V. A.D. 1646-8. CHAPTER tempt. It may be questioned whether our conduct is wise in this respect. The great puritans certainly CHAS. I. took another course. The learned Gataker bent all his powers to the subject, for even his own congregation was infected, and answered the antinomian leaders as Hooker answered Cartwright; with the same profound love of truth, the same ponderous and varied learning, the same gentle spirit, (while his adversaries shrouded themselves in invectives and abuse,) and the same devoted adherence to evangelical doctrine, which he shewed to be as much opposed to formalism on the one hand as to these excesses on the other. The clergy, who had suffered much from the Laudians in asserting the doctrines of grace, were astonished to hear the charges of popery, willworship, and ignorance of the gospel clamorously urged against themselves. Their faith, they were told, was dead; they were protestants in name, but in the main points of salvation they were papists; lisping in speech and limping in practice; sliding back to the legal teaching of the old testament in promising rewards to the followers of righteousness and threatening punishment to transgressors: they mingled the law and the gospel together, and thus they overthrew the gospel and all the benefits of it.* Under these and similar charges still more bitterly expressed this accusation was conveyed : namely, that the puritan clergy taught the necessity of obedience to the moral law not as a condition of salvation, but as an evidence of grace. According * Dr. Crisp's Honeycombe, &c., in Gataker, as before. V. A.D. 1646-8. to the antinomians, this was a great injustice and CHAPTER no slight indignity to the church of Christ: nothing but their own language can do full justice to their CHAS. I. absurdity. The teachers of the old puritan doctrine, they say, "bring forth a rod to whip, if she tread her foot a little awry, the bride in her marriage attire, the queen in her royal robes; they pull the wedding garment off over the bride's head, and put on her a mourning garment of blows; stripping the queen and bride, and making her stand naked to be whipped with rods of crosses and afflictions at her marriage feast."* Disgusted with this extravagance, the reader will perhaps conclude that antinomianism was but another name for sin; a hypocritical pretext for a vicious life. And that such is its tendency no reasonable man will doubt; but there is a vitality in the doctrines of the cross which, however they may be mangled and distorted, they never lose entirely. As a body, the antinomians after all were not immoral; their leaders were not men of impure lives; some of them, with confused heads, were guileless as infants. The disease which disturbed the understanding did not reach the heart. Dr. Crisp himself, the founder or at least the apostle of the sect, was such an one.† Of a wealthy family, he declined preferment, and spent a plentiful estate in christian hospitality: he gave himself wholly to the preaching of the word and the most laborious duties of the ministry; his life and conduct were unblameable, and his household was, even amongst puritans, religious and exact. He * Dr. Crisp's Honeycombe, &c., in Gataker, as before. + Life of Crisp. Brook, Lives of the puritans, vol. ii. p 471. CHAPTER is described as meek lowly and affectionate. What V. A.D. 1646-8. ever the tendency of his writings might have been, the force of his example put the best construction on them, and, while he was alive, corrected to a great extent the mischiefs they have since produced. He was fond of expressions which alarm and paradoxes which astonish; and yet a person skilled in theology will perceive that many of his statements are capable of a sound interpretation. But they misled the ignorant and occasioned grievous errors. These, however, in a religious age, were congenial to the taste of multitudes, who, without casting off religion, were anxious to get rid of its restraints. And this is still the character of antinomianism: it comprehends men of weak intellects, who are often sincerely pious; men of perverted reason, but sound in practice; and with these, a clamorous and noisy host to whom religion is a mere name if not a mask,—a delusion to themselves if not a deception upon others. It was in the army these opinions had their strongest hold: here their connection with politics was openly avowed; and here it was, nursed in a camp and taught its first lessons amidst the din of arms, that a fierce sectarianism, hitherto unknown, arose. The army at the conclusion of the war represented not only the military prowess but the intellectual bravery of England. Of its original soldiery (for it was now swollen by deserters from the king's army who were of another stamp) there was scarcely one who did not think himself capable of a supreme command: and to do them justice, says lord Clarendon, there were few who were not V. CHAS. I. A.D. 1646-8. capable; they were equal to their own high am- CHAPTER able, and in spiritual things the insubordination was complete. strange a sight. Between the soldier and the man there was no sameness. The soldier was moral, valiant, and perfectly obedient; the man, a prompt disciple if not a teacher of discord, insolence, and anarchy; and yet the soldier and the man were equally sincere; the soldier had no more intention * Baxter, Life, part i. p. 51. V. A.D 1646-8. CHAPTER of disobeying orders than the man had of submitting to authority. It was a singular spectacle and full CHAS. I. of contradiction; and to those who love the study of mankind, and can profit by it, its interest is profound. Some argued for a democracy in the state; others, or rather the same men at another time, for a democracy in the church; sometimes they argued against forms of prayer, and sometimes against infant baptism; sometimes against set times of prayer or the discharge of any religious duty except at the suggestion of the Holy Spirit; sometimes in favour of free-will, and sometimes against it; and so through all the points of antinomianism and arminianism. But, towering above all this, liberty of conscience was their frequent and most angry thesis. Here, they denied the right of the civil magistrate to interfere; every man might not only hold and preach, but, in matters of religion, he might practise what he pleased-a doctrine the truth of which turns upon what is meant by matters of religion. It is capable of a safe and wise construction, or of being perverted so as to countenance the foulest morals or the most audacious tyranny. It seems to set the subject free from control whenever he may think fit to plead the rights of conscience. Before the proposition can be assented to, these rights of conscience must, then, be carefully defined. Baxter, who was at this time with the army, tells us that the men who reasoned thus were "fierce with pride and self-conceitedness." Their doctrine filled him with alarm: "it struck me to the very heart, and made me feel that England was lost by those whom it had taken for |