"Hereupon followed also the defacing and demolishing of many crosses erected as the monuments of christianity, in cities, towns, and most of our country-villages; none being spared which were within the compass of those enemies of the cross of Christ. Amongst which crosses none more eminent for cost and workmanship, than those of Cheapside in London, and Abington in the county of Berks; both of them famous for the excellencies of the statuas which were placed in them; more for the richness of the trimming which was used about them. But the Divine vengeance fell on some of the executioners, for a terror to others; one of them being killed in pulling down the cross of Cheapside; and another hanged at Stow-on-the-Wold, within a short time after he had pulled down the first image of the cross in Abington.

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They must have new Priests also, and new forms of prayer a new confession of the faith, new catechisms, and new forms of government. Towards the first, an ordinance comes out green-yard pulpit, and the service-books and singing-books that could be had, were carried to the fire in the public market-place: a lewd wretch walking before the train, in his cope trailing in the dirt, with a servicebook in his hand, imitating in an impious scorn the tune, and usurping the words of the litany used formerly in the church! Near the public cross, all these monuments of idolatry must be sacrificed to the fire, not without much ostentation of a zealous joy in discharging ordonance to the cost of some who professed how much they had longed to see that day. Neither was it any news upon this guild-day to have the cathedral now open on all sides to be filled with musketeers, waiting for the mayor's return, drinking and tobacconing as freely as if it had turned alehouse." HALL'S Hard Mea

sure.

ተ May 2, 1643.-I went to London, where I saw the furious and zealous people demolish that stately Cross in Cheapside."

6

"Are all your humble and earnest desires and solicitations for peace, all your pangs and throes for a reformation in religion, delivered at last of a sacred vow and covenant against both? Have you at last thought fit to tell the world, that there is no possibility or hope of peace, but by blood and desolation? Have M. Burroughes and M. Case so perverted all texts of scripture, and sergeant Wilde and M. Glyn so confounded all rules of law, that your consciences are grown so dead to the one, and your understandings so dull to the other, that in plain English you promise God Almighty to assist any body to kill the King; and set up new covenants of your own, point blank against your oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and publish all this to the people as the articles of your new creed? And yet that your lordship should tell me that your affection and duty to the King continues still the same you have pretended it; that you have still not only the same desire, but the same hope of peace; and that you are confident that the Anabap⚫tists and Brownists (whom methinks you have sworn to defend) will shortC ly ship themselves for another climate,' is so strange to me that amazement itself is not more confounding. You tell me of a trick your lordships have found out, to save you harmless from any obligation by this oath, à Salvo to all your other oaths lawfully taken; and those being in a diameter contrary to this, you have upon the matter engaged yourselves to nothing by this new covenant, and so have cunningly evaded the design of the conurivers: Oh (my lord) can you please yourselves with these shifts? Is this the wisdom, vigilance, integrity, and courage of the highest court of judicature, (for so the House of Peers in Parliament is,) to lead the people by their example to so solemn an act as a covenant with God Almighty, which at the instant you took it you intended should signify nothing?

"There is not a godly, learned, orthodox divine in England, whom you have not traduced, imprisoned, or eminently reproached and discounte

from the Lords and Commons in October following, (advice being first had with the Assembly of Divines) by which a power was given to some chief men of the Assembly, and certain

nanced, even those whose learning and integrity first gave credit and reputation to your great reformers; you have not only disused and suppressed that excellent book of Common Prayer, (the first and glorious instance in this Kingdom of the true reformed Protestant religion,) but scurrilously and profanely reviled and scoffed at it to the scandal of christianity; you have carried yourselves with such impious and debosh behaviour in churches and consecrated places, committing such horrid and beastly outrages that the heathen themselves would tremble at the mention of them; and all this out of pure zeal to the true reformed Protestant religion! This, you will say, is done without your consents by the disorderly soldiers, whom you cannot restrain. By your lordship's favour, you have very pretty votes of one or both Houses which directly encourage those soldiers to most of this. What remedy have you provided for these disorders, if the King concurred with you in all you propose to yourselves? You have presented him a bill to pull down the whole fabrick of church government, to leave heresy, incest, blasphemy and adultery, as unpunishable as any other acts of good fellowship; to take away his supremacy, and so cancel the oath you have all taken to him; and to take away bishops, and so cancel the oath he hath taken at his coronation to defend and protect them; and have not yet so much as fancied amongst yourselves into what shape you will lick that monstrous Chaos you would produce: This you leave to your SYNOD, of such men, as most of them no schools or nurseries of learning ever knew, men never known or heard of but by their faction, treason, and rebellion, such who never had title or subsistence in the church of England till your votes, as patron and ordinary, imposed them upon parishes, and over cures in the places of those whose religion was not rebellion. Oh (my lord) can you forget the excellent times in which you were born, and the happy times in which you have since lived, the flourishing state of religion here in doctrine and discipline, in the lives and learning of so many reverend divines famous throughout Christendom, can you so much forget this, to believe these courses the way to defend the true reformed Protestant religion? If you were a Protestant two years since, I am sure they are none whose directions you now follow. Is the countenancing and joining with Anabaptists and Brownists, (name as odious to you, and so mentioned by you even in your last letter, as the Papists,) to advance the Protestant religion? But it is no wonder when you take your rules of allegiance and fidelity from traitors and rebels, that you should take your directions of religion from hypocrites and schismatiques. I do not know your face better then your heart in this point: You are no more of my lord Say's mind in religion, then bishop Wren is. When you have recovered the courage to love truth again, this clause, if there were nothing else in your covenant, will take your sleep from you, and leave you no comfort but in the charity of those you have endeavoured to destroy.

Wind yourself out of this labyrinth with courage and magnanimity, and in your evening do somewhat that may redeem the faults of the day. Consider that these men who by your assistance prosper in their bad ways, are doing their own business, and every day make a progress to their own ends. My lord Say, since all honest men have been undoing, hath bettered his own estate above twenty thousand pounds, besides advancing his younger sons to full and ample revenues; M. Pym hath sweat to purpose, and bath thrived so well in two years that he is your equal at least. They who abhor Bishops, revenge themselves at your charge; and every action that advances that design, is more pleasant to them than life. Your great General hath the sovereign delight of opposing the King, and having his health drank with loud musique. Pennington, Ven, Fulk, and Manwaring are from broken, beggarly, contemptible varlets, become your fellow Peers, and no doubt when they have reconciled your Lordships and the Commons into one House, will have the negative voice, which you two have snatched from the King, deposited in their hands. That vital part of the Kingdom, the city,

DD

ministers of London, or to any seven or more of them, to impose hands upon such persons whatsoever whom they found qualified and gifted for the holy ministry; a clause being added thereunto, That every person and persons which were so ' ordained, should be reputed, deemed, and taken for a minister of the Church of England, sufficiently authorised for any office or employment in it, and capable of receiving all advantages 'which appertained to the same.' To shew the nullity and invalidity of which ordinations, a learned tractate was set out by Dr. Bohe, Chaplain sometimes the right Reverend Dr. Houson, Bishop of Oxford first, and of Durham afterwards, will never be trusted in your custody who have managed all the rest so ill. If any accident should happen, providence or victory, to defeat them, these men have been good and wary husbands, and have the fortitude to love any country equal to their own. Is your lordship of a constitution fit to mingle with these men? Is your revenue improved, or exchequer inlarged since these troubles? Is any one design of yours satisfied by your concurrence, or can you be content to die a Peer of New-England, or the Isle of Providence? Is not your reputation and interest with all good men lost, and have you one friend left whose face you knew a year before this Parliament ? These are melancholique considerations, but you must pass through them; and then if some noble, at least some honest resolution do not possess you, resolve to die the last of your name, and to leave this character behind you, That, notwithstanding all your discourse and pretence of religion, you would have turned Turk, if the major part of both Houses and the stronger part of the Kingdom had required you to take a covenant to that purpose.”—LETTER to a Noble Lord at London from a friend at Oxford.

The preceding extract contains a most impressive lesson to Noblemen, not to degrade their characters and diminish their influence by becoming the patrons of seditious persons, or by yielding to all the unreasonable and varying passions of an uninstructed multitude. When the period of its publication is considered, (the year 1643, after the actual commencement of hostilities between the King and Parliament,) the words of the author seem to have been awfully prophetic with regard to those noblemen who disgraced themselves by their disloyal conduct at that critical juncture.

But after the Covenant was appointed to be taken, and was generally swallowed of both clergy and laity, my power of ordination was with some strange violence restrained. For when I was going on in my wouted course, (which no law or ordinance had inhibited,) certain forward volunteers in the city, banding together, stir up the Mayor and Aldermen and Sheriffs to call me to an account for an opeù violation of their Covenant. To this purpose divers of them came to my gates at a very unseasonable time, and knocking very vehemently, required to speak with the Bishop! Messages were sent to them, to know their business. Nothing would satisfy them but the Bishop's presence; at last I came down to them, and demanded what the matter was; they would have the gate opened, and then they would tell me; I answered, that I would know them better first: If they had any thing to say to me, I was ready to hear them. They told me they had a writing to me from Mr. Mayor, and some other of their magistrates. The paper contained both a challenge of me for breaking the Covenant, in ordaining ministers; and withal required me to give in the names of those which were ordained by me both then and formerly since the Covenant. My answer was, that Mr. Mayor was much abused by those who had misinformed him, and drawn that paper from him; that I would the next day give a full answer to the writing. They moved, that my answer might be by my personal appearance at the Guildhall. I asked them when they ever heard of a Bishop of Norwich appearing before a Mayor. I knew mine own place, and would take that way of answer which I thought fit; and so dismissed them, who had given out that day, that, had they known before of mine ordaining, they would have pulled me, and those whom I ordained, out of the chapel by the ears."-HALL'S Hard Measure.

never since answered by the Presbyterians, either Scots or English. Next after, comes the Directory, or new form of worship,* accompanied with an ordinance of the Lords and Commons on the third of January, for authorising the said Directory or form of worship; as also, for suppressing the public Liturgy, repealing all the acts of Parliament which confirmed the same, and abrogating all the ancient and established festivals,† that so Saint

* "What do they mean by Directory for Worship &c. Do they intend thereby some established set rule for publique prayer, administration of the sacraments, and other parts of God's worship and service? Believe me, then, they did wisely in expressing their meaning in such an unwonted phrase; for otherwise their covenant, for this very clause sake, would never have been indured by thousands that were most greedy in swallowing it. And here I cannot but smile to think, how hard the contrivers of this solemn league were put to it to find a title for their new-intended form of worship. They durst not for their ears, those that had any, call it a set form of service or publique prayers and administration of the sacraments; that had come too near the title of the English Common-Prayer Book: and rather than they will make use of that Protestant title, or come near it, they chose to borrow a complete Papist title from Parsons, or Radford, or Peter Camus, or some other of that Romish rabble, (for I cannot recall any other that ever used that title but them,) and call it a Directory for Worship, &c. But how yet to make sense of bringing the Churches of God, &c. to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in Directory for Worship, &c. is past my skill. And so much for the nonsense of these words, a little of their nonequity. What an unjust and unreasonable thing it is, for us of the Churches of England and Ireland, or those of the Church of Scotland, to swear that we 'will indeavour to bring the churches of God in the three Kingdoms, to the 'nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of 'church-government,' &c. when the church of Scotland hath a good while since amongst themselves, solemnly covenanted, and sworn in their covenant, subscribed at Edenborough, Anno Dom. 1581, That they will per'severe in the doctrine and discipline of their church, and that they will ac'cording to their calling and power defend the same all the days of their life, under pain of all the curses in the law, and upon the hazard of body and 'soul in the day of the dreadful judgement.' So that to make good this part of this present league, of bringing the churches of God in all three Kingdoms to a nearer conjunction and uniformity in confession of Faith, and discipline, than they are already in, either they of the church of Scotland must recede from their former vow and covenant in altering their doctrine and discipline, to bring it nearer to ours of the churches of England and Ireland; or else we of the churches of England and Ireland must wholly yield up and submit our doctrine and discipline to be altered according to theirs of the church of Scotland: Both which seem very unjust and unreasonable, especially without any necessary, and indispensible cause shewed why either should be done. For why may not the churches of God in the three Kingdoms, still retain their several distinct confessions of faith, and forms of worship, &c. which they have ever retained since their several reformations to this present, and that not with a few or small blessings from God attending them, as others of his approving the same? Why should we swear to rob our churches of such justifiable and honourable liberty, which God hath ever indulged his churches in several Kingdoms? Or if we must have but one confession of faith, and form of worship, &c. in all three Kingdoms, why should not ours the church of England be thought as worthy to be that one, as theirs of the church of Scotland? Ours had the honour to be published to the world and approved by other reformed churches divers years before theirs saw light; and bath, since the publication" of both, had the approbation of more learned and religious men by far than ever theirs had.—The Anti-confederacy, or the Hypocrisy of the late Covenant. 1643.

+To modern readers, who are accustomed to observe the ancient festival of Christmas, the following extracts will sound somewhat harshly.-" Dec.

Sabbath (as sometimes they called it) might be all in all. The insufficiency of which Directory to the ends proposed in the same, pronounced the weakness of the ordinance which authorised it; and the excellency of the public Liturgy, in all the parts and offices of it, was no less learnedly evinced by Dr. 25, 1654. CHRISTMAS-DAY. No public offices in churches, but penalties on observers, [those who observed the day,] so as I was constrained to celebrate it at home." EVELYN'S Diary.

That violent republican, Edmund Calamy, who was a member of the Westminster Assembly preached a sermon before the House of Lords, from Matt. xii, 25, at their monthly fast in 1644, which was appointed that year to be held on Christmas-day. In reference to this appropriation of the day to fasting instead of feasting, Calamy said: "This day is commonly called the Feast of Christ's Nativity, or Christmas-day: a day that has formerly been much abused to superstition and profaneness. It is not easy to say, whether the superstition has been greater, or the profaneness. I have known some, who have preferred Christmas-day to the Lord's-day. I have known those who would be sure to receive the sacrament upon Christmas-day, though they did not receive it all the year after. Some persons, though they did not play at cards all the year long, yet they must play at Christmas; thereby, it seems, to keep in memory the birth of Christ. This, and much more, hath been the profanation of this Feast. And truly I think, that the superstition and profanation of this day is so rooted into it, as that there is no way to reform it but by dealing with it as Hezekiah did with the brazen serpent. This year, God by his providence has buried this FEAST in a FAST, and I hope it will never rise again. You have set out, right honourable, a strict order for keeping the Fast; and you are here this day to observe your own order, and I hope you will do it strictly. The necessities of the times are great; never more need of prayer and fasting. The Lord give us grace to be humbled on this day of humiliation for all our own and England's sins, and especially for the old superstition and profanation of this Feast!"

*But these new employments no way diverted him from his former tasks; for, according to his wonted method, he continued to address remedies to the increasing mischiefs of the times, and published the tracts of Superstition, Idolatry, Sins of Weakness and Wilfulness, Death-bed Repentance, View of the Directory; as also, in answer to a Romanist, who, taking advantage of the public ruin, hoped to erect thereon trophies to the Capitol, his Vindication of the Lord Falkland, who was not long hefore fallen in another kind of war." FELL's Life of Hammond.

In this laudable manner did Dr. Hammond defend the Church against two of its inveterate enemies, the Papist and the revolutionary Presbyterian. For his successful refutation of the latter, his memory has been undeservedly maligned by those individuals who, through their injudicious excuses, "do allow the sanguinary deeds of their fathers." Among these Mr. Orme is very conspicuous: In his Memoirs of Dr. Owen he states the controversy which arose between Hammond and Owen respecting some of the opinions of Grotius then recently deceased; he then informs us, that his hero" successfully establishes what he had formerly asserted" on the subject of dispute; and adds, " Hammond rests the defence of his hero, on his work De Satisfactione,' and on the denial, that his posthumous work on the epistles was not properly his, as it contained sentiments contrary to his declared opinions in his life. Without pronouncing a positive opinion on the subject of dispute, it must be admitted, that Grotius afforded strong reason for suspecting that he either did not believe, or that he considered the doctrines referred to, as of inferior importauce. Dr. Hammond, the opponent of Owen on this occasion, was a man of talents, learning, and character. He was one of the warmest defenders of his church, and a most devoted servant of Charles, its royal head; to whose love of power and of Popery, he had no serious objections. His New Testament shews him to have been a considerable critic, though influenced by strong systematic prejudices. His controversial writings discover more of learning than of judgment; and mark a greater deference to the authority of Fathers and Councils, than to that of Christ and his Apostles."