Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/382

370 scarcely less priestly, and, in some respects, more coercive, than the organization of the church from which they diverged. Even among the Quakers, notwithstanding the pronounced individuality implied by their theory, there has grown up a definite creed and a body exercising control.

Modern Nonconformity in England has much more decidedly exhibited the essential trait of anti-sacerdotalism. It has done this in various minor ways as well as in a major way.

There is the multiplication of sects, with which by foreign observers England is reproached, but which, philosophically considered, is one of her superior traits. For the rise of every new sect, implying a re-assertion of the right of private judgment, is a collateral result of the nature which makes free institutions possible.

Still more significant do we see this multiplication of sects to be if we consider the assigned causes of division. Take, for instance, the case of the Wesleyans. In 1797 the Methodist New Connexion organized itself on the principle of lay participation in church government. In 1810 the Primitive Methodists left the original body: the cause being a desire to have "lay representatives to the Conference." Again, in 1834, prompted by opposition to priestly power, the Wesleyan Methodist Association was formed: its members claiming more influence for the laity, and resisting central interference with local government. And then in 1849, there was yet another secession from the Methodist body, similarly characterized by resistance to ministerial authority.

Of course, in sects less coercively governed, there have been fewer occasions for rebellions against priestly control; but there are not wanting illustrations, some of them supplied even by the small and free bodies of the Unitarians, of this tendency to divide in pursuance of the right of private judgment. Moreover, in the absence of a dissidence sufficiently great to produce secession, there is everywhere a large amount of express disagreement on minor points among those holding what is supposed to be the same body of beliefs. Perhaps the most curious instance of this is furnished by the established Church. I do not refer simply to its divisions into high, and low, and broad; all implying more or less of the nonconforming spirit within it. I refer more especially to the strange anomaly that the ritualists are men who, while asserting priestly authority, are themselves rebels against priestly authority—defy their ecclesiastical superiors in their determination to assert ecclesiastical supremacy.

But the universally admitted claim to religious freedom shown in these various ways, is shown still more by the growing movement for disestablishment of the Church. This movement, which, besides tacitly denying all sacerdotal authority, denies the power of a government, even though elected by a majority of votes, to prescribe religious belief or practice, is the logical outcome of the Protestant theory.