who deprecated revolutionary politics. Priestley did not choose to join the festal party, but his name was identified with its principles; and, in the riot excited by popular detestation of them, his house, with its valuable scientific apparatus, and library, perished by fire. He now removed to Hackney, near London; but his political views were too much disliked by the great majority of Englishmen, to render him easy in any part of the kingdom. Hence he emigrated to the United States of America, in 1794; and within ten years afterwards he died at Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, highly respected in all quarters for purity of morals and scientific eminence; and venerated also among the admirers of his theology, now grown a numerous body, for the bulk and presumed erudition of his polemical writings'. § 19. Blackburne's movements towards Socinianism aroused kindred spirits among his brethren to seek release from the terms on which they took and held preferment. In 1772, a petition, hastily prepared, but signed by two hundred and fifty clergymen, was presented to the House of Commons, praying relief from subscription to the articles and liturgy3. The clerical petitioners were associated with others, chiefly lawyers and physicians, who complained of the necessity to subscribe on matriculation in the two universities, as being a compliance generally exacted at an age quite incompetent for the due under Rees's Cyclopædia, art. Priestley, It is there said of him, "In his intellectual frame were combined quickness, activity, acuteness, and that inventive faculty, which is the characteristic of genius. These qualities were less suited to the laborious investigation of what is called erudition, than the argumentative deductions of metaphysics, and the experimental researches of natural philosophy. Assiduous study had, however, given him a familiarity with the learned languages, sufficient in general to render the sense of the authors clear to him, and he aimed at nothing more." This is a very unsatisfactory account of one who sought to unsettle, and did really unsettle, the faith of others, by a show of erudition. The theological questions with which Priestley grap pled, are essentially learned, and can only be mastered by the patient industry of a deep scholar. Priestley's friends, however, are driven to admit his incompetence to make a satisfactory array of learned evidence, both from the unfitness of his mind for the labour of such a task, and a want of sound scholarship. "The petition was drawn up with such haste, and the arguments adduced were so ill-selected and applied, that its enemies had little trouble in refuting them." (Collins, 373.) "They were blamed by many for not maturing their plan with sufficient wisdom, for acting with precipitation, and especially for not consulting the bishops, and ensuring their patronage." Bogue and Bennett, ii. 464. standing of recondite questions. The supporters of the petition. displayed its presumed merits in specious generalities, such as the honour and advantage of toleration. They also, but with less discretion, attacked the articles themselves, declaring them to be contradictory in some parts, and indefensible in others. An additional reason for concession was found in the dissenters themselves, who were said to be likely to conform in great numbers, if there no longer existed any articles to repel them. By those who valued a sound protestant faith, and feared to throw open the national endowments that supported it, to every one able to obtain a benefice, this proposition was firmly resisted. Great stress was laid on the recent boldness of heterodoxy; old attacks upon the Church of England, having now been backed with arguments against our Saviour's divinity, with blasphemous assaults, therefore, upon the very vitals of Christianity. Clerical complaints of hardship in subscription were very fairly derided. None need keep or take a benefice who felt pinched in conscience by the articles or liturgy : while it was of great importance, that national funds for the teaching of religion should not be diverted into a number of irreconcileable channels. Even lawyers and physicians, with other members of the universities who had entered without eye to orders, were spoken of as under no necessity to seek education in those seminaries. If they, or their friends, had any invincible repugnance to the doctrinal tests required of students, they might qualify for their several professions in other places. One point, however, urged by the friends of the petition, was conceded by some on the other side. Dissenting ministers were liable to be called upon, by the Act of Toleration, to subscribe the doctrinal articles of the church; and this was represented as no great hardship, while such divines were generally Calvinists, although it might be rather unreasonable to demand even this approbation for a system from which the subscribers did not wish, and could not receive, either honour or emolument. Within the last two reigns, it was remarked, non-conformity had taken a much wider range; Arian and Socinian tenets having rendered many of its adherents incapable of subscribing even to the doctrinal portion of the thirty-nine articles. These arguments would have had even still greater weight, if the sta tutable subscriptious had been then regularly enforced. But, in reality, subscription had become rare among dissenting ministers; and attempts to enforce it, still more so. Nor did such of them as held opinions excepted out of the Act of Toleration, fail of finding sufficient shelter under the prevailing indisposition to interfere with religious belief in any case. When, accordingly, it came to a division, the petition found only seventy-one supporters: against it were two hundred and seventeen". § 20. This disappointment was, however, somewhat lightened to the dissenting body, by the admission that it was hard upon their ministers even to be under a statutable liability to subscription, notwithstanding the practical exemption usually enjoyed. No time, accordingly, was lost in petitioning for the abolition of such liability. Sir Henry Houghton, the representative of a very old and respectable dissenting family in Lancashire, brought this petition into parliament. It was resisted, as coming with a very ill grace from a body of men who habitually disregarded the law of subscription, and with impunity, just after a similar application had been refused from another class of petitioners, who were kept strictly within the law. Much was also said upon the danger of leaving a door legally open for the dissemination of opinions, not only hostile to the church, but also to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, especially at a time when such impiety had become alarmingly prevalent. The Commons, however, passed the bill by a great majority; but the bishops opposed it most strenuously, and hence it was lost in the Lords, by a majority of a hundred aud two against twenty-nine'. The measure had, however, gained such an advantage in the lower house, that its friends were naturally sanguine of ultimate success. Hence, in the next year, it was introduced again, but with the same results, favourable reception by the Commons, rejection by the Lords'. The Bisset's George III. ii. 36. 7 Bogue and Bennett, ii. 465. 8 Upon this occasion it was, that the great Earl of Chatham, answering Drummond, archbishop of York, who had attacked the Dissenters with more zeal than discretion, uttered the lan guage often cited since: "We have a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy." If political orators came to religious discussion with more accuracy of preparation than they commonly use, the temptation to utter this, and many other question now slumbered in Parliament for a time, but the press resounded with it; Socinian pens taking the lead. Writers of this class, however, gave offence to those Dissenters who had no quarrel with the doctrinal articles, but only with an authoritative call to affirm them, by the prominence given to their peculiar opinions, and by the contumelious treatment of orthodox dissent as the blind prejudice of unenlightened minds. In return for this insulting assumption of superiority, some of the Dissenters became unwilling to make farther application for relief, feeling themselves practically under no grievance, and considering the desired indulgence as likely to be abused by bolder attempts than ever to undermine the vitals of Christianity. Still, by these literary efforts, the question was kept alive in the country; and being again brought before parliament by Sir Henry Houghton, in 1779, it passed both houses with very little opposition" Thus dissenters were excused from any farther liability to a call for subscription to any of the thirtynine articles. § 21. When the question of subscription first gained legislative notice, the old project of a Comprehension was again under discussion. Hopes of accomplishing it had been entertained both among churchmen and dissenters, under the primacy of archbishop Herring, several years before; and Doddridge was among those who thought it feasible and desirable'. It was revived to 1772, some clergymen, who subsequently rose high in their profession, being among its abettors. A petition, stating their views, was presented to archbishop Cornwallis, who then held the see of Canterbury, and he returned an answer to it, on the 11th of February, 1773. This stated, that after consultations with various members of the episcopal bench, it had been decided, that any attempt to revise the liturgy and articles would be imprudent'. Such an attempt must obviously have been attended with great delicacy and difficulty, especially under the practical abeyance to which Convocation had been so long reduced. It would have been certain, also, to disappoint things equally effective, would have been resisted. 252. Bogue and Bennett, ii. 470. 2 As Porteus, Yorke, and Percy, afterwards severally bishops of London, Ely, and Dromore. 3 Cardwell's History of Conferences, 460. its friends, both by the multiplicity of demands made, and the impossibility that must soon have manifested itself, of annihilating dissent by almost any latitude of concession. § 22. But although the dissenters gained relief from a liability to a call for subscription, they were not able, within the eighteenth century, to accomplish the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts. The attempt was first made in 1787, but both Lord North and Mr. Pitt resisted it; hence it failed. The petitioners were generally spoken of in very respectful terms, but it was denied that they lay under any practical hardship, nothing more being done in their disfavour by the State, than a declaration on its part of certain terms on which it thought offices of honour and trust might be safely laid open. Undiscouraged by this refusal, a similar application was made in 1789, and though unsuccessful, the majority unfavourable to it was much smaller than on the former occasion. This was hailed as a favourable omen by the dissenting body; and it now called upon its members in the country to join in those applications for relief, which had hitherto come chiefly from London: a circumstance that gave rise to some remarks prejudicial to the motion. But this appeal to rural non-conformity proved injurious to the immediate fulfilment of dissenting expectations, however it might have ultimately tended to realize them, by giving to the body a compact political form. A considerable degree of intemperance made its appearance, and had immediately the natural effect of producing exasperation on the other side. Acrimonious pamphlets kept up the strife; so that men became less capable of taking a calm view of the question than they had been for many years. Hence, when it came again before the house of Commons, in 1790, one of the fullest assembled for a long time, it was rejected by an overwhelming majority". Two years later, Mr. Fox would have placed such as denied the divinity of Christ as completely within the Toleration Act, as other dissenters. But Mr. Pitt opposed the extension, as really unnecessary; the parties to be benefited by it receiving practically the same exemption that all other religionists en 4 The ayes were 100, noes 178. Bogue and Bennett, ii. 478. Ayes 102, noes 122. Ibid. • Ibid, 479. 'Ayes 105, noes 294. Ibid, 480. |