No More Learning

Meanwhile the two Secretaries of State were constantly labouring to draw
their master in diametrically opposite directions. Every scheme,
every person, recommended by one of them was reprobated by the other.
Nottingham was never weary of repeating that the old Roundhead party,
the party which had taken the life of Charles the First and had plotted
against the life of Charles the Second, was in principle republican,
and that the Tories were the only true friends of monarchy. Shrewsbury
replied that the Tories might be friends of monarchy, but that they
regarded James as their monarch. Nottingham was always bringing to the
closet intelligence of the wild daydreams in which a few old eaters of
calf's head, the remains of the once formidable party of Bradshaw and
Ireton, still indulged at taverns in the city. Shrewsbury produced
ferocious lampoons which the Jacobites dropped every day in the
coffeehouses. "Every Whig," said the Tory Secretary, "is an enemy of
your Majesty's prerogative. " "Every Tory," said the Whig Secretary, "is
an enemy of your Majesty's title. " [71]

At the treasury there was a complication of jealousies and quarrels.
[72] Both the First Commissioner, Mordaunt, and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Delamere, were zealous Whigs but, though they held the same
political creed, their tempers differed widely. Mordaunt was volatile,
dissipated, and generous. The wits of that time laughed at the way in
which he flew about from Hampton Court to the Royal Exchange, and from
the Royal Exchange back to Hampton Court. How he found time for dress,
politics, lovemaking and balladmaking was a wonder. [73] Delamere was
gloomy and acrimonious, austere in his private morals, and punctual in
his devotions, but greedy of ignoble gain. The two principal ministers
of finance, therefore, became enemies, and agreed only in hating their
colleague Godolphin. What business had he at Whitehall in these days of
Protestant ascendency, he who had sate at the same board with Papists,
he who had never scrupled to attend Mary of Modena to the idolatrous
worship of the Mass? The most provoking circumstance was that Godolphin,
though his name stood only third in the commission, was really first
Lord. For in financial knowledge and in habits of business Mordaunt and
Delamere were mere children when compared with him; and this William
soon discovered. [74]

Similar feuds raged at the other great boards and through all the
subordinate ranks of public functionaries. In every customhouse, in
every arsenal, were a Shrewsbury and a Nottingham, a Delamere and a
Godolphin. The Whigs complained that there was no department in which
creatures of the fallen tyranny were not to be found. It was idle to
allege that these men were versed in the details of business, that they
were the depositaries of official traditions, and that the friends
of liberty, having been, during many years, excluded from public
employment, must necessarily be incompetent to take on themselves at
once the whole management of affairs. Experience doubtless had its
value: but surely the first of all the qualifications of a servant was
fidelity; and no Tory could be a really faithful servant of the new
government. If King William were wise, he would rather trust novices
zealous for his interest and honour than veterans who might indeed
possess ability and knowledge, but who would use that ability and that
knowledge to effect his ruin.

The Tories, on the other hand, complained that their share of power bore
no proportion to their number and their weight in the country, and that
every where old and useful public servants were, for the crime of being
friends to monarchy and to the Church, turned out of their posts to make
way for Rye House plotters and haunters of conventicles. These upstarts,
adepts in the art of factious agitation, but ignorant of all that
belonged to their new calling, would be just beginning to learn their
business when they had undone the nation by their blunders. To be a
rebel and a schismatic was surely not all that ought to be required of
a man in high employment. What would become of the finances, what of
the marine, if Whigs who could not understand the plainest balance
sheet were to manage the revenue, and Whigs who had never walked over a
dockyard to fit out the fleet. [75]

The truth is that the charges which the two parties brought against each
other were, to a great extent, well founded, but that the blame which
both threw on William was unjust. Official experience was to be found
almost exclusively among the Tories, hearty attachment to the new
settlement almost exclusively among the Whigs. It was not the fault
of the King that the knowledge and the zeal, which, combined, make a
valuable servant of the state must at that time be had separately or
not at all. If he employed men of one party, there was great risk of
mistakes. If he employed men of the other party, there was great risk of
treachery. If he employed men of both parties, there was still some risk
of mistakes; there was still some risk of treachery; and to these risks
was added the certainty of dissension. He might join Whigs and Tories;
but it was beyond his power to mix them. In the same office, at the
same desk, they were still enemies, and agreed only in murmuring at the
Prince who tried to mediate between them. It was inevitable that, in
such circumstances, the administration, fiscal, military, naval, should
be feeble and unsteady; that nothing should be done in quite the
right way or at quite the right time; that the distractions from which
scarcely any public office was exempt should produce disasters, and
that every disaster should increase the distractions from which it had
sprung.

There was indeed one department of which the business was well
conducted; and that was the department of Foreign Affairs. There William
directed every thing, and, on important occasions, neither asked the
advice nor employed the agency of any English politician. One invaluable
assistant he had, Anthony Heinsius, who, a few weeks after the
Revolution had been accomplished, became Pensionary of Holland. Heinsius
had entered public life as a member of that party which was jealous of
the power of the House of Orange, and desirous to be on friendly terms
with France. But he had been sent in 1681 on a diplomatic mission to
Versailles; and a short residence there had produced a complete change
in his views. On a near acquaintance, he was alarmed by the power and
provoked by the insolence of that Court of which, while he contemplated
it only at a distance, he had formed a favourable opinion. He found that
his country was despised. He saw his religion persecuted. His official
character did not save him from some personal affronts which, to the
latest day of his long career, he never forgot. He went home a devoted
adherent of William and a mortal enemy of Lewis. [76]

The office of Pensionary, always important, was peculiarly important
when the Stadtholder was absent from the Hague. Had the politics of
Heinsius been still what they once were, all the great designs of
William might have been frustrated. But happily there was between these
two eminent men a perfect friendship which, till death dissolved it,
appears never to have been interrupted for one moment by suspicion or
ill humour. On all large questions of European policy they cordially
agreed. They corresponded assiduously and most unreservedly. For though
William was slow to give his confidence, yet, when he gave it, he gave
it entire. The correspondence is still extant, and is most honourable to
both. The King's letters would alone suffice to prove that he was one
of the greatest statesmen whom Europe has produced. While he lived, the
Pensionary was content to be the most obedient, the most trusty, and
the most discreet of servants. But, after the death of the master, the
servant proved himself capable of supplying with eminent ability the
master's place, and was renowned throughout Europe as one of the great
Triumvirate which humbled the pride of Lewis the Fourteenth. [77]

The foreign policy of England, directed immediately by William in
close concert with Heinsius, was, at this time, eminently skilful and
successful. But in every other part of the administration the evils
arising from the mutual animosity of factions were but too plainly
discernible. Nor was this all. To the evils arising from the mutual
animosity of factions were added other evils arising from the mutual
animosity of sects.

The year 1689 is a not less important epoch in the ecclesiastical than
in the civil history of England. In that year was granted the first
legal indulgence to Dissenters. In that year was made the last serious
attempt to bring the Presbyterians within the pale of the Church of
England. From that year dates a new schism, made, in defiance of ancient
precedents, by men who had always professed to regard schism with
peculiar abhorrence, and ancient precedents with peculiar veneration.
In that year began the long struggle between two great parties of
conformists. Those parties indeed had, under various forms, existed
within the Anglican communion ever since the Reformation; but till after
the Revolution they did not appear marshalled in regular and permanent
order of battle against each other, and were therefore not known by
established names. Some time after the accession of William they began
to be called the High Church party and the Low Church party; and, long
before the end of his reign, these appellations were in common use. [78]

In the summer of 1688 the breaches which had long divided the great body
of English Protestants had seemed to be almost closed. Disputes about
Bishops and Synods, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, white
gowns and black gowns, sprinkling and dipping, kneeling and sitting,
had been for a short space intermitted. The serried array which was then
drawn up against Popery measured the whole of the vast interval which
separated Sancroft from Bunyan. Prelates recently conspicuous as
persecutors now declared themselves friends of religious liberty, and
exhorted their clergy to live in a constant interchange of hospitality
and of kind offices with the separatists. Separatists, on the other
hand, who had recently considered mitres and lawn sleeves as the livery
of Antichrist, were putting candles in windows and throwing faggots on
bonfires in honour of the prelates.

These feelings continued to grow till they attained their greatest
height on the memorable day on which the common oppressor finally
quitted Whitehall, and on which an innumerable multitude, tricked out in
orange ribands, welcomed the common deliverer to Saint James's. When the
clergy of London came, headed by Compton, to express their gratitude to
him by whose instrumentality God had wrought salvation for the Church
and the State, the procession was swollen by some eminent nonconformist
divines. It was delightful to many good men to learn that pious and
learned Presbyterian ministers had walked in the train of a Bishop, had
been greeted by him with fraternal kindness, and had been announced by
him in the presence chamber as his dear and respected friends, separated
from him indeed by some differences of opinion on minor points, but
united to him by Christian charity and by common zeal for the essentials
of the reformed faith. There had never before been such a day in
England; and there has never since been such a day. The tide of feeling
was already on the turn; and the ebb was even more rapid than the
flow had been. In a very few hours the High Churchman began to feel
tenderness for the enemy whose tyranny was now no longer feared, and
dislike of the allies whose services were now no longer needed. It
was easy to gratify both feelings by imputing to the dissenters the
misgovernment of the exiled King. His Majesty-such was now the language
of too many Anglican divines-would have been an excellent sovereign
had he not been too confiding, too forgiving. He had put his trust in
a class of men who hated his office, his family, his person, with
implacable hatred. He had ruined himself in the vain attempt to
conciliate them. He had relieved them, in defiance of law and of the
unanimous sense of the old royalist party, from the pressure of the
penal code; had allowed them to worship God publicly after their own
mean and tasteless fashion; had admitted them to the bench of justice
and to the Privy Council; had gratified them with fur robes, gold
chains, salaries, and pensions. In return for his liberality, these
people, once so uncouth in demeanour, once so savage in opposition even
to legitimate authority, had become the most abject of flatterers. They
had continued to applaud and encourage him when the most devoted friends
of his family had retired in shame and sorrow from his palace. Who had
more foully sold the religion and liberty of his country than Titus? Who
had been more zealous for the dispensing power than Alsop? Who had urged
on the persecution of the seven Bishops more fiercely than Lobb? What
chaplain impatient for a deanery had ever, even when preaching in the
royal presence on the thirtieth of January or the twenty-ninth of
May, uttered adulation more gross than might easily be found in
those addresses by which dissenting congregations had testified their
gratitude for the illegal Declaration of Indulgence? Was it strange that
a prince who had never studied law books should have believed that
he was only exercising his rightful prerogative, when he was thus
encouraged by a faction which had always ostentatiously professed hatred
of arbitrary power? Misled by such guidance, he had gone further and
further in the wrong path: he had at length estranged from him hearts
which would once have poured forth their best blood in his defence: he
had left himself no supporters except his old foes; and, when the day
of peril came, he had found that the feeling of his old foes towards
him was still what it had been when they had attempted to rob him of his
inheritance, and when they had plotted against his life. Every man of
sense had long known that the sectaries bore no love to monarchy. It had
now been found that they bore as little love to freedom. To trust them
with power would be an error not less fatal to the nation than to the
throne. If, in order to redeem pledges somewhat rashly given, it should
be thought necessary to grant them relief, every concession ought to be
accompanied by limitations and precautions. Above all, no man who was
an enemy to the ecclesiastical constitution of the realm ought to be
permitted to bear any part in the civil government.

Between the nonconformists and the rigid conformists stood the Low
Church party. That party contained, as it still contains, two very
different elements, a Puritan element and a Latitudinarian element. On
almost every question, however, relating either to ecclesiastical polity
or to the ceremonial of public worship, the Puritan Low Churchman and
the Latitudinarian Low Churchman were perfectly agreed. They saw in the
existing polity and in the existing ceremonial no defect, no blemish,
which could make it their duty to become dissenters. Nevertheless they
held that both the polity and the ceremonial were means and not ends,
and that the essential spirit of Christianity might exist without
episcopal orders and without a Book of Common Prayer. They had, while
James was on the throne, been mainly instrumental in forming the great
Protestant coalition against Popery and tyranny; and they continued in
1689 to hold the same conciliatory language which they had held in
1688. They gently blamed the scruples of the nonconformists. It was
undoubtedly a great weakness to imagine that there could be any sin in
wearing a white robe, in tracing a cross, in kneeling at the rails of an
altar. But the highest authority had given the plainest directions as
to the manner in which such weakness was to be treated. The weak brother
was not to be judged: he was not to be despised: believers who had
stronger minds were commanded to soothe him by large compliances, and
carefully to remove out of his path every stumbling block which could
cause him to offend. An apostle had declared that, though he had himself
no misgivings about the use of animal food or of wine, he would eat
herbs and drink water rather than give scandal to the feeblest of his
flock. What would he have thought of ecclesiastical rulers who, for the
sake of a vestment, a gesture, a posture, had not only torn the Church
asunder, but had filled all the gaols of England with men of orthodox
faith and saintly life? The reflections thrown by the High Churchmen on
the recent conduct of the dissenting body the Low Churchmen pronounced
to be grossly unjust. The wonder was, not that a few nonconformists
should have accepted with thanks an indulgence which, illegal as it
was, had opened the doors of their prisons and given security to their
hearths, but that the nonconformists generally should have been true
to the cause of a constitution from the benefits of which they had been
long excluded. It was most unfair to impute to a great party the faults
of a few individuals. Even among the Bishops of the Established Church
James had found tools and sycophants. The conduct of Cartwright and
Parker had been much more inexcusable than that of Alsop and Lobb. Yet
those who held the dissenters answerable for the errors of Alsop and
Lobb would doubtless think it most unreasonable to hold the Church
answerable for the far deeper guilt of Cartwright and Parker.

The Low Church clergymen were a minority, and not a large minority, of
their profession: but their weight was much more than proportioned to
their numbers: for they mustered strong in the capital: they had great
influence there; and the average of intellect and knowledge was higher
among them than among their order generally. We should probably overrate
their numerical strength, if we were to estimate them at a tenth part
of the priesthood. Yet it will scarcely be denied that there were among
them as many men of distinguished eloquence and learning as could be
found in the other nine tenths. Among the laity who conformed to the
established religion the parties were not unevenly balanced. Indeed
the line which separated them deviated very little from the line which
separated the Whigs and the Tories. In the House of Commons, which
had been elected when the Whigs were triumphant, the Low Church party
greatly preponderated. In the Lords there was an almost exact equipoise;
and very slight circumstances sufficed to turn the scale.

The head of the Low Church party was the King. He had been bred a
Presbyterian: he was, from rational conviction, a Latitudinarian; and
personal ambition, as well as higher motives, prompted him to act as
mediator among Protestant sects. He was bent on effecting three great
reforms in the laws touching ecclesiastical matters. His first object
was to obtain for dissenters permission to celebrate their worship in
freedom and security. His second object was to make such changes in
the Anglican ritual and polity as, without offending those to whom
that ritual and polity were dear, might conciliate the moderate
nonconformists. His third object was to throw open civil offices to
Protestants without distinction of sect. All his three objects were
good; but the first only was at that time attainable. He came too late
for the second, and too early for the third.

A few days after his accession, he took a step which indicated, in a
manner not to be mistaken, his sentiments touching ecclesiastical polity
and public worship. He found only one see unprovided with a Bishop. Seth
Ward, who had during many years had charge of the diocese of Salisbury,
and who had been honourably distinguished as one of the founders of
the Royal Society, having long survived his faculties, died while
the country was agitated by the elections for the Convention, without
knowing that great events, of which not the least important had passed
under his own roof, had saved his Church and his country from ruin. The
choice of a successor was no light matter. That choice would inevitably
be considered by the country as a prognostic of the highest import.
The King too might well be perplexed by the number of divines whose
erudition, eloquence, courage, and uprightness had been conspicuously
displayed during the contentions of the last three years. The preference
was given to Burnet. His claims were doubtless great. Yet William might
have had a more tranquil reign if he had postponed for a time the well
earned promotion of his chaplain, and had bestowed the first great
spiritual preferment, which, after the Revolution, fell to the
disposal of the Crown, on some eminent theologian, attached to the new
settlement, yet not generally hated by the clergy. Unhappily the name
of Burnet was odious to the great majority of the Anglican priesthood.
Though, as respected doctrine, he by no means belonged to the extreme
section of the Latitudinarian party, he was popularly regarded as the
personification of the Latitudinarian spirit. This distinction he owed
to the prominent place which he held in literature and politics, to the
readiness of his tongue and of his pert, and above all to the frankness
and boldness of his nature, frankness which could keep no secret, and
boldness which flinched from no danger. He had formed but a low estimate
of the character of his clerical brethren considered as a body; and,
with his usual indiscretion, he frequently suffered his opinion to
escape him. They hated him in return with a hatred which has descended
to their successors, and which, after the lapse of a century and a half,
does not appear to languish.

As soon as the King's decision was known, the question was every where
asked, What will the Archbishop do? Sancroft had absented himself from
the Convention: he had refused to sit in the Privy Council: he had
ceased to confirm, to ordain, and to institute; and he was seldom
seen out of the walls of his palace at Lambeth. He, on all occasions,
professed to think himself still bound by his old oath of allegiance.
Burnet he regarded as a scandal to the priesthood, a Presbyterian in a
surplice. The prelate who should lay hands on that unworthy head would
commit more than one great sin. He would, in a sacred place, and before
a great congregation of the faithful, at once acknowledge an usurper
as a King, and confer on a schismatic the character of a Bishop. During
some time Sancroft positively declared that he would not obey the
precept of William. Lloyd of Saint Asaph, who was the common friend of
the Archbishop and of the Bishop elect, intreated and expostulated
in vain. Nottingham, who, of all the laymen connected with the new
government, stood best with the clergy, tried his influence, but to no
better purpose. The Jacobites said every where that they were sure of
the good old Primate; that he had the spirit of a martyr; that he was
determined to brave, in the cause of the Monarchy and of the Church, the
utmost rigour of those laws with which the obsequious parliaments of the
sixteenth century had fenced the Royal Supremacy. He did in truth hold
out long. But at the last moment his heart failed him, and he looked
round him for some mode of escape. Fortunately, as childish scruples
often disturbed his conscience, childish expedients often quieted it. A
more childish expedient than that to which he now resorted is not to be
found in all the tones of the casuists. He would not himself bear a part
in the service. He would not publicly pray for the Prince and Princess
as King and Queen. He would not call for their mandate, order it to be
read, and then proceed to obey it. But he issued a commission empowering
any three of his suffragans to commit, in his name, and as his
delegates, the sins which he did not choose to commit in person. The
reproaches of all parties soon made him ashamed of himself. He then
tried to suppress the evidence of his fault by means more discreditable
than the fault itself. He abstracted from among the public records of
which he was the guardian the instrument by which he had authorised his
brethren to act for him, and was with difficulty induced to give it up.
[79]

Burnet however had, under the authority of this instrument, been
consecrated. When he next waited on Mary, she reminded him of the
conversations which they had held at the Hague about the high duties and
grave responsibility of Bishops. "I hope," she said, "that you will put
your notions in practice. " Her hope was not disappointed. Whatever
may be thought of Burnet's opinions touching civil and ecclesiastical
polity, or of the temper and judgment which he showed in defending those
opinions, the utmost malevolence of faction could not venture to deny
that he tended his flock with a zeal, diligence, and disinterestedness
worthy of the purest ages of the Church. His jurisdiction extended over
Wiltshire and Berkshire. These counties he divided into districts which
he sedulously visited. About two months of every summer he passed in
preaching, catechizing, and confirming daily from church to church. When
he died there was no corner of his diocese in which the people had not
had seven or eight opportunities of receiving his instructions and of
asking his advice. The worst weather, the worst roads, did not prevent
him from discharging these duties. On one occasion, when the floods were
out, he exposed his life to imminent risk rather than disappoint a rural
congregation which was in expectation of a discourse from the Bishop.
The poverty of the inferior clergy was a constant cause of uneasiness
to his kind and generous heart. He was indefatigable and at length
successful in his attempts to obtain for them from the Crown that
grant which is known by the name of Queen Anne's Bounty. [80] He was
especially careful, when he travelled through his diocese, to lay
no burden on them. Instead of requiring them to entertain him, he
entertained them. He always fixed his headquarters at a market town,
kept a table there, and, by his decent hospitality and munificent
charities, tried to conciliate those who were prejudiced against his
doctrines. When he bestowed a poor benefice, and he had many such to
bestow, his practice was to add out of his own purse twenty pounds a
year to the income. Ten promising young men, to each of whom he allowed
thirty pounds a year, studied divinity under his own eye in the close
of Salisbury. He had several children but he did not think himself
justified in hoarding for them. Their mother had brought him a good
fortune. With that fortune, he always said, they must be content: He
would not, for their sakes, be guilty of the crime of raising an estate
out of revenues sacred to piety and charity. Such merits as these will,
in the judgment of wise and candid men, appear fully to atone for every
offence which can be justly imputed to him. [81]

When he took his seat in the House of Lords, he found that assembly
busied in ecclesiastical legislation. A statesman who was well known
to be devoted to the Church had undertaken to plead the cause of the
Dissenters. No subject in the realm occupied so important and commanding
a position with reference to religious parties as Nottingham. To the
influence derived from rank, from wealth, and from office, he added
the higher influence which belongs to knowledge, to eloquence, and to
integrity. The orthodoxy of his creed, the regularity of his devotions,
and the purity of his morals gave a peculiar weight to his opinions on
questions in which the interests of Christianity were concerned. Of all
the ministers of the new Sovereigns, he had the largest share of the
confidence of the clergy. Shrewsbury was certainly a Whig, and probably
a freethinker: he had lost one religion; and it did not very clearly
appear that he had found another. Halifax had been during many years
accused of scepticism, deism, atheism. Danby's attachment to episcopacy
and the liturgy was rather political than religious. But Nottingham
was such a son as the Church was proud to own. Propositions, therefore,
which, if made by his colleagues, would infallibly produce a violent
panic among the clergy, might, if made by him, find a favourable
reception even in universities and chapter houses. The friends
of religious liberty were with good reason desirous to obtain his
cooperation; and, up to a certain point, he was not unwilling to
cooperate with them. He was decidedly for a toleration.
He was even for
what was then called a comprehension: that is to say, he was desirous
to make some alterations in the Anglican discipline and ritual for the
purpose of removing the scruples of the moderate Presbyterians. But he
was not prepared to give up the Test Act. The only fault which he found
with that Act was that it was not sufficiently stringent, and that it
left loopholes through which schismatics sometimes crept into civil
employments. In truth it was because he was not disposed to part with
the Test that he was willing to consent to some changes in the Liturgy.
He conceived that, if the entrance of the Church were but a very little
widened, great numbers who had hitherto lingered near the threshold
would press in. Those who still remained without would then not be
sufficiently numerous or powerful to extort any further concession, and
would be glad to compound for a bare toleration. [82]

The opinion of the Low Churchmen concerning the Test Act differed widely
from his. But many of them thought that it was of the highest
importance to have his support on the great questions of Toleration and
Comprehension. From the scattered fragments of information which have
come down to us, it appears that a compromise was made. It is quite
certain that Nottingham undertook to bring in a Toleration Bill and a
Comprehension Bill, and to use his best endeavours to carry both bills
through the House of Lords. It is highly probable that, in return for
this great service, some of the leading Whigs consented to let the Test
Act remain for the present unaltered.

There was no difficulty in framing either the Toleration Bill or the
Comprehension Bill. The situation of the dissenters had been much
discussed nine or ten years before, when the kingdom was distracted
by the fear of a Popish plot, and when there was among Protestants a
general disposition to unite against the common enemy. The government
had then been willing to make large concessions to the Whig party, on
condition that the crown should be suffered to descend according to the
regular course. A draught of a law authorising the public worship of the
nonconformists, and a draught of a law making some alterations in the
public worship of the Established Church, had been prepared, and would
probably have been passed by both Houses without difficulty, had not
Shaftesbury and his coadjutors refused to listen to any terms, and, by
grasping at what was beyond their reach, missed advantages which might
easily have been secured. In the framing of these draughts, Nottingham,
then an active member of the House of Commons, had borne a considerable
part. He now brought them forth from the obscurity in which they had
remained since the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and laid them,
with some slight alterations, on the table of the Lords. [83]

The Toleration Bill passed both Houses with little debate. This
celebrated statute, long considered as the Great Charter of religious
liberty, has since been extensively modified, and is hardly known to
the present generation except by name. The name, however, is still
pronounced with respect by many who will perhaps learn with surprise
and disappointment the real nature of the law which they have been
accustomed to hold in honour.

Several statutes which had been passed between the accession of Queen
Elizabeth and the Revolution required all people under severe penalties
to attend the services of the Church of England, and to abstain from
attending conventicles. The Toleration Act did not repeal any of these
statutes, but merely provided that they should not be construed to
extend to any person who should testify his loyalty by taking the Oaths
of Allegiance and Supremacy, and his Protestantism by subscribing the
Declaration against Transubstantiation.

The relief thus granted was common between the dissenting laity and
the dissenting clergy. But the dissenting clergy had some peculiar
grievances. The Act of Uniformity had laid a mulct of a hundred pounds
on every person who, not having received episcopal ordination, should
presume to administer the Eucharist. The Five Mile Act had driven many
pious and learned ministers from their houses and their friends, to live
among rustics in obscure villages of which the name was not to be seen
on the map. The Conventicle Act had imposed heavy fines on divines who
should preach in any meeting of separatists; and, in direct opposition
to the humane spirit of our common law, the Courts were enjoined to
construe this Act largely and beneficially for the suppressing of
dissent and for the encouraging of informers. These severe statutes were
not repealed, but were, with many conditions and precautions, relaxed.
It was provided that every dissenting minister should, before he
exercised his function, profess under his hand his belief in the
articles of the Church of England, with a few exceptions. The
propositions to which he was not required to assent were these; that the
Church has power to regulate ceremonies; that the doctrines set forth in
the Book of Homilies are sound; and that there is nothing superstitious
and idolatrous in the ordination service. If he declared himself a
Baptist, he was also excused from affirming that the baptism of infants
is a laudable practice. But, unless his conscience suffered him to
subscribe thirty-four of the thirty-nine articles, and the greater part
of two other articles, he could not preach without incurring all the
punishments which the Cavaliers, in the day of their power and their
vengeance, had devised for the tormenting and ruining of schismatical
teachers.

The situation of the Quaker differed from that of other dissenters,
and differed for the worse. The Presbyterian, the Independent, and
the Baptist had no scruple about the Oath of Supremacy. But the Quaker
refused to take it, not because he objected to the proposition that
foreign sovereigns and prelates have no jurisdiction in England, but
because his conscience would not suffer him to swear to any proposition
whatever. He was therefore exposed to the severity of part of that penal
code which, long before Quakerism existed, had been enacted against
Roman Catholics by the Parliaments of Elizabeth. Soon after the
Restoration, a severe law, distinct from the general law which applied
to all conventicles, had been passed against meetings of Quakers. The
Toleration Act permitted the members of this harmless sect to hold
their assemblies in peace, on condition of signing three documents, a
declaration against Transubstantiation, a promise of fidelity to the
government, and a confession of Christian belief. The objections which
the Quaker had to the Athanasian phraseology had brought on him the
imputation of Socinianism; and the strong language in which he sometimes
asserted that he derived his knowledge of spiritual things directly from
above had raised a suspicion that he thought lightly of the authority
of Scripture. He was therefore required to profess his faith in the
divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and in the inspiration of the
Old and New Testaments.

Such were the terms on which the Protestant dissenters of England were,
for the first time, permitted by law to worship God according to their
own conscience. They were very properly forbidden to assemble with
barred doors, but were protected against hostile intrusion by a
clause which made it penal to enter a meeting house for the purpose of
molesting the congregation.

As if the numerous limitations and precautions which have been mentioned
were insufficient, it was emphatically declared that the legislature
did not intend to grant the smallest indulgence to any Papist, or to any
person who denied the doctrine of the Trinity as that doctrine is set
forth in the formularies of the Church of England.

Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration
Act is perhaps that which most strikingly illustrates the peculiar vices
and the peculiar excellences of English legislation. The science
of Politics bears in one respect a close analogy to the science of
Mechanics. The mathematician can easily demonstrate that a certain
power, applied by means of a certain lever or of a certain system of
pulleys, will suffice to raise a certain weight. But his demonstration
proceeds on the supposition that the machinery is such as no load will
bend or break. If the engineer, who has to lift a great mass of real
granite by the instrumentality of real timber and real hemp, should
absolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in treatises on
Dynamics, and should make no allowance for the imperfection of his
materials, his whole apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would soon
come down in ruin, and, with all his geometrical skill, he would be
found a far inferior builder to those painted barbarians who, though
they never heard of the parallelogram of forces, managed to pile up
Stonehenge. What the engineer is to the mathematician, the active
statesman is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most important
that legislators and administrators should be versed in the philosophy
of government, as it is most important that the architect, who has to
fix an obelisk on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular bridge over an
estuary, should be versed in the philosophy of equilibrium and motion.
But, as he who has actually to build must bear in mind many things never
noticed by D'Alembert and Euler, so must he who has actually to govern
be perpetually guided by considerations to which no allusion can be
found in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. The perfect
lawgiver is a just temper between the mere man of theory, who can see
nothing but general principles, and the mere man of business, who can
see nothing but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the
speculative element has prevailed to the exclusion of the practical,
the world has during the last eighty years been singularly fruitful.
To their wisdom Europe and America have owed scores of abortive
constitutions, scores of constitutions which have lived just long enough
to make a miserable noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But in
the English legislature the practical element has always predominated,
and not seldom unduly predominated, over the speculative. To think
nothing of symmetry and much of convenience; never to remove an anomaly
merely because it is an anomaly; never to innovate except when some
grievance is felt; never to innovate except so far as to get rid of the
grievance; never to lay down any proposition of wider extent than the
particular case for which it is necessary to provide; these are the
rules which have, from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generally
guided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments. Our
national distaste for whatever is abstract in political science amounts
undoubtedly to a fault. But it is, perhaps, a fault on the right side.
That we have been far too slow to improve our laws must be admitted.
But, though in other countries there may have occasionally been more
rapid progress, it would not be easy to name any other country in which
there has been so little retrogression.

The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a great
English law. To a jurist, versed in the theory of legislation, but not
intimately acquainted with the temper of the sects and parties into
which the nation was divided at the time of the Revolution, that Act
would seem to be a mere chaos of absurdities and contradictions. It will
not bear to be tried by sound general principles. Nay, it will not bear
to be tried by any principle, sound or unsound. The sound principle
undoubtedly is, that mere theological error ought not to be punished by
the civil magistrate. This principle the Toleration Act not only does
not recognise, but positively disclaims. Not a single one of the cruel
laws enacted against nonconformists by the Tudors or the Stuarts is
repealed. Persecution continues to be the general rule. Toleration is
the exception. Nor is this all. The freedom which is given to
conscience is given in the most capricious manner. A Quaker, by making
a declaration of faith in general terms, obtains the full benefit of
the Act without signing one of the thirty-nine Articles. An Independent
minister, who is perfectly willing to make the declaration required
from the Quaker, but who has doubts about six or seven of the Articles,
remains still subject to the penal laws. Howe is liable to punishment if
he preaches before he has solemnly declared his assent to the Anglican
doctrine touching the Eucharist. Penn, who altogether rejects
the Eucharist, is at perfect liberty to preach without making any
declaration whatever on the subject.

These are some of the obvious faults which must strike every person who
examines the Toleration Act by that standard of just reason which is the
same in all countries and in all ages. But these very faults may perhaps
appear to be merits, when we take into consideration the passions and
prejudices of those for whom the Toleration Act was framed. This
law, abounding with contradictions which every smatterer in political
philosophy can detect, did what a law framed by the utmost skill of the
greatest masters of political philosophy might have failed to do. That
the provisions which have been recapitulated are cumbrous, puerile,
inconsistent with each other, inconsistent with the true theory of
religious liberty, must be acknowledged. All that can be said in their
defence is this; that they removed a vast mass of evil without shocking
a vast mass of prejudice; that they put an end, at once and for ever,
without one division in either House of Parliament, without one riot in
the streets, with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classes most
deeply tainted with bigotry, to a persecution which had raged during
four generations, which had broken innumerable hearts, which had made
innumerable firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with men
of whom the world was not worthy, which had driven thousands of those
honest, diligent and godfearing yeomen and artisans, who are the true
strength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond the ocean among the
wigwams of red Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a defence,
however weak it may appear to some shallow speculators, will probably be
thought complete by statesmen.

The English, in 1689, were by no means disposed to admit the doctrine
that religious error ought to be left unpunished. That doctrine was just
then more unpopular than it had ever been. For it had, only a few months
before, been hypocritically put forward as a pretext for persecuting the
Established Church, for trampling on the fundamental laws of the realm,
for confiscating freeholds, for treating as a crime the modest exercise
of the right of petition. If a bill had then been drawn up granting
entire freedom of conscience to all Protestants, it may be confidently
affirmed that Nottingham would never have introduced such a bill; that
all the bishops, Burnet included, would have voted against it; that
it would have been denounced, Sunday after Sunday, from ten thousand
pulpits, as an insult to God and to all Christian men, and as a license
to the worst heretics and blasphemers; that it would have been condemned
almost as vehemently by Bates and Baxter as by Ken and Sherlock; that it
would have been burned by the mob in half the market places of England;
that it would never have become the law of the land, and that it would
have made the very name of toleration odious during many years to the
majority of the people. And yet, if such a bill had been passed, what
would it have effected beyond what was effected by the Toleration Act?

It is true that the Toleration Act recognised persecution as the rule,
and granted liberty of conscience only as the exception. But it is
equally true that the rule remained in force only against a few hundreds
of Protestant dissenters, and that the benefit of the exceptions
extended to hundreds of thousands.

It is true that it was in theory absurd to make Howe sign thirty-four or
thirty-five of the Anglican articles before he could preach, and to let
Penn preach without signing one of those articles. But it is equally
true that, under this arrangement, both Howe and Penn got as entire
liberty to preach as they could have had under the most philosophical
code that Beccaria or Jefferson could have framed.

The progress of the bill was easy. Only one amendment of grave
importance was proposed. Some zealous churchmen in the Commons suggested
that it might be desirable to grant the toleration only for a term of
seven years, and thus to bind over the nonconformists to good behaviour.
But this suggestion was so unfavourably received that those who made it
did not venture to divide the House. [84]

The King gave his consent with hearty satisfaction: the bill became law;
and the Puritan divines thronged to the Quarter Sessions of every county
to swear and sign. Many of them probably professed their assent to the
Articles with some tacit reservations. But the tender conscience of
Baxter would not suffer him to qualify, till he had put on record an
explanation of the sense in which he understood every proposition which
seemed to him to admit of misconstruction. The instrument delivered by
him to the Court before which he took the oaths is still extant,
and contains two passages of peculiar interest. He declared that his
approbation of the Athanasian Creed was confined to that part which was
properly a Creed, and that he did not mean to express any assent to
the damnatory clauses. He also declared that he did not, by signing the
article which anathematizes all who maintain that there is any other
salvation than through Christ, mean to condemn those who entertain a
hope that sincere and virtuous unbelievers may be admitted to partake
in the benefits of Redemption. Many of the dissenting clergy of London
expressed their concurrence in these charitable sentiments. [85]

The history of the Comprehension Bill presents a remarkable contrast to
the history of the Toleration Bill. The two bills had a common origin,
and, to a great extent, a common object. They were framed at the same
time, and laid aside at the same time: they sank together into oblivion;
and they were, after the lapse of several years, again brought together
before the world. Both were laid by the same peer on the table of the
Upper House; and both were referred to the same select committee. But
it soon began to appear that they would have widely different fates.
The Comprehension Bill was indeed a neater specimen of legislative
workmanship than the Toleration Bill, but was not, like the Toleration
Bill, adapted to the wants, the feelings, and the prejudices of the
existing generation. Accordingly, while the Toleration Bill found
support in all quarters, the Comprehension Bill was attacked from all
quarters, and was at last coldly and languidly defended even by those
who had introduced it. About the same time at which the Toleration bill
became law with the general concurrence of public men, the Comprehension
Bill was, with a concurrence not less general, suffered to drop. The
Toleration Bill still ranks among those great statutes which are epochs
in our constitutional history. The Comprehension Bill is forgotten. No
collector of antiquities has thought it worth preserving. A single copy,
the same which Nottingham presented to the peers, is still among our
parliamentary records, but has been seen by only two or three persons
now living. It is a fortunate circumstance that, in this copy, almost
the whole history of the Bill can be read. In spite of cancellations
and interlineations, the original words can easily be distinguished from
those which were inserted in the committee or on the report. [86]

The first clause, as it stood when the bill was introduced, dispensed
all the ministers of the Established Church from the necessity of
subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles. For the Articles was substituted
a Declaration which ran thus; "I do approve of the doctrine and
worship and government of the Church of England by law established,
as containing all things necessary to salvation; and I promise, in the
exercise of my ministry, to preach and practice according thereunto. "
Another clause granted similar indulgence to the members of the two
universities.

Then it was provided that any minister who had been ordained after
the Presbyterian fashion might, without reordination, acquire all the
privileges of a priest of the Established Church. He must, however,
be admitted to his new functions by the imposition of the hands of a
bishop, who was to pronounce the following form of words; "Take thou
authority to preach the word of God, and administer the sacraments, and
to perform all other ministerial offices in the Church of England. "
The person thus admitted was to be capable of holding any rectory or
vicarage in the kingdom.

Then followed clauses providing that a clergyman might, except in a few
churches of peculiar dignity, wear the surplice or not as he thought
fit, that the sign of the cross might be omitted in baptism, that
children might be christened, if such were the wish of their parents,
without godfathers or godmothers, and that persons who had a scruple
about receiving the Eucharist kneeling might receive it sitting.

The concluding clause was drawn in the form of a petition. It was
proposed that the two Houses should request the King and Queen to issue
a commission empowering thirty divines of the Established Church
to revise the liturgy, the canons, and the constitution of the
ecclesiastical courts, and to recommend such alterations as might on
inquiry appear to be desirable.

The bill went smoothly through the first stages. Compton, who, since
Sancroft had shut himself up at Lambeth, was virtually Primate,
supported Nottingham with ardour. [87] In the committee, however, it
appeared that there was a strong body of churchmen, who were determined
not to give up a single word or form; to whom it seemed that the prayers
were no prayers without the surplice, the babe no Christian if not
marked with the cross, the bread and wine no memorials of redemption
or vehicles of grace if not received on bended knee. Why, these persons
asked, was the docile and affectionate son of the Church to be disgusted
by seeing the irreverent practices of a conventicle introduced into her
majestic choirs? Why should his feelings, his prejudices, if prejudices
they were, be less considered than the whims of schismatics? If, as
Burnet and men like Burnet were never weary of repeating, indulgence
was due to a weak brother, was it less due to the brother whose
weakness consisted in the excess of his love for an ancient, a decent, a
beautiful ritual, associated in his imagination from childhood with
all that is most sublime and endearing, than to him whose morose and
litigious mind was always devising frivolous objections to innocent and
salutary usages? But, in truth, the scrupulosity of the Puritan was not
that sort of scrupulosity which the Apostle had commanded believers to
respect. It sprang, not from morbid tenderness of conscience, but from
censoriousness and spiritual pride; and none who had studied the New
Testament could have failed to observe that, while we are charged
carefully to avoid whatever may give scandal to the feeble, we are
taught by divine precept and example to make no concession to the
supercilious and uncharitable Pharisee. Was every thing which was not of
the essence of religion to be given up as soon as it became unpleasing
to a knot of zealots whose heads had been turned by conceit and the love
of novelty? Painted glass, music, holidays, fast days, were not of the
essence of religion. Were the windows of King's College Chapel to be
broken at the demand of one set of fanatics? Was the organ of Exeter
to be silenced to please another? Were all the village bells to be mute
because Tribulation Wholesome and Deacon Ananias thought them profane?
Was Christmas no longer to be a day of rejoicing? Was Passion week no
longer to be a season of humiliation? These changes, it is true, were
not yet proposed. Put if,--so the High Churchmen reasoned,--we once
admit that what is harmless and edifying is to be given up because it
offends some narrow understandings and some gloomy tempers, where are
we to stop? And is it not probable that, by thus attempting to heal one
schism, we may cause another? All those things which the Puritans regard
as the blemishes of the Church are by a large part of the population
reckoned among her attractions. May she not, in ceasing to give scandal
to a few sour precisians, cease also to influence the hearts of many
who now delight in her ordinances? Is it not to be apprehended that, for
every proselyte whom she allures from the meeting house, ten of her old
disciples may turn away from her maimed rites and dismantled temples,
and that these new separatists may either form themselves into a
sect far more formidable than the sect which we are now seeking to
conciliate, or may, in the violence of their disgust at a cold and
ignoble worship, be tempted to join in the solemn and gorgeous idolatry
of Rome?

It is remarkable that those who held this language were by no means
disposed to contend for the doctrinal Articles of the Church. The truth
is that, from the time of James the First, that great party which has
been peculiarly zealous for the Anglican polity and the Anglican ritual
has always leaned strongly towards Arminianism, and has therefore never
been much attached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who, on
questions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin. One of
the characteristic marks of that party is the disposition which it has
always shown to appeal, on points of dogmatic theology, rather to the
Liturgy, which was derived from Rome, than to the Articles and Homilies,
which were derived from Geneva. The Calvinistic members of the Church,
on the other hand, have always maintained that her deliberate judgment
on such points is much more likely to be found in an Article or a Homily
than in an ejaculation of penitence or a hymn of thanksgiving. It does
not appear that, in the debates on the Comprehension Bill, a single High
Churchman raised his voice against the clause which relieved the clergy
from the necessity of subscribing the Articles, and of declaring the
doctrine contained in the Homilies to be sound. Nay, the Declaration
which, in the original draught, was substituted for the Articles, was
much softened down on the report. As the clause finally stood, the
ministers of the Church were required to declare, not that they approved
of her constitution, but merely that they submitted to it. Had the bill
become law, the only people in the kingdom who would have been under
the necessity of signing the Articles would have been the dissenting
preachers. [88]

The easy manner in which the zealous friends of the Church gave up her
confession of faith presents a striking contrast to the spirit with
which they struggled for her polity and her ritual. The clause which
admitted Presbyterian ministers to hold benefices without episcopal
ordination was rejected. The clause which permitted scrupulous persons
to communicate sitting very narrowly escaped the same fate. In the
Committee it was struck out, and, on the report, was with great
difficulty restored. The majority of peers in the House was against the
proposed indulgence, and the scale was but just turned by the proxies.

But by this time it began to appear that the bill which the High
Churchmen were so keenly assailing was menaced by dangers from a very
different quarter. The same considerations which had induced Nottingham
to support a comprehension made comprehension an object of dread and
aversion to a large body of dissenters. The truth is that the time
for such a scheme had gone by. If, a hundred years earlier, when the
division in the Protestant body was recent, Elizabeth had been so wise
as to abstain from requiring the observance of a few forms which a
large part of her subjects considered as Popish, she might perhaps have
averted those fearful calamities which, forty years after her death,
afflicted the Church. But the general tendency of schism is to widen.
Had Leo the Tenth, when the exactions and impostures of the Pardoners
first roused the indignation of Saxony, corrected those evil practices
with a vigorous hand, it is not improbable that Luther would have died
in the bosom of the Church of Rome. But the opportunity was suffered
to escape; and, when, a few years later, the Vatican would gladly
have purchased peace by yielding the original subject of quarrel, the
original subject of quarrel was almost forgotten. The inquiring spirit
which had been roused by a single abuse had discovered or imagined a
thousand: controversies engendered controversies: every attempt that
was made to accommodate one dispute ended by producing another; and
at length a General Council, which, during the earlier stages of the
distemper, had been supposed to be an infallible remedy, made the case
utterly hopeless. In this respect, as in many others, the history
of Puritanism in England bears a close analogy to the history of
Protestantism in Europe. The Parliament of 1689 could no more put an end
to nonconformity by tolerating a garb or a posture than the Doctors
of Trent could have reconciled the Teutonic nations to the Papacy by
regulating the sale of indulgences. In the sixteenth century Quakerism
was unknown; and there was not in the whole realm a single congregation
of Independents or Baptists. At the time of the Revolution, the
Independents, Baptists, and Quakers were a majority of the dissenting
body; and these sects could not be gained over on any terms which
the lowest of Low Churchmen would have been willing to offer. The
Independent held that a national Church, governed by any central
authority whatever, Pope, Patriarch, King, Bishop, or Synod, was an
unscriptural institution, and that every congregation of believers
was, under Christ, a sovereign society. The Baptist was even
more irreclaimable than the Independent, and the Quaker even more
irreclaimable than the Baptist. Concessions, therefore, which would once
have extinguished nonconformity would not now satisfy even one half
of the nonconformists; and it was the obvious interest of every
nonconformist whom no concession would satisfy that none of his brethren
should be satisfied. The more liberal the terms of comprehension, the
greater was the alarm of every separatist who knew that he could, in no
case, be comprehended. There was but slender hope that the dissenters,
unbroken and acting as one man, would be able to obtain from the
legislature full admission to civil privileges; and all hope of
obtaining such admission must be relinquished if Nottingham should,
by the help of some wellmeaning but shortsighted friends of religious
liberty, be enabled to accomplish his design. If his bill passed, there
would doubtless be a considerable defection from the dissenting
body; and every defection must be severely felt by a class already
outnumbered, depressed, and struggling against powerful enemies. Every
proselyte too must be reckoned twice over, as a loss to the party which
was even now too weak, and as a gain to the party which was even now too
strong. The Church was but too well able to hold her own against all the
sects in the kingdom; and, if those sects were to be thinned by a large
desertion, and the Church strengthened by a large reinforcement, it was
plain that all chance of obtaining any relaxation of the Test Act would
be at an end; and it was but too probable that the Toleration Act might
not long remain unrepealed.

Even those Presbyterian ministers whose scruples the Comprehension Bill
was expressly intended to remove were by no means unanimous in wishing
it to pass. The ablest and most eloquent preachers among them had, since
the Declaration of Indulgence had appeared, been very agreeably settled
in the capital and in other large towns, and were now about to enjoy,
under the sure guarantee of an Act of Parliament, that toleration which,
under the Declaration of Indulgence, had been illicit and precarious.
The situation of these men was such as the great majority of the divines
of the Established Church might well envy. Few indeed of the parochial
clergy were so abundantly supplied with comforts as the favourite
orator of a great assembly of nonconformists in the City. The voluntary
contributions of his wealthy hearers, Aldermen and Deputies, West India
merchants and Turkey merchants, Wardens of the Company of Fishmongers
and Wardens of the Company of Goldsmiths, enabled him to become a
landowner or a mortgagee. The best broadcloth from Blackwell Hall, and
the best poultry from Leadenhall Market, were frequently left at his
door. His influence over his flock was immense. Scarcely any member of
a congregation of separatists entered into a partnership, married a
daughter, put a son out as apprentice, or gave his vote at an election,
without consulting his spiritual guide. On all political and literary
questions the minister was the oracle of his own circle. It was
popularly remarked, during many years, that an eminent dissenting
minister had only to make his son an attorney or a physician; that the
attorney was sure to have clients, and the physician to have patients.
While a waiting woman was generally considered as a help meet for
a chaplain in holy orders of the Established Church, the widows and
daughters of opulent citizens were supposed to belong in a peculiar
manner to nonconformist pastors. One of the great Presbyterian Rabbies,
therefore, might well doubt whether, in a worldly view, he should
be benefited by a comprehension. He might indeed hold a rectory or
a vicarage, when he could get one. But in the meantime he would be
destitute: his meeting house would be closed: his congregation would be
dispersed among the parish churches: if a benefice were bestowed on him,
it would probably be a very slender compensation for the income which
he had lost. Nor could he hope to have, as a minister of the Anglican
Church, the authority and dignity which he had hitherto enjoyed. He
would always, by a large portion of the members of that Church, be
regarded as a deserter. He might therefore, on the whole, very naturally
wish to be left where he was. [89]

There was consequently a division in the Whig party. One section of that
party was for relieving the dissenters from the Test Act, and giving
up the Comprehension Bill. Another section was for pushing forward
the Comprehension Bill, and postponing to a more convenient time the
consideration of the Test Act. The effect of this division among the
friends of religious liberty was that the High Churchmen, though a
minority in the House of Commons, and not a majority in the House of
Lords, were able to oppose with success both the reforms which they
dreaded. The Comprehension Bill was not passed; and the Test Act was not
repealed.

Just at the moment when the question of the Test and the question of the
Comprehension became complicated together in a manner which might well
perplex an enlightened and honest politician, both questions became
complicated with a third question of grave importance.