THE REVOLUTION.
Bad as was Charles II. (1660-1685), his brother, James II. (1685-1688), was worse. He seemed to combine the vices of the Stuarts without their redeeming traits. Charles, indifferent to religion and defiant to virtue during his life, sent on his death-bed for a Romish priest to give him absolution for his debaucheries. James openly professed his conversion to Romanism, filled in defiance of law the highest posts in the army and the cabinet with Romanists, and opened negotiations with Pope Innocent XI. At the same time he persecuted with heartless cruelty the Protestant Dissenters, and outraged justice by a series of judicial murders which have made the name of Chief Justice Jeffreys as infamous as Nero's.
At last the patience of the English people was again exhausted, the incurable race of the Stuarts, unwilling to learn and to forget any thing, was forever hurled from the throne, and the Prince of Orange, who had married Mary, the eldest daughter of James, was invited to rule England as William III.
THE RESULT.
The Revolution of 1688 was a political triumph of Puritanism, and secured to the nation constitutional liberty and the Protestant religion. The Episcopal Church remained the established national Church, but the Act of Toleration of 1689 guaranteed liberty and legal protection to such Nonconformists as could subscribe thirty-five and a half of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, omitting those to which the Puritans had conscientious scruples. Though very limited, this Act marked a great progress. It broke up the reign of intolerance, and virtually destroyed the principle of uniformity. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 was intended for the whole kingdom, and proceeded on the theory of an ecclesiastical incorporation of all Englishmen; now it was confined to the patronized State Church. It recognized none but the Episcopal form of worship, and treated non-Episcopalians as disloyal subjects, as culprits and felons; now other Protestant Christians--Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and even Quakers--were placed under the protection of the law, and permitted to build chapels and to maintain pastors at their own expense. The fact was recognized that a man may be a good citizen and a Christian without conforming to the State religion. Uniformity had proved an intolerable tyranny, and had failed. Comprehension of different denominations under one national Church, though favored by William, seemed impracticable. Limited toleration opened the way for full liberty and equality of Christian denominations before the law; and from the soil of liberty there will spring up a truer and deeper union than can be secured by any compulsion in the domain of conscience, which belongs to God alone.
Puritanism did not struggle in vain. Though it failed as a national movement, owing to its one-sidedness and want of catholicity, it accomplished much. It produced statesmen like Hampden, soldiers like Cromwell, poets like Milton, preachers like Howe, theologians like Owen, dreamers like Bunyan, hymnists like Watts, commentators like Henry, and saints like Baxter, who though dead yet speak. It lives on as a powerful moral element in the English nation, in the English Church, in English society, in English literature. It has won the esteem of the descendants of its enemies. In our day the Duke of Bedford erected a statue to Bunyan (1874) in the place where he had suffered in prison for twelve years; and Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents united in a similar tribute of justice and gratitude to the memory of Baxter at Kidderminster (1875), where he is again pointing his uplifted arm to the saints' everlasting rest. The liberal-minded and large-hearted dean of Westminster represented the nobler part of the English people when he canonized those great and good men in his memorial discourses at the unveiling of their statues. Puritanism lives moreover in New England, which was born of the persecutions and trials of its fathers and founders in old England, and gave birth to a republic truer, mightier, and more enduring than the ephemeral military commonwealth of Cromwell. It will continue to preserve and spread all over the Saxon world the love of purity, simplicity, spirituality, practical energy, liberty, and progress in the Christian Church.
On the other hand, it is for the children of the Puritans to honor the shining lights of the Church of England who stood by her in the days of her trial and persecution. That man is to be pitied indeed who would allow the theological passions of an intolerant age to blind his mind to the learning, the genius, and the piety of Ussher, Andrewes, Hall, Pearson, Prideaux, Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, and Leighton, whom God has enriched with his gifts for the benefit of all denominations. It is good for the Church of England--it is good for the whole Christian world--that she survived the fierce conflict of the seventeenth century and the indifferentism of the eighteenth to take care of venerable cathedrals, deaneries, cloisters, universities, and libraries, to cultivate the study of the fathers and schoolmen, to maintain the importance of historical continuity and connection with Christian antiquity, to satisfy the taste for stability, dignity, and propriety in the house of God, and to administer to the spiritual wants of the aristocracy and peasantry, and all those who can worship God most acceptably in the solemn prayers of her liturgy, which, with all its defects, must be pronounced the best ever used in divine service.
While the fierce conflict about religion was raging, there were prophetic men of moderation and comprehension on both sides--
'Whose dying pens did write of Christian union,
How Church with Church might safely keep communion;
Who finding discords daily to increase,
Because they could not live, would die, in peace.'
In a sermon before the House of Commons, under the arched roof of Westminster Abbey, Richard Baxter uttered this sentence: 'Men that differ about bishops, ceremonies, and forms of prayer, may be all true Christians, and dear to one another and to Christ, if they be practically agreed in the life of godliness, and join in a holy, heavenly conversation. But if you agree in all your opinions and formalities, and yet were never sanctified by the truth, you do but agree to delude your souls, and neither of you will be saved for all your agreement.' [1383]
This is a noble Christian sentiment, echoing the words of a greater man than Baxter: 'In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision,'--we may add, neither surplice nor gown, neither kneeling nor standing, neither episcopacy nor presbytery nor independency--' but a new creature.' [1384]
[1350] The name Puritans (from pure, as Catharists from katharos), or Precisians, occurs first about 1564 or 1566, and was employed to brand those who were opposed to the use of priestly vestments, as the cap, surplice, and the tippet (but not the gown, which the Puritans and Presbyterians retained, as well as the Continental Protestant ministers). Shakspere uses the term half a dozen times, and always reproachfully (see Clarke's Shaksp. Concordance and Schmidt's Shaksp. Lexicon, s.v.). In the good sense, it denotes those who went back to the purity and simplicity of apostolic Christianity in faith and morals. Neal defines a Puritan to be 'a man of severe morals, a Calvinist in doctrine, and a Nonconformist to the ceremonies and discipline of the Church, though not totally separated from it'
[1351] Fuller, Vol. V. pp. 305-309. The petition was dated January 14, 1603 (old style), but was presented April 4. The real number of signers was only 825.
[1352] Fuller (Vol. V. pp. 378, 379) speaks in very high terms of Reynolds, who was so unceremoniously snubbed by Bishop Bancroft. He praises his memory, which was 'little less than marvelous,' and 'a faithful index,' as his reason was 'a solid judex of what he read,' and his humility, which 'set a lustre on all; communicative of what he knew to any that desired information herein, like a tree loaded with fruit, bowing down its branches to all that desired to ease it of the burden thereof, deserving this epitaph,
'Incertum est utrum doctior an melior.'
He associates him with Bishop Jewel and Richard Hooker, all born in Devonshire, and educated at Corpus Christi College, and says, ' No one county in England have three such men (contemporary at large), in what college soever they were bred; no college in England bred such three men, in what county soever they were born.' John Reynolds was at first a zealous papist and turned an eminent protestant; while his brother William was as earnest a protestant, and became by their mutual disputation an inveterate papist, which gave occasion to the distich:
'Quod genus hoc pugnæ est? ubi victus gaudet uterque,
Et simul alteruter se superasse dolet.'
'What war is this? when conquer'd both are glad,
And either to have conquer'd other sad.'
[1353] He also said to Dr. Reynolds: 'If you aim at a Scotch presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick shall meet and censure me and my council. Therefore I reiterate my former speech, Le roy s'avisera.'
[1354] The accounts of the Hampton Court Conference are mostly derived from the partial report of Dr. William Barlow, Dean of Chester, who was present. It appeared in 1604, and again in 1638. See Fuller, Vol. V. pp. 266-303; Cardwell, Hist. of Conferences, p. 121; Procter, Hist. of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 88; Marsden, Early Puritans, p. 255.
[1355] He was assigned to the company which was charged with the translation of the writings of the greater and lesser Prophets. But he died in 1607, before the completion of the work.
[1356] The discussion bearing upon this subject is likewise characteristic of the King, the Bishop, and the Puritan, and may be added here (from Fuller, Vol. V. pp. 284, 285):
'Dr. Reynolds. "May your Majesty be pleased that the Bible be new translated, such as are extant not answering the original." And he instanced in three particulars: In the Original Ill Translated 'Gal. iv. 25 sustoichei Bordereth. Psalm cv. 28. They were not disobedient. They were not obedient. Psalm cvi. 30. Phinehas executed judgment. Phinehas prayed.
'Bishop of London. "If every man's humor might be followed, there would be no end of translating."
'His Majesty. "I profess I could never yet see a Bible well translated in English; but I think that of all, that of Geneva is the worst. I wish some special pains were taken for an uniform translation; which should be done by the best learned in both universities, then reviewed by the bishops, presented to the privy council, lastly ratified by royal authority to be read in the whole Church, and no other."
'Bishop of London. "But it is fit that no marginal notes should be added thereunto."
'His Majesty. "That caveat is well put in; for in the Geneva translation some notes are partial, untrue, seditious, and savoring of traitorous conceits: as when, from Exodus i. 19, disobedience to kings is allowed in a marginal note; and, 2 Chron. xv. 16, King Asa taxed in the note for only deposing his mother for idolatry, and not killing her. To conclude this point, let errors in matters of faith be amended, and indifferent things be interpreted, and a gloss added unto them; for, as Bartolus de Regno saith, 'Better a king with some weakness than still a change;' so rather a Church with some faults than an innovation. And surely, if these were the greatest matters that grieved you, I need not have been troubled with such importunate complaints."'
[1357] Macaulay, chap. i. p. 65 (Boston ed.). I add the admirable description of Charles by Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, in the Memoirs of her husband (Bohn's ed. p. 84): 'King Charles was temperate, chaste, and serious; so that the fools and bawds, mimics and catamites, of the former court, grew out of fashion; and the nobility and courtiers, who did not quite abandon their debaucheries, yet so reverenced the king as to retire into corners to practice them. Men of learning and ingenuity in all arts were in esteem, and received encouragement from the king, who was a most excellent judge and a great lover of paintings, carvings, gravings, and many other ingenuities, less offensive than the bawdry and profane abusive wit which was the only exercise of the other court. But, as in the primitive times, it is observed that the best emperors were some of them stirred up by Satan to be the bitterest persecutors of the Church, so this king was a worse encroacher upon the civil and spiritual liberties of his people by far than his father. He married a Papist, a French lady, of a haughty spirit, and a great wit and beauty, to whom he became a most uxorious husband. By this means the court was replenished with Papists, and many who hoped to advance themselves by the change turned to that religion. All the Papists in the kingdom were favored, and, by the king's example, matched into the best families; the Puritans were more than ever discountenanced and persecuted, insomuch that many of them chose to abandon their native country, and leave their dearest relations, to retire into any foreign soil or plantation where they might, amidst all outward inconveniences, enjoy the free exercise of God's worship. Such as could not flee were tormented in the bishops' courts, fined, whipped, pilloried, imprisoned, and suffered to enjoy no rest, so that death was better than life to them; and notwithstanding their patient sufferance of all these things, yet was not the king satisfied till the whole land was reduced to perfect slavery. The example of the French king was propounded to him, and he thought himself no monarch so long as his will was confined to the bounds of any law; but knowing that the people of England were not pliable to an arbitrary rule, he plotted to subdue them to his yoke by a foreign force, and till he could effect it, made no conscience of granting any thing to the people, which he resolved should not oblige him longer than it served his turn; for he was a prince that had nothing of faith or truth, justice or generosity, in him. He was the most obstinate person in his self-will that ever was, and so bent upon being an absolute, uncontrollable sovereign that he was resolved either to be such a king or none. His firm adherence to prelacy was not for conscience of one religion more than another, for it was his principle that an honest man might be saved in any profession; but he had a mistaken principle that kingly government in the State could not stand without episcopal government in the Church; and, therefore, as the bishops flattered him with preaching up his sovereign prerogative, and inveighing against the Puritans as factious and disloyal, so he protected them in their pomp and pride, and insolent practices against all the godly and sober people of the land.'