"About twelve of the clock this Thursday, the day of her departure, Dr. More being gone, I went to her, and by degrees told her of the danger she was in, upon which she seemed as it were to recollect herself, and desired me to deal plainly with her, when I told her Dr. More's judgment of her, for which she gave me most hearty thanks, saying this was a favour above all I had ever done her, &c.; and when she had, in a most comfortable manner, given me hearty thanks, she desired me to spend the time she had to live here, with her in praises and prayers to Almighty God for her, desiring me not to leave her, but to pray for her, when she could not, and was not able to pray for herself, and not to forsake her until I had commended her soul to God her Creator. After which, some time being spent in praising God for her creation, redemption, preservation hitherto, &c., we went to prayers, using in the first place the form appointed by our Church (a form she most highly admired), and then we enlarged ourselves, when she added thirty or forty holy ejaculations;—then I read unto her divers of David's Psalms, after which we went to prayers again; then she desired the company to go out of the room, when she made a relation of some particulars of her life to me (being then of perfect judgment), desiring the absolution our Church had appointed, before which nurses and others were called in, and all kneeling by her, she asked pardon of all she had offended there, and desired me to do the like for her to those that were not there; and when I had pronounced the absolution, she gave an account of her faith, and then after some ejaculations she praised Almighty God that He had given her a sight of her sins, giving Him most humble thanks that He had given her time to repent, and to receive the Church's absolution; and then she prayed in a very audible voice, that God would be pleased to be merciful to this our distressed Church of England for Jesus Christ his sake. After this she only spoke to my Lord, having spoken to her father, Sir J. Lambe, two or three hours before, and then at last of all, she only said, 'Lord Jesus, receive my soul;' but this was so weakly, that all heard it not, nor did I plainly, but in some sort guessed by what I heard of it."[13]
But the Anglo-Catholicism of the Stuart age presented other aspects. In a multitude of cases, ritual worship degenerated into mere ceremonialism. An ignorant peasantry, who could neither read nor write, and who were destitute of all that intellectual stimulus which, in a thousand ways, now touches the most illiterate, would derive little benefit from reading liturgical forms, unaccompanied by instructive preaching—against which, in the Puritan form, the abettors of the system were much prejudiced. Though the prayers and offices of the Church of England be incomparably beautiful, experience is sufficient to show that, familiar with their repetition, the thoughtless and demoralized, being quite out of sympathy with their spirit, fail to discern their excellence. And, when it is remembered, that the Book of Sports, instituted by King James, was the rule and the reward for Sabbath observance; that after service in the parish church (not otherwise), the rustics were encouraged to play old English games on the village green, to dance around the May-pole, or to shoot at butts; we ask what could be the result, but religious formalism scarcely distinguishable from the lowest superstition? Should it be pleaded, that a pious and exemplary clergyman would impart life to what might otherwise have been dead forms, and restrain what otherwise would have been riotous excess; it may be replied, that a very considerable number of the holders of livings were not persons of that description; they sank to the level of their parishioners, and had no power to lift their parishioners to a level higher than their own.
The sympathies of the Church were with the people in their amusements; a circumstance which contributed to the strong popular reaction in favour of the Church, when Charles II. was restored. In the reign of Charles I. the wakes, or feasts, intended to celebrate the dedication of churches had degenerated into intemperate and noisy gatherings, and were, on that account, brought by the Magistrates under the notice of the Judges. But the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Bath and Wells, backed by the King, came to the rescue. The complaints were attributed to Puritan "humourists." Alleged disorders were denied. The better sort of clergy in the diocese of Bath and Wells,—seventy-two in number, likened to the Septuagint interpreters, "who agreed so soon in the translation of the Old Testament,"—came together, and declared that these wakes were fit to be continued for a memorial of the dedication of churches, for the civilizing of the people, for lawful recreation, for composing differences, for increase of love and amity, for the relief of the poor, and for many other reasons.[14]
The charge has been brought against the high Churchmen of that day, that they were papistically inclined. If by this term be meant any disposition to uphold the Papacy, and to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop of Rome over other Churches, even though modified by a charter of liberties like the Gallican, the charge is unfair. A distinct national establishment was always contended for by those who were suspected of the strongest papal leanings. They advocated an authority not derived from any foreign potentate, but, as they conceived, of immediate divine origin, and this authority they considered to be entitled to uncontrolled jurisdiction within the shores of the four seas. They wished for a Pope—to use the current language of the times—"not at Rome but at Lambeth." A reconciliation with the Church of Rome not involving submission, might have been agreeable to some of the party; yet, it must be acknowledged that, in solemn conclave, the Anglicans accused the Romanists of idolatry.[15] If, however, by papistic be meant a tendency to Catholic worship, and so ultimately to Romish conformity, then may the imputation be supported by facts. The history of Christendom shews that the Church gradually passed from its primitive simplicity to the corruptions of the papacy; that ante-Nicene innovations, with post-Nicene developments and traditionalism, were stepping-stones in the transition. The process, on a wide scale, requires many centuries for its accomplishment; but partially and in individual cases a few years may suffice for the experiment. Ecclesiastical annals, from Constantine to Hildebrand, may be epitomized in a brief chronology. Movements may rapidly pass through stages, like those of the Nicene and Mediæval. And sharp speaking, in order to maintain a certain ecclesiastical position against Rome, may immediately precede, and in fact, herald the approach of pilgrims to the very gate of the seven-hilled city.[16] What has occurred within our own time in individual instances, was likely to occur, to a large extent, in the first half of the seventeenth century.
Mediæval sympathies, at the period now under our review, are obvious not only in the rigorous enforcement of fasting and abstinence,[17] which had continued ever since the Reformation, but in certain monastic tendencies, and in slurs cast on the reformers. A document, prepared in 1633—no doubt under the influence of Laud—by Secretary Windebank, for the direction of Judges of assize, urged obedience to the proclamation for the better observance of Lent and fish-days, because their neglect had become very common, probably in many cases on Puritan grounds.[18] Monastic tendencies, about the same time, appeared in the famous Monastery at Gidding, in Huntingdonshire. While the devotions of the pious family there excited the admiration of Isaak Walton,—in whose account of it is reflected the more spiritual phase of the proceeding,—the superstitions, mingled with better things, provoked the severest animadversions of Puritan contemporaries,[19] who wondered at nothing more than, that in a settled Church government, Bishops could permit "such a foundation so nearly complying with Popery." In connection with this may be mentioned the preface to the new statutes for the University of Oxford, published in Convocation, which "disparaged King Edward's times and government, declaring, that the discipline of the University was then discomposed and troubled by that King's injunctions, and the flattering novelty of the age, and that it did revive and flourish again in Queen Mary's days, under the government of Cardinal Pole, when by the much-to-be-desired felicity of those times, an inbred candour supplied the defect of statutes."[20]
In the sixteenth century, and far into the seventeenth, intolerance, inherited from former ages, infected more or less all religious parties. Few saw civil liberty to be a social right, which justice claimed for the whole community, whatever might be the ecclesiastical opinions of individuals. This position of affairs shewed how little dependent is spiritual despotism upon any particular theological system, and how it can graft itself upon one theory as well as upon another; for, while under Elizabeth persecution allied itself to Calvinism, in the first two of the Stuart reigns, Arminianism—at that time in Holland wedded to liberty of conscience—appeared in England embracing a form of merciless oppression. But, though without special theological affinities, intolerance certainly shewed kinship to certain forms of ecclesiastical rule. It fondly clung to prelacy before the Civil War. The relation in which subsequently it appeared to other Church organizations will be disclosed hereafter. Whitgift and Bancroft, inheriting intolerance from their predecessors, persecuted Nonconformists. They silenced and deprived many; whilst others they excommunicated and cast into prison. The Anglican Canon Law—which must be distinguished from the Papal Canon Law[21]—remained a formidable engine of tyranny in the hands of those disposed to use it for that purpose. That law, of course, claimed to be not law for Episcopalians alone but for the people at large, who were treated altogether as subject to Episcopal rule; and neither creed nor worship inconsistent with canonical regulations could be tolerated for a moment. Only one Church was allowed in England; and for those who denied its apostolicity, objected to its government, disapproved of its rites and observances, or affirmed other congregations to be lawful churches, there remained the penalty of excommunication, with all its alarming consequences.[22]
Anglicanism allowed no exercise of private judgment, but required everybody to submit to the same standard of doctrine, worship, and discipline. Moderate Puritans were to be broken in, and Nonconformists "harried out of the land." It might seem a trifle that people should be fined for not attending parish churches; but imprisonment and exile for nonconformity struck most Englishmen as a stretch of injustice perfectly intolerable.[23]
Ecclesiastical Courts, not only consistory and commissary, but branching out into numerous forms, carried on actively and continuously the administration of canon law after the Reformation. Discipline was, perhaps, not much less maintained after that event than before.[24] Such activity continued throughout the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles; and so late as 1636 the Archdeacon of Colchester held forty-two sessions at four different towns during that single year. The object of the canon law and the ecclesiastical courts being pro morum correctione et salute animæ, immoralities such as the common law did not punish as crimes, came within the range of their authority, together with all sorts of offences against religion and the Church. The idea was to treat the inhabitants of a parish as members of the Anglican Church, and to exercise a vigilant and universal discipline by punishing them for vice, heresy, and schism. Intemperance and incontinence are offences very frequently noticed in the records of Archidiaconal proceedings in the latter part of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth centuries, suggesting a very unfavourable idea of public morals at that time; and a long catalogue also appears of charges touching all kinds of misconduct. Some appear very strange,—such as hanging up linen in a church to dry; a woman coming to worship in man's apparel; a girl sitting in the same pew with her mother, and not at the pew door, to the great offence of many reverent women; and matrons being churched without wearing veils. Others relate to profaning Sundays and holidays, setting up maypoles in church time, and disturbing and even reviling the parish ministers. Certain of them point distinctly to Puritan and Nonconformist behaviour, such as refusing to stand and bow when the creed was repeated, and to kneel at particular parts of divine service. Brownists are specifically mentioned, and extreme anti-sacramental opinions are described.
The method of proceeding ex officio was by the examination of the accused on his oath, that he might so convict himself if guilty, and if innocent, justify himself by compurgation[25]—a method, it may be observed, totally opposed to the criminal jurisprudence of our common law, and one which became increasingly offensive in proportion to the increase of national attachment to the English Constitution on the side of popular freedom. Though, as we look at the moral purpose of these institutions, and the cognizance they took of many vicious and criminal irregularities of conduct which did not come under the notice of civil magistrates, we are quite disposed to do justice to the motives in which the courts originated, and to admit that in the rude life of the middle ages they might possess some advantages—we must see, looking at them altogether, that they became the ready instruments of intolerance when great differences in religious opinion had appeared; that they were certain, in Puritan esteem, to attach odium to the old system of Church discipline; and that they were completely out of harmony with the modern spirit of Protestant civilization.
In the Tudor and Stuart days, there also existed two tribunals of a character which it is difficult in the nineteenth century to understand. The High Commission Court was doubtless intended to promote and consolidate the Reformation on Anglo-Catholic principles, by exterminating Popery on the one hand, and checking Puritanism on the other. According to the terms of the Act of Uniformity, Elizabeth and her successors had power given them "to visit, reform, redress, order, correct and amend all such errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, contempts, offences and enormities whatsoever, which, by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction, ought, or may be lawfully reformed, ordered, redressed, corrected, restrained or amended." Her Majesty became invested with authority to correct such heresies of the clergy as had been adjudged to be so by the authority of the canonical Scripture, or by the first four general councils, or any of them, or by any other general council, or by the High Court of Parliament, with the assent of the clergy in convocation.[26] Many Commissions were successively issued by the Queen.[27] Neal gives an abstract of that one which was issued in the month of December, 1583. After reciting the Act of Supremacy, the Act of Uniformity, the Act for the assurance of the Queen's powers over all states, and the Act for reforming certain disorders touching ministers of the Church, her Majesty named forty-four commissioners, of whom twelve were bishops, some were privy councillors, lawyers, and officers of state, the rest deans, archdeacons, and civilians. They were authorized to enquire respecting heretical opinions, schisms, absence from church, seditious books, contempts, conspiracies, false rumours, and slanderous words, besides offences, such as adultery, punishable by ecclesiastical laws. In the first clause command is given to enquire, "as well by the oaths of twelve good and lawful men, as also by witnesses, and all other means and ways you can devise."[28] With this power of enormous latitude, instituting enquiry over vague offences, was connected a power of punishment, qualified by the word "lawful," and by reference "to the power and authority limited and appointed by the laws, ordinances, and statutes of the realm." Liberty was given to examine suspected persons "on their corporal oath"—in fact, the ex officio oath.[29] Any three of the members had authority to execute the commission.[30]