preparation for the religion of pure reason. To any miracu- 
 lous sanction of a divine truth Kant attached no weight. The 
 only evidence of its heavenly origin was its accordance with 
 the eternal law of reason. These views he has developed in a 
 treatise entitled ' Religion within the limits of simple Reason i;' 
 which he undertook, as he informs us in his preface, from a 
 persuasion, that such a course on the Philosophy of Religion 
 was very desirable at the close of a theological education. In 
 accordance with this idea, his whole work exhibits an inge- 
 nious effort to convert the chief articles of the orthodox belief 
 into a corresponding series of philosophical equivalents. Many 
 of these attempts are very far-fetched, and the questionable 
 principle of accommodation is pushed to a great extent. The 
 predilection of the German mind for traditional forms, com- 
 bined with extraordinary freedom and subtlety of speculation, 
 is conspicuous throughout. Everything must come out of the 
 past through gradual historical development. His whole pro- 
 cedure was in striking contrast to that of his philosophical 
 contemporaries in France. It is an obvious defect in this 
 system of Kant, that he altogether overlooks the existence of 
 the religious principle as an original element and spontaneous 
 impulse of our mental constitution, which, however it may grow 
 1 Die Eeligion innerhalb der Granzen der blosBen Vemimft. Kouigsberg : 
 1793. 
 
308 INFLUENCE OF GERMANY. 
 
 up by the side of the moral law, and ought always to subsist 
 in perfect harmony with it, is still entirely distinct. 
 
 From this imputation the less systematic views of Lessing 
 are free. With a deep feeling of what was beautiful in the 
 pure religion of Christ, he would have left it very much as 
 feeling. He disliked aU attempts to rationalize it; and in 
 fall agreement with a well-known aphorism of Lord Bacon, 
 he strongly protested against the modern practice of amalga- 
 mating theology and philosophy. He thought Christianity 
 had become too much a matter of intellect and speculation. 
 "We are angels in knowledge," he says, speaking of the phi- 
 losophical Christianity of the eighteenth century, " but devils 
 in our lives^." 
 
 He had no belief in the old orthodox system^ j but he was 
 of opinion, that it should either be preserved in its entireness, 
 the compact and subtle consequentiality of which he admired, 
 standing on its own basis and holding no communion with 
 philosophy, or else be swept away completely and a new edi- 
 fice be erected in its place. What he objected to, was patch- 
 ing up an old and ruinous edifice with a stone here and there, 
 taken from the quarry of the philosophers. In a remarkable 
 letter to his brother, he has expressed himself very freely on 
 this subject. "We have pulled down," he says, "the old 
 wall of separation, and under pretence of making rational 
 Christians, we have made most irrational philosophers^." In 
 speaking of the efiect produced on him by defences of Chris- 
 tianity and attacks upon it, he recalls what many others must 
 frequently have experienced, and betrays at the same time the 
 religious tenderness, which in spite of scepticism was ever pre- 
 sent in the depths of his soul* : " It has often seemed to me, 
 as if these gentlemen, like Death and Love in the fable, had 
 exchanged their weapons. The more closely one presses me 
 with the proofs of Christianity, the more I am filled with 
 doubts. The greater the insolent triumph with which the 
 other would trample it in the dust, the more disposed I feel to 
 
 ' ' Der Erkenntniss naoh sind wir Engel, und dem Loben naoli Teufel,' GJe- 
 damken Tiber die Hermhiiter, in his Theologischer Naeblass. 
 
 2 ' Darin sind wir einig, dass unser altes Eeligioussystem falsoh ist.' In a 
 letter to his brother, 
 
 ' ' Man reisst deise Soheidewand nieder, und maoht uns, unter Vorwande 
 uns zu vemiinftigen Christen zu machen, zu hoohst unTerniinftigen Pliiloso- 
 phen.' Lessing's Leben, TOn K. G-. Lessing, Berlin : 1793, pp. 351-2. 
 
 ■> BibUolatrie, p. 73. Theolog. Naohlass, III. 
 
INFLUENCE OF GERMANY. 309 
 
 sustain it erect, at least in my heart." One of the means by 
 which Lessing most powerfully stimulated the fearless search 
 and theological doubts of his contemporaries, was the publi- 
 cation of the celebrated fragments of Reimarus, deposited in 
 the ducal library at Wolfenbiittel, which contained the boldest 
 assault yet made on the received faith of the Christian world, 
 and paxticularly on the credibility of the resurrection^. 
 
 But another mind of earlier date and remoter influence was 
 working perhaps more deeply still in the formation of German 
 opinion, than either Lessing or Kant ; I mean that of Spinoza. 
 While the theology and philosophy of England were yet obeying 
 the impulse originally given to them by Locke, the speculative 
 intellect concentrated in the Universities of Germany, was si- 
 lently imbibing the spirit of the Jewish pantheist. Herder, 
 Lessing, Eichhorn, Paulus, Schleiermacher — aU names which 
 mark successive steps in the development of German theology 
 — ^indicate in their writings and opinions the sway exercised 
 over their thoughts by this subtle and meditative thinker. Per- 
 haps to no circumstance can the different direction which theo- 
 logical inquiry has taken in England and in Germany, be so im- 
 mediately ascribed.- In the two countries the mixture of a phi- 
 losophical system with a yet unbroken rigidity of Scriptural- 
 ism, produced different but analogous results. In England the 
 miracle was retained, to invest with a divine authority the 
 religious and ethical wisdom which the letter of the primitive 
 record was made to yield. In Germany where miracle was 
 not reconcilable with the prevalent philosophy, while the letter 
 of Scripture was still accepted with reverence, it was so inter- 
 preted as to bring miracle within the limits of natural law. 
 In both there was a straining of Scripture language ; in both 
 an exegesis was tolerated that would have been considered 
 admissible in no other book; but it was in a different way 
 and for a different purpose in the two countries. The system 
 of antisupematural interpretation is seen to perfection in the 
 works of Paulus. Its hollow, unsatisfactory character was easily 
 detected. It could hardly have convinced those who had re- 
 course to it. Divines of a higher order, De Wette, Liicke, 
 Schleiermacher, and the great Orientalist, Ewald, while uni- 
 versally regarding miracle as no evidence of divine truth, have 
 been more generally disposed to leave the miraculous of Scrip- 
 1 Fragmente des Wolfenbuttelschen Ungenannten. Herausgegeben von 
 G.E. Lessing. Berlin: 1835. 4te Aufl. 
 
310 INFLUENCE OF GERMANY. 
 
 ture undetermined, or to look for its origin ratter in the con- 
 ception of the narrator than in the nature of the fact. The 
 pretensions of this shallow system of antisupernaturalism were 
 completely dispelled by the school of Schleiermacher. In his 
 Discourses^ addressed to the educated classes, who, at the be- 
 ginning of the present century, under the influence of the 
 French philosophy, had sunk into a complete state of moral 
 relaxation and spiritual apathy, he eloquently called attention 
 to the fact, that religion is an independent and original ele- 
 ment of human nature, and distinguished it from mere know- 
 ledge on one hand, and from simple morality on the other. 
 In this respect, by developing a new and fruitful principle, 
 with the germ of which he had perhaps been furnished by 
 Jacobi, Schleiermacher rendered great service to the religious 
 life of his country, and was always spoken of by the late ex- 
 cellent and pious Neander, as having made quite an era in 
 theology. Yet Schleiermacher's philosophy which betrays 
 itself very decidedly in all his scientific productions, excluded 
 belief in a personal God and individual immortality. It is 
 difiScult for an English mind to conceive, how such opinions 
 could be honestly reconciled with the retention of an office in 
 the Evangelical Church and the professorship of Christian 
 theology. Nevertheless, though I cannot adopt the view on 
 which his great work, ' The Christian Faith according to the 
 principles of the EvangeHcal Church,' is written, where he en- 
 deavours to bring all these principles into harmony with his 
 philosophical system, and even goes so far as to assert the 
 doctrine of man's total incapacity for good previous to his re- 
 demption in Christ^; there was certainly in Schleiermacher, 
 as any acquaintance with his writings will prove, a deep reh- 
 giousness of spirit combined with great reverence for the per- 
 son and work of Christ, and a sustained and disinterested 
 effort through his whole hfe, to renovate the Christian Church 
 and make it more conducive to the pm'ification and ennoble- 
 ment of human nature. On several points he expressed him- 
 self so ambiguously, that it was a question at his death, what 
 his real opinions were, and different parties claimed him as 
 their own. The philosophical schools of Fichte, Schelling, 
 and Hegel, which succeeded one after another that of Kant, 
 
 ' TJeber die Eeligion. Eeden an die Gebildeten vmter ihren YeriLohtern. 
 The first edition appeared in 1806. 
 = Christliohe Glaube, § 70. 
 
INFLUENCE OF GERMANY. 31] 
 
 eacli in their turn exercised an influence on the contempora- 
 neous state of theology; but of these that of Hegel which is 
 admitted to be essentially pantheistic, has made by far the 
 deepest impression, and seems likely to leave behind it the 
 most enduring eflectsi. While the disciples of Schleier- 
 macher preserved a moderately conservative character and 
 still maintained Christianity on its historical basis^; the in- 
 fluence of the Hegelian philosophy found an expression in the 
 freer and bolder theology of the Tubingen school, from which 
 the celebrated Strauss came forth. In his Life of Jesus two 
 distinct elements are to be noticed : first, the mythical princi- 
 ple, which he has carried to the utmost length, and fairly ex- 
 hausted, in his attempt to account for the origin of the su- 
 pernatural in the narratives of the New Testament ; and se- 
 condly, the pantheistic spirit in which he conceives the whole 
 subject of religion and Christianity. Of the first of these 
 elements the influence can never again be overlooked in the 
 interpretation of the primitive records of the Gospel, though 
 a more cautious and reverential criticism will doubtless reduce 
 it within far narrower limits. The second, whose eflects are 
 of a much more serious and lamentable character, is only to 
 be overcome by a philosophy more powerful than itself, and 
 truer to the unchangeable principles of human nature, which 
 shall have its source not in the abstractions of the intellect, 
 but in the living realities of the spiritual consciousness : and 
 such a philosophy can only arise under the favouring shelter 
 and stimulus of civil and religious freedom^. 
 
 • A theological professor of Heidelberg, Daub, is remarkable for having 
 passed through aU these different philosophical systems, and for having recon- 
 ciled with each in succession his Christian faith. Critical History of Bationahsra, 
 etc., by Amand Saintes, eh. xiii. p. 228, Engl, transl. 
 
 2 The principles of this school were represented in the Theologische Studien 
 und Kritiken; a journal set on foot by Schleiermacher himself, and continued 
 up to this time by the most eminent of his followers. 
 
 3 In the preface to his countrymen, prefixed by the Chevaher Bunsen to the 
 German edition of his Hippolytus, are some very wise and seasonable remarks 
 on the necessity of uniting practical hfe with science, for the sake of science 
 itself " loh bin uberzeugt, dass auf dem kirohHchen Gebiete daa sittliche Leben 
 als Selbstzweck, als die eigentliohe Eehgion, vor allem anderen anzustreben sei, 
 und zwar Ton den Wissenden insbesondere. Ich bin ferner iiberzeugt, dass 
 die innigste Verbindung des Gedankens und der Forsohung mit der reUgios 
 kirchSen Yerwirklichung als einem Theile des OffentUchen lebens, uns jetzt 
 mehr als ie nothwendig ist, damit wir nicht auf dem Gebiete des Denkens und 
 Forschens selbst riickwarts gehen, sondem das Begonnene wiirdig voUenden."— 
 The 'History of Rationahsm' by Amand Samtes, aheady referred to, does not 
 come up to its subject, and is written ii-om a narrow point of view. A really 
 
313 INFLUENCE OF GERMANY. 
 
 The intercourse between England and the Continent for the 
 last quarter of a century has been so constantly on the increase, 
 and so many of the present generation of ministers among 
 the Dissenters, have received a part of their education in the 
 Universities of Germany, that the new views of sacred history 
 and criticism suggested by its profound and original learning, 
 and the bolder tone of its philosophical speculation, could hardly 
 fail to produce some effect on that portion of the Nonconform- 
 ist body, which from hereditary principle, the previous state of 
 opinion, and ardent sympathy with the spiritual tendencies of 
 the school of Channing, is most open to receive any new impulse 
 in the direction of free inquiry. The result has undoubtedly 
 been, some division of opinion among them. In all commu- 
 nities there are men, equally intelligent and estimable, who ui 
 consequence of the different complexion of their minds, natu- 
 rally arrange themselves, during the great crises of social de- 
 velopment, in the two classes of the conservative and the pro- 
 gressive. Whenever there is clear evidence of earnestness and 
 mental purity, mutual respect and forbearance is the great 
 duty of such periods. Some Unitarians of the present day, 
 those especially whose opinions have been long formed, are 
 disposed to adhere to the position in which theology was left 
 by Dr. Priestley and his contemporaries. Others dissent from 
 his view of the human mind, and its relation to God and the 
 universe ; consider his Scriptural system as deficient ia strict 
 self- consistency; and are persuaded that the whole theologi- 
 cal truth cannot yet have been discovered. They are anxious, 
 therefore, to pursue and develope such views, as shall more 
 eflPectuaUy remove admitted difficulties, and help to place reli- 
 gion generally, and Christianity, its purest and most exalted 
 expression, on a broader and more secure foundation in the 
 spiritual nature of man. But of those who are disposed to go 
 farthest in this new direction, it may be asserted, that they 
 deny neither the metaphysical nor, in duly attested cases, the 
 historical possibility of the miraculous. Only in their esti- 
 mate of Christianity and their access to it, they set its internal 
 far before its external evidence. With diminished interest, 
 except as matters of history, in many of the doctrinal ques- 
 
 philoBopMcal history of Gennan theology has yet to be written. It is too soon 
 for such a work to appear. The whole influence of such writers as Lessing, 
 Sqhleiermacher and Strauss on the futiu-e development of Christianity and the 
 Church, only coming generations will adequately appreciate. 
 
ORGANIZATION OF INDEPENDENCY. 313 
 
 tions which most warmly excited the last generation^ they 
 have an increased love and reverence for the life and person of 
 Jesus Christ, an increased sympathy with his great and holy 
 work ; and they shrink with iastinctive pain and disgust from 
 every interpretation of his history, that would impair his spiri- 
 tual iafluence and authority over their hearts. 
 
 Upon other classes of English Dissenters the learning of 
 Germany has not been without its effects. The most eminent 
 writers among the Independents are well acquainted with Ger- 
 man theology ; and their young men are imbibing more and 
 more of its spirit^. But the power of the great body of Evan- 
 gelical Dissenters, whether Independents or Baptists, is shown 
 now, as it has ever been, rather in practical life and extensive 
 social movements, than .in learning and speculation. Its 
 whole strength has been called out against the high sacerdo- 
 tal tendencies manifested of late years by the Church. The 
 revival of the spirit of Laud has revived once more its old 
 antagonist — the spirit of Puritanism; — with this difference, 
 however, resulting from the progress of society, that, whereas 
 the old Puritans would have set up their own church govern- 
 ment in place of Episcopacy, the modern Puritans, asking no 
 preference for themselves, would level all ascendency, and put 
 every denomination on the same footing of freedom and self- 
 reliance. Independency, perhaps the most popular organiza- 
 tion of the religious life at present in existence, defies and 
 encounters the Church at every point. Whatever the Church 
 attempts. Independency, conscious of its strength, meets with 
 a counter-attempt. It multiplies schools; founds colleges; 
 establishes lectureships; circulates tracts ^ institutes a society 
 for the publication of old Puritan writings^ and centralizes 
 its energies in a National Union*. If any of its cherished 
 principles are encroached upon either by the Government 
 or the Hierarchy, the assault is at once resisted by a vast and 
 simultaneous manifestation of public opiaion from the press, 
 the pulpit and the platform, and by the systematic exer- 
 tion of a powerful influence on aU the sprmgs of parliamen- 
 
 1 rrv,„ wnvk of Mr J. D. MoreU (once an Independent Minister) on the Phi- 
 losophy of EeUgion,' has been obviously influenced by the spirit of Schleier- 
 macher's theology. 3 rpj^ y^jeWe Society. 
 
 Bright's Apostolical Independency, p. 20. 
 
314 ORGANIZATION OF INDEPENDENCY. 
 
 tary action. Among the religious phenomena of the time, 
 not the least remarkable is the strength and organization of 
 Independency. 
 
 From the association which the more ardent of the Inde- 
 pendents and Baptists and some other religionists have orga- 
 nized for the dissolution of the Establishment, under the title 
 of the Anti-State-Church Union, the majority of the Unita- 
 rians have kept aloof. Some of them, in common with their 
 Presbyterian ancestors, would much prefer the reform and 
 the purification of that which exists, to complete revolution. 
 Others who admit in the abstract the inexpediency of reli- 
 gious establishments, experience so strongly the difficulties 
 which historical conditions attach to the present realization of 
 their views in England, that they are inclined to pause, and 
 feel their way step by step towards a more just and equal con- 
 stitution of reUgious society. Nor can it be denied, that the 
 spirit too often displayed by those who are most eager for the 
 separation of Church and State, has caused no unreasonable 
 apprehension, that the liberty of the individual mind might not 
 be increased by the event, and that the tyranny of a fanatical 
 public opinion would prove more intolerable than the ascen- 
 dency of a favoured Church. 
 
 Every one who comprehends the spirit of Christianity, must 
 wish to see perfect freedom of conscience established, and all 
 civil distinctions removed from diversities of religious profes- 
 sion. Many accept the voluntary system as the most direct 
 means to this desirable end. But to the progress of truth and 
 the healthful development of individual conviction, other assist- 
 ances must concur besides the simple independence from civil 
 control of the particular bodies in which men associate for 
 worship and edification ; and among these, are repose of mind, 
 leisure for inquiry and meditation, and some security against 
 the impatient, and at times ignorant, interference of the popu- 
 lar will. I do not say that the voluntary system may not be 
 so organized, as to secure effectually all these ends ; but this 
 must depend on the quality of the minds, to which the orga- 
 nization is entrusted. The voluntary system, it should be 
 remembered, is not in itself an end, but only a means to an 
 end. The present day but adds another to the many instances 
 of that bewilderment of the public sentiment, in which a great 
 end is postponed and almost sacrificed to a fanatical predilec- 
 tion for a favourite means. In the wish to see religious 
 
ORGANIZATION OF INDEPENDENCY. 315 
 
 ascendency abated, and religious equality put in its place ; in 
 the desire, tliat all religious communities should stand in the 
 same relation to the laws of their country, and he permitted, 
 under the stimulating influences of sound education, to de- 
 velope healthfully and vigorously their inherent tendencies and 
 views ; there is, so far as I am aware, no difference of opinion 
 whatever among Unitarians. To religious justice and reli- 
 gious freedom they cling as sacred principles. But with re- 
 gard to the best method of reducing those principles to prac- 
 tice, and the most direct course for approaching their realiza- 
 tion — ^they feel, there is room for an honest and intelligent 
 diversity of opinion, which must not be put on the same ground 
 with a fundamental principle. 
 
316 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 On completing this brief survey of the Religious Life of Eng- 
 land, it is natural to ask, what impression it has left upon the 
 mind, and what indications it offers of the probable direction 
 of its future course. In each of the three manifestations of 
 it, which have been here noticed — the Church, Puritanism, 
 and Free Inquiry — though all have contributed in turn to the 
 general progress, it is impossible for a candid mind not to be 
 aware of a deficiency and a one-sidedness, which forbid our 
 regarding any one of them, taken apart, as an expression of 
 the whole truth, or a solution of all the difficulties entermg 
 into the religious constitution of society. They seem rather 
 to furnish the different ingredients which, mixed in due pro- 
 portions, and qualifying each other, might compose a uni- 
 versal Chiu"ch. 
 
 "We have, for instance, in our national hierarchy the prin- 
 ciple of tradition, modifying the conception and outward ex- 
 pression of the primitive religious elements, contained in 
 Scripture. Tradition in the Anghcan Church has acquired an 
 undue force ; it has stifled the power of inward growth, and 
 closed up the religious life in a mass of fixed and rigid forms. 
 Instead of casting out what is withered and dead, and, through 
 the absorption of fresh influences from contemporaneous ideas 
 and interests, lengthening out a continuous identity from 
 generation to generation, it clings superstitiously to the deci- 
 sions of a particular period, and drags after it the cumbrous 
 adhesions of ages less instructed and enlightened. Notwith- 
 standing these abuses, Tradition is still a principle of indis- 
 pensable application in all the social arrangements of religion. 
 It secures the peaceable evolution of the present out of the 
 past; it cherishes a healthful feeling of nationality; it pre- 
 vents the destructive outbreaks of ignorant caprice and pas- 
 sionate self-willedness ; it furnishes a broad base on which 
 practical wisdom can erect its plans, and adjust them calmly 
 
CONCLUSION. 317* 
 
 and deliberately to the advancing demands of social progress ; 
 and by fixing provisionally men's outward relations to each 
 other in the offices of public worship, it constitutes the only 
 attaiuable bond of extensive reUgious communion. Viewed 
 as the recognized symbols of internal feeling, forms and usages 
 which no one would at present think of originatiag, find a 
 sufficient justification in the fact of their estabUshed exist- 
 ence ; provided they are at war with no fundamental convic- 
 tion, and express with fitting solemnity the innate religious- 
 ness of the soul. The acceptance of them on such grounds, 
 is to acknowledge so far the principle of Tradition. Tradition 
 is the natural vehicle of a progressive civilization. 
 
 Scripture, on the other hand, brings into immediate contact 
 with the individual soul, the fresh intuitions of religious truth, 
 as they descended, under the influence of the Spirit of God, 
 into the minds of holy men and prophets, and thus renews 
 from their original source, convictions and feelings which are 
 always latent in the conscience and the heart, but which the 
 use of mere traditional forms tends to benumb. Of this im- 
 portant element of the religious life, Puritanism is the great 
 representative in our national history. But Puritanism un- 
 fortunately took under its defence rather the letter, than the 
 spirit, of Scripture ; and it has therefore distorted and exag- 
 gerated the principle of which it is the symbol. 
 
 A third element of spiritual progress has been furnished by 
 Eationalism or Free Inquiry — ^the exercise of a speculative in- 
 tellect : but this again has been cultivated in the same partial 
 and exclusive spirit as the former two, as if religion were 
 wholly the product of reason, instead of being simply measured 
 and estimated by it. There must be something given and 
 positive, for reason to set out from : independent of such data, 
 it loses itself in vague theories, and wanders on without com- 
 ing to a conclusion. Proofs of this abound in the history of 
 every civilized community. Yet if reason be not invested with 
 the fullest right of free examination. Tradition will infallibly 
 degenerate into a dead formalism, and Scriptm-e only engender 
 
 fanaticism. ■ , i i , in ■■ 
 
 These three principles, then, seem mtended to check and 
 balance each other : and that they have each been so power- 
 fully developed in our own country, at once attests the vigour 
 and activity of the national mind, and may be accepted as an 
 
 p3 
 
318 CONCLUSION. 
 
 omen of future good to be worked out under their joint influ- 
 ence. It is no mere accident^ that they have stood out so 
 prominently in the history of England, for they are deeply in- 
 terwoven with the religious constitution of Christendom. As 
 early as the third century, while the idea of Catholicism was 
 advancing towards its realization, we find them distiuctly ex- 
 pressed in the three great centres of patriarchal authority : 
 Tradition upheld with conservative stifiness at Eome ; Scrip- 
 ture studied with a critical fidelity at Antioch ; and Specula- 
 tion fiourishing among the followers of Clement and Origen 
 at Alexandria. 
 
 To produce the best fruits of which they are each capable, 
 these tendencies should not be shut up in insulated schools 
 and sects, but kindly recognize each other, and carry on a free 
 and open intercourse. Some union of this kind was in pre- 
 paration among the leaders of the difierent sections of the 
 Church, under the Protectorate; and the hope of it never 
 completely abandoned many excellent men who survived those 
 times — Baxter and Howe and some Episcopalians of a kindred 
 spirit. But the exclusive ascendency of one party so violently 
 effected at the Restoration, and the legalization of the distinc- 
 tion between Dissent and the Establishment introduced by 
 the Revolution, have settled the boundary hues of different 
 Christian communions with a fixedness and a permanence, as 
 obstructive to large views of truth, as to all genuine exercise 
 of the spirit of the Gospel. The great landmarks then set up, 
 have remained unmoved to the present day, and are protected 
 with a rehgious veneration : so that, unless a man will volun- 
 tarily excommunicate himself, he must take his position in 
 some clearly defined section of the fold of Christ, and by this 
 act virtually declare his approval of particular doctrines and 
 usages, as alone conformable to the eternal standard of truth 
 and right. There are no Churches which do not rest more or 
 less on this sectarian basis : and the fact is painful and per- 
 plexing to some minds of a high order, full of religious feeling 
 and sighing for rehgious sympathy. So many prejudices and 
 so many interests are bound up with this constitution of things, 
 that it seems vain to expect any improvement, till it is dis- 
 solved by some external change, which shall once more un- 
 fetter the primitive elements of the religious life, and put them 
 again into free circulation. Such a change might possibly 
 
CONCLUSION. 319 
 
 afford an opportunity of so tempering and combining these 
 elements in practieej as to prevent the exclusiveness which has 
 hitherto prevailed, and unite all Christian minds, if not in one 
 habitual communion, at least in a bond of mutual recognition 
 and in a friendly interchange of religious offices. To antici- 
 pate any definite plan amidst the possible contingencies that 
 may hereafter arise, would be rash and presumptuous. The 
 particular mode of approximating to the desired result, must 
 of course be determined by circumstances which no individual 
 can foresee. It is sufficient for one who reasons from the past 
 to the future, to point out the historical tendencies that lie 
 deep in our national life, and to suggest the probability of 
 their finally issuing in some harmonious result. 
 
 Such a comprehension of different religious forms in a 
 general Christian union, so far as it is attainable in this world, 
 would be more in harmony with the character and history and 
 insular position of the English nation, and at the same time 
 more directly conduce to the ends of the Gospel, than the 
 endless multiplication and reciprocal exclusiveness of sects 
 prevalent in America, which only tends to exasperate the spirit 
 of schism, by making it a point of honour and consistency, if 
 not a matter of interest, for each rehgious society to lay the 
 greatest stress on the dogmas and rites which distinguish it 
 from others. On this subject, it is more easy to feel what is 
 wrong, than to prescribe its cure. We can only throw our- 
 selves on our faith in God, and labour to diffuse the spirit of 
 Christianity; believing that, as it spreads and takes a stronger 
 hold of the heart, it will guide all sincere Christians to a 
 clearer perception of the means that should be adopted for 
 attaining the end which they all ardently desire. The change 
 "must be effected,"— to adopt the impressive language of 
 
 Howe "not by mere human endeavour, but by an almighty 
 
 spirit poured forth, which, after we have suffered awhile, shall 
 put us into joint, and make every joint know its place in the 
 body shall conquer private interests and mchnations, and 
 overawe men's hearts by the authority of the divine law, which 
 now how express soever it is, little avaUeth against preposses- 
 sions TiU then, Christianity will be among us a languishing, 
 withering thing. When the season comes of such an effusion 
 of the Spirit from on high, there wiU be no parties. And 
 amidst the wilderness desolation that cannot but be till that 
 
320 coNCLUsioir. 
 
 season comes, it matters little, what party of us is upp 
 mosti." 
 
 In the meantime, some important changes must first ti 
 place, to render such a union feasible. In the present 
 vided state of opinion about the essentials of salvation, il 
 not even approachable. Either, therefore, mankind m 
 come to an agreement respecting the doctrines which 
 taught with a divine authority, as necessary to be believed. 
 Scripture — an event which there is no reasonable ground 
 expect, since the progress of criticism seems rather to increa 
 than to lessen, difierences of mere opinion ; or else the Chi 
 tian mind must take a new direction, and, renouncing a d( 
 matic theology, look for salvation in the spirit of Christ hi 
 self, wrought into the believing soul, and becoming the inwi 
 principle of a higher moral life. This spirit of Christ invol 
 three elements : subjection of wiU and endeavour to the ■? 
 of the everlasting Father ; affectionate sympathy with hun 
 nity in all its stages of development; and the sure exp 
 tation of a more glorious futurity both for the individual a 
 for the species. AU these elements are expressed and e 
 bodied, with a surpassing beauty and power, in the life 
 Christ : and to sympathize with that life, to baptize our hea 
 into its redundant spirit of faith and love, to look up to Chi 
 as our spiritual helper and guide to a higher world, — ^is bel 
 unto salvation, an entrance into the kingdom of God. 11 
 diflBcult to conceive how any pure minds could decline t 
 sympathy mth the life of Christ ; how any minds in wh 
 the moral sense was not wholly extinct, should not 
 awakened, by having it held up before them, to a deeper c( 
 sciousness of that which is divine and immortal in the hun 
 soul. In this sympathy of the will and affections with Chri 
 in this acknowledgment of him with the heart, as the h( 
 of his Church, the first-born of the spiritual family of G( 
 there seem to exist the only indispensable conditions oi 
 comprehensive union among Christians. On this simple bs 
 individuals and societies may ground whatever forms £ 
 usages they find expedient for the culture of their spirit 
 affections, and may associate with it any exposition of d 
 trinal views which they need for the satisfaction of the spe 
 
 ' Quoted by Calamy, in the Dedication to the Protestant Dissenting Mi 
 ters, prefixed to his Continuation, p. sliii. 
 
CONCLUSION. 321 
 
 lative intellect ; if only prepared^ amidst their many varieties 
 of opinion and worship, to own as a brother-disciple of Christ, 
 every one whose life is conformed to his divine example, and 
 whose heart is filled with his heavenly spirit. 
 
 An iatellectual discipliae is also necessary to facilitate the 
 consummation desired. The reciprocal influence of religion 
 and philosophy has been alluded to. But their relation to 
 each other is indistinctly apprehended. It is a very imhappy 
 circumstance, that religion, which belongs to our moral rather 
 than our intellectual nature, and is wanted as the steady monitor 
 and unchanging comforter of om- daily life, should be carried 
 through all the vicissitudes which mark the course of its more 
 adventurous companion. "We should define, therefore, more 
 distinctly the line of separation between religion and philo- 
 sophy. For this end a more exact psychology of religion is 
 required. We ought also to possess a good natural history of 
 religion. Both processes — a careful analysis of the mental 
 elements involved in the various states of religious feeling and 
 conviction, with an elimination of the fortuitous adjuncts of 
 philosophical opinion — and secondly a comprehensive review 
 of the historical development of the religious principle, with a 
 comparison of its various outward manifestations in the rites 
 and dogmas of nations most widely separated in character and 
 institutions — are indispensable, to give us a clear insight into 
 the working of the interior sense which connects ns with the 
 invisible and the infinite, and to place in the fullest light the 
 worth and beauty of Christianity, by exhibiting its adapta- 
 tion to our nature, and the freedom of its essential idea from 
 the elements which have engendered superstition, and led to 
 priestly domination in other religions. A valuable contri- 
 bution towards the history of rehgion in this large sense, is 
 furnished by the desultory, but eloquent and suggestive, work 
 of Benjamiu Constant^. But the task is too laborious and too 
 vast for any one man at present to undertake. The materials 
 for it must in the first instance be freely accumulated by deep 
 and conscientious research into the religious monuments of the 
 most celebrated nations, carried on without theory, and with 
 a perfect readiness to admit the unbiassed results of faithful 
 criticism. The records of heathenism have been too generally 
 1 De la Eeligion, oonsid^rfe dans sa Source, ses Formes, et ses Developpe- 
 ments. 
 
333 CONCLUSION. 
 
 approached under tlie preconceived notion^ that their examii 
 tion could yield nothing but unmixed error and revolting i 
 purity. What interest must attach to a full; dispassionate a 
 unprejudiced account of the forms and influences of the r( 
 gious principle, as it existed among such a people as the Egi 
 tianSj the ancient Greeks, or the old Scandinavians ! It 
 evident that the study of theology, properly understood, is 
 from having reached its limits ; and that it seems to he s 
 tionary, only because its field is arbitrarily limited, and rea^ 
 is sent into it, unfurnished with the proper implements, a 
 deprived of the free use of all its powers. 
 
 To aid the religious progress of society, the province 
 theology, as a science, must not be confounded with that 
 religion, as a spiritual influence. The same man may be, a 
 often is — to a certain extent he always ought to be — at oj 
 a theologian and a preacher ; but he should not often exerc 
 both his functions at the same time. The theology of i 
 preacher should be a hidden source of light, lying deep in 1 
 mind, and mingling as a general radiance with the ftdl fl 
 of the spirit to his lips, to make distinctly visible the id 
 which he wishes to convey, and guide them to their destii 
 eflfect in the convictions of his hearers. Learning must of 
 be employed to undo its own work ; to help a preacher to 
 parate the living spirit of the Divine Word, from the incr 
 tations which a misplaced erudition has gathered round 
 What he should chiefly seek as the proper aim of his stud: 
 is the power of throwing himself back into the spirit of • 
 holy men whose mind and life are reflected in the sacred boo 
 Having once possessed himself of this, he must forget, wl 
 he addresses his contemporaries, all that is antique in 
 thought, or inappropriate in the phraseology of the t£ 
 through which he imbibed it ; and try to speak, under 
 sole consciousness of present, living interests, just as Paul 
 John would now speak, if from our point of view they w 
 looking out with their own deep heart of faith and warm i 
 pulse of human sympathies, on the stiU enduring strife of n 
 with doubt and sin and woe. That theology has been so ge 
 rally brought into the pulpit, rather than religion, is proba 
 one reason why most churches have lost their hold on 
 popular feeling. The masses are more attracted by the earr 
 fanaticism which comes under however rough and unshaj 
 
CONCLUSION. 323 
 
 an exterior from the genuine heart of man, than by the cold 
 light which streams from the polished inteUect, and plays with 
 a ^aceful mdifference romid the ingenious theories of learning 
 and philosophy. Nevertheless, it is in the highest degree un- 
 desirable, that the popular religion should be left to the direc- 
 tion of Ignorant and vulgar minds. The mental food which 
 has been prepared by the highest intelligence of the time, will 
 ever be found the most palatable and the most nutritious for 
 the masses. Ejefined and elevated influences, when mingled 
 with Christian simplicity and real benevolence, are the most 
 certain of a cordial welcome and a beneficial effect, even with 
 those who are themselves simple and uncultivated. 
 
 _ There must be something fondamentally wrong in the reli- 
 gious organization of society, when it is the fashion for the 
 genteel and the educated to throng to places of public wor- 
 ship, while vast multitudes of the ignorant wander abroad, 
 reckless and unreclaimed, without an instructor or a guide. 
 This is in strange contrast to the merciful doctrine which the 
 Gospel originally taught. We think of the Church of Christ 
 as the natural shelter and refuge of the poor. The great work 
 which its ministers have now to accomplish, the main direc- 
 tion which religious institutions must hereafter take, — is the 
 adaptation of Christian principles and influences to the want 
 and capacity of those vast industrious classes who are daily 
 growing in strength and intelligence, and to whose future hap- 
 piness and healthful progress it is indispensable, that their 
 whole moral being should be brought under the control of a 
 clear, firm, rational faith in Christ and God. Instead of being 
 mocked with a technical phraseology which neither satisfies 
 the understanding nor reaches the heart, the useful results 
 of theological research should be popularized, made level to 
 their comprehension, and blended with practical applications 
 to their daily life. The grand poetry of the Bible should be 
 brought home to their feelings, and rendered additionally im- 
 pressive by the blended recommendations of solemn music 
 and holy song. The true theory of their present existence 
 should be clearly laid open before them, that they may under- 
 stand its duties, and feel its worth, and perceive its connection 
 in the great order of Providence, both with what has preceded 
 them in the history of this world, and with the nobler futurity 
 which awaits them after death. That Church alone is secure, 
 
324 CONCLUSION. 
 
 and will yield good fruit, which has its roots deep and wide 
 the attachment and veneration of a virtuous and instruc 
 people. Only such a Church fulfils the end of its instituti 
 Every other praise is equivocal. Learning, refinement, in1 
 ligence, enlightened views, and a liberal spirit, however va 
 able ia themselves, exist to little purpose, if they do not spr( 
 beyond the narrow circle in which they first arose, and fi 
 over iuto the world with a quickening influence, to enno 
 and purify and bless the whole family of man. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Acontius, his anticipation of Latihi- 
 dinarianism, 205. 
 
 Adam Martindale's autobiography, 
 quoted in proof of prevalent Lati- 
 tudinarianism, 218, note. 
 
 Albigenses, 3. 
 
 Anabaptists, 125. 
 
 Andrews, Dr. Lancelot, cultivator of 
 Greek theology, 68. 
 
 Anglicanism, spirit of, 58-9 ; periods 
 of development of, 61 ; principles 
 of, 172-77 ; contrasted with Puri- 
 tanism, 183. 
 
 Antonio de Dominis, 68, note. 
 
 Armiuianism, rise of, in the Church, 
 67 ; sign of prelatical tendencies, 
 112. 
 
 Articles, forty-two, 54 ; thirty-nine, 
 54 and 55 ; twentieth article, 55, 
 note ; statute of 1571 confirming, 
 57 ; petition for release from sub- 
 scription to, 85. 
 
 Baptists, origin and principles of, 
 159 ; Burnet's testimony to them, 
 160 ; their eminent men, 161 ; 
 their confessions of faith, 161. 
 
 Barclay, account of bis Apology, 163. 
 
 Barrowe, 118. 
 
 Bates, Wm., bis character, 152; 
 Pepys's admiration of his preach- 
 ing, 152, note. 
 
 Baxter, bis character and influence, 
 147-51, with notes ; comparison 
 of, with Owen, 156-58, 215, note; 
 bis prmtn/pi/ix^ cognosceridif 215. 
 
 Beoket, 5. 
 
 Bentley, Dr. Richard, his Pbileleu- 
 therus Lipsiensis in reply to Col- 
 lins, 272. 
 
 Berkeley, bishop, his character and 
 principles, 80 and note. 
 
 Biddle, John, bis peculiar doctrmes, 
 222 ; contrast with Ermin, 224. 
 
 Bloimt, Charles, account of his 
 
 writings, 268. 
 BoKngbroke, Lord, partly educated 
 
 among the Dissenters, 250; his 
 
 character, account .of his writings 
 
 and opinions, 276-78. 
 Book of Sports, 113, note. 
 Bradshaw's Engbsb Puritanism, 119. 
 BramhaU, archbishop, bis views of 
 
 the Church, 71. 
 Brownists, 118. 
 Burnet, bishop, his character, 77 ; 
 
 examination of bis charge against 
 
 the Nonconformists, of being 
 
 bribed to silence on the subject of 
 
 Popery, 150, note. 
 Butler, bishop, educated among the 
 
 Dissenters, 81. 
 
 Calamy, Dr. Edmund, bis reasons 
 for Nonconformity, 247. 
 
 Calvinism, predominant in the 
 church under Elizabeth, 63 ; later, 
 the sign of Puritanism, 112. 
 
 Canons and Convocation, 52-3. 
 
 Cappe, Newoome, his conception of 
 Christianity, 299. 
 
 Cartwright, his controversy with 
 Whitgift, 105 ; his high church 
 principles, 106 ; more moderate 
 in iis latter years, 109. 
 
 Cathari, 3. 
 
 Channing, Dr., his character and the 
 influence of his writings, 303-4 ; 
 contrasted with Priestley, 305; 
 bis treatment of the Scriptures, 
 306; medium of transition to 
 G-erman thought, 306. 
 
 Charior, Dr. Benjamin, first intro- 
 ducer of Anglo-CathoUoism, 65. 
 
 ChiUingworth,, his Socinianism, in- 
 ferential and constructive, 205 ; his 
 skill in argmnent, 205. 
 
 Christian Man, Institution of, 33; 
 
336 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Necessary Doctrine and Erudition 
 of, 34. 
 
 Chubb, Ms character and ■writings, 
 276. 
 
 Chui'ch, headship of, transferred to 
 the Crown, 14 ; disciphne of, 51 ; 
 subjection of, to the State, 53 ; 
 three distinct elements in, 87. 
 
 Churches, foreign, in London under 
 Edward VI., 44. 
 
 Communion Service, Mr. HaUam's 
 judgment on, 45 ; influence of 
 Bucer on, 46. 
 
 Ciyihans, alUanee of, vrith high church 
 doctrines, 66 ; jealousy between, 
 and common lawyers, 66, note. 
 
 Oranmer, his first advice to Henry, 
 31, note ; refusal to vote for the 
 Six Articles, 33. 
 
 CoUius, Anthony, a friend and dis- 
 ciple of Locke, 271 ; his vratiligs 
 and opinions, 272. 
 
 Confessional by archdeacon Black- 
 bume, 85. 
 
 Conforming clergy, contempt for, 
 among the aristocracy of the 17th 
 century, 115. 
 
 Cowley's Philosophical College, 217. 
 
 Cromwell, ecclesiastical vicegerent 
 of Henry VIII., 32. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, an embodiment 
 of Puritanism, 139 ; his compre- 
 hensive toleration, 141 ; his pro- 
 jected college at Durham, 188, 
 note; general encouragement of 
 learning, 188. 
 
 Cudworth, Kalph, his view of Chris- 
 tian Eaith, 211. 
 
 Deists, Lord Barrington's judgment 
 of them, 279; their affinity of 
 thought vrith .rationahst divines, 
 280 ; their influence on the Con- 
 tinent, 280 ; unjust treatment of 
 them, 282. 
 
 Deism, its inherent deficiencies, 283 ; 
 neglects the need of a Christ, 285. 
 
 Directory of Worship, 132. 
 
 Dissenting Academies resorted to by 
 men of rank, 250 ; their character 
 and system of studies, 251-4. 
 
 Dissenting, Brethi-en, Apologetical 
 Narration of, 122-3, note ; Meet- 
 ing-houses, their originai type, 
 169. 
 
 Doddridge, his character and wii 
 
 social influence, 264-66. 
 Donatists, 3, with note. 
 Dort, Synod of, 67. 
 
 Eighteenth Century, character ( 
 
 82 ; influence on religion and tl 
 
 Church, 83. 
 Ehzabeth, freedom of religion 
 
 thought at the Court of, 198. 
 Engagement under the Commo: 
 
 wealth, 138. 
 Episcopacy, attachment of the Loi 
 
 Parhament to a mitigated, 12 
 
 vrith note. 
 Erastianism, origin of the name, 1 
 
 note ; prevalent among the 1 
 
 shops under Elizabeth, 18, 62. 
 Establishment, principle of an, n 
 
 repudiated by the early Dissentei 
 
 260, note. 
 Evangehcal party of the Church 
 
 England, 84. 
 Evidences, Christian, different viei 
 
 of, 206-8, note. 
 
 Eairfax, Sir Thomas, his Indepe 
 
 dency, 21, note. 
 Falkland, Lord, his religious ei 
 
 nestness, 203 ; charged vrith Sd 
 
 nianism, 204, note. 
 Farmer, his view of miracles a; 
 
 demoniacal agency, 295. 
 Fifth Monarchy men, 125; thi 
 
 outbreak under Venner, 146. 
 Firmin, Thomas, his character a: 
 
 principles, 224-5 ; contrast wi 
 
 Biddle, 224. 
 Frankfort, Troubles of, 95, note. 
 French literature, influence of, 
 
 Hume and Gibbon, 279. 
 
 Gale, Dr. John, his learning a 
 
 numerous auditory, 255. 
 GlanvUle, his latitudinarian spi 
 
 and scientific zeal, 211-13 no 
 
 215. 
 Grindal, his Puritanic tendenei 
 
 celebrated by Spenser, 95, note 
 
 Hales, John, liis aversion to di 
 matism, 204 ; his view of 1 
 Clu-istian Evidences, 206. 
 
 Hariot, companion of Raleigh, ' 
 Deistical tendencies, 199, note. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 337 
 
 Harley, Earl of Oxford, partly edu- 
 cated among the Dissenters, 250. 
 
 Harrington, the doctrines of his 
 Oceana, 215-16. 
 
 Hartley, Ids influence on the reli- 
 gious opinions of his day, 288; 
 takes the place of Locke in an 
 earlier generation, 288. 
 
 Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, his 
 opinions, 200. 
 
 Hoadly, his character, 77, with note; 
 contrasted with Berkeley, 80, note. 
 
 Hobbes, in outward communion 
 with the Church of England, 200; 
 his theoretical approval of Inde- 
 pendency, 200, note. 
 
 High Church doctrines, rise of, 66 ; 
 their prevalence after the Kestora- 
 tion, 71 ; supported by Clarendon, 
 71. 
 
 High Commission, Court of, insti- 
 tuted by Elizabeth, connecting 
 link of Church and State, 17. 
 
 HomiUes, twelve, pubhshed by Crau- 
 mer and Eidley, 40; Second 
 Book of, 56. 
 
 Hooker's Ecclesiastical PoHty, 63 ; 
 Hooker and Travers contrasted, 
 107, note. 
 
 Howe, his character, 152-154; in-^ 
 terview with Bichard Cromwell 
 in his last illness, 154 ; his anti- 
 cipation of fiiture union among 
 Christians, 319. 
 
 Huntingdon, Countess of, 84, 85. 
 
 Independency, earliest professors of, 
 put to death, 119 ; power and or- 
 ganization of modem, 313. 
 
 Independents, their conformity to 
 the usages of the world, 187, with 
 note. 
 
 Irreligion, prevalence of, in the mid- 
 dle of the eighteenth century, 260. 
 
 Jacob, pastor of the first Indepen- 
 dent Church in England, 120. 
 
 Jacobitism, its prevalence among 
 gome of the more extreme Dis- 
 senters, 168, with note. 
 
 Jewel's Apology for the Church of 
 England, 86. 
 
 Kant, influence of his philosophy on 
 theology, 307. 
 
 KettleweU, 79, note. 
 Keys, power of the, 124. 
 Kiffin, WiUiam, account of, 161. 
 
 Latitudinarianism, bishop Fowler's 
 account of, 212, note; its exten- 
 sive difiiision and significance in 
 the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, 217, note. 
 Latitudinarians, rise and principles 
 of, 73 ; eminent as preachers, 74 ; 
 estimate of their character, 209 ; 
 chief writers, 212, note ; their cul- 
 tivation of modem science, 213. 
 Laud, conference with Eisher, 67 ; 
 
 his Protestantism, 70. 
 Law, Dr. Edmund, his view of man's 
 
 natural mortality, 289, note. 
 Law, William, his character, 79 ; in- 
 fluence on Wesley and Venn, 83. 
 Lay impropriations, Society for the 
 
 purchase of, 113. 
 Lay preachers in Mary's reign, 97. 
 Lecturers, influence of, 114, note. 
 Lessing, his dislike of Christian i;a- 
 
 tionaiUsm, 308. 
 Liturgy, use of by Episcopalians, con- 
 nived ' at by Cromwell, 21 ; after 
 the Use of Sarum in Henry "VTII.'s 
 time, 36 ; three principal parts of, 
 42 ; successive revisions of, 49, 
 note ; character of, 50. 
 Lobb, the Jacobite Independent, 168. 
 Locke, John, intellectual symbol of 
 the Kevolution, 230 ; various in- 
 fluences in the formation of his 
 mind, 232-3 ; fundamental prin- 
 ciple of his philosophy, 234; 
 grounds of his beUef in Chris- 
 tianity, 236; his Discourse on 
 Toleration, 238-9; principles of 
 Scriptural interpretation, 241 ; at- 
 ta^jhment to Revelation, 242 ; sus- 
 pected of Socinianism, 243 ; in- 
 fluence of his Christian Rational- 
 ism, 244. 
 LoUardism, afiinity of, with Indepen- 
 dency, 90. 
 Lollards, origin of the name, 6 ; de- 
 terioration of their condition under 
 the house of Lancaster, 12 ; spared 
 during the wars of the Eoses, 13 ; 
 persecuted again under Henry 
 VII., 14. 
 Low Church principles, influence of, 
 
328 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 after the Bevolution, 75 ; promote 
 a plan of comprehension and re- 
 formation of the Liturgy, 75 ; cha- 
 racter of Low Chm-ch clergy, 76. 
 
 Martin Marprelate, tenets of, 19 ; 
 
 printing-press which circulated 
 
 them, discOTered and broken up 
 
 at Manchester, 19. 
 Mary, effect of her reign on Pro- 
 testantism, 60. 
 Mass, its relation to English Liturgy, 
 
 48 ; canon of, 48. 
 Methodism, rise of, 83 ; a compen- 
 sation of deficiencies in the Chm-ch 
 
 and the Dissenters, 266. 
 Middleton, Couyers, his mode of 
 
 dealing with the !Freethinkers, 
 
 279. 
 Millenary petition presented to 
 
 James I. by the Puritans, 111. 
 Milton, the growth of his religious 
 
 opinions, 127. 
 Ministers, ordination and induction 
 
 of, under the Commonwealth, 137 ; 
 
 under the Protectorate, 138, with 
 
 note. 
 More, Dr. Henry, character of his 
 
 writings, 211. 
 Morgan, the fundamental idea of his 
 
 "Moral Philosophei-," 275. 
 
 Newton, his humiUty and attach- 
 ment to B«velation, 242 ; a Uni- 
 tarian, 243. 
 
 Nonconformist, Churches, origin of, 
 147 ; Preadiers, their tictivity 
 during the plague and after the 
 fire of London, 168. 
 
 Nonconformity, local distribution of, 
 98, note; persecution of, in the 
 reigns of Charles and James the 
 Second, 165-6 ; account of Indul- 
 gences for, during the same period, 
 166, note. 
 
 Non-jurors, their character and prin- 
 ciples, 79. 
 
 Oath, ex officio, 68, note. 
 
 Owen, Dr. John, liis ohai-aoter and 
 princi^es, 154-6 ; compai'ison of, 
 with Baxter, 156-8 j his great 
 leaj-ning, 185, note ; his attention 
 to dress and manners, 187, note ; 
 his doctrine of the self-evidencing 
 
 light of Scripture, 206, note ; con- 
 firmed by that of Calvin, 208, 
 note ; his writings against Uni- 
 tarianism, 221 ; reply to Biddle's 
 Scripture Catechism, 223. 
 
 Paine, Thomas, Deistical argument 
 revived by him in a more popular 
 form, 283. 
 
 Parker, the primate, his learning, 
 inchned to High Church princi- 
 ples, 62 ; bishop of Oxford, rene- 
 gade from Independency, his sy- 
 cophancy, 72. 
 
 Parliament, its sympathies with Pu- 
 ritanism, 109. 
 
 Parhamentary leaders, opposed to 
 High Chm-ch principles, but not 
 hostile to Episcopacy, 116. 
 
 Penn, his character, 26, note. 
 
 Philosophical College, idea of, en- 
 tertained by Cowley, Harthb, and 
 Evelyn, 217, note. 
 
 Presbyterianism, Hberahzed by per- 
 secution, 24; not a proper Eng- 
 lish growth, 110 ; high, mitigated 
 after the time of Elizabeth, 117 ; 
 estabUshed in London and in Lan- 
 cashh-e, 137, note. 
 
 Presbyterians, their suspicions of 
 James II. 's Declaration for liberty 
 of conscience, 26 ; after the Ee- 
 volution, in usage Independents, 
 247 ; averse to subscription, 248 ; 
 influence of Locke's philosophy 
 on their theology, 249. 
 
 Presbytery, first English, at Wands- 
 worth, 1572, 102. 
 
 Priestley, Dr. Joseph, his adoption 
 of Hartley's philosophy, 289 ; liia 
 view of Christianity contrasted with 
 Locke's, 291 ; hia estimate of na- 
 tural religion, 293 and note ; his 
 complaint of the prevalence of 
 unbelief, 295; carried Scriptural 
 Srationalism to the farthest point, 
 297 ; his character, 298 and note. 
 
 Prophesyings, 100. 
 
 Puritan, ministers practise exorcism, 
 111 ; then- practical and exposi- 
 tory works, 186, note ; gentlemen, 
 188. 
 
 Puritanism, its predominance in the 
 north of England, 7 ; its conflict 
 with the hierarchy still in pro- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 329 
 
 gress, 28; fandamental idea of, 
 88 ; its spirit embodied in Crom- 
 well, 140; its essential principles 
 in contrast with Anglicanism, 
 177—84 ; its influence on literature, 
 189-91. 
 Puritans, doctrinal, 68 ; their ex- 
 tinction, 71 ; conformable and 
 nonconforming, 101 ; their loTe 
 of fasts, and the length of their 
 pubKo services, 182, note. 
 
 Quakers, 125-6 ; persecution of them 
 by Owen at Oxford, 140, with 
 note; their system attracts per- 
 sons of high mental refinement, 
 162 ; scientifically expounded by 
 Barclay, 163 ; its leading prin- 
 ciples, 164 ; charged with Popish 
 tendencies, 164; their principal 
 writers, 165, note; diflnision of 
 their principles in the middle of 
 the serenteenth century, 217. 
 
 Baleigh, Sir Walter, his reKgious 
 sentiments, their affinity with 
 those of Shakspeare, 199, note. 
 
 Eationalism, after the Eevolution, 
 its character and deficiencies, 258; 
 definition of, 290, note. 
 
 Eeformation, reaction against the 
 doctrines of the, in Arminianism 
 and Socinianism, 202. 
 
 Religion, influence of economic and 
 social theories on, 302. 
 
 EeHgious hfe, its three elements, 318. 
 
 Eehgious parties in England, his- 
 tory of, divisible into three pe- 
 riods, 6. 
 
 Eevolution, moderation in and out 
 of the Church after the, 245. 
 
 Eobiason, the father of Indepen- 
 dency, 120 and note ; his farewell 
 address to the pilgrims, 121, note. 
 
 EomiUy, Sir Samuel, prayer foimd 
 among the papers of, 302, note. 
 
 Savoy, Confession, 142-3, with note. 
 
 Scriptures, account of early trans- 
 lations of, 37, note ; LoUard zeal 
 for reading the, 97. 
 
 Seeker, archbishop, brought up 
 among the Dissenters, 81 and 
 note. 
 
 Sectaries, free notions prevalent 
 
 among the, under the Common- 
 wealth, 194, note. 
 
 Selden, a Christian, 199. 
 
 Service Book, first, 43 ; second, 45 ; 
 second restored on accession of 
 Elizabeth, 48. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, a pupil of Loete, 
 269 ; dissents from Locke's doc- 
 trine of innate ideas, 270 ; his feel- 
 ings towards Christianity, 271. 
 
 Schleiermacher, his combination of 
 rehgious and philosophical princi- 
 ples, 310. 
 
 Slave trade, union of aU reUgious 
 parties against the, 301. 
 
 Solemn League and Covenant, ana- 
 lysis of, 129, note. 
 
 Spinoza, extensive influence of his 
 system on German theology, 309. 
 
 StiUingfleet, his early liberality, 72 ; 
 change of views after the Eestorar 
 ration, 72. 
 
 Strauss, elements involved in his 
 Life of Jesus, 311. 
 
 Taylor, Dr. John, impugns the or- 
 thodox system, 286 ; Ins principal 
 writings and high reputation, 286, 
 note; Wesley's respect for him, 
 and opposition to his doctrines, 
 287, note. 
 
 Theology, character of Greek, 68-9 ; 
 its relation to rehgion, 322. 
 
 TiBotson, his relation to the Latitu- 
 dinarians, 212. 
 
 Tindal, his Christianity as old as the 
 Creation, 274. 
 
 Toland, his character and , writings, 
 269 ; disputes with Beausobre at 
 Berlin, 280. 
 
 Toleration, opposition of the Pres- 
 byterians to, 136, note. 
 
 Toleration, Act, 27 ; Acts of Parlia- 
 ment developing the principle of, 
 170, note. 
 
 Traetarianism, origin and principle 
 of, 86. 
 
 Tradition, its value in the religious 
 life, 316. 
 
 Travers, his Directory of Church 
 Government, 102 ; analysis of it, 
 103-4. 
 
 Treaty of Westphalia, 4. 
 
 Trinity, controversy of South and 
 Sherlock respecting the, 227-8. 
 
330 
 
 Triers under Cromwell, 138. 
 
 Unitarians, Milton and Penn to be 
 classed with, 225-6. 
 
 Unitarianism, early, connected with 
 Anabaptisna, 219 ; its first martyrs, 
 219 ; its extensire diffusion under 
 the Protectorate and preriously, 
 220 ; English, distinguished from 
 Polish Socinianism, 228 ; older 
 and newer school of, 312. 
 
 Venn, founder of ETangelical party, 
 83-5. 
 
 Voluntary principle, estimate of the, 
 314. 
 
 Watts, his early orthodoxy, 255 ; 
 Unitarian tendeneies of bis latter 
 years, 255, note ; his cathohc spi- 
 rit, 256 ; his protest against the 
 nationalism of his day, 262 ; com- 
 pared with Cudworth, 262, note. 
 
 Waldenses, 3. 
 
 Warburton, his theory of the alli- 
 ance of Church and State, 82 and 
 note. 
 
 Westminster, Asseiubly, description 
 
 of, 130; incompatibility of its 
 objects, 132 ; Confession, 133. 
 
 Whiston, his honesty, 78 and note. 
 
 Wilson, bishop, his charaeter, 79. 
 
 Wightman, Edward, connected with 
 the early Baptists, 159. 
 
 Witchcraft, 111, note. 
 
 Witchfinder-general, 111, note. 
 
 Woolston, his attack on the evidence 
 for the resurrection, 273 ; fined 
 and imprisoned, 273 ; persecution 
 of him condemned by Lardner, 
 274. 
 
 Wycliffe, Puritanism begins with 
 him, 5 ; his mind formed by the 
 writings of Augustine, 7 ; his zeal 
 against the preaching &iars, 8; 
 patronized by John of Graunt and 
 the Queen of Richard II., 8 ; an- 
 ticipates the principles of the 
 Quakers, 9; circulates transla- 
 tions of the Scriptures, 9 ; called 
 the Grospel Doctor, 9 ; supposed 
 friendship with Chaucer, 10; hia 
 peculiar tenets, 10, note ; wide 
 diffusion of them, 11 ; his gloomy 
 spirit, 93. 
 
 JOHN EDWABD TATLOn, PRINTEE, 
 LITTLE QUEEN STEBET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.