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The subsequent condemnation of Archbishop Laud, which was sustained on the same principles as those that gave plausibility to the attainder of Strafford, is considered by Mr. Godwin as a far less justifiable act. The prelate, he thinks, was sufficiently punished by his fall from power, and his consequent sufferings: it would have been enough to have dismissed him to obscurity and contempt.' Mr. G. attributes his destruction to the Scots, to the Presbyterians, and to the resentment of an individual who had formerly been the subject of his barbarity, the celebrated Prynne.'

We naturally turned with some curiosity to those sections of the present volume, which contain the Author's opinions on I the religious questions that divided and agitated the Long - Parliament and the Assembly of Divines. As the larger portion of our readers will probably sympathize with us in this particular, we shall extract rather extensively. After affirming the innocence of error in that sense, that the dissemination of opinions and arguments, where all are free to maintain, to examine, and to refute, can scarcely be injurious to the com'munity,' Mr. G. thus proceeds.

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Among the great geniuses and profound politicians of this memorable period, there were a few who could look with a steady eye into the future, could measure the limbs and muscles of the human mind, and could see what man in a state of liberty could do and sustain, and what were likely to be the results of all he could suffer, and all he could effect. They viewed controversy and intellectual contention as the road to substantial peace and genuine vigour. They saw that liberty of disquisition was the wholesome element in which intellect refines; that, to weigh and discern truth from falsehood, the scales which are employed in the trial must be freely poised, and that there can be no real conscience, and no pure religion, where religion and conscience are not permitted to act without restraint.

But what is scarcely less worthy of notice, there was at this time, a sect of Christians, penetrated with the fervours of the most earnest zeal, the Independents, who maintained nearly the same tenets on this subject with the party last mentioned. They were led to the conclusions they adopted, by somewhat of a different process. Like the Presbyterians, they cordially disapproved of the pomp and hierarchy of the church of England. But they went further. They equally disapproved of the synods, provincial and general, the classes and incorporations of presbytery, a system scarcely less complicated, though infinitely less dazzling, than that of diocesan episcopacy. They held, that a church was a body of Christians assembled in one place appropriated for their worship, and that every such body was complete in itself, that they had a right to draw up the rules by which they thought proper to be regulated, and that no man not a member of their assembly, and no body of men, was entitled to interfere with

their proceedings. Demanding toleration on these grounds, they felt that they were equally bound to concede and assert it for others; and they preferred to see a number of churches with different sentiments and institutes within the same political community, to the idea of remedying the evil, and exterminating error, by means of exclusive regulation and the menaces and severities of punishment.'

In the Assembly of Divines, there was an overwhelming predominance of those who pressed the adoption of the presbyterian model; and they were most powerfully supported by the Scots, who demanded uniformity of church-discipline between the two nations, as the price of their co-operation against the King.

'One would think that nothing could be able to support_itself against these two considerations, the majority of the clergy at home, and the imperious demand of the neighbour nation. But there were men who had the courage to look at all this, and yet determine to proceed. The chief of them were Vane, Cromwell, St. John, Selden, and Whitlocke. There were two questions involved in the contention, that they deemed worthy of their utmost efforts; freedom from ecclesiastical subjugation, and the freedom of the press.

This topic will be best understood, if we call to mind the five different steps of gradual descent and diminished authority of churchgovernment, as it has been practised in different ages and countries professing Christianity. The highest and most perfect is that of the Roman Catholic religion, as it was at the time that its power was most uncontrollable. This is a system of unmingled and absolute despotism, teaching men what they shall speak and think upon subjects of religion, allowing no variation or diverging from the established standard, shutting up from the laity the books in which the origin and laws of Christianity are recorded, promulgating an index expurgatorius of all other books, calling in the aid of the faggot, the stake, and the auto da fe to enforce its decrees, and binding the whole with the awful and tremendous sanction of auricular confession. Popery also had the additional resource of binding all Christendom together as one man; and it had the advantage over all other forms of Christianity, in the masterly and costly way in which it addressed itself to the eyes, the ears, and the nostrils of its disciples.

The second form of church-government, partaking of many of the advantages of the Roman Catholic system, is that of diocesan episcopacy. It aims, though at a distance, and with a diminished flight, at the same splendour: it accumulates its emoluments and its honours in somewhat of a similar manner. It issues its canons and decrees; it fulminates its excommunications. Like the church of Rome, it is rigorous and untemporising. It denounces schism as perhaps the greatest of all offences. And it punishes all deviation from its rules, at least it did in the times of which we are treating, in somewhat of the same manner as the church of Rome, with this difference, that where the pope and the inquisition burnt its victims alive, the church of England confined itself to the lash, the slitting of noses, or the cutting off of ears.

Next comes the presbyterian system, not less exclusive and intolerant, and impressed with no less horror of the blasphemy and perniciousness of sects than the former. Its chief distinctions are, the comparative moderation of its emoluments, and the plainness of its garb. The clergy of the church of Scotland were habited with something of the same unambitious sadness, as we see in paintings of the fathers of the inquisition. But this is in some respects a disadvan tage. He that lords it over me, and would persuade me that he is not of the same ignoble kind as myself, ought perhaps to be clad in robes, and covered with ermines and gold. It is some mitigation of my sufferings. I should be glad to be deluded and dazzled to the last. It seems natural that human beings should prefer, like the widow of Benares, to die amid the clangour of trumpets, and the soft breathing of recorders, to the perishing of the deformed and withering blow of undisguised cruelty.

The system of the Independents has been already described. Its generous spirit of toleration, and fearlessness of sects, come in beautiful contrast with the systems already described. It demands no other liberty for itself, than it is willing to yield to all others.

But even this system did not go far enough to satisfy the masterspirits of the age of the Commonwealth. They detected a latent error, and saw a seed of despotism and oppression, even in the simple creed of this sect. The doctrine on the subject which obtained their approbation, received its name from Thomas Erastus, a German physician of the sixteenth century, contemporary with Luther, The work in which he delivered his theory and reasonings on the subject, is entitled De excommunicatione ecclesiastica.

The Independents taught, that a church was a body of Christians assembled in one place appropriated for their worship, and that every such body was complete in itself; that they had a right to draw up the maxims by which they thought proper to be regulated, and that no man, not a member of their assembly, and no body of men, was entitled to interfere with their proceedings. But the Erastians proceeded on another principle. They held that religion is an affair between man and his Creator, in which no other man or society of men was intitled to interpose. "Who art thou that judgest another?" says St. Paul," to his own master he standeth or falleth." Proceeding on this ground, they maintained, that every man calling himself a Christian, has a right to make resort to any Christian place of worship, and partake in all its ordinances. Simple as this idea is, it strikes at the root of all priestcraft, and usurpation of one man over the conscience of another. Excommunication, or "the power of the keys," as it has been called, is the great engine of ecclesiastical tyranny. Those who claim to exercise this power, are hereby enabled to obtrude themselves into the most sacred and private concerns of every one who holds Christian worship and the ordinances of Christianity to be part of his duty. They inquire into his life, and find perhaps that his conduct and actions do not square with their ideas of rectitude. They examine him as to his creed, and discover that it does not tally with their private in

terpretation of Scripture. They undertake to reduce his confession to what they receive for truth, and to prescribe to him penances and mortification. They require of him spiritual obedience. If he fails in any of these things, they shut him out from the commemoration of the merits of Christ at first, or excommunicate him afterwards. They refuse him the consolations of the religion he embraces, and hold him up to his brother professors as no better than "a heathen man and a publican." They take from him, by their arbitrary and lawless decree, that character which makes him respectable among his fellows, and sustains him in self-reverence, which is the root of all virtue. It was "the power of the keys," carried to its utmost extent, that enabled the popes of former times to place whole realms under an interdict, and to dissolve the obligation of subjects to the government under which they lived.'

In this last paragraph, there is much fallacious comment. We are as decided enemies to what is commonly understood by the power of the keys,' as Mr. Godwin or the sturdiest Erastian can be; but, that the right of exclusion exists in every voluntary association, we shall most firmly insist. It is essentially, and as practised among Independents, nothing more and nothing less than the right of every copartnery to arrange the terms of its own harmonious combination, and to visit their infraction by an exclusion to which, as part of that arrangement, the delinquent himself has given his previous assent. The parties coalesce on the ground of an express recognition of Christian morals; and the violator of that article of their compact, severs himself from their communion by his own act and deed, put in force by the untainted part of the community. They unite on the foundation of Christian doctrine, and the same result takes place in the event of an aberration from soundness of faith. That there is another process running parallel with this, and involving the condition and character of the individual, as it regards his eternal interests, has nothing to do with what may be called the forensic character of the compact. It is part and parcel of religion, considered as an affair between man and his Creator,' and no human tribunal has authority to give sentence in this view of the question. That the act on earth of a divine or inspired arbiter would be ratified in heaven, is a fact which can have no bearing on the case, taken as a merely human transaction, though influenced by spiritual motives. The absence of a just discrimination between these things, or rather their designed and artful confusion, has given rise to the pestilential doctrine of the power of the keys.' It has suited the views of interested hierarchies, to claim the uncontrolled dispensation of ecclesiastical penalties, and to enforce them by pretending to the dominion of the unseen world; but their noisy fulmina

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tions and arbitrary inflictions have nothing in common with the voluntary code of congregational discipline. The simple idea' of Erastianism' strikes at the root,' not only of all priest-craft,' but of all order, and is utterly at variance with every legitimate view and purpose of Christian communion. An Erastian loses sight of the peculiar character and privileges of the Christian, considered as a member of the brotherhood of faith, and entitled to the confidence, the counsel, the admonition, and the prayers of all and each of his brethren. On his loose hypothesis, what becomes of the intimacy of Christian fellowship, implied in the apostolic directions, "that there should be no "schism in the body, but that the members should have the "same care one for another; and whether one member suffer, "all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, "all the members rejoice with it?" As to the alarming insinuations about intrusion into sacred and private concerns," and the application of an arbitrary rule of rectitude to conduct and actions,' they are already answered. Among Independents, there is no such recognised intrusion, and the laws of duty are plainly ascertained.

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But after all, a very important question arises as to the fairness of this representation of Erastian principles. We cannot say that we have ever set ourselves the task of reading the treatise De Excommunicatione; and we are only able, at the present moment, to refer to those who were probably much better acquainted with the subject than ourselves. Dr. Hill, in his very able divinity lectures, states, that Erastus resolved 'all the powers exercised by church-governors into the will of 'the State. It was his opinion, that the office-bearers in the 'Christian Church, as such, are merely instructors, who fulfil their office by admonishing and endeavouring to persuade 'Christians, but who have no power, unless it is given them 'by the State, to inflict penalties of any kind. Every thing, 'therefore, which we are accustomed to call ecclesiastical censure, was considered by him as a civil punishment, which 'the State might employ the ministers of religion to inflict, 'but which, as to the occasion, the manner, and the effect of its being inflicted, was as completely under the direction of the civil power, as any branch of the civil code. Nay, the authorities cited by Mr. Godwin himself, do not by any means support the favourable view which he takes of the Erastian principles.

A party was formed by Selden and a few statesmen and temperate divines, who proposed to restore to the magistrate the coercive power which the church had assumed, and to reduce the pastoral functions to exhortation and prayer."

Laing's History of Scotland, Vol. III. p.

289.

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