distingished legislators it encountered a severe oppositon. However, on the 15th of January, the bill passed: a protest being entered against it by the Earl of Derby, the bishops Boner, Tunstall, Repps, Aldrich, Skip, Heath, Thirlby, and Day.together with the Lords Dacre and Windsor. Thract provided, that the new service should be

ed in all churches on the following Whit-Sunday at farthest. Clergymen, refusing or neglecting to use it, were to forfeit, for the first offence, one year's income of their benefices; for the second, all their preferments, and to suffer a twelvemonth's imprisonment; for the third, they were to be imprisoned for life. Those who should libel the new offices by means of writing or printing, or who should endeavour by menaces to keep any priest from conformity, were to forfeit ten pounds for the first offence, twice that sum for the second, and all their goods for the third, besides being imprisoned for life. To the Universities was conceded the privilege of using the new service in Greek or Latin, excepting the Communion-office. No sooner had the work become a general subject of popular discussion, than attacks were levelled by the Romish party against two particulars in the preamble to the act. It was there stated, that the book had been drawn up" by one uniform agreement," and "by the aid of the Holy Ghost." Exceptions were made to the former of these assertions, as untrue, to the latter, as presumptuous. Positive untruth being, however, plainly out of the question, it seems D d

VOL. III.

probable, that nothing more was inte..desented to first instance, than to assert the unanimivines in actual compilers. The objectors, it is indeacons, presented this assertion as made of a larg by their mittee than that which really brought theclergyto a close. Even of such among the presh had commissioners as dissented from what was usurit is not, indeed, reasonable to suppose, that objections were very material. Every man of education was aware, that the new offices were either translated from Romish formularies, or were selected from Scripture. Hence there was no part of the compilation to which a learned Romanist would venture to object. All that he could allege against it related to its omissions. These were certainly numerous and important; wholly sweeping away the errors, absurdities, and fictions accumulated during the dark ages. In asserting, that their labours had been conducted under favour of Divine assistance, the liturgists, probably, meant only to intimate, that they had not forgotten to supplicate earnestly for that heavenly influence of which God has encouraged the expec

i "I myself have heard some Jesuits confess, that in the Liturgy of the Church of England, there is no positive error. And being pressed, why then they refused to come to our churches, and serve God with us? they answered, they could not do it, because, though our Liturgy had nothing in it ill, yet it wanted a great deal of that which was good, and was in their service." (Archbishop of Laud's conference with Fisher, the Jesuit. Lond. 1686. p. 200.) King Edward's first service-book was, however, still less offensive to Romish prejudices than the Liturgy used in Archbishop Laud's time.

distingut..ose who ask for it. While the comoppositic was in hand, the prayers of ecclesiastics the bill were claimed by royal proclamation for it by thho were thus occupied in providing for stall, piritual wants of their countrymen. By this Dayate of authority all preaching was suspended Tha time, "to the intent, that the whole clergy in this mean space, might apply themselves to prayer to Almighty God, for the better achieving of the same most godly intent and purpose'." By many devout spirits, in every part of England, it cannot be doubted, this proclamation was obeyed, as well as by the liturgical committee. Nor were the members of this justly censurable in claiming for their labours the sanction which they had every reason to expect. The integrity of their lives was notorious, the moderation of their proceedings undeniable, their attainments of the first order, and the result of their undertaking was strictly conformable to the recorded Word of God. Popes and councils, it should be recollected, had been wont to publish their decisions with an assertion that in making them the Holy Spirit was their guide. Such, however, of these eminent ecclesiastical authorities as were awakened to the knowledge of true religion, might reasonably fear to claim this sanction for all their judgments founded upon tradition ". This fatal defect not

* St. Luke xi. 13.

1 Collier, II. 262. "A blasphemous proverb was generally used, that, The Synod of Trent was guided by the Holy Ghost sent thither from time to time, in a cloak-bag from Rome." F. Paul. 497.

attaching to our Reformers, and being otherwise not unworthy, they were warranted in considering their labours as favoured from on high. They were, moreover, bound, in justice to their cause, to avow their honest conviction in a manner confident, though temperate. Eminent spiritual gifts had long been claimed by the Romish hierarchy as its exclusive inheritance, and its influence could not be destroyed, until men were shaken in their belief as to the validity of these claims. It became, therefore, the duty of those who laboured to reform the Catholic Church to insist, that their particular branch of it possessed every privilege promised by Christ to his faithful disciples. Hence they would have betrayed an injurious timidity, if they had forborne to assert, on a great public occasion, that they felt assured of having acted under that Divine guidance which Holy Scripture encourages pious Christians to expect in all their well-intentioned and well-directed undertakings. Had any unusual diffidence been displayed by the liturgical committee, it is indeed highly probable, that Romanists would have dwelt upon it as a proof, that the Reformers themselves distrusted the soundness of their cause. Such an impression respecting any party can never prevail without impairing its influence. The virtuous, learned, and enlightened divines, therefore, who re modelled the public devotions of Englishmen, displayed their usual wisdom in boldly assigning to their labours that heavenly character which individuals similarly

employed were wont to claim, and upon which those especially could calculate with reasonable assurance who rejected every thing, that was not either Scripture, or in unison with it.

The act to enforce the use of the new Liturgy contains a clause evidently intended to gratify the taste for devotional pieces in rhyme then prevalent, especially with the reforming party. Psalms, or prayers taken out of the Bible, were to be allowed in public worship, provided that no part of the legal service were omitted". Hymns in rhyme are of high antiquity in the West, and many such, some of them very pleasing, are admitted into the Latin service-books. The Bohemian and German Reformers published such pieces in their vernacular tongue, and Marot did the same thing in France about the year 1540. His version, which originally comprised thirty of David's Psalms, was no sooner published than it became highly popular. Even Francis I., and most of the licentious or thoughtless persons who figured at his court, committed these devotional poems to memory, adapted them to agreeable tunes, and sang them habitually. Marot afterwards presented his countrymen with twenty more of the Psalms in French rhyme. But this new publication appeared at Geneva, whither the poet had been obliged to flee in order to escape a prosecution for heresy. He died in 1544, and Beza then accomplished a metrical version of the

Collier, II. 263.