founded upon a rock. The light is under a bushel, but it is not extinguished.'(1)

all, the most glowing defence of her System, and the most earnest protestations that it was not the Church, but her sons,

who were to blaine. It was

land fell when the yoke of Popery was shaken off-fell, by the weakness which that yoke had caused-and which has Side by side with the most melancholy been perpetuated on it, more or less, dipictures of the conduct of individuals, rectly or indirectly, by the same agency, there are to be found, throughout them ever since. They had seen a time, in which one of the greatest favourers of the Reformation could say of it, no kind of blasphemy, heresy, disorder, and confusion, but is found among us.' (1) They did not witness, as we witness, a new when the Church was pestered with a generaspring-tide of piety dawning among them, tion of godless men, and with all other irregu churches rising on all sides, the clergy larities; when her lands were in danger of alienmultiplying their duties, the laity return- ation, her power at least neglected, and her ing to their allegiance, dissent becoming peace torn in pieces by several schisms, and such weaker; the irregular movements of reli-heresies as do usually attend that sin; when the gious feeling reorganising themselves spontaneously under the Heads of the Church; every day more demands upon men's alms for purposes of religion and charity, and those demands every day more willingly complied with. The movement with them seemed all to retrograde -communions to become less frequent confirmations disregarded (2)-discipline more abused and despised (3)--the prayers of the Church more neglected-the divisions of schism more multiplied-devotion more cold, and faith more faint ;--everything but the life within the Church ---within a small and despised portion of it-dead or dying---and yet they never despaired.(4)

6

'He is pleased,' exclaims Bramhall, to style it a dead church, and me the advocate of a dead church: even as the trees are dead in winter when they want their leaves; or as the sun is set when it is behind a cloud; or as the gold is destroyed when it is melting in the furnace. When I see a seed cast into the ground, I do not ask where is the greenness of the leaves? where is the beauty of the flowers? where is the sweetness of the fruit? But I expect all these in their due season: stay awhile and behold the catastrophe. The rain is fallen, the wind hath blown, and the floods have beaten upon their church; but it is not fallen, for it is

(1) Dugdale's Troubles, p. 574.

(2) Jackson, vol. iii. p. 272; Bishop Hall, vol. x. p. 464; Brett's Church Government, p. 237.

(3) Bishop Hall, vol. x. p. 436; Andrews, Opuscula, p. 41; Mountagu, Answer to the Gagger, p. 81. (4) For most striking passages illustrative of the state of the times in which these authors wrote, see Hickes, Controversial Letters, vol. ii. pref. 68; Nicholson's Apology, p. 151; Wordsworth's Christian Institutes, vol. iv. p. 580; Bishop Hall, vol. vi. p. 231; Hooker's Eccl. Polity, book v. s. 31; Sanderson's Sermons, vol. i. p. 129, folio. And, if it were wanted, it might be easy, from the history of the Primitive Church, as Jewel has done in his Apology, to draw a lamentable parallel.

common people seemed ambitious of doing those very things which were attended with most dangers, that thereby they might be punished, and then applauded and pitied; when they called the spirit of opposition a tender conscience, and complained of persecution because they wanted power to persecute others; when the giddy multitude raged, and became restless to find out misery for themselves and others; and the rabble would herd themselves together, and endeavour to govern and act in spite of authority;-in this extremity, fear, and danger of the Church and State,' (2)

it was that Hooker came forward to defend that present form of Church government which the laws of this land have established,' and which he declared to be 'such as no law of God nor reason of man hath hitherto been alleged of force suffi cient to prove they do ill, who to the uttermost of their power withstand the alteration thereof.' (3)

'This I dare boldly affirm,' says Archbishop Whitgift, that all points of religion necessary to salvation, and touching either the mystery of our redemption in Christ, or the right use of the sacraments, and true manner of worshipping God, are as purely and as perfectly taught, and by public authority established, in this Church of England at this day, as ever they were in any church since the apostles' times.' (4)

'I have lived,' says Laud, and shall (God willing) die in the faith of Christ, as it was professed in the ancient primitive Church, as it was professed in the present Church of England.'

'So (it seems) I was confident for the faith professed in the Church of England, else I would not have taken the salvation of another upon my soul. And sure I had reason of this my confidence. For to believe the Scripture and the creeds, to believe those in the sense of the ancient primitive Church, to receive the four great

general councils, so much magnified by antiquity, to believe all points of doctrine generally received as fundamental in the Church of Christ, is a faith in which to live and die cannot but give salvation.' (1)

My conscience assures me,' says Hammond, that the grounds on which the established Church of England is founded are of so rare and excellent mixture, that, as none but intelligent truly Christian minds can sufficiently value the composition, so there is no other in Europe so likely to preserve peace and unity, if what prudent laws had so long ago designed they were now able to uphold. For want of which, and which only, it is that at present the whole fabric lies polluted in confusion and in blood.' (2)

'I verily believe,' says Hickes, 'that the Church of England, as it now stands without any further reformation, is apostolical in doctrine, worship, and government; and would have been esteemed by the faithful, in all ages from the time of the apostles, a pure and sound member of the Catholic Church. I heartily thank Almighty God, by whose good providence I have been bred up in her communion, and called to the great honour of being one of her priests; and I beseech Him of His infinite goodness, to give all her clergy and people grace to live up strictly to her principles of piety, loyalty, justice, charity, purity, temperance, and sobriety. I am sure it must be ours, and not her fault, if we be not the best Christians, the best subjects, and the best friends and best neighbours in the world.' (3)

For this Ken did not hesitate to pray :

Glory be to thee, O Lord, my God, who hast made me a member of the particular Church of England, whose faith, and government, and worship are holy, and Catholic, and Apostolic, and free from the extremes of irreverence or superstition; and which I firmly believe to be a sound part of the Church Universal.' (4)

Of this Leslie declared.

God that he was born, baptized, and bred up in her communion,' as the best and purest Church at this day in the Christian world.' (1)

Do I anywhere,' says Bishop Mountagu, 'profess correspondency with them' [the Lutherans] or others beside the Church of England, the absolutest representation of antiquity this day extant? What that Church believeth, I believe; what it teacheth, I teach; what it rejecteth, I reject; what it doth not tender, I am not tied unto. I was bred a member of the Church of England, brought up a member of the Church of England-therein, by the means and ministry of that Church, I received that earnest of my salvation, when by baptism I was inserted into Christ. In the union and communion of that Church I have lived, not divided with papist, nor separated with puritan. Through the assistance of the grace of God's Spirit, which is never wanting unto any that seek him, I hope to live and die in the faith and confession of that Church; than which I know none, nor can any be named, in all points more conformable unto purest antiquity in the best times. . . . If there be in any writing, preaching, saying, or thought of mine, anything delivered or published against the discipline or doctrine of this Church, I am sorry for it, I revoke it, recant it, disclaim it— vultu læditur pietas-if I have done so in anything unto my Mother, in all humility I crave pardon, and will undergo penance.' (2)

And here I do profess,' says Bishop Sanderson, in his last will, that as I have lived, so I desire and (by the grace of God) resolve to die, in the communion of the Catholic Church of Christ, and a true son of the Church of England; which, as it stands by law established, to be both in doctrine and worship agreeable to the word of God, and in the most, and most material points of both conformable to the faith and practice of the godly Churches of Christ in the primitive and purer times, I do firmly believe: led so to do, not so much from the force of custom and education (to which the greatest part of mankind owe their particular different persuasions in point of religion), as upon the clear evidence of truth and reason, after a se

Though the events of life have given me oc-rious and unpartial examination of the grounds, casions to take a nearer view of the doctrines and worship of other Christian Churches, yet from thence I have been confirmed in my belief that the Church of England-abuses notwithstanding-is the most agreeable to the institutions of Christ and his apostles.' (5)

In this Bull resolved to die,

As the best constituted Church this day in the world; for that its doctrine, government, and way of worship were in the main the same with those of the primitive Church.' And he blessed

(1) Conf. with Fisher, pp. 210, 211.

(2) Preface to Treatise on the Infallibility, vol. ii. p. 560.

(3) Apologetical Vindication, p. 145.

(4) Exposit. of Church Catech., Prose Works, p. 251.

(5) Introd. Epist. Works, vol. i.

as well of popery as puritanism, according to that measure of understanding and those opportunities which God hath afforded me. Wherefore I humbly beseech Almighty God, the Father of Mercies, to preserve the Church, by his power and providence, in peace, truth, and godliness, evermore to the world's end: which doubtless he will do, if the wickedness and security of a sinful people (and particularly those sins that are so rife and seem daily to increase among us, of unthankfulness, riot, and sacrilege) do not tempt his patience to the contrary. (2)

The third sort of good seed,' says Bramhall, 'which King Charles did bear forth with him was a good religion. A religion, not reformed

(1) Life of Bull, p. 398. Works, vol. ii. p. 239. Burton Edit.

(2) Appeal to Cæsar, pp. 47, 48.

(3) Walton's Life of Sanderson, by Zonch, vol. ii. p. 290.

against which the greatest adversaries thereof

men.

to retain old articles of faith, as it is averse

from new articles. Religion which is not likely to perish for want of fit organs, like those imperfect creatures produced by the sun upon the banks of Nilus, but shaped for continuance.

. . . The terror of Rome.

tumultuously, according to the brain-sick fancies life for yours, you cannot but be happy for everof a half-witted multitude, dancing after the more.' (1) pipe of some seducing charmer, but soberly, according to the rule of God's word, as it hath And if we at this day, with hopes rebeen evermore, and everywhere interpreted by vealed to us by God's providential workthe Catholic Church, and according to the pur- ing far brighter than ever dawned upon est pattern of the primitive times. A religion, the eyes of these great men-with far have no exception, but that it preferreth grace longer experience of that wonderful before nature, the written word before uncer- strength which has supported the Church tain traditions, and the all-sufficient blood of of England through so Jesus Christ before the stained works of mortal struggles, and is now rising up within many fearful A religion, which is neither garish with her more vigorous than ever-if we, like superfluous ceremonies, nor yet sluttish, and Bishop Hall, as her 'true sons,' unto her void of all order, decency and majesty in the service of God. A religion, which is as careful sacred name would in all piety devote ourselves,' as to our reverend, dear, and holy Mother' (2)—if with Heylin we comfort our soul with our 'adhesion to a Church so rightly constituted, so warrantably reformed, so punctually modelThey fear our mod-led by the pattern of the purest and most eration more than the violent opposition of happy times of Christianity; a Church others. . . . The watch-tower of the Evangelical churches. . . . . I have seen many churches which, for her power and polity, her saof all sorts of communions, but never any that cred offices and administrations, hath the could diminish that venerable estimation which grounds of Scripture, the testimony of I had for my mother the Church of England: antiquity, and consent of fathers' (3)— from her breasts I received my first nourish- if, with Bishop Andrewes, we point to that, ment, in her arms I desire to end my days. our religion in England, ancient, holy, Blessed be he that blesseth her.' (1) Men, brethren, and fathers, says Bishop purified, and truly one which Zion would Beveridge, give me leave to speak freely to acknowledge' ('prisca, casta, defæcata, you of the Church you live in; a Church, not et vero quam Sion agnoscat') (4) if, with only in its doctrine and discipline, but in all Bishop Cosin, we believe it to be 'no things else, exactly conformable to the primi-other than what we have received from tive, the apostolical, the Catholic Church. For Christ and his universal Church' (5)— if, was that no sooner planted by Christ but it was in the spirit of the martyr Charles, (words watered by the blood of martyrs? So was ours. Did the primitive Christians suffer martyrdom from Rome ?—So did our first reformers. Hath the Catholic Church been all along pestered with heretics and schismatics?-So hath ours. Have they endeavoured in all ages to undermine, and so to overthrow her?--In this also ours is but too much like unto her. And it is no wonder

for the same reason that occasioned all the disturbances and oppositions that the Catholic Church ever met with, still holds good as to ours too; even because its doctrine is so pure, its discipline so severe, its worship so solemn, and all its rules and constitutions so holy, perfect, and divine, that mankind, being generally debauched in their principles and practices, have a natural averseness from it, if not an antipathy against it.'

He concludes

Be but you as pious towards God, as loyal to our queen, as sober in yourselves, as faithful to your friends, as loving to your enemies, as charitable to the poor, as just to all, as our Church enjoins you; in a word, be but you as conformable to her as she is to the Catholic Church in all things, and my life, my eternal

(1) Bramhall, Sermon on the Coronation, 1661. Works, p. 957.

which Sancroft thought deserve to be written in letters of gold, and to be engraved in brass or marble,') (6) we charge our children 'not to suffer their hearts to receive the least check or disaffection from the true religion established in her, as being the best in the world;' 'I tell you I have tried it ;' (7)—if, with Bishop White, we feel that, in building our faith upon the Church of England, we are building on a rock' (8)--if, with Hooker, we regard her as the sustainer of the Churches' (9)

6

with Nelson, as 'the glory of the Reformation' (10)-with Bishop Nicholson, as 'every way consonant to the doctrine and discipline of the primitive times,' and in her constitutions nearest the apos

(1) Sermon on Form of Sound Words.'
(2) Dedic. of Common Apology, vol x.
(3) The Reformation of the Church of England
Justified, General Preface, s. 1.

(4) Concio in discessu Palatini. 1613.
(5) Scholast. Hist., Pref.

(6) Life of Sancroft, vol. i. p. 168.
(7) Icon Basil., s. xxvii.

(8) Reply to Fisher, p. 588.
(9) Book iv. s. 14.

(10) Life of Bull, p. 24, s. vi.

6

tolic church of any church in the Chris- that they whose words were even as oratian world;' (1)—with Bishop Bilson, as cles amongst men seemed evermore loth wholly and truly Catholic, such as the to give sentence against anything publicly Scriptures do precisely command, and received in the Church of God, except it the ancient fathers expressly witness was were wonderfully apparently evil; for the faith and use of Christ's Church for that they did not so much incline to that many hundreds' (2)-if, with Archbishop severity which delighteth to reprove the Bancroft, we call her the most apostolic least things it seeth amiss, as to that and flourishing Church, simply that is in charity which is unwilling to behold any. all Christendom;' and, like him, 'pray thing that duty bindeth it to reprove?" unto Almighty God, with all our very Alas! to continue with Hooker, 'the state souls, for the long and happy continuance of this present age, wherein zeal hath of the blessed example, which it and this drowned charity, and skill meekness, will realm of England hath showed, in this not now suffer any man to marvel, whatlast age of the world, unto all the king- soever he shall hear reproved, by whomdoms and countries on the earth that pro- soever.' (1) fess the gospel with any sincerity' (3)- Another remarkable fact in the history if, with Brett, we allow that her govern- of our old divines is the steadiness of ment is 'modelled, as near as may be, to their adherence to the Church throughout that which was founded by Christ and his all her trials and afflictions. As they apostles, and that there are no alterations never confounded the excellence of her made from the primitive constitution but principles as a system with the sins of what the different state of the Church her children, who refused to act on them, made in some manner necessary' (4) so neither did they regard the punisheven if, with Archbishop Sancroft in his ment of those sins as any indication of touching expostulation to the Duke of the displeasure of God upon herself. York, we liken her to that lily among They saw her indeed in a state in which thorns,' the purest certainly on earth;'(5) they might well have doubted if God's or,--in language not uncommon in lips favour were with her; just as the prophwhich never used irreverence,-to her ets in Babylon might have distrusted his blessed Lord himself, exposed to perse- favour on Jerusalem, and have abandoned cution on all sides, and 'crucified between thieves'-are such words of grati tude to God, and of loyalty to the mother that bore us, to be construed into arrogance and boasting? Are they not compatible with the greatest charity to the defects of others; with the deepest penitence for our own sins, which have been committed against the warnings and example of such a parent? Are they not lessons of humility and shame, rather than vauntings of presumption?

the love of Jerusalem itself, because the Jews had deserved to be exiled from it. Instead of this, they humbled themselves in sackcloth; they laid the burden on themselves, but did not deny that still their church was Zion.

O never let any Christian,' says Bishop Nicholson, of what rank soever, add that talent voked our good God to pour out the vials of his of lead to that sin which hath so highly prowrath against this our Church, and these three Nations, (that I mention not the others of And so, with these great men, if we do Christendom,) as not to lay it to heart.. suspect defects even in this admirable God sinking the gates, his destroying the walls, system, will it not be wise to follow the his slighting the strongholds of Zion, his pollaw laid down by the greatest legislator luting the kingdom, his swallowing the palaces, of antiquity, and 'shutting up all such his cutting off the horn of Israel; God hating our feasts, his abominating our sabbaths, his questions from the young, deliberate of loathing our solemnities; God's forgetting his them only in secret with the old (6) footstool, his abhorring his sanctuary, his sufferShall we be ashamed of cherishing that ing men to break down all the carved work 'ancient simplicity and softness of spirit, thereof with axes and hammers, are all eviwhich sometime prevailed in the world, dences to me, that in the indignation of his anger he hath despised the king and the priest.' (2)

(1) Exposit. of Church Catech., Epist. Dedic. Apology for the Discipline, p. 42.

(2) True Differ. Epist. Dedic.

(3) Preface to Dangerous Positions, b. i. p. 2.] Survey, p. 460.

[4] On Church Government, p. 441.

[5] D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, vol, i, p. 166. (6) Plato de Legib., lib. i.

So Hammond with the same voice, after enlarging on the two great excellences of the Reformation-its adherence

(1) Eccl. Pol., book iv. s. 1.

(2) Apology, p. 151.

to antiquity and its union of faith and works:

valuable works against it were written under every temptation to attempt a reconciliation, and join with it against a common foe. So the recollection of their Church was their solace and hope in all their distress:—

'Tis but just that they which have walked unworthy of such guides and rules as these, lived so contrary to our profession, should at length be deprived of both, not only to have our two staves broken, Beauty and Bands, the symbols of order and unity, both which have 'I shall only crave leave,' says Bishop Taynow for some years taken their leaves of us; lor, that I may remember Jerusalem, and call but even to have the whole fabric demolished, to mind the pleasures of the temple, the order the house to follow the pillars' fate, and so to of her services, the beauty of her buildings, the be left and abide without a sacrifice, and with sweetness of her songs, the decency of her minout an image, and without an Ephod, and with-istrations, the assiduity and economy of her out Teraphim, deprived of all our ornamentspriests and Levites, the daily sacrifice, and that left naked and bare, when we had misused our eternal fire of devotion that went not out by day beauty unto wantonness. Thus when the Devil nor by night; these were the pleasures of our was turned out of his habitation, and nothing peace, and there is a remanent felicity in the followed but the sweeping and garnishing the very memory of those spiritual delights which house, and keeping it empty of any better guest; we then enjoyed, as antepasts of heaven, and the issue is, the devil soon returns again, from consignations to an immortality of joys. (1) whence he came out, and brings seven spirits worse than himself, and the end of that state is worse than the beginning. And so still the taking of the ark, and the breaking the high priest's neck, and the slaying his sons, and many more, in that discomfiture, are all far from new or strange, being but the natural effects of the profanations, which not the ark itself (that was built, every pin of it, according to God's direction) but the sacrificers, not the religion but the worshippers, were so scandalously guilty of.' (1)

Instead of being shaken from their allegiance by the captivity and sufferings of the Church, they clung to her the inore affectionately and dutifully. They anticipated with sanguine hope the day of their restoration, when, according to Bramhall's dream, the cathedral which he had seen fall suddenly on his head should rise up as suddenly without noise. (2) They ceased not, as Bishop Taylor prayed, ' to love and to desire the Liturgy, which was not publicly permitted to their practice and profession,'(3) nor felt inclined to borrow more exciting and enthusiastic forms from a breviary or missal, as if the sobriety of our own service-book were insufficient to raise the heart, and had been proved so by the defections from the Church. Bull, Sanderson, and Hammond learned from it by rote, when not allowed to use the Book. (4) They exerted themselves as strenuously as ever against Popery, when exiled from their country by Puritanism; and several of their most

They even triumphed in their afflictions for the sake of truth :

'Yet neither with us,' says Hammoud, 'nor with our dearest mother the Church still (by God's providence) of England, sorrowful as she is, yet still beauteous, and from her very humiliation more deeply to be reverenced, (and by us more preciously esteemed, since, hung upon the cross, she hath been conformed to the image of our Lord,) is there room for complaints or discontentments. Yea, rather do we think that we may rejoice and be glad, that now for ten full years our constancy and dutiful obedience, sealed with the loss of all our fortunes, with blood itself, being made a spectacle to God, and long imprisonment, with banishment, with angels, and men, with none to support and aid but Him who appointed for us the trial, we have boldly, and like to wrestlers in the games, made good and proved. He, our most merciful Father, whom even now with constant prayers We sorrowfully resort to, will grant, as we do after so many vicissitudes of storm, a calm and hope, to the other parts of the universal church, blessed peace. He will grant unto Christendom halcyon and tranquil days. With us our sufferings, our wounds, and scars-as "spiritual pearls," says Ignatius-yea, rather as "diadems of God's truly elect," says Polycarp-not to be repurchased from us by any bribe of a flattering as being that wherewith we are conformed to world, by any price of deep and unbroken restthe death of Christ, are to be counted by us among the donatives of our king, among his favours, and our privileges. Let posterity judge of us from this, that we complain of no one; give them. "Lord, lay not this sin to their that we give thanks for all men-Father, forcharge." (2)

And their voice was then as earnest and as faithful as ever in recalling wanderers to their duty:

(1) Works, vol. vii. p. 284.

(2) Diss. iv. contra Blondell. Epist. s. 8. Works, vol. iii. p. 716.