I give thefe Books
far the foundfng of a College ih Zfiis Colorvj^

Bought with the income ofthe
Azariah Eldridge Memorial Fund
19

PURITANISM IN ENGLAND

PURITANISMIN ENGLAND

BY
H. HENSLEY HENSON, D.D.
CANON AND SUB-DEAN OF WESTMINSTER
SOMETIME FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

Printed in igi2.

PREFACE
THE six lectures here published were
delivered in Westminster Abbey on
Friday afternoons during Lent this year.
They are published without alteration.
The circumstances of haste and pressure
in which they were composed are sufifi
ciently disclosed by their slightness and
penury of reference. But the opinions
and judgments they express have not
been arrived at quickly, or without
labour. I have added three Sermons which
bear more or less directly on the main
theme, and will serve to supply some
lacunae in the Lectures. They were
delivered respectively in Westminster

vi PREFACE
Abbey, in the Crypt of Canterbury
.Cathedral, and in the University Church,
Cambridge. In choosing 'Puritanism' for the subject
of my Lenten Lectures I was influenced
by the circumstance that Nonconformists
generally were engaged in commemorating
the 250th anniversary of the Ejectment
of their religious ancestors. I trust that
nothing has been said which can fairly
be regarded as lacking in sympathy or
appreciation for the Victims of what I
must needs consider the meanest perse
cution which Christian History records.
Nevertheless, I cannot think that the
tradition of their sufferings ought to
be allowed to raise the temperature of
modern discussions, or to suggest a
polemic for modern controversialists.
H. HENSLEY HENSON.
Westminster Abbey,

CONTENTS

I
PAGE
ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM . . I

II
PURITANISM BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR . 39.
Ill
THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE OF PURI
TANISM . . . -75
IV
PURITANISM AND THE SECTS . . 107
V
PURITANISM AS A WORKING SYSTEM . 141

viii CONTENTS VI
THE RESTORATION SETTLEMENT . 177

THE HUGUENOT CHURCH OF CANTER
BURY ..... 217
RICHARD BUSBY . . . . 24I
THE MORAL OF A GREAT FAILURE . 267

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
TWO hundred and fifty years have
passed since the Nonconformist
clergy, about two thousand in number if
we accept the contemporary estimates,
were ejected from their benefices by the
Act of Uniformity (1662).
It is, perhaps, no more than we ought
to expect that so important and tragic an
event^mportant in its consequences,
tragic in its incidents — should be made
the subject of commemoration by those
who regard themselves as the religious
representatives of the ejected Puritans.
Yet we cannot avoid a certain anxiety lest
the commemoration should take a polemi-
Piiritanism in England. 3

4 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
cal aspect, and thus have the unfortunate
effect of rekindling the failing fires of
religious strife, and giving new life to old
and now moribund prejudices. For it is
unhappily the case that the exasperating
memories of 1662 can hardly be revived
in 191 2 without connecting themselves
unwholesomely with the actual process of
politics. With Disestablishment actually
in debate, it is not hard to see that the
renewed study of the crisis in which the
existing Establishment of the Church of
England was effected, with much perse
cuting violence, may lend itself more easily
and obviously to the service of political
invective than to that of any worthier
interest. This would be the more unfortu
nate since a candid and unprejudiced
review of this chapter of our religious
history might well contribute much to the
discipline and guidance of the modern
Church, as well established as non-estab
lished. It occurred to me, therefore, that
it might be profltable, and could hardly be

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 5
unfitting, if we were to devote these
Lenten lectures to the attempt to consider
English Puritanism without controversial
arriere-pensie, or denominational preju
dice. In Westminster, if anywhere, such
an attempt ought to be legitimate and
hopeful, for there the most stirring epi
sodes of the brief Puritan domination were
witnessed, and within the walls of the
Abbey was framed the most widely
accepted of Puritan Confessions.
' Puritan,' like ' Christian,' ' Huguenot,"
and 'Quaker,' is a nickname, originally
devised as a term of abuse and expressing
general contempt, which in the course of
time has been made honourable by the
associations of virtue and heroism which
have gathered about it, and has thus
come to be a source of legitimate pride to
those who have the right to bear it. The
ecclesiastical writers of the seventeenth
century, Heylyn and Fuller, agree in
referring— ks origin to the early years of
Elizabeth, when the system of the Re-

6 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
formed Church was being set up in
circumstances of extraordinary difficulty
and confusion. In the preface to the
Puritan manifesto called the ' Admonition
to the Parliament,' published by Cart
wright in 1572, complaint is made ]that
the Bishops ' link in together, and slander
ously charge poor men with grievous
faults, calling them Puritans, worse than
the Donatists.' When Grindal, Arch
bishop of York, in writing to the Puritan
Sampson, spoke of ' the riot of Puri
tanism,' and referred with some scorn to
those who held ' a Puritanism superstition,'
he was roundly answered by his corre
spondent : —
' Yet do I not well understand what
you do mean by those Puritans.
Because you do use a dark phrase,
noting them to hold a pure supersti
tion. Till I be further instructed in
this, I say, that if Puritans now be
noted to be such as do revive the

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 7
old rotten heresy of Novatus, from
whom the old Katharoi did spring, I
do not know any in England which
do hold that desperate doctrine. . . .
But unjustly to impose this name on
brethren, with whose doctrine and
life no man can justly find fault, is to
rend the seamless coat of Christ, and
to make a schism incurable in the
church, and to lay a stumbling-block
to the course of the Gospel.' '
Heylyn gives the year 1565 as the
actual date at which ' the Zwinglian or
Calvinian faction began to be first known
by the name of Puritans,' and he indicates
its significance with characteristic bitter
ness : — ' Which name hath ever since been
appropriate to them, because of their
pretending to a greater purity in the
service of God than was held forth
' V. Appendix xciv. to Strype's ' Life of Parker.'

8 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
unto them (as they gave it out) in
the Common Prayer Book ; and to a
greater opposition to the rites and
usages of the Church of Rome than
was agreeable to the constitution of
the Church of England. But this
purity was accompanied with such
irreverence, this opposition drew
along with it so much licentiousness,
as gave great scandal and offence to
all sober men.' '
Fuller, ascribing the first use of the
name to the year 1 564, gives a more dis
criminating account of its early applica
tion : — ' A name which, in this notion, first
began in this year ; and the grief had
not been great, if it had ended in the
same. The philosopher banisheth
the term (which is polysaemon) that is
subject to several senses, out of the
predicaments, as affording too much
' ' History ofthe Reformation,' ii. 421.

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 9
covert for cavill by the latitude
thereof. On the same account could
I wish that the word " Puritan " were
banished common discourse, because
so various in the acceptation thereof.
We need not speak of the an
cient Cathari or primitive Puritans
sufificiently known by their heretical
opinions. " Puritan " here was taken
for the opposers of the hierarchy and
church-service, as resenting of super
stition. But profane mouths quickly
improved this nickname, therewith on
every occasion to abuse pious people :
some of them so far from opposing
the liturgy, that they endeavoured
(according to the instructions thereof
in the preparative to the Confession)
" to accompany the minister with a
pure heart," and laboured (as it is in
the Absolution) " for a life pure and
holy." We will, therefore, decline
the word to prevent exceptions :
which, if casually slipping from our

10 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
pen, the reader knoweth that only
nonconformists are thereby in
tended.' I
This character of ' Nonconformists '
attached to all the Elizabethan Puritans,
but it by no means meant in all cases the
same thing. ' Nonconformity ' might in
dicate no more than a conscientious dislike
of specific details of the established system
of the Church, as for instance kneeling at
the Holy Communion, or the use of the
Cross in Baptism ; or it might indicate a
conscientious objection to Prelacy ; or it
might even go to the length of a conscien
tious repudiation of the existing Church of
England. Bishop Cooper in an often-
quoted passage of his ' Admonition to the
People of England,' published in 1589,
has described the evolution of Puritanism.
He wrote of course with the bias of an
avowed opponent, but the substantial truth
of his statements cannot be disputed : —
' V. ' Church History,' ii. 474.

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 11
' He that is the authour of all
perillous alterations, and seeketh to
worke mischief by them, will not
attempt all at once, but will practise by
little and little, and make every former
feate that he worketh, to be a way
and meane to draw on the residue.
For he seeth all men will not be
overcome with all temptations, nor
will not be made instruments of all
evill purposes, though happily by his
colours and pretenses he be able to
deceive them in some. The practise
hereof, wee have seen in this Church
of England, to the great trouble and
danger thereof At the beginning
some learned and godly Preachers,
for private respects in themselves
made strange to weare the Surplesse,
Cap, or Tippet : but yet so, that they
declared themselves to thinke the
thing indififerent, and not to judge
evil of such as did use them. Shortly
after rose up another, defending that

12 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
they were not thinges indifferent, but
distayned with Antichristian idolatrie,
and therefore not to bee suffered in
the Church. Not long after came
forth an other sort, affirming that
those matters touching Apparell, were
but trifles, and not worthie contention
in the Church, but that there were
greater thinges farre of more weight
and importance, and indeede touching
faith and religion, and therefore
meete to be altered in a Church
rightly refourmed : As "the booke of
Common Prayer, the administration
of the Sacraments, the government of
the Church, the election of Ministers,"
and a number of other like. Fourthly,
now breake out another sort, earnestly
affirming and teaching, that we have
no Church, no Bishops, no Ministers,
no Sacraments : and therefore that all
they that love Jesus Christ, ought
with all speede to separate them
selves from our congregation, because

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 13
our assemblies are prophane, wicked,
and Antichristian.' ^
To this testimony of Bishop Cooper we
may add that of Richard Hooker in the
Preface to his great work, where after
speaking of the excessive authority which
was being yielded to Calvin throughout
the Protestant Churches, he proceeds to
describe the situation in England : —
' Amongst ourselves, there was in
King Edward's days some question
moved by reason of a few men's scru
pulosity touching certain things. And
beyond seas, of them which fled in the
days of Queen Mary, some contenting
themselves abroad with the use of
their own service-book at home
authorized before their departure out
of the realm, others liking better the
Common Prayer-book of the Church
of Geneva translated, those smaller
contentions before begun were by
' V. ' Admonition,' p. 131. Reprint of 1847.

14 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
this means somewhat increased.
Under the happy reign of her Majesty
which now is (Elizabeth), the great
est matter awhile contended for was
the wearing of the cap and surplice,
till there came Admonitions directed
unto the high court of Parliament, by
men who concealing their names
thought it glory enough to discover
their minds and affections, which now
were universally bent even against all
the orders and laws, wherein this
church is found unconformable to the
platform of Geneva. Concerning the
Defender of which Admonitions
(Thomas Cartwright) all that I
mean to say is but this : there will
co'me a tim,e when three words uttered
with charity and meekness shall
receive a far more blessed reward
than three thousand volumes written
with disdainful sharpness of wit. But
the manner of men's writing must not
alienate our hearts from the truth if

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 15
it appear they have the truth ; as
the followers of the same defender do
think he hath ; and in that persuasion
they follow him, no otherwise than
himself doth Calvin, Beza, and
others, with the like persuasion that
they in this cause had the truth. We
being as fully persuaded otherwise, it
resteth that some kind of trial be used
to find out which part is in error.' '
The evolution of Puritanism thus
described is the salient feature of our
ecclesiastical history during the reign of
Elizabeth, and has left its record in the
two grand polemical duels of the time,
that between Cartwright and Whitgift,
and that between Travers and Hooker.
The student of Puritanism must by no
means omit a careful study of these
memorable controversies.
Two factors must be distinguished in
the earlier Puritanism, the one home-born,
' V. Preface to ' Eccl. Polity,' ii. lo.

16 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
the other of foreign extraction. The first
goes back beyond the Reformation to the
fourteenth century, when it grew from the
preaching of John Wycliffe. The last
sprang from the intercourse with the foreign
Reformers which began with Cranmer,
and grew extremely close during the
Marian persecution. Dr. Gairdner has
reminded us in a recent work that Lollard-
ism played a great part in the process of
the English Reformation. It is hardly
too much to say that the Reformation, so
far as it was a popular movement, was a
Lollard movement. From Lollardism,
surviving as a tradition among the people,
came the dynamic force of religious con
viction, and the principle of ecclesiastical
innovation. That principle — ' the essen
tial principle of Puritanism ' as Dr. Briggs
has called it not excessively — was the
necessity of Scriptural authority for all
ecclesiastical arrangements. As far back
as the middle of the fifteenth century,
Bishop Pecock, anticipating Richard

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 17
Hooker, had argued against the Lollards
on this point. Archbishop Cranmer,
writing in 1552 with reference to Puritan
objections against the second Prayer-book
(which though itself a monument of
Puritan influence retained too much of
the liturgical tradition to satisfy the more
thorough-going Reformers), justly pointed
to this mistaken exaltation of Scripture as
the fount of ecclesiastical confusion :
' They say that kneeling is not com
manded in Scripture : and what is not
commanded in Scripture is unlawful.
There is the root of the errors of the sects !
If that be true, take away the whole Book
of Service, and let us have no more trouble
in setting forth an order in religion, or
indeed in common policy. If kneeling be
not expressly enjoined in Holy Scripture,
neither is standing nor sitting. Let them
lie down on the ground, and eat their
meat like Turks or Tartars.' '
' V. Dixon, ' History of the Church of England,'
iii. 476.
Puritanism in England. Q

18 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
Not unconnected with their theory of
the Scripture as the sole and sufficient
authority for all ecclesiastical arrange
ments, was the practice of Psalm-singing,
to which the Puritans gave an important
place in public worship. Bishop Jewel,
writing to Peter Martyr in 1560,
observed on the popularity of Psalm-
singing among the Londoners : ' You may
see sometimes at Paul's Cross after the
service six thousand persons, old and
young, of both sexes, all singing together
and praising God.' The practice received
stimulus bythe publication in 1562 of a
complete metrical version under the now
famous names of Sternhold and Hopkins.
The Puritans were, indeed, careful to
draw a distinction between the traditional
modes of praise and that which they
approved. When Whitgift claimed
agreement with his opponent on this
point — ' Singing I am sure you do not
disallow, being used in all Reformed
Churches, and an art allowed in Scriptures,

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 19
and used in praising God by David ' —
Cartwright was at the pains to make
clear what precisely he understood by
allowable singing. He assumes that
Whitgift ' will not defend the piping and
organs, nor no other singing than is used
in the reformed Churches, which is, in
the singing of two psalms, one in the
beginning and another in the ending, in a
plain tune, easy both to be sung of those
which have no art in singing, and under
standed of those which, because they
cannot read, cannot sing with the rest of
the church.' ^ It was indeed fortunate for
the Puritans that they could find Scriptural
authority for psalm-singings and even for
the use of musical instruments. They
never adopted the rigid attitude which
marked the Presbyterians of Scotland with
respect to the latter. The English people
have a natural fondness for music, and,
perhaps, no small natural aptitude for it.
Generally it may be observed that the
' V. Whitgift, Works, iii. io6, 7, P.S.

20 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
fervour which marked the congregational
psalmody of the Reformed Churches
indicates the sense of religious privation
which the suppression of the medieval
worship bred in the people. It is
interesting to notice that the exemption
enjoyed by music from the general
proscription of the arts enabled the
Puritans of the next age to find in
its cultivation some relief from the
dour and melancholy habit to which
their formal creed seemed to commit
them. The year 1572 is critical for Elizabethan
Puritanism, for then the Puritan leaders
adopted a policy which is difificult to
defend in point of morality, and was pre
destined to defeat. At Wandsworth the
Presbyterian system was actually estab
lished, and from that centre an organised
effort to presbyterianise the Church of
England from within was set on foot.
' This was the first-born of all presbyteries
in England,' says Fuller, ' and secundum

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 21
usum Wandesworth as much honoured by
some as secundum usum, Sarum by others.'
We may conjecture that the Puritan
leaders were misled by the Protestant
fervour of the country into supposing that
the time was favourable for a radical
change in the ecclesiastical system. A
profound impression had been made on
the public mind by the violence of the
Counter-Reformation on the Continent, a
violence which culminated in the massacre
of Huguenots in Paris on St. Bartholo
mew's Day, 1572. The rebellion of the
northern earls had brought home to the
people the danger in which the throne of
Elizabeth stood, and Pius V.'s excom
munication of the Queen had pointed out
the direction from which that danger
really arose. The year 1570 marks the
formal separation of Roman Catholics
from the National Church. It is signifi
cant that it should have been so quickly
followed by a movement which indicated
a separatist temper in the Puritans.

22 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
The inevitable consequence of the
formal adoption of the Presbyterian Dis
cipline was to drive a wedge into
Puritanism. In their zeal the Puritan
leaders ignored the national sentiment of
their own nation, and drew upon
themselves the suspicion and dislike which
in that age never failed to come upon
those who appeared to be unpatriotic.
Incidentally, they wrecked an experiment
which seemed to promise great religious
results. The Prophesyings were the most
conspicuous, and the most widely effective,
of Puritan instruments.
It is worth while to consider briefly
this short-lived but famous experiment.
Archbishop Grindal, in his letter to the
Queen (1576), when she called upon him
to suppress the Prophesyings, pleaded
earnestly for their continuance, as tending
to increase the number of preachers and
to improve their quality. These, from the
Puritan point of view, were matters of
primary importance. Grindal postulates

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 23
that 'public and continual preaching of
God's Word is the ordinary mean and
instrument of the salvation of mankind,'
ascribes the loyalty of London to ' the
continual preaching of God's Word in
that city,' and explains the recent rebellion
of the North as the natural consequence
of ' Papistry, and ignorance of God's Word
through want of often preaching.' To
the objection that many incompetent
persons were admitted to preach, he
replies by stating the precautions against
incompetence which he was accustomed to
adopt himself, and to press on his fellow-
Bishops. ' We admit no man to the office
that either professeth Papistry or Puritan
ism.' He points out that dislike of
preaching went generally with disloyalty
to the Reformation itself, and insists that
' Homilies set forth by public authority '
could never really take the place of
preaching. Nor, indeed — he reminds his
impatient Sovereign — were they ever
intended to do so, but only 'to supply

24 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
necessity for want of preaching ' in the
numerous parishes, seven-eights of the
whole number as he reckons, where ' no
sufficient living for a learned preacher'
was provided by the miserable endow
ment. Then he proceeds to attempt the
removal of Elizabeth's prejudices by
giving a detailed account of the Prophesy
ings, and setting out at length the
arguments in their favour. Finally, taking
his courage in both hands, he declares
bluntly that his conscience will not allow
him to carry out the Queen's wishes.
' For my own part, because I am
very well assured, both by reasons and
arguments taken out of the holy
Scriptures, and by experience (the
most certain seal of sure knowledge),
that the said exercises, for the inter
pretation and exposition of the Scrip
tures, and for exhortation and comfort
drawn out of the same, are both
profitable to encrease knowledge

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 25
among the Ministers, and tendeth to
the edifying of the hearers, I am
forced, with all humility, and yet
plainly, to profess that I cannot with
safe conscience, and without the
offence of the majesty of God, give
my assent to the suppressing of
the said exercises ; much less can
I send out any injunction for the
utter and universal subversion of
the same.'
His closing appeal to the Queen is
couched in a high and manly vein, and
reflects the utmost credit on his character.
It hardly needs saying that Elizabeth was
quite unable either to yield to its demand,
or to pardon its audacity. Grindal was
publicly disgraced, and the Prophesyings
were suppressed. I have dwelt at such
length on the Archbishop's letter because
it illustrates the sober and religious Puri
tanism, which formed the soundest element
in the Reformation, and had no worthier

26 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
exponent than Grindal himself. For,
though he disclaimed the name, Grindal
was a representative Puritan, and his
defence of the Prophesyings is undiluted
Puritanism. Now, however, a change was
taking place. As the inexorable attitude
of the Queen's government destroyed all
hope of any alteration in the established
system, the more ardent Puritans turned
against the system itself, and sought to
realise their ecclesiastical ideal in inde
pendence of the constituted authorities,
and in despite of them. The Prophesy
ings were a weapon ready to the hands of
these bolder men, who did not scruple to
utilise them for the establishment of the
new presbyterian polity, which they had
admired at Geneva, and now observed
also in Scotland.
Whitgift and Bancroft perceived the
danger, and acted with ruthless but neces
sary severity. If the system of the
National Church were to be preserved
and made efficient, there could be no

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 27
terms kept with a party which avowedly
used its position within the system in
order to destroy it and substitute another.
With the Puritan statements before us,
and the records of their actual proceedings,
we cannot doubt that nothing less than a
total revolution was intended. The late
Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Paget, whose
decision was based on a thorough know
ledge of the facts, and whose natural can
dour disinclined him to an undue severity,
has stated the case with lucidity and care.
He points out that Cartwright, Travers,
and their followers, holding benefices and
acting under legal disguises, aspired to
abolish episcopacy altogether, to destroy
the Royal Supremacy and substitute a
conslstorlal authority, to degrade from
orders all the clergy who had received
ordination from the Bishops under
Henry VIII. and Mary, and to make a
clean sweep of everything in the Prayer-
book which could not be shown to have
explicit authority in Scripture.

28 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
'The scheme thus characterized was
to be established and enforced by the
authority of the Crown ; it was to
supersede the existing Church of
England ; it was to be the defined
and authorized form of religion for
the Queen's subjects ; and neither the
temper of the times, the nature and
affinities of the scheme, nor the lan
guage of its champions promised much
liberty of divergence from it. There
may have been much that was faulty
in the arguments, the policy, the
motives of those who opposed it, as
well as much that was sincere and
excellent in the enthusiasm of those
who contended for it ; the time was a
time of tangled strife, and primary
importance was often attached to
subordinate matters ; the points in
controversy were multitudinous, and
there was much misplacing of empha
sis, and some stood out stiffly when
they might have yielded wisely, and

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 29
others claimed the shelter of authority
for selfish interests and indefensible
abuses. But through all the con
fusion and misunderstanding, the
ultimate question at issue in the
Puritan controversy of Hooker's day
was not whether the Prayer-book
should be altered here and there, nor
whether large allowance should be
made for those who resented its re
quirements. It was a question which
presupposed the conviction that the
religious life of a nation must have a
uniform expression ; it was the ques
tion whether the religious life of
England should be expressed in the
continuance of the historic Church of
England, or in a system such as
Calvin had established at Geneva.' ^
The Church of England in the closing
years of Elizabeth may be fairly described
' V. An Introduction to the Fifth Book of
Hooker's 'Treatise of the Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity,' 53.

30 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
as a popular institution. It had benefited
from the patriotic enthusiasm which filled
the nation after the long nightmare of
Spanish invasion had been for ever re
moved by the defeat of the Great Armada.
Time gave strength and dignity to the
religious settlement, which had at first
possessed little of either, bearing in the
eyes of a public, familiar with sudden
changes of religious policy, the ignoble
aspect of a merely provisional arrange
ment. From the death of Henry VIII.
to the settlement of Elizabeth was but
fourteen years, and in that short period
the system of Religion had been drasti
cally changed no less than four times. It
is no wonder that serious men, and such
the Puritans were beyond question, should
have regarded with slight respect a Church
which seemed to be the docile instrument
of the State, without principles or rights or
aspirations of its own. Before Elizabeth's
reign had run its course, a new generation
of Anglicans had come on the scene, men

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 31
who had grown up in the use of the
Prayer-book, who had known no other
system than that which was powerfully
defended on its merits by Whitgift and
Hooker, and which had become associated
in English minds both with stirring
national triumphs, and cherished domestic
experiences. An Anglican was no longer
necessarily a mere time-server, like that
typical Bishop Kitchen of Llandafif, re
specting whom the gibe passed on men's
lips that he could sing a new song to the
Lord four times in fourteen years, and yet
never sing out of tune. Moreover, the
gross practical abuses which disfigured it
were slowly being removed, as the system
of government gained strength, and a
new generation of better-trained clergy
came on the field. The destructive Puri
tanism which rebelled against the Bishops
and the Liturgy had been defeated, and
seems at the close of the reign to have
had but a small popular following; while
the more genuine Puritanism, which

32 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
accepted loyally the National Constitution
in Church and State, had largely leavened
the religious public. Already a distinction
was being made in common speech
between 'protestant' and 'puritan,' the
former term being universally allotted to
the Established Church, which in that age
regarded itself, and was generally regarded
by others, as the most conspicuous of
Protestant Churches. In his elaborate
work, published in 1910, on 'The Recon
struction of the English Church,' Dr.
Usher has carefully investigated the
assumed popularity of the Nonconformist
Puritans, and the conclusions to which he
has arrived are set forth in the chapter on
' The Attitude of the People towards the
Church.' Taking the last year of Eliza
beth's reign, he attempts to determine
how many clergy were avowed Puritans,
and what proportion of laymen may be
fairly believed to have followed them.
He has no difificulty in showing that the
common estimates of both are greatly

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 33
exaggerated. He tells us that ' the
strength of the Puritan movement must
have lain almost entirely in its clergy ' ;
that ' it was a movement of the ministers
and for the ministers, who heeded little
the desires of their congregations ' ; that
even on the contemporary and doubtless
excessive Puritan estimate ' about two per
cent, of the population will be enrolled as
Puritans, leaving the rest to be divided
between the Catholics and the Established
Church ' ; that ' so far as there was any
party, it was mainly composed in 1603 of
about three hundred and fifty men, sup
ported by the gentry and town corpora
tions of their districts in the face of more
or less apathetic congregations, having the
adherence of perhaps fifty thousand able-
bodied men pretty well distributed over
the Eastern Counties, the Midlands, and
the South.' He points out, indeed, that
even so petty a number was more formid
able than it appears, for ' seventy-five per
cent, of the population were utterly in-
Puriianism in E^igland. A

34 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
different to all forms of church government
or details of ceremonies,' and probably
at least five per cent, were avowed
Catholics. It must not, indeed, be supposed that
acceptance of the established Church indi
cated in all cases a sincere approval of its
system. Dr. Ussher goes so far as to say
' that there were probably not ten con
scientious men in all England in 1603,
who approved of the Church precisely as
it stood,' but we must remember that con
scientious men are but a minority at any
time, and that ordinary Englishmen in the
early seventeenth century still looked on
the regulation of ecclesiastical arrange
ments as the proper work of the civil
governor. Political questions were be
ginning to contest in English minds the
supremacy which had so long been pos
sessed by questions of religion, for the
nation was becoming conscious of its
powers, and becoming restive under the
strong hand of the Queen, The change

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 35
of dynasty would ' reveal the secrets of
many hearts,' and remove the veil from
many tendencies. Whitgift and Ban
croft succeeded in securing the pro
visional acceptance of the Established
Church. Everything turned on the com
petence of the Established Church to
make itself the instrument through which
the new sensitiveness of the English con
science, and the new consciousness of
political rights, would find expression.
And this point would be inseparably con
nected with the question, which was pre
senting itself already to thoughtful minds,
whether the new and unknown monarch
would have the wisdom to read rightly
the signs of the time, and the courage to
follow the untrodden paths to which they
pointed. There was a general expecta
tion of ecclesiastical change. Men had
held their hands from active agitation
during the last years of the old Queen's
life, partly out of deference to her vener
able years, and partly from a conscious-

36 ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM
ness that her disappearance from the
scene of public life must needs precipitate
changes in the system which she embodied.
Puritans, moreover, cherished the belief
that a ' covenanted king ' could not but be
favourable to them, and awaited with
strangely mistaken complacency the first
disclosures of his religious policy. The
wisest man in England^ Francis Bacon,
thought that the time called for a serious
effort to satisfy the reasonable demands of
those who pointed to grave practical
defects in the Establishment. James had
been more worthy of his description as
' the British Solomon ' if he had taken to
heart the little tractate on Ecclesiastical
Reform which Bacon placed in his hands
on his arrival in England. Time would
woefully disappoint the 'devout and fer
vent prayer' with which the author con
cluded his recommendations, that as the
king had been made ' the corner stone
in joining his two kingdoms, so he
might be also as a corner stone to unite

ELIZABETHAN PURITANISM 37
and knit together the differences in the
Church of God.' The reign of the first
Stuart would witness the rise of a new
kind of Puritanism, less unreasonable
in its demands, and less capable of such
handling as the traditional ' king-craft,'
in which James had been trained, could
alone suggest.

PURITANISM BEFORE THE
CIVIL WAR

II
PURITANISM BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR
THE religious Englishman ofthe later
years of Elizabeth sympathised
with the Puritan attitude of thorough
going hostility to everything Roman, and
perhaps cherished a theoretical belief in
the ecclesiastical system of Geneva, but
he distrusted and disliked the Puritan
contempt of law and order. Collier,
relates that Lord Burleigh, perhaps the
best representative of the religious English
layman we can select, once invited the
discontented dissenters from the Liturgy
to 'draw up another, and contrive the
ofifices in such a form as might give
general satisfaction to their brethren.
Upon this overture 41

42 PURITANISM
' the first classis struck out their lines,
and drew mostly by the portrait of
Geneva. This draught was referred
to the consideration of a second
classis, who made no less than six
hundred exceptions to it. The third
classis quarrelled with the corrections
of the second, and declared for a new
model. The fourth refined no less
upon the third.'
In this situation the Puritans presented
an aspect sufificiently contemptible.
' Since they could not come to
any agreement in a form for Divine
Service, he had an handsome
opportunity of a release ; for now they
could not decently importune him any
farther. To part smoothly with them,
he assured their agents, that when
they came to any unanimous resolve
upon the matter before them, they
might expect his friendship, and that

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 43
he should be ready to bring their
scheme to a settlement.' '
The wily statesman had laid his hand
on the weak point of militant Puritanism,
It was incorrigibly anarchic, and that in an
age which magnified before all things
order and uniformity. Lord Burleigh
was the spokesman of ordinary English
citizens when he said that
' there could be no government where
there was division ; that that State
could never be in safety where there
was a toleration of two religions ;
that they that differ in the service of
their God can never agree in the
service of their country.' ^
This state of mind might find one of
two expressions. It would suggest a
' V. ' Ecclesiastical History,' ii. 586.
2 V. ' The Compleat Statesman, a contemporary Life
of Burleigh,' printed in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa,
book i. p. 33. London, 1779.

44 PURITANISM
policy of mere repression of all forms of
religious Nonconformity to the man who
was hard, narrow, and unimaginative ;
but it would suggest a policy of discrimin
ating comprehension to one who could
discriminate and sympathise. Bancroft
and Bacon may stand as representatives
of the two types. Unfortunately it was
Bancroft who ' called the tune ' under
James L, not Bacon.
This was the more unfortunate because
Puritanism was being silently transformed
from within, and for the better.
' The old Puritanism which had
busied itself with caps and surplices,
and with energetic protests against
everything which bore the slightest
resemblances to the practices of the
Roman Church, was gradually drop
ping out of sight, and a movement
was taking place which careless and
prejudiced writers have attributed to
the strictness of James and Bancroft,

BEFORE THE OIVIL WAR 45
but which was in reality derived from
a far higher source. The fact was,
that thoughtful Englishmen were less
occupied in combating Spain and the
Pope, and more occupied in combating
immorality and sin than they had
been in the days of Elizabeth. . .
A generation was arising of Puritan
conformists, who had ceased to trouble
themselves about many questions
which had seemed all-important to
their fathers. They were not anxious
to see the now customary forms of the
Church of England give way to those
of Scotland or Geneva, and they were
ready to accept the Prayer Book as a
whole, even if they disliked some of
its expressions. What they lost in
logic they gained in breadth. They
desired that under the teaching of
the Bible, interpreted as it was by
them through the medium of the
Calvinist theology, every Englishman
should devote himself to the fulfil-

46 PURITANISM
ment of those duties in which they
saw the worthy preparation for the
life to come. ... It was by its
demand for a purer morality that
Puritanism retained its hold upon the
laity.' I
To this statement of Dr. Gardiner we
may add that of Dr. Ussher that ' the
Puritans of the Civil War were the growth
of the years succeeding 1615, and have
little more than a sort of historical con
nection with the earlier phases of the
movement.' 2
The change in Puritanism is pointed
out by an anonymous verse-writer in a
political poem called ' The Interpreter,'
published in 1622 : —
'Time was, a Puritan was counted such
As held some Ceremonies were too much
Retained and urged ; and would no Bishops grant,
Others to rule, who government did want.'

' V. S. R. Gardiner, 'History of England,' iii. 239 f.
= ' Reconstruction of the English Church,' vol. i.
p. 256.

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 47
Now, a Puritan is the synonym for a
genuine patriot, and hardly less for a
devoutly religious man : —
'A Puritan is he, that, twice a day,
Doth at the least, to God devoutly pray.
And twice a Sabbath, he goes to church to hear,
To pray, confess his sins, and praise God there
In open sight of all men : not content
God knows his heart, except his knee be bent,
That men, and angels likewise, may discern
He came to practise there, as well as learn ;
And honour God, with every outward part.
With knee, hand, tongue, as well as with the heart.
The close of the sixteenth century
witnessed a great increase in the wealth ot
the country. While the continent was
distracted and impoverished by the
religious wars, England enjoyed domestic
peace. Trade passed from the cities of
Germany and Belgium to Holland and
England, and in the wake of trade came
riches and luxury. There was a rapid
and alarming declension in public morals.
The long struggle maintained against

48 PURITANISM
Spain in the Netherlands told badly on
the morality of the combatants, among
whom must be reckoned large numbers of
Englishmen, employed by the Queen, or
fighting as volunteers against the arch
enemy of Protestantism. ' It hath been
observed,' writes Fuller, 'that the sin
of drunkenness was first brought over
into England out of the Low Countries
about the middle of the reign of Queen
Elizabeth.' Sir Thomas Overbury,
writing in 1609, says of the Dutch that
'they are given all to drink, and,
eminently, to no other vice.' Heylyn,
in his ' Microcosmus,' published in 1625,
says that the Netherlanders are ' much
given to our English beer,' and adds that
the Netherlands 'have in these late days
been the Campus Martins, or School of
Defence for all Christendom ; to which
the youth of all nations repair to see the
manner of fortifications and learn the art
of war.' I ' Pp. 227, 250.

BEFORE THE OIVIL WAR 49
' Suffer not thy sons to pass the Alps,'
was one of the precepts which Lord
Burleigh gave to his son, the first Earl
of Salisbury, and he added as the reason
that ' they would learn nothing there but
pride, blasphemy, and atheism.' Lord
Burleigh had to the full the Englishman's
prejudice against all things foreign, but
his severe estimate of Italian morals is
fully borne out by other and unexception
able evidence : —
' I cannot easily resolve,' wrote
Bedell from Venice in 1608, 'whether
this people be more deeply drowned
in ignorance or sin ; each, indeed, being
the effect and cause of other ; both be
so great, as if it be true, which is said,
things mend when they are at the
worst, it cannot in reason be far off,
that God should by His judgment or
mercy work some alteration.' ^
' It \i,e., Italian vice] is known suffi-
' v. 'Two Biographies of William Bedell,' p. 229.
Puritanism in England, g

50 PURITANISM
ciently to all men,' wrote Sir Edwyn
Sandys, in his famous ' Speculum Europae,'
published anonymously in 1605, without the
author's consent, and by himself in 161 3,
'and too much to some, who not
content to sport themselves with all
Italian impurities, proceed on to em
poison their country also at their return
thither, that we need not marvel if
those rarer villanies which our an
cestors never dreamed of, do now
grow frequent, and such men whom
they would have swept out of the
street of their cities, as the noisom
disgrace and dishonour of them, and
confined to a dungeon or other deso
late habitation, do vaunt themselves
now, and with no mean applause, for
the only gallants and worthy spirits
of the world.' '
There was much intercourse with the Con
tinent, and men observed with disgust and
' V. ' Europae Speculum,' p. 19. London, 1673.

BEFORE THE CIVIL W^AR 51
dismay the rehearsal in England of notions
and fashions learned in Paris, Venice, and
Rome. It is impossible to understand the
later Puritanism, unless the aggressiveness
of foreign vice be borne in mind. The
serious mind of the nation was revolted by
the licentiousness which was invading
English society, and, if the National
Church should fail adequately to interpret
that mind, Puritanism would attain a
strength and dignity which it had never
yet attained.
James I. had many merits. He was
conscientious where his interest was en
gaged, industrious, really concerned for
religion, fond of learned men, learned him
self, possessed of no mean portion of
Scottish astuteness, and genuinely devoted
to peace. Let me quote Dr. Gardiner's
measured words as to his personal faults :
they will indicate sufificiently the reason
why the King failed to enlist the confi
dence, or command the respect, of his
best subjects : —

52 PURITANISM
' It was not only by living in an in
tellectual world of his own that James
failed to gain a hold on the hearts
of Englishmen. The riotous profu
sion of his Court gave wide offence.
In July, 1606, when his brother-in-
law. Christian IV. of Denmark,
visited him, ladies who were to act
in a dramatic performance before the
two kings were too drunk to play
their parts, and the ofifence was left
uncorrected. His own life was a
double one. He liked the company
of the learned, who could discuss with
him questions of theology and of
ecclesiastical politics, but he also liked
the boon companionship of the hunting
field ; and though his own life was
pure, and his own head, according to
his physician's report, too hard to be
affected by wine, he himself indulged
in coarse language, and took no pains
to avoid the society of evil livers.' '
' V. Dictionary of National Biography, xxix. 1 70.

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 53
The citadel of social corruption was the
Court, and loyalty itself could not deny
the fact, when the portentous scandal of
Lady Essex's divorce, and the awful crime
to which it led Lady Essex and her
partner, Robert Carr, the reigning Fa
vourite, exhibited the King's immediate
entourage in a blaze of moral abomination.
Puritanism is not understood until it be
seen against this background of illustrious
wickedness, in which the Supreme Gov
ernor of the Church appeared, on the most
favourable view, as a weak and complai
sant figure. James never allowed his
regal position in the ecclesiastical system
to be forgotten or belittled. From his
first entrance into England he had taken
the attitude of a religious partisan. His
personal hostility to Puritanism had been
already disclosed in his little treatise,
' Basilicon Doron,' written for his son's
instruction in king-craft, and published in
London during the very year of his acces
sion to the English throne. ' Cherish no

54 PURITANISM
man more than a good pastor,' he wrote,
' hate no m,an more than a proud Puritan,'
His dislike was as much political as re
ligious : for as an intelligent despot, bent
on establishing his absolute authority, he
recognised in the Scottish Presbyters his
most formidable opponents. ' Their con
ceited parity^ he said, ' can neither stand
with the order of the Church, nor the peace
of a Common-weale and well-ruled Mon
archy,' In the Hampton Court Conference
he had carried himself in the chair as an
open partisan, and had wound up the
debates with the sinister threat that he
would ' make the Puritans conform them
selves, or harry them out of the land,'
His phrase, which gave such delight to
the representatives of the Church, ' No
Bishop, no King,' gives the essence of
his ecclesiastical policy in a nutshell.
Hence the unfortunate association of the
episcopal case with hostility to the rising
standard of national righteousness. Baxter
has left on record the impression made on

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 55
his boyish mind when he heard his father
jeered at by the neighbours as a Puritan
only for the strictness of his religious
habit and the purity of his morals : —
' When I heard them call my father
Puritan it did much to cure me and
alienate me from them ; for I con
sidered that my father's exercise of
reading the Scripture was better
than theirs, and would surely be
better thought on by all men at the
last, and I considered for what it was
that he and others were thus derided.
When I heard them speak scorn
fully of others as Puritans whom I
never knew, I was at first apt to
believe all the lies and slanders
wherewith they loaded them ; but
when I heard my own father so re
proached, and perceived the drunkards
were the forwardest in the reproach, I
perceived that it was mere malice.
For my father never scrupled

56 PURITANISM
Common-prayer or Ceremonies, nor
spake against Bishops, nor ever so
much as prayed but by a book or
form, being not ever acquainted then
with any that did otherwise ; but
only for reading Scripture when the
rest were dancing on the Lord's
Day, and for praying (by a Form out
of the end of the Common-prayer
Book) in his house, and for reprov
ing drunkards and swearers, and for
talking sometimes a few words of
Scripture and the life to come, he was
reviled commonly by the name of
Puritan, Precisian, and Hypocrite ;
and so were the godly conformable
ministers that lived anywhere in the
country near us, not only by our
neighbours, but by the common talk
of the vulgar rabble of all about us.
By this experience I was fully con
vinced that Godly people were the
best, and those that despised them
and lived in sin and pleasure were a

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 57
malignant unhappy sort of people :
and this kept me out of their com
pany, except now and then when the
love of sports and play enticed me.' '
When Baxter was eighteen he went up
to London with the intention of making a
start in life. There he learned that the
revilers of his good father were more in
favour with the authorities of Church
and State than their victim : —
' I had quickly enough of the Court,'
, he says, ' when I saw a Stage-play
instead of a Sermon on the Lord's
Day in the afternoon, and saw what
course was there in fashion, and
heard little preaching, but what was
as to one part against the Puritans,
I was glad to be gone.' ^
Mrs. Hutchinson, herself a strong
Puritan, writing of her father-in-law, Sir
^ V. Life, pp. 2, 3. = V. Life, p. 11.

58 PURITANISM
Thomas Hutchinson, describes a similar
instance to that of Baxter's father : —
' He was a man of a most moderate
and wise spirit, but still so inclined to
favour the oppressed saints and
honest people of those times, that,
though he conformed to the govern
ment, the licentious and profane
encroachers upon common native
rights branded him with the reproach
of the world, though the glory of good
men — Puritanism, yet notwithstand
ing he continued constant to the best
interest, and died in London in the
year 1643, ^ sitting member of that
glorious Parliament that so generously
attempted, and had almost affected,
England's perfect liberty.' '
By some strange fatality James fell out
with the public conscience in all its more
' V. 'Memoirs of Col. Hutchinson,' ed. Firth,
P- 33-

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 59
conspicuous expressions. Precisely at the
moment when public opinion was becom
ing sensitive on the question of morals, his
court was discredited by a monstrous
scandal, and his own profusion was
creating a financial crisis. Just when the
moral reformation was linking itself to the
movement for a stricter observance of
the Lord's Day, he issued his rash though
well-intentioned ' Book of Sports.' At
a time when the minds of religious men
were absorbed in the highly speculative
controversies which grew from the Calvin
istic theology, he issued (1622) his fatuous
' Directions concerning Preachers,' in
which he limited to bishops and deans
only the right ' to preach in any popular
auditory the deep points of predestination,
election, reprobation or of the universality,
efificacity, resistibility or irresistibility of
God's grace,' When the general mind of
religious people accorded with the Puritan
exaltation of preaching as the first and
most important of the Christian minister's

60 PURITANISM
duties, James ordered that no parish
clergyman or lecturer should preach ' but
upon some part of the catechism, or some
text taken out of the Creed, Ten Com
mandments, or the Lord's Prayer (funeral
sermons only excepted), and that those
preachers be most encouraged and ap
proved of, who spend the afternoon's
exercise in the examining of children in
their catechism, and in the expounding of
the several points and heads of the cate
chism, which is the most ancient and
laudable custom of teaching in the Church
of England.' The whole of the Directions
was offensive to the Puritan ; the tone of
scarcely veiled contempt which ran
through them most of all. The self-
respect of religious men was wounded by
this direct interference of the monarch
with concerns which were manifestly out
side the sphere of the State. It was
an affront to the Christian conscience.
Again, precisely at a time when the
national dread of all things Roman had

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 61
been rendered almost fanatical by the
Gunpowder Plot, and by the course of
events on the continent, James entered
on his negotiations for the Spanish mar
riage, and drew upon himself the sus
picions of his people with respect to the
matter which most of all stirred them.
Consider the significance of five events
which happened in the year 1618: the
issue of the ' Book of Sports,' the execu
tion of Sir Walter Raleigh, the begin
ning of the Thirty Years' War, the
meeting of the Synod of Dort, and the
attack on the Scottish Church at the
Assembly of Perth. The first alienated
the Sabbatarians, that is, all the more
serious Puritans ; the next demonstrated
the king's ignoble deference to Spain; the
third disclosed the imminent peril of the
Protestant cause ; the fourth reminded the
nation pf its ancient intimacy with the
very protagonists of Protestantism ; the
last showed the King making a crafty and
tyrannous attack on the Presbyterians of

62 PURITANISM
his native land. Puritanism came to be
almost synonymous with patriotism, and
thus the great disadvantage, under which
the earlier Puritans had laboured, was
actually transferred to their opponents.
The monarchy fell out of accord with the
national mind, and stamped its own grow
ing unpopularity on the Church, which it
had bound so closely to itself
Of course there was danger in the very
intensity of the Puritan zeal for righteous
ness. As the conflict between the
Puritans and their opponents developed,
both sides were worsened by the ex
aggerated emphasis which they were
led to place on their respective points
of difiference. ' Though,' writes Mr.
Firth, ' the cause of the breach between
the Stuarts and their people was more
religious than political, religion and politics
were almost inseparably associated in
the struggle from its origin to its close.
In practice it was found that men who
held a certain set of views about Church

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 63
affairs held an equally definite set of
views about State afifairs, and that there
was a definite connection between their
political and their religious creeds.' '
Men were drawn into the profession
of Puritanism by mixed motives : here a
zeal for righteousness predominated, and
there a dislike of Laud's ceremonial
innovations, and there again a passion
for political liberty, and there a reasoned
belief in Presbyterianism. As the political
blunders of the kings, and their financial
extravagance, brought general odium on
the government, so Puritanism came
into the perilous situation of being
actually popular with large sections of
the population. The affectation of Puritan
enthusiasm had an obvious political
value, and seemed but a small price to
pay for popularity to many unscrupulous
politicians. ' Corruptio optimi pessima,'
is a saying which nowhere finds more
striking illustration than in the history
' V. ' Stuart Tracts,' p. xiii.

64 PURITANISM
of spiritual movements, which in their
exaltation have disdained the common
safeguards of system, or in their zeal
have exaggerated system into an im
possible burden. Puritanism has ex
hibited both types of failure.
The ' Nonconformist Conscience ' was
more potent and not less questionable
in the seventeenth century than in the
twentieth, but it had in the earlier
period one safeguard against hypocrisy
which it has long ceased to possess —
its expression was commonly conditioned
by personal sacrifice. Mainly, indeed,
in both centuries it was a sincere and
noble force, seeking for righteousness
and working it ; but often, too often, it
was neither sincere nor noble, only a
profitable convention. Then and now
its bane was politics. The degradation
of Puritanism was latent in its association,
natural, indeed, and perhaps in the cir
cumstances inevitable, with one of the
great parties in the conflict between

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 65
King and Parliament, in which both
parties enjoyed and abused a brief
triumph, and from which emerged finally
that political compromise which we were
once accustomed to boast of as ' the
British Constitution.' It is not necessary
to draw on the prejudiced and ex
travagant denunciations of their opponents
in order to find the evidence of wide
spread hypocrisy among the Puritans of
the seventeenth century. The wisest
of the Puritan leaders perceived and
deplored the fact ; and the final over
throw of political Puritanism was less
due to the efforts of its foes than to
the intolerable abuses which attached to
its rule. It will be worth while to
refer to one representative authority.
A candid and eminent Puritan, Samuel
ToRSHELL, in his excellent treatise, 'The
Hypocrite Discovered and Cured,' pub
lished in 1644, with an Epistle to the
Assembly of Divines, illustrates his thesis
with portraits evidently drawn from life.
Puritanism in England. Q

66 PURITANISM
'One man,' he says, 'would sometimes
pleasantly tell his very private friends
that he could buy commodities the cheaper
in the Exchange, because of his short
hair and very little band.' ' Such men
were as unstable in their principles as
they were extreme in their professions.
' I knew (me man, ' says Torshell, ' who
set out liks^Jehu against corruptions, and
overran everi - good manners, in some
houses that entertained him, so that he
would tear and deface any devotional
picture (as they call it) wheresoever he
came ; and out of his detestation of
Images would scarce endure a cross in
a Gentleman's coat-of-arms ; who after
wards, when a favourable Prebend wind
had cooled him, came to be active for
superstitious innovations, and of a bitter
spirit against the godly minded.' ^ He
quotes the phrase of Erasmus about
similar impostors in his day. They
were Ev ange Hop hori, Gospel-carriers,
' P. 14. ' P. 13.

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 67
Bible-hearers only. ' I cast not this title
upon godly persons, as profane men do
in scorn and derision of their necessary
and commendable profession. But if any
man obey not that word which he hears
and talks of, but lives dissolutely, then
I say to him, as he in Erasmus, Quid
Polyphemo cum Evangelio ? What hath
a lewd wicked man to do with the
Gospel ? And as he observes, many
carry their Bibles, as the Franciscans
hang the rule of their order at their
girdles, but mind not to observe it : they
take care to adorn their Bibles, to gild
and string them richly, but no care that
the Bible shall adorn their hearts. He
tells us pleasantly of the Soldier that
beat a blasphemer with his Bible, and
so defended the Gospel with the Gospel,
and broke his pate with it : and yet for
all his zeal was noway such a man as
the Gospel requires. Such are profane
defenders of the Reformed Religion, yet
are no way reformed. They will storm

68 PURITANISM
against the Papists if they blemish our
Religion, and yet themselves never regard
the very rules of Christianity.' ' There
were wise Puritan leaders who observed
the ostentation of oddity which many
Puritans affected with alarm : —
' Grace is a commanding thing, and
will have sober hair and sober
garments. — Yet an affected outside
is commonly suspicious. I once
persuaded a good woman to leave
off a singular dress, when I told
her we must live like sincere
Christians, but must go dressed like
our neighbours. It becomes no man
to have a speaking habit, it wins
nothing to God, it exposeth the
Godly often to derision. Wear your
band and your hat, and anything
else, as others do, so they be not
exorbitant. Ye have enough beside
to make ye known what ye are,
' P. 38.

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 69
namely, to let all that converse with
you find that ye are holy and just
and honest in all dealings. Let that
speak us, rather than our coats.' '
From dress he passes to ' the affected
tone that some use to speak in.' 'I was
much taken,' he says,
' with the wit and fine spirit of a
Godly Gentlewoman, and zealously
affected in religion, who when her
chaplain returning from London,
where he had never been before,
began to use and take up a whining
fashion of speaking, she presently
admonished him. To live like a
good man, but to speak like a man,' ^
It must be obvious that a man so sane
and sensible as Torshell was the very
type of a sound National Churchman.
What was it that could make him an
avowed opponent of the Established
' P. 15. " P. 16.

70 PURITANISM
System.? We may conclude this lecture
with reading the account which he himself
has given of the' process in his ' Epistle
Dedicatory' to the Westminster Assem
bly, which was holding its sessions in
the Jerusalem Chamber when he pub
lished the delightful and edifying treatise
from which I have been quoting.
After urging the Assembly to 'remove
every burden which the tyranny of
abused Episcopacy had laid upon us,'
he proceeds : —
' I call their courses tyranny and
their Impositions burthens, as having
had through the happiness of these
late times better means and opportu
nities to discern and weigh them ;
for let me speak freely, and as
becomes us now that the hand of
God is so much out against the
nation, let me speak humbly, I
confess my thoughts were heretofore
more favourable, as walking according

BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 71
to those principles I had received
in my education. The truth is,
though I never thought Episcopacy
to be of Divine right, as it was
proudly challenged, yet I looked
upon it as the most ancient and most
prudent way of government, and so
obeyed it and spake well of it, though
not its mad and furious ways, for
I ever protested against their Altars
and their cringes, their suppressing of
faithful and painful preachers, their
discouraging and undermining of the
power of godliness, their wanton and
profane abuse of the high and
dreadful censure of excommunication ;
yet in a general conformity to such
things as I conceived were by law
established, I obeyed it, as thinking
it to be a sin not to have done so. I
will not be ashamed to put these
charitable thoughts I had (for so I
will call them, and so my own con
science, after I examined it, doth

72 BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR
call them) among the errata of my
life.'
A policy which could alienate from the
National System such men as Samuel
Torshell is self-condemned of fatuity.

THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
OF PURITANISM

Ill
THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE OF
PURITANISM
AS a moral protest against social
corruption Puritanism commended
itself to the general conscience. As the
religious principle of the popular resistance
to the autocratic system, which Charles
and Laud embodied, Puritanism gained
the acceptance of the most virile sections
of the people. But it failed to satisfy
the intellectual needs of an age of eager
questioning and progressive thought. It
has left a vast literature of homiletics
and casuistry, which is wholly dead save
for an occasional excursion of the curious.
Nothing could be more wearisome to
75

76 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
the modern reader than its voluminous
controversy. Its .exegesis is illumined by
many gleams of spiritual insight, but is
everywhere spoiled by a slavish literalism,
and an excessive deference to the
authority of the great Protestant School
men. A few devotional treatises have
survived, and even taken rank as spiritual
classics ; and two imaginative works of
the first quality, ' Paradise Lost ' and
' The Pilgrim's Progress,' belong to the
choicest treasures of English literature.
Puritan scholarship is nobly exhibited in
the learned works of Ussher and Light
foot ; and Puritan political philosophy
is well represented by the prose writings
of Milton and the ' Holy Common
wealth ' of Baxter. These compositions
of genius, learning, and political thought,
however, albeit coloured by the religious
convictions of the authors, can hardly be
regarded as properly illustrative of Puri
tanism. At least the connection must
be held to be indirect, the contribution

OF PURITANISM 77
of a tone and the suggestion of a theme,
rather than the inspiration of new ideas
or the gift of new methods. Neither
the science, nor the politics, nor the
literature, nor the theology of the genera
tion which had sat at the feet of the
Puritans, and witnessed their brief
triumph, was destined to develop on
their principles. They would leave a
powerful, and in the main a salutary,
influence on the temper and habits of the
people, but not on its thought. The
Calvinistic theology, which was the in
tellectual form of Puritanism, is dead
beyond recall. The attitude of unques
tioning and literal acceptance which
determined the Puritan's handling of the
Bible, and made it for him a sufficient
directory of conduct in all situations, has
passed for ever. His view of the Roman
Church may linger as the woeful eccen
tricity of individuals of pinched culture
and unfortunate experience, but it can
never again become the secure postulate

78 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
of any considerable number of Christian
people. Puritanism, as a coherent system
of thought and life, belongs to the antiqui
ties of English religion. It was showing
unmistakable signs of obsoleteness in
the very age which it dominated.
It is difificult for us to realise the absolute
intellectual sovereignty, which was gener
ally yielded to Calvin in this country in
the early decades of the seventeenth cen
tury. The note of revolt, however, had
already been sounded. The first four
books of Hooker's 'Ecclesiastical Polity'
were published in 1594, and they included
a grave protest against the excessive
deference which English Churchmen were
wont to exhibit to the great French
doctor. Hooker's language is restrained
and discriminating, but it is none the less
decisive : —
' Two things of principal moment
there are which have deservedly pro
cured him [Calvin] honour through-

OF PURITANISM 79
out the world : the one his exceeding
pains in composing the " Institutions
of Christian Religion " : the other his
not less industrious travails for ex
position of holy Scripture according
unto the same Institutions. In which
two things whosoever they were that
after him bestowed their labour, he
gained the advantage of prejudice
against them, if they gainsayed ; and of
glory above them, if they consented.
His writings published after the ques
tion about that discipline was once
begun, omit not any the least
occasion of extolling the use and
singular necessity thereof. Of what
account the Master of Sentences was
in the Church of Rome, the same and
more amongst the preachers of
reformed churches Calvin has pur
chased : so that the perfectest divines
were judged they, which were skil-
fullest in Calvin's writings. His
books almost the very canon to judge

80 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
both doctrine and discipline by.
French churches, both under others
abroad and at home in their own
country, all cast according to that
mould which Calvin had made.
The church of Scotland, in erecting
the fabric of their reformation, took
the self-same pattern. Till at length
the discipline, which was at first so
weak, that without the staff of their
approbation, who were not subject
unto it themselves. It had not brought
others under subjection, began now
to challenge universal obedience, and
to enter into open conflict with those
very churches which In desperate
extremity had been relievers of it.' '
Sanderson relates that when he was
a student at Oxford about the year 1608,
Calvin's ' Institutions ' were commended
to the students ' as the best and perfectest
system of Divinity, and fittest to be laid as
' V. ' Eccl. Pol.,' Preface ii. 8.

OF PURITANISM 81
a groundwork in the study of that pro
fession.' He himself was favourably Im
pressed by it : —
' I found, so far as I was then able to
judge, the method exact, the expres
sions clear, the style grave, equal, and
unafifected, his doctrine for the most
part conform to St. Augustine's, in a
word, the whole work very elaborate,
and useful to the Churches of God in
a good measure ; and might have
been, I verily believe, much more
useful. If the honour of his name had
not given so much reputation to his
very errors. I must acknowledge
myself to have reaped great benefit
by the reading thereof '
Calvinism owes its modern reputation
less to its principles than to the system of
raorality and polity which were based on
them, and to the circumstances in which
' V. Works, ed. Jacobson, vol. v. 297 f.
Puritanism in England. 7

82 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
they were advocated. Calvin's main
principle — the unflinching assertion of
Divine sovereignty In religion — was
not original. As Bishop Sanderson
justly observed, ' his doctrine was for the
most part conform to St. Augustine's,'
and St. Augustine drew it from the
writings of St. Paul. Accordingly there
was no essential connection between
Calvin's doctrine and his ecclesiastical
polity, and in point of fact the first was
accepted by those, like the illustrious
Ussher, who rejected the last. Between
St. Augustine and Calvin, moreover,
there were some crucial differences. The
great Latin Father wrote from within the
historic Catholic Church, and as its
spokesman : the French divine wrote
from without the historic Church, and as
its antagonist. The one sought and found
the application of his religious theory
within the established sacramental system,
which in his day was theoretically un
challenged and practically almost co-

OF PURITANISM 83
extensive with the Christian profession.
The other was forced to reject the
traditional organisation of Christendom,
and to discover another sphere within
which his dogmatic scheme might be
realized. St. Augustine accepted the
established ecclesiastical system, and
argued from it : Calvin rejected the
established polity, and framed an alterna
tive. Both built on the Scriptures, but
with a difference. St. Augustine read
them as the first and governing utterance
of the inspired Society of the visible
Catholic Church: Calvin read them as
an independent authority, which, in the
actual circumstances of an apostate
Church, was a hostile authority. There
was nothing in the situation of the older
Thinker which can be paralleled with
the desperate circumstances in which the
Founder of Calvinism fashioned a fighting
creed for the Protestant world The
strength and the weakness of Calvinism
lay in the fact that it was a fighting creed.

84 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
It raised the Infallible Book against the
Infallible Church : the sure guarantee of
an ' effectual calling ' against the external
pledge of a valid sacrament : the dynamic
force of Individual conviction against the
corporate strength of immemorial ortho
doxy. It was clear in Its premisses,
inexorable in its logic, remorseless in its
conclusions. It was a creed for soldiers,
and its most congenial circumstances were
those of the stricken field. Its supreme
exponents were soldiers — William the
Silent, Admiral Coligny, Oliver Crom
well, Gustavus Adolphus, countless
others of equal faith though lesser name,
who in the might of their Calvinistic
creed rolled back the tide of the Counter-
Reformation, broke the spell of Jesuit
subtlety, and saved the liberties of
Europe. But the fighting qualities of Calvinism
militated against it in time of peace. The
Bible could not permanently sustain the
character which Calvinism imposed on it.

OF PURITANISM 85
The attitude of immitigable hatred against
the Roman Church could not be main
tained when the excitements of conflict
had ceased, and men considered the issues
between the Churches as students, and
fellow-Christians, rather than as mortal
antagonists. The Iconoclastic fervour,
which went well enough with the des
perate situation of men fighting against
great odds for all that they hold most
dear, seemed excessive and even absurd
when they continued to profess the old
immitigable sentiments, and to use the old
ferocious language in time of peace.
Leisure advanced claims of its own. The
aesthetic faculties, submerged and forgot
ten in the time of conflict, began to assert
themselves insistently in a more normal
and settled age. The intellect, which had
been absorbed in the Immediate concerns
of war, developed a new independence so
soon as peace lifted the obsession of a
great fear from the human mind, and
gave it liberty of self-expression. The

86 THB INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
artist, the scholar, the man of science,
the man of devotion, the ordinary
citizen — each and all had a grievance
against the dour, unyielding system
which had seemed self-evidently true
In the earlier time of stress. After the
confusions of the religious crisis, peace
was first attained In England, and there
fore in England the reaction against the
system of Calvinism began early, and
rapidly developed. First, as was natural,
the Presbyterian polity, which had become
associated with Calvin's doctrinal scheme,
was definitely rejected. At a later period,
indeed, when the Civil War was in pro
gress, the Puritans were driven by their
military weakness to purchase the support
of the Scots at the price of subscribing the
' Solemn League and Covenant,' but the
Presbyterian polity, which was thereby
bound on the nation, had no strength In
popular regard, flourished nowhere, and
sank quickly under the rising tide of sec
tarianism, and, when that in turn had

OF PURITANISM 87
ebbed, under the stronger tide of consti
tutionalism in Church and State. The
revolt against the dogmatic system of
Calvin was slower in development, but
not less complete in its ultimate victory.
It had already begun while Elizabeth
was yet on the throne. It made rapid
way under her successors.
The revolt against doctrinal Calvinism
broke out first where it might have been
expected to break out — Inthe Universities.
Cambridge, like Oxford 250 years later,
was the scene of a ' movement,' which,
after being temporarily crushed in the
place of its birth, spread quickly in the
country, and finally triumphed everywhere.
Both movements began in a University
sermon. On April 29, 1595, William
Barret, a young Fellow of Gonville and
Caius College, created a sensation by a
Concio ad Clerum, delivered In the Univer
sity Church for his B.D. degree. The
Vice-Chancellor, giving expression to the
general indignation, peremptorily insisted

88 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
on a public recantation, but this, when at
length the offender was induced to make
it, only added fuel to the fire. A con
siderable number of Fellows of Colleges set
their hands to a protest, in which they
stated with considerable vigour their
opinion on Mr. Barret's performances : —
'We do declare,' they said, 'first,
touching the said Sermon that in our
judgments and consciences. It was
very corrupt, savouring of Popish
doctrine in the whole course and
tenour thereof (even as the Popish
writers do maintain) interlaced with
contumelious and bitter speeches
against the chief, godly, learned, new
writers, as Peter Martyr, Calvin,
Beza, Zanchius, &c., who are
worthily received and reverenced in
our Church. And finally so strange
and offensive both to us and all
others of sound religion in our
University, as we never heard the

OF PURITANISM 89
like preached in Cambridge, or else
where, since the beginning of her
Majesty's most gracious reign. And
for his Retractation (being done and
read in a very unreverend, profane,
and impudent manner) it rather added
new offence and grief of heart unto
us, and many other, than any satis
faction of the former, so as we hope
there will be further order taken with
him, for better satisfying so publick
and just offence.'^
Both sides now appealed to the Arch
bishop. Barret at first gained some
advantage, for Whitgift was annoyed at
the hasty action of the academic authori
ties, not altogether pleased with their zeal
for the foreign divines, whose authority
had been too often pleaded by the Puritans
against the ceremonial system for him to
regard them without suspicion, and very
much annoyed at the slight respect which
I v. Strype, " Whitgift," bk. iv. 436.

90 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
had been shown to his own authority.
' To traduce Calvin and other learned
men in pulpits — he said — he could by no
means like. Neither did he allow the
same towards Augustine, Jerome, and
other learned Fathers. Which neverthe
less had often and many times been
abused in the University without control.
And yet if a man would have occasion to
control Calvin for his bad and unchristian
censure of K. Henry VIIL, or him and
others, in that peremptory and false
reproof of this Church of England in
divers points, and likewise in some other
singularities, he knew no Article of
Religion against it. Much less did he
know any cause, why men should be so
violently dealt withal for It : or termed
ungodly, Popish, impudent. For the
doctrine of the Church of England did
in no respect depend upon them.' '
The conflict In Cambridge was confused
by local Issues ; but It illustrates the
^ V. Strype, iv. 441.

OF PURITANISM 91
general situation. In order to assuage
the controversy, which was beginning to
endanger the discipline of the University,
the Archbishop finally Issued the nine
dogmatic decisions, which are known as
the Lambeth Articles, These are strongly
Calvinistic, although they seem to have
been designed as an Eirenicon. In
cidentally they led to a recrudescence of
the strife in Cambridge, for Peter Baro,
the Margaret Professor of Divinity, a
learned Frenchman who was known to
dislike Calvin's views, took the Lambeth
Articles for the subject of a sermon, on
January 12, 1596, 'in which he moderated,
and stated, as he apprehended, the true
sense of them.' Whitgift expressed him
self in terms of much irritation, and the
Queen, always sensitive to the risks ot
theological controversy, was highly in
censed. In the event, the Lambeth
Articles were suffered to drop, and Peter
Baro lost his professorship.
Meanwhile the Calvinistic Theology

92 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
maintained its supremacy, and was
strengthened by the change of dynasty.
For the new monarch from Scotland was
himself a strong Calvinist, and interested
himself keenly in his partisan way in the
controversy which distracted the Nether
lands. In this, as in so many other
respects, James exhibited a paradoxical
aspect, almost unintelligible to his subjects.
Thus he sent a deputation of eminent
English prelates to Dort, where the
Arminians were put down with a high
hand, but at home he was surrounded by
Arminian ecclesiastics, and filled the
bishoprlcks and deaneries with them.
The key to his contradictions lay in his
despotism. As he hated the Puritans in
spite of their Calvinism, because they
opposed his autocratic tendencies, so he
favoured the Arminians in spite of their
Armlnlanism, because they fell In with his
political methods. His appointment of
Abbott as Archbishop of Canterbury, In
succession to Bancroft, was, indeed, a

OF PURITANISM 93
notable triumph for Calvinism, but the
current ran ever more strongly against it
in the Universities and among the clergy :
and when both James and Abbott had
passed away, their places were taken by
those whose sympathies were wholly with
the new doctrines.
Meanwhile the standing controversy
with Rome had entered on a new phase
since the Jesuits had gained the mastery
of the papal policy, which they have
generally succeeded In retaining ever
since. Hitherto the Protestants had been
clearly superior to their opponents along
the whole line of attack. They were the
best preachers, the clearest thinkers, the
ablest writers, the most acceptable moralists
of the time. In every form of conflict the
representatives of the unreformed Medieval
Church were outclassed and defeated. But
now the tide was visibly turning. The
Roman Church had purged itself of its
most embarrassing scandals : it was or
ganised for aggressive warfare, and could

94 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
bring into the field superior numbers of
well-trained, strictly -disciplined, enthusi
astic combatants. Sir Edwyn Sandys,
writing at the close of the sixteenth
century, comments with much acuteness
on the change which he perceived to be
taking place. His description is strictly
contemporary, and drawn from personal
observation. He tells us that the
Romanists had copied the methods of
their opponents so successfully, that now
at every point the Protestants were In
danger of being beaten on their own
ground, and with their own weapons.
The Jesuits, he says, had ' attained the
commendation and worked the effect of as
perfect orators as those times did yield ' ;
that in publishing ' Books of Prayer and
Piety ' they had ' so surpassed their
opposites, that they forbore not to re
proach unto them their poverty, weakness,
and coldness in that kind, as being forced
to take the Catholicks' Books to supply
therein ' ; that they now feared no longer

OF PURITANISM 95
those public disputations in which Pro
testants had commonly gained so great
advantage, but even found it profitable
themselves to Invite such encounters ;
above all, that they made their own the
whole range of education, especially laying
themselves out to gain control over well
born children who were likely to wield
influence In later life. 'In all places
wherever they can plant their nests, they
open Free Schools for all studies of
Humanity. To these flock the best wits,
the principal men's sons, in so great
abundance that wherever they settle, other
colleges become desolate, or frequented
only by the baser sort, and of heavier
metal ; and in truth, such is their diligence
and dexterity in instructing, that even the
Protestants in some places send their sons
unto their schools, upon desire to have
them prove excellent in those arts they
teach. . . . This point of their Schools and
instructing Youth is thought of such
moment by men of wisdom and judgment.

96 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
being taught so by very experience and
trial thereof, that the planting of a good
College of Jesuits in any place, is esteemed
the only sure way to replant that Religion,
and In time to eat out the contrary.' i
Now the Puritans with their Calvinistic
theology, their rigid literalism, their
irrational Sabbatarianism, their ruthless
iconoclasm, and their contempt for the
traditions and usages of historical Chris
tianity, were ill suited for the controversy
which the Jesuits Invited. If moral fervour
and strength of personal conviction could
ever take the place of knowledge and skill,
they would have been as irresistible in the
field of polemical warfare as in that of hard
fighting, but since this can never be, they
fell Into the background, wid ceased to
command the respect of tn^ intellectual
class. In this connection we may refer to
the abortive scheme for establishing a
college — ' King James's College in
Chelsea' — 'for a spiritual garrison, with
¦ V. Survey, pp. 84, 85, 90, 93.

OF PURITANISM 97
a magazine of all books for that purpose,
where learned divines should study and
write in maintenance of all controversies
against the papists.' In relating the
failure of this pretentious and Ill-designed
project. Fuller allows the polemical
superiority of the Roman Catholics, and
suggests as the reason the parochial dis
tractions of the Anglican champions,
which disqualified them for conflict with
opponents who were experts in the
polemical art : —
' The Romish church doth not
burden their professors with preach
ing, or any parochial incumbrances,
but reserves them only for polemical
studies. Whereas in England the
same man reads, preacheth, cate-
chiseth, disputes, delivers sacraments,
&c. So that, were it not for God's
marvellous blessing on our studies,
and the infinite odds of truth on our
sides, it were impossible, in human
Puritanism in England. Q

98 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
probability, that we should hold up
the bucklers against them.'
Of course, there is some truth in this,
but it omits the main disqualification
under which the Protestant controver
sialists laboured — their Calvinistic Creed.
In 1610 an illustrious scholar, Isaac
Casaubon, whose monument is not the
least interesting In this Abbey Church,
sought the hospitality of these shores.
He was flying from Calvinistic narrowness,
almost as much as from Romanist cruelty.
His brilliant modern biographer, Mark
Pattison, in relating the reasons which
led him to take refuge In England, makes
some illuminating observations on the
situation in this country. He points out
that the Huguenot scholar had been
rendered dissatisfied with Calvinism by
¦ the necessity of daily encountering the
catholic disputants.'
'The ministers of his own com
munion scouted antiquity, of which

OF PURITANISM 99
they were ignorant, and which Casau
bon regarded as the only arbiter of
the quarrel. Books fell in his way
written on this side of the channel.
In which he met with a line of
argument very different from the
uninstructed, but presumptuous dog
matism of the calvinist ministers.
He found to his surprise and delight
that there were others beside himself
who could respect the authority of
the fathers, without surrendering
their reason to the dicta of the papal
church. The young anglo-catholic
¦school which was then forming in
England took precisely the ground
which Casaubon had been led to
take against Du Perron.
' The change of face which Eng
lish theology effected In the reign of
James I. is, to our generation, one
of the best known facts in the history
of our church. But it Is often taken
for granted that this revolution was

100 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
brought about by the ascendancy ot
one man, whose name is often used
to denominate the school as the
Laudlan school of divines. Laud
was the political leader, but in this
capacity only the agent of a mode
of thinking which he did not Invent.
Anglo-catholic theology is not a
system of which any individual
thinker can claim the Invention. It
arose necessarily, or by natural de
velopment, out of the controversy
with the papal advocates, as soon as
that controversy was brought out of
the domain of pure reason into that
of learning. That this peculiar com
promise, or via media, between
Romanism and Calvinism developed
itself in England, and nowhere else
In Christendom, is owing to causes
which this is not the place to in
vestigate. But that it was a product
not of English soil, but of theological
learning wherever sufficient learning

OF PURITANISM 101
existed, is evidenced by the history
of Casaubon's mind, who now found
himself in 1610, an anglican ready
made, as the mere effect of reading
the fathers to meet Du Perron's
incessant attacks.' '
Learning, then, especially the learning
which was required for controversy with
the Romanist, would not make a man
a Puritan. The exemption from the
religious wars which the Island kingdom
enjoyed, and the comparative wealth of
the island Church, brought the contro
versial weakness of Calvinism into promi
nence, and fostered the growth of a learned
type of Protestantism.
Lack of learning was a grave fault,
but far graver was contempt for human
reason, and the Puritans, in the bondage
of their Calvinistic creed, lay exposed
to this charge also. Already the finest
minds were reacting against the ferocity
' V. ' Isaac Casaubon,' pp. 299, 300.

102 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
and futility of incessant controversies
between churches, and were seeking a
footing for faith apart from the authority
of fathers, churches, and systems. In
the calm reasoning of Richard Hooker
there was latent the developed argument
of Chillingworth. Both made their
appeal to the human spirit itself, ultimate
judge of the sense of Scripture, and
clothed with a higher and nearer authority
than any external power could vindicate.
Cheynell was a bitter and violent
Puritan, and the curious tract in which
he narrates the death and burial of
William Chillingworth may be Inter
preted as a proof that his treatment of
that illustrious man was felt generally
to have been discreditably harsh. Yet
he gave expression to the general view
of Puritans as to Chillingworth's teach
ing, when he hurled the ' Religion of
Protestants ' Into its author's grave, and
accompanied his action with words of
vehement denunciation. ' Remember,'

OF PURITANISM 103
he wrote in his Prefactory Letter to ' the
Friends of Mr. Chillingworth,' 'that
your friend did run mad with reason, and
so lost his reason and religion both at
once ; he thought he might trust his
reason in the highest points ; his reason
was to be judge, whether or no there
be a God .¦* Whether that God wrote any
Book ? Whether the Books usually re
ceived as Canonical be the Books, the
Scriptures of God .'' What Is the sense
of those Books ? What Religion is best ?
What Church purest ? ' Posterity has
passed its verdict on the two men. The
liberal Anglican has taken his place, a
great place, among the Masters of re
ligious thought ; the Puritan only lives
by virtue of his connection with his
victim. In the wake of the new rationalism
came a perception of the outrage and
folly of persecution. But Puritanism,
fettered by its prejudices, set itself against
toleration. Holding Roman Catholics

104 THE INTELLECTUAL FAILURE
to be ' idolaters,' and finding In the Old
Testament that idolatry was Divinely
ordered to be punished by death, the
Puritan was always restless at any
approach to a tolerant treatment of his
Romanist fellow-citizens. His intoler
ance was not confined to the treatment
of Roman Catholics. Archbishop Abbot,
a strong Puritan, pressed for the burning
of the unhappy sectaries, Legatt and
Wightman, who perished at the stake in
1612. The Puritans marked their tem
porary supremacy by the cruel persecution
of those whom the superstition of the age
accounted to be witches ; and when, in
America, they had a free hand, they
treated the Quakers with abominable
cruelty. No doubt the age was intolerant,
and save for an oppressed sectary here
and there, the notion of religious tolera
tion was scouted. Still, it cannot be
denied that the Puritans made a con
science of intolerance when others were
moving towards more humane positions.

OP PURITANISM 105
Roger Williams, the sectary, William
Chillingworth, the Latitudinarian,
Jeremy Taylor, the High Churchman,
— all these were leaders in the march
from bigotry to humaneness, and none of
them was a Puritan.
The intellectual failure of Puritanism,
then, cannot be questioned. Had not
Charles and Laud forced political issues
to the front, and bound up their own
religious views with a political system
which menaced English liberty, the
failure of the Puritans would have been
sooner perceived. In point of fact, the
political crisis gave a new lease of life to
Puritanism, and postponed its defeat for
a generation.

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS

IV
PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
THE Puritans were not dissenters,
but they facilitated the process by
which discontent with the established
system passed into open separation from
the Established Church. In modern
times we have become so familiar with
the fact of religious separation, express
ing itself freely in autonomous sects, that
we find It difficult to understand the
extreme reluctance with which men, whose
principles might seem to demand separa
tion from the Church, yet regarded the
notion of formal severance. Nothing,
however, is more certain than that the
Puritans condemned religious dissent,
109

110 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
and scrupled not to exert themselves to
suppress dissenters when they had power
to do so. The ' sectaries ' or ' schis-
maticks ' were hardly less abhorrent to
them than the ' papists,' and their senti
ments were cordially reciprocated by those
of whom they were both the teachers and
the opponents.
If we examine closely the circumstances
in which religious dissent arose in this
country, we can hardly be surprised either
at the fact itself, or at the peculiar form it
received. The Reformation had both
stimulated religious individualism, and
weakened the ecclesiastical system which
was Its normal check. We do not
sufificiently allow for either of these
salient facts. Persecution is a wonder
ful tonic of character, and strengthens
even while it misleads men. It is sig
nificant that the first beginnings of
organised dissent in this country are
traceable to the evil days of the Marian
persecution. Then, in the teeth of

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 111
desperate risks, and in plain defiance of
the law, a congregation of Protestants
had been formed In London, in order to
continue the worship which had been
established by Edward VI. To this
separatist church, which used the pre
scribed Prayer-book, and kept the torch
of Reformed Religion burning during the
night of popish supremacy, the later
sectaries looked back as a precedent for
their own action, which their Anglican
adversaries could not gainsay. Its justi
fication lay in the fact, which no Puritan
would dispute, that the medieval Church
was apostate, and therefore that no
religious validity attached to Its ministry.
Even Anglicans, like the learned and
bigoted Heylyn, could not condemn the
Protestant dissenters who rejected the
religious authority of Bishop Bonner ;
and yet such rejection logically implied
both an attitude towards the medieval
hierarchy, which was inconsistent with
Heylyn's churchmanship, and a resist-

112 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
ance to the civil authority which could
by no means be reconciled with the
Anglican doctrine of the Royal
Supremacy. The dissenting Protest
ants, indeed, were themselves quite
unconscious of anything schismatical In
their situation. They accounted that
they alone represented the true Church
of England, and that their diocesan.
Bishop Bonner, was quite manifestly
a tool of Antichrist. So indisputable
in those days did the apostasy of the
Roman Church appear, that there seemed
no absurdity in clothing a congregation
of a few score separatists with the
character of a National Church. In
truth there was little consistency in the
religious world of that age of crisis.
Principles and precedents were so many
weapons of polemical warfare, used as
occasion required, and repudiated readily
enough when the occasion had passed.
The Established Church lent Itself to
effective apology on paper ; but as a

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 113
working system it was deplorably open
to criticism. It had no roots In popular
sentiment strong enough to sustain an
enforcement of Its claims, and no adequate
efficiency to commend its arrangements.
The Reformation worked a revolution in
the minds of men not less violent than in
the Institutions of religion. Thus the
tradition of sacramental worship, together
with the mental dispositions and personal
disciplines which it presupposed, was
finally destroyed. Religious Englishmen,
as a body, would never again respond to
the distinctive notes of the medieval
Church. With the monasteries there
passed away the ascetic ideals and dis
ciplines which the monasteries embodied
and symbolised. With the Mass and the
Confessional vanished the sacerdotal
power and sacramental religion which had
found in these their most imposing expres
sion, and their most effective instrument.
With the papacy went from English
minds the notion of Catholic Unity In
Puritanism in England. Q

114 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
the old sense. The ecclesiastical system,
which survived the great ruin, retained,
indeed, the old political framework so
far as it was not Inconsistent with the
royal autocracy ; it preserved with
jealous care the legal forms which
guaranteed that formal continuity on
which lawyers lay stress, and which
statesmen recognise as important. But,
to adapt a famous phrase, the new system
was as the ghost of the medieval church
sitting discrowned on the ruins thereof.
In its weakness the Established Church
leaned on the monarchy. The Privy
Council took over, as an Ecclesiastical
Commission, the functions of government
which the bishops had no power to
fulfil. Mr. Ussher has shown that ' The
Reconstruction of the English Church '
was carried through by Whitgift and
Bancroft through the direct action of
the State authority.
Puritans, generally, as we have shown
in the previous lectures, were reconciled

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 115
to the Established System during the
latter years of Elizabeth's reign, and
set themselves to the supreme work of
restoring religion and morality to the
nation, which seemed In danger of losing
both. But, when we examine carefully
the presuppositions of this strong and
even enthusiastic Puritan churchmanship,
we can see that it had no promise of
permanence. It acquiesced in a system
which it could not approve, because, at
the time, that system seemed plainly
serviceable to the cause of religion, but,
if this circumstance should cease, and
loyalty to the system should be required
from men whose convictions were plainly
in conflict with its apparent tendency, it
is clear that a situation would have arisen
in which Puritanism would perforce change
its aspect. The influence of the Bible,
now widely read in the Genevan Version,
began to tell in many directions. Its
efifect was in many respects favourable
to the Established Church. The parallel

116 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
between the English nation and the
People of Israel, which was generally
drawn, and seems to have established
itself in the public mind almost as a
postulate, confirmed that intimate associa
tion of Church and State which was the
cornerstone of the Elizabethan Establish
ment. It would appear that the Old
Testament was more widely read than
the New, certainly Its spirit rather than
that of the Christian Scriptures coloured
the religious thought of the nation. The
course of events on the continent, where
the Counter- Reformation seemed to be
threatening a total destruction of the
Reformed Churches, strengthened in
English minds the notion that the Eng
lish people held a special position in the
providential scheme of history analogous
to that held by the ancient Israelites.
This notion was eminently congruous
with the prevailing Calvinism, which
suggested the idea of Divine Election
as belonging to the privileged and faith-

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 117
ful nation. Above all, Englishmen found
in the astonishing facts of their own recent
history a reason for believing that they
were under the special protection of the
Almighty. Such an idea is repulsive to
the modern mind, as savouring of an
Intolerable vanity, and generally indicating
a portentous ignorance. But neither
vanity nor ignorance could be connected
with it in that age. England had attained
to such a pinnacle of prosperity and fame
under Elizabeth, that she was regarded
with as much envy abroad as exultation
at home. The Old Testament authenti
cated the belief that temporal blessings
were proofs of Divine approbation.
Accordingly we find that the prosperity
of the country was boldly offered in
evidence of the truth of its religion. A
single example will sufficiently illustrate
this frame of mind. In the year 1624,
Carleton, Bishop of Chichester, pub
lished his ' Thankful Remembrance of
God's Mercy in an Historical Collection

118 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
of the great and merciful Deliverances of
the Church and State of England, since
the Gospel began here to flourish, from
the beginning of Queen Elizabeth.' It
ran through several editions, and may be
taken as a fair exposition of the religious
Englishmen's views in the reign of James I.
The thesis which the book maintains,
and illustrates from the history of Eng
land since the accession of Elizabeth, is
that ' true religion bringeth a blessing,
and that religion that bringeth always a
curse is to be suspected.' ^ Elizabeth, he
shows, had been uniformly successful ;
her adversaries as uniformly unfortunate.
' We see,' he says, ' God hath made our
enemies His enemies : they cannot fight
against us, but they must fight against
God, how much then are we bound to
honour and serve this great God of
heaven and earth that hath showed
such favour to His Church in England.' 2
' My purpose in writing this book is to
' P. 26. = P. 58.

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 119
declare the great works of God in the
defence of this Church of England since
Religion was planted here by Queen
Elizabeth.' ' He lays it down that It
is the privilege of the true Church of
God to enjoy a ' miraculous protection
and strange deliveraince out of dangers.'
The Roman Church, he argues, is proved
to be forsaken of God by the uniform
failure of all its attempts against England,
and by the immoral methods which it
never scrupled to adopt In them. ' Surely
it must be a strange Religion that must
be maintained by ungodly practices.
There never was any Religion that
allowed such practices.' ^ We must re
member that Carleton could remember
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the re
peated attempts to assassinate Elizabeth,
the successful assassinations by Popish
fanatics of William the Silent and
Henry IV., the Gunpowder Plot, and
the terrible history of the Netherlands.
' P. 89. = P. 65.

120 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
It is no marvel that to his generation the
Roman Church appeared to be identified
with cynical wickedness. ' God will not
have His Catholic Church maintained
with lies, with wicked and ungracious
practices, with treasons and rebellion,
with conspiracies ; they who practise such
things can never prove themselves to be
the Catholic Church : but the true
Catholic Church Is known by holding
the Oracles of God, by worshipping God
according to His own Oracles, by suffer
ing patiently the practices of wicked men,
by committing their cause to God, by
trusting in God and in the power of His
might, and by miraculous deliverances out
of danger by the only hand and power of
God. This holy and heavenly protection
of God of the Church of England may
plainly prove unto all the world, that the
Church of England is a part and true
member of that Catholic Church that
serveth God In truth and sincerity, enjoy
ing those privileges and favours which

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 121
God doth vouchsafe to no people saving
to His own Church.' ' He ends with
' some considerations proposed to such
as are not well affected to Religion.'
Among these we find the following :
' Withal they may be pleased to consider
the Works of God, His protection and
miraculous defence of His Church ; which
miraculous defence hath appeared here
over the Church of England, as also else
where, but more conspicuous here : more
Illustrious examples of God's mercy will
hardly be found anywhere ; God hath
for many years delivered this Church,
preserved us in peace, when all the
Nations about us have been in bloody
wars.' 2 Bishop Carleton was repre
sentative of loyal Anglicans ; at the Synod
of Dort, which he had attended at the
command of the King, he had dis
tinguished himself by his protest against
the decree which seemed to disallow
episcopacy ; yet his general attitude is
^ P. 237. = P. 290.

122 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
Puritan. The views which he expressed
as unquestionably Anglican in 1624 had
become characteristic of the antl-Laudlan
Puritans who were prepared to abolish
Episcopacy itself twenty years later. That
change is the salient feature of the period,
and It wrecked the Establishment.
The Church of England, for which
Bishop Carleton so confidently claimed
the signal and public approbation of the
Almighty, was before all things a Pro
testant Church, standing In the van of
the grand conflict with Antichrist as
he was embodied in the apostate Church
of Rome. This temper of mind and this
point of view are notably exhibited in the
' Judgment concerning Toleration of Re
ligion,' drawn up in 1626 by the Irish
Bishops headed by Archbishop Ussher,
the most learned churchman of the age.
There it is stated that to tolerate the
religion of Papists would be a grievous
sin implying a guilty condonation of ' the
abominations of popery,' and, in the actual

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 123
circumstances which determined the pro
position, nothing less than a shameful
' setting Religion for sale.' When such
were the views of scholars and bishops,
what were likely to be the opinions of
ardent and illiterate zealots ? A rigidly
intolerant Protestant Church was. In the
temper of that age, the only kind of
Church which seemed fully entitled to
the privileges of a quasi-miraculous pro
tection such as ancient Israel was re
corded to have enjoyed. When Charles
and Laud broke with this conception of
Anglicanism, and adopted a more reason
able attitude towards the older Church,
they seemed to many, and they the most
devout and patriotic of Englishmen, to be
endangering the prime condition of Divine
favour. Their political folly obscured and
prejudiced their religious policy in the
eyes of the nation, and has weighed
heavily against them in the verdict of
posterity. A spirit of suspicion was
aroused in the more ardent Puritans,

124 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
which sometimes passed into a settled
aversion. The Established Church suc
ceeded to the abhorrence which had been
felt towards the Church of Rome, and lay
the more open to attack, since it was itself
a reformed Church, appealing against the
traditional system to the supreme authority
of the written Word. That written Word
was the arsenal of Its adversaries. For
the Bible, when closely studied and
directly applied, offered to the devout
student another figure than that of the
Royal Vicegerent of Jehovah. In Its
sacred record the Prophet stood out in
even more impressive prominence than
the King as the spokesman of the Divine
Mind, and the instrument of the Divine
Will. Both the King and the Prophet
were naturally set over against fhe Hier
archy, its critics, its rivals, sometimes its
victims, always its appointed correctors.
If the Anglican apologist built his case
for the Royal Supremacy and the eccle
siastical system of which the Royal

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 125
Supremacy was the cornerstone, on the
precedents and principles of the Jewish
monarchy, and was finally led by his
argument into the fantastic dogmas of
unlimited obedience, passive resistance,
non-resistance. Monarchical Divine Right,
&c. ; so the more logical and independent
of the Puritans, building their revolt
against the ceremonies of the Estab
lished Church on the precedents pro
vided by the Jewish prophets, were
ultimately carried Into the confusions of
an irrational and unrestrained religious
individualism. The conflict with the Established
Church was based throughout on the
Bible. Against the legal assumption of
Christian membership, which underlies
the canons of 1604, and which was
indeed implied in the Elizabethan Settle
ment, the separatists set the Biblical
notion of a covenant freely and de
liberately entered into by the Christian
with his Maker. This Covenant ex-

126 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
changed between like-minded Christians
was the basis of a sectarian or separatist
Church. In 'the earliest completely de
veloped Independent or Congregational
Puritan (non-separatist) Catechism in
existence ' — I quote the description of
Mr. Champlin Burrage — the question
is proposed, ' How is a visible Church
constituted and gathered .¦* ' The answer
runs thus : —
' By a free mutual consent of Be
lievers joining and covenanting to
live as members of a holy Society
together in all religious and virtuous
duties as Christ and His Apostles
did institute and practise in the
Gospel. By such a free mutual
consent also all civil perfect Cor
porations did first begin.'
This answer naturally leads to the
question how such an independent and
covenanting congregation could be recon-

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 127
ciled with religious unity and civil order.
The answer is very important as illus
trating a transitional phase of Puritan
thought when It had embraced the sepa
ratist principle, but still clung to the
national idea : —
' Unity in conscience standeth not
upon one Church or Pastor over the
rest, but upon the Word or Testa
ment of Christ taught ordinarily
by that Church unto us whereof we
are ; as God's Ordinance Is. Also
thus most easily may the meanest
next dwelling Magistrate rule any
Church in outward peace ; yea in
peace and concord of Religion far
more easily and more readily than
otherwise.'
Against the legally settled doctrines and
the officially commissioned Ministry the
sectary, basing himself always on his
personal study of the Bible, advanced

128 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
the revelations of truth made by the
Divine Spirit to the believer, and the
direct Divine inspirations vouchsafed to
Christian prophets. A 'charismatic minis
try ' certified as genuine by its results
replaced in their minds the notion of a
ministry ordained to office by episcopal
or presbyteral ordination.
It is obvious that at every point the
sectary came into collision with the Estab
lished system. John Penry says In his
Apology, written shortly before his death
in 1593, that the Scottish Presbyterians
objected against the Church of England
as doctrinally muzzled ' because they hear
that preachers are suspended, silenced,
imprisoned, and deprived,' and therefore
' think that little or no truth Is permitted
to be taught in England,' and that 'that
which is taught is measured by the length
of her Majesty's sceptre.' The substantial
truth of this estimate of the ecclesiastical
situation In England cannot be disputed,
but the circumstances which reconciled

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 129
sensible Englishmen to such an anoma
lous state of things were neither trivial
nor Irreligious. In point of fact the sec
taries failed to make any considerable
impression on the English people, until
the political mismanagement of Charles I.
had created so much suspicion and exas
peration, that the mere fact of antagonism
to the established Government was a
sufficient passport to popular favour.
So long as the Established Church
served visibly the interest of Protestant
Religion, even those who were strongly
Puritan regarded with disfavour all sugges
tions of open separation from the national
worship. The violence and fanaticism
of the sectaries shocked sober-minded
Christians. Sober-minded Puritans could
not be hustled by the impetuous logic of
illiterate enthusiasts into a wholesale con
demnation of a Church which had num
bered among its founders and teachers
the most widely venerated of Protestant
divines, which had been illustrated by
Puritanism in England, JQ

130 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
the martyrs, and which counted among
its ministers the most earnest preachers
in the country. Moreover, Puritanism
was strongly entrenched among the
country gentlemen and the commercial
class, neither of whom were likely to
approve the constant religious bickerings
and the wild licence of opinion which
marked the sectarian congregations in
Holland, which had become the refuge
of religious outcasts of every kind. Not
until the ecclesiastical policy of Arch
bishop Laud had alarmed and alienated
the Puritan laity did Englishmen begin
to look more complacently on those who
set themselves against the familiar and
valued ideal of religious establishment.
The outbreak of the Civil War gave a
terrible shock to the whole fabric of
society, and stimulated every element of
discontent and disorder. There was a
sudden and alarming outbreak of sec
tarianism. The army of the Parliament
became a school of religious anarchy.

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 131
The most eminent Puritan of the time,
Richard Baxter, has left on record his
amazement and horror, when he suddenly
found himself in contact with this new
phenomenon. After the victory of
Naseby he had visited the army of
Cromwell, to learn the fate of some
friends who had been engaged in the
battle : — ' When I found them, I stayed
with them a night, and I understood
the state of the Army much better
than ever I had done before. We that
lived quietly In Coventry did keep
to our old principles, and thought
all others had done so too, except a
very few inconsiderable persons. . . .
We took the true happiness of King
and People, Church and State, to
be our end, and so we understood
the Covenant, engaging both against
Papists and Schismaticks ; and when
the Court News-book told the world

132 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
of the swarms of Anabaptists in our
armies, we thought it had been a
mere lie, because It was not so with
us, nor in any of the garrisons or
county forces about us. But when
I came to the Army among Crom
well's soldiers I found a new face
of things which I never dreamed
of: I heard the plotting heads very
hot upon that which intimated their
intention to subvert both Church
and State. Independency and Ana-
baptistery were most prevalent ;
Antinomianism and Armlnlanism
were equally distributed.'
Baxter observed the dangerous ming
ling of political with religious theories,
and the driving force of a fanaticism
which respected no limits beyond Its
own will, and no guidance apart from
its own visions.
' They said. What were the Lords
of England but William the Con-

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 133
queror's Colonels? or the Barons
but his Majors ? or the Knights but
his Captains ? They plainly shewed
me that they thought God's Provi
dence would cast the trust of Religion
and the Kingdom upon them as
conquerors : they made nothing of
all the most wise and godly in the
Armies and Garrisons, that were not
of their way. Per fas aut nefas, by
law or without it, they were re
solved to take down, not only
Bishops and Liturgy and Ceremonies,
but all that did withstand their
way. They were far from thinking
of a moderate Episcopacy, or of any
healing way between the Episcopal
and the Presbyterians : they most
honoured the Separatists, Ana
baptists, and Antinomians : but
Cromwell and his Council took on
them to join themselves to no party,
but to be for the liberty of all.'

134 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
Rather against Cromwell's wishes
Baxter set himself to argue the soldiers
out of their extravagant opinions. He
found that under all their absurdities they
had got hold of one great idea, which
they were not indeed themselves com
petent to understand or apply in practice,
and which the eager and noble-minded
Puritan was quite unable to appreciate,
but which in the retrospect of a later
age is seen to have been sound and
fruitful : —
' I found that many honest men of
weak judgments and little acquaint
ance with such matters, had been
seduced into a disputing vein, and
made it too much of their religion
to talk for this opinion and for
that : sometimes for State Demo
cracy, and sometimes for Church
Democracy ; sometimes against forms
of prayer, and sometimes against
infant baptism (which yet some of

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 135
them did maintain) ; sometimes
against set times of prayer, and
against the tying of ourselves to
any duty before the Spirit move us,
and sometimes about Free Grace and
Free Will, and all the points of
Antinomianism and Armlnlanism.
So that I was almost always, when
I had opportunity, disputing with
one or other of them : sometimes
for our civil government, and some
times for Church order and govern
ment : sometimes for infant baptism,
and oft against Antinomianism and
the contrary extreme. But their
most frequent and vehement disputes
were for Liberty of Conscience, as
they called It ; that is, that the Civil
Magistrate had nothing to do to de
termine of anything in Matters of
Religion, by constraint or restraint,
but every man might not only hold,
but preach and do in matters of
religion what he pleased ; that the

136 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
Civil Magistrate hath nothing to do
but with civil things, to keep the
peace, and protect the Church's
liberties, &c.' '
Richard Baxter's feeling with respect
to the military sectaries was thoroughly
representative of the Puritans. It were
unjust to deny that It had large justifi
cation. For the bold advocates of
' Liberty of Conscience ' were far indeed
from any adequate understanding of
their own case. Their arguments were
strangely illustrated by the wrecking of
churches, accompanied too often by shock
ing profanities. Indeed, they were
destined to provoke such resentment by
their doctrinal extravagances and the
violence of their political methods, as to
throw back for a whole generation the
cause of religious Toleration. For there
are two factors requisite in a successful
advocacy of such ' Liberty of Con-
' V. Life, ed. Sylvester, pp. 50, 53, a.d. 1696.

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 137
science ' as the sectaries clamoured for.
There must not only be a strong sense of
the rights of one's own conscience, but a
genuine respect for the consciences of
others. The one factor the Sectaries pos
sessed In full measure. There never was
a generation so obsessed with conscientious
scruples, so quixotically loyal to its per
ceptions of religious truth, so insistent on
the exact harmonising of theory and prac
tice. But the other factor was almost
universally absent. The sectaries paid
no regard whatever to the conscientious
beliefs of the Papist, the Anglican, and the
Presbyterian. They saw no incongruity
between claiming ' liberty of conscience,'
and imposing their own arbitrary notions
of social morality by main force on a re
luctant majority, or wounding the deepest
sentiments of reverence by their rough
handling of the churches. Even the
Quakers, who embodied a protest, not
against the Church of Charles and Laud,
but against the system which had been

138 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
improvised to replace it, sullied their repu
tation for genuine tolerance by extrava
gances which were justly offensive to
pious consciences, and go far to explain,
and in some sense to excuse, the severities
with which they were treated. In the
seventeenth century all parties were in
tolerant, and something must be allowed
to those who first inscribed on their
political banner the noble ideal ' Liberty
of Conscience ' ; but we may not forget
their incompetence for the championship
of that cause, or refuse to allow to their
opponents and persecutors such apolo
gies as their undoubted extravagance
provided. It is worth noting that the Sects, though
they caused widespread consternation, and
in the Civil War obtained a brief tenure of
power, did not commend themselves to
any large proportion of the English
people. A very careful writer estimates
that ' at no time before 1630, and possibly
even before 1640, can there have been

PURITANISM AND THE SECTS 139
more than five or six hundred genuine
Brownists or Barrowlsts In England, while
the presence of even a smaller number
would exceed reasonable probability.''
' In 1626,' we are told, 'the total number
of Anabaptists in the five congregations In
England was at least one hundred and
fifty.' 2 'Before 1645 neither Separatism
nor Independent Puritanism seems to
have been really strong in London.
Says Robert Baillie In 1645 : 'For the
Brownists, their number at London or
Amsterdam is but very small.' The Inde
pendent Puritans of London he likewise
reports ' as yet to consist of much within
one thousand persons ; men, women, and
all who to this day have put themselves in
any known congregation of that way,
being reckoned. But setting aside num
ber, for other respects they are of so
eminent a condition, that not any nor all
' V. Champlin Burrage, 'The Early English Dis
senters,' vol. i. p. 152.
'^ V. Ibid., p. 273.

140 PURITANISM AND THE SECTS
the rest of the Sects are comparable to
them.' I
Modern Dissent may be traced to the
sectaries of the Commonwealth so far as
the theories of its organisation and its
attitude towards the Established Church
are concerned, but its strong hold on the
middle classes of this country, and Its
avoidance of the extravagant features of
Its denominational progenitors, are de
rived from the Puritans who by a calamit
ous blunder were extruded from the
National System at the Restoration.
' V. Ibid., p. 311.

PURITANISM AS A WORKING
SYSTEM

V
PURITANISM AS A WORKING SYSTEM
RICHARD BAXTER is the Saint of
Puritanism, and he is also its
most illustrious exponent. Born In 1615,
when the first James was reigning, he
lived until 1691, three years after the
second James had been driven from the
throne. Every phase of Puritanism Is
represented in his career. As a youth he
was drawn to Nonconformity by its asso
ciation with a purer morality than was
commonly insisted upon In the Estab
lished Church. He had, however, no
scruples with respect to the doctrine and
government of the Church from which he
received Baptism, Confirmation, and Ordin-

144 PURITANISM
ation, until the severities to the Puritans
ofifended his conscience, and the Laudian
movement alarmed his reason. During
the Commonwealth he was a Protagonist
in the war with the Sects, and foremost
among the advocates of reconciliation with
the Episcopalians. Taking no mean part
in the Restoration, he seemed marked out
for a commanding position in the re
established National Church. But he
divined too clearly the direction in which
the restored Anglicans were moving, and
refused the BIshoprick of Hereford when
it was offered to him. He shared to the
full the calamities which befell the defeated
Puritans, and finally ended his days as a
tolerated Dissenter.
Baxter is the typical Puritan pastor at his
best. In both the characteristic methods
of Puritan pastorate — preaching and re
ligious writing — he was supreme. When
his frequent Illnesses hindered him from
preaching, he betook himself to writing
evangelistic and devotional tracts and

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 145
treatises, which enjoyed an immense circu
lation in his life-time, and have survived
in some cases until the present time in the
use of religious people. Finally, when he
was silenced by the Authorities of Church
and State, he continued to pour out a
stream of edifying compositions, which ex
tended and deepened the remarkable
spiritual influence which he had acquired.
His latest published tractate is stated on
the title-page to have been ' recommended
to the Bookseller a few days before his
death, to be immediately printed for the
good of souls,' and is designed as an
answer to the Philippian gaoler's question,
' Sirs, what must I do to be saved ? '
Baxter's whole life was, indeed, filled
with the attempt to answer first for him
self, and then for others, that all-import
ant question.
Any just review of Puritanism must
include an appreciation of the influence
of the popular religious literature which
it inspired. Sir James Stephen, in his
Puritanism in England. ^J^

146 PURITANISM
well-known Essay, commented on the
striking weakness of the Established
Church in this respect. ' Rich beyond
all Protestant rivalry in sacred literature,'
he says, ' the Church of England, from
the days of Parker td those of Laud,
had scarcely produced any one con
siderable work of popular instruction.'
His reflections on this fact are as sug
gestive as they are severe : —
' There is no parallel in the annals
of any other Protestant State of
so wonderful a concentration, and
so imperfect a diffusion of learning
and genius, of piety and zeal. The
reigns of Whitgift, Bancroft, and
Laud were unmolested by cares so
rude as those of evangelising the
artisans and peasantry. Jewel and
Bull, Hall and Donne, Hooker
and Taylor, lived and wrote for
their peers and for future ages,
but not for the commonalty of their

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 147
own. Yet was not Christianity
bereft in England of her distinctive
and glorious privilege ? It was still
the religion of the poor. Amidst
persecution, contempt, and penury,
the Puritans had toiled and suffered
and had not rarely died in their
service.'
Dr. Grosart quotes and comments on
these words. ' I know not,' he says,
' that a more damning charge could be
brought against a Church.' ^ It is, how
ever, to be pointed out, that the earlier
Puritans were almost without exception
beneficed clergymen of the Church of
England ; that the Bishops, in exerting
themselves to reform and establish the
system of parochial and diocesan adminis
tration, were doing an Indispensable
work of the highest importance ; and,
finally, that the learned defence of
' V. ' Representative Nonconformists,' by Rev. A. B.
Grosart (Hodder & Stoughton, 1879).

148 PURITANISM
Protestantism, which the Anglican cham
pions provided, served as a wall behind
which the Puritans could carry on in
safety their excellent work of popularising
religion In England. It is not necessary
to belittle the achievement of the
Anglican, in order to do justice to that
of the Puritan. The nature and im
portance of the latter are, however, too
little recognised by modern Churchmen,
and for this reason it is requisite to
emphasise both.
The Jesuits had early perceived the
weakness of Protestantism on its de
votional side, and had set themselves
to the task of providing at a very cheap
rate popularly written tractates which would
appeal to the emotions, especially of the
young. There can be no doubt that
their efforts were rewarded with a large
measure of success. Among the under
graduates at the Universities a perceptible
impression was made, and there were
many converts to Romanism. In 1595

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 149
the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Cam
bridge had complained to Archbishop
Whitgift that 'things had grown to
that pass that there were no books
more ordinarily bought than Popish
writers.'' Now an antidote was pro
vided. The devotional writings of the
Jesuits, inspired by the ascetic spirit
of the Medieval Church, raised to heroic
exaltation by the passions and risks of
the great conflict with Protestantism,
were met by another kind of religious
composition, not less moving and far
more virile, which drew Its inspiration,
not from the failing wells of asceticism,
but from the perpetual springs of the
Gospel. The two types of literature
were curiously combined in Baxter's
memory of -the process of his own
conversion. Like the youthful Augustine,
his boyish conscience was stirred into
activity by remorse for robbing an
orchard :• —
' V. Strype's, ' Life of Whitgift,' book iv. chap. xiv.

150 PURITANISM
' And being under some more con
viction for my sin, a poor Day-
labourer in the Town . . . had an old
torn book which he lent my father,
which was called " Bunny's Resolu
tion," being written by Parsons the
Jesuit, and corrected by Edmund
Bunny. . . . And In the reading of
this book, when I was about fifteen
years of age, it pleased God to
awaken my soul, and shew me the
folly of sinning, and the misery of
the wicked, and the unexpresslble
weight of things eternal, and the
necessity of resolving on a holy
life, more than I was ever acquainted
with before.''
Subsequently he got hold of other and
better devotional books : —
' It pleased God that a poor pedlar
came to the door that had ballards
' V. Life, p. 3.

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 151
and some good books. And my
father bought of him Dr. Sibb's
" Bruized Reed." This also I read,
and found it suited to my state,
and seasonably sent me ; which
opened more the Love of God tp
me, and gave me a livelier appre
hension of the mystery of Redemp
tion, and how much I was beholden
to Jesus Christ.'
In this statement we get a glimpse
of the manner of circulating this new
literature of religion. Pedlars offered
them along with the ballards which at
that time were so popular and so in
fluential. Baxter proceeds in his auto
biography : —
' After this we had a servant that
had a little piece of Mr. Perkins's
Works, of " Repentance " and the
" Right Art of Living and Dying
Well," and the "Government of the

152 PURITANISM
Tongue." And the reading of that
did further inform me and confirm
me. And thus, without any means
but books was God pleased to
resolve me for Himself
Thus, from the very start of his
religious life, Baxter had reason to
think highly of books as Instruments
of evangelising the people ; and of all
the Puritans he did most In providing
the kind of books required. One of his
works, ' The Saint's Everlasting Rest,'
has taken its place as a devotional classic.
As a parish minister he attached im
portance to Instructing the people by
means of short and clearly expressed
Catechisms. The defeat of the King drew with It the
collapse of the ecclesiastical system. For
twenty years, from 1640 to 1660, the
National Church was in the melting-pot of
experiment and revolution. It is not quite
easy to understand what actually happened.

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 153
Perhaps a third of the benefices were se
questrated, the incumbents being evicted on
various charges, some for being Royalists,
some for being Laudians, some for being
incompetent, some for being morally scan
dalous. The clergy were unpopular and
defenceless, and there can be no reasonable
doubt that they were treated with great
harshness. The Prayer-book was pro
hibited, and Episcopacy, together with the
whole disciplinary system administered by
the Bishops, was abolished, but the Di
rectory drawn up by the Westminster
Assembly, and imposed by Parliament on
the country, was hardly anywhere put in
use, and the Presbyterian system was so
alien to English modes of thinking and
living, that It was never seriously enforced
outside London, and some parts of Lan
cashire. Thus there was a strangely
anomalous situation created. The 'Triers,'
who were really an Ecclesiastical Commis
sion clothed with Parliamentary authority,
and charged with making spiritual pro-

154 PURITANISM
vision for the parishes, appear on the
whole to have acted conscientiously ; and
by slow degrees a working system was
improvised, which drew into the religious
service of the nation the best men of all
descriptions who would undertake to accept
the existing Government. There was
much confusion, and a great outbreak of
sectarian fanaticism ; and these in the
retrospect obscured every other aspect of
the time, so that it became in common
speech the synonym of a reign of licentious
hypocrisy. But the more closely the period
of the Commonwealth is studied, the more
untrue this version of it is seen to be.
Along with the confusion and fanaticism
proceeded a solid religious work, a process
of strong moral education, which sobered
and raised the national character, and left
Its mark for good on the national religion.
Puritanism for the first and last time was
dominant, and could give unimpeded ex
pression to its principles. Both its strength
and its weakness came into prominence.

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 155
Baxter's famous ministry at Kidderminster
illustrates the theory of pastorate which
had been expressed in numerous Puritan
works, and nowhere more admirably than
in his own ' Reformed Pastor,' a composi
tion which ranks next to the ' Saint's Ever
lasting Rest ' in popularity, and, hardly less
than that composition, deserves the title,
classical. No student of Puritanism ought
to omit a study of both these works, or
leave unread Baxter's remarkable Auto
biography. The legal instrument appointing Baxter
preacher at Kidderminster is dated April
5, 1 64 1, and Is signed by about thirty
persons. He thus describes the circum
stances in which it was sent : —
' The town of Kederminster, in
Worcestershire, drew up a Petition
against their Ministers : the Vicar
of the place they articled against
as one that was utterly insufificient
for the ministry, presented by a

156 PURITANISM
papist, unlearned, preached but once
a quarter, which was so weakly as
exposed him to laughter, and per
suaded them that he understood
not the very substantial articles of
Christianity ; that he frequented Ale
houses, and had sometimes been
drunk ; that he turned the Table
Altar-wise, &c., with more such as
this. . . . The people put their peti
tion Into the hands of Sir Henry
Herbert, Burgess for Bewdley, a
town two miles distant. The Vicar
knowing his insufficiency . . . desired
to compound the business with them ;
and by the mediation of Sir Henry
Herbert and others, it was brought
to this, That he should, Instead of his
present curate In the town, allow £60
per annum to a Preacher whom four
teen of them nominated should choose;
and that he should not hinder this
Preacher from preaching whenever he
pleased, and that he himself should

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 157
read Common-prayer, and do all else
that was to be done ; and so they
preferred not their petition against
him, nor against his curates ; but he
kept his place, which was worth to
him near ;^200 per Annum, allowing
that ^60 out of it to their Lecturer.
. . . Hereupon they invited me to
them from Bridgnorth ; the Bailiff of
the town, and all the Feoffees, desired
me to preach with them, in order to
a full determination. My mind was
much to the place as soon as it was
described to me ; because it was a
full congregation and most convenient
temple ; an ignorant, rude, and re
velling people for the greater part,
who had need of preaching ; and yet
had among them a small company of
converts, who were humble, godly,
and of good conversations, and not
much hated by the rest, and therefore
the fitter to assist their Teacher ; but
above all because they had hardly

158 PURITANISM
ever had any lively serious preaching
among them. ... As soon as I came
to Kiderminster, and had preached
there one day, I was chosen Nemine
contradicente (for though fourteen
only had the power of choosing, they
desired to please the rest). And thus
I was brought by the gracious Provi
dence of God to that place which
had the chiefest of my labours, and
yielded me the greatest fruits of
comfort.' I
The ministry thus happily begun was
interrupted by the Civil War, for Baxter
had thrown in his lot with the Parliament,
and even (as he subsequently regretted)
had subscribed the Solemn League and
Covenant, while Worcestershire generally
had taken sides with the King. Accord
ingly, for some years he was engaged,
partly in combating the sectarianism of
Cromwell's army, and partly in writing
' Life, p. 19, 20.

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 159
books. When at length peace was re
stored by the total ruin of the Royal
cause, the people of Kidderminster re
sumed their opposition to the Vicar and
his Curates, and succeeded in obtaining
the sequestration of the living. Then they
offered the vacant benefice to Baxter,
who would only consent to take again the
Lectureship which he had formerly held.
He returned to Kidderminster in a regu
larly covenanted relation to the people : —
' I went to Kidderminster . . . and
the people again vehemently urged me
to take the Vicarage : which I denied,
and got the magistrates and burgesses
together into the Town Hall, and told
them that (though I was offered many
hundred pounds per annum elsewhere)
I was willing to continue with them
in my old Lecturer's place which I had
before the wars, expecting they should
make the maintenance an hundred
pounds a year, and a house : and If

160 PURITANISM
they would promise to submit to that
doctrine of Christ which, as his Min
ister, I should deliver to them, proved
by the Holy Scriptures, I would not
leave them. . . . This Covenant was
drawn up between us in Articles, and
subscribed, in which I disclaimed the
Vicarage and pastoral charge of the
parish, and only undertook the
Lecture.' '
The Ministry thus conditioned was
carried on for about fourteen years, in
spite of repeated interruptions by illness.
It will be worth while to have before us
Baxter's own account of his pastoral
work : it will appear that he was far
indeed from being merely a preacher : —
' I preached before the wars twice
each Lord's Day : but after the
war but once, and once every
Thursday, besides occasional ser
mons. Every Thursday evening
' V. Life, p. 79.

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 161
my neighbours that were most
desirous and had opportunity, met
at my house, and there one of them
repeated the Sermon, and afterwards
they proposed what doubts any of
them had about the sermon, or any
other case of conscience, and I re
solved their doubts : and last of all I
caused sometimes one, and sometimes
another of them to pray, to exercise
them ; and sometimes I prayed with
them myself: which, besides sing
ing a psalm, was all they did. And
once a week also some of the
younger sort who were not fit to
pray in so great an assembly, met
among a few more pirivately, where
they spent three hours in praying
together : every Saturday night they
met at some of their houses to repeat
the sermon of the last Lord's Day,
and to pray and prepare themselves
for the following day. Once in a
few weeks we had a day of humiliation
Puritanism in England. 1 O

162 PURITANISM
on one occasion or another. Every
religious woman that was safely
delivered, instead of the old feast-
ings and gossipings, if they were
able, did keep a day of thanksgiving
with some of their neighbours with
them, praising God and singing
psalms, and soberly feasting together.
Two days every week my assistant
and myself took fourteen families
between us for private catechising
and conference, he going through
the parish, and the town coming to
me. I first heard them recite the
words of the Catechism, and then
examined them about the sense, and
lastly urged them with all possible
engaging reason and vehemency to
answerable affection and practice.
... I spent about an hour with
a family, and admitted no others to
be present, lest bashfulness should
make it burdensome, or any should
talk of the weaknesses of others : so

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 163
that all the afternoons on Mondays
and Tuesdays I spent in this after
I had begun it, for it was many
years before I did attempt it : and
my Assistant spent the mornings of
the same days in the same employ
ment. Before that I only catechised
them In the Church ; and conferred
with, now and then, one occasionally.
' Besides all this, I was forced for
five or six years by the people's
necessity to practise physick : a
common pleurisy happening one
year, and no physician being near,
I was forced to advise them, to save
their lives : and I could not after
wards avoid the importunity of the
town and country round about : and
because I never once took a penny
of any one, I was crowded with
patients, so that almost twenty would
be at my door at once : and though
God, by more success than I
expected, so long encouraged me,

164 PURITANISM
yet at last I could endure it no
longer, partly because it hindered
my other studies, and partly because
the very fear of miscarrying and
doing any one harm, did make it
an intolerable burden to me. So
that after some years' practice, I
procured a godly diligent physician
to come and live in the town, and
bound myself by promise to practise
no more, unless in consultation with
him in case of any seeming necessity ;
and so with that answer I turned
them all ofif, and never meddled with
it more. But all these my labours
(except my private conferences with
the families) even preaching and
preparing for it, were but my
recreations, and as it were the work
of my spare hours. For my writings
were my chiefest daily labour, which
yet went the more slowly on, that
I never one hour had an Amanuensis
to dictate to, and specially because

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 165
my weakness took up so much of
my time. . . .
' Besides all these, every first
Wednesday of the month was our
monthly meeting for parish discip
line ; and every first Thursday of
the month was the Ministers' meet
ing for discipline and disputation :
and in those disputations it fell to
my lot to be almost constant
Moderator ; and for every such day,
usually, I prepared a written deter
mination. All which I mention as
my mercies and delights, and not
as my burdens. And every Thurs
day besides, I had the company of
divers Godly ministers at my house
after the Lecture, with whom I spent
that afternoon in the truest recrea
tion, till my neighbours came to
meet for their exercise of repetition
and prayer. For ever blessed be
the God of mercies that brought me
from the grave, and gave me after

166 PURITANISM
wars and sickness, fourteen years'
liberty in such sweet employment.' '
Such a ministry was a revelation
of Christian pastorate, and enriched
English religion with an ideal of pastoral
duty which has never since been wholly
lost. It was truly a noble and gracious
thing, one of the magnalia Dei for
which the Church blesses God. As a
human achievement It is unparalleled, for
it must be remembered that the man who
was carrying on this varied and laborious
ministry, was at the same time the fore
most controversialist In England, and
closely concerned In the general politicks
of the time. We know not which to
wonder at most, the versatility of his
genius, or the militant force of his faith.
Baxter's pastoral solicitude Is Pauline.
' Our greatest afitlictions,' he said in his
farewell sermon on August 17, 1662,
' next to the misery of the ungodly, is to
' V. Life, pp. 83, 84.

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 167
think of our weak ones, what will become
of them.' This, indeed, was the principal
root of his polemical ardour. No doubt
the natural eagerness of his temperament,
and a fondness for the intellectual exercise
of disputation contributed, but the main
consideration was certainly pastoral. He
felt himself set to watch over his people,
and defend them from attack. The
sectary was In his eyes primarily one
who was endangering the spiritual safety
of the 'babes in Christ.' His charity
was apostolic, and Inspired his constant
pursuit of ecclesiastical unity. If his
opponents might fairly say of his peace
making labour what Newman said of
Pusey's ' Eirenicon,' that it was ' an olive-
branch discharged from a catapult,' the
explanation lies, not in any failure of
sincerity, but in a curious lack of tactical
wisdom which marked his public course,
and is the more surprising since in his
personal ministries his zeal was softened
and sweetened by a winning sympathy.

168 PURITANISM
Sectarianism was repulsive to his large
ness of heart, as well as disgusting to his
reason. Hence his horror of separation,
and his passionate zeal for unity. Even
when his cause had been defeated, and he
himself was about to be silenced, he could
not bring himself to say anything which
could seem to suggest or justify
separatism. His farewell sermon In
cludes an earnest warning against schis
matic tendencies : —
' Be sure you understand the nature
of Church union, and necessity of
maintaining it, and abhor all ways
that are truly schismatical, that would
rend and divide the Church of
Christ. As you must not, under
pretence of avoiding Schism, cast
your soul upon apparent hazard of
damnation, so you must maintain
the necessity of Church-union and
communion : when Christ's members
walk in communion with Christ's

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 169
members, supposing that which is
singular to the generality of judicious
men, take heed of anything that
would withdraw you from the com
munion of the generality of those
that are sound in the faith. Take
heed of withdrawing from the main
body of believers. Christ is the
Head of His Church ; He will never
condemn His Church : walk In those
substantial Christ's Church hath
walked in. Division amongst Chris
tians is a sin God hath described
as odious and tending to the ruin
of Christians. Be very suspicious
of any that would draw you from
the main body of believers, and
keep communion with the universal
Church of Christ, with the gener
ality of the godly in love and
affection.'
When from the devoted and indefatig
able Pastor, 'whose praise is in all the

170 PURITANISM
churches,' we pass to a consideration of
his methods, we are brought into no
slight perplexity. Can it be maintained
that the Puritan system, so admirably
illustrated at Kidderminster, was suitable
for general adoption ? Its effectiveness
at the time was undoubtedly very great.
Baxter could point to remarkable re
sults as following from his ministry ;
but was his system capable of general
application ? Did It not depend too much
on the zeal, wisdom, and ability of the
pastor himself.'' Baxter was no ordinary
man ; yet we may safely say that
Baxter alone could have made this
system tolerable for any length of time.
In the hands of the average minister
It would quickly sink Into an insufferable
infliction, or a lifeless form. ' Baxter's
contribution to the history of the
Pastoral Ideal was not the successful
Introduction of the parochial method,
which he so earnestly practised and so
passionately advocated : but the example

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 171
he gave to his own generation, and
left on record to posterity, of the pastoral
life. He stood midway between the two
great contending views of Church organi
sation. His evangelistic ardour drew
him to the parochial system, which,
with whatever faults, assumed that the
clergyman had a direct mission to the
whole population of the parish. He
could not acquiesce In a view which,
however otherwise reasonable, left the
bulk of the people outside the activities
of the clergy. On the other hand, his
austere ideal of Christian holiness, his
righteous loathing of the hypocrisies of
the Established system, his intense con
viction that morality was the very mark
of a Church ... all led him to look with
kindness on that notion of "gathered
Churches " which was common both to
the Independents and the Anabaptists.
He endeavoured to combine the opposed
views in his system at Kidderminster.
He applied the close personal discipline

172 PURITANISM
of a congregation to a parish. Great as
his success was. It fell so far short of
what he needed to justify his position,
that his attempt must be described as
a splendid failure. Of the 1,400 Church
members in Kidderminster, only 600
accepted his government ; for the rest
he had no effectual system. He would
not coerce to Communion as the Bishops
had done : he would suppress by the
magistrate's authority the open violation
of the Moral law, which the Bishops
had professed to desire, but had never
seriously attempted. When the State
was hostile, even this necessary measure
of coercion failed to be possible. He
was surely drifting into the position
of the sectaries whom he loathed. Per
haps the conflict between parochialism
with its territorial basis of ecclesiastical
rights, and Christianity, with its personal
basis. Is not capable of satisfactory
appeasement. It must be recognised
that the parish priest of an Established

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 173
Church combines in his person two
sets of duties. He is a pastor, and
he is a State ofificial : he is the minister
of Christ, and the servant of the nation.
Baxter could never thus divide his
personality : he was altogether and ex
clusively a consecrated person. Hence
the unreconciled contradictions of his
conception of pastoral duty.' ^
Apart from the questions of ecclesi
astical system and pastoral method, can
it be denied that the Puritan conception
of Christianity, so nobly expressed in
the ministry of Richard Baxter, was
itself too narrow and personal for
ultimate acceptance by a National Church ?
When one attempts to realise the type
of citizen which would be fashioned by
that conception, one must needs feel
that in certain particulars of great im
portance it would have been seriously
defective. Baxter's intense conviction
that the sole end of a righriy ordered
' V. ' Cross-bench Views,' p. 172.

174 PURITANISM
human life is to prepare for Death ;
his continually recurring note of sombre
urgency which gives distinctive colour
to his religious writings : his ascetical
contempt of everything which came Into
competition with this absorbing con
sideration : his exalted ' other-worldliness,'
to use a convenient if often abused
expression — all are difficult to re
concile with the claims. Interests, and
ramifying relations of national life
Puritanism addressed itself to some ele
ments only of human nature, the noblest
elements assuredly, but still not on that
account competent to claim exclusive
attention. It produced, therefore, a
strong, exalted, magnanimous type of
citizen, but one that was limited, hard,
and liable to dangerous and sudden
failure. Its danger lay in its very
exaltation. The aesthetic, social, and
intellectual faculties were starved by this
undue concentration on the spiritual and
the ethical. Human nature takes its

AS A WORKING SYSTEM 175
revenge on every violation done, with
whatever excuses, to its Integrity : and
Puritanism drew down upon itself no
less a calamity than that which is implied
in such a catastrophe. We must con
clude, therefore, that the explanations
both of Its brief success, and of its
final failure, must be sought partly in
the extraordinary conditions of the age
which witnessed both, but mainly In
its own defects as a version of Christianity
claiming national recognition and en
forcement.

THE RESTORATION SETTLE
MENT

13

VI
the RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
WHEN the Monarchy was restored
In 1660, a new ecclesiastical
settlement was generally regarded as
Inevitable. The existing system or quasi-
system was clearly provisional. It had
no secure basis In law, and It expressed
no widely-distributed popular demand.
That Episcopacy must In some form be
restored was indeed everywhere assumed.
The Monarchy and the Episcopal Church
had been so Intimately connected since the
Reformation, had stood together so closely
through the long conflict, had suffered and
fallen together In the wars, and had to
gether shared the bitter consequence of
Puritanism in England. 179

180 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
defeat, that the restoration of the one was
seen to involve that of the other. But it
was not less clearly perceived that the
ecclesiastical system could not rightly be
restored without alteration. The causes
of the Rebellion had been as much re
ligious as civil, and the Restoration would
not be secure, if it failed to commend itself
to the religious opinion of the country.
Moreover, the actual circumstances in
which the Restoration was effected seemed
to necessitate such a revision of the eccle
siastical system as would satisfy the
general body of Puritans, who were now
commonly called Presbyterians. These
had taken an important part in bringing
back the King. For some while before
the Restoration private negotiations had
been proceeding between the leading
ministers in England and the more
moderate of the Royalist divines, and
there can be no doubt that language had
been freely used which was fairly under
stood as promising a genuinely moderate

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 181
and reconciling policy. Care was taken
to emphasise the attachment of Charles
to the Protestant religion. ' I am very
glad the King was at the Protestant
churches,' wrote Bishop Morley from
Breda to Cosin in February, 1660, when
the prospect of a restoration seemed to lie
wholly in the goodwill of the Presbyterians
and moderate Anglicans, ' which gives
great satisfaction to those ministers here
to whom I have told it. I wish there
were not some of our clergy too rigid in
that particular.' ^ The Declaration from
Breda (April 4-14, 1660) was studiously
vague, but its expressions could not in the
circumstances be read otherwise than as a
promise of large concessions to those who
were actually in possession of the parishes
at the time : —
' And because the passion and un
charitableness of the times have pro-
' V. Cosin's Correspondence, part i. p. 291.
Surtees Society.

182 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
duced several opinions in religion, by
which men are engaged in parties
and animosities against each other ;
(which, when they shall hereafter unite
in a freedom of conversation, will be
composed, or better understood), we
do declare a liberty to tender con
sciences, and that no man shall be
disquieted, or called in question, for
differences of opinion in matters of
religion, which do not disturb the
peace of the kingdom ; and that we
shall be ready to consent to such an
Act of Parliament, as, upon mature
deliberation, shall be offered to us,
for the full granting that Indulgence.'
In this specious reference to Parliament
lay the promise of the great betrayal
which was soon to be disclosed. For,
once arrived In England, Charles found
himself far stronger than he had supposed.
Many elements entered Into the outburst
of enthusiasm with which the restored

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 183
exile was welcomed. The Puritan
domination had borne hardly on great
sections of the community. The capri
cious military despotism, into which states
manship had degenerated, had thrown
Into revolt the self-respect of ordinary
Englishmen, and the old constitutional
system, of which the King was the
symbol, appealed to them with irresistible
force. This astonishing explosion of long-
suppressed monarchical sentiment swept
away all moderating considerations, and
seemed to cancel all obligations. As a
matter of course the Bishops and Clergy
took again their legal position, and began
to treat the existing incumbents as in
truders. No less than 450 evictions
appear to have taken place in the interval
between the Restoration and the passing
of the Act of Uniformity. The old
Incumbents, who had either fled, or been
driven away, during the interregnum,
appeared, claimed their rights, and were
admitted again to their former benefices.

184 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
the existing holders being summarily
thrust out without any consideration.
The Puritans found the situation changed
with dramatic suddenness to their dis
advantage. They were no longer in a
position to dictate terms, or even to nego
tiate ; they had the law against them in
the parishes, and cavalier feeling against
them in the nation. The sentiment of
Parliament, notably of the House of
Commons, was extremely hostile. They
had no backing of popular affection, and
for the moment little apparent hold on the
public conscience. Their only hope of
tolerable treatment lay in the King him
self, and Charles could not, even if he
had wished, stand up against the flood-
tide of avenging Royalism which was
carrying all before it. Moreover, the
resolute intolerance of the Puritans them
selves offered a hindrance to any effective
action on the King's part. For Charles
did undoubtedly dislike the policy which
he found himself compelled to sanction.

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 185
His policy was directed towards such a
toleration of religious Dissenters as would
enable him to show kindness to the
Roman Catholics, to whom on many
accounts, both personal and public, he
was strongly attached. ' Rebel for rebel,'
he scribbled to Clarendon at a Council
meeting, ' I had rather trust a Papist
rebel than a Presbyterian.' When, how
ever, at the Conference at Worcester
House on October 22, 1660, Clarendon
proposed that liberty of worship should be
granted to all law-abiding sectaries, the
proposition was received by the Puritans
with suggestive silence, until Baxter gave
expression to their feelings by insisting
that some distinction must be made
between ' parties tolerable and parties
intolerable,' and that they could not con
sent to any Toleration of ' Papists and
Socinians.' Thus the King, their only
possible protector, was alienated by their
conscientious but inexorable attitude of
intolerance. The full disclosure of their

186 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
helplessness was not made immediately.
On October 25th, the King issued a
Declaration, the terms of which had been
previously submitted to the Puritan
leaders, and which, if it had been made
the basis of legislation, might have
secured religious harmony. This docu
ment outlined a revision of the Episcopal
system which would have reconciled most
moderate Puritans to Episcopacy. Eight
specific pledges were given, and general
assurances of indulgence to scrupulous
consciences were added. The pledges
are the following : —
I . ' To take care that the Lord's Day
be applied to holy exercises, without un
necessary divertisements,' and to insist
upon good character In the case of all
ministers appointed to ofifice in the
Church. II. To 'appoint such a number of
suffragan bishops in every diocese as
shall be sufficient for the due performance
of their work.'

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 187
III. To provide that 'no bishop shal
ordain, or exercise any part of jurisdiction
which appertains to the censures of the
church, without the advice and assistance
of the Presbyters,' and that lay-officials
shall not ' exercise any act of spiritual
jurisdiction.' IV. To constitute the deans and chap
ters, together with an equal number of
elected presbyters, a council for the
bishops, who were not to exercise any
part of their jurisdiction apart from
them. V. To 'take care that confirmation be
rightly and solemnly performed, by the
information, and with the consent of the
minister of the place, who shall admit
none to the Lord's Supper, till they have
made a credible profession of their faith,
and promised obedience to the Will of
God,' and to take effectual steps to bar
from Communion all unfit persons. It is
provided that ' the rural dean and his
assistants are In their respective divisions

188 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
to see, that the children and younger sort
be carefully instructed by the respective
ministers of every parish, in the grounds
of Christian religion, and be able to give
a good account of their faith and know
ledge, and also of their Christian conver
sation conformable thereunto, before they
be confirmed by the bishop, or admitted
to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.'
VI. To provide that ' no bishop shall
exercise any arbitrary power, or do or
impose anything upon the clergy or the
people, but what is according to the
known law of the land.'
VII. To revise the Prayer Book, and
add additional forms.
VIII. To leave the settlement of all
disputed questions as to ceremonies 'to
the advice of a national synod,' to be
' duly called after a little time, and a
mutual conversation between persons of
different persuasions hath mollified those
distempers, abated those sharpnesses, and
extinguished those jealousies, which make

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 189
men unfit for those consultations,' and to
secure that ' none shall be denied the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper, though
they do not use the gesture of kneeling
in the act of receiving.'
The use of the Cross in Baptism, bowing
at the Name of Jesus, the use of the
surplice, and the oath of canonical obedi
ence, were ' in the meantime ' to be op
tional, and the mitigated subscription of
the Articles authorised by the statute of
the thirteenth of Queen Elizabeth was to
suffice for the tenure of benefices.
The King renews the promises made in
the Declaration from Breda, and declares
that the disturbances which have happened
since his arrival have had no authority in
any direction of his. ' Let us all endea
vour,' concludes the document, 'and emu
late each other in those endeavours, to
countenance and advance the protestant
religion abroad, which will be best done
by supporting the dignity and reverence
due to the best reformed protestant Church

190 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
at home.' On the basis of this Declara
tion the leading Puritan leaders were
approached with ofifers of preferment,
which were, however, declined with a
single exception. Reynolds became
Bishop of Norwich. The rest of the
Puritans preferred to watch the progress
of the Royal policy before committing
themselves to a provisional acceptance of
the settlement to which it was leading.
The fate of the Declaration proved their
wisdom. When it was proposed in the
House of Commons to give it statutory
force, the motion was rejected by 183
votes to 157. And it was observed that
the King was nowise displeased with this
result. Still, the hope of a moderate settle
ment had by no means perished.
Stillingfleet, whose ' Irenicum ' ap
peared in a second edition in the course
of the very year which witnessed the final
rejection of the reconciling policy which
it advocated, was the spokesman of many
serious Anglicans, when he urged the

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 191
relative unimportance of ecclesiastical
polity : — ' The unity of the Church is an
unity of love and affection, and not a
bare uniformity of practice or opinion.
This latter is extremely desirable In
a Church ; but as long as there are
several ranks and sizes of men In It,
very hardly attainable. . . . The only
thing seeming to retard our peace is
the controversy about Church-govern
ment, an unhappy controversy to us
in England, if ever there were any
in the world. And the more unhappy
in that our contentions about it have
been so great, and yet so few of the
multitudes engaged In it that have
truly understood the matter they have
so eagerly contended about. For the
state of the controversy, as it concerns
us, lies not here, as it is generally
mistaken. What form of Government
comes the nearest to Apostolical prac-

192 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
tice ? but, Whether any one individual
form be founded so upon Divine Right,
that all ages and Churches are bound
unalterably to observe it ? And cer
tainly they who have espoused the
most the interest of a jus divinum
cannot yet but say, that If the opinion
I maintain be true, it doth exceed
ingly conduce to a present settlement
of the differences that are among us.
For then all parties may retain their
dififerent opinions concerning the
primitive form, and yet agree and
pitch upon a form compounded of all
together as the most suitable to the
state and condition of the Church of
God among us : that so the people's
interest be secured by consent and
suffrage, which is the pretence of the
congregational way, the due power of
presbyteries asserted by their joint
concurrence of the Bishop, as is laid
down in that excellent model of the
late incomparable Primate of Armagh,

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 193
and the just honour and dignity of
the Bishop asserted, as a very laud
able and ancient constitution for pre
serving the peace and unity of the
Church of God. . . . My main design
throughout this whole treatise Is to
shew that there can be no argument
drawn from any pretence of a Divine
Right that may hinder men from con
senting and yielding to such a fdrm of
government in the Church as may
bear the greatest correspondency to
the Primitive Church, and be most
advantageously conducible to the
peace, unity, and settlement of our
divided Church. I plead not at all
for any abuses or corruptions incident
to the best form of Government
through the corruption of men and
times. Nay, I dare not harbour so
low apprehensions of persons enjoy
ing so great dignity and honour in
the Church, that they will In any wise
be unwilling of themselves to reduce
Puritanism in England. J 4-

194 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
the Form of Church government
among us to its primitive state and
order, by retrenching all exorbitances
of power, and restoring those presby
teries which no law hath forbidden,
but only through disuse have been
laid aside. Whereby they will give
to the world that rare example of
self-denial and the highest Christian
prudence as may raise an honourable
opinion of them even amongst those
who have hitherto the most slighted
so ancient and venerable an order
in the Church of God, and thereby
become the repairers of those, other
wise irreparable, breaches in the
Church of God.'
Stillingfleet's ' Irenicum ' was sub
stantially the platform which the Puritans
were prepared to accept. Their con
tribution to the ecclesiastical settlement,
which all parties had professed to desire,
was the specific repudiation of presby-

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 195
terianism, and the acceptance of Episcopal
Government, modified In certain particu
lars which everybody agreed were not
essential, and which great numbers of
religious people considered to be very
desirable. They resented the description,
' presby terians,' which their opponents
were eager to fasten upon them. The
preface to the second part of Baxter's
' Nonconformist's Plea for Peace,' written
in 1680, may be referred to as indicat
ing the Puritan position. It is an in
dignant protest against the accusation
of presbyterianism, as well as a very
interesting statement of the course of
events from the Puritan point of view.
After reminding his readers that the
Puritan ministers had originally agreed
' to desire or offer nothing for Church
government but Archbishop Ussher's
model of the primitive episcopal govern
ment,' and that 'when his Majesty would
not grant us that model, nor the Bishops
once treat about it,' they had agreed to

196 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
accept the scheme outlined in the Royal
Declaration, which ' offered and pre
scribed the episcopacy of England as
it stood with little alteration,' Baxter
states of his own knowledge that presby
terianism ' out of London and Lancashire '
was practically non-existent, and that no
single congregation, other than the
tolerated Walloon congregations, existed
in London organised on the presbyterian
system. He continues with characteristic
vehemence :—
' Set all this together and tell me
whether it be likely that those men
believe a life to come and a judge
ment of God, who would make King
and People believe that Parliaments,
Nonconforming Ministers, and their
hearers are Presbyterians, and so
many and so bad, as that King and
Kingdom are In danger of them.'
In 1680, however, the issue had passed
from religion to politics, and the Noncon-

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 197
formists were denounced as disloyal to
the Monarchy, because they could not
echo the extravagant doctrines of
Monarchical Divine Right, which were
prevailing at the moment. But then-
appeal from the new to the old Anglicans
was not less valid in respect to religion
than to politics. A change had passed
over the Anglican clergy in the interval
which separated the earlier Stuart period
from the later. The years of controversy
in exile had stamped a new character on
Anglicanism. Bishop Carleton's bold
appeal to the success of the Church of
England as sufficient proof of Divine
approval, which had seemed sufificiently
valid when the Church was flourishing at
home and envied abroad, had lost validity
when the Church of England was repre
sented only by crowds of exiles, wander
ing in poverty from one foreign town to
another seeking the hospitality of the local
protestants. The controversy with Rome
had perforce taken a new urgency, and

198 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
received a new direction. It was no
more possible to emphasise the national
aspect of Anglicanism, for the nation had
for the time being repudiated its Church.
The appeal to antiquity still remained,
and permitted an energetic argument
against the papal prerogative. Accord
ingly it is to this period that we must
ascribe that insistence on episcopacy as
belonging to the very essence of
Christianity, which at a later time found
full expression in the writings of the
Nonjurors, and has been within the last
century revived and popularised by the
Tractarlans and their disciples. The
Puritans had been so long out of touch
with the Royalist clergv that they had
not realised the change wKi^'h had passed
over them. The Restoratuon Settlement,
which was undertaken with such copious
professions of a desire for religious
appeasement and comprehension, was
finally carried through in the interest of a
party which had become considerable

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 199
during the civil troubles, and owed its
dominating position, less to Its own merits
or consequence, than to the anti-Puritan
reaction which effected the Restoration.
It Is a mistake to suppose that there was
in the nation any general desire for
the re- establishment of the ecclesiastical
system which had existed before the wars.
Dr. Gardiner has pointed out that there
Is no real evidence of anything of the
kind : — ' There is little doubt that very
considerable numbers, probably much
more than a bare majority of the
population, either did not care for
ecclesiastical disputes at all, or at
least did not care for them sufificiently
to ofifer armed resistance to any form
of Church-Government or Church-
teaching likely to be established
either by Parliament or by King.
Yet all the evidence we possess
shows the entire absence of any

200 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
popular desire amongst the laity out
side the families of the Royalist
gentry and their immediate depen
dents to bring back either episcopacy
or the Prayer Book. Riots there
occasionally were, but these were
riots because amusements had been
stopped, and especially because the
jollity of Christmas was forbidden,
not because the service in Church was
conducted in one way or another.' '
Dr. Gardiner insists that the Puritan
experiment failed, not on its ecclesiastical,
but on its moral side. It attempted to
impose on a nation the moral standard of
a religious community, and It scrupled not
to employ the crudest coercion In the
interest of its artificial and impracticable
morality : —
' It was no reaction against the
religious doctrines or ecclesiastical
' V. ' Oliver Cromwell,' p. 77.

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 201
Institutions upheld by the Protector
that brought about the destruction of
his system of government. It Is in
the highest degree unlikely that a
revolution virould ever have taken
place merely to restore episcopacy
or the Book of Common Prayer.
So far as the reaction was not
directed against militarism, it was
directed against the introduction
into the political world of what
appeared to be too high a standard
of morality, a reaction which struck
specially upon Puritanism, but which
would have struck with as much force
upon any other form of religion which,
like that upheld by Laud, called in
the power of the State to enforce
its claims.' '
The Prayer Book, never generally
popular, had been out of use for twenty
years. Pepys observes on the failure of
' V. Ibid., p. 317.

202 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
a London congregation to make the
responses at Morning Prayer, and says
that In one City church the introduction
of the old but long-disused form of service
was received with unseemly demonstra
tions of dislike from the congregation.
Had there been any genuine desire to
conciliate the Puritans, there was no reason
to fear any serious difificulty in the
parishes. The authors of the Restoration
Settlement had a freer hand than the
Reformers of the sixteenth century.
Unfortunately the two men who were
mainly responsible for that Settlement,
Clarendon and Sheldon, were resolved
to make no concessions, and they could
count on the relentless bigotry of the
Cavalier gentlemen who formed the
majority of the House of Commons, to
support them against the protests of
moderate men, and the evident reluctance
of the King. It Is to the honour of the
House of Lords that its influence was
cast on the side of equity and moderation.

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 203
While the Act of Uniformity was passing
through Parliament, the Lords, In spite of
the vehement opposition of the Bishops
led by Sheldon, inserted a proviso which
reserved to the King power to mitigate
the effects of the measure, but even this
concession to justice was immediately
rejected by the Commons.
' Indeed,' says Mr. Bate In his
excellent monograph, ' the Lords
throughout took up the more con
ciliatory attitude, so much so that
the Presbyterian ministers of Suffolk
were said to have declared that the
Lords' House was the House of the
Lord, and so prayed for it. They
endeavoured to amend the prescribed
oaths, to secure for ejected ministers
some portion of the living (as had
been granted to the ejected royalist
clergy), and to prevent the applica
tion of the bill to schoolmasters. On
all points they had to give way to

204 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
the bitter Intolerance of the Commons.
Thus on May 19, 1662, the bill
passed, and dissenters were left to
take what comfort they could from
the Chancellor's assurance that the
king would never suffer the weak to
undergo the punishment ordained for
the wicked.'"'
The eviction of some two thousand
incumbents, and they unquestionably the
most earnest and successful, led to con
sequences of great moment which were,
perhaps, little contemplated by the leaders
of the re-established Church. Religious
dissent for the first time became both con
siderable and respected. For there could
be no doubt anywhere that the ejected
Puritans had been treated with gross
perfidy, and that they had preferred their
conscience to their interest. The Act of
Uniformity left them no choice between
retirement and Infamy. The declaration,
' 'The Declaration of Indulgence, 1672,' p. 23.

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 205
which was now required of every clergyman
and schoolmaster, was so framed that no
conscientious Puritan could subscribe It
without degrading himself In his own
eyes, and in the eyes of his neighbours.
It ran thus : —
' I, A. B., do declare that It is not
lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever,
to take arms against the king ; and
that I do abhor that traitorous posi
tion of taking arms by his authority
against his person or against those
that are commissioned by him ; and
that I will conform to the liturgy of
the Church of England, as it is
now by law established ; and I do
declare that I do hold there lies no
obligation upon me, or on any other
person from the oath commonly
called the Solemn League and
Covenant, to endeavour any change
or alteration of government either
In Church or State ; and that the

206 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
same was in itself an unlawful oath,
and imposed upon the subjects of
this realm against the known laws
and liberties of this kingdom.'
The Puritan who by this declaration
had immersed himself in the guilt of
perjury, had not yet sounded the depths
of his degradation. If, as was most
commonly the case, he had received his
ministry from other than episcopal hands,
he could only retain his benefice by
submitting himself for reordinatlon, and
thus publicly branding his original ordina
tion as Invalid, and casting a slur of
suspicion upon all his ministrations. No
man of genuine piety could lend himself
to a procedure so profane. Thus the
issues, on which the fate of the Puritans
finally turned, were neither petty nor
obscure. The victims of the Act of
Uniformity were not ejected from the
National Church for disobedience to the
Prayer Book, but for refusing to lay

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 207
guilt on their consciences by uttering
an evident falsehood, and for refusing to
acquiesce in a sacrilegious farce. None,
therefore, could pretend that they were
separatists for slight cause, or question
the motives of their compulsory dissent.
They went forth to poverty, privation,
and suffering. The victorious hierarchy
was irreparably discredited, for not only
was it clearly seen that the Puritans were
the victims of cruelty and falseness, but
it was soon found that their places could
not easily or speedily be filled. The new
incumbents were in too many cases men
of small ability and inferior character :
and numerous parishes were left for a
long time without any spiritual provision
before successors to the ejected Puritans
could be found. ' Despite the earnest
efforts of many bishops, the ministerial
ofifice continued to decline in public esti
mation. Before the close of the reign,
the " contempt of the clergy " was a
by- word.'' ' V. Bate, l.c. 34.

208 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
The Ejectment was the prelude to
persecution. It could not but be so, for
the ejected ministers constituted a new
problem not easy of solution. They had
been silenced, and thrust out, but they
remained In the parishes, receiving from
their devoted followers many significant
tokens of respect and affection. Their
principles in most cases held them back
from formal separation. Many of them
had been protagonists in the conflict with
sectarianism, and they would not readily
stultify the witness they had borne. Some
of them still cherished the hope that their
afiflictlon was but temporary, and would be
followed by some juster rearrangement
making possible their ministry in the
National Church : —
' When,' wrote Baxter, the most
illustrious of the ejected ministers,
reviewing the history after an interval
of seventeen years, 'the i,8oo or
2,000 Ministers were silenced, the

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 209
far greatest part of them forebore
all publick preaching, and only taught
some few in private at such hours as
hindered not the publick assemblies,
and many of them lived as private
men. To this day (1679) it is so
with many of the Nonconformists :
those that live where they find small
need of their preaching, or else have
no call or opportunity, and cannot
remove their dwellings, do hold no
assemblies, but as other men content
themselves to be auditors. Those
that live where are godly and peace
able ministers, who yet need help,
do lead the people constantly to the
parish-churches, and teach them
themselves at other hours, and help
them from house to house : this is
ordinary In the countries [i.e,, coun
ties], and even in London, with many
ministers that hold no assemblies, yea
many that were ejected out of City
parish churches.'
Puritanism in England. 1 c

210 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
The transition from Nonconformity to
Dissent or Separation was brought abput
by circumstances which certainly argued
in the ejected ministers better motives
than those of schismatic self-assertion.
Baxter continues his narrative : —
' It was the great and terrible plague
in 1665 which made this change in
their assembling and ministration.
When the publick ministers foresook
the City, and the rich left the poor
to misery and death, and people
looked every day for their last ; when
they that heard a sermon one day
were buried the next ; when Death
had wakened the people to repent
ance, and a regard of their ever
lasting state, divers Nonconformable
Ministers resolved to stay with them :
they begged moneys out of the
country for the poor and relieved
them ; they got into the empty pulpits
and preached to them. . . . And

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 211
when God had blessed these men's
faithful labours with the conversion
of many souls (especially apprentices
and young people) the experience so
engaged their mutual affections, that
the ministers resolved that they would
live and die in such service as God
had so blessed and preserved them
In ; and their hearers resolved that
they would not forsake their teachers.
And thus the dreadful plague began
that which now so much offendeth
men, as a dangerous Schism.'
The Plague was quickly followed by the
Fire, and this calamity also had Its efifect
on the procedure of the Nonconformists : —
' When some men out of excessive
caution were ready to think that
when that plague had ceased (having
killed about an hundred thousand)
the Ministers should lay by that
publick work, and retire again into

212 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
secret corners, God confuted them
by His next dreadful judgment,
burning down the city the next year,
1666. So that there were neither
churches to go to, nor ministers In
the parishes to preach, nor rich men
to maintain them : and could any
soul that hated not Christ and men's
salvation, have wished the Noncon
formists then to desert the miserable
people ? . , . These two great and
notorious calamities succeeding in
these two dreadful years, 1665, 1666,
calling the Nonconformable Ministers
out of their retirements, and latitant
and silent state, resolved them to
serve God more diligently and openly
than they had done, whatever it cost
them ; and many country ministers
were awakened to the like by the
examples of those In London, though
yet a great number who are In places
of less need, or not called out as
aforesaid, still lie much silent.'

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 213
Here follows in Baxter's narrative a
paragraph printed In capital letters, in
order to arrest the reader's eye, and
impress him with a sense of its terrible
significance, which sets in contrast with
the pastoral zeal of the ejected Ministers,
the shameless cruelty of their persecutors.
It runs thus : —
' While the dreadful fire was wast
ing London and other corporations,
the Parliament and Bishops were at
Oxford, making an Oath to drive
all Nonconformists above five miles
from all cities and corporations that
send Burgesses to Parliament, and all
all other places wherever they had
preached since the Act of Oblivion.
So that had they obeyed the Laws,
London had been deserted in the
plague and in the ruins, and few
people suffered publicly to worship
God.' I
' V. 'The Nonconformist's Plea for Peace,' pp. 235-
240 (London, 1679).

214 RESTORATION SETTLEMENT
The evident leadings of Providence,
for so the Puritans could not but interpret
the facts of their experience, had brought
them into the situation of dissenters, and
the policy of the government, which
necessarily they regarded as primarily
that of the National Church, forced them
to attach increasing importance to the
objections which they had always felt to
certain parts of the Established System.
Thus formal separation went hand-in-hand
with deepening aversion. The hardships
to which they were subjected neither
widened their outlook, nor sweetened their
temper. When the nightmare of perse
cution passed, and once more an oppor
tunity seemed to present itself for restoring
the broken unity of English Religion, it
was found that there no longer existed
among the Puritans any adequate desire
to return to the National System, or any
strong wish to escape from the dubious
situation in which they stood. Compre
hension, possible In 1660, had ceased to

RESTORATION SETTLEMENT 215
be possible in 1689. Its place was taken
by the policy of Toleration, a policy which
implied a lowering of the reHgious ideal,
as well as a triumph of civic good sense.
Sectarianism prevailed alike in the Na
tional Church, and in the tolerated Sects,
and the religious unity of the English
people was destroyed perhaps for ever.
Puritanism has survived less in the
dissenters, who have long emerged from
the relative inferiority of ' Toleration ' to
the position of complete religious equality,
and are now really, in a true sense, ' estab
lished churches,' worshipping alongside
of the historical ' National Church,' than
in certain distinctive features of English
religion — its comparative indifference to
religious observances, its almost fanatical
dislike of the Roman Church, its exal
tation of the Bible, its religious insu
larity, its Sabbatarian sentiment, above
all, the deep division running right across
the Established Church between Evan
gelical and Sacerdotal Christianity.

THE HUGUENOT CHURCH OF
CANTERBURY

Preached in the Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral on
the 6th Sunday after Trinity, being the 364th
anniversary of the Founding of the Church by
the French and Walloon refugees.

THE HUGUENOT CHURCH OF
CANTERBURY
' God chose the weak things of the world, that He
might put to shame the things that are strong.' —
I Corinthians i. 27.
NEARLY 350 years have passed
since the refugees from France
and the Netherlands sought the hos
pitality of this city, and were welcomed
here as fellow-believers. In the year
1550 they were established in possession
of the Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral
by the grant of King Edward VI. ,
and there they and their descendants
have worshipped through successive gen
erations until this day, when we have
ill)

220 THE HUGUENOT CHURCH
gathered together to commemorate their
original settlement. In no unreal sense
It may be said of the Huguenots and
Walloons that they saved the Reformation
when its fortunes were desperate, saved it
by their unconquerable courage and by
their immense sufferings, saved it by the
martyrdom of Coligny, by the genius of
Calvin, and by the steadfast courage of
William the Silent. The wheel of
destiny has brought such dramatic changes,
that we to-day can hardly realise the
discrepancy of resources which marked
that vital conflict in which the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew, and the still more
sanguinary cruelties of Alva were inci
dents, and from which the Huguenot
Church of Canterbury was born. The
balance of political power has moved from
the Latin to the English and German
peoples, from the Governments which
accept the authority of the Roman papacy
to those which repudiate it. It is not
easy for us to realise the situation of

OF CANTERBURY 221
Europe when the mighty conflict of the
Reformation began. Then the over
whelming weight of political power was
opposed to the Reformers. When the
young son of Henry VIII. ascended the
throne of England, he was the only
monarch of importance who stood for the
Reformation, and none could be quite
sure, with the experiences of his father's
reign fresh in mind, whether indeed he
would finally stand for It, and would not
rather consult his obvious interest by
making his peace with the Emperor.
When we consider the general acceptance
of the monstrous method of murder and
massacre by the Roman Catholic Powers,
we must remember that, in the actual
circumstances of the time, it did not seem
improbable that by that means the Re
formation might be totally and speedily
suppressed. This circumstance may miti
gate our astonishment, but it cannot lessen
our disgust at the open and eager approval
which that method received from the

222 THE HUGUENOT CHURCH
leaders of the Roman Catholic Church.
Lord Acton's remarkable essay on the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, recently
published in the volume entitled ' The
History of Freedom,' should be studied
by every one who would grasp the full
significance of that terrible episode. Him
self a devout Roman Catholic, as well as
an erudite and accomplished historian,
Lord Acton's verdict on the conduct of
the Roman Church is peculiarly weighty.
2. The intolerance which banished from
the soil of France so many thousands of
French Protestants, amid scenes of heart
rending cruelty, brought a curse on that
country so manifest that it leaps to the
eyes of the historian. Not only were the
moral resources of the nation depleted by
the withdrawal of its most virile and
conscientious members, but the exiles
carried away with them to their new
homes in England and Prussia much
mechanical skill and many valuable
industries. In the political sphere we

OF CANTERBURY 223
may trace the ill consequences of the
persecutions in the unwholesome and
unchecked development of Absolutism.
The French Revolution was latent in
the policy which violently suppressed
the French Reformation ; and the un
happy discord between Church and State
in France, which is at the present time
the salient feature of its internal situation,
is directly traceable to the crimes and
follies of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. 3. This Huguenot Church of Canter
bury is, then, the creation of religious
intolerance, a standing monument of a
policy which once commended itself to
the Statesmen of Europe, a conspicuous
illustration of a principle which once ruled
the consciences and chilled the sympathies
of Christian men. Its presence here in
the crypt of the great cathedral points
another moral. Protestantism stands and
falls with the principle of Private Judg
ment and with the policy of Religious

224 THE HUGUENOT CHURCH
Liberty. It Is the case that Protestants
were slow to realise the full meaning of
the position which they adopted, that
they were inconsistent, that they were
slow to abandon the habits which cen
turies had bound into their minds, that
their record is stained by many scandals.
Persecution was not confined to Roman
Catholics. Fanaticism is of no creed, and
of all Churches. Only three years after
the Huguenots were established in the
crypt, Servetus was burned at Geneva
with the general approval of Protestants
throughout Europe. Archbishop Abbot
insisted on the burning of two unhappy
heretics at Smithfield in 1614, and gave
his approval to the use of torture. Arch
bishop Ussher opposed the toleration of
the Roman Catholic Religion in Ireland.
The earliest advocates of religious tolera
tion were the despised sectaries who
gathered at Amsterdam, or ventured
across the stormy Atlantic to lay the
foundations of the American Republic ;

OF CANTERBURY 225
and even they could not hold to their
principles when once the power to per
secute came into their hands. Only the
Quakers have a clean record in this
respect. They have never persecuted,
or justified persecution. Still, with so
much inconsistency on the part of
individuals, so much cruelty in the policy
of Protestant States and Churches, it
remains the case that Protestantism is
inherently inconsistent with religious
intolerance, and that within the Protestant
sphere religious liberty has established
itself as the proper consequence of
Protestant principles. From the first the
difference was felt. Make the most of
the scandals of Protestant intolerance,
and you cannot pretend that they
approach in magnitude and horror the
persecutions of the Roman Church. It
is an insult to human intelligence to
pretend that the treatment of Roman
Catholics by Queen Elizabeth was
on a level with that of Protestants by
Puritanism in England. Jg

226 THE HUGUENOT CHURCH
Queen Mary, or that persecution has
played in the history of Protestant States
a role comparable with that which it
played up to quite recent times in Roman
Catholic communities. The reason lies
in the circumstance that while Protestant
principles disallow religious intolerance,
Roman Catholic principles require it.
The comparative absence of persecution
in our own age is due, not to any change
of Roman Catholic theory, but to lack of
power to apply the old theory to modern
life. In order to prevent any misunder
standing on the point, we have the
attempt to enforce the ' Ne Temere '
decree respecting mixed marriages
actually being made both in Ireland
and in Canada at the present time.
Less publicly scandalous, but perhaps
even more reprehensible, has been the
violent suppression of the Modernist
Movement within the Roman Catholic
Church. While, then, the old enemy
against which the Huguenots fought

OF CANTERBURY 227
with such noble courage still confronts
us, we may well treasure so famous a
monument of their conflict as this Church
presents. 4. But apart from this general interest
a Huguenot Church worshipping in this
place from the very beginning of the
Reformation has a special value to
English Churchmen. It comes to us
from a time in which the National
Church of England was in close fellow
ship with the other Reformed Churches,
and it illustrates the position which in
those days was common to all Protestants,
that the essentials of Christianity are not
to be found in the region of external
system, but in a common faith. All the
Reformed Churches came into existence
as the consequence of a revolt against
the ancient and established system of
the Medieval Church. All the Re
formers, English and continental alike,
had to face the question. Whether they
could rightly Insist on their own per-

228 THE HUGUENOT CHURCH
ceptions of truth against the authoritative
decisions of the Church? They often
used ambiguous language ; often caught
up theories, whether of the Church or
of the Nation, which obscured the issue ;
sometimes, perhaps, were not able to
realise the meaning of the decisions they
took ; yet, broadly, the position was clear
enough when the constituted authorities
of the Western Church, the hierarchy
and the papacy as Its Divinely constituted
organ, had spoken formally and decisively
in condemnation of the reforming move
ment. What authority should men
accept in religion? What did they
really mean by truth? When Luther
burned the Pope's Bull of excommuni
cation, there could be no mistaking his
attitude. He repudiated the claim of
the pope, that is, of the constituted
ecclesiastical system, to declare what was
truth, and thus to determine the belief
of a Christian man. He claimed to have
a higher authority within himself He

OF CANTERBURY 229
adopted towards the Church authority
precisely the same position as that which
St. Peter adopted towards the Sanhedrin,
' IVe must obey God rather than men' ; and
he assumed that the conviction of truth
which he had formed was rightly de
scribed as God's Word to him. That is
what is meant by Private Judgment. In
the last result the decision what is or Is
not true must be made by every man for
himself This Is at once the glory and
the burden of manhood. Its incommuni
cable responsibility, and its unique great
ness. Truth is not to be identified with
the decision of an external authority, but
has its sanctions within the individual
conscience, and by the Divine right of
its own inherent excellence commands
the acceptance of true men. Knowledge
is relative, but truth is in this sense
absolute that its claim to be received is
never less than Divine, and its title to be
received is never for one instant doubtful.
Therefore, whenever truth is perceived.

230 THE HUGUENOT CHURCH
there emerges for every man who per
ceives it the crucial issue of religion.
Not to accept the truth which we
perceive Is to play the traitor to our own
best selves, and to exchange the service
of the God of Truth for that of the Father
of Lies. But such acceptance may bring
us into conflict with great vested interests
of ancient and powerful falsehood.
Then arises the demand for faith. The
near, present, insistent fact claims us by
the intelligible pleas of our evident
material interest. The remote, unseen,
unarmoured truth has no other pleas
than those which the conscience feels,
and the reason owns. That was the
issue which faced the Reformers ; that
was the conflict in which the Martyrs
died. They valued liberty of thought
and worship so highly that for its sake
they endured willingly every earthly
disaster. ' With a great sum' they
obtained their freedom, for they knew
full well,

OF CANTERBURY 231
' There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear
Than his who breathes, by roof, and floor, and
wall
Pent in, a Tyrant's solitary Thrall:
'Tis his who walks about in the open air,
One of a Nation who, henceforth, must wear
Their fetters in their souls.'
This Church of the Martyrs is a stand
ing witness to the faith which overcame
the world, the faith in the unseen.
These exiles for conscience' sake, whose
memorials are about us here, like Moses,
when he turned his back on the Court of
Pharaoh and the pleasures of Egypt,
' endured as seeing Him who is invisible.'
5. We are ourselves witnesses of the
power of their faith, for we enjoy the
fruits of its triumph. I adverted just now
to the superiority of physical force which
lay with the persecutors ofthe Huguenots.
At the Reformation, and, at least in the
case of the Protestants of France and the
Netherlands, throughout the century which
followed, the battle for religious liberty,

232 THE HUGUENOT CHURCH
for the right of Private Judgment, for
the truth as God had shown it to the
individual, was fought against terrible
odds. Writing at the very end of the
sixteenth century. Sir Edwin Sandys,
when he reviewed the relative strength of
the friends and foes of the Reformation,
found a great superiority in the latter.
They were more numerous, more civilised,
more wealthy, more united. Protestants
were inferior in every element of success.
Yet we know now that such was the
inherent vigour of freedom, such the
dynamic force of religious conviction,
that all disadvantages were finally over
come, and the triumph of the Reformation
finally established. As we review the con
flict, and realise the magnitude of the
victory, we share the reverent amaze
ment with which St. Paul beheld
the first conquests of Christianity : ' God
chose the foolish things of the world, that
He might put to shame them that are wise ;
and God chose the weak things of the world,

OF CANTERBURY 233
that He might put to shame the things that
are strong ; and the base things ofthe world,
and the things that are despised, did God
choose, yea, and the things that are not,
that He might bring to nought the things
that are: that no flesh should glory before
God.' The seeming success of the policy
of persecution, which stained the annals of
France with the massacre of 1572, and
the crowning perfidy of 1685, became
ministerial to the lasting establishment of
religious liberty in other lands : and the
descendants of the exiles who bore the
brunt of the great conflict and carried
to these shores the faith which no
extremity of oppression could make
them betray, and the hopes which no
lengths of calamity could make them
abandon, have a sacred title to our
sympathy and, if need be, to our support,
as they maintain here the sacred traditions
of that age of sorrow and sufifering.
6. Are there any among us who would
suggest that the memory of the heroic

234 THE HUGUENOT CHURCH
past might be suffered to fade : that the
victory of liberty has been so firmly
secured that there is no adequate justifica
tion for recalling the exasperations of the
conflict in which it was gained : that the
old bad tyrannous fallacies of bigotry have
lost their hold over men's minds, and could
never again menace the happiness and
self-respect of civilised men ? Give me
leave to point out to them that the
ancient conflict must continue, albeit In
novel forms, so long as human nature
remains what it is : that there are no signs
that the moral of its historic failures has
been learned by the Church of Rome : that
there are many indications that the spirit
of intolerance has extended from the
religious to the political and economic
spheres : that the rights of the individual
conscience never stood in more urgent
need of vigilant championship than in
these days of organised industry, and great
centralised communities.
The salient feature of modern politics Is

OF CANTERBURY 235
the new importance of the working classes.
This, we are told, is to be the character of
the social revolution which is visibly dawn
ing on the western world — the triumph
of the ideas, and the endorsement of the
ideals of the artisans. Is it sufificiently
remembered that there is a relatively feeble
sense of individuality among the working
classes ? The circumstances In which they
live and work may develop many admir
able qualities, but they are not favourable
to this master-quality, which is the key to
true human development, individual self-
respect. Nothing is more charged with
sinister promise than the tyrannous con
tempt for individual rights which marks
the organisations of working men. The
Catholic Church of Labour will be not less
ready to use coercion in the Interest of its
creed than the Catholic Church of Christ :
and in the future the demand for the
virile and heroic qualities which created
Protestantism, will not be less than in the
past. The tyrannies of the world

236 THE HUGUENOT CHURCH
change their names and forms, but never
their character. There is a despotism of
wealth as well as of political power : a
persecution by the civilised agents of
defamation and boycott, as well as by the
crude ancient methods of the sword and
stake. The world to-day has Its martyrs,
and, if I read aright the signs of the times,
will have them in greater number in the
coming age. Therefore we cannot afford
to sufifer any factor of modern life which is
friendly to personal independence to
decline, or permit any tradition from the
past which stimulates personal self-respect
to fail. Here in this little Huguenot
Church, nestling in its ancient refuge in
the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, is
precisely such a factor, and the embodi
ment of such a tradition. Economic
changes have reduced its numbers, but
withdrawn nothing of its moral significance.
If I might be permitted to address myself
to those citizens of Canterbury, who are
themselves connected by hereditary ties

OF CANTERBURY 237
with the Huguenot exiles, who founded
this Church, I would beg of them to
recognise an honourable responsibility for
its well-being. They will render good
service to this famous and beautiful City if
they cherish with loving solicitude this
precious relic from the past, and enable it
to bear its high and necessary witness in
our modern life. Canterbury is rich
beyond most other cities in monuments
and memories, but to the informed and
considering visitor there is, perhaps, no
monument more sacred, no memory more
inspiring, than these which fill with solemn
interest the crypt of the Cathedral.
7. To the National Church of England,
which welcomed the French and Walloon
refugees 364 years ago, this Church has
an interest and a value which cannot be
exaggerated. If it be the case — and
can it be denied that it is ? — that there are
at the present time tendencies within the
Church of England which belittle and even
repudiate the principles of the Reforma-

238 THE HUGUENOT CHURCH
tion, and would build again In this country
the fabric of ancient religious errors, which
our Fathers at the peril of their lives over
threw, then it cannot be a small thing that
we should have in our midst, nay in the
very heart of our system, a living demon
stration of our true character as a
Reformed Church. Nay ; there is a
deeper truth suggested, one which holds
not merely of every Reformed Church,
but of the Christian Church in its entirety,
so far as in any measure it remains true to
its spiritual allegiance, and is in fact as
well as in name a Church of Christ.
This place for us is steeped in symbolism.
Canterbury Cathedral, rising in peer
less beauty out of the old City, which it
seems to hallow and ennoble, filled with
the memorials of a national past which
runs back across the centuries into the
twilight of a remote antiquity, echoing
daily the solemn liturgical worship of a
great National Church, and withal cherish
ing in the dark recesses of the crypt, as it

OF CANTERBURY 239
were within its very foundations, a simpler
worship, fashioned In times of desperate
trial, the workmanship of martyrs and
exiles, eloquent at every point of afifllction
and conflict, is no inadequate symbol of the
Christian Church Itself At the root of all
the glorious expressions of faith in litera
ture, in art, in history, there are the stern
simple truths for which men have fought
and died, the principles and convictions
which inspire all genuine Christian effort,
the faith which overcomes the world.
In many forms, and in widely varying
circumstances, God puts His children
to the test. In halcyon days of prosperity
we may easily forget the inexorable and
unchanging conditions of liberty, but
when the dark times come, alike for
nations and for Individuals, those for
gotten conditions emerge into threatening
prominence. ' What shall a man give in
exchange for his soul? What shall it
profit a man if he gain the whole world
and lose or forfeit his own self? ' — these

240 THE HUGUENOT CHURCH
questions claim their answer from all of
us sooner or later. O then, when to
our Nation or to ourselves the solemn
issue comes, and we must face it, God
grant that the Spirit of the Martyrs,
whom we recall with loving homage to
day, may be ours, and we in our turn
may be found faithful to our trust !

RICHARD BUSBY

17

Preached in Westminster Abbey on September
23, 1906

RICHARD BUSBY
Born September 22, 1606
Died April 6, 1695
'The righteous shall be had in everlasting
remembrance.' — Psalm cxii. 6.
TWO anniversaries of general interest
fell within the week that has just
ended, and both of them have a particular
interest for us, who live and work in
this place. Just three hundred years
have elapsed since, on September 22,
1606, Richard Busby was born in the
parish of Lutton in Lincolnshire. Just
one hundred and ninety - seven years
ago on September 18, 1709, Samuel
Johnson first saw the light in Lichfield.
Both the great Schoolmaster and the
great Lexicographer lie buried within
Puritanism in England. 2^3

244 RICHARD BUSBY
these walls. Perhaps there are few
tombs more reverently regarded here
than theirs. The two men belonged to
the same vigorous middle class of society,
rather on its lower side where it merges
in the vast army of manual labourers,
than on its upper where it passes into
the smaller literary and leisured class.
Both were born into poor homes, and
had to enter on the struggle of life
without the doubtful advantage of in
herited wealth. Both men came of a
religious stock, religious in the old
English Churchman's sense fashioned by
the greater Elizabethans and revived,
though on narrower lines, after the Great
Rebellion. Both were the sons of Church
wardens, and notable among their con
temporaries for their severe and unyielding
Churchmanship. Both were Oxford men,
and conspicuous examples of the strength,
and perhaps also of the limitations, of the
educational methods of their time. Both
men impressed their contemporaries

RICHARD BUSBY 245
wonderfully, being indeed universally
allowed to be the most striking and
original personalities of their time. The
influence of both men was pre-eminently
moral, and had its root in a deep and
simple piety. Both men were magnani
mously benevolent, and though rough
and caustic in speech and almost brutally
contemptuous of everything which seemed
to them unreal or effeminate, very tender
hearted and unworldly. Not to pursue
the parallel to tiresome lengths, it must
suffice to say that both men illustrated
the triumph of character. Of Richard
Busby I shall take leave to speak rather
more particularly, because he belongs to
Westminster in a degree which is quite
unique. Very soon after his birth his father
removed from Lincolnshire to Westmin
ster, where his own long life of 89 years
was to be spent. Of his poverty we
have an interesting indication in the fact,
recorded In the churchwardens' accounts

244 RICHARD BUSBY
these walls. Perhaps there are few
tombs more reverently regarded here
than theirs. The two men belonged to
the same vigorous middle class of society,
rather on its lower side where it merges
in the vast army of manual labourers,
than on its upper where it passes into
the smaller literary and leisured class.
Both were born into poor homes, and
had to enter on the struggle of life
without the doubtful advantage of in
herited wealth. Both men came of a
religious stock, religious in the old
English Churchman's sense fashioned by
the greater Elizabethans and revived,
though on narrower lines, after the Great
Rebellion. Both were the sons of Church
wardens, and notable among their con
temporaries for their severe and unyielding
Churchmanship. Both were Oxford men,
and conspicuous examples of the strength,
and perhaps also of the limitations, of the
educational methods of their time. Both
men impressed their contemporaries

RICHARD BUSBY 245
wonderfully, being indeed universally
allowed to be the most striking and
original personalities of their time. The
influence of both men was pre-eminently
moral, and had its root in a deep and
simple piety. Both men were magnani
mously benevolent, and though rough
and caustic in speech and almost brutally
contemptuous of everything which seemed
to them unreal or effeminate, very tender
hearted and unworldly. Not to pursue
the parallel to tiresome lengths, it must
suffice to say that both men illustrated
the triumph of character. Of Richard
Busby I shall take leave to speak rather
more particularly, because he belongs to
Westminster in a degree which is quite
unique. Very soon after his birth his father
removed from Lincolnshire to Westmin
ster, where his own long life of 89 years
was to be spent. Of his poverty we
have an interesting indication in the fact,
recorded in the churchwardens' accounts

248 RICHARD BUSBY
solid, and religious training. Accordingly
his principal concern was to ground boys
in the principles of religion, and to provide
for them the opportunities of education.
Busby was emphatically a man of action,
not a man of ideas. Neither his great
contemporary, Milton, who was keeping
school in the City at the time, and criti
cising with his deep illuminating wisdom
the traditional didactic methods which
Busby, and Johnson afterwards, cham
pioned, nor his own famous pupil, Locke,
would have received from him much
approval. His fondness for the rod,
exaggerated no doubt by tradition, was
only one among many indications of his
thoroughgoing conservatism in educa
tional method. ' His contempt of the
professional scholar ' — observes our school
historian, in his well-known excellent
' Annals of Westminster School ' — ' was
outdone by his contempt for the educa
tional amateur.' But this judgment is,
perhaps, in some degree modified by the

RICHARD BUSBY 249
statement that 'he was always alive to
new knowledge, and always seeking fresh
subjects of instruction.' ^ Busby's emi
nence as a schoolmaster, however, did
not lie in the region of didactic experiment
or reform, but in that of practical work.
' The glory of fathers is their children'
is a proverb of Scripture which is notably
illustrated by the career of a teacher.
The measure of his success, and the
proof of his distinction, are found in the
disciples whom he trains, and fills with
his spirit. Perhaps no schoolmaster ever
trained so many men famous in many cate
gories of fame as Busby. In the seven
teenth century the higher intellect of the
nation ran in clerical channels as never
since, and it is said that no less than sixteen
Bishops at one time were old scholars
of Busby. This astonishing success,
which raised Westminster School to the
primacy among the public schools of the
' V. 'Annals of Westminster School,' by John
Sergeaunt, p. 113 f. (Methuen and Co., 1898).

250 RICHARD BUSBY
time, was due to the contagious influence
of a masterful and lofty character. It
was not only boys who felt and responded
to this influence, though naturally they
were most powerfully affected. The mere
fact that Busby was allowed to retain his
office throughout the interregnum, in spite
of his strong and openly-confessed ad
hesion to the cause of Church and King,
Is perhaps the strongest evidence of the
impression he made upon his contem
poraries, while it certainly reflects great
credit on the dominant Puritans, whose
genuine zeal for education overcame the
prejudices of creed and the passions of
political party. When we Inquire wherein
this remarkable personal influence con
sisted, we cannot be mistaken in answering
that It arose mainly from Busby's ability
to arouse and enlist the conscience of his
pupils. In spite of his severity he was
felt to be just, and his firm Churchmanship
was conditioned by a genuine respect for
conscientious scruples, rare indeed among

RICHARD BUSBY 251
his contemporaries and co-religionists.
The well-known Nonconformist, Philip
Henry, has left on record the impression
made on him by the great Headmaster.
At the request of the boy's mother
Busby had allowed him to be absent
from school daily from seven to eight in
the morning, in order that he might attend
the sermons then preached in the Abbey
by a rota of Puritan divines, and every
Thursday he says that his mother 'took
him also to Mr. Tho. Case, his lecture
at St. Martin's Church, and every monthly
Fast to St. Margaret's, Westminster,
which was our Parish Church where
preacht the ablest men of England before
the then House of Commons.' He goes
on to relate the only occasion on which
he was flogged. He told a lie, and was
properly punished for it : —
' Mr. Busby turn'd his eye towards
me and said km <7u tckvov, and
whipt mee, which was the only time

252 RICHARD BUSBY
I felt the weight of his hand,
and I deserv'd it. Hee appointed
me also a Penitential copy of Latin
verses which I made and brought
him, and then hee gave mee sixpence
and received mee again into his favor.
April 14th (or yer. abouts) 1647. The
Lord was graciously pleased to bring
me home efifectually to Himself by y"
means of my Schoolmaster Mr.
Richard Busby at the time of y""
solemne preparation for y" Com
munion then observ'd. The Lord
recompense it a thousand fold into
his bosome. I hope I shal never
forget. There had been Treatyes
before between my soul and Jesus
with some overtures towards Him,
but then, then I think it was that the
match was made.' ^
When the Act of Uniformity compelled
' Quoted in the ' Memoir of Richard Busby, D.D.,'
by G. F. Russell Barker, pp. 83, 85 (Lawrence and
Bullen, 1895).

RICHARD BUSBY 253
the Puritan clergy to decide whether they
would repudiate their Presbyterian Orders,
or resign their benefices, Philip Henry
was among the Nonconformists. ' Busby
asked him some time afterwards, "Pry thee,
child, what made thee a nonconformist ? "
His answer was, " Truly, Sir, you made me
one, for you taught me those things that
hindered me from conforming."' It is
impossible to imagine a nobler tribute to
the religious teaching which Busby had
given his boys. He had not succeeded
in making the little Puritan an Anglican,
but he had so stamped on his mind the
sanctity and sovereignty of conscience,
that, when the great trial came to him,
which in some form or other comes to all
men, and he had to make his choice
between his worldly prospects and his
loyalty to conscience, he unhesitatingly
cast In his lot with the latter.
Busby was, as we have said, a strong
Churchman and Loyalist, but these
characters were not inconsistent with his

254 RICHARD BUSBY
submission to the ruling powers during
the Commonwealth, nor did they restrain
him from subscribing both the Covenant
and the Engagement. It is one of the
strangest facts about his career that no
stigma appears to have rested on him in
any quarter on this account. His position
was as secure under the reigning Puritans,
as under the restored Monarchy. He
walked in procession in Westminster
Abbey at the funeral of Oliver, and he
carried the Ampulla two years later at
the Coronation of Charles. The ex
planation, so far as there is any, seems
to lie in his devotion to his profession.
He was before all things, and everybody
understood the fact, a schoolmaster, .and
he acquiesced as a matter of course in the
political arrangements of the country so
long as they did not interfere with his
teaching work. Within that sphere he
would brook no Interference. Outside
that sphere he did not interfere. Men
recognised and chafed against his jealousy

RICHARD BUSBY 255
of interference, but perforce they acknow
ledged his enthusiasm and his good faith.
His name became symbolic of arbitrary
but righteous authority. ' The Chair
behaves himself like a Busby amongst so
many school-boys, as some say,' notes
Thomas Burton in his Parliamentary
Diary, and he adds significantly that ' he
takes a little too much on him, but
grandly,' The sentence would not,
perhaps, be wholly inappropriate as a
description of Busby's didactic method.
'He took too much upon him, but grandly,'
The circumstances of a schoolmaster's life
undoubtedly tend to encourage an exalted
estimate of one's own Importance, and of
course we all know that the pedagogue
has become proverbial for a special type
of professional vanity. Every career has
its distinctive faults, and the schoolmaster
enjoys no exception from the general law.
Yet a measure of undue self-importance
is but a small price for such genuine
exaltation of thought as that which

256 RICHARD BUSBY
inspired Busby's performance of duty. I
would venture respectfully to offer his
example to the attentive study of the
noble profession which he adorned and
raised in the public estimation. Since the
seventeenth century, the schoolmaster's
status In society has been greatly im
proved. It would no longer be reason
able to complain, as Busby's famous
pupil, South (whose monument rises at
the foot of his master's, and who shared
with him the distinction of being a
Prebendary of this Church), could justly
complain, that schoolmasters were not
treated with due regard : —
' I know not how it comes to pass,'
he said in one of his sermons, ' that
this honourable employment should
find so little respect (as experience
shows it does) from too many in the
world. For there Is no profession
which has, or can have, a greater
influence upon the public. School-

RICHARD BUSBY 257
masters have a negative upon the
peace and welfare of the kingdom.
They are indeed the great deposi
tories and trustees of the peace of it
as having the growing hopes and
fears of the nation in their hands.
For generally, subjects are and will
be such as they breed them. So
that I look upon an able, well-
principled schoolmaster as one of
the most meritorious subjects In any
prince's dominions that can be ; and
every such school, under such a
master, as a seminary of loyalty and
a nursery of allegiance.'
South goes on to speak of the methods
by which schoolmasters should fulfil their
great function in the nation : —
' But now, If their power is so
great and their influence so strong,
surely it concerns them to use it to
the utmost for the benefit of their
Puritanism in England. JQ

258 RICHARD BUSBY
country. And for this purpose let
them fix this as an eternal rule or
principle in the instruction of youth ;
that care is to be had of their
manners in the first place, and of
their learning in the next. And
here, as the foundation and ground
work of all morality let youth be
taught betimes to obey, and to
know that the very relation between
teacher and learner imports superi
ority and subjection.'
South warns schoolmasters against
that excessive severity which was common
in the schools of the time, and which
indeed was supposed to find special
favour with Busby, though the mere
circumstance that this warning should
find a place in a sermon which contains
a warm eulogy of Westminster School,
and was originally Intended to have
been preached in this church, and
presumably in Busby's presence, goes

RICHARD BUSBY 259
far to show that the supposition is with
out real ground. Nothing could be wiser
than this counsel to schoolmasters, and
it is counsel which can never lose its
relevance : —
' Let them remember that excellent
and never-to-be-forgotten advice,
that boys will be men ; and that the
memory of all base usage will sink
so deep into, and grow up so in
separably with them, that it will not
be so much as in their power ever
to forget it. For though indeed
schoolmasters are a sort of kings,
yet they cannot always pass such
acts of oblivion as shall operate
upon their scholars, or perhaps. In
all things indemnify themselves.'
South warns against ' cowing and
depressing ' children ' with scoffs and
contumelies,' and insists that in all
punishments it must be made to appear

260 RICHARD BUSBY
' that the person is loved while his fault
is punished ; nay, that one is punished
only out of love to the other.' I shall
adopt for myself as my excuse for inflict
ing these quotations on you the plea,
which the great orator originally advanced
for himself : —
' These things I thought fit to
remark about the education and
educators of youth in general, not
that I have any thoughts or desires
of invading their province ; but
possibly a stander-by may some
times look as far into the game as
he who plays It ; and perhaps with
no less judgment, because with
much less concern.' '
The schoolmaster, like the clergyman,
ought to lie outside the sphere of party
politics just because in both cases the
work to be done demands for its due
' V. Sermons, vol. iii. p. 83 f.

RICHARD BUSBY 261
fulfilment the confidence of the public,
apart from which that liberty of action,
which is Indispensable for both, cannot be
conceded. You must trust the school
master, and you must trust the clergyman,
but no sane man will trust those whom he
has good reason for suspecting, and you
may be sure that such reasons will not be
lacking if the schoolmaster or the clergy
man sinks to be the parasite of party
and the tool of faction.
Schoolmasters have a primary Interest
in the record of one who was a great
schoolmaster, but Busby was also a
great citizen, and as such I shall take
leave to commend his example to those
also who are not schoolmasters. Let
me fasten on but two features of his
citizenship. First of all consider his
benefactions to the public. He had
received much from others. As a King's
Scholar of Westminster, and as a Student
of Christ Church, he had been educated
by means of the ancient endowments of

262 RICHARD BUSBY
' Founders and Benefactors.' He had
received help, as I reminded you, from
the Vestry of St. Margaret's. Busby was
no thankless beneficiary, but rejoiced to
repay what he had received in ampler
measure. Every Institution, and every
locality whereby he had benefited, was
the better for the fact. He gave back
with generosity more than he had taken.
In this respect he sets an example which
the men of our time specially need to
learn. How few they are In any genera
tion who feel any personal obligation
attaching to the endowments which they
enjoy ! What ought to be received as a
free gift Is too often taken as a right, and
as no gratitude is felt, so no return is
made. In this respect I think we are
inferior to our fathers. Who now in his
prosperity takes thought for his native
village, or for the profession in which he
has gained wealth and honour, or for the
school where the foundations of his
success were laid, or for the college which

RICHARD BUSBY 263
first opened for him the doors to a career ?
There are exceptions which all will call
to mind, and these perhaps conceal the
general ingratitude. Consider next
Busby's treatment of his property. He
came to be comparatively a rich man, and
his handling of his property Is worthy the
attention of rich men, especially of men
who have gained riches. He did not make
haste to retire from work. Idleness and
display had no attractions for him. He did
not spend his wealth on selfish objects,
becoming I do not say a profligate (for
such a character is Inconceivable in con
nection with a man of his strong and
religious type), but a mere collector of
pictures, or books, or gems, a dilettantlst,
who ' killed the impracticable hours ' by
self-amusement with some hobby. Busby's
money was honourably earned, and it was
responsibly expended. In his hands
property was moralised ; his ownership
was clearly to the general advantage.
These are days when the manner in which

264 RICHARD BUSBY
wealth is expended is only less important,
if it is less important, than the way in
which wealth is acquired, for the conscience
of mankind Is becoming increasingly
restive on the subject of property. The
gross and well-nigh intolerable inequalities
of civilised society are weighing on men's
hearts, and 'the spectacle of vast unearned
wealth being squandered in unworthy
indulgence is moving resentments so deep
that they must some day find adequate
expression in action. There are audible
mutterings as to the advancing danger of
Socialism, and a sense of insecurity is
spreading amongst us. The strongest
argument for Socialism is not any pro
vided by its professed advocates, but that
which the owners of Wealth are daily
offering ; I mean, the argument from the
scandals of individual ownership, the
abuse of wealth to selfish and even abomin
able purposes. I speak of the wealthy,
but they are, when all is said, but a small
section of the property-owners. The

RICHARD BUSBY 265
obligation to earn honestly and spend un
selfishly rests on all of us alike.
There is something to my mind very
solemn and inspiring in the fact that after
so many years— it is 300 since Richard
Busby was born in the little Lincolnshire
parish, which has piously honoured his
memory by sending a wreath to be placed
on his tomb — I say there is something
very solemn and inspiring about the fact
that after all these years we should be
able to exult in the virtues, and uphold
the example, of this good man. We
recall the words of the old Psalmist, who
himself also had watched the courses of
human lives : ' Well is it with the man
that dealeth graciously and lendeth : he
shall maintain his cause in judgment.
For he shall never be moved; the righteous
shall be had in everlasting remembrance.'
And if we must confess that there Is much
goodness In this world which misses recog
nition, and that many heroes and saints
are among those who have no memorial.

266 RICHARD BUSBY
and to the generations that follow them,
are as if they had never been, yet we
know that this Is but a superficial view
of the facts. Nothing good ever really
fails of Its blessing and of its recompense.
' For' as the great Apostle, himself a
Martyr and the most honoured of the
Saints, said, ' Whether we live, we live unto
the Lord ; or whether we die, we die unto
the Lord: whether we live therefore, or
die, we are the Lord's.'

THE MORAL OF A GREAT
FAILURE

Preached to the University of Cambridge on the
Fifth Sunday after Easter, May 12, 191 2.

THE MORAL OF A GREAT FAILURE
The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness
of God. — James i. 20.
IN the month of May, a.d. 1662, just
250 years ago, the Royal Assent was
given to a measure which has affected
profoundly the life of the English people,
and the fortunes of the English Church.
The Act of Uniformity must be regarded
as one of the most fruitful achievements of
the legislator's art. It is recognised by
the historian as one of the critical turning-
points of the national record. It closed
the door on projects which promised well,
and diverted the course of ecclesiastical
development from what seemed to be its
natural channel. It opened a chapter of

270 THE MORAL OF
strife and confusion which has not even
yet, after two and a half centuries, reached
its close. If on this occasion I take leave
to direct your attention to that memorable
and decisive moment in the history of our
Church and Nation, my excuse must be
that the circumstances of the present time
almost compel a reconsideration of the
policy which found enduring expression In
the Act of Uniformity, and that it is the
case that large numbers of our fellow-
citizens are, for very intelligible reasons,
recalling the events of 1662 with mingled
feelings of pride and resentment, pride in
the unyielding rectitude which marked the
victims of the Caroline policy, resentment
against the policy and its apologists.
Anglicans and Nonconformists are at one
in regarding the Act of Uniformity as the
starting-point of their modern history ;
and both are at the present time, for very
different reasons, seeking to abrogate it.
The Anglicans of the Caroline epoch did
not scruple to speak of the Act of Uni-

A GREAT FAILURE 271
formity as ' establishing ' the Church of
England ; and those among us, who are
least willing to concede much to the fact
of Establishment, must needs allow that
the Act of Uniformity created the very
conditions, under which their dislike of
Establishment finds respectable expres
sion. The whole movement for ' Prayer
Book Revision ' is a movement for the
abrogation of the clauses of the Act which
stereotype the existing Book of Common
Prayer. The whole agitation for Dis
establishment is an agitation for the final
abandonment of the policy which the Act
enshrined. Thus both for Anglicans and
for Nonconformists the Act of Uniformity
is no half-forgotten and wholly obsolete
statute, but an object of frequent and
anxious consideration, which is forced on
their notice by the circumstances of modern
life. We may well inquire whether the
events of that critical time do not disclose
to the considering student some lessons
which may help to guide him in the

272 THE MORAL OF
difificult situation which now confronts the
English Churchman.
2. But, first, let me recognise and seek
to remove an Initial objection. What, it
may be asked, is the use of moralising on
the blunders of the past? To be wise
after the event is no great advantage, and
reflects no great credit. History is a
process, of which the character and direc
tion can only be discerned in retrospect.
Nay, is It not a process, part of the
general process, of natural evolution, with
respect to which censure and approbation
are alike improper, and the student's
business is strictly limited to sifting evi
dence, and stating conclusions ? ' Things
will be what they will be,' though men
fuss and fume to their hearts' content ;
and only our incorrigible vanity holds us
back from perceiving that we have no
more influence on the course of affairs
than the proverbial fly on the cart-wheel.
Why, therefore, should we sit in judgment
on our ancestors, or cheat ourselves with

A GREAT FAILURE 273
the notion that we have any Immunity
from the conditions of human action ?
We can but answer that such a mechanical
view of history not only robs the study of
ethical value, but also empties it of its
highest interest. Moreover, it does not
ring true to our own experience of life.
' History is past politics ; politics is present
history,' was a saying of an Oxford his
torian of the last century, which was both
characteristic and illuminating. It is not,
indeed, the whole truth, but It is a very
important part of the truth. We ought in
reason to make our interpretation of
human action in the past accord in point
of method with our interpretation of
human action in the present. We know
well enough that the course of events, in
which we ourselves are actors, is affected
most powerfully by that original and in
calculable force, which we conveniently
speak of as personality. Behind the
policies of the hour, which we can analyse,
appraise, approve, and condemn, lies a
Puritanism in England. 1 Q

274 THE MORAL OF
hidden world of personal motive, which
we can only guess at, never certainly
know. When, indeed, we have succeeded
In disentangling the personal factor, we
only then find ourselves in presence of the
real problem. Why that motive In that
mind ? Why so strange, and, as it seems
to us, so perverse an estimate of values ?
Why so tragic a self-dedication to a single
object, and that neither the most obvious,
nor the most important, nor the most
exalted? The bitter question of the
Hebrew Sage might be written over the
whole complicated drama of human life, of
which the pages of history preserve the
record, ' Who knoweth the spirit of man
whether it goeth upward, and the spirit of
the beast whether it goeth downward to the
earth ? '
3. Yet the Inexplicable is not necessarily
also the unedifying. For, though there
must be recognised in personality a factor
which can never be brought within the
categories of an intelligible evolution — ^for

A GREAT FAILURE 275
' The wind bloweth where it listeth, and
thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest
not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth:
so is every one that is born of the Spi'rit ' —
yet men, as we know them, are for the
most part — let cynics and pessimists say
what they will — teachable and well-inten
tioned, erring more often from ignorance
than from deliberate choice. History is
the grand register of human achievements,
and the ' Black Book ' of human blunders,
and therefore it is a storehouse both of
precedents and of warnings. It is the
shrine of a Deity whose oracles may be
not rarely hard to understand, but which
are never flattering or false. And if it be
the case, as indeed it is, that ' History
never really repeats itself,' and that, there
fore, men can never rightly seek in the
past precise directions for their ptesent
guidance, yet it is not less the case, that
the most unchanging factor in human ex-
perience is man himself, and that the most
trustworthy principles which he can follow

276 THE MORAL OF
are those which his own troubled course
through the centuries has disclosed and
illustrated. 4. The Restoration of the Monarchy In
1660 was justly regarded by our ancestors
as an event so astonishing as almost to
merit description as miraculous. For,
after years of strife and confusion, men's
hearts had been wonderfully softened,
and the course of events strangely ordered,
so that almost suddenly an event for which
many had silently longed, but which had
seemed to have fallen out of the realm of
possibilities, actually happened. The
King was brought back by the impulse
of a common agreement, without formal
conditions, but on an honourable under
standing. What was that honourable
understanding ? Surely nothing less
than that the new settlement of religion
should be carried out in the same spirit
of harmony and good-will as had pre
vailed in the Restoration itself That
honourable understanding received formal

A GREAT FAILURE 277
expression In two Royal Declarations,
and it was not openly repudiated until
all political uses had passed out of it.
Then free course was given to the
vindictive passions, which exile and
suffering had stirred in the minds of
the triumphant Royalists, and a Settle
ment was effected, which was not only
at the time grossly oppressive, but has
left a legacy of division and resentment
under which English life still suffers.
An eminent Cambridge Historian, Pro
fessor GwATKiN, writing in a work which
reflects honour on the historical students
of this University, has pointed out that
the persecution which followed this un
happy policy, lacked even the excuses
which might have been urged for earlier
persecutions. I take leave to quote his
words : — ' Once again, and for the last time,
England returned to the old ideal
of a single national Church with no

278 THE MORAL OF
dissent allowed. And from that
Church the Puritanism which had
been struggling within it for the
last century was now shut out by
law. The national Church had
been substantially national till it
was narrowed into a party by Laud :
and now it was condemned to remain
a party in the nation — no doubt the
strongest party, but still not more
than a party : for one whole side
of the religious life of the nation was
driven into opposition. So perse
cution assumed a new character.
Elizabeth might plead that the
contest with Rome was In the main
a struggle with foreign enemies for
the very existence of Church and
State in their national form ; and
even Laud might fairly say that the
Puritans would put him down if he
did not put them down. But there
was no excuse of self-defence in
1662. The mass of the Noncon-

A GREAT FAILURE 279
formists were no enemies of the
Church, and desired no great
changes in it : and, had they been
ever so evil disposed, the Church
was utterly beyond the reach of
attack. Baxter would have had no
more chance against it than Ludo-
wiCK Muggleton. But, if there
was no valid plea of self-defence,
persecution was pure and simple
revenge on the defeated party : and
of mere revenge the better sort of
churchmen would sooner or later be
ashamed.' i
I think it would be true to say that
in the interval of acute and difificult con
troversy which had elapsed since the
downfall of the Established Church, many
Anglicans had come to form definite con
victions as to the necessity of episcopal
government, and the invalidity of non-
episcopal ministries, which assuredly were
' V. 'Cambridge Modern History,'' vol. v. p. 330.

280 THE MORAX OF
alien to the minds of the Reformers. In
their case I apprehend that the temptation
to which they yielded was not the com
paratively coarse temptation of revenge,
but the more subtle temptation to ' Do evil
that good might come.' Circumstances had
brought to them an opportunity of en
throning their principles in the National
Church by utilising the fierce passions
which swayed the victorious cavaliers.
To that temptation they yielded, and we
can now trace the miserable consequences
of their fault. ' The wrath of man worketh
not the righteousness of God,' Instead
of unifying the Church, they divided the
nation. No departure from their prin
ciples was required, for the Puritans were
prepared to accept episcopacy : only
justice to opponents, and faith in the
ultimate wisdom of doing justly. Their
failure ruined the religious unity to which
they attached so much importance, and so
discredited the ecclesiastical principles
which they professed that, after a brief

A GREAT FAILURE 281
episode of domination, marked by the
violences of the meanest persecution which
history records, those principles fell Into
disregard even within the Established
Church, and are still alien to the general
belief of English Churchmen.
5. If we regard this miserable ' Settle
ment ' from the point of view of its
victims, the same lesson emerges. The
Act of Uniformity marked the final failure
of Puritanism. That masterpiece of per
fidious violence could only have been
carried on to the statute-book by a flood-
tide of persecuting sentiment. What was
it that created such a flood-tide ? What
else than the violence which the Puritans
themselves had not scrupled to employ
in the day of their own power, and in the
interest of what they conceived to be the
truth.'' Over the Interregnum, not less
than over the Restoration, we may write
the legend : ' The wrath of man worketh
not the righteousness of God.' Anglicans
and Nonconformists must commemorate

282 THE MORAL OF
the ejection of the 2,000 Incumbents,
who preferred indigence to infamy, with
equal self-reproach, and confess their share
in the great crime in terms of a common
confession. 6. Perhaps, however, it would not be
untrue to say that the error of the Puri
tans has more to teach us now than that
of their opponents. For in truth it was a
more generous error, and it belongs to a
type of error which is never obsolete,
whereas the gross error of the Anglicans
is little likely to be defended or repeated
In any recognisable form. Religious per
secutors bid fare to become an extinct
species, but social reformers are always
with us ; and while the Anglican of the
Restoration was a religious persecutor
inspired by political panic, the Puritan of
the Commonwealth was a persecuting
social reformer inspired by religious
fervour. It will be worth our while to
appreciate his error, and endeavour to
trace Its modern forms,

A GREAT FAILURE 283
7. It is a commonplace to say that the
fundamental weakness of Puritanism as a
political creed lay in the fact that it
assumed in a nation the ethical standards
and ideals of a Church, and applied the
coercive methods proper to the first in the
interest of the last. Thus it was com
mitted to a twofold blunder. It failed to
build Its social legislation on the only
secure foundation, namely, the general
will : and it failed to respect the essential
condition of moral health, namely, indi
vidual liberty. By a process which was
really inevitable, Puritanism in politics
sank quickly into a hypocritical tyranny,
equally feeble and irritating. Never were
ideals loftier, or the self-dedication of men
to them more complete and sincere, or the
courage with which they were striven for
more amazing, yet never was defeat more
absolute and humiliating. The enthusi
astic Puritan, aflame with his dream of a
Kingdom of God on earth, could not by
the purity and fervour of his zeal extricate

284 THE MORAL OF
himself from the conditions under which
all men, saints and reformers as well as
the rest, must needs act in such a world
as this. Nor was it only in the political
sphere that his attempt to transcend the
limits of normal humanity was made, and
defeated. Within the narrower sphere of
his private life he made the same mistake,
and was overtaken by the same failure.
He could not permanently maintain him
self at the level to which his occasional
ecstasies uplifted him. The prosaic
claims of ordinary existence laid hands
on him also, and, though his fervent
modes of speech and fantastic disciplines
of habit, might disguise from himself the
humbling fact, yet it was plain enough to
his neighbours that, save for some per
sonal affectations, which were not attrac
tive or intelligible to common folk, he was
really swayed by the familiar motives, and
in bondage to the conventional desires.
He seemed, therefore, to his critics and
victims less the exponent of an unearthly

A GREAT FAILURE 285
virtue, than a dour shrewd man who
'made the best of both worlds.' When
the crash came at the Restoration, and
the whole edifice of Puritan legislation
lay in ruins, none cared to remember
the lofty ideal which had inspired it,
in the joy of release from its actual
burden. 8. Pass from the seventeenth century
to the twentieth, from an age obsessed
with theology to an age obsessed with
economics, and observe how the Puritan
Ideal emerges again, with the old excuses,
and not less with the old incapacitating
defects. The Kingdom of God shall be
established on earth by the efforts of
Christian men, and human society as a
whole shall be dragooned into an accept
ance of Christian principles — that, in brief,
is the argument alike of the Christian
Socialist and of the Puritan, and what
does it really amount to more than the
claim that ' The wrath of man,' that is, his
overbearing zeal and passion of conviction.

286 THE MORAL OF
' shall work the righteousness of God' in the
sphere of economic life ?
9. No man can know anything of
English society at the present time with
out recognising, as its salient and most
honourable feature, a genuine horror at
the hardships and inequalities of society,
and an unselfish passion for social
reform. Within the Christian Churches
these sentiments are naturally clothed in
religious phrases, and induce in many
devout men an enthusiastic advocacy of
economic change. In the Church of
England a close observer might perhaps
discern a revival of asceticism connecting
itself with the new zeal for social equality :
in the non-established Churches the re
forming movement is more frankly politi
cal, but in both alike it implies a vehement
revolt against the conditions under which
industrial society, as we know it, exists,
and a categorical demand that the
economic process itself shall be frankly
moralised. The rapid spread of

A GREAT FAILURE 287
' Socialism ' among the professedly
religious sections of the people — a
phenomenon which has a perplexing,
and even a paradoxical aspect to those
who perceive the essential divergence in
principle and objective between 'Social
ism ' and historic Christianity — is to be
explained by the direct challenge to
existing conditions which ' Socialism '
makes, and its insistent appeal from the
harshness of economic ' law ' to the
fundamental demands of morality.
io. Arguing simply from the obvious
fact that the desires of the individual
reflect his volitions, the ' Christian
Socialist ' boldly postulates that the whole
process of economic life Is within human
control, and draws the inference that the
Individual Christian must accept direct
responsibility for the social anomalies
which flow from industrial conditions.
Earnest appeals are made to Christian
men, as such, to repudiate for themselves
a share in the current system, and by

288 THB MORAL OF
organised effort to secure the triumph of
righteousness in the economic sphere.
' White lists ' of shopkeepers and em
ployers, who reach the standard agreed
upon as ' Christian,' are drawn up, and
circulated ; public opinion is ' organised '
against recalcitrants, and the attempt is
openly made to moralise industry by main
force. But this Is not all. There is at
hand a more potent instrument than the
action of individuals and Churches. The
State wields a power which no Church,
nor all the Churches combined, can wield.
A democratic State is very accessible to
pressure from public opinion, liable to be
carried away by waves of sentiment, little
disposed to criticise proposals that fall in
with its wishes. Moreover the State can
coerce reluctant citizens, and enforce
whatever policies it may approve. In
effect, this is what is happening. A view
and a treatment of economic problems
which commend themselves to Christians,
and which assume Christian convictions

A GREAT FAILURE 289
and habits of living, are being advocated
as suitable for adoption by the nation as
a whole, and the State is in danger of
being carried on a wave of altruistic
sentiment to the acceptance of policies,
which have no real supports in the
opinions and habits of the people and
involve a disregard of economic conditions
which must ultimately prohibit success.
The mere attempt thus to impose a Chris
tian standard on the nation is fertile in
moral anomalies. It is to me a cause of
deep and continuing wonder that Chris
tian people generally appear to regard
with so little concern the oppression of
individuals, which is now an accepted
method among those politicians who claim
to represent the labouring class. No im
provement of material circumstances could
really outweigh the injury to self-respect
involved ih the triumph of those methods.
Surely the Christian Church at the
present time ought gravely and anxiously
to weigh the words of the Saviour, and
Puritanism in England. 20

290 THE MORAL OF
to consider the perpetual significance of
His attitude, when He deliberately re
fused to be made a party to the secular
conflicts of men, and preferred to point
them to the hidden roots of their trouble.
' One out of the multitude said unto Him,
Master, bid my brother divide the inheri
tance with me. But He said unto him,
Man, who made Me a judge or a divider
over you? And He said unto them. Take
heed and keep yourselves from all covetous
ness ; for a mans life consisteth not in the
abundance of the things which he pos
sesseth.' II. I have ventured to indicate what
appears to me a remarkably significant
parallel to that memorable error of the
Puritans, which was so cruelly punished
250 years ago. You will not have failed
to notice that I have carefully avoided
reference to the question, which, however,
lies too near my argument to be wholly
ignored, whether indeed human life in
society be really conditioned by economic

A GREAT FAILURE 291
' laws ' which no ethical considerations
can effect. At the conclusion of a sermon
I cannot enter on the formal discussion of
that painfully interesting question, yet I
will not refuse the brief confession of my
belief Suffice it to say, then, that to my
mind it is evident that the ultimately
determining factors of economic life do lie
outside the range of individual human
volition, and therefore in a true sense are,
so far as individuals are concerned,
beyond moral control : that the Influence
of moral action on the economic process
is far more restricted than enthusiasm Is
ready to admit, or pride willing to ac
knowledge : that the power of religion In
the life of society, as in that of individuals,
must be ' made manifest in weakness ' :
that man, in the last result, must own the
empire of economic, as of physical ' law ' :
that, notwithstanding, human character is
really independent of circumstances : that,
therefore, the future of mankind cannot
really turn on the terrestrial fortunes of

292 THE MORAL OF
the race : that, to borrow sacred and
familiar language, ' we have not here an
abiding city, but we seek after the city
which is to come : ' that ' our citizenship is
in heaven.' This is the faith which can
sustain the human spirit under the cruel
and bafifling enigmas of life, and make
even the stained and sombre records of
history luminous with moral witness.
Through the mighty madness of physical
catastrophe, as through the heartless
movements of economic evolution, and
the bewildering maze of politics, I see a
stage prepared on which the divine drama
of personal life is being wondrously dis
closed. ' The spirit of man is the candle
of the Lord,' and where that ' kindly
light ' is shining, under whatever con
ditions of gloom and danger, there I know
myself to be in presence of the Shekinah
Cloud itself. Elsewhere are darkness and
the deep. ' Thy way is on the sea, and
Thy paths on the great waters, and Thy
footsteps are not known,'

A GREAT FAILURE 293
12. But my argument in this sermon
is properly independent of these conclu
sions. Extend the range of human
volition as widely as you will, bind
together ethics and economics as closely
as you can, and yet it will be the case
that you can never escape from the divine
law which St. James has tersely affirmed
in the text : ' The wrath of man worketh
not the righteousness of God.' Violence
can compel an attitude : it cannot inspire
a faith. It can dictate a policy : it cannot
alter facts. There is a true and inde
structible connection between methods
and results. ' Do men gather grapes of
thorns, or figs of thistles ? ' We may not
'do evil that good may come,' because, if
in the ardour of unreflecting zeal, or in
the pride of individual ambition, or in the
haste of an impatient enthusiasm, we
surrender ourselves to that paradox, and
cast into the furrows of society that
malefic seed, we forfeit all prospect of any
other harvest than that which belongs to

294 A GREAT FAILURE
it. There is a 'natural law in the spiri
tual world ' which may not be ignored
with prudence, or violated with impunity.
' Be not deceived : God is not mocked, for
whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he
also reap. For he that soweth unto his
own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ;
but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of
the Spirit reap eternal life,'

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, WOKING AND LONDON.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
THE CREED IN THE PULPIT
Crown Svo, cloth, 6s.
CONTENTS.
Advent. I. True and False Messiahship.
2. Christ and the Temple Market.
3. The Second Advent.
4. The Authority of Jesus.
5. The Kingdom.
Christmas. 6. The Angel's Message.
7. The Davidic Ancestry of Tesus.
8. The Divinity of Christ.
Epiphany. 9. The Star.
10. The Baptism.
1 1 . The Marriage at Cana.
12. The Works of Jesus.
13. The Healing of the Demoniac.
14. The Cursing of the Barren Fig-tree.
15. Christ, our Peace.
Good Friday.
16. The Altemative of Passiontide.
17. The Meaning of the Crucifixion.
Easter. 18. Easter, the Festival of Other- worldism.
19. The Evidence of the Resurrection.
20. Enfranchisement in Christ.
21. The Argument from' Prophecy.
22. The Brazen Serpent, a Symbol of Christ.
23. The Resurrection.
Whitsunday.
24. The Spirit of the Lord.
25. The Spirit of Adoption.
Trinity Sunday.
26. Isaiah's Vision.
27. Faith and Life.
28. Trinitarianism in the Gospel.
29. Progressive Religion.
30. The Public Use of the Athanasian Creed.

_ University LIBRARY

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