Great Tew was an anticipation, for ever beautiful and memorable, of the time when all swords shall be sheathed, and the world shall have entered into final peace. But in its philosophy there were, as the world then was, two defects; it did not reach the people, and it was incapable of protecting its own existence. Laud himself did not care to crush it; he was an ecclesiastical despot rather than a theological bigot; he had a genuine respect for learned men; he preferred winning them by gracious words and preferment to coercing them with the pillory and the shears. But had Laud's system prevailed, there would soon have been an end of the philosophy of Great Tew. Mr. Arnold points to the free thought of Bacon. Nobody in those days scented mischief in the inductive philosophy, while in politics and religion Bacon was scrupulously orthodox. Cromwell's faith was a narrower and coarser thing by far than that of the inmates of the "college in a purer air;" but it brought religion and morality—not the most genial or rational morality, but still morality—into the cottage as well as into the manor-house, and it was able to protect its own existence When it had mounted to power in the person of its chief, the opinions of Great Tew, and all opinions that would abstain from trying to overthrow the Government and restore the tyranny, enjoyed practically larger and more assured liberty than they had ever enjoyed in England before or were destined to enjoy for many a year to come. Falkland, says Mr. Arnold, was in the grasp of fatality, hence the transcendent interest that attaches to him. Cromwell, happily for his cause and for his country, was, or felt himself to be, not in the grasp of fatality but in the hand of God.
Might we not have done just as well without Puritanism? Might not some other way have been found of preserving the serious element in English character and saving English liberty from those who were conspiring for its destruction? Such questions as these may be asked without end, and they may be answered by any one who is endowed with a knowledge of men who were never born, and of events that have never happened. Might not a way have been found of rescuing the great interests of humanity without Greek resistance to Persian invasion, or German resistance to the tyranny of Bonaparte? Suppose in place of the Puritan chiefs there had been raised up by miracle a set of men at once consummate soldiers and perfect philosophers, who would have fought and won the battle without being heated by the conflict. Suppose, to prevent the necessity of any conflict at all, Charles, Strafford, and Laud had voluntarily abandoned their designs. As it was, Puritanism did, and alone could do, the work. What the Renaissance would have been without Puritan morality we can pretty well guess from the experience of Italy. It would have probably been like the life of Lorenzo—vice, filthy vice, decorated with art and with elegant philosophy; an academy under the same roof with a brothel. There were ages before morality, and there have been ages between the moralities. There was, in England, an age between the decline of the Catholic morality and the rise of the Puritan, marked by a laxity of conduct, public and private, which was partly redeemed but not neutralized by Elizabethan genius and enterprise. No doubt when the revival came, there was a High Church as well as a Puritan morality, and that fact ought always to be borne in mind; but the High Church morality was inextricably bound up with sacerdotal superstition and with absolute government; it had no hold on the people; and it found itself suspiciously at home in the Court of James, in the households of Somerset and Buckingham, and in the tribunal which lent itself to the divorce of Essex.
That the Puritan Revolution was followed by a sacerdotal and sensualist reaction is too true: all revolutions are followed by reactions; it is one great reason for avoiding them. But let it be remembered, first, that the disbanded soldiers of the Commonwealth and the other relics of the Puritan party still remained the most moral and respectable element in the country; and secondly, that the period of lassitude which follows great efforts, whether of men or nations, is not altogether the condemnation of the effort, but partly the weakness of humanity. Nations as well as men, if they aim high, must sometimes overstrain themselves, and weariness must ensue. Nor did the Commonwealth of England come to nothing, though in a society not half emancipated from feudalism it was premature, and therefore, at the time, a failure. It opened a glimpse of a new order of things: it was the first example of a great national republic, the republics of antiquity having been at once city republics and republics of slave-owners: it not only heralded but, to some extent, prepared the American and even the French Revolution. In its sublime death-song, chanted by the great Puritan poet, our ears catch the accents of a hope that did not die.
The Restoration was the end of the Puritan party, which thenceforth separated into two portions, the high political element taking the form of Whiggism, while the more religious element was represented in subsequent history by the Nonconformists. Under the Marian reaction Protestantism had been saved, and the errors which it had committed in its hour of ascendency had been redeemed by the champions, drawn mostly from the humbler classes, who suffered for it at the stake. Under the Restoration it was again saved, and the errors which it had once more committed in the hour of political triumph were once more redeemed by martyrs of the same class, whose sufferings in the noisome and pestilential prisons of that day were probably not much less severe than the pangs of those who died by fire. Both in the Marian and in the Restoration martyrs of Protestantism there was no doubt much that was irrational and unattractive; yet the record of their services to humanity remains, and will remain; let the free-thought of modern times, for which their self-devoting loyalty to such truth as they knew made way, be grateful or ungrateful to them as it will.
The relations of Nonconformity, with which we must couple Scotch Presbyterianism, its partner in fundamental doctrine, its constant ally in the conflict, and fellow-sufferer in the hour of adversity, to English religion, morality, industry, education, philanthropy, science, and to the English civilization in general, would be a most important and instructive chapter in English history, but we are hardly called upon to attempt to write it in refutation of jocose charges of "hideousness" and "immense ennui." A sufficient answer to such quips and cranks will be found, we believe, within the same covers with Mr. Arnold's "Falkland," in the shape of an article on the Pulpit, by Mr. Baldwin Brown, which in tone and culture appears to us a fit companion for any other paper in the journal.
That Nonconformity has been political is true. Fortunately for the liberties of England it has had to struggle for civil right in order to obtain religious freedom. No doubt in the course of the conflict it has contracted a certain gloominess of character, and shown an unamiable side. Treat men with persistent and insolent injustice, strip them of their rights as citizens, put on them a social brand, compel them to pay for the maintenance of the pulpits from which their religion is assailed, and you will run a very great risk of souring their tempers. But without rehearsing disagreeable details, we may say generally that whoever should undertake to prove that the Established Church had not been, from the hour of her birth down to the last general election, at least as political as the Free Churches, and at least as responsible for the evils which political religion has brought upon the nation, would show considerable confidence in his powers of dealing with history. Could he find a parallel on the side of the Established Church to the magnanimous loyalty to national interests shown by Nonconformists, in rejecting the bribe offered them by James II., and supporting their persecutors against an illegal toleration? Could he find a parallel on the side of the Nonconformists to the conduct of the Established Church, in turning round, the moment the victory had been won by Nonconformist aid, and recommencing the persecution of the Nonconformists?
We fully agree with Mr. Arnold, however, in thinking that political Nonconformity is an evil. There are two known modes of getting rid of it—the Spanish Inquisition and religious equality. Mr. Arnold seems to think that there is yet a third—general submission, in matters theological and ecclesiastical, to the gentle sway of Beau Nash.
Religious equality in the United States may not be perfect unity, it may not be the height of culture or of grace, but at all events it is peace. Ultramontanism there, as everywhere else, is aggressive, and a source of disturbance; and, on the other hand, in the struggle against slavery, political and religious elements were inevitably intermingled, but as a rule politics are kept perfectly clear of religion. Saving in the case of Roman Catholicism, we cannot call to mind a single instance of a serious appeal in an election to sectarian feeling. Much as we have heard of the two candidates for the Presidency, we could not at this moment tell to what Church either of them belongs. Where no Church is privileged, there can be no cause for jealousy. The Churches dwell side by side, without disturbing the State with any quarrels; they are all alike loyal to the government; they unite in supporting a system of popular education which generally includes a certain element of unsectarian religion, they combine for social and philanthropic objects; they testify, by their common celebration of national thanksgivings and fasts their unity at all events as portions of the same Christian nation. So far as we know, controversy between them is very rare; there is more of it within the several Churches between their own more orthodox and more liberal members. In none does it rage more violently than in the Episcopal Church, though, under religious equality, irreconcilable disagreement on religious questions leads to seccession, not to mutual lawsuits and imprisonments.
Mr. Arnold says in praise of Falkland that "he was profoundly serious." We presume he means not only that Falkland treated great questions in a serious way, without unseasonable quizzing, but that he was, in the words quoted from Clarendon in the next sentence, "a precise lover of truth, and superior to all possible temptations for its violation." The temptations, we presume, would have included those of taste or fancy, as well as those of the more obvious kind; and Falkland's paramount regard for truth would have extended to all his fellow-men as well as to himself and his own intellectual circle. He would never, we are confident, have advised any human being to separate religion from truth, he would never have suffered himself to intimate that truth was the property of a select circle, while "poetry" was good enough for the common people, he would never have encouraged thousands of clergymen, educated men with sensitive consciences, to go on preaching to their flocks from the pulpit, on grounds of social convenience, doctrines which they repudiated in the study, and derided in the company of cultivated men, he would never have exhorted people to enter from aesthetic considerations a spiritual society of which, in the same breath, he proclaimed the creeds to be figments, the priesthood to be an illusion, the sacred narratives to be myths, and the Triune God to be a caricature of Lord Shaftesbury multiplied by three. If he had done so, and if his propagandism had been successful, we suspect he would soon have produced an anarchy, not only religious but social, compared with which the most chaotic periods of the Revolution would have been harmony and order. In the days of the Antonines, to which Gibbon looks back so wistfully, opinion had little influence; the organic forces of society were of a more primitive and a coarser kind. In modern times if a writer could succeed in separating truth from religion, he would shake the pillars of the moral and social as well as the intellectual world.
That religion is inseparable from truth is the strong and special tradition of the Nonconformists. Their history has been a long struggle for the rights of conscience against spurious authority, an authority which we believe Mr. Arnold holds to be spurious as well as they. This is not altogether a bad start in the pursuit of the truth for which the world now craves, and which, we cordially admit, lies beyond the existing creed of any particular Church. At all events, it would seem improvident to merge such an element of religious inquiry in that of which the tradition is submission to spurious authority, whatever advantages the latter may have in social, literary, and aesthetic respects. Not a generation has yet passed since the admission of Nonconformists to the Universities; and more than a generation is needed in order to attain the highest culture. Give the Free Churches time, and let us see whether they have not something better to give us in return than "hideousness" and "immense ennui."