after a lapse of four years was again brought from prison to answer for the renewed offence. I thought," said Lord Finch, "that Prynne had lost his ears already;" but added he, looking at the prisoner, "there is something left yet." An officer of the court removing the hair displayed the mutilated organs. " I pray to God," replied Prynne, "that you may have ears to hear "Christians," said Prynne, as he presented the stumps of his ears to be grubbed out by the hangman's knife; "stand fast; be faithful to God and your country, or you bring on yourselves and your children perpetual slavery."*

me."

The mutilation being effected, Prynne and his fellows in suffering, were sent to distant prisons, and afterwards removed to the islands of Scilly, Guernsey, and Jersey, where they were kept without the use of pen, ink, or paper, or the access of friends; till at last they were released by the Long Parliament.

Nor did the tender mercies of Laud stop here. He pursued those who had showed these men civilities as they were carried to prison. Some who visited them in prison, though it had not been forbidden, were fined £250, £300, and £500. The servant of Prynne was prosecuted in the High Commission because he would not accuse his master.

But the cruelties of Laud cannot be told. He made new rules; imposed new ceremonies; adorned the churches with pictures, images, and altar-pieces; drew the rituals of worship to a closer assimilation to those of Rome. "Laud and other prelates," says Hume, " had adopted many of those religious sentiments, which prevailed during the fourth and fifth centuries, when the Christian Church, as is well known, was already sunk into those superstitions which were afterwards continued and augmented by the policy of Rome. Nor was the resemblance to the Romish ritual any objection, but rather a merit with Laud and his brethren; who bore a much greater kindness to the 'mother Church,' as they called her, than to sectaries and Presbyterians; and frequently recommended her as a true Christian Church; an appellation which they refused, or at least scrupled, to give to others. So openly were these tenets espoused," continues Hume," that not only the discontented Puritans believed the Church of England to be relapsing fast into superstition; the court of Rome itself entertained hopes of regaining its authority in the island; and in order to forward Laud's supposed good intentions, an offer was twice made him in private of a Cardinal's hat; which he declined accepting. His answer was, as he himself says, "That there was something dwelling within him, which would not suffer his compliance till Rome were other than it was."

* Bancroft, Vol. i., p. 410.

In the meantime, the spiritual courts were full of business. "Every week," says Neale, " one or another of the Puritan ministers was suspended or deprived; and their families driven to distress: nor was there any prospect of relief; the clouds gathering thicker every day, and threatening a violent storm."

These "Puritan ministers" were the early ministers of Massachusetts Bay; and the ministers of the people who came through the forests to settle the towns on the Connecticut, and on the shore of Long Island Sound. The colony at Plymouth had lived, and others began to think of freedom to worship God in New England. "The sun shines as brightly in America," said they, "let us go." We shall leave our native land; we shall encounter perils and distress: but we and our children shall have FREEDOM TO WORSHIP GOD.

XV.

TIMES OF ARCHBISHOP LAUD.*

King and Prelates combine against the liberties of the People. Popish ceremonies and utensils. Images, pictures of God the Father. Communion tables turned into altars. Natural tendency of prelatic principles to corruption and persecution. Their fruit on a broad scale, and for a thousand years. Original idea of "A Church without a Bishop, a State without a king."

Ar the coronation of Charles, a novelty had been introduced by the officiating prelates, which struck the minds of his Protestant subjects with alarm. The king sitting with his crown and royal robes, the officiating bishop in the name of his brethren, recited to him the words of this charge: "Stand and hold fast from henceforth the place to which you have been heir by the succession of your forefathers, being now delivered to you by the authority of Almighty God, and by the hands of us, and all the bishops the servants of God. And as you see the clergy to come nearer to the altar than others, so remember that in all places convenient, you give them greater honor; that the mediator of God and man may exalt you on the kingly throne to be a mediator betwixt the clergy and laity; that you may reign for ever with Jesus Christ the king of kings and lord of lords."

King Charles never forgot this lesson. His constant aim was to uphold and aggrandize the clergy. His queen, Henrietta, a woman of exquisite beauty and blandishments, and possessed of an unbounded influence over the mind of her husband, was a papist. It pleased her to see papists raised to authority and favor. It pleased her to see the Church of England adopting the rituals and doctrines of Rome; it pleased the king, it pleased Bishop Laud. Why should any favor be shown to the

*I employ in this caption the most honorable designation of the man--the one by which he is now ordinarily known; intending, however, to embrace the whole time of his ascendency. He became archbishop in 1633. He was made Bishop of St. David's in 1621; afterwards he was translated to the See of London. His actual supremacy in church affairs began in October, 1627, upon the sequestration of Archbishop Abbot.

Puritans, who set themselves so stoutly against popish doctrines and ceremonies, as well as against the absolute prerogatives of the king? Why should the king trouble himself with parliaments, that dared to question and resist the prerogatives which he held not from the British Constitution, but indefeasibly, and unlimited, from God? "In return for Charles' indulgence towards the Church," says Hume, "Laud and his followers took care to magnify on every occasion the regal authority, and to treat with the utmost disdain all puritanical pretensions to a free and independent constitution." But while these prelates were so liberal in raising the crown at the expense of public liberty, they made no scruple of encroaching themselves on royal rights the most incontestible, in order to exalt the hierarchy, and to procure to their own order, dominion, and independence. All the doctrines which the Romish Church had borrowed from some of the Fathers, and which freed the spiritual from subordination to the civil power, were now adopted by the Church of England, and interwoven with her political and religious tenets. A divine and apostolical character was insisted on preferably to a legal and parliamentary one. The sacerdotal character was magnified as sacred and indefeasible. All right to spiritual authority, or even to private judgment, was refused to "profane laymen."

In one word, it was a conspiracy between the prelates and the king, against the civil and religious liberties of the people. Nothing but the civil war that followed, prevented the nation from being carried back into the chains of popery, and into an unlimited and hopeless despotism.

A few specimens will serve to show the character of the superstitions introduced by Laud. "St. Katharine's church having been repaired, was suspended from all divine service till it should be consecrated again. On Sunday, 16th January, 1630, Bishop Laud came, with a procession, to consecrate it. At his approach to the west door of the church, which was shut and guarded by halberdiers, some who were appointed for the purpose, cried with a loud voice, Open, open, ye everlasting doors, that the king of glory may come in.' As soon as Laud en

tered the doors, he fell down upon his knees, and with eyes lifted up, and his arms spread abroad, he said, "This place is holy; the ground is holy; in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I pronounce it holy." Then walking toward the chancel he took up some of the dust and threw it into the air several times. When he approached near the rail of the communion table, he bowed toward it five or six times; and returning, went round the church with his attendants, saying the 100th, and then the 19th Psalm, as prescribed in the Roman Pontificale. He then read several collects, in one of which he prayed "That all who

should thereafter be buried within the circuit of that holy and sacred place, may rest in their sepulchre in peace, till Christ's coming at judgment, and may then rise to eternal life and happiness." Then sitting under a cloth of state in the aisle of the chancel near the communion-table, he took a written book in his hand, and pronounced curses upon those who should thereafter profane that holy place." At the conclusion of each curse he bowed to the east, and said, "Let all the people say amen." When these curses, about twenty in number, were ended, he pronounced in like manner, blessings upon all who had any hand in framing and building that sacred and beautiful edifice, and on those who had given, or should hereafter give any chalices, plate, ornaments, or other utensils; and at the end of every blessing, he bowed to the east, and said, "Let all the people say amen." Then followed the sermon and the sacrament. The consecration of the elements he performed in the following manner; "As he approached the altar, he made five or six low bows; and coming to the side of it where the bread and wine were covered, he bowed seven times; then * he came near the bread, and gently lifting up the corner of the napkin beheld it; and immediately letting fall the napkin retreated hastily a step or two, and made three low obeisances. His lordship then advanced, and having uncovered the bread, bowed three times. as before; then laid his hand on the cup, and letting it go, he stepped back and bowed three times toward it; then came near again, and lifting up the cover of the cup, looked into it, and seeing the wine he let go the cover again, retired back, and bowed as before, after which the elements were consecrated."*

*

He consecrated St. Giles' Church in the same manner. It had been repaired, and in part rebuilt; and divine service had been performed, and the sacraments administered in it for some years. But upon Laud's accession, he interdicted the Church from divine service till it had been re-consecrated. Several other churches and chapels were in like manner shut up, till they had been consecrated after the same fashion.

Laud now set himself to introduce into the churches the ornaments and trappings of Popery. To support the enormous expense of repairing and beautifying St. Paul's, he raised money by "compositions with recusants, commutations of penance, exorbitant fines in the Star-Chamber and High Commission; insomuch that it became a proverb that St. Paul's was repaired with the sins of the people;" nor was the work much more than begun, when, after the expenditure of more than half a million of our money, the civil wars arrested its progress.

The zeal of the people in the Reformation had destroyed many

*Neale.