PROTEC A.D. 1654. CHAPTER was always a test of puritan orthodoxy to deny that IX the church of Rome was a true church. What say TORATE, you, asked the commissioner, of the church of Rome. Is it a true church or no? Bishop Hall says it is so do the priests and jesuits; and so did he that was executed the other day (meaning Laud no doubt). What say you? "It is no true church;" answered Sadler, "she was pure, but she is defiled." Sadler was rejected, but rather because his patron was a peeress than he an unsound divine.* Their Yet the testimony of Baxter is on the whole in favour of the triers. He was a competent judge, and certainly no friend to Cromwell. He did not admit their right or own the validity of their power, and he refused to sit on the commission. authority, he says, was null; some of the independents among them were over busy and too severe; too particular in enquiring after evidences of sanctification in those whom they examined, and somewhat too lax in their admission of unlearned men, of antinomians and anabaptists; yet, he adds, to give them their due, they did abundance of good to the church. They saved many a congregation from ignorant, ungodly, drunken teachers; from that sort of ministers that either preached against a holy life or preached as men who never were acquainted with it; from those who used the ministry as a common trade, and were never likely to convert a soul. They were somewhat partial, he admits, to the independents, separatists, fifth monarchy men, and anabaptists, and against prelatists and armi. • Walker, Sufferings, part i. p. 175. IX. TORATE, A.D.1654. nians; yet they did more good than harm; so that CHAPTER many thousands of souls blessed God for the faithful ministers they brought in, and grieved when the PROTEC prelatists ejected them.*-Such is the history of Cromwell's ecclesiastical commission. Its methods were uncertain, its principles on many points unfixed, its hatred of prelacy a morbid disease, its proceedings violent. It had to contend against enormous evils-evils for which a remedy was wanted; but the judges were partial; their proceedings bore the appearance of injustice; and it will be seen hereafter that the voice of the nation refused to sanction their awards. It is one of those amusing calumnies which, assuming gravity, seat themselves in the chair of history and impose upon the world, that the puritans of the commonwealth were ignorant men who hated learning. When it suited Cromwell's purpose to flatter the fanatics, no doubt he raised a Barebones to importance or thrust Hugh Peters into an ecclesiastical commission. But the condition of the universities gives abundant proof both of his own respect for learning and of the number and attainments of his learned men. When the engagement was imposed, several of the presbyterians who were heads of houses resigned, and the more complying independents were appointed. Owen became vice-chancellor of Oxford, and Cromwell, with a graceful avowal of his unfitness for the place, accepted the office of chancellor. He was anxious to promote in others that learning of which he felt the want. Cambridge throughout the commonwealth was under the guidance of learned * Baxter, book i. p. 72. CHAPTER men, unless Cudworth, More, Whichcote, Mede, and IX. PROTEC- Worthington should be thought unworthy of the name. In these puritan schools, and during the A.D. 1654. protectorate, were educated the divines, the jurists, and the philosophers of the next age. Poole, Stillingfleet, and Tillotson, now Cambridge undergraduates, always spoke with respect of their instructors. If Tillotson qualified his approbation of their learning, it was only to compliment their piety. If the royalists, he said, were the better scholars, the puritans were the better men. Oxford, under Cromwell, nourished the genius and directed the studies of not a few great men whose fame will never die. Locke and South were students at Christ-church;-Locke, the great founder of the English school of metaphysics; South, a divine of unbounded popularity; who, however, first contrived the unnatural union between consummate wisdom and the wit which stoops to coarse buffoonery; a style that Swift brought to its perfection, and that expired in our own day with Sydney Smith. South was a pulpit Hudibras. His hatred of the puritans and his love of tormenting them was the passion of his life. Yet his invectives carried their antidote along with them; for though his weapons were, it is true, the gift of nature, his skill in using them he had learned in a puritan university under Dr. John Owen the independent. Wilkins, the warden of Wadham, with Boyle and Oldenburg for his younger associates, was laying the foundation for a new philosophy-the philosophy of experiment, which resulted in the royal society and in a new epoch in the world of science. The IX. TORATE, ove of deep learning was now for the first time CHAPTER widely diffused. In 1653 Walton issued proposals for publishing his noble polyglot bible in the oriental PROTEClanguages. It was published in 1657, at a great A.D. 1654. expense, and its value was well understood, for it is said to have been the first book in England that was published by subscription.* About this time the fifth monarchy men appeared upon the stage. It is difficult to speak with any degree of confidence as to their real character. In their tenets, which were pronounced impious and abominable, we see little to object against. They held, in common we presume with every sincere christian, the future reign of Christ. The prophet Daniel has marked out four great monarchies, all of them the monarchies of antichrist. To these a fifth succeeds, the kingdom of Jesus Christ on earth; and the establishment of this kingdom is the hope and prayer and expectation of the church. So far the fifth monarchy men held no other opinions than those which, with certain modifications of time and manner, every student of prophecy entertains. The error into which they fell was of another kind. Not content to wait for the fulfilment of God's promises, they would force them onwards. They must throw down every obstacle, and so prepare the way by violence for the setting up of the Messiah's throne; of which, it may be, they entertained, as did the early christians under circumstances not very dissimilar, carnal and unworthy notions. They had seen that shaking of nations which they believed to be the prelude of the Lord's coming; but instead of * Life of Dr. Worthington, Chetham Soc. p. 50. IX. CHAPTER girding up the loins of their mind they girded on the sword. They resolved to destroy every existing government in order to make room for this. It is A.D. 1654. probable, notwithstanding the unmeasured censure PROTECTORATE, with which writers of every class have overwhelmed them, that there were good men amongst them; for there was nothing in their creed inconsistent with true piety. Every party had its fanatics, whose distempered minds were wrought into a state of frenzy. And the fifth monarchy men were certainly, in proportion to their numbers, amongst the greatest delinquents in this respect. But their party was extinguished soon after the restoration, and succeeding writers have not ventured to defend their blemished reputation. Yet if we had been compelled to judge of the quakers, the anabaptists, or even the prelatists of the commonwealth by the descriptions of their opponents, we should probably have regarded them by this time with equal scorn. To defame any society it is only necessary to dwell exclusively upon its follies and its crimes. To return to political affairs. The protector was in no haste to assemble his new parliament. At length it met in September, 1654. It was a free parliament, the first now seen in England for many years, and it immediately divulged its character and with it the feelings of the nation. The new constitution of the previous December had enacted that the supreme government should be placed in the hands of one man, and that Oliver himself should be the protector. The parliament was to assume this as a settled point, and to conduct itself submissively. But the free spirit of a body of |