SECT. VIII.

CHRISTIAN RATIONALISM AFTER THE REVOLUTION:

DISSENTING ACADEMIES: CHARACTER AND POSI

TION OF DODDRIDGE.

It has been already shewn, that the effect of the Revolution was to elevate, and bring into immediate connexion with the Government, that party in the Church, which was Latitudinarian in sentiment, and inclined to a liberal policy towards Dissenters. With them there was a large party out of the Church, quite ready to sympathise—willing, in fact, to meet them half way, and expressing by the term Presbyterian, which vaguely designated them, little more than their Catholic spirit, and their disposition to own all practical Christians of every persuasion as brethren. This temper had been introduced among the Presbyterians by Marshall and Baxter; it was prolonged into the 18th century, by Howe and Calamy and Peirce. Between these two parties there was scarce any intelligible distinction but this-that the one was established, and the other not. Tillotson and Howe, Hoadly and Calamy, Burnet and Peirce, might almost have changed places, without finding it necessary to modify their governing views of religion, except indeed that, among the Nonconformistspartly, no doubt, in consequence of their situa

tion, there was a closer adherence to the forms and phrases of the old Puritanic Calvinism-and that Hoadly's Latitudinarianism, with all his zeal for the Establishment, far exceeded that of his contemporaries. "I know many," says Calamy, "that the world calls Presbyterians, that are of no party." Still more explicitly, on another occasion, he says, "Those, (whether in or out of the Church,) whose principles and spirit are against narrowing or straitening the terms of Christian communion, by adding to what our Lord has plainly appointed, are a very considerable and increasing number. Let such persons be in the Church, nay, and dignified in it too, and they shall yet be called Presbyterians."a The Tory Fox-hunter in Addison's Freeholder, whose religion "consisted in hating Presbyterians," and who loved his spaniel, because "he had once like to have worried a Dissenting Teacher," thought the neighbouring shire very happy, for having "scarce a Presbyterian in it, except the Bishop."b

Such being the relation of a large body of the Dissenters to the most eminent personages in the Church, it may be asked, how no reconciliation and union took place between them. There was an

Calamy's Defence of Moderate Nonconformity in reply to Hoadly and Ollyffe, 1703, p. 259, Part I.: also Postscript to P. I. p. 250.

b No. 22.

invincible obstacle: they differed about the lawfulness of the terms of conformity; the Low Churchmen not scrupling to make the subscription which they could not hope, in the actual state of parties, to remove or qualify-the Dissenters objecting to it, as unscriptural. With the most entire agreement, therefore, in their general views, they could not practically approximate: and the Revolution which trengthened the foundations of the Establishnent, only increased their mutual alienation; the Churchmen thought the Dissenters unreasonalle and scrupulous, the Dissenters charged the Clurchmen with laxity. Constituted as the Church of England was, and encumbered with such a load of secular interests, the Presbyterians at a very early period seem to have given up all expectation of a comprehension. It was an object which they had earnestly desired; but they now looked upon t as only among the possibilities of a distant future; and there is a remarkable coincidence in the language of their leading men, in referring all hope of it to some powerful effusion of the divine spirit on men's hearts, which should break up existin; parties, and re-constitute the Christian world.

The grand controversy between the Church and thegreatest part of the Dissenters, related now, notso much either to doctrine or to government, as t the terms of Christian communion. These the Presbyterians contended should be simply

Scriptural. Calamy has thus stated the principles of Nonconformity:-"That all true Church power must be founded on a divine commission" (i.e. derived from a Scriptural precept) ;—" that where a right to command is not clear, evidence that obedience is a duty, is wanting; that more ought not to be made necessary for an entrance into the Church, than is necessary to the getting safe to heaven; that as long as unscriptural impositions are continued, a further reformation in the Churcl will be needful, in order to the more gener and effectual reaching the great ends of Chrstianity; and that every man that must answer or himself hereafter, must judge for himself at present." a Of the ministers of this date in London, scarcely any one but Dr. Daniel Williams, the founder of the library, is said to have been an asserter of the jus divinum of Presbyterianism: and in Scotland, Calamy found that doctrine generally abandoned. The Presbyterians ha now taken broader ground.

The spirit prevalent among them, is wel illustrated by the case of Dr. Edmund Calam', one of their most distinguished writers ad preachers at the beginning of the last centuy, sprung through his father and grandfatier from the old Puritan divines of the Commn

• Dedication to Protestant Dissenting Ministers, p. xv.prefixed to the Continuation of the Account etc., 1727.

wealth, and connecting them, through his son, in a line of unbroken filiation, with the Dissenting Minister of modern times. On completing his studies in Holland, he settled privately at Oxford, that he might thoroughly master the question at issue between the Church and the Dissenters, and read attentively the great authorities on both sides. In spite of worldly allurements, he deliberately took his lot with the Nonconformists, in consequence of their freedom from those impositions that were attached to the ministry in the Establishment. Before he assumed

the pastoral office, he tells us, he would willingly have received ordination from a bishop, "could he have found any one that would not have demanded a subscription and engagement to conformity, and a subjection to the present ecclesiastical government." b His contemporary, Peirce, of Exeter, though maintaining the validity of Presbyterian ordination, still for the sake of peace would not have objected to a modified Episcopacy, and a partial, well-regulated, use of liturgies: nor would he, on the other hand, have disowned the ministry of those, whose ordination he considered less regular, as derived simply from the popular choice, if they gave evidence of suitable qualification in

• Life and Times, Vol. I.

b Defence of Moderate Nonconform., Part I. P. 213. Vindication of the Dissenters, Part III. ch. iv., and ch. i.