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only one left, and he had surrendered his | gerous and damnable doctrines of resist canonical right to Hooper several years ance and the validity of lay deprivation." before. Hence the time had come when The true Church, they boasted, was and not a single see remained in which there ever would be to the end of the world with was both a bishop in possession and a their own "little and faithful suffering bishop with a shadowy canonical title. number." To these irreconcilables no From that moment, according to the view course was logically open but to perpetof Dodwell and his friends, the national uate the schism, till either they or the Church became free from the schismat- national Church perished; and accordical infection, and the guilt of schism ingly on the death of their other bishop, was transferred to the other side. Ac- Wagstaffe, who having nothing else to do cordingly, with great satisfaction to them- had been practising as a physician, Hickes selves, they lost no time in re-entering the obtained the co-operation of two members portals of the now disinfected Church. of the proscribed Scotch episcopate who The argument was ingenious, and we can seem to have been in hiding in London, heartily rejoice that it was found sufficient and with their assistance consecrated by these estimable persons. At the same three new bishops of the schism, Collier, time we must confess, that it appears to Howes, and Spinckes. Two years later, us to afford a striking illustration of the on the death of Hickes, these three conunreality of the whole contention. When secrated two more, Gandy and Brett. the first day of the new year dawned, the Then discord broke out among them, and national Church was schismatical to its the curse of schism came home to roost. core, and separation from its communion Collier and Brett, becoming dissatisfied was an imperative duty. Before sunset of with the Anglican communion office, drew the same day it had become the only lawful up a new one on the lines of King Ed Church in the land, and separation from its ward's first book, with modifications from communion was a sin. What had happened the early liturgies; and on the refusal of to produce this momentous difference? the majority of the body to adopt it, they Certainly nothing in the Church itself. In the evening of that day it was precisely the same as it had been in the morning; not one iota of change had been made in its doctrine, its discipline, its officers, or its connection with the State. Nothing had happened except the obscure death, in a lodging at Hammersmith, of an old man who had seceded from it twenty years before. Might not common sense be pardoned for suggesting that if so minute and entirely external an event was all that was necessary to justify a return to its communion, the previous renunciation of its communion had no sufficient cause?

Such was the opinion of the other half of the sect. They poured scorn on the weak-kneed brethren, who on so trivial an excuse had yielded to the blandishments of the apostate Establishment. To use the language of Hickes, their bishop and oracle, they "could not imagine that such adulterous intruders can merely by the death of all those whose thrones they usurped, continuing not only impenitent, but justifying their intrusion and the pravity of their schismatical consecrations, in a moment become lawful and valid bishops of their usurped districts, and Catholic bishops of the Church." In their eyes the prelates of the "Revolution Church," as they scoffingly styled it, continued to be "anti-bishops " just as much as ever, because they professed the "dan

parted company with their brethren, and formed a new sect known as the Usagers For about fourteen years the two sections of Nonjurors faced each other in hostile array, each striving to perpetuate itself by fresh consecrations; but by 1733 the Usagers had managed to absorb most of the others, and there was a short-lived union. The schismatic spirit, however, although for a moment exorcised, soon returned reinforced. One of the party, named Lawrence, known as the author of several treatises on the "Invalidity of Lay baptism," accepted consecration from the hands of a single Scotch bishop, and headed a party of Separatists, who adopted an entirely new prayer-book, drawn up by Deacon, whom Lawrence was pleased to consecrate as his coadjutor. It soon became evident that the Nonjuring cause was doomed. Discredited by its internal dissensions and the impracticable narrowness of its views, the sect dwindled in the number as well as the quality of its adherents. In 1789, Gordon, the last bishop of the regular section, died, and that branch of the schism became extinct. For nearly a score of years longer the Separatists lingered on, still playing at single-handed consecrations; "a singular proof," remarks Hallam, "of that tenacity of life by which religious sects, after dwindling down through neglect, excel frogs and tortoises; and that, even when

they have become almost equally coldblooded." But the time arrived when this remnant, too, became unable to "drag its slow length along; "its last bishop, Boothe by name, died in Ireland in 1805, and with him the once renowned Nonjuring party passed away, unnoticed and unwept.

Having thus briefly traced the secession to its inglorious close, we turn back to particularize its more prominent members, whose ability, learning, or piety gave it somewhat of lustre in its earlier period. Next after Ken the one most affectionately remembered by English Churchmen is the layman Robert Nelson, the gentle and devout complexion of whose character was well indicated by the epithet commonly attached to his name by his friends, who familiarly spoke of him as "the pious Mr. Nelson." Born in 1656, he received an Anglican education under Dr. Bull, the future Bishop of St. Davids, and was admitted to the intimate friendship of Tillotson, who actually expired in his arms after a brief tenure of the primacy. The fortune and figure of the "handsome Englishman," as Nelson was called by the queen of France when in the prime of his youth he was presented at her court, pointed him out as fitted to grace the royal circle at Whitehall, and a proposal was made to him to become attached to it by the purchase of an office; but such a court as that of Charles II. was little to his taste, and he made the wise choice of turning his back on its gilded profligacies. His principal cross was found in his marriage; for having wedded abroad a widow considerably older than himself, Lady Theophila Lucy, he discovered too late that she had previously become a Papist. In spite, however, of the gross deceit put upon him, and of the embarrassing fact that the married couple found themselves writing at the same time on opposite sides of the controversy with Rome, his amiable temperament enabled him to live in more than harmony with her, and for several years to watch tenderly over her declining health. At the time of the Revolution he was on the Continent, but returning in 1691 he found it necessary to make his choice between the old Church and the Nonjuring secession. To a man of his reverent and submissive spirit the dilemma was a cruel one. To desert the national communion was a sore wrench to his feelings; to remain in it, and listen to the prayers for William and Mary, was an offence to his conscience. He consulted Tillotson, and the primate had no other advice to give than to impress upon him

the impropriety of being present at prayers in which he could not sincerely join. Upon this Nelson reluctantly united himself to a small Nonjuring congregation, and lived quietly in close friendship with Kettlewell, one of the most esteemed members of the party, whose gentle temper was akin to his own. Happily for the Church, after Kettlewell's death in 1695 this inaction failed to satisfy Nelson, and without formally withdrawing from the Nonjurors, he gradually renewed his intercourse with many of the leading Churchmen, in concert with whom he took a prominent part in founding the Christian Knowledge and Propagation Societies, and promoting church-building, the reformation of manners, and other charitable enterprises. In 1710 he felt himself able to return to the public worship of the old communion, and had the satisfaction of spending the remaining five years of his life in the beloved Church of his fathers. He was ready with his pen, and published several works of a religious character, which, if not brilliant or striking, are invariably thoughtful and devout. To sum him up in a phrase, he was an admirable type of the old orthodox or moderately high-Church school of Anglican religion, as far removed from Romanism on one hand as from Puritanism on the other. The most popular book which he published, the "Companion for the Festivals and Fasts," is almost a transcript of himself, and to this day has scarcely ceased to hold the rank which it quickly attained, as a classic and almost indispensable handbook of Church of England devotion.

Next to Nelson may be placed Henry Dodwell, also a layman, who for many years was the chief adviser of the moderate section of the Nonjurors, and adorned their little communion by the vast extent of his erudition. He had the reputation of being one of the most learned men in Europe, but a portion of his learning might have been profitably bargained away for a modicum of sober judgment and practical good sense. His faculties seemed to be overburdened by the weight of his accumulated knowledge; the fuel choked the fire rather than fed it. It was of him that King William is reported to have said, "He has set his heart on being a martyr, and I have set mine on disappointing him." Irish by birth, he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and was elected to a fellowship; but being disinclined to take holy orders, he vacated it in 1666, disinterestedly declining, on

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dition, God happily suggested to his thoughts Whilst he thought of this change of his cona person in all respects fitted for him, viz., one in whose father's house at Cookham he had at several times tabled, and whom he had in her younger years instructed in the principles of religion, in which he found her a good proficient, and afterwards had just reason to her mind and conversation, and hereby fitted believe that such principles had influence on her for that relation. How much she was suited to his circumstances, how good a wife she was, and how careful a mother she continues to be, must not, she being yet alive, be here insisted on, lest I should be censured for

simple and somewhat ascetic in his hab its, he entirely deserved the esteem and

the ground of public policy, to avail him- and biographer, Mr. Brokesby, thus self of the offer made by Bishop Jeremy quaintly describes the result:— Taylor, to obtain a dispensation for him. Transferring himself to England he became a literary ally of Bishop Lloyd, who occupied successively the sees of St. Asaph and Worcester, and busied himself in historical researches as well as controversial divinity. The reputation which he gradually acquired led to his election to the Camdenian professorship of history at Oxford, at the beginning of the Revolution year; but his tenure of it was short, for towards the close of 1691 he was deprived for refusing to swear allegiance to William and Mary, and retired to Cookham in Berkshire, where he spent the remain- a flatterer. ing twenty years of his life. From a Cautionary Discourse" which he pub-able. Pious, kindly, full of good works, In character Dodwell was irreproachlished at the time of his deprivation, we learn that he would have had no objection to undertake to live peaceably under the new sovereigns; his difficulty was that the oath, by requiring a positive fealty and allegiance, implicitly pledged those who took it to "maintain the life, limbs, and terrene honor of their liege lord, to keep his secrets, and discover plots against him," services which he could not conscientiously render to a usurper. He continued, however, to attend the Church prayers until new bishops were consecrated to the sees of the deprived prelates; and even after that, with all his heat against the intruders, and his conviction that the Church had become schismatic by accepting them, he never assented to measures which were likely to prolong the secession beyond the death of the last of those in whom he believed the canonical possession to continue. As that event approached, he labored earnestly to prepare his friends to take advantage of it; and a year before his death, he had the satisfaction, as we have seen, of carrying back with himself a large number of the seceders to the communion of the national Church.

affection entertained towards him by his in his head than his heart. Like most friends. What defects he had were rather book-ridden recluses, he was little suited to deal with the exigencies of real life. his habit of making his journeys on foot, How he lived in his books appears from that travel might not interrupt his converse with them. For this purpose he converted coat well furnished with convenient pockhimself into a walking library. Clad in a ets, and stocked with volumes of a suitable size, he used to plod along the roads, drawing out now a portion of the Hebrew Bible, now a Greek Testament or a prayerbook, which after a while he would exchange for a treatise of St. Augustine or some other father of the church, or for the "De Imitatione," which was one of his especial favorites. A life of such uninterthe world and its affairs, not unnaturally mitted study, unbalanced by experience of exposed him to the domination of narrow or impracticable ideas. Episcopacy be came a sort of monomania with him. No salvation except through bishops became the keynote of his theology. To the A few personal traits of this rather remarkable man are worth recording. His scandalizing of his associates this maggot in his brain attained such portentous simple nature was pleasantly illustrated by the circumstances of his marriage. He dimensions that he wrote a book to prove was in his fifty-second year when it took the derivation of the soul's immortality, place, but although so late in beginning life, from the hands of the episcopal family life, he showed himself as prolific of children as of books, his olive-branches order. Of this extravagant work, which mounting up to the respectable number of it certainly requires a desperate effort to ten. He had in his bachelor days intended get through, we give the full title as a curiosity:

certain of his kinsmen to be his heirs; they, however, died off, and their removal appeared to him to be a call of Providence to beget heirs for himself. His friend

in the case of all the heirs of eternal

An Epistolary Discourse, proving from the Scriptures and the first Fathers that the soul is a principle naturally mortal, but immor

talized actually by the pleasure of God to punishment; or to reward, by its union with the Divine baptismal Spirit. Wherein is proved that none have the power of giving this immortalizing Spirit, since the Apostles, but only Bishops.

moted to the deanery of Worcester. Of his intellectual ability and the sincerity with which he professed his extreme opinions there can be no question; and especially as an Anglo-Saxon scholar, and the author of the great Thesaurus of northern languages, he has left behind him a good reputation for learning. But as an ecclesiastical controversialist he was as bitter and one-sided as he was voluminous. At Tillotson he did not scruple to fling the epithet of atheist, and even Ken was dubbed by him "a half-hearted wheedler." On the nomination of a successor to his deanery after the time of grace for taking the oath of allegiance had expired, the world was amused by the vehement protest which he affixed to the cathedral doors, warning the chapter to beware of permit

It has been embalmed in one of the satirical pamphlets which flew thickly about in those days of anonymous scribbling, entitled "Passive Obedience in Active Resistance," a sentence or two of which will be enough to show its pungent flavor : —

By his theory of the natural mortality of the human soul, Dodwell flattered himself that he got rid of several serious theological difficulties. It seemed to him to "clear the Catholic doctrine of original sin from exposing mankind to eternal torments for the single and personal act of Adam; " to account easily for the doctrine of reprobation; and to relieve theology from the difficulty of finding a reason "why the sins of finite creatures should be punished with infinite penalties." Like some in our own day, Dodwell appears to have forgotten that to deny human nature ating any infringement of his legal rights. native spiritual faculty is as good as to deny human responsibility altogether, and reduce religion to mere fatalism. To our mind there is something peculiarly grim and revolting in his defence against the charge of letting off sinners too easily. "I do not think," he wrote in the "Præmonition " to the second edition, "that any adult person whatsoever, living where Christianity is professed, and the motives of its credibility are sufficiently proposed, can hope for the benefit of actual mortality." What he meant was, as the title of his book shows, that the souls of unbelievers, instead of being allowed to become extinct according to their natural constitution, would be miraculously endowed with the gift of imperishableness at death, for the purpose of rendering them capable of enduring endless pain. Can the vanity of speculation, we would ask, upon this inscrutable and awful subject be more forcibly shown than it is by the fact that this amiable theorist could imagine himself to be smoothing away difficulties, by flinging out with a light heart the ghastly notion, that naturally mortal souls shall be "immortalized actually by the pleasure of God to punishment "?"

How he stormed, foamed, fumed, and swaggered against sovereign authority, and tore the very curtains of his stall for madness and vexation; and in what a rage he signified his vain fury to the sub-dean and the rest of the prebendaries! . . . Heavens! who could have thought that Christian, lamblike, passive obedience could have flustered and blustered and ranted and hectored at this rate!

We have already seen how strenuously he opposed the reunion of the party with the national Church, after the death of Lloyd in 1710, and, unhappily, succeeded in persuading a moiety of it to keep up the schism. Nothing can better evince his irreconcilable temper, than the small volume which he wrote on the occasion, though not published till after his death, entitled, "The Constitution of the Catholic Church, and the Nature and Consequences of Schism." In substance it consists of thirty-nine articles of ecclesiastical doctrine, enunciated in the loftiest tone of infallibility, and followed by a fortieth which declares the application of them to the existing state of things.

Of a very different temper from Dodwell's was the next most prominent of the original Nonjurors, Dean Hickes, who had been selected, on Sancroft's recommenda- Among the first generation of Nonjution to become one of the first two bishops rors a front rank must be accorded to of the schism. He was the fire-eater of Charles Leslie, son of an Irish bishop, and the party, pugnacious to an extreme, and best remembered now for the small treafanatical enough to regard the peace of tise of some forty pages which he wrote the realm and the interests of the Church against the deists. In the recent biog at large as trifles in comparison with the raphy of this acute controversialist, named maintenance of the doctrine of non-resist- at the head of our article, the reader will ance. He had been a fellow of Lincoln find ample particulars of his life and mulCollege, Oxford, from whence he was pro-tifarious writings, but will be disappointed

if he expects it to furnish him with any same we should class him as a politician discriminating appreciation of its subject. rather than a theologian. His mind was Ecclesiastical pedants, who think to meas- of the legal order, both by native comure the world by patristic precedents and plexion and by training. After graduat canonical rules, are not exactly the per- ing at Dublin, he studied law at the Temsons best qualified to take a large view of ple, and was called to the English bar. the affairs of nations, or of the characters It was only want of success which took and policy of statesmen, as in the whirl him back to Ireland several years later, and rush of human aims and passions the where he entered into holy orders, and destinies of mankind are accomplished. became a beneficed clergyman, a county If by an unkind fortune such persons magistrate, and chancellor of the diocese should be betrayed into meddling with of Connor. On his return to London after these high themes, narrowness and ec- being deprived for refusing the oaths, he centricity of treatment are but too likely plunged into controversy, and became to ensue. Luckily for our space, Mr. Les- celebrated as one of the hardest hitters lie has enabled us to produce in a single of the time. Wherever Churches, sects, sentence evidence from which it is easy to or parties were contending, Leslie smelt judge, how far he is affected by this kind the battle from afar, and rushed to join in of disqualification for historical criticism. the fray. His seven volumes of theology Having occasion to mention the death of are entirely controversial, the Quakers William III., to whom, whatever were being the foe in the larger part of them. his faults, we suppose no sane student of As to their general style and temper, perhistory can deny that both England and haps the less said the better. Such titles Protestant Europe owe no small debt of as "The snake in the grass," ""Satan disgratitude, Mr. Leslie singles out for no-robed from his disguise of light," "The tice the pathetic clinging to the Earl of wolf stripped of his shepherd's clothing," Portland of the dying monarch, for the savor more of the keen, satirical polemic, purpose of hanging upon it the astonish- than the edifying divine. They are all ishing remark, that it "relieved with a hopelessly dead now; even the once solitary ray of light his dark and terrible famous "Short and Easy Method with the career. We venture to submit that seri- Deists," the tone of which is happily unous history is not to be constructed on the exceptionable. Of this little performance assumption, that a denial of the divine it is enough to say, that it was written in right of legitimacy is the one fatal heresy consequence of a request for "one topic in politics, and to be the instrument of of reason which should demonstrate the emancipating a nation from despotism the truth of the Christian religion;" and as one unpardonable sin. If in the thick of only in an age when the apologetics of the pressure and turmoil of our revolu- faith had become mechanical and rationtionary period some shadow of an excuse alistic could the enterprise of demolishing for entertaining such a view might have the walls of the deistic citadel by a single been pleaded, it has certainly long since blast have been deemed possible, the atceased to be available. We can feel tempt, however ingenious, was doomed to amused when we read such slashing in- fail. The divine authority of the doctrine vective of Charles Leslie's as the follow-of Christ is certainly not to be established ing excerpt from his works: "I now say that a Whig is not so good as a Pagan; are not these men literally heathens? They are worse than Mahometans. Your giving heed to these men, or bidding them God-speed, is directly enlisting yourselves under the banner of the devil." But his Leslie's versatility as a controversialist biographer must pardon us if a somewhat is best shown in his periodical, the Redifferent feeling is excited by the repro-hearsal, which for more than four years duction of such sentiments, now that the he maintained single-handed, issuing it in heat and passion of the Revolution are a small sheet at first weekly, and afterremoved from us by a couple of centu- wards twice a week, till, when the four ries. hundred and eighth number was reached, On the title-page of the biography, a threat of prosecution brought it to an Leslie is defined by the expression," Non- end. The title, he says, was taken from juring divine." It is true that in the Ox-"that most humorous and ingenious of our ford edition of 1832 his theological works plays; " and its purpose was "to unravel fill seven volumes in octavo; but all the the more pernicious papers and pamphlets

by the single assertion, that the two institutions of baptism and the eucharist may be historically traced back to the first century of our era; and in that assertion the entire substance of the "Short and Easy Method" is contained.

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