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LEIGHTON-PRYNNE.

127

Laud pulled off his cap, in presence of the assembled court, and gave thanks to God aloud.

This precious primate of the established church of England has deliberately recorded in his diary this righteous sentence, which extorted his gratitude to a merciful God:-" his ears were cut off, his nose slit, his face branded with burning irons; he was tied to a post, and whipped with a treble cord, of which every lash brought away his flesh; he was kept in the pillory near two hours, in frost and snow." Leighton was then imprisoned, with peculiar rigour, for eleven years, and when, at length, released, not by Laud, who never knew what relenting was, but by the English parliament, he could neither see, nor hear, nor walk.

In 1637, Burton, Prynne, and Bastwick, a divine, a lawyer, and a physician, were found guilty of writing against Laud's popish innovations, and the Sabbath sports; for which crime, they were condemned to stand in the pillory, and have both ears cut off. Prynne had heretofore received this Laudian benediction; and now, by especial order of the good archbishop himself, the remaining stumps of his ears were barbarously mangled, the temporal artery cut, and blood drained off in streams.

When Laud was afterwards on his own trial, he had the front to ask, what one instance of cruelty he had ever committed? Prynne immediately took off his wig, and showed these "insignia Laudis," upon his own bare, mutilated scull.

During twelve years of the maladministration of this merciless, bigoted formalist, four thousand emigrants escaped with life, from his murderous persecution, to America; and twenty-seven clergymen, ordained in the church of England, became pastors of American congregations, prior to the year 1640. These persecutions drained England of half a million sterling, a sum, at least, equal in value to ten millions of dollars at present; and also drove from her an immeasurable aggregate of piety, talent,

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learning, industry, and efficiency. So serviceable is a persecuting church establishment to the cause of religion, and to the country upon which it is fastened by the iron chain of secular power.

Multitudes more would have followed the earlier pilgrims to these transatlantic shores; but Laud forbade them to emigrate, that he might gratify, though he could not glut his archiepiscopal malignity, in mangling and mutilating their bodies at home. Both Charles and Laud, however, afterwards enjoyed full leisure to regret the having issued their writ of ne exeant regno, to Oliver Cromwell, and some of his sturdy companions, who wished to come to this country.

No human language is sufficient to describe the imprudent insolence, the childish superstition, the extreme violence, the personal animosity, the unrelenting, blood thirsty persecution, that marked, and characterized, and pervaded, and darkened the whole course of Laud's ecclesiastical administration. He executed the plans of the arbitrary Stuart, and furthered the views of his own clerical ambition, with singular cruelty, and unrivalled folly.

He did every thing insolently. If the law of the land opposed his schemes, he spurned it with contempt, and violated it without hesitation. He heaped upon all whom he chose to designate as puritans, every species of injury, and vexation, and suffering; and laboured to exterminate them by imprisonment, by torture, by murder.

He rejected publicly, so early as 1625, the first year of Charles' reign, the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, as contained in the seventeenth article of the Anglican Church; and notwithstanding the opposition and remonstrance of archbishop Abbot, insisted upon substituting the Arminian system in its place. He did not indeed, venture openly to abrogate the thirty-nine articles, and cause the tenets of Arminius to be incorporated into the creed of the church of England; but in 1625, he wrote a

LAUD'S PREVARICATION.

129

small treatise to prove the orthodoxy of the Arminian doctrines; and by his influence with the duke of Buckingham, he got Arminian and anti-puritanical chaplains placed about the king.

These facts are worthy of notice, as contrasted with his subsequent flat denial of having ever encouraged Arminianism; and should be, occasionally, remembered by those churchmen, on both sides of the Atlantic, who so much admire this father and founder of protestant episcopal formalism, and hang his picture up in their closets, as papists do the images of their patron saints.

On his trial, Laud utterly denied himself to be, either an Arminian, or a promoter of Arminianism"I answer, in general," said this prevaricating prelate," that I never endeavoured to introduce Arminianism into our church, nor ever maintained any Arminian opinions. I did neither protect, nor countenance the Arminians, persons, books, or tenets. True it is, I was, in a declaration of the commons house, taxed as a favourer, advancer of Arminians and their opinions, without any particular proof at all; which was a great slander to me."

Credat Judæus! for no Christian will be readily induced to believe this assertion, although made under the prospect of impending death; for he could not reasonably expect to escape with life from the hands of men, whom he had so long been in the habit of persecuting; so many of whose relations and friends he had fined, imprisoned, tortured, killed; and some of whom, then present, bore in their own persons, the indelible marks of his merciless mutilations.

Now for the proofs of the truth of his dying asseverations, that he never was an Arminian; that he never maintained any Arminian opinions; that he never countenanced Arminians; that he never introduced Arminianism into the church of England.

In 1622, Laud induced James to publish "directions," forbidding every clergyman, under the degree of bishop or dean, to preach in public, either for or

130

CHARLES'S PROCLAMATION.

against those doctrines of grace specified therein. But this prohibition, causing much indignation in the public, James sent forth an apology for his conduct; which served both to allay the popular displeasure, and to blunt the edge of the directions themselves. In 1626, about four months after his coronation, Charles, instigated by Laud, revived these unpopular directions, and extended the prohibition to bishops and deans.

There was fraud as well as force, throughout the whole of this proceeding. But dolus, an virtus? is the motto of a full fledged formalist. And in justice, we must confess, that the dolus generally outweighs the virtus, in his ecclesiastical measures and conduct; formalism being as nearly allied to Jesuitism, in its convenient morality, or, to use a softer term, management; as it is akin in its semipelagian doctrine.

The literal tenor of Charles's proclamation was more favourable to the Calvinists, than to the Arminians; but by the manner of Laud's interpretation and execution thereof, it was made to exalt the Arminians, and crush the Calvinists. In this proclamation, it was expressly declared-"that his majesty would admit of no innovations in the doctrine, discipline, or government of the church, and therefore charges all his subjects, and especially the clergy, not to publish or maintain, in preaching or writing, any new inventions or opinions, contrary to the said doctrine and discipline, established by law."

It was, to speak in the mildest terms, a singular instance of Laud's indecent partiality, to employ this proclamation in suppressing the books written in defence of the thirty-nine articles; while he caused the writings of the Arminians, who expressly opposed these articles, to be publicly licensed. This mode of conduct, on the part of Laud, not only demonstrates his own want of integrity, but also shows how difficult it is to change systems established by law. For neither Charles, who was by no means shy of usurping authority; nor Laud, who was far from being slow to

SEVENTEENTH® ARTICLE.

131

abuse it, attempted to reform or alter the articles of church faith, directly opposed to the Arminian scheme, which they were now promoting, and which was fast gaining ground among the state clergy, under their courtly protection.

Instead of reforming, or rather of counter-reforming the thirty-nine articles, which would have been strenuously opposed by the house of commons, and a large proportion of the national clergy and laity, who were still attached to Calvinism, as the accredited system of the English reformers; the cunning and malignant primate induced his royal puppet to reprint the articles, with an ambiguous declaration prefixed, tending to discourage the existing controversies between Calvinists and Arminians; and thus secure to the Arminians an unmolested state, in which their power and influence might daily grow, under the countenance and patronage of the court.

This declaration, which, in many editions of the English common prayer book, still stands at the head of the articles, is a curious piece of political theology. In its tenor, precision is studiously sacrificed to ambiguity; and even contradictions are preferred before clear, consistent, positive decisions. The declaration seemed to favour the Calvinists, by prohibiting the affixing any new sense to any article; but in ef fect favoured the Arminians, by ordering all curious research about the contested points to be laid aside. The most preposterous part of this declaration was, its being designed to favour the Arminians, and yet prohibiting any one, either in sermons or writings, to put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the article; and ordering all to take each article in its literal and grammatical sense, and submit to it in the full and plain meaning thereof.

For the plain, literal, grammatical meaning of the seventeenth article, has been universally conceded to be unfavourable to the Arminian system; and bishop Burnet, himself a stout Arminian, acknowledges, in his "Exposition," that, without enlarging their sense,

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