'Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.'-GALATIANS V. I.

THE Reformation of the sixteenth century took a shape here in England which was distinct and peculiar. With us it was essentially a compromise -a compromise between the spirit of antiquity and the spirit of renovation, between the old learning and the new, between the Church and the State, between ecclesiastics and politicians, between those whose eyes were still fixed longfully on the past and those whose hopes were pointed anxiously to the future, between Catholicism and Protestantism, between Rome and Geneva. But scarcely had this compromise come to be recognised, and hardly the Reformation obtained what seemed to be a sure resting-ground, when a large party began loudly to express its discontent. It

1 The Hon. and Rev. W. H. Fremantle, Rector of St. Mary's, Bryanston Square, was prevented by a family bereavement from fulfilling his promise to preach this sermon of the series.

seemed to many that, after all, the work had been only half done, that greater freedom was wanted, that the Reformation must be reformed. There is in this no matter for wonder. Revolutions are rarely complete. Nearly always there is left behind a legacy of disappointment and unrealised hopes, a germ which, as time goes on, shall grow towards a fuller and freer life which was not possible before. Such was the Such was the process which brought about the rise of the Independents. There had been for some time a vague and unorganised dissatisfaction with the polity and customs of the Reformed Church, but it was reserved for a clergyman, named Robert Brown, to give to it definite and coherent expression. There is about Brown nothing of the saintliness and enthusiasm which lend such grace and charm to the lives of George Fox and John Wesley. He was a man of what is known as good family, and was nearly related to Lord Burghley, the great statesman of the Elizabethan age. Even when an undergraduate at Cambridge he showed unmistakeable symptoms of the restless, imperious spirit which made his later life so unlovable. After travelling on the Continent, where he saw by contrast the incompleteness of the English Re

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formation, he returned to this country the inveterate opponent of the Established Church. Nothing could subdue him. He traversed the land from end to end, denouncing the existing ecclesiastical arrangements with the rashness of a fanatic and the passion of a child. He was imprisoned no less than thirty-two times, and, but for the influence of his illustrious kinsman, would probably have been deprived of the clerical preferment which with strange inconsistency he continued to hold till his death. His later days were miserable enough, and in extreme old age he died in the gaol of Northampton, to which he had been committed for striking the constable of his parish in a fit of rage. It was an odd satire which made this man the founder of the great and venerable sect of the Independents, who for a time were even known as Brownites' after his name. But the cause was greater far than the champion, and it soon found worthier exponents and a better fate.

Some of us at this distance of time can but feebly appreciate the intense dislike of the surplice of the sign of the cross in baptism, of the use of the ring in marriage, of the posture of kneeling at the Lord's Supper, which animated these 'separatists' from the Church of England. Nor,

perhaps, are we able to understand the earnest passion with which they clung to the idea of separate congregations as distinct from a National Church. To the religious observer of to-day, whose mind is full of the simple truths of Christianity, it is almost incredible that men should consent to be persecuted, and that others should be eager to persecute them, about points like these. Things are better with us now than that, but even at the beginning of the seventeenth century, with the great warnings of the Reformation still ringing in their ears, bishops and Presbyterians joined themselves together in an unholy and unnatural alliance to drive the Independents out of the land. Holland gave them shelter, and in Zeeland, in Amsterdam, in Leyden, they found the spiritual freedom which England would not and perhaps dared not grant. They knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.'

To the liberal and generous mind there must be something very sad about every compulsory religious exodus. It is impossible to repress the feeling that the victory is really a defeat, and that, though the cause has been won, it has been won

by the basest form of force.

But in this case

force was almost necessary. Religion was not then what it is now. The Church of England was just entering upon an era of grave and new responsibility; the shackles of Rome had recently been cast off; the protection of the State had been solemnly accepted. It was obvious that Church and State must for years to come share the prospect of standing or falling together, and that the enemy of the one would be the enemy of the other. In this must lie the justification of the policy of repression which exiled and deprived of life some of the earlier Puritans. In our own day, of course, such an excuse would be neither wanted nor taken; in the reign of Elizabeth, amid the many domestic and foreign complications which distressed the land, the unprejudiced student will recognise its painful but emphatic force.

With the departure of the refugees the cause of the English Independents was temporarily at an end. The reign of James I. gave them neither encouragement nor hopes, and it was not until the conflict broke out between Charles I. and the Parliament that they again appeared on British soil. But in America they found, under the flag of their native land, a haven of grateful