WILLIAM AND MARY’S REIGN—1689–1702.
William and Mary were declared King and Queen of England on the 12th of
February 1689. Their reign is marked by great events—such as the siege
of Londonderry, Lord Dundee’s insurrection in Scotland, the battle of
the Boyne, the surrender of Limerick, the massacre of Glencoe, and the
war with France; but we purposely pass over all civil and military
transactions, and confine our attention to ecclesiastical and literary
affairs, with which Samuel Wesley, as a clergyman and as an author, was
more closely connected.
One of the first acts of William, after his accession to the throne, was
to give orders that, in his private chapel, the service should be said
instead of sung. This alteration was warranted by the rubric, and yet it
caused among the High Church and half-popish party a great amount of
murmuring.
Another of his early acts strangely enough occasioned much excitement.
Touching for the scrofula was a practice which had come down from the
darkest of the dark ages, and William dared to sneer at it. It had been
sanctioned by high ecclesiastical authority, but even that did not deter
the bold monarch from treating it with contempt. Charles II., in the
course of his reign, touched near one hundred thousand persons. In 1682,
only seven years before the commencement of the reign of William, he
performed the royal rite not fewer than eight thousand five hundred
times. Two years later, in 1684, the throng of scrofulous persons was
such that six or seven of the sick were trampled to death. King James,
two or three years after, touched eight hundred persons, in the choir of
Chester Cathedral. The days for touching were fixed by the Privy
Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy in all the parish
churches of the realm. 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 16th chapter of Mark
was read, after which one of the sick was brought to the all-healing
monarch. 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. Such was the ceremony of
touching for the cure of the king’s evil. The expense of this ceremony,
in the shape of coins put round the sufferers’ necks, was little less
than £10,000 a-year. The whole affair was a huge piece of costly and
superstitious foolery, ending in no beneficial results whatever. We dare
to assert this, notwithstanding the solemn assurance of one of the
surgeons of King Charles II., that the gift of healing was communicated
by the unction administered at the coronation, and that the cures were
so numerous, and sometimes so rapid, that they could not be attributed
to any natural cause whatever.
King William had too much sense to be duped, and too much honesty to
bear a part in what he knew to be an imposture.[79] “It is a silly
superstition,” said he, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his
palace was besieged by a crowd of sick persons: “give the poor creatures
some money and send them away.” Only on one single occasion was he
successfully importuned to lay his hand on a patient’s sores. “God give
you better health,” he said, “and more sense!” What was the result of
this abandonment of royal practice? The parents of scrofulous children
cried out against William’s cruelty. Bigots lifted up their hands and
eyes 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 of his own friends thought he acted
unwisely in treating with such marked contempt a superstition which had
so strong a hold on the vulgar mind. But William was not to be moved,
and was accordingly set down by many High Churchmen as an infidel, or at
least a Puritan.
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Footnote 79:
William tried to put down the practice, and yet, as late as Lent, in
1712, Dr Johnson was “touched” by Queen Anne.
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As soon as William and Mary ascended the throne of England the new oath
of allegiance was tendered. It was conceived in the simplest form, the
words “rightful and lawful sovereigns” being, upon mature deliberation,
omitted. Notwithstanding this modification, several members, both of the
House of Lords and the House of Commons, refused to take it. Among these
were the Earls of Clarendon, Lichfield, and Exeter, and likewise seven
bishops, including five who had been sent to the Tower for refusing
obedience to the mandates of James. The spiritual lords who refused the
oath of allegiance to William and Mary were Sancroft, the primate,
Turner, Bishop of Ely, Lake, of Chichester, Ken, of Bath, White, of
Peterborough, Thomas, of Worcester, and Frampton, of Gloucester. Above
four hundred of the clergy, including some of the highest distinction,
followed the example set by Sancroft and the six bishops, and thus began
the schism of the _Nonjurors_,—a term which became as prominent as that
of _Nonconformists_ had been under the last two Stuarts.
The 1st of August, 1689, was the day fixed by Parliament, 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. Above twenty-nine-thirtieths submitted to the law,
but, in general, the compliance was tardy, sad, and sullen. Many, no
doubt, deliberately sacrificed principle to interest, but they had not
fortitude to resign the parsonage, the garden, and 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; still the
thing was done, and ten thousand clergymen solemnly called Heaven to
attest their promise that they would be loyal to King William. The
clergymen and members of the university, who refused to take the oath,
were about four hundred in number, including the primate and six of his
suffragans.
Among these dissentients, there were some who were men of scholarship
and mark, but perhaps it is scarce too much to say, that there was
hardly one who was qualified to discuss any large question of morals or
politics without either extreme feebleness or extreme flightiness of
mind. The following are the most distinguished among them:—
William Sherlock, rector of St George’s, Botolph Lane, prebendary of St
Paul’s, and Master of the Temple; all of which preferments were taken
from him until some years afterwards, when he took the oath and was
reinstated. Dr Sherlock was a good man, but held extreme opinions. He
was the author of several publications, but is chiefly indebted for
celebrity to his “Practical Discourse Concerning Death,” a work which
went through thirty editions in a short space of time, has been printed
in all sizes and forms, and has been applauded by the most able critics.
George Hickes, born at Newsham, in Yorkshire, and educated at
Northallerton, a fellow and a tutor of Lincoln College, Oxford, Dean of
Worcester, with the prospect of becoming Bishop of Bristol. He was the
author of three volumes of sermons, and of a multitude of tracts in
defence of himself and of the other nonjurors. Macaulay says, “Of all
the Englishmen of his time George Hickes was the most versed in the old
Teutonic languages, and his knowledge of the early Christian literature
also was extensive.”
Jeremy Collier, lecturer at Gray’s Inn, a man of intrepid courage,
indefatigable industry, and unsullied integrity; the author of three
volumes of essays on moral subjects; of a translation of Moreri’s
“Historical Dictionary,” in four volumes folio; of an “Ecclesiastical
History of Great Britain,” &c. Macaulay writes:—“Jeremy Collier was a
good man, of eminent abilities, and a great master of sarcasm and of
rhetoric. 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 Anti-puritan reaction. His reading, too,
though undigested, was of immense extent: but his mind was narrow, his
reasoning singularly futile and inconclusive, and his brain almost
turned by priestly pride.”
Henry Dodwell, Camden Professor of History in the Oxford University, a
man of great learning, of extensive reading, and of unwearied
application, of undissembled piety, and unimpeached integrity; a man of
great benevolence, and who religiously abstained from almost all kinds
of food three days every week; and yet a man of paradoxical notions,
narrow religious sentiments, and who, as a writer, enlisted in the cause
of infidelity, and attacked revelation in the disguise of a friend. The
brilliant historian above quoted says:—“Dodwell had perused innumerable
volumes in various languages, and 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 Ludowich Muggleton. 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. He further maintained that our souls
are naturally mortal, and that the gift of immortality is conveyed in
the sacrament of baptism; but, in order to the efficacy of the
sacrament, it is absolutely necessary that the water be poured, and the
words be pronounced by a priest who has been ordained by a bishop.”
John Kettlewell, born at Northallerton, fellow and tutor of Lincoln
College, Oxford, domestic chaplain of the Countess of Bedford, and
rector of Coleshill in Warwickshire; a celebrated preacher, a laborious
writer; learned without being proud, and wise without being cunning;
devout without affectation, religious without morosity, and courteous
without flattery. His works, which were numerous, were published in two
volumes folio.
Charles Leslie, chancellor of the cathedral church of the diocese of
Connor, one of the ablest champions the Non-jurors had; a man of
extensive learning and great merit, and the well-known author of “A
Short and Easy Method with the Deists.”
To the above, of course, must be added the primate and the six bishops.
Dr Birch, in drawing Sancroft’s character, says:—“He was slow, timorous,
and narrow-spirited; but at the same time a good, honest, and
well-meaning man. He was laborious in his studies, and had written,
perhaps, more with his own hand than any person of his time. But the
three sermons which he published give us a very low idea of his taste
and judgment, and are more suitable to a disciple of Bishop Andrews than
a contemporary of Dr Tillotson.” Turner, Bishop of Ely, was a man of
higher position than of intellect. Lake, Bishop of Chichester, is also
unknown to fame. Ken, Bishop of Bath, in some respects was a man of
mark; his works, all of a theological and practical turn, were published
in four volumes octavo. He was a man of great integrity and courage;
and, though deprived of his bishopric, to the day of his death signed
himself “late Bishop of Bath and Wells.” He died in 1710, having been in
the habit for many years of travelling with his shroud in his
portmanteau, and which he always put on when attacked by illness. White
of Peterborough is scarce worth mentioning. Thomas of Worcester died
during the first year of William and Mary’s reign; and of Frampton of
Gloucester we know nothing which is worth relating.
These, then, were the principal men among the Non-jurors; and these,
with four hundred clergymen, forfeited their ecclesiastical benefices,
and formed a sort of _non-juring_ church, avowedly Jacobite in its
political predilections and principles, and, which for many years, waged
a fierce controversy with the Establishment on the theological aspects
of the question which divided them. The non-juring system had a few
lay-adherents, but it extended beyond the clergy only to a very limited
extent. The new sect was a sect of preachers without hearers. A few 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 among them by
always visiting them in full canonicals. But these were exceptions. Most
of the Non-jurors found themselves thrown on the world with nothing to
eat and nothing to do. They naturally degenerated into beggars and
loungers, and many of them became domesticated as chaplains, tutors, and
spiritual directors in the houses of opulent Jacobites.[80] The schism
of the Non-jurors, however, led to great changes among the occupants of
Church offices; and, before the end of the third year of King William’s
reign, he had issued no fewer than eighteen _conges_ for the election of
new bishops. During this brief period, sixteen new prelates, all
indebted for their promotion to the existing government, and recommended
by their attachment to the principles of the Revolution, were introduced
into the House of Lords; and of the whole twenty-six sees then existing,
only ten were left in the possession of persons who had been bishops in
the reign of James.[81]
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Footnote 80:
Macaulay.
Footnote 81:
Knight’s _History of England_.
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On the 24th of May 1689, the _Act of Toleration_ became law. This act,
long considered as the Great Charter of religious liberty, has since
been extensively modified, and is hardly known to the present generation
except by name. The several statutes passed between the accession of
Queen Elizabeth and the Revolution, requiring all people, under severe
penalties, to attend the services of the Church of England, and to
abstain from attending conventicles, were left unrepealed; but provision
was made that they should not be construed to extend to any person, who
should testify his loyalty by taking the oaths of allegiance and
supremacy, and his protestantism, by subscribing the declaration against
transubstantiation. The severe Act of Uniformity, the Five Mile Act, and
the Conventicle Act were not repealed, but merely relaxed; it being
provided that dissenting ministers might preach, if they professed,
under their hand, their belief in the Articles of the Church of England,
with a few exceptions, such as, that the Church has power to regulate
ceremonies, that the doctrines in the Book of Homilies are sound, and
that there is nothing superstitious and idolatrous in the ordination
service. But unless the minister subscribed thirty-four out of the
thirty-nine Articles, and the greater part of two other Articles, he
could not preach without incurring all the punishments which the
cavaliers, in the day of their power and vengeance, had devised for the
tormenting and ruining of schismatical teachers. Such were the terms on
which the Protestant Dissenters of England were, for the first time,
permitted by law to worship God according to their own consciences. They
were, on the above conditions, allowed to attend their own places of
worship, provided they were duly registered, and had not the doors
locked or barred. They were protected against hostile intrusion, and it
was made a penal offence to enter a meeting-house for the purpose of
molesting a congregation. The only classes of religionists excepted from
the benefits of this act were the Papists and Socinians.[82]
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Footnote 82:
Knight’s _History of England_, and Macaulay’s _History_.
-----
Many of the Dissenters were still dissatisfied, and wished other matters
of grievance to be settled in parliament. Accordingly, what was called
the “Comprehension Bill” was brought into the House of Lords. The chief
object of this bill was to admit Presbyterian ministers into the Church,
without compelling them to acknowledge the invalidity of their former
ordination; and it also proposed to allow certain ceremonial forms in
public worship to be observed or omitted at discretion.
This bill passed the House of Lords; but the Commons considered the
question as more suitable for a convocation; and the Lords concurred in
an address to the throne to that effect.
To prepare the way for convocation a royal commission was issued,
authorising certain individuals to meet and propose alterations in the
Liturgy and Canons, and to consider other matters connected with the
Church. The commissioners thus appointed were Lamplugh, Compton, Mew,
Lloyd, Sprat, Smith, Trelawney, Burnet, Humphreys, Stratford, all
bishops at the time; also Stillingfleet, Patrick, Tillotson, Sharp,
Hall, Beveridge, Tennison, Fowler, Grove, and Williams, who were
subsequently raised to the Episcopal bench; and likewise Meggot, Kidder,
Aldridge, Jane, Beaumont, Montague, Goodman, Battely, Alston, and Scott,
who, though distinguished men, never attained to prelatical honours.
The commissioners frequently met, but some of the members absented
themselves, especially Dr Jane, the Regius Professor of Divinity in
Oxford, on the ground that alterations were not required, and that the
present was not the season for such discussions. Burnet says, “We had
before us all the books and papers that the Nonconformists had at any
time offered, setting forth their demands, together with many advices
and propositions which had been made at several times by most of the
best and most learned of our divines; and so we prepared a scheme to be
laid before convocation.”
The following are some of the alterations that were proposed:—Chanting
to be discontinued. Apochryphal lessons to be left out of the calendar.
The sign of the cross in baptism to be omitted when desired. The
sacramental elements to be administered in pews to those who might
object to kneeling. The absolution to be read by deacons. The _Gloria
Patri_ not to be repeated at the end of every psalm. In the _Te Deum_
the words only-begotten Son to be substituted for _thine honourable,
true, and only Son_. All titles of the king and queen to be omitted, and
the word “sovereign” only used. The Collects to be revised by Patrick.
Sponsors to be disused if desired. The great festivals, as a rule, to be
retained; but it was not thought desirable that St Valentine, St Chad,
St Swithin, St Dunstan, and St Alphage, should share the honours of St
John and St Paul. The Athanasian creed to be kept in the Prayer-Book,
but Stillingfleet was to draw up a rubric, declaring that the damnatory
clauses were to be understood to apply only to such as obstinately
denied the substance of the Christian faith. The point of greatest
difficulty was that of _re-ordination_; but it was at last agreed that
the hypothetical _form_ should be adopted in the case of Dissenters, as
in the case of uncertain baptism, in these words “_If thou art not
already ordained, I ordain thee_.” Such were some of the alterations
proposed by the commissioners.[83] It mattered little, however, whether
the recommendations of the commissioners were good or bad. They were all
doomed before they were published; for the clergy were all smarting from
being recently compelled to take the oaths, and were resolved to defeat
a favourite scheme of that government which had exacted from them, under
severe penalties, a submission not easily to be reconciled to their
conscience or their pride.
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Footnote 83:
See Lathbury’s _History of Convocation_.
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The convocation, it may be observed, though regularly assembled with
every parliament since the Restoration, had done no business since the
year 1662; so that the members were detained in town, at considerable
expense, during the session, merely to go through the parade of reading
the church service in Latin; but now it was proposed to submit to their
consideration most important changes.
The convocation, summoned by the writ of King William, assembled on the
21st of November 1689. Compton was in the chair. Beveridge preached a
Latin sermon, in which he warmly eulogised the existing system, and yet
declared himself favourable to a moderate reform. The struggle between
the advocates for change and those who wished to preserve the Liturgy in
its present state commenced at the very outset, in the election of a
prolocutor. Tillotson, who was known to speak the sense both of the king
and queen, and was also supported by the government, was proposed by Dr
Sharp, afterwards Archbishop of York; but the election of Dr Jane was
carried by a majority of two to one. Jane, of course, belonged to the
High-Church party. He had borne a chief part in framing that decree by
which the University of Oxford ordered the works of Milton to be
publicly burned in the schools; and yet the same man 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. For a short time Jane had been regarded as a Whig, now he
was a Tory. He had demanded the see of Exeter as a reward due to his
services, but had been refused; and hence his changed sentiments. At the
time several epigrams were written on the double-faced _Janus_, who,
having got a professorship by looking one way, now hoped to get a
bishopric by looking another.
On November 25th the prolocutor was presented to the Upper House, on
which occasion he expatiated on the excellency of the Church of England,
as at present constituted, intimating that no amendments could be made,
and closing with the words, _nolumus leges Angliæ mutari_. The Bishop of
London, as president of the Upper House, replied that the clergy ought
to be prepared to make concessions in matters not essential, and that it
was their duty to show some indulgence to the Dissenters under King
William, since some of the bishops and clergy had pledged themselves to
do so in their addresses to King James.
At the next meeting, the Bishop of London informed the convocation that
the royal commission was defective, inasmuch as the great seal had not
been attached to it. They were, therefore, prorogued until the defect
was supplied. In the interval, great exertions were made by the
government to bring over some of the stiffest opponents in the Lower
House, but with small success. On the 4th of December, the royal
commission was communicated to the convocation, by which they were
authorised to act. The commission stated that, “as rites and ceremonies
are indifferent and alterable,” changes might be made according to the
exigencies of times and places, that it was desirable that the canons
should be reviewed, and the ecclesiastical courts reformed. The
convocation was accordingly empowered to treat of alterations, and to
form canons and constitutions, to be submitted to his Majesty.
The king also sent a message, by the Earl of Nottingham, in which he
expressed his hope that convocation would not “disappoint his good
intentions, or deprive the Church of any benefit from their
consultations.”
Of course, it was necessary to acknowledge the royal message, by an
address to his Majesty. This gave rise to vexatious and most
disreputable squabbles; and the result was, that, without any discussion
whatever on the important matters that had been recommended by the royal
commissioners, convocation was dissolved on February 6, 1690; nor was it
suffered to meet again for the transaction of business for the next ten
years. Thus ended the project for _comprehending_ Dissenters within the
pale of the Church of England, the last attempt of the kind that has
been made.[84]
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Footnote 84:
Lathbury’s _History of Convocation_, and Knight’s _History of
England_.
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From this time dates the long struggle between the two great parties of
Conformists. These parties, indeed, had, under various forms, existed
within the Anglican communion ever since the Reformation; but, till
after the Revolution, they were not marshalled in regular and permanent
order of battle against each other, and therefore were not known by
established names. Now they began to be called the High-Church party and
the Low-Church party. The High-Church party sympathised with James, and
were cool friends to William, and thought that no man who was an enemy
to the ecclesiastical constitution of the realm ought to be permitted to
bear any part in the civil government. The Low-Church party stood
between the Nonconformists and the rigid Conformists, and contained, as
it still contains, two different elements—a Puritan and a Latitudinarian
element. They saw nothing in the existing polity and ceremonial of the
Church of England which could make it their duty to become Dissenters;
but, at the same time, they held that both the polity and ceremonial
were means, not ends, and that the essential spirit of Christianity
might exist without Episcopal orders, and without a Book of Common
Prayer. They had, while James was on the throne, been mainly
instrumental in forming the great Protestant coalition against Popery
and tyranny, and they continued, in 1689, to hold the same conciliatory
language which they had held in 1688. They greatly blamed the scruples
of the Nonconformists, but thought the reflections thrown on them by the
High-Church party to be grossly unjust.[85]
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Footnote 85:
Macaulay.
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More than one Methodist historian has said that Samuel Wesley was “a
rigid Tory in politics, and a High Churchman in religious principle;”
that he “regarded Charles I. as properly a martyr; and was very much
attached to the interests of James.” I respectfully doubt, to some
extent, the correctness of these assertions.
Samuel Wesley was not a Jacobite, and, in the first instance, he was not
a Tory. There is no evidence to show that he was attached to the
interests of James; but, on the contrary, he was disgusted with James’s
tyranny at Oxford, and was the author of the first pamphlet published in
defence of the Revolution. John Wesley says, his father was a Tory, in
the sense of being “one that believes God, not the people, to be the
origin of all civil power;”[86] but he likewise asserts, that his
“father always praised God for the happy revolution of 1688.”[87]
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Footnote 86:
Wesley’s _Works_, vol. xiv., p. 342.
Footnote 87:
_Gent. Mag._, 1785, p. 247.
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Then as it regards his being a High Churchman;—it is true that he
considered Charles I. as an injured sovereign and properly a martyr. He
held the same opinions as his son John, who writes, “All agree that King
Charles was a pattern of piety, sobriety, temperance, and chastity. He
could not endure an obscene or profane word. He was punctual in his
devotions, both public and private. He was rigorously just; but is
supposed to have been sometimes wanting in sincerity. He was a good
father, a good master, and a good husband; yea, a fond one, which was
the chief source of his troubles, together with the wrong bias towards
arbitrary power which had been instilled into him from his infancy. But
for this, he would have been one of the most accomplished princes that
ever sat upon the English throne.”[88] But allowing that Samuel Wesley
held such opinions,—what then? Is that a proof that Samuel Wesley was,
“in religious principle, a High Churchman?” We greatly doubt it.
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Footnote 88:
Wesley’s _History of England_, vol. iii. p. 221.
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The High-Church party were most bitter opponents of Tillotson, the
leader of the Low-Church party; whereas, Samuel Wesley was his ardent
admirer, and even excessive eulogist. The High-Church party were most
vehemently opposed to the scheme of Tillotson and King William, for
“Comprehension,” or the uniting of Conformists and Nonconformists; while
on the other hand, the Low-Church party desired its adoption; and, in
this respect, Samuel Wesley agreed with them. He was in favour of
admitting the Dissenters within the pale of the Established Church, and,
therefore, we infer that he was in favour of the modification of church
rites and ceremonies, as recommended by Tillotson and his friends in
1689. The following is an article taken from the _Athenian Oracle_,
(vol. i. p. 301,) and was probably written by Samuel Wesley himself, or
at all events, it was sanctioned by him, as one of the chief members of
the Athenian Society:—
“A Comprehension, or the uniting of Conformists and Nonconformists, is
undoubtedly necessary for the reforming of England. 1. Because the
schism itself, on which side soever the fault lies, is a great sin and
scandal, and highly needs reformation. That there is a schism is as
plain as that one and one are not one, but two; since there are
different churches, different communions, and hearers more different and
opposite than either. 2. This union is further necessary, even to
_personal reformation_, because the want thereof has so much obstructed
it; persons being more concerned for their own particular tenets than
for common Christianity; nay, entertaining the most bitter, scurrilous,
and profane scoffs against the contrary party, even in their most solemn
and religious performances, with approbation and pleasure. Thus while
one laughs at the other’s preaching, and the other at his praying, the
Atheist laughs at both, and there are very many that believe neither. 3.
Another reason is, because we see not how the ancient church discipline,
so much desired, and the loss thereof so much lamented, can ever without
this be renewed. As things now are, let a person be excommunicated in
our Church, he has the Dissenters to fly to; in theirs, he flies to us,
or indeed keeps between both, rails at all, and is of neither. 4. Again,
while this fatal and scandalous division lasts, it cannot be avoided,
but there will still be different interests, and that powerful ones,
whose struggle will be not only dangerous to the State, but breed
animosities, strife, and bitterness in the different parties.”[89]
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Footnote 89:
The reader will find another article, even more explicit, in the
_Athenian Oracle_, vol. iii. p. 511.
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Such were Samuel Wesley’s arguments in favour of the attempt to bring
Dissenters within the pale of the Church of England. This was not the
language of the High-Church party; for that party were most stoutly
opposed to the propounded scheme altogether. Samuel Wesley was no
partisan of theirs; and it is a most unaccountable mistake for
respectable writers to suppose he was. If he was a _party_ man at all,
he unquestionably belonged to the Tillotson or Low-Church party. It is
true, that ten or twelve years afterwards, he was brought into most
painful collision with his Dissenting brethren; but the fault was not
his so much as Mr Clavel’s. The controversy that then took place was
mournfully bitter, but it was prompted more by politics than by
religion; and though it led to a full and final separation between him
and his old Dissenting friends, yet we are not aware that there is a
particle of evidence to show, that after this he imbibed any of the
supercilious and superstitious notions generally entertained by the
High-Church party of the present day. He held his ecclesiastical and
political principles clearly, conscientiously, and firmly; but he was
not a bigot; and, if such a confederacy as the Evangelical Alliance had
then existed, he could, without a scruple, have become a sincere and
active member of it.
Before leaving the High and the Low Church parties in the days of King
William, it may be added, that though the Low-Church clergymen were a
minority, and not a large minority, of their profession, their weight
was much more than proportioned to their numbers. We should probably
overrate their numerical strength if we were to estimate them at a tenth
part of the priesthood. Yet it will scarcely be denied that there were
among them as many men of distinguished eloquence and learning as could
be found in the other nine-tenths put together.
The head of the Low-Church party was the king. He had been bred a
Presbyterian; he was, from rational conviction, a Latitudinarian; and
personal ambition, as well as higher motives, prompted him to act as
mediator among the Protestant sects. He was bent on effecting three
great reforms in the laws touching ecclesiastical matters. 1. To obtain
for Dissenters permission to celebrate their worship in freedom and
security. 2. To make such changes in the Anglican ritual and polity, as,
without offending those to whom that ritual and polity were dear, might
conciliate the moderate Nonconformists. 3. To throw open civil offices
to Protestants without distinction of sect. The first of these only was
attainable. He came too late for the second, and too early for the
third.[90]
-----
Footnote 90:
Macaulay.
-----
While the preceding events were happening in England, other events of
great importance took place in Scotland. There Episcopacy was abolished,
being a great and insupportable grievance to the nation, and contrary to
the inclinations of the generality of the people. An act was also
passed, in 1690, ordaining that all Presbyterian ministers yet alive,
who had been thrust from their charges since 1661, or banished for not
conforming to Prelacy, should forthwith be restored to their churches,
their manses, and their glebes; and, by another act passed on the 7th of
June, in the same year, parliament ratified and established the
Westminster Confession of Faith, as the public and avowed confession of
the Scottish Church; and restored the government of the Church by
kirk-sessions, presbyteries, provincial synods, and general assemblies.
Such were the opposite effects of the Revolution upon the National
Church in the two ends of the island,—in England consolidating and
confirming the established Episcopacy,—in Scotland sweeping it utterly
away, and in its place re-erecting the old abolished edifice of
presbytery on broader and deeper foundations than ever.
The position in which the Revolution placed the generality of Protestant
Dissenters has been explained in the account given of the Toleration
Act, which was the only measure passed in their favour. From the
benefits of this act the Roman Catholics and the Socinians were
excluded; and, in 1699, the former were placed under greater
restrictions than ever. It was then enacted by parliament,—1. That a
reward of a hundred pounds should be paid to every person who should
apprehend any Popish bishop, priest, or Jesuit, and prosecute him to
conviction, for saying mass, or exercising any other part of his office,
within these realms. 2. That the priest so convicted should be adjudged
to perpetual imprisonment. 3. That the keeping of a school by any Papist
should be punished by the same penalty. 4. That every person, educated
in the Popish religion, or professing the same, who, within six months
after attaining the age of eighteen, should not take the oaths of
allegiance and supremacy, and also subscribe the declaration against
transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, and the sacrifice of the
mass, should be incapable of inheriting, or taking by descent, any
lands, tenements, or hereditaments; and that the next of kin, being a
Protestant, should inherit the estates of which the Roman Catholic was
thus deprived. 5. That all Papists should be incapable of purchasing any
lands, either in their own names or in those of any other persons.[91]
-----
Footnote 91:
Knight’s _History of England_.
-----
This was a monstrous Act of Parliament; but when we take into
consideration the sneaking perfidy, coarse brutalities, and bloodthirsty
cruelties practised by Papists during late years in Ireland, in
Scotland, and even in England itself,—when we remember that Papists in
foreign lands were concocting dark intrigues against the British throne
and British nation, recently rescued from the tyranny of papal
domination,—and when we remember further, that, as lately as the year
1692, De Grandval, a captain of French dragoons, instigated by the
Popish King James, had entered into a conspiracy against the life of
King William, and had been shot for his intended assassination,—and
that, in 1696, there had been another more widely ramified Popish plot
for the same infernal purpose, which resulted in three of the
conspirators being executed at Tyburn,—we are prepared to understand why
Papists were excluded from the benefits of the Toleration Act, and why
they were made the subjects of the legalised persecution of the act of
1699, “for the further preventing of the growth of Popery.” Abstractedly
considered, the act was monstrous, and merits reprobation; but severe
maladies sometimes need severe remedies to effect their cure.
Our space forbids any further review of ecclesiastical affairs during
William and Mary’s reign; and we must now content ourselves with
miscellaneous notices of this eventful period in English history.
In 1690 occurred the death of a man whose name, despite his almost
insane eccentricities, will always occupy a place in English Church
annals. More than forty years had elapsed, says Macaulay, since George
Fox had begun to see visions and to cast out devils. He was then a youth
of pure morals and grave deportment, with a perverse temper, with the
education of a labouring man, and with an intellect in the most unhappy
of all states; that is to say, too much disordered for liberty, and not
sufficiently disordered for bedlam. At the time, Episcopalians,
Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists were refuting and reviling
each other. He applied in vain for spiritual direction and consolation.
One jolly old clergyman told him to smoke tobacco and to sing psalms;
another counselled him to go and lose some blood. After some time, he
came to the conclusion that no human being was competent to instruct him
in divine things; and that the truth had been communicated to himself by
direct inspiration from Heaven. He argued that, as the confusion of
languages began at Babel, and that, as the persecutors of Christ put on
the cross an inscription in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, the knowledge of
languages, and more especially of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, must be
useless to a Christian minister. One of the most precious truths
revealed to this new apostle was, that it was falsehood and adulation to
use the second person plural instead of the second person singular. To
say good morning or good evening was highly reprehensible, for the
phrases evidently imported that God had made bad mornings and bad
evenings. To talk of the month of March was to worship Mars; and to talk
of Monday was to pay idolatrous homage to the moon. A Christian was
bound to face death itself rather than touch his hat to the greatest of
mankind. Bowing was considered as the effect of Satanical influence, for
the woman in the gospel, while she had a spirit of infirmity, was bowed
together, and ceased to bow as soon as divine power had liberated her
from the tyranny of the evil one.
Fox long wandered from place to place, teaching this strange theology,
shaking like an aspen leaf in his paroxysms of fanatical excitement,
forcing his way into churches which he nicknamed steeple-houses,
interrupting prayers and sermons with clamour and scurrility, and
pestering rectors and justices with epistles much resembling burlesques
of those sublime odes in which the Hebrew prophets foretold the
calamities of Babylon and Tyre. He soon acquired great notoriety by
these religious feats. His strange face, his nasal chant, his immovable
hat, and his leather breeches, were known all over the country. He was
repeatedly imprisoned and set in the stocks, sometimes justly, for
disturbing the public worship of congregations; sometimes unjustly, for
merely talking nonsense. He soon gathered round him a body of disciples,
some of whom went beyond himself in absurdity. He also made some
converts, as Barclay and Penn, to whom he was immeasurably inferior in
everything, except the energy of his convictions. By these converts his
rude doctrines were polished into a form somewhat less shocking to good
sense and good taste. His gibberish was translated into English; and his
system so much improved that he himself might have been excused if he
had hardly known it. To the last his disciples professed profound
reverence for him; and his crazy epistles were received and read in
Quaker meetings all over the country. This founder of the Quaker sect
died in 1690.[92]
-----
Footnote 92:
Macaulay.
-----
As already intimated in a previous chapter, Samuel Wesley, like
Macaulay, had no great liking for the Quakers. The following article,
taken from the _Athenian Oracle_, vol. i. p. 331, in which the Quakers
and Papists are compared, will tend to show his opinions concerning a
sect which were much more numerous about two hundred years ago than they
are at present, and whose views and vagaries then were much more wild
than happily they are now:—
“Both Quakers and Papists are so bad that they can hardly be called
Christian. In many things they are near akin. The Quakers, ever since
their rise, have been looked upon as the Jesuit by-blows. The Quakers
deny the plenary satisfaction of Christ, and rest on their own merits;
so do the Papists. They rail at our ministers, and deny their legal call
or ordination; so do the Papists. They pretend to a greater strictness
and singularity of life than other people; so do several orders among
the Papists. Then, for fanaticism and enthusiasm, they are most
admirably matched. But, to consider them asunder—The Papist holds more
than he ought to do, and therefore all the articles of the Christian
faith: but the Quaker much less, for the Quakers all deny the Christian
sacraments, and we wonder how they have a face to pretend to what they
never had, Christianity, when they were never christened. They are
indeed a compendium of almost all sorts of heresies: for they not only
deny the merits of Christ, with the Papists, but even His satisfaction
and divinity, being at best no better than mere Arians. Nay, there have
been some of them who, as far as we can understand them, deny our
Saviour’s manhood, and turn angels, spirits, heaven, and hell into mean
and jejune allegories. All of them, to a man, whom we ever met with,
deny the Scriptures to be the _Word of God_, and most of them deny any
resurrection of the body. For these reasons, we think, as a bad
Christian is better than none, so a Papist is better than a Quaker.”[93]
-----
Footnote 93:
In the fourth volume of the _Athenian Oracle_ Wesley vindicates his
charges against the Quakers by quotations from their writings, and
sums up the matter thus:—“Quakerism is a compendium of all heresies,
some of which we shall name—Pharisees, Sadducees, Ebionites, Gnostics,
Eucratites, Marcionites, Cainites, Manichees, Jacobites, Acephalae,
Tritheites, Adamites, Helcecaites, Marcocites, Colorbalites,
Sabellians, Samosatenians, Macedonians, Arians, Donatists,
Priscillians—cum multis aliis,” (p. 366.)
-----
This may seem a caricatured description of the Quakers’ religion, but it
must be borne in mind that in 1690 that religion was not the
systematised and inoffensive thing that it is in 1865.
Of all the members of the Low-Church party, in the reign of William and
Mary, Tillotson stood the highest in general estimation. He was the son
of a clothier, and was born at Sowerby Bridge, in Yorkshire, in 1630.
His first sermon was preached at the morning exercise in Cripplegate, in
1661. Thirty years afterwards he was consecrated Archbishop of
Canterbury, in the Church of St Mary le Bow. The congregation was the
most splendid that had been seen in any place of worship since William
and Mary’s coronation. The crowds that lined the streets greeted the new
primate with loud applauses; but the applauses of his friends could not
drown the roar of execration which the Jacobites and High-Church party
set up against him. According to them, he was a thief, who had entered
not by the door, but had climbed over the fences. He was an Arian, a
Socinian, a Deist, an Atheist. He had never been christened, for his
parents were Anabaptists. He had lost their religion when a boy, and he
had never found another. In ribald lampoons he was nicknamed “Undipped
John.” The parish register of his baptism was produced in vain. This
storm of obloquy, which he had to face for the first time at more than
sixty years of age, was too much for him. His spirits declined, his
health gave way, and in 1695 he died, and Samuel Wesley, his sincere and
warm admirer, wrote and published his elegy.
Tillotson was sincere, frank, and humble; of kind and tender affection,
bountiful in his charities, and forgiving of injuries. After his death,
there was found a bundle of bitter libels which had been published
against him, on which he had written with his own hand, “I forgive the
authors of these books, and I pray God that He also may forgive them.”
His public principles were philanthropic, tolerant, and liberal. William
and Mary reposed an entire confidence in his prudence, moderation, and
integrity. In some points he was, perhaps, too compliant, and was led
into some inconsistencies; but the times were difficult, and his
intentions were always good. While he was in a private station of life,
he always laid aside two-tenths of his income for charitable uses; and
when he died, his debts could not have been paid if the king had not
remitted his first fruits. 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 Scoliasts, no mean images, buffoon
stories, or scurrilous invectives, ever marred the effect of his grave
and temperate discourses. His style is not brilliant, but it is pure and
transparently clear. He is always serious, and always good. His sermons
were published in three volumes folio. Addison considered them as a
standard of the purity of the English language; and Dryden acknowledged
that, if he had any talent for English prose, it was derived from
frequent perusal of Tillotson’s writings.
In 1694, on December 28, Queen Mary died, and Samuel Wesley composed and
published a poem eulogising her character. Being seized with smallpox,
Mary gave orders that every lady of the bed-chamber, every maid of
honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not had the smallpox, should
instantly leave the house. She locked herself up during a short time in
her closet, burned some papers, and arranged others, and then calmly
awaited her decease. William remained night and day by her bedside; and
a few moments before she expired he was removed, almost insensible, from
the sick-chamber. The public sorrow at her death was great and general.
When the Commons next met they sat for a time in profound silence. The
number of sad faces in the street struck every observer. On the Sunday
which followed her death, her virtues were celebrated in almost every
parish church of the capital, and in almost every great meeting-house of
the Nonconformists. The funeral was the saddest and most august that
Westminster had ever seen. The two Houses, with their maces, followed
the hearse; the Lords, robed in scarlet and ermine; the Commons in long
black mantles. No preceding sovereign had ever been attended to the
grave by a parliament; for, till then, the parliament had always expired
with the sovereign. The whole magistracy of the city swelled the
procession. The banners of England and France, Scotland, and Ireland,
were carried by great nobles before the corpse. The pall was borne by
the chiefs of the illustrious houses of Howard, Seymour, Grey, and
Stanley. On the gorgeous coffin of purple and gold were laid the crown
and sceptre of the realm. The day was well suited to such a ceremony.
The sky was dark and troubled. The nave, choir, and transept of the
abbey were in a blaze with innumerable wax-lights. The body was
deposited under a sumptuous canopy in the centre of the church, while
the primate preached; and throughout the whole ceremony the distant
booming of cannon was heard every minute from the batteries of the
Tower.[94]
-----
Footnote 94:
Macaulay.
-----
As long as Queen Mary lived, William left the management of the affairs
of the English Church wholly in her hands, and her chief confidant and
counsellor was Archbishop Tillotson.
Whatever was Mary’s character and conduct as a daughter and a sister,
she was certainly the most devoted and exemplary of royal wives. Though,
in accordance with the atrocious practice of sovereigns, her husband
kept a mistress in the palace, yet she had the good sense to submit to
his commanding intellect. John Wesley says, she “was in her person tall
and well-proportioned, with an oval visage, lively eyes, agreeable
features, a mild aspect, and an air of dignity. Her apprehension was
clear, her memory tenacious, and her judgment solid. She was a zealous
Protestant, scrupulously exact in all the duties of devotion, of an even
temper, and of a calm and mild conversation.” She was excellently
qualified to be the head of the English court. She was English by birth,
and English also in her tastes and feelings. Her face was handsome, her
port majestic, her temper sweet and lively, her manners affable and
graceful. Her understanding, though very imperfectly cultivated, was
quick. Feminine wit sparkled in her conversation; and her letters were
so well expressed that they deserved to be well spelt. She took much
pleasure in the lighter kinds of literature, and did something towards
bringing books into fashion among ladies of quality. The stainless
purity of her private life, and the strict attention which she paid to
her religious duties, were the more respectable, because she was
singularly free from censoriousness, and discouraged scandal as much as
vice. Her charities were munificent and judicious, and though she made
no ostentatious display of them, it was known that she retrenched from
her own state in order to relieve Protestants whom persecution had
driven from France and Ireland, and who were starving in the garrets of
London.[95]
-----
Footnote 95:
Macaulay.
-----
The reign of William, her husband, extended to the year 1702. During the
thirteen years that William wore the crown, the Bank of England was
founded; the East India Company was reorganised; and the plantations or
settlements of America and the West Indies so steadily increased, that,
before his death, they employed not less than five hundred sail of
ships. Sir Godfrey Kneller and Sir Peter Lely were the chief
portrait-painters of the day; Purcell was the chief musician; and Sir
Isaac Newton was shedding a glory over his age and country by his
sublime scientific discoveries. The higher kinds of literature were at a
discount for want of court patronage. Dryden, fallen on what to him were
evil days and evil tongues, and forced in his old age to write for
bread, with less rest for his wearied head and hand than they had ever
had before, now produced some of his most laborious and also some of his
happiest works; and Lee, the dramatic poet, discharged from Bedlam,
finished two more tragedies; but besides these, there were hardly any
poets above the rank of Shadwell, Tate, and Brady. Among other writers
belonging to the same period may be mentioned:—Bishop Stillingfleet, who
had been known as an author thirty years before William’s accession to
the throne; Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough, an exceedingly learned
writer, who, at the age of eighty-four, began to study, and mastered the
Coptic language, was now in the full zenith of his fame; Bishop Bull was
writing his “Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ,” for which he received the
thanks of the whole body of the clergy in France; good old Richard
Baxter, who had been filling the world with books for half a century,
just lived to see the Revolution, and died in 1691; Dr Gilbert Burnet,
Bishop of Salisbury, was plying his prolific pen, which, during his
lifetime, produced one hundred and forty-five distinct publications;
Robert South, immortalised by his masculine, if not spiritual sermons,
was carrying on a controversy with Sherlock respecting the Trinity; and
John Locke was publishing his “Essay Concerning the Human
Understanding.”
The population of England, in the reign of King William, was about seven
millions. About ten thousand of these were clergymen, with an average
income of £60 each per annum. The average wages of labouring people and
out-door servants were five shillings and ninepence farthing per week;
and the average income of cottagers and paupers fourpence farthing per
day.[96] Such was the state of things when Samuel Wesley was flourishing
among his two hundred peasant parishioners at South Ormsby, on £50 a
year and a parsonage,—an income nearly equal to the average income of
the ten thousand clergy living at that period.
-----
Footnote 96:
Knight’s _History of England_.
-----
King William died on the 8th of March 1702. Samuel Wesley’s son John
says—“Upon the whole, William III. appears to have been an honest,
conscientious man, fearing God, and desirous to please Him. His good
qualities were many, his ill ones few; so that we may well rank him
among the best of the English princes.”[97]
-----
Footnote 97:
Wesley’s _History of England_, vol. iv., p. 41.—Dr Adam Clarke says
that Samuel Wesley was one of King William’s chaplains, but on what
authority I know not.
-----
At eighteen William sat among the fathers of the Commonwealth, grave,
discreet, and judicious as the oldest among them. At twenty-one he was
placed at the head of the administration. At twenty-three he was
renowned throughout Europe as a soldier and politician. His personal
tastes were those of a warrior rather than of a statesman; but he
occupies a far higher place among statesmen than among warriors. From a
child he had been weak and sickly. In the prime of manhood his
complaints had been aggravated by a severe attack of smallpox. He was
asthmatic and consumptive. His slender frame was shaken by a constant
hoarse cough. He could not sleep unless his head was propped by several
pillows, and could scarcely draw his breath in any but the purest air.
Cruel headaches frequently tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him.
Yet, through a life, which was one of long disease, the force of his
mind never failed, on any great occasion, to bear up his suffering and
languid body.
His frame was slender and feeble; his forehead lofty and ample; his nose
curved like the beak of an eagle; his eye bright and keen; his brow
thoughtful and somewhat sullen; his mouth firm and somewhat peevish; and
his cheek pale, thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. He
possessed strong natural sense and rare force of will. Long before he
reached manhood, he knew how to keep secrets. Meanwhile, however, he
made but little proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments.
His manners were altogether Dutch, and even his countrymen thought him
blunt. To foreigners, he often seemed churlish. He was entirely
destitute of sociability. He seldom came forth from his closet; and when
he appeared in the public rooms, he stood among the crowd of courtiers
and ladies stern and abstracted, making no jest and smiling at none. His
freezing look, his taciturnity, the dry and concise answers which he
uttered when he could keep silence no longer, disgusted noblemen and
gentlemen, who had been accustomed to be slapped on the back by their
royal masters, called Jack or Harry, congratulated about race cups, or
rallied about actresses. The women also missed the homage due to their
sex. They observed that the king spoke in a somewhat imperious tone even
to the wife to whom he owed so much, and whom he sincerely loved.
Another thing, which was regarded as one of his misfortunes, was his bad
English. He spoke our language, but not well. His accent was foreign,
his diction was inelegant, and his vocabulary seems to have been no
larger than was necessary for the transaction of business. English
literature he was incapable of enjoying or of understanding. He never
once, during his whole reign, showed himself at the theatre. Next to
hunting, his favourite amusements were architecture and gardening. He
had some talent for sarcasm, and frequently employed a natural rhetoric,
quaint indeed, but vigorous, and original. From a child, he listened
with interest when questions of alliance, finance, and war were
discussed. He understood Latin, Italian, and Spanish; and spoke and
wrote, with more or less correctness, English, French, and German. The
Dutch was his own tongue. For all persecution he felt a fixed aversion.
His theological opinions were loose, but were more decided than those of
his ancestors; and predestination was the keystone of his religion.
Since Octavius, the world had seen no such instance of precocious
statesmanship. He died at the age of fifty-two.
[This chapter is compiled from the _Histories_ of Wesley, of Knight, and
of Macaulay, Calamy’s _Life and Times_, and other works of a kindred
character.]