It is a matter of high importance in all days, and especially in days of
popular anxiety like our own, to keep before us the examples of minds
distinguished in the former trials of our country. No theory of virtue is equal
in value to its practice embodied in a wise, pure, and manly understanding.
History, the biography of nations, is too vast, abstract, and simple, for the
guidance of the individual. Its events, like the stars in their courses, large
and luminous, moving at a height above the reach of man, and influenced by
powers and impulses which perplex his science, may excite the wonder or
instruct the wisdom of the philosopher, but the school of mankind is man. To
discover the source alike of his energies and errors, we must have before our
eyes the mechanism of the human frame.
The world is but a perpetual recurrence. The
scenes of the great theater shift continually, but the same characters move
across the stage. The story of the drama may be more sullen, or more splendid,
but while Providence is the guide, and man the agent, the moral will be
unchanged. It is thus a subject of more than curiosity, to determine how
generous and lofty spirits have acted in the emergencies of other times; with
what magnanimity they sustained misfortune, or with what vigour they repelled
injustice; with what purity they withstood temptation, or with what piety they
submitted their wrongs to the hand of Heave. If, in days like ours, the wider
knowledge of human right, itself only the offspring of the wider knowledge of
religion, renders persecution less perilous, yet temptation will always exist.
The distinctions of the world will always be at the service of the world. There
has been in every age a Babylon, and men have had the alternative of
worshipping its golden idol, or paying the penalty of their faith in obscurity
and exclusion. It is then that the man who is not resolved to degrade himself,
should solicit new strength in the communion of those who have fought the good
fight and have gained the crown; that the patriot should study the shape and
countenance of public virtue, as in a gallery of the illustrious dead, and feel
the littleness of all fame that gravitates to faction; that, above all, the
Christian, surrounding himself with their recollections, and shutting out, as
with the curtains of the sanctuary, the heated passions and petulant caprices
of the time, should imbibe new energies of immortality. It is by such uses that
the renown of genius, patriotism, and sanctity becomes a splendid realization;
that the suffering of the past revives as the lesson of present wisdom; that
the living eye catches light from beyond the grave, and the forms catches light
from beyond the grave, and the forms of the saint and martyr stand before us,
like Moses and Elias in the mount, in their glory, telling at once of the brief
suffering and the imperishable reward.
Jeremy, afterwards Bishop of Down, Connor, and
Dromore in Ireland, was born in Trinity parish, Cambridge, the third son of
Nathaniel and Mary Taylor, and baptized, August 15, 1613. Like many others
destined for future eminence, he owed nothing to birth, for his father was a
barber. But his genius could dispense with the honors of ancestry; and the man
who could at once instruct the wise by his learning, and delight the elegant by
his fancy, required but little extrinsic aid for fame. Yet even his father's
trade, connected as it then was with the rude practice of surgery, was less
humble than at present; and his family had once possessed a small estate in
Gloucestershire, himself being the direct descendant of the memorable Dr.
Rowland Taylor, chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, and martyred in the third year
of Mary of bloody memory, on Aldham Common, in his parish of Hadleigh, in the
county of Suffolk.
The rector of Hadleigh was a man of acquirements
sufficient to have moved the envy of the ignorant, and of principles obnoxious
to the bigots of his day; but Gardner, his persecutor, is said to have had the
additional motive, of coveting the family estate at Frampton, on which that
rapacious minister laid his hands, like another Ahab; like his Jewish
prototype, to perish before he could enjoy the possession. The family were thus
reduced to sudden poverty, and retained in poverty by adopting, what was not
uncommon among the families of the persecuted, a turn for puritanism. This
could earn but little favour from the vigorous government of Elizabeth, which
had suffered too much from Popish turbulence to look without alarm on religious
disputes of any kind; and still less from the loose government of James, in
which alternate superstitions seemed to take the lead in the royal mind,
everything was patronized but truth, and every art of government was practiced
but manliness and honour.
In his thirteenth year, August 18, 1626, the
future bishop was sent to Caius College, Cambridge, as a sizer, or "poor
scholar;" an order of free students analogous to the "lay-brothers" of the
Romish convents. The duties of this class were, literally, to serve the higher
rank of students, at least in all the public ministrations of the college. The
feelings of our later age revolt from this employment of men running the common
race of learning. But it should be remembered, that in the time of Taylor, the
division of ranks in general society was at once more distinct and less
painful; that this education was the only one attainable by the poor; and that,
in the precarious property and narrow funds of the colleges, there was the
stronger ground for insisting on the natural maxim, that those who cannot pay
in money must pay in kind.
At Cambridge it cannot be discovered that Taylor
succeeded in any of the more public objects of scholarship, increase of rank or
increase of income. The dignities and emoluments of the University were then,
as now, devoted to proficiency in the severer sciences. And we can be as little
surprised that the poetic richness of his mind should have sought other means
of distinctions, than we can regret that his future eloquence and various
literature were not involved at their birth in the robe of the mathematician.
Accident first brought his peculiar faculties into notice. A fellow-student,
Risdon, having been appointed lecturer in St. Paul's Cathedral, employed Taylor
as his substitute during a temporary absence. The youth of the new preacher,
for he was then but twenty years old,[1] his
happiness of expression and fervour of piety, pleased the people. His rising
fame reached the ears of Laud, then newly translated from London to the see of
Canterbury the archbishop sent for him, objected only to his youth, a fault
which Taylor, in the quaint humour of the age, prayed his grace to forgive, as,
if he lived, he would amend it; and took him under his protection.
The archbishop of Canterbury must always be a man
of eminent influence; his peerage, his patronage, and his revenue, place in his
hands the largest share of practical power that belongs to any individual
beneath the throne. If the lord chancellor seem to rival him in extent of
patronage, he falls altogether short of him in the chief point of possession -
its continuance. Royal will or legislative caprice may disrobe the great law
functionary in a moment, while nothing but the power which kings and subjects
alike must obey, can deprive the great prelate of his income or his authority.
Laud in the archiepiscopal chair, was the most powerful man in England. A
vigorous mind, amply furnished with learning, a daring temperament, and a
personal passion for control, were the qualities with which he undertook the
guidance of the distracted state. But "the times were out of joint," and his
lofty, bold, and headstrong spirit was the last that could have set them
straight. In other days he might have attained secure eminence. In the early
struggles of the reformation, his intrepidity and knowledge might have made him
a second Luther. In the generation that followed the civil war, his munificence
would have raised the fallen church, as his love of order would have restored
her subordination, and his courage asserted her privileges. Hypocrisy has few
darker stains than the blood of Laud. His age, his literature, and his
fidelity, would have rescued him from all hands but those of men struggling to
seize on power by trampling on religion. Faction, which sacrificed his life,
exhibited its last malignity in tarnishing his tomb. But time does justice to
all; and like the false inscription on the Greek watch-tower, the common
operation of years have swept away the libel, and shown the truth graven on the
imperishable material within.
Taylor, by the archbishop's advice, removed to
Oxford, where his patron, as chancellor and visitor, had obvious means of
rendering him service. He was admitted Master of Arts in University College,
and finally, notwithstanding the resistance of Sheldon, warden of All Souls,
(afterwards archbishop of Canterbury,) he succeeded to a fellowship, lapsed to
the visitor in January 1636. Preferment now followed him. In March 1638, he was
presented by Juxon, Bishop of London, to the rectory of Uppingham in
Rutlandshire, having been already appointed chaplain to Laud. On the 5th of
November, 1638, he preached his first memorable sermon, that on the
gunpowder-plot, before the University. On the 27th of May, 1639, being then in
his 26th year, he married at Uppingham, Phoebe Langsdale, of whom little more
is known, that that her brother was a physician practicing at Gainsborough. By
her he had three sons, of whom one died in infancy; the other two grew up to
manhood.
Taylor was now to be called into scenes, which,
if they deeply tried the constancy of all men, gave larger space for the
labours of ability and virtue. In 1642, he joined the king at Oxford, and
signalized himself by his treatise of "Episcopacy Asserted," a publication
commended by his majesty's command. For this he obtained, by the royal mandate,
the degree of Doctor of Divinity. But, for this, the Puritans, neither slow to
discover, nor careless to punish, their enemies, sequestered his living.
Taylor, however, found a protector in Christopher Hatton, afterwards Lord
Hatton, of Kirby, who had been his neighbour at Uppingham; an individual in
high confidence with the king, by whom he had been appointed comptroller of the
household, but who derived still higher honour from his protection of Taylor,
and his suggestion of the "Monasticon" to the learned Dugdale. Loyalty was now
dangerous, but Taylor remained with the king, frequently preaching before the
court at Oxford, and attending the royal marches as chaplain. The affairs of
Charles had already become unfortunate, and his chaplain soon felt his share in
national calamity. He was taken prisoner in the defeat of the royalists at
Cardigan, February 1744. His dedication of the "Liberty of Prophesying" alludes
to this event in his characterist style: -
"In the great storm which dashed the vessel of
the church in pieces, I had been cast on the coast of Wales, and in a little
boat thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietness, which in England, in a
far greater, I could not hope for. Here I cast anchor, and thinking to ride
safely, the storm followed me with so impetuous a violence, that it broke a
cable, and I lost my anchor. And here again I was exposed to the mercy of the
sea, and the gentleness of an element which could neither distinguish things or
persons; and but that He, who stilleth the raging of the sea and the noise of
his waves, and the madness of the people, had provided a plank for me, I had
been lost to all the opportunities of content or study. But I know not whether
I have been more preserved by the courtesies of my friends or the gentleness
and mercy of a noble enemy." Adding in the Greek, the passage from St. Paul's
shipwreck, - "For the barbarous people showed us no little kindness; for they
kindled a fire, and received us every one, because of the present rain, and
because of the cold."[2]
Yet such was force of his diligence, or the
ardour of his devotion, that even imprisonment could not render him idle. In
this year of trouble he published at Oxford, an edition of the Psalter, and a
"Defence of the Liturgy." But the effect of the times was visible in his
anonymous publication of the former, and his sheltering the "Defence" under the
name of his protector, Hatton. There was still one melancholy meeting to take
place, which must have deeply tried the spirit of a man loyal on principle. The
royal cause was now extinct, the unhappy king was in the hands of his enemies;
and, whether as an additional source of bitterness, or in the contemptuous
display of mercy to the undone, the usurping government permitted the royal
chaplains to visit him in his prison. Charles, foreseeing his fate, gave them
parting tokens of his regard, and among the rest gave Taylor his watch, and a
few rubies which had studded the ebony case of his Bible.
Taylor was now utterly destitute; if he can be
called so, who has learning, contentment, and character. His living was seized,
his person liable to daily danger; and the crowd, who instinctively follow
change, could feel but little sympathy for the faith that clung to a fallen
throne. Yet he contrived to live, and to support his family. Joining with
Nicholson, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, and Wyatt, afterwards Prebendary of
Lincoln, he commenced a school at Lanhangel, in Wales, which produced some
profit, and even obtained some distinction. But a still stronger evidence of
the faculty of abstracting his mind from the sense of surrounding troubles, one
of the rarest evidences of vigor, is to be found in the composition of his most
distinguished work, "The Liberty of Prophesying," at this period. The epistle
dedicatory to Hatton, touchingly enumerates the disadvantages of his book, as
written in adversity and want, without library or leisure. He had no
auxiliaries but his memory and his Bible. Yet with a mind like his, could he
have wanted much more.
Taylor's first wife had died in the year 1642.
After six years of widowhood he married again, probably in 1648. This wife had
her share in the history of the time. She was said to be a daughter of Charles,
during that earlier period of his life when the profligate Buckingham acted as
his father's favorite, and his own example. She was a beautiful girl, strongly
resembling the king in temper and countenance, was brought up in mysterious
privacy in Glamorgan, and was provided for by the estate of Mandiman, in the
country of Carmarthen. But the times were fatal to all regular possessions, and
whatever solace he might have found in the society of his young and lovely
wife, he appears to have derived little increase of income from her fortune.
But Taylor was still further to be tried. When
the men of our age, whether in religion or politics, talk of grievances; they
should turn to the times when the popular will had cleared away all obstacles,
and for the fruit of its blood rebellion had the discovery, that religious
independence finds its natural result in the tyranny of a sect, and republican
freedom in the tyranny of the sword. In those days merit was distinguished only
by a more conspicuous share of the general suffering; and Taylor's learning,
meekness, and purity naturally became offenses, where hypocrisy was virtue. In
1654, he had republished his "Catechism for Children" in a larger shape, and
entitled it the "Golden Grove," in compliment to the Earl of Carbery, whose
neighbouring estate bore that name. The preface, though intended simply to
conciliate the Protector in favour of the fallen Church, yet contained
expressions which were conceived by the quick jealousies of the day, to convey
insult to the influential clergy. The hand of power was then as rapid as its
eye was keen, and Taylor was thrown into prison. From this he was soon
released; but again, in the same year, he was seized, and placed in custody in
Chepstow Castle. In neither case does his confinement seem to have been of
peculiar severity. In the latter, he writes to a friend, "I now have that
liberty, that I can receive my letters, and send any; for the gentlemen in
whose custody I am, as they are careful of their charges, so are civil to my
person." It is probable that his wife's fortune assisted largely in his
liberation, if not in the civility of his jailers. It will be acknowledged, to
the honour of the national manners, that the civil war of England exhibited but
few instances of ferocity. The kindlier feelings of peaceful life were not
altogether trampled out by the violence of the conflict, and strong as might be
the indignation of outraged loyalty on one side, and heated as might be the
fanaticism of the other, the combatants had not altogether forgotten that their
antagonists were human beings.
Yet, perhaps, even this terrible crisis was not
without its value. The thunderstorm clears the atmosphere. The agony of the
parental disease has often taught temperance to the children. The Revolution of
1648 beginning in war and ending in tyranny, may have inspired the wisdom by
which the Revolution of 1688 began in peace and ended in the establishment of
the throne. Still, if the experience was useful, it must not be forgotten by us
and by our children, that the price was tremendous. Man should be content with
easier knowledge. We may well shrink from securing the fertility of the harvest
by steeping the seed in blood. Of all the instruments of change, civil
commotion is the least manageable by the hand of man: once let loose, it is
alike beyond resistance and beyond control; we might as well attempt to turn
the lightnings into a weapon, or direct the invisible arrows of the pestilence.
The gallantry of the English nobles and gentlemen, the solemn intrepidity of
their adversaries, the chivalric spirit of Charles, and the soaring ambition of
Cromwell, have robed the civil was with the splendours of romance; but the eye
that looks beneath that robe sees only the wounds of a dying people. If war,
with all the glories of foreign triumph, is but a dreadful necessity; what must
be its evil, when it breaks up civilized life at home; when it visits the land,
not in the echo of the remote thunders, but in the earthquake that convulses
the soil under its feet? What must be the national loss, when every man who
falls is a subject lost to the sovereign and a son lost to the country; when
every drop of blood shed in the conflict is drawn from the national veins; when
the scaffold completes the massacre of the field, and when both are but a more
sweeping parricide?
And the results are as delusive as the price is
bitter. Until we can gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles, we shall
never find rebellion the parent of liberty. That fair form is not to be born of
the fierce, intoxicated, and adulterous union of Democracy with Ambition. If
the experiment was ever made with all its advantages, it was in the supremacy
of Cromwell. No man of his age possessed nobler qualities for distinction; no
man of any age was more fitted for the throne of a great kingdom. Unshaken
courage, unequaled sagacity, and inexhaustible resource, threw a light round
him, that dazzled the eye of England, and from his throne spread its lusters to
his country. The royalist cause melted away before him as he rose. The habitual
jealousy of the continent bowed down before his established splendour. For
England he extorted from Europe the homage due to unrivaled success in
diplomacy and war. For himself, he extorted for usurpation the honours due to
right, and compelled the old monarchies to acknowledge the illustrious upstart
as one of the family of kings.
Yet, such is the inevitable evil of all
rebellion, that this great leader, who, on a legitimate throne might have been
as magnanimous as he was brave, was forced to stoop to the arts of the tyrant.
A sovereign by nature, he was a despot by necessity. The great rebel was
compelled to study the temperament of all the rebels beneath him. Where the
power was given by felons, the first man in England could be only the first
jailer. No man was taught more keenly that usurpation must never sleep. At the
height of his supremacy, he felt himself watched by a faction, whose cunning
and virulence he still dreaded, though he had first duped their craftiness, and
then broken their power. Cromwell, with one hand defending himself from the
dagger of the fanatic, and with the other struggling to retain the scepter from
the grasp of the loyalist, was driven into tyranny; and the nation soon
discovered, by bitter experience, that it had only exchanged complaints for
sufferings, gradual freedom for remorseless authority, and the light and
negligent curb of an ancient monarchy, for the heavy and galling harness of an
iron despotism.
This cycle has been run in every period, and in
every variety of national character - in the brilliant levity of Greece, in the
stern ambition of Rome, in the fiery passions of France; and it will be run
again, in the first nation which, proclaiming violence as the instrument of
right, summons the populace to advance the liberties of the people, and erects
the demagogue into the high-priest of the profaned constitution.
That a scholar, a divine, and a man of peace,
like Taylor, should have been twice imprisoned under the protectorate, is among
the deepest evidences of the general state of coercion.
But in those periods of distress, he seems to
have always found especial friends. "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee"
is a high promise; often performed to the servants of the truth, under
circumstances which must have greatly augmented their confidence, and cheered
their trials. Taylor, though now apparently reduced to the most serious
difficulties, stripped of his professional means, unable to pursue his school,
and not merely under the suspicion, but in the hands, of vigilant and angry
power, found a new patron in Vaughan, Earl of Carbery.
Vaughan was a man of talent and distinction; who
had held high offices, and held them with a successive increase to his
character. Having served with honour in the wars of Ireland, for which he
received the knighthood of the Bath, he had subsequently taken up arms for
Charles, in the civil war, and borne the chief royalist command in South Wales.
His services were too important to be forgotten by even the negligent gratitude
of Charles II; and at the Revolution, when so many of the noble cavaliers were
left to pine in discontent, Vaughan received the title of Lord Vaughan of
Emlyn. Even in the ruin of the royalist cause, either fear of his talent, or
respect for his integrity had procured him milder terms than usual from the
parliament. He was permitted to compound for his estates; And the relief which
was thus given to this loyal and able nobleman furnished him with the means of
liberality to Taylor, and probably to many other adherents of the fallen cause.
Lord Vaughan's second wife had a poetic reputation. She was Alice, the eleventh
daughter of John Egerton, first Earl of Bridgwater, memorable as the Lady in
Comus. Milton's verses might have embalmed the remembrance of inferior birth
and beauty; the Lady in Comus is immortal.
Though the churches were closed against the
clergy of the Church, divine service was sustained, wherever it was possible;
and under the roof and in the immediate neighbourhood of this great family,
Taylor delivered his yearly course of sermons. During the entire period he was
the reverse of idle; his zeal never suffered him to adopt the easy excuses of
indolence, or to find in distress a ground for the abandonment of duty. He now
wrote his "Apology for set Forms of Liturgy against the pretence of the
Spirit," which was shortly followed by one of his most distinguished works, the
"Life of Christ." During the three following years, his labours were chiefly,
his Sermon, and his "Holy Living and Dying;" the latter, a volume which
originated in the desire, as it was written for the use of the first Lady
Carbery, and dedicated by him to her husband after her death.
Another of those friends whose services were of
peculiar value during this period, was the well-known and estimable John
Evelyn. Evelyn had accidentally heard him preach in the city in 1654, and it is
easy to conceive that Taylor's sincerity and eloquence could not be heard with
neglect by a man like Evelyn. How casual admiration was heightened into
habitual friendship we have now no means of knowing; but it appears that,
shortly after, Evelyn paid him a visit, "to confer with him about spiritual
matters." Evelyn's nature was liberal, his means were opulent for the time, and
Taylor undoubtedly enjoyed the advantages of both, during a period in which his
personal resources had utterly failed him. In 1656, he visited London, and
dined with Evelyn at his seat, Sayes Court. He there enjoyed, at least, the
feast of reason, for the company were Berkeley, Boyle, and Wilking, all three
eminent in their day for scientific ardour. Of this meeting, and still more, of
the comforts and enjoyments of his accomplished friend, he speaks with natural
pleasure in a letter of which the following is a fragment: -
"To John Evelyn, Esq.
"Honored and dear Sir,
"I hope your servant brought my apology with
him, and that I am already excused in your thoughts, that I did not return an
answer yesterday to your friendly letter. Sir, I did believe myself so very
much bound to you, for your so kind, so friendly reception of me in your
Tusculanum, that I had some little wonder upon me, when I saw you making
excuses that it was no better. Sir, I came to see you and your lady, an am
highly pleased that I did so, and found all your circumstances to be a heap and
union of blessings.
"I am pleased indeed at the order of all your
outward things, and look upon you not only as a person,by way of thankfulness
to God for his mercies and goodness to you, specially obliged to a great
measure of piety; but also as one who being freed in great degrees from secular
cares and impediments, can wholly intend what you so passionately desire, the
service of God. But, now I am considering yours, and enumerating my own
pleasures, I cannot but add that though I could not choose but be delighted by
seeing all about you, yet my delices (delights) were really in seeing you
severe and unconcerned in these things, and now in finding your affections
wholly a stranger to them."
Taylor had found another friend in Mr. Thurland,
afterwards Sir Edward, and one of the barons of the Exchequer. This eminent
lawyer was also the author of a work on Prayer, and either from congenial
studies or personal respect, he was induced to offer Taylor an asylum in
London. He mentions this offer in a letter to Evelyn.
"Truly, sir, I do continue in my desire to settle
about London, and am only hindered by my res an gusta domi, but hope in God's
goodness, that he will create to me such advantages as may make it possible,
and when I am there, I shall expect the daily issues of the Divine Providence
to make all things else well. Because I am much persuaded that by my abode in
your voisinage (neighbourhood) of London, I may receive advantages of society
and books, to enable me better to serve God and the interest of souls. I have
no other design in it, and I hope God will second it with his blessing. Sir, I
desire you to present my thanks and service to Mr. Thurland; his society were
argument enough to make me desire a dwelling there abouts, but his other
kindnesses will also make it possible." The letter proceeds to say, that in
acknowledgement of Thurland's liberality he will send him his new work "On the
Doctrine of Original Sin;" and concludes with a touch of melancholy and
resignation. "Sir, - I am in some little disorder by reason of the deat of a
little child of mine, a boy that lately made us very glad. But now he rejoices
in his little orb while we think, and sigh, and long to be as safe as he
is."
One of the evils of reputation now assailed him.
The man who obtains popularity, will have imitators; and he is fortunate, whose
imitators neither degrade his style nor disgrace his character. In this year a
small volume appeared, entitled a frivolous dissertation on the arts of female
beauty; a work unworthy of Taylor's dignity, alike in its subject and its
performance. Yet it was evidently the publisher's intent to impress the idea
that it proceeded from his pen. The frontis-piece, a female figure with the sun
on her breast, was taken from one of his known works. The peculiarities of his
language, and even his use of italics, were adopted; and though the preface
attributed the work "chiefly to a lady," yet the crowd of classic quotations
which filled its pages, strongly contradicted, and were probably intended to
contradict, the declaration. The haste of criticism, or perhaps the bitterness
of party, charged this trivial work on Taylor; but Bishop Heber, his latest and
best biographer, has indignantly defended his memory. The language of the
treatise wants all the higher characteristics of a pen to which eloquence was
familiar; its sentiments are opposed to his recorded opinions; and thus failing
in the lineaments of vigorous expression and moral dignity which belonged to
all the offspring of his mind, who can doubt its illegitimacy?
In 1662, the artifice was pushed still further,
and an edition appeared with J.T. D.D., his known initials, on its title page.
But the dexterity of fabricators in those days was more daring, and even more
disingenuous, than in our own. The knavery of pirating names was common, and
Taylor only underwent the penalty of having made a reputation which was a
passport to popular applause.
Taylor's tenderness of heart was sadly tried in
the loss of children. Distressing us this must be to any man, it must have been
doubly so to one who could write thus glowingly on the domestic affections. In
his treatise entitled the "Marriage Ring," he thus speaks, in the quaint yet
poetic language of his time.
"Nothing can sweeten felicity but love. No man
can tell, but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a
man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges. Their
childishness, their stammering, their little anger, their innocence, their
imperfections, their necessities, are so many emanations of joy and comfort to
him that delights in their persons and society. But he who loves not his wife
and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods over a nest of sorrows, and
blessing itself cannot make him happy. So that all the commandments of God,
enjoining a man to love his wife, are nothing but so many necessities and
capacities of joy. She that is loved is safe, and he that loves is joyful. Love
is an union of all things excellent. It contains in it proportion and
satisfaction, and rest and confidence, and I wish that this were so much
proceeded in, that the heathens themselves could not go beyond us in this
virtue, and its proper and appendant happiness. Tiberius Gracchus chose to die
for the safety of his wife, and yet methinks to a Christian to do so should be
no hard thing, for many servants will die for their masters, and many gentlemen
for their friend, but the examples are not so many of those that are ready to
die for their nearest relations. And yet some there have been. - Baptiste
Fregosa tells of a Neapolitan, that gave himself as slave to the Moors that he
might follow his wife, and this is a greater thing than to die."
During this period, he kept up his correspondence
with Evelyn, and between those two amiable yet grave men, the topics were
naturally of a grave and lofty nature. It appears that Evelyn desired to have
some difficulties resolved, relative to the state of the soul after death.
Taylor answers him with a curious mixture of metaphysics and morality, the
worthless learning of the schoolmen, alternately clouding and clearing away
before the vigour of an intelligent mind:- "But, sir, that which you check at,
is the immortality of the soul; that is, its being, in the interval before the
day of judgment, which you conceive is not agreeable to the Apostles Creed, or
current of Scriptures, assigning as you suppose the felicity of Christians to
the resurrection. Before I speak to the thing, I must note this, that the parts
which you oppose to each other may both be true, for the soul may be immortal,
and yet not beatified till the resurrection. For to be, and not to be happy or
miserable, are not necessary consequences to each other. For the soul may be
alive, and yet not feel; as it may be alive, and not understand. So is our soul
when we are fast asleep, and so Nebuchadnezzar's soul when he had his
lycanthropy. The Socinians that say the soul sleeps, do not suppose that she is
mortal, but that for want of her instrument she cannot do any act of life. The
soul returns to God, and that in no sense is death, and I think the death of
the soul cannot be defined, and there is no death to spirits but
annibilation."
He then adverts to the felicity of Christians
after the day of judgment; and, in illustration of the soul's existence,
quotes the fable of Licetus, "his lamps, whose flame had stood still fifteen
hundred years in Tully's wife's vault." He proceeds to say, that "as the
element of fire, and the celestial globes of fire, eat nothing, but live on
themselves, so can the soul when it is divested of its relative (the body.)"
Such was the philosophy of his day, borrowed from the Greeks, and laughed at by
the moderns.
But when he relies on his own understanding his
remarks become of more value. In answer to the allowable question - why St.
Paul, preaching Jesus and the resurrection, said nothing of the intermediate
existence of the souls; he answers, that the resurrection of the body included
and supposed that. And, secondly, "that if it had not, yet what need had he to
preach that to them, which in Athens was believed by almost all their schools;
for, besides that the immortality of the soul was believed by the philosophers
of Egypt, India, and Chaldea, it was acknowledged by all the leading
philosophers of Greece." To this, however, he adds the remarkably insecure
argument, in which, as he expresses it, "St. Paul, speaking of his rapture into
heaven, purposely and by design twice says, "whether in body or out of the body
I know not;" by which Taylor observes, "he plainly says, that it was no ways
unlikely, that his rapture was out of the body, and therefore it is very
agreeable to the nature of the soul, to operate in separation from the
body."
It is striking, to find a man of his sagacity,
falling into the common error of commentators on this remarkable passage; and
not less striking to find him followed in it by Bishop Heber; who remarks, that
"from that text alone, the probability is, that the apostle himself took the
separate existence of the soul for granted, and believed it extremely possible
for a man to be and think, and even to acquire new ideas, without the existence
of the body."
Reluctant as we may be, to reject an argument
which supports the great and consoling truth of the "intermediate state," it
must be acknowledged, that this interpretation is altogether unsustained by the
text. Nothing can be clearer, that that St. Paul is not speaking of himself,
but of another. He distinctly states, that he will glory, not in the visions
and revelations made to himself, but in those made to an individual, in whose
Divine visitations he might rejoice with safety and propriety. While, as to
himself, if he were to glory in anything, it should be in his
infirmities; which is obviously equivalent to not glorying at all.
Having thus fully established the distinction he
proceeds to speak of this highly-favoured individual, as one whom he knew
fourteen years before, though whether he were now dead or living, he could not
say; or as the text expresses it, "whether in the body I cannot tell, or
whether out of the body I cannot tell; God knoweth.[3] The phrase "out of the body," being the common Scripture
phrase for death; and as such used by St. Paul himself, when he desires to be
"absent from the body, and present with the Lord." Under the usual
interpretation the whole passage is a mass of perplexity.
Yet in the midst of those important studies, this
estimable man was not to escape the prying and persecuting spirit of the time.
His printer, Royston, had prefixed to his "Collections of Offices" an engraving
of our Lord in prayer. The representations, which printers had been so long in
the habit of prefixing to their volumes, were regarded as idolatrous by the
new-born conscience of the age. The scruple had even gone to the extent of an
act for punishing those formidable transgressions by fine and imprisonment.
Taylor was not a man likely to provoke authority, for the mere indulgence of
opposition; and it could scarcely be supposed that he felt inclined to pay more
homage to Popery than to government. But those were the days for which zealots
had cavilled and rebels had fought; and the triumph of both had alike issued in
the direct overthrow of their principles. It is enough to say of this period
and its law, that Taylor was committed to a prison for a third time.
His place of confinement was the Tower; whether
as implying an offence more nearly touching on high-treason, or from the
crowded state of the other prisons in this era of successful freedom! How long
he might have been destined by the mercy of his accusers to remain there, is
not now to be known; for the same friendship which had never failed him, again
interposed. Evelyn exerted himself to represent his innocence to the ruling
powers. Cromwell, who persecuted only from policy, while others persecuted from
zeal, was probably not disinclined to let such a prisoner go free: Evelyn's
entreaty, that his learned and pious friend might be allowed to explain his
conduct, was accordingly listed to; and, after an incarceration of two months,
he regained his liberty.
But the experiment of clemency under the
protectorate was not to be safety hazarded again; and Taylor's friends now
consulted how to withdraw him altogether from the vigilant eyes that watched
his career in England. While he remained in London he would have boldly
continued to officiate, and administer the sacraments, in the private meetings
of his people. But Episcopacy had been extinguished, and the angry strength of
government was bent on crushing the remnants of the church. Edward, Earl of
Conway, the proprietor of large estates near Lisburn in Ireland, now proposed
to Evelyn that his friend should remove there to take a lectureship then at the
earl's disposal.
Taylor was strongly disinclined to leave England,
even though his steps there were in the lion's den. After thanking Evelyn for
his unwearied kindness, he told his thoughts freely of this unpalatable change.
"I like not," says his letter, "the condition of being a lecturer under the
disposal of another. Sir, the stipend is so inconsiderable, that it will not
pay the charge of removing myself and family. It is wholly arbitrary, for the
triers may overthrow it, or the vicar may forbid it, or the subscribers may
die, or grow weary, or be absent. I beseech you, sir, pay my thanks to your
friend who had so much kindness for me as to intend my benefit." He seems here
to have had a correct idea of the "voluntary principle;" but his reluctance was
overcome, probably by the remonstrances of his friends, who knew more of his
danger, and feared more for him than he feared for himself. He accordingly set
out, furnished with letters to the leading persons of Ireland, the lord
chancellor, the chief baron, the general in command, and even with a letter
from Cromwell himself, under his signet. In Ireland he divided his residence
between Lisburn and the neighbourhood of Portmore, a princely mansion built by
Inigo Jones, and belonging to the Conway family. Here he found at once
seclusion and safety. The surrounding country is romantic: the great lake of
Lough Neah washed the park of Portmore; and in its sylvan and lonely islets, he
is said to have frequently indulged his love of nature and solitude. Here, too,
he proceeded with renewed vigour in the great work, which he had founded as the
pillar of his fame, and it was to the shelter of Portmore that the age owed the
completion of the "Ductor Dubitantium." Yet his shelter was not altogether
secure, for even there he was denounced by an informer, to the Irish privy
council, as a dangerous character; the chief pungency of the crime being, that
he had used the sign of the cross in private baptism. For such treasons men
were thrown into dungeons in the days of our ancestors! Taylor was ordered up
to Dublin, in the depth of winter. The result of his journey was a severe
illness, which however probably saved him from the greater severity of
persecution.
But his trials were at last to approach their
end. To publish his great work, and to renew his intercourse with his friends,
he travelled onwards to London. The times were anxious, the great usurper was
dead, the army had resumed its old power of disposing of the state, and all
eyes were turned on its general. Monk, tardy and cold, yet artificial and
dexterous, still kept the nation in suspense. At this critical period, some of
the bolder loyalists came forward, and drew up a declaration of confidence in
the general. Taylor, who regarded both life and death only as the means of
zealously serving the truth, was among the first to sign this momentous paper.
The confidence thus given to Monk was the signal for the restoration of the
monarchy.
If Charles was yet to disappoint the national
hopes, no sovereign was ever welcomed with more sincere rejoicing. All men were
weary of the past. The misery of revolution had been fully felt: the
unspeakable wretchedness of living at the caprice of a popular assembly, had
penetrated into every cottage; even the sullen tyranny of the protectorate had
been felt as a relief from the restless vexations of popular rule; and so deep
was the disgust earned by republicanism, that the nation, in a moment of
confidence, as rash as their disgust was sincere, threw themselves, and their
liberties together, at the foot of the young king.
In the general re-establishment of the church,
Taylor could not be disregarded without palpable injustice. His piety,
learning, and sufferings had been equally conspicuous. He was well known to
many powerful men round the throne. Whether his having married the natural
sister of the king contributed to his advancement, is not ascertained; though
if Charles desired to remove her from his immediate presence, it might have
contributed to his location at a distance from court. On the 6th of August,
1660, Taylor was appointed to the bishopric of Down and Conner in Ireland; and
soon after elected vice-chancellor of the university of Dublin.
He had at length found a situation worthy of his
activity and of his feelings. His first attention was directed to the affairs
of the university. His knowledge of mankind told him that education was the
great instrument of civil order and religious truth; and his well-won
experience had proved that universities along can dispense education without
hazard to the state, and sustain the stream of national religion without
sullying its purity. He found the revenues of the university dilapidated, and
the lands in many instances given away. So great were the disorders introduced
under the Commonwealth, that none of the existing scholars or fellows had legal
titles, all having been introduced by irregular election, or forced on the
electors by the government. Taylor took upon himself the labour of revising the
statutes of Bishop Bedel, and establishing others required by the new
circumstances of the university.
In this sense, he may be regarded as a second
founder of that noble Institution, which, under Providence, has been the great
source and sustainer of Protestantism and freedom in the sister country - not
destitute of those displays which make national fame; sending out, from time to
time, those magnificent minds, her Burkes and Grattans, which belong not to
provinces, but empires, and come periodically to reinforce the intellect of
mankind; but, in all periods, by the vigour and exactness of her learning, and
the manliness and purity of her principles, transmitting knowledge, loyalty,
and religion, into the bosom of the land: - a great luminary, on which, for
centuries, has depended all the moral sunshine of Ireland; sending out, from
time to time, flashes and emanations, of a lustre that breaks through all her
clouds; and even in her gloomiest hours, shooting its influence through the
soil, kindling every latent seed that is yet to vegetate into national virtue,
and preparing the more perfect day.
"Aggredere, o
magnos, aderit jam tempus, honores;
Cara Deum soboles!"
The Bishop's merits were to be still
further honoured. During the Commonwealth, Ireland had been almost wholly
denuded of its Episcopalian clergy. By the exertions of the Duke of Ormond they
now began to be restored. On the 27th of January, 1661, two archbishops and ten
bishops were consecrated in the cathedral of St. Patrick, in Dublin, by
Bramhall, the primate. And in the next month the Bishop of Down was called to
the Irish privy council, and shortly afterwards appointed to the administration
of the small adjoining diocese of Dromore. But if sudden authority has often
been a dangerous trial to unsettled virtue, it only exhibited more largely the
dignity and mercy of his mind. The Irish massacre of 1641, had thrown vast
tracts of country into the hands of government. The civil war had next
perverted might into rapine, and the Commonwealth had finally consolidated
rapine into law. In Ireland all the elements of order had been confounded. It
was now the difficult task of the legitimate government to bring society into
form once more. The question of the confiscated estates might have offered a
snare to an orator ambitious of influence, or to a man of influence eager for
possession. But Taylor's language on this subject was worthy of his principles.
With equal force and simplicity, he thus addressed his fellow legislators: -
"You cannot obey God, unless you do justice, for
this also is better than sacrifice, said Solomon. For Christ, who is the sun of
righteousness, is a sun and shield to them that do righteously.
"You are to give sentence in the causes of half a
nation; and he had needs be a wise and good man who divides the inheritance
among brethren, that he may not be abused by contrary pretences, nor biassed by
the interest of friends, nor transported with the unjust thoughts even of a
just revenge, nor allured by the opportunities of spoil, nor blinded by gold,
which puts out the eyes of wise men, nor cozened by pretended zeal. For justice
ought to be the simplest thing in the world, and to be measured by nothing but
truth, and by laws, and by the decrees of princes."
The passage which follows is worthy of being
recorded among the first maxims of national justice in troubled times.
"But whatever you do, let not the pretence of a
different religion make you think it lawful to oppress any man in his just
rights; for not opinions, but laws, and doing as we would be done to, are the
measures of justice. And though justice does alike to all men, Jew and
Christian, Lutheran and Calvinist; yet, to do right to them that are of another
opinion, is the way to win them. But if you, for conscience sake, do them
wrong, they will hate both you and your religion."
He concludes with a fine enunciation of his noble
principle: - "You must be as just as the law, and you must be as merciful as
your religion. And you have no way to tie those together, but to follow the
pattern in the mount - do as God does, who in judgment remembers mercy."
This pious and learned man was now approaching
his close. It is among the mysterious dispensations of Providence, that some of
the purest-minded of men have been the most subjected to personal afflictions.
Yet while this world is to be regarded only as a school of the human spirit,
and the Deity holds in his hand boundless compensation for all suffering, it is
only the work of reason, to be convinced that the deeper affliction has been
laid on for purposes essential to the richer reward.
At an early period of life, Taylor had lost all
his sons but two. And now, when affluence and rank seemed sent to brighten the
remainder of his anxious and ardent days, those two died, both by premature
deaths, - His elder son, a captain of horse in the king's service, in a duel
with a brother officer, who also fell; and his second son, of a consumption, in
the house of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, to whom he was private secretary.
Grief for the former of those losses, hung heavily upon the father's heart; and
though the death of his second son occurred in England, but on the day before
the commencement of his own final illness in Ireland, the knowledge of his
disease, and of its almost inevitable consummation, may have added bitterness
to the blow. On the 3rd of August 1667, the Bishop was seized with a fever,
which, acting on an enfeebled frame and a depressed mind, made such progress,
that within ten days he breathed his last, in the 55th year of his age, and
tenth of his episcopacy; - thenceforth to live among the glorious concourse,
whom change can touch no more.
"Quique sacerdotes
casti, dum vita mancbat,
Quique pii vates,
Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes
Quique sui memores alios fecere
merendo."
His wife survived him for many years. He left
three daughters, the eldest of whom died unmarried, the second married Dr.
Marsh, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, and the third married a Mr. Harrison, a
man of fortune, and member of parliament for the borough of Lisburn.
Taylor's personal appearance is said to have been
highly favourable; his figure, above the middle size, strong and well formed,
his eye large and dark, his nose aquiline, his countenance open, and we may
fairly presume, intelligent; and his hair, in early life, in the fashion of his
age, redundant, and flowing in curls. If he had not been a cleric, he would
have made a handsome cavalier. But the only original portrait known to be in
existence, is that in All-soul's College, taken when those youthful graces had
disappeared; and where his resigned yet melancholy look shows that he had gone
through many afflictions.
Of the more important topic, his last hours, too
little is known. The manner in which such a man receives the final summons, the
clearness of his views when the passions are no more, the strength of his faith
when the world sinks from the eye, are inquires which all would make, who
desire to have their convictions enforced, or their hopes animated; who would
be enlightened by the wisdom of the intelligent, or invigorated by the
fortitude of the holy. But, of those hours no detail seems to have been
preserved; and we must be content with such conjecture as we can form from his
life. Yet, who can doubt that the death of this man of virtue was consistent
with his career? that he whose existence was a long display of Christian
courage, was calm in the presence of the last enemy? that he who had faced the
dungeon, and would have faced the scaffold, without a fear, must have shown, on
his pillow, in what peace a Christian can die?
The conditions of the church, during the life of
Bishop Taylor, forms one of the most remarkable features of its history. The
persecution under Mary had driven many of the clergy to seek refuge in foreign
countries. Calvin's learning, zeal, and eloquence had made him the great
surviving leader of the Reformation, in the eyes of a large portion of the
continental church. Some of the clergy, on their return, had brought with them
his doctrines. Calvin, equally stern and sincere, had evidently thought that he
approached the nearer to the truth of the gospel, the further he receded from
the principles of Rome. Especially disgusted with the haughtiness of the Romish
hierarchy, he had at length conceived that independence of the civil government
was essential to the purity of the church. The tempest was now gathering which
was to fall upon the Establishment.
Presbyterianism, founded in Geneva in 1541, first
appeared in England in 1572. The remembrance of the Papal domination and the
terror of its return, made the new doctrines popular. The Protestant exiles,
returning from the Continent, reinforced the zeal of their countrymen. A new
impulse was to be added from the North. Scotland, on the death of Elizabeth, in
1503, had given a king to England. The disputes between the monarch and the
people had already involved the Scottish Episcopacy in odium. Presbyterianism,
recruited from the multitude, was too powerful for Episcopacy, deserted by the
throne; and after a century of various struggles, it was declared the
Established Church of Scotland. The junction of the civil governments brought
with it the religious controversy; and the flame, exhausted in the confines of
the North, blazed into new violence among the vast, various, and inflammable
materials of the public mind of England.
The British constitution, slowly gathered out of
the wrecks of Saxon privilege, had been, for a century, gradually forming into
freedom. But the structure was still harsh, irregular, and threatening. Modeled
by the hands of powerful subjects, more anxious for the increase of personal
power, than for the extension of public right; it bore the characters of the
baronial architecture - bold, but rude; magnificent, but frowning - the palace
combined with the dungeon. Other and nobler times, were at once the fortress
into the temple; and, throwing open its gates alike to all, summon the
multitude to bow down before altars, where true liberty stood robed in the
broadest rays of true religion.
The power of the crown, in the earlier period of
that memorable century, had, by habit, assumed something of the power of a
Divinity; and its first restraints were regarded by the sovereign less an
innovation than sacrilege. But England was marked for a high destiny,
incompatible with a return to arbitrary rule. She was to be the head of
Protestantism to Europe; and for this purpose she was to be the great example
of a free government to mankind. The form of her church was still of clay, but
the proportions were noble; and life, from the most illustrious of all sources,
was already shooting through its frame. If, like our great ancestor, it was
soon to fall upon evil days, and be disinherited of its original birth-right,
it was appointed to a triumphant recovery; that recovery itself, we will
believe, only an emblem of days of larger dominion, and more unclouded
splendour.
The prosperity of England under Elizabeth, the
overthrow of the Spanish invasion, the new growth of commerce, and the native
manliness of the public heart, all animated by the evidence of the public
strength, had prepared her for the future ascent to all the heights of civil
freedom. If her elevation was still to be slow, stormy, and exposed to
vicissitude, it was still to proceed. The accession of James, well-meaning but
harsh, a pedant in statesmanship, and a monk in religion, wasting the royal
treasure on foreign policies, and creating controversies at home, at once
relaxed the royal influence, and stimulated religious inquiry. The accession of
Charles only hastened the catastrophe. His spirit, at once chivalric and gentle
- fatal to him in both aspects, by giving him the loftiest conception of his
rights, and suggesting the feeblest means of sustaining them - marked him as
the victim of a time of change. The death of that unhappy sovereign is still
written in the darkest page of national guilt. It should also be written in the
most disastrous page of national misfortune. Regicide, as the dissolution of
the highest bond of society, seems to be visited in all lands by the especial
wrath of heaven. No event in the national annals ever gave so instant a check
to the advance of freedom, - The stream that flowed from the scaffold of the
king, instantly made its path impassable.
Even from the hour when hostility was first
turned from the crown to the wearer of the crown, and it was resolved to
baptize the Republic in royal blood, calamity fell broad and heavy upon the
land. Liberty, misunderstood by some, and abused by others, and religion,
equally misunderstood and equally abused, were forced into a profane alliance
against the people. The Establishment, the most ancient and noble rampart of
the monarchy, was first to be seized. Too powerful to be stormed, it was
undermined; and the result was true to the calculation. With it went down the
monarchy. The heads of both perished on the same scaffold Laud only preceeded
Charles to the grave.
But the fall of the Church left a chasm in the
state which was not to be filled. Civil faction attempted it, and failed.
Religious faction attempted it, and failed. The liberty, property, and blood of
the people were thrown in, but the gulf was still widening. The Commonwealth
was flung in, the Protectorship followed: at length the nation returned to its
earlier wisdom; replaced the Establishment on its old foundations; and stopped
the progress of public ruin.
The history of this interregnum is only the
history of rival factions, various in their features, but filled with the same
spirit, taking different means to power but all alike hazardous to public
security; and, whether they stole their fires from above or from below, whether
enthusiasts or intriguers, each risking alike the conflagration of the roof
under which they professed to administer to the good of the people.
The Establishment had perished; but it was only
to leave room for the struggle of the sects. Independentism was the new
competitor. It had arisen from the schism of the Brownists, who flourished in
the preceding century. After existing for a period in Holland, it was brought
into England in 1616, by Henry Jacobs, a Puritan. Its principle was, spiritual
association with mutual independence of its churches. At the commencement of
the great rebellion, some of the Independent ministers returning from the
Continent, and taking their seats in the assembly of divines, had begun to form
congregations. Against this measure Presbyterianism, then in possession of
power, strongly remonstrated. The Independents as strongly complained, that the
Presbyterians, standing in the place of the ancient Establishment, had, with
its power, adopted more than its persecution, that it denied a middle way
between rigid uniformity and utter confusion; and that though, in its own case,
declaiming against the use of the civil sword, it had unhesitatingly used force
to settle the consciences of others.
Presbyterianism was now to feel the ascendancy of
its rival. The contest remains as one proof, among the thousand, of the
feebleness of premature power. If the Establishment perishes, rooted as it was
in the soil for centuries, endeared to the national memory by the generations
which had sat under its shade, and forming a central and venerable object from
whatever spot the eye looked upon the constitution; what could be the security
of the new church, the tree without a root, planted in the midst of tempests,
and in a soil beaten into dust by the trampling of the civil war? It still had
the whole force of the state in its hands. It constituted nearly the whole
parliament, and it possessed a vast nominal majority among the people. But the
Independents more than compensated for their minority in numbers, by the vigour
of their zeal, by the impression on the popular feelings, and by that
determination to be masters, which, in itself, is equivalent to mastery; and in
those signs they conquered.
No period of British history presents at once so
strong a display of the madness of man, and of the indefatigable protection of
Providence. Republicanism had torn down the monarchy. Schism had dismantled the
Church. England stood on the verge of the grave; and the factions which dug it,
delayed the blow that would have cast her in, only till the sword or the axe
decided which was to have the robbing of the dead.
The true peril of all popular revolutions is,
that having no defined object, they have no natural termination. Springing from
a desire of universal possession, they an have no limit but universal change.
The man who will go farthest, necessarily becomes the leader. Renovation is
soon abandoned for rapine, justice for revenge, right for licence; until the
land is swept bare. The fancied oppressions of the rich become the pretest for
levelling the whole community, and the attempt to retaliate popular wrongs upon
the higher classes ends in the anarchy of the land. It is an evidence of the
Divine mercy that, hitherto, the process has never been suffered to exhibit
itself in that last stage of political ruin. The sharp remedy of the soldier
has been introduced, at once to punish the national excesses, and to check the
national undoing. In the English and French revolutions the violence of popular
passion has thus been restrained by the despotism of the sword. - The lunatic,
on whom argument and experience would be alike thrown away; whose additional
power would generate only additional evil to himself; and whose frenzy would be
inflamed by success, has been coerced by the bitter restorative of the lash and
the chain. Democracy in England would have raged, till the country was a waste,
if the selfishness and sternness of Cromwell had not been sent forth, to crush
the madness of the time. Democracy in France would have filled the country with
a moral pestilence, which after destroying its own population, would have
spread the contagion resistlessly, perhaps, through every nation of the earth,
if the fierce ambition and iron tyranny of Napoleon had not first checked, and
then turned the current of the disease into domestic slavery and foreign
domination. Both were tyrants, and both criminals of the darkest stain; but
both were the true overthrowers of the democratic principle and to both,
England and France alike owed the cessation of public ruin, and the final
restoration of monarchy. - Like the volcanoes of the great Southern Ocean, even
the thunders among which they rose, and the convulsions that made their birth
felt along the sullen and stormy expanse of nations, were proofs that there was
solid ground rising for the foot of man; that the capricious and disturbed
element through which they shot up was to have new barriers set to its career;
and that, wild and fiery as they towered before the eye of man, they were to be
the commencement of a new era of settlement and security.
Cromwell had found himself suspected, at an early
period, by the Presbyterian government. The Independents required a leader, and
he required a party. The terms were speedily made; and the great republican,
uniting in himself all the qualities essential to the time - appealing to the
multitude by the lure of popular power; to the fanatical, by raptures borrowed
from their own enthusiasm; to the soldiery, by the display of signal valour in
the field; and to the ambitious, by that inexhaustible sagacity and undeviating
success which promised his adherents every object that ambition could desire;
saw supremacy at his feet. His appointment as lieutenant, under Fairfax, one of
the capital oversights of the parliament; threw the parliament itself into his
power. The calamitous battle of Naseby extinguished the royal cause. The
fatality which entrusted the royal person to the Scottish Commissioners; the
perfidy with which they repaid that trust by betraying it to the parliament,
all played the game of his sovereignty. Presbyterianism, at the height of
power, was next to be taught by him how near success may be to subversion. The
Independents were masters of the army; the army seized the unfortunate monarch;
a weak legislature tried him; a mockery of popular opinion sanctioned the
crime; and the forms of justice, the national character, and the spirit of
religion, were alike betrayed by a faction purchasing power with the fall of
their king. But all those crimes only levelled the path before the great
usurper. Even the blood of Charles only tracked the way for Cromwell to a
throne.
In those references to a period of public shame,
there can be no wish to involve religious minds in the general charge of
treason. The men who dipped their hands in regicide were the actual antagonists
of all religion. Conscience, first used as a mask, was speedily abandoned: the
atrocities of the rebellion were committed, not by religionists but
revolutionists. Among the Independent ministers of London, it is recorded that
but two, Goodwin and Peters, consented to the king's death.
The destruction of the establishment had been the
virtual destruction of the monarchy. The legislature, reduced to eighty
members, proceeded to fix in principle the misdemeanours which they had already
committed in practice. They voted the throne dangerous, and the House of Lords
useless to a state. A new oath was imposed, by which was named the Engagement,
was levelled by the Independents against the Presbyterians; the latter having
now fallen from power, and revenging themselves by calling the government an
usurpation.
But Cromwell's experience had taught him the
hazard of suffering religion to be made a political instrument, or of giving
the fallen party the strength that is to be found in the outcry against
persecution. By an act introduced at his especial suggestion, the whole body of
penalties against religious opinions were swept away. A general toleration was
declared, with the large exception, however, of Papists and Episcopalians; the
one, as irreconcilable with all Protestantism, and the other, as repelling the
Protestantism of the day. Cromwell thus paid the fallen church the involuntary
compliment of providing that he believed its allegiance to be above his
purchase. Its principles had already resisted his power. Yet nothing shows his
faculties for government more clearly than the moderation with which he bore
the acknowledged disgust of the sectaries. The "Engagement," had produced much
irritation. Baxter, with many of the leading Presbyterian ministers, inveighed
against the oath. But the Independents now forming the government, and
themselves governed by Cromwell, bore the insult calmly, and turned it to
account, by filling up the vacant livings with Independent ministers. The press
was not neglected, and the great Milton was employed to write down the
recusants. The powers of the law were brought into action, and all who refused
"the Engagement," of the age of eighteen, were prohibited from sueing in the
law courts: while all ministers attacking the oath from their pulpits, were
deprived of their benefices for the time. But while he was thus rigid to all
who exhibited determined resistance, he gave full opportunity of repentance to
all the wavering. Presbyterianism was still too powerful to be lightly
offended; and the national church was declared to be Presbyterian in doctrine,
discipline, and worship. An attempt was even made to raise all livings to a
hundred pounds a year. But the liberality of rebellion is seldom justice, and
those livings were to be augmented by the confiscation of the lands of the
bishops, deans, and chapters, with, however, the addition of the first-fruits
and tenths. Though fallen even the church was not to be wholly forgotten. With
republican generosity it was to be propitiated out of its own plunder, and
small salaries were allotted to the bishops and the chief clergy of the
cathedrals. Still, it is the history of all usurpations, that their practice
essentially falsifies their professions. The liberty of speaking and writing
had been among the most urgent demands of the republicans. The complaint had
answered its purpose; and the press had broken down the monarchy. The champion
was now itself to be in chains. The royalist and Presbyterian writers were
declared to have abused the rights of discussion. The House of Commons took
those rights under its charge, and the press was thenceforth the tool of
power.
But the crisis of popular usurpation was at hand.
The expedition of Charles the Second to recover his crown, once more brought
Cromwell's military talents before the eyes of men. The defeat of the king at
Worcester, with his flight into France, left the sovereignty open to the first
bold hand; and who could compete with the general who had delivered the
partizans of the rebellion from the imminent dread of royal vengeance? His new
popularity with the troops first awoke the government to a sense of their
peril. To enfeeble the man whom they now felt to be their great antagonist,
they proposed to disband a part of his army. The act would have been followed
by the seizure of its general. But, when the game lies between the indolence of
many and the decision of one, between the possession of authority and the
preservation of life, it speedily comes to an issue. The single vigorous
competitor carries the day against the slow activity and mingled motives of the
crowd. Cromwell's prompt and contemptuous overthrow of the parliament is among
the most remarkable, yet the most natural events of the time.
Still his sagacity as a religious reformer
characterized even his triumph. The fear of rousing again the decayed
enthusiasm of the sectaries was the perpetual guide of his administration. All
England, in all its shapes of opinion, was already powerless before his
acknowledged supremacy. The cavaliers were weary of defeat, and disgusted with
the flight of Charles. The Presbyterians were rendered submissive at once by
the strong hand of government, and by possession. The Independents were the
natural adherents of Cromwell. That burlesque of a legislature, the Barebones'
Parliament, had resigned their functions, from the combined sense of inadequacy
and public ridicule. Yet with all the elements of resistance thus at his feet,
his first work, as sovereign, was to popularize his religious polity. In the
council of officers it was again proposed, that all religious penalties should
be formally extinguished; that a regular provision should be made for the
officiating ministers, and that a general toleration should be the law of the
land; with the old exceptions of Popery and Prelacy. Presbyterianism was still
treated with the customary respect, and was once more recognized as the
established religion.
Yet those were restless, and must have been
unhappy times. We are not driven for this conclusion to the constant privations
and frequent imprisonments of the most meritorious of the English clergy. It
follows, from the necessity of the case, from the mutual irritations of the
leading religionists, from the utter uncertainty of a religious code, dependent
on the will of a capricious council, and from the boundless jealousies,
suspicions, and bitternesses inseparable from a state of perpetual religious
struggle. All men's minds were turned on political power; to some as an object
of enjoyment, to others as a means of protection. It is impossible to doubt
that religion must thus have rapidly tended to decay. In the hands of the
politicians, a mere instrument, it must have soon fallen into scorn among the
higher and more reckless ranks of public men. In the hands of the populace,
alternately a stimulant and a victim of popular turbulence, it must have been
as rapidly degraded by ignorance, as it was deformed by fanaticism. A wise
government can give no greater boon than religious rest to a people.
But Cromwell, who never slumbered over the signs
of the times, watched Presbyterianism with the keenness of personal fear. To
sustain his popularity he adopted the Independent worship, and exhibited the
most singular raptures of their most conspicuous leaders. He further
established a commission of thirty-eight, "Tryers," to select candidates for
the ministry; and for the purpose of countervailing the influence of the
Presbyterians, appointed several Baptists and Independents to the commission.
The selection was charged with degrading the ministry by a crowd of pastors,
remarkable for nothing but the meanness of their condition and the narrowness
of their knowledge. Yet the choice was hostile to Presbyterianism, and the
commission thus answered all the purposes for which it was designed.
The inevitable result of all those changes was at
last felt in the growing unfitness of the parochial clergy for their office.
The habitual remedy was a commission. A board of lay commissioners was
appointed to examine into the learning and conduct of the clergy in general.
Yet even in this period of suffering, the policy
of the government afforded a comparative shelter to the church.Usher,
Brownrigg, Pearson, and Hall, were overlooked in their use of the liturgy;
though it had been declared by the lay-commissioners a ground of deprivation.
The "Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy" also originated about this period;
Hall, afterwards Bishop of Chester, preaching the inauguration sermon at St.
Paul's; and even taking as his subject the budding of Aaron's rod, in bold
allusion to a regular priesthood.
In this republicanism of religion the evils of
schism were at length felt so strongly, that an attempt was made, under the
influence of Usher and Baxter, to combine the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and
Independents in a general association, only retaining such principles as were
alike acknowledged by the three. But this attempt, generous in its conception,
but incompatible with the feelings of the times, was soon abandoned. The Lord
Protector adopted the plan, but, powerful as he was, and anxious to extinguish
the religious disputes, which were still the objects of his chief alarm, he
found that it was easier to subdue armies than controversialists.
Yet all his projects had the stamp of grandeur.
If his political triumphs were won more for himself than for his country, he
desired to make his religious successes the common property of Europe.
Establishing himself as the champion of Protestantism, and England as its
supreme seat, he had conceived the plan of a great Protestant commonwealth,
consisting of representatives from the Protestantism of every nation of the
Continent, capable of guiding all its impulses, securing all its rights, and
demanding retribution for all its injuries. But this design, a nobler one than
the boasted confederation of Henry the Fourth, was not to be realized by a man
harassed by domestic enemies, perplexed by craving partizanship, and now
gradually sinking under bodily decay.
The closing days of his daring and brilliant
existence are too well known to be more than touched on here. Of all cares, the
cares of a throne must be the most exhausting: for what are the anxieties of
humbler life, to his who feels the responsibilities of empire? Or, if hope is
the great stimulant of life, what hope can be his who has already attained the
highest point of human elevation? Or, if the fear of change is the great
penalty of possession, what must be the restlessness of the usurper's pillow?
The dread of assassination was the form in which decay seized on the vigorous
mind of Cromwell. The man who had habitually defied danger, whose whole life
was hazard; prompt in all the difficulties of council; daring, and even
desperate, in all the emergencies of the field; was seen sunk into timidity
within the walls of his palace, and in the midst of his guards. Worn out with
those distractions he died, September 3, 1658, leaving a mighty moral to
unlicensed ambition, in an unhappy prosperity and a clouded fame. Even the
circumstances of his death exhibited that singular mixture of good and ill,
honour and shame, which characterized his life. The day which he had always
regarded as the most fortunate of his career, the double anniversary of the
victories of Dunbar and Worcester, was his last; but he died in the midst of a
tempest so violent as to be long recorded in the popular memory, as a peculiar
evidence of Divine judgment on his crimes. He was buried with royal state at
Westminster; but was thus buried, only to be disinterred, his body removed to
the place of common execution at Tyburn; and there, after being suspended in
its coffin till sunset, flung into a hole at the foot of the scaffold. A signal
instance of the brevity of national applause, but a mean revenge on the
conqueror of two kings of England!
In contemplating the rebellion, as a great
political experiment, it presents every aspect of failure.If in the earliest
ages of the struggle it obtained some important privileges from the throne, it
destroyed their value by the violence of their seizure. The king soon learned
to suspect the moderation of men who made concession the ground of demand, and
argued conciliation into an evidence of infirmity. Self-defence compels all to
resist, when the assault is palpably made not for right but for possession.
Charles, it is true, was unfitted for the time: even the qualities that place
his name with honour among the records of personal merit, were adverse to his
success, as the master of a beleaguered throne. His high spirit was too easily
roused by the insults by the insults of meaner men; his known intrepidity was
too quick in scorning the low-born subtleties of the fanatics and conspirators
who had pledged themselves to his ruin; and his alternate contempt of all
advice, and deference to ill advisers, deprived him of that character of
decision, which, in times of civil tumult, is the one essential to victory.
But if the king erred through the defects of his
nature, the people erred still more by the rashness of their passions. Their
triumph terminated in the extinction of all liberty: their crimes against a
king were punished by the sternness of a despot; and nothing but that fortune
which cut off their usurper in the vigour of life, and left his boldness and
intelligence to be succeeded by a feeble and timid offspring, could have saved
England from a dynasty of chains.
The Rebellion, regarded as a great experiment for
liberty of conscience, was equally unsuccessful. Without liberty of conscience
no true faith can exist. But the freedom established by the rebellion was a
licence of mutual injury. The privilege which placed every novelty,
extravagance, and fantasy of popular religion on a rank with all that was
consecrated by experience, sustained by learning, and founded on the exercise
of the mature understanding; overthrew at a blow all the natural barriers
between wisdom and error. The sudden influx of political aspirants into the
sects made even their virtues dangerous to the community, and their thirst of
power exposed the state to all the hazards of faction, inflamed by all the
fantasies of zeal.
The natural result of a licence inconsistent with
the public tranquility, was a licence inconsistent with the soberness of
Scripture. Sects started up, whose claim to popularity was their eagerness for
all that was new, and their scorn of all that was established. Among the most
remarkable of those were the Levellers, a name now limited to political
conspirators, but then distinguishing a tribe of enthusiasts, who had arrived
at the unaccountable conclusion, that among Christians all property and all
power should be in common. - A doctrine, which, in our present social state, by
extinguishing all the fruits of individual industry, would obviously extinguish
all the stimulants to labour, substitute force for law, and end by pauperizing
the community.
Another sect, the Fifth-monarchy men, are more
memorable; from their having given a clearer proof of the powers of fanaticism
to disturb the public peace. Pronouncing that all earthly authority was on the
eve of being abolished by the predicted kingdom of Christ, they formed a plan
to destroy Cromwell, and proclaim the returning Messiah as king. Unfurling a
banner, with the lion couchant as its emblem, and inscribed with the words "Who
shall rouse him up," a party of those lunatics, headed by one of their
preachers, sallied from their place of worship to commence the grand
revolution. They were instantly defeated, and the tumult and the sect
suppressed together.
But if such sects were the prominent effects of
the general dislocation of religious authority, more serious evils arose from
its agency on the national mind at the Restoration. As the violence of the
politicians had finally disgusted the nation with liberty, the extravagance of
the enthusiasts had tended to shake the popular respect for religion. As the
one threw the Constitution at the foot of the king, the other hazarded even the
decencies of the Establishment. Forms had been perverted, they were now
ridiculed; all religion was declared hypocrisy, and all unbelief took the name
of candour. The morals of the king, learned in the loosest court of the
Continent, became the standard of manners: the stage conveyed the
licentiousness of the court of the multitude; and the infidelity of the higher
ranks completed the picture of a degenerate age. England was, for fifty years,
the center of intellectual evil to Europe: the especial land of the infidel,
who, in the insolence and vanity of his heart, assumed to himself the haughty
title of the Freethinker.
But she had a signal source of recovery within.
Her established Church, long stripped of its branches, and iron-bound, like the
tree in Nebuchadnezzar's vision, had deeply felt the injuries of the rebellion.
But it was soon to spread a nobler shade than ever. Its literature again became
conspicuous; to break down the infidel was its first work: a succession of
forcible treatises on the evidences, the spirit, and the value of Christianity
rapidly achieved this great service. The names of Butler, Waterland, Warburton,
Sherlock, and a crowd of other churchmen; with Lardner, Leland, and their
followers among the dissenters, are still eminent as the defenders of religion.
The deluge of revolt and impurity which had overspread the land, at length
dried away; and the Church of England, like the patriarchal family descending
from the ark, renewed the compact with its supreme Preserver. It saw, and sees
still, the soil requiring many a long period of labour, and many a high
interposition of Providence, before the traces of the day of evil shall be
wholly obliterated. But it saw the bow in the cloud; and it received in its
renewed strength the practical pledge, that the succession of the seasons of
truth and knowledge should not be interrupted again. It now sees, in the sudden
and vigorous activity of its servants a home, and the new and magnificent
planting of Episcopacy in the East and West, the approaching realization of the
promise of increase and replenishing of the earth; and now, with a faith only
refreshed by the lapse of ages, looks beyond the troubles of the time, in
sacred confidence, that while it retains its fidelity to the great Covenant of
Protestantism, the day of subversion shall return no more.
March, 1838
[1] He had taken the degree of Master of Arts,
when ordained, about 1633.
[2] Acts, xxviii. 2.
[3] St. Paul confirms this view in the subsequent verses, (7, etc.) He there again declares that he will not glory of himself, or of the divine discoveries to him; and that, (7,) directly to prohibit the temptation to personal vanity, in thus glorying, the actual revelations made to him were followed by a thorn in the flesh, to keep him humble, though of the individual mentioned before (2,) he glories with impunity.