Number of Sects in England, all appealing to the Scriptures.—Puritans.—Nonjurors.—Rise of Socinianism, and its probable Downfall.

The heretical sects in this country are so numerous, that an explanatory dictionary of their names has been published. They form a curious list! Arminians, Socinians, Baxterians, Presbyterians, New Americans, Sabellians, Lutherans, Moravians, Swedenborgians, Athanasians, Episcopalians, Arians, Sabbatarians, Trinitarians, Unitarians, Millenarians, Necessarians, Sublapsarians, Supralapsarians, Antinomians, Hutchinsonians, Sandemonians, Muggletonians, Baptists, Anabaptists, PÆdobaptists, Methodists, Papists, Universalists, Calvinists, Materialists, Destructionists, Brownists, Independants, Protestants, Hugonots, Nonjurors, Seceders, Hernhutters, Dunkers, Jumpers, Shakers, and Quakers, &c. &c. &c.^[18] A precious nomenclature! only to be paralleled by the catalogue of the Philistines in Sanson Nazarenzo,^[19] or the muster-roll of Anna de Santiago’s Devils,^[19] under Aquias, Brum, and Acatu, lieutenant-generals to Lucifer himself.

This endless confusion arises from the want of some surer standard of faith than Reason and the Scriptures, to one or both of which all the schismatics appeal, making it their boast that they allow no other authority. Reason and the Scriptures! Even one of their own bishops calls Reason a box of quicksilver, and says that it is like a pigeon’s neck, or a shot-silk, appearing one colour to me, and another to you who stand in a different light.

And for the Scriptures, well have they been likened to a nose of wax, which every finger and thumb may tweak to the fashion of their own fancy. You may well suppose how perversely those heretics will wrest the spirit, who have not scrupled to corrupt the letter of the Gospel. In many editions of the English Bible ye has been substituted for we; Acts, vi. 3. the Presbyterians having bribed the printer thus to favour their heresy. Were you to hear the stress which some of these Puritans lay upon the necessity of perusing the Scriptures, you might suppose they had adopted the Jewish notion, that the first thing which God himself does every morning is to read three hours in the Bible.

You said to me, Examine into the opinions of the different heretics, and you will be in no danger of heresy; and you requested me to send you full accounts of all that I should see, learn, and think during this enquiry, as the main confession you should require. The result will prove that your confidence was not misplaced; that nothing could leach me so feelingly the blessing of health, as a course of studies in an infirmary.

Many of the names of this hydra brood need no explanation; the others I shall explain as I understand them, and those which are left untouched you may consider as too insignificant in their numbers, or in their points of difference, to require more than the mere insertion of their titles in the classification of heresies. The Dunkers and Sandemonians, the Baxterians and Muggletonians, may be left in obscurity with the Tascadrogiti and Ascodrogiti, the Perliconasati of old, the Passalaronciti, and Artotyriti, of whom St Jerome might well say, Magis portenta quam nomina.

Some of these sects differ from the establishment in discipline only, others both in doctrine and discipline; they are either political, or fanatical, or both. In all cases it may be remarked, that the dissenting ministers, as they are called, are more zealous than the regular clergy, because they either choose their profession for conscience sake, or take it up as a trade, influenced either by enthusiasm or knavery, which are so near akin and so much alike, that it is generally difficult, and sometimes impossible, to distinguish one from the other.

When the schism was fairly established in this island by the accursed Elizabeth, all sorts of heresies sprung up like weeds in a neglected field. The new establishment paid its court to the new head of the church by the most slavish doctrines; the more abject, the more were they unlike the principles of the Catholic religion, and also to the political tenets of the Nonconformists. The consequence was, a strict union between the clergy and the crown; while, on the other hand, all the fanatics, however at variance in other points, were connected by their common hatred of this double tyranny. Elizabeth kept them down by the Inquisition: she martyred the Catholic teachers, and put the Puritans to a slower death, by throwing them into dungeons, and leaving them to rot there amid their own excrement. They strengthened during the reign of her timorous successor, and overthrew the monarchy and hierarchy together under Charles, the martyr of the English schismatical church. Then they quarrelled among themselves; and one party, disappointed of effecting its own establishment, brought back Charles II., who ruled them with a rod of iron. A little prudence in James would have restored England to the bosom of the church; but he offended the clergy by his precipitance, forced them to coalesce with the Dissenters, and lost his crown. His father’s fate was before his eyes, and he feared to lose his head also; but had he been bold enough to set it at stake, and been as willing to be a martyr as he was to be a confessor, a bloodier civil war might have been excited in England than in Ireland; England might have been his by conquest as well as by birth, and the religion of the conqueror imposed upon the people.

This revolution occasioned a new schism. From the time of their first establishment the clergy had been preaching the doctrines of absolute power and passive obedience; that kings govern by a right divine, and, therefore, are not amenable to man for their conduct. These principles had taken deep root in consequence of the general fear and hatred against the Calvinists. No inconsiderable portion of the clergy, therefore, however heartily they dreaded the restoration of what they called Popery by James, could not in conscience assent to the accession of William: indeed, the more sincerely they had deprecated the former danger, the less could they reconcile their really tender consciences to the Revolution. They therefore resigned, or rather were displaced from, their sees and benefices, and lingered about half a century as a distinct sect, under the title of Nonjurors. These men were less dangerous to the new government than they who, having the same opinions without the same integrity, took the oaths of allegiance, and washed them down with secret bumpers to King James. But great part of the clergy sincerely acquiesced in the Whig principles; and this number was continually increasing as long as such principles were the fashion of the court. Of this the government were well aware: they let the malcontents^[20] alone, knowing that where the carcase is there will the crows be gathered together; and in this case it so happened that the common frailty and the common sense of mankind coincided.

I have related in my last how the Dissenters, from the republican tendency of their principles, became again obnoxious to government during the present reign; the ascendancy of the old high church and tory party, and the advantages which have resulted to the true religion. Their internal state has undergone as great a change. One part of them has insensibly lapsed into Socinianism, a heresy, till of late years, almost unknown in England; and into this party all the indifferentists from other sects, who do not choose, for political motives, to join the establishment, naturally fall. The establishment itself furnishes a supply by the falling off of those of its members, who, in the progress of enquiry, discover that the church of England is neither one thing nor another; that in matters of religion all must rest upon faith, or upon reason; and have unhappily preferred the sandy foundation of human wit. Crede ut intelligas, noli intelligere ut credas, is the wise precept of St Augustine; but these heretics have discarded the fathers as well as the saints! These become Socinians; and though many of them do not stop here in the career of unbelief, they still frequent the meeting-houses, and are numbered among the sect. With these all the hydra brood of Arianism and Pelagianism, and all the anti-calvinist Dissenters have united; each preserving its own peculiar tenets, but all agreeing in their abhorrence of Calvinism, their love of unbounded freedom of opinion, and in consequence their hostility to any church establishment. All, however, by this union, and still more by the medley of doctrines which are preached as the pulpit happens to be filled by a minister of one persuasion or the other, are insensibly modified and assimilated to each other; and this assimilation will probably become complete, as the older members, who were more rigidly trained in the orthodoxy of heterodoxy, drop off. A body will remain respectable for riches, numbers, erudition, and talents, but without zeal and without generosity; and they will fall asunder at no very remote period, because they do not afford their ministers stipends sufficient for the decencies of life. The church must be kept together by a golden chain; and this, which is typically true of the true church, is literally applicable to every false one. These sectarians call themselves the enlightened part of the Dissenters; but the children of Mammon are wiser in their generation than such children of light.

From this party, therefore, the church of England has nothing to fear, though of late years its hostility has been erringly directed against them. They are rather its allies than its enemies, an advanced guard who have pitched their camp upon the very frontiers of infidelity, and exert themselves in combating the unbelievers on one hand, and the Calvinists on the other. They have the fate of Servetus for their warning, which the followers of Calvin justify, and are ready to make their precedent. Should these sworn foes to the establishment succeed in overthrowing it, a burnt-offering of anti-trinitarians would be the first illumination for the victory.