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required that every person admitted to a place of profit or trust under the crown, whether civil or military, should qualify for his office by taking the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. It had been preceded many years before by "The Corporation Act," which required the same qualification, in every one who entered a corporation, and also an oath similar to that required by "The Five Mile Act." The design of the Corporation Act, was levelled directly against the nonconformists, but the Test Act was directed against the Papists, though of course it equally excluded the dissenters. When the Test Act

was brought into the House of Commons, the court most strenuously opposed it, and endeavoured to divide the Church party by proposing that some regard might be had to Protestant dissenters, hoping by this means to clog the bill and throw it out of the house. Upon which Alderman Love, a dissenter, and member for the city, rose and said, he hoped the clause in favour of Protestant dissenters would occasion no intemperate heats; and therefore moved, that since this was a considerable barrier against Popery, the bill might pass without any alteration, and that nothing might interfere till it was finished, "and then," says the Alderman, "we (dissenters) will try if the parliament will not distinguish us from Popish recusants by some marks of their favour: but we are willing to lie under the severity of the laws for a time, rather than clog a more necessary work with our concerns."

In our days this would have been a strange combination of disinterestedness and selfishness, which would be scarcely entitled to praise: but in the circumstances of that day, when such efforts were made to subvert the constitution and the Protestant religion, it was deserving of high commendation.

Charles died in the communion of the church of Rome, though the head of the Church of England, and was succeeded on the throne by one still more of a Papist than himself, and of course not a less determined enemy of Puritanism, which is the most direct antagonism of Popery. The persecution of the Nonconformists was now carried on with tenfold fury under the direction of Jeffreys, the veriest monster that ever disgraced the bench or soiled the ermine. This ferocious judge, whose conduct set manners, morals, and justice equally at defiance, would, if he had not been restrained by private and powerful remonstrance, have had Baxter publicly whipped for his nonconformity through the city of London. It may be conceived what must have been the sufferings of less considerable men, when so distinguished an individual was in danger of being treated with such cruel indignity. An act was passed about this period in Scotland, more atrocious than almost any other that was passed in those dreadful times, "That whosoever should preach in a conventicle under a roof, or should attend, either as preacher or hearer, a conventicle in the open air, should be punished with death or confiscation of property."

James, to accomplish his design of favouring Popery and finally restoring England to the Papal see, published his royal declaration of liberty of conscience, and commanded it to be read in all churches and chapels. This was exalting the kingly authority above the law, and was truly what it was called, "a dispensing power." In this matter the clergy, who had hitherto preached the doctrine of passive obedience and nonresistance, saw their principles carried to an extent of which they never dreamt, and they now perceived that though this, according to their views, was the duty of the Puritans

towards the King as head of the church, it was not their duty to the King, when his object was to favour Popery; and they resisted. Some of the bishops earned for themselves immortal renown, by the stand they took in opposing the project of the King in the exercise of his dispensing power. They were sent to the tower, tried, and acquitted; and to them a debt is due for conduct which had no small share in liberating the country from the yoke of tyranny, and preventing also the yoke of Popery. The great body of Nonconformists made com mon cause with the bishops and clergy in their resistance of the dispensing power. They availed themselves of course of the opportunity afforded them by the royal declaration, for meeting publicly for worship. It is true this was contrary to statutes which James had by his own authority suspended, but the statutes themselves were opposed to the word of God, and were no more binding upon their consciences than were the laws of the Pagan empire of Rome upon the consciences of the primitive Christians. Beyond this the nonconformist body would not go, much to the chagrin of the King, who used every method to draw them into an expressed acknowledgment of his dispensing power, and an approval of its exercise. Baxter, Bunyan, and others signalised themselves by their opposition to the King's conduct. A meeting of Presbyterian ministers was held at the house of Howe to consult upon the course to be adopted. James knew of the conference, and manifested the greatest anxiety to know the result, and two royal messengers were in attendance during the discussion, who at the close of the meeting carried back the unwelcome news to the palace, that Howe had declared against the dispensing power, and had carried the meeting with him. The Nonconformists forgot the injuries they had received,

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and found themselves attracted by a strong religious sympathy towards those bishops and priests of the Church of England who, in spite of royal mandates, threats, and promises, were now waging vigorous war with the church of Rome; and they who had been so long separated by a mortal enmity were now daily drawing nearer each other. So great was the danger from a common foe, that it led them for a while to look above and beyond the differences by which they were severed.

James abdicated the throne: the glorious revolution of 1688 followed, and also the accession of William and Mary. One of the first and most precious fruits of the Revolution was the Act of Toleration which virtually, though not formally, annulled the penal statutes against the Nonconformists. This celebrated act may be called the Magna Charta of Dissenters, to whom it was a matter of universal delight and of unbounded thanksgiving, yet was it in some respects incomplete. Its title is obnoxious, inasmuch as it tacitly implies that dissent, though an evil, was on some grounds tolerated, and only just borne with. And is there not a certain concealed assumption of a right to treat it as an evil, but which right is, for political reasons, put in abeyance ? Besides, toleration, in reference to religious matters, is rather an ungracious sound in another point of view, for it is not only tolerating man in worshipping God, but seems to imply, or to come very near it, tolerating God in receiving homage, which is very revolting to the feelings. We none of us like to be told we are tolerated, and thus to be considered as all but intolerable. It should have been a law for cancelling all persecuting statutes, and acknowledging the right of every man to liberty of conscience. And then, moreover, it was quite incom

plete in its extent, for it entirely excluded both the Roman Catholics, and the Unitarians, by requiring from all who would enjoy its benefits the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and a subscription to the thirty-nine articles, excepting only those which relate to the powers and government of the church and to infant baptism. This act has been subsequently enlarged, by substituting a declaration, when called upon to make it, of our being Christians and Protestants, and that we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the revealed will of God. And by a further enlargement in the latter end of the reign of GEORGE III. it has been extended to those who impugn the doctrine of the Trinity. Still it was a wondrous advance in religious liberty; it was the first legal toleration England had ever known, and placed it ahead of every country in Europe except Holland, for though in some of the German States, Roman Catholics and Protestants, Lutherans and Calvinists, enjoyed together religious liberty, and the Reformers in France had once possessed, by the Edict of Nantes, much liberty, yet there are circumstances which gave a pre-eminence above all these to the English Act of Toleration.

The Nonconformists were now at full liberty to build meeting-houses, and to hold public worship according to the dictates of their own judgment, without interruption or molestation. They were not slow to avail themselves of this rich privilege. Their first work was to build their sanctuaries, and within twenty years after the passing of the Act of Toleration, no less than between a thousand and eleven hundred congregations were formed in England alone, the greater part of which had been collected, and their places of worship erected,

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