Hale was the proposer of the motion, and that his elevation to the Bench at this crisis was in order to detach him from the promoters of Comprehension in the House of Commons. Lord Clarendon writes that the King was very glad that his Declaration had not been converted into an Act of Parliament. The Savoy Conference, and a new Parliament which speedily passed the Act of Uniformity, dissipated, during Clarendon's administration, all hopes of a Comprehension. In December, 1667, Clarendon, the most powerful and able foe ever opposed to the Dissenters, was banished. The Parliament which passed the Act of Banishment had been adjourned from the 19th of December, 1667 to the 10th of February, 1668. In the recess an attempt at a Comprehension was set on foot by the Duke of Buckingham, then Charles's principal Minister; and who, with all his faults, was, throughout the reign of Charles, a friend to religious liberty. Baxter, in his Memoirs of Sir M. Hale, gives the following account of this transaction. He states that Lord Keeper Bridgman invited himself, and Dr Manton and Dr Bates (who had refused Deaneries from Charles II.) to meet Bishop Wilkins with Dr Burton, Chaplain to Sir O. Bridgman, and rector of St George's Southwark, about "the terms of reconciliation and restoration to our ministerial liberty," and that "after some days conference, we came to agreement in all things as to the necessary terms. And because Dr Wilkins and I had especial intimacy with Judge Hale, we desired him to draw it up in the form of an Act, which he willingly did, and we agreed to every word. But it pleased the House of Commons, upon hearing of it, to begin their next Sessions with a vote, that no such Bill should be brought in, and so it died." Baxter further writes, that Sir Matthew Hale "much lamented that so many worthy ministers were silenced, the Church weakened, Papists strengthened, the cause of love and piety greatly wronged and hindered by the present differences about conformity. And he told me his judgment, that the only means to heal us was, a new Act of Uniformity, which should neither leave all at liberty, nor impose any thing unnecessary.” Among numerous instances of an un-comprehending spirit in the reign of Charles II., may be mentioned the circumstance that Dr Whitby, precentor of Sarum, published a Book, entitled the Protestant Reconciler, which purported to be a treatise "humbly pleading for condescension to dissenting brethren in things indifferent and unnecessary, for the sake of peace, and shewing how unreasonable it is to make such things the essential conditions of communion." Such high offence did this publication give, that the University of Oxford ordered it to be burnt in a quadrangle, by the hands of the Marshal. The Author, who was Chaplain to Dr Seth Ward, was obliged by him to make a public recantation; to seal his peace he added a second part to his work, "earnestly persuading the dissenting laity to join in full communion with the Church of England." Much that has been advanced concerning the practicability of a religious comprehension in the reign of Charles II., is not to be understood of an universality of comprehension, including all or even all the leading sects of Dissenters within the same fold. The only religious Sect in the reign of Charles II. that aimed at a Comprehension was that of the Presbyterians. If not, perhaps, the most numerous sect of Dissenters, they were the most wealthy, the best educated, and possessing the greatest influence. They had governed England ecclesiastically by their Classical, Provincial and National Synods; though, latterly, the Independents, who regarded each Church as subject only to its own government, under their renowned leaders Cromwell and Vane had won political power, and in spite of the established Directory, enjoyed their own forms of public worship through a great part of England. The Independents and a multitude of other religious sects resembling the Independents in their discipline, together with the Roman Catholics, were solicitous about toleration, not comprehension. In their aims at toleration. they were desirous of having the Presbyterians for fellowsufferers, which that Sect would cease to have been the moment they were admitted to a comprehension. Moreover experience had shewn that the Presbyterians, if they became parcel of the established Church, were likely to have been numbered among the most bigoted and intolerant of its members, and from being fellow-sufferers interested in procuring toleration, would have been converted into persecutors assiduous to trample upon it1. The Presbyterians and their classical Synods, and the circumstance of their temporary domination, are the subject of several witty and wise dialogues between the presbyterian Knight Sir Hudibras and his independent Squire Ralpho; they are thus alluded to by Dryden, in his poem of the Hind and Panther: More haughty than the rest, the wolfish race His ragged tail betwixt his legs he wears, Close clapped for shame; but his rough crest he rears, And pricks up his predestinating ears. His wild disordered walk, his haggard eyes Did all the bestial citizens surprise. Though fear'd and hated, yet he ruľd a while 1 The following Sects are mentioned by Fox, as in existence at the Restoration: Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, Quakers, Seekers, Socinians, Brownists, Familists, Ranters, Muggletonians; and Fifth-monarchy-men. 2 Chief Justice Jeffreys thus expressed his opinion of Presbyterians, on the trial of Lady Lisle: "I will tell you, there is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting, Presbyterian rascals, but one way or other had a hand in the late horrid conspiracy and rebellion. Their principles carry them to it. Presbytery has all manner of villany in it. Nothing but Presbytery could bid that fellow Dunne to tell all the lies he has done; for shew me a Presbyterian, and I will engage to shew you a lying knave." It is stated by Burnet as the opinion of Sir Matthew Hale, "that those of the separation were good men, but they had narrow souls, who would break the peace of the Church about such inconsiderable matters as were the points of difference." Thus, according to the high authority of the liberal Hale, the Dissenters of the reign of Charles II. were, in a great measure, self-exclusionists. It may be observed, also, that after the ejections of St Bartholomew's day were over whereby Ministers were deprived of benefices in their actual possession, any breaking down or lowering of the barriers of Conformity would not have afforded a passport to parish pulpits without Court favour or private patronage. Thus, in the time of Charles II., few dissenting ministers, had they not been excluded from benefices by the Act of Uniformity, could have found an entrance into them through any of the doors mentioned by Lord Coke: Quatuor Ecclesias portis intratur in omnes. Cæsaris, et Simonis, sanguinis, atque Dei. CHAPTER V. LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE. LACKSTONE'S dogma that "by the law, as it stood in BLACKST the reign of Charles the Second, the People had as large a portion of real liberty as is consistent with a state of Society," is altered, in Serjeant Stephen's edition of the Commentaries, into one of smaller pretension, viz. "The People had a larger portion of real liberty than they had enjoyed in this country since the Norman Conquest." The learned Serjeant observes, in a note, that “the truth of Blackstone's proposition carried to its full extent, may be doubted; particularly if it be intended to include religious liberty." Mr Warren, in the most recent edition of Blackstone, leaves the great Commentator in the undisturbed enjoyment of his dogma. The subject will be considered under the following heads: I. Religious Penalties. II. Religious Disabilities; and, herein, of (a) The Corporation Act. (b) The Test Act. (c) The Parliamentary Test. III. Opinions in the era of Charles II. on the subject of Religious Toleration. I. Religious Penalties. The Popish Plot affords, in the trials of the persons accused of it, flagrant instances of religious persecution wielded under the guise of law. A question, however, may arise concerning those trials, how far they exhibit imperfections in the Constitution, in regard to liberty of conscience, or are rather, to use Blackstone's expressions, examples of "practical oppression” not incompatible with perfection of law. |