CHAPTER IX.
Tillotson, shortly before his death, as already related, was engaged with his Episcopal brethren in drawing up certain ecclesiastical regulations to be issued on their authority, but which he afterwards felt would be more effective if published in the King’s name. Shortly after Tenison’s accession to the Archiepiscopate, injunctions were sent forth by Royal command, touching points exactly of the nature indicated to have been discussed in prior Episcopal meetings at Lambeth. When we consider the time of their appearance, we have no doubt the new Archbishop adopted the draft of his predecessor. It appeared in the form of a Royal proclamation, recommending care in conferring orders, condemning pluralities and non-residence, and urging upon Bishops to watch over their Clergy, and promote, through them, the celebration of Sacraments, the visitation of the sick, and the catechetical instruction of the young.[239]
1695.
The publication of these articles in the King’s name is a fact not to be lightly passed over. Royal letters had been issued by Queen Elizabeth for the reform of ecclesiastical affairs, yet none of them dealt so particularly with abuses as did this mandate of William’s. It is remarkable that Charles I.—the opposite in ecclesiastical and political sentiments to the hero of the Revolution—had addressed to Laud a number of instructions, which strongly resemble those now under notice.[240] After the Restoration, although Charles II. by several missives had exercised immediate authority over the Church, and had given explicit directions as to how the Clergy were to preach,[241] such orders as approach nearest to those of William are found to bear the simple impress of archiepiscopal authority.[242] What had been attempted in the way of Church reform by Sancroft appears in the shape of an agreement between himself and the other Prelates to do things formerly enunciated.[243] The grounds upon which Tillotson and Tenison arrived at the determination to seek Church reform under cover of Royal authority, do not appear; but the proclamations indicate that, at the time, the chief spiritual rulers of the land must have had high views of the prerogatives of the Crown. If since Elizabeth’s Reformation the title of Head of the Church[244] had not been legally employed, all which that title could be taken to mean, successive Archbishops of Canterbury—Tillotson and Tenison—were ready to concede; and what is a little curious, in making this concession they could find a precedent in the acts of Archbishop Laud under Charles I. A still more striking example of the interference of the Crown with purely religious subjects will soon come under our notice.
ECCLESIASTICAL REGULATIONS.
The fact is, that what is generally called Erastianism attained more power than ever after the Revolution. The State ruled the Church. In the matter of Toleration it maintained the liberties of Nonconformity against the designs of bigoted Churchmen, and in the management of internal affairs it sought to promote the interests of a moderate and salutary reform.
A circular from the Archbishop, addressed to each of his suffragan Bishops, followed on the 16th of July, 1695; and in it, without referring to the Royal communication made in the month of February, he specifies a number of particulars which had been considered by him and such of his brethren as were at the time in or near London. These particulars relate to certain religious matters—to the public reading in church of the Act against profane cursing and swearing, and to catechetical instruction—but they relate also to a number of subjects connected with temporalities, such as the prevention of Simoniacal covenants, the better payment of curates, dilapidations, glebe lands, surrogates, and the removal of clergymen from one diocese to another. The employment of proper care in examinations for orders—a point of great religious importance—is, however, enforced at length, and each Bishop is urged to lay it upon the conscience of the candidate, to observe such fasting as is prescribed upon Ember-days, and to give himself to meditation and prayer. It is worth noticing that the third of the injunctions calls attention to the 55th canon, which enjoins the bidding of prayer for the King before sermon; “it being commonly reported,” says the Archbishop, “that it is the manner of some in every diocese either to use the Lord’s Prayer (which the canons prescribe as the conclusion of the prayer, and not the whole prayer) or at least, to leave out the King’s titles, and to forbear to pray for the Bishops as such.”[245] The sentence reveals a state of things serious, if not alarming, both to the King and the Bishops. Plainly there brooded disaffection towards the existing power in Church and State. Jacobites and Nonjurors troubled the British Israel, and manifested their feelings in the House of God. Parish churches, if not cathedrals, presented Sunday after Sunday proofs of disloyalty and spiritual revolt. A new species of Nonconformity ate its way into the hearts of Englishmen—a fact to be illustrated in subsequent portions of this history.
1695.
Between the months of February and July, to which the Royal and the Episcopal letters belonged, there occurred an incident which comes in juxtaposition with what has been related of ecclesiastical powers exercised by the Crown. The Archbishop of Canterbury was in the month of May nominated as the first of the Lords Justices of England for the administration of public affairs during His Majesty’s absence in Holland and Flanders.
William had repeatedly left England since the Revolution. In 1691 he was absent from January to March, and from May to October; in 1692 from March to October; in 1693 from March to November; in 1694 from May to November. Like Richard Coeur de Lion, like the three Edwards, like the fifth Henry, William of Orange was a man of war from his youth, and his military vocation led him, as it led them, away from the peaceful duties of home government. As they at the head of steel-clad knights and sturdy bowmen marched over the Tweed or through Normandy, Picardy, and Poitou; as they led crusaders to fight battles at Jaffa, Askelon, and Jerusalem, so did he who now swayed the English sceptre, carry his troops over into the Netherlands to bear the brunt of the Landen fight, or recover the strongholds of Namur.
LORDS JUSTICES.
When William had been abroad before in the life-time of Mary, she ruled as Queen Consort, rendering a special regency needless; now that she slept in her grave, it was necessary that representatives appointed by the Crown should during the Royal absence govern the threefold realm.
Churchmen in ancient times had held the highest offices in the State, and had been the Prime Ministers of Kings. Whilst Richard I. was pining in captivity on his return from Palestine, Archbishop Hubert Walter acted as Chief Justiciary of the kingdom, and even in person laid siege to the castles of malcontents and reduced them to his master’s sway; and whilst the not less brave, but more prudent, Henry V. was winning laurels at Agincourt, Archbishop Chicheley acted as Prime Minister at home, and took his place at the head of the Council-Board.[246] After the Reformation, Churchmen, though of diminished influence, appeared in high political positions. Juxon held the staff of Lord Treasurer, and Williams kept the Great Seal; but after the blow struck at the Church by the Long Parliament, no ecclesiastic occupied any important State office until the reign of William III. Upon this new turn in the wheel, curiously enough, came the restoration of high civil authority to ecclesiastical hands. At the same moment, the Church appeared submissive to the State, and the State appeared in submission to the chief ruler of the Church. The former kind of submission was real, the latter only apparent.
1695.
The Archbishop did not fill the place of a Prime Minister like Chicheley, any more than he took the command of troops like Hubert Walter. It is difficult to say who in the month of May, 1695, was Prime Minister; as the Duke of Leeds, who had headed the late administration, just then, though still nominally President of the Council, lay prostrate in disgrace, and his name is omitted in the list of Lords Justices who held the Regency. The Whigs were recovering power, and with the seven members of that party who were commissioned to act in the Royal name, there appeared but one Tory. William III. himself always acted as Minister of Foreign Affairs whether he was at home or abroad, and during his absence from England on this occasion probably the management of domestic business principally rested with Somers, Keeper of the Great Seal, and Shrewsbury, Secretary of State. The Archbishop, as standing next to the Royal family, took precedence in the Commission, but the actual power which he exercised must not be measured by that circumstance.
On the 10th of October William returned, after having had the satisfaction of seeing a Marshal of France surrender to the allies, the Castle of Namur. The sound of bells from every steeple, the twinkling—for in those days it could hardly be a glare—of lights in every window, and street crowds rending the air with hurrahs, welcomed the victor as he passed through London to his favourite residence at Kensington. Speedily afterwards he made a Royal progress, and visited Newmarket, where, on Sunday, October the 20th, the Vice-Chancellor, accompanied by the principal members of the University of Cambridge, in all their sedate magnificence, waited on His Majesty, and delivered a congratulatory speech. The usual kissing of hands and assurances of favour wound up the ceremony.[247] He also visited Oxford, where he had been unpopular; but now, if we were to judge by the reception prepared, we should conclude the tide had turned; for Latin orations, musical concerts, and a splendid banquet were all arranged in honour of his presence. However, he would stay in the beautiful city only a few hours, excusing himself on the ground that he had seen the Colleges before. He had no admiration for Oxford, and Oxford had no admiration for him; and between the two no love was lost, when he drove off in his lumbering coach on the road to London.
ECCLESIASTICAL INJUNCTIONS.
The Royal injunctions relative to ecclesiastical reforms, published in February, 1695, were followed by other Royal injunctions relative to theological disputes in February, 1696. Just then, a money panic struck not only the commercial classes, but the whole community. The currency sank into such a state, that owing to the wear and tear of coin, and the ingenious arts of clippers, neither the gentleman who paid his guinea nor the peasant who received his shilling, knew exactly what the piece of gold or silver happened to be worth. The subject came up in sermons, and preachers deplored the low state of public morality. Fleetwood, preaching before the Lord Mayor of London in the month of December, deplored that “a soft pernicious tenderness slackened the care of magistrates, kept back the under officers, corrupted the juries, and withheld the evidence;” and one of the clergy connected with the Cathedral of York, when addressing some clippers who were to be hanged next day, dwelt on the insensibility of culprits of that class to the heinousness of their crime.[248] Exactly at the time when this monetary question had thrown everybody into a state of embarrassment, a theological controversy added to the excitement of religious people.
1693–8.
To judge of the new Royal injunctions we must first understand the controversy, and to understand the controversy is no easy matter. To trace the dispute through all its windings would only perplex the reader—to enumerate the publications which appeared would be wearisome and profitless; therefore I shall content myself with indicating the different lines pursued by the principal controversialists, and the treatment which consequently some of them received.
It may be premised that the controversy indicates a new position of Christian thought, a new atmosphere of theological feeling, as compared with that which had obtained in Commonwealth times and after the Restoration. The question raised did not relate to predestination, to the nature of Christ’s death, the extent of its efficacy and application, but to the mode of the Divine existence. It showed a retreat back to inquiries akin to such as agitated the Nicene Age. Oxford and London witnessed a revival of conflicts similar to those of Constantinople and Alexandria. Battles about grace, election, and free-will had been fought out, and the warriors were exhausted: some had passed away, some were growing old. The human mind now ranged over other fields long neglected, seeking fresh victories over old errors. Theological discussion is determined in a great degree by circumstances, idiosyncracies, friendships, and associations; but the spirit of an age is also a mighty force, acting with, and acting through all other influences. And it is not a little remarkable, that as the revival of the study of philosophy in the Christian schools of Alexandria was followed by controversies respecting the Divine nature, so the revival of the study of a similar philosophy at Cambridge was followed by a similar result. Whereas the logic, ethics, and politics of Aristotle have affinity with questions relating to the Divine government, the speculations of Plato connect themselves more with questions as to the Divine Being Himself. Accordingly, the Aristotelian logicians of the Middle Ages, the Reformation, and the Commonwealth, dwelt much upon predestination, justification, and the atonement; and the philosophical Divines of the Revolution, trained more in Platonic culture, devoted themselves to questions respecting the Trinity and the Person of Christ.
CONTROVERSIES ABOUT THE TRINITY.
At the time of the Revolution, Unitarian principles in England were on the advance, both as to explicitness of statement and extent of currency. The preparations for this change have been indicated. It obtained in a decided form to no great degree, but its influence was felt beyond its definite boundaries. According to the Toleration Act, Antitrinitarians were as much precluded from publicly celebrating worship after the Revolution, as Presbyterians and others had been before; yet, by the close of the 17th century, it is said, Unitarian meeting-houses were erected.[249] Some Presbyterians, perhaps, rather of an Arian than of a Socinian type, at that period diverged from orthodox paths; but it is stated that on the whole these opinions “were more prevalent in the Church than among the Dissenters.”[250] The republication of Biddle’s Tracts, and the issue of new works, published anonymously, going far beyond the theological point Biddle had reached, promoted the denial of our Lord’s Divinity. The series was zealously supported, if not prepared by the well-known Thomas Firman, who, though an Unitarian, remained a member of the Church of England.[251] The modern assailants of orthodoxy, catching the rationalistic spirit of the times, dwelt upon what they conceived to be the unreasonableness of the doctrine of the Trinity, and urged the absence in Scripture of the scholastic terms in which the doctrine is commonly defined. They charged the Fathers and the Schoolmen with corrupting Christianity; then directing their attention to the doctrine of the Redeemer’s Deity, they insisted much upon His proper humanity, upon His trustfulness, devotion, and obedience.
1693–8.
If, said the Unitarians, Christ be God, none can be greater than He, yet He says, “The Father is greater than I.” If Jesus Christ were truly God, they alleged, it would be blasphemy to call Him the sent of God; heedless of the allegation, on the other side, that if He were simply man, it would be blasphemy to ascribe to Him Divine names, attributes, and honours. Arguments were also adduced against the doctrine of the Personality and Divinity of the Holy Ghost. A violent attack also was made, in a distinct publication, on the character of Athanasius, with the object of damaging the theological belief which that great Father of the Church so zealously upheld.[252] Books of this description, vindicating opinions under a legal ban, excited the indignation both of Church and Parliament. A work, bearing on the heterodox side, written by a Divine of the Latitudinarian school, led to his being deprived of the Rectorship of Lincoln College, Oxford,[253] and a vote was passed by the Commons dooming to the flames an attack on the doctrine of the Trinity.[254]
THE TRINITY.
Dr. Wallis, the Savillian professor of Geometry, wrote a pamphlet[255] in defence of the doctrine of the Trinity, and employed some of the strangest expressions and illustrations with regard to the mystery that were ever conceived by any human being. “What is it,” he asks, “that is pretended to be impossible? ’Tis but this, that there be three somewhats, which are but one God, and these somewhats are called Persons.” To explain the Trinity in unity, he compares the Almighty to a cube, with its length, breadth, and height infinitely extended. The length, breadth, and height of the cube, he says, are equal, and they are the equal sides of one substance—a fair resemblance of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This longum, latum, profundum, such are his words, is one cube of three dimensions, yet but one body; and this Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three Persons, and yet one God. Vain attempts were made by the early Fathers to give definite conceptions of the mode of the Divine existence—the sun and its rays, a fountain and its streams, reason and speech, ointment and fragrance, being employed for the purpose; but Dr. Wallis attained to an originality as unenviable as it was startling; and were it not for his known candour and piety, it might be supposed he intended to turn the orthodox doctrine into ridicule.
1693–8.
Dr. Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul’s and Master of the Temple, now in the black books of High Churchmen, undertook to meet the new attacks upon the Trinity; and, as so much was made of the assumed unreasonableness of that doctrine, he commenced his vindication of it with an elaborate argument to prove that it involves no contradiction whatever. He used the shield of reason to resist the darts of reason. His notion was, that self-consciousness constitutes the numerical unity of a Spiritual Being,—that the unity of a mind or spirit reaches as far as its self-consciousness,—that, in the three Persons of the Trinity, there is what may be called a mutual self-consciousness, a self-consciousness common to the three; and that therefore these three Persons are essentially and numerically one. A moral union in knowledge, will, and love, he says, is the only union of created spirits; but there is an essential union between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, through the existence of a mutual consciousness. This notion contains, according to Sherlock, the true faith of a Trinity in unity. It is orthodoxy rationalized. It does not confound the Persons; it does not divide the substance.[256] After working out an abstruse argument to this effect, and after endeavouring to show there is authority in some of the Fathers for his theory, he concludes by taking up, seriatim, certain objections which had been urged in recent Unitarian writings.
THE TRINITY.
A young man, a Master of Arts, just turned 27, stood up, on the 28th of October, 1695, in the pulpit of St. Mary’s, Oxford, before a large audience of Dons and Gownsmen, to preach from the text—now given up on all hands as an interpolation—“There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one.” The preacher was Joseph Bingham, a scholar of surprising erudition, destined to throw a world of light upon the antiquities of the Christian Church; in the sermon, and preface to it when published, he distinguished between the patristic and the scholastic doctrines of the Trinity, maintaining that Luther, in his theology on that point, followed in the wake of the Fathers, whilst Calvin trod in the steps of the Schoolmen. The Lutheran, the Patristic, and the Scripture doctrine, in Bingham’s estimation, amounted to this—that there are three individual substances in the Godhead, really and numerically distinct from each other, though at the same time they are one in another sense; for they are not of a different nature; they are not divided like men and angels; they are not three parts of one whole; nor are they three Beings, who have Divine natures independently, every one from himself; nor are they three opposite principles, or three providences, clashing with one another. No; they constitute “one harmonious providence, and one undivided principle of all other things.”[257] Sherlock, a citizen of the world, catching the spirit of the age, appealed to reason; Bingham, a recluse, scarcely touched by habits of thought outside his University, appealed to tradition. This piece of hard, dry learning, without the slightest tincture of pathos, or a single practical remark from beginning to end, must have proved a repulsive lesson even to an Oxford audience. Its general drift, running in the same direction as Sherlock’s teaching, though it included no theory of mutual consciousness, alarmed the authorities; they went home from St. Mary’s in great agitation, muttering against the young preacher charges of Tritheism, Arianism, and other heresies. Bingham was simply a student who had missed his way in theological speculation; but Sherlock was personally disliked by Jacobites, who were irritated by his political apostacy, and by the adherents of William, who envied him his church preferments. No hornet’s nest could be worse than the attacks which this unlucky controversialist aroused. Many who, under other circumstances, would have let heterodoxy alone, could not tolerate it when coming from such a quarter; and the most unseemly reflections on the man’s character were mixed up with arguments against his doctrines.[258]
1693–8.
South plunged into the fray, and used his sledgehammer with unmerciful violence. Not unlearned, not unversed in logic, South was more of a rhetorician than a philosopher, more of a wit than a Divine. After denouncing Sherlock’s explication as wholly inconsistent with the mysteriousness of the subject, and representing his exceptions to the use of certain words in relation to it as false, groundless, and impertinent, he exposed, with tremendous ridicule, the theory of mutual consciousness. “For self-consciousness, according to him,” says South, “is the constituent principle, or formal reason, of personality. So that self-consciousness properly constitutes or makes a person, and so many self-consciousnesses make so many distinct persons. But mutual consciousness, so far as it extends, makes a unity not of persons (for personality as such imports distinction and something personally incommunicable), but an unity of nature in persons. So that after self-consciousness has made several distinct persons, in comes mutual consciousness and sets them all at one again, and gives them all but one and the same nature, which they are to take amongst themselves as well as they can. And this is a true and strict account of this author’s new hypothesis; and such, as I suppose, he will not except against, because justly I am sure he cannot; howsoever, I may have expressed the novel whimsey something for the reader’s diversion.”[259] How monstrous to think of diverting people, when professedly engaged in studying the awful secrets of the Divine Essence!
THE TRINITY.
South maintained that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not distinct infinite minds or spirits—that to say they are so, is to contradict Councils, Fathers, Schoolmen, and later Divines; that the book he assailed contains philosophical paradoxies and grammatical mistakes; and that the author was insolent, scornful, and proud beyond all parallel. To quote a full sample of South’s personal abuse would be to cover pages.[260]
1693–8.
THE TRINITY.
No doubt there is much force in some of his arguments, and he completely demolished the theory of mutual consciousness. But he was much stronger as a destructive than as an architect. When he attempted to define a positive notion of the Trinity, he failed, as all did who went before him, as all have who followed after him. Nor could he escape the infection of a most infelicitous, if not a decidedly irreverent, habit of illustrating theological mysteries. Wallis had written of three somewhats, and of a Divine cube of infinite dimensions. Sherlock had propounded a theory of Divine mutual-consciousness; and now South came forward with the idea, that the distinctions in the Godhead are modes, habitudes, and affections of the Divine substance—they are postures—such in spiritual and immaterial beings, as posture is to the human body.[261] Passing over South’s coarse scurrility, I cannot conceive how any inquirer after truth can be helped on his way by this clever and brilliant companion, who never misses an opportunity of cracking a joke in his reader’s ear. Even when South’s reasoning is forcible, he is ever interrupting it with flashes of wit; and throughout one feels, what is fatal to all religious instruction, that the polemic is more anxious about victory than truth. No doubt his attack on Sherlock was deemed by contemporaries a decided success; he drove his antagonist from the field and spoiled him of his armour. But when he charged him with Tritheism, he charged him with what Sherlock utterly denied. That Sherlock’s theory is Tritheistic was a mere inference, and what may seem a logical deduction to others did not appear so to himself. In like manner Sabellianism, in the eyes of some, lurked under the folds of South’s argument, though he indignantly repelled the idea. The fact is, no man can attempt a logical explanation of the Godhead without being in danger of falling into Tritheism on the one side, or Sabellianism on the other. In such controversies we notice the frequent use of some word not in Scripture, but considered to be an equivalent for what is Scripture—a term conceived to be a concentration of diffused truth—the quintessence of a doctrine previously in a state of solution. Unfortunately such words are differently understood by different parties. 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. It should be added that in the end, Sherlock’s statements were more cautious than at the beginning; for he came to admit that the phrases—three minds, three spirits, three substances—which he had so freely used, needed great care for their proper employment, and were liable to be taken in a heretical sense; that after all, Father, Son, and Spirit, are really of one and the same substance.[262] Sherlock and South did but follow up divergent tendencies of thought and action before the Council of Nicæa—tendencies which that Council sought to check and harmonize. Sherlock followed in the wake of Tertullian, Novatian, Hippolytus, and Origen, whose inquiries mainly pointed to distinctions in the Godhead. South trod in the footsteps of Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Irenæus, and Clement of Alexandria, who leaned towards Monarchianism, and were jealous of any dishonour done to the Divine Unity.
1693–8.
In this controversy, which divided two men by a distance, in the judgment of some thinkers, infinitesimally small, homage was nevertheless done to the essential importance of truth. The controversy, however, betrayed the utter absence of disposition on the part of each to learn one jot of wisdom from the other. It was literally a polemical affair; a battle, each seeing in his opposite an enemy—in fact the old story of disputes between Church and Church, sect and sect, conformist and nonconformist—war to the knife by mistaken foes, instead of mutual help by friends in council.
Of course Unitarians, as they stood by, watched the conflict with eager curiosity, striving to turn it to their own account. In the view of those who had advanced beyond John Biddle, the doctrine of the Trinity and the use of the Word were repugnant; and they traced what they deemed an innovation to the early philosophical schools that had so powerfully influenced the after-history of theological thought. They labelled Cudworth’s theory as the Platonic; Sherlock’s as the Cartesian; South’s as the Aristotelian. Moreover, they connected the scheme of Sherlock with the philosophy of Realism, and the scheme of South with that of Nominalism. With regard to speculations which had been woven around the teaching of Holy Scripture, there was some ground for the nomenclature; but it really forms another instance of the confusion of thought produced when critics identify metaphysical theories with simple conclusions drawn from Scripture, as expressed in the grand old words, “The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and yet there are not three Gods, but one God.”
THE TRINITY.
Howe took part in the bewildering dispute, and has been supposed by some to have advocated Sherlock’s side. But it seems to me that what I have been saying accords with his views, and that he counted such an opinion as that expressed by Sherlock only as a theory for obviating objection to a fact, whilst another theory might be held in perfect consistency with a sincere faith in the truth to which both theories apply. In his Calm and Sober Inquiry Concerning the Possibility of a Trinity in the Godhead, the utmost he asserts is, that such a mode of triune existence as Sherlock attributes to the Divine Being is possible, and to his mind the most reasonable; but he did not think another hypothesis of a different kind altogether indefensible. He adopted what is called the personal theory; but he did not deem a modal theory, like South’s, either absurd or heterodox.[263] Evidently he considered that different hypotheses are at hand not fully to elucidate the mode of the Divine existence, but to obviate objections, by showing that a threefold distinction in that existence can be imagined, so as not to involve any contradiction whatever.[264]
1693–8.
Amidst this war of words, in which reason and tradition had a share, secular authority interfered. On the 3rd of January, 1694, the Lords spiritual and temporal ordered their Majesties’ Attorney-General to prosecute the author and printer of an infamous and scandalous libel, entitled, A Brief but Clear Confutation of the Doctrine of the Trinity.[265] This was a State condemnation of Unitarianism, and the same year a tract printed by the Unitarian Society was seized by authority, and the writer apprehended. On the 25th of November, 1695, the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Houses at Oxford decreed it to be false, impious, and heretical, contrary to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and especially the Church of England, to say that there are three infinite, distinct minds and substances in the Trinity, or that the three Persons are three distinct, infinite minds or spirits. This was a condemnation by the University of the doctrines enunciated by Sherlock and supported by Bingham. The latter, in consequence of the storm raised by his sermon, resigned his fellowship, and withdrew from the University; but others, who thought with him, asserted, that what the Heads of Oxford had condemned as heretical, really expressed the Catholic faith; that the decree virtually accused of error the Nicene Creed and the Church of England, and exposed both to the scorn and triumph of the Socinians. Sherlock declared “that he would undertake, any day in the year, to procure a meeting of twice as many wise and learned men to censure their decree.”[266] Out of this state of things also arose the new Royal injunctions I have noticed. They prohibited every preacher from delivering any other doctrine concerning the Blessed Trinity than what is contained in the Holy Scriptures, and is agreeable to the three Creeds and the Thirty-nine Articles; and they also strictly charged the right reverend fathers to make use of their authority for repressing the publication of books against that doctrine.[267]
THE TRINITY.
Charles II. had in 1662 commanded the Clergy to avoid “the deep points of election and reprobation, together with the incomprehensible manner of the concurrence of God’s free grace and man’s free will.”[268] He thus claimed a high spiritual authority over the Ministers of religion, but it was by removing certain topics from within the range of discussion. In the instance just given, William III. enjoined the positive inculcation of a particular doctrine, and no other. He did not on his own authority define the doctrine, but only referred to the doctrine authorized in the Creeds and Articles recognized by the Established Church; indeed, he did not go beyond the terms employed in the sixteenth clause of the Toleration Act;[269] yet it must be confessed that altogether he appears as a still more definite theological censor than Charles II. And it is worth notice that in this respect he not only assumed a supreme Headship over the Established Church, but he also claimed to rule the Free Churches of England, for he commanded that no “preacher whatsoever, in his sermon or lecture, should presume to deliver any other doctrine concerning the Trinity than that defined in the Creeds and Articles.” 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. What makes this fact still more curious, and the conduct in question still more unreasonable, is that the most learned men in the Church at that very crisis were unable to decide amongst themselves what was the doctrine of her formularies, Sherlock declaring it to be one thing and South another. The truth is, that William lent himself to a device of the well-meaning Archbishop for maintaining the orthodoxy of all religionists in the realm, without meaning to claim any power over the religion of his subjects; for to any usurpation of that sort he was, from temperament, education, and principle, utterly averse. The Whig Archbishop, whose intellectual acuteness did not equal his common sense, who could detect no political or philosophical heresy in the course which he recommended, simply sought to accomplish what he considered as a laudable end by a method which he thought most effectual. He sought to put down error, and to promote peace, and in doing it, hastily snatched at the rusty halberd of authority over conscience, which the Revolution had hung up as a relic of the past. Nothing could be more awkward and inconsistent than such a weapon, placed by a Latitudinarian Prelate in the hands of a Sovereign adored as the incarnation of civil and religious liberty.
1693–8.
Although it is true of ancient times and Oriental states, that “where the word of a King is, there is power,” the King’s word amongst Englishmen at the time we speak of, especially upon religious subjects, carried with it no weight whatever; and although the controversy raging when the injunctions were devised soon burnt out, the heresies assailed lingered on, and in 1698 the Commons appealed to His Majesty for a proclamation for suppressing pernicious books containing doctrines opposed to the Holy Trinity, and other fundamental articles of the Christian faith.[270] The King, not choosing to do this, gave his faithful Commons a short answer, promising attention to the subject, and wishing that provision could be made for the purpose desired; but, however, a proclamation was immediately issued for preventing and punishing immorality and profaneness. Not long before this circumstance, a youth of only eighteen years of age was executed in the city of Edinburgh for blasphemy—a victim to the zeal of the Presbyterian Clergy;[271] and, about the same time, the orthodox Dissenters of England, in an address of theirs, most inconsistently urged His Majesty to deprive Unitarians of the liberty of the press.[272]
THE TRINITY.
1693–8.
An Act of Parliament was passed in 1698 declaring that any one educated in the Christian religion, who should, by writing, printing, or teaching, deny the doctrine of the Trinity, the truth of Christianity, or the authority of the Scriptures, must, for the first offence, be disqualified for holding any office; and, for the second, be incapacitated for bringing an action, possessing lands, becoming a guardian, acting as an executor, or receiving a legacy; moreover, such a person might be subjected to imprisonment for three years. Parliament thus united its authority with that of the Sovereign in the support of orthodox opinions, without perceiving the futility of such methods of defending the Gospel. And it is not a little surprising that such a man as Calamy, both in his Diary and in his Historical Addition to Baxter’s Life and Times, passes by the objectionable enactment; indeed, so entirely unaffected by its injustice does he appear to have been, that, in the latter work, he tells us, in the year 1698, Parliament “did not meddle with matters of religion, though they had a committee for religion as usually.”[273] Nothing could more decidedly prove how much even the advocates of religious liberty had yet to learn touching that very object which they were supposed to understand, and were sincerely anxious to promote. It is a pleasure to be able to add, that neither at the time, nor afterwards, so far as can be ascertained, did this Act take any effect; and, apparently, it remained a dead letter until its repeal in the year 1813.[274]