The conduct of the Puritans, it appears from hence, was wisely adapted to the times in which they lived: in which the habits had a tendency and influence that rendered the contest about them far from being such a frivolous affair, as many are now disposed to consider it. For then a mystical signification was affixed to them by the church of Rome: and there was a prevailing notion of their necessity and efficacy in the administration of the clergy. It is also evident, that they gave the queen and her courtiers a handle to establish and exercise a despotic power: they were the instruments by which the court of high-commission endeavoured to rivet on the people the chains of tyranny. The opposition of the Puritans, therefore, may be vindicated on the largest principles. It was a bold and vigorous stand against arbitrary power, which justly calls for resistance in its first outset and its most trivial demands, if men would not give it room to place its foot and erect its banner. It is a pertinent and very sensible remark of a great author, "that our ancestors, the old Puritans, had the same merit in opposing the imposition of the surplice, that Hampden had in opposing the levying of ship-money. In neither case was the thing itself objected to, so much as the authority that enjoined it, and the danger of the precedent. And it appears to us, that the man, who is as tenacious of his religious as he is of his civil liberty, will oppose them both with equal firmness*." The reign of queen Elizabeth affords many instances of the connexion between civil and religious liberty and furnishes striking documents of her disposition and endeavours to violate both. In this view the behaviour of the Puritans was eventually attended with the most important effects.-Mr. Hume, who treats their principles as frivolous and their conduct as ridiculous, has bestowed on them, at the same time, the highest eulogium his pen could well dictate. "So absolute (says he) was the authority of the crown, that the precious spark of liberty had been kindled, and was preserved, by the Puritans alone; and it was to this sect that the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution +." While it is not asserted, that all the Puritans acted upon such enlarged views of things; while it is granted, that the "notions" of numbers, probably of the majority, of them concerning "the civil and religious rights of mankind, were dark and confused;" yet it should be allowed that some of them, for instance Fox the martyrologist, acted upon liberal principles and all of them felt the oppression of the day, so as, by their own experience of its iniquity and evils, to be instigated to oppose them; though they did not apply the principles, which were thus generated in the mind, to their full extent. : The charge brought against the Puritans, for satirical pamphlets, libels, and abusive language, was in some instances well founded. * Dr. Priestley's View of the Principles and Conduct of the Protestant Dissenters, page 66. + Hume's History of England, vol. 5. p. 189. 8vo. ed. 1763. But it by no means, justly, lay against the whole party. "The moderate Puritans publicly disowned the libels for which they were accused, yet they were brought before the star-chamber. The determinations of this court were not according to any statute law of the land, but according to the queen's will and pleasure: yet they were as binding upon the subject as an act of parliament, which the whole nation exclaimed against, as a mark of the vilest slavery*. Such oppression, such violent outrages against the security, the conscience, and the lives of men, were sufficient to irritate their minds, and to provoke them to reviling and abusive language. Much allowance should be made for men, who were galled and inflamed by severe sufferings. But, independently of this consideration, we should judge of the strain and spirit of their writings, not by the more polite manners and liberal spirit of the present age, but by the times in which they lived; when, on all subjects, a coarse and rough and even abusive style was common from authors of learning and rank. Bishop Aylmer, in a sermon at court, speaking of the fair sex said, "Women are of two sorts, some of them are wiser, better learned, discreeter, and more constant, than a number of men; but another and a worse sort of them, and the most part, are fond, foolish, wanton flibbergibs, tattlers, triflers, wavering, witless, without counsel, feeble, careless, rash, proud, dainty, nice, talebearers, eavesdroppers, rumour-raisers, evil-tongued, worse-minded, and in every wise doltified with the dregs of the devil's dunghill+." If a bishop, when preaching before the queen, could clothe his sentiment in such words, on a subject where this age would study peculiar politeness of style; can we wonder that reviling language should proceed, in the warmth of controversy, from those who were suffering under the rod of oppression? The other side, who had not the same provocations, did not come behind the most abusive of the Puritan writers, in this kind of oratory. In a tract, ascribed to archbishop Parker, the Nonconformists are described and condemned, as "schismatics, belliegods, deceivers, flatterers, fools, such as have been unlearnedlie brought up in profane occupations; puffed up in arrogancie of themselves, chargeable to vanities of assertions: of whom it is feared that they make posthaste to be Anabaptists and libertines,. gone out from us, but belike never of us; differing not much from Donatists, shrinking and refusing ministers of London; disturbers; factious, wilful entanglers, and encumberers of the consciences of their herers, girdirs, nippers, scoffers, biters, snappers at superiors, having the spirit of irony, like to Audiani, smelling of Donatistrie, or of Papistrie, Rogatianes, Circumcellians, and Pelagians ‡." * Warner's Ecclesiastical History, vol. 2. p. 463. PART II.-CHAPTER I. FROM THE DEMISE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH TO THE DEATH OF ARCHBISHOP BANCROFT. THE royal house of the Stuarts has not been more calamitous to the English church and nation, in the male descendants, than successful and glorious in the female. The four kings of this line, while in power, were declared enemies of our civil constitution; they governed without law, levied taxes by the prerogative, and endeavoured to put an end to the very being of parliaments. With regard to religion; the two first were neither sound Protestants nor good Catholics, but were for reconciling the two religions, and meeting the Papists half way; but the two last went over entirely to the church of Rome, and died professedly in her communion. The female branches of this family being married among foreign Protestants, were of a different stamp, being more inclined to Puritanism than Popery; one of them [Mary, eldest daughter of king Charles I.] was mother of the great king William III. the glorious deliverer of these kingdoms from Popery and slavery; and another [Elizabeth daughter of king James I.] was grandmother of his late majesty king George I. in whom the Protestant succession took place, and whose numerous descendants in the person and offspring of his present majesty, are the defence and glory of the whole Protestant interest in Europe. King James was thirty-six years of age when he came to the English throne, having reigned in Scotland from his infancy. In the year 1589, he married the princess Anne, sister to the king of Denmark, by whom he had three children living at this time, Henry prince of Wales, who died before he was nineteen years of age [1612], Elizabeth married to the elector palatine 1613; and Charles, who succeeded his father in his kingdoms. His majesty's behaviour in Scotland raised the expectations and hopes of all parties; the Puritans relied upon his majesty's education; upon his subscribing the solemn league and covenant; and upon various solemn repeated declarations, in particular one made in the general assembly at Edinburgh 1590; when standing with his bonnet off, and his hands lifted up to heaven, "he praised God that he was born in the time of the light of the gospel, and in such a place, as to be king of such a church, the sincerest [purest] kirk in the world. The church of Geneva (says he) keep Pasche and Yule [Easter and Christmas], what have they for them? They have no institution. As for our neighbour kirk of England, their service is an evil-said mass in English; they want nothing of the mass but the liftings. I charge you, my good ministers, doctors, elders, nobles, gentlemen, and barons, to stand to your purity, and to exhort the people to do the same; and I, forsooth, as long as I brook my life, shall maintain the same*." In his speech to the parliament 1598, he tells them, "that he minded not to bring in Papistical or Anglicane bishops t." Nay, upon his leaving Scotland, to take possession of the crown of England, he gave public thanks to God in the kirk of Edinburgh, "that he had left both kirk and kingdom in that state which he intended not to alter any ways, his subjects living in peace." But all this was kingcraft, or else his majesty changed his principles with the climate. The Scots ministers did not approach him with the distant submission and reverence of the English bishops, and therefore within nine months after he ascended the throne of England, he renounced presbytery, and established it for a maxim, No bishop, no king. So soon did this pious monarch renounce his principles (if he had any) and break through the most solemn vows and obligations! When the long parliament addressed king Charles I. to set up presbytery in the room of episcopacy, his majesty objected his coronation oath, in which he had sworn to maintain the clergy in their rights and privileges; but king James had no such scruples of conscience; for without so much as asking the consent of parliament, general assembly, or people, he entered upon the most effectual measures to subvert the kirkdiscipline which he had sworn to maintain with hands lifted up to heaven, at his coronation, and had afterward solemnly subscribed with his queen and family, in the years 1581 and 1590§. The Papists put the king in remembrance, that he was born of Roman-Catholic parents, and had been baptized according to the rites and ceremonies of the church of Rome; that his mother, of whom he usually spoke with reverence, was a martyr for that church; and that he himself, upon sundry occasions, had expressed no dislike to her doctrines, though he disallowed of the Calderwood's Hist. of the Church of Scotland, p. 256. + Ibid. p. 418. James, when settled on the English throne, talked a different language. Dr. Grey quotes different passages to this purport, with a view to invalidate Mr. Neal's authority. The fact is not, that Calderwood falsified, and Mr. Neal through prejudice adopted, his representations, but that James was a dissembler; and, when he wrote what Dr. Grey produces from his works, had thrown off the mask he wore in Scotland. See Harris's Life of James I. p. 25-29.-ED. Ibid. p. 473. § Bishop Warburton censures Mr. Neal for not giving, here, the provocation which the king had received from-what he styles "the villanous and tyrannical usage of the kirk of Scotland to him." On this censure it may be observed, that had Mr. Neal gone into the detail of the treatment the king had met with from the Scots clergy, besides the long digression into which it would have led him, it would not have eventually saved the reputation of the king. For Mr. Neal must have related the causes of that behaviour. It arose from their jealousy, and their fears of his disposition to crush them and their religion; founded on facts delivered to them by the English ministry, and from his favouring and employing known Papists. The violation of his solemn reiterated declarations, when he became king of England, shewed how just were those suspicions: and proved him to have been a dissembler. To these remarks it may be added, what provocation constrained him to give the public thanks and promise, with which he left Scotland. See Dr. Harris's Life of James I. p. 25-31, and Burnet's History of his Own Times, vol. 1. p. 5. Edinburgh edition in 12mo.-ED. usurpations of the court of Rome over foreign princes; that he had called the church of Rome his mother-church; and therefore they presumed to welcome his majesty into England with a petition for an open toleration *. But the bishops of the church of England made the earliest application for his majesty's protection and favour. As soon as the queen was dead, archbishop Whitgift sent Dr. Nevil, dean of Canterbury, express into Scotland, in the name of all the bishops and clergy of England, to give his majesty assurance of their unfeigned duty and loyalty; to know what commands he had for them with respect to the ecclesiastical courts, and to recommend the church of England to his countenance and favour†. The king replied, that he would uphold the government of the church as the queen left it; which comforted the timorous archbishop, who had sometimes spoke with great uneasiness of the Scotch mist. Upon his majesty's arrival all parties addressed him, and among others the Dutch and French churches, and the English Puritans; to the former his majesty gave this answer, "I need not use many words to declare my good-will to you, who have taken sanctuary here for the sake of religion; I am sensible you have enriched this kingdom with several arts and manufactures; and I swear to you, that if any one shall give you disturbance in your churches, upon your application to me, I will revenge your cause; and though you are none of my proper subjects, I will maintain and cherish you as much as any prince in the world." But the latter, whatever they had reason to expect, met with very different usage. Notwithstanding all the precautions that were taken to secure the elections of members for the next parliament, the archbishop wished he might not live to see it, for fear of some alteration in the church; for the Puritans were preparing petitions, and printing pamphlets in their own vindication, though by the archbishop's vigilance, says Mr. Strypet, not a petition or a pamphlet escaped without a speedy and effectual answer. It is While the king was in his progress to London [April, 1603] the Puritans presented their millenary petition, so called, because it was said to be subscribed by a thousand hands, though there were not more than eight hundred out of twenty-five counties§. entitled, "The humble petition of the ministers of the church of England, desiring reformation of certain ceremonies and abuses of the church." The preamble sets forth, "that neither as factious That the expectations of the Papists were not disappointed, though Dr. Grey controverts Mr. Neal's representation, there is ample proof given by Dr. Harris in his Life of James I. p. 219. 226." It is certain (says Dr. Warner) that he had on several occasions given great room to suspect, that he was far from being an enemy to the Roman Catholics. Amidst all their hopes (he adds), each side had their fears whilst James himself had, properly speaking, no other religion, than what flowed from a principle which he called kingcraft." Warner's Ecclesiastical History, vol. 2. p. 476, 477.-ED. : + Life of Whitgift, p. 559. Strype's Ann. vol. ult. p. 187. § Clark's Life of Hildersham, p. 116, annexed to the General Martyrology. |