The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

the school of Usher and the

moderate Presbyterians of the school of Baxter. The moderate

Episcopalians would admit that a Bishop might lawfully be

assisted by a council. The moderate Presbyterians would not deny

that each provincial assembly might lawfully have a permanent

president, and that this president might lawfully be called a

Bishop. There might be a revised Liturgy which should not exclude

extemporaneous prayer, a baptismal service in which the sign of

the cross might be used or omitted at discretion, a communion

service at which the faithful might sit if their conscience

forbade them to kneel. But to no such plan could the great bodies

of the Cavaliers listen with patience. The religious members of

that party were conscientiously attached to the whole system of

their Church. She had been dear to their murdered King. She had

consoled them in defeat and penury. Her service, so often

whispered in an inner chamber during the season of trial, had

such a charm for them that they were unwilling to part with a

single response. Other Royalists, who made little presence to

piety, yet loved the episcopal church because she was the foe of

their foes. They valued a prayer or a ceremony, not on account of

the comfort which it conveyed to themselves, but on account of

the vexation which it gave to the Roundheads, and were so far

from being disposed to purchase union by concession that they

objected to concession chiefly because it tended to produce

union.


Such feelings, though blamable, were natural, and not wholly

inexcusable. The Puritans had undoubtedly, in the day of their

power, given cruel provocation. They ought to have learned, if

from nothing else, yet from their own discontents, from their own

struggles, from their own victory, from the fall of that proud

hierarchy by which they had been so heavily oppressed, that, in

England, and in the seventeenth century, it was not in the power

of the civil magistrate to drill the minds of men into conformity

with his own system of theology. They proved, however, as

intolerant and as meddling as ever Laud had been. They

interdicted under heavy penalties the use of the Book of Common

Prayer, not only in churches, but even in private houses. It was

a crime in a child to read by the bedside of a sick parent one of

those beautiful collects which had soothed the griefs of forty

generations of Christians. Severe punishments were denounced

against such as should presume to blame the Calvinistic mode of

worship. Clergymen of respectable character were not only ejected

from their benefices by thousands, but were frequently exposed to

the outrages of a fanatical rabble. Churches and sepulchres, fine

works of art and curious remains of antiquity, were brutally

defaced. The Parliament resolved that all pictures in the royal

collection which contained representations of Jesus or of the

Virgin Mother should be burned. Sculpture fared as ill as

painting. Nymphs and Graces, the work of Ionian chisels, were

delivered over to Puritan stonemasons to be made decent. Against

the lighter vices the ruling faction waged war with a zeal little

tempered by humanity or by common sense. Sharp laws were passed

against betting. It was enacted that adultery should be punished

with death. The illicit intercourse of the sexes, even where

neither violence nor seduction was imputed, where no public

scandal was given, where no conjugal right was violated, was made

a misdemeanour. Public amusements, from the masques which were

exhibited at the mansions of the great down to the wrestling

matches and grinning matches on village greens, were vigorously

attacked. One ordinance directed that all the Maypoles in England

should forthwith be hewn down. Another proscribed all theatrical

diversions. The playhouses were to be dismantled, the spectators

fined, the actors whipped at the cart's tail. Rope-dancing,

puppet-shows, bowls, horse-racing, were regarded with no friendly

eye. But bearbaiting, then a favourite diversion of high and low,

was the abomination which most strongly stirred the wrath of the

austere sectaries. It is to be remarked that their antipathy to

this sport had nothing in common with the feeling which has, in

our own time, induced the legislature to interfere for the

purpose of protecting beasts against the wanton cruelty of men.

The Puritan hated bearbaiting, not because it gave pain to the

bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Indeed, he

generally contrived to enjoy the double pleasure of tormenting

both spectators and bear.16


Perhaps no single circumstance more strongly illustrates the

temper of the precisians than their conduct respecting Christmas

day. Christmas had been, from time immemorial, the season of joy

and domestic affection, the season when families assembled, when

children came home from school, when quarrels were made up, when

carols were heard in every street, when every house was decorated

with evergreens, and every table was loaded with good cheer. At

that season all hearts not utterly destitute of kindness were

enlarged and softened. At that season the poor were admitted to

partake largely of the overflowings of the wealth of the rich,

whose bounty was peculiarly acceptable on account of the

shortness of the days and of the severity of the weather. At that

season, the interval between landlord and tenant, master and

servant, was less marked than through the rest of the year. Where

there is much enjoyment there will be some excess: yet, on the

whole, the spirit in which the holiday was kept was not unworthy

of a Christian festival. The long Parliament gave orders, in

1644, that the twenty-fifth of December should be strictly

observed as a fast, and that all men should pass it in humbly

bemoaning the great national sin which they and their fathers had

so often committed on that day by romping under the mistletoe,

eating boar's head, and drinking ale flavored with roasted

apples. No public act of that time seems to have irritated the

common people more. On the next anniversary of the festival

formidable riots broke out in many places. The constables were

resisted, the magistrates insulted, the houses of noted zealots

attacked, and the prescribed service of the day openly read in

the churches.


Such was the spirit of the extreme Puritans, both Presbyterian

and Independent. Oliver, indeed, was little disposed to be either

a persecutor or a meddler. But Oliver, the head of a party, and

consequently, to a great extent, the slave of a party, could not

govern altogether according to his own inclinations. Even under

his administration many magistrates, within their own

jurisdiction, made themselves as odious as Sir Hudibras,

interfered with all the pleasures of the neighbourhood, dispersed

festive meetings, and put fiddlers in the stocks. Still more

formidable was the zeal of the soldiers. In every village where

they appeared there was an end of dancing, bellringing, and

hockey. In London they several times interrupted theatrical

performances at which the Protector had the judgment and good

nature to connive.


With the fear and hatred inspired by such a tyranny contempt was

largely mingled. The peculiarities of the Puritan, his look, his

dress, his dialect, his strange scruples, had been, ever since

the time of Elizabeth, favourite subjects with mockers. But these

peculiarities appeared far more grotesque in a faction which

ruled a great empire than in obscure and persecuted

congregations. The cant, which had moved laughter when it was

heard on the stage from Tribulation Wholesome and

Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, was still more laughable when it proceeded

from the lips of Generals and Councillors of State. It is also to

be noticed that during the civil troubles several sects had

sprung into existence, whose eccentricities surpassed anything

that had before been seen in England. A mad tailor, named

Lodowick Muggleton, wandered from pothouse to pothouse, tippling

ale, and denouncing eternal torments against those who refused to

believe, on his testimony, that the Supreme Being was only six

feet high, and that the sun was just four miles from the earth.17

George Fox had raised a tempest of derision by proclaiming that

it was a violation of Christian sincerity to designate a single

person by a plural pronoun, and that it was an idolatrous homage

to Janus and Woden to talk about January and Wednesday. His

doctrine, a few years later, was embraced by some eminent men,

and rose greatly in the public estimation. But at the time of the

Restoration the Quakers were popularly regarded as the most

despicable of fanatics. By the Puritans they were treated with

severity here, and were persecuted to the death in New England.

Nevertheless the public, which seldom makes nice distinctions,

often confounded the Puritan with the Quaker. Both were

schismatics. Both hated episcopacy and the Liturgy. Both had what

seemed extravagant whimsies about dress, diversions and postures.

Widely as the two differed in opinion, they were popularly

classed together as canting schismatics; and whatever was

ridiculous or odious in either increased the scorn and aversion

which the multitude felt for both.


Before the civil wars, even those who most disliked the opinions

and manners of the Puritan were forced to admit that his moral

conduct was generally, in essentials, blameless; but this praise

was now no longer bestowed, and, unfortunately, was no longer

deserved. The general fate of sects is to obtain a high

reputation for sanctity while they are oppressed, and to lose it

as soon as they become powerful: and the reason is obvious. It is

seldom that a man enrolls himself in a proscribed body from any

but conscientious motives. Such a body, therefore, is composed,

with scarcely an exception, of sincere persons. The most rigid

discipline that can be enforced within a religious society is a

very feeble instrument of purification, when compared with a

little sharp persecution from without. We may be certain that

very few persons, not seriously impressed by religious

convictions, applied for baptism while Diocletian was vexing the

Church, or joined themselves to Protestant congregations at the

risk of being burned by Bonner. But, when a sect becomes

powerful, when its favour is the road to riches and dignities,

worldly and ambitious men crowd into it, talk its language,

conform strictly to its ritual, mimic its peculiarities, and

frequently go beyond its honest members in all the outward

indications of zeal. No discernment, no watchfulness, on the part

of ecclesiastical rulers, can prevent the intrusion of such false

brethren. The tares and wheat must grow together. Soon the world

begins to find out that the godly are not better than other men,

and argues, with some justice, that, if not better, they must be

much worse. In no long time all those signs which were formerly

regarded as characteristic of a saint are regarded as

characteristic of a knave.


Thus it was with the English Nonconformists. They had been

oppressed; and oppression had kept