⚫ convenient for this Church or State.'-And that the most pious and learned Dr. Hammond* was, about the same time, of the Lord Primate's judgment in this matter, may appear by this passage in the preface to his treatise of The Power of the Keys: That a moderate Episcopacy, with a standing assistant Presby'tery, as it will certainly satisfy the desires of those whose pre"tensions are regular and moderate; craving nothing more, and ' in some things less, than the laws of the land: So that it will "appear to be that which all parties can best tolerate, and which, "next to himself, both Presbyterian, Independent, and Erastian, will make no question to choose and prefer before any of the other pretenders.'

Though it may be true, that divers of the more sober of the Presbyterian party have seemed to have approved of these terms of reconciliation, yet it has been only since the ill success their discipline hath met with, both in England and Scotland, that has made them more moderate in their demands: For it is very well known, that, when these terms were first proposed, the ringleaders of the party utterly cried them down as a great enemy to Presbytery; since this expedient would have yet left Episcopacy in a better condition than it is at this day in any of the Lutheran churches. But they were not then for Divisum Imperium, [they] would have all or nothing; and they had their desires. So that it is no wonder if the Lord Primate, in this endeavour of reconciliation, met with the common fate of arbitrators, to please neither party. But though the church is now restored (beyond our expectation as well as merits,) to all its just rights and privileges,

Several other eminent Episcopal Divines were at that period advocates for such an accommodation. The following is Dr. GAUDEN's scheme for a coalition of the three great denominations, which he proposed to the world, only two years prior to the Restoration:

"All agree in the main Christian graces, virtues, and morals required in a good Christian's practice; yet still each party is suspected and reproached by others. The brisk INDEPENDENT boasts of the liberty, simplicity, and purity of his way; yet is blamed for novelty, subtilty, vulgarity, and anarchy. The rigid PRESBYTERIAN glories in his aristocratic parity, and levelling community, which makes every petty Presbyter a Pope and a Prince, though he disdain to be a Priest; yet is taxed for petulancy, popularity, arrogancy, and novelty, casting off that catholic and ancient order which God and nature, reason and religion, all civil and military policy, both require and observe among all societies.-EPISCOPACY justly challengeth the advantages, right, and honour of apostolic and primitive antiquity, of universality and unity, beyond any pretenders; yet is this condemned by some for undue encroachments and oppressions upon both ministers' and people's ingenuous liberty and christian privilege, by a kind of secular height and arbitrary sovereignty, to which many Bishops in after ages have been betrayed, as by their own pride and ambition, so by the indulgence of the times, the munificence of christian princes, and sometimes by the flatteries of people.

"Take away the popular principle of the first, which prostrates government to the vulgar; take away the levelling ambition of the second, which degrades government to a very preposterous and unproportionate parity; take away the

without the least diminution; yet certainly no good subject or son of the church, either of the Clergy or Laity, at that time when this expedient was proposed, but would have been very well contented to have yielded farther than this, to have preserved his late Majesty's life, and to have prevented those schisms and confusions which, for so many years, harrassed these poor nations. But if our king and church are both now restored, it is what then no mau could foresee; it is the Lord's doing, and is marvellous in our eyes !"

To complete the correct view, which the reader will now have obtained of the ecclesiastical events preliminary to the Act of Uniformity, it will be necessary to present him with the subjoined elucidatory extract from BISHOP HEBER'S Life of Jeremy Taylor:

"It has happened almost uniformly, in cases of religious difference, that those schisms have been most bitter, if not most lasting, which have arisen on topics of dispute comparatively unimportant, and where the contending parties had, apparently, least to concede, and least to tolerate. Nor are there many instances on record which more fully and more unfortunately exemplify this general observation, than that of the quarrel and final secession of the Puritan clergy from the church, in the year 1662. Both parties, in that case, were agreed on the essentials of christianity. Both professed themselves not unwilling to keep out of sight, and mutually endure, the few doctrinal points on which a difference existed between them. The leading Puritans were even disposed to submit to that episcopal government, their opposition to which, during former reigns, had created so much disturbance, and had led, by degrees, to such abundant bloodshed and anarchy. And it is no less true than strange, that this great quarrel, which divided so many holy and learned preachers of the common faith, was occasioned and perpetuated by men, who, chiefly resting their objections to the form and colour of an ecclesiastical garment, the wording of a prayer, or the injunction of kneeling at

monopoly of the third, which seems to engross to one man more than is meet for the whole : Each of them will be sufficiently purged (as I conceive) of what is most dangerous or noxious in them, for which they are most jealous of, and divided from each other. Restore to People their liberty in some such way of choosing, or at least approving their ministers, and assenting to church-censures, as may become them in reason and conscience; restore to Presbyters their privileges in such public counsel and concurrence with their Bishops as may become them. Lastly, restore to Bishops that primitive precedency and catholic presidency which they ever had among and above presbyters, both for that chief authority or eminency which they ever had in ordaining of presbyters and deacons, also in exercising such ecclesiastical discipline and censures, that nothing be done without them: I see no cause why any sober ministers and wise men should be unsatisfied, nor why they should longer stand at such distances and defiances, as if the liberties of christian people, the privileges of christian presbyters, and the dignity of christian bishops, were wholly inconsistent; whereas they are easily reconciled, and, as a three-fold cord, may be so handsomely twisted together, that none should have cause to complain or be jealous, all should have cause to joy in and enjoy each other."

the eucharist, were willing, for questions like these, to disturb the peace of the religious world, and subject themselves to the same severities which they had previously inflicted on the episcopal clergy.

"With these men, whether in England, or Ireland, there were apparently only three lines of conduct for the ruling powers to follow.

"The FIRST was, the adoption of such a liturgy and form of church government as would, at once, satisfy the advocates of episcopacy and presbytery. This was attempted in vain; and was, indeed, a measure, the failure of which, a very slight attention to the prejudices and animosity of both parties would have enabled a by-stander to anticipate.

"The SECOND was that which was, at least virtually, promised by the king in the declaration of Breda; that, namely, uniformity of discipline and worship should, for the present, not be insisted on ; that the Presbyterian and Independent preachers should, during their lives, be continued in the churches where they were settled; ejecting only those who had been forcibly intruded, to the prejudice of persons yet alive, and who might legally claim reinstatement; and filling up the vacancies of such as died, with ministers episcopally ordained and canonically obedient. In this case, it is possible that, as the stream of preferment and patronage would have been confined to those who conformed, as the great body of the nation were strongly attached to the liturgy, and gave a manifest preference to those churches where it was used; and as the covenanting clergy would have no longer been under the influence of that point of honour, which, when its observance was compulsory, induced them to hold out against it, the more moderate, even of the existing generation, would have by degrees complied with their own interests and the inclination of their flocks; while the course of nature, and the increasing infirmities of age, must, in a few years, have materially diminished the numbers and influence of the more pertinacious. We have found, in fact, by experience, that the liturgy has, through its intrinsic merits, obtained, by degrees, no small degree of reverence even among those who, on other grounds, or on no grounds at all, dissent from the church of England, as at present constituted. And it is possible that, by thus forbearing to press its observance on those whose minds were so ill prepared to receive it, a generation would soon have arisen, to whom their objections would have appeared in their natural weakness, and the greatest and least rational of those schisms have been prevented, which have destroyed the peace and endangered the existence of the British churches.

But, while we at the present day are amusing ourselves with schemes of what we should have done had we lived in the time of our fathers, it may be well, for the justification of these

last, to consider how little the principles of toleration were then understood by either party; how deeply and how recently the episcopal clergy, and even the laity of the same persuasion, had suffered from the very persons who now called on them for forbearance; how ill the few measures which were really proposed, of a conciliatory nature, were met by the disingenuousness of some of the Presbyterian leaders, and the absurd bigotry of others, and the reasonable suspicion which was thus excited, that nothing would content them but the entire proscription of the forms to which they objected.

"Nor can we greatly wonder, that, under such circumstances, the THIRD and simplest course was adopted,-that, namely, of imposing afresh on all a liturgy, to which the great body of the people was ardently attached, and the disuse of which, in any particular parishes, (when the majority of congregations enjoyed it,) was likely to be attended with abundant discontent and inconvenience. These considerations are, indeed, no apology for the fresh aggressions of which the episcopalian party were guilty, for their unseasonable though well-intended alterations of the liturgy, and the hostile clauses inserted in their new Act of Uniformity. Far less can they extenuate the absurd wickedness of the persecution afterwards resorted to, against those whom these measures had confirmed in their schism. But they may lead us to apprehend that, (though a very few concessions more would have kept such men as Baxter and Philip Henry in the church,) there would have been very many whom no concession would have satisfied;* and that the offence of schism was, in a great degree, inevitable, though a different course, on the side of the victorious party, might have rendered it of less wide diffusion, and of less deep and lasting malignancy."

IV. CONTENTS OF THIS VOLUME.

HAVING given, in the preceding paragraphs, some account of the belligerent Calvinists of 1643, and of their immediate successors, I introduce my readers to Dr. William TwISSE, who has been called " a Puritan of the Old School," but to whom belongs the nuch more appropriate appellation of "a Puritan of the New School." I connect his personal history with the Synod of Dort, and relate at some length, (pp. 242-256,) the political consequences of the decisions of that Assembly in several countries of Europe. I afterwards (pp. 256-307) describe the hosts of Cal

This will be very evident to every one who has had an opportunity of perusing the very able pamphlets which were published by the Presbyterians, between 1660 and 1662. The answers of their Episcopalian brethren are likewise deserving of a perusal, on account of the moderation which many of them exhibit. h

vinistic prophets that immediately arose to predict great things to Calvinism, and the resistance which Grotius, Hammond, and a few others gave to this prophesying humour. Without a brief exposition of this kind, the reader would not be able to form any conception of the origin of that fanatical spirit which was excited among the common people by a few artful Predestinarians, and which never ceased to operate till it had engendered civil discord in every European state in which Calvinism received encouragement. This subject is resumed in another part of the volume, (pp. 499-532,) in which it is shewn, that, when the interests of Calvinism were to be promoted by arts like these, the cool metaphysical head of Dr. Twisse could busy itself in auspicious predictions respecting the overthrow of the Arminians; and that, when the mild and ingenuous Joseph Mede would not sing to his sanguine tune, and prophesy smooth things to those whom he accounted "the Lord's people," the old Doctor became very wroth and renounced his acquaintance. From the whole of this minute recital I have shewn (p. 515) how " Divine Providence then permitted the experiment of a reputed holy republic to be made in this country, and undoubtedly intended that its disastrous issue should be a warning to the nations not to infringe the royal ties of Heaven, by assigning the precise time for the accomplishment of particular events predicted in God's Holy Word, to which perverse and designing men gave a plausible meaning, and under it concealed their own secular and corrupt designs!"

After due reprehension of this perversion of Christianity through pretended inspirations, (pp. 307-377,) I subjoin a brief detail, from Dr. HEYLIN'S History of Presbyterianism, of the seditious practices of the Calvinistic cabal in Scotland and England from 1637 till the murder of King Charles the First, a description of which catastrophe is quoted from LLOYD'S Worthies. I then endeavour (pp. 379-391,) most impartially to decide between the Presbyterians and Independents, "respecting the degree of blood-guiltiness which attached to each of the prevailing parties," and have presented my readers (p. 387) with extracts from sermons delivered before the Long Parliament, by celebrated Presbyterian divines, only a few months prior to that fatal tragedy. The Assembly of Divines and their revolutionary labours at Westminster are afterwards described, (pp. 392-446,) when Dr. Twisse's personal history again connects itself with the public events of the kingdom.

In the language of Mr. Reid, one of the old Doctor's biogra phers, I give all the leading circumstances of his life, (pp. 452472,) and some curious particulars concerning the arrangements and conduct of the Westminster Assembly, over which he was appointed to preside. The Doctor's famous Latin book against Arminius is the next subject, (pp. 472-494,) on which I have offered animadversions. Of his prophesying predilections I have