of Christians should know what are the more appropriate merits as well as faults of each other. They always content themselves with the latter, the faults.

I must mention, before I conclude, the two last volumes of Dean Milner's Ecclesiastical History; they are written, like the principal part of the work by his brother, upon a particular system of doctrine; but with this, as a lecturer of history, I have no concern. The reason for which it is necessary that I should recommend them to your attention is this, that they contain, particularly in the life of Luther, the best account I know, of the more intellectual part of the history of the Reformation; in other words, they contain the progress of the Reformation in Luther's own mind; a very curious subject.

Such were the great talents and qualities of Luther, and such the situation of Europe at the time, that the Reformation in fact passed from the mind of the one into the mind of the other.

I therefore consider these two volumes, particularly in the lives of Wickliffe and Luther, as a most entertaining and valuable accession to our general stock of information, and one that may be considered as accessible to every student.

Dr. Milner appears to me too determined a panegyrist of Luther. This, however, may be forgiven him; not to say that it becomes me to speak with diffidence, when I speak to differ from one, whom I know to have been so able, and whom I conceive to have been so diligent.

Since these lectures were written many valuable and interesting works have appeared; more than I can enumerate, Histories of the Reformation by Mr. Blunt and Mr. Soame; different Lives of Erasmus and Luther; Lives of Wickliffe, Cranmer, and our eminent divines, by Mr. Le Bas, a learned and powerful writer, and many learned treatises connected with the doctrines of our English church; that is, with the Reformation. Among the rest, some striking observations on Erasmus and Luther by Mr. Hallam, in the first volume of his intended work on the Literature of Europe.

NOTES.

I.

CALVIN, in his letter to the protector Somerset, observes, after describing two sorts of troublesome people, Gospellers and Papists (probably), that both the one and the other ought to have the sword drawn upon them.

"Alii cerebrosi, sub Evangelii nomine; alii in superstitionibus antichristi ita obduraverunt," &c.

Of these he declares:

"Merentur quidem tum hi, tum illi, gladio ultore coerceri, quem tibi tradidit Dominus." - Page 67 of Calvin's Epistles, Geneva Edit. 1575. See Collier's Church History, part ii. b. 4, page 284, edit. 1714. Bucer, writing to Calvin, says :

"At quomodo Serveto lernæ hæreseôn et pertinacissimo homini parci potuerit, non video." — Vide same edition of Calvin's Epistles, page 147.

II.

Intolerance. Written in 1810.

Ir is generally supposed that it was only the bloody Queen Mary and Bishop Bonner who put people to death on account of their religious opinions; that the Protestants were incapable of such enormities.

This is not so, and Protestants should know it. Many were put to death in the time of the brutal Henry the Eighth. But there were some even in the time of Edward the Sixth, though not for Popery; more than one hundred and sixty of the Roman Catholic communion in the time of Elizabeth ; sixteen or seventeen in the time of James the First; and more than twenty by the Presbyterians and Republicans. These are the facts.

Arians and Anabaptists, for instance, were some of them actually burned. Puritans and sectarians were, some of them, hanged. These seem instances of direct and distinct intolerance.

But with regard to others, sanguinary penal laws were made, and Papists executed under them, on supposed principles of state necessity. It remains, then, to be considered how far this state necessity existed.

Some of the particulars may be noted briefly hereafter, and they may serve to put good men on their guard against the workings of their own nature on all subjects connected with their religious opinions. But in the first place, in page 398 of Fuller's Church History, the text of King Edward's Diary is given. "May 2nd, 1550.- Joan Bocher was burnt for

holding that Christ was not incarnate of the Virgin Mary, being condemned the year before," &c. This is the text.

Fuller himself writes a century afterwards, and his comment is this: "An obstinate heretic maintaining," &c. &c. "She, with one or two Arians, were all who (and that justly) died in this king's reign, for their opinions.” —“ And that justly!” says Fuller.

In Heylin's Church History, pages 88 and 89, may be seen the particulars of this horrible transaction. Cranmer and Ridley were unhappily distinguished in it. The king was averse, and said Cranmer must be answerable to God if he (the king) signed the death warrant.

George Paris was burned for Arianism on the 24th of April following, 1551.

A further reference may be made to cases, where no plea of state necessity could have been urged. Observe the conduct of Elizabeth and her advisers, or rather of Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry the Eighth.

In page 549 of Collier's History, volume ii., an account is given of the Anabaptists, taken from Stow; a conventicle had been discovered; twentyseven seized, four were recovered, and brought to a recantation. "The damnable and detestable heresies" which they recanted were these: 1. That Christ took not flesh of the substance of the blessed Virgin Mary. 2. That infants born of faithful parents ought to be rebaptized. 3. That no Christian man ought to be a magistrate, or bear the sword or office of authority. 4. That it is not lawful for a Christian man to take an oath.

Ten Dutchmen and one woman were brought into the consistory at St. Paul's, and condemned to the stake. The woman was recovered, and the government was so merciful" as to banish the rest. This clemency giving encouragement, two of the same nation and heterodoxies were burned in Smithfield. Fox, the martyrologist, wrote a letter to the queen in their behalf, "to mitigate the rigor," "to change the punishment," "to respite the execution for a month or two, that learned men might bring them off their heresy." A reprieve was granted; Fox's expedient tried without success; and they were therefore burned. The above account is abridged and given in the words of Collier.

In Fuller's Church History, to which he refers, Book IX., page 104, edit. 1655, Fox's letter is given; it does him the highest honor, all circumstances considered; it is temperate, conciliating, humane; in a word it is Christian. He observes, "Erroribus quidem ipsis nihil possit absurdius esse," &c. " sed ita habet humanæ infirmitatis conditio, si divinâ paululum luce destituti nobis relinquimur, quo non ruimus præcipites?" "Istas sectas idoneâ comprimendas correctione censeo, verum enim vero ignibus ac flammis pice ac sulphure æstuantibus viva miserorum corpora torrefacere, judicii magis cæcitate quam impetu voluntatis errantium, durum istud ac Romani magis exempli esse, quàm evangeliæ consuetudinis videtur," &c. &c. “Quamobrem, &c. supplex pro Christo rogarem, &c. ut vitæ miserorum parcatur, saltem ut horrori obsistatur, atque in aliud quodcunque commutetur supplicii genus; sunt ejectiones, sunt vincula, &c. &c. ne piras ac flammas Smithfieldianas, &c. &c. sinas recandescere."

The words that follow in Fuller are these (Fuller wrote in the time of the commonwealth, and was a member of the Church of England) :-"This

letter was written by Mr. John Fox (from whose own hand I transcribed it), very loath that Smithfield, formerly consecrated with martyrs' ashes, should now be profaned with heretics', and desirous that the Papists might enjoy their own monopoly of cruelty in burning condemned persons. But though Queen Elizabeth constantly called him her father Fox, yet herein was she no dutiful daughter, giving him a flat denial. Indeed damnable were their impieties, and she necessitated to this severity, who having formerly punished some traitors, if now sparing these blasphemers, the world would condemn her, as being more earnest in asserting her own safety, than God's honor. Hereupon the writ de hæretico comburendo (which for seventeen years had hung only up in terrorem), was now taken down and put in execution, and the two Anabaptists burned in Smithfield, died in great horror with crying and roaring."

It may not be amiss to exhibit for perusal this horrible writ. William Sautre was the first victim in the time of Henry the Fourth, 1401.

FORM of the Writ de Hæretico Comburendo from Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, 2d Vol. p. 269, ninth edition.

The king to the mayor and sheriffs of London, greeting. Whereas the Venerable Father, Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England, and legate of the apostolic see, with the consent and assent of the bishops and his brothers the suffragans, and also of the whole clergy of his province, in his provincial council assembled, the orders of law in this behalf requisite being in all things observed; by his definitive sentence, pronounced and declared William Sawtre (sometime chaplain, condemned for heresy and by him the said William heretofore in form of law abjured, and him the said William relapsed into the said heresy) a manifest heretic, and decreed to be degraded, and hath for that cause really degraded him from all clerical prerogative and privilege; and hath decreed him the said William, to be left, and hath really left him to the secular court, according to the laws and canonical sanctions set forth in this behalf, and holy mother the church hath nothing further to do in the premises. We therefore, being zealous for justice, and a lover of the Catholic faith, willing to maintain and defend holy church, and the rights and liberties thereof (as much as in us lies), to extirpate by the roots such heresies and errors out of the kingdom of England, and to punish heretics so convicted with condign punishment; and being mindful that such heretics convicted in form aforesaid, and condemned according to the law divine and human, by canonical institution, and in this behalf accustomed, ought to be burned with a burning flame of fire, do command you most strictly as we can, firmly enjoining that you coinmit to the fire the aforesaid William being in your custody, in some public and open place within the liberties of the city aforesaid, before the people publicly by reason of the premises, and cause him really to be burned in the same fire, in detestation of this crime, and to the manifest example of other Christians; and this you are by no means to omit, under the peril falling thereon. Witness, &c.

This writ was used nearly word for word by Elizabeth, when she put to death the two Anabaptists in the seventeenth or eighteenth year of her

reign. The writ may be readily seen by turning to Collier's Church History, in the fifteenth page of the preface to the second folio volume, edition 1714. This Protestant princess could sign the following dreadful words:

Nos igitur ut zelator justitiæ, et fidei Catholicæ defensor, volentesque ecclesiam sanctam ac jura et libertates ejusdem, et fidem Catholicam manu tenere et defendere, ac hujusmodi hæreses et errores ubique (quantum in nobis est) eradicare et extirpare, ac hæreticos sic convictos animadversione condigna puniri, attendentesque hujusmodi hæreticos in forma prædicta convictos et damnatos, justa leges et consuetudines regni nostri Angliæ in hac parte consuetas, ignis incendio comburi debere.

Vobis præcipimus quod dictos Johannem Peters, et Henricum Turwert, in custodia vestrâ existentes, apud West Smithfield, in loco publico et aperto, ex causâ præmissâ, coram populo igni committi, ac ipsos Johannem Peters, et Henricum Turwert in eodem igne realiter comburi faciatis, in hujusmodi criminis detestationem, aliorumque hominum exemplum, ne in simile crimen labantur, et hoc sub periculo incumbenti, nullatenus omittatis.

Teste regina apud Gorambury decimo quinto die Julii ;

Such are the facts.

Per ipsam reginam.

ELIZABETH.

There is here no terror of Papists; of men intending by mobs to overthrow the government.

The case is simply a case of intolerance, and thus, though every consideration that should have influenced the understanding, and affected the feelings of Elizabeth and her counsellors, had been urged by Fox in the most unobtrusive and respectful manner; “In igne realiter comburi faciatis," says the writ; "in hujusmodi criminis detestationem."

It is therefore impossible to impute the violent and sanguinary laws and executions of this reign to mere motives of state policy. The Roman Catholic writers do not make this mistake.

Yet they do in their own instance. Father Parsons, in his Reply to Fox, “made it appear," as he supposed, "that many of them (the Protestant martyrs) died for treason; some were notoriously scandalous and wicked persons; others distracted, and no better than enthusiasts," &c. &c. These are his excuses. — Dodd's Church History, page 463.

Observe now what these penal laws were, and what the horrible conse. quences.

Elizabeth comes to the throne in 1558; in the fifth year of her reign she asserts her supremacy. It was made death to deny twice this supremacy.

Now this supremacy of the pope is a point of religious faith with the Roman Catholics. Bishop Fisher, and Sir Thomas Moore (as she and her parliaments knew), died for it.

No effort was made to disentangle the civil obligations due to the sovereign, from the religious obligation due to the pope, as the head of the Roman Catholic church, and the supposed immediate descendant and representative and vicegerent of Christ here on earth.

On this account, from 1571 to 1594, were put to death twelve persons, seven gentlemen and five clergymen. Their names are given, page 320,