they feared that the Presbyterians were surrendering them; and they thought that Dr. Crisp's error was the less perilous. They believed that if Calvinism was surrendered, the Churches would gradually drift into Socinianism; and events which happened within a quarter of a century confirmed their fears. NOTE A The Merchants' Lecture The six original Lecturers were William Bates, Thomas Manton, Richard Baxter, William Jenkyn, John Owen, and John Collins. Manton, Owen, Jenkyn, and Baxter were succeeded by John Howe, Matthew Mead, Vincent Alsop, and Daniel Williams. Among those who held the Lectureship after the secession of the Presbyterians (see p. 481) were Nathaniel Mather, Thomas Bradbury, John Hurrion, Richard Winter; and, in the present (nineteenth) century, the Claytons, George and John Burder, Henry Foster, John PyeSmith, Robert Vaughan, Samuel Martin, James Sherman, Thomas Binney, Alexander Raleigh. In 1778 the Lecture was removed from Pinners' Hall to Old Broad Street Chapel; in 1844 to the Poultry Chapel, and delivered once a month; in 1869 to the Weigh House; and in the following year, 1870, the weekly Lectures were resumed. In 1873, for a short period while the Weigh House was under repairs, the Lecture was given in the Dutch Church, Austin Friars. In 1883 it was removed to Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields. It is now again delivered at the Dutch Church, Austin Friars. (See Wilson, Dissenting Churches, ii. 249-256.) CHAPTER III THE OCCASIONAL CONFORMITY ACT ACCESSION OF ANNE-TORY REACTION-OCCASIONAL CONFORMITY BILL-MOTIVES OF ITS PROPOSers-DiffeRENCE OF OPINION AMONG DISSENTERS AS TO THE LAWFULNESS OF THE PRACTICEEDWIN'S CASE-DEFOE'S PROTEST-ABNEY'S CASE-DEFOE'S CHALLENGE TO JOHN HOWE, AND HOWE'S REPLY-DIVERGENT OPINIONS OF MODERATE AND HIGH CHURCHMEN THE BILL CARRIED BY THE COMMONS, BLOCKED BY THE LORDS-Second ATTEMPT, AGAIN FOILED, TO CARRY IT-BURNET ON THE BILLTHIRD ATTEMPT: THE "TACK"-THE BILL DROPPED-SACHEVERELL'S ATTACK ON DISSENT-DEFOE'S SHORTEST WAY WITH THE DISSENTERS "-SACHEVERELL IMPEACHED-POPULAR ExCITEMENT-TORIES IN POWER-A DEAL WITH THE WHIGS AT THE EXPENSE OF DISSENT-THE BILL CARRIED-ITS RESULTS. WILLI ILLIAM III. died on March 8, 1701-2. During the last few years of his reign the hatred with which the High Church and Tory party regarded the Dissenters had been growing more bitter, and the news of his death was received with exultation and triumph among the enemies of the Toleration Act. The meeting-house at Newcastle-under-Lyme was partly wrecked by a violent mob, and there were fears of similar outrages in other parts of the kingdom.1 His successor, Queen Anne, hated the Whigs, and was a zealous defender of the Church. When the Ministers of the Three Denominations 2 presented a loyal address congratulating her on her accession, she received them ungraciously. Most of the statesmen who had served William were dismissed from office, and their places filled by Tories. In the new House of Commons which met in October, the Tories " were at least double the number of the Whigs. They met full of fury against the memory of the late King, and against all who had been employed by him." 3 1 Calamy, Abridgment, i. 620; Historical Account, i. 460, note. I Within a few weeks after the opening of Parliament a Bill was introduced into the House of Commons to prevent what the Tories denounced as a profane evasion of the Test and Corporation Acts. Under these Acts no person could hold any civil, military, or naval office under the Crown, or be elected a member of any municipal corporation, without receiving the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the English Church. There were Dissenters who qualified themselves for election as town councillors, aldermen, and mayors, by receiving the Lord's Supper at church immediately before their election; and the Tories declared that most of them never went to church again. The system not only allowed but encouraged profanity. It was said that— To make the celebration of this institution, which was ordained and confined by our Lord Himself to the serious remembrance of His death in the assemblies and churches of Christians, to be the instrument of some particular sort of Christians (as well as of infidels and Atheists) getting into civil offices, and to be the bar against other sorts of Christians, is debasing the most sacred thing in the world into a political tool and engine of State." 4 But the profanity of this practice, by which it was maintained that the most sacred service of the Christian Church suffered degradation, was not the only reason which led the Tories to introduce the Bill For Preventing Occasional Conformity. In a large number of cases the Corporations returned the Borough members. The Nonconformists were all Whigs; if they were excluded from municipal corporations, the Corporations would send Tory members to the House of Commons. The lawfulness of "Occasional Conformity" had been acknowledged by the more moderate Dissenters ever since the passing of the Act of Uniformity. John Howe says:— In [16]62 [the very year in which that Act became law] most of the considerable, ejected London-ministers met, and agreed to hold Occasional Communion with the (now) re-established Church; not quitting their own Ministry, or declining the Exercise of it, as they could have opportunity. And as far as I could by Bishop Hoadly, Works, ii. 522, in Abbey and Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, i. 423. enquiry learn, I can little doubt this to have been the Judgment of their Fellow-sufferers, through the Nation, in great part, ever since." "5 There is no doubt that some Congregationalists, and the majority of those who were described as Presbyterians, practised "Occasional Conformity." The Baptists were more rigid: at an assembly of delegates from more than a hundred Churches, held soon after the passing of the Act of Toleration, it was recommended that members of Baptist Churches who communicated with the Church of England should, after admonition, be rejected." A few years before the death of William III. an attempt was made to make the question a subject of public controversy. In 1697, Sir Humphry Edwin, an eminent Congregationalist, was Lord Mayor of London, and he went in state to Pinners' Hall, which was being used as the meeting-house of a Congregational Church. This imprudent act provoked the fury of the High Churchmen, and did very much to rekindle their hatred of the Dissenters. For other reasons it provoked the keen criticism of Daniel Defoe, who published an anonymous pamphlet under the title of An Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters in cases of Preferment: With a Preface to the Lord Mayor, occasioned by his carrying the Sword to a Conventicle (1697). Defoe did not discuss the question whether the Dissenters were right in separating from the Church, but insisted that if a man's conscience compelled him to become a Nonconformist, he was violating his conscience if he conformed for the sake of qualifying himself for office. In 1701 Sir Thomas Abney, a member of John Howe's Church, was Lord Mayor. Before his election he had received 5 Some Consideration of a Preface to an Enquiry concerning the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters, etc., 33. • The Conference was held September 3-12, 1689. Fifty years later, at a meeting of the Baptist Board in 1742, it was unanimously decided that it was absolutely unlawful for a member of a "Gospel Church to communicate with the Established Church on any consideration whatever. (See the details of Mr. Baskerville's case, and the letter of the ministers and deputies, in Ivimey, English Baptists, ii. 495; iii. 228-233.) See Nicholls, Apparatus ad Defen. Eccl. Angl., 108-109, and his Defence, 127-the English version, which is even more violent than the original. Pinners' Hall is " a nasty conventicle"; Edwin's action is a "horrid crime." And Calamy, Historical Account, i. 400-401. the Lord's Supper from a clergyman of the Established Church; and Defoe republished his pamphlet with a preface in which he challenged John Howe to express his judgment on Sir Thomas Abney's conduct, and on "the practice of alternate communion,"-to condemn or justify it. In reply to the argument that the Sacrament thus taken is a civil rather than a religious act, and implies no religious conformity, he insists that the Sacrament, however and whenever administered, is the same in its nature and purpose; and that to take it as a civil act in one place and a religious act in another " is playing Bo-peep with God Almighty." And as for the plea of patriotism and public duty, he says-" They are patriots indeed that will damn their souls to save their country." 8 Howe in his reply declared that for a long time he had felt a strong and constant reluctance to perplex himself or disturb others by taking part in controversies about "the circumstantials of our religion." He disclaims all responsibility for what Sir Thomas Abney had done, and refuses to pronounce any judgment upon it; but it is clear that Howe's opinion was in favour of occasional communion with the English Church. He protests with great warmth against the insinuation of Defoe's title that "Preferment' was the inducement to that worthy person, to act against his own conscience in that case, when it was his known judgment, testified by his practice several years before." " 9 10 Moderate Churchmen regarded the practice of "Occasional Conformity" with hearty approval; they believed, and believed rightly, that it softened the hostility of Dissenters to the Church, and made the position of the Church more secure.1 High Churchmen denounced it with passionate violence: it ought to qualify its professors for a gaol instead of a church, bring them to the scaffold instead of the altar, and advance them to Haman's punishment instead of his preferment "; 66 8 Defoe, An Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters in cases of Preferment (1701), Genuine Works, i. 314-315. Calamy, Historical Account, i. 464-465. 9 See Howe, Occasional Conformity, 1-3, 25-26, 34. 10 Burnet, v. 108-109. “I think the practice of occasional conformity, as used by the Dissenters, is so far from deserving the title of a vile hypocrisy, that it is the duty of all moderate Dissenters, on their own principles to do it." Archbishop Tenison, in Abbey and Overton, English Church in the Eighteenth Century, i. 428. |