The history of the Comprehension Bill
presents a remarkable contrast to the history of the Toleration
Bill. The two bills had a common origin, and, to a great extent, a
common object. They were framed at the same time, and laid aside at
the same time: they sank together into oblivion; and they were,
after the lapse of several years, again brought together before the
world. Both were laid by the same peer on the table of the Upper
House; and both were referred to the same select committee. But it
soon began to appear that they would have widely different fates.
The Comprehension Bill was indeed a neater specimen of legislative
workmanship than the Toleration Bill, but was not, like the
Toleration Bill, adapted to the wants, the feelings, and the
prejudices of the existing generation. Accordingly, while the
Toleration Bill found support in all quarters, the Comprehension Bill
was attacked from all quarters, and was at last coldly and languidly
defended even by those who had introduced it. About the same time at
which the Toleration bill became law with the general concurrence of
public men, the Comprehension Bill was, with a concurrence not less
general, suffered to drop. The Toleration Bill still ranks among
those great statutes which are epochs in our constitutional history.
The Comprehension Bill is forgotten. No collector of antiquities has
thought it worth preserving. A single copy, the same which
Nottingham presented to the peers, is still among our parliamentary
records, but has been seen by only two or three persons now living.
It is a fortunate circumstance that, in this copy, almost the whole
history of the Bill can be read. In spite of cancellations and
interlineations, the original words can easily be distinguished from
those which were inserted in the committee or on the report.
The first clause, as it stood when the
bill was introduced, dispensed all the ministers of the Established
Church from the necessity of subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles.
For the Articles was substituted a Declaration which ran thus; "I do
approve of the doctrine and worship and government of the Church of
England by law established, as containing all things necessary to
salvation; and I promise, in the exercise of my ministry, to preach
and practice according thereunto." Another clause granted similar
indulgence to the members of the two universities. Then it was
provided that any minister who had been ordained after the
Presbyterian fashion might, without reordination, acquire all the
privileges of a priest of the Established Church. He must, however,
be admitted to his new functions by the imposition of the hands of a
bishop, who was to pronounce the following form of words; "Take thou
authority to preach the word of God, and administer the sacraments,
and to perform all other ministerial offices in the Church of
England." The person thus admitted was to be capable of holding any
rectory or vicarage in the kingdom. Then followed clauses providing
that a clergyman might, except in a few churches of peculiar
dignity, wear the surplice or not as he thought fit, that the sign
of the cross might be omitted in baptism, that children might be
christened, if such were the wish of their parents, without
godfathers or godmothers, and that persons who had a scruple about
receiving the Eucharist kneeling might receive it sitting. The
concluding clause was drawn in the form of a petition. It was
proposed that the two Houses should request the King and Queen to
issue a commission empowering thirty divines of the Established Church
to revise the liturgy, the canons, and the constitution of the
ecclesiastical courts, and to recommend such alterations as might on
inquiry appear to be desirable.
The bill went smoothly through the first
stages. Compton, who, since Sancroft had shut himself up at Lambeth,
was virtually Primate, supported Nottingham with ardour. In the
committee, however, it appeared that there was a strong body of
churchmen, who were determined not to give up a single word or form;
to whom it seemed that the prayers were no prayers without the
surplice, the babe no Christian if not marked with the cross, the
bread and wine no memorials of redemption or vehicles of grace if
not received on bended knee. Why, these persons asked, was the
docile and affectionate son of the Church to be disgusted by seeing
the irreverent practices of a conventicle introduced into her
majestic choirs? Why should his feelings, his prejudices, if
prejudices they were, be less considered than the whims of
schismatics? If, as Burnet and men like Burnet were never weary of
repeating, indulgence was due to a weak brother, was it less due to
the brother whose weakness consisted in the excess of his love for
an ancient, a decent, a beautiful ritual, associated in his
imagination from childhood with all that is most sublime and
endearing, than to him whose morose and litigious mind was always
devising frivolous objections to innocent and salutary usages?
But, in truth, the scrupulosity of the
Puritan was not that sort of scrupulosity which the Apostle had
commanded believers to respect. It sprang, not from morbid
tenderness of conscience, but from censoriousness and spiritual
pride; and none who had studied the New Testament could have failed
to observe that, while we are charged carefully to avoid whatever
may give scandal to the feeble, we are taught by divine precept and
example to make no concession to the supercilious and uncharitable
Pharisee. Was every thing which was not of the essence of religion
to be given up as soon as it became unpleasing to a knot of zealots
whose heads had been turned by conceit and the love of novelty?
Painted glass, music, holidays, fast days, were not of the essence
of religion. Were the windows of King's College Chapel to be broken
at the demand of one set of fanatics? Was the organ of Exeter to be
silenced to please another? Were all the village bells to be mute
because Tribulation Wholesome and Deacon Ananias thought them
profane? Was Christmas no longer to be a day of rejoicing?
Was Passion week no longer to be a
season of humiliation? These changes, it is true, were not yet
proposed. Put if,--so the High Churchmen reasoned,--we once admit
that what is harmless and edifying is to be given up because it
offends some narrow understandings and some gloomy tempers, where
are we to stop? And is it not probable that, by thus attempting to
heal one schism, we may cause another? All those things which the
Puritans regard as
the blemishes of the Church are by a large part of the population
reckoned among her attractions. May she not, in ceasing to give
scandal to a few sour precisians, cease also to influence the hearts
of many who now delight in her ordinances? Is it not to be
apprehended that, for every proselyte whom she allures from the
meeting house, ten of her old disciples may turn away from her
maimed rites and dismantled temples, and that these new separatists
may either form themselves into a sect far more formidable than the
sect which we are now seeking to conciliate, or may, in the violence
of their disgust at a cold and ignoble worship, be tempted to join
in the solemn and gorgeous idolatry of Rome?
It is remarkable that those who held
this language were by no means disposed to contend for the doctrinal
Articles of the Church. The truth is that, from the time of James
the First, that great party which has been peculiarly zealous for
the Anglican polity and the Anglican ritual has always leaned
strongly towards Arminianism, and has therefore never been much
attached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who, on
questions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin.
One of the characteristic marks of that party is the disposition
which it has always shown to appeal, on points of dogmatic theology,
rather to the Liturgy, which was derived from Rome, than to the
Articles and Homilies, which were derived from Geneva. The
Calvinistic members of the Church, on the other hand, have always
maintained that her deliberate judgment on such points is much more
likely to be found in an Article or a Homily than in an ejaculation
of penitence or a hymn of thanksgiving. It does not appear that, in
the debates on the Comprehension Bill, a single High Churchman
raised his voice against the clause which relieved the clergy from
the necessity of subscribing the Articles, and of declaring the
doctrine contained in the Homilies to be sound. Nay, the Declaration
which, in the original draught, was substituted for the Articles,
was much softened down on the report. As the clause finally stood,
the ministers of the Church were required to declare, not that they
approved of her constitution, but merely that they submitted to it.
Had the bill become law, the only people in the kingdom who would
have been under the necessity of signing the Articles would have
been the dissenting preachers.
The easy manner in which the zealous
friends of the Church gave up her confession of faith presents a
striking contrast to the spirit with which they struggled for her
polity and her ritual. The clause which admitted Presbyterian
ministers to hold benefices without episcopal ordination was
rejected. The clause which permitted scrupulous persons to
communicate sitting very narrowly
escaped the same fate. In the Committee it was struck out, and, on
the report, was with great difficulty restored. The majority of
peers in the House was against the proposed indulgence, and the
scale was but just turned by the proxies. But by this time it began
to appear that the bill which the High Churchmen were so keenly
assailing was menaced by dangers from a very different quarter. The
same considerations which had induced Nottingham to support a
comprehension made comprehension an object of dread and aversion to
a large body of dissenters. The truth is that the time for such a
scheme had gone by. If, a hundred years earlier, when the division
in the Protestant body was recent, Elizabeth had been so wise as to
abstain from requiring the observance of a few forms which a large
part of her subjects considered as Popish, she might perhaps have
averted those fearful calamities which, forty years after her death,
afflicted the Church. But the general tendency of schism is to
widen. Had Leo the Tenth, when the exactions and impostures of the
Pardoners first roused the indignation of Saxony, corrected those
evil practices with a vigorous hand, it is not improbable that
Luther would have died in the bosom of the Church of Rome.
But the opportunity was suffered to
escape; and, when, a few years later, the Vatican would gladly have
purchased peace by yielding the original subject of quarrel, the
original subject of quarrel was almost forgotten. The inquiring
spirit which had been roused by a single abuse had discovered or
imagined a thousand: controversies engendered controversies: every
attempt that was made to accommodate one dispute ended by producing
another; and at length a General Council, which, during the earlier
stages of the distemper, had been supposed to be an infallible
remedy, made the case utterly hopeless. In this respect, as in many
others, the history of Puritanism in England bears a close analogy
to the history of Protestantism in Europe. The Parliament of 1689
could no more put an end to nonconformity by tolerating a garb or a
posture than the Doctors of Trent could have reconciled the Teutonic
nations to the Papacy by regulating the sale of indulgences. In the
sixteenth century Quakerism was unknown; and there was not in the
whole realm a single congregation of Independents or Baptists. At
the time of the Revolution, the Independents, Baptists, and Quakers
were a majority of the dissenting body; and these sects could not be
gained over on any terms which the lowest of Low Churchmen would
have been willing to offer. The Independent held that a national
Church, governed by any central authority whatever, Pope, Patriarch,
King, Bishop, or Synod, was an unscriptural institution, and that
every congregation of believers was, under Christ, a sovereign
society.
The Baptist was even more irreclaimable
than the Independent, and the Quaker even more irreclaimable than
the Baptist. Concessions, therefore,
which would once have extinguished nonconformity would not now
satisfy even one half of the nonconformists; and it was the obvious
interest of every nonconformist whom no concession would satisfy
that none of his brethren should be satisfied. The more liberal the
terms of comprehension, the greater was the alarm of every
separatist who knew that he could, in no case, be comprehended.
There was but slender hope that the dissenters, unbroken and acting
as one man, would be able to obtain from the legislature full
admission to civil privileges; and all hope of obtaining such
admission must be relinquished if Nottingham should, by the help of
some wellmeaning but shortsighted friends of religious liberty, be
enabled to accomplish his design. If his bill passed, there would
doubtless be a considerable defection from the dissenting body; and
every defection must be severely felt by a class already
outnumbered, depressed, and struggling against powerful enemies.
Every proselyte too must be reckoned twice over, as a loss to the
party which was even now too weak, and as a gain to the party which
was even now too strong. The Church was but too well able to hold
her own against all the sects in the kingdom; and, if those sects
were to be thinned by a large desertion, and the Church strengthened
by a large reinforcement, it was plain that all chance of obtaining
any relaxation of the Test Act would be at an end; and it was but
too probable that the Toleration Act might not long remain
unrepealed.
Even those Presbyterian ministers whose
scruples the Comprehension Bill was expressly intended to remove
were by no means unanimous in wishing it to pass. The ablest and
most eloquent preachers among them had, since the Declaration of
Indulgence had appeared, been very agreeably settled in the capital
and in other large towns, and were now about to enjoy, under the
sure guarantee of an Act of Parliament, that toleration which, under
the Declaration of Indulgence, had been illicit and precarious. The
situation of these men was such as the great majority of the divines
of the Established Church might well envy. Few indeed of the
parochial clergy were so abundantly supplied with comforts as the
favourite orator of a great assembly of nonconformists in the City.
The voluntary contributions of his wealthy hearers, Aldermen and
Deputies, West India merchants and Turkey merchants, Wardens of the
Company of Fishmongers and Wardens of the Company of Goldsmiths,
enabled him to become a landowner or a mortgagee. The best
broadcloth from Blackwell Hall, and the best poultry from Leadenhall
Market, were frequently left at his door. His influence over his
flock was immense. Scarcely any member of a congregation of
separatists entered into a partnership, married a daughter, put a
son out as apprentice, or gave his vote at an election, without
consulting his
spiritual guide. On all political and literary questions the
minister was the oracle of his own circle. It was popularly
remarked, during many years, that an eminent dissenting minister had
only to make his son an attorney or a physician; that the attorney
was sure to have clients, and the physician to have patients. While
a waiting woman was generally considered as a help meet for a
chaplain in holy orders of the Established Church, the widows and
daughters of opulent citizens were supposed to belong in a peculiar
manner to nonconformist pastors. One of the great Presbyterian
Rabbies, therefore, might well doubt whether, in a worldly view, he
should be benefited by a comprehension. He might indeed hold a
rectory or a vicarage, when he could get one. But in the meantime he
would be destitute: his meeting house would be closed: his
congregation would be dispersed among the parish churches: if a
benefice were bestowed on him, it would probably be a very slender
compensation for the income which he had lost. Nor could he hope to
have, as a minister of the Anglican Church, the authority and
dignity which he had hitherto enjoyed. He would always, by a large
portion of the members of that Church, be regarded as a deserter. He
might therefore, on the whole, very naturally wish to be left where
he was.
There was consequently a division in the
Whig party. One section of that party was for relieving the
dissenters from the Test Act, and giving up the Comprehension Bill.
Another section was for pushing forward the Comprehension Bill, and
postponing to a more convenient time the consideration of the Test
Act. The effect of this division among the friends of religious
liberty was that the High Churchmen, though a minority in the House
of Commons, and not a majority in the House of Lords, were able to
oppose with success both the reforms which they dreaded. The
Comprehension Bill was not passed; and the Test Act was not
repealed. Just at the moment when the question of the Test and the
question of the Comprehension became complicated together in a
manner which might well perplex an enlightened and honest
politician, both questions became complicated with a third question
of grave importance.
The ancient oaths of allegiance and
supremacy contained some expressions which had always been disliked
by the Whigs, and other expressions which Tories, honestly attached
to the new settlement, thought inapplicable to princes who had not
the hereditary right. The Convention had therefore, while the throne
was still vacant, framed those oaths of allegiance and supremacy by
which we still testify our loyalty to our Sovereign. By the Act
which turned the Convention into a Parliament, the members of both
Houses were required to take the new oaths. As to other persons in
public trust, it was hard to say how the law stood. One form of
words was enjoined by statutes, regularly passed, and not yet
regularly abrogated. A different form was enjoined by the
Declaration of Right, an instrument which was indeed revolutionary
and irregular, but which might well be thought equal in authority to
any statute. The practice was in as much confusion as the law. It
was therefore felt to be necessary that the legislature should,
without delay, pass an Act abolishing the old oaths, and determining
when and by whom the new oaths should be taken.
The bill which settled this important
question originated in the Upper House. As to most of the provisions
there was little room for dispute. It was unanimously agreed that no
person should, at any future time, be admitted to any office, civil,
military, ecclesiastical, or academical, without taking the oaths to
William and Mary. It was also unanimously agreed that every person
who already held any civil or military office should be ejected from
it, unless he took the oaths on or before the first of August 1689.
But the strongest passions of both parties were excited by the
question whether persons who already possessed ecclesiastical or
academical offices should be required to swear fealty to the King
and Queen on pain of deprivation. None could say what might be the
effect of a law enjoining all the members of a great, a powerful, a
sacred profession to make, under the most solemn sanction of
religion, a declaration which might be plausibly represented as a
formal recantation of all that they had been writing and preaching
during many years. The Primate and some of the most eminent Bishops
had already absented themselves from Parliament, and would doubtless
relinquish their palaces and revenues, rather than acknowledge the
new Sovereigns. The example of these great prelates might perhaps be
followed by a multitude of divines of humbler rank, by hundreds of
canons, prebendaries, and fellows of colleges, by thousands of
parish priests. To such an event no Tory, however clear his own
conviction that he might lawfully swear allegiance to the King who
was in possession, could look forward without the most painful
emotions of compassion for the sufferers and of anxiety for the
Church.
There were some persons who went so far
as to deny that the Parliament was competent to pass a law requiring
a Bishop to swear on pain of deprivation. No earthly power, they
said, could break the tie which bound the successor of the apostles
to his diocese. What God had joined no man could sunder. Dings and
senates might scrawl words on parchment or impress figures on wax;
but those words and figures could no more change the course of the
spiritual than the course of the physical world. As the Author
of the universe had appointed a certain order, according to which it
was His pleasure to send winter and summer, seedtime and harvest, so
He had appointed a certain order, according to which He communicated
His grace to His Catholic Church; and the latter order was, like the
former, independent of the powers and principalities of the world. A
legislature might alter the flames of the months, might call June
December, and December June; but, in spite of the legislature, the
snow would fall when the sun was in Capricorn, and the flowers would
bloom when he was in Cancer.
And so the legislature might enact that
Ferguson or Muggleton should live in the palace at Lambeth, should
sit on the throne of Augustin, should be called Your Grace, and
should walk in processions before the Premier Duke; but, in spite of
the legislature, Sancroft would, while Sancroft lived, be the only
true Archbishop of Canterbury; and the person who should presume to
usurp the archiepiscopal functions would be a schismatic. This
doctrine was proved by reasons drawn from the budding of Aaron's
rod, and from a certain plate which Saint James the Less, according
to a legend of the fourth century, used to wear on his forehead. A
Greek manuscript, relating to the deprivation of bishops, was
discovered, about this time, in the Bodleian Library, and became the
subject of a furious controversy. One party held that God had
wonderfully brought this precious volume to light, for the guidance
of His Church at a most critical moment. The other party wondered
that any importance could be attached to the nonsense of a nameless
scribbler of the thirteenth century. Much was written about the
deprivations of Chrysostom and Photius, of Nicolaus Mysticus and
Cosmas Atticus. But the case of Abiathar, whom Solomon put out of
the sacerdotal office for treason, was discussed with peculiar
eagerness. No small quantity of learning and ingenuity was expended
in the attempt to prove that Abiathar, though he wore the ephod and
answered by Urim, was not really High Priest, that he ministered
only when his superior Zadoc was incapacitated by sickness or by
some ceremonial pollution, and that therefore the act of Solomon was
not a precedent which would warrant King William in deposing a real
Bishop.
But such reasoning as this, though
backed by copious citations from the Misna and Maimonides, was not
generally satisfactory even to zealous churchmen. For it admitted of
one answer, short, but perfectly intelligible to a plain man who
knew nothing about Greek fathers or Levitical genealogies. There
might be some doubt whether King Solomon had ejected a high priest;
but there could be no doubt at all that Queen Elizabeth had ejected
the Bishops of more than half the sees in England. It was notorious
that fourteen prelates had, without any proceeding in any spiritual
court, been deprived by Act of Parliament for refusing to acknowledge
her supremacy. Had that deprivation been null? Had Bonner continued
to be, to the end of his life, the only true Bishop of London? Had
his successor been an usurper? Had Parker and Jewel been
schismatics? Had the Convocation of 1562, that Convocation which had
finally settled the doctrine of the Church of England, been itself
out of the pale of the Church of Christ?
Nothing could be more ludicrous than the
distress of those controversialists who had to invent a plea for
Elizabeth which should not be also a plea for William. Some zealots,
indeed, gave up the vain attempt to distingush between two cases
which every man of common sense perceived to be undistinguishable,
and frankly owned that the deprivations of 1559 could not be
justified. But no person, it was said, ought to be troubled in mind
on that account; for, though the Church of England might once have
been schismatical, she had become Catholic when the Bishops deprived
by Elizabeth had ceased to live.91 The Tories, however, were not
generally disposed to admit that the religious society to which they
were fondly attached had originated in an unlawful breach of unity.
They therefore took ground lower and more tenable. They argued the
question as a question of humanity and of expediency. They spoke
much of the debt of gratitude which the nation owed to the
priesthood; of the courage and fidelity with which the order, from
the primate down to the youngest deacon, had recently defended the
civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm; of the memorable
Sunday when, in all the hundred churches of the capital, scarcely
one slave could be found to read the Declaration of Indulgence; of
the Black Friday when, amidst the blessings and the loud weeping of
a mighty population, the barge of the seven prelates passed through
the watergate of the Tower. The firmness with which the clergy had
lately, in defiance of menace and of seduction, done what they
conscientiously believed to be right, had saved the liberty and
religion of England. Was no indulgence to be granted to them if they
now refused to do what they conscientiously apprehended to be wrong?
And where, it was said, is the danger of treating them with
tenderness? Nobody is so absurd as to propose that they shall be
permitted to plot against the Government, or to stir up the
multitude to insurrection. They are amenable to the law, like other
men. If they are guilty of treason, let them be hanged. If they are
guilty of sedition, let them be fined and imprisoned. If they omit,
in their public ministrations, to pray for King William, for Queen
Mary, and for the Parliament assembled under those most religious
sovereigns, let the penal clauses of the Act of Uniformity be put in
force. If this be not enough, let his Majesty be empowered to tender
the oaths to any clergyman; and, if the oaths so tendered are
refused, let deprivation follow. In this way any nonjuring bishop or
rector who may be suspected, though he cannot be legally convicted,
of intriguing, of writing, of
talking, against the present settlement, may be at once removed from
his office. But why insist on ejecting a pious and laborious
minister of religion, who never lifts a finger or utters a word
against the government, and who, as often as he performs morning and
evening service, prays from his heart for a blessing on the rulers
set over him by Providence, but who will not take an oath which
seems to him to imply a right in the people to depose a sovereign?
Surely we do all that is necessary if we leave men of this sort to
the mercy of the very prince to whom they refuse to swear fidelity.
If he is willing to bear with their scrupulosity, if he considers
them, notwithstanding their prejudices, as innocent and useful
members of society, who else can be entitled to complain?
The Whigs were vehement on the other side. They
scrutinised, with ingenuity sharpened by hatred, the claims of the
clergy to the public gratitude, and sometimes went so far as
altogether to deny that the order had in the preceding year deserved
well of the nation. It was true that bishops and priests had stood
up against the tyranny of the late King: but it was equally true
that, but for the obstinacy with which they had opposed the
Exclusion Bill, he never would have been King, and that, but for
their adulation and their doctrine of passive obedience, he would
never have ventured to be guilty of such tyranny. Their chief
business, during a quarter of a century, had been to teach the
people to cringe and the prince to domineer. They were guilty of the
blood of Russell, of Sidney, of every brave and honest Englishman
who had been put to death for attempting to save the realm from
Popery and despotism. Never had they breathed a whisper against
arbitrary power till arbitrary power began to menace their own
property and dignity. Then, no doubt, forgetting all their old
commonplaces about submitting to Nero, they had made haste to save
themselves. Grant,--such was the cry of these eager
disputants,--grant that, in saving themselves, they saved the
constitution. Are we therefore to forget that they had previously
endangered it? And are we to reward them by now permitting them to
destroy it? Here is a class of men closely connected with the state.
A large part of the produce of the soil has been assigned to them
for their maintenance. Their chiefs have seats in the legislature,
wide domains, stately palaces. By this privileged body the great
mass of the population is lectured every week from the chair of
authority. To this privileged body has been committed the supreme
direction of liberal education. Oxford and Cambridge, Westminster,
Winchester, and Eton, are under priestly government. By the
priesthood will to a great extent be formed
the character of the nobility and gentry of
the next generation.
Of the higher clergy some have in their
gift numerous and valuable benefices; others have the privilege of
appointing judges
who decide grave questions affecting the liberty, the property, the
reputation of their Majesties' subjects. And is an order thus
favoured by the state to give no guarantee to the state? On what
principle can it be contended that it is unnecessary to ask from an
Archbishop of Canterbury or from a Bishop of Durham that promise of
fidelity to the government which all allow that it is necessary to
demand from every layman who serves the Crown in the humblest
office. Every exciseman, every collector of the customs, who refuses
to swear, is to be deprived of his bread. For these humble martyrs
of passive obedience and hereditary right nobody has a word to say.
Yet an ecclesiastical magnate who refuses to swear is to be suffered
to retain emoluments, patronage, power, equal to those of a great
minister of state. It is said that it is superfluous to impose the
oaths on a clergyman, because he may be punished if he breaks the
laws. Why is not the same argument urged in favour of the layman?
And why, if the clergyman really means to observe the laws, does he
scruple to take the oaths? The law commands him to designate William
and Mary as King and Queen, to do this in the most sacred place, to
do this in the administration of the most solemn of all the rites of
religion. The law commands him to pray that the illustrious pair may
be defended by a special providence, that they may be victorious
over every enemy, and that their Parliament may by divine guidance
be led to take such a course as may promote their safety, honour,
and welfare. Can we believe that his conscience will suffer him to
do all this, and yet will not suffer him to promise that he will be
a faithful subject to them?
To the proposition that the nonjuring
clergy should be left to the mercy of the King, the Whigs, with some
justice, replied that no scheme could be devised more unjust to his
Majesty. The matter, they said, is one of public concern, one in
which every Englishman who is unwilling to be the slave of France
and of Rome has a deep interest. In such a case it would be unworthy
of the Estates of the Realm to shrink from the responsibility of
providing for the common safety, to try to obtain for themselves the
praise of tenderness and liberality, and to leave to the Sovereign
the odious task of proscription. A law requiring all public
functionaries, civil, military, ecclesiastical, without distinction
of persons, to take the oaths is at least equal. It excludes all
suspicion of partiality, of personal malignity, of secret shying and
talebearing. But, if an arbitrary discretion is left to the
Government, if one nonjuring priest is suffered to keep a lucrative
benefice while another is turned with his wife and children into the
street, every ejection will be considered as an act of cruelty, and
will be imputed as a crime to the sovereign and his ministers. Thus
the Parliament had to decide, at the same moment, what quantity of
relief should be granted to the consciences of dissenters, and what
quantity of pressure should be applied to the consciences of the
clergy of the Established Church. The King conceived a hope that it
might be in his power to effect a compromise agreeable to all
parties. He flattered himself that the Tories might be induced to
make some concession to the dissenters, on condition that the Whigs
would be lenient to the Jacobites. He determined to try what his
personal intervention would effect. It chanced that, a few hours
after the Lords had read the Comprehension Bill a second time and
the Bill touching the Oaths a first time, he had occasion to go down
to Parliament for the purpose of giving his assent to a law. From
the throne he addressed both Houses, and expressed an earnest wish
that they would consent to modify the existing laws in such a manner
that all Protestants might be admitted to public employment. It was
well understood that he was willing, if the legislature would comply
with his request, to let clergymen who were already beneficed
continue to hold their benefices without swearing allegiance to him.
His conduct on this occasion deserves undoubtedly the praise of
disinterestedness. It is honourable to him that he attempted to
purchase liberty of conscience for his subjects by giving up a
safeguard of his own crown. But it must be acknowledged that he
showed less wisdom than virtue. The only Englishman in his Privy
Council whom he had consulted, if Burnet was correctly informed, was
Richard Hampden;94 and Richard Hampden, though a highly respectable
man, was so far from being able to answer for the Whig party that he
could not answer even for his own son John, whose temper, naturally
vindictive, had been exasperated into ferocity by the stings of
remorse and shame. The King soon found that there was in the hatred
of the two great factions an energy which was wanting to their love.
The Whigs, though they were almost unanimous in thinking that the
Sacramental Test ought to be abolished, were by no means unanimous
in thinking that moment well chosen for the abolition; and even
those Whigs who were most desirous to see the nonconformists
relieved without delay from civil disabilities were fully determined
not to forego the opportunity of humbling and punishing the class to
whose instrumentality chiefly was to be ascribed that tremendous
reflux of public feeling which had followed the dissolution of the
Oxford Parliament. To put the Janes, the Souths, the Sherlocks into
such a situation that they must either starve, or recant, publicly,
and with the Gospel at their lips, all the ostentatious professions
of many years, was a revenge too delicious to be relinquished. The
Tory, on the other hand, sincerely respected and pitied those
clergymen who felt scruples about the oaths. But the Test was, in
his view, essential
to the safety of the established religion, and must not be
surrendered for the purpose of saving any man however eminent from
any hardship however serious. It would be a sad day doubtless for
the Church when the episcopal bench, the chapter houses of
cathedrals, the halls of colleges, would miss some men renowned for
piety and learning. But it would be a still sadder day for the
Church when an Independent should bear the white staff or a Baptist
sit on the woolsack. Each party tried to serve those for whom it was
interested: but neither party would consent to grant favourable
terms to its enemies. The result was that the nonconformists
remained excluded from office in the State, and the nonjurors were
ejected from office in the Church. |