is certainly written with great fierceness of spirit and much asperity in language, containing eighteen sections; in the last of which the differences between the Pre

latists and Puritans are aggravated with great bitterness.' Bishop Hall, at the end

of his Defence of the Humble Remon

strance,' speaks of the last section of Smectymnuus thus: The rest that remains is but mere declamation, not worthy of any answer, but contempt and silence.'

"In this controversy, no one can say

that Bishop Hall has used asperity of language, or manifested bitterness of spirit on the contrary, he has written with the simplicity of a primitive Christian bishop; with confidence of the goodness of the cause; with brotherly respect to his opponents: his language is energetic, yet temperate, courteous, and chaste." Hall, pp. 206, 207.

The period, in truth, was now arrived, when doctrines professedly the most humbling and softening to the heart, the doctrines of "absolute election and predestination to life," were, in some instances, we fear, to be seen united in the same individual with pride and a spirit of revenge. The Puritan had been cruelly injured; and he must have blood for blood. We are not aware that any one of these five writers hinted at the mercy or the forgiveness of the Gospel, much less at the duty of submitting to the laws and constituted authorities of the land. But of this presently. The document entitled by Hall "Some Specialties in my Life," happens to close, as we have observed, before any part of the above Smectymnuan controversy began. Other affairs, more momentous, seemed to press on his mind, and to prove too vast for utterance; those ominous words, nearly the last he here writes, "THE PARLIAMENT BEGUN," leaving us to guess the rest. A short parliament had met early in the year 1640. Happy, perhaps, had it been, says Clarendon, if that parliament had continued. Disastrous councils, however, prevailed; the parliament was dissolved, and the last long tale to which Hall's words allude, began late in the same year. There was, he says, "hard tugging!" For another year the crisis was suspended.

Several sees were at this moment filled up on the king's return from his unhappy Scotch expedition, and in a manner suitable, for the most part, to the exigencies of the times; whether or not, with men who had we have little reason to inquire been privately marked by Archbishop Laud with O for orthodox, or P for Puritan for Laud had, early this year, in spite of every principle of justice, which it is feared he had too often violated himself, been lodged in the Tower. Indeed we must say it, in mournful recollection of the disasters (humanly speaking) of those times, that it is a question whether any thing short of that rare coincidence of misfortune, which gave Charles such an adviser as Laud, and Laud such a monarch as Charles, would have shaken the firm and deep-rooted hold which Episcopacy had on this kingdom. Laud's portentous policy of ejecting what were called the predestinarian doctrines from the Church of England, throwing their full weight into the scale of her bitterest enemies, hastened the mischief. A comparatively harmless quarrel about a cap or a surplice, must have been sooner or later adjusted. The question even of Episcopacy might have stood its ground with the arguments of a Hooker and a Hall in its favour, even though with the temerity of a Laud and the violences of a court of high commission against it, we doubt whether even the spirit of a Cromwell, hovering over the councils of parliament, as that of Prince Maurice over the Synod of Dort, would have of itself carried the day in those "prælia conjugibus loquenda." But when the very grounds of doctrine, what the large body considered the ima fundamina of Christianity, were touched: and when doctrinal Puritanism, the very doctrine which conquered at Dort, was forced into the ranks of political discontent, what result, may we say, necessarily awaited the Episcopalians, who chose to ally themselves both in religion and politics to the

fixing a yoke of government in church and state perfectly tyrannical on every rank and order of the kingdom. The final result of liberty to the subject, restriction to the monarch, and security to both, we do not, therefore, owe to their wisdom or rectitude: it was as purely accidental, or we should say providential, though in natural consequence, as the clearing of the air after a hurricane.

That the Presbyterian party, indeed, were not essentially lovers of any liberty except their own, we think must be clear from a multitude of considerations arising out of the history before us. As seen in connexion with their prototypes of Belgium, what is clearer than the intention of both to erect a distinct religious tyranny of their own, in lieu of that which they so violently displaced. The same busy and graceless intermeddling between politics and piety; the same contemptuous and personal invective, whether provoked, as in Britain, or for the most part unprovoked, as in Belgium; the same renunciation by name of the hated term toleration; with all that accompanying political chicane, which did not pretend to fairness, nor, in Holland, even to the dignity of a wholesome retaliation for injuries received, we think prove to demonstration, that they were alike far too busily concerned in their own interests, and in the promotion of their own peculiar views, to have any leading regard from first to last for the higher and more important ends of Christian peace and charity. We are inclined to believe, that there was a settled principle, no less in the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly of Divines, than in the counterpart of the latter, the Synod of Dort, to carry certain views of doctrine and discipline at all risks, and to the exclusion of all others. The political men, it is very true, might have been possessed of that measure and degree of self-importance, which, without any very

distinct plan, contents itself with taking decisive order against all it imagines to be disorder; avenging for the past, or redressing for the future, as it might happen. But the religious men, at least of the Presbyterian party, we conceive to have been animated with one general and commanding spirit, identified in their minds, with every thing sacred in religion, essential to Christianity, and vital to the soul; but yet inseparably associated with the doctrinal opinions, and resting on the ecclesiastical platform of Geneva*.

It was perhaps a sense of this, which partly explained, though it could not justify indeed, the measures taken by those who were pleased to call themselves the Orthodox, on the other side of the question. Such heterodox men, indeed, as Hall in our own country, and still more Arminius abroad, had anticipated the fair principles of legitimate religious toleration. But Laud and his associates, who knew nothing of such principles, madly determined to have recourse to force. They perceived the boiling up of the element. They found it grew hotter and hotter: they could not permit these little ebullitions to find their exit

And yet let us beware of doing wrong to the many eminent persons of that day, who took an active share in promoting the Revolution, as well religious as political, which then convulsed the kingdom; the heat and prejudice of the moment, but who, though unhappily partaking of were unquestionably animated by the highest and best principles, and whose writings (still a rich source of delight and improvement to the church of Christ) testify to their close communion with God, and their ardent zeal for his glory and the best interests of mankind. As for the death of Charles, it was not the the Independents, who, whatever else work of the Presbyterian party, but of may have been their faults, cannot be justly accused of an intolerant attachment to any system either of doctrine or discipline. To them we owe the first germ of our spiritual liberties. And as to the unwarrantable measure of the trial and execution of Charles, it was partly deemed necessary to their own security; at least it certainly proceeded from no doctrinal or ecclesiastical preferences, but mainly from political considerations.

through a safety valve,-the special pleadings about a few harmless ceremonies; they increased the pressure in proportion as they marked and trembled at the danger: they added weight upon weight; piled up Ossa on Pelion, Royalty on Episcopacy, and Tyranny on Royalty, to prevent explosion. These only served to give concentration and force to the comparatively small and vapourish element underneath; till, at length, as was to be looked for, it exploded; and, with a concussion felt to the extremities of the empire, blew church

and state into atoms before it.

It was about this perilous moment, that Bishop Hall, having been, upon fair and honest bail, released from the tower, took his quiet walk down to his lodgings in Deal's Yard, Westminster. His pleasantry and love of social intercourse, led him as usual to his friends, of whom he had good store, in Westminster Hall. He had only mistaken the moment. The ful and tolerant bishop was no good neighbour to those above stairs. The all-seeing Parliament had instant knowledge of the presence of a "heinous offender," at large below. He was once more seized, he and the rest of his brethren, who were to pay the price of his illjudged stroll.

peace

"Back to the Tower again, from whence we came, thither we must go; and thither I went with a heavy, but, I thank God, not impatient heart.

"After we had continued there some six weeks longer, and earnestly petitioned to return to our several charges, we were on five-thousand-pound bond dismissed; with a clause of revocation at a short warning, if occasion should require.

"Thus having spent the time betwixt new-year's even and whitsuntide in those

safe walls, where we by turns preached every Lord's day to a large auditory of citizens, we disposed of ourselves to the places of our several abode.

"For myself, addressing myself to Norwich, whither it was his Majesty's pleasure to remove me, I was at the first received with more respect than in such times I could have expected. There I preached, the day after my arrival, to a numerous and attentive people: neither was sparing of my pains in this kind ever since; CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 311.

till the times, growing every day more impatient of a bishop, threatened my silencing." Hall, p. 398.

It does not appear that on the second seizure of this venerable company, they had to kneel at the bar of the Commons; or in their passage down the Thames, "like felons in a barge, to shoot the bridge with no small peril in the dark." But it fully appears, that, after relinquishing the charge of high treason against them, the Commons, beyond all precedent of law, detained them on a lesser charge, as "delinquents of a very high nature;" and enacted that all their spiritual means should be taken away; only with a reservation of maintenance which, for Hall, amounted to four hundred pounds per annum; this latter clause being the only part of the sentence which was not carried into effect. We have before alluded to the feelings of those men, who, at this period, be it remembered, in 1641-2, before the actual effusion of civil blood, and still pretending (as Neal tells us), adherence to Episcopal jurisdiction, could thus in their cool deliberation act towards these poor unfortunate bishops. As for Hall, he was happy enough with his talk and his antithesis, and his quaint and pious effusions of eloquence, whether in the Tower or in the Cathedral; and, above all, with the thorough answer of a good conscience, which never seems to have forsaken him: and thus supported, he was prepared for those final dealings detailed in his "Hard Measure"-the hardest word which we believe (with rare exception) that he ever personally bestowed upon them.

The "heinous offence" of our excellent and truly Christian bishop lay. it is true, in deeds committed a litt before this last protest of the bishops which had so outraged the Parliament. He had made a strong the House of Peers against the reand cogent speech in his place in moval of bishops from that seat of political power. He stood in the way of the Root-and-Branch Petition, 4 U