yet he was more a man of business than of letters!"a To whom the initials of the writer of the following piece belong, does not appear, nor has his religious denomination been discovered; so that his testimony, besides being contemporaneous is also corroborative of Burton's. The title stands thus, "Jehoiadah's Justice against Mattan, Baal's Priest: Or, The Covenanters' Justice against Idolaters. A Sermon preacht upon occasion of a Speech uttered upon Tower-hill. Wherein you may find his likeness to Mattan rather than to Christ: His place in John xi. 48, charged upon Himself: The weakness of the choice of his Text: How great cause we have to give Thanks. By J. H., Minister of the Gospel.-Judges v. 31.-1645." 4to. pp. 16. This "minister," Presbyterian, as we suppose, takes his text from 2 Chron. xxiii. 16, 17; and in applying it, he asks, "How should we increase our joy by considering what, in times past, he did "—meaning this representative of the original Mattan," which he shall never do? He shall never more play the Beast' against the Lamb,' nor set up superstition above worship; nor open a door to thrust out holiness and let in profaneness; nor accuse strictness as hypocrisy, and cry up liberty for religion! He shall no more give liberty to profane the Sabbath; nor set up maypoles as his pillars, to proclaim all strict observing of the Sabbath to be Jewish; or rear them up as spears and weapons of war, against the holiness of that day! He shall no more set up candlesticks, and put down catechising; nor deify singing [cathedral] service, and suppress lectures; nor tolerate plays, and suppress christian liberty in private communion for fasting, to increase faith and renew repentance; nor countenance men in profaneness, and convent men as offenders to his tribunal, for sanctifying their families in conceiving prayer! He shall no more watch opportunities against the Watchmen and faithful Pastors of the land, that were the Lord's husbandmen to turn many to righteousness: he shall no more remove them from their congregations by suspensions, extensions, forcing to banishment; by imprisonment, by famishment, by death; nor make their lives grievous by threats and scorns! He shall no more seduce the kings of the earth, nor delude great ones, nor overawe the judges to cause wrong judgment to proceed; nor terrify the counsellor that he dares not plead for his client; nor slay the fatherless in judgment, nor condemn the guiltless! He shall no more exalt the proud; be a terror to the just, a vexation to the thirsty soul, in taking away the bread of life from congregations that faint for the word of consolation to build them up in faith! He shall no more sow sedition, set kingdoms on fire, raise war against the peaceable, despise dominions, nor study to subvert judicatures! In a word, he shall no more, in any wise, lord it over God's heritage; not 'sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north," for the Lord hath swept him away with the besom of destruction! Now, what is our duty, but to rejoice in the God of our salvation? "Would one imagine there could live so much impudence so near a Rev. John Jones, in his "Life and Times, &c. of Bishop Hall." 1826. 8vo. b Isai. xiv. 13. p. 326. © Ver. 23. sudden death, as for a man-so eminent an enemy of all righteousness in his life, an oppressor in a high nature; a persecutor of rich and poor that set their faces towards Sion,-I say, for him,—in an open place, on the scaffold of death, before such a confluence of people of this city, that have had such open testimony of his pride and cruelty, -to justify himself by the example of our Lord Jesus? For wherefore else were those words chosen, Heb. xii. 1, 2, and this gloss, that he despised the shame for Jesus?' Durst any but a spirit past holy fear and humility, compare himself with Christ in that particular of his sufferings; his beheading, with Christ's crucifying; and his ignominy, with Christ's undeserved shame ?' Weigh but the imparity of the parallel, when you have considered one not well-shapen passage, 'Christ despised the shame for me; and God knows, I despise the shame for Christ' if the speech be comparative, as, he for my example, so I by his example, and no more; then he died a Socinian, not a Protestant. But how unlike are the sufferers! Christ, for the joy that was set before him,' was going to his Father; but this man, for grief that he could live no longer to vex Christ in his members, was going to the tribunal of Him whom he had pierced! In Christ's mouth there was no guile; under this man's lips were nothing else but deceit and strife. Christ endured the cross in obedience to his Father's will, and as our Surety; but this man despised the cross, as a fool goeth laughing to the stocks. Christ despised the shame, as being no way conscious of desert; but this man, endureth the shame, as the just wages of his ambition and pride. Christ entered into his glory, and laid down his reproach; but this man, laid down his honour at one blow, and liveth under perpetual ignominy; Christ prayed for them that cried him down to be crucified; but this man, hath branded a famous city with sedition, for praying for justice on the kingdom's disturbers. Christ endured the contradiction of sinners; but this man, sought to set dissension between two Houses, in clearing his judges, and condemning them that accused him unto them. Finally: Christ died as a 'Lamb;' but this man, as a fox, whom Christ the Lord of glory' hath taken away, never to destroy His vines any more!"a Deterred by no unmanly fear, and encouraged by no prospect of human applause, we have not withheld what we have recorded as said and done by and against one who had daringly assumed the prerogative to mould and fashion the faith of all the souls in three kingdoms; and by thus prostrating their wills, would have succeeded in his purpose of bringing their bodies into subjection. "This fierce Inquisitor had chief P. 12, 13.-There appeared also, "A full and satisfactory Answer to the Archbishop of Canterbury's Speech, or Funeral Sermon preached by Himself, on Tower-hill, on Friday the 10th of January, 1644-5, upon Heb. xii. 1, 2: At which time, he was there and then beheaded. Wherein is a full and plenary Discourse to satisfy all those who have been startled with his Subtle and Jesuitical Fallacies and Evasions in the said Speech. And other Passages and Observations of great consequence to satisfy the Expectation of the Kingdom therein.-Isai. xiv. 16.-1645." 4to. pp. 23. b Butler's Hudibras. Pt. i. C. iii. applied there, to a "Lay-elder." He missed his aim; as he righteously ought to do, when such was his end, and oppression his means! Laud was vanquished, and so dire was the necessity which he had caused, that a vigour beyond the customary rules of criminal justice sent him also to render a faithful account at the unimpeachable tribunal of HIM who "maketh inquisition for blood."a He shall have the full benefit, and our readers the fair opportunity it will afford them, derivable from his written Prayer: subjected as we have seen, for that reason, to animadversions more free than what might be regarded otherwise strictly proper, had it been an out-burst of the heart and conscience at the most awful crisis of human responsibility. We append, purposely, that it might not prevent a calm judgment, what stands better as an epilogue here, than as a prologue in its original place. "O ETERNAL GOD and merciful Father, look down upon me in mercy, in the riches and fulness of all thy mercies look down upon me; but not till Thou hast nailed my sins to the cross of Christ, not till thou hast bathed me in the blood of Christ, not till I have hid myself in the wounds of Christ, that so the punishinent due unto my sins may pass over me. And since Thou art pleased to try me to the utmost, I humbly beseech Thee, give me now, in this great instant, full patience, proportionable comfort, and a heart ready to die for Thine honour, the King's happiness, and this Church's preservation. And my zeal to this-far from arrogancy be it spoken!-is all the sinhuman frailty excepted, and all the incidents thereunto,-which is yet known to me in this particular, for which I now come to suffer; I say, in this particular of Treason; but otherwise, my sins are many and great: Lord, pardon them all; and those especially-whatever they are-which have drawn down this present judgment upon me. And when thou hast given me strength to bear it, do with me as seems best in thine own eyes: and carry me through death, that I may look upon it in what visage soever it shall appear to me. Amen. “And, that there may be a stop of this issue of blood in this more than miserable kingdom,—I shall desire that I may pray for the people too, as well as for myself,-O Lord, I beseech Thee, give grace of repentance to all blood-thirsty people: but if they will not repent, O Lord, confound all their devices, defeat and frustrate all their designs and endeavours upon them, which are or shall be contrary to the glory of thy great Name; the truth and sincerity of religion; the establishment of the King and his posterity after him in their just rights and privileges; the honour and conservation of Parliaments in their just power; the preservation of this poor Church in her truth, peace, and patrimony; and the settlement of this distracted and distressed People under their ancient laws, and in their native liberty. And when thou hast done all this in mere mercy to them, O Lord, fill their hearts with thankfulness, and with religious, dutiful obedience to Thee and thy commandments all their days. Amen, Lord Jesus, Amen and receive my soul into thy bosom. Amen.-Our Father which art in heaven, etc."b The epilogue alluded to, is the production of the "Laureate" in b Heylyn, p. 535. a Psal. ix. 12. a these terms: " He had prepared a prayer for the occasion, and never was there a more solemn and impressive form of words; it is alike remarkable for the state of mind in which it was composed and uttered; the deep and passionate devotion which it breathes, and the last firm fervent avowal of that religious loyalty, for which he was at that instant about to die a martyr. To abridge it even of a word would be injurious, for if any human composition may be called sacred, this surely deserves to be so qualified." But with all his admiration, this eulogist has not favoured his readers with the addendum given in Heylyn;b delivered, it should seem extemporally, and so, worth no more than a passing notice. Having, says Heylyn, given the executioner " a sign when the blow should come, he kneeled," and prayed; "LORD, I am coming as fast [as] I can; I know I must pass through the shadow of death before I can come to see Thee: but it is but umbra mortis, a mere shadow of death, a little darkness upon nature; but Thou, by thy merits and passion, hast broke through the jaws of death. receive my soul, and have mercy upon me, and bless this kingdom with peace and plenty, and with brotherly love and charity, that there may not be this effusion of christian blood amongst them; for Jesus Christ, his sake, if it be thy will." When the signal was given, the executioner "very dexterously did his office." The Lord Of all this procedure, strange to say, there is not a word, reflecting upon the deed as an atrocity, dropped from the pen of the cumbersomely learned "John Hacket, late Lord Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry." But because it is of the utmost importance that the true light of history should be permitted to show Laud in every incontestable shade of character, and because no one is able to reflect it better than his contemporaries and his compeers, we borrow a portion of this writer's "Memorials offered to the Great Deservings of John Williams, D.D., who sometime held the Places of Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, Lord Bishop of Lincoln, and Lord Archbishop of York ;" and who died March 25th, 1650. "Of all men, Bishop Laud was the party whose enmity was most tedious, and most spiteful against his great benefactor, Lincoln! He battered him with old and new contrivances, fifteen years: his very dreams were not without them, as they are enrolled in his memorials drawn out with his own hand. I will touch that fault, that great fault, with a gentle hand, because of that good that was in him; because, in other things, I believe for my part, he was better than he was commonly thought; [and] because his death did extinguish a great deal of envy. I meet with him in his worst action that ever he did, and cannot shun it... But his part is in every act and scene of a tragical persecution of fifteen years: Hoc etiam ipsi culpabunt mali. Perhaps it began from an emulation to keep him back who was only like to be Bishop Laud's competitor for the greatest place of our Church. Had it gone no further, it might be censured moderately, for a common temptation. No wonder if the seal and the sword-fish never swim a "The Book of the Church," sup. p. 498. b P. 537. e Folio, 1693; but finished being written Feb. 1657-8, pt. ii. p. 229. Plaut. in Bacchid. quietly in the same channel!.. Spalato says, that John, Bishop of Constantinople, that assumed to himself the title of Universal Bishop' or Patriarch,' was a good man, given greatly to alms and fasting, but too much addicted to advance the title of his See; which made a plausible Prelate seem to be Antichrist, to Gregory the Great."b What need we more? Here is the bellum episcopale intestinum, if not internecinum, exposed; and now, which is the greater "Saint," Laud, or Hildebrand the seventh Gregory ?c It is remarked with considerable acumen, that, " Physiognomy does not play us false in offering this man's face as an index of his character. Vandyke pourtrayed his features, and in the portrait which yet survives, the diminutive eyes, contracted forehead, pointed nose, and compressed tout-ensemble, warn us to expect that littleness and cunning, that acuteness and meanness, which were his mental characteristics !"d CHAP. LXI. TRACT, BY D. P. P.-ANOTHER, BY W. L.; OF GREAT HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE.-A THIRD, BY JOHN PRICE.-BAILLIE. WE begin this chapter with "An Antidote against the Contagious Air of Independency. Showing, I. Six sufficient Grounds why they ought to revoke their Schismatical Principles: II. Six Parallels betwixt theirs and the Jesuitical Practices. By D. P. P.-Feb. 13, 1644[-5.] Imprimatur, Ja. Cranford." 4to. pp. 24. This anonymous Puritan commences by bewailing "the sudden change that is befallen to this kingdom in so short a time;" but, he tells us, "that which doth most of all increase the wrath of God against us is that some of our Clergymen that should, like Moses,f stand in the gap to appease the Lord's anger, are they that inflame the same by the contentions and schisms they foment, in the church of God, about the establishing of a new way of Church-government which they have brought from Holland or America,-where they were constrained to fly by the over-rigorous courses of the Prelacy,-having been infected with this contagious air by sojourning, in these parts, among sectaries; so that thinking, by flight, to avoid a rock, they have cast themselves upon a quicksand that may, if God in his mercy prevent it not, conduce their souls to greater danger than their bodies were during the persecution of [by] the Archbishop Laud."""They, a M. A. De Dominis, Abp. of Spalato; De Reip. Eccles. lib. iv. cap. vii. par. 13. Pt. ii. p. 65, 66. The coincidence between the two, is peculiarly striking in a number of particulars described by Dr. Southey himself, in his "Book of the Church," passim. d G. W. Johnson, in his Memoir of Selden, p. 311.-Lawson, by prefixing to his Life of Laud an engraving from Vandyke, has thus enabled his readers to judge of the disagreement between the fidelity of the painter and that of the biographer. s P. 5. P. 3. f Exod. xxxii. 11-13. |