In writing a letter to his daughter, the Duchess of York, just after her conversion to Popery, the necessities of Clarendon's argument forced him to adopt a position, which, if he had sincerely taken it up at an earlier period, must have diverted him from that persecuting course, which is one of the greatest blots on his history. "The common argument," he remarks, "that there is no salvation out of the Church, and that the Church of Rome is that only Church, is both irrational and untrue." "There are many Churches in which salvation may be attained, as well as in any one of them; and were many even in the apostolic time; otherwise they would not have directed their Epistles to so many several Churches, in which there were different opinions received and very different doctrines taught. There is, indeed, but one faith in which we can be saved--the steadfast belief of the birth, passion, and resurrection of our Saviour. _And every Church that receives and embraces that faith is in a state of salvation._"[528]
The whole history of the Chancellor must be considered, if we would form a just estimate of his character. That he was a man of great ability; that he possessed those talents and accomplishments which contribute to form distinguished statesmen; that he performed services valuable to the nation, at a very critical period of its history; that he had a sense of religion, and was heartily attached to the Episcopal Church, there can be no doubt. Those who glory in the constitution of that Church as established upon the Act of Uniformity will praise him for his wisdom; those who form a different opinion of that Church, and of its legal basis, must withhold such laudation. But, apart from all ecclesiastical questions, and also putting aside the motives by which Clarendon was influenced throughout his career, with all its lights and shadows--here are two aspects of his conduct, at least, upon which the historian must pronounce a severe censure. To say nothing of his pride and avarice--there remain, first, his persecution of the Nonconformists; and next, the dissimulation which he practised, in connection with measures professedly intended for their relief. His persecution of the Nonconformists is a fact which speaks for itself. Whatever notions he might have of what the Church should be it was a gratuitous course, and it betrayed revenge and injustice, to treat Dissenters in the manner which he did: revenge, for he crushed them as conquered foes; injustice, for he dealt with them all as disaffected subjects, whilst the loyalty of the vast majority of them was above suspicion. If his clever diplomacy did not sink into downright dissimulation in the business of the Worcester House Declaration, the circumstances of which have been so fully described--if there was not also much deceptiveness in the promises from Breda, and in the plan of the Savoy Conference, both of which Clarendon, as Charles' Minister, must have advised, it is hard to prove that such qualities have ever belonged to any human being. Many a Jesuit has been a martyr--and I give the Chancellor credit for such an attachment to the Episcopal Church as would have led him to suffer on its behalf, but no man could be more Jesuitical than he was in the course of policy which he adopted for its establishment. So dark a fate as covered the last days of Strafford, Laud, and Charles I., did not attend the final destiny of the great Minister of Charles II.; still, calamities overtook him after the sunshine of his prosperity--his sun set in a cloud; and thus, like his predecessors in the defence of the Church, he has secured from posterity, through sympathy with him in his misfortunes, gentler treatment than the defects of his character would otherwise have received.[529]