Of the direct, deliberate, unprincipled, and wicked FALSEHOODS of Neal, I need only mention the following instances.

He declares that, when the punishment was pronounced in the Star-Chamber against Leighton, "Bishop Laud "pulled off his cap whilst this merciless sentence was pronouncing, and gave GOD THANKS!"* How many thousand readers have read this "merciless," and utterly false "sentence," and believed it true! How many writers have echoed it as undoubted! I assert it to be FALSE! I tell Mr. Godwin so! the author of the "History of the Commonwealth." I tell my respected friend Agar Ellis so! Is it found in any credited historian? Is it in Rushworth? Is it there? Look, thou impartial historian, Godwin! If not there, where is it? When I see the passage, in any contemporary historian worthy of credit, I shall retract what I say in the face of the Christian world, and

not before!

How malignant must have been that spirit of party which could, without any authority, sit down and invent THIS DELIBERATE FALSEHOOD!

Rash as he was, I pledge myself to prove that Laud resorted to no harsh severity till his life was threatened. His object was to defend the Episcopal Church, the Throne, and his own grey hairs.

There is, by some historians equally veracious and impar. tial, a like wicked perversion of the sentiments and words of Laud, respecting the offer of a Cardinal's hat.

It was indeed most true that the inhumanity towards Leighton and Prynne injured his cause far more than their books. Most inhuman, indeed, was this sentence of the Star-chamber on these miserable men! most inhuman the infliction! and, if I speak of any Inquisition with horror, let me not for a moment be thought to except the infamous Inquisition of the Star-chamber of Charles the First. Let the Christian reader, however he may deem the language of the Histriomastix absurd, irritating, and most intolerant, think of the stripes, the mutilations, and the judgment of imprisonment for life! But in this, as in all instances, cruelty defeated its own purposes. The Puritanpack now urging on the chase with redoubled cry, it was decided in this den, that rigid and signal punishment alone could divert the bloodhounds from their track. Laud was the hunted victim, and he turned in terror from the cry of blood and vengeance, deepening as it approached more near. Then, as in despair, these ruthless measures were resorted to.

As to the voluminous and inflexible Prynne, instead of the cruel punishment he suffered — and it was the punishment, and not his interminable volumes, which excited the feelings of the nation against Laud and the Bishops—instead of clipping his ears, so obdurate to harmony, it would have been wiser if the conclave in Star-Chamber had

VOL. I.

ordered him to do penance in a square-cap✶ on his. own folios, and had then proceeded to exorcise his spirit, by making him listen, notwithstanding all grimaces, to some scene so comic as that of the Fairies dancing round Falstaff! After this discipline, four-and-twenty choristers, in white surplices, led by the Boy-bishop, should sing round him "CANTATE!" It might tend to dispel the last fumes of his solemn spleen, if he were led forth, however tristful and repugnant, to see, " on a sunshine holiday," the lads and lasses of the village dance round a Maypole, to a tabor playing "Whitelock's Corranto!" Such a judgment by the Star Chamber would have been far more effectual to exorcise a spirit so morose, than the cruel stripes and imprisonments the implacable Presbyterian endured triumphantly!

It is true, instead of such inhumanity, it would have been far wiser to have treated with ridicule this poor, honest Presbyterian's wrath; but it is no less true that the Church of England, in a dignified position between those who decided that "TOLeraTION WAS ESTABLISHING INIQUITY BY LAW," and those who executed, to the letter, the Statute “de hæreticus comburendis," has been most unjustly accused as being generally the most intolerant and persecuting "of either."

* A Puritan Dean of Wells literally ordered the penance of a square-cup, in derision, to be worn in church by a malignant delinquent.

In the present day, a summary way has been adopted to disprove the charge of persecution on the part of the Church of Rome. There was no such thing as the massacre of the Protestants in Ireland in 1640! It is all a calumny! And as to the burning old Latimer, and Cranmer, and Ridley, they suffered in the flames justly, because they INTENDED to inflict the same torture on others! Such an historian is a modern Doctor!

In speaking of religious persecution, I should feel deserving to be condemned by heaven and earth, if I should dare to breathe a thought in palliation of the burning of a poor woman by Cranmer; but I should feel myself not less to be condemned, by the laws of God and man, if I did not lift up my voice —

Si quid loquar audiendum

against that deduction of this Papal historian, that "Cranmer and his ASSOCIATES perished in the flames THEY HAD PREPARED FOR OTHERS!"

They, the tormented, to show that their agonizing torments are no more than they deserved, are pronounced to have INTENDED to make others suffer in the same manner! Of the grounds of such a hideous reversal of character, the astonished and indignant reader might well ask, what is the proof or evidence? Let the most sanguinary Inquisitor that ever condemned a miserable wretch to the flames of an auto da fè find, if he can, a clearer proof! Cranmer and his associates are burned alive at the

fiery stake justly-for they intended to do the same to others! What proof is there of this intent of Cranmer and his suffering "associates?" Oh! a paper has been found, in which a sentence appears, that he who, after every thing has been tried in vain, opposes and oppugns the fundamental principles of Protestantism, is “PUNIENDUS." And what is the translation of PUNIENDUS, from which such an inference is drawn? To "SUFFER DEATH." And the Christian lesson is this —

Cranmer and "his ASSOCIATES" were burnt alive, because

Cranmer and "his associates" intended to burn others alive.

The word "puniendus-" is a proof of this intention, "puniendus" meaning "to suffer death."

Therefore Cranmer and his associates are justly burned alive!

I will say nothing of Cranmer, because he caused a frantic woman to be burnt alive-and even guided the pen, and endeavoured to steel the shrinking heart, of an ingenuous youth; but who are "the associates," thus summarily classed as burners in intent, because they used the word "puniendus?" Was Ridley one, who, from his kind heart, opened his house to the mother and sister of the man who burnt him? Was Hooper one? Was Latimer? No: but they were guilty of using the word "puniendus," and therefore they intended fire and faggot! "Puniendus " means "suffer death!" Oh dispas