Part 3

Doctrine of this kind is familiar enough to the student of theosophic and cosmogonic speculation. Whether Vane in his foreign travels had fallen in with the writings of Jacob Boehme we cannot say, but the family likeness is strong. The interest of the doctrine for us lies in its application to practical statesmanship by the keenest politician of a time when politicians were keen and strong. That it should have been so applied has been a sore stumbling-block to two classes of men not unfrequently found in alliance, sensational philosophers, and theologians who find the way of salvation in scripture construed as an act of parliament. The man above ordinances, as Vane was called by his contemporaries, [1] was naturally not a favourite with men whom he would have reckoned in bondage to the legal conscience. Baxter’s opinion of him has been already quoted. To the lawyers, calling themselves theologians, of the next century he was even less intelligible. Burnet had ‘sometimes taken pains to see if I could find out his meaning in his words, yet I could never reach it. And since many others {296} have said the same, it may be reasonable to believe that he hid somewhat that was a necessary key to the rest.’ [2] Clarendon had been more modest; when he had read some of his writings and ‘found nothing in them of his usual clearness and ratiocination in his discourse, in which he used much to excel the best of the company he kept’ (the company, we must remember, that called Milton friend), ‘and that in a crowd of very easy words the sense was too hard to find out, I was of opinion that the subject of it was of so delicate a nature that it required another kind of preparation of mind, and perhaps another kind of diet, than men are ordinarily supplied with.’ [3] Hume was superior to such a supposition; ‘This man, so celebrated for his parliamentary talents, and for his capacity in business, has left some writings behind him. They treat all of them of religious subjects and are absolutely unintelligible. No traces of eloquence, even of common sense, appear in them.’ In this language is noticeable a certain resentment common to men of the world and practical philosophers, that a man whom they deem a fool in his philosophy should not be a fool altogether. From his derided theosophy, however, Vane had derived certain practical principles, now of recognised value, which no statesman before him had dreamt of, and which were not less potent when based on religious ideas struggling for articulate utterance, than when stated by the masters of an elegant vocabulary from which God and spirit were excluded.

[1] [Amended from “cotemporary”. Tr.]

[2] [Burnet, _Own Time_, p. 108, Ed. 1838.]

[3] [Clarendon on ‘Creasy’s answer to Stillingfleet,’ as quoted in the _Biographia Britannica_ (art. ‘Vane.’)]

LECTURE II.

In Vane first appears the doctrine of natural right and government by consent, which, however open to criticism in the crude form of popular statement, has yet been the moving principle of the modern reconstruction of Europe. It was the result of his recognition of the ‘rule of Christ in the natural conscience’ in the elemental reason, in virtue of which man is properly a law to himself. From the same idea followed the principle of universal toleration, the exclusion of the magistrate’s power alike from the maintenance and restraint of any kind of opinion. This principle did not {297} with Vane and the independents rest, as in modern times, on the slippery foundation of a supposed indifference of all religious beliefs, but on the conviction of the sacredness of the reason, however deluded, in every man, which may be constrained by nothing less divine than itself.

‘The rule of magistracy’ says Vane, ‘is not to intrude itself into the office and proper concerns of Christ’s inward government and rule in the conscience, but it is to content itself with the outward man, and to intermeddle with the concerns thereof in reference to the converse which man ought to have with man, upon the grounds of natural justice and right in things appertaining to this life.’ [1]

[1] [‘A Retired Man’s Meditations,’ (quoted by Forster, _Eminent British Statesmen_, iv. p. 84).]

Nor would he allow the re-establishment under the name of christian discipline, of that constraint of the conscience which he refused to the magistrate. Such discipline, he would hold, as he held the sabbath, to be rather a ‘magistratical institution’ in imitation of what was ‘ceremonious and temporary’ among the Jews, ‘than that which hath any clear appointment in the gospel.’ [1] Christ’s spirit was not bound. A system of truth and discipline had not been written down once for all in the scriptures, but rather was to be gradually elicited from the scriptures by the gradual manifestation in the believer of the spirit which spoke also in them. A ‘waiting,’ seeking attitude, unbound by rule whether ecclesiastical or secular, was that which became a spiritual church. The application of this waiting spirit to practical life is to be found in the policy of Cromwell.

[1] [Sikes, quoted by Forster, _ib_. p. 81, note.]

It would be unfair to ascribe the theory of Vane in its speculative fulness to the independents as a body. It seems, however, to be but the development of the view on which Mr. Robinson had dwelt in his last words to the settlers of New Plymouth; and, so far as it could be represented by a sect, it was represented by the independents. It came before the world, in full outward panoply, in the army of Cromwell. The history of its inevitable conflict with the spirit of presbyterianism on the one hand and the wisdom of the world on the other, of its aberrations and perplexities, of its brief triumph and final flight into the wilderness, is the history of the rise and fall of the English commonwealth. I have yet {298} to speak, however, of the representation of the wisdom of the world in the Long Parliament.

Before the outbreak of the war, as I have explained, Vane was the only man in the house of commons whose opinions were recognised as definitely opposed both to episcopacy and presbyterianism. In the lords his only recognised follower was lord Brook, known to the readers of Sir Walter Scott as the ‘fanatic Brook,’ really an eminent scholar and man of letters, who was shot in storming the close at Lichfield in the first year of the war, leaving as a legacy to the parliament a plea for freedom of speech and conscience. The majority of the parliament, however, had no special love for the presbyterian discipline and theology. Their favour to it was merely negative. They dreaded arminianism, as notoriously at that time the great weapon in the hands of the jesuits; they objected to the high episcopacy as sacerdotal, and as maintaining a jurisdiction incompatible with civil liberty. In 1641 a modified episcopacy on Usher’s plan was a possible solution of the difficulty. Each shire was to have a presbytery of twelve members, with a bishop as president who, ‘with assistance of some of the presbytery,’ was to ordain, degrade, and excommunicate. Though the pressure of strife with the king prevented anything being done to carry out this resolution, it probably represented the views even of the more advanced parliamentary leaders; but only, however, as afterwards appeared, on the supposition that the presbyters with their bishop should be strictly under civil control. The worldly wisdom of the Long Parliament was, in the party language of the times, essentially erastian.

As the presbyterian claims mounted higher, this became more apparent. The calling of the assembly of divines, and the adoption of the covenant, might seem to give presbyterianism a sufficiently broad charter of privilege; yet both these steps were taken by parliament with restrictions which showed its temper. The ordinance which called the assembly gave it power ‘until further order should be taken by parliament to confer of such matters concerning the liturgy, discipline, and government of the church of England, or the vindicating of the doctrine of the same from false aspersions and misconstructions, as shall be proposed by both or either house of parliament, and no other.’ [1] It concludes by providing {299} that ‘this ordinance shall not give them, nor shall they in this assembly assume to exercise, any jurisdiction, power, or authority ecclesiastical whatsoever, or any other power than is herein particularly expressed.’ This document has nothing revolutionary about it. It is the natural utterance of what Brook pronounced to have been an ‘episcopal and erastian parliament of conformists.’ This parliament, however, had soon under military necessity to raise a spirit which no episcopacy or erastianism could lay. The divines came to Westminster, according to Brook, all conformists, with the exception of eight or nine independents. They came, that is, from the cooling atmosphere of benefices, and had not yet begun to discuss the liturgy or object to a modified episcopacy. If they came conformists, however, they did not long remain so. Contact with each other, and the applause of London congregations, essentially presbyterian in their sympathies, bred a warmer temper. The introduction of the Scotch commissioners, and the adoption of the covenant, gave spirit and strength to their disciplinarian humour, and in a few months, men who had come to the assembly anxious only for some restraint on episcopal tyranny, were clamouring for the establishment of presbyterianism as _jure divino_.

[1] [Rushworth, June 12. 1643.]

I have spoken of the adoption of the covenant in England as matter of military necessity. It was the condition of alliance between parliament and the Scotch; without this alliance the year 1644 would in all probability have been fatal to the parliamentary cause. Supposing the Scotch army to have simply held aloof, the royal party would have been so triumphant in the north as to enable the king to advance with irresistible force on Lichfield. Till the parliament had secured it, however, it could not be trusted to stand aloof; it might at any time have been gained for the king by his consenting, as he did too late in 1648, to the covenant. The English negotiators, of whom Vane was the chief, had hoped to secure the alliance by a merely civil league, and when the Scotch insisted on the adoption of the religious covenant, they still succeeded in having the document entitled ‘league and covenant’ instead of ‘covenant’ alone. In later years, as we shall see, they always insisted on interpreting it as a league in virtue of which each kingdom was to help the other in the establishment of what religion it chose, not as binding either to any particular form. {300} The desirableness of such interpretation is more obvious than its correctness. By the first and second clauses, as they originally stood, the covenanters bound themselves to ‘the preservation of the reformed religion in Scotland,’ and ‘the reformation of religion in England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship, discipline and government’; also to the ‘extirpation of prelacy.’ After the words ‘reformation etc.’ Vane procured the insertion of the qualification ‘according to the word of God,’ in order to avoid committal to any particular form. To ease the conscience of those who favoured Usher’s form of episcopacy, prelacy was interpreted to mean ‘church government by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and commissaries, deans, chapters, archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy.’ This modified covenant was taken by the parliament and the assembly at Westminster, and enjoined on every one over the age of eighteen. Practically it was by no means universally imposed even on the clergy; in Baxter’s neighbourhood none took it. Still, its operation was to eject from their livings some two thousand clergymen, whose places were mostly filled by presbyterians. A shifty and exacting alliance was thus dearly purchased at the cost of at once spreading loose over the country an uncontrolled element of disaffection to the parliament, and giving vent to a spirit of ecclesiastical arrogance which would soon demand to rule alone. This spirit was not long in showing itself. The Scotch army entered England at the beginning of 1644, and throughout that year the kirk, either by petition or through the commons in England, was pressing for a presbyterian settlement of church government in England. At last the assembly, still under special permission from parliament, was allowed to proceed to the discussion of this question. The first step was to propose a vote in the assembly that presbyterian government was _jure divino_. The only opponents of this decree were the small band of independents headed by Goodwin, the lay assessors Selden and Whitelock representing the erastian majority in parliament, whose only clerical supporter seems to have been Lightfoot the Hebraist. Selden, a layman of vast ecclesiastical lore, had a way of touching the sorest points of clerical feeling. In 1618 he had written his great work disproving the divine origin of tithes, and had been brought, in consequence, before the {301} High Commission court. There, with the ordinary suppleness of the erastian conscience, he signed the following recantation: [1]

‘My good lords, I most humbly acknowledge my error in publishing the history of tithes, and especially in that I have at all (by shewing any interpretation of scripture, or by meddling with councils, canons, fathers, or by what else soever occurs in it) offered any occasion of argument against any right of maintenance _jure divino_ of the ministers of the gospel; beseeching your lordships to receive this ingenuous and humble acknowledgment, together with the unfeigned protestation of my grief, that I have so incurred his majesty’s and your lordships’ displeasure.’

[1] [Neal, _Puritans_, i. p. 471.]

The consciousness of debasement does not strengthen one’s affection for those who have been the occasion of it, and perhaps Selden’s remembrance of his usage by the ‘old priest’ may not have quickened his friendship for the ‘new presbyter.’ ‘In the debates of the divines,’ says Whitelock, ‘Mr. Selden spoke admirably and confuted divers of them in their own learning. Sometimes when they had cited a text of scripture to prove their assertion, he would tell them, “Perhaps in your little pocket bibles with gilt leaves (which they would often pull out and read) the translation may be thus, but the Greek or the Hebrew signifies thus and thus,” and so would totally silence them.’ [1] Whitelock himself opposed much grave law-logic to the claims of the divines, which he quotes at length in his memoirs, but his most satisfactory argument, to modern ears, is the simple one, ‘If this presbyterian government be not _jure divino_, no opinion of any council can make it to be what it is not; and if it be _jure divino_, it continues so still, although you do not declare it to be so.’ [2] The divines, however, thought otherwise. Presbyterianism was duly voted _jure divino_, and parliament in 1645 was applied to to enforce the _jus divinum_ under pains and penalties. That the presbyterian _jus_ was _divinum_ parliament could never be induced to decide. It was very near doing so on one occasion, when the divines had contrived to bring the question on in a packed house, but by the skill of sergeant Glyn and Whitelock in talking against time the danger was averted. At length, however, under pressure from the Scots and city of London, it established a presbyterian régime. This régime, {302} never carried out save in London and Lancashire, was the same in kind as that existing in Scotland, except that the ‘kirk session’ was called a parochial presbytery, and the combination of parochial presbyteries not a presbytery as in Scotland, but a ‘classis.’ This was referred to in Milton’s lines,

‘To ride us with a classic hierarchy Taught ye by mere A.S. and Rutherford.’ [3]

It was established, however, with such erastian limitations that while it excluded the independents, it gave no satisfaction to the Scots. The independent principle was violated on two points; both by the subjection of the independent congregation to the ‘classis,’ and by the method of ordination adopted which recognised the presbyter as of a distinct order, to be set apart by other presbyters, instead of as a simple officer appointed by a single congregation. The thoroughgoing presbyterians were alienated by the refusal to the church of the absolute power of the keys. The offences for which the presbyteries were allowed to suspend from the sacrament or excommunicate were distinctly enumerated, and an ultimate appeal, in all ecclesiastical cases, was given to the parliament. The whole system, moreover, was declared for the present merely provisional. The restrictions at once raised an outcry among the Scots and the presbyterians of the city, and the assembly itself was bold enough to vote a condemnation of the clause giving a final appeal to parliament. A seasonable threat of a _praemunire_, however, from the commons, laid the rising dust in the assembly; but the mounting spirit of the new forcers of conscience was shown in the opposition made to the petition which the independents offered to parliament, that their congregations might have the right of ordination within themselves, and that they might not be brought under the power of the ‘presbyterian classes.’ It would be tedious to follow the war of committees, sermons, pamphlets, which this request, modest in itself, and more modest in form, excited. The assembly, the city, the Scotch parliament, urged the maintenance of an absolute uniformity. No plea of conscience was to be listened to. To admit one was to admit all. The independent claim was schismatic, and, as such, excluded by the covenant. In the words of a pamphlet of the time; ‘to let men serve God {303} according to conscience is to cast out one devil that seven worse may enter.’ The new synod of the city clergy, meeting at Sion House, petitioned the assembly to oppose with all their might ‘the great Diana of the independents,’ and not to suffer their new establishment ‘to be strangled in the birth by a lawless toleration.’ The language of the Scotch parliament, addressed through their president to the two houses at Westminster, was specially high and irritating. ‘It is expected,’ says the president, ‘that the honourable houses will add the civil sanction to what the assembly have advised. I am commanded by the parliament of this kingdom to demand it, and in their name do demand it.’ The temper in which this demand was made, was shown by a declaration against ‘liberty of conscience and toleration of sectaries,’ published at the same time by the Scotch, in which, after taking due note of ‘their own great services,’ they announce that, ‘being all bound by one covenant, they will go on to the last man of the kingdom in opposing that party in England which was endeavouring to supplant true religion by pleading for liberty of conscience.’ Evidence might be tediously multiplied to show, that if Marston Moor and Naseby had been won by the Scots and the trained bands of the city, the civil sword would really have been applied ‘to force the consciences which Christ set free,’ at a time when these consciences were at their quickest, to a conformity, if not more oppressive than that exacted by Laud, yet more fatal to intellectual freedom.

[1] [Whitelock, _Memorials_, i. p. 209, Ed. 1853.]

[2] [Whitelock, i. p. 294.]

[3] [_On the new forcers of conscience under the Long Parliament._]

Meanwhile the parliamentary erastians had a power at their back, no child of their own, too strong for the Scots and the assembly, and soon to prove too strong for parliament itself. The first note of alarm at this power had been sounded by the wary Scots about the end of 1644.

‘One evening,’ says Whitelock, ‘Maynard and I were sent for by the Lord General’ (Essex) ‘to Essex House. There we found with him the Scotch commissioners, Mr. Hollis, Sir Philip Stapleton’ (presbyterian leaders in the commons) ‘and others of his special friends. After compliments, and that all were set down in council, the lord chancellor of Scotland was called on to explain the matter on which he desired the opinion of Maynard and Whitelock. ‘Ye ken verra weel that lieutenant-general Cromwell is no friend of ours, and not only is he no friend to us and to the government of our church, but he is also no well-wisher to his excellency” {304} (Essex), “whom you and we all have cause to love and honour; and if he be permitted to go on his ways, it may endanger the whole business; therefore we are to advise of some course to be taken for prevention of this business. Ye ken verra weel the accord’ ’twixt the two kingdoms, and the union by the solemn league and covenant, and if any be an incendiary between the two nations, how he is to be proceeded against. Now the matter is, wherein we desire your opinions, what you tak the meaning of this word _incendiary_ to be, and whether lieutenant-general Cromwell be not sike an incendiary as is meant thereby, and which way wad be best to tak to proceed against him, if he be proved to be sike an incendiary, and that will clepe his wings from soaring to the prejudice of our cause. Now, ye may ken that by our laws in Scotland we clepe him an incendiary whay kindleth coals of contention in the state to the public damage; whether your law be the same or not, ye ken best who are mickle learned therein; and therefore, with the favour of his excellency, we desire your judgment in these points.”’ [1]

In reply, Maynard and Whitelock, after much disquisition on the meaning of the word ‘incendiary,’ one ‘not much conversant in our law,’ explain that lieutenant-general Cromwell is ‘a gentleman of quick and subtle parts, and one who hath (especially of late) gained no small interest in the house of commons, nor is he wanting of friends in the house of peers, nor of abilities in himself to manage his own defence to the best advantage,’ and that on the whole, till more particular proof of his incendiarism should be forthcoming, it would be better not to bring the matter before parliament. The incendiarism of lieutenant-general Cromwell really consisted in this, that he had (again to quote Whitelock) ‘a brave regiment of horse of his countrymen, most of them freeholders, or freeholders’ sons, who upon matter of conscience engaged in this quarrel. And thus being well armed within by satisfaction of their own consciences, and without by good iron arms, they would as one man stand firmly and charge desperately.’ [2] Nearly every military success of importance that had been won for the parliament had been won by these soldiers of conscience, and unhappily their conscience was not of a kind that would brook presbyterian uniformity. At the time of the conference at Essex House, {305} Cromwell, with the help of the persuasive arts of Vane, was moving the parliament, disgusted with the practical inefficiency of its conservative and presbyterian commanders, to measures which would give it an army led by officers mostly of his own training, and fired by that religious inspiration of which freedom of conscience was the necessary condition.

[1] [Whitelock, i. pp. 343-7.]

[2] [_ib_. i. p. 209.]