240 



CHURCH HISTORY 



land. Later phases of Puritanism developed a 

 great variety or sects, the Baptists and the Society 

 of Friends, or ' Quakers,' being the most notable. 



The Reformation in Scotland had received from 

 John Knox a strictly Calvinistic stamp. The 

 Protestant nobles (called the 'Lords of the Con- 

 gregation : ) entered in 1557 for the first time into 

 a ' Covenant,' and the Scotch Confession of Faith 

 was ratified by the Scottish parliament in 1560. 

 All the efforts of Mary, Queen of Scots, to \yin 

 Scotland back to Roman Catholicism were fruit- 

 less. The first National Covenant ' against all 

 kind of Papistry ' was signed by king and people 

 in 1581, and frequently renewed. In 1592 the 

 Presbyterian constitution was established. Yet 

 under James I. and his successors determined 

 efforts were put forth to make the Church of 

 Scotland a province of the Anglican Church. The 

 obtrusion of the Liturgy in 1637 was met by the 

 Solemn League and Covenant in 1638. 



During the Civil War and the Protectorate of 

 Cromwell, Independency increased in numbers and 

 in influence. Two fanatical sections of the party, 

 the ' Fifth-Monarchy Men,' and the 'Levellers' 

 who aimed at complete separation of the church 

 from the state, which they maintained should pre- 

 serve an attitude of religious indifference were 

 repressed by the iron hand of Cromwell on their at- 

 tempt to establish their principles by force of arms. 

 The declaration of faith and order issued by the 

 Synod of the Independents in 1658 is not different 

 in its doctrine from the Westminster Confession. 

 After the accession of Charles II. Episcopacy was 

 re-established both in England and Scotland. On 

 the 24th August 1662 two thousand ministers were 

 ejected from their livings in the Church of Eng- 

 land, because they refused to subscribe the second 

 Act of Uniformity, which enjoined all ministers in 

 England to declare their unfeigned assent and con- 

 sent to the entire Book of Common Prayer. In the 

 same reign, the successive Conventicle, Five Mile, 

 Corporation, and Test Acts increased the civil dis- 

 abilities of both Nonconformists and Catholics. 

 The persecutions did not cease till the Revolution, 

 when the Act of Toleration in 1689 extended religi- 

 ous liberty to dissenters, only requiring from them 

 the payment of tithes to the Established Church. 



In the 17th century a middle party within the 

 Church of England, known as the ' Latitudi- 

 narians,' had endeavoured to exercise a mitigating 

 influence on the violence of the disputes between 

 the extreme Episcopalians and the rigid Puritans. 

 Hales and Chillingworth were in the first half of 

 the century the leading exponents of the party, 

 which later included the ' Cambridge Platonists,' 

 Whichcote, John Smith, Cudworth, More, and 

 even Simon Patrick and Tillotson. About the 

 middle of the 17th century another movement 

 began in England as a reaction against the 

 religious extremes of the Great Rebellion. The 

 principles of the English ' Deists ' originated un- 

 doubtedly in the reaction from the religious excesses 

 of the Cromwell period, but were more largely due 

 to the progress or philosophy and the historical and 

 natural sciences. They passed over to France, 

 where they found a congenial soil under Louis 

 XIV. and Louis XV., and, in presence of the 

 Dragonnades and the persecutions of the Protes- 

 tants after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 

 1685, developed into the Atheism and Materialism 

 of the Encyclopedistes. These afterwards bore 

 bitter fruit in the French Revolution ' the religi- 

 ous issue of which proved,' says Hase, 'not only 

 the necessity of religion for a civilised people, but 

 also the national indispensability of a church.' 



In Germany the reaction from the fanatical 

 violence of the Thirty Years' War and the life- 

 lee. orthodoxy of the 17th century took the form 



of Pietism. It began with the collegia pietatis 

 founded by Spener about 1670, and the similar 

 collegia philobiblica of Francke, professor at 

 the university of Halle from its foundation in 

 1694. Halle became the centre whence Pietism 

 spread on every side, and its influence, like 

 that of Geneva under Calvin, extended to all 

 the Protestant countries of Europe. The church 

 of the Moravians, in the form in which it was 

 renewed by Zinzendorf, is a daughter of Pietism, 

 and the founder of Methodism testified that 

 Moravianism was the first medium of his own 

 inspiration. Pietism, with Moravianism, which 

 inwardly rests on the same foundation, is, says 

 Weingarten, 'the last fruit of that heart-religion, 

 springing originally from Franciscanism, which 

 consists in the closest vital fellowship of the indi- 

 vidual Christian with Christ.' It laid great weight 

 on strictness of conduct, and dwelt rather on re- 

 generation and sanctification than on the Reforma- 

 tion doctrine of justification by faith. During the 

 reign of Rationalism it appeared quiescent, but it 

 revived in the present century, and in alliance 

 with the orthodoxy which it formerly combated 

 forms the predominant party in the Evangelical 

 Church of Germany. 



The founders of English Methodism did not aim 

 at any new doctrine or order, but only sought, like 

 the German Pietists, to deepen spiritual life, and 

 make it more practical and fruitful. Methodist 

 societies began to be organised in 1739, after 

 Wesley and Whitefield had been excluded from the 

 pulpits of the Established Church. These two 

 leaders separated in 1748 on the question of pre- 

 destination, Wesley holding the Arminian, and 

 Whitefield the Calvinistic view. Ten years after 

 Wesley's death his followers numbered 40,000, 

 and in twenty years more increased to upwards of 

 100,000. Wesleyan Methodism and its numerous 

 offshoots have been distinguished both in this 

 country and in America for their evangelistic zeal 

 and their influence over the common people ; and 

 their earnestness and success have been the means 

 of imparting a healthful stimulus to the Church 

 of England. About the end of the 18th century 

 the influence of the Methodist movement extended 

 into the Established Church, and issued in the 

 formation of the ' Evangelical party,' which, 

 centring in Cambridge, soon became the most 

 energetic party in the Church of England. At 

 Oxford, which from Laud's time had been the 

 centre of the old ' High Church ' party, began 

 about 1833 the Tractarian movement, of which the 

 first impulse came from the Evangelical revival ; 

 while in one of its sides, at least, it was a kind 

 of aesthetic outcome of the Romantic revival in 

 literature and art. No fewer than 150 of the 

 clergy and leading laymen connected with the 

 movement followed Ward and Newman (in 1845 

 and 1846) into the Roman Catholic Church, but 

 the party, held together for nearly fifty years under 

 the leadership of Pusey, has now fully identified 

 itself with the Anglican Church as the ' Catholic 

 Church planted in England.' Though 'Anglo- 

 Catholicism ' has driven large numbers into the 

 Roman communion, it has succeeded in doing what 

 Methodism a hundred years before attempted, and 

 has brought new life into the Church of England. 

 It bears a close affinity to Roman Catholicism in 

 ritual and doctrine, but refuses to acknowledge 

 the universal supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. 

 The ' Broad Church ' party, the third in the modern 

 Church of England, traces its beginning to Cole- 

 ridge, but in spirit and to a large extent also in 

 teaching, is substantially identical with the old 

 Latitudinarians and the Cambridge Platonists, 

 who, with great spiritual earnestness and honesty, 

 maintained for over a hundred years a large and 



