Episcopalian Loyalty.
The loyalty of these persons, as we have said, is prominently exhibited in the little Prayer Book before us; and from its pages we quote the following remarkable petitions for Prince Charles:—
"O blessed Lord God, who hast in Thy fatherly care and goodness taken our late gracious Sovereign into Thy peace, and left the inheritance of his throne and sceptre to his firstborn, we beseech Thee to prepare and instruct him for so high and so weighty a calling. Be Thou pleased, out of the riches of Thy treasure, to pour Thy wisdom into his heart, to command that double portion of his father's spirit to rest upon him—the head of Solomon and the heart of David—and withal the meekness and true Christian charity, the inward calmness, and placability of spirit, that may arm him thoroughly against all the provocations of an unthankful people; that he may come and reign amongst us, as a tender compassionate father of all his kingdoms, carry them, as Moses did Thy people, in his arms, from a desert to Canaan, and go in and out before them with that conduct which Thy pillar of fire and cloud afforded them. Lord, be Thou his light and his guide, his counsellor and protector, his shield and his exceeding great reward; keep him from all the designs of the enemies of his and our peace; preserve him as the apple of thine own eyes; and because of the great strait and difficulties which are now before him, the obstructions which none but Thine especial interposition can remove, Lord, fasten his heart, and the eyes and hearts of all his counsellors steadfastly and unanimously upon Thee, to keep close to Thy ways and rule, and be Thou continually assistant to them, that without the effusion of any more blood, if it be Thy sacred will, he may attain to a peaceable possession and establishment in his inheritance; erect his throne in the hearts and loyal affections of his people; give them all a thorough sight of the great errors of their former ways, and sincere endeavour to approve their fidelity to him whom Thou hast set over us. Unite us all at length in the Christian bond of peace and love, in the practice and power of all godliness, that being by this last astonishing cup, added to so many former punishments, made inwardly sensible of Thine anger for this unnatural division, we may all at length be reduced to our bounden obedience, to the glory of Thy sacred name, the vindication of our defamed religion, the comfort of our King, and the happiness and restoration of these languishing kingdoms; and confirm all this to us, O Lord, in the bowels of Thine own mercy, to a sinful people, through the mediation of Thine own dear Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
Episcopalian Loyalty.
There is no doubt a great deal to admire in these expressions of attachment to the old regal rule of England, and in these supplications for him whom the Episcopalians could not fail to regard as heir to the throne; but then, on the other hand, no one can shut his eyes to the fact that these persons, precisely to the same degree in which they evinced their devotion to monarchy now abolished, and their love for the Stuart dynasty now exiled, shewed themselves to be disaffected subjects of the existing Government—rebels, in short, against the Republic and the Protectorate. Unquestionably they formed a very dangerous class. Their religion, and their holiest services, were identified with the strongest desires for a revolution. They believed that the overthrow of the powers of the State was essential to the restored prosperity of their Church. No doubt the righteous course of the supreme authority in England at that time would have been to separate what had become entangled; and whilst consistently forbidding such worship as was instinct with the spirit of treason, justly to concede full toleration for such worship as was simply Episcopalian. But, looking at human nature, and at the exasperation of men's feelings in those days, such clear discrimination and such calm equity are much more than could be expected; and therefore whilst we decidedly condemn the intolerance of forbidding the use of the Prayer Book altogether, we are bound to recognize—as some excuse for the Commonwealth Rulers, or, at least, as a fact claiming some mitigation of our censures of their conduct—the political position of the Episcopalians, assumed either by their continued use of the old royalistic formularies, or by their adoption of new ones even stronger and more revolutionary in their place. It is also only fair to recollect what large provocations the Puritans had received only a few years earlier from persons of this very class when they were in the ascendant; as well as to remember what provocation the rulers of the country still met with from persons of the same class who were known to be actually engaged in plots for their overthrow. And after all, the pressure put upon the Episcopal party in the darkest hour of their history under the Commonwealth is not to be compared, as it respects violence on the one side and suffering on the other, with what was inflicted by Churchmen, and experienced by Nonconformists, under Charles the First and Charles the Second.[362] Nor is there any resemblance between the amount of persecution endured by the disciples of Prelacy at the period under review, and the amount of sorrow and pain which was then borne by another class of Christians whose history will be unfolded in the following chapter.
CHAPTER XIII.
There is in humanity an element of mysticism presenting manifold developments. It characterizes both individual minds and schools of thought: mediæval theologians, and men and women of Romish Christendom, altogether ignorant of scientific divinity, and only burning with pious fervour, have been mystics without knowing that they were so. Since the Reformation particular members of all sects have been tinged with this peculiarity; and a whole body of religionists in England have from the very beginning of their remarkable history avowed the love and walked in the light of a mystical spiritualism. Though the Anglo-Saxon race are believed generally to have less sympathy with transcendental views than Spaniards, Germans, or Frenchmen, yet it is a fact that nowhere as in this country has mysticism produced a distinct and permanent ecclesiastical organization. And what is further remarkable, whilst it claims a purely spiritual basis—there is no other sect which has an equal distinctness of form and an equal prominence in external singularity; for not only in worship and discipline does it stand out in marked visibility before the world, but so obvious are or were its outward signs that, until very lately, a member of the Society might be as easily recognized as a Roman Catholic priest or a Capuchin friar.