and expected a deprivation. I find in so doing much inward fatisfaction, and if the oath had been tendered at the peril of my life, 1 could only have obeyed by fuffering:

"I defire you, my worthy friends and brethren, to bear witness to this upon occafion, and to believe it, as the words of a dying man, and who is now engaged in the most facred and folemn act of converfing with God in this world, and may, for ought he knows to the contrary, appear with these very words in his mouth at the dreadful tribunal: manu propriâ fubfcripfi.

JOHANNES CICESTRENSIS."*

We cannot say how these two devoted men would have acted in the after differences of the nonjurors, had they lived: but their last words spoke the mind of Ken, not only in their refolve against the oath, and their attachment to the Church of England, to which he afterwards bore equal teftimony in his own memorable will, but also in their adherence to the doctrine of Paffive obedience. The publishing their death bed avowals added yet more intensity to the disputes already fo rife on this dogma: it was thought to be a direct reproach to those who had taken the oath, and called forth the whole pamphleteering forces of the prefs, which teemed with a phalanx of Animadversions, Defences, Sermons and Letters from all fides.

Paffive obedience and Non-refiftance were avowed

* Dr. Jenkins's Defence of the Profeffion, which the Right Rev. late Lord Bishop of Chichester made upon his death-bed, &c. 1690,

principles in theology and politics, not in England only, or the times of the Stuarts, but throughout the univerfal Church, as a practical Christian duty, inculcated by the law of the Gofpel. Endurance of wrongs, forbearance, gentleness, peace, subjection to the powers that be, are eternal laws of the Crofs, and as fuch, bound upon all men, lay or clerical. But beyond this, it was an essential tenet, almost universally received in England after the Rebellion. A specific oath, enforcing the doctrine, had been incorporated into several Acts of Parliament in the reign of Charles II.* and fo late as 1675 the House of Lords paffed a Bill, making it imperative on every one, invefted with office, to take an oath, which was called the Oath of Abhorrence against the traiterous position of taking arms against the King.""†

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The principle of Paffive obedience, whether right or wrong, was recognized, not by the Clergy only, but by all eftates of the realm. It was, in fact, a political maxim, highly in fashion after the restoration of the monarchy,—a recoil from the republican theories, which had gained head under Cromwell. It exemplified the fudden extremes which will find expreffion, when the body politic is smarting under by-gone wrongs. Viewed with proper reftrictions, it is a wholesome principle of government, - taken without limits, it is utterly untenable. Sancroft by his own conduct had proved it impracticable on a fudden emergency when James fled from London he hurried into the city, and agreed with the Council of Peers in defiring the Prince

* Rapin, vol. ii. pp. 628, 629.

+ Ibid. p. 677.

of Orange, then at the head of an invading army, to take measures for the fafety of the kingdom. He and Ken, and the other Bifhops, were willing to concur in a Regency, though it would have been an unquestionable blow against the prerogative, and an abandonment of the abstract principle of Paffive obedience. To what precife point Ken profeffed this doctrine we are not told: in his letter to Burnet, he fays, "it was a point with which I very rarely meddled."* We have already feen that, when James was at the height of his power, he practically withstood it: but when it was altogether cried down, and he would have been a gainer by abfolving himself from it, he could not alter his judgment of its binding force.

To show how easy it was for men to disavow, when it was unpopular, the doctrine they had upheld, when in vogue, we need only point to the cafe of Dr. Tillotfon. At the condemnation of Lord William Ruffel, in 1683, for the Rye House Plot, Tillotson was Dean of Canterbury, and a personal friend of his: as fuch he attended him to the fcaffold. During his previous vifits to him in the Tower, he found that Lord Russel was fo great a lover of truthfulness, that he preferred to die a martyr to his principles of liberty, rather than acknowledge the doctrine of Non-refiftance, which he did not hold. It was thought, if he yielded this point, Charles would grant him a pardon: but Ruffel was immoveable. The Dean, on the other hand, held that the Christian religion plainly forbids the refistance of authority, and as one of Lord Ruffel's fpiritual com

Hawkins's Life of Ken, p. 33.

forters he thought it effential to his true repentance before death, to acknowledge this. Ruffel had received the Sacrament in a calm and devout temper; but Tillotson, under the apprehenfion that his peace of mind was not well grounded, wrote him a letter, as more likely to weigh with his deliberate thoughts than a tranfient discourse.

"The law," he fays, "which establishes our religion declares that it is not lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take up arms," &c: "the law of nature, and the general rules of Scripture, tie the hands of fubjects: because the government and peace of fociety could not well fubfift, if they were left at liberty: this is the declared doctrine of all Proteftant Churches. And I beg your Lordship to confider how it will agree with an avowed afferting of the Proteftant religion, to go contrary to the general doctrine of the Protestants. My end in this is to convince your Lordship that you are in a very great and dangerous mistake, and being fo convinced, that which before was a fin of ignorance, will appear of a much more heinous nature, as in truth it is, and call for a very particular and deep repentance; which if your Lordship fincerely exercise upon the fight of your error, by a penitent acknowledgment of it to God and men, you will not only obtain forgiveness of God, but prevent a mighty scandal to the reformed religion."* If Tillotson's creed, under the Stuarts, was grounded on this law of nature, the rule of Scripture, the Chriftian religion, and the declared doctrine of all Proteftant Churches, what be

*Birch's Life of Tillotfon, pp. 109, 110.

came of his friend William's title to the Crown, founded on an ufurpation which overthrew them all? But when James was driven from the throne, the Dean was to be Archbishop of Canterbury: that could never have been, unless he yielded up his principles of non-resistance, which he accordingly did.

The fame change had come over the political vifion of Burnet. In the time of Charles, when the Stuarts were in the afcendant, the Doctor was a champion for Paffive Obedience; but when it became convenient to wear the Orange scarf, and be made Bishop of Salisbury, he was a very Knight errant against every comer who should uphold that principle. No doubt Ken had an eye to both these Prelates when he wrote thus to Burnet; << many perfons of our own coat, for several years together preached up Paffive Obedience to a much greater height than ever I did, and on a fudden, without the least acknowledgement of their past error, preach'd and acted the quite contrary.'

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There is no ground for denying to Tillotson the right of adopting new opinions; only let our good Bishop, and his fuffering Brethren, enjoy an equal liberty of confcience in maintaining theirs unchanged, at the facrifice of every worldly advantage. And let the truth be understood, that Paffive Obedience was the rule, not the exception in the previous reigns.

To return to the Oath of Allegiance: there were moments when Ken had misgivings as to the correctness of his own views in rejecting the new oath. This may serve to exemplify the difficulty of the question,

* Hawkins's Life of Ken, p. 33.