scant done, I say, in one of the three parts of the Commission, by the best Teachers of this Land. And I thank my God, I am not only ready to be bound and banished, but even to die in this Cause, by His strength; yea, my Brethren, I greatly long, in regard of myself, to be dissolved, and to live in the blessed Kingdom of Heaven, with Jesus Christ and his angels; with Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Job, David, Jeremy, Daniel, Paul the great apostle of the Gentiles, and the rest of the holy Saints, both men and women: with the glorious kings, prophets, and martyrs and witnesses of Jesus Christ, that have been from the beginning of the world; particularly with my two dear Brethren, Mr. Henry Barrowe, and Mr. John Greenwood, which have, last of all, yielded their blood for this precious Testimony:' confessing unto you, my Brethren and Sisters, that if I might live upon the earth the days of Methuselah twice told, and that in no less comfort than Peter, James, and John, were in the mount; and, after this life, might be sure of the Kingdom of Heaven;' that yet, to gain all this, I durst not go from the former Testimony.'

"Wherefore, my Brethren, I beseech you be of like mind herein with me. I doubt not but you have the same precious faith' with me; and are partakers also of far more glorious comfort than my barren and sinful soul can be. Strive for me, and with me, that the Lord our God may make me, and us all, able to end our course with joy and patience. Strive also, that He may stay his blessed hand, if it be his good pleasure, and not make any further breach in His church, by the taking away of any more of us as yet, to the discouraging of the weak, and the lifting up of the horn of our adversaries.

"I would indeed, if it be His good pleasure, live yet with you, to help you to bear that grievous and hard yoke which yet ye are like to sustain, either here, or in a strange land.

"And, my good Brethren, seeing banishment, with loss of goods, is likely to betide you all, prepare yourselves for this hard entreaty ; and rejoice that you are made worthy for Christ's cause, to suffer, and bear all these things. And, I beseech you, in the bowels of Jesus Christ,' that none of you, in this case, look upon his particular estate; but regard the general state of the Church of God, that the same may go, and be kept together, whithersoever it shall please God to send you. Oh, the blessing will be great that shall ensue this care; whereas if you go every man to provide for his own house, and to look for his own family,-first neglecting poor Sion; the Lord will set his face against you, and scatter you from the one end of heaven to the other; neither shall you find a resting-place for the soles of your feet, or a blessing upon any thing you take in hand!

"The Lord, my Brethren and Sisters, hath not forgotten to be gracious unto Sion; you shall yet find days of peace and of rest, if you continue faithful. This stamping and treading of us under his feet, this subverting of our cause and right in judgment, is done by Him, to the end that we should search and try our ways, and repent us of our carelessness, profaneness, and rebellion in his sight; but he will yet maintain the cause of our souls, and redeem our lives, if we return to him yea, he will be with us in fire and water, and will not forsake

are no more; if many, that they are not capital. Show me that Church that hath not complained of distraction; yea, that family; yea, that fraternity; yea, that man, that always agrees with himself! See if the spouse of Christ in that heavenly marriage song, do not call him a young hart in the mountains of division'!

"Tell me then, Whither will you go for truth, if you will allow no truth but where there is no division? To Rome, perhaps; famous for unity; famous for peace! See now, how happily you have chosen; how well you have sped: Lo there, Cardinal Bellarmine himself, a witness above exception, under his own hand acknowledgeth to the world, and reckons up two hundred thirty and seven contrarieties of doctrine among the Romish divines. What need we more evidence? O the perfect accordance of Peter's See; worthy to be recorded for a badge of Truth I

"Let now, all our adversaries scrape together so many contradictions of opinions amongst us, as they confess amongst themselves; and be you theirs. No; they are not more peaceable, but more subtle: they have not less dissension, but more smothered. They fight closely within doors, without noise: all our frays are in the field. Would God, we had as much of their cunning as they want of our peace; and no more of their policy than they want of our truth! Our strife is in ceremonies; theirs, in substance; ours in one or two points; theirs in all. Take it boldly from him that dares avouch it-There is not one point in all divinity, except those wherein we accord with them, wherein they all speak the same. If our church displease you for differences, theirs much more, unless you will be either wilfully incredulous, or wilfully partial; unless you dislike a mischief the less, for the secrecy!

"What will you do then? Will you be a Church, alone? Alas! how full are you of contradictions to yourself: how full of contrary purposes! How oft do you chide with yourself! How oft do you fight with yourself! I appeal to that bosom which is privy to those secret combats.

"Believe me not if ever you find perfect unity anywhere but above either go thither and seek it amongst those that triumph, or be content with what estate you find in this wayfaring number.

"Truth is in differences; as gold in dross, wheat in chaff: will you cast away the best metal, the best grain, because it is mingled with this offal? Will you rather be poor and hungry, than bestow labour on the fan, or the furnace? Is there nothing worth your respect but peace? I have heard that the interlacing of some discords graces the best music; and I know not, whether the very evil spirits agree not with themselves. If the body be sound, what though the coat be torn? Or if the garment be whole, what if the lace be unript? Take you peace: let me have Truth; if I cannot have both.

"To conclude: embrace those truths that we all hold; and it greatly matters not what you hold in those wherein we differ: and if you love your safety, seek rather grounds whereon to rest, than excuses for your unrest. If ever you look to gain by the Truth, you must both choose it and cleave to it: mere resolution is not enough, except you will rather lose yourself than it." Epistles: by Joseph Hall. 1608. 12mo. Vol. ii. Dec. iii. Ep. v.

The propriety of giving a place in these pages, to this letter, appears from its writer having been obliged inconveniently to accommodate himself to his design. He could, here, try to repel an argument from Divisions, and from Contrariety of Opinions; and would show that he estimates Truth far more highly than Peace. The reader will see in other places, with what consistency all this is preserved; and he will find, too, that when Scriptural boundaries are crossed, embarrassment must of necessity ensue: so, Hall, and divines of his school, were driven, at times, to turn their weapons in self-defence: thus, they first manage their stylus that it shall inscribe an argument this way; and anon, they prepare their waren tablet so that it shall divert the same kind of argument that way: but notwithstanding the labour and skill practised, the original lines are so imperfectly obliterated that they betray the difficulties and embarrassments of the operators. Lawson's stricture on Hall's letter is, that "the pious correspondent evidently laboured under the enthusiasm of the times, and one sentence of his epistle generally contradicts another." Life, &c. of Abp. Laud. 1829. 8vo. vol. i. p. 121.

forted in their God; who, by his blessings from above, will countervail unto them the want of so notable a brother and a husband.

"I would wish you, earnestly, to write, yea to send, if you may, to comfort the Brethren in the West and North countries, that they faint not in these troubles; and that also you may have of their advice, and they of yours, what to do in these desolate times. And if you think it any thing for their further comfort and direction, send them, conveniently, a copy of this my Letter, and of the Declaration of my faith and allegiance; wishing them, before whomsoever they be called, that their own mouths be not had in witness against them, in any thing. Yea, I would wish you and them to be together, if you may, whithersoever you shall be banished; and to this purpose, to bethink you beforehand where to be; yea, to send some who may be meet to prepare you some resting-place. And, be all of you assured, that He who is your God in England, will be your God in any land under the whole heaven; for the earth and the fulness thereof are His, and blessed are they that for his Cause are bereaved of any part of the

same.

"Finally, my Brethren, the Eternal God bless you and yours, that I may meet with you all, unto my comfort, in the blessed Kingdom of Heaven. Thus, having from my heart, and with tears, performed, it may be, my last duty towards you in this life, I salute you all in the Lord, both men and women; even those whom I have not named, as heartily as those whose names I have mentioned; for all your names I know not. And, remember to stand steadfast and faithful in Jesus Christ, as you have received him, unto your immortality; and may He confirm and establish you to the end, for the praise of his glory. Amen.

"Your loving Brother in the patience and sufferings of the Gospel, John Penry; a Witness of Christ in this life, and a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed."

"The twenty-fourth of the fourth month, April, 1593."a

In a Declaration, dated the sixteenth of the following month, Penry states that he had never been at any "assembly or conventicle where any under or above the number of twelve, were assembled with force of arms or otherwise, to alter any thing established by law." The court, Lord Chief Justice Popham in the Queen's Bench, apprehending that an argument at law would arise out of this Declaration, set it aside, and convicted Penry upon the draft of the Petition, which he had intended to address to the queen, and upon other private papers, which Penry said contained "the sum of certain objections" made in Scotland against her Majesty and her government, and which he intended "to examine, but had not so much as looked unto them for fourteen or fifteen months past."

It may be easily imagined that, in those times, language like that in Penry's Petition would excite the spirit of revenge. He remonstrates with her Majesty in these terms;-"The practice of your

a Reprint of "Exam. of Bar. Greenw. and Penry." Edit. London, W. Marshall. No date. (1681.) 4to pp. 48. p. 46.

of God," as they signify, "ye shall do wisely if ye do not stir," but, for that protection, subinit to have both "doctrine and faith" tried by the "Church"-" among whom ye are," whom "it is an unlawfi 1 course to omit, and to call upon another, or the whole public state, or this university, or me, who am a weak member therein.""Let them speak first, with whom ye sojourn, whom ye deny not to be your brethren. But if, peradventure, they shall not satisfy you, or you shall not satisfy them, then let a new course be taken by lawful order.".. "And so much of the doctrine."-"I come to the accusasation which ye use against the Church of England, as ye write. . . What need is there that ye should accuse them? Ye have given place; ye have passed over into another court: wherefore you have given place, nobody desireth to know, or doth trouble you. If wrong be done you in England (that I may grant there was done; it belongeth not to me to affirm or deny, who have not known it) yet this injury hath ceased to prosecute you, being departed from them."

Is it not surprising that, placed in so influential a situation as Junius was, he should thus wind about, and create a labyrinth where a plain course was open to him? What was peculiar in his own position, might have prompted him to exercise compassion toward others who showed, by their sufferings, that they were actuated by something more than worldly interests. The anti-protestant conduct and advice of those who ought to set the example of consistency is ever to be lamented; but it required more self-denial and fixedness of principle, to throw off the shackles of human authority in sacred things, and to raise the mind by freeing the understanding from that debasing prostration which priestcraft had inculcated as a dutiful submission to those who assumed to themselves to be the only depositories of the true faith, and the oracular dispensers of the Divine will.

The paragraphs next following are, like some expressions interspersed among those which precede, grounded on a feigned conjecture what "end" the compilers of the Confession proposed to themselves. They had been in the same locality six years or more; and it is impossible to doubt but that Junius had learned some particulars of their settlement and proceedings who were so immediately in his own neighbourhood; yet he would seem to know little or nothing about them: while, under all this mysterious affectation of ignorance, he is ready and profuse with his advice: they were the weaker party, and outcasts, he chooses therefore to presume that they are less sinned against than sinning! He writes, however, "You do so require my judgment as you do also withal require the judgment of all universities and students. If you request this in common, then you do not desire that I should do it alone; but if particularly, do you think that any of us will be so mad, that when the judgment of so many good men and diligence is [are] desired, some one Palamon' should take upon him the chiefest parts? .. I ought not to judge with myself of matters unknown, at least not so evident; neither yet with such forward boldness to pronounce among you or others, the matter being not sufficiently manifest to myself... All wise men have taught this with one consent, and delivered it to posterity, That where the founda

tion of the truth of doctrine remaineth, which is the pillar of salvation, although with most corrupt manners and discipline, there the Church remaineth; and that no man ought rashly to separate himself from that church—while he may tarry in it without shipwreck of faith and conscience-or take from it the name of a church; especially, seeing every church consisteth of pastors and flock, which if some pastors or prelates trouble, yet it is unmeet that this name either should be taken away from the other pastors, which Christ doth witness by the doctrine of truth; or from the flock, which Christ hath purchased with his own blood, and doth daily sanctify with the washing of the new birth by the Word."

This last passage is conclusive to our minds against the soundness of the doctrine which Junius held, and affords a clue for unravelling the mode of treatment which he practised toward the appellants. The sentiment, concerning the "foundation," has been successfully controverted by an acute and ingenious disputant in these words:

"If Rome be a 'true' church; if she hold all the essential points of Christianity; if salvation may be attained in that communion; why was there such a stir about reforming of accidents, when the essentials were secured? Why such a contest about a little easier way, when the other was possible? Why all this ado about a purer church, when the other is confessed a 'true' church ?-These things will follow, in a lump, from these concessions: 1. That a person, or party, may separate from some true' church which holds all the essential points of the christian faith, without the imputation of being a schismatic. 2. That a person, or party, may separate from some church where salvation is attainable, without peril of the guilt of schism. 3. That the only reason that yet appears, to justify the Church of England's departure from Rome is-That it is lawful, in some cases, to withdraw from the communion of a 'true' church, wherein all the essential points of faith are owned, and wherein salvation may be attained; for the sake of greater purity of worship, greater clearness of doctrine, and greater security of salvation! İs it, then, lawful for England to separate from Italy for greater purityit may be lawful for others to separate from England for greater purity? It is readily acknowledged, that the impurity is much more, unconceivably more, than that of the Church of England; and, therefore, there was not so great cause to leave the latter as the former, upon that account; but, in aspiring after conformity to the institutions of Christ, we are not to consider so much what is behind, as what is before; not so much, what we have left, as what we have yet to reach ; not so much the terminus a quo-from what state of impurity we have emerged, as the terminus ad quem-to what state of purity we should attain. For, if it be true, that there is such a state of purity to be obtained, and such a state of impurity to be avoided, as will justify our forsaking of this for that, and such a measure of both these as will not; it must be exactly stated, what is the lowest degree of corruption that will, and what is the highest that will not, warrant a separation?"a

The Mischief of Impositions: By V. Alsop, M. A. 1680.

P. xii.