It is difficult to draw a distinction between what may be called real liberality of sentiment, and a pernicious licentiousness of profession in our religious concerns. The principle of toleration was mingled, in the days of William and of Anne, with a dangerous laxity, which required rather the counsels of the preacher, or the correctives of an enlightened press, or the chastening hand of popular education, to prevent its growth, than the questionable efficacy of penal enactments. The Test and Corporation Acts had rendered the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper an essential observance to all those who held offices of trust. This measure, passed (1673) in the time of Charles the Second, had moderated the bitter feelings towards dissenters, in which the high church party had, until that time, indulged; and the zeal which many dissenters had displayed in the service of the country at the Revolution, had procured them offices under government, to obtain which, they had in many instances not scrupled to receive the Communion. A participation in this ceremonial was, by law, only incumbent once, and it might be followed by an immediate, and regular attendance on the services and sacraments of a dissenting meeting-house. The laxity and dissimulation to which this practice conduced, called for remedy; and the remedy was either to be obtained by remitting the test, thus unscrupulously nullified, or by strengthening the penal enactments.
The question became, as usual, a matter for faction to agitate, rather than for the calm light of reason to settle, The dissenters were countenanced by the Whigs: and were supporters of the war, which they deemed essential to establish the principles of the Revolution. The Tories, in attacking them, attacked, therefore, their adversaries in various ways, and, as it was argued, more from political virulence, than from religious zeal. Yet, since it was allowed that there were many dissenters who reprobated the practice of thus prefacing the Sacrament by making it the vehicle of a false profession, so it may be presumed that there were also numerous persons amongst the high church party, who viewed such evasions of truth with real indignation, independent of party zeal, and who really desired, in the clamour for reformation, that such scandal to religion, and such temptation to the worst passions of our nature, should be prevented by legislative enactments.
It is agreeable to reflect that more just and delicate notions of religion, and its invariable attendant, integrity, now prevail, and that conduct in these matters, such as was common, and even habitual in the days of which we write, would be reprobated by all thinking people in our own times. Men who aspired to hold public offices were then frequently to be seen receiving the Communion of the Church of England once, and, having complied with the statute, were never known to enter a church of the established form again. Even Prince George received the sacrament as high admiral, yet maintained his Lutheran chapel, in which, when interest called him not elsewhere, he was a continual attendant and communicant.[[463]] Nor were those who raised the clamour against such inconsistencies, to use the mildest term, much to be commended for the regularity or sincerity of their religious observances. Sir Edward Seymour, the leading partisan of the church, confessed, when discussing the subject of non-conformity, that it was then seven years since he had received the sacrament, or heard a sermon in the Church of England. It was remarkable that the leading members of the House of Commons, who were the most active against dissenters, were all descended from dissenting families. Amongst these were Harley, and Henry St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke.[[464]]
The bill for preventing occasional conformity was, however, brought into the House of Commons. Its advocates did not attempt to conceal the existence of party motives, but contended, that since the last reign had been begun with a law in favour of dissenters, it was becoming that the gracious sovereign now on the throne should show, by some mark, her determined protection of the established church.[[465]] Whilst in the preamble a spirit of toleration was asserted, the enactments of the bill were severe, though vague, and tended to promote the vices of informers, and to produce a spirit of inquisition into every man’s actions. It affixed a heavy fine upon every person holding a public office, after attending any meeting of dissenters, not according to the Liturgy of the Church of England, where more than five persons were present, besides the family. Upon functionaries so offending, while exercising their duties, it affixed a fine of five pounds for every day so employed; and, after attending such meeting, they were incapacitated from holding any office, until after a whole year’s conformity to the church;—the great object of the bill being, according to a Whig “historian, to model corporations, and to cast out of them all those who would not vote in elections for the Tories.”[[466]]
Such was the opinion of Bishop Burnet. The Duchess of Marlborough gives us a much more highly-coloured delineation of the motives and workings of this famous measure, than even the determined and strenuous prelate.
The Church of England, the Duchess thought, could not be in any immediate danger with such a “nursing mother” as the Queen, or, as the Tories called her, the illustrious ornament of the church; and the Tories, in bringing forward this famous measure, “by the heat and agitation with which they over-acted their part, exposed their monopolizing ambition, which ought to have been better concealed under the cloak of zeal for the church.”[[467]]
The affection of her Majesty for the church, the Duchess considered, could not be doubted, since, for its better security, she had chosen “its renowned champions to be of her ministry and council. Nevertheless,” she adds, “in the very first new parliament after her Majesty’s accession, it was thought necessary, with all diligence, to provide new strength, new supports for this flourishing church, as if it had been in the most tottering and declining condition.”[[468]] The motives for such conduct were, in the Duchess’s estimation, interested and invidious. The bill did not, in her opinion, “aim at excluding the occasional conformists only, but all those constant conformists, too, who could not relish the high church nonsense of promoting religion by persecution.”
The measure, if intended, as the Duchess further asserts, to distinguish in her Majesty’s estimation the friends, from the foes of the church, succeeded in producing that effect, as subsequent events fully proved. Those who contemplated by its enactments the immediate prevention of the scandal of non-conformity, were disappointed, for it was not finally successful. It was brought into the Commons and passed; its “hottest” panegyrists being, according to Cunningham, “the clergy, and a crowd of women of the lowest rank, inflamed, as it were, with a zeal for religion.” “These women,” he observes, “expressed as great an exultation at the supposed victory, as if they had taken more pleasure in such religious triumphs, than in the gratification of even their lusts and their appetites.”[[469]]
The Peers, however, less carried away at this time by religious or political zeal than the Commons, threw out the bill, being of opinion, not only that it was the offspring of party and prejudice, but that it would be impolitic during the time of war to disgust so large a body of her Majesty’s subjects as the Protestant dissenters. They argued, also, that it was not then expedient to set about the reformation of religious controversies.
The decision of the press was against the court, but highly acceptable to the people. Prince George, though himself an occasional conformist, was not ashamed to go to the House and vote for the bill;[[470]] yet even this singular proof of the Queen’s good wishes towards the measure could not save it. The commercial part of the nation were warm in their dislike to its principles and details. Lord Somers, in a celebrated speech, in which he designated the great body of merchants, tradesmen, and mechanics, as “the nation,” denounced the measure. Lord Wharton lent the aid of his forcible eloquence to advocate the cause of toleration. His speech was strongly characteristic. “Men’s minds,” he argued, “are different, and their sentiments of divine worship, various. It were, indeed, to be wished, but is hardly to be expected, that men were all of one opinion. Many people like variety, as I myself do, provided it be not injurious to the public.” It was not long after these debates, that these two lords, “having,” says Cunningham, “over-strained their voices in the heat of debates in Parliament, fell into dangerous sickness.”[[471]] Such was the violence with which the discussion was carried on.