Barton believed this effervescence would terminate in a happy calm—a mild but energetic government; and he looked forward to prosperous times, when the remembrance of past misfortunes should correct national manners, and produce a general improvement in the minds and feelings of men. Neville was always sanguine; and Dr. Beaumont confessed that all things seemed to tend to the restoration of monarchy; yet, with the prescience of a man long accustomed to calamity, he doubted whether even that desired event would speedily repair the deep wound which England had sustained.
"We shall," said he, "receive with our Prince the inestimable blessings of our old laws and form of government; but as our troubles have served rather to show us the necessity, than to prevent the abuse, of the prerogative, its limits continue undefined, and we shall still too much depend on the personal character of the King. It were well if the situation in which we now stand would allow us to propose such conditions as would make the duties of King and subject plain and easy, before we invite our Prince to resume the sceptre of his ancestors, as it would prevent the mistakes into which his father fell, from a misconception of the bounds of sovereign power, derived from the arbitrary precedent set by the House of Tudor. But our divisions prevent us from claiming those advantages which would result from wisdom, moderation, and unanimity. We fly to the King as to a healer of our dissensions. A keen feeling of our sorrows and offences has raised the sensibility of the nation to such a pitch, that it will sooner make concessions than propose restraints, and rather throw its liberties before the throne than suggest an abridgement of its splendour. We shall therefore depend, I fear, upon his mercy for the existence of the sacred inheritance whose very shadow was so pertinaciously defended from the approaches of his father. I trust his personal virtues are what his friends report. He has been educated in adversity, a good school; but are not his advisers men who have endured too much to be dispassionate and liberal? They have suffered in a good cause: if, when restored to power, they abstain from indulging any vindictive propensity, they will be saints as well as confessors; but, considering their long and grievous provocations, is not this requiring too much of human frailty?
"Consider too, my dear friends, (and let the reflection allay your sanguine expectations of another golden age,) that the King to whom we look forward has been bred a foreigner. From his own country he has hitherto met with nothing but severe injuries. The impression he has received of the character of his future subjects is repulsive and disgusting; and the heart of a King of England, as well as his manners, should be completely English. He will return loaded with debts of gratitude, which he never can discharge, to those who supported his father, as well as those who restore him; to the surviving friends of all that have bled in unsuccessful conflicts, and to those who will ride by his side in triumph; to those who spent their fortunes in his quarrel, and to those who hope to gain or preserve fortunes by voting for his return. What course are men apt to pursue when they find themselves in a state of inextricable insolvency? Do they not endeavour to forget their creditors in general, and think only of taking care of themselves and their personal friends. Royalty does not extinguish human feelings. Let us consider its difficulties, and palliate while we anticipate its errors.
"Are these all the remaining evils which the crimes of the last twenty years have entailed upon us and our posterity? Call me not a prophet of evil if I foresee general laxity of principle arising out of these sad vicissitudes and deplorable contests. You, my good Barton, will not deny, that the extravagance, absurdity, and hypocrisy of many low fanatics, who sheltered themselves under that unbounded liberty of conscience which you Dissenters (I think unwisely, as well, as erroneously) claim, have made every extraordinary pretension to piety suspicious. The nation has been whirled in the vortex of enthusiasm, perplexed with the discordant pretensions and controversial clamour of various sects, till it has begun to consider indifference to religion as a philosophical repose; and its contempt for hypocrites is increased till it has generated a toleration, if not a partiality of licentiousness and immorality. Infidelity (a sin unknown to our forefathers) has lately appeared among us, not like a solitary, restless sceptic, affecting a wish for conviction, nor in the bashful form of an untried novelty, cautiously stealing upon public favour—but under the licence long allowed to opinions however blasphemous or immoral, a party has arisen, calling themselves free-thinkers, who not only deride every ecclesiastical institution, and publicly insult religion in its ministers, but even make the word of God an object of profane travesty and licentious allusion. This never could have happened, the manly feeling and good sense of Englishmen would never have permitted such audacity, had not trifling, malicious, ignorant, and ridiculous misapplications of the sacred writings, sunk, in too many minds, the veneration in which they were formerly held; and thus benumbed what ought to have been the natural sentiments of indignation at the blasphemies of deism.
"We must admit that the return of the King is likely to introduce an influx of foreign manners, and that the long-suspended festivities of a court will foster an exultation bordering on extravagance. How will those who seek advancement, approach a Prince who has been long groaning under the injustice of mean and cruel hypocrites? Is it not likely that ridicule will aim at the gross, distorted features of preaching mechanics, and praying cut-throats, till the ministers, who are consecrated to serve at the altar, will find some of the missile shafts fall on their vestments? The perversions of Scripture I have just mentioned will be so scrupulously avoided, that an apposite and pious quotation will be termed puritanical; and we shall seldom hear the sacred volume referred to but to point a jest. Elegant literature, the fine arts, and dramatic amusements, have been long reprobated as Pagan devices. But so natural is our desire for innocent enjoyments, that, remove the interdict, and the public inclination will rush to these delights with the avidity resulting from constrained abstinence, which will give to pleasure an undue preponderance: Wit has been too much discountenanced. I simply argue on the tendency of the human mind to extremes, when I suspect that it will be indulged till it degenerates into indecorous levity. May the evils I foresee exist only in my fears; but if they are realized, much of the guilt, much of the blame must be laid on those who deluged us with spiritual pride, cant, austerity, and oppression; who bent the necks of Englishmen to the yoke of slavery, did their utmost to exterminate the Christian sentiments of moderation and charity, wrought the nation into a ferment, and then expected good to result from the chaos of virulent passions."
Mr. Barton admitted all the evils which had resulted from overstrained rigidity, but expressed the hopes his party entertained that Episcopacy would not be considered as a necessary adjunct to monarchy; or, in case of its revival, that it might be re-instated in its primitive form, and that the objectionable parts of the Liturgy, the articles, and the canons, might be so modified as to satisfy all parties. He spoke of the obligations which the King would owe to the Dissenters; who he trusted would be rewarded by being placed on an equality with the Church.
Dr. Beaumont argued, that if these late services cancelled their former transgressions, the Dissenters would have no just cause of complaint at being replaced in the situation which they held previously to the rebellion. He much feared that the vindictive feelings of those who had been despoiled, ridiculed, plundered, imprisoned, and deprived of every earthly blessing, would produce some measures, which, though they might be supported by the pretence of preventing further mischief, he should lament and blame, but never justify. As to jointly establishing Episcopacy and Presbytery, or simply tolerating both, he could never consent to either plan politically, because he conceived one established religion was necessary to preserve national piety; and the Church had too many claims on the King's gratitude, and was too intimately connected with the laws and manners of the people to be laid aside, or reduced to the level of her opponents; and, considered as a point of conscience, he was so firmly convinced of her conformity, in doctrine and discipline, to apostolical institutions, ancient customs, and, above all, to Scripture, that, though he would be the last man in the kingdom to consent to persecute those who, through conscience, refused to conform, he would be the first to defend her pre-eminence. As to giving the Church a more primitive dress, by which he supposed was meant, depriving her of her endowments, it must be remembered, that when the ministers of the Gospel lost miraculous gifts, they became dependant on temporal support. Though the apostles appeared as mendicants, yet while they could heal diseases with a touch, they inspired reverence. But in the present times men showed more observance to those who could bestow alms than to those who required support. It should likewise be remembered that an injunction was given to the bishops of the first century "to use hospitality," a proof that the primitive church was not in all respects clad in sackcloth.
Dr. Beaumont farther declared his doubts of the good effects of a conference between the Episcopalian and Presbyterian clergy. He was willing to sacrifice non-essentials to peace; but personal disputations were more apt to confirm than to remove prejudices. One party would be too querulous, the other too tenacious. Personal considerations would mix in the dispute; difficulties would be started; objections raised, when none, in fact, existed; and, in the heat of debate, real improvements would be rejected, which, in the calm seclusion of the closet, would be allowed to be important. Declaimers, conscious of their own powers, would seek distinction rather by acuteness and fastidiousness than by candour and placability. The enemies of the Church would argue rather with a view to her destruction than to her purification; and, on the other hand, her friends would gloss over her imperfections through fear that her opponents had some latent hostility, which the least concession on their part would bring to maturity.
He reminded Barton that as a body the Dissenters could not complain at their being expelled from the situations in which they were placed by an unlawful and usurped authority. He trusted that wise and moderate men would, by conformity, avoid this evil, and prefer the true praise of sacrificing their scruples at the shrine of peace and unity, to the false glory of courting reputation, by first exciting and then enduring persecution. He spoke of schism as an evil the most afflictive; the most opposite to the spirit of the Gospel, and to the commands of its Divine Founder, and as the greatest impediment to its universal promulgation. He exhorted Barton to use his influence with his friends, persuading them to acquire the only triumph over the church in their power, by renouncing their own prejudices, when they could not make their opponents subdue theirs, and thus prove themselves to be the truest disciples of the Prince of Peace. "Let the contest," said he, "be only which shall serve our common master best, by leading a life of unpretending holiness. Schism does infinitely more harm by the enmity it engenders, than it does good by the zeal it kindles. Controversial ardour is rather the death than the life of piety."
Mr. Barton replied, that he was become much more sensible of the evils attendant on a separating humour, on the gathering of parties and forming sects from the church; their effects had proved them to be mischiefs. He confessed that until he had imbibed prejudices against the Liturgy, he had joined in it with as hearty fervency, as he afterwards did in other prayers, and felt, from its imperfections, no hinderance in his devotions. He said, that he had lost his relish for controversy, and now took most delight in what was fundamental, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, furnishing him with matter for meditation equally acceptable and abundant. That he less admired gifts of utterance, and bare professions of religion, than he once did, and no longer thought that all those who could pray movingly and fluently, and talk well of religion, were of course saints. That he was convinced most controversies had more need of right stating than of debating, and that many contenders actually differed less than they supposed[[1]]. But still if the conditions of conformity should require him to acknowledge the invalidity of his present ordination, he could not consent to admit that he had hitherto been an Uzzah, touching the ark with unhallowed hands. In that case he would submit to the rod of chastisement, instead of receiving the staff of pastoral cure, and if he were forbidden to instruct others, he would discipline himself. For the sake of peace he would attend the services of the church, in which, though he saw much that might be improved, he discerned nothing absolutely sinful. To preserve a Christian spirit in himself and others, he would avoid dwelling on the restraints he suffered; but instead of repining, be thankful for the liberty he enjoyed. And he thought such behaviour would be the best way of enlarging that liberty, or, if that could not be done, of healing, in the next generation, those breaches which furious animosity had made in the present[[2]].