private; the obnoxious word altar was changed into table, and the table removed into the body of the church, while the people were permitted, in communicating, to stand or to sit at their pleasure. Marriage in Lent was allowed, and the ring in that rite was laid aside. The Apochrypha, the Saints' days, the particular vestments, were abolished. In visiting the sick, no private confession, no authoritative absolution, was permitted; and the dead were to be interred, like dogs, without a funeral service. Neither the use of the Creed, nor of the Ten Commandments, was enjoined; and when this point came to be debated by the Commons, the silence of the divines on these important parts of the service was confirmed by a

tion; for reverent behaviour is becoming in the presence chamber. Prayer was directed to be offered for the King, that he might be saved from evil counsel; for the Queen, that she might be converted; and for the Parliament, then in open rebellion, that it might prosper. The whole Lord's day was to be spent in religious exercises. In the prayer after the sermon, the heads were to be turned into petitions; and the Lord's Prayer was recommended. In the sermon the introduction was ordered to be short and clear; the divisions to fol'low the order of matter and not of the words: the audience were not to be burdened with many parts, or perplexed with terms of logic or art; and difficulties arising from the nature of the subject, or the prejudices of the hearers, were to be unravelled. Learned languages, uncommon phrases, affected cadences, and quotations from human authors, were all to be avoided,

majority of eight or ten voices. Both the Creed and Decalogue, however, were afterwards printed in the Assembly's Confession. The observance of Christmas day was altogether prohibited.

Besides the Directory and the Confession, which was also Calvinistic, making God the author of sin, the Westminster divines published a larger catechism, which was, in fact, the Confession in ques tion and answer; but as this was deemed too ample to be taught in schools, and too difficult for the understandings of children, a lesser or abridged catechism was soon after added. None of these compositions maintained the divine right of presbytery.

IX. Laud had, for almost five years, languished in the Tower, under an impeachment for high treason. He was now drawn out for trial and condemnation, in order to gratify the Scots †, It

* Lord Pembroke being afterwards asked privately the rea son of this omission, replied, “That it was matter of regret to him and others; but that the Lords did not, at that juncture, wish to manifest a difference with the Commons.”

The whole of this process occupied five months, during which Laud was heard twenty days in his defence. The mornings were spent in substantiating the charges against him; after an interval of a few hours his pleading was received: the managers for the prosecution were next permitted to reply, after which the prisoner was conveyed back to the Tower every evening about eight o'clock. It thus appears, that with the enemies of Laud rested every advantage of concert, preparation, and rejoinder. As the trial involved the discussion of all the important questions agitated at that period, I have thought proper to enter into a minute and critical account of

is not, here, my intention, as it is no part of my province, to detail or discuss accusations merely of a civil nature; although it may be just hinted, that Laud's principle of defence was a solid one; namely, that a crime, such as treason, cannot be constituted by any accumulation of circumstances, no one of which is separately treasonable. But

it, the more particularly since Laud, who, though furnished with counsel, rested chiefly on his own resourses, could not promptly answer the preconcerted charges and arguments urged by his learned antagonists*; since the managers in their replies were guilty of the grossest mis-statements, and, lastly, since the most popular accounts of the proceedings are either garbled and imperfect, or taken from Mr. Prinne's narrative; the narrative of a determined enemy to the archbishop.

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† Among the charges, one accused Laud of having declared, that Parliament could not alter the state of religion, without consent of the clergy; whereas the clergy were adverse to the Reformation. He maintained that he only alluded to the power of the church to judge concerning truth and falsehood, as they respected heresies. The repairing of St. Paul's was one of his faults; but he had paid towards that work 1200l. from his own coffers. The charge of bribery he heard with the liveliest indignation; and it appeared that this alluded merely to a butt of sack which a person had smuggled into his cellar, and

*The counsel for the Commons were Wild, Hayward, Brown, Nicholas, and Hill (which last person, as he said nothing, the archbishop termed Consul Bibulus), with Prinne for the solicitor. Laud's solicitor was his own secretary *.

The late republication of some editions and abridgments of Neale, suggest also the propriety of correcting, here as elsewhere, that author's nuinerous and pernicious distortions of truth.

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* See Wharton's History of Laud's Troubles, 223, &c,

the third general accusation being purely of a religious nature, demands particular attention. In substance it imputed to Laud an attempt to introduce idolatry, and to reconcile the church of England to that of Rome*.

which, when he discovered it, he ordered to be removed. It was urged that he had accepted commutations for fines; this, however, was not done clandestinely, but by warrant under the great seal, and in order to raise a fund for repairing the metropolitan cathedral. To the imputation of bringing the temporal power into subjection to the clergy, he answered, that he had only endeavoured to exempt the clergy from lay oppression. In short, he had asserted the prerogative only where the law was silent; and all the acts complained of were not properly his, but those of the whole council-board.

*The first particular specified was his partiality for images and pictures, evinced in the repairing of the stained-glass windows of his private chapel in Lambeth, contrary to the stat. 3 and 4 Edward VI. and the injunctions of Queen Elizabeth ; the erection of crosses in various churches, and of a stone figure of the Virgin in St. Mary's, Oxford; with the summoning of Mr. Sherfield before the Star-chamber, for defacing an idolatrous sculpture in a church near Salisbury. To this Laud replied, that images were in use so early as the time of Constantine, and earlier; that Tertullian mentions a congregation who had a picture of Christ on their communion chalice; that even Calvin allowed the historical use of scriptural representations, since he says (Instit. lib. i. c. 11, § 12), Neque tamen eâ superstitione teneor, ut nullas prorsus ima. gines ferendas censeam, sed quia sculptura et pictura Dei dona sunt, puram et legitimam utrusque usum requiro." An his torical account of images is given in the Homilies (p. 64, 65); but though it might be granted, that they were forbidden by that publication, one might surely subscribe the Homilies as godly

Laud, in his closing speech, complained of want of time for preparation; of the seizure of his

and profitable for THOSE times, yet not believe them as to every direction necessary at all times. He did not approve of images of God the Father; though some vindicated the use of them, from Dan. vii. The similitudes of Lambeth were neither wood nor stone, but glass windows. As to crosses and pictures, images of things visible, they might be serviceable for ornament and admonition. The statue of the Virgin had been set up by Bishop Owen: nor was it in proof that he even was aware of its existence; and Mr. Sherfield was sentenced for violently destroying the ornaments of a church without autho rity from the bishop of the diocese.

In answer to this defence, it was argued by the managers, that Justin Martyr, Clemens Alexandrinus, Irenæus, and Lactantius, agree in the denying images to have been found in the primitive churches; that Epiphanius, in holy indigna tion, rent an image in pieces; that the Homilies, part ii. p. 38, show ancient councils and many pious emperors to have been averse from images; that Tertullian relates only that those heretics to whom he wrote had such a chalice as Laud alluded to; and that Calvin, in the sentence quoted, must refer only to the use of sculpture and painting in common life, since his next words affirm that the church had no images for 500 years, and that to paint images of God is unlawful, since he hath himself forbidden it. In this manner the trial proceeded; Laud being allowed only one short and almost unpremedi tated answer, while the managers had the first blow and the last in each particular charge. It is therefore a just debt to the memory of the archbishop, to examine the pleadings of his antagonists; and with this view it may be observed that the managers, with dexterous management, suppressed the distinction betwixt images as ornaments, and as objects of worship. The managers had asserted that the stained window