which had as far as possible deprived holiness of all its beauty; the yoke was too heavy, too galling, too ignominious to be borne: and when the Restoration put an end to the dominion* of knaves and fanatics, *The conduct of the puritanical clergy during their reign, is thus admirably described in a fragment said to have been written by Milton, and bearing strong marks of his style: "If the state were in this plight, religion was not in much better; to reform which, a certain number of divines were called, neither chosen by any rule or custom ecclesiastical, nor eminent for either piety or knowledge above others left out; only as each member of parliament in his private fancy thought fit, so elected one by one. The most part of them were such as had preached and cried down, with great show of zeal, the avarice of bishops, and pluralities; that one cure of souls was a full employment for one spiritual pastor, how able soever, if not a charge rather above human strength. Yet these conscientious men (before any part of the work was done for which they came together, and that on the public salary) wanted not boldness, to the ignominy and scandal of their pastor-like profession, and especially of their boasted reformation, to seize into their hands, or not unwillingly to accept (besides one, sometimes two or more of the best livings) collegiate masterships in the universities, rich lectures in the city, set: ting sail to all winds that might blow gain into their covetous bosoms by which means these great rebukers of non-residence, amongst so many distant cures, were not ashamed to be seen so quickly pluralists and non-residents themselves, to a fearful condemnation, doubtless by their own mouths. And yet the main doctrine for which they took such pay, and insisted upon with more vehemence than gospel, was but to tell us in effect, that their doctrine was worth nothing, and the spiritual power of their ministry less available than bodily compulsion; persuading the magistrate to use it, as a stronger means to subdue and bring in conscience, than evangelical persuasion; distrusting the virtue of their own spiritual weapons, which were given them, if they be rightly called, with full warrant of sufficiency to pull down all thoughts and imaginations that exalt themselves against God. But, while they taught compulsion without convincement, which not long before they complained of, as executed unchristianly, against themselves, their intents are clear to have been no better than anti-christian; setting up a spiritual tyranny by a secular power, to the advancing of their own authority above the magistrate whom they would have made their executioner to punish church delinquencies, whereof civil laws have no cognizance. : "And well did their disciples manifest themselves to be no better principled than their teachers, trusted with committeeships and other gainful offices, upon their commendations for zealous (and as they sticked not to term them) godly men, but executing it was soon perceived that the effect of such systems is to render religion odious by making piety suspected, and to prepare a people for licentiousness and atheism. The circumstances which attended the restoration of the Church were in some respects similar to those which had existed at the time of its establishment under Elizabeth, and in some respects more unfavourable. A generation had elapsed during which no men had been educated for the priesthood except upon sectarian principles. The greater number of the sequestered clergy had been cut off, many of them by the natural course of years; many by ill-usage and confinement in prisons or in the hulks. These ministers had been content to suffer for conscience-sake; but when those who had supplanted them were called upon to conform to the liturgy which they had proscribed, or to give up their benefices, a large majority preferred the easier their places like children of the devil unfaithfully, unjustly, unmercifully, and, where not corruptly, stupidly; so that, between them the teachers, and these the disciples, there hath not been a more ignominious and mortal wound to faith, to piety, to the work of reformation; nor more cause of blaspheming given to the enemies of God and truth, since the first preaching of reformation. The people, therefore, looking one while on the statists, whom they beheld without constancy or firmness, labouring doubtfully beneath the weight of their own too high undertakings, busiest in petty things, trifling in the main, deluded and quite alienated, expressed divers ways their disaffection, some despising whom before they honoured, some deserting, some inveighing, some conspiring against them. Then looking on the churchmen, whom they saw under subtile hypocrisy, to have preached their own follies most of them, not the gospel; time-servers, covetous, illiterate, persecutors, not lovers of the truth; like in most things whereof they accused their predecessors: looking on all this, the people, which had been kept warm a-while with the counterfeit zeal of their pulpits, after a false heat, became more cold and obdurate than before, some turning to lewdness, some to flat atheism, put beside their old religion, and foully scandalized in what they expected should be new." Harleian Miscellany, 8vo. edition, vol. v. p. 39. *The number of non-conformists who were expelled in consequence of the act of uniformity is stated at two thousand: that alternative. In so doing, many beyond all doubt did well in the sight of God and man, and chose conscientiously the better part; but there must certainly have been many who sacrificed their scruples to their convenience, and more who had no scruples to sacrifice, because they had brought with them to their holy office little intellect and less feeling. Some of the ejected ministers were men of unquestionable piety and signal talents: all had given proof of their sincerity. Wherever therefore the priest was ejected, part at least of his flock regretted him, and a disposition by no means favourable to his successor must have existed; and where men of little ability and little principle retained their benefices, they must have been despised. Thus the influence of the clergy, which had been wofully shaken during the long struggle, received another shock. The clergy themselves did not manifest in their prosperity the same equal mind with which they had endured their adverse fortune. They were more desirous of retaliating upon their old persecutors, than of conciliating them. Forgiveness of injuries indeed is the last lesson which men learn in the school of suffering: but he must know little of the history and the spirit of those times who should imagine that any conciliatory measures on the part of the Church could have produced uniformity in a land where old opinions had been torn up by the roots, and the seeds of schism had been scattered every where. It is easier to justify the heads of the restored clergy upon this point, than to excuse them for appropriating to themselves the wealth which in consequence of the long protracted calamities of the nation was of the sequestered clergy was between six and seven thousand, as stated by Dr. Gauden in his Petitionary Remonstrance to the Protector: so incorrect are the assertions of Messrs. Bogue and Bennet in their History of the Dissenters, that "the episcopal clergy very generally conformed to the new establishment; (vol. i. p. 87.) and that" ecclesiastical history furnishes no such instance of a noble army of confessors at one time," (ditto, p. 99.) as that of the two thousand non-conforming ministers. placed at their disposal. The leases of the church lands had almost all fallen in; there had been no renewal for twenty years, and the fines which were now raised amounted to about a million and a half. Some of this money was expended in repairing as far as was reparable that havoc in churches and cathedrals which the fanatics had made during their abominable reign; some also was disposed of in ransoming English slaves from the Barbary pirates: but the greater part went to enrich individuals and build up families, instead of being employed as it ought to have been in improving the condition of the inferior clergy. Queen Anne applied the tenths and* first fruits to this most desirable object; but the effect of her augmentation was slow and imperceptible; they continued in a state of degrading poverty, and that poverty was another cause of the declining influence of the Church, and the increasing irreligion of the people. A further cause is to be found in the relaxation, or rather the total decay of ecclesiastical discipline. In the Romish days it had been grossly abused; and latterly also it had been brought into general abhorrence and contempt, by the tyrannical measures oft Laud on one side, and the absurd rigour of Puritanism on the other. The clergy had lost that authority which may always command at least the appearance of respect; and they had lost that respect also by which the place of authority may sometimes so much * Charles II. disposed of these funds chiefly among his mistresses and his natural children. Queen Mary intended to apply them (as was afterwards done by her sister) to the augmentation of small livings: Burnet after her death represented this to William, and the measure was strongly approved by Somers and Halifax, but Sunderland obtained an assignment of 2000l. a-year upon two dioceses for two lives, "so nothing was to be hoped for after that!" † Something is said in the Quarterly Review (vol. xvi. pp. 518, 519.) of the temper with which it behooves us to regard this part of our history. But there are writers at this day who seem to think, in the words of the prose Hudibras, that "Pillories are more cruel than scaffolds, or perhaps Prynne's ears were larger than my Lord of Canterbury's head." more worthily be supplied. For the loss of power they were not censurable; but if they possessed little of that influence which the minister who diligently and conscientiously discharges his duty will certainly acquire, it is manifest, that, as a body, they must have been culpably remiss. From the Restoration to the accession of the house of Hanover, the English church could boast of some of its brighest ornaments and ablest defenders; men who have neither been surpassed in piety, nor in erudition, nor in industry, nor in eloquence, nor in strength and subtlety of mind: and when the design for re-establishing popery in these kingdoms was systematically pursued, to them we are indebted for that calm and steady resistance, by which our liberties, civil as well as religious, were preserved. But in the great majority of the clergy zeal was wanting. The excellent Leighton spoke of the Church as a fair carcass without a spirit: in doctrine, in worship, and in the main part of its government, he thought it the best constituted in the world, but one of the most corrupt in its administration. And Burnet observes, that in his time our clergy had less authority, and were under more contempt, than those of any other church in Europe; for they were much the most remiss in their labours, and the least severe in their lives. It was not that their lives were scandalous; he entirely acquitted them of any such imputation; but they were not exemplary as it became them to be; and in the sincerity and grief of a pious and reflecting mind, he pronounced that they would never regain the influence which they had lost, till they lived better and laboured more. Unfavourable as this faithful representation is, the constitution of our church tended naturally to produce such ministers. Under the Reformed, as well as under the Romish establishment, the clerical profession offered an easy and honourable provision for the younger sons of the gentry; but the Church of Rome had provided stations for them, where, if they were not qualified for active service, their sins of |