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    The Puritans. No. I.

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    rTHHE character and conduct of the JL Puritans have been lately brought before the public by Dr . Southey , in his " Book of the Church ; and from his representations the reader would scarcely give them credit for learning , talents , conscience or virtue . The

    gross partiality of the Laureate happily defeats its own design . His injustice , however , has had , in some instances within our knowledge , the good effect of exciting professed Dissenters to look into the history , and to consult the works of their fathers .

    We say good effect , because we hold the early Nonconformists in high respect , and are sure that no one can make himself acquainted with their lives and writings without entertaining a like feeling . Faults indeed they had ;

    some common to the times , some peculiar to themselves ; but these were greatly overbalanced by excellencies , of which also some were shared by them equally with the best men of the Established Church and of the Church

    of Rome , * and some were eminently their own . They were enlightened patriots , and accordingly were patronized by such of Elizabeth's counsellors as were most attached to the liberties of England . Their situation

    as religionists set them in opposition to arbitrary power ; they stood manfully in the gap , with their lives in their hands - > and to their fortitude and self-devotion in the most critical

    * The Roman Catholic Seminary Priests and Fathers that distinguished themselves in the reign of Elizabeth and the earlier part of the r ^ i gn of James , are undervalued by Protestants . They were above their contemporaries iu learning and talents , and equal to them in virtue . Amongst them are to be found some of the beat writers of this proud era of the English language . And who can read the story of their martyrdom without blushing for his Proteataqt ancestors , and ack nowledging that their deaths would have shed a > glory upon truth itself !

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    period of our history are mainly owing our free institutions . Some of our writers and preachers , who have departed most widely from the doctrinal standard of the Puritans , appear to us to have fallen inadvertently into the prejudices of High

    Churchmen with regard to the venerable founders of English nonconformity . Their Calvinistic belief , and their practical intolerance , both which they learned from the Church of England , are , we acknowledge , blemishes in their character ; but let it never be

    overlooked that they laid down principles , of the tendency of which they were not themselves aware , which ia their gradual operation have raised many of their posterity to a better mode of reasoning and a more liberal

    habit of feeling . It is ungrateful to remember only their weaknesses , and to forget entirely their magnanimity and disinterestedness , which , perhaps * were the principal cause of the Church of England remaining a Protestant Church . The Dissenter that allows

    himself to sneer at the Puritans on account of their supposed errors ia doctrine , and their known errors in church-government , is about as wise and consistent as the Englishman that

    holds Magna Charta cheap because it made no provision for a freely-chosen House of Commons , or that pours contempt upon the Revolution of 1688 , because it did not establish an

    unexceptionable and perfect constitution . Time is necessary to the flowering of a rose , according to the German proverb ; and amongst allJeremy Bentham ' a " Fallacies of Government , " none is greater than the

    modern notion , or rather talk , that re * - formers , whether in Church or State , who have not done every thing have done nothing , or , at Iea 3 t , that they deserve no gratitude for what they have done , but , on the contrary , are to be reproached for what they have left undone . If he be a benefactor to

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    THE «^^ »^ » ¦¦ i t f • • ' 1 " * * - *¦'¦¦_¦ ' * r r r ii - - — ^ ' i ! i . — > . r i j » '¦ . ; i- - ¦ - - -

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    No . CCXXXI ] MARCH , 1825 . [ Vol . XX .

    The Puritans. No. I.

    The Puritans . No . I .

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    VOL . XX . S

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1825, page unpag, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2534/page/1/