Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

impious ignorance." Another urged that "Religion admits of no eccentric notions." Every member of the congregation of a tolerant Baptist of Rhode Island was fined twenty or thirty pounds, and one who refused to pay the fine was whipped unmercifully. There was a fine on absence from "the ministry of the Word;" to deny that any book in the Old or New Testament was throughout the infallible Word of God, was blasphemy, punishable by fine and flogging, and in case of obstinacy, by exile or death. A devout woman, hearing of such things, travelled all the way from London to warn the leaders of the new church against persecution, and they flogged her. She was sentenced to twenty stripes. At home, when Laud's friends ceased to be the persecutors, they became the persecuted. Each party was full of zeal in either character, and we can only look with equal eye, whether argument be of the seventeenth or nineteenth century, on imperfections common to humanity. John Robinson uttered a great truth when, in his farewell to the little band that left Delft in the Mayflower, he said, "The Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His Holy Word." Are we not waiting yet for the acceptance of its leading truth, that of the three abiding virtues of the Christian the greatest is charity? Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." So St. Paul interpreted the teaching of Him who based His Church upon two articles: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

66

In this sense many a true man of many a creed has sought the peace of God, and Richard Baxter laboured towards peace. He was gentle, without cowardice or weakness, and he sought unity for the distracted Church as earnestly as William Laud. Baxter was reckoned among the Puritans, and shared the Presbyterian sympathies of the Long Parliament, whose members voted, in May, 1641, approval " of the affection of their brethren of Scotland, in their desire of a conformity in the Church government between the two nations." The Grand Committee of the whole House for Religion, appointed three days after the assembling of the Parliament, had originated in King James's time, but soon became a new energy for the inquiry into accusations against loyal clergy. It had a sub-committee, which divided itself into several lesser committees, and the first sentence of sequestration was passed by the Grand Committee itself as early as the 16th of January, 1641. As the work grew on the hands of the sequestrators, committees were appointed under Parliament in all parts of the country. They were to consist of from five to ten members, each paid five shillings a day for his attendance, and were enjoined to be "speedy and effectual" in their inquiry into the lives, doctrine,

and conversation of all ministers and schoolmasters. These local courts were first instituted in 1643, and remained instruments of tyranny for the next ten years. A fifth of the sequestrated income might be granted to the expelled man, on conditions that even a word of resentment might be held to break, and the number of the clergy thus ejected has been reckoned by the historian of their sufferings at seven thousand.

When Cromwell first raised his troop, he had invited Baxter to become its pastor. Baxter refused, and reasoned against the appeal to arms. But when war was so far afoot that the only question could be of having or not having the religious life maintained among the combatants, Baxter consented to become, and was for two years, chaplain to a regiment. Thus he was at the taking of Bridgewater, the siege of Bristol and of Sherborne Castle. He was three weeks at the siege of Exeter, six weeks before Banbury Castle, and eleven weeks at the siege of Worcester. In the army he opposed the various forms of free opinion in religion to be found among the soldiers, and somewhat lost their confidence by his zeal on behalf of unity; for he flinched from the religious disputations that had cast out love, and chiefly on that ground held with the Presbyterians of those days, who desired uniform Church government not less than Laud, but sought to give it a shape which they regarded as more Biblical than the machinery of archbishops and bishops. In their desire also to separate their church as much as possible from the traditions of the Church of Rome, they scrupulously avoided naming children after saints. Most of the names in the New Testament, and many more, being thus associated with saint worship, Old Testament names, as Elijah, Jonathan, Obadiah; or the names of Christian gifts, Grace, Faith, Hope, Charity; or even religious phrases, were given as Christian names to their children by pious parents. Towards the end of the civil war Baxter had a severe illness, and it was at that time that he wrote that one of his many books which is most widely read, "The Saint's Everlasting Rest," first published in 1653. He says:

"Whilst I was in health, I had not the least thought of writing books, or of serving God in any more public way than preaching. But when I was weakened with great bleeding, and left solitary in my chamber at Sir John Cook's in Derbyshire, without any acquaintance but my servant about me, and was sentenced to death by the physicians, I began to contemplate more seriously on the everlasting rest which I apprehended myself to be just on the borders of; and that my thoughts might not too much scatter in my meditation, I began to write something on that subject, intending but the quantity of a sermon or two (which is the cause that the beginning is, in brevity and style, disproportionable to the rest); but being continued long in weakness, where I had no books, nor no better employment, I followed it on till it was enlarged to the bulk in which it is published. The first three weeks I spent in it was at Mr. Nowell's house at Kirby Mallory, in Leicestershire; a quarter of a year more, at the seasons which so great weakness would allow, I bestowed on it at Sir Tho. Rouse's house, at Rouse Lench, in Worcestershire; and I finished it shortly after at Kidderminster. The first and last parts were first done, being all that I intended

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

"As we hindered no man from following his own judgment in his own congregation, so we evinced, beyond denial, that it would be but a partial, dividing agreement to agree on the terms of Presbyterian, Episcopal, or any one party, because it would unavoidably shut out the other parties; which was the principal thing which we endeavoured to avoid; it being not with Presbyterians only, but with all orthodox, faithful pastors and people, that we are bound to hold communion, and to live in Christian concord, so far as we have attained. Hereupon, many counties began to associate, as Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Hampshire, Essex, and others; and some of them printed the articles of their agreement. In a word, a great desire of concord began to possess all good people in the land, and our breaches seemed ready to heal. And though some thought that so many associations and forms of agreement did but tend to more division, by showing our diversity of apprehensions, the contrary proved true by experience; for we all agreed on the same course, even to unite in the practice of so much discipline as the Episcopal, Presbyterians, and Independents are agreed in, and as crosseth none of their principles."

Baxter, who had always held by the monarchy, welcomed the Restoration, and his great hope for a measure of compromise that would bring again into one church the Episcopal and Presbyterian Christians seemed at last attainable. The best Independents desired fellowship without the pale of a church to which, however they might be parted from it upon matters of opinion, they could be joined in the

brotherhood of Christian charity. "I have credibly heard," says Baxter, "that Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, and Dr. Owen, the leaders of the Independents, did tell the king that, as the Pope allowed orders of religious parties in mere dependence on himself, all that they desired was, not to be masters of others, but to hold their own liberty of worship and discipline in sole dependence on the king, as the Dutch and French churches do, so they may be saved from the bishops and ecclesiastical courts." Before the arrival of Charles II. he had been visited in Holland by English Presbyterians. His Declaration from Breda had included in these words the promise of an end of persecution for religion:

"And because the passion and uncharitableness of the times have produced several opinions in religion, by which men are engaged in parties and animosities against each other; which when they shall hereafter unite in a freedom of conversation, will be composed, or better understood; we do declare a liberty to tender consciences; and that no man shall be disquieted, or called in question, for differences of opinion in matters of religion which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom; and that we shall be ready to consent to such an act of Parliament as, upon mature deliberation, shall be offered to us, for the full granting that indulgence."

[graphic]

The king, whom Presbyterians had helped to the throne, after his arrival in London, named ten or twelve Presbyterians, including Baxter, chaplains in ordinary. Baxter counselled his king not less faithfully than he had counselled Cromwell, and still laboured above all things to establish spiritual union among English Christians. Baxter and other Presbyterians in London discussed measures of compromise with Episcopal clergy, and began by offering to accept Archbishop Usher's scheme of church government, that made each bishop the head of a Presbytery which shared his powers, and a revised Liturgy that did not forbid extemporary prayer. They accepted the king as supreme "in all things and causes, as well ecclesiastical as civil." They proposed also that of the church ceremonies in question, some should be abolished as occasions of dispute upon indifferent matters, and that use of others should be optional. Upon every point the Presbyterians were met with resistance by the bishops, but in October, 1660, the king signed a Declaration on ecclesiastical affairs, which conceded very much to Presbyterian desires. Had it been acted upon, much strife and division would have been at an end; but there can be no end to strife without change in the minds of combatants. The House of Commons in November, 1660, rejected the Declaration by a majority of twenty-six.

Among enthusiasts of the time was a small body of Fifth-Monarchy men, so called from their interpretation of the prophecy in the seventh chapter of Daniel. The four beasts had always been interpreted to mean the four great monarchies of the world; the ten horns of the fourth beast were said to be the ten European kingdoms, and the "little horn" (verses 8, 20, 21,) was now read to mean William the Conqueror and his successors, who "made war with the

saints, and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High." This prophecy was said to be fulfilled by the trial and condemnation of Charles I.; "and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom." This was the Fifth Monarchy, and by 1666 (verses 24-27), having overthrown the power of Rome, it was to be visible on earth, terribly and suddenly, for the redemption of the people from all bondage, ecclesiastical and civil. Sixty Fifth Monarchy men on Sunday, January 6th, 1661, issued from their meeting-house at Swan Alley, in Coleman Street, led by a wine-cooper named Venner, who had conspired in Cromwell's time, carried arms, declaring for King Jesus, and killed several people. They repulsed some files of the train-bands hastily collected by the

[ocr errors]

whom Baxter had the foremost place, argued that 'limiting of Church communion to things of doubtful disputation hath been in all ages the ground of schism and separation." They asked for modifications of the Prayer Book that would add to the number of those who used it many who before had conscientious scruples. Baxter even drew up a reformed Liturgy. The reply to this and to the desire for removal of ceremonies that had served as occasions for dispute was, "If pretence of conscience did exempt from obedience, laws were useless; whoever had not list to obey might pretend tenderness of conscience, and be thereby set at liberty." The conference was ineffectual.

The Parliament that met in May, 1661, ordered the Covenant to be burnt by the hangman, recalled

[graphic][subsumed][merged small]

Lord Mayor, each fanatic believing that he would be miraculously sustained although a thousand came against him. When they heard that the Life Guards were bearing down upon them, they escaped to Caen Wood between Hampstead and Highgate, but at dawn on Wednesday entered London again, and hoped to capture the Lord Mayor. Venner and about sixteen of his followers were taken and hanged in different parts of the town, denouncing judgment on the king, the judges, and the city. This incident was followed by a proclamation "prohibiting all unlawful and seditious meetings and conventicles under pretence of religious worship," in which the unresisting Quakers were named with the Fifth Monarchy men. The Quakers worshipped as they held that their duty to God required, and paid tribute also to Cæsar by accepting quietly the imposed pain of imprisonment for conscience' sake. Few understood their point of view, and even Baxter reckoned them with sectaries for whom he did not intercede.

In April, 1661, the conference was held at the Savoy Palace in the Strand, between twelve bishops and twelve Presbyterians. The Presbyterians, among

the bishops to the House of Lords, established an unmodified Episcopal Church, and passed, on the 19th of May, 1662, the Act of Uniformity, through which no Presbyterian minister could pass into the ministry of the Church without ordination by a bishop, "assent and consent to everything contained and prescribed in and by" the Prayer Book, with declaration that the Covenant was an unlawful oath, and that it is unlawful to take arms against the king for any cause whatever. This Act came into force on the 24th of August, 1662, and those who suffered by it remembered that this was St. Bartholomew's Day, an anniversary already associated with religious hatreds.

Richard Baxter, of course, was among the ministers then shut out of the Church. He might not return to Kidderminster. The same conformity was required from all teachers of the young, both public and private. Two thousand ministers refused compliance with the Act, and at once resigned, or were deprived of their livings. The same Parliament passed a long Act against liberty of the press, for the suppression of "heretical, seditious, schismatical, or

offensive books or pamphlets, wherein any doctrine or opinion should be asserted or maintained contrary to the Christian faith, or the doctrine or discipline of the Church of England; or which might tend or be to the scandal of religion, or the Church, or the Government, or governors of the Church, State, or Commonwealth, or of any corporation or person whatsoever." On the 21st of May, 1662, the king married Catharine of Portugal, a Roman Catholic princess. The king wished to obtain from Parliament a power dispensing with the penalties incurred by Roman Catholics and Dissenters, but in 1663 the Commons voted an address, in which they replied to him "that it is in no sort advisable that there be any indulgence to persons who presume to dissent from the Act of Uniformity, and religion established." In 1664 the first Act against conventicles was passed. Any meeting for religious worship at which five persons were present, more than the family, was declared a conventicle. Every person above the age of sixteen found at a conventicle was subject for the first offence to three months' imprisonment, or a fine of five pounds; for the second, to six months' imprisonment, or a fine of twenty pounds; for the third, to banishment to any plantation except New England or Virginia. Exile to one of these colonies might turn punishment into a favour by giving a Presbyterian the religious fellowship he sought.

In the year 1665 there was a great plague, of which, in August and September, eight thousand were dying every week. Because the plague was busy in London, Parliament met at Oxford on the 31st of October, 1665. Many Nonconformists, who had bravely stayed among the plague-stricken in London. and other towns, occupied the pulpits left vacant by those of the conforming clergy who had fled. In their preaching they sometimes dwelt on the corrupt life at court, and the persecution of their brethren. Use is said to have been made of this fact by promoters of one of the first acts passed by the Parliament at Oxford, the "Five Mile Act," which was strongly but ineffectually opposed in the House of Lords. It enacted that all persons "in holy orders or pretended holy orders," who had not fulfilled the requirements of the Act of Uniformity, and who should take upon them to preach in any unlawful assembly, conventicle, or meeting, should not, unless only in passing on the road, come or be within five miles of any city or town corporate or borough that sent members to Parliament; or of any parish, town, or place wherein, since the Act of Oblivion, they had been parson, vicar, curate, stipendiary lecturer, or had taken on them to preach in unlawful assembly, conventicle, or meeting, on pain of a penalty of £40 for every offence. Every person who had not first taken and subscribed the oath, and who did not frequent divine service as established by law, was also subject to the same penalty if he or she should "teach any public or private school, or take any boarders or tablers that were taught or instructed by him or her." It is clear, therefore, that whatever party was uppermost, the use made of power showed that England generally had not yet outgrown faith in the possibility of compelling peace by the enforcement of one rule of Christian discipline and doctrine.

Dr. John Owen was in those days the chief divine among the Independents. He was born in 1616, at Hadham, Oxfordshire, was educated at Queen's College, Oxford, but left at the age of twenty-one to avoid the regulations of Laud. At the outbreak of civil war he was disinherited for his advocacy of the cause of the Parliament. In 1650, Cromwell made him Dean of Christ Church, and he was Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1652 until the death of Cromwell. At the Restoration he was deprived of office in the University, and for the next twenty-three years he lived in retirement, using his pen actively.

66

Baxter preached, on the 25th of May, 1662, his last sermon before he was silenced by the Act of Uniformity; and in September of the same year he, being then forty-seven years old, married Margaret Charlton, aged twenty-three. His wife, who was of good worldly position, had been born within three miles of his native village, and had removed with her mother to Kidderminster, where she received from Baxter her first strong impressions of religion. In July, 1663, he went to live at Acton, and then and always wrote much, advocating always peace, and seeking a church that would comprehend the Presbyterians, with addition of an indulgence for Independents and others who aided the religious life in forms of worship outside the enlarged pale of the Church. Some thought that he would himself conform, because he urged the laity who thought with him not to forsake the Church. But he was committed to Clerkenwell prison for preaching in his own house at Acton. His wife went to prison with him, and, as he tells us, was never so cheerful a companion to me as in prison." He was released because of a flaw in the mittimus, but was then prevented by the Five Mile Act from return to Acton. He went, therefore, to Totteridge, near Barnet, where he had "a few mean rooms, which were so extremely smoky, and the place withal so cold, that he spent the winter with great pain." Here he followed up a passage in a book of Dr. Owen's, which suggested to him a chance of bringing Presbyterians and Independents to accord, and drew Dr. Owen into an endeavour to ascertain terms of a common understanding. It was the chief labour of Baxter's life to bring English religion into the way of peace. One of his many books (fifty-six publication had preceded it) was on "The Cure of Church Divisions." It was published in 1668, and gave sixty Directions to the People that applied practically the teaching of Christ to the distractions of the Church, with twenty-two additional Directions to the Pastors. It is a very practical book still. This, for instance, is one of the Directions :

DIRECTION XLIX.

Take notice of all the good in others which appeareth, and rather talk of that behind their backs, than of their faults.

If there were no good in others, they were not to be loved; for it is contrary to man's nature to will or love anything, but sub ratione boni, as supposed to be good. The good of nature

is lovely in all men as men, even in the wicked and our enemies (and therefore let them that think they can never speak bad enough of nature take heed lest they run into excess); and the capacity of the good of holiness and happiness is part of the good of nature. The good of gifts and of a common profession, with the possibility or probability of sincerity, is lovely in all the visible members of the Church; and truly the excellent gifts of learning, judgment, utterance, and memory, with the virtues of meekness, humility, patience, contentedness, and a loving disposition inclined to do good to all, are so amiable in some, who yet are too strange to a heavenly life, that he must be worse than a man who will not love them.

To vilify all these gifts in others savoureth of a malignant contempt of the gifts of the Spirit of God; and so it doth to talk all of their faults, and say little or nothing of their gifts and virtues. Yea, some have so unloving and unlovely a kind of religiousness that they backbite that man as a defender of the profane, and a commender of the ungodly, who doth but contradict or reprehend their backbitings, and are ever gainsaying all the commendations which they hear of any whom they think ill of.

But if you would, when you talk of others (especially them who differ from you in opinions), be more in commendation of all the good which indeed is in them-1. You would shew yourselves much liker to God, who is love, and unliker to Satan the accuser. 2. You would shew an honest impartial ingenuity which honoureth virtue wherever it is found. 3. You would shew an humble sense of your own frailty, who dare not proudly contemn your brethren. 4. You would shew more love to God himself, when you love all of God whensoever you discern it, and cannot abide to hear his gifts and mercies undervalued. 5. You would increase the grace of love to others in yourselves by the daily exercise of it; when backbiting and detraction will increase the malignity from which they spring. 6. You would increase love also in the hearers, which is the fulfilling of the law, when detraction will breed or increase malice. 7. You will do much to the winning and conversion of them whom you commend, if they be unconverted. For when they are told that you speak lovingly of them behind their backs, it will much reconcile them to your persons, and consequently prepare them to hearken to the counsel which they need. But when they are told that you did backbite them, it will fill them with hatred of you, and violent prejudice against your counsel and profession.

Yet mistake me not. It is none of my meaning all this while that you should speak any falsehood in commendation of others; nor make people believe that a careless, carnal sort of persons are as good as those that are careful of their souls, or that their way is sufficient for salvation; nor to commend ungodly men in such a manner as tendeth to keep either them or their hearers from repentance; nor to call evil good, or put darkness for light, nor honour the works of the devil; but to shew love and impartiality to all, and to be much more in speaking of all the good which is in them than of the evil, especially if they be your enemies, or differ from you in opinions of religion. Titus iii. 1: "Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness to all men. For we ourselves were sometime foolish, &c." Grace is clean contrary to this detracting vice.

The volume ends with the following suggestive sketch of

[blocks in formation]

Take those for Impartially judge Backbite and reyour enemies that of men by God's in- proach all those as are their friends, terest in them, and compliers with sin, or and those for your not your own or your such as strengthen the friends which are parties. Reprove the hands of the wicked their enemies: ways of love-killers and the persecutors, And cherish those and backbiters; and who would recall you be they never so let not the fear of to love and humility. bad, that will be their wrath or cen- And cherish all sects against them and sures carry you into be they never so erhelp you to root a compliance with roneous or passionate them, or cause you by that will take your silence to encourage part, and speak against them. But rejoice if them. But first, when But remember you should be martyrs the wrath which you

them out.

« AnteriorContinuar »