The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth

nt which, from that epoch, suspended at times but ever renewed, has been agitating and exciting the wor

er hand, it ran a very different course. From a merely political, it gradually rose to the height of a truly religious and popular movement, infusing new life into the nation and lifting it into the very forefront of the van of progress, curbing the insolent pretensions of king, priest and noble, purifying the minds of the people of time-honoured but

people, and only awaited a favourable opportunity to yield their fruits: already in the fourteenth they had paved the way for the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Hence it was that when Henry the Eighth, from purely personal and dynastic reasons, became involved in a quarrel with the Pope, he found his subjects prepared for greater changes in religious matters than any he contemplated or desired. However, by a series of legislative enactments, the Church of England, in 1534, was emancipated from the superiority of the Church of Rome;

of the Continent; and the attempt to enforce conformity to its demands resulted in the separation from it of the extremists of both sections. On the one hand, the English Roman Catholics became a distinct and persecuted religious body, whose members were generally regarded, despite repeated evidence to the contrary, as necessarily enemies of England. On the other, despairing of further changes in the direction they desired, a large number of the extreme Protestants separated themselves from the National Church-though by so doing they rendered themselves liable to be accused not only of heresy, but of high treason, and to suffer death-and formed themselves into different bodies of Separatists or Independents, differing on many points among themselves, but united by a common animosity of all outside ecclesiastical control. Within the Church the Catholic sentiment crystallised into the Episcopalian, the Protestant sentiment into the Presbyterian section of the Church of England. During the reign of Elizabeth the Protestant element

both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches, and who rejected alike the dogmas and doctrines of Rome, of Wittenberg, and of Geneva. The one point all such sects seem to have had in common was the denial of the sanctity and efficacy of infant baptism: hence their inclusion under the general term Anabaptists, even though many of them pas

the whole of the Scripture allegorically;15:1 and to have maintained that as Moses had taught hope, and Christ had taught faith, it was his mission to teach love. His teachings were propagated in Holland by Henry Nicholas, and in England by one Christopher Vittel, a joiner, who appears to have un

this Family of Love." Amongst those who have been converted, he tells us, were many who had hitherto been "professors of Christ Jesus' gospel according to the brightness thereof." He denounces Christopher Vittel, the joiner, as "the only man that hath brought our simple people out of the plain ways of the Lord our God," and complains how "he driveth the true sense of the Holy Ghost into allegories," and contendeth that "otherwise to interpret the Holy Scriptures is to stick to the letter." To the Family of Love, he tells us, "Christ signifieth anointed." He continues, "I pray you mark b

ose who are willingly minded to their doctrines can get a sight of their books";17:1 and that "they are disinclined to disputations and conferences with those not inclined to their opinions." He informs his readers that "it is a maxim in the Family to deny before men all their doctrines, so that they keep the same secret in their hearts"; that though they may inwardly reject, yet they will outwardly conform to the forms of the Church as by law established; that "they have certain sleights amongst th

nfession made by two of the Family of Love before a worthy and wors

semble, the Bishop or Elder doth declare unto the newly-elected brother, that if he will be content

. For they affirm that all things are r

length, perceiving themselves to be noted and marked f

hey do of order stay a great while ere they answer

ould be baptized before he is

are present in this world amongst us

ice and this service now used

not of their congregation, or that

e amongst themselves, that the liberty they h

for his opinion: therefore they condemn Master C

at magistrates should not meddle with religion; that no man ought to be compelled to faith, or put to death for his religion; that war is unlawful to Christians; that their spee

cts, and against the established policy of forcible suppression of religious differences. In 1571, a Bill having been introduced imposing a penalty for not receiving the communion, it was objected to in the House of Commons on the grounds that "consciences ought not to be forced." The same Parliament "refused to bind the clergy to subscription to three articles on the Supremacy, the form of Church Government, and the power of the Church to ordain rites and ceremonies, and favoured the project of reforming the Liturgy by the omission of superstitious practices."19:1 In 1572, however, the appearance of Thomas Cartwright's celebrated Admonition to the Parliament stemmed the course of religious reform, and produced a reaction of whi

uthlessly to be suppressed, and heretics were to be punished by death. For the ministers of the Church he claimed not only all spiritual power and jurisdiction, the decreeing of doctrines, the ordering of ceremonies, and so on, but also the supervision of public morals, under which every branch of human activities was included. In short, the State, as well as the individual, was to be placed beneath the heel of the Church. The power of the prince, the secular power, was tolerated only so that it might "protect and defend the councils of the clergy, to keep the peace, to see their decrees executed, and to puni

ught it fit that the reason of the individual should yield to that of the Church, he did not hesitate to declare "that authority should prevail with man either against or above reason, is no part of our belief. Companies of learned men, be they never so great and reverend, are to yield unto reason." As Buckle well points out,21:1 if we compare this work with Jewel's Apology for the Church of England, written some thirty years previously,-and ordered, together with the Bible and Fox's Martyrs, "to be fixed in all parish churches and read to the people,"-"we shall at once be struck by the different methods these eminent writers employ...

rue sense of it, and to live according to it." Even more fully than Hooker, Chillingworth accepts reason as the all-sufficient guide of human conduct, and admits no reservations that might limit the sacred right of private judgement. The essential difference between these three eminent writers is admirably summarised by Buckle in the following words:21:2 "These three great men represent the three distinct epochs of the three successive generations in which they respectiv

y well be regarded as the last word of

cal, and the anagogical, of which the last three were mystical or spiritual, in contradistinction to the first." The learned Erasmus, who lived and died a devout Roman Catholic, seems to have accepted this allegori

History, vol

inally presented to the High Court of Parliament in the time of Queen Elizabeth. This Giles Calvert was the printer and publisher of nearly all Winstanley's pamphlets, and also one of the first authorised printers and publishers for the Childr

o other punishment of hell, than the perpetual anguish of mind whic

in the Time of the Reformation, by

History of the Engl

vilisation in Engl

d. vol.