- Puritanism ruled England for about twenty years (1640 to 1660), which form the most
intensely earnest and excited period in her history. It saved the rights of the people against the
oppression of their rulers, but it punished intolerance with intolerance, and fell into the opposite
error of enforcing Puritan, in the place of Episcopal, uniformity, though with far less severity. The
Long Parliament abolished the Episcopal hierarchy and liturgy (Sept. 10, 1642), expelled about
two thousand royalist clergymen from their benefices, and executed on the block Archbishop Laud
(1644) and King Charles I. (1649), as traitors; thus crowning them with the glory of martyrdom
and preparing the way for the Restoration. Episcopalians now became champions of toleration, and
Jeremy Taylor, the Shakespeare of the English pulpit, raised his eloquent voice for the Liberty of
Prophesying (1647), which, however, he afterward recalled in part when he was made a bishop by
Charles II. (1661).^88
The Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643–1652), which numbered one hundred and
twenty-one divines and several lay-deputies and is one of the most important ecclesiastical meetings
ever held, was intrusted by Parliament with the impossible task of framing a uniform creed, discipline
and ritual for three kingdoms. The extraordinary religious commotion of the times gave rise to all
sorts of religious opinions from the most rigid orthodoxy to deism and atheism, and called forth a
lively pamphlet war on the subject of toleration, which became an apple of discord in the Assembly.
Thomas Edwards, in his Gangraena (1645), enumerated, with uncritical exaggeration, no less than
sixteen sects and one hundred and seventy-six miscellaneous "errors, heresies and blasphemies,"
exclusive of popery and deism.^89
There were three theories on toleration, which may be best stated in the words of George
Gillespie, one of the Scottish commissioners of the Assembly.^90
(a) The theory of the "Papists who hold it to be not only no sin, but good service to God to
extirpate by fire and sword all that are adversaries to, or opposers of, the Church and Catholic
religion." Under this theory John Hus and Jerome of Prague were burnt at the Council of Constance.
Gillespie calls it., in the Preface, "the black devil of idolatry and tyranny."
(b) "The second opinion doth fall short as far as the former doth exceed: that is, that the
magistrate ought not to inflict any punishment, nor put forth any coërcive power upon heretics and
sectaries, but on the contrary grant them liberty and toleration." This theory is called "the white
devil of heresy and schism," and ascribed to the Donatists (?), Socinians, Arminians and
Independents. But the chief advocate was Roger Williams, the Baptist, who became the founder
of Rhode Island.^91 He went to the root of the question, and demanded complete separation of politics
from religion. Long before him, the Puritan Bishop Hooper, and Robert Browne, the renegade
(^88) Coleridge regards this revocation as the only blot on Taylor’s character. His second wife was a natural daughter of Charles I.
(^89) For the extensive literature on the subject see the list of Dr. Dexter, The Congregationalism of the last three hundred years as seen
in its Literature (N. York, 1880), Appendix, pp. 49-82. The Hansard Knollys (Baptist) Society has published, in 1846 at London, a series
of Tracts on Liberty of Conscience and Persecution, written from 1614-1661. I mention only those which I have myself examined in the
rich McAlpin Collection of the Union Theol. Seminary, N. York.
(^90) Wholesome Severity reconciled with Christian Liberty, or the true Resolution of a present Controversie concerning Liberty of
Conscience. Here you have the question stated, the middle way between Popish tyrannie and Schismatizing Liberty approved, and also
confirmed from Scripture, and the testimonies of Divines, yea, of whole churches ... And in conclusion a Paraenetick to the five Apologists
for choosing Accommodation rather than Toleration. London, 1645 (40 pages). Dexter (p. 56) assigns the pamphlet, which is anonymous,
to Gillespie, and its sentiments agree with those he expressed in a sermon he preached before the House of Lords, August 27, 1645.
(^91) He wrote "The Bloody Tenent of Persecution," etc., 1644 (248 pp.), and "The Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody," etc., 1652 (373 pp.).
Among the anonymous pamphlets on the same side, we mention The Compassionate Samaritane, Unbinding the Conscience, and pouring
oyle into the wounds which have been made upon the Separation, etc., 1644 (84 pp.).