the constitutional question, had been bred up too long on The fault of the commonplaces of Puritanism to recognise boldly division falls that no settlement of the Church was likely to

on both

sides. Pym.

be permanent which did not provide for both the chief phases of opinion. Without being himself a fanatic, he had more sympathy with the fanatics than he had with the ceremonialists. The grand vision of religious liberty never lightened his path. The hard problem of toleration which his own generation and the next were called to solve never presented itself to his mind as a question worthy of consideration. He would have had but one Church, one form of worship, one dogmatic teaching, though he would no doubt have administered this system in a large and tolerant spirit. Fatal as his choice was, nothing else could fairly have been expected of him. If he had not shared the errors of his followers he would never have been their leader. The belief that the State was to settle a definite Church order, to which all were bound to submit, was too deeply rooted in the English mind to be easily eradicated, and the unbending severity of Laud's government had called forth a reaction strong enough to remove far away the thought of toleration for any practices which seemed akin to the Laudian innovations.

Falkland.

The action of Falkland is still more disappointing than that of Pym. It might have been expected that with his broad culture and wide sympathies he would have made some overtures with the object of enlarging the formularies of the Church, in order to embrace all moderate men within its fold. The policy of comprehension, indeed, was not altogether a promising one. It would, in any case, have left too many outside the widest possible Church to be accepted as a permanent solution of the problem. But at least it would have acknowledged that the problem existed. No help of this kind was forthcoming from Falkland. His entire want of imaginative force left him without creative power. He was a critican amiable, truth-loving critic—but not a statesman. He had attacked Laudian Episcopacy in February. His delicate nerves were shocked in October by the systematic rigour of Presbyterianism and by the fanaticism of the

Oct. 21.

sects. He had said his last word in politics, and he now sank into a mere position of dependency upon a man in every respect, except rigidity of purpose, so inferior to him as Hyde,

The perma

nent work of the Long Parliament ended.

What has yet to be told.

Like Falkland, the Long Parliament itself had said its last word in politics. Everything that it had done up to this point, with the single exception of the compulsory clauses of the Triennial Act, was accepted at the Restoration and passed into the permanent constitution of the country. Everything that it attempted to do after this was rejected at the Restoration. The first was the work of the whole Parliament, the second was the work of a majority. Failure, and it must be confessed deserved failure, was the result of Pym's leadership. Failure, and equally deserved failure, would have been the result of the leadership of Hyde. It does not follow that the historian should pause here and throw down his pen in despair. It does not follow that he is even called on to regret the sad and melancholy tale which has yet to be unrolled of Englishmen, born to be as brothers, flying at one another's throats in savage hatred; or, worse still, of Englishmen in despair casting away the high thoughts of their fathers to grovel in the slough of sensuality, except with that regret which is ever springing up afresh for the imperfections and weaknesses of human nature itself. Would England, it may well be asked, have been really the better if it had limited its desires to purely material objects, if it had been content to abolish ship-money and the Star Chamber, to seize the purse, and, with the purse in its hand, to enter into its inheritance of power? Such gains have never been sufficient for any nation or for any man. Liberty and authority are only permanent when they are grasped not for their own sake, but for the sake of higher and more beneficent aims. Our fathers, it is true, strove in error. They walked on paths which led not to wisdom and justice, but to folly and injustice. But wisdom and justice were the objects which they set before themselves. Each party contended for an ideal Church, which was not soiled in their minds by the admixture of material dross; and no man who strives even for a false ideal can fall so low as the man who strives for no ideal at all. The

error was great, and it was sorely expiated. He whose lot it is to tell the tale of the heroic and fatal strife may well look beyond the strife and the immediate relaxation of energy which followed its conclusion. Even in the Restoration he can foresee the Revolution and the reawakening of moral earnestness and intellectual insight which was the ultimate result of the Revolution. If it was in England that the great problem of the seventeenth century was solved by liberty of speech and thought, if England has from time to time raised herself above the temptations of material wealth to loose the bonds of the slave, and to redress the wrongs of the oppressed, if her greatest glory has been that she has been not only free herself but the mother of free nations, it is because at this crisis of her fate she did not choose to lie down and slumber as soon as she judged that the rights of property were safe.

Voices raised for tole:ation.

Even now voices were raised to point to the true path of safety; but they were not voices to which any man of authority was likely to listen. The desire for toleration naturally comes to the persecuted before it reaches the philosopher or the statesman, and the theory which had been struck out by the early Separatists retained its power over their July. successors. Henry Burton, who had been restored Burton's to his church in Friday Street, had been rushing Protested. forwards to extreme Puritanism, and in a pamphlet entitled The Protestation Protested,' had sketched out that plan of a national Church surrounded by voluntary churches, which

Protestation

Lord Brooke's Discourse on Episcopacy.

was accepted at the Revolution of 1688 as the solution of the difficulty by which two generations had been troubled.2 Still more remarkable was A Discourse opening the nature of that Episcopacy which is exercised in England, the result of Lord Brooke's vacation

1 Its publication is mentioned in a letter of July 11, R. Hobart to J. Hobart, July 11, Tanner MSS. lxvi. fol. 109.

2 The Humble Petition of the Brownists, 1641, E. 178, declares for complete toleration even for Roman Catholics and for the Family of Love, on the ground that whatever is of God will prosper. The largeness of its charity is rather suspicious, and it was most probably intended as a cari

cature.

studies. Never did so unpromising a beginning lead up to a fairer conclusion. Brooke entered upon his task by denouncing bishops as upstarts of low birth and ill-breeding. His argument meandered for some time amongst disputed points of ecclesiastical antiquity, in which he fails to interest the reader, because, like most other controversialists of his day, he shows that he is not led by any spirit of historical inquiry, and that he is thinking. of Laud and Wren much more than of Ambrose and Augustine. When the constructive portion of the book is reached the author wins upon our sympathies. He is not, indeed, aware, any more than Pym was aware, of the full extent of the problem to be solved. His ideal Church is Puritan and nothing more. But he had been brought, as a member of the House of Lords, face to face with the question of the treatment of schismatics. He had doubtless been one of those Peers who visited the conventicle in Deadman's Place. In this practical way he had come to ask himself the question whether liberty of conscience for the ignorant as well as for the wise were good or bad. The bishops, he says, had declared that ceremonies were indifferent, and on that ground had forced all to take part in them. Brooke boldly answers that nothing is indifferent. The least action ought either to be done or left undone, and it is only our ignorance of the right course which we veil under the name of indifference. Yet if there is to be any sort of Church at all, it must impose certain acts upon its members. The difficulty comes when the community is of one opinion and an individual member of another. Brooke decides for the individual. No power on earth, he says, ought to force his practice. 'One that doubts with reason and humility may not, for aught I yet see, be forced by violence.' ' With this thought before him Brooke refused to be frightened by the danger of admitting ignorant and vulgar persons to teach. Why, he asks, may not a man be allowed to preach, though he is basely employed all the week in trade, as well as a bishop who is busy all the week with affairs of state? Brooke has full faith in the purifying effect of liberty. "Fire and water," he says "may be restrained, but light cannot.

1 Page 33.

It

will in at every cranny, and the more it is opposed it shines the. brighter, so that now to stint it is to resist an enlightened and inflamed multitude." The activity of the bishops in enforcing conformity had resulted in producing many thousand Nonconformists. Why could not men agree to differ? "Can we not

dissent in judgment but we must also disagree in affection? We never prove ourselves true members of Christ more than when we embrace His members with most enlarged yet straightest affections." "1

It is impossible to over-estimate the value of such a book. Whilst the future champions of toleration were silent, whilst Cromwell was giving all his strength to the work of Brooke's the hour, whilst Milton was lost in admiration of his

Merits of

work. latest birth of an all-embracing and unobtrusive Presbyterianism, Brooke had worked out the problem of his age, and had given the solution which, after forty-eight years of confused and weary seeking, all England would accept. His pleading on behalf of the liberty of unlicensed preaching preceded by three years Milton's pleading for the liberty of unlicensed printing. No defect in the form of Brooke's work should be allowed to distract our minds from its intrinsic value.

If Pym was very far from possessing Brooke's keenness of insight into the future, it was at least certain that his counsels would be given on the side of moderation. The RootBishops Ex-and-Branch Bill was finally abandoned at the reclusion Bill. assembling of Parliament. The attempt made by the

The second

committee to enforce the resolutions of the Commons in the matter of the ceremonies was also dropped. On the 21st a new Bill was brought in to deprive the clergy of all temporal authority, and especially to exclude the bishops from their seats in the House of Lords. The opposition to the measure was of a very perfunctory kind. Hyde objected to it on the ground that it meddled with the constitution of the Upper House, whilst Falkland took the more practical ground that it was certain to be rejected by the Peers. The only alternative scheme was offered by Dering, who asked that a national Synod should be

1 Pages 98, 123.