and only thing agreed upon by the Pilgrim Fathers before they left England, respecting their church-polity, was, "the reformation of the churches, according to the written Word of God." And the result to which they came was, that "the Congregational discipline was instituted by Christ and the apostles." "The parts of church government are all of them prescribed in the Word of God. So that it is not left in the power of men, officers, churches, or any State in the world, to add, or diminish, or alter any thing in the least measure therein." So say the Fathers in the Cambridge Platform, in which Eliot fully agreed with them. They believed that their church government was "prescribed in the Word of God," and "extracted out of the Word of God." This they regarded as giving it "divine right and authority." And they insisted on this in all their controversies. With this "conviction," they sought "to propagate" it. Were they all High Churchmen? Were Cotton, and Hooker, and Wilson, and Davenport, and Shepard, and Mitchell, and Mather, "as really Puseyites as can any where be found?"

If there is one thing on which the Congregational Churches of New England are at the present time more agreed than any other, it is, we believe, in referring to the New Testament as prescribing the principles of their polity. That Christ is the sole lawgiver in his church, that he has enacted certain laws for its government, that these are Congregational, and are found in the New Testament, are ground-truths in our polity. These fundamental principles are the basis of the works of Upham, Woods, Bacon, Punchard, Mitchell, and others who have written particularly on the subject. Dwight, Hopkins, Spring, Emmons, and others, were agreed in the same. Are all these men Puseyites? They have all founded their "preference for the Congregational form of church government" on the "prescriptions in the New Testament," and they have insisted upon these as imparting to it some divine right and authority. But this, so far from justly subjecting them to the charge of being High-Churchmen, in any odious sense, constitutes one cardinal point of the difference between them and High-Churchmen.

The life of Thomas Shepard, the fourth volume in the series, is written by Dr. Albro, the successor of Shepard, as pastor of the same church. The book is written in an easy and flowing style, which bears the reader along as on the quiet bosom of some mean

dering stream. You float on through rich meadows, and fertile fields, and you are regaled by the fragrance of sweet flowers, and the flavor of delicious fruits. The author has imparted a kind of life to even the dry bones of history. You know that you are looking upon a picture; but you are well-nigh beguiled into the belief, that it is the living original. It is so natural, so life-like, that when you finish the book, you almost imagine yourself to have been a fellow-pilgrim, and fellow-sufferer with the good old Puritan pastor. You seem to have heard him preach and pray, and to be still living under the influence of his fervid eloquence, and his earnest piety. Dr. Albro was peculiarly happy in the subject which circumstances assigned him. There is a beauty and a symmetry, and a moral elevation, in the character of Shepard, not surpassed by any of the Fathers.

"There is a kind of character in his life,

That, to the observer, doth his history
Fully unfold."

Jacobi says of Göthe's Autobiography, which Göthe had called "Imagination and Truth:" "I was a party to many of the events related, and can bear witness that the accounts of them are truer than the truth itself." So, in writing the biography of a man, there is a key-note, which of itself, will almost discover the whole melody and harmony of the subject. It will explain facts, and interpret motives and actions; and lead to a whole view, more like the man's own true self, than could be produced by any analytical or synthetical arrangement of the parts. Dr. Albro, we think, has struck the key-note in the music of Shepard's life.

He has also done good service in showing that the separation of the Fathers from the English Church, was not from fanaticism. It was occasioned by the enforcement of cruel Test Acts, and Conformity Laws. The design of the original reformers, in the Church of England, was never carried out. In the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, and in the reign of the Stuarts, the reformation went backward. Popish vestments and a semi-popish Liturgy, "the dangerous earnests of sliding back to Rome," were insisted on as essential to the true worship. Christianity was neither an objective doctrine, an inward life, nor a quickening power. But it was an external sign, a gorgeous ceremony.

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They hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, and with other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold and gewgaws, fetched from Aaron's wardrobe, or the flamen's vestry." Prelacy was the great Diana of the church," under whose inquisitorious and tyrannical duncery," says Milton, true and splendid wits could flourish." The Puritans were persecuted and oppressed. They were not allowed to preach or to teach. They were fined and imprisoned. They were whipped and mutilated. And, when they could endure no longer, they "fled into the wilderness," like the woman of the Apocalypse, before the great red dragon," where also, like her, they had a place, prepared of God." They brought with them a doctrine, "winnowed and sifted from the chaff of over-dated ceremonies," and a discipline drawn from the pure fountain of the Word of God. With this doctrine and this discipline, "they made the wilderness and the solitary place to be glad for them, and the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose."

Dr. Pond has written a few chapters in the fifth volume of this series, which will go far to disabuse the minds of his readers, in respect to certain allegations against Dr. Mather and his son, more particularly and deliberately made in President Quincy's History of Harvard University. Indeed, with those who have read the reviews of that history, which appeared in the American Biblical Repository, and especially in the first volume of this publication, nothing more was necessary effectually to impeach the character of the work for historical accuracy, and impartiality. Of President Quincy's reputation as a historian, these reviews have been thoroughly destructive, both in this country and in England. He had a case to make out in favor of liberal Christianity, and against orthodoxy. The reputation of the present college dynasty depended, in part, upon his gaining his point. This gave a partizan character to his whole work, and destroyed its value, except as containing rich materials for an impartial history. President Quincy judges his friends with less discrimination than might have been expected, and his foes with less charity. He sometimes approves with little discretion, and censures without magnanimity. His eye hunts for the follies of the wise, and the frailties of the good, if they do not pronounce his Shibboleth. In their noblest and loftiest actions, he suspects them of bad

motives, as some visionaries have supposed all high mountains to be hollow. He employs their diaries to convict them of a spirit and intentions, of which, he has not the magnanimity to say that they also prove them innocent. His treatment of the Mathers, is like that of physicians in post-mortem examination, not to discover the powers of life, but to descry and proclaim the nature and workings of disease. His partizan spirit, amounting sometimes almost to acrimony, disqualified him to write the history of such men as were most of the old, sturdy, orthodox Pilgrim Fathers. He is incapable of appreciating the central principle of their character, and is not competent to pass judgment upon them. He views them as under a cloud, which rests only upon his own mind. The dark and sombre hues with which their characters seem overcast, are in the organ, not in the object, of his vision. Remove the sectarian cataract from the eye, and let these same characters, so gloomy and discordant in his sight, be bathed in the sweet light of divine charity, and new and unexpected harmonies and beauties would be disclosed to him, as the result of those powers," which have striven and struggled in the drama of life." We do not complain of the eulogies bestowed upon his favorites. This is in the general direction of charity, although it may proceed from a spirit less divine. But we blame him chiefly for the acrimony, with which, contrary to both truth and charity, he has stigmatized some whom he considered as enemies.

It is the able defence of the Mathers, whom President Quincy had especially traduced, which seems to have occasioned this volume of Dr. Pond's to be regarded with somewhat of disfavor, by a reviewer of these Lives, in the January number of the North American Review. Admitting that President Quincy had judged Increase Mather, the father, with a little undue severity, the reviewer, as if to make up for the admission, is exceedingly liberal in contemptuous epithets, bestowed upon Cotton Mather, the son. "He was a conceited, vapory pedant; an ambitious, intriguing lover of notoriety. He accumulated more worthless learning than any man of his time, and made himself ridiculous by continually obtruding it." That the style of Cotton Mather was faulty, and that he made some attainments which were of more value in his time than ours, is very true. But that much valuable "learning" of the Fathers, is "worthless " to some of the children, simply because they do not know how to use it, and that

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some deep things seem shallow, for no other reason than that men have not length of line enough to sound them, is also true. The Alps even, appear vapory "to one standing in a mist; and truth, "which loves open dealing," seems "intriguing" to one who is convicted by it.

"The noble Brutus

Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious,"

Therefore ambitious Brutus and Cassius slew Cæsar.

"What private griefs they have, alas! I know not,

That made them do it."

The reviewer says, that "Dr. Pond makes a more direct attempt than any of his coadjutors to uphold and perpetuate certain peculiar views of the Puritans," which had been "generally allowed to pass into oblivion." Among these "peculiar views," are"the doctrine of devils," or the influence of fallen angels, and "special providence." Of the former he says: "We supposed it had no believer among intelligent men in our days;" and the latter he pronounces "the most irreligious of all religious notions. If the doctrine has any weight at all, it is gained at the expense of a general providence." Now, did he not know, that these two doctrines were never "peculiar to the Puritans?" Was he not aware, that they have had a place in the symbols of almost the entire church, Romish and Protestant, from the time of the apostles even down to "our days." Is the stigma of ignorance to be fastened upon such men as Dr. Pond, for adhering to doctrines which are most sincerely believed by nine-tenths of Christendom? Is this almost universal inculcation of religious sentiments, allowing them "to pass into oblivion"? Special providence the most irreligious of all religious notions!" We do not marvel that the "learning" of the Fathers, should seem "worthless," to one who has discarded the doctrines which were so ably defended by that learning. It is nothing new that the Fathers should even be thought to have made themselves "ridiculous," in thus "obtruding it," by one who affirms a particular providence to be incompatible with a general providence, and the most irreligious of all religious notions.

But what is the doctrine of special providence? It "evidently," says the reviewer, "has no other foundation than this; that men think they can detect God's purpose and presence more