No More Learning

His prudence never
slept. His temper, in spite of manifold vexations and provocations, was
always cheerful and serene. The effective men under his command, even
if all were reckoned as effective who were not stretched on the earth
by fever, did not now exceed five thousand. These were hardly equal to
their ordinary duty; and yet it was necessary to harass them with double
duty. Nevertheless so masterly were the old man's dispositions that with
this small force he faced during several weeks twenty thousand troops
who were accompanied by a multitude of armed banditti. At length early
in November the Irish dispersed, and went to winter quarters. The Duke
then broke up his camp and retired into Ulster. Just as the remains
of his army were about to move, a rumour spread that the enemy was
approaching in great force. Had this rumour been true, the danger would
have been extreme. But the English regiments, though they had been
reduced to a third part of their complement, and though the men who were
in best health were hardly able to shoulder arms, showed a strange
joy and alacrity at the prospect of battle, and swore that the Papists
should pay for all the misery of the last month. "We English," Schomberg
said, identifying himself good humouredly with the people of the country
which had adopted him, "we English have stomach enough for fighting.
It is a pity that we are not as fond of some other parts of a soldier's
business. "

The alarm proved false: the Duke's army departed unmolested: but
the highway along which he retired presented a piteous and hideous
spectacle. A long train of waggons laden with the sick jolted over the
rugged pavement. At every jolt some wretched man gave up the ghost. The
corpse was flung out and left unburied to the foxes and crows. The whole
number of those who died, in the camp at Dundalk, in the hospital at
Belfast, on the road, and on the sea, amounted to above six thousand.
The survivors were quartered for the winter in the towns and villages of
Ulster. The general fixed his head quarters at Lisburn, [448]

His conduct was variously judged. Wise and candid men said that he had
surpassed himself, and that there was no other captain in Europe who,
with raw troops, with ignorant officers, with scanty stores, having
to contend at once against a hostile army of greatly superior force,
against a villanous commissariat, against a nest of traitors in his own
camp, and against a disease more murderous than the sword, would have
brought the campaign to a close without the loss of a flag or a gun. On
the other hand, many of those newly commissioned majors and captains,
whose helplessness had increased all his perplexities, and who had not
one qualification for their posts except personal courage, grumbled
at the skill and patience which had saved them from destruction. Their
complaints were echoed on the other side of Saint George's Channel. Some
of the murmuring, though unjust, was excusable. The parents, who had
sent a gallant lad, in his first uniform, to fight his way to glory,
might be pardoned if, when they learned that he had died on a wisp of
straw without medical attendance, and had been buried in a swamp without
any Christian or military ceremony, their affliction made them hasty and
unreasonable. But with the cry of bereaved families was mingled another
cry much less respectable. All the hearers and tellers of news abused
the general who furnished them with so little news to hear and to tell.
For men of that sort are so greedy after excitement that they far more
readily forgive a commander who loses a battle than a commander who
declines one. The politicians, who delivered their oracles from the
thickest cloud of tobacco smoke at Garroway's, confidently asked,
without knowing any thing, either of war in general, or of Irish war in
particular, why Schomberg did not fight. They could not venture to
say that he did not understand his calling. No doubt he had been an
excellent officer: but he was very old. He seemed to bear his years
well: but his faculties were not what they had been: his memory was
failing; and it was well known that he sometimes forgot in the afternoon
what he had done in the morning. It may be doubted whether there ever
existed a human being whose mind was quite as firmly toned at eighty
as at forty. But that Schomberg's intellectual powers had been little
impaired by years is sufficiently proved by his despatches, which
are still extant, and which are models of official writing, terse,
perspicuous, full of important facts and weighty reasons, compressed
into the smallest possible number of words. In those despatches he
sometimes alluded, not angrily, but with calm disdain, to the censures
thrown upon his conduct by shallow babblers, who, never having seen any
military operation more important than the relieving of the guard at
Whitehall, imagined that the easiest thing in the world was to gain
great victories in any situation and against any odds, and by sturdy
patriots who were convinced that one English tarter or thresher, who had
not yet learned how to load a gun or port a pike, was a match for any
five musketeers of King Lewis's household, [449]

Unsatisfactory as had been the results of the campaign in Ireland, the
results of the maritime operations of the year were more unsatisfactory
still. It had been confidently expected that, on the sea, England,
allied with Holland, would have been far more than a match for the power
of Lewis: but everything went wrong. Herbert had, after the unimportant
skirmish of Bantry Bay, returned with his squadron to Portsmouth. There
he found that he had not lost the good opinion either of the public or
of the government. The House of Commons thanked him for his services;
and he received signal marks of the favour of the Crown. He had not been
at the coronation, and had therefore missed his share of the rewards
which, at the time of that solemnity, had been distributed among the
chief agents in the Revolution. The omission was now repaired; and he
was created Earl of Torrington. The King went down to Portsmouth, dined
on board of the Admiral's flag ship, expressed the fullest confidence
in the valour and loyalty of the navy, knighted two gallant captains,
Cloudesley Shovel and John Ashby, and ordered a donative to be divided
among the seamen, [450]

We cannot justly blame William for having a high opinion of Torrington.
For Torrington was generally regarded as one of the bravest and most
skilful officers in the navy. He had been promoted to the rank of Rear
Admiral of England by James, who, if he understood any thing, understood
maritime affairs. That place and other lucrative places Torrington had
relinquished when he found that he could retain them only by submitting
to be a tool of the Jesuitical cabal. No man had taken a more active,
a more hazardous, or a more useful part in effecting the Revolution. It
seemed, therefore, that no man had fairer pretensions to be put at the
head of the naval administration. Yet no man could be more unfit for
such a post. His morals had always been loose, so loose indeed that the
firmness with which in the late reign he had adhered to his religion
had excited much surprise. His glorious disgrace indeed seemed to have
produced a salutary effect on his character. In poverty and exile he
rose from a voluptuary into a hero. But, as soon as prosperity returned,
the hero sank again into a voluptuary; and the lapse was deep and
hopeless. The nerves of his mind, which had been during a short time
braced to a firm tone, were now so much relaxed by vice that he was
utterly incapable of selfdenial or of strenuous exertion. The vulgar
courage of a foremast man he still retained. But both as Admiral and
as First Lord of the Admiralty he was utterly inefficient. Month after
month the fleet which should have been the terror of the seas lay in
harbour while he was diverting himself in London. The sailors, punning
upon his new title, gave him the name of Lord Tarry-in-town. When he
came on shipboard he was accompanied by a bevy of courtesans. There was
scarcely an hour of the day or of the night when he was not under the
influence of claret. Being insatiable of pleasure, he necessarily became
insatiable of wealth. Yet he loved flattery almost as much as either
wealth or pleasure. He had long been in the habit of exacting the most
abject homage from those who were under his command. His flagship was a
little Versailles. He expected his captains to attend him to his cabin
when he went to bed, and to assemble every morning at his levee. He even
suffered them to dress him. One of them combed his flowing wig; another
stood ready with the embroidered coat. Under such a chief there could be
no discipline. His tars passed their time in rioting among the rabble of
Portsmouth. Those officers who won his favour by servility and adulation
easily obtained leave of absence, and spent weeks in London, revelling
in taverns, scouring the streets, or making love to the masked ladies
in the pit of the theatre. The victuallers soon found out with whom they
had to deal, and sent down to the fleet casks of meat which dogs would
not touch, and barrels of beer which smelt worse than bilge water.
Meanwhile the British Channel seemed to be abandoned to French rovers.
Our merchantmen were boarded in sight of the ramparts of Plymouth. The
sugar fleet from the West Indies lost seven ships. The whole value
of the prizes taken by the cruisers of the enemy in the immediate
neighbourhood of our island, while Torrington was engaged with his
bottle and his harem, was estimated at six hundred thousand pounds. So
difficult was it to obtain the convoy of a man of war, except by giving
immense bribes, that our traders were forced to hire the services of
Dutch privateers, and found these foreign mercenaries much more useful
and much less greedy than the officers of our own royal navy, [451]

The only department with which no fault could be found was the
department of Foreign Affairs. There William was his own minister; and,
where he was his own minister, there were no delays, no blunders, no
jobs, no treasons. The difficulties with which he had to contend were
indeed great. Even at the Hague he had to encounter an opposition
which all his wisdom and firmness could, with the strenuous support of
Heinsius, scarcely overcome. The English were not aware that, while
they were murmuring at their Sovereign's partiality for the land of his
birth, a strong party in Holland was murmuring at his partiality for the
land of his adoption. The Dutch ambassadors at Westminster complained
that the terms of alliance which he proposed were derogatory to the
dignity and prejudicial to the interests of the republic; that wherever
the honour of the English flag was concerned, he was punctilious and
obstinate; that he peremptorily insisted on an article which interdicted
all trade with France, and which could not but be grievously felt on
the Exchange of Amsterdam; that, when they expressed a hope that the
Navigation Act would be repealed, he burst out a laughing, and told them
that the thing was not to be thought of. He carried all his points; and
a solemn contract was made by which England and the Batavian federation
bound themselves to stand firmly by each other against France, and
not to make peace except by mutual consent. But one of the Dutch
plenipotentiaries declared that he was afraid of being one day held
up to obloquy as a traitor for conceding so much; and the signature
of another plainly appeared to have been traced by a hand shaking with
emotion, [452]

Meanwhile under William's skilful management a treaty of alliance had
been concluded between the States General and the Emperor. To that
treaty Spain and England gave in their adhesion; and thus the four great
powers which had long been bound together by a friendly understanding
were bound together by a formal contract, [453]

But before that formal contract had been signed and sealed, all the
contracting parties were in arms. Early in the year 1689 war was raging
all over the Continent from the Humus to the Pyrenees. France, attacked
at once on every side, made on every side a vigorous defence; and her
Turkish allies kept a great German force fully employed in Servia and
Bulgaria. On the whole, the results of the military operations of the
summer were not unfavourable to the confederates. Beyond the Danube,
the Christians, under Prince Lewis of Baden, gained a succession of
victories over the Mussulmans. In the passes of Roussillon, the French
troops contended without any decisive advantage against the martial
peasantry of Catalonia. One German army, led by the Elector of Bavaria,
occupied the Archbishopric of Cologne. Another was commanded by Charles,
Duke of Lorraine, a sovereign who, driven from his own dominions by
the arms of France, had turned soldier of fortune, and had, as
such, obtained both distinction and revenge. He marched against the
devastators of the Palatinate, forced them to retire behind the Rhine,
and, after a long siege, took the important and strongly fortified city
of Mentz.

Between the Sambre and the Meuse the French, commanded by Marshal
Humieres, were opposed to the Dutch, commanded by the Prince of Waldeck,
an officer who had long served the States General with fidelity and
ability, though not always with good fortune, and who stood high in the
estimation of William. Under Waldeck's orders was Marlborough, to whom
William had confided an English brigade consisting of the best regiments
of the old army of James. Second to Marlborough in command, and second
also in professional skill, was Thomas Talmash, a brave soldier,
destined to a fate never to be mentioned without shame and indignation.
Between the army of Waldeck and the army of Humieres no general action
took place: but in a succession of combats the advantage was on the side
of the confederates. Of these combats the most important took place at
Walcourt on the fifth of August. The French attacked an outpost defended
by the English brigade, were vigorously repulsed, and were forced to
retreat in confusion, abandoning a few field pieces to the conquerors
and leaving more than six hundred corpses on the ground. Marlborough, on
this as on every similar occasion, acquitted himself like a valiant and
skilful captain. The Coldstream Guards commanded by Talmash, and the
regiment which is now called the sixteenth of the line, commanded
by Colonel Robert Hodges, distinguished themselves highly. The Royal
regiment too, which had a few months before set up the standard of
rebellion at Ipswich, proved on this day that William, in freely
pardoning that great fault, had acted not less wisely than generously.
The testimony which Waldeck in his despatch bore to the gallant conduct
of the islanders was read with delight by their countrymen. The fight
indeed was no more than a skirmish: but it was a sharp and bloody
skirmish. There had within living memory been no equally serious
encounter between the English and French; and our ancestors were
naturally elated by finding that many years of inaction and vassalage
did not appear to have enervated the courage of the nation, [454]

The Jacobites however discovered in the events of the campaign abundant
matter for invective. Marlborough was, not without reason, the object
of their bitterest hatred. In his behaviour on a field of battle malice
itself could find little to censure: but there were other parts of his
conduct which presented a fair mark for obloquy. Avarice is rarely
the vice of a young man: it is rarely the vice of a great man: but
Marlborough was one of the few who have, in the bloom of youth, loved
lucre more than wine or women, and who have, at the height of greatness,
loved lucre more than power or fame. All the precious gifts which nature
had lavished on him he valued chiefly for what they would fetch. At
twenty he made money of his beauty and his vigour. At sixty he made
money of his genius and his glory. The applauses which were justly due
to his conduct at Walcourt could not altogether drown the voices of
those who muttered that, wherever a broad piece was to be saved or got,
this hero was a mere Euclio, a mere Harpagon; that, though he drew a
large allowance under pretence of keeping a public table, he never asked
an officer to dinner; that his muster rolls were fraudulently made up;
that he pocketed pay in the names of men who had long been dead, of men
who had been killed in his own sight four years before at Sedgemoor;
that there were twenty such names in one troop; that there were
thirty-six in another. Nothing but the union of dauntless courage and
commanding powers of mind with a bland temper and winning manners
could have enabled him to gain and keep, in spite of faults eminently
unsoldierlike, the good will of his soldiers, [455]

About the time at which the contending armies in every part of Europe
were going into winter quarters, a new Pontiff ascended the chair
of Saint Peter. Innocent the Eleventh was no more. His fate had been
strange indeed. His conscientious and fervent attachment to the Church
of which he was the head had induced him, at one of the most critical
conjunctures in her history, to ally herself with her mortal enemies.
The news of his decease was received with concern and alarm by
Protestant princes and commonwealths, and with joy and hope at
Versailles and Dublin. An extraordinary ambassador of high rank was
instantly despatched by Lewis to Rome. The French garrison which had
been placed in Avignon was withdrawn. When the votes of the Conclave
had been united in favour of Peter Ottobuoni, an ancient Cardinal who
assumed the appellation of Alexander the Eighth, the representative
of France assisted at the installation, bore up the cope of the new
Pontiff, and put into the hands of His Holiness a letter in which the
most Christian King declared that he renounced the odious privilege of
protecting robbers and assassins. Alexander pressed the letter to his
lips, embraced the bearer, and talked with rapture of the near prospect
of reconciliation. Lewis began to entertain a hope that the influence of
the Vatican might be exerted to dissolve the alliance between the House
of Austria and the heretical usurper of the English throne. James was
even more sanguine. He was foolish enough to expect that the new Pope
would give him money, and ordered Melfort, who had now acquitted himself
of his mission at Versailles, to hasten to Rome, and beg His Holiness to
contribute something towards the good work of upholding pure religion
in the British islands. But it soon appeared that Alexander, though
he might hold language different from that of his predecessor, was
determined to follow in essentials his predecessor's policy. The
original cause of the quarrel between the Holy See and Lewis was not
removed. The King continued to appoint prelates: the Pope continued to
refuse their institution: and the consequence was that a fourth part of
the dioceses of France had bishops who were incapable of performing any
episcopal function, [456]

The Anglican Church was, at this time, not less distracted than the
Gallican Church. The first of August had been fixed by Act of Parliament
as the day before the close of which all beneficed clergymen and all
persons holding academical offices must, on pain of suspension, swear
allegiance to William and Mary. During the earlier part of the
summer, the Jacobites hoped that the number of nonjurors would be so
considerable as seriously to alarm and embarrass the Government. But
this hope was disappointed. Few indeed of the clergy were Whigs. Few
were Tories of that moderate school which acknowledged, reluctantly and
with reserve, that extreme abuses might sometimes justify a nation in
resorting to extreme remedies. The great majority of the profession
still held the doctrine of passive obedience: but that majority was now
divided into two sections. A question, which, before the Revolution,
had been mere matter of speculation, and had therefore, though
sometimes incidentally raised, been, by most persons, very superficially
considered, had now become practically most important. The doctrine of
passive obedience being taken for granted, to whom was that obedience
due? While the hereditary right and the possession were conjoined, there
was no room for doubt: but the hereditary right and the possession were
now separated. One prince, raised by the Revolution, was reigning at
Westminster, passing laws, appointing magistrates and prelates, sending
forth armies and fleets. His judges decided causes. His Sheriffs
arrested debtors and executed criminals. Justice, order, property, would
cease to exist, and society would be resolved into chaos, but for
his Great Seal. Another prince, deposed by the Revolution, was living
abroad. He could exercise none of the powers and perform none of the
duties of a ruler, and could, as it seemed, be restored only by means as
violent as those by which he had been displaced, to which of these two
princes did Christian men owe allegiance?

To a large part of the clergy it appeared that the plain letter
of Scripture required them to submit to the Sovereign who was in
possession, without troubling themselves about his title. The powers
which the Apostle, in the text most familiar to the Anglican divines of
that age, pronounces to be ordained of God, are not the powers that
can be traced back to a legitimate origin, but the powers that be. When
Jesus was asked whether the chosen people might lawfully give tribute to
Caesar, he replied by asking the questioners, not whether Caesar could
make out a pedigree derived from the old royal house of Judah, but
whether the coin which they scrupled to pay into Caesar's treasury came
from Caesar's mint, in other words, whether Caesar actually possessed
the authority and performed the functions of a ruler.

It is generally held, with much appearance of reason, that the most
trustworthy comment on the text of the Gospels and Epistles is to be
found in the practice of the primitive Christians, when that practice
can be satisfactorily ascertained; and it so happened that the times
during which the Church is universally acknowledged to have been in the
highest state of purity were times of frequent and violent political
change. One at least of the Apostles appears to have lived to see four
Emperors pulled down in little more than a year. Of the martyrs of the
third century a great proportion must have been able to remember ten
or twelve revolutions. Those martyrs must have had occasion often to
consider what was their duty towards a prince just raised to power by
a successful insurrection. That they were, one and all, deterred by the
fear of punishment from doing what they thought right, is an imputation
which no candid infidel would throw on them. Yet, if there be any
proposition which can with perfect confidence be affirmed touching the
early Christians, it is this, that they never once refused obedience
to any actual ruler on account of the illegitimacy of his title. At
one time, indeed, the supreme power was claimed by twenty or thirty
competitors. Every province from Britain to Egypt had its own Augustus.
All these pretenders could not be rightful Emperors. Yet it does not
appear that, in any place, the faithful had any scruple about submitting
to the person who, in that place, exercised the imperial functions.
While the Christian of Rome obeyed Aurelian, the Christian of Lyons
obeyed Tetricus, and the Christian of Palmyra obeyed Zenobia. "Day and
night," such were the words which the great Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage,
addressed to the representative of Valerian and Gallienus,--"day and
night do we Christians pray to the one true God for the safety of our
Emperors. " Yet those Emperors had a few months before pulled down their
predecessor Aemilianus, who had pulled down his predecessor Gallus,
who had climbed to power on the ruins of the house of his predecessor
Decius, who had slain his predecessor Philip, who had slain his
predecessor Gordian. Was it possible to believe that a saint, who had,
in the short space of thirteen or fourteen years, borne true allegiance
to this series of rebels and regicides, would have made a schism in the
Christian body rather than acknowledge King William and Queen Mary? A
hundred times those Anglican divines who had taken the oaths challenged
their more scrupulous brethren to cite a single instance in which the
primitive Church had refused obedience to a successful usurper; and a
hundred times the challenge was evaded. The nonjurors had little to say
on this head, except that precedents were of no force when opposed to
principles, a proposition which came with but a bad grace from a school
which had always professed an almost superstitious reverence for the
authority of the Fathers, [457]

To precedents drawn from later and more corrupt times little respect
was due. But, even in the history of later and more corrupt times, the
nonjurors could not easily find any precedent that would serve their
purpose. In our own country many Kings, who had not the hereditary
right, had filled the throne but it had never been thought inconsistent
with the duty of a Christian to be a true liegeman to such Kings. The
usurpation of Henry the Fourth, the more odious usurpation of Richard
the Third, had produced no schism in the Church. As soon as the usurper
was firm in his seat, Bishops had done homage to him for their domains:
Convocations had presented addresses to him, and granted him supplies;
nor had any casuist ever pronounced that such submission to a prince in
possession was deadly sin, [458]

With the practice of the whole Christian world the authoritative
teaching of the Church of England appeared to be in strict harmony. The
Homily on Wilful Rebellion, a discourse which inculcates, in unmeasured
terms, the duty of obeying rulers, speaks of none but actual rulers.
Nay, the people are distinctly told in that Homily that they are bound
to obey, not only their legitimate prince, but any usurper whom God
shall in anger set over them for their sins. And surely it would be
the height of absurdity to say that we must accept submissively such
usurpers as God sends in anger, but must pertinaciously withhold our
obedience from usurpers whom He sends in mercy. Grant that it was a
crime to invite the Prince of Orange over, a crime to join him, a crime
to make him King; yet what was the whole history of the Jewish nation
and of the Christian Church but a record of cases in which Providence
had brought good out of evil? And what theologian would assert that, in
such cases, we ought, from abhorrence of the evil, to reject the good?

On these grounds a large body of divines, still asserting the doctrine
that to resist the Sovereign must always be sinful, conceived that
William was now the Sovereign whom it would be sinful to resist.

To these arguments the nonjurors replied that Saint Paul must have meant
by the powers that be the rightful powers that be; and that to put any
other interpretation on his words would be to outrage common sense,
to dishonour religion, to give scandal to weak believers, to give an
occasion of triumph to scoffers. The feelings of all mankind must be
shocked by the proposition that, as soon as a King, however clear
his title, however wise and good his administration, is expelled by
traitors, all his servants are bound to abandon him, and to range
themselves on the side of his enemies. In all ages and nations, fidelity
to a good cause in adversity had been regarded as a virtue. In all ages
and nations, the politician whose practice was always to be on the side
which was uppermost had been despised. This new Toryism was worse than
Whiggism. To break through the ties of allegiance because the Sovereign
was a tyrant was doubtless a very great sin: but it was a sin for which
specious names and pretexts might be found, and into which a brave
and generous man, not instructed in divine truth and guarded by divine
grace, might easily fall. But to break through the ties of allegiance,
merely because the Sovereign was unfortunate, was not only wicked, but
dirty. Could any unbeliever offer a greater insult to the Scriptures
than by asserting that the Scriptures had enjoined on Christians as a
sacred duty what the light of nature had taught heathens to regard
as the last excess of baseness? In the Scriptures was to be found the
history of a King of Israel, driven from his palace by an unnatural son,
and compelled to fly beyond Jordan. David, like James, had the right:
Absalom, like William, had the possession. Would any student of the
sacred writings dare to affirm that the conduct of Shimei on that
occasion was proposed as a pattern to be imitated, and that Barzillai,
who loyally adhered to his fugitive master, was resisting the ordinance
of God, and receiving to himself damnation? Would any true son of
the Church of England seriously affirm that a man who was a strenuous
royalist till after the battle of Naseby, who then went over to the
Parliament, who, as soon as the Parliament had been purged, became an
obsequious servant of the Rump, and who, as soon as the Rump had been
ejected, professed himself a faithful subject of the Protector, was more
deserving of the respect of Christian men than the stout old Cavalier
who bore true fealty to Charles the First in prison and to Charles
the Second in exile, and who was ready to put lands, liberty, life, in
peril, rather than acknowledge, by word or act, the authority of any
of the upstart governments which, during that evil time, obtained
possession of a power not legitimately theirs? And what distinction was
there between that case and the case which had now arisen? That Cromwell
had actually enjoyed as much power as William, nay much more power than
William, was quite certain. That the power of William, as well as the
power of Cromwell, had an illegitimate origin, no divine who held the
doctrine of nonresistance would dispute. How then was it possible for
such a divine to deny that obedience had been due to Cromwell, and yet
to affirm that it was due to William? To suppose that there could be
such inconsistency without dishonesty would be not charity but weakness.
Those who were determined to comply with the Act of Parliament would
do better to speak out, and to say, what every body knew, that they
complied simply to save their benefices. The motive was no doubt strong.
That a clergyman who was a husband and a father should look forward with
dread to the first of August and the first of February was natural. But
he would do well to remember that, however terrible might be the day of
suspension and the day of deprivation, there would assuredly come
two other days more terrible still, the day of death and the day of
judgment, [459]

The swearing clergy, as they were called, were not a little perplexed by
this reasoning. Nothing embarrassed them more than the analogy which
the nonjurors were never weary of pointing out between the usurpation
of Cromwell and the usurpation of William. For there was in that age
no High Churchman who would not have thought himself reduced to an
absurdity if he had been reduced to the necessity of saying that
the Church had commanded her sons to obey Cromwell. And yet it was
impossible to prove that William was more fully in possession of supreme
power than Cromwell had been. The swearers therefore avoided coming
to close quarters with the nonjurors on this point as carefully as the
nonjurors avoided coming to close quarters with the swearers on the
question touching the practice of the primitive Church.

The truth is that the theory of government which had long been taught
by the clergy was so absurd that it could lead to nothing but absurdity.
Whether the priest who adhered to that theory swore or refused to swear,
he was alike unable to give a rational explanation of his conduct. If he
swore, he could vindicate his swearing only by laying down propositions
against which every honest heart instinctively revolts, only by
proclaiming that Christ had commanded the Church to desert the righteous
cause as soon as that cause ceased to prosper, and to strengthen the
hands of successful villany against afflicted virtue. And yet, strong as
were the objections to this doctrine, the objections to the doctrine
of the nonjuror were, if possible, stronger still. According to him, a
Christian nation ought always to be in a state of slavery or in a state
of anarchy. Something is to be said for the man who sacrifices liberty
to preserve order. Something is to be said for the man who sacrifices
order to preserve liberty.
For liberty and order are two of the greatest
blessings which a society can enjoy: and, when unfortunately they appear
to be incompatible, much indulgence is due to those who take either
side. But the nonjuror sacrificed, not liberty to order, not order to
liberty, but both liberty and order to a superstition as stupid and
degrading as the Egyptian worship of cats and onions. While a particular
person, differing from other persons by the mere accident of birth,
was on the throne, though he might be a Nero, there was to be no
insubordination. When any other person was on the throne, though he
might be an Alfred, there was to be no obedience. It mattered not how
frantic and wicked might be the administration of the dynasty which
had the hereditary title, or how wise and virtuous might be the
administration of a government sprung from a revolution. Nor could any
time of limitation be pleaded against the claim of the expelled family.
The lapse of years, the lapse of ages, made no change. To the end of
the world, Christians were to regulate their political conduct simply
according to the genealogy of their ruler. The year 1800, the year
1900, might find princes who derived their title from the votes of the
Convention reigning in peace and prosperity. No matter: they would still
be usurpers; and, if, in the twentieth or twenty-first century, any
person who could make out a better right by blood to the crown should
call on a late posterity to acknowledge him as King, the call must be
obeyed on peril of eternal perdition.

A Whig might well enjoy the thought that the controversies which had
arisen among his adversaries had established the soundness of his own
political creed. The disputants who had long agreed in accusing him of
an impious error had now effectually vindicated him, and refuted one
another. The High Churchman who took the oaths had shown by irrefragable
arguments from the Gospels and the Epistles, from the uniform practice
of the primitive Church, and from the explicit declarations of the
Anglican Church, that Christians were not in all cases bound to pay
obedience to the prince who had the hereditary title. 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.