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IV.

CHAS. I.

A.D. 1645.

thing in its place; but as their difficulties increased CHAPTER they shewed a still increasing aversion to the ancient service. The directory was published in January: it set forth that the liturgy had proved an offence to many of the godly, and to the reformed churches abroad, and it was therefore to be set aside.* This was a great advance upon their first intentions, which had been merely to revise and amend the ritual. But their prejudices still gathered strength, and in the month of August they forbad the use of the common prayer-book altogether, not only in any church, chapel, or public place of worship, but in any private place or family within the kingdom of England; under a penalty of five pounds for the first offence, ten pounds for the second, and for the third offence, one whole year's imprisonment, without bail or mainprize.† At the same time, the use of the directory was enforced; the clergy were commanded to conform to it under a fine of forty shillings for each omission; and "whoever depraved it, in preaching, writing, or teaching," was liable to be convicted in a summary manner, and fined not less than five pounds for each offence. Thus presbyterian worship was established, though not the presbyterian discipline. The puritans had not profited by the lessons of adversity. They too had their penal statutes and their act of uniformity. To those who are disposed nicely to adjust the balances of crime, their conduct seems right or wrong as it is worse or better than that of their opponents. Such writers have remarked, on the one hand, that the *Ordinance, &c., die Veneris, 3 Januarii, 1644. + Ordinance, &c., 23 Aug. 1645.

IV.

A.D. 1645.

CHAPTER punishments which the ordinance inflicts are light in comparison with the prisons and gibbets of CHAS. I. Whitgift and his school; and, on the other, that the episcopal act of uniformity of 1662 is lenient in comparison with this inglorious specimen of puritan oppression. The act of 1662 only affected the clergy; this included the laity. That did not forbid private or family prayer, although extempore; this forbad the use of the book of common prayer even in the domestic circle, under the monstrous penalty of five pounds for the first, and one hundred pounds for the third, offence.* The independents joined with the presbyterians in these merciless measures, though they themselves were at the time exposed to similar exclusion; and the puritans of 1645, are responsible to posterity for an act of which there are few parallels in the dreary records of intolerance. It admits, unhappily, of no excuse. Revenge or retaliation must not be pleaded in justification of those who rule men, or of those who fear God: as senators or as christians, they are beyond the worthless shelter of such apologies. Nor will necessity avail. A state of war confers, it is true, the rights of war; but they are to be exerted sparingly, and only when necessity compels. Had the king systematically availed himself of the occasions when the liturgy was read to foment his quarrel with the parliament-had the use of the prayer-book been the signal of his party-perhaps it might have been difficult to blame his opponents for snatching from his hands the machinery of war. The same principle of self-defence upon which the saying of mass was forbidden to papists when the

* Walker, Sufferings, &c., part i. p. 28.

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IV.

A.D. 1645.

kingdom was in danger, might possibly have ex- CHAPTER cused, but only for a time, the suppression of the prayer-book. But when the ordinance was made CHAS. I. no such pretence existed: the battle of Naseby had been fought, and Charles was no longer formidable. Two years afterwards, when the war was at an end and the king a prisoner, the parliament voted liberty to tender consciences by way of indulgence;" but within two days, as if alarmed at their own concessions, they reconsidered the question, and resolved, "that the indulgence as to tender consciences shall not extend to the book of common prayer." Rivals may exult and zealots may excuse; it is for those who have made the wrongs of the puritans their own, who have felt their sorrows through the persecutions of a century, and who abhor oppression more than they love a party, to review these measures with the deepest shame, and to give utterance to the loudest indignation.

The independents were treated with only less severity than the adherents of the liturgy. To relate the various turns of the conflict through which they struggled for equal rights against parliamentary committees and majorities of the assembly of divines, would be wearisome and unprofitable. A committee of accommodation was appointed by the house of commons to arrange the differences of the two parties. The independents differed but little from the presbyterians on church government, and in doctrine not a shade. They asked to be included in the national church about to be founded, on two conditions; namely, to reserve

* 16 Oct., 1647. Whitelocke, p. 276.

IV.

CHAS. I. A.D. 1645.

CHAPTER the right of ordination to themselves, and to be exempted from the jurisdiction of the classes or presbyterian courts. They did not intend, they said, a total separation from their brethren; they would hold occasional communion with the presbyterian churches in baptism and the Lord's supper; their ministers should preach for each other; and in cases of difficulty they would call in their assistance and advice; they would even desire the presence and approbation of presbyterian ministers at the ordination of their own clergy, and they would submit to have but a few places of worship licensed for uneasy consciences. On these terms they prayed to share the privileges of the national church. The presbyterians answered, that the concession of their demands would introduce confusion into families; would confer upon members of the independent churches privileges denied to the establishment; would destroy the whole work on which the parliament had been so long and earnestly employed, and countenance a perpetual schism. In short, said they, if you can communicate with our church occasionally, we know no reason why you may not do so constantly, and then your separation will be needless. Separation is schism. If the church impose anything that is sinful, you need not, nor ought you, to comply; you may suffer, but you must not separate: and this, they said, was the practice of the puritans in the late times. And they closed the argument with reminding the independents that their own brethren in New England (the pilgrim fathers of Boston and New Plymouth) allowed no such tole

IV.

CHAS. I.

A.D. 1645.

ration as that for which they now pleaded at home. CHAPTER The assembly triumphed: the committee of accommodation broke up; and the successors of the brownists found themselves cast out by the successors of Cartwright; just as they themselves in time past had been ejected by the prelates. The circle of intolerance was complete.*

Toleration was a word which roused those violent passions which are formidable or ludicrous as the subjects of them are invested with the power, or deprived of the opportunity, of carrying their wishes into effect. To collect from some of the greatest writers of the age the sentences in which they denounced the doctrine of toleration, meaning thereby the liberty, not of imposing a schismatic creed on others but of observing it oneself, would be to present the reader with a set of phrases the bitterness of which has never been surpassed. "To let men serve God according to the persuasion of their own conscience," says one writer, "is to cast out one devil that seven worse may enter in." Prynne, who had lost his ears in Palace-yard and felt the vengeance of the star-chamber, still thought that "the independents and all others were bound to submit to the will of parliament on the pain of obstinacy." Most of the sermons before the house of commons, at their monthly fasts, spoke the same language, and called upon the magistrate to draw the sword against the sectaries.t "If you do not labour,"

said Calamy," according to your duty and power to suppress the errors and heresies which are spread in the kingdom, all those errors are your errors, and † Ib. vol. iii. p. 254.

* Neal, vol. iii. chap. vi.

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