Bramhall.
Turning to Bramhall's "Vindication of himself and the Episcopal clergy from the Presbyterian charge of Popery,"—a book written about the year 1659, though not published till 1672[327]—in reply to Baxter's "Treatise of the Grotian Religion," we find in it a defence of the conduct of Episcopalians in the days of their prosperity. Baxter had complained of the persecutions inflicted by them upon the Puritans. According to him, in some places, it had been much more dangerous for a minister to preach a lecture once or twice on the Lord's Day, or to expound the Catechism, than it had been never to preach at all. Bramhall replies: "If preachers shall not content themselves to sow the wheat over again, but shall sow tares above the wheat; if they shall seek to introduce new doctrines, new disciplines, and new forms of worship, by popular sermons, different from and destructive to those which are established by law, who can blame the magistrates, political and ecclesiastical, if they begin to look about them? A seditious orator is dangerous everywhere, but nowhere more than in the pulpit. Then blame not magistrates, if they punish seditious or schismatical preachers more than one who is no preacher. All laws, and all prudent magistrates, regard public dangers more than particular defects."[328] The Bishop did not see that he employed a two-edged sword, and that while aiming a blow at his adversary, he ran the risk of receiving, through counter-thrusts, a wound from the back stroke of his own weapon. If to preach doctrines contrary to those which were established by law deserved chastisement from the magistrate—if such preaching was seditious preaching, then the Commonwealth Government was justified in depriving and silencing Episcopalian ministers. Bramhall vindicated his own party in having done the very same sort of thing which he now complained of as unrighteous when done by his opponents. It is plain enough that both parties were in the wrong, and that each furnished the other with a miserable pretext for revengeful injustice. And when the same writer, comparing Nonconformist with Episcopal sufferers, quietly says: the former suffered for faction, and the latter for faith,[329] and so concludes the subject,—everybody must smile to see how he assumes as settled the very point which was in dispute. His opponents could just as easily say that they were faithful, and that he and his brethren were factious. It is the old story—as old as human nature, and as modern as this morning's newspaper.
The Episcopalians were exposed to a cross fire from the Puritans, who charged them with Popery, and from the Papists, who charged them with schism. The story of the Nag's Head consecration was revived. Laud had treated Presbyterians and Independents as schismatics. M. de la Milletiere, counsellor in ordinary to the King of France, in an epistle, written in the year 1653, with a view of inviting Charles II. to embrace the Catholic faith, maintained, that everybody knew the Archbishop, who had been nourished in the English schism, had no other thought than to reunite in one body the people who were divided into sects amongst themselves, and to make himself chief head of one schismatical Church. "And we see," he adds, "God hath permitted that his own people, divided against itself, hath caused his head to be cut off." This passage illustrates the view which was entertained of Laud and his followers by foreign Roman Catholics, and also of the sort of controversy the refugees had to maintain in their travels through Roman Catholic countries. Bramhall published at the Hague, in 1653, a reply to this performance, repelling the charge of schism, and vindicating the memory of his friend. He calls Laud a most glorious martyr, a man of profound learning, exemplary life, clean hands, a most sincere heart, a patron of learning, and a friend of order and uniformity, but not for sinister ends.[330] The defence was honestly written, and indicated what many honest exiles thought of Laud—how they dwelt on his virtues, and were totally blind to the folly, mischief, and sin of his intolerance; but by holding up to admiration such a Prelate, without a word of condemnation for his faults, Bramhall and others gave bad omen of what they would do themselves if they should ever be restored to power.
Bramhall.
An elaborate confutation of the Nag's Head fable engaged the pen of the same writer, and issued from a press at the Hague in the year 1658.[331] In connection with his zeal and diligence in this controversy it is worth while to notice the suspicions which Bramhall entertained of Romanist intrigues in England throughout the Commonwealth era. These suspicions on the part of Presbyterians and Baptists have been already described. There must have been immense exaggeration in such reports; yet their extensive circulation amongst people of different opinions—all of them, however, agreeing in a hatred of Rome—is somewhat remarkable. Impossible as it now is to ascertain the amount of truth which these rumours might contain, they are curious as signs of what was a prevalent belief in those days. That the reader may see for himself what such a man as Bramhall heard and credited on this subject, we subjoin the greater part of a letter to Ussher, which he wrote in the year 1654:—
Bramhall on Romanists.
"It plainly appears that in the year 1646, by order from Rome, above one hundred of the Romish clergy were sent into England, consisting of English, Scotch, and Irish, who had been educated in France, Italy, Germany, and Spain; part of these within the several schools there appointed for their instructions. In each of these Romish nurseries, these scholars were taught several handicraft-trades and callings, as their ingenuities were most bending, besides their orders or functions of that Church. They have many yet at Paris a fitting to be sent over, who twice in the week oppose one the other; one pretending Presbytery, the other Independency; some Anabaptism, and the others contrary tenets—dangerous and prejudicial to the Church of England, and to all the Reformed here abroad. But they are wisely preparing to prevent their designs, which I heartily wish were considered in England among the wise there. When the Romish orders do thus argue pro and con, there is appointed one of the learned of those convents to take notes and to judge: and as he finds their fancies, whether for Presbytery, Independency, Anabaptism, Atheism, or for any new tenets, so, accordingly, they be to act, and to exercise their wits. Upon their permission, when they be sent abroad, they enter their names in the convent registry, also their licences; if a Franciscan, if a Dominician, or Jesuit, or any other order, having several names there entered in their licence; in case of a discovery in one place, then to fly to another, and there to change their names or habit. For an assurance of their constancy to their several orders, they are to give monthly intelligence to their fraternities of all affairs wherever they be dispersed; so that the English abroad know news better than ye at home. When they return into England, they are taught their lesson: to say, (if any enquire from whence they come,) that they are poor Christians formerly that fled beyond sea for their religion sake, and are now returned, with glad news, to enjoy their liberty of conscience. The one hundred men that went over in 1646, were most of them soldiers in the Parliament's army, and were daily to correspond with those Romanists in our late King's army that were lately at Oxford, and pretended to fight for his sacred Majesty; for, at that time, there were some Roman Catholics who did not know the design a contriving against our Church and State of England. But the year following, 1647, many of those Romish Orders who came over the year before were in consultation together, knowing each other. And those of the King's party, asking some why they took with the Parliament's side, and asking others whether they were bewitched to turn Puritans, not knowing the design; but at last, secret bulls and licences being produced by those of the Parliament's side, it was declared between them, there was no better design to confound the Church of England than by pretending liberty of conscience. It was argued then that England would be a second Holland, a Commonwealth; and if so, what would become of the King? It was answered, 'Would to God it were come to that point.' It was again replied, 'Yourselves have preached so much against Rome and his Holiness, that Rome and her Romanists will be little the better for that change:' but it was answered, 'You shall have mass sufficient for a hundred thousand in a short space, and the governors never the wiser.' Then some of the mercifullest of the Romanists said, 'This cannot be done unless the King die;' upon which argument, the Romish Orders thus licensed, and in the Parliament army, wrote unto their several convents, but especially to the Sorbonists, whether it may be scrupled to make away our late godly King and his Majesty his son, our King and master, who, blessed be God, hath escaped their Romish snares laid for him? It was returned from the Sorbonists, that it was lawful for Roman Catholics to work changes in Governments for the Mother Church's advancement, and chiefly in an heretical kingdom; and so lawfully make away the King."[332]
Cosin—Morley.
Concluding this imperfect story respecting the Bishops, we now relate what happened to the other clergy. Several of them went abroad. Cosin, the High Church Dean of Peterborough, was of this number. At Charenton, near Paris, according to Walker, he kept up the English Church discipline and worship by the Common Prayer, recovered some who were inclined to Popery, and had encounters with several Jesuits and Romish priests; but his tendencies in another direction appear in "Evelyn's Diary," where it is related that, "The Dean of Peterborough preached on the Feast of Pentecost; perstringing those of Geneva for their irreverence of the blessed Virgin."[333] The same diarist gives a glimpse of the ceremonies in the chapel of the exiles: "The King and Duke received the sacrament first by themselves, the Lords Byron and Wilmot holding the long towel all along the altar."[334] To shew the sincerity of the Dean, who had raised—and we do not wonder at it, when we think of his childish ritualism—such a storm of Puritan indignation against himself; and as an indication of his courage and his constancy—a trait of character, no doubt common in that age, as it is wont to be amongst all but the basest of mankind, when storms of persecution try their attachment to the Church of their childhood and their convictions—we venture to quote a few lines from one of Cosin's letters to his friend Sancroft, who was destined to occupy the chair of the Primacy, but was at the time of the Restoration a wanderer abroad: "I am right glad to hear still, (as I have been told by divers persons heretofore,) how firm and unmoved you continue your own standing in the midst of these great and violent storms that are now raised against the Church of England; which, for my part, notwithstanding the outward glory and dress that she had, be in these evil times taken from her, yet I honour and reverence above all the other churches of the world; for she bears upon her, more signally than any other that I know does, the marks of Christ, which, when all is done, will be our greatest glory."[335]
Dr. Morley, in company with Cosin, attended the English Court in the city of Paris in the year 1651.[336] After being engaged in the education of Hyde's family during part of their exile, at a period when they were "in great want already, and likely to be in more and more, even to a very great extremity, if God in mercy did not provide for it by some extraordinary means, beyond all visible probability,"—he became chaplain at Heidelberg to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, at a salary of £50 per annum, with permission "to officiate to the Queen's family according to the liturgy of the Church of England, without any subordination to the classis." He had been a friend of Falkland, of Chillingworth, and of Waller, and before the wars was thought to favour the Puritans. Burnet says he was doctrinally a Calvinist, and was pious and charitable, but he also speaks of him as extremely passionate, and full of obstinacy—a statement which Baxter confirms in his account of the Savoy disputations.[337] He had in early days been "one of Ben Jonson's sons," a circumstance which accords with his life-long reputation for brilliant wit. That gift, always dangerous, is particularly so to a clergyman; and Morley, who is said to have been "keen, but inoffensive," though admired by his friends for his companionable qualities, was condemned by many for social habits and a tone of conversation unbecoming a Christian minister.