nations by his WORD-that it, and it alone, shall be "the light to their feet," explaining the ground on which they stand in relation to Himself and to each other; and "the lamp to their paths,”—the path in which all must walk, and ultimately will. Every idol is to be destroyed. The prevalence of man worship is to come to an end, and the knowledge of the Lord is to cover the earth as the waters do the sea. But for this glorious consummation, the Almighty has pledged Himself to no other volume save one, even his own inspired Word. No other is fundamental to the weal or wo of mankind. No other is essential to all the purposes of genuine love and friendship, peace and unity. One Book, and so one people. The nations some time longer may rage and strive, speculate and dogmatize; the kings of the earth may set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against Jehovah; but to this Sacred and Inspired Volume the wandering family of mankind must at last return as to "the Sabbath and port of all men's labours and peregrinations.” In a higher sense than has ever been felt or acknowledged, the day must and will come when "there shall be one Lord over all the earth, and his name one."

Should our rulers and statesmen still shut their ears to the supreme authority of Divine Revelation, and close their eyes to the marked footsteps of Divine Providence, they and their country must abide the consequences; though there is no sight more agonizing than that of a favoured Nation not knowing the time of her visitation. That time has its limits, and it was upon the approach of these that, from Mount Olivet, the very sight of the capital of Judea drew tears from the eyes even of our Incarnate Mediator. And on the spot where those tears were shed the Romans first encamped, when they came to its final overthrow. But our situation is even more peculiar. We have enjoyed and abused greater mercies than Israel of old. There is nothing throughout all time with which to compare our country, in its present position-its present obligations-or its present opportunities.

With a dominion extended "far as the sea-fowl in a year can fly," far beyond all the empires of antiquity—a preservation that has frequently called for wonder; preservation from civil war and bloodshed within our borders; first through all the horrors of a French Revolution, and now through

those of a European one, not yet fully exploded;—above all, with a possession of Divine Revelation, immeasurably beyond that which any nation ever enjoyed;-intelligence from afar daily pouring into our country as to the deplorable state of the world, and no other kingdom possessing such frequent, easy and swift access to all parts of the earth! The mind becomes almost giddy in the contemplation of our present position as a people, and language fails to depict the greatness of our responsibility. But though language fails, the present crowning mercy for British Christians is this, that the path of action and duty is abundantly plain, and it were in vain to wish to escape from the condition of our place in the universe of God. Meanwhile, everything as to our beloved country appears absolutely to hang upon the use or the abuse of Divine Revelation; and the momentous consideration presented is this, that all these indescribable benefits, with which God has loaded this nation, it is as easy for Him that gave them to take away, as it is for us to "remove a candlestick out of its place.” Under this figure, He has himself warned His people long ago.

"Those who are intent on the schemes for enlightening mankind, are entertaining a confident hope of the approach of a period when the success will be far greater in proportion to the measure of exertion, in every department of the system of instrumentality for that grand object. We cherish this confidence, not on the strength of any pretension to be able to resolve prophetic emblems and numbers into precise dates and events of the present and approaching times. We rest it on a much more general mode of combining the very extraordinary indications of the period we live in, with the substantial purport of the Divine predictions. There unquestionably gleams forth, through the plainer lines and through the mystical imagery of prophecy, the vision of a better age, in which the application of Divine truth to men's minds will be irresistible. And what should more naturally be interpreted as one of the dawning signs of its approach, than a greater and wider movement, in humble dependence upon God, at once to clear their intellects, and bring the heavenly light to shine close upon them?" Only let the voice of Jehovah himself be heard—for by this voice will He as certainly enlighten the world as that He now governs it.

APPENDIX.

JOHN ROGERS, THE PROTO-MARTYR OF 1555.

WE have promised an Appendix relating to John Rogers, and more particularly because some hesitation has been expressed as to his native county and birthplace, as given in the "Annals of the English Bible." Fuller the historian, a fascinating writer, though frequently more distinguished for his wit than his accuracy, having loosely ranked the Martyr among the "Worthies of Lancashire," has as loosely been followed by some other writers; and thus so far the merits of a man have been buried in oblivion, who, now that he is better known, will be more highly venerated, and especially by the inhabitants of his native place and county.*

In this instance, the Father is to be distinctly traced through one of his sons, who, wearing a civil character and no inferior place in the reign of Elizabeth, serves to fix the lineage and birthplace of his martyred parent. Old John Foxe, in his veritable and affecting account of that martyrdom, is the first who connects this son with his father. "After his death," says he, "his wife, and one of her sons called Daniel, coming into the place where he had lain, to seek for his books and writings, and now ready to go away, it chanced her son aforenamed, casting his eye aside, to spy a black thing lying in a blind corner under a pair of stairs, who found it to be the book, written with his own hand, containing these his examinations and answers." To this youth, and future Ambassador, we stand indebted for the outrageous proceedings under the illegal imprisonment and mock trial of his illustrious father.

The industrious Strype is our next witness as to this family. When he published his Life of Whitgift in 1718, he only conjectured as follows-" Mr. Daniel Rogers, a learned and well-deserving man, son, if I mistake not, to John Rogers, the first martyr under Queen Mary," &c. But ten years later, or in 1728, having had abundance of manuscript materials in his possession, he speaks with positive certainty. The fact was, that Daniel Rogers, well known in the Court of Elizabeth, quite a master of several languages, both ancient and modern, having been employed first as an under Secretary, and then as an Envoy to the Continent from 1575 to 1588, was in frequent and confidential correspondence with Cecil Lord Burleigh. All the Burleighian and other

* Fuller died in August 1651; his "Worthies of England" being a posthumous work, published not till 1662, stood in great need of thorough revision, as it does still. So ill informed was he respecting this Bible of 1537, as to imagine, a century after its publication, that it had never been printed, but remained a manuscript in the King's Library! Nay more, he supposes that some years after Tyndale, Rogers by himself had translated from Genesis to Revelation, comparing it with the original! And finally, with no other reliance than the very questionable authority of John Bale in his "Scriptoribus Britannicis," he took for granted that Rogers was born in Lancashire. Bale, who states neither place nor parentage, is therefore no guide. As for Fuller's posthumous work, it remained for Strype to point out many other errors, as well as in his Church History; and even now, it is not to be wondered at, that Strype himself would be still more valuable by revision.

D

manuscripts then and still in the British Museum, had been ransacked by Strype. In his Annals, therefore, having occasion to mention the name of D. Rogers again, he adds-" This Daniel Rogers was the more remarkable, being the son of John Rogers, prebendary and reader of Divinity in St. Paul's, London, and the protomartyr in Queen Mary's cruel reign. He studied at Wittenberg, and was a scholar under Melancthon, as he mentions in one of his letters; and understanding the German, Dutch, and other languages, was secretary to an Ambassador divers years." Thus far then we are led to infer that this son must have been born abroad, and educated there in part, as he was afterwards more fully at home. His father, indeed, when under examination, testified that he had been married in Germany, and brought his wife and children with him to London.

Now above forty years before Strype's volume appeared, a Continental writer, Paul Freher, the member of a learned family, and a physician at Nurenberg, who died in 1682, had left behind him a useful and laborious work-"Theatrum Virorum eruditione clarorum." It was prepared for the press by his nephew, and published at Nurenberg in 1688, with many hundred portraits, among which there is one of our John Rogers. The martyr is there recorded as having come from England to Antwerp, where Tyndale then resided. By familiar conversation with him, the views of Rogers as to Christianity had been entirely changed. There, too, according to the same authority, Rogers was married in 1536, and, as it will appear presently, to a native of Weyden, a village near Aixla-Chapelle. She proved to be the mother of his numerous family, eight born on the Continent, and three after the return of the parents to England. But above all, here it was that the ardent friendship was formed with Tyndale, which led to the printing, and finishing, and notable introduction of our folio English Bible in 1537.

Rogers, however, still remained abroad, ministering in their native tongue to a congregation in Germany, until Henry VIII. was gone. But no sooner had Edward VI. ascended the throne-a monarch to whom the town of Birmingham in particular was soon after placed under lasting obligations, by the erection of her Free School, than Rogers returned to London with his German wife and family. Thus as early as 1548, we find him publishing the translation of a tract by Melancthon, the early tutor of his son. He was first admitted as Rector of St. Margaret Moyses; and in April 1550, Nicholas Ridley having been transferred from the see of Rochester to that of London, Rogers, on the 10th of next month, became Vicar of St. Sepulchre. On the 24th of August, having resigned his first appointment, Rogers had the Pancras Prebend of St. Paul conferred on him, and by the Dean and Chapter he was chosen to read the Divinity Lecture. The fact was, that Ridley and Rogers had both been educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and both were consigned to the flames the same year! Rogers on the 4th of February in London, and Ridley, with Latimer, at Oxford, on the 16th of October. Hence, among the touching "Farewells" of Ridley before death, we find the following-"Oh London, London! to whom now may I speak in thee, or whom shall I bid farewell? Shall I speak to the Prebendaries of Paul's? Alas! all that loved God's Word, and were true setters forth thereof, are now, I hear say, some burnt and slain, some

exiled and banished, and some holden in hard prisons, and appointed daily to be put to most cruel death, for Christ's Gospel sake. As for the rest of them, I know they could never brook me well, nor could I ever delight in them."

The mind thus carried back to these hallowed associations of the past, the place where Rogers first drew breath, the spot where he must have spent his earliest years, becomes of special interest.

In his Biographical Dictionary, Chalmers, without being aware of the whole truth, has given a statement as to the Son of our Martyr in these words-" Daniel Rogers, a man of considerable ability in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, and who in some of his writings calls himself Albimontanus, was the son of John Rogers of Deritend, in the parish of Aston in Warwickshire." And so had said long before his day a better and far higher authority, Bishop Tanner, in his Bibliotheca; but when Chalmers adds, " where he (Daniel) was born about 1540,” there is a mistake both as to the year and the place of his birth.

The Martyr, when under examination before Stephen Gardiner, as Lord Chancellor, in 1555, had his wife and children waiting the result; the mother having many times implored in vain one sight of her husband, and he as earnestly to the last pleaded for one interview with his wife. "She hath ten children," said he, "that are hers and mine; and somewhat I would counsel her, what were best for her to do." But both parties were most barbarously denied even this final gratification! Now Rogers himself informs us that it was then twenty years since his eyes had been opened to Divine truth at Antwerp, and then, he says, he had left the Church of Rome. This then must have been early in 1535. Freher has dated his marriage in 1536, (which Rogers corroborates before Gardiner,) and then his place of abode at Wittenberg. We have his son's authority that "he studied at Wittenberg, and was a scholar under Philip Melancthon," and the father not having set his foot in England till the reign of Edward VI., explains the reason for Daniel adding Albimontanus to his name. For whatever place was meant by this term, it points, no doubt, to his birthplace on the Continent.

And as for this son, after witnessing the awful but heroic death of his father in Smithfield, and rescuing from oblivion the papers left in his cell, he still remained in this country, or had gone but for a season to Germany again; since he afterwards proceeded to Oxford, where he took the degrees of A.B. and A.M. in the same year, or 1561. His learning and skill in languages recommended him to public notice; but though employed many years as a civilian, he has left sufficient evidence of his being a son worthy of such a father, and of a congenial spirit. Cultivating the Muses, he maintained no inferior place as a Latin poet, and discovered his warm interest in the men of greatest minds and deepest theology in the sixteenth century.*

* Thus, in one of his Latin odes, being a man of rich acquirements, equally conversant with the Continent and his Father's land, we find him celebrating in one group-" Calvin of France-Melancthon (his first tutor,) Luther and Bucer of Germany-Zuinglius and Bullinger of Switzerland -a-Lasco of Poland-Huss of Bohemia-Hemingius of Denmark-Knox of Scotland-Valdesso of Spain-Hyperius of Flanders-and last in particular, Jewell of England." His attached friends abroad and at home were among the most eminent men of their day. Abroad, besides ORTELIUS, the Ptolemy of Antwerp, there was a fellow-student, and afterwards his most intimate