The Religious Life of London

by J. Ewing Ritchie

Early in our religious history two theories as to Church and State were developed. If the Presbyterians had gained the day in that time of religious ferment—which had so melancholy a termination in the restoration of Charles II., with his puppy-dogs and mistresses—we should have seen the Church established independent of the State: the latter acting as its servant, exercising the sword at its bidding and on its behalf. The Churchmen of that day adopted a lower theory, as appears by their favourite formulas—“the power of the magistrate in ecclesiastical matters,” and “passive obedience without limitations.” In his zeal in this direction, Archbishop Sancroft actually went so far as to alter the rubric. If Bishop Cosin may be believed (the story is told by Calamy), where it was said nothing was to be read in the churches but by the Bishop’s order, Sancroft took on himself to add,

“or the King’s order.” In short, the theory was then what Sir J. D. Coleridge only the other day stated it, that “the Church was a political institution.” Against this theory, as dishonouring to God and degrading to religion, the Puritans sternly protested, and at the peril of their lives. Naturally they fell back upon such texts as, “My kingdom is not of this world,” “Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” More and more it became clear to them that the Church was simply an assembly of believers; that Christ’s kingdom was exclusively a spiritual one; that the greatest service the State could do to religion was to leave it alone. They argued, and not without some show of plausibility, that the faith enunciated by the carpenter’s son, disseminated through the world by tent-makers and fishermen; the faith which had found its way into the hearts of the stubborn Jews; which had been more than a match for the pride of Rome or philosophy of Greece—for which the multitude, the grey-haired sire, the high-spirited lad with life with its golden prospects opening all round him, the tender and delicate maiden, had gone smilingly to die—the faith immortal with the immortality of truth, required not the vulgar

patronage of worldly men, or that the State should attempt bribery on its behalf. Of course they were wrong; for only last session of Parliament the present Archbishop of Canterbury, in his place in the House of Lords, on the night of an important debate, denominated a religion thus supported as a spurious one; and it was only within the memory of living men that Nonconformists were permitted to be parish constables or town councillors. Nevertheless, half the worshippers of England and Wales are Dissenters—that is to say, are of this spurious religion, and pay their own ministers, and build their own chapels, without asking a farthing from the State. Their leading denominations are the Baptists and Congregationalists; and it shows how terribly Dissent undervalues the historical element when I state that the Independents now prefer to call themselves Congregationalists. There is an historical halo around Independency. Mr. Brodie remarks that “the grand principle by which the Independents surpassed all other sects was, universal toleration to all denominations of Christians whose religion was not conceived to be hostile to the peace of the State—a principle to which they were faithful in the height of power as well as under persecution.” Nor should it

be forgotten that Locke, the first of our philosophers to argue on behalf of toleration, gained, as his biographers confess, his enlightened views from the Independent Divines.

Speaking relatively, Dissent is a thing of yesterday. It was born of the Puritanism which filled the gaols and fed the fires of Smithfield, when there were men and women ready to die for Christ and his Cross. Wycliffe was one of our earliest Dissenters. What he taught was the study of the Bible as the source of religious faith and the rule of a religious life. At college he was known as the Gospel doctor.

Queen Elizabeth ever believed in the invocation of saints; the worship of the Virgin Mary; thought it sinful for priests to marry, and had a couple of lighted candlesticks on her altar; but the country was full of learned divines, who had come from Geneva or Frankfort with a contempt for such papistical ideas, and with a more keen appreciation of the spiritual character of true religion. About twenty years after her accession, the principles of Independency were openly taught by Robert Brown, a relative of Cecil, the Lord Treasurer. When Black Bartholomew came, Puritans and Presbyterians were alike driven out of the Church. Owen, Vice-Chancellor of the

University of Oxford, Baxter and Calamy, might have been Bishops, but they held that they could not assent to the teaching and ritualism of the Church, and be false to conscience and to God. For this they had to endure hardships, poverty, imprisonment, of all kinds—when Charles II., who obtained the Crown of England under false pretences, though he did, as Pepys tells us, take the Sacrament on his knees, received from his pliant Bishops his title of most religious King. Calamy, when a lad, wondered why the old ministers who led peaceable lives, and always prayed for the King, were persecuted, and in our day the feeling of wonder still exists.

There have been times when the religious life of England has been utterly divorced from the Church. Such were the times when George II. said all the Bishops were infidels; such were the times when the clergy read to their congregations the Book of Sports, enforcing on their hearers dancing, jumping, archery, Whitsun ales, May-poles, and Morrice dances on a Sunday; such were the times when the Methodists were expelled Oxford, and when old John Newton wrote, that besides himself, there were only two pious clergymen in London. It is impossible to overrate the obligations of this country to Dissent. It saved

England from Popery. It laid the foundation of the mightiest republic the world has yet seen. It crushed the despotism of the Stuarts, while the Church was indecently declaring that a royal proclamation had the force of law. It gave us civil and religious liberty; the wonderful change for the better which within the last thirty years has come over the Church life of this country is due to the fact that, rivalling the Establishment in zeal and good works, has been an ever-growing, intelligent, and educated Dissent.

What are the doctrines of orthodox Dissenters? I reply, as regards Baptists and Congregationalists, they are very much the same. The real question at issue, whether adults or infants are the proper subjects of baptism, and whether the rite should be administered by baptism or immersion, really being but of little more importance than that of the Big Endians and the Little Endians of Gulliver. The Congregational Union issue a statement called “The Principles of Religion,” which they publish, not as a bond of union or as a series of articles to be subscribed to, but as a summary of what is commonly believed amongst them. In this document they state they believe the Scriptures of the Old Testament as received by the Jews, and the books of the New Testament as received