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try. When Clarendon was dismissed, and his place taken by the Duke of Buckingham, who professed much zeal for liberty of conscience,-it was hoped, that the situation of the Nonconformists would be improved; but with the exception of the indulgence that was granted at the beginning of the Dutch war in 1672, the severities enacted against them went on increasing till the end of Charles the Second's reign.

James's determination to bring back Popery, through the concession of a general toleration to all persuasions, placed the Dissenters in an embarrassing position, in which their principles and their desire of relief drew different ways. I have already described the course which the wiser among them took. They availed themselves of the fact of indulgence, without addressing or complimenting the king on its principle. Only a few of the more extreme Dissenters lost sight of general considerations, in a one-sided eagerness to secure, as they thought, the freedom of their own worship. Among these, the Rev. Mr. Lobb signalized himself, and has acquired the name of the Jacobite Independent.b (28)

As they felt the increasing improbability of any speedy accommodation with the Church, the Non

Ch. I. p. 40.

See an account of Lobb in Wilson's Dissenting Churches, Vol. III. pp. 36–446.

conformists began to adopt, by degrees, a more independent mode of action, and to assume the tendencies and habitudes of a permanent, separate, body in the State. They maintained a friendly intercourse with the Protestant Churches of the Continent, and often sent their young men to be educated in the Universities of Holland. A few Meeting-houses were erected during this period, but mostly as places of temporary occupation. (29)

Throughout the history of mankind we trace a constant, intimate sympathy between new developments of the religious principle and the spirit of commerce. Our own history supplies additional evidence of this general fact. The strength of Puritanism, though it was not without large support from the ancient yeomanry of the country, lay chiefly in the manufacturing and commercial classes of the great towns. The merchants of London were zealously devoted to the cause of Nonconformity. During one of the indulgences they set up a weekly lecture at Pinners' Hall, in which they invited the most eminent ministers to take a part. We have another proof of the same connexion, in the employment of the Halls of different Companies, as meeting-places for the first congregations that were gathered in the metropolis. The earliest assemblage of Puritans that was dispersed by the civil power in the reign of Elizabeth, had met in Plumbers' Hall.

Salters' Hall, and the Weigh House which anciently belonged to the Grocers' Company, are still Meeting-houses of notoriety in London. Wilson, in his History of Dissenting Churches, has mentioned more than twenty of these Halls that were at one time so employed; and of these, some have permanently retained the use to which they were intended to be temporarily applied. In Catholic times, these Halls had often a religious application, and were connected with conventual establishments; so that, in the course of social revolution, they would seem to have only reverted, in the hands of the Puritans, to the object for which they were occasionally in the first instance designed. They were fitted up with pews, and galleries, and pulpits, by the zeal of the citizens, who thus signalized their devotion to what they deemed the cause of pure religion; and their form, dimensions, and general appearance-capacious, massive, and plain, and venerable for a sort of gloomy simplicity-have probably furnished the type of the old Dissenting Meeting-house, as the raised tribunal and lateral arcades of the Roman Basilica suggested the choir, nave, and side aisles of the ancient Christian church.

The disputes of the seventeenth century were neutralized, though not settled, in the grand compromise of the Revolution. With that event, the age of proper Puritanism expired. Before we

proceed to trace the progress of opinion subsequent to it, it may be advantageous to devote a short chapter to the review of the period we have now traversed, and to place in a few salient points before the mind, the contrasted features of the two great religious parties-the Church and the Puritans-which we have seen in constant antagonism through the course of it. (30)

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHURCH AND PURITANISM CONTRASTED.

THE primary source of divergency between the Anglican and the Puritan systems, must be sought In their different conception of the standard of final authority in religion. The genuine Puritan acknowledged Scripture only; the Church combined with Scripture the traditional exposition of its principles, preserved in the concurring judg ments of Christian antiquity. It was the avowed aim of the Puritans to reform and remodel the Church, on a principle of simple conformity to primitive usage, as recorded in the New Testament-no account being taken of change in time and circumstances. The strict letter of Scripture was received by them as a final absolute rule, ever present, ever applicable-as if framed for direct and constant use-standing in close, immediate contact with the exigencies of man's outward life through the revolutions of centuries. On the other hand, the Anglicans regarded Scripture as indeed the original depository of Christian truth, in which its germs, as it were, and first principles were shut up, but acknowledged ecclesiastical tradition as its legitimate expositor ;-Scripture and Tradition being viewed by them, as equally

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