Chapter VII (2)

But this substitution of the lay power as represented by King or Queen and the Houses of Parliament for the Papal sway, by no means satisfied the Puritan idea and conviction as to the rightful claims of the laity in their membership of the reconstructed Church. Barrow described in the following sharp sentence the summary way of proceeding so far as the laity were concerned: “All these people, with all their manners, were in one day, with the blast of Queen Elizabeth’s trumpet, of ignorant Papists and gross idolaters, made faithful Christians and true professors.” It was said that the people, divided and classed in local territorial parishes, were there treated like sheep in folds. Illiterate, debauched, incompetent, “dumb” ministers or priests assumed the pastorate in a most promiscuous way over these flocks. Membership in the Church came through infancy in baptism. The Puritans wished to sort out the draught of the Gospel net, which gathered of every kind. They claimed that the laity should themselves be parties in the administration of religion, in testing and approving discipline. They believed, too, that ministers should be supported by their congregations, and that the tithes and the landed privileges of the clergy were bribes and lures to them, making them independent and autocratical. Church lands and endowments, they insisted, should be sequestered, as had been the abbeys, nunneries, and monasteries. As soon as Separatist assemblies were associated in England or among the exiles on the Continent, altercations and divisions occurred among them as to the functions and the powers of the eldership, the responsibility and the authority of pastor and covenanted members in discipline.

Our space will admit here of only a brief recognition, conformed however to its slight intrinsic importance, of an element entering into the Puritan agitation, which at the time introduced into it a glow of excitement and a marvellously effective engagement of popular sympathy. The controversy between the Puritans and the Prelatists had in the main been pursued, however passionately, yet in a most grave and serious spirit, with a profound sense of the dignity and solemnity of its themes and interests. But from the time and occasion when Aristophanes tossed the grotesque trifling of his _Clouds_ around the sage and lofty Socrates, down to this day, when Mr. Punch finds a weekly condiment of mischief and fun for the people of England in their own doings and in their treatment by their governors, it would seem as if no subject of human interest, however exalted its moment, could escape the test of satire, sarcasm, and caricature. Experimental ventures of this sort are naturally ephemeral, but they concentrate their venom or their disdain upon their shrinking victims. Some of Ben Jonson’s plays and Butler’s _Hudibras_ have now alone a currency, and that a by no means extended one, out of a vast mass of the printed ridicule which was turned upon the Puritans. But the matter now in hand is the skill and jollity with which one or more Puritans, with the gift of the comic in his stern make-up, plied that keen blade in his own cause. Erasmus, though he never broke from the communion of the Papal Church, engaged the most stinging power of satire and sarcasm, not only against mean and humble monks, but against all the ranks of the hierarchy, not sparing the loftiest. Helped out with Holbein’s cuts, Erasmus’s _Encomium of Folly_ drew roars of mirth and glee from those who winced under its mocking exposures. Even the grave Beza, in Geneva, tried his hand in this trifling. But the venture of this sort which cunningly and adroitly intruded itself at a peculiarly critical phase of the Puritan agitation, was of the most daring and rasping character. Under the happily chosen pseudonym of “Martin Mar-Prelate,” there appeared in rapid succession, during seven months of the years 1588 and 1589, the same number of little, rudely printed tracts, the products of ambulatory presses, which engaged the full power of satire, caricature, and sarcasm, with fun and rollicking, invective and bitter reproach and exposure against the hierarchy, especially against four of the most odious of the bishops. The daring spirit of these productions was well matched by the devices of caution and secrecy under which they were put in print, and in the sly methods by which they were circulated, to be caught up, concealed, and revelled over by thousands who would find keen enjoyment in them, as in the partaking of the sweets of stolen food and waters. They may be said to have stopped only at the very edge of ribaldry, indecency, and even blasphemy. But they were free and trenchant, coarse and virulent. As such, they testify to the smart under the provocation of which they were written, and to the scorn and contempt entertained for the men and measures to which were committed for the time the transcendent interests of religion and piety. The more dignified and serious of the Puritans, like Greenham and Cartwright, frowned upon and repudiated these weapons of bitter gibe and contumely. But there was a constituency from which they received the heartiest welcome, and, as is usual in such cases, their circulation and efficiency were vastly multiplied by equally bitter and malignant replies to them from the pens or from the instigation of bishops. The whole detective force of the kingdom was put on the search for the writers and the printers. So adroit and cunning was the secret of their authorship and production at the time, that up to this day it has not been positively disclosed. Never has the investigation been so keenly or intelligently pressed for clearing the mystery investing the Martin Mar-Prelate tracts as by the indefatigable researches and the sharpened inquisition of Dr. Dexter. In his _Congregationalism_ he gives his readers an exhaustive sketch and summary, in detail and analysis, of all the facts and documents. His conclusion, which cannot be hopefully contested or invalidated, is that they were written by Barrow, a prisoner in the Fleet, and carried through the press by the agency of Penry. There is abundant evidence in the appearance, publication, and circulation of tracts known to have come from the hands of imprisoned Puritans, that the bars of jails and dungeons offered no sufficient barriers to prevent the secret intercourse and interchange of intelligence between those whom they enclosed and friends outside, who dared all risks in their zeal and fidelity.

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We must now close this narration of the issues raised in the Puritan controversy, whether by Nonconformists in the Church or by Separatists withdrawing from it, that we may note the concentration of forces and witnesses which were drawn together in assemblies or fellowships prepared in Old England to transfer and establish their principles in New England. Many of the clergy whose views and sympathies were warmly engaged in the further work of reform and purification within the Church, and who at the same time were moderate and conciliatory in their spirit, contrived to remain in their parochial fields, perhaps in this way accomplishing the most for all that was reasonable and good in the cause which they had at heart. When occasionally molested or challenged, they might contrive to make their peace. But the crisis and its demands called—as has always been the case in such intense agitations of religious passions—for patient, steadfast, and resolute witnesses in suffering, for those who should be hounded and tracked by judicial processes, who should be deprived of subsistence and liberty, and be ready not only for being hidden away in prisons or exiled beyond the seas, but for public execution as martyrs. The emergency of time and occasion found such as these; and it was of such as these that there were men and women in training for wilderness work on this soil. And the combination of materials and persons was precisely such as would meet the exactions of such an enterprise. There were university men, scholars, doctors in divinity, practised disputants in their cherished lore, and with gifts of zeal, fervor, and tender eloquence in discourse and prayer. There were gentry likewise,—men and women lifted in the social scale, with furnishings of mind and worldly goods. To these were joined, in a fellowship which equalized many distinctions, yeomen, small traders, artisans, and some of every place and grade, save the low or mean or reckless, in the make-up of the population of the realm. Governor Bradford says that the first Separatist or Independent Church in England was that of which John Rough, the minister, and Cuthbert Symson, the deacon, were burned alive by Bonner, in the reign of Queen Mary. The laborious and faithful pages of Dr. Dexter, in his _Congregationalism_, must be closely studied for the results of the marvellous diligence and keen research by which he has traced every vestige, memorial, and testimony that can throw light on the little assemblies of those outlawed Puritans. It is a curious and engaging occupation in our peaceful and lethargic times of religious ease, to scan the make-up, the spirit, and methods of those humble assemblies in their lurking-places, private houses, barns, or the open fields, frequently changing their appointments under risks from spies and tipstaves, with their secret code of signals for communicating intelligence. Their religious exercises were of the intensest earnestness, and above all things stimulating. Their conferences about order and discipline bristled with individualisms and scruples. Many of these assemblies might soon resolve themselves into constituencies of single members. There was scarce one of those assemblies, either in England or in exile on the Continent, that did not part into two or three. There was a stern necessity which compelled variance and dissension among the members. They had in hand the Bible, and each was trying what he could draw out of it, as an oracle and a rule. They had to devise, discuss, and if possible agree upon and enforce ways of church order and discipline, a form of worship, rules of initiation into church membership, of suspension, expulsion, and restoration. It was brain work, heart work, and soul work with them. It would be difficult to reduce to any exact statements the numbers of persons, or even of what may in a loose sense be called assemblies, of Nonconformists or Separatists who remained in England, or who were in refuge on the Continent at the period just preceding the colonization of New England. What was called the Millenary Petition, which was presented to James I., as he came in from Scotland, was claimed to represent at least eight hundred Nonconforming ministers.

The way is now open for connecting the principles and fortunes of the earnest and proscribed class of religious men, whose course has been thus traced in England and Holland, with the enterprise of colonization in New England. It is but reasonable to suppose that, dating from the time and the incident referred to in the opening of this chapter, such an enterprise was latent in conception or desire in the thoughts of many as a possible alternative for the near future. A resolve or purpose or effort of such a nature as this involves much brooding over by individuals, much private communing, balancing of circumstances, conditions, gains, and losses, and an estimate of means and resources, with an eye towards allowance by a governmental or noble patronage, or at least to security in the venture. We have but fragmentary and scattered information as to all these preliminaries to the emigration. We must trace them backward from the completion to the initiation of the enterprise.

And here is the point at which we should define to ourselves, as intelligently and fairly as we can from our abounding authentic sources of information, precisely what was the influence or agency of religion in the first emigration to New England. We are familiar with the oft-reiterated and positive statement, that the enterprise would neither have been undertaken, nor persisted in, nor led on to success, had not religion furnished its mainspring, its guiding motive, and the end aimed at, to be in degree realized.

We may safely commit ourselves to these assertions, that religion was the master-motive and object of the most earnest and ablest leaders of the emigration; that they felt this motive more deeply and with more of singleness of purpose than they always avowed, as their circumstances compelled them to take into view sublunary objects of trade and subsistence which would engage to them needful help and resources; and that some of these secondary objects very soon qualified and impaired the paramount importance of the primary one. I am led to make this allowance of exception as to the occasional reserve in the avowal of an exclusively religious motive, because of a fact which must impress the careful student of their history and fortunes for the first hundred years. That fact is, that in multitudes of occasional utterances, sermons, journals, and historical sketches, many of the descendants of the first comers laid more exclusive and emphatic stress upon the prime agency of religion in the enterprise than did the first movers in it. When ministers and magistrates in after years uttered their frequent and sombre laments over the degeneracy of the times, the decay of zeal and godliness, and the falling from the first love, the refrain always was found in extolling the one, single, supreme aim of the fathers as that of pure piety. The pages of Cotton Mather’s _Magnalia_ and of his tracts of memorial, rebuke, and exhortation, and the _Century Sermon_ of Foxcroft, minister of the First Church, are specimens of masses of such matter in our old cabinets pitched in that tone. Nor need we conclude that, as a general rule, the most fervent of those laments or the most positive of those statements were exaggerated. Only what such writers and speakers recognized as the degeneracy of their own later times, must be traced to seeds and agencies which came in with the most select fellowship of the fathers themselves. We cannot go so far as to claim that the whole aim, the all-including purpose of every member, or of even of a majority of the colonists, was religion, after the pattern of that of the leaders, or of any style of religion. But we have to conclude that the smaller the number of those among whom we concentrate the religious fervor in its supreme sway, the more intensified must have been its power to have enabled them, as it did, to give direction to the whole enterprise. And this was not only true at the first, but proportionately so as the original centre of that enterprise for a long period sent off its radii successively to new settlements in the woods. There were always found men and women enough to copy the original pattern and to keep the motive force in action. Sir Henry Maine does not state the whole of the truth when he writes thus: “The earliest English emigrants to North America, who belonged principally to the class of yeomanry, organized themselves in village communities for purposes of cultivation.”[450]

The stream of exile to New England in the interest of religion was first parted into one small and one large rill, which, however, soon flowed together and assimilated, as it appeared that they started substantially from the same source, with similar elements, and found more that was congenial than discordant in their qualities. The company of exiles whom residence in Holland, with its attendant influences and results, had confirmed and stiffened in their original principles of rigid Separatism, had the start by nearly a decade of years in transferring themselves to Plymouth. Their fortunes are traced in the next chapter.

The colonists in Massachusetts Bay, and those who, in substantial accord with them, struck into several other settlements in the wilderness of New England, were mainly those who in the land of their birth had remained steadfast to their principles of Nonconformity, and who had borne the penalties of them when avowed and put in practice. They had not turned in disdain and temper from the institution which they called their “mother church.” Their divided relation to it they regarded as rather caused by such harsh conditions as excluded them from its privileges than by any wilfulness or hostility of their own. They professed that they still clung to its breast, and wished to be nourished from it. It was not strange, however, that partial alienation should, under favoring opportunities, widen and stiffen into seeming antagonism to it. They regarded themselves as having been subjected to pains and penalties because of their protest against objectionable and harmful, as well as unscriptural, exactions in its discipline and ceremonial. So they were content to be known as Nonconformists, but repelled the charge of being Separatists. They kept alive a lingering tenderness, in a reminder of their early membership and later disturbed affiliation with it. Some few of the sterner spirits among them—and Roger Williams was such, as he appeared here in his youth—demanded a penitential avowal of sin from Winthrop’s company, on account of their having once been in fellowship with the English Church. An agitation also arose upon the question whether the members of the Boston Church, who on visits to the old home occasionally conformed, should not be put under discipline on their return here. Happily the dispute was disposed of by forbearance and charity.

Still, while there was a slight manifestation at first of an antipathy or a jealousy on the part of the Nonconformists at the Bay of being in any way confounded with the Separatists at Plymouth, there never was a breach or even a controversy, beyond that of a friendly discussion, between them; and there is something well-nigh amusing, as well as interesting, in following the quaint narration[451] of the establishment of immediate harmony and accord between their respective church ways. Endicott’s little company at Salem, heralding the great emigration to the Bay, “entered into church estate” in August, 1629, having sought what we should now call the advice, help, and sympathy of their Plymouth brethren. This fellowship was extended through Governor Bradford and other delegates, and the example was afterward followed in like recognition of other churches. The covenanted members of the Salem Church _ordained_ their pastor and teacher, notwithstanding that they had previously been under the hands of a bishop. It soon appeared, however, that the church was to be emphatically Nonconformist. Two brothers Brown, at Salem, set up separate worship by the Common Prayer. On being “convented” before the Governor, his Council and the ministers, and accusing the church of Separatism, they were told that the members did not wish to be Separatists, but were simply Nonconformists with the corruptions of the Church; and that having suffered much for their principles, and being now in a free place, they were determined to be rid of Common Prayer and ceremonial.[452]

The First Boston Church, in 1630, was organized under its covenant, with its appointed and ordained teacher, ruling elder, and deacons. In ten years after the landing at Plymouth there were five churches after this pattern, and in twenty years thirty-five, in New England.

This instantaneous abandonment, as it may be called, of everything in the institution of a church, followed by an immediate disuse of everything in ceremonial and worship in the English usage which the Nonconformists had scrupled at home, is of itself very suggestive, even in the first aspect of it. Followed into detail, it presents some surprises and very rich instruction. In full result, it exhibits to us principles and institutions in the highest interests of religion, in civil, social, and domestic life, which had been repudiated and put under severe penalties in England, crossing the ocean to plant themselves in a wilderness for the training and guidance of successive generations of men and women in freedom, virtue, piety, worldly thrift, and every form of prosperity. There must have been nobleness in those principles, as well as in the men and women who suffered for them, put them on trial, and led them to triumph.

The work of preference, of conviction and conscience, had been wrought in behalf of those principles, in old English homes and byways, in humble conventicles, in fireside and wayside musings and conferences. Enough persons had been brought to be of one mind, purpose, and resolve, in the spirit of a determined heroism, to make a beginning of such a sort that it would be more than half of the accomplished work. There may have been debates, warm variances, hesitations, and conciliatory methods used among those who entered into covenant as the First Church of Boston. If there were such, we know nothing of them. There is no surviving record or intimation of them. The pattern and model which the exiled colonists followed, needed no study or shaping on the wilderness soil. It was an old-home product. What might seem to be extemporized work was prepared work. It was as if they had brought over timbers cut in their native woods all framed and matched for setting up in their transferred home. Their initiated teachers had been ordained by Episcopal hands. But this was neither help nor hindrance. When they needed more and new ones, they had a method of qualifying them. Surplice, tippet, cap, rochet, and prayer-book are not missed or mourned over. Simply not a word is said about them. The fabric which they set up was of a new and peculiar style. No! They would not have owned it to be new; they regarded it as the oldest, because the original,—that which was established by the first generation of the disciples of Jesus Christ.

One hundred university men from the grand old nooks and shrines of consecrated learning in Old England were the medium for the “Gospel work” in New England, till it could supply its needs from its own well-provided resources. But there was not a prelate among them. English magistrates of various grades and authority, governors, judges, spies, collectors, and commissionaries were here to represent the mother country, till she became so stingy that we were forced to wean ourselves from her; but never did an English bishop as a functionary set foot on the soil of what is now the territory of the United States. And when after our Revolution the virtue which comes from episcopal hands was communicated to the possessors of it here, it had parted with what was most offensive or objectionable in its claim or efficacy to the Old and the New English Puritans. Town and rural parishes, colleges and schools, had the faithful services of that hundred of university men. For a long time, the books that were imported here were almost exclusively the Puritan literature of the old home, and had a perceptible influence in stiffening, rather than relaxing, the stern spirit of Dissent, and throwing new vitality into the hard work which it had to do in the wilderness. One consideration of the highest practical weight is presented to us in the fact that the Puritanism of New England originated and fostered the free and radically working instrumentalities and forces which neutralized its own errors, restrained its own bigotry and severity, and compelled it to develop from its own best elements something better than itself. There were other plantations on this virgin soil, of which religion was in no sense the master-impulse, and others still in which the mother church sought to direct the movement. New England was never affected for evil or for good by them. But if over the whole land, in radiations or percolations of influence, the leaven of any one section of the country has wrought in the whole of it, it is that of the New England Puritanism.

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CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

THE original authorities and sources of information, in manuscript and print, relating to the agitations and controversies arising within the real or assumed membership of the Church of England after the Reformation, are to be distinguished into two great classes,—those of a public character, as records of the proceedings of government, of the courts, and of all bodies or individuals in office charged with authority; and those of a private nature, coming from voluntary bodies, or from single members of them, or from writers and authors whose works were published after the usual method, or sent forth and circulated surreptitiously. Both these classes of original authorities, constituting together an enormous mass of an infinitely varied elementary composition, are alike widely scattered, and, so far as they have not been gathered into local repositories, could be directly consulted only by one whose travel, investigation, and research were of the most extended comprehensiveness. England, Holland, and Switzerland have in keeping contemporary records and documents relating to minute and trivial, or to most important and vital, points in one or another stage, or concerning one or another prime party in the controversy. Perhaps, even after all the keen investigation and diligent toil of the most recent inquisitors, such original papers have not been exhaustively detected and examined. But one who is familiar with the stores already reported to us, unless his taste and interest in them run to morbidness, will hardly desire more of them. It is certain that whatever obscurity may still invest any incidental point in the controversy, the matter is of such comparatively slight importance, that the substance and details of any information as to persons or events which may be lacking to us would hardly qualify the general narratives of history.

The expense, diligence, and intelligent illustration which within the last thirty or forty years have been devoted to the collection and arrangement and calendaring of such masses of the State and other public papers of Great Britain, have aided as well as prompted the researches of those who have been zealous to trace out with fidelity and accuracy every stage, and the character and course of each one, lofty or obscure, as an actor in the larger and the lesser bearings of the struggle of Nonconformity and Dissent. As a general statement, it may be affirmed that the developments and the more full and minute information concerning the substance and phases of early Puritanism, as they have been studied in the mass of accumulated documents, have set forth the controversy in a dignity of interest and in a disclosure of its vital relations to all theories of civil government, church establishments, and the institutional administration of religion, far more fully and in a much more comprehensive view than was recognized by contemporary actors.

There are two extensive and exceedingly rich collections of tracts, books, and manuscript documents of a most varied character well-preserved and easily accessible in London, which furnish well-nigh inexhaustible materials for the study of the Puritan, the Nonconformist, and the Separatist movements in all their phases. One of these is in the British Museum, the other in Dr. Williams’s Library. In the times with which we are now concerned, the motive, perhaps but vaguely comprehended by himself, which led George Thomason to gather his marvellous collection, now in the British Museum, would have been called a _providential_ prompting. He was a modest man in private life, and, so far as we know, took no part in public agitations. As a Royalist bookseller, at “The Rose and Crown, in St. Paul’s Churchyard,” he had opportunities favoring him in the scheme which he undertook. It was in 1641 that he began a laborious enterprise, and one not without very serious risks to himself, which he continued to pursue till just before his death in 1666. This was to gather up, preserve, and bind in volumes,—though without any system or order of arrangement except chronological,—a copy of each of the publications in tract, or pamphlet, or fly-leaf form which appeared from the press, licensed or surreptitiously printed, during a period teeming with the issue, like the dropping of forest leaves, of a most extraordinary series of ephemeral works, quickened with all the vitality of those times. Though he began his collection in 1641, he anticipated that date by gathering similar publications previous to it. He copied during Cromwell’s time nearly a hundred manuscripts, mainly “on the King’s side, which no man durst venture to publish here without the danger of his ruin.” He took pains to write upon most of the publications the date of its appearance, and when anonymous, the name of its author if he could ascertain it. Besides the risks of fire and the burden of such a mass of materials filling his house from cellar to garret, this zealous collector exposed himself to severe penalties from the authorities on either side of the great civil and religious conflict. He was compelled once at least to remove his collection to a safe hiding-place. It fills now 2,220 volumes, and counts to 34,000 separate publications, from folio downward. It is difficult to say what may not be found there, and nearly as difficult to find exactly what one wishes. After various exposures through which the collection passed safely, it now rests in the British Museum, under the general title of the “King’s Pamphlets,” having been purchased and presented by King George III. in 1762, at a cost of £300. A mine of most curious matter is there ready for search on every subject, serious or comic, sacred or secular, illustrative of high and low life during the period. Probably the two most zealous delvers in that mine for its best uses have been Professor Masson, for the purpose of _The Life of John Milton: narrated in connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time_, in six volumes; and Dr. H. M. Dexter, in his _Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years_, etc. Both authors have turned these pamphlets to the best account in clearing obscurities or filling gaps in the history or writings of men prominent in the cause of Nonconformity.

The other comprehensive and extensive collection of pamphlets, volumes, and original papers for illustrating the whole history of Puritanism and Dissent, is in what is known as Dr. Williams’s Library, in London. Dr. Daniel Williams, an eminent Presbyterian divine, possessed of means, had purchased the library of the famous Dr. William Bates. Adding to it from his own resources, he founded in 1716 the library which bears his name, committing it, with a sum of money for a building (to which additions were made by a subscription), to the hands of trustees in succession. The library edifice—long standing in Red-Cross Street, now removed to Grafton Street—has been ever since a favorite place for the assembling of meetings and committees in the Dissenting interest (of late years Presbyterians and Unitarians acceding to their trust), for the transaction of business, for preparing addresses to successive sovereigns, and managing their cause in Parliament. Those who in former years have sat in one of the ancient chairs of the library in Red-Cross Street have hardly escaped feeling profoundly the influence of the place and of its associations,—the walls hung with the portraits of venerable divines and scholars learned in all ancient lore; the cabinets filled with laboriously wrought manuscripts, histories, diaries, and letters, some of them dating in the first half of the sixteenth century; the crowded shelves of folios and smaller tractates composed of brain-work and patient toil, without the facilities of modern research and study, and the many relics and memorials connected with the daily ministerial and domestic life of men of self-denying and honorable service. Harvard College holds and administers a fund of over sixteen thousand dollars, left by Dr. Williams in 1711, as a trust for the benefit of the aborigines.

Here is the fitting place for appropriate and most grateful mention of the results of a labor of devoted zeal and love given by the Rev. Henry Martyn Dexter, D.D., to the historic memorial of a cause of which he inherits the full spirit, and in the service of which he has spent his mature life. It may safely be said that not a single person, at least of those born on the soil of New England, of the lineage of the Fathers has so “magnified” their cause and work as he has done. Holding with such a rooted conviction, as is his, that the Congregational polity of the Christian Church has the warrant of Scripture and of the Primitive Church, and that it best serves the sacred interests of soul-freedom and of associated religion in its institutions, works, and influence, the earliest witnesses, confessors, and martyrs in its behalf have seemed to him worthy of the most lavish labor for their commemoration. Repeatedly has he crossed the seas and plied his most diligent scrutiny of tracing and searching, as he got the scent of some tract or record in its hiding-place of private cabinet or dim old parchment. With hardly eye or thought for the usual attractions of foreign travel, his valuable leisure has been spent in following any clew which promised him even the slightest aid to clearing an obscure point, or setting right a disputed fact, or completing our information on any serious matter relating to the early history of what is now represented by Congregationalism. The Introduction to his volume, _The Congregationalism of the last Three Hundred Years, as seen in its Literature, with Special Reference to Certain Recondite, Neglected, or Disputed Passages_,[453] tells in a vigorous and hearty tone what was his aim, his course, and its method.

The principal text of his volume disposes the treatment of his subject under twelve lectures, delivered by the author in the Theological Seminary at Andover, in 1876-1879. This text is elaborately illustrated by notes, with references and extracts, largely drawn from the recondite sources and the depositories already referred to. The author is careful to authenticate all his statements from prime authorities; and where obscurity or conflict of views or of evidence adduced makes it necessary, his patience and candor give weight to his judgment or decision. The extraordinary and unique element of his work is presented in his _Collections towards a Bibliography of Congregationalism_, which with the Index to its titles covers more than three hundred royal octavo pages, in close type. This contains an enumeration of 7,250 titles of publications, from folios down to a few leaves, dating between the years 1546 and 1879, which have even the slightest relation in contents, authorship, or purpose with the most comprehensive bearings of his subject in its historical development.

I have mentioned this elaborate work among the primary, instead of classing it with the secondary, sources of information on the history of Nonconformity, because it is something more than a link between the two. It takes its flavor from the past. Its abounding extracts from the quaint writings, and its portraitures and relations of the experiences, of the old-time worthies transfer us to their presence, make us sharers of their buffeted fortunes and listeners to their living speech. The work may be regarded as a summary of monumental memorials, more frank and true than are such generally on stone or brass of those who fought a good fight and trusted in promises.

The natural desire of a dispassionate reader of the original documents dealing with the heats of the Puritan controversy, or pursuing it in the pages of historians who may relate it either with a partisan or an impartial spirit, is that he might have before him the words and impressions of some contemporary or observer of profound wisdom and of well-balanced judgment, as he viewed this turmoil of affairs. The nearest approach made to the gratification of this wish is found in two brief but very comprehensive essays from the pen of the great Lord Bacon, as with an evident serenity and poise of spirit he studied the scenes before him, and the characters, aims, excesses, and shortcomings of the various actors, monarchs, prelates, zealots, enthusiasts, and earnest, however ill-judging, extremists on either side. The first of these essays in publication, whenever it may have been written, is entitled _Certain Considerations touching the better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England_. The date of its imprint is 1640. But in this reference is made, in the address to King James, to an earlier essay, which appeared anonymously with the imprint of 1641, under the title of _An Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of England_. This was evidently written in the time of Elizabeth. In it, Bacon sagaciously traces the origin of the controversy to four main springs,—namely, the offering and the accepting occasions for variance; the extending and multiplying them; passionate and unbrotherly proceedings on both parts, and the recourse on either side to a stiffer union among its members, heightening the distraction. His most severe stricture is upon the Church, for its harsh measures, as the strife advanced, in enforcing with penalties what had previously been allowed to be matters of indifference, thus driving some discontents into a banded sect. He regards it as a grave error that some of the English Church zealots had spoken contemptuously of foreign Protestant Churches. Though Bacon affirms that he is himself no party to the strife, and aims only for an impartial arbitration in it, his judgment and sympathy evidently incline him to the Puritan side as against the bishops. A fair-minded Puritan of the time might well have contented himself with this wise man’s statement of his side and cause. Of the second of these essays, it being addressed to King James on his accession, it may be said that it would be difficult to find any piece of writing of equal compass, on the themes with which it deals, more crowded with sound, solid good sense, better balanced in its allowances and limitations, more moderate, judicious, and practical in its principles, or more likely to harmonize all reasonable differences, and to repress and discountenance extreme and perverse individualisms. Bacon justifies innovations and reconstructions. He tells the King that the opening of his reign is the opportune time for making them. He protests against modelling all reformation after one pattern. Then he utters words of eminent wisdom about the government of bishops, about the liturgy, ceremonies, and subscription, about a preaching ministry, the abuse of excommunication, and about non-residence, pluralities, and the maintenance of the ministry. Here, again, moderate men of both parties might well have been content with the great philosopher’s judgment.

DOCUMENTS IN FOREIGN REPOSITORIES.—In connection with the exile of so many prelates, clergy, and other members of the English Church on the accession of Queen Mary in 1553, the relations established between them and many eminent Reformers on the Continent resulted in the production of a large number of documents of the highest historical authenticity and value, as throwing light upon the aims and methods of the Puritans in England during the whole period from 1553 to 1602. Several of these exiles settled at Zurich, and there formed intimate friendships with many magistrates and ministers of the Reformed religion. On the return of the exiles, on the accession of Elizabeth, many of them kept up a constant correspondence with their friends. The letters have been preserved in the archives of Zurich, and it has been only within the last forty years that the wealth of information in them has been revealed in England. There are nearly two hundred folio volumes of these letters. Strype and Burnet had obtained copies of some of them, which they put to use in their histories.[454] A descendant of one of the Swiss correspondents had before 1788 copied eighteen thousand of the letters with his own hand, arranged chronologically. In 1845 and 1846, “The Parker Society” in England published,[455] in four octavo volumes, a large number of these “Zurich Letters,” translated and carefully edited, with annotations. The general titles are _The Zurich Letters, comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops, and Others, with Some of the Helvetian Reformers_, during the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queens Mary and Elizabeth. In the collection are several letters to royal personages. One of these, by Rodolph Gualter, who in his youth had resided at Oxford, to Queen Elizabeth, dated Zurich, Jan. 16, 1559, is a long epistle, written in a dignified, courteous and earnest strain, counselling the Queen to have two things in her supreme regard: “First, that every reformation of the Church and of religion be conducted agreeably to the Word of God;” and second, that she restrain her counsellors from hindering or reversing the good work. Better than from the best-digested pages of history, one may learn from these fresh and admirable letters, down to the most minute detail and incident, the cross-workings, the entanglements, the progressive advance, the obstructions, the retrograde and opposing forces and influences connected with the oscillations of the reform in England. Nowhere else in our abounding literature on the subject are the Puritans and Nonconformists presented more faithfully and intelligently in their conscientious, scrupulous, and certainly well-meant efforts, within the Church itself, to have its institutions, ceremonial, and discipline disposed after a pattern which should have regard equally to discountenance the impositions and superstitions of the Papal system, which had been nominally renounced, and to make the purified Church a power to advance the best interests of true religion. The intelligent American visitor to Zurich, if his attention is drawn to this highly valued and admirably arranged collection in its library, can hardly fail of the impression that he has before him most sincere evidences of the depth of thought and the nobleness of spirit of men who were working out the principles of wisdom and righteousness.

Considering the influence exerted upon some of the English Puritans by their residence on the Continent, and their frequent reference afterward to the different ecclesiastical system and discipline adopted there, an interesting phase of the controversy is presented in the two following works. At the opening of the eighteenth century, Dr. William Nichols,—as he says, at the prompting of others, though, it was intimated, of his own motion,—wrote a _Defence of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England_, addressed especially to foreign divines and churches. This was replied to by James Peirce in his _Vindication of the Dissenters; or, an Appeal to Foreign Divines, Professors, and all other Learned Men of the Reformed Religion_. In this volume, originally written and published in Latin, afterward translated by the author and published in English, there is in the main a thorough and candid review of the rise and the conduct of the cause of Nonconformity, and a searching examination of the principles of the Church of England. Peirce quotes with care the original authorities, and puts them to a good use. He follows the history into the fortunes of those who had taken refuge and established their religion in New England, and while he says he differs with Mr. Cotton, of Boston, “in many of his opinions,” defends him and all the “Independents” from the charge of being “Brownists.”

The historians Bancroft and Motley and Dr. H. M. Dexter have, after diligent research in Holland, discovered many little scraps of curious information relating to the residence, mode of life, social and domestic experiences, and way of conducting their religious affairs, of the earliest English exiles there associated in churches and assemblies. These slight memorials indicate that the Puritans and Separatists in refuge there, though their circumstances were modest, if not obscure, were respected for their characters and for the sincerity of their purposes. They found conveniences from the presses in Holland for putting into print their own fertile productions in the setting forth of their principles, while the busy commerce between the ports of Holland and those of England and Scotland furnished ready means for conveying these publications, as well as private letters, secretly and surreptitiously if it were necessary, to the safe hands of friends. Nor, if the occasion was urgent, would one of these refugees hesitate, taking in his hands the risk of his liberty or life, to pass the seas on some secret errand in his own behalf or in the interest of his fellows. Such scraps of information from Dutch repositories as the explorers above named have gathered have all been duly valued as filling gaps in our previous knowledge, or clearing up some obscure passages. The results have been so gratefully recognized and at once incorporated in the many modern rehearsals of the old history, that they need not be referred to more specifically here.[456]

ENGLISH AUTHORITIES.—All such periods of intense controversy and struggle upon themes of the highest concern to man, as that of the internal commotions in England immediately following and consequent upon the Reformation, leave behind them some memorial in literature of so conspicuous and rare an excellence as to insure perpetual freshness, and to acquire interest and attractions even beyond that of the particular subject with which it deals. When the Press in such periods is pouring its outflow of ephemeral tracts and books, vigorous, intense, effective, as they may be for a temporary end or for the circle of a sect or party, genius or scholarly culture, or a philosophical and comprehensive spirit, penetrating below the surface and rising above the details of a controversy, will engage itself upon the product of what we call an immortal work. Such a work[457] is that which came from the pen of “the judicious Hooker,”—Richard by baptismal name. His eight books constitute one of the richest classics of the English tongue. It finds delighted readers among those who care little, if at all, for the mere issues of the questions under controversy. Its generally rich and stately style, its logic and rhetoric, its wealth of learning, and its occasional play of satire or contempt, engage the interest of many a reader who would turn listlessly from most pages of polemics. There is so much in it of a manly, free courage and self-asserting spirit, that at times it is difficult to believe that it was written by one who, according to the quaint biography of him by Isaack Walton, was so cowed and subjugated by his domestic partner, the mother of his children. English Churchmen may well boast themselves on this majestic work, dealing with the nucleus of the whole Puritan controversy, the question of Church authority. Of course, its argument in its whole sum and detail, in its array and estimate of original vouchers, has been traversed and brought under dispute by champions on the other side. But it will always hold its supreme place while the cause which it upholds shall need a classic.

Hallam[458] says that, “though the reasonings of Hooker won for him the surname of ‘the Judicious,’ they are not always safe or satisfactory, nor, perhaps, can they be reckoned wholly clear or consistent. His learning, though beyond that of most English writers in that age, is necessarily uncritical; and his fundamental theory, the mutability of ecclesiastical government, has as little pleased those for whom he wrote, as those whom he repelled by its means.” The same writer, in another work,[459] passes a high encomium upon Hooker’s _Polity_, as finding a basis for its argument in natural law.

The first four of the books of Hooker’s work were published in 1594, the fifth in 1597. As the other three had been left in manuscript, and did not appear in print till many years after his death in 1600, suspicions were raised that they might have been interpolated. As the Narrative of this chapter has given place to an exposition of Hooker’s fundamental position against the Nonconformists, it need not be repeated here.

For a long period, the well-known work[460] of Daniel Neal, in its successive editions, was the only one written from an historical point of view by an author not contemporary with its whole subject, which had appeared from the press, was widely circulated and generally accredited for its fidelity, its ability, and its trustworthiness. Mr. Neal, born in London in 1678, was a Dissenting minister in that city, and died in 1743. His history was published in portions between 1731 and 1738. The editions of it now in general circulation are those edited with valuable notes by Dr. Toulmin, the first of which appeared in London in 1793, and the last in 1837. The editor continued the history after the English Revolution. Mr. Neal made diligent research, in order to verify his statements from all the original sources which were open to him. He relied largely on the laborious _Memorials_ gathered by the painstaking Strype, while owing much to Fuller and Burnet. Mosheim accepted Neal’s work as of the highest authority. Dr. Kippis commends it highly in the _Biographia Britannica_. After the publication of his first volume, Neal made public his answer to an anonymous work by Dr. Maddox, Bishop of St. Asaph, vindicating the Church of England “from the injurious reflections cast upon it in that volume.” Similar animadversions were cast upon the later volumes by Dr. Zachary Grey. Bishop Warburton, in some _Notes_ to Mr. Neal’s history which he published in 1788, even brings in question the author’s veracity. Dr. Toulmin meets and answers such charges. Mr. Neal sought to give his pages authenticity by full quotations, citations, and references to his original authorities. In a few instances in which Burnet or others denied his fairness or accuracy, Dr. Toulmin has vindicated him against all aspersions, if not from all charges of error. The author wrote when the Dissenters were relieved by legislation of the severe impositions, fines, and inflictions of an earlier period, but were by no means brought into an equality in social and civil rights and privileges with the favored and patronized members of the Church Establishment. So Mr. Neal’s pages are free from the asperity and bitterness provoked into indulgence by his predecessors under the smart of humiliating wrongs. Still, he is loyal to the memory and steadfastness of those earlier sufferers. There was much on which the Dissenters of his time might pride themselves as won by the constancy of those who had fought for them the battles with lordly arrogance and hierarchical assumptions and prerogatives. There was a palmy age for Dissent in England which Lord Macaulay describes very felicitously, when, as he says, there were Dissenting ministers whose standing and condition in life compared favorably with those of all the clergy of the Establishment below those of the bishops. Among the Dissenting laity were men of wealth and of commercial consequence, as a high and honored social class, whose munificent endowments were bestowed on some of the noblest institutions of the realm.

Mr. Hallam devotes the second, third, and fourth chapters of his _Constitutional History of England_ to the development of the history of Nonconformity, both among Roman Catholics and Protestants, during the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. Among the many reviews and critical estimates of this history, that in the _Edinburgh Review_, vol. xlviii., is especially able and satisfactory. Mr. Hallam brought to the presentation of this part of his whole subject, not only his habitually thorough and conscientious fulness of research among authorities and documents, public and private, but also that spirit of candor, moderation, and equitable impartiality which, if not already cherished in the purposes and motives of one intending the task of an historian, may or may not be acquired and exercised in dealing with themes engaging so much of temper, strife, and intenseness of polemical animosity. From his point of view, reading backwards along the line of historical development, he recognized that the early Nonconformists were dealing with fundamental principles in religious affairs which, though not at the time fully apprehended, would necessarily involve immunities and rights of a political character. It is because of this, now clearly exposed and certified to us, that such lofty tributes are rendered to the Puritans as the exponents and champions of English liberty.

The _Inner Life_[461] of Robert Barclay, not completely, though substantially, finished and supervised by its author, is an admirable example of the more wise, just, and considerate tone and method adopted in quite recent years for dealing with times and subjects of once embittered religious agitation and controversy. It is calm and judicial in its temper, inclusive and well-digested in its materials and contents. The author’s research was most wide and comprehensive. He spared no labor in the quest of original documents, in manuscript or print, all over England and on the Continent, of prime use and authority for his purpose, whether in public repositories or in private cabinets. For some very important matters which entered into the full treatment of his theme he has used for the first time many records that had been lying in undisturbed repose, and he has enlisted the valuable aid of many friends.