ENGLISH NONCONFORMITY

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29820, 12 May 1962, Page 8

ENGLISH NONCONFORMITY

Historic Event Of 300 Years Ago

[SpßCialiV written for “The Press” by GARDNER MILLER) QN May 19 there will be world-wide celebration of the birth of English Nonconformity. Three hundred years ago (1662) the great ejection took place when 2000 ministers of the Church of England left their pulpits because they would not conform to the State decree that the only form of worship permissible was to be that contained in the 1662 Prayer Book, This decree is known as the Act of Uniformity.

Nonconformity as a principle and movement began long before 1662. It goes back to the Reformation. It took various forms, all based on the right of private judgment in the matter of religion and the supremacy of the Bible as the revealed word of God. In England the movement had burgeoned during the 16th and 17th centuries and gave rise to the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Quakers and the Unitarians. The Methodist Church came into being in the 18tf> century as the fruit of the Evangelical Revival.

It could be said that the ejection of 1662 was the natural culmination of the underground movement for religious freedom that had dismayed and annoyed the State and the Established Church —they were practically one—for, at least two centuries. Men had been imprisoned, hangings were common and people dragged from their places of worship There had to come eruption. The most spectacular and far. reaching was the sailing of the Pilgrim Fathers from Plymouth in the little ship Mayflower in 1620 to America to found a Free Church in a free State. Their going not only re-shaped re. ligious history in England but also caused a new chapter to begin in the history of America.

The Four Acts In 1660 Charles II promised “Liberty for tender consciences,” but he had no respect for liberty or conscience and within a year an act was passed that restricted severely many who had sought the larger liberty that the State had promised.

Jhe Corporation Act (1661) it z was called, decreed that everyone holding public office in town or State must take the Sacrament at the altar ot the parish church and swear that the King was head of the church. In May, 1662, the Act of Unifomity was passed which decreed that the only form of worship permissible was to be that of the 1662 Prayer Book. This law also insisted that the only ordinations valid were those by a bishop of the Established Church. August 24, 1662, was the day fixed for the pinning of the act to the Prayer Book and to which ministers had to give “unfeigned assent and consent.” It is not without historic significence that August 24, 1662, was St. Bartholomew’s Day. The ministers of the time were not so much against ordered worship as they were objecting to uniformity. That day the break took place in action between the Church of England and Dissent, a breach that still remains, although bitterness has been erased. The act caused cruel suffering. Two thousand

ministers on St. Bartholomew’s Day stood firm against the act and as a consequence had to leave their pulpits. They faced poverty. How they lived is a mystery. Some of them disobeyed the law and gathered their people together in secret to teach them and to worship with them. Many of them were caught and banished from the land or flung into some foul prison.

In 1664 The Conventicle Act was passed, decreeing that no more than four persons could assemble with a household for religious worship outside the Established Church. A year later, in 1665. The five Mile Act excluded dissenting ministers or school masters from the towns, 'they could not exercise their calling within five miles of any town. The cruel coercion against good men who desired only to worship according to their conscience is still a raw memory. Until 1828—nearly two centuries after the shameful Act of Uniformity became law—it was impossible for anyone but a member of the Church of England to be a minister of the Crown, a member of a corporation, an officer in the armed forces or a responsible civil servant, although there was some little amelioration accorded by the Toleration Act of 1689.

The Dreamer It was about this time, to be precise it was November 12, 1660, that John Bunyan was arrested and flung into Bedford goal for preaching the Word of God. Rudyard Kipling’s lines are unforgettable: A tinker out of Bedford, A vagrant oft in quod. A priavte under Fairfax. A minister of God —.

We do not know the date of Bunyan’s birth, but we do know that the vicar of Elstow christened him on November 30, 1628. Bunyan would be about 32 years of age when he was first imprisoned. He was not released until the end of 1671 and so came under the ban of the Act of Uniformity. He could have been released at any time on a simple promise not to preach, but this he refused to do. They stopped him from preaching but they could not stop him from dreaming. The story of his dreaming is enshrined in the much-loved book “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” Reading it led Kipling to call Bunyan "The father of the novel. Salvation's first Defoe.” Daniel Defoe was born in the year Bunyan was imprisoned. He was a Dissenter with strong views. He wrote a satirical pamphlet called “The Shortest Way with Dissenters” which shocked the Established Church. He was prosecuted and sentenced to stand three days in the pillory. Hundreds of Londoners gathered round the stocks

showering Defoe with flowers and drinking to his health. Nevertheless he was imprisoned for two years. His “Hymn to the Pillory” sold in great numbers. A firstclass journalist, to him we owe the newspaper interview and the editorial. The Plague Pit Bunhill Field is a dreary cemetery, in City Road. Finsbury, London. This huge area was the dumping ground for victims of the Plague and of the Fire of London. More than 120.000 bodies had been buried before Bunyan was buried among them. He lies in good company. Bunhill Field is the Westminster Abbey of English Nonconformity; Daniel Defoe, novelist and pamphleteer: William Blake, poet and mystic; Isaac Watts, the hymn writer; Susannah Wesley, mother of John and Charles. All lie there with many others whose names are unknown. It is interesting to note that when John Wesley died on March 2, 1791, he was buried several days later by torchlight at five o’clock on a winter's morning. The multitudes that had filed solemnly by as he lay in state in his City Road Chapel were so great that it- was feared the cemetery would not hold all that would wish to be present at his interment and so the day and hour were known only to a few. The 17th century Nonconformists neither lived nor died in vain. They bought our freedom at the price of their own. The factors that divided them from the Established Church no longer call for reprisals. The old bitterness has passed. The principles remain. There will always be tension between the human conscious and authoritarianism. Nonconformists today welcome union with other branches of the Christian Church but not uniformity. The day of union will come. The human spirit must never be held in thralldom. Authoritarianism in any aspect of human activity must be defied and always in matters of religion.

All-night Lighting. The Auckland metropolitan area had all-night street lighting from Thursday. The majority ot the local bodies in the area have been in favour of the proposal for a long time but others held out objecting to the extra cost. These objectors have now agreed to accept the desire of the majority.—(P.A.)