enemies of Laud cut off from him, at the utmost, a few short years of infirmity and pain; and this was all they could do! They removed him from the sight of calamities, which would have been to him tenfold more grievous than death; and they afforded him an opportunity of displaying at his trial on the scaffold, as in a public theatre, a presence of mind, a strength of intellect, a calm and composed temper, an heroic and saintly magnanimity, which he could never have been known to possess, if he had not thus been put to the proof. Had they contented themselves with stripping him of his rank and fortune, and letting him go to the grave a poor and broken-hearted old man, their calumnies might then have proved so effectual, that he would have been more noted now for his infirmities than for his great and eminent virtues. But they tried him in the burning fiery furnace of affliction, and so his sterling worth was assayed and proved. And the martyrdom of Cranmer is not more inexpiably disgraceful to the Papists, than that of Laud to the Puritan persecutors. He was buried according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England; a circumstance which afforded a deep, but mournful consolation to those who revered and loved him. It seemed to them as if the venerable establishment itself over which he had presided, and for defending which he had died a martyr, were buried with him: for on the same day that six infamous peers passed the ordinance of attainder against him, they passed an act also, by which the Liturgy was suppressed,' and a Directory for public worship set forth in its stead. This miserable tract, whereby the public worship of these kingdoms was thenceforth to be regulated, is, as the title implies, a mere directory, which prescribed only the order of the service, leaving everything else to the discretion of the minister. He was to begin with prayer, in his own form of words, then to read any portion of Scripture which pleased him, so it were not from the Apocrypha, and as much as he chose, and to expound it if he thought good, having regard, however, to time, that enough might be left for other parts of the service, and that this might not be rendered tedious; psalm-singing was to follow, then a prayer before sermon, for which prefatory prayer, five pages of 1 Rushworth, part iii. vol. ii. p. 389. T directions were given; the "preaching of the word" followed: then a prayer after sermon, another psalm to be sung, and lastly, a valediction. The people at the Communion were orderly to sit about the table. It was declared requisite that on the sabbath there should be a holy cessation all the day from all unnecessary labours, and an abstaining not only from all sports and pastimes, but also from all worldly words and thoughts; that the diet on that day should be so ordered, as that neither servants should be unnecessarily detained from public worship, nor any other persons hindered from sanctifying the day; that the time between and after the service be spent in reading, meditation, repetition of sermons, (and especially by calling their families to an account of what they had heard,) and catechising; holy conferences, prayer for a blessing upon the public ordinances, psalm-singing, visiting the sick, relieving the poor, and such-like duties of piety, charity, and mercy. Burials were to be without any religious ceremony, such usages having been abused to superstition, being in no way beneficial to the dead, and many ways hurtful to the living. Nevertheless, it was judged very convenient that the Christian friends who accompanied the dead to the place appointed for public burial, should apply themselves to meditation and conferences suitable to the occasion; and the minister, if he were present, might put them in remembrance of their duty there as upon any other opportunity. They did not intend to deny any civil respects or differences, at the burial, suitable to the rank and condition of the deceased. Every one who could read was to have a psalm-book, and all were to be exhorted to learn reading, that the whole congregation might join in psalmody. But for the present, when many could not read, it was convenient that the minister or some other fit person should read the psalm, line by line, before the singing thereof. All holy-days were abolished, as having no warrant from the word of God. And no directions were given for introducing either the Lord's Prayer, the creed, or the commandments. Such was the Directory, which the Assembly of Divines prepared, and which a Parliament, usurping to itself the whole power of the state, ordered to be observed; and for this meagre, miserable substitution the Liturgy was to be laid aside! The hatred which the Puritans expressed against the Liturgy was as violent as it was unreasonable, for it must be remembered that none of them, as yet, differed in any single point from its doctrines. They called it, by a wretched play upon the word, the Lethargy of worship. To prescribe a form, they said, was stopping the course of God's Spirit, and muzzling the mouth of prayer. They reviled it as a compilation made by men who were "belching the sour crudities of yesterday's Popery ;" and they declared that it had brought the land generally to "Atheism." 3 It soon indeed became apparent, that these blind leaders of the blind had themselves prepared the way for every species of impiety and extravagance. They had raised a storm whereby the peace and happiness of three kingdoms were destroyed, because they would not kneel at the communion, tolerate the surplice, use the finest liturgy that ever was composed, nor bow at the name of Jesus! They had raised the storm, and by them it was kept up; for the King had now yielded every political point in dispute, and nothing but the intolerance of the Puritans prevented an accommodation. And here it is observable, that, as their factious scrupulosity brought on a civil war, which real grievances alone would not have provoked, and thus preserved the nation from that arbitrary government, under which it might probably have settled; so their intolerant bigotry averted a settlement, which, by stripping the King of his legitimate power, would in its consequences have been hardly less injurious: and thus, through a severe process of evil, good was ultimately educed from their gross inconsistencies, their preposterous errors, and their manifold and enormous crimes. They had succeeded in subverting that goodly fabric of Church government which had been established at the Reformation. It was now to be seen how their system would answer in its stead, and how that system would be observed when they themselves had destroyed the principle of obedience. The Assembly set forth a confession of faith, wherein the Calvinistic opinions were asserted in all their rigour; and this the Parliament approved. 1 Anatomy of the Service Book, p. 7. 2 Christ on his Throne, p. 30. 3 Of Reformation, touching Church Discipline in England, p. 16. "Trial of the Liturgy," p. 7. They drew up also a scheme of Presbyterian government, which was approved and established in Scotland, but for which they could not obtain the sanction of the English Parliament. London, with its suburbs, however, was organized upon the Presbyterian plan; and it is to be wished that parts of this discipline, particularly its parochial polity, had been carried into effect, and retained at the Restoration, as being well compatible with an Episcopal Church, and tending greatly to its efficiency and support. But even in the Assembly, convened as it had been under their own direction, the Presbyterians were opposed by two parties, differing widely from each other, but uniting now against a sect as intolerant, when it had obtained power, as it had heretofore been impatient of conformity. The Erastians were the one, who, regarding the Church as a part of the state, and properly subservient to it, were for allowing no coercive power to the Clergy. The most learned of the members held these opinions, and they were also well supported in the House of Commons. The Independents were not so numerous in the Assembly, and the ablest of their representatives was now becoming obnoxious for embracing and defending the Arminian doctrine; but they were strong in the principle of toleration, which they professed though they did not always practise, they were acquiring an ascendency in the state, and the sword was in their hands. These parties had each a clear and intelligible principle. The Erastians might prefer one form of ecclesiastical government to another, but could consistently and conscientiously conform to any, from which they did not differ in points of doctrine. The scheme of the Independents was methodical, practical, and efficient, though liable to more objections than the Presbyterian platform, as that is far inferior to the Episcopal form, even if the question were considered prospectively alone, in its mere political bearings. But besides these there were others "higher flown' and more seraphical;" a rabble of sectaries started up, so many and so various, that names for half of them have not been found in the nomenclature of heresy. Strange monsters," the Presbyterians called them, "having their heads of Enthusiasm, their bodies of Antinomianism, their thighs of Familism, their legs. 1 Edwards. and feet of Anabaptism, their hands of Arminianism, and' Libertinism is the great vein running through the whole." Thus they who had broken down the fences complained, when they saw what a herd of unclean beasts followed them into the vineyard. "We have the plague of Egypt upon us," said they, "frogs out of the bottomless pit covering our land, coming into our houses, bed-chambers, beds, churches: a man can hardly come into any place but some croaking frog or other will be coming up upon him." And they who had plunged these kingdoms into civil war, rather than submit to a hierarchy which required from its ministers nothing more than the due observance of its decent forms, cried out against toleration, now that they had set up an establishment of their own, as "the grand design of the Devil, the most transcendent, catholic, and fundamental of all evils, the Abaddon, the Apollyon, the abomination of desolation and astonishment." For a while the rod was in their hands, and they made its iron weight be felt. These men, who had pleaded conscience about a gesture and a garment, prohibited the use of the Common Prayer, not merely in churches, chapels, and places of public worship, but in any private place or family as well, under penalty of five pounds for the first offence, ten for the second, and for the third a year's imprisonment. And whoever should preach, write, or print anything in derogation of the Directory, was to forfeit, for the use of the poor, a sum not less than five pounds, nor exceeding3 fifty. They voted in the Assembly, that the power of the keys was in the officers of the Church, whereby they could retain or remit sins, shut the kingdom of Heaven and open it, and this, with the power of excommunication, they voted to be theirs by Divine right. But though the Parliament assented to this claim of power, they frustrated its purport by providing an appeal to itself, and reserving to the magistrate the cognizance of all capital offences. The Assembly ventured to petition against this on the ground of the Divine right, and in better reliance upon the Scotch, who were disposed with their whole force to assist them in their preposterous pretensions. They were alarmed when the committee of the House of Com2 Ibid. p. 121. Edwards's Gangræna, p. 16. |