That beloved Church, too, for whose sake he had, after a painful struggle, broken through his allegiance to the throne, was she really in safety? Or had he rescued her from one enemy only that she might be exposed to another? The Popish priests, indeed, were in exile, in hiding, or in prison. No Jesuit or Benedictine who valued his life now dared to show himself in the habit of his order. But the Presbyterian and Independent teachers went in long procession to salute the chief of the government, and were as graciously received as the true successors of the Apostles. Some schismatics avowed the hope that every fence which excluded them from ecclesiastical preferment would soon be levelled; that the Articles would be softened down; that the Liturgy would be garbled; that Christmas would cease to be a feast; that Good Friday would cease to be a fast; that canons on whom no Bishop had ever laid his hand would, without the sacred vestment of white linen, distribute, in the choirs of Cathedrals, the eucharistic bread and wine to communicants lolling on benches.
The Prince, indeed, was not a fanatical Presbyterian; but he was at best a Latitudinarian. He had no scruple about communicating in the Anglican form; but he cared not in what form other people communicated. His wife, it was to be feared, had imbibed too much of his spirit. Her conscience was under the direction of Burnet.
She heard preachers of different Protestant sects. She had recently said that she saw no essential difference between the Church of England and the other reformed Churches.632 It was necessary, therefore, that the Cavaliers should, at this conjuncture, follow the example set by their fathers in 1641, should draw off from Roundheads and sectaries, and should, in spite of all the faults of the hereditary monarch, uphold the cause of hereditary monarchy.
The body which was animated by these sentiments was large and respectable. It included about one half of the House of Lords, about one third of the House of Commons, a majority of the country gentlemen, and at least nine tenths of the clergy; but it was torn by dissensions, and beset on every side by difficulties.
One section of this great party, a section which was especially strong among divines, and of which Sherlock was the chief organ, wished that a negotiation should be opened with James, and that he should be invited to return to Whitehall on such conditions as might fully secure the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm.633 It is evident that this plan, though strenuously supported by the clergy, was altogether inconsistent with the doctrines which the clergy had been teaching during many years.
It was, in truth, an attempt to make a middle way where there was no room for a middle way, to effect a compromise between two things which do not admit of compromise, resistance and nonresistance. The Tories had formerly taken their stand on the principle of nonresistance. But that ground most of them had now abandoned, and were not disposed again to occupy. The Cavaliers of England had, as a class, been so deeply concerned, directly or indirectly, in the late rising against the King, that they could not, for very shame, talk at that moment about the sacred duty of obeying Nero; nor, indeed, were they disposed to recall the prince under whose misgovernment they had suffered so much, without exacting from him terms which might make it impossible for him again to abuse his power. They were, therefore, in a false position. Their old theory, sound or unsound, was at least complete and coherent. If that theory were sound, the King ought to be immediately invited back, and permitted, if such were his pleasure, to put Seymour and Danby, the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Bristol, to death for high treason, to reestablish the Ecclesiastical Commission, to fill the Church with Popish dignitaries, and to place the army under the command of Popish officers. But if, as the Tories themselves now seemed to confess, that theory was unsound, why treat with the King? If it was admitted that he might lawfully be excluded till be gave satisfactory guarantees for the security of the constitution in Church and State, it was not easy to deny that he might lawfully be excluded for ever. For what satisfactory guarantee could he give? How was it possible to draw up an Act of Parliament in language clearer than the language of the Acts of Parliament which required that the Dean of Christ Church should be a Protestant? How was it possible to put any promise into words stronger than those in which James had repeatedly declared that he would strictly respect the legal rights of the Anglican clergy? If law or honour could have bound him, he would never have been forced to fly from his kingdom. If neither law nor honour could bind him, could he safely be permitted to return?
