III. THE FRENCH CHURCH PRIOR TO THE REVOLUTION IV. THE FRENCH CHURCH IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ERA THE MODERN CHURCH. Part Second. CHAPTER I. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH THE I. THE NONJURORS. HE political connections of church affairs in England during the eighteenth century were so far noticed in a preceding chapter that the subject does not need to be treated in this relation. We add only a word respecting the ecclesiastical headship of the sovereign. Before the middle of the century it had come to mean little else than his having a principal voice in the dispensing of church dignities. This prerogative was not exercised at all times with equal directness. William III., after the death of Queen Mary, devolved the management of patronage upon the archbishops of Canterbury and York, and four bishops associated with them. George III. was disposed to take the matter into his own hands. Under some of the intermediate sovereigns, the ministers of State had much to do with the dispensing of patronage. A long-enduring memorial of the political agitations which accompanied and followed the Revolution of 1688 appeared in a party of Jacobites, that commands interest on account of the unique characters which it embraced, if not on account of its principles. This party, known as the Nonjurors, consisted of men refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the new dynasty which was required of those holding clerical, academic, or other offices. While the majority of the clergy, who had been preaching non-resistance under the restored Stuarts, quieted their scruples at taking the oath by the plea that their submission, according to the example of the early Christians, was due to the government actually in power, a minority argued that mere power ought not to take precedence of justice, and that hereditary right must determine the question of allegiance. The one party claimed adherence to the sovereign de facto, and the other to the sovereign de jure. The original Nonjurors numbered six bishops, not including three who died before the day appointed for taking the oath, and four hundred clergy, to whom a small fraction of the laity adhered. Their numbers, however, soon decreased. As some of the deposed prelates were fully persuaded that their own party was the only true Church in England, they proceeded to ordain bishops that the succession might be kept up, and so prepared for a perpetuation of the schism. The last in the line of the nonjuring bishops died in 1805. Aside from their position on the dynastic question, the Nonjurors were distinguished by their High Church or Anglo-Catholic principles. As we shall observe when we come to consider the Tractarian movement, recent Anglo-Catholics.have recognized the kinship of this party with themselves. Among the Nonjurors, Bishop Ken was eminent for his amiable character. Though he refused the oath himself, he passed no harsh judgment upon those who did not, and he kept aloof from Jacobite scheming. The same may be said of Robert Nelson, who is further known for his zeal in practical Christian work, and for devotional treatises that gained in their day a very wide circulation. A high rank in their party, as respects ability, was claimed by Charles Leslie and Jeremy Collier. In learning, Henry Dodwell, at one time professor of Ancient History at Oxford, stood among the foremost; but his faculties were poorly balanced, and he ran into the most extravagant fancies. George Hickes was noted for his intemperate zeal in the nonjuring cause, as also for his antiquarian labors. In the first days of the new dynasty, William Sherlock was regarded by the Nonjurors as a principal light in their midst; but he soon was convinced of the propriety of taking the oath. His former friends imputed his change of view to the devil and Mrs. Sherlock. The most unique and the most important, in point of religious influence, among the Nonjurors was William Law. As he was not born till 1686, he belonged to the second generation of the party. The first prominent manifestation of his Jacobite bias was at Cambridge, where he was educated, and took pupils after being elected Fellow. According to his friend Byrom, in 1713, he put forward a question which showed his estimate of the plea that allegiance is due to the sovereign de facto. The question was this: "whether, when the children of Israel had made the golden calf the object of their worship, they ought to keep to their God de facto, or return to their God de jure." As Queen Anne was a near descendant of the martyred Charles I., Law did not dispute her title; but on the accession of George I. he refused to take the oath of allegiance and abjuration. This of course cut off the prospect of position in the Church. A few years later he entered upon his career of authorship. In 1727 he became an inmate of the household of the grandfather of the historian Gibbon. For about twelve years he was connected with this family, being engaged a part of the time as tutor of Gibbon's father. His later years were spent in his native town, King's Cliffe, where he lived in the employ of two wealthy and pious ladies, serving as their spiritual guide and helping them in the charitable distribution of their ample income. As a writer William Law is entitled to a place of no mean distinction. He possessed in a peculiar degree the faculty of expression, the faculty of putting his thoughts in the form and order most available for effect. Clearness, strength, and concentration upon a definite result are characteristics of nearly everything that came from his pen. F. D. Maurice speaks of him as "the most continuous writer in our language, each of his sentences and paragraphs leading on naturally, and, as it were, necessarily to that which follows." The writings of Law reveal a strong and original. bias. He stood apart from his age and in contradiction to its most marked characteristics. At a time when the prevailing conceptions of Christianity followed in the wake of Tillotson and Locke, when reasonable conduct was thought to be the whole of religion, when earnestness was at a discount, and enthusiasm was |