is one thing; the wisdom, the temper, with which CHAPTER the charge is insisted on is another. It is not pretended that the episcopal clergy were altogether blameless. Their warmest advocates allow that it would be false and even ridiculous to affirm that there were not amongst them some men of wicked lives, a reproach and scandal to their office.* The disordered state of public affairs for several years, and the want of all other discipline than that which was enforced against puritanism, had produced its natural effects. Baxter declares that in the counties with which he was acquainted, Worcester and Shropshire, six to one at least of the sequestered clergy were, by the oaths of witnesses, proved insufficient or scandalous, or both, and especially guilty of drunkenness or swearing.t Earnestness in religion was suspected and decried : it was natural that sloth should luxuriate. When the hand of vengeance fell heavily upon the most laborious of the clergy, it is probable that those who wished to commend themselves to the ruling powers would prove their zeal by scoffing at the piety as well as the scruples of the puritans. For many years complaints against the clergy had now been loud. The vacant livings had been filled with a much more keen regard to the political opinions of the clergy, and their abhorrence of puritanism in every form, than to the more important considerations of learning, zeal, or piety. When a living fell vacant in the gift of the crown, a list of names was laid before the council on which every puritan * Walker, Suff. part i. p. 72. † Baxter's Own Life and Times, book i. p. 74. II. CHAS. I. A.D. 1643. II. CHAS. I. A.D. 1643. CHAPTER Was marked, and, whatever his merits or his claims might be, he was of course rejected. Laudians only were advanced. Had the inquisition been fairly conducted by the parliament, the results might have been very painful, but churchmen would have had no reason to complain. As spiritual guides, a vast number of the clergy were utterly incompetent; and the mischiefs of utter incompetence, not to speak of open vice, in a christian minister, are of such dreadful consequence, that we are disposed to regard severity in such a case with no disapprobation. A minister who is not apt to teach is not fit for his office. His parishioners have a right to christian instruction. To affirm that mere incompetence does not justify the removal of a minister, or at least the compulsory introduction of an efficient assistant, is simply to sacrifice the flock; to maintain, in fact, that whatever redress the clergy may have in the recovery of their rights, the people shall have none. Upon these grounds a searching inquisition was necessary; and the parliament would have entitled themselves to the gratitude of future times, had they conducted it fairly and with temper. But the clergy as a body were maligned as profligates, in order that as royalists they might be ejected from their livings. Baxter himself allows that "some able godly preachers were cast out for the war alone," simply because they were royalists; but he adds, "comparatively they were very few." Few or many, they were all that could be found. Public opinion soon revolted and prepared the way for the * i. 74. II. CHAS. I. A.D. 1643. reaction which took place at the restoration. They CHAPTER who really believe that the clergy of those times were such men as White describes must be prepared with reasons for so harsh a decision. That the hatred of puritanism led to a contempt of real piety in some, and to what was more disgraceful, an affectation of contempt in others, is not unlikely. But between the absence of religion and the sensual vices of Tiberius at Capreæ there is still a chasm. The clergy did not live in convents, where crime was unobserved; nor in a state of celibacy, at once an excuse for lust and its temptation. They mingled with their parishioners in daily life; they were surrounded by their own families. It was an age of great religious knowledge, and now for thirty years of free and violent discussion. And the moral character of English society was, at least, as high as at any previous period of our history. It is very improbable that any considerable number of the parochial clergy, then, were men of abandoned lives: though it is, we fear, too true that few of them were able teachers of the new testament. Under the plea of fencing the church against schismatics, Laud and his party had succeeded in keeping out of its benefices almost every man of evangelical piety. But whatever they may have been, the real cause of their ejectment was in many cases, perhaps in most, their attachment to the king. It was the unhappiness of Charles that he had made the pious clergy his opponents. It was the calamity of the loyal clergy to suffer for the king's misconduct rather than their own. Yet the position of the puritans was here again one of extreme difficulty; and upon II. A.D. 1643. CHAPTER the decision of the question as to the necessity of the war, their justification after all depends. If CHAS. I. the war were right, the exclusion of the loyal clergy may have been one of the direful yet just necessities the war involved. It was impossible to contend against the local influence of ten thousand clergymen residing in their own parishes, with access to every house, and a confidential intercourse with every parishioner, and all of them secretly or openly banded against the parliament; and it would have been well for the reputation of the parliament if they had honestly announced their measure, and boldly defended it, on these grounds alone, as a measure of precaution forced upon them by the necessities of a civil war. Of the revenues of the sequestered livings, one-fifth was reserved for the ejected ministers; an act of justice, stinted as it was, which ought to be recorded to the honour of the parliament; and one that was not copied by the royalists when the days of retribution came and the puritans were in their turn expelled in 1662. It is said indeed that, in the convulsions that followed, the scanty pittance was seldom paid; but in a civil war this may have been a wrong which it was impossible to prevent. The rest of the tithe was given to the new incumbent if the income were small; in richer livings the parliament seized the lion's share to carry on the war. It was one of the fatal errors of the long parliament to destroy existing institutions without having considered how to supply their place. This indeed was their singular defect. Sincere reformers, they were not so great as statesmen; courageous in re II. A.D. 1643. moving abuses, they were weak in forethought, and CHAPTER weaker still in the power that gives to forethought expression and stability. The gratitude they really CHAS. I. deserve is that which belongs to those who devote their lives to a contest with oppression. They gained many a victory both in arms and politics, but they threw away most of their advantages, and left the battle to be fought again. They had destroyed the high prelatic party. They had abolished episcopacy. They were pruning the church with no unsparing hand. Its revenues were within their power. So were its venerated shrines. They had begun to despoil its churches and cathedrals of their decorations with a ruthless barbarism. Several orders had been made in 1641 for the removal of superstitious ornaments and relics of idolatry. The cross in Cheapside was attacked first; Harlowe himself assisting a noisy crowd, who probably thought, as the cross fell, that Laud and popery were laid prostrate. St. Paul's cross followed; it was merely a pulpit of wood, with a leaden roof surmounted with a cross, standing in the churchyard. Every man of taste will deplore the destruction of the market cross; and the most zealous protestant may be allowed to regret the crusade against the venerable pulpit, in which, says an old writer, more learned men had appeared, and out of which more good and sound divinity had been delivered, than perhaps any one pulpit since the first preaching of the gospel could ever glory in.* But the 24th of August, 1643, rang the knell of the fine arts in connection with our churches and cathedrals; the * Walker's Sufferings, part i. p. 24. |