the same, by the ministers, elders, and deacons of the isles of Guernsey and Jersey, Sark and Alderney, confirmed by the authority, and in the presence of the governors of the same isles, in a synod holden in Guernsey, June 28, 1576; and afterwards revived by the said ministers and elders, and confirmed by the said governors in a synod, holden in Jersey the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 17th days of October, 1577. The book consists of 20 chapters, and each chapter of several articles, which were constantly observed in these islands till the latter end of the reign of King James the first, when the liturgy of the church of England supplanted it.* Though the papists were the Queen's most dangerous enemies, her majesty had a peculiar tenderness for them ;$ she frequently released them out of prison, and connived at their religious assemblies, of whicht here were above 500 in England at this time: Many of the Queen's subjects resorted to the Portugal ambassador's house in Charter-house yard, where mass was publicly celebrated; and because the sheriff's and recorder of London disturbed them, they were committed to the Fleet by the Queen's express command. At the same time they were practising against theQueen's life: And that their religion might not die with the present age, seminaries were erected and endowed, in several parts of Europe, for the education of English youth, and for providing a succession of missionaries to be sent into England for the propagation of their faith. The first of these was erected when the kingdom was excommunicated; after which many others were founded, to the unspeakable prejudice of the protestant religion. To set them before the reader in one view: Colleges were erected at the following places: The 1st at Douay, 2d at Rome, 7th at Louvaine, 8th at Liege, 9th at Ghent, 1569, by Philip King of Spain. 1596, by the same. 1606, by Joseph Creswel, Jesuit. *Heylin's Aerius Ridivivus, p. 276. § Strype's Annals, p. 329, 410. The popish nobility and gentry sent over their children to these colleges for education,* and it is incredible what a mass of money was collected in England for their mainten, ance, by their provincials, sub-provincials, assistants, agents, coadjutors, familiars, &c. out of the estates of such catholics as were possessed of abbey lands; the pope dispensing with their holding them on these considerations. The oath taken by every student at his admission was this: 66 "HAVING resolved to offer myself wholly up to di, "vine service, as much as I may, to fulfil the end for which "this our college was founded, I promise and swear, in the presence of Almighty GoD, that I am prepared from mine "heart, with the assistance of divine grace, in due time to "receive holy orders, and to return into England, to con"vert the souls of my countrymen and kindred, when, and "as often as it shall seem good to the superior of this col❝lege." The number of students educated in these colleges may be collected from hence; that whereas according to Saunders an eminent popish writer, there were but thirty old priests remaining in England, this year [1575] the two colleges of Douay and Rome alone, in a very few years, sent over 300; and it is not to be doubted, but there was a like proportion from the rest. About this time began to appear the family of love, which derived its pedigree from one Henry Nicholas,a Dutchman. By their confession of faith published this year, it appears that they were high enthusiasts; that they allegorized the doctrines of revelation, and, under a pretence of attaining to spiritual perfection, adopted some odd and whimsical opinions, while they grew too lax in their morals, being in their principles something akin to the quietists of the church of Rome, and the quakers among ourselves. They had their private assemblies for devotion, for which they tasted of the severities of the government. But the weight of the penal laws fell heaviest upon some of the German anabaptists, who refused to join with the ↑ De Schismat. Aug. p. 365. * Fuller, b. ix. p. 92. VOL. I. 44 Dutch or English churches: There were two sorts ofanabaptists that sprung up with the reformation in Germany; one was of those who differed only about the subject and mode of baptism, whether it should be administered to infants, or in any other manner than by dipping the whole body under water. But others, who bore that name, were meer enthusiasts, men of fierce and barbarous tempers, who broke out into a general revolt, and raised the war called the rustic war. They had an unintelligible way of talking of religion, which they usually turned into allegory; and these being joined in the common name of anabaptists, brought the others under an ill-character. Twenty-seven of them were apprehended in a private house without Aldersgate-Bars, on Easter-day, 1575, where they were assembled for worship: Of these, four recanted the following errors, (1.) That Christ took not flesh of the substance of the Virgin. (2.) That infants born of faithful parents ought to be rebaptized. (3.) That no christian man ought to be a magistrate. (4.) That it is not lawful for a christian man to take an oath. But others refusing to abjure, eleven of them, all Dutchmen, were condemned in the consistory of St. Paul's to be burnt, nine of whom were banished, and two suffered the extremity of the fire in Smithfield, July 22, 1575, viz. John Wielmacker and Hendrick Ter Woort. Thus the writ de Hæretico comburendo, which had hung up only in terrorem for 17 years, was taken down and put in execution upon these unhappy men. The Dutch congregation interceded earnestly for their lives; as did Mr. Fox the martyrologist, in an elegant Latin letter to the Queen, but she was immovable; so distant was her majesty from the tender spirit of her brother King Edward.* *The remarks of that valuable historian, Gerard Brandt, on these cruel proceedings are so just and liberal, that they deserve to be laid before the reader. "This severity, (says he) which was not the first that had been practised in England since the reformation.appeared to many protestants, who were still under the cross in Flanders and Brabant, both strange and incredible. They lamented that those who not long before had been persecuted themselves, were now harrassing others for the sake of their religion, and offering violence with fire and sword to the consciences of other men, though they had before taught, and that with 'great truth, that it did not belong to any mortal man to lord it over the A little before the burning of these heretics MATTHEW PARKER, archbishop of Canterbury, departed this life. He was born at Norwich, 1504, and educated in Bene't college, Cambridge. In the reign of King Edward VI.* he married and was therefore obliged to live privately under Queen Mary. Upon Queen Elizabeth's accession he was advanced to the archbishopric of Canterbury; and how he managed in that high station, may be collected from the foregoing history. He wrote a book entitled, Antiquitates Britannica, which shews him to have some skill in ecclesiastical antiquity; but he was a severe churchman; of a rough and unchurtly temper, and of high and arbitrary principles both in church and state; a slave to the prerogative and the supremacy; and a bitter enemy to the puritans, whom he persecuted to the length of his power, and beyond the limits of the law. His religion consisted in a servile obedience to the Queen's injunctions, and in regulating the public service of the church but his grace had too little 'consciences of others. That faith was the gift of God, and not to be implanted in the minds of men by any external force, but by the word of "God, and illumination of the holy spirit: that heresy was not a carnal but spiritual crime, and to be punished by God alone: that error and 'falshood were not to be overcome with violence but truth: that the obligation which the children of God lie under, is not to put others to death for the faith, but to die themselves in bearing witness to the truth.— Lastly, that the shedding of blood for the sake of religion is a mark of ANTICHRIST, who thereby sets himself in the judgment-seat of God, assuming to himself the dominion over conscience, which belongs to none • but God only." See Brandt's History of the Reformation in the Low Countries, quoted in Mr. Lindsey's second address to the youth of the two universities, p. 230, &c. or La Roche's abridgement of Brandt, p. 168. It should be added, that one ground of the odium which fell on those who were called anabaptists, was their deviation from the established creed, in their ideas concerning the person of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. Which shews in how very early a period of the reformation Unitarian sentiments arose among the more thoughtful and inquisitive; but the hand of power was lifted up to suppress their growth and spread. ED. * In this reign he was initiated into the exercise of power and measures of persecution: for in the year 1551, he was put into a commission with thirty other persons, for correcting and punishing anabaptists.--British Biography, vol. iii. p. 4. ED. + Life of Parker, p. 524. regard for public virtue; his entertainments and feastings being chiefly on the Lord's day nor do we read, among his episcopal qualities, of his diligent preaching or pious example. Fuller calls him a Parker indeed, careful to keep the fences, and shut the gates of discipline, against all such night-stealers as would invade the same; and indeed this was his chief excellence. He was a considerable benefactor to Bene't college, the place of his education, where he ordered his MS papers to be deposited, which have been of considerable service to the writers of the English reformation.* He died of the stone on the 17th of May, 1575, in the 72d year of his age, and was interred in Lambeth chapel the 6th of June following; where his body rested till the end of the civil wars; when Col. Scot, having purchased that palace for a mansion-house took down the monument, and buried the bones (says Mr. Strype†) in a stinking dung-hill, where they remained till some years after the restoration, when they were decently reposed near the place where the monument had stood, which was now again erected to his memory.‡ *It should be added, that literature was indebted to him for editions of our best ancient historians; Matthew of Westminster, Matthew Paris, Thomas Walsingham, and Asser's life of King Alfred. It should also, says Mr. Granger, be remembered to his honour, that he was the first founder of the society of antiquaries in England. ED. + Life of Parker, p. 499. As a balance to this, the bodies of nineteen or twenty puritan divines were dug up in Westminster-Abbey, and thrown into a pit in the yard, Dr. Trap, Mr. Marshal, Mr. Strong, &c. See in Strype, what a pompous funeral Parker had ordered for himself. ED. |