John Stoughton

“ In the death-blow aimed at popular power, morality and religion, in reference to political life, were blindly smitten. Yet whilst their creed only left scope for patience in suffering, numbers of them did not practice this patience, but were everlastingly plotting a counter-revolution. To them the State appeared as an instrument in the hands of the Church—to be controlled for its use, to afford revenues for its support, to supply means for the enforcement of its laws. ”

“ The intimate, cordial, and approving friend of Atterbury could not but be opposed to the proceedings of Tenison and Burnet. Sprat was not a man of much principle; he had joined with Dryden and Waller in poetic praise of Oliver Cromwell, he had sat on James’ High Commission, he had read the Declaration of Indulgence in servile submissiveness, but with faltering lips; he had voted for the Regency, and then taken the new oaths, and assisted at the Coronation; and though he had cleared himself from the charge of treason, there is reason to believe that he was Jacobite at heart. ”

“ Inferior to Collier in point of ability, and to Dodwell and Hickes in point of learning, Kettlewell exceeded them in the fervour of his piety and in the force of his character. Eminently spiritual and devout, with his heart fixed upon another world, he threw into his life and ministry a spiritual force, which touched as with an electric spark those who came in contact with him, and made him a centre of power, though he was free from any ambition to become a party leader. ”

“ To have excepted the Church from the obligations of the oath, would have been to make an invidious distinction between classes of the community bound by manifold political ties, and it would have been liable to the interpretation that the Government, conscious of weakness, felt afraid of the Clergy. Besides, if there be any binding form in oaths—if they afford any security at all for the stability of a throne, they certainly needed, in a pre-eminent degree at that time, to be enforced upon all Ecclesiastical persons, when so many of them were known to be disaffected to the reigning Sovereigns. ”

“ The bells were rung backwards, women shrieked, candles were placed in the windows, armed horsemen rode in the direction where the destroyers were expected; and men with their wives and children, leaving all behind, even money and plate upon the tables, ran for shelter to barns and haystacks. The terror was so great that nothing like it had occurred since the Civil Wars; but the immediate cause of it all turned out to be the shouting of a few drunken people. Again came the cry of “Fire! fire! Horse and arms! for God’s sake!”—simply because beacons were burning over the town of Halifax. ”

“ When we weigh the words employed, we are astonished to find the constitutional King of the Revolution—the Prince who came to deliver the consciences of Englishmen from the despotism of James and the tyranny of Rome—binding upon the Ministers of religion one precise and rigid form of expression as to the most profound of all theological mysteries. ”

“ Nelson believed that the Episcopal Church of England is the great conservator of orthodoxy; that her Prayer-Book is an unparalleled help to devotion; that Sacraments lie at the centre of Christianity; and that holy days are seasons of blessed revival. He wrote accordingly; and what he wrote was acceptable to members outside his own circle, not only on account of their sympathy with his Church views, but because there lay at the bottom of it this true idea, that theology should be the handmaid of devotion; that faith finds expression in worship ”

“ Who that has ever mused on the nature of the human mind, on the mystery of that unseen world which presses close around it, on the piety of such a man as Howe, and on the special love which God bears to those whom he makes so like Himself, would dare to speak lightly of such an incident? ”

“ Upon the eve of a prorogation for Easter, after the dispute about the rights of sitting and adjournment had been carried on with an obstinacy which it would be tiresome to describe, the Archbishop delivered to the members of Convocation a speech, in which he alluded to the existing dispute: “We have many enemies, and they wait for nothing more than to see the union and order of this Church, which is both its beauty and its strength, broken by those who ought to preserve it.” ”

“ Roman Catholicism to his mind was identical with a violation of the law of God and an invasion of the rights of man; yet his large views of toleration embraced Roman Catholics; he would not rob any man of the liberty of conscience, but the ascendency of the Romanist system, and the tendency of its spirit, he thoroughly abhorred as one of the worst foes to the welfare of the race. France at that moment showed herself to be more violently Roman Catholic than the Pope himself, and was seeking to establish control over Europe. ”

“ We are apt to read History amidst mental illusions. We unconsciously transfer our knowledge of results to those who were living amidst antecedents. Hence, sometimes we credit Englishmen of William’s reign with a sense of security which could only arise from a defeat of plots, which then appeared by no means certain. Indeed, the stability of the Revolution Settlement was not assured until the middle of the next century. ”

“ It is not a little surprising that so many good men, both Churchmen and Dissenters, who could not have been indifferent to the interests of morality, should have lauded, as they did, the Hero of the Revolution, both living and dead, as if he had been the very ideal of virtue and piety. ”

“ John Locke brought out the philosophy of Toleration. Toleration had become the genius of his character. Men whose minds have many sides, and who, from large human sympathies, tolerate those who differ from them, are made what they are by wide intercourse with the world. ”

“ If the Church were separated from the State to-morrow, a connexion between religion and politics would remain.
The two great political Revolutions of England in the 17th century sprung from religious feeling, from religious antipathies, from religious aspirations. Fiery impulses, kindled by faith, did more to scorch and destroy civil despotism than any constitutional traditions, any maxims of secular policy. Religion was the prime mover in the events of 1688. Not only did ministers of religion take part in it, but religion itself entered deeply into the political question. ”

“ The essential conditions of a Convocation of Canterbury are that it must meet by authority from the Crown; that it consist of two Houses, one composed of Bishops, and the other of Presbyters, both purely clerical; that the members of the Lower House must be dignitaries, together with Proctors, elected by the Clergy, and that nothing which they do has binding force without the consent of the Sovereign. What is there in these distinctive features of an English Convocation to connect it with Synods before the era of State Establishments? ”

“ One person refuses to take them in the sense affixed to them by another, and will employ a meaning of his own. The same proposition thus becomes to two different minds entirely different things, and the utmost confusion is the consequence. Theories to explain facts are confounded with the facts themselves, and a man who only denies a particular theory, is charged with denying the fact to which the theory relates. Hence, whilst Sherlock and South were really contending for the doctrine of the Trinity, each regarded the other as giving it up. ”

“ In estimating the worth of what was done at this period, it betrays a narrow philosophy to harp upon the word “Toleration” as being an offensive term, and to ask, Has any man a right to talk of tolerating another man in the worship which his conscience bids him render to the infinitely glorious Creator? It is a curious fact that the word was not used in the Bill from beginning to end. It is entitled, “An Act for exempting their Majesties’ Protestant subjects dissenting from the Church of England from the penalties of certain laws.” ”

“ He longed, as his days ebbed away, to embrace within his fellowship the good and wise of all parties; consequently lines of distinction between church and church, between sect and sect, became in his eyes paler and paler. And I cannot help seeing that the disputes amongst Nonconformist ministers in London—the unhappy divisions arising out of the Crisp controversy—vexed him exceedingly, and loosened a little the bonds which had bound him to the Independent body. A moderate Congregationalist in earlier life, he appears latterly to have sympathized most with Presbyterians. ”

“ The law of 1662 had told the Presbyterian he must denounce the doctrine of resistance—the law of 1689 did not tell the Episcopalian he must denounce the doctrine of the Divine right of Kings. At the earlier era a political dogma had been imposed as a requisite for clerical office; at the later era no political dogma was imposed at all. Conscience is sacred; yet whilst I give credit to Clergymen who scrupled to swear allegiance to the new dynasty, I cannot discover the reasonableness of their scruples. ”

“ Gentlemen, the end of the Test is not religion, but preferment; if any one therefore should be hindered upon just pretences for religion, then religion is not at the bottom of it. This, gentlemen, is a matter of great importance. It is in the Catechism that Christ is really in the Lord’s Supper; nor hath it been objected against the Church of Rome, by the Church of England, that He was not really, but by way of presentation, and that is a great reproach. ”

“ Kidder indeed never enjoyed the reputation for sanctity possessed by Ken. Tillotson, Tenison, Burnet, Stillingfleet, Patrick, Cumberland, and Fowler, were in mental power superior to Sancroft, Thomas, Lake, White, and Frampton; and as to personal religion, which admits not of precise judgment, there is no evidence that they were inferior. Stratford might easily surpass the disreputable Cartwright; the name of Hough is as illustrious as the name of Samuel Parker is disgraceful, and the name of Timothy Hall obscure. ”

“ False systems and ideas are found to be impracticable; as such they are given up by everybody. It is of no use to preserve them; they must be thrown away. So with the doctrine of religious intolerance. Englishmen could endure it in its old form no longer. A new spirit had taken possession of the age, and ancient restrictions must at last be sacrificed. But for such facts, men like Leonard Busher and John Goodwin might have gone on arguing for ever in vain. ”

“ A little while afterwards an instance occurs of clerical immorality, and of that kind of trouble which has often disturbed episcopal peace: a Norwich rector was accused of “lewdness,” amounting to a capital crime.
The case was undoubted. It came to the Bishop’s knowledge. To conceal the fact would have been to connive at the sin, to make it known to endanger the culprit’s life. Indeed, to conceal it was no longer possible, and to stifle the charge was felt to be a scandal to religion. ”

“ CHAPTER XII. Convocational history in the reign of William III., from the year 1689 to the year 1700, is simply a history of writs and prorogations. During that period no business was ever transacted, the Lower House never met. Tillotson and Tenison, knowing the temper prevalent in the Church, aware of the influence of the nonjuring Clergy, sensible of the wide diffusion of sympathy with them, and alive to the fact of an extensive revival of High-Church principles, were apprehensive of a collision between the two Houses in case they proceeded to business. ”

“ Tillotson made a large use of Scripture, but the common key-note with him was the reasonableness of the doctrines he laid down. I should suppose that his appearance, his voice, and his manner in the pulpit—the fact of what he was, as well as the circumstance of what he said, and that indefinable something which contributes so much to a speaker’s popularity—added immensely to the impressiveness of his elocution. There is for modern readers nothing attractive in his style, quite the reverse. I know scarcely any other popular sermons so hard to read. Some are exceedingly dry and uninteresting. ”

“ There were a few in Parliament too, of firm minds and remoter views, who, reflecting that the Dissenting interest had been always as much attached to liberty, as the Church of England had been to prerogative, thought that opposition and liberty would be buried in the same grave, and that great factions should be kept alive, both in Church and in State for the sake of the State itself.”—Dalrymple, i. ”

“ The Reformation was pre-eminently an ecclesiastical movement, but its political entanglements are obvious to everybody. The Civil Wars were struggles for civil liberty—for the rights of the people against the oppression of the Crown; but the religious spirit, at first hidden in the heart of those conflicts, was so strong, and soon burst out in other forms so conspicuously, that the Commonwealth of England and the Protectorate of Cromwell became entangled with ecclesiastical and theological controversies. The Revolution of 1688 came in the wake of the Puritan movement. ”

“ Old Republicans and old Royalists, Anglican Churchmen who hated Rome, Latitudinarian Churchmen who loved liberty, and Evangelical Churchmen who believed in Calvinism—Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, the first anxious for comprehension, the second and third wishing only for freedom of worship—all had been turning their thoughts for some time to the Prince of Orange as the star of their hopes. English soldiers, English sailors, and English Divines, had publicly presented themselves in the old Gothic Binnenhof of the Hague, or held private interviews with the Dutch Governor. ”

“ Books and pamphlets were not the only nor the main agencies which brought about the Religious Revolution of 1689. It is remarkable, that the first of Locke’s famous letters on Toleration was printed in Holland, in the Latin language, in the year 1689, and was not translated into English and circulated in this country time enough to assist in the passing of the Toleration Bill. It threw into form, and it made plain to the common sense of humanity, those sentiments which were almost universal amongst the Dutch, and were beginning to be common amongst the English. ”

“ Every word proves his simplicity and conscientiousness, but a weaker set of reasons, and a set of reasons more pedantically expressed, one rarely meets with. Both the moral and intellectual sides of the man’s character are apparent throughout. But for the theory of the divine right of kings, and the subject’s duty of passive obedience, which acted as a spell upon his mind, it would be impossible to conceive how a person of ordinary intelligence could advocate such a scheme as he did. ”

“ The political views of the Nonjurors were narrow in the extreme, and though to be irreligious was a thing they dreaded most of all, their views of the State were of a very irreligious kind. They took away from it all moral and religious life, and if they consistently followed out their own theory, they took away all conscience from the subjects of a legitimate and anointed King. Their system exalted such a person to the highest point of favour, and degraded the people to the lowest step of slavery. ”