extract from two of the Archbishop's greatest enemies, and consequently cannot be expected to do justice to his designs. Having quoted the concessions which they enumerated, the Doctor observes:

"In which compliances, so far forth as they speak the truth, (for in some points, through the ignorance of the one and the malice of the other, they are much mistaken,) there is scarce any thing which may not very well consist with the established, though for a time discontinued, doctrine of the church of England; the articles whereof,' as the same Jesuit hath observed, seem patient, or ambitious rather, of some sense wherein they may seem catholick: And such a sense is put upon them by him that calls himself Franciscus a Sancta Clara.* And if,

6

him, that he would draw much envy upon himself by this change of Religion, he used to reply, that he could not be surprised with any thing that might happen."-BAYLE'S Dictionary.

The subjoined moving passage from Dr. HAMMOND'S View of the New Directory, published in 1645, is a proof, in addition to the many which this volume contains, of the truly catholic amplitude of the Creed of the English Church: "That the Liturgy of the Church of England, (which was at first, as it were, written in blood, at the least sealed and delivered down to us by the martyrdom of most of the compilers of it,) should ever since be daily solicited and called to the same stage and theatre, to fill up what was behind of the sufferings of those Fathers,-is no strange or new piece of economy in the Church of God. There is not a surer evidence and criterion, by which to discern the great excellency of moderation in that book, [the Liturgy,] and so the apportionateness of it to the end to which it was designed, than the experience of these so contrary fates, which it hath constantly undergone betwixt the persecutors on both extreme parts,-the assertors of the PAPACY on the one side, and the CoNSISTORY on the other; the one accusing it of schism, the other of compliance; the one of departure from the Church of Rome, the other of remaining with it; like the poor Greek Church our fellow-martyr, [that is] devoured by the Turk for TOO MUCH Christian profession, and damned by the Pope for TOO LITTLE: It being the dictate of natural reason, in Aristotle, that the middle virtue is most infallibly known by this-that it is accused by either extreme as guilty of the other extreme!"

It is undoubtedly one of the excellences on account of which the Articles and Liturgy of the Church of England are justly celebrated, that their sanction, like that of the Scriptures, is claimed by a multitude of dissidents in religious opinions-by moderate Papists, Lutherans, Calvinists, Arminians, Baptists, Pædo-baptists, &c. The subjoined passage from BAXTER'S Key for Catholics, in continuation of that quoted in page 679, contains some just observations in reference to those Papists who sought to give such a catholic interpretation to the English Confession, as would render ample enough to afford shelter to them and the less objectionable of their sentiments, and is undoubtedly an indirect compliment to the good intentions of Archbishop Laud and Grotius: "As for the King himself that was their head, if any conjecture that he was a flat Papist, (as I have heard many rashly say,) I think there is much evidence to confute them.-(1.) That very letter to the Pope, on which the suspicion is most grounded, if you mark it exactly, doth intimate no more than a desire of a union and reconciliation, with some additions that may bear a tolerable sense.- -(2.) His own profession of the Protestant religion is sufficient evidence.-(3.) His disputation with the Marquess of Worcester cleareth it.-(4.) His speech at death, and papers since published, clear it more. So that I think we may be confident that he was no nearer to Rome than was the reconcilable part of the Greeks: and that he desired no more than Bishop Bramhall, and other of his Bishops offer

upon such compliances as those before on the part of the English, the conditions offered by the Pope might have been confirmed, who seeth not that the greatest benefit of the reconcili

them, to have the Church governed by Patriarchs, and the Pope to be Principium Unitatis, &c. Yea, for my own part I am persuaded, that the Papists were as much afraid of King Charles and the Grotian design, as of any thing that of long time hath been hatched against them. They are not all of a mind at home. The French and moderate party no doubt applauded the design, and liked such writings as S. Clara's, and would gladly have married England and France in religion. But others (the Italian Spanish Jesuited party) might easily foresee what danger was in brewing for them. Had France, England, Sweden, Denmark, and the German Lutherans, agreed together, to bear down the Calvinists as irreconcilable on one side, (as Grotius intimates it necessary,) and the Italians and their adherents that set up the Pope above a Council, on the other side, it would have made the Pope afraid, as no doubt he was. For though he was glad that we would draw nearer him, and make him the head in any sort, yet he knew not how to stop so great an inundation as was like upon the union to overflow him. And hence was the malice of the Jesuits against the life of the King, and withal that he was fallen into such hands where he was like to do them little service. Secret. Windebank's letter recited by Prynne, tells us, that it was the Jesuits that were the death of Father Leander, and so were the enemies ' of Francis. S. Clara and his book,' which caused it to incur a Roman censure. So that, with one part of them, that is the best way which the other is more afraid of than of Protestants. We see it by the Jansenian contest. We see it in that Cassander, Erasmus, Vives, &c. are excellent Catholics with some of them, and heretical and vile with the rest.-The persecuted Nonconformists of the Protestant party, though they were most adverse to the Papists, had some of the Popish brood at last crept in among them, not only to spy out their minds and ways, but to head the party, and sow among them the seeds of further discontent and error, and to make them a nursery for various sects. For every where, by their good wills, the Jesuits will have some."

In this and other passages of his book, Baxter acknowledges the existence of the leaven of Popery among the Puritans; the proofs of which fact, and the narrative of the proceedings of the Pope's agents among some, both of the Conformists and Nonconformists, would fill a volume, and, if well and impartially written, it might be useful to that class of men among us who account the Roman Catholics quite an artless and inoffensive race, that are peaceably pursuing "the noiseless tenour of their way" to heaven. The subjoined entry in EVELYN's Diary contains a brief account of the labours of a Jesuit among the early Puritans: "24th June, 1690, I dined at the Bishop of St. Asaph's, [Dr. Lloyd,] Almoner to the new Queen, [Mary,] with the famous lawyer Sir George Mackenzie, late Lord Advocate of Scotland, against whom both the Bishop and myself had written and published books, both now most friendly reconciled. He related to us many particulars of Scotland, the present sad condition of it, the inveterate hatred which the Presbyterians shew to the family of the Stuarts, and the exceeding tyranny of those bigots who acknowledge no superior on earth in civil or divine matters, maintaining that the people only have the right of government; their implacable hatred to the Episcopal order and the Church of England. He observed, that the first Presbyter dissents from our discipline were introduced by the Jesuits' order, about the twentieth of Queen Elizabeth; a famous Jesuit amongst them feigning himself a Protestant, and was the first who began to pray extempory, and brought in that which they since called, and are still so fond of, praying by the Spirit. This Jesuit remained many years before he was discovered; [he] afterwards died in Scotland, where he was buried at * * *having yet on his monument, Rosa inter spinas, [a rose among thorns]!"

The following anecdote from Arthur WILSON's auto-biography, while it illustrates this interference of the Jesuits in our national affairs, gives some

ation would have redounded to this church, to the King and people? His Majesty's security provided for, by the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance, so far as it concerned his temporal power: The bishops of England to be independent of the Popes of Rome: The clergy to be permitted the use of marriage: The people to receive the communion in both kinds, and all divine Offices officiated in the English tongue: No innovation made in doctrine, but only in the qualifying of some ́expressions, and discharging such out-landish glosses as were put upon them. And, seeing this, what man could be so void of charity, so uncompassionate of the miseries and distractions of Christendom,- -as not to wish from the very bottom of his soul, that the reconciliation had proceeded upon so good terms, -as not to magnify the men, to succeeding ages, who were the instruments and authors of so great a blessing?*

account of Sancta Clara, and contains a compliment to Archbishop Laud, which will possess a higher interest when it it considered what Puritanic prejudices the historian has expressed, and that the conversation occurred while the Archbihop was in authority. Wilson had accompanied the Earl of Warwick to the seige of Breda in 1637, and on his return was detained some time at Bruges," where," says he," some English and Scots Jesuits found me out at my lodging, with whom I had often converse. Among the rest, one Dr. Weston, an old man, fell into discourse with me about the state of England. He loathed the memory of Queen Elizabeth. These times pleased him better, but the little Archbishop of Canterbury [Laud] he could not endure. I pulled a book out of my pocket, written by the Provincial of the English Friars, Johannes de Sancta Clara, which tended to reconcile the Church of England and the Church of Rome, if we would come up a step to them, and they come down a step to us. He told me, that it was impossible that the Church of Rome should ever descend in the least degree; and the author of the book, if he were at Rome, would be mewed up between two stone walls, and his book burnt under his nose. 'I know the man,' said he, he is one of Canterbury's trencher-flies, and eats perpetually at his 'table; a creature of his making.' Then,' said I, you should better " approve of my Lord of Canterbury's actions, being he tends so much your way.' -"No," replied he, he is too subtle to be yoked; too ambitious to have a superior. He will never submit to Rome. He means to frame a " motley religion of his own, and be Lord of it himself.' He took me for some disguised English parson, as he after told me; for,' said he, they 6 use to come over in scarlet, like gentlemen, as ours do into England.' But when he was acquainted with my relation, he feasted me at his lodgings, aud used me with much civility. Aud being familiar with him, I asked him many questions, which are Arcana among them, and he was ingenuous to me in discovering the truth. Among the rest, I desired him to tell me, whether there were any kind of relish of truth, (which some Jesuits do write,} that the Puritans in England did machinate the Gunpowder Treason. He told me plaiuly, that was but to take off the first edge of the scandal; for he knew of it both in the contriving and acting."

*The following truly liberal observations were written by Dr. Gauden, after suffering, from the dominant Calvinists, nearly twenty years, the reproach of being "Popishly affected," though on this account he had far less to endure than many of his brethren in the ministry: For he was preserved from molestation during the inter-regnum by the powerful patronage of some of the nobility, who had joined the Parliamentary interest, and who were among his kindred and intimate connections. It was his relationship to them, as he intimates in page 657, which created in the mind of Archbishop Laud a degree of prejudice against him, The second paragraph in

"But then admitting, as we may, that no such reconciliation was upon the anvil, and that our two discoursers have proceeded only upon suppositions, yet Canterbury had good ground for what he

this extract will remind the pious reader of the reasons adduced by St. Paul, (Romans ix, 4,) why the Israelites, his kinsmen according to the flesh," were entitled to much veneration: "Whose are the fathers; to whom pertain the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants," &c. :

"Being now past juvenile heats and popular fervours in religion, I cou fess I cannot but vehemently approve the pious and learned endeavours of those excellent men, who, after Melanchthon, Cassander, Saravia, Wicelius, Thuanus, Grotius, Casaubon, and others,-have not only seriously deplored the sad rents and wounds of Christian churches, but sought to pour in wine and oil of wholesome and unpassionate counsels; not palliating apparent errors, yet not aggravating needless jealousies, nor inflaming mutual angers, in order to gratify either the sacrilegious policies of princes, or the pride of Popes, or the factiousness of people.

"I have no antipathies in me, contracted by any education, custom or acquaintance, against the learned, wise, and worthy Romanists (or any others) either as MEN and CHRISTIANS: In both respects 1 love and esteem them, for their many excellent parts and works, which are worthy of commendation and imitation. To them and their pious predecessors, with whom we in England once were in full communion, we thankfully owe, under God, (as did our forefathers) the successive honour and happiness of our being baptized, and admitted to the privileges of Christ's flock and people. To them we owe that conservation, for the main, of true religion, as Christian, although (as Christ in the manger) it were wrapped up in some either rotten rags or unhandsome clouts for many years; the substance of which our Reformation in England no more changed, than the angel did the person of Jehoshua the high priest, when he bid take away from him the filthy garments wherewith he was clothed, and to put on him change of fair aud goodly garments. (Zach. iii, 3, 4.) We owe to the Romanists, though ill husbands of religion in later ages, that Word and those Sacraments which they conserved and transmitted, like candles put into a dark lantern; by which, when we came to open the light side, we saw both our and their deviations from the good old way, which is God's right way: To which we rather chuse to return under the name of pious novelty and just reformation, than obstinately to continue with them in their pristine aberrations and inveterate deformities. Though they were our fathers in nature and religion, yet we think it not only lawful for us, but our duty, without any brand of disobedient children, to cure that leprosy or hereditary disease which we had contracted from them our less healthful parents, especially when themselves have preserved for us and afforded to us that receipt of God's wORD, which teacheth and alloweth us the proper medicine and cure. The successful use of which is not more comfortable to us than commendable in us, notwithstanding our progenitors' obstinacy to continue in the same deformed maladies, after they have seen the happy experiments of its virtues and remedy upon us, who never gloried in or designed any NEW Christian Religion, but only the just reformation and recovery of the OLD from those crazy distempers and dangerous diseases which, by ill times and ill orders, it had contracted.

"I well know how little all religion signifies without CHARITY; that, next to gross ignorance, immorality, unbelief, and impenitence, UNCHARITABLENESS is the pest and poison of the soul, which infects, beyond the antidote of gifts, good works, and miracles. I consider that many imperfections and failings are venial with true charity, which covers a multitude of sins of infirmity, (1 Pet. iv, 8); but no perfections are acceptable to God, or available to the enjoyer of them, if destitute of charity; that the measure of a Christian is more by his heart than his head, by his humble and honest affections than his high and puffing speculations; that in the bosom of the church, as many perish by the rock of uncharitableness as the flats of ignorance. (1 Cor. viii, 7.) Therefore, however I see the Papists are mostwhat

did, were it no other then the settling of the Church of England upon the first principles and positions of her reformation. But he had further aims than so: He had some thoughts, (and I have reason to believe it,) by conferences first, and if that failed, by the ordinary course of ecclesiastical censures,* of gaining the Papists to the church; and therefore it concerned him, in point of prudence, to smooth the way, by removing all such blocks and obstacles which had been laid before them by the Puritan faction. He knew, that from their infancy they had been trained up in a regular order of devotion,† and that they

so supercilious and high in the instep, that they not only deny us Protestants of all sorts, (even the most noble, sober and moderate, which were in the Church of England,) their charity, but they despise all our charity to them; yet I cannot think it my duty to requite evil with evil, or uncharitableness in them with the like unchristian passion in myself, but rather to requite evil with good, to commend what is good in them, to own with thanks any good from them, to pray for them, to be ready to do all offices of christian love to them, to keep all inward christian communion with them, and to be cheerfully disposed to exercise all actual communion with them, in all such holy doctrines and duties of christian faith and worship as agree to the word of God and the mind of Christ, which are the CENTRE and CIRCUMFERENCE of all ecclesiastical union."

*The Archbishop's remark concerning his own conduct at the Councilboard, (page 651,) would undoubtedly have been fulfilled in this case: "Well might I move, in some cases, CHARITY or CONSCIENCE to them; but I left them to the LAW, if thither they would go." Subsequently to the exercise of his CHARITY, the Papists would have found, to their great personal inconvenience, the Archbishop's LAW to be of a very heavy description.

"These jealousies of some Bishops, being Popishly inclined, never had, so far as ever I could discern, any farther ground than this: Some Bishops pleased themselves, beyond what was generally practised in England, with a more ceremonious conformity than others observed; FIRST, to the canons and injunctions, which (they thought) were yet in force in the Church of England, being not repealed, but only antiquated through a general disuse. NEXT, being aged and learned men, and more conversant in the antiquities of the Church than younger ministers, they found that such ceremonious solemnities in religion were then very much used, without any sin or scandal; no godly Bishop, Presbyter, or other good Christian, ever making scruple of using the sign of the cross in baptism, and at other times of bowing, kneeling, prostrating himself, or of putting his mouth to the ground and kissing the pavement when he came to worship God, or to celebrate holy mysteries, expressing thereby that humility, faith, fervency, sense of his own sinful unworthiness, and that unfeigned reverence which he bare in his heart toward God and his service. This, I suppose, made some of our Bishops hope, that they might with the like inoffensiveness add such solemnity to sanctity, and such outward veneration to inward devotion, and yet be as far from Popery or superstition as the ancient Christians were; yea, as those Ministers and others now pretend to be, who make so much of lifting up their eyes and hands in prayer, or who are pleased to be uncovered in praying, preaching, singing, or celebrating the sacraments.

"Besides this, many Bishops found a secret genius of rusticity and rudeness, of familiarity and irreverence, strangely prevailing among country preachers and people so far, that they saw many of them placed much of their religion in affecting a slovenly rudeness and irreverence in all publick and holy duties; loth to kneel, not only at the sacrament, but at any prayers, or to be uncovered at any duty; enemies to any man, and prejudiced against all he did, if he shewed any ceremonious respect in his serving God. They saw some were grown so spiritual, that they forgot they had bodies; and pretending to approve themselves to God, only as to the inward man,