On the 24th of May 1689, the Act of Toleration became law. This act, long considered as the Great Charter of religious liberty, has since been extensively modified, and is hardly known to the present generation except by name. The several statutes passed between the accession of Queen Elizabeth and the Revolution, requiring all people, under severe penalties, to attend the services of the Church of England, and to abstain from attending conventicles, were left unrepealed; but provision was made that they should not be construed to extend to any person, who should testify his loyalty by taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and his protestantism, by subscribing the declaration against transubstantiation. The severe Act of Uniformity, the Five Mile Act, and the Conventicle Act were not repealed, but merely relaxed; it being provided that dissenting ministers might preach, if they professed, under their hand, their belief in the Articles of the Church of England, with a few exceptions, such as, that the Church has power to regulate ceremonies, that the doctrines in the Book of Homilies are sound, and that there is nothing superstitious and idolatrous in the ordination service. But unless the minister subscribed thirty-four out of the thirty-nine Articles, and the greater part of two other Articles, he could not preach without incurring all the punishments which the cavaliers, in the day of their power and vengeance, had devised for the tormenting and ruining of schismatical teachers. Such were the terms on which the Protestant Dissenters of England were, for the first time, permitted by law to worship God according to their own consciences. They were, on the above conditions, allowed to attend their own places of worship, provided they were duly registered, and had not the doors locked or barred. They were protected against hostile intrusion, and it was made a penal offence to enter a meeting-house for the purpose of molesting a congregation. The only classes of religionists excepted from the benefits of this act were the Papists and Socinians.[[82]]
Many of the Dissenters were still dissatisfied, and wished other matters of grievance to be settled in parliament. Accordingly, what was called the “Comprehension Bill” was brought into the House of Lords. The chief object of this bill was to admit Presbyterian ministers into the Church, without compelling them to acknowledge the invalidity of their former ordination; and it also proposed to allow certain ceremonial forms in public worship to be observed or omitted at discretion.
This bill passed the House of Lords; but the Commons considered the question as more suitable for a convocation; and the Lords concurred in an address to the throne to that effect.
To prepare the way for convocation a royal commission was issued, authorising certain individuals to meet and propose alterations in the Liturgy and Canons, and to consider other matters connected with the Church. The commissioners thus appointed were Lamplugh, Compton, Mew, Lloyd, Sprat, Smith, Trelawney, Burnet, Humphreys, Stratford, all bishops at the time; also Stillingfleet, Patrick, Tillotson, Sharp, Hall, Beveridge, Tennison, Fowler, Grove, and Williams, who were subsequently raised to the Episcopal bench; and likewise Meggot, Kidder, Aldridge, Jane, Beaumont, Montague, Goodman, Battely, Alston, and Scott, who, though distinguished men, never attained to prelatical honours.
The commissioners frequently met, but some of the members absented themselves, especially Dr Jane, the Regius Professor of Divinity in Oxford, on the ground that alterations were not required, and that the present was not the season for such discussions. Burnet says, “We had before us all the books and papers that the Nonconformists had at any time offered, setting forth their demands, together with many advices and propositions which had been made at several times by most of the best and most learned of our divines; and so we prepared a scheme to be laid before convocation.”
The following are some of the alterations that were proposed:—Chanting to be discontinued. Apochryphal lessons to be left out of the calendar. The sign of the cross in baptism to be omitted when desired. The sacramental elements to be administered in pews to those who might object to kneeling. The absolution to be read by deacons. The Gloria Patri not to be repeated at the end of every psalm. In the Te Deum the words only-begotten Son to be substituted for thine honourable, true, and only Son. All titles of the king and queen to be omitted, and the word “sovereign” only used. The Collects to be revised by Patrick. Sponsors to be disused if desired. The great festivals, as a rule, to be retained; but it was not thought desirable that St Valentine, St Chad, St Swithin, St Dunstan, and St Alphage, should share the honours of St John and St Paul. The Athanasian creed to be kept in the Prayer-Book, but Stillingfleet was to draw up a rubric, declaring that the damnatory clauses were to be understood to apply only to such as obstinately denied the substance of the Christian faith. The point of greatest difficulty was that of re-ordination; but it was at last agreed that the hypothetical form should be adopted in the case of Dissenters, as in the case of uncertain baptism, in these words “If thou art not already ordained, I ordain thee.” Such were some of the alterations proposed by the commissioners.[[83]] It mattered little, however, whether the recommendations of the commissioners were good or bad. They were all doomed before they were published; for the clergy were all smarting from being recently compelled to take the oaths, and were resolved to defeat a favourite scheme of that government which had exacted from them, under severe penalties, a submission not easily to be reconciled to their conscience or their pride.
The convocation, it may be observed, though regularly assembled with every parliament since the Restoration, had done no business since the year 1662; so that the members were detained in town, at considerable expense, during the session, merely to go through the parade of reading the church service in Latin; but now it was proposed to submit to their consideration most important changes.
The convocation, summoned by the writ of King William, assembled on the 21st of November 1689. Compton was in the chair. Beveridge preached a Latin sermon, in which he warmly eulogised the existing system, and yet declared himself favourable to a moderate reform. The struggle between the advocates for change and those who wished to preserve the Liturgy in its present state commenced at the very outset, in the election of a prolocutor. Tillotson, who was known to speak the sense both of the king and queen, and was also supported by the government, was proposed by Dr Sharp, afterwards Archbishop of York; but the election of Dr Jane was carried by a majority of two to one. Jane, of course, belonged to the High-Church party. He had borne a chief part in framing that decree by which the University of Oxford ordered the works of Milton to be publicly burned in the schools; and yet the same man had repaired to the headquarters of the Prince of Orange, and had assured his Highness that Oxford would willingly coin her plate for the support of the war against her oppressor. For a short time Jane had been regarded as a Whig, now he was a Tory. He had demanded the see of Exeter as a reward due to his services, but had been refused; and hence his changed sentiments. At the time several epigrams were written on the double-faced Janus, who, having got a professorship by looking one way, now hoped to get a bishopric by looking another.
On November 25th the prolocutor was presented to the Upper House, on which occasion he expatiated on the excellency of the Church of England, as at present constituted, intimating that no amendments could be made, and closing with the words, nolumus leges Angliæ mutari. The Bishop of London, as president of the Upper House, replied that the clergy ought to be prepared to make concessions in matters not essential, and that it was their duty to show some indulgence to the Dissenters under King William, since some of the bishops and clergy had pledged themselves to do so in their addresses to King James.
At the next meeting, the Bishop of London informed the convocation that the royal commission was defective, inasmuch as the great seal had not been attached to it. They were, therefore, prorogued until the defect was supplied. In the interval, great exertions were made by the government to bring over some of the stiffest opponents in the Lower House, but with small success. On the 4th of December, the royal commission was communicated to the convocation, by which they were authorised to act. The commission stated that, “as rites and ceremonies are indifferent and alterable,” changes might be made according to the exigencies of times and places, that it was desirable that the canons should be reviewed, and the ecclesiastical courts reformed. The convocation was accordingly empowered to treat of alterations, and to form canons and constitutions, to be submitted to his Majesty.