Moreover, as in every age some peculiar type of piety is found to prevail, whether it be Primitive, or Nicene, or Mediæval, or Reformed; so, during the English Commonwealth, influence flowing from the past and mingling with the present, washed thoughts and habits into form and hue so as to give to all religious parties a somewhat similar appearance not to be overlooked. Much time was spent by all pious persons in retirement, in reading, in meditation, and in prayer. Piety was active as well as contemplative, but the contemplative side was most apparent: the mind dwelt much upon memories of the past, the Nicene age being the background of thought in the one case, and the age of the Reformation in the other; whilst over the whole religion of the day there rested the solemn shadows of an ascetic spirituality. Moreover, there pertained to Anglicans and Puritans in common a singularly strong conviction of the absolute reality of spiritual and eternal things. They could truly say "we walk by faith, not by sight"—in contrast with so many religionists in our own time whose views are entirely walled in by objects of sense, and who walk by sight, not by faith. Our fathers of the seventeenth century "tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the world to come." They lived "on the sides of eternity," and their souls breathed a bracing air which came from the goodly land and the "Lebanon afar off." Visiting the sick and the poor, and managing some hospital for boys, or for old men and women, constituted the usual methods of beneficence in those times, inasmuch as Bible Societies, Missions, and Sunday-schools, were institutions then unknown.
Together with the difference between one age of Christendom and another, we must consider the differences between sect and sect. It is only fair for the historian to apply the term sect to any party exhibiting avowed symbols; whether found existing within the same Episcopal Church, as were all Anglo-Catholics and some of the Puritans—or existing outside, as was the case with Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists. Each division appears marked by the strength and the weakness of all such bodies. Each had a concentrated power of attack and of defence. Each was strong in its polemical attitude and action: each was powerful against the other. The weakness lay—as is ever the case—in defective self-culture, and in an imperfect extent of teaching within its own borders. Sectarianism is always one-sided. It seizes on certain points and magnifies them beyond all rules of proportion. Other parts of Divine truth and other portions of human nature suffer from neglect.
Idiosyncrasies.
And again, the idiosyncrasies of individuals must be taken into account, since they always powerfully contribute to produce varieties of spiritual life. John Milton and John Owen were both Christians, both devout, both unceremonial, both advocating a wide liberty of conscience, both averse to Prelacy, and to all Presbyterian domination, both entertaining in general the same views of government, political and ecclesiastical; yet how unlike in many other respects! The one exhibiting in his religion the genius of a poet, the other the genius of a systematic theologian; the one soaring with outstretched wings into the loftiest regions of Divine contemplation, the other measuring every opinion by the standard of a remorseless logic, based upon Scripture; the one inspired with classic taste, chiselling the products of his intellect into forms of beauty, comparable to those of Phidias in the art of sculpture; the other careless respecting artistic style, and flinging out the treasures of his affluent mind after a fashion which is most excruciating to the æsthetical of this generation; the one a man of imagination, the other a man of reason; the one a Homer, the other an Aristotle amongst Puritans. And as they differed in their manner of thinking, so also they differed in their modes of feeling and in their habits of life; the religious sentiments of Milton being calm and pure, with something in their tone almost approaching to angelic elevation, bearing scarcely any marks of such struggles as beset most other Christians, and suggesting the idea that his chief conflicts of soul must have been with "spiritual wickedness in high places;" Owen, on the other hand, dwelling much upon "the mortification of sin in believers," "the doctrine of justification," "the work of the Holy Spirit in prayer," and "the Glory of Christ," and ever indicating the strongest faith and the intensest feeling upon those evangelical points respecting which some defect may be traced in the religion of Milton; and whilst Milton was solitary in his devotion, at least during the latter part of his life, and in this respect, as in others, was "like a star and dwelt apart," Owen delighted in social worship.
No reader who has any fixed theological opinions can examine the Church systems of that age without feeling sympathy with some one of them, mingled with disapprobation in reference to the rest. The theologian is constrained to take a side as he studies this deeply-exciting history. A passionless neutrality is absolutely impossible. At the same time, a student is chargeable with injustice who does not carefully strive to ascertain the defects of his own party; and he also is wanting in charity if he be not ever ready to acknowledge the moral and spiritual excellencies of persons, whose opinions were different from those which he himself entertains. When all modifying influences have been conscientiously analyzed by the catholic-hearted reader of ecclesiastical history, he will rejoice in believing that the centre of Christian life is not in creeds, polities, and forms, but in One Divine Redeemer; and that Herbert and Fuller, Hammond and Baxter, Taylor and Howe, and the whole company of faithful souls, a few of whose names have occurred in these volumes, were looking to one and the same Christ for holiness and peace.
Pictures are drawn of the religion and morals of the Commonwealth mostly of two kinds; rose-coloured, glowing with brightest tints; or dark and gloomy, crossed with still deeper shades. Spiritual prosperity and little else is to be seen in the first; hypocrisy and vice alone are visible in the second. Party spirit is betrayed in each of these styles of historical, or rather fictitious art; yet neither serves its object. For, if there was so much prosperity as is sometimes represented, how superficial, how slightly-rooted it must have been, seeing the Restoration of Charles II. swept it almost all away; and if there was so much of hypocrisy and vice as some declare, it is but just to ask them, who were the chief hypocrites but the people who afterwards threw off the mask? Who must have been the most vicious in secret but those who sinned so very openly when restraint was gone? The fact is, that neither extreme receives support from a calm review of facts.
State of Religion.
The materials for forming a judgment of the actual state of religion during the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth are manifold. Attention should be directed first to the general accounts of the times which have been handed down to us by contemporaries. Isaak Walton, in his "Life of Dr. Robert Sanderson," declares that "the common people were amazed and grown giddy by the many falsehoods and misapplications of truth frequently vented in sermons, when they wrested the Scripture, by challenging God to be of their party, and called upon Him in their prayers to patronize their sacrilege and zealous frenzies." He also complains of honesty and plain dealing being exchanged for cruelty and cunning, and of the encouragement given to perjury by the violation of one oath through the taking of another. He says that Sanderson lamented much that "in many parishes where the maintenance was not great there was no minister to officiate; and that many of the best sequestered livings were possessed with such rigid Covenanters as denied the sacrament to their parishioners unless upon such conditions, and in such a manner, as they could not take it."[460]
Baxter, however, remarks: "If any shall demand whether the increase of godliness was answerable in all places to what I have mentioned (and none deny that it was with us) I answer, that however men that measure godliness by their gain, and interest, and domination, do go about to persuade the world that godliness then went down, and was almost extinguished, I must bear this faithful witness to those times, that as far as I was acquainted, where before there was one godly profitable preacher, there was then six or ten; and, taking one place with another, I conjecture there is a proportionable increase of truly godly people, not counting heretics, or perfidious rebels, or Church disturbers, as such. But this increase of godliness was not in all places alike; for in some places, where the ministers were formal, or ignorant, or weak and imprudent, contentious or negligent, the parishes were as bad as heretofore. And in some places, where the ministers had excellent parts and holy lives, and thirsted after the good of souls, and wholly devoted themselves, their time, and strength, and estates thereunto, and thought no pains or cost too much, there abundance were converted to serious godliness. And with those of a middle state, usually they had a hidden measure of success. And I must add this to the true information of posterity, that God did so wonderfully bless the labours of His unanimous faithful ministers, that had it not been for the faction of the Prelatists on one side, that drew men off, and the factions of the giddy and turbulent sectaries on the other side (who pulled down all government, cried down the ministers, and broke all into confusion, and made the people at their wits' end, not knowing what religion to be of), together with some laziness and selfishness in many of the ministry, I say, had it not been for these impediments, England had been like, in a quarter of an age, to have become a land of saints, and a pattern of holiness to all the world, and the unmatchable paradise of the earth. Never were such fair opportunities to sanctify a nation lost and trodden under foot as have been in this land of late! Woe be to them that were the causes of it."[461]
Testimonies.