BOOK-FIRES OF THE REVOLUTION.
The period of the Revolution, by which I mean from the accession
of William III. to the death of Queen Anne, was a time in which
the conflict between Orthodoxy and Free Thought, and again
between Church and Dissent, continued with an unabated ferocity,
which is most clearly reflected in and illustrated by the
sensational history of its contemporary literature, especially
during the reign of Queen Anne. I am not aware that any book was
burnt by authority of the English Parliament during the reign of
William, but to say this in the face of Molyneux's _Case for
Ireland_, which has been so frequently by great authorities
declared to have been so treated, compels me to allude to the
history of that book, and to give the reasons for a contrary
belief.
It is first stated in the preface to the edition of 1770 that
William Molyneux's _Case for Ireland being bound by Acts of
Parliament in England_, first published in 1698, was burnt by the
hangman at the order of Parliament; and the statement has been
often repeated by later writers, as by Mr. Lecky, Dr. Ball, and
others. Why then is there no mention of such a sentence in the
Journals of the Commons, where a full account is given of the
proceedings against the book; nor in Swift's _Drapier Letters_,
where he refers to the fate of the _Case for Ireland_? This seems
almost conclusive evidence on the negative side; but as the
editor of 1770 may have had some lost authority for his remark,
and not been merely mistaken, some account may be given of the
book, as of one possibly, but not probably, condemned to the
flames.[137:1]
Molyneux was distinguished for his scientific attainments, was a
member of the Irish Parliament, first for Dublin City and then
for the University, and was also a great friend of Locke the
philosopher. The introduction in 1698 of the Bill, which was
carried the same year by the English Parliament, forbidding the
exportation of Irish woollen manufactures to England or
elsewhere--one of the worst Acts of oppression of the many that
England has perpetrated against Ireland--led Molyneux to write
this book, in which he contends for the constitutional right of
Ireland to absolute legislative independence. As the political
relationship between the two countries--a relation now of pure
force on one side, and of subjection on the other--is still a
matter of contention, it will not be out of place to devote a few
lines to a brief summary of his argument.
Before 1641 no law made in England was of force in Ireland
without the consent of the latter, a large number of English Acts
not being received in Ireland till they had been separately
enacted there also. At the so-called conquest of Ireland by Henry
II., the English laws settled by him were voluntarily accepted by
the Irish clergy and nobility, and Ireland was allowed the
freedom of holding parliaments as a separate and distinct kingdom
from England. So it was that John was made King (or Dominus) of
Ireland even in the lifetime of his father, Henry II., and
remained so during the reign of his brother, Richard I. Ireland,
therefore, could not be bound by England without the consent of
her own representatives; and the happiness of having her
representatives in the English Parliament could hardly be hoped
for, since that experiment had been proved in Cromwell's time to
be too troublesome and inconvenient.
Molyneux concluded his argument with a warning that subsequent
history has amply justified--"Advancing the power of the
Parliament of England by breaking the rights of another may in
time have ill effects." So, indeed, it has; but such warnings or
prophecies seldom bring favour to their authors, and the English
Parliament was moved to fury by Molyneux' arguments. Yet the
latter, writing to Locke on the subject of his book, had said: "I
think I have treated it with that caution and submission that it
cannot justly give any offence; insomuch that I scruple not to
put my name to it; and, by the advice of some good friends, have
presumed to dedicate it to his Majesty. . . . But till I either
see how the Parliament at Westminster is pleased to take it, or
till I see them risen, I do not think it advisable for me to go
on t'other side of the water. Though I am not apprehensive of any
mischief from them, yet God only knows what resentments captious
men may take on such occasions." (April 19th, 1698.)
Molyneux, however, was soon to know this himself, for on May 21st
his book was submitted to the examination of a committee; and on
the committee's report (June 22nd) that it was "of dangerous
consequence to the Crown and people of England, by denying the
authority of the King and Parliament of England to bind the
kingdom and people of Ireland," an address was presented to the
King praying him to punish the author of such "bold and
pernicious assertions," and to discourage all things that might
lessen the dependence of Ireland upon England; to which William
replied that he would take care that what they complained of
should be prevented and redressed. Perhaps the dedication of the
book to the King restrained the House from voting it to the
flames; but, anyhow, there is not the least contemporary evidence
of their doing so. Molyneux did not survive the year of the
condemnation of his book; but, in spite of his fears, he spent
five weeks with Locke at Oates in the autumn of the same year,
his book surviving him, to attest his wonderful foresight as much
as later events justified his spirited remonstrance.
There is, however, no doubt about the burning of a book for its
theological sentiments at this time, though it was no Parliament
but only an university which committed it to the fire. Oxford
University has always tempered her love for learning with a
dislike for inquiry, and set the cause of orthodoxy above the
cause of truth. This phase of her character was never better
illustrated than in the case of _The Naked Gospel_, by the Rev.
Arthur Bury, Rector of Exeter College (1690).
A high value attaches to the first edition of this book, wherein
the author essayed to show what the primitive Gospel really was,
what alterations had been gradually made in it, and what
advantages and disadvantages had therefrom ensued. Bury, many
years before, in 1648, had known what it was to be led from his
college by a file of musketeers, and forbidden to return to
Oxford or his fellowship under pain of death, because he had the
courage in those days to read the prayers of the Church. So he
had some justification for ascribing his anonymous work to "a
true son of the Church"; and his motive was the promotion of that
charity and toleration which breathes in its every page. The King
had summoned a Convocation, to make certain changes in the
Litany, and, if possible, to reconcile ecclesiastical
differences; he even dreamt of uniting the Protestant Churches of
England and of the Continent, and his Comprehension Bill, had it
passed Parliament, might have made the English Church a really
national Church; and it was from his sympathy with the broad
ideas of the King that Bury wrote his pamphlet, intending not to
publish it, but to present it to the members of Convocation
severally. Unfortunately he showed or presented a few copies to a
few friends, with the natural result that the work became known,
the author admonished for heresy and driven from his rectorship,
and the book publicly burnt, by a vote of the university, in the
area of the schools (August 19th, 1690). He should have reflected
that it is as little the part of a discreet man to try to
reconcile religious factions as to seek to separate fighting
tigers.
The unexpected commotion roused by his book led the author to
republish it with great modifications and omissions; a fact which
much diminishes the interest of the second edition of 1691. For
instance, the preface to the second edition omits this passage of
the first: "The Church of England, as it needs not, so it does
not, forbid any of its sons the use of their own eyes; if it
did, this alone would be sufficient reason not only to distrust
but to condemn it." Nevertheless both editions alike contain many
passages remarkable for their breadth of view no less than for
their admirable expression. What, for instance, could be better
than the passage wherein he speaks of the priests cramming the
people with doctrines, "so many in numbers that an ordinary mind
cannot retain them; so perplexed in matter that the best
understanding cannot comprehend them; so impertinent to any good
purpose that a good man need not regard them; and so unmentioned
in Scripture that none but the greatest subtlety can therein
discover the least intimations of them"? Or again: "No king is
more independent in his own dominions from any foreign
jurisdiction in matters civil, than every Christian is within his
own mind in matters of faith"? What Doctor of Divinity of these
days would speak as courageously as this one did two hundred
years ago? So let any one be prepared to give a good price for a
first edition copy of _The Naked Gospel_, and, when obtained, to
study as well as honour it.
History is apt to repeat itself, and therefore it is of interest
to note here that about a century and a half later (March 1849)
Exeter College was again stirred to the burning point, and that
in connection with a book which, apart from its intrinsic
interest, enjoys the distinction of having been actually the last
to be burnt in England. In the _Morning Post_ of March 9th, 1849,
it is written: "We are informed that a work recently published by
Mr. Froude, M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, entitled the _Nemesis
of Faith_, was a few days since publicly burned by the
authorities in the College Hall." The _Nemesis_, therefore,
deserves a place in our libraries, and many will even prize it
above its author's historical works, as the last example of the
effort of the ecclesiastical spirit to crush the discussion of
its dogmas. It is owing to this attempt that the _Nemesis_ is now
so well known as to render any reference to its contents
superfluous.
We now pass to the reign of Queen Anne, when Toryism became the
prevalent power in the country, and manifested its peculiar
spirit by the increased persecution of literature.
Among strictly theological works one by John Asgill, barrister,
claims a peculiar distinction, for it was burnt by order of two
Parliaments, English and Irish, and its author expelled from two
Houses of Commons. This was the famous _Argument Proving that
According to the Covenant of Eternal Life, revealed in the
Scriptures, Man may be Translated from Hence into that Eternal
Life without Passing Through Death, although the Human Nature of
Christ Himself could not be thus Translated till He had Passed
Through Death_ (1700). In this book of 106 pages Asgill argued
that death, which had come by Adam, had been removed by the death
of Christ, and had lost its legal power. He claimed the right,
and asserted his expectation, of actual translation; and so went
by the nickname of "Translated Asgill." He tells how in writing
it he felt two powers within him, one bidding him write, the
other bobbing his elbow; but unfortunately the former prevailed,
as it generally does. His printer told him that his men thought
the author a little crazed, in which Asgill fancied the printer
spoke one word for them and two for himself. Other people agreed
with the printer, to Asgill's advantage, for, as he says, "Coming
into court to see me as a monster, and hearing me talk like a
man, I soon fell into my share of practice": which I mention as a
hint for the briefless. This was in Ireland, where Asgill was
elected member for Enniscorthy, for which place however he only
sat four days, being expelled for his pamphlet on October 10th,
1703. Shortly afterwards Asgill became member for Bramber, in
Sussex, but this seat, too, he lost in 1707 for the same reason,
the English House, like the Irish, though not by a unanimous
vote, condemning his book to the flames. Asgill's debts caused
him apparently to spend the rest of his days in the comparative
peace of the Fleet prison.
Coleridge says there is no genuine Saxon English better than
Asgill's, and that his irony is often finer than Swift's. At all
events, his burnt work--the labour of seven years--is very dreary
reading, relieved however by such occasional good sayings as "It
is much easier to make a creed than to believe it after it is
made," or "Custom itself, without a reason for it, is an argument
only for fools." Asgill's defence before the House of Commons
shows that a very strained interpretation was placed upon the
passages that gave offence. Let it suffice to quote one: "Stare
at me as long as you will, I am sure that neither my physiognomy,
sins, nor misfortune can make me so unlikely to be translated as
my Redeemer was to be hanged." Asgill clearly wrote in all
honesty and sincerity, though the contrary has been suggested;
and his defence was not without spirit or point: "Pray what is
this blasphemous crime I here stand charged with? A belief of
what we all profess, or at least of what no one can deny. If the
death of the body be included in the fall, why is not this life
of the body included in the redemption? And if I have a firmer
belief in this than another, am I therefore a blasphemer?" But
the House thought that he was; and to impugn the right of the
majority to decide such a point would be to impugn a fundamental
principle of the British Constitution. I therefore refrain from
an opinion, and leave the matter to the reader's judgment.
Among the many books that have owed an increase of popularity, or
any popularity at all, to the fire that burnt them, may be
instanced the two works of Dr. Coward, which were burnt by order
of the House of Commons in Palace Yard on March 18th, 1704. Dr.
Coward had been a Fellow of Merton, and he wrote poetry as well
as books of medicine, but in 1702 he ventured on metaphysical
ground, and under the pseudonym of "Estibius Psychalethes"
dedicated to the clergy his _Second Thoughts concerning the
Human Soul_, in which he contended that the notion of the soul as
a separate immaterial substance was "a plain heathenist
invention:" not exactly a position the clergy were likely to
welcome, although the author repeatedly avowed his belief in an
eternal future life. In 1704 the Doctor published his _Grand
Essay: a Vindication of Reason and Religion against the
Impostures of Philosophy_, in which he repeated his ideas about
immaterial substances, and argued that matter and motion were the
foundation of thought in man and brutes. The House of Commons
called him to its bar, and burnt his books; a proceeding which
conferred such additional popularity upon them that the Doctor
was enabled the very same year to bring out a second edition of
his _Second Thoughts_. Certainly no other treatment could have
made the books popular. They are perfectly legitimate, but rather
dry, metaphysical disquisitions; and Parliament might quite as
fairly have burnt Locke's famous essay on the _Human
Understanding_.
For Parliament thus to constitute itself Defender of the Faith
was not merely to trespass on the office of the Crown, but to sin
against the more sacred right of common sense itself. We cannot
be surprised, therefore, since the English Parliament sinned in
this way (as it does to this day in a minor degree), that the
Irish Parliament should have sinned equally, as it did about the
same time, in the case of a book whose title far more suggested
heresy than its contents substantiated it. I refer to Toland's
_Christianity not Mysterious_ (1696), which was burnt by the
hangman before the Parliament House Gate at Dublin, and in the
open street before the Town-House, by order of the Committee of
Religion of the Irish House of Commons, one member even going so
far as to advocate the burning of Toland himself. It is difficult
now to understand the extreme excitement caused by Toland's book,
seeing that it was evidently written in the interests of
Christianity, and would now be read without emotion by the most
orthodox. It was only the superstructure, not the foundation,
that Toland attacked; his whole contention being that
Christianity, rightly understood, contained nothing mysterious or
inconsistent with reason, but that all ideas of this sort, and
most of its rites, had been aftergrowths, borrowed from Paganism,
in that compromise between the new and old religion which
constituted the world's Christianisation.[150:1] Although this
fact is now generally admitted, Toland puts the case so well that
it is best to give his own words:--
"The Christians," he says, "were careful to remove all obstacles
lying in the way of the Gentiles. They thought the most effectual
way of gaining them over to their side was by compounding the
matter, which led them to unwarrantable compliances, till at
length they likewise set up for mysteries. Yet not having the
least precedent for any ceremonies from the Gospel, excepting
Baptism and the Supper, they strangely disguised and transformed
these by adding to them the pagan mystic rites. They administered
them with the strictest secrecy; and to be inferior to their
adversaries in no circumstance, they permitted none to assist at
them but such as were antecedently prepared or initiated."
The parallel Toland proceeds to draw is extremely instructive,
and could only be improved on in our own day by tracing both
Pagan and Christian rites to their antecedent origins in India.
What he says also of the Fathers would be nowadays assented to
by all who have ever had the curiosity to look into their
writings; namely, "that they were as injudicious, violent, and
factious as other men; that they were, for the greatest part,
very credulous and superstitious in religion, as well as
pitifully ignorant and superficial in the minutest punctilios of
literature."
Toland was only twenty-six when he published his first book, but,
to judge from the correspondence between Locke and Molyneux, he
was vain and indiscreet. "He has raised against him," says the
latter from Dublin (May 27th, 1697), "the clamours of all
parties; and this not so much by his difference in opinion as by
his unseasonable way of discoursing, propagating, and maintaining
it." Again (September 11th, 1697): "Mr. T. is at last driven out
of the kingdom; the poor gentleman, by his imprudent management,
had raised such an universal outcry that it was even dangerous
for a man to have been known once to converse with him. This made
all men wary of reputation decline seeing him; insomuch that at
last he wanted a meal's meat (as I am told), and none would admit
him to their tables. The little stock of money which he brought
into the country being exhausted, he fell to borrowing from any
one that would lend him half-a-crown, and ran in debt for his
wigs, clothes, and lodging." Then when the Parliament ordered him
to be taken into custody, and to be prosecuted, he very wisely
fled the country, suffering only a temporary rebuff, and writing
many other books, political and religious, none of which ever
attained the distinction of his first.
But it was in the struggle between the Church and Dissent that
the party-spirit of Queen Anne's reign chiefly manifested itself
in the burning of books. No one fought for the cause of Dissent
with greater energy or greater personal loss than the famous
Defoe, the author of _Robinson Crusoe_. It brought him to ruin,
and one of his books to the hangman.
It would seem that his _Shortest Way with the Dissenters_ (1702),
which ironically advocated their extermination, was in answer to
a sermon preached at Oxford by Sacheverell in June of the same
year, called _The Political Union_, wherein he alluded to a party
against whom all friends of the Anglican Church "ought to hang
out the bloody flag and banner of defiance." Defoe's pamphlet so
exactly accorded with the sentiments of the High Church party
against the Dissenters that the extent of their applause at first
was only equalled by that of their subsequent fury when the true
author and his true object came to be known. Parliament ordered
the work to be burnt by the hangman, and Defoe was soon
afterwards sentenced to a ruinous fine and imprisonment, and to
three days' punishment in the pillory. It was on this occasion
that he wrote his famous _Hymn to the Pillory_, which he
distributed among the spectators, and from which (as it is
somewhat long) I quote a few of the more striking lines:--
"Hail, Hieroglyphick State machine,
Contrived to punish fancy in;
Men that are men in thee can feel no pain,
And all thy insignificants disdain.
* * * * *
Here by the errors of the town
The fools look out and knaves look on.
* * * * *
Actions receive their tincture from the times,
And, as they change, are virtues made or crimes.
Thou art the State-trap of the Law,
But neither can keep knaves nor honest men in awe.
* * * * *
Thou art no shame to Truth and Honesty,
Nor is the character of such defaced by thee,
Who suffer by oppression's injury.
Shame, like the exhalations of the Sun,
Falls back where first the motion was begun,
And they who for no crime shall on thy brows appear,
Bear less reproach than they who placed them there."
The State-trap of the Law, however, long survived Defoe's hymn to
it, and was unworthily employed against many another great
Englishman before its abolition. That event was delayed till the
first year of Queen Victoria's reign; the House of Lords
defending it, as it defended all other abuses of our old penal
code, when the Commons in 1815 passed a Bill for its abolition.
About the same time, Parliament ordered to be burnt by the
hangman a pamphlet against the Test, which one John Humphrey, an
aged Nonconformist minister, had written and circulated among the
members of Parliament.[154:1] There seems to be no record of the
pamphlet's name; and I only guess it may be a work entitled, _A
Draught for a National Church accommodation, whereby the subjects
of North and South Britain, however different in their judgments
concerning Episcopacy and Presbytery, may yet be united_ (1709).
For, to suggest union or compromise or reconciliation between
parties is generally to court persecution from both.
A book that was very famous in its day, on the opposite side to
Defoe, was Doctor Drake's _Memorial of the Church of England_,
published anonymously in 1705. The Tory author was indignant that
the House of Lords should have rejected the Bill against
Occasional Conformity, which would have made it impossible for
Dissenters to hold any office by conforming to the Test Act; he
complained of the knavish pains of the Dissenters to divide
Churchmen into High and Low; and he declared that the present
prospect of the Church was "very melancholy," and that of the
government "not much more comfortable." Long habit has rendered
us callous to the melancholy state of the Church and the
discomfort of governments; but in Queen Anne's time the croakers'
favourite cry was a serious offence. The Queen's Speech,
therefore, of October 27th, 1705, expressed strong resentment at
this representation of the Church in danger; both Houses, by
considerable majorities, voted the Church to be "in a most safe
and flourishing condition"; and a royal proclamation censured
both the book and its unknown author, a few months after it had
been presented by the Grand Jury of the City, and publicly burnt
by the hangman. It was more rationally and effectually dealt
with in Defoe's _High Church Legion, or the Memorial examined_;
but one is sometimes tempted to wish that the cry of the Church
in danger might be as summarily disposed of as it was in the
reign of Queen Anne, when to vote its safety was deemed
sufficient to insure it.
Drake's misfortunes as a writer were as conspicuous as his
abilities. Two years before the Memorial was burnt, his _Historia
Anglo-Scotica_, purporting to give an impartial history of the
events that occurred between England and Scotland from William
the Conqueror to Queen Elizabeth, was burnt at Edinburgh (June
30th, 1703). It was dedicated to Sir Edward Seymour, one of the
Queen's Commissioners for the Union, and a High Churchman; and as
it also expressed the hope that the Union would afford the Scotch
"as ample a field to love and admire the generosity of the
English as they had theretofore to dread their valour," it was
clearly not calculated to please the Scotch. They accordingly
burned it for its many reflections on the sovereignty and
independence of their crown and nation. As the Memorial was also
burnt at Dublin, Drake enjoys the distinction of having
contributed a book to be burnt in each of the three kingdoms. He
would, perhaps, have done better to have stuck to medicine; and
indeed the number of books written by doctors, which have brought
their authors into trouble, is a remarkable fact in the history
of literature.
Next to Drake's Memorial, and closely akin to it in argument,
come the two famous sermons of Dr. Sacheverell, the friend of
Addison; sermons which made a greater stir in the reign of Queen
Anne than any sermons have ever since made, or seem ever likely
to make again. They were preached in August and November 1709,
the first at Derby, called the _Communication of Sin_, and the
other at St. Paul's. The latter, _Perils among False Brethren_,
is very vigorous, even to read, and it is easy to understand the
commotion it caused. The False Brethren are the Dissenters and
Republicans; Sacheverell is as indignant with those "upstart
novelists" who presume "to evacuate the grand sanction of the
Gospel, the eternity of hell torments," as with those false
brethren who "will renounce their creed and read the Decalogue
backward . . . fall down and worship the very Devil himself
for the riches and honour of this world." In his advocacy of
non-resistance he was thought to hit at the Glorious Revolution
itself. "The grand security of our government, and the very
pillar upon which it stands, is founded upon the steady belief of
the subject's obligation to an absolute and unconditional
obedience to the supreme power in all things lawful, and the
utter illegality of any resistance upon any pretence whatsoever."
Then came the great trial in the House of Lords, and
Sacheverell's most able defence, often attributed to his friend
Atterbury. This speech, which Boyer calls "studied, artful, and
pathetic," deeply affected the fair sex, and even drew tears from
some of the tender-hearted; but a certain lady to whom, before he
preached the sermon, Sacheverell had explained the allusions in
it to William III., the Ministry, and Lord Godolphin, was so
astonished at the audacity of his public recantation that she
suddenly cried out, "The greatest villain under the sun!" But for
this little fact, one might think Sacheverell was unfairly
treated. At the end of it all, however, he was only suspended
from preaching for three years, and his sermons condemned to be
burnt before the Royal Exchange in presence of the Lord Mayor and
sheriffs; a sentence so much more lenient than at first seemed
probable, that bonfires and illuminations in London and
Westminster attested the general delight. At the instance, too,
of Sacheverell's friends, certain other books were burnt two days
before his own, by order of the House of Commons: so that the
High Church party had not altogether the worst of the battle. The
books so burnt were the following:--1. _The Rights of the
Christian Church asserted against the Romish and all other
Priests._ By M. Tindal. 2. _A Defence of the Rights of the
Christian Church._ 3. _A Letter from a Country Attorney to a
Country Parson concerning the Rights of the Church._ 4. Le
Clerc's extract and judgment of the same. 5. John Clendon's
_Tractatus Philosophico-Theologicus de Persona_: a book that
dealt with the subject of the Trinity.
Boyer gives a curious description of Sacheverell: "A man of large
and strong make and good symmetry of parts; of a livid complexion
and audacious look, without sprightliness; the result and
indication of an envious, ill-natured, proud, sullen, and
ambitious spirit"--clearly not the portrait of a friend. Lord
Campbell thought the St. Paul sermon contemptible, and General
Stanhope, in the debate, called it nonsensical and incoherent. It
seems to me the very reverse, even if we abstract it from its
stupendous effect. Sacheverell, no doubt, was a more than
usually narrow-minded priest; but in judging of the preacher we
must think also of the look and the voice and the gestures, and
these probably fully made up, as they so often do, for anything
false or illogical in the sermon itself.
At all events, Sacheverell won for himself a place in English
history. That he should have brought the House of Lords into
conflict with the Church, causing it to condemn to the flames,
together with his own sermons, the famous Oxford decree of 1683,
which asserted the most absolute claims of monarchy, condemned
twenty-seven propositions as impious and seditious, and most of
them as heretical and blasphemous, and condemned the works of
nineteen writers to the flames, would alone entitle his name to
remembrance.[160:1] So incensed indeed were the Commons, that
they also condemned to be burnt the very _Collections of Passages
referred to by Dr. Sacheverell in the Answer to the Articles of
his Impeachment_.
But Parliament was in a burning mood; for Sacheverell's friends,
wishing to justify his cry of the Church in danger, which he had
ascribed to the heretical works lately printed, easily succeeded
in procuring the burning of Tindal's and Clendon's books, before
mentioned. Nor can any one who reads that immortal work, _The
Rights of the Christian Church, asserted against the Romish and
all other Priests who claim an independent power over it_, wonder
at their so urging the House, however much he may wonder at their
succeeding.
The first edition of _The Rights of the Christian Church_
appeared in 1706, published anonymously, but written by the
celebrated Matthew Tindal, than whom All Souls' College has never
had a more distinguished Fellow, nor produced a more brilliant
writer. In those days, when the question that most agitated men's
minds was whether the English Church was of Divine Right, and so
independent of the civil power, or whether it was the creature
of, and therefore subject to, the law, no work more convincingly
proved the latter than this work of Tindal; a work which, even
now, ought to be far more generally known than it is, no less for
its great historical learning than for its scathing denunciations
of priestcraft.
As the subordination of the Church to the State is now a
principle of general acceptance, there is less need to give a
summary of Tindal's arguments, than to quote some of the passages
which led the writer to predict, when composing it, that he was
writing a book that would drive the clergy mad. The promoting the
independent power of the clergy has, he says, "done more mischief
to human societies than all the gross superstitions of the
heathen, who were nowhere ever so stupid as to entertain such a
monstrous contradiction as two independent powers in the same
society; and, consequently, their priests were not capable of
doing so much mischief to the Commonwealth as some since have
been." The fact, that in heathen times greater differences in
religion never gave rise to such desolating feuds as had always
rent Christendom, proves that "the best religion has had the
misfortune to have the worst priests." "'Tis an amazing thing to
consider that, though Christ and His Apostles inculcated nothing
so much as universal charity, and enjoined their disciples to
treat, not only one another, notwithstanding their differences,
but even Jews and Gentiles, with all the kindness imaginable, yet
that their pretended successors should make it their business to
teach such doctrines as destroy all love and friendship among
people of different persuasions; and that with so good success
that never did mortals hate, abhor, and damn one another more
heartily, or are readier to do one another more mischief, than
the different sects of Christians." "If in the time of that wise
heathen Ammianus Marcellinus, the Christians bore such hatred to
one another that, as he complains, no beasts were such deadly
enemies to men as the more savage Christians were generally to
one another, what would he, if now alive, say of them?" etc. "The
custom of sacrificing men among the heathens was owing to their
priests, especially the Druids. . . . And the sacrificing of
Christians upon account of their religious tenets (for which
millions have suffered) was introduced for no other reason than
that the clergy, who took upon them to be the sole judges of
religion, might, without control, impose what selfish doctrines
they pleased." Of the High Church clergy he wittily observes:
"Some say that their lives might serve for a very good rule, if
men would act quite contrary to them; for then there is no
Christian virtue which they could fail of observing."
If Tindal wished to madden the clergy, he certainly succeeded,
for the pulpits raged and thundered against his book. But the
only sermon to which he responded was Dr. Wotton's printed
Visitation sermon preached before the Bishop of Lincoln; and his
_Defence of the Rights of the Christian Church_ (55 pages) was
burnt in company with the larger work. It contained the "Letter
from a Country Attorney to a Country Parson concerning the Rights
of the Church," and the philosopher Le Clerc's appreciative
reference to Tindal's work in his _Bibliotheque Choisie_.
Nevertheless, Queen Anne had given Tindal a present of L500 for
his book, and told him that she believed he had banished Popery
beyond a possibility of its return. Tindal himself, it should be
said, had become a Roman Catholic under James II. and then a
Protestant again, but whether before or after the abdication of
James is not quite clear. He placed a high value on his own work,
for when, in December 1707, the Grand Jury of Middlesex presented
_The Rights_ its author sagely reflected that such a proceeding
would "occasion the reading of one of the best books that have
been published in our age by many more people than otherwise
would have read it." This probably was the case, with the result
that it was burnt, as aforesaid, by the hangman in 1710 by order
of the House of Commons, at the instance of Sacheverell's
friends, in the very same week that Sacheverell's sermons
themselves were burnt! The House wished perhaps to show itself
impartial. The victory, for the time at least, was with
Sacheverell and the Church. The Whig ministry was overturned, and
its Tory successor passed the Bill against Occasional Conformity,
and the Schism Act; and, had the Queen's reign been prolonged,
would probably have repealed the very meagre Toleration Act of
1689. Tindal, however, despite the Tory reaction, continued to
write on the side of civil and religious liberty, keeping his
best work for the last, published within three years of his
death, when he was past seventy, namely, _Christianity as Old as
the Creation; or, the Gospel a republication of the Religion of
Nature_ (1730). Strange to say, this work, criticised as it was,
was neither presented nor burnt. I have no reason, therefore, to
present it here, and indeed it is a book of which rather to read
the whole than merely extracts.
About the same time that Sacheverell's sermons were the sensation
of London, a sermon preached in Dublin on the Presbyterian side
was attended there with the same marks of distinction. In
November 1711 Boyse's sermon on _The Office of a Scriptural
Bishop_ was burnt by the hangman, at the command of the Irish
House of Lords. Unfortunately one cannot obtain this sermon
without a great number of others, amongst which the author
embedded it in a huge and repulsive folio comprising all his
works. The sermon was first preached and printed in 1709, and
reprinted the next year: it enters at length into the historical
origin of Episcopacy in the early Church, the author alluding as
follows to the Episcopacy aimed at by too many of his own
contemporaries: "A grand and pompous sinecure, a domination over
all the churches and ministers in a large district managed by
others as his delegates, but requiring little labour of a man's
own, and all this supported by large revenues and attended with
considerable secular honours." Boyse could hardly say the same in
these days, true, no doubt, as it was in his own. Still, that
even an Irish House of Lords should have seen fit to burn his
sermon makes one think that the political extinction of that body
can have been no serious loss to the sum-total of the wisdom of
the world.
The last writer to incur a vote of burning from the House of
Commons in Queen Anne's reign was William Fleetwood, Bishop of
St. Asaph; and this for the preface to four sermons he had
preached and published: (1) on the death of Queen Mary, 1694; (2)
on the death of the Duke of Gloucester, 1700; (3) on the death of
King William, 1701; (4) on the Queen's Accession, in 1702. It was
voted to the public flames on June 10th, 1712, as "malicious and
factious, highly reflecting upon the present administration of
public affairs under Her Majesty, and tending to create discord
and sedition among her subjects." The burning of the preface
caused it to be the more read, and some 4,000 numbers of the
_Spectator_, No. 384, carried it far and wide. Probably it was
more read than the prelate's numerous tracts and sermons, such as
his _Essay on Miracles_, or his _Vindication of the Thirteenth of
Romans_.
The bishop belonged to the party that was dissatisfied with the
terms of the Peace of Utrecht, then pending, and his preface was
clearly written as a vehicle or vent for his political
sentiments. The offensive passage ran as follows: "We were, as
all the world imagined then, just entering on the ways that
promised to lead to such a peace as would have answered all the
prayers of our religious Queen . . . when God, for our sins,
permitted the spirit of discord to go forth, and by troubling
sore the camp, the city, and the country (and oh! that it had
altogether spared the places sacred to His worship!), to spoil
for a time the beautiful and pleasing prospect, and give us, in
its stead, I know not what--our enemies will tell the rest with
pleasure." Writing to Bishop Burnet, he expresses himself still
more strongly: "I am afraid England has lost all her constraining
power, and that France thinks she has us in her hands, and may
use us as she pleases, which, I daresay, will be as scurvily as
we deserve. What a change has two years made! Your lordship may
now imagine you are growing young again; for we are fallen,
methinks, into the very dregs of Charles the Second's politics."
Assuredly Bishop Fleetwood had done better to reserve his
political opinions for private circulation, instead of exposing
them to the world under the guise and shelter of what purported
to be a religious publication.
But he belonged to the age of the great political churchmen, when
the Church played primarily the part of a great political
institution, and her more ambitious members made the profession
of religion subsidiary to the interests of the political party
they espoused. The type is gradually becoming extinct, and the
time is long since past when the preface to a bishop's sermons,
or even his sermons themselves, could convulse the State. One
cannot, for instance, conceive the recurrence of such a commotion
as was raised by Fleetwood or Sacheverell, possible as everything
is in the zigzag course of history. Still less can one conceive a
repetition of such persecution of Dissent as has been illustrated
by the cases of Delaune and Defoe. For either the Church
moderated her hostility to Dissent, or her power to exercise it
lessened; no instance occurring after the reign of Queen Anne of
any book being sentenced to the flames on the side either of
Orthodoxy or Dissent.
FOOTNOTES:
[137:1] In _Notes and Queries_ for March 11th, 1854, Mr. James
Graves, of Kilkenny, mentions as in his possession a copy of
Molyneux, considerable portions of which had been consumed by
fire.
[150:1] In a letter in his _Vindicius Liberius_ he says: "As for
the Christian religion in general, that book is so far from
calling it in question that it was purposely written for its
service, to defend it against the imputations of contradiction
and obscurity which are frequently objected by its opposers."
[154:1] Wilson's _Defoe_, iii. 52.
[160:1] See Somers' _Tracts_ (1748), VII., 223, and the _Entire
Confutation of Mr. Hoadley's Book_, for the decree itself, and
the authors condemned. After the Rye House Plot, which caused
this decree, Oxford addressed Charles II. as "the breath of our
nostrils, the anointed of the Lord"; Cambridge called him "the
Darling of Heaven!" Could the servility of ultra-loyalty go
further?