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PURITANISM
IN THE
OLD WORLD AND IN THE NEW
THIRD EDITION
THE PILGRIM FATHERS
OF NEW ENGLAND
And Their Puritan Successors
BY THE
Rev. JOHN BROWN, D.D.,
Author of "John Bunyan: His Life, Times and Work."
Introduction by the Rev. A. E. Dunning, D.D.,
Editor of "The Congregationalist,"
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY
CHARLES WHYMPER, AN INDEX, AND A BIBLIOGRAPHY.
850
Cloth, Git Top $2.50
"An admirable and much-needed book, scholarly,
accurate, temperate, and extremely interesting."-Dr.
JOHN FISKE.
“The Pilgrim Fathers live and move and endure
and overcome in his pages: to have told their story
worthily is his highest praise."— The Bookman.
“Of especial interest to American readers are the
chapters dealing with the Puritans in their English
homes."'-The Brooklyn Eagle.
“Of decided historical importance."— The Outlook.
"A fine example of scholarly and popular qualities
combined. It is sufficiently learned to command the
respect of historical students, and also popular enough
in manner to afford enjoyable reading for all."— The
Congregationalist.
“An important contribution.”—The Book Buyer.
"Highly attractive.”—The Independent (N. Y.).
“A remarkably vivid narrative that brings before
us the men of the Mayflower and their associates as
men of flesh and blood."--The Christian World.
"An admirable narrative."-The Critic.
Fleming H. Revell Company
New YORK: 112 Fifth Ave.
CHICAGO: 63 Washington St.
TORONTO: 140 & 142 Yonge St.
PURITANISM
IN THE
OLD WORLD AND IN THE NEW
FROM ITS INCEPTION IN THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH
TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PURITAN
THEOCRACY IN NEW ENGLAND
A HISTORICAL HANDBOOK
BY THE
REV. J. GREGORY
EDINBURGH
INTRODUCTION BY THE
REV. AMORY H. BRADFORD, D.D.
AUTHOR OF
THE PILGRIM IN OLD ENGLAND"
NEW YORK. CHICAGO TORONTO
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
1896
233
Copyright, 1896, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY.
INTRODUCTION.
The last few years have witnessed a real revival of
interest in the subject of Puritanism. It has been studied
with an earnestness and thoroughness which has not been
equalled in the present century. It is difficult to determine
the cause of this revival. Since the meeting of the Inter-
national Council of Congregational Churches, which con-
vened in London in 1891, the interest has been on the
increase in England and in America, and several important
works on the subject have appeared in both countries.
Among them all, few, if any, have been more scholarly
or comprehensive than the one which it is now my privi-
lege to introduce to American readers. Its characteristics
are perspicuity and careful scholarship. Its style is ad-
mirably clear, and the arrangement of the topics careful
and discriminating, so that they may be easily read and
remembered. It is essentially what its author styles it-
“handbook.” I do not know any volume which, within
the same limits, presents so much and such valuable in-
formation on the sụbject with which it deals.
The author, the Rev. J. Gregory, of Edinburgh, has not
heretofore been known in this country. He belongs to
the class of quiet but earnest students who are known to
a
INTRODUCTION
the world by their publications rather than by the posi-
tions which they may occupy in society or in public affairs.
He is now in the prime of life, being, I believe, still
under fifty years of age. He was educated at New Col-
lege, London, and for a number of years was pastor of
a prominent church in Leeds. From that he was called to
succeed the Rev. Dr. Lindsay Alexander, in the pastorate
of the Church of St. Angustine, in Edinburgh. Dr.
Alexander was one of the most eminent preachers and
theologians of the present century in the Scottish capital.
He was a man of wonderful power, both as a thinker and
as an orator. Perhaps no theologian among the Inde-
pendent churches of the past generation has more strongly
impressed himself upon the thought and life of that coun-
try. That our author was called to succeed such a man in
the pastorate of the leading Congregational Church in the
great university city, is testimony enough to his intellectual
strength and spiritual earnestness. He retained that pas-
torate for about fifteen years. He is a man of large abil-
ity, wide reading, and is greatly loved by his friends. As
chairman of the Congregational Union of Scotland, in
1890, he gave an address from the Chair on “The Church
and Social Problems,” which attracted much attention.
For years Mr. Gregory has been a student of Puritan
times, and this book has been eagerly awaited by the
friends who have known that it was
was in process of
preparation.
Such works as this help greatly to clear the way for
what many of us believe must come sooner or later-
some kind of unity in the Christian Church. Before there
can be unity either of spirit or of organization there must
be first an accurate and sympathetic understanding of the
INTRODUCTION
principles for which the various denominations stand. Un-
til recently there has been little attempt on the part of Puri-
tans to understand those who put emphasis upon the doc-
trine of the church, and on the part of Anglicans and
Episcopalians little honest effort to understand the prin-
ciples and motives of Puritanism. The latter have studied
the doctrine of the Church, and the former have very gener-
ally ignored it. The revival of interest in the subject has
led, of late, to a more candid examination of the doctrine.
The result in all parts of the world has been a conviction
that somehow the scandal of a divided Christendom ought
to be removed. But there are practical difficulties in the
way,
and little progress has as yet been made. In the
meantime, we are gradually learning that unity can not
be realized by the sacrifice of principles, but only as all
Christians come to estimate at their true value those phases
of truth to which each denomination has been chosen to
give prominence.
Such works as those of the late Dr. Dexter, Dr. John
Brown, of Bedford, and that which I am now commending
to American readers, have performed a real service in
showing that Puritanism is more than a protest. It rep-
resents at least one hemisphere of the doctrine of the
church-that doctrine is a sphere with two poles, namely,
the independence of the individual and the local church,
and the union of all Christians and all local churches in
one undivided body. It has been difficult for most thinkers
to realize that while these truths are opposed to each other,
they are not antagonistic. Books like this of Mr. Gregory
ought to be widely read, especially by those who differ
from the positions which he takes. From it they will
learn that Puritanism had its origin in a profound religious
INTRODUCTION
experience, and that it has a continuity, reaching not only
to apostolic times, but even to the days of the prophets.
They will also better appreciate the truth that before the
church can be one a broad and large place must be made
for those whose fundamental belief is that each indi-
vidual soul may come into direct contact with the Infinite
Spirit, and that the Church of Christ is composed of all
who from Jesus Christ have received the Divine life. Not
by shutting our eyes to the beliefs of those who differ from
us, but rather by a reverent and careful study of their
teachings shall we come to that appreciation of the grounds
of difference which is a necessary condition of the ultimate
unity of the Church. As a book well calculated to help
in this preliminary but important work, I commend to
American readers " Puritanism in the Old World and
“
in the New."
AMORY H. BRADFORD.
First Congregational Church,
Montclair, New Jersey.
PREFACE
ONE wishes there were a history of English Puritanism,
the last of all our heroisms, but sees small prospect of
such a thing at present.” So wrote Carlyle in the
introduction of his Letters and Speeches of Cromwell.
This wish will probably go unfulfilled till the task is
taken in hand by some genius like Carlyle himself, but
with more genuine religious insight and sympathy.
It seems superfluous, and yet perhaps it is necessary,
to say, in view of possible misjudgment, that this work
does not purport to be “a history of English Puritanism."
It originated in the idea of bringing together, and pre-
senting in a succinct and readable form, the best, or the
substance of the best, which has been written concerning
Puritanism and Independency—their genesis in England
and New England, their growth and vicissitudes and
struggles, till, at the close of the seventeenth century,
Puritanism lost its distinctive name, and became incor-
porated in the life of the nation as a whole. I have not
altogether departed from this intention, but have made
vi
PREFACE
it my business to consult the writings of authors of
acknowledged eminence and repute, with a view of col-
lecting the most weighty pronouncements and opinions
touching the character of Puritanism, and the work
which Puritanism did. I have found it necessary,
however, to weave these opinions and judgments into
a narrative or monograph of my own, so that in its
present form this book may in some sense (a very
slender and modified sense, I am well aware) fairly
claim to be an independent and original work. I have
endeavoured to cast it into the form of a handbook, so
that to those wishing to form a general acquaintance
with the history of the period to which it relates, and
to those wishing to pursue their inquiries further it may
serve as a useful and, it is hoped, trustworthy guide.
With a view to the requirements of the latter, a some-
what lavish apparatus critici, in the shape of notes, has
been introduced, but not more unsparingly, it is believed,
than the importance of the subjects they are introduced
to illustrate seems to justify.
The literature of Puritanism is sporadic and frag-
mentary, either buried in antiquated and unreadable
tomes,—for even Neal's history is hard reading in these
days,—or in more bright and vivacious books (happily
not few), treating the subject in too piecemeal a fashion
to present any adequate conception of what Puritanism
was, or what it contributed to the making of the England
of to-day. My aim has been to give as complete and
PREFACE
vi
comprehensive a view of the subject as possible, bringing
into one conspectus what Puritanism accomplished in the
Old World and in the New, and showing how in both it
became the parent of free institutions, and the founder
of modern democracy.
I am not solicitous to clear myself from the imputa-
tion of being biassed, nay, of being very strongly biassed,
in favour of the Puritans, and that for which the Puritans
contended. It can serve no good purpose to lay claim
to the merit of impartiality. Indeed, the parade of
impartiality is always suspicious, and the assertion of it
on the part of writers and authors, I have generally
found to be in inverse relation to its real existence and
exhibition. I fear I must be content to incur the
reproach of such writers as the author of Religious Thought
in England. In the preface to that able work, a work
to which I gladly record my indebtedness, Mr. Hunt
says: “I am dissatisfied, and I suppose most men are,
with the spirit in which the history of religion in England
is generally written. If it is the work of a Churchman,
it takes the form of a defence of the Church of England;
if by a Nonconformist, it is a defence of Nonconformity.
And thus a subject which, in proper hands, might be
prolific for good, is sacrificed to the glorification of a sect
or à party.” I trust I am as fully alive to the peril
here indicated as Mr. Hunt himself; but the remedy is
not to be found, as he appears to think, in endeavouring
to steer a middle course, and inclining neither to the one
viii
PREFACE
side nor to the other. For men of strong convictions
and principles, and who do not hesitate to avow them,
this is clearly impossible. Notwithstanding all that may
be urged to the contrary, it is possible to take sides, and
yet be scrupulously just and fair. One may believe in
Puritanism intensely, and yet be keenly alive to its vices
and shortcomings, and one may deal out even-handed
justice to its enemies and oppressors, without shutting
ones eyes to their redeeming virtues and qualities.
It is for others to judge how far this aim has been
realised in the presentment of Puritanism given in the
following pages.
CONTENTS
PART I
PURITANISM IN THE OLD WORLD
CHAP
PAGE
1
INTRODUCTION
1
I. THE CREATIVE CAUSES OF PURITANISM
11
II. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
31
III. THE RISE OF PURITANISM IN ENGLAND
43
IV. THE CHASM WIDENING : RISE OF PRESBYTERIANISM
IN ENGLAND
61
V. PURITANISM : FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS
USED FOR THEIR REPRESSION
83
BETWEEN
PURITANISM AND
THE
VI. THE CONFLICT
CHURCH
101
.
VII. RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
119
C
VIII. THE CORRUPT STATE OF THE CHURCH : THE
MARTIN MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
145,
.
IX. THE PURITAN MARTYRS
171
.
X. HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
2011
PART II
PURITANISM IN THE NEW WORLD
I. FOUNDING OF NEW PLYMOUTH
231
II. THE FOUNDING OF MASSACHUSETTS
251
ix
X
CONTENTS
CHAP
PAGE
III. ROGER WILLIAMS : THE BEGINNINGS OF RELIGIOUS
CONTROVERSY IN NEW ENGLAND .
269
IV. GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND
289
V. RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NEW ENGLAND
311
VI. THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN. NEW ENGLAND.
333
VII. TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: GENERAL
CONCLUSIONS
357
CONCLUSION
389
NOTES
MEANING AND USES OF THE NAME PURITAN
4
THE HISTORIAN NEAL
6
SCHISM.
36
CONTINUITY OF THE CHURCH
38
HOOKER'S THEORY OF CHURCH AND STATE .
115
CORRUPT STATE OF THE CHURCH
150
WHO WAS MARTIN MARPRELATE ?
166
ROBINSON'S FAREWELL WORDS
224
!
“ PILGRIM FATHERS NEITHER PURITANS NOR PER-
SECUTORS
"
257
DUTY OF PERSECUTION
366
THE TOLERANCE OF INDIFFERENCE
367
DOES CALVINISM PROMOTE INTOLERANCE ?
381
.
CALVINISM AND PURITANISM NOT IDENTICAL
383
1
INTRODUCTION
THE genius of Puritanism has been transmitted, and is
capable of being expressed, in manifold forms.
The name
is not much more than three hundred years old, but that
which it describes is older than Christianity itself. As
there were reformers before the Reformation, so there
were Puritans before that which we call Puritanism had
sprung into existence.
To their influence in the Jewish
Church must be traced all that was noblest, all that was
best worth preserving. Samuel was a Puritan, so was
Ezra, so was Nehemiah, so was John the Baptist. It
was the zeal of Puritanism that moved the Divine Son to
expel the traffickers from the Temple, and so vindicate
the honour of His Father's house. The Prophets of
Israel, in their insistence upon righteousness, in their
exaltation of the moral above the legal and ceremonial,
were anticipating the very gist of the Puritan contention.
It was he spirit of Puritanism that flamed up in the
breast of Ambrose when he required the Emperor Theo-
dosius, before entering the church at Milan, to make
reparation for the slaughter of the citizens of Thessalonica.
When Savonarola made the proud citizens of Florence to
cower under his invective, and unsparingly assailed their
I
2
PURITANISM
sins and their corruptions, the weapon which he wielded
was of the true Puritan temper. Nor is this using the
word Puritan in a loose, inexact sense. All that is
originally connoted by it is zeal for purity—purity of
faith, worship, and manners.
Puritanism simply represents the spirit of revolt
against the corruptions of the Church and of the State.
True, it has become identified with certain sharply defined
doctrines and peculiar practices, but these adhere to it as
separable accidents rather than as part of its real con-
tents and substance. As against Pope, Council, and
Church, the Puritans contended for the authority of
what they called the “pure word of God.” The
Reformers called them Precisianists, from their alleged
habit of magnifying mere punctilios, or things “indiffer-
ent," into matters of prime importance.
In the following pages we shall endeavour to show
that Puritanism was pre-eminently a moral and religious
force, and that it allied itself with certain forms of faith
and practice, only that it might thereby more effectually
promote the ends and righteousness of the kingdom of
God. That is to say, the significance of Puritanism is
not doctrinal but ethical. It was not necessary that
it should be permanently identified with the system
of Calvinism. There was no necessity why a Puritan
should be a Roundhead and go about with his hair
2
1 “This name Puritan is very aptly given to these men, not
because they be pure, no more than were the heretics Cathari, but
because they think themselves to be more . pure than others, as
Cathari did, and separate themselves.”—Archbishop Whitgift.
2 “ It is a paradox to say that old Calvinism was not doctrinal in
the face of the Institute ; but it is astonishing to find how little in
INTRODUCTION
3
cropped, or speak with a nasal twang, or affect a pre-
ternaturally solemn and sanctimonious expression, any
more than it was necessary for the old Hebrew prophet
to appear in the bravery of unkempt hair, and wear a
rough garment to deceive. We shall try to show that
this was the mere outward skin intended to be sloughed,
and that underneath was the permanent and imperish-
able force and virtue to which, by common consent, the
name Puritanism is given.
ordinary life they talked or wrote about doctrine. The doctrine
was never more than the dress. The living creature was wholly
moral and political, -50, at least, I think myself.”—J. A. Froude,
Reminiscences,” Blackwood's Magazine, Dec. 1894.
4
PURITANISM
NOTES
The Spanish ambassador De Silva, writing to his sovereign
Philip in 1568, says : “ Those who call themselves of the religio
purissima go on increasing. They are the same as Calvinists, and
they are styled Puritans, because they allow no ceremonies nor any
forms save those which are authorised by the bare letter of the
gospel.”—Froude's History, ix. 327.
“It is difficult to describe the party which about this time or soon
after got the name of Puritans. The name was generic, and included
men of widely different views. Tyndale, Hooper, and Coverdale
might be called Puritans, and, indeed, many of Elizabeth's first
bishops. Historically the word came to mean those who never
entirely conformed, or those who suffered for nonconformity.”—
Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. i. p. 48.
Fuller dates the use of the term Puritan as a nickname for the
English Nonconformists generally, from the year 1564, shortly after
Elizabeth ascended the throne.
“The name Puritan got a new meaning in the time of the Common-
wealth. All who were not Royalists were called Puritans. This
comprehended those who opposed the arbitrary measures of the King,
and the innovations of Archbishop Laud, as well as the Presbyterians
and the sectaries of all kinds. Another use of the word Puritan was
to designate all clergymen who held the views of Calvin. In this
sense Whitgift and Hooper came to be called Puritans. · After the
restoration of Charles II., many of the moderate Puritans conformed.
Those who did not were called Nonconformists.”~Hunt, vol. iii. pp.
368, 369.
“ The number of Puritans increased prodigiously in his reign (that
of James I.), which was owing to one or other of these causes 1
First, to their standing firm by the constitution and laws of the
country, which brought over to them all those gentlemen in the
House of Commons, and in the several counties of England, who
found it necessary for the preservation of their properties to oppose
the Court, and to insist upon being governed according to law;
these were called State Puritans.
“Secondly, to their steady adherence to the doctrine of Calvin
and the Synod of Dort in the points of predestination and grace,
against the modern interpretation of Arminius and his followers.
The Court divines fell in with the latter, and were thought not only
1 Preface to Neal's History of the Puritans. See note on Neal, p. 6.
INTRODUCTION
5
to deviate from the principles of the first Reformers, but to attempt
a coalition with the Church of Rome; while most of the country
clergy, being stiff in their old opinions (though otherwise well enough
affected to the discipline and circumstances of the Church), were in
a manner shut out from all preferment, and branded with the name
of Doctrinal Puritans.
Thirdly, to their pious and severe manner of life, which was at
this time very extraordinary. If a man kept the Sabbath and fre-
quented sermons, if he maintained family religion, and would
neither swear nor be drunk, nor comply with the fashionable vices
of the times, he was called a Puritan. This by degrees procured
them the compassion of the sober part of the nation, who began to
think it very hard that a number of sober, industrious, and con-
scientious people should be harassed out of the land for scrupling to
comply with a few indifferent ceremonies which had no relation to
the favour of God or the practice of virtue."
The last description is the one which has survived. In this sense
it is used by Shakespeare-
“She would make a Puritan of the devil."
“In my conscience it was a shame to be a Christian within these
fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen years in this nation! Whether in
Cæsar's house' or elsewhere! It was a shame, it was a reproach to
a man; and the badge of “Puritan’ was put upon it” (Cromwell's
Speeches).
“ Richard Baxter belonged to what was known as a Puritan family,
though they were Episcopalians and strict Conformists, and this
solely on account of their religious habits and pious manner of life.”
-Calamy's Life of Baxter, p. 48.
" It is the artifice of the favourers of the Catholic and of the
prelatical party to call all who are sticklers for the Constitution in
Church or State, or would square their actions by any rule human
or divine, Puritans."--Rushworth, vol. ii. 1355.
See the account of the Puritan party in Memoirs of Colonel
Hutchinson, pp. 79-82 :
"If any out of mere morality and civil honesty discountenanced
the abominations of those days, he was a Puritan.
showed favour to any godly, honest persons, kept them company,
relieved them in want, or protected them against violent or unjust!
oppression. . . . Whoever was zealous for God's glory or worship,
could not endure blasphemous oaths, ribald conversation, profane
If any
6
PURITANISM
scoffs, derision of the word of God, and the like—whoever could
endure a sermon, modest habit or conversation, or anything good,
all these were Puritans; and if Puritans, then enemies to the
King and his government, seditious, factious hypocrites, ambitious
disturbers of the public peace, and, finally, the pest of the kingdom.”
NOTE ON NEAL
As we shall have occasion to cite the testimony of Neal, the well-
known historian of the Puritans, pretty frequently in the following
pages, it may be well to state at the beginning that so far from
pinning our faith” to everything which Neal says, we have relied
on his authority only in those instances where we had independent
reasons for regarding it as in the main trustworthy. Mr. Green,
speaking of the "inaccuracies” of Neal's History, says it contains
little concerning the Puritan period which is not taken from the
more colourless Strype." “He (Neal) blanches them into a sweet
and almond whiteness.” We are bound to say that there is less
persistent glorification of the Puritans in the pages of Neal than we
expected to find ; nor have we discovered that he is more inaccurate
than other previous or contemporary writers. In this respect he
certainly compares favourably with Strype, whom we have no
found so
colourless” (unless the word is intended to describe, not
his opinions but his style) as Mr. Green led us to expect.
PART I
PURITANISM IN THE
OLD WORLD
7
The Creative Causes of Puritanism
9
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
0
Henry VIII. reigned .
1509–1547
Luther
born 1501, died 1546
nailed Theses to door of Church in Witten-
berg
1517
Tyndale's Edition of the New Testament published 1525
Great Bible published
1539
Genevan Bible published.
1560
.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I
Four main causes of Puritanism–The Reformation-The Bible
-Tyndale's New Testament - The Great Bible - The Geneva
Version - Foxe's Book of Martyrs—The spirit of freedom--Demo-
cracy-Puritanism advances to Separatism.
10
CHAPTER I
THE CREATIVE CAUSES OF PURITANISM
Four causes mainly contributed to the rise and spread of
Puritanism, and ultimately of Independency-
First, The influence of the Reformation.
Second, The influence of the Bible.
Third, The growth of the spirit of freedom_liberty
of conscience.
Fourth, The necessity of separation from the Church
as by law established.
The influence of the Reformation.-The Re-
formation was essentially a religious movement, a revival
of apostolic Christianity. At its outset it shared the
fate of all great movements, and became mixed up with
mean and more - inglorious issues,-civil, political, and
ecclesiastical,—and these tended in some measure to
obscure its real character. It was so notably in England,
where at first it seemed nothing better than a battle of
kites and crows, a struggle between King and Pope for
power and supremacy. Still the forces that directed it
and bore it onward in its victorious course were moral
and religious. Both Henry and Elizabeth found that
they had raised a spirit which to some extent they were
11
12
PURITANISM
able to guide and to use, but which they were powerless
to arrest. “They builded better than they knew.” No
one understood less than Elizabeth herself the real mean-
ing of the Reformation, or cherished a more undisguised
contempt for the zeal of the Reformers and the religious
temper of the nation,-a force which she failed com-
pletely to estimate,—nevertheless to this more than to
any other cause she owed the stability of her throne and
the splendid success of her administration. It was the
spirit of Puritanism which answered to her appeal when
she invoked the aid of her people against Philip and
Spain. The defeat of the Armada was the triumph of
Protestantism, and, unwilling as she was to assume the
title, Elizabeth became henceforth its recognised head.
Yet Elizabeth had not only no sympathy with the
doctrines of the Reformation, she resisted their intro-
duction as tending to create dispeace in the Church and
nation. In her judgment they emanated from the brain
of a number of noisy and impracticable zealots.
It is sometimes said that up to the time of Elizabeth
the English people as a whole were indifferent to the
Reformation, and the change that came over them during
her reign was due rather to the revulsion inspired by
the atrocities of the previous reign than to any change
of conviction in its favour. But this is an opinion that
appears to rest upon no trustworthy basis. It is a saying
of Burke that he did not know of any method of draw-
ing up an indictment against a whole people. It was
peculiarly difficult in those days to estimate the preva-
lence or gauge the strength of public sentiment. The fact
is, the Reformation in England languished, so far as it did
THE CREATIVE CAUSES OF PURITANISM
13
languish, for want of leaders. The people had no leaders
to stir up their sympathies on its behalf, still less to
kindle their enthusiasm. Imagine what would have been
the fate of the Reformation in Germany without Luther,
in Switzerland without Calvin, in Bohemia without Huss,
in Scotland without Knox. In England, however, the
Reformation had no prophet, no preacher, no herald
deserving of the name. If Wyclif had been alive he
might have stirred England from end to end as Luther
stirred Germany with his trumpet-blast. But no Wyclif
was forthcoming. Such prophet as it had was found in
the person of Cranmer. He may not have been the
despicable poltroon that Macaulay describes him, but he
certainly had not the stuff of which heroes and Reformers
are made. Hooper and Ridley, and Latimer and Taylor,
and Jewel and Fisher and More were men of infinitely
more grit and principle, but it was as much as they could
do to resist the tyranny and encroachments of the papal
power without leading a popular crusade in favour of the
Reformation. It is no small proof of the growth of
popular feeling in its favour, that notwithstanding Eliza-
beth's dislike of Protestantising zeal, and her determina-
tion, if possible, to stamp it out, yet the Reformation
continued to grow and strengthen its hold upon the
nation.
Puritanism was its offspring, and soon Elizabeth dis-
covered that she had to reckon, not only with Reformers,
but with Puritans. Shu imagined that persecution would
exert a salutary repressive influence upon these mutinous
spirits. As might have been expected, it produced the
opposite effect. It made them more unbending and
1.4
PURITANISM
formidable than ever. It enlisted the sympathy of the
people on their side. In the words of Macaulay : “It
found them a sect, it made them a faction.” “The power
of the discontented sectaries was great. They were found
in every rank, but they were strongest among the mer-
cantile classes in the towns, and among the small pro-
prietors in the country. Early in the reign of Elizabeth
they began to return a majority of the House of Commons."
“The same impulse which had carried millions away from
the Church of Rome, continued to carry them forward in
the same direction. As Catholics had become Protestants,
Protestants became Puritans.”
It was a great disappointment to Elizabeth that even
her bishops could not be depended on to give effect to
her policy, and their Protestant convictions were continu-
ally thwarting her. The persecutions of the previous
reign had sent not a few Protestants into exile, and they
had come back affected by, if not actually inoculated
with, the tenets of Calvin and the Genevan form of
worship The leaven of their influence had spread
among all sections of the nation. “The English Re-
formers were eager to go as far as their brethren on
the Continent. They unanimously condemned as anti-
christian numerous dogmas and practices to which Henry
had stubbornly adhered, and which Elizabeth reluctantly
abandoned.”
The influence of the Bible.-It would be diffi-
cult to discover a more striking coincidence, one that
more perfectly to the idea of special over-
ruling providence, than the occurrence of the Reformation
answers
THE CREATIVE CAUSES OF PURITANISM
15
and the invention of printing. There is no reason in the
nature of things why the latter should have been delayed
to the end of the fifteenth century. The art of writing
was in use among the Egyptians long anterior to the
time of Abraham, and it would seem as if the transition
from writing to printing ought to have been effected
without much difficulty, yet written characters had been
in the possession of the world for five or six thousand
years before printing was ever heard of. It was in the
year 1474 that the first printing-press was erected in
Westminster by William Caxton, an event which “ did
more for England than all the battles of kings or the
statutes of Parliaments." The time was indeed most
opportune. The introduction of printing synchronised
with the Renaissance, that wonderful intellectual awaken-
ing which has caused the fifteenth century to be styled
the “ age of discovery of the world and of man.” As
might have been expected, it gave to the New Learn
ing a mighty impulse. It contributed to the spread of
knowledge through all sections of society, and the clergy,
who had hitherto kept the key of knowledge in their
own hands, at the beginning of the fifteenth century
found that the laity were in no wise inferior to them in
this respect. At the same time it put into the hand of
those who attacked the abuses and corruptions of the
Church a most formidable weapon, which they were not
slow to use. This helped the cause of the Reformation
immensely. But undoubtedly the chief service which
printing rendered to the cause of truth and liberty was
the multiplying of copies of the Bible. Until the reign
of Henry VIII, the Bible had existed only in manuscript
16
PURITANISM
I
form. This was the translation (a translation of a transla-
1.
tion, be it remembered) of Wyclif. After the death of
Wyclif and the plague of Lollardism had been stamped
out, or supposed to have been stamped out, by the energy
and vigilance of the Popish party, the use of the Bible was
rigidly proscribed, and according to a statute of Henry v.
it was enacted that all who read the Scriptures in their
native tongue should forfeit land, cattle, life, goods, they
and their heirs for ever.
It was in the year 1525 that William Tyndale brought
9 out his edition of the New Testament. His version of the
Scriptures and reprint of the tracts of Wyclif, though
printed in Germany, soon found their way into England.
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where the
New Learning had established itself and been the means
of producing a widespread intellectual and religious
awakening, became the seed-plot of this new heresy, and
here it found a congenial and fruitful nidus.
The dream of Erasmus was at last realised. A trans-
lation of the Bible had appeared which the weaver might
repeat at his shuttle and the ploughman might intone at
the plough. The edition of 1540 was called the Great
Bible, and there was prefixed to it a preface by Archbishop
Cranmer; and from this circumstance the Great Bible is
often, but improperly, called Cranmer's Bible.
is the Byble apoynted to the use of the churches.” This
Bible was sold at 13s. 4d., “ unless Cromwell would give
the printers exclusive privileges, when it might be sold
for 10s." This would represent a much larger sum in
those days than in ours—about the value of £6.
story of the supremacy,” says Mr. Green, “was graven in
6. This
6. The
THE CREATIVE CAUSES OF PURITANISM
17
A copy
its very title-page. The new foundation of religious
truth was to be regarded throughout England as a gift,
not from the Church but from the King. It is Henry
on his throne who gives the sacred volume to Cranmer,
ere Cranmer and Cromwell can distribute it to the
throng of priests and laymen below.
The Bible was 51
formally adopted as the basis of English faith.”
of Coverdale's translation was chained to a desk or pillar
in every cathedral and parish church. The joy of the
common people knew no bounds. Ability to read was
looked upon as the most enviable of acquisitions, and
knots of people stood all day long to hear read to them
in their own tongue the wonderful works of God. The
next stage in the history of the English Bible was the
appearance, in 1550, of the celebrated Genevan version,
which became the household Bible of the English middle
classes for at least two generations. This was mainly the
work of the refugees who were driven from the kingdom
by the Marian persecution and settled at Geneva, where
they adopted the faith of Calvin and the Genevan mode
of worship. It contained a marginal commentary which
proved a great attraction to the Puritans. For nearly a
hundred years it held the field in the estimation of the
1 “It was wonderful,” says Foxe the Martyrologist, “to see with
what joy this book of God was received, not only among the learneder
sort, and those that were noted for lovers of the Reformation, but
generally all England over, among all the vulgar and common
people ; and with what greediness God's word was read, and what
resort to places where the reading of it was. Everybody that could
bought the book, or busily read it, or got others to read it to them
if they could not themselves, and divers more elderly people learned
to read on purpose ; and even little boys flocked among the rest to
hear portions of the Holy Scripture read.”
4
2
18
PURITANISM
English people, and this notwithstanding the fact that
the Puritan theology, or, speaking more strictly, the
theology of Geneva, was most conspicuous in its anota-
tions. So earnestly,” says Strype,“ did the people of
the nation thirst in those days after the knowledge
of the Scriptures, that the first impression was soon
sold off.”
The influence of the Bible and the revolution it
effected in the mind and character of the English people
have been thus eloquently described by Mr. Green: “No
greater moral change ever passed over the nation than
passed over England during the years which parted the
middle of the reign of Elizabeth from the meeting of the
Long Parliament. England became the people of a book,
and that book was the Bible. It was, as yet, the one
English book which was familiar to every Englishman ;
it was read at churches and read at home, and every-
where its words, as they fell on ears which custom had
not deadened to their force and beauty, kindled a startling
enthusiasm.
79 1
Foxe's Book of Martyrs.--Next only to the Bible,
in the influence it exercised upon the minds of the
English people, was that moving and picturesque nar-
rative of the sufferings of the martyrs which, despite
its errors and prejudices, has done more, perhaps, for the
cause of Protestantism than any other book that ever
was written By Elizabeth's own order this book was
elevated to the dignity of being placed along with the
1 See whole of this eloquent passage in “Puritan England,"
Green's Short History of the English People, pp. 447-9.
THE CREATIVE CAUSES OF PURITANISM
19
Bible, Homilies, and Prayer-Book, in all the colleges and
chapels throughout the kingdom. It passed naturally
into every English household, and its popularity was such
that no other book has been able to vie with it with the
exception of the Pilgrim's Progress. The circulation of
this book, and the avidity with which it was read by all
classes of the people, not only helped to create an intense
Protestant sentiment, it did much also to lodge in their
minds the Puritan conception of religion, and to erect
this as the strongest of all bulwarks against the encroach-
ments and pretensions of papal power. Foxe was himself
a Puritan, and when required by Archbishop Parker to
subscribe to the Canons of the Church of England, he
evinced his Puritan loyalty to the Scriptures by holding
up a Greek Testament and exclaiming: “To this will I
subscribe.”
Disfigured as his great work must be judged to be,
both by errors and the spirit of intolerance, it is pleasant
to remember that he intervened in the cause of the hated
and despised Anabaptists, and petitioned the Queen, though
unsuccessfully, to spare the lives of two of them. He
hated impartially all religious persecution, in this respect
rising far above his age and contemporary Protestant
convictions.
1
The growth of the spirit of freedom -
Liberty of conscience. -" The real value of the
religious revolution of the sixteenth century to mankind,"
says Mr. Green, “ lay not in its substitution of one creed
for another, but in the new spirit of inquiry, the new
freedom of thought and of discussion which was awakened
gues
20
PURITANISM
during the process of change.” The immediate effect of
the Reformation in England, as Macaulay has pointed
out, was by no means favourable to political liberty.
It only deposed the papal system to set up its worst
tyranny afresh in the person of King and Prelate. The
yoke of Protestantism promised to be just as intoler-
able as that of the Church of Rome, nay, as being nearer
the base of its operations, more galling and inimical to
individual freedom. The system of Henry VIII. has been
described as Popery without the Pope; and had the
Reformation stopped at the point to which it was carried
by means of the breach with Rome, it would have been,
not a forward, but a retrograde movement. But it could
not stop at that point. It is the inevitable result of any
great disruption such as that which had taken place in
England and Europe, that forces and influences are let
loose and brought into play which those who are respons-
ible for its initiation are unable to guide and powerless
to control. It is like a landslip, the effects of which are
seen, not only in the immediate dislodgment of a vast
quantity of earth, but in a loosening of the soil which
extends far beyond the scene of the primal catastrophe.
The earthquake which releases Paul and Silas, throws
down for others besides apostles the walls of the prison-
house. Religious freedom is never long divorced from
civil and political liberty. It was the stirring of men's
minds under the preaching of Wyclif that was the real
if not the proximate cause of the peasants' outbreak in
1381 and the insurrection under Wat Tyler. Wyclif
1“Oh, if we could but exercise wisdom to gain civil liberty-
religion would follow !”—Cromwell's Letters and Speeches.
THE CREATIVE CAUSES OF PURITANISM
himself was as guiltless of the revolt of the peasantry as
was Luther of the Peasant War in Germany, or of the
reign of the Anabaptists. Nevertheless, neither of these
Reformers could screen themselves from the responsibility
which, indirectly at least, attached to their own acts and
teaching. They both of them raised a spirit they were
not able to lay, and the people who imbibed their doctrines
insisted on carrying them to their extreme, and, as they
deemed, their only logical conclusion. The same thing
is illustrated in the progress of the Reformation. The
genius of liberty--if we may use the impersonation-
outran the zeal of its defenders, even its most strenuous
upholders, and chiding their lagging pace seemed to mock
their timorous mistrust. Not even the most advanced
and intrepid Reformers, in England at least, realised the
full consequences of their own action. Terrified by their
own boldness, they were ever harking back like men
venturing on quicksands or skating on thin ice, and
only by feeling their way gradually could they gain con-
fidence to proceed. In our age, experience of the value of
liberty has to a large extent conquered the instinct of con-
servatism, but in the age of the Reformation men had no
such experience. It is not surprising, therefore, that even
the most ardent lovers of liberty should sometimes falter
in their testimony for it. In the course of our inquiry
we shall see how far the Puritans themselves fell short
of acting with perfect loyalty to their own principles,
and how long it took them to learn the lesson of religious
toleration. Like the disciples of old, “ as they followed
they were afraid”; but they followed nevertheless, and
they came out at length into a wealthy land.
PURITANISM
Democracy the outcome of Puritanism.-If the
newly awakened spirit of freedom contributed, as un-
doubtedly it did, to the rise and growth of Puritanism,
Puritanism in its turn led to the establishment of Demo-
cracy, and this not by a series of successive steps, but
as it were, per saltum, by a single bound. “The principle
of the sovereignty of the people,” says Dr. Borgeaud
in his admirable book, The Rise of Modern Democracy
in Old and New England, “inalienable and impre-
scriptible, and its realisation in the modern State, belong
peculiarly to the Reformation.” Calvinism, in spite of
the aristocratic character which it temporarily assumed,
meant democracy in Church government. It meant
more than that, for its aim was to make society in all its
parts conform to a religious ideal.” 2 This was inevitable
on the part of men adopting the Bible as their statute-
book, and rejecting all authority which threatened to
come into collision with this.
“ We believe the word of God contained in the Old
and New Testaments to be a perfect rule of faith and
manners; that it ought to be read and known by all
people, and that the authority of it exceeds all authority,
not of the Pope only, but of the Church also, and of
Councils, Fathers, men, and angels.
"We condemn as a tyrannous yoke whatsoever men
have set up of their own invention, to make articles of
faith, and the binding of men's consciences by their laws
and institutions." 3
1 P. 7.
2 Preface of same work, ix.
3 Confession of Faith signed by those taking part in the Prophesy-
ings in 1571. See Neal's History of the Puritans, vol. i. p. 223.
THE CREATIVE CAUSES OF PURITANISM
23
1
It does not follow that either Reformers or Puritans bent
their energies consciously and of set purpose to the setting
up of Democracy. In respect of this they were at first
blind and unconscious instruments. "The early Puritans
had no political views; they were completely absorbed
by religious feeling.” 1 It was this religious feeling and
principle which drove them into constitution-making on
popular democratic lines. The Church covenant which
they formed among themselves strictly for a religious
purpose, became the basis of the political society which
they founded. Hence, as Dr. Borgeaud has it—“Modern
Democracy is the child of the Reformation, not of the
Reformers." “Puritanism, believing itself quick with the
seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the
egg of Democracy."
» 2
what we
The necessity of separation from the Church
as by law established. — The revolt against the
papal power led naturally to revolt against popery
in Priest or King, in other words, to the creation of
now call Protestantism. Protestantism ad-
vanced. to Puritanism, and Puritanism advanced to
Separatism. The process by which this was brought
about forms the subject of this work, and to a large
extent constitutes its raison d'être; but it will not
be inappropriate at this point just to indicate in a few
words how these three things came into line, and became
related as cause and effect. The Protestant refugees who
i The Rise of Modern Democracy, p. 12.
2 J. Russell Lowell's Among my Books : New England Two Centuries
Ago, p. 227.
24
PURITANISM
had been driven from this country by the relentless
cruelty of Mary had found a home in Germany and
Switzerland, and there they had learnt to prize the
simple worship and the free democratic polity which
prevailed and found doughty champions and eloquent
expounders in Geneva, Zurich, and Strasburg. They
returned home after the accession of Elizabeth, to find
their hopes in regard to the Reformation violently frus-
trated. The lump was still unleavened—the old leaven
of papistical corruption still untaken away.
The temper
of Elizabeth, if not as violent as that of her sister, was as
unyielding. She was determined to make her profit out
of the Reformation by resisting all further changes, and
by making it subordinate to her own views and her own
personal authority. Like her father before her, her aim
was to establish Popery without the Pope. She agreed
with Henry 1v. that a kingdom was well worth a Mass.
Against the protests of her bishops she retained an altar,
crucifix, and lighted candles in her own private chapel.1
With the zeal of the Reformers she had no sympathy
whatever, and never lost an opportunity of pouring cold
water upon it. The bigotry of the Protestant as much
as the superstition of the Romanist excited her ridicule
and her scorn. She interrupted the preacher who spoke
disparagingly of the sign of the cross, disapproved of the
marriage of the clergy, and threatened to unfrock the
prelates that dared to resist her imperious demands.
Elizabeth did nothing to further the reformation of the
1 It was owing to her influence that the words, “From the
tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities,"
were struck out of the Litany.
THE CREATIVE CAUSES OF PURITANISM
25
It:
English Church, rather did everything to retard it.
is not a little remarkable that that reformation reached
its highest point, not during her reign, but at the close
of the reign of Edward VI., and more remarkable still,
it has never since advanced beyond this point. There
is abundant evidence to show that it stopped at this
point, not because in the judgment of the Reformers
it had gone far enough, but because their efforts were
unavailing in the face of the opposition which they
provoked.
Of that opposition Elizabeth was the heart and
soul.--Her attitude in regard to the warring religious
factions, her determination to side neither with Catholics
nor with Protestants (though her attitude in regard to
the former can hardly be called neutral), and not to
allow the peace of the nation to be broken up by either,
this is often pointed to as a striking proof of her
astuteness and far-sightedness. Mr. Gladstonel says:
“ Apart from any ritualistic and theological leanings of
the Queen, she did what the national safety and unity
evidently required. Elizabeth admitted the Protestant
claim in the gross, but admitted it with serious discounts.
Yet these discounts were adjusted with extraordinary
skill."
Mr. Green 2 says she forced on the warring religions a
sort of armed truce, and though “no woman' ever lived
who was so totally destitute of the sentiment of religion,"
this only qualified her the better--if we understand him
1 Contemporary Review, November 1888, p. 767.
2 Green's History of the English People, vol. ii. Pp. 395, 397.
26
PURITANISM
aright—for reducing and guarding against the ill effects
and danger arising from the religious zeal of others.
We confess we have no faith in this sinister explanation
of the cleverness of Elizabeth. As an attempt to exalt
her intellect at the expense of her principles, it is a
failure. Her policy, we hold, was shaped partly by the
exigencies of her position, but mainly by her ungovern-
able aversion to all forms of religious zeal, and by her
determination to resist at all cost any further changes in
the constitution and ritual of the Church. By putting
down her foot firmly at this juncture, she found it
possible to reduce all the warring religious elements to
a more or less passive condition. It was a rough and
ready way of “settling” without“ healing” the differences
of the nation, but it was effectual for the time, and the
success which attended it (not at all surprising under
the circumstances) has led historians to ascribe to the
self-willed and irreligious Queen a judgment and sagacity
far beyond her desert.1
Her policy towards the Puritans was from first to last
a huge blunder, and for the future of the nation was rife
with disastrous consequences. It created and aggravated
the evil it was intended to arrest.
“ One thing was
evident, that the Puritan malcontents were growing every
day more numerous, more determined, and more likely
to win over the generality of those who sincerely favoured
the Protestant cause.” 2 Any casual observer might have
seen that between their growing numbers and strength,
1 Not all historians, however. See Hallam’s Constitutional History
in loco.
2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 242.
THE CREATIVE CAUSES OF PURITANISM
27
and the severities which were directed against them,
there was no mere temporary or accidental connection;
but Elizabeth was blinded, and her hatred of the Puritans
made her their ruthless and uncompromising oppressor.
Mr. Green says Elizabeth was a persecutor, but she
was the first English ruler who felt the charge of
religious persecution to be a stigma on her rule. Perhaps
so, but in her dealings with the Puritans there is
not much evidence of that feeling. After the manner
of her successor she was at no pains to dissemble her
determination to “make them conform," or "harry”
them by all the means which the High Commission and
Star Chamber could place at her command.
We cannot give Elizabeth credit for any enlightened
broad-minded policy either towards Roman recusants or
Puritan separatists. It was a policy shaped by her own
personal idiosyncrasies and virulent antipathies, and
though she herself rode triumphantly over the difficulties
and dangers which grew out of it, she left these as a
bitter legacy to her successors and to the nation. Her
policy had certainly the merit of being “ thorough,”
anticipating in this respect the policy of Laud and
Strafford, and it provoked a resistance as thorough and
unbending. It soon became clear to the Puritans and to
1 Elizabeth told the French ambassador that she would main-
tain the religion she was crowned 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.
2 See Introduction, p. xxv, of Select Statutes and other Constitutional
Documents illustrative of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., edited
by Professor Prothero.
28
PURITANISM
all who sympathised with them that no freedom was to
be enjoyed inside the Church which had the Queen as its
governor, and if their consciences were to find relief it
must be by seceding and separating from it.
“ We must
obey God rather than man," said these successors of the
apostles, and from the hour that banner was unfurled
the real struggle for religious liberty began.
The Church of England
20
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
597
Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, landed
with band of monks in Kent
Henry declared Supreme Head of the Church of
England
Thomas Cranmer created Archbishop of Canterbury
and Primate of all England
1534
1533
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II
The Church of Rome in England-Augustine-England the
“Pope's farm”—The Church of England–Theory of Continuity-
The right of separation implied in Reformation-Note on Schism-
Notes on Continuity of the Church.
80
CHAPTER II
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
The Church of England was such a prime constitutive
factor in the making of Puritanism, that it is impossible
to understand the genesis and character of the latter
without some acquaintance with the position and attitude
of the former.
Now we shall go wrong at the outset in pursuing this
branch of inquiry unless we bear in mind a distinction
which is often forgotten, but which is of the first import-
ance--the distinction between the Church of England
and the Church in England. There was no Church of
England till the reign of Henry VIII. The Church in
England existed from the time that Augustine, with his
band of monks, landed, in 597, on the shore of Kent, and
planted the Christian faith in the southern part of the
kingdom. The northern part of the kingdom was con-
verted by Scoto-Irish missionaries. Thus paganism was
conquered by Christianity as represented by the Roman
Catholic Church. But neither then, nor at any other
period up to the time of the Reformation, could the
Church thus constituted be called the Church of England.
The only term that could justly describe it was the
Church of Rome in England; for though both portions
31
32
PURITANISM
united and became one Church, they united by sub-
mitting to the Roman primacy, thus becoming an organic
portion of the one great Western Church.
The papal
character of the pre-Reformation Church has been grudg-
ingly admitted by Church historians, by some it has been
called in question, but the evidence by which it is sub-
stantiated is irresistible
Augustine, the first Primate of Canterbury, was a
missionary sent from Rome by Pope Gregory the Great.
Wilfrid, the leader of the Scoto-Irish converts in the
north, obtained his episcopal authority from Rome. The
same is true of Theodore, the next Primate of Canterbury,
who may be regarded as the organiser of the parish
system, the first to unify the sees that were already
created, and group them round the common centre of
Canterbury.
Notwithstanding assertions often made to the contrary,
it is easily demonstrable that England was not less papal,
but more papal, than any other part of Europe. Accord-
ing to Milman, it was a common saying in the reign of
Henry III. that “England was the Pope's farm.” And
according to Bishop Stubbs,“ liberal tribute ” began to
be paid to Rome from the end of the eighth century;
and Peter's pence, of which this was probably the origin,
continued to be paid to Rome to the time of Henry VIII.
The Church of England, as distinguished from the
Church of Rome, did not come into existence until the
reign of Henry VIII. It originated in the quarrel of
Henry with the Pope, who refused to sanction his divorce
1 Stubbs' Constitutional History of England, vol. i. pp. 250, 251.
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
33
from Katherine of Arragon. This led to the final rupture
with Rome, and the casting off of the Pope's authority.
There seems no reason to doubt that if, instead of thwart-
ing the King in his design, he had been favourable and
accessory to it, there would have been no breach with
Rome, or such breach would have been postponed till
fresh provocation had made her yoke no longer able to
be endured
L
Theory of continuity.--Church historians are greatly
enamoured of the theory of a national Church, which
has existed in unbroken continuity from the time that
Augustine, with his monks, landed upon the isle of
Thanet. The theory has been broached again and again.
As stated by a popular clergyman---the Rev. W. Page
Roberts—in a volume of sermons, entitled, Reasonable
Service, p. 151, it has at least the merit of clearness.
“Historically,” he says, "the Church of England is the
very first Church which was set up in this country.
... There have been changes in it, corruptions in it,
reformations in it, but still it is the Church which was
founded by Christian Missionaries twelve hundred years
ago.”
This fallacy of unbroken continuity is so demonstrably
transparent, that the wonder is it should impose upon
any student of history; yet it is continually cropping up,
not only in histories written from an Episcopalian point
of view, but in statements where one might reasonably
suppose it would be jealously extruded. It crops up
even in the sober annals of Presbyterianism. It would
seem as if no common denominator” could be discovered
3
34
PURITANISM
60
a
between the “Romanist priesthood” and the “ Protestant
ministry” as construed by the spirit of Presbyterianism.
The anxiety of the latter to free itself from “ the
tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable
enormities," would seem to be an effectual restraint on
any disposition to identify them even in the initial period
of their history. Yet in his excellent sketch of the
Church of Scotland Dr. M'Adam Muir says: Despite
the convulsions with which it was accompanied, the
continuity of the Church was not broken by the Refor-
mation." The Reformers did not dream of setting up
new Church.” The “purification of the Temple” was
their sole object.
It would be difficult to imagine a more perfect reductio
ad absurdum of the theory of continuity. It reminds us
of the fabled ship of antiquity which, in the course of its
voyage, was so often repaired, that at length no part of
the original material remained. On this theory the boy
who refused to part with his knife because it had been
handed down to him by his great-grandfather, though the
haft and the blades had been all of them renewed, had
good reason for clinging to it. By this method of reason-
ing the Parsee, the Hindoo, and the Mohammedan, who
has embraced Christianity, might try and persude himself
that he had not broken with the faith of his fathers-
that, in fact, he has only taken the step that he has taken
1 “The new Church which he (Henry VIII.) had created could as
little pretend to be the continuation of, and identical with, the old
English Church, as might a statue of Socrates, whereon a head of
Alcibiades had been set, do duty as the statue of the philosopher."
Addresses on Historical and Literary Subjects, by J. Ignatius von
Döllinger, D.D., p. 65.
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
35
in order to become a better Parsee, a better Hindoo, a
better Mohammedan.
The Reformers did not dream of setting up a new
Church"--whatever they dreamed, or aimed at doing, they
certainly succeeded in setting up a Church as different
from, and as diametrically opposed to, the Church which
it supplanted, as Christianity is opposed to Hindooism.
They vehemently denounced the old Church as represent-
ing the very spirit of Antichrist. The purification of
the temple was attained in no other way than by setting
a new temple; and had not the glory of the latter
eclipsed that of the former, the condition of both Scot-
land and England had been indeed dark and deplorable! I
The right of separation or schism. —No true Pro-
testant can pretend to doubt that in whatever way
the breach with Rome was effected
Rome was effected and the inde-
pendence of the Church achieved, the gain which the
Reformation brought to the Church and nation, as well
as to the cause of truth and liberty, was beyond all com-
putation. Darkness covered the earth and gross darkness
the people, and to Luther chiefly—though others are
associated with him in this proud distinction--it was
given to speak the word—“Let there be light: and there
was light.” Luther’s “doctrine of Christian liberty and
of the common universal priesthood," as Dr. Döllinger
1 Dr. Muir is apparently content to follow his authorities without
exercising his independent judgment. He quotes Dr. Story: “The
Baptism and Ordination of the unreformed Church were alike held
as valid. The old order changeth, yielding place to new, but there
is no absolute disruption between the two-Out of the Romanist
priesthood emerges the Protestant ministry."
36
PURITANISM
calls it, was bound, wherever it was embraced, to break
the yoke which Rome had forged for the enslavement of
the mind and conscience of men. It was this doctrine
which created the strength and justification of the
Protestant revolt against the Papacy. But Protestantism
was only able to embody it partially in its own system
and formularies. It found sovereign expression in the
Puritan contention, and to its insistence upon this
doctrine, and its unshrinking application of it, must be
traced the beginning of the cleft between Puritanism
and the Church.
The Reformation carried with it implications and con-
clusions which, however objectionable they might seem
to the ruling powers, were logically and morally neces-
sitated--so the Puritans believed by the breach which
had been made with Rome, and on grounds by which this
schism could alone be justified. The Reformation settle-
ment was at best a compromise, the result of statecraft
and political expediency, and could not be expected to
satisfy the aspirations of men who had dreamed a dream
of the fair City of God, and of the Church as the pure
and spotless Bride of His Son.
NOTE ON SCHISM
The word schisin has acquired a somewhat sinister meaning. The
"sin of schism” is a very favourite expression among a certain class
of ecclesiastics, and the opprobrium which is supposed to attach to
schism in any form or shape is very terrible. The sin of schism is
specially visited by Anglican writers upon those who separate from
the Established Church of the nation ; and their ingenuity has been
strained not a little in order to show that there exists no parallel
between the position of the Protestant Church of England in separat-
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
37
untrue.
ing from the Church of Rome, and that of the Puritan Separatists in
seceding from the Church of England.1
In “The Anglican Brief against the Roman Claims,” by the Rev.
Thomas Moore and the Rev. Arthur Brinckmann, the question is
asked- Are there any grounds for the argument frequently used by
Nonconformists to justify their separation from the Church, which
is to the effect, that their separation from the Church of England is
no more than the Church of England's separation from the Church
of Rome?
To this the answer is given-
There are no grounds for it whatever. The statement is, in fact,
There is no resemblance between the two cases. The
Church of England in 1534 did not dissent nor separate herself from
the historical Church of the country. She simply threw off a foreign
thraldom, liberated herself from foreign tyranny, and asserted and
resumed her historical freedom and her independence of the usurped
supremacy of Rome. The Church of England did not, in so doing,
create a new Church and a new ministry. But the case of the Non-
conformists is a very different one. They dissent from, and separate
themselves from, the historic Church of the kingdom. They form
new religious bodies, create new ministries, and establish antagonistic
centres of worship.
What these unsupported assertions come to as to the Church of
England being the ancient historic Church of the kingdom we have
already seen, and shall probably be able to see better by and by.
It is obvious at a glance that this attempt to disprove the analogy
between the two acts of separation is a mere juggling with words.
Suppose we say—what is nothing but the literal truth-that the
Nonconformists threw off the thraldom of the Church of England,
liberated themselves from its tyranny, and resumed the ancient
O
1 The shifts, indeed, to which Anglican writers are driven in order
to get rid of the imputation of “schism” are strange and extreme.
“The attitude of our Church at the Reformation cannot indeed be
too clearly or too frequently called to mind. It was not a breach or
a schism that was intended. It was simply a protest. .
The former
of these two courses (the course denoted by the word protest) was
chosen by the Church of England in the sixteenth century ; the
latter (that denoted by the word schism) by the Anabaptists and
other sectaries.”_Curteis' Bampton Lecture on Dissent in its Rela-
tion to the Church of England, p. 188. Could anything be more
inconsequential ?
38
PURITANISM
independence which had been bequeathed to them by our Lord and
His apostles—what becomes of the alleged difference between them?
Certainly, if the Church of England did not create a new Church
and a new ministry when she broke with the Church of Rome, then
the Nonconformists did not create a new Church and a new ministry
when they broke off from the Church of England.
The following words from the Spectator newspaper, in reply to a
letter from a correspondent on “Schism and the English Reforma-
tion,” should carry some weight upon this question. “The English
Church broke off doctrinally from Rome as well as politically. We
do not understand the dread felt of the word “schism' where there
is no fear of the thing. If Rome were wrong both politically and
doctrinally, then the schism was right, but it was schism all the
same.
If Rome were right, then the schism was wrong ; but
whether right or wrong, the breaking off from Rome was schism.”.
ED. Spectator, Dec. 24, 1892.
NOTES ON CONTINUITY OF THE CHURCH
We are well aware that the theory of the identity of the post-
Reformation and pre-Reformation Church can plead the sanction
and authority of not a few eminent names. W. E. Gladstone, the
historian Freeman, Dean Hook, J. A. Blunt, and a host of Anglican
writers; but no authority and no consensus of authority can avail
to establish what is so manifestly opposed to the logic of fact and
evidence.
Most conclusively we think Mr. Child has shown, in his impartial
and careful study of Church and State under the Tudors, that there
was not and could not, from the nature of the then existing circum-
stances, be anything that answered to the designation of a national
Church
up
to the time of the breach with Rome under Henry VIII.
The series of measures culminating in the Act of Appeals and the
Act of Supremacy, which were passed at the instance of Henry,
...
1 Church and State under the Tudors, by Gilbert W. Child, M.A.,
Exeter College, Oxford (Longmans, Green, & Co.). A most valuable
work, based upon “State papers, ambassadors' letters, and other
original documents which were formerly too little known”
altogether indispensable to the careful and impartial study of this
period.
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
39
made the Church in England a national Church. But at the same
time that it became national it became schismatical, for then and
there it was cast off and excommunicated by the Church of Rome.
“It was just because the Church in England was not in truth
the Church of England, but was an organic portion of the one great
Western Church ... that it was enabled to occupy the position of
independence, and sometimes almost of supremacy, in which we find
it. . . . Had the Church been in truth the Church of England, it
would have been a mere imperium in imperio, and would never have
been able to hold its own generation after generation and century after
century against the State, often represented by powerful and able
monarchs, such as Henry II. or Edward III. It was just because it
was not the Church of England, but a mere extension into England
of the powerful Western Church, having its rights and its interests
and its officers in every nation, and its independent seat of empire
at Rome, and thus enabled to enlist one nation against another, or a
nation against its own rulers, that it became in a greater or less
degree, and for periods varying in different countries, independent
of the State and a rival of the State.” 1
“It is difficult to study the actual facts of sixteenth-century
history, putting apart preconceived ecclesiastical theories, without
arriving at the conclusion that the English National Church was as
completely the creation of Henry VIII., Edward's Council, and
Elizabeth, as Saxon Protestantism was of Luther, or Swiss of Calvin
or of Zwingle.2 ... A fair consideration of the actual facts of the
Tudor history serves further to show that a theory like that which
prevails so widely at present—which represents the English Church
in any other light than that of one (though it may, perhaps, be
admitted, the greatest and the most dignified) of the many Protestant
Churches which arose in the sixteenth century-is a novelty which
took its very earliest rise some half-century or more after the separa-
tion from Rome, as a direct consequence of Elizabeth's determination
to give no quarter to the earlier Puritans, and which made little or
no progress for another half-century still.” 3
Thus we see that the Church in England was in every sense a
daughter of the Church of Rome. And notwithstanding the great
3
1 See pp. 10, 11.
2 P. 272.
Pp. 273, 274.
Those who wish to see how this view of the Church of England
appears to the present accredited organs of the High Church party,
will do well to consult an article in the Contemporary Review,
November 1892, by Mr. Child.
܂
40
PURITANISM
change she underwent at the time of the Reformation, she continued
to bear, and still bears, the marks of the lineage from which she
sprang. Her orders, her offices, and her ritual are modelled upon
those of the Romish Church, though the more objectionable, and
what were deemed distinctively popish, elements have been drastically
expunged. As Macaulay says, she copied the Roman Catholic forms
of prayer. "Utterly rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, and
condemning as idolatrous all adoration paid to the sacramental bread
and wine, she yet, to the disgust of the Puritan, required her
children to receive the memorials of divine love meekly kneeling
upon their knees. Discarding many rich vestments which sur-
rounded the altars of the ancient faith, she yet retained to the horror
of weak minds a robe of white linen, typical of the purity which
belonged to her as the mystical spouse of Christ. Discarding a
crowd of pantomimic gestures, which in the Roman Catholic worship
are substituted for intelligible words, she yet shocked many rigid
Protestants by marking the infant just sprinkled from the font with
the sign of the cross. .. The Church of England, though she asked
for the intercession of no created being, still set apart days for the
commemoration of some who had done and suffered great things for
the faith. She retained confirmation and ordination as edifying
rites; but she degraded them from the rank of sacraments. Shrift
was no part of her system. Yet she gently invited the dying penitent
to confess his sins to a divine, and empowered her ministers to soothe
the departing soul by an absolution which breathes the very spirit
of the old religion.” 1
1 Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. pp. 53–4; see Zurich Letters
-Laurence Humphrey and Thomas Sampson to Henry Bullinger,
“Some blemishes which still attach to the Church of England.”
“ After the Council of Trent had effected such considerable reforms
in the Catholic discipline, it seemed a sort of reproach to the Pro-
testant Church of England that she retained all the dispensations,
the exemptions, the pluralities, which had been deemed the peculiar
corruptions of the worst times of Popery.”—Hallam’s Const. History,
vol. i. p. 194.
In his Life of Grindal, p. 542, Strype gives a list of dispensations
and their prices.
The Rise of Puritanism in England
41
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
Edward vi. reigned
Mary reigned .
Elizabeth reigned
Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity passed
Puritan Party arose in England
1547-1553
1553-1558
1558-1603
1559
+
1556
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER III
Puritanism originated not in England but in Holland—John
Hooper, first Puritan Confessor-Made Bishop of Gloucester-
Martyrdom of Hooper-Puritanism and Anglicanism–Jewel--
Orders, non-Episcopal— Macaulay on Orders-Strype_Dr. Ham-
hond – Cosin
Cosin -- Bacon -- Bishop Barlow - Archbishop Parker
Elizabeth and the Puritans--Act of Supremacy-Act of Uniformity
-Vestments Controversy–Sacerdotal and non-Sacerdotal concep-
tions—Resistance to Vestments Convocation--Suspension of Clergy
-Hallam's Judgment-Parker's Advertisements.
42
CHAPTER III
THE RISE OF PURITANISM IN ENGLAND
error.
It is a common impression that Puritanism is a growth
that first sprang upon British soil — that, from the
seed sown by the early. Protestant Reformers, it first
pushed its way into the light of day during the reign of
Elizabeth, or during the closing years of the reign of her
sister Mary. This, however, is an
Its origin
must be sought at a much earlier period than this, and
in a country relatively smaller and historically much less
important. It was in HOLLAND or the NETHERLANDS that
Puritanism first sprang and took root.
But of this we
shall have occasion to speak presently,h, and mention it
here only as a caveat to prevent any premature conclusion
being drawn as to its British origin. ·
re-
John Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, may
garded as the father and founder of English Puritanism.
Canon Perry speaks of him as the “first Puritan con-
fessor.” He was the first Nonconformist, though his
nonconformity did not lead him to cross the Rubicon of
separation from the Church of England. He had been
a Cistercian monk, but, embracing the principles of the
1 See p. 203.
13
44
PURITANISM
Reformation, he advocated them with such zeal that it
became unsafe for him to remain in his own country.
This was in the closing years of the reign of Henry VIII.
Hooper fled to Switzerland, and settled down in Zurich,
where, under the influence of Bullinger, his Puritan
leanings became developed and strongly confirmed. On
the accession of Edward vi. he returned to England, and,
with the exception of Latimer, became the most popular
preacher of his day. He was the first champion of the
cause of religious liberty after the Reformation, and stood
alone amongst the English Protestants of his age in the
clearness with which he grasped the doctrine of the inde-
pendence of the Church and the spirituality of the kingdom
of Christ. “As touching,” he says, “the superior powers of
earth, it is not unknown to all of them who have readen
and marked the Scripture, that it appertaineth nothing
unto their office to make any law to govern the conscience
of their subjects in religion. ... Christ's kingdom is
a spiritual one. In this neither King nor Pope may
govern.
Christ alone is the Governor of His Church,
and the only lawgiver.' Preaching before the King, he
called for the restoration of the primitive Church, and
demanded the abolition of all vestments, crosses, and
altars.
King Edward conceived a great liking for this honest
and brave man. He was offered the bishopric of Glou-
cester, and, though willing to accept the appointment, he
“scrupled the vestments," and refused to take the oath-
So help me God and all the saints.” A change in
the wording of the latter relieved his conscience, but
Early Writings of Bishop Hooper, p. 280 (Parker Society, 1843).
"1
1
THE RISE OF PURITANISM IN ENGLAND
45
he still stood out against the “old symbolising popish
garments.” Persisting in his nolo episcopari, the King
and his governing prelates sought to enforce his com-
pliance, “ a usage which the doctor,” says Neal, “ thought
To miss his promotion was no disappoint-
very severe.
ment, but to be persecuted about clothes by men of the
same faith as himself, and to lose his liberty because
he would not be a bishop — this was possibly more
than he well understood." He consulted with the
continental Reformers, who urged upon him to comply,
but could not succeed in removing his scruples; and
being still contumacious, he was committed to the Fleet
Prison. At length, yielding to the remonstrance and
entreaties of his friends, he consented to wear the vest-
ments at his consecration, on condition that he might
dispense with them at other times, and was accordingly
made Bishop of Gloucester in March 1551. Here, for
four years, preaching sometimes two or three times a day
to crowds of people who hungered for the word of Life,
he laboured in season and out of season “in the faithful
discharge of every branch of his episcopal character, even
beyond his strength, and was himself a pattern of what
he taught to others.”
When the reign of persecution commenced under
Queen Mary, Hooper was one of its first victims. He
was burnt at Gloucester on 9th February 1555, suffering
torture of the most aggravated and horrible description.
With the prayer on his lips, “Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit,” died the first martyr of the Reformation in
England, the forerunner and champion of English
Puritanism,
46
PURITANISM
Puritanism and Anglicanism.—But Hooper was
by no means singular in his Puritanism. Many of Eliza-
beth's first bishops were Puritans—Tyndale, Coverdale,
Jewel, Barlow, and Grindal ; while Cranmer, Latimer,
and Ridley became more and more Puritan as their
Protestant sympathies and convictions became more
pronounced. A large number of them would gladly
have dispensed with Episcopacy; they disliked exceedingly
the ceremonies which were associated with it, and which
reminded them only too forcibly of the ceremonies of the
Church of Rome. Jewel, bishop of Salisbury, in a letter
to Peter Martyr, describes the worship which the Queen
was establishing as such as had often moved their ridi-
cule:1 “The scenic apparatus of divine worship is now
under agitation, and those very things which you and I
have so often laughed at are now seriously and solemnly
entertained by certain persons (for we are not consulted),
as if the Christian religion could not exist without
something tawdry.” The only excuse Jewel can find
for it was the extreme ignorance of the clergy, who
were “no better than mere logs of wood, without talent,
learning, or morality.” They were of no use as minis-
ters of a Protestant Church, and to cast them out
would have been to convert them into enemies, so
they resolved, says Jewel, “to commend them to
the people by a comical dress. . . . Since they cannot
obtain influence in a proper way, they seek to occupy
the eyes of the multitude with these ridiculous
trifles."
1 Jewel's Letters are well worth reading for their outspokenness,
and for the light which they shed upon this period,
THE RISE OF PURITANISM IN ENGLAND
47
1
Orders-Non-Episcopal valid. - None of the prelates
of the Church appear to have had at first any decided
leanings to Episcopacy; it was only after a time that these
leanings became very manifest, and when their alliance
with the Court made it highly useful and expedient.
“ The founders of the Anglican Church,” says Macaulay,
had retained Episcopacy as an ancient, a decent, and a
convenient ecclesiastical polity, but had not declared that
form of church government to be of divine institution.
We have already seen how low an estimate Cranmer had
formed of the office of a bishop. In the reign of Eliza-
beth, Jewel, Cooper, Whitgift, and other eminent doctors
defended prelacy as innocent, as useful, as what the State
might lawfully establish ; as what, when established by
the State, was entitled to the respect of every citizen.
But they never denied that a Christian community
without a bishop might be a pure Church.1
On the con-
1 Whitgift was not likely to gratuitously disparage his own order;
yet in a letter to Sir Francis Knollys, which Strype has printed
in the Appendix to his Life of Whitgift (bk. iii. No. xlii.), he
says : “For if it had pleased Her Majesty, with the wisdom of
the realm, to have used no bishops at all, we could not have com-
plained justly of any defect in our Church.” And again : “If
it had pleased Her Majesty to have assigned the imposition of
hands to the deans of every cathedral church, or to some other
number of ministers which in no sort were bishops, but as they
be pastors, there had been no wrong done to their persons that I
can conceive.”
In the weighty and valuable note (note vi. p. 293) on Orders in
the Church of England,” which Mr. Child has appended to his work on
Church and State under the Tudors, he quotes from a letter addressed
by Dr. Hammond to Lord Burleigh, Nov. 4, 1588: “The bishops
of our realm do not (so far as I ever yet heard), nor may not, claimi
to themselves any other authority than is given them by the statute
of the 25th of King Henry the Eighth, recited in the first year of
48
PURITANISM
+
.
trary, they regarded the Protestants of the Continent as
of the same household of faith with themselves.
An English Churchman, nay, even an English prelate,
if he went to Holland, conformed, without scruple,
to the established religion of Holland. Abroad, the
ambassadors of Elizabeth and James went in state to the
very worship which Elizabeth and James persecuted at
home, and carefully abstained from decorating their
private chapels after the Anglican fashion, lest scandal
should be given to weaker brethren. An instrument is
still extant by which the Primate of England, in the year
1582, authorised a Scotch minister, ordained according
to the laudable forms of the Scotch Church by the Synod
of East Lothian, to preach and administer the sacraments
in any part of the province of Canterbury. In the
year 1603 the Convocation solemnly recognised the
Church of Scotland, a Church in which episcopal control
and episcopal ordination were then unknown, as a branch
of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ. It was even
held that Presbyterian ministers were entitled to place
and voice in Ecumenical Councils. .. Nay, many
English benefices were held by divines who had been
Her Majesty's reign, or by other statutes of this land ; neither is it
reasonable they should make other claims, for if it had pleased Her
Majesty, with the wisdom of the realm [the similarity between these
and Whitgift's words is not a little striking), to have used no bishops
at all, we could not have complained justly of any defect in our
Church ; or if it had liked them to limit the authority of bishops to
shorter terms, they might not have said they had any wrong. But
sith it hath pleased Her Majesty to use the ministry of bishops, and
to assign them this authority, it must be to me, that am a subject,
as God's ordinance, and therefore to be obeyed according to St. Paul's
rule."
TIIE RISE OF PURITANISM IN ENGLAND
49
admitted to the ministry in the Calvinistic form used on
the Continent; nor was reordination by a bishop in such
cases thought necessary. or even lawful.” 1
Bishop Cosin says: “We had many ministers from
Scotland . . . ordained by presbyters only, and they
were initiated into benefices, and were never reordained.”
“ There is no difference in any essential matter betwixt
the Church of England and her sisters of the Reforma-
tion," is the statement of Bishop Hall; and Bishop Hall
wrote Episcopacy by Divine Right Asserted, in which, while
expressly excluding the Presbyterian Church of Scotland,
he manages, by some unaccountable dexterity, to bring
the Churches of Geneva and Zurich within the charmed
and sacred circle.
In his Advertisement touching the Controversies of the
Church of England, Lord Bacon censures the indiscretion
of those persons who called in question the orders of
foreign Protestant Churches : “ Yea, and some indiscreet
persons have been bold in open preaching to use dis-
honourable and derogative speech and censure of the
Churches abroad; and that so far as some of our men
(as I have heard), ordained in foreign parts, have been
pronounced to be no lawful ministers.”
This was fifty years after the separation from the
Church of Rome.
2
Bishop Barlow.—The oldest Protestant bishop was
Barlow; yet of the fact of his consecration there is no
extant evidence. All we know is that he was made
1 Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. pp. 75–7.
2 Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. i. pp. 175–6.
!
4
50
PURITANISM
Bishop of St. Asaph's in 1535. The slight importance
Barlow was disposed to attach to ordination, episcopal or
otherwise, may be gathered from his own words-
"If the King's grace, being supreme head of the Church
of England, did choose, denominate, and elect any layman
(being learned) to be a bishop, that he so chosen (without
mention being made of any orders) should be as good a
bishop as he is, or the best in England. Wheresoever
two or three simple persons, as cobblers or weavers, are
in company and elected in the name of God, there is the
true Church of God." We may imagine, indeed, Barlow's
hearty approval of Lacordaire's great saying: “Where
there is the love of God, there is Jesus Christ; and
where Jesus Christ is, there is the Church with Him."
All probable sources of information as to the consecration
of Barlow have been searched, but searched in vain.
Now, it was through Barlow, in point of law, that Parker
received his consecration, and through him it passed to
the succeeding line of bishops in the Church of England.
Here, then, is a missing link in the chain of apostolical
succession--missing, at anyrate, so far as the absence of
documentary evidence can show it.
The Queen selected Matthew Parker, who had been
her mother's chaplain, to be head of the new Establish-
ment; but as none of the bishops in any of the existing
sees would take part in consecrating the new Protestant
primate, recourse had to be had to four deprived bishops
of Edward VI.'s time, and accordingly Parker was in-
ducted by William Barlow, John Scory, John Hodgkins,
and Miles Coverdale, the last of whom had been an elder
THE RISE OF PURITANISM IN ENGLAND
51
in Knox's church in Geneva, and is said to have officiated
on this occasion in his Genevan gown.
Elizabeth and the Puritans.—It was about the
year 1556 the Puritans 1 rose into power and became
recognised as a separate party in the State. Long prior
to this, the leaven of Puritan influence had been silently
working in the heart of the best part of the nation,-con-
spicuously so since the days of Wyclif, who was himself
a Puritan of the Puritans,—but as yet it had found no
concerted, no organised, expression. It was driven to
find this at length by the relentless fury of persecution.
Mary was on the throne, and her reign was signalised by
that series of unparalleled atrocities, so vividly depicted in
Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which has loaded her memory with ex-
ecration, and gained for her the soubriquet of Bloody Mary.
Only by flight could the obnoxious Protestants (and
of these the Puritan section was the most obnoxious)
escape the violence of the storm which now burst upon
them. It is estimated that the refugees numbered about
eight hundred. Some found an asylum in France, some
in Switzerland, some in Holland, some in Germany. They
were most numerous in Frankfort; and here, after con-
1 Fuller dates the use of the term Puritan, as a nickname for the
English Nonconformists generally, from thc year 1564. Mr. Froude,
however, does not find any mention of the name before the year
1585. He quotes from a document drawn up by a “distinguished
Jesuit” three years before the Armada, as follows :-
party that would fight to death for the Queen, the only real friends
she had, were the Puritans (it is the first mention of the name which
I have found), the Puritans of London, the Puritans of the sea
towns."- English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century, p. 6.
“ The only
52
PURITANISM
siderable discussion as to what form of service they
should adopt, it was agreed to use the service book of
Edward VI., subject to certain changes and modifications.
This was no sooner agreed to than it was departed from
at the instance of a Dr. Cox, who refused to dispense with
the portions which had been objected to. This led to a
secession, and part of the congregation withdrew to
Geneva, where they discarded the service book entirely,
and substituted in its place the Genevan form of wor-
ship and discipline. The two parties became known as
Conformists and Puritans. The death of Mary, the
accession of Elizabeth, and her supposed sympathy with
the work of the Reformation, induced the exiles to return
to their native land. “They came home threadbare,”
says Strype,“ bringing nothing with them, but much
experience as well as learning."
Elizabeth was not slow to take advantage of her posi-
tion by asserting her absolute authority. The ecclesiastical
edifice reared by Elizabeth rested mainly upon two pillars,
the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity. These
continued in force for more than a century, and the system
built upon them, setting aside the period of the Long
Parliament and that of the Commonwealth, existed un-
changed till the passing of the Toleration Act in 1689.
The Act of Supremacy was entitled, An Act restoring
to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction over the State,
ecclesiastical and spiritual, and abolishing all foreign power
repugnant to the same.
All jurisdiction was to be vested in the Queen and her
successors. This simply meant the transference of
THE RISE OF PURITANISM IN ENGLAND
53
authority from the Pope to the Crown, and just as little
secured the rights of conscience and the liberty of the
people. Elizabeth was the supreme head, or, as she
preferred to style herself, the supreme governor, of the
Church. The extent of the authority of the Crown may
be gathered from the following terms of the Act of Sup-
remacy :-“That the King has power to redress and amend
all errors and heresies; he might enjoin what doctrines
he would should be preached, not repugnant to the laws
of the land. And if any should preach contrary, he was
for the third offence to be judged a heretic, and suffer
death.” His Majesty claimed a right to forbid all preach-
ing for the time, as did Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary,
and Elizabeth, or, as did Charles I., to limit the clergy's
preaching to certain of the Thirty-nine Articles.
The Act of Uniformity was entitled, An Act for the
uniformity of Common Prayer and Divine Service in the
Church, and the Administration of the Sacraments.
This forbade the use of any but the second Prayer-
Book of Edward VI. A fine of one shilling, nearly equal
to ten shillings at the present time, was imposed on all
who absented themselves from divine worship, "having
no lawful or reasonable excuse to be absent.” This
was the beginning of sorrows. * Upon the fatal rock
of uniformity was the peace of the Church of England
split. The rigorous pressing of this Act was the
occasion of all the mischiefs that befell the Church
66
1 Zurich Letters. Jewel, in letter to Peter Martyr, January 26,
1559, says: “The Queen has forbidden any person, whether Papist
or Gospeller, to preach to the people.”
54
PURITANISM
for above eighty years.
“What good," asks Neal per-
tinently, “could it answer to press men's bodies into the
public service without convincing their minds ? ” Let
those who wish to see how complete the absolutism
of the Crown was, and the power which they put into
the hands of the bishops and their officers, read the pro-
visions of these two Acts, the Act of Supremacy and the
Act of Uniformity.
The Vestments Controversy.—We have seen
how Hooper "scrupled the vestments," and consented to
wear them at his consecration to the see of Gloucester,
only on condition that he might dispense with them on
other occasions. This was really the beginning of the
“ Vestiarian Controversy," -- "a dispute which raged
apparently round outward symbols, but which really
turned on grave differences of opinion.” It is no
uncommon thing to hear the Puritans sneered at on
account of their scrupulosity in regard to the wearing
of vestments prescribed and commanded to be worn.
Hume's contemptuous reference to their hatred of "sur-
plices and tippets and church millinery” is well known.
Canon Curteis speaks of it as a prejudice due to their
morbid want of imagination,” magnifying mere “ trifling
matters .. into matters of morbid scruple and obstinate
antipathy."
They may be conveniently consulted in Professor Prothero's
work, Statutes and Constitutional Documents illustrative of the Reigns
of Elizabeth and James I., edited by G. W. Prothero, Fellow of
King's College, Cambridge, in which they are printed in full.
2 Curteis' Bampton Lecture on Dissent in its Relation to the Church
of England, p. 54.
(6
79 2
1
THE RISE OF PURITANISM IN ENGLAND
55
5
This is a very superficial judgment, and no more ex-
plains the dislike which the enforced wearing of the
habits inspired in the Puritans than it explains the
tenacity with which modern Ritualists cling to their dis-
tinctive habits and ceremonies. If alb and stole, and
chasuble and cope and rochet had no underlying meaning
and symbolism, they would soon cease to be things to
wrangle about, and would neither find favour on the one
hand nor stir up opposition on the other.
Sacerdotal and non-sacerdotal conceptions of the
Christian ministry were struggling for supremacy in the
English Establishment. No one can look into the Zurich
Letters and read carefully the correspondence between
Sampson, dean of Christ Church; Humphreys, president
of Magdalen; and Bullinger, Peter Martyr, and Gualter,
at Zurich," without realising, not only the unfairness, but
the absurdity of describing the Puritan revolt against
the vestments as arising from mere faddiness or narrow
bigotry—mere hatred of “surplices and tippets and church
millinery.” Rightly or wrongly, the Protestant Puritans
saw in them only a relic of the Babylonish garments
which pertained to the Church of Rome; and because they
symbolised, and were, as they held, intended to symbolise,
1 It is true that the continental Reformers counselled a less hostile
attitude than their friends in England were disposed to take up.
Bullinger thought it would not be "unlawful to use, in common
with Papists, a vestment not superstitious.” Peter Martyr wrote to
Sampson : "You may therefore use those habits either in preaching
or in the administration of the Lord's Supper, provided, however,
you persist in speaking and teaching against the use of them." --See
Zurich Letters ; Hallam’s Const. Hist. vol. i. pp. 237–8.
56
PURITANISM
that in which they did not believe, they refused to wear
them. Many of the bishops sympathised with them, and
did their utmost to prevent the use of the prescribed
vestments being made compulsory; and, indeed, “the
number of the clergy who participated in the scruples of
Sampson and Humphreys must have been considerable.
When Parker summoned to Lambeth a hundred clergy-
men, and exhibited one Thomas Cole canonically robed,
with 'a square cap, a scholar's gown priestlike, tippet,
and, in the church, a linen surplice,' only sixty-one out
of the hundred were willing to be robed after the fashion
of Thomas Cole. They wrote their names with a Nolo,
and preferred losing their benefices to wearing a surplice.”
Speaking of the ferment which the vestments contro-
versy produced in Cambridge, Strype relates how “the
fellows and scholars in St. John's College there, chiefly
the younger sort (to the number of nearly three hundred,
some said), about the beginning of December 1565, or
sooner, threw off the surplice with one consent, however
they had worn it before in the chapel; as in Trinity
College about the same time, all except three, by T. Cart-
wright's instigation."
The Queen was highly incensed on hearing of this
contumacious behaviour. In reply to a communication
from Cecil, who was at that time Chancellor of the univer-
sity, it was averred by the heads of colleges “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
" 2
1 Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. i. pp. 47, 48.
2 Strype's Annals of the Reformation, vol. i. part ii. Pp. 153, 154.
THE RISE OF PURITANISM IN ENGLAND
57
:
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 were afraid religion and learning would
suffer very much by rigour and imposition.”? Incredible
as it may appear, among the signatories attached to this
statement was the name of John Whitgift, Master of
Trinity, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and in
that position the relentless oppressor of the Puritans.
How divided opinion and feeling were, may be gathered
from what took place in the Convocation of 1563. The
Puritan demands that the habits, all but the surplice,
should be done away, also the use of organs, the sign of
the cross in baptism, enforced kneeling at the communion,
were defeated by a majority of one (fifty-eight for, fifty-
nine against). “It would have been interesting to see
how such proposals would have been received by Elizabeth
had this trifling majority been reversed.” It is clear
that at that time no appeal in favour of the habits on
the ground of order and comeliness could avail in the
face of their dubious origin and their Romish asso-
ciations. Everything that savoured of Rome was, for
that reason, specially repugnant to Protestant feeling.
“I wish,” said Jewel, “ that all, even the slightest,
vestiges of Popery might be removed from our churches,
and, above all, from our minds. But the Queen at this
time is unable to endure the least alteration in matters
of religion.” Elizabeth had fully made up her mind that
no latitude was to be allowed the clergy in regard to the
Strype's Life of Parker, bk. iii. p. 125, and also Appendix.
1
58
PURITANISM
wearing of the prescribed vestments. In this, as in all
other respects, the requirements of the Act of Uniformity
must be rigorously carried out. In Parker, archbishop of
Canterbury, the Queen found an ally and supporter after
her own mind, and, needless to say, the power which they
wielded bore down all opposition. Humphrey, presi-
dent of Magdalen, was admonished, and Sampson was
deprived of his deanery. Out of ninety-eight ministers
in London, thirty-seven refused to comply with the pre-
scribed ceremonies, and were, in consequence, suspended
from their ministry, and their livings sequestrated.1
Many will concur in the very moderate judgment of
Hallam : “I am far from being convinced that it would
not have been practicable, by receding a little from that
uniformity which governors delight to prescribe, to have
palliated in a great measure, if not put an end for a time
to, the discontent that so soon endangered the new
Establishment. The frivolous usages, to which so many
frivolous objections were raised, such as the tippet and sur-
plice, the sign of the cross in baptism, the ring in matri-
mony, the posture of kneeling at the communion, might
have been left to private discretion, not possibly without
some inconvenience, but with less, as I conceive, than
resulted from rendering their observance indispensable.” 2
1 The Advertisements, as the articles drawn up by Archbishop
Parker were called, may be consulted in Professor Prothero's work,
pp. 191-4. They are styled Parker's Advertisements, 1565, and pre-
scribe the conditions to be observed in connection with doctrine and
preaching, the administration of prayers and sacraments, certain
orders in ecclesiastical policy, and the kind of apparel to be worn by
all ecclesiastical persons.
2 Hallam’s Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 241.
The Chasm Widening: Rise of
Presbyterianism in England
59
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
Archbishops of Canterbury during reign of Elizabeth :-
Matthew Parker
1553-1575
Edmund Grindal
1575--1583
John Whitgift.
1583-1604
Thomas Cartwright appointed Lady Margaret
Professor of Divinity in 1569
died 1603
John Calvin
born 1509, died 1564
.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IV
Rise of Separatism—The Puritans and the Church-Points of
divergence-Early and later Puritans—All early Puritans desired
uniformity-Rise of Presbyterianism-Return of Refugees--Cart-
wright-His positions stated-Founder of Presbyterianism in Eng-
land—Cartwright and Whitgift-Puritan and Anglican antitheses
Walter Travers—Presbyterianised State Church-Book of Discipline
-Five hundred signatories-Presbyterians not Separatists-Not
friendly to religious liberty_Impermanence of Presbyterianism in
England.
60
CHAPTER IV
THE CHASM WIDENING-RISE OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN
ENGLAND
Rise of Separatism.-In this “vestiarian contro-
—
-1
versy”—the resistance which the enforcement of the habits
provoked Separatism originated. “A most unhappy
event,” says Strype, “whereby people of the same country,
of the same religion, and of the same judgment in doctrine,
parted communion; one part being obliged to go aside
into secret houses and chambers to serve God by them-
selves, which begat strangeness between neighbours,
Christians, and Protestants.” This was the beginning of
the breach between the Church and the people, the
breach in which Dissent and Nonconformity took its rise,
and which has gone on widening ever since, till it has
divided the nation into two rival religious càmps, and run
a line of cleavage throughout the entire strata of English
society.
The Puritans and the Church.--The Puritans were
not sorry to see the authority of the Queen substituted
for that of the Pope, but they could not bring themselves
to submit to her assumption of headship over the Church.
« The Christian sovereign,” said Cartwright in “An
61
62
PURITANISM
Admonition to the Parliament, composed by himself and
others, “ought not to be called head under Christ of the
particular and visible churches within his dominions.
It is a title not fit for any mortal man; for, when the
apostle says that Christ is the Head, it is as much as if
he had said, Christ and no other is Head of the Church.”
They were no enemies," says Neal, “ to the name or
function of a bishop, provided he was no more than
stated president of the college of presbyters in his diocese,
and managed the affairs of it with their concurrence and
assistance. They did not object against prescribed forms
of prayer, provided a latitude was indulged the minister
to alter or vary some expressions, and to make use of a
prayer of his own conception before and after sermon.
Nor had they an aversion to any decent and distinct
habits for the clergy that were not derived from Popery.
But, upon the whole, they were the most resolved Pro-
testants in the nation, zealous Calvinists, warm and
affectionate preachers, and determined enemies to Popery
and to everything that had a tendency towards it.”
The main points of divergence between the Puritans
and their opponents may be thus summarised
| The ruling powers contended that every prince had
authority to correct all abuses of doctrine and worship
within his own territories. This the Puritans resisted as
an invasion of the rights of conscience.
2 The rulers contended that, in spite of all apostasy and
1 Neal, vol. i. p. 398. But, as Hallam observes, this was in effect
to demand everything. “For," he adds, “if the office could be so
far lowered in eminence, there were many waiting to clip the tem-
poral revenues and dignity in proportion."
RISE OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND
63
corruption, the Church of Rome was a true Church, and
the Pope held his title as Bishop of the Church by an
indefeasible right; for, without admitting this, it was held
that the Church of England could not establish the
validity of her own orders. It is needless to say that
the Puritans could not approve this contention. Το
them the Pope was Antichrist, the Church of Rome an
idolatrous and corrupt Church.
i The Court reformers held that while the Scriptures
are 'supreme as the standard and rule of faith, their
authority did not extend to questions of Church govern-
ment and discipline. These were to be determined by
Church rulers with sole reference to considerations of
wisdom and expediency. This the Puritans of that age
could not admit, holding as they did to the authority of
the Scriptures, not only in matters of doctrine, but also
in questions of discipline.
4 The rulers maintained“ that things indifferent in their
own nature, which are neither commanded nor forbidden
in the Scriptures, such as rites and ceremonies, habits,
etc., might be settled, determined, and made necessary by
the command of the civil magistrate; and that in such
cases it was the indispensable duty of all subjects to
observe them.” It was upon this principle the bishops
justified their severities against the Puritans.
yielding attitude of the latter was due to nothing but self-
willed perversity (this was the charge commonly brought
against them), and of this they must be cured by chastise-
ment and condign punishment. To the Puritans, on the
other hand, the path of duty seemed plain. Christ,
they said, is the sole lawgiver of His Church, and has
The un-
64
PURITANISM
enjoined all things necessary to be observed in it to the
end of the world; consequently, where He has indulged a
liberty to His followers, it is as much their duty to main-
tain it as to observe any other of His precepts. Besides,
if the magistrate has a power to impose things indifferent,
and make them necessary in the service of God, he may
dress up religion in any shape, and instead of one cere-
mony, may load it with a hundred.
1
Early and later Puritans. It may be well to note
at this point, though we shall have occasion to advert to
it afterwards, that there was a very marked discrepancy
between the views held by the early, and those held and
promulgated by the later Puritans, more especially in
regard to the functions and power of the civil magistrate,
and in regard to the necessity of uniformity in doctrine
and worship. In regard to both these, the views and
sentiments of the Puritans underwent considerable modi-
fication, and this change naturally influenced their beliefs
and opinions in other directions.
The two pillars on which, as we have said, the eccle-
siastical system of Elizabeth rested, could not have been
set up, or, at any rate, could not have proved so stable
as they did, had they not been based more or less on the
will and convictions of all sections of her Protestant
subjects. The Act of Supremacy was welcomed by all
alike, and the Prayer-Book was regarded with favour, as
substituting a purer form of worship for the Breviary
and the Mass. In like manner, the Act of Uniformity
would have been hailed with satisfaction by the Puritans,
Neal, vol. i. p. 98.
1
RISE OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND
65
had it not demanded compliance with a number of need-
lessly offensive and, as they thought, Popish ceremonies,
such as the sign of the cross in baptism, bowing at the
name of Jesus, the compelled wearing of the cap and
surplice, etc.
Errors afterwards abandoned, clung to by the
Puritans.-Neal deplores the widespread misconception
which at that time prevailed as to the nature of true
religion, and the powers and jurisdiction of the Church.
“Why must we believe as the King believes, any
more than as the clergy or Pope ?
If every man could
believe as he would, or if all men's understandings were
exactly of a size, or if God would accept of a mere out-
ward profession when commanded by law, then it might
be reasonable there should be only one religion, and one
uniform manner of worship. The jurisdiction of the
Church is purely spiritual. No man ought to be com-
pelled, by rewards or punishments, to become a member
of any Christian society, or to continue in it any longer
than he apprehends it to be his duty.” 1 But Neal is
here speaking the language of the nineteenth century,
at all events, the language of seventeenth century Puri-
tanism. Such opinions would have staggered most of the
Elizabethan Puritans.
“ The Reformers, as well Puritans as others, had different
notions. They were all for one religion, one uniform mode
of worship, one form of discipline or Church government
for the whole nation, with which all must comply, what-
ever were their inward sentiments; it was therefore
1 Vol. i. p. 89.
5
66
PURITANISM
resolved to have an Act of Parliament to establish an
uniformity of public worship, without any indulgence to
tender consciences, neither party having the wisdom or
courage to oppose such a law, but both endeavouring to
be included in it.” 1
It is not the least service which Mr. S. R. Gardiner
has rendered to the cause of historic truth to exhibit as
he has the gradual growth and development of Puri-
tanism, both within and without the Established Church.
He shows most clearly what a different thing the Puri-
tanism of Elizabeth's time was from the Puritanism of
the time of Charles I., not to speak of the Puritanism of
the Commonwealth.2 This is a view still too commonly
disregarded by writers upon this subject, and forgetfulness
of it has been the source of much error and confusion.
The rise of Presbyterianism.-Germinal ideas
of the Church system to which the name of Presby-
terianism is given may be detected in England within
a few years of the Reformation, but it was not till the
reign of Elizabeth, when many of those who had been
driven to Germany and Switzerland by the Marian per-
secution returned to their native land, that they began
to grow in numbers and strength. These came to Eng-
1 Neal, vol. i. p. 90.
2 “Neither a knowledge of human nature nor of history justifies us
in confounding, as is commonly done, the Puritans of Old and New
England, or the English Puritans of the third and those of the fifth
decade of the seventeenth century” (J. Russell Lowell's Among My
Books : New England Two Centuries Ago, p. 222). We may add,
neither does it justify us in confounding the Puritans of the six-
teenth century with those of the seventeenth century.
RISE OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND
67
land filled with Calvinistic ideas regarding Church and
State, only to find the royal supremacy absolute, and
uniformly enforced under crushing penalties.
About the year 1568 there arose a storm of persecu-
tion in France and Holland, and this had the effect of
driving a large number of Protestants (chiefly Calvinistic
Presbyterians) to take refuge in England. The rapid
growth of Presbyterian ideas is attested by the fact that
by an Act of Parliament in 1571, ordination by presby-
ters, without a bishop, is declared to be valid.1 The
distinctive features of Presbyterianism are, however, as
might be expected at this period, merged for the most
part in those of Puritanism as a whole. Purity in
Church government, as well as purity in doctrine, this
was the aim of all Protestant Reformers, and to this they
directed their united strength.
Thomas Cartwright. In Thomas Cartwright, English
Puritanism found a most able exponent and a courageous
and stalwart leader. He was the first to crystallise its
contention and raise it to the dignity of a developed
system. He was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,
and Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity.
His great
1 This was entitled an Act for the Ministers of the Church to be of
sound Religion, which, though a disabling Act, aimed at the surviv-
ing Catholic clergy, and requiring them to give security for their
loyalty to the Queen and the Church, did, as a matter of fact, recog-
nise the validity of non-episcopal orders; in other words, the validity
of Presbyterian ordination. Called to the ministry by the imposition
of hands, according to the laudable form and rite of the Reformed Church
of Scotland, are the words of Archbishop Grindal.--Strype's Grindal,
book vi. chap. xiii. See also Bishop Cosin's Works, vol. iv. pp.
403–7, 449-50.
68
PURITANISM
learning (Beza says he thought there was not a more
learned man: under the sun), and his argumentative
acumen and power of popular address, drew a crowd of
scholars to listen to his prelections. When he preached
at St. Mary's it is said that the windows had to be taken
out, so that the large numbers outside the church might
be able to hear him. Cartwright was a Puritan of the
most thoroughgoing and, according to his enemies, the
most dangerous type. He attacked the hierarchy of the
Church with unsparing and trenchant vigour.
Cartwright's position, which was probably that of the
majority of the Puritan party at that time, may be
summed up in the following propositions, drawn up by
his own hand :
(1) That the names and functions of archbishops and
archdeacons ought to be abolished.
(2) That the apostolic order and offices should be
revived, namely, bishops and deacons; the former to
preach and to conduct worship, the latter to attend to
the ministration of the poor.
(3) That the Church should be governed by its own
ministers and presbyters, and not by bishops, chancellors,
and nominees of archdeacons.
(4) That each minister should have charge of a particu-
lar congregation, and not exercise supervision over others.
(5) That no minister should put himself forward as a
candidate for the ministry.
(6) That ministers ought not to be created by the
authority of the bishop, but to be openly and fairly
chosen by the people.
Needless to say, Cartwright's leanings were towards
RISE OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND
69
Presbyterianism, and he may be regarded as the founder
of that system in England. Some of his positions have
been departed from, but in the main the Presbyterian
Churches of Great Britain and America still stand by his
principles. He opposed, as did all the Puritans, the use
of the cross and sponsorship in baptism, the observance
of religious festivals, and the practice of kneeling at the
Lord's table. The adoption and advocacy of these views
soon brought him into collision with the authorities, and
they proceeded to use their power in order to punish his
heresies, and if possible to crush him. He was forbidden
to lecture or preach, deprived of his degree of Doctor
and of his fellowship, and expelled from the university.
He went abroad, and was induced to minister for two
years to a number of English merchants, first at Antwerp,
and then at Middelburg for three years. Then, at the
earnest solicitation of his friends in England, he was
prevailed upon to return. Meanwhile the struggle
between the Puritans and the ecclesiastical hierarchy had
reached a most acute stage. Finding that the Queen
took no notice of their remonstrances, the Puritans con-
sulted together to address an admonition to Parliament.
“We have used,” they said, “gentle words too long,
which have done no good. The wound grows desperate,
and wants a corrosive.” But Parliament was too much
under the influence of the Queen and the bishops to pay
much heed to this petition, and they retaliated by putting
the presenters of it in prison. “This admonition finding
small entertainment (the authors or chief preferrers
| Professor C. A. Briggs in Religious Encyclopeedia, edited by Dr.
Schaff.
70
PURITANISM
thereof being imprisoned), out cometh the second ad-
monition towards the end of the same Parliament.
In the second admonition the first is wholly justified.” i
This second petition was drawn up by Cartwright, who
had just returned from over the sea. Bancroft, after-
wards Archbishop of Canterbury, describes it as “great
lightning and thunder, as though heaven and earth should
have met together.”
The controversy between Cartwright and Whitgift.
- Whitgift, then Master of Trinity College and Vice-
Chancellor of Cambridge, was instructed to answer this
petition, and he did so with great elaboration and show
of completeness. This drew from Cartwright a vigorous
rejoinder, to which Whitgift again replied.
It is not necessary to give any extended account of
this passage of arms between these two redoubtable
antagonists. Their divergences were radical at the outset.
They each took their stand upon different grounds, and
it was as impossible that a common conclusion should be
reached as that two parallel lines should meet, however
far they may be produced. Cartwright took his stand
upon the Protestant principle—what in those days was
the recognised Protestant principle—that the authority
of Scripture is final, both in regard to matters of faith
and matters of Church government. Entrenching him-
self upon this ground, he had no difficulty in showing
1 Bancroft's Dangerous Positions.
2 Hooker took up the controversy twenty years after, and it must
have been not a little flattering to Cartwright in his old age to see
his own initials (T. C.) figuring so prominently in the pages of the
Ecclesiastical Polity.
RISE OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND
71
“that ministers ought not to be created by the sole
authority of the bishop, but to be openly and fairly
chosen by the people," etc. On the other hand, Whit-
gift maintained that "no form of Church government is
by the Scriptures permitted to us, or commanded by the
word of God." “I do not deny," he said, " but in the
apostles' time, and after, even to Cyprian's time, the
· people's consent was in many places required in the
appointment of ministers, but I say there is no com-
mandment that it should be; and I add that, how-
ever in the apostles' time that kind of electing and
calling ministers was convenient and profiteth, now, in
this state of the Church, it were pernicious and hurtful.
In the apostles' time all or most that were Christians
were virtuous and godly, and such as did sincerely
profess the word, and therefore the election might be
safely committed to them. Now, the Church is full of
hypocrites, dissemblers, drunkards, whoremongers, so that,
if any election were committed to them, they would be
sure to take one like to themselves. Now the Church is
full of Papists and Atheists.”
To attempt to bring a Church of this order to a con-
dition of apostolical purity, in the judgment of Whitgift,
was utterly out of the question, and the pretence of
such renovation mere hypocrisy. He showed himseļf
Cartwright's inferior in dialectical skill, but the balance
was redressed by the exercise of arbitrary power; or,
as Fuller puts it, “if Cartwright had the better of his
adversary in learning, Whitgift had more POWER to back
his arguments, and by this he not only kept the field,
but gained the victory.”
72
PURITANISM
Puritan and Anglican antitheses. The Puritan
and Anglican positions have been admirably summed up
by Dr. Fairbairn in his work, The Place of Christ in
Modern Theology. Cartwright maintained that the
'
but Whitgift, that the Church must be framed according
to the Commonwealth. Cartwright, that ' although the
godly magistrate be the head of the Commonwealth, and
a great ornament unto the Church, yet he is but a
member of the same’; but Whitgift, that this was to
'overthrow monarchies,' since it made the prince 'a
servant, no master, a subject, no prince; under govern-
ment, no governor, in matters pertaining to the Church';
Cartwright, that “infidels under a Christian magistrate
are members of the Commonwealth, but not of the
Church,' nor are known drunkards or whoremongers,
and the excommunicated, though sundered from the
Church, may yet retain his burgeship or freedom in
the city’; but Whitgift, that while in the apostles'
time all or most that were Christians were virtuous and
godly,' yet ‘now the Church is full of hypocrites, dis-
semblers, drunkards, whoremongers. It is this latter
that gives its religious significance to the controversy,
and makes apparent the moral passion that was at its
heart. On the Puritan side, what they wanted, and were
by their theological idea bound to want, was a Church in
which the moral will of God should be supreme.'
91
Walter Travers. The name which
name which falls to be
1 See the whole of this valuable note in The Place of Christ in
Modern Theology, pp. 188–190.
RISE OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND
73
bracketed with Cartwright in upholding what Mr. Soames
calls “Disciplinarian Puritanism ”-i.e. Presbyterianism
is that of Walter Trayers. The two were, as Fuller
describes them, the “head and neck” of the Presbyterian
party. Travers was the afternoon lecturer at the Temple,
and when the Mastership of the Temple became vacant
through the death of Alvey, Lord Burghley used his in-
fluence to secure the appointment for Travers, who was
his chaplain, and stood high in his regard. Whitgift,
however, with whom the appointment rested, gave the
preference to Hooker. Travers retained his lecture-
ship for some time, refuting in the afternoon what
Hooker had advanced in the morning, Hooker again
replying on the succeeding Sunday morning ; so that it
became a current saying that the forenoon sermon spake
Canterbury, the afternoon Geneva. Travers was at
length silenced by Whitgift, on the ground that he
had not received episcopal ordination, but had been
ordained abroad by presbyters. He did not go the length
of saying that his ordination was invalid, only that it
unfitted him for exercising his ministry in England..
Travers was the author of a work composed in Latin
in 1574, and translated into English by Cartwright.
under the title, A Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesias-
tical Discipline out of the Word of God, and of the Declining
of the Church of England from the same.
The goal to which Cartwright and Travers directed
their efforts was the establishment of a Presbyterianised
State Church,—in other words, the transplanting to
England of the Genevan rule of faith and discipline,
whereby the consistorial theories of John Calvin
!
74
PURITANISM
should receive concrete embodiment and national recog-
nition.
The first presbytery was organised at Wandsworth in
1572. This was the first tentative experiment “for the
better bringing in of the said holy discipline,” “and by
little and little, as well as possibly they might,” to “ draw
the same into practice.” This was a movement, not out-
side, but inside, the Church of England—“an Ecclesiosola
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 regulations required.'
The Wandsworth Presbytery became the model of
numerous presbyteries set up in parish after parish
throughout the whole country. In 1582 the consis-
torial system was in full working order. In his Dan-
gerous Positions, etc., Bancroft quotes from a letter written
in Latin to Mr. Field by one Cholmsley, resident in
Antwerp, in 1583 : "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.
1 It is greatly to be deplored that the only contemporary record
of this movement is that given in a work written by Bancroft,
then bishop of London, and entitled, Dangerous Positions and
Proceedings published and practised within this Island of Britain
under pretence of Reformation and for the Presbyterial Discipline.
Extracts from this work are given in Professor Prothero's
Statutes and Constitutional Documents, p. 247. But the work
bears upon its face that it is “written for the express purpose
of discrediting and defacing the movement” it professes to
describe.
RISE OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND
75
The Book of Discipline.--A Directory or Book of
Discipline was, contemporaneously with the growth of
this movement, in course of construction. This took
shape about the year 1583, and was in its completed
form the joint work of Cartwright and Travers. It was
revised at a national synod in London in 1584, and put
into the hands of Travers “to be corrected and ordered
by him."
This Book of Discipline was a handbook or
Directory of worship and government framed on Presby-
terian lines, according to the Genevan model, and has
been called “the palladium of English Presbyterianism.”
But the fact of chief interest and importance in con-
nection with the Book of Discipline is this, that in the
year 1590 it had spread all over England, and was sub-
scribed by as many as five hundred ministers. It is
hardly possible to exaggerate the significance of this
fact. Five hundred clergymen of the Church of England
prayed Parliament that this book "might be from hence-
forth authorised, put in use, and practised throughout
all Her Majesty's dominions.” How large this proportion
was we may gather from the statement of Neal, endorsed
by Hallam, that there were only about two thousand
preaching clergymen in the whole kingdom. So that
it need not excite surprise when, in 1589, we find
Cooper, bishop of Winchester, declaring " that the most
part of men and “all inferior subjects
to Episcopacy, and proclaimed their aversion “at every
table, in sermons, and in the face of the whole world.”
were averse
1 This Directory must not be confounded, as it often has been, with
the earlier work of Travers, which was not a Directory at all, but a
treatise and vindication of Presbyterian order.
76
PURITANISM
66
Presbyterians not Separatists.-It must not
be supposed, however, that those who subscribed the
Book of Discipline had any intention of separating from
the Established Church. Their position was probably
that of Cartwright, who, although he found much that
was objectionable in the Church, did not separate from
it himself, nor approved of separation on the part of
others. Though deformed," he said, “the Church of
England is still the body of Christ'; without walls, it
may be, nevertheless it is a city and a 'vineyard,
though without a 'fence.'” He opposed the contention
of Robert Browne, and disavowed all sympathy with his
aims and followers. “We are not for an unspotted
Church on earth, and therefore, though the Church of
England has many faults, we would not willingly with-
draw from it." Such was the language employed by
those who framed the first Admonition to Parlia-
ment.
Though they disapproved of bishops, and believed in
the popular election of ministers, they went no further
than to urge that the system they favoured should be
adopted" by public authority of the magistrate and of
our Church," they promising obedience “So far as
it may be lawful for us so to do by the publique
lawes of this kingdom and by the peace of our
Church.”
The doctrine of religious liberty not avowed by
Cartwright and his party. Considering the part which
the Presbyterian party played afterwards in the day of
their ascendency, it is probably not an unjust or un-
RISE OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND
77
a
charitable judgment to say, as onel does, that their
object was to work in obedience to the Church system
already established, by treating it as mere legal
appendage, until the time came when, undermined
from below, it might be successfully and entirely over-
thrown.”
A party which had Cartwright as its leader and in-
forming spirit was not likely to err upon the side of
moderation, or to grasp at the shadow so long as the
substance of power was within its reach.
« The disciples
of Cartwright now learned,” says Hallam, “to claim
an ecclesiastical independence, as unconstrained as the
Romish priesthood in the darkest ages had usurped.” 2
“No leader of a religious party,” says Mr. Green, “ever
deserved less of after sympathy than Cartwright. He
was unquestionably learned and devout, but his bigotry
was that of a mediæval inquisitor. The relics of the
old ritual—the cross in baptism, the surplice, the giving
of a ring in marriage-were to him not merely dis-
tasteful, as they were to the Puritans at large, they
were idolatrous, and the mark of the beast. ... The
absolute rule of bishops, indeed, he denounced as be-
gotten of the devil, but the absolute rule of Presbyters
he held to be established by the word of God. For the
Church modelled after the fashion of Geneva he claimed
an authority which surpassed the wildest dreams of the
1 H. O. Wakeman, M.A., in The Church and the Puritans, p. 47.
2 In his strictures upon Cartwright, Hallam adds the needful
caveat : “We are not, however, to conclude that every one, or even
the majority, of those who might be counted on the Puritan side in
Elizabeth's reign would have subscribed to the extravagant opinions
of Cartwright."
78
PURITANISM
masters of the Vatican. All spiritual power and juris-
diction, the decreeing of doctrine, the ordering of cere-
monies, lay wholly, according to his Calvinistic creed, in
the hands of the ministers of the Church. To them, too,
belonged the supervision of public morals. In an ordered
arrangement of classes and synods they were to govern
their flocks, to regulate their own order, to decide in
matters of faith, to administer ' discipline.' Their weapon
was excommunication, and they were responsible for its
use to none but Christ. The province of the civil ruler
was simply 'to see their decrees executed, and to punish
the contemners of them,' for the spirit of such a system
as this naturally excluded all toleration of practice or
belief. With the despotism of a Hildebrand, Cartwright
combined the cruelty of a Torquemada. Not only was
Presbyterianism to be established as the one legal form
of Church government, but all other forms, Episcopalian
and Separatist, were to be ruthlessly put down. For
heresy there was the punishment of death. Never had
the doctrine of persecution been urged with such a blind
and reckless ferocity. “I deny,' wrote Cartwright, that
upon repentance there ought to follow any pardon of
death. . . . Heretics ought to be put to death now. If
this be bloody and extreme, I am content to be so counted
with the Holy Ghost.'
The strictures both of Hallam and Green upon Cart-
wright err, in our judgment, in excess of severity, and
the passages from his writings upon which they rely as
evidence are susceptible of a much milder construction
when read in the light of their context. But there can
be no doubt that Cartwright was a man of uncompromis-
977
RISE OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND
79
ing temper, of an unyielding, not to say intolerant, spirit,
and that he succeeded in communicating to his followers
much of the infection of this temper and spirit. The
prevalence of his opinions and the victory of his party
would have been a blow to the cause of religious liberty,
hardly less severe than that which it suffered at the
hands of Whitgift and the dominant hierarchy of the
Church, and it is not without reason (though he may
seem to be speaking from prejudice) that Mr. Soames 1
says that Whitgift saved England from a democratical
pontificate.
Impermanence of Presbyterianism in England.
It is, indeed, curious, and not a little striking, to contrast
the claims made on behalf of the Holy Discipline with
its shortlived lease of power, its abruptly ended career,
so far as England was concerned. In 1588, John Udall
wrote his famous demonstration of discipline, which he
entitled, A Demonstration of the Truth of that Discipline
which Christ hath prescribed in His Word for the govern-
ment of His Church in all times and places, until the end
of the world. “Here comes," says Mr. Arber, “the irony
of history in regard to such confident dogmatising. As
a matter of fact, the Holy Discipline, in its integrity, and
as here defined by Udall, did not last two generations in
England.”? The Presbyterian system took deep roothold
in Scotland; but in England it never had more than a
struggling, precarious, sporadic existence.
It was a
1 Elizabethan Religious History, by Rev. H. Soames, M.A., p. 557.
2 See introduction to (Rev. John Udall) A Demonstration of Dis-
cipline, by Edward Arber, in English Scholars' Library.
$
80
PURITANISM
clerical rather than a national creed, and, even when
under the Commonwealth, it seemed to have won its
way to power and ascendency, it had its stronghold
only in London and Lancashire, and was rejected by
every other part of England."
i Green's Short History of the English People, p. 457.
puritanism: further Developinents, and
Means used for their Repression
6
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
The Court of Star Chamber constituted in
The Court of High Commission established in
Both Courts abolished by Long Parliament in.
1487
1559
1641
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER V
Prophesyings-Confession of faith by those taking part in-Pro-
fitableness of these exercises-Bacon-Strype-Liberty of Prophesy-
ing—Benefits of—Queen's hostility to-Remonstrance vain-Grindal
refuses to suppress_Suspended-Grindal a true Puritan—Whitgift
-Test articles --Enforcement of Interrogatories--Court of High
Commission--Its tyranny and use by Whitgift-- Lord Burghley
disgusted.
82'
CHAPTER V
PURITANISM: FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS USED
FOR THEIR REPRESSION
Prophesyings.-In 1571 a number of the clergy,
zealous for the increase and propagation of true religion,
mainly Puritans, and including several of the bishops of the
Church, commenced the religious exercises to which the
name Prophesyings was given. This movement was in-
tended to supply an antidote and corrective to the wide-
spread ignorance of the clergy, and to rescue the people
from the state of torpor and religious indifference into
which large numbers had sunk through the incompetence
or neglect of their supposed spiritual guides. These pro-
phesyings were an attempt to revive the practice of
the primitive Church to call forth the varied gifts of the
clergy and laity, with a view to their mutual edification
and the practice of spiritual religion. They were nothing
more than religious conferences,-ministerial associations,
they might be called, with a large infusion of the lay
element. Briefly stated, this was the course of procedure :
A discourse was delivered on a portion of Scripture ap-
pointed for the day, then the subject was thrown open to
discussion, and, after a free and wide expression of opinion,
then the moderator or presiding elder would review what
83
84
PURITANISM
had been advanced ; and, after summing up the various
points, the exercises would be concluded with prayer.
The first of these prophesyings was set up in North-
ampton in 1571, and is “a remarkable specimen of what
English Protestantism could become under favourable
conditions." 1
The propositions subscribed by those taking part in
these prophesyings, as already stated, were as follows:
“ We believe the word of God contained in the Old
and New Testaments to be a perfect rule of faith and
manners; that it ought to be read and known by all
people; and that the authority of it exceeds all author-
ity, not of the Pope only, but of the Church also, and
of councils, fathers, men, and angels. We condemn,
as a tyrannous yoke, whatsoever men have set up of
their own invention to make articles of faith, and the
binding of men's consciences by their laws and insti-
tutions." 3
Large audiences gathered together at these confer-
ences, and among the intelligent and religiously disposed
part of the community the prophesyings or preachings
became immensely popular.
“The word of the Lord
was precious in those days; there was no open vision.”
1 Froude's interesting and appreciative description of these exer-
cises in connection with the Church at Northampton deserves to be
carefully read.—History of England, vol. x. p 113.
2 See ante, p. 22.
8 For Bishop Parkhurst's permission of exercises in the diocese of
Norwich, 1572, see Strype’s Annals, ii. p. 494. For regulations in
the diocese of Peterborough, 1571, also the order of procedure and
confession of common faith, see Strype's Annals, iii., or as given by
Professor Prothero in his Statutes and Constitutional Documents,
pp. 202-204.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS FOR REPRESSION
85
But I say
For the clergy themselves, such as had any mind to
profit by them, they became an invaluable means of self-
training and discipline, so much so, that we find Bacon,
even while admitting their liability to abuse, expressing
a distinctly favourable opinion: “Is there no means to
nurse and train up ministers, .. to train them, I say,
not to preach, ... but to preach soundly, and handle
the Scriptures with wisdom and judgment ? I know
prophesying was subject to great abuses.
the only reason of the abuse was because there were
admitted to it a popular auditory, and it was contained
with a private conference of ministers.” 1
Strype speaks of these prophesyings as "a very com-
mendable reformation”; and when we reflect upon the
dearth of preaching, and the blight and wintry barren-
ness which religiously covered all parts of the land, we
can imagine the springtide of grace and blessing they
must have brought to numbers of spiritually starved and
hungry men and women. Truly, those were days in
which the hungry sheep looked up and were not fed.
Thus, in Cornwall, about the year 1578, out of one
hundred and forty clergymen not one was capable of
preaching, only two in the whole diocese of Bangor. In
1 In the section, “ Touching a preaching Ministry,” in his Essay
on the Pacification of the Church, Bacon asks “whether it were not
requisite to renew that good exercise which was practised in this
Church some years, and afterwards put down by order, indeed, from
the Church, in regard of some abuse thereof inconvenient for those
times, and yet against the advice and opinion of one of the greatest
and gravest prelates of this land, and was commonly called pro-
phesying,” etc. “And this was, in my opinion, the best way to frame
and train up preachers to handle the word of God as it ought to be
handled that hath been practised.”
86
PURITANISM
the course of a sermon preached before the Queen,
Sandys, bishop of Worcester, says: "Many there are
that hear not a sermon in seven years; I might say in
seventeen.'
Liberty of prophesying.–Naturally, as we may easily
conceive, these prophesyings would come to take a wider
range than what was at first contemplated, and would
embrace a wider variety of themes.
The liberty of pro-
phesying in those days resembled the liberty of the press,
and was, indeed, the substitute for it, preachers not con-
fining themselves to the mere exposition of Scripture, but
enlarging the scope of their preaching, and handling and
discussing public questions, and thus gradually assuming
the position of leaders and tribunes of the people.
That opinions would be broached and doctrines dis-
seminated that would not exactly square with the views
of the Queen, nor encourage docile submission to her
authority and that of her bishops, is only what might have
been expected. These prophesyings, no doubt, afforded
excellent opportunities for the spread of puritanical and
Presbyterian doctrines; but this is only saying that the
air of free thought and speech and discussion was
eminently congenial to these doctrines, and favourable
to their growth.
Probably Mr. Marsden does not go too far in saying
that “the future character of the Church of England was
the real question at issue. Should the reformed Church
of England expand itself; cast itself on the affec-
tions of the people, etc. etc. ? Or should it risk all
hazards, resist every innovation, and subdue by authority,
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS FOR REPRESSION
87
In a
rather than conciliate by gentleness and love?
word, should the Church be made more popular or more
imperious ? ” 1
The benefits of these prophesyings outweighed all
risks and drawbacks that could possibly accrue from
them.
Had Elizabeth been as wise and far-sighted as
she is sometimes assumed to have been, she would have
shown towards these innovations a less stiff and more
relenting attitute than she did. She would have done
as she did in Lancashire, where the disturbances and the
state of ferment into which that part of the kingdom was
thrown obliged her to connive at these exercises and
to encourage their continuance, as furnishing the most
efficacious means of resisting the invasion and growth of
Popery. More than all other causes, these prophesyings
were helping to create an atmosphere, a tone of thinking
and feeling in the minds of the soberer part of the nation,
which was the best security against all seditious influence
and Romanising tendencies; and if Elizabeth had thrown
the weight of her authority into this scale, would have
made her more supreme, more invincible than ever.
As it was, they rendered signal service to the cause of
Protestantism in England. No doubt there were excesses
and possible dangers connected with them which showed
the necessity of wise and sympathetic guidance. The
new wine was in danger of bursting the old bottles, yet
the fermentation was needful and salutary. As Mr.
Froude observes: “It would have fared ill with England
had there been no hotter blood there than filtered in the
1 Marsden's Early Puritans, p. 109.
88
PURITANISM
sluggish veins of the officials of the Establishment. There
needed an enthusiasm fiercer to encounter the revival
of Catholic fanaticism, and if the young Puritans, in
the heat and glow of their convictions, snapped their
traces and flung off their harness, it was they after
all who saved the Church which attempted to disown
them.” 1
Suppression of the prophesyings. --Some of Eliza-
beth's bishops were favourable to the prophesyings,
and encouraged them both as a means of benefit to the
clergy and as a means of promoting and spreading what
John Wesley would have called “scriptural holiness.”
The Queen herself, however, had an intense dislike
to them. Her maxim was Talleyrand's, “ Non trop de
zele." She would have sympathised, at least, with part
of the advice said to have been given by Archbishop
Sutton to Bishop Heber on his consecration to the see
of Calcutta : “ Place before your eyes two precepts, and
two only. One is, Preach the gospel; and the other is,
Put down enthusiasm." With characteristic promptitude
and decision the Queen had made up her mind that the
prophesyings must be put down. She was told by the
archbishop that they were no better than seminaries of
Puritanism; that the more averse the people were to
Popery, the more they were in danger of Nonconformity.
Archbishop Parker received the royal mandate to
repress immediately these vain prophesyings,” and wrote
at once to Parkhurst, bishop of Norwich, directing him
to take steps for their immediate suppression. The
1 History, vol. x. p. 114.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS FOR REPRESSION
89
flatter, unwilling to do what was so against his own
conscience and judgment, addressed a plea to the arch-
bishop urging their profitableness and freeness from
abuse. His remonstrance was supported by Sandys,
bishop of London, Sir Francis Knollys, Sir Thomas
Smith, and Sir Walter Mildmay, who, in a letter to the
Privy Council, said: “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,” etc.
But the imperious Queen was not to be moved, and,
armed with her authority, the archbishop reduced the
recalcitrant bishop to submission. Thus the prophesyings
were stamped out in the diocese of Norwich. It is
worth noticing, that though put an end to in this
diocese, when the bishopric fell vacant, a number of the
clergy seized the opportunity of resuming the forbidden
exercises. It shows how in the soil of Norwich, prepared
as it had been by the doctrine of Lollardism, the influence
of the Walloon settlers, and, may we not add, the labours
of Robert Browne (though this was some years after-
wards), the tree of liberty continued to grow, and put
forth its spreading branches.
1
Archbishop Grindal was raised to the see of
Canterbury on the death of Parker, in 1574. He was
a man of a very different temper from his predecessor.
He had been in exile, had learned to look with indulgence
upon the Puritans and their doctrines, and maintained
an active correspondence with the Reformers on the
Continent. He did not dissemble his sympathy with the
90
PURITANISM
1
prophesyings; on the contrary, he did everything he could
to encourage and uphold them, taking care, however, to
guard against their abuse, and to remove as far as
possible all that made them obnoxious to the ruling
powers. But his zeal in the latter respect could not
mollify the spirit of the Queen. She had fully made up
her mind to have none of them. In an interview with
the archbishop, she rated him soundly for his dilatoriness
in carrying out her behests, told him plainly that there
were far too many preachers, that three or four for a
county were quite enough, and all that was needful was
that they should be able to read the Homilies. This
greatly scandalised the grave man, as Strype calls him,
and he was so moved that he wrote to the Queen in the
following terms:2“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 be plentifully
preached ?”
After showing the superiority of preaching
over the reading of the Homilies, he goes on to say-
“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,
1 See Grindal's Regulations, 1576.
Orders for Reformation of
Abuses about the Learned Exercises and Conferences among the
Ministers of the Church.-Strype's Grindal, pp. 327, 328.
2 See Appendix to Strype's Grindal, p. 558.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS FOR REPRESSION
91
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."
This courageous and noble letter had no effect upon
the Queen, save to rouse her Tudor spirit, and call forth
all her unbending determination. It was only through
the intervention of her counsellors that she was prevented
from carrying out a sentence of deprivation. This was
commuted into a sentence of suspension and sequestration.
Meanwhile, the Queen took upon herself the authority of
the degraded prelate, and wrote 1 to every bishop in
England, telling him " to see these dishonours against
the honour of God and the quietness of the Church
reformed," etc. With characteristic obsequiousness
(though not without considerable reluctance and hesi-
tation on the part of one or two) the bishops made
their submission to the Queen. Aylmer, bishop of
London, who had formerly been a favourer of the
Puritans, specially signalising himself for his zeal against
the prophesyings. Grindal alone stood firm, and for this
contumacious conduct he continued to lie under sentence
of suspension and sequestration till within a few months
of his death, in 1583. In “The Epistle Dedicatory” of
his Life of Grindal, Strype says, “Nothing to this day
sticks upon our archbishop but the matter of the Exer-
cises and his suspension.” But it sticks not in the
way of opprobrium, but in way of glory and deathless
1 The Queen's letter against Prophesyings, 1577, is given in
Professor Prothero's Statutes, etc., pp. 205, 206.
92
PURITANISM
renown in the pages of the illustrious Puritan poet,
Edmund Spenser -
“Ah ! good Algrind, his hap was ill.”
If any
Grindal, like Hooper was a true Puritan.
doubt could exist in regard to that, it would surely be
removed by the truculent description of him in the
sermon preached by Sacheverell at St. Paul's, on the
5th of November 1709. In that sermon, Archbishop
Grindal was denounced as a false son of the Church,
because he was the first that tolerated the Puritans,-
those “miscreants begot in rebellion, born in sedition,
and nursed in faction.” 2
/
Archbishop Whitgift.-On the death of Grindal,
Whitgift, bishop of Worcester, was appointed to succeed
him in the primacy. His relation to the Puritans, and
the series of oppressive measures which he put in
execution against them, cause him to figure more pro-
minently in these pages than any of his predecessors
in the see of Canterbury.
Whitgift's administration "embodied the worst passions
of an intolerant State priest. It knew no mercy; it
exercised no compassion. It is vain to defend the
administration of Whitgift on the ground of the excesses
of the Puritans. Those excesses were provoked by his
cruelty. Neither can the archbishop be justified on
the plea that he acted on the commands of the Queen.
| Algrind is simply a transposing of the syllables of Grindal's
name.
2 Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. iii. p. 12.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS FOR REPRESSION
93
He was the Queen's adviser, to whose judgment she
deferred, and of whose hearty concurrence in every mea-
sure of severity and intolerance she was fully assured.”
Macaulay speaks of him as “a narrow-minded man,
mean, tyrannical, who gained power by servility and
adulation, and employed it in persecuting both those who
agreed with Calvin about Church government and those
who differed from Calvin touching the doctrine of
reprobation."1 To say that he was conscientious in what
he did, is only what might be said of Spanish inquisitors
and the whole brood of religious persecutors. He is said
to have been “personally pious, liberal, and free from
harshness," —qualities by no means incompatible with a
depraved mind and the absence of high principle. The
calm and judicious Hallam is hardly less severe than
Macaulay in his animadversions upon Whitgift, and the
rigour and ruthlessness of his rule.
Whitgift had not been primate three months before he
showed the temper he was of, by promulgating the Test
Articles, generally described as the Whitgift Articles.?
These were six in number, and their rigour may be antici-
pated in the initial words, “That the laws made against
the recusants be put in more due execution. That all
preaching, reading, catechising, and other such like exer-
cises in private places and families whereunto others do
resort, being not of the same family, be utterly inhibited.”
“That none be permitted to preach or interpret the
Scriptures unless it be a priest or deacon at the least,
admitted thereto according to the laws of this realm.
1 Macaulay's Essay on Lord Bacon.
2 Strype's Life of Whitgift, vol. i. pp. 229-232.
94
PURITANISM
That none be permitted to preach, read, catechise, min-
ister the sacraments, or to execute any other ecclesiastical
function unless he first consent and subscribe to
these articles following.
videlicet :
" (a) That Her Majesty, under God, hath, and ought to
have, the sovereignty and rule over all manner of persons
born within her realms, dominions, and countries; of
what estate, ecclesiastical or temporal, soever they be;
“(6) That the Book of Common Prayer, and of ordering
bishops, priests, and deacons, containeth nothing contrary
to the word of God, and that the same may be lawfully
used, and that he himself will use the form of the said
book prescribed in public prayer and administration of
the sacraments, and none other.”
Whitgift was determined that the Articles should not
only be imposed, but be resolutely enforced; and in order
that objectors and waverers should have no loophole of
escape, he drew up a series of interrogations, “so com-
prehensive as to embrace the whole scope of clerical
uniformity, yet so precise and minute as to leave no
room for evasion.” These interrogations, twenty-four in
number, were submitted by what was technically styled
the oath ex officio "to such of the clergy as were
surmised to harbour a spirit of puritanical disaffection.”
These interrogations, among other things, obliged the
examinee to state whether he had refused to wear the
surplice, or to use the sign of the cross in baptism, the
ring in marriage, and the form of words prescribed in
burial; and whether he had adhered strictly and in every
respect to the order and services of the Prayer-Book, etc.
The form in which the interrogatories were put was-
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS FOR REPRESSION
95
Item objicimus, ponimus, et articulamur. That for
the space of these three years, two years, one year, half a
year, three, two, or one month last past, you,
have used and worn only your ordinary apparel, and not
the surplice, as is required. Declare how long, how often,
and for what cause, consideration, or intent you have so
done, or refused so to do.
" Item objicimus, etc.—That within the time aforesaid
you have baptized divers, or at least one infant, and have
refused to use, or not used, the sign of the cross in the
forehead with the words in the said Book of Common
Prayer, there prescribed to be used. Declare how many
you have so baptized, and for what cause, consideration,
and intent.”
This is a fair specimen of the whole series of interro-
gatories.
1
The Court of High Commission. — The special
machinery relied upon for the enforcement of these Test
Articles was that set in motion by that terrible engine of
oppression known as the Court of High Commission,
which was created under the Act of Supremacy, and
specially designed to deal with all offences against this
Act and the Act of Uniformity. It was armed with
powers so absolute and inquisitorial, that no obnoxious
opinion could be professed, no non-attendance at church
could be indulged, no service be conducted in chapel
or private house, without bringing down upon delinquents
fine and imprisonment, and even death.
to “visit, reform, redress, order, correct, and amend all
1 See Appendix to Strype's Whitgift, vol. iii. p. 81.
It had power
96
PURITANISM
1
errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts, and
enormities whatsoever.”
By the mere establishment of such a court half the
work of the Reformation was undone.” It made the
primate for the time being—for the powers of the Com-
mission fell practically into his hands--absolute dictator,
and master of the lives and liberties of the Queen's sub-
jects. “No Archbishop of Canterbury,” says Mr. Green,
“had wielded an authority so vast, so utterly despotic,
as that of Parker and Whitgift, and Bancroft and abbot
and Laud.” The most terrible feature of this tyranny on
the part of the bishops was its personal character. No
fireside was safe from the intrusion of his officers and
pursuivants. No act, no word, was so innocent but it
could be construed into a crime. The primates created
their own tests of doctrine with an utter indifference to
those created by law. In one instance, Parker deprived
a vicar of his benefice for the denial of the verbal inspira-
tion of the Bible. This is but a sample of the charge of
heresy which was liable to be brought home to anyone
who expressed an opinion upon religious subjects. This
and the mode of taking evidence in the court, which was
contrary to the “most simple ideas of justice and equity,"
made it a terrible engine of oppression, and, according to
Hume, its jurisdiction was more terrible than that of the
Star Chamber.2
i See Statutes and Constitutional Documents illustrative of the Reigns
of Elizabeth and James I., edited by G. W. Prothero, Fellow of King's
College, Cambridge, p. 227.
2 The Court of Star Chamber was a court where "great riots and
contempts” were punished. Its jurisdiction was civil rather than
ecclesiastical, and extended to everything that might be supposed to
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS, AND MEANS FOR REPRESSION 97
No wonder that the Ecclesiastical Commission “stank
in the nostrils of the English clergy.” It was even more
detestable to the English laity; to them it remained, as
Froude says, "an inexpressible detestation and scorn.
All sides united in dread and hatred of those ecclesiastical
tribunals, whose yoke had been broken by Henry, and
which had so fearfully abused their recovered power.”
In the Court of High Commission, Whitgift had all the
machinery he required made ready to his hand for carry-
ing out his Test Articles. In 1583, on Whitgift's acces-
sion to the primacy, a new Commission was appointed.
It is generally believed that this Commission was invested
with greatly expanded powers, and became, for this reason,
a more terrible instrument of oppression; but this belief,
though resting on the authority of Hallam (in this fol-
lowing Neal), does not seem to be substantiated.
The power which the Court put at Whitgift's command
was practically absolute and unlimited, and he proceeded
to use it without mercy in the case of all persons known
to be incriminated by the Test Articles,
-a species of
ecclesiastical tyranny utterly at variance alike with our
English laws and all principles of natural equity.?
Lord Burghley, who, though at first rather friendly to
disturb or endanger the government, and to misdemeanours, such
as libels. Hence it regulated and controlled the censorship of the
press. The court consisted of all the members of the Privy Council,
together with two Chief Justices.
1 “It is true that under Whitgift the Commission was more active
and efficient than before; but this change was apparently due, not to
any additional powers, but to the energetic and uncompromising
character of its new head."-Introduction to Select Statutes and other
Constitutional Documents, by Professor Prothero, p. xlii.
2 See Hallam, in loco.
7
98
PURITANISM
Whitgift, was soon disgusted by his intolerant and arbi-
trary behaviour, wrote in strong terms of remonstrance
against these articles of examination, “which I have read,
and find so curiously penned, so full of branches and
circumstances, as I think the inquisitors of Spain use
not so many questions to comprehend and to trap their
preys. According to my simple judgment, this kind
of proceeding is too much savouring of the Romish In-
quisition, and is rather a device to seek for offender; than
to reform any."1 Burghley was no Puritan, jut, like
Bacon, his “calm and sagacious mind” was affronted and
scandalised by such high-handed proceeding. Whitgift,
however, was as little inclined as his royal mistress to
resile from a position which he had once taken up. With
him it was war to the knife and to the bitter end.
1 See Appendix to Strype's Whitgift, vol. iii. pp. 104-107.
1
The Conflict between Puritanism and
the Church
99
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
Richard Hooker
Francis Bacon.
born 1553, died 1600
1561 1626
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VI
Oppression of the Puritans Result of -- Sympathisers with
Puritans-Popular sympathy-Queen inexorable-Predominance of
Puritans—Growth of Puritanism Hooker and his Ecclesiastical
Polity-Law or Reason-Hooker and Puritanism-Misconceptions
as to Puritanism-Not opposed to reason-Lord Bacon-Note on
Hooker's theory of Church and State.
100
1
CHAPTER VI
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PURITANISM AND THE CHURCH
WHEN, during the primacy and rule of Parker, the Act
for enforcing subscription to the Articles in 1572 was
put into execution, a hundred clergymen, according to
Strype's estimate, resigned their benefices rather than
subscribe. But if Parker chastised the refractory Puritans
with whips, Whitgift chastised them with scorpions. The
Test Articles were an instrument of torture that was to
be remorselessly applied. And applied it was, regardless
of consequences. The archbishop's “ peremptory requisi-
tion encountered the resistance of men pertinaciously
attached to their own tenets, and ready to suffer the
privations of poverty rather than yield a simulated
obedience."
79 1
Result of the enforced severities. —Two hundred
and thirty-three ministers were suspended, of whom
forty-nine were deprived absolutely and at once, without
time to consider whether they would or would not com-
ply with the obnoxious Articles. Sixty-four ministers
were suspended in Norfolk alone, sixty in Suffolk, thirty-
eight in Essex by Bishop Aylmer, thirty in Sussex,
1 Hallam.
101
102
PURITANISM
twenty in Kent, and twenty-one in Lincolnshire. This
was a small number compared with the two thousand
ministers ejected in 1662, but it must be remembered
that at that time there were not more than two thousand
clergymen in the whole country. In 1586, “after
twenty-eight years establishment of the Church of
England, there were only two thousand preachers to serve
near ten thousand parishes, so that there were almost
eight thousand parishes without preaching ministers.”
And, in general, the number of those who could not
preach, but only read the service, was to the others
nearly as four to one, the preachers being a majority
only in London. “The Puritans,” says Hallam, “ formed
so much the more learned and diligent part of the
clergy, that a great scarcity of preachers was experienced
throughout this reign, in consequence of silencing so
many of the former.”
“Thus in Cornwall,” says Neal,
"about the year 1578, out of one hundred and forty
clergymen, not one was capable of preaching.” 1
Puritans not without friends and sympathisers
even in high places.—It must not be supposed that
1 “This may be deemed by some an instance of Neal's prejudice,"
adds Hallam. “But that historian is not so ill-informed as they
suppose; and the fact is highly probable. Let it be remembered that
there existed few books of divinity in English ; that all books were
comparatively, to the value of money, far dearer than at present;
that the majority of the clergy were nearly illiterate, and many of
them addicted to drunkenness and low vices ; above all, that they had
no means of supplying their deficiencies by preaching the discourses
of others,—and we shall see little cause for doubting Neal's statement,
though founded on a Puritan document.”—Hallam's History, vol. i.
p. 270, note.
CONFLICT BETWEEN PURITANISM AND THE CHURCH
103
Archbishop Whitgift had upon his side all who were
socially influential in Church and State. The Queen's
most eminent ministers of State-Lord Burghley, the
Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Francis Wal-
singham, Sir Francis Knollys, and Sir Nicholas Bacon-
disapproved strongly of the archbishop's measures, and
the rigour with which they were carried out by him and
his suffragans. The Lords of the Council wrote to the
archbishop and the Bishop of London, “That they had
heard of a great number of zealous and learned preachers
suspended from their cures; the vacancy of the places for
the most part without any ministry or preaching, prayer,
and sacraments, and in some places of certain appointed
to those void rooms being persons neither of learning nor
of good name; and in other places of that county
(Essex) a great number of persons occupying the cures
being notoriously unfit, most for lack of learning, many
charged or chargeable with great and enormous faults,
as drunkenness, filthiness of life, gaming at cards, haunt-
ing of alehouses, and such like; against whom they (the
Council) heard not of any proceedings, but that they
were quietly suffered to the slander of the Church, to
the offence of good people, yea, to the famishing of them
for the lack of good teaching.
“That there was a third sort, being a number having
double livings with cure, and not resident upon their
. That against all these sorts of lewd, evil, unpro-
fitable, and corrupt members they (the Council) heard
of no inquisition, nor of any kind of proceeding to the
reformation of those horrible offences in the Church;
but yet of great diligence, yea, and extreme usage, against
cures.
104
PURITANISM
those that were known diligent preachers. That
the people of the realm might not be deprived of their
pastors being diligent, learned, and zealous, though in
some points of ceremonial they might seem doubtful only
in conscience, and not of wilfulness," etc.
This letter of expostulation, signed by Lord Burghley,
the Earls of Warwick, Shrewsbury, and Leicester, the
Lord Charles Howard, Sir James Croft, Sir Christopher
Hatton, and Sir Francis Walsingham, Sec stary of State,
might as well never have been written. Convinced in his
own way, and secure of Elizabeth's support, the archbishop
nailed his colours to the mast, and went on his deter-
mined course.
1
Popular sympathy on the Puritan side.—The high-
handed proceedings of Whitgift and the bishops, armed
with the powers of the High Commission, and the trucu-
lence of the officials to whom the carrying out of their
measures was entrusted, outraged the humanity and
right feeling of all sections of the community, and the
result was a marked and notable reaction in favour of
the Puritans and their doctrines. A body of public
opinion, growing every day in strength, declared against
the legality of these proceedings, of the use of excom-
munication, and of the oath "ex officio.” ? This found
expression in a petition presented to the House of Lords
by the House of Commons in 1584, in which it was
1 Strype's Whitgift, vol. i. pp. 328-330.
.
2 « The oath ex officio, binding the taker to answer all questions
that should be put to him, inasmuch as it contravened the generous
maxim of English law, that no one is obliged to criminate himself,
provoked very just animadversion.”_Hallam.
CONFLICT BETWEEN PURITANISM AND THE CHURCH
105
prayed that certain reforms should be made and certain
abuses removed, among others, that ministers diligent in
their calling, and of good conversation and life, should
not be “molested . . . for omitting small portions of
some ceremony prescribed in the Book of Common
Prayer," that the scandal of such ministers being
“openly disgraced by officials and commissaries, who
daily call them to their courts to answer complaints of
their doctrine and life, or breach of orders prescribed by
the ecclesiastical laws and statutes of this realm,” should
be removed, and that all alleged offences of this descrip-
tion should be brought before the bishops themselves.
" That for the better increase of knowledge, it might be
permitted to the ministers of every archdeaconry to
have some common exercises and conferences among them-
selves, to be limited and prescribed by their ordinaries."
Perhaps the most significant of all the reforms pressed
upon the attention of the “Lords spiritual and temporal”
was that part of the petition which prayed that a cer-
tain number of the clergy might be associated with
the bishops in performing the rite of ordination.
This, however, is much more strongly emphasised in
another petition presented about the same time to the
Queen, and which is said to have been endorsed by Lord
Burghley, openly proposing that the authority with
which the bishops had hitherto been invested should be
transferred to provincial synods and national and general
councils. The Presbyterian drift of this latter petition is
1 The two petitions—that of the House of Commons and that of
private individuals to the Queen-are given in Strype's Whitgift,
vol. iii. pp. 118–124.
106
PURITANISM
unmistakable; but it shows the strong sympathy there
was with it, even among the ruling classes, that the
Privy Council was itself divided in regard to it; while in
the House of Commons the feeling was so strong, that
had its will prevailed, Whitgift would have been deposed
and his Articles abolished, and the whole system of
Church and State as it then existed would have been
profoundly modified.
But the presenters of these petitions might as well
have whistled to the wind. Whitgift remained firm, and
the Queen was inexorable. She gave one more proof of
her unyielding temper in the speech she made on pro-
roguing Parliament in 1585, in which she declared that
the Church and herself, “whose over-ruler God hath
made me," would be guilty of a “negligence
negligence” which
cannot be excused, if any schisms or errors heretical
were suffered.” She had made up her mind to “ tolerate
no new-fangledness." This quelled for the time at least
all hope of reform. Elizabeth and her archbishop were
masters of the situation. It may be interesting to note
in this connection what Hallam says about the
Predominance of Puritan influence in Parliament.
-“I conceive," he says, "the Church of England party,
that is, the party adverse to any species of ecclesiastical
change, to have been the least numerous of the three---
i.e. those who were neutral, those attached to the ancient
Church, and those who wished for further alterations in
the new.
The Puritans, or at least those who rather
favoured them, had a majority among the Protestant
gentry in the Queen's days. It is agreed on all hands,
CONFLICT BETWEEN PURITANISM AND THE CHURCH
107
un-
and is quite manifest, that they predominated in the
House of Commons. But that House was composed,
as it has ever been, of the principal landed proprietors,
and as much represented the general wish of the com-
munity when it demanded a further reform in religious
matters as on any other subject. One would imagine by
the manner in which some express themselves, that the
discontented were a small faction who, by some
accountable means, in despite of the government and
the nation, formed a majority of all Parliaments under
Elizabeth and her two successors.
The Puritan party
acquired strength by the prevailing hatred and dread of
Popery, and by the disgust which the bishops had been
unfortunate enough to excite. This contributed with the
prevalent tone of public opinion, to throw such a weight
into the puritanical scale in the Commons, as it required
all the Queen's energy to counterbalance.” i
.
Growth of Puritanism.—Puritanism went on steadily
increasing and strengthening its hold upon the nation.
At the opening of the Queen's reign, Oxford was a nest
of Papists, and sent its best scholars to feed the Catholic
seminaries. At its close the university was a hotbed
of Puritanism, where the fiercest tenets of Calvin reigned
supreme. The University of Cambridge was at a far
earlier period impregnated with the Puritan spirit, and
this continued to grow in spite of all the efforts of
Whitgift, the Vice-Chancellor, to exorcise it.2 The
1 Hallam, vol. i. p. 257.
2 “It was in Cambridge that the Reformation first commenced ;
and though that great movement had its foundation laid much
108
PURITANISM
progress which Puritanism had made, in spite of all
the repressive measures which were directed against it,
was indeed amazing. It may be said without exaggera-
tion that the best part of the religion of England, as
nearly all the virtue and serious-mindedness of the nation,
were on the side of Puritanism. The purest and noblest
of Elizabethan heroes were Puritans. The most typical
poet of the Elizabethan age was a Puritan. The blend-
ing of religion and chivalry in the Faerie Queen reveals
the spring at which Spenser had drunk, while the Shep-
heard's Calender and the satire of Mother Hubbard's Tale
reflect only too faithfully the corruption into which
religion had sunk, both among the clergy and the large
body of the people.
There is one figure, however, upon the opposite side
which stands out in noble proportions, and to this dutiful
and loyal son of the Church and defender of her institu-
tions it is a relief to turn from defenders of a different
temper and type.
1
Richard Hooker.---The genius of Hooker has in-
more in nationalism than in theology, yet latent energies of a
religious character were at work ; and of their influence, on the
Reforming side, not the greater part, but almost the whole, belonged
to Cambridge. Oxford devoted herself [that is, at the opening of
the Queen's reign] to make recusants, and Cambridge to the forma-
tion of Zwinglians and Calvinists.”—Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone,
M.P., Speech at Oxford, October 24, 1892.
1 “The highesi 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 Fäerie Queen. The highest expression
of the opposite view is in the Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard
Hooker.”—Henry Morley's History of English Literature, p. 190.
CONFLICT BETWEEN PURITANISM AND THE CHURCH
109
and prose.
vested his writings with an adventitious importance,--
an importance which they owe less to the relevance and
conclusiveness of his reasoning, than to his majestic style
His Ecclesiastical Polity is the earliest speci-
men of English prose, in which the preserving salt of
literary excellence is such as to recommend it to the
taste of modern 'readers. Its massive eloquence, its vigour
and grasp of thought, its wealth of learning and illustra-
tion, as well as its amplitude of style, have given to
Hooker's great work a permanent position in English
literature. Its abiding interest, however, is philosophical
and political; as a theological polemic, time has reduced
it to a condition of irrelevance.
The fundamental principle of the Ecclesiastical Polity
is the supremacy, unity, and all-embracing character of
Law," Law whose seat is the bosom of God, whose
voice the harmony of the world.” Law is that which binds
the whole creation in all its ranks and subordinations
to the perfect goodness and reason of God. Every law of
God is a law of reason, and every law of reason is a law
of God. There is a divine order, Hooker argues, not only
in written revelation, but also in the course and constitu-
tion of nature, in the moral order and government of the
world. It pertains to human reason to discover and to
apply the laws of this order, and even within the province
of Scripture itself to distinguish between those elements
which are accidental and temporary and those which are
essential and immutable. The authority of the Church
Hooker finds in the authority of Reason or Law, in
other words, in the historical, ordered, and continuous
progression of the Church herself, an authority enshrined
110
PURITANISM
for Hooker as truly as for Augustine, in the famous
words, Sccurus judicat orbis terrarum. The first four
books of the Ecclesiastical Polity were published in 1594,
and in them Hooker set himself to undermine the posi-
tion of Cartwright and Travers, that for the individual.
Christian the maxim is,“ Scripture is the only rule of
all things which may be done of man ”; while for the
Church the maxim is, “There must be in Scripture a
form of Church Polity, the laws of wh ch may not be
altered.”
Did Hooker refute Puritanism ?-It is sometimes
affirmed that the argument of Hooker is directed against
the Puritan position, and that by it the Puritan conten-
tion was disproved and disposed of for all time to come.
A more preposterous statement was never made. Its
absurdity is manifest at a glance, when we remember
that both the Puritan position and the Puritan party
were only in their nascent beginning, and Puritanism,
which never was a reasoned system of belief—was at
that time an inchoate principle, struggling, at tremendous
odds, to make itself felt.
Dean Church2 says that while the Reformation was,
in one sense, an appeal to reason, it was an appeal also
to authority, the authority of Scripture against reason;
and of this appeal to authority against reason, Puritanism
was the most extreme and absolute form, and showed the
1 The Anglican and Presbyterian positions are briefly but con-
veniently exhibited in extracts from the Ecclesiastical Polity, by
Professor Prothero, in his Select Statutes, etc. pp. 245–247.
2 Dean Church's Introduction to book i. of Hooker's Laws of
Ecclesiastical Polity (Clarendon Press Series).
CONFLICT BETWEEN PURITANISM AND THE CHURCH
111
consequences of sacrificing fact to theory. We venture
to think that from such insufficient data as we have,
as to what Puritanism really was at this time, this is
much too large a generalisation. It proceeds on the pre-
carious assumption that Puritanism is to be identified
with the opinions of Cartwright and Travers. Hallam
warns us against concluding that everyone, or even the
majority, of those who might be counted on the Puritan
side in Elizabeth's reign, would have subscribed to the
extravagant opinions of Cartwright. But this loose, un-
discriminating use of the term “Puritanism,” as we have
already pointed out, quite ignores the change and
development which Puritanism itself underwent during
the succeeding century.
Misconceptions as to the true meaning of Puri-
tanism.—There is no error which is more widespread
than that Puritanism is bound up with certain theories
and doctrines, such as those put forth by Cartwright.
Canon Curteis speaks of the Puritan delusion that the
Scriptures are the sole organ of the Holy Ghost, and says
that this, and the Calvinistic system in general,“ belong
to the very essence of Puritanism.” 1 “For whereas God
hath left sundry kinds of laws unto men, and by all these
laws the actions of men are in some sort directed, they
[Cartwright and his disciples] held that one only law, the
Scripture, must be the rule to direct in all things, even
so far as to the taking up of a rush or straw.” 2
1 Curteis' Bampton Lecture, p. 271.
2 Hooker's Ecclesistical Polity, book ii. chap. ii.
Readers of Mr. Matthew Arnold-those who have read his paper on
112
PURITANISM
In the course of our inquiry we shall probably find
good reason for doubting whether such notions as these
did belong to the very essence of Puritanism. Even
among the Elizabethan Puritans it would have been
difficult to extract a perfect consensus of opinion that
Scripture is the only rule of all things which may be
done of man”; and certainly as regards the rule ind order
of the Church, their notion was far from being exhausted
in the thesis, “ The apostolic polity is the authoritative
and normative polity for all time.” 1
Is it so very certain that the Puritans did appeal to
the authority of Scripture against reason ? It seems to
be taken for granted, that because the Puritans appealed
to the authority of Scripture as against the authority of
the Church of Rome and that claimed by the Anglican
Church, therefore they did not appeal to reason. Surely,
!
“Puritanism and the Church of England”—are familiar with his wild
unsupported assertions that the Puritans staked their existence on
the “assumption that there is a divinely-appointed Church order
fixed once for all in the Bible, and that they have adopted it"; also
that “the Puritan Churches found their very existence on the doctrines
of predestination, imputed righteous, etc., but the historic Churches do
not.”—St. Paul and Protestantism, popular edition, pp. 115, 85.
1 Jubilee Lectures. Introductory chapter on “Ecclesiastical Polity
and the Religion of Christ," li.
2 “ Puritan theocracy, though strict, and sure to melt away when
the sun of freedom had mounted higher in the heaven, was not
reactionary or obscurantist. It had for its rule the Bible, but the
Bible interpreted by reason. It owed paramount allegiance, not to
authority, but to truth.”—The United States : An Outline of Political
History, by Goldwin Smith, D.C.L., p. 10.
Chillingworth is regarded as a very liberal theologian, but it may
be doubted whether many of the later Puritans would not have had
serious doubts regarding a position like this : “Propose me any-
thing out of this book, and require whether I believe it or not, and
CONFLICT BETWEEN PURITANISM AND THE CHURCH
113
with equal force, the same objection may be brought
against their opponents, because they appealed to an-
tiquity-to the authority of the Fathers and of councils.
Even Hooker was not content to find in reason the sole
basis and justification of Church authority. “ It may be
justly objected,” says Hallam, "to some passages [in
the Ecclesiastical Polity] that they elevate ecclesiastical
authority, even in matters of belief, with an exaggeration
not easily reconciled to the Protestant right of private
judgment, and even of dangerous consequence in those
times, as when he inclines to give a decisive voice in
theological controversies to general councils, not, indeed,
on the principles of the Church of Rome, but on such as
must end in the same conclusion, the high probability
that the aggregate judgment of many grave and learned
men should be well founded. It is well known that the
Preface to the Ecclesiastical Polity was one of the two
books to which James II. ascribed his return into the field
of Rome; and it is not difficult to perceive by what course
of reasoning, on the position it contains, this was effected.” 1
“It cannot be said that Hooker added anything to the
answers that were made to the Puritans. He carried the
question up to a higher region, where the atmosphere
was purer.
The Puritan was not without a sense of that
order of which Hooker discoursed. He believed, however,
that it was not furthered, but hindered, by the retention
of the order and ceremonies that had been in the Church
seem it never so incomprehensible to human reason, I will subscribe
it with hand and heart, as knowing no demonstration can be stronger
than this: God hath said so, and therefore it is true.”
Hallam, vol. i. p. 296, note.
1
8
114
PURITANISM
of Rome. Why, it was asked, are we to conclude that
what is retained is any more the expression of a divine
order than that which has been rejected.”1 The Puritans
could not see the force of the long disquisition about
law as urged against them, nor can we. It may have
been relevant to some of the reasoning mployed by
Cartwright and Travers, but so far from turning the
flank of the Puritan position, Hooker's great work has
become an armoury from which Puritanism has drawn its
most fit and effective weapons.?
Lord Bacon was one with Hooker in counselling
unity in the Church, and deploring the unhappy con-
troversies which were ďividing the Church and nation ;
but to the acuteness of the philosopher, Bacon added the
practical sagacity of the statesman. Hooker would have
the Puritan comply with the laws and regulations of
the Church; while Bacon would have these sufficiently
elastic to accommodate his views and prejudices.3
Therefore it is good we return to the ancient bands
of unity in the Church of God, which was one faith, one
baptism, and not one hierarchy, one discipline, and that
we observe the league of Christians as it is penned by
our Saviour Christ, which is in substance of doctrine
this: All that is not with us is against us; but in things
indifferent, and but of circumstance, this: He that is not
against us is with us; . . . as it is excellently alluded
1 Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. i. p. 60.
2 In his admirable little handbook on Church and State, Mr. Taylor
Innes (p. 175) acutely points out how Hooker's views of the original
source of Church authority are parallel and in accordance with those
of his Presbyterian and Puritan opponents.
3 The Puritan Revolution, 1603–1660, by S. R. Gardiner.
CONFLICT BETWEEN PURITANISM AND THE CHURCH
115
by the father that noted that Christ's garment was with-
out seam, and yet the Church's garment was of divers
colours, and thereupon set down for a rule, Let there be
variety in the vesture, but not a rent.” 1
NOTE ON HOOKER'S THEORY OF CHURCH AND STATE
The Ecclesiastical Polity contains Hooker's peculiar theory of
Church and State, the false and mischievous position that the
Church and commonwealth are but different denominations of the
same society. "A Church and a commonwealth, we grant, are
things in nature the one distinguished from the other. A Church
is one way, and a commonwealth another way, defined.” “We
hold that, seeing there is not any man of the Church of England
but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any
member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of
England ; therefore, as in a figure triangle, the base doth differ from
the sides thereof, and yet one and the self-same line is both a base
and also a side,-a side simply, a base if it chance to be the bottom,
and underlie the same,—so albeit propositions and actions of one
do cause the name of a commonwealth, qualities and functions of
another sort the name of the Church, to be given to a multitude,
yet one and the self-same multitude may in such sort be both.”
Book viii. chap. i. section 2.
It is obvious at a glance that such identity as this never existed in
point of fact, and the comment which history writes upon the
attempts which, at different times and in various ways, have been
made to bring it about is instructive and tragical. Such union of
Church and State is a chimera; the fact that religion and politics
belong to two totally distinct and dissimilar spheres it entirely
ignores. His deftly constructed theory should have dissolved under
the touchstone of his own words: “A commonwealth we name it
simply in regard of some regiment or policy under which men live ;
a Church, for the truth of that religion which they profess.”_Book
viii. chap. i. section 5.
“To profess a religion is a personal act; must be voluntarily and
1 Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of England.
116
PURITANISM
consciously done to be done at all.” But this was precisely what
could not happen, or be allowed to happen, in Hooker's theory of the
Church. To him “ one society is both the Church and common-
wealth,” and, as a necessary result, “our Church hath dependence
from the chief in our commonwealth.” But this was to transform
the profession of religion into a matter of loyalty, and to identify
Nonconformity with rebellion. Responsibility to tu. King sup-
planted responsibility to God, godliness became a species f political
obedience, and the Church was emptied of its transcendental and
ethical ideals that it might be organised into a system which was all
the more civil that it was so intensely sacerdotal.” 1
1 Dr. Fairbairn on Ecclesiastical Polity and the Religion of Christ.
Introductory chapter to Jubilee Lectures. See whole of Dr. Fair-
bairn's criticism on Hooker's “splendid idea of a Church,” and the
comparison between this and the ideal of Independency and the
religion of Christ.
}
1Rise of Independency
117
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
Robert Browne, born 1550, died between 1631 and 1633
Church of Richard Fitz met in London
1567
Church in Norwich gathered by Robert Browne 1580
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VII,
Puritanism not a Church System-Independency at first not a
polity-Harbingers of Independency-Puritans libelled-Begin-
nings of Separatism-Church of Richard Fitz-Robert Browne-
His relation to Independency Browne and the Brownists
Raleigh’s estimate of number of BrownistsDissenters and Separat-
ists-What Separatism originally implied-Separatists through force
of circumstances.
118
CHAPTER VII
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
It should always be remembered that Puritanism at the
beginning had nothing to do with any question of Church
government. Neither Presbyterianism nor Independency
were involved in it, and Episcopacy only because it had
possession of the field, and appeared, even to the majority
of the Puritans of that age, the only possible and prac-
ticable polity. What they supremely desired and vehe-
mently contended for was to get Luther's “ doctrine of
Christian liberty, and of the common universal priest-
hood," embodied in visible form, so as to become the
corner-stone of a temple in which men could worship
God without the intervention of priest, altar, and sacrifice.
Contemned and rejected by the Church of Rome, it was
in their eyes the condemnation of the Reformed Pro-
testant Church, that this was the stone also which the
builders rejected.
Independency at first not a polity.---The rise of
Independency must not be confounded with the rise of
Separatism. This confusion is a common one, but no
one who reads the history of that period with any degree
of care should fall into it. Separatism led, no doubt, to
119
120
PURITANISM
the assertion of Independency, and eventually to its set-
ting up as an organised sytem, but in the beginning it
had no connection with it whatever, for the simple reason
that Independency proper had not then come into exist-
ence. Moreover, it came into existence at first, not as a
system at all, but as the vehicle and natural expression
of the religious life, and of the fellowship which that life
seeks and creates. A shipwrecked crew of religious men
and women, united by no tie but that of a deep spiritual
faith, and cast upon a desert island, would be at first
compelled to form themselves into an independent Church
or fellowship, though they might afterwards graft upon
it a system utterly at variance with the principles of
Independency. Independency is thus seen to be the
form towards which the religious life at first spontane-
vusly gravitates, the mould into which it immediately
and naturally runs.
Of this we shall find subsequent
and striking illustrations.
The harbingers of Independency.—The first
heralds of religious freedom in England, those who
were Reformers before the Reformation, became, less by
choice than of necessity, the harbingers of Independency
Among them must be included such names as Grosseteste,
bishop of Lincoln in 1248; Wyclif, Colet, Erasmus,
Hooper, Latimer, Ridley, Tyndale, and More. The most
notable of all is Wyclif. It is in his writings that we
find the first explicit statement of the principle that lies at
the root of Independency. The Temple of God is the
Ngregation, living religiously, of just men, for whom
bed His blood.” Looking at the present state
60
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
121
of the Church, we find it would be better, and of greater
use to the Church, if it were governed purely by the law
of Scripture, than by human traditions, mixed up with
evangelical.” “For Christ, our Lawgiver, has given
us a law which is itself sufficient for the whole Church
militant." When Wyclif's poor priests went about the
country preaching, they gathered assemblies of like-minded
religious people, and by them the foregleams of Reforma-
tion light were kindled and kept burning. As early as the
commencement of the reign of Henry IV. a law was passed,
the preamble of which ran—“Some had a new faith about
the sacraments of the Church, and the authority of the
same; and did preach without authority, gathered con-
venticles, taught schools, wrote books against the Catholic
faith, with many other heinous aggravations.” 1 The
preamble of an Act for the burning of heretics, passed
in 1401, that is, seventeen years after the death of
Wyclif, states that “divers false and perverse people
of a certain new sect, usurping the office of preaching, do
perversely and maliciously, in divers places within the
realm, preach and teach divers new doctrines and wicked,
erroneous opinions; and of such sect and wicked doc-
trines they make unlawful conventicles."
Misstatements and prejudice regarding the Puritans.
-The story of the early Separatists is with difficulty dis-
entangled from the allegations and aspersions which pre-
judice and rancour have woven round it, or substituted for
the final and sober judgment of history itself. “Much as
the Puritans have been vilified in history, their treatment
1 Burnet's History of the Reformation (1841), vol. i. p. 20.
122
PURITANISM
has been mild compared with that which has been
accorded to the Separatists.” It should never be for-
gotten that we are dependent upon their adversaries
for the main part of our information regarding both
Puritans and 'Separatists, and nonsequently this in-
formation needs, as far as possibw to be subjected
to the most careful investigation and sifting. What
Carlyle says about “the old narratives” in respect of
Cromwell is applicable to not a little of the “rumour
regarding the Puritans in general, which passes muster
for history.
“How many grave historical statements
still circulate in the world, accredited by Bishop Burnet
and the like, which, on examination, you will find melt
away into after-dinner rumours. · I have examined
most of them; found not one of them fairly believable;
wondered to see how already in one generation, earnest
Puritanism being hung on the gallows or thrown out in
St. Margaret's Churchyard, the whole History of it had
grown mythical, and men were ready to swallow all
manner of nonsense concerning it. Ask for dates, ask
for proofs : Who saw it, heard it; when was it, where?”2
The temper in which this subject is approached by a
1 The restrictions upon printing in these days were so great, and
the search made for books or pamphlets supposed to be tainted with
schism, sedition, and heresy was so jealous and unremitting, that the
literature of this description which did get into circulation was, with
the exception of the Martin-Marprelate tracts, of the scantiest de-
scription. “This has probably," says Hallam (History, vol. i. p. 323,
note), “been one cause of the extreme scarcity of the puritanical
pamphlets.” The censorship of the entire literature of the time was
practically in the hands of the Primate and the Bishop of London.
See p. 158.
2 Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Cromwell, vol. i. p. 239.
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
123
certain class of writers may be gathered from a remark
by Mr. Maskell in his History of the Martin-Marprelate Con-
troversy. “ I do not think that we must listen to objections
from the Elizabethan Puritans in the same temper as we
would to other men's; neither can we allow them to
have the same weight.” 1
The beginnings of Separatism and Independency.
—“The martyrs of the primitive Churches of old,"
says John Owen, “ lost more of their blood and lives
for their meetings and assemblies than for personal
profession of the faith; and so also have others done
under the Roman apostasy." We have evidence as to
the prevalence of secret meetings and assemblies long
before the beginning of the Reformation in England.
“ There were secret multitudes,” says Foxe, “who tasted
and followed the sweetness of God's holy word, and whose
fervent zeal may appear by their sitting up all night in
reading and hearing.” The number of these appears to
have increased during the Marian persecution; and even
with the fires of Smithfield blazing, as it were, before their
very eyes, they forsook not the assembling of themselves
1 A History of the Martin-Marprelate Controversy, by the Rev. William
Maskell, M.A., p. 116. The extent to which unconscious prejudice
may influence the minds of writers who make the “epitomised
synopsis of rumour,” to use Carlyle's phrase, do duty for history, is
well illustrated in the two short articles on “Robert Browne," and
“The Brownists,” which appears in the last (ninth) edition of the
Encyclopædia Britannica. A statement like this, “The occasion of
the Brownists' separatism was not any fault they found with the
faith, but only with the discipline and forms of government of the
other Churches in England,” should either have been omitted, or it
should have been amplified and explained.
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PURITANISM
together. On New Year's Day 1555, we hear of certain
honest men and women of the city (of London), to the
number of thirty, taken, as they were at the communion
in a house in Bow Churchyard, and carried off to prison.
On the death of Mary and the accession of Elizabeth
these secret meetings continued to be i old less or more
openly. Thomas Lever, one of the returned exiles, writing
to his friend Bullinger in 1559, says: “There had been
a congregation of faithful persons concealed in London
during the time of Mary, among whom the gospel was
always preached, with the pure administration of the
sacraments; but during the rigour of the persecution
of that Queen they carefully concealed themselves,
and on the cessation of it under Elizabeth they openly
continued in the same congregation. · Large
numbers flocked to them, not in churches, but in
private houses."
The Church of Richard Fitz.—In the year 1567 a
number of people about two hundred--were in the habit
of meeting in London, in what was known as Plumbers
Hall. They had chosen as their pastor one Richard
Fitz. “Some London citizens have openly separated from
us,” says Bishop Grindal, writing to Bullinger," and
sometimes in private houses, sometimes in fields, and
occasionally even in ships, they have held meetings
and administered the sacraments. Besides this, they
have ordained ministers, elders, and deacons, after their
own way. The Privy Council have lately committed the
heads of this faction to prison.” The latter refers to a
meeting at Plumbers' Hall, held in connection with some
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
125
marriage festivity, which was surprised by the vigilance
of the authorities, broken up, and the incriminated
persons hailed off to Bridewell Prison.
This little com-
pany, with Richard Fitz as their pastor, is sometimes, but
incorrectly, described as the first Independent Congrega-
tional Church, if, indeed, it could be called, in any strict
historical sense, an Independent Church at all. It
seems more probable that it was a resumption or con-
tinuation of the previously existing band of Separatists
already mentioned as composed of “certain honest men
and women of the city, to the number of thirty.” 1
“ These humble men really believed that Jesus Christ
established His empire upon the consent, not the fears, of
men, and trusted Himself defenceless among mankind,” 2
and, so far, the little Church was founded upon the Con-
gregational idea; but much more is needed to show that
it was modelled upon the Congregational system. In his
1 The claim of this little Church, which had Richard Fitz as its
pastor, to be considered an Independent or Congregational Church,
and also (for both claims have been made for it) the first Independent
or Congregational Church in England, has been very much debated.
The opinion to which the present writer inclines will be gathered
from what follows in the text. A careful and interesting statement
of the case will be found in a paper entitled, “Congregationalism :
Old and New,” in a little work on the Early Independents, by Rev.
John Brown, D.D. ; also in The Story of the English Separatists, pp.
41–45, by Rev. A. Mackennal, D.D. Both these works were pub-
lished in 1893 by the Congregational Union of England and Wales,
and present in the smallest compass—and far more effectively than
many bulky works a clear, concise, and altogether admirable
history of the period to which they relate.
2 Dr. Stoughton's History of Religion in England, vol. i. p. 343, new
and revised edition. Dr. Stoughton's statement, that “a Congrega-
tional Church existed in London so early as 1568," calls for some
revision in the light of what has been already advanced,
126
PURITANISM
work on The Congregationalism of the last Three Hundred
Years, p. 115, we think Dr. Dexter very forcibly deals
with this contention, and shows that while the little
company of Separatists held some good Congregational
principles, yet these "scarcely more touched the question
of pure polity than the pile, driven deep below the
foundations of a building, suggests whether it is to be
Gothic, Grecian, or pure Yankee in its façade.” His figure
implies a much less complete approximation to Inde-
pendent polity than that actually made by the little
company; but certainly to speak of them as being the
founders of Independency is, we must hold, historically
inaccurate. That honour, however the necessity may
be regretted, has to be accorded to one of a very
different temper from Richard Fitz or any of his little
flock
Robert Browne.—No account of Independency
would be complete which did not embrace extended and
due reference to Robert Browne, the founder of the
Brownists, the name which has since been given to the
1 “ While they (the English Independents) seek the original war-
rant for their views in the New Testament and in the practice of the
primitive Church, and while they maintain, also, that the essence
of these views was rightly revived in old English Wyclifism, and
perhaps in some of the speculations which accompanied Luther's
Reformation on the Continent, they admit that the theory of Inde-
pendency had to be worked out afresh by a new process of the
English mind in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they
are content, I believe, that the crude immediate beginning of that
process should be sought in the opinions propagated between 1580
and 1590 by the erratic Robert Browne, a Rutlandshire man, bred
at Cambridge, who had become a preacher at Norwich,"—Professor
Masson's Life of Milton, vol. iv. p. 536.
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
127
presence.
followers of Independency. This remarkable man, extra-
ordinary both for the force of his personality and character,
was the son of Anthony Browne of Tolthorp, in Rutland-
shire, and was born in 1550. His grandfather, by a
charter of Henry VIII., had acquired the singular dis-
tinction of being allowed to wear his cap in the King's
After he had taken his degree at Cambridge,
he became, according to Strype, private chaplain to the
Duke of Norfolk. He was cited to appear before the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners on a charge of disseminating
seditious doctrines; and had not that nobleman befriended
him and taken his part, he would doubtless have become
acquainted with the inside of a prison much earlier than he
did. At the age of twenty-two he became a schoolmaster, ,
and afterwards a lecturer and preacher, though without
a licence; and it would appear that about this time he
adopted the opinions with which his name has been since
identified. Neal says he was “a fiery, hot-headed young
man, and went about the countries inveighing against the
discipline and ceremonies of the Church, and exhorted
the people by no means to comply with them.” In 1580
he removed to Norwich, where his preaching was the
means of attracting a numerous congregation, which com-
prised, probably, a considerable number of Dutch refugees,
who at that time formed more than half the population
of Norwich. Among these were doubtless not a few
Anabaptists and other sufferers in the cause of liberty
1 This intervention, however, on the part of the Duke of Norfolk,
and the statement that Browne was chaplain to that nobleman, ap-
pears to be an error on the part of Strype. See note appended to Dr.
Dale's “Lecture on the Early Independents” in Jubilee Lectures, p. 55.
128
PURITANISM
and conscience. In the year 1582 he published a book
entitled, The Life and Manners of True Christians, to
which is prefixed “A Treatise of Reformation without
tarrying for any, and of the wickedness of those preachers
which will not reform themselves as their charge, because
they will tarry till the magistrate command and compel
them."
Browne seems to have been the first to protest against
multitudinism in the Church, or what is better known by
the term, promiscuous communion. “The kingdom of
God,” he says, “was not to be begun by whole parishes,
but rather of the worthiest, be they never so few.” The
Church must be constituted of sincere God-fearing Chris- .
tian men and women. This is his definition of a Church :
“ The Church planted or gathered in a company or number
of Christians or believers, which, by a willing covenant
made with their God, are under the government of God
and Christ, and keep His laws in one holy communion.
| The Church government is the lordship of Christ in the
communion of His offices, whereby His people obey His
will, and have mutual use of their graces and callings to
further their godliness and welfare."
“For Browne, as before for Cartwright, the voice of
the people was literally the voice of God.
Christ was
the King. As His will was revealed equally to all, all
had an equal right to interpret it. He reigns; the com-
munity governs in His name. Thus the Puritans, by
1“ The Independents of England and the Congregationalists of
America are to-day in lineal descent from that little Norwich church
of two hundred and ninety-six years ago.”—Dexter's Congregational-
ism as seen in its Literature, p. 114, published in 1879.
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
129
means of their idea of monarchy itself, arrived practically
at democracy. They proclaimed a kind of Divine Right
Democracy."1
Holding the views he did, he could have no communion
with the Church of England, nor could he acknowledge
her" to be a true Church, or her ministers true ministers."
He exhorted his hearers to separate from the parish
churches, and "seek the Church of God wheresoever." 2
Such extreme views, and the endeavour to embody them
by the formation of a separate congregation, naturally
exposed Browne and his followers to the severity of the
Queen and her bishops, and he was obliged to leave the
kingdom. He and several of his friends found in Holland
the freedom which was denied them in their own country,
and, by permission of the authorities, a Church, which
may properly be described as an Independent Church,
was formed in Middelburg, in Zealand. This Church at
Middelburg included not a few who afterwards became
eminent for their zeal and piety and learning. The unan-
imity that at first prevailed was, however, soon broken,
and the Church split up into two sections, the one insist-
ing with Browne upon the duty of absolute separation
from the Church of England, and the other favouring a
more modified nonconformity. This" latter section, under
Robinson, took the name Independents. These became
growingly strong and influential, and the Brownists soon
1“Puritanism and the English Revolution,” p. 34, chap. i. of the
Rise of Modern Democracy in Old and New England, by Charles
Borgeaud, Member of the Faculty of Law, Geneva. Translated by
Mrs. Birkbeck Hill, with a preface by C. H. Firth, M.A., Balliol
College, Oxford.
2 See, however, pp. 185-6.
***
9
130
PURITANISM
faded out of view, and gave place to the Independents.
As the breach between his associates and himself
became wider, and troubles increased, Browne found his
position intolerable. He determined to try Scotland, to
see if that would furnish more congenial and fruitful soil
for the growth of his free Church principles. But if he
had little to hope for from Episcopacy, he soon found
that he had still less to expect from Presbyterianism.
King James said: “ They” (meaning Browne and Penry)
“have come to Scotland to sow their popple amongst us.”
The next thing we find is that Browne was cited to
appear before the Archbishop of Canterbury to answer
for one of his publications. He was delivered from this
dilemma by the friendly interposition of his kinsman,
Lord Burghley. After this, Browne found an asylum
under his father's roof, and here apparently everything
was done that parental solicitude could suggest to induce
him to change his opinions and conform to the estab-
lished religion.
But, says Fuller, “it seems Browne's
errors were so inlaid in him, no conferences with divines
would convince him to the contrary, whose incorrigible-
ness made his own father weary of his company. Men
may wish, God only can work, children to be good. The
old gentleman would own him for his son no longer than
his son owned the Church of England for his mother,
desiring to rid his hands of him."
Concerning the closing period of Browne's life, it is
very difficult to ascertain correctly what the facts are.
We have only the testimony of men like Fuller, who was
intensely prejudiced against the man and his views, and
whose statements therefore must be received with the
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
131
reverses.
utmost caution. It seems, however, impossible to acquit
him of gross inconsistency and tergiversation. Weary of
enduring “ the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” he
accepted a living in Northamptonshire, and found rest, or
such rest as was possible to so turbulent a spirit, in the
bosom of the Church which he had so unsparingly assailed
and denounced. For this act no apology can be offered
but his ungovernable temper, and the fact that he was
an old man soured by disappointment and broken by
“One may justly wonder,” says Fuller, “ when
many meaner accessories in this schism were arraigned,
condemned, and executed, how this Browne, the principal,
made so fair an escape, yea, enjoyed such preferment.
Yet he came off at last both with saving his life and
keeping his living (and that none of the meanest-
Achurch in Northamptonshire) until the day of his
death.”
“More probable it is that the promise of his general
compliance with the Church of England (so far forth as
not to make future disturbance therein) met with the
archbishop's courteous acceptance thereof, both which
effectually improved by the countenance of Thomas Cecil,
Earl of Exeter (Browne's near kinsman and patron), pro-
cured this extraordinary favour to be indulged unto him.”
But though Browne consented to eat the bread of the
Church of which he had been so unsparing an assailant,
it is quite clear that his compliance was merely outward
and formal, and represented no change of principle or
conviction. Strype says of him: “He continued still
very freakish ”; while Fuller says: “I will never
believe that he ever formally recanted his opinions,
C
132
PURITANISM
V
either by word or writing, as to the main of what he
maintained.” 1
Browne, in what sense the founder of Independ-
ency.—It is assumed by adverse rivics of Independency
that the relation between it and Browne is like that
which exists between the stream and its source, and,
consequently, if they can show the impurity of the one,
they can demonstrate the impurity of the other. This
assumption is, however, unfounded and gratuitous.
Browne was the founder of Independency only in the
sense that he was the first (so far as we know) to grasp
its fundamental contention and principle, and give it
practical and visible embodiment. He saw clearly
enough that the primitive Church was very different
from the Church of England, that its most characteristic
features had been obliterated, its simplicity superseded
and overlaid by an elaborate ritual, by a graded hierarchy,
by ceremonies and customs which had no existence,
and could have had no sanction in the apostolic age.
Now as then, it was within the right of any number of
Christians to form themselves into a separate congre-
gation, elect their own officers, arrange for the conduct
of worship, the observance of ordinances, and the main-
tenance of discipline, free from all external authority and
control; and acting upon this conviction, he took steps
to gather a Church founded upon these principles.
Browne's part in the movement was simply that of
the discoverer who gives to some new fruitful idea its
initial impulse and shape, leaving it to others to expand
1 See Fuller's Church History, vol. v. p. 68.
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
133
and develop. But as the worth of a discovery, either in
science or morals, is not affected by the discoverer's
personal character or manner of life, so it is no deroga-
tion to Independency to say that his reputation for piety
and consistency was decidedly damaged. But if Browne
had been a much worse man than he was, it would not
invalidate or impugn his claim to have originated and
struck out a most fruitful idea, nor yet to have demon-
strated its practicability as the basis of a free democratic
Church system. In gathering the first separate congrega-
tion, Browne had, at least, the courage of his convictions.
This quality was certainly not lacking in one who boasted
that for preaching against bishops, ceremonies, etc., “he
had been committed to thirty-two prisons, in some of
which he could not see his hand at noonday.”
It is no part of our brief to defend the character of
Robert Browne, and we confess that if it were, we should
shrink from essaying the task. Let those, however, who
are desirous to see what apology can be constructed for
his later errors, turn to Dr. Dexter's account of him.1
Dr. Dexter is a convinced and ardent believer in the
genuineness of his character and the honesty of his
religious convictions. Whatever be thought of his final
judgment in regard to him, no one can consider the evi-
dence he brings forward, and examine carefully what he has
to say regarding it, without admitting the groundlessness
of the charge that Robert Browne was “an ambitious
bigot in his earlier, and a contemptible sneak in his
later years; with the easy, if not inevitable, inference
1 Dexter's Congregationalism as seen in its Literature, Robert Browne
and his co-workers, pp. 116–128.
134
PURITANISM
that he must have been a hypocrite through all.” Dr.
Dexter's deliverance is summed up in the words, that he was
a long maligned, eccentric, infirm, and probably insane, yet,
I must think, a mainly good and singularly clever man.”
60
Browne and the Browrists. In his admirable
lecture on the early Independents, Dr. Dale says: “I
have never been able, however, to satisfy myself as to the
ground on which the Congregationalists of the latter
years of Elizabeth's reign so bitterly resented identifica-
tion with the Brownists." 1 But we submit that this is
sufficiently explained by the suspicion and odium which
Browne naturally incurred by his tergiversation, and also by
the reputation he had previously acquired by his imperious
and fiery temper. If Browne's personal character had been
such as to command unhesitating confidence and respect,
there is no reason to suppose that the later Independents
would have shown any indisposition to bear his name, or
have shrunk from avowing themselves his followers. The
Brownists—the name afterwards given to his followers
carried his principles to a most extreme length. They
denied the Church of England to be a true Church, and
maintained that its rites and discipline were popish, anti-
christian, and corrupt. The constitution of the existing
ecclesiastical hierarchy seemed to them too bad to be
mended, the very pillars of it were rotten, and the only
hope of reforming it lay in razing it to the ground and
beginning to build anew.
1 “No Independent will take it well at any man's hand to be
called a Brownist.”—Hanbury's Historical Memorials relating to the
Independents, vol. iii. p. 132.
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
135
Neal the historian, and, as some aver (we think on
insufficient grounds), the unsparing panegyrist of the
Puritans and all their doings, admits that the Brownists
were involved in frequent quarrels and divisions. “Their
chief crime,” he said, "was their uncharitableness in
unchurching the whole Christian world, and breaking off
all manner of communion in hearing the word, in public
prayer, and in the administration of the sacraments, not
only with the Church of England, but with all foreign
reformed churches, which, though less pure, ought cer-
tainly to be owned as Churches of Christ.” John Cotton,
one of the organising minds of New England, and to whom
the credit specially belongs of reducing Independency
to a working system, energetically repelled the imputa-
tion of Brownism, or, as he expressed it, the “disclaiming
the Churches in England to be no Churches, but as limbs
of the devil”; adding, that for using such violent
language as this, Roger Williams was censured and
condemned.1
Twenty thousand Brownists in England. -Obnoxi-
ous as Brownism was, not less, perhaps, to Cartwright and
the Puritans at large than to the ruling powers, it is clear
from contemporary evidence it had grown even under
Thus he says
1 Dr. Dexter says Brownism has been misunderstood by the great
mass of Congregationalists, who have been wont to associate with this
term the thought of narrowness and exclusion.
Cotton calls Brownism. the “way of rigid separation." But by
Brownism, Dr. Dexter evidently means the opinions of Browne
himself. We suspect that Cotton is here speaking, not of Browne,
but of his followers, who certainly went further in the way of
narrowness and exclusion.
136
PURITANISM
/
the primacy of Whitgift to considerable dimensions,
and become a force that had to be reckoned with.
“In my conceit,” said Sir Walter Raleigh, in a speech
he delivered in Parliament in 1580, “the Brownists are
worthy to be rooted out of the Commonwealth ; but what
danger may grow to ourselves if this law pass, it were
fit to be considered. For it is to be feared that men not
guilty will be involved in it. ... If two or three
thousand Brownists meet at the sea, at whose charge
shall they be transported, or whither will you send them?
I am sorry for it. I am afraid there are near twenty
thousand of them in England, and when they be gone
who shall maintain their wives and children ?" 1
Dissenters and Separatists.-A certain degree
of confusion on the part of those who have treated of
the germinal upspringings of Independency would, we
think, have been avoided if they had kept more clearly
before their minds the fact that during and after the
Reformation (an to some extent, as we have seen, even
before, there were three classes of Dissenters or Sepa-
ratists.
1st. Those who dissented from the Established Church
because of its corruptions, but still clung to it in the
hope that the leaven of its apostasy might be purged away.
2nd. Those who dissented from the Church for the
same reason, but had abandoned all hope of possible
reformation, and so justified their secession from it.
3rd. Those who dissented from the principle of an
Established Church as being opposed to the whole spirit
1 D'Ewes' Journal, p. 517.
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
137
as well as the express teaching of the New Testament,
and as violating the constitution and contravening the
very nature of Christ's kingdom. All these three classes
were Puritans, but Puritans with a difference, which, as
between the first and the last, was most broadly marked.
The first may be described as Nonconformists inside the
Church, or nonconforming members of the Church of
England; the second and third as Nonconformists outside
the Church, that is, Nonconformists proper, Noncon-
formists in the real and historical sense of the word.
The Brownists belonged to the second class, and the
distinction between them and the “Conforming Puritans,"
i.e. the Puritans belonging to the first class, is very clearly
drawn by Neal : "Most of the Puritans were for keeping
within the pale of the Church, apprehending it to be a true
Church in its doctrines and sacraments, though defective in
discipline and corrupt in ceremonies; but being a true
Church, they thought it not lawful to separate, though
they could hardly continue in it with a good conscience.
They submitted to suspensions and deprivations; and
when they were driven out of one diocese, took sanc-
tuary in another, being afraid of incurring the guilt of
schism by forming themselves into separate communions.
Whereas the Brownists maintained that the Church of
England, in its present constitution, was no true Church
of Christ, but a limb of Antichrist, or, at best, a mere
creature of the State; that their ministers were not
rightly called or ordained, nor the sacraments duly
administered, or, supposing it to be a true Church, yet,
as it was owned by their adversaries (the conforming Puri-
tans) to be a very corrupt one, it must be as lawful to
138
PURITANISM
2
separate from it as for the Church of England to separate
from Rome.” 1
The distinction is brought out again very clearly by
Knight regarding some ministers who, about the year 1607,
took what he calls a middle course. These were called
brethren of the second separation, by way of distinction
from those who had preceded them in a more open and
decided dissent, and their principles may be best gathered
from their own words in a published defence of their
conduct, in which they say: “We protest before the
Almighty God that we acknowledge the Churches of
England, as they be established by public authority, to
be true visible Churches of Christ; that we desire the
continuance of our ministry in them above all earthly
things, as that without which our whole life would be
wearisome and bitter to us; that we dislike not a set
form of prayer to be used in our churches; nor do we
write with an evil mind to deprave the Book of Common
Prayer, ordination, or homilies, but to show our reasons
why we cannot subscribe to all things contained in them.”
With this accords in the main the more general state-
ment of Fuller. He distinguishes between three classes
of Nonconformists, the earlier, the middle and the later;
the earlier were those in King Edward's days, who
desired only to shake down the leaves of Episcopacy,
misliking only some garments about them,” the middle
were those in the end of Queen Elizabeth's and beginning
i Neal, vol. i. p. 438.
2 Knight's Pictorial History of England, vol. iii. p.461.; Neal, vol. i.
:
p. 446.
3 Church History, vol. iv. p. 72.
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
139
of James' reign, “who struck at the branches thereof,"
etc., and the later were those " who did lay the age to the
root of the tree, to cut down the function itself as unlawful
and anti-Christian.”
Separatism, and what it originally implied. - It
ought to be remembered that under the peculiar circum-
stances in which dissenters from the established religion
were then placed, isolation and separate assembly became
really an outward necessity, and did not necessarily
imply anything like inward Congregational convictions on
their part. Thus, in Queen Mary's reign, we read of “a con-
gregation of godly men at London,” who met together for
religious worship“ in the very mouth of danger," and among
them was Scambler, afterwards bishop of Peterborough,
and Bentham, afterwards bishop of Coventry and Lichfield.?
Hooper was no Separatist, and no adviser of Separatism.
Yet, as early as 1553, Hooper wrote from the Fleet
Prison" to certain godly persons, professors and lovers
of the truth, instructing them how they should behave
themselves at the beginning of the change of religion,"
as follows: “There is no better way to be used in this
troublesome time for your consolation than many times
to have assemblies together of such' men and women as
be of your religion in Christ, and then to talk and
renew among yourselves the truth of your religion,” etc.3
Archdeacon Philpot uses language to the same effect,
but still stronger. “Our God is a jealous God, and
1 Dexter's Congregationalism, p. 632.
2 See Zurich Letters, and Strype's Memorials, cf. III, ii. 147.
3 Later Writings of Bishop Hooper, Parker Society (1852), p. 589.
140
PURITANISM
19 1
cannot be content that we should be of any other body
than of that unspotted Church whereof He is the Head
only, and wherein He hath planted us by baptism.'
Yet Philpot was a loyal son of the Church of England.
It is thus clearly implied that under certain circumstances
separation is not only defensible, but may become the
highest duty. It is then perfectly obvious that the term
Separatist can only be used strictly to describe those
who belonged to the second and third class of Dissenters
from the Established Church. The second class is repre-
sented, as has been pointed out, by Browne and his
followers. It would appear from the six propositions
laid down by Cartwright that his position was similar to
Browne's, but we have his explicit testimony that he dis-
approved of separation. “We are not for an unspotted
Church on earth, therefore though the Church of England
has many faults we would not willingly leave it."
The third class, up to the period of the Commonwealth,
was very sparsely represented, —represented, it may be
said, by a mere handful of people, the Anabaptists of
Holland and some of the more extreme sectaries.
An American author, Mr. Douglas Campbell, says in
his recently published and elaborate work :2 “To the
Puritan and Separatist alike the Church as established
was obnoxious on account of its abuses. But the one
sought its reformation by Act of Parliament, looking
forward to the time when his form of worship and dis-
1 Writings of Archdeacon Philpot, Parker Society (1852), pp.
220-223.
2 The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, an Introduction
to American History, by Douglas Campbell, A.M., LL.B., Member
of the American Historical Association, vol. ii. p. 181.
RISE OF INDEPENDENCY
141
cipline should be established for the nation. The other
thought that a reformation would never come, that the
whole system of a State Church was inherently wrong, and
that the only duty before the new believers was to leave
the Church to its abuses, and set up independent con-
gregations.” The words italicised have a meaning which
is somewhat doubtful. If Mr. Campbell means that the
Separatist thought that the whole then existing system of
the Church was inherently wrong, he is quite right; not
so, however, if the statement be taken as referring to the
system of State Churchism broadly and generally. To
that, with the exception of a few Anabaptists, they had
no conscientious objection. Mr. Douglas Campbell seems
to be aware of this, for he says, in a previous part of his
work, " at that time no one, except the members of the
poor despised sect of Dutch Anabaptists, thought of such
a thing as a separation of Church and State.” 1
The foregoing classification is sufficiently complete; but
to make it exhaustive, another class of Dissenters would
need to be included : those who became such through
pressure of circumstances more than through force of
original conviction. An apposite illustration of that class
is furnished in connection with the founding of the colony
of Massachusetts under Winthrop. These were not origin-
1 Vol. ii. p. 9.
Mr. Green's statement—“The Separatists who were beginning
to withdraw from attendance at public worship, on the ground that
the very existence of a national Church was contrary to the word of God,
grew quickly from a few scattered zealots to twenty thousand souls”
(Green's Short History, p. 459)—is open to the same exception.
The number of those who, in that age, objected to the very existence
of a national Church as being contrary to the word of God, must
have been very small indeed.
142
PURITANISM
ally Separatists, like the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth.
“We separate," they said, "not from the Church of Eng-
land, but from its corruptions. We came away from the
Common'Prayer and ceremonies in our native land where
we suffered much for Nonconformity. In this place of
liberty we cannot and will not use them." The result
was, they became free Churchmen and zealous Inde-
pendents. Certainly the establishment of such a system
as Independency was a great advance upon the idea of
reforming the Church of England; yet, as a well-known
American writer says, the mere change of surrounding
conditions made it seem not a revolution in Church
government, but the only natural and possible thing to
do!
1 Historic Towns : Boston, by Henry Cabot Lodge, pp. 25, 26.
“How Puritanism glided into a state of separation, and the Non-
conformist in the Church became a Dissenter outside its pale, is
curiously illustrated in the records of the Church assembling in
Broadmead, Bristol." See Dr. Stoughton's History of Religion in
England, vol. i. (new and revised edition) pp. 99, 100.
The Corrupt State of the Church : the
SDartin Marprelate Controversy.
143
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
The Spanish Armada defeated
Publication of Martin Marprelate Tracts.
1588
1588–1590
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VIII
Corrupt state of the Church-Illiteracy of the Clergy-Character
of the Bishops—Notes on Latimer's Sermon of the Plough-Child's
answer to Canon Dixon-Arber on corruption of Clergy-Martin
Marprelate Controversy-Interest of this controversy
- Note on
works dealing with—The Epistle-Style of-Assumption of-Con-
ditions of Peace-Effect of Epistle—Restrictions on printing—The
Epitome The four Bishops attacked - On their defence Hay
any worke for Cooper—Press seized—Martin renounced by Puritans
-Defended-Conclusion of Epistle-Notes on authorship-Who was
Martin Marprelate ?
144
CHAPTER VIII
THE CORRUPT STATE OF THE CHURCH : THE MARTIN
MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
I
THE CORRUPT STATE OF THE CHURCH
We have seen how Archbishop Whitgift objected to the
contention of Cartwright, that ministers ought to be
openly and fairly chosen by the people, on the ground
that “ in this state of the Church such practice were per-
nicious and hurtful. In the apostles' time all, or most
that were Christians, were virtuous and godly, and such
as did sincerely profess the word, and therefore the
election might be safely committed to them; now, the
Church is full of hypocrites, dissemblers, drunkards,
and whoremongers, so that if any election were com-
mitted to them, they would be sure to take one like
to themselves. Now, the Church is full of Papists and
atheists."
This description of the then existing condition of the
Church was only too true. Among the clergy there
was ignorance and licentiousness; among the bishops,
sordid greed, sycophancy, and truckling to power. That
“ lying, cheating, theft, perjury, and whoredom were the
IO
146
PURITANISM
.
complaints of the times," 1 is abundantly testified by such
Churchmen as Bucer and Sanday. The picture which the
latter draws of patrons gaping for gain, and hungry
fellows, destitute of all good learning and godly zeal, yea,
scarcely clothed with common honesty, who found ready
entrance to the Church, is surpassed even by Bishop
Jewel : 2 “The poor flock is given over to the wolf; the
poor children cry out for bread, the bread of life, and
here is no man
man to break it unto them. View
your universities, view your schools, which have ever
been nurseries to this purpose.
Alas! how many shall
you find in both the universities and in all the schools
throughout England, not only that are already able, but
also that are minded to the ministry? If they be not
found there, alas ! where think you to have them ? Where
.think you they will be found ? Think you they will
spring out of the ground or drop down from the heavens?
No, no, they be of you, and must be bred and reared
amongst you. ... I speak not of the curates, but of the
parsonages and the vicarages; that is, of the places which
are the castles and towers of defence for the Lord's
temple. They seldom pass nowadays from a patron, if
he be no better than a gentleman, but either for
the lease or for present money.
Such merchants are
broken into the Church of God, a great deal more intoler-
able than were they whom Christ chased and whipped
out of the temple. Young men that are toward and
learned see this. They see that he which feedeth the
1 Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. p. 294.
2 Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. i. p. 77, note. See
Zurich Letters (1588–79) p. 33, 85.
THE CORRUPT STATE OF THE CHURCH
147
flock hath least part of the milk; he which goeth a war-
fare hath not half his wages. Therefore they are wearied
and discouraged; they change their studies; some become
aprentices, some turn to physic, some to law: all shun and
flee the ministry.” Sad was the state of religion at these
times,” says Strype; “the substantials being lost in con-
tending for externals; the Churchmen heaped benefices
upon themselves, and resided upon none, neglecting their
cures. Many of them alienated their lands, made unreason-
able leases and waste of woods, and granted reversions and
advowsons to their wives and children, or to others, for
their use.
Churches ran greatly into dilapidations and
decays, and were kept nasty and filthy and indecent for
God's worship. Among the laity there was little devo-
tion, the Lord's day greatly profaned and little observed,
the common prayer not frequented. Some lived without
any service of God at all; many were heathens and
atheists; the Queen's own court a harbour for epicures
and atheists, and a kind of lawless place, because it stood
in no parish; which things made good men fear some
sad judgments impending over the nation.” 1
Illiteracy of the Clergy.—The mass of the clergy
were so illiterate that, even had they been pure of life,
they could have done little to elevate the people, or reflect
honour upon the Church. In 1530, Tyndale declared
that there were 20,000 priests in England who could
not translate the Lord's Prayer into English (Answer
to Sir Thomas More, p. 75); and Bishop Hooper found
scores of the clergy in Gloucestershire who were unable
1 Strype's Parker, p. 395,
148
PURITANISM
to tell who was the author of the Lord's Prayer, or where
it was to be read. Such a deficiency of Protestant clergy
had been experienced at the Queen's accession that for
several years it was a common practice to appoint laymen,
usually mechanics, to read the service in vacant churches.?
Reference has been already made to the statement of
Neal, that there were only two thousand preachers to
serve near ten thousand parish churches, so that there
were almost eight thousand parishes without preaching
ministers; also that in 1578, out of one hundred and
forty clergymen in Cornwall, not one was capable of
preaching; and throughout the kingdom those who could
preach were in the proportion of about one to four,-a
statement that Hallam regards as highly probable, seeing
that “the majority of the clergy were nearly illiterate,
and many of them addicted to drunkenness and low
vices.” Bakers, butchers, cooks, and stablemen, men
wholly illiterate, and not a few utterly licentious (and
these were the class of which the clergy were to a large
part composed), could not be expected to add dignity to
the ministry or shed lustre upon the Church.3
1 Rev. R. Demaus, Life of Tyndale, p. 28.
2 Strype's Annals, pp. 138, 177.
3“ It pierces our hearts with grief to hear the cries of the country
people for the word of God. The bishops either preach not at all
or very seldom. . . . And whereas the Scriptures say that ministers
of the gospel should be such as are able to teach sound doctrine, and
convince gainsayers, yet the bishops have made priests of the basest
of the people, not only for their occupations and trades whence they
have taken them, as shoemakers, barbers, tailors, water-bearers,
shepherds, and horse-keepers, but also for their want of good learning
and honesty."--Supplication of Puritan Ministers to Parliament in
1586, Neal, vol. i. p. 317.
THE CORRUPT STATE OF THE CHURCH
149
Character of the Bishops. “ The bishops of this
reign,” says Hallam, “ do not appear, with some dis-
tinguished exceptions, to have reflected so much honour
on the Established Church as those who attach a supersti-
tious reverence to the age of the Reformation are apt to
conceive. In the plunder that went forward they took
good care of themselves. Charges against them of simony,
corruption, covetousness, and especially destruction of
their Church estates for the benefit of their families
are very common, sometimes, no doubt, unjust, but too
frequent to be absolutely without foundation." The
peculation of the bishops almost passes belief.1 They
were guilty of the grossest malversation, sold the livings
in their gift in order to enrich themselves, and made
long and dishonest leases of the ecclesiastical lands,
not hesitating even to plunder their own dioceses, cut
down the timber, and dispose of the brick and the lead
which were used in the buildings. Aylmer, bishop of
London, cut down and sold the timber in his diocese
until prevented by an injunction. When he grew old
and reflected that a large sum of money would be due
from his family for dilapidations of the palace of Fulham,
etc., he actually proposed to sell his bishopric to Bancroft.?
The Bishop of Lichfield is said to have made seventy
“ lewd and unlearned ministers for money” in the
course of a single day. Archbishop Parker disposed
of the benefices in his gift according to a fixed tariff,
regulated according to the age and money power of
1 See Strype's Annals, vol. iii. pp. 331, 463, 467.
Strype's Aylmer, p. 169. See Hunt's Religious Thought, p. 74, note;
Froude's History, vol. xii. pp. 4–7 and p. 543.
150
PURITANISM
the applicant. They were disposed of to boys under
fourteen, provided they could raise the necessary sum
of money?
NOTES
occurs :
Who that knows anything of Bishop Latimer does not know his
famous Sermon of the Plough, preached in St. Paul's, London, in 1548,
in which he thus attacked his own order : “ But this much I dare
say, that since lording and loitering hath come up, preaching hath
come down, contrary to the apostles' times; for they preached and
lorded not, and now they lord and preach not. ... For ever since
the prelates were made lords and nobles, the plough standeth ; there
no work done, the people starve. They hawk, they hunt, they
card, they dice; they pastime in their prelacies with gallant gentle-
men, with their dancing minions, and with their fresh companions,
so that ploughing is set aside ; and by their lording and loitering,
preaching and ploughing is clean gone." It is in this sermon that
the famous passage, which has become classical in pulpit literature,
“And now I would ask a strange question: Who is the
most diligentest bishop and prelate in all England ?... There is one
that passeth all the others, and is the most diligent prelate and
preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I will tell
you. It is the devil. He is the most diligent preacher of all others;
he is never out of his diocese," etc.
The order which Latimer thus so trenchantly assailed were the
Protestant bishops of King Edward VI.'s reign.
In the Appendix to his work on Church and State under the Tudors,
Mr. Child has introduced a somewhat lengthy note on the alleged
corruption of the clergy in the sixteenth century. Canon Dixon, in his
History of the Church of England, vol. i. p. 23, had alleged that “no
general charge of corruption has ever been made good against the
English clergy." Mr. Child subjects this statement to a searching
examination, and reaches the conclusion that “to say, as Canon
Dixon does, that no proof of deep corruption has been made good
against the English clergy, is simply to fly in the face of the evi-
dence, not only of satirists and lampooners, but of annalists and
historians, of records and law reports.” It is true that the evidence
1 Froude's History, vol. xi. p. 82.
THE CORRUPT STATE OF THE CHURCH
151
he adduces is mainly directed to prove the deep corruption of the
“late pre-Reformation clergy,” but he indicates very plainly how it
was not confined to the Catholic clergy, but extended to their Pro-
testant successors.
“Three times in modern English history have the bulk of the
clergy, as a class, been corrupt and rotten. In Henry VIII.'s reign,
when the remedy came by the Reformation and the dissolution of
the monasteries. In Whitgift's primacy, when it came through the
rise of the Puritans. In Queen Anne's reign, when it came through
the lay-Reformers, the moral teachers Defoe, Steele, and Addison,
in their penny folio half sheets, the Review, the T'atler, the Spectator,
the Guardian," etc. ... “In 1588 a small minority of the clergy,
for the most part at work in towns, were intensely earnest, thoroughly
pious, spiritually-minded men, but with a narrowness of view, and
no great learning, and consequently with little general culture.
At this time the bishops were thrusting hundreds of men into the
ministry of the Church who were utterly unfit for their work.”-
Introduction to the Epistle, by E. Arber, p. viii.
152
PURITANISM
II
THE MARTIN MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY, 1588–1590.
am a man.
“I am called Martin Marprelat. There be many that greatly
dislike of my doinges. I may haue my wants, I know. For I
But my course I knowe to be ordinary and lawfull.
I sawe the cause of Christs gouernment, and of the Bishops
Antichristian dealing to be hidden. The most part of men
could not be gotten to read any thing, written in the defence of
the on[e] and against the other. I bethought mee therefore,
of a way whereby men might be drawne to do both, perceiuing
the humors of men in these times (especialy of those that are
in any place) to be giuen to mirth. I tooke that course. I
might lawfully do it. I Caye) for iesting is lawful by circum-
stances, euen in the greatest matters. The circumstances of
time, place and persons vrged me thereunto. I neuer profaned
the word in any iest. Other mirth I used as a couert, wherein
I would bring the truth into light. The Lord being the authour
both of mirth and grauitie, is it not lawfull in it selfe, for the
trueth to vse eyther of these wayes, when the circumstances do
make it lawful ?
“My purpose was and is to do good. I know I haue don no
harme, howsoeuer som may iudg Martin to mar al. They are
very weake on[e]s that so think. In that which I have written
I know vndoubtedly, that I haue done the Lord and the state
of this kingdom great seruice. Because I haue in som sort
discouered the greatest enemies thereof. And by so much the
most pestilent enemies, because they wound Gods relligion, and
corrupt the state with Atheism and loosnes, and so cal for Gods
vengance vppon vs all, euen vnder the coulor of relligion. I
affirm them to be the greatest enemies that now our state hath,
for if it were not for them, the trueth should haue more free
passage herein, then now it hath. All [e]states thereby would
THE MARTIN MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
153
be amended : and so we should not be subiect vnto Gods dis-
pleasure, as now we are by reason of them.”-Hay any Worke,
etc.
bethan age.
No account of English Puritanism and the desperate
endeavour of the dominant hierarchy to strangle it in its
cradle, would be at all complete if it contained no allu-
sion to the famous Martin Marprelate Controversy,
“the Controversy,” as Mr. Maskell calls it, “ of the Eliza-
." This controversy has a double interest, an
interest to the student of English literature, as being the
first successful, if not actually the earliest attempt to
employ satire in ecclesiastical polemics, and also a very
special interest to those who sympathise with the struggle
for freedom of faith and conscience. These pungent
tracts or pasquinades began to appear in 1588, the
year of the Armada, and were issued under the nom de
plume of Martin Marprelate. The proximate cause or
1 We need scarcely say that for what appears under this head we
are greatly indebted to the valuable reprints in The English Scholar's
Library of Old and Modern Works, edited by Edward Arber, F.S.A.,
Lecturer in English Literature, etc., University College, London, An
Introductory Sketch to the Martin Marprelate Controversy, and The Epistle
[1588]; also to the well-informed, careful, and elaborate lecture on
The Martin Marprelate Controversy, by the Rev. H. M. Dexter, D.D.,
of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in his work on The Congregationalism
of the last three hundred years, as seen in its Literature ; also on the
principle--Audi alteram partem—to a History of the Martin Marpre-
late Controversy, by the Rev. William Maskell, M.A., a reprint, with
considerable additions of an article, “Martin Marprelate,” in the
Christian Remembrancer of 1845. These three works form a com-
plete thesaurus of information regarding this famous controversy.
Chap. ii. and Appendix, in Hunt's Religious Thought in England,
may also be consulted with advantage.
154
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provocation of the Martinist pasquinades was the publi-
cation of a ponderous book by Dr. John Bridges, dean of
Sarum, entitled, Defence of the Government Established in
the Church of England for Ecclesiastical Matters, a reply
to Travers' book on the Discipline, and an attempt to
undermine the Puritan position generally.
The Epistle.—The rejoinder appeared in the shape
of a quarto tract, which bore the descriptive title, Oh
read ouer D. John Bridges, for it is a worthy worke : Or
an Epitome of the fyrste Booke of that right worshipfull
volume, written against the Puritanes, in the defence of the
noble cleargie, by as worshipfull a prieste, Iohn Bridges,
Presbyter, Priest, or elder, doctor of Diuillitie, and Deane of
Sarun. Wherein the arguments of the puritans are wisely
prevented, that when they come to answere M. Doctor, they
must needes say something that hath bene spoken. Compiled
for the behoofe and overthrow of the Parsons, Fyckers, and
Currats, that have lernt their Catechismes, and are past
grace: By the reverend and worthie Martin Marprelate,
gentleman, and dedicated to the Confocationhouse. The
Epitome is not yet published, but it shall be when the
Bishops are at conuenient leysure to view the same. In
the meane time, let them be content with this learned
Epistle. Printed oversea, in Europe, within two furlongs
of a Bounsing Priest, at the cost and charges of M.
Marprelate, gentleman.
Without any preliminary skirmishing this broadside
is at once discharged straight into the ranks of the
bishops. “Right poysond, [puissant],. persecuting, and
terrible priests, the theame of mine Epistle ynto your
THE MARTIN MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
155
venerable masterdomes, is of two parts (and the Epitome
of our brother Bridges his booke, shall come out speedily).
First, most pitifully complayning, Martin Marprelate, &c.
Secondly, may it please your good worships, &c. Most
pitifully complayning, therefore, you are to vnderstand,
that D. Bridges hath written in your defence, a most
senceles book, and I cannot very often at one Breath
come to a full point, when I read the same.
Againe, may it please you to giue me leaue to play
the Duns for the nonce as well as he, otherwise dealing
with master doctors booke, I canot keepe decorum personce.
And may it please you, if I be too absurd in any place
(either in this Epistle, or that Epitome), to ride to Sarum,
and thanke his Deanship for it. Because I could not
deal with his booke commendablie according to order,
vnles I should be sometimes tediously dunsticall and
absurd. For I haue heard som cleargie men say that M.
Bridges was a verie patch [fool] and a duns, when he was
in Cambridg. And some say, sauing your reuerence that
are Bb. that he is as very a knaue, and enemy vnto the
sinceritie of religion, as any popish prelate in Rome.
But the patch can doe the cause of sinceritie no hurt.
Naye, he hath in this booke wonderfully graced the same
by writing against it. For I haue heard some say, that
whosoeuer will read his booke, shall as euidently see the
goodnes of the cause of reformation and the poore, poore
nakednes of your gouernment, as almost in reading all
Master Cartwrights workes. This was a very great ouer-
sight in his grace of Cant. to suffer such a booke to come
out. For besides that an Archb. is very weakely defended
by masse Deane, he hath also by this meanes prouoked
.
156
PURITANISMI
are
many to write against his gracious fatherhood, who per-
haps neuer meant to take pen in hand.”
There is no mincing of words. The Epistle abounds
with unpruned and telling invective, what would be
deemed in these days coarse vituperation. The bishops
cogging and cosening knaues,” “proud, popish,
presumptuous, profane, paltry, pestilent, and pernicious
prelates.” They "lye like dogs"; as for "any maners,
they might have been “ brought up in Bridewell”; as for
the Dean of Sarum, he deserves “a cawdell of Hemp-
seed and a playster of neckweed, as weel as some of
your brethren the papists.”
This style was, of course, admirably fitted to catch the
ear of the public. No plan, no methodised arrangement
of their views, was striven after by these Puritan Free
Lances who were fighting behind the shield of Martin
Marprelate. They were anxious to avoid everything that
was concatenated and formal. An elaborate and learned
treatise, had it been within their power, and had the
difficulty in getting it printed been less formidable than it
was, would have defeated the object they had in view,
which was to strike and to arrest attention, to make every
point burn and scintillate, so that there should be no
getting away from it, and no putting of the pamphlet
down till it had been read (probably in most cases at
one sitting) from beginning to end.
Not the least irritating feature of the Epistle must
have been to the attacked prelates the assumption of
perfect equality on the part of the writer. He poses as
The Rev. and worthy Martin Marprelate, gentleman,”
and addresses the bishops as “my learned brethren."
THE MARTIN MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
157
“ Take head, brethren, of your rev. and learned brother,
Martin Marprelate. But you see my worshipfull priestes
of this crue to whom I write, what a perilous fellow M.
Marprelate is: he vnderstands of all your knauerie, and
it may be he keepes a register of them : vnlesse you
amend, they shall al come into the light one day. And
you brethren bishops, take this warning from me. If you
doe not leaue your persecuting of godly christians and
good subiects, that seeke to liue vprightly in the feare of
God, and the obedience of her Maiestie, all your dealing
shal be made knowen ynto the world.”
Interpolated in the last part of the Epistle are Con-
ditions of Peace to be inuiolablie kept for euer betweene
the reuerend and worthy master Martin Marprelate
gentleman on the one partie, and the reuerend fathers
his brethren, the Lord bishops of this lande.” The
bishops must promise—(1) to labour to promote the
preaching of the word in every part of this land; (2) to
admit to the ministry none but those who are known for
their godliness and learning; (3) to suspend or silence
none but those who show themselves unworthy to be
ministers, though they refuse to wear the popish gar-
ments, and omit the corruptions of the Book of Common
Prayer; (4) not to molest any for not kneeling at the
communion, or for resorting on the Sabbath whither they
would to hear the word preached; (5) to leave off private
excommunication, and not to forbid public fasts, and
never to slander the cause of reformation or the further-
ance thereof, in terming the cause by the name of
Anabaptisterie, schisme, etc., and the men puritans, and
enemies to the state.
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PURITANISM
“ These be the conditions, which you brethren bishops,
shal be bound to keepe inuiolably on your behalfe. And
I your brother Martin, on the other side, do faithfully
promise vpon the performaunce of the premisses by you,
neuer to make any more of your knauery knowne vnto
the worlde.”
Effect of the Epistle. It is easy to imagine the
flutter and excitement and consternation produced by
this free-handed attack upon privilege and mitred tyranny.
Such dare-devil impiety had never been heard of before.
Not less to the people at large than to the pillars of
Church and State, it appeared the very height of daring,
a laying of sacrilegious hands upon the Lord's anointed.
Its popularity, if that is to be measured by the number
who read the pamphlet, was phenomenal. The Earl of
Essex took a copy out of his bosom and handed it to the
Queen. The students of Oxford and Cambridge hid them
in the folds of their gowns.
Restrictions upon printing. Officers and scouts
were despatched in every direction to see if they could
learn anything of the author, or those concerned in the
origination of the libel, but they were one and all baffled
in their efforts. The Primate and the Bishop of London
had the entire control and censorship of the press, with
the exception of two presses, one allocated to the Uni-
versity of Oxford and the other to that of Cambridge,
both under clerical and equally vigilant supervision.
There were in 1583, five years before the appearance
of the Martin Marprelate tracts, only twenty-three prin-
THE MARTIN MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
159
occur.
ters in London, and the number of hand-printing presses
in their possession was fifty-three. It was impossible
for any anonymous pamphleteer to secure the aid of
any of these.
It would have been a capital offence for
any printer to lend his press for any such purpose, and
however carefully he might seek to conceal the secret, he
could scarcely hope to elude detection and conviction. It
was the duty of the Stationers' Company to make weekly
search into all the printing houses in London, and report
any suspicious circumstance or irregularity that might
“What with the daily observation of his own
workmen and apprentices, the keen weekly search of his
competitors in business, the censorship of the episcopal
chaplains, etc., a printer and all his doings were perfectly
well known; even to the kinds of type he used, the
numbers he printed to an impression, and so forth, secret
printing was, to one not in the trade, beset with in-
numerable difficulties. A recognised printer might keep
secret presses in cellars, etc., despite the weekly searches,
but it was forbidden to a private individual to acquire
à press or type at all. There was always the further
difficulty of finding the compositor who should be so
hardy as to exercise his craft in antiepiscopal produc-
tions."
"1
The Epitome.- While the incensed bishops, fortified
by the authority of the Queen, were putting into opera-
1 See Arber's Introductory Sketch, p. 74.
The stringent measures that were adopted to prevent secret and
unauthorised printing are well shown in the Star Chamber Ordin-
ånces of 1566 and 1586, as exhibited by Prof. Prothero in his Select
Statutes and Documents, pp. 168–172.
160
PURITANISM
tion all the machinery at their command in order to
apprehend or discover the whereabouts of the miscreant
or miscreants who had exploded the alarming shell,
another explosion took place. This was the appear-
ance of the Epitome which had been promised in the
Epistle.
Martin, chuckling, as it were, in his hiding-place, begins
by bantering the bishops : “Why my cleargie masters, is
it euen so with your terriblenes ? May not a pore
gentleman signifie his good will vnto you by a Letter, but
presently you must put your selues to the paines and
charges of calling foure Bishops together, Iohn Canter-
burie, Iohn London, Thomas Winchester, William of
Lincolne, and posting ouer citie and countrie for poore
Martin? Why, his meaning in writing vnto you was
not that you should take the paines to seeke for him.
Did you thinke that he did not know where he was him-
selfe ? Or did you thinke him to haue bene cleane lost,
that you sought so diligently for him ?
brethren, I can be well though you do not send to knowe
how I do. My mind towards you, you shal from time
to time vnderstand by my pistles. I haue been enter-
tayned at the Court. Euerye man talks of my worship.
Many would gladly receiue my books if they could tell
where to find them.”
The four bishops were John Whitgift, John Aylmer,
Thomas Cooper, and William Wickham, and for none of
them has Martin a good word to spare. The first two
were specially obnoxious.
“Of all the bishops that ever
were in that place, I meane in the see of Canterbury,
I thanke you,
THE MARTIN MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
161
none did neuer so much hurt vnto the Church of God
ils he hath done since his coming."
The Bishops on their defence.—The answer of the
bishops to the Epistle—not to the Epitome, for beyond
a mere general reference there was no answer to that
was issued in a quarto book of 252 pages, with the title,
An Admonition to the People of England: wherein are
ansvvered, not onely the slaunderous untruethes, reprochfully
vttered by Martin the Libeller, but also many other Crimes
by some of his broode, obiected generally against all Bishops,
and the chiefe of the Cleargie, purposely to deface and
discredite the present state of the Church, etc.
The preface was signed by “T. C.,” bishop of Winches-
ter. If the bishops had been anxious to do all in their
power to write up Martin Marprelate, and confer notoriety
on his tracts, they could not have had recourse to tactics
more admirably adapted for this purpose. Where one
bought and read “the solemn and apologetic Admonition,"
scores eagerly purchased the Epistle and Epitome, and
gave willing credence to what they contained.
The fourth of these rattling pasquinades (we pass over
the third) was a reply to the Admonition of Bishop
Cooper. It opened with a lively appropriation of words
used as one of the street cries of London-
Hay any worke for Cooper: or a briefe Pistle, etc. ..
wherein worthy Martin quits himselfe like a man, I warrant
you, in the modest defence of his selfe and his learned Pistles,
and makes the Coopers hoopes to flye off, and the Bishops'
Tubs to leake out of all crye [out of all estimation, i.e.
II
162
PURITANISM
excessively). Penned and Compiled by Martin the Metro-
politane. Printed in Europe, not farre from some of the
Bounsing Priestes.
It was while printing this tract that the printing
press of Martin Marprelate was seized at Manchester.
But the effect in the way of arresting his surprising
activity was only momentary. The dragon-teeth had
been sown, and there sprang from them an unfailing
progeny. Within a fortnight's time another press was
at work, and another tract appeared, entitled, The Protes-
tatyon of Martin Marprelat, wherein notwithstanding the
surprizing of the printer, he maketh it known vnto the world
that he feareth neither proud priest, Antichristian pope,
tiranous prellate, nor godlesse catercap [four-cornered cap,
hence, university student], etc.
By this time, however, others besides the bishops had
taken up the cudgels, not so much, however, on their
behalf as with the intention of retaliating upon Martin,
and giving him as good as he gave.
The ridicule of the
stage was called into requisition, and pamphlets as
scurrilous, if not quite as clever, as Martin's began to
appear upon the other side. These were Pappe with an
Hatchet 1 and An Almond for a Parrot, a rhyming tract
of seven pages, entitled, A Whip for an Ape, etc. They
were supposed to have been written by Thomas Nash,
John Lyly, etc.
The Puritans renounce Martin and his works.-
1 Pappe with an Hatchet is as characteristic as any, and may be
read in Elizabethan and Jacobean Pamphlets, edited by George Saints-
bury, London (Percival & Co.), where it is attributed to John Lyly.
THE MARTIN MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
163
1
It must not be supposed for a moment that in this series
of pamphlets Martin was the acknowledged spokesman
of the Puritans. The “sturdy Puritans, who were sup-
posed to fight behind the shield of this visored knight,"
were, on the contrary, displeased with this rattling and
abusive attack upon the authorities of Church and State.
“The Puritans are angrie with me, I mean the
puritane preachers. And why? Because I am to[0] open
Because I iest. I did thinke that Martin shoulde not
haue beene blamed of the puritans for telling the trueth
openly.”—Epitome.
It is not to be wondered at that Cartwright and many
like-minded Puritans disapproved of the Martinist pub-
lications as a “kind of disorderly doings," and were at
pains to disown all sympathy with them. They naturally
wished that Presbyterianism should be seen in its sober-
suited apparel; the motley garb of Martin Marprelate
did not at all accord with their sense of the fitness of
things, and, besides this, it tended to prejudice the
discipline (so they thought) in the eyes of the people
of England.
1 Another proof of Mr. Maskell's temper as a controversialist is
furnished by his affecting to doubt that they were disapproved at the
time by the Puritan leaders. “It is not enough that they should
disclaim him [Martin) after, before the council-board, with the
terrors in the distance of the Tower and the rack, or before the
Court of High Commission; it is not enough that Neal, their pro-
fessed historian in after years, and their apologist, should speak of
Martin in terms of reprobation, and (which proves either his utter
ignorance or wilful lying) class him and his opponents in the same
style as equally obnoxious to the members of the Government."-
Maskell’s Martin Marprelate, p. 102. See Mr. Hunt's comment on
this, History of Religious Thought, vol. i. p. 105.
,
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PURITANISM
Martin Marprelate defended.--He who would
play the rôle of apologist for the Martinist tracts would
seem to need an unusual measure of courage, not to say
effrontery, in view of the strictures and objurgations that
have been cast upon them, not only by Anglican but by
Puritan writers, and also by writers whose judgment runs
no risk, apparently, of being deflected by ecclesiastical
sympathies. They are “coarse, scurrilous, and indecent
pasquinades,” never surpassed in scurrility and malignity.
"It is impossible,” says Canon Curteis, “to give any
extracts from these abominable and filthy lampoons.”
Had the Rev. Canon done what he says is impossible,
this swearing at large might have been curbed, and his
readers might have been left to judge for themselves
(supposing the extracts had been at all copious and
representative) how far they answer to the description
he gives of them.
Well may Dr. Dexter say that English literature per-
haps contains no clearer illustration than is furnished
by this controversy of the tendency to speak strongly
on scant or insufficient knowledge. Let us hear Mr.
Arber, who, in the interest of historic truth, and with
no bias other than the desire to unfold the real mean-
ing of it, has made an independent and special study
of this controversy. “ Hitherto,” he says, “the Mar-
tinists have been largely vilified, their works con-
sidered blasphemous, and their purposes treasonable.
There is neither blasphemy nor treason to be found
in their writings. Their authors, confessedly men of
irreproachable moral character, merely adopted the
extemporising' style of Richard Tarleton, the actor,
THE MARTIN MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
165
to ridicule and affront à proud hierarchy endowed
with large legal means of doing mischief, and not
wanting in will to exercise those powers to the full.”
They were the attempt of wit,” says Mr. Arber, " to fight
(though at desperate odds) against cruelty for permission
to worship God according to the dictates of conscience.
The Martinist attack was the New School of young
Radicals attacking the Old School of aged Conservatives.
And this partly explains why there was no compromise
sought out by the bishops. They were too old to
change, so they stood stiffly to their legal rights, and
contemned anything like public opinion.”
How the Martinist books could ever be called “blas-
phemous passes all comprehension, Let those who
have formed an unfavourable opinion in regard to them
read the noble exhortation at the end of the Epistle.
Conclusion of the. Epistle.—Now M. Prelates I will giue
you some more counsell, follow it. Repent cleargie men, and
especially bishopps, preach fayth Bb. and sweare no more by it,
giue ouer your Lordly callings: reform your families and your
children : They are the patterne of loosenesse, withstand not the
knowen trueth no longer : you haue seduced her Maiestie and hir
people. Praye her Maiestie to forgiue you, and the Lord first to put
away your sinnes. Your gouernment is Antichristian, deceiue the
Lord no longer thereby : You will grow from euil to worse vnlesse
betimes you return. You are now worse thari you were 29. yeeres
ago : write no more against the cause of reformation : Your vngodli-
nesse is made more manifest by your writings : And because you
cannot answer what hath bene written against you, yeeld vnto the
trueth. If you should write, deale syllogistically: For you shame
your selues, when you vse any continued speach, because your stile
is so rude and barbarous. Raile no more in the pulpitt against good
men, you do more hurt to your selues, and your owne desperat cause,
in one of your rayling sermons, then you could in speaking for
reformation. For euerie man that hath any light of religion in him
166
PURITANISM
more
will examine your groundes, which being found ridiculous (as they
are) will be decided, and your cause made odious. Abuse not the
high commission as you do, against the best subiects. The commis-
sion it selfe was ordained for very good purposes, but it is most
horriblie abused by you, and turned cleane contrarie to the ende
wherefore it was ordayned. Helpe the poore people to the meanes
of their saluation, that perish in their ignorance : make restitution
ynto your tenants, and such as from whome you haue wrongfully
extorted anything : Vsurpe no longer, the authoritie of making of
ministers and excommunication: Let poore men be no
inolested in your vngodly courts : Studie more than you doe, and
preache oftener: Fauor nonresidents and papists no longer : labor
to clense ye ministery of the swarms of ignorant guides, wherewith
it hath bin defiled : Make conscience of breaking the Sabboth, by
bowling and tabling: Be ringleaders of prophanenes no longer vnto
the people: Take no more bribes : Leaue your Symonie : Fauor
learning more than you doe, and especially godly learning : Stretch
your credit if you haue any, to the furtherance of the gospell : You
haue ioyned the prophanation of the magistracie to the corruption
of the ministerie : Leaue this sinne. All in a word, become good
Christians, and so you shall become good subiects, and leaue your
tyrannie. And I would aduise you, let me here no more of your
euill dealing.
Giuen at my Castle between two wales, neither foure dayes from
penilesse benche, nor yet at the West ende of Shrofftide : but the
foureteenth yeare at the least of the age of Charing crosse, within a
yeare of Midsommer, betwene twelue and twelue of the clocke.
Anno pontificatus vestri Quinto, and I hope vltimo of all Englishe
Popes.--By your learned and worthie brother,
MARTIN MARPRELATE.
NOTES
WHO WAS MARTIN MARPRELATE?
The authorship of the Martin Marprelate tracts is enveloped in
almost as much obscurity as that of the celebrated letters of Junius.
It is a mystery how they ever got into print, a mystery still greater
how Martin fought, and continued to fight, as he did, behind his
closed visor, defeating the rage of the bishops and the vigilance of
their scouts, while the secret of his identity was never rifled from
THE MARTIN MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
167
bethan age.
him. Suspicion fell upon John Penry and John Udal. Strype says
Penry “was reckoned the chief publisher, if not author, of those
scandalous libels under the name of Martin Marprelate.” Penry
was imprisoned on the charge of being the author of Hay any Worke
for Cooper ? but, in the absence of evidence sufficient to convict him,
he was released after a month's confinement.
By painstaking collation of evidence, and by a "process of ex-
haustion,” Mr. Arber has arrived at the conclusion that John Penry
and Job Throckmorton were the joint authors of the Epistle and
other Martinist tracts. “Penry has long been known in our literary
history. Henceforth Throckmorton must be placed by his side.
The two together are the most eminent prose satirists of the Eliza-
It is indubitable that John Penry was the managing
director, the soul,' of this [Martinist] attack." It is right to say
that Mr. Arber holds a very singular position in attributing to Penry
the authorship of those tracts. The majority of those who have
written upon this period, whether their sympathies are Anglican or
Puritan, concur in admitting that Penry was not Martin Marprelate.
“There is nothing in Penry's character or his writings that gives
any countenance to the conjecture that he was Martin Marprelate.”
“The persistency with which the Marprelate tracts have been
ascribed to Penry is a notable instance of the recklessness with which
men write history when they have a purpose to serve.”--Hunt's
Religious Thought, vol. i. p. 83. Even Mr. Maskell, who never
scruples to use his opportunity when he can fasten a damning charge
upon “a Brownist, and most bitter enemy to the Church of England,”
“We must not overlook this, that no evidence was found, and
also that Penry himself at the time (which I cannot give much weight
to) and always after, even when about to die (when one is rather in-
clined to believe that he would speak the truth), denied that he had
been concerned in the writing of those tracts.”—Maskell's Marprelate,
pp. 107, 108.
We think Dr. Dexter shows very strong and conclusive reasons for
dissenting from Mr. Arber's opinion that Penry was the real author
of the Martinist tracts.
He bases his dissent upon these four grounds-
1st. There is nothing in the affidavits bearing upon the case which
implies that Penry was the author.
2nd. There is nothing in the style and manner of Penry's acknow-
ledged works that makes it probable.
3rd. It is difficult to see how Penry could have found time with
all the work he had to do in writing other books.
says :
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PURITANISM
4th. The prelates did not dare to put him on trial as the author
of the Martinist tracts.
5th. Contemporary opinions acquit Penry of their authorship.
6th. Penry solemnly denied that he was the author of these tracts. I
But though not the author of Martin Marprelate's pasquinades,
Dr. Dexter thinks that Penry was the publisher. He it was that
owned the press and the type that were used in their production, gave
out the copy to the various workmen, corrected the proofs, used to
pay the printers, and “appeared to be a principall dealer in all the
action everywhere."
Who, then, was the author ? Dr. Dexter has adventured the theory
that the author was no other than Henry Barrowe, prisoner in the
Fleet since 1586.
We shall have occasion to advert shortly at greater length to both
Penry and Barrowe, and need only say here that Dr. Dexter has
succeeded in constructing an ingenious if not convincing argument
in support of his contention. See Dexter's Congregationalism as
seen in its Literature, pp. 196-201, and Arber's Introductory Sketch,
pp. 185-196.
Some impression of the effect produced in high quarters by the
Martinist publications may be formed by reading section iv. of
Mr. Arber's Introductory Sketch to the Martin Marprelate Controversy,
containing State documents, etc. :-
1588.
Lord Burghley's autographic minutes of a letter to Archbishop
Whitgift on the first appearance of the Epistle. Pp. 107, 108.
1589.
The Queen's proclamation against certain seditious and schismatical
books and libels, etc., in which the Epistle and Epitome are undoubtedly
aimed at.
Pp. 109-111.
Archbishop Whitgift's report to Lord Burghley of the seizure of
the Martinist press near Manchester.
Pp. 112, 113.
Summary of the information in the hands of the Queen's Govern-
ment at this date.
Pp. 114-117.
1“ Argument by the Rev. H. M. Dexter, D.D., of New Bedford,
Massachusetts, U.S.” Printed by Mr. Arber in Introductory Sketch
to the Martin Marprelate Controversy, pp. 187–189.
The puritan Martyrs
169
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IX
Bishops incensed—John Udall His crime, trial, declaration, and
death-Martyrs for Independency-Roger Rippon—The Anabaptists
-Six Separatists put to death—Henry Barrowe-His examination-
Barrowe and Greenwood in prison-Reprieved-Executed-Barrow-
ism-Barrowists and Brownists—John Penry-Cited before High
Commission-His private papers seized — His protestation-Executed
-Puritan martyrs, for what suffered-Religious toleration-Angli-
can animus towards Puritans - Puritans not seditious -- Brownist
petition.
170
CHAPTER IX
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
THE spirit of mutiny against the bishops, of which the
Martin Marprelate tracts afford such audacious and indis-
putable proof, roused them to a state of frenzy, and they
determined to leave nothing undone in order to bring
home to all convicted or suspected persons the enormity
of their crime.
John Udall.–Foremost among the early victims of
episcopal tyranny was John Udall, a graduate of Cam-
bridge and preacher at Kingston-upon-Thames, renowned
not more for his Puritan leanings than for his learning
and scholarship. He was cited to appear before the High
Commission at Lambeth; and for no other reason than
that his opinions were obnoxious to the ecclesiastical
authorities, he was forbidden to continue to preach. He
was restored to his ministry through the intervention and
influence of the Countess of Warwick and Sir Drue
Drury; but in 1588 he was again suspended, and de-
prived of his living. He had in the meantime added to
1 It is said that the first person James I. inquired after when he
came to England was Master Udall. On hearing of his death he
exclaimed, “By my sal, then, the greatest scholar in Europe's dedd.
171
172
PURITANISM
his other offences by subscribing the Book of Discipline.
He was the author of two remarkable tractates, known
as Diotrephes and A Demonstration of Discipline, which
have been printed by Mr. Arber in “The English
Scholars' Library.” The mere writing of such works was
treason and rebellion against the bishops, and for quell-
ing such mutiny they had endless resources at their
command. They were at once the creators, judges, and
administrators of the law, with an army of rapacious
officials at their back, ever ready to do their bidding,
and utterly unscrupulous as to the means employed.
That feature upon which Lord Bacon, in his Advertise-
ment, so strongly animadverts, “the solid obduracy of the
bishops, their utter unwillingness to make the least con-
cession, and so to satisfy moderate men"; this is strongly
brought out in Udall's Diotrephes, which, as the earliest
of the anti-episcopal tracts, may, in relation to its
Martinist successors, be regarded as the pilot-balloon
sent up to see which way the wind was blowing.
Udall was charged with being concerned in the Mar-
1 See Mr. Arber's Introduction to Diotrephes—The State of the Church
of England laid open in a Conference between Diotrephes a Bishop, Ter-
tullus a Papist, Demetrius a Usurer, Pandochus an Innkeeper, and
Paul a Preacher of the Word of God [April, 1588]. This Conference
is as vigorous a bit of Puritanism as anything that has come down to
us from that age. Udall's other work is entitled, A Demonstration
of Discipline, or A Demonstration of the Truth of the 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. As has been
pointed out already (p. 79), this proud claim was soon disposed of
by the irony of events. In less than two generations, in England,
at least, the Holy Discipline was discredited and rejected, though
it revenged itself for this treatment by its retreat to, and its
entrenchment in, the northern part of the kingdom.
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
173
tinist productions, and condemned to death on a charge
of libelling the bishops. “His trial,” says Hallam, " dis-
graces the name of English justice. It consisted mainly
in a pitiful attempt by the Court to entrap him into a
confession that the imputed libel was of his writing, as
to which their proof was deficient. Though he avoided
this snare, the jury did not fail to obey the directions
they received to convict him. So far from being con-
cerned in Martin's writings, Udall professed his disapproval
of them, and his ignorance of the author." His friends
made strenuous efforts in order to induce him to recant
his opinions, and sign a formal submission. Dean Nowell, ,
James VI. of Scotland, and Sir Walter Raleigh interested
themselves on his behalf, but unsuccessfully. Raleigh,
however, succeeded in drawing from him the following
declaration of his position, which was submitted to the
Queen: “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 concern the doctrine of faith and sacra-
ments 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 concern the soul,
and may not impeach any subject, much less any prince,
in liberty of body, goods, dominion, or any earthly
privilege." This declaration did indeed suffice for the
174
PURITANISM
revocation of the death sentence, which appeared (even
in the eyes of Whitgift) too iniquitous to be executed;
but before his liberation could be effected, Udall died
heart-broken in the Marshalsea Prison at the close
of 1592, a true martyr to the cause of religious and
constitutional liberty. “Solely for Diotrephes and the
Demonstration, John Udall, an absolutely upright and
pure-minded man, was cut off in the prime of life, a
victim to the secular power and political influence of
Queen Elizabeth's bishops.” 1
Martyrs for Independency.--Udall, as we have
seen, disclaimed all participation in the schism and
separation of the Brownists." A Presbyterian and
follower of Cartwright, he shared also Cartwright's
disinclination to leave the Church of England. Those,
however, who afterwards succeeded to the crown of
martyrdom were men firmly convinced that the Estab-
lished Church was no Church for them; that with a
Church framed upon such lines, and opening its doors to
all and sundry, whether moral or immoral, religious or
irreligious, they could have no communion. Browne's
doctrine of "a gathered Church” had been acting like
leaven upon the minds of many who had no thought of
ascribing to him its parentage. Fuller's pious and doubt-
less heartfelt wish in regard to Browne, " That his bad
opinions had been interred with him," was not destined
to be fulfilled. If the evil that men do lives after
them,—and certainly this has been exemplified in the
case of Browne,—the good, so far from being interred
1 Arber's Introduction to A Demonstration of Discipline, p. vii.
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
175
How many
with their bones, often has a resurrected vitality. The
Brownists, as they were now called, continued to increase;
and as they increased, persecution grew more bitter and
relentless. Archbishop Whitgift had his officers and
spies stationed wherever there was any likelihood of a
meeting being held, and all surprised in the act of
meeting for any kind of religious service were hailed
off to prison. Separatism was construed into treason
against the Queen, for it impugned her supremacy as
head or governor of the Church, and was thus made
synonymous with sedition and rebellion.
were incarcerated and done to death in the foul, fetid,
fever-reeking dungeons, we have no precise means of
knowing, for their wretchedness and sufferings, en-
dured silently and to the bitter end, have found no
chronicler.
A brief account of one of these sufferers has come
down to us. Roger Rippon died in prison, and his
friends, moved with pity and indignation, carried, with
great parade, before the house of Judge Young, who had
passed the iniquitous sentence upon him, his coffin, bearing
the inscription : "This is the corpse of Roger Rippon, a
servant of Christ, and her Majesty's faithful subject, who
is the last of sixteen or seventeen which that great enemy
of God, the Archbishop of Canterbury, with his High
Commissioners, have murdered in Newgate within these
four years, inanifestly for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
His soul is now with the Lord, and his blood crieth
for speedy vengeance against that great enemy of the
saints, and against Mr. Richard Young, who in this and
many the like points hath abused his power for the
. 176
PURITANISM
upholding of the Romish Antichrist, prelacy, and priest-
hood.”
7
The Anabaptists.--It should be here stated that
the first martyrs for religious liberty during the reign of
Elizabeth are found, not among the Brownists, but among
the hated, maligned, and much-suffering Anabaptists. The
history of that remarkable sect has yet to be written,
and when justice has been done to them a memorable
and heroic chapter will have been added to the history
of the world. The Anabaptists were Puritans before
Puritanism had sprung into recognized existence, and
held substantially all that the Puritans afterwards con-
tended for. We have already seen how Foxe, the
martyrologist, petitioned the Queen, unsuccessfully, for
the lives of two members of this despised sect. These
were Dutch Baptists, John Wiel Macker and Heindrich
Terwoort, who were burnt at Smithfield in 1575 for
denying the function of the civil magistrate in matters
of religion, and advocating the doctrine of separation of
Church and State, and liberty of conscience. The bitter
prejudice which these poor Anabaptists had to encounter
may be gathered from the truculent tone adopted by
Fuller when, speaking of the Queen's resistance to the
plea urged in their behalf by Foxe, he says: “Indeed,
damnable were their impieties, and she necessitated to this
severity, who having formerly punished some traitors, if
now sparing these blasphemers, the world would condemn
her as being more earnest in asserting her own safety
than God's honour. Hereupon the writ de hæretico
1 P. 19.
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
177
9 1
comburendo (which for seventeen years had hung only up
in terrorem) was now taken down and put in execution,
and the two anabaptists burned in Smithfield died in
great horror, with crying and roaring."
Six Separatist leaders suffered death upon the scaffold.
One of them was William Dennis, concerning whom we
have the voucher of Governor Bradford : "For Mr. Dennis,
he was a godly man, and faithful in his place.” Two
other sufferers were John Copping and Elias Thacker,
both of whom were hanged at Bury St. Edmunds in 1583,
for “dispersinge of Browne’s bookes." God gave them
courage to bear it, says Bradford. This was their answer
to the judge who sentenced them : “My Lord, your face
we fear not; and for your threats, we care not; and to
come to your read service, we dare not."
Henry Barrowe.-The three most notable of those
who suffered and died for their attachment to the prin-
ciples of Independency were Henry Barrowe, John
Greenwood, and John Penry. The first and last of these
names call for somewhat extended notice.
Barrowe was
"a gentleman of a good house,” according to the testi-
inony of Lord Bacon, who in his youth led a wild and
dissipated life. He was educated at Cambridge, and took
his degree of B.A. in 1569 to 1570. He became a
member of Gray's Inn in 1576, and frequented her
Majesty's Court. He dated his conversion to a sermon
which he heard preached in a church into which he had
casually strolled along with a boon companion, and, in
the language of Bacon," he made a leap from a vain and
1 Fuller's Church History, vol. iv. p. 390.
I 2
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PURITANISM
1
libertine youth to a preciseness in the highest degree,
the strangeness of which alteration made him very much
spoken of.” He became an ardent Puritan, and prob-
ably through the influence of Browne a convinced
believer in those principles which the latter did so much
to propagate.
After Browne, Barrowe was the most remarkable of the
early Independents, and he succeeded in communicating
to an ever increasing number of his followers the impress
of his strong character and vivid personality. His com-
panion in tribulation was John Greenwood, who had
been a clergyman of the Established Church, but had
embraced Separatist principles, and was imprisoned for
taking part in a conventicle meeting. It was while
paying a visit to his friend in the Clink Prison that
Barrowe was himself arrested and conveyed to Lambeth
Palace, and there, after subjecting him to a brief interro-
gation, the archbishop committed him to prison. The
charges brought against him may be best gathered from
the examination he underwent before Whitgift, the Bishop
of London, the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Chancellor, Lord
Buckhurst, Justice Young, and others. This examination,
the account of which we owe to his graphic pen, has
become truly historic.
2
Examination of Barrowe.—We give just one or two
extracts
2__
Bacon calls them (the Brownists) “a third kind of gospellers,"
and speaks of them as being directed by the great fervour of the
unholy Ghost.—Bacon's Works, vol. i. p. 383.
2 The whole of this examination is printed in Mr. Arber's Intro-
ductory Sketch to the Martin Marprelate Controversy, pp. 41-48.
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
179
“ I being kneeled downe at the end of the table, the
Lord Tresorer (Burghley) began and asked me my
name; which when I had told him, he asked me if I had
not ben sometymes of the Courte. I answered that I
had sometymes frequented the Courte. He sayd he
remembered me not.
“ The Lord Treasurer — Why are you in pryson ?
Barrowe~I am now in pryson, my Lord, vppon the
statute made for Recusantes.
“ Lord Treasurer —Why will you not come to the
Churche?
“ Barrowe-My whole desyer is to come to the Churche
of God.
“Lord Treasurer-Thou arte a fantasticall fellowe, I
perceive, but why not to our churches ?
“ Barrowe- The causes are manye and great my Lord:
and it were too longe to show them in particular, but
breyflye, my Lord : I cannot come to your churches
because all the wicked and prophane of the land are
receyued in to the bodye of your churches ; agayne you
haue a false and Antichristian mynisterye set ouer your
churches, neither worship you God aright, but after an
Idolatrous and superstitious manner, and your Church is
not gouerned by the worde of God, but by the Romish
Courtes.
“ Lord Treasurer - The Lord Tresorer .. demanded
of me whether I hold tithes lawfull.
" Barrowe-My Lord, they are abrogate and vnlawfull.
“Lord Treasurer - Why, thou wouldest haue the
mynisters to live by somewhat: whereof should they live?
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PURITANISM
“ Barrowe-Ex pura elemosina, of Cleane almesdeedes,
as Christ and His Apostles did and in His Testament
ordayned.
“ Lord Treasurer-But how if the people will not give ?
“ Barrowe-Suche people are not the people of God.
“Then I beseeched the Lordes to graunt a publique
conference, that it might appeare to all men what we
holde and wherein we erred.
Archbishop of Canterbury—The archbishop sayd, in
great choller, we should haue no publicke conference :
we had published inoughe alreadye, and therefore I
commit you close prysoner.
“ Barrowe-But contrary to Lawe.
Lord Treasurer—The Lord Tresurour sayd that it be
vppon such occasions done by lawe, and asked whether
I had any learning or no.
“ Bishops—Canterbury and London, with one consent,
sayd I had no learninge.
“ Barrowe—The Lord knoweth I am ignorant, i haue
no lerning to boast of, but this I know, that you are voyd
of all true learninge and good lives.
As we were thus reasoning, the Lord Chauncellor
asked me if I knew not these. 2.men, poynting to Canter-
bury and London.
Barrowe-Yes (my Lord), I haue cause to knowe
them.
Lord ChancellorBut what? Is not thys the Bishop
of London ?
“ Barrowe—I know him for no Bishop, my Lord.
“ Lord Chancellor - What is he then ?
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
181
os
“ Barrowe—His name is Elmar (or Aylmer], my Lord.
The Lorde pardon my fault that I layd him not open
for a wolf, a bloudy persecuter, and an Apostata, but by
that tyme the wardens man was plucking me vp.
“ Lord Chancellor-And what is this man ? (pointing
to Canterbury).
“ Barrowe—The Lord gaue me the spiryte of boldnes, so
that I sayd, He is a Monster, a miserable Compounde; I
know not what to call him, he is neither ecclesiasticall
nor Cyvell, euen the second beast that is spoken of the
Revelacion.
“ “ Lord Treasurer—Where is that place? Shew it.
“ Barrowe-So I turned to the place, 13 cap., and read
the verse 11, then I turned to 2 Thessal. 2 ; but the beast
arose for anger and gnashed his teethe, and sayd, will ye
suffer him, my Lord ? So I was plucked vp from my
knees by the wardens man, and carryed awaye.”
One cannot but be struck by the unflinching and spirited
way in which Barrowe bore himself during this prolonged
examination. There plays, too, over the whole scene, flash
upon flash of unconscious humour. Note, says Mr. Arber,
Lord Burghley's keenness of mind. “ Himself during
his whole life a Puritan, he makes these innovators give
chapter and verse for every statement they hazard. He
must have chuckled when he asked Barrowe to prove out
of Scripture that Whitgift was 'the man of sin,' the son
of perdition.' Doubtless that story must have gone the
round of the Court at the time. “ If such an examination
seems unseasonable at a time when Spain was preparing the
Armada for England, which, if successful, would have swept
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PURITANISM
Prelate and Puritan away together, the unseasonableness is
chargeable to Whitgift, who had kept Barrowe in prison
since November 1586.” Though in prison, Barrowe and
Greenwood were not idle. It is a mystery that remains
unsolved how they managed to secure the secrecy neces-
sary to write so much as they did. Barrowe wrote no
less than four or five volumes, one of which was a dense
quarto of more than two hundred and fifty pages, entitled,
A Brief Discoverie of the False Church, etc.
These are
admittedly from the pen of Barrowe; and, as we have
already seen, Dr. Dexter argues (though with doubtful
success) that his was the hand that penned the Martin
Marprelate tracts, the 'copy' of which surreptitiously,
and in some deftly concealed way, found its way into the
hands of John Penry, to be by him, as the principal
directing agent, printed and published, and scattered
broadcast over the whole country.
Execution of Greenwood and Barrowe.-Green-
.
wood and Barrowe were tried at the Old Bailey, March
23rd, 1592–1593, on a charge of writing and pub-
lishing sundry seditious books and pamphlets tending to
the defamation of the Queen's Majesty. In the Apology
or Defence of such True Christians as are commonly (but
unjustly) called Brownists, written a day or two before his
death, we have a description of what followed from
Barrowe's own pen : “Upon the 24th, early in the morn-
ing, was preparation made for our execution : we brought
out of the Limbo, our Irons smitten off, and we ready to
be bound to the cart; when her Maiestie's most gracious
pardon came for our reprieve.” Certain “ doctors and
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
183
deans” being sent to “exhort and confer” with them,
they expressed their willingness to debate the points at
issue between them. But this was not what the authori-
ties of the Church wanted. They wanted their retracta-
tion and submission, and to nothing that savoured of
discussion and compromise would they be induced to listen.
Vpon the last day of the third month," says Barrowe,
my brother Greenwood and I were very early and
secretly conveyed to the place of execution, where, being
tied by the necks to the tree, we were permitted to
speak a few words.” After protesting their innocency of
the charges preferred against them, just as they were
offering up prayer for the Queen, the second sentence of
reprieve arrived. This was the result of an appeal to the
Lord Treasurer, urging that, “in a land where no Papist
was put to death for religion, theirs should not be the
first blood shed who concurred about faith with what was
professed in the country, and desired conference to be
convinced of their errors."
The ecclesiastical authorities, impatient of delay, took
the law into their own hands, and on April 6th, 1593,
contrived to have them secretly hanged. It is said,
though there is not much proof for the story, that the
Queen was displeased with the hurried and clandestine
way in which the death sentence had been carried out.
A letter in the State Paper Office, from one Thomas
Philippes to William Herrell, reveals the fact that it was
the fear of the Lower House of Parliament maiming a
Bill against the Barrowists and Brownists, which had
passed the Upper House, that made Whitgift and the
bishops hasten the execution in the way they did. As
184
PURITANISM
the letter says: “The executions proceeded through malice
of the bishops to the Lower House, which makes them
much hated by the people affected that way.”
Barrowism.--Barrowe is so commanding a figure in
the annals of Puritan Separatism or early Independency,
that some mention should be here made of the following
he obtained, and of the Church system—afterwards set
up more especially in the States of New England to
the shaping of which his influence so materially contri-
buted. Barrowism, as it came to be called, was a system
standing midway between Brownism and the system of
Cartwright and Travers.
It was an attempt to graft the
Presbyterian eldership upon the simple Congregational
idea of the Church ; that eldership for which Udall, in his
Demonstration of Discipline, claims the authority of Christ
in His word, “in all times and places until the end of
the world.” The main difference of Barrowe's system of
Church government and that of Browne is that, while the
latter regards the authority of the Church as vested in
the people themselves, Barrowe favours the idea of an
imperium in imperio by the position he assigns to the
elders of the Church, and by the power he would intrust
to them. That he was in no danger of going over to the
side of Cartwright is made clear by the way in which he
speaks of Cartwright and his followers. “These Reform-
ists, howsoever for fashion sake they give the people a
little liberty to sweeten their mouths and make them
believe that they should choose their own ministers, yet
even in this pretended choice do they cozen and beguile
them also, leaving them nothing but the smoky, windy
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
185
title of election only, enjoining them to choose some
university clerk, ---one of those college-birds of their own
brood, or else comes a synod in the neck of them, and
annihilates the election whatsoever it be.” 1
There is no marked difference that we have been able
to discover, save in this matter of the eldership, between
the principles held by the Barrowists and Brownists; yet
there appears to have been as little rapprochement be-
tween them as between the ancient Jews and Samaritans.
Greenwood had been charged by Giffard with being a
Brownist, or sharing the opinions of the Brownists re-
garding the Church of England, and this is the answer
he makes: “What opinion the Brownists hold of the
Church of England, their worship, people, ministry,
government, we neither know nor regard ; neither is there
any cause why we should be charged or condemned for
their errors and faults for which themselves and this
Church of England that receiveth and nourisheth all
sectaries, heretics, wicked and abominable persons what-
soever shall account.” 2 Greenwood goes back upon the
subject and says: "You breathe out your accustomed lies,
slanders, and railings. First you term us
First you term us Brownists
and ‘Donatists,' whereas I never conversed with the men or
their writings ! I detest Donatus' heresies.
And if they
had been instruments to teach us any truth, we are not
therefore to be named with their names; we were baptized
into Christ's. Browne is a member of your Church, your
brother, and all Brownists do frequent your assemblies." 3
It should be mentioned here that Browne, notwithstand-
1 Dexter's Congregationalism, p. 239.
Hanbury's Historical Memorials, vol. i. p. 66.
2
3 Ibid. p. 69.
186
PURITANISM
ing his defence of Separatism, never enjoined upon his
followers the duty of refusing to attend the services of
the Established Church. This is what a Puritan opponent
said of him: “Sometimes he would go to hear sermons,
but that he accounted no active communion, and declared
to his friends that he thought it not unlawful to hear our
sermons, and therefore persuaded his followers in London
so to do."
John Penry.—Few nobler spirits have been nun-
bered among the noble army of martyrs than John Penry,
the apostle of wild Wales, and its first missionary. He
was born in Brecknorshire about the beginning of Eliza-
beth's reign. He was bred a Roman Catholic, “as arrant
a Papist as ever came out of Wales,” but contact with
the influence of the Reformation seems soon to have
wrought in him a great change. He matriculated at
Cambridge, where he made acquaintance with Puritanism,
and soon became a convinced and ardent disciple. After-
wards he removed to Oxford, influenced probably by the
more positive Puritan spirit which there reigned, and
took his degree of A.M. in 1586. The historian of
Oxford, Anthony Wood, in his Athence Oxonienses, says:
“He took holy orders, did preach in Oxon. and afterwards
in Cambridge, and was esteemed by many a tolerable
scholar and edifying preacher, and a good man.” His
heart was stirred within him on account of his country-
men, his kinsmen according to the flesh. In the Pro-
testation, written before his death, and addressed to Lord
Burghley, he says: “I am a poore young man, borne and
bredd in the mountaynes of Wales. I am the first, since
cent
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
187
the last springing vpp of the gospell in this latter age,
that publickly laboured to have the blessed seed thereof
sowen in those barruyne mountaines.”
For his zeal in preaching, and advocating by means of
the press the preaching of the gospel, ostensibly for his
denunciation of “dumb or unpreaching ministers,” who
were scandalously ignorant' and inefficient, contenting
themselves with the lazy reading of a printed homily
when they ought to be feeding the hungry sheep that
looked up and were not fed, he was cited before the
High Commission, and sharply rebuked for the broaching
of such heresy. Diligent study of the New Testament,
and association with the Puritans and Separatist leaders,
Barrowe and Greenwood, made him a strong believer
in the principles they had espoused, and he became
active in their advocacy by voice and by pen.
In
1590, Penry was again cited before the High Commis-
sion, this time to answer for the part he had taken in
the Martin Marprelate books or pasquinades. He was
charged with being accessory to the writings of these
tracts, and with having written some of them with his
own hand.
The latter charge is one that has never
been substantiated. The evidence to the contrary is
conclusive, and is admitted as being such by all versed
in the history of this controversy.1 But if not the
1 Even by Mr. Maskell (p. 107), who loses no opportunity of
pillorying a Puritan; even he is constrained to say : “We must
not overlook this, that no evidence was found, and also that Penry
himself at the time (which I cannot give much weight to), and
always after, even when about to die (when one is rather inclined
to believe that he would speak the truth), denied that he had been
concerned in the writing of those tracts.”
188
PURITANISM
author of these famous tracts, clearly Penry was impli-
cated in their production. “ There can be no reasonable
doubt,” says Dr. Dexter, “ that he was the publisher of
them.” He thinks that Barrowe and Penry were jointly
responsible for them, the former as author, the latter as
publisher. Suspicion fell upon Penry, and a warrant
was issued for his apprehension ; but he fled into Scot-
land, where he remained for three years, and continued
to employ his pen in the advocacy of his opinions. On
his return to England he was arrested and committed to
prison. His private papers were seized, and among them
was found a rough embryo sketch of a petition to the
Queen, in which, using very plain words, he tells Her
Majesty that “the Gospel was little beholden to her for
anything," and that she suffered it “ to reach no farther
than the end of her sceptre."
This, be it remembered, was the rough first-hand im-
pression of a petition which was intended to be addressed
to the Queen, but was really drawn from his private diary.
The extracts from this rough unfinished sketch form the
basis of the charge that was brought against Penry. He
was tried and found guilty, and sentenced to.be hanged.
The next day Penry wrote his Protestation to Lord Treasurer
Burghley, written, as Hallam says, “in a style of the
most affecting and simple eloquence,” in which he pro-
tests that he had done nothing worthy of death, and that
of sedition or disloyalty he was guiltless both in act and
intention. “It was never known before this time,” says
Neal, “that a minister and scholar was condemned to
death for private papers found in his study, nor do I
remember more than one since that time, in whose case
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
189
it was given for law scribere est agere, that to write has
been construed an overt act; but Penry must die, right
or wrong."
The first name on the warrant for his execution was
Archbishop Whitgift, and, whilst Penry was at dinner,
officers were despatched to bid him make ready, for he
must die that afternoon. The sentence was carried out
that same afternoon, May 29th, 1593, and thus died
this young and intrepid martyr, an example of as un-
conquerable fidelity to the cause of truth and liberty
as any of those emblazoned upon the martyr roll of
fame.
This was his confession, written just before his death :
“If I might live upon this earth the days of Methuselah
twice told, and that in no less comfort than Peter, James,
and John were in the Mount, and after this life might be
sure of the kingdom of heaven, yet to gain all this I
durst not go from the former testimony to the truth of
Jesus Christ."
For what, then, did these Puritan martyrs suffer
and die ?—Was it for a particular form of Church
government, to get Calvinism or Independency enthroned
in the place of Episcopacy, or to have it established
concurrently with Episcopacy? They were anxious, no
doubt, that Independency should be a religio licita ; but
it was no mere polity they were contending for; it was
the spiritual conception which lay at the root of Inde-
pendency that they were supremely anxious to have
recognised, not merely by one Church, but by all
Churches; and that if there was to be one Church, that
190
PURITANISM
1
it should stand, not upon priestly rites, formalism, and
magic, but upon the universal priesthood of all who
worshipped God in the spirit and had no confidence
in the flesh. Like the Free Churchmen of later
times, they were battling for “the Crown rights of the
Redeemer.”
To say that Barrowe and Greenwood and Penry laid
down their lives for their attachment to the principles of
Independency, is to seem to expose them to the charge
of perversity—it might seem of narrow-minded bigotry-
at best," the dissidence of dissent and the Protestantism
of the Protestant religion.” But really their attachment
to Independency meant nothing more and nothing less
than insistence on a Church in which Christ should be
supreme Ruler and King, and in which all under-rulers
should be in willing subjection unto Him. It was the
vision of a purified Church, of the kingdom of heaven
upon earth, in which there should be no unrighteousness,
and in which, at least in their ideal aim, men should be
holy and without blemish ; it was this which stirred
the moral passion that made them the Reformers, made
them the Independents, made them the martyrs they
were.
Like Browne before him, Barrowe assailed the prin-
ciple of multitudinism in the existing Church of England,
a Church in which there was no attempt "to discern
between the righteous and the wicked, between him that
serveth God and him that serveth Him not.” Instead of
the temple of the Church being composed of living stones,
“they be rather of the refuse, common pebble chalk
stones which cannot be used to any sound and sure build-
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
191
ing, even all the profane and wicked of the land, Atheists,
Papists, Anabaptists, and heretics of all sorts, gluttons,
rioters, blasphemers, purgerers, covetous extortioners,
thieves, whores, witches, connivers, etc., and who not,
that dwelleth within this land, or is within the Queen's
dominions.” 1
Penry is not less clear in his perception and pronounce-
ment: “We are to walk by the line of the word, and
not after the judgments of men. Her Majesty's authority
I acknowledge, but it doth no whit infringe her royal
power and authority to deny that she hath any warrant,
any power, any sword granted her of God, to establish
either false religion, false and antichristian ordinances,
or yet any other unwarrantable or unjust constitution.
If Her Majesty and this High Court require of us that
we resort unto the public assemblies of the land, and
so to enter into the antichristian band, and continue
therein, I answer again that it is against the written
word of God, and therefore that Her Majesty hath
no power, no authority from the Lord, to require this
at our hand.”
Religious Toleration.—It is not claimed for these
Puritan Separatists that they were the apostles of re-
ligious toleration. Their attitude to this question we
hope to consider more fully in a subsequent part of this
work. Here a few words must suffice. The sun of tolera-
tion, “ with healing in his wings,” had not yet risen upon
the world; or, rather, it had risen when Christianity was
first planted, then it had become eclipsed in the deepening
1 A Brief Discovery of the False Church, vi. 9.
192
PURITANISM
shadows of the centuries that succeeded, until, in the
darkness of the Middle Ages, it had become, we might
say, quite extinguished. Between this period and the
close of the sixteenth century, with the exception of
the Mennonites or Anabaptists, who began to appear in
Holland about 1522, it was not even professed by any body
of people. Southey's assertion, however, that “No Church,
no sect, no individual even, had yet professed the principle
of toleration," 1 is not true. Not to speak of the Dutch
Baptists, and William of Orange, who threw his shield
over this persecuted sect, Robert Browne may fairly
claim to have expiscated a doctrine of liberty of con-
science, which, if heard of before in England, had been
heard of only as a speculative conception. Dr. Dexter
holds that "Robert Browne is entitled to the proud pre-
eminence of having been the first writer claiming to
state and defend in the English tongue the true and now
accepted doctrine of the relation of the magistrate to the
Church.”
There is no doubt that succeeding Separatists fell be-
hind Browne in the way in which they grasped, or rather
failed to grasp, this doctrine. In the preface to a volume
issued by Barrowe and Greenwood, they say: “We
acknowledge that the princes ought to compel all their
subjects to the hearing of God's word in the public
exercises of the Church,”—a sentiment which seems
strangely at variance with that which immediately fol-
lows: “Yet cannot the prince compel any to be a member
of the Church, to receive any without assurance by public
profession of their own faith, or to retain any longer than
1 Book of the Church, vol. ii. p. 285.
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
193
they continue and walk orderly in the faith.” To compel
men to the hearing of God's word is not quite consistent
with liberty of conscience. The time had not come for
either Puritans or Prelatists to hoist that flag, and to
march under it as the soldiers of a free spiritual com-
monwealth. The Separatists—perhaps unconsciously even
to themselves-had their foot already upon the threshold
of that new era.
:
Animus of Anglican writers in regard to the
Separatists. The vehemence with which the claims of
these Puritan martyrs to the honour of martyrdom have
been assailed by certain Anglican writers, is evidently
the measure of their apprehension and alarm lest these
claims should prove to be well founded. ' They were
not martyrs at all; they were condemned to death for
defamation of the Queen, and for inciting to rebellion."
"Penry was found guilty of a political crime by a British
jury.” Canon Curteis, in the Bampton Lecture for 1871,
on Dissent in its Relation to the Church of England,
surpasses himself in the endeavour to show that these
men died for nothing more than a mere crotchet.
“ These
(Barrowe, Greenwood, and Penry)“ all fell victims, not
to the archbishop's anger, but to the indignation of the
Queen and the whole country at the appearance of the
scurrilous and blasphemous Marprelate tracts in 1588."
What is to be thought of the accuracy of a writer that
can so twist and misrepresent the plainest evidence ?
“For what was it,” he goes on to ask, “in the name of
common sense, that these men contested and suffered ?
It was not (as we have seen) for the great principles of
T3
194
PURITANISM
It was
Independency as expounded by modern writers.
for nothing in the world but for the mere 'crotchet' that
the State was bound at the sword's point to establish
Calvin's divine Church system (drawn from Eph. iv. 11)
on the ruins of the existing human one. It was for
the 'fixed idea that the Queen and the Government, in
resisting this interpretation of the infallible word of God,
were resisting the Holy Spirit Himself, and going to per-
dition. It was for the insane fanaticism which led them
to urge the overthrow of the ecclesiastical constitution of
their country in language so violent and inflammatory that
no court of justice, in such dangerous times as those were,
could possibly forbear to put the Act of Parliament into
execution.”
Such reckless statements as these, not one of which
can be substantiated, serve only to reveal the animus
by which a certain class of Anglican writers are moved
when they essay to speak about Puritanism and the Church.
Even granting that Barrowe, Greenwood, and Penry did
hold such opinions as those attributed to them by Canon
Curteis, still they were only opinions; and why men
should be hanged for holding them is a question on which
he does not venture to enlighten us, though he evidently
believes that hanging was no more than they deserved.
» 1
i Curteis' Bampton Lectures, p. 78.
In 1893 the Independents or Congregationalists of England
celebrated the tercentenary of the martyrdom of Greenwood, Bar-
rowe, and Penry, and this stirred—as was perhaps natural—the
wrath of the Church Quarterly, the Church Times, and other organs of
Anglican opinion, which did their best to discredit the celebration
and pour contempt upon it.
2 See Curteis' Bampton Lectures, note, p. 78.
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
195
The Puritan martyrs not guilty of sedition or any
political offence. -As for saying that the offence of
which these men were guilty was not ecclesiastical,
not the holding of certain opinions in matters pertain-
ing to Church and State, but was sedition and rebellion
against the Queen, this is a fallacy too glaring and trans-
parent to impose upon any but the credulous and those
anxious to believe it. Speaking of the execution of
Thacker and Copping, who were hanged for denying the
Queen's ecclesiastical supremacy, "the proof of which
was their dispersion of Browne's tracts, wherein that was
only owned in civil cases," Hallam goes on to say:
“ This
was according to the invariable practice of Tudor times.
An oppressive and sanguinary statute was first made, and
next, as occasion might serve, à construction was put
upon it contrary to all common sense, in order to take
away men's lives.” Clearly, if the printing and circulating
of obnoxious opinions is to be construed into an act of
treason or disloyality to the Crown, no reformation in
Church or in State could ever have been carried through,
and no hope of reprieve could ever have been indulged
by those who set their hands to it. Under such a system
as this, "justification by faith " becomes a treasonable doc-
trine, and Duke George of Saxony should not only have
forbidden the circulation of his writings, but have brought
Luther to the block.
It is a relief to turn from the prejudiced judgment
of Canon Curteis to the judgment of another Churchman,
who, though differing from Barrowe and Penry, and the
contention of the Puritans in general, as decidedly as
Canon Curteis, yet can do them the justice to say:
196
PURITANISM
“ Underneath the disputes about ceremonial and about
Church discipline, underlying the accusations so freely
cast against the Clergy that they were dumb dogs, an
unpreaching ministry, against the bishops that they were
lordly prelates and greedy wolves, beneath even the
scurrility of the Martin Marprelate tracts, can be traced
a true religious principle. The yearning after a more
direct communion between God and the soul than was
offered by a Church which had for the time deposed the
sacraments from their place in the Christian system, was
trying to find expression in a sense of personal election
and individual mission."1
Meanwhile bonds and imprisonment and the prospect
of lingering death did not stop the growth of Sepa-
ratism. In the foul malarious atmosphere of Newgate,
the Fleet, Bridewell, the Clink, and other prisons, suf-
ferers for conscience' sake were dragging out a terrible
existence.
The following, from a petition by a number of
Brownists, presented to Lord Burghley in 1592, gives
some idea of the sufferings and misery these “poor
Christians," as they styled themselves, were called upon
to endure:
“Pleaseth it then your Lordship to understand that we,
Her Majesty's loyal, dutiful, and true-hearted subjects, to
the number of threescore persons and upwards, have,
contrary to all law and equity, been imprisoned, separated
i The Church and the Puritans, by Henry Offley Wakeman, M.A.,
Fellow of All Souls College, Tutor of Keble College, Oxford, pp.
42, 43.
2 Strype's Annals, iv. 90; Neal, vol. i. p. 367.
THE PURITAN MARTYRS
197
from our trades, wives, children, and families, yea, shut
up close prisoners from all comfort, many of us to the
space of two years and a half, upon the bishops' sole
commandment, in great penury and noisomeness of the
prisons, many ending their lives, never called to trial;
some haled forth to the sessions, some cast in irons and
dungeons, some in hunger and famine; all of us debarred
from any lawful audience before our honourable governors
and magistrates, and from all benefit and help of the laws;
daily defamed and falsely accused by published pamphlets,
by private suggestions, often preaching, slanders and accusa-
tions of heresy, sedition and schism, and what not. . .
And seeing that for our conscience only we are deprived
of all comfort, we most humbly beseech your good Lord-
ship that some free and Christian conference, publicly or
privately before your honour or before whom it would
please you, where our adversaries may not be our judges
(might be had), that our case, with the reason and proof
on both sides, might be recorded by different notaries and
faithful witnesses; and if anything be found in us worthy
of death or bonds, let us be made an example to all
posterity; if not, we entreat for some compassion to be
shown in equity, according to law, for our relief; that in
the meantime we may be bailed to do Her Majesty
service, walk in our callings, to provide things needful
for ourselves, our poor wives, disconsolate children, and
families lying upon us, or else that we might be prisoners
together in Bridewell, or any other convenient place at
your honour's appointment, where we might provide such
relief by our diligence and labours as might preserve life
to the comfort both of our souls and bodies.”
198
PURITANISM
This petition was signed by fifty-nine persons immured
in different prisons. Needless to say, it was rejected by
the bishops and Privy Council. The reasons given are
thoroughly characteristic, and the drift of them may be
easily surmised.
holland and the Exiled Independents
199
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
First Church of General Baptists in England . 1611
First permanent Independent Church in England. 1616
John Robinson
born 1575, died 1625
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER X
Number of Separatists-Causes-Indebtedness to Holland-Re-
fugees in England-Influence of Holland on England-Holland birth-
place of Puritanism-Bacon's opinion of the Separatists—Popular
resentment at treatment of them-Act of Parliament to suppress
Separatism, Exiles in Holland poor, but under strong and scholarly
leaders-Francis Johnson-John Smyth-Church at Scrooby-John
Robinson-Emigrates to Holland-Leyden-Robinson's attitude to
the English Church-His farewell address to Pilgrims-Memorial
tablet-Historic Independency–Helwys and first English Church
of Baptists—First Independent Church in England-Henry Jacob
Robinson and Jacob semi-Separatists—Independents pioneers of
liberty-Note on Robinson's farewell address.
1
200
CHAPTER X
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
We have already adverted to the statement made by Sir
Walter Raleigh in Parliament in 1580, that he was
afraid that there were over twenty thousand Brownists
in England. Considering that the entire population
of England did not at that time exceed three millions ,
of people, that is (according to Motley), about equal to
the population of the Netherlands, this is a very con-
siderable proportion, and it is little wonder that the
statement has been generally supposed to be exaggerated.
It is certainly grossly exaggerated if the statement is
to be taken literally, for at the time it was made
Browne was but beginning to be a conspicuous figure
in public estimation, and could not have attracted to
himself a very numerous following. Probably, however,
Sir Walter used the word “Brownists” as descrip-
tive of the Puritan Separatists generally, those who in
substance had adopted the views of Browne, and were
disaffected towards the Church and the existing ecclesi-
astical hierarchy. Taken in this extended sense, there
seems no reason to suspect the truth of the statement.
But how had the Separatists grown to the number of
twenty thousand ? It would be a real, and, in our
201
202
PURITANISM
judgment, an insuperable difficulty to account for their
rapid increase in so short a space of time, if we had no
alternative but to attribute it to ordinary causes, say to
the influence of the Marian exiles, who had returned
home at the accession of Elizabeth imbued with the
theology of Geneva and with the spirit of freedom which
that theology generated wherever it was received. The
leaven of their teaching and influence could not have
been so great and so widely diffused as to spread the
principles of Separatism among so numerous a section of
the nation. It must have been circumscribed by the
paucity of their numbers; and when in course of time
these passed away, there were but few to take their place
and carry on their work. But even if their successors
had been equally numerous, equally zealous, their efforts
to commend the doctrine of religious liberty to the great
mass of the people would have been defeated by the
inertness, ignorance, and brutality in which they were
sunk. Very few of the latter could read, and it was
believed by the ruling powers that the best way to
make them contented was to keep them ignorant. In
truth, when we consider the general condition of the
people, the wonder is that Puritanism was not entirely
crushed out while Elizabeth was on the throne. How, then,
is the rapid growth of Puritanism to be explained ? To
answer this question we must mentally transport ourselves
across the North Sea to the kingdom of the Netherlands
or Holland.1
1 In the middle of the seventeenth century, according to Motley,
the population of Holland was as large as that of England, and much
more wealthy.-United Netherlands, vol. iv. p. 557.
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
203
Puritanism in Holland. The influence which
this little kingdom, less than half the size of Scotland,
and not one-fourth that of England, has exerted upon
the historical development of Europe, and especially
of our own country, in the matter of civil and religious
liberty, has seldom, if recognised, been appraised at its
true value.
In the brief notes which Professor Skeat has intro-
duced at the commencement of his Etymological Dictionary,
he takes credit for having been the first to point out
with sufficient distinctness how great has been the in-
debtedness of England to Holland. “I am convinced
that the influence of Dutch upon English has been much
underrated, and a closer attention to this question might
throw some light even upon English history. History
tells us that our relations with the Netherlands have
often been rather close. We read of Flemish mercenary
soldiers being employed by the Normans, and of Flemish
settlements in Wales,' where' (says old Fabyan, I know
not with what truth) 'they remayned a long whyle, but
after, they sprad all Englande ouer.' We may recall the
alliance between Edward III. and the free towns of
Flanders; and the importation by Edward of Flemish
weavers. After Antwerp had been captured by the
Duke of Parma, a third of the merchants and manufac-
turers of the ruined city are said to have found refuge
on the banks of the Thames. A final stoppage of the
trade with Flanders would have broken half the mer-
chants in London.1 Flemish weavers had come over with
the Conqueror, then settled down in Norfolk, and suc-
i Green's Short History, p. 381.
1
204
PURITANISM
ceeded to so great an extent in developing the industry
at which they wrought, that Norwich became the second
city in the kingdom. These Dutch refugees came to
this country, not only for purposes of trade, but because
they were driven out of their own country by stress of
religious persecution. During the period the Nether-
lands were overrun and laid waste by the butcheries of
Alva, it is computed that between fifty and one hundred
thousand refugees found an asylum in England. In
1560 there were ten thousand, and in 1562 the number
had reached thirty thousand.
It was among the Flemish weavers that the preaching
and doctrines of Wyclif caught hold and spread most
rapidly, and during the persecution of the Lollards it
is said more persons suffered death at the stake in
Norfolk than in all the other counties of England put
together. The martyrs who suffered under Mary were
most numerous in those counties where Lollardism ex-
verted its greatest influence, and in those counties it was
A
1 Green puts the number of refugees from the Netherlands at over
50,000. In the early part of the seventeenth century the population
of London was not more than 130,000, and of these 10,000, were
foreigners, mostly Walloons. In Norwich alone, as early as 1571,
there were 3925 Dutch and Walloons, and in 1587 this number had
risen to 4679, making a majority of the population.
2 Professor Thorold Rogers' Story of Holland, p. 51; The English
Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, by W. H. Beckett. Religious
Tract Society. See the two maps. It is idle, in the face of such
facts, to say, as Mr. Froude does, that the Lollard movement was an
untimely birth, and that it completely died out. This much is
certain, that it spread at first among the Walloon settlers; and pre-
cisely in those parts—Norfolk and Suffolk and London—where these
settlers were most numerous, there the Protestant reforming Puritan
spirit was most active and vigorou
Dus.
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
205
that Puritanism flourished, and Separatism afterwards
sprang up
The influence of Holland upon England. - These
refugees from the Netherlands brought with them the
arts and sciences for which their country had already
become famous, and they taught them to a people entirely
ignorant of them; for it must be admitted, says Mr.
Thorold Rogers, that for a long time in the industrial
history of modern civilisation the English were “the
stupidest and most backward nation in Europe.” Holland,
on the other hand, was the instructor of Europe in the
most advanced kind of agriculture, the most enterprising
commerce. It was the pioneer in navigation and in
discovery, in physical research, in medical knowledge.
and skill, and produced the greatest jurists and the most
learned scholars of the seventeenth century. It was
a centre of varied literary activity when England lay
enveloped in the gross darkness of ignorance, and more
books teemed from its presses than from all other parts
of the Continent.
But the greatest service which Holland rendered to
our own country in the sixteenth century was the dis-
semination of Protestant convictions and sentiments—the
right of private judgment, the duty of toleration, and
liberty of conscience. The Netherlanders became mis-
sionaries to the people wherever they settled down,
instructing them in the truths of the Bible, quickening at
once their intelligence and aspirations, and leading them
into the love and practice of virtue, which seemed indeed
lofty and austere when compared with the morals of our
206
PURITANISM
own countrymen. The chief strongholds of English
Puritanism were London and Norwich, and these were
just the two cities where the Dutch community and
influence were the most widely represented. It was in
Norwich, as we have seen, that Robert Browne gathered
the first Separatist or Independent Church, a church
mainly composed of people from the Netherlands, who
at that time formed the majority of the population of
the city.
Holland the birthplace of Puritanism.-It
seems clear, then, from what has been thus said, that
the origin of Puritanism, strictly speaking, is to be
sought, not in England, but Holland. It was in Holland
that it first made its appearance, and when it began
to appear in England at first it found a prepared soil,
both among the Walloon settlers and among the
people who came under the leaven of their influence.
There can be no question that this powerfully con-
tributed to its rapid growth, and to its indefinite
expansion.
The debt of England to the Netherlands has been
elaborately shown and emphasised in a work 1 to which
reference has been already made, and the gist of which,
i The Puritan in Holland, England, and America; an Introduc-
tion to American History, by Douglas Campbell, A.M., LL.B.,
Member of the American Historical Association. The praise which
Mr. Gladstone bestowed upon this work, it may be remembered,
drew an indignant letter from Mr. Goldwin Smith, in which he
characterised it as a laborious and prolix disparagement of one of
the most glorious periods of English history. The contrast is
certainly drawn between Holland and England in a way which is
decidedly unflattering to the latter ; but the body of facts which Mr.
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
207
so far as this part of the subject is concerned, is contained
in the following words: “When the Reformation came
in, in which North-Western Europe was new-born, it was
the Netherlands which led the van, and for eighty years
waged the war which disenthralled the souls of men.
Out of that conflict, shared by thousands of heroic
Englishmen, but in which England, as a nation, hardly
had a place, Puritanism was evolved,—the Puritanism
which gave the triumph to the Netherland Republic,
and has shaped the character of the English-speaking
race.”
Continued oppression of the Puritan Separatists.
-In the year 1592, that is, about ten years after
Robert Browne began to disseminate his opinions,
Lord Bacon wrote these words : “ As for those which are
called Brownists, being when they were at the most a
very small number of very silly and base people here
and there in corners dispersed, they are now (thanks be
to God !), by the good remedies that have been used,
suppressed and worn out, so that there is scarce any
news of them."1 This is, no doubt, excellent testimony
Douglas Campbell brings forward, and the evidence drawn from
manifold sources, by which he sustains his conclusions, can hardly
fail to carry conviction to every candid and unprejudiced mind, that
he has made out a strong case in support of his contention, however
humbling it may be to our insular pride to acknowledge it.
1“Bacon doubtless here expressed the feeling of all that were
respectable in England's society," says Professor Masson, Life of Milton,
vol. ii. p. 538. Doubtless he did; but considering how often the
feeling of all that is respectable in England's society has gone against
justice and principle, Bacon's opinion did not derive any added
weight from this circumstance.
208
PURITANISM
to the good and strong remedies which had been used
against them; not equally good testimony, however, to
their success, as appears from what follows.
Barrowe and Greenwood and Penry were the last who
suffered death for their Separatist convictions. Their
execution raised such a feeling of resentment against the
bishops, both in the House of Commons and among the
mass of the people, that the prelates took alarm; they
saw clearly that the policy of murdering innocent men
must be desisted from, or it would recoil with fatal effect
upon themselves.
Some other mode of quelling the
spirit of dissent-the growth of Separatism—must be
devised. Accordingly, about the very time that these
martyrs for Independency were sent to their graves, an Act
of Parliament was passed, making it penal for any person
" to abstain from coming to church to hear divine service,
or to receive the communion according to Her Majesty's
laws and statutes aforesaid, or to be present at any
unlawful assemblies, conventicles, or meetings under pre-
tence of any exercise of religion contrary to Her Majesty's
said laws and statutes." All persons convicted of such an
offence were “ to be committed to prison, there to remain
without bail or main prize, until they shall conform and
yield themselves," etc. All persons refusing to make
submission within three months were to be required to
“abjure this realm of England and all other the Queen's
Majesty's dominions for ever, unless Her Majesty shall
license the party to return." The convicted person was
required to make his submission in the following terms:
“I, A. B., do humbly confess and acknowledge that I have
grievously offended God in contemning Her Majesty's godly
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
209
and lawful government and authority by absenting myself
from church and from hearing divine service, contrary to
the godly laws and statutes of this realm, and in using
and frequenting disordered and unlawful conventicles .
and assemblies, under pretence and colour of exercise of
religion; and I am heartily sorry for the same, and do
acknowledge and testify in my conscience that no other
person hath or ought to have any power or authority
over Her Majesty,” etc. In the last place, the Act pro-
vides“ that every person that shall abjure by force of this
Act, or refuse to abjure being thereunto required as
aforesaid, shall forfeit to her Majesty all His goods and
chattels for ever," etc.
This Act surely supplies a very striking comment
upon Bacon's gratulatory deliverance. If these silly and
base people, the Brownists, were, by the good remedies
that had been used, suppressed and worn out, what need
was there to pass an Act so drastic and designedly so
woven as to enmesh and convict all persons guilty of the
sin of Separatism? Drastic remedies usually imply the
existence of desperate diseases.
The penalty which the Act visited upon those who
refused to conform to its requirements left the Puritan
Separatists no choice but to banish themselves as speedily
as possible, and seek in some new land a freer air, a more
hospitable asylum.
The Separatists or Independents in Holland.
-We propose now to accompany to Holland these
expatriated Separatists, and note very briefly their
fortunes and vicissitudes in that country till the great
1
14
210
PURITANISM
We propose
act of emigration to the far West was resolved upon,
and at last became an accomplished fact.
to follow them further in their painful and adventurous
quest, to trace the successive steps by which a small and
feeble band of men and women became the heralds of a new
faith, the pioneers of liberty, and the founders of a new
world. This method of dealing with the subject of “Puri-
tanism in the Old World and in the New” involves some
little deviation from the chronological order of events,
for it obliges us to pass over the development of Puri-
tanism in England during the opening years of the reign
of James I.; but more than what it loses in historic con-
tinuity, it is, we think, likely to gain in securing unity of
impression, since it enables us to bring into effective
juxtaposition the two continents and the two great fields
on which Puritanism waged its struggles and won its
distinctive triumph.
The limits within which the history we are relating
must necessarily be compressed render it impossible to
follow at any great length the fortunes of the exiles, or to
do more than exhibit in barest outline the Church system
which they endeavoured to construct. We can attempt
little more than an enumeration of the leaders under
whose direction they began and carried out the experi-
ment.
“Not many wise, not many noble.” The first emi-
grants belonged, almost without exception, to the humbler
class of the people. They were miserably poor, so needy,
indeed, that when they first landed in Holland the
magistrates of the town in which they settled felt con-
strained to distribute among them a small sum of money
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
211
for the relief of their necessities. They were glad to get
any employment, and to accept such wages as were offered
them, for“ they were almost consumed with deep poverty,
loaded with reproaches, despised and afflicted by all.”
We can form some idea of the difficulties which the
exiles experienced in obtaining the means of subsistence
from the statement of George Johnson (Francis Johnson's
brother), that some who had been
had been students were
content to card, spin, or to learn trades whereby
to maintain themselves”; while of himself he tells
that he had not above sixpence, sevenpence, or eight-
pence the week to live upon. Roger Williams said of
Ainsworth, that “though a worthy instrument of God's .
praise, he lived upon ninepence in the week with roots
boiled."
Those who figure as leaders of the small band of exiled
Independents were indeed remarkable men, men of strong
faith and vigorous personality, and they left their impress
deeply graven upon the minds of the young struggling
community. Francis Johnson, Henry Ainsworth, Henry
Jacob, John Smyth, William Brewster, and especially
John Robinson, were men who in any sphere of life
would have made their mark, and have risen to a
position of influence and ascendency over others. Like
Browne and Barrowe, and Greenwood and Penry, they
were nearly all university bred, all of them men of
fair scholarly attainments, some of them pre-eminently
Francis Johnson was a Fellow of Christ's College,
Cambridge, as was also Henry Jacob and John Robinson.
Ainsworth was a proficient Hebraist, and was spoken of
as “the great rabbi of this age.” A very learned man
1
SO.
66 A
212
PURITANISM
he was; we have heard some, eminent in the knowledge
of the tongues of the University of Leyden, say that they
thought he had not his better for the Hebrew tongue in
the university, nor scarce in Europe.” Indeed, it is
remarkable, considering the difficulties of their position,
that nearly all the leading Puritans and Independents
were not only men of parts, but men of real and solid
learning They carried this tradition and attachment
with them, as we shall see afterwards, into the New
World, and their descendants were ever distinguished for
their “ dread of an illiterate ministry.”
Francis Johnson had at first leanings towards the
Presbyterian system of Travers and Cartwright, but
afterwards he embraced the principles of Independency,
and connected himself with a little company of Sepa-
ratists in London, described (but wrongly, as we have
seen) as forming the first Independent or Congregational
Church. Driven into exile, he settled at Amsterdam,
and became pastor of a little flock, many of whom had
been associated with him in England, and had accom-
panied him to Holland. The little Church settled at
Amsterdam, having Francis Johnson for its pastor, and
Henry Ainsworth for its teacher, was not long without
embroilments and troubles. These were due, not merely
to the circumstance in which the exiles were placed,
though these were hard and untoward enough, but to the
irruption of those human infirmities which in a free demo-
cratic society play a not inconsiderable part, and often,
to a perilous degree, strain the loyalty of the professed
and real friends of freedom. The mild scandals of that
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
213
period have been sufficiently related elsewhere, and need
not further detain us.
Prominent among other causes of disturbance in the
Church at Amsterdam was one whose name has been
already mentioned, John Smyth, to whose influence and ·
teaching the General Baptists trace their origin. He
was a Fellow of Cambridge, became lecturer at London,
and afterwards vicar of Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire.
Here he embraced Separatist principles, and took steps
to gather an Independent Church. This became the
parent of the Church at Scrooby, which was founded in
1606, and removed to Leyden in 1609, and afterwards,
in 1620, formed the company that sailed in the May-
flower to the shores of the New World.2 After minister-
ing for a short time to the Church at Gainsborough,
Smyth transplanted himself and his little company to
Amsterdam, and there they united with the Church of
Francis Johnson. Meanwhile, however, Smyth had
become a Baptist, being baptized, as some allege, by one
John Morton, or, as others allege, having baptized him-
self. His views speedily became a source of trouble to
the Church at Amsterdam, and it is not surprising to
find that he had hardly connected himself with it
than he seceded from it, carrying with him his little
company
John Robinson.
If Robert Browne was the
1 See Dr. Dexter's Congregationalism of the last Three Hundred
Years, "Fortunes and Misfortunes in Amsterdam."
2 To that little Church in Scrooby belongs, therefore, the dis-
tinguished honour of being the mother Church of New England.
214
PURITANISM
founder of Independency, in the sense that he was the
first to grasp and give effect to its fundamental conten-
tion and principle, John Robinson was the father to
whose fostering care and organising genius Congregational
Independents are wont, by common consent, to ascribe
their distinctive polity and faith. In him they recognise
a leader of whom they have no reason to be ashamed,
but have justly reason to be proud.
The obscurity that hangs over the history of many of the
early Separatists is signally illustrated in the case of one
who was in one sense the most distinguished of them all.
Of the early life of Robinson 1 very little is known,
not even his birthplace has been definitely ascertained,
though it was probably in the neighbourhood of Scrooby,
in Nottinghamshire. He was born in 1575 or 1576.
He graduated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in
1592, and became a Fellow probably in 1599. The year
after, he removed to Norwich, where, according to Ains-
worth, “the cure and charge of ... sowles was committed
to him.” His Puritan leanings caused him to be sus-
pended by the bishop of the diocese, and in 1604 he left
Norwich, resolved to seek outside the Church the liberty
which was denied him within its pale. There is evidence
in the book which he afterwards published, entitled, A
Justification of Separation from the Church of England
that he did not take the step of severing himself from
the Church in which he had been born and baptized
1 The most complete account of Robinson and his opinions is that
given by Dr. Dexter in his Congregationalism of the last Three Hun-
dred Years. His life and works were published in three volumes
by the Rev. R. Ashton, London, 1851.
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
215
without a keen pang of regret. He says: “Had not the
truth been in my heart as a burning fire shut up in
my bones, I had never broken those bonds of flesh and
blood wherein I was so straitly tied, but had suffered the
light of God to have been put out in mine own unthank-
ful heart by other men's darkness." He resigned his
fellowship, and repaired to Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire,
where he joined a band of Christian men and women
who had bound themselves by covenant with God “to
walk in all His ways made known or to be made known
unto them, according to their best endeavours, whatever
it should cost them." This little company of Separatists
numbered among them such men as John Smyth,
Richard Clifton, William Brewster, William Bradford,
Francis Jessop, and George Morton, all of them men
shaped in no common mould, and some of them destined
to leave upon a new world the impress of their strong
character and personality. It was soon found convenient
to repair to the old manor house at Scrooby, occupied by
William Brewster, a kind of factor to the Archbishop
of York, where he had under his charge the mails of
the Government, and kept a relay of post horses. The
chapel attached to the manor house formed a most suit-
able meeting-place, and Dr. Dexter thinks it probable
that here the little company of those who afterwards
formed the Mayflower Church were in the habit of wor-
shipping. We have it on the testimony of Bradford,
they ordinarily met at his (Brewster's) house on the
Lord's day, . . . and with great love he entertained
them when they came, making provision for them to his
great charge," and "continued to do so while they could
216
PURITANISM
stay in England.” Robinson was associated with Clifton
in the pastorship of the Church.
We may be sure that the meeting at Scrooby would
not long escape the vigilance of the ecclesiastical author-
ities. “Some were taken and clapt up in prison, others
had their houses beset and watched night and day, and
hardly escaped their hands ”; and the most were fain to
fly and leave their houses and habitations, and the means
of their livelihood. Seeing themselves thus molested,
and that there was no hope of their continuance there,
by a joint consent they resolved to go into the Low
Countries, where, they heard, was freedom of religion for
all men, as also how sundry from London and other parts
of the land that had been exiled and persecuted for the
same cause, were gone thither, and lived at Amsterdam
and other places of the land. To go into a country
they knew not but by hearsay, where they must learn a
new language, and get their livings they knew not how,
it being a dear place, and subject to the miseries of war,
-it was by many thought an adventure almost desperate,
a case intolerable, and à misery worse than death,
especially seeing they were not acquainted with trades
nor traffic (by which the country doth subsist), but had
only been used to a plain country life, and the innocent
trade of husbandry. But these things did not dismay
them, although they did sometimes trouble them, for
their desires were set on the ways of God, and to enjoy
His ordinances. But they rested on His providence, and
knew whom they had believed.”
Robinson and his friends succeeded at last in evading
the vigilance of the authorities, who put every hindrance
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
217
they could in the way of their emigration, and managed to
escape to Amsterdam. Their stay here, however, was only
of short duration. It soon became evident to Robinson
and the little band of Separatists he had brought with
him from Scrooby, that the Church of Johnson afforded
them no basis on which they could continue to associate
and work together in peace and harmony. They resolved,
therefore, to remove to Leyden, some miles distant, and
there, in that "fair and beautiful city, and of a sweet
situation, but made more famous by the university
whither it is adorned,” they took up their abode in 1609,
and there for eleven years they continued to reside.
The members of the little Church worked at “such
trades and employment as they best could,” and by dint
of honest industry " they came to raise a comfortable and
competent living, but with hard and continual labour.”
In Leyden the able, prudent, and broad-minded Robinson
found a congenial home and sphere of work where his
gifts and powers could be fitly exercised. He became
a distinguished member of the university, and in con-
nection with it added greatly to his influence and fame
by a public disputation he engaged in with Episcopius,
in which he championed the tenets of Calvin against the
Arminianism which was then coming into vogue.
The
Church under Robinson and Brewster continued to grow
in numbers and strength. It may be justly regarded as
the first Independent Church in which the principles of
Independency found a congenial soil, and where they had
free, fruitful, unhindered development. Robinson's defini-
tion of a Church is specially noteworthy; he defines it as
“ A company consisting though but of two or three sepa-
·
218
PURITANISM
rated from the world, whether unchristian or antichristian,
and gathered into the name of Christ by a covenant made
to walk in all the ways of God known unto them, is a
Church, and so hath the whole power of Christ.”
At first an ardent Separatist, and carrying his Sepa-
ratist principles to the length of eschewing all communion
with the Church of England, his opinion in regard to the
latter gradually toned down, till at last he saw no wrong,
but acknowledged that much benefit might be derived
from “ hearing the godly ministers preach and pray in
the public assemblies” of the Church of England. His
ultimate position in this matter is explicitly defined : “As
to the lawfulness of communion with the Church of
England,” he says, “ the error laid to our charge is our
holding that every one of their assemblies are false
churches. We profess we put a great difference be-
tween pure and impure among you, and do not doubt
(God forbid we should !) but there are hundreds and thou-
sands amongst you having assurance of saving grace,
and being partakers of the life of God in respect of your
persons; but considering you in your Church communion
and ordinances, we cannot so difference you, but must
truly testify against your apostasy as we do."
Robinson's farewell address to the Pilgrim Fathers.
-In Robinson, both in his character and writings,
was represented the breadth and catholicity of Inde-
pendency in its best form, and with good reason he
has been described, even by a bitter-minded opponent, as
“ the most learned, polished, and modest spirit that ever
that sect enjoyed.” His noble farewell words to the
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
219
1
22
Pilgrim Fathers, delivered on the eve of their departure
from Holland to essay the perils of an unknown and
new world, have become classical, and have done inore
perhaps to immortalise his name than all his other
acts and writings together. “ We are now ere long
to part asunder, and the Lord knoweth whether even
he should live to see our faces again. But whether
the Lord had appointed it or not, he charged us before
God and His blessed angels to follow him no farther
than he followed Christ; and if God should reveal any-
thing to us by any other instrument of His, to be as
ready to receive it as ever we were to receive any truth
by his ministry; for he was very confident the Lord had
more truth and light yet to break forth out of His Holy
Word.” Of this farewell address Mr. Motley says that
for loftiness of spirit and breadth of vision, it has hardly
a parallel in that age of intolerance.”
The fear which Robinson expressed, whether he should
live to see again the faces of the friends from whom he
was taking leave, was realised. He died in Leyden, and
was buried in St. Peter's Church on March 4, 1625,
nearly five years after the Mayflower, carrying with it
the destinies of a great nation, set sail to the shores of
the New World. Yet, like another Moses, he gained from
1 The whole address, or that part of it which the writer has pre-
served, for he does not claim to reproduce all that Robinson uttered
on this occasion, was written down, probably from memory, twenty-
five years after, by Edward Winslow, one of the Fathers of New
Plymouth, and published by him in a communication addressed
to the Earl of Warwick and the Commissioners of the Plantations.
This was printed in 1646 under the title, Hypocrisie Vnmasked, a
defence of the New England Colonies from the aspersions which had
been cast upon them.
220
PURITANISM
his Pisgah vantage ground some vision, dim it may be, but
still real, of the glory that was to follow. It is his title
to lasting fame that he incited, promoted, counselled, and
directed, from its inception to its execution, the move-
ment that was to be fraught with such signal conse-
quences to the Church and to the kingdom of God and
to the commonwealth of nations.1
Historic Independency.--We have now arrived
at the point in the history of the Puritan Separatists
when the name Separatist disappears, and is replaced by
1 On July 24, 1891, a number of American and English Congrega-
tionalists, the lineal descendants (in faith and spirit at least, if not in
fact) of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the representatives of the Mayflower
Church, assembled at Leyden to witness the unveiling of a bronze
tablet on the outside of St. Peter's Church, and directly opposite the
house where John Robinson lived, taught, and died. The inscrip-
tion on the tablet is as follows:-
THE MAYFLOWER, 1620
IN MEMORY OF
REV. JOHN ROBINSON, M.A.
PASTOR OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH WORSHIPPING OVER AGAINST
THIS SPOT, A.D. 1609–1625, WHENCE, AT HIS PROMPTING
WENT FORTH
The Pilgrim Fathers
TO SETTLE IN NEW ENGLAND IN 1620
BURIED UNDER THIS HOUSE OF WORSHIP, 4TH MARCH 1625,
ÆT. XLIX. YEARS
IN MEMORIA ÆTERNA ERIT JUSTUS
ERECTED BY THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE CONGREGATIONAL
CHURCHES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, A.D. 1891
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
221
the historic title Independents. In Holland historic
Independency began, and from that time its record is con-
tinuous and unbroken. In 1611 a number of “Brownists,"
who had been driven from the kingdom, returned, and
founded in London the first English Church of General
Baptists. Their leader was Thomas Helwys, who was
associated with John Smyth in the oversight of the
Church which seceded from the Church of Francis John-
son, thus forming the second congregation of Separatists
or Independents in Amsterdam.
In 1616, five years.
afterwards, a number of other exiles returned, and
founded, also in London, the first permanent Independ-
ent or Congregational Church, under the ministry of
Henry Jacob.
Henry Jacob was one of the most remarkable of
the early Independents, and both in style and manner
resembled the modern Independent perhaps more closely
than any of his contemporaries. He was originally a
clergyman in the county of Kent, and showed his zeal as
a Churchman by writing a work, entitled, A Defence of
the Churches and Ministry of England, written in two
treatises, against the reasons and objections of Mr.
Francis Johnson and others of the separation commonly
called Brownists. This drew forth an answer from
Johnson in a series of propositions which are still worthy
of being read as a specimen of clear and admirable rea-
soning. It is said that Jacob himself was so impressed
by Johnson's reply, that soon after he renounced his
position as a clergyman, and espoused the cause of the
Separatists. Whether due to this cause or not, it is.
222
PURITANISM
pendent.
1
certain that Jacob became a convinced and sturdy Inde-
“ He was a person,” says Anthony Wood,“ most
excellently well read in theological authors, but withal
a most zealous Puritan, or, as his son Henry used to say,
“the first Independent in England.' Jacob defines a
true Church to be a number of faithful people formed by
their willing covenant in a spiritual outward society or
body politic, ordinarily coming together in one place ;
instituted by Christ in His New Testament, and having
power to exercise ecclesiastical government, and all
God's other spiritual ordinances—the means of salvation
--in and for itself immediately from Jesus Christ."
“When each ordinary congregation giveth their free
consent in their own government, then certainly each
congregation is an entire and independent body politic,
and indued with power immediately under and from
Christ, as every proper Church is and ought to be.”
This appears to be the first use of the name “Independ-
ent”; but no importance, we think, is to be attached to
it in this respect, as Jacob evidently uses it more as a
description than as an appellation.
John Robinson and Henry Jacob were called semi-
Separatists, because they did not share the aversion or
reluctance of many of the Separatists to worshipping in
the parish churches, maintaining that in them there were
true Christians, “tender and gracious souls,” to whom
1
Not, however, “ordinarily coming together in one place,” as
did the Separatists during the reign of Elizabeth, and even that
of her sister Mary; for from the way in which he expands the
definition, it is clear that Jacob contemplates a less fluid,
casual, and altogether more permanent system of Church order and
discipline.
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
223
Christ's presence was revealed, though their assemblies
were not constituted according to Christ and the model
and authority of the New Testament.
In both Robinson and Jacob is seen in a very eminent
degree the irenical temper and the constructive instinct
of the wise, broad-minded Christian statesman. It is
probable that the influence of Holland did much to culti-
vate in them and the Separatists generally much of this
instinct and temper. They were out of the reach of
persecution, and away from all the baleful influences
which goad and irritate and rankle in the breasts of those
who suffer wrongfully the ills and miseries of oppression.
Naturally the points of antagonism between them and
the dominant hierarchy and Church would become less
sharpened and less acutely felt, and as naturally, not the
negative, but the positive side of their faith, and of those
Church principles which they had come to look upon
as the pure deposit of a far-back apostolic age, would
begin more and more to strengthen its hold upon them.
They had, as it were, leisure from themselves, leisure
from strife and contending, and under the more genial
conditions in which they now found themselves placed,
their minds gradually expanded and ripened ; they
became enamoured- of a new fruitful ideal of strength
and beauty, and this ideal they sought patiently and not
without success to translate into the life and polity of
the Church and Independency of the future.
The Independents the pioneers of religious liberty.
-We do not claim for these early Independents that they
succeeded in mastering the lesson of religious toleration.
224
PURITANISM
That came later, but the advances they made towards
it entitle them to be regarded as the first pioneers, in
England at least, of toleration and religious liberty.
In 1609, Henry Jacob published his famous tract,
entitled, An Humble Supplication for Toleration and
Liberty to enjoy and observe the Ordinances of Jesus
Christ.
This Dr. Fairbairn speaks of as the earliest plea for
toleration in the English language; but while technically
this may be allowed, it is due to that much-maligned
and “poor shattered renegade,” Robert Browne, to say
that this is scarcely to do justice to the position he took
up a whole generation before Henry Jacob or Leonard
Busher ever penned a line in defence of toleration. The
consideration of this question we must, however, relegate
to a later period, and to a subsequent portion of the
history with which we propose to deal.
1
NOTE ON ROBINSON'S FAREWELL WORDS TO THE
PILGRIM FATHERS
It is not to be denied that there is a certain class of thinkers who
are more than others enamoured, we might say violently enamoured,
of these words. They have been adopted as the special motto of
those who claim to be par excellence “liberal theologians.” It would
seem as if the fair, broad-minded historian of Congregationalism as
seen in its Literature had been tried, not to say irritated, by the pre-
tensions of this school, for he enters into an elaborate attempt to
prove that in the matter of theological latitude Robinson was guilt-
less of the “liberalism” which is imputed to him. A careful
examination of Dr. Dexter's argument has left upon our mind the
impression of his overproving, i.e. of not proving, his case.
We think he proves to the hilt that the primary reference of these
reinarkable words of Robinson is not to dogma but to polity, or, to
HOLLAND AND THE EXILED INDEPENDENTS
225
1
use Dr. Dexter's words, that "polity, and not dogma," is the key-
note of this noble farewell. “More light on those questions of
bishops, elders, and synods and presbyters must be expected to
break forth, as guided by providence and experience, humble piety
shall further interpret the word.” This undoubtedly is the primary
reference of the words, but we submit that they do not on this
account exclude the natural and logically implied conclusion which
“ 'the self-styled advanced thinkers of the day" have drawn from
them.
Robinson must have been aware, in his own consciousness at least,
that the words which he uttered were susceptible of the utmost
width and scope : and improbable as it may be that he anticipated
the construction which has since been put upon them, certainly the
words, looked at by themselves, lead one to think that if this con-
struction had been present to his mind, he would still have been
unflinching in their expression. And probably, if someone had
pointed out to him the peril of sending out with his imprimatur so
free and bold a deliverance, he would have replied that he was
responsible for the deliverance itself, and not for conclusions which
others might draw from it. Whatever use may have been made of
these words, whatever extreme opinions they have been employed
to buttress up, the words themselves are noble words, and in every
way worthy of the enlightened and broad-minded father of Inde-
pendency.
15
PART II
PURITANISM IN THE
NEW WORLD
227
founding of New Plymouth
229
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
James I. reigned
1603-1625
Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury. 1605–1610
George Abbot, do.
do.
1611-1633
America discovered by Columbus
1492
Virginia successfully colonised ; first perma-
nent English settlement in America
1607
Mayflower set sail, September 6, 1620; arrived at Plymouth Bay,
December 21, 1620.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I
The Pilgrim Fathers—Founders of a New World—Residence in
Holland— Negotiations concluded and leave-taking—The Speedwell
and the Mayflower—The Mayflower alone-Compact signed-Cape
Cod-Plymouth Rock-Cold of winter-Indians-Mortality among
settlers-Honour that belongs to the Fathers - Independency-
Growing prosperity.
LEADERS IN COLONY
William Brewster, John Carver, William Bradford, Miles Standish,
Edward Winslow.
230
CHAPTER I
FOUNDING OF NEW PLYMOUTH
The Pilgrim Fathers. There are dates and epochs
in the history of our sea-girt isle which will never fade
from the memory of men : the Norman Conquest in 1066 ;
the signing of Magna Charta in 1215; the defeat of the
Spanish Armada in 1588; the Revolution of 1688.
But one tolerably familiar with the great landmarks of
history would probably be puzzled to remember what
there was specially remarkable about the year 1620.
Yet that year was signalised by a movement which,
whether we consider its beginning, or the far-reaching
and fruitful issues that sprang from it, is absolutely
without parallel in the history of the world. It was the
year the Mayflower cast anchor in Plymouth Bay. Its
crew all told did not number more than one hundred and
two, and of these twenty-eight were women.
“Giants in heart they were, who believed in God and the Bible.”
They had crossed the then comparatively untraversed
path of the Atlantic for love of God, and in search of ?
liberty of conscience.
&
231
232
PURITANISM
They were the founders of a New World.- The
rock on which they set foot~ Plymouth Rock—may be
described as the corner-stone of that mighty Republic
which now covers a territory of 3,557,000 square miles,
and extends from the Atlantic on one side to the Pacific on
the other, and comprises a population of nearly seventy
millions of people. “Behold how great a matter a little
fire kindleth.” It is safe to say that never in their most
visionary mood did it enter into the mind of these exiles
for liberty of conscience to imagine that out of their
sowing would spring the mighty harvest which is being
reaped to-day. They had no other motive in leaving
their native land than that of the hunted partridge
which flies to the mountains. They simply wanted an
asylum, where, free from all molestation and disability
on account of their faith, they could worship the Great
Being to whom they owned no doubtful or wavering
allegiance. They were, as Milton says, “ faithful and
freeborn Englishmen, good Christians, constrained
to forsake their dearest home, their friends and kindred,
whom nothing but the wide ocean and the savage deserts
of America could hide and shelter from the fury of the
bishops.”
It was no new idea struck out of their minds by the
force of relentless persecution that made the expatriated
Puritans turn to the Far West, in the belief that there
was to be found a land that would afford them a safe
1 66
They little thought how pure a light
With years should gather round that day;
How love should keep their memories bright,
How wide a realm their sons should sway.”
FOUNDING OF NEW PLYMOUTH
233
asylum, and where they might breathe the pure air of
liberty. Their enemies must be credited with the justice
(such as it was) of keeping them well informed in regard
to that. “Why do you not take yourselves off to
Virginia ?” was the taunting question which had been
again and again repeated in their hearing_indeed,
ever since Raleigh had added that not inconsiderable
strip of territory to the English Crown. It was the
iron entering
deeper and deeper into their soul
which gave to the idea substance, and shape. It was
partially arrested by their sojourn in Holland, where
they enjoyed full civil and religious liberty ; but even
there it could not be uprooted. Holland was no home
to them. They could not forget that they were in a
foreign country, where the language and customs and
habits of the people served only to accentuate the feeling
of estrangement. The “hardness” of the country, and
the difficulty of obtaining the means of subsistence, not
to speak of comfort, made it repugnant to their children
and to intending settlers from their native land. But
most of all, their religious scruples and convictions were
offended by the easy-going laxity of the Dutch. The
latter had no respect for the Sabbath, and many
other observances which their Puritan neighbours
prized and held in reverent and jealous regard, they
treated with indifference. Their standard of morals
was correspondingly low, and the exiles feared, not with-
out reason, that by association with them the fibre of
their children's principles would become flaccid. More-
over, they had constantly present to their mind the dread
that their posterity “would in a few generations become
234
PURITANISM
Dutch, and would lose their language and their name of
English,” and so, “if God would be pleased to discover
some place unto them, though in America,” they mig?
“ more glorify God, do more good to their country, better
provide for their posterity, and live to be more refreshed
by their labours than ever they could do in Holland,
where they were"; or in this way they cherished“ a great
hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation for
the propagation and advancement of the gospel in those
remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be
but stepping-stones unto others for the performance of so
great a work."
It is not needful to enter into minute details in regard
to the negotiations which had to be conducted, and the
difficulties which had to be overcome, before the purpose
which the exiles had conceived could be carried out. As
may be readily imagined, a step like this was not resolved
upon without much and anxious deliberation. Fears and
lions were in the way, and there were not wanting those,
even among their own number, who prophesied failure
and disaster. Objections were heaped up even to the
danger arising from change of air and food; and the
drinking of water instead of beer would, it was averred,
infect their bodies with sore sickness. Bolder and more
daring counsels, however, in the long-run prevailed, and
apparently with one heart and mind the exiles set them-
selves to the achievement of their great task.
many were the obstacles and mountains that had to be
laid low, that nearly three years elapsed before they
found themselves on board the vessel which was to carry
them and their families to the New World. It was in
But so
FOUNDING OF NEW PLYMOUTH
235
June 1620 that the step which actually committed the
pilgrims to their new venture was definitely taken. This
was the securing of the ship—the Mayflower—which was
to transport them across the sea. In addition to this,
the Speedwell, a vessel of sixty tons, was purchased in
Holland; she was to convey the Leyden contingent to
Southampton, whence both vessels were to commence
their distant and adventurous voyage.
There are few scenes that figure in the pages of history
more impressive and solemn than that leave-taking be-
tween the emigrants and their friends in Leyden-
solemn as the farewell of death itself, for it could not
but be present in the minds of both that they were
looking into each other's faces for the last time. Who
that heard it ever forgot the text from which the beloved
Pastor Robinson—himself restrained from being of the
number of the emigrants - preached to them: “And
there at the river by Ahava I proclaimed a fast, that
we might humble ourselves before our God, and seek of
Him a right way for us and for our children, and for all
our substance." The fast was succeeded by a frugal feast,
and in the words of a participator and actor in the
scene: “They that stayed at Leyden feasted us that were
to go at our pastor's house (being large), where we
refreshed ourselves with our tears and singing of psalıns,
making joyful melody in our hearts as well as with
the voice (there being many of the congregation very
expert in music); and, indeed, it was the sweetest
melody that ever mine ears heard.” The Speedwell was
anchored at Delfthaven, some fourteen miles distant,
and hither many of their brethren accompanied the
236
PURITANISMI
exiles.
So “they left the goodly and pleasant city
which had been their resting-place near twelve years."
We can imagine the feelings of the pilgrims as they
came within sight of their native land, and realised that
only for a too brief season could they look upon the old
familiar places and green fields of England. For they
loved England passionately, notwithstanding it had been
to them a cruel stepmother; loved it “as a Roman
loved the city of the seven hills, as an Athenian loved
the city of the violet crown.” It was in connection with
this leave-taking, though the time at which they were
spoken is not precisely known, that Robinson uttered
those memorable words, which have probably done more
to immortalise his name than all his other writings and
acts together.
The Mayflower. It was on the 5th August 1620
that the Mayflower, a vessel of about one hundred and
eighty tons, and the Speedwell set sail from Southampton.
No sooner were they fairly embarked than the Speedwell
was found to be so leaky that it was unsafe for her to
proceed farther, and both vessels put back to the port
of Dartmouth. Eight days were spent in making the
necessary repairs, and once more the two vessels were
unfurling their canvas to the winds. They had not got
out of sight of Land's End when the captain of the mis-
named Speedwell (intimidated, there is little doubt, by the
prospect, not only of the voyage over the Atlantic, but
of what awaited them on the other side) declared that he
must return or sink. The ship, he said, was not strong
enough to undertake such a voyage. There was no other
FOUNDING OF NEW PLYMOUTH
237
course open than for both vessels to return again, and
this they did, this time to Plymouth. Here the Speedwell
was discharged, and it was agreed that those of the
emigrants who were least fitted “to bear the brunt of
this hard adventure ” should be left behind, while the
Mayflower should proceed with the rest of the company.
After the loss of much valuable time, the Mayflower,
with her crew of one hundred and two passengers, set
sail from Plymouth to the great Western World,
September 6th, 1620.
It is not too much to say that in a very real and pro-
found sense the Mayflower carried with her the moral
destinies of the world. Her crew were not only the
pioneers of civil and religious liberty, they were the
heralds of a faith which, tested by the heroic men it
has formed, and the heroic actions it has produced,
may indeed challenge comparison with any faith by
which men have been moulded and inspired. The
struggle they were called upon to wage was a struggle
for liberty, not only in the New World, but in the
Old; and but for the planting of Puritanism in New
England, the victory of Puritanism in the mother country
would have been shortlived, and shorn of its most
characteristic features and products. These expatriated
exiles—self-expatriated by conscience and by principles
which were dearer to them than life itself—indulged in
no vain and Utopian hopes as to that which awaited
them on the other side of the Atlantic. They saw, in the
first place, that in the absence of any existing form of
government whose protection they might invoke, it would
be necessary to set up a government of their own; and
238
PURITANISM
seeing that there were those among their own number
not well affected to unity and concord,” before they
came within sight of land they set to work, like the
sagacious and practical men they were, to formulate a
code of their own.
Compact on board the Mayflower.—A compact-
a solemn league and covenant it might well be called
was drawn up and signed in the cabin of the Mayflower :
.“ In the name of God, amen. We whose names are
underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign
King James, having undertaken, for the glory of God
and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of
our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony
in the northern parts of Virginia, do by. these presents,
solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one
of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into
a civil body politic for our better ordering and preserva-
tion, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue
hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and
equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices
from time to time as shall be thought most convenient
for the general good of the colony. Unto which we
promise all due submission and obedience."
This instrument was signed by the entire body of men
who were on board the Mayflower, forty-one in number.
It has been truly said: “This was the birth of popular
constitutional liberty. The Middle Age had been familiar
1 It would have been well for them if they had professed no such
allegiance. In this unwitting acknowledgment they were heaping
up trouble for themselves and their descendants (see p. 302).
FOUNDING OF NEW PLYMOUTH
239
with charters and constitutions, but they had been
merely compacts for immunities, partial enfranchise-
ments, patents of nobility, concessions of municipal
privileges, or limitations of the sovereign power in
favour of feudal institutions. In the cabin of the
Mayflower humanity recovered its rights, and instituted
government on the basis of 'equal laws' for 'the general
Mr. John Carver, who had acted as governor
during the voyage, was confirmed in this office for the
"1
good.'”
first year.
It was on the 21st November 1620 that the pilgrims
set foot for the first time on the soil of the New World.
Their purpose was to find a place farther south than
that at which they landed; but, finding themselves
among dangerous shoals, and encountering adverse
winds, they were glad to find refuge in the harbour
of Cape Cod. Just before the Mayflower dropped
anchor, "they fell upon their knees and blessed the
God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and
furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and
miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and
stable earth, their proper element.” The hearts of the
emigrants must have, indeed, sunk within them as they
surveyed the bleak, barren, inhospitable coast on which
1 Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. i. p. 234, revised
edition, p. 244, Macmillan & Co. 1876. Critics have pointed to this
statement of the historian of the United States as an instance of his
enthusiasm running away with him. Dr. Borgeaud, while allowing
that perhaps some objection may be made to it on the score of exaggera-
tion, adds: “It is not the less true that, in spite of all that has
been said to lessen its importance, the agreement of the Mayflower
remains one of the most remarkable documents of modern history.”.
The Rise of Modern Democracy in Old and New Englund, p. 110.
240
PURITANISM
they found themselves landed. With a lively prescience
of coming evil our Lord said to His disciples : “Pray that
your flight be not in the winter.” So cold was the
season, that it is told of the first party of explorers that
the spray of the sea froze as it fell on them, and made
their clothes like coats of iron, Their strength was
greatly reduced by the hardships which they had under-
gone during their rough and inclement voyage, especially
with the scanty supply of food.
“Short allowance of victual and plenty of nothing but gospel ;"
and now with their retreat cut off by the ocean on
one side, and their progress by the wilderness on the
other,—especially such a waste howling wilderness as it
must then have seemed,—their condition was as hopeless
and desperate as could well be imagined. “Because there
were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die
in the wilderness? would to God we had died by the
hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by
the flesh-pots, and when we did eat bread to the full
might have been the language of the angry remonstrants
had there been some Moses to whom they could affix
the responsibility of their position; but this was not the
temper of the gallant, intrepid, God-fearing band of men
and women who came out, like Abraham of old, not
knowing whither they were going, except that they were
going at the bidding of Abraham's God.
The next day
was the Sabbath, and according to their invariable custom
they rested, and observed it as a day of worship. Mon-
day had no sooner dawned than the women were astir,
improving the opportunity with housewifely zeal. “Joyful
FOUNDING OF NEW PLYMOUTH
241
The name
was that washing day,--dours of pine and sassafras in
the air, and 'coals of juniper' under their kettles,- not.
less joyful than toilsome, for their feet were at last on
the soil of New England.” Two explorations into the
adjacent country—one by land and the other by sea-
were conducted without leading to any satisfactory result.
They resolved to make one more attempt to find a suit-
able harbour, and, after braving hardships and dangers
which made them well-nigh give up in despair, they ran
their boat aground in Plymouth Bay. The Mayflower
furled her tattered sails” in Plymouth Bay just five
weeks after she had anchored in Cape Cod.
Plymouth had been given to the bay six years before by
an earlier explorer, Captain John Smith, and seeing that
they had set sail from Plymouth, the pilgrims concurred
in the retention of the name.
on the 21st of December 1620 that the
pilgrims disembarked in Plymouth Bay. There is prob-
ably no more sacred spot in the world than Plymouth
Rock, which commemorates the landing of the Pilgrim
Fathers on the wild New England shore.
“... Plymouth Rock, that had been to their feet as a doorstep
Into a wild unknown, the corner-stone of a nation.”
“Setting rhetorical exaggeration aside, we need not
doubt that in watching that sad yet hopeful procession
of men, women, and children, we are witnessing one of
the great events and one of the heroic scenes of history."1
“The consequences of that day," says the historian of the
United States, “are constantly unfolding themselves as
1 The United States : An Outline of Political History, 1492-1871,
by Goldwin Smith, D.C.L., p. 4.
It was
16
242
PURITANISM
time advances. It was the origin of New England; it
was the planting of New England institutions as the
pilgrims landed.
Their institutions were already per-
fected. Democratic liberty and independent Christian
worship at once existed in America.” Plymouth Rock,
famous throughout the world as the stepping-stone
upon which the pilgrims landed, still occupies the
same position as when the pilgrims' shallop first grazed
its side. The only alteration is that it has been raised
somewhat, and is now covered by an architectural
canopy of granite. De Tocqueville says: “This rock
has become an object of veneration in the United
States. I have seen bits of it preserved in several towns
of the Union. Does not this sufficiently show that all
human power and greatness is in the soul of man? Here
is a stone which the feet of outcasts pressed for an instant;
and this stone has become famous; it is treasured by a
great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic. And
what has become of the gateways of a thousand palaces ?
Who cares for them ?" 1
The numbers of the little company had been greatly
reduced by disease and death, and those who were spared,
unprovided with anything but the barest necessaries of
life, were ill-fitted to encounter the cold and rigour of
the New England winter. So rapid was the mortality,
that, when spring returned, and “the birds sang in the
woods most pleasantly,” scarce fifty of the original
hundred remained. “In those hard and difficult begin-
nings there were discontents and murmurings among
some, and mutinous speeches and carriage in others; but
1 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. i. p. 29.
FOUNDING OF NEW PLYMOUTH
243
they were soon quelled and overcome by the wisdom,
patience, and just and equal carriage of things by the
governor and better part.” So passed the sorrowful first
winter in Plymouth, but the spirit of the little company
was unbroken. In April the Mayflower was despatched
home to England, yet, notwithstanding the losses they
had sustained, and the hardships and privations they
were still enduring, not one of the brave company signi-
fied their willingness to return.
Oh, strong hearts and true ! not one went back in the Mayflower.
No! not one looked back who had set his hand to that ploughing."
Governor Carver was among those who had succumbed
to the fatal cold and hardships, and William Bradford,
who had been a member of the little Church in Scrooby,
was chosen to fill his place. He was governor of Ply-
mouth for nearly thirty years, and to his graphic and
picturesque chronicle we are indebted chiefly for what
we know of the migration from Scrooby, the transplant-
ing of the Church to Holland, and the settlement of the
Fathers in New Plymouth. The other notable leaders
in the colony were-William Brewster, the hospitable
provider of the first place of meeting in Scrooby, and
the stout Puritan soldier, Miles Standish, whose court-
ship is so quaintly related by Longfellow.
The Pilgrims entered into friendly relations with the
various tribes of Indians round about them. One tribe
alone refused their overtures, and showed their hostile
intentions by sending a bundle of new arrows tied up
in a rattlesnake's skin. The said skin was stuffed by
Miles Standish full of powder and shot, and sent back
as the response and challenge of the young colony,
244
PURITANISM
and this the messenger was directed to carry back to
the Indian sachem. Yet it would appear that at one
time the colonists were only saved from extermination
by an epidemic of sickness which broke out among
the Indians; but for this they had all probably been
tomahawked to death. Their number increased very
slowly, as compared with what might have been expected.
At the end of ten years the colony contained no more
than three hundred souls. It was all the settlers could
do to wring from the infertile soil the means of subsistence.
Inured to hardship and privation by their sojourn in
Holland, as well as by their previous manner of life, they
were well-fitted-better fitted probably than any similar
number of men that could have been selected from the
population of England—to encounter the rigour of the
climate, and to perform the hard task of colonisation.
Such heartening as the friends they had left behind had
it in their power to give, they received from time to
time. “Let it not be grievous to you that you have
been instrumental to break the ice for others. The
honour shall be yours to the world's end." I
“Out of
small beginnings," said Bradford, “great things have
been produced ; and as one small candle may light a
thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many;
yea, in some sort, to our whole nation.”
The Pilgrim Fathers the founders of a new empire.
--The attempt has sometimes been made to belittle the
1 "To the world's end the honour is theirs. If Columbus dis-
covered the New Continent, they discovered the New World.”—The
United States : An Outline of Political History, by Goldwin Smith, p. 5.
FOUNDING OF NEW PLYMOUTH
245
is
importance of New Plymouth, and the position of the
Fathers in relation to the future of America. Mr. Doylel
says “ that if the Plymouth settlement had never been
made, the political life of New England would in all
probability have taken the same form, and run the same
course as it did.” This is like saying that if Columbus
had not discovered America, it would very probably have
been discovered. But how does Mr. Doyle know that
the political life of New England would have run the
same course without the Fathers as it did run?. He
will say perhaps that the character of the men who
afterwards colonised Massachusetts lends support to his
conjecture; but suppose these had not been the Puritans
they were, suppose the first settlers had been Royalists,
as was the case in Virginia, is it likely that demiocracy
would have taken root as it did, or that free institutions
would have spread over America as they have done
to-day ? In making the assertion he does, Mr. Doyle
most seriously underestimates the influence of New Ply-
mouth upon the settlers in Massachusetts.
He forgets
that Independency became the religion of the latter,
and that, though in time the colony of New Plymouth
became incorporated with Massachusetts, it parted with
its autonomy, as Greece parted with her independence
by inoculating her conquerors with her own ideas,
manners, and character. There can be no doubt that
the Pilgrims were historically, and in the most real
and unimpeachable sense, the founders of the American
Republic. “In pursuit of religious freedom, they estab-
1 The English in America : The Puritan Colonies, by J. A. Doyle,
vol. i. p. 61.
1
246
PURITANISM
lished civil liberty, and meaning only to found a Church,
gave birth to a nation, and in settling a town, commenced
an empire."
Congregationalism or Independency was in New
Plymouth the prevailing form of Church government,
and the special character it assumed was that which had
been impressed upon it by the revered and trusted
Robinson. William Brewster was the ruling elder of
the Church, and there being as yet no ordained minister
among the little band of emigrants, he performed all the
duties of this office, except the administration of the
sacraments. It cannot be said, however, that in the
young rising colony the principles of Separatism won
their way and triumphed without a struggle. The
devoted band of men and women who had joined them-
selves in Church covenant at Leyden, with John Robinson
as their pastor, did not constitute the whole company
that had come over in the Mayflower. In England they
had been joined by others; others again came over after-
wards to New England, some of them not of the most
reputable sort, and made common cause with the colonists
of New Plymouth. Among these were a number of Con-
forming Puritans, and these, instigated by their friends
and sympathisers in England, sought to subvert the
constitution of the Church at Plymouth, and “capture”
it in the interest of their own anti-Separatist principles.
In this, however, they were signally defeated, and at the
end of ten years, after fortune and prosperity had begun
to smile upon their labours, and the Fathers had suc-
ceeded in quelling all opposition, and living down all
FOUNDING OF NEW PLYMOUTH
247
serious prejudi se, it fell out that the little handful of
men and women gathered into the Church at Scrooby,
and there cradled, and afterwards nurtured into strength
at Leyden, became the nucleus of the first Free Church
of America, the founders of a new free commonwealth
of Churches, destined to sow over a vast continent the
seed of religious faith and religious liberty.
Growing prosperity of Plymouth. In 1627 the
partnership with the “ Adventurers," or merchants in
London who had advanced the money necessary to enable
the Fathers to emigrate, came to an end. The whole of
their stock and interest in the colony were made over to
the settlers, and they were relieved of the burden of
pecuniary obligation which for seven years had been
weighing heavily upon them. The sun of prosperity
had begun at last to shine upon them; the wilderness
had become a fruitful field, and gave promise of yet
further increase of growth and fruitfulness. There is no
better or more pleasing picture of the condition and
appearance of New Plymouth than that furnished by
Isaac de Rasières, secretary of the Dutch colony at New
Netherlands, who visited Plymouth in 1627. It stood
on rising ground, separated from the sea by some twenty
yards of sand. The buildings were laid out like a Roman
city in miniature. Two streets crossing one another
formed the town, and at their meeting stood the
governor's house.
Before it was an open space, guarded
by four cannon, one to command each of the ways
which there met. On an eminence behind the town, but
within its precincts, stood the little meeting-house, which,
248
1
PURITANISM
besides serving the purpose of worship, was also a public
storehouse, a powder magazine, and a fort all in one,
protected with battlements and six cannon—a combina-
tion of law and gospel, which not only served the
convenience, but was essential to the safety of the little
community. Each house was a substantial log-hut,
standing in its own enclosed patch of ground. Round
the whole ran a palisade, the tun, which, as a distin-
guishing feature, so often gave its name to the Teutonic
settlements. Of the four entrances three were guarded
by gates, the fourth being sufficiently protected by the
fort or by the sea. Along the stream to the south was
the arable land divided into small patches of corn.
Beyond lay the common pasture, consisting of meadow
and wood and jungle. But it is not necessary to expand
this description. Enough has been noted to indicate the
thrift and growing resourcefulness of the young vigorous
colony. New Plymouth is now fairly started on its
epoch-making career.
The founding of Massachusetts
249
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
1625-1649
Charles I. reigned
John Endicott arrived at Naumkeag (Salem).
Massachusetts colonised
1628
1629
.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II
Massachusetts Bay Company-Non-Separatists--Endicott and his
Company at Salem-Joined by Higginson and his Company-Second
Independent Church--Voting by ballot--Bancroft, on State and
Church at Salem-Prelatists expelled-Pilgrim Fathers-Puritans
and Separatists-Robinson's counsel and prediction-Antipathy to
Separatism disappearing-Democracy-Church Membership a con-
dition of franchise-Not so in New Plymouth-Increase of Massa-
chusetts.
LEADERS IN COLONY
Francis Higginson, John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, John Winthrop,
Thomas Dudley, Henry Vane, John Harvard, Hugh Peters.
250
CHAPTER II
THE FOUNDING OF MASSACHUSETTS
NINE years after the planting of New Plymouth, another
band of exiles, unable to endure longer the yoke of an
overbearing and prelatical Church, and enamoured with
the prospect of enjoying liberty and purity of worship, set
sail to the shores of New England, and formed themselves
into a colony on Massachusetts Bay. They were for-
tunate enough to secure a charter from the King,
empowering them to form themselves into a corporation,
and assume the title, “The Governor and Company of
the Massachusetts Bay in New England." The readiness
with which the Royal charter was granted is doubtless
explained by Charles' desire to rid himself of those who
had become to him and his government a source of
trouble and annoyance, though afterwards, like Pharaoh, he
seems to have hardened his heart and repented for having
let the people go.
The number of new settlers was be-
tween three and four hundred; they were a mixed body
of emigrants, consisting mainly of Puritans whose leanings
were rather towards. Presbyterianism than Independency,
and did not favour the Separatist principles of the latter.
They esteemed it their honour to call the Church of
England their dear mother, and could not part from their
251
252
PURITANISM
اور
+
native country, where she specially resided, without much
sadness of heart and many tears in their eyes ; ever
acknowledging that such hope and part as they had
attained in the common salvation, they had received in
her bosom and sucked from her breasts."
Among them
were probably some sincerely attached to episcopal order
and worship. Driven out as they were from their
native land by the high-handed tyranny of Laud,
they remembered only as it faded out of their sight
that it was the land of their birth and their fathers'
sepulchres.
'We will not say,"—such are the words
ascribed to Higginson,—“as the Separatists were wont
to say at their leaving of England, Farewell, Babylon !
farewell, Rome! but we will say, Farewell, dear
England ! farewell the Church of God in England, and
all the Christian friends there; we do not go to New
England as Separatists from the Church of England,
though we cannot but separate from the corruptions in
it; but we go to practise the positive part of Church
reformation, and propagate the gospel in. America."
Prior to the arrival of this company a number of
Puritans, including men of wealth and wide social influ-
ence, had obtained from the Council of New England a
tract of land of considerable extent, from the Merrimack
to the Charles River. This was made over to an asso-
ciation of six gentlemen, one of whom, John Endicott,
a stern and resolute Puritan, was installed as governor
over the new plantation. He was to be aided by “ a
plentiful provision of godly ministers,” and enjoined to
bear in mind-so ran the letter of instructions from
the directors in London--that “the propagating of the
.
THE FOUNDING OF MASSACHUSETTS
253
gospel is the thing we do profess above all to be our
aim in settling this plantation. Endicott and his
following made their way to Naumkeag, and here they
joined themselves to a number of others, and the name
Naumkeag was changed to Salem, or “ peace,” in token
of the amicable agreement which had been concluded
with the earlier settlers. By the accession of the com-
pany led by Francis Higginson, Salem rose at once into
strength and importance, and Endicott became governor
of a colony that took the lead of all others, at once
distancing New Plymouth, which had been in existence
for nine years.
The second Independent or Congregational Church
in America.-By this time Endicott's Puritan convictions
had carried him to the extreme verge of Separatism, as is
evidenced by a letter he wrote to Governor Bradford of
Plymouth prior to the arrival of Higginson and his
company: “ Touching your judgment of the outward
forms of God's worship, it is, as far as I cản yet gather,
no other than is warranted by the evidence of truth, and
the same which I have professed and maintained ever
since the Lord in mercy revealed Himself unto me. On
the arrival and settlement of the new-comers the whole
matter of the Church standing of the colony came up for
consideration, and after a day spent in fasting and prayer,
and after Higginson and Skelton had given a detailed
statement of their views, a ballot was taken, "every fit
member voting”; and Skelton was chosen pastor, and
Higginson teacher. This is the first recorded instance
of voting by ballot in America. They were solemnly
254
PURITANISM
inducted into their office, the Plymouth Church being
invited to send delegates; and Bradford and others who
were present with him gave to pastor and teacher the
right hand of fellowship,“ wishing all prosperity and a
blessed success to such good beginnings."1 A Confession
of Faith and Covenant according to the Holy Scrip-
tures, was drawn up by. Higginson in the following
terms—the same substantially, it will be observed, as
that adopted by the little Church at Scrooby : “ We
covenant with the Lord, and one with another, and
do bind ourselves, in the presence of God, to walk
together in all His ways, according as He is pleased to
reveal Himself unto us in His blessed word of truth.
Thus the Church of Skelton and Higginson was the
second Independent or Congregational Church in America.
“To the great European world,” says Mr. Bancroft,
the few tenants of the mud-hovels at Salem might
appear too insignificant to merit notice; to themselves
they were as the chosen emissaries of God. The
emigrants were not so much a body politic as a Church
in the wilderness, with no benefactor round them but
nature, no present sovereign but God.
An entire sepa-
ration was made between State and Church; religious
worship was established on the basis of the independence
of each separate religious community. The Church was
self-constituted. It did not ask the assent of the King, ,
or recognise him as its head; its officers were set apart
and ordained among themselves; it used no liturgy; it
rejected unnecessary ceremonies, and reduced the sim-
plicity of Calvin to a still plainer standard. The motives
1 Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, p. 265.
THE FOUNDING OF MASSACHUSETTS
255
“ We
which controlled their decisions were so deeply seated
in the character of their party, that the doctrine and
discipline established at Salem remained the rule of
Puritan New England.” 1
It was not to be expected, in so mixed a body of
colonists, that this doctrine and discipline would secure
perfect conformity. There were those who were favourers
of Prelacy, and were sincerely attached to "the Common
Prayer worship.” These naturally took umbrage at what
they regarded as an unwarrantable invasion of their
liberty. "You are Separatists,” they said to their fellow-
colonists, "and you will shortly be Anabaptists.”
separate,” was the answer, “not from the Church of
England, but from its corruptions. We came away from
the Common Prayer and ceremonies in our native land,
where we suffered much for nonconformity; in this place
of liberty we cannot, we will not use them. Their im-
position would be a sinful violation of the worship of
God." The stronger party proceeded by force to sup-
press the convictions of the weaker,--thus showing how,
in their zeal for freedom, men may be recreant to the
very genius of freedom, and they seized upon the two
leaders of the episcopal section, and at the instance of
Endicott, who told them "that New England was no
place for such as they,” shipped them off to England by
the first returning vessel. They were banished from
Salem because they were Churchmen. For such sum-
mary retaliation no defence can be offered. It was
1 Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. i. p. 262; in revised
edition, pp. 271–272, in which the phraseology is slightly altered.
2 Yet Dr. Palfrey, in his History of New England, vol. i. pp. 299,
300, does essay to defend it. “The right of the Governor and Com-
256
PURITANISM
the first upcropping of the persecuting spirit in New
England.
!
The Fathers of New Plymouth
of New Plymouth Puritans and
Separatists.--A very sharp line of distinction is
sometimes drawn between the religious, or, speaking
more strictly, the ecclesiastical position of the early
colonists of Massachusetts and the Pilgrim Fathers of
Plymouth. It is maintained that the inclusion among
the former of Episcopalians and Presbyterians and Con-
pany of Massachusetts Bay to exclude at their pleasure dangerous
or disagreeable persons from their domain they never regarded as
questionable, any more than a householder doubts his right to deter-
mine who shall be the inmates of his home. No civilised man had
a right to come or to be within their chartered limits except them-
selves and such others as they, in the exercise of an absolute discre-
tion, saw fit to harbour. . . . Religious intolerance, like every other
public restraint, is criminal wherever it is not needful for the public
safety ; it is simply self-defence whenever tolerance would be public
ruin." True, but who will maintain that the safety of the colony
was endangered by the presence of “ one, two, or more surpliced
priests conducting worship in accordance with the Book of Common
Prayer”? It is probably quite true that behind the surpliced priest
the colonists saw the intolerance of Laud and the despotism of the
Court of High Commission ; but seeing that the surpliced priest had
no power to threaten them with either the one or the other, they
might just as well have left him alone. It is not pretended that
these men were guilty of insubordination or of not being “conform-
able to the government.” Had that been any ground of accusation
against them, they should have been dealt with, not as Churchmen,
but as rebels. As Churchmen (Dr. Palfrey's specious pleading not-
withstanding) justice and religious toleration required that they
should be protected, and the rulers of the colony could well have af-
forded to extend toleration to them. “Master, we saw one casting out
devils in Thy name, and we forbade him, because he followeth not
with us." Will Dr. Palfrey say that this exorcist was a dangerous
or disagreeable person, whom the disciples had a perfect right to
“ exclude,” or interdict? The Master had a very different opinion.
THE FOUNDING OF MASSACHUSETTS
257
1
formists parts them by a deep and wide gulf from the
uncompromising Separatists who had come over in the
Mayflower. The distinction certainly needs to be borne
in mind, but in our judgment it is not of that vital
importance which is sometimes claimed for it. It does
not seem to us that much is gained by contending that
the Pilgrim Fathers were not Puritans, but Separatists.
We know no valid or sufficient reason for refusing them
their right of inheritance in the great name and tradi-
tions of Puritanism. They were both Puritans and
Separatists. It were as unreasonable to deny their right
to be called Protestants. The Separatists in the Puritan
party were only extreme Puritans; they were the van-
guard of the Puritan host, that is to say, they carried
their zeal for reform and purity of doctrine and worship
to its implied and, as they believed, necessary conse-
1 See pamphlet entitled, The Pilgrim Fathers neither Puritans nor
Persecutors. A Lecture delivered at the Friends' Institute, London,
on the 18th January 1866. Reprinted in 1891, with Preface, by the
late Benjamin Scott, Esq., F.R.A.S., Chamberlain of the City of
London. Third edition. (Elliot Stock.) Mr. Scott makes much
of the hostility existing between Puritan and Separatist—the fact
that the former was sometimes more bitter against Separatism than
against Prelacy or Popery--as an evidence of the marked and radical
difference between them, but this by no means sustains his conten-
tion. It is unhappily only too common for those who are members
of the same household of faith, whether in politics or in religion, to
regard each other with inveterate dislike. The feeling which the
Whig sometimes has for the Radical and the Radical for the Whig,
the feeling which the general Baptist sometimes has for the strict
Baptist, and the strict Baptist for the general, not to speak of numer-
ous other instances, should have led him, we think, to suspect the
conclusiveness of such evidence. The old classification of “moder-
ate” Puritans and “rigid” Puritans (see Fletcher's History of Inde-
pendency, vol. iii. p. 28), or Puritans and Puritan Separatists, seems
on every ground to be preferred to that of Puritans and Separatists..
17
258
PURITANISM
quence. To borrow a political illustration, the Whigs
may be said to compose the right, and the Radicals the
left wing of the Liberal party, but the right of both to
be designated Liberals is allowed and recognised. In
the same way there is no reason to deviate from tradi-
tional usage in regarding those who were zealous for
separation from the Church of England as members of
the great Puritan party.
But there are other reasons why this distinction should
not be pressed, and not the least influential is that
derived from the character of New Plymouth Independ-
ency, as impressed upon it by Robinson. Quoting once
more from the memorable address : “Another thing he
commanded to us that we should use all means to avoid
and shake off the name of Brownist, being a mere nick-
name and brand to make religion odious and the professors
of it odious to the Christian world. For," said he, “there
will be no difference between the unconformable ministers
and you when they come to the practice of ordinances
out of the kingdom.” This prediction was literally
fulfilled. Separatists and conforming Puritans, as they
were called, found no difficulty in composing their
differences on the free soil of New England. The fact
1 « The English Reformation was brought about, as every other
great change is brought about, by the co-operation of two classes of
men, who are, on the whole, content with the principles by which
they have hitherto guided their lives, though they think some
changes ought to be made in matters of detail ; and those who start
upon an entirely new principle, and who strive to realise an ideal
society which commends itself to their own minds. They answer,
in short, to the Whigs and Radicals of modern political life, whilst
the Conservatives are represented by a third class, averse to all
change whatever.”—Gardiner's Puritan Revolution, p. 1.
THE FOUNDING OF MASSACHUSETTS
259
that there was no Church to dissent from was an effectual
guarantee that this apple of discord would not be intro-
duced among them. The seed of liberty soon found a
congenial nidus in the prolific soil of New England. Its
growth could not be checked. The Conformists soon
found themselves making common cause with the Sepa-
ratists; not only did scruples and differences begin to
melt away, but they found themselves also, by a spon-
taneous and rapid process, assimilating the extreme
principles of the latter.
The Puritans in England were amazed as well as
alarmed at the boldness of their brethren in Massa-
chusetts, and the correspondence that passed between
them—expostulation on the one side and self-defence on
the other—is instructive and entertaining. It shows
that no sooner had Endicott and the Puritans who
came with him begun to breathe the air of the free
wilderness, than they began to lose the antipathy of their
party against Separatism, and to see that the theory of
the Pilgrims concerning “the outward form of God's
worship" was “warranted by the evidence of truth." In
the Utopia of New England there was no room for the
1 The ease with which rigid Puritanism drifted into Separatism
in New England, is signally illustrated in the case of John Cotton,
formerly rector of St. Botolph's Church in Boston, Lincolnshire.
“As long as he abode in England, in all his opposition to the epis-
copal corruptions, went not beyond Cartwright and the Presby-
terians. So soon as he did taste of the New English air he fell into
so passionate an affection with the religion he found there, that,
incontinent, he began to persuade it with a great deal more zeal and
success than before he had opposed it.”—Palfrey's History of New
England, vol. ii. p. 84, note.
2 See Hanbury's Historical Memorials, vol. ii. chap. XXXV.,
entitled,
“Nine positions sent to New England - Answers-Reply."
260
PURITANISM
propagation or assertion of erroneous opinions, even about
"things indifferent.” 1 It will thus be seen that the
Church position taken up by the colonists at Salem was
substantially the same as that which had been outlined
by Robinson and adopted by the Fathers at Plymouth.
There is no preciser form of democracy extant than
that which was established as the basis of the govern-
ment of Massachusetts. Voting by ballot was introduced
from the beginning, and “government of the people, for
the people, by the people "—to use the memorable words
of Abraham Lincoln-gave token that it was nevermore
to “perish from the earth.” The time was not yet ripe
for universal suffrage, but, with this exception, repre-
sentative democracy was as perfect in New England as
it is in the America of to-day.
Church membership a condition of the franchise.
-In their zeal for religion the colonists of Massa-
chusetts went beyond the Fathers of New Plymouth,
for “to the end the body of the commons may be
preserved of honest and good men, it was ordered
and agreed that for the time to come no man shall be
admitted to the freedom of this body politic but such as
are members of some of the Churches within the limits
of the same.” On this account the accusation of narrow-
ness has been freely brought against the colonists of
Massachusetts. But it does not appear that, in this
instance, the accusation has any firm basis on which to
rest. The condition imposed seemed to the members of
1 The Genesis of the New England Churches, by Dr. Leonard Bacon,
pp. 456, 462.
THE FOUNDING OF MASSACHUSETTS
261
a theocracy such as Massachusetts aspired to be, the
most suitable and the most natural thing possible under
the circumstances. Unquestionably it would have been
wiser if they had seen their way to the broad position
taken up by Cromwell: “ The State, in choosing men to
serve it, takes no notice of their opinions. If they be
willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies.” But in
Massachusetts things were not ripe for such a principle
of selection. Indeed, it is difficult to see how they could
have acted upon any other principle than that which they
did, though it was sure to be found unworkable as the
colony grew stronger and more numerous.
We may say,
with Dr. Palfrey," that the conception, if a delusive and
impracticable, was a noble one. Nothing better can be
imagined for the welfare of a country than that it shall be
ruled on Christian principles ; in other words, that its
ruters shall be Christian men--men of disinterestedness
and integrity of the choicest quality that the world
knows—men whose fear of God exalts them above every
other fear, and whose controlling love of God and of man
consecrates them to the most generous aims.
The con-
clusive objection to the scheme is one which experience
had not yet revealed, for the experiment was now made
for the first time.'
In New Plymouth church membership was not made
a condition of the elective franchise. As we shall have
occasion to show in what falls to be said upon this sub-
ject, the spirit of toleration was more prevalent among
1 History of New England, vol. i. p. 345. See also, for defence of
Massachusetts, Dr. Dexter's Congregationalism as seen in its Literature,
P. 420.
262
PURITANISM
the Fathers than among any of the early colonists. It
is even said that Miles Standish, the stout-hearted soldier
and leader at Plymouth, was a Roman Catholic, and con-
sidering the fiery hatred of Rome which, even more than
their zeal for liberty, distinguished the early Puritans,
this fact (if it were a fact) registers considerable width
of view and catholicity. “Their residence in Holland
had made them acquainted with various forms of
Christianity; a wide experience had emancipated them
from bigotry; and they were never betrayed into the
excesses of religious persecution, though they sometimes
permitted a disproportion between punishment and
crime.”
Leading men in Massachusetts.-The early
history of Massachusetts is the history of a class of men
as remarkable for gifts of statesmanship and organising
power as for their moral and religious qualities. Francis
Higginson, the leader of the first party of emigrants, had
been rector of a church in Lincolnshire, and had been
deprived of his living for nonconformity. John Cotton,
a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, had been for
more than twenty years rector of St. Botolph's, Boston,
and, rather than continue in a position which had become
intolerable to his conscience, chose to give up his living,
and quit the most magnificent parish church in England
to officiate in the rude meeting-house in Boston, Massa-
chusetts. In the same ship came Thomas Hooker, also
fellow of Emmanuel College, and afterwards known as
“ the light of the Western Churches." Other emigrants
were Hugh Peters, afterwards the friend and chaplain
THE FOUNDING OF MASSACHUSETTS
263
of Cromwell, and who, for the part he took in connection
with the execution of King Charles I., suffered death as
a regicide; John Harvard, the founder of the celebrated
university, which is now the glory of the literary republic;
Henry Vane, the younger, "young in years, but not in
sage counsel old,” one of the greatest of Puritan states-
men, a prominent actor in the Cromwellian republic, and
who preferred to die upon the scaffold rather than desert
the "righteous cause" of liberty, or abate his testimony
against kingly and tyrannical usurpation.
The accession, however, which bore most closely on
the immediate interests of the colony was the arrival of
John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley, men cast in very
different moulds, but both destined to exercise great
influence upon the young rising republic. Dudley, like
Endicott, was a stern and unbending Puritan, but less
liberal, a good hater, and hating nothing so much as
tolerance of what he deemed laxity and error. A quatrain
found among his papers after his death reveals not only
a foible for making verses, but also the spirit of the man
and of the age in which he played his part-
" Let men of God in courts and churches watch
O'er such as do a Toleration hatch,
Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice
To poison all with heresy and vice."
John Winthrop was a gentleman of wealth and posi-
tion who, at the age of forty-two, left his manor house in
Sussex to help in the planting of faith and freedom in
New England. In Winthrop is seen the noblest type of
Puritanism ; the same mingling of firmness and charity,
purity and grace, which is exhibited in the character of
264
PURITANISM
Colonel Hutchinson, and imparts to it such singular
charm and beauty. In the art of managing men, and in
the power of winning confidence and commanding respect,
he has been compared to Washington, and, indeed, in this
and in other respects he bears no little resemblance to
that most stainless of all patriots. The fortitude of his
mind, and the disciplined patience and sweetness of his
temper, enabled him to encounter and to endure what would
have been insupportable to others, nor did all the hard-
ships and untoward circumstances of New England lead
him to cast one longing, lingering look behind at the
treasures he had quitted in the Egypt of his native land.
Writing to his wife, whom he had left behind in England,
he says: “We here enjoy God and Jesus Christ, and is
not this enough? I thank God I like so well to be here,
as I do not repent my coming. I would not have altered
my course though I had foreseen all the afflictions. I
never had more content of mind."
Winthrop and Dudley were associated together, the
one as governor, the other as deputy-governor, of the
colony for many years, indeed, with one or two breaks,
during the whole term of their natural life. The acces-
sion of such leaders to the colony of Massachusetts was
the means of originating a tide of emigration, which,
with more or less intermission, did not cease to flow till
the rising of the English nation against Charles and
Laud, and the success which attended it was the means
of inducing a goodly number of the exiles to return to
their native land. It was in 1630 that Winthrop and
Dudley reached New England, and before the year had
expired seventeen ships had come to New England,
THE FOUNDING OF MASSACHUSETTS
265
bringing not far from fifteen hundred passengers. The
major part of these were Puritans, -eight hundred of
them belonging to the Independent party,—and com-
prising not a few clergymen, scholars, and men of ample
means and fortune. The depth of their emotion, and the
pain which it cost them to wrench themselves away from
their friends in England, are revealed in their parting
words: “Our hearts shall be fountains of tears for your
everlasting welfare when we shall be in our poor cottages
in the wilderness.” By the year 1634, Massachusetts
had received an accession of nearly four thousand settlers,
and about twenty villages or parishes, with an average
population of two hundred each, had been founded.
“ Thus was founded the theocratic commonwealth of
Massachusetts, with none like it to be found in history,
except the republic of Calvin ; like it, brave, austere, but
intolerant of inquiry, persecuting heresy without pity and
We shall be able better, by and by,
to form a correct estimate of the justness (or otherwise)
of this description.
without mercy.
191
1 Dr. Borgeaud's Rise of Modern Democracy, “Massachusetts,"
p. 149.
Roger Williams: the Beginnings of
1Religious Controversy in New England
267
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
1633-1645
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury
Roger Williams founded first Baptist Church
in America
1639
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER III
Liberty needing safeguarding-Roger Williams-His individual-
ism and love of toleration–His personal character–Call to church
at Salem- Banishment-Wanderings among Indians-Settles in
Rhode Island and founds town of Providence-Becomes Baptist and
founds Baptist Church–Deposed by Salem Church-Visit to England
“The Bloody Tenet of Persecution”-Father of Voluntaryism-
His position stated, and exaggerations refuted—First to found a free
Church in free State-Rhode Island Settlement-Anne Hutchinson
and Antinomianism—Expelled from Massachusetts-Founding of
Portsmouth and Newport.
268
CHAPTER III
ROGER WILLIAMS : THE BEGINNINGS OF RELIGIOUS
CONTROVERSY IN NEW ENGLAND
THE colonists of Massachusetts, like those of New Ply
mouth, had left their native land to enjoy a civil and
religious freedom which was denied them by an oppres-
sive and prelatical Church; yet when this object had been
attained, and it became necessary to frame a Constitution
of their own, they found it a task hard and formidable
enough. Even liberty requires to be checked and safe-
guarded, or it becomes an insufferable tyranny. Apart
from the character and stamp of men who gave in their
adhesion to it, even Robinsonian Independency furnished
no guarantee for the preservation of liberty and order.
The very theory of Church Independency fosters, as
Professor Masson says, the development of theological
differences and their strenuous expression. The very
freedom it encourages, the direct appeal it makes to the
individual conscience, or, as it is now termed, the right
of private judgment, seemed to these early colonists
to call for some safeguarding provision, some outward
regulative control. “ The New England Church was a
State Church (we should rather call it a Church State)
after a fashion. The pious Puritans, who had expatriated
269
270
PURITANISM
themselves from cruel England, had no other idea than
that of founding in the wilderness a commonwealth
pervaded and regulated by the strictest legislation of
the Bible, and every man, woman, and child in which
should walk all their lives long in the ways of Puritan
Christianity.”i Troubles were in store for the rising
colony,— troubles inseparable from the new order of
things,—and these were precipitated by the action, the
strident individualism it may be called, of one man, to
whose character and doings we venture to devote a con-
siderable, and what may even seem a disproportionate,
space.
Roger Williams.—“In the year 1654 a certain
windmill in the Low Countries, whirling around with
extraordinary violence by reason of a violent storm then
blowing, the stone at length, by its rapid motion, became
so intensely hot as to fire the mill, from whence the
flames, being dispersed by the high winds, did set a
whole town on fire. But I can tell my reader," says
this lively and graphic writer,2 “ that above twenty years
before this there was a whole country in America like to
be set on fire by the rapid motion of a windmill in the
head of one particular man.” This particular man was
Roger Williams, and certainly no more picturesque figure,
no more daring and untemporising, though erratic mind,
ever impressed itself upon the early history of America.
This remarkable man was a Welshman, born in Carmar-
thenshire about the year 1606, that is, fourteen years
1 Masson's Milton and his Time, vol. ii. pp. 564, 571.
2 Cotton Mather.
ROGER WILLIAMS
271
before the Mayflower set sail. He received his education
at Charterhouse School, London, and afterwards at Pem-
broke College, Cambridge. If he ever contemplated
entering the ministry of the Church, the way soon be-
came barred through his Separatist leanings and sub-
sequent Separatist convictions. He found an influential
friend and patron in Sir Edward Coke. Writing after-
wards to the daughter of that eminent lawyer, he says:
“That man of honour and wisdom and piety, your dear
father, was often pleased to call me his son; and truly it
was as bitter as death to me when Bishop Laud pursued
me out of the land, and my conscience was persuaded
against the National Church, and ceremonies and bishops,
beyond the conscience of your dear father,--I say, it was
as bitter as death to me when I rode Windsor-way to
take ship at Bristowe, and saw Stoke House, where that
blessed man was, and durst not acquaint him with my
conscience and my flight.” When he arrived at Nan-
tasket in 1631, he was about twenty-five years of age,
"a young minister, godly and zealous, and having
precious gifts.” He at once began to promulgate the
great doctrine with which his name has become identified
-the right and duty of every man to form his own
opinions and act upon his religious convictions without
restraint or interference of any kind whatever. The prin-
ciple of authority never found a more strenuous assailant,
the principle of toleration a more uncompromising ad-
vocate. He said: “The doctrine of persecution for cause
of conscience is most evidently and lamentably contrary
to the doctrine of Christ Jesus.” The civil magistrate, he
averred, had no right to compel attendance on public
272
PURITANISM
worship, no right to punish any breach of the fourth
commandment, no right to impose fines or oaths, or to
levy any tax whatever for the maintenance of religion.
“The civil magistrate may not intermeddle even to stop
a Church from apostasy and heresy; his power extends
only to the bodies and goods and outward estate of men.”
He likens the commonwealth to a ship manned by a
motley crew composed of men of various religious creeds.
Each one is free to follow his own creed and worship God.
according to his own conscience. All this is perfectly
compatible with the captain having sole charge of the
ship and enforcing discipline among the crew.
No one
shall be bound to worship, or maintain a worship, against
his own consent." “What?” said his opponents. “Is
not the labourer worthy of his hire ?” “Yes,” replied
Williams, " for them that hire him."
He retorted upon
those who contended that only members of the Church
should be magistrates, that it were as unreasonable to
select a “doctor of physick or a pilot” according to his
skill in theology and his standing in the Church. Every
Church, Williams maintained, was absolutely independent
of every other Church, and to this principle of Independ-
ency he saw nothing but danger, a perilous approximation
to Presbyterian tyranny, in the so-called conferences be-
tween ministers and Churches. "He pushed Brownism
to its logical conclusions — the complete separation of
civil and religious matters, and absolute democracy.” 1
Professor Masson speaks of him as « the arch-indi-
vidualist, Roger Williams.” No doubt many before
Williams had reached the same conclusions ; it is his
1 Borgeaud's Rise of Modern Democracy, p. 156.
ROGER WILLIAMS
273
pre-eminent distinction that he did not hesitate to carry
them out to their extreme logical and practical conse-
quences, and that in the face of prejudice, obloquy, and
persecution. Williams claimed not only the fullest
toleration for his own opinions, however repugnant they
might be to others; he claimed also a like toleration
for the opinions of others, however repugnant they
might be to himself.
He would be no party to imposing
any disability on Turk or Infidel, Mohammedan or Jew,
Catholic or Protestant, Conformist or Separatist. He
held that it was unlawful to take possession of lands
without having purchased them from the Indians, the
original occupiers. The King of England could not make
a valid grant of lands which did not belong to him.
To take them and make them over to the colonists was,
in Roger Williams' eyes, nothing less than thievery. The
consternation produced by the promulgation of such views,
and put forward with extraordinary zeal and vehemence,
can be easily imagined.
Let no one suppose, however, that extreme as his.
opinions were, extravagant as they seemed to the sober-
minded colonists, that Roger Williams was either fanatic
or firebrand. His excesses were tempered by a rich
glowing and affectionate nature, one of those natures,
contact with which disarms prejudice and hostility. No
one could succeed in hating him who came under the
spell of his personal influence. Those who knew him
best, said Cotton Mather, declared him, from “ the whole
course and tenor of his life and conduct, to have been one
of the most disinterested men that ever lived, a most pious
and heavenly-minded soul.”
18
274
PURITANISM
The people of Salem desired to have him as their
teacher. This raised in headquarters such a storm of
opposition that Williams found it prudent to withdraw
from Salem, and accordingly betook himself to Plymouth,
where he remained for two years in association with
Brewster and the Fathers. But the people of Salem
would not be baulked in their intention, and on the
death of their pastor, Skelton, they elected Williams to
fill his place. This was the occasion for a manifesto
from Governor Haynes and the ruling magistrate. Sum-
moned before the General Court, and in presence of his
accusers, he "maintained the rocky strength of his
grounds,” and declared himself “ ready to be bound and
banished, and even to die in New England,” rather than
renounce his opinions. At a meeting of the Court in
Boston the following edict was passed: “Whereas Mr.
Roger Williams, one of the elders of the Church of
Salem, hath broached and divulged divers new and
dangerous opinions against the authority of magistrates,
and also writ letters of defamation both of the magistrates
and Churches here, and that before any conviction, and
yet maintaineth the same without retractation, it is there-
fore ordered that the said Mr. Williams shall depart out
of this jurisdiction within six weeks now next ensuing.” 1
The refractoriness of Williams gave the authorities
considerable trouble. They tried to entrap him and his
wife and child, and ship them off secretly to England,
but Williams, getting wind of their design, fled to the
woods, and took refuge with the Pokanokett Indians, in
1 See p. 345 for brief discussion of the alleged injustice of the
banishment of Roger Williams,
ROGER WILLIAMS
275
company with whom he wandered about for fourteen
weeks in the depth of winter, “ not knowing what bread
or bed did mean. He wrote letters of admonition to
all the Churches whereof any of the magistrates were
members, inciting them to admonish the magistrates of
their injustice. This was the breaking point of the strain
between Williams and the Churches themselves; they
could not justify his recusant and impenitent attitude.
His own wife was constrained to set herself in opposition
to him. Often in the stormy night he had neither fire nor
food nor company; often he wandered without a guide,
and had no house but a hollow tree; but his unconquer-
able spirit, winsomeness of disposition, power of inspiring
others with affection and trust, stood him in good stead.
He grappled to himself the hearts of the Indians as with
hooks of steel. God," he says, “ was pleased to give me
a painful, patient spirit to lodge with them in their filthy
smoky holes (even while I lived at Plymouth and Salem),
to gain their tongue.” “The barbarous heart of Canonicus, ,
the chief of the Narragansetts, loved him as his son to the
last gasp.” He said: “The ravens fed me in the wilder-
ness.” “ That ever-honoured Governor Winthrop privately
wrote to me to steer my course to the Narragansett Bay,
encouraging me from the freeness of the place from
English claims or patents. I took his prudent motion as
a voice from God.” To this bay Williams and his family,
with five other companions, steered their course. They
landed in Rhode Island in June 1636, and Williams
named the spot at which they landed “ Providence," for,
he said, “I desired it might be a shelter for persons
distressed for conscience.". Such was the foundation of
276
PURITANISM
the town of Providence, such the beginning of the settle-
ment of Rhode Island. With the utmost cordiality and
goodwill the Narragansett Indians ceded to him the ex-
tensive territory in the midst of which he had made his
home, and so confirmed him in possession of it that, as
he says, he could claim the soil as “his own as truly as
any man's coat upon his back." Here at once was to be
tried the experiment of setting up a democracy of the
most thoroughgoing type. Something like a community
of goods was at once established. Williams reserved to
himself not one foot of land, not one tittle of political
power more than he granted to servants and strangers.
“He gave away his lands and other estate to them that
he thought were most in want, until he gave them away
all.” As Professor Masson observes, it was probably the
most absolutely democratic community on the whole face
of the earth. But if it was a democracy, it was also a
theocracy, for it was laid down from the beginning that
God was their King, the ruler of conscience to be impli-
citly obeyed, “only in civil things” were they free to
frame their own laws and regulations.
Though Williams had stoutly protested against the
injustice of his being banished from Massachusetts, though
he had undergone untold hardships, and was still under
the sentence of outlawry, not the least feeling of resent-
ment or ill-will towards those who had been the means
of inflicting this suffering upon him found place in his
large and generous heart. “I did ever, from my soul,
honour, love them, even when their judgment led them
to afflict me.” Many hearts in Massachusetts were stirred
with relentings at the exhibition of such unruffled patience
.
ROGER. WILLIAMS
277
and sweetness. “That great and pious soul, Mr. Winslow,
melted, and kindly visited me, and put a piece of gold
into the hands of my wife for our supply.”
Williams was at once the founder of the new settle-
ment and its pastor and teacher. Surrounded by con-
genial associates, and strong in his own religious principles
and rectitude of purpose, he set to work to complete the
hard task he had taken in hand. It might have been
supposed that the work of organising the small community,
as well as of sowing broadcast the seed of the new faith
in the new country, would have consumed all his energies ;
especially when to this was added the necessity of labouring
for the maintenance of his family, for, as he says:
« Time
was spent day and night, at home and abroad, on land and
water, at the hoe and at the oar, for bread.” But there
was another difficulty, not less formidable that it was of
his own creating. Williams had a very clamant and
pertinacious creditor to satisfy in the shape of his own
conscience. It was all he could do to keep pace with its
requirements. Three years after his settlement in Rhode
Island we hear of his having embraced Baptist principles,
and with a consistency from which he never shrank, he
induced a poor man, who, like himself, had come all the
way from Salem, to baptize him ; then he baptized his
baptizer, along with ten others, thus founding what was
practically the first Baptist Church in America.
This was a great scandal to the Church at Salem, of
which Williams and his wife were still nominally mem-
bers, and at the instance of its new pastor, Hugh Peters,
the Church solemnly deposed them, along with others,
from its membership. Even then, Williams could not
278
PURITANISM
satisfy that uneasy and clamorous conscience of his, that
he had a right to be baptized, and that even if he had,
that the administration of baptism was valid, and in
accordance with the will of God. This raised in Williams'
mind the whole question of Church order and Church
ordinances. Was there divine authority for any of them ?
Was not the God who spake to Abraham and Saul of
Tarsus calling him to cut himself adrift from external
forms, and cast himself upon the unmediated revela-
tion and teaching of God Himself ?1 “Let the reader
fancy him," says Professor Masson, “in 1640, a man
of thirty-four, of bold and stout jaw, but with richest
and softest eyes, gazing out upon Narragansett Bay,
a spiritual Crusoe, the excommunicated even of Hugh
Peters, and the most extreme and outcast soul in all
America." 2
It does not fall within the scope of our purpose to
relate the history of Roger Williams.
This has been
abundantly done by others. All we are endeavouring
to do is to indicate his position in the New England theo-
cracy, and the religious and political developments to
which his influence so powerfully contributed.
over his visit to England in 1643, when he made the
acquaintance of Milton, and became intimate with the
leading divines of the Westminster Assembly; simply
noting how he threw himself with characteristic vehem-
We pass
1 In his fiery and polemical tract, George Fox digged out of his Bur-
rowes, written many years after, in 1676, he says: “I profess that if
my soul could find rest in joining unto any of the Churches profess-
ing Christ Jesus now extant, I would readily and gladly do it, yea,
unto themselves whom I now opposed.”
2 Masson’s Life of John Milton and History of his Time, vol. ii. p. 563.
ROGER WILLIAMS
279
ence into the controversy which was then raging round
the question of toleration, and wrote his famous tract,
entitled, The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for cause of Con-
science discussed in a Conference between Truth and Peace.
The tract was a most forcible plea for unlimited tolera-
tion, a toleration which should embrace all sects and all
opinions—Papists and Jews, Mohammedans, Pagans, and
Infidels. Yet he was well aware of the hopelessness of
his task, for he writes : “I confess I have little hope till
these flames are over that this discourse against the
doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience should
pass current, I say not amongst the wolves and lions,
but even among the sheep of Christ themselves. Yet
liberavi animam meam. I have not hid within my breast
my soul's belief.''
Professor Masson designates Roger Williams as the
father and apostle of what, since his time, has figured
anywhere in Great Britain, or in the United States, or
in the British Colonies, under the name of Voluntaryism.
Says the eloquent historian of the United States, he was
the first person in modern Christendom to assert in its
plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the
equality of opinions before the law; and in its defence
he was the harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the
superior of Jeremy Taylor. For Taylor limited his tolera-
tion to a few Christian sects; the philanthropy of Williams
compassed the earth. Williams would permit persecu-
tion of no opinion, of no religion, leaving heresy unharmed
by law and unprotected by the terrors of penal statutes.
He believed in liberty and equality, as he believed in
1 History of the United States, revised edition, vol. i. p. 298.
280
PURITANISM
the gospel
He had the robust faith-a faith without
scruples and without reservations--of the men of old
'
Exaggerated claims put forward on his behalf.
The error into which some of the panegyrists of Roger
Williams have fallen, is that of placing him on too lofty
à pedestal, and claiming for him too commanding a
position among the pioneers of progress and the apostles
of “soul - liberty." We certainly cannot follow Mr.
Straus 2 in bracketing Williams with Luther and Crom-
well as one of the three epoch-making men of modern
history; nor can we subscribe to the eloquent eulogy of
Mr. Bancroft, in which he says that he was “the first
person in modern Christendom who asserted in its
plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the
equality of opinions before the law.” This honour belongs,
more justly, to the despised Anabaptists and Mennonites
of Holland, who, a hundred years before, suffered in the
cause of “soul-liberty” the most rancorous persecution.
William, Prince of Orange, himself threw his shield over
them, and in commanding the magistrates of Middleburgh
to desist from persecuting the Anabaptists, used these
remarkable words-most remarkable when we consider
the time when they were spoken : “We declare to you
that you have no right to trouble yourselves with any
man's conscience, so long as nothing is done to cause
private harm or public scandal. We therefore expressly
1 Dr. Borgeaud, Rise of Modern Democracy, p. 164.
Roger Williams, the Pioneer of Religious Liberty, by Oscar S.
Straus (1894).
2
ROGER WILLIAMS
281
ordain that you desist from molesting these Baptists," etc.
This was in 1577. But there are other claimants, who
must; in all fairness, be regarded as having priority over
Roger Williams in asserting and advocating the doctrine
of toleration and religious liberty; or: Robert Browne,
for example, on behalf of whom it is claimed that he was
the first writer clearly to state and defend in the English
tongue the true and now accepted doctrine of the relation
of the magistrate to the Church. It was in 1581 that
Browne was inhibited from preaching his "seditious”
doctrines in Norwich. A generation later, and a whole
generation before Roger Williams, Leonard Busher wrote
his Religious Peace ; or, A Plea for Liberty of Conscience.
In 1611, in a Confession of Faith put forth by the
English Baptists of Amsterdam, it is clearly stated that
“the magistrate is not to meddle with religion or matters
of conscience, nor compel men to this or that form of
religion; because Christ is the King and Lawgiver of
the Church and conscience."
Williams' title to honour and pre-eminence rests, not
upon the ground that he was the earliest champion of
soul-liberty, or that, as Mr. Bancroft says, he was the
1 Leonard Busher, who was a member of the first English Church
of General Baptists founded by Thomas Helwys (see ante, p. 221),
published his tract in 1614, in which he says: “As kings and bishops
cannot command the wind, so they cannot command faith ; and as
the wind bloweth where it listeth, so is every man that is born
of the Spirit. You may force men to church against their con-
sciences, but they will believe as they did before, when they
came there.” This was written thirty years before the Bloody Tenet
of Persecution. A valuable catena of references to this subject will
be found in a note on p. 414, vol. i. of Dr. Palfrey's History of New
England. We propose to advert again to this subject, pp. 357–379.
282
PURITANISM
first person in modern Christendom who asserted in its
plenitude the doctrine of liberty of conscience, but that
he planted the first civil government in which the prin-
ciple of toleration and religious liberty was explicitly
proclaimed and consistently upheld and maintained.
His title to fame is, that he was the originator and
founder of “ a free Church in a free State.” 1
" 2
Rhode Island Settlement.--Slate Rock, to all
lovers of freedom, ought to have an interest second only
to Plymouth Rock. It was the spot where Williams and
his four companions landed, and where, upon the neigh-
bouring hillside, they commenced the first settlement of
Rhode Island, to which, in recognition of “God's merciful
providence to him in his distress,” he gave the name
Providence. In the course of time the first four or
five settlers were joined by others, and to a nucleus of
thirteen associates the lands granted by Canonicus and
Miantonomoh, the Indian sachems, were made over for a
sum of thirty pounds. These were formed into town-
ships, the settlers stipulating for themselves and for those
who should be afterwards admitted to the same, to render
"an active or passive obedience to all such orders or
agreements as shall be made for public good,” but it was
expressly added, “only in civil things.”
1 « The theories of freedom in Church and State, taught in the
schools of philosophy in Europe, were here brought into practice in
the government of a small community," etc. ---Professor Gervinus in
his Introduction to the History of the Nineteenth Century, p. 65.
2 The town of Providence has since raised a statue to the memory
of its founder. Roger Williams is represented in the attitude of
addressing an assembly, and on the book which he holds may be
read the inscription : “Soul-Liberty. 1636."
ROGER WILLIAMS
283
The name Providence was given, as we have seen, in
token of its founder's desire that “it might be a shelter
for persons distressed for conscience." The latitude of
this invitation proved, as might naturally be supposed,
dangerously wide. Those who chafed under the more
stringent laws and regulations of Massachusetts and of
other colonies, and those who for other reasons found
them intolerable, had a city of refuge conveniently near
at hand to which they could flee. Inevitably, Providence
became “a harbourage for all sorts of consciences.”
Thither fled the disaffected, the turbulent, fanatics of all
kinds and all shades of belief; every description of
"cranky” persons, "some half-crazed with those teeming
maggots of the brain which so breed in times of exas-
perating religious controversy; others possessed by harm-
less vagaries of illogical thought, which spring up in such
seasons in some minds, and which, if they have a meaning
to those who cherish them, are incomprehensible to every-
body else.” 1 Happily for the future of this settlement, ,
arrest was at length laid upon the tendency to religious
anarchy and political disorder, and out of this primal
chaos order and restraint and progress gradually emerged.
Anne Hutchinson and the “Antinomian Dispersion.”
-In the wake of the disturbance occasioned by Roger
Williams, and by his expulsion from Massachusetts,
there followed another controversy, bitterer by far than
any that had yet broken out. This was theological,
and raged round what was known as the doctrines of
1 A Popular History of the United States, by Bryant and Gay, vol. ii.
P. 40.
284
PURITANISM
Antinomianism. The leader in this controversy was a
woman of such“ busy spirit, competent wit, and voluble
tongue, yet profitable and sober carriage,” that she soon
drew companions and disciples round her, and extorted
even from her enemies testimony to her masculine under-
standing and power of eloquent persuasiveness. Mrs.
Anne Hutchinson, the harbinger of the “revolt of woman,”
as she has been termed, had followed her favourite
minister, the Rev. John Cotton, from Lincolnshire to New
England. She had brought over with her, says Win-
throp,"two dangerous errors—first, that the person of the
Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person ; second, that no
sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification.”
In exposition of her views, she lectured in Boston twice
a week, and large numbers of her own sex flocked to hear
her, many forsaking their own ministers and proclaiming
themselves her followers, "It began to be as common,
says Winthrop, “to distinguish between men by being
under a covenant of grace or a covenant of works as in
other countries between Protestants and Papists." Mrs.
Hutchinson found staunch supporters in her brother-in-
law, the Rev. John Wheelwright, and Sir Henry Vane, at
that time governor of the colony; even the sober-minded
and judicious Cotton declared in her favour; and a con-
siderable number of persons of influence in the colony
adopted her views, and abetted her arraignment of
ministers and priest-ridden magistrates living under a
covenant of works. She claimed to possess, and to live
and teach under, the influence of special divine inspira-
tion, a claim which of all others the more sober-minded
Puritans of that age were least able to tolerate. The
1
ROGER WILLIAMS
285
contest grew hot and furious, and at length issued in
what is known in the history of Massachusetts as the
Antinomian Dispersion. Anne Hutchinson was brought
to trial before the Court of Massachusetts. Sentence
of expulsion was passed upon her, and she, accompanied
by a goodly number of friends and sympathisers, made
their way to Providence, where they were hospitably
received by Roger Williams, and, at his advice, settled
down in Rhode Island, and founded the two towns of
Portsmouth and Newport.
Says Professor Masson: “These two, I should say,
this man in his prime from Carmarthenshire and this
woman from Lincolnshire, now with wrinkles round her
eloquent eyes,—-were the two spirits in New England
that had most of the incalculable in them, and had shot
furthest ahead in the speculative gloom.”!
1 Masson's Milton and his Time, vol. ii. p. 577.
Growth and Development of New England
287
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
1640
1649
.
Long Parliament met
Charles I, beheaded .
Four Colonies of New England united
Commencement of Protestant missions
1643
1646
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IV
Connecticut colonised-Thomas Hooker, father of American de-
mocracy-Connecticut professes no allegiance to British Crown-
New Hampshire — New Haven The Pequot Indians – Roger
Williams as peacemaker--Pequots implacable-Exterminated— Mis-
sionary labours-John Eliot, apostle to the Indians, translates Bible
-First missionary corporation—United colonies-Rhode Island left
out-Massachusetts predominant-Expansion of New England-
Attitude of England-A Governor-General of Commission threatened
-Resistance of colonists—False relation between colonies and mother
country-Measures to prevent emigration, especially of clergymen-
Eight ships arrested-Cromwell and Hampden not on board-Loss
to mother country by New England - Long Parliament-Emi-
gration stayed-Prosperity and longevity of colonists—Contrasted
with Europe --Winthrop's fine description of liberty.
LEADERS
In Rhode Island .
In Connecticut
In New Haven
Roger Williams.
Thomas Hooker.
John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton.
288
CHAPTER IV
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND
It is quite beside the purpose of this work to give any
detailed and connected history of the colonies of Con-
necticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and the way
in
which they rose into political importance. Only as this
bears upon the establishment of the Puritan theocracy
in New England does it come within the scope of our
present purpose.
Colonisation of Connecticut.-
We do not pro-
pose, therefore, to give any extended description of the
new communities that were formed, and the Puritan
villages which rose in rapid succession upon “the delight-
ful banks” of the Connecticut, nor of the rich harvest
that sprang from the cultivation of these alluvial lands.
Thomas Hooker, “the light of the Western Churches,'
was the chief pioneer in this movement. He was one of
the most learned and eloquent of the Puritan leaders,
and was specially distinguished for his broad and advanced
views in regard to the self-governing power of the people.
Winthrop and Cotton held such views to be both inex-
pedient and dangerous. Winthrop defended the restric-
tion of the suffrage, on the ground that “the best part
2
19
290
PURITANISM
is always the least, and of that best part the wiser part
is always the lesser." Hooker, on the other hand, held
that “in matters which concern the common good, a
general council, chosen by all, to transact businesses which
concern all, I conceive most suitable to rule, and most
safe for relief of the whole." To this position Hooker
steadfastly adhered, and in the course of a sermon preached
by him, after Connecticut had commenced its separate
and independent existence, he maintained that “the
foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the
people; that the choice of the public magistrates belongs
to the people of God's own allowance; and that they who
have the power to appoint officers and magistrates have
the right also to set the bounds and limitation of the
power and place unto which they call them.” The
government of Connecticut was settled on a purely demo-
cratic basis, and its Constitution was the "first written
Constitution of modern democracy,”1 and more, perhaps,
than any other man, Thomas Hooker deserves to be
called the father of American democracy. Well
knowing," its preamble recited, “where a people are
gathered together the Word of God requires that to
maintayne the peace and union of such a people there
should be an orderly and decent government established
according to God, to order and dispose of the affayres of
the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; doe
1“We have passed from the world of unwritten to that of written
Constitutions, from a world of government by usage, tradition, and
chartered privileges, wrested from kings, to a world of government
by public reason embodied in codes of political law.”—The United
States, an Outline of Political History, by Goldwin Smith, D.C.L.,
P. 20.
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 291
therefore associate and conjoyne ourselues to be as one
Publicke State or Commonwealth, and doe, for ourselves
and our successors, and such as shall be adjoyned to us here-
after, enter into Combination and Confederation together,
to maintayne and preserve the liberty and purity of the
Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ which we now professe,
as also the discipline of the Churches; which, according
to the truth of the said Gospell, is now practised amongst
us; as also in our civill affairs to be guided and governed
according to such Lawes and Rules, Orders and Decrees as
shall be made, ordered, and decreed, as followeth :”i
What is omitted from the written Constitution is almost
as significant as what it contains. Such expressions as
those introduced into the compact drawn up in the cabin
of the Mayflower, “ dread sovereign,” or “gracious King,"
are conspicuous by their absence.
Connecticut recog-
nised no allegiance to the British Crown, nor to any govern-
ment outside its own bounds. It refused to make church
membership a condition of exercising the franchise, and
also church attendance compulsory, in this respect
departing from the practice of Massachusetts, and con-
forming to the example of New Plymouth. More than
two centuries have elapsed; the world has been made
wiser by the most varied experience; political insti-
tutions have become the theme on which the most
powerful and cultivated minds have been employed,
and many constitutions have been framed
reformed, stifled or subverted, that memory may de-
spair of a complete catalogue; but the people of Con-
necticut have found no reason to deviate essentially
1 Dr. Borgeaud's Rise of Modern Democracy, p. 121.
SO
01
292
PURITANISM
from the frame of government. established by their
fathers.” 1
New Hampshire.— The settlement of New Hamp-
shire in 1623 need not detain us further than to note that
of its four towns, two were founded by Antinomians driven
out from Boston. The other two were founded by Epis-
copalians, and were the first-fruits of the colonising efforts of
Gorges and Mason. In 1641, at the request of a majority
of the settlers, this colony was added to Massachusetts.
New Haven. — The colony of New Haven was
founded in 1638 under the leadership of John Daven-
port, a clergyman, and Theophilus Eaton, a merchant,
possessed of considerable substance. Davenport was very
apprehensive lest his flock should be led away by the
Antinomian heresy which had broken out in Massa-
chusetts, and for this and other reasons connected with
the insufficiency of Massachusetts as a place of trade,
they wished to withdraw from its jurisdiction and set up
an independent government of their own. Each of the
towns was to be governed by seven ecclesiastical officers,
known as "pillars of the Church." These seven were to
gather round them others who were eligible for member-
ship in the Church, and these were to be the nucleus of
the new State. The Bible was their statute-book, and
“the choice of magistrates, legislation, the rights of in-
heritance, and all matters of that kind were to be decided
according to the rules of Holy Scripture.” 2 They re-
1 Bancroft's History, vol. i. p. 302, revised edition, p. 319.
2 Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven, ed. Ch. J.
Hoadley (Hartford, 1857), p. 12.
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 293
jected trial by jury, that being no part of the Mosaic law.
Church membership was the condition of citizenship; he
who was not fit for that was unfit for this, for the State
must be “according to God.” This law had the effect of
disfranchising more than half the settlers in the town of
New Haven, nearly half in Guildford, and less than one-fifth
in Milford. “The first leaders of the colony of New Haven
represent the clerical tendencies of Congregationalism.” 1
Thus New Haven, even as to its basis of government,
was the very opposite of Connecticut; it was less demo-
cratic even than Massachusetts ; it was indeed an absolute
theocracy, but founded upon the voluntary concurrence
of the people themselves. It maintained its separate
existence, however, for only about twenty-five years ; at
the end of that time it was annexed to Connecticut.
The Pequot Indians.--Immediately after the
little federation of towns in Connecticut had been
formed, and before they had taken the step of separating
from Massachusetts, they found themselves threatened
by a new and alarming peril. The various tribes of
Indians inhabiting the regions in the midst of which
the colonists had made their home, always regarded the
latter as game to be hunted down, tomahawked, and, if
possible, exterminated. Of these tribes the Iroquois and
the Pequots were the most cruel, vindictive, and ruth-
less. The latter were living in close neighbourhood to
the settlers in the Connecticut valley, and they had seven
hundred warriors at their command. The Pequot Indians
formed an alliance with their hereditary enemies, the
1 Dr. Borgeaud's Rise of Modern Democracy, p. 135.
294
PURITANISM
Narragansetts, and conceived the design of falling upon
the colonists, who were less than two hundred in number.
This conspiracy was frustrated by Roger Williams, who,
with consummate skill and courage, succeeded in dissolving
this ill-starred alliance. Writing many years afterwards,
he says: “I had my share of service to the whole land in
that Pequot business ... the Lord helped me imme-
diately to put my life into my hand, and scarce acquainting
my wife, to ship myself all alone, in a poor canoe, and
to cut through a stormy wind, with great seas, every
minute in hazard of life, to the sachem's house. Three
days and nights my business forced me to lodge and mix
with the bloody Pequot ambassadors, whose hands and
arms, methought, reeked with the blood of my countrymen
massacred by them on Connecticut river, and from whom
I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my
own throat also. Williams was so far successful that
he was able to prevail upon the Narragansett chiefs to
refrain from their design, and the result was, they made
a treaty of alliance with the English. But the Pequots
were implacable, and were not to be turned from their
Connecticut appealed to Massachusetts
and Plymouth for aid, which was readily granted. A fierce
battle ensued, one fought at desperate odds on the part
of the colonists; but the savages could make no stand
"1
hostile purpose.
1 «Williams' opportunities of studying the Indian character were
perhaps greater than those of any other man of his time. He was
always an advocate for justice towards them. But he seems to have
had no better opinion of them than Mr. Parkman (see his Jesuits in
North America), calling them sharply and shortly wolves endowed
with men's brains.”—Lowell's Among my Books, New England Two
Centuries Ago, p. 277.
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND
295
against the disciplined forces of the white men, and the
deadly precision of their arms. A terrible rain of Eng-
lish bullets, assisted by a still more terrible conflagration,
did most effectually the work of extermination. It is
computed that some six hundred Indians perished, while
of the English only two were killed, and about twenty
wounded. “ Thus," exclaimed the exultant leader, "did
the Lord judge among the heathen!" There remained
not a sannup or squaw, not a warrior nor child of the
Pequot name.” A nation had been wiped out of
existence. It was a bloody but decisive arbitrament.
It led to the establishment of a peace which lasted
for forty years.
No doubt, as Mr. Goldwin Smith
observes, the Puritan had his cruel moods, and his
notions about smiting the Canaanite in New England as
well as in Ireland; but in this instance the fierceness of
the founders of Connecticut was not without provoca-
tion and excuse. . They were fighting not only in self-
defence, but for their very lives, and for the very exist-
ence of their hearths and homes.
First Protestant missionary labours.—It is pleasant
to turn from such scenes of carnage to scenes in which
humanity and Christian philanthropy are seen at work,
redressing the wrongs and ameliorating the sufferings
which man's inhumanity to man has been the means of
inflicting. The settlers did not deal with the Indians
they dispossessed of the lands which had been their
hunting grounds and those of their ancestors from time
immemorial as men who had no right to justice and com-
pensation. They paid for the lands they occupied, and for
296
PURITANISM
among them."
the seed-corn they used. But there were those among their
own number who could not allow that justice and even-
handed dealing exhausted their obligation to the tribes
around them. It is interesting to remember that it was
within the Puritan commonwealth that the first Protestant
missionary movement originated. The Pilgrim Fathers
were the first to move in this good work. One of their
number was set apart “to promote the conversion of the
Indians.” In December 1621, Robert Cushman appealed
to England on behalf of “ these poor heathen,” and in 1636
the colony legislated for the “preaching of the gospel
John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians,
famous both as a linguist and preacher, moved with pity
for a race so benighted, and living in such ignorance and
misery, gave up his settled ministry at Rosebury, near
Boston, and devoted himself for forty years to the con-
version and civilising of the Indians in their forests and
wigwams. He published an Indian grammar and a com-
plete translation of the Bible in the Indian language.
This was the first Bible printed in America, and remains
to this day, though printed in a language which has
become extinct, and which very few living scholars are
able to read, a monument of his prodigious industry and
patience and skill. Through the labours and influence
of this devoted man and others like-minded, it is estimated
that in 1674 there were no fewer than four thousand
praying Indians," as they were called.
Schools were
established, and many learned to read and write. The
effect of these labours was to a large extent nullified by
internecine strife among the various tribes, and by their
gradual retreat and disappearance before the march of
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 297
civilisation ; but the spiritual harvest which sprang from
the seed thus sown is beyond all human power to com-
pute, and is bearing fruit even to the present day. It is
interesting to note in this connection that the first Pro-
testant Missionary Corporation was that called into
existence by the Long Parliament, and was formed for
the “Propagation of the Gospel in New England." To
assist this object Oliver Cromwell, then Lord Protector
of England, issued an order for a collection to be made
in all the parishes of England and Wales.
The United Colonies of New England.—The
time had now come when it was felt that the federal
principle, which has since received such majestic embodi-
ment in the Republic of the United States, might with
great advantage be applied to four of the then existing
colonies. Accordingly, in 1643, Massachusetts, New
Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven entered into a
confederation “ to advance the kingdom of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and to enjoy the liberties of the gospel in
purity with peace.” This was deemed necessary in view
of their exposure to common dangers arising from the
people of several nations and strange languages" by
whom they were surrounded, also because “the sad
distractions of England” cut off from the mother country
all hope of assistance. They entered, therefore, “into a
firm and perpetual league of friendship and amity, for
offence and defence and succour upon all just occasions,
both for preserving and propagating the truth and liber-
ties of the gospel, and for their own mutual safety and
welfare.” These four colonies were made all as one,"
>>
298
PURITANISM
under the name, “ The United Colonies of New England.”
Rhode Island was left out of this arrangement. The
attitude of the people of that island had been so inde-
pendent and defiant, that to them no terms of union
could be proposed ; they must be abandoned to their
own perversity and condition of isolation. Rhode Island
determined to get from the old country the protection
she could not obtain in the new. With this object in
view Roger Williams departed for England, and after
making a brief acquaintance with its stormy politics,
returned, bringing with him a charter, thanks to the
good offices of Sir Henry Vane--"the sheet anchor of
Rhode Island,” confirming the new colony in the posses-
sion of the most absolute rights and privileges.
For
some time Rhode Island seemed to be drifting rapidly in
the direction of anarchy, on account of its “headiness
and tumults"; but the character of the men chosen to
administer the government was happily the means of
keeping the vessel right, and enabling it to steer at
length a straight prosperous course, and “Rhode Island
was not long in showing the world that civil society
could subsist, and political order could be maintained,
without imposing shackles on spiritual life.” 1 This
federated union did not work at first without considerable
1 In his Records of Rhode Island, Lieutenant-Governor Arnold
claims for his country the honour of having been the cradle of
American democracy. But, as Dr. Borgeaud says,
" the historians
of the other States of New England assert their claims also to this
honour, each for his own, with no less talent and no less convincing
proofs.” Those who cannot be suspected of bias either the one way
or the other will probably concur in his judgment, that democracy
is not the heritage of any one single State, but of all the States of
New England, though it may be in differing proportions.
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND
299
i
friction. The predominance of Massachusetts—à pre-
dominance naturally created by her superior size and
strength, and exacerbated, there can be little doubt, by a
domineering spirit—was resented by her weaker sisters,
and instead of harmony there was jealousy and strife.
But this was incident to the initial stage of the move-
ment rather than to its subsequent development, and in
spite of all drawbacks the Confederacy grew and flourished.
Expansion of New England.—A nation had
now been planted, and had taken firm and fruitful root-
hold in the soil of New England. The population
embraced by it had reached nearly 24,000, of which
15,000 may be assigned to Massachusetts, 3000 to New
Plymouth, 3000 to Connecticut, and 2500 to New
Haven. During the twenty - three years which had
elapsed since the Mayflower had cast anchor in Cape Cod,
fifty towns and villages had been planted, between thirty
and forty churches had been erected, “and more ministers'
houses, a castle, a college, prisons, forts, cartways, causeys
many, and all these upon our own charges, no public
hand reaching out any help, having comfortable houses,
gardens, orchards, grounds fenced, corn fields,” etc.
Attempted interference on the part of the mother
country.--Nations, like individuals, sometimes profit
by the misfortunes of others. The civil war in England
broke out in 1642, just about the time that the four
colonies of Massachusetts, New Plymouth, Connecticut,
1 New England's First Fruits, etc. (London, 1643); Palfrey's His-
tory of New England, vol. ii. p. 6.
300.
PURITANISM
and New Haven entered into federated union. But
for this circumstance, the colonists of New England
would probably have been involved in a most bitter and
disastrous struggle for their rights and liberties. The
English Church and hierarchy had from the first main-
tained towards them a hostile attitude. They looked
upon them as escaped victims, as runaway slaves were
afterwards regarded by the planters of Virginia ; and the
tidings which reached England from time to time of the
freedom enjoyed by the settlers in the New World, and
of their growing prosperity, did not make them feel any
more favourably disposed towards them. The resentment
of the Royalist and High Church party was fanned and
intensified by malcontents and seditious persons, who,
finding the rule and discipline of New England too
oppressive, had returned to their native land, and now
sought to revenge themselves upon the colonists by
setting in circulation all manner of defamatory reports.
They said that New England was torn with religious
factions; that religious sanctions were disregarded ; that
marriage was no longer held to be a sacrament, but
a contract celebrated by the civil magistrate; that the
colonists held the Church of England in utter detestation ;
and that they were determined to owe no sort of subjec-
tion to the English Crown. This was to excite the
deepest susceptibilities of the then rulers in Church and
State.
The King was induced to sanction the appointment of
a Governor-General of Commission, with full power to
revise the laws of the colonies, and to introduce what
form of government they judged necessary to bring it
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 301
into subjection to the English Crown. At the head of
this Commission was Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
It was proposed to send out a Governor-General, and
to revoke every patent or charter which had been pre-
viously granted. This struck at the foundation, at the
very life, of the rising commonwealth.
There was a
consultation of the Puritan leaders at Boston, and the
resolution come to was: “ If a Governor-General were
sent we ought not to accept him, but defend our lawful
possessions if we were able; otherwise to avoid or
protract." The colonists met this threatened invasion of
their liberties with earnest but dignified remonstrance.
The letter addressed by Winthrop to the Commissioners
concludes by saying: “If the patent be taken from us, the
common people will conceive that His Majesty hath cast
them off, and that hereby they are freed from their
allegiance and subjection, and therefore will be ready to
confederate themselves under a new government, for
their necessary safety and subsistence, which will be of
dangerous example unto other plantations, and perilous to
ourselves of incurring His Majesty's displeasure.” They
asked nothing of His Majesty but the favour of neglect.
It will thus be seen that the colonists had no thought
of disowning the authority of the British Crown, to which,
rather than to Parliament, they held themselves bound.
At the same time, they clung jealously to their own
independence, claimed and exercised the right of framing
their own laws, administering their own affairs, and
entering into any compact or alliance they deemed
necessary for their own safety or advantage, without
waiting for any mandate or authorisation from the
302
PURITANISM
mother country. For, said Winthrop, "if we in America
should forbear to unite for offence and defence against
a common enemy till we have leave from England, our
throats might be cut before the messenger could be half
seas through." This relation of dependence upon the
mother country was unhappily established from the
very beginning It was enshrined in the covenant
signed in the cabin of the Mayflower : “We whose
names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread
sovereign King James," etc. The colonists thus never
suffered themselves to forget that they were liegemen
of a sovereign on the other side of the Atlantic.
“Herein lay the fatal seeds of misunderstanding—of
encroachment on the side of the home Government, of
revolt on that of the growing colony, and ultimately
of revolution. This was the beginning of woes, the full
measure of which came in 1765."
The Government, represented by Strafford, Laud, and
the ecclesiastical hierarchy, saw that, powerless as they
were to check the rising liberties of the colonies, they
could, at any rate, succeed in reducing the dimensions of
the evil by staying the tide of emigration. None but the
poorest, and socially the most uninfluential, were allowed
to leave the country without a special permission, and
these were required to take the oath of supremacy and
allegiance to the King. On April 30, 1637, the fol-
lowing proclamation was issued : " The King being in-
formed that great numbers of his subjects are yearly
transported into New England with their families and
whole estates, that they might be out of the reach of
971
1 See Goldwin Smith's United States, pp. 6, 7.
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 303
ecclesiastical authority, His Majesty therefore commands
that his officers of the several ports should suffer none to
pass without licence from the Commissioners of the
Plantations, and a testimonial from their minister of
their conformity to the orders and discipline of the
Church.” To stop the flight of the ministers, the fol-
lowing Order of Council was published: “Whereas it is
observed that such ministers as are unconformable to the
discipline and ceremonies of the Church do frequently
transport themselves to the plantations, where they take
liberty to nourish their factious and sysmatical humours
to the hindrance of the good, conformity, and unity of the
Church, we therefore expressly command you, in His
Majesty's name, to suffer no clergyman to transport him-
self without a testimonial from the Archbishop of Canter-
bury and Bishop of London.” This edict did not pro-
duce any appreciable effect in restraining those who
were bent on leaving the country. A squadron of eight
ships in the Thames, preparing to set sail for the New
World, was arrested by order of the Privy Council.
It has been alleged that Hampden and Cromwell, with
other illustrious patriots, were on board this fleet, intend-
ing to seek in the New World the rights and privileges
which they had sought vainly in the Old; but this
statement appears to rest upon no basis of fact, and on
the face of it, it is a most improbable story; and yet, im-
probable as it is, it is avouched by Hallam, Hume, and
other historians.
1 Hallam’s History, vol. ii. p. 58: “Men of a higher rank than
the first colonists, and now become hopeless alike of the civil and
religious liberties of England; men of capacious and commanding
304
PURITANISM
Loss to the mother country represented by New
England.—Neal, the Puritan historian, basing his state-
ments on Mather's History of New England, says that
during twelve years of Laud's administration there went
over the sea about four thousand planters, carrying with
them materials, in money and cattle, etc., to the value
of not less than one hundred and ninety-two thousand
pounds. Upon the whole, it has been computed
that the four settlements of
of New England, viz.
Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New
Haven, all which were accomplished before the civil
wars, drained England of four or five hundred thousand
pounds in money (a very great sum in those days); and if
the persecution of the Puritans had continued twelve years
longer, it is thought that a fourth part of the riches of
the kingdom would have passed out of it through this
channel.” 1
The Long Parliament met in 1640. This marked the
turn of the tide for the Puritan's both at home and abroad.
It not only stayed the tide of emigration, but induced
many to return to their native land.
The population of
New England, fed by the continuous stream of emigration
minds, formed to be the legislators and generals of an infant republic,
—the wise and cautious Lord Say, the acknowledged chief of the
Independent sect; the brave, open, and enthusiastic Lord Brooke ;
Sir Arthur Haselrig Hampden, ashamed of a country for whose
rights he had fought alone; Cromwell, panting with energies that
he could neither control nor explain, and whose unconquerable fire
was still wrapt in smoke to every eye but that of his kinsman
Hampden,--were preparing to embark for America, when Laud, for
his own and his master's cause, procured an Order of Council to stop
their departure."
1 Neal, vol. i. p. 546; Palfrey's History of New England, vol. i.
r
p. 584.
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 305
between the years 1620 and 1640, reached to between
twenty-three and twenty-four thousand. But from 1640
there set in a return tide, which did not cease to flow
for that same century and a quarter, so that, in that
period, more persons passed from New England to the
mother country than came out from the mother country
to New England. It must not be supposed, however, on
this account, that New England continued to be the sterile,
inhospitable soil and clime that it was to the first settlers.
Nowhere was man's power to subjugate by his indomit-
able will the forces of nature, and make them subservient
to his happiness and prosperity, more singularly displayed.
When the persecutions ceased in England there were
dwelling in New England thousands who would not
change their country for any other in the world.
At
one time Cromwell offered the colonists the rich and
sunny land of Jamaica in exchange for their own. At
another time he proposed to transplant them to Ireland ;
but, wisely for themselves and for the world, they preferred
to remain where they were. “ As Ireland will not brook
venomous beasts, so will not that land vile livers." One
might dwell there “from year to year, and not see a
drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar.” The con-
sequence was a marked increase of health and longevity.
The average duration of life in New England, as com-
pared with Europe, was doubled ; and the human race was
so vigorous that of all who were born into the world,
more than two in ten, full four in nineteen, attained
the age of seventy. Of those who lived beyond ninety,
the proportion, as compared with European tables of
longevity, was still more remarkable. “I have dwelt
20
306
PURITANISM
1
the longer," continues Mr. Bancroft, " on the character
of the early Puritans of New England, for they were the
parents of one third the whole white population of the
United States as it was in 1834. Within the first
fifteen years and there was never afterwards any con-
siderable increase from England- we have seen that
there came over twenty-one thousand two hundred
persons, or four thousand families. Their descendants
were in 1834 not far from four millions. Each family
has multiplied on the average to one thousand souls.
To New York and Ohio, where they then constituted
half the population, they carried the Puritan system of
free schools; and their example is spreading it through
the civilised world.”
The progress which had been made in New England in
the planting of free institutions, and the measure in which
civil and religious freedom was possessed and enjoyed, can
be best appreciated, as De Tocqueville 3 has pointed out,
by running our eye, even rapidly, over the then existing
condition of Europe. In every portion of that continent
absolutism still reigned. The aspirations of the people
were stifled; they were systematically exploited in the
1 “It would probably be coming somewhere near the truth to
divide the present [this was written in 1858] white population of the
United States into three equal parts—one part belonging to the New
England stock, one the posterity of English who settled in the other
Atlantic colonies, and another consisting of the aggregate of Irish,
Scotch, French, Dutch, German, Swedish, Spanish, and other im-
migrants, and their descendants.”—See Preface to Palfrey's History
of New England, ix.
2 Bancroft's History of the United States, revised edition, vol. i.
p. 375. The population of the United States is now not far from
seventy millions.
3 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. i. 42, 43,
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 307
interest of a governing class ; were left for the most part
to sink further and further in ignorance and degradation
and misery, and anything like independence or liberty
was withheld from them. And yet,“ at that very time,
those principles, which were scorned or unknown by the
nations of Europe, were proclaimed in the deserts of the
New World, and were accepted as the free creed of a
great people.... In the bosom of this obscure de-
mocracy, which had as yet brought forth neither generals
nor philosophers nor authors, a man 1 might stand up in
the face of a free people and pronounce the following
fine definition of liberty: 'I observe a great mistake in
this country. There is a twofold liberty-natural (I
mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal.
The first is common to man with beasts and other
creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to
man, simply hath liberty to do what he lists; it is a
liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incom-
patible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure
the least restraint of the most just authority. The exer-
cise and maintaining of this liberty makes men to grow
more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts :
omnes sumus licentia deteriores—we all become worse by
licence. That is the great enemy of truth and peace,
that wild beast which all the laws of God are bent
against, to restrain and subdue it. The other kind of
liberty I call civil or federal; it may also be called
moral, in reference to the covenant between God and
man in the moral law, and the political covenants and
constitutions among men themselves. This liberty is the
i Governor Winthrop.
308
PURITANISM
I
proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist
without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is just,
good, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for at
the hazard, not only of your goods, but of your lives, if
need be. Whatsoever crosseth this is not authority, but
a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained and
exercised in a way of subjection to authority ; it is of
the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us
free.'
Such was the Puritan ideal of a well-ordered and free
commonwealth.
> >
Religious and Social Aspects of
Thew England
309
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
اسم
1636
1641
Harvard College founded ".
First code of laws, “The Body of Liberties”
adopted.
The Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in
America, printed in Cambridge, Massachu-
setts
The “Cambridge Platform” adopted
1640
1651
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER V
Congregational Independency, indigenous to new state of things
Led to democracy - The Cambridge Platform—Cotton on Independ-
ency-Platform adopted— New England Way-Barrowism-Growth
of Independency—The Sabbath in New England-Passion for worship
-First meeting-house--Saturday evening-Wintry meeting-houses-
Miss Earle's description-Judge Sewall-Social Life in New Eng-
land-Satires on Puritanism--Austereness of American Puritans-
Amusements and luxuries proscribed—Temperance, not abstinence
-Regulations as to dress, concession to “dignities”—Old Testament
and Mosaism-Nathaniel Ward—The Body of Liberties-- Ten capi-
tal offences—Church attendance-Penalty more stringent in Virginia
-Laws more humane than those of England--Prevalence of vice-
Measures for its suppression abortive through their severity--Educa-
tion in New England—Dread of illiteracy—Common schools—Har-
vard College.
310
CHAPTER V
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NEW ENGLAND
Congregational Independency.--We have seen
how Congregationalism or Independency was the system
of Church government which was carried over in the
Mayflower to the shores of the New World. We have
seen, too, how its principles gradually infiltrated into
the minds of the main body of succeeding settlers, even
of those who were at first hostile and disaffected,
till at last it came to be seen that Congregational
Independency was the only practicable polity, the only
system suited to the necessities of the young rising
Puritan Republic. The colonists of Massachusetts, who
were at first the least friendly to this system,“ yielded,"
as Dr. Borgeaud has it, “ to the necessities of the case,
and also, there is no doubt, to a sincere conviction,
developed by example, that such an organisation was
what was sanctioned by Holy Scripture.” So it
So it may be
said that Independency rose to the ascendency which
it gained through the operation of “the law of the
survival of the fittest." It is not too much to say
that it was the only mould into which the new molten
metal could have been run, or, changing the figure, the
only vessel capable of holding the new generous ferment-
311
312
PURITANISM
" Its
ing wine of faith and liberty. True, it might have been
run into other vessels, but in that case it would not
have been the same wine, its quality would have been
altogether changed. This was what happened in Vir-
ginia ; there it acquired a “tang " that was peculiarly its
own, and bore witness to the more ancient, aristocratic
vine from whose clusters it had been pressed.
principles” (those of the Confederation of the Colonies),
says an unfriendly historian, “were altogether those of
Independency, and it cannot easily be supported by any
other.” 1 " It may be said that as a general rule Con-
gregationalism produced democracy wherever it was
interpreted by laymen, or by pastors who had broken
away completely and radically from the ideas of the
Anglican clergy, and who followed out the logical con-
sequences of the premises laid down." 2
1 Chalmers' Annals, p. 178, quoted by Dr. Palfrey, vol. i. p. 633.
2 Rise of Modern Democracy, p. 119. In the panegyrists of this
system Dr. Borgeaud detects a strain of irritating self-complacency,
even while doing justice to their contention.. “The share of
influence which Congregationalism can claim in the formation of
the national institutions of the United States has been insisted
upon by its literary representatives. Their zeal, which was occa-
sionally excessive, and not always free from the feeling, so provoca-
tive of criticism, which certain interpreters of Holy Scripture call
self-righteousness, caused a reaction.” So a new school has risen
up “in which may be counted some distinguished historians,”
which makes American democracy descend in a direct line from
Teutonic institutions. But, as pointed out on pp. 22, 23, the
credit of giving rise to democracy, both in the Old World and in
the New (whatever that credit may be, and as shown conclusively
by Dr. Borgeaud), certainly belongs to Puritanism and Independ-
ency. The Church covenants, on the basis of which free government
and free institutions, in a word, democracy, were modelled, were
“the essential cause of the Independent congregations.”—Rise of
Modern Democracy, pp. 137-140, also p. 32.
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NEW ENGLAND
313
The Cambridge Platform. It will be well here
to advert briefly to an event which took place in 1651,
which, though occurring at a later period than this work
professes to embrace, has a unique importance, “as com-
pleting the theocratic organisation of the Puritan com-
monwealth in Massachusetts." This was the adoption
of the famous Cambridge Platform, which was agreed
upon at a synod of Churches meeting in Cambridge in
1648. It contained some seventeen chapters, and its
credal confession was substantially that of the Westmin-
ster Assembly of Divi The time had come when, as
Cotton Mather says, it was convenient that “ the Churches
of New England should have a system of their discipline,
extracted from the word of God, and exhibited unto
them with a more effectual acknowledged and established
recommendation; and nothing but a council was proper
to compose the system.” This system was to embody
the Congregational idea or conception of the Church in
preference to that denoted by the name Independency.
In his Way of the Congregational Churches Cleared,
John Cotton, who did perhaps more than any other
leader to make Independency a working system, objects
to Independency as “a fit name of the way of our
Churches,” describing it as “ too strait,” “ because we
do profess dependence upon magistrates for civil govern-
ment and protection; dependence upon Christ and His
word for the sovereign government and rule of our
administrations ; dependence upon the counsel of other
Churches and synods, when our own variance or ignor-
ance may stand in need of such help from them. This
1 See Dexter's Congregationalism as seen in its Literature, p. 439.
314
PURITANISM
broader conception of the Church, and of the relation of
one Church to another, was embodied in the Cambridge
Platform. It is easy to see in this measure of retreat and
recession from the hard and fast line of Independency the
indirect influence of the spirit of Presbyterianism, which
had been brought over from the mother country by a
large body of the colonists. The number who resisted the
assimilative process by which the majority of their brethren
became Independents, and who still remained zealous for
Presbyterianism, were ever on the alert to stir up agita-
tion on its behalf, and the victory secured by the Presby-
terians in England under the Long Parliament made
them only the more restless and aggressive. Partly, there-
fore, to disarm their antagonism, but chiefly in order to
consolidate and unify the Churches themselves, and lift
them out of their unintegrated condition and position of
isolation, a plan of government was adopted, entitled, “ A
Platform of Church Discipline, gathered out of the Word
of God, and agreed upon by the Elders and Messengers
of the Churches assembled in the Synod at Cambridge
in New England, to be presented to the Churches and
General Court for their consideration and acceptance in
the Lord.” This was presented accordingly, and after
various changes and modifications—none, however, affect-
ting the substance of the Platform—it was adopted in
1651.1
1 “This Platform is the most important document produced by the
Congregationalists of the seventeenth century, for it most clearly
represents the belief of the Churches and their system of government
for more than one hundred years. It was, indeed, the legally recog-
nised standard till 1780."-Congregationalists in America, by Rev.
Albert E. Dunning, D.D., p. 149.
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NEW ENGLAND
315
The judgment of Dr. Dexter is, that the early Con-
gregationalism of America was Barrowism, and not
Brownism, a Congregationalised Presbyterianism, or a
Presbyterianised Congregationalism, which had its roots
in the one system, and its branches in the other; which
was essentially Genevan within the local congregation,
and essentially other outside of it. The forty or fifty
churches which, “for the substance of it,” adopted the
Cambridge Platform, held this general system, indeed,
with varying degrees of strictness, from the almost
Presbyterianism of Hingham and Newbury to the large-
minded and large-hearted Robinsonism of the mother
Mayflower Church. This system came to be designated
and known as The New England Way.
Growth of Independency or Congregationalism in
New England.—The following is a brief summary of
the position of Independency in New England at the
close of 1648, the year when “ The Cambridge
Platform" had
had been agreed upon as the common
basis of Church government. These twenty-eight years
since the landing of the Fathers in Plymouth may
be regarded as the creative era of American Con-
gregationalism. The Plymouth Church remained alone
till 1629. In 1648 the number of churches in New
England had grown to fifty-one. Thirty of this number
were planted in Massachusetts, nine in New Plymouth,
five in Connecticut, five in New Haven, two in New
Hampshire. To this number must be added two or three
on Long Island, and one in Virginia. The leading or
1 Congregationalism as seen in its Literature, pp. 463, 464.
316
PURITANISM
organising minds were Cotton, Hooker, Norton, Daven-
port, and the learned and credulous Cotton Mather. In
less than fifty years after this, i.e. in 1696, there were,
according to President Hills, one hundred thousand
souls in New England, and one hundred and thirty
Congregational churches.1
The Sabbath in New England. --It must never
be forgotten that New England, to use the words of the
excellent Francis Higginson,“ was a plantation of religion,
not a plantation of trade.” “New England was the
colony of conscience; if they make religion as twelve
and the world as thirteen, such an one hath not the
spirit of a true New England man. This religious char-
acter, impressed upon it in its nascent condition, it has
never lost; it has permeated its whole history and
character and institutions. “The principles of New
England,” says De Tocqueville, “ spread at first to the
neighbouring States; then they passed successively to the
more distant ones; and at length they imbued the whole
Confederation.” The government of New England was as
near an approach to a theocracy as the world has seen since
that of the Jewish Church. As truly as to the Jews which
came out of Egypt, it had been said by their sovereign
ruler to these expatriated exiles: “Ye shall be unto me a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” To these early
settlers in the West worship was a necessity and a
passion. “ It had been as unusual for a right New
England man to live without an able ministry as for a
1 Punchard's History of Congregationalism in America, vol. i. p.
627, note.
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NEW ENGLAND 317
smith to work his iron without a fire.” It was liberty
to worship God according to their own conscience which
had brought them over the sea, and now that this liberty
was within their reach, they enjoyed it in no stinted
It was with keen and ardent joy
measure.
They rolled the Psalm to wintry skies.”
Their first meeting - house was a “ timber fort,” both
strong and comely, with flat roof and battlements, and
was erected on an eminence behind the town. It thus
served a threefold purpose. It was an observatory from
which they could observe the approach of scout and
Indian marauder; it was also a powder-magazine, pro-
tected on all sides by a cannon-mounted rampart; and
it was also a meeting-house for worship,—a combination
of war and gospel, which was necessary both for their
safety and comfort. This was the house of worship for
twenty-eight years. The settlers were eager and glad to
build their meeting-houses, for they looked upon them as
the visible sign of the theocracy which the Most High
had established in their midst, and of the covenant they
had made with Him. But lest some future settlements
should be slow or indifferent about doing their duty, it
was enacted in 1675 that a meeting-house should be
erected in every town in the colony; and if the people
failed to do so at once, the magistrates were empowered
to build it, and to charge the cost of its erection to the
town.
In Massachusetts we find, among other rules and
regulations framed by the Company for the colonists, that
the inhabitants were to“ surcease” their labour
every
Sat-
318
PURITANISM
urday throughout the year at three of the clock in the
afternoon, and to spend the rest of that day in catechising
and preparation for the Sabbath, as the ministers should
direct. “From sunset on Saturday until Sunday night
they would not shave, have rooms swept, nor beds
made, have food prepared, nor cooking utensils and table-
ware washed.”
The ministers of New England laid great
stress upon this prolonged preparation for the Sabbath.
It was a prevalent belief among the early colonists that
the practice of working on the eve of the Sabbath was
one certain to call down the judgment of heaven upon
them. One man who had worked an hour after sunset
at the repairing of a mill-dam went home to find that
his child had fallen into an uncovered well in the cellar
of his house, and was drowned. This is related by
Winthrop as an instance of divine retribution, and, adds
the pious and good man,“ the father freely, in the open
congregation, did acknowledge it the righteous hand of
God for his profaning His holy day.” “ Sweet to
the pilgrims and to their descendants was the hush
of their calm Saturday night and their still, tranquil
Sabbath-sign and token to them, not only of the
weekly rest ordained in the Creation, but of the
eternal rest to come.” The universal quiet and peace of
the community showed the primitive instinct of a pure
simple devotion, the sincere religion which knew no
compromise in spiritual things, no half-way obedience to
God's word, but rested absolutely on the Lord's Day, as
was commanded. No work, no play, no idle strolling
was known; no sign of “human life or motion was seen
except the necessary care of the patient cattle and other
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NEW ENGLAND
319
dumb beasts, the orderly and quiet going to and from
the meeting, and at the nooning, a visit to the church-
yard to stand by the side of the silent dead. This abso-
lute obedience to the letter as well as to the spirit of
God's word was one of the most typical traits of the
character of the Puritans, and appeared to them to be
one of the most vital points of their religion.”i In her
charming book, The Sabbath in Puritan New England,
Miss Earle gives a graphic and amusing description of
the early meeting-houses, with their old-fashioned pews
and their seats allocated with nice discrimination
according to the position and character of their occu-
piers. The description given of the icy temperature of the
meeting-house is enough to affect us with a fit of shivering,
even as we read it at the fireside. “ One can but wonder
whether that fell scourge of New England, that heredi-
tary curse, consumption, did not have its first germs
evolved and nourished in our Puritan ancestors by the
Spartan custom of sitting through the long winter ser-
vices in the icy, deathlike meeting-houses.” This is an
entry from the diary of Judge Sewall: “The communion
bread was frozen pretty hard, and rattled sadly into the
plates. Extraordinary cold storm of wind and snow. Blows
much more as coming home at noon, and so holds on.
Bread was frozen at the Lord's table. Though 'twas so
cold John Tuckerman was baptized. At six o'clock my ink
freezes, so that I can hardly write by a good fire in my
wife's chamber. Yet was very comfortable at meeting."
In the bitter winter weather women carried to meeting
little foot-stoves. This, however, was done furtively,
1 The Sabbath in Puritan New England, by Alice Morse Earle.
320
PURITANISM
as not quite comporting with New England ideas of
enduring hardness. It is told of one worshipper that
when it was proposed to introduce a stove into the wintry
meeting-house, he withheld his subscription, on the ground
that “good preaching kept him hot enough without
stoves.”
“Sadly down through the centuries is ringing in our
ears the gloomy rattle of that frozen sacramental bread
on the church plate, telling to us the solemn story of
the austere, comfortless church life of our ancestors.
Would that the sound could bring to our chilled hearts
the same steadfast and pure Christian faith that made
their gloomy, freezing services warm with God's loving
Patient, frugal, God-fearing, and in-
dustrious,-cruel and intolerant sometimes, but never
cowardly,--sternly obeying the word of God in the spirit
and the letter, but erring sometimes in the interpreta-
tion thereof, surely they had no traits to shame us, to
keep us from thrilling with pride at the drop of their
blood which runs in our backsliding veins. Nothing can
more plainly show their distinguishing characteristics,
nothing is so fully typical of the motive, the spirit of
their lives, as their reverent observance of the Lord's
presence! .
day.” 1
Social Life in New England. — The austerity
and gloom of Puritanism is a theme on which it does not
require much ability to grow eloquent. It lends itself
1 The Sabbath in Puritan New England. The book abounds with
lively and attractive etchings, and there is an absence of the straining
and exaggeration which so often occurs in books and essays professing
to describe Puritan life and manners.
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NEW ENGLAND
321
only too easily to satire and criticism, and much that is
entertaining, if not quite true, has been written about it.
Iší New England, as elsewhere, life was a stern, solemn,
and colourless thing. How could it be otherwise with
men trained in such a school as these settlers had been,
inured from their very birth to toil, hardship, and priva-
tion, and with no leisure to cultivate the graces and
amenities of human life. It would have been a miracle if
the history of such a people had been other than “ dry and
unpicturesque. “ There is no rustle of silks, no waving
of piumes, no clink of golden spurs. Instead, we have
the noise of axe and hammer and saw, an apotheosis of
dogged work, work for mere subsistence, for the sheer
necessaries of life,—work, the dignity of which · Carlyle
chants in his pæan, and in comparison with which all
else is . chaff and dust-“Extrinsically, prosaic; intrin-
sically, it is poetic and noble.” “ It has been the
fashion lately,” adds Mr. Lowell,1 " with a few feeble-
minded persons to undervalue the New England Puritans,
as if they were nothing more than gloomy and narrow-
minded fanatics.” It is more than thirty years since
these words were written, but the word “lately” may
as well stand to-day; nor need the fashion be restricted
to a few feeble-minded persons.
The error has a
wider and more reputable currency; but inveterate as
it is, it has no support, save that which imagination
or unreasoning prejudice is able to supply.
There can, of course, be no question as to the austereness
of these American Puritans. They had crossd the sea,
not only to get rid of a persecuting Church, but also to
1 Among my Books, p. 232.
21
322
PURITANISM
get out of the reach of profligacy, social corruption, and
contagion. “Merry England,” the England of the Book
of Sports, of holiday saturnalias, with their drinking bou ús
and their bear-baitings and cock-fightings; this was the
Babylon which had cast them forth, and every shred and
trace of which they were determined to extrude from
the land of their adoption. They set up, as they
believed, in sheer self-protection, a system of wholesale
proscription which was bound in the long-run to react
injuriously upon them and their children. Everything
that savoured of lightness, cheerfulness, and recreation
was discouraged and frowned upon. There were jo be
no amusements save such as could be extracted fro:n the
social accessories of religion and worship. No persons
might possess cards, or dice, or other means of garnbling.
Dancing was condemned as an encouragement to wanton-
ness, or as inconsistent with a sober and grave carriage.
The “worldly luxury of long hair” on the part of men
was denounced as sinful, or, if not sinful, “ uncomely and
prejudicial to the common good.” “The sale of every-
thing was regulated by law, with such minuteness as to
reach the cost of a meal at an inn, and even the price of
a pot of beer between meals. The law fixed the price
of all commodities, of all labor, and of all servants'
wages. The use of tobacco was early forbidden in all
public-houses and places; and though one might smoke
it in his own house, it was unlawful to do so before
strangers, or for one person to use it in company of
another.” 1 Puritan asceticism does not seem to have
1 See chapter on “The Boston Puritans," in Bryant and Gay's
Popular History of the United States, vol. ii.
P. 62.
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NEW ENGLAND
323
extended to matters of food and drink, and though
frugality and temperance were the rule, what was thought
of the attempt to make it a binding, self - denying
ordinance may be gathered from an extract from a letter
from Thomas Shephard, minister of Cambridge, to Gover-
nor Winthrop in 1639: “ This also I doe humbly entreat,
that there may be no sin made of drinking in any case
one to another, for I am confident that he that stands
here will fall and be beat from his grounds by his own
arguments; as also that the consequences will be very
sad, and the thing provoking to God and man to make
more sins than (as yet is seene) God Himself hath made.” 1
Extravagance, or any kind of insobriety in dress, was
specially distasteful to the Puritans of New England.
They felt moved to declare against “ the ordinary wearing
of silver, gold and silver laces," against “immoderate
great sleeves,” and “slashed apparel.” The size of sleeve
which women were allowed to wear in their dress was
limited to the width of half an ell; and none were to be
made “with short sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the
arm may be discovered in the wearing thereof." The
General Court (of Massachusetts), however, had at
length to acknowledge the difficulty of enforcing such
sumptuary laws, on account of “the blindness of men's
minds, and the stubbournnes of theire wills," and they
found it necessary to exempt from their operation per-
sons of education and employment "above the ordinary
degree.” At the same time, the Court reaffirmed their
utter detestation and dislike that men or women of
meane condition, educations, and callinges, should take
1 Lowell's Among my Books, p. 249.
324
PURITANISM
vpon them the garbe of gentlemen, by the wearinge of
gold or siluer lace, or buttons or poynts at theire knees,
to walke in greate bootes; or women of the same ranke
to weare silk or tiffany hoodes or scarfes, which, though
allowable to persons of greater estates, or more liberal
education, yet we cannot but judge it intolerable in per-
sons of such like condition.” From which it will be seen
that these Puritan democrats had no levelling down notions
as to the "natural rights" of all men. They had notions
about“ dignities ” which perhaps would not with perfect
symmetry have fitted in with other parts of their creed.
The Jewish Theocracy the ideal of the Puritans of
New England. -For these sumptuary laws and regula-
tions the Puritans of New England pleaded the sanction
of the Mosaic legislation. The Bible was their statute-
book, the law of Moses their fountain of authority.
The first code of laws, drawn up at the request of the
General Court of Massachusetts, was taken entirely
from the Old Testament. This was rejected in favour of
a more liberal and discriminating code, submitted by
Rev. Nathaniel Ward, who had had the advantage of a
legal as well as a theological training, and thought that
something could be learned from Justinian as well as
Moses. This was “The Body of Liberties," which was
adopted in 1641, and was the first Constitution of Mas-
sachusetts, and the foundation of all subsequent Con-
stitutions. The Hebrew law of inheritance and of
servitude (for slavery, as afterwards developed and
practised, was expressly disallowed) were followed so far
as their underlying principles were concerned. The
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NEW ENGLAND
325
breaking of the Sabbath, smiting and cursing parents,
were not made capital offences. The punishment of
death was reserved for ten kinds of misdemeanours.
These were idolatry, witchcraft, when“ direct, express,
presumptuous, or high-handed,” homicide, whether com-
mitted in malice or in passion, adultery, two other
crimes of lust, man stealing, false witness, “of purpose
to take any man's life," and treason against the common-
wealth. Lying and lechery, improper behaviour of
any kind, extravagance in dress, profaneness, uncomely
speeches, swearing, “either by the holy name of God
or any other oath,” were all made penal offences. In
“The Body of Liberties" it was enacted that whosoever
should blaspheme the name of God the Father, the
Son, or the Holy Ghost, should be put to death. To
deny the infallibility or inspiration of any book of the
Old or New Testaments was to incur the penalty of
fine, stripes, and, in extreme cases, even death.
wanton gospeller" was, of all men, most exasperating to
a Boston Puritan—"a kind of human vermin which he
felt bound to extirpate.” A wanton gospeller was
one who made free with his criticism on the preacher or
preached word, “making God's ways contemptible and
ridiculous"; and for this offence he was to be condemned
to stand in a public place for two hours upon a raised
block, with the inscription "a wanton gospeller" fixed on
his breast.2 In Massachusetts and New Haven the support
1 For the death penalty in respect of adultery was afterwards sub-
stituted the practice of the offender being compelled to stand up in
some public place with the letter A in scarlet displayed conspicu-
ously on the breast. See Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter.
2 “ The Boston Puritans,” Bryant and Gay's History, vol. ii. chap. iii.
6 A
326
PURITANISM
of the ministry and religious ordinances, and the duty of
constant attendance upon them, were enforced by law.
As in the mother country, no one was allowed to absent
himself from church without lawful or reasonable excuse.
In the colony of Virginia ? this law was more stringently
enforced. Church attendance was here made absolutely
compulsory,“ upon pain, for the first fault, to lose their
provision and allowance for the whole week following ;
for the second, to lose said allowance, and also to be
whipped; and for the third, to suffer death."
Still, the code of Massachusetts and New Haven (the
latter was even sterner and more tainted with Mosaism)
was mild and humane when compared with that of the
mother country. There were, at the close of Elizabeth's
reign, thirty-one kinds of crime for which the death.
penalty was inflicted ; afterwards they reached the enorm-
ous number of one hundred and twenty-three. The
principles on which the written code of Massachusetts
was framed were, at any rate, a great advance upon the
chaos and unintelligibility of English jurisprudence. If
they were strict, and sometimes magnified sins into
crimes, they were at least intelligible, and people knew
what to expect from their infraction.
In the eyes of the Boston Puritans it was the distinc-
tive merit of their system that it sought to reproduce
in the theocracy of New England the minuteness and
exactitude of the laws according to which the theocracy
in the wilderness was governed. It sought, in a word,
to govern men in accordance with the will of God,
1
Palfrey's History of New England, vol. ii. p. 34, note.
2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 27.
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NEW ENGLAND
327
by exercising an immediate supervision over the con-
duct of every individual in the community in all
his private as well as public acts and relations. In
their zeal for making men righteous by sumptuary
legislation, the rulers and law-makers of New England
were admonished by signs that filled them with dismay
that they had overshot the mark. Naturam expellas
furca, tamen usque recurret. The tide of vice and
uncleanness could not be kept out of the fancied Arcadia
of New England by such ineffectual dykes as they endea-
voured to construct. The laws against lechery were
specially severe and drastic, yet unnatural crimes were
frequent, and punishment was continually inflicted for
the vice of unchastity. The prevalence of this vice may
be in a large measure accounted for by the influx of a
heterogeneous population, made up of adventurers from
Europe, and whose natural depravity was intensified by
the attempted pressure of restraint. Anyhow, such
doings spread great consternation throughout the colonies.
“Marvilious it may be," exclaims Governor Bradford,“ to
see and consider how some kind of wickedness did grow
and break forth here,” notwithstanding the austerity of
public opinion and the severity of the law, both exceed-
ing that of any place he ever knew or heard of; and the
latter so relentless as to be “somewhat censured by
moderate and good men.” For such wickedness Bradford
can only account on the supposition that “the divell may
carrie a greater spite against the Churches of Christ and
the gospell hear,” and that “Satane hath more power in
these heathen lands, as som have thought, then in more
Christian nations, especially over God's servants in
328
PURITANISM
them."1
But perhaps we may be pardoned for thinking
that the overstrained character of the laws that were en-
acted for their suppression, and the mixed population of
the colonies, as well as the publicity which was neces-
sarily given to all flagitious offences in so small a com-
munity, these furnish a more rational explanation of the
matter than the occult and malign influence of the
Evil One.
Education in New England.-The colonists of
New England would have subscribed to the opinion that
“it is better to be unborn than untaught." They saw
no security for religion or social order save as these were
built round by the bulwark of cultivated intelligence.
The Puritans dreaded to have an illiterate ministry.
They dreaded also to have an illiterate people. A com-
mon school, public as the highway, was being projected
by the Fathers at Plymouth at a very early date, just
when they had succeeded in scaring away the wolf of
starvation, and when the number of men, women, and
children, all told, did not exceed one hundred and eighty..
In 1635 the inhabitants of Boston passed a vote" that
our brother Philemon Pormont be entreated to become
schoolmaster for the teaching and nurturing of youth among
us.” The system of common schools came into existence as
early as 1647, by an Act of the General Court: “ To
the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of
our forefathers in Church and commonwealth, the Lord
assisting our endeavours, it is therefore ordered by this
Court and authority thereof, that every township in this
History of Plymouth Plantation, pp. 385, 386.
1
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NEW ENGLAND
329
jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to fifty
householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within
their towns to teach all such children as shall resort to
him to write and read." These common schools, now
thickly planted down throughout the towns and villages
of New England, may be said to constitute “ the great
discovery of our Puritan Fathers.” They were the first
lawgivers who saw clearly and enforced practically the
simple moral and political truth, that knowledge was
not an alms to be dependent on the chance charity of
private men, or the precarious pittance of a trust-fund,
but a sacred debt which the commonwealth owed to
every one of her children.” 1
In 1636 the famous Harvard College 2 was founded
by John Harvard, a graduate of Cambridge, who had
crossed the Atlantic to become the “minister of God's
word at Charlestown." It was of his poverty that John
Harvard gave to the college that immortalises his name.
His endowment consisted of half of his property, namely,
£400 and his library. The General Court voted to the
cost of its erection a sum equal to a year's rate of the
whole colony, and in honour of the mother university the
name of the town was changed to Cambridge. The assembly
which decreed the establishing of the college,—-fitly pre-
1 Lowell's Among my Books, p. 231. As to the origin of the com-
mon school system, whether imported from Geneva or Holland, the
reader may consult Mr. Douglas Campbell. He contends earnestly,
as against Mr. Bancroft and other historians, for the Netherlands as
its birthplace and cradle,—The Puritan in Holland, England, and
America, ii. pp. 338-340.
2 Quincy, History of Harvard University.
330
PURITANISM
sided over by an Oxonian, Henry Vanė, the friend of
Milton,-is said to have been “ the first body in which
the people, by their representatives, gave their own money
to found a place of education.” “ The act was a memorable
one, if we have regard to all the circumstances of the year
in which it was done. On every side danger was in the
air. Threatened at once with an Indian war, with the
enmity of the home Government, and with grave dissen-
sions among themselves, the year 1636 was a trying one
indeed for the little community of Puritans, and thei
founding a college by public taxation just at this time is
a striking illustration of their unalterable purpose to
realise in this. new home their ideal of an educated
Christian society."
» 1
1 Fiske's Beginnings of New England, p. 111.
The Growth of Intolerance in
Thew England
331
MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES
The Commonwealth in England .
George Fox began his public preaching
1649-1660
1648
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VI
Spirit of Intolerance, Cromwell on-Measures against Anabaptistry
-Clarke, Crandall, and Holmes--Imprisonment, fines, and whipping
-Baptist Church in Charlestown-Cessation of persecution-
Baptism and Anabaptism-Law-abiding Baptists protected—Quakers
persecuted, imprisoned, banished, scourged, mutilated, put to
death-Indignation provoked by these cruelties, Rhode Island
refused to persecute, nevertheless suffered for its lenity-Quakerism
provoked Roger Williams--Ranters not Quakers--Gross excesses-
Error of rulers, Lodge and Lowell on-Massachusetts specially
chargeable with intolerance, Goldwin Smith on-Roger Williams
banished, not for religion but for political reasons-Puritan leaders
intolerant, Endicott, Cotton, Ward, Winthrop, Dudley-Sir H.Vane's
hatred of Intolerance-Popular feeling in Massachusetts against
oppression-Massachusetts increased in tolerance as with strength-
The Pilgrim Fathers not persecutors–Sewel's blunder-Growth of
tolerance in New Plymouth--Puritans and Puritans-Doyle-
Saturday Review.
332
CHAPTER VI
THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND
It would be an obvious and, indeed, inexcusable
omission in a history professing even in barest outline,
to exhibit the growth of the Puritan theocracy in New
England, did it contain no allusion to the spirit of exclu-
siveness which gradually became grafted upon it, and
culminated at length in active and bitter persecution.
We have already seen one or two portentous manifesta-
tions of this spirit. We have seen how two of the early
emigrants were banished from Salem because they were
Churchmen, and how Massachusetts cast out Roger
Williams, Mrs. Hutchinson, and others because their
opinions had become too extreme to be tolerated. We
shall find, as we investigate the matter further, fresh
and melancholy confirmation of what has been often
observed in connection with struggling religious parties,
that those who have themselves suffered the evil and
misery of oppression, are nothing loth in the day of their
power to inflict like suffering upon others. “Every sect
saith, 'Oh, give me liberty!' But give it to him, and
(to his power) he will not yield it to anybody else. Is it
ingenuous to ask liberty and not to give it? What
greater hypocrisy than for those who were oppressed by
333
334
PURITANISM
1
the bishops to become the greatest oppressors themselves
so soon as their yoke was removed ?”1
We do not propose to attempt anything like a descrịp-
tion of the ecclesiastical controversies which at successive
periods during the seventeenth century agitated the
Church life of New England. There are two, however,
which we must not pass over, not only because of their
importance, but because they were the occasion of much
heart-burning, and have done more to excite prejudice
against the Fathers of New England than all the other
“ evil and uncomfortable occurrents” (to use Cotton
Mather's phrase) which were so rife during that century.
These were the Baptist and the Quaker controversy.
Persecution of Baptists. —. The first Baptist
Church in America was founded, as we have seen, by
Roger Williams; but independently of Williams it is
manifest, from the nature of the soil, that among
such a plentiful crop of heresies as Rhode Island
got the credit of producing, “Anabaptistry” was not
likely to be wanting. It was inevitable, too, that the
seed should be carried into the colony of Massachusetts,
if it did not spring there independently on its own
account. Anyhow, the seed was sown there also, for in
1644 we find Winthrop writing : “Anabaptistry increased
and spread in the country, which occasioned the magis-
trates at the last Court to draw up an order 2 for banishing
such as continued obstinate after due conviction.” The
austere and intolerant Endicott was then governor of the
1 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches.
2 Palfrey's History of New England, vol. ii. p. 346.
THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND
335
colony. Some years after the passing of this order,
John Clarke, who had been educated as a physician, and
was now the pastor of the first Baptist Church in New-
port, accompanied by two friends, Crandall and Holmes,
went on a visit to the house of an old friend and fellow-
Baptist at Lynn, ten miles from Boston. The sequel
proved that this was indeed putting their head into the
lion's den, or rather, into the lion's mouth. The next
day being Sunday, they agreed to have a religious service
among themselves, and while Clarke was speaking, two
constables entered the house and arrested them. They
were hauled off to the meeting-house of the town, and
when the service was over, Clarke rose and asked leave
to “propose a few things to the congregation.” This
was, of course, forbidden. Next morning they were all
brought before the magistrate, and sentenced to be iin-
prisoned in the jail at Boston. The day after, they were
brought before Governor Endicott, who reviled them
with being Anabaptists, their answer to which was sum-
marily cut short, and they were each of them fined,
Clarke £20, Holmes £30, and Crandall £5, and in default
of payment, “ each was to be well whipped.” A friend
came forward to pay the fine on behalf of Clarke; but
Holmes, refusing to avail himself of help so little to his
mind, was subjected to the humiliation of being whipped.
It does not appear that any further penalty of the like
kind was inflicted upon persons embracing and professing
Baptist views For years the law against Baptists
remained practically a dead letter. In 1665, however,
a Baptist Church was organised in Charlestown, which
ultimately became the first Baptist Church of Boston,
336
PURITANISM
and its action in receiving to its communion those who
had been excommunicated by other Churches appears to
have led the authorities to deal with it in very summary
fashion. Five of its members were disfranchised, and
two were sent to prison, where they remained for nearly
a year.
Three of the leaders were sentenced to be
banished. No further proceedings appear to have been
instituted against the members of this sect, for two
years after we have the testimony of the agents of the
colony in England to the effect: “As for the Anabaptists,
they are now subject to no other penal statutes than
those of the Congregational way.” 1
It is not at first sight easy to explain why, for holding
the apparently harmless opinion that infants are not fit
subjects for baptism (the question of immersion does not
seem to have figured in the controversy), Christian men
should have been subjected to persecution or suffering.
It seems to exhibit the spirit of intolerance in its very
worst form. But it must be borne in mind that to the
Puritans of that day baptism was not the innocuous
seeming creed which it is to us. It was identified with
Anabaptism, and Anabaptism had a history behind it
full of terrorising significance. In the sixteenth century
Baptism or Anabaptism (for practically there was no
attempt to discriminate between them) gave the name
to one of the wildest and fiercest sects ever bred
within the pale of the Christian Church."
The mem-
2
1 Palfrey's History, vol. ii. p. 486.
2 “Anabaptism," says Jeremy Taylor, in his famous argument for
liberty, “is as much to be rooted out as anything that is the greatest
pest and nuisance to the public interest.”
THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND
337
1
bers of this sect denied the authority of the magistrates,
the lawfulness of taking oaths, and many of the cardinal
Christian doctrines, and were guilty of gross enormities,
such as polygamy, rebellion, theft, murder, etc. Con-
sidering, then, the flagitious errors and excesses into
which the Anabaptists had fallen, and by which they had
acquired such an unsavoury reputation, it is little to be
wondered at that the Puritans of Massachusetts should
view with horror and alarm the possible recrudescence
of such errors, and without making any attempt to
discriminate between them should regard Baptists of
every description as eminently unsafe and dangerous
people.
Whatever may be said in reprobation of the course
they pursued, there is no doubt that the rulers of Massa-
chusetts were sincerely perplexed as to how they should
act in regard to those holding and avowing Baptist con-
victions. “The truth is," said the General Court in their
“ Declaration” in November 1646, "the great trouble
we have been put into, and hazard also, by fanatistical
and anabaptistical spirits, whose conscience and religion
hath been only to set forth themselves and raise conten-
tions in the country, did provoke us to provide for our
safety. . But for such as differ from us only in judg-
ment, and live peaceably amongst us, without occasioning
1 Crosby's History of the English Baptists, lxxiii, xxiv, vol. i. p. 196;
Palfrey's History, vol. i. p. 487, note, also vol. ii. p. 348 ; Motley's
Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. i. pp. 79, 80; Robertson's History of
the Reign of Charles the Fifth, bk. v. “The 'superadding of Ana-
baptistry to Sans-culottism'(Carlyle's Cromwell, vol. ii. p. 70) alarmed
the magistrates of Massachusetts, as it soon after alarmed the Dicta-
tor of England ;” Palfrey's History, vol. ii. p. 348, note.
22
338
PURITANISM
disturbance, etc., such have no cause to complain; for it
hath never been as yet put in execution against any of
them, although such are known to live amongst us.” 1
They were glad of any pretext to restrain them from
enforcing the law against Anabaptists. It is said that
two of the presidents of Harvard College were Anabaptists.
Persecution of the Quakers.-The sufferings of
the Baptists were mildness itself compared with the
severities inflicted on the people called Quakers. This is
the darkest and most shameful blot upon the theocracy of
New England. Quakerism made its appearance in Boston
in 1656, being thither imported by two unprotected
women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, who had come from
the Barbadoes. They were charged with holding " very
dangerous, heretical, and blasphemous opinions”; their
baggage was searched, and all their books and tracts con-
fiscated, and after being kept in prison for five weeks they
were shipped back to the Barbadoes. Two days after,
another contingent of the same persuasion, eight in num-
ber, were in like manner imprisoned and then sent back
to England. Nothing daunted by this treatment, some
of them returned ; nor could all the severities which the
authorities could devise for their suppression-scourging,
imprisonment, and threatenings—avail to quench their
ardour or abate their “testimony." The punishment
decreed against all who came within the jurisdiction of
the Court was the loss of one ear on the first conviction ;
on the second, the cropping of the other ear; after the
1 Palfrey's History, vol. ii. p. 348, note ; Bancroft's History, vol.
i. p. 324, revised edition, p. 350.
THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND
339
third conviction, the tongue was to be bored with a hot
iron, and then they were to be imprisoned, with hard
labour, till they could be got rid of “ at their own charge.
It was made criminal for any one to harbour any of the
accursed sect." Any captain of a vessel carrying a Quaker
into port was to be fined £100, and in default of pay-
ment, to be imprisoned till the fine was paid. Three
Quaker women were stripped to the waist and flogged
through eleven towns, and this in the winter season, amid
frost and snow. Persecution had the effect it has had
so often on its hapless victims, and upon those who have
witnessed their sufferings. It begot a strange and weird
eagerness for the crown of martyrdom. The sufferers
were most numerous where they were most feared.
Their fortitude, their patience under suffering, their
unwavering conviction in the righteousness of their
cause, won for them friends and sympathisers among all
classes of the community. The authorities did their
utmost to restrain every manifestation of sympathy,
even to the extent of sentencing any person convicted
of being present at a Quaker meeting to a fine of 10s.,
and for taking part in any such meeting a fine of £5.
Four Quakers were hanged—William Robinson and
Marmaduke Stevenson in 1659, Mary Dyer in 1660,
and William Leddra in 1661. Leddra's was the last
execution in Boston for the cause of religious opinion.
“What do you gain,” cried Wenlock Christison, “by
taking Quakers' lives ? For the last man that you put
to death, here are five come in his room.
If ye have
power to take my life, God can raise up ten of His
servants in my stead."
340
PURITANISM
At last the pent up indignation of the people, inspired
by these atrocities, broke out in such violence that the
magistrates began to quail before it, and were forced to
stay their hands, and to repeal the iniquitous laws. It
is due to the other united colonies to say that though
they were guilty of harsh and repressive measures, they
did not go the length of enacting capital laws against
the Quakers; it was only by the Puritans of Massachu-
setts that they were hanged. The persecution of the
Quakers continued for five years, and during that time
it was a great grievance to Massachusetts that no assist-
ance was given by the towns of Narragansett Bay in
extirpating the heretics who “propagate the kingdome
of Sathan."
Rhode Island would have no part in Persecution.
-It is to the everlasting honour of Rhode Island
that, when appealed to by the commissioners of the
united colonies, they replied in these terms: “As
concerning these Quakers (so called) which are now
among us, we have no law among us whereby to punish
any for only declaring by words, etc., their minds and
understanding concerning the things and ways of God as
to salvation and an eternal condition.” They did not
deny that the doctrines of the Quakers tended“ to very
absolute cutting down and overturning relations and civil
government among men”; nevertheless, they believed
that the most effectual way of defeating their designs
was to oppose them with no weapons other than argu-
ments and moral dissuasives. To meet them with weapons
of another kind would be to defeat their own objeet,
THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND
341
inasmuch as they delight "to be persecuted by civil
powers; and when they are so, they are like to gain more
adherence by the conceit of their patient sufferings than
by consent to their pernicious sayings.” It is easy for
us to see that the Rhode Islanders took the only right
and reasonable ground; but, unfortunately for their very
sound and enlightened theory, it did not receive practical
illustration in the behaviour of the persecuted sect which
they thus welcomed to their asylum. Rhode Island
became a very cave of Adullam for Quaker refugees.
They kept the whole colony in a state of constant
embroilment and dispeace. There is no doubt that
Roger Williams gave expression to the feeling of
grievance on his own part and on the part of his
fellow-colonists when he said: "We suffer for their
sake, and are accounted their abettors." Wide as was
his toleration and boundless his charity, he could
not hold himself back from contending against their
pernicious errors, their unscriptural opinions ;1 and his
controversy with Fox, contained in a book of more than
300 printed pages, entitled, George Fox Digged out of his
Burrowes, is perhaps the only controversy of his life into
which he threw a spice of acrimony and bitterness,
though he himself playfully describes it as “sharp Scrip-
ture language.”
From the description of them just given, it will be
seen that the Quakers of three hundred years ago
1 His irrepressible zeal is shown in the fact that when he was
seventy-three years old he rowed himself in a boat the whole length
of Narragansett Bay to engage in a theological tournament against
three Quaker champions.
342
PURITANISM
99 1
had little in common with the peaceably-disposed,
excellent, and irreproachable people we now know as
the Society of Friends. Strictly speaking, they were
not Quakers, but Ranters, the Ranters whom Fox
spoke of as “great opposers of Friends, and disturbers
of our meetings. Yet these were the species of
Quakers with which New England and Old England
were made painfully familiar. At one time more than
four thousand of them were in English jails. They were
a disorderly and turbulent set of people, guilty of most
censurable behaviour, the most wanton acts of outrage
and indecency. They railed against ministers and magis-
trates when they met them on the road, interrupted
public worship, harangued the people in public places
with loud voice and excited gestures, and even women went
naked through the public streets. A Quakeress appeared
at a meeting-house in Massachusetts attired in sackcloth,
and with her face painted black, in order to represent the
coming of the small-pox. “The Quakers were drunk with
religious zeal. They appeared naked in the streets and
churches, hideous with grease and lampblack, breaking
bottles, and raising riot and disturbance everywhere."
Undoubtedly the great error into which the authorities
of Massachusetts fell was in attempting to extirpate
them as fanatics and heretics, rather than as enemies
of public order, and as disturbers of the peace. Some
of the severities directed against them may be on the
latter ground justly defended. For the more drastic
1 See chapter on “Quakerism in New England,” Bryant and Gay's
History, vol. ii. p. 175.
2 “The magistrates took the ground that Massachusetts belonged
THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND
343
measures—those that were directed against dangerous,
heretical, and blasphemous opinions—no apology can be
offered. They are indefensible. The execution of Mary
Dyer, William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, and
William Leddra was a piece of horrible and atrocious
barbarity, and reflects upon Endicott and Norton, the
principal agents concerned in it, lasting infamy and
disgrace.
It is possible to reprobate and condemn the intoler-
ance of the Puritans of Massachusetts, rather, we should
say, the leaders of the Puritans of Massachusetts, for it
is clear that the body of opinion and feeling in the
colony was not with them, but against them,--and yet
to disavow all sympathy with the reckless unmeasured
denunciation which has been poured out upon them in
connection with their treatment of the Quakers. It
has been the fashion in these days to represent the case
as if all the wrong were on one side, and all human
sympathy should be with the Quakers. It seldom
happens in any quarrel that all the wrong is on one
side. Life would be much simpler if such were the
In this instance wrong was largely on one side,
but not entirely so.” 1 Lowell's judgment upon this
matter must, we think, constrain the sympathy, if it
does not command the entire assent, of all who have
fairly considered this question : “Whether they were
right or wrong in their dealing with the Quakers is
absolutely to its people, and that they had the right now, as in
earlier days, to put down opposition, and banish all malcontents.
The theory was correct enough.”—History of English Colonies in
America, by Henry Cabot Lodge, p. 354.
1 Boston, by Henry Cabot Lodge, pp. 46–48.
case.
344
PURITANISM
not a question to be decided glibly after two centuries'
struggle towards a conception of toleration very imper-
fect even yet, perhaps impossible to human nature. If
they did not choose what seems to us the wisest way
of keeping the devil out of their household, they
certainly had a very honest will to keep him out, which
we might emulate with advantage.”.
"1
Massachusetts less advanced in regard to freedom
and toleration than any other State." It is wrong,"
says Mr. Goldwin Smith, “ to say that the Puritans of
Massachusetts left the mother country to assert the
principle of liberty of conscience, and then shamefully
violated that principle by their own practice. They
came out, not to assert liberty of conscience, a principle
which had not dawned on their minds, but to found a
religious commonwealth on their own model, and in it to
live the spiritual life to which they aspired.” “These men
had come into the wilderness to build up a theocracy,
and made no pretensions of securing liberty for anybody
but themselves. They were quite as intolerarit of opinions
that were not their own as the most inexorable persecutor
that ever 'peppered' a Puritan.” 2
1 Among my Books : New England Two Centuries Ago, p. 269.
2 Bryant and Gay's History, vol. i. p. 537. Perhaps there is too
much pepper in this criticism, and it needs to be read side by side
with the statement of Mr. Douglas Campbell, in his work, The Puri-
tan in Holland, England, and America. He condemns, and that
strongly, the intolerance of Massachusetts. He says: “She was the
only one of the colonies except Connecticut in which witches were
put to death ; she alone hanged the inoffensive (save the mark)
Quakers; and her records tell the worst tale—with the exception of
those of Virginia-regarding the atrocities committed on the Indians,
THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND
345
We have already seen how Roger Williams was ban-
ished from Massachusetts for having a broached and
divulged divers new and dangerous opinions.” As this
furnishes a crucial instance of the charge of exclusiveness
and intolerance brought against the Puritans of Massa-
chusetts, it will be well for us to try and ascertain what
really were the grounds on which the action of the author-
ities was based in their treatment of Roger Williams. This
raises the question,
con-
Was Roger Williams persecuted on account of his
religious opinions ? And we may say at once that
this is one of those questions which probably never
will be settled to the satisfaction of every one
cerned in it. Opposite conclusions will be formed,
and opposite answers given, according as the standpoint
from which men view it varies, and according as their
minds are swayed by varying prepossessions. On the one
side, it is contended that Roger Williams suffered what he
did in the cause of soul liberty; in other words, that it was
his zeal for toleration, the rights and liberty of conscience,
that made him obnoxious to the authorities of Massa-
who were robbed of their land and constantly kidnapped and sold
as slaves to the southern planters. He accounts for her obscurantism
on this wise, on the theory which his work is mainly written to sup-
port, that she had come less than any other colony under the influence
of the Netherlands. He adds : “Much has been said in history about
the severe Puritanical laws of Massachusetts. They were severe
when compared with the laws of some of the other colonies, like
New York and Pennsylvania, which had come more fully under a
Netherland influence. But in some features they were mildness itself
with those enacted at an earlier period by the government of Vir-
ginia, a pure English settlement little tainted with Puritanism.”
Vol. ii. pp. 414, 415.
346
PURITANISM
chusetts, and led them to insist on his expulsion from
the colony. On the other side, it is maintained that
toleration and soul liberty or soul oppression had noth
whatever to do with his being banished. No question
of this kind was involved in it. He was not charged
with heresy; the issue as between him and the Fathers
did not turn upon any religious dogma. The questions
which he raised, and by raising provoked opposition,
were questions relating to political rights and the
administration of government. It will put the matter
in a clearer light if we consider for a moment what
exactly were the charges brought against Roger Williams.
Happily he himself has left us in no doubt as to what
these were.
In Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and
Answered, he says: “After my public trial and answers,
one of the most eminent magistrates, whose name and
speech may by others be remembered, stood up and spoke.
Mr. Williams holds forth these four particulars : First,
That we have not our land by patent from the King, but
that the natives are the true owners of it, and that
we ought to repent of such a receiving it by Patent.
Secondly, That it is not lawful to call a wicked person
to sweare to pray as being actions of God's worship.
Thirdly, That it is not lawful to hear any of the Ministers
of the Parish Assemblies in England. Fourthly, That
the Civil Magistrates' power extends only to the bodies
and goods and outward state of men, etc. I acknowledge
the particulars were rightly summed up." It is evident
at a glance that it is only the last particular which
contains any allusion whatever to the doctrine of tolera-
tion or “soul liberty.” Such allusion, indeed, as may
THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND
347
be detected in the third, rather points to the infraction
than the maintenance of this doctrine.
We have read with considerable care a work recently
published, entitled, Roger Williams, the Pioneer of Religious
Liberty, in which Mr. Straus does his best to relieve
Williams from the charge of being factious and self-
opinionative, etc., and to affix 'to the leaders in
Massachusetts the odium of intolerance and persecu-
tion. We recognise the earnestness and ability with
which he has discharged his task, but we cannot
honestly say that his success is equal to his zeal, or that
he has in any way weakened the argument or discredited
the contention of those who hold that Roger Williams
was banished from Salem, not for his religious opinions,
but for political reasons, because he identified himself
with doctrines and opinions which were believed to be
subversive of the safety and even the existence of the
rising commonwealth. That this was the conviction of
those who were the means of his banishment, we have
no manner of doubt.
They may have been mistaken
in so believing, to some extent it is very probable that
they were, but their sincerity is unimpeachable; nor does
a candid examination of their conduct constrain any
other conclusion than that they were moved, not by a
malignant and persecuting spirit, but by the prudent
instinct of self - protection. This admission does not
in any wise detract from our admiration of Roger
Williams, nor lessen our conviction that he was
noble, magnanimous, broad-minded man, swayed by a
a
1
By Oscar S. Straus. London: T. Fisher Unwin. New York :
The Century Co. 1894.
348
: PURITANISM
as
passion for liberty as pure and intense
ever
glowed in a human soul. Nay more, we confess that
necessary as it seems to us that he should have been
restrained from following divisive courses by propagating
his opinions, our sympathies go out to him in his banish-
ment and exile, as they do not go out to his judges and
those who inflicted this sentence upon him, and we cannot
but feel that his was the real triumph and the stainless
and lasting glory.
“And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels
Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels."
The gpirit of intolerance was deeply ingrained in the
minds of some of the Puritan leaders. John Endicott was
a passionate, domineering, yet disinterested ruler, an un-
sparing and conscientious bigot. Cotton only disapproved
of persecution when it was directed against truth; it was
the duty of truth to persecute error.
“ Better tolerate
hypocrites and tares," he said, “ than thorns and briars.”
Nathaniel Ward, who drew up the first legal code, known
as the Body of Liberties, said, “ Polypiety is the greatest
1 Dr. Dexter, in his As to Roger Williams, Boston 1876, has
thoroughly discussed the question as to Williams being expelled
from Massachusetts on account of his religious opinions, and justifies,
we think, completely the verdict of Dr. Palfrey (History of New Eng-
land, vol. i. p. 413), that “the sound and generous principle of a
perfect freedom of the conscience in religious concerns can scarcely
be shown to have been involved in the dispute.”
We would take this opportunity of directing attention to an article
on “The alleged Persecution of Massachusetts, or Justice to the
Pilgrims," which appeared in 1892 in the March number of New
Englander and Yale Review. This article is specially valuable for
the sources of information and authority which it marshals and
suggests.
THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND
349
old age.
impiety in the world. It is said that men ought to have
liberty of their conscience, and that it is persecution to
debar them of it; I can rather stand amazed than reply
to this: it is an astonishment to think that the braines
of men should be parboyld in such impious ignorance.
Let all the wits under heaven lay their heads together
and find an Assertion worse than this (one excepted), I will
Petition to be chosen the universal Ideal of the world.” 1
“The elder Winthrop had, I believe," says Bancroft,2
“ relented before his death, and professed himself weary
of banishing heretics; the soul of the younger Winthrop
was incapable of harbouring a thought of intolerant
cruelty ; but the rugged Dudley was not mellowed by
God forbid,' said he,'our love for the truth
should be grown so cold that we should tolerate errors.
I die no libertine. Very different, however, was the
spirit of Sir Henry Vane. 'It were better,' he said,
'not to censure any persons for matters of a religious
concernment.' With Roger Williams, with Milton, and
Cromwell, he held that persecution for the sake of reli-
gious opinion was both a blunder and a crime. It is
evident that in this Governor Vane carried with him
1 This eminent lawyer-divine outdoes all the peculiarities of his
style when writing of toleration. “We have been reputed as Col-
luvies of wild Opinionists, swarmed into a remote wilderness to find
elbow-room for our Phanatic doctrines and practices; I trust our
diligence past, and constant sedulity against such persons and courses,
will plead better things for us. I dare take upon me to be the
Herauld of New England so far as to proclaim to the World, in the
name of our Colony, that all Familists, Antinomians, Anabaptists,
and other enthusiasts, shall have free Liberty to keep away from us;
and such as will come, to be gone as fast as they can, the sooner the
better.”_Bryant and Gay's History, vol. ii. pp. 59, 60.
2 History, vol. i. p. 336, revised edition, p. 362.
>>>
350
PURITANISM
the weight of opinion among the colonists. They rose
up again and again in arraignment of and revolt against
the policy of their rulers, and there can be little doubt
that it was owing to the growing body of adverse public
opinion that the reign of persecution ceased as soon as it
did. Massachusetts, on whom, as the most powerful of
the colonies, lay the heaviest responsibility for her own
safety and the safety of her allies, had used greater
rigour than the rest in the maintenance of order and
in the removal of dissentients. But in thirty-five years
she had grown powerful enough and confident enough to
dismiss or to relax some of the securities which, in her
early feebleness, had been thought essential.
fairly be reckoned to the credit of her people that they
desisted from harsh measures, and were reconciled to the
existence of dissent in some proportion to their becoming
well organised and safe, while too often it has been
observed in other communities, that the stronger they
felt themselves the less freedom they allowed.” 1
It may
The Fathers of New Plymouth free from the stain
of persecution. It has been asserted, and when not
asserted has been frequently implied, that the Fathers
and founders of New Plymouth were chargeable with
perscuting those who differed from them in their religious
opinions, and that consequently Mrs. Hemans' well-
known tribute, that
“They left unstained what there they found,
Freedom to worship God,"
must be taken with considerable abatement. In his
1 Palfrey's History of New England, vol. ii. p. 493.
THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND
351
History of the People called Quakers, Sewel makes this
charge without any qualification. Speaking of the fol-
lowers of those men who suffered much for their separa-
tion from the Church of England, Brown, Barrowe,
Greenwood, and Penry,—he adds: “Very remarkable it
is that even those of that persuasion, of which many in
the reign of King Charles I. went to New England to
avoid the persecution of the bishops, afterwards them-
selves turned cruel persecutors of pious people by inhuman
whippings, etc., and, lastly, by putting some to death by
the hands of a hangman.”1 It is evident at a glance
that the writer has fallen into a double blunder, first in
saying that the followers of Browne went out to New
England in the reign of Charles I., and, secondly, in
alleging that they turned out cruel persecutors. No
doubt Sewel is thinking of the second band of emigrants
who went out to Massachusetts, and which he mixes up
with the settlers at New Plymouth.
That the Fathers of New Plymouth were innocent of the
charge of persecuting the Quakers is proved by the fact that
during their lifetime there were no Quakers to persecute.
Upon this matter the testimony of George Fox may be
held to be decisive. “In 1655," says Fox, “ many went
beyond the sea, where truth also sprung up (he means the
truth for which he and his co-religionists contended); and
in 1656 it broke forth in America." This was thirty-five
years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620,
and by that time not a single leader whose name has
come down to us was living. John Robinson, John
Carver, Samuel Fuller, William Brewster, Edward Win-
1 Vol. i. pp. 6, 7.
352
PURITANISM
slow, Miles Standish, William Bradford, had all passed
away.
New Plymouth was no longer an independent
colony, but had become confederated with Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and New Haven. Clearly, then, no charge
of persecution as against Friends or Quakers can be
sustained against the Fathers and first settlers of New
England.
Reference has been already made to the prevalence of
toleration in New Plymouth as compared with Massa-
chusetts. The treatment of Quakers was far more
humane. It was never guilty of the crime of hanging
witches. In New Plymouth church membership was not
made a condition of the elective franchise. Those larger
and freer sentiments in regard to the toleration of differ-
ing opinions, which were fermenting in the minds of a
large and influential section of their countrymen in
England, were beginning to operate upon the minds of
colonists, and they read with avidity the literature which
was being continually imported into the colony. The im-
pression that it made upon them may be gathered from a
movement which was set on foot in New Plymouth : " for
a full and free tolerance of religion to all men, without
exception, against Turk, Jew, Papist, Arian, Socinian,
Familist, or any other.” Winslow, governor of the colony,
writing to Governor Winthrop, says: “You would have
admired to have seen how sweet the carion relished to
1 See pamphlet entitled, The Pilgrim Fathers neither Puritans nor
Persecutors, by the late Chamberlain of the City of London, Benja-
min Scott, Esq., F.R.A.S. In this pamphlet Mr. Scott brings for-
ward some interesting facts, showing how the sons and descendants
of the Pilgrim Fathers were honourably distinguished for their
hatred of, and hostility to, persecution.
THE GROWTH OF INTOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND
353
the palate of most of them." The movement was
defeated by delay ; but it shows in what direction the
mind of these Plymouth Puritans was tending.
Puritans and Puritans.-What has just been
said about New Plymouth illustrates the necessity of
careful discrimination when passing judgment upon the
Puritans as a party or class. To their detractors and
the majority of critics it never seems to occur that
there were Puritans and Puritans; that the name
stands for almost as much diversity of faith and
character as the name Protestant.” Hence much
that has been written about the Puritans recalls the
saying of Napoleon, that "history is a fable that has
been agreed on.” 1 For instance, in his work on The
Puritan Colonies, Mr. Doyle says: “To speak of the
Puritan, whether in England or America, as the champion
of spiritual freedom, is a proof of ignorance or worse.
Toleration was abhorrent to him, even when he most
needed it. He would have scorned those pleas of
expediency which modern apologists have sometimes
urged in his behalf. His creed on this matter was
as simple as that of St. Lewis or Torquemada. He
had possession of the truth, and it was his bounden
duty, by whatever means, to promote the extension of
that truth, and to restrain and extirpate error. In
this he in no wise fell short of the moral standard of
his age.”
But as a specimen of wholesale reckless denunciation
1 See ante, p. 112; Doyle's English in America : Puritan Colonies,
vol. i. p. 6.
23
354
PURITANISM
“ The
it would be difficult to match the following choice passage,
taken from a leading literary English journal:1
savage brutality of the American Puritans, truthfully told,
would afford one of the most significant and profitable
lessons that history could teach. Champions of liberty,
but merciless and unprincipled tyrants; fugitives from
persecution, but the most senseless and reckless of perse-
cutors; claimants of an enlightened religion, but the last
upholders of the cruel and ignorant. creed of the witch
doctors; whining over the ferocity of the Indian, yet
outdoing that ferocity a hundredfold,” etc. But probably
enough has been quoted of this kind of swearing at large.
It serves at least to illustrate the venomous antipathy
which it has ever been the fate of the Puritans to provoke,
whether in America or in England. Their enemies and
critics (of this school) have never professed to be re-
strained by the usual urbanities of controversy, nor to
be governed by the ordinary rules of literary warfare,
but have gone upon the principle that any stick is
good enough with which to beat a cur of a Puritan.
The homage of such hate is perhaps the greatest of all
tributes which has been paid to the greatness of Puritanism.
1 The Saturday Review, January 29th, 1881.
Toleration and Religious Liberty:
General Conclusions
355
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VII
Toleration not from scepticism, ignorance, or indifference, Lecky,
Froude, Morley, Dr. Johnson, Charles James Fox-Lord Herbert and
Hobbes, St. Louis-Philips Brooks' definition of tolerance_Wrong
views rebutted-Appeal to history-Origin of toleration-Christian
Church founded on Edict of Milan — Tertullian, Lactantius,
Athanasius-William of Occam, Marsiglio-Wyclif--Augsburg Con-
fession—Luther–Hallam points to More and Jeremy Taylor-
Masson on-Pioneers of liberty and toleration, how to be judged-
Note on “The duty of persecution"—Note on "The tolerance of indif-
ference"-Earliest apostles of toleration from among the persecuted
---Masson's testimony to Independents and Baptists-English Baptist
Church at Amsterdam-Dutch Anabaptists first advocates of tolera-
tion-William of Orange--Dutch Anabaptists in London, Robert
Browne first to advocate toleration in England-Toleration bound
up with Independency-Bishop Hooper—Robert Browne —Yet
Browne's doctrine not toleration in the fullest sense—Plea that
Papists might be tolerated-Principle of toleration very imperfectly
understood—Roger Williams gave it widest practical application-
Henry Jacob, Leonard Busher-Both allow magistrate right of inter-
ference in religious matters Williams a fanatic for liberty
American Puritans, intolerance of-Less inexcusable, because living
in age of intolerance-Note on “Does Calvinism promote intoler-
ance ?" — Bancroft quoted— Buckle, Froude, Fairbairn— Note on
“ Calvinism and Puritanism not identical."
356
CHAPTER VII
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: GENERAL
CONCLUSIONS
I
THE question of toleration and religious liberty is so
intimately bound up with the Puritan contention, and
has been so identified with the struggle which has been
fragmentarily recounted in the previous pages, that we
feel we owe no apology for endeavouring to ascertain, with
some degree of exactitude and detail, the position in which
the question stands at the point we have now reached,
and what has been the progress made in regard to it."
1 It need scarcely be pointed out that to discuss with anything like
adequateness the principle of toleration and its historical develop-
ment, not a few pages, but a large and elaborate treatise, would be
required. In the preface to his candid and suggestive work, Persecu-
tion and Tolerance (being the Hulsean Lectures, delivered before the
University of Cambridge in 1893–4 by the Bishop of Peterborough),
Dr. Creighton says: “No one can feel more strongly than myself the
triviality of this book as a contribution to the investigation of a large
subject." As such an attempted contribution the following pages
must seem triviality itself, but we are happy in thinking that they
cannot possibly incur the risk of being thus construed. We have
merely "put together some conclusions " which have occurred to us
in tracing the genesis and growth of Puritanism in the Old World
and in the New, and do not think it necessary to apologise for their
being so “fragmentary and incomplete."
357
358
PURITANISM
What is toleration ?-Before proceeding, however,
to trace the development of the idea of tolerance or
toleration, it may be well to state and define what tolera-
tion really is, for the misconceptions which have pre-
vailed and still prevail upon the subject are indeed
extraordinary. Even able writers and acute critics have
fallen into strange error in regard to it. Mr. Lecky,
in his Rise of the Influence of Rationalism in Europe,
contends that tolerance is the outcome of scepticism,
and that intolerance was exploded, or, at all events,
began to be undermined, by the rise of the rationalistic
spirit. “Tolerance,” says Mr. Froude, “means at bottom
that no one knows anything about the matter, and
that one opinion is as good as another." It is perfectly
true, as Mr. John Morley has observed, that complete
tolerance may mean only complete indifference, and
certainly the cheapest of all virtues is tolerance on
the part of men who have no faith. Speaking of certain
controversialists, Dr. Johnson says: “They disputed
with good humour, because they were not in earnest.” 1
“ The only foundation of tolerance," said Charles James
Fox, “is a degree of scepticism, and without it there can
be none.” “It is getting to be a fashionable notion that
toleration is the offspring of scepticism. If so, then
Lord Herbert and Hobbes of Malmesbury ought to have
been its apostles, but they were not; and the Baptists,
the Independents, and the people called Quakers ought
i See note at end of this section on the tolerance of indifference.
“Clerks may dispute," said St. Louis, “but the layman who hears
the Christian faith spoken against ought to defend it only with his
sword, which he should drive home into the gainsayer." Quoted by
Bishop of Peterborough in Persecution and Tolerance, p. 91.
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
359
not to have been its early apostles, but they were."]
Even Mr. Lecky is constrained to declare that "the
mnost illustrious of the advocates of toleration were men
who were earnestly attached to positive religion, and
that the writings in which they embodied their argu-
ments are even now among the classics of the Church.”
Not only so, “the greatest living antichristian writer
was Hobbes, who was perhaps the most unflinching of
all the supporters of persecution.”
No better definition of toleration, we think, has been
given than that of Dr. Philips Brooks, in his admirable
little work on Tolerance. “It is," he says, "the willing
consent that other men should hold and express opinions
with which we disagree, until they are convinced by
reason that those opinions are untrue.” This definition
may not be deemed quite satisfactory from a doctrinaire
or logical point of view, but as a working definition we
think it leaves nothing to be desired. The tolerance
which is thus defined is utterly alien from the state of
mind which regards all opinions as alike,
-matters of no
moment,—or yields to them à mere frivolous incon-
siderate assent. The very word tolerance, as applied to
such a state as this, is a misnomer.
Tolerance sup-
poses that there is something to tolerate, and that some
degree of strain, difficulty, and cost is involved in it.
But ex hypothesi, this is excluded. Indifference knows
no strain, to it all opinions are alike; it reminds us of
what Gibbon says about the various modes of worship
which prevailed in the Roman world, which were con-
sidered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers
1 Dr. Stoughton, Jubilee Lectures.
360
PURITANISM
as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.
To ascribe to the magistrate, the philosopher, and the
people the virtue of toleration, would indeed be a glaring
fallacy. Not less transparent is the fallacy involved in
Dr. Johnson's dictum, that controversy conducted on both
sides with good humour is a proof of want of earnestness.
Is it not, on the very face of it, absurd to conclude that
charity and good temper must argue indifference to truth,
or imply want of depth of conviction, want of firmness
of principle ? May we not rather say that he who feels
that he has his feet firmly planted upon the rock of
truth and principle, and he alone, can afford to exhibit
perfect charity and good temper ? The clearness of a
conviction is the best preservative against its over-
passionate enforcement.2 When the Church was most
catholic, and so most tolerant, then it was that the
victorious certitude of her own faith was pre-eminently
exhibited to the world. Toleration, it has been truly
1“A man of vague and uncertain opinions cannot lay claim to
tolerance ; he is exercising no self-restraint, he is not guiding him-
self towards any moral purpose ; he is simply indifferent and incap-
able. The tolerant man, on the other hand, has decided opinions.
... He is virtuous, not because he puts his own opinions out of sight,
nor because he thinks that other opinions are as good as his own,
but because his opinions are so real to him that he would not have
anyone else hold them with less reality.”—Persecution and Tolerance,
“ Tolerance is not merely a negative virtue. It is needful
on the part of the Church as an organised body. Tolerance is need-
ful to the individual, for it is the expression of that reverence for
others which forms a great part of the lesson which Christ came to
teach him. It is the means whereby he learns to curb self-conceit,
and submit to the penetrating discipline imposed by Christian love."
-Ibid. p. 137.
2 Rothe. See Canon Mozley's fine sermon on “The unspoken
judgment of mankind.”
p. 123.
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
361
1
said, is not only possible, but necessary, the moment
religion is made a matter for the conscience rather than
the magistrate, but impossible the moment it becomes
an affair of the magistrate rather than the conscience.
The best answer, however, to the assertion that
toleration is created by scepticism is that supplied by
history.
Rise and growth of toleration. — The history
of Independency is to a large extent the history of the
rise and spread of the principle of toleration. By this
it is not implied that it originated within the borders of
Independency. Its origin, strictly speaking, is indeter-
minable. Like the passion for liberty, it is universal as
the mind of man, and old as the first attempt to rivet
fetters upon it. All through the ages the forces that
have contributed to the progress and development of the
world have been making for it.
“ Thou hast great allies,
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind.”
Still the principle of toleration may be shown to have
had a historic beginning. During the first century, as we
should expect (for surely it may be said that the Christian
Church was founded on toleration), and before the
impulse communicated to His followers by Christ and
His apostles had passed away, toleration and charity or
love were almost synonymous terms, and constituted an
1 Dr. Fairbairn's Religion in History and in the Life of To-day, pp.
229-231.
362
PURITANISM
evidence of Christian discipleship which the heathen
around were unable to resist or gainsay.1
Toleration we find expressly provided for in the Edict
of Milan put forth by Constantine in conjunction with
Licinius, A.D. 313. This rescript contained far more
than the first edict of toleration published by the Emperor
Galerius. By the latter, Christianity was merely received
into the class of the religiones licitoe, while this new law
implied the introduction of a universal and unconditional
religious freedom and liberty of conscience—a thing, in
fact, wholly new (Neander). “ The rights of man and
the law of nature," says Tertullian, “give everyone the
power of worshipping as he thinks proper, and the religion
of one man neither injures nor benefits another. Force is
indeed foreign to religion.” So speaks Lactantius, and
Lactantius was tutor to the son of the Emperor Constan-
tine. Religion cannot be compelled, it is by words
rather than wounds that you must bend the will.
Nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion.
Our God is the God of all, whether they will it or no;
but we do not desire that anyone, whether he will or no,
should be compelled to worship Him. Religion is the one
region in which liberty has fixed its domicile and home."
Says Athanasius : “ It is an evidence that men want
confidence in their own faith when they use force, and
constrain men against their wills. It is the devil's
16. See how these Christians love one another,' was the just and
striking exclamation of the heathen in the first century. "There
are no wild beasts so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning
their faith,' was the equally striking, and probably equally just,
exclamation of the heathen in the fourth century.”—Lecky's Ration-
alism in Europe, p. 31. See entire chapter on “History of Persecution."
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
363
method, because there is no truth in him, to work with
hatchet and sword.”
Among the earliest advocates of religious liberty was
William of Occam, who was expelled from the Franciscan
order for maintaining, against the pretensions of the
Papacy, that "the Head of the Church and its foundation
is one-Christ alone." The De Monarchia of Dante did
much to clear the air. John Marsiglio of Padua, in 1327,
in his epoch-making book, The Defender of Peace, “advanced
and maintained tenets which, if heard for centuries in
Christendom, had been heard only from obscure and
fanatic heretics, mostly mingled up with wild and
obnoxious opinions.”i These tenets found a prepared
and fruitful soil in the mind of Wyclif, and from them
he elaborated his famous doctrine of the sovereignty of
the people, and the universal priesthood of believers.
The idea of toleration was not, perhaps, explicitly recog-
nised by these early Reformers, but it was certainly
implied and subsumed in the position which they took up.
The earliest and most explicit statement of the doctrine
of toleration that we have come upon since the first
centuries of the Church is that contained in that first-
born of Protestant creeds, the Augsburg Confession,
which, though drawn up by Melanchthon, was doubtless
drafted under the direction of Luther, and reflects the
opinions of the great Reformer. In his treatise on the
secular power, and how far obedience is due to it, Luther
says: “Its duty is to secure external peace and order,
and to protect men in their persons and property against
1 Milman's History of Latin Christianity, vol. vii. p. 406. See “The
Evolution of Tolerance” in Persecution and Tolerance, pp. 94-97.
364
PURITANISM
can
ill-doers. . . . But God cannot, and will not, allow any
,
one but Himself to rule the soul. Whenever, therefore,
the temporal power presumes to legislate for the soul, it
encroaches. No one
or shall force another to
believe. Thoughts are toll-free. Heresy is a spiritual
thing which no iron can hew down, no fire burn, no
water drown. Body, gold, and goods God has given over
to the emperor; the heart He has reserved to Himself.
The Church is to be governed with the spoken sword,
the rod of the mouth, which alone touches the conscience.
The civil authority has nothing else than the sword of
the fist and a rod of wood. They differ both as to
ends and means. The end and aim of the Church
is the peace of eternity; that of the State is peace
on earth."
Hallam rebukes Southey for having declared, in lan-
guage which at least dates after the year of the Spanish
Armada, that "no Church, no sect, no individual even, had
yet professed the principle of toleration,” by citing the
Utopia of Sir Thomas More and the harangues of the
Chancellor l'Hospital of France. Hallam calls Jeremy
Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying the first famous plea in
England for toleration in religion. But as we have seen
already the idea had a much earlier origin than this.
“Who shall say," asks Professor Masson,“ in the heads
of what stray and solitary men scattered through Europe
in the sixteenth century, nantes rari in gurgite vasto,
some form of the idea, as a purely speculative conception,
may have been lodged ? Notwithstanding the suc-
cessive struggles which have been waged on its behalf,
religious toleration, or, as it is often called, liberty of
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
365
conscience, “the noblest innovation of modern times,” i
was of slow growth, and not till the close of the seven-
teenth century can it be said to have been recognised or
clearly understood by any large body of people. It had
to fight its way at first in the face of undisguised bitter
hostility, and afterwards in the face of suspicion and of
secret or openly avowed distrust. Ever since the Refor-
mation there has been a slow and continuous progress
in the direction of widened freedom, but it has been
marked by this special peculiarity, that the progress has
never been all along the line. It has been always the
few, sometimes the one or two, that have stepped out of
the line, and sounded the signal for the advance. "A
few guiding spirits march first, and the multitude fall
into line and follow after them.” And even these guiding
spirits have often shown themselves surprisingly backward
to cast away, not merely the dregs and tatters, but the
more ample habiliments of intolerance and religious bigotry.
If they have struck the blow for freedom with one hand,
they have helped to manacle it with the other. Of course
this charge has to be brought against the various members
of the vanguard with differing degrees of force, but there
are very few indeed against whom it may not be to some
1“ The principles of tolerance are no modern discovery,” says the
Bishop of Peterborough, Persecution and Tolerance, p. 97. “Men
had always known that truth [that the compelling of a man to any.
thing against his own conscience is a doing evil], but it was not
always convenient to act up to their knowledge,” p. 114. Dr. Creigh-
ton does not, we think, give sufficient weight to the consideration
that this truth had not only become eclipsed, but had actually been
lost, through the obfuscation of men's consciences, and through the
influence of inherited traditional belief, and that in the seven-
teenth century it was practically rediscovered.
366
PURITANISM
extent preferred. It were strange indeed had it been
otherwise. As in judging of the morality of the Old
Testament saints we recognise the propriety of applying
to them, not the standard which prevails in our age, but
that which prevailed in the age in which they lived; so, in
like manner, the attainments of the early pioneers of free-
dom may fairly claim to be judged, not by an ideal standard,
but by prevalent contemporary conceptions of conscience
and liberty. Judged by this standard they were con-
spicuously in advance of the age in which they lived,
and this honour must be ungrudgingly accorded to them.
No doubt their theory of liberty was very defective, and
was often vitiated by such unreasonable limitations and
illusory safeguards, that, had it been logically carried out,
it would have been nugatory, or even subversive of its
avowed purpose. Happily the instincts of these zealots
were better than their logic, and preserved them from
drawing the practical deductions of their own theory;
while their heroic struggle in what to them was the
most sacred of all causes, makes it a thankless task to
dwell upon their inconsistencies and errors.
NOTE ON THE DUTY OF PERSECUTION
The idea of toleration was understood neither by those who
espoused the cause of the Reformation nor-by those who opposed it.
“Both sides believed that it was necessary to punish or even to burn
a man's body to save his soul.” Sir James Mackintosh says: “The
toleration of heresy was deemed by men of all persuasions to be
as unreasonable as it would now be thought to propose the impunity
of murder.” From a list of authenticated trials for heresy drawn
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
367
1
up by Bishop Stubbs at the request of the Royal Commission on
Ecclesiastical Courts (1881–1883), it appears that, beginning with
Wyclif, and ending with William Balowe, who was burned in
1466, more than one hundred and twenty persons were tried for
heresy ; and the number of those who were thus tried was probably
far in excess of this. “Everywhere the dominant party, which-
ever it might be, forbade, and that in most cases under pain
of death, the practice of any religion except that of the dominant
party. Those who clave to the old religion forbade the practice
of the new; and the professors of the new doctrines, the moment
they had the power, forbade the practice of the old.
Under Edward and Elizabeth the standard of belief was changed,
so changed that only a few extreme sectaries were now in danger of
the flames. But the difference simply was that the line was drawn
at a different point. Those who went beyond that point were burned
by those who, a few years before, might have been burned them-
selves.”—Freeman. In the reign of Elizabeth, Hallam distinguishes
five stages or degrees in restraint on religious liberty. Here is the
persecutor's ladder, as it has been termed : (1) The regeneration of a
test of conformity to the established religion as a condition of exer-
cising offices of public trust. (2) Restraint of the free promulgation
of opinions, especially through the press. (3) Prohibition of the open
exercise of religious worship. (4) Prohibition of even private, acts
of devotion, or private expression of opinion. (5) Enforcement by
legal penalties of conformity to the Established Church, or an abjura-
tion of 'heterodox tenets." “The statutes of Elizabeth's reign,” he
adds, “comprehended every one of these progressive stages of restraint
and persecution.”—National Rights, by D. G. Ritchie, M.A., Professor
of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of St. Andrews, pp. 199,
200, Note A, “ Religious Persecution and Toleration; some His-
torical Illustrations."
NOTE ON THE TOLERANCE OF INDIFFERENCE
What has been said in the preceding chapter on the persecution of
the Quakers in Massachusetts furnishes a somewhat striking example
of quasi or rather pseudo-toleration. In a tracton liberty of conscience,
already referred to, written by Leonard Busher, the author says:
"I
read that Jews, Christians, and Turks are tolerated in Constantinople,
368
PURITANISM
and yet are peaceable, though so contrary the one to the other. If this
be so, how much more ought Christians not to force one another to
religion! And how much more ought Christians to tolerate Christians,
when as the Turks do tolerate them! Shall we be less merciful than the
Turks? or shall we learn the Turks to persecute Christians ?” Now
the humaneness of the Turk, as compared with that of the Puritans
of Massachusetts, is supposed to be illustrated by the treatment to
which the Quakeress Mary Fisher was subjected. Persecuted and
imprisoned both in Old and New England, she found an asylum in
Turkey, and there, under the protection of the Grand Turk, she was
unmolested, and left free to propagate her opinions, and enjoy the
fullest liberty of prophesying. “This is one of the numerous inci-
dents," says Mr. Fiske (Beginnings of New England, pp. 183, 184),
“that on a superficial view of history might be cited in support of
the opinion that there has been, on the whole, more tolerance in the
Mussulman than in the Christian world. Rightly interpreted, how-
ever, the fact has no such implication. In Massachusetts the
preaching of Quaker doctrines might (and did) lead to a revolution ;
in Turkey it was as harmless as the barking of dogs. Governor
Endicott was afraid of Mary Fisher ; Mahomet III. was not.”
It is said that one of the first papers laid before Charles II. after
his restoration was a memorial on behalf of the oppressed Quakers
in New England. The result was the despatching of a missive to
Governor Endicott and the Court of Massachusetts, commanding
them to desist from all further proceedings against the Quakers.
Does anybody suppose that Charles cared a single straw whether the
Quakers were persecuted or not? The King had the best of reasons
for wishing to secure toleration for Catholics, and the securing of
toleration for Quakers would, he believed, be one step towards the
attaining of this object.
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
369
II
The earliest apostles of toleration. We have
distinguished from among the early Separatists those
who were pioneers in the struggle for religious freedom,
and those who may fairly claim to be regarded as the
apostles of this doctrine. The latter, at first very few,
as time went on and the struggle waxed fiercer, became
more and more numerous. Professor Masson thinks
that the doctrine of toleration became gradually evolved
from persecution and suffering, and those whose ex-
perience of the latter was most bitter, and into whose
souls the iron entered most deeply, became naturally
its most strenuous upholders. A common cause, says
Hallam, made toleration the doctrine of the sectaries.
“The plea for liberty of conscience has always come
most ardently from those to whom it was denied. Men
begged to be tolerated long before they learned to
tolerate.” 1
Professor Masson holds that the Church of England
was more tolerant than the Church of Rome, and Scottish
Presbyterianism or Scottish Puritanism was more tolerant
(though the reverse is usually asserted) than the Church
of England prior to 1640. He adds—and the words are
a weighty and most important testimony—“Not to the
1 Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. i. p. 353. “The
meaner and more ignoble the party, the more general and compre-
hensive are its principles, for none but principles of universal
freedom can reach the meanest condition. The serf defends the
widest philanthropy, for that alone can break his bondage."
Bancroft's History, vol. ii. p. 687, revised edition, p. 181.
24
370
PURITANISM
In a
Church of England, however, nor to English Puritanism
at large, does the honour of the first perception of the
full principle of liberty of conscience, and its first asser-
tion in English speech, belong That honour has to be
assigned, I believe, to the Independents generally and to
the Baptists in particular.”1 The first organised Baptist
Church was that formed by Smyth and Helwys at Am-
sterdam in 1611. It consisted of forty-two members,
and the Declaration of Faith which they put forth
is truly remarkable, not less for its advanced position
in regard to religious liberty, than for the Arminian
and anti-Calvinistic character of its doctrines.
revised and fuller confession published afterwards by
Smyth, the position is taken up: “That the magis-
trate, by virtue of his office, is not to meddle with
religion or matters of conscience, nor to compel men
to this or that form of religion or doctrine, but to
leave the Christian religion to the free conscience of
everyone, and to meddle only with political matters,
-namely, injustice and wrong of one against another,
such as murder, adultery, theft, and the like; because
Christ alone is the King and Lawgiver of the Church
and of the conscience.” It is believed, says Pro-
fessor Masson, that this is the first expression of the
absolute principle of liberty of conscience in the public
articles of any body of Christians. The first formulated
expression in a confession adopted and put forth by
1 Masson's Milton, vol. iii. p. 99. We think that the Bishop of
Peterborough scarcely exhibits his usual candour when (Persecution
and Tolerance, p. 114) he says : “Tolerance was not the doctrine of
any sect or party.” It certainly was the doctrine of the In-
dependents.
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
371
a particular Church it may be, and probably is, but
we have evidence that places it beyond a doubt that
this principle was apprehended and acted upon by a
body of Christians long anterior to the period here
referred to.
This was the poor and despised sect of Dutch
Anabaptists, which first appeared in Holland about
the year 1522. Afterwards they became known as
Mennonites, after Menno Simons, of Friesland, a leader
who acquired great influence over them; but the name
Anabaptist still survived, and the name Mennonites
gradually disappeared. They contended resolutely for
the right to enjoy perfect liberty of conscience, and
held that there ought to be no alliance between the
Church and the State. But even in Holland, where
religious freedom was cradled, and realised and enjoyed
as in no other country, these poor Mennonites did not
escape persecution. They were fortunate enough,
however, to obtain the protection of William of Orange.
This broad-minded ruler wrote to the magistrates of
Middelburg: “We declare to you that you have no
right to trouble yourselves with any man's conscience
so long as nothing is done to cause private harm or
scandal. We thereupon expressly ordain that you desist
from molesting these Baptists, from offering hindrance
to their handicraft and daily trade by which they can
earn bread for their wives and children, and that you
permit them henceforth to open their shops and to do
their work according to the custom of former days. Be-
ware, therefore, of disobedience and of resistance to the
ordinance which we now establish." This had the effect
372
PURITANISM
of quelling the persecution of Anabaptists in the Dutch
Republic. About the year 1575 a number of Anabaptists
-about twenty-seven - who had made their way to
England, were apprehended in a private house in London,
where they had assembled for worship, and tried for
heresy before the Bishop's Court. Nine of them were
banished, and two were publicly burned alive at Smith-
field. Allusion has been already made to the church at
Norwich which Robert Browne succeeded in gathering,
the main part of which was composed of refugees from
the Netherlands, who at that time formed the majority
of the population of Norwich. Among them were many
Anabaptists.
The judgment of Professor Masson, that the honour of
the first perception of the full principle of liberty of con-
science has to be assigned to the Independents generally,
and to the Baptists in particular, calls, we think, for some
measure of revision in the light of what has been said
about the Anabaptists of Holland. But it needs also to
be modified in view of another person, who Professor
Masson, indeed, mentions with honour in this con-
nection, but whose real position he seems scarcely
to apprehend. Yet it is a fact that the full principle of
liberty of conscience had found a strenuous defender and
advocate in the erratic and notorious founder of the
Brownist sect.? Dr. Dexter holds that Robert Browne
228;
1 Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. iii. p. 206 ; Brandt's
History of the Reformation, bk. xi. pp. 588, 589; Neal, vol. i. p.
Froude, vol. xi. p. 43. See ante, p. 19.
2 Ante, pp. 128, 192. Mr. Taylor Innes, in his valuable Historical
Handbook on Church and State, p. 173, says: “The only controversialists
who held the modern doctrines of toleration were the Brownists and
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
373
is entitled to the proud pre-eminence of having been the
first writer claiming to state and defend, in the English
tongue, the true and now accepted doctrine of the relation
of the magistrate to the Church. This he speaks of, but
more doubtfully, as “the true modern doctrine of tolera-
tion and of liberty of conscience.”
The principle of religious liberty is almost logically
bound up with the theory of the independency of parti-
cular Churches. Hallam says:1 " The Congregational
scheme leads to toleration as the National Church
scheme is adverse to it, for manifold reasons which the
reader will discover. This being the principle of some
of the early Protestant movements that went beyond
Luther, Zwinglius, or Calvin, and perplexed these Re-
formers, little wonder that flashes of the fullest doctrine
of liberty of conscience should be found among the records
of those movements, whether on the Continent or in
England. Little wonder, either, that the principle of
toleration should be discernible in the writings of Robert
Browne, the father of the crude English Independency
of Elizabeth's reign.”2 But it is one thing, says Professor
Masson, to hold a principle vaguely or latently, as impli-
cated in a principle already avowed, and another thing to
extricate the implied principle, and kindle it, as on the
top of a lighthouse, on its own account. He shows that
Barrowists, so called from their founders, whose position was like that
afterwards known as Independents." Baillie, the famous chronicler
of the doings of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, makes it a
reproach against Browne that he held the toleration doctrine.
1 Hallam's Constitutional History of England, vol. ii. p. 102n.
2 Masson's Milton, vol. iii. p. 100.
3 The difference which Professor Masson here notes is a very im-
374
PURITANISM
the early Separatists, as a whole, lagged behind Browne,
and looked with lively fear on the conclusions he had
reached. They wanted toleration for themselves, and
perhaps a general mildness in the administration of
religious affairs, but they could not rid themselves of the
notion, held alike by all the established Churches, whether
Prelatic or Presbyterian,—that is, the duty of the prince
portant one. Among the writings of some of the Reformers it would
not be difficult to find statements as advanced in regard to religious
liberty and the relation of the magistrate to the Church as anything
written by Robert Browne. E.g. in his treatise of Reformation
without Waiting for Any, Browne says: “They, the magistrates, may
doe nothing concerning the Church, but onelie civilie and as civile
magistrates ; that is, they have not that authoritie over the Church
as to be prophetes, or priestes, or spirituall kings, as they are magis-
trates over the same; but onelie to rule the common wealth in all
outwarde justice, to maintaine the right welfare and honour
thereof with outwarde power, bodily punishment, and civill forcing
of men." Compare with this the following extract from a letter
by Bishop Hooper thirty years before, written while he was in
prison, and addressed to the members of Convocation : “Cogitate
apud vos ipsos, an hoc sit piorum ministrorum ecclesiæ officium, vi,
metu et pavore corda hominum in vestras partes compellere. Pro-
fecto Christus non ignem, non gladium, non carceres, non vincula,
non violentiam, non bonorum confiscationem, non regineæ majestatis
terrorem media organa constituit quibus veritas verbi sui mundo
promulgaretur, sed miti ac diligenti prædicatione evangelii sui
mundum ab errore et idololatria converti præcepit.” In opinion and
conviction as to the inviolableness of conscience, and the unlawful-
ness of the civil magistrate meddling with matters of faith, Bishop
Hooper seems to be quite as advanced as Robert Browne. But
Hooper remained to the last an attached son of the Reformed Pro-
testant Church, whereas Browne separated from it, and formed a
“gathered ” Church founded upon Separatist principles, and made
it a matter of boast that for preaching against bishops, ceremonies,
etc., “he had been committed to thirty-two prisons, in some of
which he could not see his hand at noonday."-Ante, pp. 43–45,
132, 133,
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
375
or the civil power in any State to promote true religion
and suppress false.
Dr. Dexter's contention, that Browne's doctrine of the
relation of the magistrate to the Church is identical with
the true modern doctrine of toleration and of liberty of
conscience, is perhaps scarcely justified. It has been
pertinently asked, would he or any of his followers in
Elizabeth's time have conceded freedom of worship to
Roman Catholics? 1 No one will assert that they were
any of them prepared to extend to Papists the liberty
which they claimed for themselves. It may be said,
and doubtless with great force, that even in this free
and tolerant nineteenth century there are large num-
bers of so-called enlightened and religious people who
would conscientiously refuse to go this length. Remem-
bering how tardily the disabilities which Roman
Catholics have suffered have been removed, it is not
to be wondered at that in Elizabeth's day it was
regarded as eminently unsafe to accord to them any full
1 There were some among the early Independents—though of a
later period than that referred to in the text-who did not shrink
even from this concession, as is evident from a Brownist petition
prepared in the year 1640, praying “ that every man may have
freedom of conscience,” not excepting Papists.—Stoughton's History
of Religion in England, vol. i. p. 337. A pamphlet was published in
the year 1644, in which the question was asked, “whether, if security
be taken for civil subjection, Papists might not be tolerated ?”
Otherwise, it is added, "if England's government were the govern-
ment of the whole world, not only they, but a world of idolators of
all sorts—yea, the whole world—must be driven out of the world.”
-Surrey's Congregational History, by Dr. Waddington, and Hanbury's
Memorials, vol. ii. p. 246. This was not, of course, in Elizabeth's
time, but many years after, during which the question of toleration
had wonderfully grown and ripened.
92
376
PURITANISM
measure of civil and religious liberty. With Jesuit
priests creeping secretly from one country house to
another in Norfolk and Lancashire, and inciting the
Catholic gentry to revolt; with the troops of Alva in
the Netherlands threatening England with invasion ; with
the Spanish Armada in the Channel,-even an advanced
member of the Liberation Society might not have had
the courage to insist on granting the Catholics perfect re-
ligious equality.” ! It would have marked a most extra-
ordinary and, indeed, incredible advance on the part of
the early Independents, if their principles had approxi-
mated more closely than they did to the true modern
doctrine of toleration and of liberty of conscience. The
wonder is, in an age when the authority of the civil
power was so uniformly invoked in defence of religion,
and deemed the only effectual safeguard for its preserva-
tion, that so many earnest-minded religious men should
have been found ready to insist upon the worthlessness
of this security, and to claim for the conscience of every
man the sole and indefeasible right to govern his religious
convictions. It need not surprise us to know that this
great principle was held, even by those who first adopted
it, in a very halting and hesitating manner. We find the
1 “Even in that age, the permission to Papist, Puritan, and
Anglican to exercise each his own worship, and to persuade his
neighbour into the better form of practice and belief, would appa-
rently have diminished instead of increasing the discontents of the
kingdom, and would have surrounded the already absolute Queen
with a barricade of enthusiastic loyalty.”—Mr. Taylor Innes on
Church and State, p. 173. We firmly believe this ; but it is one
thing to believe it now in the light of all the teaching of history ;
it would have been quite another and enormously more difficult
thing to believe by the Elizabethan Puritans.
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
377
Apostle Peter, notwithstanding his emphatic and oft-
repeated assertions that there was no difference between
Jew and Gentile, contradicting his own principle, and,
through fear of those who were of the circumcision,
separating himself from those whom he had already
recognised as brethren in Christ. For this he was
rebuked openly by St. Paul, who says: “I withstood
him to the face because he was to be blamed.” It is
unhappily common enough in these days for men to
identify themselves with principles and doctrines which
they shrink from carrying out to their logical conclusion,
and not infrequently, when they are called upon to apply
them, they show an incredible faithlessness and want of
courage. It would have been, indeed, a miracle if there
had been nothing of this vacillating temper in those who
espoused for the first time the great doctrine of religious
liberty. They fell into gross error and inconsistency, not
simply through vacillation, but in consequence of the
very imperfect way in which they apprehended and
grasped the doctrine.
If in that age, when freedom's battle was being so hotly
and strenuously waged, the endeavour is made to select
from among the combatants one who, with fearless,
uncompromising spirit, contended for toleration of the
broadest and most unqualified description, the choice, it
seems to us, must fall upon Roger Williams. We have
already given reasons for refusing to subscribe to the
opinion of Mr. Bancroft and others, that Williams was
the earliest champion of religious liberty--that he was
the “ first person in modern Christendom to assert in its
plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of conscience”; but
378
PURITANISM
such abatement of this estimate as we are required to
make, in view of some who were before him in the field,
and had already won honour and glory in the struggle
for freedom and toleration, does not invalidate the con-
clusion that he was the first to give the principle of
liberty—both religious and civil—its widest application
and its most perfect embodiment. It is his unique title
to pre-eminence and fame that he was the first to found
an absolutely free Church in an absolutely free State, and
Rhode Island and Providence Plantation remain a monu-
ment of his sagacity and daring and penetration, a centre
from which the light of “soul-liberty” has radiated far
and wide, till it has flooded a whole continent, and shines
with concentrated splendour in the constellation of States
which now form the great Western Republic.
It is scarcely necessary, after what has been previously
said in reference to the Dutch Anabaptists, Robert Browne
and Henry Jacob, to call attention again to their position
in regard to freedom and toleration. Henry Jacob's tract,
published in 1609, entitled, An Humble Supplication for
Toleration and Liberty to Enjoy and Observe the Ordinances
of Jesus Christ, has been spoken of 1 as the first work
written in the English language in which the duty of
toleration is explicitly advocated. But it does not appear
that this plea for toleration is based upon any broad or
sufficient ground. It allows to the civil magistrate a
power of interference in religious matters which is in-
compatible with perfect liberty of conscience, and amounts
merely to a plea that he, Jacob, and his followers
might be protected in the enjoyment of their religious
1 Ante, p. 224.
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
379
rights, privileges, and worship. A considerable advance
upon this position was a treatise published by Leonard
Busher, a Baptist, who had probably been a member
of Smyth's congregation in Amsterdam, and had come
over to England with Helwys in 1611. It is entitled,
Religious Peace; or a Plea for Liberty of Conscience.1
The tract is certainly the earliest known English
publication," says Professor Masson, "in which full
liberty of conscience is openly advocated.” Exception
may, however, be taken to this encomium on the
ground that the liberty contended for by Busher was
by no means “full,” but qualified in several directions,
notably in the authority which he assigns to King and
Parliament to "enact and publish the law of Christ.” It
is an admirable and stirring treatise against persecution,
but hardly more than this can be claimed for it.
Neither Jacob nor Busher take, as did Brownė, the
broad ground of separation between things civil and
religious. Both allow to the civil magistrate a right of
interference in matters of religion of which Browne, at
least, would not have approved. But the Puritans of
that age--Separatists as well as others—were nearly all
of them in bondage to the notion that it was the duty of
the ruling powers to uphold true religion and to suppress
false. To this notion Roger Williams would, as we
1 See Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, published by the Hanserd
Knollys Society. Hanserd Knollys was an eminent Baptist minister,
born in 1598, went out to New England in 1638, returned to England
in 1641, and died in London in 1691. When the Society for repub-
lishing early Baptist Writings was organised in 1845, the name of
Hanserd Knollys was given to the series in recognition of his learning
and of his labours and sufferings in the advocacy of Baptist doctrines.
1
380
PURITANISM .
have seen, give no quarter whatever. Like Milton, he
was a fanatic for liberty, and if he could have heard the
great Puritan poet declaiming his famous words, he
would have hailed them with vociferous applause: "And
though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play
upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously,
by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength.
Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put
to the worse in a free and open encounter ?”
In the course of what has been said concerning the
American Puritans, no attempt has been made to minimise,
still less to excuse or justify, the spirit of intolerance
which broke out in New England, and especially in
Massachusetts, in connection with the persecution of
Baptists and Quakers. This it is impossible to defend.
But it is possible only too easily to fall into the error of
imputing to the people generally the criminality of that
which lies almost exclusively at the door of their leaders
and rulers. "One might almost say that it was not the
people of Massachusetts after all that shed the blood of
the Quakers; it was Endicott and the clergy.”] Nor
must it be forgotten, as Mr. Bancroft reminds us, that
the age in which these cruelties were practised was an
age of intolerance. “For four centuries Europe had
maintained that heresy should be punished by death.
In Spain more persons have been burnt for their
opinions than Massachusetts then contained inhabitants.
Under Charles v., in the Netherlands alone, the number
of those who were hanged, beheaded, buried alive, or
burnt for religious opinion, was fifty thousand, says
1 Fiske's Beginnings of New England, p. 187.
+
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
381
Father Paul; the whole carnage amounted, says Grotius,
to not less than one hundred thousand. America was
guilty of the death of four individuals; and they fell
victims rather to the contest of will than to the opinion
that Quakerism was a capital crime.” 1
NOTE
DOES CALVINISM PROMOTE INTOLERANCE ?
It has been a charge not infrequently brought against the Puritan
Separatists, that they were cruel and intolerant because they were
Calvinists in religion and Republicans in politics. Reasoning on
à priori grounds, it is not, perhaps, unnatural to conclude that
Calvinisin should make men intolerant, for it will be admitted by
friends and foes alike that Calvinism is a stern and uncompromising
creed. Did not Calvin himself defend the lawfulness of persecution;
and was not his burning of the heretic Servetus an act applauded
by all sections of Protestants ? Nevertheless, the charge is one which
history most persistently refuses to sustain. To all à priori conclu-
sions it opposes the stern logic of facts, a body of facts so hostile and
so conclusive that no theory can stand against it. It is not, of course,
to be denied that many of the Puritans were intolerant. This has
been admitted already ; but the question to be determined is, was
it their Calvinism that made them so ? This, we hold, history dis-
proves. It is disproved, in the first place, by the history of the
Puritans in Holland. No one can impugn their zeal as Calvinists,
nor call in question their love of liberty. Much as they suffered
from persecution, they were never goaded into retaliation, even when
they had the power, and their annals are (with the exception of those
of the Quakers or Friends) most free from the stain of persecution.
But the best answer to the charge that Calvinism tends to promote
intolerance is the history of Puritanism itself. It will not be denied
that the Puritans were ever found in the vanguard of the struggle
for religious and civil freedom, and the Puritans were (at least up
1 Bancroft's History, vol. i. p. 341. See Lecky's History of
Rationalism in Europe, “History of Persecution,” vol. ii. pp. 32, 33.
382
PURITANISM
to the middle of the seventeenth century) all Calvinists. The
Reformers, and those who, like Hooper, resisted the imposition of
the vestments, were Calvinists. The Separatists were Calvinists ;
Browne, Barrowe, Greenwood, Penry, Robinson, Johnson, Jacob were
all Calvinists. The Pilgrim Fathers, not less than the first colonists
of Massachusetts, were all Calvinists. Roger Williams was a Cal-
vinist of the most thoroughgoing type.2 “In Boston," says Mr. Ban-
croft (vol. ii. p. 692, revised edition, p. 184), “with Henry Vane and
Anne Hutchinson, 'Calvinism ran to seed'; and the seed was 'incor-
ruptible.'
. . The exiled doctrine, which established conscience as
the highest court of appeal, fled to the island gift of Miantonomoh ;
and the records of Rhode Island, like the beautiful career of Henry
Vane, are the commentary on the true import of the creed.”
“It is an interesting fact that the doctrines which in England are
called Calvinistic have been always connected with a democratic
spirit, while those of Arminianism have found most favour among
the aristocratic or protective party. In the republics of Switzerland,
of North America, and of Holland, Calvinism was always the popular
creed. On the other hand, in those evil days, immediately after the
death of Elizabeth, when our liberties were in imminent peril ; when
the Church of England, aided by the Crown, attempted to subjugate
the consciences of men ; and when the monstrous clain of the divine
right of Episcopacy was first put forward ;—then it was that Armi-
nianism became the cherished doctrine of the ablest and most
ambitious of the ecclesiastical party. And in the sharp retribution
which followed, the Puritans and Independents, by whom the
punishment was inflicted, were, with scarcely an exception, Cal-
vinists ; nor should we forget that the first open movement against
Charles proceeded from Scotland, where the principles of Calvin
had long been in the ascendant."-Buckle’s History of Civilisation in
England, vol. ii. pp. 339, 340.
“Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the sixteenth
century than the effect of Calvinism in levelling distinctions of
rank, and in steeling and ennobling the character of common
In Scotland, in the Low Countries, and in France there
men,
1 The only exception we can think of were the Baptists of Amster-
dam, whose “Confession or Declaration of Faith,” promulgated in
1611 (see ante, p. 370), is as anti-Calvinistic as it is advanced in its
doctrine of religious liberty.
2 “His theology was severely Calvinistic, typical of his generation,
not in advance of it."— Roger Williams, by Oscar S. Straus, p. 232.
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
383
was the same phenomenon. In Scotland the Kirk was the creation
of the preachers and the people, and peasants and workmen dared
to stand in the field against belted knights and barons, who had
trampled on their fathers for centuries. The artisans of the Low
Countries had for twenty years defied the whole power of Spain.
The Huguenots were not a fifth part of the French nation, yet defeat
could never dishearten them. Again and again they forced Crown
and nobles to make terms with them. It was the same in England.”
--Froude's English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century, p. 127.
See also what Mr. Bancroft says on Calvinism and predestination,
History of the United States, vol. ii. pp. 689–692, revised edition, pp.
182-185.
Let those who would realise the debt of freedom which the
world owes to Calvin and Puritanism read an article by Principal
Fairbairn in the Contemporary Review for November 1888, on “The
Genesis of the Puritan Ideal”: “The influence of Geneva had pene-
trated Germany, and, even where provoking resistance, had quickened
the whole body Protestant; bad converted almost the half of France,
and enlisted her noblest sons in the army of reform, with the royal
Condé and the gallant Coligny at their head; had gone like iron
drops into the blood of the Netherland Churches, and made the
heroes that broke the mighty power of Spain; it had reached
England, created the Puritan spirit, the faith that was to determine
her political constitution, condition her religious development, and
create her most fruitful and characteristic colony; had sent Knox
into Scotland with a theology that was to nurse a brawny race,
civilise a people, and with a polity that was to effect the completest
and happiest revolution any nation ever experienced. Without
Calvin and Geneva these things would not have been; and without
these things Europe and America would not have been as they are
to-day-not so good, so well-ordered, or so free.”
CALVINISM AND PURITANISM NOT IDENTICAL
It would be a great mistake, however, to infer from what has just
been said that Calvinism and Puritanism are indissolubly bound up
together. As we have previously had occasion to maintain, Puri-
tanism was not a creed, but a spirit, an ethical force or power
making for righteousness, rather than a reasoned system of belief.
It allied itself with Calvinism in order that it might thereby more
effectually promote the ends and righteousness of the kingdom of
God; but when its ethical significance and force could be
384
PURITANISM
maintained unimpaired by its centre of gravity being shifted
from the side of Calvinism to that of Arminianism or to that
of a greatly modified Calvinism, the history of religion in our
nineteenth century shows that it has exhibited the utmost
readiness to enter into this new alliance. It is a favourite
device with those who wish to discredit Puritanism to represent it
as being identical with the most rigid and extreme form of Cal-
vinism. But the necessity of any such identity, if it ever existed
(and we cannot allow that the existence of the identity ever demon-
strated its necessity), has long since passed away. The subsequent
developments of Puritanism, the changes it underwent after the
Commonwealth and has undergone since, show conclusively that
Calvinism is no necessary integral part of it. “It cannot be too
often repeated that those who use the word Puritanism merely to
define a supposed temporary mood of English sanctimoniousness, or
even to define the domination of Calvinist theology for a time in the
British Islands, know nothing whatever of what Puritanism was
historically and included intellectually. Puritanism was a revolt
froin authority, clothing itself at first in whatever doctrines of a
fervid theology or ideas of popular Church discipline were at hand
to suit, but passing on, by the usual law of development, into a
multiplicity of forms and phrases, with abundant inclusion of the
most abstruse scientific inquisitiveness, and the coolest philosophical
freethinking.”—Masson's Milton and his Time, vol. vi. p. 393.
But the supposed monopoly in the Calvinistic creed and system
which Puritanism is represented as possessing, is refuted by the
fact, which no one who has any acquaintance with the ecclesiastical
history of England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
will venture to deny, that up to the time of James 1. Calvinism was
no more peculiar to Puritanism than it was to Prelacy. Nearly all
the divines of the Elizabethan age were Calvinists. “It is a ques-
tion which has been keenly discussed between Calvinists and
Arminians, which side could claim Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and
Hooper. If the question were to be determined by the general tone
and spirit of their writings, there can be no doubt that they were
Calvinists.”—See entire note, p. 33, Hunt's Religious Thought in
England, vol. i. “It is evident to every unbiassed person,” says
Mr. Hunt (vol. i. p. 131, note), “that all the Reformers were Cal-
vinists in doctrine. The denial of this is the most daring thing in
all ecclesiastical history." Both Parker and Grindal were Calvinists ;
while Archbishop Whitgift, the bitter enemy and relentless perse-
cutor of the Puritans, was an ardent and thoroughgoing Calvinist,
TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
385
as is proved by the part he took in framing the Lambeth Articles,
the first four of which are : 1.“God from eternity has predestinated
some persons to life, and reprobated others to death." 2. “The
moving or efficient cause of predestination to life is not foreseen
faith or good works, or any other commendable quality in the per-
sons predestinated, but the goodwill and pleasure of God." 3. "The
number of the predestinated is fixed, and cannot be lessened or
increased." 4.6 They who are not predestinated to salvation shall
be necessarily condemned for their sins." We must wait for Arch-
bishop Laud before we find Arminianism allowed in the English
Church. James I. was a strict Calvinist. He called Vorstius, the
successor of Arminius at Leyden, a monster and a blasphemer, and
said by his death only did Arminius escape the vengeance of the
Most High and Mighty Prince.
25
5
Conclusion
387
CONCLUSION
We have now concluded our brief survey of the rise and
growth of Puritanism in the Old World and in the New.
We have seen it at last firmly planted in the soil of New
England, destined to grow into a great tree, sending forth
its branches northward and southward, eastward and
westward. But the most eventful and glorious chapter
in the history of Puritanism remains as yet untouched.
That chapter recounts the struggle of Puritanism in the
old land, from which many of its noblest sons had been
driven out, and whither some returned at length to bear
their part in, and to celebrate its triumph and glory.
This sequel we may endeavour to relate at some future
time, should what we have attempted thus far meet with
such acceptance as to encourage us to resume and con-
tinue the story.
We have now reached a point in the history of the
New England theocracy when not a few signs admonish
us that the golden age of Puritanism was passing away.
New England was “a plantation of religion, not a planta-
tion of trade." Such a plantation contained within itself
the seed of eventual decay. In respect to States as to
individuals, that is not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual,
and the attempt to invert the order will in the long-run
389
390
PURITANISM
prove a failure.
vanish away.
There came a time in the history of
the Jewish Church when the theocracy established by
Jehovah Himself began to wax old, and was ready to
It was so with the theocracy of New
England. Its framers sought to compass that which
was impossible. "Perhaps," said Plato of that perfect
republic of which he dreamed, “some image of it re-
maineth for us in the heavens.” Yes, in heaven, but
not upon earth! There is something not a little pathetic
in what Cotton Mather says of Davenport, the noble-
minded founder of New Haven: “After all, the Lord
gave him to see that in this world a Church-State was
impossible, whereinto there enters nothing which defiles.”
The Puritans of New England soon began to see that no
dyke which they could possibly construct could keep out
of their Arcadia the tide of surging corruption. Laxity,
both of creed and conduct, worldly conformity, indulgence
and chartered libertinism,--the scum which ever rise to
the surface of a free commonwealth, and fills timid and
faithless souls with panic and with dark foreboding, -
these began to sap the virtue and threaten the very life
of the young struggling republic. But this blotted page
belongs to a chapter in the annals of New England later
than that embraced within the scope of our present plan.
And there are brighter pages which follow; for, if there
are periods of decadence, there are also epochs of revival,
resurrections of those very virtues which men deem to be
dead and extinct. It has ever thus been with the soul
or spirit of Puritanism. It was from the hour of its
seeming downfall that its real victory began. The Re-
storation of 1660 seemed to deal it its death-blow, but
CONCLUSION
391
Mr. Green is speaking the words of truth and soberness
when he says that the whole history of English progress
on its moral and spiritual side has been the history of
Puritanism. Puritanism never dies. The form in which
it clothes itself changes, must change, from age to age,
and its history both in England and America, shows that
much that has seemed to be inevitably associated with it
is destined to pass away; but the spirit of Puritanism
lives on, and not until conscience is dethroned from its
chief and controlling place in human affairs, and righteous-
ness ceases to run down as a mighty stream, will it ever
perish, or cease to be a force to be reckoned with by
the rulers and peoples of the world.
INDEX
393
INDEX
306n.;
A
ing Controversies, 49; commends
prophesyings, 85; would have
Act of Supremacy, transfers Pope's room made in church for Puri-
authority to Crown, 52; absolut- tans, 114; his opinion of Brown-
ism of Crown, 53 ; nevertheless ists, 178n.; his prejudiced testi-
acceptable to people, 64.
inony regarding them, 207, 209.
Act of
Uniformity, appoints second Bancroft, Archbishop, his Danger-
Prayer-Book of Edward vi., 53; ous Positions, 74n.
fine for absence from worship, Bancroft, History of United States
53; Prothero's “Statutes and on Mayflower Compact, 239n.;
Constitutional Documents,"54n.; on Salem, 255; on Roger Wil-
distasteful to Puritans, 64.
liams, 279-81 ; on Connecticut,
Admonitions to Parliament, 69, 70. 291 ; on Puritans of New England,
Advertisements, Parker's, 58n.
on Winthrop, 349; on
America. See New England.
intolerance of Massachusetts,
American Democracy from Puri- 380-1.
tanism, 312n.
See Democracy, Baptists, John Snıyth, founder of,
Anabaptists — martyrs, 176 ; early 213 ; first English Church of
adopted principles of toleration, General Baptists, 221 ; Roger
192, 280; excesses of, 336, 337. Williams forms first Baptist
See Baptists.
Church in America, 277 ; order
Anglicanism and Puritanism, 46. for banishmentof, from Massachu-
Animus of Anglican writers, 193–4. setts, 334 ; fined and whipped,
Antinomianism and Anne Hutchin- 335; imprisonment and banish-
son, 283-4.
ment of, 336; commonly iden-
Antitheses, PuritanandAnglican, 72. tified with Anabaptists, 336–8;
Arber, on corruption of clergy, 151n.; first in struggle for religious
Martin Marprelate Con- liberty, 369–70.
troversy, 153n., 159, 167, 168 ; Barlow, Bishop, no record of con.
defence of Martin Marprelate, secration, 49, 50; his unsacer-
164; authorship of Martinist dotal spirit, 50.
Tracts, 167, 168.
Barrowe, Henry, 177; arrest of, 178;
Arminianism, not allowed in church examination, 178–81; writings
till Laud, 385 ; Buckle on, 382. in prison, 182; Dexter thinks
Athanasius on persecution, 362. bim author of Marprelate Tracts,
Augsburg Confession, 363.
168, 188; his execution, 183.
Barrowism, between Brownism and
system of Cartwright, 184; and
B
Brownism, 185 ; Congregational-
ism of America Barrowism, 315.
Bacon, Lord, Advertisement touch- Bible, one of creative causes of Puri-
on
395
396
INDEX
tanism, 11, 14; Wyclif's, 15;
C
Tyndale's New Testament, 16;
Great Bible, 16, 17; Genevan Calvinism, meant democracy in
Version, 17 ; influence on people, church government, 22; not in-
Foxe, 17n.; Strype, Green, 18. tolerant, 381; early Puritans all
Bishops, Puritan, 4, 46 ; not neces- Calvinists, 381–2; democratic,
sary to Church, 47, 48; simony 382; Buckle, Froude, Fairbairn
and peculation of, 149, 150 ; on, 382-3; not identical with
Latimer on, 150n.; Martinist Puritanism, 383; not peculiar to
attack on, 152; on their defence, Puritanism, 384; of Whitgift and
161 ; Arber on, 165.
Lambeth Articles, 385.
Body of Liberties," constitution Cambridge Platform, 313.
of Massachusetts, 324.
Campbell
, Douglas, on the Puritan
Borgeaud's Rise of Modern Demo- in Holland, England, and Amer.
cracy, 22, 23 ; on Robert Browne, ica, 140; on State Church, 141;
128; "Divine Right Democracy, England's debt to Holland, 206–7;
129 ; Democracy from Independ- intolerance of Massachusetts,
ency, 312n.
344n.
Bradford, William, second Governor Carlyle, heroism of Puritanism, v;
of New Plymouth, 243.
on libelling Puritans, 122.
Brewster, William, at Scrooby, 215; | Cartwright, Thomas, on Christ's
New Plymouth, 243 ; elder, 246. Headship, 61, 62; first to syste-
Brooks, Philips, on Tolerance, matise Puritanism, 67; position
359.
defined in six propositions, 68;
Browne, Robert, 126; at Norwich, founder of Presbyterianism, 69 ;
127; treatise and opinions, 128 ;
author of second Admonition to
flees to Holland, Middleburg, 129; Parliament, 70; controversy with
with Penry in Scotland, 130; Whitgift, 71, 72; antitheses, 72;
accepts living in Northampton- did not approve of separatism,
shire, 131; first to grasp prin- 76 ; aimed at a Presbyterian
ciple of Independency, 132; in despotism, 76–9.
thirty-two prisons, 133; Dr. Carver, John, first Governor of New
Dexter's estimate of, 133, 134; Plymouth, 239, 243.
early Independents disowned, Child, his Church and State under
134; sometimes attended Estab- the Tudors, 38n.; on continuity
lished Church, 185, 186 ; his of Church, 38–9; quotes letter by
Treatise on Reformation without Dr. Hammond, 47n.; on Canon
waiting for any, 128, 374n.
Dixon regarding corruption of
Brownism, Cotton disowned, 135; clergy, 150n.
Dexter
says
misunderstood, Chillingworth on Scripture author-
135n.
ity, 112n.
Brownists, carried principles to Church, Dean, takes narrow view
extreme, 134; Neal on their of Puritanism ; alleged appeal of
uncharitableness, 135; “twenty Puritans to Scripture against
thousand in England," 136, 201;
reason, 110.
Neal's distinction between Brown- Church, and Scripture, 63, 70, 71,
ists and other Puritans, 137, 138; 111, 112; and State, Hooker on,
increase and persecution of, 174, 115; Browne's definition of, 128,
175.
Robinson's, 217, 218, Jacob's,
Burleigh, Lord, his remonstrance 222.
against the Whitgift Articles, 98; Church of England, had origin under
Brownist petition to, 196–8. Henry VIII., 31; papal character
Busher's Religious Peace, 281, 367, of pre-Reformation Church, 32;
379.
from quarrel with Pope, 32;
INDEX
397
on
as to
alleged continuity in England | Curteis, Canon, on schism, 37n.;
and Scotland disproved, 35; re-
on vestments controversy, 54;
tained Popish elements, Mac- on Puritan martyrs, 193–5.
aulay, Zurich letters, Hallam,
Strype, 40n.; Whitgift
corrupt state of, 71, 72, 145;
D
Jewel, 146; Strype, 147.
Church of Scotland, recognised by Dale, Dr., error regarding Browne
Convocation, 48; ordination of, corrected by, 127n.; on Brown-
held valid, says Bishop Cosin ; ists, 134.
excluded by Bishop Hall, 49. Democracy the outcome of Puritan-
Clergy, extreme ignorance of, 46 ; ism, 22, 23; Rise of Modern
numbers object to vestments, 56; Democracy, 312n.
looseness, illiteracy, and number Dennis, William, martyr, 177.
of, 147, 148; Child on corruption Dexter, Dr., on church of Richard
of, 150n., Arber on, 151n.
Fitz, 124-6; estimate of Browne,
Confession signed by those taking 133, 134, 192, 373; thinks H.
part in prophesyings, 22, 84. Barrowe author of Marprelate
Conformists and Puritans, 52, 137. Tracts, 168, 188; on Robinson's
Connecticut, colonisation of, 289 ; farewell words, 224, 225;
T. Hooker on self-governing power Roger Williams," 348n.; alleges
of people, 289; constitution of, Browne's toleration to be the
290-2; ignores allegiance to true modern doctrine, 375.
British Crown, 291.
Discipline, Book of, by Cartwright
Continuity of Church of England, and Travers, 75 ; subscribed by
of Scotland, with ancient Church, five hundred ministers, 75 ; De-
alleged, 33-5; reductio ad ab- monstration of Discipline by
surdum, 34 ; confuted by Child, Udall, 79, 172.
38, 39.
Dissenters, three classes of, 136;
Convocation recognised Church of Brownists in second class, 137;
Scotland, 48; majority of one Fuller on Nonconformists not
against Puritans, 57.
being Separatists, 138, 139 ;
Cooper, Bishop of Winchester, de- Hooper and Philpot not Sepa-
clares most part of men averse to ratists, yet recommend separa-
Episcopacy, 75.
tion, 139, 140 ; Anabaptists of
Copping, John, martyr, 177.
Holland in third class, 140 ;
Cosin, Bishop, on Presbyterian Douglas Campbell on Dissent,
ordination, 49.
140, 141; Green's mistake, 141n.;
Cotton, John, 259, n., 262; dis- Dissenters through force of cir-
owns Brownism, 135n.; his
cumstances, 141, 142.
Way of Congregational Churches Döllinger on continuity of Church,
cleared, 313; disapproved not of 34n.
persecution of error, 348.
Doyle, The Puritan Colonies,
Court of High Commission, its in- does Pilgrims scant justice, 245;
quisitorial powers, 95; use of by undiscriminating censure of Puri-
Whitgift, 97; detested by laity, tans, 353.
97; how differing from Star Dudley, Thomas, aversion to tolera-
Chamber, 96–7.
tion, 263, 349.
Creighton, Bishop, his Persecution
and Tolerance quoted, 357n.,
358n., 360n., 365n., 370n.
E.
Cromwell, on reproach of Puritan-
ism, 5; on refusing liberty to Edict of Milan gave universal reli-
others, 333-4.
gious freedom, 362.
398
INDEX
on
Education in New England, schools, for lives of two Anabaptists, 19;
328, 329; Harvard College, 329, Book of Martyrs next to Bible,
330.
18, 19,
Eliot, John, apostle to the Indians, Freeman, says dominant party per-
296.
secuted, 367.
Elizabeth, Queen, had no sympathy Froude, on Calvinism, 2n.; De
with the Reformation, 12; per. Silva on name Puritan, 4; first
secuted Puritans, 13; resisted mention of name, 51n.;
changes, desired Popery without prophesyings, 84n.; on young
the Pope, 24; her short-sighted Puritans, 87, 88; toleration from
policy, her sagacity overesti. indifferentism, 358.
mated, 25-27; made separation Fuller, on name Puritan, 4; on
necessary, 28; the two pillars of Cartwright and Whitgift, 71; on
her ecclesiastical edifice, 52; her Browne, 130-132, 174; on Non-
rigour in enforcing the vestments, conformists, 138.
56-8; determination to suppress
prophesyings, 88, 89; suspends
Archbishop Grindal, 90-2.
G
Endicott, governor of Massachu-
setts, 252, 253; his character, Gardiner, on development of Puri-
348.
tanism, 66 ; on two classes of
England, "the Pope's farm,” 32; Puritanism, 258.
not birthplace of Puritanism, Gladstone, W. E., view of Eliza-
population of, 201.
beth's policy, 25; on Reformation
Episcopacy, not of the essence of in Cambridge, 107n.
the Church, Macaulay on, 47; Green, on Neal and Strype, 6; on
Whitgift on, Child on, 47n. ; Bible, 16–18; spirit of inquiry,
Puritans did not object to, per se,
19; his view of Elizabeth, 25, 27;
62; people averse to, 75.
on Cartwright's bigotry, 77; on
Erasmus, dream realised, 16.
those who objected to National
Church, 141n.; on Puritanism
and progress, 391.
F
Greenwood, John, in prison, 178;
executed, 183; disowns Brown-
Fairbairn, Dr., on Puritan and ism, 185.
Anglican antitheses, 72 ; Grindal, Archbishop, succeeds Par-
Hooker's theory of the Church, ker, 89; refuses to suppress pro-
116; on Jacob's humble supplica- phesyings, 90 ; suspended by
tion, 224 ; on toleration, 361; Queen, 91; denounced by Sacha-
on Puritan ideal, 383.
verell, 92.
Fisher, Mary, persecuted in New
England, 338; tolerated in Tur-
key, 368.
H
Fiske, on education in New Eng-
land, 330; on toleration, 368; Hall, Bishop, his Episcopacy by
exonerates people of Massachu- Divine Right, 49.
setts, 380.
Hallam, his estimate of Elizabeth,
Fox, Charles James, on tolerance 26; on Church of England, 40n.;
from scepticism, 358.
against enforced uniformity, 58;
Fox, George, Digged out, 341; on Puritan claims, 62n.; on Cart-
origin of Quakerism in America, wright, 77 and n.; few preachers
351.
among clergy, 102; on the oath
Foxe, John, on joy with which ex officio, 104n.; predominance
Bible received, 17n.; petitioned of Puritan party, 106, 107 ; on
on
INDEX
39.9
sense
on
Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, 113; trines, 284; expelled from Mas-
on bishops, 149; on Udall's trial, sachusetts, 285; flees to Rhode
173.
Island, with followers founds
Harvard, John, 263.
Portsmouth and Newport, 285.
Harvard College, 329 ; two presi-
dents Anabaptists, 338.
Headship of Christ, 62; martyrs
I
suffered for, 190.
Higginson, Francis, disavowed sepa- Independency, how developed,
ratism, 252; leader of company, 119 ; fundamental principle held
253, 262; chosen teacher, 253 ; by Wyclif, 120; unlawful con-
drew up confession and covenant, venticles, 121 ; beginnings of,
254.
123, 124 ; congregation under
Holland, population equal to Eng. Richard Fitz, 124-6 ; Brown,
land, 201, 202n.; England's Mackennal, and Stoughton on,
indebtedness to, 203; Refugees 125, notes ; Dr. Dexter's view,
from, 204, Green's estimate, 126 ; in Middleburg, 129 ; in
204n.; Lollardism among Wal- what
Robert Browne
loon settlers in England, 204n.; founder of, 132; historic Inde.
arts and religion, 205; Douglas pendency, 220 ; became prevail-
Campbell on indebtedness to, ing form in New Plymouth, 246;
266 and n.; churches, Middle- only system suited to new Puri-
burg, 129; Amsterdam, 212, Ley- tan Republic, 120, 311; excep-
den, 217; Puritan emigrants poor tion taken to temper of its apolo-
under scholarly leaders, 211; no gists, democracy and, 312; the
home for Puritans in, 233; leave- Cambridge platform, 313-5;
taking, 235.
Cotton's criticism
name,
Hooker, and Cartwright, 70n.; 313; American Congregational-
Master of Temple, 73; his genius, ism Barrowism, 315; growth of,
108; his Ecclesiastical Polity, 109; in New England, 315-6.
supremacy of law, 110; exaggera- Independent church, first perman-
tion of eclesiastical authority, ent, 221 ; second in America, 253.
Hallam on, 113; original source Independents, and R. Browne, 126n.;
of authority same as with Puri- pioneers of religious liberty,
tans, 114n.; identity of Church 223-4, 370.
and State, 115, criticised, 115, Innes, Taylor, his handbook on
by Fairbairn, 116.
Church and State,
114n. ;
Hooker, Thomas, light of Western toleration and Independents,
Churches, 262; pioneer in Con- 372n.; toleration safest, 376n.
necticut, 289; Father of Amer- Intolerance, growth of, in New
ican democracy,” 290.
England, 333-54; Massachusetts,
Hooper, John, first Nonconformist, 344 ; of some of Puritan leaders,
43; for liberty of conscience, 44;
Puritans exaggerated
offered bishopric of Gloucester, by Doyle, 353, Saturday Review,
"scrupled the vestments," 44; 354. See Persecution.
imprisoned, acceptsconditionally,
burnt at Gloucester, 45.
Hume, his sneer at Puritan scruples
J
about vestments, 54.
Hunt, his complaint regarding Jacob, Henry, 221 ; defined Church
spirit in which history is written, as Independent, 222 ; broad-
vii; on name Puritan, 4; vest- minded, 223; his Humble Sup-
ments, 56.
plication for Toleration, 224,
Hutchinson, Anne, 283; her doc- 378.
348n.;
400
INDEX
James 1., his opinion of Udall,171n.; | Marsden, real question regarding
a strict Calvinist, 385.
prophesyings, 86.
Jewel, Bishop, letter to Peter Marsiglio, The Defender of Peace,
Martyr, 46; on worship appointed 363.
by Queen, 46 ; on vestiges of Martin Marprelate controversy, 152;
Popery,57; on state of Church, 146. works on subject by Arber, Dex-
Johnson, Francis, in London, in ter, and Maskell, 153n.; Epistle,
Amsterdam, 212, 213.
154-8; effect of, 158; restric-
Johnson, Dr., good humour from tions on printing, 158–9; Epi-
want of earnestness, 358, 360. tome, 159–61; bishops on their
defence, 161; Hay any worke for
Cooper, 161; press seized, 162;
L
Puritans disapprove of tracts,
163; Curteis, Dexter, and Arber
Lacordaire's great saying, 50.
on, 164-5; conclusion of Epistle,
Lactantius, religion a matter of 165-6; authorship-opinions of
free will, 362.
Arber, Maskell, and Dexter, 166–
Lambeth Articles, 385.
8; effect in high quarters, 168.
Latimer, Hugh, most popular Martyr Peter, letter from Jewel,
preacher, 44 ; Sermon of the 46; on vestments, 55n.
Plough, 150n.
Martyrs, for assembling themselves,
Laws of New England, sumptuary 123 ; communion service inter-
regulations, tainted with Mosa-
rupted, 124 ; John Udall died in
ism, the Body of Liberties, 320-8. prison, 171-4; Roger Rippon
Lecky, toleration outcome of scep- died in prison, 175; Macker and
ticism, 357.
Terwoort burnt at Smithfield,
Liberty, of conscience, growth of, 176 ; Dennis, Copping, Thacker,
19; of prophesying, 86; political, 177 ; Henry Barrowe and John
promoted by Reformation, 19-21, Greenwood, 177, executed, 182-
but not immediately, 20; soul 4; John Penry, 186–8, executed,
liberty, 280, 282n.; religious, 189; not for mere polity, but for
and toleration, 357–85; principle Christ's supremacy, 190–1; not
of religious liberty involved in for “crotchet,” as Curteis, 193–
Congregationalism, 373 ; Win- 5; not for political offence, 195;
throp on, 307.
Wakeman's judgment, 196 ; peti-
Lollardism in Norfolk among tion of sufferers to Lord Burgh-
Flemish weavers, 204-5.
ley, 196-8.
Lowell, Among my Books, on Puri- Mary, Queen, persecutions under,
tanism, 23, 66n.; on free edu- 51 ; separate meetings recom-
cation, 329; on persecution of the mended by Hooper and Philpot,
Quakers, 343.
139–40.
Luther, and peasant war, 21 ; his Maskell, his prejudice against the
doctrine of liberty, 35; on reli- Puritans, 123 ; on Marprelate
gious liberty, 363, 364.
Tracts, 153n., 163n., 167n.,187n.
Massachusetts, founding of, 251;
land acquired in, 252; Endicott,
M
Governor at Salem, 252–3 ; new
exiles with Royal charter, 251 ;
Macaulay, persecution and disowns separatism, 252 ; Church
increase of Puritans, 14; on membership a condition of fran-
effect of Reformation, 20; on chise, 260-1 ; leading men, 262-
Popish elements retained, 40; 4 ; Winthrop and Dudley joint
Episcopacy not essential, 47; on governors, 264; large accessions
Whitgift, 93.
to, 265; laws from Old Testa-
on
.
INDEX
401
65 ;
ment, 324; banishes Roger 22 ; on compulsory attendance at
Williams, 274; the Body of Liber- worship, 53 ; differences between
ties, 324 ; ten capital crimes, Puritans and their opponents
325; laws humane compared with stated, 62–4 ; early and later
England, 326; vice prevalent, Puritans, 64; why believe as
327, causes,
328 ; persecutes King believes ?” 65; Puritans
Baptists, 334-8, and Quakers, desire uniformity,
few
338-40, 342-44; more intoler- preachers and best Puritans, 102;
ant than other States, 244 ; more on Browne, 127 ; Brownists, un-
tolerant as became stronger, 350. charitableness of, 135 ; distinc-
Masson, Professor, on Independents,
tion between Brownists and other
R. Browne, 126n., 269, 270; Puritans, 137, 138.
on Roger Williams, 278, 279 ; New England, growth of, 289-308 ;
on Anne Hutchinson, 285; origin twenty-three years' progress, 299
of doctrine of toleration, 369, interference of mother country,
370 ; Puritanism and Calvinism, 299 ; Governor-General appointed
384,
and resistance to, 300; measures
Mayflower, 235 ; with Speedwell, to stop emigration to, 302 ;
sails from Southampton, 236; Council forbids
clergy to transport
alone from Plymouth, 237 ; num-
themselves, 303 ; eight ships
bers on board, 231 ; compact arrested, 303.; Hampden and
drawn up and signed on board, Cromwell said to be on board,
238-9; harbour of Cape Cod, 303 ; loss to England from emi-
239 ; Plymouth Bay, 241.
gration, 304 ; return tide, 305 ;
Middelburg, Church in, founded by elements of population in United
· Browne, 129.
States, 306n.; Governor Win-
Milman England the Pope's throp on liberty, 307-8; New
farm,' 32.
England Way, 315; Independ-
Milton, on Puritans, 232 ; on truth ency in, 316; religion and
and liberty, 380.
social life in, 316; wholesale
Misconceptions of Puritanism, proscriptions, 320, 321; life
Hooker's, 110; Dean Church's, laborious, 321 ; laws regulating
110; Canon Curteis, 111; Mat- smoking, width of sleeves, etc.,
thew Arnold's, 111n.; Carlyle on, 322, 323 ; exemption for persons
122; Doyle, Saturday Review, above ordinary degree, 323, 324.
353-4.
New Hampshire, 292.
Missionary labours, 295; John New Haven, founded by Davenport
Eliot, 296; first Protestant and Eaton, 292; joined to Con-
Missionary corporation, 297.
necticut, 293.
Moore and Brinckmann's Anglican New Plymouth, founding of, 241-8 ;
Brief against the Roman claims, 37. first winter in, 242; leading men,
Morley, John, tolerance from in- 243; Congregationalism in, 246;
difference, 358.
money obligations cleared off, 247;
Motley, on Robinson's farewell description by De Rasiéres, 247,
address, 219.
248 ; "church membership not
Multitudinism in church, assailed necessary to franchise, 261, 352;
by Browne, 128, and Barrowe, Fathers of New Plymouth not
190.
guilty of persecuting Quakers, 351,
352 ; Sewel's double blunder,
N
352; toleration more prevalent
than in Massachusetts, 352, 353.
Neal, his classification of Puritans Norwich, Browne gathers congre
in reign of James 1., 4; note on, , gation in, 127 ; second city in
6 ; on Puritan confession of faith, England, 204 and n.
26
402
INDEX
:
0
Pilgrim Fathers, 231 ; Robinson's
address to, 218, 224n., 235 ;
Orders non - Episcopal valid, number in Mayflower, 237, com-
Macaulay on, 47; Whitgift on, pact, 238 ; at Cape Cod, 239;
Child on, 47n.; Scottish orders sufferings of, 240; at Plymouth
held valid, 48, Cosin, 49, and Rock, 241; great mortality, 242
foreign --- Hall and Bacon, 49; Governor Carver died, Bradford
orders of unreformed Church, succeeds, 243; a hostile tribe-
Story, 35n.
epidemic among Indians, 243–4 ;
Owen on martyrs, 123.
influence belittled by Doyle,
244-5, but real founders of the
American Republic, 245-6; The
P
Pilgrim Fathers neither Puritans
nor persecutors, 257n.; Puritans
Palfrey, Dr., History of New though Separatists, 256-8.
England, defends banishment of Plymouth Rock, "corner-stone” of
churchmen from Salem, 255n.; American Republic, 232 ; object
on John Cotton, 259n.; church of veneration, 242.
membership and franchise, 261 ; Preachers, scarcity of, 85, 86, 102.
on Roger Williams, 348.
Presbyterianism, rise of, 66, 67;
Parker, Archbishop, consecrated by Cartwright, founder of, 69; first
deprived bishops, 50, 51; re- presbytery at Wandsworth, 74;
quires Foxe to subscribe, 19; short-lived in England, 79;
supports Queen in imposing vest- under Commonwealth in London
ments, 57; thirty-seven sus- and Lancashire, 80.
pended from ministry, 58 ; Ad- Presbyterians not Separatists, 76.
vertisements, 58n.; suppresses pro- Printing, Reformation helped by,
phesyings, 88; one hundred 15 ; Caxton's, 15; restrictions
clergymen resign their livings, on, 122n., 153-9.
101 ; a Calvinist, 384.
Prophesyings, 83; confession of
Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich, re- faith of those taking pait, 22,
monstrates against suppression of 84; commended by Bacon and
prophesyings, 88, 89.
Strype, 85 ; liberty of, 86 ; bene-
Penry, John, 186 ; twice cited be- fits of, 87–8; suppressed, 88.
fore High Commission, 187; Protestantism, Elizabeth's attitude
flees to Scotland, 188 ; suspected towards, 12–14 ; developed and
of being author of Marprelate justified by Puritanism, 36.
Tracts, 167 ; publisher of, 168, Prothero's Statutes and Constitu-
188; execution of, testimony be- tional Documents, 54n.
fore death, 189; denies Queen's Providence, town of, founded by
warrant to establish false re- Roger Williams, 275, 282; a
ligion, 191.
harbourage for all sorts of con-
Pequot Indians make war, are sciences, 283.
wiped out,” 293-5.
Puritan, and Anglican antitheses,
Persecution, and tolerance, Bishop 72; bishops, 4, 46; demands,
Creighton on, 357 ; note on duty 57 ; literature, vi.
of, 366-7; "persecutor's ladder, Puritanism, “last of all our hero-
367; by all parties, Freeman, isms," v, spirit of, l; not a
367 ; effect of persecution on system but a force, 2, 3, 383;
Puritans, 14; last who suffered
name, 2, 4; zeal for purity,
death-confiscation and banish- under James 1., 4, 5; causes of,
ment, 208–9; of Baptists in New 11 ; offspring of Reformation, 13;
England, 334-8; of Quakers, led to democracy, 23 ; had origin
338-40.
in Holland, 43, 206; rise in
INDEX
403
282;
on
S
England, 43–58; growth, 107, beth no sympathy with, 12 ; re-
208, 201 ; hatred provoked by it, sisted, 12, 25 ; wanted leaders,
354 ; not indissolubly bound up 13; promoted by printing, 15;
with Calvinism, 383-4; spirit of, not at first favourable to liberty,
imperishable, 391.
20 ; highest point under Edward
Puritans, causes of increase, 4, 5; VI., 25; settlement a compro-
Elizabeth's hatred of, 27; and mise, 36.
Reformation settlement, 36; rose Reformers, continental, took a less
into power, 51; Fuller on, 4, 5, 51, extreme view of vestments, 55.
n.; about eight hundred fled to Rhode
Island,
Roger
Continent, 51 ; returned thread- Williams obtains charter, 298;
bare, 52; points of divergence from perils of, 283; progress of, 298.
ruling powers, 62–4; early and Rippon, Roger, died in prison, 175.
later, 64; desired uniformity, Robinson, John, 213 ; at Norwich,
65; Gardiner on development 214; justified separation, 214;
of, 66; numbers, 106–7, how at Gainsborough and Scrooby,
accounted for, 201; continued 215; at Amsterdam and Leyden ;
oppression of, 207; banishment 217; definition of church, 217–8;
and confiscation, 208–9; exile farewell address to Pilgrims, 218,
made necessary, 209, 210 ; poor 219; Dexter's view of, criticised,
under scholarly leaders, 210–12; 224n.; death, 219; tablet to
Puritans and Puritans, 353 ; memory, 220n.; influence
denunciations of-Doyle, 353, New Plymouth, 246 ; advice to
and Saturday Review, 354 ; to shake off name of Brownists, 258.
middle of seventeenth century
Calvinists, 381–3 ; yet Calvinisin
not more essential to Puritanism
than to Prelacy, 383–4; decay of
in New England, Sabbath, place of worship, 247,
389; resurrection power, 390–1. 248, 317 ; preparation for, 317–
8; strict observance of, 318–9;
Miss Earle on the Sabbath in
Puritan New England, 319, 320.
Sacerdotalism and vestments, 55.
Quakers, shameful treatment of, Salem, Skelton, pastor, and Higgin-
in Massachusetts, 338–9; four son, teacher, 253; covenant,
hanged, 339; indignation of the 254; worship on basis of Inde-
people, 340; Rhode Island re- pendency, 254-5; two objecting
fuses to persecute, 340 ; Williams Churchmen banished, 255, this
writes against errors of, 341; defended by Dr. Palfrey, 255n.;
gross excesses of, 342 ; Lodge's democracy and the ballot from
view and Lowell's, 343, 344 ; the first, 260.
Goldwin Smith, 344; and Doug- Sampson deprived of deanery, 58.
las Campbell,' 344ń.; Charles Sandys, Bishop of Worcester, on
IJ. befriends Quakers, 368.
scarcity of preaching, 86.
Saturday Review on "savage brutal-
.
ity” of American Puritans, 354.
R
Schism, the right of, 35; the “sin
of," 36n.; Anglican schism
Raleigh, Sir W., on number of denied-Moore and Brinckmann,
Brownists, 136, 201.
37, and Curteis, 37n. ; Spectator
Reformation, relation to Puritan-
foolish dread of word
ism, 11-14; alleged indifference “schism,” 38.
of English people to, 12; Eliza- Schools in New England, 328–9.
on
404
INDEX
Scriptures, supremacy recognised by | Supplication of Puritan ministers
Puritans, 22, 84 ; not sole organ: 148n.
of Holy Ghost, 111; only rule Supremacy of Scriptures. See
of all things, say some, 111, Scriptures.
112, but not against reason, Sutton, Archbishop, his advice to
112–3; Chillingworth, 112n. See Bishop Heber, 88.
Bible.
Separation, necessity of, 23-5, 27,
28 ; right of, 35, 36.
T
Separatism, Puritanism advanced
to, 23, 28; arose out of vestiarian Tertullian, on religious freedom, 362.
controversy, 61; points of diver- Test Articles, 93-5.
gence between Separatists and Thacker, Elias, martyr, 177.
Reformers, 62–3; three classes Tolerance, Persecution and Toler-
of dissenters, 136; Brownists, ance by Bishop of Peterborough,
Separatists, 137; brethren of the 357n.; of indifference, 367; of
second separation, 138 ; in Queen Mahomet III. and Charles II.,
Mary's reign, 139; few objected 368; Lecky and others, as out-
to principle of Establishment, come of scepticism, 357–8; Philips
Anabaptists did, 140; doubtful Brooks' definition, 359; good
statements of Douglas Campbell temper from firmness of convic-
and Green, 140, 141; origin- tion, 360; not a negative virtue,
ated by force of circumstances, 360n.
141-2.
Toleration, 191, 357–85; Browne,
Sewall, Judge, his communion ser- Barrowe, and Greenwood, 192 ;
vice experiences, 319.
Roger Williams claimed com-
Skeat, Professor, on Dutch and plete, 279, preceded by Anabap-
English, 203.
tists and Prince of Orange, 280,
Skelton, Pastor, at Salem, 253. also by Browne, Busher, and Eng-
Smith, Goldwin, 241, 244, 290, 295, lish Baptists of Amsterdam, 281;
302, 344.
Rhode Island practised, 282, 340 ;
Smyth, John, at Gainsborough and Christian Church founded on,
Amsterdam, became Baptist, 213. 361; Edict of Milan, Tertullian,
Spectator dread of word Athanasius, Lactantius, 362;
“schism,” 38.
William of Occam, Wyclif, Augs-
Speedwell, purchased, 235; sailed, burg Confession, 363; Luther,
236 ; discharged as unfit, 237. 363–4; Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of
Spenser, a Puritan, 108.
Prophesying, 364 ; few in favour
Standish, Miles, 243, 262.
of before close of seventeenth
Story, Dr., quoted, 35n.
century, 365 ; Dr. Creighton,
Stoughton's History - Brownist 365n.; pioneers to be judged not
petition for freedom of conscience, by ideal standard, 366; evolved
375n.
among persecuted, Masson and
Straus, on Roger Williams, 280. Hallam, 369; Bancroft, 369n. ;
Strype, on thirst for Scriptures, 18; Masson on Independents, specially
Annals quoted, 27n.; Life of Articles of English Baptist Church
Griodal, 40n.; letter of Whit- at Amsterdam, 370; but Ana-
gift's, 47n.; return of Puritans, baptists and Browne held doc-
52; Fellows and scholars of St. trine, 371-3, Hooper also, but
John's, 56 ; on separatism, 61; Browne suffered for it, 373n.;
on prophesyings, 85; on Grindal, Brownists later desired Roman
91; on state of religion, 147.
Catholics included. See Stough-
Stubbs, Bishop, quoted, 32; trials ton, 375n.; Browne's not mo-
for heresy, 367.
dern doctrine, 375–6; full really
on
INDEX
405.
name
safest, Taylor Innes, 376n. ; but
experience of then wanting,
376-7; Roger Williams most
fully grasped, 377–8; Jacob and
Busher did not distinguish civil
and religious, 378–80 ; Massa-
chusetts rulers criminal, 380,
but compare hundred thousand
martyrs in Europe, 381.
Travers, Walter, the “neck” of
the Presbyterian party, 72, 73;
lecturer at Temple, silenced by
Whitgift, 73; his Work on Dis-
cipline, 75.
U
Udall, John, cited before High
Commission, 171 ; Diotrephes,
172; Demonstration of Discipline,
79, 172; Hallan's opinion of trial,
173; Udall's declaration, 173;
death in prison, 174.
United Colonies of New England,
297.
United States, elements of popula-
lation, 306n.
Liberties, 324; intolerant spirit,
348, 349n.
Whitgift, Archbishop, on
Puritan, 2n.; bishops not indis-
pensable, 47n.; signed petition
against vestments, 57 ; contro-
versy with Cartwright, 70–72;
on state of Church, 71, 72, 145;
silences Travers, 73; saved Eng-
land from democratical pontifi-
cate, 79; appointed archbishop,
92; character of, Macaulay on,
93; Test Articles, 93–5; prose-
cuted heretics in Court of High
Commission, 97; Lord Burleigh
scandalised, 98; two hundred
and thirty - three
ministers
suspended, 101; Lords of Coun-
cil wrote remonstrance, 103 ;
Commons petition Lords, 104 ;
petition to Queen, 105; Queen
inexorable, 106 ; at Barrowe's
examination, 178-81 ; signed
Penry's death warrant, 189 ;
a Calvinist, 384 ; took part
in framing Lambeth Articles,
385.
William of Occam, an early advo-
cate of toleration, 363.
Williamof Orange, 280, 371.
Williams, Roger, 270; pain in leav-
ing England, 271; at Nantasket,
271 ; extreme Independent and
arch individualist, 272; claimed
universal toleration, 273; of most
amiable character, 273; called to
church at Salem, 274; sentence
of exile, 274; wanders among
Indians, 275 ; lands in Rhode
Island, founds Providence, 275;
acquires land, 276; becomes Bap-
tist, founds first Baptist church in
America, 277 ; deposed by Salem
Church, 277; tract on The Bloody
Tenet of Persecution, 279; others
had held doctrine of toleration,
280–1; first to set up government
on principle of, 282; Slate Rock
and Providence, 282, statue to
founder, 282n., a harbour for
all sorts of consciences, 283; dis-
solves alliance of Pequots and
Naragansetts, 294; four particu-
lars for which tried, 346; not
V
Vane, Henry, one of the greatest
of Puritan statesmen, 263; re-
garded persecution as a crime, 349.
Vestments, Hooper scrupled, 45;
controversy, Hume's sneer, 54;
underlying meaning, 55 ; Zurich
Letters, 55; aversion to, at Lam-
beth, 56 ; opposition at Cam-
bridge, 56; Queen resolute, 56–8;
majority of one in Convocation
against Puritans, 57; thirty-seven
ministers suspended, 58; Hallani's
moderate view, 58.
Voluntaryism, Roger Williams
apostle of, 279.
W
Wakeman's appreciation of Puri-
tans, 196.
Ward, Nathaniel, author of Body of
406
INDEX
persecuted for religious opinion, fundamental principle of Inde-
347-8.
pendency, 120; his opinions im-
Winthrop, John, 263; governor of plied doctrine of religious tolera-
Massachusetts, 264 ; ideas on tion, 363.
liberty, 307-8; weary of ban- Wyclif's Bible, 15, 16.
ishing heretics, 349.
Witches put to death in Massachu-
Z
setts and Connecticut, 344n.
Wyclif, raised spirit of liberty, 20; Zurich Letters, 40n.; vest-
à Puritan of Puritans, 51, held ments, 55n.
on
MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH,
68 508 AA A 30
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
DATE DUE
11 1997
OCT 2 4 1997
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209002
MAR 1
OCT 21998
OCT 0 5 1998
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1999
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