which they were principled, according to the rules of their first reformation. And hereupon some rupture was like to grow betwixt the young Marquess and his subjects, if by the intervention of some honest patriots it had not been closed up in this manner, or to this effect: that the Lutheran forms only should be used in all the churches of the Marquissate, for the contentation of the people; and, that the Marquess should have the exercise of his new religion, for himself, his lady, and those of his opinion, in their private chapels."

The connection which existed between this change in Brandenburgh, and the assumption of the regal dignity by the Elector Palatine, will be seen by the succeeding extracts from the same able historian. Speaking of the Elector's marriage with the daughter of King James, he says, "Had he adventured no further on the confidence of that power and greatness which accrued to him by contracting an alliance with so great a Monarch, it had been happy for himself and the peace of Christendom. But being tempted by Scultetus, and some other of the divines about him, not to neglect the opportunity of advancing the gospel, and making himself the principal patron of it, he fell on some designs destructive to himself and his.* Who, though * One of our English Poets has well observed,

In other men we faults can spy

And blame the mote that dims their eye,
Each little speck and blemish find,

To our own stronger errors blind.

This seems to have been Richard Baxter's state of mind when he wrote the following animadversions on poor Schultetus; the whole paragraph indeed is most important, considering the party from whom the reflectious proceed, some of which are exceedingly judicious:

"I am farther than ever I was from expecting great matters of unity, splendor, or prosperity to the church on earth, or that saints should dream of a kingdom of this world, or flatter themselves with the hopes of a golden age, or reigning over the ungodly, till there be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. And on the contrary; I am more apprehensive that sufferings must be the church's most ordinary lot, and Christians indeed must be self-denying crossbearers, even where there none but formal nominal christians to be the cross-makers: and though ordinarily God would have vicissitudes of summer and winter, day and night, that the church may grow extensively in the summer of prosperity, and intensively and radicatedly in the winter of adversity; yet usually their night is longer than their day, and that day itself hath its storms and tempests. For the prognostics are evident in their causes : The church will be still imperfect and sinful, and will have those diseases which need this bitter remedy. The tenour of the gospel-predictions, precepts, promises, and threatenings, are fitted to a people in a suffering state; and the graces of God in a believer are mostly suited to a state of suffering. Christians must imitate Christ, and suffer with him before they reign with him; and his kingdom was not of this world. The observation of God's dealing hitherto with the church in every age confirmeth me and his befooling them that have dreamed of glorious times. It was such dreams that transported the Munster Anabaptists, and the followers of David George in the Low Countries, and Campanella and the Illuminati among the Papists, and our English Anabaptists, and other fanatics here both in the army, and the city and country. When they think the gol

he were a Prince of a phlegmatick nature, and of small activíty; yet being prest by the continual solicitation of some eager spirits, he drew all the provinces and Princes which profest the Calvinian doctrines, to enter into a strict league or union amongst themselves, under pretence of looking to the peace and happiness of the true religion. It much advantaged the design, that the Calvinians in all parts of Germany had begun to stir, as men resolved to keep the saddle, or to lose the horse."

Describing the progress of the war in Bohemia, he adds: “But their new governours (or directors, as they called them) being generally worsted in the war, and fearing to be called to a strict account for these multiplied injuries, resolve upon the choice of some potent Prince, to take that unfortunate crown upon him. And who more like to carry it with success and honour, than Frederick the fifth, Prince Elector Palatine, the head of the Calvinian party, Son-in-law to the King of England, descended from a daughter of the Prince of Orange, and by his wife allied to the King of Denmark, the Dukes of Holstein and Brunswick, three great Lutheran Princes. These were the motives on their part to invite him to it; and they prevailed as much with him to accept the offer, to which he was pushed forward by the secret instigation of the States United, whose truce with Spain was now upon the point of expiration; and they thought fit, in point of state-craft, that he should exercise his army further off, than in their Dominions. Upon which motives and temptations, he first sends forth his letters to the estates of den age is come, they shew their dreams in their extravagant actions: and, as our fifth-monarchy men, they are presently upon some unquiet rebellious attempt to set up Christ in his kingdom, whether he will or not. I remember how Abrahain Scultetus in Curriculo Vitæ suæ confesseth the common vanity of himself and other Protestants in Germany, who seeing the princes in England, France, Bohemia, and many other countries, to be all at once both great and wise, and friends to reformation, did presently expect the golden age but within one year either death, or ruins of war, or back-slid ings, had exposed all their expectations to scorn, and laid them lower than before."-Narrative of his Life and Times.

No one would suppose that the old man who wrote this had been in early life as great a stickler as any of his brethren for the seditious schemes of the levellers in Church and State, or that he had attended the Parliamentary forces as Chaplain to a regiment. I could produce quotations from the earliest even of his practical works, which would prove his hopes to have been extremely sanguine about the appearance of a golden age."-Expressions of the disappointment which he felt at the failure expectations are equally numerous in his writings. Nor was it quite fair for a chaplain in the grand rebellim to brand" the Fifth-Monarchy men" as the only persons" who were presently upon some unquiet rebellious attempt to set up Christ in his kingdom!" Baxter had discovered, in the practice of the Triers and Ejectors, and of other select assemblies of gospel ministers under the Protectorate, as many grounds of dissatisfaction and complaint as in the practice of those who had previously held the supremacy in affairs ecclesiastical. The inference which he deduces, is exceedingly instructive: "I am much more sensible of the evil of schism," says he," and of the separating humour, and of gathering parties, and making several sects in the Church, than I was heretofore. For the effects have shewed us more of the mischiefs."

Bohemia, in which he signified his acceptance of the honour conferred upon him, and then acquaints King James with the proposition, whose counsel he desired therein for his better direction. But King James was not pleased at the precipitancy of this rash adventure, and thought himself unhandsomely handle, in having his advice asked upon the post-fact, when all his counsels to the contrary must have come too late. Besides, he had a strong party of Calvinists in his own dominions, who were not to be trusted with a power of disposing of kingdoms, for fear they might be brought to practise that against himself which he had countenanced in others. He knew no Prince could reign in safety, or be established on his throne with peace and honour, if once religion should be made a cloak to disguise rebellions.

Upon these grounds of christian prudence, he did not only disallow the action in his own particular, but gave command that none of his subjects should from thenceforth own his sonin-law for the King of Bohemia, or pray for him in the liturgy, or before their sermons, by any other title than the Prince Elector. At which the English Calvinists were extreamly vexed, who had already fancied to themselves upon this occasion the raising of a fifth Monarchy in these parts of Christendom, even to the dethroning of the Pope, the setting up of Calvin in St. Peter's chair, and carrying on the war to the walls of Constantinople. No man more zealous in the cause, than Arch-bishop Abbot, who pressed to have the news received with bells and bonfires, the King to be engaged in a war for the defence of such a righteous and religious cause, and the jewels of the crown to be pawned in pursuance of it, as appears plainly by his letters to Sir Robert Naunton, principal secretary of estate. Which letters bearing date on the 12th of December, Anno 1619, are to be found at large in the printed Cabala, p. 169, &c. and thither I refer the reader for his satisfaction. But neither the persuasions of so great a prelate, nor the solicitations of the Princess and her public ministers, nor the troublesome interposings of the House of Commons in a following parliament, were able to remove that King from his first resolution. which, though he incurred the high displeasure of the English Puritans, and those of the Calvinian party in other places; yet he acquired the reputation of a just and religious Prince with most men besides, and those not only of the Romish, but the Lutheran churches. And it is hard to say which of the two [the Papists or the Lutherans were most offended with the Prince Elector, for his accepting of that crown; which of them had more ground to fear the ruin of their cause and party, if he had prevailed; and which of them were more impertinently provoked to make head against him, after he had declared his acceptance of it.

By

"For when he was to be'inaugurated in the church of Prague he neither would be crowned in the usual form, nor by the hands of the Arch-bishop, to whom the performing of that ceremony did of right belong; but after such a form and manner as was digested by Scultetus, his domestic chaplain, who chiefly governed his affairs in all sacred matters. Nor would Scultetus undertake the ceremony of the coronation, though very ambitious of that honour, till he had cleared the church of all carved images, and defaced all the painted also. In both respects alike offensive to the Romish clergy, who found themselves dispriviledged, their churches sacrilegiously invaded, and further ruin threatened by these innovations.

"A massy crucifix had been erected on the bridge of Prague, which had stood there for many hundred years before; neither affronted by the Lutherans, nor defaced by the Jews, though more averse from images than all people else: Scultetus takes offence at the sight thereof, as if the brazen serpent were set up and worshipped; persuades the King to cause it presently to be demolished, or else he never would be reckoned for an Hezekiah; in which he found conformity to his humour also, and thereby did as much offend all sober Lutherans, (who retain images in their churches, and other places,) as he had done the Romish clergy by his former follies. This gave some new increase to those former jealousies which had been given them by that Prince: First, by endeavouring to suppress the Lutheran forms in the churches of Brandenburgh, by the arts and practices of his sister. [She was married to the Marquis of Brandenburgh: see page 249. ] And Secondly, by condemning their doctrine at the Synod of Dort, (in which his ministers were more active than the rest of the foreigners) though in the persons of those men whom they called Arminians. But that which gave them greatest cause of offence and fear, was his determination in a cause depending between two sisters, at his first coming to the crown; of which, the youngest had been married to a Čalvinian, the eldest to a Lutheran lord. The place in difference was the castle and seignoury of Gutscin, of which the eldest sister had took possession, as the seat of her ancestors. But the King passing sentence for the younger sister, and sending certain judges and other officers, to put the place into her actual possession, they were all blown up with gun-powder by the Lutheran lady, not able to concoct the indignity offered, nor to submit unto judgment which appeared so partial."

It may be necessary to introduce the account of the Calvinistic prophecies by the following quotation from Brandt's History, in which, after relating the conduct of Peter Du Moulin and other violent Calvinists in imposing the Canons of Dort upon the French Churches, he says: "Some of the Remon

strants were of opinion, that there was some mystery of State concealed under these proceedings at Alez in relation to the Canons of Dort, and that the secret spring of all these motions was in Holland; that some of the Contra-Remonstrants had been the first to commence this matter, by instituting a correspondence between the Reformed of Geneva and those of France, not without having privately concerted it with Du Moulin and others; and that by thrusting the Canons of Dort down the throats of the French Clergy, and by compelling them to swear to their observance, they endeavoured to communicate additional strength to their party, as had been already done in Holland, and at the same time to favour the designs of the Elector Palatine or new king of Bohemia. For it seemed as though some project of a confederacy was forming among those of the Reformed religion [the Calvinists], not only to subdue the little hand-full of the Remonstrant party, but even some of the members of that great body, the Romish Church; from which confederacy, the author of the Bohemian Trumpet, whom we shall hereafter mention, imagined great consequences would ensue. Thus did they aim at a kind of REFORMED MONARCHY; and, as they viewed all objects with a magnifying glass, the smallest finger which promoted the work, appeared to be a powerful arm: -So easily do men deceive themselves with vain hopes!"

The Prophetical Book, to which allusion is made in the preceding paragraph, is thus described by the same historian :

The Contra-Remonstrants also published several pieces this same year, [1620, 1****The Bohemian Trumpet, printed at Amsterdam, by leave of the Burgo-masters. The author, who styles himself Irenæus Philalethius, was in reality Ewout Telingh, the Treasurer of Zealand, brother to William Teelingh minister of Middelburgh, and a great zealot for his own party. He expressed himself to this effect: That it seemed as if the Lord had certainly invited many Kings and Princes thither into Bohemia] to make a great sacrifice; and that he did not entertain any doubt that God would take vengeance of the great violation of the public faith, of which both the one and the other beast [the Emperor and the Pope had been guilty towards John Huss and Jerome of Prague, with regard to the safe-conduct for their appearance at the Council of Constance. He represented the war in Bohemia, as a war which could not fail of success, because it was waged against the Pope, whom he calls Antichrist and the man of sin. He added, that God had unexpectedly bestowed upon the Elector Palatine such a ' noble kingdom as that of Bohemia, and had brought it home 'to him, as it were, whilst he slept, by a people who had a right to dispose of it; and therefore that it must not be doubted, that the Lord, who had entrusted him with the keys of that