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6. GARDINER, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.

"Is there not some chosen curse,

Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven,
Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man
Who gains his fortune from the blood of souls?"

GARDINER, bishop of Winchester, and chancellor of England, was one of the most virulent opponents of the cause of the Reformation in that country. We cannot, in our brief space, give the reader any true notion of the enormous horrors and cruelties perpetrated by his orders under the sanguinary reign of Mary, truly designated "the bloody." When he came to die, November 12th, 1555, he exhibited great remorse at the remembrance of his various cruelties. "He often," says Bishop Burnet, "repeated those words, 'Erravi cum Petro, sed non flevi cum Petro,'" (I have erred with Peter, but have not repented with him.)

7. GEORGE JOHN JEFFREYS.

THE death-bed of George John Jeffreys, chief justice, and afterwards lord chancellor in the reign of James II., was an appropriate close to a life of monstrous debauchery and brutal cruelties, to which the powers of his high station gave a dreadful force. He was imprisoned on the flight of his master in the Tower, where he lingered out a wretched and unpitied life, amidst the utmost remorse of conscience. He was suspected to have died by his own hand.

8. ANTIOCHUS IV.

ANTIOCHUS IV. was an unrelenting enemy of the Church of God. In a furious passion he vowed the utter ruin of Jerusalem and the people of God. He took an oath that he would make it a national sepulchre for the Jews, and extirpate them to a man. But even while the words were in his mouth the wrath of God fell on him, and smote him with a horrible disease. In spite of all the arts of his physicians, his body became a mass of putrefaction, whence there issued an incredible number of worms; and the torture of his mind was infinitely superior to that of his body. And before he sunk into a delirium he acknowledged that it was the hand of the Almighty that had crushed him.

9. PHILIP IL, OF SPAIN.

PHILIP II., of Spain, was a persecutor of Christians, more bigoted and more bloody than even Antiochus. He was smitten by the same disease. His flesh consumed away on his bones, by incurable ulcers, which sent forth innumerable swarms of worms, so that nobody could approach him without fainting. His shrieks and groans were heard all over the palace.

10. ALEXANDER CAMPBELL.

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL was a Dominican friar, who stood by and assailed the Scottish martyr, Patrick Hamilton. After the martyr was in the flames, and the powder, having exploded, had severely scorched his hand

and face, this impious man cried out incessantly to him, "Repent, heretic. Call on our lady, and say, Hail, Mary!" The martyr meekly replied, "Depart from me, thou messenger of Satan, and trouble not my last moments." But, as he still uttered with great vehemence, "Pray to our lady; say, Hail, Mary," the martyr turned his eyes on him and said, "O thou vilest of men, thou knowest in thy conscience that these doctrines which thou condemnest are true, and this thou didst confess to me in I cite thee to answer for this at the judgmentscat of Christ." Buchanan and Knox add, that the friar in a short time became distracted, and died in the ragings of despair.

11. CHARLES IX., OF FRANCE.

CHARLES IX., of France, was a modern Nero, as the memorable St. Bartholomew's massacre, conducted under his auspices, can testify. He plotted the horrid massacre of the Protestants in his kingdom. Within a few days thirty thousand, others say fifty thousand, another writer, one hundred thousand Protestants were butchered in cold blood. The day after the butchery he observed several fugitives about his palace, and taking a fowling piece, fired upon them repeatedly.

He died in the midst of these disorders, overcome by vague and sombre terrors, believing that he heard groans in the air, starting from his sleep at night, and struck by a strange malady, which made him bleed from every pore.

"Two days before his death, he had near him," says L'Estoile, "his nurse, whom he ardently loved, although she was a Huguenot. As she was sitting upon a chest, and commenced nodding, having heard the king complaining, weeping, and groaning, she approached his bed

very softly; and taking off the coverlet, the king began to say to her, drawing a deep sigh, and weeping so violently that the sobs interrupted his words: Ah, my nurse, my dear nurse, what blood, what murders! ah! what evil counsels I have followed! O, my God, pardon me, and have mercy on me, if thou canst. I know not what I am. What shall I do? I am lost: I see it well.' The nurse said to him, 'Sire, let the murders rest on those who counselled you to them! And since you consented not to them, and are repentant, trust that God will not charge them upon you, and will cover them with the mantle of his Son's justice, to whom alone you should turn.' Upon that, having brought a handkerchief, his own being saturated with his tears, after his majesty had taken it from her hand, he made her a sign that she should retire and allow him to rest.

Soon after he expired, exhibiting on his death-bed the appalling exhibition of a tortured conscience and an avenging heaven."

12. ROCKWOOD.

DURING the Papist persecution in England, one Rockwood distinguished himself for his busy malignity, and in his last sickness he fell to raging, "I am utterly damned!" He was exhorted to ask mercy of God, but he roared out, "It is now too late, for I have maliciously sought the death of many godly persons, and that against my own conscience, and therefore it is now too late."

13. BISHOP BRAMBLE.

WHEN the celebrated Mr. Blair of the seventeenth century, was deposed by Bishop Bramble of Derry, in Ireland, he cited the bishop to appear before the tribunal of Christ, to answer for that wicked action. "I appeal," said the bishop, "from the justice of God to his mercy."

"Your appeal,” replied Mr. Blair, "is likely to be rejected; because, in prohibiting us the exercise of our ministry, you act against the light of your own conscience."

The bishop was shortly after smitten with sickness, and when Dr. Maxwell, his physician, inquired of him what was his particular complaint, after a long silence he replied, "It is my conscience!"

"I have," rejoined the doctor, "no cure for that."

This confession the friends of the bishop endeavoured to suppress; but the countess of Andes, who had it from the doctor's mouth, and who was worthy of credit, used to say, "No man shall suppress that report; for I shall bear witness of it to the glory of God, who smote him for persecuting Christ's faithful servants."

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