CHAPTER XX.
The Naseby triumph was won, not by the Scotch army, or by the English Presbyterian generals, but chiefly by Cromwell and his Independent Ironsides. They sustained the hottest brunt of the battle, their charges bore down the brilliant cavaliers; and they, therefore, claimed the greenest laurels reaped on that memorable field. They had become the sworn opponents of the men who were so busy in laying the corner-stones of the new ecclesiastical establishment. Jealousy of Presbyterian power was an influence which, combined with a disapproval of the mode of carrying on the war, produced the self-denying ordinance, by which certain officers of that persuasion were removed from command. Not that Cromwell and others had any great distaste for Presbyterianism considered in itself, since in doctrinal tenets and religious feeling they agreed with the Genevan school; but with the exclusiveness and intolerance of its ecclesiastical polity they were at issue: and they were determined that, while they had tongues to speak and hands to fight, they would not allow a Presbyterian any more than an Episcopal Church to trample upon the liberties of other denominations. They had fought for religious freedom as their own right, and were prepared to concede it, with certain limitations, to their brethren; nor would they now, in the hour of their success, surrender the prize for which they had fought and bled. As the Naseby heroes assumed an attitude of resolute opposition to the Presbyterians, the effect soon became visible at Westminster.
Unpopularity of the Scotch Army.
New elections contributed to alter the relative position of these parties. New writs were issued by the Speaker of the House of Commons, in August, to fill up vacant seats. Before the end of the year, one hundred and forty-six fresh members took the oath; and within twelve months eighty-nine more did the same, amongst whom were Blake, Ludlow, Algernon Sidney, Ireton, Skippon, Massey, and Hutchinson.
1645.
There was another cause at work in the same direction. The Scotch army had been the main pillar of Presbyterian hope. In almost every letter which the indefatigable Robert Baillie wrote home to his friends this fact appears. No doubt, in the simplicity of his heart, and without any consciousness of inconsistency, he could stand up in any Edinburgh or London pulpit and take for his text, "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal;" and yet, no man was more filled with the idea that the success of Presbyterianism in England depended upon Scotch soldiers. To take one instance from a sheaf of quotations. "If by any means we would get these our regiments, which are called near thirty, to sixteen thousand marching men, by the blessing of God, in a short time we might ruin both the malignant party and the sectaries. The only strength of both these is the weakness of our army. The strength, motion, and success of that army, in the opinion of all here, is their certain and quick ruin.... It's our only desire to have the favour of God, and to hear of the speedy march of our army."[550] But at the time of which we now speak the Scotch soldiers had become very unpopular. Our laborious correspondent expostulates with the authorities of his own country, not only on the dilatoriness of their military movements, but on the demoralized condition of their troops; so that, as he said, if justice were not done "on unclean, drunken, blasphemous, plundering officers," Scotland would "stink in the nose" of England. He was frightened to hear what many told him of ravishers, blasphemers, and Sabbath-breakers, being left unpunished. No one could be more zealous for the discipline of the forces than he who thus discloses his bad opinion of their character and his fear of the ruinous consequences. Letters in the State Paper Office indicate what ground there was for Baillie's apprehensions. These letters complain of the lawless behaviour of Major Blair's men, stationed in Derbyshire, who broke open houses, beat women, and robbed the carriers as they came to Winkworth market. And so it happened, that while the Scotch Presbyterian army, which was meant to be England's saviour, was sinking into had repute, Cromwell's Independents were being praised up to the very skies.[551]
The case stood thus. The Scotch and most of the Presbyterians of the Westminster Assembly were, on the one side, for putting down the sects, and setting up an ecclesiastical rule which should have government support without government direction, and exclude from toleration systems different from their own; and on the other side were the army, the Erastians, and the Independents, who, differing from each other in religious opinion and character, were politically united, forming an irresistible phalanx, which exhibited as its watchwords such mottoes as these: "State Control over a State Church;" "For other Churches full Toleration." Two questions had to be decided. Should not Presbyterianism, established by the civil power, be subject to the interference of that power? Should not freedom of worship and polity be allowed to sects dissenting from the Establishment? There was also a third—Was Presbyterianism of Divine right?
The Power of the Keys.
1645.
Let us see how the three were handled.
I. The question touching "the Power of the Keys" was debated in the Assembly, and then in the House of Commons. According to Presbyterian doctrine, the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven were committed to the ruling officers of the Church. They had power to call before them any member, to enquire into his spiritual state, and to suspend him from the Lord's Supper, if found unworthy of communion. Church censures, however, while independent of the magistrates' authority as to their origin, were, in their execution, if necessary, to be supported by the magistrates' assistance. The Independents agreed with the Presbyterians thus far, that the most careful order ought to be maintained in the Church of Christ; but the Independents contended that discipline was a duty pertaining to the congregation at large, and that no individual should be set aside, or cut off from Christian privileges, except by the votes of the community. At the same time, they excluded all magisterial interference, and could not accept of any enforcement of their own decisions by legal penalties. The Erastians took a very different view, and believed that communion ought to be perfectly open, and that it should be left to every man's conscience to decide respecting his own fitness for receiving the Lord's Supper. Crimes only, they said, deserved social penalties, and these were to be adjudged by civil tribunals. The Presbyterians carried their own point in the Westminster Assembly. The keys, contrary to the Independent idea, were to be in the hands of Church officers, and not to be held by the congregation at large. The keys, contrary to Erastian notions, were to be exclusively under spiritual, not at all under civil control.
When this question passed from the Assembly to the Commons, and the time came for deciding the matter, the conclusion of the Assembly was annulled. The House determined, that if any person found himself aggrieved by the proceedings of a Presbytery, he might not only appeal to a superior Church tribunal, but he might bring his case for final adjudication before the High Court of Parliament. Criminal charges were reserved entirely for the magistrates' decision, whose certificate was necessary for the suspension of offenders. A committee of Lords and Commons also had vested in them a discretionary power to adjudge any cases of scandal unspecified in the rules for suspension which had been drawn up by the Assembly.[552]
The Power of the Keys.
The Erastians, who were at this time the leaders of the political Independent party in the House of Commons, thus defeated their opponents. By fixing the control of ecclesiastical judicature in the civil magistracy and in Parliament, they established their own distinctive principle, which was utterly subversive of the polity advocated by the Presbyterians. The Church was altogether degraded from its position as a kingdom not of this world; and also discipline became so fettered, that in many cases its exercise proved to be impossible. The rules prepared by the Assembly, and sanctioned by the Commons, appeared sufficiently formidable to fence the Lord's table against the approach of improper communicants; yet the very minute specification of sundry offences, as in all cases of precise canon law, really presented an obstacle in the way of discipline respecting unspecified offences against morality and religion. All such minute rules are inherently vicious, and are singularly out of harmony with New Testament methods of legislation. Moreover, the interference of magistrates and of senatorial committees were likely to render these rules inoperative; and in cases which the rules did not reach, such interference was not calculated to produce ecclesiastical purity.
One object of the Presbyterians was the establishment of a Church of incorrupt religion and of undefiled morality. The Puritan Presbyter resembled the Anglican Archbishop as an apostle of uniformity; but the former thought much more of moral reformation, and much less of ritual worship, than the latter. The Church discipline of Presbyterian courts came nearer to the Church discipline of Archdiaconal ones than many people suppose; but what is truly moral and religious was raised by Presbyterians above what is ceremonial in a measure far beyond the conception of Romanists or Anglo-Catholics. The old ecclesiastical courts were overturned, many cases of immorality were no longer subject to jurisdiction; and Presbyterians, who, like Anglicans, treated the nation as a Church, aimed by their own system to supply what they considered a great defect in the moral government of the people.
1645.
The English Presbyterians essayed to walk in the path of their Scotch brethren; and the general conviction of the latter as to the divinity of that system must be borne in mind. Amongst an equal number of persons, where one man in England believed prelacy to be a divine institution, a dozen might be found in Scotland, who were not only assured that their Church rested upon the foundation of apostles and prophets, but were resolved also, in its defence, to go to prison, to the gallows, or to the stake. Church power bore in their eyes the stamp of Heaven, and owed nothing to Acts and Ordinances of Parliament. In Scotland, the Reformation had not been, as in England, mainly the revolt of the laity against the clergy. The clergy had led the way, like a grand prophet choir, they had headed the host. They had been in the van as the nation marched out of Egypt; and Moses did not more rejoice over Pharaoh than John Knox had done over the Man of Sin. Some will say there was plenty of fanaticism in the Reformation on the other side the Tweed; but it must be admitted that there was certainly no time-serving. Braver men never trod God's earth; and the sons now brought some of their fathers' fire over the border.
But, however admirable the purpose of the Presbyterians might be, the means employed for its accomplishment were inappropriate, dangerous, and unjust. They were inappropriate, because purity of discipline has ever been found impossible in a State establishment, whether it be the superior, the ally, or the subordinate of the civil power; for a Church which comprehends, or is meant to comprehend, a whole nation within its pale, must necessarily be open to great laxity of communion. The means, too, were dangerous, because to vest the power of discipline, entailing civil consequences, in a body of local officers, was to place the social position and interests of individuals at the mercy of a few in their own parish, who possibly might be induced by unworthy motives to give trouble and annoyance. And the means also were unjust, because the penal enforcement of uniformity in doctrine, worship, and polity, contravened the rights of conscience, and deprived all Nonconformists of religious liberty. It was not on the side of opposition to strict discipline and pure fellowship that religious Independents had any sympathy with the Erastians in their anti-Presbyterian warfare. Most earnestly did the former inculcate the importance of these very things, and, for the sake of them, were prepared to sacrifice many temporal advantages. What they objected to was, first, the secular power which the new Church wished to manage and employ for its own purposes; and secondly, the intolerance towards rival sects with which the supremacy of that Church would be connected. The Independents maintained, what wise and thoughtful men, though widely removed from Erastian tendencies, have ever since done, that if there be an Establishment at all, it is far better that the State should be mistress of the Church than that the Church should be mistress of the State. No doubt, the political alliance between the Erastian and the Independent damaged somewhat the apparent consistency of the latter; but in this respect, as to what he suffered, he only shared in the common fate of religious persons when entering into political combinations; and as to what he did, he only acted like many individuals since of eminent conscientiousness; for in fact he was glad of help, from whatever quarter it might come, in his endeavours to prevent despotism and to resist intolerance.
Toleration.
1645.
II. The question of the keys, if it did not exactly involve, certainly approached the question of toleration. At any rate, Church censures, when left to the presbytery of a parish, gave little hope of religious liberty being conceded to the parishioners. But, beyond mere implication and probable contingency, there existed the fact that the Presbyterian regarded the suppression of opinions and usages contrary to his own as an inexorable obligation. In addition to the legal enactment of discipline, he asked power to punish sectaries. The ministers were ardent in endeavouring to prove the magistrates' duty to put down heresy and schism. It formed the theme of numerous sermons preached in St. Margaret's to the House of Commons. The City Divines, in their weekly meetings at Sion College, debated upon the best method of securing that end. The zealots of the party would, if possible, have moved the Corporation of London to throw its influence into their scale; but, just then, certain political complications checked the movement, and deep lamentations over the faithless citizens immediately ensued. So far did some of the Londoners go in this kind of backsliding, that they even spoke of the Assembly being dissolved[553]—an extreme measure, which the Lords Say and Wharton, in their jealousy of ecclesiastical encroachments upon the liberties of the people, had also proposed in the Upper House.[554] At the same period, books and pamphlets were written by Prynne and others, to establish the claims of the new ecclesiastical polity, and the righteousness of treating all sectaries as obstinate offenders.[555] One of their advocates, in the heat of his eloquence, declared, "that to let men serve God according to the persuasion of their own consciences is to cast out one devil, that seven worse might enter."[556] The Scotch were too much interested in the subject, and took too prominent a part in the settlement of ecclesiastical affairs in England, to be silent at this crisis.[557] But the style of the letter which they sent to Parliament ruffled the tempers of many of the members, though it received at the time a courteous and dignified notice; but two months afterwards, when another address of a similar character, yet less offensive in style, came from the same quarter, and was published without authority, the Houses voted the "papers false and scandalous, and, as such, to be burnt by the hand of the hangman."[558]
Toleration.
1645.
The Presbyterian advocates, as they insisted upon the excision of heresy and schism by the sword of the State, never attempted to do so on grounds of political expediency with the idea, that by hunting out heresy and schism they would be getting at serpents of treason hidden underneath. Very different were the grounds of their policy from some selected by the Anglican Church at the Restoration. Fidelity to Christ's crown—pure zeal for His covenant—were put forth, and sincerely felt in a number of cases, as the main, if not the sole, motive of the Presbyterian crusade against hated sects. Perhaps sometimes Independents and Presbyterians did not clearly understand one another. The former might, at times, seem to countenance the moral toleration of error and sin, and to be thinking more of liberty than of truth. On the other hand, the Presbyterian polemic might sometimes only intend to pour out his fiery wrath upon sympathy with falsehood and evil when he denounced toleration; but certainly this was not always the case, and it may be added that, generally, he prized truth much more than liberty. Neither side seemed to discern that the defence of freedom in religion must rest simply on the civil right of every man to pursue his own course, to declare his own opinions, and to act according to his own convictions, so long as he does not interfere with his neighbours who wish to do the same. We are prepared to judge favourably of the motives of the Presbyterians; but if their motives in some degree redeem their character, it must be admitted that men holding the opinions of toleration which many at least of that party did, though they may act under the influence of the best feelings, are very dangerous persons to be at the head of public affairs. If, under the idea that they have a mission from Heaven for the purpose, and with a desire to promote the glory of God, they set to work to gather the tares from amidst the wheat, woe be to the culture of the field altogether, and to the growth even of the good grain. He who perfectly understood this subject interdicted all such interference, no matter how pious the intent, and laid down a law which is utterly inconsistent with all intolerance—"Let both grow together to the harvest." After His decision on the subject, for any persons, however wise and good in other respects, to attempt the extermination of error and evil by the scythe of civil penalties, is sheer fanaticism, whether the endeavour be made by a Protestant ecclesiastical court or by a Roman Catholic inquisition.
Divine Right of Presbyterianism.
III. The doctrine of the Divine right of Presbyterianism was bound up with its scheme of discipline and its principle of intolerance. The majority of the Westminster Assembly would not rest content with the establishment of their Church by the simple decree of Parliament. They required it to be recognized by the State as of Divine authority. Not only did the Presbyterian say that he believed—which was consistent and proper—that his own system rested upon the teaching of the New Testament; but he demanded that the highest power in the realm should say the same, and enforce its peculiarities, as requirements clothed with a celestial sanction. This doctrine the Independents opposed, on the ground that they considered their own Church polity to be nearer the Word of God. The Erastians also opposed it, because they did not believe in the Divine foundation of any ecclesiastical rule at all. Both parties alike opposed it on the principle, that if the State chose to endow a Church, the State must be left to do so on its own terms. In this way it happened, as it often does in controversy, that parties proceeding from different and even opposite points, found themselves at length side by side, in honest and hearty alliance, so far as related to a resistance of common foe. But it should be borne in mind that it was not in the character of religionists that Independents and Erastians formed their combination, but in the character of patriots and politicians, who were agreed in resisting a body of men whose success in the advocacy of intolerance they judged would be as inimical to the temporal welfare as it would be destructive to the religious liberties of the nation.
1645.
There were debates on the jus Divinum in the Assembly, and sterner and more important debates on the same subject in the House of Commons. The five brethren argued from Scripture for Congregationalism against Presbyterianism; and Whitelocke and Selden employed their learning and logic to prove that the Bible did not decide the question one way or the other. At length a crisis came. The Presbyterians of the Assembly, in concert with their Scotch brethren, complained of the Erastian clauses in the Parliamentary ordinance for discipline, and asserted the Divine right of the scheme of government. The House of Commons declared that the Assembly had no right to complain of the decision of Parliament, since the Divines had been called together simply to give advice, and that with giving advice their functions came to an end. Members spoke of the penalties of a præmunire, and held up that which has been described as the "fatal spell before which spiritual pretensions sunk exorcised, mysterious as excommunication and no less terrible in its vagueness."[559] At the same time, they called on the Assembly to answer certain queries as to the nature and extent of the jure Divino claim. This was done simply with the view of putting off a serious collision with the Assembly. But whatever want of earnestness there might be on the side of Parliament in proposing the questions, no want of earnestness is seen on the side of the Assembly in answering them. Yet, when the replies were ready in July, 1646, the Assembly became afraid of a final rupture, and, under the terror of a præmunire, abstained from publishing what they had prepared. The Divines of Sion College, however, took up the controversy, and would have vigorously pursued it, had not Parliament cut short the matter by peremptorily insisting that the ordinances issued in March should be obeyed. After relieving their consciences by an explanation of their views, these reverend persons submitted[561] to the authority which they found it impossible to resist.
Westminster Assembly.
As we shall not have occasion again to notice the Westminster Assembly, it is convenient here to conclude its history. No Convocation ever sat so long. Gathered in the summer of 1643, it pursued its work till the autumn of 1647, when, the main business of the ecclesiastical commission being completed, the Scotch members took their leave. But from that time up to the winter of 1648-9, a few of the Divines continued to examine ministerial candidates; and afterwards a small committee met for the same purpose every Thursday morning, even as late as the spring of 1652. Upon the breaking-up of the Long Parliament by Oliver Cromwell, this appendage silently disappeared without any formal dissolution. Neither before nor since did any convocation of the Church in England go over so much ground, and accomplish so much work. In this respect it rivals the Council of Trent. The whole range of dogmatic divinity, together with ecclesiastical polemics, and devotional formularies, came under discussion. Notice has been taken of the partial revision of the Thirty-nine Articles, of the Directory for worship, and of the humble advice for the ordination of ministers, and the settling of Presbyterian government. It is almost needless to say that the Westminster Divines prepared a confession of faith. A committee, including Reynolds, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, drew up this document. They divided themselves into sections, each taking a specific topic. When a chapter had been fully prepared it was submitted to the Assembly, and then again subjected to minute examination, sentence by sentence, and word by word. There were long and tough debates on the doctrine of election. Neal says, "All the Divines were in the anti-Arminian scheme, yet some had a greater latitude than others. I find in my MS. the dissent of several members against some expressions relating to reprobation, to the imputation of the active as well as passive obedience of Christ, and to several passages in the chapters of liberty of conscience and Church discipline; but the confession, as far as it related to articles of faith, passed the Assembly and Parliament by a very great majority."[561]
1643-52.
The confession consists of thirty-three chapters—the first on the Holy Scriptures, the last on the final judgment. The doctrines of Calvinism are sharply defined in an order and in a form which many theologians of the present day, substantially Calvinistic, cannot adopt. Certain chapters, interspersed with the rest—the twentieth, on Christian liberty and liberty of conscience, the thirtieth, on Church censures, and the thirty-first, on synods and councils—plainly exhibit the intolerance of the times in connection with the principles of Presbyterian government. As everything which the Assembly did had to be submitted to Parliament for its sanction, this theological manifesto came under the consideration of that supreme court. The doctrinal portions were ratified by the two Houses, but the particulars as to discipline were "recommitted;" which, under the circumstances, though it did not amount to a formal, yet proved a virtual rejection.[562]
Westminster Assembly.
Two catechisms, the longer and the shorter, were also prepared at Westminster,—the last of which, with its scripture proofs, was much more familiar to the children of Nonconformists in past generations than in the present. The Annotations which bear the name of the Assembly were, in fact, the production of a committee appointed by Parliament, including learned men who never belonged to the Assembly at all. The Assembly also undertook the revision of psalmody, which has obtained less notice than it deserves. Congregations were getting tired of Sternhold and Hopkins; consequently Parliament recommended there should be a new version. One, by Mr. Rouse, found favour with the Commons, and was submitted to the consideration of the Divines, who, after a careful perusal and some emendations, pronounced it "profitable to the Church, should it be publicly sung." But Mr. Rouse had a rival in Mr. Barton, who likewise had prepared a new psalter. He petitioned the Lords in favour of his own work, and obtained their patronage. They passed a resolution, enquiring of the Divines why Mr. Barton's book might not be used as well as others? The Lower House soon afterwards decided that Mr. Rouse's psalms and no others should be sung in all churches and chapels within the kingdom of England, the dominion of Wales, and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. The Assembly, in answer to the queries of the House of Lords, replied that, if liberty should be given to people to sing whatever translation they liked, several different books would be used even in one and the same congregation at the same time, "which would be a great distraction and hindrance to edification." This was such an extraordinary contingency, that to contemplate it as at all probable, indicated the existence of an astonishing amount of disunion and obstinacy. It is a significant fact that, whilst in the Episcopal Church of England, after the imposition of the Prayer Book, the choice of a form of psalmody was left to the discretion of the clergy and their congregations, the Presbyterians, when in power, would not allow such liberty, but endeavoured to secure uniformity in the worship of praise, such as in the worship of prayer they did not even permit.[563]
1643-52.
The Westminster Assembly has seldom been treated with justice. By Episcopal Churchmen, too generally, it is depreciated; and by some it is dismissed with a few words of unconcealed contempt. Scotch Presbyterians have extravagantly extolled it; and Neal, the Independent historian of Puritanism is accused of damning it with faint praise. Clarendon speaks of the Assembly in words of scorn; and Walker, still more deeply prejudiced, writes against it with wearisome vituperation. Milton, who had incurred the censure of the Divines by his doctrine of divorce, could not be expected to pronounce an equitable judgment on their merits; and we do not wonder at the resentment which burns against his censurers through certain magnificently sonorous sentences in the third book of his History of England.[564] Baxter's words have been often quoted on this subject, and though not free from partiality, they deserve more than those of any other man to be repeated: "The Divines, there congregate, were men of eminent learning and godliness, and ministerial abilities and fidelity; and being not worthy to be one of them myself, I may the more freely speak that truth which I know, even in the face of malice and envy, that, as far as I am able to judge by the information of all history of that kind, and by any other evidences left us, the Christian world, since the days of the apostles, had never a synod of more excellent Divines (taking one thing with another) than this synod and the synod of Dort were."[565]
Westminster Assembly.
1643-52.
This is high praise; but it comes nearer to the truth than the condemnatory verdicts pronounced by some others. The godliness of the men is proved by the spirit of their writings, and by the history of their lives. Their talents and attainments even Milton does not attempt to deny. No one would think of comparing any of them with Jeremy Taylor in point of eloquence; and in breadth of sacred learning, in a certain skilful mastery of knowledge, and in the majesty and grace of polemical argument, the best were not equal to Hammond and Pearson. Cosin would surpass them all in some branches of study, which they would account useless. Certainly, none of them had the sagacious quaintness of Bishop Hall, or the inexhaustible wit of Thomas Fuller; but quaintness and wit are qualities not needed in theological conferences. Even superior eloquence and large accomplishments may, in such case, be dispensed with. The Westminster Divines had learning—scriptural, patristic, scholastical, and modern—enough, and to spare; all solid, substantial, and ready for use.[566] Lightfoot and Selden were of ponderous but not unwieldy erudition; and Arrowsmith and Calamy, though less known to literary fame, were ripe and ready scholars. Caryl and Greenhill had abundance of knowledge; Dr. Goodwin was, in many respects, the greatest Divine amongst them all. Moreover, in the perception and advocacy of what is most characteristic and fundamental in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they were, as a body, considerably in advance of some who could put in a claim to equal, and perhaps higher scholarship. They had a clear, firm grasp of evangelical truths. The main defect and the chief reproach of the Assembly consisted in the narrowness and severity of their Calvinism, and in the fierce and persistent spirit of intolerance manifested by the majority.
