has been indicated already, whose Jacobitism is unquestionable, and
who supported the Archbishop in his defiant course, wrote to him on
Ascension Day, 1689, a letter in which he refers to Ken, and the
doubts felt respecting him. “I must needs say, the sooner we meet our
brother of Bath the better, for I must no longer in duty conceal from
your Grace--though I beseech you to keep it in terms of a secret--that
this very good man is, I fear, warping from us, and the true
interests of the Church of England, towards a compliance with the new
Government.”[175]

[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]

Frampton, Bishop of Gloucester, coincided with Ken in his moderation;
and if the rest had resembled them, possibly a practical adjustment
of the controversy might have been reached. He is described as a
gentle, amiable man, unfitted for an Episcopal position during a season
of political trouble. After his deprivation he pursued a quiet and
inoffensive course, without giving any umbrage to the Government.[176]
Sancroft, Lloyd, and Turner were men of a different mould.

[Sidenote: 1689.]

During the period of the Bishops’ remaining in suspension, their case
excited immense interest--friends loudly expressing sympathy, opponents
loudly expressing disapproval. The press was employed. Apologies
were published; answers were returned. On the one hand the services
of the Seven in the cause of liberty were gratefully rehearsed,
their sufferings pitifully depicted, their temper under trials
enthusiastically extolled, and the sacredness of oaths, as asserted in
their conduct, earnestly enforced. Connected with this vindication and
eulogy, were mystical allusions to the perfect number of the Episcopal
confessors, the Seven imprisoned being irreverently compared to the
burning lamps before the throne of God. On the other hand, this play
of fancy met with sarcasm and ridicule; the old arguments for the
new oaths came into hackneyed use; the patient temper of the Bishops
failed to excite any longer much admiration, and a ridiculous panegyric
pronounced upon them for “the holy tears” they wept, like “trees of
sovereign balm, to cure the wounds of their Royal enemy,” only aroused
mockery, whilst their suffering and services were depreciated by a
reference to the story of Alexander the Great. Alexander had coats
of armour made for men and horses three times the ordinary size, and
left behind on the banks of the River Indus, to make succeeding ages
believe that his soldiery were of gigantic bigness. So, it was said,
the setting forth a few days’ imprisonment in the Royal palace of
the Tower,--under the notion of its being a prison such as confined
the primitive Christians,--detracted from the real glory gained by
the Bishops, since everybody saw the vast disproportion between the
dungeons of Diocletian and the Tower of London.[177]

As the 1st of February approached, a few Clergymen in the archdeaconry
of Sudbury applied to their Diocesan, Lloyd, Bishop of Norwich, telling
him that though they thought of nothing less than losing all, yet they
passionately desired to know whether they should voluntarily leave
their respective cures, or wait to be forcibly thrust out; also they
wished to know how they were to behave, so as, if possible, to preserve
the ancient Church of England. He informed them that in the opinion
of eminent lawyers a judicial sentence alone could eject them; and
therefore that they might retain possession until they were judicially
expelled. Their second question he left unanswered.[178] Whether
Lloyd’s notion of law was right or wrong, the Clergy generally did not
act upon it, for most of them quietly quitted possession on the 1st
of February.[179] Amongst the most distinguished of these Nonjurors
were George Hickes, Dean of Worcester; Henry Dodwell, who, though
not in orders, was Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford;
Jeremy Collier, Lecturer at Gray’s Inn; and John Kettlewell, Vicar of
Coleshill, in Warwickshire.

[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]

Hickes was a man of great learning, skilled both in patristic lore and
Teutonic tongues. He was brother to the Nonconformist Minister of the
name, who suffered death after Monmouth’s rebellion; but, so far from
being tainted with his brother’s sentiments, he was an intense opponent
of Nonconformity, and an extravagant assertor of passive obedience.
He published the last speeches of two Presbyterian Ministers, under
the title of _The Spirit of Popery, speaking out of the Mouths of
Fanatical Protestants_; and declared, in his _Thebæan Legion_,
that if King James should imitate the Emperor Maximian, and doom his
soldiers to death, for refusing to commit idolatry, it would be their
duty to submit with meekness to the Royal decree. He wrote letters
to a Popish priest, and an apologetical vindication of the English
Church, in answer to those who reproached her with heresy and schism;
and he also composed a book, entitled _Speculum Beatæ Virginis, a
discourse of the due praise and heroism of the Virgin Mary_. These
works indicate what manner of man he must have been, yet it is affirmed
that at first he felt disposed to take the oaths, and came up to London
for the purpose, but swerved from it through the influence of his High
Church friends; a statement which seems very improbable.[180] Dodwell
was still more learned than Hickes, and if in his theories more
absurd, he was in practice more reasonable. Some of his speculative
ideas upon marriage and music, upon the old serpent and the human soul,
were as extraordinary as any that ever entered the human brain; but
the fact which more immediately relates to my purpose is, that on the
one hand he wrote _Discourses against the Romanists_, and on the
other hand treatises upon _Schism_ and _One Priesthood_, in
such a style, that when Tillotson read the MS. he told him some things
in it were so palpably false, he wondered the author did not see their
absurdity, and that they were so gross as to grate much upon one’s
inward sense. He compared him to Richard Baxter--a man unlike him in
most respects, but whom he resembled in pertinacity of purpose and
fondness for his own opinion. Collier was described in his own day as
a breathing library, and for metaphysical learning and eloquence as
bearing the bell from most men.[181]

[Sidenote: 1689.]

[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]

Inferior to Collier in point of ability, and to Dodwell and Hickes in
point of learning, Kettlewell exceeded them in the fervour of his piety
and in the force of his character. Eminently spiritual and devout, with
his heart fixed upon another world, he threw into his life and ministry
a spiritual force, which touched as with an electric spark those who
came in contact with him, and made him a centre of power, though he was
free from any ambition to become a party leader. He had been Chaplain
in the Bedford family, and had been held in affectionate esteem by
Lord William Russell, though he utterly differed from him in political
opinion, for Kettlewell strongly maintained the doctrine of passive
obedience. He did not join in the outcry against Popery in the reign
of James II.; he thought it betrayed unworthy fears to be so alarmed
at the antagonism of error; and instead of preaching against Romanism,
he enforced the doctrines of the Creeds. When others were exclaiming
against the miscarriages of Government, he, it is said, turned the
thoughts of his hearers upon themselves, bidding them contemplate
the judgment of God, adore His wisdom, and submit to His will.[182]
The use which he meant to be made of these religious reflections was
to reconcile people to the ruling powers, and to repress the idea of
resisting them, whatever might be the excesses to which they ran. “He
preached up,” as his sympathizing biographer, remarks, “the duties
of common Christianity and of universal obligation, of reliance upon
Providence, of simplicity and sincerity, of fidelity and perseverance,
with all the branches of the great doctrine of the Cross, and the
benefit which the Church maketh by sufferings; constantly recommending
Christianity to his flock as a passive religion, and giving them rules
for begetting in them a meek and passive spirit.”[183] The temper
of the man, the tone of his churchmanship, and the preparation he
was making for his ultimate position as a Nonjuror, are very plain;
and with peculiarities of this kind he blended a love of Ritualism,
which expressed itself in rather an unusual form, for when a new set
of Communion plate had been presented to the church at Coleshill, he
caused the vessels to be dedicated by Archbishop Sancroft. They were
placed upon a table below the altar steps, and then taken, piece by
piece, and reverently placed upon the altar, sentences of Scriptures
being repeated in connection with the presentation of each. When the
patten, the chalices, the flagon, and the bason had been so offered,
a prayer of consecration followed, then a benediction, and then the
Holy Communion.[184] Kettlewell is described as a man of a peaceable
disposition; but it is clear from his Memoirs that the ardour of his
affections led him to speak and act with a vehemence not agreeable
to those who differed from him, and “the true effigies” of his face
prefixed to the book, confirms the inference which in this respect must
be drawn from the narrative. He was unquestionably a man of enthusiasm,
and his enthusiasm had a capacity for becoming fanatical.

[Sidenote: 1689.]

The Nonjurors were not so numerous as Kettlewell and others wished.
Only six joined him in his own county. In the diocese of Lichfield and
Coventry there might be twenty. In one archdeaconry in the diocese of
Norwich there might be half that number, owing to the influence of a
nonjuring Bishop. In one College at Cambridge there was a considerable
majority of Nonjurors, attributable to the party spirit they managed to
maintain. Altogether, about 400 Clergymen quitted the Establishment.
When we remember how prevalent had been the doctrines of the Divine
right of Kings, and of the absolute submission of subjects; when,
besides this, we recollect the nature of the education given at Oxford,
where the decree against the opposite doctrines had been daily read,
and constantly hung up in the Colleges,--we wonder that the Nonjurors
were not more numerous.

[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]

Dignitaries were not so submissive as their inferior brethren. In
defiance of the Act of Parliament, nonjuring Bishops retained their
palaces; and so lenient was the Government, that, at the eleventh hour,
forms of proviso were proposed, under which Nonjurors might continue
to enjoy their benefices. The suspicion with which all such overtures
of kindness were regarded appears in a letter to Sancroft written by
Lloyd, the Coryphæus of the obstinates:

          “May it please your Grace,

   “Mr. Inch called upon me last Monday, and showed me a protest
   contrived by him, and some of our good friends (as he styled
   them), in order to fend off our deprivation. I thanked him and
   our good friends for their kind designs, but at the same time I
   could not well resolve what it might import, _Timeo Danaos et
   dona_, and I dread lurking and consequential snares. It is
   therefore necessary to consider well of this protest before any
   determination about it.

   “I must confess to your Grace, that I do not think it fit for us
   to appear in it, or to push it on, as it took its rise from our
   friends’ kindness; for it is most proper for them to manage it.

   “Again, it may be very improper to stir the point, till we see
   in what temper the gentlemen are that meet at St. Stephen’s
   Chapel. The giving of a recognizance for the good behaving, or
   quiet peaceable living, is a point that deserves to be well
   weighed, especially since the interpretation of it depends much
   on the mercy of the gentlemen that sit in Westminster Hall.
   On the other hand, the circumstances of our poor noncomplying
   brethren in our respective dioceses, must be considered, for (if
   I mistake not) the benefit of the protest concerns them more
   than us.

   [Sidenote: 1690.]

   “My Lord, upon the whole matter, I designed this day to have
   waited upon your Grace and my Lord of Ely, but, in good truth,
   I am not able to stir abroad. I took physic last Monday, and I
   have been feverish ever since; but as soon as it shall please
   God to enable me, I shall wait upon your Grace and my Lord of
   Ely. In the meantime, with the tender of my humble duty and
   service,

                         “I remain,
          “Your Grace’s most obedient servant
                                         to command,
                                   “WILLIAM NORWICH.”[185]

This secession from the Church on a question touching the Crown
could not but be a trouble to William; at the same time he had other
troubles. The intrigues and trials between Whigs and Tories were the
plague of his reign. He wished he were a thousand miles away, and that
he had never become King of England. He thought he could not trust the
Tories--he resolved he would not trust the Whigs; and once he was on
the point of going back to Holland, leaving the Government here in the
hands of the Queen. He and his Ministers had warm debates, and it is
said that amongst them tears were shed. At last William made up his
mind to go to Ireland, and there put an end to the war.[186]

He assembled a new Parliament on the 2nd of April. Terrific excitement
prevailed at the elections. The Whigs denounced the Tories as
Jacobites, and the Jacobites as Papists. The Tories denounced the Whigs
as Republicans, Fanatics, Latitudinarians, and Atheists. The Tories had
the best of it, and returned a majority. Four Tories were declared to
be at the head of the poll for the City of London. Prominent and noisy
Whigs were excluded from their old seats; liberal men, disgusted at the
excesses of their own party, voted on the other side; even Sir Isaac
Newton declined a contest at Cambridge, and recorded his name in favour
of Sir Robert Sawyer, who had been expelled from the Whig Convention.
Yet in spite of defeats, the Whigs took heart and concocted plans,
hoping to frustrate the opposite policy. This subject, however, it is
not necessary to pursue, neither need we describe the changes which
took place in the Ministry. Before the Revolution, the conduct of the
Ministry affected most materially the affairs of the Church and the
condition of Dissenters; after the passing of the Allegiance Act, the
Church was little affected by the policy of the Government, except
as connected with Convocation; still less did that policy touch the
Dissenters after the passing of the Toleration Act.

[Sidenote: IRISH CAMPAIGN.]

In anticipation of the Irish campaign, a national fast was fixed for
the 12th of March, when prayers were offered for the personal safety of
William. Immediately afterwards, a form of prayer of a very different
description was printed and circulated. It referred to England as in
a state of religious apostacy, and it sought the restoration of James
without mentioning him by name. He was referred to as the stone which
the builders rejected, and which God would make the head of the corner.
There could be no mistake as to what was meant by the petitions, “Give
the King the necks of his enemies;” “Raise him up friends abroad;” “Do
some mighty thing for him, which we, in particular, know not how to
pray for.”[187]

This inflammatory performance under a devout disguise aroused
indignation, and numbers of the adherents of William ascribed its
composition to the Nonjurors. The excitement against the Bishops of
that party was increased by a publication, in which they were styled
“the Reverend Club of Lambeth,” “the Holy Jacobite Club,” “wretches,
great contrivers, and managers of Cabals,” who loved “to trample on the
Dissenters, now happily out of their clutches.” The new prayers are
called the Bishop’s “Great Guns;” and Ken is alluded to as a fellow
who had eaten King William’s bread. The most shameful passage is one
in which, under a covert allusion to the massacre of the De Witts in
Amsterdam, a violent assault upon the individuals abused is obviously
suggested.[188]

[Sidenote: 1690.]

The Bishops published a vindication of themselves, denying that they
had any share in the recent form of prayer, or that they had any
knowledge as to who were the writers. In reference to the attack upon
them they said, “Who the author of the libel was they did not know;
but whoever he might be, they desired, as the Lord had taught, to
return him good for evil, and recommended him to the Divine mercy.”
They had all, they went on to declare, actually or virtually, hazarded
whatever they possessed in opposing Popery and arbitrary power; and
were still ready to sacrifice their very lives in the same noble cause.
In conclusion, they lamented the misfortune that they were unable to
publish full and particular replies to the many libels which were
industriously circulated by enemies, to the injury of their reputation.
The authorship of the prayers being denied by the Bishops, it was
attributed to Hickes, or to Sherlock, or to Kettlewell; on their
behalf a protest was entered against such a suspicion in the Life of
the last of these persons; but some sympathy with the New Liturgy
itself is betrayed by the writer, when, without any condemnatory or
qualifying remark, he calls it “as solemn and expressive as any could
well be;” nor does he hint at its being the work of Roman Catholics--an
origin which, by some writers, has been suggested without sufficient
reason.[189]

                              CHAPTER VI.

On the 1st of July, 1690, the memorable Battle of the Boyne was
fought and won by William III. He received a slight wound; and that
slight wound created an unexampled sensation throughout England and
the cities and courts of Europe. A letter conveying the intelligence
reached the Queen at Whitehall just as she was going to chapel; and,
to use her own expression, it frightened her out of her wits. But out
of her senses with trouble one day, she was out of her senses with
joy the next, to find the injury turned out to be very slight.[190]
Paris, at first frantic with exultation on hearing of the supposed
death of the great enemy of France, sunk into rageful disappointment
to find that he was still alive, and ready to fight further battles in
support of Protestantism. Strange as it may appear--but the strange
combinations of European parties and politics at that time will account
for it--the tidings of the wound brought no joy to Rome, any more than
to Austria.[191] Both were reassured by a true report of the fate of
William. “No mortal man,” said Tillotson, “ever had his shoulder so
kindly kissed by a cannon bullet;” a felicitous tune of expression,
which even South, with all his prejudice against Tillotson, could not
fail to admire.[192]

[Sidenote: 1690.]

Whilst the battle was raging on the banks of the Boyne, a sea fight
occurred off the Sussex coast; an English Bishop, in sympathy with
his Royal master, was performing his sacred functions in the vicinity
of the latter of these conflicts; and an extract from his Diary in
reference to it is worth transcribing:--

“Thirtieth of June, being Monday, I began my visitation at Arundel;
and went the next day to Lewes, where I visited on Wednesday; and on
Thursday went towards Hastings, and heard by the way that the French
were burning that town. But we resolved to go on, being invited to
lie at Sir Nicholas Pelham’s, whose house was not many miles from it.
He was gone thither with other country gentlemen; the French having
attempted to burn some ships that were run on ground there. He sent us
word the town was safe, but he could not come home that night. At six
in the morning he came, and said there was no danger, but the town was
in such confusion that it would be to no purpose to go thither. For
the churches were full of soldiers, who lay there all night, and the
streets full of country people, and all the women frighted away and
fled, so that there were none left to dress any victuals. He invited
us therefore to stay with him, and entertained us most kindly. But my
Chancellor, Dr. Briggs, all on a sudden started up, and would go to
Hastings, and about noon word was brought us some of the Clergy were
there; which made me condemn myself for not going with him, though I
followed the best advice I could get. And afterward it appeared to be
the best; for though some of the clergy appeared, there was no place
wherein to visit them; and besides it might have proved dangerous: for
two men were killed with a cannon bullet in the very next house to that
where my Chancellor sat; which made him run away in haste before he had
done his business, and (as I remember) left some of his books behind
him.”[193]

[Sidenote: SHERLOCK.]

The Battle of the Boyne led to an important clerical conversion.
William Sherlock, Master of the Temple, had distinguished himself in
the reign of James II., not only by his zeal in contending against
Popery, but also by his decision in maintaining the principle of
non-resistance. He strongly disapproved of the turn which affairs
took at the Revolution, and advocated negotiations with the exiled
Monarch, in reference to his being restored upon terms which would
preserve constitutional liberty. The accession of the Prince and
Princess of Orange inspired indignation, and the new oaths were by him
unhesitatingly declined. He threw in his lot with the Nonjurors, who
regarded his talents with respect and his character with admiration;
and they esteemed the support of a man so popular as a tower of
strength. After losing the Mastership of the Temple, he retired into
private life, and, pensive amidst misfortunes, wrote and published his
celebrated treatise on Death. Still he deprecated schism; disapproved
of the establishment of any Episcopal sect; advised those who could
conscientiously remain, not to forsake their parish churches; and even
officiated himself at St. Dunstan’s, actually reading the prayers
for William and Mary. When the Battle of the Boyne decided the fate
of the exile, and secured peace for the occupants of the throne,
Sherlock looked at things in another light, became reconciled to the
revolutionary settlement, and took the oaths which he had before
refused. As a consequence, he returned to the Mastership of the Temple,
and also received the Deanery of St. Paul’s, vacated by Tillotson’s
elevation to Canterbury. So prominent a man on the nonjuring side,
could not pass through such a conversion without giving some reasons
for it; accordingly he wrote a book, which he entitled, _The Case of
the Allegiance due to Sovereign Powers stated and resolved according to
Scripture and Reason and the Principles of the Church of England_.

[Sidenote: 1690.]

[Sidenote: SHERLOCK.]

Sancroft, soon after the Revolution, published what was called
_Bishop Overall’s Convocation Book_, written in the reign of James
I., containing certain conclusions respecting Ecclesiastical and Civil
Government, one of which, notwithstanding the current tone of the
book in favour of non-resistance, is to the effect, that a Government
originating in rebellion, when thoroughly settled, should be reverenced
and obeyed as “being always God’s authority, and therefore receiving no
impeachment by the wickedness of those that have it.” The Convocations
of Canterbury and York had endorsed the contents of Overall’s volume;
and, by a canon, distinctly condemned the doctrine that a Government
begun by rebellion, after being thoroughly settled, is not of God.[194]
Sherlock made a good deal out of this, and said he should have
continued to stick at the oaths, had he not been relieved by Overall’s
book, and had not the venerable authority of a Convocation given him a
freedom of thinking, which the apprehensions of novelty and singularity
had cramped before.[195] He did not consider, as is sometimes
represented, that the Bishop and Convocation settled the matter, and
that he was to submit as a child to the authoritative decree; but that
a door had been thereby opened to the sons of the Church to look at
the matter;[196] and that he, having been thus induced to examine it
afresh, had for various reasons, which he assigns--some of which, it
must be acknowledged, run counter to his previous publications on the
subject[197]--arrived at the conclusion that he could conscientiously
take the required vow. A terrible storm assailed him after this.
Argument, satire, and abuse, sometimes in vulgar prose, sometimes in
doggerel rhyme, descended in torrents upon his devoted head. Nonjurors
reviled him on the one side; Revolutionists on the other; and people
who did not care for either side joined in the old English cry against
turncoats and time-servers. Most people maintained he had changed
for the sake of loaves and fishes; and, as Mrs. Sherlock had made
herself very notorious, and was said to have had immense influence
over her husband, she caught a terrible pelting from a literary mob,
who assailed her as Xanthippe, Delilah, and Eve, all in one. Sherlock
had to pay the penalty, which men, whose new opinions jump in the
same direction as their pecuniary interests, must ever pay; but human
motives, whether good or evil, lie so far beneath the surface, that the
reading of them by even honest historians may widely differ from the
reading of them by the only Omniscient One. Contemporaries were too
much involved in party strife to take an unbiassed view of Sherlock’s
conduct; and writers since have scarcely been able to free themselves
from prejudices handed down by the pamphlets of that day. The grave
feature of the case affecting the reputation of the Master and Dean,
is to be found, not in the new application of a principle which he
had long held; but in the repudiation of his old principles, just at
the moment when the Battle of the Boyne had destroyed all prospect
of James’ restoration--the chance upon which, as Sherlock’s enemies
believed, he had ventured hopes of high preferment, during the time of
casting in his lot with the poor Nonjurors.[198]

[Sidenote: 1690.]

The Battle of the Boyne having established the Revolution, and with it
the throne of William, the people who had hailed him as their Deliverer
became more than ever impatient towards all who remained disaffected
towards his Government.

Lloyd, the nonjuring Bishop of Norwich, a friend, adviser, and
correspondent of Sancroft, not being one of the illustrious Seven,
had never shared in that halo of confessorship which for awhile had
played around their sacred heads; but he had long been, and was still
more than ever, regarded as an obstinate, violent, and intriguing
Churchman, bent upon overthrowing the new Sovereign, and bringing back
to Whitehall the exiled King. His politics, not his religion, made him
unpopular; and his letters to his archiepiscopal friend, written in the
summer of 1690, betray the fact, that whatever might be the dislike
of the London populace to nonjuring Bishops in general, a feeling of
hatred prevailed against him in particular, and threatened his security
in one of the most unaristocratic districts of the Metropolis.

“I was yesterday,” he wrote on the 5th of August, “forced to a sudden
flight, being alarmed by the rabble, who began to appear at their
Reformation work in Old Street. I had a message from a good friend last
Saturday, which assured me that the rabble would be up in a short time.
And on Friday, my housekeeper (being among some of her relations in
Cripplegate) brought me word, that the fanatics talked bitterly against
the Bishops, and would shortly call them to an account.

“About 9 of the clock yesterday, Mr. Edwards, of Eye, and another
gentleman, called upon me, and told me they saw about 150 of the mob
very busy in pulling down of houses in Old Street. Within a few minutes
the hawker which sells pamphlets brought the same tidings, and, in
regard the dangerous crew were so near, I sent forthwith one of my men
to see how the affair went abroad, and another to fetch me a hackney
coach, into which I got with my wife and child, and straightway took
sanctuary in the Temple. From thence I sent for further information,
and found that the crew in Old Street was dispersed; partly by Justice
Parry coming among them and taking their names and threatening them
with informations; and chiefly by a company of the train-bands, who in
that nick of time passed that way to muster in the fields.

[Sidenote: 1690.]

“About four in the afternoon I returned to my house and found all quiet
in the way. If the rabble had continued I would not have failed to send
notice to your Grace; and, on the other hand, I resolved not to send a
confused uncertain alarm. God be praised, this scarecrow is over, and
I hope God will still deliver us from the bloody fangs of cruel saints
and scoundrels.”[199]

Six months later the popular fury against men of Lloyd’s order was
being fanned afresh, and again he told his sorrows to his old friend:

“Your Grace will see by the enclosed papers how the mob are encouraged
to bring some under their discipline: their wrath is cruel, and their
malice as keen as razors, but God defend the innocent from their rage.

“There is also published a most devilish Atheistical satire against the
Clergy in general, but more especially against poor Nonjurors. I think
no age hath seen the like of it,--it’s called a Satire against the
Priests.”[200]

Nonjurors lived on both sides the Irish Channel. Soon after the battle
which decided the fate of James, though it did not crush the hopes and
schemes of his supporters, William had his attention called to the
refusal of the Bishop of Ossory to pray for him in public worship. “His
Majesty’s command,” said the Secretary of State to the delinquent, “is,
that your Lordship be suspended till further order. I know not the
terms, being here in a camp, that are used in things of this nature;
but I acquaint your Lordship of His Majesty’s present resentment, and
can say no more till I hear from your Lordship herein.”[201] Nonjurors
on this side of the Channel, however, gave much more trouble than they
did on the other.

[Sidenote: SCHEMES FOR RESTORATION.]

A scheme for the restoration of James came to light at the end of 1690.
The leader of the conspiracy was Richard Graham, Viscount Preston,
Secretary of State in the preceding reign, whose patent of nobility had
been drawn up at St. Germains, and who retained his seals of office
in spite of the Revolution. Secret conferences were held amongst the
English Jacobites, and as the result, Lord Preston, with a Mr. Ashton
and another companion, were despatched with treasonable papers to the
ex-King; but ere they had passed Tilbury Fort, in a smack which was
to convey them to the shores of France, they were seized and brought
back to London. Preston and Ashton were tried, convicted, and condemned
at the Old Bailey. Ashton was executed; Preston was pardoned. As
they lay under sentence of death, the sympathies of the Nonjurors
eagerly gathered round them, and the following letter from two
well-known members of the party, to Sancroft--who still lingered in his
Archiepiscopal Palace on the banks of the Thames--shows how earnestly
they sought to enlist his offices:--

[Sidenote: 1691.]

   “We who waited on your Grace on Sunday last, in the evening,
   being sensible that we were defective in the delivery of
   our message, occasioned, in great measure, out of profound
   respect to your Grace, have, upon a fuller recollection of
   the importance of that affair, presumed to lay our thoughts
   more plainly before your Grace, humbly conceiving, with all
   due submission to your Grace’s judgment, that if your Grace
   shall think it proper to give your personal assistance to the
   gentlemen under sentence of death, it would not only be a
   very great comfort and satisfaction to the dying gentlemen,
   but likewise a considerable support and encouragement to all
   surviving honest men.

   “My Lord, the concern is very extraordinary, otherwise we had
   not presumed to give your Grace this trouble, and therefore, we
   humbly beg your Grace would please to excuse this freedom.[202]

                                                  “JEREMY COLLIER,
                                                  “SHADRACH COOKE.”

Turner, Bishop of Ely, was charged with complicity in Preston’s
treasonable business, and two suspicious letters were produced, said
to be in the Prelate’s handwriting; but I cannot find evidence of
their authorship, or any proof in their contents justifying a charge
of treason. As Turner immediately hid himself, and then absconded,
it looks, notwithstanding, as if he felt a pang of conscious guilt;
but concealment in his case seems to have been a difficult matter,
for he had such a remarkable nose, that Sancroft, with a play of
humour,--which occasionally illumined his misfortunes,--spoke of
his friend as resembling Paul’s ship of Alexandria, which carried
a well-known sign upon its prow, or beak. Hence, though London was
a great wood, it would be hard for one with such a face, however
disguised by a patriarchal beard, or by a huge peruke, to escape
detection.[203] It is not a little remarkable that, though the deposed
Primate prayed for his friend’s safety, he expressed no conviction
of his friend’s innocence. The Nonjurors, as we have seen, had been
treated with consideration and kindness. Though forfeiting their Sees
in February, 1690, after which successors were nominated, the Prelates
of the party were allowed to retain their palaces; and even as late
as April, 1691, attempts were made by friends of the Government to
compromise matters with them, in spite of the increased odium cast on
their order by Turner’s conduct: it was proposed that, at least, they
should disavow all share in the alleged conspiracy, but Sancroft would
do nothing of the kind, easy and reasonable as such a concession seemed.

[Sidenote: NONJURORS EJECTED.]

There remained no alternative but to eject the disaffected, and to
induct loyal successors. As the crisis approached, questions were
raised and discussed by Nonjurors, touching the treatment of those
so inducted. Lloyd, Sancroft’s busy correspondent, now wrote to say
how perplexed he felt; for, extreme as might be his views, they were
surpassed by the views of others. He reported that they asked, what
they should do in case they appeared at any of the new Episcopal
elections,--should they oppose them? From such a proposal he shrunk,
for to carry it out might incur a _premunire_. Further, he
inquired whether for him to recommend their absenting themselves
would not be cowardly? Nonplussed by these problems, he despondingly
added, “What, then, is to be done? Here I stick.” His friend Wagstaffe
informed him, some had resolved to resist all Erastian intrusion,
and expected the displaced Bishops would assert their rights. Lloyd
grew testy at such an excess of zeal, and wished to know what the
self-appointed critics would advise the Prelates to do? Had not those
very critics submitted to deprivation? Of what use would it be for
their superiors to do otherwise?[204]

[Sidenote: 1691.]

Presently the question came again on the carpet.

“May it please your Grace,” wrote the indefatigable Lloyd, “I had last
Saturday a fit opportunity to discourse with Sir Edward Entwich about
the _vexatio questio_, and found him--upon consideration of the
whole matter--to be of the same opinion with Mr. N---- th. The first
question that I proposed was, whether it was advisable for us to keep
possession till we were ejected by legal processes; his answer was, we
might, if we judged it meet, dispute the possession; but then, saith
he, you must at last expect to be outed, and to pay the costs and
charges of the suit, and to be called to Westminster Hall, and perhaps
elsewhere, to answer hard questions, and that with all rigour. I then
asked whether he would advise us so to do, and appear for us, and draw
pleas as occasions offered? To this his answer was, that he knew not to
what purpose we should put ourselves to fruitless trouble; for, saith
he, if a happy turn should come, all the proceedings against you will
be out of doors. This is the sum of our discourse.”

He adds a paragraph respecting a Nonjuror whose Jacobitism had plunged
him into serious danger:

“I saw Dr. B[ea]ch last week, who hopes shortly to be at liberty, or at
least to be abroad upon bail.

“It was well for him that the informer blundered in his depositions
against him, and indeed, so did the justices who took the information;
for there is not in the deposition any express mention of the time or
place, when and where the Doctor said, that _the same power which put
our Saviour on the pinnacle of the Temple, put William and Mary upon
the throne_; but I am told that there are other informations against
him. His successor has broke into his Church in his absence, and got
possession in his absence, and this is a very great trouble to the Dr.

[Sidenote: NONJURORS EJECTED.]

“I hear that Mr. Dean of Worcester begins to appear again, and hopes
that the storm will blow over him. I heartily wish it may, _sed timeo
Danaos_; for commonly they are not so generous.”[205]

The Dean of Worcester here referred to was Dr. Hickes. A little more
than a fortnight before Lloyd’s letter was written, the Dean drew up
a protest against his own ejectment, addressed to the Sub-Dean and
Prebendaries, idly declaring the appointment of a successor to be
illegal, and as idly calling upon them to defend the rights of the
dispossessed. This protesting ended in smoke. Hickes and Wagstaffe, as
well as Lloyd, had to succumb; so had Frampton of Gloucester, and White
of Peterborough. Sancroft yielded only to a legal process; and at last,
on Midsummer eve, between seven and eight o’clock, accompanied by the
steward of his household and three other friends, he entered a boat at
Lambeth ferry, which conveyed the little party to the Temple stairs,
where the deprived Primate sought shelter for a few days in Palsgrave
Court. One imagines, as amidst the lengthening shadows on the waters
that same night he left for ever the towers of the familiar palace, he
would cast “one longing, lingering look behind.” But history preserves
a more touching picture of the departure of Ken from the city of Wells.

[Sidenote: 1691.]

After he had from his pastoral chair in the Cathedral asserted his
Canonical right to remain Bishop of the Diocese, he passed through
the gardens and crossed the drawbridge over the moat, whilst old and
young crowded round him to ask his blessing and say farewell. “Mild,
complacent, yet dignified,” remarks the Layman who writes his life,
“on retiring with a peaceful conscience from opulence and station
to dependence and poverty, as the morning sun shone on the turreted
chapel, we naturally imagine he may have shed only one tear, when
looking back on those interesting scenes. Perhaps his eye might have
rested on the pale faces of some of the poor old men and women who had
partaken their Sunday dinner so often, and heard his discourse in the
old hall.”[206]

Dr. Beveridge, who will be more particularly noticed hereafter, was
offered the See of Bath and Wells; but he was threatened by the
Nonjurors, in case he should accept the offer, with the fate of
schismatical usurpers, like Gregory and George of Cappadocia, who
invaded the See of Alexandria, upon the deposition of the orthodox
Athanasius.

[Sidenote: NONJURORS EJECTED.]

A rumour went abroad that the Archdeacon of Colchester had accepted a
mitre, in consequence of which friends pestered him with letters for
his suspected act, and turned against him his reputation for learning
and loyalty. Dr. Lowth prematurely addressed him under an Episcopal
title, and expostulated with him in the following terms:--

           “May it please your Lordship,

   “You must be sensible in what great reputation all well-minded,
   learned, and judicious men, have had your laborious performances
   upon the Laws and Canons of the Church. But notwithstanding,
   since you have accepted a nomination to the Bishopric of Bath
   and Wells, of which See Dr. Ken is the Canonical proprietor;
   and having not been removed by his brethren, the Bishops,
   something more is required of you, whereby its comportment with
   those Church Laws may appear, so frequently forbidding two
   Bishops to be in one city. It is well known what separations
   the same practice hath bred in God’s Church, as also that her
   decision hath still been against you. If, then, the same return,
   the guilt and schism of it must be laid at your door, unless
   you can produce such ground for the present practice, whereof
   not only yourself but the Ancient Church hath heretofore been
   ignorant. These are the sentiments of many, who have formerly
   been your just admirers, and desire that you will give them no
   occasion of taking new measures concerning you, and particularly
   of him, who, notwithstanding he may no longer--upon the account
   of your present promotion--write himself your brother, yet will
   always remain

                   “Yours, in the faith and discipline
                                    of the Ancient Church.”[207]

Whether or not such rebukes and warnings prevented Beveridge from
accepting the vacant See, at all events he declined it, and remained a
Presbyter till after the death of William.

                             CHAPTER VII.

Nonconformists regarded the Revolution with thankfulness. William
was, in their eyes, a Heavensent deliverer, and at weekly and monthly
fasts they joined in prayer, that God’s blessing might rest on his
forces,[208] which they regarded as being at war with Babylon. It is
said that had the London Dissenters been requested to raise a monument
to his memory, they would have provided a statue of gold;[209] and
Calamy paints in bright colours their payment of taxes, and hearty
intercession for both King and Queen. He also alludes to their public
ordinations, their loving carriage amongst themselves, and their
friendly behaviour towards the Established Church. There is truth in
what he says, and we can conceive how, with memories of ancestral
troubles, he would rise to enthusiastic delight whilst recording the
blessings of the Revolution; but truth throws strong shadows amidst
these brilliant hues, and, indeed, he himself, in subsequent portions
of his narrative, makes an abatement in his demands on our admiration.

[Sidenote: NONCONFORMISTS.]

Mutual charity would have been exemplified if Howe’s advice had
prevailed, for he urged Conformists and Nonconformists not to magnify
diversities of opinion, but to promote the interests of a common
Christianity. “If our rulers,” he adds, “shall judge such intercourses
conducing to so desirable an end, they may perhaps in due time think
it reasonable to put things into that state, that ministers of both
sorts may be capable of inviting one another occasionally to the
brotherly offices of mutual assistance in each other’s congregations.
For which, and all things that tend to make us a happy people, we
must wait upon Him in whose hands their hearts are.”[210] But on many
people these sentiments fell as idle words; and if by others they
were heard for one moment, the very next they were drowned by the
din of old controversies, or the outburst of new passions. Beautiful
and blessed ideals of union to most were as destitute of all charm
for their affections as of power to work themselves out into facts.
Catholic-minded men on opposite sides, if unencumbered by partizanship,
would have surmounted difficulties, and reached, if not unity of
fellowship, yet freedom of intercourse; but then, as always, prejudices
in the many defeated endeavours on the part of a few, and reopened
breaches when they seemed on the point of being healed.

Death removed some most distinguished Nonconformist Ministers at the
era of the Revolution.

[Sidenote: 1691.]

John Bunyan, who belongs more to the universal church than to a
particular sect, died, as he had lived, in the Baptist communion.
He has come before us in a former volume, not as a leader in
ecclesiastical affairs, but as a sufferer for conscience’ sake, and
as an author of works which have won for him an unparalleled renown.
He trod the paths of private life, save that when he came to London
his “preaching attracted enormous multitudes;” and it was in the city
which had witnessed his vast popularity that he breathed his last. A
minister of peace, he took a long journey on horseback to extinguish
domestic strife, and on his way afterwards to the Metropolis, brought
on a fatal fever, through fatigue and exposure to heavy rains. This
occurred in the month of August, 1688, when the throne of James was
tottering to its fall, and plans which led to the Revolution were being
formed; probably whisperings of what was to happen to his country
reached Bunyan’s ears in his last hours. Illness overtook him in the
house of his friend Mr. Strudwick, a grocer on Snow Hill, and just
before his death he said to his friends, “Weep not for me, but for
yourselves. I go to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will, no
doubt, through the mediation of His blessed Son, receive me, though a
sinner, where I hope we ere long shall meet to sing the new song and
remain everlastingly happy, world without end.” “He felt the ground
solid under his feet in passing the black river which has no bridge,
and followed his pilgrim into the celestial city.” He expired before
the end of August, and was interred in Bunhill Fields; his church at
Bedford lamented with unaffected sorrow his loss at the age of 60;
and keep the next month days of humiliation and prayer for the heavy
bereavement they had sustained.[211]

Dr. John Collinges, a Presbyterian, once Vicar of St. Stephen’s,
Norwich, died in 1690. He had assisted Pool in his _Annotations_,
and written practical as well as controversial works. One of them,
entitled _The Weaver’s Pocket-book, or Weaving Spiritualized_,
was no doubt suggested to him as he had stood watching the loom in the
house of some industrious parishioner in days when the city of Norwich
enjoyed the zenith of its manufacturing industry. He left behind a
good reputation, being, as his brethren testified, “a man of various
learning and excelling as a textuary and a critic, and generally
esteemed for his great industry, humanity, and exemplary piety.”

[Sidenote: NONCONFORMISTS.]

John Flavel ended his days on the 26th of June, 1691, at Exeter. He
had, before his death, left the town of Dartmouth, the scene of his
long and zealous ministrations, because the rabble, headed by certain
aldermen, in 1685 paraded the town, carrying the good man’s effigy to
be burnt,--an insult he revenged by praying, “Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do.” With his lively imagination he combined
intense spiritual emotion, and the following story, which he relates
of himself in his _Pneumatologia_ is so curious that, though
familiar from frequent quotation, it deserves to be inserted here. It
exemplifies a phase of spiritual life belonging to an age which has
passed away.[212]

“Being on a journey, he set himself to improve his time by meditation;
when his mind grew intent, till at length he had such ravishing tastes
of heavenly joys, and such full assurance of his interest therein, that
he utterly lost the sight and sense of this world and all its concerns,
so that for hours he knew not where he was. At last, perceiving himself
faint from a great loss of blood from his nose, he alighted from his
horse and sat down at a spring, where he washed and refreshed himself;
earnestly desiring, if it were the will of God, that he might there
leave the world. His spirits reviving, he finished his journey in the
same delightful frame. And all that night passed without a wink of
sleep, the joy of the Lord still overflowing him, so that he seemed an
inhabitant of the other world. After this, an heavenly serenity and
sweet peace continued long with him; and for many years he called that
day one of the days of heaven, and professed he understood more of the
life of heaven by it, than by all the discourses he had heard or the
books he ever read.”[213]

[Sidenote: 1691.]

Richard Baxter was an old man at the time of the Revolution, weighed
down by suffering; and the Toleration Act came too late to give scope
to energies which, had the event happened twenty years earlier, would
have been ardently spent in tilling the newly-opened fields of labour.
Yet, when the adoption of the Doctrinal Articles of the Church was
required as the condition of exercising a Nonconformist ministry, the
trembling hand of the veteran theologist could not resist an impulse
to write down scholastically the sense in which the Articles were to
be subscribed. It was his own sense, yet it was also, as he believed,
one in which many of his brethren concurred. Few, it is said, took
notice of his explication, and at this we are not surprised, as his
explication contains more in the way of suggestive thought than of
explicit definition. His metaphysics, warmed by zeal for practical
religion, appear distinctly in this farewell effort. He has something
abstruse to say as to the glorified body of Christ, and upon some
other points; and he lays down a dictum, often repeated since in a
wider sense than he specifies, with regard to legislation in Church
and State: “God’s laws are the supreme civil laws, man’s laws are
but by-laws.” He also insists upon the doctrine of the Apostle James,
as well as the doctrine of the Apostle Paul; and, after charitably
saying, “all were not accursed that hoped well of Socrates, Antonine,
Alexander, Severus, Cicero, Epictetus, Plutarch,” and others, he
adds, “there is no name, that is, no Messiah, to be saved by, but
Christ.”[214]

[Sidenote: NONCONFORMISTS.]

[Sidenote: 1691.]

In a tenement near his friend Sylvester’s, in Charterhouse Square,
Baxter spent his last days; and when disabled from preaching in his
friend’s meeting-house, he preached in his own dwelling, almost dying
in the exercise of his favourite employment. “It would doubtless,”
it is said, “have been his joy to have been transfigured on the
Mount.” “He talked in the pulpit,” as one reports, “with great freedom
about another world, like one who had been there, and was come as a
sort of express from thence to make report concerning it.” His busy
pen was employed as long as he could grasp it with his fingers, in
writing something for the benefit of his fellow-men. At last growing
infirmities confined him to his chamber, and then to his bed. There his
vigorous mind “abode rational, strong in faith and hope, arguing itself
into, and preserving itself in, that patience, hope, and joy, through
grace.” With unaffected humility he spoke of himself as a sinner worthy
of being condemned for the best duty he ever did, whose hopes were all
“from the free mercy of God in Christ.” Reminded of the good which his
works had produced, he replied, “I was but a pen in God’s hands, and
what praise is due to a pen?” When extremity of pain constrained him
to pray for release, he would check himself with the words, “It is
not fit for me to prescribe;--_when Thou wilt, what Thou wilt, and
how Thou wilt_!” “Oh! how unsearchable are His ways, and His paths
past finding out; the reaches of His providence we cannot fathom! Do
not think the worse of religion for what you see me suffer.” He had
assurance of future happiness, and great peace and joy in believing,
only lamenting that because of pain he could not express all he felt.
Still he spoke of heaven, and quoting the Apostle’s description of
the celestial Church, remarked, that it deserved a thousand thousand
thoughts. With characteristic width of sympathy, he spent many of his
last hours in praying for a distracted world, and a divided Church.
Physical pain, his old companion, continued to the last. “I have pain,”
he said, “there is no arguing against sense; but I have peace--I
have peace.” The catalogue of his diseases is enough to excite pity
in the most inhuman, and our sensibilities are positively tortured
by the pathetic descriptions he gives of himself. They illustrate
the beautifulness of his oft-quoted answer to the question, How he
did?--“_Almost well._” “On Monday, about five in the evening,”
says Sylvester, “Death sent his harbinger to summon him away. A great
trembling and coldness awakened nature, and extorted strong cries,
which continued for some time;” at length he ceased, waiting in
patient expectation for his change. The gentle cry in the ear of his
housekeeper, “Death, death!” betokened full consciousness at the last
moment, and turning to thank a friend for his visit, he exclaimed,
“The Lord teach you to die.” About four o’clock on the morning of
the 8th of December, 1691, he had done for ever with the sorrows of
mortality, and entered on the saints’ everlasting rest. His body sleeps
in Christchurch beside the ashes of his wife and mother. Many vied in
doing honour to his memory. Conformists as well as Nonconformists
carried him to the grave, and made great lamentations over him; a train
of mourning-coaches reached from Merchant Taylors’ Hall--whence the
corpse was carried--to the place of burial.

[Sidenote: NONCONFORMISTS.]

At the commencement of the year 1692, another of the old Puritans left
this world. He represented a class which had borne the brunt of the
battle, and who, when the Revolution brought peace, loved to relate
stories of sufferings which promoted Dissent, after the severer laws
against it were relaxed.

Francis Holcroft, son of a knight residing at Westham, near London,
was sent to Clare Hall, Cambridge, where Dr. Cudworth was Master, and
David Clarkson a Fellow. Under the instructions of the latter, the
gownsman became a Puritan, and as, on a Sunday morning, he sat over
the College Gate, in a chamber which he shared in common with young
Tillotson, described as “his bed-fellow,” he sometimes observed a
horse, which was brought up for one of the Fellows, who served the
living of Littlington, and which was frequently led away without its
master. Pitying the sheep without a shepherd, the young Puritan offered
to supply the neglected parish, where his services were crowned with
signal success. Promoted in 1655 to the Vicarage of Bassingbourne,
he became exceedingly popular, and, not content with the effect of
his sermons, he felt anxious to establish ecclesiastical discipline,
and therefore formed a Church upon Congregational principles. At the
Restoration things changed. Holcroft was ejected, and the sheep were
scattered. He met them as he could, some in one place, some in another;
but the circuit of his labours becoming too wide for his failing
strength, he arranged that four members should assist him in pastoral
work. Worship was disturbed by the beating of drums, and the pastor was
imprisoned; but the greater the persecution the more his popularity
increased, and when silenced as a preacher, he sent pastorals round
his wide rural diocese. For some time the congregations to which he
ministered, formed of Baptists and Pædobaptists, constituted only
one Church; but after the Revolution they settled down into distinct
communities. The memory of Holcroft still lingers in the neighbourhood
of Cambridge, and old barns in which he ministered were pointed out
a few years ago. He died on the 6th of January, 1692. Before his
departure, spiritual tranquility, awhile disturbed, was happily
restored, for he died exclaiming, “I know that if the earthly house
of this tabernacle be dissolved, I have a house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.” He sleeps in a small burial-ground beside the
churchyard of Oakington, four miles from Cambridge. Three flat stones
cover the spot hallowed by the remains of two other Nonconformist
ministers, as well as his own. Over his resting-place are inscribed the
appropriate words, “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of
the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars
for ever and ever.”

[Sidenote: 1691.]

[Sidenote: NONCONFORMISTS.]

Several others of the ejected died about the period of the Revolution.
Veneration for them increased as death swept them away: their virtues
were embalmed; their names were canonized. Collectors of anecdotes
published whatever they could find respecting the departed, sometimes
accompanied by severe reflections upon the old laws which had thrust
them out of the gates of the Establishment. People in Derbyshire were
told that rich as might be their treasures in wool and lead, the
shepherds they had lost were more precious than all the flocks grazing
on their beautiful hills; and the sermons they had preached were
costlier than all the metals dug out of their capacious mines. After
a short beadroll of pastors in the county, the writer asks, What hath
cast away the shields of the mighty? _Uniformity._ What hath slain
the beauty of England, and made the mighty fall? _Uniformity._
What hath despoiled the neck of the Church, like the town of David
builded for an armoury, whereon there hung a thousand bucklers, all
shields of mighty men? _Uniformity._[215]

                             CHAPTER VIII.

It is a curious coincidence that Tillotson, Barrow, and Howe were
all born in the year 1630. Tillotson’s father lived at Sowerby,
near Halifax; a respectable clothier, a decided Puritan, a zealous
Calvinist, yet at that time an Episcopalian in practice, for he had his
child baptized in the Church of his native village, and a gentleman,
afterwards Rector of Thornhill, stood godfather. When this little
boy came to be Archbishop, his Puritan parentage, and the fact of
his father being a Baptist, occasioned reproach; it was said that he
had never been baptized in any way, and a preacher before the House
of Commons, after Tillotson’s elevation to the Primacy, is supposed
to have alluded to the rumour, when he declared, with more absurdity
than wit, that there were fathers of the Church who never were her
sons. The register of Sowerby, however, sets that question at rest,
showing that he was baptized in the parish church; and another moot
point touching Tillotson’s ecclesiastical life, namely, whether he was
ever episcopally ordained, is now also settled; it appears he received
ordination from a Scotch Bishop--the Bishop of Galloway.[216]

[Sidenote: TILLOTSON.]

Educated at Cambridge under the Commonwealth by Puritan tutors, he
afterwards became identified with the Latitudinarian school of
Divines, but in 1661 we find him amongst the Presbyterians, preaching
a morning exercise at Cripplegate. He certainly conformed in 1662,
and that fact itself implies his submission to Episcopal ordination.
At an early period he attained celebrity as a preacher, although he
read his sermons, and never was able to preach without a manuscript.
It is related of him that on one occasion he made an attempt to speak
extempore upon a plain text, and one upon which he has five discourses
in his printed works; yet he found himself so much at a loss, “that
after about ten minutes spent with great pain to himself, and no great
satisfaction to his audience, he came down with a resolution never
to make the like attempt for the future.”[217] He was successively
Curate at Cheshunt; Rector of Ketton, or Kedington in the County of
Suffolk; preacher at Lincoln’s Inn; Tuesday Lecturer at St. Lawrence,
Jewry; and Canon and Dean of Canterbury. After the Revolution he
accepted the Deanery of St. Paul’s, and his position in reference to
public affairs at that juncture has been noticed already; here it
will be sufficient to trace the steps by which he reached the highest
position in the Church of England. In some way Tillotson had become a
personal favourite with the Prince of Orange, and had been desired to
preach before him at St. James’s, soon after his arrival in London.
Burnet interested himself zealously on the Dean’s behalf; but, beyond
personal grounds, the popularity of this Divine as a preacher, his
eminent abilities, his opposition to the policy of the late King,
his liberal politics, his desire for Comprehension, his conciliatory
temper, and his moderation in ecclesiastical affairs, recommended him
to the new Sovereign as fitted to occupy the post vacated by Sancroft.
The very day Tillotson kissed hands on his appointment to the Deanery
in September, 1689, the King told him, in reply to his thanks for
an office which had set him at ease for the rest of his life, that
this was no great matter, for his services would soon be needed in
the highest office of the Church.[218] In February, 1690, William
pressed upon Tillotson the acceptance of the Primacy; of his extreme
reluctance to accept it there can be no doubt; his conversation with
his Royal Master, his correspondence with Lady Rachel Russell, and his
own private memoranda, prove that if ever a man honestly said, _Nolo
Episcopari_, Tillotson did. What he wrote within a year afterwards
shows that to him the archiepiscopal throne was a bed, not of roses,
but of thorns. The _congé d’élire_ was issued May the 1st, and
his consecration followed on Whit-Sunday at St. Mary-le-Bow, when the
congregation included some of the principal Whig nobility, and his
progress along Cheapside was an ovation amidst crowds who admired both
his eloquence and his liberality.

[Sidenote: 1691.]

He took possession of Lambeth Palace in November, 1691, having first
repaired the building, altered the windows, wainscoted the rooms, and
erected a large apartment for his wife, he being one of the earliest
Archbishops living there in lawful wedlock.

[Sidenote: SANCROFT.]

With congratulations from friends there came insults from foes. Arian,
Socinian, Deist, Atheist, were titles bestowed on his Grace; and in
allusion to the doubts respecting his baptism, he received the nickname
of _Undipped John_. His manner of bearing such treatment showed
his proficiency in the Christian virtues of patience and meekness. One
day, when he was conversing with a gentleman, a servant brought in a
sealed packet containing a mask. The Archbishop smiled, and said, “This
is a gentle rebuke, if compared with some others in black and white,”
pointing to papers lying on the table. A bundle of letters, found after
his death, exhibited a memorandum in his own handwriting, “These are
libels. I pray God forgive them; I do.”[219]

[Sidenote: 1692.]

It is interesting to follow Sancroft into his retirement. He left the
Metropolis--never to see it again--in August, 1691, for Fresingfield, a
village in Suffolk, where his family had been settled for generations,
where his ancestors lay buried in the parish church, and where he
himself had been born and baptized. He went down at harvest-time, the
sweet air and quiet of the place being, as he said, so preferable to
the smoke and noise of London. Presently we find him busy in building
a new house, reckoning up the time it would take to daub and tile it,
to clothe and cover it in, amidst the dews and mists which might be
expected to begin by St. Bartholomew’s-day--then at hand. He complains
of being weakly, and describes himself as eating bread-and-butter in a
morning, and “superbibing a second dish of coffee after it;” waiting
to see what that, and time, and native air would do for his health.
He gave up pills, and swallowed juniper-berries, and lived upon plain
food, and ate with a keener appetite than he had been accustomed to at
Lambeth. In the late autumn the new house remained incomplete; there
was winter work to do within doors, paving and flooring, daubing and
ceiling, plastering, glazing, and wainscoting, making doors and laying
hearths; the old tenement, in the meantime, being packed close from end
to end with the Bishop, his little household and workmen.[220] The
superintendence of building, which appears to have occupied him for a
time, presents a strange contrast to previous employments in the Church
and the Palace, the Court and the Council-Board; and the simplicity
of Sancroft’s rural life appears simpler still when we think of the
palatial splendour in which he had previously moved. He wished to shut
out the world; he sometimes felt like a dead man out of mind; old
friends dropped off, and tales of sorrow aroused his sympathies; yet
he seems, on the whole, to have spent a pleasant time down in Suffolk,
although those who disliked his nonjuring principles did what they
could to plague his peace. He was reported to be engaged with some of
his brethren in plots for the restoration of the exiled Monarch; and
Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, came under suspicion of the same offence,
in consequence of which he was arrested in his orchard at Bromley one
day, whilst quietly working out the heads of a sermon.[221] In the end,
these charges of conspiracy proved to be abominable fabrications, which
Sprat took care fully to expose.[222] Other Nonjurors were suspected of
treasonable intrigues, and Dean Hickes fell into great trouble. “If the
persons,” it is said in a letter written at the time, “now malignantly
fermented, should find him walking abroad, they would certainly take
him up and bring him forthwith to the King’s Bench, and be ready with
an information against him.” The Dean was advised to abscond for the
present, and so he became, “like the tortoise in winter-time, earthed
for some days.” Dr. Bryan about the same time heard that a warrant had
been issued for his apprehension, on account of his having written
“flat treason.” “It was advisable for him to step out of the way.” Ten
days later, Bishop Lloyd, to whom we are indebted for these snatches
of information, wrote again to the archiepiscopalian recluse, that
he found the Dean had removed his quarters, and desired to be very
private, and that messengers were searching for Dr. Bryan.[223]

[Sidenote: SANCROFT.]

Sancroft, who escaped arrest because Sprat, when confronted with his
accusers, exposed their falsehoods, seems to have been more annoyed
a few months before by a very different accusation. “The spirit
of calumny, the persecution of the tongue, dogs me even into this
wilderness. Dr. Lake, of Garlick Hill, and others, have (as I am
informed) filled your city with a report that I go constantly to this
parish church, and pray for I know not whom, nor how, and receive the
Holy Sacrament; so that my cousin had something to do to satisfy even
my friends that it was quite otherwise.”[224] The fallen Primate’s
intense dislike to the Establishment--as bitter as could be manifested
by any virulent Dissenter--here bursts out in unmistakable fashion.
The feeling remained as a sort of monomania to the day of his death.
It kept him from setting foot over the threshold of a parish church,
and led him to frame an instrument by which he appointed Lloyd,
the deprived Bishop of Norwich, his Vicar in all ecclesiastical
matters,[225] and inaugurated a voluntary and schismatical Episcopalian
Church.

[Sidenote: 1693.]

At the end of the year 1691 he removed into his new house, and on New
Year’s-day at family worship he officiated himself, “in a very cold
room where there never was a fire.” He would not employ a Chaplain.
The preparation and arrangement of Laud’s MSS. for the press, occupied
a good deal of his time, after which, in the month of November, 1693,
his end approached. “It touched my spirits extremely,” says Mr. North,
who visited him, “to see the low estate of this poor old saint; and
with what wonderful regard and humility he treated those who visited
him, and particularly myself.” His pious ejaculations were carefully
recorded by his friends, and we are glad to find him saying to a
visitor, “You and I have gone different ways in these late affairs,
but I trust heaven’s gates are wide enough to receive us both. What
I have done, I have done in the integrity of my heart.” The approach
of mortality expands human charity, yet the ruling passion may be
strong in death. Hence, though the dying man felt kindly towards all,
he insisted that only Nonjurors should read prayers by his bedside,
or officiate at his funeral. He entreated that God would bless and
preserve His poor suffering Church, which by the Revolution had been
almost destroyed; that he would bless and preserve the King, Queen, and
Prince, and in His due time restore to them their undoubted rights.[226]

Sancroft had an active but narrow intellect, a playful but feeble
imagination, a careful but perverted judgment. His powers had been
cultivated by study, and his productions indicate compass and command
of learning. Living in a narrow circle, his prejudices were strong;
and bitter memories of Presbyterian oppression at Cambridge followed
him to the grave. His nature was not destitute of affection and
generosity, and he seems not to have been morose; he was simple in his
living, rather than ascetic in his temper. By no means a Ritualist, he
decidedly opposed Romanism, though his sentiments were what would be
called decidedly High Church. Of his conscientiousness, honesty, and
self-denial, the sacrifice of the Primacy is a sufficient proof; and of
his obstinacy, the conduct he manifested on leaving Lambeth, and the
persistency he showed in nonjuring habits, afford abundant evidence.

[Sidenote: TILLOTSON.]

Tillotson survived his predecessor little more than twelve months.
He did not occupy his See long enough to accomplish much either as
Bishop or Primate. In neither capacity has he left any memorials. No
injunctions from him appear in the Archiepiscopal Register, and his
biographer makes no mention of his visitations. We are told that he
convened an assembly of Bishops at Lambeth, when they agreed with him
upon certain regulations, which remained at his death unpublished,
as he preferred they should appear with Royal as well as Episcopal
authority, and he had not time to complete arrangements for that
purpose. His biographer furnishes a list of his deeds, which form but a
meagre total for a primacy of even two years and a half, when so much
needed to be done. Le Neve, who is particular in noting archiepiscopal
acts, has next to nothing to say of Tillotson’s archiepiscopal
career. The most he can do is to supply extracts from a MS. diary,
eulogizing the Primate’s eloquence and charities, and stating that
William, after his Grace’s death, never mentioned him without some
testimony of esteem. He used to say to Mr. Chadwick--son-in-law of the
Archbishop--“I loved your father: I never knew an honester man, and I
never had a better friend.”[227]

[Sidenote: 1694.]

From what we know of him, we should judge that the deficiency of
results during his episcopate is to be attributed more to the
difficulties of the times and the inconvenience of circumstances, than
to want of ability or the absence of devotedness.

He was seized, in the Chapel at Whitehall, with paralysis on the 18th
of November, 1694; and though the fit crept over him slowly, he would
not call for assistance, lest he should disturb Divine worship. His
death occurred on the 22nd, at the age of 65.

His character, as compared with Sancroft’s, has been differently viewed
by enemies and friends. Nonjurors said that his predecessor devised no
project for revolutionizing the Church, implying that Tillotson did;
that his predecessor was no Latitudinarian, more than insinuating that
Tillotson was; and when they spoke of Sancroft as a true Father, they
meant to affirm that his successor was by no means such. “Intruder,”
“thief,” “robber,” “ecclesiastical usurper,” were epithets fastened on
the Archbishop of the Revolution. Burnet, on the other hand, extols him
as a faithful friend, a gentle enemy, with a clear head and a tender
heart, without superstition in his religion, and, as a preacher, the
best of his age.[228]

In saying so much, Burnet probably went no further than facts warrant.
And I would add, that if Sancroft made a sacrifice in renouncing the
Archbishopric, Tillotson, according to his private confessions, made
scarcely less sacrifice in accepting it.

[Sidenote: TILLOTSON.]

Intellectually he was a man of eminence;[229] what Burnet advances
cannot be gainsayed; for Tillotson’s writings indicate a rare amount
of common sense and of calm judgment, the more remarkable in an age
of manifold passions;[230] and he shows eminent precision and force
in stating propositions and arguments, at a time when a great deal of
loose reasoning passed muster. His sermons are chiefly remarkable in
this point of view. Free from Puritan stiffness, and what many would
call Puritan enthusiasm, free also from that academical affectation
which had so long offended pure taste,--they were couched in the
language of common life, and people felt a strange pleasure, which
they could not describe, at hearing from the pulpit language such as
they heard at their own fireside. He seems to have aimed at that which
ought to be the object of every Christian preacher, to translate the
truths of the Gospel into such forms of thought and utterance as were
suited to the age in which he lived. He spoke upon religion just as men
talk upon every-day topics; and thus he brought down Divinity to the
level of his congregation. He could be earnest and even vehement in the
inculcation of truth and duty; and never would he be more acceptable
to a large class of his hearers than when, with tact and warmth, he
exposed the errors of Popery--an opportunity for doing which he rarely,
if ever, missed. His habit, too, of insisting upon the reasonableness
of almost everything he taught would coincide with the current which,
in educated circles, had strongly set in against the enforcement of
morality and religion on grounds of authority. Preachers not only help
to promote, but they reflect the spirit of their own times. Their modes
of teaching are fashioned by it. A reaction had arisen against the
authority of the Church, of the Fathers, of the Schoolmen, and of the
Reformers; consequently, sermons filled with quotations and appeals to
great names were no longer in request. Even Scripture came to be less
favourably used in the way of exclusive authority, than in the way of
addition to the force of reasoning. Texts were with many not so much
corner-stones, as pillars and buttresses. Tillotson made a large use of
Scripture, but the common key-note with him was the reasonableness of
the doctrines he laid down. I should suppose that his appearance, his
voice, and his manner in the pulpit--the fact of what he was, as well
as the circumstance of what he said, and that indefinable something
which contributes so much to a speaker’s popularity--added immensely
to the impressiveness of his elocution. There is for modern readers
nothing attractive in his style, quite the reverse. I know scarcely
any other popular sermons so hard to read. Some are exceedingly dry
and uninteresting.[231] From natural temperament he lacked what is
signified by the word _unction_. He has no strokes of pathos,
and the spirit of his theology adds to the defect, by depriving his
sermons, to some extent, of that light and beauty, that tenderness and
power, which proceed from a clear insight into the deepest spiritual
wants of humanity, and the supply made for them in the unsearchable
riches of Christ.

[Sidenote: 1694.]

Wit was not wanting amongst Tillotson’s gifts. “I hate a fanatic in
lawn sleeves,” cried one of his detractors--“I hate a knave in any
sleeves,” replied the Prelate. He said South “wrote like a man, but
bit like a dog;” and when South replied, “he would rather bite like
a dog, than fawn like one,” Tillotson rejoined, “that for his part he
would choose to be a spaniel rather than a cur.”[232] Sancroft was a
Tory. Tillotson, through the discipline of the Revolution, had cast
off the last remnant of the doctrine which he unfortunately inculcated
at the time of Russel’s execution. Tillotson had by his Puritan birth,
childhood, and education, imbibed feelings which he never completely
lost; and his personal sympathies with those who retained a Puritan
creed continued to live in his later days, fostered by friendly
intercourse with members of nonconforming communions. Yet perhaps he
had not a whit more of love for Nonconformity than High Churchmen,
whose reputation for charity his own completely eclipsed.

[Sidenote: TENISON.]

As in our day, so it was in the days of William the III., when a
vacancy occurred in the See of Canterbury, different names were
suggested for its supply. Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, and Hall,
Bishop of Bristol, were both mentioned, and their merits canvassed,
but after the lot had been shaken a little in the Royal urn, guided
by the Queen, it fell upon Thomas Tenison, Bishop of Lincoln. He had
been a distinguished London clergyman, prominent in opposing Popery and
King James. A nobleman, wishing to secure the Bishopric of Lincoln for
some one else, and to prejudice the Queen against Tenison, told Her
Majesty that he had delivered a funeral sermon for Nell Gwyn, and had
praised that concubine of Charles II. “I have heard as much,” replied
Mary; “this is a sign that that poor unfortunate woman died penitent;
for if I can read a man’s heart through his looks, had not she made
a truly pious and Christian end, the Doctor could never have been
induced to speak well of her.”[233] Tenison’s conduct in the diocese
of Lincoln increased the high estimation in which he was held by Mary,
and consequently he was nominated to Canterbury on the 8th of December,
1694, and confirmed in his election in the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow on
the 16th of January, 1695.

[Sidenote: 1695.]

Between those two dates, his Royal patroness sickened with the
small-pox, three days before Christmas, and died three days after.
I shall employ a passage in the funeral sermon which he preached on
the occasion, not only because it well describes the event, but also
because it exhibits the preacher’s style, and occasioned at the time
considerable controversy.

“Some few days before the feast of our Lord’s nativity, she found
herself indisposed. I will not say that of this affliction she had
any formal presage, but yet there was something that looked like an
immediate preparation for it. I mean her choosing to hear read more
than once a little before it, the last sermon of a good and learned man
(now with God) upon this subject: ‘What, shall we receive good from
the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ This indisposition
speedily grew up into a dangerous distemper; as soon as this was
understood, the earliest care of this charitable mistress was for the
removing of such immediate servants, as might by distance, be preserved
in health. Soon after this she fixed the times of prayers in that
chamber to which her sickness had confined her.

[Sidenote: TENISON.]

“On that very day she showed how sensible she was of death, and how
little she feared it. She required him who officiated there to add that
collect in the Communion of the Sick, in which are these words, ‘That
whensoever the soul shall depart from the body, it may be, without
spot, presented unto Thee.’ ‘I will,’ said she, ‘have this collect read
twice every day. All have need to be put in mind of death, and Princes
as much as anybody else.’

“On Monday the flattering disease occasioned some hopes, though they
were but faint ones. On the next day, the festival of Christ’s birth,
those hopes were raised into a kind of assurance, and there was joy, a
great joy seen in the countenances of all good people. That joy endured
but for a day, and that day was closed with a very dismal night. The
disease showed itself in various forms, and small hopes of life were
now left. Then it was that he who performed the holy offices, believed
himself obliged to acquaint the good Queen of the small hopes all
had of any likelihood of her recovery. She received the tidings with
a courage agreeable to the strength of her faith. Loath she was to
terrify those about her; but for herself, she seemed neither to fear
death, nor to covet life. It was, you may imagine, high satisfaction
to hear her say a great many most Christian things, and this among
them: ‘I believe I shall now soon die, and I thank God I have, from my
youth, learned a true doctrine, that repentance is not to be put off
to a death-bed.’ That day she called for prayers a third time, fearing
she had slept a little, when they were the second time read; for she
thought a duty was not performed if it was not minded.

[Sidenote: 1695.]

“On Thursday she prepared herself for the blessed communion, to which
she had been no stranger from the 15th year of her age. She was much
concerned that she found herself in so dozing a condition, so she
expressed it. To that, she added, ‘Others had need pray for me, seeing
I am so little able to pray for myself.’ However, she stirred up her
attention, and prayed to God for His assistance, and God heard her, for
from thenceforth to the end of the office, she had the perfect command
of her understanding, and was intent upon the great work she was going
about; and so intent, that when a second draught was offered her, she
refused it, saying, ‘I have but a little time to live, and I would
spend it a better way.’

“The holy elements being ready, and several Bishops coming to be
communicants, she repeated piously and distinctly, but with a low voice
(for such her weakness had then made it) all the parts of the holy
office which were proper for her, and received, with all the signs of a
strong faith and fervent devotion, the blessed pledges of God’s favour,
and thanked Him with a joyful heart that she was not deprived of the
opportunity. She owned also, that God had been good to her, beyond
her expectation, though in a circumstance of smaller importance, she
having, without any indecency or difficulty, taken down that bread,
when it had not been so easy for her, for some time, to swallow any
other.

“That afternoon she called for prayers somewhat earlier than the
appointed time, because she feared (that was her reason) that she
should not long be so well composed. And so it came to pass; for
every minute after this ’twas plain that death made nearer and nearer
approaches. However, this true Christian kept her mind as fixed, as
possible she could, upon the best things; and there were read, by her
directions, several psalms of David, and also a chapter of a pious book
concerning trust in God. Toward the latter end of it, her apprehension
began to fail, yet not so much but that she could say a devout Amen to
that prayer in which her pious soul was recommended to that God who
gave it.

[Sidenote: TENISON.]

“During all this time there appeared nothing of impatience, nothing of
frowardness, nothing of anger; there was heard nothing of murmuring,
nothing of impertinence, nothing of ill-sound, and scarce a number of
disjointed words.

“In all these afflictions the King was greatly afflicted; how sensibly,
and yet how becomingly, many saw, but few have skill enough to
describe; I am sure I have not. At last, the helps of art and prayers
and tears not prevailing, a quarter before one on Friday morning, after
two or three small strugglings of nature, and without such agonies as
in such cases are common, she fell asleep.”[234]

I have thought it best to give this extract without any abridgment, as
certain omissions in the account of the Queen’s last hours became the
subject of much controversy.

Mary was buried in Westminster Abbey, with all the pomp of a purple and
gold coffin, banners, and escutcheons, Lords in scarlet and ermine, and
Commons in black mantles; far more interesting than all that is the
following incident, carefully recorded: “A robin redbreast, which had
taken refuge in the Abbey, was seen constantly on her hearse, and was
looked upon with tender affection for its seeming love to the lamented
Queen.”[235]

Loyalty to William, and sympathy with him in his great loss, were
expressed in numerous addresses. A large collection of elegiac poems
were published at Cambridge, entitled, _Lacrymæ Cantabrigienses_,
&c., by a list of Dons, some of whom became Bishops; and the London
Clergy vied with each other in their eulogiums--to use the words of a
contemporary letter-writer, playing “the fool in their hyperbolical
commendation of the Queen, that looks like fulsome flattery, and some
expressions bordering upon blasphemy.”[236] The Presbyterians, headed
by Dr. Bates, presented an address of condolence to His Majesty.

[Sidenote: 1695.]

The nonjuring Clergy were much excited by the publication of Tenison’s
sermon, since it represented the Queen as eminently religious and
devout, but said not a word of any repentance for having assumed her
father’s crown, and for the filial impiety considered to be involved in
such conduct. A letter to this effect, published in the month of March,
1695, created an intense sensation, being attributed to Bishop Ken.
It is printed as his composition in the Memoirs of Tenison; but the
Layman who wrote Ken’s life pronounces it “a tissue of bitter obloquy
against the Queen and the Archbishop, wholly inconsistent with the meek
spirit of the author of the _Practice of Divine Love_.”[237] Upon
internal grounds he rejects its genuineness. I feel disposed to do
the same. Tenison also, it appears, doubted it, but I find no notice
of Ken’s having disavowed the authorship; and we must not forget how
possible it is for an amiable and pious man, under the influence
of what he regards as duty, to say things which run counter to the
generally calm and quiet current of his life.

[Sidenote: LICENSING OF THE PRESS.]

Tenison’s sermon was zealously defended by an anonymous pamphleteer,
who included within his defence funeral discourses delivered by other
dignitaries; and whilst the press was occupied by this controversy,
the friends and agents of James were rejoicing in the death of Mary
as endangering the position of William. The Church of England, it was
now thought, would be weaned from his cause, by the outburst of his
Presbyterian predilections, even to the overthrow of Episcopacy. The
ruin of its interests seemed at hand, unless the Revolution could be
revolutionized. Ten thousand men, the Jacobite plotters surmised, would
suffice for the reconquest of the kingdom, since the Church of England
party, who had been for William only on Mary’s account, were, it was
thought, now entirely alienated from him. The confusion occasioned by
her removal was relied upon as a proof of the inclination of the people
to see their Stuart King back at St. James.[238]

[Sidenote: 1695.]

In noticing the deaths of Sancroft, Tillotson, and Mary, we have passed
over a period marked by one of those silent changes which often elude
the notice of historians. The change referred to is connected very
closely with religious freedom. We have had frequent occasion to notice
restrictions on the liberty of the press. It is not necessary to go
back further than 1662, when Lord Clarendon’s Act for licensing books
was passed. The Act proscribed the printing and selling of heretical,
schismatical, blasphemous, seditious, and treasonable publications.
Nothing was to appear contrary to the Christian faith, or the
doctrines or discipline of the Church of England. Books on law required
a license from the Lord Chancellor or the Lord Chief Justices; books of
history, a license from the Secretaries of State; books of divinity and
philosophy, a license from the Archbishop of Canterbury. The folly of
such restrictions--proved by their futility when evaded, and by their
mischievousness when carried into effect--needs no comment. The Act now
noticed was made to be in force for two years. It was then continued.
In 1685 it was re-enacted for seven years. It continued through the
Revolution; and in 1692 was renewed under the Tories for two years
more. At four different times, from 1694 to 1698, attempts were made
in Parliament to prepare new Bills for licensing printing presses, and
the Whigs on one occasion seemed on the point of following the example
of their political rivals. Movement in the old direction went so far
once, that a restrictive Bill passed the Lords and was read in the
Commons--to be thrown out on a second reading. Church and State thus
narrowly missed being shackled again in the exercise of rights ever
precious to enlightened humanity; and the year 1694, though unmarked in
history, is illustrious in fact through the melting away for ever of a
long-continued and mischievous licensing law. Not, however, as we shall
presently see, that all legislative interference with the publishers of
opinions then terminated; but a great obstacle vanished out of the path
to that wide intellectual liberty which as a nation we now enjoy.

                              CHAPTER IX.

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]

                              CHAPTER X.