The Episcopalians also, looking at the matter on the other side, had something to say. They prized the past History of the Church, and esteemed it of great importance to stand in the relation of successors to the Christian teachers of antiquity. Their theory was that the Church of England had not been established in the reign of Elizabeth or Henry, but had then been only reformed; that it constituted part of the Catholic Church, of which Rome had unjustly usurped the name, without possessing the attribute. Their formularies they traced back through mediæval times. For their doctrines they claimed the support of early Councils and Fathers. They pointed to the great antiquity of their orders, to the diocesan Bishops of the second century, and of every century since; and were prepared to argue, that the early prevalence of the distinction between Bishops and Presbyters is a presumptive proof of its having been sanctioned by apostolic authority. As to the evils flowing from Prelacy, the advocates of it would maintain that the abuse of a system is one thing, and the system itself another; that, although in the Middle Ages, in the Church of Rome, Prelacy had been made the instrument of immense mischief, this fact had nothing to do with the present controversy, the subject in dispute being not Popish Episcopalianism, but the Episcopalianism of the Reformed Church of England—the Episcopalianism of Ridley and Parker. Such Prelacy, the Bishops and their friends could irresistibly maintain to have been part and parcel of the law of England since the Reformation down to the Civil Wars; and, at the same time, they could point to the recognition of the rights of Spiritual Peers in the Constitution of this country from the early Saxon period—the legal or constitutional argument being the great bulwark of the Episcopalian cause, when treated as a social or political question. The ecclesiastical changes accomplished by the Long Parliament, were, in the eyes of Royalist and Anglican Churchmen, perfectly unconstitutional, illegal, and nugatory—for, in the accomplishment of them, one House had virtually done everything, the remnant of the Lords being mere ciphers; and the King, so far from having sanctioned the overthrow of the ancient Church, had protested against it, even unto death. With the Restoration, it was said again and again, came back the old Constitution of King, Lords, and Commons; and with that Constitution the Reformed Episcopacy and Prayer Book of England. The gravest and most forcible of all the allegations which the men now claiming their former position could bring against their opponents was, that they, in their turn, had been as exclusive as it was possible for any class to be. The Presbyterians, in the day of their power, had shown no consideration whatever for their Episcopalian neighbours. They had ruled with a high hand, and those who differed from them had experienced no mercy. They had proscribed the Prayer Book, and had vilified it in all kinds of ways—that very Prayer Book which now, with certain alterations, they would not decline to use. They had persecuted some of the very persons to whose candour and generosity they now appealed; also, they had been Commissioners for casting out scandalous ministers, and had assisted to expel some, from whom now, they were asking the privilege of continued ministration, with its emoluments, as an act of strict justice, or, at least, of reasonable favour. Besides, the Anglicans charged the Puritans with narrow-mindedness, with sticking at trifles, with making mountains of mole-hills, with cherishing scruples about points which involved no principle—in short, with being under the influence of prejudice and obstinacy. And then, beyond all other things which separated Episcopalians from their brethren, was a certain element of feeling in some—not in Sheldon, but in Cosin and Thorndike, and Heylyn,—which gave a mystical tinge to their views of matter in relation to mind, and which was the soul of their distinctive sacramental theology.[135]
1660.
Such were the religious, theological, and ecclesiastical differences between the two parties, to which must be added strong political antagonism for the last twenty years. That antagonism has been described in my former volumes. It will reappear in these.
Thus the two parties looked upon the question in dispute from their own point of view, influenced by past circumstances and by personal prejudices, after the manner of most controversialists.
Both are chargeable with faults of reasoning, and faults of temper. Each made too much of little things: one in enforcing them for the sake of order, the other in objecting to them as sins against God. The strong despised the weak. The weak condemned the strong. Neither mastered the lessons of St. Paul.[136] Yet the two were by no means equally blameable. More of Christian consideration and charity is discernible on the Puritan than on the other side, although even the Puritans had not attained to the exercise of that rare sympathy by which one man penetrates into the soul of another, making him as it were a second self,—by which process alone can a man subdue prejudice and win his brother over to that which he believes to be the truth.
THE CONTROVERSY.
It is necessary also to bear in mind this circumstance, that both parties were advocates for a national establishment of religion. Each party fixed its thoughts upon one society in which substantial uniformity of government and worship should be maintained—one society engrossing patronage and absorbing emoluments. It requires some effort for persons familiar only with modern phases of thought, thoroughly to enter into the ideas of the seventeenth century, and accurately to apprehend and estimate the views which were then current. Ecclesiastical controversy has undergone an immense change since that day; and could those who met together, as about to be described, now rise from the dead, it would be difficult for them to comprehend the position into which the Church questions of our age seem to be drifting.[137]
Remembering all this we proceed with our history.
1660.
WORCESTER HOUSE DECLARATION.