France, and at Geneva, brought back the rigid opinions and imperious discipline of Calvin to graft upon our Reformation; which, though they cunningly concealed at first, (as well knowing how nauseously that drug would go down, in a lawful monarchy, which was prescribed for a rebellious commonwealth) yet they always kept it in reserve, and were never wanting to themselves either in court or parliament, when either they had any prospect of a numerous party of fanatic members in the one, or the encouragement of any favourite in the other, whose covetousness was gaping at the patrimony of the church. They who will consult the works of our venerable Hooker, or the account of his life, or more particularly the letter written to him on this subject by George Cranmer, may see by what gradations they proceeded. From the dislike of cap and surplice, the very next step was admonitions to the Parliament against the whole government ecclesiastical: then came out volumes in English and Latin in defence of their tenets; and immediately practices were set on foot to erect their discipline without authority. Those not succeeding, satire and railing was the next; and Martin Mar-Prelate (the Marvel of those times) was the first Presbyterian scribbler who sanctified libels and scurrility to the use of the good old cause: which was done, says my author, upon this account, that (their serious treatises having been fully answered and refuted) they might compass by railing what they had lost by reasoning; and when their cause was sunk in court and parliament, they might at least hedge in a stake amongst the rabble; for to their ignorance all things are wit which are abusive; but if church and state were made the theme, then the doctoral degree of wit was to be taken at Billingsgate, Even the most saint-like of the party, though they durst not excuse this contempt and vilifying of the government, yet were pleased, and grinned at it with a pious smile; and called it a judgment of God against the hierarchy. Thus sectaries (we may see) were born with teeth, foul-mouthed and scurrilous from their infancy; and if spiritual pride, venom, violence, contempt of superiors, and slander, had been the marks of orthodox belief, the Presbytery, and the rest of our Schismatics, which are their spawn, were always the most visible church in the Christian world. It is true, the government was too strong at that time for a rebellion; but, to show what proficiency they had made in Calvin's school, even then their mouths watered at it; for two of their gifted brotherhood, Hacket and Coppinger (as the story tells us) got up into a pease-cart, and harangued the people, to dispose them to an insurrection, and to establish their discipline by force: so that, however it comes about that now they celebrate Queen Elizabeth's birth-night as that of their saint and patroness, yet then they were for doing the work of the Lord by arms against her; and, in all probability, they wanted but a fanatic lord mayor and two sheriffs of their party to have compassed it. Our venerable Hooker, after many admonitions which he had given them, towards the end of his preface, breaks out into this prophetic speech : There is in every one of these considerations most just cause to fear lest our hastiness to em brace a thing of so perilous consequence, (meaning the Presbyterian discipline) should cause posterity to feel those evils which, as yet, are more easy for us to prevent, than they would be for them to remedy.' How fatally this Cassandra has foretold, we know too well by sad experience. The seeds were sown in the time of Queen Elizabeth; the bloody harvest ripened in the reign of King Charles the Martyr; and because all the sheaves could not be carried off without shedding some of the loose grains, another crop is too like to follow; nay, I fear it is unavoidable, if the Conventiclers be permitted still to scatter. A man may be suffered to quote an adversary to our religion, when he speaks truth; and it is the observation of Maimburg, in his History of Calvinism, that wherever that discipline was planted and embraced, rebellion, civil war, and misery, attended it. And how, indeed, should it happen otherwise? Reformation of church and state has always been the ground of our divisions in England. While we were Papists, our holy Father rid us, by pretending authority ont of the Scriptures to depose princes; when we shook off his authority, the Sectaries furnished themselves with the same weapons, and out of the same magazine, the Bible. So that the Scriptures, which are in themselves the greatest security of governors, as commanding express obedience to them, are now turned to their destruction; and never, since the Reformation, has there wanted a text of their interpreting to authorize a rebel. And it is to be noted by the way, that the doctrines of king-killing and deposing, which have been taken up only by the worst party of the Papists, the most frontless flatterers of the Pope's authority, have been espoused, defended, and are still maintained, by the whole body of Nonconformists and Republicans. It is but dubbing themselves the people of God, which it is the interest of their preachers to tell them they are, and their own interest to believe; and after that, they cannot dip into the Bible, but one text or another will turn up for their purpose. If they are under persecution, as they call it, then that is a mark of their election; if they flourish, then God works miracles for their deliverance, and the saints are to possess the earth. They may think themselves to be too roughly handled in this paper; but I, who know best how far I could have gone on this subject, must be bold to tell them they are spared; though, at the same time, I am not ignorant that they interpret the mildness of a writer to them as they do the mercy of the government; in the one they think it fear, and conclude it weakness in the other. The best way for them to confute me is, as I before advised the Papists, to disclaim their principles, and renounce their practices. We shall all be glad to think them true Englishmen when they obey the king, and true Protestants when they conform to the church-discipline. It remains that I acquaint the reader that these verses were written for an ingenious young gentleman, my friend, upon his translation of The Critical History of the Old Testament, composed by the learned Father Simon: the verses, therefore, are addressed to the translator of that work, and the style of them is, what it ought to be, epistolary. If any one be so lamentable a critic as to require the smoothness, the numbers, and the turn of heroic poetry in this Poem, I must tell him, that if he has not read Horace, I have studied him, and hope the style of his Epistles is not ill imitated here. The expressions of a poem, designed purely for instruction, ought to be plain and natural, and yet majestic; for here the poet is presumed to be a kind of lawgiver, and those three qualities which I have named are proper to the legislative style. The florid, elevated, and figurative way, is for the passions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, are begotten in the soul by showing their objects out of their true proportion, either greater than the life, or less: but instruction is to be given, by showing them what they naturally are. A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth. |