irfrfT^r^Tttrfiif Mfffar " FROM THE LIBRARY OF REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON, D. D. BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO THE LIBRARY OF PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY "1^*4-^ ■ ■ v m ^M >;■*.:■ fWA y HISTOEY OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND: &bm Jltse, §ulxm, antr gcbibal. 0\1 OF PH/^g? / APR 22 1932 HISTOKY vgfe ...tffc <2^ A * PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND: Gbcir IRise, Decline, atrt IRcvival. ^ REV. A. H. DRYSDALE, M.A. 5f onbon : PUBLICATION COMMITTEE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF ENGLAND, 14, Paternoster Square, E.G. 1889. BuTtER &. Tanker, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. PREFACE This, though a Sectional, will not, it is hoped, be found a Sec- tarian history. Written, no doubt, under deep and slowly- formed convictions which the Author has not been careful to conceal, he has made every effort not to allow these to warp his judgment or embitter his style. The Book has been pre- pared at the request of the Presbyterian Church of England's Law and Historical Documents Committee, over which the late Professor Leone Levi so long presided ; but the Author alone is responsible for everything about the work, except the finan- cial arrangements, of which he has been generously and en- tirely relieved. That such unexpectedly large numbers of copies should have been subscribed for on special terms, seems to indicate a widespread and public-spirited interest on the subject in many quarters, and gives reason for indulging the hope that the book may help to supply a felt need. No one is more aware than the writer himself of the many possible short- comings which may attach to his labours ; but he has not been insensible to the honour done him by his brethren, nor to the obligations laid on him to meet it. Intelligent and discrimi- nating readers will speedily find, that while some portions of the work have required a considerable amount of research, other parts have been compiled from a variety of more or less easily accessible sources, to which attention is called in their proper place. Having to travel over the smouldering ashes of controversies VI PREFACE. still far from extinct, the Author has tried not unduly to stir their embers ; but his plan has necessitated numerous references and quotations, besides bibliographic and other allusions, in what some may deem an excessively large apparatus of foot- notes. He is content to have erred on this side, rather than on the score of meagreness in citing authorities. Unvarying courtesy and kindness on the part of Librarians and official Correspondents have greatly facilitated the writer in his work ; and while not forgetful of the services of many other kind friends and brethren, he has special reason for thanking "William Carruthers, Esq., F.R.S., of the British Museum, the Rev. A. B. Grosart, D.D., LL.D., and J. G. Smieton, Esq., M.A., of the Presbyterian College. He has also to express his sense of obligation to James Robertson, Esq., of Nisbet & Co., and to the Religious Tract Society, through the Rev. John Kelly, M.A., for so readily granting permission to use some previous articles and biographies of his, the copyright of which belongs to them. His brother, the Rev. George Drysdale, formerly of Crouch Hill Church, has been good enough to read the proofs in passing through the press. The Manse, Morpeth, May, 1889. Gbe Presbyterians in £nglanfc>: tbeir IRise, Decline, anb IRevivaL CONTENTS. Entrotmctton. I. The Presbyterian Position and Principles II. Traces of their Main Principle— a. In the Ancient British and Welsh Church B. In the Early Northumbrian Church . C. In the Anglo-Saxon Church D. In Medigevalism E. In Wycklifnte and Pre-Reformation Times F. In the Ecclesiastical Revolution under Henry VIII, 8 10 14 17 19 22 PART I. ftfje Efsc of tfje Prcs&utcrians tit tfjc Ecformcti Church of (!5nrjlanti. INCEPTIVE PERIOD. I. Martin Bucer and his Presbyterianizing Draft of Church Reform for Edward VI., 1549-1551 29 II. John A'Lasco and his Early Presbyterian Organization of the London Church of the Strangers, 1550-1553 ... 40 III. John Hooper, and the Origin of the Vestments Controversy, 1550-1551 52 IV. John Knox in England, and his Influence on its Early Presby- terian Worship, 1549-1553 62 V. The Growth of Presbyterian Views among English Exiles, 1553-1558 73 The English Exiles in Frankfort 74 The Exiles in Geneva 80 VI 11 CONTENTS. FORMATIVE PEKIOD. PAGE Introductory. — Queen Elizabeth and her Ecclesiastical Policy, 1559-1561 89 I. Development of a Presbyterian Party, 1562-1569 ... 99 First Enforcement of Uniformity, and its Results . . . 101 The Early Seceding Presbyterian Puritans, 1566-1567 . . 104 The Presbyterians Inside the Church ..... 108 II. The Presbyterian Leader, 1570 Ill III. An Early Presbyterianizing Experiment, 1571 .... 121 IV. Parliament and the First Presbyterian Manifesto, 1572 . . 129 V. The First Presbytery of Wandsworth, 1572 . . . .141 VI. The Presbyterians Formulating their Church Principles, 1573-83 150 The Nature of the Controversy 153 Some of the More Prominent Presbyterian Clergy . . 156 Growth and Increase of the " Classes," with the Early Synodical Gatherings 158 The Great Directory, or Book of Discipline, 1583 . . . 160 Petitions and Memorials . . . . . . . .162 Appendix.— Presbyterianism Established under Elizabeth in Jersey and Guernsey, 1576 164 THE REPRESSIVE PERIOD. I. Suppression of the Prophesyings, 1577-1582 .... 177 II. The Great Struggle, Beginning in 1583 186 "VVhitgift's Measures and Machinery 186 The Great Struggle in and out of Parliament . . . 190 III. Tbe Mar-Prelate Controversy, 1588-1590 198 IV. John Udall, the Presbyterian Martyr, 1592 . . . .207 V. Further Struggles, Parliamentary, Ecclesiastical, and Literary, 1590-1603 217 In the Ecclesiastical Courts 219 In Parliament 221 In Literature 225 THE IRREPRESSIBLE. I. Hampton Court Conference, and the Harryings, 1603-1625 . 233 II. The Laudian and Absolutist Revolution; or, New Soil for Presbyterian Growth, 1625-1637 244 CONTENTS. IX PAGE III. English Presbyterian Exiles, and the British Synod in Hol- land, 1637 255 IV. The Presbyterian Pamphlet War, and Early Church Debates in the Long Parliament, 1640-1641 264 V. Ejection of Bishops from the House of Peers, 1642 . . .277 PERIOD OF THE PRESBYTERIAN ASCENDENCY, 1643-1649. I. Parliament Calls the Westminster Assembly, and with it Swears to the Covenant, 1642-1643 237 Constitution of the Westminster Assembly .... 288 The Solemn League and Covenant Agreed upon . . . 289 The Solemn League and Covenant Sworn to by Parliament and Assembly 290 Outside the Assembly and Parliament 292 II. Transactions of the Westminster Assembly, 1643-1649 . . 295 III. Presbyterian London, 1643-1649 304 IV. The Presbyterian Church Establishment in Lancashire, 1646- 1660 316 V. Presbyterianism in other Counties 326 Presbyterianism in Essex, Suffolk, and the Eastern Counties 326 In Cheshire, and the Welsh Border 329 VI. English Presbyterians and the Origin of Presbyterianism in America 334 PART II. 2Tftc ©crime of the Ptcsbotcrtans m ISnglano. PERIOD OF DISAPPOINTMENT AND FAILURE. I. How the Presbyterians Failed to Establish Themselves . . 345 II. An English Presbyterian Covenanter and Martyr (Trial and Execution of Christopher Love) 356 III. The Presbyterians under the Later Commonwealth and Pro- tectorate 362 The Associations 365 IV. The Presbyterians in the Balance again 370 CONTENTS. THE HEROIC PEEIOD. PAGE I. The Act of Uniformity, and the Ejectment of 1662 . . .381 II. Sufferings and Struggles 390 III. The Lowest Depth, 1684-1685 .400 IV. Philip Henry : An Ejected Presbyterian Minister of the Period 408 At Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford . . 409 Philip Henry's Ordination and Ministry .... 413 The Suffering Nonconformist Minister and His Principles . 416 TOLERATION AND MEETING-HOUSE BUILDING PERIOD. I. Toleration or Comprehension ? 425 II. The Celebrated " Enquiry," 1691 433 III. Early Presbyterian Meeting-Houses and their Trusts . . 441 IV. Post-Revolution Presbyterian Churches : their Constitution and Peculiarities 448 V. The Presbyterians and Independents in their " Happy Union " of 1690-1694 459 The Provincial Associations and Unions .... 466 VI. First, or Neo-nomian, Controversy : Dr. Daniel Williams and the Rupture of the London Union ..... 469 VII. Matthew Henry, and his Presbyterial Position .... 477 His Early Life 477 His Ordination, Ministry, and Church Principles . . 481 TRANSITIONAL AND SPASMODIC PERIOD, 1710-1740. I. Trying and Changing Influences at Work from 1710 . . 489 II. The Subscription Controversy. — Exeter Assembly and Salters' Hall Synod, 1719 . .499 III. Insidious Tendency to Arianism, and its Causes, 1720-1740 . 508 PERIOD OF FURTHER DEFECTION AND DECAY, 1740-1812. I. Character and Relations of the Heterodox Presbyterian Con- gregations, 1740-1788 519 II. Decay and Lapsing of Presbyterian and other Dissenting Charges 526 Presbyterian Congregations becoming Independent . . 527 Presbyterian Congregations becoming Extinct . . . 529 III. Arianism Driven to Unitarianism, 1782-1812 .... 533 CONTENTS. XI PART III. 2Tf>e fficbtbal of tfjc Prcsbotmans in Cnglanto. PEIMAEY PERIOD. PAGB Introduction and Review. Chief Elements in the Revival . . 545 I. Early Scottish Churches, and their Influence .... 553 The Earliest Scotch Preshyterian Church in London, 1672 . 553 Other Early Scottish Churches in London, and their Con- nections 555 The Early Scottish Secession Churches in London . . 557 II. A Faithful Remnant of Orthodox English Preshyterian Churches 561 Illustration of an Old English Presbyterian Church Grow- ing into the Modern Organization 561 III. Survival of Presbyterians in Newcastle and Northumberland . 567 COLLATERAL DEVELOPMENTS. I. How Methodism, under Wesley, became Presbyterian in Polity 583 II. Rise of the Presbyterians and their Church in Wales . . 594 The Spiritual Awakening 596 The Ecclesiastical Organization 599 PERIOD OF RE-ORGANIZATION, 1820-1876. I. Presbyterian Increase : its Nature and Causes .... 605 In Connection with the United Secession (latter'ly, since 1847, the United Presbyterian) Church . . . .607 In Connection with the Presbyterian Church in England, formed 1836-1842 608 II. Favourable Circumstances, 1836-1842 613 The Orthodox Presbyterians in the General Body of the Three Dissenting Denominations ..... 613 The Decision in the Lady Hewley Chancery Suits, 1830-1842 617 The Fluctuations of Modern Unitarianism .... 620 III. The Re-constituted Presbyterian Church of England, and the Union of 1876 625 Conclusion G29 INTRODUCTION. THE PRESBYTERIAN POSITION AND PRINCIPLES. TEACES OF THEIR MAIN PRINCIPLE - a. In the Ancient British and Welsh Church. b. ix the early northumbrian church. c. Ix the Anglo-Saxon Church. d. Ix aLedeeyalism. e. Ix \Yyckliffite axd Pre-Eeformatiox Times. f. Ix the Ecclesiastical Revolutiox under Hexry YTH. INTRODUCTION. The History of the Presbyterians in England— their Eise, Decline, and Revival— is what we propose to narrate. Atten- tion has been directed, from time to time, to certain portions of this subject ; but little has been done to represent it as a whole, in an intelligible and connected unity.1 Presbyterians have played no unimportant nor discreditable part in the civil and ecclesiastical history of the country, and have contributed in no small measure to its enlightenment, liberty, and progress. Presbyterianism in England has had, however, a singularly chequered and trying career, though perhaps none the less interesting or instructive on that account. Originally, and for more than a century (1550-1662), the Presbyterians were the party of further reform within the Church of Elizabethan and early Stuart times ; and since their ejectment under the Uniformity Act of 1662, they have co- operated with others in stimulating the Established Church from without against her inherited tendencies to medieval re- action or spiritual inertness. The position has in many respects been a difficult and invidious one ; but its persistence and survival under strange vicissitudes may suffice to vindicate its aims and lend dignity to its struggles. In writers of England's secular history, the Presbyterians come suddenly to the surface in their days of triumph (1640- 1662), but they are brought on the scene usually without adequate explanation of their rise, while they disappear as suddenly and unaccountably. In ecclesiastical annals again, 1 It would be ungrateful not to mention a Sketch of the History and Principles of the Presbyterian Church in England, Nisbet & Co., 1840 ; 2nd edition, enlarged, 1850 (issued anonymously, but written by G. F. Barbour, Esq.) ; and the larger Annals of English Presbytery, by Thomas McCrie, D.D., LL.D., Loudon, 1872. Neal's great work on The Puritans, Brook's Puritan Lives, and Marsden's two volumes on the Puritans are invaluable for the earlier period. 4 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. they are often made to figure under some disreputable guise, as a defeated and discredited faction in the Church. Theirs has been the fate of a vanquished remnant, whose record, left to hostile hands, has read like a "bulletin de victoire" rather than a veritable history. The evil is being redressed, how- ever, under the light of modern research, by recent more candid and careful writers.1 Originally in England the terms "Puritan," "Precisian," " Presbyterian," though not synonymous, were applied to the same ecclesiastical party. The three words were in use within a few years of each other. " Precisians," or precise folks, came first, introduced apparently by Archbishop Parker.3 "Puritan," which soon outstripped it in popular phraseology, had its origin from the same quarter in 1564, and frequently recurs in the Archbishop's letters.3 Like many party words, it was employed at the outset by way of nickname, and was long displeasing to those to whom it was applied.1 1 One of the most virulent attacks, under the name of history, may be found in the portentous old folio A'erius Redivivus; or, the History of the Presbyterians, Containing the Beginnings, Progress, and Success of that active Sect . . . from the Year 1530 to the Year 1647, by Peter Heylin, D.D., Chaplain to Charles I. and Charles II., Monarchs of Great Britain. ;Heyliii was a learned, diligent, and capable man ; but most of his fifty publications are disfigured by intense political and theological rancour. (Hallam's contemptuous references, e.g. "One of Heylin's habitual falsehoods," — Constitutional History, notes at pp. 334 and 348, — are not undeserved.) His History of the Presbyterians is particularly unscrupulous ; and appearing soon after the Restoration, along with the contemporary burlesque of Hudibras (1(563), did more at a critical juncture to prejudice the English mind and poison the springs of truth than any other polemical publications. 2 Strype's Parker, ii. 40. " The precise folk," says the Archbishop, " would offer their goods and bodies to prison rather than relent." — Parker < 'orrespondence, pp. 273, 277. :t " I se her Majestie is affected princely to govern, and for that I se her in con- stancie almost alone to be offended with the Puritans." — The Archbishop's last letter to the Lord Treasurer (Strype's Parker Records, xcix. iii. 331). "The English Bishops," says Dr. Thomas Fuller (Church History, under 1564), "conceiving themselves empowered by their canons, began to show their authority in urging the clergy of their dioceses to subscribe to the Liturgy, Ceremonies, and Discipline of the Church, and such as refused the same were branded with the odious name of Puritanes, a name which, in. this nation, first began in this year." 4 Sampson, the famous Elizabethan Puritan, writing to Grindal ten years later (9 Nov. 1574), when the word was getting quite into use, utters this protest : " But unjustly to impose this name on brethren, with whose doctrine and life no man can justly find fault, is to rend the seamless coat of Christ, and to make a schism in- curable in the Church and to lay a stumbling-block to the course of the Gospel, and woe to the man by whom the offence cometh" — Strype's Parker, Append, xciy. iii. 322, INTRODUCTION. It Puritanism were, as some one has said, the feeling of which Protestantism was the argument, we may add that Presbyterianism was its organized expression.1 "What Guizot says of the Reformation at large may be equally said of Puri- tanism : " Greater as an event than as a system." Puritanism was not, at its first outbreak, a matter of Church government, or polity. The supreme question related more to the dynamics or inward forces than to the organic or outward forms of spiri- tual faith and practice. Nevertheless, Presbyterian convictions were in the English Reformation from the beginning, though the question of Church government was not formally raised till about 1570. Within a few years thereafter, the words " Presbytery," " Party of Presbytery," and " Presbyterianism," were getting into use,3 greatly aided by the prevalence of Presbyterian views among the Reformed Churches on the Continent. It was when the English Puritans found them- selves overborne, and their favourite aims and ideas pushed to the wall by Queen Elizabeth's policy, they were compelled to look more narrowly into questions of Church organization and polity. " Things," says Hooker, " are always ancienter than their names." As there were Christians in the world before the " dis- ciples were first called Christians in Antioch," or as there were Reformers before the Reformation, there were Presbyterians in England long before Presbyterianism had found in it " a local habitation and a name." There can hardly be said to be a 1 That the early Puritans were distinctively Presbyterians, may be judged by the way the two names are used by Pastor John Robinson, of Pilgrim-Fathers renown, whom Neal calls " the Father of the Independents." " The Papists," he says, "plant tbe ruling power of Christ in the Pope ; the Protestants in the Bishops ; the Puritans in the Presbytery ; we put it in the body of the Congregation of the multitude called the Church." - One of the earliest references to "Government by Presbyteries'' is in a letter from Bishop Sandys to Bollinger, of date 1573 (Zurich Letters, i. p. 294). Among the early names applied to the rising Presbyterians were : " The Dis- ciplinarians " or " Consistorians ; " while " Genevans " or " Allobrogians " were used when special antipathy was meant to be expressed. We have not found "Independent" in any ecclesiastical sense before 1609; and it appears to have been Henry Jacob who first used it in connection with a Church. " Each con- gregation," he says, "is an entire and Independent body politic, and endowed with power immediately under and from Christ, as every proper Church is and ought to be " (p. 13 of his Declaration and Plainer Opening of Certaine Pointes, 1611). (', THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. time when what is known as the Presbyterian theory of the Christian Church and its ministry did not find supporters in England as in the Church at large. What is this Presbyterian theory ? Its primary watchword and essential feature is this —Every preaching Presbyter or Pastor of a flock is a true Bishop in the Scripture sense of the term, with no higher order of Bishops or Prelates by divine right or apostolic institution. This view of the Christian ministry never professed to have any quarrel with primitive Episcopacy : nay, it is itself that very Episcopacy : its preaching and presiding Presbyters being Bishops in the early and true sense, not Bishops of Bishops, but Bishops of the flock ; not Shepherds of Shepherds, but Shepherds of the sheep. All believe there were Bishops in the Church from the beginning, but the question is, What kind ot Bishops ? Presbyterianism is the system of Church Government by Elders, Bishops, or Presbyters ; and its three leading features in its fully developed form are 1 : — I. The parity of preaching Pastors, or Presbyters, who arc the presiding Bishops of the Church, with no higher order over them by divine right. Bishops and Presbyters it holds to be of the same order ; 2 and no one can preside over them by any other tenure than as Primus inter pares, or first among equals. In this body or Council of Presbyter-bishops is lodged by apostolic in- stitution the right and power to ordain other Presbyter-bishops.:; i The two chief public documents of native English production which best ex- hibit the Presbyterian polity are : The Book of Discipline, or Directory of Church Government, drawn up in 1583 by Thomas Cartwright, and signed by about 500 Church of England clergy at that time, and, The Form of Presbijterial Church Government, agreed on by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster in 1645. - That Bishop and Presbyter or Elder constituted one order in the New Testa- ment, and were interchangeably used in the earliest days of the Church, may be taken as now settled, whatever difference of function or office they respectively came soon to denote. Expositors are practically agreed on this. Bishop Lightfoot (Epistle of St. Paul to the Philippians, pp. 94-6) adduces six proofs for regarding Bishop and Presbyter as originally identical ; and he may be accepted as repre- senting the voice of modern critical scholarship, when he adds, that the title Bishop, "which was originally common to all, came at length to be appropriated to the chief among them." ;i The best defence of this fundamental position on the part of English Presby- terians, is furnished in their " Jus divinumHinisterii Evangelici, or Divine Eight of the Gospel Ministry. In two parts, together with an Appendix, wherein the judg- ment and practice of antiquity about the whole matter of Episcopacy, and especially INTRODUCTION'. t II. Church Government and administration to be in the hands of a body, or council, or senate of elders and office-bearers. We never read but of bishops or elders, and deacons in every Church (the bishops or elders always in the plural as well as the deacons) ; election to office being in the hands of the people, but Church rule, for doctrinal, disciplinary, and financial pur- poses, being in the hands of the respective classes of office- bearers. III. Organic Union, or the right, duty, and privilege of different Churches or bodies of the faithful to associate together in organic union, so as to cultivate and manifest an esprit de corps or interest in the separate Churches' well-being at large, and secure the benefits of the union that is strength. All agree that it is lawful (though Scripture affords no clear prece- dent) to have a Church divided, or to divide itself, when it has become of unwieldy dimensions in to other fixed and separately located Churches. The question is, Shall the organic union be retained ? Presbytery says : Yes ; by means of a Synod or Common Council of the Elders. It is in brotherly council, not in auto- cratic jurisdiction, Presbyterianism finds the key of both liberty and order in the Church. Presbyterianism proceeds, not on any monarchical principle as in Diocesan Episcopacy, nor on any merely associative or co-ordinative principle as in Congregationalism, but on the representative or subordinative principle embodying itself in Presbyteries, Classes and Synods, Assemblies, or whatever else such gatherings for counsel or appeal may be called. Episcopacy, in the sense of superintendentship over Pastors, is not alien to Presbytery ; but its watchword is not a threefold grade in the ministry (a very modern theory, as we shall see), but a threefold ministry in the Church, of Doctrine. Discipline. and Distribution. about the ordination of ministers, is briefly discussed by the Provincial Assembly of London," 1654. The Appendix is very valuable, "Having," they say, "suffi- ciently proved out of the Word of God that Bishop and Presbyter are all one, and that ordination by Presbyters is most agreeable thereunto, we shall now subjoin a brief discourse about the grand objection from the antiquity of Prelacy, and about the judgment and practice of the ancient Church." 8 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. The Presbyterian view of the Church and her ministry is no novelty. It would be instructive to trace its three main prin- ciples in the history of the Church at large, and to mark especially the connection between them and the decay or revival of spiritual life, according as they were disregarded or practically recognised and acted on. Fastening, however, on the first of the above principles, though not to the exclusion of the others, we will note its constant recurrence in our English ecclesiastical history. In the Ancient British and Welsh Church. When or how Christianity first reached the shores of Britain it is now impossible to determine. Later legends of a supposed visit by the Apostle Paul : apocryphal tales about Joseph of Arimathea and his twelve companions at Glastonbury, with the miraculous blossoming of the Holy Thorn ; of Bran, the Blessed ; or of Llewen Mawr, the British King, otherwise called Lucius — these, with other mediaeval or mythical tales, must be all laid aside, or merely taken along with some happily better evidence that suffices to prove the very early planting of the Christian faith in our island, at least before the close of the second century. There were apparently two main channels of its conveyance, a military and a commercial one ; the former in connection with the part of Britain that was a Eoman pro- vince, and the latter by a trade with the East from parts of the island not subject to the Eomans.1 Many of the Eoman soldiers who came to Britain were Christians; while the touching story of the missionary-preacher Amphiballus, and the proto- martyr Alb an, with other martyrdoms (though not committed to writing till much later),3 may serve to show how Christian congregations sprang up in the town-centres and civilized settlements under Eoman sway. The three British " Bishops," 1 Tertulliau [adv. Jmhcos, c. vii.) says, " Britannorum inaccessa Komanis loca Christo vero subdita." 2 The date of the martyrdoms would be a.d. 286, or a.d. 305 ; aud the first record of them is by Gildas (Hist, viii.), a monk of the sixth century (a.d. 564), and Bede (Hist. Eccl. i.), who was more than a century later (a.d. 673-735). INTRODUCTION". 0 Eborius of York, Eestitutus of London, and Adelfius of Caer- leon, in Wales, who attended the Ante-Nicene Church-Council of Aries, in France, a.d. 314, or the other three who, by ap- pearing at the later Council of Rimini, a.d. 359, acknowledged themselves Arians, were of course "Bishops" in the earlier and true sense of the word— preaching Presbyters, or pastors presiding over individual congregations. It would be a serious anachronism to import into the name " Bishop " at that time the very different ideas and associations that belong only to much later pretensions. For Church government was yet Synodal, and each Council ruled by the "common consent " of its members. By an early canon of one of these first Councils, it was agreed that no one should ordain a bishop alone, but with the concurrence of seven other bishops, or, where that was impossible, of not fewer than three — a regulation that certainly better accords with a Presbyterial than with a Pre- latic theory of the Church and its ministry. It was long after Constantine the Great became Emperor, a.d. 324, ere Diocesan, let alone Papal, institutions were developed, or the hierarchical orders arose. A cathedral system was undreamt of in those clays, and the humble Churches, then called " Con- venticles," l were constructed either of wood, or of clay and wattles. The withdrawal of the Romans from Britain, to defend the Empire at its centre against its northern invaders, postponed the development of Prelatic and Papal organizations among the Celtic peoples. For the great ecclesiastical transi- tion that supervened on the fall of the Empire was not effected by quietly normal methods, as the patrons of the " Catholic " Church system would have us suppose, but proceeded in the most capricious and erratic way under the pressure of dynastic or national struggles. 1 Conventicula is the word used for Churches at this time by Lactantius him- self, the Christian Father {Be Morte Pers. xv. xvi.). It was Ninian, the British missionary and apostle to the neighbouring heathen Picts and Scots, who first " built his church of stone in a fashion to which the Britons were unaccustomed " (Bede, Hist. Eccl. hi. 4). This was Candida Casa (Whit-horn in Galloway), about a.d. 397. The Church of the Picts and Scots, who received their Christianity from St. Ninian and the British missionaries, followed of course the usages and govern- ment of the British Church, as did also the Irish Church in due time. 10 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Thus, if the British Church had not been thrust bach by the heathen Anglo-Saxons, or if the rising Papal Church had not made these Anglo-Saxons the very first objects of its mis- sionary exertion outside the borders of the Latin peoples ; or if the monk Augustine, whom Pope Gregory settled at Canter- bury, had failed in crushing his Welsh and British brethren, what a different aspect would the future Church of England have presented in its organization ! For the existence and well- being of the British and other Celtic Churches depended on those Collegiate or Presbyteral Institutes which, with the early Synods, play so important and prominent a part in their history.1 Many " Bishops " were included often in a single one of these peculiarly constituted " Colleges." In the kindred Church of Ireland, founded by St. Patrick (a Briton of Scotland) in the fifth century, " Bishops " were to be counted by hundreds — very different ideas of course gathering round such " Bishops " from those of later times. In the Northumbrian Church. The old Culdee Church of Northumbria, representative, like its "Welsh and Irish neighbours, of an early mode of Christianity derived from the East, and not from the Latin or Western corruption, was certainly not prelatic nor diocesan in its con- stitution. It had no Romish nor mediceval type of hierarchy, but, like all its British or Celtic sisters, carried on its work through a system of Collegiate and Presbyteral institutions.3 Recent researches 3 have brought to light the existence and 1 The Chronicles of the Ancient British Church anterior to the Saxon Era, by Jas. Yeowell, 1820. 2 Even so late as a.d. 740, the canon continued in Northmnbria, "Let not a Bishop ordain clerks without a Council of Priests " (Johnson's Eccles. Laws, a.d. 740. — This follows an older African canon). The very same principle found embodiment in the thirty-fifth canon of the Church of England iu 1603 : " They who shall assist the Bishop in examining and laying on of hands, shall be of his cathedral Church, if they may conveniently be had, or other sufficient preachers of the same diocese to the number of three at least, and if any bishop or suffragan shall admit " otherwise "he shall be sus- pended . . . from making either deacons or priests for the space of two years." 3 Chiefly conducted by Prof. Ebrard, of Erlangen. See article on the Celtic and Culdee Church in British and Foreign Evangelical Review for January, 1866, and April, 1871, where the leading works of authorities will be found. Valuable for popular use are Dr. W. L. Alexander's Ancient British Church, and Dr. MacLaughlan's The Early Scottish Church. Specially see p. 42G. INTRODUCTION. 11 operations of this and other Celtic Churches, both in this country and over the Continent, on a scale not formerly dreamt of. These continued to live on in the face of the Romish Com- munion, and persistently prosecuted their missions out and in, amid the operations of that Communion, themselves entirely Rome-free and with very distinctive peculiarities of their own. With their married presbyters, with their bishops subject to the presbyters,1 with missionaries sent out in twelves, and with establishments constituted much more like modern foreign mission stations than the monasteries of later date (into which many were, however, afterwards converted, when Papal su- premacy obtained sway), these collegiate settlements bear testi- mony to usages and methods of action wholly incompatible with diocesan or hierarchical pretensions. These Culdee Mis- sions, whether starting from Ireland, Iona, or Wales, were widely spread over Northern France, along the whole Rhine- land, through Germany, Switzerland, and elsewhere. The Church of Borne has of course no claim to these holy mis- sionaries and Church founders, — men like St. Patrick, St. Columba, St. Aidan of Northumbria, and hosts of others like- minded, who never belonged to any Romish organization or communion at all, and whose names were adroitly canonized long after the times in which they lived.3 From this point of view, the ecclesiastical arrangements in the old and long separate kingdom of Northumbria form an ' Becle says of Iona (Hist. Eccl. hi. 4), " Habere autem solet ipsa insula rectorem semper abbatum presbyterum, cu jus juri et omnis provincia et ipsi etiam episcopi, online inusitato, debeant esse subjecti, juxta exemplum primi doctoris illius qui non episcopus sed presbyter exstitit et monachus." " This island is known to have for its ruler an abbott, who is a Presbyter, under whose jurisdiction the whole province, including even the Bishops, by an unwonted order, ought to be subject after the example of the first teacher (Columba), who was not a bishop, but a presbyter and monk." The custom of Iona, as described by Bede, seems to have resembled the ancient custom of the Church of Alexandria, by which, not bishops, but twelve Presbyters were the nominators, consecrators, andordainers of others. — Vide Stanley's Eastern Church, p. 266, note 2. - " Peace to their shades ! the pure Culdees Were Albyn's earliest priests of God, Ere yet an island of her seas By foot of Saxon monk was trod." Campbell's Beullura. 12 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. instructive chapter in Church History. While the Saxon shore lay south of the Humber, some Anglian settlements lay north- wards, and were gathered up into Bernicia (which stretched from the Tees northward), and Deira (between Tees and Hum- ber mouth). Until the middle of the 7th century, the people were rude and warlike, and lived in their original pagan super- stition and barbarism. In 617, Edwin, king of Deira, con- quered and slew Ethelfred, king of Bernicia, and pushed his dominion to the river Forth, establishing Edwin-burgh, or Edinburgh, as a frontier defence. By-and-by, Edwin himself was defeated and slain by Cadwalla, the apostate king of Wales, and Penda, the heathen king of Mercia. These pagan invaders overwhelmed the little Christian Church which the Roman monk Paulinus had set up at York under Edwin's pro- tection. But when Oswald, the surviving son of King Ethel- fred, had shattered the heathen confederacy by his great victory at Dennesburn, or Heavenfield,2 near Hexham, thereby be- coming Bretwalda, or High Sovereign, from the Humber to the Forth, joining multitudes of Britons, Picts, and Scots with the Anglians under his dominion, he resolved to Christianize his new subjects. Instead, however, of looking southward, to the Romish priesthood for this purpose, he sent for missionaries to the Scottish Iona, where he had himself been trained be- tween the ages of thirteen and thirty. In the words of the Venerable Bede, " he sent to the Elders of the Scots, among whom, during his exile, he and his fellow-soldiers had been baptized/' And so, the real apostle of Northumbria was the Presbyter Aidan, strangely enough, " The sun coming out of the north to enlighten the south," says Fuller,3 " as here it came to pass." It was Aidan who selected Lindisfarne as the le House of Commons 1 Not sea-shore or coast, but their limit of conquest. - I find Sir Thomas Widdrington (who was Speaker of the „ in 1(557, and was himself a Northumbrian) saying in his address to the Lord Pro- tector : " There is yet some memory of Oswald in the county of Northumberland, where he fought the last battle with the Picts. The place is called to this day Ha low-down or Hallow-held, which is Holyfield ; and there was a chapel built tailed St. Oswald's Chapel, standing there at this day." The worthy Speaker is enforcing the sentiment, that " The examples of rulers are the most prevalent ( = prevailing or influential) sermons to the people." a Church Hist. i. 120. INTRODUCTION. 13 convenient seat of his Missionary Institute within sight of Bam- borough, Oswald's royal residence, the capital of Nortlmnibria, which his grandfather Ida, " the Flame-bearer," had founded : and so it became the Holy Island, the Northumbrian " Iona," bearing no small resemblance to its western original. While Aidan was yet learning the Northern Saxon language, ': it was a touching spectacle," says Bede, — who really, though belonging to the Romish Communion, does strive to do justice to those Columban missionaries, though sometimes puzzled, and even vexed at their usages and inexplicable ways,—" to see King- Oswald, who had thoroughly learned the Celtic tongue in his exile, translating and interpreting as Aidan preached." And he adds, " from that time, many from the region of the Scots came daily into these parts, and with great devotion preached the word of faith to those provinces of the Angles over which King Oswald reigned." The results of the labours of these Northern missionaries are thus epitomized by Archbishop Usher : — " St. Aidan and St. Finan deserve to be honoured by the English nation with as memorable a remembrance as, I do not say Wilfrid and Cuthbert. but Austin the monk and his followers : for by the ministry of Aidan was the kingdom of Northumberland recovered from paganism, where- unto belonged then, beside the shore of Northumberland and the lands beyond it unto Edinburgh frith, Cumberland also, and Westmoreland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Durham. And by means of Finan, not only was the kingdom of the East Saxons, which contained Essex, Middlesex, and half of Hertfordshire regained, but also the large kingdom of Mercia comprehending fifteen Midland Counties." It would take long to tell how in the generation but one fol- lowing, the two Churches of Iona and Home came into direct collision at the famous Synod of Whitby, and how the Romish Communion secured there one of its greatest triumphs. But as Kurtz says l : — " If the British Confession, had prevailed, as at one time seemed pro- bable, not England only, but also Germany would from the first have stood in direct antagonism to the Papacy, a circumstance which would hare given an entirely different turn, both to the political and ecclesiastical history of the Middle Ages." 1 Hist, of the Christian Church by Prof. Kurtz, vol. i. p. 20"). 14 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Or, in tlie words of Neander l : — "Had the Scottish tendency prevailed, England would have maintained a more free Church Constitution; and a reaction against the Romish hierarchical system would have ever continued to go forth from this quarter.1'' It is of importance to observe that traces of the Culdee in- fluence continued long after their special methods had been submerged ; and that the Papal Church, while it was deepen- ing alike in its power and in its corruption, did not bear sway uninterruptedly over these parts for much beyond three cen- turies, Lollardism and other protests against rampant evils breaking forth from time to time even during these centuries, and thus foretokening that mighty upheaval in which John Knox was afterwards to play so important a part throughout the crisis of the Reformation struggle in Northumberland. u&&j In the Anglo-Saxon Church. In its first beginnings the Church of Christ in England was, as we have seen, eminently Collegiate, or, according to a usual but rather misleading term, Monastic? These early institu- tions continued to maintain their place and influence even in Anglo-Saxon times ; 3 and it was they that had to bear the 1 Neander's Church History, vol, vi. p. 31. - See Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 226. 3 The difference between the British and the Anglo-Saxon Churches and their relations to each other have been well stated in Lechler's Wyclijf'e (Lorimer's edit. p. 15). In the British Church " the ecclesiastical centre of gravity 2cas in the monasteries, not in the episcopate ; in addition to lohich they were under no subjection to the Bishops of Rome — their Church life was entirely autonomous and national.1' On the other hand, " The missionaries to the Saxons had been sent forth from Rome, and the Anglo-Saxon Church was, so to speak, a Roman colony; its whole Church order received, as was to be expected, the impress of the Church of the West : in particular, the government of the Church was placed in the hands op the bishops, 10I10 in their turn were dependent upon the See of Rome. The difference, or rather the opposition, was felt on both sides vividly enough, and led to severe collisions." Lechler adds : " It would be an error, nevertheless, to believe that Borne obtained in England an absolute victory, or that the old British Church, with its peculiar independent character, disappeared in the Bomish Anglo-Saxon Church without a trace. It is nearer the truth to say that the British Church made its influence felt in the Anglo-Saxon, at least in single provinces, especially in the North of England ; and perhaps it was due in part to this influence that a certain spirit of Church autonomy developed itself at an early period among the Anglo-Saxon people." INTRODUCTION. 15 brunt of the Danish invasions. But as, after so terrible a devastation, they could not be restored without the greatest difficulty, they gave place to a more widespread clergy, to a large extent secular and married,1 while their bishops were relatively far more numerous than afterwards under a more stringently diocesan system.2 It was against this condition of things the notable primate Dunstan (a.d. 959) directed his energies. Himself for a time an "unattached" bishop, his chief aim was to promote the ascendency of the regular over the secular clergy — the ascetic monies, over the irregular clerks or canons. The beginnings of a diocesan and parochial system had only been made towards the end of the seventh century 3 by the Greek monk, Theodore of Tarsus, a layman whom the Pope had consecrated primate among the Angles ; but affairs were mainly managed still by Church Councils* which often met twice a year, and in which clergy and laity were inter- mingled. The Anglo-Saxon or early English Constitution contained, both in Church and State, the principle of repre- sentation. It was, in fact, a municipal or local form of self- government. The radical or lowest court was the Hundred, with its tithings over the district, mark, or township ; the Sdr- gemot or shire-mote, with the management of a wider area ; and the wittena-gemote, or Assembly of the Wise, that de- veloped afterwards into the Parliament. These civil or geogra- phical divisions did much to determine the later ecclesiastical arrangements ; but for generations there was no sharply drawn distinction between ecclesiastical and civil jurisdictions ; and 1 Hence the number of charters providing for transmission of estates and property to the direct heirs or children of these clergy, who never affected to be mere ghostly fathers, but properly and lawfully married persons. — Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 224. - Even so early as a.d. 700, England, with a population of less than a million, had twenty-one bishops; and the Venerable Bede besought King Egbert, in 735, to in- crease their number. The idea of a bishop being set over a district (rather than over a city or congregation of people) was however now rooted in the Church. 3 The name "diocese" was not however in use, with authority of the Pope, till a.d. 1138. 4 We are largely indebted for our knowledge of the number, importance, and regularity of these Councils, as well as those of the Welsh Church, to the learned and laborious researches of Haddan and Stubbs, in their great work on The Councils of Britain. 16 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Gemotes, Councils, and Synods, not Bishops, held the power, and were the prevailing features of the scene. These Synods of the Anglo-Saxon Church consisted of the priests ranged according to their seniority, and below these were the principal deacons, while behind them were seated select bodies of lay- men distinguished for piety and wisdom.1 And up to the eleventh century the concurrence of laity with clergy was required in all election proceedings; the very Pope himself being then chosen by the commons as well as clergy in the States of the Church. The ancient ealclormen and the bishops often jointly presided over these deliberations, and both Witans and Synods dealt indiscriminately with civil and ecclesiastical matters. Bishops, by the discharge of purely secular func- tions, both civil and military (for they often led in battle), grew in power. Interference directly from Rome increased, and under her dictation there were three Archbishops for a time, at Canterbury, York, and Lichfield, with full metropolitan powers. But no cathedral system had as yet taken root. Up to the eve of the Conquest we read rather of such distinc- tions as head churches, middling churches, lesser churches (having a burying-place), and country churches (having none). And the refusal to recognise the episcopate as a separate order lingers on and finds canonical expression 3 so late as 994-97. In the interesting document preserved to us by the famous monk iElfric, " the grammarian," of Ramsbury or Malmes- bury, the prevailing mediaeval theory of seven orders of the ministry in the Church is accepted and described ; and the highest of all, he says, is the Presbyter, who "hallows the housel 3 and preaches to and instructs the people." It is added, 1 There is riot the slightest notice of any Convocation or synod of the clergy with- out tbe adiui.vture of laymen, in England, before a.d. 1250. - Johnson's English Canons, i. 387-403. ;! It is iElfric also who so distinctly disavows all transubstantiation doctrine. In an exhortation appended to the above Canons, the " housel," or sacramental bread, is declared to be " Christ's body not corporally but spiritually." And in his famous Easter Homily (which played so important a part afterwards in the hands of Cranmer and Ridley) he develops more fully the same idea, "Great is the difference between the body in which Christ suffered and that which is hallowed for housel. . . . His ghostly body, which we call housel, is gathered of many corns without blood or bone, limbless and soulless ; and there is therein nothing to be understood bodily, but all is to be understood .spiritually." introduction:. 17 '; There is no more between a bishop and a priest but that the bishop is appointed to ordain and to bishop children, and to hallow churches and to take care of God's rights.'" The writer knows nothing of any threefold order of the ministry, and is at least theoretically presbyterian. In Medievalism. Although during the Middle Ages, and after the great changes effected by the Norman Conquest in England, the Prelatic and Papal Church system reigned supreme, yet even down to the Council of Trent (1546-1564) there were not wanting eminent authorities in the Church of Rome who ac- knowledged the original identity of Bishops and Presbyters ; and one of the most distinguished theologians in the Council itself vigorously protested and maintained that not only did Scripture favour this view, but many of the Fathers, like Jerome,1 Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, Theocloret, Theo- plrylact, were distinctly of this mind. No doubt that Council of Trent, in the Decrees that summed up the views of Mediseval and Romish theology, dogmatically asserted that from the earliest ages " there v:eve seven okdees in the Christian ministry" and that " Bishops were superior to Priests." Still they agreed that the priesthood is the highest order of ministry in the Church, and the Episcopate is only a higher ecclesias- tical degree or grade (gradus) within the Presbyterate. The records and usages even of Meclisevalism contain many linger- ing traces and testimonies of the original and theoretic oneness of Bishops and Presbyters. What stronger evidences can there be of this than those furnished by Gratian, the very founder of the science of Canon Law in the Church of Rome, or his contemporary, Peter Lombard, her renowned theological oracle, who both flourished in the twelfth century, and who 1 The famous passage of Jerome, at the end of the fourth century, in his Com- mentary on the Epistle to Titus, is perhaps the best known and the most decisive. " A Presbyter is the same as a Bishop. And before dissensions in religion were produced by the instigation of the Devil, and one said, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Cephas, the Churches were governed by a common Council of Presbyters." C 18 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. both expressly assert trie original oneness of Bishop and Pres- byter ? * Those who study the rise and constitution of the monastic orders, will find adequate proofs and illustrations there of the existence and survival of such Presbyterial tradi- tions. The growth and retention of what were called "exempt jurisdictions," and the continuance of the usage, that required Presbyters to join in laying on of hands in ordinations ; the removal of monasteries from episcopal jurisdiction and con- trol,2 and the long struggle of the " abbots " in England against the Bishops, that issued not only in the entire im- munity of many heads of abbeys from episcopal control, but their actual admission to Episcopal rights over their own clergy.3 The contentions between the rival sects of the monks and of the preaching friars, and the hatred of both of them to the Bishops ; the vehement opposition to the Church's system and government on the part of the Fratricelli, Beghards, and other ejected "Brotherhoods," not to mention the Albigensians,1 Waldensians and similar offshoots — all of these supply proof, that though the practice of the Church was systematically Prelatic, the Presbyterial theory was not wholly lost sight of or disowned. This is emphatically seen : — 1 Gratian, in his Decretum vel Concordium Discordant ium Ganonum, which was the text-book of the English Ecclesiastical Courts ; and Lombard, in his Sent entice. Hence it was declared by Linwood and other English canonists, " Episcopatus non est Ordo." For further references, see Cunningham's Historical Theology, vol. i. pp. 422-432. A man like Anselm himself, Archbishop of Canterbury (a.d. 1093), says (Com. in Epist. Philipp. ch. i.) on the word Ejnscopis, " id est Presbyteris : Dignitatem et excellentiam Presbyterornm declarat, dum eosdem qui Presbyteri sunt, Episcopos esse manifestat. Quod autem postea unus electus est, qui ceteris prreponeretur. . . . Constat ergo ArosTOLiCA institutions omnes Fresbytcros esse Episcopos, licet nunc illi majores hoc nomen obtineant." And in fact he says, Bishop and Presbyter differ only in respect of place and degree, not of order. 2 First granted by the Pope in the Lateran Council of a.d. 601, but introduced into England by the Cistercians, who were exempt from the very first, and this gave the whole of these monastic institutions an aspect of dissent and protest against the prelacy of the Church. 3 The first Episcopal or mitred Abbot in England was the Abbot of St. Albans, about 1163. St. Albans was also the first notable abbey which had secured com- plete immunity from episcopal control. The great mitred abbots were among the highest spiritual peers and magnates of the realm, and ultimately their numbers and influence quite overtopped the Bishops in the House of Lords. 4 For the rise in Bosnia, " the religious Switzerland of mediaeval Europe," of the great and widespread revolt, afterwards called Albigensi, see " Historical Sketch," in A. J. Evans's Throu/jh Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot. Lond., 1876. INTRODUCTION. 19 In Wycliffite and Pee-Reformation Times. By far the noblest figure emerging out of the dreary expanse of Scholasticism is that of John Wycliffe, "the Morning Star of the Reformation," in his peerless loneliness heralding and assur- ing the dawn of a brighter day for Western Christendom. He is a true spiritual Prometheus, bringing fire from heaven to illumine and purify both Church and State.1 For whether as Reformer or Patriot, it is impossible to over-estimate his far- reaching influence.3 His writings, now being at last carefully edited and brought to light, increasingly confirm the conviction, that if, in matters of Scripture teaching, Wycliffe anticipated future Protestantism, in matters of Church discipline and polity he anticipated Puritanism— a Church reformer as he was, of the purest evangelical type and spirit.3 The greatness of Wycliffe lay in the depth and moral earnestness of his character, as well as in the marvellous variety of his gifts and labours. He was great alike as a thinker, writer, preacher, and worker : above all, a religious reformer upon Scriptural grounds and principles. And thus he stands forth head and shoulders above all such precursors in England as Henry Bracton or William of Occam, Richard Fitzralph or Robert Grosteste of Lincoln ; the theo- i One of the illustrations in a magnificently illuminated Bohemian Cautionale of 1572, in the University Library of Prague, represents Wycliffe striking the spark from flint ; John Huss, in a second medallion, is applying the fire to the fuel ; and in a third compartment, Luther is bearing aloft the blazing cresset. 2 The great authority here is Lechler's learned yet popular work on John Wycliffe and his English Precursors, translated and annotated by Principal Lorimer, D.D. (Religious Tract Society's edition, 188L) See also the Life, by for The English Text Society ; the MSS. of the Latin work, issued by Dr. Rudolph Buddensieg and others for The Wycliffe Society, and also the four precious volumes of the Wycliffe Bible, by Forshall and Madden. 3 " If the Reformation of our Church had been conducted by Wycliffe, his work, in all probability, would nearly have anticipated the labours of Calvin, and the Protestantism of England might have pretty closely resembled the Protestantism of Geneva. There is a marvellous resemblance between the Reformer with his poor itinerant priests, and at least the better part of the Puritans.' — Le Bas, Life oj Wycliffe, pp. 305-60. " About a hundred and fifty years before Luther, nearly the same doctrine as he taught had been maintained by Wycliffe, whose disciples, usually called Lollards, existed as a numerous, though obscure and proscribed sect till, aided by the confluence of foreign streams, they swelled into the Protestant Church of England." — Hallam's Constitutional Hist. i. p. 57. 20 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. logical Brad wardi lie, or the satirical William. Langland in his wonderful allegory, " The Vision of Piers Plowman." The movement under Wycliffe and his Lollards was a revolt, not only against mediaeval doctrine, morals, and worship, but against false and corrupt theories of the Church and its consti- tution. By long study, especially of Scripture, his views de- veloped and underwent considerable growth and modification from first to last.1 But he rested finally in the conviction that Papacy in the Church was a form of Antichrist ; and that a non-preaching priesthood was an invention of the devil, and a mere mockery of the Christian ministry. He proclaims that Presbyter and Bishop were identical in Scripture, and continued not only to be so acknowledged, but acted on long afterwards in the best parts of the Church. He maintained that " in the time of the Apostle Paul, two orders of clergy were sufficient for the Church : nor were there in the days of the Apostles any such distinctions as Pope, Patriarch, or Prelate." 2 The subsequent graduated hierarchy within the presbyterate sprang out of the growing but illegitimate smuggling of secular arrangements into the Church.3 These views led him to de- nounce the whole hierarchical and prelatical system, as well as the positive blasphemy of the Papal claims.4 Nor did his work cease with denunciation ; for he began to give practical effect 1 Lechler distinguishes three stages in Wycliffe's Church-government views — the first stage reaching to the outbreak of the Papal schism in 1378, the second from 1378 to 1381, and the last from 1381 to his death in 1384.— Wycliffe's Life, ch. viii. sec. 11th, pp. 312-318. s In his Trialogus (iv. sec. 15, p. 296), he says: "Unum audenter assero, quod in primitiva ecclesia ut tempore Pauli suffecerunt duo ordines clericorum, scilicet sacer- dos atque diaconus. Secundo dico, quod in tempore apostoli fuit idem presbyter atque episcopus ; patet 1 Timothy iii. et ad Titum 1." Comp. Siipplementuiu Tria- logi, c. 6, p. 438 : ut olim omnes sacerdotes vocati fuerunt episcopi. Be Officio Pastorali, I. 4, p. 11 : Apostolus voluit episcopos, quos vocat quoseunque curatos. J Wycliffe, in his Litem missa Archiepiscopo Cuntuariensi, strongly enunciates the principle that the clergy should possess no secular Lordships. He lays great emphasis on the idea that Bishops of Bishops, or fixed presidency over the original Bishops, was introduced in connection with Constantine the Great, having not only endowed his own Bishop Sylvester at Rome with rich temporal possessions, but also with new power and dignity, whence graduated hierarchy was developed, culminating in the Papal Primacy.— I 'ide Lechler's Wxjcliffe, p. 311. Wycliffe's great work, Be Officio Pastorali, turns upon the thought, that it would be more wholesome for the parish clergy, and, at the same time, quite sufficient for their worldly comfort, to live upon the voluntary gifts of their congregations. 4 Here are some of Wycliffe's primary and fundamental positions. "Looking on the present state of the Church, we find it would be better and of greater use to INTBODUCTION. 21 to his views by training and sending forth his " poor priests " or " Bible-men," to preach and evangelize. Out of this grew the Lollard persuasion, that presbyters have the right and power of ordaining. Wycliffe's whole position was remarkably kindred to that of Wesley, nearly four centuries later. His in- stitution for equipping and commissioning qualified preachers, has as yet been only imperfectly understood : its history and results will become better known as his later manuscripts get printed and studied. The great schism in the Papacy in 1378, which lasted nearly forty years, when the two rival Popes, Urban VI. and Clement VII., were cursing and excommunicating each other, afforded a grand and providential means of protection for "WyclifTe. Vengeance could only be wreaked long afterwards on his bones. But by the fierce action of the Bishops and Clergy, the fright- ful enactment " De comburendo hseretico " was at length passed in Parliament, 1401. And then such havoc began to be wrought in the Lollard Church, that it was ultimately stamped out in blood and fire ; William Sautre,1 William Thorpe,2 and finally, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham,3 being among the most prominent victims. the Church if it were governed purely by the law of the Scripture than by human traditions, mixed up with evangelical truths." Again : "As they ought to be, Papal Bulls will he superseded by the Holy Scrip- tures. By pursuing such a course, it is in our power to reduce the mandates of Prelates and Popes to their just place." Or again : " For Christ, our Lawgiver, has given us a law ivhich in. itself is suffi- cient for the whole Church Militant." — Buddensieg's Wycliff'e, pp. 89, 92, 93. 1 William Sautre, ex-priest, and first Lollard martyr, was burned at Smithfield in March, 1401. 2 William Thorpe for twenty years was a notable itinerant preacher. Some very interesting memoranda of his trial and testimony before the Archbishop's Court were jmblished a century afterwards by William Tyndale, and became a favourite manual with the early Reformationists. It was called " The Examin- ation of William Thorpe," and though prohibited by royal decree in 1530, it was preserved, both in Latin and English, by John Foxe. See his Acts and Monuments, or Book of Martyrs (Pratt & Stoughton's edition, vol. hi. pp. 250-282). 3 The tragic story and cruel death of Sir John Oldcastle, the " Good Lord Cob- ham," in 1417, are told in Foxe's Acts and Monuments, Book V., and vol. i. of Hepworth Dixon's Her Majesty's Toiver. Through the misleading and malignant tales of the monkish chronicles, Sbakespeare had figured his well-known character Falstaff by the name Sir John Oldcastle ; but better information convincing him that Sir John was " a valiant martyr and a virtuous peer," he substituted Falstaff for Oldcastle ; and in the Epilogue to Part II. of Henry IV. he makes an explan- ation and apology in these words : " For anything I know, Falstaff' shall die of a sweat ; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." 22 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. In the Ecclesiastical Revolution under Henry VIII. The Reformation in England, as elsewhere, was a twofold movement — an outer and inner one. As a politico-ecclesiastical movement, it was an insurrection against Papal claims : as a religious revival, it was a resurrection of Scripture life and doctrine. As the work of Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth, it was more of the nature of a political and ecclesias- tical revolution ; but as the work of Bible-taught and Bible- loving men, it was a resuscitation of long-buried gospel truth, and preaching of the Word. Both movements were, in a sense, contemporaneous, yet the former had the precedence.1 What Henry VIII. promoted, was not a religious reformation, but a politico-ecclesiastical revolution, on a scale that England had never yet seen. His aim was, to make the Church of Christ in England a purely national institution, with himself as Pope ; and he secured this end by his two gigantic measures : absolute severance from the Papal See, and the total suppression of the monasteries. It were, of course, both shallow philosophy and imperfect history, to say that Henry VIII. or Elizabeth produced the Reformation. The distinctive peculiarity, however, of the Reformation in England, was its dependence to so large an ex- tent on the policy or caprice of the monarch. This dominates the whole situation, and accounts for many peculiar features and tendencies of the English Reformation. Elsewhere, the vehemence of the popular will is the initiating and potent factor. In England, the work moved round a political, in Scotland, round an ecclesiastical centre. The prominent out- come of the former was a nobly free State : of the latter, a notably free and self-governing Church. The first aspect of the change in England, was the severance of the kingdom from the supremacy' of rome. For the first eighteen years of his reign, Henry VIII. had 1 As Hallain remarks (Constitutional History, chap, ii., -where the reader will find on the whole the best summary and most accurate view of the situation at this time), "The English Reformation, down to the middle of Elizabeth's reign, was much more a political than a religious movement with the great proportion of English people." INTRODUCTION. 23 supported in its most extreme form the doctrine of the Papal supremacy ; and for his work against Luther had won from the Pope the famous title, "Defender of the Faith." Then came the sudden and violent breach with Rome, over the question of the king's desired divorce. For, when the Pope would not be terrified into granting that divorce, Henry, having got Wolsey and the Bishops into his power fby the clever stroke of involving them in a violation of the great statute of Prcemunire), wrung from the ecclesiastics that ever- memorable and all -determining measure, i: the submission of the clergy." And i having still the nation strongly at his back) there came then the violent wrench from Rome, when Hemy got Parliament, after various strong enactments, to pass the strongest of them all : " the Act of Supremacy" in 1534, by which he not only became Supreme Head of the Church in England, but acquired a mastery over the Bishops, even in their own province. Statute law decreed, that " Archbishops, Bishops, Archdeacons, and other ecclesiastical persons, hace no measure of jurisdiction ecclesiastical, but by and under the king's majesty, the only undoubted supreme head of the Church." 1 To lend emphasis to this novel and revolutionary theory of ecclesiastical authority (whereby all spiritual as well as temporal power was resolved into the royal supre- macy), Henry made Thomas Cromwell his vicegerent in all ecclesiastical matters, for reforming all heresies, scandals, and abuses ; and, by virtue of this office, Cromwell sat in the eery Convocation itself even above the Archbishops} 1 It was for conscientiously refusing to own this supremacy, that Sir Thos. More and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, were executed. 2 In an extraordinary document to be afterwards noticed (the original in Cotton. Lib. E. 5), and which is signed first by "Thomas Cromwell," then by Cranmer, and his fellow Archbishop of York, as well as by eleven Bishops, twenty-three Doctors of Theology and Professors of Canon Law, and " some other hands there are that cannot be read" they say in name of the king, " As touching the sacrament of Holy Orders, we will that all Bishops and preachers shall instruct and teach our people " . . . " that in the New Testament there is no mention of other degrees, but of Deacons or Ministers and of Presbyters or Bisliops ; " and then follows the extremely noteworthy passage : " Of these two orders only, that is to say, priests and deacons, Scripture maketh express mention, and how they were conferred of the Apostles by prayer and imposition of hands ; but the primitive Church afterwards appointed inferior degrees, as sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, etc.; but lest peradventure it might be thought by some, that such authorities, powers, 2-i THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. The other great revolutionary measure was The total sup- pression of the monasteries — an event that drew immense consequences in its train. For the removal of the mitred abbots from the House of Peers changed the whole aspect of matters there. The Lords Temporal now preponderated over the Lords Spiritual, so that the ecclesiastical aristocracy had to play, if an influential, yet a very secondary and subordinate part. For now the three estates of the realm were no longer King, Clergy, and Laity, but King, Lords, and Commons. As a body, the Bishops hated and opposed the progress of the Reformation of the Church in all its forms, but they had to succumb at critical junctures to the inevitable ; and thus the revolutionary methods had the form and show of law and order, in spite of all the helpless votes or protests of the Church's episcopal leaders and representatives. l Considered as a religious movement, the most potent factor in the Reformation was not the Church or her functionaries, but the translation and dissemination of the Bible by the labours of Tyndal and Coverdale, with other books relating to its teaching and doctrines.2 For a time this was permitted by and jurisdictions as patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and metropolitans now have, or heretofore at any time have had, justly and lawfully over other bishops, were given them by God in holy Scripture ; we think it expedient and neces- sary that all men should be advertised and taught, that all such lawful power mid authority of any one bisliop over another were and be given them by tlie consent, ordinances, and positive laws of men only, and not by any ordinance of God in holy Scripture ; and all such power and authority which any bishop has used over another, which has not been given him by such consent aud ordinance of men, is in very deed no lawful power, but plain usurpation and tyranny." See Burnet's Hist, of Reformation, vol. i. Append. The great Statute of Provisors (25th of Edward III., 1350) claims distinctly, that Prelacy was erected in England by the. Croivn and its Councillors, apart from any other authority ; and it is on this that Henry VIII. falls back in support of his own spiritual supremacy. 1 In referring to the fall of the monasteries and the exclusion of abbots from both the House of Lords and Convocation, a modern High Church historian truly remarks : " Henceforth there was a gulf between the clergy and the laity. The inferior clerical orders were abolished at the same time with the monks aud friars ; and the nation grew accustomed to think that tliere could be no other clergy but liislnijis, priests, and deacons. This is a modern and restricted conception, which has wrought calamitously on the fortunes of the Church." — Dixon's History of Church of England, vol. ii. p. 2'20. - A very remarkable book, " The Institution of a Christian Man," was drawn up with royal authority by the Bishops and other divines in 1537. This was called "The Bishops' Book," to distinguish it ^froni a more Bomish version in 1540, called " The King's Book," with the title "The Erudition of a Christian Man" It INTEODUCTION. 25 the Crown, under the more Protestant influence of Cromwell and Cranmer ; but in 1539 Henry VIII. became vehemently reactionary in doctrine and discipline, and issued the terrible Six Articles, or " Bloody Statute," as it was called, or "Scourge with six thongs," for the " abolition of diversity of opinion " in religion, whereby such fearful havoc was done during the remaining eight tyrannical years of his reign. William Tyn- dale, the great Bible translator and the best apostle of evangelic faith of his day, had perished under a former statute in 1536; but, like other advanced reformers, he had descried from Scrip- ture the essential basis of Presbyterianism. In his " Practice of Prelates," issued in 1530, he not only proclaimed that " the covetousness of prelates was the decay of Christendom,"1 but in setting forth " what officers the apostles ordained in Christ's Church," 2 he says : — " Wherefore the Apostles, following and obeying the rule, doctrine, and commandment of our Saviour Jesus Christ their Master, ordained in His kingdom and congregation two officers, one called after the Greek word bishop, in English an overseer, which same was called priest after the Greek, elder in English . . . Another officer they chose, and called him deacon after the Greek, a minister in English, to minister the alms." was read and approved by both Houses of Parliament, after being revised by the king's own hand, and was dedicated to his faithful subjects, as a standard of Chris- tian belief. It has some remarkable passages denying the divine origin of prelacy. We have already given one. The following is no less striking: "Albeit the holy fathers of the Church- which succeeded the Apostles, minding to beautijie and ornate the Church, of Christ ivith all those tilings which were commendable in the temple of the Jews, did devise not only certain other ceremonies than be before rehearsed, Tonsures, Eoesures, Unctions, and suchother observances to be used in the administra- tion of the said sacraments, but did also institute certain inferior orders or degrees, ■ianitors, lectors, exorcists, acolists, and sub-deacons, and deputed to every one of those certain offices to execute in the church, wherein they followed undoubtedly the example and rites used in the Old Testament : yet the truth is, that in the New Testa- ment THERE IS NO MENTION MADE OF ANY DEGREES OR DISTINCTIONS IN ORDERS, BUT only of Deacons or Ministers, and of Priests or Bishops. 1 Parker Society's edition, p. 254. 2 Ibid., p. 253. (Xbc iRisc of tbe Presbyterians in tbe IReformeb Cburcb of fiSnglanb. INCEPTIVE PERIOD. I. — Martin Bucer and his Presbyterianizing Draft of Church Reform for Edward VI. 1549-51. II. — John A'Lasco axd his Early Presbyterian Organization of the London Church of the Strangers. 1550-5;]. III. — Hooper axd the Origin of the Vestments Controversy. 1550-51. IV. — John Knox in England, axd his Influence on its Early Presbyterian Worship. 1549-53. v. — grrowth of presbyterian vlews among english exiles. 1553-58. 27 £bc IRisc of the Presbyterians in tbc IReformeb Cburcb of i£nglan&. INCEPTIVE PERIOD. I. MAETIN BUCER AND HIS PRESBYTERIANLZING DEAFT OF CHUECH EEFOEM FOE EDWARD VI. 1549-51. We are now to see in this chapter, from the story of Martin Bucer and his Presbyterian draft of Church Reform for Edward VI., how narrowly the English Church escaped from receiving a Presbyterian Constitution, or from starting along Presbyterian lines in its early reformation. Martin Bucer,1 a native of Alsace, where he was born in 1491, became identified with its Protestant capital, Strasburg, and was the acknowledged leader of its Protestantism. So far as his Continental work was concerned, he is chiefly remarkable for his strenuous efforts to promote agreement be- tween the Lutherans and the Zuinglians on the subject of the Lord's Supper. Himself originally a Zuinglian, with the idea of the sacramental elements being naked signs (nuda signa), he settled in the intermediate or Calvinian conviction that they constitute to faith not only a symbolic but a sealing ordinance, pledging and conveying the benefits of the Saviour's presence, in the believing use of them. As a man of splendid intellectual and spiritual power, he was overshadowed by only a few of his greatest contemporaries, and may be fairly set on a level with Melanchthon. Of a fear- less and unselfish nature, he made a bold stand against the im- 1 Bucer is the Grrccized rendering of his real German name, Kuhorn, according to the learned usage of the times, whereby the name Schwaktz-ekd, or black-earth, was represented by its Greek equivalent, Melanchthon : or the name of Gerhard was translated into both Latin and Greek forms, Desiderius or Erasmus, by which the great Dutch scholar is now exclusively known. 29 30 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. position of the Imperial Interim at Strasburg ; and only when overborne by main force did he withdraw from the struggle. Cranmer was exceedingly anxious to secure the presence and help of so prominent and able an opponent of the imperial policy, and in a letter of 2nd October, 1548, invited him to take refuge in England, urging him to " set aside all hesitation and come over as soon as possible." l Bucer reached London 25th April, 1549, as appears from a letter of Fagius, his companion, written from Lambeth the following day." His time in England was not long — he died within two years — but his influence in mould- ing opinion was extraordinary, both as theological professor at Cambridge, and one of the chief advisers in spiritual affairs. He arrived at a most critical juncture, when the English Church formularies and Prayer Book were being compiled ; and that these became so effectively Protestant in their second issue under Edward VI. was in no small ■measure owing to Martin Bucer, with his friends Peter Martyr Vermigli, and John a Lasco. Cranmer and others, no doubt, wielded the pen, but Bucer and his foreign associates did far more than is usually supposed in supplying matter, and even guiding the hand that produced the volume. Much blame has been most undeser- vedly cast upon his memory for interfering so largely with English Church affairs. It is the strongly Protestant and Presbyterianizing direction of his influence that has constituted his sole offence, his supposed interferences being none of his own seeking.3 Even before his arrival in England he had, all unconsciously, made his mark on the earliest English Com- munion Service. This was the eirst part of the Liturgy in English, and it Avas issued for use by royal proclamation, as if it were a state paper, on 8th March, 1548 : the other sections not appearing as a whole till early in 1549. Whatever in this Communion Service was not taken from the Latin Mass books was derived, by Cranmer and the divines who drew it up, from 1 Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, p. 20. (Parker Society.) - Orig. Letters, p. 332. 3 The authority on all matters relating to Bueer aDd the English Church is that remarkable posthumous collection, M. Buceri Scripta Anglicana, issued at Basle by C. Habertus, 1577. THEIR RISE. 31 the notable '! Consultation " l of Archbishop Hermann, which was really the work of Bucer and Melanchthon, based on Luther's Nuremberg Services. This Directory for worship, set forth by the famous reforming Archbishop of Cologne, is one main source of the English Communion Service, which is specially indebted to those comments or explanations in it which Bucer himself had composed. Another link of associa- tion that Bucer had formed with England, before he reached its shores, was the friendly letter of congratulation 3 to its reform- ing Church. Among other words of stimulus, he had written : — '; I have received your Homilies, the discourses in which you piously and effectively exhort your people to read the Scriptures : in which you explain with holy skill both the faith by which we are Christians, and the justification wherein salvation wholly consists, as well as the other capital parts of religion. How scrupulously you separate true faith from dead faith, and define the works of the justified ! No relics of the old leaven will long- remain among you, either in doctrine or discipline. The work will go on : the sacraments will be administered according to Christ's institution, communicated to all who should receive, and declared and acknowledged to be the signs of His grace.7' When Bucer set foot in England, it was the Ordinal, or the service for use in ordinations, that was under consideration, so as to complete the formularies of the first Prayer Book (partly issued already) in English. During the winter of 15-19, a Committee was appointed to draw up such an Ordinal, and the result was printed by Richard Grafton the following March, 1550. There can be no doubt Bucer's help was requested ; and this was probably among his earliest services that winter, under Cranmer's roof at Lambeth. In the Script a Anglicana (that is, Bucer's Writing* in Eng- land) there is a little treatise that has been singularly over- looked, on Ordination, with a Form for it as well.3 Presbyterian views of ministerial equality led Bucer to 1 See Procter's Hist, of Prayer Booh, p. 23 ; and Scudamore's Notitia Eucharistica. " Gratulatio Martini Buceri ad Ecclesiam Anglicanara de religionis Christi restitutione, Anno 1518. — Scripta Anglicana, p. 171. 3 De Ordinatione legitime/, Hinistrorwm Ecclesiarum revocandd, the very first word of which — " Qucsritur de ord.leg.revocanda," — is sufficient to show that the tractate was drawn up in answer to a request for a statement of his views. And certainly it does not admit of doubt that Bucer's form is the original source of very much in the English Ordinal, though this has entirely escaped the notice of the commenta- 32 THE PTCESBYTERTAXS IX EXGLAXD. compose only one form of ordination. This gets distributed in the Prayer Book over the three distinct services, in the ordinal for bishops, priests, and deacons, which the Anglican Reformers had resolved to maintain,1 though we presume it was out o± tors and historians of the Prayer Book. Whoever will be at pains to compare the two, will readily conclude that no man has contributed so much to the Ordinal in the English Prayer Book as Bucer has, though evidently foiled in his efforts to pre- serve it from a priestly leaven. The address to the newly ordained Presbyters, with all its force and gravity, is but a condensed rendering of Bucer's very words, while the questions proposed in the Ordinal to the candidates are adopted almost verbatim, as may be seen at a glance. Specimen of Bdter's Form. I. Confiditis vos a Domino nostro Jesu Christo, principe pastore gregis sui et summo animarum Episcopo ad Ecclesia? sure ministerium esse vocatos ? II. Persuasum habetis D. Scripturas continere omnem doctrinam a'terna? salutis et decrevistis ex his solis atque juxta confessionem nostra? Ecclesia? (qua? summa est doctrina? in D. Scrip- turis tradita? et consensus Ecclesire Christi Catholicus) desumere qua? popu- lum vobis commissum doceatis omnia, nee quicquam ei inferre quod ex illis concludi et demonstrari non possit ? III. Dabitis igitur fidelem operam ut et doctrinam etsacramentaet disciplinam Christi omnino ita aclministretis ut prse- cepit Dominus et habet Ecclesia nostra ex Domini pra?ceptis administrationis hujus rationem constituendam, ut do- ceatis vestra? fidei ac cura? commissos servare omnia qinpcunque Dominus do- cenda tradidit et prsecepit ? English Ordinal of 1549. (Questions proposed to Presbyters.) Do you think in your heart, that you be truly called, according to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Order of this Church of England, to the Ministry of Priesthood ? Be you persuaded that the holy Scrip- tures contain sufficiently all doctrine required of necessity for eternal salva- tion through faith in Jesus Christ? And are you determined, with the said Scrip- tures to instruct the people committed to your charge, and to teach nothing, as required of necessity to eternal salva- tion, but that you shall be persuaded may be concluded and proved by the Scripture ? Will you, then, give your faithful dili- gence always so to minister the doctrine and Sacraments, and the discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Kealm hath received the same, according to the commandments of God, so that ye may teach the people committed to your care and charge with all diligence to keep and observe the same .' So close a resemblance as this is very remarkable, and it is equally observable through all the questions proposed to the candidates, there being, of course, no reference in Bucer's language to " this realm," or the "Bishop," or "ordinary," and the like ; but his allusions are to the ministry and rulers of Christ's Church and Kingdom. 1 It is of moment to remember, that while the English Prayer Book speaks of the " three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons," it was not till the Uniformity Edition of 1(361, when the forms were somewhat altered, that the Consecration of a bishop was actually called " ordaining " ; the Anglican Church thus committing herself at that time more strongly than before to what Presbyterians regard a fatal and pernicious theory. Stilliiigfleet mentions that Archbishop Cranmer, in an Assembly of Divines con- vened by authority of Edward VI., gave it as his opinion, in which many concurred, " that Bishops and Priests were not two things, but both one office in the beginning THEIR RISE. 33 deference to such views as Bucer's, or from doubts of the sufficiency of a one-man ordination by a prelate alone, that the rubric for ordaining Presbyters does still enjoin that " the Bishop, with the priests present, shall lay their hands several!;/ upon the head of every one that receiveth orders" (that receiveth the order of the priesthood, is the present form of words). On this question of orders, Bucer declares distinctly, in the preface to his own form, that— "The ministers in the Church are of two kinds, according to the insti- tution of the Holy Ghost : one relating to the stewardship of the word, sacraments, and discipline of Christ, which properly belongs to Bishops or Presbyters ; the other, the care of the poor, which used to be entrusted to those whom they called Deacons." But the differences between Bucer's draft and the English ordinal are not less remarkable than the resemblances. Perhaps the most crucial instance is seen in the very act of ordination. The Anglican authorities retain the Eomish formula, but while they charge the Bishop to use the words, " Receive the Holy Ghost," they yet shrink at the same time from requiring him to employ the Saviour's solemn action, uHe breathed on them" although that too was part of the medieval usage, and both were introduced together — not, indeed, earlier than the eleventh century. Bucer's plain, yet scriptural choice of words leaves no room for priestly pretensions.1 The act is to of Christ's religion. That Kings and Governors also, so Christian Emperors and p. 392. 1 Bucer's Form. Post hanc precem pri- marius ordinator cum presbyteris praesentibus, imponit iis qui ordinantur in genua sua procumbenti- bus manus,et dicit, Manus Dei Omnipotentis Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti sit super vos, protegat et gubernet vos ut eatis et fructum vestro ministerio quamplurimum afferatis isque inaneat in vitam seternam. Amen. * The prayer is also Bucer's. a Bishop may make a Priest by Scripture, and so may . . . For as we have read that Bishops have done it, Princes usually have done it."— Stillingrleet's Ircnicum, Translation. After this prayer the chief ordainer, with tbo Presbyters present, im- poses bands on those who are being ordained, as they kneel upon their knees, and says, The hand of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be upon you, protect aud govern you, that ye may go aud bring forth much fruit by your ministry, and that it may remain to life eternal. Amen. English Ordinal, 1549. When this prayer* is done, the Bishop . . . saying- Receive the Holy Ghost. . . . Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God, and of His holy Sacraments ; In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. D 34 THE PRESBYTERIANS IX ENGLAND. him an orderly Apostolic designation to office within the Church, with neither ghostly gift nor grace mystically con- veyed in the ordaining process. But, perhaps the most valuable service he rendered to Eng- lish Protestantism was his masterly style of handling the First Prayer Book. Cranmer had sent him a copy of this Book for consideration ; and Bucer, having got his distinguished Scotch friend Ales, or Alesius, to translate it into Latin, proceeded to draw up a review of it at great length.1 His criticisms occupy twenty- eight chapters of the Scripta Anglicana, and being endorsed by Peter Martyr, they produced a very strong and whole- some impression in influential quarters. In fact, they rendered a revision inevitable, and contributed to secure that most thoroughly Protestant of all English standards, the Second English Prayer Book of Edward VI., in 1552.- What, however, signalizes Bucer above all, in this advanced work of Reformation in England, is the draft of a more primi- tive Church system, which, with Cranmer s goodwill, he drew up for the use of the young King. This is contained in that portion of the Scripta Anglicana which is headed De Regno Christi (concerning Christ's Kingdom), in two books. The treatise was dedicated to Edward VI., and was sent to him first in manuscript, as a new year's gift, in 1551, Bucer " being 1 See Collier's Ecclcs. Hist. vol. v. pp. 3U7 et seq., and Procter, Hist, of Prayer Look, pp. 41 et seq. 2 In the First Book of 1549, " altar " was employed with entire consistency, be- cause the sacrifice of the " Mass " had been retained, though in modified form. But when Cranmer and Ridley had become convinced of the Mass being a compara- tively recent corruption, — as they were led to see, chiefly by a treatise of Johannes Scotus, commonly but erroneously known then as the Book of Bertram, and also by the famed Saxon homily of /Elfric of Malmesbury against the monk of Corby's defence of transubstantiation, — they resolved to remove it, root and branch. Ridley began his vigorous crusade against altars, pulling them down all through his diocese ; and Cranmer wrote the elaborate treatise which created so tremendous a sensation in 1550 on The True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament. Hence, in every instance where " altar " occurred in the First Book, "table" is substituted in the Second and later Prayer Books, sometimes " holy table " or " the Lord's table ; " but never is " altar " used any more in the Service. And though the word priest was retained, it was only Presbyter writ short, not priest in the sense of Sticerdos. Hence the language of the Homily on the Lord's Supper, ' ' Herein thou needest no other man's help — no sacrificing priest, no Mass." THEIR RISE. 35 himself then sick, and dying the next month." l According to Collier (Eccles. Hist. vol. v. p. 418),— "Tins tract of Bucer's lias a great deal of uncommon thought in it. handsomely supported. The whole discourse appears with a nohle air of freedom and integrity.'' That the young King was greatly delighted with it, is apparent from his proceeding to draw out, with his own hand, a project of reformation in Church polity according to its leading suggestions, that each Bishop should have a Council of Presbyters with whom to consult and habitually act, and that Provincial Synods, with ecclesiastical jurisdiction, should meet twice a year, a Eoyal Commissioner being present. The young King is strengthened also in his appointment of a body of able and eloquent preachers, to travel over the kingdom and instruct the people, Bucer pressing the need of exercising persuasion rather than compulsive rigour in withdrawing the people from superstition.3 Before coming to the pith of the scheme, we may notice two prominent features, connected with education and poor law reform. To the matter of general education Bucer attaches very great importance. In Edward's Royal Grammar Schools, created out of the old chantries, a good beginning was made ; but Bucer's suggestions would have carried the King and Council vastly further. His anxiety was, for the means of educating the entire youth of the country. 1 Strype, hi. [110. A few months afterwards appeared "An Account of the much lamented Death of Sneer," consisting of two letters by the distinguished Greek scholar, Sir JohnCheke, the hist bearing date 10 March, addressed to Peter Martyr, and the second to Dr. Walter Haddon. There is also a third, addressed to Sir John Cheke from Car, of Trin. Coll., Cambridge, besides poems in honour of the deceased. When the young King heard how much Bucer suffered from cold, he sent him one hundred crowns for a German stove. The funeral was one of the grandest Cambridge had ever seen ; and the funeral sermon was preached by Matthew Parker (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury). Five years later, under Queen Mary, the body was dug up and burned with his books, after a formal pro- cess for heresy against the corpse ! The body of Peter Martyr's wife was also dis- interred at Oxford, as that of a married nun, and committed to a dunghill! But, as we read in Foxe's Acts and Monuments, in Elizabeth's reign it was finally deposited in the grave of a female saint, mingled with her relics, that no further indignity might be possible. - That this enlightened policy did not continue under Elizabeth, was the cause of untold evil. 36 THE PRESBYTERIANS IX ENGLAND. Under another head, he proposes a remarkable poor law measure, winch he would have worked gratuitously through the machinery of the Church by creating an order of honorary deacons in each parish, to be under the surveillance of the Bishop and his Presbytery. But it is what Bucer calls his fourth law, and the ideas gathering round it, that are of special interest to us, more particularly Ms method of reducing Episcopacy, and securing a fuller discharge of all the pastoral functions which the Church has a right to expect. Holding the usual Presbyterian view of the ministry, Bucer is not averse to Episcopacy for administra- tive ends, but is decisively against any prelatic theory that would involve a hierarchical priesthood with powers of con- ferring grace. He would abolish the civil administration of the Bishops ; separate them from secular matters and affairs of State ; bind them to their spiritual calling in their respective districts, with suffragans over every twenty parishes ; strip them of their high discretionary powers, and get them to manage all things in council with their Presbyters, and in con- nection with a proper form both of doctrine and discipline by which all should be regulated. He would weed out canon law and have provincial synods, as of old, twice a year for orderly management.1 Holding as he does with Jerome, that the office of Presbyters and Bishops is one and the same (episcopal func- tions being lodged in the body of Presbyters), and allowing that even in the times of the Apostles one of the Presbyters was chosen and ordained to go before the rest in administering the episcopal functions chiefly and in the highest degree, — to whom the name of Bishop was peculiarly attributed, and to whom a presidency in a congregation was fixedly accorded, though he was to undertake nothing of his own motion, apart from the counsel of the rest of the Presbyters,2 — he yet thinks that for the due discharge of pastoral labour in each several Church, there are tiro kinds of Presbyters needed — one being the preach- 1 Scripta Anglicana, p. 582. See also The Judgment of M. Bucer touching "The Original ofBishopx and Metropolitans," published at Oxford, in the critical year 1641 alouK with the views of Dr. John Kainoldes and Archbishop Ussher. - lie Regno, pp. C>7 and 280. THEIR RISE. 37 ing and presiding elder, or Bishop proper of that charge, and others, as in the synagogue, not necessarily gifted with learning or preaching power, however apt to teach, being the Seniores Ecclesice, without whose advice and decision nothing should be proceeded with. "Which function, by what negligence it fell into disuse I know not, unless through the carelessness or perhaps rather the pride of the teaching Presbyters affecting everything by themselves."1 As to the regimen of the Church, it should be under the government of Christ directly and alone, though all its members and office-bearers should be subject in civil affairs to the magistrate whom the Lord has entrusted with the power of the sword. Perhaps the most striking thing about the whole treatise is the way Bucer cleaves to Scripture proof and testimony for everything, and the fidelity with which he carries his appeal invariably to its decisions as final. In this and other respects he is thoroughly Puritan, and at nearly every point anticipates the later Presbyterian positions. Believing in a threefold ministry which the Church ought to exercise, Bucer has no sympathy with the notion, to which the English Church was committing herself, of a threefold order in the ministry, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. It was Calvin who brought again to light the original and primitive threefold ministry of the Church — a ministry (as Knox afterwards burnt into the Scottish consciousness) of Doctrixe, Disciplixe, and Distributiox.2 With such views Bucer was in full sympathy ; and he had to a considerable extent inoculated the young King and others with them. That efforts were not made at once to have them 1 Be Regno, pp. 34. 35. This is the notable saying of Ambrose, in his Comment. on 1 Tim.'v. 1. "Unde et Synagoga et postea Ecclesia Seniores habuit, quorum sine consilio nihil agebatur in Ecclesia. Quod, qua, negligentiaobsoleverat, nescio, nisi forte Doctorum desidia aut magis superbia dum volunt aliquid videri. " 2 Of this threefold ministry in the Church, the threefold clerical orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons in the interests of a sacerdotalism or caste in the Church, is a later perversion and caricature. Calvin, with his eagle eye and spiritual discern- ment, bad noted this real seat and source of Church corruption ; and no man, — not Cranmer nor Ridley, however able and learned they were,— so vividly descried this Jons et origo mali, and so effectually provided against it. " The Lord's , he laments his inability to have the primitive Church discipline restored, ': because those Bishops who should execute it are men unable, some for papistry, some for ignorance, some for age, some for their ill name, some for all these " ; and so he resolves to keep it out of the hands of those that were u ill Bishops"; and he makes a memorandum under October of the same year, 1552, '; For commissions to be granted to those Bishops that were grave, learned, wise, sober, and of good re- ligion, for the executing of discipline." Proposals were even on foot for dropping the official name Bishop altogether, and leaving it to the papal'nts, using Superintendent in its place, as among the Protestant Churches of Germany. And worthy Bishop Poynet himself thus argues for the change :— " "Who knoweth not that the name Bishop hath heen so abused, that when it was spoken, the people understood nothing else but a great lord that went in a white rochet, with a wide-shaven crown, and that carried an oil-box with him, wherewith he used, once in seven years, riding about, to confirm children? Now. to bring the people from this abuse, what 1 Heylin's Hist, of Reformation, p. Ii."). 2 Burnet's Hist, of Reform, vol. ii. p. 155. 3 First printed by Burnet in an Appendix to his second vol., and more fully in two vols, of the Roxburgh Club, Hie Writings of Edward IT., with Historical notes by J. G. Nichols, 1857. It may be well to bear in mind that when Edward VI. came to the throne, in January, 1547, he was but ten years old, and was to come of age at eighteen, but died in his sixteenth year. THEIR RISE. 39 better means can be devised than to teach the people their error by another word out of the Scripture, of the same signification? Which thing, by the term Superintendent, would in time have been well brought to pass. . . . And the word Superintendent is such a name that the papists themselves . . . cannot find fault withal. . . . For Bishop means simply Superintendent.''"1 1 " Episcoptis enim superintendens interpretatur."— Strype's Eccles, Memorials, iii. pp. 317, 318. II. JOHN A'LASCO AND HIS EARLY PRESBYTERIAN ORGANIZATION IN LONDON. Of the foreign divines who came into England at the call of Cranmer, to further the Reformation, John A'Lasco, Polish Reformer and London Pastor, was at once the most distin- guished, and the most signally favoured by those in power. His writings l are of special value in throwing light on those strong and more pronounced forms of Protestantism which the Reformation under Edward VI. tended to assume. Standing high in the esteem of the Protector Somerset and other chief Councillors of State, A'Lasco was often consulted on English Church affairs, and exercised no small influence on the opinions and procedure of the young King and his advisers. The whole life and work of this remarkable man are of great interest. His London labours have deep significance for us, founder as he was of the first legally organized body of Churches in England outside the pale of the national Establishment. These Churches were bound together according to a Presby- terian form of organization, and they embodied Presbyterian principles and ideas beyond anything that the English or Scottish Reformation had yet seen. John A'Lasco, or in his own native tongue, Laski, was in every sense one of Poland's noblemen. He came of an ancient family, whose ancestral seat, the castle of Lask, may still be discerned in some fragmentary ruins near the old town of the same name. There he was born in 1-499, and thus he takes his 1 Now, after three centuries, for the first time carefully collected aucl edited by- Professor Kuyper, of Amsterdam. — " Joannis A'Lasco Opera, tarn edita quam inedita" 2 vols. These writiugs, doctrinal, devotional, and epistolary, have been gathered with pious care from many quarters, Dublin, St. Petersburg, Zurich, Amsterdam. Some of them, especially the London tractates, had become most rare, some of them unique, others quite inaccessible. See also the Life of John A'Lasco, by Dr. Hermann Dalton, St. Petersburg (translated in part by Eev. M. J. Evans, B.A. Loud. 188G). 40 THEIR RISE. 41 place between the elder Reformers (like Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, and Farel), and the younger ones who were born after him (like Calvin, Knox, Bullinger, and Ridley). "With all these and other noted contemporaries he became acquainted, with some of them very intimately, while with not a few in various lands he cultivated warm friendship and correspondence. For not many had travelled so much as John A'Lasco, or had so large experience of the different European nationalities.1 Nor did he fail to profit from his early educational advan- tages and other peculiar opportunities. His sojourn at Basle with Erasmus, and his Biblical studies there, did much to shake his Romish faith, and left impressions which, though often weakened, were never effaced. Unfortunately, we have no letters of his for the twelve years from 1528 to 1510, and few direct means therefore of gauging the conflict through which he passed. That a mighty and permanent change was going forward in the interval is evident enough, however slowly effected. The crisis itself, however, stands out clear and sharp. In 1538, two mitres are at his command, "Wesprim in Hungary, and Cujavia in Poland, the latter opening his way to the Pri- macy itself. Matters are now brought to an issue. On one side, dignities with moral debasement : on the other, Christ's pure Gospel with losses and persecution. He feels himself a Protestant at last ; and better still, a humble but genuine follower of the Lord Jesus. The die is cast. He goes straight to the King : tells out his whole mind : and comes away " the Lord's freed-man." But he cannot remain in Poland. And when, like Abraham, he is called to go out, by faith he went out, not knowing whither he Kent. " This man," says Strype, " had abandoned his own country and honours to dwell an exile in other parts for the freer acknowledgment- of the Gospel, but not without the Polish king's good leave, by whom he was well known and beloved, and Avho did more than once make use of him in his difficult affairs." For two years A'Lasco is a wanderer, chiefly in Rhineland, 1 For details of his brilliant early career and high position, see the Author's Sketch of his Life, in the Religious Tract Society's New Biographical Series, No. 41. ■42 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. and with greater risk in Belgium. At Louvain lie severs the last tie of his Romish priesthood by marrying, and, as it proved, happily, into a burgher family there. He joins a little band of Gospel worshippers ; and it was to him a memorable and harrowing event, that shortly after he left for Emden, the meet- ing was discovered, and cdl its member* endured with constancy the martyr's death. Meanwhile, a call had come to him from East Friesland, a district of special interest to us, as the seat of those early Saxons who took a foremost place among " the makers of Eng- land." The old Frisian tongue, as Sir William Temple long ago observed, "has still so great an affinity with our old English as to appear easily to have been the same/' and is very different from adjoining dialects. This northern district of Germany, between Holland and Denmark, had early received the Reform- ation, and the good Countess Anna of Oldenburg, who was now its Regent for her son under the Empire, was anxious to have A'Lasco at her little capital, Emden, to carry forward and con- solidate the work. One less resolute would have declined the difficult task or succumbed before it. But having, in 1543, accepted the post of Superintendent, he begins to triumph over the hazards of the situation, overthrowing the monks, weeding out corrup- tions, gradually establishing the Genevan order and discipline, with a famous Protestant synod, that long continued a tower of strength, and was a bulwark behind William the Silent in his conflict with Spanish oppression. Yet A'Lasco does not escape from faction within and hostility from without. The one forced him to resign his superintend- ency and limit his ministry to the Great Church at Emden : the other took the form of vehement antagonism from Lutheran quarters to his more pronounced Reformed principles. But by a powerful letter to Countess Anna, (in which, thinking it better " to seem impolite than prove unfaithful," he lays clown clearly his Scriptural grounds of action. ) he secures her good- will and further co-operation. Thus was established, by A'Lasco's influence, the nourishing Protestant Church that made Emden an early refuge for per- THEIR RISE. 43 secuted exiles. Here, for example, that most advanced of English Reformers, Dr. William Turner, the eminent physician and divine, eluded Henry VIII.'s vengeance. It was he who wrote those keen and biting, but very rare, black-letter tracts. The Hunting of the Romish Fox which more than Seven Year* hath been Hid among the Bishops of England, and The Hunting of the Romish Wolf ; but he is best known as the author of that mar- vel of early printing and botanic lore, The Herbal.1 Through him and other friends, A'Lasco lends a favourable ear to Cranmer's urgent invitation to visit England. It was the Archbishop's policy, on the accession of Edward VI., in January, 1547, to secure a gathering somewhere of the leading Protes- tant divines in Europe, to settle matters of doctrine, and be a counterpoise to the Romish Council at Trent. " We have therefore invited yourself and other learned men/' writes Cranmer to him, ': and we earnestly entreat you to come, and, if possible, bring with you Melanchthon, whom I am inviting for the third time." 3 On Melanchthon finding it impossible, A'Lasco consents, though at great inconvenience, and is accom- modated at Lambeth and Windsor during the autumn and winter of 1548-9. " John a Lasco, a most admirable man," says Cranmer, " lived with me these months in closest and friendliest intercourse." The bracing effect of his presence on the good Archbishop is referred to in a letter of December, 1548, by another distinguished foreigner, John Ab Ulmis (Von Eschen) : " Thomas Cranmer is also recovered from his letharg}- 1 William Turner, M.D. This distinguished man was a native of Morpeth, and took a foremost place both at Cambridge and Oxford. Early espousing the Eeform- ation and vigorously preaching its doctrines, he was first imprisoned and then banished by Henry VIII. In Italy and elsewhere he was greatly admired for his varied learning, and was created Doctor of Physic at Eerrara. A like degree was con- ferred by Oxford after his return, in the reign of Edward VI. ; and with a licence to preach he became Dean of Wells, and was appointed Chaplain and Physician to the Lord Protector Somerset. He was one of the first to oppose both the Episcopacy and the ceremonies of the Church. In the MSS. of Wells Cathedral there is not only the mandate to instal him Dean, but a dispensation from residence "when- ever he may be occupied with preaching in any part of the Kingdom " ; for he was one of the royal itinerating preachers in 1550. There are similar documents in his favour from Queen Elizabeth in 1560 {Hist. Com. Report on the MSS. of Wells Cathedral, p. 287 and p. 240). He was one of the first dignitaries deprived by the Queen for his strenuous opposition to her ecclesiastical policy, being in many re- spects the forerunner of the Presbyterian Cartwright. - Ori (Continued). FORMATIVE PERIOD. Introductory.— Queen Elizabeth and her Ecclesiastical Policy 1559-61. I. — Development of a Presbyterian Party, 1562-1569. II. — The Presbyteriax Leader. 1570. III. — An Early Presbyteriaxizixo Experiment. 1571. IV. — Parliament axd the First Presbyteriax Manifesto. 1572. V. — The First Presbytery of Wandsworth. 1572. VI. — The Presbyterians formulating their Church Principles. 1573-1583. Appendix. — Presbyteriaxism Established uxder Elizabeth ix Jer- sey axd Guernsey, 1576. 87 Zbc IRtsc of tbe Presbyterians in tbe IReformeb (IbnrCb Of jEnglanb (Continued). FORMATIVE PERIOD. INTRODUCTORY.— QUEEN ELIZABETH AND HER ECCLE- SIASTICAL POLICY. The Accession of Elizabeth, November 17th, 1558, which delivered the nation from Mary's unpopular reign, was hailed with special hope by the Reforming party, for it assured them of at least some welcome religious changes. Among other displays of popular rejoicing which London witnessed, as the coronation pageant passed along the streets, was the incident, arranged with dramatic effect, of Father Time leading his daughter, clad in white silk, and bearing a Bible marked in great letters, " The Word op Truth," for presentation to the new Queen. Elizabeth graciously received the gift ; and she pressed it to her heart, "declaring that this should be the rule of her government." No doubt Elizabeth was favourable to certain aspects of the Reformation, especially in its political bearings, the child as she was of that famous marriage of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn, which had delivered England from the insufferable pretensions of the Papal See. She had conformed, however, to her sister's creed and worship during the late reign. To what extent, and on what lines she would promote ecclesiasti- cal change, remained to be seen. At her accession, those Roman Catholics who considered her illegitimate, as she had been at one time declared, were rendered helpless by the country being at war with France at the very moment ; and her only possible rival being Mary of Scotland, the Dauphiness. Elizabeth's position was, however, a difficult one, the relative strength of parties, old and new, Romish and Protestant, being doubtful. Already a mistress of dissimulation at the age of twenty-five, 90 THE PRESBYTERIANS TX ENGLAND. highly capable, thoroughly trained and accomplished, with her sell- will under the control of a politic mind, she readily yielded from the very first to the temptation to temporize, and act diplomatically in both home and foreign affairs. Her ecclesias- tical doings were regulated less by personal religions conviction than by capricious likings, and at the outset largely by pru- dential consideration for her own safety and her crown. She went to Mass to gratify the Papists ; she forbad the elevation of the host, as a sop to Protestants. And this spirit continued to animate her throughout, though expressing itself in less pro- nounced forms as the Romish party began steadily to give way. Elizabeth's Anglicanism was emphatically a compromise ; and the Church which she ruled was forced by her into a similar position. For above all others, Queen Elizabeth has left the impress of her powerful will on the Anglican Establishment. Had she got her own way entirely, what would have best pleased her, would have been the Church as her father had left it, rather than either her brother's very Protestant or her sister's very Papal arrangements. If Paul IV. had not insulted and menaced her when she sent him a respectful intimation of her accession,1 she could have willingly deferred to the Pope as Chief Bishop of Christendom; and her ideal would have been a semi-reformed English Institution, with a partially Romish ritual and doctrine, subject to herself. She was a thorough Tudor, and loved authority ; no Pope must dictate to her. Her tastes, too, were towards a splendid worship, with plenty of show, and gorgeous ceremonial.2 Elizabeth would have had roods and crucifixes, altars and candles, a celibate clergy and priestly vestments in the Church, as she continued to insist on them for her own private chapel.3 It was a knowledge of this 1 His Holiness averred " that she could not succeed, being illegitimate ; and that, the Crown of England being a fief of the Popedom, she had been guilty of great presumption in assuming it without his consent." 2 Intact, many royal heads of the English Church seem not to have known what to make of religion." With Elizabeth it was too much a pageant; with James I. it was a traffic ; with Charles I. a political engine ; with Charles II. a farce ; and with James II. a sheer fetish. :i The crucifix was removed for a time from her private chapel by the persuasion of her Bishops, but it was restored about 1570. She was not unaccustomed to address prayer to the Virgin. — Strype, ii. 1. THEIR RISE. 91 that bred suspicion and afterwards disappointment in many a loyal-hearted Puritan. And unfortunately it committed her to a line of religious policy which brought discredit on herself, serious embarrassment on her Bishops and Council, suffering and persecution on some of her best and ablest subjects, and often much bewilderment on foreigners, who could not under- stand how she, who so championed the Reformation in other countries, should harass those of her own people who were in fullest accord with the Reformed Churches abroad. This was the great blot on her otherwise glorious reign .; and she would have avoided it had she deferred to her wiser councillors in ecclesiastical affairs. The Parliament which met on her accession was much more Protestant than the Queen, just as those that followed it were more favourable to Puritanism than ever she was. Strong reaction had set in against the recent Romish mis-rule, and there was an immense uprising and revolt, besides, of the laity against the clergy, and the horrors they had promoted. In making a new religious settlement, there was no idea therefore of taking council with the Church. Convocation had shown itself painfully and bigotedly averse to any re-arrangement. The English Church had as a Church little hand in the Eliza- bethan settlement. For as a Church, its clergy were vehemently opposed to alterations again. In the beginning of Mary's reign (though the whole of these clergy had professed the Reforma- tion just before) only fve divines had the moral courage to stand up in the lower House of Convocation for the English Prayer Book and its formularies. And now, on Elizabeth's accession, the whole lower Convocation were of the same temper, and voted unanimously for the old superstitions, as well as for the divine authority and supremacy of the Pope. Had the question of religious reform depended on the ecclesiastical dignitaries or clergy, nothing would have been done. It was the political hand of Elizabeth and her advisers that effected the change, the Parliament entirely ignoring the Church's voice in the matter.1 1 It is this fact that utterly demolishes any High Church theory of the case that has ever heen atterrrpted ; and that justifies the religious party which struggled for a more popular, less Erastian, and truly consistent Reformation, as both the easiest 92 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Among the most memorable Acts of her first Parliament were the two famous statutes which bind together and inter- mingle the ecclesiastical with the temporal Constitution— both of them vehemently opposed by the spiritual peers and the clergy. Yet both of them fundamental in the new English Church Establishment. They are commonly called, The Act of Supremacy,1 and the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity— the one abolishing entirely all ecclesiastical power and jurisdiction, except as granted by the Crown, and the other prohibiting all changes of rites, discipline, and worship without the approbation of Parliament? In the former, which bears the decisive title, " An Acte re- and most stable. What the Queen and Parliament did in matters spiritual, they did of their own motion and in their oini name. To consult the Church in Con- vocation, was neither Elizabeth's theory nor practice. To supply, not to accept the dicta of Bishops, was her usage. Her Bishops were emphatically her oivn ; and she was never loath to make them feel themselves the creatures of prerogative. It was to Cox (author of the troubles at Frankfort) she addressed the characteristic letter : " Proud prelate, you know what you were before I made you what you are ; if you do not immediately comply with my request, by G— , I will unfrock you.— Elizabeth." To think it was the Church, or its officers in any sense, that carried out the change, would be a serious mistake. Honest modern Anglicans will not be deceived by such a pretence. Some of them frankly, though painfully, acknowledge the difficulties that beset every High-Church theory of the matter. One says : " No subject probably in all history presents such an entangled skein for the student to unravel, as the Elizabethan re-establishment of the Church in this country" (Curteis' Hampton Lectures, p. 51). i There was a second and firmer Act of the same sort a few years later, in 1503. - It is easy to see at a glance what room for antagonism between Crown and Parliament was created by these two Acts, and what friction and irritation would be produced between them when delicate questions of ecclesiastical jurisdiction might arise. For though each had rights of ecclesiastical interference, the sphere and scope of each was largely undefined. The arbitrary but cunningly-managed power of Elizabeth sufficed, as we shall see, to give the Crown an ascendency during her reign ; but with weaker or more stubborn rulers, the conditions of the problem were reversed. And the result, as we might anticipate, has simply issued in Parliament engulfing within itself all powers of the Crown Supremacy ; and this ecclesiastical supremacy of Parliament has consequently come to be considered the grand bulwark of religious liberty, as against clerical or other assumption in the Church of Eng- land. That this is.the interpretation now given to this Act, may be seen from a mani- festo issued 1 Oct!, 1868, by a Prime Minister (Mr. Disraeli) while in office, in which he says: "The religious liberty which all her Majesty's subjects now happily enjoy, is owing to the Christian Church in this country having accepted the princi- ples of the Reformation, and recognised the supremacy of the Sovereign, as the re- presentative of the State, not only in matters temporal, but in matters ecclesiastical ; this is the stronghold of our spiritual freedom." It need scarcely be added, that the Sovereign, as the representative of the State, is a very modern gloss, the ecclesias- tical supremacy being originally a personal prerogative of the monarch. This was, at least, the practice, whatever may have been the theory. Vide Mitchell's West- minster Assembly, p. 272. THEIR RISE. 93 storynge to the Crowne the ainciente jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiasticall and Spiritually and abolyshynge all forayne power repugnant to the same," the Queen is empowered by letters patent under the great seal to commission such persons as she thought fit — " To visit, reform, redress, order, correct, and amend all such errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities which, by any manner spiritual or ecclesiastical power, authority or jurisdiction, can or may lawfully be reformed, ordered, redressed, corrected, or amended/' This intolerant Act, arming the Crown with so inordinate and irresponsible discretionary power, and tempting the Sovereign to use her capricious will in coercing the subject, was fraught with the gravest peril to liberty, and with dangerous complications for Parliament itself, even though it was accompanied with some concessions and safeguards.1 While this Act of Supremacy, after two months' debate (from 27 Feb. to '29 April), was becoming law, the other great Act constituting the legal basis of the Church of England, The Act of Uniformity, was getting into shape, after yet greater resistance by the Bishops and Clergy. To remove in some mea- sure the awkwardness of imposing the English Prayer Book on the Church in the teeth of the Church's vehement and authori- tative opposition, as determined by Convocation, recourse was had to two expedients : A clerical debate was arranged by Government on peculiar principles in "Westminster Abbey, be- tween eight Romish disputants, headed by Archbishop Heath, and eight reforming divines, who had returned from abroad, Scory, Cox, Horn, Aylmer, Whitehead, Grindal, Guest, and Jewel, who were all really Puritans at this time, whatever some of them afterwards became. The other expedient was, the ap- pointment of a Prayer Book Revision Committee, upon whom the Queen might directly operate, intervening as she did with i The Queen shrank from the novel title (first used by her father) of Supreme Head of the Church, being persuaded by Mr. Thos. Lever, her Court preacher, and one of the few Puritan divines she could tolerate about her, that it was not suit- able ; but in adopting the name Supreme Governor instead, she would abate nothing of the prerogatives challenged and used by her father. Whoever, therefore, should write, print, or publicly utter anything against any part of the Royal Supremacy, was to be punished with forfeiture of goods and a year's imprisonment — the third offence to be adjudged high treason, and punished with death. 94 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. direct suggestions of her own liking, though they were not all adopted. But the Queen had authority to " ordain and pub- lish such further ceremonies and rites as may be most for the advancement of God's glory, the edifying of His Church, and the due reverence of Christ's holy mysteries and sacraments " ; and this Act of Uniformity (which passed the Lords by a majority only of three) came into effect on 24 June, 1559. It enforced the use of Elizabeth's revised Prayer Book under severest penalties,1 and opened afresh the running sore of the ceremonies and vestments controversy. The evil was im- mensely aggravated by the fact that, out of the Royal Commis- sioners appointed under these two Acts, there sprang the new Court of High Commission, which, with the older Star-Ch am- ber Court, proved such instruments of arbitrary rule and in- tolerable oppression in Church and State alike.2 1 Any clergyman who did not use this Book of Common Prayer, or who spoke against it, was lined, for the hrst offence, a year's value of his living, and was liable also to six months' imprisonment. For the second offence, his living was forfeited ; and a third offence subjected him to imprisonment for life. Among the laity, de- preciation of the Book of Common Prayer was also liable to heavy punishment : while every absentee from public worship in a parish was liable to a fine of one shilling for every occasion of absence that could not be reasonably explained. This Prayer°Book of "Elizabeth was a compromise between the First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI. - It is important to understand clearly the constitution and procedure of these Courts, which play so terrible a part in our history. The Star-Chamber Court (so called, not as once supposed, from the decoration of its place of meeting— gilded stars on a sky-blue surface— but from the Jews' money-bonds, called " starres," being lodged there) consisted of nobles, bishops, judges, and councillors, nominated by the Queen, who was herself sole judge when present, the others giving their opinions by way of advice. When the Sovereign was absent, a majority decided, the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper having a casting vote. Its jurisdiction extended to everything that might be supposed to disturb or endanger the Government, and to all misdemeanours, such as libels, that might be reckoned pernicious. The mode of procedure was by questioning and cross- questioning a susj)ectcd person ; the Court, without any jury, being the sole judges alike of law, fact, and penalty, which was arbitrarily inflicted, according to the supposed aggravation of the offence. The High Commission Court was a similar oppressive inquisition, where the vic- tims were obliged to answer on oath in cases of bare suspicion, or if the Commis- sioners thought fit to proceed against them by this e.v-qfficio or self-accusing way of information, as it ^vas called— the main difference being, that it was confined to ecclesiastical matters. It was re-established in 1584, in its most rampant form, at Archbishop Whitgift s suggestion; and, as Hume says. "This Court was a real Iniquisition, attended with similar iniquities and cruelties" (Hist. chap. 41). And Linuard fitly adds: " Whoever will compare the powers given to this tribunal with those of the Inqui- sition, which Philip II. endeavoured to establish in the Low Countries, will find that THEIR RISE. 95 England presented a most extraordinary ecclesiastical phe- nomenon in 1559. No episcopal authority was available ; and while destruction of altars, images, crosses, and the like was going forward under Commissioners, the Queen selected Matthew Parker, who had been her mother's chaplain, to be head of the new Establishment;1 but not one of the Bishops of an// of the sees would take part in consecrating the first Protestant Arch- bishop, or act on the order given under the great seal. "Without the pallium, or any of those other Romish accompaniments that had for ages and generations been associated with the Metro- politan of Canterbury's appointment, Parker was inducted into episcopal office by four deprived Bishops of Edward Sixth's time, Barton, Scory, Hoclgkins, and Coverdale, the last of whom did duty in his Geneva cloak, or black gown, having been re- cently an elder in John Knox's Church there. In a few days four of the sees got filled, and a number more some months later.2 the chief difference between the two Courts consisted in their names." (History of England, vol. v. p. 316, chap, vi.) Its unmercifulness during three reigns has stamped its name with lasting obloquy. Having been, in righteous indignation, abolished by the Long Parliament in 1641, an attempt to revive it in the days of James II. only hastened that infatuated mon- arch's overthrow. 1 The Queen had first offered the Archbishopric, however, to the distinguished scholar David Whitehead, who had also been one of her mother's chaplains, and -who had declined the Archbishopric of Armagh in Cranmer's time. Lord Bacon represents him as being against the episcopal government, though a great favourite with Elizabeth. " I like thee better, Whitehead, because thou livest unmarried." He at once replied, " In troth, madam, I like you the worse for the same cause " (Fuller's Worthies, part ii. p. 12). Whitehead was an anti-vestiarian and a con- stant preacher up and down the country (Brook's Puritans, vol. i. pji. 172-174).' - " Tlw Church of England then adopted, and lias not yet renounced, tlie inconsistent and absurd opinion, that the Church of Home, though idolatrous, is the only channel through which all lawful power of ordaining priests, of consecrating Bishops, or validly performing any religious rite, flowed from Christ, through a succession of prelates, down to the latest age of the world ! The ministeis therefore first en- deavoured to obtain the concurrence of the Catholic Bishops in the consecration, which those prelates, who must have considered such an act as a profanation, con- scientiously refused. They were at length obliged to issue a uew Commission for consecrating Parker, directed to Kitchen, of Llandaff ; to Ball, an Irish Bishop ; to Scory and Coverdale, deprived in the reign of Mary ; and to two suffragans. Who- ever considers it important to examine the list, will perceive the perplexities in which the English Church was involved by a zeal to preserve unbroken the chain of episcopal succession. On account of this frivolous advantage, that Church was led to prefer the common enemy of all reformation to those Protestant communions which had boldly snapped that brittle chain." — Sir James Mackintosh's "History of England," vol. iii. pp. Hi, 17. 96 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. If the Popish Bishops would have accepted her supremacy, she would have preferred to retain them, especially as her choice was limited to a class of men much more Protestant than herself, like Jewel, Sandys, Aylmer, Grindal, and Park- hurst, who were all greatly opposed to her own mongrel faith and worship. This became early manifest. Sandys consented to the episcopal habits on the latent understanding that they were to be temporary. Grindal had the same scruples, which were resolved for him by Peter Martyr, who counselled him, however, to continue urging his objections to these vestments. Jewel shows himself a thorough Puritan, or Precisian, at this time in his letters to his foreign correspondents ; and in fact he threatened to resign his bishopric if altars, crosses, and images were not to be removed.1 Many of the new Bishops were decidedly in favour of a nearer affinity in worship and polity to other reformed Churches, so much so, that a recent writer, with strong Church views, does not hesitate to aver that " the main body of the Elizabethan Bishops were both Calvinists in doctrine and inclined to Presbyterianism in discipline.1"'1 When Calvin him- self, through Archbishop Parker, renewed his application to Elizabeth to " summon a general assembly, wherein a set form 1 Hallam represents this whole matter very admirably in ch. iv. of his Const. Hist. We are indebted to the Parker Society for its editions of tbe Zurich and Original Letters of the Eeformers, where the whole matter is now exhibited in clear and self-evidencing light, which all modern writers frankly admit. Dr. F. Lee, for example, in his recent, The Church under Queen Elizabeth, readily allows that " Bishops Pilkington, Sandys, Grindal, Overton, Meyrick, Bale, Bullingham, and Parkhnrst were each and all thoroughly agreed in their principles and course of action " (vol. i. p. 272). What Bishop Pilkiugton says to Gualter (in letter of 20 July, 1573) maybe accepted as a specimen : " We endure many things agaimt our inclina- tions, and groan under them, which, if we wished ever so much, no entreaty can re- move." As to the vestments, Bishop Jewel spoke the mind of his brethren, " Theg are the relics of the Amorites : that cannot be denied." In answer to the fears of Elizabeth, that if the " habits " and " ceremonies " were laid aside, the Romanist party would feel yet more outraged and alienated from Church and Crown, the Puritans argued, that the danger was all the other way. " If we compel the godly to conform themselves to the Papists," said Whittiugham, " I fear greatly lest we fall to Papism ourselves." So Miles Coverdale says: " While Popish superstitions have the broad seal and Popish pomp allure and awe the people, wherewithal shall they be restrained from backsliding to Borne ? " This was but to express the secret hope of the " Papalins " themselves, as embodied in a memorable phrase of Bishop Bonner's, "An they but sup of our broth, they will soon eat of our beef." 2 Perry, Student's English Church History, vol. ii. p. 291. THEIR RISE. 97 and method of public service and Church government might be established, not only within her dominions, but among all the reformed and evangelical Churches abroad," even Parker assented to the idea, if only the Church of England might retain her episcopate, " not as from Pope Gregory, who sent over Augustine the monk hither, hut from Joseph of Arimathea i/"1 If nothing were attempted in this direction, it was mainly owing to the peremptory spirit and native jealousy of the Queen ; but a measure of blame must attach to those of the returned exiles who accepted bishoprics and other dignities without insisting on obtaining such concessions or coming to such understanding as might have been in better accord with their own judgment and wishes. " There were many learned and pious divines in the beginning- of Queen Elizabeth's reign, who, being driven beyond sea, had observed," says Bishop Burnet, " the new model set up in Geneva and other places for the censuring of scandalous persons, of mixed judicatories of the ministers and laity ; and these, reflecting on the great looseness of life which has been universally complained of in King Edward's time, thought such a platform might be an effectual way for keeping out a return of like disorders." That such suggestions should meet with little consideration from the Queen, is easily understood. They were set aside, however, not on the ground of any religious or pious objections, but for very mundane reasons indeed. For, as the Bishop tells us, there were those who — " Demonstrated to her that these new models would certainly bring with them a great abatement of her prerogative ; since, if the concerns of religion came into popular hands, there would be a power set up distinct from her, over whicti she could have no authority. This she perceived well, and therefore resolved to maintain the ancient government of the Church^ Here we have a key to much of the ecclesiastical policy and procedure of Elizabeth's whole reign. This spirit of suspicion and distrust of the people was the fruitful source of tyrannical administration in matters ecclesiastical ; while the jealous shrinking from anything like autonomy or self-regulation for 1 Strype's Parker, p. 70. 98 THE PKESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND, the Church did more than aught else to stereotype and stiffen its action, secularize its spirit, and perpetuate the relics of feudalism which, above all other English institutions, it has ever had a tendency to harbour. The anomaly of a free Parlia- ment and yet an enslaved Church, in the midst of a people pro- gressing in religious as well as in constitutional liberty, is a sad heritage from the old Elizabethan ecclesiastical plan. Hence the rise and maintenance of two great parties, with two differ- ent conceptions of the Church and its work : the one solicitous about carrying forward the internal or spiritual reformation of the Church on simple evangelical lines ; the other disposed to set chief store by the external power of the Church as a great social institution, imposing to the eye, mighty in the State, and with certain mystic powers, rather than as an effective institu- tion for convincing men of sin, converting them to Christ, and building them up in the faith of the Gospel. I. DEVELOPMENT OF A PBESBYTEKIAN PAETY. In the third year of Elizabeth, the purged and reformed Convocation met in Henry Seventh's chapel, 19th January 156f, to draw up, as far as it was permitted, those ecclesiasti- cal arrangements and articles which Avere to bind the Church of England. The decisions of this Synod were not, however, adopted by the Queen, nor ratified as law by Parliament, till nine years afterwards ; and the interval from 1562 to 1571 was a period of much wrestling and struggle, during the early part of which it remained doubtful what precise shape the Church's Constitution might be made to assume. Indeed, for the first ten years of her reign, until the suppression of the Northern Rebellion in 1569, Elizabeth's throne was far from being secure ; but thereafter the Church became yet more dependent on the mere will of the Crown, the very conflict and confusion among Church parties adding greatly to the Sovereign's personal authority in religious affairs. Even in 1562-3 the Queen could afford almost to ignore a remarkable Petition, from " the main part of the Commons of this your realm of Eng- land, Wales, and Ireland," which seems like an echo of Knox's Genevan programme.1 But of graver significance to the Queen's mind at this moment were the Critical Votes in the Lower House of Convocation. Having agreed on the doctrinal Articles, reducing the forty-two of Edward VI. to the present thirty-nine,- that House proceeded to questions of 1 It lies in that Morrice collection of MSS. alongside the bundle of Knox's papers reprinted by Dr. Lorimer. See his Knox, p. 220. - An extraordinary illustration of the royal supremacy in even making Church doctrine, is afforded by the surreptitious addition in Article XX. of the notable clause, " The Church has power to decree rites and ceremonies ," which was not in the copy subscribed by Convocation. It was the Queen's own, and was ratified with the rest in 1571 by statute. A minor, but similar stretch of prerogative occurred in 1576, when she struck out something distasteful to her from Grindal's puritanizing regulations, though they had passed Convocation in both Houses. See Wilkin's Concilia, sub anno 1576. 100 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Church order and discipline. A vigorous effort was made to get rid of Canon Law altogether, at least to have that revision or substitute for it which had been prepared under Edward VI., the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, to which we have pre- viously referred. The movement was overborne by the Bishops in the Upper House ; but in the Lower, the majority of those present voted ominously in favour of a proposal to omit the sign of the cross in baptism, to leave kneeling at Communion to the Ordinary's discretion,1 and make both cope and surplice optional ; the scale being turned after a keen debate by only one of the proxy votes.3 Another circumstance in the same Convocation may indicate how readily the Reformed section in the English Church would have swung at this time to something like Presbyterian moor- ings, had it been left free to cast its own anchor.3 The dis- tinguished Puritan Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. Alexander Nowell, who was now Prolocutor of the Lower House, had drawn up a Catechism,1 based on that of Bishop Poynet, which again was based on that of Calvin himself. It had been approved by a Committee of Convocation in the days of Edward VI., and though now opposed by the Prelates, was actually sanc- tioned by the Lower House.5 Among other Presbj'-terianizing doctrine, it gives such as this : — 1 Even Archbishop Parker himself had at first administered the Lord's Supper in Canterbury Cathedral to persons standing. And the Queen's Commissioners also allowed the same posture at Coventry, where it in fact continued down to 1608. For evidence, see Certain Demands propounded unto Richard, Archbishop of Canter- bury, 1605, J3. 45. Also Removal of Imputations laid on Ministers in Devon and Cornwall, 1606, p. 51 ; and A Dispute upon the Question of Kneeling, 1608. See McCrie's Life of Knox, i. p. 101. 2 Strype's Annals, i. p. 500. 3 Another influence in favour of the Genevan party was the success of their ver- sion of the Bible with its notes. There were eighty-five editions of the Scriptures issued in Elizabeth's reign; but sixty of these were of the Geneva version of 1560. The Bishops' Bible was produced in 1568 in opposition to it ; but while this super- seded Cranmer's, or the Great Bible, for use in churches, the Geneva maintained a unique place for household use. 4 Originally in Latin, in a Larger and Lesser form: translated into English by Norton, aud into Greek by the author's very learned kinsman, Dr. William Whi- taker. Nowell was of a distinguished family in Whalley, Lancashire, and, as a Marian exile, sided with Knox at Frankfort, though now conforming in part. V. Memoir prefixed to Catechisms. Parker Society. ■"' It used to lie doubted by party-writers whether even the Lower House did ever THEIR RISE. 101 u In Churches well ordered and well mannered there was, as I said before, ordained and kept a certain form and order of governance. There were chosen elders, that is, ecclesiastical magistrates, to hold and keep the discipline of the Church." ' First Enforcement of Uniformity, and its Results. Up till this time, great freedom and variety liad characterized the parish-church services, in ritual, postures, and vestments.3 But to the Queen all this was highly obnoxious and dis- orderly. Having therefore obtained a certain basis of uniform- ity, she peremptorily insisted on a strong policy of Episcopal coercion. How far blame rests with the Queen for her ill- judged mandates, and how far with the Bishops for succumb- ing to them, has been an oft-debated question. Her own high- handed procedure on this unfortunate business reveals too painfully that Elizabeth's love of order and ceremonial was the measure of her religious sentiment. The fact was, she looked askance on Protestantism as a religious revival ; and having little insight into the meaning and workings of a spiritual Christianity, she proceeded to drill and dragoon her most piously disposed subjects in a mere legal style, sacrificing the peace and purity of the Church of England to her idea of a stiff regimental uniformity.3 By the stern requirement of the Queen " that an exact order and uniformity be maintained in all approve of such a Catechism ; but the question is settled by a letter in State Paper Office (Dom. Corr.) from Nowell himself to Cecil. See p. vi. of Memoir prefixed to Catechism. Dean Hook (Lives of Archbishops, iv. 354) says, with a, breath of relief, " We may be satisfied with expressing our deep sense of gratitude to the merciful Providence which has exonerated us from a burden it would be difficult to sustain," although, with so much heavier burdens to bear, the gratitude in this case seems excessive. 1 P. 218, Parker Societifs edit. ■ Strype's Parker, p. *152, furnishes a summary from Cecil's papers of parish returns in 15G4. 3 To the Dutch ambassadors she once said, "Why make such ado about the Mass ? Cannot you attend it as you would a play ? I bave a white gown on now : Suppose I should begin to act the Mass priest, would you think yourselves obliged to run away ? " On tbe other hand, it was matter of surprise to her, that Papists could not attend the parish church, and keep their own religion in their pockets. And in her proclamation of 1569, after stating how her Majesty would "not molest any for matters of conscience," she oddly enough adds, " so long as they outwardly conform to the laws of the realm, which enforce frequentation of divine service in the ordinary Churches:' Neal has dealt very fully with this whole question m the fourth chapter of his Puritans. 102 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. external rites and ceremonies, as by Jaw and good usages are provided for, and that none hereafter be admitted to any Ecclesias- tical preferment but who is well disposed to common order, and shall formally promise to comply with it " ; followed up as this was by the Archbishop's Advertisements^ prescribing a dress for ministers, and a set of injunctions which the prelates were to enforce, the ejection of many of the best clergy was fatally insured. Not a few important chinches were closed ; and when some of the ablest of the silenced ministers began to defend themselves in pamphlets, the liberty of the press was at once restrained by a menacing Order of Council against those who should dare to print anything about these injunctions and ordinances.- So great became the scandal, that while Grindal and Pilkington strove to migitate the evil, and Whittingham wrote earnestly to his friend at court (the Earl of Leicester, who always favoured the Puritans), to interpose against the 1 Cardwell (Doc. Annals, i. pp. 287-297) gives the text in full of this Boole of Advertisements. The clergy were required to subscribe a set of promises as to preach- ing and apparel, which put them under their Bishops, so as to be at the mercy of the Crown, without any constitutional or legal protection whatever. - It has been estimated that the number of those suspended, silenced, or deprived, for " scrupling the habits," or similar offences in Elizabeth's reign, embraced about one-third of the clergy throughout the kingdom. Meanwhile, the blow fell heavily on London. Suspension and sequestration were the lot of the most popular preachers, whose congregations were greatly exasperated. From this time a certain sullen spirit of dissatisfaction descended on certain circles in the metropolis ; and the seeds were sown of an acrimonious and hostile disposition towards the hier- archy, which should be reaped many days hence. Among the first sufferers was the good and aged Miles Coverdale, once Bishop of Exeter in the reign of Edward VI., a pioneer in Biblical translation, a Genevan exile, who had been called in on an extremity to assist at the consecration of Archbishop Parker, but now allowed to fall into neglect because " against the habits." From the humble living of St. Magnus, London Bridge, the venerable Confessor was now driven, pauper et pere- grinus, as was touchingly said ; and dying shortly after, in 1567, at the advanced age of 81, his body was attended by vast crowds to its resting-place, the popular heart responding to his worth, and resentfully marking its sense of the evil usage he had sustained. The venerable John Foxe, the martyrologist, was another sufferer; and though Elizabeth affectionately called him " her Father Foxe," and his immortal book of The Acta and Monument*, — which has done more for English Protestantism than any other work, and which was elevated to the special honour of being often placed with the Bible, Homilies, and Prayer Book, in the chancel of the parish Churches, — he too shared in Father Coverdale's disgrace. Dr. William Turner, who had been Dean of Wells, and one of the many early Presbyterians in theory, with Whitehead, who had declined the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and Thomas Lever, the famous preacher, and Dr. Thomas Sampson, the very able and learned Dean of Christchurch, and Dr. Laurence Humphrey, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Begins Divinity Professor, were among the victims, with many others, as the Archbishop himself allowed, of the best in the Church. THEIR RISE. 103 severities, leaders of the Eeformation abroad, like Bullinger and Gualter * implored their old acquaintances, Bishops Horn, Grindal, Parkhurst, Jewel, Sandys, and Pilkington, to inter- vene vigorously with her Majesty ; and Beza in name of the Genevan and French divines, wrote yet more peremptorily. But it was the Scottish Church, which was now assuming its Presbyterian form, that most honourably distinguished itself with its remonstrances at this juncture. " The Superintendents, Ministers, Commissioners of Kirks within, the Realm of Scotland, to their Brethren the Bishops and Pastors in England, etc. : — "Byword and writ it is come to our knowledge, reverend brethren, pastors of God's word in the Church of England, that divers of our dearest brethren, amongst whom are some of the best learned within that realm, are deprived from ecclesiastical function, and forbidden to preach, and so by you are stayed to promote the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, be- cause their conscience will not suffer them to put on, at the command- ment of authority, such garments as idolaters in time of blindness have used in their idolatry- • • • We purpose not at this present to enter into the ground which we hear is agitated and handled with greater vehe- mency by either party than well liketh us, to wit,'whether such apparell is to be counted among things which are simply indifferent or not. But in the bowels of Jesus Christ we crave that Christian charity may so prevail in you, that ye do not to others that which ye would not others to do to you. You cannot be ignorant how tender a thing the conscience of man is." 2 But all this pleading was of no avail : the dire, and deadly work went on in bitterness and feud. 1 Zurich Letters, i. p. 350. - It thus concludes : "From Edinburgh, out of our General Assembly, and third session thereof, 27 December, 1566." The letter was written by Knox, but from politic reasons not signed by himself, but by "Your loving Brethren and fellow preachers, Johne Craig, Robert Pont, Nicol Spittell, David Lindsay, John Wynrauie, James Melville, Wm, Chrystesone, John Row, John Erskine, Johne Spotswod." This letter is given in Knox's Hist, of the Reformation ; in Appendix i. to Neal, vol. i.; but most accurately of all in Calderwoocl's History, vol. ii. 332. " There is at Horningsham, in Wiltshire, an old meeting-house with a large stone in the end wall bearing date 1566. When the stone was put there is not known, and whence it came we cannot learn; but we are informed that, according to tradi- tion, some Scotch Presbyterians, disciples of Knox, came over from Scotland to build Longleat House for Sir John Thynne, in 1566, and that refusing to attend the parish church, they obtained a cottage in which to meet for Divine Service, with a piece of land attached for a grave-yard. This house, turned into a chapel, is still preserved, and is used as an Independent place of worship : the tercentenary of its origin was celebrated in I860.'' — Stoughton, Religion in England, vol. i. pp. 98, 99. 104 the presbyterians in england. The Eaely Seceding Presbyterian Puritans, 1566-67. So fierce and relentless grew the coercive measures, that there arose anxious deliberations among the deprived and se- questrated ministers as to their future policy. The great bulk of the more learned and distinguished among them resolved to continue in communion with their Church, exercising their ministry as best they could within her pale, and striving for her further reformation. To this they were the more dis- posed because, — being still at liberty to entertain large theoretic views on the Church's constitution, and not having yet ex- hausted all lawful means of reform open to them, — they were not without hope of further success by persistent consti- tutional agitation. The great bulk of the now Presby- terianizing party resolved therefore to maintain their foothold in the Church as by law established, and take advantage of whatever remedies were still within their reach. Some, how- ever, of the ministers resolved on immediate secession. The incident is thus recorded by Neal, under the year 1566 : — " At length, after waiting about eight weeks to see if the Queen would have compassion on them, several of the deprived ministers had a solemn consultation with their friends, in which, after prayer and serious debate about the lawfulness and necessity of separating from the Established Church, they came to this agreement, that since they could not have the Word of Clod preached nor the Sacraments administered without idolatrous gear (as they called it), and since there had been a separate Congregation in London and another at Geneva in Queen Mary's time, which used a book and order of preaching, administration of the Sacraments, and Dis- cipline that the great Mr. Calvin had approved of, and which was free from the superstitions of the English Service, — that therefore it was their duty in their present circumstances to break off from the public Chiirches and to assemble, as they had opportunity, in private houses or elsewhere to worship God in a manner that might not offend against the light of their consciences." These first Separatists1 followed the Presbyterian form, 1 The Komanists broke away from the Established Church three years later, when Pius V., on 5th May, 1570, fulminated the Bull of Excommunication against "the pretended Queen of England," his two predecessors, Paul IV. and Pius IV., having held the sentence in suspense, under the vain hope of reclaiming Elizabeth. The Bull not only anathematized her as a heretic, but declared her tenure of the Crown mill and void. Parliament at once replied with a double statute, decreeing it high THEIK EISE. 105 and were known to assemble secretly for worship in private houses, in the fields, or in ships on the river. They admini- stered the Sacraments, ordained elders, and maintained dis- cipline among themselves according to the order of the Genera Service Bool'. The Queen threatened all such offenders with her extreme displeasure, even to excommunication. The Bishops desired to proceed by statutory enactments, going the length of embodying the Convocation-work of 1562-3 in a Bill before Parliament (5 December, 1566) ; but the Queen was extremely angry, and stopped the measure in the House of Lords. She wanted no statutory measures, but was bent on governing- Bishops and Church by her own royal prerogative and the Eccle- siastical Commission. The chief leaders of the Separation were Messrs. Colman, Button, Halingham, Benson, White, Rowland, and Hawkins, who had all been beneficed clergy in the diocese of London ; and their followers among the laity seemed to be even more vigorous and pronounced than the ministers. Wax- ing strong in courage and numbers, they hired the Plumbers' Hall, in Anchor Lane ; and it was there, on 19 June, 1567, the assembly of worshippers, to the number of 100, was invaded and broken up by the Sheriff, who was instructed to lodge them in the Fleet and other prisons. Next day a few of them were brought before the Lord Mayor, Grindal Bishop of Lon- don, and other Commissioners. A long and vehement discussion ensued,1 in which Grindal felt himself evidently in a false position when he' and his colleagues had to commit twenty- four men and seven women to the durance of BrideAvell for a year, whence they were however released at last by his own inter- cession with the Council. While yet in prison, they had, by circular letters, appealed for sympathy and approval to their Puritan brethren at home and abroad. Foreign reformers with- held their sanction — Knox in Scotland, Beza in Geneva, and Bullinger in Zurich deeming their step of separation impolitic and unwise in the circumstances. It is interesting to think treason for any subject to " declare the Queen a heretic or usurper of the Crown," and a like crime to introduce or publish any Papal Bull in England. 1 It is given at length in Brooks' Puritans, vol. i. pp. 183-148, under the name Robert Hawkins. See also Strype's Grindal, p. 135. 106 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. of these heroic and suffering admirers of the Book of Geneva communicating with one of its authors, John Knox ; but un- fortunately his two letters to the prisoners have never been found. We know they were "tender, comfortable" epistles; but his judgment was against their action, as too hasty and inconsiderate ; the correspondent who acknowledged one of his communications, saying : "Our brethren do give hearty thanks for your gentle letter written unto them ; but to be plain, with you, it is not in all points Vtke&P l While the venerated Eeformer of Scotland, however, soothed and cheered the persecuted prisoners, and while his old Frankfort friend, Thomas Lever, the representative English Puritan, did not hesitate to visit and refresh them, "not ashamed of their chain," neither one nor other could approve the secession policy. In fact, both Lever and the equally advanced Dr. William Turner, as well as others, wrote learnedly on the subject.'3 For, as Neal observes : — " Most of the Puritans were unwilling to separate from a Church where the Word and Sacraments were truly administered, though defiled with some Popish superstitions. Of this number were Humphrey, Sampson, Foxe, Lever, Whittingham, G-ilby, and others, who continued preaching up and down as they had opportunity, . . . though they were excluded all parochial preferment." All this rigour was a sudden and recent freak of authority. For years past Elizabeth had followed largely in the wake of Edward VI., and had shown something of a wise and tolerant spirit. Was it too much to hope that this older and milder policy would ultimately prevail ? But whatever course might be followed by Government, the group of Secessionists did not as yet contain men of much standing or weight among their brethren ; and if the leaders of the older generation of Puritans counselled against separa- tion, the ablest men of the rising generation — Field, Wilcox, 1 Lorimer's Knox, p. 231. - A copy of Dr. Turner's Examination of the Proposition that no parishioner our/lit In hear the preaching of his pastor or other common preachers that keep any abrogated ceremonies or use any several hind of garments which Popes and other superstitious mcnhavc brought into the Church, etc., is preserved in the Second Part of a Register, among the Morrice Papers, in Dr. Williams's Library, together with a copy of Lever's Writing delivered to the prisoners of Bridewell, ir>07. THEIR RISE. 107 Cartwright, Travers, Fulk, and others, were no less disposed to adhere to the advice. Two striking inconsistencies in Elizabeth's ecclesiastical pro- cedure arrest our attention. First : "It may seem strange," to use Heylin's words (History of Presbyterians, lib. viii. sec. 12), " that Queen Elizabeth should carry such a hard hand on her English Puritans, as well by severe laws as by terrible execu- tions, . . . and yet protect and countenance the Presbyterians in all places else," Doubtless he is right in attributing it to her being forced to sustain the Presbyterian cause in Holland and Scotland, owing to what he calls "that great monster in nature, Reasons of State." The Second capricious inconsistency is this : — Men like Cart- wright were forced to flee to the Continent at the very time and for the very cause that French refugees and others were fleeing from the Continent and were being received and pro- tected in England ! Elizabeth granted privileges of worship and discipline to foreigners, which she would not allow to her own subjects who were free-born Englishmen ! On condition that they chose the Bishop of London and his successors as their Superintendents, she not only on her accession promised to the Dutch, German, and French strangers to confirm their charter and restore their buildings, so that they were reinstated, the Dutch in Austin Friars and the French in their Thread- needle-street edifice ; but when the persecutions in France and the Netherlands, during 1567 and 1568, drove thousands of Protestants, chiefly Presbyterians, to England, so that the Churches of the Foreigners were greatly increased in London and Southwark, Norwich, Colchester, Canterbury, Sandwich, Maidstone, Southampton, and elsewhere, she allowed them their own mode of Presbyterian worship and discipline. But, when sundry English Nonconformists sought to join their ranks, the Queen and Council required " that they should not receive into their Communion any of this realm that offered to join with them, and leave the customs and practice of their native country, lest the Queen should be moved to banish them out of the kingdom."1 So 1 Neal's Puritan*, vol. i. p. 325, under year 1573. Strype's Parker, p. 334, and Strype's Annals, p. 284. 108 THE PRESBYTERIANS IX ENGLAND. strangely jealous was authority in those times, and so singularly were religious forms deemed matters of geographical limita- tion ! The Presbyterians Inside the Church. The question of Presbyterial government for the Church of England had been formally raised and agitated as early as 1570. Within a few years of the origin of the words "Puritan " and " Precisian," we find the term " Presbytery " coining into use. In a letter by Sandys to Bullinger l of this date, we find the worthy Bishop giving a sketch of the young party, not without lively apprehensions of the ultimate consequences :— " New orators," he says, ': are rising up from among us — foolish young men who despise authority and admit of no superior. They are seeking the complete overthrow and uprooting of the whole of our ecclesiastical polity, and striving to shape out for us I know not what new platform of a Church. . . . That you may be the better acquainted with the whole matter, accept this summary of the question at issue, reduced under cer- tain heads : — ■ •' I. The civil magistrate has no authority in ecclesiastical matters ; he is only a member of the Church, the government of which ought to be committed to the clergy. " II. The Church of Christ admits of no other government but that by Presbyteries, viz. by the minister, elders, and deacons. " III. The names and authorities of Archbishops, Archdeacons, Deans, Chancellors, Commissaries, and other titles and dignities of like kind, should be altogether removed from the Church of Christ. " IV. Each parish should have its own Presbytery. li V. The choice of ministers of necessity belongs to the people. '• VI. The goods, possessions, lands, revenues, titles, honours, authorities, and all other things relating either to bishops or cathedrals, and which now of right belong to them, should be taken away forthwith and for ever. " VII. No one should be allowed to preach who is not a pastor of some congregation ; and he ought to preach to his own flock exclusively, and nowhere else. il VIII. The infants of Papists are not to be baptized. '" IX. The judicial laws of Moses are binding upon Christian princes, and they ought not in the slightest degree to depart from them." Allowing for some natural misapprehensions regarding a 1 Zurich Letters, i. pp. 294, 295. THEIR RISE. 109 party whose views were not yet clearly formulated and defined, this statement may be accepted in a general way as a rough draft of what was aimed at by the central body of the Puri- tans. It was expressed in another epitomized form by the distinguished Dr. Thomas Sampson (who had already expe- rienced the two extremes — the offer of the bishopric of Nor- wich, which he refused because he could not take the prescribed oaths ; and deprivation and actual imprisonment with his friend Dr. Humphrey, President of Magdalen College, for refusing conformity to the ceremonies), in his letter to Lord Treasurer Burleigh, a little later : — " My Lord, — Though the doctrine of the Gospel is preached in the Church of England, the government of the Church, as appointed in the Gospel, is still wanting. The doctrine and the government, as appointed by Christ, are both good : and are to be joined together and not separated. It is a deformity to see a Church, professing the Gospel of Christ, governed by those canons and customs by which Antichrist ruleth his synagogue. Martin Bucer wrote a book to King Edward upon this subject, entitled De Regno Christ/'. There you will see what is wanting of the Kingdom of Christ in the Church of England. My Lord, I beseech you to read this faithful and brief epitome of the book which I have sent you, and I beseech you to lay it to heart. It is the cause of Jesus Christ and His Church, and very much concerneth the souls of men. Use your utmost endeavours, that, as Christ teacheth us in the Church of England, he may also rule us and govern us, even by the laws of His Kingdom. Help, my Lord, in this good work. . . . You cannot employ your authority in a better cause." ' This question of the government or polity of the Church was now pressing itself more and more on many learned and thinking minds, in proportion as conformity was being rigor- ously enforced. A man like the pious and earnest scholar, Andrew Kingsmill, who so deeply impressed his contem- poraries with a sense of his many rare qualities, retired to Geneva, and afterwards to Lausanne, to study the subject care- fully and watch the working of Presbyterian methods in the best Reformed Churches ; but his valuable life was cut short in its early prime in 1570.- The Presbyterian theory was also 1 Strype's Annals, ii. pp. 365-367. 2 Wood's A thence Oxon. i. p. 126; Strype's Parker, p. 157. HO THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. being widely received and taught at this time by many eminent divines, who were, however, content to live under an Episcopacy, so long as it was reasonably exercised and not urged as an indispensable in Church organization. The views of Thomas Becon, who had been Cranmer's chaplain, and still held good preferment, were widely entertained among all classes of clergy:— " What difference is there," he asks, " between a Bishop and a spiritual Minister ? None at all. Their office is one ; their authority and power is one ; and therefore St. Paul calleth the spiritual ministers sometimes Bishops, sometimes Elders, sometimes Pastors, sometimes Teachers. What is Bishop in English ? An overseer or superintendent, as Paul said to the Bishops or Elders of Ephesus, ' Take heed unto yourselves, and to the rlock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers." l i Becon's Catechism, in Lis Works, Parker Library edit. Indeed, when one gets behind the mere Index of the Parker Library, it is not difficult to see that Becon was far from being singular in holding these Presbyterian views. Thus, e.g., Dr. Wm. Fulke, in his Defence of Bible Translations (Parker Society edit. p. 255— the book was published in 1582 against the Papist Martin), says :— "And where you say, we ' have no Elders permitted in England,' it is false ; for those that are commonly called Bishops, Ministers, or Priests among us be such ' Elders ' as the Scripture commendeth to us. And although we have not such a Consistory of Elders of Govern- ment as they had in the Primitive Church and many Churches at this_ day have, yet have we also Elders of Government to exercise discipline as Archbishops and Bishops, with their Chancellors, Archdeacons, Commissaries and officials, in whom if any defect be, we wish it may be reformed according to the Word of God." The Presbyterians, as the Reforming party within the Church, were ready to submit to many things they could not approve, in hope they might improve, or at any rate not wax worse. But at last, after great and aggravated provocations, they proceeded to deal with lordly Prelacy as it had itself dealt with the Papacy, cast it off entirely as a usurpation and corruption. II. THE PRESBYTEEIAN LEADER. Great principles always tend to crystallize around some great name. A struggling party gathers to some prominent ex- pounder of its views, and lie becomes its leader. The young- Presbyterian Disciplinarians in the Church found a fitting- representative in Thomas Cartwright, confessedly a very able, learned, and eloquent man, with a force of character, honesty of purpose, and manly piety equal to his intellectual endow- ments. ': In the months which followed the suppression of the North- ern Rebellion," says Froude, " the peace of Cambridge was troubled with the apparition of a man of genius. Thomas Cart- wright,1 now [1570] about thirty-five years old, had entered St. John's in 1550. He left the University during the Marian persecution, and kept terms as a law student in London. He returned on the accession of Elizabeth, became a Fellow, and continued in residence till the vestment controversy of 1564." From this time Presbytero-Puritanism became a living force in England.- Born in Hertfordshire about 1535, and matriculat- ing at Cambridge, St. John's College, in 1550, from his earliest 1 Froude's Hist, of England, ix. ch. 55, pp. 343-348. There is a Life of Cart- wright by Brook, and another prefixed to Hanbury's edition of Hooker's Eccle- siastical Polity, 1830. The first sketch of him with a portrait is in Clarke's Lives, 1651. 2 Marsden, Early Puritans, pp. 71-81. In recording his own estimate, this author calls him " a man of high attainments, fervent zeal, and unwearied resolution, devoting himself to suffering and disgrace in the long endeavour to achieve, as he thought, a second and better Eeformation. Such examples deserve to be recorded for the reverence of future ages." He further declares him " one of the few men whose life and personal character still interest posterity after a lapse of three hundred years," though, as he adds, " angry writers have not yet ceased by turns to defend and assail his memory," or to fight over " the reputation of this great Puritan Divine." A novel mode of maltreatment has been adopted by the Rev. John Henry Blunt, M.A., who, though writing a History of the Eeformation of the Church of England, from 1547 to 1662, devotes one sentence to Cartwright and omits the name from the index altogether. ill 112 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. years Cartwriglit had given high promise of distinction, and being a hard strident at Cambridge, he was elected a Fellow of St. John's in 1560 under its new master, Dr. James Pilking- ton, the zealous Puritan who was shortly after made Bishop of Durham to check the Romish propensities of the northern shires. In 1563 Cartwriglit moved to the recently founded but already magnificent Trinity College, and became one of its Senior Fellows. And such was his reputation in the University, that when Queen Elizabeth paid it a royal visit, in 1564, he had the distinction of being chosen a chief disputant in the Philosophy Act for her Majesty's delectation. It was ominous that in the Questions, Whether Monarchy he not the best form of Government? and, Whether frequent alterations of the taws is dangerous ? Cartwriglit debated in the opposition, as he might also have done in the divinity questions, Whether the Church has greater authority than Scripture? and Whether the Civil Magistrate has authority in spiritual affairs / While all distinguished themselves,1 the Queen is said to have- been specially pleased with Preston, of King's College, and made him her Scholar with a fair salary. The suggestion has been often unworthily repeated, that Cart- wright threw himself into the Puritan ranks from disappointed ambition, went abroad to nurse his splenetic temper, and came back embittered against the hierarchy ! 3 It may be a sufficient answer simply to mention that he was duly admitted Bachelor of Divinity in 1567, and two years later, at the early age of thirty-four, was advanced to the high and responsible post of 1 Eoger Ascham, who had been Preceptor to Elizabeth, thus refers to the occa- sion : " Now there be in Cambridge again, many goodly jilcuits, as did well appear at the Queen's Majesty's late being there, which are like to grow to mighty great timber, to the honour of learning and great good of their country." — The School- master, p. 180, edit. 1743. 2 In The Life of Archbishop Whitgift, by Sir George Paule, comptroller of his grace's household, which in tone and temper is just what we might expect, we read, p. 11 : " Mr. Cartwriglit, immediately after her Majesty's neglect of him, began to wade into divers opinions, as that of discipline, and to kick against her ecclesiastical government. He also grew highly conceited of himself for learning and holiness, and a great contemner of others who were not of his mind." The smggestio falsi of the whole passage is aggravated by his being made to set off straightway to Geneva, " that he might the better feed his humour," though he did not go there for years after this. THEIR EISE. 113 Margaret Professor of Divinity, in succession to Whitgift and Chadderton. The fact is, that from the days of the White Horse Divines, the University of Cambridge had been the chief seat and sanctuary of Puritanism. And the very next year after her Majesty's visit, there occurred an outburst of Puritan feeling in the University, which was shared by the authorities them- selves. No fewer than 300 of the students of St. John's Col- lege cast aside their surplices, while Trinity and other colleges were getting rid of them also. When this was known at Court, the Queen was highly incensed; and Cecil, who was Chancellor of the University, had stormy work. In reply to his communi- cations, the Heads of Colleges represented what evils would ensue were the habits pressed, declaring in one of their letters, — " That a great many persons in the University, of piety and learning, were fully persuaded of the unlawfulness of the habits ; and therefore, if conformity were urged, they would be forced to desert their stations, and thus the University would be stripped of its ornaments : they therefore gave it as their humble opinion that indulgence in this matter would be attended with no inconveniences ; but on the other hand they wrere afraid religion and learning would suffer very much by rigour and imposition." It is startling to find among the long list of signatories to this letter the name of John Whitgift, Master of Trinity, who lived to alter his views, and to insist on the most rigorous measures when Archbishop of Canterbury. The future Archbishop of York, Matthew Hutton (at this time Master of Pembroke Hall), was also among the signatories, showing how deep and wide-spread was the antipathy to the vestments, not among young men merely, but grave Heads of Houses, who joined in deprecating the re-imposition of the apparel, and pressed Cecil, their Chancellor, to support their application. " This burden," they say, " we very much fear will prove a hindrance to the preaching of the Gospel and to literature. By your successful application to this, you will indubitably confer a great benefit, not only on us, but on the nation." ' The Queen, however, broke all the waver ers to her will, 1 Strype's Parker, p. 191, App. 69. 114 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. and she made it known that preferment would attend the sub- missive— though it was not for many years that the old uni- formity was re-established ; and even some of the non-compliant, like Cartwright, were advanced to posts of honour, as being- best qualified to fill them. He has been thought by some to have occupied a compromising position; but he himself never ceased to contend that in accepting the Divinity chair he ful- filled every legal requirement, both in the letter and the spirit, and honourably discharged every obligation of his oath of office. He was a preacher as well as Professor. For though he would never accept what are called priest's orders, such were the anomalies of the ecclesiastical situation, that he had, by lawful right, free access to any pulpit without Episcopal licence. A peculiar privilege had been granted the University by a Papal Bull, which permitted the Chancellor (the distinguished Bishop Fisher, of Rochester, in Henry Eighth's time) and his successors, to license twelve preachers yearly, under the Common Seal of the University, who could preach anywhere throughout Eng- land during the term of their natural life, without obtaining any licence from a Bishop. This singular usage, still, at that time, in force, was a " great door and effectual " for notable Puritans entering on the ministry of the "Word ; and although Archbishop Parker had strenuously endeavoured to shut it,1 he was foiled in the attempt ; and, as Neal says, " the University retained then privilege, and made use of it to the relief of the Puritans." Cartwright opened his professorial career by some Lectures on the first and second chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, which created no small sensation ; while his preaching was so popular, that when he occupied the pulpit of St. Mary's, the windows had to be taken out, that the thronging crowds, who could not be accommodated within the building, might be able to hear. At the very outset he had taken his position as a Church Reformer. Pluralities and non-residence were indignantly de- cried ; not less so, the grievous inequalities of office and income. 1 Strype's Parker, p. 193, THEIE RISE. 115 "Poor men did toil and travel, out princes and doctors licked up all" he said ; while intrusions into livings took place without consulting the parish, and the action of the ecclesiastical courts was simply detestable. And if kneeling in the Communion were in his eyes a " feeble superstition," how many other remaining evils were but a " counterfeit presentment " of Romish cor- ruption. His avowed standard for discipline as well as doctrine in the Church, was Holy Scripture : hence he would reduce the existing hierarchy to a simpler and more Apostolic appearance, and make short work with everything that tended to keep up a form of religion without any experience of its power. He especially opposed the theory of spiritual lordship in the Episcopate and priestly claims in the ministry, testifying with all his might against the cunning yet fatal pretexts under which these were being retained in the Church. He was at the age when men of noble, yet fiery spirit, are impatient of un- realities ; and Cartwright comes before us strong by nature, but strongest of all in his aversion to religious shams and affectations. " Holy Orders," in their mystical meaning, or as the mark of a priestly caste, were an offence to him ; and the ghostly powers which the term suggested were allied to con- scious imposture. His own Letters of Orders (for he had been admitted to Deacon's orders) he is represented as having de- stroyed, " for that he thought it not lawful by his own doctrine to use them."1 The word "priest" of the First Prayer Book, 1549, which had been supplanted by the unmistakable term "minister" in King Edward's Second Prayer Book, had now re-appeared, with its sinister meaning, in the Elizabethan book, and, — worst of all and the root evil of the hierarchical system, — there had been restored, with a phantom ceremony of election, the mystic rite that gives semblance to the idea of Apostolic suc- cession. This is the point where, according to Froude, " the framers of the Constitution of the Church went manifestly wrong." A few sentences from an important passage of his2 may best open up this grave matter. 1 Paule's Whitgift, p. 15. 2 Froude's Hist, of England, vol. xii. . closing chapter, pp. 498-502. 116 THE PEESBYTEEIANS IN ENGLAND. " The position of Bishops in the Church of England, has been from the first anomalous. The Episcopate was violently separated from the Papacy, to which it would have preferred to remain attached ; and to secure its obedience it was made dependent on the Crown. The method of Episco- pal appointments, instituted by Henry VIII. as a temporary expedient, and abolished under Edward as an unreality, was re-established by Eliza- beth,-not certainly because she believed that the invocation of the Holy Ghost was required to the completeness of an election which her own choice had already determined, not because the Bishops obtained any gifts or graces in their consecration which she herself respected ; but because the shadowy form of an election, with a religious ceremony following it, gave them the semblance of spiritual independence, — the semblance with- out the substance, — which qualified them to be the instruments of the system which she desired to enforce. . . . The Presbyterian did not resent authority as such, but authority which assumed a divine origin when resting in reality on nothing but a Conge (Pel/ re. As an elder among elders, as a minister promoted to deserved superiority for purposes of order and government, the Bishop of the Church of England would have commanded a genuine reverence. . . . No rational object was secured by the transparent fiction of the election and consecration. The invocation of the Holy Spirit either meant nothing, and was a taking of sacred names in vain, or it implied that the Third Person of the Trinity was, as a matter of course, to register the already declared decision of the English Sovereign ! " l But to return to Cartwright, whose views were creating a ferment in Cambridge, and causing great anxiety among the Heads of Colleges. A large and varied correspondence, which has been preserved, with Cecil, the University Chancellor, en- sued.2 On complaint being lodged against him, Cartwright, in his " elegant Latin letter " to Cecil, in July, 1570, explained that in lecturing he had stuck closely to the text of Scripture, and had not introduced contentious matter about the habits ; but as the ministry of the Church had plainly declined, from 1 This point is so little known, yet of such deep consequence, that it may be needful to explain. In the later days of Henry VIII. and during Edward's reign, Bishops held their appointments wholly from the Crown, like any legal or other functionaries, by lettersqjatent, without further ceremony save formal ad- mission. Under Elizabeth, and down to the present day, a Conic of the earliest steps toivards the union o/the Puritans and the Patriots, the advo- cates of Spiritual freedom and the defenders of Civil liberty." — Price's Hist, of Prot. Nonconformity, vol. i. p. 227. Lond. 1836. 2 Three or four editions were printed during the next two years, and were eagerly read by multitudes. The Bishops failed to discover where they were being printed, and they tried in vain to call in the copies. Archbishop Parker, in a letter to Lord Burghley, 25 Aug., 1572, indicates the opposition of the City and corporation of London to the vehement procedure of the Bishops in prosecuting the writers. " Sir, for all the deuises that we can make to the Contrarie, yet sum good fellowes still labor to printe owte the vaine admonition to the Parliament. Since the first printing it hath been twise printed, and now with addicions. We wrote lettres to the Maior and sum aldermen of London to laie in waits for the Charectes [type] , printer, and corrector, but I feare they deceaue us ; they are not willing to disclose this matter."— Lansd. MS. 15, fol. 75. And although, on the 11th June, 1573, the Queen issued a Proclamation against 140 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. their cause, the sufferers being waited on by such leaders of the party as Humphrey, Fulke, Wyburn, and Cartwright. From Newgate the prisoners addressed a spirited petition and apology in admirable Latin * to Lord Burghley on September 3, 1572 ; but he did not see his way to interfere, being afraid of the Queen. They also represented to their friend the Earl of Leicester, that besides having lain in a common gaol for a year, they had been illegally confined four months prior to their conviction, and were now in a loathsome condition from the foulness of their prison. They entreated their freedom now, as they did also in another petition to the Lords of the Privy Council. But above all, just before their release was due by law, they wrote a " Confession of their Faith," 3 dated from Newgate, December 4, 1572, to prove their doctrinal orthodoxy, and remove some false and injurious impressions. the Admonition and all other books in its defence, calling them in ; yet the Bishop of London, writing from Fulham to Lord Burghlfa-, has to report in July, that "the whole Cittie of London (where no doict is greate plentie) hath not brought one to my handes."—lisinsdL. MS. 17, Art. 37. And writing again on 5 Aug. to Burghley and Leicester, Bishop Sandys says : " Her Majesty's Proclamation took none effect, not one Book brought in. Mr. Cart- wright is said to lie hid in London with great resort to him." (Strype's Whitgift, Appendix xvi. p. 20.) Two pamphlets (anonymous of course) were issued at this time, "An Exhortation to the Bishops to deal brotherly with their Brethren; " and "An Exhortation to the Bisho2)s and Clergy to answer the little book that was pub- lished last Parliament ; and an Exhortation to other Brethren, to judge of it by God's Word." 1 Now, Lansdowne MS. 15, Art. 73. - This interesting and important paper is given in full by Neal, Puritans, i. pp. 192-194. V. THE FIRST PRESBYTERY, ERECTED AT WANDSWORTH, 1572. We must further fix our attention on this year 1572, a critical and memorable year for Protestantism in general and for Pres- byterian history in particular. That year stands forth with marked significance in the Presbyterian annals of England and of several other lands besides, specially Holland, France, and Scotland. In Holland, the spring of 1872 was signalized by the wide- spread and enthusiastic celebration of the Ter-centenary of the beginning, in 1572, of the Dutch struggle for independence, that issued also in their own Presbyterian Church. In France, the year 1572 was signalized in a very different way, by the perpetrating of that frightful carnival of blood, the St. Bartholomew massacre. It is two o'clock of a Sunday morning, 24 August, 1572. In the Palace of the Louvre are found three persons, the Duke of Guise, Catherine de Medici, and her royal son, Charles IX., who is being urged to give orders for the massacre of the Huguenots— the Presbyterian Protestants of France, with Admiral Coligny at their head. This great crime sent a thrill of horror and indignation through the heart of Protestant Europe ; 1 and never, perhaps, did Queen Elizabeth act the part of a Protestant Queen more nobly than when she put her Court in mourning for the horrible massacre, and received the French Ambassador amid that sombre pageant of grief, to which she also gave expression in a few pointed and eloquent words. 1 Singular to say, the two buildings iu which it was plotted and first put in exe- cution, the Tuileries and the Hotel de Ville, lay sacked and ruined on its tercentenary day in 1872, by that fiery Communism which was but the ghost of the old blood- fiend that has never been laid. The crimes of the past were thus linked with the tragedies of the present. The Paris of 1572 and the Paris of 1872 afforded a new illustration of that retributive economy under which, as individuals and nations, we are living. HI 142 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. In Scotland, the year 1572 was marked by two disasters to its Presbyterian cause. First, the death of John Knox, " than whom no grander figure can be found in the entire history of the Reformation in this island ; " x and second, the setting up of the notorious Tulchan Bishops, under the rapacious policy of the Earl of Mar and other nobles, which the Assembly of August was too feeble to resist, though it inaugurated that great struggle against the despotic imposition of Prelacy, which was handed down from sire to son for more than a century, and was at last crowned with success by the Revolution Settle- ment of 1688. In England, the year 1572 was also a crisis for Presbyteri- anism, the Presbyterian element breaking out with unmistake- able boldness, both of utterance and action, — " For that was the year when Parliament was first solemnly summoned by the young giant Puritanism, to carry out to a more satisfactory issue the great work of Reformation which had only been re-begun at the acces- sion of Elizabeth — the year of the two famous " Admonitions to Parlia- ment," which shook with repeated shocks all the high places of the land, the palaces of the legislature, the Bishops, and the Queen. Above all, it was the year when the first steps were taken to give the Puritanism of the country an organization conformable to the Presbyterian type ; a step in advance, which meant that all the efforts for fourteen years by Queen and Bishops to put down this Reformation power had been in vain, and that this poAver had a future big with destiny, both for a despotic Crown and an oppressive Church, and big with promise both to the civil and the religious liberties of the realm." '- This Presbytery of Wandsworth, however we are to con- ceive of it, — and rather misleading views have been entertained of its real nature, — was the first step of a practical kind in the actual organizing of a native English Presbyterianism. " Up till 1572 Presbyterianism in England existed as a Church theory or Ecclesiastical programme. Now it became a fact and fixed institution.'''' Unfortunately, the only contemporary record of the proceeding, — and it is a very meagre and one-sided account, 1 See Fronde's Essay. - Principal Lorimer's Article in Britisli and Foreign Evangelical Review, October 1872, which leaves nothing further to be desired either for information or comment, and to which this chapter is chiefly indebted. THEIR RISE. 113 — has been u preserved to us in a work written for the express purpose of discrediting and defacing the whole movement." In Bancroft's Dangerous Positions and Proceedings . . , for the Presbyterial Discipline,1 we read, pp. 6G-67, this brief state- ment : — " Whereupon, — presently after the said Parliament (viz., the 20th of November, 15721, — there was a Presbytery erected at Wandsworth, in Surrey fas appeareth by a Bill endorsed with Mr. Field's hand, thus : The Order of Wandsworth), in which Order the Elders' names, eleven of them, are set down ; the manner of their election is declared ; the approvers of them (one Smith of Mitcham, and Crane of Eoehampton) are mentioned ; their offices and certain general rules, then given unto them to be observed, were likewise agreed upon and described." Brief, however, as is his statement, it suffices to convey the impression of the vital importance of the step now taken at "Wandsworth ; while a careful consideration of his words should have prevented subsequent writers from falling into the mis- taken views that have been too easily adopted, as to what this Presbytery of Wandsworth really was. With regard to the Bill endorsed by John Field, we gather that it contained a narrative of the proceedings at Wandsworth in the appointment of eleven Elders ; that the mode of election and other particulars that might be of service elsewhere were carefully recorded in the Bill; and that the functions to be ful- filled through these office-bearers were described, along with instructions for their guidance. From all which it is very clear that it was not, as some have imagined, a Classical Presbytery 1 This curious and virulent book of Bancroft's, which is largely made up of the depositions of spies and informers before the Star Chamber and High Commission Courts, did not appear till 1583. It was issued first anonymously, but again in 1593 with the author's name. It was instigated by Whitgift in order to inflame the civil authorities against the Presbyterian party. The " Scots Genevating," and the " English Scottizing for Discipline," is its hue and cry. Its full title is "Danger- ous Positions and Proceedings published and practised within this Island of Britain under pret-ence of Reformation, and for the Presbyterial Discipline. Collected and set forth by Kichard Bancroft, D.D., then Lord Bishop of London, and afterwards Lord Archbishop of Canterbury." The texts prefixed are a key to its spirit, Pbov. xxiv. 21 : "My son, fear thou, the Lord and the king, and meddle not with them that are given to change." Jude : " They despise government and speak evil of dignities ." He declares that " nothing is alleged therein which is not to be found either in books or writings published to the view of the world or in public records," the reference being to those of the Star Chamber and High Commission Courts, to which he had privileged access. 144 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. that was- there instituted (although one may have been at work in London), and still less a Presbyterian Church or meeting separated from the Parish Church, as others have thought ; but it was a Presbytery of the first instance, or what is now called a Church Session : a body of Elders chosen from the Congregation to co-operate with John Field, the Lecturer of Wandsworth, in matters of Church rule and discipline among the Puritan portion of the parishioners. In short, there was organized, within the general body of parochial worshippers, a society of the more spiritually-minded of the people with Elders and other office-bearers — an Ecde.sioJa in Ecclesia, or a Church within the Church, consisting of those who desired a purer Communion, and who combined together for higher fellowship and discipline than what the ordinary Church regula- tions required. 11 Here then, at Wandsworth, on the 20th day of November, 1572, we are," says Dr. Lorimer, " in the presence of the first parochial or Congre- gational Presbytery of the English Presbyterians. But how are we further to conceive of it? Was it a presbytery for the whole parish of Wandsworth, proposing to exercise discipline upon all the parishioners, whether Puritan or not ? Was it a Congregational presby- tery, in the sense of ruling the whole congregation assembling in the ancient parish Church ? We should greatly err if we conceived of it in that way. John Field was not the beneficed incumbent of Wandsworth : he was only the Lecturer ; and the Lecturer was, in many cases, only the favourite preacher of a portion of the parishioners who set a value upon Gospel preaching, and were willing to contribute for the preacher's support. It would only be the Puritans of the parish who came to church when so zealous and outspoken a Puritan as John Field was preaching ; and it was doubtless only among them that he found his Elders and the people who were willing to accept and submit to the discipline of the Eldership. In a word, it was purely by consent, or by the voluntary desire and submis- sion of the Puritan people of the parish, that any room could have been found at that time for the exercise of presbyterial discipline over them, or for the erection of a presbytery or consistory to exercise it. Many devout Christians in the National Church accepted it as the yoke and burden of the Lord Jesus ; and to such this yoke was easy and the burden light. But it was recognised by none else ; it was forced upon none ; and it in- terfered with none of the jurisdictions or authorities existing by law in the parish." This was the inauguration of the i( holy discipline "; a free THEIR RISE. 145 leaven working its way by moral suasion and spiritual methods within the Church, and not that caricature it has been so often painted, from Bancroft downwards, of a " pontifical board" or a " tyrannical conclave " in every parish. A difficulty has often been felt respecting the date of 20th November, with which the Bill was endorsed in Field's hand- writing. It is certain that at that time Field was lying in Newgate gaol, having been committed there, with his friend Wilcocks, on 7 July, 1572, and kept a close prisoner till at least the end of 1573. How are we to construe, therefore, this endorsement of 20th November ? This we conceive will readily appear, if we consider how the Bill came into Ban- croft's hands, and what his words suggest about ' the origin of this " Order of Wandsworth." After Field was in prison, his private repositories would be searched, and all doubtful papers seized ; and among them this Bill would be impounded and become the possession of the High Commission Court. Ban- croft, as having been chaplain to two of the Chief Commis- sioners (first to the Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton, and next to the newly-appointed Archbishop Whitgift, who instigated him to write the book), had ready access to all these papers in first preparing this work, in 1583. Unfortunately, no copy of this Bill has been found, and no trace of it exists in the State Paper Office ; nor is there any reason to believe it ever existed in any other than manuscript form.1 But whence does Bancroft suggest that it came ? Was this Bill a private paper merely of John Field's ? He indicates that it emanated from a series of " Conferences " of Ministers held that summer in London, and was the careful result of their prolonged deliberations. He further intimates that, either because no London parish was deemed sufficiently ripe for the discipline and its eldership, or, more likely, because London parishes were so directly under the lynx eye of the Privy Council and Commission, Wands- worth was fixed on by the London " Conference " as in all 1 Dr. M'Crie (with others) seems to think that, though not published, the "Bill," existed in printed form; but nothing of the kind has ever been seen. His sugges- tion, however, that the " Bill," or " Order of Wandsworth," was what was devel- oped into the " Directory," is, as we shall see, a sound one. L 146 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. respects the most eligible place to make a beginning with their practical experiment. We conclude, therefore, that the " Con- ference " which met before 7th July, and at which Field was present as a prominent member (perhaps clerk to the meeting), drew up this "Bill "; and that when John Field wrote on the back of it, "The Order of AVandsworth, 20th November," he was recording the date when the two brethren, Smith of Mitcham, and Crane of Roehampton, were instructed to go over and inaugurate the work of inducting the Elders into their office — the Wands- worth Presbytery, though purely parochial, having its official origin in the London Conference, probably on the petition of Field and his supporters among the Wandsworth parishioners. For here is the explanatory passage in Bancroft, immediately succeeding the one already quoted : — " How they grew to be so far gone at Wandstcorth, that I find not; they of London at that time were nothing so forward. And yet, as it appeareth by the lawful deposition and, oath of one of them, they had then their meetings of Ministers, termed Brethren, in London: as namely of Field, Wilcox, Standen, Jackson, Bonham, Seintloe, Crane, and Edmonds, which meetings Avere called Conferences, according to the plot in the First and Second Admonitions mentioned. ': In these London meetings, at the first, little was debated, but against subscription, the attire, and the Book of Common Prayer. Marry after (saith he) that Charke, Travers, Barber, Gardner, Cheston, and lastly, Crooke and Egerton joined themselves into that Brotherhood, then the handling of the Discipline began to rise ; then many motions were made, and conclusions were set down, as for example: That, forasmuch as divers books have been written, and sundry Petitions exhibited to her Majesty, the Parliament, and their Lordships, and yet to little purpose, there- fore, every man should labour, by all means he could, to bring into the Church the said Eeformation themselves. . . . " That for the better bringing in of the said form of Discipline, they should not only, as well publicly as privately teach it ; but by little and little, as much as possibly they might, draw the same into practice, though they concealed the names either of Presbytery, Elder, or Deacon ; making little account of the name for a time, so that their offices might be secretly established." It appears then, — 1. That the Presbytery which was set up at Wandsworth, was a local or parochial Eldership, and — 2. That while these elders were chosen by the Wandsworth THEIR RISE. 147 people themselves, the matter was not exclusively a congrega- tional one, but connected with a London Class or Conference superintending the arrangements.1 What really occurred, therefore, was this : — An Association or Conference (or what now would be called a Presbytery, but what would then have been called a Classis,) had its meetings in London. This Association agreed to erect or constitute a parochial eldership under John Field, in conjiec- tion with his work in the Parish Church of Wandsworth; and this parochial eldership was the famous Presbytery of Wands- worth, the herald and model of hundreds of others that spread through the parishes of England.2 i It is not difficult to understand how mistakes have arisen as to what really was done at Wandsworth. Heylin (Hist, of Presbyterians, b. vii. p. 237), not so much through malice in this case as by a careless indifference about particulars, has confounded things that differ, by mixing the two paragraphs from Bancroft as to what was done in London and what at Wandsworth. Neal, in his " History of the Puritans," has fallen into the same confusion from similar causes ; and by speaking both of the Association, and of the eleven elders as the Presbytery, and finally adding : " This was the first Presbyterian Church in England," he has led later writers into mistakes — some supposing the London Association to have been the Presbytery of Wandsworth ; and others conceiving the Presbytery to have been a Church assembling in some meeting-place, distinct from and in rivalry with the Wandsworth parish Church. Thus Brook (p. 34 of his Introduction to Lives of the Puritans) says: "For this purpose they erected a Presbytery at Wandsworth, near London. The Members of this Association were Messrs. Smith, Crane, Field, etc." ; whereas we know that the Association, while they erected that Presbytery of Wandsworth, were in no sense members of it at all — the eleven Elders alone com- posing it, along with their Lecturer. Again, the other equally mistaken notion has been adopted, very naturally, by an able and careful modern writer, Marsden (Hist. of the Early Puritans, pp. 02-04), who says: "In 1572, a Presbyterian Church was formed, and a meeting-house erected at Wandsworth, in Surrey. Field, the Lecturer of Wandsworth, was its first Minister. . . . The Conventicle, — for by this obnoxious term such assemblages were now designated, — was immediately sup- pressed, though after a while it reappeared." No doubt there still stands, in a retired courtyard in Wandsworth, an old Puritan chapel ; but it has no possible connec- tion with so early a date as 1572, when in fact, such a meeting-place could not have existed there at all. 2 That a Presbytery meant a parochial eldership is easily evidenced from the current use of the word in those days. 1. Bancroft habitually uses Presbytery in this parochial or congregational sense. Thus: "Concerning the Presbyteries, which the book affirmeth should be in every parish. . . . Bichard Holmes affirmeth (in evidence before the Court of High Commission) that by such speeches as he hath heard he doth verily think that the Ministers in their Classes have re- solved to erect up their several Presbyteries in their own parishes." (See Dangerous Positions, Book hi., eh. 14, passim.) 2. This was the familiar use of the word, both with friends and foes. " In every particular Church there ought to be a Presbytery, which is a consistory, and as it were a senate of Elders. Under the name of Elders here are contained they who in the Church minister doctrine, and they who are properly called Elders."— The Directory of Church Government, drawn up and used 148 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. "Nor ought it to surprise any intelligent Presbyterian," says Dr. Lorimer, " that the Presbyterian Church-builders of England at that early date began their work of reform with the institution of the Lesser, and not of the Greater Presbytery. For was not this the only proper place to begin it ? It is not the Greater Presbyteries of a Church which consti- tute its basis, but its Lesser Presbyteries. The primary ecclesiastical unit, the rudimentary Church germ, is the " particular Church," with its own " particular Eldership." It was quite in the order of nature, that the very first stone of the new ecclesiastical pyramid should have been an Elder- ship, or Presbytery of Wandsworth ; and not a Classical Presbytery, or a Synod of London. It was in truth about these parochial or congregational presbyteries that the Elizabethan Presbyterians were chiefly concerned for the whole decade of years from 1572 to 1582. At a later period it was in season and in order, when Particular Elderships had greatly multi- plied, to distribute them into " Classes," and other Courts of appeal and Review. But that was not done till ten years afterwards, when, about 1583, they had, after prolonged deliberations, come to embody their " plat- form " in their disciplinary book, already mentioned, the " Directory of Church Government." All the early English Presbyterian writers, like Cartwright, Travers, Field, Fenner, attached the highest importance to this particular point in the discipline. They demanded some gua- rantee for purity of Communion, apart from the arrangements of civil law — some recognition of the right, in the Church and the Communicants, to be protected against unworthy and un- fit Communicants — some constitutional method for the Church herself, exercising her own inherent powers of disciplining training, and spiritually appealing to her members, other than had been already provided. There were two things especially obnoxious to them, — 1. That only " open and notorious evil livers" should be de- barred Communion ; and that the whole power should rest with the Curate, or clerical pastor, to " advertise " such an one " not by the Elizabethan Presbyterians (see next chapter). And this usage was still a common enough one at the Westminster Assembly time. Thus, in the treatise on " The Divine right of Church Government," by the London Ministers, in 1645, the phrase, " Congregational Presbyteries," often recurs : — "All Censures and Acts of Government in single Congregations are dispensed in Congregational Presbytekies, subordinately with liberty of appeal to presbyterial or synodal assembles." The twelfth chapter treats, " Of the Divine right of parochial Presbyteries or Congre- gational Elderships. . . . These are called the lesser assemblies, or smaller Presbyteries." The larger Presbyteries were, for distinction's sake, known by the name of Classes, or Classical Presbyteries. THEIR RISE. 149 to presume to come to the Lord's table "—no provision being made by the canon law or the rubric for the " mutual edify- ing of one another in love." This was to them as shocking as to make the Lord's Supper a qualification for civil office, or otherwise subject it to civil enactment. 2. The other evil was, for the Church to be uttering its fre- quent " Commination, or denouncing of God's anger and judg- ments against sinners," and deploring the loss of the primitive discipline — for " in the Primitive Church there was a godly discipline" it says— and yet never proceeding to take steps for securing the operation and restoration of that godly discipline " which is much to be wished." To these Presbyterian Church- Puritans the exercise of the primitive discipline was an essen- tial and vital portion of the full doctrine or Gospel of Christ. For this they wrote and suffered and struggled nobly, suppli- cating it in vain as a boon from the higher authorities in Church and State. Can we wonder if they urged its introduc- tion everywhere, however quietly and secretly, among the devouter portion of their flocks, and set up its machinery in every parish they could command ? This was the first great object of their consultations and activity ; and they succeeded in securing its acceptance in hundreds of parishes in every corner of the land. VI. THE PEESBYTEEIANS FORMULATING THE1E CHURCH PEINC1PLES, 1573 TO 1583. During the first decade of Elizabeth's reign (1559-69), the Church Puritans confined their efforts to the removal, if possi- ble, of superstitious ceremonies, ritual, and vestments. But finding all their efforts in this direction of little avail, they proceeded to inquire more narrowly into the causes of their failure ; and when they began to apprehend with growing clearness, that the evil lay deep down in the very constitution of the Church, they seized on and emphasized certain simple principles that might counteract the mischief. The formula- ting of these occupied the .second decade of Elizabeth's reign — beginning with the Order op "Wandsworth in 1572, and issu- ing in the Great Directory which was dragged to light by the High Commission (acting under its extended and more terrific powers when "VVhitgift became Primate) in 1583. The third decade, 1584-94, witnessed the vehement struggle to bring these radical principles into practical action in the Church at all hazards ; and then was the time of the most severe sufferings and persecution, even to the crushing down if not the crushing out of the Presbyterianizing attempts. For the prelatic authorities grew greatly alarmed when they discovered the deep and wide-spread influence of the " Holy Discipline ; " and then made every effort to destroy it, by the arrest of Cartwright and all the other leaders in 1590 and subsequent years. It is with what transpired in the second decade, between 1573 and 1583, we are now to deal ; when the Presbyterian principles of organization were being built up through secret gatherings similar to that at Wandsworth in 1572, though on a larger scale and over a more extended area. 150 their rise. 151 The Controversy between Cartwright and Whitgift. It will have been observed that the name of Thomas Cart- wright is conspicuous by its absence from those London Conferences which issued in the Wandsworth Presbytery. Deprived of his professorship 11 December, 1570, and of his fellowship at Trinity College in September, 1571, he repaired to Geneva, to enjoy intercourse with Beza and other leaders of the Reformed Churches, by whom he was confirmed in his Presbyterian views. He had not returned, when the important first "Admonition to Parliament " had been agreed on ; but he arrived soon after, in November, 1572, and proceeded at once to follow up the bold work, for which Field and Willcox were suffering in Newgate, by a yet bolder " Second admonition" with, as Bancroft says, " Great lightning and thunder, as though heaven and earth should have met together." Then began in earnest that long struggle which shook at last the whole fabric of the Church to its very foundations, and the full issues of which have yet to be seen. The discussion covered the whole field of what the Puritans had hitherto contended for, and introduced fresh elements of debate.1 1 " Then arose a controversy which, while it lasted, occupied the attention and absorbed the sympathies of all the Reformed Churches ; and which has ever since been referred to as containing within itself the germ of almost every important argument which either party has been able to advance." — Marsden, Early Puritans, p. 84. It is to be borne in mind that many of the tracts and treatises on Cartwright's side were written under persecution; and they had usually to be printed abroad or by stealth, on account of the entire control of the press by the Bishops. Hence these and all early publications under the Episcopal ban are exceedingly scarce, and of many of them not a copy remains, so effectually were they destroyed; while not a few bear evidence of the untoward conditions under which they were printed, with their bad paper, foul ink, and battered type, in some cases hardly now legible. Thus in Cartwright's — A Bepltjc to An Answer made by M. Doctor Whitgifte, against the Admonition to Parliament (1573, though it has no imprint of date or place. It is a quarto of 190 pages)— the printer has to complain, " It falleth out, Gentle Reader, that I neither having the wealth to furnish the print with suffi- cient variety of letters, have been compelled (as a poor man doth one instrument to divers purposes), so to use one letter for three or four tongues. ... I was sometimes for want of help driven both to work at the press, to set and to correct ; and ... I wanted the commodity of being near unto the Author, or to some that is made privy unto his book." That Whitgift had the last word in this controversy is a mistake, more or less wil- ful, on the part of Sir G. Paule, Heylin, and other writers. The mistake seems to have originated in Cartwright's final reply being printed abroad in his exile, and somewhat delayed by sickness. To Cartwright's " Second 152 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. In the midst of the controversy, Cartwright, at the close of 1574, had to flee to the Continent, whence he continued his battle. He was not unaware of what he must incur ; and he counted beforehand the cost. " We who bend ourselves to deal in these matters have cast our ac- counts," he says, in his prefatory address to the Second Admonition, " not only to abide hard words, but also hard and sharp dealings for our labour; and yet we shall think our labour well bestowed, if by God's Grace we attain but to give some light of that Reformation of religion which is grounded on God's "Word, and to have somewhat opened the deformities of our English Reformation. . . . The Authors of the former Admonition have been and are hardly handled to be sent close prisoners to Newgate, next door to hanging ; and by some of no mean estimation it hath been said, as is reported, ' that it had been well for them if they had been sent to Bedlam to save their lives.' " And again, in the second impression of his " Eeplye " to Whitgift's answer, after a sharp passage on " the wicked dealings of this horned generation "—(the Prelates being then accustomed to wear their mitres) — he declares, — " That no laws, were they never so hard and severe, can put out the force of God's Spirit in His children ; nor any cruelty, though it stretched itself so far as to the shedding of blood, from which land of dealing the Bishops are not clear, as the. prisons in London, the gatehouse at West- minster, etc., can witness (The Lord forgive them and us our sins), can discharge the saints and servants of the Lord from going forward in that which is good. For the profit therefore of the godly, and their instruction, have we hazarded ourselves, and as it were cast ourselves into such dangers and troubles as shall be laid on us, if we come into the hands of the persecuting bishops." These are no vain words. The peril was real. For no sooner had Cartwright written his first pamphlet, than a warrant was issued, on 11 December, 1573, for his immediate apprehension. But after lying hid with friends for a little, we learn in a letter from Willcox to Anthony Gilby, of date 2 February, 1574, " Our brother Cartwright is escaped, God Replye,^ no answer was vouchsafed by Whitgift, who was now rising to position and rank in the Church. It was reserved for Hooker, twenty years after this, to pick up the gauntlet of the redoutable " T.C." When Hooker's great work was issued, in 1504, under Whitgift's auspices, Cartwright must have felt gratified in his old age, that the whole pith of the " Ecclesiastical Polity " was still directed against his own pamphlets, and that his own initials, T.C, have everywhere the place of prominence. THEIR RISE. 153 be praised, and departed this land since my coming up to London ; and I hope is by this time in Heidelberg." He re- mained abroad for eleven years, till 1585 ; and during this long second exile he exercised great influence as Minister to the English Merchants at Antwerp, and afterwards at Middleburg, as we shall see when we come to treat of the British Synod in Holland. And we shall also see of what service he was in establishing the Presbyterian Government in Jersey and Guernsey, the only places where it was set up by the direct permission of Queen Elizabeth in 1576. During his Conti- nental life, he kept up a close correspondence with his friends and followers in England ; and in the early part of it he vigorously prosecuted his struggle with Whitgift on the right government of the Church ; issuing his " Second Replie " to Whitgift's " Second Answer " in 1575 ; and " The Rest of the Second Replie " in 1577, besides translating into English, in 1574, his friend Travers's great work on the Ecclesiastical Discipline. The Nature of the Controversy. The controversy thus inaugurated resolves itself into two chief heads : First, The Scriptural constitution of the Church, and Second, The abuses and corruptions that yet remained in the Chu rch of Engl a nd.1 The abuses in the Church against which Cartwright and his brethren thundered were flagrant enough, and mischievous sources of danger and corruption to pure and vital religion. 1 " Justice is not done to these Reformers within the Church, if they are looked upon as merely contending for a form of Church government. The main object and the moving spring of their contendings was pure love to the Gospel of Christ and sincere longing for the salvation of immortal souls. If they looked around them, they beheld the benefices possessed by dignitaries, pluralists, and non-residents who lived on the fat of the land and fleeced the flock, while 'the hungry sheep looked up and were not fed ' ; if they looked into the churches, they beheld a non-preaching clergy, ill-paid, and too often loose-living, mumbling out the Service with the aid of clerks that could not read, to a people that could not spell nor write their own names ; if they surveyed the parishes of England, they appeared, from the total absence of discipline, like an unwatched and unweeded garden, bereft alike of the advantages of Christian teaching and the products of Christian virtue. And it was because they felt persuaded that the presbyterial order not only was a Scriptural institution, but that it held out the only promise of a preached Gospel, a working clergy, and an intelligent moral and religious people, that they were so zealous for its substitution." — M'Crie's Annals of English Presbytery, pp. 122, 123. 154 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. There existed no guarantees that patronage should be exercised as a trusty no popular veto or check against secular or simoniacal evils in a parish, and no control by the Church, as a Church, over the ordering of its own spiritual affairs ! How gross the evils, hindering the Church's life and marring its serviceable- ness, that lurked in its system of preferment and pluralities ! "Whitgift, for example, was Rector of Feversham, Master of Trinity College, Prebendary of Ely, and Dean of Lincoln, all at one time ! Then there were the extravagant and growing pretensions of the hierarchy, with its excessive harshness towards many godly ministers and its slackness towards many godless and immoral incumbents,1 and with tendencies that, if unchecked, would bring back all the former state and pomp of prelates full of pride and worldliness.3 As to the Chtrch's Constitution, AVhitgift held that while " Christ in His Word hath fully and plainly comprehended all things necessary to faith and good life," it is not so in Church government. Cartwright upheld Scripture as the alone standard, not only for faith and morals, but for everything necessary in regulating the Church. It was enough, in Whit- gift's eyes, that an office be useful, and not necessary that it should be Scriptural, though nothing was to be done directly contrary to Scriptural requirements. With Cartwright, every 1 It is very significant, that while Gualter, the Zurich Eeformer, writes in August 1573, to Bishop Cox of Ely, very sharply against the action and policy of some of the Presbyterian party, he does not fail to add, " I cannot dissemble that there are out of England pious and excellent men, yea some even of the nobility, who blame many things in the manners and pomp of your Bishops. And those who have lately come over from England have complained that many harsh proceedings have been adopted against godly and learned ministers of the Word . . . who now, with the connivance, yea even with the concurrence, of the Bishops, are thrust into prison on the most trilling grounds. . . . Whether there be any truth in this report concerning you, I do not know ; we certainly promise better things of you all. But if anything of this kind should take place, I would again entreat you to consider how cautious you should be, lest, in opjjosition to the precept of St. Peter, you exercise dominion over the clergy or be of the number of those who beat their fellow-servants. You will forgive me, reverend Father, tbis freedom of speech." — Zurich Letters, ii. p. 225. - Whitgift, we are told by his biographer, travelled as Archbishop with a retinue of a hundred gentlemen and servants ; he kerjt " a good armoury for the exercise of military discipline, and could equip at any time a hundred horsemen and fifty foot of his own, trained and mounted." He greatly exceeded Parker in splendour and pageantry. — Sir G. Paule's Whitgift, pp. 97, 105. THEIR RISE. 155 office was dangerous for which Scriptural sanction, direct or inferential, could not be pleaded. If Cartwright went too far in insisting that the New Testament contains in express terms the exact features of every true Church, it is easy to see that Whitgift's position essentially and logically involves the Papacy, with all its claims.1 On this subject Cartwright himself and his co-religionists have been often criticized. He has been charged with writing in a style of almost papal arrogance regarding the powers of the Church.2 But he has been the victim of much misrepresentation, because of his maintaining that the visible Church of Christ is a divine and spiritual institution, with laws, officers, and rights of its own, distinct from those of Civil Government ; and that princes and magistrates are, in their official, as well as in their private capacity, bound to hear Christ's truth, to submit to His Kingly Authority, and to acknowledge His Word as that which must guide, and be administered in, His own Church. The Presbyterians recog- nised the royal supremacy over all causes, civil and ecclesias- tical ; but still there were spiritual functions and jurisdictions belonging of right to the Church's own office-bearers, with which civil rulers must not interfere, and in the exercise of which the Church deserved the protection and support of law. And if the power of the sword belonged exclusively to the magistrate, the power of the key* belonged exclusively to the Church and her rulers. Divested of theological subtleties, this 1 " He •would require no better books to prove his doctrine of Popery by, than the Archbishop's writings against Cartwright. . . . His writings are taken from the doctrine of their Schoolmen." — Ballard, a Eomish priest, quoted in Strype's Whitgift, p. 265. - Hallam, for example, like many others, quotes the following passage from Cartwright: "It must be remembered that Civil Magistrates must govern it according to the rules prescribed in His Word ; and as they be nourishers, so they be servants unto the Church ; and as they rule in the Church, so they must remember to subject themselves unto the Church, to submit their sceptres, to throw down their crowns before the Church ; yea, as the propbet speaketh, to lick the dust of the feet of the Church." Here the quotation invariably stoj)s, and the sentence seems ominous enough by itself ; but Cartwright goes on to disavow the very sense which his bold and incautious words have been alleged to convey : " Wherein," he adds, " I mean not that the Church doth either wring the sceptres out of princes' hands or that it requireth princes to lick the dust of her feet, as the Pope under this pretence hath done ; but Pniean as the prophet meaneth." There is no claim of undefined and irresponsible ecclesiastical supremacy. 156 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. power of the keys is simply the power to declare and apply the Gospel, and to say who shall be admitted to office or mem- bership within her communion. And this is all that Cart- wright claims for the Church — that spiritual things be managed by professedly spiritual people. Some of the More Prominent Presbyterian Clergy. In noticing two or three of the leading divines avowing Presbyterianism, a foremost place must be assigned to the name of — Walter Travers, B.D.1 Next to Cartwright, Travers was the ablest and most learned defender of the Presbyterian views. The two were the " head and neck " of the young and rising party.2 Educated at Cambridge, like so many of his Presbyterian brethren, and a graduate in Oxford as well, Travers, though he took a divinity degree at the University, would not consent to be ordained by a Bishop, but went abroad for this purpose, like Edward Snape, Dudley Fenner, Dr. Robert Wright, and others who preferred Presbyterian to Episcopal ordination. He became Cartwright's assistant as preacher to the English merchant colony at Antwerp. We shall presently meet with him again in England as Hooker's colleague at the Temple. While advocating a learned ministry with a liberal maintenance, he inveighs against non-residence, pluralities, and other corruptions, especially against prelates " imitating with their croziers the sceptres, and with their mitres the crowns of princes.'''1 As for the mediseval ceremonies, vestments, and ritual, he exclaims, " Would God we had suffered the Papists, when they were cast out, to have gone away with hag and 1 The most complete idea of Presbyterian principles and aims at tins time may be obtained from the Latin treatise of Walter Travers, printed abroad in 1574 :— Ecclesiastics: Disciplirxc et, Anglicancc Eccles'uc ab ilia aberrationis plena c Verba Dei et dilucida Explicatio. The preface or dedication was by Cartwright, who also, the same year, translated the whole work into English, though it too had to be printed on the Continent, — ''A full and plaine Declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline out of the Word of God; and off' the Declining off the Churche of England from the same, 1574." 2 " Allowing Mr. Cartwright for the Head, Mr. Walter Travers might be termed the Neck of the Presbyterian arty, the second in honour and esteem."— Fuller's Gh. Hist. Book ix. p. 136. TflEIK RISE. 157 baggage, and that we had not so great a desire to be enriched with their spoils." Edward Deering, of the ancient Kentish family at Surrenden-Dering, studied at Christ Church, Cambridge, and having become B.D., served as Proctor in 1566 and Lady- Margaret Preacher, 1567. Singularly enough, the very year (1571) he was cited before the High Commission for his adherence to the First Manifesto, he was acting as Domestic Chaplain to the Duke of Norfolk, with whom he dealt very plainly for those treasonable practices on behalf of Mary Queen of Scots, which brought the unfortunate Duke to the block. Deering, though himself an habitual sufferer for his prin- ciples, was able to interfere on behalf of others by his inti- macy with Lord Treasurer Burleigh. In a letter to Burleigh, Nov. 1, 1573, he explains and defends his position with great force and fulness ; showing how " the lordship and civil government of Bishops is utterly unlawful," the Kingdom of Christ and His Church being " a spiritual government only " ; no carnal weapons nor temporal sword being allowed in it. As to the primitive Church, " the Bishops and Ministers then were one in degree ; now they are diverse. There were many Bishops in one town ; now there is but one in a whole county. . . . The Bishops then used no bodily punishment ; now they beat, imprison, and fine." And much more to the same purpose in this admirable letter ; l as also in his replies to the twenty questions proposed to him in the Star Chamber that same year. 2 Deering was suspended from his Lectureship at St. Paul's, and kept from any other preferment. He died in 1576.3 R. Harvey was one of a band of Presbyterian clergy about Norwich, summoned in 1576 before the Bishop of that diocese and suspended for testifying against the prelatic constitution 1 Strype's Annals, ii. p. 270-279. 2 Strype's Parker, p. 433. 3 See that beautiful piece of biography, " The Life and Death of Edward Deering," in Fuller's Abel Redivivas. 158 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. of the Church. We find him protesting in a letter to the Bishop : — " That when Christ ruled in His Church, His officers were Bishops or Pastors, Elders, and Deacons. But when the Pope set aside this govern- ment, he appointed new governors in the Church, as Cardinals, Archbishops, Lord Bishops, Deans, Chancellors, Commissioners, and many others. The doctrines have been purged ; but the Church's government continues much the same as under Popery. You prelates turn the edge of the sword against us, . . . though you hide yourselves under the shadow of the prince, saying that she created you and your authority. . . . But as Jesus Christ is the only lawgiver in His Church, and as He alone has power and authority to appoint its officers, if any other king or prince appoint any others than Christ has allowed, we will lay down our necks on the block, rather than consent to them." l Growth and Increase op the " Classes," with the Early Synodical Gatherings. It is unfortunate that the principal authority here is the book by Bancroft2 already referred to, which is so bitterly hostile, and so largely made up of ex parte selections from the depositions of spies and informers, wrung from unwilling witnesses before the High Commission or Star Chamber — the original papers and full depositions having apparently disap- peared or been destroyed. It is evident that many consulta- tions and gatherings of ministerial brethren were held from time to time in various places, to consider the " Orders of Wandsworth," and to come to some agreement how best the discipline by parochial Presbyteries or Elderships might be brought into operation.3 Slowly and steadily they were con- structing a Directory, or Book of Order ; and as their numbers grew, their synods and assemblies became more numerous and consolidated. Thus we read : — " There was an Assembly of threescore Ministers appointed out of Essex, 1 It would be easy to extend these notices of the earlier Presbyterian clergy, who all signed the " Discipline." Those who would inquire further may consult Brook's Lives of the Puritans (with the authorities there given) under such names as Anthony Gilby, Eobert Wright, Fenn, Fenner, Edward Snape, Edmund Lyttleton, Edward Lord, Robert Cawdry, and numbers more. - Dangerous Positions and Proceedings . . . for the Presbyterial Discipline. 3 The heading of Chap. ii. Book iii. in Bancroft runs thus, " The Secret Meetings for Discipline and the matters handled in them here in England, from 1572 till 1583." THEIR RISE. 159 Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk, to meet the 8th of May, 1582, at Cockfield (Mr. Knewstubb's town), there to confer of the Common Book, what might be tolerated, and what necessarily to be refused in every point of it, apparel, matter, form, days, fastings, Injunctions, etc. Of this meeting it is thus reported, Our meeting was appointed to be kept very secretly and to be made known to none. . . . Another Meeting was also appointed to be held that year, at the Commencement in Cambridge, as is plain by these words (letter to Field, 16 May, 1582), ' I like well your motion concerning the Commencement, if you at London shall so think well of it, and we here may understand your mind?" Three things become very evident at this time : — 1. An increasing tendency for "Brethren" (as the Presby- terian ministers called each other) to arrange themselves into Classes or Conferences in their respective localities, and to stand by one another in resisting the arbitrary or illegal injunctions by Bishops and others. 2. Setting up of parochial Presbyteries after the Wandsworth pattern j1 and, — 3. The development of a Directory, or Book of Discipline. " Hitherto it would seem that, in all their former proceedings, they had relied chiefly upon the First Admonition and CartwrighVs Book ; but now at length, about the year 1583, the Form of Discipline (which is lately come to light) was compiled ; and thereupon an Assembly or Council being held, as 1 think at London or Cambridge, Certain Decrees were made concerning the establishing and the practice thereof." - 1 Bancroft (Dangerous Positions, p. 73) quotes " a letter written to Mr. Field from Antwerp, 25 June, 1583, by one Chohnsley (it is in Latin, like so many of its kind), in which he writes, " Lcetor intus et in corde meliori successu reruvi vestrarum" etc. " I am rejoiced with all my heart for the better success of your affairs, not only in that I hear of your assemblies, but most delightfully of all, in respect of your so effectually practising of the Ecclesiastical Discipline in all its parts.'" 2 Bancroft, p. 69. He adds, " In which decrees mention is made of a collection concluded upon for the Scottish ministers fugitives here in England, 1583 (which sheweth the time when they were made) ; and order is also taken for putting in use of the Synodical Discipline." Very interesting it is to notice the strong sympathy of these English Presbyterian ministers with their exiled Scottish brethren, and their anxiety to further " the Discijrtine " without violating their canonical obedience or making a breach in tlie Church's peace. All the "Decrees," as Bancroft calls them, he says he had seen in the hand-writing of " one of that brotherhood," Dr. Robert Wright ; and he translates them " word for word out of their own Latin copy." — Dangerous Positions, pp. 70-72. We give a few extracts : — "Let no Man (though he be an University-Man) offer himself to the Ministry; nor take upon him any uncertain and vague Ministry. . . . But such as be called to the Ministry by some certain Church, let them impart it unto that Claris or Con- 160 the presbyterians in england. The Great Directory, or Book op Discipline, 1583. These prolonged deliberations resulted in the Directory of worship and government, which seems to have been completed by 1583. This was really the "Order of Wandsworth," re- vised, sifted, and enlarged, as its contents had been from time to time in the Assemblies so frequently held during the inter- vening ten years.1 Originally written in Latin, as it would appear, for the use of the ministers,2 it was rendered into English by Cartwright ference (whereof themselves are) or else unto some greater Church Assembly; and if such shall be found fit by them, tben let them be commended, by their Letters unto the Bishop, that they may be ordained Ministers by him. ... If subscription to the Articles of Religion, and to the Book of Common Prayer, shall be again urged : It is thought that the Book of Articles may be subscribed unto, according to Statute 13 Eliz., that is, unto such of them only, as contain the sum of Christian Faith, and Doctrine of the Sacraments. But for many weighty Causes, neither the rest of the Articles, nor the Book of Common Prayer, may be subscribed : No, though a Man should be deprived of his Ministry for it. Churchwardens, and Collectors for the Poor might thus be turned into Elders and Deacons. [Here come instructions.] And touching Deacons of both sorts [viz. Men and Women), the Church shall be monished not to choose them of custom, and of course, or for their Riches, but for their Faith, Zeal, and Integrity." Then follow instructions respecting Classes, Provincial and Comitial Assemblies, but especially the National Synod, with a view to the reform of Convocation on a less clerical and more representative basis. It has been suggested that the Presbyterian Clergy should have " quitted the Church." But what advantage would have been in that ? Penal prosecutions would have not less inexorably pursued them. Be- sides, they maintained their strict legal right to continue inside with their Presby- terian views and practices, so long as they broke no statute law, 1 No copy of this " Order of Wandsworth " has ever come to light. Nor are we to conceive of these earlier documents as having ever existed in printed form. To have published such conclusions broadcast would have been both dangerous and premature. For long they were in manuscript only, and were passed from hand to hand for use in the secret discussions and deliberations. But having been carefully deliberated upon, and its provisions drawn out and amended by Cartwright and Travers, the book, in its enlarged and more complete condition, was at last ready for jn'actical service, after being carefully considered by Conferences in London and Warwickshire. It seems to have been finally revised in 1584, by a general Synod in London ; and being referred to Mr. Travers for its last corrections, was signed first in 1588, in the Warwickshire Assembly. 2 No copies in the original Latin have ever been found ; but we know they were diligently searched for by the Bishops and destroyed. It was the English copy found among Thomas Cartwright's books that was reprinted in 1G44, for the Long Parliament and Westminster Assembly. Its title is,— k \" A Directory of Church Government. Anciently contended for, and as farre as the. Times icould suffer practised by the first Non-Conformists in the daies of Queen Elizabeth. Found in the Study of the most accomplished Divine, Mr. Thomas Cart- wright after his decease, and reserved to be published for such a time as this. Pub- lished by Authority. London : printed for John Wright, in the Old-baily, 1G44." This was reprinted in 1872, as " A Contribution to the Tercentenary Com- THEIR RISE. 161 himself, and through his influence was printed at the Cam- bridge Press, in 158-1. Great things were hoped for by the Presbyterians from the New Parliament summoned for Novem- ber, 1584 ; and it was this book that was referred to in the proceedings of that session, under the title, "A Book of the Form of Common Prayers ; Administration of the Sacraments etc.," which was annexed to a petition of sixteen Articles pre- sented to the Commons by the Presbyterians, praying that the said Book " might be from henceforth authorized, put in use, and practised throughout all her Majesty's dominions" ; and this was the Book which plays so important a part in the history and struggles of the Elizabethan Presbyterians.1 This was the " Book of Discipline," as it was commonly called, which was ultimately signed by 500 Clergy in the Church of England, and which they strove to get introduced and legal- ized, either as a substitute or an alternative for the Book of Common Prayer and its rubrics. Like the books on which it was modelled (those of the English Congregations at Geneva in 1556, the Reformed Church of Scotland, in 1564, and of France, in 1572), it is not a book of complete or fixed liturgical forms and prayers, but of Principles of Ecclesiastical Order, and directions for their application and administration in electing ministers, elders, and deacons, and in conducting religious ordi- nances. It has been well called, "The Palladium op English Presbyterianism," 2 and is not a book to be ashamed of, for it is one of rare dignity and power.3 memoration, by the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of England, of the First Presbytery in England, at Wandsworth, in the year 1572," with a valuable jireface by Principal Lorimer. It may be also seen in the Appendix of Briggs's American Presbyterianism. 1 Not to be confounded, as often it has been, with Traverses work, which we have seen was a Treatise and Vindication of Presbyterian Order, while this is of the nature of a Directory or Handbook of worship and discipline, to guide ministers and office-bearers in the discharge of their varied duties within the Church. 2 By the Anglican writer, Per. Henry Soames, M.A., in his Elizabethan Peligious History, p. 352. He commits the usual blunder of confounding it with Travers's treatise. 3 We ought most carefully to observe that it is made up of two distinct parts : The first part is : " The Sacred Discipline of the Church described in the Word of God," and is printed in large black-letter type, and occupies only three pages. Its fundamental position is, " The Discipline of Christ's Church that is necessary for all times, as delivered by Christ and set downe in the Holy Scriptures." But M 1g2 the presbyterians in england. Petitions and Memorials. The Presbyterians having thus obtained in the Directory a detailed scheme of Church-government, and having come to an understanding among themselves of the chief points to be sought in Church-government Reform, proceeded to give ex- pression to their wishes in various practical ways. They began to put in operation a number of the usages on which they had determined, and did not shrink from memorializing the Queen on the subject. As an example of such petitions, we may cite the one from Norfolk, in 1583 — a document purporting to be signed by one hundred and seventy-five of her Majesty's " loving subjects," and to speak in the name of " infinite more in this shire of Norfolk." l It is entitled " The Supplication op the Norwich Men to the Queen's Majesty, Anno, 1583," and among other things says : — " We crave that, as your Highness, by the favour of God, has been the author of removing the doctrine of Antichrist, . . . so it might seem good to your Highness to fulfil up your happy work by removing the government of Antichrist also, with all his Archbishops," etc., . . . " by planting that holy eldership (the very sinew of Christ's Church) so plainly described in God's Word, . . . by removing the dumb ministry, . . . and by placing such as the Word of the Lord shapeth out, which may not be chosen by coiTupt patrons, . . . but by the flock whose souls per- tain to the Minister's charge, so that]the judgment of the said flock in their choice, be examined by a Synod of lawful Ministers." The Queen soon showed what she thought of this and similar proposals by the elevation to the Primacy of Whitgift, the the Second and much the longer part, which is printed in common type, is " The Synodical Discipline gathered out of the Synods, and use of the Churches which have restored it " ; and this is put on a different footing. For they are careful to say that, " in so far as it is not expressly Confirmed by Authority of the Holy Scrip- ture, but is applied to the use and times of the Churches, according to the Analogy and General Rules of the same Scripture " it " may be changed in such things as belong not to the Essence of the Discipline, as the diverse states of the Church may require." The form of subscription appended to the Book of Discipline, begins as follows : — " The Brethren of the Conference of N , whose names are here underwritten, have subscribed this Discipline after this manner," and ends thus, " In the meantime we promise to observe it, so far as it may be lawful for us so to do, by the Fublic Laws of this Kingdom, and by the Peace of our Church." J Second Parte of a Register, p. 321 in 'Williams's Library MSS. THEIR RISE. 103 sworn foe of all Presbyterianizing measures ; and by the in- structions she at once allowed him to issue against them with a vehemence and violence such as the Church had not witnessed since the Marian persecutions, and which have rendered the year of his elevation, 1583, sufficiently and painfully notorious. But before noticing these repressive measures, we must turn aside and look at the Establishment of Presbyterianism in the Channel Islands with Elizabeth's own sanction ; under circum- stances she could not resist. APPENDIX. PRESBYTERIANISM ESTABLISHED UNDER ELIZABETH IN JEBSEY AND GUERNSEY, 1576.1 Presbyterian policy and worship were formally set up and sanctioned by Queen Elizabeth in 1576, as the Established Church order for Jersey and Guernsey; and there a completely equipped Presbyterian Church continued to flourish for half a century, till 1625. This she was constrained to admit on account of the peculiar history of the Reformation in the Islands. Politically attached to England through the Norman Conquest, these Isles de la Manche, being connected geographic- ally and by language with France, received their Protestant- ism from French refugee Huguenots or Genevan pastors ; and this was of course a determining element in their ecclesiastical fortunes. The general history of these Norman Islands is of no small interest and suggestiveness. Touching and mingling with that of England, their political fortune is yet a sort of eddy by itself, like their own Archipelago, with its four distinct groups of islets in the wide bay of St. Michael. The islanders, being of Norman blood, were ever mindful that it was their own Norman William and his followers who had conquered England ; and when Normandy went with France, their own little por- tion of it still adhering to the English Crown, obtained thereby unusual rights and privileges. Their efforts to establish and perpetuate these rights were at last successful ; and the long and arduous struggle for a system of home rule, maintained with tenacity of purpose and a jealousy of interference, com- mands our respect and wins our sympathy. That a people only a few thousands in number should have been able so to 1 Chief authorities will appear as we proceed, but I am principally indebted to an Article on the Huguenot Reformation in the Norman Isles, in the London Quarterly Revieic for July, 1885. 164 THEIR RISE. 165 retain their own tongue, and even develop their native parlia- ment and other free institutions, keeping their little wheel at work within the greater one of the British Constitution, is a phenomenon well worthy of study and regard. Doubtless the distance of these islands from England, their proximity to the French coast, and their use of a tongue that was the court lan- guage and diplomatic speech of Europe, contributed greatly to so notable a result. Ecclesiastical life was powerfully in- fluenced by these same causes. Originally Christianized from France, and in later ages constituting a portion of the diocese of Coutances, in Normandy, they derived their Bible, their literature, their preachers, and their reformed principles from French Protestantism. Normandy was an early seat and stronghold of the new doctrines; and so far back as 1528 Rouen witnessed the martyrdom of one Gospel-preacher, and Caen of another in 1531. The Norman Archipelago therefore, with its French tongue and its foreign English jurisdiction, became a convenient retreat for persecuted refugees; and the ecclesias- tical confiscations and changes introduced by Henry VIII., succeeded as these were by the strong Protestantism of Edward VI., lent additional security to the young movement and its supporters. Among the first recorded tokens of Protestant in- fluence, at least of an official kind, was the resolution adopted by the Royal Court of Jersey, and entered on its minutes in 1548, to provide for the maintenance of Maistre Martin Lang- lois and Maistre Thomas Johaxne, French refugee ministers, who were " to preach the "Word of God to the people purely and faithfully, according to the text of the Gospel." When we learn that the Duke of Somerset was that year Governor of Jersey, we are not surprised at the countenance and support afforded to these Huguenot preachers ; nor at the very parish priests (who sat ex officio in the State's Council) feeling con- strained to contribute personally towards their salary ; nor at the Cure or Rector of St. Saviour's being deprived of his living because he would not renounce Popery ; nor at discipline being exercised on others of the clergy for various faults of incompe- tency and evil life. Genevan or French forms of service and discipline were coming into use ; the struggle in some cases 166 THE PEESBYTEEIANS IN ENGLAND. was waxing hot, even to the extent of open strife ; and the civil authorities were feeling the pressure and discomfort of it. In these circumstances, Sir Hugh Pawlet was sent over, in the fourth year of Edward VI., as Royal Commissioner, to make inquiry. His reports to the King described the islands as having been won to the Reformed doctrines, and ripe for Pro- testant service. It was resolved, therefore, to have the Prayer Book (which had just been issued in its first edition) translated into French for the use of the islanders ; and it was duly sent over with the following order of the King in Council, bearing date 15th April, 1550 : — " Wee have been informed at good length of your conformitj*, as well in all other things wherein the said Sir Hugh hath had conference with you, touching his Commission, as alsoe in your earnest following and embrac- ing his Majesty's laws and proceedings, in the order of Divine Service and Ministration of the Sacraments ; for the which we give to you on the behalfe of his Majestie heartilie thanks, praying yon as yon have well begun and proceeded, to continue in the same ; and with all due reverence, devotion, quiet obedience and unitie among you, to observe and use the Service and other orders appertaininge to the same and to the ministration of the Sacraments, set forth in the book sent you presentlye." This mildly expressed edict, icith the Service Book accompany- ing it, was welcome enough to the semi-Protestant cures, who were retained in their livings on condition of complying with the new order of things. But the Book was far too full yet of Popish leaven to be acceptable to the Reformed preachers and congregations, whose influence was now greatly reinforced by the addition of zealous labourers about whom little more un- fortunately is known than their preaching-gifts and their names, Martin, Maeet, Moulin, Geein, and Baftiste. Sir Hugh Pawlet, who had now become Governor of Jersey, saw howr much the Reformation movement depended on such men, and how impolitic it would be to force upon them the Anglican Liturgy, which they would not use. They were therefore in- dulged in their own Presbyterian worship and discipline, while the work of removing altars, crucifixes, and other popish relics was briskly going forward. Nor was the Roj^al Court of Jersey wanting in its support of this more advanced movement. By THEIR EISE. 167 an Act dated 20th March, 1552, it imprisoned Pierre Fallu for allowing his wife Martha to bring her beads to church ; and in other ways it strove to repress the ancient superstitions. With the death of Edward came the Romish reflux ; but many things conspired to show the persistent power of Protestantism in Jersey. Numbers of the leading families, like de Cartaret, de Soulemont, Lempriere, Gosselin, Herault, Poingdestre, remained steadfast; and while some expatriated themselves (repairing to Geneva or other Reformed centres), many persisted in cross- ing from time to time for the ordinance of the Lord's Supper to Normandy, where the Huguenot Church of St. L6 had been established as a celebrated rendezvous.1 When we turn to Guernsey, we find the Reformation, at first, more vehemently resisted there, but eventually placed on a firmer and fuller basis than even in Jersey. The local au- thorities at an early date issued severe threats and ordinances against all intrusive refugees ; but this, instead of repressing, seemed only to incite the zeal of hardy adventurers. Guernsey may well revere the name of one heroic evangelist and martyr, Denis le Vair. This man had been a French priest, but on embracing the Reformed doctrines he had escaped to Geneva. Returning as a porteballe, or colporteur, he found his way, after many hair-breadth escapes, to Guernsey, with his knapsack of Bibles and religious books, traversing the island and preaching as he went, quietly and effectively " doing the work of an evan- gelist." On Mary's accession he crossed to France, with the view of going to Geneva, but was seized, tried, and condemned to be burnt alive at Rouen as a heretic. The sentence was carried into execution in front of the Church of Notre Dame, 9th August, 1554, accompanied with the horrible cruelty of having his tongue cut out, because he attempted to preach the Gospel from the cart that conveyed him to the scene of martyrdom. Guernsey witnessed, however, in her own chief town of St. 1 Another incident on record, illustrative of the same spirit, was the firm way the Royal Court of Jersey seized and hanged a criminal priest at this time, in spite of clerical opposition, and at the risk of incurring the frown and vengeance of Queen Mary herself. 168 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Peter's Port, a far more dreadful atrocity on 18th July, 1556 — the execution of a mother and two daughters for heresy, as re- corded by Foxe, with corroborative official papers in his Acts and Monuments.1 Among those who had fled to Geneva in Mary's time, and had now returned to their native Guernsey, was Guillame de Beauvoir, of good family and high character, who, having made acquaintance with Calvin and his Church order, entreated the Reformer to send a pastor to Guernsey. Nicholas Bafdoin was the minister selected ; and in recom- mending him, Calvin writes De Beauvoir — " So we send you our brother, the bearer of the present letter, who has given evidence of his zeal, and has had such frequent conversation with us that we doubt not his life will prove an exemplary one. His doctrine is pure, and, so far as we can judge, whoever is willing to be taught in sim- plicity, will listen to his preaching with undoubted profit." Baudoin proved in every way worthy of this commendation. The difficulties of his position were very considerable, owing to the antagonism of most of the magistrates, as well as many of the people, to the Evangelical doctrines. With the coun- tenance, however, of Sir Thomas Chamberlain, Governor of Guernsey, he was enabled to set up a Church at St. Peter's Port on the Reformed plan, with elders, deacons, and a Consis- tory, or session for exercise of discipline. For some time the whole proceeded on a simple voluntary basis ; but in 1563, by an Order of Privy Council, legal provision was made for the minister and his assistant out of the Crown revenues of the island, and the Governor, Bailiff, and some of the jurats became members of the Consistory, which met every Thursday. Meanwhile, a similar result had been reached in Jersey, though with less difficulty. " About 1563 a minister of Anjou, Gitillaitme Mokisb, Seigneur de la Bipandie're, was called upon by the Authorities to organize the Eeformed Church in Jersey. That was a grand day when, in the old parish Church 1 No small conflict has raged round some of Foxe's details in his tragic recital, especially what concerns one of the daughters, Ferrotine Massy, wife of a pastor who had fled from the persecution. So bad, however, was the case, that the per- petrators of it, Halier Gosselin, the bailiff, Jacques Amy, the Dean, and others, felt necessitated, on Elizabeth's accession in 1558, to pray " the Queen's Majesty's pardon "; and this sbe granted, to stay the demands of popular vengeanee. THEIR RISE. 169 of St. Helier's, cleared of its Popish ornaments, Pastor Morise administered the Lord's Supper in Protestant form. Lieutenant Amyas Pawlet, son and assistant of the Governor, sat at the table of the Lord, along with Helier de Carteret, Seigneur of St. Ouen's, and most of the gentry of the island. With the consent of the States, La Ripandiere appointed elders and deacons to constitute the Consistory of the Eeformed Church of St. Helier's, and to take care that a good discipline should be exercised." But now came the question, if Queen Elizabeth, so jealous of her prerogatives in religious matters, would really sanction all this. Fearing she might consider it an attempt at schism, or even a dangerous and undesirable intrusion of Frenchmen with French ideas, they decided to send Helier de Carteret in person directly, as their deputy, to the Queen and Council, to state the case and ask the Royal sanction. It should be mentioned that this resolve to petition the Queen was arrived at in a synod — the first of a long series of such — held in Guernsey on 28th June, 1564, consisting of the two consistories that had been formed at St. Helier's and St. Peter's Port. The scheme had the hearty support also of the governors of the two islands, Sir Amyas Pawlet and Sir Thomas Leighton. Her Majesty and her Council took time to consider the pro- posal; but so ably did De Carteret represent the case that she felt constrained, perhaps reluctantly yet unavoidably, to acknowledge the justice and reasonableness of his pleadings : and the following letter was issued in August, 1565, to the Bailiff and jurats of Jersey, with a copy to the authorities of Guernsey : — " Whereas the Queen's most excellent Majesty understandeth that the isles of Jersey and Guernsey have anciently depended on the Diocese of Coutances, and that there be some Churches in the same diocese well reformed, agreeably throughout in doctrine as it is set forth in this Realm : Knowing therewith that you have a Minister, who, ever since his arrival in Jersey, hath used the like order of preaching and administration as in the said Reformed Churches, or as it is used in the French Church at London : Her Majesty, for divers respects and considerations moving her Highness, is well pleased to admit the same order of preaching and ad- ministration to be continued at St. Heliers as hath been hitherto accus- tomed by the said Minister. Provided always that the residue of the parishes in the said isle shall diligently put away all superstitions used in the said diocese, and so continue there the order of service ordained 170 THE PEESBYTEEIANS IN ENGLAND. and set forth within this Eealm, with the injunctions necessary for that purpose, wherein you may not f aile diligently to give your aide and assist- ance, as hest may serve for the advancement of God's glory. And so fare you well. "From Richmond, the 7th day of Aug., anno 1565. N. Bacon. Will. Nortiiamp. E. Lecester. Cul. Clyxton. E. Eogeus. Fr. Kxols. William Cecil. The reader will observe that the Queen and her Council, in sanctioning Presbyterian order and worship for the two most important parishes of Jersey and Guernsey, did so on the under- standing that the other parishes should conform to the English Church Liturgy and usages. This proved, however, an utterly impracticable condition, and after a few years of irritating conflict between the two systems, the Presbyterian was firmly established throughout the islands, in 1576. Such a result was largely due to the number of able and scholarly Huguenot pastors who sought sanctuary and refuge from the horrors of the civil war and the persecutions of 1563. These men, being powerful and popular preachers, were enabled to give great and growing impetus to the Reformed or Presbyterian worship and discipline. When the Bishop of Winchester (in whose diocese the islands were thought to lie) claimed the right to exercise jurisdiction, the second synod, held in 1567, ap- pointed a deputation to come to some mutual understanding ; and at the third synod of 1569 it was agreed that the Dean of Guernsey, who sat in these meetings as an ordinary member, should, in name of all the islands, formally present to his lord- ship a copy of the Articles of Church Government regulating their synodical procedure, as well as the Articles of Government of the French Be formed Churches in, London. No accommodation being arrived at between the two systems, the islands were allowed to take their own course, and a Presby- terian code of ecclesiastical law and procedure was fully adopted in 1576 ; and was finally revised and put in force in 1579. 1 1 Thus Jersey sought no successor to Dr. John Pawlet, the last Eomish Dean, nor Guernsey any successor to its first Protestant Dean, Dr. John After. Prebendary Palle, who wrote the first History of Jeivci/ at the end of the seventeenth century, laments, in the spirit of a High-Church nonjuring divine, " That these islands were THEIR RISE. 171 Something of the ultimate efficiency of the new regime was owing to the presence and service of the two leading English Presbyterian worthies, Cartwright and Snape. Their interven- tion arose out of a misunderstanding between the Presbytery or Colloquy of Jersey and that of Guernsey. The former had admitted into its pastoral fellowship some ministers who had been censured by the latter, and a bitter feeling and correspon- dence had arisen. At this crisis, Cartwright and Snape inter- posed with their good offices, effected a reconciliation, and greatly aided in preventing future collisions. In the words of Neal {Hist, of Puritans, sub anno 1575):— " No form of Discipline having been settled by law since the Reforma- tion, Mr. Cartwright and Snape were invited to assist the ministers in framing a proper Discipline for their Churches. This fell out happily for Cartwright, who, being forced to abandon his native country, made this the place of his retreat. The two divines being arrived, one was made titular pastor of Mount Orgueil in the Isle of Jersey, and the other of Castle Cornet in Guernsey. The representatives of the several Churches being assembled at St. Peter's Port in Guernsey, they communicated to them a draught of Discipline, which was debated and accommodated to the use of those islands, and finally settled the year following, as appears by the title of it, which is this : — The Ecclesiastical Discipline observed and x>raetised by the Churches of Jersey and. Guernsey after the Reforma- tion of the same, by the Ministers, Elders, and Deacons of the Isles of Guernsey and Jersey, Sark and Alderney, confirmed by the Authority and in, the Presence of the Governors of the same Isles, at a Synod hold en in Guernsey, 28 June, 1576, and afterwards Revised by the said Ministers and Elders, and Confirmed, by the said Governors in a Synod holden in Jersey 11th to 11th days of October, 1577. The book consists of twenty chapters, and each chapter of several Articles, which Avere constantly observed in these islands till the latter end of the reign of King James the First," x drawn to depart from that union with the Church of England which was our happi- ness and our glory, to let in Presbytery, of which (he characteristically says) after a time we grew no less weary than we were fond of it before." The worthy Pre- bendary's prejudices communicate their taint to his ecclesiastical narrations. The native "weariness" of Presbytery will be found as apocryphal as the imaginary " departure" from some supposed original union with the Church of England. 1 This book of Discipline, referred to by Neal, is preserved in MS. under the official custody of the Rector of St. Peter's Port, with the title, La Discipline ecclesi- axtiquc comme die a este pratiquee depuis la Reformation de VEglise par les Ministres,Anciens et Diacrcs des Isles de Gucrneze, Jerzc, Serlc et Aurigmj. Arrestee 172 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. For about sixty years in Jersey these regulations were the law of the land ; and they continued in full operation in Guernsey for forty years more. And it is interesting to observe that this movement in support of Presbyterianism synchronized with Knox's struggle for the same end in Scotland ; and the same nefarious attempts to overthrow it which at first seemed so likely to succeed, but at last so signally failed in Scotland, were unfortunately attended with a different result in these Channel Islands. The causes of this reversal we need not now trace. On the accession of James I. to the English throne he formally confirmed the Presbyterian government ; but he lived to see it partially overthrown in Jersey by the introduction of the canons of the English Church, 30 June, 1623. No such result, how- ever, was effected in Guernsey and Alderney until the Act of Uniformity of 1662 ; and this completed the ruin of the Presby- terian Establishment throughout the Islands. Meanwhile, from 1576, Presbytery was in the ascendant, the methods in use being similar to those of the Eeformed Churches in France and Scotland, though more thoroughly reflecting the special features of the Genevan organization. The ecclesi- astical office-bearers were Calvin's four— the Pastor, the Doctor or Teacher, the Elder, and the Deacon. The respective func- tions of Pastor and Doctor were preaching and teaching : the Elders " watched over the behaviour of Christ's fold," and the Deacons " held and disposed of Church property and charities." Office-bearers had all to be " chosen by the ministers and elders, then presented to the Governor or Vice-governor, after whose approval their names were called before the people"; and then, if no objections were lodged, they were installed in office a fortnight afterwards. The Church Courts were the par Vauthorite et en la presence de Messieurs les Governeurs des ditcs Ides an Synode term a Gucrneze le 28e jour de Juin Van 1570. Beside it is deposited the other valuable and authoritative MS., Registre des Actes et Affaires les plus memorables qui out etc traictees et arrestees es Consistoires tenus par le Ministre et par les Anciens de VEglisc de Saint-Andre (Guernsey). In 11542 appeared, The Orders for Ecclesiasticall Discipline according to that which hath been practised since the Reformation of the Church in his Majesty's Dominions by the Ancients, Ministers, Elders, and Deacons of the Isles of Guernsey, Jersey, Sark, and Alderney.'" THEIR RISE. 173 " Consistory," or local session, and the " Colloquy," or Presby- tery, meeting quarterly, and the Synod every two years, in Jersey and Guernsey alternately. The churches were to be open only during worship, so as " to prevent all superstition" in frequenting them. No civil business was to be transacted within their walls. Two services were customary on the Lord's Day, with encouragement for week-day services also. The people remained uncovered in church, knelt at prayer, and joined in the Psalms. The Lord's Supper was observed quarterly, the people sitting at the administration (standing was the custom of some Churches, the men coming first and the women after- wards). Candidates for Church membership were examined by the pastors, and admitted or rejected by the Consistory ; but excommunication, which involved civil disabilities, could only be pronounced by the Synod. The Colloquies and Consistories were, as at Geneva, strict courts of morals, and were fitted in to the general civil jurisdiction. On the other hand, the civil courts exercised jurisdiction in many matters religious and ecclesi- astical ; and it is probably a forgetfulness or perversion of this that has led to insinuations of harsh dealings in purely Church discipline. If, for example, Guillaume Fautrast was sent to prison for attending Mass in Normandy and for having intro- duced a papistical book and some holy water, this happened in 1566, before the establishment of Presbytery, and was purely an act of the civil court. It was the civil court which enacted next year that all persons found going on pilgrimage be fined sixty sols ; or, in 1569, condemned one Richard Girard to be flogged through the town for upholding Mass. And if in 1576 several persons in Jersey were imprisoned for not attend- ing Communion, and were not to be liberated till they could repeat at least the Commandments and Lord's Prayer; or if adult persons, not communicating within a year and a day without good excuse, were to be fined ; or, if in 1592, all should attend divine service within certain intervals under a certain fine ; and if an ordinance dated 22 January, 1593, required all strangers to conform to the established religion or quit the island — these, it must be remembered, were enactments of the civil authority, or Court Royal, and not of Colloquies, Presby- 174 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. teries, or Consistories at all. The only mistake occurred, away back in 1567, when one Synod adjudged corporal punishment to a certain class of immoralities ; but the next Synod wisely withdrew from the position, and left fines and chastisement entirely to the civil courts, while Colloquies and Consistories were restricted to moral suasion or Church censures alone. Bishops and other ecclesiastical authorities in England at this time had prisons of their own, and powers of imposing fines for spiritual offences ; but it was not so with Presbyteries, or Church courts, in the Channel Islands. Doubtless there was much confusion between matters civil and religious, with in- tolerance and persecution as elsewhere ; but we may not mix up the transactions of the civil courts with those of Church discipline, even although all the people were under the juris- diction of both. Gbc IRise of tbe Presbyterians in the •Reformed CblllXb Of lEnglanb (Continued). THE REPEESSIVE PERIOD. I.— Suppression of the Propiiesyings. 1577-1582. II.— The Great Struggle, Beginning in 1583. III.— The Mar-Prelate Controversy. 1588-1590. IV. — John Udall, the Presbyterian Martyr. 1592. V. — Further Struggles, Parliamentary, Ecclesiastical, and Literary. 1590-1603. 175 Zbc IRiec of tbc Presbyterians in tbe IReformefc CbUVCb Of Jgnglant) (Continued). THE REPRESSIVE PERIOD. I. SUPPRESSION OF THE PROPHESYING^. The first decisive blow to the hopes of the Presbyterianizing party was the resolution adopted by the Queen and given effect to in an edict dated 7 May, 1577, to put down the Pro- phesyings with the strong hand of Supremacy. Varied and severe had been the ebullitions already of author- ity against these Church Puritans. They had not only in large numbers been thrust out of their ministry by suspensions, deprivation, and removing of their licences, but they had been harassed by penal enactments, fines, sequestrations, imprison- ment, and various other severities. First of all there had been the Royal Injunctions of 1559, with their pressure on men like Deans Humphrey and Sampson ; then the Advertisements of 156-1-66, with the immediate citation of the London ministers before the Lambeth Commissioners, and the suspension or deprivation of no fewer than thirty-seven of them (ex-bishop Coverdale and Dr. Turner, ex-dean of Wells, among the num- ber), and the silencing of many more, like Thomas Lever and Christopher Goodman ; then the imprisonment, in 1566, of the Separatist leaders and the increasingly rigorous execution of the Acts of Uniformity and Supremacy in the Star Chamber, High Com mission, and Bishojis' Courts.1 1 Citation before these Courts meant heavy, often ruinous, charges. The fees were exorbitant ; the processes inquisitorial ; and the punishment capricious. Each Bishop too had his prison in those days, and could thrust any victim of spiritual persecution into the harsh keeping of a Clink or Bocardo. And when a Cartwright was expatriated, and a Field and a Wilcox incarcerated without being brought to trial, it was, alas ! but a foretaste of greater and more ruthless severities 177 N 178 THE PKESBVTEEIANS IN ENGLAND. These hardships had as yet affected chiefly the persons, lives, or fortunes of the individual sufferers, who might conquer in the end by meekly bearing them. But when the Prophesy ings were struck at, the wound was deadlier and nearer the heart. Hitherto the damage done rebounded from the victims ; now it entered into the very vitals of their cause. For several years no step had been taken against the Prophesyings. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners, though armed with royal patent to inquire into every novelty, and though well informed as to this one, wisely determined to let it alone. But the Queen herself had her eye upon it ; and when she saw how it was received and worked in the Diocese of Norwich, — the head- quarters of Presbyterial Nonconformity, — her antipathies were roused. She had wit enough to see whither these Prophesyings were tending, but not wisdom enough to descry their worth. Jealousy of interference with her own high prerogative was always her snare ; and her dread of an earnest, living piety was her opprobrium as supreme governor over the Church. Proba- bly Archbishop Parker did nothing to allay her suspicions ; and acting on her private order he willingly despatched to good old Bishop Parkhurst the royal mandate to " repress imme- diately these vain Prophesyings." Parkhurst,— who had been private chaplain to Queen Catharine Parr and tutor to Jewel, — was one of those who, as exiles in Switzerland, had a liking for the Reformed order and discipline, to which he could have wished the Church of England more conformable. Still friendly as a Bishop to Puritan ways, he adroitly took advantage of the expression " vain " as applied to the prophesyings, and in answering his metropolitan he naively inquired whether it was a special class of them that was meant ; for he had freely to submit — " That they had, and still did bring singular benefit to the Church of God as well in the clergy as in the laity, and were right necessary exercises to be continued, so the same were not abused, as indeed they had to follow. Elizabeth told the French Ambassador, " That she would maintain the religion she was crowned in and baptized in ; and would suppress the Papistical religion, that it should not grow ; but that she would root out Puritanism and the favourers thereof."— Strype's Annals, ii. p. 568, sub an. 1579. THEIR RISE. 179 not been, unless in one or two places at the most,— and he had at once corrected the evil,-since which time he had not heard but all things had succeeded quietly without offence to any." Tins pleading, however, did not avail, even though backed up by a Privy-Council letter from Sandys Bishop of London Sir Francis Knollis, Sir Thomas Smith, and Sir Walter Mildmay who encouraged the Bishop to continue the Prophesyings, all the more that, as they say, " Some not well-minded towards true religion and the knowledge of God, speak evil and slanderously of these Exercises as commonly they do against the sincere preaching of God's Holy Word/' The Archbishop, being sup. ported by the Queen, brought the Bishop to submission ; and the Prophesyings were ordered to be stamped out first in the diocese of Norwich, during 1574.1 Parkhurst died very shortly afterwards, and Archbishop Parker a few months later 17 May, 1575. ' Edmund Geindal, who was then raised to the See of Canterbury, belonged to a different school from his predecessor Parker; and, having been an exile, was neither so severe to the Puritans* nor so servile to Her Majesty. In fact, the Queen and he came speedily into collision. For, instead of carrying out the policy already begun of suppressing the Prophesyings, he sought to maintain them, and only remove their alleged 1 The order sufficiently shows the Bishop's reluctance. aw.ES3K£ra y/s— s as ^ ta thei™ n,2™snot fn « ;ncI t0 the Prophesyings, however, in Norwich Diocese. A number of clergy seized the opportunity which the vacancy in the bishopric afforded of resuming the .forbidden exercise. In the MS " Second Parts n TLlf! ' served in Dr. Williams's Library we find (pp ^SoSS ' The OnLl £ 'IS ffi' phesie at Norwich anno. 1575, began 8ede vacante" and " Orders tc ,bl observed a Q fofnoTT^ *"**»*& " " Ever^ Monday in Christ's Clnirch in Norwich ^X^!o?SS^^^ **»""» -ded, the learned bretlit m^r eSXwS^inadan °f EliZab6th'S fiKt hk^ » *»5 more &K 180 THE rKESBYTEKIAXS IX ENGLAND. irregularities or abuses, by issuing with his suffragans a series of rather sharp and stringent regulations.1 Nevertheless, a stormy scene awaited the Archbishop on his appearing at Court by the Queen's summons. She seems to have assailed him with peremptory language, and shocked him by insisting that there were far too many preachers, three or four being enough for a whole county in her estimation, and it was enough that they should read the Homilies. She would at least have none of these Prophesyings, and commanded him to see at once that they were everywhere stopped. Overborne by so sudden an attack, and by the sharp words of an imperious mistress, Grindal left her presence silenced, but not convinced. He had often felt keenly the self-willed style of her inter- ference in Church affairs, and now, as a spiritually-minded man, he resented her off-hand settlement of a purely spiritual question, by the mere declaration of her sovereign pleasure- This touched his conscience ; and he resolved to make a stand at whatever cost.- In a remarkable letter to the Queen, elated 20 Dec, 1576, he protests — " I cannot marvel enough how this strange opinion should once enter your mind, that it should be good for the Church to have few preachers. Alas ! Madam, is the Scripture more plain in any one thing than that the Gospel of Christ should he plentifully preached ? " 3 After some pungent remarks on the reasons why preaching is disliked by various classes, — by the worldl}*, vain, and disso- 1 Orders for Eeformatiou of Abuses about the learned Exercises and Conferences among the ministers of the Church. — Strype's Grindal, p. 327. 2 For particulars see Strype's Grindal, App. pp. S0-89. " Almost the last of the Reformers, he was like them far beyond his age ; and had that prophetic wisdom with which God endows a few great minds. He saw the whole bearing of the subject ; and marked the consequences, remote but not less disastrous, it would involve — the decay of preaching, the alienation of the laity, the growth of sectaries, and, to crown the whole, the deadening return to formality and with it the loss of zeal and scriptural piety. His high position entitled him to remonstrate. He did not shrink from the hazardous duty. He addressed a letter to the Queen which incurred her deep displeasure; but it has entitled him to the reverence of all posterity."- — Marsden's Early Puritans, p. 113. 3 Queen Elizabeth's saying about a certain cleric, that in making him a bishop she had spoiled a good preacher, gives edge to the Puritan complaint, that Bishops preached but seldom. THEIK "RISE. 181 lute, because it rebuked their vices, by the reactionary party because it promoted reformation and the removal of supersti- tion,— he continues, " The reading of Homilies hath its use ; but is nothing comparable to the office of preaching. The godly preacher is termed in the Gospel that faithful and wise servant who can give to each his portion of meat in due season. He can apply his speech according to the diversity of times places, and hearers, which cannot be done in Homilies." Besides, the Homilies were to supply a passing necessity for want of preachers (as appears by the Statute, he adds) ; and but for the spoliation of the parish revenues, by the abbeys, the Crown, and later possessors, each flock would have had a preaching pastor, which is now ,': rather to be wished than hoped for." As to the Prophesyings, after explaining their object, maintaining that Scripture and experience attest their great value, and that no fewer than ten Bishop>s of his Province are agreed with him on this, he protests with much solemnity : " I cannot with a safe conscience and without the offence of the Majesty of God give my assent to the suppressing of the said Exercises ; much less send out any injunction for the utter and universal subversion of the same. If it be your Majesty's pleasure for this or any other cause to remove me out of this place, I will with all humility yield thereto and render again to your Majesty what I received. . . . Bear with me, I beseech you, Madam, if I choose rather to offend your earthly Majesty than to offend the heavenly Majesty of God." Then reminding her that the will of God, and not of the prince, must be the standard in spiritual decisions ; and that she ought to consult with Bishops and divines in matters of doctrine and discipline, " for these things are to be determined in Church or Synod, not in the palace (in ecclesia sen synodo, non in palatio "), as an ancient Father says, he proceeds, in a tone of keen and heart-searching application to which Eliza- beth was little accustomed, to set forth her responsibilities, and her own answerableness at God's great judgment seat. This noble letter,1 — perhaps no nobler was ever penned by 1 Heylin calls it, after his manner, "a most tedious and voluminous letter'' (Hist, Presbyterians, 284). 182 THE PKESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND an Archbishop of Canterbury to an English monarch, — was conveyed to Elizabeth by the Earl of Leicester, who, along with Burleigh and other Privy Councillors, sympathized with Grin- dal's views. But the Queen's blood was up at his resistance, and after an ominous silence for several months, she ordered at last a meeting of the Court of Star Chamber, in June, 1577, so that the Archbishop might actually be deprived. Her Counsellors averted such a scandal, and prevailed to secure a milder sentence. Grindal was suspended for six months ; his see put under sequestration, and himself confined a prisoner to his house until submission. Meanwhile Elizabeth usurped Archiepiscopal functions herself, and in letters to every Bishop in England " given under our signet at our Manor of Green- wich, 7th May, 1577, and in the 19th year of our reign," she thus schools them to obedience, — Right Eeverend Father hi God, — We greet fyou well. We hear to our great grief that in sundry places of our realm there are no small number of persons presuming to be teachers and preachers in the Church . . . who ... do daily devise, imagine, propound, and put in execution sundry new rites and forms in the Church, as well by their inordinate preaching, reading and minis- tering the Sacraments, as by procuring unlawfully of assemblies of great numbers of our people out of their ordinary parishes . . . to be hearers of their disputations and new devised opinions upon points of Divinity far unmeet for vulgar people, which manner of ministrations they in some places term Prophesyixos and in other places Exercises. . . . We therefore, according to the Authority which we have, do charge and command you as Bishop of the Diocese, with all manner of diligence to take order, etc. . . . And furthermore, considering the great abuses that have been in sundry places of our realm by reason of the aforesaid assemblies called Exercises . . . we will and straitly charge you that you cause the same forthwith to cease and not be used. . . . And in these things we charge you to be so careful and vigilant as by your negligence . . . we be not forced to make some example in reforming you according to j'our deserts." ' What could the unfortunate Bishops do, but succumb to this peremptory mandate ? — some of them willingly, and others, 1 For these letters in full see Strype's Grindal, Appendix ii., ix., x., or Grindal's Remains, Parker Soc, pp. 375 and 407. THEIR RISE. 183 like Cox of Ely l or Bentham of Lichfield, reluctantly and with a wry face.2 In contrast with the pusillanimous conduct of the Bishops on this memorable occasion, Grindal stood firm ; and showing no signs of giving way, he was urged to submit by his friend Lord Burleigh, who even supplied him with a proper form for begging pardon of Her Majesty. But beyond a letter of respect and of regret that his conscience had compelled him to take the course he had done, nothing was effected. The Queen, therefore, was wishful to have him wholly deprived of his Archiepiscopal office, and was with difficulty restrained from so high-handed an act. And in face of a petition both from Convocation and the Bishops of the province, he was kept under suspension and sequestration for years, till in fact within a few months of his death, in 1583 ; all the while out of favour at Court and an object of resentment with the Queen. The matter derives special interest from its touching at this point the realm of higher literature. Edmund Spenser has thrown the light of genius upon this part of the great ecclesias- tical struggle, the best interpreter as he is of the nobler aspira- tions of the country. Spenser's sympathy with the Puritanism 1 Bishop Cox thus wrote to Burleigh (Strype's Annals, Appendix), " I trust here- after, the thing being deeply and considerately weighed, her Majesty, seeking especially the glory of God and the quiet and needful edifying of the people, may be proved to have further consideration of this matter ; and when the great ignorance, idleness, and lewdness of the great number of poor and blind priests in the clergy shall be deeply weighed and considered of, it will be thought most necessary to call them and to drive them to some travail and exercise of God's Holy Word, whereby they may be the better able to discharge their bounden duty towards their flock." - Aylmer, Bishop of London, exceeded most of his brethren in zeal over this matter, and required his subordinates, " in her Majesty's name," to execute im- mediately and in every point the items of her letter — " Fail you not to do so," he adds, "as you will answer the contrary at your peril, lour loving brother, John London." This was that Aylmer who, — from having been an ardent favourer of Puritanism, declaiming in his Harboro' for faithful subjects, against the wealth and grandeur of Bishops, their Civil authority and Lordly dignities, — acquired a bad pre-eminence for persecuting the Puritans and for standing much on his own lordly dignity as a Bishop. In spite of his great learning and undoubted ability and courage, he has left a worse name than any of the early Elizabethan Bishops for ill temper and severe exaction of his revenues. His name was variously spelt — Elmer or Elmar among other ways; and as he cut down an avenue of elm- trees at Fulharn to raise money, he was jocularly called the Elm-er, or sometimes by transposition, Mar-elm. Among other allegations, he is charged with proposing to sell his Bishopric to Bancroft, Bee Strype's Aylmer, pp, 71, 168, and 194, 184 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. of Grindal comes out strongly in his first book, the " Shej)- Tieardes Calender, conteyning Twelve jffiglogues proportionable to the Twelve Monethes" published at first anonymously in 1579, but dedicated to "Master Philip Sidney.''' (It is after the exam- ple of Clement Marot's eclogues on behalf of the Huguenots.) In the 7th Eclogue (for July) Spenser writes " in honour and commendation of good shepheardes and to the shame and disprayse of proude and ambitious Pastours," and referring to old Algrind as a sample of the one class and to Morell of the other, he is not at pains to disguise the allusion — Algrind being simply a trans- ference of the two syllablesof Grindal ; as Morell is of Aylmer's name which among its other forms was spelt occasionally (as by Heylin) both Elmor and Ellmor ; whom Spenser assails at the opening of the Eclogue, — "Is not thilke same a goteheard prowde, That sittes on yonder bancke." While at the close he is not afraid to sjTnpathically range himself alongside of Grindal, — " Ah ! good Algrind, his hap was ill." The whole Eclogue, with its dialogue between Thomalin and Morell, who represent the two parties in the Church, lends itself to some sharp reflections on more than the Roman prelates, among whom the pilgrim Palinode saw such abuses, and such contrast to the true Bishops of early days : — ".Whilome ! all these were lowe and lief2 And loved their flocks to feed : They never stroven to be chiefe, And simple was their weecle." 3 But now — " They bene yclad in purple and pall,4 So hath thej'r God them blist ; They reigne and rulen over all And lord it as they list." The story of the Queen and Grindal is told at the close — for, in answer to the question, — " But saye me, what is Algrind, he That is so oft bynempt 5 ? " 1 Once on a time. 2 Be'oved, or endeared. :! Dress. 4 Bich coveiing. 5 Named, or referred to. THEIR RISE. 185 Thomalin answers, — •' He is a shepheard great in gree l That hath been long ypent.2 One daye he sat upon a hyll (As now thou wouldest me, But I am taught by Algrind's ill To love the lowe degree) ; For sitting so with bared scalpe, An Eagle soared bye That weening3 his whyte head was chalke A shell-fish down let fly : She weened the shell-fishe to have broke But therewith bruzed his brayne ; 80 now astonied with the stroke He lyes in lingering payne." What Spenser, with, his strong Puritan views and sympa- thies, thought of the whole position of the English Church and the Reformation attained under Elizabeth, we shall have occasion afterwards to notice. Meanwhile, though the Queen had her way, the struggle over the Prophecies was not with- out some salutary results in Convocation and elsewhere. Nor should we omit to remember that the Queen felt necessi- tated to allow the Prophesyings to continue in Lancashire, with the view of keeping in check the Popish party, which was nowhere stronger in any part of England. This helped in no small measure to make Lancashire eventually the fittest field for the Presbyterian organization, when that form of Church Establishment came to be set up under the Long Parliament.4 1 Degree. 2 Pent up, or restrained. 3 Thinking. 4 So late as 1585 we find Chadderton, the Puritan Bishop of Chester, — in whose diocese Lancashire then was, — issuing directions to his clergy in that county about the Prophesyings : "Whereas," he says, "the right honourable the Lords of her Majesty's most honourable Privy Council, upon careful zeal for the furtherance of the good proceeding and course of religion, have recommended unto us some fur- ther enlargement of the Ecclesiastical Exercises, to the end they might be more frequently used, and in more places in this diocese than had formerly been : Where- fore we have, upon good deliberation and by good advice, appointed that the said Exercises shall be had and kept at more places." He afterwards declared, " Many that could do little good before in the Church, by this means have been brought in a short time to do some profit. Much good hath ensued." — Strype's Annals, Appendix, b. i. c. 39. The Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry drew up Articles for similar arrangements in Ms diocese about 1585 also ; but Whitgift denounced them as the well-spring of a pernicious platform, so that the attempt had to be abandoned. II. THE GREAT STRUGGLE, BEGINNING IN 1583. Queen Elizabeth was too prudent and self-seeking to be fanatical ; but she was none the less violent and capricious in her persecuting policy when there was no danger to herself. Deeply imbued with arbitrary principles, and excessively fond of personal rule, she would allow no public deviation from the modes of worship she had herself prescribed. She was careful, therefore, not to have a second Grindal in the Chair of Canter- bury. When a successor had to be appointed to the deceased Primate, in 1583, Whitgift, on whom the royal preference had long been fixed, was named Archbishop ; and he speedily vin- dicated the royal choice, as a man entirely after the Queen's own heart. To stamp out by mere force all religious antagonism was the policy more resolutely adopted than ever, and more rigorously pursued.1 Two devices specially characterized the beginning of his administration ; 1. An extended body of Articles as tests in the Church ; and 2. A new form of High Commission, with additional and unheard-of powers. Both these measures came into play in 1583, within three months of the new Primate's appointment. Whitgift's Measures and Machinery. We must look at each of these two measures in turn. I. The Test Articles. Whitgift's first step was to issue, after consulting the other Bishops, a paper of fifteen requi- sitions which all the clergy were at once to subscribe, on pain of deprivation. To a great number of these requisitions no 1 " There was no danger of his Grindalizing," says Strype. Whitgift, however, is not to be too severely judged. He was not alone in the harsh exercise of author- ity, nor in the thorough conviction that conformity was to be secured by £>enal exac- tions. What, however, does stain his name, is the delight which his common- place nature took in applying this common-place remedy, and his attaching such importance to minor matters of law, while so readily overlooking the greater re- quirements of the Gospel. 1B6 THEIR RISE. 187 serious objection could be taken, as they were within the pro- visions of statute law. But it was different with others of them, which aimed at making the decisions of Convocation co- ordinate in authority with Acts of Parliament, and enlarging the force of the royal supremacy. The Sixth of these provisions was the hardest and most notorious, containing as it did the new subscription test, and requiring, — "That none be permitted to preach, read, catechise, minister the Sacra- ments, or execute any ecclesiastical function, by what authority soever he be admitted thereunto, unless he first consent and subscribe to these Articles following, before the Ordinary of the diocese, viz : — (1) " That her Majesty under God hath, and ought to have, the Sove- reignty and rule over all manner of persons," etc. (2) " That the Book of Common Prayer, and of ordering bishops, priests, and deacons, containeth in it nothing contrary to the Word of God" etc. (3) " That he alloweth the book of the Articles of Eeligion agreed upon by the Archbishops and Bishops of both provinces, and the whole clergy in the Convocation holden at London in the year of Our Lord 1562, and set forth by her Majesty's authority, and that he believeth all the Articles therein contained to be agreeable to the Word of God." These are known in English Church History as The Whit- gift Articles, which wrought such havoc among large numbers of able and godly clergy throughout the land. That they ex- ceeded the law in some vital points is evident enough. We have already noted that the famous Acts of Settlement (13th Elizabeth, c. 12) expressly withheld the sanction of statute law from the thirty-sixth, and the rest of the Articles relating to the hierarchical constitution and ritual of the Church. Whitgift sought to establish that canons enacted by Convoca- tion, and which had also received the assent of the Crown, were binding on the clergy, even if such canons might not have had the express sanction of the laity assembled in Parliament. The Presbyterians insisted, on the other hand, that nothing was the legal voice of the Church which had not passed Parlia- ment, and that nothing but full statute law was binding and authoritative, either on clergy or laity. The following case may illustrate how the persecuted Pres- byterian ministers nobly stood out against the legality of these 188 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Whit gift Articles. Humphrey Fenn was a learned, laborious, and much venerated preacher in Coventry, where he continued for upwards of forty years. He held firmly the Presbyterian views of the Church and the ministry, like hundreds more of his brethren, who felt fully justified by law in doing so, and still retaining their office. Mr. Fenn had already experienced the cruel oppressions to which his general Puritan views sub- jected him ; and on the publication of Whitgift's three Articles he was cited before the Archbishop at Lambeth. On refusing to subscribe, he was immediately suspended ; but here are the grounds and reasons of his vigorous protest : — Archbishop. " Your subscription is required by the Statute of 13 Eliz." Fenn. "That Statute extendeth no further than the Confession of Christian faith, and the doctrine of the Sacraments." A. " There is provision in the Statute of 7 Eliz. that the Queen with her High Commissioners, or the Archbishop, may take further order." F. " The proviso of 7 Eliz. can have no relation to 13 Eliz., which was some years after. And the proviso expresseth how far it is to be extended. ..." A. " But so much of the Canon Law is still in force as is not contrary to God's Word, and you have promised canonical obedience." F. " But the question is, Whether the things required be agreeable to God's Word? And not only so, there is no Canon which requires us to subscribe to the judgment of our Ordinary." A. " That I allow ; but the law hath charged the Bishop to see that all things for the ministry be duly observed, as by laic established, and I take this order for the more effectual execution of things already established." F. " Your care and diligence in the execution of laws must be accord- iny to, and not contrary to law. . . . But these proceedings are not according to law." A. " I make this a decree and order for the whole of my province, and therefore it is to be observed as if it had been made before." F. " No one person, nor any number of persons, hath authority to make decrees or constitutions, except in Convocation. ... A. " I have the Queen's consent." F. " But that consent was not according to law provided in this behalf. ..." A. u I have the consent of my brethren and some others." F. " That was not according to the order of Convocation. . . . Fenn, however, with multitudes more of his brethren, suf- fered immediate suspension ; but in order to quell the discus- sions arising out of these questions of constitutional law, the THEIR EISE. 189 Archbishop resolved on bringing the Presbyterian clergy (equally with Brownists and other Puritans of a different order that were now springing forth more numerous than ever) under an arbitrary jurisdiction that might set all ordinary laws at defiance. This more effectual scheme was II. The New High Commission, with powers and appliances far beyond any of its predecessors. At the urgent request of the Archbishop,1 the Queen appointed, in December, 1583, forty- four High Commissioners, twelve to be Bishops, and the rest chief officers under the Crown. Any three of these could act, provided the Archbishop, or at least a Bishop, was one of the members present. The jurisdiction and powers of this high Ecclesiastical Court were alike portentous — amply sufficient to crush anything. The Presbj^terians it did crush doicn for years to come ; the marvel is, that it did not at once crush them out altogether. This High Commission was empowered to call before it all suspected parties from any corner of the land ; to make inquisition into any disturbing rumours or reputedly dan- gerous opinions and books ; specially to put in force the Ecclesi- astical laws, and have their penalties exacted, so as at once to admonish, suspend, deprive, imprison, or otherwise deal with those of the clergy who did not rigidly adhere to the canons or rubrics, and particularly Whitgift's Articles. " If the supposed culprit could not be convicted under ' the oath of twelve good and lawful men,' a jury might be dispensed with. If witnesses were wanting, ' all other ways and means you can devise,' empowered them to use the rack, and ' little ease,'2 and the solitary dungeon, as wrell as the dreadful oath, i Strype's Whitgift, p. 134. See also Neal, vol. ii. p. 322 2 Marsden, Early Puritans, p. 154. "This frightful hole of little ease is still shown in the Tower. It is a small triangular den, or cage, cut into the wall, and closed with a low door. The prisoner must have sat with his back bent, and his head upon his knees ; and it was utterly impossible to change the posture of a single limb. There appears to have been another 'little ease' at Bridewell, and other prisons besides." Who will not sympathize with the same writer's indignant words, when he adds : " Under the grinding pressure of this frightful and ponderous machine, which was designed to crush the Puritans, all the liberties of England must have perished long ago, had it not been swept away with indignation by a fiery Parliament of Charles the First. The tribunal, even in the arbitrary times of Elizabetb, was held to be unconstitutional. The oath e.c officio, in particular, was viewed with abhor- 190 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. ex officio mero. They could continuously punish those who refused the oath, by fine or imprisonment, according to their discretion."' The Great Struggle in and out oe Parliament. The next ten years witnessed a fearful struggle. It has often been alleged, and with perfect truth, that the Presb}'- terian suffering clergy through it all cherished harsh and ty- rannical views and principles of their own. But the glory of their struggle lies here, that though unemancipated from coer- cive views themselves, they protested and fought against that hind of coercion which capriciously transcends constitutional law. They struggled for a reign of law, as against the rule of capricious individual will. And to them the nation is ever- lastingly indebted for laying emphasis on this great and dis- tinctive principle of constitutionalism. The situation was vastly more embittered when Whitgift drew up for the use of the High Commission a set of twenty-four ingeniously con- trived Articles x by which to question and try all suspects, and of which Lord Burleigh had soon occasion to say, " I find them so curiously penned, that I think the Inquisition in Spain use not so many questions to comprehend and to trap their prey. According to my simple judgment, this kind of proceeding is too savouring of the Roman Inquisition, and is rather a device to seel, for offenders, than to reform any."- There was no love lost between Lord Burleigh and Whitgift. Jealous of the Archbishop's growing influence with the Queen, he was no rence. It is contrary, it was argued, not only to the liberties of England, but to the law of nations and the instincts of our nature. It is a universal maxim, that no man is bound to accuse himself. No Canon, no General Council of the Church, for the first thousand years of its existence, had resorted to such a measure. Even pagan emperors had blushed to make use of a power which Christians now em- ployed against each other ; they had disowned and countermanded it, when their proconsuls and inferior magistrates used it against the primitive Christians. The Pope and the Inquisition admitted it, no doubt, but only in cases of heresy, whereas it was now levelled against every paltry misdemeanour. And lastly, it had been repealed in the reign of Henry the Eighth, and again declared unlawful by statute in the first year of Queen Elizabeth. Such were the objections then made to this ill-omened tribunal ; and amidst the deepest disapprobation its proceedings began." 1 See Neal's Puritans, vol. i. p. 331, for these twenty-four Articles. 2 State papers, Eliz. Dom. 17'2, 1. THEIR RISE. 101 admirer either of himself or his ways.1 Burleigh was indeed no Puritan ; but his churchmanship was very different from "Whitgift's, and was more like that of Lord Bacon in the next generation, with a tendency to larger liberty for the Presby- terianizing Puritans, so long as they did not disturb his own peace or that of the State. But the Primate blindly and stubbornly drove headlong on his own course of applying with vigour his subscription test. Sixty-four ministers were sus- pended in Norfolk alone, sixty in Suffolk, thirty in Sussex, thirty-eight in Essex, by Bishop Alymer, twenty in Kent, and twenty-one in Lincolnshire. A loud and bitter cry arose from many parts of the country, for, as the Earl of Leicester complained, multitudes of the most faithful and laborious among the clergy were deprived of their ministry, and the people were deprived of their preaching. Petitions poured in to the Privy Council ; but notwithstanding the strong representations of Burleigh himself, the most which the sufferers could obtain was a Conference at Lambeth be- tween the two parties, in the autumn of 1584, in presence of Leicester, Walsingham, Lord Grey, and others. Whitgift and Cooper, Bishop of Winchester, represented the one side ; Sparkes and Travers the other. Nothing but increased jealousy and bitterness came of the proceedings. Whitgift had the Queen strongly with him, and this was noted by the Presby- terian party with mingled grief and anger, deepening their sense of wrong.2 1 With words having the sting of truth in them, he angrily declares that " Men who were well enough before their promotion, became full of worldliness when they were made Bishops." Not that be means to reflect on the Archbishop ; oh, no! he has great respect for His Grace, but " he wished the spirit of gentleness might win, rather than severity." — Strype's Whitgift, b. iii. c. 9. - Queen Elizabeth's most eminent ministers of State, Lord Burghley, the Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Francis Knollyes, Sir Francis Walsingham, and Sir Nicholas Bacon, were strongly averse, as is well known, to the rigour which she and the Archbishop, with his suffragans, were exercising towards the Presbyterians or Church Puritans. These ministers of hers, with their wives, constituted the new noblesse which Elizabeth was rearing up against the old nobility, whom she was tearing down as partisans of Mary Queen of Scots and adherents of the old religion. Lady Burghley, with her two sisters, Lady Bacon and Lady Russell (who were all three daughters of the old Puritan exile Sir Anthony Cooke), often urged Burghley to try and dissuade the Queen from driving things to extremes. There is extant an important letter from Lady Bacon to her brother-in-law Lord Burghley, entreating that the Presbyterian ministers should be allowed a debate, not after the fashion 192 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Meanwhile the struggle waxed more intense than ever. The Discipline was silently spreading ; the very violence of the per- secution, far from making its aiders and abettors lose courage, only driving them upon more astute and secret methods. Be- tween 1583 and 1590 the numbers of Presbyterianizing min- isters were on the increase, till in the latter year it is usually reckoned there were not fewer than 500 of them, all labouring in the exercise of their ministry to introduce the Presby- terian discipline into their various parishes, unknown to the authorities. A strong counter-movement to Whitgift's tactics was set agoing in 1584, when a real crisis was reached. Parliament was summoned for November of that year ; and the more sanguine Presbyterians were resolutely bent on obtaining from it some kind of sanction for the Discipline, or at least some protection for themselves in its exercise.1 For this purpose a great gathering, or, as Bancroft2 calls it, "A National Synod" was held in London, though secretly, to operate both on Parliament and Convocation. The plan was apparently to flood the House of Commons with a deluge of petitions and complaints, and then, on the strength of the impression thus produced, to bring in a strong sweeping measure for " The Eeformation of the Church/' and at the same time to present the " Book of Discipline," as an indication of the desired line of reform. The very introduction of the Bill was negatived, however, as others had been before it, by the Queen's ministers representing in strong terms Her Majesty's settled antipathy to the proposal. But it is very remarkable, as indicating what the House would have done if left freely to itself, that it re- solved upon a somewhat startling form of petition, which, if accepted by the Upper House, was to have been pressed upon of the Lambeth Conference, but an opportunity of quiet exposition of their views before the Queen or Lords of Council. It bears date of 26 Feb., 1584, that is, new style 1585, and is one of the Lansdowne MSS. in Brit. Mus., No. 48 of 74 D. Like all others, it was of no avail with Elizabeth. 1 " Now, even now, it seemeth the Discipline of Christ seeketh and beseecheth tbe favour of men. The time of the worthy assembling of Parliament craveth it." Preface to Unlawful Practice of Prelates, 1585. Directed against Whitgift and his suffragans. 2 Dangerous Positions, p. 75. fiifirtt iiisti; 19$ Her Majesty.1 This notable petition included such drastic requests as these — that Presbyters and Bishops should be on a level in the matter of ordination; that no minister should be settled in a parish without being called by the people ; that the Prophesy- ings be restored, suspensions cancelled, and the illegal subscrip- tions abolished. The excitement was immense as to the course the Lords might take, especially as it was thought Lord Bur- leigh might be favourable. It soon appeared he knew too well the Queen's strength of purpose, and he could not advise the Lords to countenance the measure. Meanwhile Whitgift and the Bishops had, in their fright, endeavoured to redress some grievances, and rectify a few of the more glaring abuses. The Queen was greatly pleased with the Archbishop's suggestion that changes in the Church should be by canon, and not by statute, for she might thus retain the power in her own hands. A striking evidence of the ascendency of the Crown in Church affairs is afforded by the style in which the Queen lectures and rates all parties when dismissing Parliament for that Session. "Men were fault-finders," she said, "with the order of the clergy, which so might make a slander to herself and the Church, whose overlooker God had made her." On the other hand, speaking of the " Lords of the Clergy," she significantly threatens, " If they did not amend, she was minded to depose them. . . . All might be amended without needless and open exclamation. She would not animate Romanism, but neither would she tolerate newfangledness." 3 The Presbyterians were discomfited. Yet not altogether discouraged. They continued to revise the Book of Discipline, and the London Synod referred it to Mr. Travers, "to be cor- rected and ordered as his leisure would admit." 3 "We find it 1 D'Ewes, Journal* of Parliament, p. 339 ; and Htrype's Whitgift, b. iii. c. 10. - Strype's Whitgift, b. iii. c. 11. 3 The revised edition was eagerly expected. Our old friend John Field writes to Travers, 3 July, 1585, " I would wish the Discipline were read over with as much Bpeed as may be. ... I find many abroad very willing to join the rest to put in practice what shall be agreed on by the Brethren." And Edward Crellibrand, of Magdalen College, Oxford, says also, to John Field, 9 Nov. 1585, " I pray you re- member the Form of Discipline which Mr. Travers promised to make perfect, and send it to me when finished. We will put it in practice and try men's minds therein, as we may." 194: THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. at last completed " by the godly and most Christian pains of the Brethren " of the London classes, and distributed to the classes of Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick, Northamptonshire, and elsewhere. " The Discipline wo have received, " writes Gellibrand to Field, u and we give you and the Brethren hearty thanks for it. As yet we are not resolved on all points of it, having had but small time to peruse it, nor the commodity of often meeting about it. But we have taken order, for our monthly assembly {i.e. at Oxford), and for associating others into our Company." i We must here notice two incidents relating to Travers and Cartwright, both belonging to this year, 1585, which may throw a side light on the interests and struggles of the Presby- terians and their leaders. Travers was at this time Lecturer at the Temple, and domestic chaplain to Lord Burleigh, who held him in high esteem. (Subscription to Whitgift's Articles was not required for either of these positions.) The Mastership of the Temple became vacant through the death of Alvey, a noted Puritan. Lord Burleigh desired the appointment for his protege, Travers, a great favourite with the Templars also, who themselves were strongly imbued with the spirit of Presbyterian Puritanism. Whit gift strongly urged the claims of one of the Queen's chaplains. Both candidates were withdrawn for the sake of peace, and this opened the way for the distinguished Richard Hooker being made Master. Thus two leading representatives of two schools of thought in the Church (the Master and the Lecturer) were brought into contact, and naturally enough into collision. In some high respects Travers was not the equal of Hooker, but he was much the more powerful and attractive in the pulpit. Crowds thronged in the afternoon to hear him, while Hooker's audience were but sparse in the forenoon.3 1 Bancroft, Dangerous Position*, pp. 7G, 77. - The audience " ebbed in the morning and flowed in the afternoon," says Fuller, ■who thus pictures their opposite styles. " Mr. Hooker ; his voice was low, stature little, gesture none at all ; standing stone-still in the pulpit, as if the posture of hie body were the emblem of his mind, unmovable in his opinions. Where his eye Was left fixed at the beginning, it was found fixed at the end of the sermon ; in a word, the doctrine he delivered had nothing but itself to garnish it. His style was THEIR RISE. 195 Soon other differences developed. " The pulpit," says Fuller, " spoke pure Canterbury in the morning, and Geneva in the afternoon." Both were men of earnest convictions, and each impersonated the opposing ecclesiastical principles of their day. Their antagonism afforded an opportunity for "VVhitgift to intervene. He speedily, on various pretexts, silenced and removed Travers, who, being prohibited from preaching any- where in England, went over to Dublin, where he was made Provost of Trinity College, and helped to sow the seeds of Presbyterian Puritanism in Ireland, the famous Ussher being one of his favourite and much-attached students. Hooker was provided with a quiet country rectory, to which he retired to write his great work on Ecclesiastical Polity. The other incident which this year, 1585, also witnessed, was the seizure and imprisonment of Thomas Cartwright.1 After a struggling exile of eleven years, his long-shattered health en- tirely failed ; and his life being in imminent danger, he wrote the Privy Council for permission to come to England, by his physician's advice. His friends, Leicester and Burleigh, re- ferred to his case most handsomely in the House of Lords, and interceded for him with the Queen herself, though in vain. long and pithy, driving on a whole flock of several clauses hefore he came to the end of a sentence ; so that when the copiousness of his style met not with propor- tionable capacity in the audience, it was unjustly censured for being perplexed, tedious, and obscure. . . . Mr. Travers : his utterance was graceful, gesture plausible, manner profitable, method plain, and his style carried in it indolent, pietatis, a genius of grace flowing from his sanctified heart." 1 Cartwright had married, in Antwerp, the sister of John Stubbe, the noted Puritan lawyer, who (when Queen Elizabeth, in 1571), at the age of forty-six, had exposed herself to popular opprobrium in proposing to marry the Duke of Anjou,) wrote the pamphlet, " Gaping Gulph, in which England will be swallowed up by the French Marriage," by which he expressed the national mind, and drew down on himself the concentrated vengeance of the Queen. Hallam says : " This pamphlet is very far from being what some have ignorantly or unjustly called it, a virulent libel ; but is written in a sensible manner, and with unfeigned loyalty and affection towards the Queen." Stubbe was sentenced to have his right hand cut off, for writing this book ; but when the shocking penalty was executed, he took off his hat with his left hand, and exclaimed, " Long live Queen Elizabeth ! " Lord Burleigh, who knew his fidelity and worth, employed him often afterwards in answering popish libels — Stubbe always signing himself Scceva, or the left-handed, in these productions. Writing long before to Lord Burghley's secretary Hicks, he says, •" We have no news here, but that Cartwright hath married my sister — a husband whose livelihood is learning : who should endue his wife with wisdom ; and leave to his children the rich portion of godliness by Christian careful education." — Strype's Annals, ii. b. 2, c. 10. 196 THE PEESBYTEEIANS IN ENGLAND. Permission to return was not granted, and when Cartwright ventured over, he was no sooner landed than Aylmer, Bishop of London, had him arrested and imprisoned " by her Majesty's commandment" as he let out. For this blunt betrayal of the Queen's private instigation, Aylmer had to humble himself, and he did it in very servile fashion. But •Cartwright remained in prison until, by the Earl of Leicester's influence, he be- came Master or Warden of the Hospital at Warwick; and this office, being exempt from the jurisdiction of a Bishop, enabled him to preach without a licence, though he was not left altogether unmolested. He had, however, the favour and protection of Leicester, and his brother also, who was known as " The good Earl of Warwick." Among other usages, Cart- wright, in his Warwick ministry, is said to /tare introduced the practice of extemporaneous prayer before sermon. But the contest of the Presbyterians was now getting pain- fully complicated with the more violent procedure of the Brown- ists, the Family of Love, and other sectaries, who disavowed all communion with any other Churches but their own. Eobert Browne, a vigorous but self-willed man, a near relative of Lord Burleigh, began, about 1581, to broach his special views ; and his followers increased with amazing rapidity in the Eastern Counties, where he had been a beneficed clergyman. These were emphatically "Separatists," their founder, in Iris " Trea- tise of Reformation without tarrying for any;' not only denying the whole Church system as " the mark of the beast," and its Bishops " Antichrists," but vehemently denouncing " the wickedness of those preachers" who remained in the Church seeking its reform from within by constitutional agitation. Hence the antipathy between the Church Puritans and the Brownists from this time forwards.1 And yet, however strongly i " No Independent will take it well at any man's hand to be called a BrowniitJ' says a modern Independent (Benjamin Hanbury, Memorials of Independents, vol. iii. p. 132). Doubtless the Brownists enunciated first, though in an extravagant form, the radical idea of each Congregation having supreme and self-governing powers within itself ; but the godly and eminent lawyer, Henbt Bakbow, with Greenwood, Penry, and others, who all suffered death for their convictions, lifted the principle up to a higher platform, and permeated it with a better spirit. Kobert Browne ulti- mately conformed to the Church again ; but his later days were far from edifying. THEIR RISE, 197 Cartwriglit and his followers opposed all separatism,1 the Presbyterians were charged with causing the divisions and extravagances of the various sects ; and on this ground all further reform teas resisted.2 1 Cartwriglit, while contending against Prelatic corruptions and impositions on the one hand, argued vigorously against the spirit of separationism on the other. A letter of his remains, dated Warwick, 30 Aug., 1590, and addressed to his " Sister- in-law " (Mrs. Stuhbe), " to persuade her from Brownism." (Harl. MS. 7581.) See Presbyterian Review, vol. vi., p. 10!), and Briggs' American Presbyterianism, p. 44. He distinguishes between a Church with a pure discipline ; and the unattainable notion of an absolutely purist Church, without a false or hypocritical member in it. 3 Lord Bacon (who was himself no Puritan, however much his mother inclined that way), with his prescient eye, foresaw the mischief of this policy of resistance, and warned against it. He holds the balance carefully between both sides in his early tract (written about 1590, but not published till 1657), "Ax Advertisement TOUCHING THE CONTROVERSIES OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND." Hallam thus gives his idea of Bacon's views (Note in oh. vi. of Const. Hist.), " How desirous men not at all connected in faction with the Puritans, were of amendments in the Church appears by a Tract of Bacon, written, it seems, about the end of 1603 (vol. i. p. 387). He excepts to several matters of ceremony, the cap and surplice, the ring in marriage, the use of organs, the form of absolution, lay-baptism, etc. ; and he inveighs against the abuse of excommunication, against non-residence and pluralities, the oath ex Officio THE SOLE EXERCISE OF ORDINATION AND JURISDICTION BY THE BlSHOP, Conceiving that the Dean and Chapter should always assent. And in his predominant spirit of improvement he asks, ' Why the Civil State shoiild be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws made every three or four years in Parliament assembled, which deviseth remedies as fast as time breedeth mischiefs ; and contrariwise the Ecclesias- tical State should still continue upon the dregs of time, and receive no alteration now for these forty-Jive years or more ? ' " See also Spedding's Bacon, vol. iii., p. 105. III. THE MAR-PRELATE CONTROVERSY AND TRACTS,1 1588-1590. We must now look into a controversy which has been much misunderstood, and whose bearings have been sadly misrepre- sented. There can be little doubt that the appearance of the Mar-prelate Tract* did serious injury to the Presbyterian party and their cause. For although these famous tracts were not of Presbyterian authorship, and their spirit and tone were positively disallowed by the Presbyterian leaders, yet, as the controversy turned chiefly on their proceedings, it brought down on the heads of many innocent persons among them the vengeance of a Government ready enough to charge them with whatever might bring discredit on the party at large. The Bishops who were assailed in these tracts, were disposed to strike blindly, and with random fury at all on whom they could fasten odium ; and, although earnest Presbyterian writers, like John Uclall and others, who were examined on suspicion of being concerned with the so-called " libels," did openly and distinctly disavow all complicity with them, there have never 1 The authorities are, The Tracts themselves, so far as they have come clown to us, and have escaped the destructive hand of the Episcopal and civil authorities. In the extreme scarcity of those that are extant, we are deeply indebted to the re- prints of a few by John Petheram (the Chancery-lane bookseller), under the title, " Puritan Discipline Tracts," with notes and introductions, 1842-1847. Among these are Martin Mar-prelate's Epistle to the right puissante and terrible Priests, etc. : the Epitome : and Ha' y' any work for Cooper. This last refers to Cooper, Bishop of Winchester's Admonition to the People of England, etc., which is also among the reprints, with two anti-Puritan squibs, "Pappe with an Hatchet," and "Cuthbert Curry Knave. An Almond for a Parrot." Still more valuable are the recent reproductions and reprints of parts of this con- troversy in the "English Scholars' Library of Old and Modern Works," by Professor Edward Arber, 1880. We specially acknowledge obligations to Mr. Arber's valuable " Introductory Sketch of the Martin Mar-Prelate Controversy, 1588-90," though not acquiescing in all of his views. Other special works are, " A History of the Martin Mar-Prelate Controversy in the Eeign of Queen Elizabeth," by Rev. William Maskell, M.A. (1845). John Penry, the Pilgrim Martyr, 1559-1593, by Eev. John Waddington, D.D. (1854). And still more valuable, the studies on the subject in " Congregationalism," by Henry M. Dexter, D.D, who has given it much attention. 188 THEIR RISE. 100 been wanting partisans, who (like Bancroft at the time) have been willing to attribute to the Presbyterian Puritans as a whole the spirit and genius of these fierce and mocking satires, which are all designed to " 'pistle the Prelates." Undoubtedly the deep-seated causes of the Presbyterian revolt in the Church were the very same which operated in the production of these Mar-prelate Tracts. To this extent, there was an affinity between the Presbyterian contention, and the Mar-prelate controversy. To these deep-seated causes, — and they were very terrible ones, — we must now advert ; for otherwise it is impossible to understand the position. And, indeed, it is diffi- cult for modern readers to realize the enormities of mis-rule which then gathered round the Bishops and their style of Church-administration.1 There are two evils especially, which the reader must bear in mind. The first is — Bishops in those days had not only spiritual or Ecclesiastical Courts of a very secular kind ; but they had actually prisons of their own, to which they could directly send recalcitrants. The second anomaly to be noted is — Bishops had entire control over all printing-presses, and supreme power to determine the publica- tions that should be issued. The tyrannical exercise and abuse of these amazing func- tions; the direct committal to prison of merely spiritual offenders ; the consequent sufferings of many of the best and worthiest men, and the violent suppression of their able and intelligent writings ; these were the real causes of the restless vehemence of pulpit and press that blazed forth in defiant utterance and secret publications throughout the latter part of Elizabeth's reign. Let us look more closely into these two points — 3 i Most people will acquiesce in the following statement : — " Whatever frenzies, or narrow-mindedness may be chargeable to the Puritans, they were undoubtedly the founders of our present freedom ; while the Bishops and their entourage, with all their patristic learning and general culture, were the sup- porters of arbitrary power and the active instruments of the peoples' oppression. No amount of historical research can obliterate this distinction." — Arbek, Intro- duction to Mar-prelate Controversy, p. 9. - Undue stress has been laid on the coincidence between the appearance of these tracts and the danger from the Spanish Armada, as if the Puritans deliberately seized this crisis for making their violent assaults, regardless of the country's peril. 200 THE FBESBYTEBIANS IN ENGLAND. 1. Bishops, and their Imprisoning Power. — The temporal authority and the secular offices of the Bishops had come down from mediaeval times. They were portions of papal and prelatiG policy, against which the Presbyterian Puritans pro- tested and struggled with all their might. It was because of these unprunecl episcopal prerogatives the Presbyterians had attacked the whole principle of Temporal and Baronial Bishops, against which they made their appeal to the authority of Scrip- ture and the very nature of a spiritual Church discipline.1 2, The Bishops and their Power over the Press.2 — The censorship of the press, and absolute control of all publications, was lodged in the hands of the Bishops, by Article 51 of Queen Elizabeth's Injunctions, 1559, — " No manner of person shall print any manner of boke or paper of what sorte, nature, or in what language soever it be, excepte the same be first licensed by her Majestie by expresse words in writing, or by six of her " Neither can they be acquitted," it has been said, " of the crime of taking advan- tage of England's supreme danger from the Spaniards, in tbe year 1588, to increase the virulence of their attacks . . . while the Church was offering up solemn prayers to God to avert the threatened danger." That the Puritans were not as loyally zealous against the Armada, and all it represented, as at least any other party 'in Church or State, may be dismissed like others of Camden's and Heylin's groundless insinuations. . i It is difficult for us to realize the extent to which this secular jurisdiction of the Bishops was carried, and the amount of use they made of the " Gate-house," the " Clink," the " Bocardo " (the old North Gate of Oxford, whence Latimer was led to the stake), and other prisons. The following extract will suffice (Harleian MSS. fol. 7, no. 6848), bearing date 18 July, 1588,— " The true Copye of a lamentable -petition dcliuered to ye Queenes Maiestije the 13 of March, 1588. " The LORD of heaven and earthe that bathe so wonderfully hitherto preserued and established your Maiesty in your earthly kingdome, enclyne your Eoyall harte . . . to some christian consideration, and speedy redresse of the outragious wronges and most extreame iniuryes, wherewith sundrye of your most faithfull and true-harted subiectes have bin a longe tyme, and are at this present especially op- pressed in all places by the BB. of this lande, but principally by the BB. of Canter- bury and London. . . . Dayly spoilinge, vesing (vexing), molestinge, hurtinge, pursuyinge.yea barringe, and locking them up close prisoners in the most vn [w]hol- some and vyle prysones, and there deteyninge them, without briuginge them to their answeres. Some they haue Cast into the ' Little Ease ' : some they haue put iuto the ' Myll,' Causinge them to be beaten with cudgels in their prysones." _ 2 Censorship of the Press by ecclesiastical authorities was coeval with the intro- duction of printing. A Bull of Leo X., so early as 1515, required all Bishops and Inquisitors to examine all books before they could be set up in type, or issued from the press. At the Reformation in England, this was claimed as a preroga- tive of the Crown, and was delegated to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London. THEIR RISE. 201 Privy Counsel, or be perused and licensed by the Archbishops of Cantor- bury and Yorke, the Bishop of London, the Chancellours of both Univer- sities, the Bishop being Ordinary, and the Archdeacon also of the place where any suche shall be printed, or by two of them, whereof the Ordinary of the place to be alwaies one.'1'1 These powers did not lie unused. In September, 1576, the Stationers' Company had been stirred up to begin a regular weekly search of all printing places in London, so that every printer might be known ; the number of presses and workmen and apprentices he employed, the kinds of type he could use, the quantity of paper he had on hand, and how he accounted for the sheets he threw off. Seven years afterwards, it is on record, that there were only twenty-three printers in London, with fifty-three hand-presses ; : and only two others were allowed in the kingdom, one at Oxford, and one at Cambridge, for University use. On 23 June, 1586 (apparently at the instigation of Whitgift, who had become Archbishop of Canterbury little more than two years before), there issued the great Star Chamber decree on printing, which regulated the press so long afterwards, and by which the whole power was yet more effectually concen- trated in the hands of the Archbishop and the Bishop of London, and whomsoever they might appoint.2 No wonder a contemporary petition complains that, — " The followers of Reformation lacke libertie to answere in their own cause. If they speake, they be silenced ; if they write, they wante Prin- ters. They be shut up in close prisons, their handes, as it were bounde and then buffeted." 3 The Episcopal licensers, however lax in matters of moral de- cency, were very lynx-eyed when passing anything for publica- tion, that seemed to reflect on matters ecclesiastical. Hence the controversial treatises on the Presbyterian side, the books of Cartwright or Travers, had to be printed secretly or abroad at Antwerp or elsewhere, and were surreptitiously introduced into 1 Arber's Introductory sketch to Mar-prelate Controversy, p. 50. 2 Transcript, etc., 11, 810, ed. 1875. :i A petition directed to her most excellent Majestic. Secretly printed. Brit. Mm. p.m. 108. 02. See Arber, ut supra, p. 52, 202 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. the kingdom, and secretly spread among friends.1 -The Bishops were masters of the field, and ruthlessly confiscated whatever ran counter to their own notions or dignity. Among the first who attempted to break through this vicious monopoly were Udall, Penry, and the printer Waldegrave, who began to use a secret or wandering press, and whose names, long covered with reproach and infamy, are beginning to be held in honour for what they risked of their property and their lives in such a noble quarrel. John Udall (of whom we shall have more to say in the next chaper) was anxious, as a learned Presbyterian Puritan, to reply to a controversial volume by Dr. Bridges, Dean of Salisbury,2 in which he had at great length attacked 1 The ten or twelve years from Cartwrigbt and Travers's writings, 1572-77, had seen many treatises and pamphlets on the Church Government question, and there had been no falling off latterly in this respect. Among the more recent, re- ferred to in the Mar-prelate Tracts, were, — In 1581, " A Pleasant Dialogue between a Soldier in Berwick and an English Chaplain " (anonymous, but, as already noticed, by the learned Anthony Gilbv). It assails the whole 'framework of the prelatic Courts of "Commissaries" and "Facul- ties," and vindicates the Presbyterian lines of reform. In 15S3, " An Abstract of certain Acts of Parliament ; " to which appeared,— In 1581, " An Answer," by Dr. Richard Cosin. The aim of the " Abstract " is to show how the Bishops had exceeded their powers and violated Statute law : which was so undeniable that the " Answer " does not seek to deny, but blames the writer for exposing their Fathers' nakedness, and for writing without name or licence. In 1581, a reply appeared anonymously, but known to be by Dudley Fenner, then an exiled Presbyterian Minister at Middleburgh, Holland. "A Counter Poyson, modestly written for the time, to make answere to the objections and reproaches wherewith the Answerer to the Abstract would disgrace the holy Discipline of Christ." Another most noteworthy book in 1584, is " A learned Discourse of Ecclesias- tical Government," or more fully, " A briefe and plaine Declaration concerning the desires of those faithful ministers for the Discipline and Reformation of the Church of England ; which may suerve for a just Apologie against the false accu- sations and slanders of their adversaries " (printed by Waldegrave). This was by Dr. William Fulke, Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, for whose Life, see Brooks, Puritans, i. 385. 2 This book (with Bishop Cooper's later Admonition) is the piece de resistance of the whole early Martinist assaults. Its title is instructive : " AtDefence of the Govern- ment Estabiislied In the Church of Englande For Ecclesiastical Matters: Contain- ing an aunswere," to (a) The Learned Discourse of Eccl. Gouemment, otherwise intituted, A briefe and plaine declaration of faithfull Ministers that seek for the discipline and reformation of the Church of Englande. And (b) The judgment of a must Reuerend and Learned man from beyond the Seas, " Aunsvvering also to the argu- mentes of Caluine, Beza, and Danaeus, with other our Reuerend learned Bretheren, besides Caenalis and Bodinus, both for the regiment of women, and in defence of her Maiestie, and of all other Christian Princes' supreme Gouernment in Ecclesias- call causes, Against the Tetrarchie that our Bretheren would erect in euery particular congregation, of Doctors, Pastors, Gouerners and Deacons, with their seuerall and ioynt authoritie in Elections, Excommunications, Synodall-Constitutions, and THEIR RISE. 203 the Presbyterian position, and such pamphlets as the}^ had got into circulation, despite of the authorities. Udall had just penned a brief, pungent, satirical dialogue (it had to be short in the circumstances) on the state of the Church, and against the administration of prelatic Bishops ; but how could it be published? Udall had already produced some earnest prac- tical religious books ; but this attack on prelatic government was a very different matter, and it would be folly to ask per- mission to print it. In these circumstances, Udall had recourse to the Puritan printer and publisher, Robert Walgrave, or "Waldegrave : a great suspect for a number of years, who had already suffered many things at the hands of the Bishops and their spies.1 Waldegrave undertook to print this Diotrephes Dialogue secretly at his own press ; but was surprised by the Episcopal pursuivants, as thus described in the official BecovcU of the Stationers' Company : — "13 May, 1588. Whereas Master Coldock, Warden, Thomas Wood- cock, Oliver Wilkes, and John Wolf, on 1G April last, upon search of Robert Wal(de)graves house, did seise of his and bring to Stationers' Hall, according to the late decrees of the Starre-Chamber and by vertue thereof A Presse with two paire of cases with certain Pica Roman and Pica Italian letters with diuers bookes entituled: The State of the Church of Englande laid ojten, etc. For that the said Wal(de)orave without Aucthority and contrary to the said decrees had printed the said book. It is now in full Court ordered and agreed that the said books be burnte and the said pi-ess, letters (type) and printing stuffe defaced and made unserviceable." '- other Ecclesiasticall matters. By John Bridges, Deane of Sarum." (London, 1587). The first Mar-prelate tract begins : " Oh ! read over P. John Bridge's, for it is a worthy work." A serious Answer was immediately issued from the Presbyterian point of view, by Dudley Fenner, 1587 (only a few months before his death), " A Defence of Godly Ministers against Dr. Bridge's slanders with a true report of the ill deal- ings of the Bishops against them." 1 Waldegrave had been committed to prison for printing the three following Presbytero-Puritan tracts, in 1585. A Lamentable Complaint of the Commonalty, by way of supplication to the High Court of Parliament, for a learned ministry. (Brit. Mus. 4103, b.) The Unlawful practises of Prelates against Godly ministers, the maintainers of the Discipline of' God. (Brit. Mus. Ill, a. 8.) The Judgement of a most reuerend and learned man from beyond seas concerning a threefold order of Bishops. (Brit. Mus. C97, f. 14 = A Parte of a Register. Edin., 1593.) * Herbert's edit, of Ames's Typ. Ant. ii. 1145. See Arbev's Introduction, p. xiii. 204 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. But notwithstanding this seizure, "Waldegrave managed to secrete under his cloak (whether by connivance or not we can only guess) and carry off for future use one box of his notable Roman or Italic types (notable because it was not an English cast of type, but an imported or continental one, and there- fore easily distinguished). This he deposited with a widow, Mistress Crane, at East Molesey, at that time a very secluded Surrey village, nearly opposite Hampton Court, conveniently near Udall's residence at Kingston, which is only three miles off, and yet no less conveniently distant from London, thirteen miles away. The difficulty, however, was a press. Udall had another brief but pungent treatise ready. It was easy to set it up in type ; but every hand-press in the kingdom was care- fully registered, and none but a fully qualified member of the Stationers' Company could have one about London. But by some means Waldegrave made or found a press ; and this was the famous secret or wandering press which issued the Marti- nist Tracts, so maddening to the Authorities, and which was moved from place to place all over the kingdom, shooting its fiery arrows into the ranks of the enraged ecclesiastics with mocking, bitter sarcasm and malicious glee.1 Here, at East Molesey, in the mid-summer weeks of 1588, was Udall's De- monstration of DhcijjJine slowly printed ; one sheet probably at a time, that the little supply of type might be re-distributed 1 Places where the secret press was proved to have been at work : — East Molesey (at Mrs. Crane's house). Fawsley (near Daventry, Northamptonshire, and Norton by Daventry, both being houses of Sir Richard Knightly, who sat in Elizabeth's Parliaments from 1584 to 1597, and who died 1615). Coventry, at the White Friars or Hales's Place, the residence of John Hales, Esq. Haseley, near Warwick, residence of Job Throckmorton (or Throgmorton), Esq., an able country gentleman, who seems much bound up with at least the later Tracts. Woolston Priory (six miles from Coventry) residence of Robert Wigston, Esq. Newton Lane, near Newton Heath, Manchester, where the press was seized by Ferdinand, Earl op Derby, and of which important seizure Whitgift makes report to Lord Burghley, 24 Aug. 1589 (v. Lansd. MS. Gl art. 3). After the press was seized at Manchester (printing Ha' y' Any Work for Cooper), Penry seems to have secured another press, from which Martin Mai -prelate'* Pro- testation was printed, probably at ThrogmortoaCs house ; Penry and Throgmorton keeping up the controversy beyond the kingdom by a press worked by Waldegrave at Edinburgh and Rochelle, THEIR EISE. 205 for working off the next sheet. At this point John Penry comes into view as one connected with and probably owning this secret press, with which his name stands ever most closely associated. Beyond all question he was the man that issued from it the first Martin Mar-prelate Tract, entitled "The Epistle," which flew far and wide in November, 1588 ; con- temporaneously with Udall's " Demonstration," which appeared from the same press that very same month. But Who was Martin Mar-prelate ? is a much-agitated ques- tion.1 "Was the conception of such a character with so striking a name due to any one mind, or was it struck out by the con- ference of several minds together ? Was the use of the name confined to one writer ? or was it felt to be, in the circum- stances, so telling a device that the nom de plume was used by several writers ? as Hallam says, " A vizored Knight, behind whose shield a host of sturdy Puritans were supposed to fight." Were these writers in direct communication with each other, or did they fight often individually for their own hand ? These and other questions may probably never admit of being satisfactorily answered ; the tracts themselves being- called in and largely destroyed.3 i Here is his account of himself, while declaring that he alone is responsible both for matter and manner, — " I am called Martin Mar-prelate. There be many that greatly mislike of my doings. . . . But my course I know to be ordinary and lawful. I sawe the cause of Christ's government and of the Bishops Antichristian dealing to be hidden. The most part of men could not be gotten to read anything in the defence of the one and against the other. I bethought me, therefore, of a way . . . perceiving the minds of men to be given to mirth, I tooke that course . . . for jesting is lawful ... as a covert wherein I would bring the truth to light. . . . My purpose was and is to do good." 2 Udall, Penry, Thogmorton, Dudley Fenner, and others, were vehemently sus- pected, but nothing definite was ever legally proved. The chief place is assigned differently by different investigators. a. The latest theory by Arber makes Penry the real Martin, aided after a time by Job Thogmorton, whom Camden describes as "a man of learning and master of a very facetious and satirical vein." Arber presses this in opposition to — ■ b. The view advocated by Dr. Dexter, that Henry Barrow, the remarkably able barrister of Gray's Inn (who suffered death for his nonconformity), is entitled to be regarded the real Martin Mar-prelate. Penry was a Brownist, and had much of the temper as well as the principles of Robert Browne. Barrow (whose great book, A Brief Discovery of False Churches, is so unique and subtle) can only be regarded as a " Barrowist " — a man quite sui generis in his position and views. In some respects a clear expounder of Congregatiimalist ideas far ahead of his times, he in other respects runs athwart every denominational cleavage, with notions of Presby- 206 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. The spirit of the Mar-prelate tracts is on a par with that of the Bishops' defenders.1 Happily for the credit of religion, this mode of controversial guerillaship was not of long dura- tion. The results were, however, far from favourable to the straggling Presbyterial interest. "Whatever may have been the aim of the projector or projectors of these poisoned weapons, and however much they helped to render the Epis- copal order odious in popular estimation, they did much in- directly to bolster it up. For the very vehemence of the in- vective, with its curious mingling of levity and bitterness, was adroitly used by the authorities to justify severer measures against the whole reforming party in the Church. terian Independency of a voluntary order. It is worthy of notice, as illustrating the changed attitude of the general mind towards such a controversy, that whereas in 1854 Dr. Waddington labours to relieve the memory of John Penry of the odium of being Martin Mar-prelate, Dr. Dexter strives to secure for Henry Barrow the honour of the position. The Brief held against the Martinists by Sir John Puckering when Attorney- General, gives leading points of original information. It is one of the Baker manuscripts, Harl. MS. 7042, and is reprinted in Sect. v. of Arber'a Introd. Sketch. " When the Bishops felt the smart, and cried out against that lashing pamphlet called Martin Mar-prelate, and there was a prohibition published that no man should presume to carry it about witli him on pain of punishment ; and when the Queen did speak as much when the Earl was present. ' Why then,' said he ' what will become of me ? ' And pulling a copy out of his pocket, he did show it unto the Queen." — Codrington's Life of Kobert Earl of Essex, Harl. Misc. i. p. 219. 1 " Martin's forty pamphlets were answered by at least an equal number, scarcely less truculent or less contemptuous of the Christian virtues of forbearance, truth, and charity" (Marsden's Earlier Puritans, i. 204). The anti-Marprelate squibs were the production of Nash and other wits and playwrights, incited by the authorities when they found that grave and serious replies had no effect. A good bibliography of the Mar-prelate literature is given in Arber's "Introductory Sketch." IV. JOHN UDALL, THE PEESBYTEEIAN MAETYE, 1592. Our interest in the name of John Udall culminates in his most noteworthy State trial, which grew out of the Mar- prelate excitement, and which issued in his being condemned to death simply on a charge of libelling the Bishops, as if that very offence itself were felony and treason against the Crown. The conviction of such a man on such grounds is, according to Hallam, " one of the gross judicial iniquities of Elizabeth's reign," while the trial itself " disgraces the name of English justice." Udall, as a learned Puritan of most pronounced Presbyterian convictions, had been repeatedly before his ecclesiastical su- periors, and been silenced and imprisoned like multitudes of his brethren, more than once. We need not dwell on his early career ; only noting that, having entered Cambridge University as a sizar of Christ's College, 15 March, 1577-8, and migrating afterwards to Trinity, he proceeded B.A. 1581 ; M.A. 1584, and became the ordained preacher at Kingston-on- Thames and the writer of some practical religious books. His Puritan ways soon brought him under notice of the Arch- deacon's Court ; and on 26 Sept., 1586, he was convened before the Bishop of Winchester (Thomas Cooper), and the Dean of Windsor (William Daye) ; and then, on 17 October, before the High Commission at Lambeth.1 After much trouble and delay, Udall was restored to his ministry, through the influence and importunity of the Countess of Warwick and Sir Drue Drury ; but having in the 1 For a full report of the inquisitorial procedure both before the Diocesan and the High Commission Courts, see Brook's Puritans, vol. ii. pp. 1-9, taken from the MS. Register, or " Second part of a Register," in the Morrice collection of MSS. in the Williams Library. Roger Morrice was one of the ejected clergy in 1062 — from Duffield, Derbyshire. " This gentleman," says Strype, " was a very diligent collector of Eccl. MSS." — Brook's Puritans, iii. p. 539. SO 208 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. meantime subscribed The Book of Discipline, he was more than ever a marked man ; and in 1588 he was altogether suspended and deprived of his living. " After I was silenced at Kingston, I rested about half a yeare preparing myself to a private life, for that I sawe so little hope of returning to ray ministry, or any reste in it to the good of the Church. But God would not have it so. For meanes were made by some that feared God in New- castle-upon-Tyne to the Earle of Huntingdon ' to sende me thither, who did so. And I was received thither in such sorte as contented mee, and joyned in the ministry of the Word there with two godlie men, Master Houldsworth, the Pastor, and Master Bamford, a teacher through whose joint labours, GOD vouchsafed so to draw the people to the love of the Word (notwithstanding that the Plague was grievous in the Towne all the while I was there, and consumed aboute 2,000 of the Inhabitants) as we had hope in time to see much fruit and receive great comfort of our labours." - He then gives an account of his being called before the High Commission, and the dialogue between Lord Chief Justice Anderson and himself thus proceeds : — Anderson. " How long have you bin at Newcastle ? " Udall. " About a yeere, if it please your Lordship.'1'' A. " Why tcent you from Kingston-upon-Thames t " TL " Because I was silenced there, and, teas called to Newcastle." Bishop. " What calling had rjou thither?'''1 TJ. " The people made means to my Lord of Huntingdon, who sent me thither." Bishop. " Had you the allowance of the Bishop of the Diocese? " TJ. " At that time there was none." (The See of Durham teas vacant for a considerable interval at this time, as was also the Archbishopric of York. It was a custom of the Queen and Council to keep a Diocese or living vacant, in order that the Government might draw the revenues.) A. " You arc called, hither to answer concerning certain books which are thought to be of your making." TJ. " If it be for any of Martin's books, I have already answered and con ready to do so again." A. " Where have you answered, and in what manner?" 1 The Earl of Huntingdon was then the Lord President of the Council of the North. ■ This account by Udall of his temporary ministry at Newcastle-on-Tyne, with his arraignment hefore the High Commission and his condemnation to death at the Croydon Assizes is contained in " A New Discovery of Old Pontifical Practises for the Maintenance of the Prelates Authority and Hierarchy, Evineed by their Tyran-> nical Persecution of that Reverend, Learned, Pious and Worthy Minister of Jesus Christ, Master John Udall, in the Kaigne of Queene Elizabeth," etc. ; also State Trials, vol. i. pp. 144-146, edit. 1719. THEIE RISE. 209 IT. " At Lambeth, a year and a half ago, I cleared myself not to be the Author, nor to know who he icau." Thus we see how Udall, in 1588, had been one of those vehemently suspected and cross questioned about the Mar- prelate productions. We will find him repeating his regret and disapproval of their tone and spirit, and disavowing all guilty knowledge of them. The only connection he admits was of the most innocent and casual kind, some notes of his own experiences at the hands of the Bishops and the Com- mission having been (unknown to Mm) worked up into the first Martinist Tract. On this account he was credited by some of his contemporaries (as in Harleian MS. 7042, p. 56, probably written about 1589), though mistakenly, with the authorship of this first tract, called The Epistle. His relation to other two secretly-printed treatises, on which the indictment was founded, we know to be different, and he had no wish to disavow either his approval or authorship of them, though complaining that no legal proof of his author- ship of these books had ever been adduced.1 i Udall, beyond all doubt, was the author of the two remarkable tractates, called for brevity's sake, " Diotrephes," or " A Dialogue," and " The Demonstration," or more fully, — a. " The State of the Church of England, laid open in a Conference between Diotrephes, a Bishop, Tertullus, a Papist, Demetrius, a Usurer, Pandochus, an Innkeeper, and Paul, a Preacher of the Word of God." (April, 1588.) The scene of the Dialogue is laid in Pandochus' a Inn, at some posting town in the North of England, on the high road from London to Edinburgh. b. " A Demonstration of the truth of that Discipline, which Christ hath prescribed in His Word, for the government of His Church in all times and places until the end of the world." (July-November, 1588.) This able treatise of eighty-three pages opens with an Address " To the supposed governors of the Church of England, the .-br/tbishops, Lord Bishops, Archdeacons, and the rest of that order ; " and then an " Address to the Reader." There are nineteen chapters ; the more important headings being : — ■ 1. The Word of God describeth perfectly the lawful form of Church government and the officers to execute the same. 2. Every Church office should have express scriptural authority. 3. Church officers cannot be non-resident. 4. Appointment of officers rests with the Church, and not with patrons. 7-14. Church officers should be ordained with prayer and laying on of hands. In every Church there should be a Bishop or Pastor as President, a Doctor or Teacher if possible, and Elders for government. Deacons attend to money matters. 15. Church Government is only spiritual ; therefore its governors may not meddle in civil causes or secular affairs. [For evidence that Udall wrote these two tractates, v. Arber. (Lit rod. to Mar- prelate Cont. 121-122 and 171), who says also, "The Dialogue, while written with a 210 THE PEESBVTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Dioteephes is a quietly satirical and pungently sarcastic dialogue against the prelatic administration ; and while not at all a Martinist tract, nor yet in the savage, mocking Martinist vein, it was the immediate herald and precursor of the series, besides being printed at the same secret press which produced the earlier Marprelate broadsides. The cross-questioning is thus resumed : — Lord Chief Justice A. " What say you of a Demonstration and a Dialogue ? Did you not make them f " Udall. " I cannot answer." A. " Why would you clear yourself of Martin and not of these, hut that you are guilty ? " U. " Not so, my Lord. I have reason to answer in the one, and not in the other." A. " I pray you let us hear your reason, for I cannot conceive of it, seeing they are all written concerning one matter." TJ. " This is the matter, my Lord. I hold the matter proposed in them to he all one ; hut / would not be thought to handle it in the manner which the former books do; and because I think otherwise of the latter, I care not though theg should be fathered on me." After some queries by Lord Buckhurst (in answering which Udall explains his intimacy with Penry, and declares, " Nor do I think him to be Martin,") he replies to Lord Cobham, another of the High Commissioners : — Cobham. " If you be not the author, Mr. Udall, say so ; and if you be, confess it. You may find favour." U. " My Lord, I think the author, for anything I know, did well ; and he is enquired after to be punished ; " " and because," as he added, " if every suspected person were to deny it, the author must needs be found out." And so, although " he likes the books and the matter handled in them," he declines to say whether he is their author or not ; the more especially because he is not required by law to do so, and he had painful experience of treachery on a former occasion. "I was called to answer certain articles upon mine oath (the hateful ex officio oath he means), when I freely confessed that against myself which could never have been proved ; quietude of expression, is as vigorous a bit of Puritanism as anything that has come down to us from that age," p. xiv. of lntrod. to reprint of it. As to the Demonstration, meant, as he says, " to be a hind of ecclesiastical Euclid," he declares that " Nowhere else do we get in so short a space such a clear tracing of the precise rift in matters of public worship and Church order between the two systems of the Episcopacy and the Eldership, as they subsisted in Eliza- beth's reign." P. xi., lntrod. to reprint of Demonstration.] THETR RISE. 211 and when my friends laboured to have me restored, the Archbishop an- swered that there was sufficient matter against me by my own confession. . . . Whereupon I covenanted with mine own heart, never to be mine own accuser in that sort again." On refusing, therefore, to take the entangling and inquisi- torial ex officio oath : — " You must go to prison, and it will go hard with you," he was told. " God's will be done," he replied ; " 1 had rather go to prison with a good conscience than be at liberty with an ill one." And so he adds : " I was carried to the Gate-house by a messenger, who delivered me with a warrant to be kept close prisoner ; and not to be suffered to have pen, ink, or paper, or any person to speak to me. . . . At the end of half a year I was removed to the White Lion in South urirk, and then carried to the Assizes at Croydon." On July 24, Uclall, with " fetters on his legs," was taken to these Surrey Assizes at Croydon, on a charge of felon)/, before Baron Clarke and Serjeant Sir John Puckering. The passage founded on in the indictment was from the dedication of The Demonstration of Discipline, and it is the only offen- sive gibe the preface contains against the Bishops, of whom it sharply says : — " Who can, without blushing, deny you to be the cause of all ungodli- ness, seeing your government is that which giveth leave to a man to be anything save a sound Christian ? For certainly it is more free in these days to be any most wicked one whatsoever. . . . And I could live these twenty years, any such, in England (yea, in a Bishop's house it may be), and never be much molested for it. So true is that which you are charged with in a ' Dialogue ' lately come forth against you, and since burned by you, that you care for nothing but the maintenance of your dignities, be it to the damnation of your own souls and infinite millions more." There was a measure of painful truth in the insinuation about the Bishops looking more sharply after their dignities than the care of souls. But however indefensible the tone of the passage, how singular to found on it an indictment involv- ing a death penalty ! Udall was willing to explain and apologize for that particular paragraph, as we shall find him doing immediately ; but the fact was, while this particular paragraph was brought forward, 212 THE PRESBYTERIANS IX ENGLAND. the real ground of the trial teas UdalVs adoption and vigorous defence of the Presbyterian polity. This plainly appeared from the terms of the indictment when produced, but very especially from the long and vehement invective against "the discipline" by the leading Queen's Counsel in opening the case. A very painful feature in the trial was the refusal of Counsel for the accused. His humble request for this was peremptorily declined. The indictment declared that Udall " not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being stirred up by the in- stigation of the devil, did maliciously publish a scandalous and infamous libel against the Queen's Majesty, her crown and dignity" l as appeared from a treatise, Demonstration of Dis- cipline, issued by him at East Molesey, 31 Oct., 1588. The three points in the indictment which had to be proved were, — 1. That Udall was the author of the book. 2. That he had a malicious intent against her Majesty in making it ; and — 3. That the matters in the indictment were by the Statute 23 Eliz. c. 2, Felony. Strangely enough, no witnesses appeared in court, all the evidence in support of the first point being written declara- tions obtained by secret examination of witnesses, who never were produced for cross examination. The second point was never attempted to be even argued ; and as for the third point, in order to bring him in guilty under the statute adduced, counsel insisted, that to threaten the Bishops, tvho were the Queen's officers, was constructively to threaten the Queen herself! This startling doctrine was adopted by the judge, who de- clared "that they who spake against the Queen's authority in causes ecclesiastical, or her ecclesiastical laws, proceedings, and officers, defamed the Queen herself." The statute was thus miserably strained in order to put 1 The original indictment runs : " Deum prce oculis mis non habens, sed instiga- tione Diabolica seductus," etc. A copy is among the Baker Transcripts. Harleian MS. 7042. [These Baker Transcripts form the 23 vols, of Harl. MSS. 7028 to 7050 in Brit. Mus. They were bought by Robert Harley, Lord Oxford, in 1710, from Thomas Baker, B.D. of St. John's Coll., Camb., who had also sold him the Puckering Papers two years before.] THEIR RISE. 213 Ud all's life at the mercy of the court. The jury were directed to find him guilty or not, of the mere fact of the authorship apart from the intent, although by the statute felony depended on the malicious intent. They were also assured that if they found him the author, their verdict would not endanger, how- ever it might forfeit his life. Thus was Udall convicted of " felony," though judgment was deferred.1 What the High Commission desired was, to have a sentence of death to hold in terrorem over John Udall, in order to wring from him an abject recantation and surrender, which they drew up some months after the trial. But they did not know the man. His plea continually was, that he could not in conscience so withdraw from his carefully formed convictions ; and he was resolved rather to suffer on the gallows than be guilty of pre- varication and hypocrisy. After repeated communications with Puckering and others, in a letter to Puckering of 11 Nov., 1590, he says with deep emotion, and out of a true sense of the position of the case : " If you find that I am worthy to receive the punishment, I pray you hasten the execution of the same ; for it were better in this case for me to die than live," — he offered to do anything by way of petition or apology, not in- volving admission of crime. All attempts having failed to induce this noble-spirited man to sign the official recantation and submission in the terms proposed to him, Udall was brought up at the Lent Assizes for sentence. On being asked why judgment should not be pro- 1 " The case of Mr. Udall seems singular," says Hume, " even in the arbitrary times in which he lived. He was thrown into prison on suspicion of having pub- lished a book against the Bishops, and brought to his trial for this offence. It -was pretended that the Bishops were part of the Queen's political body; and to speak against them was to attack her, and was, therefore, felony by the statute. This was not the only iniquity to which Udall was exposed. The judges would not allow the jury to determine anything but the fact of his being the author of the book, without examining his intention, or the import of his words. In order to prove the fact, they did not produce a single witness to the court, they only read the testi- mony of two or three persons ahsent. They would not allow Udall to produce any exculpatory evidence, saying it was not permitted against the Crown. His refusing to swear that he was not the author of the book, was employed against him as the strongest proof of his guilt. Notwithstanding these multiplied iniquities, the ver- dict of the jury was brought against him. For, as the Queen was extremely bent upon his prosecution, it was impossible he could escape." — Hume's Hist, of Eng. vol. v. pp. 315, 3-16. 21-i THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. nomiced, he handed in a paper with the following among other reasons : — • 1. " Because the jury were directed only to find the fact, whether I was the author of the book ; and were expressly freed by your lordship from inquiring into the intent, without which there is no felony. 2. " The men on the jury were not left to their own consciences, but were wrought upon, partly by promises, assuring them it should be no further danger to me, but tend to my good ; and partly by fear, as appears from the grief some of them have manifested ever since. 3. " The statute, in the true meaning of it, is thought not to reach my case, there being nothing in the book concerning her Majesty's person, but in duty and honour, 1 beseech you, therefore, to consider whether drawing it from her royal person to the bishops, as being part of her body politic, be not a violent depraving and wresting of the statute. 4. " But if the statute be taken as urged, the felony must consist in the malicious intent ; wherein I appeal first to God, and then to all who have known me, and to your lordships' own consciences, whether you can find me guilty of any act in all my life that savoured of any malice or mali- cious intent against her Majesty. And if your consciences clear me before God, I hope you will not proceed to judgment. 5. " By the laws of God, and, I trust also, by the laws of the land, the witnesses ought to have been produced in open court before me ; but they were not, nor anything else, only certain papers and reports of depositions. This kind of evidence is not allowed in the case of lands, much less ought it to be allowed in the case of life. 6. " None of the depositions prove me to be the author of the book in question. 7. "Supposing I were the author of the book, let it be remembered that the said book, for substance, contains nothing but what is taught and believed by the best Reformed Churches in Europe ; so that in condemning me, you condemn all such nations and Churches as hold the same doctrine. If the punishment be for the manner of writing, this may be thought by some worthy of an admonition, or fine, or some short imprisonment ; but death for an error of such a kind, cannot but be extreme cruelty, against one who has endeavoured to show himself a dutiful subject, and a faithful minister of the Gospel." " If all this prevail not," he adds, " yet my Redeemer liveth, to whom I commend myself, and say, as Jeremiah once said in a case not much unlike mine: 'Behold, I am in your hands to do with me whatsoever seemeth good unto you ; but know you this, that if you put me to death, you shall briny innocent blood upon your own heads, and upon the land: As the blood of Abel, so the blood of Udall will cry to God with a loud voice, and the Righteous Judge of the land will require it at the hands of all who shall be found guilty of it." THEIR RISE. 215 While sentence of death was pronounced on 20 Feb., the Court did not dare to order execution, or appoint a time for it. This was an outrage that even Whitgift was not prepared to perpetrate, though the unhappy position of his being both an Archbishop and a criminal functionary is painfully illus- trated. By Whitgift's orders, Bancroft wrote Puckering, signifying that if Udall's submission did not satisfy, Puckering should proceed to judgment, and command his execution, though he should defer fixing a date till her Majesty's pleasure be consulted.1 The authorities had got into an awkward position. Udall's appeal and protest were somewhat solemn- izing. He was, besides, a learned and able man,2 with many influential friends. Through Sir Walter Raleigh, he was enabled to submit directly to her Majesty a brief exposition of his faith and views, in which he says : — " I believe, and have often preached, that the Church of England is a part of the true visible Church, for which reason (1) I do still desire to be a preacher in the same ; I utterly renounce the schism and separation of the Brownists. (2) I do allow the Articles of Religion, as far as they con- tain the doctrine of faith and Sacraments, according to law. (3) I believe the Queen's Majesty hath, and ought to have, supreme authority over all persons, in all causes, ecclesiastical and civil. (-4) I believe the Church, rightly reformed, ought to be governed as in the foreign Reformed Churches. (5) I believe the censures of the Church ought merely to con- cern the soul, and may not impeach any subject, much less any prince, in liberty of body, goods, dominion, or any earthly privilege." Even King James of Scotland wrote Queen Elizabeth some strong words of intercession in a letter still extant, dated 12 June, 1591. The Turkey Merchants of London offered to pro- vide him a Chaplaincy 3 in one of their factories ; and he writes the Lord Treasurer (1592): " My case is lamentable, having now i Baker's MSS., xv., p. 105. • He wrote a Hebrew Manual to alleviate his long confinement in prison : " The Key of the Holy Tongue, with a short Dictionary, and a Praxis on certain Psalms," 15lJ3. 8 The proposal was, that he should go as a Missionary-Chaplain to Syria or Guinea for two years; but while both the Archbishop and Lord Keeper favourably entertained the proposal, and the Earl of Essex got the draft of a pardon prepared, it is quite a mistake to say that Udall was pardoned by the intervention of Whit- gift, for no pardon was ever j/rante I, only a respite. He sued for a pardon, no doubt, but it never came. 216 THE PEESBYTEEJANS IN ENGLAND. been above three years in durance ; which makes me humbly desire your lordship's favour, that I may be released from my imprisonment." The point on which the proposed arrangements for his deliver- ance broke down was one on which both Elizabeth and Whit- gift seem to have been inexorable, that Udall should expatriate himself until lie should receive a royal licence to return;1 a condition to which the sufferer could not in honour submit. And so he was left to die a few months later in the Marshalsea prison, towards the close of 1592, a true martyr to his prin- ciples, and in defence of a sober, constitutional liberty. He was buried in the churchyard of St. George's, Southwark, great numbers of the London ministers and others attending the funeral out of respect to the man, and as a protest against the iniquity by which he was cut off.2 1 This appears from Udall's own Narrative in A New Liseovcry, etc. (pp. 43, 44, edit. 1643). See also Arber's reprints. 3 It is said that amoug the first persons James I. inquired for shortly afterwards was Master Udall. On being told he was no more, he exclaimed in his own fashion: "By my sal, then, the greatest scholar in Europe's dead." Cooper's Athena Cantab, ii. pp. 148-149 ; and Brook's Puritans, i. p. 22-23. V. FUETHEE STRUGGLES— ECCLESIASTICAL, PAELIAMENTAEY, AND LITEEAEY. 1590-1603. The sharpest assaults against the abettors of the Presbyterian discipline had broken out in 1590. Government, now elated and strengthened by its triumph over the Armada, felt in a position to strike hard, especially as the Mar-prelate inquiry had elicited curious information on the extent to which the discipline had secretly spread. Many causes had been operat- ing against the Presbyterians — the rise of the Brownists and the increase of other sectaries being used as a pretext by the Bishops for staying further reform. Concession would only breed confusion. The fears thus conjured up it was difficult for Cartwright and his friends to withstand ; while at the same time the rebuffs they had so often experienced from the authorities had raised what Bancroft calls " a notable ques- tion " among themselves, whether they should " tarry for the magistrate," and wait the rulers' sanction before putting their own methods in operation ; and this had also fed the irritation that exploded in the Mar-prelate tracts. In spite of all difficulties, however, the Presbyterian move- ment was spreading and rooting itself among thoughtful classes in the community ; so that when the Government arrested Cartwright and others, in 1590, startling evidence presented itself. Thus Mr. Johnston, a Northamptonshire minister who had signed the Directory, informed the High Commission that "this device," meaning the Presbyterian platform and dis- cipline,— " Was commonly received in most parts of England, not merely in his own county, but, as lie had heard, at the Classes and other meetings in Warwickshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, and elsewhere, besides provincial synods, as in St. John's College, Cambridge. Again it came out in evidence, that Edward Snape, the zealous Presbyterian Lecturer at St. Peter's, Northampton, 217 218 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. had, in 1588, declared in the presence of several witnesses, who repeated it in their testimony before the Commission, — " That there were three or four small Classes of ministers, in every shire where there were any learned preachers, who did use in their meetings to dehate of the Discipline, and that the said several small Classes did send their resolutions and opinions to the greater Assemblies at Cambridge and London, which did meet together also for the same purpose ; and that if the said greater Assembly did like of that which was done by the smaller Classes, then was the same generally concluded to be that which ought to stand in the Church.'' It would appear, that of all the counties of England the most fully organized, Presbyterially, was Northamptonshire. Each of its three towns, Northampton, Daventry, and Kettering, was the seat of a Presbytery or Classis ; and a monthly representa- tive Assembly met at Northampton, with two delegates from each Classis, Avhereby a regular correspondence was kept up with the stated Provincial or National Synods. In the quaint and picturesque language of Thomas Fuller, himself a North- amptonshire man, — " These classes were more formally settled in Northamptonshire than anywhere else in England ; for as the west part of that shire is observed to be the highest place of England, as appeareth by the rivers rising there and running thence to the four winds, so was that county a probable place as the middest of the land, for the Presbyterian Discipline there erected to derive itself into all the quarters of the Kingdom." But while Northamptonshire had the fullest Presbyterian organization, the two greater centres of Presbyterian influence were at Warwick and London ; "Warwick, where Cartwright lived during the last twenty years of his life, and whence he directed the general movement ; and London, which had all the advantages derived from the wealth of many staunch sup- porters among merchants and leading families there, as well as from the ability and activity of a body of Presbyterian ministers like Field, Wilcox, Travers, Egerton, Gardner, Barber, and such-like capable men. The Directory had been accepted far and wide by bodies of most zealous and faithful ministers; and by 15(J0, when this Book of Discipline was THEIE RISE. 219 seized, with other presumably dangerous documents,1 it was understood to have been subscribed by 500 of the clergy. Bancroft, writing of it in 1593, mentions it as " having lately come to light ; " and this, with other discoveries, brought down upon the Presbyterians the worst persecution to which they had yet been subjected. We may select as an example, the treatment of Cartwright and others, — In the Ecclesiastical Courts. When arraigned before the High Commission or Star Chamber, from Nov. 1590 till some time in 1592, the u Father of the Puritans," as Neal calls Cartwright, was confronted with thirty-nine articles, charging him, among other offences, with having renounced his orders in the Church of England, and being re-ordained presbyterially abroad, seeking to set up a new ecclesiastical discipline, with a new form of wor- ship, and attending various private and unlawful meetings organized to set aside the hierarchy. He was especially charged with having Avritten or aided in writing the " Book of Disci- pline/' as weJl as knowing, or being in communication with the authors of the Mar-prelate tracts and other unauthorized pamphlets. For declining to criminate himself by means of the ex-officio oath, he was with his brethren committed to the Fleet prison, and subjected to much severe and arbitrary deal- ings during the next two years. At the meeting of the High Commission in May, 1591, Cartwright made his distinguished stand against the ex- officio oath, and dared his examiners to proceed against him by any fair and open process of law.2 Baffled by his declin- 1 One especially, in the possession of Edmund Lyttleton of Northamptonshire, given in Lorimer's preface to the Directory. 2 Cartwright's very able and spirited wrestling with Bancroft and Aylmer is pre- served in " an authentic paper " in Strype's Aylmer, pp. 310-319. About this same time occurred the notable affair of another Presbyterian minister, Robert Cawdkey, Hector of South Luffenham in Rutlandshire, who being suspended for declining to take the obnoxious ex-vffieio oath, carried an appeal from the High Commissioners to the Court of Exchequer, Hilary term, 1591. Opponent's council allowed that the High Commission proceedings were not justified by Statute 1 Eliz. but were based on old Canon Law. The judges upheld the Commissioners; but their 220 THE PKESBYTEEIANS IX ENGLAND. ing to purge himself by oath, his prosecutors handed him from the one court to the other, and finally to the Star Chamber, who remitted him to prison, and refused all bail. Strangely enough, one of the intercessors on his behalf was King James himself, in an earnest letter to Queen Elizabeth, dated 12 June, 1591 ; 1 but this had apparently no more effect than the inter- vention of Lady Russell, one of Burghley's daughters, Lord Gray, or the Treasurer himself, with all of whom Cartwright had correspondence.2 The stubborn feelings of the Queen and Bishops resisted every suggestion of lenity ; and when "Whit- gift was petitioned by Cartwright and his seven fellow-prison- ers to move for their release, he distinctly declined unless they would — " Under their own hands declare the Church of England to he a true Church, observe the whole order of public prayer and ceremonies pre- scribed, and renounce all their Assemblies, Classes, and Synods as unlaw- ful and seditious." 3 Knowing that they were being dealt with outrageously, they resolved to lay a summary of their whole case as free- born subjects before her Majesty, in April, 1592, defending themselves against all charges. The following are the main points : — The Oath. —"The immediate cause of our trouble," they say, ''the reason why we took it not is because it is without limitation, . . . and may furnish both matter of accusation and evidence against ourselves," contrary to both law and equity. Schism they abhor, having no wish to leave the National Church, " for anything we esteem needful to be re- formed in it." As to " impeaching your Majesty's Supremacy, the third authority was so shaken by Cawclrey's " brave stand for the rights and liberties of the subject," that Whitgift hereafter deemed it safer to send his prisoners to the Star Chamber direct. 1 Its beginning and end are as follows (v. Fuller, b. ix. pp. 203, 204) : — " Right Excellent, high and mighty Prince, our dearest Sister and Cousin, in our heartiest manner we recommend us unto you. Hearing of the apprehension of Mr. Udal and Mr. Cartwright and certain other ministers of the Evangel within your realm, of right good erudition and faithful travails in the Church, howsoever their diversities from the bishops and others of your clergy, in matters touching them in conscience . . . requesting you most earnestly . . . that it may please you to let them be relieved of their present straits." 2 v. Lansdowne MSS. vol. 69, arts. 40, 41, and 42. 3 Strype's Wliitgift, p. 370, and Appendix, pp. 153-156. THBIH 1USE. 221 crime misinformed against us," they protest their acceptance of it u as far as laic requires, and as the other Eeformed Churches of Christendom acknowledge." Concerning Excommunication, which they think the Church herself should exercise, they disown the misconceptions " odiously devised against us." Abhorring excommunication as used with " intolerable presumption " by the Bishop of Rome, " we profess that our discipline clepriveth a man only of spiritual comforts, as of being par- taker of the Lord's Table, . . . without taking away liberty, goods, lands, or any other civil or earthly commodity of this life." Concerning Coxfekexces, while strongly disavowing having ordained ministers or usurped any illegal jurisdiction in them, they defend their need and rightfulness, and refer to the rubric in the Commination Service, where the Prayer Book declares " there was a godly discipline in the primitive Church," and deplores it is not yet restored in the Church of England.1 How Her Majesty received this petition, or when the sufferers were released, is not precisely known. Fuller says that Whit- gift, reflecting on Cartwright's abilities, and " considering that both of them now were well stricken in years, and (some will say) fearing the success of so tough a conflict" procured his re- lease on a general promise to be quiet." In Parliament. The question of the ex-officio oath, and the violent procedure connected with its recent working, found expression in the Parliament of 1592-93. 3 Two bills were introduced for pro- tecting victims against capricious tyranny. Sir Francis 1 This important document (for which see Strype's Annals, vol. iv. p. 85) was subscribed on 1 March, 1592 by Cartwright, Humphrey Fenn, Daniel Wight, Edward Lord, Ed. Snape, Melancthon Jewell, W. Proudlove, Aud. King, and John Payn. 2 A contemporary in a bitter and unscrupulous bookjdeclares, that though " it was their Honours' pleasure to show him great favour, and to accept of a certain sub- mission he made, as I have heard . . . Mr. Cartwright may remember that he standeth bound in the Court of Commission to appear at any time within twenty days' warning given to him ; which argueth that albeit he be dismissed upon hope of amendment, yet he is not discharged:'1 Matthew Sutcliffe (Dean of Exeter) : Examination of M. Thomas Cartwright's late Apology, 1596, p. 43. It is to be feared Dean Sutcliffe"is one of those who must be held answerable for some calumnies and injurious aspersions against Cartwright that have been persistently repeated. 3 The condition of things, so far as the clergy were concerned, had become rather alarming; and the laity were in many quarters crying out against the Bishops for the serious inconveniences caused by so many ministers being under the ecclesiastical ban. Neal avers that under Whitgift's administration a third of the whole body of beneficed clergy had been under suspension ; and the same thing is said by Hume, Hist. v. 337. 222 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Knollys and Oliver St. John took action in the matter, and showed themselves friends of enlightened liberty. But the brunt was borne on this occasion by the redoubtable Puritan lawyer, Mr. Morrice, Attorney or Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. His efforts were of no avail. The jealousy so often shown by the Queen towards any Parliamentary action in Church affairs was more alive, and unfortunately, to the great discredit of the House of Commons, was more influential than ever. The overthrow of the Armada had covered Elizabeth with glory ; and her will more than ever became law, and opposition to it more dangerous. Morrice was seized in the very House itself, dismissed from his office under the Crown, disabled from practising his profession, and committed to Tutbury Castle, where he was kept close prisoner several years. The Queen had sent for Sir Edward Coke, the Speaker, and had commanded him on his allegiance not to read Morrice's Bill, should it be laid before the House.1 And the Commons did not resent this double affront. Alas ! there followed one of the most disgraceful laws that ever sullied the statute book of England.2 The first part is directed against the Separatists, but the second part was meant by one fell stroke to extinguish the Presbyterians. Enacting, as it did, that if any one should " go about to move and per- suade any of Her Majesty's subjects to deny, withstand, or im- pugn her Majesty's power and authority in causes ecclesiastical, he should be, on conviction, " committed to prison without bail or mainprise," till he should conform and openly submit ; and if he failed to do so within three months, the delinquent was to be banished, and if he returned without leave, to suffer death as a felon.3 The cold hand of a mechanical regime now lay with 1 D'Ewes, Journal, pp. 474-475. - An Act to retain the Queen's subjects, etc. 35 Eliz. c. 8. 8 That the Commons should have passed so disgraceful an Act may admit of explanation but not of defence. It was adopted in a time of horror and panic. The public mind went into frenzy over the case of " William Haclcet," a wretched but violent madman, who could not even read, but who, pretending to be King Jesus, with Coppinger as his "prophet of mercy" and Arthington his "prophet of judgment," went about denouncing the Queen's rule, defacing her royal arms, THEIE EISE. 223 chilling effect on the heart of the English Church, producing that state of frigidity and torpor that so painfully signalized it during the later years of Elizabeth's reign.1 Puritan warmth or enthusiasm had to enter on other methods. Not that the Disciplinarian or Presbyterian party was extinct ; but being debarred from giving practical effect to its views, it cherished them inwardly while it assumed by degrees • those other developments which led to the name of " The Doctelntal Pueitans " in the next generation, headed by such Divines as Rainolds, Perkins, Bolton, Sibbes, Preston, and many more, whose writings on experimental and practical divinity did so much to sustain the spark of vital godliness and diffuse the spirit of piety among the people. This was essentially the same Presbyterian party, many of whom had signed 2 he Discipline ; and others cherished it in their hearts and, as far as possible, expressed their attachment to it. No doubt, Presbyterian/.^? in its organized form de- clined during the later years of Elizabeth and the early Stuart time — for it was unmercifully stricken down, wherever it made stabbing her picture, and preaching up his own reign. Instead of putting him under confinement as a religious maniac, the Government, after sending him to the rack, solemnly tried him, and he was hanged in the street two days later, raving mad : Coppinger dying in prison of self-starvation, and Arthington being dismissed on confessing his folly. It is an awful exhibition of human frailty, that there were not wanting those even in high place who greedily sought to turn the tide of excited bigotry against their ecclesiastical opponents. The two chief offenders were Deans Cosin and Sut- cliffe. Cosin, who was Dean of Arches and principal official to Whitgift, wrote aporten- tous treatise, "Conspiracy for Pretended Reformation, viz., Presbyteiual Discipline. A treatise discovering the late designments and courses held for advancement thereof by William Hacket, Yeoman; Edmund Coppinger and Henry Arthington, etc., by Richard Cosin LL.D. Dean of Arches and Official Principal to Archbishop Whitgift. Published by Authority, 1592." And Cartwright bad to get permission to reply in an " Apology " for himself and his brethren against the further asper- sions of Sutcliffe, Dean of Exeter in his Examination. Even Hooker was not above entertaining the atrocious and groundless calumnies (See the Epistle Dedi- catory to his Ecclesiastical Polity), as to the evil and seditious tendencies of the Genevan Discipline. Fuller says, " This business of Hacket happened unseason- ably for the Presbyterians" though he candidly adds "They as cordially detested Hacket's blasphemy as any in the Episcopal party." 1 Then began the first slender and little noticed exodus, to America on the one hand and to Holland on the other, not merely of the Brownists or other separatists, as too commonly supposed, but, as we shall afterwards see, of the Presbyterian and Disciplinarian party also, with French Huguenot exiles : laying the foundations eventually of the British Synod in Holland and of Presbyterian strength on the American shores. 224 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. its appearance ; but none the less during this period the majority of English Protestants were only partially conforming Puritans still. Most of this class of Clergy were disposed to acquiesce in Episcopacy as an ancient mode of Church govern- ment, but still strove after simpler methods of administra- tion by advocating plans that might result eventually in Presbyterial Synods and Councils. They also established "Lectureships" in market towns; they held private "Chap- laincies " among families of rank who sympathized with their aims ; they occupied posts in the Universities (where the rigours of the new law did not apply and where they constituted " nests of Genevans ") ; above all, they took advantage of certain strange and anomalous arrangements in the Church, which survived the destruction of Abbeys and Monasteries, and which are among the strong evidences of Presbyterial ways and usages connected with these old institutions. There were many parishes exempt from Episcopal jurisdiction, having an ordinary of their own, distinct from the Bishop of the Diocese ; and it was in these privileged parishes that the Presbyterian ministers found their last retreat, and patiently waited for better times.1 Warwick Hospital, where Cartwright still laboured, was one of these exempt jurisdictions ; and so were Jersey and Guernsey, where he betook himself for a time, with Lord Zouch the Governor, and did good service at Castle Cornet. It has often been insinuated, that Cartwright, after his return to "Warwick, about 1598, became a Conformist and was willing to disavow his Presbyterian principles. But he was " still underhand thundering out the praises of his Dis- cipline," and as Fuller observes under 1(302, — "There want not those who will maintain that all this while Mr. Cartwright was not more remiss hut more reserved in his judgment : 1 This whole subject of the non-Episcopal ordinaries and the exempt parochial jurisdictions is one of great historical interest and suggestiveness. Often and often we have references to them in the lives of the afflicted Presbyterian clergy. Baxter, for example, says he was readily induced to go to Bridgnorth, to be assistant to the minister there. " For Bridgnorth is a place privileged from all Episcopal jurisdiction. There is a peculiar ordinary who as an official keeps a con- ttant ecclesiastical Court, having jurisdiction over six parishes which lie there together, which have all the privilege of this exemption . . . which was a security to Ids assistant."— Baxter's Life and Times, vol. i. p. 15 of Calamy's abridgment. THEIR EISE. 225 being still as sound but not as sharp in the Cause out of politic intents like a skilful pilot in a great tempest yielding to the violence of a storm, therewith to be carried away contrary to his intents for the present, but waiting till the wind should turn about and blow him and his a pros- perous gale according to his desires." Coventry was another of these peculiars, where, among other Presbyterian usages, the Lord's Supper was long observed without kneeling, and where it is worth noticing in the case of the Venerable Humphrey Fenn, who lived to a great age and connected the days of Whitgift with the Laudian epoch, how persistently his Presbyterianism expressed itself even in his Will, so late as 1631. l There were Presbyterians still remain- ing in nearly every county. In Literature. The printing press was now more jealously closed than ever against all Puritans and Presbyterians, not less than against all Separatist treatises. This accounts for the comparative silence on their part, while publications were multiplied on the opposite side, who had it all their own way.2 Subtle changes were at work in favour of a fuller and more unfettered mani- festation of prelatic principles and practices, which were soon to produce their terrible fruits. The beginnings of these are usually traced to the novel and " high " position taken by Bancroft in his famous St. Paul's Cross Sermon of 9 Feb. 1588-9, wherein he broached for the first time the Divine Eight of Diocesan Episcopacy and connected it with the question of Ministerial Orders and Sacramental Grace ; and the denial of this he said was heresy? The sermon was provoked by the Mar- 1 A copy of the Introduction to this Will of Humphrey Fenn is in the State Paper Office, No. 83 of vol. cclx : See Cal. Bom. 1633-34, pp. 468 : — " This Introduction contains an avowal of the writer's opinions in favour of the Presbyterian form of Church government." 2 The years 1591-93 saw the publication of various Anti-Presbyterian books, like Bancroft's Survey of the pretended Holy Discipline, and The Dangerous Positions already so often referred to, in which he accuses the English Puritans of " Scot- tizing " for discipline, and the Scotch of " Genevating." In 1593 was also published Bilson's (Warden, afterwards Bishop of Winchester), The Perpetual Government of Christ's Church : and soon after, the first instalment of four out of the eight books of Hooker's great work, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. 3 Strype's Whityift, p. 292. In contrast to Bancroft's new and strange notion, ' that Bishops were a distinct order from priests, and that they had a superiority 226 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. prelate attacks, and was regarded as the vehement utterance of a hot-headed man, meeting the extravagant claims of some ultra-Puritans by an extravagance of his own on the other extreme. Even Whitgift, whose chaplain Bancroft was, re- marked that it was rather one to be devoutly wished than believed and accepted. But it fell in with certain unmistak- able tendencies of the time, and marked a1 new departure, and in many respects a new temper, which should become after- wards more pronounced and more apparent. No hindrance was put in the way of its acceptance in the Church, the Queen herself declining to interfere.1 over them by Divine right and directly from God," it bad been hitherto the common doctrine, tbat all the customary superiority of bishops over pastors or presbyters was entirely of human appointment, devised in the 3rd or 4th century, to secure a general uniformity. Bancroft was answered at the time by the reputedly most learned man of his day in England, Dii. John Kaixoldes, who, in his letter to Sir Francis Knollys, declares, " that all who have laboured in reforming the Church for rive hundred years, have taught that all pastors, whether they are entitled bishops or priests, have equal authority and power by God's word : As the Waldenses, next Marsilius Patavinus, then Wickliffe and his scholars, afterwards Husse and the Hussites; and Luther, Calvin, Brentius, Bullinger, and Musculus. Among our- selves, we have bishops, the Queen's professors of divinity, and other learned men ; as, Bradford, Lambert, Jewel, Pilkington, Humphrey, Fulke, etc. But why do I speak of particular persons ? It is the opinion of the reformed Churches of Helvetia, Savoy, France, Scotland, Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Low Countries and our own. I hope Br. Bancroft will not say, that all these have approved that for sound doctrine, which was condemned by the general consent of the whole Church as heresy, in the most flourishing time. I hope he will acknowledge that he was overseen, when he avouched the superiority of bishops over the rest of the clergy, to be GocVs oivn ordinance." This letter is given in Petrie's Church History, and in Joseph Boyse's Account of Ancient Episcopacy. 1 See Secretary Knollys's important letter to Sir Francis Walsiugham, calling the Queen's attention to the possible serious results of this Jure Divino claim for Epis- copacy, and rebutting the idea of any such superiority of Bishop over Presbyters. This letter is in State Paper Office, 20th March, 1588, and is given in Collier's Eccl. Hist. vol. ix. p. xciv. The position was a novel one. Whitgift himself and the earlier Church writers had defended Episcopacy and the institutions which had gathered round it, on purely Erastian grounds. That the Sovereign, by virtue of her Ecclesiastical Supremacy, was entitled to lay down or modify any form of Church Government which did not contradict Scripture requirements and adapt it to civil government as expediency might determine — this was the main ground on which Whitgift, in his Replies to Cartwright, Bridges, in his Defence of Church Government, and Cooper in his Admonition, had upheld the ecclesiastical system ordained under Elizabeth. They even conceded that the Presbyterian plan may have more of Scripture accord- ance and authority for it than their own, but still they could apologetically contend that their own was not antagonistic to Scripture and was therefore lawful. Even Hooker's position was a very moderate one. The early part of his stately work, The Laics of Ecclesiastical Polity, is of extra- ordinary value, and contains in its elaborate exposition of " Law," no contentious THEIR RISE. 227 The Church herself] according to another aspect of this view, has a Divine authorization to create and develop an ecclesi- astical system, rooted in Scripture no doubt, but involving far more than Scripture could be quoted for.1 This higher ground was taken increasingly by subsequent English Divines ; but still the Church of England as such had not as yet committed itself to the high prelatic doctrine and claims. Meanwhile, the inner spirit of the Presbyterio-Puritan movement was not left without witness in the higher Eliza- bethan literature. It perhaps attains its strongest expression in Edmund Spenser's great spiritual allegory The Faerie Queene : the first three Books of which were published in 1590, and the second three in 15CJ6.2 Spenser continued faithful to the end to the cause of further Church reform, which he had espoused in early life. Faerie means .spiritual throughout the allegory: and the Faerie Queene, orGloriana, is the Glory of God, toward which every faerie Knight, or spiritual militant virtue, strives, but which can be attained only through Divine or matter. The Books directed against T. C. (Thomas Cartwright) are of less value. Hooker's high eulogium on Calvin, as well as his own Calvinism in doctrine, are well known. He lends no countenance to the sacerdotal pretensions of Apostolical Succession, frankly admitting that the deviations from all rule as to episcopal ordination have been common enough, and in many cases quite justifiable. " There may be," he says, " sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow or- dination made without a bisbop. . . . The ordinary institution of God hath given often times and may (jive place. And therefore we are not simply without exception to urge a lineal descent of power from the Apostles by continued succes- sion of bishops in every effectual ordination." 1 Singularly enough, Hooker defended this position. " It is well known," says Hallam, "that the Preface to the 'Ecclesiastical Polity' was one of the two boohs to which James II. ascribed his return, into the fold of Rome; and it is not difficult to perceive by what course of reasoning on the positions it contains this was effected." Another authority well says, "Hooker's greatness indeed, like the greatness of all those by whom England was ennobled in the Elizabethan age, consisted rather in the entireness of his nature than in the thoroughness with which his particular in- vestigations were carried out. . . . The work wbich had to be done by the gene- ration which came after him was work which he could not do. . . . Men were to arise who, in clearness of conception and in logical precision, surpassed the great Elizabetban writers as far as the political themes of Pym or Somers surpassed those of tbe Elizabethan Statesmen."— S. R. Gardiner, Hist, of Enyland, i. 158. - " The highest expression of the Puritan view of English Religion in the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth, is to be found in the First Book of Spenser's Faerie Queene. The highest expression of the opposite view is in the Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker." — Henry Morley's Illustrations of English Religion, p. 190. 228 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Redeeming Grace, in the person of the Mediator, represented by Prince Arthur. The poem is a " Pilgrim's Progress " and a " Holy War " combined ; though, with its intricate meanings and elevated style, it can minister only to cultured intelligence and the very highest spiritual tastes. What magnificent renderings it affords of the Christian struggle, alike on the field of history and in the theatre of the individual soul ! And what deep and glorious interpretations it gives of Reformation scenes and of the Puritan movement itself ! The Red Cross Knight, St. George, who has to fight the Dragon, is Christianity in England ; but having got seated on the "wanton paltry" (or the sensuous in worship), he gets separated from the lady " Una" (= truth), and takes up with Duessa ( = doubleness), though calling herself Fidessa (=the Faith) as the type of a Church in which there was more of pretence and pomp than of piety and preaching. Una has the Lion (=the higher spiritual reason) with her; while Duessa leads the unfortunate Red Cross Knight into the dungeon of Orgoglio ( = the Italian for the haughty pride and pomp, still retained in English Prelacy and all its unreformed hierarchical usages derived from Rome), where, alas ! the Red Cross Knight remained in thrall. This is Spenser's picture of the English Church of his own time — in bondage to Orgoglio, through its abjectness to Duessa on her seven-headed beast. The poet himself may represent the people — which yet was but, as he paints it, a dwarf — meeting with Una and pouring into her ears a sad and grievous tale of religious and educational ne- glect. What the poet desired for the deliverance of the Church of England as then constituted, he proceeds in the cantos of the later Books to delineate and prescribe. Much of the mean- ing of all this allegorizing was of course entirely hidden from Queen Elizabeth's eyes, remote as it was from ordinary apprehension no less than from popular appeal. It moved in a region beyond even her Majesty's reach ; and, above all, it did not interfere, except theoretically, with her ecclesiastical prerogative. Spenser is not a refractory Puritan preacher like Cartwright and his fellows, stirring up the popular cry against the prelates, and directly raising opposition to her own self- THEIE EISE. 229 cliosen mode of managing the Church. The poet was loyal to her — did homage to her great qualities, sung her praises, and recognised the glory of her reign. What he wanted for the Church was locked up in lofty argument and in high and stately allegorizing, which, as it never disquieted her, she could afford quietly to let pass, as neither seditious nor prag- matical. Nevertheless, whatever may have been Spenser's views of the great practical controversy of his time respecting Church Government, and whatever he thought of " the seemly form and comely order of the Church," he has left in the Faerie Queene his testimony in favour of the higher genius of Puritanism in all its grand essentials, as truly as Milton was yet further to do, not merely in his Presbyterian pamphlets, but in the whole drift and temper of his poetical works. Zbe IRise of tbe Presbyterians in the IReformefc CbUrCb Of Jgnglanb (Continued). THE IEEEPRESSIBLE, I, — Hampton Court Conference, and the Harryings, 1G03-1625. II.— The Laudian axd Absolutist Revolution — or New Soil for Presbyterian Growth. 1625-1637. III. — English Presbyterian Exiles, and the British Synod in Holland, 1637. IV. — The Presbyterian Pamphlet War, and Early Church Debates in the Long Parliament, 1640-1641. V. — Ejection of Bishops from House of Peers, 1642. 281 Z\k IRise of tbe Presbyterians in tbe IReformefc CblirCb Of £lU.}lanfc (Continued). THE IRREPBESSIBLE. I. HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE, AND THE HARRYINGS. Queen Elizabeth died on the last day of 1602, old style (24th of March, 1602-3), in the 70th year of her age and 45th of her reign : " that bright occidental star " setting at last with some- what of diminished lustre. Her loss of prestige and popularity was largely owing, not to the increase of taxation or similar causes that have been often assigned, but rather, as Hallam says, " to her inflexible tena- ciousness in every point of ecclesiastical discipline." The succession of the Scottish king was, if not hailed with delight, at least acquiesced in by all parties in Church and State, who vied with each other in conveying the first words of congratulation. Mr. Lewis Pickering, a Northamptonshire gentleman, zealous for the Presbyterian party, is said to have outstripped his Episcopalian rival, the Dean of Canterbury. But, as Fuller observes, "He may be said to come first who effects what he was sent for " ; and the Dean could bring back, to the great relief of AVhitgift and his suffragans, " the welcome answer of his Highness's purpose, to uphold the Ecclesiastical Government of the late Queen, as she had left it settled." The Presbyterians in England were not, however, without assur- ance that King James would show them some favour, or at least extend to them a measure of relief. By promising to consider their claims, and give their case a fair hearing, he raised their already high expectations. Besides, they could re- call not a few things that seemed to them of happy augury.1 1 Had not James repeatedly interposed on their behalf? Had he not interceded with Elizabeth in favour of Cartwright and Udall, and offered University chairs to 233 234 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. There had appeared somewhat sinister signs no doubt in his later procedure, as if he were coquetting with the High Church party in England. He had recently broken with the more advanced section of his native Church ; and the breach was widened by the statute of 1599, appointing certain clergy to seats in the Scottish Parliament, with the title and modified powers of BLslwpx. These tendencies were emphasized in his Basilikon Doron (written in 1599, but just issued in 1602 before Iris accession to the English Crown), showing how he might avenge on the Puritans of the South, those defeats and affronts he had sustained at the hands of their congeners in the North. Throughout this Basilikon Doron (or royal gift) of his, — a sage example, as he meant it, of Kingcraft, for the guidance of his eldest son Prince Henry, a promising youth too soon to be snatched away by death, — there is an under- current of resentment against the Presbyterian ministers who had opposed his arbitrariness. On finding that these censures might not unfairly be thought " to furnish grounds for men to doubt of his sincerity in that religion which he had ever constantly professed," he labours in a " preface to the reader," to show that he was aiming at political offenders, " declaring, when they contemn the law and sovereign authority, what exemplary punishment they deserve for the same." By Puri- tans, he says he has special reference to " that vile sect, the Family of Love" and such-like brain-sick despisers of the magistrate. Cartwright and Travers in their time of need ? — M'Crie's Life of Melville, p. 153. Had be not also repeatedly declared his preference for the Reformed Church of Scotland, in whose doctrine and discipline he had been trained under his chief Tutor, George Buchanan, who, though only a lay member of the Early Assemblies, had been raised to the Moderator's chair in 1567 ? Had not James also, as a youth, sanctioned and subscribed with his own hand, in 1581, that very Confession which " negatived " the ceremonies and hierarchy ; and above all, had be not in that memorable speech of 15(J0, with head uncovered, and hands uplifted to Heaven, protested solemnly before Parliament and General Assembly that their own was to his mind "the sincerest (purest) Kirk in the world," and that it was his purpose to maintain its principles as long as he lived ? "As for our neighbour Kirk of England," he said, " their Prayer Book is an evil-said Mass, wanting nothing thereof but the liftings" (elevation of the host for adoration). — Calder- word's True History of the Church of Scotland, p. 250. And yet more recently, in 1598, he had classed together the " papistical and Anglican Bishops," declaring that " their order smelled vilely of popish pride," and their copes and ceremonies were " badges of popery." THEIR RISE. 235 " But on the other part, I protest upon mine honour, I mean it not gene- rally of all preachers, or of others that like better the simple form of worship in our Church, than of the many ceremonies of the Church of England. . . . No ; I am far from being contentious in these things (which, for my own part I ever esteemed as indifferent), as I do equally love and honour the learned and grave men of either of these opinions." l King James was never at a loss for artful phrases, that by their ambiguity might serve his own turn with opposite parties. When, therefore, he set forth, in April, 1603, to take possession of his great inheritance, petitions were eagerly addressed to him by various classes of Puritan clergy on his progress south- ward— by [far the most important of these being the well known Millenary petition.2 This manifesto was expressed in very mild and respectful terms, entering in no theoretic ques- tions, but praying for removal simply of the worst grievances.3 Doubtless there were other petitions of a much more Presby- terian type, pleading directly for a reduction of Prelacy and reform of the Church in the Genevan direction, presented by Arthur Hildersham and other old subscribers of " The Discipline."4 1 The Prose Works of the Most High and Mighty Prince James. Folio. Collected and edited by the Bishop of Winchester, cumprivilegio, 1616 (pp. 143, 144). 2 A name it received, not because signed by a thousand, — the actual number being 750, of the twenty-five North, West, and Midland Counties, — but because the peti- tioners speak in the preamble of more than a thousand of the clergy groaning under the pressure of easily removable evils. 3 The Humble Petition of the Ministers of the Church of England de- siring Eeformation of certain Ceremonies and Abuses of the Church. For a copy, see Fuller's Hist., 1603. Nothing could be more moderate and conciliatory. The University of Oxford issued an answer in a very different tone. Strype's Whitgift, p. 567. 4 Thomas Brightman, a celebrated exponent of Presbyterian principles, a great friend of Cartwright, and a distinguished scholar of Queen's College, Cambridge, came over from his parish of Hawnes, in Bedfordshire, accompanied by other ministerial friends, to have an interview with King James, who was the guest for the time, singularly enough, of the Cromwells at Hitchinbrook, near Huntingdon. Be- sides protesting against the enforcement of cap and surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, the application of the term " priests " to ministers, profanation of the Sabbath, longsomeness of service, and the like, they craved for spiritual discipline, and for presbyterial consent and counsel in Church affairs, instead of excommunica- tion for mere trifles, or at the hands of such as an Archdeacon's lay Commissary ; and they had, it is said, " Some good conference with his Majesty," handing him withal " a'book of reasons." (Petition to King James, Addl. MSS. Brit. Mus., 8978.) This Dr. Thomas Brightman had subscribed the Presbyterian " Book of Discipline" about 1586, and had written much against the prelacy. His most famous book was a Commentary on Revelation, which made " a great noise in the world " forty years 230 THE PRESBYTEEIANS IN ENGLAND. Meanwhile the dominant Church party was not idle. The dignitaries as well as the Universities bestirred themselves, and by way of prejudicing the King's judgment, the reply from Oxford insinuated that the petitioners belonged to a class that advocated limited monarchy, making kings amenable to law and popular control. To these opposite appeals, the Royal answer was very characteristically two-faced. First, in a public letter to the Bishops, James declared his adhesion to the Church as he found it ; and then, in a public proclamation, amidst many doubtful and sinister phrases, he did really promise a Conference after Christmas, on Church grievances and abuses.1 Had James been a king of men, and not a mere pedant, he would have known how to use this opportunity for stanching an old and dangerous sore. But inflated with his own conceit, he set about the matter as only a blundering busy-body could do. The idea of such a Conference was as wise as it was well-timed, had it only been honestly and fairly carried out. When we consider, however, that the King him- self chose the representatives of each party,2 that he nominated only four on the one side, but nineteen on the other ; 3 and above all, that he admitted the prelatists alone to private afterwards. Prelacy was what lie reckoned Antichrist, which he declared must shortly come down ; and so, when the Bishops were removed from the House of Lords, under the Act of 1642, which Charles I. himself signed, the name of Brightman was " cried up for an inspired writer," and his book republished.— Brook's Puritans, vol. ii. pp. 182, IKS. For evidence of further petitions against the Government of the Church presented to the King, see Domestic State Papers, vol. hi., No. 83, under Sept., 1603. That from the Lincolnshire ministers in 1605, took up a bold position, and was couched in vigorous terms. 1 For the Letter, see State Pajiers (Domestic) of 1603, vol. iii. p. 82 ; and for the Proclamation, vol. iv. pp. 28, 29. Calendar Dom. 1603-1610, pp. 41 and 47. 2 It used to be represented that the Puritans chose their own representatives ; as, by Archdeacon Echard, Hist, of England, vol. ii., p. 186. 3 Nine Bishops, eight Deans, and two other dignitaries, composed the stronger body. The four Puritan Divines, Rainoldes, Sparke, Chadderton, and Knewstubs, were of a mild type — Knewstubs only having persistently acted on the Presbyterian Book of Discipline, though Chadderton had also signed it. Dr. John Rainoldes, the most learned man of his time in England, held strong anti-prelatic convictions, but was not opposed to modified Episcopacy. His posi- tion was very much that of Ussher, Leighton, and Baxter afterwards ; and he is the real pillar of this via media. It is of Rainoldes the incident is told by Fuller and others, that in discussing the Romish question with his brother William, the one converted the other. He had conscientiously declined a Bishopric from Elizabeth. Dr. Sparke ultimately resiled from his original position, by publishing "A THEIR RISE. 237 audience, we may from such an unhappy beginning antici- pate the futile result. The Hampton-Court Conference lasted nominally three days, Saturday 14th, Monday 16th, and Wednesday, 18th January, 1603-4 ; but so far as hearing the Puritans was concerned, it really was confined to the Monday.1 On Saturday, the Puritans were kept in the outer chamber, only Bishops and Deans being admitted to discuss, in the presence of the Privy Council, certain points about which the King had doubts. The result may be gathered from the laudatory remarks by some who were present. " He sent us away," says Dean Barlow, " not with contentment only, but astonishment." ~ Or in the words of Dean Montague, " He spake for three hours wisely, wittily, and learnedly, and with that pretty patience that I think no man living ever heard the like ; " and Bishop Bilson, with even more fulsomeness if pos- sible, " He showed such dexterity, perspicuity, and sufficiency that I protest before God, without flattery, I have not observed the like in any man living." The proceedings of Wednesday were an echo of those of Brotherly Fersuasion to Unity and Uniformity," ,,and which called forth some in- dignant answers. Dr. Lawrence Chadderton, of an old Lancashire Roman Catholic family, was the first Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, a Puritan foundation specially provided for him by his friend, Sir William Mildmay. He was succeeded by the famous Dr. Preston, Puritan leader in the next generation. John Knewstubs, more pronouncedly Presbyterian than either of the two pre- ceeding, was leader of his party in the Eastern Counties, and with sixty others had suffered suspension for refusing Whitgift's " three Articles." 1 Kapin (History of England) does not hesitate to call it a " pretended Conference, whose sole end was to make the public believe the ministers were convinced and instructed ; and that therefore it was out of pure obstinacy if any still separated from the Church." And another writer of equal candour declares, " This Confer- ence was but a blind to introduce Episcopacy in Scotland, all the Scotch noblemen then at Court being designed to be present, and others, both noblemen and minis- ters, being called up from Scotland by the King's letters to assist at it." — Dr. Well- wood's " Memorials of the most material Transactions in England for the last Hundred Years preceding the Revolution of 1688." London, 1710. - The first record of the Hampton-Court Conference was drawn up at the request of Whitgift, and issued by Court Authority. — "The sum and substance of the Con- ference, etc. at Hampton Covrt by Willtam Barlow, D.D., and Dean of Chester, 1(304 (republished in the Phcenix, 1707). Its bias is apparent enough, but its general accuracy is not questioned. There are other accounts by Sir John Harrington ; Dean Montague, in a letter to his mother ; and King James himself, in a letter where he boasts : " I peppered them soundly." Patrick Galloway's account, cor- rected by the King, is in Calderwood's History. 238 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Saturday, and would have for us as little interest, but that they concluded with perhaps the most humiliating scene of all.1 On Monday, when the Puritans were heard, they dealt with four subjects — Doctrine, Office, Discipline, and Ritual. The King was pleased when Rainoldes suggested a revised translation of the Bible ; and all things seemed to go smoothly till it was urged (under the third head), that there should be a fuller ecclesiastical autonomy, the old prophesyings and disciplinary meetings being restored, " as the reverend Archbishop Grin- dal desired of her late Majesty," and that the clergy meet in local Synod with their Bishop. It was at this point the King broke forth in unseemly rage. "At which speech," says Dean Barlow, " his Majesty was somewhat stirred, yet, which was admirable in him, without passion or show thereof, thinking they aimed at a Scottish Presbytery, which, says he, agreeth as well with a Monarchy as God and the Devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my Council and cdl our proceedings.'''1 But the indecency of the King's behaviour reached its climax when Mr. Knewstubs began to deal with the fourth head. Here, accord- ing to all accounts, the coarse buffoonery of the King knew no bounds. His conduct on this occasion is condemned on every hand.- His closing words might have been as well spoken at the beginning : — 1 Ou the eX'Officio oath being discussed, one of the lay lords had courage enough to denounce it as " equal to the Spanish Inquisition." But after hearing a defence of it from both Whitgift and Lord Chancellor Egerton, the King upheld it in a long and learned harangue. "Undoubtedly," said Whitgift, "your Majesty speaks by the special assistance of God's Spirit." This utterance proceeded from the Archbisbop in the last stages of senile decay, but it was far surpassed by the servility of Bancroft, Bishop of London (very soon to be Primate), who, " on his knees protested that his heart melted within him, as he doubted not did the hearts of the whole company, with joy, and made haste to acknowledge to Almighty God His singular mercy in giving us such a King, as since Christ's time the like he thought had not been seen." — Baklow. - " The Puritan ministers were insulted, ridiculed, and laughed to scorn, with- out either wit or good manners." (Canon Perry, Students' English Church History, Second Period, p. 3(33.) And Hallam (Constitutional Hist. c. vi.) delivers his calm verdict, "We are alternately struck with wonder at the indecent and partial behaviour of the King, and at the abject baseness of the Bishops," whose measures towards their opponents he reprobates as " having been evidently resolved on before their Divines were summoned to Conference.'1'' THEIR RISE. 239 ': Xoic, Doctor, hdce you anything else to say?" Dr. Bainoldes — "- No more, if it please your Majesty" The King — L- If this be all your party have to say, I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land, or worse." x A royal proclamation, dated 5 March, 1604, gave sufficient token of the King's disposition, and this was confirmed by his vehement declaration against the whole Puritan party in his first Parliament. Whitgift, though relieved of his gravest anxieties by the new King's bias, was yet dreading Parliament, and almost hoping he might not live to struggle with it. He died 25 February, 1603-4 ; Cartwright, his great ecclesi- astical opponent, having pre-deceased him little more than a month. With The Convocation of 1603-4, over which Bancroft presided, there may be said to have begun that new and untoward conjunction of absolutism in Church and State which was to be productive of such varied issues, and meanwhile led to the " harrying " of so many godly ministers,2 and the driv- 1 Heylin and several later writers, — strangely enough, Cartyle among them (Crom- well's Letters and Speeches, vol. i. p. 52), — have substituted hurry ; but harry is the word as reported at lirst by Barlow, p. 85. To harry a bird's nest, or to " harry out of house and home," are vigorous Scottish; phrases. What the Scotticism meant in the royal intention, may be significantly enough illustrated by the hunted victim with a pack of harriers in full cry after it. 2 Hallam says, " The most enormous outrage on the civil rights of these men, was the commitment to prison of ten among those who had presented the millenary petition ; the judges having declared in the Star Chamber that it was an offence finable at discretion, and very near treason-felony, as it tended to sedition and rebellion." Nothing could be more shameful than the treatment of the Scottisli ministers, headed by Andrew Melville, whom King James had cajoled into Eng- land, under pretence of settling Church affairs, and whom he wantonly imprisoned and charged with treason for resisting the bastard form of prelacy he was seeking to impose on Scotland. The question was, " whether they were to be ruled by law or by the arbitrary will of the prince ; whether royal proclamations were to be obeyed when they suspended statutes enacted by joint authority of King and Parliament, . . nor ought it to be forgotten that these ministers of Scotland were the first to avow the constitutional doctrine which confined royal authority within the boundaries of law, though they did it at the expense of being denounced at the time, and punished for it as traitors " (M'Crie's Melville, vol. ii. p. 117). Then occurred the rencontre between Melville and Bancroft, when the latter tried to fasten on the Scottish preacher a charge of treason for libelling the Bishops. "My Lords, Andrew Melville was never a traitor. But, my Lords, there was one Richard Bancroft (let him be sought for), icho, during the life of Uie late Queen, wrote a treatise against his Majesty's title to the Crown of England, and here (pulling the corpus delicti from his pocket), here is the book." Bancroft was utterly taken aback; and Melville, advancing gradually as he spoke to the head of the table, took hold of the lawn sleeves of the Bishop, and calling them Romish rags, he said : "If you 2-10 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. ing of many more into Holland, America, and elsewhere,1 to found Presbyterian and other Churches that reacted with such power and influence afterwards on the mother Church of England. After Cartwright's death, there still remained at home a goodly number of the ministers who had " signed the Disci- pline;" and on them, even more than on others, the heavy end of the rod fell with merciless severity. The cases of Arthur Hildersham and John Dod are illustrations of this class of upholders of a Presbyterian platform. Arthur Hildersham was a divine of high birth and of not less high character and attainment. Like his grand-uncle, Cardinal Pole, he belonged to the royal Tudors, Queen Elizabeth herself condescending to greet him as " Cousin Hildersham." Born in 1563, and living till 1632, he is one of many links between the Elizabethan Presbyterians and those of Charles the First's time. Brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, and disinherited by his incensed relatives, from the outset he took up a firm and advanced reforming position, and was a prominent leader and habitual sufferer in the cause. He was one who, as minister for forty-three years at Ashby de la Zouch, clung tenaciously to the projphesyings, or exercises, long after their suppression by royal mandate ; " and did much to sustain " the tico famous associa- tions at Ilepton in Derbyshire and Burton in Staffordshire" At Hampton Court Conference, he represented the more advanced Puritans, and on that account was under ecclesiastical censure and silenced for three years. An iniquitous attempt was then are the author of the book called ' English Scottisiug for Genevan Discipline,' then I regard you as the capital enemy of all the Eeforrned Churches in Europe, and as such I will profess myself an enemy to you and your proceedings to the effusion of the last drop of my blood." The consternation that ensued may be more easily imagined than described. A primary authority here is David Calderwood's Church History (8 vols. Wodrow Society, 1842-!)). The same author's Altare Damascendm, issued in Holland where he was an exile, 1623, is the armoury and thesaurus of Presbyterianism, to which King James himself paid reluctant homage. ' Ireland must not be forgotten, Ulster especially, as a place of refuge for the next twenty years. (Keid's History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, vol. i. p. 89.) 2 The " prophesyings," however rigorously suppressed, do crop up occasionally in different parts, as in Yorkshire, eyen after 1620. See article, "Ezekiel Rogers,' in Brook's Puritans, vol. iii. p. 142. THEIR RISE. 241 made by Bishop Neile of Lichfield, to connect, him with Wight- man the Socinian, who was the last example in England of any one being burnt alive for heresy alone. Hildersham was repeatedly suspended, fined, imprisoned, and even excommunicated ; but in his last will and testament he still says :— " I do hereby declare and protest that I do continue and end my days in the very same faith and judgment, touching all points of religion, as I have ever been known to hold and profess, and which I have, both by my doctrine and practice, and by my sufferings also, given testimony unto." Loyal to his king and country, he was not less so to the Church, which he strove to reform after his own ideal, being stoutly opposed to a spirit of separatism. " If we dissent from one another," he says in one of his works, " it must be without bitterness and in brotherly love. The odious names of Puri- tans, Formalists, Schismatics, or Time-servers, ought not to be heard among brethren."1 John Dod (surnamed the Decalogist from his great book on the Ten Commandments) was another of those longsuffering leaders who had signed the Bool: of Discipline ; and having been born in 1549, and not dying till 1645, at the venerable age of ninety-six, he is one more of those distinguished links that bind the Elizabethan Presbyterians to the Westminster Assembly itself. 2 Nor should we omit to observe, that the sons both of Arthur Hildersham and of John Dod have their names enrolled among the ejected of 1662 — -pleasing instances, which could be readily multiplied, of descendants to the third and fourth generation who remained faithful to the spirit and con- tendings of their fathers. Presbyterianism as a sentiment still beat strong in many hearts, but as a practical system was cherished only partially among certain classes of Puritans hating Prelacy, yet willing to acquiesce in Episcopacy as an ancient and tolerable mode of Church government, while evading not a few of the prevailing usages and rubrical 1 Hildershaiu's Lectures on John, p. 301 (edit. 1632). For further particulars of Hildersham, see Samuel Clark's Martyrology, pp. 112-124. 3 Clarke's Lives, appended to his Martijrologie ; and Fuller's Worthies, Part I. 242 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. arrangements. But the new party under Bancroft was strenu- ously pushing forward and securing Court favour. Diocesan episcopacy, upheld as of Divine right, was connected with ideas of priesthood and sacramental grace. Those preten- sions were springing up which have ever since been the watchwords of Anglicanism as distinct from Protestantism, and by which the Church of Bancroft was widely separated in temper, views, and aims from the Church of Cranmer. Hatred of the Puritans at home and estrangement from the Reformed Churches abroad, went hand-in-hand. The English Prelates were no longer the friends and correspondents of foreign Presbyters. No longer acting on the defensive and apologizing for the peculiarities of the English Reformation, they began now to extol these very peculiarities as of the essence of the Church. Bancroft's primacy lasted however for only six years ; and when George Abbot succeeded him, in 1010, a very decided change or even reversal of administration was witnessed. Clarendon complains that Abbot " did not think so ill of the Presbyterian discipline as he ought to have done." As Grindal stood to Parker, so Abbot did to Bancroft ; and during his ten years of primacy there was considerable relaxation in the prelatic system. Strange that James should have elevated Abbot to such high office. 1 But it was in keep- ing with the many inconsistencies of his reign. In 1605, the Gunpowder Plot inflamed him against the Papists ; but in order to promote the " Spanish Match," he became most gracious towards his Roman Catholic subjects. For a time he was a vehement Calvinist ; and not content with displaying polemic zeal as an author, he commissioned Church of England repre- sentatives to the Calvinistic Synod of Dort ; 3 but on finding i Abbot once preached before the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and was publicly thanked for " his excellent sermon," even though on a mission from King James to undermine the very " freedom " of her assemblies. If his mission contributed to the overthrow of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and if in reward for his services on this oceasion he was made Archbishop of Canter- bury, we are no less assured that " his semi-puritanical principles and moderate administration were a principal cause of the ruin of the hierarchy and triumph of Presbytery in England." — M'Crie's Life of Melville, vol. ii. p. 240. Heylin's Hist, of Presbyterians, p. 283, and Clarendon's History, vol. i. pp. 88, 89. 2 Called by the States General of Holland, 1G18-19, to settle, if possible, the doc- trinal controversy that had arisen under the name of Arminianism. The deputies THEIH RISE. 243 how Puritanism and Calvinism were associated together in curbing his arbitrary prerogative, he latterly gave fullest countenance to the opposite school. And so, when he died, in 1625, the breach was wider than ever between the Calvinistic Puritans, who had rallied under Abbot's primacy, and the new school of Arminian Anglicans, who had become passionately devoted to the royal prerogative and the defence of the Divine right of kings. sent from England by King James with the approval of Archbishop Abbot, were men of such position in the Church as Bishop Carleton, Davenant, Hall, Ward, and Goad. With the Lambeth Articles, so distinctively Calvinistic or Augustinian, in their hands, they took an active part in the proceedings of the Synod, which pre- sented the remarkable phenomenon of a humble Dutch Presbyterian minister pre- siding over an Anglican Bishop and other dignitaries, who acted as simple members of Synod, and who acquiesced in its unanimous condemnation of the distinctive Arminian positions. That the Church of England was decisively Calvinistic down to the days of Archbishop Laud, does not admit of doubt ; and Toplady's treatise on the Historic Proofs of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England is un- answerable. The first formal treatise on the Thirty-nine Articles, by Thomas Rogers, under the title The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, never dreams of anything but the Calvinistic interpretation. Laud and Montague, with the other Arminiauizers, were the real innovators. Bishop Carleton's Examina- tion of Montague's Appeal amply reveals this, as does also the recent Camden Society's issue* of the Register of lTisitors of Oxford University, with its able and candid Introduction. See Prof. Mitchell's Westminster Assembly, Lecture X., for a succinct history of doctrine in the English Church, II. THE LAUDIAN AND ABSOLUTIST REVOLUTION— OR NEW SOIL FOR PRESBYTERIAN GROWTH. 1625-1637. When Charles I. came to the throne, in 1625, he found the treasury exhausted, the legislature full of suspicion, the country dissatisfied, and the Church still torn with internal dissensions. His position was one of no ordinary difficulty ; and great wis- dom alone could cope with the tangled state of affairs as left by his father. Alas ! whatever his private excellences, Charles was rendered seriously unfit for the hazards of the situation by reason of his own narrow-minded obstinacy of judgment, his miserable habit of dissimulation, and those inherited notions of high personal prerogative and Divine right, about which he was inflexible. His incompetency is significantly enough indicated by his having summoned and angrily dismissed three successive Parliaments in the first four years of his reign,1 and then determining to dispense with Parliaments altogether, as long as possible. But we have to do with matters ecclesi- astical— the most difficult, perhaps, of all he had to face. Charles I. was born in Scotland in 1600, and having been baptized in the Presbyterian Church, was placed for a time, in boyhood, under a Presbyterian tutor. This was all, however, that was Presbyterian about him, having early become attached to a system which was more congenial to his tastes and which ministered more successfully to his aims. He had just married on his accession, Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. of France, and sister of the reigning King Louis XIII., a woman of great beauty and cleverness, but too fond of intermeddling, and withal a most devoted adherent of the Church of Eome, which made her suspected among the people. But if Charles, as a constitutional monarch, had an evil genius in his Queen, he was yet more unfortunate in his chosen i 1625, 1626, 1629. a>'ishes to be particular Reforming Congregational Churches. Humbly proposed as a Way which hath so much Light from the Scriptures of Truth as that it may be lawfully submitted to by all ; and may, by the Blessing of the Lord, be a Means of Uniting those two Holy and Eminent Parties, the Presbyterian and Congregational. As also to Prepare for the hoped-for Resurrection of the Church, and to bring all Christian Nations into an Unity of the Truth and Order of the Gospel. Z 338 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Church power; so Councils of Churches are their eminent ordinary successors in point of Counsel." He then goes on to develop his four orders or degrees of such councils. 1. When twelve or any number of Churches under twenty-four, agree to hold Communion in a Council for mutual advice, these constitute the first order of a complete Council, " the first ascent of the glorious temple, or the first vow in compacting the New Jerusalem." These Councils should meet at least monthly. 2. Twelve of these Councils of the first degree, or any number under twenty-four, should constitute a Provincial Synod, to meet quarterly. 3. Out of these last should come the National Assembly or Council, to meet annually. 4. The (Ecumenical Council is similarly the out- growth of the varied National Assemblies. Thus Eliot magnifies the Presbyterial organization of Coun- cils ; the chief point in which he differs from the full Presby- terianism of the Westminster Assembly being his denial of strict juridical power to the higher Councils over the lower, and his making that power to be merely dogmatical or doctrinal ; remitting to the individual Church the power of censure or excommunication. He insisted, however, on introducing the Congregational Presbytery among his Indian converts.1 The Connection between Eliot's Missionary Work and the Presbyterians of this Country is very noteworthy and honourable. The earliest of the modern Missionary Societies in Great Britain was that which was founded in 1649 by ordinance of the Long Parliament, and incorporated under the name of " The President and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England.'' It was authorized to receive and disburse moneys that should be raised for that purpose ; i " The Puritan Presbyterians had been willing, for the sake of the great ends of peace and union, to unite with the Episcopalians in a modified form of Episcopacy ; so, for the same important objects, they were willing to unite with the Inde- pendents in New England, in a modified form of Congregationalism." — Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America by Charles Hodge, D.D. vol. i. p. 28. This union was The Saybrook Platform, midway between the Cambridge Platform and a fully organized Presbyterianism. It was in 1708 that the Synod met at Saybrook, which settled this Consociational scheme of •permanent Councils under which New England Puritanism flourished for a time. THEIE RISE. 339 and a general collection was appointed to be made in all counties, cities, towns, and parishes of England and Wales. This amounted to nearly £12,000, and was carefully invested in land and otherwise. The corporation consisted of sixteen persons, and had its origin in a famous petition presented to Parliament and published in 1(341, and which was approved and signed by 70 prominent Puritan Divines, chiefly Pres- byterians of England, as well as by Alexander Henderson and others from Scotland. And when the first account of Eliot's work was published in London, in 16-43, New England's First Fruits, an immense impulse was given to the movement. In 1646 Eliot began to preach with striking results to the Indians in their own tongue ; so that while the General Court of Massa- chusetts passed an Act in 1648, encouraging the work, financial aid was being sent to him and his coadjutors in considerable amounts from England.1 His Indian translation was the first Bible printed in America, 1661-3.2 It need only be further added here, that the Society was deprived of its charter at the Restoration, 1660 ; but, through the efforts of Richard Baxter, the Right Honourable Robert Boyle, and others, the funds were preserved and a fresh and enlarged charter obtained in 1662, for " The New England Company," which is at this moment probably the most richly endowed Missionary Society in the world/' 1 The literature of the subject is very large ; and the results reported were very striking in such tracts as, The Day Breaking if not the Sun Rising of the Gospel with the Indians in New England, London, 1647; The Clear Sunshine of the Gospel breaking forth upon the Indians of Neu> England, 1648 ; The Glorious Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England, 1649 ; The Light appearing more and more toward the. Perfect Day, etc., 1651 ; Strength out of Weakness, 1652 ; Tears of Repentance, 1653 ; A Late and Further Manifestation of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in Neto England, 1655 ; A Further Account of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England, 1659; A Further Account, etc., 1660. The eleventh and last tract of this Indian Series from New England, written by Eliot, was A Brief Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in the Year 1670. London, 1671. 2 He also published a large number of other booklets, such as his Indian Grammar, 1666 ; Indian Primer, 1669 ; Harmony of the Gospels, 1678 ; besides translating Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, 1664, and similar serviceable works. 3 See Sketch of the Origin and Recent History of the New England Company, by the Senior Member of the Company (1884), and Prof. Briggs's American Presby- terianism, Appendix V., on " The New England Company." Its three funds, the Charter Fund, the Boyle Fund, and the Williams Fund, are regulated by Chancery 340 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. In the Middle Colonies. — The number of Presbyterian Puritans, both ministers and Churches, in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, as well as Virginia and the Carolinas, went on increasing from England during the 17th century, although it naturally stopped during the Long Parliament. Among the early English Presbyterian clergy thrust out of their preferments at home, were Francis Doughty and Richard Denton, who preached over the Middle Colonies, and who took refuge with the Dutch, becoming respectively the First and Second English Presbyterian ministers at ATew Amsterdam, as the City of New York was called till it was taken, in 1664, by the Duke of York.1 The great struggles there between the Episcopalians and the Pres- byterians belong to a future period. Francis Doughty, the Presbyterian minister, had to flee for his life from New York ; but he became the chief Apostle of Presbyterian ism all over the Middle States. His great work in Maryland was carried forward by Matthew Hill, a close friend and correspondent of Richard Baxter, by whose influence he went over to Maryland when he had been ejected in 1662 from his parish of Thirsk, in his native county of York. Through the labours of these and other English Presbyterians, the dominant influence in the Presbyterianism of the Middle Colonies was distinctively of the English type ; but Scotch, Irish, and Welsh ministers were gladly received as ministers by their Churches, and a happy amalgamation was commenced that issued in the best results. A native and free form of Presbyterianism of a dis- tinctively American type grew and prevailed ; originally aided, not only by English-born colonists, but by large subsidies from wealthy English Presbyterian families, and especially by the ministers of London. The original Presbytery of Philadelphia, which developed decrees of 1836. The Williams Fund is that of Dr. Daniel Williams, the eminent London Presbyterian minister, who died 1716. 1 Francis Doughty, Vicar of Sodbury, Gloucestershire, was silenced for his Nonconforming ways, and emigrated to Massachusetts in 1637. Richard Denton, who had been minister at Coley Chapel, Halifax, Yorkshire, came to Connecticut in 1630, and afterwards co-operated with both French and Dutch Presbyterians in New York City. THEIR EISE. 341 into the first American Synod of 1717, was a happy union of various types and nationalities. This Presbytery was promoted by the distinguished Irish Presbyterian minister Francis Makemie, and gathered into its ranks seven of his own countrymen, six from Scotland, two from London, three from "Wales, and seven from New England — a composite and international body, organized on a broad, generous, and tolerant foundation.1 It only remains to add, that by the remarkable unanimity of the Presbyterians in the struggle for independence, and the influential position of their leaders, especially of Dr. John Witherspoon, the only minister of the Gospel in the Congress of 1776, an immense impulse was given to the Presbyterian cause in the United States, there- by securing the development on so vast a scale of modern American Presbyterianism. 1 How the ecclesiastical current was even then running may be judged from what Jonathan Edwards, the great President of Princeton, says in a letter to Dr. John Erskine of Edinburgh, 5 July, 1750, "You are pleased, dear Sir, very kindly to ask me whether I could sign the Westminster Confession of Faith and submit to the Presbyterian form of Church government. As to my subscribing to the substance of the Westminster Confession, there would be no difficulty ; and as to the Presbyterian government, I have long been out of conceit with our unsettled, Independent, confused way of Church government in this land ; and the Presby- terian way has ever appeared to me most agreeable to the Word of God and the reason and nature of things." ftbc Presbyterians in EnQlanb: tbeir IRise, decline, anfc IRevivaL PART II, £be Decline of tbe preeb^terians in England PEEIOD OF DISAPPOINTMENT AND FAILURE. I.— How tub Presbyterians Failed to Establish themselves. II. — An English Presbyterian Covenanter and Martyr (Trial and Execution of Christopher Love). III. — The Presbyterians under the Later Commonwealth and Protectorate. IV. — The Presbyterians in the Balance again. 543 Zbc Presbyterians in lEnglanb : their IRise, Decline, anfc IRevivaL PART II. Zbe Decline of the Presbyterians in iBnglanb. PEBIOD OF DISAPPOINTMENT AND FAILURE. I. HOW THE PRESBYTERIANS FAILED TO ESTABLISH THEMSELVES. The Presbyterians having risen to such measure of political and ecclesiastical ascendency as we have endeavoured to describe, it was inevitable that they should continue to play no un- important part in Church and State for years to come. Their time of triumph, however, was short ; and their hope of effecting a settlement in the national affairs experienced an early blight. Their desires after religious and political unity for the three kingdoms were not destined to be successful ; and their elabo- rated State Church system never came into full play. The causes of this we may now briefly indicate. When not only the Presbyterians and Independents failed to come to terms, but when the breach occurred, that never was healed, between Assembly and Parliament, the whole reforming movement in Church and State ceased as a constitutional effort, and the revolutionary method took its place. What parties may be most to blame for such an issue, will always continue matter of debate. Meanwhile the Presbyterians had to accept the situation ; and henceforward they carried on their work in the spirit of a half-hearted compromise. "Many and varied were the antagonistic influences with which the 345 346 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Presbyterian Establishment, born in such troublous days, had to struggle. It had to contend with the Prelatic party, watching an opportunity of reprisal, with the Independents, who feared that their separate Churches should be swamped in a national Establishment, and with the Sectaries , who aimed at a general melee of all parties. But other obstacles stood in the way of success. Though the outward forms of Presbytery were set up, by no persuasion could Parliament be induced to lend airy civil sanction to the decisions of the Church Courts, even in matters within their proper sphere. They retained in their own hands an Erastian power as the supreme Court of Appeal, so that none could be excluded from the Lord's table for ecclesiastical offences without having recourse to the civil courts."1 Now upon no subject have the Presbyterians been more severely censured than their intolerance. Ever since Milton's famous but splenetic epigram, which ascribes to them a design to— " Ride us with a classic hierarchy," and to — " adjure the civil sword To force our consciences that Christ made free," and which concludes with the bitter and jaundiced line, — " New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large," it has become the fashion to regard them as a " Synod of eccle- siastical sachems, bent on reducing England to a tyranny worse even than that of Rome."'3 This charge of intolerance, which has been immensely exaggerated, we shall immediately examine. That it was some intolerance inherent in the Presbyterian System which caused its downfall, is, however, a vulgar mistake. One chief explanation of the collapse, is the loss of faith, by the Presbyterians themselves, in the attainableness of their own ideal. For ideal they had of no common order, destined to fulfil itself in higher ways than they could foresee. Their desire was a constitutional and representative government alike in Church and State, worked along the same lines throughout the three kingdoms. And who will say that it had not been better for these kingdoms at this hour, had they been ripe enough or wise enough for such an experiment, vitiated though it was at 1 Dr. M'Crie's Annals of English Presbytery, pp. 189, 190. 2 Ibid. p. 190. THEIR DECLINE. 347 the time with a certain measure of compulsion in matters of religion? Even if Presbytery had aimed at domination, it was of a very different kind from that of the older prelatic type. Being associated with methods of local self-government and with all the machinery of general representation (the very essence of liberty and the best safe-guard of the common weal), it contained within itself provision for its own re-adjustment and for sloughing off such elements of intolerance as clung to it. A leading blunder of those who guided the movement, was their too prolonged discussion of the subject of Church govern- ment, and their aiming at too much in the circumstances. The clerical members of the Westminster Assembly were better divines than tacticians. They committed a mistake similar to what would have been committed if, in the Revolu- tion of 1688, time had been wasted on abstract resolutions and long-drawn debates. There was moreover a consuming zeal for the house of God, that, in the very effort to cleanse the Temple, overthrew more than the tables of money-changers, and pro- voked unnecessary antagonism. What aroused against them, most of all, the antipathy of politicians, was their strong asser- tion of the Church's inherent right to self-government, and to the exercise of spiritual discipline among her members. But neither Nation nor Parliament was one whit more tolerant than the Presbyterians, as the result showed. It was not be- cause they were Presbyterians, but because they were National Churchmen they were intolerant. For their general conception of a State Church was logical and strictly consistent, nor was it out of harmony with the prevailing spirit of the nation. If a National Church system (they argued) is not to be imposed in every sense upon the whole nation, it ceases to be a National Church system in any sense, and becomes an unreality or self-contradiction. The world indeed is governed less by logic than by sentiment ; yet it bodes nothing but evil, if logic and sentiment become divorced, as was threatened in the present case. When, therefore, the Presbyterian Earl of Manchester and his Presbyterian supporters were driven from power, in 1648, by the military and revolutionary party, we need not wonder 348 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. if the Presbyterians in London and Lancashire grew dubious and lukewarm about their position. Hampered and weakened in their discipline by Erastian interferences, they were power- less to prevent the growth of sects around them. Their Church scheme was checked by the army leaders ; and what of it had been already established, found itself speedily in collision with the State. The first great shock was the execution of the King, in January, 1649. Presbyterians everywhere, as avowed consti- tutional reformers, not at all revolutionists, were strongly, even violently, opposed on principle to this step ; and the beheading of the two Presbyterian noblemen, the Duke of Hamilton and the Earl of Holland, shortly after for their loyalty, confirmed the alienation. While the Scotch Presbyterians were hurling themselves in vain against Cromwell, those of London, Lanca- shire, and elsewhere plotted hard against his military Republi- canism. Many of the influential Presbyterian ministers of Lan- cashire, like Heyricke, Hollinworth, Herle, Angier of Denton, Gee of Eccleston, and Harrison of Ashton, were committed to prison for a time on this account — Heyricke narrowly escaping with his life, when his friend Christopher Love fell a victim, as we shall see, to his decisive maintenance of the League and Cove- nant. Henceforward the Presbyterian Establishment had to submit to indignities and humiliating interferences foreign even to the genius of its Erastianziecl Constitution. Its property was managed by " Sequestrators," its Church order invaded by governmental encouragement of fanatical religionists, while avowed Independents were planted in parochial benefices right in the heart of both London and Lancashire. l The " Records op the London Provincial Assembly " throw light on the difficulties with which the Presbyterians had to contend. " Two grievances stand conspicuous :- — 1. "Thej7 complain of the insufficient maintenance of the ministry, which, they say, ' comes far short of a competency ; and that is much shortened 1 " Independency of State pay and of State control being," as Dr. Halley candidly observes, " no part of the ecclesiastical polity of the early Independents." 2 M'Crie's Annals of the English Presbytery, pp. 192-194. THEIR DECLINE. 349 by general unjust withholding of it, notwithstanding the legal provision for the payment thereof.' The Long Parliament was much more intent npou securing to their own use, or that of the State, the benefices of the Episcopal clergy, than on making any suitable or permanent provision for the support of divine ordinances. . . . The idea of resorting to the voluntas exertions of the people as a stated supply for the national ministry, was then an unknown and untried experiment.1 2. Another source of weakness under which English Presbytery had now to labour, was the absence of a competent body of men to act as ruling elders. The records of the London province abound with complaints on this subject. In spite of every effort, some of the largest churches re- mained without any elders, while others had two or three. The lay element in its constitution is essential to the efficient working of the Presbyterial system. In a decaying state of the Church it sinks down to zero ; but the English Presbyterian Establishment had to commence its work from infancy bereft of its right arm — the Christian eldership. Un- like Scotland, — where Parliament formed a tower of strength, and where nobles, barons, and gentlemen gathered around the blue banner of the Covenant, like staff-officers round their general, proud to take their part in the councils of the Church, — English Presbytery was denuded both of the support of Parliament and of the patronage of the nobility, the gentry, and the landowners. The people, left without their natural leaders, shrank back helpless ; and the Church courts, thus left in the hands of preachers and divines, better acquainted with books than with business, dwindled into little more than clerical meetings for prayer and con- sultation." • Nevertheless the Presbyterian ministers were very greatly to blame for not striving to exercise their whole pastoral functions and discipline up to the full measure the law allowed ; and (as Baxter shows in his Reformed Pastor) they might have done more in this direction. We now return to the charge of " Intolerance." The general indictment against the Presbyterians resolves itself into three parts : — 1. The Long Parliament, under Presbyterian pressure and ascendency, passed the shocking Ordinance of 2nd May, 1648, with its pains and penalties, against heresies and blasphemies. 1 " Voluntaryism cannot properly be identified with Puritanism. The leading Puritans neither advocated nor countenanced that principle." — Dr. Stoughton's Church of the Restoration, p. 8. "Even Dr. Owen and other Independents con- tended for the continued obligation of tithes," says Dr. M'Crie. 2 Ibid., p. 195. 350 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. 2. A large number of leading representative Presbyterians both wrote and agitated strongly against religious toleration. And 3. The Presbyterian Establishment claimed civil as well as ecclesiastical power over men's persons and property, so as the more effectually to force all into subjection to its authority. We must now look carefully at each of these charges, and, by bringing into view the whole facts of the case, allow these to speak for themselves and make their own impression. 1. As to the harsh and cruel Ordinance1 of 2nd May, 1648, against heresies and blasphemies, it is too frequently forgotten that — " Harsh and cruel as the Ordinance seems to us, it was not a tightening hut a relaxation of the old law, and the restraint without law, formerly practised but put in temporary abeyance by the abolition of the Court of High Commission and the office of Bishop. Offenders were no longer punishable for opinions Jield, but for opinions deliberately exjiressed. , . . The charge must be prosecuted and proved in the civil courts, within a limited time, and, as I take it, at least in graver cases, before a jury."- Whatever may be thought of some of the principles of the Presbyterians, or of the position they took up respecting toleration in the abstract, it is undeniably to their credit that in actual practice their conduct when in power was marked by the most exemplary forbearance.3 No persecution of their enemies and no martyrdom of sectaries can be laid to their 1 It is given in ScobelVs Acts, p. 149 ; and is carefully epitomized in Stoughton's Church of the Civil Wars, pp. 513-515. 2 Professor Mitchell, The Westminster Assembly, p. 492 ; see especially Note II. in his Appendix, pp. 490-496. Cromwell himself, in his height of power, never professed to tolerate all sorts of so-called heresy and blasphemy ; and even after the Kevolution settlement, King William, with all his tolerance, assented to the Act for suppressing blasphemy, which provided, " that if any person, having been educated in, or at any time having made jvofession of, the Christian religion, should, by writing or by advised speaking, deny such doctrine as the Trinity, or the Christian religion to be true, or the Scriptures not to be of Divine authority, he should suffer for the first time severe disabilities, and the second time be imprisoned for three years." It is hardly fair to make the Presbyterian Ordinance the scape-goat for general legislative delinquencies. The horrible writ De hceretico coviburendo was not itself repealed by Act of Parliament till 1677, long after its renewal by the Restoration. Eive persons were burned to death, simply as heretics, under Elizabeth, and two under King James, the Bishops of Norwich, Loudon, and Lichfield being the royal instruments in the several cases. But in the case of Paul Best, which occasioned the severe Ordinance of 1648, burning was never dreamed of, and he himself made an explanation which set him free. 3 For contemporary evidence, see Edwards's Gangrccna, vol. i. pp. 50-53. THEIR DECLINE. 351 charge. In fact, they are far more free in this respect than either the Prelatists or even the Independents in their day of power. Moreover, when the Presbyterians regained their ascendency in Parliament, immediately before the Restoration, even in the very Act for re-establishing their Presbyterianism, with its Solemn League and Covenant, they showed how much they had learned by expressly guaranteeing, as we shall see, toleration for tender consciences. To the Presbyterians also belongs the honour of having set forth with clear and ringing emphasis, and in pithily memora- ble phrase, the solid fundamental principle of Christian liberty. This freedom, "wherewith Christ hath made His people free," they express in the memorable words, uGod alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and com- mandments of men which are in anything contrary to His Word or beside it in matters of faith and worship." l Like other religionists of that age, their views of liberty were no doubt very narrow and hazy, as well as very mixed and confused ; but however we may regard some of their positions and pronounce- ments,- it none the less remains true, that the spirit and tendency of their legislative measures and their general con- tendings must in all fairness be reckoned essentially liberalizing, as compared with what followed or what had been previously attained ; mitigating and relaxing, as it did, the severity of former ecclesiastical acts and procedure.3 1 Confession of Faith, ch. xx. , " Of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience," sect. ii. 2 See Dr. William Marshall's The Principles of the Westminster Standards Persecuting. For somewhat different view, see Principal Cunningham's Discussioiis on Church Principles, chapter viii., " The Westminster Confession on the Relations between Church and State." 3 Whoever will carefully read chapter xxxi. of the " Confession of Faith on Synods or Assemblies " will find principles distinctly in advance — a real gain in the direction of the right of public meeting where peace is not endangered — for which the Presbyterians have seldom got the credit that is their due. It was their National Church Scheme that was averse to certain kinds of toleration ; and not their Presbyterian principles or forms of government. This was what Nye and others failed to see, and hence they confounded together things that differ. It was the mixing up of the civil and religious spheres that prevented even Cromwell giving free scope to his tolerant principles, and that led the Independents of New England to persecute Presbyterians, Quakers, and all others "o/ a different way" in religion. It was the blending of the temporal and spiritual power, — the grafting 352 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. 2. "With regard to Presbyterians writing against toleration, it is not to be either denied or concealed that many of them protested stoutly against the idea of toleration, as it was advanced by the Sectaries ; l denouncing it in no measured terms. Still, their true leaders and spokesmen were by no means so far behind the most advanced and liberal-minded of their opponents, as is too often supposed. A man even like Owen could school the Cromwellian Parliament of 1652 with such words as these: — " Know that error and falsehood have no right or title from God or man to any privilege, protection, advantage, liberty, or any good thing yon are entrusted withal." And he goes on to say, that while men are not to be disturbed from their opinions so long as they keep them to themselves, they have no right and should have no liberty to propagate them as they like.2 And it is too seldom remembered that the of the sword on the crool;, — that led to the evil which they inherited from the past. As Dante says, — " The Church of Rome, Mixing two governments that ill assort, Hath missed her footing, fallen into the mire, And there herself and burden much defiled." —Purgatorio, xvi. 129-132. 1 We refer to such polemical tracts as that entitled " A Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience," by Samuel Rutherford (whose name, such was tbe confusion of the times, is made in Milton's Epigram to rhyme with " sword,'" though his Lex Rex is so able a defence of Constitutional Liberty) ; or those by Thomas Edwards (called " Shallow Edwardes," by Milton), in his Gangrcena, a large and portentous indictment in three parts, and his Casting Down of the Last and Strongest Hold of Satan; or, A Treatise against Toleration. The book, however, with the largest measure of opprobrium attached to it, is the oft-cited " Harmonious Consent of the Ministers within the County Palatine of Lancaster icith their Brethren the Ministers of the Province of London, in their late Testimony to the Truth of Jesus Christ and to our Solemn League and Covenant; as also of the Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies of those times and the Toleration of them," 1648. A passage often quoted is this : "A toleration would be the putting of a sword into a madman's hand ; a cup of poison into the hand of a child ; a letting loose of madmen with firebrands in their hands ; an appointing a city of refuge in men's consciences for the devils to fly to ; a laying of tbe stumbling-block before the blind ; a proclaiming of liberty to the wolves to come into Christ's flock to prey upon His lambs; " and so forth. But it must not be forgotten, that even this violent and hysterical tirade is only an echo of words used by that gentlest of Independents, Jeremiah Burroughs, in his Heart Divisions. - It is notorious, though apt to be kept in the background, that Owen, Goodwin, Simpson, and Nye were actually engaged, in 1654, in drawing up a list of Fimda- mentals which should be imposed on all religionists who claimed toleration. Neal (iv. pp. 98-100) gives sixteen of these ; and the Journals of the House speak of THEIR DECLINE. 353 Presbyterian leaders opposed a certain limited toleration, only because they desired what they deemed a preferable thing, mutual forbearance and accommodation. As George Gillespie says — " I wish that, instead of toleration, there may be a mutual endeavour for a happy accommodation. . . . There is a certain measure of forbearance ; but it is not so seasonable now to be talking of forbearance, but of mutual endeavours for accommodation." And when any quote the " Harmonious Consent of the Lancashire Ministers" it would be only fair to quote also the " Testimony of the Essex Ministers," with its pleading for tender con- sciences. But the best defence of the Presbyterians is such a public and official paper as the " Vindication op the Presbyterial Government and Ministry," issued in 1649, by the London Provincial Assembly, and in which it is said— ': We abhor an over rigid urging of uniformity in circumstantial things, and are far from the cruelty of that giant who laid upon a bed all he took, and those who were too long he cut them even with his bed, and such as were too short he stretched out to the length of it. God hath not made all men of a length or height. Men's parts, gifts, graces, differ ; and if there should be no forbearance in matters of inferior alloy, all the world would be perpetually quarrelling. If you would fully know our judgments herein, we will present them in these two propositions : 1. That it is the duty of all Christians to study to enjoy the ordinances of Christ in unity and uniformity as far as it is possible. ... 2. That it is their duty to hold communion together as one Church in what they agree, and in this way of union mutually to tolerate and bear with one another in lesser differences. . . . For our parts we do here manifest our willingness twenty, the first only having been passed when Cromwell dissolved Parliament. The toleration of the leading Independents at this time, was simply a toleration for orthodox fellow -Christians ; and even Dr. Thomas Goodwin, when presenting to Richard Cromwell the Declaration of the " Savoy Conference" of 1658 (which was attended by two hundred delegates from the one hundred Independent Churches then established in England and Wales), said in their name, "We look at the magistrates as custos utriusque tabula:, and so commit it (the Gospel) to your trust, as our chief magistrate, to countenance and propagate" (Orme's Life of Owen, pp. 180-183) . This, and similar inconsistencies, brought down the scorn of Milton on the Independents, equally with the Presbyterians. Unquestionably it was the Baptists who first repudiated, clearly and strongly, all coercive power whatever in religion (see especially Leonard Busher's Religious Peace, or a Plea for Liberty of Conscience, 1614) ; and they were constant to this principle throughout, v. Skeats, History of the Free Churches of England, pp. 40-42. But Hooper, so early as 1550, had grasped and enunciated the whole breadth of the principle of religious freedom (see ante, p. 56). A A 354 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. (as we have already said) to accommodate with you, according to the Word, in a way of union, and (such of us as are ministers) to preach up and to practise a mutual forbearance and tote rat ion of all things that may consist with the fundamentals of religion, with the, power of godliness, and with that peace which Christ hath established in His Church. But to make ruptures in the body of Christ, and to divide Church from Church, and to set up Church against Church, and to gather Churches out of true Churches, and because ice differ in some things to hold Church Com- munion in nothing, this we think hath no warrant out of the Word of God, and will introduce all manner of confusion in Churches and families, and not only disturb but in a little time destroy the power of godliness, purity of religion, and peace of Christians." . . . If the Presbyterians had not emancipated themselves from the theory of intolerance, they had largely outgrown the spirit of persecution, as certainly as, ere they lost their ascendency, they had forsworn the practice of it. 3. With regard to the charge about the tyrannical civil jurisdiction aimed at by the Presbyterian Ecclesiastical Courts, very much serious misapprehension has been promul- gated. The claim really amounted to little more than this : — the power of the Keys for the Church judicatories, and the power of the Sword for the Civil Magistrate, with legal guarantees for a cordial entente and good understanding between the two.1 It was no doubt desired that Presbyteries should be clothed with civil authority so far as the management of Church property or finance was concerned, very much as the Indepen- dents desired liberty for each congregation to administer its own secular as well as spiritual affairs. The Presbyterians 1 Baillie, who, though even less advanced on this point than many of his English Presbyterian brethren, thus distinguishes in his Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time, between all that he himself wished and what had been usual with the Court of High Commission : " But if once the government of Christ (meauiug of course presbytery) were set up among us, we know not what would impede it, by tlie sword of God alone, without any secular violence, to banish out of the land those spirits of error, in all meekness, humility, and love, by the force of truth convincing and satisfying the minds of the seduced. Episcopal courts were never fitted for the reclaiming of minds. Their prisons, their fines, their pillories, their nose-slitting, ear-croppings, and cheek-burnings did but hold down the flame, to break out in season with the greater rage. But the reformed presbytery doth proceed in a spiritual method eminently fitted for the gaining of hearts ; they go on with the offending party with all respect ; they deal with him in all gentleness from weeks to months, from months sometimes to years, before they come near to any censure." THEIR DECLINE. 355 ■ desired also to be legally protected in the honest discharge ot ecclesiastical discipline, as well as in their worship; but far from this being a usurpation of civil pains and penalties, it may be regarded as but a legitimate assertion of liberty of judgment operating within its own proper sphere. Believing, as they did, and as they still do, that " the Lord Jesus Christ has appointed a government in the Church, distinct from and not subordinate to civil government," they insisted on the Divine right ot the rulers in the Church to be themselves the judges, apart from parliamentary enactment, as to who should be either members or office-hearers in the Christian Community, this right not in any measure depending on civil authority, nor to be lodged in the hands of the civil magistracj^. This was, in short, the great subject of contention between the "Westminster Assembly and the Parliament, which led to the rupture between them, and to the consequent failure of the Presbyterian Establishment l It was on the rock of Erastianism that the vessel at last went to pieces. 1 Much misapprehension lias prevailed on this point of " Church power " ; and for some of it Neal's History of the Puritans must be held answerable. He occasionally indulges in passages like these : — " The Presbyterians were now in the height of their power, the hierarchy being destroyed, and the best, if not all the livings in the kingdom being distributed among them ; yet still they were dissatisfied for want of the top stone to their new building, which was Church power ; the pulpits of the city being filled with invectives against the men in power, been use they would not leave the Church independent of the State:'1 Or, again, " The Presbyterian hierarchy was as narrow as the Prelatical ; and as it did not allow of liberty of conscience, claiming a civil as well as an ecclesiastical jurisdiction over their persons and properties, it was equally if not more intolerable." Such un- warrantable and extravagant charges have been repeated by various writers, — prelatical, latitudinarian, and sectarian, — against Presbytery, and all because^ being opposed to the Erastian theory, it insisted, as Baillie says (Letters, ii., pp. 150 and 195), that it belonged to the Church itself " to keep off from the Sacraments all that were scandalous " ; so that " if they cannot obtain the free exercise of that foweH which Christ hath given, they will lay down their charges and rather choose all affliction." II. AN ENGLISH PEESBYTEEIAN COVENANTER AND MARTYR. Christopher Love's Trial and Execution. One circumstance which greatly embittered the Presbyterians against the Commonwealth, and still further strained their relations with the Independents, was the trial and execution, in 1651, of Mr. Christopher Love, for alleged high treason. This pious and worthy man, a prominent Presbyterian repre- sentative, and minister of St. Lawrence Jewry, — whose fidelity and zeal were not perhaps always tempered with discretion, — had been more than once a sufferer for conscience' sake. "When but a youth at Oxford, he was expelled from the University, being the first who openly declined to subscribe Land's new canons in 1040. A few years later, he was imprisoned for preaching in the North against the Prayer Book, although, on being removed by writ of Habeas Corpus to Westminster, he was acquitted ; and " by order of the Lords and Commons, 26 May, 1645, Mr. Christopher Love is directed to preach the Word of God at Newcastle-on-Tyne." His most notable appearance was at the Uxbridge Treaty, 1644-5, where his sermon lost him, however, the respect of some of his own party. But his re- peated imprisonments for his principles since, and the firmness with which, as a covenanted Presbyterian minister, he testified against both the execution of Charles I. and the new Common- wealth's Engagement, contributed, with his high character, fer- vent piety, and popular preaching power, to replace him again in their confidence and affection. Since Cromwell's victory at the battle of Dunbar, (Sept. 3, 1650), the Presbyterians were full of mingled exasperation and fear. Looking on the execution of Charles I. with horror, they recognised the rights of his son Charles II., now in Scotland at- tending to his own interests. The Scottish Presbyterians strove 356 THEIR DECLINE. 357 to bend him to the Constitution ; and he, with however bad a grace, three times took the Covenant, and swore to its provi- sions. This secured their allegiance. Charles was crowned a Covenanting King at Scone, 1 Jan., 1651 ; and nothing that Cromwell could do was able to prevent a general rallying to the Royal standard. In the spring of that year, a number of English Royalists, strongly supported by several leading London Presbyterian ministers, entered into a scheme for raising money and arms so as to levy troops in Scotland, that might join the Royalists in England, overthrow the " Rump " Parliament, and set Charles II. on the throne, The plot was discovered by Cromwell's sleepless vigilance. A small vessel conveying information of the design to the Earl of Derby in the Isle of Man, was driven by stress of weather into Ayr harbour, and being suspected, was seized and searched by Cromwell's garrison. Letters by Love and others were found, which revealed what was on foot ; and he and the rest implicated (Heyricke of Manchester among them) were at once arrested and sent to the Tower. On June 20, he was placed at the bar of the specially constituted "High Court of Justice," in Westminster Hall, charged with being privy to a criminal correspondence to restore Charles Stuart, in violation of two Ordinances of Parliament, which declared it treason to make any such attempt, or to assist foreigners in invading England.1 " I was ignorant," he said, " of the danger I now see I was in." The trial lasted for six days, amid great excitement ; but though he had for his counsel the celebrated (Sir) Matthew Hale, all defence was fruitless. He pleaded that he was only true and faithful to his Covenanting Presbyterian principles ; he denied he had either himself written or sent letters into Scotland, though confessing he had connived at the plot, and had a secret knowledge of it from letters read in his own house, thoroughly approving as he did of any pro- 1 Passed in March, 1G49. The Presbyterian ministers had freely denounced the whole procedure of tbe King's trial and execution. They accused the perpetrators of being usurpers, stained with blood. Edmund Calamy and William Jenkyns were specially fearless in praying for the Prince of Wales as lawful King. Thomas Caw- ton did so, even before the Lord Mayor. This brought matters to a crisis, and led the " Kump " to frame these Acts. 358 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. ceedings in favour of a restored monarchy. So far as lie was technically obnoxious to the law, he besought forgiveness, and threw himself on the mercy of the Court, beseeching them, however, in conclusion, not to bring on themselves through his death " the guilt of innocent blood." Neither his own plead- ings nor the eloquent defence of his counsel could avert the sentence of death. The Court, on the 5th of July, condemned him to be beheaded in ten days.1 At this sad juncture the name of Mary Love, his noble wife, rises into something like historical distinction through her efforts to save her husband's life.3 The whole of her corre- spondence and petitions forms an affecting episode. Her first petition was read in Parliament on Wednesday, 9 July, together with one from Love himself. ' By thirty-six votes to twenty-eight, the discussion on this was postponed for two days. Whatever was done on Friday has not been recorded ; but as there remained still room for hope, Mary Love continued her indefatigable efforts.3 On the very day (15 July) which had been first fixed for his execution, powerful representations were made to the House, not only by Mrs. Love's further petition for a remission of the sentence, or at least a commutation of it into banishment, but 1 State Trials, vol. i. pp. 660-728 ; and Anderson's Memorable Women of Puritan Times, vol. i. pp. iJ2o-345. - The letters that passed between them, and copies of the petitions she presented to the Parliament, are preserved in the contemporary print, Love's Name Lives (Lond., 1651), which bears neither publisher's nor printer's name, though the pub- lisher, in an address to the reader, indicates, he was moved to issue true and exact copies, on account of imperfect and spurious ones having been put in circulation. :i To prepare, however, for the worst, this admirable woman addressed a most noble letter to her husband on the 14th, the very day before the one appointed for his execution, beseeching him to realize the comforts of God in Jesns Christ, and re- minding him of " death being but a little stroke." And, " when thou goest up the scaffold, think it is as thou saidst to me, but thy fiery chariot to carry thee to thy Father's house." The parting words are full of tenderest pathos, " Be comforted, dear heart. Though thou mayest eat thy dinner with bitter herbs, yet thou shalt have a sweet supper with Christ that night. . . . Farewell, dear heart ; I may never see thee more, till we both behold the face of the Lord Jesus at the Great Day." His reply is couched in the same spirit of mingled triumph and resignation. " Every line thou writest gladdeth my heart. ... Be comforted concerning thy husband, who may honour God more in death than in life. . . . The Lord bless and requite thee for thy wise and good counsel. The very things I thought to have written to thee, thou hast written to me. I have had more comfort from thy gra- cious letter, than from all the counsel I have had from any else in the world. Till I rest in heaven, I rest thy dying but comforted Christopher Love.' THEIR DECLINE. 359 by a deputation headed by Obadiah Sedgwick, who presented another to the same effect signed by no fewer than fifty-four London ministers. This did not secure its full object ; but the House, hesitating somewhat, and as if to give time for consult- ing Cromwell, now in Scotland, granted a reprieve for a month. Strenuous efforts were made to improve this opportunity. "While Mary Love drew out another petition for Parliament, thanking them for the vote of the 15th July, which had opened to her "a door of hope in her valley of Achor," communications were opened with Cromwell, beseeching him to intervene ; Lieu- tenant-General Hammond especially using his good offices, and representing in a letter to Cromwell, dated London, 22 Jul}', that— " The hearts of many, if not most of the good men here of all parties are exceedingly set to save his life, on the ground that it may be a means to unite the hearts of all good men, the best of whose spirits is set to walk in the ways of the Lord."' Cromwell, however, had made no sign by the 15th August,1 and Parliament granted a further respite of one week, to give time for any communication from their General. Meanwhile, a petition and narrative from Love's own hand were laid before the House ; as also ': The Humble Petition of clivers well-affected Citizens of London," and another " from divers Ministers of the "Word in the County of Worcester."' Mary Love herself addressed one more earnest petition to Parliament. Her final appeal to them for " changing the sentence of death into one of banishment," is founded on the plea that, " Whilst you are propagating the Gospel in New England" her husband may, " as a prophet front the dead, he sent to endeavour the conversion of the poor Indians, that so many souls mat/ bless God in your be- half" But pleading was of no avail. AVhether to strike terror into the Royalist Presbyterians, or from whatever other motive, the Government resolved to let the law take its course. The 1 A story has been told by Echard (History of England, vol. ii. p. 706), and re- peated by others, that Cromwell did send a despatch of a favourable tenor to Parlia- ment, but it was stolen from the messenger by some revengeful cavalier. But Cromwell never complained of any such despatch having miscarried, and never vouchsafed any such explanation, when it would have preserved his Government from odium and damage. 360 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. last words of Mary Love to her husband were those of a letter the night before he must suffer, which thus concludes, — " Farewell, farewell, my clear, till we meet where we shall never bid farewell any more ; till which time I leave thee in the bosom of a loving, tender-hearted Father ; and so I rest till I shall for ever rest in heaven.'' Next morning, which was his last, he penned an answer with equally touching words, saying, — " Dear wife, farewell ; I will call thee wife no more ; I shall see thy face no more ; yet am I not much troubled, for now I am going to meet the Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom I shall be eternally married." This is dated " From the Tower of London, 22 August, 1651, the day of my glorification." About 2 o'clock that afternoon, he was brought out, with his friend Mr. Gibbon, also under sentence for the same cause, to the scaffold on Tower Hill. He was accompanied by three of his brethren, most prominent London Presbyterian ministers, Edmund Calamy, Dr. Thomas Manton, and the venerable Simeon Ashe. He made a long and able speech in a fearless, manly tone, maintaining he had been convicted on insufficient evidence, and protesting against both the Engagement and the invasion of Scotland by an English army, while he avowed his readiness to die for the Covenant, and for his Presbyterian principles. " I am for a regulated mixed monarchy, which I judge to be one of the best governments in the world. I opposed the late King and his forces, because I am against screwing up monarchy into tyranny, as much as against those who would pull it down into anarchy. I was never for put- ting the King to death, whose person I did promise in my Covenant to preserve; and I judge it an ill way to cure the body-politic by cutting off the political head." With regard to himself, he added, "I bless God, I have not the least trouble on my spirit ; but I die with as much quietness of mind as if I was going to lie down on my bed to rest ; " and he claimed that his blood was that of an innocent man and a martyr. After some words of high spiritual experience and exhortation, he knelt in prayer ; and having embraced his friends and blessed the multitude, he calmly laid his head on the block, and it was severed at one stroke. THEIR DECLINE. 361 Christopher Love was not quite forty years of age ; and the whole circumstances of his death produced a deep and abiding impression on the public mind. In spite of the frowns of authority and the threatening presence of the soldiery, Dr. Manton preached a funeral sermon over the remains, which were buried in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry, where Love had been minister.1 The Presbyterians bitterly resented Love's execution, though helpless to avenge the indignity. For, besides regarding it as an outrage clone to their ministry, they reckoned it a display of arbitrary power, — the tribunal that condemned him being, like that which was used in trying the King, a specially created one, with novel and self-chosen forms of procedure, — by men who were professedly warring against all arbitrariness ; and especially because it came in the wake of what they regarded as three great crimes against the Covenant — the King's execu- tion, the anti-Presbyterian Scotch war, and the death of the two Presbyterian peers on the scaffold, the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Holland. With Love's execution, the alienation between the two Puritan parties was fixed and complete. " This blow," says Baxter, " sank deeper to the root of the New Commonwealth than will easily be believed ; and made them grow odious to all the religious party in the land, except the sectaries." And he declares that, " after this, most of the ministers and good people did look upon the New Commonwealth as tyranny, and were more alienated than before." As for him- self, refusing as he did to observe the days of humiliation or thanksgiving appointed by the Rump, he fell under great and growing suspicion. "The soldiers said I was so like to Love that I should not be right till I was shorter by the head."3 1 The sermon was published under the title, " The Saint's Triumph over Death," the text being 1 Cor. xv. 57, "But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 Baxter's Life and Times, vol. i. p. 67. In July, 1653, the Scottish General Assembly wa.s broken up by Cromwell's soldiers, so as to destroy the influence of the Royalist nesolutioners, who had gained control over both Assembly and Parliament, while their rivals, the Protesters, though the more vehement in their Covenanting and Presbyterian proclivities, were disposed to rely on Cromwell and his party. III. THE PRESBYTERIANS UNDER THE LATER COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE. Two very opposite views have been entertained regarding the amount of religious liberty allowed under the Commonwealth. Some have praised it as a period of unequalled and universal toleration. Others have denounced it as a time of bigoted and cruel intolerance. It was neither the one nor the other exclu- sively, but a singular combination of both. " Mixed religious tolerance " very aptly described the system under the "Rump" and successive Commonwealth and Cromwellian Parliaments. Not only under their enactments were several Roman Catholic priests condemned to death for exercising their functions (one, at least, was executed on this ground alone) ; not only were some Quakers and members of other sects severely handled, (one, James Naylor, for example, being sentenced by a vote of one of the Parliaments to be pilloried, whipped, branded, and held to hard labour " for professing some religious fancies,") but the use of the Prayer Book was proscribed with greater strictness ; and it was then that the most rigorous of all the enactments regarding pastimes, Maypole dances, and the like came into force. In short, it was under Commonwealth legis- lation, rather than under the earlier Presbyterian regime, that there occurred those exhibitions of the narrowest Puritanism which the nation afterwards so much resented, and from which it so strongly recoiled. No doubt Cromwell, during his own Protectorate, showed himself possessed of a far more noble spirit of religious tolerance and liberality. Yet it is impossible not to be impressed even with his helplessness in the presence of the grave ecclesiastical problems. He tried to evade their difficulties by letting them severely alone as long as they would let him alone. If, however, they threatened to thwart his favourite aims, force was ever his rough and ready remedy. THEIB DECLINE. 363 Everything gave way to his military vigour and genius. This was what dominated the situation, ecclesiastical government itself being regulated by military lieutenants. The nation did not care for his ideal of Puritanism ; and generations had to elapse before the people of England could appreciate the man. In this, however, his contemporaries were not wholly inexcus- able. For his faults and inconsistencies were unhappily not less great than his powers and virtues.1 Cromwell will always stand out in history as a marvellous yet debatable character, with enigmas about him difficult to read, and with much that was anomalous in his proceedings, for which the only plea is the unsatisfactory one of necessity. For decision of will, and a certain insanity of restless and resistless energy, he has been surpassed by few. His place is among men of indomitable force of character and vehemence of practical wisdom ; but not among the foremost class, who must be also men of deep reflec- tive thought and philosophic insight. Cromwell was no mere vulgar hypocrite, nor dishonest fanatic. Yet, being a man of daring and warm nature, he was raised above his fellows by his enthusiasms, and was not incapable of letting himself be carried away by them when it suited his purpose, so that, if argument failed, violence at once took its place. AVhatever breadth and tolerance he exercised, and whatever may have been his enlarged views of religious liberty, it is unquestionable that, like other rulers of his time, Cromwell firmly maintained and applied the principle of State control in matters of religion.2 Toleration was larger under him than had been previously allowed ; but it was sadly vitiated in many ways. He did not require uniformity of the rigidest order — but all preachers and all worship had to come, not only under the surveillance, but under the positive and immediate direction of his Government/' 1 Vide Bisset's Commonwealth of England, vol. i. pp. S1-S3, and vol. ii. pp. 218-220 and 419-473. - Cromwell's ecclesiastical policy rested on five principles : State recognition, State control, State support, State protection, and State penalties." — Stoughton'k Religion in England, vol. ii. p. 76. :i " During the Commonwealth no system of Church government can be con- 364 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. The Presbyterians felt greatly embarrassed with questions arising out of the new Constitution in Church and State under the Commonwealth and Cromwell's Council, when the Solemn League and Covenant was supplanted by the Engagement, which ran thus : " I do promise to be true and faithful to the Commonwealth as it is now established, without a King or House of Lords." This had to be taken, under pains and penal- ties, by all above eighteen years of age ; and, as Neal says, — "No minister was to be admitted to any ecclesiastical living, or to en- joy any preferment in the Church, unless he qualified himself by taking' the Engagement within six months, publicly, in the face of the congre- gation." A pledge so opposed to the Covenant was a real stumbling- block to vast numbers ; and much keen controversy ensued, with many pamphlets. At length the chief London ministers ex- pressed their willingness to come to terms with the new Govern- ment ; and those in other parts of the country, like Martinclale in Cheshire, and Newcome in Lancashire, agreed to subscribe, though they never ceased to be troubled with doubts and scruples as to the legitimacy of their relations to Cromwell and his finally usurped position. Yet, under the guidance chiefly of Baxter, many of them strove as far as possible to draw all they could influence into co-operative associations for the conduct of discipline among themselves, especially those who were more moderate in their Episcopal or Congregational judgment and sidered as Laving been properly or fully established. The Presbyterians, if any, enjoyed this distinction." — Orme's Life of Owen, p. 245. "The beneficed clergy throughout England, till the return of Charles II., were chiefly, though not entirely, of that denomination.— Hallam's Const. Hint. ch. x. Sect.'l. . . . . . „. Independents and Baptists were all eligible, however, for ministerial omce, equally with those of the " Presbyterian way." Here it is to be observed, that the Independent Churches at this time were of two distinct types, the " gathered" and the " reformed." Gathered Churches were voluntary, or self-supporting societies, having no res- pect to parochial limits, but composed of individual earnest people joined in Church covenant, with or without a settled pastorate, as they might themselves determine. Reformed Independent Churches were simply the parochial institutions organized in the Congregationalist way; the pastor being Vicar or Hector of the parish, receiv- ing tithes or other public maintenance, and the Church members were the associ- ated body of godly parishioners. THEIR DECLINE. 365 practice, though Baxter confesses he could make nothing of the more rigid Independents, who believed in no stated ministry, nor of the high Prelatists, who believed in none but their own. The Associations. Baxter's Scheme in Worcestershire.— In 1653 Richard Baxter issued his " Agreement for Church Order and Concord" and was successful in organizing an Association that embraced moder- ate men of different parties. This was the model adopted by Associations in Devonshire, 1655 ; Westmoreland and Cum- berland, 1656 ; Essex, 1658 ; and elsewhere, both in England and Ireland. The meetings were called " Assemblies of the Associated Ministers." Baxter's own account,1 long afterwards, was as follows : — "The ministers of the churches were then (as is usual) of divers opinions about Church government ; (1) Some were for our Diocesan Episcopacy, as settled by the Eeformation. (2) Some were for a more Keformed Episcopacy, described by Bucer, . . . Ussher, etc. $) Some were for Diocesans in a higher strain, as subject to a foreign jurisdiction, . . . the Pope being Principium Unitatis. (4) Some were for National and Classic government by Presbyters only, without Bishops. (5) And some were for a parity of ministers and Churches, without any superior Bishops, or Synods, or Governors; but to have every congregation to have all governing power in their proper pastors. (6) And some were for each Congregation to be governed by the major vote of the people ; the pastor being but to gather and declare their vote. Among all these, the third sort, the Foreigners, were utterly unreconcilable ; and of the sixth we had no great hopes. But with the other four we attempted such a measure of agreement, as might be useful in a loose, unsettled time. . . . The most laborious ministers took the hint, and seconded us in many counties: first and chiefly in Westmoreland and Cum- berland, and then in Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Essex. . . . But when it came to closest practice, as the Foreigners (Prelatists) and popular called Brownists, kept off, so but few of the rigid Presby- terians or Independents joined with us ; (and, indeed, Worcestershire and the adjoining counties had but few of either sort). But the main body of our Association were men that thought the Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Independent had each of them some good in which they excelled the other two parties, and each of them some mistakes ; and that to select out of all 1 From the Preface to his Church Concord (London, 1691). 366 THE PKESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. three thebest part, and leave the worst, wax the most desirable {and ancient) form of government." ' Baxter's great desire was, to vitalize the popular religion and bring the quickening power of the Gospel into direct contact with the masses. Subordinating everything else to his intense yearning for practical co-operation among all that truly loved the Lord Jesus, he brought together Episcopalian " clergymen," Presbyterian " ministers," and Independent " pastors," along with godly representative laymen, who could be got together from all the Church bodies, with the view of combining as far as possible the episcopal presidency, the Presbyterian associate- ship and the Independent self-rule in a federated rather than an oro-anic oneness, which latter the loose unsettled times did not admit of. The scheme was worked through a parochial and a monthly meeting. In Kidderminster was held a papochial meeting, made up of " three Justices of the Peace (who lived with them), and three or four ministers (for so many they had in the parish), and three or four deacons, and twenty of the ancient and godly men of the congregation, who pretended to no office as lay-elders, but only met as trustees of the whole Church, and were chosen annually for that purpose. Kt this meeting they admonished those who remained impenitent to any scandalous sin. After more private admonition before two or three, they, with all possible tenderness, persuaded them to repent, and laboured to convince them of their sin and clanger ; and prayed with them if they consented." If this parochial meeting failed in its object, the party was 1 In a letter to bis learned ministerial friend, Thomas Gataker,_the same year, 1Go3, Baxter dwells on the threatening evils of disunion to the interests of the Reforming Protestant Churches, and earnestly insists on the need of cultivating union of worship, not as divided into parties, but as members of the universal body of Christians ; no minute form of Church government being of Divine right, but only the simpler principles involved in moderate Presbyterianism.— Baxter MSS. hi. HI), in Dr. Williams's Library. In the British Museum is a pamphlet of 1658 by Baxter, entitled : "Judgment and Advice of the Assembly of the Associated Ministers of Worcestershire, held at Worcester, Aug. 6, 1058, concerning the Endeavours of Ecclesiastical Peace, and the Ways and Means of Christian Unity which Mr. John Durey doth represent. Sent unto him in the Name and by the Appointment of the said Assembly. By Richard Baxter, Pastor of the Church at Kidderminster. It is signed also by other ministers. — See also Calamy"s Abridgment of Baxter's Life, pp. 119-138. THEIR DECLINE. 367 brought before the joint monthly meeting, and if still obdu- rate was ordered to be admonished by the pastor of the Church to which he belonged, and prayed for, for three days together, the Church being ultimately required " to avoid him as a per- son unfit for the Communion." This was the method followed by all these associated ministers and Churches.1 The Association in Cumberland and Westmoreland. — The 1 This may be the fittest place for stating briefly Baxter's ecclesiastical position and views. The great excitement connected with the issue of Laud's canons and the " et cetera" oath, directed his attention to questions of Church polity; and it was not long ere he revolted from and entirely rejected the Diocesan scheme of Prelatic Episcopacy as exhibited in England. In this sense he is commonly and rightly designated a Presbyterian : though he was not unwilling to serve under a modified Episcopacy where a Bishop was simply the first among equals, and not with any precedency in order above Presbyters as of Divine right. Regarding Church government as subservient and subordinate to the claims of practical re- ligion, his attachment to Presbyterianism, though sincere, was not rigid nor exclu- sive. The following excerpts from Calamy's Abridgment of his Life (pp. 113-115), will best explain and define his relation to the several ecclesiastical parties. " In the Presbyterian way, he disliked the order of lay-elders, who had no ordina- tion nor authority to preach nor administer Sacraments. Some of them were for binding the magistrate to confiscate and imprison men, merely because they were excommunicate," whereas he reckoned Church discipline to be purely spiritual and voluntary, if it were to be truly effective. " In the way of the Independents, he dis- liked their making too light of ordination, their having among them also the office of lay-eldership, and their being stricter about the qualifications of Church members than Scripture, reason, or the practice of the Universal Church would allow ; " a serious and sober credible profession being all that was necessary. " He discerned a great tendency in the Independent way to divisions ; and he could not at all approve of their making the people by majority of votes to be Church-governors in excom- munications and the like, which Christ had made acts of office. He also greatly disliked their too great exploding of Synods, and their making a minister to be no minister to any but his own flock. " " Many things he disliked in the Episcopal Diocesan party ; their extirpating the true discipline of Christ ; their altering the ancient species of Presbyters and Bishops : one Bishop with his Consistory having sole authority over many Churches, and many thousands of persons they were never likely to see, without setting up any parochial government, while Pastors had only a power of teaching and worshipping, and not of governing ; their exercise of Church government in a merely secular way ; their vexing honest Christians who esteemed their ceremonies unlawful, and their silencing of able godly preachers, because they durst not subscribe and swear to all that was bv civil authority im- posed. As to the Erastian party, he disliked these three things : their making light of tbe ministry and Church discipline ; their making the Articles of the Church and the Communion of Saints mere civil affairs; and their injuriously insinuating that Church discipline would be necessarily a coercive jurisdiction over men's bodies and purses, whereas true ministers of Christ pretend not to any bodily force, but only to apply God's Word to men's consciences." Baxter, in his Reformed Pastor, does not spare his Presbyterian brethren for their lukewarmness in exercising the " Disci- pline," and for their sulkily refusing to exert themselves on its behalf up to the full extent of their liberty and power, on account of their not having got the whole of their scheme established and sanctioned. His remonstrances are very pungent and faithful. 368 THE PEESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Presbyterian spirit and genius of these Associations may be readily gathered from the " Articles of Agreement of the Associated Ministers and Churches of the Counties of Cumber- land and Westmoreland." l The first and main article of the four, is as follows : — " No. 1. That in the exercise of discipline, it is not only the most safe course, but also the most conducive to brotherly union and satisfaction, that particular Churches carry on as much of their work with joint and mutual assistance as they can with conveniency and edification, and as little as may be in their actings to stand distinctly l>y themselves and apart from each other. " In Cheshire. — Adam Martindale, in his Autobiography, thus describes the Association in Cheshire, representing it as a kind of cross between a Presbytery and a County Union. — " In September, 1653, at a meeting of ministers at Wilmslow, the 14th day of that month, a motion was made and a letter drawne to invite many other ministers, to give them the meet- ing at Knutsford, on the 20th October, being the Exercise day, as accordingly many of them did ; and there they agreed upon a voluntary association of themselves and their Churches, if it could be clone, for mutual advice and strengthening one another. Into this Societie I quickly after fell and met with much comfort and assistance. ... If it be asked how I got satisfaction to act with them now, when I had scrupled some things concerning classical government at the time of my being at Gorton, I answer, The case was not the same. Here was onely a Voluntary Association ; . . . we pretended not to any power to convent any before us, or suppresse any minister because dwelling in such a place, within such a verge, and dif- fering from us in practice." The way it operated in his own parish he thus notices, " "We agreed in our Classis, by mutual consent, upon such rules for 1 This paper was drawn up by Dr. Richard Gilpin, Ee«tor of Greystoke, who, — like his great relative, Bernard Gilpin, before him, — declined the Bishopric of Carlisle, and who became the first Nonconformist Presbyterian minister in Newcastle-on- Tyne. It is entitled, The Agreement, etc. (as above) with something for explication and exhortation, annexed. London, 1656, pp. 5&, 4to. See Dr. Grosart's valuable Memoir of Gilpin prefixed to the Demonoloyid sitcrd, p. 48, also Baxter's Life and Times, vol. i. pp. 117, 118, 2nd edition. THEIR DECLINE. 369 the administration of Baptisms and the Lord's Supper, as also of the solemnization of matrimonie, as my religious neighbours seemed well pleased with. And as for transactions among our- selves, we never disputed about the power of Church guides, nor libertie of the brethren. For smaller matters, that came of course, they were willing enough the officers should dispatch without troubling the Societie. And for those that were weightier . . . we always tooke their consent along with us, which we used to ask after the Sacrament, or at a week-day confirmer. And so unanimous were we, that, though most of all the com- municants that were accounted the chiefe for parts and piety, leaned much toward the Congregational way of Church govern- ment, and some of them for their natural tempers peevish enough, . . . yet I cannot remember that so much as one of them forsooke us." This Cheshire Classis seems to have been the type of organi- zation set up in other parts of England at this time, but which had to be dissolved at the Restoration along with the firmer establishments of Presbytery in London and Lancashire. We shall find a somewhat similar though more lasting Associa- tion of Presbyterian and Independent ministers in Cheshire, maintained from 1691 to 1745.1 1 Eespectiug Shropshire, Flint, and the Welsh border, we read a little later,— " In the year 1G58, the ministers of that neighbourhood had begun to enlarge their correspondence with the ministers of North Wales, and several meetings they had at Ruthin and other places that year for the settling of a correspondence and the promoting of unity and love and good understanding among themselves, by enter- ing into an Association like those some years before of Worcestershire and Cumber- land, to which as their pattern (those two having been published) they did refer themselves. They appointed different Associations and (notwithstanding the differ- ences of apprehension that were among them, some being in their judgments Episcopal, otliers Congregational, and others Classical) they agreed to lay aside the thoughts of matters in variance, and to give each other the right hand of fellowship, that with one shoulder, and with one consent they might study each in their places to promote the common interest of Christ's kingdom and the common salvation of precious souls." — Life of Philip Henry, by his son Matthew Heury, 3rd ed., 1712, pp. 45, 46. In the life of Joseph Alleine, author of the well-known "Alarm to the Unconverted," who was the Presbyterian Co-Pastor of the Rev. George New- ton, Vicar of Taunton, an account will be found of pastoral labour and methods, which may be accepted as an index of what was customary among the more earnest and zealous of his brethren. Vide " Joseph Alleine, his Companions and Times," by Charles Stanford. B B XV. THE PEESBTTEEIANS IN THE BALANCE AGAIN. "When Cromwell died, on that tempestuous night, 3 September, 1058, which was the anniversary of his two great victories at Dunbar and Worcester, the Commonwealth, with all its insti- tutions, of which he was soul and centre, began to crumble to pieces. His son Richard, quietly succeeded him, but could never fill his place. Of an easy nature and unambitious temper, sympathizing, moreover, with the Presbyterian party rather than with the Independents,1 Richard Cromwell was quite un- able, even if he had been disposed, to cope with the circum- stances of the case, or deal with the rivalry of contending factions, and especially of the military chiefs, Lambert, Fleet- wood, and the rest. When Richard's first House of Commons met (29 Jan. to 22 April, 1658-59) and proved so reactionary, the Council of Officers, with Fleetwood, his brother-in-law, at their head, compelled him to dissolve it; and Richard Cromwell, then finding himself abandoned by his father's chief supporters, at once abdicated and withdrew.3 Even when the " Rump " of the Parliament was permitted to reassemble, it was the signal of further quarrel, Lambert trying to play the rule of the 1 It was within a month after Oliver Cromwell's death that the gathering of " Messengers " of the Independent Churches (previously convened) assembled in the Savoy Palace (Sept. 29, to Oct. 12), to hear " complaints relating to disputes and differences " among them, and to give advice. Their chief work, besides the issue of that modification of the Westminster Confession, known as the " Savoy Confession," was, as the Preface to the " Declaration " says, to devise means " that there might be a constant correspondence held among the Chinches for counsel and mutual edification." This was the nearest practical approach the Independents had yet made to the Presbyterians. What need there was for this, may be gathered from what they go on to say, " The generality of our Churches have been like so many ships, though holding forth the same general colours, launched singly, and sailing apart and alone in the vast ocean of these tunmltuating times, exposed to every wind of doctrine, . . . without associations among ourselves or so much as holding our common lights to others, whereby to know where we were." - By far the best and fullest account of the events of 1658-GO, and of the various steps that led up to Charles's return, is in Guizot's liicliard Cromwell and the Restoration. 270 THE1E DECLINE. 371 great Oliver by dismissing it, 13 Oct., 1659, The country was shuddering with the dread of becoming a prey to a mixture of anarchy and military competitorship. The humiliation and fall of Fleetwood afforded proof enough that the political counsels and influence of the Independent party had become hopelessly distracted, and Republicanism entirely impossible. At this critical juncture it is universally allowed the Presby- terians did an enormous, though, as the result showed, a self- immolating, service to constitutional liberty, and protected the country from the military chaos that seemed impending, by taking their disinterested and patriotic course of allying them- selves with the Royalists, and giving military expression to their sentiments. And though their trusty leader, Sir George Booth, was defeated for the time in his Cheshire rising, the cue was given to General Sir George Monk, commander of the forces in Scotland, who had been keenly watching the course of events, and who saw in the hopeless dead-lock after Richard Cromwell's withdrawal, and the fall of the Rump, his own opportunity. Increasingly he felt that the nation was getting tired and dispirited at its many failures to effect a settlement, and was willing to fall back into its old monarchical and ec- clesiastical groove. Keeping, however, his own counsel, and cautiously feeling his way toward a policy, Monk moved south- ward, carefully noting the state of the public mind,1 and entered London, 3 Feb., 1659-60, at the head of 5,000 chosen troops. When he declared in favour of the old Parliament as originally constituted, London went mad with joy, and kindled its bonfires against the " Rump," which it roasted in hatred and derision. The Long Parliament met again on 21 Feb., 1660, with the excluded Presbyterian members reinstated ; and in- asmuch as many of the Independents felt they had been be- trayed by Monk, and declined to attend, the Presbyterians 1 On his progress he received many strong appeals, both from Royalists and those not vehemently partisans for any side, to redress the miseries of a nation "im- poverished and bleeding under an intestine sword." A memorial from Devon may be accepted as expressing widely-spread views. "Briefly," it says, "since the death of the King we have been governed by tumult : bandied from one faction to another : this party up to-day, that to-morrow, but still the nation undermost, and a prey to the strongest." 372 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. were once more in the ascendant. On assembling, the House was addressed by Monk, who professed his zeal for the Com- monwealth ; "And as to government in the Church, the want whereof hath been no small cause of these nations' distraction," he goes on to declare his fear that if monarchy be re-introduced, " Prelacy must be brought in, which these nations cannot bear and against which they have so solemnly sworn." All these earlier speeches of Monk bear a strong flavour of his Scottish experiences, and were characteristic of his somewhat slow but cunning apprehension. His conclusion is in accordance with the temper of the House, that "Moderate, not rigid, Presbyterian government, icith a sufficient liberty for consciences truly tender, appears at present to be the most indifferent cmd acceptable way to the Church's settlement." 1 And so the renovated Parliament proceeded to annul the votes by which the Presbyterians had been excluded in 1648, and to declare afresh that Presbyterianism is the established faith and order of the Church of England, with, however, an express toleration for tender consciences — an improved arrange- ment with which these Presbyterians are not always credited, though it is of moment to observe this, as evidence of their having learned something at this last hour of their triumph. A copy of the Solemn League and Covenant was hung up on the walls of the House and in the parish churches, to be read publicly once a year, while a new Council of State, with Royalist proclivities, was appointed, and writs were issued for the calling of anew and free Parliament at once, of both Lords and Commons. So ended the last session of the ever-memor- able Long Parliament, which thus finally dissolved itself on 16 March, 1660. Meanwhile, Monk, seeing how the stream was running, and anticipating the likely issue of the " Conven- tion" Parliament (so called because summoned at once for 25th April without any Royal writ) had been careful to make his own terms privately with the exiled monarch.2 With con- 1 Pari. Hist. hi. 1580. 2 It was here that the knavery and selfish duplicity of Monk were consummated. He had deceived his former friends, the Independents : he now played false by his more recent friends, the Presbyterians. Charles was afraid lest the Presbyterians THEIR DECLINE. 373 summate adroitness he managed also, as soon as Parliament met, to have a messenger from Charles II. in waiting, with communications, and especially with the famous Declaration of Breda, in which, among large promises of pardon and equit- able settlement of claims and rights by a free Parliament, occurs the notable one regarding toleration and liberty to tender consciences, " that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of religion, which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom ; and that we shall be ready to consent to such an Act of Parliament as, upon mature deliberation, shall be offered to us for the full granting that indulgence." This gave immense impulse to the Restora- tion proposal, and rendered the issue sure and speedy. Some Presbyterian members and others — Matthew Hale especially — did suggest, and even struggled for, adequate guarantees and a clear settlement regarding a few momentous points ; but they were overruled. Charles was proclaimed King in Palace Yard, 8 May, 1660. He landed on the 25th at Dover, and on his own birthday, 29 May, entered London in the midst of one vast ovation of vociferous joy and excitement. At the time of the King's return the Presbyterians were in ecclesiastical possession ; for, upon the collapse of the Indepen- dents, Presbyterianism had been once more re-established as the Constitution of the National Church, and rose to ascendency in the State Council, the Universities, and the corporations. It is important to remember this, as it explains how Presby- terianism had to bear the coining burden and brunt of the fight, and how the battles of the Restoration crisis, with all its reactionary legislation, raged round the Presbyterian position ; while the contending^ of the Independents and Sectaries held quite a subordinate place. That Presbyterian government and worship pure and simple should exact pledges of him because lie had sworn to the Covenant. Monk assured bkn he would manage to get him back without conditions. " This," as Burnet (Own Times) remarks, "was indeed the great service Monk did." This is the secret of his being created Duke of Albemarle and his brother a Bishop. Alas ! in accepting the religious profession and the rich rewards of the King, he was but an early herald in high places of many more who gave evidence of the jaded spirit and the debauched conscience of the nation at large. 374 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. could not be maintained as the Church system of England, was of course well enough understood, and by none more than by the Presbyterians themselves, who realized that, as the price of their loyalty, they must submit to compromise and concession. For it must be allowed, that if Puritanism in general had never won a majority of the people to its side, still less deeply and widely had Presbyterianism permeated the national mind ; and its time of operation had been too brief and circumscribed to have rooted itself in the land, or to have secured an intelligent hold of the popular sentiment. How far, therefore, these need- ful concessions were to extend, and on what lines they were to proceed, were somewhat perplexing questions ; and unhap- pily their discussion tended to divide the Presbyterian interest. A smaller section, led by men like Dr. Lazarus Seaman and William Jenkyn, felt inclined to stand stiffly on the defensive, and have the necessary changes engrafted on the system al- ready at work ; but much the larger section of the London ministers, led by Calamy, Reynolds, Ashe, and Man ton, with the strong support of Baxter and others, realizing the difficulties surrounding them, seemed much more disposed to accede at once, and frankly, to a combination of a modified Presby- terianism with a modified Episcopacy ; seeking to save their essential principles, while willing to surrender much that was distinctive of outward Presbyterial organization and nomen- clature. The ideas of their Episcopal and High Church oppo- nents on the ecclesiastical situation were widely different, however, from these. Churchmen of pronounced Royalist and Prelatic views held, not without some show of reason, that the changes in ritual, discipline, worship, and Church government which had been effected during the last eighteen years under the Long Parliament, ought to be considered as cancelled, nugatory, and invalid, because they not only had not either full Constitutional sanction of the House of Peers and the Crown, but King Charles I. had protested even to death and martyrdom against them. AVith the Restoration, therefore, came back the old Constitution in Church and State — King, Lords, and Commons, together Avith the former Church polity and the Prayer Book. Much, no doubt, had happened in the THEIR DECLIXE. 375 interval, and this might call for some rearrangement. Mean- while, much consideration was due to the wishes of the King and his friends in Council. And so it was along this line of things that the new policy proceeded, under the auspices of Charles himself, Hyde (Clarendon), Monk (Albemarle), South- ampton, and Ormond, with the surviving Bishops and their entourage. Thus the Liturgy and surplice, which the prelates and exiled clergy had been always employing abroad, came at once into use, especially in Colleges, Cathedrals, and the Royal Chapel ; and the Bishops resumed their sees, though they could not legally sit among the Peers till the Exclusion Act, which Charles I. had passed, should be repealed ; and many struggles went on in law courts and elsewhere, as to who were the legal incumbents in parishes. Many of the rights and claims of the loyal Presbyterians, however, were respected as yet. The moderate party among the Presbyterians had repeated inter- views with, the King — ten or twelve of them having been created Presbyterian Court Chaplains ' b}^ his Majesty, at the instance of the earnest and pious Presbyterian peer, the Earl of Manchester, who had become Lord Chamberlain in acknow- ledgment of his services, and who, with the estimable Lord Holies and the Earl of Delamere, continued worthily to support and represent Presbyterian interests in high places. A con- siderable body of these moderately disposed Presbyterians now met informally at Sion College, under Royal sanction ; and after prolonged discussion for three weeks, they adopted an Address to the King in which they proposed Ussher's " Reduction of Episcopacy unto the form of Synodical Government, received in 1 Among them were Reynolds, Calaniy, Spurstow, Baxter, Bates, Manton, Wallis, Case, Ashe, who all accepted the post — Matthew Newcoinen declining ; but only the hist four were ever admitted to conduct service before his Majesty, and, as Baxter adds, " Not a man of them all ever received or expected a penny for the salary of their places."— Life and Times, vol. ii. p. 229. We are now entering on a period when Baxter's Life and Times is of peculiar value, because of his own direct personal knowledge and mingling in affairs. " Pray read with attention," says Coleridge, "Baxter's life of himself. It is an estimable work. ... I could almost as soon doubt the Gospel as his veracity." The full title is, Reliquice Baxteriancc ; or, Mr. Richard Baxter's Narrative of the most Memorable Passages of His Life and 'Times. Dr. Calamy issued an admirable abridgment as vol. i. of his Account of the Ejected Minister*, and ably defended Baxter's accuracy in vol. ii. of his Continuation. 376 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. the Ancient Church" as a basis of agreement on both sides, averring that, Avhile opposed to Prelacy as formerly adminis- tered, they had no fundamental objection to a modified Epis- copacy, where a Bishop, in conjunction with his co-Presbyters, exercised effective oversight and discipline in a moderately-sized diocese ; nor were they opposed to all liturgical service or the use of the Book of Common Prayer, if only they were relieved of those parts and ritual observances to which they had in- superable conscientious objections.1 This and other interviews resulted (after warm debates and unavailing conferences with the Bishops and high Episcopalians, who were resolved to de- stroy Presbyterianism,) in a very memorable Royal Declaration which is specially to be noted, commonly called The Wor- cester House Declaration, from Lord Clarendon's mansion, where the interview took place at which it was introduced. In altered form it was published in the King's name on 25th October, and, after confirming the promises of the Breda Manifesto, it set forth the Royal resolution not only, among other things, to allow a large increase of suffragan Bishops, but to require a certain Dumber of Presbyters to take part in Episcopal acts, and create in each deanery a special means for efficient oversight ; to cause a revision of the Prayer Book in the direction desired ; and, meanwhile, till a Synod shall be called, to leave ministers discretionary power as to their i "Oh, how little," says Richard Baxter, "would it have cost your Churchmen in 1GG0 and 16G1 to have prevented the calamitous and dangerous divisions of this land. . . . And how little would it cost them yet to prevent the continuance of it." — Preface to his Penitent Confession, 1691, written just hefore his death. And Macaulay says, "Of those who had been active in bringing back the King, many were zealous for Synods, and for the Directory, and many were desirous to terminate by a compromise the religious dissensions which had long agitated Eng- land. ... It did not seem impossible to effect an accommodation between the moderate Episcopalians of the school of Ussher, and the moderate Presbyterians of the school of Baxter. The moderate Episcopalians would admit that a Bishop might lawfully be assisted by a council. The moderate Presbyterians would not deny that each provincial assembly might lawfully have a permanent president, and that this president might lawfully be called a Bishop. There might be a revised Liturgy, which should not exclude extemporaneous prayer ; a Baptismal Service in which the sign of the Cross might be used or omitted at discretion ; a Communion Service at which the faithful might sit, if their consciences forbade them to kneel. But to no such plan could the great body of Cavaliers listen with patience" — Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. p. 159. THEIR DECLINE. 377 use of some parts of the Prayer Book and ceremonial ob- servances.1 In all these discussions the King and Lord Chancellor Hyde were regarded as acting in the spirit of umpires, eager to find some middle course between the extremes of the two contend- ing parties. An agreement seemed thus to have been reached that promised a basis for unity and peaceable settlement. But it soon appeared that the Declaration was not put forth with any serious or honest intent, but was a hypocritical and tem- porary expedient, a bit of tactics on the part of the Lord Chancellor to quiet the Presbyterians and to gain time. For when it came before the Convention Parliament on 28 Novem- ber, to be ratified in the form of a " Bill," the whole weight of the Court party was cast against the measure; and it was known among the members that the very author of the De- claration, Lord Chancellor Hyde himself, had no liking for it, and the King too was easily indifferent if not secretly opposed. In fact, it was found that the country was getting into the full swing of the reaction. The bye-elections in the course of the summer had been recruiting the party whose one dominant idea was Eoyalism— that new and increasingly fashionable craze which unscrupulously bore down everything before it, so that when the next or "Pension" Parliament met, the following year, the country had swayed to its worst extreme of servility and un- worthy indulgence. Many who had hitherto called themselves Presbyterians began now to drop the name ; and from this time the Presbyterian party, both in Church and State, began to lose ground, under the new influences that were seen to prevail. And so the Bill to legalize the Declaration was rejected by 183 against 157, the King and his ministers affecting afterwards to believe that this absolved them from the Breda promises,3 1 When the Royal Declaration appeared in its amended form (it is found in Wilkins' Concilia 'and Cardwell's Conferences), there was prepared .-1 Humble and Grateful Acknowledgment of many Ministers of the Gospel in and about the City oj London, to his Royal Majesty for his Gracious Concessio7is in his Majesty's late Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs." It was signed by, among others, Thos. Case, Dr. Gouge, Dr. Jacomb, Dr. Bates, and Matthew Poole, and afterwards printed by royal permission. See Baxter's Life and Times, vol. ii. pp. 259-264. 2 The accounts of these transactions by Clarendon himself in his great but par- 378 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. though they had used all means to defeat the measure. And there is no doubt that even already Charles was manoeuvring to get the management of Church affairs into his own hand by means of a dispensing power — for was not he, by law and usage, Head of the Church of England ? and was not ecclesiastical supremacy lodged in the Crown ? — this claim to a dispensing power being the characteristic of Charles's policy, so far as he personally interfered in public affairs. Meanwhile, however, as long as the Convention Parliament lasted, and during what remained of 1660, the King was favourably disposed towards the moderate claims and proposals of the Presbyterians ; and the general policy was conciliatory- — the only time of tender- ness ever experienced, and it was very temporary.1 At this period, among those on whom Doctor of Divinity diplomas were conferred at Cambridge University by Royal mandate, the Presbyterians were represented by Dr. William Bates, Dr. Jacomb, and Dr. Robert Wilde. But more singular still was the offer of bishoprics to Baxter, Calamy, and Reynolds, while the see of Carlisle was meant for a fourth prominent Presby- terian, Dr. Richard Grilpin, and Winchester or Salisbury was pressed upon Thomas Warren, an equally able and dignified representative of Presbyterianism in the south-western coun- ties ; the Deanery of Lichfield being offered to Bates, that of Rochester to Dr. Manton, and that of York to Edward Bowles, while similar other preferments were in contemplation. All declined except Edward Reynolds, who accepted the bishopric of Norwich, apparently on the understanding that the terms ot the Royal Declaration were to be legalized and faithfully kept.2 tisan History, pp. 1034-1035, are far from creditable to his honour ; while in the Contemporary State Papers, " Cal. Dom. Charles II.," under such dates as 1 Nov. and 7 Dec, 1060, will be found curious and suggestive disclosures. _ It is important to note, that all the main legislation of this reign was a direct violation of the King's declaration from Breda. 1 The favourable prospects of the Presbyterians up to this time may be judged from certain entries in Pepys's JDiaky, e.g., under 4 Oct., 1600. 2 A volume of considerable interest, because a kind of manifesto of the Pres- byterians in 1660, is entitled, " REASONS Shewing the Necessity of Reformation of the Publick— 1. Doctrine; 2. Worship; 3. Rites and Ceremonies; 4. Church Government and Discipline. Reputed to be (but indeed not) Established by Law. Humbly offered to the serious Considerations of this present Parliament. By divers Ministers of sundry Counties in England. London : 1660." Zbc Decline of tbe Presbyterians in )£nglanfc (Continued). THE HEROIC PERIOD. I._Act of Uniformity, and the Ejectment of 1662. II.— Sufferings and Struggles. III.— The Lowest Depth, 1684-1685. IV.— An Ejected Presbyterian Minister of the Period. S7'J Zbc Decline of tbe Presbyterians in BSnglanfc (Continued). THE HEROIC PERIOD. I. ACT OF UNIFORMITY, AND THE EJECTMENT OF 1GG2. The steps by wliich the Church of the Restoration secured its triumph must always be painful to the honest mind. As the Restoration itself was founded in acts of selfish duplicity, the successive stages by which Prelacy resumed its power are defiled with the same taint. From the violated Declaration of Breda, down through the hypocritical Worcester House Declaration, and onward to the falsely designated Savoy Conference, the ground is strewn with discreditable artifices and violations of good faith, both on the part of the King and his advisers, especially Sir Edward Hyde (Lord Clarendon) and latterly Sheldon, Bishop of London, who became afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. To The Savoy Conference, the crowning act in this solemn farce, we must now advert, pre- mising that it was held in deference to a public promise of the King to the Presbyterians, which could not decently be set aside. A Royal Commission was therefore issued, March 25, 1661, summoning twelve Bishops and twelve Presbyterian Divines (with nine assistants on each side to supply the place of absentees),1 to meet together at the scene of former confer- 1 The Presbyterians were : — Edward .Reynolds (though now Bishop of Norwich) ; Dr. Tuckney, Master of St. John's College, Cambridge ; Dr. Conant, Divinity Prof., Oxford; Dr. Spurstow ; Dr. Wallis, Savilian Prof. 'Math., Oxford; Drs. Manton, Calamy, Baxter, Jackson, Case, Clark, Newcomen. Coadjutors : Drs. Horton, Jacomb, Bates, Cooper, Lightfoot, and Collins ; with Bevs. Wordbridge, Rawlinson, and Drake. Nine of these had been members of the Westminster Assembly ; Dr. Wallis had been one of its clerks, and Lightfoot a prominent debater for Erastianism. 381 382 THE PEESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. ences, the fine old Savoy Palace, overlooking the river from the Strand, where Sheldon had an official residence as its Hospital Master. The Conference opened 15th April, and according to Commission might go on for four months. The hollowness of the whole affair may be best seen if we recall what was being simultaneously transacted elsewhere, both in connection with the new Parliament and the Convocation. Events had tra- velled rapidly in the twelve months' interval between the Restoration of May, 1660, and the great coronation scene of May, 1661. It has been truly said, that if the Presbyterians were in the saddle in the May of 1660, the Prelatists had effectually supplanted them by the May of 1661. Hence the Savoy Conference was a mere blind, or little better. Sheldon took the chair ; and he speedily began to display that unfriendly and unyielding spirit which was actuating those who were now at the head of affairs. Far from meeting the Presbyterian Divines on that footing of fair equality which the terms of the Commission and the ostensible and professed object of the Conference would have led one to expect, he adroitly threw his opponents into the attitude of petitioners to the Bishops for the amendments they were wishful to secure. " It was unquestionably their duty to have met the Presbyterians in a moderate and conciliatory spirit, and with an honest desire to sacrifice things that were not essential, or at least to show that no agreement was attainable. Instead of this, they laboured to defeat the charitable design they had been convened to promote." ' So ended, with futile issue, the third and last public Con- ference for consultation and agreement between Prelatists and Puritans, the two others having been that at Hampton Court and that in the Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster, under the presidency of Dean (afterwards Archbishop) Williams, 1641. "2 The Presbyterians were conciliatory enough — " I leave it here on record to posterity," says Baxter, " that to the best 1 Canon Molesworth's History of the Church of England from 16G0. - The authority for the Savoy Conference is Baxter, who among his Presbyterian brethren might have said : " Quorum maxima parsfui." His Liturgy is one of the chief, though not sufficiently regarded, fruits. — An Account of all the Proceedings of the Commissioners of both Persuasions appointed by his Sacred Majesty, according to Letters Patent for the Beview of the Book of Common Prayer, etc. London, 10(31. THEIR DECLINE, 383 of my knowledge the Presbyterian cause was never spoken of, nor were they ever heard to petition for it at all." What they struggled for as sufficient for the present, was the old scheme of a reduced Episcopacy. Meanwhile the struggle was being waged elsewhere, in Convocation and Parliament. The new, or Pension, Parliament, besides decreeing that the Solemn League and Covenant should be burnt,1 and Prelates restored to the Upper House, had passed " The Corporation or Tests Act," and one for rehabilitating the Episcopal jurisdiction — thus paving the way for the subscription of the Pra}^er Book and the all-important Act of Uniformity.2 The nature of the Act of Uniformity,3 and the view of the whole situation, as it presented itself to the Presbyterian ministers, may be seen from the subjoined summary i of their objections to its requirements. It demanded of them : — I. To be re-ordained, if not episcopally ordained before. To this they could not submit, because it would stultify their past ordinations. II. To declare their unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained in and prescribed by " The Book of Common Prayer." 1 " Copies of the Covenant having attached to them the names of all the parishioners above the age of eighteen are still to be found among corporation records and parish archives. In the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, there is a copy, which was found a few years ago iu the roof of the old Rectory of Swyneshead, to the north of Bedfordshire, and bearing the signatures of Thomas Whitehead, the minister, and fifty of his parishioners. He had evidently not liked to destroy it, even after the Restoration came in. He had seen Episcopacy displaced by Presbyterianism and then again Presbyterianism by Episcopacy ; and in this uncertain world who could say what might happen again ? The coil of parchment, therefore, was not shrivelled in flame, but hidden away in the old Rectory roof, where it came to light in this generation, bearing the name of the parishioners who had signed it in the summer months of 1644." — Brown's Life of Banyan, pp. 76-78. 2 An able contemporary book by a very able man, John Corbet (who became the ejected minister of Southampton), gives an admirable account of the Presbyterian position and claims, in a beautiful style and spirit. It is entitled, The Interest of England in the Matter of Religion, in two parts, 1661, Svo. Among Corbet's other services was the part he took in compiling the first vol. of Eushworth's Historical Collections. See Calamy's Account, vol. ii. pp. 335-387. 3 Chief authorities here are (besides Baxter and Calamy), "Documents relating to the Settlement of the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity of 1662," with an able historical introduction by Dr. P. Bayne, A Bicentenary volume. See also Canon Swainson's Parliamentary History of the Act of Uniformity. 4 Abridged from Palmer's Calamy, vol. i., Introduction, pp. 37-50. 384 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. But they could not do this, for — 1 . Very few of them could possibly see the book in time. 2. When they had opportunity to see it, many things seemed to them not conformable to the "Word of God. Thus it :— (1) Teaches the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. (2) Prescribes the use of godfathers and godmothers, in baptism, to the exclusion of parents. (3) Obliges ministers to use the sign of the cross in baptism. (-1) J; „ to reject from the Lord's Supper all such as would not receive it kneeling. ' (5) To believe that bishops, priests, and deacons are three distinct orders in the Church by divine appointment. (G) To pronounce all saved that are buried, except the unbaptized, excommunicate, and self-murderers. (7) To express their consent to a rule for finding out Easter day, which they knew to be false.2 (S) To read apocryphal lessons. (9) To express entire approbation of the old version of the Psalms. (10) To consent to the clause in St. Athanasius's creed, " which faith except every one do keep ichole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.'''' (11) To assent and consent to the rubric, that " none shall be ad- mitted unto the Holy Communion until such time as he be confirmed, or be ready and desirous to be confirmed.''' III. To take the oath of canonical obedience, and swear subjection to their Ordinary, according to the canons of the Church. 1 Dean Stanley, after an elaborate historical survey in a well-known passage of his " Christian Institutes," declares : — " In the controversy beticeen the Church and the Puritans in the 11th century, there was a vehement contention whether kneel- ing at the Sacrament should be permitted. It was the point on which the Church most passionately insisted, and xvhich the Puritans most passionately resisted. The Church party in this were resistiny the usage of Ancient Catholic Christendom and disobeying the canon of the first Ecumenical Council, to luhich they professed the ■most complete adhesion. The Puritans, ivho rejected the authority of either, were in the most entire conformity with both." He had just before said: "The nearest likeness is to be seen in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, where the minister in his lofty pulpit behind the table, addresses the congregation, with his elders beneath him on the pulpit stairs or round its base." And again, " Of this standing posture of the congregation, which still prevails throughout the East, all traces have disap- peared in the Western Church, except in the attitude of the officiating minister at the Eucharist, and in the worship of the Presbyterian Churches always. Its extinction is the more remarkable because it was enjoined by the only canon of the Council of Nicam which related to public worship, and which ordered that on every Sunday (whatever licence might be permitted on other days) and on every day between Easter and Pentecost, kneeling should be forbidden and standing enjoined." - The rule is this : " Easter day is always the first Sunday after the first full moon which happens next after the 21st of March; and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter day is the Sunday after." THEIR DECLINE. 385 Herein they could not comply — 1. Because they found several things highly exceptionable in those canons,1 For instance, every one of them would be condemned — By Can. 4, for charging the Book of Common Prayer with " containing anything repugnant to the Scriptures." By Can. 5," affirming any of the Thirty-nine Articles to be erroneous." By Can. 7, for affirming, that " the government of the Church of England, by Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, etc., is repugnant to the Word of God." By the 9th, 10th, and 11th canons, for denying that " such as separate themselves from the Communion of the Church of England, and such as own those separate societies to be true Churches, are cdl to be excommunicated, and only restored by the Archbishop." By Can. 58, uEvery minister, when officiating, is required to wear a surplice, under pain of suspension." By Can. 68, " Ministers are required to baptize cdl children, without exception, who are offered to them for that purpose." 2. Another capital reason why these ministers scrupled taking the oath of canonical obedience was, that they found the episcopal government managed by Chancellor 's Courts ; and the word Ordinary, mentioned in the oath, would admit of divers senses, not only meaning the Bishop of the diocese, but the ' secular judges in their courts. Whereas, they thought the keys of the Church as much belonged to the pastor as the administration of the Sacraments ; and that incase of abuse, an appecd might more properly be lodged with a Synod, or with a meeting consisting partly of ministers and partly of deputies from the neighbouring Churches. IV. They were also required, by the Act of Uniformity, to abjure the Solemn League and Covenant, in these words : — " I, A. B., do declare, that I do hold there lies no obligation upon me, or any other person, from the oath commonly called, ' The Solemn League and Covenant,^ to endeavour any change or alteration of government either in Church and State; and that the same was in itself an, unlawful oath, and imposed upon the subjects of this realm against the known laws and liberties oftliis kingdom." Though many of those who were ejected had not taken this Covenant, and some of them were, all along, against the imposing it, their con- sciences would not allow such an unparalleled, form of renunciation as 1 No fewer than seventy-two of the canons of 1603-4 were directed against the Puritan positions. C C 380 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. this. They remembered that King Charles himself had taken it lawfully in Scotland, no less than tpiree times, with all possible appearance of seriousness and solemnity ; and they durst not run the hazard of tempt- ing the King himself, and thousands of his subjects, to incur the guilt of perjury. V. Besides the oath of allegiance and supremacy, all in holy orders were, by the Act of Uniformity, obliged to subscribe this political de- claration : — " / A.B. do declare, that it is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the King; and that I do abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his authority against his person, or against those that are commissionated by him.'1'' Thus, besides the non-resistance or passive obedience oath, the Act of Uniformity which was passed 19th May, and was to come into force 24th August, demanded three leading require- ments, with which the Presbyterians could not in honour and conscience comply : Re-ordination by a Diocesan Bishop ; unfeigned assent and consent to everything in the Prayer Book; and an unexampled oath renouncing the Covenant. Accordingly, on Sunday, 24th August, 1662, England witnessed one of the grandest triumphs of conscience on a vast scale — two thousand ministers, or one-fifth of the entire clergy of the Church, surrendered their benefices. Of the four-fifths who con- formed, a goodly number were moderate Presbyterians, like Dr. Reynolds, Bishop of Norwich ; Dr. John Wallis the mathe- matician ; and Dr. John Lightfoot the Hebraist, who were prominent members of the Westminster Assembly ; and these, with multitudes who had taken the Covenant and conformed to the Presbyterian Directory, carried on the struggle that produced the Low Church Evangelical party ; while Dr. Whichcote, Dr. Ralph Cudworth, and Dr. Henry More, the Cambridge Platonists, who belonged to Presbyterian families, paved the way by their latituclinarianism for a Broad Church party.1 Dr. M'Crie (Annals of English Presbytery, pp. 235, etc.) thus narrates the issue : — 1 Baxter, in his Penitent Confession, pp. 64-79, declares that of the 10,000 that conformed, no fewer than 8,000 had conformed to the Presbyterian order. Vide also Preface to his Church Concord and Life and Times, vol. i. pp. 390-399. THEIR DECLINE. 387 " The fatal 24th of August drew nigh, the blackest day in the calendar of the Reformed Church, being the anniversary of the Bartholomew massacre of the Huguenots of France in the preceding century, which occurred that year, as it did in 1662, on a Sabbath. Intense was the anxiety to know how the Nonconformists would act. To the astonish- ment of all, to the admiration of the few capable of appreciating the sacrifice, before that day arrived, without any physical compulsion, without concert or co-operation, upwards of two thousand ministers of Christ, rather than submit to the terms imposed, voluntarily forsook their churches, parsonages, and livings, casting themselves, with their destitute families, on the providence of Heaven.1 " Nothing is more remarkable in the story of this ejectment than the quietness with which it was effected. The Government, indeed, pretended to entertain some apprehensions of an emeute, and actually had the leading thoroughfares of London strongly guarded to prevent disturbances. But all such precautions were superfluous. The dissatisfaction in the public mind was widely spread and strongly felt ; in one or two churches some of the common people, — amused or annoyed at the novel and unwonted spectacle of surplice and service-book, — hooted at the officiating clergy ; but the sorrow of good men lay too deep to vent itself in strong ebullition. Nor did the ministers avail themselves of the opportunity to excite the angry feelings of their flocks ; on the contrary, their " farewell sermons," several of which were published,2 are remarkably free from any allusions 1 " Great pains were taken at the time to conceal the numbers of the ejected ministers. It was industriously circulated in the unprincipled newspapers of the day, that only one here and there had refused subscription (Mercuriw Publicus and Parliamentary Intelligencer, from August 14 to August 21, 1662); and at- tempts have often been since made to diminish the amount ; hut the calculations of the industrious Calamy have been fully verified by subsequent investigations, which show that the ejected must have considerably exceeded two thousand." (See Preface to a Second Edition of Calamy' s Account, vol. ii. p. 19.) "Dr. Edmund Calamy has done much to 'preserve to posterity the memory of their names, characters, writings, and sufferings,' in his Account of the Minister*, Lecturers, Masters and Felloivs of Colleges, and Schoolmasters icho were Ejected or Silenced (2 vols.) at this period. Calamy has arranged the persons according to the counties to which they belonged. This invaluable work, together with his Continuation (also in 2 vols.), forms a sort of biographical dictionary, which may be consulted by such as are desirous to know more particularly of those ejected from certain localities." The present writer has been favoured with the use of Dr. Calamy's own annotated copy, as well as other volumes from his library by the kindness of one of bis descendants. Samuel Palmer's " Abridgment," under the name of The Nonconformists' Memorial, is a serviceable form of Calamy's Account. 2 In 1663, A Collection of Farewell Sermons, to the number of forty- three (together with the Prayers on the occasion), was issued in a 4to volume. A sermon preached in anticipation by Thomas Watson of Walbrook, in April, reveals the meek and patient spirit of the sufferers ; not a word of complaint escapes the lips of the preacher, nor a single harsh reflection on the policy of the Govern- ment, The preface begins : " How infinitely happy are they who have a God 38S THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. to the melancholy circumstances under which they were delivered. Samuel Pepys, who records in his diary that he went to hear Dr. Bates' farewell sermons at St. Dunstan, on the Sabbath preceding St. Bartholo. mew, when a great crowd was assembled, informs us that in the morning " he made a very good sermon, and very little reflections in it to anything of the times. In the afternoon Dr. Bates pursued his text again, very well, only at the conclusion he told us after this manner : — ' I do believe many of you do expect that I should say something to you in reference to the time, this being possibly the last time I may appear here. You know it is not my manner to speak anything in the pulpit that is extraneous to my text and business ; yet this I shall say, that it is not my opinion, fashion, or humour that keeps me from complying with what is required of us ; but something, after much prayer, discourse, and study, yet remains unsatisfied, and commands me herein. Wherefore, if it is my unhappiness not to receive such an illumination as should direct me to do otherwise, I know no reason why men should not pardon me in this world, as I am confident that God will pardon me for it in the next.' " A more inoffensive or less inflammatory address could not have been uttered. And yet there is a sublimity even in its softness. It is the calmness of conscious integrity, blended with the meekness of Christian humility. Mr. Herring, who read the psalms and chapters on this occasion, after reading the 5th chapter of the Acts, which concludes by narrating that the Apostles, when beaten and commanded not to speak in the name of Jesus, " departed from the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name. And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ," simply said, " This is just the case of England at present. God, He bids us to preach, and men bid us not to preach ; and if we do, we are to be imprisoned and further punished. All that I can say is, that I beg your prayers and the prayers of all good Christians for us." " This," says Pepys, " was all the exposition he made of the chapter, in these very words, and no more." As they went fortli from their parsonages and benefices they knew not whither they were going or how they were to find support. No allowance was made by law out of their livings (though this had been done by the appointment of a fifth of the living when the clergy had been cast out by the Long Parlia- ment). Moreover, St. Bartholomew's day seems to have been malici- ously, and of set cruel design, chosen, that the incoming clergy to go to ! The saints are in such a condition that nothing can make them miserable." THEIR DECLINE. 389 might receive the revenues for the quarter then ending, while the Presbyterians, though they had done the work, were not allowed to be paid for it — a proceeding surely as pitifully mean as it was unjust and cruel.1 1 The precise number of tbe ejected has been a vexed question ; but taking into account that not a few had been displaced before St. Bartholomew's day by tbe return of sequestered Episcopalian incumbents who claimed their former livings, and a goodly number who resigned after that day, by stress of conscience, we see no reason to depart from the usual statement of at least 2000 in round numbers baving been cast forth from first to last; and that of these about fifteen hundred, or three-fourths, allowed themselves to be designated Presbyterian ministers, though many of them did afterwards conform. II. SUFFERINGS AND STBUGG-LES. The heroic and suffering age of English Presbyterianism, in- augurated by the Act of Uniformity, was a nobler time and bears nobler reflections than its years of greatest triumph. That triumph was secured by too much dependence on merely political methods of action. The authorities at the Restoration fell even more headlong into the same snare, and wrought un- speakable havoc and disaster. It is not too much to aver that by the Act of Uniformity the Anglican Church became schis- matic. That Act has much to answer for, in the generations of formalism, licentiousness, and irreligion that followed. The nation would have been spared many of the regrets and miseries of the last two centuries, had it taken more kindly to the aims and ideal of these old English Presbyterians. But the powers in Church and State had resolved to crush as well as humiliate them. The King himself vacillated, as if wishing that the Presbyterian clergy might retain their livings — though his object was the private and sinister one of protect- ing the Papists ; but Clarendon and Sheldon1 were fiercely implacable. The cunning and craft of priests and statesmen have seldom been better illustrated than in the legislative measures consequent on the Restoration. 1 Clarendon admits, regarding the Uniformity Act, that " every man, according to his passion, thought of adding somewhat to it that might make it more grievous to somebody whom he did not love." Sheldon, Bishop of London, is rejDorted as saying of the Presbyterian clergy, " Now that we know their mind, we shall make them all knaves if they conform." And on some one expressing regret that the door should have been made too strait, he is said to have replied, " It is no pity at all ; if we had thought so many would have conformed, we would have made it much straiter. " — Clarendon's Life, vol. i. p. 557. For the real character of Sheldon see Buckle's Hist, of Civilization in England, vol. i. chap. vii. , who gives painful details, with authorities. So regardless was he of the decencies of his station, that he would provide in his own palace mock exhibitions and caricatures of the Presby- terian preaching. For scandalous details, see Pepys's Diary, vol. iv. pp. 321, 322. Wilson's Life of Defoe, vol. ii. pp. 44-48. 390 THEIR DECLINE. 391 The Act of Uniformity completed the havoc previously begun in the Presbyterian Church of England. " Nor shall the eternal roll of praise reject Those unconforming ; whom one rigorous day- Drives from their cures, a voluntary prey To poverty, and grief, and disrespect, And some to want." ' Or, in the strong words of Locke, '; Bartholomew Day was fatal to our Church and Religion, in throwing out a very great number of worthy, learned, pious, and orthodox divines who could not come up to some things in the Act of Uniformity." 3 " No provision was made for the support of the ejected ministers, who were left to their own resources and the kindness of their friends. Their sufferings were often dreadful. One of them relates how Providence as- ' sisted him when he had but threepence left ; another tells of the joy with which he found two silver pieces in a ditch by the roadside, where he had sat down faint with hunger and distress ; a third records the unchanging goodness of the God of Elijah, who, — when his children wept for bread, and his wife had to witness their agonies and her husband's shameful lot, — sent an unknown messenger to his door with a sack of flour ; a fourth offers up his praises for the gift of seven golden coins from a stranger, when all his wealth amounted to three-halfpence; but, in short, the reader who chooses to turn over the leaves of Baxter's Life, or Calamy's History of the Ejected Ministers, may read the pathetic story, and yet too true, of want endured by many an outcast Vicar and his delicate family, far more touching than Goldsmith's imaginary tale, gilded with the lustre of an unfailing faith, and a serene dependence upon God." 3 From a modern point of view it may seem to have been a great mistake of the ejected Presbyterians that they did not join firmly yet respectfully in setting up a United Church organization, instituting ordinances and discipline on a Catholic basis as a protest against the new schismatic and non-Catholic Church Establishment, Why, it may be asked, did they not cling together and insist on co-operating together as one body, Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sketches. Locke's posthumous works, Letter from a Person of Quality. Marsden's Later Puritans. 392 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. scaring the Government out of their tyranny, and forcing them into a more generous and comprehensive policy ? In consider- ing the charge often preferred against them, of their being too tamely subservient to the tyranny of their rulers, and yielding too much to the encroachments of the prevailing party, we have to bear in mind, that in theory they were themselves National or Established Churchmen, and, like most of their contemporaries, not averse to a high and even a violent policy, which they had in measure themselves exemplified in their day of power ; that they naturally hoped the present mood of the country would alter, and another reaction set in which might counterbalance the prevailing one ; while, above all, they still cherished as their fond aim, not separation or final exclu- sion from the general Church system of the land, but compre- hension within it. Considerations like these, if they do not wholly justify, may serve to explain their reluctance to unite in measures which, by provoking the old animosities, would have led to military reprisals or renewal of civil war ; while the difficulty of inter-communication, the great poverty and precariousness of livelihood to which, as ministers, they were reduced, the divided counsels of their leaders, the state of the people, untrained to give for the voluntary support of religious ordinances, the certainty that Government would at once con- fiscate any large central funds that might be created, these and similar considerations that will occur to the reader, go far to account for their failure to set up a rival organization, and for their readiness to content themselves with doing what in conscience they could, while debarred from what they would have preferred. By their persistence, however, and patient endurance under innumerable indignities, sufferings, and wrongs, they did in the end secure a triumph over a capricious and odious system of tyrannical rule, even though the main- tenance of organized Church life, as they would have preferred it, was broken or had to pass into other forms for nearly a cen- tury, till the outburst of Methodism and the revival of its own more fully developed type of representative Church rule, gave token of better days for Presbyterian life and aspirations in England. But " the time was not yet come," and meanwhile THEIR DECLINE. 393 much had to be clone and suffered by those who stood out for further Church autonomy and reform.1 "We need not enter into detail as to the violent and persecut- ing statutes subsequent to the Act of Uniformity, directed with cruel and cunning precision against, not only the religious, but the ecclesiastical, social, educational, and personal rights of the Presbyterians.2 It was they who were more particularly aimed at in such statutes as the " Conventicle Act" which broke up the little attached congregations that had gathered around and clung to their ejected pastors, the " Five Mile Act" which forced these ministers and their small flocks into rural exile or even to starvation itself, and the " Oxford Act " of some years later, and of which we shall hear more afterwards. The one mitigating event in these vehemently suffering and harassing years was lithe ttle gleam of sunshine in the " In- dulgence " of 1672.3 1 " In recurring to the year 1062, it is impossible wholly to avoid the deeply in- teresting question, What became of the partner ejected from the firm ? The old English Puritanism has largely passed, on a widened scale, and with features miti- gated, but developed and enlarged, into the modern English Nonconformity. . . . After the ejectment from the National Establishment of religion, it travelled through a period of declension. But it has since developed, throughout the British Empire, in the United States, and in heathen lands, into a vast and diversified organization of what may be roughly termed an Evangelical Protestantism, which, viewed at large, is inclusive of the Presbyterian Churches in Scotland and elsewhere ; which has received a large collateral accession from the movement of Wesley, and which exceeds in aggregate numbers, and perhaps in the average of religious energies, the old Lutheran and Reformed communities on the Continent. It may be estimated moderately at one-tenth of the entire numerical strength of Christendom ; it de- pends almost entirely on the voluntary tributes of Christian affection, and it has become a solid inexorable fact of religious history which no rational inquirer into either its present or its future can venture to overlook." — W. E. Gladstone, in Nineteenth Century, July, 1888. - The State Papers of this time are full of suggestive illustrations. We may take as an example, because that of a layman, the case of a true patriot and distinguished inventor, Andrew Yaeeanton, of Worcestershire, one of the real makers of Eng- land's industrial greatness, and a chief founder of her iron trade. Seized in the midst of his labours by the Lord-lieutenant of the county, he was kept in prison for two years on some trumped-up charge of being connected with one of the many supposed Presbyterian plots of those days. V. Dom. Cal. of State papers, 13 Nov., 1660, and 23 June, 1662. Years afterwards, in 1681, he exploded the whole affair in his rare tract entitled, A Full Discovery of the First Presbyterian Sham Plot. For a full account of Yarranton's interesting and busy life, see chapter iv. of Samuel Smiles's Industrial Biography, 1852. 3 The two volumes of Registration of preaching licences under The Indulgence of 1(572, have recently come to light. A gentleman of the Records Office writes, " Among the State Papers of the reign of Charles II. preserved in the Public Record 394 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. We may now turn to Lancashire, and see how the Presby- terians and their Establishment fared in that province under the Restoration legislation. Of the noble ejected, Lancashire furnished well-nigh a hundred ; and these, with few exceptions, were covenanted Presbyterians, who resolved, at least most of them, to continue their ministry in secret at all hazards. Herle, Hollinworth, Gee, and other leaders were gone. Warden Heyricke, now a feeble old man, saw his way, after a deadly struggle, to conform, with a few others afterwards. Among the more distinguished Presbyterian non-conforming clergy in Lancashire parishes, we may mention the truly good and eloquent Henry Newcome of Manchester ; John Angler of Denton, and his nephew ; John Harrison, Rector of Ashton ; Robert Bath, Vicar of Rochdale, who had actually got the preferment from Laud himself, on marrying the Archbishop's niece ! Isaac Ambrose, of Preston and Garstang, the best known of his brethren as a writer of devotional books, full as they are of " pathos and beauty" ; John Tilsley, Vicar of the famous parish of Dean ; Robert Yates, rector of AVarrington ; Goodwin and Park, of Bolton ; Constantine of Oldham ; Richard Holbrooke of Salford, Heyricke's son-in-law, who became a physician, like Dr. Marshall of Lancaster, and others, to obtain an honourable livelihood ; and James Hyett, of Croston, who was Moderator of the first Provincial As- sembly, and able from his large private fortune to be of much service to his poorer brethren. A number of these Presbyterian ministers were twice ejected (first for refusing the " engagement" of the Republican Govern- ment, and then by the black Bartholomew Act). They became Office, is a volume lettered on the back ' Peeaching Licences — Domestic Entry Book: . . . The volume is of great value and interest to English Presbyterians, as it affords an almost complete directory of Presbyterianism in England and Wales in 1672. Not only are tbe names of the ' teachers,' as they are called, specified, but also the names of the places licensed for worship. Under the Indulgence three forms of licence were granted, one allowing the person therein named to preach in a certain place ; another authorizing the use of a specified place for worship after the manner of the Nonconformists applying for the same ; and the third, allowing a person to preach in any licensed place. These various forms are preserved among the State Papers of Charles the Second's reign, as are also some original licences, and the famous Indulgence itself." For details, see Report xvii., in Minutes of t lie Synod of the Presbyterian Church of England. 188G. THEIR DECLINE. 395 for the most part founders of the older Dissent in their respec- tive towns and neighbourhoods, when, after some years, licences for meeting-places could be legally secured. But after the Act of Uniformity, Presbyterianism as an organization was crushed in Lancashire, though Presbyterian ministers and Presbyterian people continued to abound. The diaries of Henry Newcome and Oliver Heywood re- veal the hardships that attended the frightful Conventicle Act of 1664, and the other sections of the notorious Clarendon code. Oliver HeyAvood was a Lancashire man, and co-operated with the Lancashire Presbyterian sufferers — though settled for years within the Yorkshire border. He was excommunicated first in the diocese of York, and afterwards in that of Chester, to pre- vent his private ministrations in his native county. Of the clergy who came to supply the parish of this silenced Presbyte- rian, we read, that the first was not liked, " being a wild man " ; the next came under a false name, and after officiating a month, " carried off some things he had borrowed of his neighbours " ; the third left, " not much regretted " ; the fourth " gave little satisfaction " ; the fifth " stayed but a short time " ; and the sixth felt " ashamed to remain." l Such were too often the men who stepped into the pulpits of the ousted Presbyterians. Very touching it is to read of the secret labours and the narrow, often hair-breadth, escapes of the worthy sufferers for conscience sake. To none were these "ousted " ministers more under obli- gations than to the noble family of the Booths of Dunham, who, though living in Cheshire, were identified closely with Lanca- shire as well. It will be remembered, that on the Protector's death, when a military chaos was threatening, Cheshire be- came the scene of the famous rising under Sir George Booth, the leading Presbyterian in the county, which did so much to determine the course of events in favour of the Restoration. Defeated for the time, and committed to the Tower, Sir George was ultimately chosen first of the twelve Commissioners to negotiate with Charles at Breda. And if, like others, he was fatally deceived in the results, he continued at least true 1 Hunter's Life of Oliver Heywood, p. 149. 396 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. throughout to Constitutional Government and to his original cry, " A free Parliament." After the Restoration, his valuable services at a critical juncture could not be overlooked. He was created Baron Delamere, of Dunham Massey. The Court of Charles II. was, however, no place for a man of his religious and political principles ; and, as Clarendon allows, " both he and his family were speedily disregarded by the King, and ill- used by his successor, James II." His son, the second Lord Delamere, was one of the foremost to welcome the Prince of Orange, who made him Earl of Warrington for his public spirit. To no Presb}^terian family of those clays is the country more indebted for civil and religious liberty, than to these honourable Cheshire Booths of Dunham. Their names are household words on the pages of Newcome and Martindale. The persecuted ministers were under special obligations to them when trying times came. Fifty-two were ejected in Cheshire, according to Calamy's figures ; but the names of at least sixty-two can with certainty be given. Martindale himself, after many severe ex- periences in gaining a livelihood, found a home for fourteen years as chaplain and tutor at Dunham Hall ; and there he had facility and leisure for writing his almanacks, his Country Sur- vey Book, and other scientific productions, which won him special attention from the Royal Society. In the Philosophical Transactions of 1670, it is interesting to find " extracts from two letters ... by the ingenious Mr. Adam Martindale, concerning the discovert/ of a rock of natural salt " in Cheshire. With all his interest in natural studies, however, Martindale continued, till his death in 1686, most devotedly attached to his ministry, preaching the Gospel in his old parish and elsewhere as he could find opportunity. The man, however, to whom the Cheshire Presbyterians looked above all others, during the dismal twenty-eight years from the Restoration to the Revolution, was the noble and pious Philip Henry ; but his life will form by itself the sub- ject of a later chapter. The year 1672, with its licences, brought some relief. Private houses and barns were, by the Royal indulgence, permitted to THEIR DECLINE. 397 be licensed for worship. The real founder of the old Presby- terian Dissent in Lancashire, was the pious and eloquent Henry Newcome, who had become the favourite preacher in Man- chester. Aided by Lady Mosley and other influential sup- porters, Newcome secured a licence, and became the first Presbyterian Nonconformist minister in the county. In the October of that year, there occurred the first ordination in England to perpetuate a Dissenting Ministry. The service was held in the house of Robert Eaton, Deansgate, Manchester, and was conducted by Newcome, Oliver Heywood, and others — Newcome delivering the charge to the three young men who were set apart with the laying on of hands. To hold a Presbytery was, of course, impossible and out of the question . The meeting was simply one of ministers ; Independents taking part also in the solemnity of the day. Thus were begun those associations of ministers for ordination purposes, by which Presbyteries and their representative character were consider- ably modified, if not in great measure ultimately supplanted. The penal laws operating between 1662 and 1688 effectually stamped out the whole hated system of Presbyterian Church Government and discipline. Presbyterians and Independents came to be regarded very much as one community, having the same relations to the law of the land, and were together known with the minor sects as simply " The Dissenting Interest." Oliver Heywood's account of his dedicating his two sons to such a discredited and persecuted ministerial life, would melt the heart of a stone. The closing of the Universities was a deadly blow, which was aimed emphatically at the better class of Presbyterian families. The earlier Presbyterian clergy were all University men — scholarly and highly cultured — preachers and authors, many of them, of very considerable mark. Herle, the Presbyterian Rector of "Winwick, and Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly after Dr. Twiss's death, was an able writer. His scholarly treatise, entitled, Wisdom's Tripos, and his sermon before the House of Lords, David's Song of Three Parts, amply attest this. The devotional works of that finely- 398 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. tuned and meditative soul, Isaac Ambrose, of Preston and Garstang, were long and deservedly popular.1 Oliver Heywood's writings have been collected in five volumes, and the life of this noble man has been repeatedly written. Many other Lancashire divines and worthies might be named, but the Presbyterian ministry never recovered its educational status. Nor did Presbyterianism ever rally to its full compass, from the deadly wounds inflicted on it, between the Restoration and the Revolution. Presbyterian ministers and their congregations were numerous, but they never attempted to revive Presbyterian government or organization in their entirety, which indeed the law for so long would not allow. But clearly did they pay the penalty of their remissness. For after the Revolution, their Church administration was of a mongrel kind — neither wholly Independent nor wholly Pres- byterian, in the full "Westminster sense of the term. They never regained their old fervour ; and being too passive in their attitude, they sank into feebleness, and then into defec- tion and decay. That the lapse of the so-called Presbyterian chapels into Arian and Unitarian possession has nothing what- ever to do with Presbyterianism as a method of ecclesiastical rule, we shall afterwards see. That " lapse " is largely a ques- tion of their independent or semi-detached condition, as well as of the trust deeds and endowments they saw fit to introduce. Recurring, however, for a moment to the noble and suffering Presbyterian leaders of Lancashire, that able heresiarch, Dr. Taylor of Norwich, as if startled in his later days with the growing degeneracy he had helped to initiate, thus casts " a longing, lingering look behind" in his fervid eulogium.2 " They had the hest education England could afford ; most of them were excellent scholars, judicious divines ; pious, faithful, and laborious minis- 1 An edition now lies before us of so recent a date as 1812, issued by no less a man than John Wesley, who knew good writing when he came across it, and who prefixes a Life and a strongly recommendatory notice. 2 The passage occurs in his Scrijjture Account of Prayer (1758), pp. 58-65. He is writing to dissuade Lancashire Dissenters from a Liturgy, to which some were strongly inclined ; and he protests, that " The principles and worship of Dissenters are not formed upon such slight foundations as the unlearned and thoughtless might imagine." THEIR DECLINE. 399 ters ; of great zeal for God and religion ; undaunted and courageous in their Master's work ; keeping close to their people in the worst of times ; diligent in their studies ; solid, affectionate, powerful, lively, awakening preachers, aiming at the advancement of real vital religion in the hearts and lives of men, which, it cannot he denied, nourished greatly wherever they could influence. Particularly, they were men of great devotion and eminent abilities in prayer, uttered, as God enabled them, from the abun- dance of their hearts and affections ; men of Divine eloquence in pleading at the throne of grace, raising and melting the affections of their hearers, and being happily instrumental in transfusing into their souls the same spiritual and heavenly gift. . . . But now, alas ! we are pursuing mea- sures which have a manifest tendency to extinguish the light which they kindled, to damp the spirit which they enlivened, and to dissipate and dissolve the societies which they raised and formed ! Let my soul for ever be with the souls of these men ! " III. THE LOWEST DEPTH. 1684-1685. There is a satisfaction in reflecting, that the King who most plumed himself on being no Presbyterian, was the most fla- gitious and perfidious of our monarchs : one, as has been said, "who was crowned in his youth with the Covenant in his hand and died with the host sticking in his throat, after a life of dawdling suspense between Hobbism and Popery." l Presby- terianism, according to Charles II., " was no religion for a gentleman." And he instinctively felt that its whole aim, spirit, and discipline were, as Hume himself allows, " more favourable to liberty than to royal power." "We select the last year of Charles the Second's ignoble but by no means unserviceable reign, 1684.3 He had long been playing a double game, not merely with his subjects but his ministers, each of whom he duped in turn. But now he had just won his greatest triumph. The Exclusion Bill had been rejected, and the succession secured for his popish brother. A mad out- burst of loyalty had followed the discovery of the Rye-house Plot, which was made the most of. Lord Russell and Algernon Sydney had been basely implicated and sent to the scaffold. The Country party was thoroughly worsted : Shaftesbury had fled, and the other leaders disappeared. Thus the Constitu- tional Opposition, which had so long held the King in check, was effectually crushed. Charles had regained immense popularity ; and at last he seemed within measurable reach of despotic power. The country was on the brink of accepting a tyranny. Never had public spirit fallen so low, nor the national temper been so abject. 1 Macaulay's Essay on Sir James Macintosh's History of the Revolution. - He died in fact before its close (if we adopt the style of the period which obtained till 1752 in England, and by which the year ran on to 25th March), on Gth Feb. 1684-5, at the age of fifty-three, after a reign of twenty-four years. 400 THEIE DECLINE. 401 The very climate was at its worst. The year opened in the midst of the great thirteen weeks' frost, the most famous in our annals, and fit index of the general condition of things. Philip Henry, says in his diary, " Great frost for divers weeks past. The Thames frozen over — booths built on it — forty coaches on the ice at once." Truly, as he remarks, " a hard time : a very sharp season." Under 1st Jan., 1684, the courtly Evelyn writes, " Weather continues intolerably severe, . . . small-pox very mortal." Farther on, we read of the cold increasing, coaches plying on the ice, " bull-baitings, horse-races, puppet-plays and interludes, a bacchanalian carnival on the water, though a severe judgment on the land, men and cattle perishing in diverse places." He mourns over the havoc in his own garden, " rare plants utterly destroyed," others " very sick" ; rosemary, laurels, and the like " dead to all appearance." l Other plants of rarer worth — patriotism, piety, and principle — were suffering also the most Arctic rigours. Midsummer brought a change, but no improvement. " Such a drought," says Evelyn, " as never was in my memory." Frost and drought sum up this unhappy year, 1684 ; and every sacred interest lies blighted. The " Divine right of Kings," alone is flourishing. Their divine right to do wrong is fashionable doctrine. The two ablest treatises in defence of absolutism were published this year, — one by Dean Sherlock and the other by the Scottish Lord Advocate, Sir George Mackenzie, — the bloody Mackenzie ; and they sufficiently indicate the debasement of public opinion. The Anglican clergy were foremost in gross adulation of the monarch ; and their pulpits had been echoing the extravagant and slavish theories of Sir Robert Filmer, which were now receiving fresh currency through his posthumous writings.2 It would be endless and profitless to enumerate the sermons, tracts, and dissertations that were being penned in favour of the doctrine of non-resistance, passive obedience, and the indefeasible hereditary right of the Crown. Here are some of 1 For further particulars of the great frost, see CaJamifs Life, vol. i. p. 115. 2 It is, however, but justice to Sir R. Filmer to remember his unusually en- lightened views regarding the witch craze, and also on the question of tbe interest of money — on both of which he anticipated the views of later times. D D 402 THE PBESBYTEKIANS IN ENGLAND. Filmer's morsels (liis Patriarcha being in such esteem as to require a special answer from Locke, years later) — " As kingly power is by the law of God, so hath it no inferior power to limit it. The father of a family governs by no other law than his own will, not by the laws and wills of his servants." " The direction of the law is but like the advice and direction which the Kings-counsel gives the King, which no man says is a law to the King." " A man is bound to obey the King's command against law, nay, in some cases against Divine laws." Sherlock, though, like Dean Hickes in his famous Jocian, of more moderate views, sets himself to maintain that " sovereign princes are in all cases irresistible." Within a year he is found piping in a different key, when the new King is beginning to thrust out Ins horns against the Anglican Establishment. The University of Oxford, to its lasting disgrace, had just published, — 21st July, 1(383, — its notorious decree in favour of despotic authority1 — a decree so abominable that it was adjudged to be burned by an order of the House of Lords in Palace Yard, 27 March, 1710. It was to Oxford University Sir George Mackenzie dedicated his Jus Begin m in 168-1, fitly maintaining, " that monarchy is in its very nature absolute, and these pretended limitations are against the very nature of monarchy." And he asks cynically in his preface, " Under whom can we expect to be free from arbitrary government, when we were and are afraid of it under King Charles I. and King Charles II. ? " Need we wonder that, with such servility prevailing, Charles should have ventured this year on the most dangerous aggressions he had ever attempted against the Con- stitution— the attack on town charters and the beginning of a standing army ? He had previously violated the Test Act by restoring James to his seat in the Council and to his post of Lord High Admiral ; while, in defiance of the Triennial Act, i It was, " against certain pernicious books and damnable doctrines, destructive to the sacred persons of princes, their state and government, and of all human society," in which Buchanan (De Jure Ilegni), Goodman, Cartwright, Travers, Rutherford {Lex Rex), The Solemn League and Covenant, Milton, Baxter, and otbers, all come in for denunciation under one or other of the Twenty-seven " con- demned propositions." These propositions are given by Jeremy Collier. See also State Tracts, privately printed in the reign of King Charles II., pp. 153. THEIR DECLINE. 403 Parliament had not been assembled. But lie was not without serious difficulties. Besides the vehement and aeonizine re- sistance in Scotland, there were a few other things to " give him pause." Though the Presbj'terian party had long been effectually prostrated in England, Charles had to reckon with a large measure of the Presbyterian Spirit, especially in Corpora- tions. The servility of the Anglican Church encouraged him to strike a blow at this. He dreaded Parliament, and yet to summon one sooner or later seemed inevitable. The policy and character of the Prince of Orange were entirely above the comprehension of so base a pensionary of the French king. For 100,000 livres Charles this year allowed Louis to seize Strasburg and Luxemburg ; but Avhat happened ten years b:?foro was likely to occur again. li Do 3*011 not see your country is lost ? " said Buckingham to the Prince of Orange, who had by so singular a Providence been allowed to marry the royal Princess Mary in 1677. " There is a sure way never to see it lost," said William, " and that is, to die in the last ditch." In fact, William was a mystery to Charles ; and his noble pertinacity and disinterestedness were sure to baffle the English King. And all the more, that the revengeful and irritated King of France, resenting Charles's shuffling evasions, withdrew all pecuniary aid, and, to the dismay of the English monarch, published one of his discreditable secret treaties with him. Charles's black visage never looked so gloomy, and never had he so bad a time of it, as during the autumn of 168-4. But the country was mad with loyalty, and Charles adroitly availed himself of this to secure a compliant Parliament, should he be driven to call one.1 1 This was the year of the famous, or rather infamous, quo warranto prosecutions. As Hallam says, it was suggested by some crafty lawyers, that a judgment to forfeit its charters obtained against the City of London (so hostile to the Court party) would not only demolish the chief citadel of opposition, but intimidate other cor- porations. Saunders was made Chief Justice for the very purpose of securing this (Campbell's Chief Justice*, vol. ii. p. 59). A pretext was easily found in some irregu- larity or other, with the result that the King obtained absolute control over the nomination of mayor, sheriffs, and other officers of the City, and thereby over the parliamentary elections. A like result followed in many other places. The judges of assize prostituted their authority to forward this encroachment ; and, as that unblushing partisan, Roger North, 'represents in his Examen, "Jeffreys, on the northern circuit in 1684, made all the charters, like the walls of Jericho, fall down 404 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. It was a liappy lot for the country, that Charles was always so divided against himself. His spendthrift habits stood in the way of tryanny. Pepys drew up a memorial on the waste and corruption in this very year ; and he reports that " No estimate could be trusted : no contract was performed, and no check was enforced." Besides the stability of the Habeas Corpus Act, the one re- deeming feature of this dark time was the comparative free- dom of the press. The old statute for the regulation of printing had lapsed in 1679, and the censorship was therefore a matter simply of common law. Did we not know the cause, we should be astonished at the literary activity of the period, and the way that a man like Baxter wielded his pen. He was just pushing through the press his Paraphrase on the New Testament with Notes. John Howe's pathetic discourse, The Redeemer's Tears wept over Lost Souls, and Dr. Thomas Manton's Practical Exposition of the Lord's Prayer may represent the more strictly Presbyterian publications of the year, besides Charnock's collec- ted works and Poole's Annotations. Of the members of the West- minster Assembly still surviving, may be mentioned Sir Matthew Hale, whose book, On the Nature of True Religion, bears date 1684. Like Selden and other eminent lawyers, he was a kind of ecclesiastical nondescript — having acted professionally alike for Laud and for Cromwell's two Presbyterian martyrs, Dr. Chris- topher Love and the Duke of Hamilton ; but, having signed the Solemn League and Covenant, he would to the last have preferred Presbyterian government. His high character and piety made him friends with all parties. The works of Dr. John Lightfoot were edited this year by John Strype. Light- foot had also been a member of Assembly in 1644, and, preach- ing at that time before the House of Commons, had not hesitated to say, " I rejoice to see what you have clone in platforming Classes and Presbyteries, and I verily and cordially believe it is according to the pattern in the mount." But many things before him, and returned laden with surrenders, the spoils of towns." Thus fell the municipal and, to a large extent, the parliamentary liberties, while, to provide against insurrection, Charles increased his guards steadily to 9,000; and he had six regiments besides— strangely enough, in the pay of William ! THEIR DECLINE. 405 had happened since then ; and Lightfoot preferred a quiet student's life. It was otherwise with those who preferred the heat and burden of the day, who were suffering sorely for conscience sake. Baxter, for example, was dragged three times this very year to the Sessions, and had to give his bond for £400 as security. His great rencontre with Jeffreys did not occur till the following May. " Richard^ I see the rogue in your face," shouted the infamous Judge. " I was not aware my face was so true a mirror" said Baxter smartly. The worst case this year of the maltreatment of a Presbyterian minister, was that of "William Jenkyn, the distinguished London preacher, and author of the Commentary onJude. This pious scholar and gentleman was thrust into prison for re- fusing to take the Oxford Oath, and verified his own remark, " A man may be as effectually murdered in Newgate as at Tyburn." One night, at Whitehall, Charles says to his musi- cians, " Play Jenkyn's Farewell." " Please your Majesty," said a nobleman in waiting, " Jenkyn has got his liberty." "Ay!" said the King, "who gave it him?" "A greater than your Majesty," was the reply ; " Jenkyn is dead." [ 1 Some further details of so eminent a Presbyterian minister as William Jenkyn may not be out of place. Jenkyn came of a wealthy Kentish family, his father being a distinguished Puritan minister of Sudbury, and his grandfather a gentle- man of considerable property at Folkestone. Born at Sudbury in 1012, he went, after his father's death in 1618, to live with his grandfather some years at Folke- stone. At the age of fourteen he was sent to Cambridge, where in due time he took his degrees with honour. He was appointed Lecturer of St. Nicholas' Church, Loudon, and in 1C40 was presented by Charles I. to the rectory of St. Leonard's, Colchester ; and two years later he became Vicar of Christ Church, Loudon, and Lecturer at Blackfriars. When in Colchester, he married the daughter of the like- minded divine Thomas Cawton, with whom he became implicated in Christopher Love's plot in favour of Eoyalty. (His father-in-law escaped to Holland aud died English minister at Rotterdam, 1659. An interesting memoir by a son of his in 1662, bears this title, The Life and Death of that holy Man of God, Mr. Thomas Caw ton, some time Minister of the Gospel at St. Bartholomew's, behind the Royal Exchange, and lately Preacher to the English Congregation at Rotterdam, with several of his Speeches and Letters while in Exile for his Loyalty to the King's Most Excellent Majesty. To which is annexed the Sermon on the inhuman Beheading of his Majesty, for which Cawton was imprisoned by the Commonwealth Government.) From 1642, Jenkyn had been Vicar of Christ Church, London, but when he de- clared himself a Eoyalist Presbyterian, on the overthrow of Monarchy, his living was sequestered. He was re-presented, however, to it on the next vacancy ; and held it till his second ejectment under the Act of Uniformity, in 1662. When the Indulgence of 1672 was issued, he took out a licence for himself as a Presbyterian preacher, and another for his " howse or chamber, in Home Alley, Aldersgate Street, 406 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. In many an act of despotic weakness and cowardly wrong did the reign of Charles II. come ignominionsly to its close. Prisons were kept crowded with aged ministers ; courts of justice were grossly corrupted, and were thronged with base informers, ready to swear anything for money ; while the Church, the Universities, and the Government were tainted to the core with loathsome hypocrisj^.1 Still, in spite of all their sufferings under the perfidious conduct and arbitrary measures of those in power,2 — aided and abetted as these were by the as a worship-place,'" these two licences being the first on the MS. " Entry Book " in the State Paper Office. He was very roughly treated in prison, when committed in 1684. Jenkyn's publications are — 1. An, Exposition on Jude. 2 vols. 4to. 2. The Busie Bishop, or, The Visitor Visited, in answer to John Goodwin's Sion College Visited. Goodwin answered this in The Youngling Elder, or, Novice Presbyter, and Jenkyn replied in The Blind Guide, or, the Doting Doctor. This John Goodwin, the Arminiau, is to be carefully distinguished from Dr. Thomas Goodwin. Of John Goodwin, Calamy says, "He was a man by himself; a man against every man, and had every man almost against him." 3. A Vindication of the Busy Bishop, in Answer to Goodwin's Reply. 4. Funeral Sermon for Dr. Thomas Gouge. ■">. Funeral Sermon for Dr. Lazarus Seaman, 1('>75. This occasioned a great outcry. Jenkyn had charged! some of the Conformists with preaching the sermons of Puritan ministers, while treating their persons with scurrility and contempt. While extolling the jDrofound acquirements of Dr. Seaman, he sarcastically says of the prelatical incumbents : " What a company of uncatechised upstarts do we now behold ! Oh, what poor shrubs are these young theologues to this lofty cedar till death cut him down. These empty and unaccomplished predicants, on whom I would not have reflected — though losers may have leave to speak — if they did not reproach our persons, while they preach (to say no worse) our sermons!" The controversy was keen ; and, in order to avoid objections, Jenkyn wrote a review in Latin, (5. Celeusma, sive Clamor ad Caelum adv. Theolog. Hierarchies Anglicance. 4to, 1G67. On this being attacked by Dr. Eobert Grove in a Latin treatise, Jenkyn furnished, 7. A Eeply to Dr. Grove, again in Latin. 8. Three sermons in the Morning Exercises, are also by Jenkyn. 1 Matters were worse in Scotland, if worse were possible. Hallam declares, " No j>art, I believe, of modem history can be compared for wickedness of government with the Scots' administration of this reign." The climax of iniquity at its close led up to the terrible incidents of what is so fitly and pathetically called " the killing time." inaugurated this year by those two frightful enormities, the appoint- ment of the "Itinerant Commissioners of Justiciary," with powers of court-martial ; and licence granted to the soldiery to enforce certain enactments on the spot, with- out any form of trial whatever. The patriotic instincts of Eobert Burns made him sing — " The Solemn League and Covenant Cost Scotland blood, cost Scotland tears ; But it sealed Freedom's sacred cause — If thou'rt a slave, indulge thy sneers ! " Henceforward the symbol of the Scottish Presbyterian Church was " The Burning Bush," with the motto encircling it, "Nee tamen consumebatur.'" - It has been estimated that from KitiO to 1(588, as many as 00,000 of all classes of Nonconformists suffered under the Uniformity laws ; 5,000 died in prison ; and THEIR DECLINE. 407 leaders and rulers of the Church party, — the Presbyterians, in the day of that Church's distress (when James II. was bringing in popery on the back of the Church of England's own profes- sions and principles), nobly and disinterestedly arrayed them- selves on the side of the Church, and patriotically aided in the defeat of the royal bigot's cunning but unconstitutional machi- nations.1 And so they were mainly instrumental in securing a peaceful and happy Be volution. 15,000 families were ruined. — Sir James Macintosh, History of the Revolution, pp. 166, 175; and Cotton Mather's History of New England, lib. hi., p. 4. 1 Lord Macaulay says (History of England, vol. ii., pp. 215, 347) : "After the Reformation, when her (the Church of England's) power was at the height, she had breathed nothing but vengeance. She had encouraged, urged, almost compelled the Stuarts to requite with perfidious ingratitude the recent services of the Presby- terians. ... At this conjuncture (James the Second's popish struggle) the Protestant Dissenters of London won for themselves a title to the lasting gratitude of their country. With a noble spirit, they arrayed themselves side by side with the members of the Church in defence of the fundamental laws of the realm. Baxter, Bates, and Howe distinguished themselves by their efforts to bring about this coalitiou. . . . The zeal of their flocks outran that of the pastors." IV. PHILIP HENRY: AN EJECTED PRESBYTERIAN MINISTER.1 What enduring vitality attaches to noble character ! Philip Henry, of all men least covetous of fame, seems destined to an immortality that springs perennial from age to age.2 Of Welsh extraction on the paternal side, he was born 24th August, 1631, within the precincts of Whitehall Palace ; his father having a place with considerable perquisites as keeper of the postern-gate at the garden stairs by the river, through which he had to give admission to Privy Councillors and others who came by water. " The witnesses at my baptism were Philip, Earl of Pembroke, who gave me my name and was kind to me to the day of his death ; James, Earl of Carlisle ; and the Countess of Salisbury." Philip Henry did no discredit to such a birthplace or so distinguished sponsors. He was naturally a well-favoured child, and soon began to develop that graceful suavity of speech and demeanour which never left him. The young princes were his occasional associates, Prince Charles, afterwards Charles II., being a year older, and Prince James, afterwards James II., two years younger. 1 Chiefly adapted from Author's Life of Philip Henry, in Religious Tract Society's new Biographical Series, No. 51. 2 He is usually referred to as Matthew Henry's father ; but he becomes dearer for his own sake, tbe better be gets known. There is a charm about him of a kind that does not belong to his distinguished but more prosaic som Philip Henry's unambitious temper appears in his motto, from Thomas a Kempis, Bene vixit qui bene latuit. But though fond of the " quiet retreat " of his study and the " silent shade" of his country pastorate, he was, by the diligent improvement of his leisure time, unwittingly rearing a monument to himself in the mass of carefully digested material which was turned to such good account in that delicious morsel of Chris- tian biography, The Life of Philip Henry, by his son Mattbew ; and the three sets of Memoirs of the Henry family by Sir John Bickerton Williams, F.S.A. ; and most recently, in The Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry, 1882. In him these gracious words are verified afresh — [" The sweet remembrance of the just Shall flourish when he sleeps in dust," 40S their decline. 409 At Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. From earliest childhood, Philip Henry was piously nurtured and guarded from the contaminations of Court life by a beloved and revered mother, Magdalen Rochdale, who had imbibed much of the devout and anxious Puritan spirit, and of whom he writes, " Living where she had opportunity ot enjoying worldly delights extraordinary, she was dead to them. She looked well to the ways of her household, prayed with them daily, catechised her children, and brought them con- stantly to public ordinances." Philip Henry was brought into contact with the great events of 1640-1G42, at their very centre : events like the assembling of the Long Parliament ; the tumults and mobs against the Bishops and in favour of the Grand Re- monstrance ; and the rash attempt of the King to seize the patriot leaders, followed by his flight and their triumphant re- turn to Westminster. He cherished grateful memories of the royal family ; and whatever he thought in later life as a Pres- byterian respecting Laud and his policy, he was never slow to mention his own kindly reminiscences of the Archbishop per- sonally. The sharp active Primate not unfrequently noticed with approval the eagerness of the boy to open the postern for his Grace, when hastening to cross the river to Lambeth from some Privy Council meeting.1 It would not be easy to light on a finer picture of Christian boyhood than that of Philip Henry. After good preparatory training, he is admitted in 1643, at the age of twelve, to Westminster School. Passing with distinction through the fourth form, he ere long comes under the immediate care of its redoubtable head-master, Dr. Richard Busby, whose name has become proverbial as a preceptor of youth. Philip Henry's 1 After Laud bad been sent to the Tower, Philip Henry once went with his father and saw him there — a visit rendered memorable to the boy by the Archbishop giving liim some bright new coined pieces of money. Philip Henry chose the Presbyterian side in the coming conflict, striving to unite in himself the Constitutional Loyalist and the Evangelical Churchman. But never, even when an outcast and persecuted sufferer, did he cease to cherish these early recollections. And never did they fail to keep bitterness from bis spirit, without in any way impairing his own deliberate convictions. 410 THE PRESBYTEEIANS IN ENGLAND. mother, in her religious care for her boy, stipulated he should attend the early morning lecture, set up from seven to eight o'clock at the Abbey in connection with the Westminster Assembly of Divines. Writing of the seven preachers who conducted that service, Stephen Marshall, Herbert Palmer, Charles Herle, Philip Nye, with Whitaker, Stanton, and Hill, he says : — " I was their constant hearer, at the request of my dear mother to the master, who dispensed with my absence from school that while; and I wrote their sermons as well as I could. She took me also with her every Thursday to the lecture at St. Martin's, and every monthly fast to Si. Margaret's, Westminster, which was our parish church, where preached the ablest men in England before the House of Commons." These and other influences then surrounding him were among the chief determining elements of his life. But though drawing him in an opposite direction, they did not interfere with his rise in the good graces of Dr. Busby, whose favourite pupil indeed he ere long became. In 1645 he was admitted King's Scholar, and was used by Dr. Busby for gathering references for his celebrated Greek Grammar. But Philip Henry's beloved mother was not spared to see her son's further progress. She was cut off by consump- tion in the spring of that year. With wdiat inexpressible joy and thankfulness she would have hailed the great religious decision and spiritual turning-point of her beloved boy in 1047 ! This to her would have been " above all Greek, above all Roman fame." Here is the touching record of April 1647, when he was six- teen years of age : " The Lord was graciously pleased to bring me home effectually to Him- self by means of my schoolmaster, Mr. Richard Busby, at the time of the solemn preparation for the Communion then observed. The Lord recom- pense it a thousandfold into his bosom. I hope I shall never forget. There had been treaties before between my soul and Jesus, with some weak overtures to Him : but then, then I think it was that the match was made." But the time had come for Philip Henry to pass from Busby's charge, and repair to the University. Of the ten THEIR DECLINE. 411 elections in May, 1647, five were for Oxford and five for Cam- bridge. The second place for Oxford fell by right of merit to Philip Henry. So he is entered Commoner at Christ Church on December 15th, the Earl of Pembroke sending him ten pounds to set out with. On March 24th, 1648, he is admitted student of Christ Church b}^ Dr. Henry Hammond, subdean, who called him god-brother, the Earl of Pembroke having stood god-father to them both.1 He takes his Bachelor's degree 7th February, 1051, and proceeds Master of Arts 10th December. 1652, dis- charging during the next year or two several University offices with great credit and honour.2 But Philip Henry's mind is bent on the ministry. He preaches his first probationary sermon in Janua^ 1653, at South Hinksey, near Oxford. " The Lord make use of me as an instrument of His glory and His Church's good in this high and holy calling," he writes in his diary. He is wishful to continue his studies some time further, but an unexpected offer changes for him the whole scene of a lifetime. In that section of Flintshire which is separated from the rest of its county, and curiously embedded between Shropshire 1 These two admirable characters, Henry Hammond and Philip Henry, the very excellent of the earth, got speedily separated amid the convulsions of the times. Each went his several way in life ; Hammond, to be the hope of the Anglican party, and Philip Henry, the glory of an ejected remnant. Oxford had been the strong- hold of Boyalists and High Churchmen. Bat now that Parliament had acquired the ascendency, a commission was sent down to purge the University. Under the test question, " Will you submit to the power of Parliament in this present visita- tion ? " Hammond and many others were ejected. Philip Henry's guarded answer was accepted : " I submit as far as I may with a safe conscience and with- out perjury," he himself acquiescing in the Covenant, as well as in the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. But he saw further changes forcibly effected after Par- liament and the army had come to an open rupture. The Presbyterian, Dr. Edward Beynolds, who had supplanted the Episcopalian, Dr. Fells, as Dean of Christ Church, is ejected for not taking the engagement to Cromwell, and gives place to Dr. Owen, the Independent. Unpropitious as these political invasions and turmoils might be supposed to be for studious life, yet we are told Philip Henry "would often mention with thankfulness to God, what great helps and advantages he then had in the University, not only for learning, but for religion and piety. Serious godliness was in reputation. . . . Many of the scholars met together for prayer and Christian conference, to the great confirming of one another's hearts and preparing of them for the service of the Church in their generation." - Home Latin verses of his are found in the volume of Congratulatory Poems from Oxford, on occasion of Cromwell's glorious peace with Holland in 1654. 412 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. and Cheshire, Philip Henry's lot was cast all the rest of his days.1 He lived in it at Emral and Worthenbury for nine years, and then at Broad Oak for thirty-four. "Worthenbury, with a church of its own, was an incumbency in the north- west of Bangor parish, having a chapelry also dependent on the mother church. Here stands Emral Hall, an ancient mansion of the Pulestons, then occupied by John Puleston, serjeant-at-law, just made in 1649, after the King's death, one of the judges in the Court of Common Pleas. His wife, Lady Puleston, was not only of good family, but of strongly marked character and piety. She had written to a friend at Christ Church for some young man to teach her sons and preach at "Worthenbury, promising free board with the family and sixty pounds per annum as a very honourable encourage- ment ,to begin with. The post was offered to Philip Henry, who agrees to come for six months, provided he is to preach but once on the Lord's day, being only twenty-two years of age and " newly entered on that great work." September sees him located in Emral Hall, busy with his various duties. " You have done more good these six months than I have seen these eighteen years," was Lady Puleston's encouraging testimony. 1 Interesting associations are connected with this curiously detached piece of border country. Here Wales seems as it were to protrude into England with that fragment of Flintshire so singularly torn away from the rest of the county, and, being wedged in on the eastern side of the Dee, is entirely surrounded by Shropshire, Cheshire, and Denbigh. The Welsh name for the district is Maelor Saesneg, Saxon or English Maelor, by way of distinction from Maelor Cymraeg, or Welsh Maelor, on the Western or Denbigh side of the river. Maelor means, " a place of traffic," and apparently indicates where the two opposing races, Welsh and Saxon, in olden time, might meet and mingle on friendly terms in the transaction of business. Here, on an island in the Dee originally, but latterly also along its eastern banks, rose the great British Monastery of Bangor — if indeed Monastery be the right term for that famous Celtic College and Missionary Institute, the Oxford or Iona of Wales in the sixth century, which was by far the largest and oldest of its kind, and which con- tinued to send forth from its midst bauds of Christian teachers and labourers far and wide over Britain, Ireland, and the Continent of Europe itself. Abbot Dinoth, its last president, firmly resisted all the efforts of Augustiu of Canterbury to bring the British Church under Papal authority ; and it was in opposing these Romish pretensions that he and, it is said, two thousand of his brethren fell at last a bloody prey to Ethelred in G07. The scene of this tragic story, this Bangor Monachorum, or Bancornbury by Dee, is not to be confounded with the other Bangor in Wales or the Irish one on Belfast Lough. Its traditions and memories are perpetuated in the present name of the place, Bangor-is-y-coed, or Bangor Iacoed, " the great high choir under the trees." their decline. 413 Philip Henry's Ordination and Ministry. "July 6, 1657, 1 made addresses to the Presbytery in Shrop- shire for Ordination. Sept. 16, I was ordained minister, being solemnly set apart thereto by imposition of hands. I thank Thee, 0 Lord Jesus, for puting me into the ministry. I did this day receive as much honour and work as ever I shall be able to do with. Lord Jesus, give me strength! " This ordina- tion of his was ever a delicate matter, of high concernment with Philip Henry. And, as it came to play an important part at the most critical and conscientious juncture of his history, and determined the current of his whole after life, it may be proper to explain his Church principles and position. Two words, the Discipline and the Prophesying*, had been long familiar favourites with the " more resolved Puritans," or Presbyterians within the Church of England. Out of the Discipline grew those endeavours in the parish or congrega- tion which had respect to purity of Church-fellowship. Out of the Prophesyings grew the Classis, or classical Presbytery, which had respect to more autonomy or spiritual self-government in the Church. Both these parts of the Consistorial or Presby- terial polity sprang up together and found embodiment in that Book of Discipline, or Directory' of the earlier Church Puritans, which was republished by authority of the Long Parliament in 1644. This was the line of Church reform that was being fallen back on and adopted after the execution of Laud ; and Philip Henry's days at Westminster School were in the very thick of the movement. With the vivid intelligence of a public schoolboy, he took the keenest interest in the crisis and was permanently affected by it. He saw the whole machinery of Presbyterian organization and worship come into operation all over London in July and August, 1646, with fourteen Presbyteries and one hundred and thirty parishes. But this more Conservative wave of Puritanism was checked when the victorious revolutionary army, fresh from Naseby, seized the struggling city a second time, and having ejected the 200 Presbyterian members from Parliament, 6th December, 1648, proceeded to arraign and execute King Charles, the London 414 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Synod protesting with all its might against the deed. But though Presbyterianism had waned as a State power, it was to this as a religious party that Philip Henry strenuously adhered ; politically condemning the King's death as a blunder and crime, having been opposed, not to the Crown, but to its slavish maxims and its unconstitutional malpractices ; and ecclesi- astically, having a preference for a National Establishment of religion, with its watchword of accommodation inside for tender consciences, as against a merely limited toleration for orthodox sects outside its pale. When this scheme failed as a civil establishment, there sprang up Presbyterial associations of ministers and Churches in many places, for " mutual advice and strengthening one another," on a voluntary footing. It was one of these, set up in Shropshire by Thomas Porter, M.A., the venerable minister of "Whitchurch, Richard Steel, M.A., of Hanmer, and other like-minded men, that Philip Henry now joined, and which he did so much to maintain and adorn. His examinations were conducted with great care. Foremost was the inquiry as to the work of grace in his own soul. Then followed his trials in Hebrew and Greek, Logic and Philosophy, Divinity and Church History, Casuistry, and the like. When he had satisfactorily acquitted himself in all these exercises, his ordination was fixed for the month following, and was gone about with equal orderliness and solemnity. '-Methought I saw much of God in the carrying on of the work . . • the remembrance of it I shall never lose." l 1 In Matthew Henry's Life of His Father, there is a full account of the ordination services, and of the seven questions publicly proposed to the candidates. The account continues : — " When this was done, Mr. Parsons pray'd ; and in Prayer he and the rest of the Presbyters (Mr. Porter, Mr. Houghton, Mr. Maiden, and Mr. Steel) laid their hands upon hirn, with words to this purpose, Whom we do thus in Thy Name set apart to Die Work and Office of the Ministry. After him, there were five more, after the like previous Examinations and Tryals, Professions and Promises, at the same time in like manner set apart to the Ministry. The Classis gave him Instruments in Parchment, — Whereas Mr. Philip Henry, of Worthenbury, in the county of Flint, Master or Arts, liatli addressed himself unto us, Authorized by an Ordinance of both Houses of Parliament of the 29th of August, 1648, for the Ordination of Ministers, desiring to be Ordain'd a Presbyter, for that he is chosen and appointed for the Work of the Ministry at Worthenbury, in the county of Flint, as by a Certificate now remain- ing ivith lis, touching that his Election and Appointment appenreth. And having THEIR DECLINE. 415 Thus, at the age of twenty-six, Philip Henry becomes minister of Worthenbury. Judge Puleston confirmed a settle- ment he had made of £100 per annum, and was contemplating the erection of a parsonage-house for him. " Lord, I seek not theirs but them," is his own comment. " Give me the souls ; let whoso will take the goods. Oh that God would add some seals to my ministry." Lady Puleston died 29th September, 1658. This was a great blow to Philip Henry : '; She was my best friend I had on earth." They were singularly of one mind in religious and ecclesiastical matters, and doubtless he had been greatly strengthened, by her in his conscientious convictions. Judge Puleston, though not sympathizing with him to the same ex- tent, dealt, however, by him always most kindly and honour- ably. Not only did he build the promised house (part of it being still visible in Worthenbury Parsonage), but he had previously given him a legal indenture of 5th March, 1657, assigning it to him in personal right, with glebe and appur- tenances, for sixty years, should he not accept other prefer- ment. Philip Henry entered on possession in February, 1650, likewise exhibited a sufficient Testimonial of his diligence and proficiency in ]iis Studies and unblamableness of his Life and Conversation, lie hath been examin'd according to the Rules for Examination in the said Ordinance expressed; and there- upon approved, there being no just Exception made, nor put in against his Ordination and Admission. These may, therefore, testijie to all whom it may concern, that upon the Sixteenth day of September, i657, Vie have proceeded solemnly to set apart for the office of a Presbyter, and Work of the Ministry of the Gospel, by laying on of our Hands with Fasting and Prayer, By virtue whereof ice do declare him to be a lawful and sufficiently authorized Minister of Jesus Christ : And having good evidence of his lawful and fair Calling, not only to the Work of the Ministry, but to the Exercise thereof at the Chappel of Worthenbury in the County of Flint : We do hereby send him thither, and actually admit him to the said Charge, to perform all the Offices and Duties of a Faithful Pastor there, exhorting the People in the Name of Jesus Christ, willingly to receive and acknowledge him as the minister of Christ, and to maintain and encourage him in the Execution of his Offiice, that he may be able to give up such an Account to Christ of their Obedience to liis Ministry, as mag be to his joy, and their everlasting comfort. In Witness whereof, we the Presbyters of the Fourth Class, in the County <;/' Salop, commonly called Bradford-North Class. have hereunto set our hands, this Wth day of September, in the year of our Lord God, 1657. Tho. Porter, Moderator for the time. Andrew Parsons, Minister of Wens. Aylmar Haughton, Minister of Prees. John Malden, Minister of NeAvport. Richabd Steel, Minister of Hanmer. 416 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. eight months before the Judge's death. Had he been eager for preferment, he had two opportunities this very year ; being offered, and " much solicited to accept," the vicarage of Wrexham in March, and a large living near London shortly after. He declined both proposals, for many reasons. One thing that bound him to the spot, was the mutual attachment which had sprung up between himself and a young lady of pious disposition in the neighbourhood, Katharine Matthews, only child and heiress of Mr. Daniel Matthews, a gentleman of property, who had been Under-sheriff of Flintshire, and who represented some of the old families in the district. Philip Henry and she were married, 26th April, 1660, at "White-well chapel, her father giving her awajr, and surrendering for marriage portion the title-deeds of Broad Oak farm he had himself obtained with his own wife, Eleanor Benyon, as heiress of a family that had held it for generations. On Mr. Matthews's death, in 1667, his other properties came likewise to his daughter's children, so that Philip Henry and his household were amply provided for. His richest inheritance, however, was found in Katharine Matthews herself. " My dear wife, every way my helper, blessed be God," is his grateful and constant acknow- ledgment. The Suffering Nonconformist Minister and His Principles. But Philip Henry is now on the eve of great changes. Try- ing times, not, indeed, unmixed with mercy, are at hand, times of a suffering, and what for him was even worse to bear, times of a silenced ministry. Of this he had foretastes in the strange treatment he began to experience at the hands of the young Pulestons, now returning home again with very different views and habits from any they had imbibed when under his own influence. Within a year, Judge Puleston had followed his wife to the tomb, 5th September, 1659 ; and when Philip Henry preached the funeral sermon, he felt, as his son remarks, that the last tie which bound him to the family at Emral Hall was snapped, and buried in the grave. On Cromwell's death, a military chaos seemed impending. The country was falling a prey to soldier adventurers. At this THEIR DECLINE. 417 juncture, Sir George Booth, of the family of Dunham Massey, headed the Cheshire rising in Philip Henry's neighbourhood, which, with its cry for " A free Parliament," did so much to determine the course of events in favour of the Restoration. Lord, own them, if they only own Thee, was the expression of Philip Henry's hopes and wishes on the occasion. Defeated at the time by Lambert's soldiers (some of whom Philip Henry rebuked in "VVorthenbury church for irreverence), Sir George was committed to the Tower, but eventually was chosen first of the twelve Commissioners to negotiate with Charles at Breda, and was afterwards created a peer (Lord Delamere) for his high services, however much deceived in the end, with his co-Presbyterians, by royal and other perfidy. Relying on the Declaration from Breda, and to save a nation on the brink of ruin, none more cordially promoted or welcomed the return of Charles II. than Philip Henry and his fellow-Presbyterian ministers. How sadly misplaced was their confidence ! Very soon the conduct of the restored King and his advisers gave cause for disgust and alarm. Milton's warning words in his Defence of the People of England were coming true: "Woe be to you, Presbyterians especially, if ever any of Charles's race recover the sceptre ! Believe me, you shall pay all the reckon- ing ! " A mighty reaction was setting in. The nation began to sink to its lowest. Its worst scum rose to the surface. Wearied out with its long and abortive efforts at reform, it craved for a settlement of any kind and at any price, if only it were a speedy one. Mad excitement was followed by an equally mad fit of base and lethargic self-indulgence. Philip Henry, like his brethren, had bitter experience in his own neighbourhood of the change. The Puleston family had been on the side of the Parliament in the late struggle, and in 1644 Emral Hall had been rabbled by the Royalists. But now, the rapid way the younger generation swung round to extreme Royalism, alike in politics, religion, and morals, was an illustra- tion of what was going forward more or less all over the land. The process was in every way most demoralizing. With vast numbers, it was a matter of convenience only, and not of conscience. No wonder we read so much in Philip Henry's E E 418 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Diary, after this, of revellings, and of deaths from drunken surfeits. Young Puleston, with his brothers, imbibed the low, sensual tastes that began to prevail where men had consciously lost their political and religious integrity. Aided and abetted by neighbouring squires, he seems to behave like a frenzied mad-cap, and in many ways vexes the righteous soul of his former tutor. He tears down the Covenant in the church, and insists on hanging up in its place the Privy Council Order to burn it. Believing a lying report, he sends a deputy-lieutenant of the county to search Philip Henry's house for arms, " not openly, but slily by his brother." At another time " he over- took us and drew his sword, and would needs fight, saying we were all traitors, swearing desperately." With keenest interest, but with mingled pain and astonish- ment, Philip Henry watched the reactionary and vindictive measures of the Restoration Government and the "Pension" Parliament, as it was called, from so many of its members being in the pay of Charles II. and Louis XIV. of France. Ecclesiastically, its procedure led up to the Act of Uniformity of 1662. The interval between the 19th of May, when that Act passed, and the 24th of August of the same year, when it came into force, was a period of gravest anxiety and prayerful consideration for Philip Henry and his brethren. He could heartily take the oath of allegiance, but the three other things it imposed — re-ordination by a Diocesan bishop, unfeigned assent and consent to everything in the Prayer Book, and abjuring the Solemn League and Covenant, he could not in conscience accept. By this time he was dismissed from his curacy through a crafty collusion of the young Squire and the Rector of Bangor. But the question he still had to settle was, Conform or not to the new regulations of the Church ? This he discussed with all and sundry, friends and foes — but chiefly spread it before his Glod in prayer, afraid lest he should over- much "confer with flesh and blood." The suggestion of many, that if he did not conform at once, he would lose his chance of promotion, he could brush aside without a thought. " I had rather lose my all, and save my conscience," is his indignant protest. Philip Henry had nothing in him of the schismatic THEIR DECLINE. 4l9 or separatist spirit. But his conscientious difficulties were insuperable. St. Bartholomew's Day found Philip Henry, therefore, among the '; ejected." It was his own birthday. Hence he writes in his will under 24th August, " The day of the year in which I was bora, 1631, and also the day of the year in which by law I died, 1662, as did also near two thou- sand other faithful ministers of Jesus Christ." Happily, how- ever, for him and his, the sweet little freehold estate and farm demesne of Broad Oak, which had come as marriage portion with his wife, Katharine Matthews, was ready to receive them. A comfortable retreat it proved at such a juncture, and for the remaining thirty-four years of Philip Henry's life, a notable centre of help and hospitality for his less fortunate brethren, and such a scene of domestic felicity and family nurture as to have made the very name of Broad Oak a delight and a praise on the earth. It was conveniently near, — but five miles off on the high road between Whitchurch and Wrexham, just where the Welsh hills come into view,— and thither, as to a port in a storm, the little household, consisting of himself, his wife, and their eldest boy, betook themselves, only a fortnight before Matthew is, if not prematurely, yet unexpectedly born. Philip Henry is the domestic or family saint of the seven- teenth century Presbyterians. The home life at Broad Oak is his special glory. With nothing mystical or monkish about his quietude and retirement, he threw a halo of sanctity round all the domestic relations, and made his dwelling a proverb for everything true and pure, honourable, lovely, and of good report. What streams of gracious influence have come forth from that well-ordered and hallowed abode ! Nowhere did Philip Henry shine more brightly than as prophet, priest, and king in his own house. And seldom has a scene of purer domestic order and happiness been witnessed than at Broad Oak. During the long period between the Restoration in 1660, and the Revolution in 1688, Philip Henry suffered much and often for conscience' sake as a Nonconformist minister. Throughout these twenty-eight years, public worship by Dissenters was for the most part prohibited, often under heavy 420 THE PEESBYTEEIANS IN ENGLAND. pains and penalties. Even the meeting of a few Christian friends for prayer and social edification became a crime. Both Church and nation fell into a persecuting mood. The severe statutes against Nonconformity afforded many opportunities for spiteful annoyances and exactions, and of these Philip Henry had a full share. His Church principles and position as a Nonconforming Presbyterian may be best given in his own words. Against Prelacy he protests, — " 1. That the government of the Church ought to be managed by the ministers of Christ. " 2. That in Prelacy, ministers have not the management of Church government — not in the least — being only the executioners of the Prelates' decrees, as in Excommunication and Absolution ; which decrees are given forth by lay Chancellors and lay Deans rural. " 3. Therefore, that Prelacy is a Usurpation in the Church of God, upon the crown and dignity of Jesus Christ, and upon the gospel rights of His servants, the ministers. " 4. Therefore I ought not to subscribe to it, nor to swear not to en- deavour in all lawful ways the alteration of it."1 As against Independency, he says : — " Three things I do not like in the Independent way. 1. That they unchurch the nation. 2. That they pluck up the hedge of parish order. 3. That they throw the Ministry common, and allow * persons to preach that are unordained. In two things they are to be commended. 1. They keep up discipline among them. 2. That they love and correspond with one another. If I were an Independent, I must be an Anabaptist." 2 Philip Henry, as a warmly evangelical and spirituals- minded man, was no narrow, bigoted, or pragmatic sectarian. There was in him a vein of the largest Christian catholicity. Holding firmly regarding The Covenant, " that though particu- lar instruments might miscarry, it was in general the cause of God and religion, as will in due time be made to appear" he was most tender to those who differed from him in honest convic- tions, on conscientious grounds. He was the very opposite of an extreme man, though of incorruptible integrity and un- 1 Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry, p. 185. 2 Ibid., p. 277. THEIR DECLINE. 421 flinching faithfulness. The principle on which he acted in freely attending the Established Church services was this : — " I do not conform to the liturgy and its requirements as a minister, that I may hear my testimony against Prelacy ; but I do conform in part as a private worshipper in the assembly, that I may bear my testimony against Independency, looking on both as by-paths and the truth between them." ' His parish church was in Malpas, Cheshire ; but more or less for thirty years he attended what was called, from the salt spring above the Wich valley, Wichwell or Whitewell chapel, an old picturesque black and white building of beams, which had to be removed in 1830. It was nearer for the family, and he had his liberty as to postures or omissions of ritual,2 although he was often sorely tried as a moderate Conformist, and made the victim of outrageous bigotry and persecution. Philip Henry was repeatedly in prison for conscience sake. In 1665, the unworthy insult and affront was put on him of being appointed sub-collector of taxes for the township, to show he was not legally a clergyman. This, like every other indignity, he bore with meek Christian patience, discharging the office by paying a deputy and seeing the work well done. A greater trial this year was the Five Mile Act. Broad Oak was more than this from Worthenbury, by actual measurement ; but the Justices insisted on the wretched quibble that it was only four reputed miles, and Philip Henry had to remove to Whitchurch for a year. There he began to dispense the Lord's Supper, and to exercise all other ministerial functions, weary with waiting for some relaxing of the law. When King Charles II. suspended the penal laws in 1672 for a little, Philip 1 Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry, p. 277. 2 As regards posture in public worship aud kneeling at altar rails, to which Philip Henry would not conform, how noble his sentiment, " To the command of my superiors, I oppose the command of my supreme, saying, ' Be not ye servants of men and call no man master,' which I do when I give a blind obedience to their injunctions for the authority's sake of the injoiners, rendering me no reason why or wherefore, but only, Sic volo, sic jubeo ; and to do this in the things of God's worship I conceive to be sinful." The rails were one of Laud's freaks, " an innovation warranted by no law, neither divine nor human, civil nor canonical." That the Lord's Supper was observed by guests round a table, was the all-sufficient standard for the Bible-taught Philip Henry. 422 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Henry availed himself of the licence procured by his friends, and made Broad Oak a Presbyterian preaching-place, while he further took advantage of the opportunity afforded for minister- ing in adjacent counties. At the Revolution in 1688, Philip Henry got the benefit of its liberty and toleration, and was more abundant in labours than ever, and greatly revered and looked up to by all his brethren. He died on midsummer day, 1696, aged nearly sixty-five. ersuasions of Protestants in such a bond of love and unity as may contribute to the lasting security and en- joyment of spirtuals and temporals to all sincere professors of that holy religion." 400 460 THE PRE3LYTEKIANS IN ENGLAND. that spread at once to the provinces ; though, for reasons which we shall afterwards see, it was unfortunately of so few years' continuance in London itself. Both parties, for the sake of mutual peace, and for the urgent requirements of a common and sacred cause, showed a disposition to coalesce and co-oper- ate. The effort at union was formally embodied in the famous nine brief chapters, or, as they were called, " Heads of Agree- ment assented to by the United Ministers in and about London, formerly called Presbyterian and Congregational" Both parties had, of course, to sacrifice something of their distinctive methods of action, if not of their special or distinctive principles, in the spirit of a true and loving compromise. The following passage, from the " Preface " to the " Heads of Agreement" will illustrate the healing spirit as well as the general position of the movers in the case. " Imposing these terms of Agreement on others is disclaimed. All pre- tence to coercive power is as unsuitable to our principles as to our circum- stances ; Excommunication itself in our respective Churches, being no other than a declaring such scandalous members as are irreclaimable to be incapable of communion with us in things peculiar to visible believers. And in all, we expressly determine our purpose to be the maintaining of har- mony and love among ourselves, and preventing the inconveniences which human weakness may expose us to in our use of this liberty. The general concurrence of ministers and people in this city, and the great disposition thereto in other places, persuade us this happy work is undertaken in a season designed for such Divine influence as will overcome all impedi- ments to peace, and convince of that agreement which has been always among us in a good degree, though neither to ourselves nor to others so evident as hereby it is now acknowledged. It is incumbent on us to for- bear condemning and disputing those different practices we have expressly allowed for ; to reduce all distinguishing names to that of United Brethren ; to admit no uncharitable jealousies or censorious speeches ; much less any debates whether party seems most favoured by this Agreement. Such carnal regards are of small moment with us who herein have used words less accurate, that neither side might in their various conceptions about lesser matters be contradicted, when in all substantials we are fully of one mind ; and from this time hope more perfectly to rejoice in the honour, gifts, and success of each other as our common good. That we, as United, may contribute our utmost to the great concernments of our Redeemer, it's mutually resolved we will assist each other with our labours, and meet and consult without the least shadow of separate or distinct parties, THEIR DECLINE. 461 whence we joyfully expect great improvements in light and love through the more abundant supplies of the Spirit, being well assured we herein serve that Prince of Peace, of the increase of whose government and peace there shall be no end." The leading idea of the Union was not one of entire incor- poration of Churches (however much some might sanguinely hope for such a result), but of practical co-operation in all matters where both parties might work in common. It has sometimes been represented that in this brotherly but unfortunately short-lived Union, the Presbyterians made an entire surrender of all their distinctive positions in favour of the views of their Independent brethren. A careful and candid consideration of the Articles of Agreement will sufficiently dispel this notion ; and while both the spirit and measure of their concessions reflect special honour on the conciliatory temper of the Presbyterians, it will be seen that they surren- dered their outward methods rather than their inward princi- ples, though no doubt the unwise extent of their concessions as to the former did ultimately operate in the impairing of the latter. The effort was, however, a fair and honourable attempt, on both sides, to find a modus vivendi by mutual concessions, and to exemplify in the altered circumstances the Apostolic in- junction, " Whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing." x 1 Philippians iii. 16. The following account of the Union is given by Rev. John Quick, the Presbyterian author of the Synodicon in Gallia Beforniata. "After a most lamentable schism of about forty years' continuance, it pleased God at last to touch the hearts of the godly ministers of the Presbyterian and Independent per- suasions with a deep sense of this great evil, in separating so long the one from the other. Whereupon several pious and learned pastors in the City of London, of both ways, met together divers times, and conferred each with other about healing this breach ; and having frequent consultations about it, and poured out many and fervent prayers unto the God of grace and peace to assist them in it. Upon 6 March, 1690, most of the Dissenting Nonconforming ministers in the City, and many others from adjacent parts of it, met together, and there was read to them the Heads of Agreement prepared by the Committee, and which had been seen and perused by many of them before ; and their assent to them being demanded, it was readily accorded, and afterwards near 100 gave in their names to this Union. This example was taking and leading to the Nonconforming ministers through England, who in many of their respective counties had their meetings to^ compose this difference. . . . When the London ministers first signed this Union, they unanimously agreed to bury in the grave of oblivion the two names of distinction, Presbyterian and Independent, and to communicate these Articles of Union unto all members in 462 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. The Presbyterians had, of course, given up in their altered circumstances their old idea of parochial or territorial divisions, which was essentially connected, not with their Presbyterian- ism, but with their Established Churchism ; and they fell in with the former Independent idea of indiscriminately "gathered Churches," as the necessary complement of a Non-State Church condition, " yet for common edification, the members of a par- ticular Church " should be as far as possible such as " live near one another." All constituted Churches are admitted to be on the same level, and have equal rights within themselves, each Church choosing its own office-bearers, and determining of what num- ber and Lkind these office-bearers shall be, no Church or bod}' of Churches having strictly speaking Church power or juridi- cal functions over others. A kind of appellate jurisdiction, however, belongs to Synods ; but parochial and Classical Pres- byteries are held in abeyance, or resolved into consultative associations of ministers. On the other hand, the Independents made a long stride towards Presbyterianism in declaring and " allowing that it belongs to the Pastors and Elders to rule and govern " in each Church, and to the brotherhood to consent " according to the rule of the Gospel." Under Article II., the Independents also agreed that minis- ters and pastors are to be elected by the Church, but "that every such Church consult and advise with the Pastors of neighbouring Congregations," as to whom they ;shall call and choose ; while speciaFcare is taken as to the minister-elect being solemnly and duly ordained, and set apart to his office over the Church by these associated ministerial brethren, who, according to Article IV., are " to act together and consult on the interest of the Churches ; while more Presbyterial still is Article VI., " that it is useful and necessary in cases of import- ance for the ministers of many Churches to hold a Council ; communion with them in their particular Churches, the Lord's Day come seven- night after ; and that they would at the next meeting acquaint the United Brethren what entertainment and acceptance the reading of it had in their Assemblies ; which was done accordingly, and to general satisfaction." THEIR DECLINE. 463 and that the decisions formed in their conventions must not be rejected by the Churches without the most weighty reasons." Undoubtedly the Presbyterians, in surrendering, or at least being so largely indifferent to, the Authoritative power of the Associated Ministers and Synods over individual Churches, did surrender most under this scheme of Union. For though they theoretically retained the real kernel and guarded the keystone of their polity, they certainly sacrificed many of the principal outworks and buttresses of their system. In the palmy days of the Long Parliament, the Presbyterians declined to yield so much to the "Dissenting Brethren," and they held stiffly out for the strict and full form of Presbyterian Organization ; but it should not be forgotten that if the Dis- senting or Independent Brethren of that earlier period had conceded then as much as they were willing to concede now, an accommodation might have been reached. At all events, it is only due to the Presbyterian party to remember that the Westminster Assembly had itself indicated, that where it was difficult or impossible for Classical Presbyteries to be organized "up to their full work and power," other arrange- ments might be made, so long as Presbyterial rights of ordin- ation were recognised and secured. This they now deemed in the whole circumstances of the case a sufficient recogni- tion of their essential principle of general Church unity and organic coherence, while avoiding as far as practicable the continuance of disunion and the weakening influence and tendency toward self-isolation of separate or individual Churches. For this good end, the Independents had made also very heavy and serious concessions on their part.1 1 That this was so, to a much greater extent than many mere controversialists have been -willing to allow, is frankly and fairly stated with his usual candour by Dr. Stoughton, who says : — " The Independents must have passed through a change, inasmuch as they now ceased to insist upon the duty of Church-members entering into formal Covenants, and allowed that in the administration of Church power it belongs to the Pastors and Elders to rule and govern, and to the brotherhood to consent, according to the rules of the Gospel. They also tacitly admitted that a man might be ordained to the work of the ministry without having a specific pastoral charge." And again, he adds, " In the chapter relative to the Communion of Churches, the Independents of the Eevolution showed more disposition towards unity than their predecessors had done, and the chapter indicates an approach to Presbyterian government." 464 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Thus arose the main " Dissenting Interest," as it now got to be called in England, neither wholly Presbyterian nor wholly Independent or Congregational, but partly both ; and on this footing many of the Dissenting " meetings " were placed and worked. The "Happy Union," as it was fondly termed, did not last in London quite four years, for reasons to be imme- diately given ; but the " Heads of Agreement " were adopted in many parts of the country, and were worked out in associa- tions which, in their laxer form, became, if not the parent, at least the herald of the later and modern " County Unions " among Congregationalists ; and, in their stride)' form of classes, grew (especially in Northumberland, as we shall afterwards see) into Presbyteries ; while some of the Unitarian and Pres- byterian Assemblies, as of Devonshire and Lancashire with Cheshire, are linked to the still older Presbytero-Independent Associations of the times of the Commonwealth. The motif which dictated so wise and sensible a policy at this juncture may, perhaps, be best gathered from the Minutes of the London General Fund Committee, illustrating, as they do, very clearly why the United Body of Presbyterians and Congre- gationalists had, on July 1st, 1690,1 established a Fund, adminis- tered by a central Board, for the training of students for the ministry, the aid of weak Churches, and the extension of the Gospel. The minutes begin with the following highly sug- gestive record, — " "When it pleased God to incline the hearts of our rulers to permit the religious liberty of Dissenters by a law, some persons (concerned in this present worke) laid to heart the great disadvantages which the ministry of the Gospel was attended with in England and "Wales, both by the poverty of Dissenting ministers, and the inability and backwardness of many places to afford them a mere subsistence — they considered also that many of the present ministers (wonderfully preserved to this time) are aged, and therefore it was necessary to provide for a succession of titt persons to propagate the Gospel when others were removed. By the im- portance of these considerations t\\ey were led to invite a considerable number of ministers in and about the City of London, to advise of some methods to obviate those difficulties, as far as the law allowed to improve 1 The Presbyterians by themselves had originated a scheme of their own the previous year, 1G89, but now sought to widen its scope and basis. THEIR DECLINE. 465 this liberty to the best purposes. These ministers judging a select num- ber of ministers might best contribute to these designs, did choose seven ministers of the Presbyterian persuasion, and the ministers commonly called Congregational, fixed in an equal number, to assist in an affair thus common to all, who desire the advancement of the interests of our blessed Lord. The ministers thus appointed met together, and after seeking coun- sel of God and many serious thoughts and debates among themselves, att last concluded,—' (1) That some due course should be taken by way of benevolence to relieve and assist such ministers in more settled work as could not subsist without some addition to what their hearers contributed ; (2) That provision might be made for the preaching of the Gospel in some most convenient places where there are not as yet any fixed ministers. (3) That what is thus contributed should be impartially applied, accord- ing to the indigent circumstances and work of every minister. (4) That none might be admitted to a share in this supply as ministers, but such as are devoted and exercised in the ministry as their fixed and only em- ployment with the approbation of other ministers. (5) That some hope- ful young men might be incouraged for the ministry, and the sons of poor Dissenting ministers (if equally capable) might be preferred to all others. (6) That a number of private gentlemen should be desired to concur with the fore-appointed ministers in the procuring and disposal of the said supply to the above-described uses, which gentlemen were fixed on.' " By these steps this happy work was begun, which 'tis hoped God will soe enlarge the hearts of the well-disposed to contribute to, and attend with such a blessing as may greatly advance the kingdom of Christ, and give posterity occasion to adore the goodness of God in thus directing the minds of such as are engaged therein." 1 1 The trustees thus selected were : William Bates, Samuel Annesley, John Howe, Vincent Alsop, Daniel Williams, Eichard Mayo, and Richard Stretton, Presbyterian ministers ; and Matthew Mead, George Griffith, Nathaniel Mather, George Cokayne, Matthew Barker, John Faldo, and Isaac Chauncy, Congregational ministers. The next meeting was held July 14, 1690, and the third meeting August 25, when it was reported that £2,136 12s. Gd. had been subscribed to the Fund. For three years the representatives of the two denominations met together for the purpose of increasing this fund and appropriating it. The minutes are blank for the fourth year. The last record of the third year is June 26, 1693. The first record of the fifth year is Feb. 5, 1694 (5), when the Presbyterians appear alone. There were present, John Howe, Daniel Williams, Richard Mayo, Richard Stretton, and John Shower. The subscriptions for the year were £996 18s. M. This separation in the Fund followed the separation from the Union, and the rupture of the Agreement owing to the strife over Dr. Williams's book. The minutes of the original meetings are in the first volume of the minutes of the Presbyterian Fund, which was supposed to be its legitimate successor, the Congregational brethren withdrawing. See Appendix xiv. of Dr. Briggs's American Presbyterianism; but for full particulars on this and other Trusts, see The Presbijterian Fund, and Dr. Daniel Williams's Trust, with Biographical Notes of the Trustees, and some Account of their Academies, Scholarships, and Schools, by Walter D. Jeremy, M.A.., Esq., Barrister-at-Law. Lond., 1885. H H 166 the presbyterians in england. The Provincial Associations and Unions. The efforts at Union and Co-operation, which, had been successfully inaugurated in the Metropolis, led to similar efforts in the country, and helped to revive the spirit of the older Commonwealth associations. These Classes or Associations of Presbyterian and Congregational ministers sprang up in many quarters, where the " Heads of Agreement " formed a basis of common ecclesiastical and ministerial fellowship. This hap- pened in Lancashire,1 in Cheshire,3 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Cumberland and "Westmoreland, Norfolk and Suf- folk, Exeter and Devon.3 as also in the Midlands and Northum- berland (to be afterwards noted). We may here indicate the earlier course of Presbyterianism in Devonshire, so as to trace the connection between its organization and the famous Exeter Assembly of later date. " Under Elizabeth Puritanism took deep root in the West, and this Establishment of " Prophesyings of the Clergy " paved the way for the formal introduction of Presbyterianism. The seed then sown sprang into active life in the ensuing reigns, and was fostered into vigorous growth by the proceedings of the Court of High Commission. . . . Presby- terianism had gained so great a hold in many localities, that the abolition of Episcopacy made no change in them." 4 For some period of its ascendency Presbyterianism was well organized and effectively worked by its adherents there. Ac- cording to John Quick, who was one of the later of these Devonshire Presbyterian worthies (see Icones Anglicance), — " They kept their yearly Provincial Synod at Exeter, in the month of May, in which all the ordained Pastors had their place and session, and power of suffrage. This Synod was subdivided into several colloquies or classes ; that of the South Hams reached from Ashburton to Newton 1 In the Chetham Library, Manchester, there is preserved the Minute-Book of the United Brethren of the County of Lancaster, from 3 April, 1693, to 13 August, 1700 — very much like the continuation of the Presbytery records, for the Independ- ents in that neighbourhood were few. 2 The Cheshire minutes are preserved in the vestry of the old Meeting-House (now Unitarian) in Knutsford. 3 In the Williams' Library, London, are the Minutes of the United Brethren of the City and County of Exon and County of Devon, from 1691 to 4 Sept., 1717. * History of Devonshire, by R. N. Worth, pp. 32-34. THEIR DECLINE. 467 Bushell ; from Newton Bushell to Totness ; from Totness to Dartmouth ; from Dartmouth to Kingsbridge ; from Kingsbridge to Modbury, including all the country parishes of these parts. These met once a quarter." The history of Presbyteriariism in Devonshire is closely con- nected with the name of the godly and pious John Flavel,1 who, though associated with its earlier operations in that coun- ty in 1650, and one also of its ejected ministers in 1662, was spared to take a leading part, after the Revolution of 1688, in endeavouring to effect a union between the Presbyterians and their Congregational brethren in 1691. He had the satisfac- tion of seeing matters brought to what he thought an amicable conclusion, though unfortunately the arrangement did not last very long, being ultimately broken through by the Congrega- tionalists. At the meeting; of the Devonshire ministers held 1 Born about 1630, in the pleasant parsonage of Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. After graduating at Oxford, John Flavel received Presbyterian ordination in 1650, at Deptford, Devonshire, whence, in 1656, he removed to the larger and more popu- lous Dartmouth, in the same county, on the earnest and unanimous call of the people, though it was " to his great loss in temporals, the Rectory of Deptford being a much more valuable benefice." When only twenty-three years of age, he presided with great dignity as "Moderator" of the Devonshire " Provincial Synod; " and when a Presbyterian Established Church was no longer possible, he was one of those who, under the Protectorate and later Commonwealth, strove in the spirit of Baxter at Kidderminster, and others in different places, to advance genuine godliness by a coalition of Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists, " that so, by their united counsels and forces, they might prevent the desolation of the Church and of the reformed religion," and stem the torrent of practical wickedness, as well as mitigate the evil of prevailing heresies, blasphemies, and divisions. " No man," we are told, " was more generally popular or more beloved by his people. When ejected from Dartmouth, they clung to him with such devotion that it was with great difficulty he could tear himself away. On the passing of the ' Oxford Act,' the whole congregation followed him out of the town, and at Townstall Churchyard they took a mournful farewell." He suffered much under the "Five-mile" and other persecuting Acts, ministering often secretly to his flock, and at great personal risk. On one occasion he was surprised when preaching to an immense congrega- tion near the high road between Crediton and Exeter ; but while several of his hearers were seized and heavily fined, he himself managed to escape the officers of the Crown. During the plague of London, 1665, his worthy father, Richard Flavel, who was also one of the ejected, happened to be on a visit to the City, and with his wife was at a meeting for prayer at a private house in Covent Garden, which was broken in upon by soldiers with drawn swords. They were arrested with the other worshippers, and being committed to Newgate, where the plague was raging, they both caught the infection, and were at last released only to die. John Flavel was spared till 1691, and reaped the benefits of the Revolution for a year or two. His practical works, The Mystery of Providence, A Token for Mourners, A Saint Indeed, and the two volumes on Husbandry, and Navigation spiritualized, have long continued among the best known and most useful of their kind, with their rich sap and savour, their homely yet striking metaphors, and illustrative stories, their evangelical glow, and all the other ingredients of arresting and effective writing. 468 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. at Exeter in June, 1691, to consider and adopt the London Articles of Agreement, Flavelwas Moderator ; but the thanks- giving sermon he so gladly preached on the occasion, was " his dying song." That very night, after supper, he was struck with paralysis, and passed to his rest saying, " I know that it will be well with me." A few years later, we find John Quick (to whom we are indebted for valuable sketches and memorials of Flavel and other worthies, in his Icones Sacrce Anglicancs, still in MS.),1 crying out of a sorrowful heart, " Come out of your graves, ye old Puritans and self-denying ministers, and shame this selfish, quarrelsome, and contentious generation. Oh ! that there were a double portion of the healing spirit of those Elijahs whom I knew in my younger days ! " 1 John Quick's Icones Sacra Anglicancc MS. " This interesting MS. volume is preserved, though in a very dilapidated and mouldering condition, in the Dr. Williams Library. It is entitled, " Icones Sacrce Anglicana, or the Lives and Deaths of severalls eminent English Divines, Ministers of the Gospel, Pastors of Churches, and Professors of Divinity in our own and foreign Universitys. A work never before ex- tant. 2 Tim. 4, 5; Heb. 6, 12; Heb. 13, 7. Performed by John Quick, minister of ye Gospel." This is accompanied by other two volumes in folio, one of which is entitled, " Icones Sacra; Gallicaiue, being a History of the Lives of five-and-thirty eminent French Divines, Pastors, and Professors in the Reformed Church and Univer- sities of France." The three volumes are written out in a fair band, and carefully prepared for the press. (Prefixed are some poetical pieces, congratulating the author on the appearance of his work.) They appear to bave been written about the year 1691, but, tbougb the author's death did not take place till 1706, they were never published. Probably they came into tbe bands of Dr. Daniel Williams, wbo preacbed his funeral sermon. Dr. Calamy had access to these manuscripts, and has made ample use of them (see Calamy's Account, p. 230). He was tbe author of Synodi- con in Gallia Eeformata, or a History of the French Eeformed Synods. Settled first at Brixton, in Devon (he was minister, too, at Middleburg, in Holland, where Cartwright had been, and also Joseph Hill, see Steven's Hist, of Rotterdam Church, p. 318, 319), he came to London, and continued to labour there for several years, chiefly in a meeting-house in Bartholomew Lane, near the ruins of St. Bartholo- mew's Church, where, through a low gateway, still extant, the martyrs were led to the stake at Smithfield. Strange, that the name of that blessed apostle should be so mixed up with scenes of massacre, martyrdom, and ejectment ! " (M'Crie's Annuls of English Presbytery, pp. 285, 286.) VI. THE FIEST, OE NEO-NOMIAN, CONTROVERSY. DR. DANIEL WILLIAMS AND THE RUPTURE OF THE LONDON UNION. There was unfortunately too much reason for these sighings and expressions of grief by good John Quick, on account of the spirit of contention and recriminative suspiciousness that broke out in 1692 among the leading Dissenters, Presbyterian and Independent, in the Metropolis, and which raged with such fury for the next seven years, till the end of the century. The violent and unseemly theological controversy which suddenly sprang up, entirely shattered the London Happy Union within four years of its formation ; but happily its worst effects were confined to the London neighbourhood, and did not seriously threaten the United Associations elsewhere, though it checked their development and prevented the growth of more. That the leading Congregational Brethren, who ultimately broke away from the Union, were the parties chiefly responsible for the rancour and bitter personal animosities of the controversy, will soon painfully appear.1 A dangerous spirit of Antinomianism2 1 See Bogue and Bennett's History of Dissenters, vol. i. pp. 402 and 418, for support of this view by candid Independents. - This was the dregs of an old controversy, inherited from the days of the Civil War, when it had been thrashed out in many treatises by members of the West- minster Assembly and others. One of the most famous of tbese volumes was, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, by Edward Fisher, originally published 1644-5, and designed to strike out the true middle way between Legalism and Antinomian- ism. "The author endeavouring to reconcile and heal those unhappy differences wbich have lately broken out afresh amongst us," says Joseph Caryl in his Recom- mendation and Imprimatur of May 1, 1645. This was the book which, when re- issued in 1718, with preface by James Hog of Carnock, produced such a commotion in Scotland, with memorable results. Of the author, Edward Fisher, we learn {Wood's Athence Oxoniensis, vol. ii. p. 198) he was a godly Puritan gentleman of good birth and education, the eldest son of a Knight, a member of Brazen-nose College, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1627, and afterwards lived privately, *' a noted person among the learned for his great reading in Ecclesiastical History, and in the Fathers, and for his admirable skill in Greek and Hebrew." His other writings were, An Appeal to the Conscience, 1644, 4to ; A Christian Caveat to Old and New Sabbatarians, 1650; and An Answer to Sixteen Queries, touching the Rise and Observation of Christinas. 469 470 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. had begun to prevail among the more narrow but zealous sec- tion of Dissenters, fostered by the hyper-Calvinistic and supra- lapsarian forms of phraseology which so many, ignorantly but none the less vehemently, affected, as the alone test of ortho- doxy. This now burst into a flame, when the son of the once- notable Dr. Tobias Crisp l republished his father's sermons with additions ; and in order to promote the sale of this Epis- copalian clergyman's works among Dissenters, had the art to secure an attestation of the genuineness of the fresh matter from some of their popular London preachers. The book fell in with the prevailing mood of narrow and bitter Evangelicism that had a hold on many of their hearers. Its circulation and influence were enormous, especially among many well-mean- ing but fiery members and ministers of the Independent and Baptist persuasions, who were carried away with its high-sound- ing but nonsensical paradoxes about predestinarianism and the doctrines of substitution and imputation. Something like a theological frenzy ensued ; the advocates of an ultra-Calvin- ism denouncing all opponents of Crisp's views as legalists or worse, and decrying them, in speech, sermon, and pamphlet, as enemies of the pure Gospel. It was at this point that the afterwards celebrated Dr. Daniel Williams began to distin- guish himself in this controversy ; and as he was one of the few among his prominent contemporaries who not only held firmly by Presbytery, but maintained still the Divine right of it as well, and was one of the most influential Presbyterian 1 Tobias Crisp, born of a wealthy London family, and educated at both Cam- bridge and Oxford, became a Wiltshire Rector; but being a Royalist, was driven from his parish at the beginning of the Civil Wars. He died in London, 1642, at the early age of forty-one. At first he was a vehement Arminian in Laud's time ; but having adopted Calvinistic views with great earnestness, he wrote and preached these with corresponding vehemence, and to the uttermost extreme ; unconsciously caricaturing and travestying each Calvinistic point with puzzle-headed perplexity, though doubtless with the best possible intentions. Through confounding imputa- tion with transference, for example, he wrote of Christ's righteousness, not as if imputed, but actually transferred to the believer ; not seeing that it is the bene- fits of Christ's righteousness that are transferred by virtue of the righteousness itself being imputed. He wrote, too, of Christ, as if He were a sinner — having men's sins actually transferred to Him ; whereas it is the penalty that was transferred, the sins being only imputed. Crisp's heresies arrested the attention of the West- minster Assembly Divines, who, however, reckoned them too weak for further notice beyond their exposure by John Flavel and others at the time. THEIR DECLINE. 471 benefactors of his age, some special notice of him is here de- manded. Daniel "Williams, D.D. (founder of the famous Library in London that bears his honoured name, and The Memoirs of whose Life and Eminent Conduct were written by his friend and admirer, Daniel Defoe),1 was born at Wrexham, Den- bighshire, in 1644, and became at an early age one of the first to offer himself to the hazardous work of a Presbyterian proba- tioner or preacher after the Uniformity Bill had been passed. Having gone to Ireland as chaplain to the Earl and Countess of Meath, he became Presbyterian pastor for a season at Drog- heda, removing in 1667 to the central and influential Presby- terian Church in "Wood Street, Dublin, where he laboured with great acceptance for the next twenty years. Exciting the rage and malice of the Papist party, and his life hardly being safe, he removed to London in 1687, and became the minister and friend of many poor Irish Protestant refugees. After the Revolution he was often consulted on Irish affairs by King- William and Queen Mary, to whom his advice, it was under- stood, proved very serviceable. At the same time he accepted the pastoral charge of Hand Alley Presbyterian Church, Bishopsgate, one of the largest in the city. He was an inti- mate friend of the aged Richard Baxter, on whose death he was chosen, in 1692, to fill his place as one of the Pinners' Hall lecturers. Being thus a rising man among the London Pres- byterian ministers, he was urged by some of his brethren to reply directly to Crisp and so to allay the plague. " Williams possessed talents for the undertaking. He had a clear, logi- cal head, he was well skilled in polemical theology, and he entered on the work of confutation with as much candour as can he well expected in a controversial writer. Having collected Dr. Crisp's opinions into certain heads, he stated under each what is the truth : what is the error that Dr. Crisp maintains, and quotes passages from his writings in support of the charge ; he takes pains to specify wherein the Doctor does nob differ from the common sentiments of divines, and after that, wherein the difference really lies ; and he points out the way in which the Doctor was led into 1 See also Palmer's Noncon. Memorials, vol. ii. p. 640 ; sketch of his life by Key. Thos. Morgan, 1816 ; and Armstrong's Ordination Sermon, etc., Dublin, 1829. 472 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. error. He then establishes the truth from the sacred scriptures, and from the Confession of the Reformed Churches and public bodies, and from the writings of the most eminent Divines, whose orthodoxy has been uni- versally acknowledged. Whatever ideas may be entertained of the senti- ments of Dr. Williams, the fairness of his manner is certainly entitled to general praise ; and had those on the other side adopted the same method, it must soon have appeared wherein the real difference between them did actually consist.'7 1 But Dr. Williams's book, which was issued in 1692, and bore the title, Gospel Truth Stated and Vindicated, far from allaying the storm, seemed only to add to its violence. Prefixed to the volume by way of recommendation, after the fashion of those times, was a brief address, signed by a few eminent London ministers, Bates, Howe, Alsop, the Scottish Presbyterian, William Lorimer, being of the number. In no partisan spirit, and with- out committing themselves to every expression or sentiment of the writer, they gave their opinion that, " in all that is mate- rial he had fully and rightly stated the truths and errors ; and they hoped that the book would do considerable service to the Church of Christ." This was the signal for a new outburst. The outcry against the work was loud and fierce, for in his zeal against Antinomianism, Williams seemed to many to have swung to an opposite extreme, and was denounced as undermining the very fundamental spirit of the Gospel, although his aim was to hit the happy medium between Legalism and Antinomianism. Immediately, in 1G93, — " A large quarto volume came from the pen of Mr. Isaac Chauncy, an Independent minister, entitled, Neo-nomianism unmasked, for that was the name invented to designate and to disgrace Dr. Williams's sentiments and his book. Had this champion followed the method of the writer whom he attacked, . . . the controversy must have been speedily terminated. . . . But his spirit was bad, and his accusations against Dr. Williams for heresy were numerous, but they were mostly as weak as they were bitter." 2 Dr. Williams replied by publishing a " Defence " in 1693 ; but the unhappy internecine strife continued, in spite of heal- 1 Bogue and Bennett's Dissenters, vol. i. pp. 402, 403. - Ibid., vol. i. pp. 404, 405. THEIR DECLINE. 473 ing measures that were proposed ; and the angry and bitter pampleteering grew wider with fresh combatants. The tem- pest reached its height in 1694, when a violent practical dis- ruption ensued between Presbyterians and Independents, the dispute having by this time assumed a denominational and party form. It will be remembered that a weekly Merchants' Lecture or Wednesday Morning Exercise had for a year or two been carried on in Pinners' Hall, Broad Street, by six of the most prominent of the United Ministers in London, four being Presbyterians and two Independents. Williams, who had succeeded Baxter, was, however, forbidden to take his turn by the managers, in their antipathy to his views ; and the conse- quence was, that he and his Presbyterian Colleagues, Dr. Bates, John Howe, and Alsop, were forced in self-respect to establish a Lecture at Salters' Hall, associating two others with them to complete the number : while Mead and Cole, with four other newly-chosen Independents, maintained themselves at Pinners' Hall.1 Unfortunate misunderstandings and disagreeable heart-burn- ings had already occurred over several things among the United Brethren ; but these dogmatic squabbles now com- pletely wrecked the " London Union." The Congregationalists published, a few years afterwards, their account of the rupture,2 and defend themselves by saying, — " The Congregational brethren were offended at several managements in the Union, hut never deserted it till that happened, which forced them at last to leave it. It was this : Mr. Daniel Williams published a book against Dr. Crisp's opinions, and with a confutation of the Doctor's opinions, he did interweave several notions of his own, which have been reckoned contrary to the received and approved doctrine of the Eeformed Churches. To speak the least of the book, it goes as far from the doctrine of the first and best reformers as the new method or the Amyraldian scheme does, if it does not take some steps farther." Six congregational ministers had complained of Dr. Williams's 1 " For the men who could drive away Dr. Bates and John Howe from a Lecture, it is a happiness that their names are unknown ; for certainly, to escape being en- rolled in the annals of infamy was the highest felicity for which they could hope." Ibid. p. 403. 2 History of the Union between the Presbyterian and Congregational Ministers in and about London ; and the Cause of the Breach of it (London, 1698), p. 9. 474 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. book, and his New Method to the Union ; but though the Union itself was now wrecked, the controversy went on as before, and even with increased bitterness. Stephen Lobb, " the Jacobite Independent," as he was called, mingled in the fray, with several others ; and suspicions of heresy of all sorts, Arminian- isni and even Socinianism, were thrown out against the unfor- tunate Williams.1 An earnest effort at conciliation had been made at an early stage by some who looked with the deepest grief on the bickering spirit that was at work, and who were solicitous about closing the breach that was occasioning such deadly injury to religion in general and the Dissenting interest in particular. They drew up a list of the doctrinal points in debate, and stated the questions in such a form as was agreed to, and even subscribed on both sides — yet, in spite of all this, the truce had proved but of short duration. And now again, when matters had come to such a pass that the Presbyterians were being taxed with rank Arminianism, and they, in turn, retorted the charge of Antinomianism and moral laxity against their accusers, another attempt at concilia- tion was made. The Presbyterians offered to renounce, and in set terms disavow entirely all the Arminianism which was in- sinuated against them, if the Independent Brethren would as frankly renounce the Antinomian tenets and positions ; but this design failed. Then, on 25 March, 1696, " A Pacificatory Paper" was drawn up and signed by a committee of the moderate and conciliatory Presbyterians, consisting of Dr. William Bates, Samuel Slater, John Howe, Vincent Alsop, Richard Stretton, Daniel Burgess, and John Shower, which was well fitted to allay all heats and differences. " For the composing whereof," they say, " as we formerly expressed our approbation of the doctrinal Articles of the Church of England, or the Confession of Faith compiled by the Assembly at "Westminster, or that at the Savoy, as agreeable to the Word of God ; unto that approbation we i " If any one will take the trouble to look into what Williams wrote, he will be astonished to find a man who went so far in his notions of the union between the Meditator and His people, suspected of not believing in the Atonement ; and he will discover a signal instance of the intolerable demands which some will make upon others, in order to extract from them a full amount of prescribed orthodoxy."— Stoughton's Religion in England, vol. v. p. 299. THEIR DECLINE. 475 still adhere : declaring further, that if any of us shall at any time here- after be apprehended to have expressed himself disagreeing thereunto, we we will with brotherly candour and kindness mutually endeavour to give and receive just satisfaction herein ; bearing with one another's infirmi- ties and different sentiments about logical or philosophical terms, or merely humane forms of speech, in matters of lesser weight, not thinking- it reasonable or just to charge upon any brother such consequences of any expression or opinion of his which he himself shall disown." It would be tedious to enter into further details of this con- troversy. Suffice it to say, that Bishop Stillingfleet and another distinguished divine, being appealed to, gave decidedly their testimony both against Crisp's perplexing crudities of phrase- ology and confusion of ideas in reference to imputation, and in favour of the strict orthodoxy of Dr. Williams in the whole matter of Christ's satisfaction. An attempt had been made to blast Dr. Williams's character by some of his unscrupulous adversaries, who raised or affected to believe some malicious reports respecting his private morals. He, however, at once appealed to the general body of London ministers, and secured a searching investigation, with the result that, after an inquiry extending over two months, they unanimously declared him " entirely clear and innocent of all that was laid to his charge." Both these circumstances tended to allay the strife — while the death of some of the disputants and the returning sobriety of others, along with the weariness of the general public, brought the controversy to an end. Some of the Independent and Pres- byterian brethren having joined in a testimony against Anti- nomian errors, Dr. Williams was enabled to close the long and bitter affray by his treatise in 1699, entitled, Peace with Truth, or an End to Discord.1 1 Dr. Daniel Williams was not only one of the most influential, benevolent, and useful ministers of his time, but one of the great benefactors of posterity. It was he who was put forward at the head of The Three Denominations, to present their loyal address to Queen Anne on her accession to the throne, in 1702 ; and was honoured with the same position when George I. became King, in 1714. He strongly supported the " Union " between England and Scotland, in 1707 ; and in 1709 he received the Diploma of D.D. from both Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities, along with his attached personal friends Edmund Calamy and Joshua Oldfield — the very first Divinity degrees on the Edinburgh University Calendar. He crowned a life of service by the munificent arrangements of his last will and testament, in 1711 (to which he added a codicil in 1712), by which he bequeathed his property, 476 THE PESBYTEK1ANS IN ENGLAND. The effects of this controversy were very unhappy. Clear- ness and precision in stating certain doctrines were dearly pur- chased by the baneful influence of the spirit it engendered and left behind,1 and by its fruits, especially among Presbyterian Dissenters. It deepened and hardened the alienation of parties ; it inflicted in the eye of the public a heavy wound on the whole of the Dissenting interest ; and worst of all, it in many ways most injuriously affected the temper and tone of the preaching of many, and greatly lowered the power of vital godliness. The learned and able among the Presbyterian ministers especially suffered by a revolt, however unconscious on their part, against certain aspects of the doctrines of grace, because so vehemently divorced from the interests of practical holiness ; and it seems but too painfully manifest that we must connect with even this early period something of that indiffer- ence to warm Evangelical utterance which afterwards more largely betrayed itself in the lack of unction and animation in much of the Presbyterian preaching, robbing it of converting power, and rendering it cold, meagre, and ineffective. estimated at £50,000, to twenty-three Trustees, including most of his friends among the leading London Presbyterian ministers. He had been one of the founders of The General Fund in Dublin, and the Presbyterian Fund in London ; and now, after providing for his wife, through whom he had derived large wealth, and leaving other private legacies, he bequeathed considerable benefactions for propagating the Gospel, especially to The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Neiv England and Adjacent Parts, and to The Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Know- ledge, which did such service to the American Presbyterian Church. He left also the well-known and valuable Williams' Bursaries and Scholarships, one set of which are for English-born students (particularly sons of Presbyterian ministers in Eng- land) who attend an undergraduate course at Glasgow University ; and the other, founded by tbe Trustees in 1841, for Divinity Students who are graduates of an English or Scottish University, or that of Dublin. But his most princely gift was his noble Library (with ample funds for its support), including the rare collection of Dr. William Bates and many later acquisitions, as that of Dr. William Harris, minister of Crutched Friars Presbyterian Church, and others. This is a Library of great extent and value, peculiarly rich in Puritan lore, and especially in precious masses of MSS.like the Morrice Collection ; the Original Minutes of the Westminster Assembly, Bichard Baxter's letters, and other MSS. shedding light on Purito- Presbyterian History in England. The Library was located, in 1729, in Bed Cross Street, removed temporarily to Queen Square in 1863, and now suitably accommo- dated, since 1873, in Grafton Street. Dr. Williams died 26 Jan., 1716, and was buried in Bunhill Fields ; his colleague and successor, Dr. John Evans, preaching his funeral sermon. 1 For some admirable reflections on this, see Bogue and Bennett's Disse7iters, pp. 409-418. VII. MATTHEW HENRY, AND HIS PRESBYTERIAL POSITION. Matthew Henry, the worthy son of a no less worthy father, was born at Broad Oak in the township of Iscoed, Flintshire, October 18, 1662: the year of "Black Bartholomew." The honourable distinction, as he esteemed it, of being a child of the ejectment was often present to Matthew Henry's yonng mind, and was frequently adverted to in his home circle. Consciously and unconsciously the coincidence exercised its mystic and subtle influence, giving tone and colour as well as direction to his future life. It seemed to entail on him the duty of a ministerial career ; at least to involve a special responsibility which he never allowed himself to forget or disown. His Early Life. He was the second child of his parents ; but as his elder brother John, a most promising boy, was cut off in his sixth year, Matthew Henry grew up like an only son among sisters. The four girls, Sarah, Katharine, Eleanor, and Anne, who in due time graced the Broad Oak home, were his early and happy companions. Only a very little younger than himself, he and they being all born within six years, 1662-1668, there was no such disparity as to prevent them being play and school- fellows in their pleasant abode. They were educated together under the care of their parents, with occasional help from resident tutors. The sweet and tender ties between brother and sisters thus genially formed in childhood were only strengthened with the growth of time, and continued unbroken save by death.1 1 Their lives were closely and curiously bound up with one another from first to last. All the five of them were married within two years of each other. They all settled within easy distance of the parental roof, and in homes that reflected in every case, as it is pleasant to think, the gracious influences of their early training. Nor 477 478 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Filial as well as fraternal piety shone with conspicuous brightness in Matthew Henry. Deep at the root of his being- lay reverence for his parents. From each of them he derived some distinguishing characteristics. He inherited from his reverend father a judicial and studious cast of mind, with a certain natural gravity, not however incompatible with bon- homie and good-humour. From his beloved mother came that calm equanimity and cheerful patience, with that vivacious energy of manner and mild persistence in duty, which he displayed through life. ' Being by no means of a hardy physical nature, and in later life of a heavy and plethoric habit of body, Matthew Henry was the object of much solici- tude in his early years. As he grew to boyhood, however, his constitution acquired vigour, and his education went forward apace. He early dis- played a passion for books and learning. So earnest became his application that his careful mother had often, from regard to his health, to drive him from the study into the open air. In 1671, when only nine years old, writing what seems to be a first letter to his father, who was on a visit to London, he can tell that, " every day since you went, I have done my lesson, a side of Latin or Latin verses, with two verses in the Greek Testament;''1 a fair accomplishment surely for a boy of nine. Matthew Henry was a child of many prayers, and of the most constant and careful Christian nurture in the well-ordered and genial home. His parents, by their consistent and attractive example, as well as by firm yet gentle discipline, made piety to their children, not a mere duty, but a delight. With Matthew it grew into a simple habit and second nature, giving him a first conscious spiritual experience at the early age of ten.1 was it one of the least felicities of Matthew Henry's lot, that the three youngest be- came, with their husbands, members and ornaments of his Church in Chester, the eldest also, to whom he seems to have felt specially drawn, being wife of the God- fearing and prosperous farmer of Wrenbury Wood, in an adjoining neighbourhood. Never in the life-long intercourse of this attached family circle was there known an instance of alienation or suspicion, neither an unkindly feeling nor a divided interest. 1 It is interesting to notice the providence which made the year 1672 peculiarly memorable to him. Father and son had just escaped serious danger from fever, and were both in an unusually tender and susceptible religious condition. Now THEIR DECLINE. 479 Up to his eighteenth year, Matthew Henry enjoyed the full benefit of his father's immediate supervision and personal help in all his studies. Philip Henry, with his vigorous intellect and thorough scholarship, was in every way pre-eminently qualified to quicken and direct his son's growing intelligence, setting before him a high standard, and imbuing him with his own taste for clear thinking and pointed accuracy of expres- sion. We picture them at work together in that snug study, with its well-appointed library, the lad poring over his lessons, and preparing translations or versions for his father's eye, while the kindly grave divine himself is seated at his writing-table, transcribing into the big folio commonplace book before him some choice extract from a favourite author, or compacting his own sermonic thoughts into those memor- able and expressive phrases that are afterwards to do such service when shot as winged arrows from the bow. But the time came when it was necessary to take further steps for completing young Matthew Henry's education. It was however a serious and difficult question — the way to the national seats of learning being barred by those recent statutes, oaths, and tests which had been directed against exactly such cases and families as his ; and the idea of sending Matthew abroad to study being also hard to entertain. But at this moment the door into a third course seemed provi- dentially to open. A remarkable man in his way, though his name may not look the most promising, was the Rev. Thomas Doolittel, or Doelittle, M.A., formerly of Pembroke College, and afterwards Rector of the parish of St. Alphage in London. Belonging to Kidderminster, and owing much of his spiritual zeal and vigour to Richard Baxter, this worthy minister is known as the courageous founder of the very first meeting- house in London after the Act of Uniformity, and also as the this was the year when Charles II. was pleased to issue preaching licences to cer- tain classes of Nonconformists. They were of two kinds, for persons and for places. Philip Henry's friends procured one for himself, and another for Broad Oak as a licensed place. Fitting up the " meeting " room was a great event for the young people, as well as an epoch for the neighbourhood. No one took more interest in this than young Matthew Henry ; and once especially, we are told, after listening to a sermon on the grain of mustard-seed as illustrative of true grace in its ger- mination and growth, he opened his mind in an interesting way to his relatives. 480 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. last survivor of all his London fellow-ejected brethren, living on as he did till 1707. Quietly ignoring the severely persecu- ting statutes, he had first opened a worship-room at Bunhill Fields, and then actually proceeded to build the large and stately meeting-house which stood in Monkwell Street, Cripple- gate.1 He was the first also to venture on opening an academy at Islington, in 1672, for training young divines, so as to perpetuate a Presbyterian ministry outside the pale of the National Church.2 Such an attempt could hardly be ex- pected to go on long in the face of the violent spirit then unhappily prevailing ; but till the authorities should crush it, Philip Henry resolved to support the effort. AVhen Matthew entered, in 16S0, there were twenty-eight students ; but it was closed by force a few months later. Amid the scattering that followed, Matthew Henry went back to Broad Oak ; and it is not till April, 1685, when he was in his twenty-third year, we find him in London again, enter- ing himself this time a law student at Gray's Inn, Holborn. Not that he had by any means abandoned the purpose. Deem- 1 This earliest of the meeting-houses was the scene of many curious incidents. On one occasion, for example, a company of soldiers threatened to shoot the minister if he persisted in the service. His undaunted bearing and courage saved him. At another time it was invaded by the justices, who tore down the pulpit ; and closing the doors, they marked tbem with the broad arrow, and seized the building as Crown property. It became the Lord Mayor's chapel for a time. On a later occa- sion we are told that Mr. Doolittel, when giving out his text one morning, was dis- turbed by a young man making frantic efforts to escape from a crowded pew. Pausing for a moment, and in an easy and friendly yet serious tone addressing by name an aged member in the gallery, he inquired, " Do you repent of having come to Christ ? " The old member rose and said, " No, sir: I only repent that I did not come to Him sooner." Then turning, in the face of the astonished and breathless congregation to the place whence the disturbance rose, he said solemnly, " Are you willing, young man, to come to Christ ? " Arrested by the question, and naturally much embarrassed by the strangeness of his position, he was silent for a little ; and then, as if prompted by those around him, he said, " Yes, Sir." " Ay, but tvhen ? " was the next question from the pulpit. What else could he answer but, "Just now, sir "? " Then stay, dear friend, and hear God's word to you in my text; ' Behold, now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.' " The remarkable part of the story is, that on learning from the young man how much he stood in terror of his father's displeasure, should he ever come to know of his having worshipped there, Mr. Doolittel went to intercede on the young man's behalf ; and the interview- happily resulted in both father and son being savingly converted and " added to the Church." 2 According to Tong's Life of Shower (p. 7), the really first in the country to do this, were the learned and venerable Warren of Taunton (who declined a bishopric at the Restoration), and the noble Frankland, in the North of England. THEIR DECLINE. 481 ing the law an honourable and for himself perhaps a possi- ble profession, — or at least a means of protection, should the open adoption of a Nonconforming ministry be absolutely pro- hibited,— -he prosecuted legal studies meantime for their valu- able mental discipline, while, as his letters show, he pursued in private his theological course. Among other means of self- improvement, he acquired fair facility in French. His Ordination, Ministry, and Church Principles. It was in the midsummer of 1686, when at home for a holi- day, after fourteen months' work at Gray's Inn, that Matthew Henry began to preach. Invited over to Nantwich by his dear and life-long friend, Mr. George Illidge, he conducted service for him several evenings — secretly, of course, because of the law, yet to considerable congregations — -with conspicu- ous promise and marked effect on the hearers. He had occasion to do the same when on a visit to friends in Chester, with yet more memorable results. By birth and training, as well as by conviction, Matthew Henry was a Presbyterian Puritan. His father's Church views and principles commanded his sympathy and approval. But being, like his father, a singularly Catholic-spirited Evangelical Christian, with nothing whatever in him of the ecclesiastical bigot or partisan, when some friends urged that he might find it advisable to be ordained in the Episcopal way, especially if a Bishop could be had who might not rigorously insist on the more objectionable of the prescribed oaths and forms, he carefully re-considered the whole question of ordination, as set forth in Scripture and practised in the early Church. But finding himself by the process confirmed and strengthened in his original judgment, he applied without delay to some of the best-known Presbyterian divines in London ; and by them, after all due probation and examination, he was solemnly but secretly ordained by laying on of hands, with prayer and fast- ing, 9th of May, 1687." Matthew Henry was urgently pressed to settle in the metro- polis, but he yielded rather to the importunate calls from Chester. In a paper carefully prepared at this time, he says : — i i 482 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. " I can appeal to God that I have no design in the least to maintain a party or to keep up any schismatical faction. My heart rises against the thoughts of it. I hate dividing prin- ciples and practices, and whatever others are, I am for peace and healing. If my life-blood would be a sufficient balsam, I would gladly part with the last drop of it for the closing up of the bleeding wounds of differences among true Christians .•" Thus, at the age of twenty-five, Matthew Henry was settled in Chester, where other twenty-five out of the remaining twenty-seven years of his comparatively brief life were to be passed in earnest, anxious, ministerial service. As he did not remove to London till two years before he died, his name and labours must always remain associated with Chester, where an obelisk now stands to his memory. Up to this time the little company had secretly met in one of their own dwellings ; but their numbers and zeal so in- creased in prospect of having Mr. Henry for their minister, that one of their number offered a portion of his large premises for their use — part of an old Friary, on which the people set to work one Monday morning, and had it all ready for service next Lord's day. r When the Union between Presbyterian and Independent ministers of London was constituted, in 1691, on the nine heads of agreement, a similar one in Cheshire found in Matthew Henry a warm and zealous supporter. It met twice a year for consultation and mutual encouragement, the minutes from 1691 till its dissolution in 1745 being still extant.- He served it some time as Secretary, and sought to make it in every way as efficient as possible. He writes on June 17, 1707, " Went to Macclesfield to join with my brethren the ministers of Cheshire and Lancashire in an ordination. Formerly have declined that work, but now see it is a service that must be rendered. Am satisfied of the validity of such an ordination by the laying-on of the hands of the 1 Here they worshipped upwards of twelve years, the first half ^exactly of Mr. Henry's ministry among them, when they entered their new meeting-house in 1700, which cost £600 or more, with later additions. 2 In the old chapel vestry at Knutsford. THEIR DECLINE. 483 Presbytery;1 and though we want a national establishment, yet that cannot be essential. I went with a true desire to honour God and promote the interests of Christ's Kingdom." He first took an active official part at Broad Oak, when Dr. Benyon became his father's successor.2 He extended active home-missionary excursions far and wide, carrying the Gospel into many a dark corner like life from the dead. His annual visits to certain places in Lancashire, Staffordshire, and ad- jacent parts were extremely serviceable to many struggling congregations, which survive to this day, and cherish the memory and retain the sweet savour of these self-denying and indefatigable apostolic labours.3 In conducting the affairs of his congregation, the whole re- sponsibility of admitting to Church privileges and membership 1 It is very noticeable that both to Philip and Matthew Henry the ministerial association was a "Presbytery." Pa all essential particulars it was so. 1. It was not a mere indiscriminate gathering, but a fixed and regular body with a fixed meeting-place (Knutsford), and keeping carefully its own minutes. 2. It licensed preachers and conducted ordinations in its own right, apart sometimes fromany call from a special congregation. 3. It did not hesitate to exercise a measure of watch- ful discipline over its members, or to call itself a " Class " with " Moderator " and " Clerk," though no longer constituted on the lines of a "National Establishment." Thus, in the affecting entry of August, 169C, " It had been unanimously desired that the Rev. Mr. Philip Henry, of Broad Oak, would . . . give us a sermon, in hopes of which the meeting was appointed at Chester. But it pleased God, in the meantime, on 24th June, to put out that burning and shining light by death, as to the unspeakable grief of multitudes, so to the particular disappointment of this Class." This Cheshire Association gave its judgment on the invitation to any minister to remove from one charge to another. In 1721 it pronounced censure on a sermon printed by one of its members for its hyper- Calvinism ; and " I have been informed from a very respectable source," says the Independent Lancashire minister who edited Oliver Heywood's works, " that one of the last public acts of the Assembly of which the pious Matthew Henry was a member, was the suspension of a minister from the exercise of his ministry in a chapel in this county for Arianism." (See James's History of Legislation on Presbyterian Chapels, pp. 19 and 620.) This Association was dissolved in 1745 by the doctrinal strifes and alienations of that unhappy time. - His account of the ordinations (for there were seven of them at once on this occasion) is as follows : " Mr. Angier, who was Moderator, demanded of the can- didates in order a confession of their faith, and a distinct answer to the qtiestions, which was done fully." Like his father and the Presbyterians generally at that time, Matthew Henry was strongly in favour of such ordinations as were con- ducted wholly by ordained ministers, in opposition to the contrary claim of Con- gregationalist Churches to perform it by their own office-bearers or members anions themselves, while the neighbouring ministers were to be invited as witnesses of. their faith and order. 3 The effects of his reviving and quickening ministry may be gathered from that repertory of facts and observations, the Notitia Cestriensis of Gastrell, who became Bishop of Chester in the year of Matthew Henry's death. 484 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. reded in his hands, together with all the exercise of discipline. This added greatly to the weight of his authority, and not less to the weight of his care. He observed also with his people regular quarterly fasts, besides keeping those days of humilia- tion or thanksgiving appointed by public authority, then so common, and the occasions of which he sought always re- ligiously to improve. Some of the best of his published efforts were connected with these special seasons. He took great interest in the young, and besides often preaching to them, he devoted an hour every Saturday to public training of them by means of the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism and his own two little manuals, the Scripture Catechism for seniors, and the more simple one he prepared for children. Many dated their first religious convictions and impressions from these exercises. Although Matthew Henry's great achievement is of course The Exposition or Bible Commentary, with which his name has become most familiarly associated, his was in many other ways a diligent and prolific pen.1 The ministerial services of Matthew Henry were greatly •coveted by congregations in London. He received numerous calls to settle there. So early as 1699 the church at -Hackney, •on the death of their learned and eloquent pastor, Dr. William 1 But lie kept at his great work 'with unflagging zeal and increasing zest till life's close. Consecrating every available moment to the congenial task, he was usually in his study by four or five o'clock in the morning ; and often in the night watches, when kept from sleep through illness in the family, he would sit down "to do a little at the Exposition." By September, 1706, his notes on the Pentateuch were ready for the press. His mother was spared to see this first volume published ; but hardly expecting at her advanced age to get through it all, she began with Deuteronomy, and passed to her rest a few months later, May 25, 1707. Every second year found another small folio ready for issue. The fourth volume completed the Old Testament, and, prompt to time, the fifth, embracing the Gospels and Acts, was finished April 17, 1714. But this was his last. For in two months afterwards he was dead, and as his Latin epitaph beauti- fully suggests, "The mysteries contained in the Apostolic Epistles and Book of Revelation he went to gaze into more closely in heaven." With the help of bis preparations and jottings some ministerial brethren finished the work. Their names and respective parts are given in most editions. Dr. James Hamilton (Chris- tian Classics) has said, "Like the Spartan babe whose cradle was his father's shield, it is scarcely a figure to say that the Bible was the pillow of hjs infant head. What has been remarked of an enthusiast in Egyptian antiquities, that he had grown quite pyramidal, may be applied to the Presbyterian minister at Chester, that he had grown entirely biblical." THEIR DECLINE. 485 Bates, urged him, without avail, to become successor to that distinguished man ; and soon after he also declined a flattering invitation to be lecturer at Salters' Hall, in room of another gifted divine. In the year 1708 he was pressed by both the Church at the Old Jewry and that at Silver Street, which was vacant by the death of John Howe's successor, to become their minister. Bat both of these, though backed up by earnest solicitations from influential London ministerial brethren, he saw fit to decline. The Church at Hackney having, however, once more lost its minister by death, turned again to Matthew Henry in 1710 ; and on 18th May, 1712, he at last became its minister, under much constraint.1 The congregation was not large ; only a hundred communicants. Worst of all, the spiritual life was beating low, and religious dulness prevailed around ere spreading to the provinces. Matthew Henry found plenty to do in struggling against the tide ; but he did it with a will, and in the spirit and power of his Master. Now in his fiftieth year, and in the full maturity of his powers, he toiled on bravely and full of help to his brethren. His death came suddenly. "When he left Chester, in 1712, he promised to pay an annual visit to his former flock. He did so the very next summer, 1713, and set out a second time in May, 1714. After some strenuous yet happy services, he set out again for London on Monday, June 21, engaging to preach at Nantwich that very night. It was there he preached his first sermon ; it was there he preached his last. His horse had stumbled, but, declaring he felt no injury from the fall, he went through his pulpit work, though under difficulty. He was soon after seized with apoplexy, and at eight on Tuesday morning, June 22, he fell asleep. His eldest sister's diary has these entries : — " Wednesday, 23 June. — I went to the place to take leave 1 He had not been without his discouragements recently in Chester, however loving and attached the congregation had been. In fact, he was suffering under that tremendously reactionary tide of political and ecclesiastical frenzy, with its "illiberal measures against the " Dissenting Interest," that culminated in the " Schism Bill," and under whose influence the Toleration Act itself was scarcely safe. The nation was again touching one of its lowest moral depths, and an age of spiritual torpor was quickly setting in. ■186 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. of the dear earthen vessel, in which was lodged such treasure. Nothing of death to be seen on his face— rather something of a smile. " Friday, 25 June.— We gathered up the mantle of this dear Elijah. Took the remains to Chester. We laid him in Trinity Church, beside his first wife, accompanied by a vast crowd desiring to pay their tribute to his blessed memory." l 1 A son and five daughters, by his second marriage, outlived Matthew Henry. The son Philip took the name of Warburton on inheriting the Grange Estate. He sat some time as M.P. for his native city of Chester, but was not understood to manifest the ancestral piety. Zhc Decline of tbe jpresb^terians in England (Continued). TEANSITIONAL AND SPASMODIC PEEIOD, 1710-1740. I. — Trying axd Changing Influences at Work from 1710. II. — The Subscription Controversy. — Exeter Assembly and Salters' Hall Synod. 1719. III. — Insidious Tendency to Arianism, and its Causes. 1720-1740. ftbe decline of tbe Presbyterians in jgnglanfc (Continued). TRANSITIONAL AND SPASMODIC PERIOD, 1710-1740. I. TRYING AND CHANGING INFLUENCES AT WORK. The era into which, we are now passing presents a painful but suggestive contrast to the heroic or even the chapel-building one, in which the survivors of the persecuting time still con- tinued for a season to nourish. The age of the suffering Puritan Presbyterians stands out pre-eminent, not only for deeds of high honour, self-denial, and fidelity, but for minds cf surpassing compass and energy — minds with a strong spiritual grasp of eternal things, and with the utmost elevation, in- tensity, and fervour of thought and feeling, exhibiting " the faith and patience of the saints," as England has seldom seen before or since, and stamping the age in which they lived as one of abiding power and ennobling impulses. We now pass into an altogether less exalted and less significant epoch. We are sinking from the notables to the mere respectables of the Kingdom of Christ. The process is a very gradual one ; but, with only an exception here and there, the decline is in- creasingly perceptible. During King "William's reign, the Presbyterians no doubt continued outwardly in a fairly flourishing condition ; and through the greater part of Queen Anne's time they still remained the largest, and, in point of social position, the most influential branch of English Nonconformity. There was a much larger proportion of landed proprietors in those days than now ; and of these yeomen and gentry, and even county and noble families, the Presbyterians continued to retain a fair share ; like the Hoghtons, of Hoghton Tower, in Lancashire, Sir John and Lady Hewley, of York, as well 490 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. as the able and theologically disposed Barringtoii Shute, who became Lord Barringtoii. Even Robert Harley, Speaker of the House of Commons, afterwards Earl of Oxford and Lord Treasurer (whatever his temptations and his political tergiver- sations), never formally abandoned the religious views and at- tachments of his Presbyterian family, whose name will ever be honourably associated with the Harleian Library, Manuscripts, and Miscellany, and whose memory is still further preserved in the pages of his personal friends and associates, Pope and Swift. But the active-spirited lay-representatives of the Presbyte- rian party were chiefly found, as ever, among the corporations of the cities and towns. By the Corporation Act, every one holding a municipal office was required, as a qualification, to receive the Lord's Supper in a parish church according to the rites of the Church of England, and officially attend the parish church. Sir John Shorter, a Presbyterian, had (during an in- dulgence time in James the Second's reign) been chosen and acted as Lord Mayor of London ; and a few years subsequent to the Revolution, Sir Humphrey Edwin, another Presbyterian, had even dared during his mayoralty, in 1697, to attend a Presby- terian meeting at Pinners' Hall in his official robes. This created an immense sensation for a while ; so much so, that Dean Swift, in 1704, in his Tale of a Tub,— that profane but witty satire on the religious controversies of the time, — endea- vours to ridicule the attempt by referring to Jack's tatters coming into fashion, and his getting on a great horse, and eating custard.1 The Presbyterian, Sir Thomas Abney, was Lord Mayor in 1701. He officially attended Church as an occasional Con- formist, but continued a staunch member of the Presbyterian Church in Silver Street, where John Howe was minister. De Foe, who had in 1697, on the occasion of Sir Humphrey Edwin's mayoralty, issued anonymously his Enquiry into Occasional Conformity of Dissenters, now re-issued it with a 1 The law had enacted that any Mayor who should attempt what Sir Humphrey Edwin had done, should be liable to a fine of £100 ; and might be declared ever afterwards incapable of municipal honours. So jealous was the law on behalf of the Church Establishment and its prestige. THEIR DECLINE. 491 preface to John Howe ; and hence the Occasional Conformity Discussion among the Nonconformists, headed by these two veterans of the Presbyterian name, who took opposite sides, and whence so much damage accrued to Dissenters in general and to the Presbyterians in particular. Throughout these twenty years after the Revolution, so far as outward moderate prosperity went, the position and pros- pects of the Presbyterian ministers were fairly promising. The congregations, in London especially, were large and flourishing, and, as Macaulay l says, though somewhat ex- aggeratingly, about some of " the great Presbyterian Rabbis " of the metropolis, " The situation of these men was such as the great majority of the Divines of the Established Church might well envy. . . . The contributions of his wealthy hearers, Aldermen and Deputies, West India merchants and Turkey merchants, etc., 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. . . . One of the great Presbyterian Rabbis therefore might well doubt whether, in a worldly view, he should be a gainer by a comprehension." So long as these older suffering ministers lived, the tie be- tween them and their flocks was a very close and tender one from the common bonds arising out of the memory of common suffering in days past. But a change began to creep over the face of things when the suffering veterans were passing away ; and the Hanoverian succession in 1714, with its larger liberty and growing religious indifferentism, gave a fresh impulse to certain ominous tendencies that were already at work. The " New " Dissent was getting decidedly different from the " Old" in its motif and temper. Not many of the " ejected " of 1662 lived on into the eighteenth century.2 But some distinguished names remained. 1 History of England, vol. ii. p. 474. 2 " The eighteenth century ushered in a religious declension, which pervaded all the Churches, not in England alone, but in Scotland, in Ireland, and on the Conti- nent. A spiritual blight, affecting alike the interests of the truth and of religious life, for which many causes may be assigned, but which it is difficult to explain in any other way than by supposing the withdrawal of God's Spirit from tbe Churches 492 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Oliver Heywood, the founder of the old Dissent in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a truly noble and noteworthy man, died 1702, and Vincent Alsop, in 1703. The latter was one of those who, having been ordained by a single Anglican Bishop, felt dubious about the validity of his one-man orders, and preferred to be re-ordained by a body of Presbyters, as others had done at earlier dates — like Edward Snape or Dudley Fenner in Queen Elizabeth's time. On account of his wit, Anthony Wood sneers at Vincent Alsop as having been, since the death of the famous Andrew Marvell, " quibbler and punster in ordinary to the Presbyterian party." John Howe died in 1705. l He had been ordained in Winwick Church, Lancashire, in the days of Charles Herle ; and of this ordi- nation Howe himself says, " there are few ministers whose ordination has been so truly primitive as mine, having been devoted to the sacred office by a primitive bishop and his officiating Presbytery." When, after the Restoration, Seth Ward, Bishop of Exeter, asked Howe, " What hurt is there in being twice ordained ? " he replied, " It hurts my under- standing, for nothing can have twice a beginning." Thomas Doolittle, who occupied Monkwell Street, Cripplegate, the oldest meeting-house in the City, and Francis Tallents, of Shrewsbury, — who both continued till 1707 and 1708 respect- ively,— were probably the last survivors of the ejected. Many of those who, though not of the ejected, were ordained in suffering and hazardous times, were also dying out — like of the Beforruation, swept over the whole of Europe. In England the change was soon apparent, though the process was gradual. The approach of doctrinal laxity was heralded by loud pagans in praise of what was termed Christian charity. Pamphlets began to appear in defence of ' the innocency of mental error,' and in which the ' fundamentals ' of religion were reduced within narrow bounds, and nothing was to be heard but of ' the light of nature, reason, and the fitness of things.' Step by step the descent was made, from the highest Arianism to the lowest Socinianism." — Dr. M'Crie's Annals of English Presbytery, pp. 297, 298. 1 With regard to ecclesiastical polity, Howe's views were pacific and conciliatory, but as much dispute has gathered round his honoured name, it may be well to quote Dr. Stoughton, as an unexceptionable witness, who says of Howe, " A moderate Congregationalist in earlier life, he appears latterly to have sympathized most with Presbyterians. The Church in Silver Street, of which he took pastoral charge, was Presbyterian. The Salters' Hall Lecture, with which he identified himself, was Presbyterian; and he felt and acted with them as against the Independents to the very last." THEIR DECLINE. 493 Daniel Burgess (the younger) in 1713, and Matthew Henry, in 1714, who had been in Hackney only two years after leaving Chester. Dr. Daniel "Williams, founder of the Library and Scholarships, who had been specially concerned in resisting the Antinomian tendency of Independent and Baptist Brethren, and who perhaps aided unwittingly the Neo-nomian tendency of his own side, died in 1716, as also Robert Fleming, of the First Scotch Church, London. No luminaries arose of equal lustre to fill their places; a pale wan light as of an autumnal or October-looking afternoon was diffused over the scene, and gave token of the November frosty fog succeeding. Clouds were lowering for many reasons over general Nonconforming prospects, and over Presbyterian in- terests in particular. We must advert to a few of these trying influences. I. The icant of University training and of high-class education for ministers must be noted. The younger generation of minis- ters were trained totally differently, under new and altered conditions ; and this had its effect. The earlier Presbyterian clergy were, as already noted, all University men — scholarly and highly cultured — preachers and authors, many of them, of very considerable mark. The closing of the Universities against all but thoroughgoing Conformists was perhaps the deadliest and most subtle blow against a revival of Presby- terianism that Clarendon and Sheldon had devised ; and it was aimed emphatically against the better class of Presby- terian families. The Presbyterians would readily have signed the doctrinal part of the Articles ; but nothing would suffice but unconditional assent and consent to the disciplinary Articles and the whole Prayer Book, in order even to matricula- tion. The want of University training and of all its social advantages was so fearfully felt, that, in the second and third generation, the sons of genteel families made the sacrifice to the requirements of their position, and succumbed to the in- evitable. This made inroads of course on Presbyterian family attachments, and drew over many of that class to the Church sooner or later. In those who continued staunchly to their principles, there was an entire cutting off from the intercourse 494 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. and amenities of social culture. Estrangement and asperity grew as the cleavage became more visible. This has never been sufficiently taken into account. To maintain and con- tinue the ministry, some of the more zealous and able minis- ters trained and tutored promising young men ; and this afterwards grew into what were called Academies ; among the earliest of which were that of Richard Frankland, in York- shire, and that of Samuel Jones, at Gloucester and Tewksbury — where Archbishop Seeker and Bishop Butler were students together, though afterwards joining the National Church, in which they rose to such eminence.1 Dissenting education was, however, carried on with great difficult}^, and even, at times, at hazard of penal statutes ; and the results were not always very satisfactory. The able and learned, though too little known, Charles Morton conducted an establishment at Stoke Newington, where Defoe was trained ; and his cotemporaries also, Samuel Wesley and Samuel Palmer, who both, however, went over to the Episcopal Establishment, though their pens were first employed in defence of the principles of Dissent. From many of the later Academies proceeded afterwards clever but raw youths, with undigested knowledge and keen specula- tive habits that were a snare to them and sources of trial and trouble to Presbyterian Churches afterwards. Very few, like Calamy, had the advantages of foreign training and travel. II. Another evil consisted in the violent 'political currents of the times, with the immense High-Church reaction in 1710 under Queen Anne.- She was known to be thoroughly High-Church 1 Bishop Butler (born 1G92, died 1752) was son of a Presbyterian in Wantage, and, after being educated at places for Dissenting youth, went to Oxford and took orders. In 1736, he published his Analogy (the year Whitefield preached bis first sermon), and was made a Bishop in 1738, just the year before Wesley and Whitefield began to preach in the fields. - Soon after the accession of Queen Anne, there was a proposal made " to debar Dissenters of their votes at elections." See Vernon Correspondence, London, 1841. Vol. iii. p. 228. Vernon was then Secretary of State. For action of the Government as to the Dissenting Academies, see also Vernon Cor- respondence, vol. ii. pp. 128-130, and 133-156. In 1705, the Archbishop of York told the House of Lords that " he apprehended danger from the increase of Dis- senters, and particularly from the many Academieslset up by them."— Newcome's Life of Archbishop Sharp, of York, vol. i. pp. 125 and 358. Note also the powerful influence in politics of Queen Anne's reign by Clarendon's Hist, of the Rebellion, now issued by Attenbury, Aldrich, and Smalridge ; and such virulent books as England's Black Tribunal, or Charles the Martyr, and the like. THEIR DECLINE. 495 in her likings ; and, in fact, — like most small-minded persons with a weak apprehension and coarse commonplace nature, — she was much more of a Church-devotee, the victim of form and phenomenalism in religion, than a truly spiritual Christian with a strong hold upon the deeper realities of the faith. The genius of her reign may be understood from the petty self-willed persistence with which the measure was forced on for stopping occasional conformity.1 The Test Act, which pressed heavily on Nonconformists, had hitherto been got over by Presbyterian and other Dissenting members of corporations receiving the Lord's Supper, so as to qualify for office, accord- ing to law, but continuing to worship as Dissenters in their own meeting-houses. The Church party conspired together to put an end to this by seeking to impose heavy fines on all officials who should attend what was now called a Conventicle, during tenure of office. It was a bold attempt to repeal the Toleration Act ; but though again and again re-introduced, it was too base and too dangerous to pass as yet, however violent the clerical agi- tation had become in the country. But soon, in the midst of mutual recriminations of parties in Convocation, there arose fierce outcries as to the growth of Dissent and the encroachment of Dissenting ministers on the office and rights of the clergy, in maintaining schools and giving private baptism. Then came furious panic over the possible ecclesiastical effects of the Union with Presbyterian Scotland in 1707, and the admission of Presbyterian members to the English Parliament, which was so hated and feared by the Anglican clergy and their supporters ; and all this culminated in the Sacheverell episode of 1710,3 when 1 It was at this crisis that Defoe, who had stood so high in the confidence of King William and his ministers, now issued his indignantly stinging and satirical Short and East/ Way with the Dissenters, for which he had to pay so severe a penalty. " Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe ; " and in his " Hymn to the Tillory," he could say with scornful triumph, — " Tell them, the men that placed him here, Are scandals to their times : Are at a loss to find his guilt, And can't commit his crimes." - An amusing but virulent thirty- one-page tract of this very year, 1710, suffices to indicate the altered and liberalized attitude of the Presbyterians, and at the same time the bitterness of the High Church party's revived resentment against -496 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. the Church of England attained to the height of its political power, and when, as Macaulay sarcastically remarks, the morals and education of the people were at their very lowest.1 How the High-Church party used or abused their great triumph, we need not dilate on ; save to say that the Bill against occasional conformity, which had been thrice over rejected by the Lords in Queen Anne's first Parliament, was now, in her last Parliament, carried by them even without a division ; that it met with similar acquiescence in the Com- mons, and actually became law.2 The second legislative enor- mity was a successful effort to stop, absolutely and by summary law, all Dissenting education in the land ; the Act of 1713 enacting that none but a Conformist should be a tutor or teacher of any kind, under pain of imprisonment without bail. But though this was passed into law, its arbitrary provisions could not be fully enforced. This was the infamous Schism Bill, so called because meant to prevent the growth of Schism, " one of the worst Acts that ever defiled the statute book." 3 The Queen died, however, the very day it was to come into their ancient enemies. The tract bears the title, " Bodkins and Thimbles, or 1645 against 1710. Containing the opinions of the old and new Presbyterians touching toleration, separation, schism ; and the necessity of uniformity in a National Church, faithfully set down in their own words." 1 His words are, " It is an unquestionable and a most instructive fact, that the years during which the political power of the Anglican hierarchy was in the zenith. were precisely the years during which national virtue was at its lowest." - It would carry us too far afield into the region of violent party politics to enter further into the history of this measure. Readers must refer to the histories of the time by Dr. Hill Burton or Mr. Lecky. One dastardly episode connects it- self with the name of the Presbyterian Robert Harley and member of an honoured Presbyterian family. Long regarded with suspicion, he now shamelessly sacrificed religious principles to his political interests ; and so he became Earl of Oxford and Lord Treasurer. His retribution, however, was speedy and severe. For, after the accession of George I., this hateful measure was repealed, and Oxford was com- mitted to the Tower on an impeachment. Jonathan Swift was the fit and un- scrupulously able Secretary of Lord Oxford. In Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dean Swift's Works will be found some correspondence over this matter. :t Contemporary with the " Schism Bill" and prominent among other fruits and evidences of the great reaction in the later years of Queen Anne's reign, was an Act fraught with dire and bitter effects, in breaking up the unity of the Presby- terianism of Scotland. This was the Act of 1712, restoring "patronage" in the Scottish Church, directly in the face of the Treaty of Union a few years before. No single measure is more answerable for producing disintegration in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, for to it is traceable, more or less directly, the first " Seces- sion," in 1733, and the second, nineteen years later, in the movement for "Belief," and, finally, the great " Disruption " of 1843. THEIR DECLINE. 497 operation/ and the new Government suspended its execution. In 1719, five years later, both these measures were repealed. Their repeal was strenuously resisted, however, by the two Archbishops,2 but happily in vain. III. The only other trying and adverse influence ice would mention was connected with the prevailing religious contentions and polemics that bore sway. All the controversies that raged in and around the National Church, had their serious effects on the Dissenting, and especially on the Presbyterian interest. Besides earlier post-Revolution controversies, such as the fierce and bitter one that raged chiefly between Atterbury and Wake after 1700, over the rights and powers of Convocation, we refer specially to the semi-Arian controversy, in 1710 ; the Bangorian or Hoadly controversy on the constitution of a Christian Established Church, which began in 1717 ; 3 the 1 Hallam says, " It is impossible to doubt for an instant, that if the Queen's life had preserved the Tory Government for a few years, every vestige of the Toleration Act would have been effaced." The general mass of the people with the clergy, con- tinued under the spell of the old English idea (notwithstanding all that had occurred) that the National Church should be National in the fullest sense; that, in short, the Church was simply the ecclesiastical side of the nation, and all should belong to the one organization. ' Bogue and Bennett, vol. hi., p. 132. When, a little latter, in 1726, the Bishop of London wished to strain the Act of Toleration, he was prevented by a happy retort of York, the Attorney General, who made him feel he was living under the milder Hanoverian regime. — Harris' Life of Hardwicke, vol. i. pp. 193, 194. 3 This was the occasion of the civil Government suspending Convocation altoge- ther— no meetings of that body being allowed from 1717 till its resuscitation in 1852. The ferment over Hoadly passed from Convocation to pamphleteering and debate through the press, not fewer than fifty authors engaging in the fray ; and as many as seventy pamphlets issuing in a single month ! The conflict also over- flowed into vehement and violeut partisan writings between Church and Dissenters. In 1716, we find certain of the Nonconformist ministers beginning what were called "The occasional papers," and in 1722, the volume was issued containing essays on the same side under the name of The Independent Whig. On the Church side there appeared the collection of papers called The Scourge, and such a volume as England* Black Tribunal, botn in 1720. These are only specimens of the literature that raged on every side. The virulence of the times may be judged by a single sentence or two. "Above all, I am obliged to caution my fellow-subjects against that mystery of sin called Presbytery — a sanctified crocodile, fished up by an apostate rebel out of the Lake of Geneva, carried through the greatest part of Europe over a sea of blood, transported at last into Scotland, and from thence, with a cloak upon her back and a drawn sword in her hand " [that is, the crocodile's hand !] ; " she came along with the northern army into England, and there discharged her poison and spent her tury upon this distracted kingdom." Again, " May it be equally criminal, may the same capital punishment, the same degrees of vengeance and public in- famy pursue the promoters of Presbytery as follow the traitor who would murder his sovereign." — The Scourge, p. 179. K K -198 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Subscription Controversy, headed by the Latitudinarians ; and the Deistical Controversy ; all of these profoundly touched the vital places of the old Dissent, especially the first.1 It was William Winston, a bold but eccentric genius, in his Historical Preface to Primitive Christianity, 1710, and Dr. Samuel Clarke in his Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, in 1712, who started the fiery discussion of the Trinitarian doctrines, Whiston being Apollinarian, and Clarke Arian in tendency. This opened the way for the subject of the Trinity and kindred fundamentals being canvassed in the most cool and meta- physical style ; what heat of controversy there was being too often that of personal passion and temper, rather than that of zealous contending for the faith. The spirit of laxity and religious indifferentism began to show itself in two directions in the Church. Either it asserted the right of subscribing Trini- tarian formularies in an Arian sense ; or it began to wish and then clamour for alterations in the formularies, and, finally, for the abolition of subscription to Articles altogether. In the one case, there sprang up in the Church those who were known as " Conforming Arians." In the other case, were the Anti- subscriptionists — like Clarke himself, who prepared a Prayer Book to suit Arian tastes, Dr. Herring, Archbishop of Canter- bury, who approved of the design, Hutton, Archbishop of York, Warburton, and, finally, Francis Blackburn, Archdeacon of Cleveland, who headed the non-subscription petitioners in the Church of England about 1750-60, but who failed in their attempt. Perhaps the chief benefit from all these controversies was the extension and strengthening of the principles of civil and religious liberty and the discrediting of the principles of sacer- dotalism. The ideas of a priestly caste and of apostolical suc- cession were getting reduced to a minimum, and the High Church party shrank and shrivelled into its narrowest dimen- sions in the presence of what it did so much to engender — the growing but fatal extreme and reaction of Latitudinarianism or indifferentism both in discipline and in doctrine. i See Lecky, Hist, of Eighteenth Century in England, vol. ii. ch. ix., particularly his summary at pp. 544, 545. II. THE SUBSCRIPTION CONTROVERSY. EXETER ASSEMBLY AND SALTERS' HALL SYNOD. 1719. In the midst of the untoward changes and influences referred to in the last chapter, a dangerous controversy broke out in the ranks of the Presbyterian ministry in England on the question of Subscription to Articles of Faith. This controversy was vio- lently agitating different Churches at the same time through- out Great Britain and Ireland; but it was specially at work in its explosive power among the Presbyterians of England, from the circumstances of the case to which we have now to refer. This case arose out of the ill-omened appearance of what is known as " Serni-Arianism," l or the doctrine which casts doubts on the Supreme Deity of the Saviour, and which was being broached in various quarters, and was occasioning great heartburnings and suspicions — the fear being a natural and 1 The evil showed itself first in Dublin, where the Presbytery had to deal with one of its ministers, Thomas Emlyn, an English Presbyterian, born at Stamford in 1663, and educated at the Northamptonshire Academy for Dissenters, and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Becoming chaplain to the Countess of Donegal, he was chosen in 1691 as colleague to Joseph Boyse, the leading Presbyterian minister in Dublin, who did such service to the cause of Presbytery in Ireland. Thomas Emlyn, after officiating in this important post for eleven years, gives the following account of his change of views and what happened to him in 1702. " I own I had been unsettled in my notions from the time I had read Dr. Sherlock's Book of the Trinity, which sufficiently discovered how far many were gone back towards Polytheism ; I long tried what I could do with some Sabellian turns, making out a Trinity of somewhat in one single mind. I found that by the fatherhood scheme of Dr. Sherlock and Mr. Howe, I best preserved a Trinity, but I lost the Unity ; by the Sabellian scheme of modes, subsistence, and properties, I best kept up the Divine Unity, but then I had lost a Trinity, such as the Scripture discovers, so that I could never keep both in view at once " (A True Narrative of the Proceedings of the Dis- senting Ministers of Dublin against Mr. Thomas Emlyn). Having been remove. I from his office by the Dublin ministers, Emlyn came to London, became intimate with Clark and Whiston, and attempted without success to carry on a cause of Lis own. He met with no sympathy, but rather severe opposition from his Presbyterian brethren. He died at the age of seventy-eight, in 1713 — an able but restless / speculative man. For fullest particulars regarding Emlyn, see Wilson's London D, ■ .seating Churches, vol. iii. pp. 398-112 ; and Wallace's Anti-Trinitarian Biograph. , vol. iii. Article " Emlyn." • 490 500 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. well-grounded one, that it was sure to develop into other types and phases of heresy. When, in a few years, this tendency to laxness appeared in English Presbyterian Dissent, it gave rise to paroxysms of terror and bewilderment. The first symptom or suspicion of doctrinal defection among the Presbyterians appeared in 1717, at Exeter. In that city there were five Presbyterian meet- ings,—James's meeting (so called, because originating in James the Second's Indulgence, 1687) ; Bow meeting, George's meeting (so called, because opened at time of George the First's accession, 1714) ; Castle Lane meeting, and Little meeting. These formed a kind of secular Presbytery, being under one joint Managing Committee. That Committee enter- tained the question of the orthodoxy of three of the ministers, James Peirce, Joseph Hallett, and Mr. Withers. What had first excited suspicion, was Mr. Peirce's omission of the dox- ology which was sung after the Psalm ; and he seems to have explained this procedure by the plea that he objected to sing anything but the inspired Psalms, without human additions. Why he omitted this on his own motion, without consulting others whose rights were at stake, we need not here inquire. The question, however, was urged, what right had he to make this change ? It seemed personal usurpation. But Peirce was a very able man, and had distinguished himself by a very powerful vindication of Dissenters, issued both in a Latin and an English form.1 He was charged with the new, but in some quarters fashionable, Arianism ; which he however denied. His theory seemed to be the Eusebian or High Arian ; and Whiston 2 boasts of having infected Peirce, and made him favourable to heterodoxy. "I am not of the opinion of Sabellius, Arius, or Socinus, or Sherlock. I believe there is but one God, and can be no more. I believe the Son and Holy Ghost to be Divine persons, but subordinate to the Father, and the unity of God is, I think, to he resolved into the 1 Vindicice fratrum dissent ientium in Anglia, otherwise "A Vindication of the Dis- senters : In answer to Dr. William Nichols' Defence of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England, etc." By James Peirce, a.d. 1707. 2 Memoirs, pp. 143, 144. THETR DECLINE. 501 Father's being the fountain of the Divinity of the Son and Spirit:1 The disingenuousness of Peirce appeared in his main line of defence, when his orthodoxy was challenged, that the people were concerned with what he taught, not ivith what he believed. When requested by the Trustees to clear himself from suspi- cion by an avowal of his faith, he resented the suggestion as inquisitorial and oppressive.1 This was the ground gene- rally taken by numbers of ministers all over the country who were conscious of departing more or less from the old doctrines, and who were ever ready with the plea of their liberty being in danger from inquisitorial requirements. The whole matter was brought before the famous Exeter As- sembly— a Synod which had been set up in 1655, to deal with matters of doctrine and discipline ; and this old Presbyterian organization, founded by Flavel and others, continued to meet even after the Uniformity Act, Independent ministers being afterwards admitted ; but the contention was not allayed, even though the local Trustees (after consulting with seven neighbouring ministers) had forbidden Peirce and Hallett their pulpits; and the adherents of these two ministers {to the number of three hundred) had seceded to a new meeting-place of their own they had built, called The Mint Meeting.2 In the Exeter Assembly, which met in May, 1719, fifty- seven of the ministers signed the first Article of the Thirty- nine, but nineteen, or one-third, refused to do so ; and among these latter were Hallett and Peirce. They were not however tried or further dealt with, though dismissed already by their congregations ; but the Assembly resolved that no minister henceforth be ordained or recommended to congregations by the Assembly, unless he subscribed that First Article, or the i James Peirce wrote a vigorous pamphlet under the title, The Western Inquisi- tion, 1719. 2 The after history of these Exeter Meetings is very interesting and suggestive, as illustrating how Presbyterian places became both Independent and Unitarian. The James's meeting was taken down in 1760 ; and there being room enough in George's meeting, the two were united. The Mint meeting was sold in 1810 ; and to show how heterodoxy was then waning, that seceding body rejoined its original home, George's meeting, from which it was an offshoot. Bow meeting, of which Mr. Withers had been minister, and afterwards Mr. Lavington, was ultimatety absorbed, in 1795, in the Independent congregation of Castle Lane. 502 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. 5th and 6th answers of the Assembly's Catechism, or assented to the Assembly's own declaration of faith, or " sufficiently expressed the same sense in words of his own."1 Meanwhile, some London ministers who had been applied to, had drawn up a healing letter, which was brought before the Committee of the Deputies of the Three Denominations,— who called the whole body of London Dissenting ministers together at Salters' Hall Meeting-House, 19 Feb., 1719. This was the famous Salters' Hall Synod, which met in fierce debate for several sittings. The question resolved itself into this : — Should the letter of advice be sent by itself, or should the assembled brethren not preface it with an avowal of their faith by subscribing Article I. of Church of England, and fifth and sixth answers of the shorter Catechism ? There was no question as to the real orthodox beliefs at that time of any who were present as members of the Synod. The matter in debate was a tactical one, about the way of putting things, so as to keep down strife. It was the unanimous opinion that a letter of advice should be drawn up and for- warded to Exeter ; but Mr. Bradbury, in name of nearly all his Congregational brethren present, insisted on subscription to the above Articles by each minister as a witness to his own personal faith. His opponents, who were chiefly Presbyterian ministers, resisted this proposal, mainly on the ground of its being unnecessary, and that this would be the imposition of a human creed, which they contended was inconsistent with their position and principles as Protestant Dissenters. The numbers at the final session consisted of 142, of whom 73 voted against the need or propriety of any subscription, and the other 69 were in favour ; so that, as Sir John Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, who was present as a Presbyterian layman, expressed it, " The Bible carried it by four." The decision turned on the point that was raised by Peirce at Exeter, who 1 This was the rule that obtained till 1753, when Micaiah Towgood after four years' agitation got it dropped. Towgood's book is a Nonconformist classic, un- commonly able and pungent: A Dissent from the Church of England fully Justi- fied and proved to be the Genuine and Just Consequence of the Allegiance which is due to Jesus Christ, the only Lawgiver in His Church, etc., which ran through many editions from its publication in 1716. THEIR DECLINE. 503 objected to sign any formulary or declaration of faith except in the very words of Holy Scripture ; and this was the real question or stress of debate, that ensued in floods of pamphlet, speech, and sermon. Unquestionably from this point there were new departures and new tendencies. The process was a very gradual one ; but the decline is increasingly perceptible. The London Presbyterian ministers now divided into three parties (with considerable irritation and alienation between them) — Non-subscribers, Subscribers, and Neutrals. Some of the most eminent of the London ministers who were sum- moned to Salters' Hall Synod refused to go, and declined to in- terfere as judges in the Exeter disputes ; assured, as things then stood, that their interference would only result in increased bitterness and divisions. The position of those Neutrals is explained by Calamy, who was the leading Presbyterian among them. " I told him," says Calamy,1 in talking with an Aberdeen Professor, " that, as for the true eternal Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, I was very ready to declare for it, at that time or any other, and durst not, in conscience, be backward to it. But I could upon good grounds assure him, that was not the point in question among those that were to meet together on the day following ; that certain gentlemen behind the curtain had so influenced their respective friends, for two different ways and methods to which they severally inclined, that, as they appeared disposed, a fierce contention and a shameful breach was in my apprehension un- avoidable." Of this class of neutrals, who declined to go to the Salters' Hall Convention, five were Independents (among them being Dr. Isaac Watts and Daniel Neal, the historian of the Puritans), and nine were prominent Presbyterians. On the vote taking place, the minority, who were in favour of " subscribing," left the Synod, and resolved themselves into a distinct meeting, over which their leader, the Rev. Thomas Bradbury, presided. It included the main body of Independent ministers, who, singularly enough, were " Subscriptionists " ; with the minority of the Presbyterians, who yet were greater in actual numbers than their Independent subscribing brethren. The Non-subscribers, being in the majority, went on with their 1 Edmund Calamy, Historical Account of my own Life, vol. ii. pp. 414, 415. 504 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. meeting after the withdrawal of the Subscribers ; the Modera- tor, the learned Dr. Joshua Oldfield, remaining in the chair. They adopted their Letter of Advice, and sent it to Exeter, on 10 March. Accompanying the letter was a statement of rea- sons for not subscribing, and among other things they said, — "We did not think fit to subscribe, because we thought no sufficient reasons were offered for our subscribing. We were pressed to it that we might clear ourselves from the suspicions of Arianism. But as we knew no just ground of suspicion, much less of any charge against us, we thought it would ill-become us so far to indulge an unreasonable jealousy, as to take a step of this nature for removing it ; especially since doing it would have been inconsistent with one of the Advices which we thought necessary to be given, and which was founded upon an Apostolical rule." Again they say, — " We saw no reason to think that a declaration in other words than those of Scripture would serve the cause of peace and truth ; but rather be the occasion of greater confusions and disorders. We have found it always so in history ; and in reason the words of men appear to us more liable to different interpretations than the words of Scripture. . . . We take it to be an inverting the great rule of deciding contro- versies among Protestants, making the explications and words of men determine the sense of Scripture, instead of making the Scriptures to determine how far the words of men are to be regarded. . . . And we know that several who had the same faith and opinions concerning the Trinity with ourselves and our brethren, yet could not be satisfied to come into any human explications." ' This letter and statement bore the signatures of seventy- three ministers. In the following month (7 April) the subscrib- ing assembly forwarded to Exeter their " Advices for Peace," prefaced by a declaration of faith in the doctrine of the Trinity (as stated in the first of the Thirty-nine Articles, and the sixth answer of the Assembly's Shorter Catechism) signed by seventy- seven names ; including not merely forty-eight London minis- ters, but others gathered promiscuously. These " Advices " were, however, too late for any service at Exeter (the Trustees having already ejected Peirce and Hallett) ; i The Non-scbsckibing ministers in their Authentic Account of several Thine/* done and agreed upon by the Dissenting Ministers lately assembled at Sailers' Hall, Lon- don, 1719 ; see also the Subscribing ministers, A True Relation of some Proceedings at Salters' Hall by those Ministers who signed the First Article of the Church of Eng- land, etc., London, 1719. THEIR DECLINE. 505 but the}- originated a violent controversy of newspaper letters and pamphlets,1 which did irretrievable mischief in the ranks of Dissent (the " subscribing " party showing itself particularly virulent), while accusations of falsehood and other grave charges affecting personal character were freely and fiercely bandied about on both sides. Of the Presbyterians, fifty were Non-subscribers, twenty-six Subscribers (two of them Scotch ministers), and nine Neutrals. Of the Congregationalists seven were Non-subscribers, twenty- three were Subscribers, and five Neutrals. It was through the great preponderating majority of these non-subscriptionist Presbyterians that the tendency grew up to use the name Presbyterian, as Dr. Toulmin says, "in a new doctrinal sense.''1 Thus, of those who voted at Salters' Hall, whereby a formal breach was made between Subscribers and Non-subscribers among Presbyterians, — the Subscribers were about half of them Presbyterians and half Independents, — while of the Non-subscribers, the decidedly major and influen- tial portion were Presbyterians ; in fact, nearly all were Presby- terians (fifty Presbyterians and only seven Independents). It is an extraordinary phenomenon, how the two parties, Presby- terians and Independents, should have so entirely changed sides ; and it is indicative of the confused and mixed issues -that were now before the minds of each party. They were truly living in changed times, and were evidently perplexed with the novel conditions, and unable to take their proper bearings. And as the controversy was not confined to London, but raged violently over the country, it was seen that the Presbyterian body especially was broken into two diverse and largely hostile sections ; one claiming to be the only supporters of what they called the true Protestant principle of the sole authority of the 1 Besides the " Authentic Account " and the " True Relation, " there were the Exeter people's " Reasons of their withdrawal from Peirce and Hallett's ministry." and the Non-subscribing ministers' " Reply to Subscribing ministers' Reasons ; " and amid the shower of " Animadversions," " Defences," " Letters," the most prominent tracts were Peirce's " Case," " Western Inquisition," "Defence," "Jus- tification," and " Reply," with, on the other side, Bradbury's " Answer to the Re- proaches." Of the seventy or more pamphlets, a collection may be found in the Williams' Library. A virulent High-Church view is furnished in " The Anatomy of the Synod at Salters' Hall," 1720, appended to " The Scourge." 506 THE TEESBYTEKIANS IN ENGLAND. Bible, to the exclusion of all human formulas, though at the same time avowing their orthodoxy without pluming them- selves on it ; the other party proclaiming themselves the only maintainers of the old faith, making perhaps too much a boast of their entire orthodoxy, and vehemently suspecting and de- nouncing those who had not followed their mode of showing it. Those who took the Non-subscribers' side could boast of greater learning, social status and culture in their ranks ; but the old- fashioned party, as their opponents considered them, included the more saintly and devotional of the ministers and people. The parties stiffened, of course, into rigid lines of division, and good folks had to take sides. Young men of vigorous and ambitious minds tended to the laxer party as the superior in attractiveness, — while numbers, who were timid, swelled the ranks of the Subscribers, — and numbers more fell back into the Established Church, as if sickened with the strife, or de- spairing of the success of the " cause." The English Presbyterians began now to experience the want of some staying power, either in stronger organized coherence, or in a fixed standard of doctrine as a test of sound- ness in the faith, — or rather, they felt the evils of being so largely without them both. The Subscribing section of the Presbyterian ministers showed a stronger tendency toward inter-communion with their Inde- pendent Brethren ; while the congregations that sympathized with them were not averse, when in difficulties, to be served by Independent preachers and pastors. The Non-subscribing Presbyterian ministers showed a ten- dency toward the reception of new ideas, whatever these ideas might be ; and, to adapt themselves to altering tastes, commit- ting themselves to the current speculations and spirit of the times. This was the section that slowly found themselves drifting away from former moorings, though they neither in- tended nor admitted to themselves that they were doing any- thing else than protesting against narrow, illiberal, and bigoted notions.1 1 Calamy mentions twenty-five promising Presbyterians who, in a few years after Salters' Hall, conformed to the Church (Butler, author of the Analogy, and Seeker, THEIR DECLINE. 507 Not that there was any avowed heterodoxy among the London ministers for half a generation after Salters' Hall proceedings ; they were just yielding to the sweet intoxica- tion of new-found and much-needed civil and religious liberty. Their best feature was their vehemently professed attachment to sacred Scripture, and their conviction of its supremacy and all-sufficiency as a guide and standard. Chilling-worth's famous dictum : " The Bible, the Bible only, the religion of Protestants," to which they as Non-subscribers adhered, and which they admired and praised beyond descrip- tion, has in it, however, when taken baldly and barely by itself, the very seeds of rationalism. In Ghillingworth's own hands it had become the grand bulwark of laUtudinarianism ; and subsequently it got to be freely used in defence of all sorts of laxity by many among this non-subscribing class of Presbyterian ministers. They fell, unwittingly perhaps, but none the less effectually, into the mediaeval mode of looking at and dealing with Scripture. Faith, evangelical and saving faith, was with them an assent to truths (frigida opinio) in doctrine and morals ; ceasing to be a warm, living, direct, trust in a personal Saviour. They fell thus from one of the essential principles of the Eeformation ; for theology got to be studied as a philosophy,1 and the Bible was handled as a laboratory to gratify and reward human research and curiosity. The Bible brought to the standard of reason and common sense, will yield very different results from the true Protestant principle — the Bible interpreted to the individual experience by the humbly-sought teaching and illumination of the Holy Spirit. afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, among them) ; and he comments -with sur- prise and severity on eighteen of the number being partisans of tbe Non-subscribers at Salters' Hall, who resented subscription to one Article, but did not scruple at length to subscribe that and many more.— Calamy's Own Life, vol. ii. pp. 503-506. 1 Note here the influence of Locke— both his mode of philosophy and of theologi- zing. Locke left behind him a posthumous Defence of Nonconformity. See Calamy's Autobiography, vol. ii. pp. 30 and 371. III. INSIDIOUS TENDENCY TO AEIANISM, AND ITS CAUSES. The Westminster Shorter Catechism, which Dr. Johnson has characterized as " one of the most sublime works of the human understanding," continued to be taught in all Presbyterian Congregations until about 1735. It was then revised and ex- purgated by the Rev. James Strong, of Ilminster, in an Ar- minian and High Arian sense, with the professed view of making it more adapted to the faculties of children and igno- rant persons. But it was the Rev. Samuel Bourn, of Birming- ham (usually called the elder Bourn), who first of all, in 1736, emitted the most pronounced Arian note in An Address to Protestant Dissenters ; or, an Enquiry into the Grounds of their Attachment to the Assembly's Catechism ; whether they Act upon Bigotry or from Reason : being a Calm Examination of the Sixth Answer in the Assembly's Shorter Catechism. By a Protestant Dissenter. Two years later, in 1738, he re-issued Strong's revision of The Assembly's Catechism, with three other Cate- chisms, or, as he calls them, Lectures in a Catechetical Method, by himself, and with recommendations of the volume by Mr. Mottershead of Manchester, Rogerson of Derby, Grove and Amory of Taunton, with Dr. Samuel Chandler and Dr. George Benson, the real heads of the now rising Arian school among the Presbyterians. And this may be regarded as the first manifesto of the party.1 Many causes were now at work to make the Presbyterian congregations especially liable to fall victims to any fungus that might alight. We may note a few. 1 Dr. Toulmin, the Socinian historian of tbe Dissenters, who issued an annotated edition of Neal's Puritans, says, long afterwards, that " Mr. Bourn, though he did not think it proper to lay aside the Assembly's Catechism, which initiatory piece of religious instruction carried with it at that day a very undue authority, yet in his catechetical lectures in his chapel freely censured the doctrines which he believed to be erroneous." THEIR DECLINE. 501) I. The want of order and discipline, so far as the ministers were concerned. Purely Independent Churches could and did operate directly and decidedly on their ministers from within : purely and fully equipped Presbyterian Churches can do so yet more effectively, by the control of Church courts, from without. But here were comparatively nondescript bodies, where the ministers were without legitimate restraint — especi- ally where they had chapel endowments, as the Arianizing ministers were careful for the most part to have. But even the orthodox Presbyterian ministers showed more anxiety to uphold their own dignity and liberty than to protect the Christian people from ministerial supineness or laxity. They largely seem to have forgotten that the Church was not made for the ministry, but the ministry for the Church, and that the members and adherents of a Church require guarantees, not at ordination only, but that shall be continuously operative. II. The mistaken notions they entertained about Church con- fessions and subscriptions. They had seen the evils of an imposed set of Articles, enforced by the State and statute law ; and as conscious freedmen they learned to resent it, when practised upon themselves. Their prejudice against tests and imposi- tions, so natural and easy to be understood, led them to con- found this with the very different thing of what is apostolically required — "a pattern, or form of sound words," as an exposition of a teacher's faith, for mutual confidence and co-operation. Doubtless they had seen men keep the faith, without such bonds, through times of trial and persecution ; for no better guarantee can be afforded for fidelity and zeal, than to endure suffering and hardship for conscience sake. But this guarantee is not available in quiet and peaceful times. Besides, while they persuaded themselves that they were wiser and more liberal than their fathers and ^founders in showing antipathy to all tests or standards of orthodoxy, they confounded terms of Church communion, — which is a question concerning Church membership, and which may and ought to be open and liberal enough, — with terms of ministerial office and honour, which has to do with the different question alto- gether of public and authorized Church teaching. Those who 510 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. aspire to that function are not to be always mere inquirers, never coming to a profession and an open acknowledgment of the truth ; as if Gospel doctrine were to be a frigida opinio, and not a frank and rousing challenge, " We believe, we have con- victions, and therefore we speak." They were right in con- ceiving that in their system of undeveloped and partially formed polity, the idea of subscription was somewhat out of place. For subscription, to be free and unoppressive yet secure, must be preceded by thoroughly good and efficient training in the theology to be taught, and followed up by a process of con- stantly operative discipline by mutual consent. They forgot, too, that the easy-going state of goodwill toward all speculative tendencies was only a latitudinarian or intellectual charity — the charity of an easy-going and secularly-minded indiffer- entism, and very far removed indeed from the Christian charity which, in a very different sense, believeth all things. They forgot that the charity of speculative intellectualism is pain- fully deficient in enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and life. III. The Churches had no real control over the Academies, or their tutors and pupils, save to help to sustain them and keep them going. Some of these, like Taunton and Hoxton, got neutral-tinted in doctrine ; and generally, for reasons too difficult now to deal with, they became seed-plots of hetero- doxy, long before the notorious Warrington one was started.1 1 The Academies. Till after the Revolution, the risk of educating young men for the ministry was undertaken by prominent divines among the ejected, such as by the noble-spirited Rev. Richard Frankland, M.A., in the North, chiefly at Rathmel < 1674-1698), who trained a very large number, like the two sons of Oliver Heywood, William Tong, and Dr. John Evans, of Hand Alley ; or by the Rev. Thomas Doo- little, M.A., of London, already referred to ; or by the Rev. James Owen, of Oswes- try and Shewsbury, 1679-1706 (see interesting account in Life of James Owen, pp. 87-92) ; and many more. The same course was followed by others in the 18th century, as by Rev. Samuel Jones, of Gloucester and Tewkesbury, 1712-1720, where Chandler was trained, with his friends, the future Bishop Butler and Archbishop Seeker, the last of whom gives a full account of the course of studies pursued (Letter of 18 Nov. 1711, in Gibbons's Life of Watts). Doctrinal degeneracy seems not, however, to have crept in till after the establish- ment of Academies with a staff of Tutors, conducting classical, philosophical, and other secular studies, as well as theology. One of the first affected was the Academy at Taunton, which was begun single-handed by the good and noble Rev. Matt. Warren before 1687, but which became under his successors a kind of joint- stock institution, turning out a set of speculative and Arianly-taiuted preachers, between 1725 and 1738. Similar was the fate of the more particularly Independent THEIR DECLINE. 511 Then, again, in the Presbyterian Churches there had crept in the evils of both family patronage and of trusteeism. In the large and wealthy congregations it was an early custom to have an assistant minister ; and certainly many of these assistants were the introducers of heretical tendencies. The trustees and minister had the largest " voice " in these appointments, the congregation being understood to acquiesce, especially if the wealthier folks were to find the money- — a nominee of their own being thus provided for respectably. IV. The practical disuse of and departure from the more fully developed Presbyterial government and discipline, as an opera- tive and influential reality, was an aggravation of the other symptoms. This was needed to protect congregations against Trusteeism, and hereditary family influence and control. The inspiriting and invigorating influence that comes from mutual counsel and co-operation was virtually lost. Organization, in- deed, is not life ; but as the highest life seeks the best organi- zation, the want of it is apt to be death, and the disuse of it deprives Churches of that staying and self-recuperative power which is most needed at critical junctures ; and so they are left a prey to the downward and deadening tendencies that may or Congregational Academy that began so promisingly under the Rev. John Jen- nings, at Kibworth, 1715-1722 (v. Doddridge's Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 462, for admirable letter descriptive of the course of study), and that was continued with such eclat at Northampton by Dr. Doddridge, with the help of the William Coward Trustees, 1738-1751, but which got on to the down-grade when removed to Daventry, 1751 to 1798, under Dr. Caleb Ashworth (who, with several others of Doddridge's pupils, became Arian). Priestley, who was Ashworth's very first student, and from 1761 to 1767 his classical assistant, says, " The Academy was in a state peculiarly favourable to the serious pursuit of truth, as the students were about equally divided upon every question of much importance, such as liberty and necessity, the sleep of the soul, and all the articles of theological orthodoxy and heresy: in consequence of which, all these topics were the subject of continual discussion. Our tutors also were of different opinions ; Dr. Ashworth taking the orthodox side of every ques- tion, and Mr. Clark, the sub-tutor, that of heresy, though always with the greatest modesty." Matters came to a crisis in 1789, when the chief tutor, Eev. Thomas Belsham, resigned on avowing himself a Socinian, and the Calvinistic Coward Trustees transferred their patronage elsewhere, and founded a new orthodox Insti- tution. The Presbyterian Academy at Kendal, under Dr. Caleb Rotheram from 1733 to 1752, never proceeded so far ; but the mixed one in Hoxton Square, which came to an end in 1785, under Drs. Morton Savage, Andrew Kippis, and Abraham Bees lapsed into heresy ; but especially so the Warrington Institution to be after- wards mentioned. Full accounts of the Dissenting Academies may be found in Dr. Toulmin's Edition of Neal's Puritans. See also Bogue and Bennet's Dissenters, and Rev. W. Turner's Account, in his Unitarian Lives (1840). 512 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. be at work.1 For want of Presbyterial supervision, the leaven of heresy had free course to work its way secretly. For this is the worst feature of the Arian development — the aspect of dis- honesty and cowardice it seemed to wear ; for its beginnings are unquestionably yet painfully bound up with many deli- cate implications of personal honour and a lack of moral niceness. V. The age, being destitute of deep faith or warm earnest- ness, was impatient of all strong convictions and passionate enthusiasms ; or, as one has put it : — " The age of George II. had its value for political and other progres- sion ; but the historian of moral and religious progress, on the other hand, is under the necessity of depicting the same period as one of decay of religion, licentiousness of morals, public corruption, profaneness of language — a day of ' rebuke and blasphemy.' Even those who look with suspicion on the contemporary complaints from the Jacobite clergy, of ' decay of religion,' will not hesitate to say, it teas an age destitute of depth and earnestness ; an age whose poetry is without romance, tchose philo- sophy was without insight, and ivhose public men were ivithout character; an age of ' light without lovef xvhose very merits were ' of the earth, earthy. ,' In their estimate, the followers of Mill and Carlyle will agree with those of Dr. Newman." - Given then all this : given this spirit of opposition to re- straint and of resistance to any trammels of human authority, with dislike to all subscriptions of Articles and compulsory authority ; then, with the other conditions of the age, and the state of the young, half-trained Presbyterian ministers, Arian- 1 It would be an egregious blunder to suppose, what some have not been unwilling to suggest, that tbere is something in Episcopacy that is alien to Arianism or to any similar doctrinal declension. Adopt Episcopacy, some would say, and you have a guarantee against such things as Arianism. This is a mere illusion. Not only did Arianism spring up in tbe English Episcopal Church and secure a firm lodgment tbere, but tbe Churches which predominated in tbe early kingdoms of the Gothic peoples, as well as those of tbe Burgundians, Vandals, and Lombards, were all Episcopal Churches, and yet were all of them Arian ! It is an insinuation alto- gether unworthy of Canon Liddon (Bampton Lectures, p. 484), that it was owing to the want of the High Church theory of grace in the Sacraments that certain deno- minations have suffered such lapses in doctrine and spiritual condition, as if he bad not before his eyes such a case as the German, Scandinavian, and similar Lutheran Churches, with high enough sacramental ideas, becoming honeycombed with Socinianism and the worst forms of rationalism. 2 Mark Patteson, in his " Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688- 1750." — Essays and Reviews. THEIR DECLINE. 513 ism, with its vagueness and flexibility, just met their case, and was a convenient disguise, to any that sought it, to conceal a denial of all supernatural elements in revelation ; or, if not going so far, to fit in to the antipathy toward all enthusiasm or high-souled Christian life, or to suit a turn and temper of phi- losophizing that would settle all problems by an easy-going off-hand decision of common sense. VI. The original set, or attitude, of the Presbyterians aided the process of the transformation. " Presbyterians seem to have now simply aimed at making the best of the position, not by seeking to organize a Church outside the Establish- ment, but by finding if possible some modus Vivendi that would enable them to remain in or return to it with a good conscience. The one thing, they wished to avoid was a permanent disruption of the Church. It even seems as if this attitude of mind, very admirable from one point of view did, in their case, gradually degenerate into a tendency to compromise all round, in very striking contrast to the spirit of the Presbyterianism of the previous generation, and led directly, first, to a charitable toleration of the Arian views that now began to show themselves, and then, as a natural result, to the spread of such views among themselves. Perhaps nothing in ecclesiastical history is more remarkable than the change which came over the Presbyterianism of England between the West- minster Assembly and the Revolution, in the transition from a jealous guarding of the complete truth, even to intolerance, in the former period, to the broad and even latitud in arian charity which prevailed in the latter. If the Presbyterians of the Eevolution period did become more infected with the spirit of error than other religionists of the day, the ex- planation is probably to be found in the direction indicated."1 VII. The state of the law also respecting trusts and Corpora- tions is answerable in some degree for both the imperfection and the defection of Presbyterianism in England. The voluntary societies or congregations uniting for public worship, not being corporate bodies, could not hold land. All had to be conveyed to or vested in Trustees, chosen by an expensive process from time to time. The power of the Trustees was a new and un- satisfactory element. The extreme jealousy with which the law guarded the Established Church and the rights of its Ecclesiastical Courts, and constituted the parson in every Eev. John Black, Presbyterianism in England in 18th and 19th Centuries, PP. 7, 8. L L 514 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. parish, a Corporation sole for religious purposes, had its subtle effects on the Presbyterian system and methods. VIII. The endowments helped to fix and perpetuate the Arianizing or heterodox congregations. In this way the Pres- byterian name grew into association with the Arian or the later Unitarian names, because, while heterodox Independent or Baptist congregations became extinct, the very wealth and liberality of the Presbj'terians maintained many ministers of a heterodox turn, who must otherwise have failed to find subsist- ence. It is specially to be borne in mind that many heterodox ministers, trained as Independents, like Priestley or Belsham, sought settlements in endowed Presbyterian charges; and while able and scholarly leaders like these could command prominent pulpits, there were others less capable who seemed to drift into quieter but still endowed " meeting-places." It would be a mistake to suppose that these changes belonged chiefly or ex- clusively to the Presbyterian ministers, though there were reasons why the heterodox preachers and Presbyterian charges should have specially been drawn together. The constitution of the Presbyterian bodies of worshippers had in it in many instances all the disadvantages of the Independent system, with none of its advantages — the minister, with a few trustees, being the factotum, and the congregation being often reduced to little more than an audience, with no effective or organized popular control, as in the strict covenant-making Church membership which wielded the power. Not that all Independent Churches were of this kind, for many were precisely on the Presbyterian footing, which gave power to seat-holders, or those who paid for sittings, with the worse evil of a thoroughgoing and stoutly maintained spirit of self-segregation. Hence, as Dr. Halley frankly allows, " The early Unitarians among the Nonconformists were not Presbyterians, as com- monly supposed, but Independents and Baptists." He says with equal candour, " The change in the theology of many Nonconformists has been attributed, I think inconsiderately, to the influence of Presbyterian rather than of Independent min- isters. The greatest offenders, or the greatest reformers (how- ever the charge may be regarded), were educated among the THEIR DECLINE. 515 Independents more frequently than among the Presbyterians. . . . In London, in the early part of last century, Nathaniel Lardner, Martin Tomkins, Moses Lowman, and Jeremiah Hunt, educated as Independent ministers and accepted as members of the Independent Board, were the chief supporters of the new theology. So, on comparison of the Lancashire ministers belonging to the middle of the century, those edu- cated in the Independent Academy of Northampton and Daventry, under Doddridge and Ashworth (the Academy of Priestley and Belsham) were more decided and active in pro- moting the new theology than those who had been educated in the Presbyterian Academy under Dr. Eotheram at Kendal."1 1 Halley, Lancashire, vol. ii. pp. 77 and 380, etc. It was under these influences that the older Independency ran away down into decay and threatened dissolution, till Calvinistic Methodism picked it up in its new form. Zhc Decline of tbe Presbyterians in Englanfc {Continued). PERIOD OF FURTHER DEFECTION AND DECAY, 1740-1812. I. — Character and Relations of the Heterodox Presbyterian Congregations. 1740-1788. II. — Decay and Lapsing of Presbyterian and other Dissenting Charges. III. — Arianism Driven to Unitarianism. 1782-1812. 517 (Continued). PERIOD OF FURTHER DEFECTION AND DECAY, 1740-1812. CHAEACTEE AND EELATIONS OF THE HETEEODOX PEESBYTEEIAN CONGEEGATIONS. 1740-1788. It was over tlie question of ministerial subscription that the English Presbyterians began to break into fragments. Al- though Ariaxism was the chief form of doctrinal declension that began to obtain a footing among the non-subscribing, which was also the larger, section of the Presbyterian ministry in England, this particular form of doctrine was determined simply by force of circumstances and the prevailing speculative fashion of the time. Any other form of doctrinal speculation that happened to emerge might have been as readily adopted. For the great question among these anti-subscription Presby- terian divines of the middle of last century was not so much about any one specific doctrine or other, but it was the prin- ciple of entire ministerial freedom of religious inquiry and pro- fession. This was an early and potent watchword with these non-subscribing Presbyterians, and under the spell of it there resulted many varying changes of doctrinal theory. For long indeed it was unattended by any avowed departure from the Calvinistic profession, unless to the extent of that modification of it, called Baxterianism. But the absence of any provision for enforcing doctrinal unity beyond what was legally required by the Toleration Act, was a form of unrestrained liberty greatly relished by men embarking on a new departure in ecclesiastical life. Intoxicated with its exhilarating atmo- 520 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. sphere, there were those among them who began to praise, and ultimately even to worship, this newly-found principle of an untrammelled ministry, as a method sure to lead to the greatest and happiest results. Ostensibly the creed of these English Presbyterian ministers may have still remained for a time that of the "Westminster Confession, or, legally speaking, the Doctrinal Articles of the Church of England ; but changes at length inevitably began to appear, according as the practical habit of acting on the easy and non-restrictive method led to a speculative recognition of its pleasantness, and then to an undue over-estimate of its importance or its intrinsic value. Under their hands religion began to wear the aspect of an intellectual or palsestric exercise, as if presenting a field for boundless inquiry and speculation. Christian doctrine ceased to be held as a living faith or conviction, and degenerated into a mere set or scheme of " opinions," as was the favourite and current phrase. It was on these lines of regarding Christian faith as " opinion " and Christian doctrine as non-restrictive that the leaders of Presbyterian thought and education in the Academies proceeded during the student days of Drs. Lardner, Benson, and John Taylor ; and they in their turn were content to emphasize and carry forward the same idea. Thus it came about, slowly but surely, that the one distinctive and most noticeable feature of these heterodox Presbyterians, was their boast of "free and candid religious inquiry." By this they were content to abide ; and they were not indisposed to accept and even glory in whatever might result from this grand principle, whether it might land them for the time being in Arianism, Pelagianism, or any other " opinion." We thus find along this line a sort of intermediate stage between the earlier Arianism and the later Unitarianism — which, both as a word and an explosive force, Dr. Priestley was to do so much afterwards to extend. This intermediate phase appears in many works soon after the middle of the century, but chiefly in the writings of that very learned Presbyterian heresiarch Dr. John Taylor of Norwich, whose main polemical book, The Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, was thoroughly Pelagian ; and it opened up fresh fields for heterodox specula- THEIR DECLINE. 521 tion and discussion. In one of his early books, Defence of the Common Rights of Christians, published in 1737, Dr. Taylor boasts of the Salter Hall Synod, that it furnished, — " The only instance perhaps that can be produced out of Church history for many centuries, of any Synod of ministers declaring in favour of religious liberty." And in the same book he gives, as a Presbyterian preacher, his views of how this kind of liberty should work : — ■ "If the Dissenters stand firm in liberty and love; . . . if they refuse all party schemes and stand upon the basis of Universal Christianity ; if they allow the free study of the Bible, and encourage the labours of their honest and learned men ; if they are steadfastly determined to establish their faith, practice, and worship on the "Word of God alone, as it shall from time to time be made known to them . . . then they will act up to their own true principles. . . . But if ever they abandon liberty and love ; if they stiffly adhere to party names and schemes"; . . . if they discourage the honest and learned that would throw in more light and truth among them, they will become weak and dwindle into nothing.'' In his sermon at the opening of his handsome new " chapel " at Norwich, in 1756 (the year in which he received his honorary degree of D.D., from Glasgow University, in special recognition of his labours and attainments in Hebrew lexicography), he says : — " This edifice is founded on no party principles or tenets, but is built on purpose . . . that we may exercise the public duties of religion upon the most Catholic and charitable foundation, and that . . . we may be quite free to search the Scriptures, to discover, correct, or reform at any time our own mistakes and deficiencies, and at liberty to exercise communion with any of our Christian brethren." l These views, which became so current, and which confound licence with liberty and the lack of restraint with freedom, which mistake iiidifferentism and latitudinarianism for Chris- tian charity, and which make ministerial laxness synonymous with Catholicity, soon began, like all empiricism, to work its mischievous effects, to the detriment and ruin of the very interests which were meant to be safeguarded. Narrowness 1 Dr. John Taylor died suddenly, during sleep, in 1761. Vide Theological Magazine, July, 1804, for notice of his life, and specially a Memoir by his son, in Monthly Repository for August, 1826. 522 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. of view, paltriness of aim, and general paralysis of effort began to characterize the religious life of the ministry ; while languor, decay, and dissolution supervened over the congregations. Not that this was universal, or that there were no exemplary specimens remaining of orthodox Presbyterian ministers and Churches. A concrete illustration of the state of things will, perhaps, throw more light on the situation than any amount of general disquisition. We select the case of Needham, in Surrey, where the old Presbyterian meeting, which had been presided over for forty years (1662-1702) by the ejected divine John Fairfax, found a worthy successor to him in the equally orthodox and Evangelical John Meadows, who was the son of another of the ejected1 and who was ordained at Needham (or Barking) in 1702. After a long pastorate here of fifty-six years, Mr. Meadows died, in 1757, at the age of eighty. Two years before his death he received the afterwards famous Priestley as colleague and successor, on the recommendation of Dr. Ashworth, his tutor at Daventiy, who knew Priestley's heterodox tendencies. This introduced a disturbing element which clouded the close of the good old Evangelical Presby- terian minister's life.2 We are told that, — " The congregation, by a majority, if not decidedly in favour of the orthodox views preached by their old pastors, Fairfax and Meadows, were at least against any open controverting of them. They were about 100 1 The Suffolk Bartholoh^ans. A Memoir of the Ministerial and Domestic History of John Meadoics, A.M. (formerly Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, ejected in 16G2 from the Bectory of Ousden in Suffolk), by the late Edgar Taylor, F.S.A., one of his descendants. London : Pickering, 1840 (A Unitarian volume). In Norwich the families of Taylor, Martineau, Meadows, and others were inter- married, as was not uncustomary elsewhere, with the old Presbyterian households in different centres. 2 How strongly Evangelical this Presbyterian minister, Mr. Meadows, continued, may be seen from a long paper of nine paragraphs which he left as his dying testimony. The first runs thus : — " I die in faith as I have lived, believing the Divine authority of the Old and New Testaments, and in the faith of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in which I have been baptized myself and have baptized others, and believing a state of rewards, retribution, and punishment at the end of this life." And he closes thus after the nine paragraphs: "Lastly, O Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit when it shall depart from its body. Amen." Mr. Meadows retained also high and stiff Presbyterian views of ordination, and would not join with the other Dissenting brethren in their loose way of doing it in his neighbourhood. (Memoir of Meadows, ut supra, pp. 108-110.) Priestley in his Memoirs speaks of the ministers round about Needham being Arian. THEIR DECLINE. 523 in number and had received assistance both from the Presbyterian and Independent London Funds ; l but they abandoned the latter on Priestley's recommendation, though he allows many of them were opposed to his doc- trinal views, as was also the old minister. Priestley left in 1758 (the year after Mr. Meadows' death), after being there only three years. Mr. Meadows having been a man of independent fortune, the congregation could ill discharge the burden of a successor's support ; and after lingering for a while in orthodox hands, the meeting-place, which had been built in 1715, was closed, and the Presbyterian congregation finally ceased in 1775." 2 The congregation at Needham, like many other struggling " causes," had been in the habit of taking aid from both the Presbyterian and Independent Funds. Priestley,3 however, that he might not be hampered by any external interference with his " opinions," broke off connection with both Funds ; and as his hearers became fewer, he began to eke out his liv- ing by secular teaching and lecturing. With such speculative 1 It will be remembered that the Presbyterians had a Fund in London in 1691, and that the Congregationalists, after the rupture -with them in 1691, created a separate Fund of their own in 1695, to aid the poorer ministers and to help in training students for the ministry. After a time both of these Fund-Boards co- operated in many ways with each other, till the serious doctrinal divergencies arose, as in the Academy at Carmarthen in 1757, when the Congregational Board with- drew and established a Welsh Academy of their own. Both the Funds were ad- ministered on very broad Dissenting grounds; Independent ministers receiving from the Presbyterian Board, and vice versa, for many years ; as may be gathered from the following letter of complaint, dated so far on as the 4th of February, 1771, from "the Managers of the Presbyterian Fund" to "the Eev. and worthy Gentlemen, Managers of the Congregational Fund." " Gentlemen, — The Managers of the Presbyterian Fund for poor Dissenting Ministers have received a letter addressed to them and signed by several ministers of respectable character in Lancashire and Cheshire, setting forth, that while those of the Independent Denomination in those counties have annual allowances from both Funds, such as are of the Presbyterian Denomination are debarred from sharing any advantages from yours. By which means, while they suffer for principle and conscience, their congregations labour under great disadvantages. The above affair calls for our serious attention. But we cannot suffer ourselves to proceed hastily in it, or without first laying it before our brethren of the Congregational Board ; and desiring a friendly conference with them upon the subject of this complaint." 2 Memoir of Meadows, pp. 10G, 107. It was re-opened, years afterwards, in 1793, by a new congregation, on Independent principles ; and, after being enlarged, it was rebuilt, in 1837, by the Independents with the aid of public subscription. 3 Dr. Joseph Priestley, who was to exercise such sinister influence on the name Presbyterian, was by birth and education an Independent. Born in 1733, at the Yorkshire village of Birstal Fielding, where his father was a woollen manufacturer, and taught the Assembly's Shorter Catechism by his mother, he gave early token of his fluctuating views by becoming an avowed and pugnacious Arminian while yet a youth ; and at Daventry Academy, under Dr. Doddridge's successors, he threw aside the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement. 524 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. proclivities as his, Priestley naturally preferred the more liberal administrative ways of the Presbyterian meeting-houses ; and, at the end of three years, in 1758, he was thankful to accept an invitation from the Presbyterian " meeting " at Nantwich, small as it was, and composed, like other of these old English Presbyterian interests even then, chiefly of travelling Scotch- men, as he tells us in his "Memoirs." Then, after three more years, he accepted the post of classical tutor in the recently-founded Academy at Warrington. The two most menacing features for Lancashire Presbyterianism at that time were, the quick change in temper and morals, as well as in politics, that seized upon Manchester and other Puritan districts when the drunken and dissolute cry of " Church and King " became the fashion ; and the rapid deterioration that went on through the prevalence of bitter and barren theological controversies consequent on the establishment of the Academy at Warrington in 1759, which increasingly became a hotbed of heterodox speculation and activity. Dr. John Taylor of Norwich was the first professor, both in divinity and classics ; and on his death, in 1761, he was suc- ceeded by his classical assistant, who had also been Doddridge's pupil and assistant, John Aikin,D.D. (father of John Aikin,M.D., and Miss Aikin, who became Mrs. Barbauld, and grandfather of Miss Lucy Aikin, all three so eminent in literature) ; while Gilbert Wakefield, Priestley, Dr. Enfield, and others who had been under Doddridge and Dr. Caleb Ashworth, were tutors, either on the lay or divinity side of the Institution. Between 1759 and 1786, when it was dissolved, 393 pupils had been en- rolled ; some of them became curiously eminent afterwards, like Ralph Eddowes of Chester, the chief Unitarian in America of his day ; Dr. Estlin of Bristol, one of the early Universalists ; Malthus, the political-economy enthusiast ; Forster, the natu- ralist, who accompanied Captain Cook ; Lord Ennismore ; and George, last Lord Willoughby of Parham, with representa- tives of Presbytero-Unitarian names like Rigby, Martineau, and Taylor of Norwich ; Heywood, Yates, Potter of Man- chester, Roscoe of Liverpool, Gaskell of Wakefield, Shore of Sheffield, and Wedgewood of Etruria. When Priestley left THEIR DECLINE. 525 Warrington, in 1767, after a tutorship of six years, during which he had written and experimented much, so as to have been brought into friendship with Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Price, and had received the degree of LL.D. from Edinburgh, and entered the Koyal Society, he removed to the leading Pres- byterian pulpit, Leeds. There the famous Letter on the Logos, which had been kept by Dr. Lardner in his desk for twenty years, finally fixed and confirmed Priestley in Unitarianism. II. DECAY AND LAPSING OF PRESBYTERIAN AND OTHER DISSENTING CHARGES. "With growing doctrinal laxity and spiritual indifferentism among Presbyterians, there came a corresponding stagnation and exhaustion both in numbers and resources. . Outward decay attended the inward decline. It was not the mere lapse in doctrine, but the far more fatal symptom of spiritual declen- sion accompanying it that wrought the mischief. Doctrinal faithlessness was partly the result of the prevailing spiritual deadness and partly the fruitful cause of it, the two things acting and reacting on each other with a malign fatality. Not that these evil symptoms were confined to the Presbyterians. They affected all denominations ; but, for the reasons already given, they permanently and most seriously rested with blight- ing influence on Presbyterian interests. The very wealth and liberality of the earlier Presbyterians now operated to the disadvantage of many Churches they had founded. Heterodox congregations among the Independents died out ; but the endowments among the Presbyterians kept many of them alive, and helped to perpetuate the sinister application of the Presbyterian name. While numerous Independent and Presby- terian congregations of a heterodox kind were becoming extinct,1 many Presbyterian charges of a like obnoxious kind were enabled to hold out, where the adherents by themselves could not have maintained a minister. Such endowed places and the Arianizing ministers were naturally drawn to one another ; and thus many Arian and Socinian ministers, like Priestley and Belsham, who were brought up as Independents, became 1 A melancholy feeling creeps over the mind of the reader from time to time, as he turns the pages of Walter Wilson's four volumes of The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Cliurches and Meeting-houses in London, Westminster, and Southwark, at the constant recurrence of the word "■Extinct" applied with painful and impar- tial frequency to Presbyterian and Independent places of worship alike, throughout the metropolis, during last century. 626 THEIR DECLINE. 527 ministers of such Presbyterian places. Thus more and more the name Presbyterian came to be associated with doctrinal declension ; and the tendency was created of calling the new doctrinaires Presbyterians and the others Independents in a hap-hazard way, "without much regard," as one has said, " to the appropriateness of their respective designations." x AVe select as illustrations of these remarks one or two cases of Presbyterian congregations becoming Independent, both in London and the Provinces, and one or two cases of their becoming entirely extinct. Presbyterian Congregations becoming Independent. 2 Silver Street, London.3— The history of this Church will sufficiently indicate the extraordinary fluctuations and vicissi- tudes through which so many of the old Nonconformist meet- ing-houses passed, very much because of the lack of a solid and settled system of government. The original place of worship in Silver Street was built for the Presbyterian Community that descended from the congre- gation of Dr. Lazarus Seaman, who was succeeded by Dr. Thomas Jacomb, at whose death in 1685, John Howe, who had been his assistant from 1675, became senior minister. This important charge was usually Collegiate. In 17-17 it became so reduced that when the Independent Congregation founded by Philip Nye and ministered to till 1743 by Daniel Neal the Historian of the Puritans, in Jewin Street, was split in two under his successor, the remains of the Presbyterian Society and the Section of Jewin Street which adhered to the 1 Halley's Lancashire, its Puritanism and Nonconformity, p. 486. 2 The main and essential difference between the two consisted in this : with the Independents, all power and control lay in the Church Meetings ; the enrolled members in full Communion exercising supreme and direct authorityin calling or dismissing the minister, accepting or rejecting members, and exercising generally all authoritative discipline and government. In a Presbyterian Congregation, there was no such thing as the Church-meeting, and no such authority was recognised by the Presbyterian minister and his representative Committee; who simply aimed at obtaining the approval and concurrence of the generai congregation or body of worshippers in anything they did ; all spiritual dealings and discipline being lodged in the hands of the minister. 3 It occupies 125 pages in vol. iii. of Walter Wilsou's History of London Dissent- ina Churches. See also History of Silver Street Church, by Dr. James Bennett, 1842. 528 THE rEESBYTEEIANS IN ENGLAND. minister, united in Silver Street under the Independent minis- ter. Thus it remained more or less under Independent regimen till 1790, when it became extinct as an Independent Church, and passed into the hands of the Calvinistic Methodists. The remarkable feature about it was, that the last minister of of it prior to the change, "William Smith, M.A. (who let the building to another minister of another charge for the morning, for 12 years), was not only Scotch, but was a Member of the Scots Presbytery in London ; and had David Bogue (afterwards of Gosport), a licentiate of the Church of Scotland, as his assistant from 1774 to 1777. "When, like the Presbyterian, the Independent Congregation had also become extinct, the building, in a greatly enlarged and altered form, was occupied for the Calvinistic Methodists by ministers who had been educated in Lady Huntingdon's Connexion, and who introduced organ, litany, and other ornate service associated then with the ideas of "a proprietary Chapel." Finally, in 1828, an Independent minister (Dr. James Bennett) took charge of the congregation, under whom it removed from the ancient meeting-house to a new chapel in 1842. Other London Presbyterian charges passed through similar transformations before the middle of the century ; and the process went on also in the latter half of it from similar causes.1 "We select, however, a provincial case as illustrating how in the country at large the isolated condition of the Presbyterian congregations tended to make them, while at first really Presbyterian in their internal order, to become virtually and then at last actually Independent. Gospoet.— This originally Presbyterian (now Congregational) Church, was founded by Waltee Maeshall, the author of a famous book of practical divinity, The Gospel Mystery of Sancti- fication, who was ejected in 1662, from the Vicarage of Hursley. The little Gosport conventicle was reared in a back alley of the town, and Mr. Marshall preached in it till his death in 1690. He and his two successors were Presbyterians, and they con- 1 For the record of the change of Weigh House (one of the most prominent of these later transitions) under the ministry of John Clayton^ soon after his ordination in 1778, see Wilson's London Dissenting Churches, vol. i. p. 149. THEIR DECLINE. 529 ducted the affairs of the Church on Presbyterian principles, until 1732, when the change to Independency was effected lyy John Hurrion, who was the son of the distinguished London Independent minister of the same name.1 Presbyterian Congregations becoming Extinct. As the century advanced the process of decay and dissolution seemed to go on with increasing ratio in the old Presbyterian congregations. "Wealthy families were drawn back into the Established Church ; humbler, but not less earnest and devout worshippers, found more congenial homes for their piety in other Nonconformist Communions ; while Scottish licentiates, who often came up to minister in English Presbyterian pulpits^ did little or nothing to prevent their dismemberment.2 The reader who will follow the fortunes of such famous old " meeting-houses " as Little St. Helen's,3 founded by Dr. Samuel Annesley ; or Hand Alley, Bishopsgate Street (after- wards New Broad Street 4), that could once boast of ministers like Drs. Daniel "Williams, Calamy, and John Evans ; or Jewry Street,5 with earlier ministers like Timothy Cruso or Dr. AVilliam Harris, will have ample occasion to lament the grow- ing decadence, keeping pace with the growing laxity both in doctrine and discipline. Some famous old " meetings " which struggled on, even into Unitarianism, succumbed in the end. Let us follow the fortunes of one of the originally strongest and most notable of these : — The Old Jewry.6 — The name of the street indicates its having been the locality of the Jewish quarter at a very early date, centuries indeed before the Jews were allowed by law to settle and become naturalized in England. The Presbyterians 1 Bogue and Bennett's History of Dissenters, vol. ii. pp. 238-243. 2 See for example the fate of Monkwell Street; Wilson's Dissenting Churches, vol. ii. pp. 215-217 ; and so too, the case of the " Old Jewry," as we shall see imme- diately. 3 Wilson's Dissenting Churches, vol. i. pp. 363-387. 4 Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 189-229. 5 Ibid. vol. i. pp. 55-127. 6 Wilson's Dissenting Churches, vol. ii. pp. 302-400; supplemented in G. H. Pike's Ancient Meeting Houses, chapter iv. pp. 95-158. A similar case is that of Carter Lane (Doctors' Commons), for which see Wilson, vol. ii. pp. 105-164, and Pike, pp. 265-332. M M 530 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. erected their place of worship here, in Meeting-house Court, only in 1701, for the eminent John Shower; but the congregation had been long in existence, worshipping in Aldermanbury, in the house of its first minister, the second Edmund Calamy (who, like his more eminent father, was one of the ejected, and whose son was the Dr. Edmund Calamy of literary fame), and then, after occupying Curriers' Hall for a time, building a meeting- house for him in Jewin Street. Calamy's successor was also one of the ejected ; but it was during the pastorate of its third minister, the really able and eloquent John Shower, that the Congregation attained its high position and influence from 1691 to 1715.1 His assistants were men of mark, and his successor was the singularly gifted, but not less singularly afflicted, Simon Browne,2 whose varied genius and remarkable hallucination arrest attention equally with his literary and other multifarious labours. The learned and influential Dr. Samuel Chandler3 was minister of Old Jewry from 1726 to 1766,4 having among his assistants Dr. Henry Miles and the distinguished Dr. Richard Price (with whom Edmund Burke did not disdain to enter into keen political pamphleteering debate) ; but it was in the days of his successor, Dr. Thomas i Memoirs of Shower by William Tong (dedicated to Sir Bartholomew Shower), were issued in 1716, with records of his continental travel. The remarkable letter of protest he wrote to Robert Harley, Lord Oxford, against the Occasional Conformity Bill in 1711, with the no less characteristically bitter reply from Jonathan Swift, his Lordship's Secretary at the time, may be seen in Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dean Swift's Works, and in Pike's Ancient Meeting Houses of London, pp. 110-112. 2 Very full notices of all the ministers are given in the volumes just mentioned. 3 Chandler was trained under Jones of Gloucester and Tewkesbury, where he had, as fellow-students, the future Bishop Butler and Archbishop Seeker, with both of whom he maintained a life-long friendship. He was an ardent defender of everything that in his judgment tended to enlarge religious and political liberty, and asserted for himself the largest measure of ministerial freedom, doctrinal and otherwise. He held stoutly by his Presbyterian ordination, and by other Presby- terian positions. His very numerous and laborious writings ring the changes on such words as Liberty, Charity, Integrity, Defences of Revelation, the Evils of Super- stition, Persecution, and Subscription of Articles. The lack of the distinctive features of the Gospel, rather than any antagonism to Gospel doctrine, is the characteristic of Chandler's position — his attachment to Scripture-teaching being sincere, if somewhat cold and speculative. A 4to MS. volume in the Williams Library contains a learned Collection of Notes from his interleaved Bible. 4 Singularly enough, the Old Jewry congregation addressed an invitation to the notable Archdeacon Blackburn, the Anti-subscriptionist leader in the Established Church, to succeed Chandler; but he could not see his way to become a Dissenter. THEIR DECLINE. 531 Amory 1 (1759-1774), that Arianism became the avowed and fixed doctrinal position ; and this was steadily carried further during the long ministry of Dr. Abraham E-ees (1784-1825) of Encyclopaedia fame. He had already been for many years assistant and latterly chief Tutor of the Academy in Hoxton Square, which collapsed in 1785 ; and when the Old Jewry lease expired, in 1808, a new building was reared for him in Jewin Street, where he officiated, though with diminished efficiency, till his death in 1S25, at the age of 82. The last minister of the decaying cause was a Glasgow graduate who had been settled in Ireland ; on whose resignation, in 1840, the remains of the congregation dispersed ; the trustees eventually disposing of the building to the Wesleyan Methodists, who still occupy it with a vigorous and flourishing society. These may suffice as illustrations of the decaying process under which the English Presbyterians were rapidly dying out under the blighting influences of lifeless doctrine and mistaken Church policy. We do not stay to trace minutely this numerical decline ; but briefly notify its different stages. Immediately after the Toleration of 1689, of the thousand meeting-houses (speaking in round numbers) which then sprang up, over 500 were Presbyterian, about half that number Independents, and the remainder Baptists, Friends, and minor bodies. In 1715, according to Neal's list, there were 1107 Dissenting congregations ; and " it appears that both the number and size of the Presbyterian congregations were nearly double that of the Independents, and that the congre- gations of the Baptists, though nearly equal to the Indepen- dents in number, were inferior to them in size."3 1 Made D.D. in 1768 by Edinburgh University. It is astonishing what large numbers of these prominent English Dissenters received Divinity diplomas from the Scottish Universities. Men not only like Calamy, Daniel Williams, or Joshua Oldfield, but like Priestley, Price, Taylor, Towers, Philip Furneaux, Earle, Amory, Abraham Eees, and many more, besides Scottish divines themselves in England. — Calami/ s Life, vol. ii. p. 513. 2 Bogue and Bennett's History of Dissenters, vol. i. p. 358 ; and they add, " The superiority of the Presbyterians is evident from the arrangements in the meeting of the Deputies of the three Denominations. For one Independent and one Baptist, there were always to be two Presbyterians. 532 THE PEESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. In 1772 the Presbyterian and Independent congregations numbered together only 702 ; probably 400 being Independent, and the remaining 302 Presbyterian, divided, in all likelihood, about equally between orthodox and heterodox. III. ARIANISM DRIVEN TO UNITARIANISM. 1782-1812. The name Presbyterian, as the century rolled on, became in popular parlance looser than ever in its application, a minister and an audience being all it seemed to imply ; the old tra- ditional technical reverence for regular ordination being, how- ever, carefully maintained. The name, Presbyterian, indeed, was acquiring more and more a doctrinal signification, having reference to those Churches whose ministers preferred specu- lative liberty to Evangelical orthodoxy, and that were in the main current or drift toward Unitarianism. The " Meetings " were simply worshipping assemblies, and most of them dwin- dling away into mere handfuls of people. They were con- gregations rather than Churches; where the principles of " congregational independency " were, however, not only not in use, but positively abhorrent to the ministers and trustees. There were numbers of very rich and prosperous congrega- tions throughout the country representing this side of the old Presbyterian traditions, as at Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Norwich, Bristol ; and very able men were secured for such places. Some of these Presbyterian ministers were pre-eminent among their contemporaries for their literary abilities and for their skill and attainment in scientific and philosophic pursuits. Chief of them were (after Dr. Nathaniel Lardner's time), Dr. Samuel Chandler, Dr. Priestley, Dr. Price, Dr. Kippis, and George "Walker, all of whom had high academical degrees and were all Members and Fellows of the Royal Society. Their speculative heterodoxy had of course various shades — from that High Arianianism which could use a kind of Trini- tarian phraseology with cautious reserve, down through all stages, till it reached the condition of dull, listless, platitudin- izing about religion and virtue, that was but a poor echo of 533 534 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Seneca or Epictetus. Socinianism did not come into vogue, as a militant or fighting creed, till the later days of Dr. Priestley, half a century after Arianism had been quietly and sleepily holding the field ; and then the great premonitory shakings that issued in the French Revolution and the Methodist revival, brought a new spirit into play. It was in 1782 that Priestley published his History of the Corruptions of Christianity,1 and in 1786 his History of Opinions Concerning the Person of Jesus Christ. These books marked an epoch in the evolution of Unitarianism in England. But if Dr. Daniel Waterland and others smote Arianism to the dust and drove it from its position by sheer force of argu- mentativeness, however unevangelical in temper and spirit, by their Defences and Expositions of the Nicene Theology ; it was Dr. Joseph Priestley and men of his school and training that may be said to have destroyed it in the opposite way, by compelling its adherents to be consistent and go some stages further, so as to become clearly and unmistakably Socinian and Unitarian,2 or to fall back again within the lines of the orthodox profession. This was much what Butler, by his Analogy, was simultaneously doing in another sphere — making the old and fashionable half-way house of Deism un- tenable, consistently with its own assumptions ; and so he drove it out of fashion and out of countenance by compelling the rejectors of Christianity to move forward logically and irresistibly to sheer Atheism or universal scepticism, with no intermediate halting-place. It is very remarkable to notice how thoroughly routed Arianism was in all its disguises, and all along the line, before the end of the century, and how speedily it was supplanted by the new explosive force of Uni- tarianism. Priestley's ancestors had been for generations Independents ; and he had himself, though minister of a 1 Of Priestley's History of the Corruptions of Christianity, Bishop Horsley says (Tracts in Controversy with Dr. Priestley, p. 72), " No work was ever sent abroad under the title of a History, containing less of truth than this, in proportion to its volume." 2 Some drew the distinction between the Socinian and Unitarian positions — the former admitting of prayer being offered to Christ, but the latter disallowing it altogether. THEIR DECLINE. 535 Presbyterian " meeting" very little similarity in tone and temper to the old Arianizing Presbyterians ; being remarkably out-spoken and uncompromising ; showing an air of defiance, and an impatience of shams, very contrary to the staid, easy- going, and not highly honourable tactics of the Arian ministers.1 This new style of thoroughgoingness, indicating a more earnest spirit, began to clear the marches ; and caused many ministers to define their position. There, no doubt, remained " a high and dry lot " both among Presbyterians and Indepen- dents— at the head of whom maybe placed Dr. Abraham Rees, the Presbyterian of Encyclopedic fame, minister of the Old Jewry, 2 or Dr. Andrew Kippis, the learned and laborious com- piler, editor of the Biographia Britannica, who was another nondescript both in his doctrinal and ecclesiastical position.3 We find this great change — this vast difference in spirit between the old and new state of things — which was about to toss Arianism aside like a bundle of old used-up clothing, in favour of the more advanced and pushing habit of the new Socinianism, admirably portrayed in a recent publication. " Towards the end of the century a rapid and startling change occurred. Mankind had awakened from its lazy lethargy. A spirit was abroad that was producing, more especially among the younger and more enthusi- astic, a delight and happiness in present being and in hopes for the future that can now scarcely be realized. It was the period of which Wordsworth has said, — " Joy was it in that dawn to be alive ; But to be young was very heaven." It was almost inevitable that not a few of the leaders of the science 1 "I do not wonder," says Dr. Priestley, in memorable words used by him to the Rev. Dr. Miller of Princeton, "that you Calvinists entertain and express a strongly unfavourable opinion of us Unitarians. The truth is, there neither can nor ought to be any compromise between us. If you are right, we are not Chris- tians at all ; or if we are right, you are gross idolaters." 2 Not to be confounded with the later Unitarian Secretary, Dr. Thomas Rees. 3 The ideas of many of the speculative Presbyterian ministers concerning the person of Christ, were greatly determined by the views and arguments of a curious and at the time popular tract, The Scripture Trinity, intelligibly explained by Dr. Thomas Burnet, the remarkable Eector of West-Kingston, Wilts, and Pre- bendary of Sarum, who died, May, 1750. " In this performance," says Dr. Kippis (Biog. Britan. iii., 41), "the author endeavours, with great ingenuity and plausi- bility, to unite the rationality claimed by the Unitarians with the orthodox lan- guage of those who admit the Athauasian doctrine of the Trinity." 536 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. and of the reasoning of the time should be men who had either abandoned or been ejected from other communions, and had therefore attached them- selves to the Presbyterians. But their spirit was not that of the Presby- terians of 1719, but its direct antagonist. The spirit of Presbyterianism had been that of tolerance carried to its utmost limit ; the new apostles who joined it from without, and of whom two notably, Priestley and Belsham, formed and all but formulated for it a creed, were men of vehement assertion and scarcely disguised contemptuous aggression against all who differed from a pure Unitarianism. As a consequence of the changes that had been taking place, a large body among the so- called Presbyterians were prepared to accept as the exponents of their faith these new leaders when they appeared ; but the society of which Priestley and Belsham were thus, towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the avowed leaders, had never at any time formally repudiated the faith of their Puritan fore- fathers. Amongst many of them the old Puritan traditions remained in almost full vigour, so that, living in the same body, sending their sons to the same schools, identified by the same name, were men who scarcely differed in opinion from the great body of English Evangelicals, whether within the Established Church or among " Orthodox Dissenters," and others from whom these latter would, at all events now-a-days, recoil as from the worst of heretics. Thus it happened that a man whose opinions were in all main points orthodox might in the same chapel succeed, or be succeeded by, one under the direct influence of dogmatic Unitarianism ; and between these extremes there was a considerable number who, whatever their individual opinions might be on one side or the other, yet adhered to the old Presbyterian tradition, and therefore abstained, in the pulpit at least, from all doctrinal discussion. During the period of transition, before the new masters had finally established their ascendency, a certain reluctance to permit the change from toleration to dogmatism to take place needed only an opportunity for its expression. Such an occasion arose when, in 1792, Belsham was proposed as the afternoon preacher in the same chapel in which Priestley was already morning preacher. Belsham was, to his infinite annoyance, then rejected, and a young man, twenty-six years of age, was elected in opposition to him. That young man was Michael Maurice. The position which was thus, by an accident, forced upon him defines accurately the standpoint of the man. Descended, according to his own statement, from one of those who had suffered at the time of the passing of the Act of Uniformity, the history of his family, of which he left a manuscript record of no general interest, was one exactly characteristic of the ordi- nary course of life of the English Puritans. In the days of Michael Maurice's father the family appears to have been strictly and even zealously orthodox, and almost unconscious of the THEIR DECLINE. 537 spirit that was abroad in the Presbyterian body. Born on Feb. 3, 1766, Michael Maurice was, in 1782, sent by his father, himself an " orthodox " Dissenting minister and farmer, to Hoxton Academy, which was then one of the chief places of education for the children of Presbj'terians. During a time when changes in men's beliefs were taking place, which were largely connected with the progress of science and with devotion to reason, those men of science and of thought who, excluded by tests which they could not face from most other pursuits, betook themselves to edu- cation, naturally sought congenial occupation at an important Puritan Academy at which no questions were asked as to their opinions. Hence it happened that most of the Professors at Hoxton were either avowedly or secretly under the influence of Unitarianism. But, before and beyond all things, the most powerful minds among them were political Liberals. The aspirations of the time were far more political than religious ; and Michael Maurice issued from Hoxton Academy, or rather from Hackney College, which was in connection with it, and to which he removed in 1786, a Unitarian in opinion, but heart, soul, and spirit an enthusiastic political Liberal. He had been brought up with the intention of his becoming an orthodox Dissenting minister. By the time that he left Hackney, in 1787, he was sufficiently zealous in his Unitarian opinions to abandon a considerable property which would have been left to him had he been content to adhere to the faith of his forefathers. But the whole tone of his mind in relation to religious questions was that of the old Salters' Hall Presby- terians of 1719, and not that of the later Unitarian dogmatists."1 The more aggressive temper of the rising Unitarianism, as compared with the easy and shuffling Arianizing spirit, may be gathered as readily as anywhere else from the Preamble to the Rules of the Society of the Unitarian Christians established in the West of England, which we find in circulation by 1794. It declares that, though the Christian religion has its origin "from the immediate revelation of God," it has been immensely and perniciously corrupted. And " considering that one principal obstruction to the progress of just sentiments in religion has arisen from the want of an open avowal of them by those by whom they have been embraced " [this is a reflection on and a thrust at the slow and stiff old Arian party], they see fit to 1 Life of F. D. Maurice, by his Son. London, 1884, vol. i. pp. 5, 6, and 7. The reader will find the impressions of a contemporary in a volume entitled, Observations on the State and Changes in the Presbyterian Societies of England during the last Half -century , etc. Preceded by a Sermon on the Death of the Rev. Dr. Joshua Toulmin. By Israel Worslby, 1816. 538 THE PEESBYTEKIANS IN ENGLAND. issue a creed, " declaring it to be the fundamental principle of the Society in which we all agree, that there is hut one God the Creator and Governor of the Universe, tcithout an equal or vice- gerent, the only object of religious worship ; and that Jesus Christ teas the most eminent of those messengers tohich He has employed to reveal His will to mankind, 'possessing extraordinary powers, similar to those received by other prophets, but in a much higher degree." Taking then a higher flight, they proceed to say, — " While we thus declare our helief in the strict Unity of God, and can- not but regard every practice as idolatrous which attributes any of the prerogatives of the Deity to another, ... we would not be understood to assert that we think such practices are attended with the same im- moral consequences as the idolatry which prevailed in the heathen world. That they are, however, in all cases injurious, and in some, highly criminal, we have no doubt." x In the historical pamphlet of Isaac Worsley, just mentioned, we find a number of side-lights let in upon the present subject, illustrated by his own case as a typical example. Isaac Worsley, born at Hertford, — where his father kept a scholastic establishment, in which John Howard the Philan- thropist and John Wilkes the politician were pupils, — was sent to Daventry, where he studied under Mr. Belsham, until the adoption of Unitarian views by the preceptor led to the breaking up of the Academy there. " Being," as he says, " one of those students who had enjoyed the benefits of Mr. Belshani's lectures during the last years of his filling the Divinity Chair at Daventry, he was requested by the trustees of Mr. CoicarcVs Fund, in the midsummer of 1789, together with those who were in the same class, to dispose of himself for the remainder of his term in study as should be most agreeable to himself. He had already received, of course, a strong bent toward Unitarian views ; but his friends, who strongly disapproved of these tendencies, thought he might get rid of them if he went to a Scottish University, as was very customary with the more promising and ingenuous of the English Presbyterian youth, who were deprived of a University training in their own country." 1 In the Pre/ace to "A Letter to James White, Esq., of Exeter, on the late Correspondence between him and Mr. Toulmin, relative to the Society of Unitarian Christians, established in the West of England; by John Kentish of Plymouth," the reader will find a very significant and suggestive correspondence, throwing light on the methods used in pressing forward the new Unitarian development. THEIE DECLINE. 530 He went, therefore, to Aberdeen to finish his theological curriculum under Principal Campbell and Dr. Gerard, the latter of whom he represents as having departed from the old orthodox ways, and of whom he declares that, — " He adopted, therefore, a plan by which he might he said to teach no system exclusively. "When the writer went to Aberdeen, Gerard was delivering a course of Theological lectures upon precisely the same plan as that which Mr. Belsham had adopted at Daventry. All the great questions which divided the Christian world were fairly discussed in them. The opinions of opposite antagonists were given ; references were made to their respective works; the Scriptures were examined and suffered to speak for themselves, and when both parties were fairly heard, the studious inquirer was left to the workings of his own mind, and to the unrestrained influences of Truth. But how should young men, who might thus imbibe principles opposite to those of the Establishment, con- trive to hold the rank of preachers in that Church ? It was not difficult to discover the method. . . . They could preach moral sermons founded upon Christian principles; they could altogether omit sermons of a doctrinal and controversial nature ; they could occasionally use popular language to which they could affix their own ideas ; . . . and by degrees the congregations might be brought to approve this mode of preaching." Worsley allows what serious consequences might follow this accommodating principle — but he does not morally disapprove of it ! On his returning to England, in 1793 (he had in the interval been over to Amsterdam, preaching for a year or two in the English Presbyterian Church there, and afterwards for a little time at Dunkirk), he felt altogether out of sympathy with the timid Arian class of ministers, who by no means looked with friendly eye on the younger and more outspoken innovators.1 Becoming a keen and active propagator of Uni- tarian sentiments, first at Lincoln and afterwards, for twenty years, at Plymouth, where his ancestor, John Hughes (father of Obadiah Hughes and father-in-law of John Howe) had been ejected in 1662, Worsley allows that " for a time Unitarianism 1 He says that those educated at Daventry, under Dr. Ashworth or Mr. Bobbins, became Arian ; but under their successors, [like Belsham, " many young men left the classic walls both of Daventry and Hoxton with decided impressions favourable to Unitarianism," and the same, he says, was true even of many from Wym.on.dley and Homcrton, who became most energetic and valuable auxiliaries to the Unitarian cause. 540 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. was very unpopular, and many who imbibed it left the ministry altogether, because of the opposition of congregations and the way they felt shackled as hired preachers and under trusts." 1 Where young ministers with Unitarian proclivities were not particularly scrupulous in adhering to the " trusts," and where they forced themselves and their views, in spite of the trusts, upon congregations, many entire societies were dissolved and the people scattered ; old families deserted the meeting-houses, which, in many cases, now fell into the possession of the young and rising Calvinistic Methodists or Independents, as they virtually became.2 Two causes he assigns for such falling away from the old Presbyterian ranks : — 1. The general obloquy into which the new-school theologians brought themselves by their warm dissensions, which the quiet old school would not share ; and this afforded an opportunity for the younger members of genteel families dropping away from the meeting-houses and qualifying for offices from which as Dissenters they had been excluded, and, — 2. They were not grounded or trained in the peculiar principles of Dissent by the easy-going Avian ministers, whose indifferentism was fitted to chill the enthusiasm of young natures. Even in the case of those Presbyterian ministers who remained in many 1 Thus, in 1796, a pamphlet was published at Manchester by Mr. George Wicke, one of this class, who left the ministry for a secular calling, assigning the reasons why so many gave up the Dissenting Presbyterian ministry, the chief one being the antipathy to Unitarian doctrine on the part of the people. 2 It was under such circumstances that some of the old Presbyterian " meeting- houses " passed into the hands of Independents. In the third chapter of Felix Holt, the Radical, we are told, that " Nonconformity in Treby Magna was repre- sented architecturally by a small, venerable, dark-pewed chapel, built by Presby- terians, but long occupied by a sparse congregation of Independents.''' The writer of this novel, "George Eliot," knew well the ground on which she was going, in making such a representation of a not uncommon condition of things. An early instance of Unitarians seceding from a Calvinistic meeting-place and building one of their own, may be found at Kidderminster. There the original "meeting " was constituted not long after the Ejectment, and a " meeting-house" was erected — the congregation being Calvinistic. A number of the attenders, becoming determinedly set against Evangelistic orthodox doctrine, did actually secede in 1781, and opened an Anti-trinitarian chapel in 1784. This was the place known locally as "Presbyterian," or latterly as "Unitarian," the property being held on trust for Protestant Dissenters with the usual proviso, " so long as they are not prohibited by law from using liberty of conscience in the due exercise of their religious worship." In some places where a division occurred, there was both an "old " and a " new " meeting. THEIR DECLINE. 541 parts of England comparatively sound in the faith, there was little to stir the interest or rouse the energies of the rising race ; and they sought nourishment and quickening for themselves in other communions, the Evangelical party in the Church of England absorbing numbers of them, while both Calvinistic Methodism and "Wesleyanism, — but above all the fresh and ris- ing Congregationalism which began to renew the youth of old Independency, — secured each its share of adherents from the Presbyterianism that was now getting so deteriorated, both in quantity and in quality. A dreary orthodoxy proved, equally with a pugnacious heterodoxy, a poor substitute for a living Gospel ; and this even the Presbyterians who still remained in some measure faithful to their earlier creed, were more and more destined for some time further to suffer from, until they should, in their turn, experience the power of the Evangelical revival in their midst. On the other hand, the Presbyterians who stuck to the new Unitarian party were forced to become more pronounced and devoted in their attachment to the new tenets. Then ensued a Unitarian hectic fever, with a certain measure of chapel-building,1 but all Presbyterial life was ebbing ; many Presbyterian congregations were dissolved ; and Philosophic rationalizing took the place of old Puritan intensity. One thing, however, is clear, and should be kept in mind, that however the old meeting-houses and endowments fell into Arian and Unitarian hands, the lapse and decay were not occasioned by Presbyterian polity or principles. The want of such government among the ministers, while it was being- exercised and carried out in a onesided way toward the people, explains much ; the endowments and the appoint- ment of trustees explain still more ; but the wreck and decline of spiritual life in old Dissent at large, is the most significant explanation of all. As an intelligent Independent has put it, " Had these meeting-houses been really Presbyterian, there would have been a controlling power in the Presbytery and 1 In Yorkshire there were nineteen Churches professing Unitarianism in 1808, yet only seven of these were of the old Presbyterian stamp, the other twelve being new creations. Something similar, though not to the same extent, occurred in other parts of the country. 542 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Synod, by which the purity of doctrine has been so well pre- served in the Scottish Churches ; but in propriety of speech they were neither entirely Presbyterian nor entirely Independent ; and therefore there was no practical responsibility or super- vision. The original trustees were indeed pious and orthodox men, and as long as they survived, the evil was postponed ; but they were succeeded by others of a different character yet of equal power. These trustees, regardless of trust-deeds, appointed to the ministry whom they chose — the congregations were dispersed (usually into Methodist or new-style Inde- pendent Churches) — and the chapels and endowments were left to their present occupants ; Unitarian in doctrine and not Presbyterian in practice." Gbe Presbyterians in j£n$lanfc> : tbcir IRise, decline, anfc IRevival. PART III. Zhe IRevival of tbe Presbyterians in England PEIMARY PERIOD. Introduction and Review. Chief Elements in the Revival. I. — Early Scottish Churches and their Influence. II. — A Faithful Remnant of Orthodox English Presbyterian Churches. III.— Survival of Presbyterians in Newcastle and Northumber- land. 543 £be Presbyterians in England : tbeir IRise, Decline, ant) IRevivaL PART III. ZTbe IRevival of tbe Presbyterians in England PRIMARY PERIOD. INTRODUCTION AND EEVIEW. CHIEF ELEMENTS IN THE EEVIVAL. The recovery and re-in vigor at ion of Presbyterianism in Eng- land, according to the Westminster Assembly's draft of it has been one of the results of a revived Evangelical life, as its dissolution and defection were coincident with a period of religious decline and decay. We have watched with painful surprise the ebbing of its vital force, and have endeavoured to determine the causes of its long eclipse. We have now to trace the evidences which mark a renewal of vigour and which give hopeful token of the dawning upon it of a brighter day. Any one who would study the process of ecclesiastical declen- sion will find a fruitful field in the Act of Uniformity of 1662, and in the policy attending its execution. This Act is the basis of the modern Anglican National Establishment. De- signed, as it was, to keep religious life and enthusiasm well within control of the secular power, the whole movement which it inaugurated in Church and State began speedily to clip short every tendril of spiritual vigour. By such a process, persistently applied, the whole religious life of the people became stunted and artificial. The change at the Revolution Settlement, great as it was, affected but little the natural results of so vicious a measure. Under its continued influence the Established Church soon acquired the look of one of those 545 NN 546 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. marvellously stiff old gardens, where the holly, the box- tree, and the yew have been elaborately trimmed into every shape but the natural one. Uniformity, indeed, was secured of a kind, but it was the uniformity of dulness and the saplessness of a drearily enforced decay. Nor did the Act and the policy which backed it up affect merely the National Church, but spread an unwholesome influence all around. The religious life of the eighteenth century, till the rise and growth of Methodism after 1760, was dreary in the extreme. The soil was prepared for welcoming any fungus that might happen to alight.1 It has often been matter of wonder that Presbyterianism in England crumbled so easily away into a state of helpless apathy and weakness. And it has been made a matter of long-stand- ing reproach that it allowed itself to lapse into Arian and Unitarian doctrines. The one, however, grew very naturally out of the other, in the circumstances in which Presbyterianism was placed under the strong hand of the law. Whoever will carefully study the nature and order of that series of ecclesias- tical enactments, beginning with the Corporation Act of 1661, and culminating in the Test Act of 1673, will easily under- stand that, while designed to extinguish all Nonconformity, it bore with special hardship on Presbyterianism ; for some parts of that legislation were devised with peculiar ingenuity to break in upon the system of the Presbyterian order of Church rule and render it unworkable. Under the Five Mile and Conventicle Acts Presbyterian congregations became neces- sarily independent and isolated. Government of the whole body by organized Presbyteries and Synods became impos- sible. "Where Classical or Presbyterial meetings had been set 1 " Never has century risen on Christian England so void of soul and faith as that •which opened with Queen Anne, and which reached its misty noon beneath the second George — a dewless night succeeded by a sunless dawn. There was no fresh- ness in the past and no promise in the future. The memory of Baxter and Ussher possessed no spell, and calls to revival or reform fell dead on the ecbo. Confessions of sin, and National Covenants, and all projects towards a public and visible acknowledgment of the Most High, were voted obsolete ; and the golden dreams of Westminster worthies only lived in Hudibras. The Puritans were buried, and the Methodists were not born." — Dr. James Hamilton's Christian Classics, vol. iv. p. 222. THEIR REVIVAL. 547 up, tliey had perforce to be abandoned ; and thus Presbyterian- ism in its full organization ceased to exist. There were hosts of people of Presbyterian principles, but they were not at liberty to apply or develop them. The fact is, that Presby- terianism in England fell upon evil days before it had time to root itself thoroughly in the soil. Its name and fame sprang up at last too suddenly and at a crisis, while yet the ground into which it was cast was not sufficiently deep for its purpose. Its branches were wider than its roots, so that the first adverse blast threw it over on one side. And even after the Revolu- tion, Presbyterian congregations were forced into a false posi- tion. Presbyterian in name, they ceased to be Presbyterially knit together. They lingered on as separate Church-fellow- ships, with no common or uniting organization. The result was a very natural one. Compelled to assume, as it were, a false attitude, need we wonder if what was called Presbyte- rianism drifted into positions thoroughly alien to its own true genius ? " There was no sufficient union and connection established among these societies — no representative or other body who could consult for the com- mon benefit, or determine questions of right which might arise within the body itself. Had there been, it would have prevented some things that have occurred." The clear fact is, that the congregations swerved from ortho- doxy, because, without adopting the checks in use among other evangelical bodies, they had swerved from Presbyterianism. Under the Toleration Act, Presbyterian ministers were recog- nised in law simply as licensed religious teachers. Their con- gregations were regarded as just the most powerful section of what was called " The Dissenting Interest." Their meeting- houses were placed under the protection of law by certain forms of registration, and were secured by particular trust-deeds. But the Presbyterian system was allowed no corporate existence nor legal standing, save in its separate congregations. This, of course, afforded peculiar facilities for Presbyterian property dropping into the possession of Arian and Unitarian propa- gandists. For there can be little doubt that the so-called Pres- byterian Churches fell more easily a prey to the advancing 518 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. tide of religious paralysis and deadness chiefly because they had neither the corrective influence of Presbyterian super- vision nor of popular control. Their endowments were a bait also, and thus they became the places where infected teachers could most readily find an entrance surreptitiously for them- selves. Thus, part of these old chapels became Independent in name as they had long been in outward appearance, and another part were called indifferently Unitarian or Presby- terian, while numbers of them were gradually forsaken and fell to ruins. But they all were, as they had been from the beginning, simply Separatist meeting-places, whatever name they bore ; the Unitarian body being organized on the Inde- pendent principle, where each individual Church exercises supreme and exclusive control over its own doctrines and forms of worship. We would not insinuate that, because Presby- terian Churches became virtually Independent ones in prac- tice, before lapsing into Unitarianism, there is any necessary connection between the Independent form of Church govern- ment and the Unitarian form of doctrine. What we mean is, that when Churches which were Presbyterian in profession and principle were driven into isolation and mutual independ- ence, the way was prepared for further change, according to the well-known maxim that one false step leads on to another. _At any rate, we hold ourselves fully justified, by an ample historic testimony regarding English Presbyterianism, in as- serting that it ceased through legal violence, and then through established usage, to be Presbyterian in its discipline or polity, ere it fell away, through the spirit of last century, into the prevailing low tone of speculative Rationalism. By the Revolution Settlement, the Church of England ceased to be absolutely despotic ; but Presbyterianism, like other Non- conformity, continued to labour under the deadening and paralysing influence of the civil, social, and educational pains and penalties attaching to Dissent. In 1691, it was glad to join as we have seen, with the equally depressed Independents in certain Heads of Agreement by which both denominations openly relinquished some of their previously distinctive charac- teristics. The Presbyterians, by giving up so much of their THEIR REVIVAL. 540 full discipline and methods of government, did unwittingly, or at least unwisely, surrender much of the inspiriting influence that comes from mutual counsel and co-operation among them- selves, without deriving corresponding advantages from other quarters. Disuse of distinctively Presbyterian methods of pro- cedure, deprived the Churches of their chief staying power, and left them a prey to the downward tendencies of the times. The fairly successful efforts to erect meeting-houses and to support them efficiently up to 1720, were succeeded by pain- fully spasmodic dissensions and panics that completely para- lyzed all further vigour ; so that in the course of another generation, or by the middle of the century, it was too evident that the old Puritanism, whether Presbyterian or Independent, was, if not an extinct, at least a sleeping or quiescent volcano, smothered in its own ashes that were piled above it. Nor could men any longer say, " Even in these ashes live their wonted fires." For the National Church was at this time, not only spiritually torpid herself, but communicated her torpid touch to others. Its clergy, left without discipline, were worldly, negligent, and some of them even notoriously immoral. While Dissent was waning, torrents of scepticism and irreligion flowed over the land. Vital godliness was being suffocated in the universal choke-damp. Men like Seeker and Butler, of Presbyterian families, forsook the cause of their fathers, and, like Tillotson and others before them, sought greater powers of serviceableness as well as promotion in the National Establish- ment. Dry rot had already showed itself plentifully there, in the speculations of a Whiston, or yet more deeply in the Arianism of Dr. Samuel Clarke, who, though nearly censured by Convo- cation, managed to save himself by timely albeit insignificant concessions, and to remain in his benefice as before. Peirce of Exeter, and other able Presbyterian ministers, became semi- Arian through reading Clarke ; and rapidly did the infection spread, becoming more virulent and deep-seated as the years in- creased. Uncontrolled liberty to speculate asserted itself; and ministers, especially in endowed charges, insisted on this as their right. The Salters' Hall controversy, in 1719, familiarized the 550 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. people with the new destructive force that was to wreck the old Presbyterian interest, already sufficiently prostrate, under different efforts to galvanize its departing and well-nigh ex- hausted energy. The reign of cold indifferentism to the higher interests of spiritual religion now set in. Philosophic Rationalism was a poor substitute for Puritan enthusiasm, and it is certain there was nothing but evil for the Presbyterian name in the new departure. Already ecclesiastically as well as educationally and socially discredited, it was now being religiously demoral- ized. The icy hand was on its vitals ; inner declension was attended with outer decay. Many Presbyterian congregations were dissolved. The endowments in other cases proved a curse and snare. And when the word Unitarian grew into repute and began to be pushed into the foreground, it only aggravated the original evil of religious strife in the old Presbyterian ranks, dividing them into debating pulpiteers and pamphleteering partisans, scattering the congregations. What of religious zeal and enterprise remained was degenerating into merely polemical and palsestric discussion, under which the sweet and genial spirit of the Gospel was rapidly getting withered and parched. Devotion was quenched. The plaintive cries of the people were disregarded. The spirit and form of Pres- byterianism were all but gone. Whence was deliverance to come ? It is to be borne in mind, that while the great body of the English Presbyterian meeting-houses were passing away into Arian and Unitarian occupancy under the influences already indicated,— especially the influence of the Non-subscribing or rather Anti-subscriptionist ministers, — and while many of them were dying out altogether, or were dropping into the possession of Independents, a faithful remnant still continued orthodox in different corners of the country, but especially in the three Northern Counties, Northumberland, Cumberland, and the part of Durham which depended on Newcastle and Tyneside industries. These ■ congregations looked for their pulpit supplies largely to Scotland, where their own native preachers were trained, or whence they derived an orthodox THEIR REVIVAL. 551 ministry ; l but they never lost their Presbyterian name, and were none the less English congregations, though often called Scotch, partly because of their Scottish ministry and partly because they were resorted to by Scottish families resident in their neighbourhood. There were, however, in England from a very early period, — even before the Revolution of 1688, — some Presbyterian congregations of a distinctively Scottish type and origin ; and these increased both in London and the Northern Counties after the Union in 1707, and yet more largely after the rebel- i The irritation at the Durham and Yorkshire dividing line between the Northern Subscriptionist ministers and the Southern-trained Non-subscriptionists may be judged from a letter dated Darlington, 31 January, 1737, addressed by Rev. William Wood, M.D., to his Presbyterian ministerial friend, Rev. Isaac Barker, Whitby (it is given in Richmond's Brief History of Protestant Nonconformity in Stockton, and is followed by one of a similar strain by the Arianizing minister, Thompson, of that town) : " To yourself I have somewhat more to say, and that is, that I shall have no hand in bringing candidates from Scotland among us, unless they will either actually or virtually abjure their National Kirk and resolve never more to return to it for preferment. I may seem to be in jest, but Mr. Thompson, who is thoroughly ac- quainted with my sentiments on the subject, knows me to be in sad earnest. My reason is, that though the candidates from Scotland are, many, even most of 'em, very ingenious, and I hope pious, too, in the main, yet one thing is lacking, and that the distinguishing characteristic of an English from a Scotch Presbyterian. The English one builds upon the large foundation of the New Testament ; the Scotch one dares not profess to do so even when in England, by which he shows that he only comes hither for bread, and would secure his retreat to the Establishment on the other side of the Tweed when a favourable opportunity offers. Hence comes a scourge to such of us as are for reviving primitive Christianity , and a fatal obstacle to the removal of that attachment to confessions of faith of human composure which our brethren on this side the water so much labour after. I am infinitely far from a pre- judice against any country, but I utterly dislike that set of principles annexed to all present Establishments ; and these principles must unavoidably spread through England in time, if every new vacancy be attempted to be supplied from Scotland, ichich is very much the practice in Northumberland, Cumberland, and some other places. When there are no proper candidates for vacancies in England, I should then comply with the method of having recourse for 'em to Scotland, where it will at any time, in all appearance, be an easy task to find not only sufficient supply for all Britain, but perhaps for all the Protestant countries in Europe." The struggle that was going on in the latter part of the 18th century between the heterodox and orthodox tendencies in connection with the Presbyterian name may be illustrated in the case of Stockton, where a Presbyterian meeting was licensed in 1672, and a place of worship built and a minister ordained, 1689. After two long pastorates of forty-one, and of twenty -four years respectively, of the Thompsons, father and son (the latter of whom was heterodox), the third ministry, for thirty-one years, was that of a Scotchman, in 1753, Rev. Andrew Blackie (previously of Branton, near Alnwick), whose successor in 1785 was distinctly a Unitarian. A struggle ensued, resulting in a Scottish Presbyterian minister obtaining possession, during whose pastorate and his successorsjit was known as the Scotch Presbyterian Church (Brewster, Hist, and Antiquities of Stockton, 1829), and then it relapsed. It is the common parent of the three bodies of Unitarians, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians. 552 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. lion of 1745, when the Scottish Secession began also to plant its congregations on English soil. To these Scottish congre- gations there resorted, from time to time, not a few English Presbyterians who loved sound Gospel doctrine, and who were driven away from the frigid services of the Arian and hetero- dox ministers.1 By supplying pulpits of English Presbyterian congregations also, Scottish ministers protected from the in- roads of heterodoxy quite a number of these venerable charges.2 And thus was formed the nucleus of revived and re-organized Presbyterianism in England — the impulse derived originally from Scotland, but not unaffected by the Methodist movement and the general religious stirrings in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and ministered to and maintained by the growing life and efficiency of Scottish Presbyterian influences, too long hampered and embarrassed by the disunion produced through political entanglements and legislative mistakes. 1 In some cases the reduced remnant of an English Presbyterian congregation acceded to its Scottish neighbour, as at Swallow Street, Piccadilly. — Wilson's Dis- senting Churches, vol. iv. p. 45. 2 This was, of course, a process greatly disliked by all the Arianizing and Socinian party from first to last. It was denounced by Dr. Priestley in his Free Address to Protestant Dissenters, 1769, and by others after him, like Dr. Toulmin. He allows the alliance had been such that " Dissenters in England are often confounded with the Presbyterians of the Kirk of Scotland." And in speaking of " vacancies among us supplied from Scotland," he testily adds, " How they are supplied from this quarter, let the state of the Dissenting Interest in the North of England testify " (p. 281). By thus accentuating national distinctions, Dr. Priestley and his party showed how far they had fallen from the Westminster Assembly's conception of a common Presbyterian Church for the Three Kingdoms, not less than they had departed from the doctrine and discipline of the Westminster standards. I. EAELY SCOTTISH CHURCHES, AND THEIE INFLUENCE. The first of the early-planted and still surviving Scottish Presbyterian Churches which had a considerable influence in the preservation of Westminster doctrine and discipline in London, is the Church now at Canonbury, previously at London Wall, and, before that, at Founders' Hall. Its rela- tions to old English Dissent will appear as we proceed. It had English ordained Presbyterian ministers among its pastors, just as Scotch ordained ministers were pastors over old English Presbyterian charges. The Earliest Scotch Presbyterian Church in London, 1672. Only ten years after the Ejectment, in 1672, when Charles II. issued his Indulgence for reasons best known to himself, this Scottish Presbyterian interest was begun in London, with its " Congregational Presbytery " according to the plan of the Westminster Assembly. Singular to say, a Scottish exiled minister, Alexander Carmichael by name, was banished that very year to London, and was invited on arrival to be pastor to the little handful of faithful fellow-countrymen who seized the opportunity of the Indulgence to rent the Hall of the Company of Founders for their Presbyterian worship. Alexander Carmichael, when parochial incumbent of Pitten- weem, had yielded to the pressure of law for a time, but being soon dissatisfied with the new episcopal innovations, had joined the ejected ministers of the Covenant ; and being arrested at Kirkcaldy for illegal preaching, and tried 22 Feb., 1672, he was banished "fourth the Kingdom" in a vessel bound for the Thames. After an earnest, faithful ministry in London for four years, he died in 1676, and was succeeded by a somewhat remarkable English Presbyterian minister, trained in Man- chester Grammar School and Cambridge University, Jeremiah 554 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Marsden, one of the ejected from Ardesley, near Wakefield, of whom Calamy gives an interesting account ; l a much perse- cuted and much imprisoned man, driven from place to place, " his whole life a perfect peregrination " ; who, having been in confinement in York Castle, at Oxford, and elsewhere, was committed to Newgate for his nonconformity, where he died four years before the Revolution, in his fifty-eighth year. After a brief ministry on the part of Nicholas Blakie, whose health speedily began to fail, there came over from Holland as an assistant and successor to him, the distinguished Robert Fleming, so well known in connection with one of his writings, The Rise and Fall of the Papacy? in whose early pastorate the Church at Founders' Hall was rebuilt on the same site. He had the honour of declining the Principalship of Glasgow Univer- sity when offered him. When he died, in 1716, John Cumming, from Cambridge, who was of Irish extraction and Scotch train- ing, and whose name is favourably associated with the Salters' Hall Synod, became minister. Dr. Cumming was followed by Dr. William Wishart, who after seven years succeeded his distinguished father in the Principalship of Edinburgh Univer- sity— a notable and learned family. Dr. Wishart was succeeded at Lothbury by Mr. John Partington, of Hampstead ; and after he had filled the pasto- rate for ten years, there came in his place, in 1751, Mr. William Steele, who, however, after a few months of much promise, was cut off by death ; and thereafter, for twenty years, Robert Lawson ably and efficiently carried forward the work. In his day, the Founders' Hall Church, Lothbury, gave place to the new one at London Wall, 1764. And it is interesting to note that of these nine ministers who preached at Founders' Hall, two were English Presbyterian, and a third of Irish lineage — a fit illustration of the intermingling of national relations that should afterwards be a characteristic of the future ministry of the Presbyterian Church of England. Seven years after the building of London Wall Church, the earnest and faithful 1 Palmer's Calamy, or Nonconformists'1 Memorial, vol. ii. pp. 553, 554. 2 For life of Robert Fleming, see Steven's Scottish Clturch at Rotterdam. THEIR REVIVAL. 555 "Robert Lawson died in his fiftieth year, 24 April, 1771 ; and in August of the same year, there was inducted a Scottish parish minister, who became one of the most notably popular preachers and writers in London, the distinguished Dr. Henry Hunter, who maintained the dignity and extended the Evan- gelic influences of the Presbyterian name in the metropolis throughout his long and valuable career. After Dr. Henry Hunter's death, in 1802, when Dr. Robert Young was chosen to succeed him, a section of the congregation seceded to Artillery Street, under Dr. Brichan, a rival candidate ; but in 1809, this section was happily re-united, and a time of much prosperity set in, -with a flourishing Sabbath school and the vigorous prosecution of other good work. After Dr. Young's death, in 1813, an effort was made to get Thomas Chalmers, of Kilmany, to supply the pulpit ; but he " declined to leave his present charge." Then came Dr. Manuel, in whose days metropolitan Presbyterianism was growing in its westward movement under Edward Irving, and his successors in Regent Square Church, 1827 ; but London Wall Church held on its way under McLean, Jardine, Tweedie, Burns, Dr. Nicholson, and Rev. William Ballantyne, M.A., under whom the removal was made in 1857, to Canonbury, where it is now located.1 Other Early Scottish Churches in London, and their Connections. While the above is the oldest Scottish Presbyterian Church in London, with the longest record, others of the same order were springing up from time to time : that in Glass-house Street being formed immediately after the Revolution, and migrating in 1710 to the vacated French Protestant Church in Swalloio Street, Piccadilly, it was joined by most of the members of the English Presbyterian Church (in the same street) which had been founded by Baxter in 1676 2 ; that in Crown Court, Diuxy Lane, 1718 3; and that of Peter Street, Soho, 1734,4 under the 1 For fuller details, see Memorials of the Old Ministers, Founders' Hall, London Wall, and Canonbury, by Eev. George Wilson, M.A., F.L.S., Minister at Canonbury, 1882 ; and Wilson's Dissenting Churches, vol. ii. pp. 460-514. - Wilson's Dissenting Churches, vol. iv. p. 45. » Ibid. pp. 1-10. * Ibid. pp. 32-37. 556 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. same able minister (Bishop Anderson, as he was often called), who founded the Swallow Street Church. From the earliest period, the Scotch Presbyterian ministers began to mingle with their English Dissenting brethren and take an active part in their public proceedings. Thus, the Rev. Robert Fleming succeeded Vincent Alsop, in 1701, as one of the six preachers at the Merchants' Lecture at Salters7 Hall, by the election of his fellow Protestant Dissenting brethren. It was he that was chosen also to be at the head of the Three Denominations, when their deputies congratulated Queen Anne on the successful legislative union of England and Scotland in 1707. Both Dr. John Cumming, the successor of Fleming, and Dr. Anderson, of Swallow Street, took an active part as subscribers in the Salters' Hall Synod and in the controversy that followed, as did also Rev. William Lorimer, M.A., who was associated with Dr. Joshua Oldfield in the first English Presbyterian Academy located in Hoxton Square. The names of the Scottish ministers appear also in ordinary course in the General Body of the Three Denominations formed in 1727, as well as in such lists of Presbyterians as those of Dr. John Evans, 1717-1729, and the Palmer MS. of 1730 in the Williams Library. After a time, however, as the century rolled on, when debates arose on vital points of doctrine and on the real grounds of dissenting from the Church of England, — and when the large and growing body of the Non-subscribing Presbyterian ministers were insisting that freedom from all subscription to creeds was the ground of their Nonconformity, and was the characteristic principle of their Presbyterian Protestantism, — the Scottish ministers, feeling repelled, like their English Subscriptionist brethren, kept themselves more and more aloof from the heterodox party ; and in self-defence created what came to be known as " the Scots Presbytery " in London,1 which represented 1 We know that the Scotch minister of at least one old English Presbyterian Church (William Smith, of Silver Street,) was a member of this Scots' Presbytery (Wilson's Dissenting Churches, vol. iii. p. 114), and that orthodox English Presby- terian ministers freely took part in ordination and other solemn services in these Scotch Churches, as when Eev. Samuel Say presided at the ordination of Dr. William Crookshank. — Wilson's Dissenting Churches, vol. iv. pp. 47, 94. THEIR REVIVAL. 557 an older organization in the early part of the century. Under the leadership of Dr. Henry Hunter, this became a firm rallying ground for wholesome discipline and evangelic principles. In the preamble of the minutes, bearing date 5 August, 1772, it is said, " The Scots' Presbytery in London, since their first formation as an ecclesiastical body, have conformed strictly to the worship and government ; inviolably maintained the faith and spirit ; and legally exercised the powers, of the parent Church in the land where Providence hath cast their lot." It would appear that those English Presbyterians who met at the Williams Library at the end of that same year, disowned their Scotch brethren because they deemed them " not Dissenters upon principles of liberty." l And certainly they were not, if by " principles of liberty " were meant that novel notion of a speculative freedom for ministers on matters of doctrinal opinion which was to put congregations entirely at the mercy of their preachers, and was opposed to all the meeting-house trusts, except perhaps a very few that may have been doctrinally open ones. The Early Scottish Secession Churches in London. Meantime a rupture had taken place in the Presbyterian National Church of Scotland, and this led to another line of Presbyterian Congregations being planted in England. Over- ruled as that division may have been for good, the disinte- grating evils of it must be attributed to the illegitimate and blundering action of the Imperial legislature, as we shall presently see. A threatening political danger rendered legislative Union with Scotland a necessity ; and after no small difficulty, the 1 The following extract is according to the invariable but not too accurate claims and representations of the whole Ariauizing and Anti-subscriptionist party, — " The Presbyterians in particular, with regard to their notions of ecclesiastical power and government, are a different set of men from the Presbyterians of the last century. The English Presbyterians of this age have discarded all ideas of parochial sessions, classes, provincial synods, and general assemblies. They dis- claim all coercive jurisdiction in spiritual concerns, and believe that every distinct and separate congregation ought to be the sole director of its religious affairs, with- out being controllable by or accountable to any other earthly authority. In short, they retain little of Presbyterianism, properly so-called, but the name." — A Vindi- cation of the Protestant Dissenting Ministers, etc., by Andrew Kippis, D.D., 1772. 558 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Act of Union was passed in 1707. According to the Articles of Treaty, the preservation of the Presbyterian form of Church government and worship was made an essential and funda- mental condition ; and for greater assurance, a special " Act of Security" became part of the Treaty, requiring of every Sovereign, on ascending the British throne, an oath to support intact the privileges and discipline of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. In five years, however, this part of the solemn compact was violated. For in 1712, an Act restoring patronage was passed, the Bill being hurried through both Houses of Parliament in a single month. " The British legislature violated the Articles of Union, and made a change in the constitution of the Church of Scotland. . . . Year after year the General Assembly protested against the violation, but in vain ; an&from the Act of 1112 undoubtedly flowed every secession and schism that has taken place in the Church of Scotland.'''' ' For a number of years the Act was almost a dead letter, the popular feeling being strongly averse to the settlement of any minister by lay patronage without the direct " call " of the Church over which he was to preside. Up to 1728, there had been no intrusions of ministers on reclaiming congregations ; but in 1729, forced settlements commenced, the calI"of the people being set at nought, and the patron's nomination of a presentee reckoned sufficient by the majority of the Assembly, who disre- garded all cases of appeal or protest. Against this and other forms of faithlessness there were those who strongly testi- fied ; and out of this agitation the First Secession sprang in 1733, under the leadership of Ebenezer Erskine, who, having been formally censured by the General Assembly for de- nouncing the corruptions of the Church in a Synod sermon, protested with three others against the sentence. These four protesting brethren were declared no longer ministers of the Church ; but they constituted themselves into a Presbytery, 5 Dec, 1733, and in the following May gave full reasons for their procedure in their first document, entitled, " A Testimony to the Doctrine, "Worship, Government, and Discipline of the 1 Lord Macaulay's Speeches, vol. ii. p. 180. THEIR REVIVAL. 559 Church of Scotland." It was not against the constitution ot the Presbyterian Church, but against the " prevailing party," or defective majority, who were unfaithful to its spirit and genius, that " The Associate Presbytery " testified and laid down their programme of action, for which they were finally deposed from office in 1740.1 From this time and for nearly a century, what came to be known as "the Moderate party" were in the ascendant, de- fending and enforcing the alleged rights of patrons, and coming under the influence of a most un evangelic and ratio- nalistic spirit. The Moderate leaders, of whom Principal Robertson, the historian, was chief, were more at home in litera- ture than theology, and were vehemently opposed to everything that looked like enthusiasm in religion or to popular power in ecclesiastical administration. A cold wave of latitudinarianism was kept long rolling over Scotland ; and it was this and the strug- gles that ensued thereon, that prevented Scottish Presbyterians from rendering more effective service earlier to their orthodox and subscribing brethren in England, and that greatly de- layed the Presbyterian revival. The high-handed measures of the Moderate majority in the General Assembly gave great impulse to the Secession, which rapidly advanced, under the banner of an earnest Evangelical style of preaching on its one side, and of freedom for congregations to choose their own pastors emblazoned on the other. In 1737-8, upwards of seventy applications, chiefly from " praying societies," for supply of Gospel ordinances were laid on the table of the " Associate Presbytery" ; and so early as 1744, certain of these 1 The disintegrating influence of State law's interference with religion went for- ward apace. This " Secession," or " Associate " Presbytery was split into two over the question of the lawfulness of the parliamentary Burgess oath, which required adhesion to " the true religion presently professed within this realm.'" As the Secession congregations increased, the names '^Associate Synod," and " General Associate Synod," or in vulgar parlance, " Burghers," and " Anti-Burghers," came to designate the two bodies which respectively admitted or denied the lawfulness of the Burgess oath. On the abolition of the oath, the two parties coalesced in 1820, and were called " The United Secession Church:'' Meanwhile, in 1752, the Patro- nage Law had created another Secession, which issued in the " Synod of Belief," owning the same Westminster Presbyterian doctrine and government, but protesting against " the power of the civil magistrate in religious concerns." This and the United Secession Synod of 1820 joined together in 1847, to form " The United Presbyterian Church." 560 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. "praying societies" in London that had put themselves in correspondence with that Presbytery, were received under its inspection as the nucleus of a Church which should help to carry out the spirit and aims of the Westminster Assembly's order of government, according to the uncoercive, voluntary, and Evangelic policy desired by such as Adam Martindale and the section which he and many others represented among the fathers and founders of early English or Westminster Presbyterianism. II. A FAITHFUL EEMNANT OF ORTHODOX ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES. Illustration of an Old English Presbyterian Church Growing into the Modern Organization. In a back part of the "Anciente towne of Stafiforde " is an interesting and venerable specimen of an old English Presby- terian meeting-house,1 still in use as a place of worship in con- nection with the Presbyterian Church of England, though not now so serviceable for that purpose as once it was. The build- ing itself,- — only surpassed in age among the ecclesiastical buildings of that town by St. Chad's and St. Mary's parish churches, — dates from the year of the Toleration Act ; but the congregation belongs to a considerably earlier period. Among the fifty names of the " ejected " in Staffordshire in 1662, men- tioned by Calamy, is that of the Rev. Noah Bryan, who, as " minister of Marie's in Stafford," had conducted public wor- ship in that parish church after the Presbyterian form. His distinguished father, Dr. Bryan, of Coventry, his two brothers, and an uncle, were among the ejected ministers also, in other parts of England. Mr. Bryan was the founder of the little company of Nonconformist Presbyterians in the town of Staf- ford ; and after he had been forced to quit the neighbourhood (he became chaplain to the Earl of Donegal, and died in Ire- land in 1667), it would appear from an interesting MS. in Lambeth Palace (Cod. Tenison, 639), which contains a list of Conventicles within the Archdeaconry of Stafford in 1669, that a Conventicle was held in the house of John Wade, their preacher in Stafford, who is registered as a Curate, and with whom were associated some "persons of quality" — the number 1 Jubilee and Bicentenary Memorial of the old Stafford Meeting House by Rev. S. D. Scammell, F.R.G.S., 1887. 561 0 0 562 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. of Presbyterians in Stafford being reckoned at "three or four hundred." How the secret cause continued to struggle on amid the difficulties of persecuting statutes and opposing autho- rities, we are not informed ; but we learn from the registration volume in the Record Office that the Presbyterians in Stafford were among the first to obtain one of Charles the Second's licences, in 1672, for the house of " Joseph Wade," to be used as their meeting-place ; while on 13th May the same year, the Rev. William Turton, M.A., of Birmingham, who had been ejected from Rowley and had been holding Conventicles at Wednesbury and Darlaston, came to Stafford as a licensed Presbyterian minister, and began to build up a Presbyterian Church. The congregation grew in numbers ; larger accommodation was rendered necessary, and licences were secured for two other private houses in which to hold meetings. From a MS. " Census of the Province of Canterbury," it would appear that a set of questions were issued from Lambeth in 1676 ; and among the Tenison MSS. in Lambeth Palace there is " a par- ticular account rendered to the Archbishop in answer to the inquiries of 1676," from which we learn that there were 155 adult or professed Presbyterians, those under sixteen years of age being omitted. When Rev. William Turton, M.A., re- moved to Birmingham, in 1682, he was succeeded by the not less zealous and admirable Rev. Samuel Evans, under whose ministry very much was done to consolidate both the spiritual and temporal interests of the congregation. Immediately after the passing of the Toleration Act, steps were taken, though under difficulties, for securing a site for a burial-ground and a meeting-house. By the good offices of a kind lady of property, who was a member of the congregation, and who surrendered her garden, which was entirely shut in from public view, a spot was obtained " free from all observation and annoyance on the part of certain who object to Nonconformist worship ; " and so the first parchment comes down to us endorsed thus : " Sarah Salte's deed of her own house and the garden where the chappell is built." A great and memorable day for the suffer- ing Presbyterians was the 26th of August, J1689, when 200 adherents took part in a public religious service, which was THEIR REVIVAL. 563 meant to be partly dedicatory of the new meeting-house reared at the " Publick charge of John Dancer, Francis Lycett, yeo- men of Stafford, and others," and partly a funeral service, on occasion of the first interment, which was marked by the erection of an elaborate "head-stone," still preserved. " The meeting-house," we are told, " was built in the form of a parallelogram, running east and west, of the best red brick with large blocks of sandstone for the base, corners, and arches. The walls are two feet of thickness at the base, and the roof unusually strong and heavy. The building presents a massive appearance. It had a gallery at each end, and a mahogany pulpit, with spiral stairs and large sounding-board, fixed in the centre of the south wall. From its shape the pulpit was known among the people as the " egg-cup." This has been removed, but the original galleries remain. There were eight windows, one in each end under the galleries, the lower ones protected with shutters. The church is entered by a massive door on each side of the pulpit, and opening under the galleries." An original parchment deed of 1696, still preserved, explains the nature of the trust, which is a very general one in favour of Protestant Dissenting ministers exercising religious worship, and is signed by "John Dancer" and "Ffrancis Lisott," and is " sealed and delivered " in the presence of Samuel Evans the minister, and his wife, and William Greene. The Presbyterians .were as yet the only Protestant Dissenters in Stafford, and in a later trust-deed are designated "Orthodox Presbyterians," in terms of the Toleration Act.1 The leaders of the congrega- tion were prominent men, either yeomen of the county, or, like John Dancer and William Greene, above mentioned, who were popular Mayors of the town, the latter being elected at least four times to the Mayoral office. The Church was connected with the Cheshire Association or " Classis," already described, which was constituted in 1691, with John Angier and Matthew Henry as "Moderator" and "Scribe" respectively, Matthew 1 It was not till 1730 that the second Nonconformist congregation was established in Stafford. This was the Society of Friends. The third was the Wesleyan Methodists, not, however, till 1785 ; and only in 1786 did the Independents obtain a footing as the fourth iu order. 564 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Henry paying for long an annual visit, and being on intimate terms with a succession of Stafford ministers, Rev. Richard Milne being ordained by the " Classis " in June, 1700, and Rev. Mr. Brian (grandson of the ejected minister), in 1705 ; while on the death of his friend Rev. Dr. Peyton, in 1711, another of his friends, the Rev. John King, minister of Stone, watched over the interests of the Church at Stafford until the settlement of Rev. Samuel Harrops, in 1713, who remained for twenty-seven years, till 1740, and whose ministry seems to have been a highly successful one. In 1715 there were 300 hearers, 30 being parliamentary voters ; and in 1730 there were 350 hearers, and among them were 30 county and 45 borough voters. In the third year of Mr. Harrops' ministry occurred those " riots " that raged through Staffordshire, the result of the High Church fury against Dissenters connected with the name of Sacheverell, and that broke forth with ungovernable frenzy on the accession of the House of Hanover. The meet- ing-house in Stafford was defended with great success and spirit against the destructive mob, but damages were recovered to the extent of £215. When Mr. Harrops retired, in 1740, the churches of Stone and Stafford were conducted under two joint and successive ministries till 1770, and under a third from 1772 to 1782, when difficulties began to be experienced in procuring suitable pulpit smpplies, though some were sent occasionally from the Academy of Lady Glenorchy, at Newcastle-under-Lyne. Here begins the connection of the old English Presbyterian Church of Staf- ford with a Scottish ministry. In 1789 the centenary of the old meeting-house was suitably and joyfully celebrated by the settlement of the Rev. Henry Proctor, a minister of the Church of Scotland, who retained the pastoral charge for nineteen years, till his death in 1808, at the age of 76. An interesting relationship occurs at this point between the Methodists and the Presbyterians in Stafford. After Wesley had repeatedly visited the town in 1783 and 1784, a neat little chapel, capable of holding about 100 persons, was built by his adherents ; but after a struggling existence for sixteen years, it had to be sold by auction in 1802, and the remaining members of the Society THEIR REVIVAL. 565 cast in their lot with the Presbyterians, though a few joined the recently organized Independent body. These Methodists were helpful in procuring pulpit supplies in the later years of Mr. Proctor's lengthened ministry ; and in fact, from 1805 to 1811, the Presbyterian meeting-house had its place on the Methodist plan as a preaching station, while the Trustees administered the funds, and a duly accredited Pres- byterian minister occupied the pulpit from time to time, and held a Communion Service once a quarter. When the Wes- leyans proceeded once more to erect a chapel for themselves, the Presbyterian interest was reduced to its lowest level ; but still the continuance of Church ordinances (for it was never " shut up " altogether, as was once alleged) was persistently maintained by one or two staunch adherents, especially by a venerable and much-respected precentor or " clerk," as he was called, who never failed to be in his desk at the time appointed in his long black robe, and who used to say, " This old place shan't be closed while I'm living." It was at this stage, when matters were at their lowest ebb, that the meeting almost fell into the hands of the Unitarians ; but by the strenuous resist- ance of a few of the members, this was prevented. Efforts were now made for securing pulpit supply by arrangement with ministers of the Church of Scotland passing through Stafford to Birmingham or London ; for the Church at Bir- mingham was at this time connected with what was known as the " Scots Presbytery " of London. Accounts have come down to us of the visits of several of these ministers. The bond of connection between Churches of the older type and those of a more fully organized Presbyterian system was most commonly effected by the choice of a minister. This was the case at Stafford, when, after repeated and lengthened visits, the Rev. Alexander Macdonald, M.A., removed from Birming- ham; and being a very superior and greatly admired preacher, he speedily was at the head of a flourishing and influential •cause in Stafford. Soon after his settlement, the aged "clerk," or precentor, died, but with the happy assurance that the old place was at last to revive. On Mr. Macdonald's own death, in 1834, the attention of the congregation was directed to the 566 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Rev. Alexander Stewart, M.A., a licentiate of the Irish. Presby- terians. According to the minutes of the Synod of Ulster, "On 23rd October, 1834, the Presbytery of Dublin ordained Mr. Alexander Stewart as pastor of the congregation of Staf- ford, in England, he having previously subscribed to the West- minster Confession of Faith according to the Synod's Formula ; and the congregation having expressed through him their wish to he taken into connection with this Church, ... it was moved, and unanimously agreed, that . . . the Synod receive the minister and congregation of Stafford into its connection, and place them under the care of the Presbytery of Dublin." Be- sides being trained for the ministry, Mr. Stewart was educated also for the bar at Trinity College, Dublin, from which he obtained afterwards the degree of LL.D. Under his powerful and popular services, the Presbyterian cause received immense impetus ; and as the premises were greatly enlarged and reno- vated, with school additions and vestry, a revised Trust-deed (which is now the principal one) was drawn up, with date of 10 February, 1835, bearing that " Thomas Lycett, being ad- vanced in life, conveys . . . all that chapel or meeting-house . . . now and for many years used by the orthodox Presby- terians, . . . with buildings, lands, appurtenances, to " a new body of Trustees, including the Clerk of the Dublin Presbytery ; and rehearsing the terms of the original deed. From the minutes of the Ulster Synod we learn that in 1838 " the Pres- bytery of Dublin reported to the Synod that in January last the Rev. Alexander Stewart, of Stafford, requested leave to connect himself, for sake of local convenience, with the Lancashire Presby- tery in England, which request was unanimously granted." This was the Lancashire Presbytery which helped to constitute, as we shall see, the Synod of the Presbyterian Church in Eng- land, in 1836 ; so that we need trace the history of the congre- gation no further, except to add that the Stafford Church retained its connection with the Lancashire Presbytery till 1847, when the increase in the number of the Churches in the Midland Counties led to the formation of the Presbytery of Birmingham, under whose inspection the ancient charge in Stafford is at present placed. III. SUEVIVAL OF PRESBYTERIANS IN NEWCASTLE AND NORTHUMBERLAND. Noethumbeeland has long been the most Presbyterian County of England.1 To this northern border Presbyterianism re- treated when overthrown elsewhere ; and here it chiefly entrenched itself and continued to hold its own, when the rest of the country seemed almost unaware of the existence of such a system in its orthodox form on English soil. Proximity to Scotland does not suffice to explain how religious life and methods in Northumberland have been to so large an extent moulded by Presbyterian influences. Presbyterianism was no recent upstart there and no mere intruder from the North. Its venerable career and associations, however chequered, give it a right to be considered a native plant, indigenous to this soil ; and those who mingle with the Northumbrian Presbyterians are soon made aware how quickly they resent the idea of their own Presbyterianism being in any sense " Scotch," either of recent importation or of foreign development. The ministers were largely Scotch, or Scotch-trained ; but the congregations were English, with Scottish settlers worshipping with them.3 We have noted already, in the opening chapters of this work, the existence of Presbyterian ideas and methods in connection with the very first introduction of Christianity into these parts, under the Presbyter Aidan and the Culdee or Columban Church, while Northumbria was a separate kingdom extending from the Firth of Forth to the Humber, under Oswald of Bamborough. "We have seen also how John Knox rocked the cradle of advanced Puritanism in Berwick and Newcastle in the very earliest Reformation times, before even lie had done anything in /Scotland of a similarly advanced kind ; and so the movement 1 There are 70 Presbyterian congregations in the county. 2 EeaJers of the Waverley Tales will readily recall some of Sir Walter Scott's illustrations of this. 567 568 THE PKESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. was set on foot in Northumberland that issued next century in the political ascendency of Presbyterianism in England. The chief local event we have to note in the beginning of that ascendency,1 is the encounter of argument and courtesy at Newcastle, from May to July 1646, between the sombre, narrow, punctilious Charles I., and the wise, dignified, massive Alexander Henderson, whom Baillie calls " the fairest ornament, after John Knox of incomparable memory, that ever the Church of Scotland did enjoy." The question respected the Divine right of Prelacy or diocesan Episco- pacy, and whether the King could annul it in England and supersede it by Presbytery, without violating his coronation oath. The controversy was unreal on the King's part, and only to gain time ; and Henderson, though earnestly carrying it on, knew this too well and was sadly affected at the pro- spective but inevitable mischief of the royal debater's temper and aims. The whole came to nothing. The correspondence, consisting of the King's five letters and Henderson's four, — the King courteously being allowed the last word, — may be found, not without suspicion of having been tampered with, in the Reliquiae Sacrce Carolina}, or the Works of Charles I. ; but prelatic writers do not seem so fond of referring to them as they once were. An absurd forgery, purporting to be a " Declaration of Mr. Henderson," regretting and recanting his Presbyterian sentiments, did service for a time in Clarendon's and other partisan histories, but is now universally known to have been forged.2 Henderson stands second to Knox for 1 The Great "Assembly" of 1639 had overthrown Prelacy in Scotland; and in 1640 it was known the King was doing his best to muster forces to invade Scotland. The Covenanters resolved to be beforehand. In August their forces crossed the Tweed,— the great Marquis of Montrose being the first to dash into the river,— and in a few days they occupied Newcastle with the good-will of the lieges. It was this that forced Charles I. to summon the eventful Long Parliament, for it stopped entirely the coal supplies of London and the South. •- For full account of this forgery see Masson's Life of Milton. Hallam says, " It is more than insinuated that Henderson died of mortification at his defeat. He certainly had not the excuse of the philosopher, who said he had no shame in yielding to the master of fifty legions. But those who take the trouble to read these papers will probably not think one party so much the stronger as to shorten the other's days. They show that Charles held those extravagant tenets about tbe authority of the Church and of the Fathers, which are irreconcilable with Protestantism, in any country where it is not established, and are likely to drive it out where it is so." THEIR REVIVAL. 569 moral power and statesman-like genius, as well as for the lasting influence lie has wielded over England and Scotland in the Presbyterian interest. While yet Charles remained at Newcastle, the Long Parlia- ment was following up with other steps its famous early ordinance " that the name, title, style, and dignity of Arch- bishop of Canterbury or York, and Bishop of Winchester, Durham, and all other Bishops within the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales be, from and after 5 Sept. 1646, wholly abolished and taken away." Presbyterianism was now the Established Church of England, as far as Parliamentary ordinances and arrangements could make it so ; and this very year that Establishment was coming into full operation by Presbyteries and Synods in London and all over Lancashire. By this time there were many in New- castle and district of the " Presbyterian way or judgment," as it was called, and a Classis or Presbytery was partially at work for a season also.1 We need only mention the vicar, Dr. 1 Here is a form of ordination of a minister, that may illustrate the working of Presbyterianism in Newcastle under the Commonwealth. It is from Calamy's Account, vol. ii. p. 506 ; and his pages preserve many other copies of similar ordination certificates by the Presbyteries or Classes :— " For as much as Mr. Ralph Ward hath address'd himself to the classical Presbytery, within the town and county of Newcastle upon Tyne (according to the Order of both Houses of Parliament, of Aug. 29, 1648, for the Ordination of Ministers by the Classical Presbytery ;) desiring to be ordained a Preaching- Presbyter, for that he iscall'd to the Work of the Ministry in Wolfingham Church in the County of Durham, and hath exhibited unto the Presbytery, a sufficient Testimonial now remaining in their custody of his compleat Age, of his unblameable Life and Conversation, of his Diligence and Proficiency in his Studies, and of his fair and direct call to the foremention'd Place. We the Ministers of the said Presbytery have by Appointment thereof examin'd him, according to the Tenor of the said Ordinance ; and finding him to be duly qualify'd and gifted for that holy Office and Employment (no just Exception being made against his Ordination or Admission), have approv'dhim ; And accordingly in the Church of John's in Newcastle, upon the Day and Year hereafter express'd have proceeded solemnly to set him apart to the Office of a Preaching- Presbyter, and Work of the Ministry, with Fasting and Prayer, and Imposition of Hands : And do hereby (so far as concerneth us) actually admit him into the said charge, there to perform all the offices and duties of a faithful Minister of Jesus Christ. In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscrib'd our Names, this 14th Day of September, Ann. Dom. 1658. John Bewick, Moderator. Richard Prideaux. William Coley. Anthony Japthorn. John Marshe. Robert Plaisance. Will. Henderson. Henry Lever. Thomas Hubbart.'"' 570 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Robert Jenison (or Jenningson), who had been prosecuted in the High Commission, who dedicates one of his treatises in 1649 " to the reverend his brethren and honoured friends of the Classis of the town and county of Newcastle-upon-Tyne." Lieutenant-colonel John Fenwick was one of the most promi- nent adherents of the "Covenant"; and the earnest and devoted Cuthbert Sydenham, one of the lecturers, " shined with the greatest lustre in Newcastle. He was a very seraphim. His pulpit transformed him out of himself"- — so says the author of the Life (in the Surtees Society) of Alder- man Ambrose Barnes, the famous Presbyterian Alderman. In the dedication of his books, addressing " the Right Worshipful Win. Johnson, Mayor of Newcastle, with the Aldermen, Sheriff, Common Council, and the rest of that famous corporation," Cuthbert Sydenham says, " These nine years, when all the nation have been in a puzzle about errors, sects, and schisms, even almost unto blood, you have sat as in a paradise, no disturbances in your pulpits, no railings or dis- putings " ; . . . " and as for the errors of the times that have disturbed so many towns in England, it may be said of Newcastle as of Ireland, ' the aire is so pure, no such venemous reptiles can live there? and this hath been through the power of the Gospel." l When " Black Bartholomew's Day," of 1662, arrived, New- castle and Northumberland contributed their quota to the 2,000 ejected ministers for conscience' sake.2 ' An interesting little book, that should be commended as an exemplary speci- men of Christian brotherly love and charity, is Historical Memorials of Presby- terianism in Neivcastle-on-Tyne, 1844. The writer of it (T. G. Bell, Esq.), though retaining his predilections as an Episcopalian, felt drawn out to the sister com- munion by devout spiritual affinities. 2 The reader will find notices of thirty-eight Northumberland worthies, with their deeds of self-sacrifice, recorded in Calamy's Memorial ; and though some of them did afterwards conform, the greater number struggled on in the face of the Five Mile Act and other oppressive measures, some of them earning a livelihood as farmers, doctors, apothecaries, and the like, yet maintaining secret religious services in cottages and barns as best they could. "Their names shall nerve a patriot's hand Upraised to save a sinking land, And piety shall learn to burn With holier transports o'er their urn." THEIR KEVIVAL. 571 A few were Independents, but the great bulk were Presby- terians, and some eminently so. We need only name Dr. Samuel Hammond, Vicar of Newcastle ; Henry Levee, of St. John's, — grandson of that great colleague of Knox, Thomas Leaver, one of the best of England's preachers, a royal chaplain to Edward VI., and often at the court of Elizabeth in her earlier years, — and Henry Erskine, who gave up the parish of Cornhill, and who was father of the two famous founders of the Scottish secession, Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine. The wonderful privations, deliverances, and labours of Henry Erskine belong rather to the other side of the border,— yet he was not unacquainted with Wooler gaol, like his companion in tribulation, the learned and pious Luke Ogle, Presbyterian Vicar of Berwick,— and in the name of Erskine we find the link between the suffering Presbyterianism of Northumberland and the self-denying Presbyterianism of the Scottish seceder Church, which was destined to impart again of her spiritual life and resources, and thereby to return amply and with interest what Northumberland first had given. Perhaps the most eminent of the Presbyterian ejected ministers, was Dr. Gilbert Eule, incumbent of St. Michael's Church, Alnwick. After banishment to the Bass Rock, and undergoing other sufferings, he felt inclined, at the Revolution, to settle down as a Presbyterian Nonconformist preacher in Alnwick, but at this juncture he was appointed Principal of Edinburgh Uni- versity, where he did great service for the General Assembly in the revived Presbyterian Church.1 While persecution times i See his own telling pamphlets against the persecuting Episcopal Establishment, especially The Good Old Way Defended, 1697 ; and the admirable sketch of his Life in Tate's History of Alnwick. He died in 1701. The following is a carefully- prepared list of bis writings : — 1. " Modest Answer to Dr. Stillingfleet's Irenicum." 8vo, London, 1680. 2. " Historical Representation of the Testimonies of the Church of Scotland." 1687. 3. "A Rational Defence of Nonconformity against Dr. Stillingfleet." 4to, London, 1689. 4. " A Sermon Preached before Parliament from Isaiah ii. 2, and others." 4to, Edinburgh, 1690. 5. "A Vindication of the Church of Scotland, being an Answer to a Paper entitled, Some Questions concerning Episcopal and Presbyterial Government in Scotland, etc." 4to, London, 1691. 2nd edition, 4to, Edinburgh, 1691. 6. "A Second Vindication of the Church of Scotland." 4to, Edinburgh, 1691. Another edition, 4to, London, 1691. • [Over. 572 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. lasted, the Border was much, frequented by oppressed Presby- terian ministers, who could escape the law of the one country by crossing into the other. In this way the celebrated Alexander Peden (from whom a high conical hill near Otterburn, where he used to preach, receives its name) gave an impulse to the cause in Redesdale, which continues to this hour. Probably, however, the man who did most in the county, and was most hotly pursued, was William Veitch, whose " house and field conventicles," even in the worst of times, are associated with such places as Falalies in E-othbury, Harnham Hall near Bavington, Stanton Hall near Morpeth, and his hiding retreat on Carter Fell. Few men even at that time went through so many hard- ships for Christ's sake, or could say more truly with the Apostles, " We both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place," yet he lived to rehearse his vicissitudes in a green old age by the fireside of his manse at Dumfries.1 For other sufferers in 7. "A Just Reproof of a Pamphlet called Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence." 4to, Edinburgh, 1693. 8. " A Defence of the Vindication of the Church of Scotland, in Answer to tbe Apology of the Clergy of Scotland, by Dr. Alex. Munro " (his predecessor in the Principalship). 4to, Edinburgh, 1694. 9. " A Sermon Preached at the Meeting of Council of George Heriot's Hospital." 4to, Edinburgh, 1695. 10. " The Cyprianick Bishop examined and found not to be a Diocesan, nor to have superior Power to a Parish Minister or Presbyterian Moderator ; being an Answer to J [ohn] S [age] his Principles of the Cyprianick Age ; together with an Appendix, in Answer to a railing Preface to a Book entitled, ' The Fundamental Charter of Presbytery.' " 4to, Edinburgh, 1696. 11. " The Good Old Way Defended, in Support of Presbytery against the Attempts of Alexander] M[onro] , D.D., in his Book called, ' An Enquiry into the New Opinions.' " 4to, Edinburgh, 1697. 12. " A Discourse of Suppressing Immorality, and Promoting Godliness, being the Subject of some Sermons on Ps. ci." 4to, Edinburgh, 1701. Besides the above, he published, " A Vindication of the Purity of Gospel Worship," " A Representation of Presbyterian Government," and " Answer to the Questions concerning Episcopal and Presbyterian Government;" but the place and date of their publication have not been ascertained. 1 Memoirs of William Veitch and George Brysson, written by themselves, and edited by Dr. M'Crie, 1825. Among the texts prefixed to his Memoirs, Veitch quotes Psalm xlii. 6 : " Therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar" ; and he comments thus : " The land of Jordan is the Scotch and English ground on both sides of the Tweed ; the Hermonites are the Redesdaleites, and Mizar is the Carteb, where I hardly escaped the enemies' search." THEIR REVIVAL. 573 Newcastle and elsewhere we refer our readers to the general authorities.1 After the Revolution settlement, when people could breathe more freely, many of these little knots and gatherings of long- afflicted Presbyterians began to erect meeting-houses for them- selves ; and from this time many of the present Presbyterian charges take their date, among the earliest of them being Pottergate (or St. James's), Alnwick, 1689, with its twin-sister of Morpeth a few years later, in 1694 ; Stamfordham, Baving- ton, Etal, and Lowick having their roots away back in 1672; Birdhopecraig and the Groat Market Church, Newcastle (now John Knox Church), 1698, in all of which it is easy to trace a lineal succession of Presbyterian ministers from before 1700- We gather from various sources, that in 1715 (when the county was shaken to its centre by the Jacobite outburst) there were twenty-five of these Presbyterian meetings, though all may not have been accommodated in buildings of their own ; that of Morpeth, for instance, not till 1721. In Northumberland, as elsewhere, much ground was lost and progress was hindered, by many of these Churches, — although constituted and worked within themselves on purely Presbyterian principles, as these have been already explained, — remaining long comparatively iso- lated, missing thereby the inspiriting influence that comes from mutual counsel and co-operation. The dry-rot of Arianism, how- ever, which prevailed to such an extent elsewhere, did not get much hold here. So far as I can learn, only two Churches, one in Newcastle and the other in North Shields (though this soon came to an end), were all that in Northumberland got infected with the prevailing heresies ; and even then it was the ministers and trustees rather than the congregations, the people moving quietly away elsewhere.2 The one Newcastle place that be- came Unitarian was however of some note and wealth. It was 1 Besides Calamy, vide James Clephane's Nonconformity in Newcastle two Centuries Ago, 1862 ; and Depositions from Castle of York, in Suktees Society. 2 In 1808, there were in all the four Northern Counties,— Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham,— only three congregations professing Unitarianisrn— Newcastle, North Shields, and Kendal. In Yorkshire there were nineteen professedly Unitarian places, but only seven were of the old Presbyterian stock. See Britannia Puritanica, the most valuable of the MS. vols, of Joseph Hunter in the British Museum Library. 574 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. the Close-gate Church, the first Dissenting meeting-house in Newcastle, whose first minister had been the learned and godly Dr. Richard Gilpin, author of the " Demonologia Sacra,"1 who was related to the earlier Apostle of the North, Bernard Gilpin, and who had been closely associated with the famous Presbyterian Alderman of Newcastle, Ambrose Barnes.2 Gil- pin's successor was Benjamin Bennett, author of the pithy volume, Memorials of the Reformation, and he was followed by Dr. Samuel Lawrence, in whose successor's time the change to Arianism and ultimately Unitarianism was effected.3 That the plague did not spread, was owing in some measure to the action of such Presbytery as there was at the time — -a fixed association, though it was as yet of ministers only, for mutual counsel and discipline, and not merely for licensing preachers and conducting ordinations. From the Restoration to the Revolution (twenty-eight years), Presbyterial organization was impossible, because contrary to the penal laws then in force ; but ministerial fellowships were kept up in Northumberland as far as possible or as the ecclesiastical law and courts would allow, and openly renewed bit by bit when canonical laxity permitted. The Newcastle Classis was one of the earliest to be revived, the oldest extant minutes dating back to 7 August, 1751. But that minute-book implies the existence of an earlier one, which is unfortunately however no longer extant. By this Presbytery, in its original form, an ordina- tion service was conducted at least as early as 25 February, 1G93-4, when, in Newcastle, Dr. Jonathan Harle (or, as it was sometimes pronounced and often written, Harley), — he was M.D., like several of his fellow Presbyterian ministers, and was author, among other things, of a Treatise on the diseases mentioned in the Bible,- — was set apart by his brethren to 1 For important letters of Gilpin, showing how eventually he stood to the new Prelacy on the one hand and to Independency on the other, see Dr. Grosart's Memoir, p. xxxix. " Much of the Dissenters' interest in ye North depends upon the welfare of our congregation. The Episcopal party have long since made their prognostik yt when I die, ye congregation will be broken and then there will be an end of ye dissenters' interest in Newcastle." See the same valuable Memoir for Gilpin's complaint about the Independents of his time. 2 Longstaffe's Barnes (in Surtees Society). 3 For details, see Rev. William Turner's Sketch of this Church, 1844. THEIR REVIVAL. 575 minister to the double charge of Alnwick and Morpeth ; and when, in 1709, through the growth of his double charge, he settled wholly in Alnwick, he was succeeded in Morpeth by his friend and biographer, John Horsley. This latter is the most noteworthy name among the Northumbrian Presbyterian ministers during last century ; for John Horsley was one of the greatest archasological savants of his day.1 In 1755, there 1 His merits as the learned author of the Britannia Romana ; or, the Roman Antiquities of Britain, receive a just and distinguished acknowledgment in the current edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It was under the Rev. John Horsley, M.A., that the first Presbyterian meeting-house was erected in Morpeth. The building has been repeatedly enlarged and repaired; and the substantial fabric is still, in a renovated form, most serviceable for educational purposes. Hodgson (in his great life-work, History of Northumberland, 1832) states, under Morpeth, p. 77, that: — "The Presbyterians had no fixed meeting-house here before the year 1721. For some time before that year, they are said to have assembled in a house on Cottingburn, where Mr. Railstone's tanyard now is, and a little above their present house, which, according to its title deeds, stands on ground which had belonged to Newminster Abbey. The indenture which confers the property on the foundation is dated July 20, 1721 ; and is between William Crawford in the first part ; Sir William Middleton, Bart. ; John Cay, of South Shields, Esq.; Reynolds Hall, of Newbiggin; Cumberland Leach, of Belsay ; Benjamin Bennet, of Newcastle; Jonathan Harley (Harle), of Alnwick, M.D. ; and John Horsley, of Widrington, Gent., on the other part ; and, among other things, sets forth, that in consideration of £10, the premises were demised on a determination term of 999 years, which commenced 20th September, 27 Ch. II., to the said parties of the second part, " up>on trust that they should permit a chapel or meeting-house to he erected thereon, if the laws of the realm would permit, connive at, tolerate, allow, or indulge the same to be used or employed for and as a meeting- house, and as an assembly of a particular Church or congregation of Protestants dis- senting from the Church of England, for the exercise of their divine and religious worship therein, the minister to be a Protestant, able minister, who in judgement and practice as to Church discipline and government should be a Presbyterian, and not of any other persuasion, and should be orthodox and sound in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, and profess the doctrinal Articles of the Church of England, and be qualified according to the statute of the first of William and Mary.'" This, and other subsequent deeds, are deposited in the custody of the Church Treasurer's safe. Abundance of material is available in connection with Morpeth congregation to establish the continuity of its Presbyterian constitution and working from its origin till the present time ; and it is only an example of similar cases in the Northern Counties. See references to Horsley and Harle in Dr. Calamy's Autobiography , vol. ii. pp. 147, 148, so early as 1709, when Horsley had settled as Presbyterian minister of Morpeth. He died suddenly, 12 January, 1732, at the early age of forty-six, of an apoplectic stroke, brought on by the toil of his marvellous researches embodied in the Britannia Romana, which he just lived to see through the press. He left a son and two daughters. His wife was a daughter of William Hamilton, D.D., Professor of Divinity, Edinburgh University. He published the beautiful and touching memorial sermon which he preached in Alnwick for his friend and pre- decessor in Morpeth, Jonathan Harle, M.D. His ministerial successors during the rest of the century were William Richardson, James Simpson, William Achison, and the much-respected Rev. Robert Trotter. For reference to Mr. Trotter's ministry, at the close of the century, see Memoirs of Dr. Robert Blakey, of 576 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. occurs a reference in these minutes to " The Northern class," no doubt the representative of the later Presbytery of Nor- thumberland ; and one of the most important entries is that which bears date 15th January, 1783, resolving to summon a representative elder from each congregation, so as to constitute a full Presbytery in the more proper and fuller modern acceptation and development.1 Queen's College, Belfast, who was a native of Morpeth, and who thus writes of his birth-time in 1795: "I have heard my relatives often mention that two days before my father's death, he sent for his minister, the Rev. Eobert Trotter, my uncle Robertson, and my grandmother, Mrs. Laws, and, with a solemnity of manner conjured them to bring me up in the Presbyterian profession, and in ?;o other. They all with one voice made the promise ; and he faintly ejaculated, ' Now I die in peace.' This interview made a deep and lasting impression upon all present. Fifty years after, I have heard my uncle Robertson recite the event with tears in his eyes." The Rev. George Atkin succeeded Mr. Trotter in 1807; and having been trained at Wymondley, Herts, when the conflict was waxing hot, between the Evangelical and Unitarian parties, he warmly espoused the Evan- gelical interest, with a strong tendency in favour of the renewed and rising Con- gregational theory. This he brought with him to Morpeth ; and though the practice of the Church continued Presbyterian in accordance with the trust deed, his views began to take effect, so that at his death a contest took place between a professed Presbyterian and a professed Independent candidate. The contest caused such feeling, that on the Rev. Matthew Brown, M.A., the Presbyterian, being elected, the minority broke away and built an Independent Chapel for themselves. In accordance with what we have seen were the largely non -denominational usages of the Congregational Board in London, which helped Presbyterian brethren if they were not under the jurisdiction of Scottish Presbyteries, Mr. Atkin acted for some time as its almoner and agent for Northumberland, and thus he aided many struggling Presbyterian Evangelical ministers and Churches. It need only be added, that Mr. Atkin's successor, Rev. Mat. Brown, was succeeded in 1843 by the late venerable and revered James Anderson, D.D., who died in 1882. 1 The following two illustrative extracts from the manuscript Minutes of the Newcastle Classis shed important light on this subject : — I. Rules of Orderly Procedure, April 1, 1755. " Newcastle, April 1, 1755. We, subscribers, Ministers of the Gospel, for the honour of our profession, the maintaining and promoting peace among us, do declare — " 1. That we will study to cultivate a good understanding amongst ourselves by promoting each other's peace and the common interest of religion in our several congregations, readily embracing brotherly advice. "2. As Infidelity, Error, and Profaneness (with the deepest concern we mention it) seem to be on the growing hand, we disclaim Deism, the Arian, Socinian, Antinomian, Pelagian, and Sabellian errors and heresies as such, and resolve on all occasions to give our testimony against them. "3. And whereas Confessions of Faith and Creeds are unreasonably run down, we are determined by the grace of God to make His Holy Word and Confessions thereunto agreeable, the standard of our faith or religious principles, and the Rule of our Practice. " 4. We also, in all public affairs relating to the Church of Christ, both licensing of young men to preach the Gospel and ordaining of Ministers, resolve to act in concert one with another in an orderly and brotherly way. " 5. Whosoever of the Protestant Dissenting Ministers will join us in this manner, THEIR REVIVAL. 577 The renewal and development of Presbyterianism was not unaffected even in Northumberland by the general religious stirrings throughout the country towards the close of last century. One impulse was derived from the Methodist move- ment, which, while it profited by drawing from the old Presbyterianism a goodly number, in whom evangelical doc- trine and spiritual life found ready sympathizers, re-acted most favourably on that Presbyterianism itself. Another impulse was derived from the budding power and evangelical zeal of the Scottish Secession Church,1 which dictated to her the policy of following her children over the border ; of sending and according to the peaceable intent of this our declaration, we will be glad of their assistance and concurrence." II. Formula and Bules adopted April 5, 1784. 1. Formula. — ■" We, the Dissenting Ministers of the Newcastle Class, do own and believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice ; we believe in original sin, and that the only way of recovery is by grace through the Mediator, who is the Lord Jesus Christ, both God and Man in one person, able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God who through Him ; and as these and all the other doctrines which we believe and profess are clearly comprehended and shortly and distinctly summed up in the Westminster Confession of Faith, we heartily acknowledge it to be the Confession of our Faith, and this we the rather do, as Arians, Socinians, Arminians, etc., have always recourse to Scripture, and wrest it to support their own erroneous tenets, whereas we are convinced, that the Westminster Confession gives us a view of the doctrines as most agreeable to the mind of the Spirit of God in His holy Word. " And therefore we promise (through grace) to maintain them both in our pro- fession and preaching, and we consider the said Confession as a proper Directory for worship and discipline, as far as our situation and circumstances will admit, by Vestries or Sessions, Classes or Presbyteries, and a Synod if attainable. And we promise to follow no divisive courses from the said Confession and Presbyterian Form of Worship, renouncing and disclaiming all doctrines, tenets, and opinions inconsistent with and contrary thereto, as witness our hands." 2. Rules. — " As every Society has a right to make Rules and Eegulations for the direction of their own conduct, so this Class think it highly necessary that the following be consented to and acquiesced in by all its members that either are or shall be admitted members of it : — ■ " (1.) That no person, ordained or unordained, should be admitted a member of this Class until he subscribe the above Formula. " (2.) That we will ordain none to our charge in our bounds unless they have been either licensed by the Church of Scotland, or have got a regular education in England, and have been licensed by some regular Presbyterian Class." (From the Minutes of the Class, afterwards named Presbytery, of Newcastle. These minutes go back without a break till 1751, and refer to still earlier pro- ceedings whose records have apparently been lost, or at least not yet discovered.) i It is worth noting, that the first Sabbath School in Great Britain was taught by Bev. Jas. Morrison, Secession minister of Norham, so early as 175ft There were others of a similar kind before Robert Baikes began his school in 1781, from which the modern Sunday School system more immediately took its rise. r r 578 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. men like John Brown of Haddington, on preaching tours over this district ; and of being able to plant, so early as 1744, that seedling in Newcastle now represented in Blackett Street,1 which outplanted itself so largely, that when the Union took place in 1876, while the older Newcastle Presbytery contri- buted seventeen congregations, the younger one contributed no fewer than twenty-five north of the Tyne, besides many more on the south or Durham side of the river — a strong lesson never to despise the day of small things, not knowing where- unto, by God's good hand, it may ultimately grow. Yet a third great impulse was derived from that swelling tide of new life in the National Church of Scotland, which issued at last in the Disruption of 1843, the late Venerable Dr. Anderson being the very first parish-minister after that event to cross the Border and settle in Northumberland. Prior to that, how- ever, Northumberland owed very much to the Scottish Uni- versities for the high educational status of her Presbyterian sons ; and to those divinity classes which had trained many a zealous and faithful minister,— some of them Scotch, but many of them native Northumbrians, — to occupy her old Presbyterian pulpits from time to time. And so, by 1836, we find no fewer than six Presbyteries or Classes in Northumberland. These were : the two native Presbyteries of Newcastle and North- West Presbytery, with six charges, and Northumberland county Class with nineteen ; Newcastle Presbytery, with ten charges (in connection with the Church of Scotland), from which it was largely fed ; and the Newcastle Presbytery of the Secession, or latterly (since 1847), the United Presbyterian Church ; besides two Presbyteries with their seat in Berwick, but their con- gregations mainly in Northumberland. It was in 1818 that the old Northumberland Class began to designate itself a Pres- bytery? following the example of its neighbour, the Neiccastle i The Rev. William Gkaham, who came from Whitehaven to be second minister of this Church in 1771, published in 1792 his notable work, Beview of Ecclesiastical Establishments in Europe, which opened the great modern question of the Freedom of religion from State patronage and control. 2 See Deposition of Rev. James Blythe, of Branton, in Bethell's Brief of Deposi- tions, Lady Hewley Case, vol. vi. fol. 271. It is very interesting, in connection with the name of Rev. James Blythe, to note an example of a Presbyterian ministry fox- three generations in one family. The Rev. John Blythe, author of an Exjwsitwi THEIR REVIVAL. 579 and North-West "Presbyterian Class.7' How these all got gradually blended, and from being connected with several Synods, got at last happily gathered together under the one United Synod in England, will be afterwards indicated. We need only further mention, that the first effort to form a Synod took place in these Northern parts in 1828-9. This Synod did not prove successful, and did not last long.1 But it was the herald of the auspicious Synodal union in 1836, and happiest of all, the Union Synod of 1876. Conducive to this end was the deliverance from Unitarian hands, in 1847, of the old Presbyterian Lady Hewley Trust, on behalf of godly preachers and struggling congregations in the six Northern Counties, in which the Evangelical- Presbyterianism of Nor- thumberland was adjudged by the Civil Courts to have its share and by which it has ever since so largely profited. of the Thirty-nine Articles (a scarce but able treatise, written at a time when the clergy of the Church of England were themselves but little faithful to her creed), was minister of the now extinct Presbyterian Congregation at Kirkley, between Morpeth and Stamfordham. His eldest son, the Rev. John Blythe, D.D., became Presbyterian Minister of Woolwich, where he died 1839. Another son, Rev. Newton Blythe, M.A., was born 1770 ; graduating in Glasgow University, and being duly ordained by the Northumberland Class in 1797, was settled as minister of Malins Rigg, Sunderland, for twelve years; then was translated to Branton in 1809, where he continued for the long period of forty-four years, instituting a Sabbath School in 1816, and conducting a successful and highly-esteemed Academy along with his son, the Rev. James Blythe, M.A., who was settled as his father's colleague in 1834, and who acted as Clerk of Presbytery for many years, having been also Moderator of Synod. The Rev. James Blythe attained his ministerial jubilee in 1881, and continues faithfully and efficiently still (1888) to discharge all his pulpit and pastoral duties without assistance. The three ministries of father, son, and grandson have thus extended over a century and a quarter in connection with the Presbyterianism of their native Northumberland. 1 The Book of its Records from 6th September, 1826, to 20th July, 1831, is among the archives of the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of England. £bc IRcvival of tbc Presbyterians in England {Continued). COLLATEEAL DEVELOPMENTS. I. — How Methodism, under Wesley, became Presbyterian in Polity, II. — Eise of the Presbyterians and their Church in Wales. £81 ftbe IRcvival of tbe Presbyterians in BSnglanb {Continued). COLLATERAL DEVELOPMENTS. I. HOW METHODISM, UNDEE WESLEY, BECAME PEESBYTERIAN IN POLITY.1 Methodism, a by-word at first, soon grew by a certain fitness to be tlie adopted name for one of the mightiest religious quickenings that England has ever seen. Like primitive Christianity, which it strove to reproduce, Methodism was essentially a spiritual development, taking the shape of aggres- sive action against abounding heathenism. Of the movement, in its original intention, as a revival of earnest religion, the chief agents were "Whitefield and the two Wesleys. George Whitefield was its thrilling and awakening voice; John Wesley, its eye, its ceaselessly active foot, and thrifty, managing hand; and Charles Wesley, with the rich and dulcet melody of his hymns, was the music for its ear; while over all these is felt the mighty rushing wind of Pentecost renewed. Of these three remarkable men, John Wesley was naturally the one to come to the front as the movement rolled on, and became a " Christianity on wheels." Methodism was the old Puritan spirit of England, "risen from the dead " under a new' and more hopeful set of condi- tions and a more auspicious political environment. Its tendency has been to have its resurrection-body clothed upon more and more with a Presbyterial habit. For it is a significant fact, 1 Chief authorities : besides the Life of Wesley by such writers as Southey, Tyerman, Rigg, arid Julia Wedgwood ; and the Histories of Methodism by Dr. Abel Stevens or Dr. George Smith, see John Wesley's Journals; Pierce's Ecclesiastical Principles and Polity of the Wesleyan Methodists from 1774 to 1872, revised by Dr. Jobson ; The Constitution and Polity of Wesleyan Methodism, brought down to tbe Conference of 1880, by Dr. H. W. Williams ; and specially Dr. J. H. Rigg's Con- nexional Economy of Wesleyan Methodism in its Ecclesiastical and Spiritual Aspect. 583 584 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. that while Dissenters in Scotland have for the most part re- tained the Presbyterian polity of their Mother Church, Dis- senters from the Church of England have almost as uniformly rejected its Prelacy and Anglican Episcopacy. The chief exceptions are unimportant — the small modern body of the Free Church of England, and the doubtful case of Episcopal Methodists in America, besides the Nonjurors of the Revolu- tion, headed by Sancroft and Ken, with seven other Bishops and four hundred clergy, who formed a separatist Church which hardly outlived the generation that gave it birth.1 But the main body, both of Puritanism and Methodism, the first and last offshoots from the Anglican Church, fell back on New Testament lines and adopted eventually the same Presbyterian form of polity. We do not mean to trace the parallel, however interesting and instructive, between the Puritan and the Methodist move- ments, nor notify the links of union, outer and inner, between the two.2 But it may be suggestive to recall in this connec- tion, that John Wesley's father had been trained as a Presby- terian student ; that his mother was a daughter of the Presby- terian Dr. Annesley, and his mother's sister was wife of the Presbyterian Daniel Defoe. His great-grandfather on the mother's side was Mr. John White, the famous Presbyterian patriarch of Dorchester. His paternal grandfather and great- grandfather had both suffered ejectment from their livings by the Act of Uniformity in 1662 ; and one of them had been i According to Dr. D'Oyly (Life of Sancroft, p. 297), Dr. Gordon, who died in London in Nov. 1779, is supposed to be the last Nonjuring Bishop— and this is not an uncommon representation. But Hallam has pointed out a passage in State Trials that shows another of those Bishops, Cartwright, living in Shrewsbury in 1793 ; and Lathbury (Hist, of Nonjurors, p. 412, London, 1845) says he died in 1799. 2 That there would not have been such a Methodist movement, had there not been a Presbyterian Puritanism before it, seems to be involved in the well-known passage of the historian, John Kichard Green, regarding Puritanism — " It was from the moment of its seeming fall its victory began. ... In the Revolution of 1688, Puritanism did the work of civil liberty, which it had failed to do in 1642. It wrought out through Wesley and the revival of the eighteenth century the work of religious reform, which its earlier efforts had only thrown back for one hundred years.' Slowly but steadily it introduced its own seriousness and purity into English, society, English literature, and English politics. The history of English progress since the Restoration, on its moral and spiritual sides, has been the history of Puritanism." THEIK REVIVAL. brought to an early grave by his sufferings as an outed minister. Calamy records how this elder John Wesley, the grandfather, was "had up," about 1661, before Dr. Ironside, Bishop of Bristol, who charged him with belonging to " a factious and heretical Church," and preaching without ordination. "What does your lordship mean by ordination? If you mean the ordination spoken of in Romans x., I had that," said Wesley. " You must have a mission according to law, and the order of the Church of England," said the Bishop. " I am not satisfied in my spirit therein," replied Wesley. " You have more new- coined phrases than ever we have heard of! You mean your conscience," exclaimed the Bishop, somewhat nettled. " Spirit is no new phrase," retorted Wesley. " We read of being sancti- fied in body, soul, and spirit; but if your Lordship like it not so, then I say I am not satisfied in my conscience touching the ordination you speak of." How remarkably this sounds like a rencontre, mutatis mu- tandis, between this Wesley's grandson and the Bishops of his clay a century later. Truly history repeats itself ; and, as has been remarked, this is one of many indications afforded us by Wesley's life, " how numerous and far-reaching are the fibres by which the life of the present draws nourishment from the life of the past." In John Wesley's Puritan mother, we may see an especial link between the old and the new Evangelism, the daughter of Dr. Annesley, the Presbyterian Puritan, becoming the mother of John Wesley, the Presbyterian Methodist. For though both she and her husband, the Eev. Samuel Wesley, passed from Dissent into the Church of England, they carried much of the Puritan spirit unconsciously with them, like many others who have made the same transition. Susannah Wesley, nee Annesley, at least had something in her of the sacred fire, and kindled not a little of it in her husband's parish of Epworth, as some of her letters to him show. Once, during his absence at Convocation, this remarkable woman had managed to gather two hundred or more of the rough Lincolnshire peasantry around her at the Rectory, for prayer and religious instruction. The curate complained to the absent Rector of these irregular 586 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. proceedings, and by hinting the awful word, " conventicle," had terrified the timid parson into a letter of remonstrance to his wife. Her reply reveals something of the spiritual fervour and the quiet but firm ascendency which she transmitted to her son John. '■ I thank you," she says to her husband, "for dealing so plainly and faithfully with me in a matter of uncommon concern. The main of your objections against our Sunday meetings are, first, that it will look parti- cular ; secondly, my sex ; and lastly, your being at present in a public station and character ; to all which I shall answer briefly. As to its looking particular, I grant it does, and so does almost everything that is serious, or that may in any way advance the glory of God or the salva- tion of souls, if it be performed out of a pulpit and in the way of common conversation, because in our corrupt age the utmost care and diligence has been used to banish all discourse of God or spiritual concerns out of Society. ... To your second, I reply that, as I am a woman, so I am also the mistress of a large family, and ... in your absence I can- not but look upon every soul you leave under my care as a talent com- mitted to me under a trust to the great Lord of all the families of heaven and earth. . . . Your third objection I leave to be answered by your own judgment. . . . Wiry any should reflect upon you, let your station be what it will, because your wife endeavours to draw people to Church and to restrain them by reading and other persuasions from their profana- tion of God's most holy day, I cannot conceive. But if any should be so mad as to do it, I wish you would not regard it." There spoke the mother of John AVesley ; and (need we add?) the meetings were continued, which exercised a deep and lasting influence on her boys, who never seemed to forget how much the surrounding clergy had censured her as "precise and hypocritical . ' ' The word Methodist has three historic phases ; and it is needful to distinguish between what it meant originally in its rise at Oxford, and what it became after John "Wesley's " con- version," and finally when it assumed in his hands an organized form. The first, or University, phase was rubrical and High Anglican ; the second, or popular, phase was Evangelical and evangelistic; and the third, or " Society '," phase was connexional, steadily tending to the Presbyterial. " Methodist " was a cant word of the seventeenth century, a nickname for any display of religious earnestness or " enthu- THEIR REVIVAL. 587 siasm." It lay ready to hand as a derisive term, and was soon applied to a " set " of young Oxford students who proposed to themselves a more rigid method of holy life and practice. This began to show itself in November, 1729, when John Wesley came up to Oxford from a country curacy, and found his younger brother Charles, with a few other kindred spirits, who were soon after sneered at as " Bible-Moths," and " the Godly Club," or the like. Wesley's Oxford life had the seeds of Methodism in it.1 •■ Those who cared for religion and morality had forgotten that man was an imaginative and emotional being. Defenders of Christianity and of Deism alike appealed to the reason alone. Enthusiasm was treated as a folly or a crime ; and earnestness of every kind was branded with the name of enthusiasm. The higher order of minds dwelt with preference upon the beneficent wisdom of the Creator. The lower order of minds treated religion as a kind of life-assurance against the inconvenience of eternal death. '• Upon such a system as this, human nature was certain to revenge itself. The preaching of Wesley and Whitefield appealed direct to the emotions. They preached the old Puritan doctrine of conversion, and called upon each individual, not to understand or to admire, not to act, but vividly to realize first the love and mercy of God. In all this there was nothing- new. What was new was, that Wesley added an organization, in which each of his followers unfolded to one another the secrets of their hearts, and became accountable to his fellows. Large as the numbers of the Wesleyans ultimately became, their influence is not to be measured by their numbers. The double want of the age, the want of spiritual earnest- ness, and the want of organized coherence, would find satisfaction in many ways which would have seemed strange perhaps to Wesley himself, but which were, nevertheless, a continuance of the work which he began." - i " Method and fellowship in religion were foundation-stones in the small society he helped to frame, and in the large society he afterward governed."— Stoughton, Religion in England, vol. vi. p. 112. - Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. viii. p. 355. Buckle (Civilization, vol. i. pp. 421, 422) says, " Under two of the most remark- able men of the eighteenth century, Whitefield, the first of theological orators, ' greatest since the apostles,' a marvellous man ; and Wesley ,_ the first of theo- logical statesmen, there was organized a great system of religion which bore the same relation to the Church of England as it bore to the Church of Eome. The Wesleyans were to the Bishops what the Beformers were to the Popes, two cen- turies earlier." Macaulay declares (Essays, vol. i. p. 221, 3rd edit.) that John Wesley's "genius for government was not inferior to that of Bichelieu." And this will readily enough appear when we reflect what he managed to achieve in the face of the varied opposition he had to overcome. He was last century in Ecclesiastical politics what 1'itt was in civil politics. 588 THE PRESBYTEEIANS IN ENGLAND. We have now to indicate briefly the different stages in the process toward Presbyterianism — first, in Wesley himself, and then afterwards in the Wesleyan Connexion. It was in 1739 that Wesley first openly revolted against the Church of England, and refused to obey the Bishop of Bristol, who ordered him to quit his diocese. It was in the same year he began to preach in the fields, and to found the " Religious Societies" which were the first visible beginnings of Methodism, and which grew so rapidly as to demand a more definite organi- zation. It was in 1744 that the first Conference (consisting of six persons, all clergymen) was held, " T^o consider, (1) What to teach; (2) How to teach; and (3) What to do." Severance from the Established Church was strenuously discountenanced ; but in 1749 it was evident that Wesley's views of " Church Order" had undergone a remarkable change, and that Method- ism would henceforth develop into a new organic and perma- nent form of polity. Up to 1738, Wesley had been theoretically a High Church- man ; but by 1746 he had become a moderate Presbyterian, through reading the famous " Enquiry into the Constitution of the Primitive Church," by Peter King (Locke's nephew, and afterwards Lord Chancellor). It was in 1745-6 that AVesley began to set apart his preachers, though as yet without using imposition of hands. " In spite of the vehement prejudice of my education," he says, " I was ready to believe that King's work was a fair and impartial draught ; but, if so, it would follow that Bishops and Presbyters are essentially of one order, and that originally every Christian congregation was a Church independent of all others." Hence we do not wonder at the recorded decisions of the Conferences of 1745 and 1747, which show that the Meth- odist body, with Wesley at its head, had completely broken with the Prelatic Episcopacy of the Anglican Church. In the minutes of the latter year we find the following : — " Ques. — Does a Church in the New Testament always mean a single congregation ? Ans. — We believe it does. We do not recollect any instance to the contrary. THEIR REVIVAL. 589 Ques. — What instance or ground is there in the New Testament for a National Church ? Ans. — We know none at all. We apprehend it to he a merely political institution. Ques. — In what age was the Divine right of Episcopacy first asserted in England ? Ans. — About the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign." l Wesley's prelatic notions were revolutionized ; and in his Journal for 20 Jan., 1746, lie saw that " the uninterrupted suc- cession was a fable which no man ever did or could prove." After this we hear no more from John Wesley about apos- tolical succession, in regard to which dogma he wrote, in 1761, " I never could see it proved, and I am persuaded I never shall." 2 In 1761 he also declares that he had been fully con- vinced by Bishop Stillmgneet's " Irenicon," that the notion that none but Episcopal ordination was valid, was an entire mistake.3 And in 1780 he shocked the High Church opinions of his brother Charles by declaring, " I verily believe I have as good a right to ordain as to administer the Lord's Supper." * Forty years after his adoption of them, he put his Presby- terial views fully into practice, though still under a kind of protest and pressure ; and in 1784, the memorable year of the Poll Deed, or Deed of Declaration (the Magna Charta of Meth- odism, which he drew up when warned of the evils of the old Presbyterian trust deeds),5 he ordained, along with other Eng- lish Church-Presbyters, by the laying on of hands, three men for America ; the following year several of his ablest coadjutors for Scotland, whom he always wrote to under the style and title of Reverend; and finally, in 1788, ordained other seven to administer the Sacraments in England itself.6 1 Conference Minutes, vol. i. p. 36. " Works, vol. iii. p. 42. 3 Works, vol. xiii. p. 233. 4 Works, vol. xii. p. 137. 5 The first Methodist Chapel was put in trust according to the usual Presbyterian form of deed ; but it was felt that if the Trustees were allowed to name the preacher, many evils might arise, and even Wesley himself be kept out of the pulpit. The deed was therefore cancelled, and another was ultimately enrolled in Chancery, committing the power of legal control over connexional property after "Wesley's death to the "legal hundred," and their successors, chosen by the Confereuce. 6 The first ordination which he gave by the laying on of hands took place at Bristol in September, 1784, when he had reached the 82nd year of his age, the parties ordained being Coke, Asbury, Whatcoat, and Vasey. Coke had been pre- viously ordained a deacon and a priest of the Church of England, and when curate of 590 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Wesley had at first no idea of founding a separate religious denomination ; so that living and dying in professed com- munion with the Church of England, he scrupulously avoided at the outset the use of traditional ecclesiastical designations for the offices and functionaries of the New Societies. Hence his adoption of secular terms, calling his preachers helpers, not ministers or presbyters ; the officers of the Society, leaders and stewards, not elders and deacons : and the associated people, Societies, not Churches. "Wesley strove hard, even to the end, to keep his Societies in communion with the National Church ; but Providential cir- cumstances were too strong. He succeeded partially during his life, but separation was inevitable ; the action of the Bishops and clergy of the National Establishment made it so. " While, therefore, Wesley kept his eye on the Church," saj's one, " yet like a rower on the Thames with an eye on St. Paul's, each stroke carried him away practically from it;" and he adds, with an exultant and pardonable nourish, " for the design of Providence was not to make Methodism like the Chinch, but to make the Church like Methodism." In 1787, four years before his death, Wesley may be said to have fixed the Societies and their Conference in an uncompro- Petherton was dismissed from his curacy on account of his sympathy with Method- ism, but specially requested ordination again at the hands of Wesley. He became the great organizer of Methodist missions in America. On 2 Sept., 1784, Wesley signed a document which says, among other things, " I have appointed Dr. Coke and Mr. Francis As bury to be joint superintendents over our brethren in North America, as also Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey to act as elders among them by bap- tizing and by administering the Lord's Supper. And I have prepared a Liturgy little differing from that of the Church of England (I think the best constituted National Church in the world), which I advise all the travelling preachers to use on the Lord's day, reading the Litany only on Wednesdays and Fridays, and praying extempore on all other days. I also advise the elders to administer the Lord's Supper every Lord's day. Again, in August, 1785, Wesley says, "Having with a few select friends weighed the matter thoroughly, I yielded to their judgment, and set apart three of our well-tried preachers, viz., John Pawson, Thos. Hanbj*, and Joseph Taylor, to minister in Scotland." In 1786 he ordained other four, and in 1787 five others. In 1788, when he was in Scotland, he ordained John Barber and Joseph Cownly, and in 1789 nine others, including Alexander Mather, who was ordained to the office not only of deacon and elder, but of superintendent, which in the Methodist body is an office of considerable standing and weight. Mr. Mather was then 52 years of age, and had been a preacher for thirty years. — Tyerman's Life and Times of Wesley, vol. iii. p. 411. Some of these preachers were intended for Scotland, some for foreign missions, and a few, as Mather, Moore, and Rankin, were employed in England. THEIR REVIVAL. 591 mising attitude toward the National Church, because, in order to escape the mischiefs of the execrable Conventicle Act, he placed the chapels and services under the protection of the Dissenters' Toleration Act, or the " Act for Exempting their Majesties' Protestant Subjects, dissenting from the Church of England, from the Penalties of certain Laws." l Thus, in its general principles and its fundamental usages, the Wesley an Constitution became truly Presbyterian. This was Wesley's own judgment. Here is a passage from his intimate friend and associate, the devoted and able Rev. Samuel Bradburn, in his answer to the question " Are the Methodists Dissenters? " Anno 1792. i And yet two years later, in an Irish sermon (preached at Cork, May, 1789), the venerable old man defends his consistency, and pleads necessity for all he had done, while urging his followers to abide still in the Church. His position was just that of the Elizabethan Presbyterians, in wishing to keep up discipline by an "Eccle- siola" within the Ecclesia. He says, " I believe, one reason why God is pleased to continue my life so long is, to confirm them in their present purpose, not to separate from the Church. "But notwithstanding this, many warm men say, 'Nay, but you do separate from the Church.' Others are equally warm, because they say I do not. I will nakedly declare the thing as it is. "J hold all the doctrines of the Church of England. I love her Liturgy. I approve her plan of discipline, and only ivish it could be put in execution. I do not know- ingly vary from any rule of the Church, unless in those few instances, where I judge, and as far as I judge, there is an absolute necessity. "For instance, (a) As few clergymen open their churches to me, I am under the necessity of preaching abroad. " (b) As I know no forms that will suit all occasions, I am often under a necessity of praying extempore. " (c) In order to build up the flock of Christ in faith and love, I am under a necessity of uniting them together, and of dividing them into little companies, that they may provoke one another to love and good works. " (d) That my fellow-labourers and I more effectually assist each other, to save our own souls and those that hear us, I judge it necessary to meet the preachers, or, at least, the greater part of them, once a year. " (e) In those conferences we fix the stations of all the preachers for the ensuing year. " But all this is not separating from the Church. So far from it, that, whenever I have opportunity, I attend the Church service myself, and advise all our societies so to do. " Nevertheless, as the generality even of religious people, who do not understand my motives of acting, and who on the one hand hear me profess tbat I will not separate from the Church, and on tbe other that I do vary from it in these in- stances, they will naturally think I am inconsistent with myself. And they cannot but think so, unless they observe my two principles : the one, that I dare not separate from the Church, that I believe it u-ould be a sin so to do ; the other, that I believe it would be a sin not to vary from it in the points above mentioned. I say, put these two principles together — first, I will not separate from the Church ; yet, secondly, in case of necessity, I will vary from it (both of which I have constantly and openly avowed for upwards of fifty years) — and inconsistency vanishes away."' 592 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. " The question is, ' What is the Methodist Constitution ? ' and I shall give the answer in his own words (i.e. "Wesley's), which, though I am not sure they are printed, yet I am willing to go into eternity declaring that he said them to me, and I know not that he has not said them to hundreds. His words were, ' As soon as I am dead, the Methodists will be a regular Presbyterian Church? And he did not mean we should become such by making any alterations in our government, for the thing is true if he had never said it ; but he meant that his death would make us such." And so, says Bradburn, " We are not Episcopalians ; we cannot be. We are not Independents ; we will not be. There- fore we must be Presbyterians, whatever we may choose to call ourselves." And he further remarks, " Our Quarterly Meetings answer to those Church meetings in Scotland called the Presbytery ; our District Meetings agree exactly with the Synod ; and the Conference, with the National or General Assembly." And so in 1792, in the face of some temporary opposition on the part of a small but more conservative section, it was deter- mined that ordinations should take place under sanction of Conference, and of it alone ; any breach of this rule entailing exclusion from the Connexion. Within a short space after Wesley's death, in the Manchester Conference of 1795 (where the famous " plan of pacification " was adopted on the other vexed question of administering the Sacraments), Alexander Kilham, who had itinerated in Scotland, and had acquired a strong preference for its Pres- byterian system of lay representatives, brought forward his proposals in this direction, to modify the oligarchic rule of the Legal Hundred, but in such a spirit as to ensure his own exclusion, and the founding of " The New Connexion," on more democratic and more distinctively Presbyterian lines. The convulsions that ensued from time to time during this century showed the need of the original Wesleyan body sub- mitting to some more Presbyterianized development, in order to get over the one weak point of having a purely clerical Con- THEIR REVIVAL. 593 ference, while yet they had a lay element in all subordinate judicatures. In 1877 and 1878 the final and natural consummation of their Presbyterian Polity was happily attained, by constituting a United Conference of ministers and lay representatives, and by arranging, ten years later, in 1888, that the meeting of the lay Conference should have precedence of the other or distinctively pastoral one ; and thus the last stage of a fully-organized Pres- byterianism has been reached among the "Wesleyan Methodists, who may be most truly called The Presbyterian Methodist Church. Q Q II. RISE OF THE PRESBYTERIANS AND THEIR CHURCH IN WALES.1 The Calvinistic Methodists of Wales ; or, as they are now commonly called, the Welsh Presbyterians, had their origin in the great Evangelical movement before the middle of last century. Though deriving its name eventually from the Methodism of England, the religious revival in Wales was really the earlier one of the two. It had already sprung up before AVesley or Whitefield had begun their Evangelistic labours. Owing to its strong attachment to Calvinistic doctrine, Welsh Methodism assumed in an early stage an attitude of antagonism to Wesley's own personal teaching and agency ; preferring to cast itself rather, for assistance, upon George AVhitefield, through whom it derived its Methodist name, and to whom it looked up with the greatest respect, though never putting itself under his leadership. Whitefield's forte, in fact, was that of a travelling and evangelizing, but not an organizing influence ; and indeed he was too much on the move, in America and elsewhere, to wield any strong or con- tinuous influence, save indirectly, on the course of Welsh Methodism. The religious revival in the Principality was primarily an Evangelistic or Gospel-preaching movement, with little or no organization : and for more than half a century it continued under the sway of the same generic impulse, without any particular regime. Gradually, however, the need of some distinctive mode of administration was realized ; though it was not till 1811 that the movement assumed a distinctly separate and organized form, when, after long and i Chief authorities are History of Welsh Methodism, by Rev. John Hughes, Liverpool, 3 vols., Oct., 185G; and Welsh Calvinistic Methodism : a Historical Sketcii of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, by Rev. W. Williams, of Swansea, 1871. See also Article Methodism, by Dr. J. H. Bigg, in Encyc. Britan., ninth edition. 594 THEIR REVIVAL. 595 anxious deliberation, the important step was taken of ordaining men apart from Episcopal authority, and thereby consolidating the new Connexion. Henceforward, the organization became more and more distinctively Presbyterian ; though it was not till 1864, when the Calvinistic Methodism both of North and South Wales put itself under the control of one common " General Assembly," that the Presbyterianism of its govern- ment became more clearly manifest, and the Presbyterian name began to be used. In offering a few notes on these two main points, — the spiritual revival which gave birth to "Welsh Calvinistic Methodism, and the ecclesiastical organization it ultimately assumed, — we need do no more at the outset than simply remind the reader that there were many Presbyterian elements and principles imbedded in the original and early native Welsh Church, before it was by conquest incorporated with that of England and stripped of so much of its special characteristics as well as of its property to enrich some English cathedrals ; and that the Presbyterian movement in the Church of England, from 1570 and onwards, made its mark and left its traces on the religious condition of the Principality. The history of the Presbyterians in Wales followed, however, very much in the wake of their fortunes in England, so that in 1715, when we come upon the first carefully collected statistics,1 we find mention made of only nineteen Presbyterian Churches in Wales and Monmouthshire, while there were thirty-five Independent and fifteen Baptist Congregations. Even among these comparatively few Nonconformist bodies, there was at work a leaven of that kind of sentiment which had a tendency in not a few cases to degenerate into Arianism, and which ultimately landed in Unitarianism.2 The spirit that reigned in the Church Establishment was no better ; and a painfully lurid light is cast upon its condition by the proceedings and evidence 1 The list, prepared with much care by Dr. John Evans, the Presbyterian successor of Dr. Daniel Williams in Hand Alley, London, is preserved in MS. in the Williams Library, and is given by Dr. Kees in his History of Nonconformity in Wales, p. 259. - Rees, History of Nonconformity in Wales, p. 297. 596 THE PRESBYTERIANS IX ENGLAND. of the grave charges at the trials of the Bishops of St. David's and St. Asaph's, which resulted in the deprivation of the one for gross malpractices (22 Feb., 1700) while only the humili- ating confessions of the other obtained the removal of his sus- pension, 5 May, 1702. The condition of religion throughout the Church of Wales, with a few bright and honourable excep- tions, was in the main truly deplorable.1 It is however but just to observe that the religious revival sprang up from within the bosom of the Established Church ; and if only its Bishops and clergy had known the time of their merciful visitation, and had striven to guide the movement as they ought, its future history might have been a different one. The Spiritual Awakening. In three different counties of South "Wales there sprang up, — almost simultaneously and quite independently, under three young men, Howell Harris, Daniel Rowlands, and Howell Davies. unknown to one another, — that remarkable religious awakening, in 1735-6, which ultimately issued in modern Welsh Presbyterianism. Howell Harris may be regarded as foremost in the work — a young man of gentle blood and superior social position, who belonged to Trevecca in the parish of Talgarth, County of Brecon, South Wales. On 30th March, 1735, which was the Lord's day previous to the Easter Com- munion, Howell Harris, who was then about 21 years of age, resolved, under some emphatic words of exhortation from his parish clergyman, to become a communicant and prepare for the solemn rite. Strong religious convictions settled upon him ; and the weeks after his first Communion were weeks of inward spiritual struggle under a deep sense of sin and the need of a Saviour, whom at last he found, and in whose peace he rejoiced. In November his friends sent him to Oxford, " to cure him of his fanaticism " ; but the prevailing secularity and ungodliness of the University life at the time completely sickened him, and sent him home at the end of his first term, i View of the State of Religion in the Diocese of St. David's about the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, by Dr. Erasmus Saunders, 1721. THEIR REVIVAL. 597 resolved not to return. He began to warn and exhort in a simple and earnest way his friends and neighbours around his own home, and with such a rousing and stirring effect that before he was aware of it he became a preacher to hundreds and thousands, who gathered around the young layman to listen to his burning words. And thus, without premeditation, and certainly without much theological equipment or learned preparation, young Howell Harris was thrust, as by the Spirit of the Lord, into the great work of fervent Evangelization. Meanwhile, in the little village of Llangeitho in the adjoining County of Cardigan, forty miles north-west of Trevecca, and separated from it by wild trackless mountain ranges, a similar but unconnected awakening had arisen under the fervent and overwhelmingly powerful preaching of the Eev. Daniel Eowlands, who was also a young man of only twenty-two years of age, and who was acting as curate to his elder brother, who had succeeded their father as Yicar of Llangeitho. Having been admitted to holy orders a year before the usual age " in consideration of his superior scholar- ship," and being a man of athletic frame and mental power, he began to " thunder " in preaching, as if emulous of the popular gifts of a neighbouring Nonconformist minister who had secured a great hold upon the people. He speedily, however, learned a more excellent way at the hands of this good and Gospel- loving Nonconformist pastor, though he was chiefly indebted for his conversion to the Eev. Griffith Jones, the energetic and devoted Vicar of Llancldowror, Carmarthenshire, who had been called the "morning star," of the revival movement, both because of his great and blessed work in originating the famous " circulating schools " for teaching the people to read the Bible in their own tongue, and because he was instrumental in reach- ing the heart of Daniel Eowlands, who thenceforward became a preacher of rare power, baptized into the spirit and eloquence of the Gospel. The carefully prepared yet glowing sermons of Eowlands produced the most extraordinary impressions on his hearers, and led to great spiritual results. The third scene of the awakening was in Pembrokeshire, under Eev. Howell Davies, who had just been ordained to the 598 THE PKESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. curacy of LI}- syfran, and who by preaching the same doctrine in the same spirit, was producing, albeit unknown to Harris or Rowlands, equally remarkable results in his own county as they were doing in Brecon and Carnarvon shires. Being- dismissed from his curacy through the offence which his preaching was giving to some influential parishioners, he felt called on to itinerate as an evangelizer, and was privileged to address enormous crowds in the open air, and to administer the Lord's Supper to masses of communicants that would have filled a church two or three times over. Thus, under these earnest and devoted servants of Christ, Howell Harris and the Reverends Daniel Rowlands and Howell Davies, the great revival of Evangelical religion was inaugu- rated at three different points within the very same year ; the three Revivalists knowing nothing of each other at first, nor of the parallel work of Whitefield in England. In 1738, however, a meeting took place at Cardiff between Whitefield and Howell Harris, the result of which was an extension of Harris's labours, and the founding by him, both in North and South Wales, of religious and praying societies in strict connection with the Church of England, similar to the Woodward and other socie- ties which had been long at work in England, though with more of the Evangelistic and Revivalist elements than we find in these others, and akin rather to Wesley's own Society, which was started that very same year, 1739. Among the fathers and founders of Welsh Methodism there are usually reckoned two eminent early converts — Rev. William Williams of Pantycelyn, who was the sacred poet and hymnist of the movement ; and somewhat later, Rev. Peter Williams, whose Scripture- com- ment is emphatically the Family Bible of the Welsh people. There was, however, at this time and for long afterwards, very little organic unity in AVelsh Methodism, and not much system of any kind. A first " Association " was held at Wat- ford in Glamorganshire, in 1742, when Whitefield was present, and the first " Conference " took place a few months later (5 January, 1743) at the same place, under Whitefield's presidency; but when his presence ceased to be available, after 1748, even this measure of organization gradually came to an end. Up THEIR REVIVAL. 599 to 1750, the movement had been one of success in the midst of great persecution and self-sacrificing zeal ; but thereafter it began to languish, and this was aggravated by a painful strife between the leaders in 1751, and the consequent separation for a number of years between " Harris's people" and " Rowlands's people," which led to much bitterness and the loss of popular prestige and enthusiasm. Howell Harris ceased to itinerate, and settled down at Trevecca in 1751 ; and in 1763, Daniel Rowlands, — ejected from his curacy and forced to leave the Established Church,— had very much to confine the force of his marvellous ministry to the local Dissenting chapel which his people had built for him, where he preached with great power and influence till his death in 1790. The Ecclesiastical Organization. Meanwhile, occasional indications of revival were breaking out here and there over the country, especially the great one of 1762 : the Countess of Huntingdon founded her College at Trevecca, in 1768 (removed to Cheshunt in 1792, ten years after the Countess and her " connexion" had seceded from the Church of England) ; in 1769 the breach between Howell Harris and his old friends was happily healed, after eighteen years' estrangement ; and religious life began to beat more hopefully again. It was not, however, till 1785, when the Eev. Thomas Charles of Bala, cast in his lot with the Welsh Metho- dists, that, under the influences of fresh revival, the various results, so loosely compacted hitherto, began to be gathered up into a Connexional or Ecclesiastical Organization. Welsh Methodism had now existed for half a century; but the accession of Charles of Bala to the ranks of its ministry marks a new era in its history, and initiated a new and most significant depar- ture. Though entered as a boy of fourteen at the Presby- terian College of Carmarthen, he came of a Church family, and was destined for the ministry in the Episcopal Establishment. Taking his degree at Oxford and receiving Deacon's orders, he entered on a curacy in Somersetshire ; but being dismissed from several curacies in succession because of his methodistical ways, he felt the Church doors closed against him, and threw 600 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. himself with great energy and power, as a Methodist preacher, into the notable revival of 1791, of which Bala was the centre. Henceforward he became known everywhere as Mr. Charles of Bala, and was hailed by the people as what the venerable Daniel Rowlands had once called him, on their first meeting, " the gift of God to North Wales." From this period, and chiefly from the labours of Mr. Charles, may be dated the new and powerful impulse which has rooted the Calvinistic and Presbyterian form of Methodism so strongly in the hearts of the Welsh people. Through his efforts to extend and promote the system of u circulating schools," and his zeal in the cause of Sabbath-school instruction, when he found such a dearth of Bibles, it is well known he was the means of originating the great " British and Foreign Bible Society " in London, which furnished Wales alone with 100,000 copies of sacred Scripture within the first ten years of its existence. In the midst of earnest revival work and varied other labours, Mr. Charles had an influential share in moulding the Ecclesias- tical Constitution of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism. In Wales, as elsewhere, the Presbyterian system was a matter of growth, and in some measure also of conflict from stage to stage. Starting from a few elementary points drawn from Scrip- ture, the primary principles expanded in their application till the present system of Presbyterianized polity was reached. "Rules regarding the proper Mode of Conducting the Quarterly Association" were drawn up by Mr. Charles and accepted in 1790; and in 1801, the " Order and Form of Church Govern- ment and Rules of Discipline " were agreed upon ; but it was not till 1811 that the decisive step which severed them from the Established Church was taken at last, as it had been already by their Wesleyan brethren in England sixteen years before, by Presbyterially ordaining their preachers, and authorizing them to administer the Sacraments and discharge all the functions of the pastoral office. This was not done without much anxious deliberation, Mr. Charles and the other Episcopally-ordained clergy in the Methodist ranks being long averse to it ; but difficulties and objections having been at length satisfactorily overcome, it was agreed to, first by the Association of North THEIR REVIVAL. 601 Wales, and immediately thereafter by that of South "Wales, under the strong advocacy of the Rev. Rowland Hill, who hap- pened to be present at its meeting. The anomalous condition of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism was thus at an end ; and it started on its new and separate existence with the highest hopes, which have been more than fully realized, with the blessing of God. In 1823 a " Confes- sion of Faith" was jointly agreed to ; and in 1864, the two Associations of North and South Wales, which had been hither- to separate and independent organizations, were united under one " General Assembly." Each Church manages its own affairs, admitting or excluding members by the votes of the Church members themselves, and so far it is congregational ; but this is subject to successive appeal to the Monthly Meeting of the County or Presbytery, to one or other of the Quarterly Associations of North or South Wales, now known as Synods, and to the Annual General Assembly, whose decision is final. Each Church nominates its own Dea- cons or Elders, but they are appointed and installed in office by the Monthly Meeting or Presbytery's delegates. Ministers can be ordained only by approval of the North or South Associ- ations or Synods, where they must have been nominated at a previous meeting. The meeting-houses and chapels are the property, not of the individual Churches, but of the Connexion at large, being secured and held by a Constitutional Deed enrolled in Chancery. There are all the Collegiate, Missionary, and other equipments of a fully organized Church body. The remarkable strides made by it in recent times may be judged from the following comparative statistics :— 1850. 1880. 1882. 1885. Ministers 172 GOO 616 619 Places of Worship 848 1372 Communicants 58,678 118,979 122,167 129,401 £be IRevival of tbe Presbyterians in j£nglan& (Continued). PERIOD OF RE-ORGANIZATION, 1820-1876. I. — Presbyterian Increase : its Nature and Causes. II. — Favourable Circumstances. III. — The Re-constituted Presbyterian Church of England, and the Union of 1876. Conclusion. Z\k IRevival of tbe Presbyterians in j£nglanb (Continued). PERIOD OF RE-ORGANIZATION, 1820-1876. I. PRESBYTERIAN INCREASE: ITS NATURE AND CAUSES. The renewal of Evangelical and re-organized Presbyterianisni was originally from Scotland, though not unaffected by the general religious stirrings and movements of the time in England.1 1 Calviuistic Methodism, resulting from the labours of Whitefield, did good work in preparing an Evangelical soil, the chief benefits of which passed into the Inde- pendent body. We ought here to notice the influence of the Scottish element, along with Calviuistic Methodism, in moulding the lines of modern Congrega- tionalism. By the middle of last century the old Independency had sunk to the lowest ebb ; Watts and Doddridge lamenting its decay, and High Church dignitaries anticipating its dissolution. The revival which issued in Methodism brought it new life, with cravings after some new departure. The want of some bond amon" the Churches had operated very disastrously — the oldest association, that of Hampshire, dating only from 1791. When, therefore, some new congregations were springing up in the great manufacturing districts, through the devoted zeal of a few earnestly Evangelizing ministers, there was formed, in 1806, on fresh lines, a Lancashire Union of Churches, thus anticipating by a quarter of a century the Congregational Union of England and Wales, in 1832. Into this Lancashire Union were gathered some of the Calviuistic Methodist chapels and some of the Presbyterian " meetings " which had remained orthodox, such as the old interests at St. Helens ; Greeuacres (Oldham) ; Darwen ; Whitworth or Hallfold near Rochdale, which, having joined the Scottish Secession, again joined the congrega- tionalists ; Elswick and Tockholes. Others of these old Presbyterian interests, like Wharton, Eisley, and Tunley, remain in connection with the Presbyterian Church of England. After long consideration, the moral influence of the increasing County Unions of Independent Churches was gathered up into " the Congrega- tional Union of England and Wales " in 1832, when a statement of doctrine and the principles of Church order was issued, declaring the independent status of each congregation, and disavowing any right or power to interfere with any single Church's faith and discipline, " further than to separate from such as, in faith and practice, depart from the Gospel of Christ " — the Union thus reserving its own right to determine what is " the Gospel of Christ " for its own guidance in carry- ing out its disciplinary decisions. In the earlier part of the century a similar Union had been effected among the Congregational Churches of Scotland ; but Dr. W. Lindsay Alexander thus freely comments on the inaugural discourse of Dr. Wardlaw in advocating such an arrangement : — " In the case of Independent cor, 606 THE PKESBYTEKIANS IX ENGLAND. Two impulses contributed most directly to its renaissance. One was the budding power and Evangelic zeal of the Scottish Secession Church, which led her to listen to appeals that came to her from over the border, untrammelled as she was by considerations of national limits or legal restriction, and " abjuring any territorial designation." Among prominent representatives of this branch of Presbyterianism may be mentioned Drs. Alexander Waugh and Thomas Archer, of London, Drs. Jack and McKerrow, of Manchester, Drs. Stewart, Crichton, and William Graham, of Liverpool, and Dr. George Young, of Whitby, the Yorkshire topographer and geologist. The other impulse came from the National Church of Scotland, which was not unmindful of her own adherents in England ; and this impulse was intimately connected with that swelling tide of new life which culminated in the great event of the Disruption in 1843. Thus the movement advanced along two separate yet ultimately converging lines, both of them holding fast by the same Westminster scheme of doctrine and government ; and each of them managing to rally to itself a number of the old orthodox English Presbyterian causes, that still existed. " Soon after 1812 began the Evangelical movement in the Church of Scotland, the influence of which was immediately felt by the orthodox English i Presbyterians, who had for some time drawn their ministers increasingly, and latterly almost exclusively, from that Church. Already about 18 of the o)d English congregations had connected themselves, for the sake of an Evangelical ministry, with one or other of the branches of the Scottish Secession. Some 50 more, together with 20 congregations Churches this question (of the desirableness of an organized union) is further complicated by the question, whether such union of Churches be possible, saving the Independency of the Churches ? Whether, in other words, to say that a society is independent and complete in itself, and yet is part of another and larger society, be not a contradiction in terms?" {Life of Wardlaw, p. 172.) Be this, however, as it may, a step was taken then, whose tendencies are toward a firmer and closer organization of its ecclesiastical life. Hence, in the Coiigregational Year-Book of 1871 we naturally find the avowal that " the Churches in apostolic days recognised their inter-dependence " (p. 68) ; and again (p. 119) the Union "has been able indirectly to command an influence over the weaker Churches in the election of their ministers," and has thereby " prevented many an imprudence." That such an association of Churches was a wise and invigorating step, seems to have been vindicated by the result, which holds out also a hope of possible con- vergence between itself and other more highly organized methods of Church- administration. THEIR REVIVAL. 607 of later origin, formed themselves between 183G and 1842 into an English Synod in ecclesiastical communion with the Church of Scotland, though not subject to its jurisdiction. Both sections from that time made rapid progress till, in 1876, they numbered together about 259 congregations. These became united, in that year, in the present Synod of the Presby- terian Church of England, numbering to-day 286 congregations, with a membership of upwards of 60,000, and an annual income exceeding £200,000." » In Connection with the United Secession (latterly, since 1847, the United Presbyterian) Church. Individual congregations sprang up in different parts of England as local circumstances seemed to demand them. Had the first fathers of the Secession possessed men and resources equal to the appeals made to them from England, they might have extended their influence more widely. We have seen how, so early as 1744, they had obtained a foothold both in London and Newcastle ; and in 1820, through the union of both branches, which had been severed by the " Breach " of 1747, a fully equipped Presbytery was established in each of these centres. The congregations of Lloyd Street, Manchester, begun by the Edinburgh Presbytery, in 1798, and of Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, by the Glasgow Presbytery a few years later, were the Mother Churches in Lancashire of the Secession order, which reared and fostered many goodly daughters ; so that in 1831 a Lancashire Presbytery was formed by the United Secession (afterwards the United Presby- terian) Synod. Into this connection in its various Presby- teries, there had been gathered from time to time a number of the old English Presbyterian orthodox charges inherit- ing the traditions of the Westminster Assembly.2 The United 1 Eev. John Black, M.A., Presbyterianism in England in 18th and 19th Centuries, 1887, pp. 19, 20. 2 The authority here is the careful and elaborate volume, Annals and Statistics of the United Presbyterian Church, by Kev. William Mackelvie, D.D., 1873. Thus we read, p. 15, " The congregations of Carlisle, Halfold, Penrith, Penruddock, Great Salkeld and Plumpton, South Shields, Swalwell, Tunley, Warkworth, and both congregations in Wooler, belonged previously to the old Presbyterian Non- conformists in England." Pull particulars of these and other accessions from various denominations will be found under their several names in the five English Presbyteries, referred to in the above work. 608 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Presbyterian Church derived its name from the further Union effected in 1847 between the two bodies which left the Church of Scotland, the Secession in 1733, and the Relief (from Patronage) in 1752. This latter body never did much south of the border, although founded by Thomas Gillespie, who had been trained under Dr. Doddridge, and who had carried some of the salutary elements of his English experience into the religious life of Scotland, with wider ideas of Christian Com- munion. A new impulse was gained however by the Union of 1847, so that the number of congregations in England in con- nection with the United Presbyterian Synod was doubled in thirty years ; and, with a view to further extension, a specially constituted English Synod met for the first time in Liverpool in 1863, having within it five Presbyteries and about a hundred congregations, with prospects of steady increase. Indeed, it may be well to note here, that by the statistical returns for the Synod of 1876, immediately preceding the Union in England that year, the United Presbyterian Church had 620 congrega- tions, with upwards of 190,000 members in full communion, and more than 5,000 Elders. Its total income amounted to nearly £420,000, being an increase of £56,000 upon the previous year. Its congregations situated in England were 104 in number, with a membership of 20,000 ; and they contributed nearly £60,000 in 1875, being upwards of £19,000 more than the previous year. Altogether, between 1843 and 1876 its income exceeded £7,000,000 sterling ; a tenth being for foreign missions. In Connection with the Presbyterian Church in England, formed 1836-1842. The Divinity classes of the Scottish Universities had trained many a zealous and faithful minister who from time to time prosecuted his isolated work in England, in the old Presbyterian pulpits or elsewhere, as Grocl's Providence might direct. It is astonishing to mark the number of native-born English preachers who were thus trained. " For a long time the only connection traceable between the border counties or any other part of England, and the Established Church or the THEIR REVIVAL. 609 Secession bodies of Scotland, is to be found in the supply of English vacancies by the transference of probationers or already ordained clergy- men from the north of the Tweed. Scotland sent no missionaries to England, nor did it organize any scheme for extending its own discipline and worship beyond its national borders." ' Over none of these sporadically scattered Presbyterian con- gregations did the Church of Scotland exercise its discipline ; the only jurisdiction it sought to exert being carefully restrained within its own constitutional and territorial rights, and con- fined only to the individual ministers whom it had licensed or ordained ; the case of Edward Irving affording an exemplary illustration.2 In such separate charges protection against Arian and Unitarian heresies or ministerial defaults were secured by certain clauses in the trust-deeds to the effect that the minister must declare his belief in the Westminster Confession or that he must be a licentiate of the Church of Scotland, while the 1 Dr. Stoughton's Religion in England, vol. vi. p. 316. 2 To what extent, if any, these old Presbyterian congregations in the Northern Counties benefited by the extraordinary Regiutn Donum, or annual Government grant to the English Dissenters, we are not aware. [For account of the origin and object of this English Dissenting Regium Donum, granted by George I. at the suggestion of Sir Robert Walpole, and only abolished in 1851, see Skeats' History of the Free Churches of England, 1867, pp. 319 and 617.] That some of them long received aid from the London Congregational Fund Board is well known, as Independent Congregations did from the Presbyterian Fund. The principles on which that Board proceeded may be gathered from its letter to the minister of the very old church at Brampton, Cumberland, who had received ordination from the Presbytery of Annan. It belongs to the year 1819. "Rev. Sik, — Your letter was received and" laid before the Fund Board ; and I am sorry to have to inform you that, although the contents were in great measure satisfactory, they do not think that they can consistently grant you an Exhibition. This Fund is formed by the annual contributions of certain Congregational or Independent Churches, for the purpose of assisting such Churches or their ministers. Now the Board do not concern themselves about the particular form of government tohich any Church, may think proper to adopt, so long as they continue to act by and for themselves ; but if they belong to the Church of Scotland and are under the direc- tion of one of its Presbyteries, they do not come under the description of Churches for whose relief this Fund is established and to whom the Board, as Trustees, con- sider themselves bound in honour to confine its distribution. They have sometimes, no doubt, deviated from this rule, but it has been for want of correct information. They supposed that the Church at Brampton was an Independent Church, though Presbyterian in its form of government; but, if we understand your letter aright, they have been under a mistake. You must not consider this as arising from illiberality, but from a desire conscientiously to fulfil the trust reposed in them. If you make application to the Presbyterian Board in London, I think it not im- probable that they may grant you some assistance.'''' In every case the Congregational Board exacted a written creed from the appli- cant, and adjudicated thereon. R R 610 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Classes that were in existence refused to ordain or induct with- out some such guarantees. There were, however, other Pres- byterian congregations in England more fully Scotch in their membership and more directly dependent on, though not practically subject to, the Scottish National Church. An out- standing instance is Regent Square Church, London, with such ministers as Edward Irving, Dr. James Hamilton, and Dr. J. Oswald Dykes. Of this kind also were the two Liverpool Churches of Oldham Street and Rodney Street, and that of St. Peter's Square, Manchester. These three, along with a more ancient representative at Ramsbottom, now singularly revived, and another at Douglas in the Isle of Man, constituted the whole of the five charges of the Presbytery of Lancashire in 1836. On the 4th of May in that year a Convention met in Manchester, consisting ot Ministers and Elders of the Pres- bytery of Lancashire and the kindred one of the North- West of England with its seven charges, and agreed to form themselves, — according to the advice of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, — into a Synod that might be the nucleus of further organization. This advice was the result of repeated deputations, especially from the old Presbytery of London already described, and the more recent one of Lancashire. In a few years, other Pres- byteries were admitted to the Synod on the same basis of the Westminster Standards in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government ; the Scots Presbytery of London, and the Pres- bytery of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, both in 1839 ; that of Ber- wick-on-Tweed in 1840 ; and those of Northumberland and the North- West of Northumberland in 1842.1 This com- 1 Very full details on the formation, constitution, and history of the Synod and Church will be found in the Digest of the Actings and Proceedings of the Synod of the Pkesbyteeian Chukch in England, 1836-1876, by Professor Leone Levi, LL.D., 1877. The Bev. John Black, in his pamphlet on' Presbyterianism in England in 18th and 19th Centuries, 1887, says, p. 27, " When the Synod of the Presbyterian Church in England was fully formed, in 1842, of the 70 congre- gations which then composed it, no fewer than 50 (five-sevenths of the ivhole) were congregations that had come into existence prior to the present century — 35, or the full half, being prior to 1750. Combining both sides of the now United Church in England, probably two out of every three that existed in 1842 were con- gregations of the old stock." He had just before said,—" Excluding Aston Tyrrold, Wharton, and of course Tooting, which have only become connected with us since THEIR REVIVAL. 611 pleted the Synod, though subsequent re-arrangements were effected. The Evangelical revival that moved the Scottish Church after 1830 gave an immense impulse to the Pres- byterian cause in England, especially when " the ten years' conflict" for spiritual independence and freedom from secular patronage issued in the great and arousing event of the " Dis- ruption," when Chalmers and 450 ministers of the Established Church of Scotland surrendered manses, glebes, and stipends, and organized the Free Church. This memorable upheaval arrested wide-spread attention and was attended with striking results in England as elsewhere. For the heyday of Unitarian ascendency in connection with the old Presbyterian name was also now past ; and by its appeal to law rather than to equity in 1844, Unitarianism seemed to allow that in this respect its prestige was fading. Thus the orthodox party of Presbyterians, which had been so long depressed, began to pluck up fresh courage, and to push forward toward further organization. The Synod of 1836 was evidence of this, especially when, after a few years, it was forced by the Scottish disruption of 1843 to assume an entirely independent and self-reliant posi- tion. No longer calling itself "the Presbyterian Church in England, in Connection with the Church of Scotland" it began better to realize its mission and function by dropping the latter part of its designation, and cultivating the idea of having work to do among and for English people as well as on English soil. Beginning with twelve congregations, five in its Lancashire Presbytery, and seven in the North-West of England Presbytery, this Synod soon gathered other sections the formation of the Synod in 1836-42, we have at this moment 66 congregations which came into existence prior to 1800, of which 45 took their origin before 1750 and 31 before 1715. Of tbese 66, however, it should be stated that two (Hexham and Belford) represent each two (now united) congregations ; so that 68 in all are represented, and with Aston Tyrrold, Wharton, and Tooting, 71." And he adds,— "Further, 35 of the congregations enumerated by Dr. Evans as Presbyterian between 1717 and 1729 can be historically identified with congregations now form- ing part of the Presbyterian Church of England, besides one (Low Meeting, Berwick) marked by him as then Independent, but which a legal decision subsequently assumed to have been Presbyterian." It is to be hoped that the valuable papers which Mr. Black has left to the Church on the annals and history of individual congregations, vindicating and verifying these general observations of his, may be duly published. 612 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. within its jurisdiction ; so that when, in 1844, it started under the simpler and happier (as it proved, also the truer) name, " The Presbyterian Church in England," it had already rallied to its banner no fewer than sixty- three charges in half a dozen Presbyteries. Many of the old orthodox Presbyterian Eng- lish charges, too, as if freed from the incubus of a nightmare, began to wake in earnest and seek admission to the newly constituted organization. These old English Presbyterian causes were chiefly in Northumberland, though some of them, like Stafford, Eisley, and Wharton, were further south. As leaders in this whole movement, there is no invidiousness in mentioning Professors Hugh Cambell and Lorimer, Drs. James Hamilton and William Chalmers, with Dr. Munro of Man- chester, and his liberal-handed elder, Robert Barbour, " clarum et venerabile nomen." " This was the beginning of a course of progress, slow at first, but gradually acquiring greater impetus, until, from 63 congregations, which composed the Church in the year 1844, the number had grown, prior to the present Union, to 156 ; and the Presbytery of London, with only G congregations in 1844, numbered no fewer than 56 in 1876." l The English Presbyterian College for educating a native ministry was founded in 1844,2 the very year of the Chapel Act, as we shall presently see. i H. M. Matheson, in Proceedings of Union Synod, 1876, p. 9, where further in- formation will be found. In 1843, a number of congregations continued in connection with the Church of Scotland, and formed a Synod which has still 4 Presbyteries and 18 ministerial charges in England, with 16 chaplains to her Majesty's forces. 2 Of the situation and feelings of the Church at that time, an admirable con- temporary expression will be found in Professor Lorimer's Address in the English Presbyterian College, Introductory Lectures, 1845. " At its meeting in April last, the Synod of the Presbyterian Church in England resolved to establish a Theo- logical College, 'a step to which they felt themselves constrained by the growing exigencies of their Church. The Introductory Lectures appear inprint at the request of the College Committee, and have been revised by the lecturers. London : Jan. 1, 1845." II. FAVOURABLE CIRCUMSTANCES, 1836-1842. While yet the orthodox Presbyterians were struggling to- wards further development and consolidation, certain favour- able events occurred that were fitted to increase their hopes. To three of the more important of these we would now advert. (1) The place secured in 1836 for the Orthodox Presbyterians in the General Body of the Three Dissenting Denominations. (2) The final and favourable decisions in the Lady Hewley Chancery Suits, which lasted twelve years, from 1830 to 1842. (3) The fluctuations of modern Unitarianism. The Orthodox Presbyterians in the General Body of the Three Dissenting Denominations. We must here recall a few historical facts not already re- ferred to, respecting the General Body of Protestant Dissenting ministers of the Three Denominations. Ever since Toleration had been secured under the Revolution Settlement, it was the custom for leading ministers of the Presbyterian, Independent, and Baptist persuasions to appear together at Court and pre- sent joint addresses to the Crown on special occasions. This grew into a recognised privilege, and was established in the eyes of the Government as a right of approach to the Throne by the united body. For many years at the outset, the chief spokesman who presented the addresses was a Presbyterian divine, in recognition of the superior weight and influence then of that denomination. Thus, the very first time these three bodies of Dissenting ministers combined to present congratulations to William and Mary at St. James's, the distinguished and eloquent Presbyterian divine, Dr. William Bates, who, as John Howe said, " was born to stand before Kings," headed the joint deputation of about one hundred on that auspicious occasion. 614 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Another leading Presbyterian, Dr. Daniel Williams, — now so well known in connection with the famous Library which he so munificently founded, and one of the few in his own day who avowed his belief in even the Divine right of Presbytery, — headed quite a number of these representative deputations. It was he that was chosen to this position on the accession both of Queen Anne and of George I. when the Hanoverian family came to the throne in 1714. It was the Scotch Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Robert Fleming, of Founders' Hall Church, who headed the three Denominations when they offered their congratulations to Queen Anne on the occasion of the Union, in 1707. Dr. Edmund Calamy, the next leading Presbyterian, dis- charged a similar function in 1717 ; and when George II. ascended the throne, in 1727, Dr. John Evans, who had been colleague and was then successor to Dr. Daniel Williams in Hand Alley Presbyterian Church, presented the address to his Majesty, and Dr. Calamy made a speech to the Queen. It was on the 11th July of that year, 1727, that these three Boards of Presbyterian, Independent, and Baptist ministers in London and Westminster were organized for certain common purposes into one gathering, called " The General Body of Protestant Dissenting Ministers of the Three Denominations," with rules and regulations determining its constitution and objects ; the business to be conducted by a committee, consisting of seven Presbyterians, six Independ- ents, and six Baptists, to be chosen annually, each set by the brethren of their own denomination. The electorate on the Presbyterian Board was originally the largest, but it had a tendency to diminish as years went on, though receiving from time to time members from the various sections of Presby- terians both Scotch and English. As the Congregational and Baptist Boards increased, they were, of course, obtaining greater sway and control of affairs. This somewhat disturbed the old balance and tended to create friction, especially when most of the English Presbyterian ministers in London had become avowedly Unitarian, and the general conflict between Evan- gelical and Unitarian Dissent thickened and waxed hot. THEIR REVIVAL. 615 By this time there were several Evangelical or orthodox Scotch Presbyterian ministers of London on " The General Body," who were politically and otherwise as well as doctrinally in warm sympathy with their Evangelical brethren of the other two denominations. The Lady Hewley Chancery Suit, promoted chiefly by the Independents, though carefully and eagerly watched by the various bodies of Presbyterians, readily conspired with other causes to inflame and irritate the suscep- tibilities of the Unitarian members, who proceeded to sever their connection with their brethren under circumstances that need not here be more fully particularized ; while at the same time the place of the Scotch Presbyterian ministers was secured and confirmed, and their title fully recognised.1 1 The following extracts from minutes will explain the position of these Evan- gelical Presbyterians, and will show how they secured their present footing by the votes and resolutions of their fellow-members of the " General Body" : — "Library, Redcross Street. "At an extraordinary General Meeting of the General Body of Dissenting Minis- ters of the Three Denominations, held by special summons on the 9th March, 1836, " Resolved unanimously, — " That this Body having heard the documents read by Mr. Broadfoot [the Rev. William Broadfoot was minister of the Scottish Secession Church, Oxendon Street. Having lost his voice, he resigned his charge ; but on partial recovery, he became Theological Tutor to Cheshunt College (Lady Huntingdon Connexion), without sever- ing from the Scottish Secession, to ivhose London Presbytery he acted as clerk till his death in 1837] , do approve the proceedings of their protesting brethren, and do hereby declare that they, together with any other member or members of the Pres- byterian denomination who have not withdrawn from this Body, do continue to possess all the privileges they have been accustomed to enjoy in this General Union." "Eesolved unanimously, — " That a deputation, consisting of members of each denomination, with the Chair- man and Secretary, be directed to wait upon the Bight Hon. Lord John Bussell, with a memorial asserting the claims to all the privileges which it has hitherto enjoyed in connection with His Majesty's Government and the Throne." It was also unanimously agreed to set forth, — " That the withdrawment of certain Unitarian members of the Presbyterian Body from the General Union had not affected, and does not affect, the existence, consti- tution, and objects of the Union. That those members who are in every respect Presbyterian, and have been for many years members of the General Body, still con- tinue to sustain that relation. That their protest against the secession of the Presbyterian Body, and the reasons alleged in support of their continued connection with the Union, have been cordially approved by the General Body. That the Union of the Ministers of the Three Denominations is thus inviolably preserved, and that the representations to His Majesty's Government and the public of the Union being dissolved, because certain members of Unitarian principles have with- drawn from a Body consisting of 147 members, are contrary to fact." " Library, Redcross Street. "At an adjourned Meeting of the General Body of ProtestantDissenting Ministers of the Three Denominations, held by official summons on March 31, 1836." [A letter to be addressed to Lord John Russell as representing the Government, was * 616 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND It only remains to be added, that the Chairman and Secretary of the " General Body " are at this present time (1888) both Presbyterians ; and in this way among others a line of histori- cal continuity has {according to a very recent legal decision)1 been established between the old English Presbyterians and the present " Presbyterian Church of England." read and unanimously adopted, containing, among other things, the following state- ment " of facts "] — " That the number of Protestant Dissenting Ministers reported to have withdrawn themselves does not exceed twelve, of whom seven only are the regularly officiating ministers of congregations, which do not probably amount in the whole to more than two thousand persons, while the congregations of those members who remained in connection with the General Body certainly exceed fifty thousand individuals. Under these circumstances the General Body of the Protestant Dissenting Ministers have deemed it fitting and proper to inform your Lordship and His Majesty's Government by us, that no change whatever has taken place, or is likely to occur affecting the object, the constitution, or the privileges of their Body, which for more than a century has had the honour of being recognised as the legitimate and authorized organ of communication with His Majesty the King." This was subscribed by — Joseph Fletcher, D.D., Chairman, Thomas Binney, George Clayton, A. Tidman, William Broadfoot, Edmund Steane, James Yates, John Watts. 1 The reference is to the King's Lynn case. In 1885 a sum of £223 had accrued from an old endowment of a Presbyterian Chapel, Broad Street, King's Lynn, now extinct. This money was assigned by an order of Justice Chitty to the Ministerial Support or Sustentation Fund Committee of the Presbyterian Church of England, in order to be expended by it within the County of Norfolk. As no application whatever had been made to the Court on behalf of tbe Presbyterian Church of Eng- land, and as the Secretary of tbe Congregational Union of London had claimed tl^Tmoney for the Congregationalists, it is of peculiar interest and importance to note the grounds of that order. The Solicitors to the Treasury do so in a letter of 31 January, 1885, addressed to the claimant, in which they say, — " Referring to our recent correspondence in this case, Mr. Justice Chitty yesterday made an order for payment of the fund in Court to the Presbyterian Church of England, to be applied for the benefit of Ministers of that denomination in the county of Norfolk. We should inform you that the original objects named in the testator's will having ceased to exist, the Court has to apply the fund, in its discretion, as nearly as may be in accordance with the testator's expressed intentions. The statement you for- warded to us was read to the Judge, who came to a decision after considering the facts therein stated. He was of opinion that the Trustees of the Broad Street Chapel were not acting in accordance with their trust in conveying the Chapel to the new trustees by the deed of Nov. 2G, 1805 ; and this being so, the legacies given by the testator could not belong to the Independent Chapel. On the other hand, the existing Presbyterian Church of England can trace connection tcith the old English Presbyterians, because certain of the latter were embodied in the Presbyterian Church in England on its foundation in 1836 and further, the ' Presbyterian Board,'' which, existed in London in connection with the English Presbyterians in the last century is still in existence, and most of the present members of it are members of the Presby- terian Church of England." The money was eventually divided between the Pres- byterian and Congregational authorities. For full particulars, see the Beports of Committee on Ministerial Support in the Blue Book for 1888-9 of the Synod in the Presbyterian Church. their revival. 617 The Decision in the Lady Hewley Chancery Suits, 1830-1842. In 1824 the Unitarians of Manchester and elsewhere had the temerity, in connection with an interesting and festive occasion, to publish among the complimentary proceedings a speech by one of their ministers, in which he made a vehement attack on the prevailing Evangelical doctrine of other Communions, charging " the spirit of orthodoxy " with being "mean, cruel, vindictive, and persecuting," as well as " direful and demoral- izing in its effects." A keen and lengthy controversy ensued, and, being carried on in the form of a newspaper correspond- ence, excited a wide and lively interest, all the more that the leading combatants were two well-known representative men who afterwards became Members of Parliament.1 In the course of this correspondence it was urged that the Unitarians had no legal and still less any moral right to many of their endow- ments and places of worship. It was also suggested that they were abusing the trust funds left by Lady Hewley of York at the beginning of the previous century, by perverting to their own sectarian purposes charities that did not belong to them ; and that for Unitarians to have become exclusive Trustees of such property was a usurpation which the Courts of Law would not sustain. On inquiry being set a-foot, many curious and startling facts were elicited, and some questionable proce- dure brought to light. Hence arose the long and notable liti- gation in Chancery for twelve years, between 1830 and 1842, and the famous Dissenters' Chapel Bill which followed in 1844. 3 1 George William Wood, afterwards M.P. for Kendal, on the Unitarian side ; and George Hadiield, afterwards M.P. for his native borough of Sheffield. The Manchester Socinian Controversy, is the title of the volume issued by Mr. Hadfield in 1824, which did such admirable service. Mr. Hadfield was then a Solicitor in Manchester ; and this volume, besides an account of the dinner and speeches con- nected with a minister of the leading Unitarian Manchester Chapel in Cross Street, and the newspaper letters that followed, contained a remarkable Introduction calling in question Unitarian rights to tbe old Presbyterian Chapels and Charities. 2 Those who would acquaint themselves with the whole matter will find it fully detailed in various books specially devoted to it ; among other authorities, the very large and elaborate volume — The Histonj of the Litigation and Legislation respect- ing Presbyterian Chapels and Charities, by T. S. James, London, 1867 ; and the Law Report of Attorney Generals. Shore and others (9 Clark and Finelly, p. 355) in re Lady Hewley's Charity, 23 Dec, 1833, Reg. Lib. A, fol. 372. 618 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. Without entering into minute particulars, it may be sufficient to indicate here some of the more important facts in the case.1 In 1704, Dame Sarah Hewley of York, widow of Sir John Hewley, executed a deed by which she assigned to certain Presbyterian Dissenting Trustees considerable estates in York- shire, the rental of which was to be expended in the better maintenance of " poor and godly preachers of Christ's Holy Gospel in the six Northern Counties of England," and in other (what we would now call) Home Mission objects ; and in 1707 she added a minor trust, appointing Seven TRUSTEESjmder each deed, all of them, like herself, orthodox Presbyterian Dissenters. The Trusts came into operation at her death, in 1710. During the century that followed, and from causes already narrated, the Trusts dropped gradually into the hands of ad- 1 Connected and wrapped up with, and in large measure determining the Hewley suit, was the decision in the contemporaneous one, known as the Wolverhampton Chapel Case, the litigation on which began in 1817. A community of Protestant Dissenters had, in 1701, erected a chapel or meeting-house for the worship and service of God. The foundation deed directed that there should be twelve or more Trustees, and that they or the major part of them should, from time to time, at any meeting to be holden upon matters relating to the trust, make such orders as they should think best, to be binding upon all parties. It further provided, that if the meetings therein contemplated "for the service of God," should be prohibited by law. the Trustees should sell the property, the subject of the charity, and apply the proceeds to other charitable uses. In 1720, additional land was granted for the support of the minister of the said chapel or meeting-house, and the deed of conveyance contained provision for another application of the property, " if 1 Will, and Mary, c. 18, called the Toleration Act, should be repealed." A Bill of Com- plaint and Information was filed by the plaintiffs and relators, the surviving Trustees, and the minister of the said chapel or meeting-house, praying the Court of Chancery to sanction and establish their possession, to appoint new Trustees, and to grant an injunction to stay proceedings in an action at law of ejectment com- menced by the defendants, who claimed to be Trustees of the chapel or meeting-house. The defendants claiming to be Trustees were Unitarian. The plaintiffs, or relators, were the minister and his supporters on the Evangelical side. Ultimately the Court ordered that the meeting-house and other property ought not to be applied to the support or teaching of those who deny the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, or profess opinions as to the Christian religion which, at the time of the erection of the said meeting-house, could not be legally taught or preached therein ; that therefore the two defendants be removed from being Trustees of the said meeting-house and the other trust property, and that they execute all proper deeds and conveyances thereof to new Trustees, to be appointed under the direction of the Court. The defendants appealed against this decree of the Vice-Chancellor. The appeal was heard (after able and elaborate argument) by Lord Cottenham, then Lord Chancellor, in Hilary Term, 1836, who, however, postponed his judgment on this appeal till after the hearing and decree in the then pending Lady Hewley suit of the Attorney-General, v. Shore and others; but thereafter the decree of the Vice- Chancellor was confirmed. See James's History of Legislation on Presbyterian Chapels, pp. 210-227, and Law Eeport of Attorney-General, v. Pearson, 3 Meri- vale, 409. THEIK EEVIVAL. 619 ministrators who were Unitarian in their beliefs. The Chan- cery suit to eject them was commenced in 1830. No charge of intentional mal-administration was preferred, the principal foundation having been managed by men of known probity of character, whose chief disqualification lay, as was alleged, in their rejection of the doctrinal creed designed to be promoted by the benevolent foundress. The decisions went against the Trustees from the first. After the Vice-Chancellor had heard the parties, he decided that none but Trinitarian Protestant Dissenters were entitled to act as dispensers of the bequest. In February, 1836, this decision was confirmed by Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst ; and the final verdict was pronounced in the House of Lords in 1842, when six out of the seven Judges called in to assist, were in favour of the plaintiffs. Judgment was then pronounced by Lord Cottenham for the Lord Chancellor, who declared that the officiating Trustees must be displaced ; and he remitted to Lord Henley, one of the Masters in Chancery, to proceed without undue delay to nominate their successors according to certain prescribed restrictions.1 It is to be remembered that the suit was instituted by per- sons of the Independent denomination, who however, having so far successfully carried the case, begin at this point to assume a less dignified position. Some of these " relators " (as they were designated in legal phrase),2 who had found the money for the suit, conceived the idea of monopolizing the Trusteeships within their own form of Dissent, on the plea that "in a fair, just, and honourable sense, the term Presby- terian may be applied to Modern Independents," and that the Presbyterians who claimed a right to share in the management were representative of Scotch Congregations, and were there- fore not entitled, however by courtesy they might be graciously admitted, to the status or privileges of English Protestant Dis- senters. They were baulked in this attempt ; and as we are not wishful to open any old sore, we dismiss this part of the subject 1 See The Laws Concerning Religious Worship, etc., by John Jenkins, 1885, pp. 92-108 ; or History of Legislation on Presbyterian Chapels, by T. S. James, 1867, pp. 311-362. - A relator, in law, is one who lodges an information in the nature of a Quo icarranto before a Court. 620 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. by simply recording that the Court decreed to elect three Pres- byterians, three Independents, and one Baptist, to manage the chief Trust, in the interests of their respective denominations. When the final judgment of the House of Lords, which was not given till 1842, went, like those of the lower tribunals, en- tirely against the Unitarian Trustees, and they were removed, the whole of that denomination were struck with dismay at the revelation of the insecure tenure of their old properties. To prevent further litigation, Government, on the urgent pressure and petitioning of Unitarians and others, promoted the notable Chapel Act of 1844, which determined that when there is no trust deed at all, or none determining directly the doc- trine, polity, or worship, a usage of twenty-five years should he taken as conclusive evidence of the right of any congregation to the possession of their place of worship, and of the schools, burial grounds, and endowments pertaining thereto} The Fluctuations op Modern Unitarianism. By the Chapel Act of 1844, the Presbyterian name, which had been so long associated in the popular mind with Unitarianism in England, continued to be perpetuated in that connection, but in smaller and diminishing measure. Except where an old meeting-house was rebuilt, the name Presbyterian attached to no new Unitarian place of worship. For it was felt to be wholly inapplicable; modern Unitarianism having adopted lines of organization more truly congregational than in Congrega- tionalism itself, inasmuch as it is simply the worshipping con- gregation supporting ordinances, apart from any idea of Church membership within it, which is the primary factor in all its arrangements. While the main body of English Presbyterian i The whole proceedings in Lords and Commons were printed in a volume. De- bates on the Dissenters' Chapel Bill, 1844, which was issued by the parties associated in procuring this measure. This Chapel Act of 1844, " for the regulation of suits relating to meeting-houses," so far modifies the general law of mortmain and charitable uses in England, the principle of which may be thus stated (as deter- mined by the two cases already noticed), that property granted or given for a religions, educational, charitable, or scientific use, will be devoted to the object stated in the Deed, according to its ordinary meaning and grammatical construction, assisted, if ambiguous, by the status and opinion of the donor and the law then in force in the country. THEIR REVIVAL. 621 ministers had been falling into Socinianism, a still larger num- ber of New England Congregational Churches had done the same, especially in Boston and Eastern Massachusetts ; and these, along with other intermingled elements, were the root of modern Unitarianism. It has never been other than one of the smallest and most struggling denominations, although, from the high culture of some of its leaders and the distin- guished literary names associated with it, not less than from its zeal for educational and humanitarian schemes, its influence has been greater perhaps than its numbers. Probably no religionists have to pay a larger price for their position as Dissenters, than modern English Unitarians. And while none have a higher individual sense of personal truth and honour, no other body of religionists has to drag behind it so heavy a dead weight of compromising traditions or self-nullifying transformations at different stages of its history. In one large aspect, Unitarianism is a synonym for certain speculative religious moods of the human mind ; in another and narrower sense, it is whatever may set itself theologically against Trinitarianism. One time it was under the spell of Priestley, the most vehement of dogmatists and theological systematizers. Through him the conflict between Arian and Unitarian issued in many disruptions ; then it underwent a radical change under the essentially different spirit of Channimg, while still further disturbing elements have marked the transition to the more modern favourite idea of " free-thought." These diverse strains have not been advantageous to either its popular ex- tension or its congregational life. Its spirit of adiaphorism, or pure indifference to doctrine, — otherwise known as a simple " search after truth," or " free inquiry," — has been no bond of cohesion, but, like gravitation acting on whirling dust or sand, the very first " wind of doctrine " so scatters the separable par- ticles that they never settle again as they were before. . Other watchwords than those of Apostolic Christianity have inspired and held them together ; and men have found among them but scanty glorying in such themes as redemption through Christ's blood, reconciliation and peace by His Cross, and personal salvation from sin by the power of the Holy Spirit. Even the 622 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. grand principle of its " open trust" has been stultified in cases of meeting-houses which have been settled on a narrow and dogmatically Unitarian basis ; while the same fluctuation which has so singularly characterized its career, has marked its varying relations to the Presbyterian name. The use of this name had become entirely fortuitous and traditional. It was connected, not so much with principles, as with build- ings and other property. It had come down as an inheritance from the past, associated with family, social, and other venerable ties. It indicated adherence to the central idea, no doubt, of the Presbyterian forefathers, that there was no higher order in the ministry than Presbyter or Bishop ; but while it had nourished, to an exaggerated degree, certain old Presbyterian watchwords, such as " comprehension " and " accommodation," and while it cherished a profound dislike to all creeds imposed by civil or other authority, it had wholly lost sight of other features which were still more characteristic of the ancestral name. By none more than by Priestley and his disciples had the fundamental aims and methods of the early Presbyterians been ridiculed, renounced, and decried, albeit they did cast "longing, lingering looks behind" at some things whose disuse or surrender, they felt when too late, had proved dis- astrous.1 The very name, Unitarian, is being now disowned by some of the " left " extreme, as that of Presbyterian had already been by others who felt it was inapplicable. All these fluctuations and transformations, while constituting the very glory of the freethought movement in the eyes of many admirers, have afforded grounds of encouragement and help to the representatives of orthodox or Westminster Presby- terianism. Yet, singular to say, the latest phase of change 1 We find Dr. John Taylor deploring certain tendencies he saw at work but felt impotent to check. And Dr. Priestley, in his Essay on Church Discipline, which he followed up by a Sermon on the Proper Constitution of a Christian Church, preached at the New Meeting in Birmingham, 3 Nov., 1782, with prefatory discourse on the present state of those called " Rational Dissenters,'1 lamenting how their Societies do not flourish, suggests mournfully these two remedies : (1) Training children by ministers catechising them, and especially (2) appointing elders (annually and by ballot) to aid ministers, and to administer admonitions and reproofs. From the lack of some such arrangement, he says, " Our congregations have become mere' audiences. ," THEIR REVIVAL. 623 brings before us a remarkable Address,1 in which Dr. James Martineau, condemning the Congregational methods hitherto at work in their Free Christian Churches, pleads for a return to early Presbyterian organization, as most in harmony with the historic past and as best fitted to reinvigorate their future. " I need not say, our societies exist upon what is call the congregational principle — that is, the principle that each body of Christian worshippers is fully equal to the management of its own affairs, and is in itself a complete and perfect unity. Now as to that, I have no objection what- ever to it as an abstract principle, and I quite admit that if there were but one body of Christians, one body of disciples meeting for Christian worship and the promotion of the Christian life, it would be entirely com- petent to manage its own affairs. But when you tell me that a little country congregation, consisting, it may be, of waggoners, quarrymen, and factory hands, and persons earning their daily wages and living a life of great privation and poverty — when you tell me that they, without any foreign aid whatever, are a complete and competent society for the conduct of their objects, I say it is a mockery to say so and to deny and refuse it external aid in order to enable them to maintain the conditions and the institutions of their Christian life. If there were but one congre- gation subsisting as an oasis in a desert, it would be capable of managing its own affairs ; but so soon as ever a multitude of other congregations or societies accumulate about it, it is no use telling me that these stand in no relation to one another. The evils from which we suffer are the evils from this congregational principle in the absence of any union." After a full explanation and advocacy of the Sustentation Fund, as worked in different Presbyterian Churches, Dr. Martineau illustrates how he would guard its dispensation by means of District Boards ; and he thus continues : — " The materials for the District Boards I would find in the old provin- cial associations in Lancashire and Cheshire and many other places, con- sisting of all the ministers and a certain number of the laity belonging to our congregations, who meet once a year. These assemblies are rem- nants of old Presbyteries, every one of them. Every one of the Presby- teries were Presbyteries connected with our Church. The very chapels in which many of them now meet are many of them the old buildings in which, during the Presbyterian time, they assembled for worship. And, moreover, the very ancestors from whom we are descended, and from 1 Address at Leeds to " the third Triennial Conference of the members and friends of Unitarian, Liberal Christian, Free Christian, Presbyterian, and other non- subscribing or kindred congregations," 25 April, 1888. Dr. Martineau's proposed Scheme has also been printed for consideration since. Its basis is purely a financial one. 624 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. whom we derive our most noble characteristics, were themselves Presby- terians. Baxter, who was the founder of our body, was himself a Presbyterian. The Baxterians — all who followed him — were attached to Presbyterian government. They had no desire whatever to abolish that Presbyterian government, nor have we at any period of our history re- nounced our attachment to it. It was sacrificed by the Act of Uniformity under which the Church of England is now constituted ; but this had no effect in altering the allegiance of our ancestors to the system, and if they could have constituted it again they would have done so. But a whole generation passed before the Act of Toleration rendered their work legal, and by that time theirs had become an isolated system. They were driven by persecution and coercion out of the Presbyterian scheme, to which they were deeply attached, to that of the Congregational, to which they were deeply averse. Instead of their being put in love with the Congregational system by that experience, they disliked it more than ever. That is proved by the fact that every attempt to unite together the Independents, who were Congregationalists, and the Presbyterians, who had been forced to it, proved to be entirely vain. They were completely ' antipathic ' to one another, however great the wish to see the restoration of their old constitution. Hence it was that Calamy and men of the Liberal tendency of that time kept up their connection with Scotland, and went to visit the Scotch Church. Hence it was that Dr. Williams left in his will sums to educate young men in Scotland, and in every way wished to show his continued attachment to the system of all North Britain. I say, we have no excuse whatever, when we can do it, for not reverting to the Presbyterian constitution— the constitution we have in- herited. We are not in the least bound to continue our present system of absurd isolation. There are only three modes in which human practical affairs can be managed, and they are equally available for civil purposes and for ecclesiastical purposes, being represented in ecclesiastical institu- tions by the Congregational system, the Hierarchical system, and the Presbyterian system. The system of representative government is the system which, under the name of Presbyterianism, has secured all the most powerful and popular Churches that exist in Christendom." After explaining that the Presbyterian system need not involve essential fixity of creed, but may, in his judgment, be worked on the broadest doctrinal principles, he concludes by a reference to his own Presbyterial ordination : — " Perhaps I may be a little attached to the Church which ordained me ; but it is my deliberate and reflective judgment that the most popular, the most penetrating, and the most beneficent Church in Christendom is the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. If there is still in us that which is worth organizing, I ask, what better form can we have than this ? ' III. THE BECONSTITUTED PEESBYTEEIAN CHURCH OF ENGLAND, AND THE UNION OF 187G. An important chapter was added to the history of the Presby- terians in England by the Union, on 13 June, 1876, of The Presbyterian Church in England and that section of The United Presbyterian Church which was included in its English Synod. What had kept these bodies apart, was their separate historic origin and development, but especially the alienation occasioned by " the Voluntary Controversy," which had its roots in the difficult problems of State law in its relation to religion and the stumbling-block of the Civil Magistrate's authority in relation to the Christian conscience. Many far- seeing minds, however, had long been persuaded that, in the face of urgent necessities, a way of escape out of these diffi- culties could be found, without any need for compromise at all. So early as 1849, Dr. James Hamilton and other kindred spirits were feeling their way in this direction, which ultimately, after many years, issued in various Uniou movements and negotia- tions.1 These were at last, after some delay and interruptions, happily crowned with success ; and with such success as to afford augury of more. The Union was fitly consummated within the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, under most favourable auspices. Each of the two Synods formed a procession from their respective places of meeting, and being timed to reach the hall together, the members of both mingled with one another, like two streams flowing into one common channel. The gathering was immense and impressive; the general public crowded the galleries, many being unable to obtain admission, while the platform was thronged by ministers and 1 See section iv., p. 12 of Digest of Actings and Proceedings of Synod of Presby- terian Church of England, 1836-1876, by Prof. Leone Levi, LL.D., who has also preserved a Digest of the final forty days' proceedings, from the inception of the Union till its completion. 625 s g 626 THE PRESBYTERTANS IN ENGLAND. representatives of sister Churches at home and abroad, who came to join in the congratulations of the occasion.1 The pro- ceedings began with praise, reading the "Word of God, and prayer, after which the minutes confirming the basis of Union were read by the Clerks,2 and the formal declarations were made and responded to. Documents embodying these items, which were engrossed on vellum, having been duly signed, the two Moderators gave to each other the right hand of fellow- ship, and the members of the two uniting Synods followed with a similar ceremony. After the Union had been thus formally consummated, the Synod was constituted in the usual way by the Venerable and Eeverend Dr. James Anderson, of Morpeth, its newly-elected first Moderator, who proceeded to deliver an eloquent and memorable Address, and then in its name to re- ceive and reply to the messages of congratulation and goodwill from sister Churches. The following brief summary of the Church's work and position may here suffice.3 The Presbyterian Church of England has seven main Schemes. Be- sides the central one for ministerial support, commonly called the Sus- tentation Fund, the other six are Home Missions, Foreign Missions, 1 Full particulars are accessible in the first special number of The Messengeb of the Presbyterian Church of England, entitled, Proceedings of the Union Synod, 1876. 2 The following Articles constitute the Basis of Union : — I. That the Word of God contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- ments is the only rule of Faith and Duty. II. That the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms are the Standards of this Church. III. That in subscribing the said subordinate Standards, the Office-bearers of this Church, while holding the subjection of Civil Rulers, in their own province, to the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, are not required to accept anything in these documents which favours, or may be regarded as favouring, intolerance or persecu- tion. IV. That the Westminster Directory of Worship exhibits generally the Order of Public Worship and of the Ministration of the Sacraments in this Church. V. That the name of the Church shall be "The Presbyterian Church of England," and the Supreme Court of the Church shall be " The Synod (or Assembly) of the Presbyterian Church of England." 3 The Church's constitution and methods of action are found in " The Book of Order, or Bides and Forms of Procedure of the Presbyterian Church of England, together with the Model Trust Deed," Lond., 1883. All other details are furnished in the Church's Year Book and the Synod's Annual Blue Book. The other Publi- cations are the weekly and monthly Messenger and Missionary Record; the Children's Messenger (Monthly), and Our Sisters in Other Lands (Quarterly). THEIR REVIVAL. 627 College, Continental Work, Jewish Missions, and Higher Instruction of Youth. These schemes are worked, not by mere Societies, but as ordinary parts of the Church's life and organization, through freely chosen and repre- sentative Committees of responsible office-bearers gathered from all parts of the country, the funds being administered under synodical supervision and review. The Sustentation Fund. The object of this Fund is the worthy and adequate support of an efficient Gospel ministry all over the Church. The principle of the Fund is the New Testament one that the strong shall help the weak. Strong congregations, which are fed and sustained by members from the smaller congregations, give of their larger substance in return, to these weaker Churches. Recent statistics show, for example, that five of the wealthy congregations pay into the Fund £3,284 and only take £1,000 out. The working basis of the Fund is, that a self- supporting congregation may supplement its own minister's stipend according to its own discretion after sending the equal dividend of £200 or more. The great bulk of the congregations are of course self-sup- porting. Twenty-five contribute a little to the Fund and take nothing out. Ninety-eight are aid-receiving, twenty-four, however, not being on the equal-dividend platform. To be on this equal-dividend platform, no congregation can send less than £110 per annum. If a congregation can only send £80 — and no congregation can send less and be a par- ticipant— it receives £155 : but, as an encouragement to exertion, what- ever additional sum it sends, it receives back with one-half more added. The whole scheme is revised every three years. So simple and sound is this Sustentation Fund ; one of the best proofs being that its equal dividend of £200 has always been maintained in even the worst of times. The Home Mission Scheme has two objects. 1. To raise and admin- ister funds for church building, or reduction of building debt. In ten years (from 1876 to 1886) churches have been raised at a cost of £215,000, and only £30,000 of debt remains. Within twelve years the Church's property has increased from £1,000,000 to £1,500,000. 2, The other and urgent object of this Fund is, to promote and further Evangelistic and Home Missionary efforts — a matter of very vital and vast importance, on which much remains to be done in stimulating local efforts among the masses. Foreign Missions. The Church's Mission in China,1 begun by the saintly and apostolic William C. Burns, is one of the marvels of modern missionary enterprise. Only called into existence forty years ago, and now with a membership of 5,000 gathered from heathenism, 73 native > See The China Mission of the Presbyterian Church of England— its History Methods, Results, by Rev. W. S. Swanson, 1887 ; and The China Mission of the Presby- terian Church of England, by Donald Matheson, Esq., 1878. 628 THE PRESBYTERIANS IN ENGLAND. preachers and 55 students under college training, it is a Church rapidly becoming self-supporting and self-extending. Meanwhile there are 31 missionary agents from this country variously at work, 16 ordained ministers, 6 medical missionaries, 7 lady missionaries, and 2 teachers. The Church has also a young Indian Mission begining to thrive : while — The Jewish Mission is ably conducted in London; and now in Morocco also. Continental Work. The proceeds of an Annual Collection are divided among weak or struggling Protestant Free Churches on the Con- tinent, as in Italy, Belgium, Spain, Hungary, and Bohemia : specially the Waldensian and Free Italian Churches. The College in London had last year four professors and 27 students. Besides its revenue of £1,500 from invested capital, it needs £1,200 at least per annum from Church contributions for its suitable maintenance. The Higher Instruction op Youth is the latest but neither the least nor least deserving of the Church's schemes. With God's blessing, it is developing into a powerful agency for the retention of youth and train- ing them for high and intelligent service in the Church. It only remains to be added here, that while at the Union in 1876 there were 270 congregations with 50,000 members under 10 Presbyteries and an income of £163,000, the returns for 1888 show 288 congregations with 62,000 members under 11 Presbyteries and an income of £200,000. CONCLUSION. Various branches of the Christian Church seem now to be entering upon a new era, whose watchword is to be reunion. We have traced the religious and ecclesiastical struggles ot the Reformation periods, have looked with sadness on much that was deadening and disintegrating in last century, and have noted with satisfaction the quickening and healing measures of more recent times. " I sometimes fancy," says one/ " I can discern three epochs ip the His- tory of the Reformed Churches, corresponding in the main to the three weighty epithets, Via, Veritas, Vita-Christ the Way, the Truth and the Life The early reformers laid chief stress on the first of these ; for it was on Christ as the Way that Popery had chiefly erred, obscuring the doctrine of iustifieation by faith. The epoch following was essentially dogmatic wl^nleamed Theologians drew up their systems of Oj^^-J^ was now indeed Veritas, the Truth; hut taken a ^ *^* 'J™* formality, and sectarianism. Happy will it be for the Church he adds " if not forgetting the other two, she shall now be found movn on to the thtd development, Vita, or, Christ the Life, which will regulate the two others, while it consummates and informs them. We may be permitted to regard this third epoch as haying been inaugurated by the great Evangelical and Methodist re- vival, with its warmth and vitalizing influences; and that a movement towards manifested unity, in the power ot a mis- sionary spirit, with which union to the Lord is .connected may be the next great wave in Christendom. What i the fourth epoch be one of reunion, by the concentrating of all the three previous forces; and uniting upon Cheist Himself who is in His own Person the Way, the Truth, and the Life? This is the genius of the Gospel ; and Presbyterians, it may be hoped, will not be behind in understanding it. They have been wil- ling enough in the past to divide on the surface, so as the better i John Macintosh, The Earnest Student. Life of, by Dr. Norman McLeod. A09 630 CONCLUSION. to unite at the centre. A spirit of Presbyterian Union is now set in ; and Union's battle will be like Freedom's — " Once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft, is ever won." A Union landmark — a sign of these times of ours, and a symbol of the coming era, is the Pan- Presbyterian Council, the — " Alliance of the Reformed Churches (Popularly called the ' Presbyterian Alliance ') — " A voluntary organization formed at a Conference in London, 1875, somewhat similar to that of the Evangelical Alliance, but confined to Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian system of government, and more Churchly in the character of its representation. It realizes a desire strongly entertained by Calvin (letter to Cranmer, 1552) and Beza (confer- ence at St. Germain, 1561), to heal the divisions among Protestants by the formation of some general Council. Nothing came of their efforts; and the different Protestant Churches rapidly became still further separated. " The English-speaking portion of the Presbyterians had their home in Scotland, where Knox's influence was paramount ; and there the desire for a re-union of Reformed Christendom, lingering in men's hearts, subse- quently found expression in a variety of ways. The Second Book of Dis- cipline of the Scottish Church (pub. 1578), speaks of an ' Assembly representing the Universal Kirk of Christ, which may be properly called the General Assembly, or General Council of the whole Kirk of God ; ' while in Pardovan's well-known collection of Scottish Church laws (1st ed., 1709), there is a section under the title, ' Of a General Council of Pro- testants.'' During the eighteenth century a variety of controversies, con- ducted too often with great bitterness, alienated even the Presbyterian Churches from each other, till Presbyterian re-union seemed all but hope- less. In the early part of the present century, however, a kindlier spirit began to prevail, and Churches that were doctrinally agreed drew together. In 1820, the Burgher and Anti-burgher Churches united under the name of the United Secession Church. This has been followed by a large number of Presbyterian Church Unions in Scotland, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Australia, and elsewhere." 1 After long delay and some preparatory tentative action on the 1 Dr. Matthews, in Dr. Schaff s edition of Herzog's Real-Encycloplldie. CONCLUSION. 631 part of Rev. Dr. McCosh, President of Princeton, and the Rev. Dr. W. G. Blaikie, of Edinburgh, as well as the simultaneous appointment of committees of correspondence by the General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Churches of Ireland and the United States, a Committee which met in New York, 6 Oct., 1873, during the Evangelical Alliance there, issued an address and appeal to the Presbyterian Churches at large, to attempt an Ecumenical gathering. The proposal was heartily adopted, and in July, 1875, about a hundred delegates attended a General Conference at the English Presbyterian College in London, to prepare a Constitution for the proposed alliance of Presbyterian Churches throughout the world. As the result, the First General Council of the Alliance of Presbyterian or Reformed Churches, met in Edinburgh from 3rd to 10th July, 1877. Three hundred and thirty-three delegates were present, representing upwards of fifty different Churches in twenty-five different countries, and consisting o± more than 20,000 congregations. The Second General Council was held in Philadelphia, "the city of brotherly love," in 1880, from 23 Sept. to 2 October. The Third General Council met in Belfast, Ireland, 1884 ; and the Fourth (a very important one) in London, 1888, the tercentenary of the destruction of the Spanish Armada, and the bicentenary of the " glorious Revolution " of 1688. The Fifth Council is fixed to meet in Toronto, Canada ; and these varied quarters of the earth in which the Alliance holds its gatherings, reveal the world-wide scope and significance of its proceedings. Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia, all send their representatives. It is a polyglot assembly. Dele- gates have appeared from Presbyterian Churches in nearly every European country, Austria, Germany, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Moravia, Bohemia,. Holland, Belgium, France, and Spain, besides our own nationalities at home, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Ancient Churches like that of the old Nestorians in Persia, find their place in this Alliance under the native " Evangelical Church of Syria," and most recently formed modern Churches like that of the " United Church of Christ in Japan," a native, a self-supporting, and 632 CONCLUSION. self-governing Presbyterian Church. The statistics of so vast a number of fully organized Presbyterian Churches, besides others more sporadic in all quarters of the globe, indicating as they do that the Alliance represents 20,000 Presbyterian con- gregations, with 4,000,000 communicants and 20,000,000 ad- herents, are fitted to enlighten any who may still be under the impression that Presbyterianism is chiefly a Scottish mode of worship, and may well surprise even those who are not wholly unacquainted with the world-wide diffusion of the Presbyterian method of Church government. Presbyterianism has done much to solve some intricate and difficult Church problems already, such as that of a Free Church in a Free State, and a free conscience in a free, Evangelical, and international Church system. It does not profess itself to be a finality, but it may not unlikely come nearer than any other mode of Church administration to the great Union Church of the future. Its own uniting time has come. Its divisions are being- healed, and its organizing power is being manifested in generous forms all over the world. While, therefore, it carries forward its own work in its own way, Presbyterianism in Eng- land may help various religious sections of the community into closer relations and happier understanding with each other, while none the less faithful to its own essential principles. A quiet, dignified, earnest, attention to the spiritual necessities of the people and to its own work of Church consolidation and evangelical extension, and not any noisy zeal of ecclesiastical partisanship, may best enable it to act wisely and efficiently as emergencies arise, and to verify anew its ancient motto, — " Nec tamen Consumebatur." The bush did burn with fire, and yet it was not consumed. INDEX. Aaron's Rod Blossoming, 301, note. Abbeys. See Monasteries. Many grew beyond episcopal jurisdiction, 18. Abbot, George, succeeds Bancroft as Archbishop of Canterbury, 242 ; is superseded, 246, 263. Abbots, First episcopal or mitred, in England, 18, note ; removed from House of Peers at destruction of the monasteries, 24. Abbey, Sir Thomas, Presbyterian Lord Mayor of London, 490. Academies, Dissenting, 510-11, note; Presbyterian one at Warrington, 524. Act of Supremacy, !)2, 93, 94 ; Unifor- mity, see Uniformity; Conventicle, Test, Five Mile', and Oxford Acts, 393 ; Toleration, 427, seq. ; for Presbyterian Security, 558. Admonition to Parliament, First, 137; Second, 151. JElfric of Malmesbury, a.d. 994 ; de- scribes the Presbyters as highest order, 16 ; disavows Transubstantiation, 16. Aidan, St., of Northumbria, 12, 13. A'Lasco, John, Polish Reformer and London pastor, born a.d. 1499, his writings, 40 ; of noble family and highest prospects, 41 ; surrenders all, becomes Protestant, leaves Poland, 41 ; at Louvnin and Emden in East Friesland, 42 ; his work at Emden, 42 ; accepts invitation to England, 43 ; his high influence at Court, 44 ; the great charter given him for Church of the '.Strangers by Edward VI., 45 ; first Presbyterian organiza- tion of Churches legally allowed, 40 ; his influence on Second Prayer Book, 48 ; a Royal Commissioner to revive Ecclesiastical law, 48; leaves England on accession of Mary, 49 ; his work in Poland, 49, 50 ; his letter to Queen Elizabeth, 50. Alb, or long white tunic, 52, note. Alban, St., first British martyr, 8. Alban's, St., Abbot of, first mitred or episcopal abbot and spiritual peer, 24. Albigenses, 18. Alleine, Joseph, 369, note. Alliance of Presbyterian or Reformed Churches, 630. Alsop, Vincent, 457, 473, 492. Altar e Damascenum, by David Calcler- wood, the Thesaurus of Presbyterian- ism, 240, note. Ambrose, Isaac, 394, 398. America, Origin of Presbyterianism in, 334-341 ; English Presbyterian minis- ters in, 334, 335, 340. Amice (Amictus), 52, note. Amphiballus, early missionary in Bri- tain, 8. Anderson, Dr. James, of London, 556 ; of Morpeth, 576, note, 578, 626. Anglo-Saxon Chuech. Difference from earlier British Church, 14, note ; con- tained strong representative princi- ples, 15 ; its affairs managed by Church Councils, 15 ; its clergy married, 15 ; Bishops not a separate order in, 16 ; no cathedrals in,^16 ;"ita churches, 16. Anne's, Queen, reign, 494-6. Annesley, Dr., leading Presbyterian mi- nister in London, 456, 457, 529, 584. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, a.d. 1093, says Bishop and Presbyter differ only in degree, not in order, 18, note. Arianism, 499 ; among Presbyterian ministers, 500 ; in early Episcopal Churches, 512, note. Aries, Council of, a.d. 314, 9. Arminianism, 243 and note. Articles, The Thirty-nine formed, 99 ; distinction of Doctrinal and Disci- plinary, 133, 187; the thirty-five Doctrinal Articles, and tbe place they held after 1688, 429, 446; the Lam- beth Calvinistic Articles, 243 ; the Whitgift Test Articles, 187-8. Ashe, Simeon, 276, 308, 360, 374. Assembly, Westminster, Parliament calls, 287 ; constitution, 288 ; leading members, 288-9 ; swears to Solemn League and Covenant, 291 ; transac- tions 1643-1649, 295; Directory of Worship, 296 ; form of Presbyterial government, 300 ; collision with Par- liament, 302 ; Confession of Faith and Catechisms, 303. Associations, Ministerial, under Com- monwealth, 365 ; in Worcestershire, 365 ; in Cumberland and Westmore- land, 367 ; in Cheshire, 368; in Shrop- shire, Flint, and Welsh border, 369. Athanasian Creed, 431. Augustine of Canterbury, 10. Autonomy of the Church, 295, 301. Aylmer, Bishop of London, originally Puritan, 183, note ; becomes severely opposed to Puritans, 181, note ; Spen- ser assails him, 184. 634 INDEX. Bacon, Lord, his views on Puritan posi- tion, 197, note. Baillie, Principal Bobert, his letters and journals, 269, note, 289, note, 295, note; a Commissioner to England, 269 ; Member of Westminster Assem- bly, 292, 299; his views of Church government, 354, note. Bancroft, Bishop of London and after- wards Archbishop of Canterbury, 143 ; his book on Dangerous Positions and Proceedings for Presbyterial Disci- pline, 143 ; first to maintain the Divine right of Diocesan Episcopacy, 225 ; attacked by Dr. John Rainoldes, 226, note; scene with Melville, 239. note. Bangor, or Welsh Bancornbury, 412, note. Baptists, early, disavow all religious coercion, 353, note. Barbour, G. F., Sketch of Presbyterian Church of England, 3, note. Baxter, Richard, his Presbyterianism, 367, note ; his pious zeal, 366 ; his Life and Times, 375, note ; his desire for Christian union, 366, 374 ; at the Savoy Conference, 381 ; his liturgy, 382 ; his sufferings as an ejected minister, 405 ; his literary activity, 404. Becon, Thomas, Cranmer's chaplain, Catechism, 110, note ; Bishop and minister, he thinks the same, 110. Bede, Venerable, account of Iona and its Church constitution, 11, note; account of Oswald and Aidan, 13. Belsham, Thomas, Rev., Unitarian leader, 536, 538. Bernicia, 12. Berwick-on-Tweed. See Knox, 571, 610. Beza, Theodore, 105, 120, 137 and note. Bishops, in Scripture, same as Presby- ters, 8 ; not diocesan in early Churches, 8 ; Elizabeth's first, Cal- vinistic and inclined to Presbyterian- ism, 96 ; ejected from House of Lords in 1642, 277, 284. "Bishops' War" against Scotland, first and second, 265. Black, Rev. John, references to, 513, 607, 611. Blythe, Rev. James, and his family, 578-9, note. Book of Sports, 320 and note. Booth, Sir George, leads Presbyterians in Cheshire, 371, 395, 417 ; becomes Lord Delamere, 396 ; obligations of suffering Presbyterians to the Booths of Dunham Massey, 396. Bourne, Samuel, 508. Bourne, William, 321. Boyle, Hon. Robert, 339. Boyse, Joseph, leading Presbyterian minister in Dublin, 499, note. Bradford, John, the martyr, 318. Breda, Declaration from, by Charles II., 373, 377, 381, 417. Brigbtman, Dr. Thomas, a leading Presbyterian minister, 235, note. Britain, Entrance of Christianity into, 8. British Bishops, of what kind, 9, 10 ; Church, 8 ; colleges, 10 ; monasteries, 10 ; councils, 10 ; chronicles, 10. Brownists, 196. Bruen, John, Cheshire Puritan, 331 and note. Bucer, Martin (German name, Kuhorn), Reformer at Strasburg, 29 ; invited to England by Cranmer, and arrives at critical juncture a.d. 1549, 30; draws up Ordination form which is used in Prayer Book, 31 ; he himself holds Presbyterian views, 31, 32; his Seripta Anglicana, 30, note, 34, 36; differences between Ordinal and his form, 33 ; his Presbyterianizing draft of Church reform for Edward VI. in 1551, 34- 38 ; dies Theological Professor at Cambridge, 35. Bullinger of Zurich, the sponsor and foster-father of early English Re- formers, 54, 103 ; Hooper's letters to him, 55 ; Utenhove to him, 59 ; Sandys to him, 108. Burning of heretics begun by statute, a.d. 1401, 21. Burns, William C, missionary to China, 627. Busher's, Leonard, Plea for Liberty of Conscience, 353, note. Cadwalla, apostate Welsh king, 12. Calamy, Edmund, the elder, one of the writers of Smectymnuus, 270 ; leading London Presbyterian minister, 308, 312 and note, 374, 375. Calamy, Dr. Edmund, the younger, 387, note, 451-3, notes, 503, 5*06. Calderwood, David, his Church History and his Altar e Damascenum, 240, note. Calvin, 37 ; his great influence in Eng- land, 96. Calvinism, the prevailing theology of the Reformers and early divines in England, 242-3, note. INDEX. 635 Calvinistic Methodists or Presbyterians in Wales, 594, seq. Cambridge (England) University of, 113; Puritanism in, 113, 117; statutes and regulations of, 117, note, 120, note. Cambridge (New England) 336; The Cambridge Platform, 336 and note. Candida Casa (Whit-horn) 9. Carlyle, Thomas, on Knox's Puritanism, 86. Cart wright, Thomas, the Presbyterian leader, 111 ; Lady Margaret Divinity Professor, 113 ; his views summed up in six Articles, 118 ; deprived of his Professorshijn, 118; lives abroad, 120; writes the Second Admonition, 151 ; his contest with Whitgift, 151, 153 ; writes the Directory, or Book of Disci- pline, 160 ; his stand against the ex- officio oath, 219 ; his sufferings, 152, 195, 219; retires to Warwick, 196; his death, 239. Cassock (caracalla), 53, note. Catechism, Assembly's Shorter,' 303, 508. Cawton, Thomas, 405. Celtic Churches, early missionary work of, 10. Chadderton, Dr. Lawrence, 237, note. Chalmers, Thomas, 611. Chalmers, Principal William, 612. Chandler, Dr. Samuel, 508, 530 endnote. Channel Islands, Presbyterianism esta- blished in 164-174. Charke, William, Presbyterian Puritan, 120, note, 146. Charles I., his Presbyterian baptism, 244 ; his difficult position on coming to throne, 244 ; Laud his chief eccle- siastical counsellor, 246 ; his inter- meddling policy in Church matters, 255, 261; re-issues Book of Sports, 320 ; meets with rebuff, 262 ; his in- fatuated policy, 264 ; his Scottish dis- asters, 265 ; passing Bill for ejecting Bishops, his last constitutional act, 277 ; collision with Parliament, 409 ; successful in earlier campaigns of civil war, 289 ; his move on London, 306 ; corresponds at Newcastle with Alexander Henderson on Presbytery, 568 ; Presbyterians oppose and con- demn his execution, 315, 348, 356. Charles II., Presbyterians promoted his Eestoration, 417 ; his Declaration from Breda, 417 ; his Worcester House Declaration, 376 ; seems at first to favour Presbyterians, 376, 378 ; yet thoroughly opposed to them, 377, 400 ; his Indulgence of 1672, 393, note ; his hypocrisy, 400 ; his despot- ism, 402, 406. Charles, Bev. Thomas, of Bala, 599, 600. Chasuble, the sacerdotal vestment, 52, note. Cheshire, its early Puritans, 331 ; its Presbyterian ministers, 332, 333 ; its attestation, 332. Chester, Siege of, 330 ; description of, 330. Clarendon, Lord, 375, 376, 377, 381; his history, 378, note; his life, 390 and note. Clarke, Dr. Samuel, 498. Cobham, Lord. See Ohlcastle. Cole, Dr. William, takes part in Knox's Liturgy, 77, 83. Comprehension Bill, 430-431. Congregational Board Fund, 465, 523, notes, 576, note, 609, note. Congregational Union, 605, note. Congregationalists, present designation of Independents, 605, note. Consultation, or Directoi-y, of Archbishop Hermann, 31. Conventicula (conventicles), 9. Convocation, first Reformed, 99 ; critical votes in, 99 ; unworthy conduct, 91 ; suspended by Government, 497. Cope (cappa), 52, note. Corporation Act, 490. Council of Aries, a.d. 314, 9 ; Rimini, a.d. 359, 9. Councils, Early British, 10. Covenant, Solemn League and, 289, 290 ; sworn to by Parliament and Westminster Assembly, 291 ; to be distinguished from Scottish National Covenant, 292 ; taken thrice by Charles II., 386; Pension Parliament orders it to be burnt, 383 ; copies curiously preserved, 383, note ; Act of Unifor- mity required abjuration of, 385. Coverdale (ex-Bishop of Exeter), an Elder in John Knox's Church at Geneva, 80 ; takes part in consecra- ting Archbishop Parker in Genevan cloak, 95; is neglected by Elizabeth, and dies in poverty because he was against " the habits," 102, note. Cranmer, 25, 30, 34, 44, 48, 61, note, 67. Crisp, Dr. Tobias, 470. Cromwell, Oliver, swears to Covenant, 292 ; Self-denying Ordinance, profits by, 314 ; seizes London, 314 ; his relations to Presbyterians, 315, 359, 636 INDEX. 361, note ; his Protectorate, 362 ; his ecclesiastical policy, 363 ; his charac- ter, 363 ; his death, 370. Cromwell, Eichard, 370 ; sympathizes with Presbyterian party, 370. Dangerous Positions. See Bancroft. Deering, Edward, Presbyterian leader, 157. Defoe, Daniel, Presbyterian, 490, 494, 495, note. Deira, 12. Dennesburn, Great battle of, near Hex- ham, 12. Dering, Sir Edward, 273 ; introduces Bill for abolishing Episcopac.y, 282. Devonshire Presbyterianism, 365, 466- 468. D'Ewes, Sir Shnonds, Presbyterian Member of Long Parliament, 129 ; value of his journals of Parliaments of Elizabeth, 129, note. Dinoth of Bangor, 412, note. " Diocese " (the word) first used offi- cially in England, a.d. 1138, 15, note. Directory of Presbyterian Government, Cartwright's, 160, 161; Westminster Assembly's, 298-300, 449; of Public Worship, 296. Discipline, The, 38, 57, 121; Book of, 161 ; Demonstration of, see Udall. Dissenters, 428, 442, 459, 591 ; The Three Denominations, 614, 615, 616; Regium Donum of, 609, note. Dissenters' Chapel Bill of 1844, 620, note. Doctrinal Puritans, The, 223. Dod, John, the Decalogist, subscribes Presbyterian Book of Discipline, 241. Doelittle, Eev. Thomas, 479, 480, note. Dort, Synod of, 242-3. Dunstan, 15. Dutch Presbyterian Church, 255, 257,263. Edinburgh, or Edwiuburgh, Frontier of Bernicia, 12. Edward VI., 34, 35, 38 and note, 46, 57. Edwards, President Jonathan, 341. Edwin, King of Deira, 12. Edwin, Sir Humphrey, Presbyterian Lord Mayor of London, 490. Eldership, Theories of the, 298. Eliot, John, Apostle of the Indians, 337 ; his Presbyterial views, 337, 338 ; his work and writings, 339 and note. Elizabeth, Queen, her Accession, 1558, 89 ; a Protestant chiefly on political grounds, 90, 91 ; her Protestantism a compromise, 90 ; is made Supreme Governor in Church, 93 and note ; in- sists on her prerogatives, 91 ; and on uniformity, 101 ; severely opposed to Puritans, 107 ; imprisons the early Presbyterians, 104, 139 ; sways the Church of England to her own mind, 130 ; suppresses the prophesyings, 177 ; her treatment of Grindal, 182; her second High Commission against Puritans, 189 ; inexorable to the Presbyterian Udall, 216 ; her dimin- ished popularity and death, 233. Emlyn, Thomas, the Arian, 499, note. Erskine, Ebenezer, 558, 571. Erskine, Henry, 571. Essex, Presbyterianism in, 327 and note ; its fourteen Presbyteries, 329 ; testimony of its ministers, 329, 353. Exempt jurisdictions, what ? 224 ; and non-Episcopal Ordinaries, 224, note. Exercises. See Prophesyings. Exeter, The Assembly at, 501 ; Its Pres- byterian meeting-houses, 500, 501, note. Exiles, English, in Frankfort, 73, 74 ; in Geneva, 80. Fairfax, Lord General and Lady Fair- fax as Presbyterians, 293, 294. Faerie Queene, Spenser's, its Puritan idea and sympathy described, 227-29. Fenn, Humphrey, Presbyterian preacher at Coventry, 188, 221, note, 225, note. Fenner, Dudley, 202, 203, 205, notes. Field, John, early Presbyterian, 137 ; he writes the first Admonition to Parliament, 137; imprisoned, 140; his connection with the first Presby- tery at Wandsworth, 143 ; endorses Bill, or Order of Wandsworth, 143, 145, 147 ; letter of, 193, note. Filmer, Sir Eobert, 401, 402. Flavel, John, Devonshire Presbyterian, 467. Foreign Churches in England, 107, 246, note. See A'Lasco. Founders' Hall, Presbyterian Church at, 553-4. See London Wall. Foxe, John, his Acts and Monuments, or Book of Martyrs, set in churches, 102 ; referred to, 21, 61, note; takes part in Knox's Liturgy, 76, 77 ; ejected for refusing the surplice, 102, note. Frankfort, English exiles in, 74. Fulke, Dr. William, thinks Bishop and Presbyter one, 110 note, 220; author of A Learned Discourse of Eccles. Govt., or, A brief and plain Declara- tion for Discipline, 202, note. Fuller, Dr. Thos., Church History of Britain, 12, 74 and note, 220. INDEX. 637 Geneva, English exiles in, 80 ; first English Presbyterian Church in, 81 ; English version of Bible, 84 ; English Service book, or Book of Common Order, 82. Gilby, Anthony, prominent at Frankfort and Geneva, 76, 77, 80, 83; very learned Presbyterian, 83 ; author of A Pleasant Dialogue, etc., 83, note. Gillespie, George, Scotch Commissioner to England, 292 ; Member of West- minster Assembly, 295, 301. Gilpin, Dr. Eicbard, Rector of Grey- stoke, and first Nonconforming Pres- byterian minister Newcastle-on-Tyne, 368 and note, 574 and note. Gladstone quoted, 393, note. Glastonbury and the "Holy Thorn," 8. Goodman, Christopher, 80, 85, 330. Gouge, Dr. Wm., 308, 311, 377, note, 406. Gratian, 12th Century, Founder of Canon Law, 17 ; holds original one- ness of Bishop and Presbyter, 18. Grindal, Edmund, Archbishop of Can- terbury, 179 ; defends Prophesyings, 180 ; his remarkable letter, 180 ; praised by Spenser, 184. Haddan and Stubbs, Councils of Britain, 15. Hallam, Constitutional History, 4, 22, 96, 130, 133. Halls, London Companies', '.used for worship, Salters', Founders', Pinners', 444, 553-4 ; Crosby Hall, 444, note. Hamilton, Dr. James, 610, 612, 625. Hampton Court Conference, 237. Harvey, R., Presbyterian at Norwich, 157. Helvetic Consensus, 55, note. Henderson, Alexander, the Scottish Presbyterian leader, 265 ; a Scotch Commissioner to England, ■ 269 ; his Presbyterian pamphlets, 269 ; pre- pares the Solemn League and Cove- nant, 292 ; Member of Westminster Assembly, 292 ; his correspondence with Charles I. at Newcastle, 568. Henry VIII., ecclesiastical revolution by, 22 ; chiefly political, 22 ; two great feats: overthrow of supremacy of Pope, and total suppression of monasteries, 22-24 ; tyrannical pro- cedure of, 25 ; became reactionary in doctrine, a.d. 1539, 25 ; his remarkable books, The Institution, and The Eru- dition of a Christian Man, 24 ; teaches strong anti-prelatic doctrine of only two orders of ministers, 25 ; his novel dogma of the Supremacy, 23, note; compels " the submission of the Clergy," 23. Henry, Matthew, early life, 477-80 ; his ordination, 481 ; ministry at Chester, 482 ; his Presbyterian principles, 482, 483 ; his Commentary and writings, 484 ; removes to Hackney, 485 ; his death, 485, 486. Henry, Philip, ejected Presbyterian minister, 408 ; Diaries and Letters of, 408, note ; born within precincts of Whitehall Palace, 408 ; favourite pupil of Dr. Busby at Westminster School, 410; student of Christ Church, Oxford, 411 ; his ordination and ministry, 413 ; his marriage to Catherine Matthews, 416 ; his Pres- byterian principles, 413, 420; his sufferings as a Nonconformist, 419, 421 ; his life at Broad Oak, 419. Herle.JCharles, Rector of Winwick, and Prolocutor of Westminster Assembly, 321. Hewley, ;Sir John and Lady, of York, 445 ; Lady Hewley Chancery suits, 617-620. Heylin, Peter, D.D., his Aerins Redi- vivus, 4, 217 ; his virulence against Presbyterians, 4, note ; History of Re- formation, 38. Heyricke, Richard, Warden of Man- chester, 320. Heywood, Oliver, leader of Yorkshire Presbyterian Nonconformists, 395, 397 ; takes part in first Noncon- formist ordination, 397. Higginson, Francis, 335. High Commission Court, its origin and constitution, 94 and notes. Hildersham, Arthur, subscribes Pres- byterian Book of Discipline, 240 ; called Cousin Hildersham by Queen Elizabeth, 240 ; continues the pro- phesyings, 240 ; his sufferings, 241. Hill, Joseph, 259, 311, note. Hill, Matthew, 340. Holland, English Presbyterian exiles in, 255 ; Presbyterian Church in, the first National Church that was tol- erant, 255 ; British Synod in, 256, 261 ; English Presbyterian Churches in, 258-260, 263. Hollinworth, Richard, of Manchester, 322. Hooker, Richard, Master of Temple, 5, 194 ; his Ecclesiastical Polity, 223, note, 152, 226-7, notes. Hooper, Bishop, early life of, 54 ; 638 INDEX. studies under Bullinger, 54 ; refuses Episcopal vestments, 52 ; declines the form of oath at consecration, 57 ; issues his Godly Confession and Protestation, 58 ; argues with Ridley, 57 ; sent to prison about the vest- ments, 58 ; compromise effected with him, 58; very advanced views on religious toleration, the Lord's Supper, and the Church, 56, 57 ; ideal of a Bishop, 59 ; his martyrdom at Glou- cester, 60, 61 ; his early and later writings, 56, note. Horningsham, Wiltshire, oldest meet- ing-house of Scotch Presbyterians, 103, note. Horsley, John, author of Britannia Romana, 575. Howe, John, on ordination, 321, 492 ; in what sense Presbyterian, 465, note, 490, 492, notes. Huguenots in England, 107, 246, note. Hyde, Lord Chancellor. See Clarendon. " Independents," word first used a.d. 1609, 5, note ; relations to Brown and Barrow, 196, note; pastor Robinson and the Pilgrim Fathers, 255 ; their congre- gations in Holland, 261 ; their writings on the Church question, 276 ; the Independents in the Westminster As- sembly, 289 ; the controversy there, 295-6; the grand debate, 300, 301, note; their plea for toleration, its ground and extent, 312, 313 ; in New England, 335, 336 ; under the Com- monwealth and Protectorate, 362-368 ; among the ejected, 387 ; Post Revo- lution Independents, how they differed from Presbyterians, 449, 454, 527, note; in their "happy union" with Presbyterians, 461 ; rupture of union by Antinomian controversy, 469 ; Presbyterian congregations becoming Independent, 527, 540, note. See Congregationalists. Indians, North American mission to. See Eliot. Iona, 10. Irving, Edward, 555, 609-10. Jacob, Henry, first to use "Independ- ent " in its ecclesiastical sense, a.d. 1609, 5, note. James I., King, his Basilicon Doron, 234 ; maintains Presbyterian Church in Scotland, 234 ; resents opposition of Presbyterian ministers, 234 ; Mille- nary Petition to him on coming to England, 235 ; his conduct at Hamp- ton Court Conference, 238 ; inconsist- encies of his reign, 242 and note. James II., his bigotry, 407 ; Presby- terians oppose his unconstitutional policy, 407. Jenkyn, William, distinguished Presby- terian minister, 405 ; his writings and sufferings, 406, note. Jerome says, Presbyter is same as Bishop, 17, note. Jersey and Guernsey, Presbyterianism established in, a.d. 1576, 164-174. Jewel, Bishop, a Puritan Precisian, 96. Jurisdictions, Exempt, 224. King, Lord Chancellor, 433 ; sou of Exeter Presbyterian, 435 ; his cele- brated Enquiry into the Primitive Church, 437. Kingsmill, Andrew, retires to Geneva, 109. Kneeling at Lord's Supper, Question of, 56, 65-68, 225, 384, note. Knewstubbs, 237, note, 238. Knox, John, in England, a.d. 1549-1553, 62 ; released from French galleys, 62 ; his five years' work in Berwick, Newcastle, and London, 62 ; travelling preacher and King's Chaplain, 63, 65 ; calls the Mass idolatrie, 64 ; vindicates himself before immense audience in St. Nicholas' Church, Newcastle, 64 ; introduced " sitting " at Lord's Supper, 65 ; his influence on the Liturgy, 67 ; secures insertion of the Black Rubric, 68 ; refuses a Bishop- ric, 68, 69 ; his sermons before Edward VI., 70 ; marries English wife, 72 ; his intense zeal for Eng- land, 72 ; escapes to Dieppe, 72 ; min- ister to English exiles at Frank- fort, 76 ; the Compromise, 78 ; the " troubles " there and their causes, 78 ; driven thence to Geneva, 79 ; Minister of first English Presbyterian congregation in Geneva, 80 ; import- ance of the movement, 81, 83 ; his colleagues and fellow-labourers, 80, 85; his "Liturgy'' 82 ; his writings for England, 66 ; his letter to early seceding Puritans, 106; his death in 1572, 142. Kurtz, 13. Lancashire, Presbyterian Church Es- tablishment in, 323 ; its nine Presby- teries, 324 ; why Lancashire was fittest for Presbyterianism, 323 ; County of, INDEX. 639 316; its Puritanism, 317; its early martyrs, 318 ; its leading ministers, 321 ; its Presbyterian families, 324 ; the harmonious consent of Lancashire ministers, 352, note. Lardner, Dr. Nathaniel, 515, 525, 533. Laski. See A'Lasco. Laud, William, Archbishop, his charac- ter, 215 ; his early career, 246 ; his innovating spirit, 246-7 ; his high- handed procedure, 246, note, 251, 255, 263, note, 335, note ; his execution, 296, note. League and Covenant. See Covenant. Lechler on Eelation of British and Anglo-Saxon Church, 14. Lechler's Wycliffe, 14, 19. Leighton, Dr. Alexander, his Zion's Plea against the Prelacy, 248 ; his arrest and trial in tbe Star Chamber, 250 ; his sufferings, 251 ; his deliver- ance by the Long Parliament, 252 and note. Levi, Prof. Leone, 610, 625, notes. Ley, John, 333. Lightfoot, Bishop, holds Bishop and Presbyter originally identical, 6, note. Lightfoot, Dr. John, 289, 404. Liturgy, Knox's, or Book of Geneva, used by English Presbyterians, 105 ; Eng- lish Presbyterians, not opposed to idea of a, 431, 439. Livres des Anglais, Geneva, 80 and note. Llewen Mawr, or Lucius, British King, 8. Lollards stamped out'in blood and fire, 21. Lombard, Peter, in 12th century, holds original oneness of Presbyter and Bishop, 18. London. Presbyterian under Long Parliament, 304 ; description of, 307 ; its twelve Presbyteries, 310 ; its Pro- vincial Synod, 311 ; its Minutes and Records, 311-12, note ; surrenders to the army, 314 ; London Presbyterian ministers, 308-9 ; their Presbyterian writings, 311, 312, notes ; their pro- tests against the execution of Charles I., 315. London Wall Presbyterian Church, 554- 5. See Founders' Hall. Lorimer, Principal of English Presby- terian College, his John Knox and the Church of England, 62, 66, 67 ; on First Presbytery at Wandsworth, 142, 144, 148; his edition of the Directory, or Bool: of Discipline, 160 ; his Address in 1845, 612, note. Love, Christopher, Presbyterian Cove- nanter and martyr, 356-361 ; his trial, 357, 358 ; his noble wife, 358 ; his execution, 360 ; effects of, 361 ; his principles, 360. Lucius, Llewen Mawr, British King, 8. Macaulay, Lord, quoted, 400, 407, note, 491, 496, note. Mackintosh, Sir James, 95, note. Manchester tPresbytery, 324, note, 325, note. Manchester, Socinian Controversy, 617. See Lancashire and Newcome. Maniple (a sacerdotal vestment), 52, note. Manton, Dr. Thomas, 309, 360, 361, 374, 375, note, 378, 404. Mar-prelate controversy and tracts, 198 ; their causes, 200 ; origin, 204 ; by whom produced, 205 ; seizure of secret press, 204 and note ; Walde- grave their printer, 203, 204. Marsh, George, Martyr, 318. Marshall, Stephen, the Presbyterian preacher, 270, 309. Martindale, Adam, 333 ; his Autobio- graphy, 333, 368 ; describes associa- tion in Cheshire, 368. Maryland, Presbyterians in, 340. McCrie, Dr. Thomas (senior), Life of Knox, 62 ; Life of Melville, 239, note. McCrie, Dr. Thomas (the younger), Annals of English Presbytery, 3 note, 153, note, 386-7, 491. Medievalism, 17, 18 ; traces of Presby- terian theory of Church and ministry in, 17. Melville, Andrew, basely treated by King James, 239, note ; scene with Ban- croft, 239, note. Methodism, how it became Presby- terian, 583-593 ; origin of the move- ment, 583 ; its relation to Puritan- ism, 584 ; its three phases, 586. See Wesley. In Wales, Calvinistic, 594- 601. Milton, John, difference between his Comus, 1634, and his Lycidas, 1637, 254 ; his Presbyterian pamphlets, 274 ; he took the Covenant, 314 ; assails the Presbyterian coercive policy, 314. Missionary Society, First modern, 338 ; early Society promoted by Presbyte- rians, 336-7 ; work among Indians, 339. See Eliot. China Mission of Presbyterian Church, 627. Monasteries, Early, were Colleges and 640 INDEX. Missionary Institutes, 10 ; abolition of, 24. Monk, General George, Commander of Forces in Scotland, 371 ; overthrows the Bump Parliament, 371; concludes for Presbyterian government, 372 ; his selfish duplicity, 372, note ; bis service to Charles II., 373 and note; is made Duke of Albemarle, 373, note. Morpeth, Presbyterian Church in, 575, 576, note. Morrice, Mr. Attorney, Puritan lawyer in Parliament, 222 ; kept close prisoner at Tutbury, 222. Morrice, Eoger, MBS., 207, note. Morrison, case of his ordiuation 132, note. Morton, Bishop of Chester, prepares Book of Sports, 320. Neander, 14. Neo-nomian Controversy, 469. Newcastle-on-Tyne, John Knox settled in, 64, 65; JohnUdallin,208 ; Chris- topher Love in, 356 ; conference be- tween Charles I. and Alexander Hen- derson on Presbytery, 568 ; early Classis or Presbytery in, 569 ; histori- cal memorials of Presbyterianism in, 570 ; Dr. Bichard Gilpin and his Church, 574 ; early ordinations in, 569, note, and 574 ; Newcastle Presby- tery, 576, 577, notes, 578; Blackett Street Church, its minister, William Graham, and his work on Ecclesias- tical Establishments in Europe, 578, note. Newcome, Henry, the great preacher of Manchester, 322 and note, 333, 394- 5 ; leader of old Presbyterian Dissent, 397, 445 ; takes part in first Noncon- formist ordination, 397. Newcomen, Matthew, 271, 375, note. New England, the Mayflower Pilgrims, 335 ; Presbyterians in, 335, 336 ; New England Company, 339 ; Cam- bridge and Saybrook Platforms, 336 and 338, notes. Nonjurors, Church of the, 442. Northampton, earliest prophesyings at, 121, 124. Northamptonshire, chief seat of Presby- terian Classes, 218. Northumberland. See Northumbria. Knox's work in, 05, 567 ; Presby- terianism in, 567, 573, 575-9. Northumbria, early Kingdom of, 11 ; Oswald, King of, 12 ; trained at Iona, 12 ; great victory of, at Dennesburn, 12 ; Oswald becomes Bretwalda, or High Sovereign, 12 ; sends to Iona for missionaries, 12 ; St. Aidan, apostle of, 12, 13 ; chooses Lisdisfarne for seat of his Missionary Institute, 12 ; Cul- dee or Iona Church in, 10 ; not hier- archical, 11 ; checked at Synod of Whitby, 13, 14. Nowel, Alexander, his Catechism, 100; his Presbyterian views, 100, 101. Ogle, Luke, of Berwick, 571. Oldcastle, Sir John (Lord Cobham) the Lollard leader, 21 ; cruel death of, a.d. 1417, 21 ; Shakespeare's changed view of him, and substitutes Sir John Fal- staff, 21, note. Order of Wandsworth, 143-6. Ordination, Presbyterian, recognised formerly in Church of England, 132, aud note ; but declared invalid by Act of Uniformity, 383, 386 ; Presby- terians attached importance to, 413, 418, 449 ; first Presbyterial ordina- tion in private, 397, 456 ; first public ones, 456, 457; Philip Henry's, 413, 414 ; Matthew Henry's, 481, 482. Oswald, King of Northumbria, sends to Iona, 12. Owen, Dr. John, 308, 349, and 411, notes. Owen, Bev. James, of Oswestry and Shrewsbury, 510. Oxford Act, 393 ; oath, 405. Oxford University,411, ?;ote; its disgrace- ful Decree, 402. Paget, John, Presbyterian minister, and his book, 331. Pall (pallium), 53, note; Matthew Parker, first Archbishop without one, 95. Pamphlet war, Presbyterian, 264 ; thirty thousand pamphlets on Church Question, a.d. 1610-1660, 264. Parker, Matthew, first Protestant Arch- bishop of Canterbury, 95 ; his singu- lar consecration, 95. Patrick, St., 10. Paulinus, Roman monk at York, 12. Peculiar Ordinaries, 224, note. Peden, Alexander, 572. Peirce, James, Presbyterian minister at Exeter, 500; controversy regarding, 501, 504. Penda, King of Mercia, 12. Penry, John, 202, 205. Petitions to Parliament. Boot and Branch, 266 ; Ministers', 266 ; from Suffolk and Essex, 328 ; from Cheshire, 332. INDEX. 641 Pltamix Britannicus, 74, note. Pillory, the, 251, 253, 495. Poole, Matthew, Presbyterian minister and commentator, 377, note : his Annotations, 404. Pope Paul IV. insults Queen Elizabeth, 90, note. Pope Pius Y. excommunicates her, 104, note. Poynet, Bishop, argues for superin- tendent in place of the word Bishop, 38, 39. " Precisians," word first used, 5. Presbyterianism described, 5-8. Presbyterians. Party of Keform within Church of England, a.d. 1550-1662, 3 ; have not had justice done them, 4 ; relation of, to Puritans, 5 ; the name getting into use about, 1570, 6 ; re- lation to Episcopacy, 6 ; a system of Church government, 7 ; its three leading features, 8. Traces of their main principle : — in ancient British and Welsh Church, 8; in Northum- brian Church, 11 ; in Anglo-Saxon Church, 15; in Medievalism, 17; in Wycliffite and Pre-Beformation Times, 19 ; in ecclesiastical revolu- tion under Henry VIII., 22; their rise in the Beformed Church of Eng- land, 29 ; Bucer's draft of Presby- terianizing Church Beform for Edward VI., 36 ; King Edward VI. favours their view, 38 ; he grants charter to John A'Lasco in 1550, 46 ; Church of the Strangers in London Presby- terially organized, 40, 47 : growth of Presbyterian views among English exiles at Frankfort, 76, 77 ; first English Presbyterian Church organ- ized in Geneva, 82 ; development of Presbyterian party in Elizabethan Church, 97, 108; Cartwright their leader, 111 ; beginnings in the Dis- cipline and the Prophesyings, 121 ; first Presbyterian manifesto or Ad- monition to Parliament, 137 ; First Presbytery, 1572, erected at Wands- worth, 142 ; their principles formu- lated in the Directory, 1583, 160; signed by 500 clergy, 161 ; the great controversy between Whitgift and Cartwright, 151, 153 ; leading Pres- byterian clergy, 156 ; Classes and Synods, 158 ; the great struggle from 1583 to 1600, 186 ; their persecution and sufferings, 219 ; represented in Hampton Court, 235 and note; sur- vivors of early Presbyterians, 240, 241 ; new soil for their growth under Laud and absolutism, 244 ; fresh struggle begun by Dr. Alexander Leighton, 248 ; and by William Prynne, 252 ; English Presbyterian exiles in Holland and their British Synod, 255 ; English Presbyterian Churches in Holland, 258-260 ; Presbyterian pamphlet war, 264 ; Presbyterian rising in Scotland, 265 ; Presbyterian petitions to Long Parliament, 266 ; Smectymnuau controversy, 270 ; Milton's Presbyterian pamphlets ; 274 ; Presbyterian leaders in Long Parliament, 279 ; the great ecclesi- astical debate, 282 ; ejection of Bishops from House of Peers, King Charles I. passes Bill for, 284 ; Parlia- ment calls Westminster Assembly, 287 ; swears to Solemn League and Covenant, 291 ; passes ordinances for National Presbyterian Establish- ment, 302, 310 ; settles Presbyterian government for London, 310 ; and for Lancashire, 323 ; Presbyterian steps in other counties, 326, 329 ; the Presbyterians in England and the origin of Presbyterianism in America, 334 ; in New England, 335 ; in the Middle Colonies, 340 ; how the Pres- byterians failed to establish them- selves in England, 345 ; charge of in- tolerance against them examined, 349 ; under the Later Commonwealth and Protectorate, 362 ; how dealt with at the Bestoration, 373 ; two sections of, 374 ; ejected under Act of Uniformity, 387 ; their heroic sufferings and struggles, 390, 393, 405, 406 ; Philip Henry, a Presbyterian, 409, note ; 413, 420 ; Presbyterians and the Bevolution of 1688, 427; Presby- terians and the Protestant Dissenting Interest, 427 ; then- worship and discipline tolerated, but not their ecclesiastical polity, 429, 430; dis- appointed in the failure of Compre- hension Bill, 430-31 ; their early- meeting-houses, 441, 443 ; constitu- tion and peculiarities of their post- Bevolution congregations, 448 : lack of organization, 450 ; causes of, 451, 452 ; how they differed from Inde- pendents, 454 ; what they meant by ordination, 456-7 ; their first ordina- tions as Non-conformists, 456, 457 ; Presbyterians and Independents in their Happy Union, 1691, 461 ; the heads of agreement, 460 ; what they T T 642 INDEX. surrendered in it, 462; the provincial associations, 466 ; rupture cf union by Antinoraian controversy, 469 ; leading Presbyterians, Dr. Daniel Williams, Dr. William Bates, John Howe, Matthew Henry, 474; Mat- thew Henry's life and work, 477 ; transitional and spasmodic period, 490 ; trying and changing influences at work, 493 ; subscription contro- versy, 499 ; Exeter Assembly, 501 ; Salters' Hall Synod, 502 ; Presby- terians divide into Subscriptionists and Non-Subscbiptionists, 506 ; In- sidious tendency to Arianism, and its causes, 508 ; further defection and decay, 520 ; the heterodox Pres- byterian congregations, 526 ; Pres- byterian congregations becoming In- dependent, 527, 540, note ; or extinct, 529; "Presbyterian," word acquires a doctrinal significance, 533 ; the Arian party is driven to Unitarian- ism, 534 ; wreck and decline of spiritual life, 541 ; revival of Pres- byterians in England, 545 ; chief causes and elements of, 551, 552; early Scottish Churches in England, 553 ; the first in London, 553-4 ; others begun, 555; early Secession Churches, 557 ; a faithful remnant of orthodox English Presbyterians, 561 ; sjiecially in Northumberland, 567 (see Nortli- umberland) ; how Methodism, under Wesley, became Presbyterian, 583- 593 ; the Presbyterians or Calvinistic Methodists in Wales, 594-601 ; Pres- byterianism in England re-organized, 605 ; in connection with United Pres- byterian Church, 607 ; the Presby- terian Church in England formed, 1836-1842, 608; favourable circum- stances, 613 ; the Presbyterian Church of England reconstituted in the Union of 1876, 625 ; the Presbyterian Alli- ance, 630 ; vast extent of, over the world, 631-2. Presbytery of Wandsworth, see Wands- worth; Presbytery or Classis, 148, 158. See London, Lancashire, Northumber- land, Newcastle. Press, Bishops' control over, 151, note, 200 ; Star-chamber decrees on, 201 ; secret and Marprelate press, 203- 4 ; censorship and licensing of, 200 ; comparative freedom of, 404. Priestley, Dr., brought up an Inde- pendent, 523, 534 ; becomes minister of Presbyterian Churches at Needham, 522; at Nantwich, 524; at Leeds, 525 ; in Warrington Academy, 524 ; heads the aggressive Unitarian move- ment, 534, 622 and note. Prophesyings, Earliest example of, at Northampton, 1571, 121, 124; their usefulness, 126 ; their suppression, 177 ; at Norwich and Lancashire, 179, 185, note; occasional reappear- ance, 240 and note. Protestant Dissenters, 427. See Dis- senters. Protestantism, 425, 459. Prynne, William, early life, 252 ; his sufferings, 253 ; his Presbyterian pamphlets, 253, note; 268, note. Psalms, Metrical versions of, 297, note. " Puritans," word first used in 1564, 5 ; origin and rise of, 93-4, 102. See Presbyterians. Quick, John, 259, 466, 468 and note. Bainoldes, Dr. John, 236, note ; his letter against Divine Bight of Epis- copacy, 226, note ; at Hampton Court Conference suggests new Bible trans- lation, 238 ; King James's final words to, 239. Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, 49, note, 100, 136, note. Eegent Square Church, 555, 610. Regium Donum of English Dissenters, 609, note. Bestoration, The, of Charles II., 373-8. Revolution of 1688, 425-427, 459. Reynolds, Dr. Edward, 374, 375, note, 378. Bidley, Nicholas (Bishop), pulls down altars in his diocese, 55 and note. Rimini, Council of, a.d. 359, 9. Robinson, John (Pastor), 5, note, 335. Rule, Dr. Gilbert, of Alnwick, Principal of Edinburgh University, 571. Salters' Hall Synod, 502. See Halls. Sampson, Dean, his Presbyterian views, 109. Sautre, William, first Lollard martyr, a.d. 1401, 21. Savoy Conference, 381, 382. Schism Bill, 496. Scripta Anglicana. See Bucer. Seaman, Dr. Lazarus, 311 and note ; 374, 406. Secession Church in Scotland, its origin, 558-9. Separatists, The first Presbyterian, from the English Church, 104, 105 ; dis- INDEX. 6-43 approved of by Knox, Lever, Turner, Cartwright, and younger Presby- terians, 106. Shorter, Sir John, Presbyterian Lord Mayor, 490. Sjiectyjinous, 270, 271. Socinian (see Unitarian), 53-4 ; Man- chester Socinian Controversy, 617 and note. Spenser, Edmund, his Puritan sym- pathies, 185, 227, 228. Sports, Book of, 320 and note. Spurstow, William, 271, 375, note. Stafford, History of orthodox Presby- terian Church in, 561-6. Star Chamber Court, 91 and note. Stole (or scarf), 52, note. Strickland, a Puritan leader in Parlia- ment, 129. Strype, John, Life of Parker, 4, 107 ; Annals, 107, 109. Stubbe, John, 195, note. Stubbs, Constitutional History, 14, 15 ; Councils of Britain, 15, note. Suffolk, Presbyterianism in, 328 ; its fourteen Presbyteries, 329 and note. Supremacy, Act of, 92, 93, 94. Surplice (Super-pellicium), 53, note. Sustentation Fund, 627 ; A'Lasco's Sustentatio 2Iinistrorum, 47, note. Taylor, Dr. John, of Norwich and War- rington, his heterodox speculations, 520, 521, 524 ; extracts from, 398, 521. Theodore (of Tarsus), Archbisbop of Canterbury, first lays foundation for dioceses in England, 15. Thorpe, William, WyclifEte Evangelist, 21. Toleration Act, described, 428-430. Towgood, Micaiah, 502, note. Travers, Walter, the learned Presby- terian defender, 156 ; Cartwright's assistant at Antwerp, 156 ; his great treatise on Presbyterianism, 156; Lecturer at the Temple, and Domes- tic Chaplain to Lord Burleigb, 194 ; conflict with Hooker, 194 ; becomes Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, 195. Troubles in Frankfort, Brief Discourse of, 74, 75. Turner, William, M.D., born at Mor- peth, 43, note ; imprisoned and banished as advanced Reformer by Henry VIII., Dean of Wells and Royal Preacher under Edward VI., author of Herbal and anti-Romish tracts, opposed to Prelacy and ceremonies, 43 ; deprived by Queen Elizabeth but opposed to separatism, 106. Twisse, Dr. William, Prolocutor of Westminster Assembly, 288 and note. Tyndale, William, best English Bible translator, 25 ; his Practice of Pre- lates, a.d. 1530, teaches essence of Presbyterian view, 25 ; is burnt in 1536, 25. Udall, John, the Presbyterian martyr, 207 ; subscribed Book of Discipline, 208 ; before tbe High Commission, 208 ; his cross-examination, 210 ; his indictment, 212 ; his arbitrary sentence, 213, 215 ; Hume's remarks on his trial, 213, note; King James writes to Queen Elizabeth on his be- half, 215 ; his death, 216. Uniformity, Elizabethan, 101 ; coven- anted, 290, 293, 247 ; Act of, 381-6, 545-6. Union of England and Scotland, 558 ; of Presbyterians in England, 625. Unitarian ministers leave general body of the three Denominations, 615 ; Unitarian trustees displaced from Hewley Trust, 619. Unitarianism, outgrowth from Arianism, 534 ; Priestley makes Unitarianism aggressive, 534, 535 ; illustration of aggressiveness, 537-8 ; fluctuations of modern Unitarianism, 620 ; its rela- tions to early Presbyterians, 622. Unitarians, Heterodox Presbyterian ministers become, 535-6. United Presbyterian Church, 607, 608, 625. Ussher, Archbishop, his Reduction of Episcopacy, 272, 273, 275, 375. Veitch, Rev. William, 572 and vote. Vestments, Sacerdotal, 52, 53. Vines, Richard, 309. Virginia Company, Presbyterians in, 334. Waldegrave, printer, and his secret press, 202-204. Wandswortb, First Presbytery at, 142 ; order of, 146 ; mistakes about, 147, note. Warwick, 218, 224. Wentworth, Peter, a leading Puritan in Elizabethan Parliaments, 134 ; his patriotic speaking, 135 ; committed to the Tower, 135 ; released, 136. Wesley, John, his relations to the old Presbyterians, 584 ; his mother, 586 ; 644 INDEX. ceases to be High Churchman, 588- 9 ; influence of Lord Chancellor King's book on, 588 ; his Presbyterian views and practices, 589 ; places his chapels under the Dissenters' Act, 591 ; clings to Church of England, and explains his apparent incon- sistency, 591. Westminster Assembly, Parliament calls, 287 ; its constitution, 288 ; leading members, 288-9 ; swears to Solemn League and Covenant, 291 ; transactions, a.d. 1613-1649, 295 ; Directory of Worship, 296 ; form of Presbyterial government, 300 ; its collision with Parliament, 302 ; its Confession of Faith and Catechisms, 303. Whiston, William, 408, 500. Whitby, Synod of, a.d. 664, 13, 14. White, John, M.P., of Southwark, his Century of Scandalous Ministers, 266. White, John, Rev., Patriarch of Dor- chester, and Assessor in Westminster Assembly, 289, 308, 335. Whitefield, George, 583, 587 and note ; 594, 598, 605, note. Whitehead, David, 73, note; 76, 95, note. Whitgift, Archbishop, his early con- troversy with Cartwright, 153 ; once opposed to the vestments, 113 ; severity at Cambridge, 118, note ; the Whitgift Articles, 187 ; his severe measures, 189. Whittingham, William, 77, 80 ; Calvin's brother-in-law, 84 ; translates Geneva New Testament, 84 ; is made Dean of Durham without Episcopal ordina- tion, 83. Wilcox, Thomas, early Presbyterian. See Field, John, 137. Williams, Dr. Daniel, strong Presby- terian, 470 ; his Life, 471 ; founder of the famous Library, 470, 476, note ; his benefactions, 476, note; his book against Dr. Crisp, 471 ; accused of Neo-nomianism, 472 ; bitter contro- versy over, 474-5. Wolverhampton Chapel Case, 618, note. Wycliffe, John, greatest Reformer be- fore the Reformation, 19 ; the great Papal schism, a.d. 1378, helped his work, 21 ; his revolt against corrupt theories of the Church and its con- stitution, 20 ; holds Presbyter and Bishop identical, 20 ; anticipated Puritan and Presbyterian views, 19 ; three stages in his Church views, 20, note; his Lollards and Bible men, like Wesley's evangelists, 21 ; Life of, by Lechler, Vaughan, Lewis, and Le Bas, 19, notes. Wycliffe Society, 19, note. Wycliffe's MSS., English and Latin, 19, note. Yarranton, Andrew, notice of, as Pres- byterian, 393, note. Young, Dr. George, of Whitby, 606. Young, Dr. Thomas, 258, 270. Zurich Letters, 108. 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