But before that formal contract had been signed and sealed, all the

contracting parties were in arms. Early in the year 1689 war was raging

all over the Continent from the Humus to the Pyrenees. France, attacked

at once on every side, made on every side a vigorous defence; and her

Turkish allies kept a great German force fully employed in Servia and

Bulgaria. On the whole, the results of the military operations of the

summer were not unfavourable to the confederates. Beyond the Danube,

the Christians, under Prince Lewis of Baden, gained a succession of

victories over the Mussulmans. In the passes of Roussillon, the French

troops contended without any decisive advantage against the martial

peasantry of Catalonia. One German army, led by the Elector of Bavaria,

occupied the Archbishopric of Cologne. Another was commanded by Charles,

Duke of Lorraine, a sovereign who, driven from his own dominions by

the arms of France, had turned soldier of fortune, and had, as

such, obtained both distinction and revenge. He marched against the

devastators of the Palatinate, forced them to retire behind the Rhine,

and, after a long siege, took the important and strongly fortified city

of Mentz.

Between the Sambre and the Meuse the French, commanded by Marshal

Humieres, were opposed to the Dutch, commanded by the Prince of Waldeck,

an officer who had long served the States General with fidelity and

ability, though not always with good fortune, and who stood high in the

estimation of William. Under Waldeck's orders was Marlborough, to whom

William had confided an English brigade consisting of the best regiments

of the old army of James. Second to Marlborough in command, and second

also in professional skill, was Thomas Talmash, a brave soldier,

destined to a fate never to be mentioned without shame and indignation.

Between the army of Waldeck and the army of Humieres no general action

took place: but in a succession of combats the advantage was on the side

of the confederates. Of these combats the most important took place at

Walcourt on the fifth of August. The French attacked an outpost defended

by the English brigade, were vigorously repulsed, and were forced to

retreat in confusion, abandoning a few field pieces to the conquerors

and leaving more than six hundred corpses on the ground. Marlborough, on

this as on every similar occasion, acquitted himself like a valiant and

skilful captain. The Coldstream Guards commanded by Talmash, and the

regiment which is now called the sixteenth of the line, commanded

by Colonel Robert Hodges, distinguished themselves highly. The Royal

regiment too, which had a few months before set up the standard of

rebellion at Ipswich, proved on this day that William, in freely

pardoning that great fault, had acted not less wisely than generously.

The testimony which Waldeck in his despatch bore to the gallant conduct

of the islanders was read with delight by their countrymen. The fight

indeed was no more than a skirmish: but it was a sharp and bloody

skirmish. There had within living memory been no equally serious

encounter between the English and French; and our ancestors were

naturally elated by finding that many years of inaction and vassalage

did not appear to have enervated the courage of the nation, [454]

The Jacobites however discovered in the events of the campaign abundant

matter for invective. Marlborough was, not without reason, the object

of their bitterest hatred. In his behaviour on a field of battle malice

itself could find little to censure: but there were other parts of his

conduct which presented a fair mark for obloquy. Avarice is rarely

the vice of a young man: it is rarely the vice of a great man: but

Marlborough was one of the few who have, in the bloom of youth, loved

lucre more than wine or women, and who have, at the height of greatness,

loved lucre more than power or fame. All the precious gifts which nature

had lavished on him he valued chiefly for what they would fetch. At

twenty he made money of his beauty and his vigour. At sixty he made

money of his genius and his glory. The applauses which were justly due

to his conduct at Walcourt could not altogether drown the voices of

those who muttered that, wherever a broad piece was to be saved or got,

this hero was a mere Euclio, a mere Harpagon; that, though he drew a

large allowance under pretence of keeping a public table, he never asked

an officer to dinner; that his muster rolls were fraudulently made up;

that he pocketed pay in the names of men who had long been dead, of men

who had been killed in his own sight four years before at Sedgemoor;

that there were twenty such names in one troop; that there were

thirty-six in another. Nothing but the union of dauntless courage and

commanding powers of mind with a bland temper and winning manners

could have enabled him to gain and keep, in spite of faults eminently

unsoldierlike, the good will of his soldiers, [455]

About the time at which the contending armies in every part of Europe

were going into winter quarters, a new Pontiff ascended the chair

of Saint Peter. Innocent the Eleventh was no more. His fate had been

strange indeed. His conscientious and fervent attachment to the Church

of which he was the head had induced him, at one of the most critical

conjunctures in her history, to ally herself with her mortal enemies.

The news of his decease was received with concern and alarm by

Protestant princes and commonwealths, and with joy and hope at

Versailles and Dublin. An extraordinary ambassador of high rank was

instantly despatched by Lewis to Rome. The French garrison which had

been placed in Avignon was withdrawn. When the votes of the Conclave

had been united in favour of Peter Ottobuoni, an ancient Cardinal who

assumed the appellation of Alexander the Eighth, the representative

of France assisted at the installation, bore up the cope of the new

Pontiff, and put into the hands of His Holiness a letter in which the

most Christian King declared that he renounced the odious privilege of

protecting robbers and assassins. Alexander pressed the letter to his

lips, embraced the bearer, and talked with rapture of the near prospect

of reconciliation. Lewis began to entertain a hope that the influence of

the Vatican might be exerted to dissolve the alliance between the House

of Austria and the heretical usurper of the English throne. James was

even more sanguine. He was foolish enough to expect that the new Pope

would give him money, and ordered Melfort, who had now acquitted himself

of his mission at Versailles, to hasten to Rome, and beg His Holiness to

contribute something towards the good work of upholding pure religion

in the British islands. But it soon appeared that Alexander, though

he might hold language different from that of his predecessor, was

determined to follow in essentials his predecessor's policy. The

original cause of the quarrel between the Holy See and Lewis was not

removed. The King continued to appoint prelates: the Pope continued to

refuse their institution: and the consequence was that a fourth part of

the dioceses of France had bishops who were incapable of performing any

episcopal function, [456]

The Anglican Church was, at this time, not less distracted than the

Gallican Church. The first of August had been fixed by Act of Parliament

as the day before the close of which all beneficed clergymen and all

persons holding academical offices must, on pain of suspension, swear

allegiance to William and Mary. During the earlier part of the

summer, the Jacobites hoped that the number of nonjurors would be so

considerable as seriously to alarm and embarrass the Government. But

this hope was disappointed. Few indeed of the clergy were Whigs. Few

were Tories of that moderate school which acknowledged, reluctantly and

with reserve, that extreme abuses might sometimes justify a nation in

resorting to extreme remedies. The great majority of the profession

still held the doctrine of passive obedience: but that majority was now

divided into two sections. A question, which, before the Revolution,

had been mere matter of speculation, and had therefore, though

sometimes incidentally raised, been, by most persons, very superficially

considered, had now become practically most important. The doctrine of

passive obedience being taken for granted, to whom was that obedience

due? While the hereditary right and the possession were conjoined, there

was no room for doubt: but the hereditary right and the possession were

now separated. One prince, raised by the Revolution, was reigning at

Westminster, passing laws, appointing magistrates and prelates, sending

forth armies and fleets. His judges decided causes. His Sheriffs

arrested debtors and executed criminals. Justice, order, property, would

cease to exist, and society would be resolved into chaos, but for

his Great Seal. Another prince, deposed by the Revolution, was living

abroad. He could exercise none of the powers and perform none of the

duties of a ruler, and could, as it seemed, be restored only by means as

violent as those by which he had been displaced, to which of these two

princes did Christian men owe allegiance?

To a large part of the clergy it appeared that the plain letter

of Scripture required them to submit to the Sovereign who was in

possession, without troubling themselves about his title. The powers

which the Apostle, in the text most familiar to the Anglican divines of

that age, pronounces to be ordained of God, are not the powers that

can be traced back to a legitimate origin, but the powers that be. When

Jesus was asked whether the chosen people might lawfully give tribute to

Caesar, he replied by asking the questioners, not whether Caesar could

make out a pedigree derived from the old royal house of Judah, but

whether the coin which they scrupled to pay into Caesar's treasury came

from Caesar's mint, in other words, whether Caesar actually possessed

the authority and performed the functions of a ruler.

It is generally held, with much appearance of reason, that the most

trustworthy comment on the text of the Gospels and Epistles is to be

found in the practice of the primitive Christians, when that practice

can be satisfactorily ascertained; and it so happened that the times

during which the Church is universally acknowledged to have been in the

highest state of purity were times of frequent and violent political

change. One at least of the Apostles appears to have lived to see four

Emperors pulled down in little more than a year. Of the martyrs of the

third century a great proportion must have been able to remember ten

or twelve revolutions. Those martyrs must have had occasion often to

consider what was their duty towards a prince just raised to power by

a successful insurrection. That they were, one and all, deterred by the

fear of punishment from doing what they thought right, is an imputation

which no candid infidel would throw on them. Yet, if there be any

proposition which can with perfect confidence be affirmed touching the

early Christians, it is this, that they never once refused obedience

to any actual ruler on account of the illegitimacy of his title. At

one time, indeed, the supreme power was claimed by twenty or thirty

competitors. Every province from Britain to Egypt had its own Augustus.

All these pretenders could not be rightful Emperors. Yet it does not

appear that, in any place, the faithful had any scruple about submitting

to the person who, in that place, exercised the imperial functions.

While the Christian of Rome obeyed Aurelian, the Christian of Lyons

obeyed Tetricus, and the Christian of Palmyra obeyed Zenobia. "Day and

night," such were the words which the great Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage,

addressed to the representative of Valerian and Gallienus,--"day and

night do we Christians pray to the one true God for the safety of our

Emperors." Yet those Emperors had a few months before pulled down their

predecessor Aemilianus, who had pulled down his predecessor Gallus,

who had climbed to power on the ruins of the house of his predecessor

Decius, who had slain his predecessor Philip, who had slain his

predecessor Gordian. Was it possible to believe that a saint, who had,

in the short space of thirteen or fourteen years, borne true allegiance

to this series of rebels and regicides, would have made a schism in the

Christian body rather than acknowledge King William and Queen Mary? A

hundred times those Anglican divines who had taken the oaths challenged

their more scrupulous brethren to cite a single instance in which the

primitive Church had refused obedience to a successful usurper; and a

hundred times the challenge was evaded. The nonjurors had little to say

on this head, except that precedents were of no force when opposed to

principles, a proposition which came with but a bad grace from a school

which had always professed an almost superstitious reverence for the

authority of the Fathers, [457]

To precedents drawn from later and more corrupt times little respect

was due. But, even in the history of later and more corrupt times, the

nonjurors could not easily find any precedent that would serve their

purpose. In our own country many Kings, who had not the hereditary

right, had filled the throne but it had never been thought inconsistent

with the duty of a Christian to be a true liegeman to such Kings. The

usurpation of Henry the Fourth, the more odious usurpation of Richard

the Third, had produced no schism in the Church. As soon as the usurper

was firm in his seat, Bishops had done homage to him for their domains:

Convocations had presented addresses to him, and granted him supplies;

nor had any casuist ever pronounced that such submission to a prince in

possession was deadly sin, [458]

With the practice of the whole Christian world the authoritative

teaching of the Church of England appeared to be in strict harmony. The

Homily on Wilful Rebellion, a discourse which inculcates, in unmeasured

terms, the duty of obeying rulers, speaks of none but actual rulers.

Nay, the people are distinctly told in that Homily that they are bound

to obey, not only their legitimate prince, but any usurper whom God

shall in anger set over them for their sins. And surely it would be

the height of absurdity to say that we must accept submissively such

usurpers as God sends in anger, but must pertinaciously withhold our

obedience from usurpers whom He sends in mercy. Grant that it was a

crime to invite the Prince of Orange over, a crime to join him, a crime

to make him King; yet what was the whole history of the Jewish nation

and of the Christian Church but a record of cases in which Providence

had brought good out of evil? And what theologian would assert that, in

such cases, we ought, from abhorrence of the evil, to reject the good?

On these grounds a large body of divines, still asserting the doctrine

that to resist the Sovereign must always be sinful, conceived that

William was now the Sovereign whom it would be sinful to resist.

To these arguments the nonjurors replied that Saint Paul must have meant

by the powers that be the rightful powers that be; and that to put any

other interpretation on his words would be to outrage common sense,

to dishonour religion, to give scandal to weak believers, to give an

occasion of triumph to scoffers. The feelings of all mankind must be

shocked by the proposition that, as soon as a King, however clear

his title, however wise and good his administration, is expelled by

traitors, all his servants are bound to abandon him, and to range

themselves on the side of his enemies. In all ages and nations, fidelity

to a good cause in adversity had been regarded as a virtue. In all ages

and nations, the politician whose practice was always to be on the side

which was uppermost had been despised. This new Toryism was worse than

Whiggism. To break through the ties of allegiance because the Sovereign

was a tyrant was doubtless a very great sin: but it was a sin for which

specious names and pretexts might be found, and into which a brave

and generous man, not instructed in divine truth and guarded by divine

grace, might easily fall. But to break through the ties of allegiance,

merely because the Sovereign was unfortunate, was not only wicked, but

dirty. Could any unbeliever offer a greater insult to the Scriptures

than by asserting that the Scriptures had enjoined on Christians as a

sacred duty what the light of nature had taught heathens to regard

as the last excess of baseness? In the Scriptures was to be found the

history of a King of Israel, driven from his palace by an unnatural son,

and compelled to fly beyond Jordan. David, like James, had the right:

Absalom, like William, had the possession. Would any student of the

sacred writings dare to affirm that the conduct of Shimei on that

occasion was proposed as a pattern to be imitated, and that Barzillai,

who loyally adhered to his fugitive master, was resisting the ordinance

of God, and receiving to himself damnation? Would any true son of

the Church of England seriously affirm that a man who was a strenuous

royalist till after the battle of Naseby, who then went over to the

Parliament, who, as soon as the Parliament had been purged, became an

obsequious servant of the Rump, and who, as soon as the Rump had been

ejected, professed himself a faithful subject of the Protector, was more

deserving of the respect of Christian men than the stout old Cavalier

who bore true fealty to Charles the First in prison and to Charles

the Second in exile, and who was ready to put lands, liberty, life, in

peril, rather than acknowledge, by word or act, the authority of any

of the upstart governments which, during that evil time, obtained

possession of a power not legitimately theirs? And what distinction was

there between that case and the case which had now arisen? That Cromwell

had actually enjoyed as much power as William, nay much more power than

William, was quite certain. That the power of William, as well as the

power of Cromwell, had an illegitimate origin, no divine who held the

doctrine of nonresistance would dispute. How then was it possible for

such a divine to deny that obedience had been due to Cromwell, and yet

to affirm that it was due to William? To suppose that there could be

such inconsistency without dishonesty would be not charity but weakness.

Those who were determined to comply with the Act of Parliament would

do better to speak out, and to say, what every body knew, that they

complied simply to save their benefices. The motive was no doubt strong.

That a clergyman who was a husband and a father should look forward with

dread to the first of August and the first of February was natural. But

he would do well to remember that, however terrible might be the day of

suspension and the day of deprivation, there would assuredly come

two other days more terrible still, the day of death and the day of

judgment, [459]

The swearing clergy, as they were called, were not a little perplexed by

this reasoning. Nothing embarrassed them more than the analogy which

the nonjurors were never weary of pointing out between the usurpation

of Cromwell and the usurpation of William. For there was in that age

no High Churchman who would not have thought himself reduced to an

absurdity if he had been reduced to the necessity of saying that

the Church had commanded her sons to obey Cromwell. And yet it was

impossible to prove that William was more fully in possession of supreme

power than Cromwell had been. The swearers therefore avoided coming

to close quarters with the nonjurors on this point as carefully as the

nonjurors avoided coming to close quarters with the swearers on the

question touching the practice of the primitive Church.

The truth is that the theory of government which had long been taught

by the clergy was so absurd that it could lead to nothing but absurdity.

Whether the priest who adhered to that theory swore or refused to swear,

he was alike unable to give a rational explanation of his conduct. If he

swore, he could vindicate his swearing only by laying down propositions

against which every honest heart instinctively revolts, only by

proclaiming that Christ had commanded the Church to desert the righteous

cause as soon as that cause ceased to prosper, and to strengthen the

hands of successful villany against afflicted virtue. And yet, strong as

were the objections to this doctrine, the objections to the doctrine

of the nonjuror were, if possible, stronger still. According to him, a

Christian nation ought always to be in a state of slavery or in a state

of anarchy. Something is to be said for the man who sacrifices liberty

to preserve order. Something is to be said for the man who sacrifices

order to preserve liberty. For liberty and order are two of the greatest

blessings which a society can enjoy: and, when unfortunately they appear

to be incompatible, much indulgence is due to those who take either

side. But the nonjuror sacrificed, not liberty to order, not order to

liberty, but both liberty and order to a superstition as stupid and

degrading as the Egyptian worship of cats and onions. While a particular

person, differing from other persons by the mere accident of birth,

was on the throne, though he might be a Nero, there was to be no

insubordination. When any other person was on the throne, though he

might be an Alfred, there was to be no obedience. It mattered not how

frantic and wicked might be the administration of the dynasty which

had the hereditary title, or how wise and virtuous might be the

administration of a government sprung from a revolution. Nor could any

time of limitation be pleaded against the claim of the expelled family.

The lapse of years, the lapse of ages, made no change. To the end of

the world, Christians were to regulate their political conduct simply

according to the genealogy of their ruler. The year 1800, the year

1900, might find princes who derived their title from the votes of the

Convention reigning in peace and prosperity. No matter: they would still

be usurpers; and, if, in the twentieth or twenty-first century, any

person who could make out a better right by blood to the crown should

call on a late posterity to acknowledge him as King, the call must be

obeyed on peril of eternal perdition.

A Whig might well enjoy the thought that the controversies which had

arisen among his adversaries had established the soundness of his own

political creed. The disputants who had long agreed in accusing him of

an impious error had now effectually vindicated him, and refuted one

another. The High Churchman who took the oaths had shown by irrefragable

arguments from the Gospels and the Epistles, from the uniform practice

of the primitive Church, and from the explicit declarations of the

Anglican Church, that Christians were not in all cases bound to pay

obedience to the prince who had the hereditary title. The High Churchman

who would not take the oaths had shown as satisfactorily that Christians

were not in all cases bound to pay obedience to the prince who was

actually reigning. It followed that, to entitle a government to the

allegiance of subjects, something was necessary different from mere

legitimacy, and different also from mere possession. What that something

was the Whigs had no difficulty in pronouncing. In their view, the

end for which all governments had been instituted was the happiness of

society. While the magistrate was, on the whole, notwithstanding some

faults, a minister for good, Reason taught mankind to obey him;

and Religion, giving her solemn sanction to the teaching of Reason,

commanded mankind to revere him as divinely commissioned. But if

he proved to be a minister for evil, on what grounds was he to be

considered as divinely commissioned? The Tories who swore had proved

that he ought not to be so considered on account of the origin of his

power: the Tories who would not swear had proved as clearly that he

ought not to be so considered on account of the existence of his power.

Some violent and acrimonious Whigs triumphed ostentatiously and with

merciless insolence over the perplexed and divided priesthood. The

nonjuror they generally affected to regard with contemptuous pity as

a dull and perverse, but sincere, bigot, whose absurd practice was in

harmony with his absurd theory, and who might plead, in excuse for

the infatuation which impelled him to ruin his country, that the same

infatuation had impelled him to ruin himself. They reserved their

sharpest taunts for those divines who, having, in the days of the

Exclusion Bill and the Rye House Plot, been distinguished by zeal for

the divine and indefeasible right of the hereditary Sovereign, were now

ready to swear fealty to an usurper. Was this then the real sense of all

those sublime phrases which had resounded during twenty-nine years from

innumerable pulpits? Had the thousands of clergymen, who had so loudly

boasted of the unchangeable loyalty of their order, really meant only

that their loyalty would remain unchangeable till the next change of

fortune? It was idle, it was impudent in them to pretend that their

present conduct was consistent with their former language. If any

Reverend Doctor had at length been convinced that he had been in the

wrong, he surely ought, by an open recantation, to make all the amends

now possible to the persecuted, the calumniated, the murdered defenders

of liberty. If he was still convinced that his old opinions were sound,

he ought manfully to cast in his lot with the nonjurors. Respect, it was

said, is due to him who ingenuously confesses an error; respect is due

to him who courageously suffers for an error; but it is difficult

to respect a minister of religion who, while asserting that he still

adheres to the principles of the Tories, saves his benefice by taking an

oath which can be honestly taken only on the principles of the Whigs.

These reproaches, though perhaps not altogether unjust, were

unseasonable. The wiser and more moderate Whigs, sensible that the

throne of William could not stand firm if it had not a wider basis

than their own party, abstained at this conjuncture from sneers and

invectives, and exerted themselves to remove the scruples and to soothe

the irritated feelings of the clergy. The collective power of the

rectors and vicars of England was immense: and it was much better that

they should swear for the most flimsy reason that could be devised by a

sophist than they should not swear at all.

It soon became clear that the arguments for swearing, backed as they

were by some of the strongest motives which can influence the human

mind, had prevailed. Above twenty-nine thirtieths of the profession

submitted to the law. Most of the divines of the capital, who then

formed a separate class, and who were as much distinguished from the

rural clergy by liberality of sentiment as by eloquence and learning,

gave in their adhesion to the government early, and with every sign of

cordial attachment. Eighty of them repaired together, in full term, to

Westminster Hall, and were there sworn. The ceremony occupied so long

a time that little else was done that day in the Courts of Chancery and

King's Bench, [460] But in general the compliance was tardy, sad and

sullen. Many, no doubt, deliberately sacrificed principle to interest.

Conscience told them that they were committing a sin. But they had not

fortitude to resign the parsonage, the garden, the glebe, and to go

forth without knowing where to find a meal or a roof for themselves and

their little ones. Many swore with doubts and misgivings, [461] Some

declared, at the moment of taking the oath, that they did not mean to

promise that they would not submit to James, if he should ever be in a

condition to demand their allegiance, [462] Some clergymen in the north

were, on the first of August, going in a company to swear, when they

were met on the road by the news of the battle which had been fought,

four days before, in the pass of Killiecrankie. They immediately turned

back, and did not again leave their homes on the same errand till it was

clear that Dundee's victory had made no change in the state of public

affairs, [463] Even of those whose understandings were fully convinced

that obedience was due to the existing government, very few kissed the

book with the heartiness with which they had formerly plighted their

faith to Charles and James. Still the thing was done. Ten thousand

clergymen had solemnly called heaven to attest their promise that they

would be true liegemen to William; and this promise, though it by no

means warranted him in expecting that they would strenuously support

him, had at least deprived them of a great part of their power to injure

him. They could not, without entirely forfeiting that public respect

on which their influence depended, attack, except in an indirect

and timidly cautious manner, the throne of one whom they had, in the

presence of God, vowed to obey as their King. Some of them, it is true,

affected to read the prayers for the new Sovereigns in a peculiar tone

which could not be misunderstood, [464] Others were guilty of still

grosser indecency. Thus, one wretch, just after praying for William and

Mary in the most solemn office of religion, took off a glass to their

damnation. Another, after performing divine service on a fast day

appointed by their authority, dined on a pigeon pie, and while he cut it

up, uttered a wish that it was the usurper's heart. But such audacious

wickedness was doubtless rare and was rather injurious to the Church

than to the government, [465]

Those clergymen and members of the Universities who incurred the

penalties of the law were about four hundred in number. Foremost in rank

stood the Primate and six of his suffragans, Turner of Ely, Lloyd

of Norwich, Frampton of Gloucester, Lake of Chichester, White of

Peterborough, and Ken of Bath and Wells. Thomas of Worcester would have

made a seventh: but he died three weeks before the day of suspension. On

his deathbed he adjured his clergy to be true to the cause of hereditary

right, and declared that those divines who tried to make out that the

oaths might be taken without any departure from the loyal doctrines of

the Church of England seemed to him to reason more jesuitically than the

Jesuits themselves, [466]

Ken, who, both in intellectual and in moral qualities, ranked highest

among the nonjuring prelates, hesitated long. There were few clergymen

who could have submitted to the new government with a better grace. For,

in the times when nonresistance and passive obedience were the favourite

themes of his brethren, he had scarcely ever alluded to politics in

the pulpit. He owned that the arguments in favour of swearing were

very strong. He went indeed so far as to say that his scruples would be

completely removed if he could be convinced that James had entered

into engagements for ceding Ireland to the French King. It is evident

therefore that the difference between Ken and the Whigs was not a

difference of principle. He thought, with them, that misgovernment,

carried to a certain point, justified a transfer of allegiance, and

doubted only whether the misgovernment of James had been carried quite

to that point. Nay, the good Bishop actually began to prepare a pastoral

letter explaining his reasons for taking the oaths. But, before it was

finished, he received information which convinced him that Ireland had

not been made over to France: doubts came thick upon him: he threw

his unfinished letter into the fire, and implored his less scrupulous

friends not to urge him further. He was sure, he said, that they had

acted uprightly: he was glad that they could do with a clear conscience

what he shrank from doing: he felt the force of their reasoning: he was

all but persuaded; and he was afraid to listen longer lest he should

be quite persuaded: for, if he should comply, and his misgivings should

afterwards return, he should be the most miserable of men. Not for

wealth, not for a palace, not for a peerage, would he run the smallest

risk of ever feeling the torments of remorse. It is a curious fact that,

of the seven nonjuring prelates, the only one whose name carries with it

much weight was on the point of swearing, and was prevented from doing

so, as he himself acknowledged, not by the force of reason, but by a

morbid scrupulosity which he did not advise others to imitate, [467]

Among the priests who refused the oaths were some men eminent in

the learned world, as grammarians, chronologists, canonists, and

antiquaries, and a very few who were distinguished by wit and eloquence:

but scarcely one can be named who was qualified to discuss any large

question of morals or politics, scarcely one whose writings do not

indicate either extreme feebleness or extreme flightiness of mind. Those

who distrust the judgment of a Whig on this point will probably allow

some weight to the opinion which was expressed, many years after the

Revolution, by a philosopher of whom the Tories are justly proud.

Johnson, after passing in review the celebrated divines who had thought

it sinful to swear allegiance to William the Third and George the First,

pronounced that, in the whole body of nonjurors, there was one, and one

only, who could reason, [468]

The nonjuror in whose favour Johnson made this exception was Charles

Leslie. Leslie had, before the Revolution, been Chancellor of the

diocese of Connor in Ireland. He had been forward in opposition to

Tyrconnel; had, as a justice of the peace for Monaghan, refused

to acknowledge a papist as Sheriff of that county; and had been so

courageous as to send some officers of the Irish army to prison for

marauding. But the doctrine of nonresistance, such as it had been taught

by Anglican divines in the days of the Rye House Plot, was immovably

fixed in his mind. When the state of Ulster became such that a

Protestant who remained there could hardly avoid being either a rebel or

a martyr, Leslie fled to London. His abilities and his connections were

such that he might easily have obtained high preferment in the Church of

England. But he took his place in the front rank of the Jacobite body,

and remained there stedfastly, through all the dangers and vicissitudes

of three and thirty troubled years. Though constantly engaged in

theological controversy with Deists, Jews, Socinians, Presbyterians,

Papists, and Quakers, he found time to be one of the most voluminous

political writers of his age. Of all the nonjuring clergy he was the

best qualified to discuss constitutional questions. For, before he had

taken orders, he had resided long in the Temple, and had been studying

English history and law, while most of the other chiefs of the schism

had been poring over the Acts of Chalcedon, or seeking for wisdom in the

Targurn of Onkelos, [469] In 1689, however, Leslie was almost unknown

in England. Among the divines who incurred suspension on the first

of August in that year, the highest in popular estimation was without

dispute Doctor William Sherlock. Perhaps no simple presbyter of the

Church of England has ever possessed a greater authority over his

brethren than belonged to Sherlock at the time of the Revolution. He

was not of the first rank among his contemporaries as a scholar, as a

preacher, as a writer on theology, or as a writer on politics: but in

all the four characters he had distinguished himself. The perspicuity

and liveliness of his style have been praised by Prior and Addison. The

facility and assiduity with which he wrote are sufficiently proved by

the bulk and the dates of his works. There were indeed among the clergy

men of brighter genius and men of wider attainments: but during a long

period there was none who more completely represented the order, none

who, on all subjects, spoke more precisely the sense of the Anglican

priesthood, without any taint of Latitudinarianism, of Puritanism, or of

Popery. He had, in the days of the Exclusion Bill, when the power of

the dissenters was very great in Parliament and in the country, written

strongly against the sin of nonconformity. When the Rye House Plot was

detected, he had zealously defended by tongue and pen the doctrine of

nonresistance. His services to the cause of episcopacy and monarchy were

so highly valued that he was made master of the Temple. A pension was

also bestowed on him by Charles: but that pension James soon took away;

for Sherlock, though he held himself bound to pay passive obedience to

the civil power, held himself equally bound to combat religious errors,

and was the keenest and most laborious of that host of controversialists

who, in the day of peril, manfully defended the Protestant faith. In

little more than two years he published sixteen treatises, some of them

large books, against the high pretensions of Rome. Not content with the

easy victories which he gained over such feeble antagonists as those

who were quartered at Clerkenwell and the Savoy, he had the courage to

measure his strength with no less a champion than Bossuet, and came out

of the conflict without discredit. Nevertheless Sherlock still continued

to maintain that no oppression could justify Christians in resisting

the kingly authority. When the Convention was about to meet, he strongly

recommended, in a tract which was considered as the manifesto of a

large part of the clergy, that James should be invited to return on such

conditions as might secure the laws and religion of the nation, [470]

The vote which placed William and Mary on the throne filled Sherlock

with sorrow and anger. He is said to have exclaimed that if the

Convention was determined on a revolution, the clergy would find forty

thousand good Churchmen to effect a restoration, [471] Against the new

oaths he gave his opinion plainly and warmly. He declared himself at a

loss to understand how any honest man could doubt that, by the powers

that be, Saint Paul meant legitimate powers and no others. No name

was in 1689 cited by the Jacobites so proudly and fondly as that of

Sherlock. Before the end of 1690 that name excited very different

feelings.

A few other nonjurors ought to be particularly noticed. High among them

in rank was George Hickes, Dean of Worcester. Of all the Englishmen of

his time he was the most versed in the old Teutonic languages; and his

knowledge of the early Christian literature was extensive. As to his

capacity for political discussions, it may be sufficient to say that his

favourite argument for passive obedience was drawn from the story of

the Theban legion. He was the younger brother of that unfortunate John

Hickes who had been found hidden in the malthouse of Alice Lisle. James

had, in spite of all solicitation, put both John Hickes and Alice Lisle

to death. Persons who did not know the strength of the Dean's principles

thought that he might possibly feel some resentment on this account: for

he was of no gentle or forgiving temper, and could retain during many

years a bitter remembrance of small injuries. But he was strong in his

religious and political faith: he reflected that the sufferers were

dissenters; and he submitted to the will of the Lord's Anointed not

only with patience but with complacency. He became indeed a more loving

subject than ever from the time when his brother was hanged and his

brother's benefactress beheaded. While almost all other clergymen,

appalled by the Declaration of Indulgence and by the proceedings of

the High Commission, were beginning to think that they had pushed the

doctrine of nonresistance a little too far, he was writing a vindication

of his darling legend, and trying to convince the troops at Hounslow

that, if James should be pleased to massacre them all, as Maximian had

massacred the Theban legion, for refusing to commit idolatry, it would

be their duty to pile their arms, and meekly to receive the crown of

martyrdom. To do Hickes justice, his whole conduct after the Revolution

proved that his servility had sprung neither from fear nor from

cupidity, but from mere bigotry, [472]

Jeremy Collier, who was turned out of the preachership of the Rolls,

was a man of a much higher order. He is well entitled to grateful and

respectful mention: for to his eloquence and courage is to be chiefly

ascribed the purification of our lighter literature from that foul taint

which had been contracted during the Antipuritan reaction. He was, in

the full force of the words, a good man. He was also a man of eminent

abilities, a great master of sarcasm, a great master of rhetoric, [473]

His reading, too, though undigested, was of immense extent. But his mind

was narrow: his reasoning, even when he was so fortunate as to have a

good cause to defend, was singularly futile and inconclusive; and his

brain was almost turned by pride, not personal, but professional. In

his view, a priest was the highest of human beings, except a bishop.

Reverence and submission were due from the best and greatest of the

laity to the least respectable of the clergy. However ridiculous a man

in holy orders might make himself, it was impiety to laugh at him. So

nervously sensitive indeed was Collier on this point that he thought

it profane to throw any reflection even on the ministers of false

religions. He laid it down as a rule that Muftis and Augurs ought always

to be mentioned with respect. He blamed Dryden for sneering at the

Hierophants of Apis. He praised Racine for giving dignity to the

character of a priest of Baal. He praised Corneille for not bringing

that learned and reverend divine Tiresias on the stage in the tragedy of

Oedipus. The omission, Collier owned, spoiled the dramatic effect of the

piece: but the holy function was much too solemn to be played with. Nay,

incredible as it may seem, he thought it improper in the laity to sneer

at Presbyterian preachers. Indeed his Jacobitism was little more than

one of the forms in which his zeal for the dignity of his profession

manifested itself. He abhorred the Revolution less as a rising up of

subjects against their King than as a rising up of the laity against

the sacerdotal caste. The doctrines which had been proclaimed from

the pulpit during thirty years had been treated with contempt by the

Convention. A new government had been set up in opposition to the wishes

of the spiritual peers in the House of Lords and of the priesthood

throughout the country. A secular assembly had taken upon itself to pass

a law requiring archbishops and bishops, rectors and vicars, to abjure;

on pain of deprivation, what they had been teaching all their lives.

Whatever meaner spirits might do, Collier was determined not to be led

in triumph by the victorious enemies of his order. To the last he would

confront, with the authoritative port of an ambassador of heaven, the

anger of the powers and principalities of the earth.

In parts Collier was the first man among the nonjurors. In erudition the

first place must be assigned to Henry Dodwell, who, for the unpardonable

crime of having a small estate in Mayo, had been attainted by the Popish

Parliament at Dublin. He was Camdenian Professor of Ancient History

in the University of Oxford, and had already acquired considerable

celebrity by chronological and geographical researches: but, though

he never could be persuaded to take orders, theology was his favourite

study. He was doubtless a pious and sincere man. He had perused

innumerable volumes in various languages, and had indeed acquired

more learning than his slender faculties were able to bear. The small

intellectual spark which he possessed was put out by the fuel. Some of

his books seem to have been written in a madhouse, and, though filled

with proofs of his immense reading, degrade him to the level of James

Naylor and Ludowick Muggleton. He began a dissertation intended to prove

that the law of nations was a divine revelation made to the family which

was preserved in the ark. He published a treatise in which he maintained

that a marriage between a member of the Church of England and a

dissenter was a nullity, and that the couple were, in the sight of

heaven, guilty of adultery. He defended the use of instrumental music in

public worship on the ground that the notes of the organ had a power to

counteract the influence of devils on the spinal marrow of human

beings. In his treatise on this subject, he remarked that there was

high authority for the opinion that the spinal marrow, when decomposed,

became a serpent. Whether this opinion were or were not correct, he

thought it unnecessary to decide. Perhaps, he said, the eminent men

in whose works it was found had meant only to express figuratively the

great truth, that the Old Serpent operates on us chiefly through the

spinal marrow, [474] Dodwell's speculations on the state of human beings

after death are, if possible, more extraordinary still. He tells us that

our souls are naturally mortal. Annihilation is the fate of the greater

part of mankind, of heathens, of Mahometans, of unchristened babes. The

gift of immortality is conveyed in the sacrament of baptism: but to the

efficacy of the sacrament it is absolutely necessary that the water be

poured and the words pronounced by a priest who has been ordained by a

bishop. In the natural course of things, therefore, all Presbyterians,

Independents, Baptists, and Quakers would, like the inferior animals,

cease to exist. But Dodwell was far too good a churchman to let

off dissenters so easily. He informs them that, as they have had an

opportunity of hearing the gospel preached, and might, but for their

own perverseness, have received episcopalian baptism, God will, by an

extraordinary act of power, bestow immortality on them in order that

they may be tormented for ever and ever, [475]

No man abhorred the growing latitudinarianism of those times more

than Dodwell. Yet no man had more reason to rejoice in it. For, in the

earlier part of the seventeenth century, a speculator who had dared to

affirm that the human soul is by its nature mortal, and does, in the

great majority of cases, actually die with the body, would have been

burned alive in Smithfield. Even in days which Dodwell could well

remember, such heretics as himself would have been thought fortunate if

they escaped with life, their backs flayed, their ears clipped, their

noses slit, their tongues bored through with red hot iron, and their

eyes knocked out with brickbats. With the nonjurors, however, the author

of this theory was still the great Mr. Dodwell; and some, who thought

it culpable lenity to tolerate a Presbyterian meeting, thought it at the

same time gross illiberality to blame a learned and pious Jacobite for

denying a doctrine so utterly unimportant in a religious point of view

as that of the immortality of the soul, [476]

Two other nonjurors deserve special mention, less on account of their

abilities and learning, than on account of their rare integrity, and

of their not less rare candour. These were John Kettlewell, Rector of

Coleshill, and John Fitzwilliam, Canon of Windsor. It is remarkable

that both these men had seen much of Lord Russell, and that both, though

differing from him in political opinions, and strongly disapproving

the part which he had taken in the Whig plot, had thought highly of his

character, and had been sincere mourners for his death. He had sent to

Kettlewell an affectionate message from the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn

Fields. Lady Russell, to her latest day, loved, trusted, and revered

Fitzwilliam, who, when she was a girl, had been the friend of her

father, the virtuous Southampton. The two clergymen agreed in refusing

to swear: but they, from that moment, took different paths. Kettlewell

was one of the most active members of his party: he declined no drudgery

in the common cause, provided only that it were such drudgery as did not

misbecome an honest man; and he defended his opinions in several tracts,

which give a much higher notion of his sincerity than of his judgment or

acuteness, [477] Fitzwilliam thought that he had done enough in quitting

his pleasant dwelling and garden under the shadow of Saint George's

Chapel, and in betaking himself with his books to a small lodging in an

attic. He could not with a safe conscience acknowledge William and

Mary: but he did not conceive that he was bound to be always stirring up

sedition against them; and he passed the last years of his life,

under the powerful protection of the House of Bedford, in innocent and

studious repose, [478]

Among the less distinguished divines who forfeited their benefices, were

doubtless many good men: but it is certain that the moral character of

the nonjurors, as a class, did not stand high. It seems hard to impute

laxity of principle to persons who undoubtedly made a great sacrifice

to principle. And yet experience abundantly proves that many who are

capable of making a great sacrifice, when their blood is heated by

conflict, and when the public eye is fixed upon them, are not capable of

persevering long in the daily practice of obscure virtues. It is by no

means improbable that zealots may have given their lives for a religion

which had never effectually restrained their vindictive or their

licentious passions. We learn indeed from fathers of the highest

authority that, even in the purest ages of the Church, some confessors,

who had manfully refused to save themselves from torments and death

by throwing frankincense on the altar of Jupiter, afterwards brought

scandal on the Christian name by gross fraud and debauchery, [479] For

the nonjuring divines great allowance must in fairness be made. They

were doubtless in a most trying situation. In general, a schism, which

divides a religious community, divides the laity as well as the clergy.

The seceding pastors therefore carry with them a large part of their

flocks, and are consequently assured of a maintenance. But the schism of

1689 scarcely extended beyond the clergy. The law required the rector to

take the oaths, or to quit his living: but no oath, no acknowledgment of

the title of the new King and Queen, was required from the parishioner

as a qualification for attending divine service, or for receiving the

Eucharist. Not one in fifty, therefore, of those laymen who disapproved

of the Revolution thought himself bound to quit his pew in the old

church, where the old liturgy was still read, and where the old

vestments were still worn, and to follow the ejected priest to a

conventicle, a conventicle, too, which was not protected by the

Toleration Act. Thus the new sect was a sect of preachers without

hearers; and such preachers could not make a livelihood by preaching. In

London, indeed, and in some other large towns, those vehement Jacobites,

whom nothing would satisfy but to hear King James and the Prince of

Wales prayed for by name, were sufficiently numerous to make up a few

small congregations, which met secretly, and under constant fear of

the constables, in rooms so mean that the meeting houses of the Puritan

dissenters might by comparison be called palaces. Even Collier, who had

all the qualities which attract large audiences, was reduced to be the

minister of a little knot of malecontents, whose oratory was on a second

floor in the city. But the nonjuring clergymen who were able to obtain

even a pittance by officiating at such places were very few. Of the

rest some had independent means: some lived by literature: one or two

practised physic. Thomas Wagstaffe, for example, who had been Chancellor

of Lichfield, had many patients, and made himself conspicuous by always

visiting them in full canonicals, [480] But these were exceptions.

Industrious poverty is a state by no means unfavourable to virtue: but

it is dangerous to be at once poor and idle; and most of the clergymen

who had refused to swear found themselves thrown on the world with

nothing to eat and with nothing to do. They naturally became beggars and

loungers. Considering themselves as martyrs suffering in a public cause,

they were not ashamed to ask any good churchman for a guinea. Most of

them passed their lives in running about from one Tory coffeehouse to

another, abusing the Dutch, hearing and spreading reports that within

a month His Majesty would certainly be on English ground, and wondering

who would have Salisbury when Burnet was hanged. During the session

of Parliament the lobbies and the Court of Requests were crowded with

deprived parsons, asking who was up, and what the numbers were on the

last division. Many of the ejected divines became domesticated, as

chaplains, tutors and spiritual directors, in the houses of opulent

Jacobites. In a situation of this kind, a man of pure and exalted

character, such a man as Ken was among the nonjurors, and Watts among

the nonconformists, may preserve his dignity, and may much more

than repay by his example and his instructions the benefits which he

receives. But to a person whose virtue is not high toned this way of

life is full of peril. If he is of a quiet disposition, he is in danger

of sinking into a servile, sensual, drowsy parasite. If he is of an

active and aspiring nature, it may be feared that he will become expert

in those bad arts by which, more easily than by faithful service,

retainers make themselves agreeable or formidable. To discover the weak

side of every character, to flatter every passion and prejudice, to sow

discord and jealousy where love and confidence ought to exist, to watch

the moment of indiscreet openness for the purpose of extracting secrets

important to the prosperity and honour of families, such are the

practices by which keen and restless spirits have too often avenged

themselves for the humiliation of dependence. The public voice loudly

accused many nonjurors of requiting the hospitality of their benefactors

with villany as black as that of the hypocrite depicted in the

masterpiece of Moliere. Indeed, when Cibber undertook to adapt that

noble comedy to the English stage, he made his Tartuffe a nonjuror:

and Johnson, who cannot be supposed to have been prejudiced against the

nonjurors, frankly owned that Cibber had done them no wrong, [481]

There can be no doubt that the schism caused by the oaths would have

been far more formidable, if, at this crisis, any extensive change had

been made in the government or in the ceremonial of the Established

Church. It is a highly instructive fact that those enlightened and

tolerant divines who most ardently desired such a change afterwards saw

reason to be thankful that their favourite project had failed.

Whigs and Tories had in the late Session combined to get rid of

Nottingham's Comprehension Bill by voting an address which requested the

King to refer the whole subject to the Convocation. Burnet foresaw the

effect of this vote. The whole scheme, he said, was utterly ruined,

[482] Many of his friends, however, thought differently; and among these

was Tillotson. Of all the members of the Low Church party Tillotson

stood highest in general estimation. As a preacher, he was thought

by his contemporaries to have surpassed all rivals living or dead.

Posterity has reversed this judgment. Yet Tillotson still keeps his

place as a legitimate English classic. His highest flights were indeed

far below those of Taylor, of Barrow, and of South; but his oratory was

more correct and equable than theirs. No quaint conceits, no pedantic

quotations from Talmudists and scholiasts, no mean images, buffoon

stories, scurrilous invectives, ever marred the effect of his grave and

temperate discourses. His reasoning was just sufficiently profound and

sufficiently refined to be followed by a popular audience with that

slight degree of intellectual exertion which is a pleasure. His style

is not brilliant; but it is pure, transparently clear, and equally free

from the levity and from the stiffness which disfigure the sermons of

some eminent divines of the seventeenth century. He is always serious:

yet there is about his manner a certain graceful ease which marks him

as a man who knows the world, who has lived in populous cities and in

splendid courts, and who has conversed, not only with books, but with

lawyers and merchants, wits and beauties, statesmen and princes.

The greatest charm of his compositions, however, is deriven from the

benignity and candour which appear in every line, and which shone forth

not less conspicuously in his life than in his writings.

As a theologian, Tillotson was certainly not less latitudinarian than

Burnet. Yet many of those clergymen to whom Burnet was an object of

implacable aversion spoke of Tillotson with tenderness and respect.

It is therefore not strange that the two friends should have formed

different estimates of the temper of the priesthood, and should

have expected different results from the meeting of the Convocation.

Tillotson was not displeased with the vote of the Commons. He conceived

that changes made in religious institutions by mere secular authority

might disgust many churchmen, who would yet be perfectly willing to

vote, in an ecclesiastical synod, for changes more extensive still; and

his opinion had great weight with the King, [483] It was resolved that

the Convocation should meet at the beginning of the next session

of Parliament, and that in the meantime a commission should issue

empowering some eminent divines to examine the Liturgy, the canons, and

the whole system of jurisprudence administered by the Courts Christian,

and to report on the alterations which it might be desirable to make,

[484]

Most of the Bishops who had taken the oaths were in this commission;

and with them were joined twenty priests of great note. Of the twenty

Tillotson was the most important: for he was known to speak the sense

both of the King and of the Queen. Among those Commissioners who looked

up to Tillotson as their chief were Stillingfleet, Dean of Saint Paul's,

Sharp, Dean of Norwich, Patrick, Dean of Peterborough, Tenison, Rector

of Saint Martin's, and Fowler, to whose judicious firmness was chiefly

to be ascribed the determination of the London clergy not to read the

Declaration of Indulgence.

With such men as those who have been named were mingled some divines who

belonged to the High Church party. Conspicuous among these were two

of the rulers of Oxford, Aldrich and Jane. Aldrich had recently been

appointed Dean of Christchurch, in the room of the Papist Massey, whom

James had, in direct violation of the laws, placed at the head of

that great college. The new Dean was a polite, though not a profound,

scholar, and a jovial, hospitable gentleman. He was the author of some

theological tracts which have long been forgotten, and of a compendium

of logic which is still used: but the best works which he has bequeathed

to posterity are his catches. Jane, the King's Professor of Divinity,

was a graver but a less estimable man. He had borne the chief part in

framing that decree by which his University ordered the works of Milton

and Buchanan to be publicly burned in the Schools. A few years later,

irritated and alarmed by the persecution of the Bishops and by the

confiscation of the revenues of Magdalene College, he had renounced

the doctrine of nonresistance, had repaired to the headquarters of

the Prince of Orange, and had assured His Highness that Oxford would

willingly coin her plate for the support of the war against her

oppressor. During a short time Jane was generally considered as a

Whig, and was sharply lampooned by some of his old allies. He was

so unfortunate as to have a name which was an excellent mark for the

learned punsters of his university. Several epigrams were written on the

doublefaced Janus, who, having got a professorship by looking one way,

now hoped to get a bishopric by looking another. That he hoped to get a

bishopric was perfectly true. He demanded the see of Exeter as a reward

due to his services. He was refused. The refusal convinced him that the

Church had as much to apprehend from Latitudinarianism as from Popery;

and he speedily became a Tory again, [485]

Early in October the Commissioners assembled in the Jerusalem Chamber.

At their first meeting they determined to propose that, in the public

services of the Church, lessons taken from the canonical books

of Scripture should be substituted for the lessons taken from the

Apocrypha, [486] At the second meeting a strange question was raised

by the very last person who ought to have raised it. Sprat, Bishop of

Rochester, had, without any scruple, sate, during two years, in the

unconstitutional tribunal which had, in the late reign, oppressed and

pillaged the Church of which he was a ruler. But he had now become

scrupulous, and expressed a doubt whether the commission were legal.

To a plain understanding his objections seem to be mere quibbles. The

commission gave power neither to make laws nor to administer laws,

but simply to inquire and to report. Even without a royal commission

Tillotson, Patrick, and Stillingfleet might, with perfect propriety,

have met to discuss the state and prospects of the Church, and to

consider whether it would or would not be desirable to make some

concession to the dissenters. And how could it be a crime for subjects

to do at the request of their Sovereign that which it would have been

innocent and laudable for them to do without any such request? Sprat

however was seconded by Jane. There was a sharp altercation; and Lloyd,

Bishop of Saint Asaph, who, with many good qualities, had an irritable

temper, was provoked into saying something about spies. Sprat withdrew

and came no more. His example was soon followed by Jane and Aldrich,

[487] The commissioners proceeded to take into consideration the

question of the posture at the Eucharist. It was determined to recommend

that a communicant, who, after conference with his minister, should

declare that he could not conscientiously receive the bread and wine

kneeling, might receive them sitting. Mew, Bishop of Winchester, an

honest man, but illiterate, weak even in his best days, and now fast

sinking into dotage, protested against this concession, and withdrew

from the assembly. The other members continued to apply themselves

vigorously to their task: and no more secessions took place, though

there were great differences of opinion, and though the debates were

sometimes warm. The highest churchmen who still remained were Doctor

William Beveridge, Archdeacon of Colchester, who many years later became

Bishop of Saint Asaph, and Doctor John Scott, the same who had prayed

by the deathbed of Jeffreys. The most active among the Latitudinarians

appear to have been Burnet, Fowler, and Tenison.

The baptismal service was repeatedly discussed. As to matter of form the

Commissioners were disposed to be indulgent. They were generally willing

to admit infants into the Church without sponsors and without the sign

of the cross. But the majority, after much debate, steadily refused

to soften down or explain away those words which, to all minds

not sophisticated, appear to assert the regenerating virtue of the

sacrament, [488]

As to the surplice, the Commissioners determined to recommend that a

large discretion should be left to the Bishops. Expedients were devised

by which a person who had received Presbyterian ordination might,

without admitting, either expressly or by implication, the invalidity of

that ordination, become a minister of the Church of England, [489]

The ecclesiastical calendar was carefully revised. The great festivals

were retained. But it was not thought desirable that Saint Valentine,

Saint Chad, Saint Swithin, Saint Edward King of the West Saxons, Saint

Dunstan, and Saint Alphage, should share the honours of Saint John and

Saint Paul; or that the Church should appear to class the ridiculous

fable of the discovery of the cross with facts so awfully important as

the Nativity, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of her

Lord, [490]

The Athanasian Creed caused much perplexity. Most of the Commissioners

were equally unwilling to give up the doctrinal clauses and to retain

the damnatory clauses. Burnet, Fowler, and Tillotson were desirous to

strike this famous symbol out of the liturgy altogether. Burnet brought

forward one argument, which to himself probably did not appear to

have much weight, but which was admirably calculated to perplex his

opponents, Beveridge and Scott. The Council of Ephesus had always been

reverenced by Anglican divines as a synod which had truly represented

the whole body of the faithful, and which had been divinely guided in

the way of truth. The voice of that Council was the voice of the Holy

Catholic and Apostolic Church, not yet corrupted by superstition, or

rent asunder by schism. During more than twelve centuries the world

had not seen an ecclesiastical assembly which had an equal claim to the

respect of believers. The Council of Ephesus had, in the plainest terms,

and under the most terrible penalties, forbidden Christians to frame or

to impose on their brethren any creed other than the creed settled by

the Nicene Fathers. It should seem therefore that, if the Council of

Ephesus was really under the direction of the Holy Spirit, whoever

uses the Athanasian Creed must, in the very act of uttering an anathema

against his neighbours, bring down an anathema on his own head, [491]

In spite of the authority of the Ephesian Fathers, the majority of the

Commissioners determined to leave the Athanasian Creed in the Prayer

Book; but they proposed to add a rubric drawn up by Stillingfleet, which

declared that the damnatory clauses were to be understood to apply only

to such as obstinately denied the substance of the Christian Faith.

Orthodox believers were therefore permitted to hope that the heretic

who had honestly and humbly sought for truth would not be everlastingly

punished for having failed to find it, [492]

Tenison was intrusted with the business of examining the Liturgy and

of collecting all those expressions to which objections had been made,

either by theological or by literary critics. It was determined to

remove some obvious blemishes. And it would have been wise in the

Commissioners to stop here. Unfortunately they determined to rewrite a

great part of the Prayer Book. It was a bold undertaking; for in general

the style of that volume is such as cannot be improved. The English

Liturgy indeed gains by being compared even with those fine ancient

Liturgies from which it is to a great extent taken. The essential

qualities of devotional eloquence, conciseness, majestic simplicity,

pathetic earnestness of supplication, sobered by a profound reverence,

are common between the translations and the originals. But in the

subordinate graces of diction the originals must be allowed to be far

inferior to the translations. And the reason is obvious. The technical

phraseology of Christianity did not become a part of the Latin language

till that language had passed the age of maturity and was sinking into

barbarism. But the technical phraseology of Christianity was found in

the Anglosaxon and in the Norman French, long before the union of those

two dialects had, produced a third dialect superior to either. The Latin

of the Roman Catholic services, therefore, is Latin in the last stage

of decay. The English of our services is English in all the vigour and

suppleness of early youth. To the great Latin writers, to Terence and

Lucretius, to Cicero and Caesar, to Tacitus and Quintilian, the noblest

compositions of Ambrose and Gregory would have seemed to be, not merely

bad writing, but senseless gibberish, [493] The diction of our Book of

Common Prayer, on the other hand, has directly or indirectly contributed

to form the diction of almost every great English writer, and has

extorted the admiration of the most accomplished infidels and of the

most accomplished nonconformists, of such men as David Hume and Robert

Hall.

The style of the Liturgy, however, did not satisfy the Doctors of the

Jerusalem Chamber. They voted the Collects too short and too dry: and

Patrick was intrusted with the duty of expanding and ornamenting them.

In one respect, at least, the choice seems to have been unexceptionable;

for, if we judge by the way in which Patrick paraphrased the most

sublime Hebrew poetry, we shall probably be of opinion that, whether he

was or was not qualified to make the collects better, no man that ever

lived was more competent to make them longer, [494]

It mattered little, however, whether the recommendations of the

Commission were good or bad. They were all doomed before they were

known. The writs summoning the Convocation of the province of Canterbury

had been issued; and the clergy were every where in a state of violent

excitement. They had just taken the oaths, and were smarting from the

earnest reproofs of nonjurors, from the insolent taunts of Whigs, and

often undoubtedly from the stings of remorse. The announcement that

a Convocation was to sit for the purpose of deliberating on a plan of

comprehension roused all the strongest passions of the priest who had

just complied with the law, and was ill satisfied or half satisfied with

himself for complying. He had an opportunity of contributing to defeat

a favourite scheme of that government which had exacted from him,

under severe penalties, a submission not easily to be reconciled to his

conscience or his pride. He had an opportunity of signalising his zeal

for that Church whose characteristic doctrines he had been accused of

deserting for lucre. She was now, he conceived, threatened by a danger

as great as that of the preceding year. The Latitudinarians of 1689 were

not less eager to humble and to ruin her than the Jesuits of 1688.

The Toleration Act had done for the Dissenters quite as much as was

compatible with her dignity and security; and nothing more ought to be

conceded, not the hem of one of her vestments, not an epithet from the

beginning to the end of her Liturgy. All the reproaches which had been

thrown on the ecclesiastical commission of James were transferred to

the ecclesiastical commission of William. The two commissions indeed

had nothing but the name in common. Put the name was associated with

illegality and oppression, with the violation of dwellings and the

confiscation of freeholds, and was therefore assiduously sounded with no

small effect by the tongues of the spiteful in the ears of the ignorant.

The King too, it was said, was not sound. He conformed indeed to the

established worship; but his was a local and occasional conformity. For

some ceremonies to which High Churchmen were attached he had a distaste

which he was at no pains to conceal. One of his first acts had been

to give orders that in his private chapel the service should be said

instead of being sung; and this arrangement, though warranted by the

rubric, caused much murmuring, [495] It was known that he was so

profane as to sneer at a practice which had been sanctioned by high

ecclesiastical authority, the practice of touching for the scrofula.

This ceremony had come down almost unaltered from the darkest of the

dark ages to the time of Newton and Locke. The Stuarts frequently

dispensed the healing influences in the Banqueting House. The days on

which this miracle was to be wrought were fixed at sittings of the Privy

Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy in all the parish

churches of the realm, [496] When the appointed time came, several

divines in full canonicals stood round the canopy of state. The surgeon

of the royal household introduced the sick. A passage from the sixteenth

chapter of the Gospel of Saint Mark was read. When the words, "They

shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover," had been

pronounced, there was a pause, and one of the sick was brought up to the

King. His Majesty stroked the ulcers and swellings, and hung round the

patient's neck a white riband to which was fastened a gold coin.

The other sufferers were then led up in succession; and, as each was

touched, the chaplain repeated the incantation, "they shall lay their

hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Then came the epistle,

prayers, antiphonies and a benediction. The service may still be found

in the prayer books of the reign of Anne. Indeed it was not till some

time after the accession of George the First that the University

of Oxford ceased to reprint the Office of Healing together with the

Liturgy. Theologians of eminent learning, ability, and virtue gave the

sanction of their authority to this mummery; [497] and, what is stranger

still, medical men of high note believed, or affected to believe, in the

balsamic virtues of the royal hand. We must suppose that every surgeon

who attended Charles the Second was a man of high repute for skill; and

more than one of the surgeons who attended Charles the Second has left

us a solemn profession of faith in the King's miraculous power. One of

them is not ashamed to tell us that the gift was communicated by the

unction administered at the coronation; that the cures were so numerous

and sometimes so rapid that they could not be attributed to any natural

cause; that the failures were to be ascribed to want of faith on the

part of the patients; that Charles once handled a scrofulous Quaker and

made him a healthy man and a sound Churchman in a moment; that, if those

who had been healed lost or sold the piece of gold which had been hung

round their necks, the ulcers broke forth again, and could be removed

only by a second touch and a second talisman. We cannot wonder that,

when men of science gravely repeated such nonsense, the vulgar should

believe it. Still less can we wonder that wretches tortured by a disease

over which natural remedies had no power should eagerly drink in tales

of preternatural cures: for nothing is so credulous as misery. The

crowds which repaired to the palace on the days of healing were immense.

Charles the Second, in the course of his reign, touched near a hundred

thousand persons. The number seems to have increased or diminished as

the king's popularity rose or fell. During that Tory reaction which

followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, the press to get near

him was terrific. In 1682, he performed the rite eight thousand five

hundred times. In 1684, the throng was such that six or seven of the

sick were trampled to death. James, in one of his progresses, touched

eight hundred persons in the choir of the Cathedral of Chester. The

expense of the ceremony was little less than ten thousand pounds a year,

and would have been much greater but for the vigilance of the royal

surgeons, whose business it was to examine the applicants, and to

distinguish those who came for the cure from those who came for the

gold, [498]

William had too much sense to be duped, and too much honesty to bear a

part in what he knew to be an imposture. "It is a silly superstition,"

he exclaimed, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his palace was

besieged by a crowd of the sick: "Give the poor creatures some money,

and send them away." [499] On one single occasion he was importuned into

laying his hand on a patient. "God give you better health," he said,

"and more sense." The parents of scrofulous children cried out against

his cruelty: bigots lifted up their hands and eyes in horror at his

impiety: Jacobites sarcastically praised him for not presuming

to arrogate to himself a power which belonged only to legitimate

sovereigns; and even some Whigs thought that he acted unwisely in

treating with such marked contempt a superstition which had a strong

hold on the vulgar mind: but William was not to be moved, and was

accordingly set down by many High Churchmen as either an infidel or a

puritan, [500]

The chief cause, however, which at this time made even the most moderate

plan of comprehension hateful to the priesthood still remains to be

mentioned. What Burnet had foreseen and foretold had come to pass. There

was throughout the clerical profession a strong disposition to retaliate

on the Presbyterians of England the wrongs of the Episcopalians of

Scotland. It could not be denied that even the highest churchmen had,

in the summer of 1688, generally declared themselves willing to give

up many things for the sake of union. But it was said, and not without

plausibility, that what was passing on the other side of the Border

proved union on any reasonable terms to be impossible. With what face,

it was asked, can those who will make no concession to us where we are

weak, blame us for refusing to make any concession to them where we are

strong? We cannot judge correctly of the principles and feelings of a

sect from the professions which it makes in a time of feebleness and

suffering. If we would know what the Puritan spirit really is, we must

observe the Puritan when he is dominant. He was dominant here in the

last generation; and his little finger was thicker than the loins of the

prelates. He drove hundreds of quiet students from their cloisters, and

thousands of respectable divines from their parsonages, for the crime of

refusing to sign his Covenant. No tenderness was shown to learning, to

genius or to sanctity. Such men as Hall and Sanderson, Chillingworth and

Hammond, were not only plundered, but flung into prisons, and exposed

to all the rudeness of brutal gaolers. It was made a crime to read fine

psalms and prayers bequeathed to the faithful by Ambrose and Chrysostom.

At length the nation became weary of the reign of the saints. The fallen

dynasty and the fallen hierarchy were restored. The Puritan was in his

turn subjected to disabilities and penalties; and he immediately found

out that it was barbarous to punish men for entertaining conscientious

scruples about a garb, about a ceremony, about the functions of

ecclesiastical officers. His piteous complaints and his arguments in

favour of toleration had at length imposed on many well meaning persons.

Even zealous churchmen had begun to entertain a hope that the severe

discipline which he had undergone had made him candid, moderate,

charitable. Had this been really so, it would doubtless have been our

duty to treat his scruples with extreme tenderness. But, while we were

considering what we could do to meet his wishes in England, he had

obtained ascendency in Scotland; and, in an instant, he was all himself

again, bigoted, insolent, and cruel. Manses had been sacked; churches

shut up; prayer books burned; sacred garments torn; congregations

dispersed by violence; priests hustled, pelted, pilloried, driven forth,

with their wives and babes, to beg or die of hunger. That these outrages

were to be imputed, not to a few lawless marauders, but to the great

body of the Presbyterians of Scotland, was evident from the fact

that the government had not dared either to inflict punishment on the

offenders or to grant relief to the sufferers. Was it not fit then that

the Church of England should take warning? Was it reasonable to ask

her to mutilate her apostolical polity and her beautiful ritual for the

purpose of conciliating those who wanted nothing but power to rabble her

as they had rabbled her sister? Already these men had obtained a boon

which they ill deserved, and which they never would have granted.

They worshipped God in perfect security. Their meeting houses were

as effectually protected as the choirs of our cathedrals. While

no episcopal minister could, without putting his life in jeopardy,

officiate in Ayrshire or Renfrewshire, a hundred Presbyterian ministers

preached unmolested every Sunday in Middlesex. The legislature had,

with a generosity perhaps imprudent, granted toleration to the most

intolerant of men; and with toleration it behoved them to be content.

Thus several causes conspired to inflame the parochial clergy against

the scheme of comprehension. Their temper was such that, if the plan

framed in the Jerusalem Chamber had been directly submitted to them,

it would have been rejected by a majority of twenty to one. But in

the Convocation their weight bore no proportion to their number.

The Convocation has, happily for our country, been so long utterly

insignificant that, till a recent period, none but curious students

cared to inquire how it was constituted; and even now many persons, not

generally ill informed, imagine it to have been a council representing

the Church of England. In truth the Convocation so often mentioned

in our ecclesiastical history is merely the synod of the Province of

Canterbury, and never had a right to speak in the name of the whole

clerical body. The Province of York had also its convocation: but,

till the eighteenth century was far advanced, the Province of York was

generally so poor, so rude, and so thinly peopled, that, in political

importance, it could hardly be considered as more than a tenth part of

the kingdom. The sense of the Southern clergy was therefore popularly

considered as the sense of the whole profession. When the formal

concurrence of the Northern clergy was required, it seems to have been

given as a matter of course. Indeed the canons passed by the Convocation

of Canterbury in 1604 were ratified by James the First, and were ordered

to be strictly observed in every part of the kingdom, two years before

the Convocation of York went through the form of approving them. Since

these ecclesiastical councils became mere names, a great change has

taken place in the relative position of the two Archbishoprics. In all

the elements of power, the region beyond Trent is now at least a third

part of England. When in our own time the representative system was

adjusted to the altered state of the country, almost all the small

boroughs which it was necessary to disfranchise were in the south. Two

thirds of the new members given to great provincial towns were given

to the north. If therefore any English government should suffer the

Convocations, as now constituted, to meet for the despatch of business,

two independent synods would be legislating at the same time for one

Church. It is by no means impossible that one assembly might adopt

canons which the other might reject, that one assembly might condemn as

heretical propositions which the other might hold to be orthodox, [501]

In the seventeenth century no such danger was apprehended. So little

indeed was the Convocation of York then considered, that the two Houses

of Parliament had, in their address to William, spoken only of one

Convocation, which they called the Convocation of the Clergy of the

Kingdom.

The body which they thus not very accurately designated is divided into

two Houses. The Upper House is composed of the Bishops of the Province

of Canterbury. The Lower House consisted, in 1689, of a hundred and

forty-four members. Twenty-two Deans and fifty-four Archdeacons sate

there in virtue of their offices. Twenty-four divines sate as proctors

for twenty-four chapters. Only forty-four proctors were elected by

the eight thousand parish priests of the twenty-two dioceses. These

forty-four proctors, however, were almost all of one mind. The elections

had in former times been conducted in the most quiet and decorous

manner. But on this occasion the canvassing was eager: the contests were

sharp: Rochester, the leader of the party which in the House of Lords

had opposed the Comprehension-Bill, and his brother Clarendon, who had

refused to take the oaths, had gone to Oxford, the head quarters of that

party, for the purpose of animating and organizing the opposition, [502]

The representatives of the parochial clergy must have been men whose

chief distinction was their zeal: for in the whole list can be found not

a single illustrious name, and very few names which are now known even

to curious students, [503] The official members of the Lower House,

among whom were many distinguished scholars and preachers, seem to have

been not very unequally divided.

During the summer of 1689 several high ecclesiastical dignities became

vacant, and were bestowed on divines who were sitting in the Jerusalem

Chamber. It has already been mentioned that Thomas, Bishop of Worcester,

died just before the day fixed for taking the oaths. Lake, Bishop of

Chichester, lived just long enough to refuse them, and with his last

breath declared that he would maintain even at the stake the doctrine

of indefeasible hereditary right. The see of Chichester was filled by

Patrick, that of Worcester by Stillingfleet; and the deanery of

Saint Paul's which Stillingfleet quitted was given to Tillotson. That

Tillotson was not raised to the episcopal bench excited some surprise.

But in truth it was because the government held his services in the

highest estimation that he was suffered to remain a little longer a

simple presbyter. The most important office in the Convocation was that

of Prolocutor of the Lower House. The Prolocutor was to be chosen by the

members: and the only moderate man who had a chance of being chosen was

Tillotson. It had in fact been already determined that he should be the

next Archbishop of Canterbury. When he went to kiss hands for his new

deanery he warmly thanked the King. "Your Majesty has now set me at ease

for the remainder of my life." "No such thing, Doctor, I assure you,"

said William. He then plainly intimated that, whenever Sancroft should

cease to fill the highest ecclesiastical station, Tillotson would

succeed to it. Tillotson stood aghast; for his nature was quiet and

unambitious: he was beginning to feel the infirmities of old age: he

cared little for money: of worldly advantages those which he most

valued were an honest fame and the general good will of mankind: those

advantages he already possessed; and he could not but be aware that, if

he became primate, he should incur the bitterest hatred of a powerful

party, and should become a mark for obloquy, from which his gentle

and sensitive nature shrank as from the rack or the wheel. William was

earnest and resolute. "It is necessary," he said, "for my service; and

I must lay on your conscience the responsibility of refusing me your

help." Here the conversation ended. It was, indeed, not necessary that

the point should be immediately decided; for several months were still

to elapse before the Archbishopric would be vacant.

Tillotson bemoaned himself with unfeigned anxiety and sorrow to Lady

Russell, whom, of all human beings, he most honoured and trusted, [504]

He hoped, he said, that he was not inclined to shrink from the service

of the Church; but he was convinced that his present line of service was

that in which he could be most useful. If he should be forced to accept

so high and so invidious a post as the primacy, he should soon sink

under the load of duties and anxieties too heavy for his strength. His

spirits, and with his spirits his abilities, would fail him. He gently

complained of Burnet, who loved and admired him with a truly generous

heartiness, and who had laboured to persuade both the King and

Queen that there was in England only one man fit for the highest

ecclesiastical dignity. "The Bishop of Salisbury," said Tillotson, "is

one of the best and worst friends that I know."

Nothing that was not a secret to Burnet was likely to be long a secret

to any body. It soon began to be whispered about that the King had

fixed on Tillotson to fill the place of Sancroft. The news caused cruel

mortification to Compton, who, not unnaturally, conceived that his own

claims were unrivalled. He had educated the Queen and her sister; and

to the instruction which they had received from him might fairly be

ascribed, at least in part, the firmness with which, in spite of the

influence of their father, they had adhered to the established religion.

Compton was, moreover, the only prelate who, during the late reign, had

raised his voice in Parliament against the dispensing power, the only

prelate who had been suspended by the High Commission, the only prelate

who had signed the invitation to the Prince of Orange, the only prelate

who had actually taken arms against Popery and arbitrary power, the

only prelate, save one, who had voted against a Regency. Among the

ecclesiastics of the Province of Canterbury who had taken the oaths,

he was highest in rank. He had therefore held, during some months, a

vicarious primacy: he had crowned the new Sovereigns: he had consecrated

the new Bishops: he was about to preside in the Convocation. It may be

added, that he was the son of an Earl; and that no person of equally

high birth then sate, or had ever sate, since the Reformation, on the

episcopal bench. That the government should put over his head a priest

of his own diocese, who was the son of a Yorkshire clothier, and who was

distinguished only by abilities and virtues, was provoking; and Compton,

though by no means a badhearted man, was much provoked. Perhaps his

vexation was increased by the reflection that he had, for the sake of

those by whom he was thus slighted, done some things which had strained

his conscience and sullied his reputation, that he had at one time

practised the disingenuous arts of a diplomatist, and at another time

given scandal to his brethren by wearing the buff coat and jackboots of

a trooper. He could not accuse Tillotson of inordinate ambition. But,

though Tillotson was most unwilling to accept the Archbishopric himself,

he did not use his influence in favour of Compton, but earnestly

recommended Stillingfleet as the man fittest to preside over the Church

of England. The consequence was that, on the eve of the meeting of

Convocation, the Bishop who was to be at the head of the Upper House

became the personal enemy of the presbyter whom the government wished to

see at the head of the Lower House. This quarrel added new difficulties

to difficulties which little needed any addition, [505]

It was not till the twentieth of November that the Convocation met for

the despatch of business. The place of meeting had generally been Saint

Paul's Cathedral. But Saint Paul's Cathedral was slowly rising from

its ruins; and, though the dome already towered high above the hundred

steeples of the City, the choir had not yet been opened for public

worship. The assembly therefore sate at Westminster, [506] A table was

placed in the beautiful chapel of Henry the Seventh. Compton was in

the chair. On his right and left those suffragans of Canterbury who

had taken the oaths were ranged in gorgeous vestments of scarlet

and miniver. Below the table was assembled the crowd of presbyters.

Beveridge preached a Latin sermon, in which he warmly eulogized the

existing system, and yet declared himself favourable to a moderate

reform. Ecclesiastical laws were, he said, of two kinds. Some laws were

fundamental and eternal: they derived their authority from God; nor

could any religious community repeal them without ceasing to form a part

of the universal Church. Other laws were local and temporary. They had

been framed by human wisdom, and might be altered by human wisdom. They

ought not indeed to be altered without grave reasons. But surely, at

that moment, such reasons were not wanting. To unite a scattered flock

in one fold under one shepherd, to remove stumbling blocks from the path

of the weak, to reconcile hearts long estranged, to restore spiritual

discipline to its primitive vigour, to place the best and purest of

Christian societies on a base broad enough to stand against all the

attacks of earth and hell, these were objects which might well justify

some modification, not of Catholic institutions, but of national or

provincial usages, [507]

The Lower House, having heard this discourse, proceeded to appoint

a Prolocutor. Sharp, who was probably put forward by the members

favourable to a comprehension as one of the highest churchmen among

them, proposed Tillotson. Jane, who had refused to act under the

Royal Commission, was proposed on the other side. After some animated

discussion, Jane was elected by fifty-five votes to twenty-eight, [508]

The Prolocutor was formally presented to the Bishop of London, and

made, according to ancient usage, a Latin oration. In this oration the

Anglican Church was extolled as the most perfect of all institutions.

There was a very intelligible intimation that no change whatever in her

doctrine, her discipline, or her ritual was required; and the discourse

concluded with a most significant sentence. Compton, when a few months

before he exhibited himself in the somewhat unclerical character of

a colonel of horse, had ordered the colours of his regiment to be

embroidered with the well known words "Nolumus leges Angliae mutari";

and with these words Jane closed his peroration, [509]

Still the Low Churchmen did not relinquish all hope. They very wisely

determined to begin by proposing to substitute lessons taken from the

canonical books for the lessons taken from the Apocrypha. It should seem

that this was a suggestion which, even if there had not been a single

dissenter in the kingdom, might well have been received with favour. For

the Church had, in her sixth Article, declared that the canonical books

were, and that the Apocryphal books were not, entitled to be called Holy

Scriptures, and to be regarded as the rule of faith. Even this reform,

however, the High Churchmen were determined to oppose. They asked,

in pamphlets which covered the counters of Paternoster Row and Little

Britain, why country congregations should be deprived of the pleasure of

hearing about the ball of pitch with which Daniel choked the dragon,

and about the fish whose liver gave forth such a fume as sent the devil

flying from Ecbatana to Egypt. And were there not chapters of the

Wisdom of the Son of Sirach far more interesting and edifying than

the genealogies and muster rolls which made up a large part of the

Chronicles of the Jewish Kings and of the narrative of Nehemiah?

No grave divine however would have liked to maintain, in Henry the

Seventh's Chapel, that it was impossible to find, in many hundreds of

pages dictated by the Holy Spirit, fifty or sixty chapters more edifying

than any thing which could be extracted from the works of the most

respectable uninspired moralist or historian. The leaders of the

majority therefore determined to shun a debate in which they must have

been reduced to a disagreeable dilemma. Their plan was, not to

reject the recommendations of the Commissioners, but to prevent those

recommendations from being discussed; and with this view a system of

tactics was adopted which proved successful.

The law, as it had been interpreted during a long course of years,

prohibited the Convocation from even deliberating on any ecclesiastical

ordinance without a previous warrant from the Crown. Such a warrant,

sealed with the great seal, was brought in form to Henry the Seventh's

Chapel by Nottingham. He at the same time delivered a message from the

King. His Majesty exhorted the assembly to consider calmly and without

prejudice the recommendations of the Commission, and declared that

he had nothing in view but the honour and advantage of the Protestant

religion in general, and of the Church of England in particular, [510]

The Bishops speedily agreed on an address of thanks for the royal

message, and requested the concurrence of the Lower House. Jane and

his adherents raised objection after objection. First they claimed the

privilege of presenting a separate address. When they were forced to

waive this claim, they refused to agree to any expression which imported

that the Church of England had any fellowship with any other Protestant

community. Amendments and reasons were sent backward and forward.

Conferences were held at which Burnet on one side and Jane on the other

were the chief speakers. At last, with great difficulty, a compromise

was made; and an address, cold and ungracious compared with that which

the Bishops had framed, was presented to the King in the Banqueting

House. He dissembled his vexation, returned a kind answer, and intimated

a hope that the assembly would now at length proceed to consider the

great question of Comprehension, [511]

Such however was not the intention of the leaders of the Lower House.

As soon as they were again in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, one of them

raised a debate about the nonjuring bishops. In spite of the unfortunate

scruple which those prelates entertained, they were learned and holy

men. Their advice might, at this conjuncture, be of the greatest service

to the Church. The Upper House was hardly an Upper House in the absence

of the Primate and of many of his most respectable suffragans. Could

nothing be done to remedy this evil? [512] Another member complained of

some pamphlets which had lately appeared, and in which the Convocation

was not treated with proper deference. The assembly took fire. Was it

not monstrous that this heretical and schismatical trash should be cried

by the hawkers about the streets, and should be exposed to sale in the

booths of Westminster Hall, within a hundred yards of the Prolocutor's

chair? The work of mutilating the Liturgy and of turning cathedrals into

conventicles might surely be postponed till the Synod had taken measures

to protect its own freedom and dignity. It was then debated how the

printing of such scandalous books should be prevented. Some were

for indictments, some for ecclesiastical censures, [513] In such

deliberations as these week after week passed away. Not a single

proposition tending to a Comprehension had been even discussed.

Christmas was approaching. At Christmas there was to be a recess. The

Bishops were desirous that, during the recess, a committee should sit to

prepare business. The Lower House refused to consent, [514] That House,

it was now evident, was fully determined not even to enter on the

consideration of any part of the plan which had been framed by the Royal

Commissioners. The proctors of the dioceses were in a worse humour than

when they first came up to Westminster. Many of them had probably never

before passed a week in the capital, and had not been aware how great

the difference was between a town divine and a country divine. The sight

of the luxuries and comforts enjoyed by the popular preachers of the

city raised, not unnaturally, some sore feeling in a Lincolnshire or

Caernarvonshire vicar who was accustomed to live as hardly as small

farmer. The very circumstance that the London clergy were generally for

a comprehension made the representatives of the rural clergy obstinate

on the other side, [515] The prelates were, as a body, sincerely

desirous that some concession might be made to the nonconformists. But

the prelates were utterly unable to curb the mutinous democracy. They

were few in number. Some of them were objects of extreme dislike to the

parochial clergy. The President had not the full authority of a primate;

nor was he sorry to see those who had, as he concerned, used him ill,

thwarted and mortified. It was necessary to yield. The Convocation

was prorogued for six weeks. When those six weeks had expired, it was

prorogued again; and many years elapsed before it was permitted to

transact business.

So ended, and for ever, the hope that the Church of England might be

induced to make some concession to the scruples of the nonconformists. A

learned and respectable minority of the clerical order relinquished

that hope with deep regret. Yet in a very short time even Barnet and

Tillotson found reason to believe that their defeat was really an

escape, and that victory would have been a disaster. A reform, such as,

in the days of Elizabeth, would have united the great body of English

Protestants, would, in the days of William, have alienated more hearts

than it would have conciliated. The schism which the oaths had produced

was, as yet, insignificant. Innovations such as those proposed by the

Royal Commissioners would have given it a terrible importance. As yet

a layman, though he might think the proceedings of the Convention

unjustifiable, and though he might applaud the virtue of the nonjuring

clergy, still continued to sit under the accustomed pulpit, and to kneel

at the accustomed altar. But if, just at this conjuncture, while his

mind was irritated by what he thought the wrong done to his favourite

divines, and while he was perhaps doubting whether he ought not to

follow them, his ears and eyes had been shocked by changes in the

worship to which he was fondly attached, if the compositions of

the doctors of the Jerusalem Chamber had taken the place of the old

collects, if he had seen clergymen without surplices carrying the

chalice and the paten up and down the aisle to seated communicants, the

tie which bound him to the Established Church would have been dissolved.

He would have repaired to some nonjuring assembly, where the service

which he loved was performed without mutilation. The new sect, which

as yet consisted almost exclusively of priests, would soon have been

swelled by numerous and large congregations; and in those congregations

would have been found a much greater proportion of the opulent, of the

highly descended, and of the highly educated, than any other body of

dissenters could show. The Episcopal schismatics, thus reinforced, would

probably have been as formidable to the new King and his successors as

ever the Puritan schismatics had been to the princes of the House of

Stuart. It is an indisputable and a most instructive fact, that we are,

in a great measure, indebted for the civil and religious liberty which

we enjoy to the pertinacity with which the High Church party, in

the Convocation of 1689, refused even to deliberate on any plan of

Comprehension, [516]