THE HISTORY OF THE PURITANS; OR, PROTESTANT NONCONFORMISTS; FROM THE REFORMATION IN 1517, ΤΟ THE REVOLUTION IN 1688: COMPRISING AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR PRINCIPLES; THEIR ATTEMPTS FOR A FARTHER REFORMATION IN THE CHURCH; THEIR SUFFERINGS; AND THE LIVES AND CHARACTERS OF THEIR MOST CONSIDERABLE DIVINES. BY DANIEL NEAL, M. A. A NEW EDITION, IN FIVE VOLUMES; REPRINTED FROM THE TEXT OF DR. TOULMIN'S EDITION, WITH HIS LIFE OF THE AUTHOR AND ACCOUNT OF HIS WRITINGS. REVISED, CORRECTED, AND ENLARGED. VOL. III. LONDON: PRINTED FOR WILLIAM BAYNES AND SON, AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE THIRD VOLUME. No period of civil history has undergone a more critical examination than the last seven years of king Charles I. which was a scene of such confusion and inconsistent management between the king and parliament, that it is very difficult to discover the motives of action on either side: the king seems to have been directed by secret springs from the queen and her council of Papists, who were for advancing the prerogative above the laws, and vesting his majesty with such an absolute sovereignty as might rival his brother of France, and enable him to establish the Roman-Catholic religion in England, or some how or other blend it with the Protestant. This gave rise to the unparalleled severities of the star-chamber and high-commission, which, after twelve years' triumph over the laws and liberties of the subject, brought on a fierce and bloody war, and after the loss of above a hundred thousand lives, ended in the sacrifice of the king himself, and the subversion of the whole constitution. Though all men had a veneration for the person of the king, his ministers had rendered themselves justly obnoxious, not only by setting up a new form of government at home, but by extending their jurisdiction to a neighbouring kingdom, under the government of distinct laws, and inclined to a form of church-discipline very different from the English: this raised such a storm in the north, as distressed his majesty's administration; exhausted his treasure; drained all his arbitrary springs of supply; and (after an intermission of twelve years) reduced him to the necessity of returning to the constitution, and calling a parliament; but when the public grievances came to be opened, there appeared such a collection of ill-humours, and so general a distrust between the king and his two houses, as threatened all the mischief and desolation that followed. Each party laid the blame on the other, and agreed in nothing but in throwing off the odium of the civil war from themselves. The affairs of the church had a very considerable influence on the welfare of the state: the episcopal character was grown into contempt, not from any defect of learning in the bishops, but from their close attachment to the prerogative, and their own insatiable thirst of power, which they strained to the utmost in their spiritual courts, by reviving old and obsolete customs, levying large fines on the people for contempt of their canons, and prosecuting good men and zealous Protestants, for rites and ceremonies tending to superstition, and not warranted by the laws of the land. The king supported them to the utmost; but was obliged, after some time, to give way, first, to an act for abolishing the high-commission, by a clause in which the power of the bishops' spiritual courts was in a manner destroyed; and at last to an act depriving them of their seats in parliament. If at this time any methods could have been thought of, to restore a mutual confidence between the king and his two houses, the remaining differences in the church might easily have been compromised: but the spirits of men were heated, and as the flames of the civil war grew fiercer, and spread wider, the wounds of the church were enlarged, till the distress of the parliament's affairs obliging them to call in the Scots, with their solemn league and covenant, they became incurable. When the king had lost his cause in the field, he put himself at the head of his divines, and drew his learned pen in defence of his prerogative, and the church of England; but his warguments ere no more successful than his sword. I have brought the debates between the king and Mr. Henderson, and between the divines of both sides at the treaties of Uxbridge and Newport upon the head of episcopacy, into as narrow a compass as possible; my chief design being to trace the proceedings of the parliament and their as sembly at Westminster, which (whether justifiable or not) ought to be placed in open view, though none of the historians of those times have ventured to do it. The Westminster assembly was the parliament's grand council in matters of religion, and made a very considerable figure both at home and abroad through the course of the civil war, till they disputed the power of the keys with their superiors, and split upon the rocks of divine right and covenant-uniformity. The records of this venerable assembly were lost in the fire of London; but I have given a large and just account of their proceedings, from a manuscript of one of their members, and some other papers that have fallen into my hands, and have entered as far into their debates with the Erastians, Independents, and others, as was consistent with the life and spirit of the history. Whatever views the Scots might have from the beginning of the war, the parliament would certainly have agreed with the king upon the foot of a limited episcopacy, till the calling the assembly of divines, after which the solemn league and covenant became the standard of all their treaties, and was designed to introduce the Presbyterian government in its full extent, as the established religion of both kingdoms. This tied up the parliament's hands, from yielding in time to the king's most reasonable concessions at Newport, and rendered an accommodation impracticable; I have therefore transcribed the covenant at large, with the reasons for and against it. Whether such obligations upon the consciences of men are justifiable from the necessity of affairs, or binding in all events and revolutions of government, I shall not determine; but the imposing them upon others was certainly a very great hardship. The remarkable trial of archbishop Laud, in which the antiquity and use of the several innovations complained of by the Puritans are stated and argued, has never been published entire to the world. The archbishop left in his diary a summary of his answer to the charge of the commons, and Mr. Prynne, in his Canterbury's Doom, has published the first part of his grace's trial, relating principally to points of religion; but all is imperfect and immethodical. I have therefore compared both accounts together, and supplied the defects of one with the other; the whole is brought into a narrow compass, and thrown into such a method, as will give the reader a clear and distinct view of the equity of the charge, and how far the archbishop deserved the usage he met with. I have drawn out abstracts of the several ordinances relating to the rise and progress of Presbytery, and traced the proceedings of the committee for plundered and scandalous ministers, as far as was necessary to my general design, without descending too far into particulars, or attempting to justify the whole of their conduct; and though I am of opinion, that the number of clergy who suffered purely on the account of religion was not very considerable, it is certain that many able and learned divines, who were content to live quietly, and mind the duty of their places, had very hard measure from the violence of parties, and deserve the compassionate regards of posterity; some being discharged their livings for refusing the covenant, and others plundered of every thing the unruly soldiers could lay their hands upon, for not complying with the change of the times. In the latter end of the reign of queen Anne, Dr. Walker of Exeter published "An attempt to recover the number and sufferings of the clergy of the church of England ;" but with notorious partiality, and in language not fit for the lips of a clergyman, a scholar, or a Christian; every page or paragraph, almost, labours with the cry of "rebellion, treason, parricide, faction, stupid ignorance, hypocrisy, cant, and downright knavery and wickedness," on one side; and "loyalty, learning, primitive sanctity, and the glorious spirit of martyrdom," on the other. One must conclude from the doctor, that there was hardly a wise or honest patriot with the parliament, nor a weak or dishonest gentleman with the king. His preface* is one of the most furious invectives against the seven most glorious years of queen Anne that ever was published; it blackens the memory of the late king William III. to whom he applies that passage of Scripture, "I gave them a king in my anger, and took him away in my wrath;" it arraigns the great duke of Marlborough, the glory of the English nation, and both houses of parliament, as in a confederacy to destroy the church of England, and dethrone the queen. "Rebellion (says the doctor) was esteemed the most necessary requisite to qualify any one for being intrusted with the government, and disobedience the principal recommendation for her majesty's service.--Those were thought the most proper persons to guard * Preface, p. 8--11. |