evolutions of the seventeenth
century--that in 1649, accomplished by the Parliament armies, (including
its reaction in 1660,) and secondly, that in 1688-9--did much to unsettle
the religious tone of public morals. Historians and satirists ascribe a
large effect in this change to the personal influence of Charles II., and
the foreign character of his court. We do not share in their views; and
one eminent proof that they are wrong, lies in the following fact--viz.
that the sublimest act of self-sacrifice which the world has ever seen,
arose precisely in the most triumphant season of Charles's career, a time
when the reaction of hatred had not yet neutralized the sunny joyousness
of his Restoration. Surely the reader cannot be at a loss to know what we
mean--the renunciation in one hour, on St Bartholomew's day in 1662, of
two thousand benefices by the non-conforming clergymen of England. In the
same year, occurred a similar renunciation of three hundred and sixty
benefices in Scotland. These great sacrifices, whether called for or not,
argue a great strength in the religious principle at that era. Yet the
decay of external religion towards the close of that century is proved
incontestably. We ourselves are inclined to charge this upon two causes;
first, that the times were controversial and usually it happens--that,
where too much energy is carried into the controversies or intellectual
part of religion, a very diminished fervour attends the culture of its
moral and practical part. This was perhaps one reason; for the dispute
with the Papal church, partly, perhaps, with a secret reference to the
rumoured apostasy of the royal family, was pursued more eagerly in the
latter half of the seventeenth than even in any section of the sixteenth
century. But, doubtless, the main reason was the revolutionary character
of the times. Morality is at all periods fearfully shaken by intestine
wars, and by instability in a government. The actual duration of war in
England was not indeed longer than three and a half years, viz. from
Edgehill fight, in the autumn of 1642, to the defeat of the king's last
force under Sir Jacob Astley at Stow-in-the-wolds in the spring of 1646.
Any other fighting in that century belonged to mere insulated and
discontinuous war. But the insecurity of every government between 1638 and
1702, kept the popular mind in a state of fermentation. Accordingly, Queen
Anne's reign might be said to open upon an irreligious