From The Quarterly Review. more resolute we are to act in their spirit, the more bound we are to hold ourselves Of the problems left by primitive Chris- free from being coerced by their outward tianity for future generations to solve, the form and bare letter. But this distinction widest, and if we may judge from experi- between the spirit and the letter, between ence the most perplexing, is the adapta- the immutable principle and the changeation of its principles to the various prov-ble expression of it in action and conduct, inces of human life and conduct. The is just that which is most difficult to be right application to these of the law of the drawn with precision and confidence. The kingdom of Heaven is certainly not among unenlightened fail to understand it, the the things which are revealed to babes. scrupulous stumble at it, the self-seeking In this field of action, mere conscientious-abuse it. Hence has sprung a plentiful ness or rectitude of intention is no sure crop of controversies, divisions, offences preservative from error. Mistakes, often against religion and society, by which the carrying with them the most disastrous ecclesiastical and civil orders have been consequences, even wrecking the useful- disturbed, to the great detriment both of ness of individuals and the peace of com- Church and State. munities, mark the historical course of the These reflections are suggested to us Church, and testify that only at the cost of by the biographical works named above, many futile experiments and pernicious which have recently revived attention to failures has progress in this practical sci- the almost forgotten sect of the Nonjurors. ence been achieved. The reason of this To every one whose judgment is not is not far to seek. Contrasted with Juda- warped by ecclesiastical prejudices it ism, and indeed with all other historical must, we think, by this time be tolerably religions, Christianity is not a system of clear that the schism, originated at the rigid precepts by which conduct can be Revolution of 1688 by the primate Saninfallibly guided, but a spirit, a principle, croft, and a small number of the bishops an inward law, aspiring to purify and reg- and clergy, had no other justification than alate the temper, the motives, and the one of those misapprehensions of the genaims, while it leaves their practical devel-ius of Christianity to which opments to be fashioned by the individual alluded. It would have been impossible judgment, after consideration of the cir- but for the strange notion that the Bible cumstances to be dealt with in each par- is a manual of practical politics, and deticular case. And since, in the course of fines for all ages the rights of monarchs ages and the vicissitudes of the social and the duties of their subjects. Such a order, the circumstances may vary almost misreading of Holy Writ surely ought not without limit, the habits and lines of con- to have been adopted by the heads of a duct which at one time are the most in Church, which had denied the right of the accordance with the Christian spirit, and mere letter of Biblical precepts and inrightly approve themselves to the con- stances to prevail against the dictates of science, may at another epoch wear the the moral judgment, by affirming in her very opposite aspect and frustrate the articles the lawfulness of oaths and mili ends which Christianity is intended to tary service and capital punishments, and promote. In scarcely any case, outside denouncing the communism in favor of the fundamental rules of morality, can which the Sermon on the Mount and the such precepts and examples as the sacred example of the primitive Christians had books of our religion contain be taken lit-been pleaded. Within such a Church no erally for an authoritative guide of con- room ought to have been found for the duct under all circumstances, without risk preposterous notions, that a rule of civil of falling into some grievous blunder. The polity binding in conscience on all Christians may be drawn from the first four chapters of Genesis, and that a perpetual charter of immunity for unbridled despotism may be based on St. Paul's precept, The Life and Writings of Charles Leslie, MA., Nonjuring Divine. By the Rev. R. J. Leslie. London, 1885. 2. William Law, Nonjuror and Mystic. By the Rev. J. H. Overton. London, 1881. we have enjoining on his converts obedience to the Roman government. its perpetuation by the appointment of successors to themselves. This, however, But during the preceding reigns circum- their devotion to the royal supremacy for. stances had betrayed the Anglican Church bade them to do without first obtaining the into the mistake of endeavoring to sanction of the legitimate monarch; and strengthen her position, by fathering on thus was produced the curious spectacle Scripture a doctrine which invested hered- of these prelates of the Reformed Church itary monarchs with an inviolable sacred- of England sending over the water, to ness, and prescribed to their subjects the obtain from a bigoted Papist the nomina. duty, under all provocations, of non-re- tion of the proposed new bishops of the sistance and passive obedience; and as schism. James, accordingly, after conmight have been expected, the whirligig sulting the heads of the Gallican hierarchy of time brought in its revenge. When at and the Vatican, directed two of the Nonlength the nation, in the exercise of its juring presbyters to be raised to the epissupreme right of self-preservation, saved copate. Hickes and Wagstaffe were itself from an intolerable tyranny by a selected for the doubtful honor, and were solemn and deliberate change of its ruler, consecrated by the suffragan titles of the Church was compelled to reconsider Thetford and Ipswich, but in such a holeher new political doctrine, and ascertain and-corner way that for a long time many whether with a good conscience she could of the Nonjurors themselves remained acquiesce in the change, and enjoy the ignorant of the fact. The sincerity of benefit which Providence had brought to Sancroft and his allies in carrying out her doors. With more than half the bish- their principles to this bitter end is not in ops, twenty-nine thirtieths of the clergy, question. It is their acknowledged consciand the laity in general, common sense entiousness that points our moral. What prevailed, aided no doubt by an instinctive could more forcibly show the blindness to repugnance to disturbance and self-sac- the spirit of Christianity which bondage rifice for the sake of an idea. Anyway, to the letter of Scripture may produce, with whatever differences of political than the fact that honest and earnestopinions and desires, there was an almost universal agreement that no sufficient ground existed for a breach between the Church and the State. To the primate, however, and a small minority of the bishops, it seemed otherwise. Unable to extricate themselves from the spurious doctrine, which made it a matter of conscience to refuse allegiance to the new occupants of the throne whom the nation had deliberately chosen, they were not content to retire, as they might easily have done, for the relief of their own consciences and for the peace of the Church; they judged it right to secede, and to set up themselves and their handful of adherents as the true Church of England. The Establishment, against which they shook off the dust of their feet, became hateful in their eyes, and was denounced by them as rebellious and apostate. To hold communion with it was regarded by them as sinful, and lest the separation should expire with their own deaths, they thought it incumbent on them to take measures for minded prelates, bent upon doing their duty at any personal sacrifice, could persuade themselves that they lay under an imperious obligation to risk the wrecking of the fortunes of the Church committed to their guidance, on a mere question of secular politics? We have here two remarks to make, to prevent misapprehension. In blaming the schismatic action of the Nonjuring prelates, we are not expressing any opinion on the decision of the legislature to impose on all holders of office, lay and ecclesiastical, an oath of allegiance to the new sovereigns. That Parliament was within its right in requiring this formal act of submission is beyond question; and the utmost consideration for tender consciences, supposing that there was to be an oath at all, was shown by prescribing a new form which left opinions free as to the title by which William and Mary sat on the throne. The previous oath, which implied the doctrine of hereditary right, was dropped, and the oath now imposed ran in this simpler form: "I do sincerely promise and swear to bear true allegiance to their Majesties King William and Queen Mary." The only questionable point is the policy of requiring an oath at all on the change of the dynasty, especially from the Anglican clergy, taking the peculiar circumstances into consideration. Hallam, in discussing the matter, comes to the conclusion that the reasons in favor of imposing the oath preponderated. But with that question, which is one of expediency, not of principle, we are not here concerned. The only matter we are dealing with is the action of the Nonjuring prelates, when the simple oath just cited, which pledged them to nothing but submission to the de facto sovereigns of the nation, was required of them by an undoubtedly competent authority. Our other remark is that the blame of the schism does not lie on all the bishops who felt themselves so bound by the doctrine of legitimacy, and by their previous oath of allegiance to James, as to be unable conscientiously to take the new oath. These were nine in number. But the act of the legislature, while requiring the oath to be taken generally before August 1st, 1689, gave to ecclesiastics a further indul- | gence of six months before actual deprivation took place in case of persistent refusal; and before this period had elapsed three of the recusant prelates died, leaving only six to decide on their future action. Of these six Frampton, Bishop of Gloucester, and Ken, of Bath and Wells, declined to be parties to setting up a separate sect; and thus Sancroft and three suffragans were the only prelates who were responsible for dividing the Church. Frampton's line of conduct after deprivation is thus sketched by Mr. Lathbury, the somewhat partial historian of the Nonjurors: Frampton never had a desire to continue the separation. He could not take the oath of allegiance, and was prepared to suffer the consequences; but beyond this he did not wish to proceed. As long as he was able, he attended the service of the parish church in which he resided. He frequently catechized the children in the afternoon, and expounded the sermon which had been preached by the parochial clergyman. Of the saintly Ken, also, it may be said that although he was a Nonjuror in fact, in temper and conduct he was widely separated from Sancroft and the more extreme members of the party. After the settlement of the crown he decided to take the new oath of allegiance, and began to draw up a pastoral letter to justify his action. But while he was writing, a fine-drawn scruple invaded his somewhat timid mind; and after vainly fighting against it he yielded, burnt the letter, and begged his friends to leave him alone, saying, that if, when the irrevocable step was once taken, he should be haunted by misgivings of its lawfulness, he should be a miserable man to the end of his days. His difficulty was to determine the point at which a legitimate sovereign forfeits by wrongdoing his claim to the allegiance of his subjects. That there is such a point he did not doubt, but whether James had reached it he could not feel certain; and to his tender conscience the doubt left no alternative but to retire, and make room for others who saw their way more clearly. He blamed no one who was bolder and more assured. If he did not go so far as to urge his friends to accept the oath, at least he rejoiced when they found them selves able to take it. Only for himself, for his own peace of mind, he felt it safer to exchange his station as a ruler of the Church for the privacy in which he could devote himself to the religious musings which he loved, and to the sacred hymnody by which his name has become a household word amongst all English-speaking Christians. It would have been better, perhaps, that he should have completed his self-abnegation by formally resigning his see, as he did a dozen years later on the appointment to it of a personal friend of his own by Queen Anne, and thus have freed his immediate successor's position from embarrassment. But his theory of "the independency of the clergy on the lay power" made him cling to the shadowy title of canonical bishop of the see, after his deprivation by the State; and as his successor, Bishop Kidder, belonged to the opposite party stigmatized as latitudinarian, Ken was the less disposed to make things easy for him. How strongly the ·66 ex-bishop felt about the spread of the Forced from my flock I daily saw, with tears, 66 the praise of being equal to the guidance of the English Church through revolutionary troubles, we could with much less qualification have held them in honor as sufferers for conscience' sake. It is then on Sancroft, and the three Bishops of Ely, Norwich, and Peterborough, that the burden of the schism rests. They could have prevented it altogether with a single word, but that word they would not speak. Had they magnanimously withdrawn their claims to their sees, when, in consequence of their refusal of the oath, the same power which had given them jurisdiction deprived them of it, no difficulty could have arisen about the canonical authority of their successors, and on the principles of the Nonjurors themselves no cause for secession Yet sore as Ken felt at first about the in- would have existed. The whole matter trusion of a successor into the diocese would have passed away with a few petuwhich he still deemed to be canonically lant abstentions from the Church's public his own, he never suffered this feeling to worship, or some ill-mannered gestures of lead him into any formal act of separation dissent while the prayers for the new sovfrom the national Church. To the conse-ereigns were read. Even had they simply cration of the two bishops - Hickes and Wagstaffe he refused to be a party: My judgment," he wrote, was always against it, and I have nothing to do with it, foreseeing that it would perpetuate a schism." As time ran on, he evidently grew dissatisfied with the Nonjuring position, and anxious to heal the breach. In 1700, in a letter to Hickes, he lamented the schism, "concerning which," he said, I have many years had ill-abodings," and suggested that, to restore peace to the Church, he and the other two survivors of the deprived bishops should resign. This suggestion being declined, three years afterwards, much against the wish of the party, he formally withdrew in favor of Hooper; and, on the death of the last of the other two, he openly expressed the wish that the breach might now be closed by the union of the seceders with the bishops in possession. Taking this saintly man altogether, it may be said that he was one of those beautiful souls which in quiet times shed lustre over the communions to which they belong, but are scarcely of the robuster stuff of which leaders are made for times of crisis and revolution. Bold to stand on their conscience, strong to suffer for a scruple, they fail through timidity when the times are out of joint, and new emergencies require the adoption of courses which depart from the wellworn groove of precedent. Had Sancroft, and the three prelates who followed his lead, been like Frampton and Ken, although we could not have awarded them 66 been silent, the worst that could have happened would have been an unorganized separation for the short time they had to live, instead of the hundred years of schism which their action entailed on the Church. It is for this action that we blame them, not for being scrupulously tender of their own consciences. With their antecedents they might not have been the right persons to govern the Church under the new dynasty; to make way for others might have been the better course. We would not for a moment deny that in critical epochs public men may sometimes feel themselves so deeply committed to certain views or lines of conduct, as to be morally disqualified for taking the lead in a change of front, even though circumstances convince them of its expediency. Hampered by their past, enfeebled by a dread of inconsistency, held back by scruples arising out of previous engagements, they may be pardoned, perhaps even praised, if they consider it right to resign the lead to others who have no such entanglements to break through. But a plea of this kind, available though it be to exonerate the Nonjuring prelates for incurring deprivation, is not broad enough to cover their schismatic action. To justify this, it was not sufficient to impugn the title of William and Mary; what needed to be proved was that the national Church, by acquiescing in the Revolution, had departed from the faith, or violated the divine ecclesiastical order, to such a degree as to render communion with it 1 unlawful for a Christian. But to prove that was impossible. No verse of Scripture, no tradition of the fathers, no decree of council or synod, could be cited to that effect; in faith and order the Church remained exactly what it had been. This argument was very forcibly put by the learned Stillingfleet in a sermon which he wrote for the thanksgiving day in 1694, but was prevented by illness from preaching: I would have them consider [he says] whether there hath ever been so groundless and unreasonable a separation as they have been guilty of. I mean as to two things: i. On account of those bishops who refused to act when they were permitted and invited so to do, according to the principles of religion owned by themselves. Nothing required of them contrary to Scripture, Fathers, and Councils, or the Articles of our Church; nothing but what the law required as a security to the present government; and, if their consciences were not satisfied as to the giving of that, they might have retired and lived quietly. But why a separation? Where is there any precedent of this kind in the whole Christian Church? viz., of a political schism, where all the offices of religion are the same; only some are deprived for not doing what the law of the land requires; ..., they rather chose to lose their places than to do their duties; which is a very new ground of separation and utterly unknown to the Christian Church. ii. As to the public offices of the Church with respect to their Majesties, I can find no one instance in the Greek or Latin Church, where these were scrupled to be used with respect to those who were in actual possession of the throne by the providence of God, and consent of the people. It was a saying of Samuel Johnson's, that, "with the exception of Leslie, the Nonjurors could not reason.' Certain it is that the conduct of their leaders bristled with inconsistencies. They were continually straining out the gnat while they swallowed the camel. Non-resistance to the hereditary monarch was their fundamental principle, their sacred "doctrine of the cross; "" yet they were willing to accept the Prince of Orange as an armed mediator between James and the nation, and to assent to the forcible transfer of the whole regal power to William with the title of regent. Their consciences allowed them to obey William, but forbade them to recognize him. They denied his right to exercise the royal prerogatives, yet they accepted his nomination of Burnet to be Bishop of Salisbury. They acknowledged the force of St. Paul's precept to pray for all who are in authority; and at the same time declared that a second absolu tion was needed at the end of the Church's service, to absolve the worshippers from the guilt contracted by joining in the petitions for the welfare of the actual sovereigns, William and Mary. They had accepted their diocesan jurisdiction from the civil power, and they denied the competency of the same power to withdraw it from them. They had entered on their sees under an oath imposed by the legis lature, and they protested against the right of the legislature to require them to swear. They condemned the oath of allegiance to William and Mary as sinful, and empowered their commissaries to administer it when giving institution to benefices. They took their stand on the Church's political teaching, and repudiated the practice of the Church in the Apostolic themselves about the title of the Cæsar age, when Christians never concerned who happened to reign, but recognized each in turn, and even several at once when rivals seized the power in different provinces of the Empire. Such inconsistencies were the nemesis of the Nonjurors' impracticable doctrine, and betrayed the intrinsic weakness of the cause for the sake of which their learning, piety, and fidelity to conscience, were lost to the Church and turned to her hurt. Seceding bodies have a tendency to further disintegration, and the Nonjuring party was no exception to the rule. The opening of the year 1710 brought its first crisis, and happily saw the reconciliation of its more moderate and thoughtful members to the Church of their fathers. It is instructive to notice the plea by which this abandonment of their position was justified by them. Dodwell, their leader, though a layman, had maintained the necessity of the original secession on the single ground that the deprived bishops "our invalidly deprived fathers" as he used to designate them-not having been canonically deposed continued to be the canonical bishops of their respective sees, and consequently that the bishops actually in possession were schismatical intruders. So long as a single see remained in this. predicament, he held that the entire national Church, being in communion with the schismatical intruder, was schismatical by contagion, and the communion with it continued to be unlawful. But the suc cessive deaths of Sancroft and his deprived suffragans released one see after another from the category of sees capable of communicating the contagion of schism; and when, on January 1, 1710, Lloyd, the exBishop of Norwich, died, Ken was the |