The dissenters also have had their quarrels and controversies amongst themselves, and managed them with great warmth and eagerness of temper. During their persecution under King Charles II. and the common danger of the nation under his brother James, they kept tolerably quiet; the designs of the common enemy to ruin them all, uniting them the more firmly amongst themselves. But after the revolution, when they were secure from oppression by the civil power, they soon fell into eager disputes about justification, and other points of like nature. The high-flown orthodox party would scarce own for their brethren those who were for moderation in these principles, or who differed in the least from their doctrine concerning them. [[358]]And when they could no longer produce reason and scripture in their defence, they, some of them, made use of infamous methods of scandal, and endeavoured to blast the character of a reverend and worthy divine, Dr. Williams, in the most desperate manner; because they could no otherwise answer and refute his arguments. But his virtue stood the shock of all their attempts to defame it; for after about eight weeks spent in an enquiry into his life, by a committee of the united ministers, which received all manner of complaints and accusations against him; it was declared at a general meeting, as their unanimous opinion, and repeated and agreed to in three several meetings successively, that he was intirely clear and innocent of all that was laid to his charge.
Thus was he vindicated in the amplest form, after the strictest examination that could be made; and his adversaries, who dealt in defamation and scandal, if not brought to repentance, were yet put to silence. It was almost incredible how much he was a sufferer for his opposition to Antinomianism, by a strong party, who left nothing unattempted to crush him, if it had been possible. But as his innocence appeared the brighter, after his character had been thoroughly sifted, he was, under God, greatly instrumental in putting a stop to those pernicious opinions which his opposers propagated; which struck at the very essentials of all natural and revealed religion. His Gospel Truth remains a monument of his honour; a monument his enemies were never able to destroy. However, nothing would serve, but his exclusion from the merchant’s Lecture at Pinners-Hall. Three other worthy divines, who had been his partners in that service, bore him company; and their places were supplied with four others, of unquestionable rigidness and sterling orthodoxy. Many papers were drawn up on each side, in order to an accommodation; so that it looked as Dr. Calamy tells us, as if the creed-making age was again revived. It was insisted, that Arminianism should be renounced on one side, and Antinomianism on the other. But all was in vain; and the papers that were drawn up to compose matters, created new heats, instead of extinguishing the old ones. These contentions were kept up for several years, till at last the disputants grew weary, and the controversy thread-bare, when it dropped of itself.
The next thing that divided them was the Trinitarian controversy, and the affair of subscription to human creeds and articles of faith, as a test of orthodoxy. In the year 1695, a great contest arose about the trinity, amongst the divines of the church of England, who charged each other with Tritheism and Sabellianism; and according to the ecclesiastical manner of managing disputes, bestowed invectives and scurrilous language very plentifully upon each other. The dissenters, in the reign of his late majesty, not only unfortunately fell into the same debate, but carried it on, some of them at least, with equal want of prudence and temper.
In the west of England, where the fire first broke out, moderation, christian forbearance, and charity, seemed to have been wholly extinguished. The reverend and learned Mr. James Peirce, minister in the city of Exeter, was dismissed from his congregation, upon a charge of heresy; and treated by his opposers, with shameful rudeness and insolence. Other congregations were also practised with, to discard their pastors upon the same suspicion, who were accused of impiously “denying the Lord that bought them;” to render them odious to their congregations, merely because they could not come up to the unscriptural tests of human orthodoxy. And when several of the ministers of London thought proper to interpose, and try, if by advices for peace, they could not compose the differences of their brethren in the west; this christian design was as furiously opposed as if it had been a combination to extirpate christianity itself; and a proposal made in the room of it, that the article of the church of England, and the answer in the assembly’s catechism, relating to the trinity, should be subscribed by all the ministers, as a declaration of their faith, and a test of their orthodoxy.
This proposal was considered by many of the ministers, not only as a thing unreasonable in itself, thus to make inquisition into the faith of others, but highly inconsistent with the character of protestants, dissenting from the national establishment; and dissenting from it for this reason amongst others, because the established church expressly claims “an authority in controversies of faith.” And, therefore, after the affair had been debated for a considerable while, the question was solemnly put, and the proposal rejected by a majority of voices. This the zealots were highly displeased with, and accordingly publicly proclaimed their resentments from the pulpits. Fasts were appointed solemnly to deplore, confess, and pray against the aboundings of heresy; and their sermons directly levelled against the two great evils of the church, Nonsubscription and Arianism. Through the goodness of God they had no power to proceed farther; and when praying and preaching in this manner began to grow tedious, and were, by experience, found to prove ineffectual, to put a stop to the progress of the cause of liberty, their zeal immediately abated, the cry of heresy was seldomer heard, and the alarm of the church’s being endangered by pernicious errors, gradually ceased; it being very observable, that though heresy be ever in its nature the same thing, yet that the cry against it is either more or less, according as the political managers of it, can find more or fewer passions to work on, or a greater or lesser interest to subserve by it.
SECT. VI.
Of Persecutions in New England.
It hath been already remarked, in the foregoing section, that the rigours with which Laud, and his persecuting brethren treated the puritans, occasioned many of them to transport themselves to New England, for the sake of enjoying that liberty of conscience, which they were cruelly denied in their native country. And who could have imagined, but that their own sufferings for conscience sake must have excited in them an utter abhorrence of these antichristian principles, by which they themselves had so deeply smarted? But though they carried over with them incurable prejudices against persecuting prelates, yet they seem many of them to have thought that they had the right of persecution in themselves; and accordingly practised many grievous cruelties towards those who did not fall in with their doctrine and discipline, and church order.
I shall not here mention the severities practised on great numbers of persons for supposed witchcraft, to the great blemish and dishonour of the government there, those prosecutions being carried on not properly upon a religious account; but I am obliged, in justice, not to pass by the cruel laws they made against the persons called Quakers, who felt the weight of their “independent discipline,” and were treated with the utmost rigour by their magistrates and ministers.
[[359]]In the year 1656, a law was made at Boston, prohibiting all masters of ships to bring any quakers into that jurisdiction, and themselves from coming in, “on penalty of the house of correction.”[correction.”] When this law was published, one Nicholas Upshal, who was himself an independent, argued against the unreasonableness of such a law; and warned them to take heed “not to fight against God,” and so draw down a judgment upon the land.[land.] For this they fined him twenty-three pounds, imprisoned him for not coming to church, and banished him out of their jurisdiction.