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more solemn humiliation, because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this Feast pretending the memory of Christ into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights, being contrary to the life which Christ led here on earth, and to the spiritual life of Christ in our souls, for the sanctifying and saving whereof Christ was pleased both to take a human life, and to lay it down again."RUSHWORTH, part 3, vol. 2, p. 817.

"THE chant not merely assists the voice, and gives it a larger volume of sound for an extensive church; but, what is of much more consequence, augments the devoutness by the modulation of its tones, by the rapid flow at one time, by the solemn slowness at another, by the rise, the fall and the swell, much more strongly marked than any of these can be in reading, much more expressive of devoutness in the officiating Clergyman, and much more impressive of devoutness upon the attending congregation. A chanted prayer is thus the poetry of devotion, while a prayer read is merely the prose of it. So at least thought the wisest and the best of our ancestors; men peculiarly qualified to judge, because their intellects were exalted, and their spirits were very devout; who therefore carried the

not within reach of Ordinary Capacities.

"It is plainly reasonable," says BArrow, "to follow our guides in all matters wherein we have no other very clear and certain light of reason or revelation to conduct us: the doing so is indeed not only wise in itself, but safe in way of prevention, that we be not seduced by other treacherous guides; it will not only secure us from our own weak judgements, but from the frauds of those who lie in wait to deceive. The simpler sort of men will in effect be always led, not by their own judgement, but by the authority of others; and if they be not fairly guided by those whom God hath constituted and assigned to that end, they will be led by the nose by those who are concerned to seduce them: so reason dictateth that it must be, so experience sheweth it ever to have been; that the people whenever they have deserted their true guides, have soon been hurried by impostors into most dangerous errors and extravagant follies; being carried about with divers and strange doctrines; being like children, tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine.”—BARROW, vol. 3, p. 161.

Extempore Plays in France and Italy. "There is a way Which the Italians and the Frenchmen use, That is, on a word given, or some slight plot, The actors will extempore fashion out Scenes neat and witty."

The Spanish Gypsey, by MIDDLETON

and ROWLEY.

Division of the Forenoon in Elizabeth's Reign.

"WE wake at six and look about us, that's eye-hour: at seven we should pray,

that's knee-hour; at eight walk, that's leghour; at nine, gather flowers and pluck a rose, that's nose-hour: at ten we drink, that's mouth-hour; at eleven, lay about us for victuals, that's hand-hour; at twelve, go to dinner, that's belly-hour."-MIDDLETON and ROWLEY'S Changeling.

Boar and the Buffalo.

"Ir is a common saying and belief among the Turks, that all the animal kingdom was converted by their Prophet to the true faith, except the wild boar and buffalo, which remained unbelievers: it is on this account that both these animals are often called Christians."-BURCKHARDT's Travels in Syria, p. 135.

Montaigne-How he had outgrown the Incre

dulity of Presumptuous Ignorance. "C'EST une sotte presomption, d'aller desdaignant et condamnant pour faux, ce qui ne nous semble pas vraysemblable; qui est un vice ordinaire de ceux qui pensent avoir quelque suffisance outre la commune. J'en faisois ainsi autrefois; et si j'oyois parler ou des esprits qui reviennent, ou du prognostique des choses futures, des enchantemens, des sorcelleries, ou faire quelque autre conte, où je ne peusse pas mordre, Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala; il me venoit compassion du pauvre peuple abusé de ces folies. Et à present je treuve, que j'estois pour le moins autant à plaindre moy-mesme: Non que l'expérience m'aye depuis rien faict voir au-dessus de mes premieres creances; et si n'a pas tenu à ma curiosité: mais la raison m'a instruit, que de condamner ainsi resolument une chose pour fausse et impossible, c'est se donner l'advantage d'avoir dans la teste les bornes et limites de la volonté de Dieu, et de la puissance de nostre mere Nature: et qu'il n'y a point de plus notable folie au

fort, par une temeraire presomption, de sçavoir jusques où va la possibilité. Si l'on entendoit bien la différence qu'il y a entre l'impossible et l'inusité, et entre ce qui est contre l'ordre du cours de nature, et contre la commune opinion des hommes; en ne croyant pas temerairement, ny aussi ne descroyant pas facilement, on observeroit la reigle de Rien trop, commandée par Chilon." —MONTAIGNE, liv. 1, chap. 26.

"MY LORD-I find a very great sense in the officers of the Regiments, of the sufferings and the ruin of this poor kingdom, and in them all a very great zeal to have impartial justice done upon offenders: and I must confess I do in all from my heart concur with them, and I verily think and am persuaded, they are things which God puts into our hearts. I shall not need to offer any thing to your Excellency; I know God teaches you, and that he hath manifested his presence so to you, as that you will give glory to him in the eyes of all the world. petitions and letters, and being desired by I held it my duty, having received these the framers thereof, to present them to you; the Good Lord work his will upon your heart, enabling you to it, and the presence of Almighty God go along with you. Thus prays, my Lord, your most humble and faithful servant, O. Cromwell.

tragedy which was now preparing. The conduct of Fairfax toward Lisle, Lucas, and Lord Capel, gave him reason for thinking so.

Dangerous Error of representing the King

as one of the Three Estates.

"It is a known maxim in logic, and of undoubted verity, that coordinata se invicem supplent; and whoever endeavours to make the King of England one of the Three Estates in Parliament, does at the same time alter and subvert the Monarchy, which consists in sovereignty, supremacy and superiority. And, by rendering the King only a member, robs him of the greatest prerogative of his crown, which is, to be, over all persons, and in all matters as well ecclesiastical as civil, Supreme Governor, which he is declared to be in the Oath of Supremacy, by Act of Parliament 5 Eliz. cap. 1. And the dangerous consequence of this opinion was sufficiently made appear by that slip of his late Majesty's pen in a declaration sent from York, June 17, 1642, where, after the Bishops being expelled the House, he seems to account himself one of the Three Estates; which being once dropt from him, fell not to the ground, but was immediately taken up by some of the leading men of the Parliament, who made use of it as a foundation for their usurped coordinacy of authority, till at the last, having ruined him by force of arms, which they justified on that supposition, they advanced from coordinate to inordinate power, making the King subordinate to themselves."-NALSON's Collection.-Introduction, p. xv.

Sir Benjamin Rudyard in Defence of the Clergy.

"Sir Benjamin Rudyard, 21 June, 1641.

"WE are now upon a very great business, so great indeed that it requires our soundest, our saddest consideration; our best judgement for the present, our utmost foresight for the future.

"But, Sir, one thing doth exceedingly trouble me, it turns me round about, it makes my whole reason vertiginous; which is, that so many do believe, against the wisdom of all ages, that now there can be no reformation without destruction, as if every sick body must be presently knocked on the head as past hope of cure.

"If we pull down Bishopricks, and pull down Cathedral Churches, in a short time we must be forced to pull Colleges too; for Scholars will live and die there as in cells, if there be not considerable preferment to invite them abroad. And the example we are making now, will be an easy temptation to the less pressing necessities of future times.

"This is the next way to bring in barbarism; to make the Clergy an unlearned contemptible vocation, not to be desired but by the basest of the people. And then where shall we find men able to convince an adversary?

"A Clergyman ought to have a far greater proportion to live upon, than any other man of an equal condition. He is not bred to multiply three-pences; it becomes him not to live mechanically and sordidly; he must be given to hospitality. I do know myself a Clergyman, no dignitary, whose books have cost him a thousand pounds, which when he dies, may be worth to his wife and children about two hundred.

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"It will be a shameful reproach to so flourishing a kingdom as this, to have a poor beggarly Clergy. For my part, I think nothing too much, nothing too good, for a good Minister, a good Clergyman. They ought least to want, who best know how to abound. Burning and shining lights do well deserve to be set in good candlesticks."— NALSON, vol. 2, pp. 298, 300.

Sir Benjamin Rudyard on the Spoiling the Monasteries.

"I HAVE often," says Sir Benjamin Rudyard," seriously considered with myself, what strong concurrent motives and causes did

meet together in that time when Abbies and Monasteries were overthrown. Certainly God's hand was the greatest, for he was most offended. The profane superstitions, the abominable idolatries, the filthy nefandous wickedness of their lives, did stink in God's nostrils, did call for vengeance, for reformation. A good party of religious men were zealous instruments in that great work; as likewise many covetous ambitious persons, gaping for fat morsels, did lustily drive it on.

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But, Mr. Hide, there was a principal Parliamentary motive which did facilitate the rest; for it was propounded in Parliament that the accession of Abbey Lands would so enrich the Crown, as the people should never be put to pay subsidies again. This was plausible both to Court and Country. Besides, with the overplus, there should be maintained a standing army of 40,000 men, for a perpetual defence of the kingdom. This was safety at home, terror and honour abroad. The Parliament would make all sure.

"God's part, religion, by his blessing, hath been reasonably well preserved; but it hath been saved as by fire, for the rest is consumed and vanished: the people have paid subsidies ever since, and we are now in no very good case to pay an army."NALSON, vol. 2, p. 299.

"It was ordered that it shall be lawful for the Parishioners of any parish in the kingdom of England, or dominion of Wales, to set up a Lecture, and to maintain an orthodox minister at their own charge, to preach every Lord's day where there is no preaching, and to preach one day in every week when there is no weekly lecture.

"Thus did they set up a spiritual militia of these Lecturers, who were to muster their troops; and however it only appeared a religious and pious design, yet it must go for one of their piæ fraudes, politick arts, to

gain an estimate of their numbers and the strength of their party. These Lecturers were neither Parsons, Vicars, nor Curates, but like the Order of the Friars Predicants among the Papists, who run about tickling the people's ears with stories of legends and miracles, in the meantime picking their pockets; which were the very faculties of these men. For they were all the Parliament's, or rather the Presbyterian faction's creatures; and were therefore ready in all places to preach up their votes and orders, to extol their actions, and applaud their intentions. These were the men that debauched the people with principles of disloyalty, and taught them to worship Jeroboam's Golden Calves, the pretended Liberty of the Subject, and the glorious reformation that was coming, which the common people adored even the imaginary idea of, like the wild Ephesians, as if it were a government falling down from heaven, and as they used to cant it, the Pattern in the Mount, the New Jerusalem and Mount Zion. And in short, the succeeding tragedies of murder, rapine, sacrilege and rebellion, were in a great measure the dismal harvest of these seeds of fears, jealousies, the lawfulness of resisting the King's authority in assistance of the Parliament, their long prayers and disloyal sermons, their Curse ye Meroz's, and exhorting to help the Lord against the mighty; which with such diligence they sowed, and with such unwearied pains, by preaching, as they said, in season, and most certainly out of season, they took care to cultivate and improve. And whoever will take the pains to observe, shall find in the thread of this history, that these hirelings were so far from laying down their lives for the sheep, that they preached many deluded souls out of their lives by a flagrant rebellion; and were so far from advancing the gospel of peace, that they sounded the trumpet for war; and always their pulpit harangues to the people were the repeated echoes of the votes, orders, remonstrances and declarations of Westminster."-NALSON, vol. 2, p. 478.

Cheshire Petition.

THE Cheshire Petition-for which Sir Thomas Ashton, when he presented it to the Lords, "received a smart rebuke, and narrowly escaped a prison."

"When we consider that Bishops were instituted in the time of the Apostles; that they were the great lights of the Church in all the first General Councils; that so many of them sowed the seeds of religion in their blood, and rescued Christianity from utter extirpation in the primitive Heathen persecutions; that to them we owe the redemption of the purity of the Gospel we now profess from Romish corruption; that many of them for the propagation of the truth became such glorious martyrs; that divers of them lately, and yet living with us, have been so great assertors of religion against the common enemy of Rome; and that their government hath been so long approved, so oft established, by the Common and Statute Laws of this kingdom; and as yet nothing in their doctrine, generally taught, dissonant from the will of God, or the Articles ratified by law;-in this case, to call their government a perpetual vassallage, an intolerable bondage, and, primâ facie et inauditâ alterâ parte, to pray the present removal of them; or, as in some of their petitions, to seek the utter dissolution and ruin of their offices as anti-christian; we cannot conceive to relish of justice or charity, nor can we join with them.

"On the contrary-we cannot but express our just fears that their desire is to introduce an absolute Innovation of Presbyterial Government, whereby we who are now governed by the Canon and Civil Laws dispensed by twenty-six Ordinaries, easily responsible to Parliaments for any deviation from the rule of the law, conceive we should become exposed to the mere arbitrary government of a numerous presbytery, who together with their Ruling Elders will arise to near forty thousand Church Governors, and with their adherents must needs bear so great a sway in the Commonwealth, that

Remonstrating Ministers.

UPON the petition of the Remonstrating Ministers, Dec. 20, 1641, NALSON says (vol. 2, p. 766), "Were I to give instructions to draw the exact pourtraicture of a Nonconforming-conforming Church Hypocrite, with peace in one hand, and fire and sword in the other; with a conscience like a cockle-shell,

that can shut so close when he is under the fear of the law, or losing his living, that you cannot croud the smallest scruple into it; but when a tide of liberty wets him, can lay himself open, and display all his resentments against that government in the Church to that horrid sin of perjury must confess himwhose laws he had sworn obedience, and by

self a villain of no manner of conscience, to swear without due consideration, and to break his oath without a lawful determination that it was unlawful; I would recommend this petition as a rare original to copy after."

The Church Plundered by Churchmen. WELL,-here's my scholar's course: first get a school,

And then a ten-pound cure; keep both; then buy

(Stay, marry-ay, marry)—then a farm or

So.

Serve God and Mammon: to the Devil go.
Affect some sect; ay, 'tis the sect is it!
So thou canst seem, 'tis held the precious
wit.

And oh, if thou canst get some higher seat,
Where thou mayst sell your holy portion
(Which charitable providence ordained
In sacred bounty for a blessed use),
Alien the glebe; entail it to thy loins;