James II. and the established church set out on the highest terms of good humour with each other. This, as the king afterwards assured the dissenters, was owing to the professions made to him by some of the churchmen, whom he named, who had promised favour to the Catholics, provided he would abandon all idea of general toleration, and leave them their ancient authority over the fanatics. Moved, as he said, by these promises, the Declaration in council, issued upon his accession, had this remarkable clause: "I know the principles of the church of England are for monarchy, and the members of it have shewn themselves good and loyal subjects, therefore I shall always take care to defend and support it." This explicit declaration gave the greatest satisfaction to the kingdom in general, and particularly to the clergy. "All the pulpits of England," says Burnet, "were full of it, and of thanksgivings for it. It was magnified as a security far greater than any that laws could give. The common phrase was, We have now the word of a king, and a word never yet broken. This general feeling of gratitude led to a set of addresses, full of the most extravagant expressions of loyalty and fidelity to so gracious a sovereign. The churchmen led the way in these expressions of zeal; and the university of Oxford, in particular, promised to obey the king without limitations or restrictions." The king's promise was reckoned so solemn and inviolable, that those addresses were censured as guilty at least of ill-breeding, who mentioned in their papers the "religion established by law;" since that expression implied an obligation on the king to maintain it, independently of his royal grace and favour. But the scene speedily changed, as the king's intentions began to disclose themselves. Then, as a Catholic pamphleteer expresses himself, "My loyal gentlemen were so far out of the right bias, that, in lieu of taking off the tests and penal laws, which all people expected from them in point of gratitude and good manners, they made a solemn address to his majesty, that none be employed who were not capacitated by the said laws and tests to bear offices civil and military."[276]
If James, had viewed with attention the incidents of the former reign, he might have recollected, that, however devoted the clergy had then shown themselves to the crown, his brother's attempt at his present measure of a general indulgence had at once alarmed the whole church. This sensibility, when the interest of the church is concerned, is severely contrasted with the general indifference to the cause of freedom, into which they relapsed when the indulgence was recalled, in a party pamphlet of the year 1680-1. "You may easily call to mind, a late instance of the humanity and conscience of this race of men here in England: For when his majesty, not long since, attempted to follow his own inclinations, and emitted a declaration of indulgence to tender consciences, the whole posse cleri seemed to be raised against him: Every reader and Gibeonite of the church could then talk as saucily of their king, as they do now of the late honourable Parliament; nay, they began to stand upon their terms, and delivered it out as orthodox doctrine, that the king was to act according to law, and, therefore, could not suspend a penal statute; that the subjects' obedience was a legal obedience; and, therefore, if the king commanded any thing contrary to law, the subject was not bound to obey; with so many other honest positions, that men wondered in God how such knaves should come by them. But wherefore was all this wrath, and all this doctrine? merely because his majesty was pleased for a time to remove the sore backs of dissenters from under the ecclesiastical lash; the bloody exercise of which is never denied to holy church, but the magistrate is immediately assaulted with the noise and clamour of Demetrius and his craftsmen.
"But now, the tables being turned, the same mercenary tongues are again all Sibthorp, and all Manwaring; not a bit of law, or conscience either, is now to be had for love or money; not any limits to be put to the king's commands, or our obedience. It is a gospel truth with these men, that all which we have is the king's; and if he should command our estates, our wives and children, yea, and our religion too, we ought to resign them up, submit, and be silent."—The Freeholders' Choice, or, A Letter of Advice concerning Elections.
Possess your soul with patience, and attend;
A more auspicious planet may ascend;
Good fortune may present some happier time,
With means to cancel my unwilling crime.—P. [224].
The first expression in these lines seems to have been a favourite with Dryden. In the Introduction to the Translation of Juvenal, he makes it his glory, "that, being naturally vindicative, he had suffered in silence, and possessed his soul in quiet."
The arguments used by the Panther in this passage seem to have more weight than her antagonist allows them. It was surely reasonable, that the church of England should rest upon her penal statutes and test act, as the sole mode of preventing the encroachments of her rival during a Catholic reign, and at the same time that she should look forward with pleasure to a future period, when such severe enactments might be no longer necessary for her safety; a time, of which it has been our good fortune to witness the arrival.