The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 - Thomas Babington Macaulay (novel books to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Thomas Babington Macaulay
Book online «The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 - Thomas Babington Macaulay (novel books to read TXT) 📗». Author Thomas Babington Macaulay
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
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
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