Respecting the amusements in which the clergy may indulge with propriety, opinions have been as various as the dispositions and fancies of men. In the old canons, a difference is made betwixt the quieta and the clamosa. But to refrain when a thing is doubtful, is perhaps a less fallible rule. Grindall used to play at bowls on a Sunday evening, at Lambeth. Abbat, in 1621, killed a game-keeper, with an arrow from a cross-bow, in buck-hunting. The King dispensed him from trial for the homicide; and a council of bishops acquitted him. An apology also was written for his mischance? but he could not forgive himself, He observed solemnly the day. of the accident to the end of his life; and paid an annuity of twenty pounds to the widow. An old law directs a bishop, when dying, to bequeath his pack of hounds to the king's free use.

In the course of this reign died Bishop Rudde, of whom a singular anecdote deserves to be recorded. Having preached a nervous, unadorned discourse before Queen Elizabeth in the decline of her life, he was acquainted by Whitgift, that he had afforded her so much satisfaction, as to merit the reversion of the metropolitan chair. “That is strange," was the reply of Rudde, "for my dis course had not much polish to attract the fancy.”

Her Majesty," said Whitgift, in her earlier days, was fond of art and eloquence; but she now loves plain matter which touches her heart." It

, [17th Cent, soon, however, appeared that there are some plain truths, which not even a Magdalen would hear, with patience. Rudde, relying on the Queen's new light and partiality, delivered another discourse a little while after, in which he lectured her concern. ing the duties of old age, when the grinders were few, and they that look out at the windows are darkened. I need hardly subjoin, that he heard no further of his promotion; and preached no more sermons to her Majesty at Whitehall.

1615, In Collier's History, vol. ii. p. 708, a form of prayer used by Bishop King, in consecrating a church, is inserted. It is clothed in the most sublime and flowing language of adoration, and appears to me, to be a masterpiece of human composition; well worthy the attention of all those philosophical Christians, who pretend that places of worship are superstitious and unnecessary. "Sq Adam had his oratory in paradise; Jacob his praying-place in the fields; Moses his holy ground in the wilderness; and the Israelites their tabernacle in the land of promise. Shall the swallow have a house, and the sparrow her nest; and shall we not find out a residence for thee, O Lord, our Redeemer ?" Shall we, which are but dust and ashes, build unto ourselves ceiled and beautified houses for our worldly affairs; and shall we not build a temple for thy worship; an audience court for thy great and fearful name; and repay, as it

were, the tithes of our dwelling places, unto thee, -&c."

SELDEN'S History of Tithes, a violent invective against the clergy, had been the work of many hands; and was a plan of the Puritans to reduce the church to the wretched pittances of Geneva *. It is no wonder that it inet with a warm reception from the laity, who gaped after the patrimony of the church. The argument chiefly turns on the nature and extent of Jewish tithes; and of course loses its whole interest and application, where tithes are granted by the statute law of the land. -Three divines assumed the weapons of controversy; which they wielded so ably, that Selden was said to have been galled by Tillesly, gagged by Montague, and stung by Nettle. He had, however, a more formidable opponent to encounter, in the court of High Commission. But though, in consequence of its citation, he owned his error at Lambeth, 28th January 1618;-hatred towards the clergy still fankled in his breast. Tillesly, Archdeacon of Rochester, couched his answer to Selden in the three following propositions: First, that the fathers before the time of Constantine, had held tithes to be due jure divino : secondly, that after the ceasing of the Pagan persecutions, tithes were given to the clergy before *any imperial laws or canons were enacted to en,

See Collier, vol. ii. p. 712; Heylin, Hist. Presbyt.

force their payment: and thirdly, that the imperial and ecclesiastical constitutions were only declarative of a divine, not merely introductive of a human right.

XX. Among the acts connected with religion, passed in parliament during the course of the foregoing transactions, were one for inflicting penalties on Popish recusants not repairing to church,-one against Popish burials, one for observing the fifth of November, and another for enforcing other holidays. The privilege of sanetuary in churches was taken away; penalties for drunkenness were appointed; and forfeitures directed for profaneness in stage-plays.

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XXI. Several fathers of sects or denominations among Christians, flourished in the reign of James I. Arminius in Holland, a man of mild temper and excellent character, but much traduced by his enemies, published his Latin Epistles which occasioned the synod of Dort; and has since given name to the Anti-Calvinists. The mystical works sent forth at the same time by Boehmen in Germany, inflamed, a century afterwards, the imagination of Emanuel Swedenburg. The "Augustinus" of the French bishop Jansenius, created an inward schism in the Catholic church, by generating those Popish Calvinists who are called Jansenists after his name. Nearly at the same period, the younger Socinus, a Polish freethinker, became father of that daring family of

self-named Christians, who may be said to have denied the Lord that bought them. Bellarmine's Treatise on the Power of the Pope is still esteemed as a standard work, among the Catholics: and the Treatise of Grotius on the Evidences of Christianity, is an invaluable treasure to the Christian world at large; a day-spring visiting with beams of light and cheerfulness, the mind that has been overwhelmed in the gloom of infidelity, or perplexed amidst the mists of doubt.

NOTES.

1610. Several Scotchmen having come into England, with the view of obtaining consecration as bishops, it was objected by Andrews, the Bishop of Ely, that they must first become deacons and priests: to which Spottiswoode represents Bancroft as having replied, that in this case the ordination of presbyters would suffice: but he, in fact, stated that Ambrose and Nestorius were created, the one, Bishop of Milan, the other, Patriarch of Constantinople, without any first order, either, of deacon or of priest.-Heylin, Hist. of Dis. p. 382.

On this occasion, Spottiswoode, Hamilton, and Lambe, were consecrated bishops of Glasgow, Galloway, and Brechin; they were also, at the same time, made Lords of Parliament; but Neale affirms, that they were hated by both ministers and people.

Edward VI. had introduced the Reformation into Jersey and Guernsey; but in the reign of Mary these islands had relapsed into Popery.-Under Elizabeth, a body of Hugonots arriving from France, introduced the discipline of Geneva.