Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/560

546 safe, in which there would be nothing but national and individual dishonour and degradation; and nothing in history is finer than the moral retribution, the poetical justice, of the state church and the state aristocracy being now driven into this cleft stick, and compelled to turn again and drive out the incorrigible tyrants whom they had so long flattered and assisted.

The vessel which brought over the Prince of Orange to England.

If we will see the real magnitude of the change which James had now forced on the spirit of the church, we must look back to the hour and from the hour when James the pedant first entered England. What do we see in this long retrospect? the high church and the aristocracy, its national ally, worshipping absolutism in the person of the monarch; echoing and supporting with all their flattery, might, and influence the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience. There we shall see Bancroft, Whitgift, and others, their brother bishops, telling the modern Solomon, when he rated and spurned for them the puritan divines at Hampton Court, "that his majesty was the breath of their nostrils," and that by the divine inspiration. There we shall see Dr. Cowell, under the patronage of bishop Bancroft, publishing in his "Law Dictionary," that the king was above all law; shall see Mainwaring, Montague, and Sibthorp, advanced by Charlas I. to bishoprics and stalls for preaching the very doctrine which these bishops are now compelled to repudiate; preaching that if a prince should command anything contrary to the laws of God and nature, they must still obey him as the Lord's anointed— offering no resistance, no railing, but mild and perfect obedience. There we shall find bishop Williams telling Charles "that there was a public conscience and a private conscience." We shall see that, in all the arbitrary measures of these kings for forcing the consciences of their subjects in Scotland and Ireland, as well as in England, the bishops were the unfailing abettors. What torrents of blood of the persecuted had their doctrine and their exhortation poured out on the mountains of Scotland and the wastes of Ireland! What groans of misery and death had arisen, from the same origin, from crowded and dying puritans in the loathsome dungeons of England! We shall find these bishops and clergy supporting Charles in all his illegal and tyrannical intrigues on his subjects in the Star Chamber and High Commission court; Laud, their admired primate, the most fiery and officious actor in promotion of these atrocities. The clippings, and loppings, and brandings, and nose-slittings of Prynne, and Bastwick, and Leighton, will testify against them. We shall see Oxford and Cambridge singing the praises of absolutism and non-resistance; and Oxford receiving Charles with open arms when he commenced war on his subjects. We shall find the high churchmen eagerly claiming rewards from Charles II. for having helped to bring him back without any restraint on his absolute principles. When he was brought back and was fairly installed among his pimps and his mistresses, we shall see the convocation hailing him in the liturgy as "our most religious king." We shall find them instigating him against all dissenters, to the passing of those acts—the act of uniformity and the five-mile act—and being within a hair's-breadth of obtaining an oath of non-resistance to be imposed on everybody. This we shall find so late as 1665, whilst the parliament was sitting at Oxford, and the bishops and clergy were preaching before the king and parliament members as if this non-resistance bill was already passed; and the