LA LECTURA DE TEXTOS LITERARIOS

legislature above all spiritual canons". But this does not mean religion

ought to be dependent upon the state. "Nothing can be more absurd than to

establish religion by law". And "good government has nothing to do with theology; it ought only to distinguish between a good and bad citizen,

by cherishing virtue and punishing vice". He recommends religious

toleration. Each person ought to be left to "worship his creator according

to the dictates of his conscience, without prohibition or limitation". But, commenting favourably on Quaker beliefs, Baxter also recommends "submission to the laws in all cases wherein conscience is not violated". This includes being involved in "any illicit trade". In this context, he specifically mentions smuggling as a social crime; he does not extract any

romantic political meaning from this activity. Baxter particularly

praises the Quaker "respect for order".

The subordinate role of religion in the institutional life of

society does not mean its disappearance. He deplores William II's

"irreligion" just as much as he denigrates Mahomet"s "pretended

revolutions". Even worse was the atheism rife in Charles II's time.

26.

One of the bad things about an established religion is it attracts "the infidel and the worthless". Baxter is most against the forms of "monkish superstition" he associates with Roman Catholicism. Among the attractions of the Quakers are that they have no professional clergy, "reject the major and mystical part of Christian ritual", and do not get entangled in

theological disputes since they "are very tender of quittting scripture terms for those of the schoolmen". It is "to Christ alone" the Quakers "give the total Word of God, and not the scriptures, although they highly esteem these sacred writings". Following Christ, they do every­ thing "in a simple manner". The deistical beliefs of the Quakers show up "the primitive simplicity of the Christian religion" as well as its purity. This is how religion was in its origins.

Despite the fact Baxter wants to separate religion and politics at the level of institutions, there is a profound cognitive connection. The logic or form of religion spilled over into the logic of politics. There is a connection between the purity, simplicity and originality of religion and "the purity of parliament" and of the polity in general. Radical politics becomes sacred politics. The word "sacred" is common in Radical political vocabulary and is often used in an historical context with a religious content. Henry III was made to order "sentence of excommunication" against anyone "who should dare violate the sacred constitution". Although he despises most religious ritual, Baxter

frequently invokes it when attempting to give legitimacy to his beliefs. When Henry swears to abide by the Magna Carta, the prelates and abbots who forced him into it symbolically "threw their tapers to the ground". They also threatened to excommunicate anyone who violated the fundamental laws and cursed "the soul of everyone who incurs this sentence" to

"stink and corrupt in hell!" The people are given grace or sacredness. On one occasion, "the archbishops harangued the multitude on that

celebrated maxim, 'the voice of the people is the voice of God"'. History becomes a series of sacred acts: a sacred history. The most sacred act is foundation. Just as Jesus is the founder of the Christian religion, so Alfred is the founder of the English polity. This can be so since the society of the ancient Britons was totally destroyed by the Saxon invaders. Even from a founder like Brutus, who Baxter recognises as at least a semi-fabulous figure, he can get some political capital. After he got rid of the giants Brutus "divided the land among the people"; and he certainly sees Brutus, the founder of "Albion", as a sort of libertarian figure against the despotic giants.

As in all myth, the key relationship is between the present and the distant past, not the present and the recent past. When parliament gives an unlimited vote for credit, Baxter comments "our ancestors would have heard such a demand with hatred and rejected it with scorn". The custom of the people, "our ancestors", is at the bottom of legitimacy. No matter how often that custom is broken by the wilful acts of kings, there remains a thread of continuity hidden beneath the surface of historical events. Yet this does not mean time is progressive. There

is not even any sense of a steady progressive moral degeneration, as Thompson argues. History is the history of (comparative) liberty or of periods of light and darkness, good and evil. Using another sense of progress, Baxter speaks, in seemingly Enlightenment terms, of "the

progress of reason" and a "revolution in sentiment". But reason can only progress back towards, and as far as, the Saxon liberty. Progress has limits. Revolution can only revolve towards a new point of the spiral which resembles the antique past far more than it represents anything new. Time gets squeezed out. Saxon kings and heroes seem to be determined less by lineage than by defence of the people’s rights. Baxter’s table of the kings and queens of England shows Henry II and other medieval monarchs as 'Saxons’. The Magna Carta is a charter which, in part, supports demands for present-day political rights. And the Saxon millenium is used in an even more evocative way to picture the dream of the ideal society. According to Baxter, the Saxon people were,

courteous to each other, sincere in their dealings, faithful to their word, and firm in their attachments. They were hospitable beyond all nations; and not

only esteemed it dishonourable to deny admittance to a guest, but made it an object of punishment. Nor was their care limited to their own nation; they extended it to travellers who might pass through their own country, setting aside a portion of the public grain for their entertainment. Mild in the treatment of criminals, they forgot not the moderation and equity which attended on liberty. Their fierceness was corrected by humanity, and

their generosity unfettered by the narrow boundary of exact justice. They neither indulged in a plurality of wives, nor prohibited their women to attend them to the field, to assist their councils and to be useful * and active in the different occupations which employed them. Gallantry had not turned sex from business or made it an object of criminal voluptuousness. Vice in those simple and virtuous times had not lifted her head to triumph over innocence. Ambition had not intruded into the place of modesty, nor were the poor crushed under the proud oppression of the rich. A precarious justice was not bought from corrupted

tribunals of judges. The ignorance of crime was a firmer preservative to their manners, than to other nations the strictness of law and the knowledge of virtue ... Supreme power was vested in the community

... The extreme liberty of the people made them two

or three days in assembling on ordinary occasions '-'21

Like all golden ages, Baxter’s Saxon millenium reveals more of the values and situation of its contemporary expression than it does of

history. Note, for example, in Baxter's picture, the silversmith's pride

in the fraternalist values of the tramping system of the trade clubs, here seen as Saxon hospitality; the emphasis is on the law and political

ambition; on the role of women. See, also, his celebration of the

jury system. Also observe, despite Baxter's many disagreements with Burke,

that he has a Burkeian notion of the Englishness of the constitution. When

Baxter says "vice in those simple and virtuous times had not lifted her head to triumph over innocence", he is plainly not referring to any

political or historical reality that ever existed. He is retracing the

steps back to a political and historical Eden. But it is important to