fathers arose from the bitter remembrances of the Babylonish chain. But the cause is altogether too narrow for an effect of such extent, completeness, and continuance. Nothing is more rapidly forgotten than the pangs of national punishment: nothing makes a slighter impress on the living generation than the pangs of the past. The captivity had palpably been much lightened towards its close. The people, like their fathers in Egypt, as palpably loved the luxuries of Babylon more than they hated its scourge. The whole living generation were Chaldean. Of the multitudes who had survived the captivity, scarcely above fifty thousand could ever be induced to return. The permanent Jewish abhorrence of idolatry was the work of the national revival of religion; and that revival the work of the direct energy of Heaven, in the national delivery of the Scriptures." (Pp. 2, 3.) Concerning the Biblical labours of Wickliffe and his successors Dr. Croly thus speaks:

"(A.D. 1360.)-Another memorable revival, was to signalize the Scriptures among ourselves. England, since the decay of the national Church under the Norman line, had fallen into the most abject condition of spiritual slavery. The Scriptures were scarcely known, the Papacy was supreme. In this extremity, it was the divine will to stir the nation to Christian freedom; and the delivery of the Scriptures was, as of old, the breaker of the chain. Wickliffe, indignant at a new demand of tribute by the Papacy, had incidentally opened the Bible to ascertain the right. Its perusal immediately determined him to give the Scriptures to the people. The result was, what it had

"A Canon of Leicester, a hostile contemporary of Wickliffe, thus characteristically describes the tenets of the time, and the nature of his services: 'Christ committed the Gospel to the Clergy and Doctors of the church, that they might minister to the laity and weaker persons, according to the exigency of times and persons' wants. But this Master John Wickliffe translated it out of Latin into English, and by that means laid it more open to the laity and to women who could read, than it used to be to the most learned of the Clergy, and those of them who had the best understanding; and so the Gospel pearl was cast abroad, and trodden under swine.' (Quoted by Milner.)

"Lingard, the Romish historian, says, Wickliffe made a new translation, multiplied the copies with the aid of transcribers, and by his poor Priests' recommended

always been, a sudden and singular energy of religion. Multitudes instantly changed the whole tenor of their lives. Men of every rank, from the peasant to the highest nobility, exulted in the new possession of the Scriptures, and in declaring themselves the disciples of doctrines so long lost to the nation. The citizens of London became, for the most part, Lollards, as the Reformers were called.' The sermons of the mendicant Friars, formerly so much admired, were undervalued, and the preaching from the NEW SCRIPTURES made an universal impression.'+ An influence totally beyond the ordinary impressions of moral truth, even truth of the most momentous order, was evidently acting upon the national mind. The natural impulses of Christianity were clearly propelled by a power above the course of nature; and this surge of light spread through Europe. The celebrated John Huss, and Jerome of Prague, received the doctrines from England, and proclaimed them in Bohemia, till a glorious martyrdom closed their labours. By the hand of the great English Teacher, Germany was now led within sight of the Reformation.

"(A. D. 1517.)-Another era of memorable revival was to come; and still the delivery of the Scriptures was to be the direct instrument. In Germany, the lapse of a century, from the martyrdom of Huss, in 1415, and the furious persecution of the Bohemian Reformers, had again shut up the Bible from the people; and, by natural consequence, almost wholly extinguished its knowledge among the

Priesthood. It is well known that Lu

ther, though from early life remarkable for vigorous study; though a member of the Augustinian order, one of the most

eminent of the Romish Church; and though urged to the Priesthood by strong impressions of religious awe; had never seen a copy of the Bible; till by accident, in the second year of his residence, he found one in the dust of the conventual library. It will be admitted, that his first summons to publicity was his indignation at the scandalous sale of indulgences. Such are the various, and apparently trivial, incidents by which God stimulates the latent mission of his servants into activity. Disdain of an insolent and burlesque traffic stung him to

it to the perusal of their hearers. In their hands it became an engine of wonderful power, a spirit of inquiry was generated, and the seeds were sown of that religious revolution which astonished and convulsed Europe.'

"Turner. History of England."

examine its right by the Bible in his hands. But, from that hour his career was decided. He pronounced the human doctrine of indulgences fatal to the divine doctrine of repentance; and in this spirit prepared himself for martyrdom. The first labour of his leisure, in 1522, was to supply the grand popular want, the translation of the Scriptures. The effect was immediate and irresistible. The Papal historian acknowledges that the translation was read by almost every one throughout Germany. Women of the first distinction studied it with the most persevering attention, and defended the tenets of the Reformer against Bishops, Monks, and Catholic Doctors.'* The result was the GERMAN REFORMATION; the establishment of Protest antism in the most learned, vigorous, and civilized portions of Europe; and the liberation of our country from a spiritual slavery, which nothing but a national frenzy, preferring evil to good, and rejecting the noblest gifts of Heaven for the heaviest degradations of man, can ever again fix upon the neck of the British empire.

"The mention of the illustrious Work which we this day solemnize, must now be limited to a few words. In the commencement of the sixteenth century, the reading of the Scriptures in English had been forbidden by royal proclamation, and the penalty of burning alive was annexed even to the possession of Tyndal's version of the New Testament.+ The version itself was publicly committed to the flames in Cheapside. But powerful influence had been already exercised by its circulation; and Henry the Eighth, a capricious tyrant, who, but a few years before, had burned men and women for daring to deliver even fragments of the Scriptures in English, was prevailed on by Cranmer, in 1534, to sanction a general translation. On the fourth day of October, 1535, the whole Bible was

"Luther's words in the first struggles of his public ministry have the sacred anxiety, the solemn confidence, and almost the language, of the Apostle: I am compassed with no guards, but those of Heaven. live in the midst of enemies, who have legal power to kill me every hour. But, this is the way in which I comfort myself: I know that Christ is Lord of all; and that the Father hath put all things under his feet, among the rest, the wrath of the Emperor and of all evil spirits. If it please Christ that I should be slain, let me die in his name. If it do not please him, who shall slay me?"

"Maimbourg."

published in the national language, by Coverdale.+

"The popular rejoicing on this high occasion was unbounded. An order had been issued that every church should possess a copy; and the people crowded the churches day by day, to see and read the sacred volume. They were not yet suffered to purchase it for their houses, nor was this permission given until four years after, but it was then received with universal joy. Many sold their valuables to purchase a Bible. Those who could not afford to purchase the whole, carried away a part. Many learned to read in advanced years, that they might know the Scriptures for themselves; and mul titudes of all ages crowded round the readers, who stood in the public places of London, and the country, to repeat portions of the book, which the nation justly felt to be the book of truth and immortality." (Pp. 7—10.)

Of the French Revolution, and its thoroughly anti-scriptural and Atheistic character, the author gives the following terrific sketch:

"France, from the commencement of the Papal supremacy, had been the chief champion of the Popedom; so early as the ninth century, had given it temporal dominion; and continued through all ages fully to merit the title of Eldest Son of the Church.' But France had received in turn the fatal legacy of persecution. From the time of the Albigenses, through the wars of the League, and the struggles of the Protestant Church during the seventeenth century, closing with its

"Miles Coverdale had, like Luther, been an Augustinian Monk. The Reformation reached him in early life, and as it was then death in England, he went to the Continent, and assisted Tyndal, in 1532, in his translation of the New Testament. His scholarship and intelligence introduced him to Cranmer, bywhom he was commissioned to complete the translation of the entire Scriptures. It appeared under the title of Biblia, the Bible, that is, the Holy Scripture of the Olde and New Testament, faithfully and newly translated out of Doutche and Latin into English by Miles Coverdale.' This service was justly rewarded by distinction. He was made Almoner to Queen Catherine Parr; and Bishop of Exeter, in 1551. On the accession of the bigot Mary, he again fled to the Continent, where he again assisted the English refugees in a version of the Scriptures. On the death of Mary, he returned to England, but never resumed his bishopric. He died about 1580, aged eighty-one."

ruin by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685; the history of France was written in every page with the blood of the Reformed. Frequently contesting the personal claims of the Popes to authority, but submissively bowing down to the doctrines, ceremonial, and principles of Rome, France was the most eager, restless, and ruthless of all the ministers of Papal vengeance.

"In a moment all this submission was changed into the direst hostility. At the exact close of the prophetic period, in 1793, the 1260th year from the birth of the Papal supremacy, a power, new to all eyes, suddenly started up among nations: an Infidel Democracy! France, rending away her ancient robes of loyalty and laws, stood before mankind a spectacle of naked crime. And, as if to strike the lesson of ruin deeper into the mind of all; on the very eve of this overthrow, the French monarchy had been the most flourishing of continental Europe; the acknowledged leader in manners, arts, and arms; unrivalled in the brilliant frivolities which fill so large a space in the hearts of mankind; its language univer sal, its influence boundless, its polity the centre round which the European sovereignties perpetually revolved, its literature the fount from which all nations in their golden urns drew light.' Instantly, as by a single blow of the divine wrath, the land was covered with civil slaughter. Every star of her glittering firmament was shaken from its sphere; her throne was crushed into dust; her Church of forty thousand Clergy was scattered, exiled, ruined; all the bonds and appliances which once compacted her with the general European commonwealth were burst asunder, and cast aside for a conspiracy against mankind. Still there was to be a deeper celebration of the mystery of evil. The spirit that had filled and tortured every limb of France with rebellion to man, now put forth a fiercer malice, and blasphemed. Hostility was declared against all that bore the name of religion. By an act, of which history, in all its depths and recesses of national guilt, had never found an example, a crime too blind for the blindest ages of barbarism, and too atrocious for the hottest corruptions of the pagan world, France, the leader of civilized Europe, publicly pronounced that there was no God! The decree was rapidly followed by every measure which could make the blasphemy practical and national. The municipality of Paris, the virtual Government, proclaimed, that as they had defied earthly monarchy, they would now dethrone

the monarchy of Heaven.' On the 7th of November, 1793, Gobet, the Bishop of Paris, attended by his Vicars-General, entered the hall of the Legislature, tore off his ecclesiastical robes, and abjured Christianity; declaring that the only religion thenceforth should be the religion of liberty, equality, and morality.' His language was echoed with acclamation. A still more consummate blasphemy was to follow. Within a few days after, the municipality presented a veiled female to the assembly, as the Goddess of Reason, with the fearful words, There is no God; the worship of Reason shall exist in his stead!' The assembly bowed before her, and worshipped. She was

then borne in triumph to the cathedral of Paris, placed on the high altar, and worshipped by the public authorities and the people. The name of the cathedral was thenceforth the Temple of Reason. Atheism was enthroned. Treason to the majesty of God had reached its height. No more gigantic insult could be hurled against Heaven.

"But persecution had still its work. All the churches of the republic were closed. All the rites of religion were forbidden. Baptism and the communion were to be administered no more. The seventh day was to be no longer sacred; but a tenth was substituted; and on that day a public orator was appointed to read a discourse on the wisdom of Atheism. The reign of the demon was now resistless. While Voltaire and Marat (infidelity and massacre personified) were raised to the honours of idolatry, the tombs of the kings, warriors, and statesmen of France were torn open, and the reliques of men whose names were a national glory tossed about in the licentious sport of the populace. Immortality was publicly pronounced a dream; and on the gates of the cemeteries was written, Death is an eternal sleep.' In this general outburst of frenzy, all the forms and feelings of religion, true and false, were alike trodden under the feet of the multitude. The Scriptures, the lamps of the holy place, had fallen in the general fall of the temple. But they were not without their peculiar indignity: the copies of the Bible were publicly insulted; they were contemptuously burned in the havoc of the religious libraries; in Lyons, the capital of the south, where Protestantism had once erected her especial church, and where still a remnant worshipped in its ruins, an ass was actually made to drink the wine out of the communion cup, and

"Alison, vol. ii."

was afterwards led in public procession through the streets, dragging the Bible at its heels! The example of those horrors stimulated the daring of infidelity in every part of the Continent. France, always modelling the mind of Europe, now still more powerfully impressed her image, while every nation was beginning to glow with fires like her own. Recklessness, licentiousness, and blasphemy, were the characters and credentials by which the leaders of overthrow, in every land, ostentatiously proceeded to make good their claims to French regeneration. The Scriptures, long lost to the people, in the whole extent of Romish Christendom, were now still more decisively undone. No effort was made to reinstate them by the Romish Church. Thus spake the prophecy, They shall lie in the street of the great city.' They shall be dead, and abandoned to all the barbarous contumelies of the persecutor, refusing the last rites of humanity to his victim; ' and they shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves.'

"Why do I thus dwell on topics whose very touch makes the blood run cold? Why thus, with shuddering hand, lift up the gory folds of the shroud that wraps the dead rebellion? Why thus call on you to follow me from depth to depth of history, until we seem to have reached the borders of the kingdom of darkness, and exchanged the language of man for the sounds and maledictions of the undone ?

Certainly not in any desire to re-imprint the stamp of reprobation on that ill. omened people. Certainly not to harass your minds by gratuitous remembrances of human crime. But if we may unpresumptuously penetrate the will of Providence, it was then its will to show to all mankind the necessity of religion, even for the common purposes of society; the infinite value of that divine Spirit, which, like His rain shed upon the just and the unjust, the God of all power and mercy sheds even upon the partial and worldly economy of nations. Now, for the first time, man was to make the dreadful experiment of trusting altogether to his own nature. Despotisms had been subtle, ambitious, and revengeful; republics stern and cruel; democracies wild, capricious, and sanguinary. But there was still a saving principle: religion was not altogether abjured; and, deeply as the true God was lost to human view, in the incense offered to the passions and imaginations of man, that Holy Spirit which strove with the generations before the flood, still hovered above the darkness of the earth, and infused peace into its

reluctant bosom. But, now all religion. was abjured; and, as the act was utterly without example, so were the horrors that instantly followed. Vice itself assumed a blacker hue. A hundred thousand heads must fall!' was the unequivocal principle of the leaders of the state. The fact outran the calculation, and the mas sacre amounted to millions. The scaf fold groaned from morning till night. The leaders themselves were successively swept away in the cataract of blood which they had let loose. Atheism, the last fury of the mind, had brought in Anarchy, the last torturer of nations." (Pp. 22—25.)

Dr. Croly pays the following just tribute to the Bible Society :

"In less than a year from the death. blow of the Papal supremacy in France, an impression on the mind of an individual in our country, which entirely bore the shape of accident, began the most astonishing delivery of the Scriptures that the world has ever seen. It is only justice to the Church of England to say, that from her first existence, she had made the propagation of the Gospel a principle; and had even formed an Institution for the express purpose, a hundred years ago. (1698.) But the truc triumph was not to be anticipated; it the hour had sounded, the gates were must await the prophetic time; and when thrown open, and it went forth, distending over the globe. That triumph still advances, with unabated force and lustre. The liberality of England, on a scale of

"In 1803. The actual formation of the Bible Society dates from March 7th, 1804. It originated in a casual call for some Welsh Bibles."

"The Bible, either in the whole or in part, has now been translated into one hundred

and fifty-eight languages. Without adverting to the various colours of opinion subsisting between the Society of the Es

tablished Church and the General Bible Society, distinctions which, perhaps, by increasing the circumspection and activity of both, may have the ultimate effect of aiding the common cause, we are to remember, that the world beside is engaged, without a sense or care of these local distinctions. The two Americas, France, Germany, Russia, Greece, South Africa, India, New South Wales, the Islands of the Pacific, &c. &c.,-the whole round of human habitancy is engaged in this service. Probably not less than the astonishing sum of a quarter of a million sterling is annually expended by the various Societies of the old and new worlds."

magnitude which rises to the sublime, has awoke the liberality of every Christian land; until the extension of the Scriptures is nearly commensurate with the remotest tribes of the scattered family of man.

And this broad and powerful impulse, this boundless unanimity of purpose, among the thousand shapes and shades of the human mind, is so utterly incapable of being accounted for on human motives, that we are driven to a higher source, and can find its solution only in that authority, which divinely coerces and softens the stubbornness of man. Yes, if we find every face of man upturned to the same light, and exulting in its rays as it traverses the globe; what stronger assurance can we require, that it is not the work of human hands,- that it is not partial, feeble, earth-born,—that its motion is not within the circle of our light and shade,-that the giant rejoicing to run his course' has not borrowed his strength and splendour from less than the founts of heaven? Yes, more than man has been the inspirer, the guide, and the sustainer, of this magnificent ambition of conquering the darkness of the whole world. No vigour of British civilization, no ardour of British enterprise, no habitual British defiance of danger and toil in all the achievements of humanity, can account for it. I love to do honour to this glorious country. If the trumpet of perpetual fame were at my lips, I should love to inspire it with one long echo to the renown of England. The son is not worthy of her, who would not feel, like the dying Spartan, proud to inscribe her trophy with his last gore. But, if England led, and still leads, the march, who make up the host that follows? All nations, and peoples, and kindreds, and tongues,'-dwellers in every various region, and under every form of government,-friend and stranger,-millions who never heard each others' name before,-millions who never met before but in hostility,-all joining in one sacred league, to spread the Gospel; one vast civilized influence penetrating the general frame, and ameliorating mankind; vigorous and willing intellects starting out in this great cause, even from the native haunts of superstition, and barbaric life, as if a mighty hand had swept the moral firmament, and where all before was cloud and storm, revealed to the eye the calm glories of the lights of heaven. It is matter of record, that the two great Bible Societies of England, in the thirty years since their com

"Between two and three millions sterl

ing."

mencement, have sent forth upwards of ten millions of Bibles and Testaments, besides assisting the distribution of five millions more through foreign Societies. By the divine blessing on such labours, their resources have never shrunk,—a tide of wealth, that knows no ebb, rolls in upon them, and will roll, until they shall have done the full work of mercy, for which they have been commissioned by the Father of all. The Scriptures are now put beyond the power of human coercion; no tyranny can reach a Gospel which is already in the hands of all nations. The two witnesses have been made immortal, and, like Enoch and Elijah, have risen to a glory which defies the touch of man and the grave. They have been called up, in spirit, to the place of perpetual security, and perpetual splendour, to heaven.' The prophecy is fulfilled." (Pp. 30-32.)

Of the result of the impending struggle between Protestantism and Popery, Dr. Croly's views are somewhat discouraging. That evangelical truth, in all its primitive purity, will ultimately prevail, there can be no doubt; "for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it;" but that, in the mean while, fearful calamities, to be inflicted by Popish tyranny and cruelty, may await some of the Churches of Protestant Christendom, there is too much reason to apprehend. At all events, it is right that British Protestants should be duly apprized of the peculiarity of their present situation; exposed as their institutions are to the combined hostility of Popery and Infidelity, even in the Senate. Like a faithful watchman, Dr. Croly sounds an alarm :

"Are we to be blind to the fact, of the sudden rise, nay, flight of Popery, in our days, to power, and the very highest power; the breadth of wing and sharpness of talon, with which that vulture has grasped the pinnacle of the state, and already counts her carcases below?