hdmet ves made by a severe censure passed upon Dr. Fleetwood Buship of St. Asaph. This divine had published some sermes with a preface in which he endeavoured to prove that "the Szetome of Sempuare not put men in a worse position, with respect to divi liberty, than they would have been had they not been Jumstans The Commons seemed to think that the attampa ar prove such a thesis was a very grievous heresy, and they rebred the book to be burned by the common hangman.1

On

16 In the summer of 1713 the Tories were obliged to peal to the country for its verdict as to the Peace, and the Parlament winch met in November had a much larger admixture of the Way element in it. Yet the first session of this Parliament 28 remarkable as exhibiting the political reaction against Dissenters, and in favour of High Church views at its extreme point. May 12 a bill was brought into the House of Commons, which was exactly similar in its character and provisions to some of the Acts passed in the first fervour of loyalty in the reign of Charles II. This Ant provided that no person in Great Britain should keep any public or private school, or act as tutor, that had not first subscribed the declaration to conform to the Church of England, and chained a license from the diocesan, and that, upon failure of so doing, the party may be committed to prison without bail; and that no such license shall be granted before the party produces a certificate of his having received the sacrament according to the communion of the Church of England within the last year, and also subscribed the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. 2 This was an attempt, by a summary law, absolutely to stop all Dissenting education in England. Yet this arbitrary measure passed the Commons by a large majority. In the Lords it was strongly opposed, but some of the speakers in its favour endeavoured to show something like a conspiracy among the Dissenters to get the education of youth into their hands, and under the influence of these suspicions the bill was voted. It received the royal assent, but its arbitrary provisions were never put into force.

§ 17. In Convocation there was more hope of progress than before, as Dr. Atterbury, whose ambition had entirely paralysed the action of the last Convocation, was no longer Prolocutor, having been raised to the bench as Bishop of Rochester. The queen's Letters of Business were again given to the Synod, authorising it to treat on the subjects which had been before the last Convocation. The joint committees of the two Houses agreed upon a form for regulating proceedings at excommunication—the principal point n which was that the contumacious person should be subjected to 2 Earl Stanhope's Hist. of England, i. 80

Parl. Hist. vi. 1151.

the penalties which the law decreed against the excommunicate, so that the necessity of proceeding to the last sentence was thus obviated. There was also a form drawn up for Terriers of glebe lands, a draft of canons for matrimonial licenses, a form for admitting converts from the Church of Rome, and an exhortation to be read in church previously to the sentence of excommunication being read.1

§ 18. But now again the useful labours of the Synod were interrupted by a question of heresy. Dr. Samuel Clarke had been chaplain to Moore, Bishop of Norwich, and two years consecutively Boyle lecturer. He was promoted to the rectory of St. James', Westminster, and a royal chaplaincy, and had distinguished himself in the literary world by writing against Henry Dodwell. Unfortunately, he was led into treating upon the deep and mysterious subject of the Holy Trinity, and in attempting to bring this doctrine down to the level of the human understanding, he fell into manifest Arianism. Convocation, properly jealous of any undue handling of such high mysteries, proceeded to the examination of Mr. Clarke's statements. The writer, who, at this time at any rate, did not desire to contradict the teaching of the Church, sent a paper of submission to the Synod, and thus escaped a sentence of condemnation which otherwise would have certainly been passed against him. Thus the sessions of Convocation were consumed, and before it could meet again a great calamity had fallen upon it, and upon the Church of England generally, by the death of the queen (August 1, 1714).

§ 19. Queen Anne had ever been a faithful supporter of the Church, not merely upon political grounds, but because, like her grandfather, Charles I., she loved and venerated it. She had shown herself desirous to promote men eminent in their profession, and was ready to suffer political inconvenience rather than forego this just exercise of her prerogative. She had selected a true son of the Church for her religious adviser, and she ever displayed a devout and fitting regard for his admonitions.2 She had proved her liberality to the Church in a more effective manner than some of her predecessors; and while Queen Elizabeth had robbed the clergy, Queen Anne had substantially aided them. Whatever fancies might for a time perplex them, Churchmen were in their hearts persuaded that the queen was truly with the Church in which she had been baptized and educated, and that she would never consent to any injustice being done to it. And when men thought of the successor destined to be advanced to the throne of England in her place, and considered how different were his antecedents, and how little in Wilkins' Concilia, iv. 656-666. 2 Life of Archbishop Sharp, i. 317.

!

common with the Church of England there was in his views, they were disposed to regret the good queen the more. That fervour and earnestness in the worship and observances of the Church which, encouraged by the example of the queen, was so marked a feature of the days of Queen Anne, could hardly be expected to continue in vigour under a German prince of Latitudinarian views and immoral habits of life. On the other hand, the son of James

was a disciple of the Jesuits, and committed to the worst principles of absolutism and tyranny. Great was the calamity, therefore, which now befel the Church of England. The Churchmen who now take a prominent place are for the most part of the shallow Latitudinarian school. The real Churchmen recede into obscurity, and leave the field open to the wranglers, the sceptics, and the politicians.

20. The accession to the throne of England of a sovereign alien in birth, in language, and in religion, was certainly calculated to alarm the zealous members of the Church of England. The Jacobites endeavoured, naturally, to stimulate this alarm. "His Majesty," wrote a clever pamphleteer, "to qualify himself for the Crown, having been pleased to depart from his own religion, and to embrace one so different from it in many (and those essential) respects, it is no remote thought to apprehend that he may consent to an alteration of ours for a valuable consideration to himself." 1 To repress, if possible, the clerical alarmists, Directions were issued, bidding the clergy not to meddle in their sermons with affairs of State; but, on the other hand, Convocation was allowed to meet, and Letters of Business were sent to it, to enable it to continue the regulation of the subjects which had been submitted to it during the last reign. The Lower House now displayed a calm and practical temper very different from that which had animated it under Binks and Atterbury. On some of the subjects sent to it for consideration agreement had been arrived at, on the others there was a fair prospect of accord; and when, on the death of Archbishop Tenison (December 24, 1715), William Wake, Bishop of Lincoln, a learned and moderate Churchman, was appointed to the primacy, fair prospects seemed to lie before the Church.

§ 21. This aspect of affairs was soon entirely changed by the intemperate utterances of one man, than whom none perhaps ever inflicted a more serious injury on the Church of England. Benjamin Hoadly, already mentioned as a controversialist, was in 1715 promoted to the See of Bangor. Soon after his promotion his attention was attracted to some papers of Dr. Hickes, late Nonjuring bishop, 1 English Advice to the Freeholders of England, Somers' Tracts, xiii. 533 (Bishop Atterbury). 2 Wilkins' Concilia, iv. 666.

which had been seized and made public. In these the Church of England was accused of schism. In answer to this Hoadly wrote a treatise,1 in which he denied the necessity of being in communion with any visible Church whatsoever, and asserted that sincerity is the only necessary requirement of a Christian profession.2 He followed up these startling views in a sermon preached before the king (March 17, 1717), in which he impugned the notion of the existence of any visible Church, and scoffed at the maintenance of tests of orthodoxy, and the claims of ecclesiastical government.

§ 22. The Convocation of Canterbury immediately proceeded to consider and animadvert on these audacious views. A committee of the Lower House met May 3, 1717, and in a week had agreed on their report to the Upper House. It was to the effect that the doctrines preached by the Bishop of Bangor had a tendency to subvert all government and discipline in the Church of Christ, as well as to impeach the royal supremacy. This report was read in the Lower House May 10, and ordered, nemine contradicente, to be presented to the bishops.

§ 23. Upon this the king's ministers, probably not fully under. standing the question, but regarding Hoadly as representing the Whig interest, and the Convocation as the representative of Tory views, ordered the prorogation of Convocation. It was prorogued to the 23d November following, and never again suffered to meet for the despatch of business, until quite modern times. To this gross outrage on the Church of England most of the mischiefs and scandals which impeded her progress during the eighteenth century are distinctly to be traced. The Church, denied the power of expressing her wants and grievances, and of that assertion of herself in her corporate capacity which the constitution had provided for her, was assaulted at their will by unscrupulous ministers of the Crown, and feebly defended by Latitudinarian bishops in an uncongenial assembly. Her ministers might now give utterance to the most heretical, and even blasphemous teaching, without fear of censure, and there remained no agency for altering and adjusting her system to meet the varying requirements and opportunities of the times.

1 A Preservative against the Principles and Practices of the Nonjurors in Church and State. 2 Hoadly's Works, i. 392-3-5.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.