Strive for me, and with me, that the Lord our God may make me and all able to end our course with joy and patience. Strive also that he may stay his blessed hand, if it be his good pleasure, and not make any further breach in his Church, by the taking away any more of us as yet, to the discouragement of the weak, and the lifting up of the horn of our adversaries.

I would indeed, if it be his good pleasure, live yet with you to help you bear that grievous and hard yoke, which ye are like to sustain, either here or in a strange land. And, my good brethren, seeing banishment with loss of goods is likely to betide you all, prepare yourselves for this hard entreaty, and rejoice that any are made worthy for Christ's cause to suffer and bear all these things. And I beseech you in the bowels of Jesus Christ, that none of you in this case look upon his particular estate, but regard the general state of the Church of God; that the same may go and be kept together, whithersoever it shall please God to send you. Oh the blessing will be great that shall ensue this care; whereas, if you go every man to provide for his own house, and to look for his own family first, neglecting poor Zion, the Lord will set his face against you, and scatter you from one end of heaven to the other. *** The Lord, my brethren and sisters, hath not forgotten to be gracious unto Zion. You shall yet find days of peace and rest, if you continue faithful. This stamping and treading us under his feet, this subverting of our cause and right in judgment, is done by Him, to the end that we

should search and try our ways. *** Let not those of you that either have stocks in your hands, or some likely trades to live by, dispose of yourselves where it may be most commodious

for

your outward estate, and in the mean time suffer the poor ones that have no such means either to bear the whole work upon their weak shoulders, or to end their days in sorrow and mourning, for want of outward and inward comforts in the land of strangers; for the Lord will be the avenger of all such dealings

*. Let not the poor and friendless be forced to stay behind here, and to break a good conscience for want of your support and kindness to them, that they may go with you. And here I humbly beseech you, not in any outward regard, as I shall answer it before my God, that you would take my poor and desolate widow, and mess of fatherless and friendless orphans with you into exile, whithersoever you go; and you shall find, I doubt not, that the blessed promises of my God made unto me and mine, will accompany them. ** Only I beseech you, let them not continue after you in this land, where they must be forced to go again into Egypt. Be kind and loving and tender-hearted, the one of you towards the other. Labor every way to increase love, and to show the duties of love, one of you

toward another, by visiting and comforting and relieving one the other. Be watching in prayer; especially remember those of * * *. I fear me our brethren who are especially endangered

our carelessness was over great unto our God for the lives of those two so notable lights of his Church, who now rest with him; and that thus he took them away, for many respects, seeming good to his wisdom; so also, that we might learn to be more careful brethren, for in prayer in all such causes. Pray, then, that God may brother Mr. Francis Johnson and for me, spare us unto his Church, if it be his good pleasure; or give us exceeding faithfulness; and be every way comfortable unto the sister and wife of the dead: I mean unto my beloved Mrs. Barrowe, and Mrs. Greenwood, whom I heartily salute, and desire to be much comforted in their God, who, by his blessings from above, will countervail unto them the want of so notable a brother and a husband. I would wish you earnestly to write, yea, to send if you may, to comfort the brethren in the West and North, that they faint not in these troubles; and that you also may have of their advice and they of yours, what to do in these desolate times. I would wish you and them to be together if you may, whithersoever you shall be banished; and to this purpose bethink you beforehand, where to be, and be all of you assured, that he who is your God in England, will be your God in any land under the whole heaven; for the earth and the fullness thereof are his; and blessed are they that for his cause are bereaved of any part of the same. Finally, my brethren, the Eternal God bless you and yours, that I may meet you all unto my comfort in the blessed kingdom of heaven. Thus having from my heart, and with tears, performed, it may be, my last duty towards you in this life, I salute you all in the Lord, both men and women, even those whom I have not mentioned, for all your names I know not. And remember to stand fast in Jesus Christ, as you have received him unto immortality; and may he confirm and establish you unto the end for the praise of his glory. Arnen. Your loving brother in the patience and sufferings of the Gospel. "JOHN PENRY.

"24th 4th mo., April, 1593."

This was the last work of Penry; to give a word of encouragement and comfort to his brethren who were now about to be driven into that exile from which our pilgrim fathers came, to give us, their children, our pleasant homes in this western world. Others have labored, and we have entered into their labors. How does it become the descendants of such ancestors never to throw away the principles which they prized so dear,

till at least we are satisfied that they are neither the principles of national freedom nor of the Word of God. An age of sufferings is yet before us, before we come to the voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers. But upon the details of sufferings we shall dwell no more than is necessary to give the most rapid intelligible account of the history. We now take our leave of the history down to the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, and shall employ the next chapter upon the great work of the "Judicious Hooker," a work written expressly against the Puritans by the master mind of the established Church in that age; and which was not only relied upon by the persecuting hierarchy of the succeeding reigns as an ample and triumphant justification of all their cruelties, but which has stood the great text book of those who hate the principles of the Puritans down to the present day.

IX.

"THE JUDICIOUS HOOKER."

The design and principles of his Ecclesiastical Polity. Its controlling influence over the dynasty of the Stuarts. These principles examined. His doctrine. His notion of the power of orders.

THE disputes which began about vestments and ceremonies involved deep principles concerning the rights of conscience. The reign of Elizabeth had not expired before the debate left the form of questions concerning particular grievances, and assumed a shape corresponding with the reality-not a question about surplices, caps, and ceremonies, but a deep and solemn inquiry into the ground, nature, and limits of ecclesiastical power; and the rights of conscience in congregations of Christians, and in individual men.

Accordingly, when Richard Hooker, in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, took up his pen against the Puritans in justification of the severities practised by the queen, the bishops, and the High Commission, he spent not his strength upon the particular impositions of kneeling at the sacrament, the surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, and things of that sort, but laid down the broad PRINCIPLE that the CHURCH has authority to impose such things according to her discretion; and that the conscience of individuals and of particular congregations in such matters is not to be regarded; but that they may be rightly and piously COMPELLED to yield, by whatever PENALTIES good mother Church and the sovereign prince may find it necessary to employ for the attainment of that end.

Richard Hooker was sufficiently "judicious" to perceive that on no principle short of this, could the rigors of the established Church be justified, or the CHURCH itself, as established in England, be vindicated, and that if this principle could be substantiated, the robes, ceremonies and liturgies were all right; and the fines, the imprisonments, the banishments, and the slaughters inflicted, were all proper, just, and wholesome punishments for the coercion of the wickedly rebellious.

Accordingly, the account which Hooker himself gives of his great work on Ecclesiastical Polity, is, that his design was "To write

a deliberate and sober Treatise on the CHURCH'S POWER, to make canons for the use of ceremonies, and BY LAW TO IMPOSE AN OBEDIENCE to them, as upon her children, and this he proposed to do in eight books of the LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY."*

This was cutting up the whole matter by the roots. Grant this principle and there is no further dispute about surplices, liturgies, and ceremonies; the Church may stand upon her authority. There are no rights of conscience in the case; and if any begin to prate about conscience, or hesitate to yield a due conformity, they may be righteously silenced, imprisoned, banished, hanged, or burnt. A most convenient doctrine, no doubt, for the prelates and the despotic queen, in her capacity of head of the Church!

This was the great design and principle of Hooker, which he maintained with consummate ability, in a work on which he employed his undivided energies for a series of years. Many of his subordinate principles, illustrations, and arguments, are admirable; and could they be separated from this great design, they would be most excellent. Much truth is mingled with his scheme (when was any monstrous error ever put forth, entirely dissociated from all truth, and in its own naked deformity ?), but that has only served to make the lurking mischief the more deceptive and dangerous.

This great doctrine of Hooker, and the ability with which he maintained it, have made him the great champion of the Church of England, from that day to this. He became, in his day, the beloved of Archbishop Whitgift; the honored of Queen Elizabeth; and when King James came from Scotland to take possession of the English throne, almost the first thing he did, was to inquire of the Archbishop for "his friend Mr. Hooker, that writ the works of Ecclesiastical Polity," and he expressed great sorrow, when he learned that Hooker died the year before. King James, when among the Presbyterians in Scotland, had often and earnestly professed himself, from entire conviction, a Presbyterian. His accession to the throne of England wrought a marvellous change in his opinions. "No Bishop, no King," became now his favorite saying; and he affirmed that " Presbytery agreed with monarchy, as well as God with devil." The work of Hooker was precisely to his mind. It maintained his lofty notions of Church prerogative; or rather of his own prerogative as head of the Church. It was indeed as thoroughgoing a defence of despotism as could be desired. It is no wonder that King James (as Hooker's biographer says) did never mention him but with the epithet of "The learned," or "Ju*Life, p. 58, vol. i., Ed. Lond., 1825,