Tillotson, shortly before his death, as already related, was engaged
with his Episcopal brethren in drawing up certain ecclesiastical
regulations to be issued on their authority, but which he afterwards
felt would be more effective if published in the King’s name. Shortly
after Tenison’s accession to the Archiepiscopate, injunctions were sent
forth by Royal command, touching points exactly of the nature indicated
to have been discussed in prior Episcopal meetings at Lambeth. When
we consider the time of their appearance, we have no doubt the new
Archbishop adopted the draft of his predecessor. It appeared in the
form of a Royal proclamation, recommending care in conferring orders,
condemning pluralities and non-residence, and urging upon Bishops to
watch over their Clergy, and promote, through them, the celebration
of Sacraments, the visitation of the sick, and the catechetical
instruction of the young.[239]
[Sidenote: 1695.]
The publication of these articles in the King’s name is a fact not
to be lightly passed over. Royal letters had been issued by Queen
Elizabeth for the reform of ecclesiastical affairs, yet none of them
dealt so particularly with abuses as did this mandate of William’s.
It is remarkable that Charles I.--the opposite in ecclesiastical and
political sentiments to the hero of the Revolution--had addressed to
Laud a number of instructions, which strongly resemble those now under
notice.[240] After the Restoration, although Charles II. by several
missives had exercised immediate authority over the Church, and had
given explicit directions as to how the Clergy were to preach,[241]
such orders as approach nearest to those of William are found to bear
the simple impress of archiepiscopal authority.[242] What had been
attempted in the way of Church reform by Sancroft appears in the shape
of an agreement between himself and the other Prelates to do things
formerly enunciated.[243] The grounds upon which Tillotson and Tenison
arrived at the determination to seek Church reform under cover of Royal
authority, do not appear; but the proclamations indicate that, at the
time, the chief spiritual rulers of the land must have had high views
of the prerogatives of the Crown. If since Elizabeth’s Reformation the
title of _Head of the Church_[244] had not been legally employed,
all which that title could be taken to mean, successive Archbishops of
Canterbury--Tillotson and Tenison--were ready to concede; and what is a
little curious, in making this concession they could find a precedent
in the acts of Archbishop Laud under Charles I. A still more striking
example of the interference of the Crown with purely religious subjects
will soon come under our notice.
[Sidenote: ECCLESIASTICAL REGULATIONS.]
The fact is, that what is generally called Erastianism attained more
power than ever after the Revolution. The State ruled the Church. In
the matter of Toleration it maintained the liberties of Nonconformity
against the designs of bigoted Churchmen, and in the management of
internal affairs it sought to promote the interests of a moderate and
salutary reform.
A circular from the Archbishop, addressed to each of his suffragan
Bishops, followed on the 16th of July, 1695; and in it, without
referring to the Royal communication made in the month of February,
he specifies a number of particulars which had been considered by him
and such of his brethren as were at the time in or near London. These
particulars relate to certain religious matters--to the public reading
in church of the Act against profane cursing and swearing, and to
catechetical instruction--but they relate also to a number of subjects
connected with temporalities, such as the prevention of Simoniacal
covenants, the better payment of curates, dilapidations, glebe lands,
surrogates, and the removal of clergymen from one diocese to another.
The employment of proper care in examinations for orders--a point of
great religious importance--is, however, enforced at length, and each
Bishop is urged to lay it upon the conscience of the candidate, to
observe such fasting as is prescribed upon Ember-days, and to give
himself to meditation and prayer. It is worth noticing that the third
of the injunctions calls attention to the 55th canon, which enjoins
the bidding of prayer for the King before sermon; “it being commonly
reported,” says the Archbishop, “that it is the manner of some in every
diocese either to use the Lord’s Prayer (which the canons prescribe
as the conclusion of the prayer, and not the whole prayer) or at
least, to leave out the King’s titles, and to forbear to pray for the
Bishops as such.”[245] The sentence reveals a state of things serious,
if not alarming, both to the King and the Bishops. Plainly there
brooded disaffection towards the existing power in Church and State.
Jacobites and Nonjurors troubled the British Israel, and manifested
their feelings in the House of God. Parish churches, if not cathedrals,
presented Sunday after Sunday proofs of disloyalty and spiritual
revolt. A new species of Nonconformity ate its way into the hearts of
Englishmen--a fact to be illustrated in subsequent portions of this
history.
[Sidenote: 1695.]
Between the months of February and July, to which the Royal and the
Episcopal letters belonged, there occurred an incident which comes
in juxtaposition with what has been related of ecclesiastical powers
exercised by the Crown. The Archbishop of Canterbury was in the month
of May nominated as the first of the Lords Justices of England for
the administration of public affairs during His Majesty’s absence in
Holland and Flanders.
William had repeatedly left England since the Revolution. In 1691 he
was absent from January to March, and from May to October; in 1692 from
March to October; in 1693 from March to November; in 1694 from May to
November. Like Richard Coeur de Lion, like the three Edwards, like the
fifth Henry, William of Orange was a man of war from his youth, and
his military vocation led him, as it led them, away from the peaceful
duties of home government. As they at the head of steel-clad knights
and sturdy bowmen marched over the Tweed or through Normandy, Picardy,
and Poitou; as they led crusaders to fight battles at Jaffa, Askelon,
and Jerusalem, so did he who now swayed the English sceptre, carry his
troops over into the Netherlands to bear the brunt of the Landen fight,
or recover the strongholds of Namur.
[Sidenote: LORDS JUSTICES.]
When William had been abroad before in the life-time of Mary, she ruled
as Queen Consort, rendering a special regency needless; now that she
slept in her grave, it was necessary that representatives appointed by
the Crown should during the Royal absence govern the threefold realm.
Churchmen in ancient times had held the highest offices in the State,
and had been the Prime Ministers of Kings. Whilst Richard I. was pining
in captivity on his return from Palestine, Archbishop Hubert Walter
acted as Chief Justiciary of the kingdom, and even in person laid siege
to the castles of malcontents and reduced them to his master’s sway;
and whilst the not less brave, but more prudent, Henry V. was winning
laurels at Agincourt, Archbishop Chicheley acted as Prime Minister at
home, and took his place at the head of the Council-Board.[246] After
the Reformation, Churchmen, though of diminished influence, appeared
in high political positions. Juxon held the staff of Lord Treasurer,
and Williams kept the Great Seal; but after the blow struck at the
Church by the Long Parliament, no ecclesiastic occupied any important
State office until the reign of William III. Upon this new turn in the
wheel, curiously enough, came the restoration of high civil authority
to ecclesiastical hands. At the same moment, the Church appeared
submissive to the State, and the State appeared in submission to the
chief ruler of the Church. The former kind of submission was real, the
latter only apparent.
[Sidenote: 1695.]
The Archbishop did not fill the place of a Prime Minister like
Chicheley, any more than he took the command of troops like Hubert
Walter. It is difficult to say who in the month of May, 1695, was Prime
Minister; as the Duke of Leeds, who had headed the late administration,
just then, though still nominally President of the Council, lay
prostrate in disgrace, and his name is omitted in the list of Lords
Justices who held the Regency. The Whigs were recovering power, and
with the seven members of that party who were commissioned to act in
the Royal name, there appeared but one Tory. William III. himself
always acted as Minister of Foreign Affairs whether he was at home or
abroad, and during his absence from England on this occasion probably
the management of domestic business principally rested with Somers,
Keeper of the Great Seal, and Shrewsbury, Secretary of State. The
Archbishop, as standing next to the Royal family, took precedence in
the Commission, but the actual power which he exercised must not be
measured by that circumstance.
On the 10th of October William returned, after having had the
satisfaction of seeing a Marshal of France surrender to the allies,
the Castle of Namur. The sound of bells from every steeple, the
twinkling--for in those days it could hardly be a glare--of lights in
every window, and street crowds rending the air with hurrahs, welcomed
the victor as he passed through London to his favourite residence at
Kensington. Speedily afterwards he made a Royal progress, and visited
Newmarket, where, on Sunday, October the 20th, the Vice-Chancellor,
accompanied by the principal members of the University of Cambridge,
in all their sedate magnificence, waited on His Majesty, and delivered
a congratulatory speech. The usual kissing of hands and assurances
of favour wound up the ceremony.[247] He also visited Oxford, where
he had been unpopular; but now, if we were to judge by the reception
prepared, we should conclude the tide had turned; for Latin orations,
musical concerts, and a splendid banquet were all arranged in honour
of his presence. However, he would stay in the beautiful city only a
few hours, excusing himself on the ground that he had seen the Colleges
before. He had no admiration for Oxford, and Oxford had no admiration
for him; and between the two no love was lost, when he drove off in his
lumbering coach on the road to London.
[Sidenote: ECCLESIASTICAL INJUNCTIONS.]
The Royal injunctions relative to ecclesiastical reforms, published
in February, 1695, were followed by other Royal injunctions relative
to theological disputes in February, 1696. Just then, a money panic
struck not only the commercial classes, but the whole community. The
currency sank into such a state, that owing to the wear and tear
of coin, and the ingenious arts of clippers, neither the gentleman
who paid his guinea nor the peasant who received his shilling, knew
exactly what the piece of gold or silver happened to be worth. The
subject came up in sermons, and preachers deplored the low state of
public morality. Fleetwood, preaching before the Lord Mayor of London
in the month of December, deplored that “a soft pernicious tenderness
slackened the care of magistrates, kept back the under officers,
corrupted the juries, and withheld the evidence;” and one of the clergy
connected with the Cathedral of York, when addressing some clippers
who were to be hanged next day, dwelt on the insensibility of culprits
of that class to the heinousness of their crime.[248] Exactly at the
time when this monetary question had thrown everybody into a state of
embarrassment, a theological controversy added to the excitement of
religious people.
[Sidenote: 1693–8.]
To judge of the new Royal injunctions we must first understand the
controversy, and to understand the controversy is no easy matter. To
trace the dispute through all its windings would only perplex the
reader--to enumerate the publications which appeared would be wearisome
and profitless; therefore I shall content myself with indicating the
different lines pursued by the principal controversialists, and the
treatment which consequently some of them received.
It may be premised that the controversy indicates a new position of
Christian thought, a new atmosphere of theological feeling, as compared
with that which had obtained in Commonwealth times and after the
Restoration. The question raised did not relate to predestination,
to the nature of Christ’s death, the extent of its efficacy and
application, but to the mode of the Divine existence. It showed a
retreat back to inquiries akin to such as agitated the Nicene Age.
Oxford and London witnessed a revival of conflicts similar to those
of Constantinople and Alexandria. Battles about grace, election, and
free-will had been fought out, and the warriors were exhausted: some
had passed away, some were growing old. The human mind now ranged
over other fields long neglected, seeking fresh victories over old
errors. Theological discussion is determined in a great degree by
circumstances, idiosyncracies, friendships, and associations; but
the spirit of an age is also a mighty force, acting with, and acting
through all other influences. And it is not a little remarkable, that
as the revival of the study of philosophy in the Christian schools of
Alexandria was followed by controversies respecting the Divine nature,
so the revival of the study of a similar philosophy at Cambridge was
followed by a similar result. Whereas the logic, ethics, and politics
of Aristotle have affinity with questions relating to the Divine
government, the speculations of Plato connect themselves more with
questions as to the Divine Being Himself. Accordingly, the Aristotelian
logicians of the Middle Ages, the Reformation, and the Commonwealth,
dwelt much upon predestination, justification, and the atonement; and
the philosophical Divines of the Revolution, trained more in Platonic
culture, devoted themselves to questions respecting the Trinity and the
Person of Christ.
[Sidenote: CONTROVERSIES ABOUT THE TRINITY.]
At the time of the Revolution, Unitarian principles in England were
on the advance, both as to explicitness of statement and extent of
currency. The preparations for this change have been indicated. It
obtained in a decided form to no great degree, but its influence was
felt beyond its definite boundaries. According to the Toleration Act,
Antitrinitarians were as much precluded from publicly celebrating
worship after the Revolution, as Presbyterians and others had been
before; yet, by the close of the 17th century, it is said, Unitarian
meeting-houses were erected.[249] Some Presbyterians, perhaps, rather
of an Arian than of a Socinian type, at that period diverged from
orthodox paths; but it is stated that on the whole these opinions
“were more prevalent in the Church than among the Dissenters.”[250]
The republication of _Biddle’s Tracts_, and the issue of new
works, published anonymously, going far beyond the theological point
Biddle had reached, promoted the denial of our Lord’s Divinity. The
series was zealously supported, if not prepared by the well-known
Thomas Firman, who, though an Unitarian, remained a member of the
Church of England.[251] The modern assailants of orthodoxy, catching
the rationalistic spirit of the times, dwelt upon what they conceived
to be the unreasonableness of the doctrine of the Trinity, and urged
the absence in Scripture of the scholastic terms in which the doctrine
is commonly defined. They charged the Fathers and the Schoolmen with
corrupting Christianity; then directing their attention to the doctrine
of the Redeemer’s Deity, they insisted much upon His proper humanity,
upon His trustfulness, devotion, and obedience.
[Sidenote: 1693–8.]
If, said the Unitarians, Christ be God, none can be greater than He,
yet He says, “The Father is greater than I.” If Jesus Christ were truly
God, they alleged, it would be blasphemy to call Him the sent of God;
heedless of the allegation, on the other side, that if He were simply
man, it would be blasphemy to ascribe to Him Divine names, attributes,
and honours. Arguments were also adduced against the doctrine of the
Personality and Divinity of the Holy Ghost. A violent attack also was
made, in a distinct publication, on the character of Athanasius, with
the object of damaging the theological belief which that great Father
of the Church so zealously upheld.[252] Books of this description,
vindicating opinions under a legal ban, excited the indignation both of
Church and Parliament. A work, bearing on the heterodox side, written
by a Divine of the Latitudinarian school, led to his being deprived of
the Rectorship of Lincoln College, Oxford,[253] and a vote was passed
by the Commons dooming to the flames an attack on the doctrine of the
Trinity.[254]
[Sidenote: THE TRINITY.]
Dr. Wallis, the Savillian professor of Geometry, wrote a pamphlet[255]
in defence of the doctrine of the Trinity, and employed some of the
strangest expressions and illustrations with regard to the mystery
that were ever conceived by any human being. “What is it,” he asks,
“that is pretended to be impossible? ’Tis but this, that there be three
_somewhats_, which are but one God, and these _somewhats_
are called Persons.” To explain the Trinity in unity, he compares
the Almighty to a _cube_, with its length, breadth, and height
infinitely extended. The length, breadth, and height of the cube, he
says, are equal, and they are the equal sides of one substance--a
fair resemblance of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This _longum_,
_latum_, _profundum_, such are his words, is one cube of
three dimensions, yet but one body; and this Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost are three Persons, and yet one God. Vain attempts were made by
the early Fathers to give definite conceptions of the mode of the
Divine existence--the sun and its rays, a fountain and its streams,
reason and speech, ointment and fragrance, being employed for the
purpose; but Dr. Wallis attained to an originality as unenviable as
it was startling; and were it not for his known candour and piety,
it might be supposed he intended to turn the orthodox doctrine into
ridicule.
[Sidenote: 1693–8.]
Dr. Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul’s and Master of the Temple, now in the
black books of High Churchmen, undertook to meet the new attacks upon
the Trinity; and, as so much was made of the assumed unreasonableness
of that doctrine, he commenced his vindication of it with an elaborate
argument to prove that it involves no contradiction whatever. He used
the shield of reason to resist the darts of reason. His notion was,
that self-consciousness constitutes the numerical unity of a Spiritual
Being,--that the unity of a mind or spirit reaches as far as its
self-consciousness,--that, in the three Persons of the Trinity, there
is what may be called a mutual self-consciousness, a self-consciousness
common to the three; and that therefore these three Persons are
essentially and numerically one. A moral union in knowledge, will,
and love, he says, is the only union of created spirits; but there is
an essential union between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, through the
existence of a mutual consciousness. This notion contains, according
to Sherlock, the true faith of a Trinity in unity. It is orthodoxy
rationalized. It does not confound the Persons; it does not divide
the substance.[256] After working out an abstruse argument to this
effect, and after endeavouring to show there is authority in some of
the Fathers for his theory, he concludes by taking up, _seriatim_,
certain objections which had been urged in recent Unitarian writings.
[Sidenote: THE TRINITY.]
A young man, a Master of Arts, just turned 27, stood up, on the 28th
of October, 1695, in the pulpit of St. Mary’s, Oxford, before a large
audience of Dons and Gownsmen, to preach from the text--now given up
on all hands as an interpolation--“There are three that bear record
in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three
are one.” The preacher was Joseph Bingham, a scholar of surprising
erudition, destined to throw a world of light upon the antiquities of
the Christian Church; in the sermon, and preface to it when published,
he distinguished between the patristic and the scholastic doctrines of
the Trinity, maintaining that Luther, in his theology on that point,
followed in the wake of the Fathers, whilst Calvin trod in the steps
of the Schoolmen. The Lutheran, the Patristic, and the Scripture
doctrine, in Bingham’s estimation, amounted to this--that there are
three individual substances in the Godhead, really and numerically
distinct from each other, though at the same time they are one in
another sense; for they are not of a different nature; they are not
divided like men and angels; they are not three parts of one whole;
nor are they three Beings, who have Divine natures independently,
every one from himself; nor are they three opposite principles, or
three providences, clashing with one another. No; they constitute
“one harmonious providence, and one undivided principle of all other
things.”[257] Sherlock, a citizen of the world, catching the spirit of
the age, appealed to reason; Bingham, a recluse, scarcely touched by
habits of thought outside his University, appealed to tradition. This
piece of hard, dry learning, without the slightest tincture of pathos,
or a single practical remark from beginning to end, must have proved a
repulsive lesson even to an Oxford audience. Its general drift, running
in the same direction as Sherlock’s teaching, though it included no
theory of mutual consciousness, alarmed the authorities; they went
home from St. Mary’s in great agitation, muttering against the young
preacher charges of Tritheism, Arianism, and other heresies. Bingham
was simply a student who had missed his way in theological speculation;
but Sherlock was personally disliked by Jacobites, who were irritated
by his political apostacy, and by the adherents of William, who envied
him his church preferments. No hornet’s nest could be worse than
the attacks which this unlucky controversialist aroused. Many who,
under other circumstances, would have let heterodoxy alone, could not
tolerate it when coming from such a quarter; and the most unseemly
reflections on the man’s character were mixed up with arguments against
his doctrines.[258]
[Sidenote: 1693–8.]
South plunged into the fray, and used his sledgehammer with unmerciful
violence. Not unlearned, not unversed in logic, South was more of a
rhetorician than a philosopher, more of a wit than a Divine. After
denouncing Sherlock’s explication as wholly inconsistent with the
mysteriousness of the subject, and representing his exceptions to
the use of certain words in relation to it as false, groundless, and
impertinent, he exposed, with tremendous ridicule, the theory of mutual
consciousness. “For self-consciousness, according to him,” says South,
“is the constituent principle, or formal reason, of personality. So
that self-consciousness properly constitutes or makes a person, and so
many self-consciousnesses make so many distinct persons. But mutual
consciousness, so far as it extends, makes a unity not of persons (for
personality as such imports distinction and something personally
incommunicable), but an unity of nature in persons. So that after
self-consciousness has made several distinct persons, in comes mutual
consciousness and sets them all at one again, and gives them all but
one and the same nature, which they are to take amongst themselves
as well as they can. And this is a true and strict account of this
author’s new hypothesis; and such, as I suppose, he will not except
against, because justly I am sure he cannot; howsoever, I may have
expressed the novel whimsey something for the reader’s diversion.”[259]
How monstrous to think of diverting people, when professedly engaged in
studying the awful secrets of the Divine Essence!
[Sidenote: THE TRINITY.]
South maintained that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not distinct
infinite minds or spirits--that to say they are so, is to contradict
Councils, Fathers, Schoolmen, and later Divines; that the book he
assailed contains philosophical paradoxies and grammatical mistakes;
and that the author was insolent, scornful, and proud beyond all
parallel. To quote a full sample of South’s personal abuse would be to
cover pages.[260]
[Sidenote: 1693–8.]
[Sidenote: THE TRINITY.]
No doubt there is much force in some of his arguments, and he
completely demolished the theory of mutual consciousness. But he was
much stronger as a destructive than as an architect. When he attempted
to define a positive notion of the Trinity, he failed, as all did
who went before him, as all have who followed after him. Nor could
he escape the infection of a most infelicitous, if not a decidedly
irreverent, habit of illustrating theological mysteries. Wallis
had written of _three somewhats_, and of a _Divine cube_
of infinite dimensions. Sherlock had propounded a theory of Divine
_mutual-consciousness_; and now South came forward with the idea,
that the distinctions in the Godhead are _modes, habitudes, and
affections_ of the Divine substance--they are _postures_--such
in spiritual and immaterial beings, as _posture_ is to the human
body.[261] Passing over South’s coarse scurrility, I cannot conceive
how any inquirer after truth can be helped on his way by this clever
and brilliant companion, who never misses an opportunity of cracking a
joke in his reader’s ear. Even when South’s reasoning is forcible, he
is ever interrupting it with flashes of wit; and throughout one feels,
what is fatal to all religious instruction, that the polemic is more
anxious about victory than truth. No doubt his attack on Sherlock was
deemed by contemporaries a decided success; he drove his antagonist
from the field and spoiled him of his armour. But when he charged him
with Tritheism, he charged him with what Sherlock utterly denied.
That Sherlock’s theory is Tritheistic was a mere inference, and what
may seem a logical deduction to others did not appear so to himself.
In like manner Sabellianism, in the eyes of some, lurked under the
folds of South’s argument, though he indignantly repelled the idea.
The fact is, no man can attempt a logical explanation of the Godhead
without being in danger of falling into Tritheism on the one side, or
Sabellianism on the other. In such controversies we notice the frequent
use of some word not in Scripture, but considered to be an equivalent
for what is Scripture--a term conceived to be a concentration of
diffused truth--the quintessence of a doctrine previously in a state
of solution. Unfortunately such words are differently understood by
different parties. One person refuses to take them in the sense affixed
to them by another, and will employ a meaning of his own. The same
proposition thus becomes to two different minds entirely different
things, and the utmost confusion is the consequence. Theories to
explain facts are confounded with the facts themselves, and a man who
only denies a particular theory, is charged with denying the fact to
which the theory relates. Hence, whilst Sherlock and South were really
contending for the doctrine of the Trinity, each regarded the other as
giving it up. It should be added that in the end, Sherlock’s statements
were more cautious than at the beginning; for he came to admit that the
phrases--three minds, three spirits, three substances--which he had so
freely used, needed great care for their proper employment, and were
liable to be taken in a heretical sense; that after all, Father, Son,
and Spirit, are really of one and the same substance.[262] Sherlock
and South did but follow up divergent tendencies of thought and action
before the Council of Nicæa--tendencies which that Council sought to
check and harmonize. Sherlock followed in the wake of Tertullian,
Novatian, Hippolytus, and Origen, whose inquiries mainly pointed to
_distinctions_ in the Godhead. South trod in the footsteps of
Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Irenæus, and Clement of Alexandria, who
leaned towards Monarchianism, and were jealous of any dishonour done to
the Divine Unity.
[Sidenote: 1693–8.]
In this controversy, which divided two men by a distance, in
the judgment of some thinkers, infinitesimally small, homage
was nevertheless done to the essential importance of truth. The
controversy, however, betrayed the utter absence of disposition on
the part of each to learn one jot of wisdom from the other. It was
literally a _polemical_ affair; a battle, each seeing in his
opposite an enemy--in fact the old story of disputes between Church and
Church, sect and sect, conformist and nonconformist--war to the knife
by mistaken foes, instead of mutual help by friends in council.
Of course Unitarians, as they stood by, watched the conflict with
eager curiosity, striving to turn it to their own account. In the view
of those who had advanced beyond John Biddle, the doctrine of the
Trinity and the use of the Word were repugnant; and they traced what
they deemed an innovation to the early philosophical schools that had
so powerfully influenced the after-history of theological thought.
They labelled Cudworth’s theory as the Platonic; Sherlock’s as the
Cartesian; South’s as the Aristotelian. Moreover, they connected the
scheme of Sherlock with the philosophy of Realism, and the scheme
of South with that of Nominalism. With regard to speculations which
had been woven around the teaching of Holy Scripture, there was some
ground for the nomenclature; but it really forms another instance of
the confusion of thought produced when critics identify metaphysical
theories with simple conclusions drawn from Scripture, as expressed in
the grand old words, “The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy
Ghost is God, and yet there are not three Gods, but one God.”
[Sidenote: THE TRINITY.]
Howe took part in the bewildering dispute, and has been supposed by
some to have advocated Sherlock’s side. But it seems to me that what I
have been saying accords with his views, and that he counted such an
opinion as that expressed by Sherlock only as a theory for obviating
objection to a fact, whilst another theory might be held in perfect
consistency with a sincere faith in the truth to which both theories
apply. In his _Calm and Sober Inquiry Concerning the Possibility
of a Trinity in the Godhead_, the utmost he asserts is, that such
a mode of triune existence as Sherlock attributes to the Divine
Being is _possible_, and to his mind the most reasonable; but
he did not think another hypothesis of a different kind altogether
indefensible. He adopted what is called the _personal_ theory;
but he did not deem a _modal_ theory, like South’s, either absurd
or heterodox.[263] Evidently he considered that different hypotheses
are at hand not fully to elucidate the mode of the Divine existence,
but to obviate objections, by showing that a threefold distinction in
that existence can be imagined, so as not to involve any contradiction
whatever.[264]
[Sidenote: 1693–8.]
Amidst this war of words, in which reason and tradition had a share,
secular authority interfered. On the 3rd of January, 1694, the Lords
spiritual and temporal ordered their Majesties’ Attorney-General to
prosecute the author and printer of an infamous and scandalous libel,
entitled, _A Brief but Clear Confutation of the Doctrine of the
Trinity_.[265] This was a State condemnation of Unitarianism, and
the same year a tract printed by the Unitarian Society was seized by
authority, and the writer apprehended. On the 25th of November, 1695,
the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Houses at Oxford decreed it to be
false, impious, and heretical, contrary to the doctrine of the Catholic
Church, and especially the Church of England, to say that there are
three infinite, distinct minds and substances in the Trinity, or that
the three Persons are three distinct, infinite minds or spirits. This
was a condemnation by the University of the doctrines enunciated by
Sherlock and supported by Bingham. The latter, in consequence of the
storm raised by his sermon, resigned his fellowship, and withdrew from
the University; but others, who thought with him, asserted, that what
the Heads of Oxford had condemned as heretical, really expressed the
Catholic faith; that the decree virtually accused of error the Nicene
Creed and the Church of England, and exposed both to the scorn and
triumph of the Socinians. Sherlock declared “that he would undertake,
any day in the year, to procure a meeting of twice as many wise and
learned men to censure their decree.”[266] Out of this state of things
also arose the new Royal injunctions I have noticed. They prohibited
every preacher from delivering any other doctrine concerning the
Blessed Trinity than what is contained in the Holy Scriptures, and
is agreeable to the three Creeds and the Thirty-nine Articles; and
they also strictly charged the right reverend fathers to make use of
their authority for repressing the publication of books against that
doctrine.[267]
[Sidenote: THE TRINITY.]
Charles II. had in 1662 commanded the Clergy to avoid “the deep points
of election and reprobation, together with the incomprehensible manner
of the concurrence of God’s free grace and man’s free will.”[268]
He thus claimed a high spiritual authority over the Ministers of
religion, but it was by removing certain topics from within the range
of discussion. In the instance just given, William III. enjoined
the positive inculcation of a particular doctrine, and no other. He
did not on his own authority define the doctrine, but only referred
to the doctrine authorized in the Creeds and Articles recognized
by the Established Church; indeed, he did not go beyond the terms
employed in the sixteenth clause of the Toleration Act;[269] yet it
must be confessed that altogether he appears as a still more definite
theological censor than Charles II. And it is worth notice that in this
respect he not only assumed a supreme Headship over the Established
Church, but he also claimed to rule the Free Churches of England, for
he commanded that no “preacher whatsoever, in his sermon or lecture,
should presume to deliver any other doctrine concerning the Trinity
than that defined in the Creeds and Articles.” When we weigh the
words employed, we are astonished to find the constitutional King of
the Revolution--the Prince who came to deliver the consciences of
Englishmen from the despotism of James and the tyranny of Rome--binding
upon the Ministers of religion one precise and rigid form of expression
as to the most profound of all theological mysteries. What makes
this fact still more curious, and the conduct in question still more
unreasonable, is that the most learned men in the Church at that
very crisis were unable to decide amongst themselves what was the
doctrine of her formularies, Sherlock declaring it to be one thing and
South another. The truth is, that William lent himself to a device
of the well-meaning Archbishop for maintaining the orthodoxy of all
religionists in the realm, without meaning to claim any power over
the religion of his subjects; for to any usurpation of that sort he
was, from temperament, education, and principle, utterly averse.
The Whig Archbishop, whose intellectual acuteness did not equal his
common sense, who could detect no political or philosophical heresy
in the course which he recommended, simply sought to accomplish what
he considered as a laudable end by a method which he thought most
effectual. He sought to put down error, and to promote peace, and in
doing it, hastily snatched at the rusty halberd of authority over
conscience, which the Revolution had hung up as a relic of the past.
Nothing could be more awkward and inconsistent than such a weapon,
placed by a Latitudinarian Prelate in the hands of a Sovereign adored
as the incarnation of civil and religious liberty.
[Sidenote: 1693–8.]
Although it is true of ancient times and Oriental states, that “where
the word of a King is, there is power,” the King’s word amongst
Englishmen at the time we speak of, especially upon religious subjects,
carried with it no weight whatever; and although the controversy
raging when the injunctions were devised soon burnt out, the heresies
assailed lingered on, and in 1698 the Commons appealed to His Majesty
for a proclamation for suppressing pernicious books containing
doctrines opposed to the Holy Trinity, and other fundamental articles
of the Christian faith.[270] The King, not choosing to do this, gave
his faithful Commons a short answer, promising attention to the
subject, and wishing that provision could be made for the purpose
desired; but, however, a proclamation was immediately issued for
preventing and punishing immorality and profaneness. Not long before
this circumstance, a youth of only eighteen years of age was executed
in the city of Edinburgh for blasphemy--a victim to the zeal of the
Presbyterian Clergy;[271] and, about the same time, the orthodox
Dissenters of England, in an address of theirs, most inconsistently
urged His Majesty to deprive Unitarians of the liberty of the
press.[272]
[Sidenote: THE TRINITY.]
[Sidenote: 1693–8.]
An Act of Parliament was passed in 1698 declaring that any one educated
in the Christian religion, who should, by writing, printing, or
teaching, deny the doctrine of the Trinity, the truth of Christianity,
or the authority of the Scriptures, must, for the first offence,
be disqualified for holding any office; and, for the second, be
incapacitated for bringing an action, possessing lands, becoming a
guardian, acting as an executor, or receiving a legacy; moreover, such
a person might be subjected to imprisonment for three years. Parliament
thus united its authority with that of the Sovereign in the support of
orthodox opinions, without perceiving the futility of such methods of
defending the Gospel. And it is not a little surprising that such a man
as Calamy, both in his _Diary_ and in his _Historical Addition
to Baxter’s Life and Times_, passes by the objectionable enactment;
indeed, so entirely unaffected by its injustice does he appear to
have been, that, in the latter work, he tells us, in the year 1698,
Parliament “did not meddle with matters of religion, though they had a
committee for religion as usually.”[273] Nothing could more decidedly
prove how much even the advocates of religious liberty had yet to learn
touching that very object which they were supposed to understand, and
were sincerely anxious to promote. It is a pleasure to be able to add,
that neither at the time, nor afterwards, so far as can be ascertained,
did this Act take any effect; and, apparently, it remained a dead
letter until its repeal in the year 1813.[274]