Part 5 (1/2)
”The word G.o.d in Scripture is chiefly used two ways: first, as it signifies Him that rules in heaven and earth . . .; secondly, as it signifies one who hath received some high power or authority from that one G.o.d, or is some way made partaker of the Deity of that one G.o.d. It is in this latter sense that the Son in certain places in Scripture is called G.o.d. And the Son is upon no higher account called G.o.d than that He is sanctified by the Father and sent into the world.
”But hath not the Lord Jesus Christ besides His human a Divine nature also?
”No, by no means, for that is not only repugnant to sound reason, but to the Holy Scripture also.”
This is doubtless enough to convey an idea of the Catechism, which was again translated in 1818 by T. Rees. Whether Bidle was the translator or not, he must have been actuated by good intentions in what he wrote; for he says of the _Twofold Catechism_, that it ”was composed for their sakes that would fain be mere Christians, and not of this or that sect, inasmuch as all the sects of Christians, by what names soever distinguished, have either more or less departed from the simplicity and truth of the Scripture.” But these Christians, who preferred their religion to their sect, Bidle should have known were too few to count.
Far inferior writers to Bidle were Ebiezer Coppe and Laurence Clarkson: nor, if religious madness could be so stamped out, can we complain of the House of Commons for condemning their works to the flames. The strongest possible condemnation was pa.s.sed for its ”horrid blasphemies” on Coppe's _Fiery Flying Roll; or, Word from the Lord to all the Great Ones of the Earth whom this may concern, being the Last Warning Peace at the Dreadful Day of Judgment_. All discoverable copies of this book were to be burnt by the hangman at three different places (February 1st, 1650); and Coppe was imprisoned, but was released on his recantation of his opinions. His book was the cause of that curious ordinance of August 9th, 1650, for the ”punishment of atheistical, blasphemous, and execrable opinions,” which is the best summary and proof of the intense religious fanaticism then prevalent, and so curiously similar in all its details to that of the primitive Christian Church. At both periods the distinctive features were the claim to actual divinity, and to superiority to all moral laws.
On September 27th, 1650, Clarkson's _Single Eye: all Light, no Darkness_, was condemned to be burnt by the hangman; and Clarkson himself not only sent to the House of Correction for a month, but sentenced to be banished after that for life under a penalty of death if he returned.
These books have their value for students of human nature, and so have the next I refer to, the works of Ludovic Muggleton, most of which were written during this period, though not condemned to be burnt till the year 1676, and which in other respects seem to touch the lowest attainable depth of religious demoralisation.
The extraordinary thing is that Muggleton actually founded a sort of religion of his own; at all events, he gave life and t.i.tle to a sect, which counts votaries to this day. Only so recently as 1846 a list of the works of Muggleton and his colleague Reeve was published, and the books advertised for sale. These two men claimed to be the two last witnesses or prophets, with power to sentence men to eternal d.a.m.nation or blessedness. Muggleton had a decided preference for exercising the former power, especially in regard to the Quakers, one of his books being called _A Looking Gla.s.s for George Fox, the Quaker, and other Quakers, wherein they may See Themselves to be Right Devils_. There is no reason to believe Muggleton to have been a conscious impostor; only in an age vexed to madness by religious controversy, religious madness carried him further than others. An asylum would have met his case better than the sentence of the Old Bailey, which condemned him to stand for three days in the pillory at the three most eminent places in the City, his books to be there in three lots burnt over his head, and himself then to be imprisoned till he had paid a sum of 500 (1676). But this did not finish the man, for in 1681 he wrote his _Letter to Colonel Phaire_, the language of which is perhaps unsurpa.s.sed for repulsiveness in the whole range of religious literature. Muggleton's writings in short read as a kind of religious nightmare. In their case the fire was rather profaned by its fuel than the books honoured by the fire.
CHAPTER V.
BOOK-FIRES OF THE RESTORATION.
With the Restoration, the burning of certain obnoxious books formed one of the first episodes of that Royalist war of revenge of which the most disgraceful expression was the exhumation and hanging at Tyburn of the bones of Cromwell and Ireton. And had Goodwin and Milton not absconded, it is probable that the revenge which had to content itself with their books would have extended to their persons.
John Goodwin, distinguished as a minister and a prolific writer on the people's side, had dedicated in 1649 to the House of Commons his _Obstructours of Justice_, in which he defended the execution of Charles I. He based his case, indeed, after the fas.h.i.+on of those days, too completely on Biblical texts to suit our modern taste; but his book is far from being the ”very weak and inconclusive performance” of which Neal speaks in his history of the Puritans. The sentiments follow exactly those of Rutherford's _Lex Rex_; as, for example, ”The Crown is but the kingdom's or people's livery. . . . The king bears the relation of a political servant or va.s.sal to that state, kingdom, or people over which he is set to govern.” But the commonplaces of to-day were rank heresy in a chaplain to Cromwell.
There seems to be no evidence to support Bishop Burnet's a.s.sertion that Goodwin was the head of the Fifth-Monarchy fanatics; and his story is simply that of a fearless, sensible, and conscientious minister, who took a strong interest in the political drama of his time, and advocated liberty of conscience before even Milton or Locke. But his chief distinction is to have been marked out for revenge in company with Milton by the miserable Restoration Parliament.
Milton's _Eikonoklastes_ and _Defensio Populi Anglicani_ rank, of course, among the masterpieces of English prose, and ought to be read, where they never will be, in every Board and public school of England. In the first the picture of Charles I., as painted in the _Eikon Basilike_, was unmercifully torn to pieces. Charles's religion, Milton declares, had been all hypocrisy. He had resorted to ”ign.o.ble s.h.i.+fts to seem holy, and to get a saints.h.i.+p among the ignorant and wretched people.” The prayer he had given as a relic to the bishop at his execution had been stolen from Sidney's _Arcadia_. In outward devotion he had not at all exceeded some of the worst kings in history. But in spite of Milton, the _Eikon Basilike_ sold rapidly, and contributed greatly to the reaction; and the Secretary of the Council of State had just reason to complain of the perverseness of his generation, ”who, having first cried to G.o.d to be delivered from their king, now murmur against G.o.d for having heard their prayer, and cry as loud for their king against those that delivered them.”
The next year (1650) Milton had to take up his pen again in the same cause against the _Defence of Charles I. to Charles II._ by the learned Salmasius. Milton was not sparing in terms of abuse.
He calls Salmasius ”a rogue,” ”a foreign insignificant professor,” ”a slug,” ”a silly loggerhead,” ”a superlative fool.”
Even a _Times_ leader of to-day would fall short of Milton in vituperative terms. It is not for this we still reverence the _Defensio_; but for its political force, and its occasional splendid pa.s.sages. Two samples must suffice:--
”Be this right of kings whatever it will, the right of the people is as much from G.o.d as it. And whenever any people, without some visible designation from G.o.d Himself, appoint a king over them, they have the same right to pull him down as they had to set him up at first. And certainly it is a more G.o.dlike action to depose a tyrant than to set one up; and there appears much more of G.o.d in the people when they depose an unjust prince than in a king that oppresses an innocent people. . . . So that there is but little reason for that wicked and foolish opinion that kings, who commonly are the worst of men, should be so high in G.o.d's account as that He should have put the world under them, to be at their beck and be governed according to their humour; and that for their sakes alone He should have reduced all mankind, whom He made after His own image, into the same condition as brutes.”
The conclusion of Milton's _Defensio_ is not more remarkable for its eloquence than it is for its closing paragraph. Addressing his countrymen in an exhortation that reminds one of the speeches of Pericles to the Athenians, he proceeds:--
”G.o.d has graciously delivered you, the first of nations, from the two greatest miseries of this life, and most pernicious to virtue, tyranny, and superst.i.tion; He has endued you with greatness of mind to be the first of mankind, who, after having conquered their own king, and having had him delivered into their hands, have not scrupled to condemn him judicially, and pursuant to that sentence of condemnation to put him to death. After the performing so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing that is mean and little, not so much as to think of, much less to do, anything but what is great and sublime.”
An exhortation to virtue founded on an act of regicide! To such an issue had come the dispute concerning the Divine Right of kings; and with such diversity of opinion do different men form their judgments concerning the leading events of their time!
The House of Commons, reverting for a time to the ancient procedure in these matters, pet.i.tioned the King on June 16th, 1660, to call in these books of Goodwin and Milton, and to order them to be burnt by the common hangman: and the King so far a.s.sented as to issue a proclamation ordering all persons in possession of such books to deliver them up to their county sheriffs to be burnt by the hangman at the next a.s.sizes (August 13th, 1660).[122:1] In this way a good many were burnt; but, happily for the authors themselves, ”they so fled or so obscured themselves” that all endeavours to apprehend their persons failed. Subsequently the benefits of the Act of Oblivion were conferred on Milton; but they were denied to Goodwin, who, having barely escaped sentence of death by Parliament, was incapacitated from ever holding any office again.
The _Lex Rex_, or the _Law and the Prince_ (1644), by the Presbyterian divine Samuel Rutherford, was another book which incurred the vengeance of the Restoration, and for the same reasons as Goodwin's book or Milton's. It was burnt by the hangman at Edinburgh (October 16th, 1660), St. Andrews (October 23rd, 1660),[122:2] and London; its author was deprived of his offices both in the University and the Church, and was summoned on a charge of high treason before the Parliament of Edinburgh.
His death in 1661 antic.i.p.ated the probable legal sentence, and saved Rutherford from political martyrdom.
His book was an answer to the _Sacra Sancta Regum Majestas_, in which the Divine Right of kings, and the duty of pa.s.sive obedience, had been strenuously upheld. Its appearance in 1644 created a great sensation, and threw into the shade Buchanan's _De Jure Regni apud Scotos_, which had hitherto held the field on the popular side. The purpose and style of the book may be gathered from the pa.s.sage in the preface, wherein the writer gives, as his reason for writing, the opinion that arbitrary government had ”over-swelled all banks of law, that it was now at the highest float . . . that the naked truth was, that prelates, a wild and pus.h.i.+ng cattle to the lambs and flocks of Christ, had made a hideous noise; the wheels of their chariot did run an unequal pace with the bloodthirsty mind of the daughter of Babel.” The contention was, that all regal power sprang from the suffrages of the people. ”The king is subordinate to the Parliament, not co-ordinate, for the const.i.tuent is above the const.i.tuted.” ”What are kings but va.s.sals to the State, who, if they turn tyrants, fall from their right?” For the rest, a book so crammed and stuffed with Biblical quotations as to be most unreadable. And indeed, of all the features of that miserable seventeenth century, surely nothing is more extraordinary than this insatiate taste of men of all parties for Jewish precedents.
Never was the enslavement of the human mind to authority carried to more absurd lengths with more lamentable results; never was manifested a greater waste, or a greater wealth, of ability. For that reason, though Rutherford may claim a place on our shelves, he is little likely ever to be taken down from them. But may the principles he contended for remain as undisturbed as his repose!
The year following the burning of these books the House of Commons directed its vengeance against certain statutes pa.s.sed by the Republican government. On May 17th, 1661, a large majority condemned the _Solemn League and Covenant_ to be burnt by the hangman, the House of Lords concurring. All copies of it were also to be taken down from all churches and public places.