Sketch of the General History of Nonconformity

NoNOONFORMiTT, in relation to existing and prevailing systems of religious doctrine or polity, is no new thii, and should not be considered as pertaining exclusively to this age or to this country. It must be judged of, as regards its moral character, by the grounds on which it rests, and the spirit by which it is actuated. Separation from a system of error, originating in conscience, maintained in a spirit of charity, and avowed with the meekness of wisdom, is not only defensible, but praiseworthy and is indeed demanded by God as an act of allegiance to Him, and to truth.

In almost every age, since the commencement of the Christian era, there have been nonconformists, of some class or other. Such, in fact, were the first Christians in relation to Judaism and Paganism; such were the Cathari or Puritans, as the word signifies, of the third century; such were Claude, of Turin, and his followers, who were the Protestants of the ninth centuiy amidst the valleys of Piedmont; such were the Albigenses and Waldenses, who held fast their separation from Rome amidst the fortresses of the Alps; such were Wickliffe and his followers; such were the Lollards and their massacred leader. Lord Cobham, in the time of Heniy V,; such were the followers of John Huss and Jerome of Prague; such, Luther and the Reformers. And what,

B indeed, are the Church of England, and all the other reformed churches, viewed in relation to the Church of Rome, to which they were all at one time subject, but nonconformists, — ^seceders, — separatists, — dissenters; a fact which ought to make all these communities very cautious how they bring the odious charge of schism against those who conscientiously and peaceably retire from their communion.

The separation of Dissenters from the Church of England is precisely on the same general ground as that taken by the Church of England in seceding from Rome — a conscientious regard to truth, or at any rate to what is apprehended to be such. The errors which in the two cEises cause the separation, it is admitted are vastly disproportionate as to magnitude and importance; but still the separation itself is in each case produced by a conviction that there is something erroneous, something contrary to the word of God, in the system from which the secession takes place. Nor is it enough to justify the secession in one case and to condemn it in the other, to alledge that the errors of the Church of Rome are of such magnitude as not only to warrant but to demand a separation, while those of the Church of England, even by the admission of dissenters, are of far less consequence, inasmuch as they do not extend to fundamental doctrines. It must be left to every one’s conscience to determine what measure of error in any given system is sufficient to demand his separation from it. No one man, nor any set of nien, can determine this matter for another.

When the Reformation was efiFected in this country by the passions and authority of Henhy VIII., which in fact was still a modified Papacy with a king instead of a pope at its head, the most stringent laws were passed to enforce conformity in doctrine, sacraments, and polity to the state-religion. There were some of his subjects who went feirther than Hemy in their views of reformation, and who wished to throw off a great deal more of Popery than he was prepared to relinquish. The publication of Tindal’s and Coverdales translation of the Scriptures, which took place at this time, greatly promoted the work of reformation, which, however, received a powerful check by the passing of the terrible and bloody act of “The Six Articles.” By this law the doctrines of the real presence, the communion in one kind, the perpetual obligation of vos of chastity, the utility of private masses, the oeUbacy of the clergy, and the necessity of auricular confession, were established by royal authority, and all who spoke against transubstantiation were to be burnt as heretics. No wonder that after the pubhcation of the Scriptures in the vernacular language, many refused to conform to Henryls decrees, and suffered martyrdom rather than profess such doctrines as these, among whom were Bilney, Byfield, Freeth, and Dr. Robert Barnes, all men of eminent piety and distinguished zeal in the cause of the Keformation. Here were the first nonconformists after the nation had thrown off the yoke of Rome, and here its proto-martyrs.

On the accession of Edward VI. the work of Reformation, under the advice and direction of Cranmer, and the Duke of Somerset, made rapid progress, and a mass of superstition was removed from the English Church, an event which was hailed with delight by the nonconformists, of whom there were then many. But even this measure of reform could not satisfy men who were anxious to bring all things into agreement with the New Testament, and who saw many things yet remaining

b2 which were in opposition to that standard, and savoured strongly of Popery.

In the year 1562, forty-two articles of religion were agreed upon by the Convocation, to which subscription was required of all persons who should officiate at the altars of the Establishment, or enjoy an ecclesiastical benefice. This was the commencement of subscription to articles of faith as the door of entrance to the pulpit. Against some of the things thus enjoyed by authority, many divines of distinguished learning and piety raised a protesting voice. They excepted, for instance, against the clerical vestments, especially the use of the surplice; kneeling at the Lord’s supper, as countenancing the Popish notion of adoring the host; the use of godfathers and the sponsorial service in baptism; the superstitious observance of Lent; the use of the sign of the cross in baptism; the oath of canonical obedience; pluralities and non-residence; with other matters of a similar nature. To these things they could not and did not conform; and therefore became, on such points, zealous nonconformists. The disputes about these subjects were introduced to the pulpit, and carried on with great warmth, one party insisting on the necessity of absolute and universal conformity, tJie other pleading for liberty and latitude in reference to these lesser matters.

Edward, though so young, was not inattentive to the controversy, and was set upon removing the ground of it, by putting aside many of the usages against which exception had been taken; and there is little doubt that Granmer, to a certain extent, coincided with his views. Peter Martyr and Martin Bucer, the two celebrated divines brought over by Edward &om the Continent to carry on the work of the Reformation. by acting as Professors of Divinity in the Universities, were both of them, in some things, nonconformists. “When I wsa at Oxford,” said Martyr, “I could never use those white garments in the choir, and I am satisfied with what I did.” He called them relics of Popery. Nor could Bucer ever he prevailed upon to use the surplice; and when asked why he did not wear the square cap, replied, “Because my head is not square.” Hooper, appointed to the see of Gloucester, and afterwards burnt there in the reign of Mary, refused for a long time to submit to consecration, because he would not wear the prelatical vestments required by law. Latimer, Coverdale, Rowland Taylor, John Rogers, John Bradford, who subsequently were distinguished soldiers in “the noble army of martyrs,” were all in these matters 2ea lous nonconformists. At length, so continued, and so strong, was the resistance to these impositions, that it was wisely thought expedient to leave it as a matter of indifference, to be settled by a man*s own taste and conscience.

As dissatisfaction with many things contained in the Book of Common Prayer continued to increase, and it was by many wholly or partially disused, alarm was taken by the heads of the Church, and a royal commission was issued to repress nonconformity by punishing those who practised it, and at the same time to visit with the penalties of the law the “anabaptists” as they were called. Persecution thus found its way into the kingdom under the reign of the pious and gentle Edward. On the trial of a member of an obscure sect of separatists in the county of Kent, their leader thus addressed Cran* mer in open court: “Well, reverend sir, pass what sentence you please upon us, but that you may not say you were not forewarned, I testify that your own turn will be next.” We do not believe that this was inspired prophecy; yet how soon was it fulfilled. A little whild after this, Edward died, the prisoners were liherated, and Cranmer himself brought to the stake. This venerable, but imperfect man, fell a victim to that severe intolerance which he himself had manifested, and having burnt others for heresy, expired in the flames for the same alledged offence.

The early death of that scarcely-full-blown rose of monarchy, Edwabd vz., is one of those deep mysteries of Providence which man’s finite reason attempts, in vain, to penetrate. What a work of reformation was stopped — what a reign of darkness, of terror, and ol blood was introduced by that event. What the Church of England would have become, and what would have been the necessity for nonconformity, had he lived, it is impossible to conjecture; though when we consider the strength of his intellect, the kindness of his heart, and the liberality of his sentiments, we are ready to imagine things would have been widely different from what they became under his lordly sister Elizabeth.

The reign of Maby was a dark night of Protestant history, illumined only by the lurid glare of the flames of Smithfield. There were a few nonconformists then, and it is a deep and indelible disgrace to the national clergy that there were no more. The few that existed were illustrious ones, and much have they added to the glory of our English martyrology. As Popeiy was now the state-religion, all the ministers and members of the Church of England who held fast their Protestanism, were thrown into the ranks of nonconformity. It is true they did not assume the name, and did not go the lengths of those who had hitherto been so called, but dissenters they were. Was nonconformity their shame and their infUuny? Do they deserve to be reproached

HISTOllT OF KONCONFOtlMmr. 7

tot their dissent? Are they to be accused of schism when they had cut themselves off from the state church? Is there an episcopalian who will enter into the prisons or approach the stake of these illustrious martyrs, and revile them as sectarians, and separatists? And yet they were such. In them, at any rate, nonconformity tras a crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty: and why should it be for a stigma upon those who, on the same general grounds, separate from the community of which these confessors and martyrs were ministers?

Elizabeth was an extraordinary woman, a second, but much improved, edition of her father; yet certainly another edition of Henry VIII., not of course in hiiS vices, but in many of his principles, and in some of his passions. No sooner was she quietly settled upon the throne than, forgetting the sufferings through which her fellow Protestants had passed in the reign of her sister, and the dangers she herself had escaped; untaught alike by observation, reflection, or experience; equally ungrateful to God and tyrannical to man; impelled by her own intolerant disposition, and urged forward by her no less intolerant ecclesiastical guides, she passed “The Act of Uniformity,” the design of which was to extinguish all liberty in matters of religious worship, and to make it as necessary, in order to officiate at the altar of the Church of England, to wear the surplice, as to be clad in the robe of righteousness and the garment of salvation; to trace the sign of the cross upon an infant’s brow in baptism, as to preach the doctrine of the cross in the great congregation; and to administer the elements of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper to the people on their knees, as to observe the sacred festival at all. It is not meant that the Act of Uniformity intentionally reduced all these matters to the same level, viewed by themselves, but that it made one as necessary as the other, in order to be a minister of the national Church. The controversy about all the disputed points was now to be settled by royal authority, and the penalties of law. Absolute, universal, unhesitating conformity was determined upon by the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity of Common Prayer, which was passed in the first year of her reign. Then in 1559 came forth her Injunctions, consisting of upweurds of fifty distinct articles on religious subjects, all intended to make the religion of the Church of England as palatable to the Roman Catholics as could be done without totally unprotestantising it. To carry out this purpose, a committee of divines was appointed to review King Edward’s liturgy, to whom it was given as her Majesty’s will and command that they should strike out, as far as possible, all passages ofifensive to the Pope, and make the people easy about the corporeal presence of Christ in the sacrament. The liturgy was therefore altered as much as it could be to secure the approbation of the Papists. “To this day,” says Macaulay,” the constitution, the doctrines, and the services of the Church, retain the visible marks of the compromise from which they sprang. She occupies a middle position between the churches of Home and Geneva. Her doctrinal confessions and discourses composed by Protestants, set forth principles of theology in which Calvin or Knox would have found scarcely a word to disapprove. Her prayers and thanksgivings, derived from the ancient liturgies, are very generally such as Bishop Fisher or Cardinal Pole must have heartily joined in them. A controversialist who puts an Arminian sense on her articles and homilies, will be pronounced by candid men to be as unreasonable as a controversialist who msTOBT OF NOMGONFOBMnr.

denies that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration can be discovered in her liturgy.”*

The multitude of the clergy who had become Pro* testants under Henry and Edward, and had relapsed to Popery under Mary, now turned round again to Protestantism imder Elizabeth. Still there were many among them who saw with concern the Popish aspect their church had assumed in its worship, and were truly anxious, and even zealous, to obtain a further reformation. Among these were some of the exiles — Fox the martyrologist, John Knox the Scottish reformer, and others who had fled to Geneva during the persecuting reign of Mary, but who had now returned to England, on her death and the accession of Elizabeth. In the year 1562 was held the famous convocation which set up “The Thirty-nine Articles” of faith which now constitute the theological basis of the Church of England. At this meeting Bishop Sandys put in a paper calling for further reformation of the church, especially touching the matters which during the reign of Edward had occasioned such division of opinion, and which were considered to savour so strongly of Popery. On this subject the convocation was much divided in opinion, but the party for retaining things as they were prevailed, and the bishops became resolute to maintain the authority of the canons, and to enforce conformity to their prescriptions in all things. Many of the clergy refused canonical obedience, and they who thus contended for greater purity in the worship of God were on this account called, in derision and sarcastic contempt, PuBiTANs. They had no reason to refuse the designation, nor to blush over it, any more than the followers of Jesus had when at Antioch they were first called

* Macanlay’B History of England, toI. i. p. 6’^,

10 SKEtCH OF T^ OENfiBAL

Christians. What was intended as their reproach, wad their brightest honour.

It must be here observed that the nonconformists, were not jet sepaifatists, and by some it will perhaps be contended that they ought either to hate come out of the church, or to have conformed to itB canons and the Act of Uniformity; While by others it will be thought that it was hardly worth while to make such comparatively trifling matters a subject of division and contention. In reply to the former, it must be said, that separate worship was not allowed by law; silence and the neglect to exercise their ministry, would have been incompatible with their ordination vows to labour for Christ; and the exercise of any secular calling was contrary to the laws of the church, and inconsistent with the indelibility of their clerical character. So that they were shut up to the necessity of being nonconformists, and of remaining in the church. As to the comparative unimportance of the matters with which they could not comply, this must depend upon the view that was taken of them by the persons who refused compliance, and the manner in which conformity affected their conscience. If they were matters of indifference in the view of those who imposed them, then why enforce them? Why break the unity of spirit, by an unimportant uniformity of ritual? Moreover, we see even by modern feeling and conduct, that these matters are not so indifferent as many seem to represent. What a stir and ferment are excited in many parts of the coimtry in this day of Puseyite zeal? What commotions have been excited in our day by the wearing of this very surplice in the pulpit? Whole congregations, which could endure the linen in the desk, have been disturbed and divided when” the white-robed priest’’ has appeared in the pulpit. At this

HtStOfiT OF NONCOKFOAMITT. 11

very tinie appeals are going on irom a hole district to the Primate and the Queeti, against the religious fop* peries of certain clergytnen of the Ohurch of England, tnth a trelate at their head. Now, what has roused this spirit of opposition, and given importance to toBX” ters seemingly so unimportant? There is not in the mere garment itself any thing to call forth these expressions of impassioned zeal, for surely they who can tolerate it in the desk might he supposed to be able to endure it in the pulpit: there seems no more impropriety in wearing it in the latter than in the former. Nor is it merely that the surplice in the pulpit is an innovation upon usages long established, for this could perhaps be borne with. But this revived custom is the symbol of sentiment, the badge of a party, and part and parcel of a system of opinions. It is a thing indifferent in itself, but which is connected with, and introduces, things absolutely bad, or, it inevitably leads to them. It is a leaning towards Home, and therefore, although at all times such things would be considered objectionable, yet at this time they are doubly so, from the zeal and success of the Church of Rome, with whose spirit they so entirely sympathise, and to whose communion they so insensibly yet so directly lead. How easy is it to learn from hence, the danger which must have been apprehended by the Puritans from all these Popish practices, when the nation had been but recently recovered from the dominion of Home, and when there was so strong a party in it, ever ready to return to the fellowship of that apostate church. It requires no great sagacity to perceive that many things derive importance from existing circumstances, and that what may be harmless’ and innocuous, and therefore indifferent, at one time, may be replete with mischief, and therefore important, at another.

With these views the nonconformists in the church continued their resistance to the imposition of the en* actments, and of other matters; while the advocates for unbroken uniformity were no less zealous in their endeavours to enforce them. To aid the latter in this work of coercing the conscience, a tribunal unknown to the constitution, and contrary to its spirit, was erected, called “The High Court of Commission,” of which Mr. Macaulay gives the following account. “The tribunal afforded no protection to the subject against the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. [Charles I.] The judges of the common law holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were less ready and efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of courts, the memory of which, after the lapse of two centuries, is still held in just abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these courts in power and in infamy, were the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission, the former a political, the latter a religious inquisition. Neither of them was a part of the old constitution of England. The Star Chamber had been re-modelled, and the High Commission created by the Tudors.” The High Commission was set up by Elizabeth, and consisted of a tribunal composed of both clerical and lay members, and vested with extensive powers to take cognizance of heresy, and to summon, try, and punish heretics. Permitted to examine by interrogation, and to dispense with the law of evidence, it was emphatically what the historian just alluded to has called it, “The English Inquisition.”

The terrors of this infeunous outrage upon English liberty were all brought to bear upon the Purit&ns; and though they had friends in both houses of parliament, and 6Ten in her Majestys privy council, it was of no avail; vested with such powers, the bishops were too strong for the recusants, and trod them down with the iron heel of oppression. That the Puritans were not few or inconsiderahle may he learnt from the Heict that the principal persons for learning and piety in the university of Camhridge, not only opposed the severities now so generally practised against them, hut refused them- ‘wes to conform. The fellows and scholars of St. John’s College, to the number of nearly three hundred, threw away their surplices with one consent; and many in the other colleges did the same. But it was all in vain; one archhishop after another, ¥dth nearly the whole hench, determined to crush and extirpate the spirit of nonconformity. Clergymen were supended and deprived of their benefices; churches were shut up; the rites of worship were in many places discontinued, for want of ministers to conduct them. It is computed that a fourth part of the clergy were suspended as Puritans. Among the men thus silenced was the venerable Miles Coverdale, the translator and first printer of the Bible in the English language, who was driven from his flock and obliged to relinquish his benefice.

The Puritans finding at length that they could enjoy no services in the church which their consciences approved, determined to separate from it. This was considered by their persecutors to unite the crimes of schism against the church and rebellion against the state. Upon the discovery of one of these congregations, in the year 1567, in London, a fierce persecution commenced, and no less than fifty or sixty persons were imprisoned for the crime of separate worship. This called out the cele« brated Thomas Cartwright, of Cambridge, one of the most accomplished men and most elegant Latin scholars of his time, who, himseK a Puritan, became their apologist, and appealed to the parliament on their behalf, which produced a controversy between him and Dr. Whitgift, that exalted the advocate for conformity to the see of Canterbury, and drove the champion for nonconformity into exile.*

No relief could be obtained fix)m Parliament, and therefore conformity or persecution was left for the choice of the Puritans. Very many chose the latter, iid bitter was the cup they had to drink. Mr. Brook, in his history of the Puritans, has given us a list of several hundreds of these illustrious confessors, whose heroism, whose sufferings, and whose virtues reflect as much disgrace upon .their persecutors, as they do honour upon themselves. Multitudes were imprisoned, of whom many died in jail; some were beheaded; and some were burnt alive in Smithfleld.

Sometime about the middle of the reign of Elizabeth lived Robert Brown, a clergyman by education and office, and a kinsman to the great Lord Treasurer Burleigh. This man had come to the belief that in church government, neither episcopacy, nor presbyterianism, was the polity laid down in the New Testament, but independency, a system which makes each church complete in itself, and competent to the management of its own afilEdrs, without any controul whatever from without. He was a man of great ardour and zeal in the promulgation of his own opinions, for such they were, believing that he who knows truth should spread it. Being a preacher of ready, earnest, and impassioned utterance, he drew crowds to hear him first at Cambridge, and afterwards at Norwich. It was not likely

* A memoir of this distinguished Puritan was published two or three years ago by the late Bev. B. Brook.

such a zealot would escape the notice of the prelates. He became the object of a relentless persecution, but both his zeal and his sufferings made many converts. He endured persecution with the most dogged obstinacj, if not with the most exemplary patience, and even boasted that he had been committed to more than thirty prisons. At length he fled for safety to Middleburgh in Zealand, where he first instituted a church after his own model — then quarrelled with it — and then left it. Such is the versatiUty of man, that on his return to England he reconciled himself to the church he had so vehemently opposed, and by which he had been so virulently persecuted, and became again a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England. “He lived,” says Dr. Vaughan, from whom this account is taken, “to an extreme old age, but the last forty years of his life were the years of a sorry worldling, and his death is said to have been brought on by one of those fits of passion and self-will to which he was liable. The story of this unhappy man is instructive. He was one of a class — a zealot in religion without being religious. His hatred of some real or supposed Christian abuses, was presumed to be evidence of his own Christian character; but while doing so much to mend the reUgion of other men, it was ere long to be manifest that he had no religion of his own. Passionate opposition to ebbor IS NOT THE SUBEST WAY TO TRUTH. Piety is self-govcmmentin its highest form. It is the Christian profession which must regenerate Christian institutions.”

“Brown’s opinions ovithved his apostacy and his life, and were embraced by men whose character for piety was the opposite of his own, but who were naturally anxious not to be known by a name so dishonourable and so detestable. But their enemies were but too hAppj in such an opportunity of rendering them odious, and therefore they fixed the stigma upon them, and independency became identified with all that was extravagant, fickle, and base in the career of Robert Brown, an association as just as it would be to identify the Church of England with all that was licentious, tyrannical, and murderous in the character of its founder, the eighth Henry.”

At length Elizabeth departed to give an account of her administration to a higher tribunal. It has been said that, “as to her religion, she abjured nothing in Popeiy but submission to a higher authority than her own, and was no further a Protestant that was necessary to make herself a pope. She had images, a crucifix, and lighted candles in her own chapel; and when her chaplain preached against the sign of the cross, she called out to him to desist from that ungodly digression, and to go on with his text. As an enemy to preaching, she scarcely ever heard a sermon, and used to say, one or two preachers in a county were enough. The exercises which were most calculated to form a useful ministry she suppressed, and broke the heart of Grindall, the best primate that England has known. That such an idolater of her own prerogative should hate the Puritans was natural, for they were not the courtly men who could join the priests of the day to call her goddess. A life spent in defiance of the genuine spirit of religion, was closed without its consolations, while the gloom which hung over her latter days was aggravated by seeing her courtiers turn to worship James the rising sun.”*

There is enough, and in the estimation of some, more than enough of severe justice in these remarks, * Bogae and Bennetts History of Dissenters.

for whatever were the faults of Elizabeth, and they were neither few nor small, she was still the main prop and pillar of Protestantism, as viewed in its national form among the kingdoms of Europe. This was felt and acknowledged by the Puritans whom she persecuted, who, even in the depths of the prisons to which she had sent them, prayed, and with no simulated fervour, that she might be kept firom the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion might be put down under her feet, and that her arms might be victorious by sea and land. “One of the most stubborn of the stubborn sect,” [thus harshly does Macaulay speak of them,] immediately after one of his hands had been lopped off by the executioner, for an offence into which he had been hurried by his intemperate zeal, waved his hat with the hand which was still left him, and shouted “God save the Queen. “*^ The Puritan historian Neal, confirms this by his own testimony, for after censuring her cruelty to the sect to which he belonged, concludes thus, “However, notwithstanding all these blemishes, Queen Elizabeth stands upon record as a wise and politic princess for delivering her kingdom from the difficulties in which it was involved at her accession, for preserving the Protestant Reformation against the potent attempts of the Pope, the Emperor, and the King of Spain abroad, and the Queen of Scots and her Popish subjects at home. She was the glory of the se in which she lived, and will be the admiration of posterity.”

One thing, it is evident from these extracts, the Puritans had learned, and that is, the hardest of all the lessons of Christianity, and the one most rarely practised, the duty of returning good for evil, of blessing them that curse us, and praying for them who despite- * History of the Puritans, Part I. oapi viii, fally use us, even as our Lord has instaniotcid us to do. The m?u who, in the dark vaults to which their sovereign had committed them, for no crime but that which she herself had committed during the reign of her Popish sister, worshipping God according to the dictates of their conscience, could lift up to heaven their prayers for her protection — and of whom one was found who, when his hand was choked off by a royal edict for his zeal against the state-religion, waved his hat with the other, and invoked the blessing of heaven upon his persecutor, proved themselves worthy of better treatment from, their sovereign, than to be hunted down as heretics; and firom the historian who has alluded to their virtues, than to be stigmatised as a ‘* stubborn sect” The Puritans had their faults, but these have bfen exaggerated not only by their enemies, but even by others who were neither insensible to their virtues, ior backward in many things to admit their claims. Mr. Macaulay has not been wanting in eulogy, though it is by no means impassioned, on the better parts of their character, but he has not been sparing of the darker colours with which he has painted, and far too deeply shaded, their failings. Speaking of them in an after page of his history, he says, The persecution which they had undergone had been severe enough to irritate, but not severe enough to destroy. They had not been tamed into submission, but baited into savageness and stubbornness. After the fSashion of oppressed sects, they mistook their vindictive feelings for emotions of piety, encouraged in themselves by reading and meditation a disposition to brood over their wrongs, and when they had worked themselves up into hating their enemies, imagined they were only hating the enemies of heaven.’’ But is this the way to speak of men who were worn out with persecation and into whose soul the iron had entered? Is it home out hj the testimony of the facts he had already recorded? Does this comport with the prayers going up from the prisons of the incarcerated confessors for their persecutors? and with the “God save the Queen” from the man who had lost his hand? They had no douht a measure of fianaticism; they did certainly in some cases study the pagjrn of the Old Testament, and draw inferences from the theocracy as others have done since, which that unique polity was never intended to furnish, and when in adversity they forgot to profit by their own experience — but still they never in the days of their suffering imitated the savageness of wild beasts baited into ferocity by the attacks of their persecutors.

James I. had been educated in Presbyterian principles, and the English prelates dreaded in him what they called “the Scotch mist:” yet the nonconformists cherished the hope that from that mist would emeige the sun of their liberties, or distil the refreshing rain of religious principles. The sequel of this dark and dreary chapter of our history dissipated the fears of the one, and equally disappointed the hopes of the other. James had all the bigotry of Elizabeth, without her genius to throw a lurid glare on the dark thunder cloud. Before he left Scotland, he said to the Presbyterians of tlmt country, “I thank God that I am king of the sincerest kirk in the world; sincerer than the kirk of England, whose service is an ill-said mass; it wants nothing of the mass but its lifting,” meaning the elevation of the host. “Put not your confidence in princes,” said the Psalmist; and alas! that the chronicles of royally should fiunish such ground for the caution. At the very time the hypocrite was uttering these words, he was carrying on a correspondence with the English nobles and bishops, and promising to continue the liturgy, which he derided as “an ill-said mass.” From such a monarch and head of the English church, the Puritans when they knew, and they very soon did know, his hypocrisy, could expect but little in the way of relief to their consciences or mitigation of their suiSerings. They were not slow to appeal to his wisdom and his clemency, of neither of which could he boast a very large share. To save appearances, he appointed a conference at Hampton Court between the two parties of the High Church and the Puritans, which consisted of eight bishops and as many deans on the one side, and of four advocates for nonconformity on the other. These were to discuss the points of difference between the two, to see if any concessions could be made by either party. The only good, and it is a mighty one, -which resulted from this conference was our present English version of the Scriptures; for when Dr. Beynolds, one of the Puritan divines, requested, in the name of his brethren, that this work might be undertaken, as the Bible then extant was a very imperfect translation, the King, in opposition to the opinion of the Bishop of London, approved of the proposal, and a committee of divines was appointed to undertake the momentous work. No fault whatever can be found with the instructions given to them for their undertaking, and indeed almost all the wisdom which James ever displayed centred in this afiEair. The translation, as a whole, is a glorious achievement, though it sufficiently evinces by some of its renderings that it was the work of episcopalians exclusively.

The condition of the Puritans gained little improvement during the reign of this royal pedant. Bancroft,

HISTOBT OF NONCONrOBHlTT. 21

Archbishop of Ganterbuiy, persecuted them with such merciless severity, that a contemporary writer informs us that in one year three hundred ministers were suspended, deprived, excommunicated, imprisoned, or forced to leave the country.

James followed Elizabeth to the bar of God, to account, as she had been compelled to do, for cruelties towards the servants of the Lord, and was succeeded by his unhappy son, Chables I. This ill-fated monarch inherited the combined errors and prejudices of the Tudors and of his father, the first of the Stuarts. He soon evinced that with far greater personal respectability than his father, and fieu: less of foolish pedantry, he had all his contracted views, arbitrary principles, and high church prepossessions. It was veiy early discovered, that the opponents of the state-worship had little to expect from one who, though not a Papist, liked a Papist far better than a Puritan. He was a zealous episcopalian in religion, and a despot in politics. With a conscience sensitive in little things, but obtuse on the great cardinal virtues of truth and justice, he was prepared to play the part of a persecutor towards those who differed from him either in civil or sacred matters. In Archbishop Laud, who was his evil genius, he found a man to foster his worst qualities as a king and head of the church. Eveiy thing now looked as if an attempt were to be made, if not to reunite the English Church to the Romish See, to bring it into as near a conformity to it as possible, in Arminian doctrine and Popish ritual. The Puritans beheld all this with alarm and dismay, and some few ventured to protest against it. Dr. Alexander Leighton, father of that Archbishop, who, in his commentary upon Peter, gave to the world the sweetest exposition ever written by an uninspired pen, for daring

cd to publish an appeal to parliament against prelacy was sentenced by the Star Chamber to a sentence so mild and equitable that, when it was pronounced, Laud pulled off his cap and gave God thanks. That we may justly appreciate his lordship’s devotion, he has recorded in his own diary the sentence which raised his gratitude to heaven. ‘’His ears were cut off, his nose slit, his hce branded mth burning irons; he was tied to a post, and whipped with a treble cord, of which every lash brought away his ffesh. He was kept near two hours in frost and snow. He was then imprisoned with greater severity for about eleven years, and when released by the parliament, he could neither hear, nor see, nor walk.”

It is no matter of surprise that in such circumstances our persecuted forefathers should call to recollection the words of their divine Lord, “when they persecute you in one city, flee ye to another;” and looking across the broad Atlantic, they determined to seek in its dreary wilds an asylum from the tyranny of Charles, the bigotiy of Laud, and the cruel oppression of the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission. Among others who determined to expatriate himself was Mr. Robinson; formerly a clergyman of the Church of England, but subsequently a Brownist preacher, and who so far modified the principles of the Brownists, as to bring then more into the form of modern congregatidnalism, and on that account is generally regarded as the father of the English Independents. This man with many of his flock determined in the first place to emigrate to Holland; but when about to sail finom Boston, in Lincolnshire, they were betrayed by the captain of the vessel, seized, and many of Uiem committed to prison. A second attempt was xoade, when a still more melancholy mcident occurred, for, daring the embaikation, when only a part of the men had been pnt on board, the captain, seeing an armed company approaching, weighed anchor in all haste, and sailed away to Holland, leaving Robinson and the rest of the crew to witness the outburst of agony ftota the wiyes and children whose husbands and fEidiers had been thus torn from them. In the next year, however, this devoted party and the rest of the company reached Holland, where the vessel which had IxHme their forerunners, who had been well nh wvedced on the coast of Norway, had arrived before them. Here they found a settlement at Leyden, and exhibited Independency in much of the simplicity of the primitive churdies. Btit the soil of Holland was not yet prepared for the seeds of this form of polity, and there its professors felt themselves ill at ease amidst a people who, though atone with them in theological doctrine, were diverse from them in ecclesiastical order. Added to this, a lingering patriotism for the country which was not worthy of them, and loyalty for a king whidi had insulted and (pressed them, still made them cling to their English birth and English relationships. Not wishing their children to become Presbyterians in religion, and Dutchmen in their nationality, they tamed their eyes to the western world, and determined to fix their residence in that desolate country, which its northern shores then were. After observing solemn days of humilition and prayer for divine guidance, it was determined that port of the church should go before their brethren into America, to prepare for the rest. And if in case the major part should choose to go over as the first section, then the pastor should go along with them, but if the major part stayed, he should remain with them. The majority determined to eonti-

/24 SKETCH OF THE OEKEBAL

noe where they were for the present. Eobinson, thereforO; of course, remained with them. The number that were to emigrate amounted to about a hundred and twenty. Two small vessels, the Speedwell and the Mayflower, were engaged to convey these pilgrim fietthers of the great western republic across the Atlantic.

The time of separation arrived. They were to sail from the neighbouring port of Deft Haven. They who were to remain accompanied the colonists to the scene of their embarkation. “The night before was one of little sleep, and was employed in friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of Christian love. The next day they went on board, when doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting: what sighs, and sobs, and prayers did sound among them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each others hearts; that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood spectators could not refrain from tears. Robinson fell upon his knees, the whole company around threw themselves into the same posture, and while eveiy cheek of man, and woman, and their little ones, was bedewed with tears, the man of God sent up his parting prayer for the much-needed blessing of heaven upon them.”

After various delays, and touching at different ports to repair the vessels, which were found to be in a very crazy state, and after a long, rough, and somewhat perilous voyage, the Speedwell and the Mayflower reached the coast of North Amierica, near Cape Cod. Their destination was the Hudson Biver, but weary of the voyage, and longiug to set their feet on dry land, they begged to go on shore, on reaching which, they fell upon their knees and poured out their hearts in prayer and praise to God. “It is not too much to say,”

HISTOBT OF NONCONrORMITT. 25

writes Dr. Yaughan, “that in that first prayer from the soil of the new worlds ascending from so feeble a brotherhood, amidst a wilderness so desolate, there wer« the seeds of a new ciyilization for mankind, the elements of freedom for all nations, and the power which in its turn shall regenerate all the nations of the earth.”

The vessels now sailed southward, and explored the coast, when, after many dangers from the intense cold of that northern region in mid-winter; from breakers and the rocks, and from the attacks of Indians, they landed on a point to which they gave the name of New Plymouth, in grateful memory of the hospitality shewn them in the last English port from which they sailed. Here they resolved to fix their permanent abode: and here they laid the comer stone of that vast nation which is destined to bear so large a share in the future destinies of our world. A «new town of course long since sprang up on the spot trodden by the feet of these pilgrims of persecution; the rock on which they landed is surrounded with an appropriate enclosure; and their descendants still commemorate, on the eleventh of December, the arrival of men in whom they justly boast, and of whom any country might be proud.

They had no sooner landed and provided the first and most necessary means of social and civilized life, than they adopted the polity both in church and state which had been determined upon even before they embarked. Independency was the form of their ecclesiastical goviBmment, and democracy that of their civil statutes. Robinson, with the other part of the church, kept up a constant correspondence with their brethren, and intended speedily to follow them; but various impediments were thrown in their way by the company of merchant adventurers at Plymouth in the old world.

and he died before his desire could be accomplished. After his decease, his family and the rest of the church joined their brethren at New Plymouth.*

This is perhaps a long digression from the course of the nonconformist history, or rather a considerable expansion of one of its incidents: but who would wish it shorter, when to its own inherent interest is added the consideration that it contains the origin of a nation, evidently destined not only to be the largest on the face of the earth, but to be itself an experiment for the instruction of all others in government, both civil and ecclesiastical.

In twelve years of Laud’s administration, four thousand emigrants became planters in various places of America, chiefly in the more southerly parts, which had been already colonized, and Neal affirms that he possessed a list of seventy-sevi divines, ordained in the Church of England, who became pastors of emigrant churches in America before the year 1 640. Persecution, while it curses the country in inch it rages, by draining its wealth, and driving its citizens to other lands, has been often overruled by Providence to be a blessing to the world. “Those that were scattered abroad by the persecution that arose about Stephen, went everywhere preaching the word.” The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which drove out the Huguenots from France, impoverished that country to enrich many others.

With a singular species of cruelty. Laud and his

* The reader is directed to read the first article in the first number of The British Quarterly Review,” entitled “The Pilgrim Fathers,” written by Dr. Yaughan, and since published with his other papers prepared for that periodical. To that beautiful essay I am indebted for the facts I have narrated of the history of Robinson and his choroh.

fuirty, while they harrassed the Pimtans to death at home, would not have suffered them, if they could have prevented it, from seeking safety abroad; as if they would detain them purposely for the mahgnant gratification of tormenting them. It is affirmed that Hampden and Oliver Cromwell intended to expatriate themselves, and were prevented by the interposition of the reigning powers: if so, the King and the Archbishop had good reason to repent of their wickedness in keeping the Puritans within the reach of their cruelty.

Some opinion of the vigilance of this infamous primate in persecuting the objects of his hatred, and in eHher driving them out of the country, or into the greateist retirement in it, may be formed from the fact that the “Report of the state of the province of Canterbury, as delivered by him to his master, at the close of the year 1639, represents the Church of England in the highest and most palmy state. There was scarcely the least appearance of dissent. Most of the Bishops stated that all was well among their flocks. Seven or eight persons in the diocese of Peterborough had seemed refractory to the church, but had made ample submission. In Norfolk and Suffolk, all whom there had been reason to suspect, had made profession of conformity, and appeared to observe it strictly. It is confessed there was some little difficulty in bringing some of the vulgar in Suffiplk to take the sacrament at the rails of the church. This was the only open instance of nonconformity which the vigilant eye of Laud could find in all the dioceses of his twenty-one suffragans, on the very eve of a revolution, in which primate and church, and monarch and monarchy, were to perish together.”*

This report, if correctly made, of which there is some Edinburgh Review, No. 100, p. 652.

reason to doubt, viewed in connexion with the revolution that followed, proves either that there must have been a widely diffused, though suppressed, Puritanism, or that it spread most rapidly when the pressure was taken off by the Long Parliament. Both are true. And the report of Laud proves, in addition, and it is one of the most striking evidences of this on record, that the stillness produced by oppression is often a most deceptive auguiy, being only the unruffled surface of the accumulating lake, just before it bursts the dam and rushes forward with the irresistible force of a torrent, and the overwhelming power of an inundation.

In the contest between Charles and his parliament, Puritanism, which had been gaining ground in the legislature, triumphed. The Long Parliament was at one time a collection of patriots, whose eulogium is thus pronounced by the eloquent historian so frequently alluded to in this sketch, — “For the authority of law, for the security of property, for the peace of our streets, for the happiness of our homes, our gratitude is due, under Him who raises and pulls down empires at his pleasure, to the Long Parliament, to the Convention, and to William of Orange.” This is true: but it is not the whole truth. There were spots, and broad ones too, upon the disc of its glory. It may not be irrelevant here to remark that, though the parliament contained many Pruitans, it had no Separatists. They were all, as admitted by Clarendon, up to that time, members of the Church of England, and nearly all advocates of Episcopacy. Such was the constitution of the very house which, after passing various acts, even in the time of Charles, though much against his inclination, for liberty of conscience, and for destroying the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission, proceeded to

HISTOBT or NONGOKFOBMITT. 29

oveiihrow the Episcopacy altogether, and to set aside the Book of Common Prayer. This august body, in the year 1643, appointed an assembly to take into consideration the state of religion, and to devise and recommend to parliament such measures as might be, in their opinion, conformable to the Word of God. This convocation held its sittings in Henry VII.’s Chapel at Westminster, and on that account was called “The Westminster Assembly:” it was composed of one hundred and twenty divines, and thirty lay assessors. By this time, partly through the influence of Scotland, and partly through that of Geneva, in both of which places Presbyterianism was the established religion, this form of polity had now become exceedingly prevalent among the theologians of England, and was favoured by the Parliament, perhaps in some degree on account of their partial dependence in the conflict with the King on the Scotch army. A few of the Episcopal clergy were nominated on this Assembly, but when Charles protested against it, they all withdrew. With the exception of six members, who were Independents, and on that account called “The dissenting brethren,” the assembly consisted wholly of Presbyterians, at least as regards the ministers of religion. The power of this body was not legislative, but simply advisory.

The Parliament had put aside Episcopacy, but was not prepared with any other system to set up in its place: and acted very wisely in abolishing all penal statutes of our religion and allowing every one to think and worship as he pleased. Well had it been for the honour of those who belonged to it had they persevered as they commenced, but falling under the influence of “The Westminster Assembly,” they were soon betrayed into acts of intolerance which haye left a stain upon their memory never to be efSaced. The divines of- the Assembly were eminently good men, and sound theologifms, and as such put forth some valuable confessions of fieuth, but they did not understand the sulyect of religious liberty. In common with many others, they were misled by drawing their arguments and precedents too much from the Old Testament instead of the New, and seeking for their models in the Jewish theocracy.

When penal statutes against heresy were abolished, and liberty of conscience, though with some restrictions, was granted, an inundation of sects rushed in to fill up the vacuum occasioned by the overthrow of the Establishment. Never did an age manifest a greater fecundity in the production of systems than this, which was just what was to be looked for; as liberty of opinion, like every other privilege, might, of course, be expected to be much abused or misdirected when first enjoyed. Some of the earliest efforts of an emancipated slave, when his fetters have just dropped from his limbs, might very probably be wild, freakish, and almost in appearance insane. It is one of the mischiefs of long-continued oppression that it not only makes a wise man mad, while under the yoke, but even when he has recently thrown it off. *This multiplication of creeds alarmed the Assembly of Divines, with whom it became now a question of grave and momentous consideration, what system was to be established upon the ruins of Episcopacy, and whether toleration should be extended to any who dissented from it In a convocation of Presbyterians, the former part of the subject was soon disposed of, and it was agreed that Presbyteiianism should be recommended as the state religion. It was not so easy to dispose of the second part of the question. It might have been e]qpected that the men who had drank

HmOBT OF NONCONFOBMITT. 31

SO deeply of the bitter cap of penecutioii, as many of these men had done, would have been backward themselves to mingle and administer the wormwood and the gall to others. It is said that emancipated slaves often make iyie most tyrannical masters. It was found too true in the present instance, in the spirit of the remark, if not to the full extent of the letter. A fine opportunity was now presented to the Assembly to manifest how well, in imitation of some we have already mentioned, they also had learnt, in the school of affliction, that hardest but loftiest lesson of Christ, to love our enemies; to bless them that curse us; and to pray for them that despitefully use us. Unhappily the opportunity was suffered to pass away unimproved, and instead of this, the Westminster Assembly took up, and used, the carnal weapons of persecution, which they had wrested from the hands of the Episcopalians.

The divine right of Presbyterianism was set up in the Assembly and contended for by the main body with a zeal not at all inferior to that which had been displayed for the divine right of Episcopacy. If this were a divine institution, it was by these casuists argued that it should admit of no infraction, and therefore toleration would be a sin against God. This brought on a struggle in the Assembly between the friends of Uberty and the advocates of intolerance, which was maintained for a considerable time with all the force of argument which the different parties could command, and all the vehemence of passion which both, but especially the Presbyterians, could feel.

In that Assembly, as we have said, were six Independents, these were Mr. Thomas Goodwin, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Phihp Nye, Mr. Jeremiah Burroughs, Mr. William Bridge, and Mr, Drury. By the declared opinions of the Presbyterians on toleration, these brethren felt the danger they were likely to be placed in by the bigotry of the Assembly, and pleaded nobly the cause of religious liberty.

Let it be distinctly borne in mind that this question, as carried on by the champions of liberty, was not the establishment of Presbyterianism or Independency, as has been too often affirmed, for the Independents conceded the subject of the establishment of the former, and only asked for toleration on behalf of those who conscientiously seceded from it. But their forcible arguments and eloquent appeals were in vain. No toleration could be granted, and absolute and universal conformity to their opinions was required by the sticklers for the divine right of Presbyterianism. The Parliament was disposed to more liberal opinions, and to grant a certain measure of toleration, but it was controuled by the influence of the Assembly. The whole country was in a flame about the subject, and one Edwards published a tirade against toleration, called “GangrsBua,” so full of fire and fury that it contained combustible matter enough to set the nation in flames. Toleration was reviled as the great Diana of the Independents. The opponents of liberty said, “If we tolerate one, we must tolerate all.” And why not? Little did it occur to these persecuting theologians that in less than twenty years from that time, all this artillery would be turned upon themselves; that they should be excluded the Establishment by a re-enactment of the Act of Uniformity; and that they should be reduced to the necessity of pleading for the indulgence which they now refused to their brethren.

The Long Parliament at length lent itself to the cruel and dirty work of persecution. They required all men to subsoribe to that renowned instrament, “The Solemn League and Covenant;” they interdicted, under heavy penalties, the use of the Book of Common Prayer, not only in churches, but in private familes. “It was a crime in a child to read by the bedpside of a sick parent one of those beautiful collects which had soothed the griefs of twenty generations of Christians.” Most of the old clergy were ejected from their benefices, and in some instances exposed to the outrages of a fanatical rabble. Severe punishments were denounced against such as should presume to blame the Calvinistic worship. Nor were they more tolerant of things than they were of opinions, for they waged war against matters of taste as well as religion. Churches and sepulchres were defaced; fine works of art and precious remains of antiquity were destroyed. Popular and polluting amusements, which should have been suppressed by the growing intelligence and virtue of the people, were put down by statute. All this — alas! for human consistency — was done by the very men who had delivered the nation from despotism; and it proves how greatness may be sometimes allied to littleness, and how a passion for liberty in one direction may be associated with a taste for persecution in another.

The bigotry and intolerance of the Assembly of Divines and their adherents, roused to indignation the mighty soul of that great man whom the pen of Macaulay thus beautifully describes: —” A mightier poet, tried at once by pain, danger, obloquy, and blindness, meditated, undisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged all around him, a song so sublime and so holy that it would not have misbecome the lips of those ethereal virtues whom he saw, with that inner eye which no calamity could darken, flinging down on the jasper pavement

3t SKETCH OF THE GENERAL

their crowns of amaranth and gold.” Milton stepped forth to wither with the sarcasm of his verse, and to ahash with the power of prose immortal as his poetry, the narrow and jealous spirit of the party predominant in the Assembly. In a work entitled “The Liberty of Unlicensed Printing,” written to defend the freedom of publications against the Assembly, who had seized the press and set up a system of licensing, ‘he pleaded in some of the noblest paragraphs in the English language for unrestricted toleration.’ The following is an attack upon the bigots, in verse:

“Because you have thrown off your prelate lord,
And with stiff vows renounc’d his liturgy,
To seize the widow’d whore plurality
From them whose sin ye envied, not ahhorr’d,
Dare ye for this abjure the civil sword

To force our consciences that Christ set free, And ride us with a classic hierarchy?

But we do hope to find out all your tricks,

Your plots and packing worse than those of Trent,

That so the parliament May with their wholesome and preventive shears Clip your phylacteries, though balk your ears.

And succour our just fears. When iliey shall read this clearly in your charge, New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large.”

One of those great minds, which appear at rare intervals of time, now rose upon the nation, and threw the light of his genius upon the troubled scenes of intestine commotion. At length, after ages of misrepresentation and misconception, the clouds of reproach are rolHng oflf from the true character of Oliver Cromwell, and by the defences of two such opposite men as Carlyle and D’Aubigne, aided by Macaulay, he begins to be understood. In common with those who acted with him, he committed the sin, and the fault, for it was

Milton’s Poems, p. 265.

HISTORY OF NONCONFORMllT. 35

both, of beheading Charles, a monarch, it is true, who, by his despotism, his perfidy, and his obstinate folly, exhausted the forbearance of his foes and disgusted the moral taste even of his friends. Whatever may be said in the way of palliation, in regard to the death of Charles, it cannot be defended. It is a question, however, whether Cromwell could have averted it, had he been so disposed. In his views of religious liberty, he surpassed his age. The power, and therefore the persecutions, of the Parliament, were now over, and Cromwell granted liberty of conscience to all but Papists and Unitarians. The clergy of the Anglican church were allowed to celebrate their worship in their own forms, on condition that they would abstain from preaching about politics; and even the Jews, whose public worship, ever since the thirteenth century, had been interdicted, were, in spite of the gloomy opposition of zealous traders, and fanatical theologians, permitted to build a synagogue in London. Just a little before the Protector’s death, the Independents petitioned his Highness for liberty to hold a synod, in order to agree upon, and publish to the world, a confession of their fedth. The very act of asking permission for such a meeting shews that even in the time of the Protectorate religious liberty had yet some heavy restrictions upon it, for who, when this is complete, would think it necessary to ask the civil magistrate for permission to assemble for such a business? The meet, ing accordingly was held at the Savoy, in the year 1658, and consisted of ministers and delegates of above one hundred churches. A declaration of principles was agreed upon, which was soon after published, and on account of the place where the meeting was held, was called “The Savoy Confession.”

It may be here proper to remark that the great quesd3 tion of modern times, the separation of religion altogether from the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate, and the support of it exclusively hj the voluntary offerings of its friends, bad scarcely been mooted, except in a few minds like those of Milton, and even in them rather as speculation than as a practicahility. The Indepen« dents came nearer to this than any other, but even they were not clear upon the subject. Dr. Owen, in his sermon entitled “Christs Kingdom and the Magistrates’ Power,” preached to the Parliament, October, 1659, has the following remarks: — “Some think that if you were settled, you ought not in any thing, as rulers of the nation, to put forth your power for the interest of Christ: the good Lord keep you from such an appre* hension. If it once comes to this that you should say you have nothing to do with religion as rulers of the nation, God will quickly manifest that he hath nothing to do with you as rulers of the nation.” He also uses the very allusion and illustration, the fallacy of which has been so often and so fully demonstrated in modern times, of the duty of the Parliament, as fathers, and masters of the nation, to take care for the religion of their great household. The Independents generally con** tended for an establishment, but an establishment which at the same time should allow of toleration, and also comprehension. Their theory was the protection and support of those who preached the gospel, whether belonging to Presbyterians or Independents; and many of both at that time possessed the benefices of the church, though the great bulk of the ministers were Presbyterians, The purely voluntary principle, as that to which religion is to be exclusively left, was almost unknown, and had scarcely become a matter even of speculation. It was the establishment of error only that was opposed; for

HTSTOBY OF NONCONFOBiaTT. 87

nearly all allowed of the establishment of truth. This is not unfrequently alledged against the modern dissenters, who are told, by an argumentum ad verecundiam that they go fieurther than their great ancestors, who only contended for reform, but not for an entire revolution. But the question is not what the nonconformists of ancient days believed and practised, but whether their fiEdth and practice were accordant with the New Testarment.

Mr. Macaulay gives us a very accurate and striking description of the religious and moral character of Cromwell’s army: — “That which chiefly distinguished it from other armies was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous royalists that, in that singular camp, no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that during the long dominion of the soldiers, the property of the peaceful citizen and the honour of woman were held sacred. If outrages were committed they were outrages of a very different kind of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant girl complained of the rough gallantry of the red coats. Not ao ounce of plate was taken fhpm the shops of the goldsmiths. But a Pelagian sermon or a window on which the Virgin and Child were painted, produced in the Puritan ranks an excitement which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to queU. One of Oliver s chief difficulties was to restrain his pikemen and dragoons from invading by main force the pulpits of ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not savoury: and too many of our cathedrals still bear the marks of the hatred with which these stem spirits regarded every vestige of Popery.” And now let the same pen tell what these

D 3.

warriors continued to be when, at the Restoration, they laid down their military character and returned to the occupations of peace and their homes. “The troops were now to be disbanded. Fifty thousand men accustomed to the profession of arms were at once to be thrown upon the world; and experience seemed to warrant the belief that this change would produce noiuch misery and crime, that the discharged veteiai» would be seen begging in every street, or would be driven by hunger to pillage. Bat no such result followed. In a few months there remained not a trace indicating that the most formidable army in the worid had been admitted into the mass of the community. The royalists themselves confessed that in every department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an alms, and that if a mason, or a baker, or a waggoner, attracted notice by diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability one of Oliver’s old soldiers.”* All history may be challenged for the parallel to this.f

Such testimony proves that if it be the tendency of one great crime to subvert the foundation and overthrow the superstructure of all personal virtue, and leave the character in ruins, how well and strongly must the basis of morals and religion have been laid in those men’s hearts, which, to borrow the representation of many royalist writers, even the shock of this greatest of all crimes,

Macaulay, vol. I. p. 154.

f Since the former sheet was struck oflT, I have examined into the evidence of the truth of the report of Cromwell and Hampden having been detained and prevented from sailing for America after they had gone on board for that purpose, and find that it is utterly incredible.

HISTORY OF NONCONFOBMITT. ^9

nxt to the death of Christ, did not in the smallest degree weaken.

On the death of Cromwell, and the resignation of the Protectorate by his son Richard, the nation, tired of changes, and now in danger of universal anarchy, manifested the general uneasiness which was felt. General Monk with his army was called out of Scotland, and on his arrival in London declared in favour of Charles II. A council of state was summoned, and having agreed to invite the royal exile to the throne, put the question, “Whether they should call him in open treaty and covenant, or entirely confide in him?” After some debate it was resolved to trust him absolutely. This want of caution has been severely censured by many, but has lately been explained and even defended, as rendered necessary by the circumstances of the nation, which did not admit of the delays and the dangers which protracted discussion on that point would have certainly occasioned. And, moreover, with the army on his side, and the nation so generally conciliated to his interests, it may be questioned whether any covenant he might have entered into to secure liberty of conscience, would have been permitted to remain in force a single year. The Puritans, notwithstanding this omission, entertained hopes that though Episcopacy would, of course, be re-established, that yet toleration would be granted to those who conscientiously dissented from it. For thesa hopes they had all the ground that could be afiforded by the word of the King. Both to the Presbyterian divines who waited upon him, and in his declaration from Breda, he assured them that “He would grant liberty to tender consciences, and that no man should be questioned for a difference of opinion in matters of reUgion, who did not disturb the peace of the kingdom.” Had the King been left to himself, it is the opinion of many that he would have abided by his own declaration, and that it was the instigation of the bishops, and of others bent upon revenge, which so soon led him to falsify all these promises. Episcopacy was restored in all its splendour, and with it, of course, all that pertained to the offices and services of the hierarchy and the church. The clergy who had been expelled, by order of the Long Parliament, for incompetency or immorality, or at least those of them who still lived, were restored to their former livings: the fellows and heads of colleges of the two universities, who had been ejidcted, were re-instated, and things brought back as nearly as possible to their condition before the Commonwealth.

The Puritans would have had no great reason to complain, considering the views entertained on these matters by the court and the nation, had matters gone no farther than this, and if they had been allowed, in matters of indifference to use their liberty in the church, or to exercise their ministry according to their own views, oiU of it. But they soon learnt that they were permitted to do neither. The King was scarcely seated upon his throne before persecution commenced its dreadful work, by dragging the nonconformists into the spiritual courts, and there mulcting them of their property and condemning them to prison.

Still the voice of the Puritan ministers, who called for church reform, was not wholly suppressed, for a commission was granted by the King for the purpose of reviewing the liturgy, which met at the Savoy, in 1661, and from its place of meeting was called” The Savoy Conference.’’ On the side of the Church of England were the Archbishop of York, and many of the bishops, and on that of the Paritans many of their leading minip stars, among whom were Baxter, Bates, Calamj, and others. To this meeting the nonconformists proposed the alterations which they desired in the liturgy and in the rites and ceremonies, which were the same as those that had all along been the ground of contention. The Conference ended in a determination on the part of the bishops, to make no alterations in the liturgy, and therefore no concessions to the objecting party. There had not been wanting some in the Church of England, both among the higher clergy and laity, who were desirous of a coalition, and who laboured hard to promote it, among whom was the eminently learned and pious Usher, primate of Ireland. The questions in dispute at that time lay within a very narrow compass, and if at the Savoy Conference the Church party would have conceded such seemingly trifling matters as the use of the cross in baptizing; kneeling at the Lord’s Supper; the surplice; the exclusion of the Apocrypha from the public services of the Church; and a few other such things, treating them as matters of liberty either to be observed or not, as the consciences of ministers might prefer, the consequences of the Act of Uniformity, which soon followed, might have been spared, .and though there would not have been rigid uniformity, there still might have been what is a thousand times more valuable, unity. Or, though this had not been conceded, which in the estimation of many would have failed to secure the harmonious working of the EstabUshment, yet had toleration been granted to separatists, the dissidents would have felt that much was gained, and like their descendants have been, if not altogether satisfied, yet certainly thankful and happy. But these instances of petty malice were but the first

4S SKETca 0^ THE GENEllAt

drops of the thunder cloud, which was rolling on sur* charged with its electric bolts, in the Act of Uniformity. The act was worthy of the day of its birth. Bartholomew day, or at any rate the eve of it, had already been rendered by the Papists dark and infamous in the calen* dar of bigotry and intolerance. It was a Uttle less than a century before that, on the memorable evening of the S4th of August, 1572, orders were issued for extending the massacres of the Huguenots which had commenced in Pans, and which did not stop till, in the space of two months, thirty thousand Protestants had been but chered in cold blood, if indeed ihst expression approp priately describes the mind of those who were influenced by passions set on fire of hell. On the 24th of August, 1662, was passed by the British Parliament an act which required perfect conformity in practice, and in opinion, to the Book of Common Prayer, and to all the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, under pain of expulsion from their livings of all clergymen who would not swear their unfeigned assent and consent to all things contained in this unbending rule of faith and practice. In many parts of the kingdom the ministers could not procure the book before the time within which the law required them to swear to it, or resign their livings; so that in their farewell sermons they had to tell their flocks that they were obliged to leave them for not swearing to a book which they had not been able to see.

Upon the passing of this act more than two thousand of the best and holiest ministers of the national church threw up their livings, and cast themselves upon the providence of God, for the support of themselves and families, rather than violate their consciences by swearing their assent and consent to all that was contained

HISTORY OF KOXCONFOHMltt. 48

in a dii*ectory which they did not approve. Of the suf* ferings of nonconformists in consequence of this act, only an imperfect statement can he made. The exact record is on high. Mr. Jeremy White is said to have collected a list of sixty thousand persons who had sufr fered for dissent between the Restoration and the Revo* lution, of whom five thousand died in prison. Lord DoxBet was assured by Mr. White that King James offered a thousand guineas for the manuscript, but that in tenderness to the reputation of the Church of Eng* land) he had determined to conceal the black record. In the preface to the Plea for the Nonconformists, by Mr. Delaune, that gentleman is said to have been one of eight thousand who, in the reign of Charles II. had, for dissenting from the Church of England, perished in prison. It is added that, within three years, property was wrung from them to the amount of two millions sterling. But who could calculate the total loss of lives and of substance which the dissenters sustained from the first rise of the Puritans to the triumph of toleration under King William? It it justly questioned whether the annals of the Christian Church, since the Reformation, contains any instance of persecution equally severe. The multitudes who fled from their oppressors peopled a considerable part of the new world, while the English refugees, who formed churches in all the principal towns of Holland, added to the strength and industry of that rising state. Yet from these accumulated injuries, the dissenters were at the revolution little diminished in strength, numbers, or spirit, and capable of turning either scale, into which they might choose to turn their weight.*

But to return to the Act of Uniformity, and its con- * Bogue and Bennet, vol. I. p. 8.

sequences. “The world,” says Bishop Eennet, “has reason to admire not only the wisdom, but even the moderation of the act, as being effectually made for ministerial conformity alone and leaving the people unable to complain of any imposition.” Such were episcopal views of moderation, in those days; which makes it very easy for us to credit all that history has recorded of prelatical cruelty during the ages of intolerance, for as moderation is the attainment of very few, what must have been the tender mercies of the many? However, even this moderation was soon withdravm from those who were the objects of it; for in addition to the loss of their beloved pastors, expelled from their churches by the operation of this statute, they were soon forbidden, by “The Conventicle Act,” under severe penalties, to assemble for worship in any other place than the parish church, and were commanded by statute not to neglect assembling there. So that intolerance did not restrict itself to the ministers, but extended its cruelty to the people. By “The Conventicle Act,” it was enacted, “That if any person, above the age of sixteen, shall be present at any meeting for worship different from the Church of England, where there shall be five persons more than the household, they shall for the first offence suffer three weeks* imprisonment, or pay five pounds; for the second, the punishment is doubled; and for the third, they shall be banished to America, or pay a hundred pounds, or if they return from banishment, suffer death.” The oath of any common informer was sufl&- cient to inflict all the severity of this statute of Draco. In consequence of this, multitudes of the best men in the kingdom were filling our jails, while the vilest of the human race were rioting in debauchery by the money obtained as spies and informers.

There have not been wanting writers to represent and justify these measures, as only an imitation and a righteous retribution of the measures pursued by the Puritans during their domination, in compelling so many of the Episcopal clergy to resign their livings. We pretend not to justify that measure, and we have already condemned much that was done by the Long Parlialiament, and the Westminster Assembly of Divines: but still there are some diiferences in the two cases which ought not to be overlooked. The first is that the clergy ejected by the Puritans were deprived of their livings not upon the ground of nonconformity to religions rites and ceremonies, but either for incompetency or gross immorality; and secondly, even when expelled they were allowed, as a means of support, one fifth of the produce of their sequestered livings. “This example,” says Macaulay, “the Cavaliers, intoxicated with animosity, had not the justice and humanity to follow.”

The name of Pubitan was now dropped, and that of NoNCONFOBHiST assumod, by those who dissented born the Church of England. Among the many who thus, for their adhering, at the dictation of conscience, to what they believed to be the principles of the New Tes* tament, were suddenly deprived of their means of sub« sistence, and of what they felt still more bitterly, their opportunities of usefulness, were Owen, Baxter, and Howe; Sates, Manton, and Henry; names that will be dear to every lover of evangelical truth as long as there shall be any who understand the English language, and hold the doctrines of Protestantism.

One act of oppression followed another in rapid succession to torment and crush the nonconformists. Though many of their ministers remained in London while the plague was raging, and preached to the peo* pie in the pulpits which the clergy had deserted; though God had visited London with the awful fire which consumed so large a part of the city, the hearts of the persecutors were not softened, for the Parliament which sat at Oxford while God was consuming the people by his judgments, was busy in passing what is called “The Five Mile Act,” a statute which required the nonconformist ministers to swear that it is not lawful, on any pretext whatever, to take up arms against the King, nor to endeavour at any time to make any alteration of the government, either in church or state; which if they refused they must not come, unless upcJn the road on a journey, within five miles of any city, corporation, or any place that sent burgesses to parliament, or any place where they had been ministers, or had preached after the Act of Oblivion. “This was a most cruel statute, and reduced the objects of it to great distress, by driving very many of them from their places of abode and the circle of their friends, and turning them out upon the world homeless and pennyless, to live upon Providence. And Providence did not forsake them, for we are informed, by Mr. Francis Tallents, of Shrewsbury, who reckoned up as many as a hundred that were ejected within a few miles round, that though many of them were brought very low, had many children, were greatly harrassed by persecution, and their friends generally poor and unable to support them, he never knew, nor heard of, any nonconformist minister in prison for debt.”

As a proof of the good disposition of the nonconformist body, and their zeal for Protestantism, it might be mentioned, that they concurred in the Test Act, which was passed in 1673, and remained in force till the reign of George IV. This celebrated statute required that every person admitted to a place of profit or trust under the crown, whether civil or mihtary, should qualify for his office by taking the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. It had been preceded many years before by “The Corporation Act,” which required the same qualification, in every one who entered a corporation, and also an oath similar to that required by “The Five Mile Act.” The design of the Corporation Act, was levelled directly against the nonconformists, but the Test Act was directed against the Papists, though of course it equally excluded the dissenters. When the Test Act was brought into the House of Commons, the court most strenuously opposed it, and endeavoured to divide the Church party by proposing that some regard might be had to Protestant dissenters, hoping by this means to clog the bill and throw it out of the house. Upon which Alderman Love, a dissenter, and member for the city, rose and said, he hoped the clause in favour of Protestant dissenters would occasion no intemperate heats; and therefore moved, that since this was a considerable barrier against Popery, the bill might pass without any alteration, and that nothing might interfere till it was finished, “and then,” says the Alderman, “we (dissenters) will try if the parliament will not distinguish us from Popish recusants by some marks of their favour: but we are willing to lie under the severity of the laws for a time, rather than clog a more necessary work with our concerns.”

In our days this would have been a strange combination of disinterestedness and selfishness, which would be scarcely entitled to praise: but in the circumstances of that day, when such efforts were made to subvert the constitution and the Protestant religion, it was deserving of high commendation.

Charles died in the communion of the church of Rome, though the head of the Church of England, and was succeeded on the throne hj one still more of a Papist than himself, and of course not a less determined enemy of Puritanism, which is the most direct antagonism of Popeiy. The persecution of the Nonconformists was now carried on with tenfold fury under the direction of Jeffreys, the veriest monster that ever disgraced the bench or soiled the ermine. This ferocious judge, whose conduct set manners, morals, and justice equally at defiance, would, if he had not been restrained by private and powerful remonstrance, have had Baxter pubUcly whipped for his nonconformity through the city of London. It may be conceived what must have been the sufferings of less considerable men, when so distinguished an individual was in danger of being treated with such cruel indignity. An act was passed about this period in Scotland, more atrocious than almost any other that was passed in those dreadful times, “That whosoever should preach in a conventicle under a roof, or should attend, either as preacher or hearer, a conventicle in the open air, should be pimished with death or confiscation of property.”

James, to accomplish his design of favouring Popery and finally restoring England to the Papal see, published his royal declaration of liberty of conscience, and conmianded it to be read in all churches and chapels. This was exalting the kingly authority above the law, and was truly what it was called, “a dispensing power.” In this matter the clergy, who had hitherto preached the doctrine of passive obedience and nonresistance, saw their principles carried to an extent of which they never dreamt, and they now perceived that though this, according to their views, was the duty of the Puritans towards the King as head of the church, it was not their duty to the King, when his object was to favour Popery and they resisted. Some of the bishops earned for themselTes immortal renown, by the stand they took in opposing the project of the King in the exercise of hia dispensing power. They were sent to the tower, tried* and acquitted; and to them a debt is due for conduct which had no small share in liberating the country from the yoke of tyranny, and preventing also the yoke of Popery. The great body of Nonconformists made com* mon cause with the bishops and clergy in their resistance of the dispensing power. They availed themselves of course of the opportunity afforded them by the royal declaration, for meeting publicly for worship. It is true this was contrary to statutes which James had by his own authority suspended, but the statutes themselves were opposed to the word of God, and were no more binding upon their consciences than were the laws of the Pagan empire of Home upon the consciences of the primitive Christians. Beyond this the nonconformist body would not go, much to the chagrin of the King, who used every method to draw them into an expressed acknowledgment of his dispensing power, and an approval of its exercise. Baxter, Bunyan, and others signalised themselves by their opposition to the King’s conduct. A meeting of Presbyterian ministers was held at the house of Howe to consult upon the course to be adopted. James knew of the conference, and manifested the greatest anxiety to know the result, and two royal messengers were in attendance during the discussion, who at the close of the meeting carried back the unwelcome news to the palace, that Howe had declared against the dispen* sing power, and had carried the meeting with him. The Nonconformists forgot the injuries the had received, and found themselves attracted by a strong religious sympathy towards those bishops and priests of the Church of England who, in spite of royal mandates, threats, and promises, were now waging vigorous war with the church of Rome; and they who had been so long separated by a mortal enmity were now daily drawing nearer each other. So great was the danger from a common foe, that it led them for a while to look above and beyond the differences by which they were severed.

James abdicated the throne: the glorious revolution of 1688 followed, and also the accession of William and Mary. One of the first and most precious fruits of the Revolution was the Act of Toleration which virtually, though not formally, annulled the penal statutes against the Nonconformists. This celebrated act may be called the Magna Charta of Dissenters, to whom it was a matter of universal delight and of unbounded thanksgiving, yet was it in some respects incomplete. Its title is obnoxious, inasmuch as it tacitly implies that dissent, though an evil, was on some grounds tolerated, and only just borne with. And is there not a certain aonceeled assumption of a right to treat it as an evil, but which right is, for political reasons, put in abeyance? Besides, toleration, in reference to religious matters, is rather an ungracious sound in another point of view, for it is not only tolerating man in worshipping God, but seems to imply, or to come very near it, tolerating God in receiving homage, which is very revolting to the feeliags. We none of us like to be told we are tolerated, and thus to be considered as all but intolerable. It should have been a law for cancelling all persecuting statutes, and acknowledging the right of every man to liberty of conscience. And then, moreover, it was quite incommsTORT OF NONCONFOKMITY. 51

plete in its extent, for it entirely excluded both the Roman GathoHcs, and the Unitarians, by requiring from all who would enjoy its benefits the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and a subscription to the thirty-nine articles, excepting only those which relate to the powers and goTemment of the church and to infemt baptism. This act has been subsequently enlarged, by substituting a declaration, when called upon to make it, of our being Christians and Protestants, and that we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the revealed will of Qod. And by a further enlargement in the latter end of the reign of Geobge III. it has been extended to those who impugn the doctrine of the Trinity. Still it was a wondrous advance in religious liberty; it was the first legal toleration England had ever known, and placed it ahead of every country in Europe except Holland, for though in some of the German States, Roman Catholics and Protestants, Lutherans and Calvinists, enjoyed together religious liberty, and the Beformers in France had once possessed, by the Edict of Nantes, much liberty, yet there are circumstances which gave a pre-eminence above all these to the English Act of Toleration.

The Nonconformists were now at full liberty to build meeting-houses, and to hold pubHc worship according to the dictates of their own judgment, without interruption or molestation. They were not slow to avail themselves of this rich privilege. Their first work was to build their sanctuaries, and within twenty years after the passing of the Act of Toleration, no less than between a thousand and eleven hundred congregations were formed in England alone, the greater part of which had been collected, and their places of worship erected,

eS

5li SKETCH OF THE GENERAL

between the years 1689 and 1696. Of these the majority were Presbyterian in their views of church polity, and the rest Independents and Baptists. The Pxesby* terians, however, were such only in name, or at any rate they had no more of Presbyterianism than to shut out the sufiErages of the congregation, and to direct their church afilEiirs by a body of trustees, or elders. No presbyteries were formed, nor any church courts got up beyond the circle of each congregation. Indeed, the difference between the two bodies of Presbyterians and Independents was considered so small as to present, in the view of many, no insurmountable obstacle to a coalition between the two bodies. The London ministers were the first to promote this blessed work of union, a basis for which was agreed upon, embracing such common principles as both parties could consent to subscribe, which contains this preamble: “The following heads of agreement have been resolved upon by the united ministers in and about London, formerly called Presbyterian and Congregational; not as a measure for «ny national constitution, but for the preservation of order in our congregations, that cannot come up to the common rule by law established.”- The principle of Association commended itself to the judgment of very many in the provinces, and similar unions were formed there, the most celebrated of which was the Exeter assembly, which was a revival of one formed so far back as 1665, after the model of that established by Baxter and his brethren in Worcestershire. Why should not this spirit of union extend itself? The spirit of sects ds opposed to the spirit of Christianity. Dissenters, in .their jzesl for liberty, have been in danger of losing a love of unity. They do not deserve the charge of schism as coming from the Church of England. It were to be

HI6T0BT OF NONCONFORMITT. 5$

wished they were equally guiltless of this sin among themselves. They have cod tended nobly against intolerance from without — let them finish their work, and contend as mightily for toleration within.

William was scarcely settled on the throne before ha manifested a desire to introduce dissenting laymen to offices of trust, but the Test and Corporation Act pre-Yented the King from accomplishing his benevolent design. But another most important movement for union, which was almost immediately commenced, must not be passed over, and that was an attempt, which however ultimately proved abortive, to bring in an act for making such alterations in the liturgy and services of the Church of Eugland as should meet the scruples of the Nonconformists and make way for their being received into the Church of England. This had been thought of, and proposed, once or twice before, as we have already seen; but it was now resumed by Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, who for conscience* sake soon after resigned his see, and became the head of the nonjuring clergy, that is, a class which could not take the oaths required on the change of the government under William and Mary. A commission was issued by William, to thirty divines, ten of ‘whom were bishops, to consider this subject. The commissioners, at least most of them, went to their work in the best and most candid spirit, really desirous of promoting union. As the result of their labours, six hundred alterations, many of them trivial, but some of them important, and viewed as a whole, removing entirely all objections of dissenters to the Book of Common Prayer, were agreed upon as proper to be recommended for approval to the convocation. But the scheme entirely failed, for that body would not so much as take

£ 3 the subject into consideration. Neither had the measure better success in the House of Commons. It may be well affirmed that six hundred alterations proposed to be made in the standards and services of the Church of England, by such men as Archbishop Tillotson, and Bishops Burnet, Stillingfleet. Patrick, Sharp, Kidder, Beveridge, and Tennison, certainly go far to prove that the Book of Common Prayer is susceptible of some improvement; and that dissenters, in objecting to it, are not quite so unreasonable as many in the present day would represent.

The Nonconformists continued, during the reign of William and the early part of that of Anne, in the enjoyment of their new liberties, not however without some feeble but unsuccessful attempts, by the High Church party, to restrict the meaning of the Act of Toleration, by contending that though it gave liberty of worship, it made no provision for the education of ministers. There was too much good sense, as well as too deep a regard to justice, to allow the validity of such a quibble, for of what use was toleration to worship God according to the dictates of our conscience, if we had no ministers to conduct our services?

The scripture says, “how great a fire a little matter kindleth,” and this was proved by an unwise act of Sir Humphrey Edwin, who, while Lord Mayor of London, in the reign of William and Mary, being a dissenter, carried the regalia of the city to a meeting-house at Pinner’s Hall. This needless and irritating act was considered as a very heinous crime, and generated as keen wrath in the hearts of many zealous churchmen as ever Achilles felt towards Agamemnon. The bad feeling called out by this act of dissenting ostentation, existed however already, though latent, and was now only ex-HIBTOBT OP KONCONFORMlTt. 55

cited to combustion* The fact is, the liberty of dissenters is a grudged right with high church bigots, and which they determined, if possible, to abridge. The clergy were now distinguished by the names of High Ohtjbch and Low Chubch, which were appropriated, the latter to all who treated the dissenters with temper and moderation; the former, to those who viewed them as enemies to the Establishment, that were to be oppressed and vanquished, if this were possible, and to be despised and insulted, if not. The spite of the High Church party was soon manifested in obtaining, after considerable opposition, an act called “The occasional Conformity BiU.” In explanation of which it is necessary to say that ever since the passing of “The Act of Uniformity,” some of the Nonconformists occasionally attended public worship at the parish church and received the communion there. Men no less venerable and esteemed than Baxter, Howe, Bates, and Philip Henry, sanctioned this practice by their example. This continued after the Revolution, and as it was not confined to ministers, but was adopted by laymen also, many of the latter, notwithstanding “The Test and Corporation Acts,” had obtained a share of civic office, honour, and emolument. The provisions of “The Occasional Conformity BiU” made it a crime, to be visited with a heavy fine, for any one holding office, civil or military, to be found at dissenting worship; and required every one occupying a place of profit or trust to take the sacrament according to the rules of the Church of England, three times in the year, after he declared his conformity. The object of this cruel measure was to expel all dissenters from every public office, and to compel such as had no conscience, if any such there were, to conform. Great numbers, who had a conscience, were

thus effectuallj ruined. The Church gained some apostates and hypocrites; the dissenters, many confessors and martyrs. For exposing in somewhat disguised but cutting irony, the rancour of this bill, the celebrated Daniel De Foe, the well-known author of Robinson Crusoe, and of innumerable other works, suffered imprisonment in Newgate, and the indignity of the pillory.

The horizon of the religious world became, during the reign of Anne, cloudy and lowering with gathering storms of intolerance and persecution. The Scottish parliament, will it be credited? passed an act, making it high treason to attempt to overthrow, by writing or speaking, the Presbyterian government of Scotland. In the south a furious agitation was raised by Dr. Sacheverell, chaplain of St. Thomas’s, Southwark, wha threw all England into confusion by his distempered zeal for the Church of England, which, as one observes, burnt as hot in his breast as the flames of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. In his rabid passion he reflected with great bitterness on the memory of William; condemned the Revolution; vented the greatest fuiy against the Whig administration; .and seemed to court notoriety and sympathy by provoking suflering. This he gained, by a sermon he preached at St. Paul’s, November 1, 1709, from 2 Cor. xi. 26, which he entitled “The perils of fialse brethren, both in church and state.” It was foil of the most virulent declamation against many, both in church and state; it asserted to the fullest extent the doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance; condemned all toleration; and poured out a turbid flood of scurrility and abuse upon the dissenters’. Of this infamous philippic forty thousand copies were sold in a few weeks, which filled the land with myriads of echoes of the portentous sound, “The Church is in danger.” The cause was brought into Parliament, and the author was impeached and tried in Westminster-hall. He was, during the trial, lodged in the Temple, and carried every day to the tribunal in a coach, attended by immense assemblages of the people, who shouted their huzzas, strove to kiss his hand, and struggled for pre-eminence in the most abject obeisance; while others of superior rank, from windows and balconies, gave him demonstrations of respect and attachment. So zealouswere his partizans, that they compelled the passengers in the streets, and members of Parliament, to do him honour by shouting the* watch- word of their party, “The Church and Sacheverell.” They even surrounded the Queen’s sedan, on her way to the House of Lords, and to enlist the royal mind in their cause, cried “God bless your Majesty and the Church, and we hope your Majesty is for Dr. Sacheverell.” The clergy also rallied round the Doctor, at his trial, and extolled him as the champion of the Church. To this there were many honourable exceptions, both among the bishops and the inferior clergy The trial lasted three weeks, and ended in the conviction of the accused, and with the sentence that his sermon should be publicly burnt by the hands of the hangman, and that its author should be prohibited from preaching for the term of three years. A pitiful exhibition of justice this. By Sacheverell and his friends it was looked upon as a triumph, and received with ecstasies. But this did not satisfy the Doctor’s friends, for now they turned their fory against what they considered his greatest enemies, the dissenters. The flames of many a meeting-house, both in the metropolis and the provinces, crackled to the tune of “High Church and Sacheverell. Down with the dissenters.”

58 SKEtCd OF TItE OEKfiRAL

Sacheverell travelled through the country in a kind of triumphal procession, and was received with little short of regal splendour. The clergy in their gowns, magistrates in the insignia of office, accompanied by thou sands of men in arms, came forth to pay their homage to the champion of the Church, and the persecutor of dissenters; while the toiy nohility and gentry threw open their mansions at his approach, which they considered, from that moment, dignified and hallowed by the sojourn of such a guest.

But why all this? The people were ignorant, and their leaders intolerant. It was one of the last spasms and convulsions of expiring higotiy. But that it was not yet dead, “The Schism Bill,” to which we now advert, will sufficiently prove. Such events as those we have just contemplated could not have occurred unless there had been a determined hostility in the nation to the nonconformist hody, and a resolution to crush their liherties, if not by law, at least by violence. There was a purpose to do both; and under the influence, and by the efforts, of the infidel Bolinghroke, one of Queen Anne’s ministers of state, this was now to he accomplished. It was clearly seen that the hest way of repressing dissent, next to the repeal of the Act of Toleration, which their holdest and most cruel foe was not audacious enough to attempt, was to prevent the education of their children in their own principles. Julian the apostate, as he is called, had adopted this refined harharity against the Christians. His writings and conduct have been the delight of most infidels, and Bolinghroke was not wanting in this admiration of his school. The hill to which we now allude was entitled” An Act to prevent the growth of Schism, and for the further security of the Churches of England and Ireland,

HlStOllT OF KONCOKFOftMITt. 69

aj8 by law established;” it forbad, under severe pains and penalties, any one to be a schoolmaster of any grade, public or private; -or to teach children any religious catechism whatever, besides the catechism of the Church of England. The dissenters petitioned to be heard by counsel against the bill, but their petition was rejected. However, one or two clauses were gained in their favour, such as allowing them to have schoolmistresses to teach their children to read, and even masters to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, or any part of mathematical learning which relates to navigation and mechanics only. And any nobleman or noblewoman might have teachers in their families, provided they qualified them as the act directed. Such an infamous measure did not pass without the most strenuous opposition from the Whigs, and was carried at last in the Lords, only by a majority of Qye, there having been seventy-seven for it, and seventy-two against it. Twenty-two temporal peers and five bishops recorded on the journals their protest against it. The royal assent was given, and by a statute which grossly fouled the stream of British legislation, the education of their children, in defiance of the demands of nature, justice, and religion, was taken out of the hands of the dissenters.

Bitter was the distress of the Nonconformists, and loud their cries to Him who telleth the groans and heareth the prayers of the afflicted, and who in his merciful purposes had determined that this iniquitous measure should not oppress his servants. He sent that grim monarch, to whom all earthly sovereigns must yield, to arrest the British Queen in her career, and make way for the house of Hanover to the British throne. Anne died the very day on which “The Schism Bill” was to come into operation.

0iO SKETCH OF THE QENEBAL

No part of the papulation of this country has ever been more loyally attached to the present illustrious family upon the throne of Great Britain, than the Protestant dissenters — nor has any had more reason for it — for since their accession, religious liberty has never been touched, except to be enlarged. From that auspicious era in our history, the great principle of freedom for the conscience, like imperceptible but irresistible leaven, has been diffusing itself through the whole community. A vain and abortive attempt was made in the year 1715 to awaken the echoes of the Sacheverell mobs by the cry of “The Chm’ch in danger,” and some few meeting-houses at Oxford, Birmingham, Bristol, Chippenham, Reading, and Norwich were burnt or damaged. But these were soon stopped. Belief was granted to the Quakers in the first year of George I. on the subject of oaths. In 1718, “The Test and Corporation Acts” were somewhat moderated. There were two events in this reign which were very favourable to religious liberty: the first was the Bangorian controversy that arose out of Dr. Hoadley’s sermon before the King, in which he not only advocated the broadest principles of toleration, but also went much too far in his views of the spirituality and liberty of the Christian church, and of the mere human expediency of our Anglican establishment to please the Tories and the High Church party. The other event was the downfall of Bishop Atterbury, the Goliath, as he has been called, of priestly dominion and intolerance. The Schism Bill and Occasional Conformity Bill were repealed in the early part of the reign of George I. who ever was the enlightened and firm advocate of the rights of conscience.

During the reign of George II. some feeble and ineffectual attempts were made by the Convocation of the elergy to infringe the principle of the Toleration Act, and the rights of conscience, by silencing Arians, Socinians, and sceptics. The spirit of persecution, like the ejected demon of which we read in the gospels, still roamed about in dry places, restless, envious, and pre« pared for mischief. The mild, the learned, the pious Doddridge, whom in his latter days bishops dehghted to honour, was not only grossly insulted by the populace for his nonconformity, but had to sustain a prosecution, instigated by the neighbouring clergy for teaching an academy. Information of this intolerance having been carried to the King, he interfered with his royal authority, and stopped the proceedings.

George III. distinguished the commencement of his reign by a declaration from the throne, which endeared him, as a friend of religious liberty, to every generous and impartial mind, and especially to the great body of nonconformists. “The peculiar happiness of my life,” said this amiable monarch, “will ever consist in promoting the welfare of my people, whose loyal and warm affection to me, I consider as the greatest and most permanent support of my throne; and I doubt not but their steadiness to these principles will equal the firmness of my resolution to maintain the Toleration Act inviolable. The civil and religious rights of my loving subjects are equally dear to me as the most valuable prerogative of my crown; and as the surest foimdation of the whole, and the best means to draw down the divine favour on ny reign, it is my fixed purpose to countenance and encourage the practice of true religion and virtue.” These were sentiments worthy of the monarch of the greatest nation upon earth; and what adds might and strength to them is, that, whatever were his wealmesses, or his faults, as a monarch, this declaration was religiously fulfilled throughout his protracted and chequered reign. Before he closed his career, various cruel and persecuting statutes affecting and oppressing the Roman Catholics were repealed, though from mistaken views of the purport and ohligations of the coronation oath, he refused their admission to political power. As the provisions of the Toleration Act did not include persons impugning the doctrine of the Trinity, it was now ordered, as we have already shewn, to embrace them. All could not be obtained, however, which was sought by the friends of religious liberty, for various attempts were made to obtain the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, but though these efforts were sustained by the eloquent argumentation of Fox, and many others, they were not successful. An incident occurred in the year 1811, which, whatever was its intention, was in its tendency, and would have been in its consequences, an invasion of the Magna Charta of nonconformist libertv. Lord Sidmouth scandalized at the invasion of the sacred oflBice by illiterate men, and jealous for the honour of the ministry, proposed in the House of Lords, a bill to restrict the liberty of public teachers, and to institute a legal qualification for the work of preaching the gospel. The whole body of Nonconformists, including the Methodists as well as dissenters, instantly took alarm, which spread with astonishing rapidity through the country, and in the course of a few days, such an opposition was raised and organised against the measure, that Lord Holland, in speaking against it, jocosely said, “We could hardly shake hands vdth our fellow Peers, from the number of petitions that entered agadnst the bill.” These petitions were signed by many beneficed clergymen; and the Archbishop of Canterbury did himself honour by his liberal exposition of the doctrine of religious liberty, and his hostility to the bill.

Since then, the British legislature has demonstrated the advance of Uberal opinions by passing the Catholic Relief Bill, and the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts; and granting the privilege to dissenters of celebrating marriages in their own places of worship and according to their own rites.

Such is now the present position of the Protestant dissenters in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Other men have laboured, and we have entered into their labours. The vine and the fig tree under which we repose in such tranquil security and unmolested enjoyment, were planted in ages that are past, amidst the tears and the blood of other generations. Patriote and heroes, martyrs and confessors, hedged them round, some with their swords, and others with their writings. The boar out of the wood, and the wild beast out of the field, did waste them; the storms of persecution rolled over them, the lightnings of which often scathed them; but an invisible yet omnipotent power afibrded them protection, and now in their ample shadow millions are feasting upon their precious fruit, who are reversing the order of the plaintive theme of the antient church, and instead of sorrowfully dwelling upon what was, are exulting in what is, saying of the noble vine, “Thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it. Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river.”

Still the nonconformists, notwithstanding their lofty position, do not consider their liberties quite complete:

they are excluded from the national seats of learning — they are forced to pay for the support of a state church from which conscientiously hut not factiously they have seceded — they are compelled on entering a corporation to make a declaration which they feel to be an inyidious distinction — and in other ways they are depressed, as they think, below the true level of the constitution; and no one can justly blame them if they seek, by peaceable means, to gain their proper standing on the platform of this great nation.

Still the man who finds in what he yet desires to possess, more cause for discontent, complaint, and endless fetation, than he does of gratitude, satisfaction, and enjoyment in what he has gained, should re-peruse the blood-stained page of his own history as a nonconformist, and if, on contrasting his liberty, with the prison, the scaffold, and the stake of his martyred ancestors, he does not find cause for thanksgiving to God, it must be because he either does not believe what they endured, or floes not know what he is permitted to enjoy.