Читать книгу Brief Records of the Independent Church at Beccles, Suffolk - S. Wilton Rix - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Antiquity of dissent from state religions—Leading principles of modern nonconformity: authority of Christ; sufficiency of the Scriptures; duty of examining and privilege of interpreting their contents—Right of private judgment claimed by its enemies—Position and duty of those by whom it is conceded—Illustrations from English ecclesiastical history—This right asserted by the first converts to Christianity; by the reformers—Henry VIII.—Edward VI.—Mary; seeks support from Suffolk protestants; promises toleration; practices persecution—East Anglian counties abound with protestants; they petition the queen; are rebuked; and remonstrate with her commissioners in vain.

It has been remarked by Lord Bacon, that “those times are ancient when the world is ancient, and not those we vulgarly account so, by counting backwards: so that the present time is the real antiquity.” Modern institutions are not hastily to be rejected as impertinent or crude; for they are frequently found to exhibit the successful result of a protracted struggle between truth and error, or to imbody the accumulated wisdom of many generations. But if it be contended that, in speculations relating to religion, “quod verum, id antiquissimum,” that antiquity is the test of truth; they who claim to be free from all human authority in religious affairs, need not shrink from the application of such a principle. The origin of dissent from “the commandments of men,” on such subjects, must be sought at a period far more remote than the rise of Independent Churches in England. Under the Old Testament dispensation, nonconformity, thus understood, was nobly exemplified and divinely sanctioned in the instances of Daniel, and the three Hebrew youths. During the apostolic times its course was distinctly marked. It has since mingled with the impurities, and has sometimes been almost lost amid the intellectual and moral stagnation, of passing ages. At length opposing elements again brought it more conspicuously into notice: obstruction augmented the rapidity of its current; and it will flow on until it shall be lost in the ocean of piety and freedom, which is destined to cover the whole earth.

The leading principle of nonconformity, as the term is now generally employed, to signify a continued separation from the national church of England, is, the sole authority of Jesus Christ as the head and lawgiver of his people. This exclusive right he is alleged to have claimed, when he cautioned his disciples against the assumption of ecclesiastical power, emphatically reminding them that One was their master, “even Christ.” [3] A sentiment, which, from the peculiar form of its announcement, he appears to have intended that they should adopt as a principle and quote as an axiom of his government. All that he taught them, they were bound to obey; all that he enjoined, they were to practise; and he discharged them, by that brief and memorable sentence, from all spiritual allegiance to each other, and to their fellow-men, however exalted or wise. Reason, persuasion, the evidence of the sacred writings, “the effectual fervent prayer,” and the eloquence of a holy life, these were the weapons he put into their hands, the only weapons adapted to the genius of his religion and to the nature of man. [4]

From this view of Christ’s authority is derived another principle scarcely less momentous,—the absolute sufficiency of the sacred Scriptures, “the word of Christ,” to prescribe the faith and regulate the practice of his followers. A revelation inadequate to these purposes, it is generally admitted, would be at once derogatory to God, and a cruel mockery of erring man. Nor can the perplexity arising out of contending human powers, and conflicting articles of faith and rules of practice, be avoided, but by submitting all to one criterion,—“to the law and to the testimony,”—and by the consideration that “if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” [5]

The Bible, possessing such claims, addresses itself to every rational creature with an individuality which none can evade, and fixes upon each a responsibility which cannot be delegated. Hence there appears (at least in the apprehension of a nonconformist) to devolve upon every one to whom the page of revelation is accessible, the sacred and inalienable right, or rather the imperious and solemn duty, of personally examining its contents and submitting to its precepts. Since its Author has commissioned none to dictate its interpretation, he has, in effect, granted to all a perfect freedom of inquiry and discussion. Nor is it less a duty than a privilege, to aid, as circumstances may allow, in elucidating its doctrines and requirements, and in promoting the practice and the promulgation of such views of religion and forms of worship as an enlightened conscience may approve. This right alone, it is urged, could justify “Peter and the other apostles” when they openly disobeyed the command of the high priest; and, without claiming any special exemption in their own case, laid down as the ground of their conduct, the general principle “we ought to obey God rather than men.” [7a] They deduced their duty from their convictions; and while their enemies “took counsel to slay them,” they firmly resisted the interference of human authority between their own consciences and that God who “seeketh such to worship Him” as “worship Him in spirit and in truth.” [7b] Unhappily there has not always been found, among persecutors, a Gamaliel to point out the propriety and the result of allowing the free publication of religious opinions. “Refrain,” said he, in terms, a due regard to which would have saved mankind from an inconceivable amount of suffering; “refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.” [7c]

Nonconformity, then, dates its existence from the time when the secular power first infringed upon the liberty wherewith Christ had made his disciples free. It professes to be jealous of his authority, and to adhere to his laws and institutions. Though ever so palatable or ever so bitter a draught be presented from another source, it still dares to draw from the well-spring of truth the waters of everlasting life which he came to dispense. Whatever, in modes of faith or forms of worship, may be enjoined by civil or ecclesiastical powers, it prefers “to keep close to the college of fishermen, and to the doctrine of inspired apostles; to a Scriptural creed and a spiritual worship.” [8] It claims, in a word, to be the only true conformity.

The right of private judgment in religious matters, which follows immediately from the first principles of dissent, has been too generally denied by the rulers of this world to their subjects. Nevertheless, its enemies have frequently been constrained to bear a practical testimony in its favour. Under varying circumstances in our own history, for instance, this indestructible privilege has been assumed, alternately, by the christian convert from paganism, by the protestant, and the papist, again by the reformer, again by the Roman catholic, and, still more recently, by the puritan, and the dissenter from protestant establishments. This is the moving power which has caused, and the unfailing clew which has run through, all these changes, and will only find its termination in the perfect concord and liberty of the universal church.

To the truly liberal and candid, it must be a subject of profound regret, that, for so many ages, no party duly appreciated, or heartily countenanced, the liberty which each, in turn, asserted. But in proportion to the sorrow which such a view of ecclesiastical history occasions, will be the joy, if a gradual though tardy approach to the full recognition of the rights of conscience can be perceived; and especially if it be discovered, that there has long existed a numerous and intelligent portion of the christian world, among whom those rights have not only been claimed, but generally conceded; not merely assumed to serve a purpose, but watched and advocated as the invaluable and inalienable birthright of man. And although it will be admitted as a sad evidence of human frailty, if intolerance be found lurking even among the class of persons just referred to, yet, as a body, they ought never, on that account, to be ranked with those whose principles would lead them to enthral the conscience within creeds and formularies of man’s devising. The characteristic views of congregational dissenters, containing the very elements of freedom, rise up to condemn, with double energy, the least departure from its laws in them. They, assuredly, should be the last to lord it over the consciences of their fellow-men, who, themselves, acknowledge in religious affairs, no lawgiver but Christ, and no directory but the Bible. [10]

A glance at some of the great religious alternations which have occurred in England, will serve to illustrate the preceding remarks, and, at the same time, furnish occasion to trace, imperfectly, the origin and operation of dissenting principles in the locality to which the following pages are especially devoted. Perhaps it may be found that institutions which, even by the candid and charitable, are sometimes supposed to have their foundation in a morbid disaffection towards secular rulers, or at best, in a too prurient scrupulousness, and to lead to anarchy and infidelity, are based on nobler principles and tend to happier results.

In various parts of the Roman empire, multitudes were converted by the instrumentality of the apostles and their successors, and many died in testimony of their sincerity, and in defence of the right to deviate from human authorities in their religious creed. All the sanctions of Christianity were addressed to the reason, the affections, the hopes, and the fears, of the individual. Appealing from human tribunals to the commission she had received from the King of kings, she challenged the soul as the province of her undisputed sway; and the sincere convert to Jesus Christ felt that he dared not, and could not, had he dared, resign his faith at the bidding of any mortal.

When Christianity was adopted as the religion of the empire, and the clergy became wealthy and ambitious, the bishops of Rome assumed a superiority over their brethren, and announced themselves as possessing infallible authority in matters of faith. A claim, which, in the darkness of the middle ages, met with too ready a compliance, and has strikingly exemplified the fearful consequences of departing from the plain rules of the New Testament.

During the long reign of popery in England the general perusal of the Scriptures was prohibited; the services of the sanctuary were enveloped in a foreign language; a contribution towards the aggrandizement of the papal see furnished the customary atonement for the worst crimes; and the extermination of heretics was esteemed the brightest of virtues.

At length Wycliffe appeared;—he urged upon all the study of the Scriptures as a book “full of authority.” [14]—Luther afterwards announced himself a dissenter from the established faith. The reformation was begun in Germany; and the writings of the reformer were disseminated at home.

Henry the Eighth, on his accession, vainly thought to arrest the growth of “heresy” by a rigorous execution of penal statutes against the Lollards or Wycliffites, while he unconsciously surrendered the principle of infallibility, on which alone the attempt could be justified, by entering the arena of controversy with Luther. The pope declared that the royal pen had been guided by inspiration, and rewarded Henry’s zeal with the title “Defender of the Faith.” So illustrious a controversy naturally attracted notice; and some were even presuming to compare the merits of the combatants, when the prince himself shook off the dominion of the Roman pontiff. But the privilege which, in so doing, he claimed for himself, he was not prepared to grant to others, though demanded by them on far worthier grounds. He declared himself “head of the church of England,” [15a] taking care to explain that office as including “full power to visit and correct all heresies and other abuses.” Seizing, with a tyrant’s grasp, the torch which was destined to enlighten the moral world, he employed it to guard his despotic sway and to kindle the fires of persecution. [15b] He dissolved the monasteries, whose existence was inconsistent with the line of policy he had adopted, and whose wealth furnished a powerful temptation. The reading of the English Bible in churches was prohibited, as well as its perusal by women, artificers, &c. Spiritual persons maintaining any thing contrary to the king’s instructions, were to recant or be burned. Nearly all the leading doctrines of the Romish faith were retained; and papists and protestants went together to the stake, the former for denying the supremacy, the latter for questioning the creed, of an arbitrary and vicious monarch. [16]

On the death of Henry, a brighter era seemed to be dawning. The Bible had already been published in English, and had become the intelligent study of many. Edward the Sixth, who succeeded to the throne, and those by whom his mind was chiefly influenced, were favourable to the Reformation. The right of private judgment, sanctioned alike by the example of the prince and the subject, might reasonably have been expected to receive encouragement, or at least protection. Hence numerous confessors who had fled to the continent, returned joyfully to their native land, looking for ameliorated institutions, and perhaps dreaming of entire liberty.

He who contemplates for the first time, this crisis of religious history, imagines, like some of the early maritime adventurers, that he is about to plant his foot upon the soil of truth and freedom; but he speedily discovers that he is chasing a beautiful illusion, and that many days of suffering and nights of darkness must intervene before the vision can be realized.

Edward’s advisers loosened the reins of ecclesiastical authority: they were unconscious that no mortal should have ever held them. Some statutes against the Lollards were repealed. An act of parliament was passed allowing the sacrament to be received by the laity in both kinds, of bread and wine, whereas the cup had previously been confined to the priests. Prescribing an improved form of worship, though retaining much of superstition in deference to the popish party, the legislature enjoined uniformity in the services and sacraments of religion. [17] Cranmer was directed to draw up articles, with the delusive expectation of “rooting out the discord of opinions.” This led to the imprisonment of many, and even to the burning of some. But Edward’s better judgment and his tender heart revolted from the infliction of such a punishment. He is said on one occasion, to have bedewed with tears the warrant which he reluctantly signed for the execution of the law, and to have told the archbishop “that if he did wrong, since it was in submission to his authority, he should answer for it to God.” [18] Among those who dared to differ from the established faith, were Bonner and Gardiner; and Mary, the king’s sister. They were incited by protestant persecution, as well as by their own intolerant principles, to the cruel course by which the succeeding reign is proverbially distinguished. The princess pronounced in reply to Edward’s injunctions, at once her own apology and that of her victims: “Her soul,” she said, “was God’s.”

Mary was at her manor of Keninghall in Norfolk, when consumption carried off the young and promising king. His regard for the cause of the reformation had induced him to nominate as his successor the Lady Jane Grey in preference to Mary, in whose mind the claims of the papacy had been long identified with the rights of her mother Catharine of Arragon. Finding her claim to the crown disputed by some of the leading nobles, Mary sought to engage the commons in her cause. With this view she “speedeth herself secretly away” (to use the quaint but expressive language of Fox) “into the North.” She soon learned that the council had sent out the Duke of Northumberland with an army in support of her rival, and “tossed with much travel up and down, to work the surest way for her best advantage, withdrew herself into the quarters of Northfolk and Suffolk, where she understood the Duke’s name to be had in much hatred for the service that had been done there of late, under King Edward, in subduing the rebels; and there gathering to her such aid of the commons on every side as she might, keeping [kept] herself close for a space within Fremingham Castle. [19] To whom, first of all, resorted the Suffolk men; who being always forward in promoting the proceedings of the gospel, promised her their aid and help, so that she would not attempt the alteration of the religion which her brother King Edward had before established, by laws and orders publicly enacted and received by the consent of the whole realm in that behalf. To make the matter short,” adds the historian, “unto this condition she eftsoons [20a] agreed, with such promise made unto them that no innovation should be made of religion, as that no man would or could have misdoubted her. [20b] Which promise if she had as constantly kept as they did willingly preserve her with their bodies and weapons, she had done a deed both worthy her blood, and had also made her reign more stable to herself through future tranquillity. For though a man be never so puissant of power, yet breach of promise is an evil upholder of quietness; fear is worse; but cruelty is the worst of all.” [21a]

Mary no sooner found herself, by “the power of the gospellers,” firmly seated on the throne, than she qualified the promises she had made them in the hour of need, declaring, that she would not compel her subjects to be of her religion, till public order should be taken in it by common consent. [21b] A parliament sufficiently obsequious was assembled; the laws passed in the preceding reign, in favour of the reformation, were repealed, the service and sacraments used at the close of the reign of Henry the Eighth, restored, [22a] and the crown and realm of England formally reconciled to the papal see. A series of barbarities ensued, under the alleged sanction of religion, at the recital of which humanity shudders. The persecutors had been taught in the school of their victims, and neither party understood the principles of religious liberty. All the people were required to come to church, where the mass was revived. [22b] To deny the supremacy of the pope, was once more become as heinous an offence as it had been to question that of Henry the Eighth during the latter years of his reign. The dungeon and the faggot [22c] were the arguments by which erring judgments and tender consciences were to be restored and comforted. When some members of the convocation declined subscribing to the doctrine of transubstantiation, the discussion was terminated with the following conclusive reasoning: “You,” said the prolocutor, “have the word, but we have the sword.” [23a] An argument which has not unfrequently been employed in behalf of a state religion in more enlightened times.

Rogers, the protomartyr of Mary’s short but frightfully sanguinary career, died because he would acknowledge no head but Christ, of his catholic church, and no authority above the word of God. [23b] Saunders, Hooper, Bradford, Latimer, Ridley, and the frail but afterwards repentant and magnanimous Cranmer, with a multitude of less eminent but equally honourable and worthy men, expired in the flames, to testify their attachment to a faith which, three years earlier, their rulers had taught them to admire and maintain.

Suffolk, and the adjacent maritime counties, had always been the stronghold of protestantism. Their geographical situation occasioned considerable intercourse with the continent, where the reformation still flourished, and whither many were self-exiled for conscience’ sake. At a much earlier period the Lollards appear to have been numerous in Norfolk; they had been multiplied by persecution, and by a comparatively extensive circulation of the writings of the reformers. [24a] Undeterred by the terrible examples of the queen’s severity, the protestants of Suffolk and Essex met privately for religious worship. [24b] Great numbers entirely forsook the public authorized service. At Stoke in Suffolk, there was a congregation of protestants, so considerable in number and so united in their views, that the bishops for some time hesitated to interfere. And at last, when the whole society was required to come to church, they contrived to escape, leaving their angry diocesan first to suspend, and then to excommunicate them. [24c]

Every where the protestants had to endure the anxiety attending an exposure to the vengeance of their enemies, or the privations and inconveniences of concealment. Indescribably dreadful as the pains of martyrdom must have been, they were brief in their duration, and their very bitterness kindled the pity of the spectator and the fortitude of the victim. Perhaps the total amount of misery which they occasioned, was overbalanced by the less agonizing, but more protracted and retired, sufferings of the multitudes who “wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens, and in caves of the earth,” and “of whom” (with equal truth it might be affirmed) “the world was not worthy.” The following are, probably, neither rare nor extreme instances. In the parish of St. James, near Bungay, there resided a family named Fisk. Of six brothers, three were protestants. A pursuivant employed to apprehend one of them, gave him, from motives of personal friendship, a private notice of the intention to seize him. Whereupon, the good man first called his family to prayer, and then hastened away to hide himself in a ditch, with his godly wife and her helpless babe. Another of these brothers was, to avoid burning, hid many months in a pile of wood; and afterwards, for half a year, in a cellar, where he diligently employed himself in profitable manufactures by candlelight; but his many hardships brought on an excessive bleeding, which shortened his days, and added unto the cry of the “souls under the altar.” [26a]

Calling to mind their own efforts and the queen’s promise, the Suffolk protestants ventured to send a deputation to her to represent their grievances. But, “it was,” as Fox very justly remarks, “an heavy word that she answered them: ‘Forasmuch,’ saith she, ‘as you, being but members, desire to rule your head, you shall one day well perceive that members must obey their head, and not look to bear rule over the same.’” [26b] One of the deputation having referred to the particular ground on which they rested their claims, was put in the pillory three days, and had his ears cut off.

When the queen and council sent commissioners to Norfolk and Suffolk “to enquire into matters of religion,” a supplication was presented “by some good and well disposed men dwelling about those parts,” [27] in which they contended earnestly for the superiority of King Edward’s ritual. “All our bodies, goods, lands, and lives,” say they, “are ready to do her Grace faithful obedience and true service of all commandments that are not against God and his word: but in things that import a denial of Christ, and refusal of his word and holy communion, we cannot consent nor agree unto it . . . We think it no true obedience unto the queen’s highness or to any other magistrate ordained of God under her, to obey in the things contrary to God’s word, although the same be never so straitly charged in her Grace’s name . . . We think not good by any unlawful stir or commotion, to seek remedy . . . But unto such ungodly bishoplike commandments, as are against God, we answer with the apostles, God must be obeyed rather than man. If persecution shall ensue, (which some threaten us with,) we desire the heavenly Father, according to his promise, to look from heaven, to hear our cry, to judge between us and our adversaries, and to give us faith, strength, and patience, to continue faithful unto the end, and to shorten these evil days for his chosen’s sake; and so we faithfully believe he will.”

The queen was alike deaf to reason and regardless of her promise. She answered the remonstrances of those who reverenced the Scriptures more than her command, and valued conscience more than life, with the most fearful torments bigotry and tyranny could inflict. Suffolk furnished its share of victims. Amongst them were, Dr. Rowland Taylor of Hadleigh, and three men who suffered in the town, to which the subsequent records more immediately relate.