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PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS

145

Church from State control, and yet place religion under the guardianship of the State. Yet their system (which looked back also to Elizabeth's days and the teaching of Robert Brown, the Separatist) was the antithesis of the Presbyterian. Each congregation claimed the right to order all its own business, religious and secular, and to choose its Own ministers. All spiritual offences were punished by spiritual penalties alone. It was the logical outcome of individual ideas. Politically it avoided, in theory at least, the danger of a Church-governed State, and it was, as the great German historian Von Ranke observed, essentially republican. It held out hopes of a wider toleration than seemed consistent with the views of other parties. It attracted to itself nearly all those who were not strongly attached to the English Church or the Presbyterian system.

Attitude of

the Church.

The attitude of these two parties towards the Church was different. The Presbyterians claimed to reform it by substituting a system more purely spiritual but not less ecclesiastical,-one which would enter still more each towards deeply into every aspect of the individual and national life. This they claimed to do as in obedience to the direct instruction of Holy Writ, outside the words of which any Church government was unlawful. The Independents, on the other hand, desired to reform the Church in the direction of individual liberty, to loosen the bonds between Church and State, to establish a number of small self-governing societies hardly related to each other by more than brotherly love.

It was natural that the Presbyterian party should come to the front during the earlier stages of the constitutional struggle and of the war. It alone was an organised party, with fixed principles, and a history behind it, and with examples of successful establishment among neighbouring nations. The characteristic expression of their views is to be found in the propositions made at Uxbridge in 1645, in which it was demanded that Charles should take the Covenant, assent to the abolition of the Prayer-book and of Episcopacy, and to the establishment of the Directory of Public Worship and the Presbyterian Church systems. It was a demand based on the conscientious belief that one form of government, with its concomitant expression in worship, had been established

L

by the Long Parliament, a form from which it would be impossible to vary without incurring the Divine wrath.

It is characteristic also that this demand was met by the project of toleration suggested on behalf of the Church, by which the bishops were to continue, but to exercise their power only by the advice of the presbyters, and the Prayerbook was to be revised. Toleration was at the same time offered. "We think it lawful," said the Oxford clergy representing the Church view, "that a toleration be given by suspending the penalties of all laws, both to the Presbyterians and Independents."

It was on the rejection of these terms, or the failure to obtain an agreement or compromise between them, that the Independent party became prominent. It was strong in the army, and every day the failure of the Presbyterian system to root itself in the affections of the country made it stronger; and it had the supreme advantage of being guided by the greatest man in England, in force and will, Oliver Cromwell, the Lord General who had led the armies of the Parliament to victory, and whose firm insistence had brought the king to the block. When the king suffered, the final position of these two parties was not certain; but during the next few months, step by step, the Independents, through the army, which since the New Model was strongly of their party, came into power. The history of the events which brought this about belongs to politics, not to religion. It is our part here rather to sketch the general attitude of Parliament towards the Church.

Three clergy lists have recently been printed. They contain the names of those clergy dealt with by Parliament as "superstitious, innovating, scandalous, or malignant." The first on the list, it may be noted, is Dr. Layfield, of All Hallows Barking, the Church in which Archbishop Laud was

General action of the

Commons

buried. To this is appended a list of Puritan lecturers nominated or sanctioned by the Long House of Parliament up to the outbreak of the Civil War, and with regard after that there is a list of the Parliamentary sequestrations of Royalist clergy from the beginning of the war, with the names of those who were appointed in their places, in each case the action being that of Parliament. How minute and inquisitorial the action of the House was is

to the Church.

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ESTABLISHMENT OF PRESBYTERIANISM

147

shown by these lists. It assumed the patronage of the Crown, of all the ecclesiastical corporations, both sole and aggregate, and of Royalist private patrons whenever it could with any appearance of justification. Complete chaos seems in some counties to have been introduced into the ecclesiastical arrangements by these means. The Church had been entirely disestablished and disendowed; and, though in August 1645, and March 1646, Presbyterianism was definitely established by law in its place, it was found impossible to carry the system into operation in many parts of England-by no means only those which during the war were favourable to the king. The Calvinistic system was felt by the people to be both foreign and inquisitorial. Theoretically it had the adhesion of the Universities, when they had been "purged" by Parliamentary Commissions with armed men at their backs; and in London and Essex it was practically founded; but in the north it hardly existed, even in name.

Beside these detailed lists has been placed a very interesting and significant collection of financial data, showing what became of the Church lands. After the money used by the Parliament for military purposes, and after the extremely large deductions for salaries and expenses, and the small sums paid to the dispossessed clergy, very little, in proportion, went to the support of a "God-fearing clergy." It seems clear that if the revolution had been completely carried out, it would have resulted, as it had done in Scotland a century before, in the utter impoverishment of the religious establishment.

(1) The payment of ministers.

There was great difficulty in procuring a proper sustenance for the Ministry. The Parliament, by ordinance of April 1, 1643, confiscated all the real and personal property of all persons, ecclesiastical and civil, who had taken up arms against the Parliament or voluntarily contributed towards the king's army, and with it two-thirds of all the property of Roman Catholics. The sums thus secured, and the property, were placed in the hands of committees and sequestrators, named for all the English shires, who were to remit the money for the use of the Parliament. None of this money seems to have been directly employed in the maintenance of the ministers now placed in

the parishes; and at the same time some allowance was occasionally made, as will be mentioned later on, for the dispossessed clergy and their families.

At the same time there were many expressions of an aversion to the tithe system. The controversy of the early years of the century had now sunk down from Tithes. learned men to the people. The Independents were inclined to regard it as carnal, contrary to the spiritual life in its freedom. In May 1646, a body of about two thousand persons from Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire petitioned the House for the abolition of tithes; they were sternly rebuked by the Speaker, who told them that they knew not the laws of God or the realm, and must go home and obey both.

A pro

On August 6, 1649, a proposal to declare the payment of tithes compulsory was rejected by the House of Commons. During the Commonwealth considerable interest was shown in the question. Some desired to get rid of such payments as unspiritual, some because they did not wish to pay. posal for their abolition was made in Parliament, July 15, 1653, but it was rejected. A voluntary system, however, continued to be strongly advocated, and a committee considered the subject. In November 1653 the question was further complicated by a proposal to abolish private patronage, as leading to simony and to scandalous appointments. When the Instrument of Government ordered the maintenance of an Established Church it seemed to propose at least the commutation of tithes. But as to their abolition Cromwell stated that "he was but one, and his Council allege it not fit to take them away." So the matter rested.

The second subject on which it is well to observe the general attitude of Parliament, before dealing in detail with

(2)

special aspects of it, is that of toleration. The Toleration. practical results of the financial question affect this very closely. It has been shown by minute investigation that there is no justification for the view that real toleration was granted. Schoolmasters who were not certified to belong to the dominant religious order were dismissed, under command from Parliament. Up to 1653 or 1657, there was no legislative grant of toleration, and Presbyterianism remained

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THEORIES OF TOLERATION

149

the legally established form of religion. Practical toleration came to be enjoyed by the Independents when Cromwell was in power, but legally and practically they stood in much the same position with regard to the established State Presbyterian system as their successors stand to-day in regard to the Church of England.

toleration.

To

OLERATION

The history of toleration during these years is an interesting one. The facts do not seem to justify the attacks made on Charles I., whose views of toleration, inadequate Influence of though they were, were sincere, and were formally theories of sanctioned by the religious advisers to whom he referred the matter at the crisis of his fate. A very one-sided view of the subject also is given when the literary advocates of toleration are ignored. Among them were not only prominent Independents, but Churchmen, as sound and as prominent as Hammond, whose sermons would be a revelation to some of those who throw stones at the Caroline divines. It should not be forgotten that pamphlets and sermons, as well as Parliamentary speeches, had a real influence on the acquisition of such toleration as was secured. The chief force which worked for toleration was perhaps, in the long run, not the interaction of Presbyterian and Independent thinkers, nor the views of Churchmen, such as were shown in the Oxford opinions presented at the time of the treaty of Uxbridge, nor the supremacy of Cromwell, but the determined Erastianism of the Long Parliament. In other words, the claim made by Parliament to decide every religious matter for every class and every individual, to upset churches and replace them, to turn out ministers, to say what men should teach and what they should be paid for teaching, worked in the long run for toleration. This is the view of important historical writers. Perhaps it did, but, if so, it was very largely by the reaction that it caused.

Besides

Three strong influences, however, were at work. the deep-seated Erastianism of the age, conspicuous in the Long Parliament, and the rooted affection of the majority of Englishmen to the Church with her settled liturgy, was the indomitable individualism of Oliver Cromwell.

So far we have been dealing with general characteristics. We must now turn to consider the period in more detail.