carried out to Norwich, "quasi in Sandapilâ." It is in the cemeteries of Norwich and Higham, and no longer in the bright and courtly meridian of London, that we are now to look for our episcopal martyr. Having alternately pursued his duties of homilizing, catechising, and ordaining, till the March following, 1642-3, he continues his narrative in his "Hard Measure as follows:

"The first noise that I heard of my trouble was, that, one morning, before my servants were up, there came to my gates one Wright, a London trooper, attended with others, requiring entrance; threatening, if they were not admitted, to break open the gates; whom I found, at my first sight, struggling with one of my servants for a pistol which he had in his hand. I demanded his business at that unseasonable time. He told me, he came

to search for arms and ammunition, of which I must be disarmed. I told him I had only two muskets in the house, and no other military provision. He, not resting upon my word, searched round about the house, looked into the chests and trunks, examined the vessels in the cellar. Finding no other warlike furniture, he asked me what horses I had, for his commission was to take them also. I told him how poorly I was stored, and that my age would not allow me to travel on foot. In conclusion, he took one horse, for the present; and such accompt of another, that he did highly expostulate with me afterwards, that I had otherwise disposed of him." Hall, pp. 400, 401.

It was immediately, as it appears, after this, that the Parliament,the intemperance and harshness of whose proceedings will scarcely admit of an excuse,-passed their ordinance, as a hint for all future reformers, for sequestrating the whole private as well as church property of the malignant bishops; and Bishop Hall recovered from the search for arms only to undergo the more vigorous and hearty search of commissioners for money.

It appears that Mrs. Goodwin, "a religious good gentlewoman," whom we name honoris causâ, relieved the library of our Hall and his household stuff from the outrage of a sale, and distribution to the winds. An attempt was made

at securing the well-known fifth of the almost nothing previously left to these malignants; and this in behalf of his wife:

"But still the rents and revenues, both of my spiritual and temporal lands, were taken up by the sequestrators, both in Norfolk, and Suffolk, and Essex, and we kept off from either allowance or accompt." Hall, p. 403.

It seems these reformers were late resters as well as early risers. bishop, dear to him as the apple of One right still remained to the his eye: we mean his right of ordination. He had suffered before as a man; he now feels as a bishop, when, "the mayor, and aldermen, and sheriffs having been stirred up," divers volunteers in the service "came to my gates at a very unseason

able time; and, knocking very vehemently. required to speak with the Bishop. Messages were sent to them to know their business: nothing would satisfy them but the Bishop's presence. At last, I came down to them, and demanded what the matter was they would have the gate opened, and then they would tell me. answered that I would know them better first if they had any thing to say to me, I was ready to hear them. They told me they had a writing to me, from Mr Mayor, and some other of their magis

trates.

I

The paper contained both a challenge of me for breaking the covenant, in ordaining ministers; and, withal, required me to give in the names of those which were ordained by me both then and formerly since the covenant. My answer was, that Mr. Mayor was much abused by drawn that paper from him; that I would those who had misinformed him, and the next day give a full answer to the writing. They moved that my answer might be by my personal appearance at ever heard of a bishop of Norwich appearthe Guildhall. I asked them when they ing before a mayor. I knew mine own place; and would take that way of answer which I thought fit; and so disthat had they known before of mine ormissed them, who had given out that day, daining, they would have pulled me and those whom I had ordained out of the chapel by the ears." Hall, pp. 404, 405.

The civility here intended by the Presbyterians to the subjects of Episcopal ordination, was afterwards, on June 10, 1644, practised, at the grand ceremonial of the reformers, on the walls and glasses of the cathedral of Norwich, under

the authority and presence of Linsey, Toftes the sheriff, and Greenwood.

"What work was here! what clattering of glasses! what beating down of walls! what tearing up of monuments! what pulling down of seats! what wresting out of irons and brass from the windows and graves! what defacing of arms! what demolishing of curious stone-work, that had not any representation in the world, but only of the cost of the founder, and skill of the mason! what tooting and piping on the destroyed organ pipes! and what a hideous triumph on the marketday before all the country; when, in a kind of sacrilegious and profane procession, all the organ pipes, vestments, both copes and surplices, together with the leaden cross which had been newly sawn down from over the Green-yard pulpit, and the service-books and singing-books that could be had, were carried to the fire in the public market-place; a lewd wretch walking before the train, in his cope trailing in the dirt, with a service-book in his hand, imitating in an impious scorn the tune, and usurping the words of the litany used formerly in the church. Near the public cross, all these monuments of idolatry must be sacrificed to the fire; not without much ostentation of a zealous joy, in discharging ordnance, to the cost of some, who professed how much they had longed to see that day. Neither was it any news upon this Guild-day, to have the cathedral, now open on all sides, to be filled with musketeers, waiting for the Major's return; drinking and tobacconing as freely, as if it had turned alehouse." Hall, pp. 406,

407.

It must have been truly pleasant to see the respectable representative above of the reforming body in Norwich, "trailing his cope in the dirt;" and the proceeding comports with the conduct of some of those leading characters which had been conducting, under the immediate eye of the Parliament itself, similar practices, perhaps honoured with "the discharge of ordnance," at any rate not fit to be interrupted in their zeal for the great work of church-and-state reformation.

If there had been any fair or bright spot, to recover their credit in their future proceedings with respect to their treatment of this very Bishop Hall, "in cause so innocent, in fate so lamentable," we should willingly adduce it. On the contrary, those who had desecrated the cathe

dral soon turned the aged Bishop, and his wife and children, out of his palace. This was justified on the not unusual pretext of reformers, economy; that "the committee, who was now at charge for a house to sit in, might make their daily session there, being a place both more public, roomy, and chargeless." The street was a more suitable accomodation than a house for an old man of seventy, and a follower of HIM who had not where to lay his head."

"Out we must, and that in three weeks' warning by Midsummer-day then ap proaching; so as we might have lain in the street for aught I know, had not the providence of God so ordered it, that a neighbour in the close, one Mr. Gostlin, a widower, was content to void his house for us.” Hall, p. 408.

The widow Goodwin, and the widower Gostlin, will doubtless be remembered in that day when the "widowed indeed and desolate" shall be so no longer; and when they who " saw the stranger and

took him in," shall have more honour from HIM "to whom they did it," than those who could say in their pride, "We have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in our streets."

"This hath been my measure," shortly and meekly concludes the Bishop: "wherefore, I know not: Lord, thou knowest, who only canst remedy, end, and forgive, or avenge, this horrible oppression."

This final scene took place, we apprehend, in 1644, though Mr. Jones is rather defective in distinct arrangement of occurrences and dates; indeed, his whole work is rather an undigested compilation than an orderly narrative, though written, we must not neglect to add, in an admirable spirit, and with much good sense in his own scattered observations.

In 1644 we find two consecutive sermons, preached by our now septuagenarian, on the text, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption:" one in the

Chrysostom," and who is described by Fuller as an author "not unhappy at controversies, more happy at comments, very good in his characters, better in his sermons, best of all in his meditations." We have felt it our exclusive duty, in our own notice of one whom we may be content with the honour of calling "our great countryman," to do justice between him and his enemies in the fearful encounter of the times he lived in ; nothing on either side extenuating, nor, we would willingly hope, setting down aught in malice.

In public affairs we have been called to do even-handed justice. In what is private and personal, we are disposed to use the language of our great poet:—

"Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all: Close up thine eyes, and draw the

curtain close,

And let us all to meditation."

In meditating on all that has preceded, we find, what is often the case, narrow limits and less inclination for those very observations which it might have seemed our primary object to awaken and to enforce. We shall, it is true, have missed our aim, if our readers have not already anticipated our conclusions and it is with a view of giving utterance to their feelings, as much as to our own, that we throw together any further remarks. We are not aware, that, from the foregoing facts, any particular form of church discipline can be made out as essentially belonging to either of those views of doctrine which are usually designated as either Calvinistic or Arminian; and if Jacob Harmens in Holland, and Joseph Hall in England, be considered as fair representatives of opposite creeds, certainly the Calvinist was Episcopal, and the Arminian Presbyterian. Davenant, without any scruple, told the Synodists of Dort, that an Episcopate would have saved all their confusions at that period : to which the president, Bogerman, replied, "they were not so happy as to

possess it." Still Episcopacy, when connected with Arminianism, did not itself prevent the wider and more ruinous confusions of England; but itself fell a sacrifice, in attempting to employ somewhat similar means against Calvinism in England, which had been employed against Arminianism in Holland.

If we proceed to the far more important inquiry, " Where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?" what are we to reply? That it was wisdom, or a proper understanding of Christ's kingdom, to establish or propagate it with words of insult, or deeds of persecution, by acts of oppression on the one side, or of rebellion on the other, we cannot believe; but must regard those as being utterly mistaken upon first principles, who deemed it their duty thus to act. It was not so that the first Christians either promoted uniformity in the church, or contended for their rights and liberties of conscience. At the same time it must be fairly admitted, as respects the troubles which produced the temporary overthrow of the Church of England, that there was no similar opportunity of political conflict in the days of Polycarp, Justin Martyr, and St. Irenæus. These Christian bishops possessed no secular powers which they could pervert to purposes of oppression; while the people possessed no political rights which it might be their duty to protect. There was, therefore, no room for that state of things, which, whatever may have been its happy results on the security of our constitutional rights and of our religious liberties, yet called forth, in all the contending parties, a spirit of bitterness and bigotry wholly at variance with the meekness and peaceableness of Christ's religion.

We have thus placed ourselves, it might appear, in the unfriendly position of advocating neither party, and attacking both. If so, it is, we can truly say, with no hostile feelings toward either, that we speak;

but we hope the time is arrived, or is fast approaching, when genuine Christianity will not be confounded any more, even in the judgment of Christian charity, with a spirit and conduct opposed to its most obvious principles; and when we are to learn, from all that has preceded, the difficult but important art of adhering to true scriptural principles in belief and practice. It is not denied that some attempts were formerly made to separate "the precious from the vile ;" and there were some choice spirits, even in the times we speak of, on both sides, who perhaps, if they had been suffered to work, would have hammered out on each other's anvils a golden chain, that would have united all tongues and all hearts. But it must be felt, on the other hand, that men in general were not ripe for such a result; that they bordered too nearly upon preceding times of ferment and change, to take a calm and comprehensive view of things; and that the multitude, of both parties, would only view things on their own side, and take up by one handle truths, which they then wielded rather as weapons of hostility than as bonds of love. It is, therefore, vain for us, with respect to the past, now to inquire whether Arminius abroad, or Bishop Hall in England, might not have found those kindred spirits, in the opposing lines, between whom, in the name of the several parties, first an armistice might have been signed, next a truce, and finally a peace. We, however, may well take the warning which these times so forcibly give us, and avoid the rock on which they split.

But with respect to the truth of the doctrine so keenly discussed on all sides, in those portentous times; this was not then apparently matured to any thing like ripeness, after the controversies of recent years, and in minds no longer blessed with an authoritative and supernatural inspiration. It is a fact, however, to be noted, that both

Hall and Arminius, the subjects of this review, stood equally opposed to, and certainly opposed by, the Supralapsarians of the day; some of whom, however, inclined rather to the doctrine of fatalism than of predestination. Even in the decisions of Dort-that farfamed synod, into which Bishop Davenant was pleased to consider his surreptitious admission as his highest honour to his dying day

it is remarkable that there is not a single guard placed against the errors of a philosophic fatalism; while, on the other side, there is the strongest possible guard against every modification of the Pelagian heresy; as if the one heresy was not to be lashed with the same rigour as the other. St. Austin was of a very different mind. He dealt, with an equal and unsparing hand, his censures on either side; so unsparing, indeed, as to have incurred some charge of inconsistency in his writings. And it does appear to us one of the prime errors of the period of which we have been speaking, to have plunged, without consideration of consequences, into the bottomless depths of subtle, and too often useless speculation.

ex

It remains still to be tried, how far, " each claiming truth," "truth disclaims not both." Both tremes of system abundantly "betray their meanness." It were strange indeed, what the depth and mystery of the Divine decrees can mean, if they are to be solved with the facility with which dogmatists on either side erect their systems. There lies much of real depth and difficulty beyond all this, in the high and solemn doctrines in question; such as a few individuals, sublimed beyond the spirit of their age, have perhaps been able to catch a glimpse of, but such as, we apprehend, the mere dogmatist never knew.

Let us be allowed for a moment the language of analogy. Of all the sublime discoveries in the philosophy of modern times, the most surprising was that magnificent theory of