William and Mary were declared King and Queen of England on the 12th of February 1689. Their reign is marked by great events—such as the siege of Londonderry, Lord Dundee’s insurrection in Scotland, the battle of the Boyne, the surrender of Limerick, the massacre of Glencoe, and the war with France; but we purposely pass over all civil and military transactions, and confine our attention to ecclesiastical and literary affairs, with which Samuel Wesley, as a clergyman and as an author, was more closely connected.
One of the first acts of William, after his accession to the throne, was to give orders that, in his private chapel, the service should be said instead of sung. This alteration was warranted by the rubric, and yet it caused among the High Church and half-popish party a great amount of murmuring.
Another of his early acts strangely enough occasioned much excitement. Touching for the scrofula was a practice which had come down from the darkest of the dark ages, and William dared to sneer at it. It had been sanctioned by high ecclesiastical authority, but even that did not deter the bold monarch from treating it with contempt. Charles II., in the course of his reign, touched near one hundred thousand persons. In 1682, only seven years before the commencement of the reign of William, he performed the royal rite not fewer than eight thousand five hundred times. Two years later, in 1684, the throng of scrofulous persons was such that six or seven of the sick were trampled to death. King James, two or three years after, touched eight hundred persons, in the choir of Chester Cathedral. The days for touching were fixed by the Privy Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy in all the parish churches of the realm. When the appointed time came, several divines, in full canonicals, stood round the canopy of state, the surgeon of the royal household introduced the sick, a passage from 16th chapter of Mark was read, after which one of the sick was brought to the all-healing monarch. His Majesty stroked the ulcers and swellings, and hung round the patient’s neck a white riband, to which was fastened a gold coin. The other sufferers were then led up in succession, and as each was touched the chaplain repeated the incantation, “They shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” Then came the epistle, prayers, antiphonies, and a benediction. Such was the ceremony of touching for the cure of the king’s evil. The expense of this ceremony, in the shape of coins put round the sufferers’ necks, was little less than £10,000 a-year. The whole affair was a huge piece of costly and superstitious foolery, ending in no beneficial results whatever. We dare to assert this, notwithstanding the solemn assurance of one of the surgeons of King Charles II., that the gift of healing was communicated by the unction administered at the coronation, and that the cures were so numerous, and sometimes so rapid, that they could not be attributed to any natural cause whatever.
King William had too much sense to be duped, and too much honesty to bear a part in what he knew to be an imposture.[79] “It is a silly superstition,” said he, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his palace was besieged by a crowd of sick persons: “give the poor creatures some money and send them away.” Only on one single occasion was he successfully importuned to lay his hand on a patient’s sores. “God give you better health,” he said, “and more sense!” What was the result of this abandonmentabandonment of royal practice? The parents of scrofulous children cried out against William’s cruelty. Bigots lifted up their hands and eyes at his impiety. Jacobites sarcastically praised him for not presuming to arrogate to himself a power which belonged only to legitimate sovereigns. And even some of his own friends thought he acted unwisely in treating with such marked contempt a superstition which had so strong a hold on the vulgar mind. But William was not to be moved, and was accordingly set down by many High Churchmen as an infidel, or at least a Puritan.
As soon as William and Mary ascended the throne of England the new oath of allegiance was tendered. It was conceived in the simplest form, the words “rightful and lawful sovereigns” being, upon mature deliberation, omitted. Notwithstanding this modification, several members, both of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, refused to take it. Among these were the Earls of Clarendon, Lichfield, and Exeter, and likewise seven bishops, including five who had been sent to the Tower for refusing obedience to the mandates of James. The spiritual lords who refused the oath of allegiance to William and Mary were Sancroft, the primate, Turner, Bishop of Ely, Lake, of Chichester, Ken, of Bath, White, of Peterborough, Thomas, of Worcester, and Frampton, of Gloucester. Above four hundred of the clergy, including some of the highest distinction, followed the example set by Sancroft and the six bishops, and thus began the schism of the Nonjurors,—a term which became as prominent as that of Nonconformists had been under the last two Stuarts.
The 1st of August, 1689, was the day fixed by Parliament, 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. Above twenty-nine-thirtieths submitted to the law, but, in general, the compliance was tardy, sad, and sullen. Many, no doubt, deliberately sacrificed principle to interest, but they had not fortitude to resign the parsonage, the garden, and 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; still the thing was done, and ten thousand clergymen solemnly called Heaven to attest their promise that they would be loyal to King William. The clergymen and members of the university, who refused to take the oath, were about four hundred in number, including the primate and six of his suffragans.
Among these dissentients, there were some who were men of scholarship and mark, but perhaps it is scarce too much to say, that there was hardly one who was qualified to discuss any large question of morals or politics without either extreme feebleness or extreme flightiness of mind. The following are the most distinguished among them:—
William Sherlock, rector of St George’s, Botolph Lane, prebendary of St Paul’s, and Master of the Temple; all of which preferments were taken from him until some years afterwards, when he took the oath and was reinstated. Dr Sherlock was a good man, but held extreme opinions. He was the author of several publications, but is chiefly indebted for celebrity to his “Practical Discourse Concerning Death,” a work which went through thirty editions in a short space of time, has been printed in all sizes and forms, and has been applauded by the most able critics.
George Hickes, born at Newsham, in Yorkshire, and educated at Northallerton, a fellow and a tutor of Lincoln College, Oxford, Dean of Worcester, with the prospect of becoming Bishop of Bristol. He was the author of three volumes of sermons, and of a multitude of tracts in defence of himself and of the other nonjurors. Macaulay says, “Of all the Englishmen of his time George Hickes was the most versed in the old Teutonic languages, and his knowledge of the early Christian literature also was extensive.”
Jeremy Collier, lecturer at Gray’s Inn, a man of intrepid courage, indefatigable industry, and unsullied integrity; the author of three volumes of essays on moral subjects; of a translation of Moreri’s “Historical Dictionary,” in four volumes folio; of an “Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain,” &c. Macaulay writes:—“Jeremy Collier was a good man, of eminent abilities, and a great master of sarcasm and of rhetoric. 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 Anti-puritan reaction. His reading, too, though undigested, was of immense extent: but his mind was narrow, his reasoning singularly futile and inconclusive, and his brain almost turned by priestly pride.”
Henry Dodwell, Camden Professor of History in the Oxford University, a man of great learning, of extensive reading, and of unwearied application, of undissembled piety, and unimpeached integrity; a man of great benevolence, and who religiously abstained from almost all kinds of food three days every week; and yet a man of paradoxical notions, narrow religious sentiments, and who, as a writer, enlisted in the cause of infidelity, and attacked revelation in the disguise of a friend. The brilliant historian above quoted says:—“Dodwell had perused innumerable volumes in various languages, and 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 Ludowich Muggleton. 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. He further maintained that our souls are naturally mortal, and that the gift of immortality is conveyed in the sacrament of baptism; but, in order to the efficacy of the sacrament, it is absolutely necessary that the water be poured, and the words be pronounced by a priest who has been ordained by a bishop.”
John Kettlewell, born at Northallerton, fellow and tutor of Lincoln College, Oxford, domestic chaplain of the Countess of Bedford, and rector of Coleshill in Warwickshire; a celebrated preacher, a laborious writer; learned without being proud, and wise without being cunning; devout without affectation, religious without morosity, and courteous without flattery. His works, which were numerous, were published in two volumes folio.
Charles Leslie, chancellor of the cathedral church of the diocese of Connor, one of the ablest champions the Non-jurors had; a man of extensive learning and great merit, and the well-known author of “A Short and Easy Method with the Deists.”
To the above, of course, must be added the primate and the six bishops. Dr Birch, in drawing Sancroft’s character, says:—“He was slow, timorous, and narrow-spirited; but at the same time a good, honest, and well-meaning man. He was laborious in his studies, and had written, perhaps, more with his own hand than any person of his time. But the three sermons which he published give us a very low idea of his taste and judgment, and are more suitable to a disciple of Bishop Andrews than a contemporary of Dr Tillotson.” Turner, Bishop of Ely, was a man of higher position than of intellect. Lake, Bishop of Chichester, is also unknown to fame. Ken, Bishop of Bath, in some respects was a man of mark; his works, all of a theological and practical turn, were published in four volumes octavo. He was a man of great integrity and courage; and, though deprived of his bishopric, to the day of his death signed himself “late Bishop of Bath and Wells.” He died in 1710, having been in the habit for many years of travelling with his shroud in his portmanteau, and which he always put on when attacked by illness. White of Peterborough is scarce worth mentioning. Thomas of Worcester died during the first year of William and Mary’s reign; and of Frampton of Gloucester we know nothing which is worth relating.
These, then, were the principal men among the Non-jurors; and these, with four hundred clergymen, forfeited their ecclesiastical benefices, and formed a sort of non-juring church, avowedly Jacobite in its political predilections and principles, and, which for many years, waged a fierce controversy with the Establishment on the theological aspects of the question which divided them. The non-juring system had a few lay-adherents, but it extended beyond the clergy only to a very limited extent. The new sect was a sect of preachers without hearers. A few 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 among them by always visiting them in full canonicals. But these were exceptions. Most of the Non-jurors found themselves thrown on the world with nothing to eat and nothing to do. They naturally degenerated into beggars and loungers, and many of them became domesticated as chaplains, tutors, and spiritual directors in the houses of opulent Jacobites.[80] The schism of the Non-jurors, however, led to great changes among the occupants of Church offices; and, before the end of the third year of King William’s reign, he had issued no fewer than eighteen conges for the election of new bishops. During this brief period, sixteen new prelates, all indebted for their promotion to the existing government, and recommended by their attachment to the principles of the Revolution, were introduced into the House of Lords; and of the whole twenty-six sees then existing, only ten were left in the possession of persons who had been bishops in the reign of James.[81]
On the 24th of May 1689, the Act of Toleration became law. This act, 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 several statutes passed between the accession of Queen Elizabeth and the Revolution, requiring all people, under severe penalties, to attend the services of the Church of England, and to abstain from attending conventicles, were left unrepealed; but provision was made 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 severe Act of Uniformity, the Five Mile Act, and the Conventicle Act were not repealed, but merely relaxed; it being provided that dissenting ministers might preach, if they professed, under their hand, their belief in the Articles of the Church of England, with a few exceptions, such as, that the Church has power to regulate ceremonies, that the doctrines in the Book of Homilies are sound, and that there is nothing superstitious and idolatrous in the ordination service. But unless the minister subscribed thirty-four out 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 vengeance, had devised for the tormenting and ruining of schismatical teachers. 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 consciences. They were, on the above conditions, allowed to attend their own places of worship, provided they were duly registered, and had not the doors locked or barred. They were protected against hostile intrusion, and it was made a penal offence to enter a meeting-house for the purpose of molesting a congregation. The only classes of religionists excepted from the benefits of this act were the Papists and Socinians.[82]
Many of the Dissenters were still dissatisfied, and wished other matters of grievance to be settled in parliament. Accordingly, what was called the “Comprehension Bill” was brought into the House of Lords. The chief object of this bill was to admit Presbyterian ministers into the Church, without compelling them to acknowledge the invalidity of their former ordination; and it also proposed to allow certain ceremonial forms in public worship to be observed or omitted at discretion.
This bill passed the House of Lords; but the Commons considered the question as more suitable for a convocation; and the Lords concurred in an address to the throne to that effect.
To prepare the way for convocation a royal commission was issued, authorising certain individuals to meet and propose alterations in the Liturgy and Canons, and to consider other matters connected with the Church. The commissioners thus appointed were Lamplugh, Compton, Mew, Lloyd, Sprat, Smith, Trelawney, Burnet, Humphreys, Stratford, all bishops at the time; also Stillingfleet, Patrick, Tillotson, Sharp, Hall, Beveridge, Tennison, Fowler, Grove, and Williams, who were subsequently raised to the Episcopal bench; and likewise Meggot, Kidder, Aldridge, Jane, Beaumont, Montague, Goodman, Battely, Alston, and Scott, who, though distinguished men, never attained to prelatical honours.
The commissioners frequently met, but some of the members absented themselves, especially Dr Jane, the Regius Professor of Divinity in Oxford, on the ground that alterations were not required, and that the present was not the season for such discussions. Burnet says, “We had before us all the books and papers that the Nonconformists had at any time offered, setting forth their demands, together with many advices and propositions which had been made at several times by most of the best and most learned of our divines; and so we prepared a scheme to be laid before convocation.”
The following are some of the alterations that were proposed:—Chanting to be discontinued. Apochryphal lessons to be left out of the calendar. The sign of the cross in baptism to be omitted when desired. The sacramental elements to be administered in pews to those who might object to kneeling. The absolution to be read by deacons. The Gloria Patri not to be repeated at the end of every psalm. In the Te Deum the words only-begotten Son to be substituted for thine honourable, true, and only Son. All titles of the king and queen to be omitted, and the word “sovereign” only used. The Collects to be revised by Patrick. Sponsors to be disused if desired. The great festivals, as a rule, to be retained; but it was not thought desirable that St Valentine, St Chad, St Swithin, St Dunstan, and St Alphage, should share the honours of St John and St Paul. The Athanasian creed to be kept in the Prayer-Book, but Stillingfleet was to draw up a rubric, declaring that the damnatory clauses were to be understood to apply only to such as obstinately denied the substance of the Christian faith. The point of greatest difficulty was that of re-ordination; but it was at last agreed that the hypothetical form should be adopted in the case of Dissenters, as in the case of uncertain baptism, in these words “If thou art not already ordained, I ordain thee.” Such were some of the alterations proposed by the commissioners.[83] It mattered little, however, whether the recommendations of the commissioners were good or bad. They were all doomed before they were published; for the clergy were all smarting from being recently compelled to take the oaths, and were resolved to defeat a favourite scheme of that government which had exacted from them, under severe penalties, a submission not easily to be reconciled to their conscience or their pride.
The convocation, it may be observed, though regularly assembled with every parliament since the Restoration, had done no business since the year 1662; so that the members were detained in town, at considerable expense, during the session, merely to go through the parade of reading the church service in Latin; but now it was proposed to submit to their consideration most important changes.
The convocation, summoned by the writ of King William, assembled on the 21st of November 1689. Compton was in the chair. Beveridge preached a Latin sermon, in which he warmly eulogised the existing system, and yet declared himself favourable to a moderate reform. The struggle between the advocates for change and those who wished to preserve the Liturgy in its present state commenced at the very outset, in the election of a prolocutor. Tillotson, who was known to speak the sense both of the king and queen, and was also supported by the government, was proposed by Dr Sharp, afterwards Archbishop of York; but the election of Dr Jane was carried by a majority of two to one. Jane, of course, belonged to the High-Church party. He had borne a chief part in framing that decree by which the University of Oxford ordered the works of Milton to be publicly burned in the schools; and yet the same man had repaired to the headquarters of the Prince of Orange, and had assured his Highness that Oxford would willingly coin her plate for the support of the war against her oppressor. For a short time Jane had been regarded as a Whig, now he was a Tory. He had demanded the see of Exeter as a reward due to his services, but had been refused; and hence his changed sentiments. At the time several epigrams were written on the double-faced Janus, who, having got a professorship by looking one way, now hoped to get a bishopric by looking another.
On November 25th the prolocutor was presented to the Upper House, on which occasion he expatiated on the excellency of the Church of England, as at present constituted, intimating that no amendments could be made, and closing with the words, nolumus leges Angliæ mutari. The Bishop of London, as president of the Upper House, replied that the clergy ought to be prepared to make concessions in matters not essential, and that it was their duty to show some indulgence to the Dissenters under King William, since some of the bishops and clergy had pledged themselves to do so in their addresses to King James.
At the next meeting, the Bishop of London informed the convocation that the royal commission was defective, inasmuch as the great seal had not been attached to it. They were, therefore, prorogued until the defect was supplied. In the interval, great exertions were made by the government to bring over some of the stiffest opponents in the Lower House, but with small success. On the 4th of December, the royal commission was communicated to the convocation, by which they were authorised to act. The commission stated that, “as rites and ceremonies are indifferent and alterable,” changes might be made according to the exigencies of times and places, that it was desirable that the canons should be reviewed, and the ecclesiastical courts reformed. The convocation was accordingly empowered to treat of alterations, and to form canons and constitutions, to be submitted to his Majesty.
The king also sent a message, by the Earl of Nottingham, in which he expressed his hope that convocation would not “disappoint his good intentions, or deprive the Church of any benefit from their consultations.”
Of course, it was necessary to acknowledge the royal message, by an address to his Majesty. This gave rise to vexatious and most disreputable squabbles; and the result was, that, without any discussion whatever on the important matters that had been recommended by the royal commissioners, convocation was dissolved on February 6, 1690; nor was it suffered to meet again for the transaction of business for the next ten years. Thus ended the project for comprehending Dissenters within the pale of the Church of England, the last attempt of the kind that has been made.[84]
From this time dates the long struggle between the two great parties of Conformists. These parties, indeed, had, under various forms, existed within the Anglican communion ever since the Reformation; but, till after the Revolution, they were not marshalled in regular and permanent order of battle against each other, and therefore were not known by established names. Now they began to be called the High-Church party and the Low-Church party. The High-Church party sympathised with James, and were cool friends to William, and thought that 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. The Low-Church party stood between the Nonconformists and the rigid Conformists, and contained, as it still contains, two different elements—a Puritan and a Latitudinarian element. They saw nothing in the existing polity and ceremonial of the Church of England which could make it their duty to become Dissenters; but, at the same time, they held that both the polity and ceremonial were means, 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 greatly blamed the scruples of the Nonconformists, but thought the reflections thrown on them by the High-Church party to be grossly unjust.[85]
More than one Methodist historian has said that Samuel Wesley was “a rigid Tory in politics, and a High Churchman in religious principle;” that he “regarded Charles I. as properly a martyr; and was very much attached to the interests of James.” I respectfully doubt, to some extent, the correctness of these assertions.
Samuel Wesley was not a Jacobite, and, in the first instance, he was not a Tory. There is no evidence to show that he was attached to the interests of James; but, on the contrary, he was disgusted with James’s tyranny at Oxford, and was the author of the first pamphlet published in defence of the Revolution. John Wesley says, his father was a Tory, in the sense of being “one that believes God, not the people, to be the origin of all civil power;”[86] but he likewise asserts, that his “father always praised God for the happy revolution of 1688.”[87]
Then as it regards his being a High Churchman;—it is true that he considered Charles I. as an injured sovereign and properly a martyr. He held the same opinions as his son John, who writes, “All agree that King Charles was a pattern of piety, sobriety, temperance, and chastity. He could not endure an obscene or profane word. He was punctual in his devotions, both public and private. He was rigorously just; but is supposed to have been sometimes wanting in sincerity. He was a good father, a good master, and a good husband; yea, a fond one, which was the chief source of his troubles, together with the wrong bias towards arbitrary power which had been instilled into him from his infancy. But for this, he would have been one of the most accomplished princes that ever sat upon the English throne.”[88] But allowing that Samuel Wesley held such opinions,—what then? Is that a proof that Samuel Wesley was, “in religious principle, a High Churchman?” We greatly doubt it.
The High-Church party were most bitter opponents of Tillotson, the leader of the Low-Church party; whereas, Samuel Wesley was his ardent admirer, and even excessive eulogist. The High-Church party were most vehemently opposed to the scheme of Tillotson and King William, for “Comprehension,” or the uniting of Conformists and Nonconformists; while on the other hand, the Low-Church party desired its adoption; and, in this respect, Samuel Wesley agreed with them. He was in favour of admitting the Dissenters within the pale of the Established Church, and, therefore, we infer that he was in favour of the modification of church rites and ceremonies, as recommended by Tillotson and his friends in 1689. The following is an article taken from the Athenian Oracle, (vol. i. p. 301,) and was probably written by Samuel Wesley himself, or at all events, it was sanctioned by him, as one of the chief members of the Athenian Society:—
“A Comprehension, or the uniting of Conformists and Nonconformists, is undoubtedly necessary for the reforming of England. 1. Because the schism itself, on which side soever the fault lies, is a great sin and scandal, and highly needs reformation. That there is a schism is as plain as that one and one are not one, but two; since there are different churches, different communions, and hearers more different and opposite than either. 2. This union is further necessary, even to personal reformation, because the want thereof has so much obstructed it; persons being more concerned for their own particular tenets than for common Christianity; nay, entertaining the most bitter, scurrilous, and profane scoffs against the contrary party, even in their most solemn and religious performances, with approbation and pleasure. Thus while one laughs at the other’s preaching, and the other at his praying, the Atheist laughs at both, and there are very many that believe neither. 3. Another reason is, because we see not how the ancient church discipline, so much desired, and the loss thereof so much lamented, can ever without this be renewed. As things now are, let a person be excommunicated in our Church, he has the Dissenters to fly to; in theirs, he flies to us, or indeed keeps between both, rails at all, and is of neither. 4. Again, while this fatal and scandalous division lasts, it cannot be avoided, but there will still be different interests, and that powerful ones, whose struggle will be not only dangerous to the State, but breed animosities, strife, and bitterness in the different parties.”[89]
Such were Samuel Wesley’s arguments in favour of the attempt to bring Dissenters within the pale of the Church of England. This was not the language of the High-Church party; for that party were most stoutly opposed to the propounded scheme altogether. Samuel Wesley was no partisan of theirs; and it is a most unaccountable mistake for respectable writers to suppose he was. If he was a party man at all, he unquestionably belonged to the Tillotson or Low-Church party. It is true, that ten or twelve years afterwards, he was brought into most painful collision with his Dissenting brethren; but the fault was not his so much as Mr Clavel’s. The controversy that then took place was mournfully bitter, but it was prompted more by politics than by religion; and though it led to a full and final separation between him and his old Dissenting friends, yet we are not aware that there is a particle of evidence to show, that after this he imbibed any of the supercilious and superstitious notions generally entertained by the High-Church party of the present day. He held his ecclesiastical and political principles clearly, conscientiously, and firmly; but he was not a bigot; and, if such a confederacy as the Evangelical Alliance had then existed, he could, without a scruple, have become a sincere and active member of it.
Before leaving the High and the Low Church parties in the days of King William, it may be added, that though the Low-Church clergymen were a minority, and not a large minority, of their profession, their weight was much more than proportioned to their numbers. 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 put together.
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 the Protestant sects. He was bent on effecting three great reforms in the laws touching ecclesiastical matters. 1. To obtain for Dissenters permission to celebrate their worship in freedom and security. 2. 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. 3. To throw open civil offices to Protestants without distinction of sect. The first of these only was attainable. He came too late for the second, and too early for the third.[90]
While the preceding events were happening in England, other events of great importance took place in Scotland. There Episcopacy was abolished, being a great and insupportable grievance to the nation, and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people. An act was also passed, in 1690, ordaining that all Presbyterian ministers yet alive, who had been thrust from their charges since 1661, or banished for not conforming to Prelacy, should forthwith be restored to their churches, their manses, and their glebes; and, by another act passed on the 7th of June, in the same year, parliament ratified and established the Westminster Confession of Faith, as the public and avowed confession of the Scottish Church; and restored the government of the Church by kirk-sessions, presbyteries, provincial synods, and general assemblies.
Such were the opposite effects of the Revolution upon the National Church in the two ends of the island,—in England consolidating and confirming the established Episcopacy,—in Scotland sweeping it utterly away, and in its place re-erecting the old abolished edifice of presbytery on broader and deeper foundations than ever.
The position in which the Revolution placed the generality of Protestant Dissenters has been explained in the account given of the Toleration Act, which was the only measure passed in their favour. From the benefits of this act the Roman Catholics and the Socinians were excluded; and, in 1699, the former were placed under greater restrictions than ever. It was then enacted by parliament,—1. That a reward of a hundred pounds should be paid to every person who should apprehend any Popish bishop, priest, or Jesuit, and prosecute him to conviction, for saying mass, or exercising any other part of his office, within these realms. 2. That the priest so convicted should be adjudged to perpetual imprisonment. 3. That the keeping of a school by any Papist should be punished by the same penalty. 4. That every person, educated in the Popish religion, or professing the same, who, within six months after attaining the age of eighteen, should not take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and also subscribe the declaration against transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, and the sacrifice of the mass, should be incapable of inheriting, or taking by descent, any lands, tenements, or hereditaments; and that the next of kin, being a Protestant, should inherit the estates of which the Roman Catholic was thus deprived. 5. That all Papists should be incapable of purchasing any lands, either in their own names or in those of any other persons.[91]
This was a monstrous Act of Parliament; but when we take into consideration the sneaking perfidy, coarse brutalities, and bloodthirsty cruelties practised by Papists during late years in Ireland, in Scotland, and even in England itself,—when we remember that Papists in foreign lands were concocting dark intrigues against the British throne and British nation, recently rescued from the tyranny of papal domination,—and when we remember further, that, as lately as the year 1692, De Grandval, a captain of French dragoons, instigated by the Popish King James, had entered into a conspiracy against the life of King William, and had been shot for his intended assassination,—and that, in 1696, there had been another more widely ramified Popish plot for the same infernal purpose, which resulted in three of the conspirators being executed at Tyburn,—we are prepared to understand why Papists were excluded from the benefits of the Toleration Act, and why they were made the subjects of the legalised persecution of the act of 1699, “for the further preventing of the growth of Popery.” Abstractedly considered, the act was monstrous, and merits reprobation; but severe maladies sometimes need severe remedies to effect their cure.
Our space forbids any further review of ecclesiastical affairs during William and Mary’s reign; and we must now content ourselves with miscellaneous notices of this eventful period in English history.
In 1690 occurred the death of a man whose name, despite his almost insane eccentricities, will always occupy a place in English Church annals. More than forty years had elapsed, says Macaulay, since George Fox had begun to see visions and to cast out devils. He was then a youth of pure morals and grave deportment, with a perverse temper, with the education of a labouring man, and with an intellect in the most unhappy of all states; that is to say, too much disordered for liberty, and not sufficiently disordered for bedlam. At the time, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists were refuting and reviling each other. He applied in vain for spiritual direction and consolation. One jolly old clergyman told him to smoke tobacco and to sing psalms; another counselled him to go and lose some blood. After some time, he came to the conclusion that no human being was competent to instruct him in divine things; and that the truth had been communicated to himself by direct inspiration from Heaven. He argued that, as the confusion of languages began at Babel, and that, as the persecutors of Christ put on the cross an inscription in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, the knowledge of languages, and more especially of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, must be useless to a Christian minister. One of the most precious truths revealed to this new apostle was, that it was falsehood and adulation to use the second person plural instead of the second person singular. To say good morning or good evening was highly reprehensible, for the phrases evidently imported that God had made bad mornings and bad evenings. To talk of the month of March was to worship Mars; and to talk of Monday was to pay idolatrous homage to the moon. A Christian was bound to face death itself rather than touch his hat to the greatest of mankind. Bowing was considered as the effect of Satanical influence, for the woman in the gospel, while she had a spirit of infirmity, was bowed together, and ceased to bow as soon as divine power had liberated her from the tyranny of the evil one.
Fox long wandered from place to place, teaching this strange theology, shaking like an aspen leaf in his paroxysms of fanatical excitement, forcing his way into churches which he nicknamed steeple-houses, interrupting prayers and sermons with clamour and scurrility, and pestering rectors and justices with epistles much resembling burlesques of those sublime odes in which the Hebrew prophets foretold the calamities of Babylon and Tyre. He soon acquired great notoriety by these religious feats. His strange face, his nasal chant, his immovable hat, and his leather breeches, were known all over the country. He was repeatedly imprisoned and set in the stocks, sometimes justly, for disturbing the public worship of congregations; sometimes unjustly, for merely talking nonsense. He soon gathered round him a body of disciples, some of whom went beyond himself in absurdity. He also made some converts, as Barclay and Penn, to whom he was immeasurably inferior in everything, except the energy of his convictions. By these converts his rude doctrines were polished into a form somewhat less shocking to good sense and good taste. His gibberish was translated into English; and his system so much improved that he himself might have been excused if he had hardly known it. To the last his disciples professed profound reverence for him; and his crazy epistles were received and read in Quaker meetings all over the country. This founder of the Quaker sect died in 1690.[92]
As already intimated in a previous chapter, Samuel Wesley, like Macaulay, had no great liking for the Quakers. The following article, taken from the Athenian Oracle, vol. i. p. 331, in which the Quakers and Papists are compared, will tend to show his opinions concerning a sect which were much more numerous about two hundred years ago than they are at present, and whose views and vagaries then were much more wild than happily they are now:—
“Both Quakers and Papists are so bad that they can hardly be called Christian. In many things they are near akin. The Quakers, ever since their rise, have been looked upon as the Jesuit by-blows. The Quakers deny the plenary satisfaction of Christ, and rest on their own merits; so do the Papists. They rail at our ministers, and deny their legal call or ordination; so do the Papists. They pretend to a greater strictness and singularity of life than other people; so do several orders among the Papists. Then, for fanaticism and enthusiasm, they are most admirably matched. But, to consider them asunder—The Papist holds more than he ought to do, and therefore all the articles of the Christian faith: but the Quaker much less, for the Quakers all deny the Christian sacraments, and we wonder how they have a face to pretend to what they never had, Christianity, when they were never christened. They are indeed a compendium of almost all sorts of heresies: for they not only deny the merits of Christ, with the Papists, but even His satisfaction and divinity, being at best no better than mere Arians. Nay, there have been some of them who, as far as we can understand them, deny our Saviour’s manhood, and turn angels, spirits, heaven, and hell into mean and jejune allegories. All of them, to a man, whom we ever met with, deny the Scriptures to be the Word of God, and most of them deny any resurrection of the body. For these reasons, we think, as a bad Christian is better than none, so a Papist is better than a Quaker.”[93]
This may seem a caricatured description of the Quakers’ religion, but it must be borne in mind that in 1690 that religion was not the systematised and inoffensive thing that it is in 1865.
Of all the members of the Low-Church party, in the reign of William and Mary, Tillotson stood the highest in general estimation. He was the son of a clothier, and was born at Sowerby Bridge, in Yorkshire, in 1630. His first sermon was preached at the morning exercise in Cripplegate, in 1661. Thirty years afterwards he was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, in the Church of St Mary le Bow. The congregation was the most splendid that had been seen in any place of worship since William and Mary’s coronation. The crowds that lined the streets greeted the new primate with loud applauses; but the applauses of his friends could not drown the roar of execration which the Jacobites and High-Church party set up against him. According to them, he was a thief, who had entered not by the door, but had climbed over the fences. He was an Arian, a Socinian, a Deist, an Atheist. He had never been christened, for his parents were Anabaptists. He had lost their religion when a boy, and he had never found another. In ribald lampoons he was nicknamed “Undipped John.” The parish register of his baptism was produced in vain. This storm of obloquy, which he had to face for the first time at more than sixty years of age, was too much for him. His spirits declined, his health gave way, and in 1695 he died, and Samuel Wesley, his sincere and warm admirer, wrote and published his elegy.
Tillotson was sincere, frank, and humble; of kind and tender affection, bountiful in his charities, and forgiving of injuries. After his death, there was found a bundle of bitter libels which had been published against him, on which he had written with his own hand, “I forgive the authors of these books, and I pray God that He also may forgive them.” His public principles were philanthropic, tolerant, and liberal. William and Mary reposed an entire confidence in his prudence, moderation, and integrity. In some points he was, perhaps, too compliant, and was led into some inconsistencies; but the times were difficult, and his intentions were always good. While he was in a private station of life, he always laid aside two-tenths of his income for charitable uses; and when he died, his debts could not have been paid if the king had not remitted his first fruits. 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 Scoliasts, no mean images, buffoon stories, or scurrilous invectives, ever marred the effect of his grave and temperate discourses. His style is not brilliant, but it is pure and transparently clear. He is always serious, and always good. His sermons were published in three volumes folio. Addison considered them as a standard of the purity of the English language; and Dryden acknowledged that, if he had any talent for English prose, it was derived from frequent perusal of Tillotson’s writings.
In 1694, on December 28, Queen Mary died, and Samuel Wesley composed and published a poem eulogising her character. Being seized with smallpox, Mary gave orders that every lady of the bed-chamber, every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not had the smallpox, should instantly leave the house. She locked herself up during a short time in her closet, burned some papers, and arranged others, and then calmly awaited her decease. William remained night and day by her bedside; and a few moments before she expired he was removed, almost insensible, from the sick-chamber. The public sorrow at her death was great and general. When the Commons next met they sat for a time in profound silence. The number of sad faces in the street struck every observer. On the Sunday which followed her death, her virtues were celebrated in almost every parish church of the capital, and in almost every great meeting-house of the Nonconformists. The funeral was the saddest and most august that Westminster had ever seen. The two Houses, with their maces, followed the hearse; the Lords, robed in scarlet and ermine; the Commons in long black mantles. No preceding sovereign had ever been attended to the grave by a parliament; for, till then, the parliament had always expired with the sovereign. The whole magistracy of the city swelled the procession. The banners of England and France, Scotland, and Ireland, were carried by great nobles before the corpse. The pall was borne by the chiefs of the illustrious houses of Howard, Seymour, Grey, and Stanley. On the gorgeous coffin of purple and gold were laid the crown and sceptre of the realm. The day was well suited to such a ceremony. The sky was dark and troubled. The nave, choir, and transept of the abbey were in a blaze withwith innumerable wax-lights. The body was deposited under a sumptuous canopy in the centre of the church, while the primate preached; and throughout the whole ceremony the distant booming of cannon was heard every minute from the batteries of the Tower.[94]
As long as Queen Mary lived, William left the management of the affairs of the English Church wholly in her hands, and her chief confidant and counsellor was Archbishop Tillotson.
Whatever was Mary’s character and conduct as a daughter and a sister, she was certainly the most devoted and exemplary of royal wives. Though, in accordance with the atrocious practice of sovereigns, her husband kept a mistress in the palace, yet she had the good sense to submit to his commanding intellect. John Wesley says, she “was in her person tall and well-proportioned, with an oval visage, lively eyes, agreeable features, a mild aspect, and an air of dignity. Her apprehension was clear, her memory tenacious, and her judgment solid. She was a zealous Protestant, scrupulously exact in all the duties of devotion, of an even temper, and of a calm and mild conversation.” She was excellently qualified to be the head of the English court. She was English by birth, and English also in her tastes and feelings. Her face was handsome, her port majestic, her temper sweet and lively, her manners affable and graceful. Her understanding, though very imperfectly cultivated, was quick. Feminine wit sparkled in her conversation; and her letters were so well expressed that they deserved to be well spelt. She took much pleasure in the lighter kinds of literature, and did something towards bringing books into fashion among ladies of quality. The stainless purity of her private life, and the strict attention which she paid to her religious duties, were the more respectable, because she was singularly free from censoriousness, and discouraged scandal as much as vice. Her charities were munificent and judicious, and though she made no ostentatious display of them, it was known that she retrenched from her own state in order to relieve Protestants whom persecution had driven from France and Ireland, and who were starving in the garrets of London.[95]
The reign of William, her husband, extended to the year 1702. During the thirteen years that William wore the crown, the Bank of England was founded; the East India Company was reorganised; and the plantations or settlements of America and the West Indies so steadily increased, that, before his death, they employed not less than five hundred sail of ships. Sir Godfrey Kneller and Sir Peter Lely were the chief portrait-painters of the day; Purcell was the chief musician; and Sir Isaac Newton was shedding a glory over his age and country by his sublime scientific discoveries. The higher kinds of literature were at a discount for want of court patronage. Dryden, fallen on what to him were evil days and evil tongues, and forced in his old age to write for bread, with less rest for his wearied head and hand than they had ever had before, now produced some of his most laborious and also some of his happiest works; and Lee, the dramatic poet, discharged from Bedlam, finished two more tragedies; but besides these, there were hardly any poets above the rank of Shadwell, Tate, and Brady. Among other writers belonging to the same period may be mentioned:—Bishop Stillingfleet, who had been known as an author thirty years before William’s accession to the throne; Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough, an exceedingly learned writer, who, at the age of eighty-four, began to study, and mastered the Coptic language, was now in the full zenith of his fame; Bishop Bull was writing his “Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ,” for which he received the thanks of the whole body of the clergy in France; good old Richard Baxter, who had been filling the world with books for half a century, just lived to see the Revolution, and died in 1691; Dr Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, was plying his prolific pen, which, during his lifetime, produced one hundred and forty-five distinct publications; Robert South, immortalised by his masculine, if not spiritual sermons, was carrying on a controversy with Sherlock respecting the Trinity; and John Locke was publishing his “Essay Concerning the Human Understanding.”
The population of England, in the reign of King William, was about seven millions. About ten thousand of these were clergymen, with an average income of £60 each per annum. The average wages of labouring people and out-door servants were five shillings and ninepence farthing per week; and the average income of cottagers and paupers fourpence farthing per day.[96] Such was the state of things when Samuel Wesley was flourishing among his two hundred peasant parishioners at South Ormsby, on £50 a year and a parsonage,—an income nearly equal to the average income of the ten thousand clergy living at that period.
King William died on the 8th of March 1702. Samuel Wesley’s son John says—“Upon the whole, William III. appears to have been an honest, conscientious man, fearing God, and desirous to please Him. His good qualities were many, his ill ones few; so that we may well rank him among the best of the English princes.”[97]
At eighteen William sat among the fathers of the Commonwealth, grave, discreet, and judicious as the oldest among them. At twenty-one he was placed at the head of the administration. At twenty-three he was renowned throughout Europe as a soldier and politician. His personal tastes were those of a warrior rather than of a statesman; but he occupies a far higher place among statesmen than among warriors. From a child he had been weak and sickly. In the prime of manhood his complaints had been aggravated by a severe attack of smallpox. He was asthmatic and consumptive. His slender frame was shaken by a constant hoarse cough. He could not sleep unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could scarcely draw his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel headaches frequently tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. Yet, through a life, which was one of long disease, the force of his mind never failed, on any great occasion, to bear up his suffering and languid body.
His frame was slender and feeble; his forehead lofty and ample; his nose curved like the beak of an eagle; his eye bright and keen; his brow thoughtful and somewhat sullen; his mouth firm and somewhat peevish; and his cheek pale, thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. He possessed strong natural sense and rare force of will. Long before he reached manhood, he knew how to keep secrets. Meanwhile, however, he made but little proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments. His manners were altogether Dutch, and even his countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners, he often seemed churlish. He was entirely destitute of sociability. He seldom came forth from his closet; and when he appeared in the public rooms, he stood among the crowd of courtiers and ladies stern and abstracted, making no jest and smiling at none. His freezing look, his taciturnity, the dry and concise answers which he uttered when he could keep silence no longer, disgusted noblemen and gentlemen, who had been accustomed to be slapped on the back by their royal masters, called Jack or Harry, congratulated about race cups, or rallied about actresses. The women also missed the homage due to their sex. They observed that the king spoke in a somewhat imperious tone even to the wife to whom he owed so much, and whom he sincerely loved. Another thing, which was regarded as one of his misfortunes, was his bad English. He spoke our language, but not well. His accent was foreign, his diction was inelegant, and his vocabulary seems to have been no larger than was necessary for the transaction of business. English literature he was incapable of enjoying or of understanding. He never once, during his whole reign, showed himself at the theatre. Next to hunting, his favourite amusements were architecture and gardening. He had some talent for sarcasm, and frequently employed a natural rhetoric, quaint indeed, but vigorous, and original. From a child, he listened with interest when questions of alliance, finance, and war were discussed. He understood Latin, Italian, and Spanish; and spoke and wrote, with more or less correctness, English, French, and German. The Dutch was his own tongue. For all persecution he felt a fixed aversion. His theological opinions were loose, but were more decided than those of his ancestors; and predestination was the keystone of his religion. Since Octavius, the world had seen no such instance of precocious statesmanship. He died at the age of fifty-two.
[This chapter is compiled from the Histories of Wesley, of Knight, and of Macaulay, Calamy’s Life and Times, and other works of a kindred character.]