The Decline of the Presbyterians in England (Continued). PERIOD OF FURTHER DEFECTION AND DECAY, 1740-1812. I. CHARACTER AND RELATIONS OF THE HETERODOX PRESBYTERIAN CONGREGATIONS. 1740-1788. II. DECAY AND LAPSING OF PRESBYTERIAN AND OTHER DISSENTING CHARGES. III.-ARIANISM DRIVEN TO UNITARIANISM. 1782-1812. The Decline of the Presbyterians in England (Continued). PERIOD OF FURTHER DEFECTION AND DECAY, 1740-1812. I. CHARACTER AND RELATIONS OF THE HETERODOX It was over the question of ministerial subscription that the English Presbyterians began to break into fragments. Although ARIANISM was the chief form of doctrinal declension that began to obtain a footing among the non-subscribing, which was also the larger, section of the Presbyterian ministry in England, this particular form of doctrine was determined simply by force of circumstances and the prevailing speculative fashion of the time. Any other form of doctrinal speculation that happened to emerge might have been as readily adopted. For the great question among these anti-subscription Presbyterian divines of the middle of last century was not so much about any one specific doctrine or other, but it was the principle of entire ministerial freedom of religious inquiry and profession. This was an early and potent watchword with these non-subscribing Presbyterians, and under the spell of it there resulted many varying changes of doctrinal theory. For long indeed it was unattended by any avowed departure from the Calvinistic profession, unless to the extent of that modification of it, called Baxterianism. But the absence of any provision for enforcing doctrinal unity beyond what was legally required by the Toleration Act, was a form of unrestrained liberty greatly relished by men embarking on a new departure in ecclesiastical life. Intoxicated with its exhilarating atmo sphere, there were those among them who began to praise, and ultimately even to worship, this newly-found principle of an untrammelled ministry, as a method sure to lead to the greatest and happiest results. Ostensibly the creed of these English Presbyterian ministers may have still remained for a time that of the Westminster Confession, or, legally speaking, the Doctrinal Articles of the Church of England; but changes at length inevitably began to appear, according as the practical habit of acting on the easy and non-restrictive method led to a speculative recognition of its pleasantness, and then to an undue over-estimate of its importance or its intrinsic value. Under their hands religion began to wear the aspect of an intellectual or palæstric exercise, as if presenting a field for boundless inquiry and speculation. Christian doctrine ceased to be held as a living faith or conviction, and degenerated into a mere set or scheme of "opinions," as was the favourite and current phrase. It was on these lines of regarding Christian faith as (6 opinion" and Christian doctrine as non-restrictive that the leaders of Presbyterian thought and education in the Academies proceeded during the student days of Drs. Lardner, Benson, and John Taylor; and they in their turn were content to emphasize and carry forward the same idea. Thus it came about, slowly but surely, that the one distinctive and most noticeable feature of these heterodox Presbyterians, was their boast of "free and candid religious inquiry." By this they were content to abide; and they were not indisposed to accept and even glory in whatever might result from this grand principle, whether it might land them for the time being in Arianism, Pelagianism, or any other "opinion.” We thus find along this line a sort of intermediate stage between the earlier Arianism and the later Unitarianism—which, both as a word and an explosive force, Dr. Priestley was to do so much afterwards to extend. This intermediate phase appears in many works soon after the middle of the century, but chiefly in the writings of that very learned Presbyterian heresiarch DR. JOHN TAYLOR of Norwich, whose main polemical book, The Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, was thoroughly Pelagian; and it opened up fresh fields for heterodox specula tion and discussion. In one of his early books, Defence of the Common Rights of Christians, published in 1737, Dr. Taylor boasts of the Salter Hall Synod, that it furnished, "The only instance perhaps that can be produced out of Church history for many centuries, of any Synod of ministers declaring in favour of religious liberty." And in the same book he gives, as a Presbyterian preacher, his views of how this kind of liberty should work : "If the Dissenters stand firm in liberty and love; . . if they refuse all party schemes and stand upon the basis of Universal Christianity ; if they allow the free study of the Bible, and encourage the labours of their honest and learned men; if they are steadfastly determined to establish their faith, practice, and worship on the Word of God alone, as it shall from time to time be made known to them . . then they will act up to their own true principles. . . But if ever they abandon liberty and love; if they stiffly adhere to party names and schemes'; . . . if they discourage the honest and learned that would throw in more light and truth among them, they will become weak and dwindle into nothing.” In his sermon at the opening of his handsome new "chapel " at Norwich, in 1756 (the year in which he received his honorary degree of D.D., from Glasgow University, in special recognition of his labours and attainments in Hebrew lexicography), he says: purpose we may "This edifice is founded on no party principles or tenets, but is built on that we may exercise the public duties of religion upon the most Catholic and charitable foundation, and that be quite free to search the Scriptures, to discover, correct, or reform at any time our own mistakes and deficiencies, and at liberty to exercise communion with any of our Christian brethren."1 These views, which became so current, and which confound licence with liberty and the lack of restraint with freedom, which mistake indifferentism and latitudinarianism for Christian charity, and which make ministerial laxness synonymous with Catholicity, soon began, like all empiricism, to work its mischievous effects, to the detriment and ruin of the very interests which were meant to be safeguarded. Narrowness Dr. John Taylor died suddenly, during sleep, in 1761. Vide Theological Magazine, July, 1804, for notice of his life, and specially a Memoir by his son, in Monthly Repository for August, 1826. |