death his executors found that the copyright of his works had no mercantile value. He perhaps formed a true estimate of his own powers when he said that all he could do was to 'systematize portions of knowledge which the consent of opinions has brought into readiness for such a process.'1 His name will not be associated with any great discovery, or any original theory, if we except his memoir on Crystallography, which is the basis of the system since adopted; and his researches on the Tides, which have afforded a clear and satisfactory view of those of the Atlantic, while it is hardly his fault if those of the Pacific were not elucidated with equal clearness. It too often happens that those who originally suggest theories are forgotten in the credit due to those who develop them; and we are afraid that this has been the fate of Dr. Whewell. Moreover, since his time scientific speculation has taken a new direction; his favourite theory, that our ideas are innate, and that both in the inductive sciences and in morality we can find a foundation in some immutable principle, no longer finds general favour. We cannot but think, however, that the History of the Inductive Sciences will still be referred to as a storehouse of facts; carefully investigated, and agreeably linked together. We are sorry to find that he was not considered really great as a mathematician; he was too much wedded to ancient geometrical methods; and ‘had no taste for the more refined methods of modern analysis.' Again, in one very important point, the special characteristic of Cambridge men, he was certainly deficient. We mean, accuracy. It used to be remarked how often his examination papers contained errors. This was not because he prepared them too hastily. We were once staying in his house when he was making his paper for the Smith's Prize (the highest mathematical examination at Cambridge, in which the Master of Trinity is an ex officio examiner), and can testify to the pains he took over it. But he seemed to think that accuracy in minor points was of less importance than one would have expected from a mathematician of his power, whose whole life had been spent in severe studies. So, too, in one of his most elegant mathematical investigations (read before the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1850), the second memoir on what he styles the intrinsic value of a curve,' after very cleverly performing the integration necessary to find

1 Mrs. Stair Douglas, p. 208.

3

2 Memoir by Sir John Herschel, Proceedings of Royal Society, xvi., p. lvi. 3 Bishop Goodwin's article in Macmillan's Magazine for December 1881, p. 140.

the rectangular co-ordinates of the running pattern curve om sin s, he gives a wrong result. Again, to illustrate the same defect in another subject, we remember hearing that he submitted some of the sheets of his translation of Plato's Dialogues to one of the first scholars in the country, who indicated 'the grosser blunders.' Notwithstanding the pains he had taken, however, several of the errors pointed out were allowed to appear in the published volumes. In science, as in other matters, his strong conservative instincts stood in his way. He could not be persuaded to accept new theories. To the last he resisted Lyell's geological system, and Mr. Darwin's evolution.'

We have felt it our duty to point out these shortcomings; but it is a far more agreeable one to turn from them, and conclude our essay by pointing out the lofty tone of religious enthusiasm which runs through all his works. As Dr. Lightfoot pointed out in his funeral sermon, the world of matter without, the world of thought within, alike spoke to him of the Eternal Creator, the Beneficent Father. Even his opponent, Sir David Brewster, who more strongly than all his other critics had denounced what he termed the paradox advanced in The Plurality of Worlds, that our earth may be 'the oasis in the desert of the solar system,' was generous enough to admit that posterity would forgive the author'on account of the noble sentiments, the lofty aspirations, and the suggestions, almost divine, which mark his closing chapter on the future of the universe.'

ART. IX.-NOT NONCONFORMISTS, BUT

DISSENTERS.

1. A Treatise of Divine Worship, tending to prove that the Ceremonies imposed upon the Ministers of the Gospel in England are in their use unlawful. By W. BRADSHAW. (1604. Republished in 1660.)

1 We are not sure that he ever allowed the Origin of Species to be admitted into the College library. It was certainly refused more than once, being probably dismissed with the expression which he was fond of using when, as Chairman of the Seniority, he read the list of books proposed a worthless publication.'

2. The Unreasonableness of the Separation made apparent. By W. BRADSHAW. (1614. Republished in 1640.)

3. Superstitio Superstes, or the Relics of Superstition. By D. CAWDREY. (1641.)

4. Independency a Great Schism. A Reply to Dr. Owen. By D. CAWDREY. (1657.)

5. Independency further proved to be a Schism. In answer to Owen's reply. By D. CAWDREY. (1658.)

THE student of the ecclesiastical tendencies of our generation cannot fail to notice, when he takes account of the words and phrases which are floating upon the surface of our controversies, that general consent with which the Separatists from the English Church have all but abolished the title of 'Dissenters'—of which they were once so proud-and have adopted in its stead the title of Nonconformists.' We shall not now attempt to show for what reasons this most significant change of nomenclature has been made: whether from historical ignorance, from astuteness, or from both. It is evident that it is not due to the mere anxiety of the modern Dissenters to be known to the English nation by a positive rather than a negative denomination, for 'Nonconformity' and 'Dissent' are both negative denominations. Besides, whenever the Dissenters wish to assert their positive standing, they define their sects as 'the Free Churches of England,' or 'the Voluntary Churches,' in contradistinction to the historical Church of England, which they assume to have been manufactured at some time or other by the State, and to be more or less enslaved and tyrannized over by the State, or to be patronized and favoured by it. The modern adherents of those English sects which were successively generated out of the foreign Calvinist germ-the Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists-have neither etymological nor historical right to the title of Nonconformists. The Dissenters are not the direct heirs of the Nonconformists of history. They are the direct heirs of the Separatists of history. The Nonconformists and Separatists were not one and the same; they were not even friends and allies; they were most bitter foes. The gulf which divided the Nonconformist from the Separatist or Dissenter was deeper and wider than that which divided the Nonconformist from the Conformist.

The difference of the two words Nonconformist and Separatist gives some indication of the original difference between the two historical movements. A 'Nonconformist' meant one who had a quarrel against the form or forms of the

actual historical Church, of which he was a member, but who had no fundamental quarrel against its substance, stuff, or matter. A Separatist, Sectary, or actual Dissenter, meant one who might or might not quarrel with the form or forms of the real historical Church, of which he refused to be a member, but who had a fundamental quarrel with the substance, stuff, or matter of the Church.

The original English Nonconformists regarded the historical Church as a true and proper Church, much deformed indeed, and in sore need of 'a godly thorough reformation;' but they dared not separate themselves from it, nor persuade others to leave it, nor set up a rival society, lest they should thereby commit the sin of schism. The dread of schism is one of the primary traditions of Nonconformity. The Nonconformist opponents of the Brownists, or early Independent Separatists, contended that the Church of England had been a true Church even before the Reformation, notwithstanding its long subjection to the Pope, whom the Nonconformist and Separatist agreed in regarding as the Antichrist. George Gifford, the Nonconformist, in his controversy with the Independent Separatists, Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, lays down a series of propositions which show that the Nonconformists and the Conformists stood on common ground against the Separatists. He states (1) that 'The Church of England, in the time of Popery, was a member of a Universal Church;' (2) that 'She had not her being of a Church of Christ from Rome;' (3) Nor took her beginning of being a Church by separating herself from that Roman Synagogue;' (4) ' But, having her spirits revived, and her eyes opened, by the Light of the Heavenly Word, she did cast forth that tyranny of Antichrist, with his abominable idolatry, heresies, and false worship, and sought to bring all her children into the right faith and true worship of God.' This sturdy Puritan concludes that the rejection of Antichrist's tyranny had not made the Church of England a new Church, as the Papists and Separatists assumed, but simply a purer and more faithful Church than before.' Samuel Clark, the popular and voluminous author of the Martyrology, the Marrow of Divinity, and the Discourse against Toleration, may be cited as a witness to the survival

1A Short Reply unto Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, the chief Ringleaders of our Donatists in England, 1591, p. 55. As Gifford, or Giffard, was one of the Puritan clergy who petitioned the Parliament against the English hierarchy, he doubtless held that the National Church would have become still more pure and faithful if she had rejected or modified the national Episcopate as well as the extra-national Papacy.

of the old Nonconformist tradition against schism at the time of the passing of the Act of Uniformity, 1662. After resigning his benefice, he attended the Church of England both as a hearer and as a communicant; for,' as he says, 'he durst not separate from it, nor was he satisfied about gathering a private Church out of a true Church, which he judged the Church of England to be. He continued twenty years in this retirement.' He remained a Nonconformist, and he justified his right to that title by refusing to become a Separatist.'

The one persistent aim of the English Nonconformists, from the time of the Tudor Act of Uniformity to the time of the Stuart Act of Uniformity, was the realization, by the arm of the Sovereign or of the Parliament, of their own ideal 'godly thorough Re-formation' of the existing National Church. The Nonconformists did not aim, like their foes the Separatists, at the production of an entirely new visible Church, or of entirely new visible Churches, but at the remodelling of the already existing Church after the pattern of the best Reformed Churches.' The English Separatists, Sectaries, or Dissenters, on the contrary, regarded the existing Church of England as no Church at all. The Separatists agreed with their Nonconformist foes in their horror of schism. If an Elizabethan Separatist had believed that his own parish church was in any sense a true visible Church of Christ-as his educated Liberationist successors probably believe every present parochial church in England to be-he would not have dared to separate himself from it. But as he believed the parish congregation to be at its best a mingle-mangle of the elect and the reprobate, at its worst a synagogue of Satan, he dared not remain in communion with it. The Nonconformist held separation from the parish church or the National Church to be the sin of schism: the Separatist or Dissenter held it to be the very first and foremost of Christian duties.2

1 S. Palmer. The Nonconformist's Memorial, 1802, i. p. 101.

2 There is nothing to be expected from Christ by any member of the Church of England but a pouring out of His eternal wrath upon them.' De Cluse, the most active elder in H. Ainsworth's Church,' cited in a Dialogue between an Anti-Christian (or churchgoer) and a Christian (or non-churchgoer), published first in 1615 an Objection Answered, &c., republished under other titles in 1620, 1662, 1827, and by the Baptist Hanserd Knollys Society in 1846, p. 156. 'I may never go to these (parish church) assemblies again without sin,' p. 157. They (the parish churches) are in God's account so far from being true churches, that they are synagogues of Satan,' p. 161. This ferocious attack upon Conformists and Nonconformists has received the imprimatur of Separatists for more than two centuries. Similarly J. Canne, 'Our inference is that the public assemblies of England are false and anti-Christian, and there