the government of a Christian church. As might naturally have been expected, the Puritans, by attacking episcopacy, became embroiled with the state, and were occasionally treated by Elizabeth with considerable harshness. They were, however, connived at, and even protected by some of her ablest ministers; and during her reign they increased in numbers and importance.

As the Presbyterian discipline had been established in Scotland, by the active zeal of Knox and his brother reformers, and as King James had, in the general assembly at Edinburgh, in the year 1590, "praised God that he was born in the time of light of the gospel, and in such a place as to be king of such a kirk, the sincerest kirk in the world"-on his accession to the throne of England, the Puritans entertained sanguine hopes that their religious principles would be adopted by the state. But the futile conferences at Hampton Court, speedily awakened them from their dream of synods and church censures, and convinced them of what, if zeal had not bereft them of common sense, they must have antecedently suspected, that the monarch decidedly preferred a church splendidly endowed, which humbly hailed him as its head, to a kirk struggling with poverty, and marked with austerity; and which claimed a right to sit in judgment on his delinquencies no less than on those of the meanest of his subjects. At the termination of the second day's conference, his majesty declared that "he would make the Puritans conform, or he would harry them out of the land, or else worse." These words of ill omen were a prelude to severities, which, whilst they served to sour the temper of the sectarians, were insufficient for their extirpation. On the contrary, during the reign of James, they still continued to be numerous, and many preachers who were tinctured with their principles contrived to retain their situations in the church, in the capacity of lecturers.

The molestation of these preachers was a direful source of misfortune to Charles the First, and this molestation was principally the work of Archbishop Laud. The wrong which was done to this ecclesiastic at his trial, and the injustice which brought him to the block, have in some degree hallowed his memory for it is to the credit of human nature, that the general sympathy is on the side of him who is unfairly smitten by the hand of power. But candour must allow that he was a man of a narrow mind, and of arbitrary principles, and that his zeal appears to have been tinctured with malignity. He laid it down as an indisputable postulate, that the Church of England was infallibly correct both in doctrine and in discipline. Hence he inferred, that to dissent from her in the least iota was scandalous and sinful; and thought himself equally

justifiable in law and in equity, in compelling all Protestants in the King's dominions (he was sparing of the Catholics) to come within her pale. Endless were the pains which he took in the enforcement of the wearing of surplices and capes, in regulating the position of communion tables, and in compelling communicants to kneel at the holy eucharist. His love of splendour in divine offices gave colour to the false accusation brought against him by his enemies, of being a secret partizan of Popery. Many were the popular preachers whom he silenced, because they were followed by those who were puritanically inclined. In his zeal for uniformity, he would not suffer the Dutch and French churches, which had been allowed to carry on their worship in this kingdom, to adore their God in peace; but insisted upon it that the children of their members, born since their parents settled in England, should, under severe penalties, conform to the established mode of worship. His universal grasp reached the factories of our trading companies on the Continent, and the chaplains of our regiments in foreign parts; and he meditated the discomfiture of the pious exiles who had fled to indulge themselves in extempore prayer and the power of excommunication, in the vicinity of Cape Cod. Though the church of Ireland was an independent church, he intruded upon the province of the venerable Usher, and corrected its articles to a conformity with those of the church of England. Emboldened by success, he at length attempted to force a liturgy upon the whole people of Scotland. But the failure of this enterprise brought disgrace upon his counsels, and upon those of his royal master, and led the way to that series of calamities, which for a time abolished his favourite church, destroyed the constitution, and brought the unfortunate Charles and himself to the block.

Lest we should seem to bear too hard upon the memory of Laud, we think it expedient to observe, that his error was the error of the times in which he lived. At that period, uniformity was the darling object of every religionist; and no class of people then existed who had the least idea of toleration. It was reserved for future times to discover that religious liberty is the best security for the peace of a nation, and that, when sectarians are protected by law in the profession of their faith and the exercise of their worship, the public tranquillity is in no danger of violation. Toleration is the safety-valve which gives quiet issue to that zeal which, like steam, if too strongly compressed, would spread mischief and ruin all around.

At the period of the Scottish Reformation, the rapacity of the nobles had made such depredations on ecclesiastical property, that the kirk was reduced to a state of poverty, which, however primitive, was not entirely satisfactory to Knox and

his brother reformers; whose descendants, both in Scotland and in England, could not but regard with an evil, perhaps with a jealous eye, the splendid revenues which, in spite of similar invasions of the laity, were still left to the English church. Wishing to regulate all ecclesiastical affairs by the standard of their own discipline and circumstances, they professed to regard a superfluity of worldly goods as the bane of a churchman; and they were of opinion, that the political power conceded by the English constitution to the episcopal order was incompatible with the piety, the humility, and the active exertions in the cause of the gospel, which were requisite in those who were set apart for the exercise of spiritual functions. Hence, bishops were the objects of their abomination; and from the time of Martin Mar-prelate, to the period when those stumbling blocks to the faithful were expelled from the House of Lords, the mitre and the lawn sleeves were the perpetual objects of their virulent abuse. Amongst those who signalised themselves by their assaults on these remnants of Popery, as they styled them, was Dr. Bastwick, the author of the tracts, which this article may rescue from oblivion, in which, like thousands of other fugitive pieces, they have been long involved. We have thought it expedient thus to bring them into notice, as affording a specimen of the style in which theological controversy was conducted in the times of our ancestors; and as throwing some additional light on a striking incident in the history of Charles

the First.

John Bastwick was born in the county of Essex. This is intimated in the following quaint passage, which we extract from the dedication of his "Letany," to the virtuous and elect lady, the Lady Walgrave.-" Calves, you know, in old times were. good sacrifices, and well accepted of; and I doubt not but they may yet be well pleasing. Now I am an Essex calf, and the prelates have made me one, and pent me up in a coop a fatting. If they shall in fine, and after all this, sacrifice me upon the altar of the pillory, I will so bleat out their episcopal knaveries, as that the odour and sweet smelling savour of their oblation, I hope, shall make such a propitiation for the good of this land and kingdom, as the king himself and all loyal subjects shall be the better for it."

Bastwick must have been born to the inheritance of a decent property, as he was educated in Emanuel College, Cambridge, whence he repaired to the University of Padua, for the purpose of studying medicine. Having taken his degree in that celebrated school of physic, he returned to his native country, and established himself as a M. D. at Colchester. Here he appears to have met with a good deal of encouragement, and might have lived usefully and happily, had he not

been diverted from his regular practice by a desire of healing the disorders which, in his opinion, afflicted the church. Regarding the extravagant assumptions of the bishops to be the principal of these disorders, he examined their claims in a Latin treatise, entitled "Apologeticus ad Præsules Anglicanos in Curiâ Celsa Commissionis;" in which he attempted to prove that bishops did not derive their authority from Divine right. At the same time he appears to have taken the precaution to except from his animadversions such prelates as might acknowledge that they derived their spiritual and temporal power from the civil institutions of their respective countries. But in the estimation of Laud, it was an offence of the greatest atrocity to deny the jure divino right of himself and his brethren, He therefore caused the unfortunate disciple of Galen to be arrested by a pursuivant, and had him duly brought up before the court of high commission. In vain Bastwick pleaded that "his book was only written against the pope, and Italian bishops, and such as vindicated authority over all kings and princes, and ecclesiastics jure divino." This plea was treated, as we remember that of a luckless cobler was treated in the year 1792, who, being accused before a magistrate of damning the king in a pot-house, acknowledged the fact, but protested that he meant the King of France. The Apologeticus was declared a scandalous libel; its author was condemned to pay a fine of one thousand pounds, besides the costs of the prosecution, and to be imprisoned in the Gate-house till he should recant his errors""a goodly censure," says he, in his dedication of his " Letany" to Lady Walgrave, " of which I may say as a poor silly old countryman spoke, coming once to London in the time of a great plague, and seeing a superscription over a door, not being acquainted with such things in the country, and reading it, it was Lord have mercy upon us.* I promise you,' saith he, 'a good and a godly saying, I would every house in the town had as much on it,' meaning no ill, poor man; so I say, their sentence was a good and a godly sentence, I would every prelate in England were under the same."

It is a trite remark, but no less true than it is trite, that pains and penalties are of no efficacy in the correction of opinion. Bastwick took up his lodgings in prison with a dogged resolution, that if the archbishop waited for his recantation, he should wait, as he himself expresses it "till doom's-day in the afternoon." He cared not for the loss of fortune or of friends; he was not alarmed by the impairing of his health; nor did the

Houses, which were shut up, on account of the inhabitants being infected, bore this inscription, along with a large cross in red.

sufferings of his wife and family cause him to give way. In his seclusion he brooded over his wrongs, and studied the subject of church discipline, till his feelings were exasperated to the highest degree, and he was determined to persist in disseminating his opinions, whatever might be the consequences.

"If Father William, of Canterbury," says he, in a letter to the keeper of the Gate-house, "think that I am afraid of him, he is metropolitically mistaken; for I neither fear him, nor love him; neither is there any affection or passion in me so contemptible, that I deem him, or any prelate in England, worthy to be an object of it. know they are enemies of God and the King, and of all goodness. I fear not the face of man, neither do I tremble at the foul fiends of Acheron. Can the prelates tell me of any thing worse than hell and death? If they cannot, it is not dreadful to me; for the Devil hath no power over me; and Death is my loving friend and kind neighbour. I am a physician, and have been bred in the tents of mortality, and have had Death by the hand every day. He is solamen miseriarum ; neither have the prelates any more power over me than the Devil had over Job." Having thus screwed up his spirits to the sticking point, he declares that he is "resolved to put a few nettles under Antichrist's tayle, and to make him frisk a little before he dies;" and that as "the Prelates have taken away his practice among men, he is willing to try if he can heal beasts, and, among others, that scarlet whore, and all those that commit fornication with her."

In this spirit of defiance, Bastwick proceeded to compose, and to publish his Letany, which was printed "by special procurement," (i. e. surreptitiously) "and for the special use of our English Prelates, in the year of Remembrance, 1637." This work is introduced by a dedication from John, the Physician, to the vertuous and elect lady, the Lady Walgrave, at her house in Wormingford, in Essex, who had been one of his patients, and whose sympathy in his puritanical opinions led her to commiserate his sufferings in the cause of their common faith. Next follows a short address to the courteous reader, and next a letter to Meester Aquila Weekes, keeper of the Gatehouse. These prolegomena form an introduction to the Letany itself, in which the incarcerated author poured forth his wrath against the reverend bench, and the whole system of the church established by law.

For this important work, John, the Physician, prepared himself by a course of meditation, by which he seems to have worked himself up to no ordinary pitch of enthusiasm. For thus he commences his letter to his honourable patroness :

"Madam,-In these times of great danger, being every way environed with the contagious sickness of the plague, and seeing all possibility taken away (without a miraculous kind of deliverance) of ever