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with this blessing, Be to the flock of Christ a shepherd.' Upon this his remark is in these words (p. 290, col. 2): "But here, as it happens, this learned person has been led into a mistake for the two first editions of the Ordinal made in King Edward's reign, have none of the different rites mentioned by this gentleman." I was indeed surprised when I read this, and went to look into the first edition of that Ordinal, which I knew was in the Lambeth library; for, by Archbishop Sancroft's order, I had the free use of every thing that lay there. There I went to examine it, and I found indeed a small variation from my History; the whole is in these words: in the ordination of a priest, after the imposition of hands, with the words still used, follow this rubric: "Then the bishop shall deliver to every one of them the Bible in the one hand, and the chalice, or cup, with the bread, in the other hand, and say, Take thou authority,'" &c. In the consecration of a bishop, this rubric is, The elected bishop, having upon him a surplice and a cope, shall be presented by two bishops, being also in surplices and copes, having their pastoral staves in their hands." And after the form of the consecration this rubric follows; "Then shall the archbishop lay the Bible upon his neck, saying, Give heed to reading."" The next rubric is, "Then shall the archbishop put into his hands the pastoral staff, saying, Be to the flock of Christ a shepherd;" on to the end of the charge, now given altogether, but then divided in two. This book was printed by Richard Grafton, the king's printer, in March, 1549; or, by the Roman account, 1550. I have given this full account of that matter in my own justification: I am sorry that I cannot return this learned person his compliment to myself, "that he was led into a mistake."

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The next, and indeed the last particular that out of many more I will mention, is, the setting down the explanation, that was made upon the order for kneeling at the sacrament in King Edward's time, wrong in a very material word: for in that the words were," that there was not in the sacrament any real or essential presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood;" but he instead of that puts, corporal presence" (p. 310, col. 2). It seems in this he only looked at the rubric as it is now at the end of the communion service, upon a conceit that it stands now as it was at that time changed; and we know who was the author of that change (D. P. G.), and who pretended that a corporal presence signified such a presence as a body naturally has, which the asserters of transubstantiation itself do not, and cannot pretend is in this case: where they say the body is not present

corporally, but spiritually, or as a spirit is present. And he who had the chief hand in procuring this alteration, had a very extraordinary subtilty, by which he reconciled the opinion of a real presence in the sacrament with the last words of the rubric, "that the natural body and blood of Christ were in heaven, and not here; it being against the truth of Christ's natural body to be at one time in more places than one." It was thus a body is in a place, if there is no intermediate body, but a vacuum, between it and the place; and he thought, that, by the virtue of the words of consecration, there was a cylinder of a vacuum made between the elements and Christ's body in heaven: so that, no body being between, it was both in heaven and in the elements. Such a solemn piece of folly as this can hardly be read without indignation. But if our author favours this conceit, yet when he sets down that which was done in King Edward's reign, he ought not to have changed the word, especially such an important one. I shall say no more of that work, but that there appeared to me, quite through the second volume, such a constant inclination to favour the popish doctrine, and to censure the reformers, that I should have had a better opinion of the author's integrity, if he had professed himself not to be of our communion, nor of the communion of any other protestant church.

But as I thought myself bound to give this warning to such as may have heard of that work, or that have seen it so there is another history lately written in French, and which, I hope, is soon to appear in our own language, which I cannot recommend more than it deserves. It is Mr. L'Enfant's History of the Council of Constance; in which that excellent person has with great care, and a sincerity liable to no exceptions, given the world, in the history of that council, so true a view of the state of the church, and of religion, in the age before the Reformation, that I know no book so proper to prepare a man for reading the History of the Reformation, as the attentive reading of that noble work he was indeed well furnished with a collection of excellent materials, gathered with great fidelity and industry by the learned Doctor Vander Hordt, professor of divinity in the university of Helmstadt; and procured for him by the noble zeal and princely bounty of that most serene and pious prince, Rodolph August, the late duke of Brunswick Wolfenbuttle, who set himself with great care, and at a vast charge, to procure from all places the copies of all papers and manuscripts that could be found, to give light to the proceedings of that great assembly. That col

lection amounted to six volumes in folio. From these authentic vouchers the history of that council is now happily compiled. And if that learned author can find materials to give us as full and as clear a history of the council of Basil, as he has given of that of Constance, I know no greater service can be done the world: for by it popery will appear in its true and native colours, free from those palliating disguises which the progress of the Reformation, and the light which by that has been given the world, has forced upon those of that communion. We have the celebrated history of the Council of Trent, first published here at London, written with a true sublimity of judgment, and an unbiassed sincerity; which has received a great confirmation, even from Cardinal Palavicini's attempt to destroy its credit; and a much greater of late from that curious discovery of Vargas's Letters. But how well and how justly soever the history that P. Paulo gave the world of that council is esteemed, I am not afraid to compare the late History of the Council of Constance even to that admired work; so far at least, as that if it will not be allowed to be quite equal to it, yet it may be well reckoned among the best of all that have written after that noble pattern, which the famous Venetian friar has given to all the writers of ecclesiastical history.

Since I published my Introduction, I fell on many papers concerning the Reformation in Scotland, which had escaped the diligence of that grave and judicious writer Archbishop Spotswood, of which I have given a full account, and have used the best endeavours I could to be furnished with all the other materials that I could hear of: it is true, I never searched into a lately-gathered famous library in this place, but yet I had from some, on whose good judgment and great care I might well depend, who had carefully looked through it, every thing that they found material to my purpose.

No curiosity pleased me more than that noble record of the legates' proceedings in the matter of King Henry's divorce; of which I had the free use, as of every thing else that was in the library of my learned and dear brother, the late bishop of Ely; in whose death the church, and all his friends, and none more than myself, have had an invaluable loss. I read that record very carefully twice or thrice over, and gave a full abstract of it, but did not then reflect on what has occurred to me since: for though, upon the credit of so noble a record, I have said that the king and queen were never together in court, yet I find the contrary is affirmed by that king himself, in a letter bearing date the 23d

of June, to his ambassadors at Rome, in these words; "Both we and the queen appeared in person:" and he sets forth the assurances the cardinals gave of their proceeding without favour or partiality; " yet she departed out of court, though thrice called to appear, and was denounced contumacious." The only reconciling of this apparent contradiction seems to be this, that they were indeed together in the hall where the court sat; but that it was before the cardinals sat down and had formed the court: for as it is not to be imagined that in the record so material a step could have been omitted, so highly to the honour of the court; so it is not likely that the queen, after her appeal, would have owned the court, or have appeared before those judges: therefore the most probable account of that particular is this, that the king intending to appear in the court, the queen went thither after him, and made that speech to him in the open hall that I mentioned in my former work: but all this was over, and they were both gone before the court was opened, or that the cardinals had taken their places; so that their appearance could be no part of the record of the court.

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I am now to give an account of some papers that I add as an Appendix, for they relate to the former volumes. The first of these was sent me by one Mr. Thomas Granger, of whom I can give no other account but that I understood he was a clergyman. He dated his letter from Lammerton, near Tavistoke, in Devonshire, the 7th of February, 1683-4. I wrote him such a civil answer, as so kind a censure deserved and I promised that I would make my acknowledgments more publicly to him whensoever I reviewed that work. Upon my settling at Salisbury, I inquired after him, but I was told he was dead; so I lost the occasion of returning my thanks to him in a more particular manner, which I now express thus publicly.

I had another letter, writ in another strain, full of expostulation, from Anthony (who affected to write himself) à Wood. He thought it incumbent on him to justify himself, since I had reflected on him; so he gave this vent to it. I wrote short remarks on it; one of these I find is in the bishop of Worcester's hand: they were sent to Bishop Fell, to be communicated to him; but whether they were or not I cannot tell. The thing has escaped my memory, but the paper still remains with me; and therefore I have thought it à justice to Mr. Wood's memory, and to his writings, to insert it here.

The third paper was drawn by me at Paris, in the year VOL. III, PART I.

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1685. My History being then translated into French, was much read; and as to the main conduct of our Reformation, it was approved by some men of great name. At that time there was an embroilment between the court of Rome and that of Versailles: and the propositions that passed in the year 1682 seemed to threaten a greater rupture to follow. Upon that, the scheme of the English Reformation was a subject of common discourse; and that was so much magnified by those who were called the Converters, that the hope of a reformation in France was one of the artifices that prevailed on some, who knew not the "depths of Satan," and were easily wrought on to make their court by changing their religion, in hope that a great reformation of abuses among them was then projected. But one of the learnedest men that ever I knew of that communion, said then to myself, that all that was only done to fright Pope Innocent the Eleventh, who was then in the interests of the house of Austria; but that whensoever they should have a pope in the interests of France, their court would not only declare him infallible in points of doctrine, but even in matters of fact and he added, that it was an abuse that people put upon themselves, to imagine, that with what pomp or zeal soever the court seemed to support those articles passed in the assembly of the clergy, that this could have any other effect but to bring the court of Rome into their interests. He said, this had been Cardinal Mazarine's practice during his whole ministry. When he could not carry matters to his mind at Rome, he showed such favour to the Jansenists, as let many of them into great dignities; but when he had brought that court to what he designed, he presently changed his conduct towards them.

A person of distinction at Paris, finding my History so much liked, wrote a censure upon it. This run through many hands, but was never printed: it fell into Mr. Auzont's hands, and from him I had it. I wrote an answer to it, and got it to be translated into French: it was favourably received by many in Paris. I do not find the copy of that censure among my papers; but I have still the copy of my remarks on it, from which the substance of that censure may be gathered: so I have thought fit to add this to my Appendix.

The fourth paper is a large collection of many mistakes (descending even to literal ones) in both the volumes of my History, and in the Records published in them, which a learned and worthy person has read with more exactness than either my amanuensis or myself had done. I publish

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