The changes proposed did not touch any articles of faith, and therefore exhibit the English Latitudinarian party in a very different position from that of the foreign Latitudinarians, who threw down all the barriers of orthodoxy, and opened the doors of the Church to Unitarians. D’Huisseau, a distinguished professor and pastor at Saumur, proposed the reunion of Christendom on the broadest doctrinal basis, and received support from several Calvinistic Divines of considerable note. The English Episcopalians, who moved in the matter as just described, rather resembled Jurieu, an eminent French theologian, ordained by an Anglican Bishop, yet officiating as a Presbyterian clergyman in France and in Holland. He advocated Comprehension on an orthodox basis, and treated Church organization and forms of worship as of minor importance.
1689.
The sittings of the Commission ended on November the 18th. Convocation had assembled on the 6th of the same month.
The labour of the Commissioners was labour in vain. It came to nothing. All that remains of it is a royal octavo pamphlet in blue paper covers, published some years ago by order of the House of Commons.
History records many a lost opportunity, which students of the past, looking at events, each from his own point of view, must needs lament. To the Catholic—the old Catholic of the Döllinger type—the Reformation appears a lost opportunity for removing abuses and uniting European Christendom. It comes before him as a crisis, which, if the Catholic party had been wise, they would have used for the purpose of purifying the Church and conciliating opponents, and so retaining them within the same fold. By the Puritan, freeing himself from party bias, I should think, the era of the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth must be regarded as a lost opportunity for treating Episcopalians (their inveterate persecutors) in the spirit of Christian justice and charity, by granting admirers of the Prayer-Book a freedom of worship which admirers of the Prayer-Book had never granted to the Puritans; thus returning good for evil, and so reading with emphasis a priceless lesson to the whole world. In like manner, surely, the liberal Churchman of the present day, whatever he may think of Tillotson’s Commission, must mourn over the Revolution as a lost opportunity for enlarging the boundaries of her communion, of recovering Dissenters—not to the extent Calamy supposed, yet in considerable numbers—and of removing from the Church of England many incumbrances, which have ever since been points of attack and sources of weakness.
CONVOCATION.
Much excitement had been manifested during the clerical elections in the year 1661, but there was far greater excitement during the election of 1689. Canvassing for members of Parliament was an old custom, but canvassing for members of Convocation was a new one, and at the time it was noticed as a sign of party spirit then so rife. The fact is remarkable, that whilst the official members of the Lower House included many distinguished men, nobody of any mark was elected, except Dr. John Mill, the eminent Greek scholar, who edited a new version of the text of the New Testament.[161] By far the majority was composed of persons who had long been Tories in politics, and now showed themselves to be High Churchmen in religion; but the Upper House,—thinned, by refusal to attend, of those nonjuring Prelates who still survived, two of them having died,—contained decidedly liberal politicians and divines in the persons of Compton, Lloyd, Burnet, and Patrick, the last of whom had in September been raised to the Bishopric of Chichester. These Bishops took the lead in the proceedings of that assembly, and imparted to them a liberal spirit. The difference between the temper of the two Houses soon appeared.
Convocation had formerly met first at St. Paul’s, and afterwards at Westminster. Now that the new Cathedral of London, though nearly completed, had not been consecrated, Convocation assembled at once within the walls of Henry VII.’s Chapel, when a Latin sermon was preached by Beveridge.
1689.
As soon as the Lower House proceeded to business, the choice of a Prolocutor was the first step. On the 21st of November, Sharp—who had in the Deanery of Canterbury succeeded Tillotson, now made Dean of St. Paul’s—proposed as Prolocutor his distinguished predecessor, who was a friend of the King, a favourite at Court, a man of prudence and moderation, and a promoter of the scheme of Comprehension. But Tillotson was rejected by two to one in favour of Jane. Nobody could mistake the significancy of the choice. It would appear that personal feeling had some influence in it. The Earls of Clarendon and Rochester are accused of having intrigued against Tillotson from resentment towards his patrons, the King and Queen—the latter of them, although their near relative, not having raised them to any high employments in the State. Moreover, it had become known, that Tillotson was intended by William to be Sancroft’s successor, as soon as Sancroft’s deposition could be legally accomplished. This circumstance stung the mind of Compton, who, on account of his former relation to the Queen as her tutor, and the signal service he had rendered at the Revolution, not to mention his noble rank, considered he had a claim superior to that of the Dean. Unworthy motives are often attributed to men upon insufficient grounds, and I am unable to discover the reasons for Tillotson’s unfavourable opinion of Compton; but as Tillotson was not likely to have adopted suspicions without reason, it is probable that Compton had something to do with the rejection of Tillotson as a candidate for the Prolocutorship. Knowing what human nature is, one does not wonder that Compton was annoyed at Tillotson being preferred to him; yet it should be remembered that if Compton was mortified by the Royal preference for Tillotson, it did not at present induce him to abandon the Liberal party. When Jane the Prolocutor was presented to Compton as President of the Upper Chamber, in the room of the absent Primate, he finished a speech upon the perfection of the Church, and the mischief of any change in it, with the words, “Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari,” in allusion, it is inferred, to Compton’s having adopted that motto for the colours of his regiment, when he had played the part of a colonel. The Bishop, in his answer, indicated his adherence to the opinions and measures he had before proposed, by saying to the Clergy, that “they ought to endeavour a temper in those things that are not essential in religion, thereby to open the door of salvation to a multitude of straying Christians; that it must needs be their duty to show the same indulgence and charity to the Dissenters under King William, which some of the Bishops and Clergy had promised to them in their addresses to King James.”[162]