This was an extraordinary speech to an English Parliament. It can bear no construction but that of being a plea for a dispensing power. The Houses having framed a law, Clarendon would have it left to the Royal wisdom to temper its administration, and to distinguish between the tenderness and the pride of conscience,—as if the power of discerning spirits were a gift to kings. What, in the lips of any English senator would be inconsistent, appears doubly so in the present instance, for Clarendon afterwards opposed the exercise of the power which he now claimed on his master's behalf.
It is necessary here to pause, and inquire what change this famous Act made in the Establishment of England. The insisting upon Episcopal ordination, in every case, as essential to the conducting of public service, and to the preaching of the Gospel, certainly cut off the English Church, more completely than before, from fellowship with other reformed Churches;[339] and, in consequence of another provision for a certain period, the pastoral office became dependent on the taking of a political oath, to which some, approving of her doctrine and of her discipline, might conscientiously object. The Church also stood pledged to the maintenance of civil despotism. Under pretence of reprobating the course pursued under the Commonwealth, a dogma was imposed upon the ministers of religion, which, if believed, would effectually prevent any resistance to the designs of an arbitrary monarch, even if he should lend himself to the overthrow of the Church itself. Besides, persons might be found not unfriendly to moderate Episcopacy, who, nevertheless felt it wrong to use respecting the League and Covenant the terms which this Act prescribed.
ACT OF UNIFORMITY.
The Act of Uniformity added the requirement of "unfeigned assent and consent" to everything contained in the Prayer Book. By such alterations the Church of England became increasingly exclusive and Erastian in its principles, and less Protestant and liberal in its spirit.
1662.
In carrying a great measure, responsibility must be divided. It rarely happens that a number of persons combining together to effect any change are influenced by the same views; and in this instance of united action different degrees of responsibility, and different kinds of motives, are discoverable, when we look a little below the surface.
I. Convocation must be held responsible for the changes made in the Prayer Book, its revision being exclusively the work of that assembly; but, at the same time, it should be remembered, that assembly formed only a small body, and represented but in part the sentiments of the clergy. Many of the members felt a strong zeal for order and union; the feeling assumed different aspects in different instances. Some in the Upper House, as Cosin, Sanderson, Hacket, Ward, Morley; some in the Lower, especially Thorndike, sympathized in the sentiments of Cyprian, as expressed in his Liber de Unitate Ecclesiæ, confounding unity with uniformity, and allegiance to Christ with submission to Bishops. They, like him, might suppose that in their zeal for Episcopal order, they were working out an answer to our Lord's intercessory prayer. Such a conception of ecclesiastical oneness had been, by the Nicene and Mediæval Churches, handed down to the Church of the English Reformation; and it must be admitted, that desires for uniformity by means of Episcopal order, were in many cases so interlinked with submission to Christ, as, even in the estimation of those who differ from Anglo-Catholics, to have their errors, in a measure, redeemed by the devoutness of their affections. Desires for uniformity, however, as they wrought in some, both of the superior and inferior clergy, at the period of the Restoration, had nothing whatever of nobleness in them.
The Bishops shared in the responsibility of the Upper House of Parliament, as well as in the responsibility of the Upper House of Convocation. Sheldon,—to whom must be attributed much influence over the latter, and also much over the former, so far as the Bishops were concerned; and who also, from his prominent position and great activity at the Restoration, could not fail to share in Clarendon's counsels, respecting the Bill,—was not a man of religious zeal, but a man of worldly principles; and it is not uncharitable to regard others on the Bench, and in the Lower House, as closely resembling him in this respect. Reynolds belonged to a class which, when a crisis arrives, will always bend to the force of stronger minds, and be carried along by the current of authority.
ACT OF UNIFORMITY.
Between the Bishops at the Restoration and the Bishops at the Reformation, a considerable difference appears. The theology of the Anglican prelates at the Restoration was not imbued with those elements of thought, which the early Reformers held in common with Puritan Divines; hence, in part, arose the dislike which the Fathers of the re-established Church cherished towards Nonconformists. Sheldon, as will appear when we fully examine his character, differed from the ecclesiastical leaders in Queen Elizabeth's time, such as Parker and Jewel,[340] who had strong religious affections, and were earnestly bent upon building up Protestantism in England as the great bulwark of her prosperity; moreover, the Caroline restorers and revisers of the Prayer Book were utterly deficient in comprehensive policy. The Elizabethan Divines did avoid, as much as possible, giving offence to such of the old Roman Catholic party, just dispossessed of power, as felt at all disposed to join them; but the ecclesiastical leaders of Charles' day, threw every obstacle they could in the path of those Nonconformists who showed any disposition to adopt a modified system of Episcopacy.[341]