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Let us rejoice and praise God together, that our beloved brother and father in the faith has been hitherto so wonderfully upheld, that he has found so calm a retreat. Let us pray, that, in his sufferings for the truth's sake, according to his own honest convictions, the Lord of peace himself will give him peace-t -that peace which is the fruit of faithalways, by all means.

CHAPTER VIII.

WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING.

THERE are some facts connected with the reformation of the church in this country which are not generally known. They are full of interest, but what is more to the point, they are of deep importance; and we shall do well to notice them briefly. At the time when Queen Mary died, in 1558, the clergy of England were, with a few exceptions, Romanists. Scarcely a clergyman had been permitted to retain any cure or benefice who did not conform to the Roman Catholic ritual. On the 20th of May, 1559, six months after Elizabeth's accession, Bishop Cox writes to Weidner of Zurich, with whom he had taken refuge during Mary's persecution, "the nobility come every day over to us with many of the people, but not one of the clergy. They all stick together, as a body that may not be moved. Everything was done that reason and kindness could suggest for eight months, to induce them to conform to the reformed church. But it does not appear that the efforts which were used led to the voluntary conformity of a single individual."

Was it expected by the Romish clergy that the firmness of the Queen would give way? Instead of this, fresh laws were enacted by herself and her parliament more directly opposed to Romanism than before. The papistical bishops were required to take the oath of supremacy; and injunctions were prepared for the purpose of enforcing obedience to the law reinstating the English service-book. commission of visitation was sent through all the churches of England to enforce these injunctions; and the Report of it was brought to the Queen. That Report is still extant. Of the 9400 beneficed men in England, no more than fourteen bishops, six abbots, twelve deans, fifteen heads of colleges, fifty prebendaries, and eighty rectors of parishes, 177 in all, had left their benefices on account of their religion. The whole of the English clergy had conformed to the Queen's injunctions, and had read the Protestant service. In the June not one had recanted; in the July, with the exception of a mere fraction, every one had done so.

At this period the Jesuits were busily engaged everywhere; and it has been concluded, on good grounds, that the sudden conformity of the papal clergy in England was in obedience to secret orders from the court of Rome, and intended to further its designs. But other exertions, of a still more secret character, were also made by the Jesuits. Strype relates, that "One Samuel Mason, an Englishman, and a man of learning, bred a Jesuit in Paris, was converted to the Gospel in Ireland, in the year 1566. Sir H. Sidney, the Lord Lieutenant, made him his chaplain. In his recantation the said Mason disclosed the fact that, in 1560, Pope Pius IV. gave a dispensation to several of the most active and learned Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits, to preach among the Protestants in England wild doctrines on purpose to sow divisions, allowing even some of them to marry,

declaring that the marriage established by the Queen was no marriage. They were directed not to preach all after one manner; but to observe the places wherein they came. If Lutherism prevailed, then they were to preach Calvinism; and if Calvinism, then Lutherism. In England especially they were to preach either these, or John Huss's opinions, or anabaptism, or any doctrines that were contrary to the holy see of St Peter, by which their function would not be suspected, and yet they might still drive on the interests of the mother church, there being, as the Council of Trent had agreed, no better way to demolish the church of England's heresy than by mixtures of doctrines, and by adding of cere monies more than were at present permitted." That which gave the first ground and occasion of this vile project of the pope was this: that Calvin, the great minister of Geneva, had written to Archbishop Parker for a good understanding and union to be had among Protestants. Pope Pius had knowledge of this. He determined to use all designs and means in his power to prevent this union, and therefore granted indulgences to several orders of Rome to set up new tenets and principles of religion, in order to create dissensions, and disruptions, and disunions of every kind among Protestants. Upon these indulgences several of the English popish clergy returned to this country to distract the common peoples' heads with new founded opinions and fancies in religion, and all against the established liturgy. The circumstances attending the discovery of two of these delinquents are notorious. One of them was a William Blagrave, who was hanged at York. When taken several treasonable papers were found in his closet. He was so hardened, that when he went up the ladder he laughed in the Archbishop of York's face, telling him that the converts he had made would hate the church's liturgy as much as his

grace did Rome; and when the Archbishop desired to know who they were, he refused to tell, but said he hoped they would be ashamed of their folly, that is, in retaining the unsound doctrines he had taught them, on purpose to divide them from other Protestants, and that they would turn back again to their mother principles of Romanism and not to heresy. Another of these papal emissaries was one Thomas Heath, the brother of the late Archbishop of York in Mary's days. After preaching in various parts of England he came to Rochester, and applied to the dean as a poor minister seeking some preferment. "The dean," says Strype, "gave him a turn of preaching in the cathedral. In his sermon he had some strokes that looked towards Puritanism: for he said of the prayers that were made of the church for Peter, without ceasing, that they were not such prayers as were then used by the church of England. By hap, in the pulpit, he let fall a letter writ to him under the name of Thomas Hind, from one Malt, an eminent English Jesuit, at Madrid, which contained directions how he should manage himself on his mission. This letter being taken up by the sexton to Guest, the bishop, he examined him, and made so close a use of the letter that he made him confess himself at length a Jesuit, though at first he pretended that, though he had been a Jesuit, he had wholly fallen off from that order, that indeed he was not so wholly of the Episcopal party, but laboured to refine Protestants, and take off all smacks of ceremonies that did in the least tend towards the Romish faith."

After this they searched his chambers, when in his boots were found beads, a license from the Jesuits, a bull from Pius the IVth to preach what doctrine that society pleased, for the dividing of Protestants, and particularly among the English Protestants; and in his trunk several books against infant bap

tism, and divers other dangerous papers seized.

were

These secret plots, and wily practices of the Romish church were still carried on up to the period about which we are speaking. There is no reason to suppose that they have ever wholly ceased; and in the present day we have good ground for knowing that they have been renewed with fresh vigour. But to return to the times of the Stuarts. We may refer to the life of Usher, where we are told that Sir W. Boswell, in a letter to Laud, dated from the Hague, in 1640, informs him that above sixty Romish clergymen had gone within two years from France, to preach the Scotch covenant, and the rules of that kirk; and to spread the same about the northern coast of England: and that their great object was to effect the ruin of English Episcopacy. Also that Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, in 1654, assured Archbishop Usher, that in 1646, by order from Rome, above a hundred of the Romish clergy were sent into England, consisting of English, Scotch, and Irish, who had been educated for the above mentioned purpose; and that there were many priests at Paris preparing to be sent over, who held meetings twice a week, in which they opposed one another; some pretending to be for Presbytery, others for Independency, and others for Anabaptism, that their qualifications for the work in which they were to engage were judged of by the learned superiors of some of the convents; that the parties were entered in the registers of their respective orders, but with different names, which they were to use and change as circumstances might require. From these facts, and it would be easy to multiply them, we have surely a key to many of those violent dissensions, and of much of that unbecoming and unchristian language between men of opposite opinions, which have been reported, as occurring

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