The Presbyterians in England: their Rise, Decline, and Revival. PART II. The Decline of the Presbyterians in England. PERIOD OF DISAPPOINTMENT AND FAILURE. I. HOW THE PRESBYTERIANS FAILED TO ESTABLISH THEMSELVES. II. AN ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN COVENANTER AND MARTYR (TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF CHRISTOPHER LOVE). III.-THE PRESBYTERIANS UNDER THE LATER COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE, IV. THE PRESBYTERIANS IN THE BALANCE AGAIN. The Presbyterians in England: their Rise, Decline, and Revival. PART II. The Decline of the Presbyterians in England. PERIOD OF DISAPPOINTMENT AND FAILURE. I. HOW THE PRESBYTERIANS FAILED TO ESTABLISH THEMSELVES. THE Presbyterians having risen to such measure of political and ecclesiastical ascendency as we have endeavoured to describe, it was inevitable that they should continue to play no unimportant part in Church and State for years to come. Their time of triumph, however, was short; and their hope of effecting a settlement in the national affairs experienced an early blight. Their desires after religious and political unity for the three kingdoms were not destined to be successful; and their elaborated State Church system never came into full play. The causes of this we may now briefly indicate. When not only the Presbyterians and Independents failed to come to terms, but when the breach occurred, that never was healed, between Assembly and Parliament, the whole reforming movement in Church and State ceased as a constitutional effort, and the revolutionary method took its place. What parties may be most to blame for such an issue, will always continue matter of debate. Meanwhile the Presbyterians had to accept the situation; and henceforward they carried on their work in the spirit of a half-hearted compromise. "Many and varied were the antagonistic influences with which the Presbyterian Establishment, born in such troublous days, had to struggle. It had to contend with the Prelatic party, watching an opportunity of reprisal, with the Independents, who feared that their separate Churches should be swamped in a national Establishment, and with the Sectaries, who aimed at a general mêlée of all parties. But other obstacles stood in the way of success. Though the outward forms of Presbytery were set up, by no persuasion could Parliament be induced to lend any civil sanction to the decisions of the Church Courts, even in matters within their proper sphere. They retained in their own hands an Erastian power as the supreme Court of Appeal, so that none could be excluded from the Lord's table for ecclesiastical offences without having recourse to the civil courts." Now upon no subject have the Presbyterians been more severely censured than their intolerance. Ever since Milton's famous but splenetic epigram, which ascribes to them a design to and to "Ride us with a classic hierarchy," "adjure the civil sword To force our consciences that Christ made free," and which concludes with the bitter and jaundiced line,- "New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large," it has become the fashion to regard them as a "Synod of ecclesiastical sachems, bent on reducing England to a tyranny worse even than that of Rome." This charge of intolerance, which has been immensely exaggerated, we shall immediately examine. That it was some intolerance inherent in the Presbyterian System which caused its downfall, is, however, a vulgar mistake. One chief explanation of the collapse, is the loss of faith, by the Presbyterians themselves, in the attainableness of their own. ideal. For ideal they had of no common order, destined to fulfil itself in higher ways than they could foresee. Their desire was a constitutional and representative government alike in Church and State, worked along the same lines throughout the three kingdoms. And who will say that it had not been better for these kingdoms at this hour, had they been ripe enough or wise enough for such an experiment, vitiated though it was at 1 Dr. M'Crie's Annals of English Presbytery, pp. 189, 190. 2 Ibid. p. 190. |