[424] I do not attempt to vindicate this great man against the charge of inconsistency. One side of a subject was everything to him while he gazed at it. He had no faculty for harmonizing apparently opposite truths, and was apt, as ardent men are, to fall into errors, from which his clearly expressed opinion on certain points ought to have saved him. Mr. Hallam (Literature of Europe, iii. 112), in whose severe judgment of Taylor's inconsistency I cannot coincide, thinks that one inconsistent chapter, (the seventeenth) was interpolated after the rest of the treatise was complete. This is possible, but it is also possible that Taylor when first writing his book might suddenly swing from one side to the other, and then come round again. It has been said that Taylor forgot his liberality when he became a bishop. His biographer, Bishop Heber, attempts to meet this charge.—Works, i. 30. It may be added, that the Dissuasive from Popery, published in 1664, proceeds on the same principles as the Liberty of Prophesying. See Dissuasive, part ii. book i.—Works, x. 383.
How Taylor's work was regarded by a Royalist and an Episcopalian may be seen in Mrs. Sadleir's Letter to Roger Williams. "I have also read Taylor's book of the Liberty of Prophesying, though it please not me, yet I am sure it does you, or else I know you would not have wrote to me to have read it. I say, it and you would make a good fire. But have you seen his 'Divine Institution of the Office Ministerial?'" Life of Roger Williams, 99. Mrs. Sadleir was daughter of Sir Edward Coke. A writer in the Ecclesiastic, April, 1853, p. 179, remarks: "Whatever Taylor may have been thought of since, certainly his contemporaries amongst the Church party had no very high opinion of him."
[425] Sermon preached before the House of Commons, March 31st, 1647.
[426] Ward's Life of Henry More, 171. I have here confined myself to those in the Church of England who advocated toleration, pointing out the grounds which they adopted as distinguished from those occupied by the Independents. Others, who proceeded in the same advocacy on the broadest principles of justice, will be hereafter noticed, i.e., John Goodwin, Leonard Busher, and Sir Henry Vane. Of the last of these it may be remarked that so early as 1637 he used this memorable language, in New England: "Scribes and Pharisees, and such as are confirmed in any way of error, all such are not to be denied cohabitation, but are to be pitied and reformed; Ishmael shall dwell in the presence of his brethren." (Bancroft's United States, i. 390.) The most thorough advocate of intellectual liberty in the New World was Roger Williams, who, though in many respects an impracticable man, and wanting in catholicity of spirit, appears to have been an original and intrepid champion for the political independence of theological opinions, as well as a noble minded and disinterested leader in colonial enterprise. Milton advocates toleration in his Areopagitica, a speech to the Parliament of England for the liberty of unlicensed printing, 1644. Harrington's Political Aphorisms, in which liberty of conscience is justly placed on a political basis, was not published until 1659. Episcopius and Crellius were early advocates for toleration. See Hallam's Introduction to Literature of Europe, iii. 103, 104.
[427] Const. Hist., i. 612.
[428] The petition is largely quoted by Waddington in his Surrey Congregational History, p. 32, and the pamphlet, entitled Queries of Highest Consideration, is quoted in Hanbury, ii. 246.
[429] For proofs and illustrations of this we refer to our second volume. In the meanwhile we may observe that in An Attestation, published by the Cheshire ministers in 1648, allusion is made to some of the Independents as "averse in a great measure to such a toleration as might truly be termed intolerable and abominable"—meaning by that universal toleration.—Nonconformity in Cheshire. Introduction, xxvi.
[430] Life of Goodwin, by Jackson, 93.
[431] A Reply of Two of the Brethren to A. S., 1644. Quoted by Jackson, p. 116. Goodwin states "that the part which treats of religious liberty was the production of his own pen."—Jackson, 57.
[432] Baillie, writing to Mr. Spang, May 17th, 1644, (Letters, ii. 184,) says: "The Independents here, finding they have not the magistrate so obsequious as in New England, turn their pens, as you will see in M.S.," (which he had before identified as Goodwin's, of Coleman Street,) "to take from the magistrate all power of taking any coercive order with the vilest heretics. Not only they praise your magistrate who for policy gives some secret tolerance to diverse religions, wherein, as I conceive, your Divines preach against them as great sinners; but avows that by God's command the magistrate is discharged to put the least discourtesy on any man—Jew, Turk, Papist, Socinian, or whatever, for his religion." "The five will not say this, but M.S. is of as great authority here as any of them." Yet, though this sentiment is by Baillie confined to Goodwin, and expressly said not to be shared by the five, it has by some been put into the lips of Nye.