Jeremy Taylor · 3 of 155

A Sketch of the Life and Times of Bishop Taylor. · Part 3

Presbyterianism was now to feel the ascendancy of its rival. The contest remains as one proof, among the thousand, of the feebleness of premature power. If the Establishment perishes, rooted as it was in the soil for centuries, endeared to the national memory by the generations which had sat under its shade, and forming a central and venerable object from whatever spot the eye looked upon the constitution; what could be the security of the new church, the tree without a root, planted in the midst of tempests, and in a soil beaten into dust by the trampling of the civil war? It still had the whole force of the state in its hands. It constituted nearly the whole parliament, and it possessed a vast nominal majority among the people. But the Independents more than compensated for their minority in numbers, by the vigour of their zeal, by the impression on the popular feelings, and by that determination to be masters, which, in itself, is equivalent to mastery; and in those signs they conquered.

No period of British history presents at once so strong a display of the madness of man, and of the indefatigable protection of Providence. Republicanism had torn down the monarchy. Schism had dismantled the Church. England stood on the verge of the grave; and the factions which dug it, delayed the blow that would have cast her in, only till the sword or the axe decided which was to have the robbing of the dead.

The true peril of all popular revolutions is, that having no defined object, they have no natural termination. Springing from a desire of universal possession, they an have no limit but universal change. The man who will go farthest, necessarily becomes the leader. Renovation is soon abandoned for rapine, justice for revenge, right for licence; until the land is swept bare. The fancied oppressions of the rich become the pretest for levelling the whole community, and the attempt to retaliate popular wrongs upon the higher classes ends in the anarchy of the land. It is an evidence of the Divine mercy that, hitherto, the process has never been suffered to exhibit itself in that last stage of political ruin. The sharp remedy of the soldier has been introduced, at once to punish the national excesses, and to check the national undoing. In the English and French revolutions the violence of popular passion has thus been restrained by the despotism of the sword. — The lunatic, on whom argument and experience would be alike thrown away; whose additional power would generate only additional evil to himself; and whose frenzy would be inflamed by success, has been coerced by the bitter restorative of the lash and the chain. Democracy in England would have raged, till the country was a waste, if the selfishness and sternness of Cromwell had not been sent forth, to crush the madness of the time. Democracy in France would have filled the country with a moral pestilence, which after destroying its own population, would have spread the contagion resistlessly, perhaps, through every nation of the earth, if the fierce ambition and iron tyranny of Napoleon had not first checked, and then turned the current of the disease into domestic slavery and foreign domination. Both were tyrants, and both criminals of the darkest stain; but both were the true overthrowers of the democratic principle and to both, England and France alike owed the cessation of public ruin, and the final restoration of monarchy. — Like the volcanoes of the great Southern Ocean, even the thunders among which they rose, and the convulsions that made their birth felt along the sullen and stormy expanse of nations, were proofs that there was solid ground rising for the foot of man; that the capricious and disturbed element through which they shot up was to have new barriers set to its career; and that, wild and fiery as they towered before the eye of man, they were to be the commencement of a new era of settlement and security.

Cromwell had found himself suspected, at an early period, by the Presbyterian government. The Independents required a leader, and he required a party. The terms were speedily made; and the great republican, uniting in himself all the qualities essential to the time — appealing to the multitude by the lure of popular power; to the fanatical, by raptures borrowed from their own enthusiasm; to the soldiery, by the display of signal valour in the field; and to the ambitious, by that inexhaustible sagacity and undeviating success which promised his adherents every object that ambition could desire; saw supremacy at his feet. His appointment as lieutenant, under Fairfax, one of the capital oversights of the parliament; threw the parliament itself into his power. The calamitous battle of Naseby extinguished the royal cause. The fatality which entrusted the royal person to the Scottish Commissioners; the perfidy with which they repaid that trust by betraying it to the parliament, all played the game of his sovereignty. Presbyterianism, at the height of power, was next to be taught by him how near success may be to subversion. The Independents were masters of the army; the army seized the unfortunate monarch; a weak legislature tried him; a mockery of popular opinion sanctioned the crime; and the forms of justice, the national character, and the spirit of religion, were alike betrayed by a faction purchasing power with the fall of their king. But all those crimes only levelled the path before the great usurper. Even the blood of Charles only tracked the way for Cromwell to a throne.

In those references to a period of public shame, there can be no wish to involve religious minds in the general charge of treason. The men who dipped their hands in regicide were the actual antagonists of all religion. Conscience, first used as a mask, was speedily abandoned: the atrocities of the rebellion were committed, not by religionists but revolutionists. Among the Independent ministers of London, it is recorded that but two, Goodwin and Peters, consented to the king’s death.

The destruction of the establishment had been the virtual destruction of the monarchy. The legislature, reduced to eighty members, proceeded to fix in principle the misdemeanours which they had already committed in practice. They voted the throne dangerous, and the House of Lords useless to a state. A new oath was imposed, by which was named the Engagement, was levelled by the Independents against the Presbyterians; the latter having now fallen from power, and revenging themselves by calling the government an usurpation.

But Cromwell’s experience had taught him the hazard of suffering religion to be made a political instrument, or of giving the fallen party the strength that is to be found in the outcry against persecution. By an act introduced at his especial suggestion, the whole body of penalties against religious opinions were swept away. A general toleration was declared, with the large exception, however, of Papists and Episcopalians; the one, as irreconcilable with all Protestantism, and the other, as repelling the Protestantism of the day. Cromwell thus paid the fallen church the involuntary compliment of providing that he believed its allegiance to be above his purchase. Its principles had already resisted his power. Yet nothing shows his faculties for government more clearly than the moderation with which he bore the acknowledged disgust of the sectaries. The “Engagement,” had produced much irritation. Baxter, with many of the leading Presbyterian ministers, inveighed against the oath. But the Independents now forming the government, and themselves governed by Cromwell, bore the insult calmly, and turned it to account, by filling up the vacant livings with Independent ministers. The press was not neglected, and the great Milton was employed to write down the recusants. The powers of the law were brought into action, and all who refused “the Engagement,” of the age of eighteen, were prohibited from sueing in the law courts: while all ministers attacking the oath from their pulpits, were deprived of their benefices for the time. But while he was thus rigid to all who exhibited determined resistance, he gave full opportunity of repentance to all the wavering. Presbyterianism was still too powerful to be lightly offended; and the national church was declared to be Presbyterian in doctrine, discipline, and worship. An attempt was even made to raise all livings to a hundred pounds a year. But the liberality of rebellion is seldom justice, and those livings were to be augmented by the confiscation of the lands of the bishops, deans, and chapters, with, however, the addition of the first-fruits and tenths. Though fallen even the church was not to be wholly forgotten. With republican generosity it was to be propitiated out of its own plunder, and small salaries were allotted to the bishops and the chief clergy of the cathedrals. Still, it is the history of all usurpations, that their practice essentially falsifies their professions. The liberty of speaking and writing had been among the most urgent demands of the republicans. The complaint had answered its purpose; and the press had broken down the monarchy. The champion was now itself to be in chains. The royalist and Presbyterian writers were declared to have abused the rights of discussion. The House of Commons took those rights under its charge, and the press was thenceforth the tool of power.

But the crisis of popular usurpation was at hand. The expedition of Charles the Second to recover his crown, once more brought Cromwell’s military talents before the eyes of men. The defeat of the king at Worcester, with his flight into France, left the sovereignty open to the first bold hand; and who could compete with the general who had delivered the partizans of the rebellion from the imminent dread of royal vengeance? His new popularity with the troops first awoke the government to a sense of their peril. To enfeeble the man whom they now felt to be their great antagonist, they proposed to disband a part of his army. The act would have been followed by the seizure of its general. But, when the game lies between the indolence of many and the decision of one, between the possession of authority and the preservation of life, it speedily comes to an issue. The single vigorous competitor carries the day against the slow activity and mingled motives of the crowd. Cromwell’s prompt and contemptuous overthrow of the parliament is among the most remarkable, yet the most natural events of the time.

Still his sagacity as a religious reformer characterized even his triumph. The fear of rousing again the decayed enthusiasm of the sectaries was the perpetual guide of his administration. All England, in all its shapes of opinion, was already powerless before his acknowledged supremacy. The cavaliers were weary of defeat, and disgusted with the flight of Charles. The Presbyterians were rendered submissive at once by the strong hand of government, and by possession. The Independents were the natural adherents of Cromwell. That burlesque of a legislature, the Barebones’ Parliament, had resigned their functions, from the combined sense of inadequacy and public ridicule. Yet with all the elements of resistance thus at his feet, his first work, as sovereign, was to popularize his religious polity. In the council of officers it was again proposed, that all religious penalties should be formally extinguished; that a regular provision should be made for the officiating ministers, and that a general toleration should be the law of the land; with the old exceptions of Popery and Prelacy. Presbyterianism was still treated with the customary respect, and was once more recognized as the established religion.

Yet those were restless, and must have been unhappy times. We are not driven for this conclusion to the constant privations and frequent imprisonments of the most meritorious of the English clergy. It follows, from the necessity of the case, from the mutual irritations of the leading religionists, from the utter uncertainty of a religious code, dependent on the will of a capricious council, and from the boundless jealousies, suspicions, and bitternesses inseparable from a state of perpetual religious struggle. All men’s minds were turned on political power; to some as an object of enjoyment, to others as a means of protection. It is impossible to doubt that religion must thus have rapidly tended to decay. In the hands of the politicians, a mere instrument, it must have soon fallen into scorn among the higher and more reckless ranks of public men. In the hands of the populace, alternately a stimulant and a victim of popular turbulence, it must have been as rapidly degraded by ignorance, as it was deformed by fanaticism. A wise government can give no greater boon than religious rest to a people.

But Cromwell, who never slumbered over the signs of the times, watched Presbyterianism with the keenness of personal fear. To sustain his popularity he adopted the Independent worship, and exhibited the most singular raptures of their most conspicuous leaders. He further established a commission of thirty-eight, “Tryers,” to select candidates for the ministry; and for the purpose of countervailing the influence of the Presbyterians, appointed several Baptists and Independents to the commission. The selection was charged with degrading the ministry by a crowd of pastors, remarkable for nothing but the meanness of their condition and the narrowness of their knowledge. Yet the choice was hostile to Presbyterianism, and the commission thus answered all the purposes for which it was designed.

The inevitable result of all those changes was at last felt in the growing unfitness of the parochial clergy for their office. The habitual remedy was a commission. A board of lay commissioners was appointed to examine into the learning and conduct of the clergy in general.

Yet even in this period of suffering, the policy of the government afforded a comparative shelter to the church.Usher, Brownrigg, Pearson, and Hall, were overlooked in their use of the liturgy; though it had been declared by the lay-commissioners a ground of deprivation. The “Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy” also originated about this period; Hall, afterwards Bishop of Chester, preaching the inauguration sermon at St. Paul’s; and even taking as his subject the budding of Aaron’s rod, in bold allusion to a regular priesthood.

In this republicanism of religion the evils of schism were at length felt so strongly, that an attempt was made, under the influence of Usher and Baxter, to combine the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents in a general association, only retaining such principles as were alike acknowledged by the three. But this attempt, generous in its conception, but incompatible with the feelings of the times, was soon abandoned. The Lord Protector adopted the plan, but, powerful as he was, and anxious to extinguish the religious disputes, which were still the objects of his chief alarm, he found that it was easier to subdue armies than controversialists.

Yet all his projects had the stamp of grandeur. If his political triumphs were won more for himself than for his country, he desired to make his religious successes the common property of Europe. Establishing himself as the champion of Protestantism, and England as its supreme seat, he had conceived the plan of a great Protestant commonwealth, consisting of representatives from the Protestantism of every nation of the Continent, capable of guiding all its impulses, securing all its rights, and demanding retribution for all its injuries. But this design, a nobler one than the boasted confederation of Henry the Fourth, was not to be realized by a man harassed by domestic enemies, perplexed by craving partizanship, and now gradually sinking under bodily decay.

The closing days of his daring and brilliant existence are too well known to be more than touched on here. Of all cares, the cares of a throne must be the most exhausting: for what are the anxieties of humbler life, to his who feels the responsibilities of empire? Or, if hope is the great stimulant of life, what hope can be his who has already attained the highest point of human elevation? Or, if the fear of change is the great penalty of possession, what must be the restlessness of the usurper’s pillow? The dread of assassination was the form in which decay seized on the vigorous mind of Cromwell. The man who had habitually defied danger, whose whole life was hazard; prompt in all the difficulties of council; daring, and even desperate, in all the emergencies of the field; was seen sunk into timidity within the walls of his palace, and in the midst of his guards. Worn out with those distractions he died, September 3, 1658, leaving a mighty moral to unlicensed ambition, in an unhappy prosperity and a clouded fame. Even the circumstances of his death exhibited that singular mixture of good and ill, honour and shame, which characterized his life. The day which he had always regarded as the most fortunate of his career, the double anniversary of the victories of Dunbar and Worcester, was his last; but he died in the midst of a tempest so violent as to be long recorded in the popular memory, as a peculiar evidence of Divine judgment on his crimes. He was buried with royal state at Westminster; but was thus buried, only to be disinterred, his body removed to the place of common execution at Tyburn; and there, after being suspended in its coffin till sunset, flung into a hole at the foot of the scaffold. A signal instance of the brevity of national applause, but a mean revenge on the conqueror of two kings of England!

In contemplating the rebellion, as a great political experiment, it presents every aspect of failure. If in the earliest ages of the struggle it obtained some important privileges from the throne, it destroyed their value by the violence of their seizure. The king soon learned to suspect the moderation of men who made concession the ground of demand, and argued conciliation into an evidence of infirmity. Self-defence compels all to resist, when the assault is palpably made not for right but for possession. Charles, it is true, was unfitted for the time: even the qualities that place his name with honour among the records of personal merit, were adverse to his success, as the master of a beleaguered throne. His high spirit was too easily roused by the insults by the insults of meaner men; his known intrepidity was too quick in scorning the low-born subtleties of the fanatics and conspirators who had pledged themselves to his ruin; and his alternate contempt of all advice, and deference to ill advisers, deprived him of that character of decision, which, in times of civil tumult, is the one essential to victory.

But if the king erred through the defects of his nature, the people erred still more by the rashness of their passions. Their triumph terminated in the extinction of all liberty: their crimes against a king were punished by the sternness of a despot; and nothing but that fortune which cut off their usurper in the vigour of life, and left his boldness and intelligence to be succeeded by a feeble and timid offspring, could have saved England from a dynasty of chains.

The Rebellion, regarded as a great experiment for liberty of conscience, was equally unsuccessful. Without liberty of conscience no true faith can exist. But the freedom established by the rebellion was a licence of mutual injury. The privilege which placed every novelty, extravagance, and fantasy of popular religion on a rank with all that was consecrated by experience, sustained by learning, and founded on the exercise of the mature understanding; overthrew at a blow all the natural barriers between wisdom and error. The sudden influx of political aspirants into the sects made even their virtues dangerous to the community, and their thirst of power exposed the state to all the hazards of faction, inflamed by all the fantasies of zeal.

The natural result of a licence inconsistent with the public tranquility, was a licence inconsistent with the soberness of Scripture. Sects started up, whose claim to popularity was their eagerness for all that was new, and their scorn of all that was established. Among the most remarkable of those were the Levellers, a name now limited to political conspirators, but then distinguishing a tribe of enthusiasts, who had arrived at the unaccountable conclusion, that among Christians all property and all power should be in common. — A doctrine, which, in our present social state, by extinguishing all the fruits of individual industry, would obviously extinguish all the stimulants to labour, substitute force for law, and end by pauperizing the community.

Another sect, the Fifth-monarchy men, are more memorable; from their having given a clearer proof of the powers of fanaticism to disturb the public peace. Pronouncing that all earthly authority was on the eve of being abolished by the predicted kingdom of Christ, they formed a plan to destroy Cromwell, and proclaim the returning Messiah as king. Unfurling a banner, with the lion couchant as its emblem, and inscribed with the words “Who shall rouse him up,” a party of those lunatics, headed by one of their preachers, sallied from their place of worship to commence the grand revolution. They were instantly defeated, and the tumult and the sect suppressed together.

But if such sects were the prominent effects of the general dislocation of religious authority, more serious evils arose from its agency on the national mind at the Restoration. As the violence of the politicians had finally disgusted the nation with liberty, the extravagance of the enthusiasts had tended to shake the popular respect for religion. As the one threw the Constitution at the foot of the king, the other hazarded even the decencies of the Establishment. Forms had been perverted, they were now ridiculed; all religion was declared hypocrisy, and all unbelief took the name of candour. The morals of the king, learned in the loosest court of the Continent, became the standard of manners: the stage conveyed the licentiousness of the court of the multitude; and the infidelity of the higher ranks completed the picture of a degenerate age. England was, for fifty years, the center of intellectual evil to Europe: the especial land of the infidel, who, in the insolence and vanity of his heart, assumed to himself the haughty title of the Freethinker.

But she had a signal source of recovery within. Her established Church, long stripped of its branches, and iron-bound, like the tree in Nebuchadnezzar’s vision, had deeply felt the injuries of the rebellion. But it was soon to spread a nobler shade than ever. Its literature again became conspicuous; to break down the infidel was its first work: a succession of forcible treatises on the evidences, the spirit, and the value of Christianity rapidly achieved this great service. The names of Butler, Waterland, Warburton, Sherlock, and a crowd of other churchmen; with Lardner, Leland, and their followers among the dissenters, are still eminent as the defenders of religion. The deluge of revolt and impurity which had overspread the land, at length dried away; and the Church of England, like the patriarchal family descending from the ark, renewed the compact with its supreme Preserver. It saw, and sees still, the soil requiring many a long period of labour, and many a high interposition of Providence, before the traces of the day of evil shall be wholly obliterated. But it saw the bow in the cloud; and it received in its renewed strength the practical pledge, that the succession of the seasons of truth and knowledge should not be interrupted again. It now sees, in the sudden and vigorous activity of its servants a home, and the new and magnificent planting of Episcopacy in the East and West, the approaching realization of the promise of increase and replenishing of the earth; and now, with a faith only refreshed by the lapse of ages, looks beyond the troubles of the time, in sacred confidence, that while it retains its fidelity to the great Covenant of Protestantism, the day of subversion shall return no more.

G.C. London

March, 1838