pursued, and the party felt only the weight of the judgment, not the passion of his judges) made them less taken notice of, and so less grievous to the public, though as intolerable to the person."

These severities, instead of reconciling the Puritans to the church, drove them farther from it; for men do not care to be beat from their principles by the artillery of canons, injunctions, and penal laws; nor can they be in love with a church that uses such methods of conversion. A great deal of ill blood was bred in the nation by these proceedings; the bishops lost their esteem with the people, and the number of Puritans was not really lessened, though they lay concealed, till in the next age they got the power into their hands, and shook off the yoke.

The reputation of the church of England has been very much advanced of late years, by the suspension of the penal laws, and the legal indulgence granted to Protestant dissenters. Long experience has taught us, that uniformity in doctrine and worship, enforced by penal laws, is not the way to the church's peace; that there may be a separation from a true church without schism; and schism within a church, without separation; that the indulgence granted by law to Protestant Nonconformists, which has now subsisted above forty years, has not been prejudicial to church or state, but rather advantageous to both; for the revenues of the established church have not been lessened; a number of poor have been maintained by the dissenters, which must otherwise have come to the parish; the separation has kept up an emulation among the clergy; quickened them to their pastoral duty, and been a check upon their moral behaviour: and I will venture to say, whenever the separate assemblies of Protestant Noncon. formists shall cease, and all men be obliged to worship at their parish churches, that ignorance and laziness will prevail among the clergy; and that the laity in many parts of the country will degenerate into superstition, profaneness, and downright atheism. With regard to the state: it ought to be remembered, that the Protestant dissenters have always stood by the laws and constitution of their country; that they joined heartily in the glorious revolution of king William and queen Mary, and suffered for their steady adherence to the Protestant succession in the illustrious house of his present majesty, when great numbers that called themselves churchmen were looking another way; for this, the Schism-bill and other hardships were put upon them, and not for their religious differences with the church; for if they would have joined the administration at that time, it is well known they might have made much better terms for themselves: but as long as there is a Protestant dissenter in England, there will be a friend of liberty, and of our present happy constitution. Instead therefore of crushing them, or comprehending them within the church, it must be the interest of all true lovers of their country, even upon political views, to ease their complaints, and to support and countenance their Christian liberty.

For though the church of England is as free from persecuting principles as any establishment in Europe, yet still there are some grievances remaining, which wise and good men of all parties wish might be reviewed; not to mention the subscriptions which affect the clergy; there is the act of the twenty-fifth of king Charles II. for preventing dangers arising from Popish recusants, commonly called the Test-act, "which obliges, under very severe penalties, all persons, [of the laity] bearing any office, or place of trust or profit (besides taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribing a declaration against transubstantiation), to receive the sacrament of the

Lord's supper according to the usage of the church of England, in some parish church, on a Lord's day, immediately after divine service and sermon, and to deliver a certificate of having so received it, under the hands of the respective ministers and churchwardens, proved by two credible witnesses upon oath, to be recorded in court." It appears by the title of this act, and by the disposition of the parliament at that time, that it was not designed against Protestant Nonconformists; but the dissenters in the house generously came in to it, to save the nation from Popery; for when the court, in order to throw out the bill, put them upon moving for a clause to except their friends, Mr. Love, who had already declared against the dispensing power, stood up, and desired that the nation might first be secured against Popery, by passing the bill without any amendment, and that then, if the house pleased, some regard might be had to Protestant dissenters; in which, says Mr. Echard, he was seconded by most of his party *. The bill was voted accordingly, and another brought in for the ease of his majesty's Protestant dissenting subjects, which passed the commons, but before it could get through the lords, the king came to the house and prorogued the parliament. Thus the Protestant Nonconformists, out of their abundant zeal for the Protestant religion, shackled themselves, and were left upon a level with Popish recusants.

It was necessary to secure the nation against Popery at that time, when the presumptive heir of the crown was of that religion; but whether it ought not to have been done by a civil rather than by a religious test, I leave with the reader. The obliging all persons in places of civil trust to receive the holy sacrament of the Lord's supper, seems to be a hardship upon those gentlemen, whose manner of life loudly declares their unfitness for so sacred a solemnity, and who would not run the hazard of eating and drinking unworthily, but that they satisfy themselves with throwing off the guilt upon the impostors. Great Britain must not expect an army of saints; nor is the time yet come, when all her officers shall be peace, and her exactors righteousness. It is no less a hardship upon a great body of his majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, who are qualified to serve their king and country, in all offices of civil trust, and would perform their duty with all cheerfulness, did they not scruple to receive the sacrament after the usage of the church of England, or to prostitute a sacred and religious institution, as a qualification for a civil employment. I can see no inconvenience either to church or state, if his majesty, as the common father of his people, should have the service of all his subjects, who are willing to swear allegiance to his royal person and government; to renounce all foreign jurisdiction, and to give all reasonable security not to disturb the church of England, or any of their fellow-subjects, in the peaceable enjoyment of their religious or civil rights and properties. Besides, the removing this grievance would do honour to the church of England itself, by obviating the charge of imposition, and by relieving the clergy from a part of their work, which has given some of them very great uneasiness: but I am chiefly concerned for the honour of religion and public virtue, which are wounded hereby in the house of their friends. If therefore, as some conceive, the sacramental test be a national blemish, I humbly conceive, with all due submission, the removal of it would be a public blessing.

The Protestant Nonconformists observe with pleasure the right reverend

Echard's Church History, ad ann. 1672-3.

fathers of the church owning the cause of religious liberty, "that private judgment ought to be formed upon examination, and that religion is a free and unforced thing." And we sincerely join with the lord bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, in the preface to his excellent Vindication of the Miracles of our Blessed Saviour*, "in congratulating our country on the enjoyment of their civil and ecclesiastical liberties within their just and reasonable bounds, as the most valuable blessings;" though we are not fully satisfied with the reasonableness of those bounds his lordship has fixed. God forbid that any among us should be patrons of open profaneness, irreligion, scurrility, or ill manners, to the established religion of the nation; much less that we should countenance any who blasphemously revile the founder of it, or who deride whatsoever is sacred! No; we have a fervent zeal for the honour of our Lord and Master, and are desirous to "contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints" with all sorts of spiritual weapons; but we do not yet see a necessity of stopping the mouths of the adversaries of our holy religion with fines and imprisonments, even though, to their own infamy and shame, they treat it with indecency: let scandal and ill manners be punished as they deserve, but let not men be terrified from speaking out their doubts, or proposing their objections against the gospel revelation, which we are sure will bear a thorough examination; and though the late ungenerous attacks upon the miracles of our blessed Saviour, may have had an ill influence upon the giddy and unthinking youth of the age, they have given occasion to the publishing such a number of incomparable defences of Christianity, as have confirmed the faith of many, and must satisfy the minds of all reasonable inquirers after truth.

Nor do we think it right to fix the boundaries of religious liberty upon the degree of people's differing from the national establishment, because enthusiasts or Jews have an equal right with Christians to worship God in their own way; to defend their own peculiar doctrines, and to enjoy the public protection, as long as they keep the peace, and maintain no principles manifestly inconsistent with the safety of the government they live under.

But his lordship apprehends he has a chain of demonstrable propositions to maintain his boundaries: he observes †, "1. That the true ends of government cannot subsist without religion, no reasonable man will dispute it. 2. That open impiety, or a public opposition made to, and an avowed contempt of, the established religion, which is a considerable part of the constitution, do greatly promote the disturbance of the public peace, and naturally tend to the subversion of the whole constitution." It is here supposed that one particular religion must be incorporated into the constitution, which is not necessary to the ends of government; for religion and civil government are distinct things, and stand upon a separate basis. Religion in general is the support of civil government, and it is the office of the civil magistrate to protect all his dutiful and loyal subjects in the free exercise of their religion; but to incorporate one particular religion into the constitution, so as to make it part of the common law, and to conclude from thence, that the constitution, having a right to preserve itself, may make laws for the punishment of those that publicly oppose any one branch of it, is to put an effectual stop to the progress of the Reformation throughout the whole Christian world: for by this reasoning our first reformers must be + Pref. p. ix. x.

* Pref. p. viii.

condemned; and if a subject of France, or the ecclesiastical states, should at this time write against the usurped power of the pope; or expose the absurdities of transubstantiation, adoration of the host, worshipping of images, &c., it would be laudable for the legislative powers of those countries to send the writer to the galleys, or shut him up in a dungeon, as a disturber of the public peace, because Popery is supported by law, and is a very considerable part of their constitution.

But to support the government's right to enact penal laws against those that opposed the established religion, his lordship is pleased to refer us to the edicts of the first Christian emperors out of the Codex Theodosianus, composed in the fifth century, which acquaints us with the sentiments of that and the preceding age; but says nothing of the doctrine of Scripture, or of the practice of the church for three hundred years before the empire became Christian. His lordship then subjoins sundry passages out of a sermon of archbishop Tillotson, whom he justly ranks among the greatest of the moderns. But it ought to be remembered, that this sermon was preached at court in the year 1680, when the nation was in imminent danger from the Popish plot. His lordship should also have acquainted his readers with the archbishop's cautious introduction, which is this: "I cannot think (till I be better informed, which I am always ready to be) that any pretence of conscience warrants any man, that cannot work miracles, to draw men off from the established religion of a nation, nor openly to make proselytes to his own religion, in contempt of the magistrate and the law, though he is never so sure he is in the right*." This proposition, though pointed at the Popish missionaries in England at that time, is not only inconsistent with the Protestant reformation (as I observed before,) but must effectually prevent the propagating of Christianity among the idolatrous nations of the Eastern and Western Indies, without a new power of working miracles, which we have no ground to expect; and I may venture to assure his lordship and the world, that the good archbishop lived to see his mistake; and could name the learned person to whom he frankly confessed it after some hours' conversation upon the subject t. But human authorities are of little weight in points of reason and speculation.

It was from this mistaken principle that the government pressed so hard upon those Puritans whose history is now before the reader; in which he will observe how the transferring the supremacy from the pope to the king, united the church and state into one body under one head, insomuch that writing against the church was construed by the judges in

Abp. Tillotson's Works, vol. 1. fol. p. 320, 321.

The learned person, to whom Mr. Neal refers, I conceive, was Mr. Howe: the purport of the conversation he had with the bishop, on the proposition contained in his sermon, was given to the public by Dr. Calamy in his Memoirs of Mr. Howe, p. 75, 76. The fact was, that the bishop was sent for, out of his turn, to preach before the king, on account of the sickness of another gentleman; and had prepared his discourse in great haste, and impressed with the general fears of Popery: the sentiment above quoted from it, was the occasion of its being published from the press. For the king having slept most part of the time while the sermon was delivered, a certain nobleman, when it was over, said to him: “'Tis pity your majesty slept, for we have had the rarest piece of Hobbism that ever you heard in your life." "Odstish, he shall print it then," replied the king. When it came from the press the author sent a copy, as a present, to Mr. Howe, who freely expostulated with Dr. Tillotson on this passage, first in a long letter, and then in a conversation which the doctor desired on the subject, at the end of which he fell to weeping freely, and said "that this was the most unhappy thing that had of a long time befallen him."

Westminster-hall, a seditious libelling the queen's government, and was punished with exorbitant fines, imprisonment, and death. He will observe further, the rise and progress of the penal laws; the extent of the regal supremacy in those times; the deplorable ignorance of the clergy; with the opposite principles of our church-reformers, and of the Puritans, which I have set in a true light, and have pursued the controversy as an historian in its several branches, to the end of the long reign of queen Elizabeth; to all which I have added some short remarks of my own, which the reader will receive according to their evidence. And because the principles of the Scotch reformers were much the same with those of the English Puritans, and the imposing a liturgy and bishops upon them gave rise to a confusion of the next age, I have inserted a short account of their religious establishment; and have enlivened the whole with the lives and characters of the principal Puritans of those times.

A history of this kind was long expected from the late reverend and learned Dr. John Evans, who had for some years been collecting materials for this purpose, and had he lived to perfect his design, would have it done to much greater advantage; but I have seen none of his papers, and am informed, that there is but a very small matter capable of being put in order for the press. Upon his decease I found it necessary to undertake this province, to bring the history forward to those times when the Puritans had the power in their own hands; in examining into which I have spent my leisure hours for some years; but the publishing those collections will depend, under God, upon the continuance of my health, and the acceptance this meets with in the world.

I am not so vain as to expect to escape the censures of critics, nor the reproaches of angry men, who, while they do nothing themselves, take pleasure in exposing the labours of others in pamphlets and newspapers; but as I shall be always thankful to any that will convince me of my mistakes in a friendly manner, the others may be secure of enjoying the satisfaction of their satirical remarks without any disturbance from me.

I have endeavoured to acquaint myself thoroughly with the times of which I write; and as I have no expectations from airy party of Christians, I am under no temptation to disguise their conduct. I have cited my authorities in the margin, and flatter myself that I have had the opportunity of bringing many things to light relating to the sufferings of the Puritans, and the state of the Reformation in those times, which have hitherto been unknown to the world, chiefly by the assistance of a large manuscript collection of papers, faithfully transcribed from their originals in the university of Cambridge, by a person of character employed for that purpose, and generously communicated to me by my ingenious and learned friend Dr. Benjamin Grosvenor; for which I take this opportunity of returning him my own, and the thanks of the public. Among the ecclesiastical historians of these times, Mr. Fuller, bishop Burnet, and Mr. Strype, are the chief; the last of whom has searched into the records of the English reformation more than any man of the age; Dr. Heylin and Collyer are of more suspected authority, not so much for their party principles, as because the former never gives us his vouchers, and yet the latter follows him blindly in all things.

Upon the whole, I have endeavoured to keep in view the honesty and gravity of an historian, and have said nothing with a design to exasperate or widen the differences among Christians; for as I am a sincere admirer of the doctrines of the New Testament, I would have an equal regard to its