Note XIV. But most in Martin's character and fate, The conclusion of the fable naturally introduces a discussion of the penal laws, which unquestionably were extremely severe towards Catholics. By the fourteenth of Queen Elizabeth, it was enacted, that whoever, by bulls of the pope, should reconcile any one to Rome, should, together with the person reconciled, be guilty of high treason; that those, who relieved such reconcilers, should be liable in the penalties of a premunire, and those who concealed them in misprision of treason. A still more severe law passed in the twenty-eighth of the same queen, upon discovery of Parry's conspiracy against her life, to which he had been stirred up by a book of Allen, or Parsons the Jesuit, written for the express purpose. It was thereby enacted, that all Jesuits and Popish priests should depart the kingdom within forty days; and that those who should afterwards return into the kingdom, should be guilty of high treason; and all who relieved and maintained them, of felony. There were other enactments of a similar nature made upon the discovery of the gun-powder plot. Samuel Johnson (I mean the divine) gives an odd justification of these laws, saying, that the priests are hanged, not as priests, but as traitors. But, as their being priests was the sole reason for their being held traitors, it does not appear, that the Protestant divine can avail himself of this distinction. Note XV. No church reformed can boast a blameless line, Or else an old fanatic author lies, Who summed their scandals up by centuries.-P. 218. The fanatic author is John White, commonly called Century White. He was born in Pembrokeshire in 1590, was educated for the bar, and made a considerable figure in his profession. As he was a rigid puritan, he was chosen one of the trustees which that sect appointed to purchase impropriations to be bestowed upon fanatic preachers. This design was checked by Archbishop Laud; and White, among others, received a severe censure in the Star-Chamber. In the Long Parliament, White was member for Southwark, and distinguished himself by his vindictive severity against the bishops and Episcopal clergy, saying openly in a com- mittee, he hoped to live to see the day, when there should be nei ther bishop nor cathedral priest in England. He was very active in the ejectment of the clergy, by which upwards of eight thousand churchinen are said to have lost their cures in the course of four or five years. In order to encourage and justify these violent measures, he published his famous treatise, entitled, "The First Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests, made and admitted into benefices by the Prelates, London, 1643;" a tract which contains, as may be inferred from its name, an hundred instances of unworthiness, which had been either proved to have existed among the clergy of the church of England, or had been invented to throw a slander upon them. When this satire was shown to Charles I., it was proposed to answer it by a similar exposition of the scandalous part of the puritanical teachers; but that monarch would not consent to give countenance to a warfare in which neither party could gain, and religion was sure to be a loser between them. Similar considerations are said to have prevented White himself from publishing "A Second Century," in continuation of his work. He wrote another tract, entitled, "The Looking Glass ;" in which he attempted to prove, that the sin against the Holy Ghost was the bearing arms for the king in the civil war. His own party bestow on White a high character for religion and virtue; but the cavaliers alleged, that although he had two wives of his own, a large proportion of matrimony, he did not forbear to visit three belonging to his neighbours in the White Friars. He died in January 1644, and is said, in his last illness, to have bitterly lamented the active share which he had taken in ejecting so many guiltless ministers, and their families. This, however, may be a fiction of the royalists; for the death-bed repentance of an enemy is amongst the most common forgeries of party. White's body was attended to the grave by most of the members of Parliament, and the following distich inscribed on his tomb: "Here lyeth a JOHN, a burning shining light, See Wood's Athena Oxonienses. Note XVI. The Lion, studious of our common good, To join our nations in a lasting love ; The bars betwixt are easy to remove, For sanguinary laws were never made above.-P. 218. When James II. ascended the throne, deceived by the general attachment of the church of England for his person, and the little jealousy which they seemed to entertain of his religion, he conceived there would be no great difficulty in procuring a reconciliation between the national church and that of Rome. With this view he made a favourable declaration of his intentions to maintain the church of England as by law established, and cer- . tainly expected, that, in return, they would consent to the repeal of the test act and penal laws; * and this, it was conceived, might pave the way for uniting the churches. An extraordinary pamphlet, already quoted, recommends such an union, founded upon the mutual attachment of both communions to King James, upon their success in resisting the Bill of Exclusion, and their common hatred of the dissenters. "This very stone, which was once rejected by the architects, is now become the chief stone in the corner. We may truly see in it the hand of God, and look upon it with admiration; and may expect, if fears and jealousies hinder not, the greatest blessings we can wish for. An union betwixt these two walls, which have been thus long separated, and now in a fair way to be united and linked together by this corner stone; after which, how glorious a structure may we hope for on such foundations!" A plan is therefore laid down, containing the following heads, of which it may be observed, that the very first is the abrogation of these penal laws, which Dryden states to be the principal bar between the alliance of the Hind and the Panther. "First, that it may be provided, That those who are known to be faithful friends to the king and kingdom's good, may equally with us enjoy those favours and blessings we may hope for under so great and so just a king, without being liable to the sanguinary penal laws, for holding opinions noways inconsistent with loyalty, and the peace and quiet of the nation; and that they may not be obliged, by oaths and tests, either to renounce their religion, which they know they cannot do without sacrilege, or else to put themselves out of capacity of serving their king and country. "Secondly, That, for healing our differences, it be appointed, that neither side, in their sermons, touch upon matters of controversy with animating reflections; but that those discourses may wholly tend to peace and piety, religion and sound morality; and that, in all public catechisms, the solid grounds and principles of religion may be solely explicated and established, all reflecting animosities being laid aside. "Thirdly, That some learned, devout, and sober persons, may be made choice of on both sides, who may truly state matters of controversy betwixt us; to the end, each one may know others pretensions, and the tenets they cannot abandon, without breaking So says the memorable" Test of the Church of England's Loyalty." the chain of apostolic faith; which, if it be done, we shall, it may be, find that to be true, which the Papists often tell us, that the difference betwixt them and us is not so great as many make it; nor their tenets so pernicious, but if we saw them naked, we should, if not embrace them as truths, yet not condemn them as errors, much less as pernicious doctrines. Yet if, notwithstanding all this, we cannot perfectly agree in some points, let us, however, endeavour to live together in the bonds of love and charity, as becomes good Christians and loyal subjects, and join together to oppugn those known maxims, and pernicious errors, which destroy the essence of religion, loyalty, and good government."---Remonstrance, by way of Address, to the Church of England, 1685. Note XVII. Yet still remember, that you wield a sword, Forged by your foes against your sovereign lord; Defraud succession, and dis-heir the crown.---P. 219. The Test-act was passed in the year 1678, while the popish plot was in its vigour, and the Earl of Shaftesbury was urging every point against the Catholics, with his eyes uniformly fixed upon the Bill of Exclusion as his crowning measure. It imposed on all who should sit in parliament, a declaration of their abhorrence of the doctrine of transubstantiation. The Duke of York, with tears in his eyes, moved for a proviso to exempt himself, protesting, that he cast himself upon the House in the greatest concern he could have in the world; and that whatever his religion might be, it should only be a private thing between God and his own soul. Notwithstanding this pathetic appeal, he carried his point but by two votes. With seven other peers he protested against the bill. Dryden therefore, and probably with great justice, represents this test as a part of his machinations against the Duke of York, whose party was at that time, and afterwards, warmly espoused by the church of England. But though the Testact was devised by a statesman whom they hated, and carried by a party whom they had opposed, the high-church clergy were not the less unwilling to part with it when they found the advantages which it gave them against the Papists in King James's reign. Hence they were loaded with the following reproaches: My business is to set forth, in its own colours, the extraordinary loyalty of those men, who obstinately maintain a test contrived by the faction to usher in the Bill of Exclusion: And it is much admired, even by some of her own children, that the grave and matron-like church of England, which values herself so much for her antiquity, should be over-fond of a new point of faith, lately broached by a 66 famous act of an infallible parliament, convened at Westminster, and guided by the holy spirit of Shaftesbury. But I doubt there are some parliaments in the world which will not so easily admit this new article into their creed, though the church of England labours so much to maintain it as a special evidence of her singular loyalty."-New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty. Note XVIII. The first reformers were a modest race; But now the sovereign mounts the regal chair, 66 And mitred seats are full, yet David's bench is bare.---P. 221. This passage regards the situation of the Roman Catholic peers. Notwithstanding their religion, they had been allowed to retain their seats and votes in the House of Lords. So jealous were they, (as was but natural,) of this privilege, that, in 1675, when Danby proposed a test oath upon all holding state employments and benefices, the object of which was to acknowledge the doctrine of non-resistance, and disown all attempts at an alteration of government, the Roman Catholic peers, to the number of twenty, who had hitherto always voted with the crown, united, on this occasion, with the opposition, and occasioned the loss of the bill. This North imputes to the art of Shaftesbury, who dinned into their ears, that this test (by mentioning the maintenance of the Protestant religion, though that of the royal authority was chiefly proposed) tended to deprive them of their right of voting, which was a birth-right so sacrosanct and radically inherent in the age, as not to be temerated on any account whatsoever." When the earl had heated the Catholic lords with this suggestion, he secured them to the opposition, by proposing, and carrying through, an order of the House, that no bill should be received, tending to deprive any of the peerage of their right. But when the Test-act of 1678 was moved, which had, for its direct purpose, that exclusion which that of 1675 was supposed only to convey by implication, Shaftesbury laughed at the order which he himself had proposed, saying, leges posteriores priores abrogant. And by this test, which required the renunciation of their religion as idolatrous, the Catholic peerage were effectually, and for ever, excluded from their seats in the House of Lords. Dryden intimates, in the following lines, that this test applied to the Papists alone, and complains heavily of this odious distinction, betwixt them and other non-conformists, peer |
