merciful, and the peacemakers; and had brought them to suppose it to be their duty to excite tumult and disaffection-to promote anarchy and bloodshed-to preach not peace but a sword. By some it was plainly declared that their righteous cause must be supported, even at the expense of royal blood; and, although they differed greatly amongst themselves, both as to political schemes and religious opinions, on one point they were unanimous, that the present state of things must be totally changed.

• ...

In the course of their proceedings these religious demagogues found that Hooker had well described the path which leads to popularity. "He that goeth about," says that wise man, "to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers. And because such as openly reprove supposed disorders of the state are taken for principal friends to the common benefit of all, and for men that carry a singular freedom of mind, under this fair and plausible colour whatsoever they utter passeth for good and current. That which wanteth in the weight of their speech is supplied by the aptness of men's minds to accept and believe it."

Thus the cause of the puritans flourished, and every success emboldened them to strive for fresh advantages, till at length they had the house of commons under their control, overwhelmed the lords, destroyed the monarchy, swept away in the flood the episcopal church of England, and of course appropriated its temporalities to themselves.

The political preaching of the times was absolutely frightful; and sentiments were uttered by ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God which are shocking to a sober and pious mind. The teachers of religion called for the blood of Strafford, of Laud, and of

the king; no political measure was sure of popularity unless it was advocated from their pulpits; destruction and misery were in their path, and the way of peace they did not know. "What soldier's heart," it was asked by one who preached before the Commons, so early as 1641, “would not start, deliberately to come into a subdued city, and take the little ones upon the spear's point; to take them by the heels and beat out their brains against the wall? yet, if this work be to revenge God's church against Babylon, he is a blessed man that takes and dashes the little ones against the stones!" In 1643, the same preacher was suffered to speak thus before the same auditory: -"It is better to see people wallowing in their blood, rather than apostatising from God, and embracing idolatry and superstition. Leave not a rag that belongs to popery,

root and branch, head and tail!"

away with it,

Another thus addressed the people in the presence of the Earl of Essex:

"Beloved, can you forget the soldiers? I say, the soldiers, who have spent their blood for Christ as Christ did for them; even their own precious blood in God's cause at Newbury."

One who preached before the Commons in 1644 represented the Supreme Majesty of Heaven as expostulating with them, and saying, "Will you strike? Will you execute judgment or will you not? Tell me for if you will not, I will. I will have the enemy's blood, and yours too." The same preacher dared to pronounce this profane invitation to the holy communion ;-" Ye that have freely and liberally contributed to the parliament, for the defence of God's cause and the gospel, draw

near.

Often they expressly pointed out the king for destruction, in such words as the following, which were utter

ed before parliament in a sermon on prayer:-" This arrow will find a joint in Ahab's armour! Draw this arrow as Jehu did against Jehoram, with your full strength, and doubt not but it will, in God's time, smite our Romish Jehoram at the heart, and sink him in his chariot and chair of pride!" Another preached before the same assembly, saying,-" Neither let your eyes spare though there are great ones that are guilty; the highest court may reach the highest persons."

A preacher declared, that "If God did not finish the good work which he had begun in the reformation of the church, he would show himself to be a God of confusion, and such an one as by cunning and stratagems had contrived the destruction of his own children." Another prayed thus: "We know, O Lord, that Abraham made a covenant, and Moses and David made a covenant, and our Saviour made a covenant, but thy parliament's covenant is the greatest of all covenants." And a sermon, licensed and printed in 1645, contains an adaptation of the 136th psalm to the purposes of seditious exultation, after the following manner:-"O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is gracious, and his mercy endureth for ever; who remembered us at Naseby, for his mercy endureth for ever; who remembered us in Pembrokeshire, for his mercy," &c. &c.

Such are some of the specimens which stand on record to show how the pulpit was prostituted to the vilest purposes in those days; they are here inserted in order to give some notion of the faction and fanaticism which were daily working upon the public mind, and Walker, from whose Account of the Sufferings of the Clergy they are taken, in remarking upon them, expresses the sentiments which they must naturally awaken in a well-regulated mind. "I am persuaded," he says, "that any

considerate person who did not know the event, would imagine that doctrines of blood and blasphemy, so abhorrent from the temper of the Gospel, must have created a great detestation of these men in all their hearers; but in fact it was quite otherwise. So much was the infatuation and delusion of those times, that the influence these ministers and lecturers had upon the people was little less strange than the doctrines themselves. It is too well known to every one, how the women by these harangues were persuaded to part with their thimbles and bodkins in this righteous cause; and that the blessed parliament was the term which they had instructed all the people to call them by. Colonel Axtel, who was afterwards executed, declared that himself, with many more, went to that execrable war with such a controlling horror upon their spirits from those sermons, that they verily believed they should have been accursed from God for ever, if they had not acted their part in that dismal tragedy, and heartily done the devil's work, being so effectually called and commanded to it in God's name.'

It was in the year 1640 that the Commons saw fit arbitrarily to settle puritanical preachers and lecturers in all important places throughout the kingdom, and ample vengeance was soon taken for the long silence and constraint which had been imposed by the authority of the high commission. At this early period of the troubles, the presbyterians were by far the most numerous and influential of all the enemies of the church.

The measures of spoliation and ejection which commenced in the same year, were chiefly carried into effect by means of committees. One of the most notorious of these was the committee appointed to try scandalous ministers-a comprehensive appellation designed to in

clude all who might be obnoxious to the party in power. Before such a body it might be supposed that charges would be brought against the clergy, dictated by private animosity and by a variety of improper feelings. Yet it is singular how few cases deserving of reproach the lynx eye of jealousy and hatred could discover, and how generally the enemies of the church were obliged to have recourse to two grand objections; the one, being that the clergy were tainted with popery, the other that they were guilty of malignity, which meant loyalty.

The cry of popery was occasioned by an attachment to certain usages which those who made so much clamour ought to have known to be perfectly distinct from the sinful corruptions of that church; and Dr. Hammond, in one of his publications, compares it to the ancient practice of dressing up the martyrs in the skins of animals, in order to induce the savage beasts to fall upon them more eagerly.

Malignity was more easily proved; the solemn league and covenant (which amongst other things engaged those who took it to promote the destruction of prelacy) was proposed to them, and, if refused, it was considered that the charge was established.

This committee also tenderly protected the lecturers appointed by parliament. If a clergyman dared to refuse his pulpit to these political divines, he was sent for by the committee, and kept in custody till the next meeting of parliament. He was thus detained to his serious inconvenience and expense; and, fearful of the injury which must be sustained, even where the issue was most favourable, the clergy usually submitted to such intrusion, for fear of the consequences of a refusal.

Besides these systematic aggressions, gross offences of a more disorderly character were common and unre