PRESBYTERIANS, INDEPENDENTS, ERASTIANS, AND THEIR THEORIES.
O wad some pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursel’s as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An’ foolish notion;
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ e’en devotion.--BURNS.
For the last three years the Assembly of Divines had been sitting
almost daily in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey.
♦Presbyterians.♦ The assembly consisted of a hundred and twenty
ministers, all Presbyterians but ten or twelve Independents; twenty
members of the Commons and ten peers; besides four ministers and three
laymen from Scotland. They were preparing a new Prayer-book, a form of
Church Government, a Confession of Faith, and a Catechism; but the real
questions at issue were the establishment of the Presbyterian Church
and the toleration of sectarians.
%ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES.%
The Presbyterians, as we know, desired to establish their own form of
Church government by assemblies and synods, without any toleration
for nonconformists, whether Catholics, Episcopalians, or sectarians.
But though they formed a large majority in the assembly, there was a
well-organized opposition of Independents and Erastians, whose union
made it no easy matter for the Presbyterians to carry every vote their
own way.
♦Church Government--Independents.♦ The Independents agreed with the
Presbyterians in freeing the Church from the control of the State,
but the essential requirements of their theory of Church government
were--1st, the independence of each separate congregation, including
the election of its own ministers; 2nd, that penalties for spiritual
offences should be spiritual and not temporal; inflicted, not by the
civil magistrate, nor by assemblies, but by the congregation. Their
theory on this second point was expressed by Milton in a pamphlet in
which he wrote, “It is not to be expected all in a church to be gold
and silver and precious stones; it is not possible for man to sever the
wheat from the tares, the good fish from the other fry; that must be
the angels’ ministry, at the end of mortal things. Yet, if all cannot
be of one mind, as who looks they should be? this, doubtless, is more
wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian, that many be tolerated
rather than all compelled.” This noble theory of toleration naturally,
but illogically, they confined to all sects who taught the fundamental
doctrines of Christianity.
♦Erastians.♦ The name of the Erastian party was derived from a
German of the sixteenth century, called Erastus. These were at the
opposite pole to their allies. The Independents made each congregation
independent of both Church and State; the Presbyterians made the
congregation dependent on an independent Church; while the Erastians
made the Church itself dependent on the State. Their wish being to
reduce the power of the Church, they were as strongly opposed as the
Independents to the strong Church government of the Presbyterians,
and were quite willing to agree with them in making the congregation
independent of any such central authority as the Scotch assembly.
They also agreed with the Independents in their objection to civil
penalties for spiritual offences. In fact they went further, and
objected to spiritual offences being punished by the spiritual weapon
of excommunication. Their party mainly consisted of lay members from
the Parliament, who had the intuitive dislike of lawyers to courts
administered by ecclesiastics. Episcopacy many of them would have been
willing to restore, if shorn of the moral and social jurisdiction it
enforced under civil penalties. The English Church, as administered at
the present day, would have nearly come up to their ideal.
%PRESBYTERIAN INTOLERANCE.%
The Presbyterian Church could be seen in full work in Scotland.
There toleration was unknown. Those who conformed held their goods
and chattels at the mercy of ministers and elders sitting in kirk
session; while those who did not conform were imprisoned till they
did; neighbours and servants acted as informers, and the edifice was
crowned by a great Church Assembly, in power more than a match for
the Scotch Parliament. Bad as it is to have Church and State acting
in antagonism to one another, in Scotland the establishment of the
Presbyterian system kept political liberty alive among the people.
The Scotch Parliament was corrupt, and did not represent the country.
The Church assemblies, on the contrary, were really popular in
constitution; conscious that their power was based on the affections
of the people, the ministers and elders who sat in them dared to
uphold the cause of liberty, when their Parliament was suffering
itself to be made a tool in the hands of the executive. Thus, however
contentious they showed themselves, however unreasonable the claims
they put forward, the assemblies none the less played the same part
as the English House of Commons in preventing the establishment of
an arbitrary monarchy. Further, the excessive influence which the
Presbyterian Church exercised in Scotland was itself due to the fact
that a very large proportion of the nation was Presbyterian, so that
even where tyranny was exercised the sufferers as a rule themselves
approved of the discipline. In England neither of these conditions
existed; the Parliament was far better fitted than an assembly of
churchmen to defend the nation’s liberties, while the Presbyterians
themselves were in a minority. It was impossible, however, that in
the warmth of their zeal the Presbyterian party should be brought to
recognize the force of the different conditions prevailing in the two
countries. In fact, the arguments used in the assembly did not regard
these points. The question was debated from the theological point of
view, whether the Presbyterian Church had been originally established
by the will of God. When the Presbyterians were opposed by Erastians
and Independents, the ignorance which accompanied their dogmatism was
often exposed. When they quoted a telling text, Selden, the Erastian
lawyer, would say, “Perhaps in your little pocket Bibles with gilt
leaves” (which they would often pull out and read) “the translation may
be thus or thus, but in the Greek or Hebrew it signifies the other.”
His opponents had to bow to his superior knowledge. Thus the Opposition
went on for months, battling every point; and “besides all this,”
says a Presbyterian, plaintively, “we have to answer the pamphlets of
our many opponents, often very plausibly written, demanding liberty
for all religions.” The Commons, moreover, in summoning the divines,
meant to hear their advice, not to abide by their votes. As soon as a
debate ended in the assembly it began again in the House. There the
Presbyterians found it more difficult to command a majority, for the
ranks of their opponents were swelled by a new contingent, the “worldly
profane men,” who, though impartial as Gallio as to creeds, evinced a
desperate antagonism to any ‘kirk-sessional’ discipline.
%PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH ESTABLISHED.%
♦New Prayer-book.♦ At last, however, after the assembly had sat a
year and a half, the Parliament passed an ordinance for putting a
directory, prepared by the divines, into force, and taking away the
Common Prayer-book (3rd Jan., 1645). The sign of the cross in baptism,
the ring in marriage, the wearing of vestments, the keeping of saints’
days, were discontinued. The communion table was ordered to be set
in the body of the church, about which the people were to stand or
sit; the passages of Scripture to be read were left to the minister’s
choice; no forms of prayer were prescribed. The same year a new
directory for ordination of ministers was passed into an ordinance. The
Presbyterian assemblies, called presbyteries, were empowered to ordain,
and none were allowed to enter the ministry without first taking the
covenant (8th Nov., 1645).
♦Ordinance for establishment of Presbyterian Church.♦ This was followed
by a third ordinance for establishing the Presbyterian system of Church
government in England by way of trial for three years. As originally
introduced into the House, this ordinance met with great opposition,
because it gave power to ministers of refusing the sacrament and
turning men out of the Church for scandalous offences. Now, in what,
argued the Erastians, did scandalous offences consist? Were 10,000
little courts of justice to be set up over the kingdom, searching
into men’s lives, and punishing any fault they pleased to call a
scandalous offence? A modified ordinance accordingly was passed;
scandalous offences, for which ministers might refuse the sacrament
and excommunicate, were specified; assemblies were declared subject
to Parliament, and leave was granted to those who thought themselves
unjustly sentenced, to appeal right up from one Church assembly after
another to the civil power--the Parliament (16th March, 1646).
Presbyterians, both in England and Scotland, felt deeply mortified.
After all these years’ contending, then, just when they thought they
were entering on the fruits of their labours, to see the Church still
left under the power of the State--the disappointment was intense to
a degree we cannot estimate. They looked on the Independents as the
enemies of God; this ‘lame Erastian Presbytery’ as hardly worth the
having.
♦Ordinance for the suppression of blasphemies and heresies.♦ Through
Presbyterian influence, a severe ordinance passed the Parliament for
the suppression of blasphemies and heresies (2nd May, 1648). Those who
denied the doctrines of the Trinity, the Atonement, or the inspiration
of the Scriptures, were to be punished with death as felons.
Anabaptists and those who denied the lawfulness of the Presbyterian
government to be imprisoned until they should recant. But, happily,
these terrible persecutors failed in power. It seemed, indeed, as if
all their force was spent in the process of getting their ordinances
through Parliament. Thus, to the very last, their Church government was
only set up in London and Lancashire, while their ordinance to suppress
heresies entirely failed in its object. To get the ordinance passed the
assembly had sent petition after petition to the Commons, showing the
daily growth of heresies and schisms; the city of London had complained
that private meetings multiplied, that eleven were held in one parish
alone, that women and ignorant persons preached.[128] But, after all,
the passing of the ordinance did not abate the evil. The Presbyterian
party in Parliament dared not attempt strong measures for the
suppression of sectarians, while the fatal Independent army remained
undisbanded, while the king obstinately rejected the terms offered him,
and the Royalists stood by mocking and exulting over the feuds and
heart-burnings of their opponents. Milton with bold bitterness appealed
to Parliament against these new forcers of conscience:
“Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent,
Would have been held in high esteem with Paul,
Must now be named and printed Heretics,
By shallow Edwards and Scotch what-d’ye-call;
But we do hope to find out all your tricks,
Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent,
That so the Parliament
May with their wholesome and preventive shears
Clip your phylacteries, though balk your ears,[129]
And succour our just fears,
When they shall read this clearly in your charge
New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large.”
%SECTARIANS.%
Colonel Hutchinson, governor of Nottingham Castle, and Cromwell’s
friend, was not a man who could be imprisoned because he refused to
have his child baptized, nor yet one likely to fail in protecting
poorer brethren of his own persuasion. Persecution to any extent was
only possible against Catholics and Episcopalians, who were regarded
as Royalists by Independents and Presbyterians alike. An ordinance
was passed, forbidding the Prayer-book to be publicly or privately
read, on payment of a fine of £5 for the first offence, £10 for the
second, a year’s imprisonment for the third. Catholic priests taken
in the country were remorselessly imprisoned, banished, or executed.
Meanwhile new sects sprung up on all sides, and obtained safe shelter
under the shadow of the army and its leaders. Any man, however
ignorant and untaught, might obtain his little band of followers, for
the people’s minds were restless and willing to give ear to every
new doctrine. A book written at this time asserted that there were
176 heresies which found believers in the nation.
♦Leading sects.♦ Amongst many other sects, appeared the Brownists,
who would have had the laws of England modelled upon those of the Old
Testament, and even blasphemers and Sabbath-breakers punished by the
magistrates with death; the Anabaptists, who rejected the baptism of
infants, and went about re-baptizing their converts in the rivers by a
hundred at a time: the Quakers, who lived lives of extreme austerity,
refusing to take oaths, declaring all war sinful, and teaching that the
light within man is his sufficient rule of conduct:[130] and lastly
the Fifth Monarchists, who held that the world’s history was comprised
under four monarchies,--the Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and the
Roman; that the Roman was soon, like its predecessors, to pass away,
and the Fifth Monarchy--the reign of Christ upon earth--to begin. In
every country town and village, an Anabaptist, or some other sectarian,
would appear, and it was well for the Presbyterian minister, if, by
holding a public disputation in his church,[131] he could convince
his parishioners of the stranger’s error, and drive schism from their
doors.[132]
%REPUBLICANS.%
The mental excitement, the questioning, revolving, doubting, was not
confined to one side or to one question. Not only did sectarians
increase in numbers, but also men of new political ideas, demanding
reforms in the law, the Church, the constitution of the State; some
called for a reform of the law, observing that lawyers pocketed
enormous fees, and that suitors were often kept waiting years before
they could get a cause decided in Westminster Hall; others, with
feeling for poor debtors, shut up for life within a prison’s walls,
demanded the abolition of imprisonment for debt; Republicans, disgusted
with Charles’ perfidy, openly avowed their opinion, that a republic,
in which a House of Commons, or some other representative assembly,
exercised supreme authority by itself, was a far superior form of
government to a monarchy, and the only one under which liberty could
be secured; whilst boldest of all, sectarian soldiers, who had read in
the Old Testament that blood defiles a land, and that a land cannot be
cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him
that shed it, talked of the duty of bringing the king to justice, as
guilty of the blood of the thousands who had lost their lives in the
war. Amid the general confusion, the Presbyterians made their voices
heard plainly enough. Though they could not produce a Milton to write,
or a Cromwell to act, they at least endeavoured to make up for quality
by quantity, and gave to the world thousands of pamphlets extolling
their own form of Church government. Yet all their efforts to keep
down their opponents were unavailing. Sectarians, Republicans, law
reformers, though they did not necessarily share one another’s special
views, all agreed in opposing the Presbyterians, whose ideas of reform
were rapidly narrowing to the establishment of their own Church in
place of the Episcopal. The Presbyterians gazed in dismay upon the
increasing numbers of their enemies, the birth of the war they had
themselves begun. Nor was their fear groundless; for, either on the
side of Independents or of Royalists, the greater part of the intellect
of England was engaged against them.
%SIR HENRY VANE.%
♦Sir Henry Vane.♦ Ever since Pym’s death, the young Sir Henry Vane
had stood at the head of civil leaders. This English stoic at the age
of twenty sacrificed his brilliant prospects at court and emigrated
to America for conscience’ sake. Chosen governor of the little
colony of Massachusetts at twenty-three, after exciting enthusiastic
admiration for a time, he soon displeased the colonists by his
advocacy of toleration. He thus returned to England in time to take
an active part in the discussions preceding the meeting of the Long
Parliament, of which he was elected a member. Though he was hated by
the Presbyterians, the troublous war times necessarily brought to the
helm of the State the men, whatever their opinions, whose judgment and
skill were greatest in directing immediate operations. Vane’s sagacity
in practical matters even his enemies did not dispute. Clarendon
describes him as a man of extraordinary parts, with a wonderful insight
into character, and in fact as “all in any business where others were
joined with him.” It had chiefly been through his exertions that the
Parliament secured the aid of the Scots in 1643, at the critical
juncture when the triumph of the king’s arms made many regard the cause
of the Parliament as lost. Milton recognized his greatness, and thus at
a later date described his administration in the perilous times of the
Dutch war:
“Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old,
Than whom a better senator ne’er held
The helm of Rome, when gowns not arms repelled
The fierce Epirot and the African bold,
Whether to settle peace, or to unfold
The drift of hollow States, hard to be spelled,
Then to advise how war may, best upheld,
Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold,
In all her equipage; besides to know
Both spiritual power and civil, what each means,
What severs each, thou hast learn’d, which few have done:
The bounds of either sword to thee we owe:
Therefore, on thy firm hand Religion leans
In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son.”
His abstract theories of government, however, for Church and
State, were generally ill understood, and laid him open to much
misrepresentation. Though called an Independent, he in fact belonged
to no particular sect, being, as some said, ‘above ordinances;’ for he
held that there was no true church established by Divine Right--neither
Episcopalian, Presbyterian, nor Independent; but that they, whatever
their creed, who acted in the spirit of Christ, best deserved to be
called members of the true Church of Christ. Thus he lost caste with
each sect by his enthusiastic advocacy of toleration of all; he braved
the denunciations of Baxter in supporting Catholics, and stood by the
Unitarian on trial; and, while himself spending much of most days in
prayer, he claimed to be at one with Paul in accounting the Sabbath as
now a mere “magisterial institution.” With an infinite belief in the
perfectibility of human nature he aimed at attaining this object, not
through weakening the will by repression, but through strengthening it
by freedom. In the government of the State, as in that of the Church,
he desired that, as far as possible, men should be left free to think
and act for themselves. While at one with his age in earnestness, his
ideas were tinged with mysticism, and his theories were too far in
advance of his age to be understood. By his friends he was regarded
as an impracticable enthusiast; by the Presbyterians as a dreamer of
dreams, a man of obscure doctrines; by the Royalists as a fanatic who
was expecting the saints to govern the earth, and himself to reign as
their king.
%JOHN MILTON.%
♦John Milton.♦ Milton’s name had already emerged among the
Independents. In 1644 he published a tract, maintaining that
non-suitability of temper between man and wife is a sufficient ground
for divorce; a doctrine so objectionable to the Presbyterians, that
they caused the author to be called to account before the House of
Lords. But Milton’s pen was soon engaged in a nobler cause, the freedom
of the press (1644). Since the Reformation, the crown had assumed the
power before exercised by the Church, of maintaining a censorship
over the publication of books; and authors, printers, and importers
of prohibited works had been prosecuted in the Star Chamber, and
often barbarously punished. The Presbyterians, copying the example of
the tyranny they had overthrown, framed an ordinance, forbidding the
publication of books, that had not been first perused and licensed
by officers appointed by Parliament (June, 1643).
♦Areopagitica or liberty of unlicensed printing (1644).♦ The ordinance
was evaded by all parties, but Milton wrote to show the falseness
of the principles on which it rested. He addressed his tract to the
Lords and Commons, and told them that their ordinance could do no
good, because evil manners are learnt in a thousand other ways than
by books; that if it answered its purpose it must do harm, because
it would stop the search for truth and expel as much of virtue as of
sin. “Truth, indeed,” he wrote, “came once into the world with her
Divine Master, and was a perfect shape, most glorious to look on; but
when He ascended, and His apostles after Him were laid asleep, there
straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes
of the Egyptian Typhon, with his conspirators took the virgin Truth,
hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to
the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of truth,
such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for
the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by
limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all,
Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master’s second coming;
He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them
into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not
these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity
forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to
do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint.” “Opinion in
good men,” he said, “is but knowledge in the making.” That the greater
part of the people should be taken up with the study of the highest and
most important matters; that there should be a disputing, reasoning,
reading, inventing, discoursing, he told them, betokened, not that the
nation was degenerated or “drooping to a fatal decay, but casting off
the old and wrinkled skin of corruption, to outlive these pangs and wax
young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue,
destined to become great and honourable in these later ages. Methinks
I see in my mind,” he continued, “a noble and puissant nation rousing
herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible
locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, muing[133] her mighty youth,
and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and
unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly
radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with
those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she
means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects
and schisms.”[134] The Parliament, however, far from being influenced
by Milton’s noble appeal, passed several further ordinances for
restraining unlicensed printing[135] (Ord. 1647--1649--1652).
%LUDLOW--HUTCHINSON.%
♦Ludlow and Hutchinson.♦ On the military side there were Ludlow and
Hutchinson, both of them officers in the army and members of the
Commons, open-hearted men, who made no concealment of their desire to
effect a revolution in the government of the State. Distrust of the
king had gradually ripened into distrust of monarchy, and a belief that
England could never enjoy true liberty or freedom of conscience under
any but a republican form of government. Ireton, Cromwell’s son-in-law,
was abler and more reserved than these brother-officers of his. Though
devoted to the cause of freedom, he had not, as they, attached himself
blindly to republicanism as the only security for England’s liberties.
%IRETON--OLIVER CROMWELL.%
It was Cromwell, however, whom all adherents of the party that now
found itself standing in such fierce opposition to the Presbyterians,
regarded as their chief; whom the enthusiastic Vane, the cautious
Ireton, the generous Hutchinson, the sincere Ludlow, as well as the
sectarian, whatever his denomination, Independent, Brownist, or
Anabaptist, all alike looked upon as the one man able to understand
their wants, and to lead them to the accomplishment of their aims.
For above others he possessed a power of sympathy, talking to each
in the language of the hearer’s heart, until one and all found it
impossible to doubt that his obvious sympathy with their feelings must
spring from a sympathy with their views; with Ludlow and Hutchinson he
would discuss republican government; with Vane he could look forward
to the time when men, instead of being governed by self-interest,
should strive to act as Christ would act did He reign upon earth;
with his soldiers he could pray and humble himself before the Lord,
feeling that he and they were but as weak worms, and that it was God
in His mercy who bestowed victory upon His saints; with the more
worldly-minded he could unbend and be a pleasant companion, using the
language of the ordinary English gentleman, while in debate he could
either attest his sincerity with the fervid words and tears of a more
demonstrative age, or rein in his feelings and battle with the calm
arguments of reason. Freedom with the various forms of vigorous life
that spring from freedom--this was his ideal, and it was one that had
room within itself for all the others. A man whose nature is based
on a principle so wide and deep, when dealing with those whose aims
converge in different lines on the same point as his own, is not to
be considered false-hearted because his conversation seems to accord
with his companion’s character; it is rather that his mind is more
capacious, able to entertain more ideas and feelings than those of his
fellows; he sees the many sides to a question, they but one. Sympathy
is, in fact, the first quality of a leader. To move men he must be
moved by them; thus alone will they follow while he leads. It was thus
through his being able to obtain the confidence of all that Cromwell
took his natural position as chief of a coalition, united by common
hatred of Presbyterian ascendancy, and including fanatical Anabaptists
and Fifth-Monarchists, aristocratical Republicans and Independents,
democratical law reformers and Church reformers, with lawyers and
Erastians who were Monarchists at heart.
%OLIVER CROMWELL.%
The features of this man who, having begun life as a farmer, was
rapidly rising to become the director of a great nation, rough as they
were to look upon, could not fail to bear upon them the expression of
his true worth. A big head, which was covered with light brown hair
curling down upon his neck; a forehead broad and high; shaggy eyebrows,
with stern, deep-set eyes looking out from beneath them; a nose that
stood well out from the face, rather broad and red; a chin and mouth
expressive of firmness; a skin tanned brown with exposure to wind and
weather; a rough-looking face, with a big wart over the right eyebrow;
the whole, bearing the expression of dignity though not of grace,
showing a man of strong feelings with stronger self-control, of spirit
stern and just. One of his household, writing to a friend in America,
thus describes him: “His body was well compact and strong, his stature
under six foot about two inches; his head so shaped, as you might see
it a store-house and shop both of a vast treasury of natural parts; his
temper exceeding fiery (as I have known), but the flame of it kept down
for the most part, or soon allayed with those moral endowments he had.
He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distress, even to an
effeminate measure. Though God had made him a heart wherein was little
room for any fear, but what was due to Himself, of which there was a
large proportion, yet he did exceed in tenderness towards sufferers.
A larger soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his
was.”[136]
The thorough Presbyterians boasted no great names, but there were those
among the king’s friends who have won fame for their theories on
Church and State. The philosopher Hobbes published the ‘Leviathan’ in
1651: in this he proposed to give the sovereign absolute power, both in
Church and State, with the right to make laws, impose taxes, and decide
what creeds should be tolerated in his kingdom, arguing that whatever
dangers attended this form of government were none of them so bad as
that anarchy which attends civil war. In short, Hobbes’ ideal was a
wise and just despotism, a form of government almost impossible to get,
and quite impossible to keep.
%JEREMY TAYLOR--CHILLINGWORTH.%
There were others among the Royalists who could plead for religious
toleration in words as noble as those of the Independents themselves.
Jeremy Taylor, an Episcopalian minister, driven from his living
during the war, but drawing a noble lesson from his own and others’
sufferings, was teaching in his ‘Liberty of Prophesying’ (1647),
that no matters of mere opinion, no errors that are not sins, ought
to be persecuted or punished. Chillingworth, also, who fought in the
royal armies, had written before the war broke out a book called the
“Religion of Protestants,” in which he maintains that the Bible is the
sole religion of Protestants, and each man’s reason its interpreter.
Protestants, he says, are inexcusable, if they offer violence to other
men’s consciences, and if faulty in the matter of claiming authority,
“it is for doing it too much and not too little. This presumptuous
imposing of the senses of men upon the words of God, the special senses
of men upon the general words of God, and laying them upon men’s
conscience together, under the equal penalty of death and damnation ...
this restraining of the word of God from that latitude and generality,
and the understandings of men from that liberty wherein Christ and
the apostles left them, is and hath been the only fountain of all the
schisms of the Church, and that which makes them immortal.... Take away
these walls of separation, and all will quickly be one. Take away this
persecuting, burning, cursing, damning of men for not subscribing the
words of men as the words of God; require of Christians only to believe
Christ and to call no man master but Him only; let those leave claiming
infallibility that have no title to it, and let them that in their
words disclaim it, disclaim it also in their actions.”
FOOTNOTES:
[128] Weekly Account, Jan., 1646.
[129] _I.e_., leave untouched.
[130] Baxter’s Life; Neal; Baillie.
[131] Baxter’s Life, 30, 76.
[132] The Assembly of Divines practically came to an end in 1649,
when it was changed into a committee for examining candidates for the
Presbyterian ministry. It finally broke up without any formal dismissal
on the dispersion of the Rump Parliament in March, 1653.
[133] The _mew_ was the dark cage where falcons were _mewed up_ while
they _mewed_ or moulted their feathers. See Spenser’s ‘darksome _mew_’
and Hastings’ exclamation on Clarence’s imprisonment:
‘More pity that the eagle should be _mew’d_,
While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.’--Richard III., i. 132.
[134] Areopagitica, or speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.
Published 1644.
[135] The press was set free in 1695, when the Commons refused to renew
the Licensing Act passed soon after the Restoration (1662).
[136] Thurloe, i. 766.