Some of them are called Brownists, from Robert Brown of Northamptonshire, but there are some Brownists who allow of pædobaptism. Familists, or the Family of Love, we have scarce any remaining: Adamites none: but here are some Antinomians, who hold that no transgression is sin in the children of God: Traskites, now called Seventh-day men, who keep the Jewish Sabbath: Antisabbatarians, who keep none at all; and the Muggletonians are scarce extinct, who say that God the Father, leaving the government of heaven to Elias, came down on earth and suffered in human form; these deny the Holy Trinity, the creation of heaven and earth and water, the immortality of the soul, religious ministry, and, some of them, the authority of the civil magistrate. The other sort of Anabaptists are called Quakers, or Shakers, Quakers from the trembling and quaking caused in them by vapours in the ecstatick fits, especially after long fasting, and exercise, very much practised by the first disciples of this sect here in England, but of late almost wholly disused. They reject ministerial ordinances, and place religion wholly in the inward light of every man's private spirit, and how dif ferent soever the impulses of one man's spirit from another, and how different notions soever they create, they account it all the same light infused by the spirit of God in different measures and degrees. They agree with other Anabaptists against infant baptism, and go far beyond them, even to the neglecting all baptism, and the other sacrament of the eucharist, all human learning, appropriate places and times of worship, and abhor paying of tithes. Independents are a sect lately sprung up from the Brownists. Independents These have no general church government, but each particular congregation is ruled by their own laws and methods without dependence on one another; are against all set form of prayer, even to the Lord's prayer. They give power to private men to erect and gather churches, elect, ordain, depose, excommunicate, and determine finally in all church causes. The laity sometimes administer the sacraments, and magistrates administer the office of matrimony. They are most of them Millenaries and commence the last thousand years of Christ's kingdom from Presbyterians the beginning of independency. All those of the laity whom they account gifted men are permitted to preach and pray and to catechize the preacher concerning the doctrine he hath preached. They communicate frequently, sitting at a table, or without a table. Presbyterians maintain that there is only a nominal difference between bishop, presbyter, and pastor; and that "priest " is not a gospel word, but belongs only to sacrifices. They will not allow deacons to preach, but only collect for and administer to the poor. In every church they appoint lay elders and rulers, who are to inspect men's manners, and to bear a part in the government of the church; they acknowledge a priority of orders ought to be amongst church governours, but not a priority of jurisdiction. They deny the civil magistrate any authority in church government, making the king a mere layman, and subject to the censures of parochial church governours. They have two church judiciaries, the Classical Assembly and the General Assembly, to which latter there lies an appeal from the Classical. When we speak of any of these sectaries indiscriminately, we call them Dissenters and Nonconformists; and they that speak more freely term them fanaticks and enthusiasts. It must be confessed that in all these sects there are some good moral men, nay, some of them zealous towards God, but in such a zeal as is not according to knowledge. The pamphlet from which the following passages are taken was written by the celebrated satirist and essayist Daniel Defoe. It is believed by some that he wrote this as his serious belief, by others that he intended it as a satire. Whichever way it was intended, it illustrates equally well the belief of the high church or Tory party of the time, that the Dissenters had already been too much favored and that the time had now come under Queen Anne when they should be completely excluded from all political influence. Fortunately the toleration already granted to them was never taken away. The Shortest Sir Roger L'Estrange tells us a story in his collection of 341. Daniel fables, of the cock and the horses. The cock was gotten to Defoe, roost in the stable among the horses, and there being no racks Way with or other conveniences for him, it seems he was forced to roost Dissenters (1702) upon the ground. The horses jostling about for room, and putting the cock in danger of his life, he gives them this grave advice, "Pray, gentlefolks, let us stand still, for fear we should tread upon one another." There are some people in the world, who now they are unperched, and reduced to an equality with other people, and under strong and very just apprehensions of being further treated as they deserve, begin, with Esop's cock, to preach up peace and union, and the Christian duties of moderation, forgetting that, when they had the power in their hands, these graces were strangers in their gates. toleration It is now near fourteen years that the glory and peace of Fourteen the purest and most flourishing church in the world has been years since eclipsed, buffeted, and disturbed by a sort of men whom God has been in his providence has suffered to insult over her and bring her granted to down. These have been the days of her humiliation and tribu- the Dislation. She has borne with invincible patience the reproach of the wicked, and God has at last heard her prayers and delivered her from the oppression of the stranger. And now they find their day is over, their power is gone, and the throne of this nation possessed by a royal, English, true, and ever-constant member of and friend to the Church of England; now they find that they are in danger of the Church. of England's just resentments; now they cry out peace, union, forbearance, and charity, as if the church had not too long harbored her enemies under her wing, and nourished the viperous brood till they hiss and fly in the face of the mother that cherished them. No, gentlemen, the time of mercy is past; your day of grace is over; you should have practiced peace, and moderation, and charity, if you expected any yourselves. We have heard none of this lesson for fourteen years past. We have been huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration ; you have told us that you are the church established by law, senters, by the act of 1689 Jacobite clergy Charles I, William III as well as others; have set up your canting synagogues at our church doors, and the church and members have been loaded with reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, and what not. Where has been the mercy, the forbearance, the charity, you have shown to tender consciences of the Church of England, that could not take oaths as fast as you made them; that, having sworn allegiance to their lawful and rightful king, could not dispense with that oath, their king being still alive, and swear to your new hodgepodge of a Dutch government? These have been turned out of their livings, and they and their families left to starve; their estates double taxed to carry on a war they had no hand in, and you got nothing by. What account can you give of the multitudes you have forced to comply, against their consciences, with your new sophistical politics, who, like new converts in France, sin because they cannot starve? And now the tables are turned upon you; you must not be persecuted; it is not a Christian spirit. You have butchered one king, deposed another king, and James II, and made a mock king of a third, and yet you could have the face to expect to be employed and trusted by the fourth. Anybody that did not know the temper of your party would stand amazed at the impudence, as well as folly, to think of it. 342. Extracts from the Act The union with Scotland was the most permanent change dating from the reign of Anne. There was long opposition to it in Scotland and but little popular interest in England, but it was finally carried through by acts of the two parliaments, the following being the most important sections of the English act. I. That the two kingdoms of England and Scotland shall, upon the first day of May which shall be in the year one thousand seven hundred and seven, and forever after, be united into one kingdom by the name of Great Britain; and that the ensigns armorial of the said United Kingdom be such as her Majesty shall appoint, and the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew be conjoined in such manner as her Majesty shall think fit, and used in all flags, banners, standards, and ensigns, both at sea and land. II. That the succession to the monarchy of the United Succession to Kingdom of Great Britain and of the dominions thereto be- the crown longing, after her most sacred Majesty and in default of issue of her Majesty, be, remain, and continue to the most excellent princess Sophia, electress and duchess dowager of Hanover, and the heirs of her body, being Protestants, upon whom the crown of England is settled by an act of parliament made in England in the twelfth year of the reign of his late Majesty King William the Third. . . III. That the United Kingdom of Great Britain be repre- The united sented by one and the same parliament to be styled the parliament parliament of Great Britain. IV. That all the subjects of the United Kingdom of Great Freedom of Britain shall from and after the union have full freedom and trade between England and intercourse of trade and navigation to and from any port or Scotland place within the said United Kingdom and the dominions and plantations thereunto belonging; and that there be a communication of all other rights, privileges, and advantages, which do or may belong to the subjects of either kingdom, except where it is otherwise expressly agreed in these articles. Sixteen peers commoners to XXII. That by virtue of this treaty, of the peers of Scotland at the time of the union sixteen shall be the number to sit and and forty-five vote in the House of Lords, and forty-five the number of the sit in the representatives of Scotland in the House of Commons of the united parliaparliament of Great Britain. . . . Some of the keenest and bitterest observations on Ireland in the early eighteenth century, which was one of its most unhappy periods, were made by Jonathan Swift, who was born in Dublin and held a position in the established church in Ireland. The two following passages are taken from two pamphlets written by him in the year 1727. Ireland is the only kingdom I ever heard or read of, either in ancient or modern story, which was denied the liberty of ment |