The holy Spirit, therefore, to guard the rising Church from these mischiefs, saw fit, by the Apostle Peter, to admonish both the Jewish and Gentile converts to conduct themselves as free men indeed, so far as they were, or could honestly contrive to become free (for that their religion no way disallowed); but not as misusing the liberty they had, or might have (which every principle of their religion, as well as prudence, forbad). As free, says he, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness: As if he had said, “Be careful to observe a due mean in this matter: Maintain your just liberties; yet so, as not to gratify your malignant passions under pretence of discharging that duty.” And the better to secure the observance of this precept, he adds—but as the servants of God—that is, “Remember ye are so to employ your liberty as never to forget the service ye owe to God; who, in the present instance, commands you to obey Magistrates; that is, to submit yourselves to the government, under which ye live, not only for wrath, for fear of punishment, but for conscience sake.”
And this caution, so guarded by religious as well as moral considerations, was the more important, because no word is so fascinating to the common ear, as that of Liberty, while the few only know what it means; and the many, of all ranks, in all times, mistake it for licence.
And well had it been if this warning voice of the holy Apostle, which sunk deep into the hearts of the first Christians, had continued to make the same impression on the whole Christian world; which, unhappily, has contemned, or at least neglected it, in almost all ages; but never more remarkably, than in those disastrous days, which the present solemnity calls upon us to recollect and lament.
I. The great quarrel of the times I speak of, was opened with the cry of RELIGIOUS LIBERTY; not without reason, it must be confessed, yet with an ill grace in the complainants; who certainly would have denied to others what they so peremptorily, and indeed with too much petulance, demanded for themselves.
The source of this evil (to do justice to all sides) is to be sought in the Reformation itself; which, when it had succeeded in its great view of cleansing Religion from the corruptions of Popery, concluded that no man could have reason, thenceforth, to dissent from the national church; and that an universal conformity to its discipline and doctrine was to be exacted. The conclusion was natural enough in their situation; and the benefit of such conformity, past dispute. But it was not considered, that differences will arise, many times, without reason; and, when they do, that force is not the proper way to compose them. This oversight continued long, and had terrible effects. It kept the Protestants of all denominations from entertaining just ideas of Toleration; the last great point of reformed religion which was clearly understood, and perhaps the only one of real moment in which the extraordinary persons, whom Providence raised up to be the conductors of our Reformation, were deficient.
In this state of things, it unfortunately happened that the Reformation was suddenly checked by the return of Popery, which forced many pious and eminent men to take refuge in the Protestant churches abroad; where they grew enamoured of certain forms of church-government, different from those that prevailed at home; and which, on their subsequent return, they fanatically strove to obtrude on their brethren, and to erect, under the new name of The Discipline, on the ruins of the established hierarchy. So unreasonable a pretension naturally alarmed and exasperated those who had power in their hands, and had their prejudices too, not less violent than those by which the Puritans (for that was the name they went by) were possessed. The consequence was what might be expected. A toleration for their discipline out of the establishment, which was all they should have aimed at, and to which they had a right, would not have satisfied them; and their iniquitous claim of Dominion was too naturally repaid by penal laws and compulsive statutes: that is, one sort of tyranny was repressed and counteracted by another. And thus matters continued through several reigns; till some more pressing claims of civil liberty, mixing with these struggles for church-dominion, overthrew, in the end, the ancient ecclesiastical government; drove the bishops from their sees, the liturgy from our churches, and brought in the classical regimen, enforced, in its turn, as the episcopal one had been, with the rigours of persecution.
Still, the restless spirit of the times continuing, or rather increasing, this new model was forced to give may to another, which assumed the more popular name of Independency; under whose broad wing a thousand sects sprung up, each more extravagant than the other, till, in the end, all order in religious matters, and religion itself, disappeared, under the prevailing torrent of fanaticism and confusion.
Such is the brief, but just, account of the religious factions of those days: from which we collect how miserably the zealots for religious liberty defeated their own aims; or rather how wickedly they contended for power and libertinism, under the mask of liberty: An evil, which could not have happened, had they paid the least regard to the Apostle’s injunction of being free, but not as using their liberty for a cloak of maliciousness.
II. The claims of CIVIL LIBERTY (which sprung up amid this rage of religious parties) were better founded; were for a time carried on more soberly; and, as was fitting, were, at first, attended with better success.
The mixed form of the English government, originally founded on the principles of liberty, had, from many concurring causes, degenerated into a kind of monarchical despotism, which an unquestionably virtuous, but misinformed and misguided Prince, was for moulding into a regular system. Happily the growing light and spirit of the times excited a general impatience of that project; and produced a steady and constitutional opposition to it. The distresses of government aided the friends of liberty, who managed their advantage so well as, in process of time, to support their claims, redress their grievances, establish their rights, and, in a word, to reduce the Crown, from the exorbitances it affected, within the ancient and legal boundaries of the Constitution.