The new lights, as they were termed, had begun to set England in a blaze, and two of their burning torches were greeted in Ribblesdale in the persons of Morgan and Davies, the latter the village-schoolmaster, the former a low-minded money-scrivener, who had amassed a large fortune in "the godly city of Gloucester"; and retired to spend it in his native town, where he purchased an estate, acted as justice of the peace, and styled himself gentleman. Both were illuminated apostles of the new doctrines, but each had a peculiar department in the work of reformation; one wishing to batter down the spiritual abominations of the church, while the other confined his zeal to destroying the bands of tyrannical rulers, and "calling Israel to their tents." Davies laboured under the pressure of poverty. He had displeased Dr. Beaumont by his seditious and impertinent behaviour, and the inhabitants withdrew their children from his school; but as his means of living decreased, his opinion of his own deserts enlarged; he mistook the cravings of want for spiritual illumination, and so perplexed his mind by reading the scurrilous libels of the day, as to be firmly persuaded that the King was the Devil's bairn, and Archbishop Laud the personal antichrist. A description of church ceremonies thrilled him with horror, and in every prosecution of a contumacious minister his ardent fancy saw a revival of the flames of Smithfield, while his confused notions of right and justice convinced him, that if the arm of the spirit failed, that of the flesh must be exerted, to throw down these strong holds. He had long believed himself equal to Dr. Beaumont in learning, and fancied that the unction of gifts and graces, with which he was favoured, gave him a decided preference over man's ordination. He continued to attend the church, but not in the capacity of an humble learner. By coming late, he avoided the zeal-quenching liturgy, which, as it avowedly retained ancient prayers, he considered as Babylonish and idolatrous, and he exercised his Christian liberty of choosing his religion by listening to the sermon, with a design of cavilling at the preacher, whom he soon found to be a mere legal teacher, descanting on the doctrine of works exploded by the new covenant.
Morgan had less zeal than Davies, and more foresight. Though equally anxious to pull down and destroy, he was not so certain that the fragments would re-edify themselves into a habitable fabric; and as he liked the comforts he enjoyed in the present state of things, he was not inclined to lay the foundation of a republic, till he was certain of getting a good apartment in it himself. He saw that the aspect of the times forboded extraordinary changes; but as he could not divine which of the numerous sects that opposed the church would acquire the ascendancy, he left his religion to future contingences. He found Davies an able assistant, and therefore determined to keep him hungry and discontented, in order to make him the more active in recommending the sovereign panacea, that was to cure all the national disorders. This recipe was no other than the covenant promulgated in Scotland, and which was called "a golden girdle to tie themselves to Heaven, a joining and glueing themselves to the Lord, a binding themselves apprentice to God[[1]]." These terms were applied to an agreement which made those that entered into it, if in a public station, break their oath of allegiance, (for the covenanters were bound to overturn the ecclesiastical branch of the constitution,) and which though it affected loyalty by professing deference for the person of the King, yet maintained the independence and paramount power of the parliament, and denounced the King's friends as malignant incendiaries and evil instruments, who prevented his reconciliation with his people. The pretext of separating the royal person from the free exercise of his functions, was too gross to deceive the most short-sighted. Equally palpable was the falsehood of pretending to promote peace and unity by an instrument, which, in the form of a religious sacrament, forbade concession, and solemnly denounced eternal enmity to all who held different opinions. Such mockery could be equalled only by that of the popish inquisitors, who intreat the secular power to be merciful, even in the warrant by which they virtually consign their victims to the flames.
These were the pestiferous principles of the intermeddlers, who disturbed the tranquillity of Ribblesdale, and alienated the minds of the people from their good pastor. The doctrine of Davies was most popular, for Morgan cut only the fifth commandment and its dependant duties out of the decalogue, while Davies, by always insisting on the freedom of grace, led his hearers, who were unskilled in theological subtilties, to think he meant to limit duty to the simple act of belief. From the period of their opposition to Dr. Beaumont, a marked change was visible in the manners of the villagers; their time was devoted to contentious disputation, which is in truth the most dangerous sort of idleness, and as they became in their own ideas more enlightened, they became more miserable; a sullen morose gloom usurped the frank hilarity of satisfied rusticity, which formerly animated their countenances. Athletic exercises and cheerful sports were renounced as sinful, and the green became the resort of conceited politicians, who, with misapplications of Scripture in their mouths and newspapers and libels in their hands, boasted their renunciation of the sensual vices, yet cherished as graces the baneful passions of pride, malice, and stubbornness, which the Scriptures assure us are most odious in the sight of God.
Dr. Beaumont was not an inactive spectator, while he beheld his parishioners thus exchanging the infirmities of the flesh for spiritual contumacy; but the evil had spread beyond the reach of lenient remedies. It is possible to instruct the ignorant, and reform a conscious culprit, but who shall teach those who are wise in their own eyes, or convince an offender, who, while he condemns righteousness as filthy rags, boasts of his freedom from the power of sin. The church was deserted, or frequented only by the Doctor's most inveterate opponents, who came not to reform their lives, but to impugn the doctrine of one, whom they had previously denounced, as not preaching the gospel, and what with omissions, transpositions, inuendoes, and insertions, they took care so to disguise his discourses in their reports, as to make him appear to maintain what he had uniformly controverted.
As his ministerial credentials were thus discredited, even while he stood by the mercy-seat, as priest of the Most High, so when he performed the social part of his pastoral functions, his visits to his flock exposed him to derision and insult. The smile of respectful affection, and the salute of humility and gratitude, no longer greeted His Reverence; his charity was received as a right, and the legal maintenance which the law allowed him was grudgingly paid, or vexatiously withheld from him, being deemed a pledge of servitude to a preacher whom the people had not chosen, and who fed them with garbage instead of wholesome food. Even his own tithe-holder, farmer Humphreys, was led away by the delusion. He was a man of rough manners and gloomy unsocial disposition, but he had hitherto never ventured to rebel, farther than occasionally to absent himself from church, on the Sunday after every admonition which Dr. Beaumont from time to time privately gave him to abstain from too free indulgence at market. He would have thought it sacrilegious as well as impudent to question the lawful endowment of the church, and he reproved his wife for being piqued at Mrs. Mellicent's blaming her passion for high-crowned hats, ruffs, and farthingales, which the sage spinster thought indecorous for yeomen's wives, though very suitable to Lady Waverly. He silenced the good dame's remarks on Mrs. Mellicent's interfering disposition, by reminding her of the value of that lady's green ointment, adding that though she was apt to be domineering and outrageous, she was ever a true friend, and more useful in sickness than the great Doctor at Lancaster. But Humphreys's opinions were totally changed, since he had the honour of joining the club at Squire Morgan's, and heard the evening lectures which Davies gave in the schoolroom. He now found that man was born equal and free, that he had a right to choose by whom and how he would be governed or taught, that tithes were a Jewish ordinance, and therefore carnal; and that as he was nearly as rich as his pastor, it was lording it over the Lord's heritage for Dr. Beaumont to be called Your Reverence, while himself was only Goodman Humphreys. As to the Doctor's superior share of virtue and wisdom, he had reason to doubt whether he really possessed them, because he never heard him say he did, but he knew Squire Morgan was wiser, and Master Davies more godly than other people, for they told him so every day. And they made such fine speeches, and uttered such long prayers, that he knew they wished him well. Some things indeed, that they said about free grace, and agrarian laws he did not quite understand, but he believed these dark sayings meant, that when he came to be one of the elect, he should get to Heaven without any trouble; and that if church and King were overthrown, he should occupy the glebe without paying any rent. Be this as it would, the right of choosing his own pastor, which Davies peremptorily insisted on as the foundation-stone of the reformation, secured him from the mortification of continually hearing Dr. Beaumont insist on duties he had no inclination to practice, and condemn faults he did not like to renounce. It is no wonder, therefore, that Humphreys wrought himself into a most patriotic resolution, no longer to submit to tyranny and priestcraft, and to vow that the next time the Doctor admonished him, he would retort with "Ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi."
People who resolve to speak their minds, seldom wait long for an opportunity. Farmer Humphreys's zeal for the holy covenant, which he was assured confirmed these privileges, not only induced him to take it himself, but to insist on his carter, Jobson's, subscribing to it also. Not that he intended the blessed panacea should work a similar change in the situation of Jobson, who, he discovered, was predestined to hard work and hard fare; but, as the good cause might want an arm of flesh in its defence, the muscular strength of the ploughman, like that of the ox, would help to drag the new ark into the sanctuary. For this purpose, he carefully concealed from Jobson the latent privileges and immunities that were vested in these cabalistical words, nor did he think it any infringement of his principles to inforce by his own behaviour the abominable doctrine of passive obedience, and to insist that Jobson should either become a covenanter, or quit his service, and forfeit his wages. Jobson had once heard the rigmarole, as he called it, read over, and by a strange perverseness of understanding, fancied these indentures of faith and unity, to be no other than binding himself to the Devil, to pull down the church and curse the King, and he preferred persecution and poverty to such servitude. As he resisted all Davies's attempts to enlighten him, and met his master's threats with a stedfastness which these friends to liberty called contumacy, the alternative was dismissal from his present service, without any remuneration for his past.
He applied to Justice Morgan for redress, who, anxious to disprove the suspicions that were circulated of his disposition to favour disorganizing principles, enjoined Jobson to obey his master, and reproved him for thinking that his soul could be endangered by following the example of so many great men, who had taken the covenant. It inopportunely happened, that at this moment Jobson recollected a sermon of Dr. Beaumont's, against the sin of following a multitude to do evil, in which every man's responsibility for his own offences, and the attention of Omniscience to individual transgressions, were illustrated by proofs drawn from the minute watchfulness of Providence, which superintends the heedless flight of the sparrow, and adorns the lilies of the field with more than regal magnificence. In reply to Morgan's enumeration of the Dukes, Marquisses, Lords and Squires, Godly Ministers and staunch Common-wealth men, who had taken the covenant, Jobson shook his head, and said, none of them would answer for his soul. "I heard," said he, "last Sunday in church, that all the Princes of a great nation worshipped a golden image, and three men would not, so every body went against these men, and threw them into a burning furnace. But the men were right after all in the end of the story; and so, please Your Worship, I'll not sign the Devil's bond for any body."
Davies, who was present at the examination, now remarked that Jobson had not only forfeited his wages as an hireling, by his disobedience to a believing master, but deserved to be committed for slandering the holy covenant; and Morgan, though he knew this had not yet been made an offence by statute, yet relying on the temper of the parish, the ignorance of the culprit, and the protection he would be sure to meet from a faction, whose violence had driven the King from his capital, and usurped the government, made out a Mittimus. Some remaining sense of justice, and a dislike of oppression when exercised against one of their own rank, induced the peasants to shew their disapprobation. A crowd collected around Morgan's door, determined to exercise their rights and to rescue the prisoner. The tears and cries of his wife and children had just roused them to the assumption of that summary mode of vengeance, so gratifying to an English mob, when the appearance of Dr. Beaumont suspended their fury. The long-formed associations of habitual reverence were not so intirely abrogated as to allow them to continue their riotous conduct under the influence of that mild eye, which had often silently reproved their faults, or that benevolent countenance, which had pitied their wants, and confirmed their virtues; they stood in suspence, involuntarily waiting for his opinion.
Dr. Beaumont severely condemned their misconduct in taking justice into their own hands, and assured them he would use all proper means for the liberation of Jobson. A confused murmur arose, as he entered the house. Some wondered if he knew that Morgan was his enemy, supposing that, if he did, he never would have objected to their breaking his windows; others said that the Doctor and Davies would now have it out. Davies had often said the Doctor was a Babylonish trafficker in works, an Alexander the copper-smith; and they wondered what names the other would invent. All were amazed how he dared venture among them, as they wanted something on which to accuse him to the new government.
Personal safety, and a regard to his own peculiar contests, were the last things that suggested themselves to the mind of Doctor Beaumont. Forgetful of the injuries and insults he had received, he addressed his opponents with graceful manners, and in conciliatory language. He requested to know what was Jobson's offence, expressing a hope that it was of such a nature as to admit of his urging the extenuating plea of his former good conduct.