when the commissioners nominated met each other at the bishop of London's apartments in the Savoy. From the place of meeting, this memorable transaction is known as the Savoy Conference. When the two parties confronted each other, the bishops fairly enough treated the whole business as intended merely for the satisfaction of their opponents, having no wishes of their own for any alteration. They desired, accordingly, a full statement in writing of every thing that the Presbyterian managers recommended, and utterly refused to enter at once upon those oral discussions which the latter pressed upon them. In adopting this course, they are charged by opponents with an artful intention of drawing from the Presbyterians such a catalogue of objections as would exhaust public patience, and make the party seem incapable of any satisfaction, unless its own very wide expectations were consulted at the expense of those entertained by all the world besides. If any such management were contemplated, it certainly was very much forwarded by Presbyterian indiscretion. Not only were numerous exceptions to the liturgy presented, but also Baxter, perhaps the ablest and most influential man of his party, offered for consideration a new liturgy drawn up by himself within the compass of a single fortnight just before. His brethren had examined and approved it; but such a hasty composition could obviously maintain no sort of competition with the concentrated liturgical labours of ages which the Common Prayer comprises, and its appearance before the episcopal commissioners was, therefore, an undeniable indiscretion in the Presbyterian party. Baxter's own reason for preparing it rather makes the case worse. He wished to leave, he says, a standing memorial, that neither he nor his brethren objected to a stated form of prayer. Thus he substantiated the common objection to his own party, and to similar opponents of existing institutions, that they have no real objection to the objects of their opposition, but only to see them vested in any other hands than their own. Besides preparing this liturgy, Baxter also drew up what he called a Petition for Peace, which is, in fact, a document of considerable power, urging the impossibility of Presbyterian conformity, and the evils that must result both to clergy and laity if it should be pressed. He evidently threatens, rather than entreats, and upon the

4

5

5 Short's Sketch of the Hist. Ch. Engl. Lond. 1838, p. 491.

whole the services of this, their ablest champion, were disadvantageous to the Presbyterian party, by making it appear unlikely to rest satisfied with any thing short of that exclusive ascendancy for which it had contended ever since the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. The episcopal party, however, notwithstanding the unpromising nature of the opposition with which it had to grapple, answered the numerous objections presented with great care and minuteness." But no real progress was made in considering the need of any alterations in the liturgy, until a long paper controversy had nearly exhausted the time allowed in the commission. Then, to render the proceedings productive of some definite end, a disputation took place as to the liturgical expectations of the Presbyterian party. This, however, speedily bore an interminable aspect from the branching off of objections into the two heads of inexpediency and sinfulness. To cut it short, Bp. Cosin produced a paper which called upon the Presbyterians to state in writing the matters considered sinful. This was answered by a charge, that the Common Prayer-Book was flatly sinful, and contrary to the Word of God, in requiring ministers to use the sign of the cross in baptism, to wear surplices, to pronounce all the baptized regenerate, to admit unfit persons to the Eucharist, to insist upon kneeling when it was received, to absolve the unfit, to speak of all persons buried as those whom God has taken to himself, and to subscribe all the public formularies of the church as free from any thing contrary to the Word of God. A debate ensued upon kneeling at the Sacrament, which produced a great deal of noise, heat, and subtle syllogistic argumentation, giving the town an opportunity of ridiculing the two principal disputants, but leaving both parties just as irreconcilable as ever. The Episcopalians being by far the more numerous when the dispute concluded, the sinfulness of kneeling was denied by a great majority. The Presbyterians having thus utterly failed of impressing their views of sinfulness upon the other party, and there being evidently no greater chance of effecting this in any of the remaining cases, they proceeded to urge the general good behaviour of their body, the services that it had rendered in the Restoration, and the danger of disregarding it from a mere regard to the spiritual wants of the nation. The bishops,

The answers may be seen in Collier, ii. 897.

however, denied any power to entertain such questions, professing themselves authorized only to make those alterations in the liturgy which were necessary, and adding, that in strict accuracy, they knew of none that could be made bearing that character. In this manner the conference broke up, the time allowed by the commission having expired, and both parties having left it with an increase of mutual dissatisfaction. Still the government was desirous of showing a desire to consider the dissenting body; and accordingly, a royal message came down to Convocation in the following November, enjoining a review of the book of Common Prayer. After a month's attention this review was completed, and signed unanimously in both houses. It made various additions and alterations in the Liturgy, leaving it as it has been used ever since, with the exception of some small particulars, made in Parliament, while the Act of uniformity was under consideration in the following year, and referred by both houses to a committee of three bishops. In the service-book thus finally arranged, the nonconformists were considered, in taking the sentences, the epistles and gospels, and other extracts from the last version of Scripture, in several alterations of the Communion-service, in the addition of a general thanksgiving, and in various verbal alterations. 8

§ 11. In Ireland, Presbyterian divines were established both in Ulster, which contained numerous families from Scotland, and in Dublin with its neighbourhood. Immediately on the Restoration, these clergymen made exertions for a continuance in their benefices, and entertained hopes of success. But the government quickly undeceived them. Eight of the prelacy survived, and of these, Bramhall, bishop of Derry, the most able man of the party, was nominated to Armagh in the August immediately following Charles's return; to the general satisfaction of all who valued the ecclesiastical system which late troubles had overthrown. His formal appointment was deferred until the following January. Before the end of that month, twelve prelates were consecrated by him at the same time. The see of Kildare continued unsupplied, its revenues having been alienated a century before. But a prebend in St.

▾ Neal, iii. 91.

Short's Sketch, 547. The old version is retained in the Psalms, and Decalogue.

See Cardwell's Hist. of Conferences, Oxf. 1840, p. 298.

Patrick's cathedral was annexed to it almost immediately afterwards, and by the consecration of a prelate to it in March of the same year, 1661, the episcopate of Ireland received a complement of four archbishops and seventeen bishops. Eventually the latter were eighteen, and thus they continued until the act of 1833 came into operation. In restoring the church to her temporalities, Charles II. placed the bishops in full possession of all those estates which they or their predecessors had enjoyed in the year 1641, the time when the Irish massacre laid their order in the dust, and exposed its endowments to pillage from various quarters. It may be hastily supposed, that such a mass of property once more vested in the church ought to have produced a general reenlightenment of the people, and thus have drawn them extensively away from a religion like Romanism, which pretends to no sufficient scriptural authority, and labours under the disadvantage of enjoining or encouraging many things that appear forbidden in Scripture to every reader of it who has neither a bias in his mind, nor a gloss in his hand. But when Ireland regained the religious advantages wrested from her in 1641, she was by no means in a condition to profit adequately by them. The Romish priesthood retained its hold upon the country, and the national establishment had to struggle with such difficulties as paralysed its efforts. Its churches were generally in ruins, the revenues to support the clergy had been, by various means, so enormously alienated, that two or more contiguous benefices, sometimes even eight or nine, were put together, for the sake of supplying the incumbent with a respectable maintenance, Romish hostility hemmed it every where, and in Ulster, Presbyterian hostility was little less formidable, especially after the act of uniformity passed, which in Ireland was not until 1665. In the face of all these discouragements, however, some progress was made in reconciling the nation to the church of England, and the Irish were upon the point of receiving the benefit of religious instruction extensively through the press, in their own language, when Charles II. died; and the succession of a violent Romanist revived all the hopes, however sanguine, of the papal party. It is true

9 Mant, 671. Before the settlement of religion in Ireland is dismissed, it may be useful to mention a judicious expedient by which Abp. Bramhall evaded

the inconvenience of insisting upon reordination, which was found in both islands a most formidable obstacle to the conformity of Presbyterian incum

that these hopes were dashed, within a very short interval, to the ground, but this disappointment was embittered by new confiscations, which again linked Protestant opinions with a galling sense of pecuniary pillage.

§ 12. Early in the reign of Charles II. the English clergy receded from the practice of taxing themselves. Their constitutional right to do this had been regularly exercised in convocation, from time immemorial, until the late days of the com monwealth. They had then been included in money bills, like all other inhabitants of the country. On the Restoration, the ancient practice was revived, but it gave no pleasure to the clerical body. While taxed in common with their neighbours, clergymen underwent no higher burdens: when taxed apart, they found the court expect more of them than of other men, and that influential persons of their own order were quite willing to force or cajole them into the fulfilment of such expectations. As usual with mankind under any disagreeable pressure, the clergy attributed this court-subserviency of their leaders to interested motives, feeling sure that their money would not be so

bents. "When the benefices were called at the visitation, several appeared, and exhibited only such titles as they had received from the late powers. He told them they were no legal titles; but in regard he heard well of them, he was willing to make such to them by institution and induction; which they humbly acknowledged, and intreated his lordship to do. But desiring to see their letters of orders, some had no other but their certificates of ordination by some Presbyterian classes, which, he told them, did not qualify them for any preferment in the church. Whereupon the question immediately arose, Are we not ministers of the Gospel? To which his grace answered, that that was not the question: at least, he desired, for peace sake, of which he hoped they were ministers too, that that might not be the question for that time. I dispute not, said he, the value of your ordination; nor those acts you have exercised by virtue of it: what you are, or might do, here when there was no law, or in other churches abroad. But we are now to consider ourselves as a national church, limited by law, which, among other things, takes chief care to prescribe about ordination: and I do not know how you could recover the means of the church, if any should refuse to pay you your tythes, if you

are not ordained as the law of this church requireth. And I am desirous that she may have your labours, and you such portions of her revenue as shall be allotted you in a legal way. By this means he gained such as were learned and sober, and for the rest it was not much matter.

"Just as I was about to close up this particular, I received full assurance of all that I offered in it, which, for the reader's sake, I thought fit to add, being the very words which his Grace caused to be inserted into the letters of one Mr. Edward Parkinson, whom he ordained at that time, and from whom I had them by my reverend brother and neighbour, the Lord Bishop of Killaloe. Non annihilantes priores ordines, (si quos habuit,) nec validitatem aut invaliditatem eorum determinantes, multo minus omnes ordines sacros ecclesiarum forensicarum condemnantes, quos proprio judici relinquimus : sed solummodo supplentes, quicquid prius defuit per canones Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ requisitum; et providentes paci Ecclesiæ, ut schismatis tollatur occasio, et conscientiis fidelium satisfiat, nec ullo modo dubitent de ejus ordinatione, aut actus suos Presbyterales tanquam invalidos aversentur ; in cujus rei testimonium, &c." Bp. Vesey's Life of Primate Bramhall, cited by Bishop Mant, 624.