The Bible, intrepreted in the spirit of the early continential Reformers, was held by the Puritans to be the only valid source from which doctrine, liturgy, church polity, and personal religion should be constructed. The spread of biblical theology was seen as the only way to halt the advance of the Antichrist (The Roman Catholic Pope). Bible reading in the home from the annotated Geneva Bible was encouraged. So also was weekly biblical preaching from parish pulpits and catechizing of parishioners in their homes. Various schemes were developed and executed to train more preaching ministers (for example, the founding of Emmanuel College, Cambridge). From John Hooper (died 1555) they received a determined conviction that Scripture should regulate ecclesiatical structure and personal behavior alike.
The history of Puritanism may be divided into three periods:
(1)
from the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1559 to the crushing
of the Presbyterian movement by her in 1592;
(2)
from 1592 to the calling of the Long Parliament in 1640; and
(3)
from 1640 to the restoration of Charles II in 1660.
Queen Elizabeth at the beginning of her reign attempted to develope a broad, national, comprehensive church sufficiently "reformed". She had rejected the authority of Pope over the English church. But the church in its officers and services resembled the older church as fully as Protestant senitiment would tolerate. All but a fragment of its parish clergy conformed, and Elizabeth was pleased to leave them alone undisturbed in their parishes, provided they remained quiet. But faced with this Puritan division in religious belief and practice, Elizabeth became implacably hostile to the Puritan movement.
Presbyterianism.
Certain clerical Puritans also wanted to reform the polity of the church
along the presbyterian lines, but Elizabeth would have none of this. Among
the men who had learned in Reformed centers on the continent that any worship
for which Biblical warrant could not be found is an insult to the divine
Majesty, there were those that concluded that an ecclesiatical system which
deposed minsters who refused to use vestments and ceremonies not capable of
Scriptural demonstration, was not that which God intended for His church.
As some of these Puritans read their New Testament through Genevan
spectacles, they saw a definite pattern of church government quite unlike
that existing in England; in the New Testament the effective discipline was
maintained by elders, ministers were in office with the consent of the
congregation, and that there was an essential spiritual parity between those,
whom, as Calvin said, the Scriptures in describing them as "bishops,
presbyters, and pastors", "use the words as synonymous." (Institutes,
4:3, 8). It was the same conviction as to the essential equality of those in
spiritual office that was used by Scottish Presbyterianism in its long fight
with "prelacy".
The representative and leader of this development within Puritanism was Thomas Cartwright (1535?-1603). As Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge University in 1569, he advocated the appointment of elders for discipline in each parish, the election of pastors by their people, the abolition of such offices of archbishops and archdeacons, and the reduction of clergy to essential parity. That was practical Presbyterianism, and more radical Puritans moved henceforth in the Presbyterian direction. Cartwright's arguments aroused the opposition of the man who was to be the chief enemy of the Puritans, John Whitgift (1530-1604). Against Cartwright's assertion of jure divino Prebyterianism, Whitgift was far from asserting a similar authority for episcopacy. To him it was the best form of church government, but he denied that any exact pattern of church government is laid down in the Scripures, and affirmed that much is left to the judgment of the church. The changes advocated by Cartwright were presented in an extreme but popularly effective pamphlet entitled An Admonition to the Parliament, written by two London ministers, John Field (?-1588) and Thomas Wilcox (1549?-1608), in 1572. Whitgift replied to it, and was answered in turn, by Cartwright. In 1572, Whitgift was able to have Cartwright, who had been removed from his professorship nearly two years before, finally deprive him of his fellowship also. Cartwright thenceforth lived a wandering and persecuted life, much of the time on the Continent, laboring indefatigably to further Presbyterian Puritan cause.
Some Puritans were more moderate than Cartwright, and believed that relatively little alteration of the existing churchly constitution was required. The obnoxious ceremonies could be discarded, the Prayer Book revised, elders instituted in parishes, and bishops preserved as presiding officers of the churches of each diocese organized as a synod, primi inter pares. But the Presbyterianism was growing, and in the 1570's various Presbyterian experiments were attempted within the framework of the Established Church. Meetings of ministers and devout laymen for preaching and discussion, called "prophesyings", were undertaken. The Presbyteran position was advanced by the publication in 1574 of A Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesiactical Discipline by a former Cambridge scholar, Walter Travers (1548?-1583). All this was aided by the succession to the archbishopric of Cambridge, on the death of Parker in 1576, of Edmund Grindal (1519?-1583), who sympathized with the Puritans and was suspended for his conscientious objections to the Queen's orders to forbid prophesying.
Separatists.
Cartwright and his fellow Puritans opposed all separation from the Church
of England. Their thought was to introduce as much of Puritan discipline and
and practice as possible, and wait for further reformation by the government.
Such a hope was not seem to be vain. Within the previous generation, the
constitution and worship of the church of the land had been four times
altered. Might it not soon be changed a fifth time into what the Puritan
deemed a more Scriptural model? They would agitate and wait. This remained
the program of the Puritans in general.
But there were some to whom the delay seemed unjustifiable. They wanted to establish what they considered to be Scripural at once. These Puritans were called Separatists, among whom were proponents of congregational polity. On July 19, 1567. the authorities in London seized and imprisoned some of the members of such a separatists congregation, assembled for worship ostensibly to cellebrate a wedding. This group believed that it could no longer freely follow the Word of God within the framework of the Church of England, and had chosen its own officers, with Richard Fitz as minister. Besides this "Plumber's Hall" group, there were other non-conformist bodies, but in the early Puritan period separatist activities were of fugitive and occasional character.
The first really conspicuous advocate of Separatist views in England was Robert Browne (1550-1633), a student at Cambridge in the troublous times of Cartwright's brief professorship, and a graduate from there in 1572. At first an advanced Presbyterian Puritan, he came to adopt Separatist principles by about 1580, and in connection with a friend, Robert Harrison, founded an independent gathered congregation in Norwich in 1581. As a result of his preaching, he found himself several times in prison. He and a majority of his congregation sought safety in Middleburg, in the Netherlands. Here in Middleburg Browne had printed, in 1582, a substantial volume containing three treatises. One was directed against the Puritans who would remain in Church of England; another which pictured the true church as composed of believers gathered together of their own volition. According to Browne, the only church is a local body experiental believers in Christ, united to Him and to one another by a voluntary covenant. Such a church has Christ as its immediate head, and is ruled by officers and laws of His appointment. Each is self-governing and chooses a pastor, a teacher, elders, deacons, and widows, whom the New Testament designates; but each member has responsibility for the welfare of the whole. No church has authority over any other, but each owes to other brotherly helpfulness.
Browne's congregational approach resembles Anabaptist views at certain points. But there was no organized Anabaptist effort in England until the next century. Browne showed not conscious indebtedness to the Anabaptists, nor did he reject infant baptism. English separatism arose out of the Puritan movement chiefly. Browne did not remain its champion very long. His stay in Holland was brief. His church was turbulent and after a period in Scotland he returned to England, where he conformed, outwardly at least, to the Established Church in October, 1585, and spent his long remaining life, from 1591 to 1633, in its ministry.
Under Grindal's archbishopric many of the main body of Puritan ministers, who remained within the Established Church, ceased to use the Prayer Book in whole or part. Stress was placed on the establishment of "Holy Discipline"; Walter Travers prepared a second work on this theme as a guide for Puritan practice. But Grindal was succeeded from 1583 to 1604, in the see of Canterbury by Whitgift. A Calvinist in theology, he was a marinet in discipline, and this had the hearty support of the Queen, who was hostile to the Puritans. He promptly issued articles of enjoining full approval and use of the Prayer Book, prescribing clerical dress, and forbidding all private religious meetings. From then on the heavy hand of repression rested heavily on the Puritans. This hostility was embittered by the secret publication of a telling satire the bishop, coarse and unfair, but extremely witty and exasperating, plainly of Puritan origin, though disliked by the Puritans generally. Issued in 1588-1589, and known as the "Martin Marprelate Tracts," their authorship has never been full ascertained, though probabilities point to Job Throckmorton (1545-1601), a Puritan layman.
Anglican opposition.
The Puritan and Separatist assertion of the divine character of their
systems caused a rapid change of attitude of their opponents, the
Anglicans. In his sermon at Paul's Cross, in London, in 1589,
Richard Bancroft (1544-1610), who was to be Whitgift's successor as
archbishop, not merely denounced Puritanism, but affirmed a jure divino
right for episcopacy. Adrian Saravia (1531-1613), a Walloon theologian
domiciled in England, advocated the same view a year later, as did Thomas
Bilson (1547-1616), soon to be bishop of Winchester, in his Perpetual
Government of Christ's Church, in 1593. Less extreme was the learned
Richard Hooker (1553?-1600), in his Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity, of 1594 and 1597. He believed that the episcopacy was grounded
in Scripture, but his chief argument in its favor was its essential
reasonableness, over against the extreme Biblicism of the Puritans.
The foundation of a high-church party had been laid.
The closing years of the reign of Elizabeth also saw the beginning of a reaction against the dominant Calvinism. By 1595 a controversy broke out at Cambridge, where Peter Baro (1534-1599) had been advocating the liberal doctrines of Arminius. This discussion led to the publication, under Whitgift's auspices, of the strongly Calvinistic "Lambeth Articles"; but the tendency to criticise Calvinism, thus started, increased, and thorough opposition to Puritanism was to become more and more characteristic of the Anglican party. The long reign of Queen Elizabeth ended on March 24, 1603.
James I.
Elizabeth was succeeded by James I (1603-1625), the son of Mary
"Queen of Scots". He had already held the Scottish throne since 1567 as James
VI. All religious parties in England looked with hope to his accession, the
Catholics because of his parentage, the Presbyterian Puritans because of his
Presbyterian education, and the Anglicans on account of his high conception of
divine rights and his hostility to Presbyterian rule, which had developed in
his long struggles to maintain the power of the crown in Scotland. Only the
Anglicans read his character correctly. "No Bishop, No King", was his favorite
expression. In claim and action he was no more arbitrary than Elizabeth, but
the country would bear much from a popular and admired ruler which it resented
from a disliked, undignified, and unrepresentative sovereign. On his way to
London, in April, 1603, the King was presented with the "Millenary Petition",
so-called because it professed to represent a thousand Englishmen, though no
signatures were attached. It was a very moderate statement of the Puritan
desires. As a consequence, a conference was held at Hampton Court (January,
1604) between bishops and Puritans, in the royal presence. The leading
Anglican disputant, besides the King himself, was Bancroft, now bishop of
London. No changes of importance desired by the Puritans were granted,
except a new translation of the Bible, which resulted in the "Authorized"
or "King James Version" of 1611. The Puritans were ordered to conform.
After James I made it clear at the Hampton Court Conference that he did not intend to make any major changes in English Church, the Puritans -- especially the ministers -- faced a real problem. Many compromised to the extent that they gave a minimum conformity and then used the parish as a center of evangelism by means of preaching and catechizing. Others became lecturers and preached on market days and on other agreed upon times, being financially supported by voluntary gifts, not tithes. Yet others became Separatists founding their own churches; some of these were forced to go to Holland and to New England (for example, the Pilgrim Fathers). After 1630 there was a large exodus of Puritans to Massachusetts, where they sought to create a purified Church of England, as an example for the homeland.
The Anglican victory at Hampton Court Conference was followed by the enactment by convocation, with royal approval, in 1604, of series of canons elevating into church law many of the declarations and practices against which the Puritans objected. Here the leading spirit was Bancroft, who was to succeed Whitgift in the see of Canterbury (1604-1610). Now the Puritans were thoroughly alarmed, but Bancroft was more considerate in government than his declarations and previous conduct would have suggested, and only a relative small number of ministers were deprived. Anglicanism was gaining in strength from a gradual improvement in the education and zeal of the clergy, which Whitgift and Bancroft did much to foster; a conspicuous example was the learned, saintly, and eloquent Lancelot Andrews (1555-1626), who became bishop of Chichester in 1605.
Bancroft's successor as archbishop was George Abbot (1611-1633), a man of narrow sympathies and strong Calvinism, unpopular with masses of the clergy, and himself in practical disgrace in the latter part of his episcopate. The loss of such strong hands as those of Whitgift and Bancroft was felt by the Anglicans, and under these circumstances, not only Purianism but Separatism made decided progress.
Under Abbot's less vigorous government of the Established Church, Puritanism was developing its "lectureships", the successor to the old-time "prophesyings". In parishes where the legal incumbent was hostile, or unwilling, or unable to preach, Puritan money was financing afternoon preachers of strongly Puritan cast. This was a time-tested Puritan device to allow preachers who could not conscientiously administer the sacraments in the prescribed manner to proclaim their message. Puritanism had always laid stress on a strict observance of Sunday, and its Sabbatarian tendencies was augmented by the publication in 1595 by Nicholas Bownde (?-1613) of his Doctrine of the Sabbath, which urged the perpetuity of the fourth commandment in Jewish rigor. Therefore, much Puritan hostility was roused (and that of Archbishop Abbot also) when King James I issued his famous Book of Sports in 1618, in which he commended the old popular games and dances for Sunday observance. To the Puritans it seemed to be a royal command to disobey the will of God. The growth of Puritanism was further stimulated by political considerations. The King's arbitrary treatment of Parliament, his failure to support effectively the hard-pressed Protestants of Germany in the opening struggles of the Thirty Year's War, and above all, his ultimately unsuccessful attempts to procure marriage with a Spanish princess for his heir, were increasingly resented, and drove Commons into a steadily growing political sympathy with Puritanism, all the more as the Anglicans were identified largely with royal policies. By the end of his reign, in 1625, the outlook was ominous.
But James's policy in his northern kingdom of Scotland was troublesome. During James's childhood, the Regent Morton, in 1572, had secured the nominal perpetuation of the episcopate largely as a means of getting pssession of church lands. Thus there were bishops in name only in Scotland. Their power was slight. In 1581, under the lead of Andrew Melville, the General Assembly had given full authority to presbyteries as ecclesiastical courts, and ratified the Presbyterian Second Book of Discipline. In spite of James's opposition, the King and the Scottish Parliament had been forced to recognized the Presbyterian system as established by law in 1592.
Yet James was determined to substitute a royally controlled episcopacy for this largely self-governing Presbyterianism. He had the means at hand in the nominal bishops. By 1597 he was strong enough to insist that he alone had the right to call general assemblies, and his encroachments on Presbyterianism steadily grew. Melville and other leaders were exiled. The year 1610 saw a strong royal advance. James established two high commission courts for ecclesiastical cases in Scotland, similar to that in England, and each with an archbishop at its head; and he procured from the English bishops episcopal consecration and apostolical succession for the hitherto irregular Scottish episcopate. In 1612, a packed Parliament completed the process by giving full diocesian jurisdiction to these bishops. Thus far there had been no changes in worship, but nine years later the King forced through a cowed General Assembly, and then through Parliament, provisions for kneeling at communion, confirmation by episcopal hands, the observance of the great church festivals, private communion and private baptism. Scotland was seething with religious discontent when James died.
Charles I.
James I was succeeded, in England and Scotland, by his son Charles I
(1625-1649). A man of more personal dignity than his father, of family
life, and of sincere religion, he was quite as exalted as James in his
conception of the divine right of Kings, arbitrary in his actions, and
with no capacity to understand the drift of public sentiment. He was also
marked by a weakness that easily laid him open to charges of double-dealing
and dishonesty. From the first he enjoyed the friendship and support of
one of the most remarkable men of the time, William Laud (1573-1645).
Laud had been, under James, a leader among the younger Anglicans. As a vigorous opponent of Calvinism, he had argued as early as 1604 "that there be no true church without bishops." In 1622, in contest with the Jesuit, Fisher, he had held that the Roman Church was a true church, and a branch of the Catholic Church universal, of which the Church of England was the purest part. In many respects he was a pioneer of what was later known as the Anglo-Catholic tradition, but it is not surprising that both the Puritans and Roman authorities, to whom such views were then novel, believed him to be a Roman Catholic at heart. Twice he was offered a cardinalate. But so to class him was not fair to his true position. Laud was intent upon uniformity in ceremony, dress, and worship. He was industrious and conscientious, but with a rough tongue and overbearing manner that made him many enemies. To the Puritans, he became a symbol of everything they hated. At the bottom, with all the narrowness of sympathy, he had a real piety of the type, though not of the winsomeness, of Lancelot Andrewes. In 1628 King Charles made Laud bishop of the strongly Puritan diocese of London, and in 1633 archbishop of Canterbury. To all intents he was Charles's chief adviser also in political affairs after the murder of the Duke of Buckingham in 1628.
The country gentry, who formed the backbone of the House of Commons, were strongly Calvinistic in their sympathies, and disposed politically to resent the imposition of taxes without parliamentary consent. Charles soon put himself in disfavor in both respects. Under Laud's guidance he promoted Arminians to church preferments. To prevent Calvinistic discussion, in 1628 he caused a declaration to be prefixed to the Thirty-nine Articles, that no one shall "put his own sense" on any Article, "but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense." Parliament resented these actions. Charles has proceeded to forced taxation, imprisoning some who refused to pay, Roger Manwaring (1590-1653), royal chaplain, argued that as the King ruled as God's representative, those who refused taxes imposed by him were in peril of damination. Parliament condemned Manwaring, in 1628, to fine and imprisonment, but Charles protected him by pardon and rewarded him by ecclesiastical advancement, ultimately by a bishopric. Questions of royal right to imprison without statement of cause, and of taxation, as well as of religion, embittered the relations of King and Parliament, and after dismissing the Parliament of 1629, Charles determined to rule without parliamentary aid. No Parliament was to meet until 1640. The weakness of the Anglican party was that it had identified itself with the arbitrary policy of the King.
Laud, with the support of the King, enforced conformity with a heavy hand. Lecturships were broken up. Puritan preachers were silenced. The Book of Sports was reissued. Under these circumstances, many Puritans began to dispair of the religious and political situation, and planned to migrate to America. By 1628, emigration to Massachusetts began. In 1629, a royal charter for Massachusetts was secured, and a church formed in Salem. The year of 1630 saw the arrival of many immigrants under the leadership of John Winthrop (1588-1649). Soon there were strong churches about Massachusetts Bay, under able ministerial leaders, of whom John Cotton (1584-1652) of Boston, and Richard Mather (1596-1669) of Dorchester, were the most conspicuous. The Connecticut colony was founded in 1636, with Thomas Hooker (1586-1647) as its chief minister at Hartford; and the New Haven colony in 1638 under the spiritual guidance of John Davenport (1597-1670). These men were clergy of the English establishment. They had no fondness for Separatism. But as staunch Puritans, they looked on the Bible as the law of church organization, and firmly believed that it taught Congregational polity. They were able to do in New England what their fellow non-separatist Congregationalists longed for in old England; they set up their Congregational system under the law of the state as the established church. Until 1640, the Puritan tide in New England ran full, at least twenty thousand crossing the Atlantic.
Charles's period of rule without Parliament was a time of considerable prosperity in England, but taxes widely believed to be illegal, such as the famous "ship money," and enforced religious uniformity, kept up the unrest. But it was in Scotland that the storm broke. James I had succeeded in his overthrow of Presbyterianism largely by securing the support of the nobles by grants of church lands. At the beginning of his reign Charles, by an act of revocation that was just, though impolitic, ordered the restoration of these lands, to the lasting advantage of the Scottish church, though the command was imperfectly executed. But its political effect was to throw the possessors of church lands and tithes largely on the side of the discontented Presbyterians. There was now a relatively united Scotland, instead of the divisions which James had formented to his profit.
As great as were the changes effected by James I, Charles had not dared to alter the larger features of worship. But now, in 1637, in a fatuous desire for uniformity, Charles, inspired by Laud, ordered the imposition of a liturgy which was essentially that of the Church of England. Its use, on July 23, in Edinburgh, led to riot. Scotland flared in opposition. In February, 1638, a National Covenant to defend the true religion was widely signed. In December, the General Assembly deposed the bishops, and repudiated the whole ecclesiatical structure which James and Charles had erected. This was rebellion, and Charles raised forces to suppress it. So formidable was the Scottish attitude that an agreement patched up a truce in 1639; but in 1640 Charles determined to bring the Scots to terms. To pay the expenses of the war in prospect, Charles was at last compelled to call an English Parliament in April, 1640. The old parliamentary grievances in politics and religion were at once presented, and Charles speedily dissolved the "Short Parliament". But in the brief war that followed, the Scots successfully invaded England. Charles was forced to guarantee the expenses of a Scottish army of occupation until the treaty should be completed. And of course, the English Parliament had to be summoned again, and in November, 1640, the "Long Parliament" began its work. It was evident at once that Presbyterian Puritanism was in the majority. Laud was cast into prison. In July, 1641, the High Commission was abolished. In January, 1642, the attempt of the King to seize five members of the Commons, whom he accussed of treason, led finally to the outbreak of civil war. In general, the North and West stood for the King, and the South and East stood for Parliament.
The Westminster Assembly.
Parliament passed an act early in 1643 which abolished episcopacy before
the year was out. Provision had to be made for the creed and the government
of the church, and therefore Parliament called an assembly of one hundred
and twenty-one clergymen and thirty laymen, named by it, to meet in Westminster
on July 1, 1643, to advise Parliament, which kept the power of enactment in
their own hands. The Westminster Assembly, thus convened, contained a
few Congregationalists and Episcopalians, but its overwhelming majority was
Presbyterian Puritan. Meanwhile, the war had begun badly for Parliament,
and to secure Scottish aid, the Solemn League and Covenant, pledging the
largest possibile uniformity of religion in England, Scotland, and Ireland,
and opposing "prelacy", was accepted by Parliament in Septmeber, 1643, and
was soon imposed on all Englishmen over eighteen years of age. Scottish
comissioners, without vote, but with much influence, now sat in the Westminster
Assembly. The Assembly presented to Parliament a Directory of Worship
and a throughly Presbyterian system of church government in 1644. In
following January, Parliament abolished the Prayer Book and substituted the
Directory, which provided an order of worship substantially that used
in conservative Presbyterian and Congregational Churches for generations.
It struck a balance between a prescribed liturgy and extemporaneous prayer.
Parliament was hesitant to establish Presbyterian government, but finally
ordered it in part in 1646 and 1647. But the work was very imperfectly set
in operation. In January, 1645, Laud was executed under a bill of attainer --
an act which must be judged as vindictiveness. The Assembly next prepared
its famous confession, which it laid before Parliament late in 1646. Adopted
by the General Assembly of Scotland on August 27, 1647, it remains the basic
standard of Scottish and American Presbyterianism. The English Parliament
refused approval until June, 1648, and then modified some sections. In 1647,
the Assembly completed two catechisms, a Larger, for pulpit exposition, and
a Shorter, primarly for the training of children.
The Westminster Confession and catechisms, especially the Shorter, have been considered as among the most notable expositions of Calvinism. In general, they repeat the familar continental type. On the question of divine decrees they are infralapsarian. In answer to the question of the order of God's decrees of election or reprobation with respect to the fall, infralapsarian answers that the decree to permit the fall is before the decrees of election or reprobation (infra lapsum), and supralapsarian answers that decrees of election and reprobation is before the decree to permit the fall (supra lapsum).
One of the chief features of the Westminster Confession and catechisms is that in addition to their familar derivation of original sin from the first parents as "the root of all mankind", they emphasize a "covenant of works" and a "covenant of grace". In the former, Adam is regarded as the representative head of the race, to whom God made definite promises, which included his descendants, and which he, as their representative, forfeited by his disobedience for them as well as for himself. The "covenant of works" having failed, God offered a new "covenant of grace" through Christ. The roots of this covenant, or federal, theology can be traced back to Zwingli, though its fullest exposition was to be found in the work of Johann Cocceius (1603-1669), professor in Franeker and Leyden. It was an attempt to provide a definite explanation of sin as man's own act, and show a real human responsibility for his ruin. Another feature of these documents is an emphasis on the Sabbath consonant with the Puritan development.
Oliver Cromwell.
While the theological and ecclesiastical discussions were going on, the
civil war was running its earthly course. On July 3, 1644, the royal army had
been defeated on Marston Moor near York, largely by the skill of a member of
Parliament of little military experience, Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658),
whose abilities had created a picked troop of "religious men". Not quite
a year later, on June 14, 1645, Cromwell cut to pieces the last field army
of the King near Naseby. The next year Charles gave himself up to the Scots,
who, in turn, surrendered him to the English Parliament. The "new model" army,
as created by Cromwell, was a body of religious enthusiasts, in which little
question was raised of the finer distinctions of doctrine. So long as they
opposed Rome, and "prelacy," Puritans of all stripes were welcome in it.
The Independents emerged as the dominant group, with Baptists and sectaries
ever more in evidence. But the rigid Presbyterianism of the Parliamentary
majority was becoming as distasteful to the army as was the older rule of
bishops, and Cromwell fully shared this feeling. The army soon demanding
a large degree of toleration. Puritanism had appealed to the Bible and
experience, and now men on a spiritual pilgrimages (many of them in the army)
were demanding the freedom to follow their convictions.
The attitude of the army prevented the full establishment of Presbyterianism which Parliament sanctioned. This displeased the Scots. Charles now used this situation to intrigue with the Scots to invade England in his interest, inducing them to believe that he would support their Presbyterianism. On August 17-20, 1648, the invading Scottish army was scattered by Cromwell near Preston. This left the army supreme in England. On December 6, 1648, "Pride's Purge" expelled from Parliament the Presbyterian members, leaving a "Rump Parliament". Charles I was then tried and condemned for his alleged treasons and perfidies, and was beheaded on January 30, 1649, bearing himself with great dignity. Cromwell next subjugated Ireland in 1649, reduced Scotland the next year, and overthrew Charles's son, the later Charles II (1660-1685), near Worcester in 1651. Opposition was everywhere put down.
Cromwell, although not identified wholly with any one Puritan group, was inclined toward the Independents. Under his Protectorate, a large degree of toleration was allowed, and moderate Episcopalian Puritans, Presbyterians, Independents, and some Baptists were included in a broad establishment. But since the beginning of the civil war, about two thousand Episcopal clergymen had been deprived, and suffered great hardships. But the majority of clergy either was undisturbed or managed to adjust themselves to the new state of affairs. As able, conscientious, and statesmanlike as was Cromwell, his rule was that of a military authority, and was, as such, disliked, while the bickerings between rival groups were equally distasteful to a great majority of the English people who could, as yet, conceive of only one form of established faith. Until his death, on September 3, 1658, Cromwell suppressed all disaffection.
Oliver Cromwell was succeeded by his son, Richard, as Protector; but the new ruler was a man of no force, and practical anarchy was the result. Royalists and Presbyterians now combined to effect a restoration of the monarchy. On April 14, 1660, Charles II issued a declaration "of liberty to tender consciences", from Breda, and on May 29 he entered London. But if the Presbyterians had hopes of being included in the new religious establishment, they were doomed to bitter disappointment.
Charles II.
After Comwell's death (1658), the people of England asked the son of
Charles I, Charles II (1660-1685), to return, a Restoration that
was the end of organized Puritanism. Charles II may have intended to include
the Presbyterians in the national church. Edward Reynolds (1599-1676),
heretofore a decided Puritan, was made bishop of Norwich. The saintly Richard
Baxter (1615-1691) who was one of the most eminent of the Presbyterian party,
was offered a bishopric, but he declined. A conference between bishops and
Presbyterians was held by government authority at the Savoy Palace in 1661,
but led to little result. Charles II was unscrupulous, immoral, weak, and
indifferent in religion. Little reliance could be placed on his promises.
But if he had been a better or stronger man, it is doubtful whether he could
have stemmed the tide of national reaction against Puritanism. The first
Parliament chosen after Charles II's restoration was fiercely royalist and
Anglican. The Convocation of Canterbury and York met in 1661, and six hundred
alterations were made in the Prayer Book, but none of them in the Puritan
direction. In May, 1662, the new Act of Conformity received royal assent.
By it the use of any other service than those of the revised Prayer Book was
forbidden under heavy penalties, and each clergyman was required, before
August 24, to make an oath of "unfeigned assent and consent to all and
everything contained and prescibed" therein; and also, "that it is not lawful,
upon any pretense whatsoever, to take up arms against the King."
These provisions were intended to bar the Puritans from the church, and as such they were effectual. Some eighteen hundred ministers gave up their places rather than take the prescribed oaths. The Puritan party was now, what it had not been before, outside the Church of England. Nonconformity had now been forced to become Dissent. Presbyterians and Independents, the latter now organized along Congregational lines, were force outside the Establishement. Severer acts soon followed, induced partly by the fear of conspiracy against the restore monarchy. By the First Conventicle Act of 1664, fine, imprisonment, and ultimate transportation were the penalties for presence at a service not in accordance with Prayer Book, attended by five or more persons not of the same household. By the "Five Mile Act" of the next year, any person "in Holy Orders or pretended Holy Orders" who preached at a "conventicle", and did not take an oath condemning armed resistance to the King and pledging no attempt at "alteration of government either in church or state", was forbidden to live within five miles of any incorporated town or within the same distance of the former place of his ministry. Such persons were forbidden to teach school -- about the only occupation readily open to a deprived minister. These and other "Clarendon Code" of the Cavalier Parliament ensured that the former Puritans remained outside the National Church. Thus was Nonconformity born. But such codes were impossible of strict enforcement, but they led to a great deal of persecution of the Dissenters. The Second Conventicle Act, of 1670, made penalties for unlawful attendance at Dissenting services less severe, but ingeniously provided that the heavy fines on preachers and hearers could be collected from any attendant, in case of poverty prevented their payment by all. Yet inspite of this repression, Dissenting preaching and congregations continued.
The Puritan spirit continued in various ways -- for example, in the emphasis on practical divinity and sabbatarianism -- but the Puritan ideal of the Reformed nation and church was gone forever.
The Revolution of 1688.
Charles II (1660-1685), though a man of no real religion, sympathized with
the Roman faith, which he professed on his death-bed, and his brother, the
later James II, was an acknowledged and earnest Catholic from 1672. Moreover,
Charles was receiving secret pensions from the strongly Catholic, Louis XIV of
France. On March 15, 1672, with a design of aiding the Catholics and securing
Dissenting favor to that end, Charles issued, on his own authority a
Declaration of Indulgence, by which Protestant Dissenters were granted the
right of public worship, the penal laws against the Catholics remitted,
and their worship permitted in private homes. To Parliament this seemed
an unconstitutional favor to Rome. It forced the withdrawal of the Indulgence,
in 1673, and passed the Test Act, which, though aimed at Catholics, bore hard
on the Protestant Dissenters. All in military and civil office, with a few
exceptions, living within thirty miles of Longdon, were required to take the
Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Church of England or forfeit their
posts. This statute was not to be repealed until 1828. Thus the repression of
Dissent continued until the death of Charles II, in 1685.
For James II (1685-1688), his chief aim was the establishment of Catholism, and his measures toward that end were vigorous but tactless. He ignored the Test Act, and appointed Catholics to high office in military and civil service. He brought in Jesuits and monks. He secured from a packed Court of the King's Bench, in 1686, an acknowledgement of his right "to dispense with all penal laws in particular cases." He re-established a High Commission Court. On April 5, 1687, he issued a Declaration of Indulgence, granting complete religious toleration. In itself it was a well-sounding, and from the modern standpoint, a praiseworthy act. Yet its motives were too obvious. Its ultimate aim was to make England once more a Roman Catholic country, and all Protestantism was alarmed, while lovers of constitutional government saw in it a nullification of the power of Parliament by arbitrary royal will. The vast majority of Dissenters, though relieved thereby from grievious disabilities, refused to support it, and made common cause with the churchmen. When, in April, 1688, James II ordered the Indulgence read in all churches, seven bishops protested. They were put on trial and, to the delight of the Protestants, acquitted. James had taxed national feeling too greatly. William of Orange (1650-1702), the Stadholder of the Netherlands, who had married Mary, James's daughter, was invited to head the movement against James. On November 5, 1688, he landed in England with an army. James fled to France. The Revolution of 1688 was accomplished, and on February 13, 1689, William (III) and Mary were proclaimed joint sovereigns of England.
The clergy of the Restoration had asserted too long the doctrine the divine right of Kings and of passive obedience to royal authority to make this change palatable. Seven bishops, headed by William Sancroft (1617-1693), refused the oath of allegiance to the new sovereigns, and with them about four hundred clergy. To them James II was still the Lord's anointed. They were deprived, as Anglicans and Dissentrs had been before, and they bore themselves with equal courage. Many of them were men of earnest piety. They formed the Nonjuror party, part of which took refuge in Scotland, there to make a genuine liturgial contribution to the Episcopal Church in that country.
Under the circumstances of the Revolution of 1688, toleration could no longer be denied to Prostestant Dissenters. By the Toleration Act of May 24, 1689, all who swore, or affirmed, the oaths of allegiance to William and Mary, rejected the jurisdictions of the Pope, transubstantiation, the mass, the invocation of the Virgin and saints, and also subscribed the doctrinal positions of the Thirty-nine Articles, were granted freedom of worship. It was a personal toleration, not a territorial adjustment as in Germany at the close of the Thirty Years' War. Diverse forms of Protestant worship could now exist side by side. The Dissenters may have amounted to a tenth of the population of England, divided chiefly between the "three old denominations," Presbyterian, Congregationalists, and Baptists. They were still bound to pay tithes to the establishment, and had many other disabilities, but they had won essential religious freedom. In time they became known as the English free churches. No such privileges as they had won were granted to deniers of the Trinity or to Roman Catholics. The effective relief of the latter did not come until 1778 and 1791, and was not completed until 1829.
Scotland.
In Scotland, the Restoration was a time of great turmoil and suffering.
The Parliament of 1661 annulled all acts favorable to the Presbyterian
Church in 1633. Episcopacy was, therefore, restored as in the times of
Charles I. In September, 1661, four bishops wre appointed, chief of them
James Sharp (1618-1679) as archbishop of St. Andrews. Consecration was
obtained from England. Sharp had been a Presbyterian minister, but had
betrayed his party and his church. All office-holders were required
by Parliament to disown the covenants of 1638 and 1643. In 1663,
Parliament enacted heavy fines for absence from the now episcopally
governed churches, even though it did not dare introduce a liturgy.
Many Presbyterian ministers were now deprived, especially in southwestern
Scotland. When their parishioners absented themselves from the ministration
of the new appointees, they were fined, and if payment was not forthcoming,
soldiers were quartered on them. In 1664, a High Commission Court was
added to the instruments of repression. Two years later some of the
oppressed supporters of the covenants of 1638 and 1643, or Covenanters,
engaged in the Pentland Rising. It was ruthlessly crushed, and the
Presbyterian element was treated with increasing severity. On May 3,
1679, in belated retaliation, Sharp was murdered. This crime was speedily
followed by an armed rising of Convenanters; but on June 22 the revolt was
crushed at Bothwell Bridge and the captured insurgents were treated with
great cruelty. Six months later the King's brothre, James - the later
James II of England - was practically put in charge of Scottish affairs.
The extremer and uncompromising Presbyterians were now a proscribed and
hunted folk, known as Cameronians - named from one of their leaders,
Richard Cameron (1648?-1680).
The accesion of James II, or VII, as he was numbered in Scotland, but intensified at first the repression of the Camerionians. His first year was the "killing time"; and the Parliament of 1685 made death the punishment for attendance at a "conventile." James, however, soon pursued the same course in England. He filled his council with Catholics, and in 1687 issued Letters of Indulgences granting freedom of worship. As in England, this release of Catholics from penalty aroused the hostility of all shades of Prostestants, Episcopalians and Presbyterians were alike opposed; and when William and Mary mounted the throne of England, they had many friends in the northern kingdom. Scotland was more divided than England, however. The Stewards were Scottish, and though Episcopalians disliked the Catholicism of James they distrusted the Calvinism of "Dutch William," whom the Presbyterians favored. The Revolution triumphed, however, and on May 11, 1689, William and Mary became the rulers of Scotland. In 1690, Parliament restored all Presbyterian ministers ejected since 1661, ratified the Westminster Confession, and declared Presbyterianism the form recognized by the government. This legal establishment of the Presbyterian Church was opposed by the Cameronian laity, who continued their hostility to any control of the church by civil authority and condemned the failure to renew the covenants, and by the Episcopalians, who were strong in northern Scotland. IN 1707, England and Scotland were united into one kingdom of Great Britain; but the independent rights of the Church of Scotland were safeguarded. Under Queen Anne, in 1712, two important acts were passed by Parliament. By one the status of a tolerated communion was give to episcopacy, then strongly intrenced in northern Scotland. The other, destined to be the source of infinite trouble, permitted "patron," usually the crown or landlords, to force appointments of Presbyterian ministers on hostile parishioners.