Brief Records of the Independent Church at Beccles, Suffolk / Including biographical notices of its ministers,and some account of the rise of nonconformity in the East Anglian counties

by S. Wilton Rix

Again: one of the Thirty-nine Articles expressly affirmed that “Christ went down into hell.” If Mr. Fleming was not at liberty to assign to this language a meaning such as the words, in the plain literal sense, do not express, and such as the compilers did not intend to convey, he might naturally feel some difficulty in admitting the statement to be “agreeable to the word of God.”

Another of the Articles asserted that Christ rose from death, “and took again his body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature; wherewith he ascended into heaven, and there sitteth until he return to judge all men at the last day.” But a contemplative mind, accustomed to bring all its speculations to the test of holy writ, might be ready to assent to the proposition that there is a sense in which the glorified body of Christ is identical with that in which he tabernacled on earth, and yet might venture to doubt whether the language of that Article was altogether “agreeable to the word of God,” in which the distinction is so clearly marked between the “natural” and the “spiritual” body; between that which is sown in corruption, dishonour, and weakness, and that which is raised in incorruption, glory, and power; and in which it is expressly asserted that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” [83] Nor could the concluding words of this Article be regarded as having the warrant of Scripture, by any who were looking for the millennial reign of Christ upon earth.

It is possible that the “penance,” prescribed by another of the Articles as requisite to the restoration of an excommunicated person, would appear to some, to be more consonant with the genius of popery, but less “agreeable to the word of God,” than that penitence, without which the garb or the posture of humiliation could avail nothing.

Or, (not to multiply instances further,) perhaps Mr. Fleming was an admirer of instrumental music in public worship, and believed it to have the warrant of Scripture. But by the thirty-fifth Article it is declared that the homilies contained “a godly and wholesome doctrine,” although one branch of the doctrine comprised therein was, that “chaunting and playing upon organs displeased God sore, and filthily defiled his holy house.” [84]

In the above statement, no account has been taken of the invasion of Christ’s authority and of his people’s freedom, implied in the requirement of subscription to any human formulary. Nor is it intended to rest the argument upon the most formidable objections to the Common Prayer Book of the English church in particular. Some of those objections relate to doctrines so momentous, sanctioned under circumstances so peculiarly solemn, as to relieve the dissentient altogether from the suspicion of captious trifling.

But it is submitted to the consideration of the candid reader, whether any hesitancy existing in the mind of a minister of the gospel, on any one of these, or any similar point, would not be enough to justify his declining, at whatever apparent sacrifice of usefulness or emolument, to give his deliberate assent to the propositions contained in Whitgift’s Articles. The law of sincerity binds not to a partial but to a universal obedience. A deep reverence for truth, and a peculiarly tender conscience, are obviously just the qualities most likely to have insured a refusal. Cruel and mischievous indeed must have been the policy which thus demanded an unqualified acquiescence in so heterogeneous a mass of propositions, holding out a premium to the temporizing and careless to fritter away the eternal boundaries of right and wrong. [85]

If the separation which took place among the professed Christians of Beccles at this early period may be designated a schism, the charge does not attach to Mr. Fleming, and those who, probably, seceded with him, but to the parties by whom they were rejected. “Schism is a thing bad in itself, bad in its very nature; separation may be bad or good according to circumstances.” Separation is not necessarily schism; “for while it may be occasioned by crime, it may be occasioned by virtue; it may result in those who depart from intolerance attempted, or intolerance sustained, from the pride of faction, or the predominance of principle, attachment to party, or attachment to truth. A schismatic, in short, must be a sinner, on whichever side he stands; a separatist may be more sinned against than sinning.” [86]

Mr. Fleming was a separatist, he was so by compulsion; but he was not a schismatic: and protestant dissent in Beccles was pure in its source; for it must in justice be traced not to a factious disobedience to the higher powers, but to an act of moral heroism, elicited by the despotism of Queen Elizabeth and the severity of a protestant archbishop.

CHAPTER IV.

Rise of the Brownists; persecuted—James I.—Millenary petition; Brownists imprisoned and exiled—Robinson; father of the Independents—Jacob establishes the first English Independent church—Book of Sports—Bishop Harsnet—Laud—Bishop Wren’s Articles of Visitation—William Bridge retires to Holland—Returns on the change of affairs—Formation of Independent churches at Yarmouth and Norwich—Cromwell.