ments, the English church had the form of godliness but wanted the power, she was ready to say, 'I shall sit as a queen for ever, I shall not be moved;' but the Lord had marked His servants as those who should come out of great tribulation, and therefore he appointed a scourge for the Church of England, which should prove who were His indeed, and who were only numbered among His professing servants, having a name to live while they were dead.

The flourishing and happy period of Edward's reign being over, the English crown, after the failure of an attempt to bestow it on Lady Jane Grey, devolved to that zealous and faithful servant of the Romish church, the persecuting Queen Mary. Every page in the history of her miserable reign is marked with blood, persecution, flames, and death. Such a spirit in a female form makes the mind shudder. But Satan can overcome every gentler feeling, and fit his instruments for his work.

Mary had promised not to alter the established religion;' but as it is an established maxim of Romanism that no faith is to be kept with heretics, she deemed herself fully justifiable and praiseworthy, not only in endeavouring to alter, but to overthrow it, by all the violence that the intolerant spirit of popery could exert.

As you have in every English history an account of her bloody deeds, I may spare you and myself the reciting of them.

Many now joined the noble army of martyrs,' whose names will ever be dear to a British Protestant, and will shine in the annals of the British Reformation. But it would encrease too much these pages even to mention the names of all these martyrs for the truth, and I scarcely dare attempt to select from the list of worthies.

Latimer and Ridley, to whom we are greatly indebted for our liturgy, died together; when bound to the stake the former said, 'Be of good cheer, brother, we shall this day kindle such a torch in England as I trust by God's grace shall never be put out.' His words were accomplished; O may not the sins or ingratitude of England ever cause that torch which has burned so bright, and given light to "the nations sitting in darkness," to be 'put out in obscure darkness.'

Acting on the model of the Spanish Inquisition, Mary was the most furious and unwearied persecutor the church in those days had seen. An object of pity, as well as of hatred and dread; her life and death were equally miserable; and to comment on such a character would be needless. To the relief of the Protestants, and dismay of the persecuting papists, she died in the sixth year of her reign, 1558.

On the accession of Elizabeth, Romanism again hung down her guilty head, and Protestantism triumphed. Elizabeth had always been its friend, and her life was repeatedly in danger during her

cruel sister's reign. She immediately commenced the reform of the church, and consulted with her secretary, Sir William Cecil, on the re-establishment of the Protestant religion.

Many of the most eminent ministers and bishops had been martyred in the preceding reign; some, however, had escaped the rage of the persecutors, and taken shelter from the storm, amongst the reformed churches on the Continent. When it had passed, they returned, and having gained an acquaintance with the doctrines and discipline of those churches, especially with that of Geneva, they brought them in some degree to England, and wished to have them established by law, instead of the church service we have now; but Elizabeth deeming the latter more suited to the times, retained it.

Thus was protestantism filly established in England, and here I shall leave its history without advancing further into those sectarian disputes which disturbed its peace, or those errors which invaded its purity.

Of Scotland I have not told you any thing in the History of the Reformation; indeed that country, shining as it does, and has done, in the light of evangelical truth, would require a history for itself, which I could not attempt in these little sketches of ecclesiastical events.

The ecclesiastical history of Scotland embraces such a variety of circumstances, and its struggles

for religious freedom are so interwoven with its secular history, that I should find difficulty in compressing the narration of these events into the small compass of these Stories. John Knox was the most eminent Reformer of Scotland; but though the Protestant religion was finally established there under King James, the son of the unfortunate Mary, the present ecclesiastical government of the country was not settled without violent struggles; the Scots chose the presbyterian religion; and wished to model their church nearly on the plan of that of Geneva, the principles of whose great reformer, Calvin, they held. The King of England insisted on their adopting the liturgy and episcopacy of the church of that country. Long, and I regret to say, bloody contests ensued; the Scots, called covenanters, from the covenant they entered into to defend their religious liberties, are accused of fanaticism, blamed as outrageous zealots, and ridiculed as absurd enthusiasts; but let us not judge of a body by the example of a few:-at such a time some might indeed give occasion to the enemies of Christ to blaspheme, but nothing can palliate the cruelties, tyranny, and violence exercised in Scotland in the seventeenth century. Those who ridicule the Scotch Covenanters, will, I think generally be found to ridicule the profession of the genuine religion of Christ. The Presbyterian religion, for which they so warmly contended against Charles, is now the religion of Scotland;

and perhaps no country enjoys more Gospel light and purity than it does.

Of Ireland, I shall only say that the reformed church there, at the time I speak of, might be comprised in a small space indeed. Yet this little church, concerning which its friends might have pleaded with the persecuting Mary, as Lot did with the angel for Zoar, "Is it not a little one?" would not have escaped the destruction to which that zealous bigot would have doomed all who dissented from Romanism, had not, as it is said, the mistress of an Inn ingeniously contrived to steal away the commission which the Queen's agent was conveying to Ireland for the extermination of all Protestants there, and substituted in its place a pack of cards; which I certainly think were never put to so good a use before or since. The commissioner, not aware of the trick, presented his commission, as he thought, to Lord FitzWalters, at Dublin Castle. But lo! when opened, a knave of clubs stared the Lord Deputy and Commissioner in the face. The commission was gone, they knew not how; and before another could be made out Mary died, and the little church of Ireland was saved.

The Protestant Church was undoubtedly encreased in the time of William III. whose name is so hateful to an Irish papist, and whose victory on the banks of the Boyne established protestantism as the religion of the country, though it did