Theological Essays and Other Papers — Volume 2

by Thomas De Quincey

We seek not to refine; but all moral power issues out of moral forces. And it may be well, therefore, rapidly to sketch the history of religion, which is the greatest of moral forces, as it sank and rose in this island through the last two hundred years.

It is well known that the two great revolutions of the seventeenth century—that in 1649, accomplished by the Parliament armies (including its reaction in 1660), and secondly, that in 1688-9—did much to unsettle the religious tone of public morals. Historians and satirists ascribe a large effect in this change to the personal influence of Charles II., and the foreign character of his court. We do not share in their views; and one eminent proof that they are wrong, lies in the following fact—viz., that the sublimest act of self-sacrifice which the world has ever seen, arose precisely in the most triumphant season of Charles's career, a time when the reaction of hatred had not yet neutralized the sunny joyousness of his Restoration. Surely the reader cannot be at a loss to know what we mean—the renunciation in one hour, on St. Bartholomew's Day in 1662, of two thousand benefices by the nonconforming clergymen of England. In the same year, occurred a similar renunciation of three hundred and sixty benefices in Scotland. These great sacrifices, whether called for or not, argue a great strength in the religious principle at that era. Yet the decay of external religion towards the close of that century is proved incontestably. We ourselves are inclined to charge this upon two causes; first, that the times were controversial; and usually it happens—that, where too much energy is carried into the controversies or intellectual part of religion, a very diminished fervor attends the culture of its moral and practical part. This was perhaps one reason; for the dispute with the Papal church, partly, perhaps, with a secret reference to the rumored apostasy of the royal family, was pursued more eagerly in the latter half of the seventeenth than even in any section of the sixteenth century. But, doubtless, the main reason was the revolutionary character of the times. Morality is at all periods fearfully shaken by intestine wars, and by instability in a government. The actual duration of war in England was not indeed longer than three and a half years, viz., from Edgehill Fight in the autumn of 1642, to the defeat of the king's last force under Sir Jacob Astley at Stow-in-the-walds in the spring of 1846. Any other fighting in that century belonged to mere insulated and discontinuous war. But the insecurity of every government between 1638 and 1702, kept the popular mind in a state of fermentation. Accordingly, Queen Anne's reign might be said to open upon an irreligious people. The condition of things was further strengthened by the unavoidable interweaving at that time of politics with religion. They could not be kept separate; and the favor shown even by religious people to such partisan zealots as Dr. Sacheverell, evidenced, and at the same time promoted, the public irreligion. This was the period in which the clergy thought too little of their duties, but too much of their professional rights; and if we may credit the indirect report of the contemporary literature, all apostolic or missionary zeal for the extension of religion, was in those days a thing unknown. It may seem unaccountable to many, that the same state of things should have spread in those days to Scotland; but this is no more than the analogies of all experience entitled us to expect. Thus we know that the instincts of religious reformation ripened everywhere at the same period of the sixteenth century from one end of Europe to the other; although between most of the European kingdoms there was nothing like so much intercourse as between England and Scotland in the eighteenth century. In both countries, a cold and lifeless state of public religion prevailed up to the American and French Revolutions. These great events gave a shock everywhere to the meditative, and, consequently to the religious impulses of men. And, in the mean time, an irregular channel had been already opened to these impulses by the two founders of Methodism. A century has now passed since Wesley and Whitefield organized a more spiritual machinery of preaching than could then be found in England, for the benefit of the poor and laboring classes. These Methodist institutions prospered, as they were sure of doing, amongst the poor and the neglected at any time, much more when contrasted with the deep slumbers of the Established Church. And another ground of prosperity soon arose out of the now expanding manufacturing system. Vast multitudes of men grew up under that system—humble enough by the quality of their education to accept with thankfulness the ministrations of Methodism, and rich enough to react, upon that beneficent institution, by continued endowments in money. Gradually, even the church herself, that mighty establishment, under the cold shade of which Methodism had grown up as a neglected weed, began to acknowledge the power of an extending Methodistic influence, which originally she had haughtily despised. First, she murmured; then she grew anxious or fearful; and finally, she began to find herself invaded or modified from within, by influences springing up from Methodism. This last effect became more conspicuously evident after the French Revolution. The church of Scotland, which, as a whole, had exhibited, with much unobtrusive piety, the same outward torpor as the church of England during the eighteenth century, betrayed a corresponding resuscitation about the same time. At the opening of this present century, both of these national churches began to show a marked rekindling of religious fervor. In what extent this change in the Scottish church had been due, mediately or immediately, to Methodism, we do not pretend to calculate; that is, we do not pretend to settle the proportions. But mediately the Scottish church must have been affected, because she was greatly affected by her intercourse with the English church (as, e.g., in Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, &c.); and the English church had been previously affected by Methodism. Immediately she must also have been affected by Methodism, because Whitefield had been invited to preach in Scotland, and did preach in Scotland. But, whatever may have been the cause of this awakening from slumber in the two established churches of this island, the fact is so little to be denied, that, in both its aspects, it is acknowledged by those most interested in denying it. The two churches slept the sleep of torpor through the eighteenth century; so much of the fact is acknowledged by their own members. The two churches awoke, as from a trance, in or just before the dawning of the nineteenth century; this second half of the fact is acknowledged by their opponents. The Wesleyan Methodists, that formidable power in England and Wales, who once reviled the Establishment as the dormitory of spiritual drones, have for many years hailed a very large section in that establishment—viz., the section technically known by the name of the Evangelical clergy—as brothers after their own hearts, and corresponding to their own strictest model of a spiritual clergy. That section again, the Evangelical section, in the English church, as men more highly educated, took a direct interest in the Scottish clergy, upon general principles of liberal interest in all that could affect religion, beyond what could be expected from the Methodists. And in this way grew up a considerable action and reaction between the two classical churches of the British soil. Such was the varying condition, when sketched in outline, of the Scottish and English churches. Two centuries ago, and for half a century beyond that, we find both churches in a state of trial, of turbulent agitation, and of sacrifices for conscience, which involved every fifth or sixth beneficiary. Then came a century of languor and the carelessness which belongs to settled prosperity. And finally, for both has arisen a half century of new light—new zeal—and, spiritually speaking, of new prosperity. This deduction it was necessary to bring down, in order to explain the new power which arose to the Scottish church, during the last generation of suppose thirty years.

When two powerful establishments, each separately fitted to the genius and needs of its several people, are pulling together powerfully towards one great spiritual object, vast must be the results. Our ancestors would have stood aghast as at some fabulous legend or some mighty miracle, could they have heard of the scale on which our modern contributions proceed for the purposes of missions to barbarous nations, of circulating the Scriptures, (whether through the Bible Society, that is the National Society, or Provincial Societies,) of translating the Scriptures into languages scarcely known by name to scholars, of converting Jews, of organizing and propagating education. Towards these great objects the Scottish clergy had worked with energy and with little disturbance to their unanimity. Confidence was universally felt in their piety and in their discretion. This confidence even reached the supreme rulers of the state. Very much through ecclesiastical influence, new plans for extending the religious power of the Scottish church, and indirectly of extending their secular power, were countenanced by the Government. Jealousy had been disarmed by the upright conduct of the Scottish clergy, and their remarkable freedom hitherto from all taint of ambition. It was felt, besides, that the temper of the Scottish nation was radically indisposed to all intriguing or modes of temporal ascendency in ecclesiastical bodies. The nation, therefore, was in some degree held as a guarantee for the discretion of their clergy. And hence it arose, that much less caution was applied to the first encroachment of the non-intrusionists, than would have been applied under circumstances of more apparent doubt. Hence, it arose, that a confidence from the Scottish nation was extended to this clergy, which too certainly has been abused.

In the years 1824-5, Parliament had passed acts 'for building additional places of worship in the highlands and islands of Scotland.' These acts may be looked upon as one section in that general extension of religious machinery which the British people, by their government and their legislature, have for many years been promoting. Not, as is ordinarily said, that the weight of this duty had grown upon them simply through their own treacherous neglect of it during the latter half of the eighteenth century; but that no reasonable attention to that duty could have kept pace with the scale upon which the claims of a new manufacturing population had increased. In mere equity we must admit—not that the British nation had fallen behind its duties, (though naturally it might have done so under the religious torpor prevalent at the original era of manufacturing extension,) but that the duties had outstripped all human power of overtaking them. The efforts, however, have been prodigious in this direction for many years. Amongst those applied to Scotland, it had been settled by Parliament that forty-two new churches should be raised in the highlands, with an endowment from the government of [pound symbol]120 annually for each incumbent. There were besides more than two hundred chapels of ease to be founded; and towards this scheme the Scottish public subscribed largely. The money was intrusted to the clergy. That was right, but mark what followed. It had been expressly provided by Parliament—that any district or circumjacent territory, allotted to such parliamentary churches as the range within which the incumbent was to exercise his spiritual ministration, should not be separate parishes for any civil or legal effects. Here surely the intentions and directions of the legislature were plain enough, and decisive enough.

How did the Scottish clergy obey them? They erected all these jurisdictions into bona fide 'parishes,' enjoying the plenary rights (as to church government) of the other parishes, and distinguished from them in a merely nominal way as parishes quoad sacra. There were added at once to the presbyteries, which are the organs of the church power, two hundred and three clerical persons for the chapels of ease, and forty-two for the highland churches—making a total of two hundred and forty-five new members. By the constitution of the Scottish church, an equal number of lay elders (called ruling elders) accompany the clerical elders. Consequently four hundred and ninety new members were introduced at once into that particular class of courts (presbyteries) which form the electoral bodies in relation to the highest court of General Assembly. The effect of this change, made in the very teeth of the law, was twofold. First, it threw into many separate presbyteries a considerable accession of voters—all owing their appointments to the General Assembly. This would at once give a large bias favorable to their party views in every election for members to serve in the Assembly. Even upon an Assembly numerically limited, this innovation would have told most abusively. But the Assembly was not limited; and therefore the whole effect was, at the same moment, greatly to extend the electors and the elected.

Here, then, was the machinery by which the faction worked. They drew that power from Scotland rekindled into a temper of religious anxiety, which they never could have drawn from Scotland lying torpid, as she had lain through the eighteenth century. The new machinery (created by Parliament in order to meet the wishes of the Scottish nation), the money of that nation, the awakened zeal of that nation; all these were employed, honorably in one sense, that is, not turned aside into private channels for purposes of individuals, but factiously in the result, as being for the benefit of a faction; honorably as regarded the open mode of applying such influence—a mode which did not shrink from exposure; but most dishonorably, in so far as privileges, which had been conceded altogether for a spiritual object, were abusively transferred to the furtherance of a temporal intrigue. Such were the methods by which the new-born ambition of the clergy moved; and that ambition had become active, simply because it had suddenly seemed to become practicable. The presbyteries, as being the effectual electoral bodies, are really the main springs of the ecclesiastical administration. To govern them, was in effect to govern the church. A new scheme for extending religion, had opened a new avenue to this control over the presbyteries. That opening was notoriously unlawful. But not the less the church faction precipitated themselves ardently upon it; and but for the faithfulness of the civil courts, they would never have been dislodged from what they had so suddenly acquired. Such was the extraordinary leap taken by the Scottish clergy, into a power, of which, hitherto, they had never enjoyed a fraction. It was a movement per saltum, beyond all that history has recorded. At cock-crow they had no power at all; when the sun went down, they had gained (if they could have held) a papal supremacy. And a thing not less memorably strange is, that even yet the ambitious leaders were not disturbed; what they had gained was viewed by the public as a collateral gain, indirectly adhering to a higher object, but forming no part at all of what the clergy had sought. It required the scrutiny of law courts to unmask and decompose their true object The obstinacy of the defence betrayed the real animus of the attempt. It was an attempt which, in connection with the Veto Act (supposing that to have prospered), would have laid the whole power of the church at their feet. What the law had distributed amongst three powers, patron, parish, and presbyter, would have been concentrated in themselves. The quoad sacra parishes would have riveted their majorities in the presbyteries; and the presbyteries, under the real action of the Veto, would have appointed nearly every incumbent in Scotland. And this is the answer to the question, when treated merely in outline—How were these things done? The religion of the times had created new machineries for propagating a new religious influence. These fell into the hands of the clergy; and the temptation to abuse these advantages led them into revolution.

III. Having now stated WHAT was done, as well as HOW it was done, let us estimate the CONSEQUENCES of these acts; under this present, or third section, reviewing the immediate consequences which have taken effect already, and under the next section anticipating the more remote consequences yet to be expected.

In the spring of 1834, as we have sufficiently explained, the General Assembly ventured on the fatal attempt to revolutionize the church, and (as a preliminary towards that) on the attempt to revolutionize the property of patronage. There lay the extravagance of the attempt; its short-sightedness, if they did not see its civil tendencies; its audacity, if they did. It was one revolution marching to its object through another; it was a vote, which, if at all sustained, must entail a long inheritance of contests with the whole civil polity of Scotland.

'Heu quantum, fati parva tabella vehit!'

It might seem to strangers a trivial thing, that an obscure court, like the presbytery, should proceed in the business of induction by one routine rather than by another; but was it a trivial thing that the power of appointing clergymen should lapse into this perilous dilemma—either that it should be intercepted by the Scottish clerical order, and thus, that a lordly hierarchy should be suddenly created, disposing of incomes which, in the aggregate, approach to half a million annually; or, on the other hand, that this dangerous power, if defeated as a clerical power, should settle into a tenure exquisitely democratic? Was that trivial? Doubtless, the Scottish ecclesiastical revenues are not equal, nor nearly equal, to the English; still, it is true, that Scotland, supposing all her benefices equalized, gives a larger average to each incumbent than England, of the year 1830. England, in that year, gave an average of [pound symbol]299 to each beneficiary; Scotland gave an average of [pound symbol]303. That body, therefore, which wields patronage in Scotland, wields a greater relative power than the corresponding body in England. Now this body, in Scotland, must finally have been the clerus; but supposing the patronage to have settled nominally where the Veto Act had placed it, then it would have settled into the keeping of a fierce democracy. Mr. Forsyth has justly remarked, that in such a case the hired ploughmen of a parish, mercenary hands that quit their engagements at Martinmas, and can have no filial interest in the parish, would generally succeed in electing the clergyman. That man would be elected generally, who had canvassed the parish with the arts and means of an electioneering candidate; or else, the struggle would lie between the property and the Jacobinism of the district.