CHAPTER X. RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. Milton to Cromwell-Cromwell's Part with regard to Religious Liberty -Opposition to Radicalism, Political and Religious-Established Religion and Liberty-Milton, a Champion of the Separation of Church and State Cromwell's System of Religious Liberty-The Two Great Interests-The Protector's Catholicity-George Fox and CromwellNayler-Cromwell and the Episcopalians-Roman Catholics and Jews-State and Protestantism Identical-Principia Vita-A Danger-True Means of Diffusing Christianity-Ely Cathedral-State and Church: Church and People. CROMWELL'S exertions were not confined to civil liberty only: he was an instrument in the hand of God to introduce a new principle into the world,.....one till then entirely unknown and overlooked. It was with reference to this, that the great bard of England composed the following lines: TO OLIVER CROMWELL. Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plough'd, And on the neck of crowned fortune proud Hast rear'd God's trophies, and his work pursued. And Worcester's laureate wreath. Yet much remains No less renown'd than war: new foes arise Help us to save free conscience from the paw The Protector needed not this appeal. Without doubt the question of religious liberty did not present itself to him as it does to our contemporaries. It is now something more positive and abstract. The love of truth, most assuredly, burnt no less brightly in his heart than the love of liberty; and yet he could respect convictions which differed from his At that period these principles were very necessary. The parliamentarians, bigoted successors of the hierarchists, had called for the suppression of that " new heresy" entitled 'liberty of conscience," and had labored carnestly to this end. Oliver did the very contrary. own. 66 The Protector's ruling passion was religious liberty, and its establishment was his work. Among all the men of past ages, and even of the times present, there is not one who has done so much as he in this cause. It has almost triumphed in every Protestant nation; its great victory is yet to come among those which profess the Romish creed and under God, it is to Cromwell in particular that men's consciences are beholden. It frequently happens that those who advocate liberty when they are in opposition, no sooner attain power than they employ it to oppress the freedom of others. It was not thus that Oliver acted. Not seldom also, when the cause of liberty is triumphant, its partisans carry it to excess, and indulge in senseless theories of equality and socialism. He steered cautiously between these two shoals. His speeches contain sentiments of admirable wisdom on the extreme disorder of men's minds, as well in temporal as in spiritual things. No one could express himself more forcibly than he did against the principles of the radicals and levellers, who aimed at destroying all moral and social distinctions. He was aware that men might as well look for ships without frames, bodies without bones, mountains without rocks, as for a nation without authority and obedience. "What was the face that was upon our affairs as to the interest of the nation ?" asked Cromwell in his second speech to parliament. "As to the authority in the nation; to the magistracy; to the ranks and orders of men, whereby England hath been known for hundreds of years?—A nobleman, a gentleman, a yeoman. . . . . . .the distinction of these, that is a good interest of the nation and a great one! The natural magistracy of the nation, was it not almost trampled under foot, under despite and contempt, by men of levelling principles? I beseech you, for the orders of men and ranks of men, did not that levelling principle tend to the reducing of all to an equality?" He also complains of a similar tendency in spiritual matters, and contrasts it with the former evil,—the evil of prelacy and popery. He continues: "The former extremity we suffered under was, that no man, though he had never so good a testimony, though he had received gifts from Christ, might preach, unless ordained. So now I think we are at the other extremity, when many affirm, That he who is ordained hath a nullity stamped thereby upon his calling; so that he ought not to preach, or not be heard." The prudent firmness with which Oliver combated these extremes at a time when they were so potent, and when the true principles of liberty were not generally acknowledged, deserves our highest admiration. Even his adversaries have confessed it. Mr. Southey, although a zealous Episcopalian, and an enemy to the commonwealth, and who regarded the disastrous restoration of Charles II. as the salvation of England, says in his book of the Church :-" Cromwell relieved the country from Presbyterian intolerance; and he curbed those fanatics who were for proclaiming King Jesus, that, as his Saints, they might divide the land amongst themselves. But it required all his strength to do this, and to keep down the spirit of religious and political fanaticism.”† Perhaps his zeal was the more remarkable, as it did not reach the point to which many of his friends had arrived,* Parl. Hist. xx. 318. Carlyle, iii. 26, 30. † Southey, Book of the Church, 508. London, 1837. the separation, namely, of Church and State. In his third speech, even when professing the doctrine of an established state-religion, he boldly claims liberty of conscience for all.* "So long as there is liberty of conscience for the supreme magistrate to exercise his conscience in erecting what form of church government he is satisfied he should set up, why," asks Oliver, "should he not give the like liberty to others? Liberty of conscience is a natural right; and he that would have it, ought to give it. Indeed that hath been one of the vanities of our contest. Every sect saith: 'O, give me liberty!' But give it him and to his power-he will not yield it to anybody else! . . . . . . Where is our ingenuousness ? Liberty of conscience is a thing that ought to be very reciprocal. I may say it to you, I can say it: All the money of this nation would not have tempted men to fight upon such an account as they have here been engaged in, if they had not had hopes of liberty of conscience better than Episcopacy granted them, or than would have been afforded by a Scots Presbytery, or an English either. This, I say, is a fundamental. It ought to be so. It is for us and the gen erations to come. And if there be an absoluteness in the imposer, without fitting allowances and exceptions from the rule, —we shall have the people driven into wildernesses. As they were, when those poor and afflicted people, who forsook their estates and inheritances here, where they lived plentifully and comfortably, were necessitated, for enjoyment of their liberty, to go into a waste howling wilderness in New England; where they have, for liberty's sake, stript themselves of all their comfort; embracing rather loss of friends and want, than be so ensnared and in bondage !" Why did Cromwell, when he stood forth as the champion of religious liberty, maintain the principle of a special Church established by the State? It has been supposed that he was guided by political considerations, being unwilling to strip the public authority of every sort of direction in re* Parl. Hist. xx. 349, Carlyle, iii, 68. ligious matters, which exert so great an influence over the people. In the speech we have just quoted, he assigns another reason :-"The supreme magistrate should exercise his conscience in erecting what form of church government he is satisfied should be set up." In his mind probably both these motives were combined. The doctrine of the complete separation of Church and State found other not less illustrious defenders. The Protector's secretary, the great poet of the seventeenth century, was its resolute champion. Milton thought that the state ought not to interfere in the interests of religion. In his treatise on Christian Doctrine, first published by the Rev. C. R. Sumner, now Bishop of Winchester, he says:—" It is highly derogatory to the power of the Church, as well as an utter want of faith, to suppose that her government cannot be properly administered without the intervention of the civil magistrate."* The bard of Paradise Lost explained his views more particularly in his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, and in his considerations on The likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. In his opinion, this thesis is incontrovertibly established by four arguments. The first is, that every individual has an exclusive right in determining the choice of his own convictions; the second reposes on the wholly spiritual nature of the Gospel; the third is derived from the consequences which christian liberty brings with it; and the fourth, from the uselessness or the danger of the influence of the civil power in ecclesiastical matters, even when that action is protective. Milton was not satisfied with writing treatises; he demanded of the powerful Protector the complete independence of the Church. "If you leave the Church to the Church, and thus judiciously disburthen yourself and the civil magistracy in general of a concern forming half their * Derogant ita multum potestati Ecclesiæ atque diffident, &c. J. Miltoni de Doctrina Christiana libri duo posthumi, edidit Carolus Ricardus Sumner, p. 371. |