While the Parliament and nation were under the strong feelings excited by these transactions, the king entered an accusation of High Treason against Lord Kimbolton, and five Commons, Hollis, Hazelrig, Hampden, Pym, and Strode. A serjeant at arms came to the house, and in the king's name demanded the five members-but in vain. The next day, the king in person, accompanied by some two hundred men with swords, came to seize them, but they had received notice, and were fled. In passing through the streets of London, the next day, Charles was everywhere greeted with the cry of “ Privilege," " Privilege,” "Privilege of Parliament !" A sturdy yeoman drew near to the royal coach and shouted aloud, " To your Tents, O Israel!"

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The die was cast. There was no further appeal but to arms. The king collected his forces; and at Nottingham, on the 25th of August, 1642, "he erected his royal standard; the open signal of civil war, throughout the kingdom." Before another sun arose, a dreadful storm had blown that standard down; nor did the raging tempest permit it to be erected again for two days.

It is not my design to pursue the incidents of that war, in which the royal power, and the Hierarchy, fell before the strength of the people; and in which Charles, with the two ministers of his tyrannies, Strafford and Laud, perished on the scaffold. These were stirring times; full of incidents, and full of instruction. But my design is accomplished in having pursued that history so far as to trace the events which mark the history and principles of the Puritans. We might go on to trace the renewal of the old persecutions against the Puritans on the restoration of King Charles II. We might tell of the bloody massacres which he inflicted upon the Scots. We might tell of the "Corporation Act," requiring all Magistrates to swear to the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance; of the " Act of Uniformity," by which all ministers, heads of Colleges, and schoolmasters, and every person instructing youth in a private family, were required to declare their unfeigned assent to everything contained in the Prayer-Book, and to all the rites and ceremonies of the established Church; as well as their full assent to the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance. We might tell of St. Bartholomew's day, in 1662, when two thousand of the ablest and best esteemed clergymen were at once turned out of their livings, for non-conformity.

We might tell of the Five-mile Act in 1665, by which all dissenting ministers were forbidden, except upon the road, to come within five miles of any place where they had preached since the act of oblivion. "By ejecting the non-conforming clergy from their churches," says Hume, "and prohibiting all separate congregations, they had been rendered incapable of any liveli

hood by their spiritual profession. And now, under color of removing them from places where their influence might be dangerous, an expedient was fallen upon to deprive them of all means of subsistence." Multitudes of them pined out their years in prison. We might go on to tell of these things in a Long course of injuries which have not wholly ceased down to the present day. Even now, under all the mitigations obtained, the wrongs and indignities inflicted upon the non-conformists of England, are such as Americans would find it impossible to endure. But a detail of these things would be only a repetition of the same conflict of principle, and of the same development of the temper, principles, and tendencies of prelacy, which we have already traced for a course of more than two hundred years; and yet which we have only partly and inadequately portrayed. This part of my work, is, therefore, now done. We return to the principles and polity of the Puritan Churches; and to an examination of the Prelatical claims, as set forth by those who would fain persuade us that we are bound to abandon the principles of our fathers, and to return to the yoke which our fathers detested as more intolerable than banishment or death.

XVIII

THE RULE AND JUDGE OF FAITH.

Bishop of Connecticut on the Rule of Faith. "The Scriptures as interpreted by the first two centuries." Dr. Jarvis extends it to five centuries; others to seven; to nine; to eighteen. Who to fix the limit? Who to declare the interpretation? Absurdity of the rule. No stable ground between Puritanism and Popery. The Prayer-Book as the interpretation of an interpretation. Impossible to fix the standard of the first two centuries. Episcopalians, on their principles, bound to fix the canons of the Fathers, and to give them to the people. Doctrine of the Bishop of Connecticut contrasted with the doctrine of the Scriptures. The Bible alone the religion of Protestants.

THERE are two or three preliminary questions, involving fundamental principles, which lie back of all questions of Church organization, of discipline, and modes of worship. If, in debating the great question at issue between Puritanism and Prelacy, we make our appeal to the Word of God, even Protestant Prelacy, at the present day, affirms that " The Bible alone, to the exclusion of all Church AUTHORITY; is no sufficient ground of union and stability." The Bishop of Connecticut in his recent charge says, that "The Holy Scriptures AS THEY WERE INTERPRETED BY THE CHURCH during the Two FIRST CENTURIES, constitute THE ONLY SURE BASIS to rest upon." Nor does he allow us to go and search those two first centuries for ourselves; oh no; we must take the Church's interpretation of that interpretation, so that our rule is removed two steps back from the Word of God! "The result," he says, "is FULLY embodied in our book of Common Prayer; a STANDARD of faith; which, he 66 says, now stands secure, as the only enduring monument of the Protestant Reformation." The Bible alone as a rule of faith, and the right of a private man to go to the Bible without subjecting his judgment to the interpretations or traditions of the Church, he stigmatizes as among " The Errors of the Times." "The continental Reformers," he says, "went to the extreme of rejecting all TRADITION and CHURCH AUTHORITY." He laments the "schisms," "heresies," "infidelity," "fanaticism," and "dis

*Bishop Brownell, Charge.

tractions," which have sprung from this rejection. "I need not tell you," he says, "that there are numerous bodies of intelligent and devoted Christians; but without any sufficient bond of union and stability; the Bible alone, to the exclusion of all Church authority, the Bible alone, without note or comment, their only standard of faith; and the utmost liberty of private interpretation allowed."

Now in opposition to these views, the Puritan principle (which, indeed, till recently we had supposed the common principle of Protestantism) is, that the Bible alone is the sole and sufficient standard of faith. With regard to the interpretation of that rule we have ever held, that we may search for all the light that can be found in Christian writers, or in profane, modern or ancient, but that we need not-nay, we must not bind our belief to any interpretation, whether of the Church or of councils, doctors, or Fathers; otherwise our faith stands not in the Word of God, but in the opinions of men.*

Let us examine a little, the Prelatic principles as laid down by

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* In laying down his doctrine, the bishop makes several false issues. We do not (as he intimates that we do) refuse to investigate "any fact" pertaining to remote antiquity," by the light of "cotemporary history." But that is not the ques tion; the point at issue is, What at last is the authoritative standard? Is it the Word of God? or must we make a Bible of the Fathers, or rather of the PrayerBook? Is the standard of faith the Bible alone; or the Bible as interpreted by the two first centuries; or rather the Bible as interpreted by the interpretation of the interpretation of those two centuries; the "results" of which interpretation of an interpretation, it is claimed are now "FULLY" embodied in the " Prayer-Book ?"

With regard to private judgment the bishop makes one or two false issues more. None of us have ever contended that we may "rightfully" set up "our private judgment" in opposition to the Word of God; or that we may "rightly exercise" it in a spirit of vanity or self-conceit," as though in maintaining the right of private judgment, we had maintained the right to exercise that judgment in so reprehensible a mode and spirit! We claim a right to go to the Bible for ourselves, without tradition, or decrees, or interpretations of bishop, council, or Pope; but we claim no right to indulge a spirit of "vanity, perversity, or self-conceit." If the bishop thought these inuendos argument, he mistook the question. If he threw them out as correct representations of matters of fact, he did us injustice.

Another position of Bishop Brownell, in this connection, deserves further notice than we can give it here. We hold, that for the conscientious exercise of our private judgment in matters of faith, we are responsible only to conscience and to God.

The

The bishop holds that we are responsible, not only to God, but in a minor degree "to our fellow-men." He says that "we may not rightly exercise [viz. our private judgment in matters of faith], in a way injurious to the order and peace of society; nor without a due veneration for the judgment of the Church and its ministry.”—( Charge, p. 7.) So thought Bishop Bonner; and he did hold the private conscience and judgment responsible to man. He carried out the idea to its legitimate consequences Pope has ever thought that such heretics as the Albigenses, Waldenses, and Huguenots, exercised their judgment "in a way injurious to the peace and order of society," and "without due veneration for the judgment of the Church;" and doubtless he thinks the same of us, and of the Bishop of Connecticut too. But will the Bishop of Connecticut allow the Pope to hold us "responsible?" If so, To WHOM are we "responsible?" Who may call us to an account for exercising our private judgment in matters of faith," without due veneration for the judgment of the Church and its ministry ?"

Bishop Brownell; that "The Holy Scriptures, as they were interpreted by the Church during the two first centuries, constitute the only sure basis to rest upon."

I. On what principle, or by what authority does he fix the limit at the first two centuries? If, because those centuries were pure and others were not, then does he set his private judgment above his standard; JUDGING THOSE CENTURIES whether they were pure. And by what RULE does he judge them? By the Bible? But he cannot interpret the Bible till he has first fixed its meaning on the authorities of those two centuries, i. e., till he has first proved his standard by the thing which it is to measure! He, therefore, has no ultimate standard, unless he will either set up his private judgment as infallible, or consent to repose in the supreme infallibility of the Church, or of the Pope.

Thus he lays the foundation of his scheme in an ineffable absurdity, and imposes upon himself the necessity of rearing its superstructure in mazes and self-contradictions without end.

But in fixing the limit at two centuries, the bishop has an account to settle with his more learned presbyter. Dr. Jarvis extends the limit three hundred years further. The bishop in his charge considers the Prayer-Book as a fixed and certain standard; not to be varied and invariable. Dr. Jarvis boldly avows † that neither is the Episcopal Church established in its "ancient customs and privileges," nor in "the doctrines of the Scriptures according to the consentient interpretation of Catholic antiquity;" nor in "government, discipline, and ritual:" that "The intention of the reformers was hindered from being fully carried out by opposition, first of the Papists, and afterwards of the Puritans:" and that "IT REMAINS for us [the Episcopal Church] with tranquillity and patience to PURSUE the great and true principles of the English Reformation;" which, he says, "are reducible to three heads: 1st. To recover the original customs and privileges of the British Church. 2d. To restore the doctrines, &c. 3d. To bring back the government, discipline, and ritual, to the general analogy of practice at the time of the fourth general council, OR MIDDLE of the FIFTH CENTURY." The first two centuries will not do. The standard of faith, ritual, and discipline, is not fixed in the Prayer-Book, as the bishop fondly thought; but as his learned presbyter assures us, Prayer-Book, ritual, and doctrine are all yet out of their longitude by three hundred years, and that a work of "restoring, recovering, and bringing back,” yet "remains" to be "pursued" with " tranquillity and patience." The Episcopal Church is, therefore, yet afloat, and whither it will yet drift, can any mortal tell, unless we may conjecture by "Address to Members of the Protestant Episcopal Church; or, No Union with Rome, dated Festival of St. Bartholomew, 1843.'' ↑ Ibid.