Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes, however, in the preceding century had
still treated it as the great incubus upon intellectual progress, and it
was not yet exorcised from the universities. It had, however, passed
from the sphere of living thought. This implies a series of correlative
changes in the social and intellectual which are equally conspicuous in
the literary order, and which I must note without attempting to inquire
which are the ultimate or most fundamental causes of reciprocally
related developments. The changed position of the Anglican church is
sufficiently significant. In the time of Laud, the bishops in alliance
with the Crown endeavoured to enforce the jurisdiction of the
ecclesiastical courts upon the nation at large, and to suppress all
nonconformity by law. Every subject of the king is also amenable to
church discipline. By the Revolution any attempt to enforce such
discipline had become hopeless. The existence of nonconformist churches
has to be recognised as a fact, though perhaps an unpleasant fact. The
Dissenters can be worried by disqualifications of various kinds; but the
claim to toleration, of Protestant sects at least, is admitted; and the
persecution is political rather than ecclesiastical. They are not
regarded as heretics, but as representing an interest which is opposed
to the dominant class of the landed gentry. The Church as such has lost
the power of discipline and is gradually falling under the power of the
dominant aristocratic class. When Convocation tries to make itself
troublesome, in a few years, it will be silenced and drop into
impotence. Church-feeling indeed, is still strong, but the clergy have
become thoroughly subservient, and during the century will be mere
appendages to the nobility and squirearchy. The intellectual change is
parallel. The great divines of the seventeenth century speak as members
of a learned corporation condescending to instruct the laity. The
hearers are supposed to listen to the voice (as Donne puts it) as from
'angels in the clouds.' They are experts, steeped in a special science,
above the comprehension of the vulgar. They have been trained in the
schools of theology and have been thoroughly drilled in the art of
'syllogising.' They are walking libraries with the ancient fathers at
their finger-ends; they have studied Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and have
shown their technical knowledge in controversies with the great Jesuits,
Suarez and Bellarmine. They s