07092.2 - Puritan Conflict - 2

§92.2. The Puritan Conflict -Part 2. THE REVOLUTION.

Bad as was Charles II. (1660-1685), his brother, James II. (1685-1688), was worse. He seemed to combine the vices of the Stuarts without their redeeming traits. Charles, indifferent to religion and defiant to virtue during his life, sent on his death-bed for a Romish priest to give him absolution for his debaucheries. James openly professed his conversion to Romanism, filled in defiance of law the highest posts in the army and the cabinet with Romanists, and opened negotiations with Pope Innocent XI. At the same time he persecuted with heartless cruelty the Protestant Dissenters, and outraged justice by a series of judicial murders which have made the name of Chief Justice Jeffreys as infamous as Nero’s. At last the patience of the English people was again exhausted, the incurable race of the Stuarts, unwilling to learn and to forget any thing, was forever hurled from the throne, and the Prince of Orange, who had married Mary, the eldest daughter of James, was invited to rule England as William III. THE RESULT. The Revolution of 1688 was a political triumph of Puritanism, and secured to the nation constitutional liberty and the Protestant religion. The Episcopal Church remained the established national Church, but the Act of Toleration of 1689 guaranteed liberty and legal protection to such Nonconformists as could subscribe thirty-five and a half of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, omitting those to which the Puritans had conscientious scruples. Though very limited, this Act marked a great progress. It broke up the reign of intolerance, and virtually destroyed the principle of uniformity. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 was intended for the whole kingdom, and proceeded on the theory of an ecclesiastical incorporation of all Englishmen; now it was confined to the patronized State Church. It recognized none but the Episcopal form of worship, and treated non-Episcopalians as disloyal subjects, as culprits and felons; now other Protestant Christians-Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and even Quakers-were placed under the protection of the law, and permitted to build chapels and to maintain pastors at their own expense. The fact was recognized that a man may be a good citizen and a Christian without conforming to the State religion. Uniformity had proved an intolerable tyranny, and had failed. Comprehension of different denominations under one national Church, though favored by William, seemed impracticable. Limited toleration opened the way for full liberty and equality of Christian denominations before the law; and from the soil of liberty there will spring up a truer and deeper union than can be secured by any compulsion in the domain of conscience, which belongs to God alone.

Puritanism did not struggle in vain. Though it failed as a national movement, owing to its one-sidedness and want of catholicity, it accomplished much. It produced statesmen like Hampden, soldiers like Cromwell, poets like Milton, preachers like Howe, theologians like Owen, dreamers like Bunyan, hymnists like Watts, commentators like Henry, and saints like Baxter, who though dead yet speak. It lives on as a powerful moral element in the English nation, in the English Church, in English society, in English literature. It has won the esteem of the descendants of its enemies. In our day the Duke of Bedford erected a statue to Bunyan (1874) in the place where he had suffered in prison for twelve years; and Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents united in a similar tribute of justice and gratitude to the memory of Baxter at Kidderminster (1875), where he is again pointing his uplifted arm to the saints’ everlasting rest. The liberal-minded and large-hearted dean of Westminster represented the nobler part of the English people when he canonized those great and good men in his memorial discourses at the unveiling of their statues. Puritanism lives moreover in New England, which was born of the persecutions and trials of its fathers and founders in old England, and gave birth to a republic truer, mightier, and more enduring than the ephemeral military commonwealth of Cromwell. It will continue to preserve and spread all over the Saxon world the love of purity, simplicity, spirituality, practical energy, liberty, and progress in the Christian Church. On the other hand, it is for the children of the Puritans to honor the shining lights of the Church of England who stood by her in the days of her trial and persecution. That man is to be pitied indeed who would allow the theological passions of an intolerant age to blind his mind to the learning, the genius, and the piety of Ussher, Andrewes, Hall, Pearson, Prideaux, Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, and Leighton, whom God has enriched with his gifts for the benefit of all denominations. It is good for the Church of England-it is good for the whole Christian world-that she survived the fierce conflict of the seventeenth century and the indifferentism of the eighteenth to take care of venerable cathedrals, deaneries, cloisters, universities, and libraries, to cultivate the study of the fathers and schoolmen, to maintain the importance of historical continuity and connection with Christian antiquity, to satisfy the taste for stability, dignity, and propriety in the house of God, and to administer to the spiritual wants of the aristocracy and peasantry, and all those who can worship God most acceptably in the solemn prayers of her liturgy, which, with all its defects, must be pronounced the best ever used in divine service.

While the fierce conflict about religion was raging, there were prophetic men of moderation and comprehension on both sides- ’Whose dying pens did write of Christian union, How Church with Church might safely keep communion; Who finding discords daily to increase, Because they could not live, would die, in peace.’ In a sermon before the House of Commons, under the arched roof of Westminster Abbey, Richard Baxter uttered this sentence: ’Men that differ about bishops, ceremonies, and forms of prayer, may be all true Christians, and dear to one another and to Christ, if they be practically agreed in the life of godliness, and join in a holy, heavenly conversation. But if you agree in all your opinions and formalities, and yet were never sanctified by the truth, you do but agree to delude your souls, and neither of you will be saved for all your agreement.’ [SeeNote #1383] This is a noble Christian sentiment, echoing the words of a greater man than Baxter: ’In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision,’-we may add, neither surplice nor gown, neither kneeling nor standing, neither episcopacy nor presbytery nor independency-’ but a new creature.’ [SeeNote #1384]

Note #1350 The name Puritans (from pure, as Catharists from katharos), or Precisians, occurs first about 1564 or 1566, and was employed to brand those who were opposed to the use of priestly vestments, as the cap, surplice, and the tippet (but not the gown, which the Puritans and Presbyterians retained, as well as the Continental Protestant ministers). Shakspere uses the term half a dozen times, and always reproachfully (see Clarke’s Shaksp. Concordance and Schmidt’s Shaksp. Lexicon, s.v.). In the good sense, it denotes those who went back to the purity and simplicity of apostolic Christianity in faith and morals. Neal defines a Puritan to be ’a man of severe morals, a Calvinist in doctrine, and a Nonconformist to the ceremonies and discipline of the Church, though not totally separated from it’

Note #1351

Fuller, Vol. V. pp. 305-309. The petition was dated January 14, 1603 (old style), but was presented April 4. The real number of signers was only 825.

Note #1352

Fuller (Vol. V. pp. 378, 379) speaks in very high terms of Reynolds, who was so unceremoniously snubbed by Bishop Bancroft. He praises his memory, which was ’little less than marvelous,’ and ’a faithful index,’ as his reason was ’a solid judex of what he read,’ and his humility, which ’set a lustre on all; communicative of what he knew to any that desired information herein, like a tree loaded with fruit, bowing down its branches to all that desired to ease it of the burden thereof, deserving this epitaph, ’Incertum est utrum doctior an melior.’

He associates him with Bishop Jewel and Richard Hooker, all born in Devonshire, and educated at Corpus Christi College, and says, ’ No one county in England have three such men (contemporary at large), in what college soever they were bred; no college in England bred such three men, in what county soever they were born.’ John Reynolds was at first a zealous papist and turned an eminent protestant; while his brother William was as earnest a protestant, and became by their mutual disputation an inveterate papist, which gave occasion to the distich:

’Quod genus hoc pugnæ est? ubi victus gaudet uterque, Et simul alteruter se superasse dolet.’

’What war is this? when conquer’d both are glad, And either to have conquer’d other sad.’

Note #1353

He also said to Dr. Reynolds: ’If you aim at a Scotch presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick shall meet and censure me and my council. Therefore I reiterate my former speech, Le roy s’avisera. ’

Note #1354 The accounts of the Hampton Court Conference are mostly derived from the partial report of Dr. William Barlow, Dean of Chester, who was present. It appeared in 1604, and again in 1638. See Fuller, Vol. V. pp. 266-303; Cardwell, Hist. of Conferences, p. 121; Procter, Hist. of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 88; Marsden, Early Puritans, p. 255.

Note #1355

He was assigned to the company which was charged with the translation of the writings of the greater and lesser Prophets. But he died in 1607, before the completion of the work.

Note #1356 The discussion bearing upon this subject is likewise characteristic of the King, the Bishop, and the Puritan, and may be added here (from Fuller, Vol. V. pp. 284, 285):

’Dr. Reynolds. "May your Majesty be pleased that the Bible be new translated, such as are extant not answering the original." And he instanced in three particulars:

’Bishop of London. "If every man’s humor might be followed, there would be no end of translating."

’His Majesty. "I profess I could never yet see a Bible well translated in English; but I think that of all, that of Geneva is the worst. I wish some special pains were taken for an uniform translation; which should be done by the best learned in both universities, then reviewed by the bishops, presented to the privy council, lastly ratified by royal authority to be read in the whole Church, and no other."

’Bishop of London. "But it is fit that no marginal notes should be added thereunto."

’His Majesty. "That caveat is well put in; for in the Geneva translation some notes are partial, untrue, seditious, and savoring of traitorous conceits: as when, from Exodus 1:19, disobedience to kings is allowed in a marginal note; and, 2 Chronicles 15:16, King Asa taxed in the note for only deposing his mother for idolatry, and not killing her. To conclude this point, let errors in matters of faith be amended, and indifferent things be interpreted, and a gloss added unto them; for, as Bartolus de Regno saith, ’Better a king with some weakness than still a change;’ so rather a Church with some faults than an innovation. And surely, if these were the greatest matters that grieved you, I need not have been troubled with such importunate complaints."’

Note #1357

Macaulay, chap. 1. p. 65 (Boston ed.). I add the admirable description of Charles by Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, in theMemoirsof her husband (Bohn’s ed. p. 84): ’King Charles was temperate, chaste, and serious; so that the fools and bawds, mimics and catamites, of the former court, grew out of fashion; and the nobility and courtiers, who did not quite abandon their debaucheries, yet so reverenced the king as to retire into corners to practice them. Men of learning and ingenuity in all arts were in esteem, and received encouragement from the king, who was a most excellent judge and a great lover of paintings, carvings, gravings, and many other ingenuities, less offensive than the bawdry and profane abusive wit which was the only exercise of the other court. But, as in the primitive times, it is observed that the best emperors were some of them stirred up by Satan to be the bitterest persecutors of the Church, so this king was a worse encroacher upon the civil and spiritual liberties of his people by far than his father. He married a Papist, a French lady, of a haughty spirit, and a great wit and beauty, to whom he became a most uxorious husband. By this means the court was replenished with Papists, and many who hoped to advance themselves by the change turned to that religion. All the Papists in the kingdom were favored, and, by the king’s example, matched into the best families; the Puritans were more than ever discountenanced and persecuted, insomuch that many of them chose to abandon their native country, and leave their dearest relations, to retire into any foreign soil or plantation where they might, amidst all outward inconveniences, enjoy the free exercise of God’s worship. Such as could not flee were tormented in the bishops’ courts, fined, whipped, pilloried, imprisoned, and suffered to enjoy no rest, so that death was better than life to them; and notwithstanding their patient sufferance of all these things, yet was not the king satisfied till the whole land was reduced to perfect slavery. The example of the French king was propounded to him, and he thought himself no monarch so long as his will was confined to the bounds of any law; but knowing that the people of England were not pliable to an arbitrary rule, he plotted to subdue them to his yoke by a foreign force, and till he could effect it, made no conscience of granting any thing to the people, which he resolved should not oblige him longer than it served his turn; for he was a prince that had nothing of faith or truth, justice or generosity, in him. He was the most obstinate person in his self-will that ever was, and so bent upon being an absolute, uncontrollable sovereign that he was resolved either to be such a king or none. His firm adherence to prelacy was not for conscience of one religion more than another, for it was his principle that an honest man might be saved in any profession; but he had a mistaken principle that kingly government in the State could not stand without episcopal government in the Church; and, therefore, as the bishops flattered him with preaching up his sovereign prerogative, and inveighing against the Puritans as factious and disloyal, so he protected them in their pomp and pride, and insolent practices against all the godly and sober people of the land.’

Note #1358

Born at Reading, Oct. 7, 1573; ordained 1601; Bishop of St. David’s, 1621; of Bath and Wells, 1626; of London, 1628; Chancellor of Oxford University, 1630; Archbishop of Canterbury, 1633; impeached of high-treason, 1641; beheaded Jan. 10, 1645.

Note #1359

’Because,’ as King James said, in keen discernment of his character, ’he hath a restless spirit, and can not see when matters are well, but loves to toss and change, and to bring things to a pitch of reformation, floating in his own brain, which may endanger the steadfastness of that which is in a good pass.’ He restrained his early plans ’to make that stubborn [Scotch] Kirk stoop to the English pattern,’ for ’he knows not the stomach of that people.’

Note #1360 He was called ’the little Archbishop.’

Note #1361

’His influence extended every where, over every body, and every thing, small as well as great-like the trunk of an elephant, as well suited to pick up a pin as to tear down a tree.’-Stoughton, Vol. 1. p. 33.

Note #1362

I must add, however, that in his book against Fisher the Jesuit there are a few favorable allusions to Calvin as a theologian, especially to his doctrine of the spiritual real presence.

Note #1363 Works (Oxf. 1847), Vol. 1. pp. 161, 167, 180, 181.

Note #1364 That Laud is the author of this Declaration was charged by Prynne, and is proved by the Oxford editor of his Works , Vol. 1. pp. 153 sq. Comp. above, p. 617.

Note #1365

He informed the king of ’a very ill accident which happened at Taplow, by reason of not having the communion-table, railed in, that it might be kept from profanations. For in the sermon time a dog came to the table and took the loaf of bread prepared for the Holy Sacrament in his mouth, and ran away with it. Some of the parishioners took the same from the dog and set it again on the table. After sermon the minister could not think fit to consecrate this bread, and other fit for the Sacrament was not to be had in that town, so there was no Communion.’-Works , Vol. V. p 367. This brings to mind the grave and curious disputes of the mediæval schoolmen on the question what effect the consecrated wafer would have upon a mouse or a rat.

Note #1366 Diary , March 8, 1626 (Works , Vol. III. p. 201).

Note #1367

He relates, in his Diary , Aug. 4, 1633 (on the day of Archbishop Abbot’s death), that ’there came one to me, seriously, . . . and offered me to be a Cardinal. I went presently to the King and acquainted him both with the thing and the person.’ On the 17th of August, having in the mean time (Aug. 6) been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, he had a second offer of a red hat, and again answered ’that something dwelt within him which would not suffer that till Rome were other than it is’ (Works , Vol. III. p. 219). In his Marginal Notes on Prynne’s Breviate (p. 266), he adds that his ’conscience’ also went against this. But it is by no means certain or even probable that the pope himself (as Fuller states without proof) authorized such an offer. It may have been a trap laid for Laud on the eve of his elevation to the primacy. Lingard, the Roman Catholic historian of England, says that Laud was ’in bad repute in Rome’ (Vol. X. p. 139), and Dean Hook, his Anglo-Catholic biographer, asserts that he was ’dreaded and hated at Rome,’ and that his death was greeted there with joy (Life of L. p. 233). Lingard adds, however, that ’in the solitude of his cell, and with the prospect of the block before his eyes, Laud began to think more favorably of the Catholic [Roman] Church,’ and he shows that Rosetti inquired of Cardinal Barberini whether, if Laud should escape from the Tower, the pope would afford him an asylum in Rome with a pension of 1000 crowns. But this is inconsistent with Laud’s last defense. He was then over seventy, and anxious to die.

Note #1368 Hist. of the Puritans , Vol. 1. p. 280.

Note #1369 The Conference with Fisher (whose real name was Piersey or Percy) took place, by command and in the presence of King James, May 24, 1622, and was edited, with final corrections and additions, by Laud himself in 1639. It was republished 1673 and 1686, and by the Oxford University Press 1839, with an Introduction by Edward Cardwell. It is also included in Vol. II. of the Oxf. ed. of his Works. Laud thought that his way of defense was the only one by which the Church of England could justify her separation from the Church of Rome. He bequeathed £100 for a Latin translation of this book.

Note #1370 The Works of Laud embrace five volumes in the Oxford ’Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology.’ His seven sermons preached on great state occasions abound with his high notions of royalty, episcopacy, and uniformity, but do not rise above mediocrity. His Diary-the chief source of his autobiography-though not ’contemptible’ (as Hallam characterizes it), is dry and pedantic, and notices trifling incidents as important occurrences, e.g. , the bad state of the weather, his numerous dreams, the marriage of K. C. with a minister’s widow, the particular posture of the Elector of the Palatinate at communion ’upon a stool by the wall before the traverse, and with another and a cushion before him to kneel at’ (Dec. 25, 1635), and his unfortunate affairs with ’E. B.’ (of which he deeply repented; see his Devot. Vol. III. p. 81). His Devotions are made up mostly of passages of the Psalms and the fathers, and reveal the best side of his private character. His last prayer, as he kneeled by the block to receive the fatal stroke, is the crown of his prayers, and worth quoting: ’Lord, I am coming as fast as I can. I know I must pass through the shadow of death before I can come to see Thee. But it is but umbra mortis , a mere shadow of death, a little darkness upon nature; but Thou, by Thy merits and passion, hast broken through the jaws of death. So, Lord, receive my soul, and have mercy upon me; and bless this kingdom with peace and plenty, and with brotherly love and charity, that there may not be this effusion of Christian blood amongst them, for Jesus Christ His sake, if it be Thy will.’ The opinions on Laud are mostly tinctured by party spirit. His friend Clarendon says, ’His learning, piety, and virtue have been attained by very few, and the greatest of his infirmities are common to all, even the best of men.’ Prynne, who lost his two ears by Laud’s influence, calls him the most execrable traitor and apostate that the English soil ever bred (’Canterbury’s Doome’). His biographers, Peter Heylin (Cyprianus Anglicanus , Lond. 1671), John Parker Lawson (The Life and Times of William Laud , Lond. 1829, 2 vols.), and Dr. Hook (in the Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury , Vol. XI. Lond. 1875), are vindicators of his character and policy. May, Hallam, Macaulay, Lingard, Green, Häusser, and Stoughton (Vol. 1. pp. 402 sq.) condemn his public acts, but give him credit for his private virtues. May (History of Parliament , approvingly quoted by Hallam, chap. 8. Charles I.) says: ’Laud was of an active, or, rather, of a restless mind; more ambitious to undertake than politic to carry on; of a disposition too fierce and cruel for his coat. He had few vulgar and private vices, as being neither taxed of covetousness, intemperance, nor incontinence; and, in a word, a man not altogether so bad in his personal character as unfit for the state of England.’

Note #1371

Burton called the bishops step -fathers, cater -pillars, limbs of the beast, blind watchmen, dumb dogs, new Babel-builders, antichristian mushrumps, etc. Prynne called them ’silk and satin divines,’ and said that ’Christ himself was a Puritan, and that, therefore, all men should become Puritans.’ But their opponents could be equally abusive. Lord Cottington, one of Prynne’s judges, said that, in writing the Histrio-Mastix , ’either the devil had assisted Prynne or Prynne the devil.’ Another judge, the Earl of Dorset, called him ’omnium malorum nequissimum. ’

Note #1372

One of the noblest specimens of a Puritan officer was Col. Hutchinson, whose character and life have been so admirably described by his widow (pp. 24 sqq. Bohn’s ed.).

Note #1373

Comp. Marsden, The Later Puritans , pp. 40 sqq. Baxter himself allows that ’some able, godly preachers were cast out for the war alone.’ Among these was also the excellent Thomas Fuller, the author of the incomparable books on Church History and the Worthies of England , although in the days of Laud he had been stigmatized as a Puritan in doctrine.

Note #1374 On his last days and utterances, see the Mercurius Politicus for Sept. 2-9,1658, and Stoughton, The Church of the Commonwealth , p. 511. Macaulay pays the following tribute to Cromwell’s foreign policy: ’The Protector’s foreign policy at the same time extorted the ungracious approbation of those who most detested him. The Cavaliers could scarcely refrain from wishing that one who had done so much to raise the fame of the nation had been a legitimate king; and the Republicans were forced to own that the tyrant suffered none but himself to wrong his country, and that, if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at least given her glory in exchange. After half a century, during which England had been of scarcely more weight in European politics than Venice or Saxony, she at once became the most formidable power in the world, dictated terms of peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of Christendom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land and sea, seized one of the finest West India islands, and acquired on the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for the loss of Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the Protestant interest. All the Reformed Churches scattered over Roman Catholic kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian. The Huguenots of Languedoc. the shepherds who, in the hamlets of the Alps, professed a Protestantism older than that of Augsburg, were secured from oppression by the mere terror of that great name. The pope himself was forced to preach humanity and moderation to popish princes. For a voice which seldom threatened in vain had declared that, unless favor were shown to the people of God, the English guns should be heard in the Castle of Saint Angelo. In truth, there was nothing which Cromwell had, for his own sake and that of his family, so much reason to desire as a general religious war in Europe. In such a war he must have been the captain of the Protestant armies. The heart of England would have been with him. His victories would have been hailed with a unanimous enthusiasm unknown in the country since the rout of the Armada, and would have effaced the stain which one act, condemned by the general voice of the nation, has left on his splendid fame. Unhappily for him. he had no opportunity of displaying his admirable military talents except against the inhabitants of the British Isles.’-History of England , ch. 1. Carlyle says that Cromwell was the best thing that England ever did.

Note #1375

’Almost all the gentry of all parts went-some to fetch him over, some to meet him at the sea-side, some to fetch him into London, into which he entered on the 29th day of May, with a universal joy and triumph, even to his own amazement; who, when he saw all the nobility and gentry of the land flowing in to him, asked where were his enemies. For he saw nothing but prostrates, expressing all the love that could make a prince happy. Indeed, it was a wonder in that day to see the mutability of some, and the hypocrisy of others, and the servile flattery of all. Monk, like his better genius, conducted him and was adored like one that had brought all the glory and felicity of mankind home with this prince.’-Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson , p. 402.

Note #1376 The fullest account of the conference held in the Savoy Hospital, London, is given by Baxter, who was a member, in his Autobiography. Comp. Neal, Cardwell, Stoughton (Restor. Vol. 1. p. 157), Hallam (Ch. XI. Charles II.), and Procter (History of the Book of Common Prayer , p. 113). Hallam casts the chief blame on the Churchmen, who had it in their power to heal the division and to retain or to expel a vast number of worthy clergymen. But both parties lacked the right temper, and smarted under the fresh recollection of past grievances. Baxter embodied the changes desired by the Puritans in his Liturgy, the hasty work of a fortnight, which was never used, but republished by Prof. Shields of Princeton, Philadelphia, 1867.

Note #1377

Procter (p. 141): ’Some changes were made, in order to avoid the appearance of favoring the Presbyterian form of Church government; thus, church , or people , was substituted for congregation , and ministers in for of the congregation; priests and deacons were especially named instead of pastors and ministers. ’ The Apocryphal lessons were retained, and the legend of Bel and the Dragon (omitted in 1604) was again introduced in the Calendar of Daily Lessons, to show contempt for the Puritan scruples. In the Litany the words ’rebellion’ and ’schism’ were added to the petition against ’sedition.’

Note #1378

Dr. Stoughton, a well-informed and impartial historian, gives it as the result of his careful inquiry that the persecution and sufferings of the Episcopalians under the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth are not to be compared with the persecution of the Nonconformists under Charles 1. and Charles II. (Ch. of the Commonwealth , p. 346). Hallam is of the same opinion. Richard Baxter, one of the ejected ministers, gives a sad account of their sufferings: ’Many hundreds of these, with their wives and children, had neither house nor bread. . . . Their congregations had enough to do, besides a small maintenance, to help them out of prisons, or to maintain them there. Though they were as frugal as possible, they could hardly live; some lived on little more than brown bread and water; many had but eight or ten pounds a year to maintain a family, so that a piece of flesh has not come to one of their tables in six weeks’ time; their allowance could scarce afford them bread and cheese. One went to plow six days and preached on the Lord’s day. Another was forced to cut tobacco for a livelihood. . . . Many of the ministers, being afraid to lay down their ministry after they had been ordained to it, preached to such as would hear them in fields and private houses, till they were apprehended and cast into gaols, where many of them perished’ (quoted by Green, p. 612). Baxter himself was repeatedly imprisoned, although he was a royalist and openly opposed Cromwell’s rule. For many details of suffering, see Orme’s Life of Baxter (Lond. 1830), pp. 229 sqq.

Note #1379 Stanley’s Hist.Memorials of Westminster Abbey, pp. 191 sq., 247, 320 (3d ed. Lond. 1869).

Note #1380

Butler’s Hudibras fairly reflects the prevailing sentiment of the Restoration period about the Puritans. He caricatures them in his mock-heroic style (Part 1. Canto 1. vers. 192 sqq.) as ’That stubborn crew Of errant saints, whom all men grant To be the true Church militant:

Such as do build their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun;

Decide all controversy by Infallible artillery; And prove their doctrine orthodox by apostolic blows and knocks;

Call fire, and sword, and desolation A godly thorough Reformation, Which always must be carried on, And still be doing, never done, As if religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended.’

Note #1381

’Puritanism,’ says an Oxford historian, ’ceased from the long attempt to build up a kingdom of God by force and violence, and fell back on its truer work of building up a kingdom of righteousness in the hearts and consciences of men. It was from the moment of its seeming fall that its real victory began. As soon as the wild orgy of the Restoration was over, men began to see that nothing that was really worthy in the work of Puritanism had been undone. The revels of Whitehall, the skepticism and debauchery of courtiers, the corruption of statesmen, left the mass of Englishmen what Puritanism had made them-serious, earnest, sober in life and conduct, firm in their love of Protestantism and of freedom. In the Revolution of 1688 Puritanism did the work of civil liberty, which it had failed to do in that of 1642. It wrought out through Wesley and the revival of the eighteenth century the work of religious reform which its earlier efforts had only thrown back for a hundred years. Slowly, but steadily, it introduced its own seriousness and purity into English society, English literature, English politics. The whole history of English progress, since the Restoration, on its moral and spiritual sides, has been the history of Puritanism.’-J. R. Green’s Short History of the English People, p. 586.

Note #1382 Taine’s History of English Literature, vol. 1. p. 461 (Am. ed.).

Note #1383

Vain Religion of the Formal Hypocrite. Baxter’s Works , Vol. XVII. p. 80. Quoted by Stoughton, p. 195. The sermon was preached Apr. 30, 1660, just before the recall of Charles II. See Orme. Life of Baxter , p. 160.

Note #1384

Galatians 6:15.