but had been the result of self-defence and state necessity: they partook not of the nature of penal statutes and religious persecution, until the necessity of self-defence had ceased with the animosities which called it into action.

During the reign of Queen Anne, Mr. Hoadley, then a London clergyman, had published many able works in defence of natural and revealed religion, as well as of civil liberty, freedom of conscience, and extended toleration. This produced, in 1709, a resolution of the House of Commons, which declared that he, having often strenuously justified the principles on which her Majesty and the nation proceeded at the Revolution, had justly merited the favor and recommendation of that House, and that an humble address be presented to her Majesty, praying that she would bestow some dignity on so distinguished a writer, for his eminent services both to church and state. About this time, however, Tory principles began to prevail in the councils of Queen Anne; and the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience, so loudly trumpeted forth by the contemptible Sacheverell, had taken possession of her mind; so that she returned a civil answer to her Commons, but paid no farther attention to their recommendation. Hoadley's advancement therefore was postponed, until the recurrence of more liberal men and measures, at the accession of George I., procured his appointment to the Bishoprick of Bangor. In 1716 he published his Preservative against the Principles and Practices of the Non-jurors,* which was

* One of the publications to which this was intended as an antidote, is thus noticed by Calamy: 'Some messengers, searching for a scandalous paper called 'The Shift Shifted,' happened to meet with a book entitled 'the Case of Schism in the Church of England truly stated,' by Mr. Howell, a clergyman; who was thereupon

followed, in March, 1717, by his celebrated Sermon, preached before the King, on the Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ; in which he insists that Christ is the sole lawgiver to his subjects, and the sole judge of their behavior in the affairs of conscience and eternal salvation; and that to set up any other authority in his kingdom, to which his subjects are indispensably and absolutely bound to submit their consciences or conduct in what is properly called religion, evidently destroys the rule and authority of Jesus Christ as king. These publications raised violent clamor and much calumny against the Bishop from the high church party, and produced an extraordinary number of sermons, charges, letters, and essays; wherein the several writers maintained their respective opinions on the nature of Christ's kingdom, the origin and extent of civil government, and the expediency or advantage of a religious test. Nor was it from the pens of private individuals only, that opposition to the Bishop of Bangor's sentiments emanated: his doctrines and positions were thought to give sufficient occasion for the exercise of that very authority against which he had so strongly protested: accordingly the subject was in the same year taken up very warmly by the lower House of Convocation, in which a

committed to Newgate. The avowed design was to prove, that ever since the Revolution, there has been a schism in the Church of England; that those only are of the true church, who have preserved their principles of loyalty to King James II. and his posterity; and that the others are schismatical, guilty of perjury, and by consequence ipso facto, deprived.' He was sentenced, March 2, 1717, to a fine of 5007., to remain in prison three years, to be twice whipped, to be degraded and stripped of his gown by the executioner, which was done in court accordingly.-Calamy's Life, vol. ii. p. 358.

SHERL.

VOL. I.

C

committee was appointed, with the Dean of Chichester at its head, to draw up a report concerning their tendency; which was declared to be,

First, to subvert all government and discipline in the church of Christ, and to reduce his kingdom to a state of anarchy and confusion.'

Secondly, to impugn and impeach the regal supremacy in causes ecclesiastical, and the authority of the legislature to inforce obedience in matters of religion by civil sanctions.'

These proceedings, however, were speedily stopped: the Convocation gaped, but could not speak;' for before the report could be brought into the Upper House, the whole assembly was prorogued by a special order of the King, into whose mind the principles of the Revolution were diligently instilled by his whig ministers; nor has it, since that period, ever been permitted to sit for the transaction of business.*

Such a measure as this tended but to inflame the controversy which had previously been commenced by Dr. Andrew Snape, the most intolerant and abusive of all the Bishop's adversaries, who was answered by Mr. Arthur Ashley Sykes, one of the most pertinacious disputants on the other side of the question. Dean Sherlock also, in vin

*Whenever a new parliament is assembled, the Primate, with his Dean (the Bishop of London,) accompanied by other dignitaries, repair to St. Paul's. There they are joined by the civilians from Doctors Commons, and after the Liturgy has been read in Latin, they listen to a Concio ad Clerum. Then, after a benediction from the Archbishop, they form a procession to the Chapter-House; and when a Latin speech has been delivered by the Prolocutor of the Lower House, they vote an address to the king, and adjourn sine die.

dication of himself as a leader in Convocation, and chief author of the Report, published, very early in 1717, his Remarks on the Bishop of Bangor's Treatment of the Clergy and Convocation, which soon called forth from the pen of Mr. Sykes, A Letter to Dr. Sherlock, &c. comparing the dangerous Positions and Doctrines contained in the Doctor's Sermon, preached Nov. 5, 1712, with those charged on the Bishop in the late Reports of the Committee; in which extracts were produced from the Dean's own Discourse, by which it was attempted to be shown that he himself had rejected all temporal authority in the civil magistrate, and had in fact advanced the same doctrine regarding Christ's kingdom as that of the Bishop of Bangor. To this pamphlet the Dean replied, in An Answer to a Letter sent to the Rev. Dr. Sherlock, relating to his Sermon, &c. ; which, being considered unsatisfactory, was met by a Second Letter to Dr. Sherlock, containing an Appendix relating to Dr. Snape, and a Postscript to Dr. Sherlock, by the Bishop of Bangor himself: in this his Lordship, having assured the Dean that he did not know of the former Letter addressed to him till after its publication, vindicates himself against the charge of writing down the magistrate's power in every case,' promises to undertake all necessary defence of himself; and at the same time declares his opponent to be a person of great abilities and weight, and one whom he could never persuade himself either to contemn or ridicule.' This publication again drew out Sherlock, whose reply was particularly directed to the Postscript; and thenceforward he chose to conduct the dispute with the principal, though he certainly was more concerned with the letter-writer, whom he designated as the 'second.'

After some more skirmishing, the Dean of Chichester,

seeing that the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts. was both directly and indirectly aimed at by the Bishop of Bangor and the Low Church party, applied all the powers of his acute intellect and legal knowlege, to show the expediency and justice of those enactments in his celebrated Vindication; a work which has continued from the time of its publication to possess a high reputation; and which, just before the laws in question were repealed by Parliament, drew from an able writer in one of our best periodicals, the following commendatory expressions :'If a discussion of this subject' (the repeal of the Test Laws) should be brought on, we have one request to make. It is, that no member of the Legislature will give a suffrage on the question, without previously perusing a small tract of Bishop Sherlock on this subject; a tract first drawn up in the Bangorian Controversy, and lately reprinted in a separate pamphlet. We care not if every thing be read over and over again, that was ever written against the Test Laws; but shall be amply satisfied if only this small treatise be read in their defence. Let a plain understanding, biassed by no prejudices, be brought to the discussion, and we shall have no fears as to the result.'Quarterly Review, iv. 309.

Still, in this ingenious defence, the special pleading of an advocate appears sometimes mixed up with a candid inquiry after truth; nor can I withhold my humble tribute of approbation from the more dignified sentiments of those enlightened prelates of our own times, who withstood the profanation of a most holy rite, instead of attempting to retain the Sacramental Test, by professing, like Sherlock, to consider it not as a qualification for a civil office, but only as a proof of such qualification. The conclusion of this treatise, in which the Bishop of Bangor's sentiments