bably it did not enter into the preacher's mind while preparing his sermon. He was, however, highly popular in the pulpit, and every way an influential divine; and his diocesan, Henry Compton, bishop of London, received a royal order to suspend him. The prelate respectfully declined, alleging that he was called upon to do a judicial act without any necessary preliminary of judicial forms; but he recommended Sharp to abstain from preaching until the king should be willing to let him resume it, and this recommendation was unhesitatingly taken. While, however, the business was in progress, James had been so rash and ill advised as to set up an Ecclesiastical Commission, which was justly deemed little or nothing else than a revival of the High Commission Court, abolished, with every similar judicature, by statute, in the 17th of Charles I.8 This tribunal suspended Bishop Compton, and thus placed before the country one of the principal churchmen, who was a man of family, and had lately shown very just views of his public duties, as a victim of arbitrary power, and a martyr to the Protestant religion. While people were brooding indignantly over his wrongs, their excitement was increased by conduct in other quarters of an opposite description, and by the king's injudicious patronage of it. At every time men will be found ready with such alleged convictions as make for their interests it is greatly to the credit of the Church of England that no great number of such men has ever been found within her pale when her principles, position, and efficiency were at stake. Of course the reign of James II. supplied some such. An open conversion to Popery, or that advocacy of its pretensions which may colourably pass for liberal and enlightened, were modes of remedying defects of professional eminence, or influential patronage, so very easy and obvious, that the reign of James II. was certain to bring forward clergymen thus recommended. The master of University college, Oxford, and 6 Newcome's Life of Abp. Sharp, Lond. 1825, i. 70. Kennet states, that although this new court did not open until August, yet the commission for erecting it was issued in April. The biographer of Abp. Sharp, however, asserts that Bp. Compton objected to its cognizance of his case, as being a judicature established after the matter charged occurred, and that the VOL. IV. U chancellor did not deny the correctness of the dates, but merely claimed a retrospective operation for the court. Newcome's Sharp, i. 68. 8 It was pleaded, that another act, 13 Car. 2, had authorized the present court, though not with those extraordinary powers that had been exercised by the old high commission. Kennet, iii. 456. They a few other ecclesiastics of less note, accordingly, soon came before the public, as enlightened by the same religious convictions that awakened such lively interest in the royal patron. In their favour, James dispensed with the tests, that must otherwise have deprived them of preferment. His power to confer this indulgence was declared an integral part of the kingly prerogative by nearly all the judges; and a general acquiescence of the nation in their decision seemed at one time likely to be ultimately gained. James was thus decoyed into further violations of statute law and the rights of individuals, covering every such act of infatuation with the illimitable mantle of his dispensing power. In this way both universities were arrayed against him; and after the unsuccessful trial of the seven bishops, nearly all England loathed his administration, as incurably hostile both to sound religion and constitutional rights. It is true, that he had, at one time, obtained considerable popularity among the Dissenters by suspending the penal laws in their favour, including the Test Act. were thus left at liberty to worship God publicly in their own. way, and acquired that influence in corporations which their body, lying as it does very much among certain classes of traders, is sure to possess when its energies are left unfettered. But then their liberty was shared by the Romanists, whom they abhorred, and felt no disposition to tolerate, and who, they felt certain, would drive them again into the fires of Smithfield, if ever Popery should regain its old ascendancy. To bring this about, however, they considered as James's only aim, not any liberal views of leaving all men to follow freely a religion of their own. Hence the Dissenters had no sooner their former power in corporations, or something near it, than they used it against the crown; willingly listening to schemes of toleration or comprehension by which the church party proposed to unite the whole Protestant body, if it could be freed from existing dangers. While James thus held sovereignty by a mere thread, the birth of a male heir accomplished his ruin. As his own age was considerably advanced, and both his 9 9 64 'Sir John Shorter, the new lord mayor, and a Protestant dissenter, thought fit to qualify himself for this office according to law, though the test was suspended, and the king had signified to the mayor that he was at liberty, and might use what form of worship he thought best in Guildhall." Neal, iii. 290. daughters were staunch Protestants, the common course of nature might soon relieve the nation from any further apprehensions for its religion. But an infant, certain to be educated in all the violence of Romish prejudice, with a Romish mother too, who might long be regent, offered a prospect which zealous Protestantism would not face. Before the birth of this unfortunate child, rumours had been eagerly circulated, and seemingly were generally credited, that a supposititious male heir was to crown the king's delinquencies, and ensure, if the nation would allow it, a firm establishment for tyranny and popery.1 When James really reached the ruin which his folly had so industriously prepared, and was pressing forward with the most humiliating retractations, he offered sufficient evidence of the young prince's lawful birth. But nothing was less desired by the nation than conviction of that kind: hence the spuriousness of the Pretender's origin was long a standing article of popular belief in England. His legitimacy was embarrassing to national prepossessions in favour of hereditary right, and unquestionably his admission to the throne would have jeopardied. both the religion and the liberties of Englishmen. His appearance, accordingly, on the theatre of life, instantly sealed the fate of that infatuated government which sanguine Romanism thought only waiting for such an event to become permanently consolidated. § 15. Soon after the revolution, it was unanimously voted in the convention parliament 2, that popery on the throne has been proved by experience inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant nation. Papists were, therefore, virtually declared incapable of the English sceptre. But inherent exclusion from royal power having thus been proclaimed against the religious principles which drove James from his country, the claims of those which were so largely concerned in raising William to the sovereignty could not in equity or with safety be overlooked. Nor, indeed, was the indisposition to favour the scruples of non-conformity nearly so great as it "While the bishops were in the Tower and the Princess Anne at Bath, the queen was declared to be delivered of a prince, on Sunday, June 10, between the hours of nine and ten in the morning. This mysterious birth was conducted with great artifice or great im prudence; no care had been taken to satisfy the Protestant part of the nation that the queen was with child, though it was ridiculed in pamphlets dispersed about Whitehall." Ibid. 305. 2 Jan. 29, 1689. had been during the violence of that re-action which naturally exasperated high-church prejudices in most of Charles the Second's reign. On the contrary, schemes of toleration and of comprehension were in agitation among the heads of the church and their friends, before James had been driven from the land which loathed his austere temper, dull understanding, Romish bigotry, and loose indulgences. The church, indeed, had obviously fallen into urgent need of assistance from every Protestant quarter, and the Dissenters had shewn themselves magnanimous enough to make common cause with their ancient rival and oppressor, rather than fall into the snares of that party which was hostile to a scriptural faith altogether. Hence the king recommended some such qualification for office as would lay it open to all Protestants able and willing to take it. A bill was accordingly brought into the House of Lords for abrogating the former oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and substituting other oaths in their place. This occasioned a committee for drawing up reasons explanatory of the proposed abrogation, and for preparing a clause to abolish the sacramental test on admission to office. The design, however, miscarried by a very great majority. Nor was another motion more successful, which condemned any other than religious motives in receiving the sacrament, and admitted the reception of it in dissenting congregations within twelve months before or after, as a sufficient security on the taking of office. Thus the Test Act was continued in force. But notwithstanding, the revolution ended the substantial hardships of orthodox Protestant Dissenters. The Toleration Act was passed with little difficulty, though, as might be reasonably expected, not entirely to the satisfaction of all the church party. By it, separate congregations and absence from church were exempted from the penalties of existing statutes, on condition that parties claiming such indulgence should take the oath of allegiance, and subscribe the declaration against popery. Dissenting 4 ministers also were to subscribe the doctrinal articles of the church of England, but Quakers were freed from this condition. Neither Papists, nor anti-Trinitarians, were to be inIcluded within this measure of toleration. In practice, this Abp. Sancroft himself was engaged upon deliberations of this kind. D'Oyly's Sancroft, 197. 4 Kennet, iii. 518. 5 It received the royal assent May 24, 1689. Ibid. 550. Act secured, within a few years, more than its letter strictly warranted, subscription to doctrinal articles gradually becoming obsolete, and the Protestant Dissenter being thus really left in the unfettered exercise of his own discretion. § 16. The scheme of a comprehension, or a religious arrangement satisfactory to Dissenters, proved a total failure. The subject was introduced into the upper House, while the bill for toleration was under discussion, and some of the peers earnestly contended for the appointment of a committee, such as had been contemplated under Henry VIII. and Edward VI., in which laymen should be blended with ecclesiastics, for the preparation of some well-digested plan for altering the liturgy and canons, and improving ecclesiastical courts. This was, however, opposed by Burnet, newly made bishop of Salisbury, under a conviction that it would increase the dissatisfaction, already rising among the clergy and their warmest friends." Tillotson also, then clerk of the closet, and much consulted by the king, objected to the plan, as likely to confirm the Romish jeers of worshipping God by act of parliament. He recommended that nothing should be done by the legislature in this delicate matter, which had not been previously approved by convocation, and that a committee of divines should be appointed by royal authority to consider what alterations this latter might advantageously discuss.7 The Commons proved as unwilling to enter upon the plan of comprehension as any high churchman could desire, ending a debate upon the bill for it sent down from the upper House, by an address to the crown to summon a convocation and advise with it on ecclesiastical affairs. When this body met, it displayed immediately a spirit highly unfavourable to the proposed comprehension. Tillotson was meant by the crown for prolocutor of the lower House: but it chose Dr. Jane, regius professor of divinity at Oxford, who had rendered himself conspicuous in the ill-judged proceedings there of 1683, which committed the university to the doctrine of passive obedience, and who now closed his opening speech with the unbending language of England's ancient baronage, Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari. This sentence became the watch-word of his party 9, and it was the party that Neal, iii. 319. Nichols, Defensio Eccl. Angl. Lond. 1707, p. 95. s Kennet, iii. 552. |