A DEFENCE OF DISSENT
(D. Defoe’s Works, 2nd edition, A New Test of the Church of England’s Loyalty, p. 406 et seq.)
Our first Reformation from Popery was in the days of King Edward VI ... ‘twas under him that the whole Nation and Government embraced the Protestant Reformed Religion ... and here it began to be called the Church of England.
Some enquiring Christians were for making farther steps, and carrying on the Reformation to a higher degree ... but the return of Popery under Queen Mary put a stop to the work in general.... Queen Elizabeth restored it again.... Those who insisted upon the further Reformation were then called Puritans, because they set up for a greater purity of worship; and they separated themselves from the Established Church....
Before this time there was no such thing as Church of England, it was then the Church of Rome[30] that was the established National Church. The Protestants under the title of Lollards, Wickliffians, Hussites, what did they do? Did they, as our modern people say everybody should conform to what the Government commanded? No, the present Church of England party were the Dissenters, the Schismatics and Fanatics, in the days of Henry VIII were persecuted for not coming to Church, many of them put to death and always treated with scorn and contempt.... In the next Ages these come to have the power in their hands and forgetting that they had found it “Righteous in the sight of God to obey God rather than man,” they treat those whose consciences oblige them to dissent from them, with the same contempt which themselves had received from the Roman [church] government.
Thus far they are upon even terms, as to obedience to their Superiors.
The Dissenters have the first occasion after this to show their submission under extraordinary pressures. Queen Elizabeth discountenanced them continually, and as good a queen as she was, put some of them to death. King James I hunted them quite out of the kingdom, made thousands of them fly into Holland and Germany, and at last to New England.... Under the reign of King Charles I, the case altered, the King and Parliament fell out about matters of civil rights and invasion of the liberties and properties of the people; the Puritans or Dissenters, call them what we please, fell in unanimously with the Parliament.
And here ‘tis worthy of remark, that the first difference between the King and English Parliament did not respect Religion but civil property nor were the majority of the House Puritans, but true Church Protestants and English men. (There were but four Dissenters in all that Parliament).... (p. 408).
But the Parliament finding the Puritan party stuck close to their cause, they also came over [to] them when things came to a rupture ... the Whigs in 41 to 48, took up arms against their King, and having conquered him and taken him prisoner, cut off his head, because they had him: the Church of England took up arms against their King in 88, and did not cut off his head, because they had him not. King Charles lost his life because he did not run away; and his son, King James, saved his life because he did run away.... Nay if arguments may be allowed to have equal weight on both sides, the Whigs have been the honester of the two, for they never protested any such blind, absolute and undisputed obedience to Princes, as the others have done.
It has always been their opinion, that Government was originally contrived by the consent and for the mutual benefit of the parties governed, that the people have an original, native right to their property, the liberty of their persons and possessions, unless forfeited to the Laws; that they cannot be divested of their right but by their own consent; and that all invasion of this right is destructive of the Constitution, and dissolves the Compact of Government and Obedience (p. 411).
They have always declared that they understand their allegiance to their governors to be, supposing they govern them according to the Laws of the Land; and that if Princes break this Bond of Government, the Nature of it is inverted, and the Constitution ceases of course....
This has been the avowed doctrine of the Dissenters, and indeed is the true sense of the Constitution itself; pursuant to this doctrine, they thought they had a right to oppose violence with force; believing that when Kings break Coronation Oaths, the Solemn Compact with their people, and encroach upon their civil rights, contrary to the Laws of the Land, by which they are sworn to rule, they cease to be the Lord’s Anointed any longer; the sanction of their office is vanished, and they become Tyrants and enemies of mankind, and may be treated accordingly (p. 412).