rceived as specimens of a University and Churchof-England-education, as well as the base and unworthy Fell. I may here observe, that there never was an opinion so unfounded, as that either the Presbyterian or Cromwellian Puritans promoted the cause of learning, or religion, or liberty. The Presbyter, it is true, cast down and destroyed, for a season, the Episcopal Church, and the Independents put to death the King! If these facts prove their religion and love of liberty- they doubtless promoted the cause of both. But, after the Episcopal Church was destroyed, what service did either party render to genuine piety, when they made the very name of religion abhorred and loathsome by their hypocrisy and bigotry, and caused the reaction of impiety through the Nation? What service did the Independents render to freedom, when, after they had brought to the scaffold their Sovereign, thẹ Nation was far more arbitrarily governed than it had ever been before, to support those who tolerated, indeed, most of the discordant sects, not from defined principles, but necessarily, and when one man had the power to say "Sic volo-sic jubeo," as despotically as the Grand Seignor himself? What service did either the Presbyterian or Independent Puritans render to knowledge, when the one scarce looked beyond the Synod, and the other sent out illiterate hordes of inspired ranters - (all human learning being ungodly!) schools were vilified, as they are now when public and when a Society which had been instituted to promote science and knowledge, in 1641, was obliged to be suspended, by the progress of frantic enthusiasm, till near the Restoration-so that science dared not raise her head, amongst the fury of frantic tongues. But how glorious a testimony to the learning and piety of the proscribed Episcopal Clergy how glorious?—I might say how IMMORTAL a testimony to their piety and learning-was the monument which they completed amid obloquy and persecution - amid revilings and threatenings in poverty and sorrow! I allude to the splendid PoLYGLOT BIBLE of the pious, learned, and noble BRYAN WALTON, afterwards Bishop of Worcester,* This stupendous work goes by his name, but he was assisted by scholars, all suffering for the same cause, at the saddest period of their calamities Archbishop Usher-Thomas Hyde, the great illustrator of the ancient Persian religion-Pocock, the learned traveller, and commentator on Hosea, &c. -Hammond-Sanderson, and others all of them *The following is the manly acknowledgment to Cromwell for leave to print it, which had been granted by Charles previously: "Primo autem commemorandi, quorum favore chartam a vectigalibus immunem habuimus, quòd quinque abhinc annis, a consilio secretiori primo concessum, postea a Serenissimo PROTECTORE ejusque CONSILIO, operis promovendi causâ, benignè confirmatum et continuatum est." Selden and Lenthall were among the promoters. † Such men Mr. Hume would pay with stinted stipends! Despicable, heartless cypherer, the King's treasury could not pay them! involved in one common deprivation-all of them, except one, Dr. Bruno Ryves, silent on the subject of great wrongs, all of them "patient in tribulation," all of them subjected to insults and scorn, and some with their lives hourly in danger. This stupendous and splendid work, the Bible in the Hebrew, Chaldee, Samaritan, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Syrian tongues, completed by one set of men, and in one age-of one Episcopal communion-(when Episcopacy was proscribed as antichristian!) — eating the same bread of adversity, "unfainting" alike in tribulation, as intent on their great Master's task,"- must of itself have made a great impression, when the public mind began slowly to recover from its late delusions; and yet how few, generally speaking, know any thing of the circumstances under which this work was composed, or the great talents combined in its execution, by scholars whose lives were as pure as their learning was wonderful.* If the Clergy thus, in their miseries, raised this immortal monument of learning and piety, it was * Bryan Walton was sequestered from his Living of St. Martin's, plundered, and forced to fly. Two Members of Parliament, in the spirit of Lord Mountcashel, drew up articles. against him themselves, though no way concerned in the parish, and sent these articles to be witnessed and subscribed. "He then (says Salmon) fled to Oxford, having reason to fear he should be murthered." So inveterate was the malice of that meek set of men to orthodoxy, though it had for its advocate so much piety, learning, and innocence of behaviour, as Dr. Walton was adorned with. not the principles either of the Presbyterians or Independents which triumphed at the Revolution, it was the principles of Hales, of Chillingworth, of Jeremy then, and not before, had time to work, and find their level. These principles were nobly maintained by that great character Lord Sommers, educated, as I have said, at Oxford, at the same college with Chillingworth. After the death of Queen Anne, the HighChurch Tories and Jacobites endeavoured to bring back to the abdicated throne the son of him whom the Nation had expelled; but the circumstances of the times were completely changed: if the Father had been a traitor to the laws of his country, it did not follow that the Son would be, and Oxford only spoke the feelings of the Nation, from 1714 to 1745, when the last effort was made in favour of the descendant of the bigoted James the Second. But the cry is now "Intolerance! intolerance!" and Lord King has produced a solitary Prayer, composed in the time of Charles the Second, to prove the intolerance of the body of English Clergy! 99 I shall say nothing in defence of "the prayer which his Lordship has brought forward with such satisfaction, as becoming a Turkish Divan, rather than a Bench of Christian Bishops,* except that I * The prayer which Lord King has produced, as the most triumphant proof of the intolerance of the Church of England, was composed probably by Sancroft, at a time when it was universally believed there had been a conspiracy against the life of Charles the Second. VOL, I, would wish his Lordship to compare this prayer, in spirit and in language, with those passages from sermons which the vindication of the Episcopal Church has caused me to lay before the reader. After his Lordship has compared them, and shall have judged which compositions are more in the spirit of a Turkish Divan, I will assert, and I know not whether the declaration may surprize his Lordship, that, respecting the unfortunate Russell and Sydney, the opinions of the Church of England, and of the University of Oxford, are generally the same as those of his Lordship, and every thinking and virtuous man in the kingdom. These principles the University has publicly attested, by rewarding that animated poet with the academical laurel, who in the Theatre spoke the noble verses "ON THE LOVE OF OUR COUNTRY;" from which I extract the following. Lo! Sydney pleading o'er the block! his mien, Who nobly acted what he boldly thought, And seal'd by death the lesson that he taught! Let such sentiments as these, which were honoured with the Chancellor's prize at Oxford, go, in some part, to avert the noble Lord's disdain towards this Tory and intolerant University.* The Turkish intolerance, in the solitary prayer * These lines were written by a Bishop, an Irish Bishop, and who that reads them does not read them with melancholy |