was to supply the deficiency; but this was what the Archbishop and his friends in the Upper House were determined to prevent-being by this time tired out of all patience with their impracticable brethren. When, therefore, the Lower House, on the 14th, formally communicated intelligence of the death of Dr. Woodward, his Grace curtly expressed surprise at the news, and at once ordered a schedule of prorogation for the 19th, the day after Ash Wednesday. Tenison persevered in the policy of prorogation. On the 29th he told his brethren, in plain words, he meant to do so, assuring them, on the one hand, that they were mistaken who thought that he and the Bishops wished to bring Convocation into disuse; and remarking, on the other, that such heats as theirs had given great scandal to those who understood not the controversy, but were much concerned that there should be any differences among men, who were by profession ministers of the gospel of peace. The party who sympathized with the Bishops felt satisfied; a great majority felt otherwise. They met of their own accord in Henry the VII.'s Chapel, and having chosen a Chairman or Moderator, marched up to the little old anteroom, which had become a sort of outpost for the episcopal garrison, where the invincible besiegers were ever pressing upon the trenches of the upper citadel. They were now met by the Bishop of Lincoln, whom they requested to convey a message to the other Bishops, expressing a desire to elect a Prolocutor. A new point of difference immediately arose. As amidst the confusion of the crowded apartments, some members began to dictate a message to the effect that the House wished to proceed to an election, Kennet interposed, saying he hoped the message would not be worded so, for they were not a House, and were unable to act as such; and, moreover, some of the members, he being one, did not agree to the proposed message. The Bishop wrote down the communication as coming from certain members of the Lower House-a form of expression vehemently opposed by several of the listening and agitated group, and bringing down hot indignation upon him who had suggested it. One death had already disabled the Lower House, another death suddenly and completely extinguished its paralyzed and convulsed existence. William of Orange fell from his horse as he was riding in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court, and broke his collar-bone. Removed to Kensington, he was seized with shivering fits, and it soon appeared death was approaching. The Earl of Portland states, "that when he was once encouraging him, from the good state his affairs were in both home and abroad, to take more heart, the King answered him, that he knew death was that which he had looked at on all occasions without any terror; sometimes he would have been glad to have been delivered out of all his troubles, but he confessed now he saw another scene, and could wish to live a little longer. He died with a clear and full presence of mind, and in a wonderful tranquillity. Those who knew it was his rule all his life long to hide the impressions that religion made on him, as much as possible, did not wonder at his silence in his last minutes; but they lamented it much, they knew what a handle it would give to censure and obloquy." Early on Sunday, January the 8th, he received "the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, with great devotion, from the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury "2-about 8 o'clock he was a corpse. Round his 1 Burnet, ii. 303. 2 Hist. of King William III. 513. neck a black ribbon was discovered with a gold ring, and a lock of Queen Mary's hair. The moral conduct of the King had not been in accordance with his religious professions. Burnet, who honestly gives his impressions of William's character, says in a few words, "He had no vice but of one sort, in which he was very cautious and secret "a statement which, whilst it presents a contrast to James and Charles, who were barefaced in their sensualities, admits the fact of William's being addicted to vicious indulgence, of which concealment neither expiated nor diminished the guilt. It is not a little surprising that so many good men, both Churchmen and Dissenters, who could not have been indifferent to the interests of morality, should have lauded, as they did, the Hero of the Revolution, both living and dead, as if he had been the very ideal of virtue and piety. Yet Burnet, who was disposed to take the most favourable view of his character, cannot be charged with exaggeration when he informs us, that "he believed the truth of the Christian religion very firmly, and he expressed a horror at atheism and blasphemy, and though there was much of both in his Court, yet it was always denied to him, and kept out of his sight. He was most exemplary, decent, and devout in the public exercises of the worship of God-only on week days he came too seldom to them. He was an attentive hearer of sermons, and was constant in his private prayers and in reading the Scriptures; and when he spoke of religious matters, which he did not often, it was with a becoming gravity. He was much 1 Dr. Willis, William's Military Chaplain, who became Bishop of Gloucester in 1714, was an extempore preacher. To this he "was at first led, no doubt, by the temper of his master, King William, who was ac customed to hear such kind of preach- possessed with the belief of absolute decrees: he said to me, he adhered to these, because he did not see how the belief of Providence could be maintained upon any other supposition. His indifference as to the forms of Church government, and his being zealous for toleration, together with his cold behaviour towards the Clergy, gave them generally very ill impressions of him."1 The effect of frigid manners, felt by the nation at large, was deepened in the case of high Churchmen, by William's well-known Presbyterian predilections, and his dislike to what is meant by Anglo-Catholicism. As we have seen, during the life of Mary, he left the exercise of his prerogative in reference to ecclesiastical matters in her hands, and after her death meddled with them in the smallest possible degree, so that he never could be said to have exerted any direct influence in the government of the Church.2 But, indirectly, by the Revolution itself, and by the Act of Toleration which followed, and was promoted by him, he changed the position of the Establishment altogether, and opened up to the Episcopal Church a new career, in which conciliation instead of persecution could alone prove its permanent safeguard, and a secret of prosperity. The first monarch on the throne of these realms who loved a constitutional system of religious liberty, William not only won the affection of Dissenters, as he might be naturally expected to do, but by his wise and equitable policy in this respect, laid the whole kingdom and posterity under obligations which have never yet been fully acknowledged. 1 Own Time, ii. 305. 2 It would look as if the conduct of William in reference to patronage did not please some of the Bishops. Patrick says, "We cannot serve His Majesty unless he will countenance those whom we commend to him, purely because they have deserved well of him, and have no friends to maketheir worth known butwe alone." Patrick's Works, ix. 621. The date is misprinted 1731; I take it for 1701. TH CHAPTER XIII. HE most distinguished divines who sat upon the Episcopal Bench in the reign of William III., were more or less imbued with what were called Latitudinarian sentiments. Tillotson and Tenison who did so much, especially the latter of them, by force of character, as well as prominence of position, towards keeping the Church in subordination to the State, have already occupied a considerable space in this History. Next to them, Burnet was most distinguished, and he also has received repeated notice as an ecclesiastical statesman; it should be added, that he was no less a diligent diocesan and a laborious divine. His treatise on Pastoral Care expresses the spiritual anxieties of a good minister of Jesus Christ: his Histories are pervaded by a spirit of Erastianism, as described by some; by a tone of liberality, as denoted by others; and his Exposition of the XXXIX Articles, in like manner, is both condemned as latitudinarian, and commended as comprehensive. No work gives me so favourable an opinion of Burnet as his Four Discourses, delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Sarum. For learning, earnestness, and ability, they deserve a higher place in theological litera 1 The Bishop of Sarum's Four Treatises appeared in 1695. 1 |