them three or four times back, but to no purpose.*

public

this time.

Meanwhile the glad tidings were flying to every part of the Peculiar kingdom, and were everywhere state of received with rapture. Glou- feeling at cester, Bedford, and Lichfield were among the places which were distinguished by peculiar zeal; but Bristol and Norwich, which stood nearest to London in population and wealth, approached nearest to London in enthusiasm on this joyful occasion.

no small expense with robes and a tiara, was mounted on a chair resembling that in which the Bishops of Rome are still, on some great festivals, borne through Saint Peter's Church to the high altar. His Holiness was generally accompanied by a train of Cardinals and Jesuits. At his ear stood a buffoon disguised as a devil with horns and tail. No rich and zealous Protestant grudged his guinea on such an occasion, and, if rumour could be trusted, the cost of the procession was sometimes not less than a thousand The prosecution of the Bishops is an pounds. After the Pope had been event which stands by itself in our borne some time in state over the heads history. It was the first and the last of the multitude, he was committed to occasion on which two feelings of trethe flames with loud acclamations. In mendous potency, two feelings which the time of the popularity of Cates have generally been opposed to each and Shaftesbury, this show was exhi- other, and either of which, when strongly bited annually in Fleet Street before excited, has sufficed to convulse the the windows of the Whig Club on the state, were united in perfect harmony. anniversary of the birth of Queen Those feelings were love of the Church Elizabeth. Such was the celebrity of and love of freedom. During many these grotesque rites, that Barillon once generations every violent outbreak of risked his life in order to peep at them High Church feeling, with one excepfrom a hiding place.* But, from the tion, has been unfavourable to civil day when the Rye House plot was dis- liberty; every violent outbreak of zeal covered, till the day of the acquittal of for liberty, with one exception, has the Bishops, the ceremony had been been unfavourable to the authority and disused. Now, however, several Popes influence of the prelacy and the priestmade their appearance in different parts hood. In 1688 the cause of the hieof London. The Nuncio was much rarchy was for a moment that of the shocked; and the King was more hurt popular party. More than nine thouby this insult to his Church than by all sand clergymen, with the Primate and the other affronts which he had received. his most respectable suffragans at their The magistrates, however, could do head, offered themselves to endure nothing. The Sunday had dawned, bonds and the spoiling of their goods and the bells of the parish churches for the great fundamental principle of were ringing for early prayers, before our free constitution. The effect was the fires began to languish and the a coalition which included the most crowds to disperse. A proclamation zealous Cavaliers, the most zealous rewas speedily put forth against the publicans, and all the intermediate rioters. Many of them, mostly young sections of the community. The spirit apprentices, were apprehended; but which had supported Hampden in the the bills were thrown out at the Mid-preceding generation, the spirit which, dlesex sessions. The Justices, many in the succeeding generation, supported of whom were Roman Catholics, ex- Sacheverell, combined to support the postulated with the grand jury and sent

See a very curious narrative published, among other papers, in 1710, by Danby, then Duke of Leeds. There is an amusing account of the ceremony of burning a Pope in North's Examen, 570. See also the note on the Epilogue to the Tragedy of Edipus in Scott's edition of Dryden.

Archbishop who was Hampden and Sacheverell in one. Those classes of society which are most deeply interested in the preservation of order,

* Reresby's Memoirs; Van Citters, July. 1688; Adda, July.; Barillon, July Luttrell's Diary; Newsletter of July 4.; Oldmixon, 739.; Ellis Correspondence.

which in troubled times are generally manned his ships, the very sentinels most ready to strengthen the hands of who guarded his palace. The names government, and which have a natural of Whig and Tory were for a moment antipathy to agitators, followed, with-forgotten. The old Exclusionist took out scruple, the guidance of a venerable the old Abhorrer by the hand. Episcoman, the first peer of the Parliament, palians, Presbyterians, Independents, the first minister of the Church, a Tory Baptists, forgot their long feud, and in politics, a saint in manners, whom remembered only their common Protyranny had in his own despite turned testantism and their common danger. into a demagogue. Many, on the other Divines bred in the school of Laud hand, who had always abhorred episco- talked loudly, not only of toleration, pacy, as a relic of Popery, and as an but of comprehension. The Archinstrument of arbitrary power, now bishop soon after his acquittal put forth asked on bended knees the blessing a pastoral letter which is one of the of a prelate who was ready to wear most remarkable compositions of that fetters and to lay his aged limbs on age. He had, from his youth up, been bare stones rather than betray the in- at war with the Nonconformists, and terests of the Protestant religion and had repeatedly assailed them with unset the prerogative above the laws. just and unchristian asperity. His With love of the Church and with love principal work was a hideous caricaof freedom was mingled, at this great ture of the Calvinistic theology.* He crisis, a third feeling which is among had drawn up for the thirtieth of the most honourable peculiarities of our January and for the twenty ninth of national character. An individual op- May forms of prayer which reflected pressed by power, even when destitute on the Puritans in language so strong of all claim to public respect and grati- that the government had thought fit to tude, generally finds strong sympathy soften it down. But now his heart was among us. Thus, in the time of our melted and open. He solemnly engrandfathers, society was thrown into joined the Bishops and clergy to have confusion by the persecution of Wilkes. a very tender regard to their brethren We have ourselves seen the nation the Protestant Dissenters, to visit them roused to madness by the wrongs of often, to entertain them hospitably, to Queen Caroline. It is probable, there- discourse with them civilly, to persuade fore, that, even if no great political or them, if it might be, to conform to the religious interest had been staked on Church, but, if that were found imposthe event of the proceeding against sible, to join them heartily and affec the Bishops, England would not have tionately in exertions for the blessed seen, without strong emotions of pity cause of the Reformation.t and anger, old men of stainless virtue pursued by the vengeance of a harsh and inexorable prince who owed to their fidelity the crown which he wore.

Actuated by these sentiments our ancestors arrayed themselves against the government in one huge and compact mass. All ranks, all parties, all Protestant sects, made up that vast phalanx. In the van were the Lords Spiritual and Temporal. Then came the landed gentry and the clergy, both the Universities, all the Inns of Court, merchants, shopkeepers, farmers, the porters who plied in the streets of the great towns, the peasants who ploughed the fields. The league against the King included the very foremost men who

Many pious persons in subsequent years remembered that time with bitter regret. They described it as a short glimpse of a golden age between two iron

*The Fur Prædestinatus.

†This document will be found in the first of the twelve collections of papers relating to the affairs of England, printed at the end of 1688 and the beginning of 1689. It was put forth on the 26th of July, not quite a month after the trial. Lloyd of Saint Asaph about the same time told Henry Wharton that the Bishops purposed to adopt an entirely new policy towards the Protestant Dissenters; corruptelis penitus exueretur; ut sectariis reformatis reditus in ecclesiæ sinum exoptati occasio ac ratio concederetur, si qui sobrii et pii essent; ut pertinacibus interim jugum levaretur, extinctis penitus legibus mulctatoriis."-Excerpta ex Vita H. Wharton.

"Omni modo curaturos ut ecclesia sordibus et

ages. Such lamentation, though natural, has never since been similar misgovernwas not reasonable. The coalition of 1688 ment. It must be remembered that, was produced, and could be produced, though concord is in itself better than only by tyranny which approached to in- discord, discord may indicate a better sanity, and by danger which threatened state of things than is indicated by conat once all the great institutions of the cord. Calamity and peril often force country. If there has never since been men to combine. Prosperity and secusimilar union, the reason is that there [rity often encourage them to separate.

CHAPTER IX.

THE acquittal of the Bishops was not to his posterity. This vista of calathe only event which makes the thir-mities had no end. It stretched beyond tieth of June 1688 a great epoch in the life of the youngest man living, history. On that day, while the bells beyond the eighteenth century. None of a hundred churches were ringing, could say how many generations of while multitudes were busied, from Protestant Englishmen might have to Hyde Park to Mile End, in piling fag-bear oppression, such as, even when it gots and dressing Popes for the rejoicings of the night, was despatched from London to the Hague an instrument scarcely less important to the liberties of England than the Great

The

Thus

bound meekly to submit, and to be torn | had been often repeated, from the pulin pieces or roasted alive without a pits of all the Cathedrals of the land, struggle. The arguments in favour of that the apostolical injunction to obey this proposition were futile indeed: but the civil magistrate was absolute and the place of sound argument was amply universal, and that it was impious presupplied by the omnipotent sophistry sumption in man to limit a precept of interest and of passion. Many which had been promulgated without writers have expressed wonder that any limitation in the word of God. the highspirited Cavaliers of England Now, however, divines, whose sagacity should have been zealous for the most had been sharpened by the imminent slavish theory that has ever been known danger in which they stood of being among men. The truth is that this turned out of their livings and prebends theory at first presented itself to the to make room for Papists, discovered Cavalier as the very opposite of slavish. flaws in the reasoning which had forIts tendency was to make him not a merly seemed so convincing. slave but a freeman and a master. It ethical parts of Scripture were not to exalted him by exalting one whom he be construed like Acts of Parliament, regarded as his protector, as his friend, or like the casuistical treatises of the as the head of his beloved party and of schoolmen. What Christian really his more beloved Church. When Re- turned the left cheek to the ruffian who publicans were dominant the Royalist had smitten the right? What Christian had endured wrongs and insults which really gave his cloak to the thieves who the restoration of the legitimate govern- had taken his coat away? Both in the ment had enabled him to retaliate. Old and in the New Testament general Rebellion was therefore associated in rules were perpetually laid down unaehis imagination with subjection and companied by the exceptions. degradation, and monarchical authority there was a general command not to with liberty and ascendency. It had kill, unaccompanied by any reservation never crossed his imagination that a in favour of the warrior who kills in time might come when a King, a Stuart, defence of his king and country. There would persecute the most loyal of the was a general command not to swear, clergy and gentry with more than the unaccompanied by any reservation in animosity of the Rump or the Protector. favour of the witness who swears to That time had however arrived. It speak the truth before a judge. Yet was now to be seen how the patience the lawfulness of defensive war, and of which Churchmen professed to have judicial oaths, was disputed only by a learned from the writings of Paul would few obscure sectaries, and was posistand the test of a persecution by no tively affirmed in the articles of the means so severe as that of Nero. The Church of England. All the arguments. event was such as everybody who knew which showed that the Quaker, who anything of human nature would have refused to bear arms, or to kiss the predicted. Oppression speedily did Gospels, was unreasonable and perverse, what philosophy and eloquence would might be turned against those who have failed to do. The system of Fil- denied to subjects the right of resisting mer might have survived the attacks extreme tyranny by force. If it was of Locke: but it never recovered from contended that the texts which prothe death blow given by James. hibited homicide, and the texts which prohibited swearing, though generally expressed, must be construed in subordination to the great commandment by which every man is enjoined to promote the welfare of his neighbours, and would, when so construed, be found not to apply to cases in which homicide or swearing might be absolutely neces sary to protect the dearest interests of

That logic, which, while it was used to prove that Presbyterians and Independents ought to bear imprisonment and confiscation with meekness, had been pronounced unanswerable, seemed to be of very little force when the question was whether Anglican Bishops should be imprisoned, and the revenues of Anglican colleges confiscated. It

sistance in all its integrity. Particular cases might doubtless be put in which resistance would benefit a community: but it was, on the whole, better that the people should patiently endure a bad government than that they should relieve themselves by violating a law on which the security of all government depended.

society, it was not easy to deny that | verned by the most cruel and licentious the texts which prohibited resistance despot. It was therefore necessary to ought to be construed in the same maintain the great principle of nonremanner. If the ancient people of God had been directed sometimes to destroy human life, and sometimes to bind themselves by oaths, they had also been directed sometimes to resist wicked princes. If early fathers of the Church had occasionally used language which seemed to imply that they disapproved of all resistance, they had also occasionally used language which seemed to imply that they disapproved of all war and of all oaths. In truth the doctrine of passive obedience, as taught at Oxford in the reign of Charles the Second, can be deduced from the Bible only by a mode of interpretation which would irresistibly lead us to the conclusions of Barclay and Penn.

Such reasoning easily convinced a dominant and prosperous party, but could ill bear the scrutiny of minds strongly excited by royal injustice and ingratitude. It is true that to trace the exact boundary between rightful and wrongful resistance is impossible: but this impossibility arises from the nature of right and wrong, and is found It was not merely by arguments drawn in every part of ethical science. A from the letter of Scripture that the good action is not distinguished from a Anglican theologians had, during the bad action by marks so plain as those years which immediately followed the which distinguish a hexagon from a Restoration, laboured to prove their square. There is a frontier where favourite tenet. They had attempted virtue and vice fade into each other. to show that, even if revelation had Who has ever been able to define the been silent, reason would have taught exact boundary between courage and wise men the folly and wickedness of rashness, between prudence and coall resistance to established government. wardice, between frugality and avarice, It was universally admitted that such between liberality and prodigality? resistance was, except in extreme cases, Who has ever been able to say how far unjustifiable. And who would under- mercy to offenders ought to be carried, take to draw the line between extreme and where it ceases to deserve the cases and ordinary cases? Was there name of mercy and becomes a perniany government in the world under cious weakness? What casuist, what which there were not to be found some lawgiver, has ever been able nicely to discontented and factious men who mark the limits of the right of selfwould say, and perhaps think, that defence? All our jurists hold that a their grievances constituted an extreme certain quantity of risk to life or limb case? If, indeed, it were possible to justifies a man in shooting or stabbing lay down a clear and accurate rule an assailant: but they have long given which might forbid men to rebel against up in despair the attempt to describe, Trajan, and yet leave them at liberty in precise words, that quantity of risk. to rebel against Caligula, such a rule They only say that it must be, not a might be highly beneficial. But no slight risk, but a risk such as would such rule had ever been, or ever would cause serious apprehension to a man of be, framed. To say that rebellion was firm mind; and who will undertake to lawful under some circumstances, with- say what is the precise amount of out accurately defining those circum-apprehension which deserves to be stances, was to say that every man might rebel whenever he thought fit; and a society in which every man rebelled whenever he thought fit would be more miserable than a society go

called serious, or what is the precise texture of mind which deserves to be called firm? It is doubtless to be lamented that the nature of words and the nature of things do not admit of