Wentworth's Wentworth bore himself as haughtily as usual. Not only did he state his case proudly and defiantly, but, in opposition to the rules of the House, he omitted to withdraw when it was under investigation, and rose again to answer advocacy of the arguments which had been urged against him. Eliot at once rose to denounce the offender, com paring him to a Catiline who had come into the senate in order to ruin it. Before this invective Wentworth was compelled to leave the House, though he was afterwards permitted to return and to state his case once more.1 his own case. Wentworth It was no mere personal rivalry, no casual difference, which divided Wentworth and Eliot. With Wentworth good goComparison vernment was the sole object in view. Everything between else was mere machinery. Conscious of his own powers, he was longing for an opportunity of exercising them for the good of his fellow-countrymen; but, excepting so far as they could serve his ends, he cared nothing for those constitutional forms which counted for so much in and Eliot. the eyes of other men. The law of election existed, one may suppose him to think if not to say, for the purpose of sending Sir Thomas Wentworth to Parliament. He was himself arrogant and overbearing to all who disputed his will. In private he expressed the utmost contempt for his fellow-members,2 and it is not likely that he had any higher respect for his constituents. He was an outspoken representative of that large class of politicians who hold that ability is the chief requisite for government, and who look with ill-concealed contempt upon the view which bases government upon the popular will. July 4. Eliot stood at the opposite pole of political thought. To 'Mr. Forster (Sir J. Eliot, i. 160), after giving Eliot's speech from the Negotium, proceeds as follows: "Yet hear me first,' cried Wentworth, as with a general feeling unmistakeably against him, he rose to leave. He spoke briefly and without interruption.' This implies that Wentworth succeeded in setting the rules of the House at defiance. The Eliot Notes do not agree with this view of the case. After referring to Eliot's appeal to the privileges of the House, they say "W. sent out again. After, the motion being renewed upon question, W. admitted to be heard." Wentworth therefore was specially authorised to speak. 2 Strafford Letters, i. 24. 1625 Eliot's reproof. RICHARD MONTAGUE. 351 him the attempt to convert Parliamentary elections into a sham was utterly abhorrent. In them he saw the voice of the nation speaking its mind clearly, as he saw in the representatives of the nation once chosen the embodiment of the majesty of England. Out of the fulness of his heart he reproved the man who held both the House and its constituents in contempt. The majority sided with Eliot. Glanville, whose authority was great on all questions of this nature, produced precedents July 5. to show that a poll when demanded must be granted, The election whether it was after eleven or before, and that electors declared had a right to vote even if they had not heard the writ read. Wentworth's election was declared void, and the doors of the constitution were opened more widely than they had been before.1 void. Stanford Rivers. Few as were the members remaining at Westminster during the last days of the session, they had still matters of unusual 1622. importance to discuss. Some three years before, Montague at Richard Montague, the rector of Stanford Rivers, in Essex, found in the hands of some of his parishioners a paper drawn up by a Roman Catholic missionary, containing the usual arguments against those Calvinistic tenets which, at the close of the preceding century, had been the accepted doctrines of the great majority of the clergy, and attacking the popular theology as if it was the accepted doctrine of the English Church. Montague, who belonged to a different school, and who found support for his opinions in those formularies of his Church which reflected the belief of an earlier generation, determined to frame a reply which should lase its repudiation of the Roman doctrine upon grounds very different from those which were popular amongst the clergy and laity. He was not unversed in controversy, having already entered the lists against Selden himself, whose History of Tithes he had unsparingly condemned. The result of Montague's meditations was that The Gag for the new Gospel-such was the quaint name of the paper Forster, Sir J. Eliot, i. 153; Farsley Debates, 13, 36, 44. 1624. for an Old Goose. which had aroused his indignation-received a reply under the equally quaint name of A New Gag for an Old A New Gag Goose. It is unnecessary to say that it was deformed with that scurrility from which few controversies in that age were free. But, as far as the matter of the volume is concerned, an impartial judgment will probably consider it as a tenperate exposition of the reasons which were leading an increasing body of scholars to reject the doctrines of Rome and of Geneva alike. To the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination Montague entertained an insuperable objection. He refused to speak of the Roman Church as indubitably Antichrist, or of the Pope as the man of sin.1 Those who remained under the Pope's authority formed a part of the Church of Christ, corrupt and unsound in the highest degree, but not utterly apostate. Of the more peculiar doctrines sanctioned by Papal authority he spoke in a way very different from that in which the majority of Protestant Englishmen were accustomed to express themselves. He denied the right of the clergy to enforce upon the people the practice of compulsory auricular confession; 2 but he held that in cases where the mind was perplexed or the conscience burthened with sin, the person so troubled might be invited, or even exhorted, to come voluntarily to the Christian minister, and to seek for advice and consolation, and for the declaration of divine pardon to the repentant offender. He denied that the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper underwent any substantial change; but he asserted that Christ was therein present to the faithful receiver in some mysterious way which he did not venture to define.3 Pictures and images, he et The passage about the Roman Church is a quotation from Cassander: "Et quamvis præsens hæc ecclesia Romana non parum in morum disciplinæ sinceritate, ab antiquâ illâ unde orta et derivata est, discesserit, tamen eodem fundamento doctrinæ, adde etiam in doctrinæ sinceritate et sacramentorum a deo institutorum firma semper constitit, et communionem cum antiquâ illâ et indubitatâ Christi Ecclesiâ agnoscit et colit. Quare alia et diversa ab illâ non potest, tametsi multis in rebus dissimilis sit. Manet enim Christi Ecclesia et sponsa, quamvis multis erroribus et vitiis sponsum suum irritaverit, quamdiu a Christo suo sponso non repudietur, tametsi multis flagellis ab eo castigetur." New Gag, 53. 3 Ibid. 258. 2 Ibid. 83. 1624 'A NEW GAG FOR AN OLD GOOSE! 353 said, might not be made the object of worship or even of veneration; but there was no reason why they should not be used, even in churches, to bring the persons and actions of holy men of old before the minds of the ignorant, and thus to excite devotion in those upon whose ears the most eloquent sermon would fall flat. Montague, in short, proposed that they should be used much in the same way as the pictures in illustrated Bibles, or in painted church windows, are used in our own time.' He finally argued that prayers to the saints were to be rejected, not because he doubted that the holy dead retained a loving sympathy with those who were yet living, but because he was unconvinced that there was any way of reaching their ears so as to excite their pity, and further, because' we may well be blamed of folly for going about, when we may go direct; unto them, when we may go to God.'2 Such opinions were not likely to pass long unchallenged. Two clergymen, Yates and Ward, complained to a committee of the Commons in the last Parliament of James, and, as the session was drawing to a close, the Commons referred their complaint to the Archbishop The Com mons refer the book to Abbot. of Canterbury. Abbot's pro Although Abbot warmly sympathised with the objections taken to the New Gag, he did not much like the responsibility thrust upon him by the House of Commons. If the ceedings. idea, prevalent with modern writers, that he was still under disgrace in consequence of the accidental homicide committed by him in Lord Zouch's park, finds little countenance from contemporary evidence, it is certain that James far preferred the chatty, secular-minded Williams to the Calvinistic, clerical Archbishop. Abbot therefore thought it best, as soon as he had read the book, to ask James what he had better do, and was recommended to send for the author. 1 "Images have three uses assigned by your schools. Stay there, go no further, and we charge you not with idolatry! Institutionem rudium, commonefactionem historiæ, et excitationem devotionis. Not the making of images is misliked, not the having of images is condemned, but the profaning of them to unlawful uses in worshipping and adoring them." New Gag, 300, 303. #Ibid. 229. VOL. V. A A He renion Montague. Abbot took the hint. "Mr. Montague," he said, “you profess you hate Popery, and no way incline to Arminianism. You see what disturbance is grown in the Church strates with and the Parliament House by the book by you lately put forth. Be occasion of no scandal or offence; and therefore this is my advice unto you. Go home, review over your book. It may be divers things have slipped you, which, upon better advice, you will reform. If anything be said too much, take it away; if anything be too little, add unto it; if anything be obscure, explain it ; but do not wed yourself to your own opinion, and remember we must give an account of our ministry unto Christ." Such advice, which might perhaps have been of some avail with a young man whose opinions were as yet unformed, was of course thrown away upon a practised writer who was simply asked to cast the whole treasure of his intellect in a new mould. Montague too went to the King, and found in James a sympathising auditor. "If that is to be a Papist," said James, 66 SO am I a Papist." By the King's permission he prepared a second Appello book, entitled Appello Cæsarem, in which he vindiCæsarem. cated more fiercely than before his claim to be the true exponent of the doctrine of the Church; and this book, having been referred by James to Dr. White, Dean of Carlisle, was by him declared to contain nothing but what was agreeable to the public faith, doctrine, and discipline of the Church of England. and was accordingly licensed for the press. Before it was ready for publication, James died, and it was issued with a dedication to his successor. 1625. The Com Montague's opinions were not likely to be popular. On July 1, as soon as the question of supply had been settled, the Commons sent a deputation to Abbot, to know what July 1. steps he had taken. The deputation found him much mons apply vexed. After telling them all that had happened, he complained that he had not even been informed of the intended publication of the second book till it was actually in the press. As, however, he had no legal jurisdiction over Montague on the mere complaint of the House of Commons, all that he could say was that he would gladly give his judg.. to Abbot. |