Part 61 (1/2)
Elizabeth herself only considered them as ”a troublesome sort of people:” even that great politician could not detect the political monster in a mere chrysalis of reform. I find, however, in a poet of the Elizabethan age, an evident change in the public feeling respecting the _Puritans_, who being always most active when the government was most in trouble, their political views were discovered. Warner, in his ”Albion's England,” describes them:--
”If ever England will in aught prevent her own mishap, Against these Skommes (no terme too gross) let England shut the gap; With giddie heads-- Their countrie's foes they helpt, and most their country harm'd.
If _Hypocrites_ why _Puritaines_ we term, be asked, in breefe, 'Tis but an _ironised terme_: good-fellow so spells theefe!”
The gentle-humoured FULLER, in his ”Church History,” felt a tenderness for the name of _Puritan_, which, after the mad follies they had played during the Commonwealth, was then held in abhorrence. He could not venture to laud the good men of that party, without employing a new term to conceal the odium.
In noticing, under the date of 1563, that the bishops urged the clergy of their dioceses to press uniformity, &c., he adds--”Such as refused were branded with the name of Puritans--a name which in this nation began in this year, subject to several senses, and various in the acceptions.
_Puritan_ was taken for the opposers of hierarchy and church service, as resenting of superst.i.tion. But the nickname was quickly improved by profane mouths to abuse pious persons. We will decline the word to prevent exceptions, which, if casually slipping from our pen, the reader knoweth that only _nonconformists_ are intended,” lib. ix. p. 76. Fuller, however, divided them into cla.s.ses--”the mild and moderate, and the fierce and fiery.” HEYLIN, in his ”History of the Presbyterians,” blackens them as so many political devils; and NEALE, in his ”History of the Puritans,” blanches them into a sweet and almond whiteness.
Let us be thankful to these PURITANS for a political lesson.
They began their quarrels on the most indifferent matters.
They raised disturbances about the ”Romish Rags,” by which they described the decent surplice as well as the splendid scarlet chimere[407] thrown over the white linen rochet, with the square cap worn by the bishops. The scarlet robe, to please their sullen fancy, was changed into black satin; but these men soon resolved to deprive the bishops of more than a scarlet robe. The affected niceties of these PRECISIANS, dismembering our images, and scratching at our paintings, disturbed the uniformity of the religious service. A clergyman in a surplice was turned out of the church. Some wore square caps, some round, some abhorred all caps. The communion-table placed in the East was considered as an idolatrous altar, and was now dragged into the middle of the church, where, to show their contempt, it was always made the filthiest seat in the church. They used to kneel at the sacrament; now they would sit, because that was a proper att.i.tude for a supper; then they would not sit, but stand: at length they tossed the elements about, because the bread was wafers, and not from a loaf. Among their _preciseness_ was a qualm at baptism: the water was to be taken from a basin, and not from a fount; then they would not name their children, or if they did, they would neither have Grecian, nor Roman, nor Saxon names, but Hebrew ones, which they ludicrously translated into English, and which, as Heylin observes, ”many of them when they came of age were ashamed to own”--such as ”Accepted, Ashes, Fight-the-good-Fight-of-Faith, Joy-again, Kill-sin, &c.”
Who could have foreseen that some pious men quarrelling about the square caps and the rochets of bishops should at length attack bishops themselves; and, by an easy transition, pa.s.sing from bishops to kings, finally close in levellers!
[406] The origin of the controversy may be fixed about 1588. ”A far less easy task,” says the Rev. Mr. Maskell, ”is it to guess at the authors. The tracts on the Mar-Prelate side have been usually attributed to Penry, Throgmorton, Udal, and Fenner.
Very considerable information may be obtained about these writers in Wood's 'Athenae,' art. _Penry_; in Collier, Strype, and Herbert's edition of 'Arnes,' to whom I would refer. After a careful examination of these and other authorities on the subject, the question remains, in my judgment, as obscure as before; and I think that it is very far from clear that either one of the three last-named was actually concerned in the authors.h.i.+p of any of the pamphlets.”--ED.
[407] So Heylin writes the word; but in the ”Rythmes against Martin,”
a contemporary production, the term is _Chiver_. It is not in Cotgrave.
[408] In the ”Just Censure and Reproof of Martin Junior” (circae 1589), we are told: ”There is Cartwright, too, at Warwick; he hath got him such a company of disciples, both of the wors.h.i.+pfull and other of the poorer sort, as wee have no cause to thank him. Never tell me that he is too grave to trouble himself with Martin's conceits. Cartwright seeks the peace of the Church no otherwise than his platform may stand.” He was accused before the commissioners in 1590 of knowing who wrote and printed these squibs, which he did not deny.--ED.
[409] I give a remarkable extract from the writings of Cartwright.
It will prove two points. First, that the _religion_ of those men became a cover for a _political_ design; which was _to raise the ecclesiastical above the civil power_. Just the reverse of Hobbes's after scheme; but while theorists thus differ and seem to refute one another, they in reality work for an identical purpose. Secondly, it will show the not uncommon absurdity of man; while these nonconformists were affecting to annihilate the hierarchy of England as a remains of the Romish supremacy, they themselves were designing one according to their own fresher scheme. It was to be a state or republic of Presbyters, in which _all Sovereigns_ were to hold themselves, to use their style, as ”Nourisses, or servants under the Church; the Sovereigns were to be as subjects; they were to vail their sceptres and to offer their crowns as the prophet speaketh, _to lick the dust of the feet of the Church_.” These are Cartwright's words, in his ”Defence of the Admonition.” But he is still bolder, in a joint production with _Travers_. He insists that ”the _Monarchs of the World_ should give up their _sceptres and crowns_ unto him (Jesus Christ) who is _represented by the Officers of the Church_.” See ”A Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline,” p.
185. One would imagine he was a disguised Jesuit, and an advocate for the Pope's supremacy. But observe how these saintly Republicans would govern the State. Cartwright is explicit, and very ingenious. ”The world is now deceived that thinketh that the _Church_ must be framed according to the _Commonwealth_, and the _Church Government_ according to the _Civil Government_, which is as much as to say, as if a man should fas.h.i.+on his house according to his hangings; whereas, indeed, it is clean contrary. That as the hangings are made fit for the house, so the Commonwealth must be made to agree with the Church, and the government thereof with her government; for, as the house is before the hangings, therefore the hangings, which come after, must be framed to the house, which was before; so the Church being before there was a commonwealth, and the commonwealth coming after, must be fas.h.i.+oned and made suitable to the Church; otherwise, G.o.d is made to give place to men, heaven to earth.”--CARTWRIGHT'S _Defence of the Admonition_, p. 181.
Warburton's ”Alliance between Church and State,” which was in his time considered as a hardy paradox, is mawkish in its pretensions, compared with this sacerdotal republic. It is not wonderful that the wisest of our Sovereigns, that great politician Elizabeth, should have punished with death these democrats: but it is wonderful to discover that these inveterate enemies to the Church of Rome were only trying to transfer its absolute power into their own hands! They wanted to turn the Church into a democracy. They fascinated the people by telling them that there would be no beggars were there no bishops; that every man would be a governor by setting up a Presbytery. From the Church, I repeat, it is scarcely a single step to the Cabinet. Yet the early Puritans come down to us as persecuted saints. Doubtless, there were a few honest saints among them; but they were as mad politicians as their race afterwards proved to be, to whom they left so many fatal legacies. Cartwright uses the very language a certain cast of political reformers have recently done. He declares ”An establishment may be made without the magistrate;” and told the people that ”if every hair of their head was a life, it ought to be offered for such a cause.” Another of this faction is for ”registering the names of the fittest and hottest brethren without lingering for Parliament;” and another exults that ”there are a hundred thousand hands ready.” Another, that ”we may overthrow the bishops and all the government in one day.” Such was the style, and such the confidence in the plans which the lowest orders of revolutionists promulgated during their transient exhibition in this country. More in this strain may be found in ”Maddox's Vindication Against Neale,” the advocate for the Puritans, p. 255; and in an admirable letter of that great politician, Sir Francis Walsingham, who, with many others of the ministers of Elizabeth, was a favourer of the Puritans, till he detected their secret object to subvert the government. This letter is preserved in ”Collier's Eccl. Hist.” vol. ii. 607. They had begun to divide the whole country into _cla.s.ses_, provincial synods, &c. They kept registers, which recorded all the heads of their debates, to be finally transmitted to the secret head of the _Cla.s.sis_ of Warwick, where Cartwright governed as _the perpetual moderator_! _Heylin's Hist. of Presbyt._ p. 277.
These violent advocates for the freedom of the press had, however, an evident intention to monopolise it; for they decreed that ”no book should be put in print but by consent of the _Cla.s.ses_.”--Sir G. PAUL'S _Life of Whitgift_, p. 65. The very Star-Chamber they justly protested against, they were for raising among themselves!
[410] Under the denomination of _Barrowists_ and _Brownists_. I find Sir Walter Raleigh declaring, in the House of Commons, on a motion for reducing disloyal subjects, that ”they are worthy to be rooted out of a Commonwealth.” He is alarmed at the danger, ”for it is to be feared that men not guilty will be included in the law about to be pa.s.sed. I am sorry for it. I am afraid there is near twenty thousand of them in England; and when they be gone (that is, expelled) who shall maintain their wives and children?”--SIR SIMONDS D'EWES' _Journal_, p.
517.
[411] The controversies of Whitgift and Cartwright were of a nature which could never close, for toleration was a notion which never occurred to either. These rivals from early days wrote with such bitterness against each other, that at length it produced mutual reproaches. Whitgift complains to Cartwright: ”If you were writing against the veriest Papist, or the ignorantest dolt, you could not be more spiteful and malicious.” And Cartwright replies: ”If peace had been so precious unto you as you pretend, you would not have brought so many hard words and bitter reproaches, as it were sticks and coals, to double and treble the heat of contention.”
After this it is curious, even to those accustomed to such speculations, to observe some men changing with the times, and furious rivals converted into brothers. Whitgift, whom Elizabeth, as a mark of her favour, called ”her black husband,” soliciting Cartwright's pardon from the Queen; and the proud Presbyter Cartwright styling Whitgift his Lord the Archbishop's Grace of Canterbury, and visiting him!
[412] Sir George Paul, a contemporary, attributes his wealth ”to the benevolence and bounty of his followers.” Dr. Sutcliffe, one of his adversaries, sharply upbraids him, that ”in the persecution he perpetually complained of, he was grown rich.”
A Puritan advocate reproves Dr. Sutcliffe for always carping at Cartwright's purchases:--”Why may not Cartwright sell the lands he had from his father, and buy others with the money, as well as some of the bishops, who by bribery, simony, extortion, racking of rents, wasting of woods, and such like stratagems, wax rich, and purchase great lords.h.i.+ps for their posterity?”
To this Sutcliffe replied:
”I do not carpe alway, no, nor once, at Master Cartwright's purchase. I hinder him not; I envy him not. Only thus much I must tell him, that Thomas Cartwright, a man that hath more landes of his own in possession than any bishop that I know, and that fareth daintily every day, and feedeth fayre and fatte, and lyeth as soft as any tenderling of that brood, and hath wonne much wealth in short time, and will leave more to his posterity than any bishop, should not cry out either of persecution or of excess of bishop's livinges.”--SUTCLIFFE'S _Answer to Certain Calumnious Pet.i.tions._
[413] ”The author of these libels,” says Bishop Cooper, in his ”Admonition to the People of England,” 1589, ”calleth himself by a feigned name, _Martin Mar-Prelate_, a very fit name undoubtedly. But if this outrageous spirit of boldness be not stopped speedily, I fear he will prove himself to be, not only _Mar-Prelate_, but Mar-Prince, Mar-State, Mar-Law, Mar-Magistrate, and altogether, until he bring it to an Anabaptistical equality and community.”--ED.
[414] Cartwright approved of them, and well knew the concealed writers, who frequently consulted him: this appears by Sir G.
Paul's ”Life of Whitgift,” p. 65. Being asked his opinion of such books, he said, that ”since the bishops, and others there touched, would not amend by grave books, it was therefore meet they should be dealt withal to their farther reproach; and that some books must be _earnest_, some _more mild and temperate_, whereby they may be both of the spirit of Elias and Eliseus;” the one the great mocker, the other the more solemn reprover. It must be confessed Cartwright here discovers a deep knowledge of human nature. He knew the power of ridicule and of invective. At a later day, a writer of the same stamp, in ”The Second Wash, or the _Moore_ Scoured _once more_,” (written against Dr. Henry More, the Platonist), in defence of that vocabulary of _names_ which he has poured on More, a.s.serts it is a practice allowed by the high authority of Christ himself. I transcribe the curious pa.s.sage:--”It is the practice of Christ himself to character _men_ by those _things_ to which they a.s.similate. Thus hath he called _Herod_ a _fox_; _Judas_ a _devil_; _false pastors_ he calls _wolves_; the _buyers and sellers_, _theeves_; and those Hebrew Puritans the _Pharisees_, _hypocrites_. This rule and justice of his Master St. Paul hath well observed, and he acts freely thereby; for when he reproves the Cretians, he makes use of that ignominious proverb, _Evil beasts and slow bellies_. When the high priest commanded the Jews to _smite_ him on the face, he replied to him, not without some bitterness, _G.o.d shall smite thee, thou white wall_. I cite not these places to justify an injurious spleen, but to argue the liberty of the truth.”--_The Second Wash, or the +Moore+ Scoured once_ more.
1651. P. 8.
[415] One of their works is ”A Dialogue, wherein is laid open the tyrannical dealing of L. Bishopps against G.o.d's children.” It is full of scurrilous stories, probably brought together by two active cobblers who were so useful to their junto. Yet the bishops of that day were not of dissolute manners; and the accusations are such, that it only proves their willingness to raise charges against them. Of one bishop they tell us, that after declaring he was poor, and what expenses he had been at, as Paul's church could bear witness, shortly after hanged four of his servants for having robbed him of a considerable sum.