Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/748

728 728 INDEPENDENTS silenced all who did not conform ; in 1603 the Conventicle Act, which prevented Nonconformist congregations meeting, not allowing in houses more than five persons beyond the family to be present at once. In 1665 the Five Mile Act forbade non-conforming ministers to come within 5 miles of any corporate borough; in 1670 the Conventicle Act was made more rigorous; and in 1673 the Test Act made Nonconformists ineligible for offices, civil, naval, or military, under the crown. Charles, indeed, in his weak way, tried to be more generous than his church or parliament, wished to tolerate the Nonconformists that he might the better tolerate the Roman Catholics. Out of this feeling came the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, which was, inciden tally, the means of proving the strength of dissent, three thousand applications being made for licences to use or erect places of worship ; but parliament resisted, and Charles gave way. In the dark days that had now come to them, the Inde pendents, it may well be said, lived with patient courage, and learned through their sufferings. They had men among them that adorned their adversity, and made even their sudden obscurity illustrious. John Owen, late vice- chancellor of Oxford, massive, erudite, the ideal of the scholastic theologian, building up with patient skill his loved science and fencing it round with the sort of argu ments his age understood ; Thomas Goodwin, less varied but more subtle, not so broad but quite as analytic as Owen, dealing with rich delight in the dialectical subtleties that pleased his age ; John Howe, with a soul above the narrowness and bitterness of his day, serene in the midst of his troubles, living in sublime contemplation on &quot; the Living Temple,&quot; or the &quot; Vision of God &quot; ; Joseph Caryl and William Greenhill, quaint expositors, rich in the lore then used to explain the Old Testament ; Theophilus Gale, the equal of Cudworth in his knowledge of the ancient world, full of the great and fruitful idea he has embodied in his Court of the Gentiles, these were some of the ejected from church or university, and they may help to show the quality of the men who were now, because of their Inde pendency, outcasts from the Church of England, and for it deprived of their common rights as citizens. Their conduct under James showed that they would not purchase their own privileges at the expense of the public safety, and under William their fidelity to the constitution and liberties of England had its first reward in the Act of Toleration. This was but a small concession, and one that by the Occasional Conformity Act of Anne was almost as good as repealed. But what had been done could not be altogether undone. The coming in of the Hanoverian dynasty brought a more liberal spirit into politics, and history has ever since, with an occasional period of declension, been a progressive movement towards freedom. As one by one its principles and claims have been admitted by the state, England has become a roomier and healthier place for spirits who feel that for religion- to be religious it must be free. In estimating the work done in England by the Indepen dents, it is necessary to bear in mind the extent to which they have supplemented the deficiencies of the Anglican Church. But for them religion in many places would have almost, perhaps altogether, died out. They have helped to quicken and deepen the religious consciousnes; and life of the English people. Their preachers, too, have not been without influence, which is the more remarkable as from the time of the Act of Uniformity till a few year; ago they were excluded from the national universities. Soon after the passing of the Act of Toleration we find Independent preachers rising to eminence. The Foster who was celebrated in Pope s couplet &quot; Let modest Foster, if he will, excel Ten metropolitans in preaching well was an Independent, and as vigorous as a thinker as he was eloquent as a preacher, his answer to Tindal anticipating in its leading lines the celebrated argument of Butler in his Analogy. Isaac Watts is a name that must still be honoured, and Philip Doddridge a name that must be mentioned with respect. Edward Williams did much to revive the study of theology in the end of last century and early years of this, and Dr Pye Smith showed that within dissent scholarship and theological learning were still possible. The last generation had not a few men of distinc tion. The names of Henry Rogers, Joseph Gilbert, J. Angell James, Dr Winter Hamilton, Dr Ralph Wardlaw, Dr Robert Vaughan, his distinguished son Alfred Vaughan, Dr Halley, the historian of Nonconformity in Lancashire, and Thomas Binney of London are names representative of the kind of men that Independency can still produce. But to complete this sketch of the Independents we must add one other element the work done by their academies and colleges. They have always believed in an educated ministry, and when cast out of the universities one of their very first acts was to found academies. These they had great difficulty in maintaining, because of the operation of the oppressive acts passed in Charles II. s reign ; but in spite of the difficulties they contrived to do so. Theophilus Gale had an academy; so had Samuel Cradock, Thomas Doolittle, Richard Frankland, and others of the ejected ministers. It was possible to keep these only by the most frequent changes of place, so as to elude the vigilance of the authorities. When toleration was granted, the academies were able in the greater quiet they now enjoyed to do better work. One of these may serve as a sample. At Gloucester and then at Tewkesbury was an academy conducted by the Rev. Samuel Jones. Here were educated Thomas Seeker, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury; Joseph Butler, bishop of Durham, and author of the Analogy ; Samuel Chandler, one of the finest scholars of his day, who remained in poverty the scholar and the Christian Nonconformist still ; and Jeremiah Jones. We know, on the authority of an early letter of Seeker s, the method of education followed in Tewkesbury; and certainly, measured by the standard of the day, it was as thorough as the education was ample. Oi.t of these academies the present Congregational colleges have grown. It is unnecessary to attempt any exposition of the principles of Independency. These have been made ap parent in the progress of this sketch. It may simply be. said here that the Independents conceive their church order as the primitive and apostolic, and that out of their idea of the constitution and order of the primitive Christian churches their own system has grown. They believe that their conception of the church necessarily involves freedom of conscience, the interference with no man s belief, the concession of equal rights to all churches or religious societies by the state, and they may well remember with pride that John Locke based his plea for toleration on a conception of the church essentially akin to theirs. 1 Their notion of the pastoral office is in no respect sacerdotal, but is based on the Old Testament idea of the prophet, on the New Testament idea of the preacher the man who by help or inspiration of God speaks for God to men. And the call to his office comes through the people ; the divine choice is expressed through the men the divine word enlightens and the divine Spirit guides. Their theology has been predominantly Calvinistic, though of the more moderate type; but there has always been variety of theo logical opinion, subscription and the uniformity it attempts to secure being alike impossible to Independency. 1 Works, ii. 245 (ed. 1759).