The Last Summer (2/3)

THOUGH many of the Puritan ministers were far removed from the intrigues and disputations going on in London, they were never­theless deeply concerned in their outcome and throughout the land they waited for word from the capital. For many months before the Act of Uniformity was published rumours were circulating, and even amidst the peaceful beauties of far-off Flintshire we can hear their echoes in the diaries of Philip Henry. “Great expectations,” he writes in July 1661, “about a severe Act about imposing the Common prayer and Ceremonies passed both houses of Parliament but not signed by the King.” Again, “News from London of speedy severity intended against the Nonconformists. The Lord can yet, if he will, break the snare. If not, welcome the will of God.”

Although news of an Act of Uniformity had thus been heard of well in advance, it was not, as has already been said, until May 1662 that its terms were made known. Three months only were given the Puritans for deliberation and that in spite of the fact that the revised Prayer Book to which they must give unfeigned assent was not to be ready for publication till August 6–only three weeks before St. Bartholomew’s Day. In an age in which books had to be despatched and circulated in a manner far different from what we are accustomed to today, this meant that in certain parts of the country such as Lancashire, ministers could not obtain copies before August 22, and in some cases not even then. We hear of one ejected minister who was subsequently to complain that he was silenced for not declaring his consent to a Book which he never saw or could see.

The shortness of the interval allowed to the Puritans before the Act was enforced also hindered the assembling of any national Conference to formulate a joint decision. It is true, of course, that much correspondence circulated in these three months of trial and anxiety, and those who could do so met together for mutual con­sultation, but, in general, it was in the quietness of their own homes that they arrived by prayer and thought at the individual decisions they were to make. The diary of Oliver Heywood, the faithful minister of Coley in Yorkshire, gives us a glimpse of what was being felt within men’s hearts all over the land. After noting the threats he had already received from ecclesiastical authorities, Heywood goes on to encourage himself in the thought that he was not alone in these trials: “Hitherto God hath helped: and now I am but in the same predicament with the rest of my brethren in the ministry since the passing of this fatal act of uniformity, which we are waiting for the execution of, which commenceth from the 24th of August, which if not prevented will strike dead most of the godly ministers in England.” Heywood was in no doubt whether or not he should comply with the Act: “the conditions are too hard to be accepted. Woe be to us, if we preach not the gospel! but a double woe to us, if we enervate the gospel by legal ceremonies …. Our work is dear to us; but God is dearer, and we must not do the least evil to obtain the greatest good. There are worldly advantages enough to sway us to conformity, if conscience did not answer all the pleas of flesh and blood. The bargain will be too hard to provide a livelihood by making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience. God can advance his work without our sinful shifts, and rear up monuments to his glory without our complying pre­varications: suffering may benefit the gospel as much as service, when God calls to it.” ....

For more see here