* Rymer, tom. xviii. p. 117, 594.
Upon the whole, we must conceive that monarchy, on the accession of the house of Stuart, was possessed of a very extensive authority: an authority, in the judgment of all, not exactly limited; in the judgment of some, not limitable. But, at the same time, this authority was founded merely on the opinion of the people, influenced by ancient precedent and example. It was not supported either by money or by force of arms. And, for this reason, we need not wonder that the princes of that line were so extremely jealous of their prerogative; being sensible, that when these claims were ravished from them, they possessed no influence by which they could maintain their dignity, or support the laws. By the changes which have since been introduced, the liberty and independence of individuals has been rendered much more full, entire and secure; that of the public more uncertain and precarious. And it seems a necessary, though perhaps a melancholy truth, that in every government, the magistrate must either possess a large revenue and a military force, or enjoy some discretionary powers, in order to execute the laws and support his own authority.
We have had occasion to remark, in so many instances, the bigotry which prevailed in that age, that we can look for no toleration among the different sects. Two Arians, under the title of heretics, were punished by fire during this period; and no other reign, since the reformation, had been free from the like barbarities. Stowe says, that these Arians were offered their pardon at the stake, if they would merit it by a recantation. A madman, who called himself the Holy Ghost, was without any indulgence for his frenzy, condemned to the same punishment. Twenty pounds a month could, by law, be levied on every one who frequented not the established worship. This rigorous law, however, had one indulgent clause, that the lines exacted should not exceed two thirds of the yearly income of the person. It had been usual for Elizabeth to allow those penalties to run on for several years; and to levy them all at once, to the utter ruin of such Catholics as had incurred her displeasure. James was more humane in this, as in every other respect. The Puritans formed a sect which secretly lurked in the church, but pretended not to any separate worship or discipline. An attempt of that kind would have been universally regarded as the most unpardonable enormity. And had the king been disposed to grant the Puritans a full toleration for a separate exercise of their religion, it is certain, from the spirit of the times, that this sect itself would have despised and hated him for it, and would have reproached him with luke-warmness and indifference in the cause of religion. They maintained, that they themselves were the only pure church; that their principles and practices ought to be established by law; and that no others ought to be tolerated. It may be questioned, therefore, whether the administration at this time could with propriety deserve the appellation of persecutors with regard to the Puritans. Such of the clergy, indeed, as refused to comply with the legal ceremonies, were deprived of their livings, and sometimes, in Elizabeth’s reign, were otherwise punished: and ought any man to accept of an office or benefice in an establishment, while he declines compliance with the fixed and known rules of that establishment? But Puritans were never punished for frequenting separate congregations; because there were none such in the kingdom; and no Protestant ever assumed or pretended to the right of erecting them. The greatest well-wishers of the Puritanical sect would have condemned a practice, which in that age was universally, by statesmen and ecclesiastics-philosophers and zealots, regarded as subversive of civil society. Even so great a reasoner as Lord Bacon thought that uniformity in religion was absolutely necessary to the support of government, and that no toleration could with safety be given to sectaries.[*]
* See his essay De Unitate Ecclesiae.
Nothing but the imputation of idolatry, which was thrown on the Catholic religion, could justify, in the eyes of the Puritans themselves, the schism made by the Hugonots and other Protestants who lived in Popish countries.
In all former ages, not wholly excepting even those of Greece and Rome, religious sects, and heresies, and schisms had been esteemed dangerous, if not pernicious, to civil government, and were regarded as the source of faction, and private combination, and opposition to the laws.[*] The magistrate, therefore, applied himself directly to the cure of this evil, as of every other; and very naturally attempted, by penal statutes, to suppress those separate communities, and punish the obstinate innovators. But it was found by fatal experience, and after spilling an ocean of blood in those theological quarrels, that the evil was of a peculiar nature, and was both inflamed by violent remedies, and diffused itself more rapidly throughout the whole society. Hence, though late, arose the paradoxical principle and salutary practice of toleration.
The liberty of the press was incompatible with such maxims and such principles of government as then prevailed, and was therefore quite unknown in that age. Besides employing the two terrible courts of star chamber and high commission, whose powers were unlimited, Queen Elizabeth exerted her authority by restraints upon the press. She passed a decree in her court of star chamber, that is, by her own will and pleasure, forbidding any book to be printed in any place but in London, Oxford, and Cambridge:[**] and another, in which she prohibited, under severe penalties, the publishing of any book or pamphlet “against the form or meaning of any restraint or ordinance, contained, or to be contained, in any statute or laws of this realm, or in any injunction made or set forth by her majesty or her privy council, or against the true sense or meaning of any letters patent, commissions or prohibitions under the great seal of England.”[***] James extended the same penalties to the importing of such books from abroad.[****]
* See Cicero de Legibus.
** 28th of Elizabeth. See State Trials Sir Robert Knightly,
vol vii. 1st edit.
*** Rymer, tom. xvii. p. 522.
**** Rymer, tom. xvii. p. 522.
And to render these edicts more effectual, he afterwards inhibited the printing of any book without a license from the archbishop of Canterbury, the archbishop of York, the bishop of London, or the vice-chancellor of one of the universities, or of some person appointed by them.[*]
In tracing the coherence among the systems of modern theology, we may observe, that the doctrine of absolute decrees has ever been intimately connected with the enthusiastic spirit, as that doctrine affords the highest subject of joy, triumph, and security to the supposed elect, and exalts them by infinite degrees above the rest of mankind. All the first reformers adopted these principles; and the Jansenists too, a fanatical sect in France, not to mention the Mahometans in Asia, have ever embraced them. As the Lutheran establishments were subjected to Episcopal jurisdiction, their enthusiastic genius gradually decayed; and men had leisure to perceive the absurdity of supposing God to punish by infinite torments what he himself from all eternity had unchangeably decreed. The king, though at this time his Calvinistic education had rivetted him in the doctrine of absolute decrees, yet, being a zealous partisan of Episcopacy, was insensibly engaged, towards the end of his reign, to favor the milder theology of Arminius. Even in so great a doctor, the genius of the religion prevailed over its speculative tenets; and with him, the whole clergy gradually dropped the more rigid principles of absolute reprobation and unconditional decrees. Some noise was at first made about these innovations; but being drowned in the fury of factions and civil wars which ensued, the scholastic arguments made an insignificant figure amidst those violent disputes about civil and ecclesiastical power with which the nation was agitated. And at the restoration, the church, though she still retained her old subscriptions and articles of faith, was found to have totally changed her speculative doctrines, and to have embraced tenets more suitable to the genius of her discipline and worship, without its being possible to assign the precise period in which the alteration was produced.