Sometimes we're still arguing about the same things

Yesterday's post that touched lightly on church government put me in mind of a statement I made early in this blog: that passions about the controversies of 17th-century Britain are largely exhausted now. That statement does not apply to Ireland, and there are probably broad exceptions in the rest of the English-speaking world.

It was reading reading the tail end of Arthur Bryant's 3-volume biography of Samuel Pepys that provoked me to this entry, though. Bryant, writing about a period 90 years after the era into which we are preparing to dip our toes, naturally took a position in support of his hero, the Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Pepys. In doing so, he re-introduced, in the 1930s, some arguments that have been simmering (sometimes raging) since 1610. Bryant confidently assumes a Tory stance. By doing so, he automatically (and apparently with his eyes open) puts himself into angry disagreement with Whigs like Macaulay; and makes violent accusations against the ebablers of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

There is no doubt that serious charges can be proved against the lords, lawyers and bishops who brought William of Orange to the British crowns. In many ways, they were a scummy lot. But the same can be said for the sycophants and infidels who suppported the rightful king, James Stuart and his foreign-driven religious policy. My point is that we are still not over it. Seventy years ago Bryant could work himself into a (for a Tory) frenzy about some of the same issues that excited the English and Scots in 17th century.
I think that if you turn on AM radio in Central Texas tomorrow you will hear people work themselves into frenzies over very similar arguments.

This brief revery encourages me, because I think our walk in 17th-century Britain may occasionally be topical as well as interesting.