true son, and a stanch supporter of the Roman superstition.

During the reign of Edward the sixth, Cranmer was at the head of that protestant inquisition, which was first to attempt the conversion of anabaptists, by dint of argument; failing which, the flames of death were to conclude their Christian efforts.

Edward died in 1553, in the sixteenth year of his age, and the seventh of his reign. Bishop Burnet, in his history of the reformation, says-the untimely end of this good prince was looked upon by all people, as a just judgment of God, upon those who pretended to love and promote, but whose impious and flagitious lives were a reproach to a reformation. The open lewdness in which many lived, without shame or remorse, gave great occasion to their adversaries to say, they were in the right to assert justification by faith, without works, since they were, as to every good work, reprobate. Their gross and insatiable scrambling after the goods and wealth, that had been dedicated to good designs, though to superstitious uses, without applying any part of it to the promoting the Gospel, the instructing the youth, and relieving the poor, made all people conclude, that it was for robbery, and not for reformation, that their zeal made them so active.

Probably, had Edward lived, the English reformation would have been carried to a greater distance from the complicated machinery, and cumbrous pomp of popery, and approximated nearer to the clerical simplicity of primitive Christianity. Certainly, after the death of this truly evangelical monarch, the reformation of the established church was retrograde; as well, under the successors of Mary, as during the reign of that horrible woman herself.

It does not appear, that the conversion, or spiritual regeneration of the English people was very extensive. Some of the leading men, both clerical and lay, were in earnest in their reformation from popery; as was manifested in their soon after yielding up

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their living bodies to be burned, rather than renounce their faith, and declare their belief in a satanic lie. But to the great body of the people, it was little more than a change of political system, from one state church to another. An immense majority of all ranks, both clergy and laity, were either papists or protestants, Calvinists or Lutherans, high or low churchmen, as the existing government measured out to them their legal allowance of established faith and practice. In many parishes, the clergy could not, in others, they would not preach; in most of them, they were papists at heart, and yet, conscientiously, retained their benefices under a protestant establishment.

Under the bloody Mary, the leading English reformers evidenced their faith to be of the right kind, however much they erred, while possessing power, in persecuting those, who differed from them in doctrine, discipline, or dress. When Cranmer, Latimer, Hooper, Ridley, and others, ever to be revered martyrs, passed through the flames to heaven, the burning of their bodies did, indeed, kindle a light, which, by the grace of God, none of the enemies of pure, evangelical, vital religion, have been able to extinguish.

The number of protestant martyrs, during Mary's reign, is computed at two hundred and eighty; including twenty-six clergymen, of whom five were bishops. It ought not to excite surprise, that so few clergy suffered; for a national, established, state clergy, as such, are seldom ambitious of martyrdom, The greater part of them must, always, ex necessitate rei, be irreligious, secular formalists; to whom the ruling power, and the prevailing religion can never fail to present the charms of orthodoxy.

Even at this hour, when nearly three centuries have rolled by their tide of time since the commencement of the Reformation, a very fearful majority of the clergy in the Anglican Church establishment, are merely formal; and not contented with never preach

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ing the Gospel themselves, invariably, to the extent of their capacity and power, persecute the comparatively few among their clerical brethren, who conscientiously perform the duties of their sacred function. These evangelical ministers are continually reproached, as being "methodists, calvinists, vital godliness men, righteous over much, sectaries in disguise;" and I know not what else.

Every effort is made by the formal faction to prevent such men from obtaining holy orders; to starve them when ordained; and to hold them up to the execration of an irreligious community, by every species of misrepresentation and abuse. The labours of Tomline, Marsh, Daubeny, and many others, are notable instances of the unjustifiable lengths, to which a controversial and a party spirit will carry even regular ministers of the Christian sanctuary.

These men, however, understand their business; and seem to be well aware of the force of the reply made by the arch calumniator, in Alexander's court, to the question," why do you perpetually calumniate men whom you know to be honest, since such calumny must be harmless, as to them, and recoil upon your own head?" His answer was, "calumny, continually repeated, is like a deep wound; the wound itself may be healed, but there always remains behind a

scar."

These tactics are in general requisition against beneficed evangelicals; for curates of the same stamp formal dignitaries have recourse to a much more compendious method. They suspend them from preaching; and thus, so far as they are able, consign them to penury and famine. To evangelical curates, located in the diocese of a formalist bishop, might be applied that fine, though brief description of peril, originally used in relation to wretches gulphed in another kind of danger; υπερ εκ θανατοιο φέρονται; they float for ever on the verge of death.

Formalists, in these United States, labour with the same zeal and perseverance, in railing against evan

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gelism, as do their brethren in England. For a forme alist, whether clerical or lay, is the same irreligious being all over the world; and is actuated by the same deadly hatred of all Christian truth; the carnal mind, the unregenerate heart, being for ever at enmity with God. But where there is no national church establishment, a formalist has not equal power to do mischief; is not so strong to extinguish all vital piety; seeing that his formalism, in due time, only dilutes and diminishes his own sect, and helps to swell the ranks of evangelical denominations, by driving all serious persons to them.

For, wherever religion is left to find its own level, without the interference of the secular government, to buttress up one persuasion and crush the rest, formalism has no competency to cope with Christianity.

It is manifest to an observant eye, says a late able writer, that there is a deep rooted enmity in all wicked men, whether pagans, papists, protestants or deists, towards all godly men, of every nation and name. This enmity, it is true, is not suffered to operate according to its native tendency. He who holdeth the winds in his hand, restrains it. Men are withheld by laws, by policy, by interests, by education, by respect, by regard founded on other than religious qualities, and by various other things. There are certain conjunctions of interest, especially, which occasionally require a temporary cessation of hostilities; and it may seem, on such occasions, as if wicked men were ashamed of their animosities, and were all on a sudden become friendly to the followers of Christ.

Thus, at the revolution in 1688, those who for more than twenty years had persecuted the nonconformists with unrelenting severity, when they found themselves in danger of being deprived of their dignities and emoluments by a popish prince, courted their friendship, and promised to persecute them no more. And thus, at the commencement of the French revolution, deists, papists and protestants, who were

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engaged in one political cause, seemed to have forgotten their resentments; all amicably uniting together in opening a place for protestant worship.

But let not the servants of Christ imagine, that any temporary conjunction of interests will extinguish the ancient enmity. It may seem to be so for a time; and all things being under the control of Providence, such a time may be designed as a season of respite for the faithful; but when self-interest hath gained its end, if other worldly considerations do not interpose, things will return to their former channel. The enmity is not dead, but sleepeth.

On the death of Mary, her sister Elizabeth declared herself a protestant; but dictated the extent and mode of the English reformation. In the beginning of the year 1559, she restored the reading of Edward's liturgy, with the Epistles and Gospel, in English. By act of parliament, she took that supremacy in the church of England, which her father had borrowed from the pope. By this statute she was empowered to erect a court, which, under the name of the High Commission, has deeply stained the annals of England.

In this court, commissioners, appointed by the crown, took cognizance of, proscribed and punished the religion of Englishmen. It was in this court that archbishop Laud, whose name it is an effort of Christian forbearance to mention without an epithet of execration, afterwards laid the foundation of the overthrow of the English monarchy and hierarchy, by his bloody brutality, and persecution of all evangelical piety and truth.

By this statute, all clerical persons were obliged to swear to Elizabeth's supremacy; and although the great body of the national, the established clergy had been devout papists under Mary, only two hundred and forty-three were honest enough to abandon their state benefices, rather than perjure themselves. The rest, to the amount of some thousands, swore themselves into substantial protestant livings.