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Updated: July 15, 2025
In his day, and in Elizabeth's, the lay statesmen were Erastians to a man; that is forgiven to them; but the ecclesiastic who adopts and preaches without reservation the theory that the Church its organisation, its administration, even its doctrines is ultimately subject to the secular sovereign, essentially and not owing to the accidental sanction of force such a one is inevitably regarded as a traitor to his order; that he was guided by honest conviction seems incredible.
If the reverend brother had let me know where to find his other testimonies of Origen and Chrysostom, peradventure I had given him as good an account of them. Tertullian’s words which he citeth, Praesident probati seniores, I know very well where to find; and I know also, that if there be a passage in all antiquity against the Erastians, that is one.
The more dogged Erastians held aloof; but those who conceived of the Church as a spiritual society obeyed the summons; the "Conference of Bishops" assembled, and the priceless word "Pan-Anglicanism" was added to the resources of the language. What did these good men do when they were come together? Not, it must be admitted, very much.
Now, as Prynne out of doors, with all his Presbyterianism, was also lawyer-like, and therefore staunchly Erastian, and as the Independents in Parliament made common cause with the Erastians wherever they could, the obstruction had been very formidable. "The Erastian party in the Parliament is stronger than the Independent, and is like to work us much woe," wrote Baillie in May 1645; "Mr.
Scarcely had the Westminster Assembly begun its deliberations, when it became abundantly apparent, that, however sincere its members might all be in the desire to promote the religious welfare of the community, they were, nevertheless, divided in their views as to how that could be best accomplished. There were three parties in the Assembly, the Presbyterians, the Independents, and the Erastians.
Only two ministers were decided Erastians, but a considerable number of the parliamentary members, chiefly those who were professionally lawyers, advocated that secular policy.
Unless they were mistaken, it was a Toleration to "all the sectaries of the time," whether they were "Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians, Familists, Erastians, Brownists, Separatists, Libertines, or Independents;" yea it extended to "those Nullifidians the Seekers, to the new sect of Shakers, and divers others;" and, though it professed not to include "Antitrinitarians, Arians, and Antiscripturists," where was the security that these might not at least print and publish their blasphemies and errors?
It taught men to distrust the claims of authority, to exercise their own judgment on matters of the highest interest, and to spurn the fetters of intellectual as well as of political thraldom. In a short time the Independents were joined by the Antinomians, Anabaptists, Millenarians, Erastians, and the members of many ephemeral sects, whose very names are now forgotten.
And it is doing no discredit to Erastians of the present day, to say that they are not likely to produce anything either more profound in learning, or more able and acute in reasoning than was done by their predecessors of the Long Parliament, and the Westminster Assembly.
Occasionally he vindicated with great animation the right of every freeman to worship God according to his own conscience; and presently he charged the guilt and misery of the people on the awful negligence of their rulers, who had not only failed to establish presbytery as the national religion, but had tolerated sectaries of various descriptions, Papists, Prelatists, Erastians, assuming the name of Presbyterians, Independents, Socinians, and Quakers: all of whom Kettledrummle proposed, by one sweeping act, to expel from the land, and thus re-edify in its integrity the beauty of the sanctuary.
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