The Dissenting Conference at Manchester; The Church Mis- sionary Society; New Zealand and the Colonial Bishoprics; The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; The Society The Tendency of the Principles advocated in the Tracts for the The Spas of England, and Principal Sea-bathing Places Gilbertize the New Poor Law: a Fresh Plan, in a Letter to Sir Luther on Rome and the Reformation. A Poem. By Alfred Lord 491 A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities A Series of Original Designs for Churches and Chapels, in the Anglo-Norman, Early English, Decorative English, and Per- pendicular English Styles of Ecclesiastical Architecture Personal Recollections. By Charlotte Elizabeth Precedents in Causes of Office against Churchwardens and A Treatise on the Right Use of the Fathers in the Decision of Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai, Arabia Petrea National Ballads, Patriotic and Protestant. By M. A. Stodart. Efés Dammîm: a Series of Conversations at Jerusalem, between a Patriarch of the Greek Church and a Chief Rabbi of the The Baptismal Privileges, the Baptismal Vow, and the Means of Grace, as they are set forth in the Church Catechism A Practical Exposition of the Gospel according to St. John. By Cottage Dialogues on the Gospel of St. Mark. By D. H. W. 510 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND Quarterly Review. JULY, MDCCCXLI. ART. I.-The History of England under the House of Stuart, including the Commonwealth (A. D. 1603-1688). Part II.: Commonwealth, Charles II., James II., Under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. London: Baldwin and Co. 1840. 2. An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, chiefly of England, from the first Planting of Christianity to the end of the Reign of King Charles II.; with a Brief Account of the Affairs of Religion in Ireland. Collected from the Ancient Historians, Councils, and Records. By JEREMY COLLIER, M.A. New Edition, with a Life of the Author, the Controversial Tracts connected with the History, Notes, and an enlarged Index. By Francis Barham, Esq. In 9 vols. London Straker. 1841. FEW authors have been so truly fortunate as Dr. Vaughan, who, having seen one edition of a work comfortably placed on the booksellers' shelves without any prospect of removal, except at a price a little beyond that of waste paper, has been favoured to such an extent by a public society, that the book so unceremoniously rejected by the public has been palmed upon the world in a new form, and under new auspices. We repeat, that such good fortune has fallen to the lot of but very few authors; nay, we do not believe that Dr. Vaughan has any associate. He stands alone in his glory" in this matter; for until the present day no such society as that for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge existed, or, at any rate, no one that felt itself at liberty to expend its funds, collected as such sums are from the VOL. X.-B public, on the republication of an unsold work of a disappointed author. What was the marvellous secret possessed by Dr. Vaughan over a public body, we cannot determine; we deal only with the fact. The present volume opens with the year 1649 and we did not proceed far before we were confirmed in the opinion which we expressed concerning our author in reviewing the previous one, namely, that he is not the man to write a history for general use. Such a work should be free from any party bias; but Dr. Vaughan, as might have been expected, is the partisan of Dissent, and therefore not competent for the task which he has undertaken. In allusion to the high court of justice, by which so many honest men were sacrificed, Dr. Vaughan speaks in the following terms: "If the extraordinary occasion for which that tribunal had been instituted was such as to justify its existence, it should have ceased to exist as soon as its one great object was accomplished. The claim of the accused to be tried by their peers was, in the present state of things, unreasonable; but the demand to be tried by a jury was also resisted, their opponents having reason to suspect, that by such a form of proceeding some mitigated sentence only would be obtained, and the infant government be deprived of the protection which might be afforded by such examples." (p. 475). It will be seen that our author cannot justify the course pursued against Holland, Capel, and Hamilton. To have done so would have been impolitic, and Dr. Vaughan appears to be endowed with a considerable share of worldly prudence; but still he does not condemn their proceedings in such terms as might have been expected from a Christian minister, and a man who is actually employed by a society, whose avowed object is to furnish a correct account of all matters that transpired during the period of which these volumes treat. What, for example, does our author mean by the one great object? It was nothing less than the murder of King Charles I. Does he mean that he would have been content with the death of one victim? The Independents of that day were not satisfied until the lives of many of the followers of the unfortunate monarch had also been taken. As far as we are able to ascertain our author's opinions, from the passage just quoted, we cannot discover any other difference between him and the men of 1649, who set up the pretended high court of justice: The Presbyterians are treated by our author in no very courteous manner, except, indeed, on those occasions in which they act against episcopacy. As an Independent, Dr. Vaughan applauds his own sect; but the Presbyterians are classed among Thus he tells us what persecutors, papists, and prelatists. steps were adopted by the fragment of a Parliament to soothe the Presbyterian body, who were sufficiently numerous to be formidable to their Independent brethren : "In the hope of soothing these infallible theologians still further, it was resolved that the dean and chapter lands, excepting those of Christ Church, and of the great public schools, should be sold. Presbyterianism was allowed to remain as the established ecclesiastical polity; and the law relating to tithes was not to be disturbed until an equivalent, equally certain, should be provided in the place of them. Still the Sectaries were to be tolerated through the nation, in the universities, and, under certain restrictions, within the Establishment itself; and this grand delinquency in the bearers of the civil sword, allied as it was with preferences hostile to monarchy, was enough to keep a formidable number of the English Covenanters in a state of avowed disaffection. It followed, as a consequence, that ministers of the Independent persuasion were placed in greater prominence by the Government than they would otherwise have been; and the Presbyterians not only saw those hated Sectarics the possessors of livings in the Church, but, what was to them still more irritating, raised to the chief places of trust and honour in the universities." (p. 488). This is not very complimentary to the Presbyterians, who come in for some share of that abuse which is so lavishly bestowed upon the Anglican Church and her members. The author's predilections for independency are so apparent, that no one could fail to discover them, even if the fact were not known that he is actually an Independent minister. It is clear that he views the proceedings of the Commonwealth, with respect to religion, with extreme satisfaction; nor does he even attempt to conceal his sentiments. The Presbyterians are charged with pretending to infallibility—a charge which we are ready to admit; but it comes with no very good grace from our author, whose decisions are little less infallible in their tone. readers need not be informed, that, at this particular juncture, the Presbyterian body were anxious to restore Charles II. ;_consequently they meet with little favour from Dr. Vaughan. Love, one of their ministers, was executed for the part which he took in favour of the exiled prince. "But the blow (says Dr. Vaughan) which humbled this proud aristocracy the most, was the execution of Love, one of their most popular preachers." The Presbyterians had been guilty in bringing Archbishop Laud to the block; but still no honest man can acquit the Independents of that day of cruelty and injustice in the death of Love. Our "The moderation of the English Parliament (?) on matters of ecclesiastical conformity, was, during the period of the Commonwealth, |