Without inquiring into the causes, even if we thought that we could ascertain them, of that frightful dissolution of religion which so long prevailed in our country, and of which the very corruption it has left behind still breeds in monstrous shapes, it will be sufficient to observe that the destruction of the monarchy and the ecclesiastical order was a moral earthquake, overturning all minds, and opening all changes. A theological logomachy was substituted by the sullen and proud ascetics who ascended into power. These, without wearying themselves, wearied all others, and triumphed over each other by their mutual obscurity. The two great giants in this theological war were the famous Richard Baxter and Dr. Owen. They both wrote a library of books; but the endless controversy between them was the extraordinary and incomprehensible subject, whether the death of Christ was solutio ejusdem, or only tantundem; that is, whether it was a payment of the very thing, which by law we ought to have paid, or of something held by God to be equivalent. Such was the point on which this debate between Owen and Baxter lasted without end.
Yet these metaphysical absurdities were harmless, compared to what was passing among the more hot fanatics, who were for acting the wild fancies which their melancholy brains engendered; men, who from the places into which they had thrust themselves, might now be called “the higher orders of society!” These two parties alike sent forth an evil spirit to walk among the multitude. Every one would become his own law-maker, and even his own prophet; the meanest aspired to give his name to his sect. All things were to be put in motion according to the St. Vitus’s dance of the last new saint. “Away with the Law! which cuts off a man’s legs and then bids him walk!” cried one from his pulpit. “Let believers sin as fast as they will, they have a fountain open to wash them;” declared another teacher. We had the Brownists, from Robert Brown, the Vaneists, from Sir Harry Vane, then we sink down to Mr. Traske, Mr. Wilkinson, Mr. Robinson, and H. N., or Henry Nicholas, of the Family of Love, besides Mrs. Hutchinson, and the Grindletonian family, who preferred “motions to motives,” and conveniently assumed that “their spirit is not to be tried by the Scripture, but the Scripture by their spirit.” Edwards, the author of “Gangræna,” the adversary of Milton, whose work may still be preserved for its curiosity, though immortalised by the scourge of genius, has furnished a list of about two hundred of such sects in these times. A divine of the Church of England observed to a great sectary, “You talk of the idolatry of Rome: but each of you, whenever you have made and set up a calf, will dance about it.”[278]
This confusion of religions, if, indeed, these pretended modes of faith could be classed among religions, disturbed the consciences of good men, who read themselves in and out of their vacillating creed. It made, at least, even one of the puritans themselves, who had formerly complained that they had not enjoyed sufficient freedom under the bishops, cry out against “this cursed intolerable toleration.” And the fact is, that when the presbyterians had fixed themselves into the government, they published several treatises against toleration! The parallel between these wild notions of reform, and those of another character, run closely together. About this time, well-meaning persons, who were neither enthusiasts from the ambition of founding sects, nor of covering their immorality by their impiety, were infected by the religiosa insania. One case may stand for many. A Mr. Greswold, a gentleman of Warwickshire, whom a Brownist had by degrees enticed from his parish church, was afterwards persuaded to return to it—but he returned with a troubled mind, and lost in the prevalent theological contests. A horror of his future existence shut him out, as it were, from his present one: retiring into his own house, with his children, he ceased to communicate with the living world. He had his food put in at the window; and when his children lay sick, he admitted no one for their relief. His house at length was forced open, and they found two children dead, and the father confined to his bed. He had mangled his Bible, and cut out the titles, contents, and everything but the very text itself; for it seems that he thought that everything human was sinful, and he conceived that the titles of the books and the contents of the chapters were to be cut out of the sacred Scriptures, as having been composed by men.[279]
More terrible it was when the insanity, which had hitherto been more confined to the better classes, burst forth among the common people. Were we to dwell minutely on this period, we should start from the picture with horror: we might, perhaps, console ourselves with a disbelief of its truth; but the drug, though bitter in the mouth, we must sometimes digest. To observe the extent to which the populace can proceed, disfranchised of law and religion, will always leave a memorable recollection.
What occurred in the French Revolution had happened here—an age of impiety! Society itself seemed dissolved, for every tie of private affection and of public duty was unloosened. Even nature was strangely violated! From the first opposition to the decorous ceremonies of the national church, by the simple puritans, the next stage was that of ridicule, and the last of obloquy. They began by calling the surplice a linen rag on the back; baptism a Christ’s cross on a baby’s face; and the organ was likened to the bellow, the grunt, and the barking of the respective animals. They actually baptized horses in churches at the fonts; and the jest of that day was, that the Reformation was now a thorough one in England, since our horses went to church.[280] St. Paul’s cathedral was turned into a market, and the aisles, the communion-table, and the altar, served for the foulest purposes.[281] The liberty which every one now assumed of delivering his own opinions, led to acts so execrable, that I can find no parallel for them except in the mad times of the French Revolution. Some maintained that there existed no distinction between moral good and moral evil; and that every man’s actions were prompted by the Creator. Prostitution was professed as a religious act; a glazier was declared to be a prophet, and the woman he cohabited with was said to be ready to lie in of the Messiah. A man married his father’s wife. Murders of the most extraordinary nature were occurring; one woman crucified her mother; another, in imitation of Abraham, sacrificed her child; we hear, too, of parricides. Amidst the slaughters of civil wars, spoil and blood had accustomed the people to contemplate the most horrible scenes. One madman of the many, we find drinking a health on his knees, in the midst of a town, “to the devil! that it might be said that his family should not be extinct without doing some infamous act.” A Scotchman, one Alexander Agnew, commonly called “Jock of broad Scotland,” whom one cannot call an atheist, for he does not seem to deny the existence of the Creator, nor a future state, had a shrewdness of local humour in his strange notions. Omitting some offensive things, others as strange may exhibit the state to which the reaction of an hypocritical system of religion had driven the common people. “Jock of broad Scotland” said he was nothing in God’s common, for God had given him nothing; he was no more obliged to God than to the devil; for God was very greedy. Neither God nor the devil gave the fruits of the ground; the wives of the country gave him his meat. When asked wherein he believed, he answered, “He believed in white meal, water, and salt. Christ was not God; for he came into the world after it was made, and died as other men.” He declared that “he did not know whether God or the devil had the greatest power; but he thought the devil was the greatest. When I die, let God and the devil strive for my soul, and let him that is strongest take it.” He no doubt had been taught by the presbytery to mock religious rites; and when desired to give God thanks for his meat, he said, “Take a sackful of prayers to the mill and grind them, and take your breakfast of them.” To others he said, “I will give you a two-pence, to pray until a boll of meal, and one stone of butter, fall from heaven through the house rigging (roof) to you.” When bread and cheese were laid on the ground by him, he said, “If I leave this, I will long cry to God before he give it me again.” To others he said, “Take a bannock, and break it in two, and lay down one half thereof, and you will long pray to God before he will put the other half to it again!” He seems to have been an anti-trinitarian. He said he received everything from nature, which had ever reigned and ever would. He would not conform to any religious system, nor name the three Persons,—“At all these things I have long shaken my cap,” he said. “Jock of broad Scotland” seems to have been one of those who imagine that God should have furnished them with bannocks ready baked.
The extravagant fervour then working in the minds of the people is marked by the story told by Clement Walker of the soldier who entered a church with a lantern and a candle burning in it, and in the other hand four candles not lighted. He said he came to deliver his message from God, and show it by these types of candles. Driven into the churchyard, and the wind blowing strong, he could not kindle his candles, and the new prophet was awkwardly compelled to conclude his five denouncements, abolishing the Sabbath, tithes, ministers, magistrates, and, at last, the Bible itself, without putting out each candle, as he could not kindle them; observing, however, each time—“And here I should put out the first light, but the wind is so high that I cannot kindle it.”
A perfect scene of the effects which the state of irreligious society produced among the lower orders I am enabled to give from the manuscript life of John Shaw, vicar of Rotherham; with a little tediousness, but with infinite naïveté, he relates what happened to himself. This honest divine was puritanically inclined, but there can be no exaggeration in these unvarnished facts. He tells a remarkable story of the state of religious knowledge in Lancashire, at a place called Cartmel: some of the people appeared desirous of religious instruction, declaring that they were without any minister, and had entirely neglected every religious rite, and therefore pressed him to quit his situation at Lymm for a short period. He may now tell his own story.
“I found a very large spacious church, scarce any seats in it; a people very ignorant, and yet willing to learn; so as I had frequently some thousands of hearers, I catechised in season and out of season. The churches were so thronged at nine in the morning, that I had much ado to get to the pulpit. One day, an old man about sixty, sensible enough in other things, and living in the parish of Cartmel, coming to me on some business, I told him that he belonged to my care and charge, and I desired to be informed of his knowledge in religion. I asked him how many Gods there were? He said he knew not. I informing him, asked again how he thought to be saved? He answered he could not tell. Yet thought that was a harder question than the other. I told him that the way to salvation was by Jesus Christ, God-man, who as he was man shed his blood for us on the cross, &c. Oh, sir, said he, I think I heard of that man you speak of once in a play at Kendall, called Corpus-Christ’s play,[282] where there was a man on a tree and blood run down, &c. And afterwards he professed he could not remember that he ever heard of salvation by Jesus, but in that play.”
The scenes passing in the metropolis, as well as in the country, are opened to us in one of the chronicling poems of George Withers. Our sensible rhymer wrote in November, 1652, “a Darke Lanthorne” on the present subject.