understand an universal, uncontrolled license of living as you please in things concerning religion: that every one may be let alone, and not so much as discountenanced in doing, speaking, acting, how, what, where, or when he pleaseth, in all such things as concerneth the worship of God, articles of belief, or generally any thing commanded in religion. And in the mean time, the parties at variance, and litigant about differences, freely to revile, reject, and despise one another, according as their provoked genius shall dispose their minds thereunto. Now, truly, though every one of this mind pretend to cry for mercy to be extended unto poor afflicted Truth, yet I cannot but be persuaded, that such a toleration would prove exceeding pernicious to all sorts of men." Did not the Independents accept sequestered livings from which even Presbyterians were ejected, as freely, to say the least, as Presbyterians had ever done? "When, upon the death of the king, the government of England was changed to a commonwealth, an ordinance was passed appointing an engagement to be taken, first by all civil and military officers, and afterwards by all who held official situations in the universities; and at last it was further ordered, that no minister be capable of enjoying any preferment in the church, unless he should, within six months, take the engagement publicly before a congregation. The consequence of this was, that while the engagement was readily taken by all the sectarians, and by many Episcopalians of lax principles, it was refused by great numbers of the Presbyterians, several of whom were in a short time ejected from the situations to which they had been appointed by the parliament. Cromwell and his council, carrying into full execution this course of procedure, certainly not that of toleration, immediately placed Independents in the situations thus rendered vacant by the ejection of the Presbyterians, prohibited the publication of pamphlets censuing the conduct of the new government, and abolished the monthly fasts, which had continued to be regularly kept for about seven years, and whose sacred influence had often been deeply and beneficially felt by both parliament and assembly."

During the reign of Cromwell, when the Independents were in chief power, were not many of the existing sects, such as the Levellers, the Fifth-Monarchy men, the Socinians, the Antinomians, the Quakers, &c., forcibly suppressed?* Did not the leading Independent ministers bring before the committee of triers, in 1654, a series of requests, in the form of a representation, one article of which was as follows:† "That this honor

Dr. Lang's Relig. and Educ. in America, p. 125, and Hetherington, p. 269.

*Hetherington, p. 286.

Neal, Vol. II., p. 621, 622.

able committee be desired to propose to the parliament, that such who do not receive those principles of religion, without acknowledgment whereof the Scriptures do clearly and plainly affirm that salvation is not to be obtained, as those formerly complained of by the ministers, may not be suffered to preach or promulgate any thing in opposition unto such principles." And when, in consequence of this representation, it was agreed "that all should be tolerated who professed the fundamentals of Christianity," and a committee of divines, including Goodwin, Nye, and other Independents, were appointed to draw up a list of fundamental articles, did they not present such an enumeration as effectually to exclude from all toleration Deists, Papists, Socinians, Arians, Antinomians, Quakers, and even Arminians? Did not their mightiest champions, and the great teachers of the doctrine of toleration, and that, too, while discussing this very subject, exclude Romanists from any possible toleration ?* And had the Independents been in a similar majority with the Presbyterians, and possessed the same power, would they have been as willing to tolerate as were these same Presbyterians? Let Dr. John Edwards answer. "I am confidently persuaded," says this writer, "and so I believe are all wise men that have observed the ways of the sectaries, that if they had been in the place of the Presbyterians, having had their power, number, authority, and the Presbyterians had been a small number as they were, and should have offered to have done but the twentieth part of that in preaching, writing, &c., which the sectaries have done against the Presbyterians, they would have trod them down as mire in the street, casting them out in scorn before this time of day, nor have suffered a Presbyterian to preach among us, or to have been in any place or office, military or civil, but all would have been shut up in prison, banished, or else hiding themselves in holes and corners; many godly persons, in some places, having much ado now to hold up their heads to live by them, to preach quietly, to go safely in the streets, or to be quiet in their houses." And if this testimony is not sufficient, then we would point to the New England colonies, where Independency, as it was then termed, did attain to absolute power, and to the actual persecution and intolerance which was long practised among them, as demonstrative proof that Independents can lay no peculiar claim to an early practice of toleration, nor boast themselves over their Presbyterian brethren.

Shall we now compare the conduct of the Presbyterians with that of Prelatists, both previously and subsequently to these

Ibid., Vol. II., p. 621, 622.

*Milton's Prose Works, Vol. IV., 264, 265-"Of True Religion," &c. Locke on Toleration, in Works, Vol. II., 342, 343, 4to ed.

times? But will they endure a moment's comparison? "Supposing," to use the words of the Edinburgh Review,* "that the republican religionists of those days had been more unconciliatory to their spiritual opponents than the members of the Church of England,-supposing that they had imprisoned, and mutilated, and butchered greater numbers,-even then would it be a gross injustice to brand their intolerance with as much moral turpitude. Despotic cruelty, and retaliation, is each to be ranked as a crime in our moral codes; but assuredly as a crime of higher or lower gradation than the other. Wantonness and cold-blooded deliberation enhance the guilt of the one; the partial infusion of justice and the hurry of passion diminish the guilt of the other. And be it remembered that these were the precise moral distinctions of the Episcopalian and RepubliThe former had haughtily trampled down, without any necessity, all who dared to dissent from their pretensions; the latter, when the hour of requital came, had higher reasons for gratifying their vengeance. We are far-very far-from exculpating the Presbyterians; they would have shown a glorious magnanimity and a Christian piety in overlooking wrongs: but, nevertheless, we must protest against their being equalized with their foes." It would be idle in us to say that the opponents of the Church of England were in "no instances intolerant. Education, passion, kept many of them ignorant of the true principles of civil and religious liberty. But it is beyond bearing, that party-spirit should make a man so purblind to facts, and so self-contradictory, as to prompt him to institute any thing like a comparison between the intolerance of Charles I. and the intolerance of" his opponents.

"That during the Protectorate," continues the Review, "there were many instances of unrighteous oppression; that there were numerous sequestrations of the Episcopal clergy, which were most indefensible, must be admitted. But the calm observer of these times will perceive, that revenge, not religious intolerance, caused such proceedings: and, INASMUCH AS THE LEAD

ING MINISTERS OF RELIGION HAD NO PART IN THESE RETALIATIONS, THEY ARE NOT TO BE URGED AGAINST THEM AS PROOFS OF RELIGIOUS OR POLITICAL INSINCERITY."

But who, we further ask, were the Episcopal ministers who were thus ejected, and on what grounds were they thus treated? "They cast out," says Baxter,t "the grosser sort of insufficient and scandalous clergy, and some few civil men, that had acted in the wars for the king; but left in near one-half of those that were but barely tolerable." He further states, "that in the

*Oct. 1836, p. 53.

†Dr. A. Alexander's Hist. of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, p.

counties where he was acquainted, six to one of the sequestered ministers were, by the oaths of witnesses, proved insufficient, or scandalous, or both." This ejectment, then, does not admit of a comparison with that which took place at the restoration, for non-conformity. In this case, the principal ground was either political, because they were considered enemies to the existing government, or, because they were totally unfit for the sacred office of the ministry; whereas the ejected ministers of 1662 were loyal subjects of the king, had had a considerable share in his restoration, and were certainly among the most pious and best qualified ministers in the kingdom. There was another striking difference in the two cases: in the ejectment by parliament, one-fifth of the income of all ejected ministers was appropriated to the support of their wives and children; whereas, in the case of those ministers cast out after the restoration, no provision whatever was made for the suffering families of the ejected ministers; but on the contrary, by severe penalties, they were prohibited from coming within five miles of any incorporated town; so that their opportunities of making a living by teaching, or in any other way, were exceedingly circumscribed." When prelacy had again triumphed; when, through the agency of Presbyterians, the king was restored to his throne; when all power was in the hands of Episcipalians; when Presbyterians confided in their oaths and promises of conciliation and kindness; who can palliate that act of barbarous intolerance by which two thousand ministers were thus ejected, in opposition to the petitions, prayers, and tears of their parishioners, and then hunted down, fined. imprisoned, and made to suffer a thousand deaths?

"The questions between the revengeful Episcopate that followed the second Charles, and those who afterwards were driven to non-conformity, were," to continue the words of the Review, "not whether that should be the religion of the state— not whether the Episcopacy should retain its government and revenues—not whether the liturgy should be preserved; but whether the 'Apocrypha' should receive sanction the same as inspiration-whether a few exceptionable passages in the ritual should be modified. These, and just such unimportant differences as these, were under agitation. Let us hear Mr. Lathbury, in his recent defence of the prelacy. "The alliance,' he says, 'between church and state, the lawfulness of a prescribed form, and other points, on which modern Dissenters entertain such strong opinions, were never questioned by the Presbyterians, either prior to or at the Conference; nay, the necessity of an established church was insisted on as strongly by the one party as the other.' The intolerance of an ungrateful Episco*P. 55, Edinburgh Rev., Oct., 1836.

pate-one unhumbled by her afflictions-was therefore for the single purpose of revenge. No matters of principle entered into the discussion."†

SECTION VI.

PRESBYTERIANISM VINDICATED FROM CHARGE OF HAVING GIVEN ORIGIN TO INNUMERABLE SECTS, AND THE SUBJECT CONCLUDED.

So much, then, for the charge of intolerance. But it is also alleged by Prelatists that the system of Presbytery, as introduced by this Assemmly, has resulted only in the introduction of innumerable sects, and that its tendency is to degenerate into Socinianism and every error. Never, however, was there a mistake more glaring, or a calumny more monstrous. It would be easy to show, did time permit, that Presbyterianism was never generally established in England; that the ordinance of parliament took effect only in a very few counties; that the system, as recognized by parliament, was shorn of its strength and deprived of all power of discipline and independent jurisdiction; and that even as it was established in some places, it had but little time and opportunity to exemplify its tendencies.* It was strangled almost in its birth, by the young Hercules of Independency, and, after lingering out a dying existence, was finally crushed by the strong hand of prelatic power. It is, we have seen, a fact easily explained by these circumstances, that the Confession of Faith of the Westminster Assembly was not subscribed by any member of that body except the prolocutor, assessors, and clerks, nor was an assent to it required from any minister or layman, as a term of ecclesiastical communion, for forty years afterwards. Presbytery had no authority to carry out its principles. Its courts of review were nullified, its laws emasculated, and its standards converted into mere paper proclamations. To impute, therefore, the results which followed at this time in England to the system of Presbytery, is most preposterous and absurd. Presbytery found the seeds of these pestiferous evils growing up into maturity around it. They were the offspring of the previous ignorance and superstitions of the people, which embraced the first opportunity afforded by the license of the times, to shoot forth into vigorous growth. These sects were everywhere and always denounced and opposed by Presbytery. They, in turn, regarded Presbytery as their most powerful enemy, and hence were they all found combined in fell hostility to its system of doctrine, discipline, and

† See also Appendix.

*See Neal, Vol. IV., 204. Price's Hist., II., 340. 408. Owen's Works, 20, 322. Orme's Life of Baxter, p. 71, 72, 80, 81. Baxter's Disput. on Ch. Gov't., Pref. p. 28 and p. 328. Henderson's Review and Consid., p. 33. Neal III., 329, Note by the Editor, and references there given.