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dialectical weapons, and to dispute, dis-
tinguish, define, was for him, now and
henceforward, the highest possible happi-
The son of an eminent English
ness.
courtier, the heir of an ancient and opu-
lent house, he was likely to receive from
the hierarchs of the Puritan Rome suffi-
cient deference to flatter his intellectual
pride, while their argumentative skill,
practised in the debates of the most con-
troversial century in the history of the
world, would polish to a gossamer atten-
uation that subtlety which was at once
the force and the foible of Vane. He re-
turned to England in a white glow of Pu-
ritan illumination, and the court began to
look with chagrin upon the prospect of
such an addition to the Puritan ranks. It
was arranged that Laud should take him
in hand, but the result was as might have
been foreseen.. Laud had a limited log-
ical faculty and a short temper; Vane
had a genius for argumentative logic, an
invincibly placid temper, and that ineffa-
ble self-complacency which is irritating
in any man, insufferably irritating in a
stripling. Finding that he made no prog-
ress, Laud flew into a passion and brought
Shrewd Sir
the discussion to an end.
Harry, the father, looked on with philo-
sophical tranquillity, speculating perhaps
on the possibility that his son's Puritan-
ism might turn up as a good card one of
these difficult and dubious days.

it then pleased God to call him to repent- Westminster School, he finds, when still ance, and to reveal Jesus Christ in him. a mere boy, that his conscience will not His religion was Puritan, and the word permit him to take the oath of supremin his case points to the moral fervour as acy. After lingering for a period at Oxwell as to the scholastic dogmatism of the ford in unattached study, he travels on Puritans. In point of fact, the most the continent, and makes his way, as was characteristic men of the entire period customary for spiritual knights errant of between the rise of Calvin and the Res- the time, to Geneva. Here the Calvinistoration of Charles II. are unintelligible tic doctors would give him play for his unless we to some extent realize that spiritual heat, that transcendent belief in responsibility to God, which could not, like the Puritan theology, be embodied in creeds, but which is vividly present in the best religious literature of the time, in Calvin's letters, and indeed in all Calvin's writings, in Jeremy Taylor's sermons and devotional treatises, in Milton's best poetry and Baxter's best prose. The religious inspiration of the age reached all parties in England, but it burned most vehemently in the Puritans. The fundamental allegation of Luther and Calvin was that the Church of Rome had falsified Christianity. They did not, as they have been a thousand times misrepresented to have done, proclaim the emancipation of the human mind from authority. They appealed to an infallible Bible against a Church whose claim to infallibility they rejected; and they affirmed it to be the duty of all men to submit to the infallible Bible as emphatically as Rome affirmed it to be the duty of all men to submit to the infallible Church. The English Puritans, whose theory of inspiration was more rigid than that of Luther and Calvin, insisted with fiery importunity that the Bible and the Bible alone should be the religion of England. Laud and the anti-Puritans urged that rites and ceremonies, though not enjoined in the Bible, might be lawfully imposed by the Church. The Anglican view was something of a compromise and something of a retrogression; both cir-less glad to have him temporarily out of cumstances would discredit it with the the way, on board an emigrant ship amid emotionally fervid and dialectically abso- a company of Puritans bound for New lute Henry Vane. Accordingly, from the England. The honest exiles cannot help earliest point at which we can trace him, looking on him as a surprising, if not he is a Puritan. A scrupulous conscien- alarming, phenomenon. His long hair, tiousness was combined in him with con- his courtly dress, his aristocratic deportsistent, unswerving Biblicism. At Ox- ment, strike them as more compatible ford, to which he had been sent from with the character of a court spy than of

We next find young Henry, with the acquiescence of his father, who is doubt

a genuine Puritan. But they soon discover their mistake. In prayer and theological discourse the young aristocrat can out-stay the longest-winded of the party. He lands at Boston in the beginning of 1635, is admitted to the freedom of Massachusetts on the 3rd of March, and in the following year is appointed Governor of the Colony.

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sibly stand this. Boston became a scene of fierce contention between Hutchinsonians and anti-Hutchinsonians. The clergy proved themselves as capable of criticism as their censor; and Mrs. Hutchinson was accused of various theological errors, Antinomian and Sabellian, the very sound of which was enough to make both the ears of any Puritan hearing them American writers are naturally inter- to tingle. The probability is that, if Mrs. ested in Vane's residence in Boston and Hutchinson had praised the other preachgovernorship of Massachusetts. That he ers as much as she praised Mr. Cotton, should have been elected to administer they might have failed to detect her herethe affairs of the colony at an age when sies. Vane took part with her and Cotyoung men are commonly still at college ton, defending her with a chivalry which is enough to prove that he possessed must enlist Mr. Mill and the leaders of some remarkable qualities, and Mr. Up- the Woman's Rights movement in his ham quotes instances of his dexterity favour, and arguing that her doctrines, and tact in managing men and composing though they looked like heresies, were differences: but, on the whole, his governorship was not successful. Clarendon's account is that, through his unparalleled intellectual subtlety, he involved the colony in interminable disputes and dissensions, and I fancy this is an uncivil statement of a substantial fact. He did not bring the disputes into the colony, but, having to deal with disputes, he did so not as a man of action, but as an irrefragable logician; not as a builder of houses on the ground, who hews his stones with hammer and chisel, but like a builder of castles in the air, who cuts phantom blocks with air-drawn razors. He did not succeed, but he was ready to prove to all the world that he ought to have succeeded.

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orthodox enough. The case appears to have been one in which a correct decision depended on the apprehension of sundry theological distinctions, which ordinary persons were almost sure to overlook or confound, but which would be perfectly and fascinatingly lucid to the subtle mind of Vane. According to the Puritan theology, personal holiness, or sanctification, is in no sense or degree the price of salvation; in plainer words, good works have absolutely no effect in justifying the sinner. But sanctification, if genuine — that is, if produced by Divine grace acting on the believer is an indispensable accompaniment, and an infallible proof, of justification; in other words, good works are absolutely inseparable from a The colony was blessed or cursed with life of saving faith. On these points Puria Mrs. Hutchinson, a preaching woman, tan theologians are agreed, and I have no clever, vehement, disputatious, censo- doubt that Mrs. Hutchinson and Henry rious, qualified in a rare degree to set men Vane would have maintained them against by the ears. She held every week one or all who should affirm that Luther's docmore preaching and prayer meetings, at trine of salvation by faith alone is unfawhich she rehearsed the sermons deliv-vourable to morals. But Mrs. Hutchinered from some Boston pulpit the Sunday son might very well draw a distinction before, with comments of her own. The theology of the town did not give her satisfaction; Mr. Cotton alone of several clergymen preached the Gospel as, in her opinion, it ought to be preached. Clerical human nature in a Puritan colony where the pastors expected to have themselves looked up to as the Heaven-sent guides of the community, could not pos

between genuine sanctification and works really good on the one hand, and certain external symbols of sanctification, certain ostensibly good works, which, in Puritan circles, might be easily taken for such, on the other. If what she said was that demure faces, long prayers, and conversation interlarded with Scripture - in one word, all the external signs of Puritanism

- were no infallible proofs of justification, it may easily be conceived that her language, wholly satisfactory to a Cottonian, would strike one of the opposite faction as countenancing the deadly Antinomian heresy that good works are not essential to salvation, and that there can be godliness without virtue. Vane and her other supporters declared that she struck merely at Pharisaism, hypocrisy, formality; her enemies alleged that she taught that the justified sinner might continue to sin.

The reader has probably had more than he wants of theology, but I may add that the second heresy imputed to Mrs. Hutchinson the belief that the Holy Ghost is an Influence, instead of a Person — would, in the discussions it originated be still more promotive of abstruse speculating and nice distinguishing, and would afford still finer play to the dialectical subtlety of Vane, than the first.

ried home an affectionate recollection of his New England friends; but he had not been successful; and the essential reason of his failure was that his genius was for drawing out the terms of a logical demonstration rather than for governing men.

In the England of 1637 he found ample occupation for his observant and speculative faculties, and it soon seemed probable that the experience which he had gained of affairs would be put in exercise. It was the time when Laud and Strafford were at the height of their power. In the year of Vane's return, Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, a lawyer, a clergyman, and a physician, who had written against the Bishops, had their ears cut off in Palace Yard, were fined £5000 apiece, and were consigned to life-long imprisonment in remote castles. Parliament had not sat for eight years, and servile judges had pronounced the King entitled to levy ship-money upon Hampden and other inland householders. Vane entered into relations with the leading Puritans, and, in his intercourse with the Court, was on the alert for information which might be useful to the party. Sir Henry Vane, his father, was a member of the Privy Council. Between the elder Vane and Strafford, who had insulted him, there was bitter hostility. The father and the son continued, as usual, on excellent terms.

The colony buzzed with disputation like a distracted beehive. Out of the question of Mrs. Hutchinson's heresy, or in addition to it, arose the question of the right of the Church to punish her for the same, and in this also Vane was ready with his logic. A sentence or two from his controversial writing on this point will exhibit in small compass his conception of Bible law as defining the powers alike of Church and State. "Churches have no liberty to receive or reject, at their discretions, but at the discretion of Christ. Whatsoever is done in word or deed, in Church or Commonwealth, must be done in the name of the Lord Jesus (Col. iii. 17). Neither hath Church nor Commonwealth any other than ministerial power from Christ (Eph. v. 23), who is the Head of the Church and the Prince of the Kings of the Earth (Rev. i. 5).” To realize this ideal, to bring Commonwealth and Church into the condition prescribed by Christ, was the object of Vane's life. His doctrine led directly to the sovereignty of the Christian people, for no monarch could be entitled to deprive Christians of the liberty conferred on them by Christ that is of the liberty to perform fully what Christ enjoins or could exercise more than ministerial power. But whilst thus covering himself with glory as a con-er's hand of treasonable expressions used troversalist, Vane slipped out of his seat by Strafford in the preceding May at a as Governor. His controversial antago- meeting of the Privy Council. Deeply nist, Winthrop, was elected in his stead, struck with the discovery, he takes a copy and in rather more than two years after of the paper, and feels bound to comhe reached the colony, Vane returned to municate it to "some person of better England. With a party in Massachusetts judgment than myself." The person sehe was still highly popular, and he car-lected is Pym, the conductor of the im

In due course, after his return from America, young Vane married and took up his abode with his wife in London. He was elected member for Hull in the Short Parliament, which met in the spring of 1640. In the course of this summer his father, absent in the North of England, desirous of enabling Henry to increase the amount of the settlement already made upon his wife, instructed his secretary in London to put into his son's hands the keys of certain boxes containing, says the father, "writings and the evidences of my lands." Having got from the boxes what he wanted, young Vane caught sight of a "red velvet cabinet," and being curious to know what was within, procured its key from the secretary and opened it. He finds, among other papers, a memorandum in his fath

ing slow and soft between willow-hung banks in "an endless plain;" Milton's is a swollen torrent rending its way down hill. Vane could track a thought with unweariable patience into a thousand ramifications; he could hold his way imperturbably amid distinctions which the fiery glance of Milton penetrated or overlooked. In his sonnet to Vane, Milton signalizes his power of exact discrimination and definition, and we can imagine Vane's countenance lighting up with enthusiasm as he marked his own fine-drawn logical wire-work becoming radiant in the imaginative eloquence of Milton.

peachment of Strafford. The words used were to the effect that the King, having vainly appealed to the affections of his people, was "absolved and loose from all rule of government," entitled "to do what power will admit,” and at liberty for one thing, to employ the army of Ireland "to reduce this kingdom to obedience." The effect produced by this evidence, when Pym brought it up on the trial of Strafford, was very great, and though the impeachment was abandoned and the method of attainder adopted, it unquestionably helped to bring the Earl to the block. The circumstance that there was personal enmity between Strafford and the elder Cromwell, Milton, and Vane were Vane has suggested scepticism as to the agreed that England ought not to pause purely accidental nature of the discovery half-way, but to complete her reformamade by his son. Vane, the Privy Coun- tion. Milton's position in his first pamcillor, was bound by oath to observe se- phlet was, as Professor Masson finely cresy respecting what took place at meet- says, "that the European Reformation ings of the Privy Council, and his oath begun by Luther had been arrested in required him to conceal all such mem- England at a point far less advanced than oranda as that of Strafford's treasonable that which it had reached in other counadvice. It is not surprising that the cav- tries, and that, in consequence, England aliers should have accused the father of had ever since been suffering and strugtreachery and perjury, but we may, I gling, and incapacitated, as by a load of think, assent to the resolution in which nightmare only half thrown off, for the the House of Commons declared that no full and free exercise of her splendid blame could be attached to the son. The spirit." Cromwell and Vane, adroitly younger Vane never sat in the Privy using Sir Edward Deering as their inCouncil along with Strafford, and as one strument, introduced a bill in May, 1641, of the most advanced and resolute Puri-"for the utter abolishing and taking tans, he had a right to be as eager in the search for evidence against their great adversary as Pym himself.

away of all Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors and Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, PreIn the Long Parliament he at once as- bendaries, Chanters, Canons, and all other sociated himself with the Root and their under-officers." Vane's speech in Branch party. Their view of the policy the debate was the speech of a wary polito be adopted in regard to the State was tician and experienced Parliamentary that the amplest constitutional conces- statesman, rather than of an enthusiastic sions should be exacted from the King, dreamer of ecclesiastical dreams. Episand not only so, but that securities should | copacy, he argued, could be defended be taken that those concessions would only by substantially the same arguments not, in any vicissitude of public feeling, be as defended Popery; it had been tried in resumed. For the Church they demanded England, and had shown itself unfavoura complete reform, to the extent of able to piety; it alienated the Church of sweeping away the entire Episcopal sys- England from the Reformed Churches; it tem and substituting a system which they tended to bring back Popery; and it was did not exactly define, but which would hostile to civil liberty and favourable to bring the government and ritual of the arbitrary conceptions of government. Church into close accordance with those The hardest-headed zealot in the House of the other Churches which had thrown could not call this abstruse, the most prooff the yoke of Rome. Pre-eminent in saic stateman could not call it fantastical. this party we distinguish Oliver Crom- Strange to say-strange, that is, when well, Henry Vane, and-outside the we recollect the sequel Cromwell, MilHouse-John Milton. Between Milton ton, and Vane were all three at this time and Vane it is easy to understand how more correctly definable as Presbyterians there should be sympathy. Each had than by any other ecclesiastical designawhat the other, comparatively speaking, tion. It is curiously illustrative of the lacked. Vane was singularly void of im- nature of Revolutions, and of the charaginative fire; his writing is a river mov-acter of the results which their rude and

perilous ministry can effect, that it was the Five Members. From that hour the not found possible, in the course of the destinies of England were in the hands Puritan Revolution, to fix permanently, of the Root and Branch Party. in place of the ecclesiastical system swept When the war broke out, Cromwell beaway, any one of the forms of ecclesiasti- took himself to the field. Vane, intrepid cal polity which prevailed at the time. in speculation, perfect in moral courage, Each party, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, had the reputation of physical timidity. Independent, was in turn strong enough In friendship and in policy, they remained to oppress or strong enough to destroy; cordially allied. After the death of Hampbut when the Puritan army was triumphant den, in the summer of 1643, and the death in England, neither Episcopacy, Presby- of Pym, which occurred a few months teries, nor Independency could have its later, Vane was the most important of way. At the time when Laud was cutting those leaders of the Parliament who conoff Presbyterian ears and Wren was hop-fined themselves to their Parliamentary ing to bring some Puritan to the stake, the duties. He had been appointed jointgreat body of the people wanted nothing secretary of the navy so early as 1640, more than that the Laudian ceremonial and both in this capacity and in the work should not be matter of forcible imposi- of Committees, he proved himself a contion on the consciences of men. At the summate man of business. time when Cromwell and Vane pushed forward the Root and Branch bill, a temperate version of the Presbyterian system, with considerable freedom in the use of vestures and liturgies, would have given satisfaction to a like proportion of the nation. When the war ended with the battle of Worcester, both Episcopacy and Presbyterianism had become impracticable, but Independency, though professed by many able men, and favoured by Cromwell on the ground of the comparative tolerance of its adherents, could not be established. The issue of all the furious contention between the three forms of Protestant Christianity was that Cromwell found himself compelled to set on foot a nondescript scheme, which any modern Independent, or Divine-right Independent of any time, would reject as intolerable. There are no disappointments so heart-breaking as those of great revolutions.

For the present, Vane and Cromwell had overstepped the mark. The debate on the Root and Branch bill marks a point at which there occurred a decided rally on behalf of the Church and of Charles. In proceeding against Strafford the Commons had acted as one man, and even in the attempt to save the Earl from the capital sentence Digby had commanded only a trifling minority. But when Strafford had fallen and Laud and his impositions were flung out of sight, a formidable party in the House became conscious of a strong enthusiasm for the Church of England. Two events combined to stay the reaction and to hurry on the Revolution. In the autumn of 1641, England was convulsed by intelligence of the Irish Rebellion; in the first month of 1642, Charles attempted the arrest of

Sufficient importance has not been attached by Macaulay in his history to the service performed by Vane for the Parliament in the second half of 1643. Occupied with Cromwell's statement that his Ironsides, men of religion and a high purpose, had brought victory to the Puritan standard, Lord Macaulay makes no mention of that feat of statesmanship and diplomacy by which the extremely probable crushing of Cromwell's military schemes in the bud was averted. In the summer of 1643 the scale of the Parliament was dangerously depressed. The King was carrying all before him in the West; Newcastle had not been checked in the East; it seemed likely, if not inevitable, that, should no important accession of force be gained by the Parliament, a brief campaign in 1644 would bring the war to a close, and lay the liberties of England in their grave. Cromwell was fully sensible of the danger, for he knew that the troops of the Eastern counties, which he had been organizing, were not numerous enough to cope with Newcastle. Clarendon has not overlooked the critical nature of the situation. He dwells with bitter emphasis on the means by which the fortune of the war was changed. An embassy was despatched to Scotland. Vane, though several commissioners were associated with him, was himself the embassy. "He was chosen," says Clarendon, "to cozen and deceive a whole nation, which excelled in craft and cunning, which he did with notable pregnancy and dexterity." He was chosen to persuade the Scots to send an army to the aid of the Parliament. The negotiation was ticklish, but there is no need to suppose that Vane tried, or intended, to cozen. It was necessary to hold out an induce

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