Chapter XIX

HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE, FROM 1600 TO 1650.

Claim of Popes to temporal Power—Father Paul Sarpi—Gradual Decline of papal Power—Unpopularity of Jesuits—Controversy of Catholics and Protestants—Deference of some of the latter to Antiquity—Wavering in Casaubon—Still more in Grotius—Calixtus—An opposite School of Theologians—Daillé—Chillingworth—Hales—Rise of the Arminian Controversy—Episcopius—Socinians—Question as to Rights of Magistrates in Religion—Writings of Grotius on this Subject—Question of Religious Toleration—Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying—Theological Critics and Commentators—Sermons on Donne—and Taylor—Deistical Writers—English Translation of the Bible.

Temporal supremacy of Rome.

1. The claim of the Roman see to depose sovereigns was like the retractile claws of some animals, which would be liable to injury were they not usually sheathed. If the state of religion in England and France towards the latter part of the sixteenth century required the assertion of these pretended rights, it was not the policy of a court, guided as often by prudence as by zeal or pride, to keep them for ever before the eyes of the world. Clement VIII. wanted not these latter qualities, but they were restrained by the former; and the circumstances in which the new century opened, did not demand any open collision with the civil power. Henry IV. had been received back into the bosom of the church; he was now rather the ally, the favoured child of Rome, than the object of proscription. Elizabeth again was out of the reach of any enemy but death, and much was hoped from the hereditary disposition of her successor. The temporal supremacy would therefore have been left for obscure and unauthorised writers to vindicate, if an unforeseen circumstance had not called out again its most celebrated champions. After the detection of the gunpowder conspiracy, an oath of allegiance was imposed in England, containing a renunciation, in strong terms, of the tenet that princes excommunicated by the pope might be deposed or murdered by their subjects. None of the English catholics refused allegiance to James; and most of them probably would have felt little scruple at taking the entire oath, which their arch-priest, Blackwell, had approved. But the see of Rome interfered to censure those who took the oath; and a controversy singularly began with James himself in his “Apology for the Oath of Allegiance.” Bellarmin answered, in 1610, under the name of Matthew Tortus; and the duty of defending the royal author was devolved on one of our most learned divines, Lancelot Andrews, who gave to his reply the quaint title, Tortura Torti.[52] But this favourite tenet of the Vatican was as ill fitted to please the Gallican as the English church. Barclay, a lawyer of Scottish family, had long defended the rights of the crown of France against all opponents. His posthumous treatise on the temporal power of the pope with respect to sovereign princes was published at London in 1609. Bellarmin answered it next year in the ultra-montane spirit which he had always breathed; the parliament of Paris forbade the circulation of his reply.[53]

Contest with Venice. 2. Paul V. was a pope imbued with the arrogant spirit of his predecessors, Paul IV. and Pius V.; no one was more prompt to exercise the despotism which the Jesuits were ready to maintain. After some minor disputes with the Italian states, he came, in 1605, to his famous conflict with the republic of Venice, on the very important question of the immunity of ecclesiastics from the civil tribunals. Though he did not absolve the subjects of Venice from their allegiance, he put the state under an interdict, forbidding the celebration of divine offices throughout its territory. The Venetian clergy, except the Jesuits and some other regulars, obeyed the senate rather than the pope. The whole is matter of known history. In the termination of this dispute, it has been doubted which party obtained the victory; but in the ultimate result and effect upon mankind, we cannot, it seems, well doubt that the see of Rome was the loser.[54] |Father Paul Sarpi.| Nothing was more worthy of remark, especially in literary history, than the appearance of one great man, Fra Paolo Sarpi, the first who, in modern times and in a Catholic country, shook the fabric not only of papal despotism, but of ecclesiastical independence and power. For it is to be observed that in the Venetian business, the pope was contending for what were called the rights of the church, not for his own supremacy over it. Sarpi was a man of extraordinary genius, learning, and judgment: his physical and anatomical knowledge was such as to have caused at least several great discoveries to be assigned to him;[55] his reasoning was concise and cogent; his style perspicuous and animated. A treatise “Delle Materie Beneficiarie,” in other words, on the rights, revenues, and privileges, in secular matters, of the ecclesiastical order, is a model in its way. The history is so short and yet so sufficient, the sequence so natural and clear, the proofs so judiciously introduced, that it can never be read without delight and admiration of the author’s skill. And this is more striking to those who have toiled at the verbose books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where tedious quotations, accumulated, not selected, disguise the argument they are meant to confirm. Except the first book of Machiavel’s History of Florence, I do not remember any earlier summary of facts so lucid and pertinent to the object. That object was, with Father Paul, neither more nor less than to represent the wealth and power of the church as ill-gotten and excessive. The Treatise on Benefices led the way, or rather was the seed thrown into the ground that ultimately produced the many efforts both of the press and of public authority to break down ecclesiastical privileges.[56]

History of Council of Trent. 3. The other works of Sarpi are numerous, but none require our present attention except the most celebrated, his History of the Council of Trent. The manuscript of this having been brought to London by Antonio de Dominis, was there published, in 1619, under the name of Pietro Soave Polano, the anagram of Paolo Sarpi Veneto. It was quickly translated into several languages, and became the textbook of protestantism on the subject. Many incorrectnesses have been pointed out by Pallavicini, who undertook the same task on the side of Rome; but the general credibility of Father Paul’s history has rather gained by the ordeal of hostile criticism. Dupin observes that the long list of errors imputed by Pallavicini, which are chiefly in dates and such trifling matters, make little or no difference as to the substance of Sarpi’s history; but that its author is more blamable for a malicious disposition to impute political motives to the members of the council, and idle reasonings which they did not employ.[57] Ranke, who has given this a more minute scrutiny than Dupin could have done, comes nearly to the same result. Sarpi is not a fair, but he is, for those times, a tolerably exact historian. His work exhibits the general excellences of his manner; freedom from redundancy, a clear, full, agreeable style; a choice of what is most pertinent and interesting in his materials. Much has been disputed about the religious tenets of Father Paul; it appears to me quite out of doubt, both by the tenor of his history, and still more unequivocally, if possible, by some of his letters, that he was entirely hostile to the church, in the usual sense, as well as to the court of Rome, sympathising in affection, and concurring generally in opinion, with the reformed denomination.[58] But as he continued in the exercise of his functions as a Servite monk, and has always passed at Venice more for a saint than a heretic, some of the Gallican writers have not scrupled to make use of his authority, and to extenuate his heterodoxy. There can be no question but that he inflicted a severe wound on the spiritual power.

Gallican liberties. Richer. 4. That power, predominant as it seemed in the beginning of the seventeenth century, met with adversaries besides Sarpi. The French nation, and especially the parliament of Paris, had always vaunted what were called the liberties of the Gallican church; liberties, however, for which neither the church itself, nor the king, the two parties interested, were prone to display much regard. A certain canonist, Richer, published in 1611 a book on ecclesiastical and political power; in which he asserted the government of the church to be a monarchy tempered with aristocracy; that is, that the authority of the pope was limited in some respects by the rights of the bishop. Though this has since become a fundamental principle among the Cisalpine catholics, it did not suit the high notions of that age; and the bishops were content to sacrifice their rights by joining in the clamour of the papal party. A synod assembled by Cardinal du Perron, archbishop of Sens, condemned the book of Richer, who was harassed for the rest of his life by the persecution of those he had sought to defend against a servitude which they seemed to covet. His fame has risen in later times. Dupin concludes a careful analysis of Richer’s treatise with a noble panegyric on his character and style of writing.[59]

Perron. 5. The strength of the ultra-montane party in the Gallican church was Perron, a man of great natural capacity, a prodigious memory, a vast knowledge of ecclesiastical and profane antiquity, a sharp wit, a pure and eloquent style, and such readiness in dispute, that few cared to engage him.[60] If he did not always reason justly, or upon consistent principles, these are rather failings in the eyes of lovers of truth, than of those, and they are the many, who sympathize with the dexterity and readiness of a partizan. He had been educated as a Protestant, but, like half the learned of that religion, went over from some motive or other to the victorious side. In the conference at Fontainebleau with Du Plessis Mornay, it has been mentioned already that he had a confessed advantage; but victory in debate follows the combatant rather than the cause. The supporters of Gallican liberties were discouraged during the life of this cardinal. He did not explicitly set himself against them, or deny, perhaps, the principles of the Council of Constance; but, by preventing any assertion of them, he prepared the way, as it was hoped at Rome, for a gradual recognition of the whole system of Bellarmin. Perron, however, was neither a Jesuit, nor very favourable to that order. Even so late as 1638, a collection of tracts by the learned brothers DuPuy, on the liberties of the church, was suppressed at the instance of the nuncio, on the pretext that it had been published without permission. It was reprinted some years afterwards, when the power of Rome had begun to decline.[61]

Decline of papal power. 6. Notwithstanding the tone still held by the court of Rome and its numerous partisans, when provoked by any demonstration of resistance, they generally avoided aggressive proceedings, and kept in reserve the tenets which could not be pleasing to any civil government. We should doubtless find many assertions of the temporal authority of the pope by searching into obscure theology during this period; but after Bellarmin and Perron were withdrawn from the stage, no prominent champions of that cause stood forth; and it was one of which great talents and high station alone could overcome the intrinsic unpopularity. Slowly and silently, the power of Rome had much receded before the middle of the seventeenth century. Paul V. was the last of the imperious pontiffs who exacted obedience as sovereigns of Christendom. His successors have had recourse to gentler methods, to a paternal rather than regal authority; they have appealed to the moral sense, but have rarely or never alarmed the fears of their church. The long pontificate of Urban VIII. was a period of transition from strength to weakness. In his first years, this pope was not inactively occupied in the great cause of subduing the Protestant heresy. It has been lately brought to light, that soon after the accession of Charles I., he had formed a scheme, in conjunction with France and Spain, for conquering and partitioning the British islands: Ireland was to be annexed to the ecclesiastical state, and governed by a viceroy of the Holy See.[62] But he afterwards gave up these visionary projects, and limited his ambition to more practicable views of aggrandizement in Italy. It is certain that the temporal principality of the popes has often been a useful diversion for the rest of Europe: the duchy of Urbino was less in our notions of importance than Germany or Britain; but it was quite as capable of engrossing the thoughts and passions of a pope.

Unpopularity of the Jesuits. 7. The subsidence of catholic zeal before the middle of this age deserves especially to be noted at a time when, in various directions, that church is beginning to exalt her voice, if not to rear her head, and we are ostentatiously reminded of the sudden revival of her influence in the sixteenth century. It did undoubtedly then revive; but it is equally manifest that it receded once more. Among the leading causes of this decline in the influence, not only of what are called ultra-montane principles, but of the zeal and faith that had attended them, a change as visible, and almost as rapid as the reaction in favour of them which we have pointed out in the latter part of the sixteenth century, we must reckon the increasing prejudices against the Jesuit order. Their zeal, union, indefatigable devotion to the cause, had made them the most useful of allies, the most formidable of enemies; but in these very qualities were involved the seeds of public hatred and ultimate ruin. Obnoxious to Protestant states for their intrigues, to the lawyers, especially in France, for their bold theories of political power and encroaching spirit, to the Dominicans for the favour they had won, they had become, long before the close of this period, rather equivocal and dangerous supporters of the See of Rome.[63] Their fate, in countries where the temper of their order had displayed itself with less restraint, might have led reflecting men to anticipate the consequences of urging too far the patience of mankind by the ambition of an insulated order of priests. In the first part of this century the Jesuits possessed an extensive influence in Japan, and had re-united the kingdom of Abyssinia to the Roman church. In the course of a few years more, they were driven out from both; their intriguing ambition had excited an implacable animosity against the church to which they belonged.

Richelieu’s care of Gallican liberties. 8. Cardinal Richelieu, though himself a theological writer, took great care to maintain the liberties of the French crown and church. No extravagance of Hildebrandic principles would find countenance under his administration. Their partisans endeavoured sometimes to murmur against his ecclesiastical measures; it was darkly rumoured that he had a scheme of separating the Catholic church of France, something in the manner of Henry VIII., from the supremacy of Rome, though not from her creed; and one Hersent published, under the name of Optatus Gallus, a book so rapidly suppressed, as to be of the greatest rarity, the aim of which was to excite the public apprehension of this schism.[64] It was in defence of the Gallican liberties, so far as it was yet prudent to assert them, that De Marca was employed to write a treatise, De Concordaniâ Sacerdotii et Imperii. This book was censured at Rome; yet it does not by any means come up to the language afterwards usual in the Gallican church; it belongs to its own age, the transitional period in which Rome had just ceased to act, but not to speak as a mistress. De Marca was obliged to make some concessions before he could obtain the bulls for a bishopric. He rose however afterwards to the see of Paris. The first part of his work appeared in 1641, the second after the death of the author.

Controversy of Catholics and Protestants. 9. In this most learned period, according to the sense in which the word was then taken, that Europe has ever seen, it was of course to be expected that the studious ecclesiastics of both the Romish and Protestant denomination would pour forth a prodigal erudition in their great controversy. It had always been the aim of the former to give an historical character to theological inquiry; it was their business to ascertain the faith of the Catholic church as a matter of fact, the single principle of its infallibility being assumed as the basis of all investigation. But their opponents, though less concerned in the issue of such questions, frequently thought themselves competent to dispute the field; and conversant as they were with ecclesiastical antiquity, found in its interminable records sufficient weapons to protract the war, though not to subdue the foe. Hence, partly in the last years of the sixteenth century, but incomparably more in the present, we find an essential change in the character of theological controversy. |Increased respect for the fathers.| It became less reasoning, less scriptural, less general and popular, but far more patristic, that is, appealing to the testimonies of the fathers, and altogether more historical than before. Several consequences of material influence on religious opinion sprang naturally from this method of conducting the defence of Protestantism. One was that it contracted very greatly the circle of those who, upon any reasonable interpretation of the original principle of personal judgment, could exercise it for themselves; it became the privilege of the deeply learned alone. Another that, from the real obscurity and incoherence of ecclesiastical authorities, those who had penetrated farthest into that province of learning were least able to reconcile them; and however they might disguise it from the world, while the pen was in their hands, were themselves necessarily left, upon many points, in an embarrassing state of doubt and confusion. A third effect was, that upon these controversies of Catholic tradition, the church of Rome had very often the best of the argument; and this was occasionally displayed in those wrestling matches between religious disputants, which were held, publicly or privately, either with the vain hope of coming to an agreement, or to settle the faith of the hearers. And from the two last of these causes it arose, that many Protestants went over to the church of Rome, and that a new theological system was contrived to combine what had been deemed the incompatible tenets of those who had burst from each other with such violence in the preceding century.

Especially in England. Laud. 10. This retrocession, as it appeared, and as in spirit it was, towards the system abandoned in the first impetuosity of the Reformation, began in England about the conclusion of the sixteenth century. It was evidently connected with the high notions of ecclesiastical power, of an episcopacy by unbroken transmission from the apostles, of a pompous ritual, which the rulers of the Anglican church took up at that time in opposition to the puritans. It rapidly gained ground in the reign of James, and still more of his son. Andrews, a man far more learned in patristic theology than any of the Elizabethan bishops, or perhaps than any of his English contemporaries except Usher, was, if not the founder, the chief leader of this school. Laud became afterwards, from his political importance, its more conspicuous head; and from him it is sometimes styled. In his conference with the Jesuit Fisher, first published in 1624, and afterwards with many additions in 1639, we find an attempt not feeble, and we may believe, not feigned, to vindicate the Anglican Protestantism, such as he meant it to be, against the church of Rome, but with much deference to the name of Catholic, and the authority of the ancient fathers.[65] It is unnecessary to observe, that this was the prevalent language of the English church in that period of forty years, which was terminated by the civil war; and that it was accompanied by a marked enhancement of religious ceremonies, as well as by a considerable approximation to several doctrines and usages of the Romanists.

Defections to the Catholic church. 11. The progress of the latter church for the first thirty years of the present century was as striking and uninterrupted as it had been in the final period of the sixteenth. Victory crowned its banners on every side. The signal defeats of the elector Palatine and the king of Denmark, the reduction of Rochelle, displayed an evident superiority in the ultimate argument to which the Protestants had been driven, and which silences every other; while a rigid system of exclusion from court favour and of civil discouragement, or even of banishment and suppression of public worship, as in the Austrian dominions, brought round the wavering and flexible to acquiesce with apparent willingness in a despotism they could neither resist nor escape. The nobility, both in France and Germany, who in the last age had been the first to embrace a new faith, became afterwards the first to desert it. Many also of the learned and able Protestants gave evidence of the jeopardy of that cause by their conversion. It is not, however, just to infer that they were merely influenced by this apprehension. Two other causes mainly operated; one, to which we have above alluded, the authority given to the traditions of the church, recorded by the writers called fathers, and with which it was found very difficult to reconcile all the protestant creed; another, the intolerance of the reformed churches, both Lutheran and Calvinistic, which gave as little latitude as that which they had quitted.

Wavering of Casaubon. 12. The defections, from whatever cause, are numerous in the seventeenth century. But two, more eminent than any who actually renounced the Protestant religion, must be owned to have given evident signs of wavering, Casaubon and Grotius. The proofs of this are not founded merely on anecdotes which might be disputed, but on their own language.[66] Casaubon was staggered by the study of the fathers, in which he discovered many things, especially as to the eucharist, which he could not in any manner reconcile with tenets of the French Hugonots.[67] Perron used to assail him with arguments he could not parry. If we may believe this cardinal, he was on the point of declaring publicly his conversion before he accepted the invitation of James I. to England; and even while in England he promoted the Catholic cause more than the world was aware.[68] This is more than we can readily believe, and we know that he was engaged both in maintaining the temporal rights of the crown against the school of Bellarmin, and in writing animadversions on the ecclesiastical annals of Baronius. But this opposition to the extreme line of the ultra-montanists might be well compatible with a tendency towards much that the reformers had denounced. It seemed in truth to disguise the corruptions of the Catholic church by rendering the controversy almost what we might call personal; as if Rome alone, either by usurping the headship of the church, which might or might not have bad consequences, or by its encroachments on the civil power which were only maintained by a party, were the sole object of that religious opposition, which had divided one half of Europe from the other. Yet if Casaubon, as he had much inclination to do, being on ill terms with some in England, and disliking the country,[69] had returned to France, it seems probable that he would not long have continued in what, according to the principles he had adopted, would appear a schismatical communion.

Meric Casaubon’s “Pietas contra Maledicos Patrii Nominis ac Religionis Hostes,” is an elaborate vindication of his father against all charges alleged by his adversaries. The only one that presses is that of wavering in religion. And here Meric candidly owns that his father had been shaken by Perron about 1610. (See this tract subjoined to Almeloveen’s edition of the Epistles, p. 89.) But afterwards, by dint of theological study, he got rid of the scruples the cardinal had infused into him, and became a Protestant of the new Anglican school, admiring the first six centuries, and especially the period after Constantine: Hoc sæculum cum duobus sequentibus ακμη της εκκλησιας flos ipse ecclesiæ et ætas illius aurea queat nuncupari. Prolegomena in Exercitationes in Baronium. His friend Scaliger had very different notions of the fathers. The fathers, says he, in his blunt way, are very ignorant, know nothing of Hebrew, and teach us little in theology. Their interpretations of scripture are strangely perverse. Even Polycarp, who was a disciple of the apostles, is full of errors. It will not do to say that, because they were near the apostolic age, they are never wrong. Scaligerana Secunda. Le Clerc has some good remarks on the deference shown by Casaubon to the language held by the fathers about the eucharist, which shook his Protestantism. Bibl. Choisie, xix. 230.

And of Grotius. 13. Grotius was from the time of his turning his mind to theology, almost as much influenced as Casaubon by primitive authority, and began, even in 1614, to commend the Anglican church for the respect it showed, very unlike the rest of the reformed, to that standard. But the ill-usage he sustained at the hands of those who boasted their independence of papal tyranny, the caresses of the Gallican clergy after he had fixed his residence at Paris, the growing dissensions and virulence of the Protestants, the choice that seemed alone to be left in their communion, between a fanatical anarchy, disintegrating everything like a church on the one hand, and a domination of bigoted and vulgar ecclesiastics on the other, made him gradually less and less averse to the comprehensive and majestic unity of the Catholic hierarchy, and more and more willing to concede some point of uncertain doctrine, or some form of ambiguous expressive. This is abundantly perceived, and has often been pointed out in his Annotations on the Consultation of Cassander,[70] written in 1641, in his Animadversion on Rivet, who had censured the former treatise as inclining to Popery, in the Votum pro Pace Ecclesiasticâ and in the Rivetiani Apologetici Discussio; all which are collected in the fourth volume of the theological works of Grotius. These treatises display an uniform and progressive tendency to defend the church of Rome in everything that can be reckoned essential to her creed; and, in fact, he will be found to go farther in this direction than Cassander.

But to return from this digression to the more immediate purpose. Grotius for several years continued in this insulated state, neither approving of the Reformation nor the church of Rome. He wrote in 1622 to Episcopius against those whom he called Cassandrians, Qui etiam plerosque Romanæ ecclesiæ errores improbantibus auctores sunt, ne ab ejus communione discedant. Ep. 181. He was destined to become Cassandrian himself, or something more. The infallibility of the church was still no doctrine of his. At illa auctoritas ecclesiæ αναμαρτητου quam ecclesiæ, et quidem suæ, Romanenses ascribunt, cum naturali ratione non sit evidens, nam ipsi fatentur Judaicam ecclesiam id privilegium non habuisse, sequitur ut adversus negantes probari debeat ex sacris literis. Epist. secunda series, p. 761 (1620). And again: Quæ scribit pater de restituendis rebus in eum statum, qui ante concilium Tridentinum fuerat, esset quidem hoc permultum; sed transubstantiatio et ei respondens adoratio pridem Lateranensi concilio definita est, et invocatio peculiaris sanctorum pridem in omnes liturgias recepta. P. 772 (1623).

Grotius passed most of his latter years at Paris, in the honourable station of ambassador from the court of Sweden. He seems to have thought it a matter of boast that he did not live as a Protestant. See Ep. 196. The Hugonot ministers of Charenton requested him to communicate with them, which he declined, p. 854, 856 (1635). He now was brooding over a scheme of union among Protestants: the English and Swedish churches were to unite, and to be followed by Denmark. Constituto semel aliquo tali ecclesiarum corpore, spes est subinde alios atque alios se aggregaturos. Est autem hæc res eo magis optanda protestantibus, quod quotidie multi eos deserunt et se cœtibus Romanensium addunt, non alia de causa, quam quod non unum est eorum corpus, sed partes distractæ, greges segreges, propria cuique sua sacrorum communio, ingens præterea maledidicendi certamen. Epist. 866 (1637). See also p. 827 (1630). He fancied that by such a weight of authority, grounded on the ancient church, the exercise of private judgment, on which he looked with horror, might be overruled. Nisi interpretandi sacras literas, he writes to Calixtus, libertatem cohibemus intra lineas eorum, quæ omnes illæ non sanctitate minus quam primæva vetustate venerabiles ecclesiæ ex ipsa prædicatione scripturis ubique consentiente hauserint, diuque sub crucis maximè magisterio retinuerint, nisi deinde in iis quæ liberam habuere disputationem fraterna lenitate ferre alii alios discimus, quis erit litium sæpe in factiones, deinde in bella erumpentium finis? Ep. 674 (Oct., 1636). Qui illam optiman antiquitatem sequuntur ducem, quod te semper fecisse memini, iis non eveniet, ut multum sibi ipsis sint discolores. In Angliâ vides quam bene processerit dogmatum noxiorum repurgatio, hac maximè de causa quod qui id sanctissimum negotium procurandum suscepere nihil admiscuerunt novi, nihil sui, sed ad meliora sæcula intentam habuere oculorum aciem. Ep. 966 (1688).

But he could not be long in perceiving that this union of Protestant churches was impossible from the very independence of their original constitution. He saw that there could be no practicable reunion except with Rome itself, nor that, except on an acknowledgment of her superiority. From the year 1640 his letters are full of sanguine hopes that this delusive vision would be realised. He still expected some concession on the other side; but, as usual, would have lowered his terms according to the pertinacity of his adversaries, if indeed they were still to be called his adversaries. He now published his famous annotations on Cassander, and the other tracts mentioned in the text, to which they gave rise. In these he defends almost everything we deem popery, such as transubstantiation (Opera Theologica, iv. 619), stooping to all the nonsensical evasions of a spiritual mutation of substance and the like; the authority of the pope (p. 642), the celibacy of the clergy (p. 645), the communion in one kind (ibid), and in fact is less of a Protestant than Cassander. In his epistles he declares himself decidedly in favour of purgatory, as at least a probable doctrine, p. 930. In these writings he seems to have had the countenance of Richelieu. Cardinalis quin ἑνωσεως negotium in Gallia successurum sit, dubitare se negat. Epist. sec. series, p. 912. Cardinalis Ricelianus rem successuram putat. Ita certè loquitur multis. Archiepiscopus Cantuariensis pœnas dat honestissimi consilii, quod et aliis bonis sæpe evenit, p. 911. Grotius is now run away with by vanity, and fancies all will go according to his wish, showing much ignorance of the real state of things. He was left by some from whom he had entertained hopes, and thought the Dutch Arminians timid. Vossius ut video, præ metu, forte et ex Anglia sic jussus, auxilium suum mihi subtrahit, p. 908. Salmasius adhuc in consiliis fluctuat. Est in religionis rebus suæ parti addictior quam putabatur. P. 912. De Episcopio doleo; est vir magni ingenii et probus, sed nimium cupidus alendæ partis. But it is probable that he had misinterpreted some language of these great men, who contemplated with regret the course he was taking, which could be no longer a secret. De Grotii ad papam defectione, a French protestant of some eminence for learning writes, tanquam re certa, quod fama istuc distulit, verum non est. Sed non sine magno metu eum aliquid istiusmodi meditantem et conantem quotidie inviti videmus. Inter protestantes cujuslibet ordinis nomen ejus ascribi vetat, quod eos atrocius sugillavit in Appendice de Antichristo, et Annotatis ad Cassandri consultationem. Sarravii Epistolæ, p. 58 (1642). And again he expresses his strong disapprobation of one of the later treatises. Verissimè dixit ille qui primus dixit Grotium papissare. P. 196. See also pp. 31, 53.

In 1642 Grotius had become wholly averse to the Reformation. He thought it had done more harm than good, especially by the habit of interpreting everything on the papal side for the worse. Malos mores qui mansere corrigi æquum est. Sed an non hoc melius successurum fuerit, si quisque semet repurgans pro repurgatione aliorum preces ad Deum tulisset, et principes et episcopi correctionem desiderantes, non rupta compage, per concilia universalia in id laborassent. Dignum est de quo cogitetur, p. 938. Auratus, as he calls him, that is, D’Or, a sort of chaplain to Grotius, became a Catholic about this time. The other only says—Quod Auratus fecit, idem fecit antehac vir doctissimus Petrus Pithæus; idem constituerat facere Casaubonus si in Gallia mansisset, affirmavit enim id inter alios etiam Cordesio. p. 939. Of Casaubon he says afterwards: Casaubonus multo saniores putabat Catholicos Galliæ quam Carentonianos. Anglos autem episcopos putabat a schismatis culpa posse absolvi, p. 940. Every successive year saw him now draw nearer to Rome. Reperio autem quicquid communiter ab ecclesia occidentali quæ Romanæ cohæret recipitur, idem reperiri apud Patres veteres Græcos et Latinos, quorum communionem retinendam esse vix quisquam neget. Si quid præter hoc est, id ad liberas doctorum opinationes pertinet; in quibus suum quis judicium sequi potest, et communionis jus non amittere, p. 958. Episcopius was for limiting articles of faith to the creed, but Grotius did not agree with this, and points out that it would not preserve uniformity. Quam multa jam sunt de sacramentis, de ecclesiarum regimine, in quibus, vel concordiæ causa, certi aliquid observari debet. Alioqui compages ecclesiæ tantopere nobis commendata retineri non potest, p. 941. It would be endless to quote every passage tending to the same result. Finally, in a letter to his brother in Holland, he expresses his hope that Wytenbogart, the respectable patriarch of Arminianism, would turn his attention to the means of restoring unity to the church. Velim D. Wytenbogardum, ubi permiserit valetudo, nisi id jam fecerit, scriptum aliquid facere de necessitate restituendæ in ecclesia unitatis, et quibus modis id fieri possit. Multi pro remedio monstrant, si necessaria a non necessariis separentur, in non necessariis sive creditu sive factu relinquatur libertas. At non minor est controversia, quæ sint necessaria, quam quæ sint vera. Indicia, aiunt, sunt in scripturis. At certè etiam circa illa loca variat interpretatio. Quare nondem video an quid sit melius, quam ea quæ ad fidem et bona opera nos ducunt retinere, ut sunt in ecclesia catholica; puto enim in iis esse quæ sunt necessaria ad salutem. In cæteris ea quæ conciliorum auctoritate, aut veturum consensu recepta sunt, interpretari eo modo quo interpretati sunt, illi qui commodissimè sunt locuti, quales semper aliqui in quaque materia facile reperientur. Si quis id a se impetrare non possit, ut taceat, nec propter res de quibus certus non est, sed opinationem tantum quandam habet turbet unitatem ecclesiæ necessariam, quæ nisi retinetur ubi est, et restituitur ubi non est, omnia ibunt in pejus, p. 960. (Nov. 1648.) Wytenbogard replied very well: Si ita se res habet, ut indicia necessariorum et non necessariorum in scriptura reperiri nequeant, sed quæri debeant in auctoritate conciliorum aut veterum consensu, eo modo quo interpretati sunt illi, qui commodissimè locuti sunt, prout Excellentia tua videtur existimare, nescio an viginti quinque anni, etiamsi illi mihi adhuc restarent, omnesque exigui ingenii corporisque mei vires in mea essent potestate, sufficerent ut maturo cum judicio perlegam et expendam omnia quæ eo pertinent. This letter is in the Epistolæ præstantium et eruditorum virorum edited by Limborch in 1683, p. 826. And Grotius’s answer is in the same collection. It is that of a man who throws off a mask he had reluctantly worn. There was in fact no other means of repelling Wytenbogard’s just observation on the moral impossibility of tracing for ourselves the doctrine of the Catholic church as an historical inquiry. Grotius refers him to a visible standard. Quare considerandum est, an nonfacilius et æquius sit, quoniam doctrina de gratia, de libero arbitrio, necessitate fidei bonorumque operum obtinuit in ecclesia quæ pro se habet universale regimen et ordinem successionis, privatos se in aliis accommodare, pacis causa, iis quæ universaliter sunt recepta, sive ea aptissimis explicationibus recipiendo, sive tacendo, quam corpus illud catholicum ecclesiæ se in articulo tolerantiæ accommodare debere uniuscujusque considerationibus et placitis. Exempli gratiâ: Catholica ecclesia nemini præscribit ut precetur pro mortuis, aut opem precum sanctorum vita hac defunctorum imploret: solummodo requirit, ne quis morem adeo antiquum et generalem condemnet. The church does, in fact, rather more than he insinuates, though less than Protestants generally fancy.

I have trespassed on the patience of the general reader in this very long note, which may be thought a superfluous digression in a work of mere literature. But the epistles of Grotius are not much read; nor are they in many private libraries. The index is also very indifferent, so that without the trouble I have taken of going over the volume, it might be difficult to find these curious passages. I ought to mention that Burigny has given references to most of them, but with few quotations. Le Clerc, in the first volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle, reviewing the epistles of Grotius, slides very gently over his bias towards popery; and I have met with well-informed persons in England, who had no conception of the lengths to which this had led him. It is of far more importance, and the best apology I can offer for so prolix a note, to perceive by what gradual, but, as I think, necessary steps, he was drawn onward by his excessive respect for antiquity, and by his exaggerated notions of Catholic unity, preferring at last to err with the many, than to be right with the few. If Grotius had learned to look the hydra schism in the face, he would have had less fear of its many heads, and at least would have dreaded to cut them off at the neck, lest the source of life should be in one of them.

That Grotius really thought as the fathers of Trent thought upon all points in dispute cannot be supposed. It was not in the power of a man of his learning and thoughtfulness to divest himself of his own judgment, unless he had absolutely subjugated his reason to religious awe, which was far from being the case. His aim was to search for subtle interpretations, by which he might profess to believe the words of the church, though conscious that his sense was not that of the imposers. It is needless to say that this is not very ingenuous; and even if it could be justifiable relatively to the person, would be an abandonment of the multitude to any superstition and delusion which might be put upon them. Via ad pacem expeditissima mihi videtur, si doctrina, communi consensu recepta, commodè explicetur, mores, sanæ doctrinæ adversantes, quantum fieri potest, tollantur, et in rebus mediis accommodet se pars ingenio totius. Epist., 1524. Peace was his main object; if toleration had been as well understood as it was afterwards, he would perhaps have compromised less.

Baxter having published a Treatise of the Grotian Religion, wherein he imputed to Grotius this inclination towards the church of Rome, Archbishop Bramhall replied, after the Restoration, with a vindication of Grotius, in which he does not say much to the purpose, and seems ignorant of the case. The epistles indeed, were not then published.

Besides the passages in these epistles above quoted, the reader who wishes to follow this up may consult Epist. 1108, 1460, 1561, 1570, 1706 of the first series; and in the second series, p. 875, 896, 940, 943, 958, 960, 975. But there are also many to which I have made no reference. I do not quote authorities for the design of Grotius to have declared himself a convert, if he had lived to return to France, though they are easily found; because the testimony of his writing is far stronger than any anecdote.

14. But if any one could put a different interpretation on these works, which would require a large measure of prejudice, the epistles of Grotius afford such evidence of his secession from the Protestant side, as no reasonable understanding can reject. These are contained in a large folio volume, published in 1687, and amount to 1766 of one series, and 744 of another. I have quoted the former, for distinction’s sake, by the number, and the latter by the page. Few, we may presume, have taken the pains to go through them, in order to extract all the passages that bear upon this subject. It will be found that he began, as I have just said, by extolling the authority of the Catholic or universal church, and its exclusive right to establish creeds of faith. He some time afterwards ceased to frequent the Protestant worship, but long kept his middle path, and thought it enough to inveigh against the Jesuits and the exorbitancies of the see of Rome. But his reverence for the writers of the fourth and fifth centuries grew continually stronger; he learned to protest against the privilege, claimed by the reformers, of interpreting Scripture otherwise than the consent of the ancients had warranted; visions, first of an union between the Lutheran and English churches, and then of one with Rome itself, floated before his eyes; he sought religious peace with the latter, as men seek it in opposition to civil government, by the redress of grievances and the subsequent restoration of obedience. But in proportion as he perceived how little of concession was to be obtained, he grew himself more ready to concede; and though at one time he seems to deny the infallibility of the church, and at another would not have been content with placing all things in the state they were before the council of Trent, he came ultimately to think such a favourable sense might be put on all the Tridentine decrees, as to render them compatible with the Confession of Augsburg.

15. From the year 1640 his course seems to have been accelerated; he intimates no disapprobation of those who went over to Rome; he found, as he tells us, that whatever was generally received in the church of Rome, had the authority of those Greek and Latin fathers, whose communion no one would have refused; and at length, in a remarkable letter to Wytenbogart, bearing date in 1644, he puts it as worthy to be considered, whether it would not be more reasonable for private men who find the most essential doctrines in a church of an universal hierarchy and a legitimate succession, to wave their differences with it for the sake of peace, by putting the best interpretations they can, only keeping silence on their own opinions, than that the Catholic church should accommodate itself to the separate judgment of such men. Grotius had already ceased to speak of the Arminians as if he was one of themselves, though with much respect for some of their leaders.

16. Upon a dispassionate examination of all these testimonies, we can hardly deem it an uncertain question whether Grotius, if his life had been prolonged, would have taken the easy leap that still remained; and there is some positive evidence of his design to do so. But, dying on a journey and in a protestant country, this avowed declaration was never made. Fortunately indeed for his glory, since his new friends would speedily have put his conversion to the proof, and his latter years might have been spent, like those of Lipsius, in defending legendary miracles, or in waging war against the honoured dead of the Reformation. He did not sufficiently remember that a silent neutrality is never indulged to a suspicious proselyte.

17. It appears to me, nevertheless, that Grotius was very far from having truly subjected his understanding to the church of Rome. The whole bent of his mind was to effect an exterior union among Christians; and for this end he did not hesitate to recommend equivocal senses of words, convenient explanations, and respectful silence. Listening attentively, if I may be allowed such a metaphor, we hear the chaunt of the Æsculapian cock in all he has written for the catholic church. He first took up his reverence for antiquity, because he found antiquity unfavourable to the doctrine of Calvin. His antipathy to this reformer and to his followers led him on to an admiration of the episcopal succession, the organized hierarchy, the ceremonial and liturgical institutions, the high notions of sacramental rites, which he found in the ancient church, and which Luther and Zuingle had cast away. He became imbued with the notion of unity as essential to the catholic church; but he never seems to have gone the length of abandoning his own judgment, or of asserting any positive infallibility to the decrees of man. For it is manifest that, if the councils of Nice or of Trent were truly inspired, it would be our business to inquire what they meant themselves, not to put the most convenient interpretations, nor to search out for some author or another who may have strained their language to our own opinion. The precedent of Grotius, therefore, will not serve those who endeavour to bind the reason of the enlightened part of mankind, which he respected like his own. Two predominant ideas seem to have swayed the mind of this great man in the very gradual transition we have indicated; one, his extreme reverence for antiquity and for the consent of the catholic church; the other, his Erastian principles as to the authority of the civil magistrate in matters of religion. Both conspired to give him an abhorrence of the ‘liberty of prophesying,’ the right of private men to promulgate tenets inconsistent with established faith. In friendly conversation or correspondence, even perhaps; with due reserve, in Latin writings, much might be indulged to the learned, room was to be found for an Erasmus and a Cassander; or, if they would themselves consent, for an Episcopius and a Wytenbogart, at least for a Montagu and a Laud; but no pretext was ever to justify a separation. The scheme of Grotius is, in a modified degree, much the same as that of Hobbes.

Calixtus. 18. In the Lutheran church we find an eminent contemporary of Grotius, who may be reckoned his counterpart in the motives which influenced him to seek for an entire union of religious parties, though resembling him far more in his earlier opinions, than in those to which he ultimately arrived. This was George Calixtus, of the university of Helmstadt, a theologian, the most tolerant, mild, and catholic in his spirit, whom the Confession of Augsburg had known since Melanchthon. This university indeed, which had never subscribed the Form of Concord, was already distinguished by freedom of inquiry, and its natural concomitant, a large and liberal spirit. But in his own church generally, Calixtus found as rigid schemes of orthodoxy, and perhaps a more invidious scrutiny into the recesses of private opinion, than in that of Rome, with a less extensive basis of authority. The dream of good men in this age, the reunion of Christian churches in a common faith, and, meanwhile, the tolerance of differences, were ever the aim of Calixtus. But he fell, like the Anglican divines, into high notions of primitive tradition, placing, according to Eichhorn and Mosheim, the unanimity of the first six centuries by the side of Scripture itself. He was assailed by the adherents of the Form of Concord with aggravated virulence and vulgarity; he was accused of being a papist and a Calvinist, reproaches equally odious in their eyes, and therefore fit to be heaped on his head; the inconsistency of calumnies being no good reason with bigots against uttering them.[71]

His attempts at concord. 19. In the treatise, published long after his death, in 1697, De tolerantia Reformatorum circa quæstiones inter ipsos et Augustanam confessionem professes controversas consultatio, it is his object to prove that the Calvinists held no such tenets as should exclude them from Christian communion. He does not deny or extenuate the reality of their differences from the Confession of Augsburg. The Lutherans, though many of them, he says, had formerly maintained the absolute decrees of predestination, were now come round to the doctrine of the first four centuries.[72] And he admits that the Calvinists, whatever phrases they may use, do not believe a true and substantial presence in the Eucharist.[73] But neither of these errors if such they are, he takes to be fundamental. In a shorter and more valuable treatise, entitled Desiderium et studium concordiæ, ecclesiasticæ, Calixtus proposes some excellent rules for allaying religious heats. But he leans far too much towards the authority of tradition. Every church, he says, which affirms what others deny, is bound to prove its affirmation; first by Scripture, in which whatever is contained must be out of controversy, and secondly (as Scripture bears witness to the church that it is the pillar and foundation of truth, and especially the primitive church which is called that of the saints and martyrs), by the unanimous consent of the ancient church; above all, where the debate is among learned men. The agreement of the church is therefore a sufficient evidence of Christian doctrine, not that of individual writers, who are to be regarded rather so far as they testify the catholic doctrine, than as they propound their own.[74] This deference to an imaginary perfection in the church of the fourth or fifth century must have given a great advantage to that of Rome, which is not always weak on such ground, and doubtless serves to account for those frequent desertions to her banner, especially in persons of very high rank, which afterwards occurred in Germany.

Gerard Vossius, as Episcopius wrote to Vorstius in 1615, declared in his inaugural lecture as professor of theology, his determination to follow the consent of antiquity, in explicatione Scripturarum et controversiarum diremtionibus diligenter examinare et expendere catholicum et antiquissimum consensum, cum sine dubio illud quod a pluribus et antiquissimis dictum est, verissimum sit. Epist. Virorum præstantium, p. 6.

High-church party in England. 20. The tenets of some of those who have been called High-church Anglicans may in themselves be little different from those of Grotius and Calixtus. But the spirit in which they have been conceived is altogether opposite. The one is exclusive, intolerant, severe, dogmatical, insisting on uniformity of faith as well as of exterior observances; the other catholic in outward profession, charitable in sentiment, and in fact one mode, though a mode as imprudent as it was oblique, in which the latitudinarian principle was manifested. The language both of Grotius and Calixtus bears this out, and this ought closely to be observed, lest we confound the real laxity of one school with the rigid orthodoxy of the other. One had it in view to reconcile discordant communions by mutual concession, and either by such explication of contrarieties as might make them appear less incompatible with outward unity, or by an avowed tolerance of their profession within the church; the other would permit nothing but submission to its own authority: it loved to multiply rather than to extinguish the risks of dissent, in order to crush it more effectually; the one was a pacific negotiator, the other a conquering tyrant.

Daillé on the right use of the Fathers. 21. It was justly alarming to sincere protestants, that so many brilliant ornaments of their party should either desert to the hostile side, or do their own so much injury by taking up untenable ground.[75] Nothing, it appeared to reflecting men, could be trusted to the argument from antiquity: whatever was gained in the controversy on a few points was lost upon those of the first importance. It was become the only secure course to overthrow the tribunal. Daillé, himself one of the most learned in this patristic erudition whom the French reformed church possessed, was the first who boldly attacked the new school of historical theology in their own stronghold, not occupying their fortress, but razing it to the ground. The design of his celebrated Treatise concerning the right use of the Fathers, published in 1628, is, in his own words, to show, “that they cannot be the judges of the controversies in religion at this day between the papist and the protestant,” nor, by parity of reasoning, of many others; “1. Because it is, if not an impossible, yet at least a very difficult thing to find out what their sense hath been touching the same. 2. Because that their sense and judgment of these things, supposing it to be certainly and clearly understood, not being infallible, and without all danger of error, cannot carry with it a sufficient authority for the satisfying the understanding.”

22. The arguments adduced by Daillé in support of the former of these two positions, and which occupy the first book of the treatise, are drawn from the paucity of early Christian writers, from the nature of the subjects treated by them having little relation to the present controversies, from the suspicions of forgery and interpolation affecting many of their works, the difficulty of understanding their idioms and figurative expressions, the habit of some of the fathers to say what they did not believe, their changes of mind, the peculiar and individual opinions of some among them, affording little evidence of the doctrine of the church; finally, the probability that many who differed from those called the fathers, and whose writings have not descended to us, may have been of as good authority as themselves.

23. In the second book, which in fact has been very much anticipated in the first, he shows that neither the testimony nor the doctrine of the fathers is infallible (by which word he must be understood to mean that it raises but a slight presumption of truth), proving this by their errors and contradictions. Thus he concludes that, though their negative authority is considerable, since they cannot be presumed ignorant of any material doctrine of religion, we are to be very slow in drawing affirmative propositions from their writings, and much more so in relying upon them as undoubted verities.

24. It has been said of this treatise on the right use of the fathers, that its author had pretty well proved they were of no use at all. This indeed is by no means the case, but it has certainly diminished not only the deference which many have been wont to pay to the opinion of the primitive writers, but what is still more contended for, the value of their testimony, whether as to matters of fact, or as to the prevailing doctrines of the Christian church. Nothing can be more certain, though in the warmth of controversy men are apt to disregard it, than that a witness, who deposes in any one case what can be disproved, is not entitled to belief in other assertions which we have no means of confuting, unless it be shown that the circumstances of his evidence render it more trust-worthy in these points than we have found it before. Hence, such writers as Justin and Irenæus ought not, except with great precaution, to be quoted in proof at all, or at least with confidence; their falsehood, not probably wilful, in assertions that have been brought to a test rendering their testimony very precarious upon any other points. Daillé, it may be added, uses some circumspection, as the times, if not his own disposition, required in handling this subject, keeping chiefly in view the controversies between the Romish and protestant churches: nor does he ever indulge in that tone of banter or acrimony which we find in Whitby, Barbeyrac, Jortin, and Middleton; and which must be condemned by every one who reflects that many of these writers exposed their lives, and some actually lost them, in the maintenance and propagation of Christianity.

25. This well-timed and important book met with a good reception from some in England, though it must have been very uncongenial to the ruling party. |Chillingworth’s Religion of Protestants.| It was extolled and partly translated by Lord Falkland; and his two distinguished friends, Chillingworth and Hales, found in it the materials of their own bold revolt against church authority. They were both Arminians, and, especially the former, averse in all respects to the Puritan school. But like Episcopius, they scorned to rely, as on these points they might have done, on what they deemed so precarious and inconclusive as the sentiments of the fathers. Chillingworth, as is well known, had been induced to embrace the Romish religion, on the usual ground that a succession of infallible pastors, that is, a collective hierarchy, by adhering to whom alone we could be secure from error, was to be found in that church. He returned again to the protestant religion on being convinced that no such infallible society could be found. And a Jesuit, by name Knott, having written a book to prove that unrepenting protestants could not be saved, Chillingworth published, in 1637, his famous answer: The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation. In this he closely tracks the steps of his adversary, replying to every paragraph and almost every sentence.

Character of this work. 26. Knott is by no means a despicable writer, he is concise, polished, and places in an advantageous light the great leading arguments of his church. Chillingworth, with a more diffuse and less elegant style, is greatly superior in impetuosity and warmth. In his long parenthetical periods, and in those of other old English writers, in his copiousness, which is never empty or tautological, there is an inartificial eloquence springing from strength of intellect and sincerity of feeling, that cannot fail to impress the reader. But his chief excellence is the close reasoning, which avoids every dangerous admission and yields to no ambiguousness of language. He perceived and maintained with great courage, considering the times in which he wrote and the temper of those he was not unwilling to keep as friends, his favourite tenet, that all things necessary to be believed are clearly laid down in Scripture. Of tradition, which many of his contemporary protestants were becoming as prone to magnify as their opponents, he spoke very slightingly; not denying of course a maxim often quoted from Vincentius Lirinensis, that a tradition strictly universal and aboriginal must be founded in truth, but being assured that no such could be shown; and that what came nearest, both in antiquity and in evidence of catholic reception, to the name of apostolical, were doctrines and usages rejected alike by all denominations of the church in modern times.[76] It will be readily conceived, that his method of dealing with the controversy is very different from that of Laud in his treatise against Fisher; wherein we meet chiefly with disputes on passages in the fathers, as to which, especially when they are not quoted at length, it is impossible that any reader can determine for himself. The work of Chillingworth may at least be understood and appreciated without reference to any other; the condition, perhaps, of real superiority in all productions of the mind.

27. Chillingworth was, however, a man versed in patristical learning, by no means less so, probably, than Laud. But he had found so much uncertainty about this course of theological doctrine, seducing as it generally is to the learned, “fathers,” as he expresses it, “being set against fathers, and councils against councils,” that he declares, in a well-known passage, the Bible exclusively to be the religion of protestants; and each man’s own reason to be, as from the general tenor of his volume it appears that he held it, the interpreter of the Bible.[77] It was a natural consequence that he was a strenuous advocate not so much for toleration of separate churches, as for such an “ordering of the public service of God, that all who believe the Scripture and live according to it, might, without scruple or hypocrisy or protestation against any part, join in it;”[78] a scheme when practicable, as it could not possibly be often rendered, far more eligible than the separation of sects, and hence the favourite object of Grotius and Taylor, as well as of Erasmus and Cassander. And in a remarkable and eloquent passage, Chillingworth declares that “protestants are inexcusable, if they did offer violence to other men’s consciences;” which Knott had said to be notorious, as in fact it was, and as Chillingworth ought more explicitly to have admitted.[79] “Certainly,” he observes in another place, “if protestants are faulty in this matter [of claiming authority], it is for doing it too much and not too little. This presumptuous imposing of the senses of men upon the words of God, the special senses of men upon the general words of God, and laying them upon men’s consciences together, under the equal penalty of death and damnation, this vain conceit that we can speak of the things of God better than in the words of God; this deifying our own interpretations and tyrannous enforcing them upon others; this restraining of the word of God from that latitude and generality, and the understandings of men from that liberty wherein Christ and the apostles left them, is and hath been the only fountain of all the schisms of the church, and that which makes them immortal;[80] the common incendiary of Christendom, and that which tears in pieces not the coat but the bowels and members of Christ. Take away these walls of separation and all will quickly be one. Take away this persecuting, burning, cursing, damning of men for not subscribing the words of men as the words of God; require of Christians only to believe Christ, and to call no man master but him only; let those leave claiming infallibility that have no title to it, and let them that in their words disclaim it, disclaim it also in their actions. In a word, take away tyranny,” &c.[81]

28. It is obvious that in this passage, and indeed throughout the volume, Chillingworth contravenes the prevailing theories of the Anglican church, full as distinctly as those of the Roman. He escaped however unscathed by the censure of that jealous hierarchy; his private friendship with Laud, the lustre of his name, the absence of factious and sectarian connections, and still more perhaps the rapid gathering of the storms that swept both parties away, may be assigned as his protection. In later times his book obtained a high reputation; he was called the immortal Chillingworth; he was the favourite of all the moderate and the latitudinarian writers, of Tillotson, Locke, and Warburton. Those of opposite tenets, when they happen to have read his book, can do nothing else but condemn its tendency.

Hales on Schism. 29. A still more intrepid champion in the same cause was John Hales; for his little tract on Schism, not being in any part directed against the church of Rome, could have nothing to redeem the strong protestations against church authority, “which,” as he bluntly expresses it, “is none;” words that he afterwards slightly qualified. The aim of Hales, as well as of Grotius, Calixtus, and Chillingworth, was to bring about a more comprehensive communion; but he went still farther; his language is rough and audacious;[82] his theology in some of his other writings has a scent of Racow; and though these crept slowly to light, there was enough in the earliest to make us wonder at the high name, the epithet Ever-memorable, which he obtained in the English church.

The treatise on Schism, from which these last passages are not extracted, was printed at Oxford in 1642, with some animadversions by the editor. Wood’s Athenæ, iii. 414.

Controversies on grace and free will. Augustinian scheme. 30. It is unnecessary to say that few disputes in theology have been so eagerly conducted, so extensively ramified, as those which relate to the free will of man, and his capacity of turning himself towards God. In this place nothing more will be expected than a brief statement of the principal question, doing no injustice by a tone of partiality to either side. All shades of opinion, as it seems, may be reduced to two, which have long divided and will long divide the Christian world. According to one of these, the corrupt nature of man is incapable of exerting any power towards a state of acceptance with God, or even of willing it with an earnest desire, until excited by preventing (præveniens) grace; which grace is vouchsafed to some only, and is called free, because God is not limited by any respect of those persons to whom he accords this gift. Whether those who are thus called by the influence of the Spirit, are so irresistibly impelled to it, that their perseverance in the faith and good works which are the fruits of their election, may surely be relied upon, or, on the other hand, may either at first obdurately resist the divine impulses, or finally swerve from their state of grace, is another question, upon which those who agree in the principal doctrine have been at variance. It is also controverted among those who belong to this class of theologians, whether the election thus freely made out of mankind depends upon an eternal decree of predestination, or upon a sentence of God following the fall of man. And a third difference relates to the condition of man after he has been aroused by the Spirit from a state of entire alienation from God; some holding that the completion as well as commencement of the work of conversion is wholly owing to the divine influence, while others maintain a co-operation of the will, so that the salvation of a sinner may, in some degree, be ascribed to himself. But the essential principle of all whom we reckon in this category of divines is the necessity of preventing grace, or, in other words, that it is not in the power of man to do any act, in the first instance, towards his own salvation. This, in some or other of its modifications, used to be deemed the orthodox scheme of doctrine; it was established in the Latin church by the influence of Augustin, it was generally held by the schoolmen, by most of the early reformers, and seems to be inculcated by the decrees of the council of Trent, as much as by the articles of the church of England. In a loose and modern acceptation of the word, it often goes by the name of Calvinism, which may perhaps be less improper, if we do not use the term in an exclusive sense, but, if it is meant to imply a particular relation to Calvin, leads to controversial chicane, and a misstatement of the historical part of the question.

Semi-pelagian hypothesis. 31. An opposite class of theological reasoners belong to what is sometimes called the Semi-pelagian school. These concur with the former in the necessity of assistance from the Spirit to the endeavours of man towards subduing his evil tendencies, and renewing his heart in the fear and love of God, but conceive that every sinner is capable of seeking this assistance, which will not be refused him, and consequently of beginning the work of conversion by his own will. They therefore either deny the necessity of preventing grace, except such as is exterior, or, which comes effectively to the same thing, assert that it is accorded in a sufficient measure to every one within the Christian church, whether at the time of baptism, or by some other means. They think the opposite opinion, whether founded on the hypothesis of an eternal decree or not, irreconcilable with the moral attributes of the Deity, and inconsistent with the general tenor of Scripture. The Semi-pelagian doctrine is commonly admitted to have been held by the Greek fathers; but the authority of Augustin, and the decisions of the Western church caused it to assume the character of a heresy. Some of the Scotists among the schoolmen appear to have made an approach to it, by their tenet of grace ex congruo. They thought that the human virtues and moral dispositions of unregenerate men were the predisposing circumstances which, by a sort of fitness, made them the objects of the divine goodness in according the benefits of his grace. Thus their own free will, from which it was admitted that such qualities and actions might proceed, would be the real, though mediate, cause of their conversion. But this was rejected by the greater part, who asserted the absolute irrespective freedom of grace, and appealed to experience for its frequent efficacy over those who had no inherent virtues to merit it.

Tenets of the reformers. 32. The early reformers, and none more than Luther, maintained the absolute passiveness of the human will, so that no good actions, even after conversion, could be ascribed in any proper sense to man, but altogether to the operation of the Spirit. Not only, however, Melanchthon espoused the Synergistic doctrine, but the Lutheran church, not in any symbolic book, but in the general tenets of its members, has been thought to have gone a good way towards Semi-pelagianism, or what passed for such with the more rigid party.[83] In the reformed church, on the contrary, the Supra-lapsarian tenets of Calvin, or the immutable decrees of election and reprobation from all eternity, were obviously incompatible with any hypothesis that made the salvation of a sinner depend upon himself. But towards the close of the sixteenth century, these severer notions (which it may be observed by the way, had always been entirely rejected by the Anabaptists, and by some of greater name, such as Sebastian Castalio) began to be impugned by a few learned men. This led in England to what are called the Lambeth articles, drawn up by Whitgift, six of which assert the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, and three deny that of the Semi-pelagians. But these, being not quite approved by the queen, or by Lord Burleigh, were never received by authority in our church. There can nevertheless be no reasonable or even sincere doubt that Calvinism, in the popular sense, was at this time prevalent; even Hooker adopted the Lambeth articles with verbal modifications that do not affect their sense.

Rise of Arminianism. 33. The few who, in England or in the reformed churches upon the Continent, embraced these novel and heterodox opinions, as they were then accounted, within the sixteenth century, excited little attention in comparison with James Arminius, who became professor of theology at Leyden in 1604. The controversy ripened in a few years; it was intimately connected, not, of course, in its own nature, but by some of those collateral influences which have so often determined the opinions of mankind, with the political relations between the Dutch clergy and the States of Holland, as it was afterwards with the still less theological differences of that government with its Stadtholder; it appealed, on one side to reason, on the other to authority and to force; an unequal conflict, till posterity restore the balance. Arminius died in 1609; he has left works on the main topics of debate; but in theological literature, the great chief of the Arminian or Remonstrant church is Simon Episcopius. |Episcopius.| The principles of Episcopius are more widely removed from those of the Augustinian school than the five articles, so well known as the leading tenets of Arminius, and condemned at the synod of Dort. Of this famous assembly it is difficult to speak in a few words. The copious history of Brandt is perhaps the best authority; though we must own that the opposite party have a right to be heard. We are here, however, on merely literary ground, and the proceedings of ecclesiastical synods are not strictly within any province of literary history.

His writings. 34. The works of Episcopius were collectively published in 1650, seven years after his death. They form two volumes in folio, and have been more than once reprinted. The most remarkable are the Confessio Remonstrantium, drawn up about 1624, the Apology for it against a censure of the opposite party, and what seems to have been a later work, and more celebrated, his Institutiones Theologicæ. These contain a new scheme of religion, compared with that of the established churches of Europe, and may justly be deemed the representative of the liberal or latitudinarian theology. For though the writings of Erasmus, Cassander, Castalio, and Acontius had tended to the same purpose, they were either too much weakened by the restraints of prudence, or too obscure and transitory, to draw much attention, or to carry any weight against the rigid and exclusive tenets which were sustained by power.

Their spirit and tendency. 35. The earlier treatises of Episcopius seem to speak on several subjects less unequivocally than the Theological Institutions; a reserve not perhaps to be censured, and which all parties have thought themselves warranted to employ, so long as either the hope of agreement with a powerful adversary, or of mitigating his severity, should remain. Hence the Confession of the Remonstrants explicitly states that they decline the Semi-pelagian controversy, contenting themselves with asserting that sufficient grace is bestowed on all who are called by the gospel, to comply with that divine call and obey its precepts.[84] They used a form of words, which might seem equivalent to the tenet of original sin, and they did not avoid or refuse that term. But Episcopius afterwards denies it, at least in the extended sense of most theologians, almost as explicitly as Jeremy Taylor.[85] It was common in the seventeenth century to charge the Arminians, and especially Episcopius, with Socinianism. Bossuet, who seems to have quarrelled with all parties, and is neither Molinist nor Jansenist, Calvinist nor Arminian, never doubting that there is a firm footing between them, having attacked Episcopius and Grotius particularly for Semi-pelagianism and Socinianism, Le Clerc entered on their defence. But probably he would have passed with Bossuet, and hardly cared if he did pass, for a heretic, at least of the former denomination himself.[86]

Great latitude allowed by them. 36. But the most distinguishing peculiarity in the writings of Episcopius was his reduction of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity far below the multitudinous articles of the churches; confining them to propositions which no Christian can avoid acknowledging without manifest blame; such, namely, wherein the subject, the predicate, and the connexion of the two are declared in Scripture by express or equivalent words.[87] He laid little stress on the authority of the church; notwithstanding the advantage he might have gained by the Anti-Calvinistic tenets of the fathers, admitting indeed the validity of the celebrated rule of Vincentius Lirinensis, in respect of tradition, which the upholders of primitive authority have always had in their mouths, but adding that it is utterly impossible to find any instance wherein it can be usefully applied.[88]

The life of Episcopius has been written by Limborch. Justice has been done to this eminent person and to the Arminian party which he led, in two recent English works, Nicholls’ Calvinism and Arminianism displayed, and Calder’s Life of Episcopius (1835). The latter is less verbose and more temperate than the former, and may be recommended, as a fair and useful production, to the general reader. Two theological parties in this country, though opposite in most things, are inveterately prejudiced against the Leyden school.

Progress of Arminianism. 37. The Arminian doctrine spread, as is well known, in despite of obloquy and persecution, over much of the protestant region of Europe. The Lutheran churches were already come into it; and in England there was a predisposing bias in the rulers of the church towards the authority of the primitive fathers, all of whom, before the age of Augustin, and especially the Greek, are acknowledged to have been on that side, which promoted the growth of this Batavian theology.[89] Even in France, it was not without considerable influence. |Cameron.| Cameron, a divine of Saumur, one of the chief protestant seminaries, devised a scheme of syncretism, which, notwithstanding much opposition, gained ground in those churches. It was supported by some highly distinguished for learning, Amyraut, Daillé, and Blondel. Of this scheme it is remarkable, that while in its literal purport it can only seem a modification of the Augustinian hypothesis, with an awkward and feeble admixture of the other, yet its tendency was to efface the former by degrees, and to slide into the Arminian hypothesis, which ultimately became almost general in the reformed church.

Rise of Jansenism. 38. These perplexities were not confined to protestant theology. The church of Rome, strenuous to maintain the tenets of Augustin, and yet to condemn those who did the same, has been charged with exerting the plenitude of her infallibility to enforce the belief of an incoherent syncretism. She had condemned Baius, as giving too much efficacy to grace; she was on the point of condemning Molina for giving too little. Both Clement VIII. and Paul V. leaned to the Dominicans against the Jesuits in this controversy; but the great services and influence of the latter order prevented a decision which would have humbled them before so many adversaries. It may, nevertheless be said that the Semi-pelagian, or Arminian doctrine, though consonant to that of the Jesuits, was generally ill received in the church of Rome, till the opposite hypothesis, that of Augustin and Calvin, having been asserted by one man in more unlimited propositions than had been usual, a reaction took place, that eventually both gave an apparent triumph to the Molinist party, and endangered the church itself by the schism to which the controversy gave rise. The Augustinus of Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, was published in 1640, and in the very next year was censured at Rome. But, as the great controversy that sprung out of the condemnation of this book belongs more strictly to the next period, we shall defer it for the present.

Socinus. Volkelius. 39. The Socinian academy at Racow which drew to itself several proselytes from other countries, acquired considerable importance in theological literature after the beginning of the century. It was not likely that a sect, regarded with peculiar animosity, would escape in the general disposition of the catholic party in Poland to oppress the dissidents whom they had long feared; the Racovian institution was broken up and dispersed in 1638, though some of its members continued to linger in Poland for twenty years longer. The Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, published at Amsterdam (in the title-page, Irenopolis), in 1658, contains chiefly the works of Socinian theologians who belong to this first part of the century. The Prælectiones Theologicæ of Faustus Socinus himself, being published in 1609, after his death, fall within this class. They contain a systematic theology according to his scheme, and are praised by Eichhorn for the acuteness and depth they often display.[90] In these, among his other deviations from the general orthodoxy of Christendom, Socinus astonished mankind by denying the evidences of natural religion, resolving our knowledge even of a deity into revelation. This paradox is more worthy of those who have since adopted it, than of so acute a reasoner as Socinus.[91] It is, in fact, not very congenial to the spirit of his theology, which, rejecting all it thinks incompatible with reason as to the divine attributes, should at least have some established notions of them upon rational principles. The later Socinians, even those nearest to the time, did not follow their master in this part of his tenets.[92] The treatise of Volkelius, son-in-law of Socinus, De vera Religione, is chiefly taken from the latter. It was printed at Racow in 1633, and again in Holland in 1641; but most of the latter impression having been burned by order of the magistrates, it is a very scarce book, and copies were formerly sold at great prices. But the hangman’s bonfire has lost its charm, and forbidden books, when they happen to occur, are no longer in much request. The first book out of five in this volume of Volkelius, on the attributes of God, is by Crellius.

Crellius. Ruarus. 40. Crellius was, perhaps, the most eminent of the Racovian school in this century.[93] Many of its members, like himself, were Germans, their sect having gained ground in some of the Lutheran states about this time, as it did also in the United Provinces. Grotius broke a lance with him in his treatise De Satisfactione Christi, to which he replied in another with the same title. Each retired from the field with the courtesies of chivalry towards his antagonist. The Dutch Arminians in general, though very erroneously, supposed to concur in all the leading tenets of the Racovian theologians, treated them with much respect.[94] Grotius was often reproached with the intimacies he kept up among these obnoxious sectaries; and many of his letters, as well as those of Curcellæus and other leading Arminians, bear witness to the personal regard they felt for them.[95] Several proofs of this will be also found in the epistles of Ruarus, a book which throws much light on the theological opinions of the age. Ruarus was a man of acuteness, learning, and piety, not wholly concurring with the Racovians, but not far removed from them.[96] The commentaries of Grotius on the Scriptures have been also charged with Socinianism; but he pleaded that his interpretations were those of the fathers.

This book contains two centuries of epistles, the second of which is said to be very scarce, and I doubt whether many have read the first, which must excuse my quotations. The learning, sense, and integrity of Ruarus, as well as the high respect which Calixtus, Curcellæus, and other great men felt for him, render the book of some interest. He tells us that while he was in England, about 1617, a professorship at Cambridge was offered to him, worth 100l. per annum, besides as much more from private pupils, p. 71. But he probably mistook the civil speeches of individuals for an offer: he was not eminent enough for such a proposal on the part of the university; and at least he must have been silent about his Socinianism. The morality of the early Socinians was very strict and even ascetic, proofs of which appear in these letters, p. 306 et alibi.

Erastianism. 41. Two questions of great importance which had been raised in the preceding century, became still more interesting in the present, on account of the more frequent occasion that the force of circumstances gave for their investigation, and the greater names that were engaged in it. Both of these arose out of the national establishment of churches, and their consequent relation to the commonwealth. One regarded the power of the magistrate over the church he recognized; the other involved the right of his subjects to dissent from it by non-conformity, or by a different mode of worship.

Maintained by Hooker. 42. Erastus, by proposing to substitute for the ancient discipline of ecclesiastical censures, and especially for excommunication, a perpetual superintendence of the civil power over the faith and practice of the church, had given name to a scheme generally denominated Erastianism, though in some respects far broader than anything he seems to have suggested. It was more elaborately maintained by Hooker in his Ecclesiastical Polity, and had been, in fact, that on which the English reformation under Henry was originally founded. But as it was manifestly opposed to the ultra-montane pretensions of the See of Rome, and even to the more moderate theories of the catholic church, being, of course, destructive of her independence, so did it stand in equal contradiction to the Presbyterian scheme of Scotland and of the United Provinces. |And Grotius.| In the latter country, the states of Holland had been favourable to the Arminians, so far at least as to repress any violence against them; the clergy were exasperated and intolerant; and this raised the question of civil supremacy, in which Grotius, by one of his early works entitled Pietas Ordinum Hollandiæ, published in 1613, sustained the right of the magistrate to inhibit dangerous controversies.

His Treatise on ecclesiastical power of the state. 43. He returned, after the lapse of some years, to the same theme in a larger and more comprehensive work, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum circa Sacra. It is written upon the Anglican principles of regal supremacy, which had, however, become far less popular with the rulers of our church, than in the days of Cranmer, Whitgift, and Hooker. After stating the question, and proving the ecclesiastical power of the magistrate by natural law, Scripture, established usage, agreement of Heathen and Christian writers, and the reason of the thing, he distinguishes control over sacred offices from their exercise, and proceeds to inquire whether the magistrate may take the latter on himself; which, though practised in the early ages of the world, he finds inconvenient at present, the manners required for the regal and sacerdotal character being wholly different.[97]

44. Actions may be prescribed or forbidden by natural divine law, positive divine law, or human law; the latter extending to nothing but what is left indefinite by the other two. But though we are bound not to act in obedience to human laws which contradict the divine, we are also bound not forcibly to resist them. We may defend ourselves by force against an equal, not against a superior, as he proves first from the Digest, and secondly from the New Testament.[98] Thus the rule of passive obedience is unequivocally laid down. He meets the recent examples of resistance to sovereigns, by saying that they cannot be approved where the kings have had an absolute power; but where they are bound by compact or the authority of a senate or of estates, since their power is not unlimited, they may be resisted on just grounds by that authority.[99] “Which I remark,” he proceeds to say, “lest any one, as I sometimes have known, should disgrace a good cause by a mistaken defence.”

45. The magistrate can alter nothing which is definitely laid down by the positive law of God; but he may regulate the circumstantial observance even of such; and as to things undefined in Scripture he has plenary jurisdiction; such as the temporalities of the church, the convocation of synods, the election of pastors. The burthen of proof lies on those who would limit the civil power by affirming anything to be prescribed by the divine law.[100] The authority attributed in Scripture to churches does not interfere with the power of the magistrate, being persuasive and not coercive. The whole church has no coercive power by divine right.[101] But since the visible church is a society of divine institution, it follows that whatever is naturally competent to a lawful society, is competent also to the church, unless it can be proved to be withdrawn from it.[102] It has, therefore, a legislative government (regimen constitutivum), of which he gives the institution of the Lord’s day as an example. But this does not impair the sovereign’s authority in ecclesiastical matters. In treating of that supremacy, he does not clearly show what jurisdiction he attributes to the magistrate; most of his instances relating to the temporalities of the church, as to which no question is likely to arise.[103] But, on the whole, he means undoubtedly to carry the supremacy as far as is done in England.

46. In a chapter on the due exercise of the civil supremacy over the church, he shows more of a protestant feeling than would have been found in him when he approached the latter years of his life;[104] and declares fully against submission to any visible authority in matters of faith, so that sovereigns are not bound to follow the ministers of the church in what they may affirm as doctrine. Ecclesiastical synods he deems often useful, but thinks the magistrate is not bound to act with their consent, and that they are sometimes pernicious.[105] The magistrate may determine who shall compose such synods;[106] a strong position which he endeavours to prove at great length. Even if the members are elected by the church, the magistrate may reject those whom he reckons unfit; he may preside in the assembly, confirm, reject, annul its decisions. He may also legislate about the whole organisation of the established church.[107] It is for him to determine what form of religion shall be publicly exercised; an essential right of sovereignty as political writers have laid it down. And this is confirmed by experience; “for if any one shall ask why the Romish religion flourished in England under Mary, the protestant under Elizabeth, no cause can be assigned but the pleasure of these queens, or, as some might say, of the queens and parliaments.” In this manner Grotius disposes of a great question of casuistry by what has been done; as if murder and adultery might not be established by the same logic. Natural law would be resolved into history, were we always to argue in a similar way. But this, as will appear more fully hereafter, is not the usual reasoning of Grotius. To the objection from the danger of abuse in conceding so much power to the sovereign, he replies that no other theory will secure us better. On every supposition the power must be lodged in men, who are all liable to error. We must console ourselves by a trust in divine providence alone.[108]

47. The sovereign may abolish false religions and punish their professors, which no one else can. Here again we find precedents instead of arguments; but he says that the primitive church disapproved of capital punishments for heresy, which seems to be his main reason for doing the same. The sovereign may also enjoin silence in controversies, and inspect the conduct of the clergy without limiting himself by the canons, though he will do well to regard them. Legislation and jurisdiction, that is, of a coercive nature, do not belong to the church, except as they may be conceded to it by the civil power.[109] He fully explains the various kinds of ecclesiastical law that have been gradually introduced. Even the power of the keys, which is by divine right, cannot be so exercised as to exclude the appellant jurisdiction of the sovereign; as he proves by the Roman law, and by the usage of the parliament of Paris.[110]

48. The sovereign has a control (inspectionem cum imperio) over the ordination of priests, and certainly possesses a right of confirmation, that is, the assignment of an ordained minister to a given cure.[111] And though the election of pastors belongs to the church, this may, for good reasons, be taken into the hands of the sovereign. Instances in point are easily found, and the chapter upon the subject contains an interesting historical summary of this part of ecclesiastical law. In every case, the sovereign has a right of annulling an election, and also of removing a pastor from the local exercise of his ministry.[112]

Remark upon this theory. 49. This is the full development of an Erastian theory, which Cranmer had early espoused, and which Hooker had maintained in a less extensive manner. Bossuet has animadverted upon it, nor can it appear tolerable to a zealous churchman.[113] It was well received in England by the lawyers, who had always been jealous of the spiritual tribunals, especially of late years, when, under the patronage of Laud, they had taken a higher tone than seemed compatible with the supremacy of the common law. The scheme, nevertheless, is open to some objections when propounded in so unlimited a manner, none of which is more striking than that it tends to convert differences of religious opinion into crimes against the state, and furnishes bigotry with new arguments as well as new arms, in its conflict with the free exercise of human reason. Grotius, however, feared rather that he had given too little power to the civil magistrate than too much.[114]

Toleration of religious tenets. 50. Persecution for religious heterodoxy, in all its degrees, was in the sixteenth century the principle, as well as the practice of every church. It was held inconsistent with the sovereignty of the magistrate to permit any religion but his own; inconsistent with his duty to suffer any but the true. The edict of Nantes was a compromise between belligerent parties; the toleration of the dissidents in Poland was nearly of the same kind; but no state, powerful enough to restrain its sectaries from the exercise of their separate worship, had any scruples about the right and obligation to do so. Even the writers of that century, who seemed most strenuous for toleration, Castalio, Celso, and Koornhert, had confined themselves to denying the justice of penal and especially of capital inflictions for heresy; the liberty of public worship had but incidentally, if at all, been discussed. Acontius had developed larger principles, distinguishing the fundamental from the accessory doctrines of the gospel; which, by weakening the associations of bigotry, prepared the way for a catholic tolerance. Episcopius speaks in the strongest terms of the treatise of Acontius, de Stratagematibus Satanæ, and says that the Remonstrants trod closely in his steps, as would appear by comparing their writings; so that he shall quote no passages in proof, their entire books bearing witness to the conformity.[115]

Claimed by the Arminians. 51. The Arminian dispute led by necessary consequence to the question of public toleration. They sought at first a free admission to the pulpits, and in an excellent speech of Grotius, addressed to the magistrates of Amsterdam in 1616, he objects to a separate toleration as rending the bosom of the church. But it was soon evident that nothing more could be obtained; and their adversaries refused this. They were driven therefore to contend for religious liberty, and the writings of Episcopius are full of this plea. Against capital punishment for heresy he raises his voice with indignant severity, and asserts that the whole Christian world abhorred the fatal precedent of Calvin in the death of Servetus.[116] This indicates a remarkable change already wrought in the sentiments of mankind. Certain it is that no capital punishments for heresy were inflicted in protestant countries after this time; nor were they as frequently or as boldly vindicated as before.[117]

By the independents. 52. The Independents claim to themselves the honour of having been the first to maintain the principles of general toleration, both as to freedom of worship, and immunity from penalties for opinion. But that the Arminians were not as early promulgators of the same noble tenets, seems not to have been proved. Crellius in his Vindiciæ pro Religionis Libertate, 1636, contended for the Polish dissidents, and especially for his own sect.[118] The principle is implied, if not expressed, in the writings of Chillingworth, and still more of Hales; but the first famous plea, in this country, for tolerance in religion, on a comprehensive basis and on deep-seated foundations, was the liberty of Prophesying by Jeremy Taylor. |And by Jeremy Taylor.| This celebrated work was written according to Taylor’s dedication, during his retirement in Wales, wither he was driven, as he expresses it, “by this great storm which hath dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces,” and published in 1647. He speaks of himself as without access to books; it is evident, however, from the abundance of his quotations, that he was not much in want of them: and from this, as well as other strong indications, we may reasonably believe, that a considerable part of this treatise had been committed to paper long before.