Chapter 22
An Anglican Bishop’s Support For Religious Freedom
N the seventeenth century, Doctor Jeremy Taylor,
chaplain to King Charles I and Bishop of Down and Conner, published a book
entitled A Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying shewing the
unreasonableness of Prescribing to Other Men’s Faith: And the Iniquity
of Persecuting Differing Opinions. In the edition of 1836, a long
introductory essay was written by R. Cattermole, a fellow Anglican
minister. Cattermole, with the advantage of hindsight, wrote:
The measure of freedom enjoyed in a country will always
be in proportion to the diffusion of knowledge and virtue among the
people. In the latter ages, therefore, of the degenerate Roman Empire,
over which the mists of ignorance were settling with increasing density,
and from which public virtue had fled, all remains of liberty became
extinct. R. Cattermole, introductory essay in Jeremy Taylor’s, A
Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying, p. ix
The only changes that could come in the Roman empire,
Cattermole contended, were through the disruption of despotism and the
development of more responsible governments. Insightfully, Catter-mole
wrote:
In a country, where religion is purely a political
engine, as is the case in pagan Rome, toleration is impossible because
under such circumstances treason and unconformity are identical. Ibid., p.
xi
In contrast, he wrote:
As long as the Christian church continued uncorrupted,
the utmost forbearance and mildness toward the professors of heretical
opinions, consistent with public order, appeared to have prevailed. With
corruption came in persecution. The first example of intolerance on the
part of Christians towards each other, appeared in the destructions
occasioned by the followers of Arius, and by the other powerful sects
which rose about the same time, or not long afterwards [fourth and fifth
century, this would have also included the Donatists]. But whatever
severities were recommended and put in practice by these schismatics, by
the Iconoclasts, at a later period, or by the church, in its angry
endeavors to crush the swarms of heresies by which its peace was assailed,
the rage of persecution among Christians, in those times, always stopped
short of the punishment of death. Cattermole, p. xii
Indeed, is important to recognize that comparatively
speaking, martyrdoms at the hands of fellow Christians were few before the
thirteenth century. But the thirteenth century began one of the most
ruthless assaults upon those who opposed the absolute authority of the
Papacy. Thus Protestantism had its beginnings shortly after the increase
of persecution, and unquestionably the success of the Protestant movement
was significantly responsible for the very rapid escalation of martyrdom.
There seems no doubt that sixteenth century leaders
such as Cranmer, Ridley, and Hooper were moving in the direction of more
tolerance, if not liberty, for those who were non-conformists. But
nevertheless, the common public seemed not ready for this liberality
because of the centuries of papal thinking. Thus when Queen Mary came to
the throne, during her short and cruel rule in support of Roman
Catholicism, a majority of the population supported her strict discipline.
We cannot deny that considerable persecution existed during the latter
part of the sixteenth and a major part of the seventeenth centuries under
Protestant rule.
If a church, in the prosperous days of Elizabeth and
James, maintained her prerogatives against the Puritans with the severity
of a parent assailed by the unreasonable clamors of rebellious children,
these Puritans, however bitterly they complained of the hardship of their
own position, never denied, upon general principles, the right of the
former to persecute it; then "their ardor for toleration was nothing
more than impatience of individual suffering." Ibid. p. xv
When we study the thinking of the day, we can
understand why the Puritans of Massachusetts were people of the
persecution mind-set. After all, they had left England during the reign of
James I. They had spent time in the Netherlands, and then in 1620 had made
their way to the new world. Theirs had not been so much a cry for liberty
as it was a cry to accept their theological position. There is little
doubt that, had they obtained the ascendancy and the support of the
monarch, they would have in turn become the persecutors. Indeed, we have
all the evidence we need to support such a conclusion, from an examination
of history of the Puritans in the new world.
As there developed many new religious groups, there was
great hatred generated between them, as each saw the other as being
heretical.
In the multiplication of sects that took place in the
latter part of that period, and in the reign of the unhappy Charles, the
animosity of each towards each other, equaled that which all in common
bore toward the establishment. Each strove for the supremacy of its own
opinions—none for an equal charitable toleration of all speculative
tenets alike; and when the most numerous and powerful of the religious
factions opposed to the Church of England, at last obtained the
ascendancy, its members proved too clearly by their arrogance and
persecuting spirit how little effect calamity, which softens and corrects
the ways of individuals, has in diminishing the [hostility] and smoothing
the aspirates of sects and parties. Cattermole, pp. xv, xvi
In his introductory essay, Cattermole sums up the
thesis of the seventeenth century Jeremy Taylor. Taylor believed that the
exact truth on minor matters of government could not be exactly
determined, and has very little input in determining the behavior of men.
Therefore he emphasized peace and charity as of great importance. However,
Taylor did not see this freedom on minor matters of dogma as extending to
fundamental biblical principles. Thus he proposed that the Confession of
the Apostles’ Creed should be accepted as a test of all orthodoxy, and
the condition of union and communion with Christians. Unfortunately, in
suggesting the Creed as a basis of unity, Taylor missed a fundamental
principle of Protestantism, "that the Bible and the Bible only is our
basis of faith and practice." But the credal concept was taken to the
new world, and in 1680, the New England Confession of Faith was adopted.
It had many of the same precepts as the European reformational confessions
of faith. But such confessions of faith did not provide a clear platform
for religious liberty.
Yet we must not overlook the tremendous contribution
that Doctor Jeremy Taylor made in his landmark book in the seventeenth
century. It is true that he did not comprehend liberty as we understand it
today, but rather emphasized the need for toleration of the many different
sects that were rising up out of the Protestant Reformation. There is no
question that he believed that the Church of England had the truth, and he
staunchly defended its basic tenets. In many ways his thinking was sacral,
but it was that of an extraordinarily benevolent sacralist—a man who,
while strongly defending the positions of the Church of England,
nevertheless thought to offer freedom from religious and civil persecution
to those who chose to dissent from the Church of England.
His thesis is particularly extraordinary in that Dr.
Taylor should write so persuasively on religious liberty, when it is
realized that he was serving the Stuart kings. Charles I, son of the first
Stuart, King James I, like his father, believed in the divine right of
kings. Indeed, it was largely this belief that led to the events that
culminated in his execution by beheading. After the establishment of the
Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, Taylor was proscribed as a royalist,
and found his way to a country area of Wales where he and his family
resided through considerable privation. He eventually went to northern
Ireland, where under the patronage of a nobleman, his circumstances were a
little better.
It so happened that Doctor Taylor was visiting in
London when the monarchy was reestablished under Charles II. This in many
ways seemed fortuitous for Doctor Taylor, because he came to the new king’s
attention as a loyalist to the new king’s father while he had been
chaplain to the court. The new king created him bishop of Down and Conner,
a diocese far from London where he had no firsthand acquaintance with the
practices of Charles II. Indeed, if Charles II had followed the call for
toleration by Bishop Taylor, Bunyan would not have spent many years in
prison; John James would not have been hanged, drawn, and quartered; and
others would not have had to flee to the new world in the hope of
protection from persecution there.
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