No More Learning

The High Churchman
who would not take the oaths had shown as satisfactorily that Christians
were not in all cases bound to pay obedience to the prince who was
actually reigning. It followed that, to entitle a government to the
allegiance of subjects, something was necessary different from mere
legitimacy, and different also from mere possession. What that something
was the Whigs had no difficulty in pronouncing. In their view, the
end for which all governments had been instituted was the happiness of
society. While the magistrate was, on the whole, notwithstanding some
faults, a minister for good, Reason taught mankind to obey him;
and Religion, giving her solemn sanction to the teaching of Reason,
commanded mankind to revere him as divinely commissioned. But if
he proved to be a minister for evil, on what grounds was he to be
considered as divinely commissioned? The Tories who swore had proved
that he ought not to be so considered on account of the origin of his
power: the Tories who would not swear had proved as clearly that he
ought not to be so considered on account of the existence of his power.

Some violent and acrimonious Whigs triumphed ostentatiously and with
merciless insolence over the perplexed and divided priesthood. The
nonjuror they generally affected to regard with contemptuous pity as
a dull and perverse, but sincere, bigot, whose absurd practice was in
harmony with his absurd theory, and who might plead, in excuse for
the infatuation which impelled him to ruin his country, that the same
infatuation had impelled him to ruin himself. They reserved their
sharpest taunts for those divines who, having, in the days of the
Exclusion Bill and the Rye House Plot, been distinguished by zeal for
the divine and indefeasible right of the hereditary Sovereign, were now
ready to swear fealty to an usurper. Was this then the real sense of all
those sublime phrases which had resounded during twenty-nine years from
innumerable pulpits? Had the thousands of clergymen, who had so loudly
boasted of the unchangeable loyalty of their order, really meant only
that their loyalty would remain unchangeable till the next change of
fortune? It was idle, it was impudent in them to pretend that their
present conduct was consistent with their former language. If any
Reverend Doctor had at length been convinced that he had been in the
wrong, he surely ought, by an open recantation, to make all the amends
now possible to the persecuted, the calumniated, the murdered defenders
of liberty. If he was still convinced that his old opinions were sound,
he ought manfully to cast in his lot with the nonjurors. Respect, it was
said, is due to him who ingenuously confesses an error; respect is due
to him who courageously suffers for an error; but it is difficult
to respect a minister of religion who, while asserting that he still
adheres to the principles of the Tories, saves his benefice by taking an
oath which can be honestly taken only on the principles of the Whigs.

These reproaches, though perhaps not altogether unjust, were
unseasonable. The wiser and more moderate Whigs, sensible that the
throne of William could not stand firm if it had not a wider basis
than their own party, abstained at this conjuncture from sneers and
invectives, and exerted themselves to remove the scruples and to soothe
the irritated feelings of the clergy. The collective power of the
rectors and vicars of England was immense: and it was much better that
they should swear for the most flimsy reason that could be devised by a
sophist than they should not swear at all.

It soon became clear that the arguments for swearing, backed as they
were by some of the strongest motives which can influence the human
mind, had prevailed. Above twenty-nine thirtieths of the profession
submitted to the law. Most of the divines of the capital, who then
formed a separate class, and who were as much distinguished from the
rural clergy by liberality of sentiment as by eloquence and learning,
gave in their adhesion to the government early, and with every sign of
cordial attachment. Eighty of them repaired together, in full term, to
Westminster Hall, and were there sworn. The ceremony occupied so long
a time that little else was done that day in the Courts of Chancery and
King's Bench, [460] But in general the compliance was tardy, sad and
sullen. Many, no doubt, deliberately sacrificed principle to interest.
Conscience told them that they were committing a sin. But they had not
fortitude to resign the parsonage, the garden, the glebe, and to go
forth without knowing where to find a meal or a roof for themselves and
their little ones. Many swore with doubts and misgivings, [461] Some
declared, at the moment of taking the oath, that they did not mean to
promise that they would not submit to James, if he should ever be in a
condition to demand their allegiance, [462] Some clergymen in the north
were, on the first of August, going in a company to swear, when they
were met on the road by the news of the battle which had been fought,
four days before, in the pass of Killiecrankie. They immediately turned
back, and did not again leave their homes on the same errand till it was
clear that Dundee's victory had made no change in the state of public
affairs, [463] Even of those whose understandings were fully convinced
that obedience was due to the existing government, very few kissed the
book with the heartiness with which they had formerly plighted their
faith to Charles and James. Still the thing was done. Ten thousand
clergymen had solemnly called heaven to attest their promise that they
would be true liegemen to William; and this promise, though it by no
means warranted him in expecting that they would strenuously support
him, had at least deprived them of a great part of their power to injure
him. They could not, without entirely forfeiting that public respect
on which their influence depended, attack, except in an indirect
and timidly cautious manner, the throne of one whom they had, in the
presence of God, vowed to obey as their King. Some of them, it is true,
affected to read the prayers for the new Sovereigns in a peculiar tone
which could not be misunderstood, [464] Others were guilty of still
grosser indecency. Thus, one wretch, just after praying for William and
Mary in the most solemn office of religion, took off a glass to their
damnation. Another, after performing divine service on a fast day
appointed by their authority, dined on a pigeon pie, and while he cut it
up, uttered a wish that it was the usurper's heart. But such audacious
wickedness was doubtless rare and was rather injurious to the Church
than to the government, [465]

Those clergymen and members of the Universities who incurred the
penalties of the law were about four hundred in number. Foremost in rank
stood the Primate and six of his suffragans, Turner of Ely, Lloyd
of Norwich, Frampton of Gloucester, Lake of Chichester, White of
Peterborough, and Ken of Bath and Wells. Thomas of Worcester would have
made a seventh: but he died three weeks before the day of suspension. On
his deathbed he adjured his clergy to be true to the cause of hereditary
right, and declared that those divines who tried to make out that the
oaths might be taken without any departure from the loyal doctrines of
the Church of England seemed to him to reason more jesuitically than the
Jesuits themselves, [466]

Ken, who, both in intellectual and in moral qualities, ranked highest
among the nonjuring prelates, hesitated long. There were few clergymen
who could have submitted to the new government with a better grace. For,
in the times when nonresistance and passive obedience were the favourite
themes of his brethren, he had scarcely ever alluded to politics in
the pulpit. He owned that the arguments in favour of swearing were
very strong. He went indeed so far as to say that his scruples would be
completely removed if he could be convinced that James had entered
into engagements for ceding Ireland to the French King. It is evident
therefore that the difference between Ken and the Whigs was not a
difference of principle. He thought, with them, that misgovernment,
carried to a certain point, justified a transfer of allegiance, and
doubted only whether the misgovernment of James had been carried quite
to that point. Nay, the good Bishop actually began to prepare a pastoral
letter explaining his reasons for taking the oaths. But, before it was
finished, he received information which convinced him that Ireland had
not been made over to France: doubts came thick upon him: he threw
his unfinished letter into the fire, and implored his less scrupulous
friends not to urge him further. He was sure, he said, that they had
acted uprightly: he was glad that they could do with a clear conscience
what he shrank from doing: he felt the force of their reasoning: he was
all but persuaded; and he was afraid to listen longer lest he should
be quite persuaded: for, if he should comply, and his misgivings should
afterwards return, he should be the most miserable of men. Not for
wealth, not for a palace, not for a peerage, would he run the smallest
risk of ever feeling the torments of remorse. It is a curious fact that,
of the seven nonjuring prelates, the only one whose name carries with it
much weight was on the point of swearing, and was prevented from doing
so, as he himself acknowledged, not by the force of reason, but by a
morbid scrupulosity which he did not advise others to imitate, [467]

Among the priests who refused the oaths were some men eminent in
the learned world, as grammarians, chronologists, canonists, and
antiquaries, and a very few who were distinguished by wit and eloquence:
but scarcely one can be named who was qualified to discuss any large
question of morals or politics, scarcely one whose writings do not
indicate either extreme feebleness or extreme flightiness of mind. Those
who distrust the judgment of a Whig on this point will probably allow
some weight to the opinion which was expressed, many years after the
Revolution, by a philosopher of whom the Tories are justly proud.
Johnson, after passing in review the celebrated divines who had thought
it sinful to swear allegiance to William the Third and George the First,
pronounced that, in the whole body of nonjurors, there was one, and one
only, who could reason, [468]

The nonjuror in whose favour Johnson made this exception was Charles
Leslie. Leslie had, before the Revolution, been Chancellor of the
diocese of Connor in Ireland. He had been forward in opposition to
Tyrconnel; had, as a justice of the peace for Monaghan, refused
to acknowledge a papist as Sheriff of that county; and had been so
courageous as to send some officers of the Irish army to prison for
marauding. But the doctrine of nonresistance, such as it had been taught
by Anglican divines in the days of the Rye House Plot, was immovably
fixed in his mind. When the state of Ulster became such that a
Protestant who remained there could hardly avoid being either a rebel or
a martyr, Leslie fled to London. His abilities and his connections were
such that he might easily have obtained high preferment in the Church of
England. But he took his place in the front rank of the Jacobite body,
and remained there stedfastly, through all the dangers and vicissitudes
of three and thirty troubled years. Though constantly engaged in
theological controversy with Deists, Jews, Socinians, Presbyterians,
Papists, and Quakers, he found time to be one of the most voluminous
political writers of his age. Of all the nonjuring clergy he was the
best qualified to discuss constitutional questions. For, before he had
taken orders, he had resided long in the Temple, and had been studying
English history and law, while most of the other chiefs of the schism
had been poring over the Acts of Chalcedon, or seeking for wisdom in the
Targurn of Onkelos, [469] In 1689, however, Leslie was almost unknown
in England. Among the divines who incurred suspension on the first
of August in that year, the highest in popular estimation was without
dispute Doctor William Sherlock. Perhaps no simple presbyter of the
Church of England has ever possessed a greater authority over his
brethren than belonged to Sherlock at the time of the Revolution. He
was not of the first rank among his contemporaries as a scholar, as a
preacher, as a writer on theology, or as a writer on politics: but in
all the four characters he had distinguished himself. The perspicuity
and liveliness of his style have been praised by Prior and Addison. The
facility and assiduity with which he wrote are sufficiently proved by
the bulk and the dates of his works. There were indeed among the clergy
men of brighter genius and men of wider attainments: but during a long
period there was none who more completely represented the order, none
who, on all subjects, spoke more precisely the sense of the Anglican
priesthood, without any taint of Latitudinarianism, of Puritanism, or of
Popery. He had, in the days of the Exclusion Bill, when the power of
the dissenters was very great in Parliament and in the country, written
strongly against the sin of nonconformity. When the Rye House Plot was
detected, he had zealously defended by tongue and pen the doctrine of
nonresistance. His services to the cause of episcopacy and monarchy were
so highly valued that he was made master of the Temple. A pension was
also bestowed on him by Charles: but that pension James soon took away;
for Sherlock, though he held himself bound to pay passive obedience to
the civil power, held himself equally bound to combat religious errors,
and was the keenest and most laborious of that host of controversialists
who, in the day of peril, manfully defended the Protestant faith. In
little more than two years he published sixteen treatises, some of them
large books, against the high pretensions of Rome. Not content with the
easy victories which he gained over such feeble antagonists as those
who were quartered at Clerkenwell and the Savoy, he had the courage to
measure his strength with no less a champion than Bossuet, and came out
of the conflict without discredit. Nevertheless Sherlock still continued
to maintain that no oppression could justify Christians in resisting
the kingly authority. When the Convention was about to meet, he strongly
recommended, in a tract which was considered as the manifesto of a
large part of the clergy, that James should be invited to return on such
conditions as might secure the laws and religion of the nation, [470]
The vote which placed William and Mary on the throne filled Sherlock
with sorrow and anger. He is said to have exclaimed that if the
Convention was determined on a revolution, the clergy would find forty
thousand good Churchmen to effect a restoration, [471] Against the new
oaths he gave his opinion plainly and warmly. He declared himself at a
loss to understand how any honest man could doubt that, by the powers
that be, Saint Paul meant legitimate powers and no others. No name
was in 1689 cited by the Jacobites so proudly and fondly as that of
Sherlock. Before the end of 1690 that name excited very different
feelings.

A few other nonjurors ought to be particularly noticed. High among them
in rank was George Hickes, Dean of Worcester. Of all the Englishmen of
his time he was the most versed in the old Teutonic languages; and his
knowledge of the early Christian literature was extensive. As to his
capacity for political discussions, it may be sufficient to say that his
favourite argument for passive obedience was drawn from the story of
the Theban legion. He was the younger brother of that unfortunate John
Hickes who had been found hidden in the malthouse of Alice Lisle. James
had, in spite of all solicitation, put both John Hickes and Alice Lisle
to death. Persons who did not know the strength of the Dean's principles
thought that he might possibly feel some resentment on this account: for
he was of no gentle or forgiving temper, and could retain during many
years a bitter remembrance of small injuries. But he was strong in his
religious and political faith: he reflected that the sufferers were
dissenters; and he submitted to the will of the Lord's Anointed not
only with patience but with complacency. He became indeed a more loving
subject than ever from the time when his brother was hanged and his
brother's benefactress beheaded. While almost all other clergymen,
appalled by the Declaration of Indulgence and by the proceedings of
the High Commission, were beginning to think that they had pushed the
doctrine of nonresistance a little too far, he was writing a vindication
of his darling legend, and trying to convince the troops at Hounslow
that, if James should be pleased to massacre them all, as Maximian had
massacred the Theban legion, for refusing to commit idolatry, it would
be their duty to pile their arms, and meekly to receive the crown of
martyrdom. To do Hickes justice, his whole conduct after the Revolution
proved that his servility had sprung neither from fear nor from
cupidity, but from mere bigotry, [472]

Jeremy Collier, who was turned out of the preachership of the Rolls,
was a man of a much higher order. He is well entitled to grateful and
respectful mention: for to his eloquence and courage is to be chiefly
ascribed the purification of our lighter literature from that foul taint
which had been contracted during the Antipuritan reaction. He was, in
the full force of the words, a good man. He was also a man of eminent
abilities, a great master of sarcasm, a great master of rhetoric, [473]
His reading, too, though undigested, was of immense extent. But his mind
was narrow: his reasoning, even when he was so fortunate as to have a
good cause to defend, was singularly futile and inconclusive; and his
brain was almost turned by pride, not personal, but professional. In
his view, a priest was the highest of human beings, except a bishop.
Reverence and submission were due from the best and greatest of the
laity to the least respectable of the clergy. However ridiculous a man
in holy orders might make himself, it was impiety to laugh at him. So
nervously sensitive indeed was Collier on this point that he thought
it profane to throw any reflection even on the ministers of false
religions. He laid it down as a rule that Muftis and Augurs ought always
to be mentioned with respect. He blamed Dryden for sneering at the
Hierophants of Apis. He praised Racine for giving dignity to the
character of a priest of Baal. He praised Corneille for not bringing
that learned and reverend divine Tiresias on the stage in the tragedy of
Oedipus. The omission, Collier owned, spoiled the dramatic effect of the
piece: but the holy function was much too solemn to be played with. Nay,
incredible as it may seem, he thought it improper in the laity to sneer
at Presbyterian preachers. Indeed his Jacobitism was little more than
one of the forms in which his zeal for the dignity of his profession
manifested itself. He abhorred the Revolution less as a rising up of
subjects against their King than as a rising up of the laity against
the sacerdotal caste. The doctrines which had been proclaimed from
the pulpit during thirty years had been treated with contempt by the
Convention. A new government had been set up in opposition to the wishes
of the spiritual peers in the House of Lords and of the priesthood
throughout the country. A secular assembly had taken upon itself to pass
a law requiring archbishops and bishops, rectors and vicars, to abjure;
on pain of deprivation, what they had been teaching all their lives.
Whatever meaner spirits might do, Collier was determined not to be led
in triumph by the victorious enemies of his order. To the last he would
confront, with the authoritative port of an ambassador of heaven, the
anger of the powers and principalities of the earth.

In parts Collier was the first man among the nonjurors. In erudition the
first place must be assigned to Henry Dodwell, who, for the unpardonable
crime of having a small estate in Mayo, had been attainted by the Popish
Parliament at Dublin. He was Camdenian Professor of Ancient History
in the University of Oxford, and had already acquired considerable
celebrity by chronological and geographical researches: but, though
he never could be persuaded to take orders, theology was his favourite
study. He was doubtless a pious and sincere man. He had perused
innumerable volumes in various languages, and had indeed acquired
more learning than his slender faculties were able to bear. The small
intellectual spark which he possessed was put out by the fuel. Some of
his books seem to have been written in a madhouse, and, though filled
with proofs of his immense reading, degrade him to the level of James
Naylor and Ludowick Muggleton. He began a dissertation intended to prove
that the law of nations was a divine revelation made to the family which
was preserved in the ark. He published a treatise in which he maintained
that a marriage between a member of the Church of England and a
dissenter was a nullity, and that the couple were, in the sight of
heaven, guilty of adultery. He defended the use of instrumental music in
public worship on the ground that the notes of the organ had a power to
counteract the influence of devils on the spinal marrow of human
beings. In his treatise on this subject, he remarked that there was
high authority for the opinion that the spinal marrow, when decomposed,
became a serpent. Whether this opinion were or were not correct, he
thought it unnecessary to decide. Perhaps, he said, the eminent men
in whose works it was found had meant only to express figuratively the
great truth, that the Old Serpent operates on us chiefly through the
spinal marrow, [474] Dodwell's speculations on the state of human beings
after death are, if possible, more extraordinary still. He tells us that
our souls are naturally mortal. Annihilation is the fate of the greater
part of mankind, of heathens, of Mahometans, of unchristened babes. The
gift of immortality is conveyed in the sacrament of baptism: but to the
efficacy of the sacrament it is absolutely necessary that the water be
poured and the words pronounced by a priest who has been ordained by a
bishop. In the natural course of things, therefore, all Presbyterians,
Independents, Baptists, and Quakers would, like the inferior animals,
cease to exist. But Dodwell was far too good a churchman to let
off dissenters so easily. He informs them that, as they have had an
opportunity of hearing the gospel preached, and might, but for their
own perverseness, have received episcopalian baptism, God will, by an
extraordinary act of power, bestow immortality on them in order that
they may be tormented for ever and ever, [475]

No man abhorred the growing latitudinarianism of those times more
than Dodwell. Yet no man had more reason to rejoice in it. For, in the
earlier part of the seventeenth century, a speculator who had dared to
affirm that the human soul is by its nature mortal, and does, in the
great majority of cases, actually die with the body, would have been
burned alive in Smithfield. Even in days which Dodwell could well
remember, such heretics as himself would have been thought fortunate if
they escaped with life, their backs flayed, their ears clipped, their
noses slit, their tongues bored through with red hot iron, and their
eyes knocked out with brickbats. With the nonjurors, however, the author
of this theory was still the great Mr. Dodwell; and some, who thought
it culpable lenity to tolerate a Presbyterian meeting, thought it at the
same time gross illiberality to blame a learned and pious Jacobite for
denying a doctrine so utterly unimportant in a religious point of view
as that of the immortality of the soul, [476]

Two other nonjurors deserve special mention, less on account of their
abilities and learning, than on account of their rare integrity, and
of their not less rare candour. These were John Kettlewell, Rector of
Coleshill, and John Fitzwilliam, Canon of Windsor. It is remarkable
that both these men had seen much of Lord Russell, and that both, though
differing from him in political opinions, and strongly disapproving
the part which he had taken in the Whig plot, had thought highly of his
character, and had been sincere mourners for his death. He had sent to
Kettlewell an affectionate message from the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. Lady Russell, to her latest day, loved, trusted, and revered
Fitzwilliam, who, when she was a girl, had been the friend of her
father, the virtuous Southampton. The two clergymen agreed in refusing
to swear: but they, from that moment, took different paths. Kettlewell
was one of the most active members of his party: he declined no drudgery
in the common cause, provided only that it were such drudgery as did not
misbecome an honest man; and he defended his opinions in several tracts,
which give a much higher notion of his sincerity than of his judgment or
acuteness, [477] Fitzwilliam thought that he had done enough in quitting
his pleasant dwelling and garden under the shadow of Saint George's
Chapel, and in betaking himself with his books to a small lodging in an
attic. He could not with a safe conscience acknowledge William and
Mary: but he did not conceive that he was bound to be always stirring up
sedition against them; and he passed the last years of his life,
under the powerful protection of the House of Bedford, in innocent and
studious repose, [478]

Among the less distinguished divines who forfeited their benefices, were
doubtless many good men: but it is certain that the moral character of
the nonjurors, as a class, did not stand high. It seems hard to impute
laxity of principle to persons who undoubtedly made a great sacrifice
to principle. And yet experience abundantly proves that many who are
capable of making a great sacrifice, when their blood is heated by
conflict, and when the public eye is fixed upon them, are not capable of
persevering long in the daily practice of obscure virtues. It is by no
means improbable that zealots may have given their lives for a religion
which had never effectually restrained their vindictive or their
licentious passions. We learn indeed from fathers of the highest
authority that, even in the purest ages of the Church, some confessors,
who had manfully refused to save themselves from torments and death
by throwing frankincense on the altar of Jupiter, afterwards brought
scandal on the Christian name by gross fraud and debauchery, [479] For
the nonjuring divines great allowance must in fairness be made. They
were doubtless in a most trying situation. In general, a schism, which
divides a religious community, divides the laity as well as the clergy.
The seceding pastors therefore carry with them a large part of their
flocks, and are consequently assured of a maintenance. But the schism of
1689 scarcely extended beyond the clergy. The law required the rector to
take the oaths, or to quit his living: but no oath, no acknowledgment of
the title of the new King and Queen, was required from the parishioner
as a qualification for attending divine service, or for receiving the
Eucharist. Not one in fifty, therefore, of those laymen who disapproved
of the Revolution thought himself bound to quit his pew in the old
church, where the old liturgy was still read, and where the old
vestments were still worn, and to follow the ejected priest to a
conventicle, a conventicle, too, which was not protected by the
Toleration Act. Thus the new sect was a sect of preachers without
hearers; and such preachers could not make a livelihood by preaching. In
London, indeed, and in some other large towns, those vehement Jacobites,
whom nothing would satisfy but to hear King James and the Prince of
Wales prayed for by name, were sufficiently numerous to make up a few
small congregations, which met secretly, and under constant fear of
the constables, in rooms so mean that the meeting houses of the Puritan
dissenters might by comparison be called palaces. Even Collier, who had
all the qualities which attract large audiences, was reduced to be the
minister of a little knot of malecontents, whose oratory was on a second
floor in the city. But the nonjuring clergymen who were able to obtain
even a pittance by officiating at such places were very few. Of the
rest some had independent means: some lived by literature: one or two
practised physic. Thomas Wagstaffe, for example, who had been Chancellor
of Lichfield, had many patients, and made himself conspicuous by always
visiting them in full canonicals, [480] But these were exceptions.
Industrious poverty is a state by no means unfavourable to virtue: but
it is dangerous to be at once poor and idle; and most of the clergymen
who had refused to swear found themselves thrown on the world with
nothing to eat and with nothing to do. They naturally became beggars and
loungers. Considering themselves as martyrs suffering in a public cause,
they were not ashamed to ask any good churchman for a guinea. Most of
them passed their lives in running about from one Tory coffeehouse to
another, abusing the Dutch, hearing and spreading reports that within
a month His Majesty would certainly be on English ground, and wondering
who would have Salisbury when Burnet was hanged. During the session
of Parliament the lobbies and the Court of Requests were crowded with
deprived parsons, asking who was up, and what the numbers were on the
last division. Many of the ejected divines became domesticated, as
chaplains, tutors and spiritual directors, in the houses of opulent
Jacobites. In a situation of this kind, a man of pure and exalted
character, such a man as Ken was among the nonjurors, and Watts among
the nonconformists, may preserve his dignity, and may much more
than repay by his example and his instructions the benefits which he
receives. But to a person whose virtue is not high toned this way of
life is full of peril. If he is of a quiet disposition, he is in danger
of sinking into a servile, sensual, drowsy parasite. If he is of an
active and aspiring nature, it may be feared that he will become expert
in those bad arts by which, more easily than by faithful service,
retainers make themselves agreeable or formidable. To discover the weak
side of every character, to flatter every passion and prejudice, to sow
discord and jealousy where love and confidence ought to exist, to watch
the moment of indiscreet openness for the purpose of extracting secrets
important to the prosperity and honour of families, such are the
practices by which keen and restless spirits have too often avenged
themselves for the humiliation of dependence. The public voice loudly
accused many nonjurors of requiting the hospitality of their benefactors
with villany as black as that of the hypocrite depicted in the
masterpiece of Moliere. Indeed, when Cibber undertook to adapt that
noble comedy to the English stage, he made his Tartuffe a nonjuror:
and Johnson, who cannot be supposed to have been prejudiced against the
nonjurors, frankly owned that Cibber had done them no wrong, [481]

There can be no doubt that the schism caused by the oaths would have
been far more formidable, if, at this crisis, any extensive change had
been made in the government or in the ceremonial of the Established
Church. It is a highly instructive fact that those enlightened and
tolerant divines who most ardently desired such a change afterwards saw
reason to be thankful that their favourite project had failed.

Whigs and Tories had in the late Session combined to get rid of
Nottingham's Comprehension Bill by voting an address which requested the
King to refer the whole subject to the Convocation. Burnet foresaw the
effect of this vote. The whole scheme, he said, was utterly ruined,
[482] Many of his friends, however, thought differently; and among these
was Tillotson. Of all the members of the Low Church party Tillotson
stood highest in general estimation. As a preacher, he was thought
by his contemporaries to have surpassed all rivals living or dead.
Posterity has reversed this judgment. Yet Tillotson still keeps his
place as a legitimate English classic. His highest flights were indeed
far below those of Taylor, of Barrow, and of South; but his oratory was
more correct and equable than theirs. No quaint conceits, no pedantic
quotations from Talmudists and scholiasts, no mean images, buffoon
stories, scurrilous invectives, ever marred the effect of his grave and
temperate discourses. His reasoning was just sufficiently profound and
sufficiently refined to be followed by a popular audience with that
slight degree of intellectual exertion which is a pleasure. His style
is not brilliant; but it is pure, transparently clear, and equally free
from the levity and from the stiffness which disfigure the sermons of
some eminent divines of the seventeenth century. He is always serious:
yet there is about his manner a certain graceful ease which marks him
as a man who knows the world, who has lived in populous cities and in
splendid courts, and who has conversed, not only with books, but with
lawyers and merchants, wits and beauties, statesmen and princes.
The greatest charm of his compositions, however, is deriven from the
benignity and candour which appear in every line, and which shone forth
not less conspicuously in his life than in his writings.

As a theologian, Tillotson was certainly not less latitudinarian than
Burnet. Yet many of those clergymen to whom Burnet was an object of
implacable aversion spoke of Tillotson with tenderness and respect.
It is therefore not strange that the two friends should have formed
different estimates of the temper of the priesthood, and should
have expected different results from the meeting of the Convocation.
Tillotson was not displeased with the vote of the Commons. He conceived
that changes made in religious institutions by mere secular authority
might disgust many churchmen, who would yet be perfectly willing to
vote, in an ecclesiastical synod, for changes more extensive still; and
his opinion had great weight with the King, [483] It was resolved that
the Convocation should meet at the beginning of the next session
of Parliament, and that in the meantime a commission should issue
empowering some eminent divines to examine the Liturgy, the canons, and
the whole system of jurisprudence administered by the Courts Christian,
and to report on the alterations which it might be desirable to make,
[484]

Most of the Bishops who had taken the oaths were in this commission;
and with them were joined twenty priests of great note. Of the twenty
Tillotson was the most important: for he was known to speak the sense
both of the King and of the Queen. Among those Commissioners who looked
up to Tillotson as their chief were Stillingfleet, Dean of Saint Paul's,
Sharp, Dean of Norwich, Patrick, Dean of Peterborough, Tenison, Rector
of Saint Martin's, and Fowler, to whose judicious firmness was chiefly
to be ascribed the determination of the London clergy not to read the
Declaration of Indulgence.

With such men as those who have been named were mingled some divines who
belonged to the High Church party. Conspicuous among these were two
of the rulers of Oxford, Aldrich and Jane. Aldrich had recently been
appointed Dean of Christchurch, in the room of the Papist Massey, whom
James had, in direct violation of the laws, placed at the head of
that great college. The new Dean was a polite, though not a profound,
scholar, and a jovial, hospitable gentleman. He was the author of some
theological tracts which have long been forgotten, and of a compendium
of logic which is still used: but the best works which he has bequeathed
to posterity are his catches. Jane, the King's Professor of Divinity,
was a graver but a less estimable man. He had borne the chief part in
framing that decree by which his University ordered the works of Milton
and Buchanan to be publicly burned in the Schools. A few years later,
irritated and alarmed by the persecution of the Bishops and by the
confiscation of the revenues of Magdalene College, he had renounced
the doctrine of nonresistance, had repaired to the headquarters of
the Prince of Orange, and had assured His Highness that Oxford would
willingly coin her plate for the support of the war against her
oppressor.
During a short time Jane was generally considered as a
Whig, and was sharply lampooned by some of his old allies. He was
so unfortunate as to have a name which was an excellent mark for the
learned punsters of his university. Several epigrams were written on the
doublefaced Janus, who, having got a professorship by looking one way,
now hoped to get a bishopric by looking another. That he hoped to get a
bishopric was perfectly true. He demanded the see of Exeter as a reward
due to his services. He was refused. The refusal convinced him that the
Church had as much to apprehend from Latitudinarianism as from Popery;
and he speedily became a Tory again, [485]

Early in October the Commissioners assembled in the Jerusalem Chamber.
At their first meeting they determined to propose that, in the public
services of the Church, lessons taken from the canonical books
of Scripture should be substituted for the lessons taken from the
Apocrypha, [486] At the second meeting a strange question was raised
by the very last person who ought to have raised it. Sprat, Bishop of
Rochester, had, without any scruple, sate, during two years, in the
unconstitutional tribunal which had, in the late reign, oppressed and
pillaged the Church of which he was a ruler. But he had now become
scrupulous, and expressed a doubt whether the commission were legal.
To a plain understanding his objections seem to be mere quibbles. The
commission gave power neither to make laws nor to administer laws,
but simply to inquire and to report. Even without a royal commission
Tillotson, Patrick, and Stillingfleet might, with perfect propriety,
have met to discuss the state and prospects of the Church, and to
consider whether it would or would not be desirable to make some
concession to the dissenters. And how could it be a crime for subjects
to do at the request of their Sovereign that which it would have been
innocent and laudable for them to do without any such request? Sprat
however was seconded by Jane. There was a sharp altercation; and Lloyd,
Bishop of Saint Asaph, who, with many good qualities, had an irritable
temper, was provoked into saying something about spies. Sprat withdrew
and came no more. His example was soon followed by Jane and Aldrich,
[487] The commissioners proceeded to take into consideration the
question of the posture at the Eucharist. It was determined to recommend
that a communicant, who, after conference with his minister, should
declare that he could not conscientiously receive the bread and wine
kneeling, might receive them sitting. Mew, Bishop of Winchester, an
honest man, but illiterate, weak even in his best days, and now fast
sinking into dotage, protested against this concession, and withdrew
from the assembly. The other members continued to apply themselves
vigorously to their task: and no more secessions took place, though
there were great differences of opinion, and though the debates were
sometimes warm. The highest churchmen who still remained were Doctor
William Beveridge, Archdeacon of Colchester, who many years later became
Bishop of Saint Asaph, and Doctor John Scott, the same who had prayed
by the deathbed of Jeffreys. The most active among the Latitudinarians
appear to have been Burnet, Fowler, and Tenison.

The baptismal service was repeatedly discussed. As to matter of form the
Commissioners were disposed to be indulgent. They were generally willing
to admit infants into the Church without sponsors and without the sign
of the cross. But the majority, after much debate, steadily refused
to soften down or explain away those words which, to all minds
not sophisticated, appear to assert the regenerating virtue of the
sacrament, [488]

As to the surplice, the Commissioners determined to recommend that a
large discretion should be left to the Bishops. Expedients were devised
by which a person who had received Presbyterian ordination might,
without admitting, either expressly or by implication, the invalidity of
that ordination, become a minister of the Church of England, [489]

The ecclesiastical calendar was carefully revised. The great festivals
were retained. But it was not thought desirable that Saint Valentine,
Saint Chad, Saint Swithin, Saint Edward King of the West Saxons, Saint
Dunstan, and Saint Alphage, should share the honours of Saint John and
Saint Paul; or that the Church should appear to class the ridiculous
fable of the discovery of the cross with facts so awfully important as
the Nativity, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of her
Lord, [490]

The Athanasian Creed caused much perplexity. Most of the Commissioners
were equally unwilling to give up the doctrinal clauses and to retain
the damnatory clauses. Burnet, Fowler, and Tillotson were desirous to
strike this famous symbol out of the liturgy altogether. Burnet brought
forward one argument, which to himself probably did not appear to
have much weight, but which was admirably calculated to perplex his
opponents, Beveridge and Scott. The Council of Ephesus had always been
reverenced by Anglican divines as a synod which had truly represented
the whole body of the faithful, and which had been divinely guided in
the way of truth. The voice of that Council was the voice of the Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church, not yet corrupted by superstition, or
rent asunder by schism. During more than twelve centuries the world
had not seen an ecclesiastical assembly which had an equal claim to the
respect of believers. The Council of Ephesus had, in the plainest terms,
and under the most terrible penalties, forbidden Christians to frame or
to impose on their brethren any creed other than the creed settled by
the Nicene Fathers. It should seem therefore that, if the Council of
Ephesus was really under the direction of the Holy Spirit, whoever
uses the Athanasian Creed must, in the very act of uttering an anathema
against his neighbours, bring down an anathema on his own head, [491]
In spite of the authority of the Ephesian Fathers, the majority of the
Commissioners determined to leave the Athanasian Creed in the Prayer
Book; but they proposed to add a rubric drawn up by Stillingfleet, which
declared that the damnatory clauses were to be understood to apply only
to such as obstinately denied the substance of the Christian Faith.
Orthodox believers were therefore permitted to hope that the heretic
who had honestly and humbly sought for truth would not be everlastingly
punished for having failed to find it, [492]

Tenison was intrusted with the business of examining the Liturgy and
of collecting all those expressions to which objections had been made,
either by theological or by literary critics. It was determined to
remove some obvious blemishes. And it would have been wise in the
Commissioners to stop here. Unfortunately they determined to rewrite a
great part of the Prayer Book. It was a bold undertaking; for in general
the style of that volume is such as cannot be improved. The English
Liturgy indeed gains by being compared even with those fine ancient
Liturgies from which it is to a great extent taken. The essential
qualities of devotional eloquence, conciseness, majestic simplicity,
pathetic earnestness of supplication, sobered by a profound reverence,
are common between the translations and the originals. But in the
subordinate graces of diction the originals must be allowed to be far
inferior to the translations. And the reason is obvious. The technical
phraseology of Christianity did not become a part of the Latin language
till that language had passed the age of maturity and was sinking into
barbarism. But the technical phraseology of Christianity was found in
the Anglosaxon and in the Norman French, long before the union of those
two dialects had, produced a third dialect superior to either. The Latin
of the Roman Catholic services, therefore, is Latin in the last stage
of decay. The English of our services is English in all the vigour and
suppleness of early youth. To the great Latin writers, to Terence and
Lucretius, to Cicero and Caesar, to Tacitus and Quintilian, the noblest
compositions of Ambrose and Gregory would have seemed to be, not merely
bad writing, but senseless gibberish, [493] The diction of our Book of
Common Prayer, on the other hand, has directly or indirectly contributed
to form the diction of almost every great English writer, and has
extorted the admiration of the most accomplished infidels and of the
most accomplished nonconformists, of such men as David Hume and Robert
Hall.

The style of the Liturgy, however, did not satisfy the Doctors of the
Jerusalem Chamber. They voted the Collects too short and too dry: and
Patrick was intrusted with the duty of expanding and ornamenting them.
In one respect, at least, the choice seems to have been unexceptionable;
for, if we judge by the way in which Patrick paraphrased the most
sublime Hebrew poetry, we shall probably be of opinion that, whether he
was or was not qualified to make the collects better, no man that ever
lived was more competent to make them longer, [494]

It mattered little, however, whether the recommendations of the
Commission were good or bad. They were all doomed before they were
known. The writs summoning the Convocation of the province of Canterbury
had been issued; and the clergy were every where in a state of violent
excitement. They had just taken the oaths, and were smarting from the
earnest reproofs of nonjurors, from the insolent taunts of Whigs, and
often undoubtedly from the stings of remorse. The announcement that
a Convocation was to sit for the purpose of deliberating on a plan of
comprehension roused all the strongest passions of the priest who had
just complied with the law, and was ill satisfied or half satisfied with
himself for complying. He had an opportunity of contributing to defeat
a favourite scheme of that government which had exacted from him,
under severe penalties, a submission not easily to be reconciled to his
conscience or his pride. He had an opportunity of signalising his zeal
for that Church whose characteristic doctrines he had been accused of
deserting for lucre. She was now, he conceived, threatened by a danger
as great as that of the preceding year. The Latitudinarians of 1689 were
not less eager to humble and to ruin her than the Jesuits of 1688.
The Toleration Act had done for the Dissenters quite as much as was
compatible with her dignity and security; and nothing more ought to be
conceded, not the hem of one of her vestments, not an epithet from the
beginning to the end of her Liturgy. All the reproaches which had been
thrown on the ecclesiastical commission of James were transferred to
the ecclesiastical commission of William. The two commissions indeed
had nothing but the name in common. Put the name was associated with
illegality and oppression, with the violation of dwellings and the
confiscation of freeholds, and was therefore assiduously sounded with no
small effect by the tongues of the spiteful in the ears of the ignorant.

The King too, it was said, was not sound. He conformed indeed to the
established worship; but his was a local and occasional conformity. For
some ceremonies to which High Churchmen were attached he had a distaste
which he was at no pains to conceal. One of his first acts had been
to give orders that in his private chapel the service should be said
instead of being sung; and this arrangement, though warranted by the
rubric, caused much murmuring, [495] It was known that he was so
profane as to sneer at a practice which had been sanctioned by high
ecclesiastical authority, the practice of touching for the scrofula.
This ceremony had come down almost unaltered from the darkest of the
dark ages to the time of Newton and Locke. The Stuarts frequently
dispensed the healing influences in the Banqueting House. The days on
which this miracle was to be wrought were fixed at sittings of the Privy
Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy in all the parish
churches of the realm, [496] When the appointed time came, several
divines in full canonicals stood round the canopy of state. The surgeon
of the royal household introduced the sick. A passage from the sixteenth
chapter of the Gospel of Saint Mark was read. When the words, "They
shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover," had been
pronounced, there was a pause, and one of the sick was brought up to the
King. His Majesty stroked the ulcers and swellings, and hung round the
patient's neck a white riband to which was fastened a gold coin.
The other sufferers were then led up in succession; and, as each was
touched, the chaplain repeated the incantation, "they shall lay their
hands on the sick, and they shall recover. " Then came the epistle,
prayers, antiphonies and a benediction. The service may still be found
in the prayer books of the reign of Anne. Indeed it was not till some
time after the accession of George the First that the University
of Oxford ceased to reprint the Office of Healing together with the
Liturgy. Theologians of eminent learning, ability, and virtue gave the
sanction of their authority to this mummery; [497] and, what is stranger
still, medical men of high note believed, or affected to believe, in the
balsamic virtues of the royal hand. We must suppose that every surgeon
who attended Charles the Second was a man of high repute for skill; and
more than one of the surgeons who attended Charles the Second has left
us a solemn profession of faith in the King's miraculous power. One of
them is not ashamed to tell us that the gift was communicated by the
unction administered at the coronation; that the cures were so numerous
and sometimes so rapid that they could not be attributed to any natural
cause; that the failures were to be ascribed to want of faith on the
part of the patients; that Charles once handled a scrofulous Quaker and
made him a healthy man and a sound Churchman in a moment; that, if those
who had been healed lost or sold the piece of gold which had been hung
round their necks, the ulcers broke forth again, and could be removed
only by a second touch and a second talisman. We cannot wonder that,
when men of science gravely repeated such nonsense, the vulgar should
believe it. Still less can we wonder that wretches tortured by a disease
over which natural remedies had no power should eagerly drink in tales
of preternatural cures: for nothing is so credulous as misery. The
crowds which repaired to the palace on the days of healing were immense.
Charles the Second, in the course of his reign, touched near a hundred
thousand persons. The number seems to have increased or diminished as
the king's popularity rose or fell. During that Tory reaction which
followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, the press to get near
him was terrific. In 1682, he performed the rite eight thousand five
hundred times. In 1684, the throng was such that six or seven of the
sick were trampled to death. James, in one of his progresses, touched
eight hundred persons in the choir of the Cathedral of Chester. The
expense of the ceremony was little less than ten thousand pounds a year,
and would have been much greater but for the vigilance of the royal
surgeons, whose business it was to examine the applicants, and to
distinguish those who came for the cure from those who came for the
gold, [498]

William had too much sense to be duped, and too much honesty to bear a
part in what he knew to be an imposture. "It is a silly superstition,"
he exclaimed, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his palace was
besieged by a crowd of the sick: "Give the poor creatures some money,
and send them away. " [499] On one single occasion he was importuned into
laying his hand on a patient. "God give you better health," he said,
"and more sense. " The parents of scrofulous children cried out against
his cruelty: bigots lifted up their hands and eyes in horror at his
impiety: Jacobites sarcastically praised him for not presuming
to arrogate to himself a power which belonged only to legitimate
sovereigns; and even some Whigs thought that he acted unwisely in
treating with such marked contempt a superstition which had a strong
hold on the vulgar mind: but William was not to be moved, and was
accordingly set down by many High Churchmen as either an infidel or a
puritan, [500]

The chief cause, however, which at this time made even the most moderate
plan of comprehension hateful to the priesthood still remains to be
mentioned. What Burnet had foreseen and foretold had come to pass. There
was throughout the clerical profession a strong disposition to retaliate
on the Presbyterians of England the wrongs of the Episcopalians of
Scotland. It could not be denied that even the highest churchmen had,
in the summer of 1688, generally declared themselves willing to give
up many things for the sake of union. But it was said, and not without
plausibility, that what was passing on the other side of the Border
proved union on any reasonable terms to be impossible. With what face,
it was asked, can those who will make no concession to us where we are
weak, blame us for refusing to make any concession to them where we are
strong? We cannot judge correctly of the principles and feelings of a
sect from the professions which it makes in a time of feebleness and
suffering. If we would know what the Puritan spirit really is, we must
observe the Puritan when he is dominant. He was dominant here in the
last generation; and his little finger was thicker than the loins of the
prelates. He drove hundreds of quiet students from their cloisters, and
thousands of respectable divines from their parsonages, for the crime of
refusing to sign his Covenant. No tenderness was shown to learning, to
genius or to sanctity. Such men as Hall and Sanderson, Chillingworth and
Hammond, were not only plundered, but flung into prisons, and exposed
to all the rudeness of brutal gaolers. It was made a crime to read fine
psalms and prayers bequeathed to the faithful by Ambrose and Chrysostom.
At length the nation became weary of the reign of the saints. The fallen
dynasty and the fallen hierarchy were restored. The Puritan was in his
turn subjected to disabilities and penalties; and he immediately found
out that it was barbarous to punish men for entertaining conscientious
scruples about a garb, about a ceremony, about the functions of
ecclesiastical officers. His piteous complaints and his arguments in
favour of toleration had at length imposed on many well meaning persons.
Even zealous churchmen had begun to entertain a hope that the severe
discipline which he had undergone had made him candid, moderate,
charitable. Had this been really so, it would doubtless have been our
duty to treat his scruples with extreme tenderness. But, while we were
considering what we could do to meet his wishes in England, he had
obtained ascendency in Scotland; and, in an instant, he was all himself
again, bigoted, insolent, and cruel. Manses had been sacked; churches
shut up; prayer books burned; sacred garments torn; congregations
dispersed by violence; priests hustled, pelted, pilloried, driven forth,
with their wives and babes, to beg or die of hunger. That these outrages
were to be imputed, not to a few lawless marauders, but to the great
body of the Presbyterians of Scotland, was evident from the fact
that the government had not dared either to inflict punishment on the
offenders or to grant relief to the sufferers. Was it not fit then that
the Church of England should take warning? Was it reasonable to ask
her to mutilate her apostolical polity and her beautiful ritual for the
purpose of conciliating those who wanted nothing but power to rabble her
as they had rabbled her sister? Already these men had obtained a boon
which they ill deserved, and which they never would have granted.
They worshipped God in perfect security. Their meeting houses were
as effectually protected as the choirs of our cathedrals. While
no episcopal minister could, without putting his life in jeopardy,
officiate in Ayrshire or Renfrewshire, a hundred Presbyterian ministers
preached unmolested every Sunday in Middlesex. The legislature had,
with a generosity perhaps imprudent, granted toleration to the most
intolerant of men; and with toleration it behoved them to be content.

Thus several causes conspired to inflame the parochial clergy against
the scheme of comprehension. Their temper was such that, if the plan
framed in the Jerusalem Chamber had been directly submitted to them,
it would have been rejected by a majority of twenty to one. But in
the Convocation their weight bore no proportion to their number.
The Convocation has, happily for our country, been so long utterly
insignificant that, till a recent period, none but curious students
cared to inquire how it was constituted; and even now many persons, not
generally ill informed, imagine it to have been a council representing
the Church of England. In truth the Convocation so often mentioned
in our ecclesiastical history is merely the synod of the Province of
Canterbury, and never had a right to speak in the name of the whole
clerical body. The Province of York had also its convocation: but,
till the eighteenth century was far advanced, the Province of York was
generally so poor, so rude, and so thinly peopled, that, in political
importance, it could hardly be considered as more than a tenth part of
the kingdom. The sense of the Southern clergy was therefore popularly
considered as the sense of the whole profession. When the formal
concurrence of the Northern clergy was required, it seems to have been
given as a matter of course. Indeed the canons passed by the Convocation
of Canterbury in 1604 were ratified by James the First, and were ordered
to be strictly observed in every part of the kingdom, two years before
the Convocation of York went through the form of approving them. Since
these ecclesiastical councils became mere names, a great change has
taken place in the relative position of the two Archbishoprics. In all
the elements of power, the region beyond Trent is now at least a third
part of England. When in our own time the representative system was
adjusted to the altered state of the country, almost all the small
boroughs which it was necessary to disfranchise were in the south. Two
thirds of the new members given to great provincial towns were given
to the north. If therefore any English government should suffer the
Convocations, as now constituted, to meet for the despatch of business,
two independent synods would be legislating at the same time for one
Church. It is by no means impossible that one assembly might adopt
canons which the other might reject, that one assembly might condemn as
heretical propositions which the other might hold to be orthodox, [501]
In the seventeenth century no such danger was apprehended. So little
indeed was the Convocation of York then considered, that the two Houses
of Parliament had, in their address to William, spoken only of one
Convocation, which they called the Convocation of the Clergy of the
Kingdom.

The body which they thus not very accurately designated is divided into
two Houses. The Upper House is composed of the Bishops of the Province
of Canterbury. The Lower House consisted, in 1689, of a hundred and
forty-four members. Twenty-two Deans and fifty-four Archdeacons sate
there in virtue of their offices. Twenty-four divines sate as proctors
for twenty-four chapters. Only forty-four proctors were elected by
the eight thousand parish priests of the twenty-two dioceses. These
forty-four proctors, however, were almost all of one mind. The elections
had in former times been conducted in the most quiet and decorous
manner. But on this occasion the canvassing was eager: the contests were
sharp: Rochester, the leader of the party which in the House of Lords
had opposed the Comprehension-Bill, and his brother Clarendon, who had
refused to take the oaths, had gone to Oxford, the head quarters of that
party, for the purpose of animating and organizing the opposition, [502]
The representatives of the parochial clergy must have been men whose
chief distinction was their zeal: for in the whole list can be found not
a single illustrious name, and very few names which are now known even
to curious students, [503] The official members of the Lower House,
among whom were many distinguished scholars and preachers, seem to have
been not very unequally divided.

During the summer of 1689 several high ecclesiastical dignities became
vacant, and were bestowed on divines who were sitting in the Jerusalem
Chamber. It has already been mentioned that Thomas, Bishop of Worcester,
died just before the day fixed for taking the oaths. Lake, Bishop of
Chichester, lived just long enough to refuse them, and with his last
breath declared that he would maintain even at the stake the doctrine
of indefeasible hereditary right. The see of Chichester was filled by
Patrick, that of Worcester by Stillingfleet; and the deanery of
Saint Paul's which Stillingfleet quitted was given to Tillotson. That
Tillotson was not raised to the episcopal bench excited some surprise.
But in truth it was because the government held his services in the
highest estimation that he was suffered to remain a little longer a
simple presbyter. The most important office in the Convocation was that
of Prolocutor of the Lower House. The Prolocutor was to be chosen by the
members: and the only moderate man who had a chance of being chosen was
Tillotson. It had in fact been already determined that he should be the
next Archbishop of Canterbury. When he went to kiss hands for his new
deanery he warmly thanked the King. "Your Majesty has now set me at ease
for the remainder of my life. " "No such thing, Doctor, I assure you,"
said William. He then plainly intimated that, whenever Sancroft should
cease to fill the highest ecclesiastical station, Tillotson would
succeed to it. Tillotson stood aghast; for his nature was quiet and
unambitious: he was beginning to feel the infirmities of old age: he
cared little for money: of worldly advantages those which he most
valued were an honest fame and the general good will of mankind: those
advantages he already possessed; and he could not but be aware that, if
he became primate, he should incur the bitterest hatred of a powerful
party, and should become a mark for obloquy, from which his gentle
and sensitive nature shrank as from the rack or the wheel. William was
earnest and resolute. "It is necessary," he said, "for my service; and
I must lay on your conscience the responsibility of refusing me your
help. " Here the conversation ended. It was, indeed, not necessary that
the point should be immediately decided; for several months were still
to elapse before the Archbishopric would be vacant.

Tillotson bemoaned himself with unfeigned anxiety and sorrow to Lady
Russell, whom, of all human beings, he most honoured and trusted, [504]
He hoped, he said, that he was not inclined to shrink from the service
of the Church; but he was convinced that his present line of service was
that in which he could be most useful. If he should be forced to accept
so high and so invidious a post as the primacy, he should soon sink
under the load of duties and anxieties too heavy for his strength. His
spirits, and with his spirits his abilities, would fail him. He gently
complained of Burnet, who loved and admired him with a truly generous
heartiness, and who had laboured to persuade both the King and
Queen that there was in England only one man fit for the highest
ecclesiastical dignity. "The Bishop of Salisbury," said Tillotson, "is
one of the best and worst friends that I know. "

Nothing that was not a secret to Burnet was likely to be long a secret
to any body. It soon began to be whispered about that the King had
fixed on Tillotson to fill the place of Sancroft. The news caused cruel
mortification to Compton, who, not unnaturally, conceived that his own
claims were unrivalled. He had educated the Queen and her sister; and
to the instruction which they had received from him might fairly be
ascribed, at least in part, the firmness with which, in spite of the
influence of their father, they had adhered to the established religion.
Compton was, moreover, the only prelate who, during the late reign, had
raised his voice in Parliament against the dispensing power, the only
prelate who had been suspended by the High Commission, the only prelate
who had signed the invitation to the Prince of Orange, the only prelate
who had actually taken arms against Popery and arbitrary power, the
only prelate, save one, who had voted against a Regency. Among the
ecclesiastics of the Province of Canterbury who had taken the oaths,
he was highest in rank. He had therefore held, during some months, a
vicarious primacy: he had crowned the new Sovereigns: he had consecrated
the new Bishops: he was about to preside in the Convocation. It may be
added, that he was the son of an Earl; and that no person of equally
high birth then sate, or had ever sate, since the Reformation, on the
episcopal bench. That the government should put over his head a priest
of his own diocese, who was the son of a Yorkshire clothier, and who was
distinguished only by abilities and virtues, was provoking; and Compton,
though by no means a badhearted man, was much provoked. Perhaps his
vexation was increased by the reflection that he had, for the sake of
those by whom he was thus slighted, done some things which had strained
his conscience and sullied his reputation, that he had at one time
practised the disingenuous arts of a diplomatist, and at another time
given scandal to his brethren by wearing the buff coat and jackboots of
a trooper. He could not accuse Tillotson of inordinate ambition. But,
though Tillotson was most unwilling to accept the Archbishopric himself,
he did not use his influence in favour of Compton, but earnestly
recommended Stillingfleet as the man fittest to preside over the Church
of England. The consequence was that, on the eve of the meeting of
Convocation, the Bishop who was to be at the head of the Upper House
became the personal enemy of the presbyter whom the government wished to
see at the head of the Lower House. This quarrel added new difficulties
to difficulties which little needed any addition, [505]

It was not till the twentieth of November that the Convocation met for
the despatch of business. The place of meeting had generally been Saint
Paul's Cathedral. But Saint Paul's Cathedral was slowly rising from
its ruins; and, though the dome already towered high above the hundred
steeples of the City, the choir had not yet been opened for public
worship. The assembly therefore sate at Westminster, [506] A table was
placed in the beautiful chapel of Henry the Seventh. Compton was in
the chair. On his right and left those suffragans of Canterbury who
had taken the oaths were ranged in gorgeous vestments of scarlet
and miniver. Below the table was assembled the crowd of presbyters.
Beveridge preached a Latin sermon, in which he warmly eulogized the
existing system, and yet declared himself favourable to a moderate
reform. Ecclesiastical laws were, he said, of two kinds. Some laws were
fundamental and eternal: they derived their authority from God; nor
could any religious community repeal them without ceasing to form a part
of the universal Church. Other laws were local and temporary. They had
been framed by human wisdom, and might be altered by human wisdom. They
ought not indeed to be altered without grave reasons.