The Power of the Keys.
The Erastians, who were at this time the leaders of the political Independent party in the House of Commons, thus defeated their opponents. By fixing the control of ecclesiastical judicature in the civil magistracy and in Parliament, they established their own distinctive principle, which was utterly subversive of the polity advocated by the Presbyterians. The Church was altogether degraded from its position as a kingdom not of this world; and also discipline became so fettered, that in many cases its exercise proved to be impossible. The rules prepared by the Assembly, and sanctioned by the Commons, appeared sufficiently formidable to fence the Lord's table against the approach of improper communicants; yet the very minute specification of sundry offences, as in all cases of precise canon law, really presented an obstacle in the way of discipline respecting unspecified offences against morality and religion. All such minute rules are inherently vicious, and are singularly out of harmony with New Testament methods of legislation. Moreover, the interference of magistrates and of senatorial committees were likely to render these rules inoperative; and in cases which the rules did not reach, such interference was not calculated to produce ecclesiastical purity.
One object of the Presbyterians was the establishment of a Church of incorrupt religion and of undefiled morality. The Puritan Presbyter resembled the Anglican Archbishop as an apostle of uniformity; but the former thought much more of moral reformation, and much less of ritual worship, than the latter. The Church discipline of Presbyterian courts came nearer to the Church discipline of Archdiaconal ones than many people suppose; but what is truly moral and religious was raised by Presbyterians above what is ceremonial in a measure far beyond the conception of Romanists or Anglo-Catholics. The old ecclesiastical courts were overturned, many cases of immorality were no longer subject to jurisdiction; and Presbyterians, who, like Anglicans, treated the nation as a Church, aimed by their own system to supply what they considered a great defect in the moral government of the people.
1645.
The English Presbyterians essayed to walk in the path of their Scotch brethren; and the general conviction of the latter as to the divinity of that system must be borne in mind. Amongst an equal number of persons, where one man in England believed prelacy to be a divine institution, a dozen might be found in Scotland, who were not only assured that their Church rested upon the foundation of apostles and prophets, but were resolved also, in its defence, to go to prison, to the gallows, or to the stake. Church power bore in their eyes the stamp of Heaven, and owed nothing to Acts and Ordinances of Parliament. In Scotland, the Reformation had not been, as in England, mainly the revolt of the laity against the clergy. The clergy had led the way, like a grand prophet choir, they had headed the host. They had been in the van as the nation marched out of Egypt; and Moses did not more rejoice over Pharaoh than John Knox had done over the Man of Sin. Some will say there was plenty of fanaticism in the Reformation on the other side the Tweed; but it must be admitted that there was certainly no time-serving. Braver men never trod God's earth; and the sons now brought some of their fathers' fire over the border.
But, however admirable the purpose of the Presbyterians might be, the means employed for its accomplishment were inappropriate, dangerous, and unjust. They were inappropriate, because purity of discipline has ever been found impossible in a State establishment, whether it be the superior, the ally, or the subordinate of the civil power; for a Church which comprehends, or is meant to comprehend, a whole nation within its pale, must necessarily be open to great laxity of communion. The means, too, were dangerous, because to vest the power of discipline, entailing civil consequences, in a body of local officers, was to place the social position and interests of individuals at the mercy of a few in their own parish, who possibly might be induced by unworthy motives to give trouble and annoyance. And the means also were unjust, because the penal enforcement of uniformity in doctrine, worship, and polity, contravened the rights of conscience, and deprived all Nonconformists of religious liberty. It was not on the side of opposition to strict discipline and pure fellowship that religious Independents had any sympathy with the Erastians in their anti-Presbyterian warfare. Most earnestly did the former inculcate the importance of these very things, and, for the sake of them, were prepared to sacrifice many temporal advantages. What they objected to was, first, the secular power which the new Church wished to manage and employ for its own purposes; and secondly, the intolerance towards rival sects with which the supremacy of that Church would be connected. The Independents maintained, what wise and thoughtful men, though widely removed from Erastian tendencies, have ever since done, that if there be an Establishment at all, it is far better that the State should be mistress of the Church than that the Church should be mistress of the State. No doubt, the political alliance between the Erastian and the Independent damaged somewhat the apparent consistency of the latter; but in this respect, as to what he suffered, he only shared in the common fate of religious persons when entering into political combinations; and as to what he did, he only acted like many individuals since of eminent conscientiousness; for in fact he was glad of help, from whatever quarter it might come, in his endeavours to prevent despotism and to resist intolerance.
Toleration.
1645.
II. The question of the keys, if it did not exactly involve, certainly approached the question of toleration. At any rate, Church censures, when left to the presbytery of a parish, gave little hope of religious liberty being conceded to the parishioners. But, beyond mere implication and probable contingency, there existed the fact that the Presbyterian regarded the suppression of opinions and usages contrary to his own as an inexorable obligation. In addition to the legal enactment of discipline, he asked power to punish sectaries. The ministers were ardent in endeavouring to prove the magistrates' duty to put down heresy and schism. It formed the theme of numerous sermons preached in St. Margaret's to the House of Commons. The City Divines, in their weekly meetings at Sion College, debated upon the best method of securing that end. The zealots of the party would, if possible, have moved the Corporation of London to throw its influence into their scale; but, just then, certain political complications checked the movement, and deep lamentations over the faithless citizens immediately ensued. So far did some of the Londoners go in this kind of backsliding, that they even spoke of the Assembly being dissolved[553]—an extreme measure, which the Lords Say and Wharton, in their jealousy of ecclesiastical encroachments upon the liberties of the people, had also proposed in the Upper House.[554] At the same period, books and pamphlets were written by Prynne and others, to establish the claims of the new ecclesiastical polity, and the righteousness of treating all sectaries as obstinate offenders.[555] One of their advocates, in the heat of his eloquence, declared, "that to let men serve God according to the persuasion of their own consciences is to cast out one devil, that seven worse might enter."[556] The Scotch were too much interested in the subject, and took too prominent a part in the settlement of ecclesiastical affairs in England, to be silent at this crisis.[557] But the style of the letter which they sent to Parliament ruffled the tempers of many of the members, though it received at the time a courteous and dignified notice; but two months afterwards, when another address of a similar character, yet less offensive in style, came from the same quarter, and was published without authority, the Houses voted the "papers false and scandalous, and, as such, to be burnt by the hand of the hangman."[558]
Toleration.