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pass before the mind within this period the oppressive reign of Charles 1;the characters of Laud and Strafford; the Star chamber, and the king's tyrannical men, courts, and measures: the noble defence of liberty in the House of Commons: Hampden and Pym : the war between the king and parliament: the king's defeat and death upon the scaffold: the glorious protectorate of Cromwell, of few years, but grand and prosperous, a freedom and prosperity united, such as England had never known: then comes the hasty, unconditional restoration of a prince who cared for nothing but his own pleasure, the dissolute tyrannical reign of Charles II, one of the most promising, lying, unprincipled, worthless, selfish, corrupted and corrupting kings that ever sat upon the throne of England: in the terribly severe language of the Edinburgh Review, a king 'who superseded the reign of the saints by the reign of strumpets: who was crowned in his youth with the covenant in his hand, and died with the Host sticking in his throat, after a life spent in dawdling suspense between Hobbism and Popery: a king and a reign of which one of the grand climacterics in wickedness embraced the royal murders of the noble patriots Russell and Algernon Sydney: immortal be their names, and honoured ever be their memories: a reign the very beginning of which threw John Bunyan into prison, and produced a Bartholomew's-day to thousands of the conscientious ministers of the Church of England.

"The king's reign, from the time of the restoration, began in contempt of all religion, and continued in debauchery and drunkenness. Even those persons who may have taken their views of the history of this period simply from the pages of Hume may, if they will look narrowly, gather so much as this. Agreeable to the present prosperity of public affairs,' says Hume, was universal joy and festivity diffused throughout the nation. The melancholy austerity of the fanatics fell into discredit, together with their principles. The royalists, who had ever affected a contrary disposition, found in their recent success new motives for mirth and gaiety; and it now belonged to them to give repute and fashion to their manners. From past experience it had sufficiently appeared that gravity was very distinct from wisdom, formality from virtue, and hypocrisy from religion. The king himself, who bore a strong propensity to pleasure, served, by his powerful and engaging example, to banish those sour and malignant humours which had hitherto engendered such confusion. And though the just bounds were undoubtedly passed, when once returned from their former extreme, yet was the public happy in exchanging vices pernicious to society, for disorders hurtful chiefly to the individuals themselves who were guilty of them.'

"This means simply that the nation, under the example of the king and the royalists, having thrown off the vices and vicious restraints of gravity, formality, and hypocrisy, so generally pernicious to society, became almost entirely abandoned to the mere individual disorders' of profligacy and sensual licentiousness. They were happy in exchanging those sour and malignant humours' for the more luscious and generous qualities of sin. The restoration, says Bishop Burnet, brought with it the throwing off the very professions of virtue and piety; and all ended in entertainments and drunkenness, which overran the three kingdoms.

"As the reign began, so it continued; and it was a period when just such men as God had been preparing in the case of Bunyan were most needed : just such men also as he had ready in Baxter, Owen, Howe, and a multitude of others, perhaps quite equal in piety, though not so distinguished as these. So was fulfilled the great principle, that when the enemy cometh in like a flood, then the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.

As to the measures of this reign for the destruction of religious liberty, with which more especially we are now concerned, it opened with what is called the Corporation Act, by which in defiance of all the king's previous stipulations, all persons whose religious principles constrained them con

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scientiously to refuse conformity to the Established Episcopal Church were at once expelled and excluded from every branch of the magistracy, and rendered incapable of serving their country in the meanest civil offices.

"Next followed the memorable statute against the Society of Friends, by which upwards of 4000 persons were cast into prison for their religious scruples, and treated with the utmost cruelty, with even a savage barbarity.

"In the second year of this reign, 1662, came the Act of Uniformity, suppressing by force all diversity of religious opinions, imposing the Book of Common Prayer, and reviving for this purpose the whole terrific penal laws of preceding reigns. This was to take effect from the feast-day of St. Bartholomew, in 1662; the day of a former well-known dreadful massacre of Protestants in Paris and other French cities, the 24th August, 1572, nearly a hundred years previous: and a day on which more than 2000 conscientious ministers were silenced, ejected from their pulpits, and thrown into persecu tion and poverty. For these men to preach, or conduct public worship, was made a penal offence against the state; and among these men are such names as those of Owen, Bates, Manton, Goodwin, Baxter, and Howe: towards whom that very cruelty was enacted by the Established Church of England, which in the case of the Jewish Church is said to have filled up the measure of its crimes, and prepared the Jewish people for the Divine vengeance; forbidding the apostles to speak to the Gentiles, that they might be saved.' No matter how holy nor how eminently useful the body of the non-conforming clergy might be: the act would have passed, it has truly been said, though the measure had involved the eternal misery of half the nation.

"Of this act Hume himself says (and I like to take authorities of which it may be said, Our enemies themselves being judges); Hume himself says that in it the Church party gladly laid hold of the prejudices (the conscientious scruples) which prevailed among the Presbyterians, in order to eject them from their livings. By the Bill of Uniformity it was required that every clergyman should be re-ordained, if he had not before received episcopal ordination: should declare his assent to every thing contained in the Book of Common Prayer; should take the oath of canonical obedience; should abjure the Solemn League and Covenant; and should renounce the principle of taking arms on any pretence whatsoever against the king. This bill reinstated the Church in the same condition in which it stood before the commencement of the civil wars; and as the old persecuting laws of Elizabeth still subsisted in their full vigour, and new clauses of a like nature were now enacted, all the king's promises of toleration and indulgence to tender consciences were thereby eluded and broken.'

"The same historian observes that the ecclesiastical form of government, according to the Presbyterian discipline, is more favourable to liberty than to royal power and hence the readiness of Charles to break all promises of tolerance which he had made for the gaining of the throne, and to produce an iron uniformity of ecclesiastical subjection, in which he might break down all the defences raised against regal encroachments. The spirit of religious liberty always has been, and ever must be, the world's greatest safeguard against the oppression of political tyranny.

"Two years after this statute came the memorable Conventicle Act, 1664. It was found that these holy clergymen, though banished from their own pulpits, would preach, and that people would hear, preach anywhere, and hear anywhere, in dens and caves of the earth, in barns and private houses, so it were but the gospel. To put a stop to this, and to extirpate all public worship not within the walls of episcopal consecration, the barbarous statute of a preceding reign was declared in force, which condemned to banishment, and, in case of return, to death without benefit of clergy, all persons refusing to attend the public worship appointed by the state. It was then enacted that if any person should be present at any assembly, conventicle, or meeting, under colour or pretence of any exercise of religion, in other manner than is

allowed by the Liturgy or practice of the Church of England; or if any person shall suffer any such meeting in his house, barn, yard, woods, or grounds; they should be for the first and second offence thrown into jail, or fined; for the third offence transported for seven years, or fined a hundred pounds; and, in case of return or escape after such transportation, death without the benefit of clergy! Troops of horse and foot were on the alert to break up such meetings; the ravages and forfeitures for this crime of religious worship according to conscience became very great; the jails were filled with prisoners; others were transported as convicts; other whole families emigrated; informers were multiplied; and the defence and security of life, liberty, and property, in the trial by jury, were broken down.

"Next came the great Plague, in which the nonconformist clergy, having before been driven from their pulpits by power of persecution, the established clergy fled from theirs through fear of death. But when men who feared death more than God fled, then those men who feared nothing but God entered their places. Then came those same persecuted and silenced clergy, when the court and parliament had removed to Oxford, and the hirelings had fled from their flocks; they came in defiance of law and contagion, and ministered the bread of life to pale multitudes, at altars from which they would have been driven with penal inflictions in the season of health. But this too must be stopped; and therefore, by this very parliament, sitting in Oxford through fear of the plague in London, and to shut out those men who entered with the gospel when others dared not enter, a fresh penal law was enacted, by which, unless they would take an oath that the Earl of Southampton declared in parliament no honest man could take, all nonconformist ministers were banished five miles from any city, town, or borough, that sent members to parliament, and five miles from any place whatsoever where they had at any time, in a number of years past, preached. This savage act produced of course great suffering, but it also called into exercise great endurance and patience for Christ's sake. Ministers who would not sacrifice their duty to God and their people, and who had to be concealed at a distance, sometimes rode thirty or forty miles to preach to their flocks in the night, fleeing again from their persecutors before the dawn of day.

"In 1670, the barbarous Conventicle Act was renewed with still greater severity; the trial by jury in case of offenders was destroyed; no warrant to be reversed by reason of any default in the form; persons to be seized wherever they could be found; informers encouraged and rewarded, and justices punished who would not execute the law. Archbishop Sheldon addressed a circular letter to all the bishops of his province, commanding them to take notice of all offenders, and to aid in bringing them to punishment. The Bishop of Peterborough declared publicly concerning this law, that it hath done its business against all fanatics except the Quakers; but when the Parliament sits again, a stronger law will be made, not only to take away the land and goods, but also to sell them for bond-slaves.' The magistrates became, it has been truly remarked, under this law an encouragement to evil doers, and a punishment of those who did well.”—(pp. 9—14.)

Such is Dr. Cheever's "rapid and important glance of the age in which he (Bunyan) lived." Important indeed-most affecting and monitory: but we do not quite like the Dr's conclusion.

"We shall pursue no further," says Dr. C., "the history of political and ecclesiastical cruelty in this arbitrary persecuting reign. It is enough to make the very name of the Union of Church and State abhorred in the mind of every man who has a spark of generosity or freedom in his composition."

If this be intended as a slur upon the Church and Constitution of our land, we can only pity it. If from the times of the Stuarts

Dr. C. has concluded against the principle of Church and State, it is only a proof that men may philosophize very deeply, and yet not deeply enough. Had our able American brother looked Romeward with as keen an eye as he has cast upon the stormy progress of English principles during the seventeenth century, or had he called to mind the Blue Code of Connecticut, and some other matters connected with American history, we think he might have come to a gentler and wiser conclusion. The Church and Constitution of England are essentially tolerant and we are bold to say it, both politically and religiously, the only breakwater against the tyranny of Rome. Rome has all along been the mischief-maker. But Dissenters will not believe this, and hence our perils. The Church of the Reformation, even during the seventeenth century, when but few of any party questioned the principle of alliance, was fruitful in great names; and as we do not wish to quarrel with Dr. C., we will thankfully accept his own tribute, as contained in the following passage, proud to say that though last, our own names are by no means least, in this partial list.

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Bunyan's life and times," says Dr. C., "were also Baxter's; Baxter being but thirteen years the oldest. Bunyan died in 1688, Milton in 1674, Baxter in 1691. Owen was another contemporary, 1616-1683. John Howe was another, born 1630. Philip Henry was another, born 1631. The sweet poet George Herbert should be named as another. Matthew Poole was another, born 1623. Thomas Goodwin was another, born in 1600. Lord Chief Justice Hale was another, born in 1609. Cudworth was born in 1617: Henry More was born in 1614, and died in 1687, a year before the death of Bunyan. Archbishop Usher and Bishop Hall both died in 1656. Taking these names together, you have a striking picture of the richness of the age both in piety and genius: an ascending series of great minds and good men from every rank and party."

We are happy in this agreement: and if we are unfortunate enough to differ with Dr. C. on the principle of Church and State, perhaps he will excuse our saying that the list he has given will at all events decide the difference in our favour. We are content to refer it to this decision-and who would wish for nobler judges?

On the whole, while we very highly appreciate Dr. Cheever's lectures on the Pilgrim's Progress, we must repeat that we can by no means approve of his line of remark on Church-establishments in the Life and Times. We the more regret this, as the passages in question (pp. 9-14, 78--81, 85-94, passim) would render it impossible for us as Churchmen to promote its circulation to the extent we could wish. We know not whether the Tract Society's Edition is an expurgated one-but surely it would be no sacrifice of principle to furnish a valuable Exposition of so Catholic a book as the Pilgrim's Progress free from such objectionable matter-objectionable, that is, to conscientious members of the Church of England.

1. CODEX EPHRAEMI RESCRIPTUS: sive Fragmenta utriusque Testamenti, è Codice Græco Parisiensi quinti ut videtur post Christum seculi, eruit atque edidit CONSTANTINUS TISCHENDORF. Lipsia: sumtibus et typis Bernh. Tauch

nitz, Jun. 1845, folio. 2. CODEX FRIDERICO-AUGUSTANUS: sive Fragmenta Veteris Testamenti è Codice Græco omnium, qui in Europa supersunt, facile antiquissimo. Ex oriente detexit, in patriam attulit, ad modum Codicis edidit CONTANTINUS TISCHENDORF. Lipsia sumtibus et typis Bernh. Tauchnitz, Jun. 1846, large (imperial) 4to.

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3. MONUMENTA SACRA INEDITA: sive Reliquiæ Antiquissima Textus Novi Testamenti Græci ex novem plus mille annorum Codicibus per Europam dispersis. Eruit atque edidit CONSTANTINUS TISCHENDORF. Lipsiæ: sumtibus et typis Bernh. Tauchnitz, Jun. 1846, folio.

DR. TISCHENDORF, who is Professor of Theology in the University of Leipzig, is one of the most successful explorers of the remains of sacred antiquity and his splendid publications are not undeserving of a place on the same shelf with Dr. Woide's fac-simile edition of the New Testament after the celebrated Alexandrian Manuscript in the British Museum, published at London in 1786, and with Mr. Baber's magnificent and accurate fac-simile edition of the Old Testament in Greek, after the same manuscript, also published in London in 1816-28. As Dr. Tischendorf's publications are but little known in this country, and the high price which they necessarily bear, render them accessible to but few biblical students, we think (at least we hope) that we shall gratify our readers by offering to them an outline of their various and important contents.

1. The fac-simile of the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus was published in two parts, viz. (1.) The New Testament in 1843; and (2.) The Old Testament in 1845, with separate title-pages. The title above given is that of the volume into which these two parts are collected. The Codex Ephraemi derives its name from the circumstance of several Greek ascetic treatises of Ephraim, a deacon of the Syrian Church at Edessa, being written over some more ancient writings which had been erased. These writings contained the Septuagint version of the Old Testament and the entire New Testament but these venerable remains of the Scriptures were

completely intermingled, inverted, or transposed, by the unknown later copyists of Ephraim's treatises (who lived at the

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