It is very important that the members of the Church of England, and others, should receive some correct information on the subject of religious persecution, or persecution for conscience sake; for a very great mistake on the subject very commonly prevails—namely, that the Dissenters have always been the suffering party, and the Church the offending party, in this matter. At a time, indeed, when the duty of toleration was little understood, some of the rulers of the Church of England, as well as of the government of the day, did exercise the most unjustifiable severity against those who ventured to separate from the established religion. But the instances of this have been so much insisted on, and have been so frequently made the subject of popular declamation, that many have been led to imagine that the Church of England has, again and again, been chargeable with the guilt of cruelly persecuting her opponents, while the opponents have been guiltless of any such wrong against her. But the impression is a most erroneous one; for it may be asserted, without the fear of contradiction, that the sufferings which the clergy endured in the short space of three years during the Commonwealth, at the hands of those who had separated from her, were in severity and extent greater than the whole amount of suffering which she may have been the instrument of inflicting on separatists for the hundred years previous.[84]

In proof of this, Gauden,[85] in the Petitionary Remonstrance which he delivered to Cromwell, in behalf of the suffering Clergy of England, stated that the number of Ministers ejected from the benefices amounted to 8000. And Gauden would not, in a public address, and to such a man as Cromwell, have ventured to make a false or careless statement. But a much closer investigation of the subject was afterwards made, and the result of it was published by Walker, in his well known work, entitled—“The Sufferings of the Clergy,” from which it may be seen that, if we include in the catalogue the Cathedral Clergy, and the Clergy belonging to the Universities, and chaplains,—as well as the parochial ministers and their curates,—the sufferers far exceeded the number above stated. By a resolution passed in the House of Commons, during the Protectorate of Cromwell, all ministers were to be deprived of their benefices who refused to sign the League and Covenant; and, consequently, numbers who were too loyal to subscribe a document so hostile to the interests of the King and the Church, were at once reduced to poverty, and had to bear the severest hardships and privations. They and their families were driven from their houses, not knowing where to look for food and shelter; exposed also to the brutal insolence of the military, who found as much pleasure in plundering a peaceful parsonage, as in defiling the sanctity of the house of God. And these outrages appear to have been sanctioned by those in authority, rather than repressed. Besides this, numbers were thrown into prisons—the ancient palaces of the Bishops being turned into jails for the purpose; and when these and the common prisons in London were crowded with inmates, “many” as Clarendon states, “both of the laity and clergy, were committed to prison on board the Ships in the river Thames, where they were kept under decks, and no friend suffered to come to them, by which many lost their lives.” Nor is this to be omitted, in giving account of their sufferings, that while they were enduring these wrongs, for conscience sake—nay, suffering the loss of all things, rather than abandon their principles—they were vilified in Parliament, and by the public press, as being little better than criminals; and men, whose reputation had never been blemished by a single stain,—whose deep learning, and still deeper piety, would have reflected honor on any church of which they had been members;—men who were saints indeed, in the true and ancient sense of the word—were held up to public scorn, as if they were not fit to live, and branded by the name of “malignant and scandalous ministers.”

The recollection of these persecutions, inflicted on the loyal body of the clergy, sharpened the feelings of the Government, after the Restoration, against Dissenters; and those who then came into power were too ready to make reprievals for the injuries and wrongs committed during the Commonwealth. The consequence was, that many excellent men, whose devotedness to God and whose zeal in the pastoral office was unquestioned—men of whom, indeed, “the world was not worthy,” and whose only offence was want of conformity to the Church, suffered very severely; but their sufferings were trifling, both in extent or severity, compared to the previous sufferings of the Clergy: so much, indeed, does the one exceed the other, that Archbishop Bramhall, who certainly was one not accustomed to utter words at random, says, “Let Mr. Baxter sum up into one catalogue all the nonconformists throughout the kingdom of England, even since the beginning of the Reformation, who have been cast aside, or driven away. I dare abate him all the rest of the kingdom, and only exhibit the Martyrologies of London, and the two Universities, or a list of those who in the late intestine wars have been haled away to prisons, or chased away into banishment, by his own party, in these three places alone; or left to the merciless world to beg their bread, for no other crime than loyalty, and because they stood affected to the ancient rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, and they shall double them for number.”—Grot: Relig. p. 116.

It is very desirable that such facts as these should be known; not that the knowledge of them may serve to ferment and keep alive any feelings of hostility, or unkindness, towards those who still maintain the principles of nonconformity—such a purpose cannot be too strongly repudiated; but, that we may have an answer to give to such as charge the Church with intolerance and persecution, and may be able to shew, that in this respect she has been far more “sinned against than sinning.” These facts also prove to us, and on this account they are worthy of record, that the principles of the Church of England were considered by our forefathers as worth suffering for; and that rather than surrender the Articles of her Creed, or abrogate her regimen, they willingly endured the severest penalties; took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and counted not their life dear unto them. Happily, the day of persecution for conscience sake is past,—the spirit of the age does not tolerate any thing like violence;—would that our “unhappy divisions” were at an end also;—that all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity were not only of one heart, but of one mind also—were “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgement,” “spoke the same things,” “walked by the same rule;” not only kept “the unity of the Spirit,” but also unity of worship and of doctrine. This is the fellowship which the Scripture teaches should subsist between the members of Christ’s Church; and nothing short of this should be the object of your hopes and prayers.