CHAP. CHAPTER XXIX. State of the Church of England during the Usurpation, considered: 1. In its Internal History. 2. In its External History, as connected with the existing Government, and with the expatriated King.-Declaration of Charles at Breda.-His Return.-Restoration of the Monarchy and the Church of England. By the death of Charles, there was an entire dissolution of all that authority, both ecclesiastical and civil, by which the nation was accustomed to be governed. Every man had framed a system of religion peculiar to himself, and founded on his own fancied inspiration. A description of the various sects by which the kingdom was overspread belongs not to the historian of the church of England; his attention will be directed to its condition under the usurpation of Cromwell. The English church must be considered under two points of view, its internal and its external history. I. Although her members were dispersed, and her revenues despoiled, the English church might apply to herself the apostolical characteristic of "rejoicing in persecution." The affection of her members for her primitive government and worship was strengthened, and their zeal in her defence was excited, in proportion as her external state was depressed and destitute. At no time was the divine institution of episcopacy so strongly asserted and unanswerably proved, as by Usher and Ham mond, when the English bishops were in peril of their lives, and when the name of prelacy was proscribed as antichristian and idolatrous. While episcopacy was the established form of government, Usher had asserted its rights with singular moderation, and his model of primitive episcopacy had received the approbation of many among the puri tans. But when the church and the monarchy were prostrate, he was anxious lest it should be thought by foreign congregations, that the defence of the episcopal order had been universally abandoned. While Usher himself defended against Blondel the genuineness of the epistles of Ignatius, in which therights of episcopacy are set very high, he encouraged Hammond to leave the narrow question of the genuineness of the Ignatian epistles, and to discuss the main and general argument of the divine origin of episcopacy. That firmness of principle which gained strength from persecution, from the same cause was separated from all bitterness and intolerance. In the beginning of the civil wars, Jeremy Taylor, with the ardour of youth, had aided the cause of the church by his defence of episcopacy, and his apology for authorized forms of liturgy. When episcopacy was abolished, and all forms of liturgy prohibited, he pleaded for both in a different manner than formerly, but with greater effect, by his treatise "On the Liberty of Prophesying." Happily availing himself of a phrase which the fanatical teachers of the age had abused to the worst of purposes, to the encouragement of schism, and the subversion of order, he applied it to prove that, amid general latitudinarianism, a reasonable liberty ought to be VOL. II. K K A. D. 1647. XXIX. CHAP. granted to the persecuted church of England. Justifying himself from the charge of indifference to all religion, he recommended to the champions of the faith the use of no other weapons than those which suit the Christian warfare. To obtain a patient hearing for his argument, he gave a sketch of the opinions and practice of the Christian church, as to the question of toleration, and proved that persecution was a practice unheard of among Christians, till the church became worldly and corrupted. He also proved, that persecution in the western church was of a date comparatively recent with the introduction of Christianity. In England, more particularly, though the power of the popes was absolute, yet there were no executions for heresy till the reign of Henry the Fourth, who, having usurped the crown, endeavoured to conciliate the priesthood by these sanguinary sacrifices. Of a work so rich in intellect, so renowned for charity, which contending sects have rivalled each other in approving, and which was the first, perhaps, since the earliest days of Christianity, to teach those among whom differences were inevitable, the art of differing harmlessly, it would be almost impertinent to enlarge in commendation *. If the persecuted condition of the English church had produced no other effect than that of dictating Taylor's treatise "On the Liberty of Prophesying," she would not have suffered persecution in vain. And while adversity taught the English church the great lesson of charity, even towards the most * Bishop Heber's Life of Jeremy Taylor. pernicious heresies, it had an equally powerful effect in moderating the violence of such of her members as disagreed on points not fundamental, and on which her articles and formularies had not expressly decided. Doctrinal Calvinism, which had been arrested in its progress by the Lambeth articles and the synod of Dort, had revived with the downfal of episcopacy, and the introduction of the presbyterian discipline. It had gained strength on two accounts: first, because its most successful opponents laboured under either unjust or well-founded suspicions of heterodoxy; and, secondly, because some of the most zealous defenders of episcopacy in the English church were equally attached to the doctrines of Calvin. But presbyterian intolerance and persecution, intimately connected as they were with doctrinal Calvinism under the usurpation, moderated its attachment in some of the episcopalian divines, and induced an entire change in the opinions of others. A fact illustrative of this observation deserves to be recorded. The fraternity of Sion College, being the remnant of the assembly of divines, issued a declaration, condemning a public and general toleration as unlawful and pernicious, and branded by the name of heresy the smallest deviation from the supralapsarian hypothesis. Among other errors which they denounced, they accused the excellent Hammond of maintaining tenets destructive of the fundamentals of Christianity, and repugnant to the Holy Scriptures. They particularly directed their censures against three passages in his Practical 1647. XXIX. CHAP. Catechism: the first, on universal redemption; the The sentiments of Usher, likewise, with respect * He was, it seems, inclined to acquiesce in the sublapsarian |