unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity, as being used when men most sequester themselves from action. The reason

hereof is an admirable facility which music hath to express and represent to the mind, more inwardly than any other sensible mean, the very standing, rising, and falling, the very steps and inflections every way, the turns and varieties of all passions whereunto the mind is subject; yea, so to imitate them, that, whether it resembles unto us the same state wherein our minds already are, or a clean contrary, we are not more contentedly by the one confirmed, than changed and led away by the other. In harmony the very image and character even of virtue and vice is perceived, the mind delighted with their resemblances, and brought by having them often iterated into a love of the things themselves. For which cause there is nothing more contagious and pestilent than some kinds of harmony; than some nothing more strong and potent unto good. And that there is such a difference of one kind from another we need no proof but our own experience, inasmuch as we are at the hearing of some more inclined unto sorrow and heaviness, of some more mollified and softened in mind; one kind apter to stay and settle us, another to move and stir our affections: there is that draweth to a marvellous grave and sober mediocrity; there is also that carrieth as it were into ecstasies, filling the mind with an heavenly joy, and for the time in a manner severing it from the body: so that, although we lay altogether aside the consideration of ditty or matter, the very harmony of sounds being framed in due sort, and carried from the ear to the spiritual faculties of our souls, is by a native puissance and efficacy greatly available to bring to a perfect temper whatsoever is there troubled, apt as well to quicken the spirits as to allay that which is too eager, sovereign against melancholy and despair, forcible to draw forth tears of devotion, if the mind be such as can yield them, able both to move and to moderate all affections."

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Perseverance and Preservation.

"Of us who is here which cannot very soberly advise his brother? Sir, you must learn to strengthen your faith by that experience which heretofore you have had of God's great goodness towards you. Per ea quae agnoscas præstita, discas sperare promissa,-By these things which you have known performed, learn to hope for those things which are promised. Do you acknowledge to have received much? Let that make you certain to receive more. Habenti dabitur,-To him that hath more shall be given. When you doubt what you shall have, search what you have had at God's hands. Make this reckoning, that the benefits which He hath bestowed are bills obligatory, and sufficient sureties that He will bestow further. His present mercy is still a warrant of his future love, because 'whom He loveth, He loveth unto the end.' Is it not thus ? Yet if we could reckon up as many evident, clear, undoubted signs of God's reconciled love towards us, as there are years, —yea, days,—yea, hours, passed over our heads, all these set together have no such force to confirm our faith as the loss, and sometimes the only fear of losing, a little transitory good, credit, honour, or favour of men-a small calamity, a matter of nothing to breed a conceit, and such a conceit as is not easily again removed, that we are clean cast out of God's book, that He regards us not, that He looketh upon others, but passeth by us like a stranger to whom we are not known. Then we think, looking upon others, and comparing them with ourselves, Their tables are furnished day by day; earth and ashes are our bread: they sing to the lute, and they see their children dance before them; our hearts are heavy in our bodies as lead, our sighs beat as swift as a thick pulse, our tears do but wash the bed wherein we lie: the sun shineth fair upon their foreheads; we are hanged up like bottles in the smoke, cast into corners like the shreds of a broken pot: tell not us of the

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promises of God's favour, tell such as do reap the fruit of them; they belong not to us, they are made to others. The Lord be merciful to our weakness, but thus it is. Well, let the frailty of our nature, the subtilty of Satan, the force of our deceivable imaginations be, as we cannot deny but they are, things that threaten every moment the subversion of our faith, —faith, notwithstanding, is not hazarded by these things. As many as have entered their names in the mystical book of life, they have taken upon them a laboursome, a toilsome, a painful profession; but no man's security is like to theirs. 'Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to winnow thee as wheat;' here is our toil: 'But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not;' this is our safety. No man's condition so sure as ours. The prayer of Christ is more than sufficient to strengthen us, be we never so weak, and to overthrow all adversary power, be it never so strong and potent. His prayer must not exclude our labour their thoughts are vain, who think that their watching can preserve the city which God himself is not willing to keep. And are not theirs as vain, who think that God will keep the city, for which they themselves are not careful to watch? The husbandman may not therefore leave his plough, nor the merchant forsake his trade, because God hath promised, 'I will not forsake thee.' And do the promises of God concerning our stability, think you, make it a matter indifferent for us to use or not to use the means whereby to attend or not to attend to reading? to pray or not to pray, that 'we fall not into temptations?' Surely, if we look to stand in the faith of the sons of God, we must hourly, continually be providing and setting ourselves to strive. It was not the meaning of our Lord and Saviour in saying, 'Father, keep them in my name,' that we should be careless to keep ourselves. To our own safety, our own sedulity is required. And then blessed for ever and ever be that mother's child whose faith hath made him the child of God. The

WHO SHALL SEPARATE?

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earth may shake, the pillars of the world may tremble under us, the countenance of the heaven may be appalled, the sun may lose his light, the moon her beauty, the stars their glory; but concerning the man that trusted in God, if the fire have pronounced itself unable as much as to singe a hair of his head, if lions, beasts ravenous by nature, and keen with hunger, being set to devour, have as it were religiously adored the very flesh of the faithful man-what is there in the world that shall change his heart, overthrow his faith, alter his affection towards God, or the affection of God to him? If I be of this note, who shall make a separation between me and my God? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No; I am persuaded that neither tribulation, nor anguish, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor the sword, nor death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall ever prevail so far over me. I know in whom I have believed; I am not ignorant whose precious blood hath been shed for me; I have a Shepherd full of kindness, full of care, and full of power; unto Him I commit myself; His own finger hath engraven this sentence in the tables of my heart, 'Satan hath desired to winnow thee as wheat, but I have prayed that thy faith fail not' therefore the assurance of my hope I will labour to keep, as a jewel, unto the end; and by labour, through the gracious mediation of his prayer, I shall keep it."

But above Jewel, Hooker, and all the apologists of the Reformation and of the Church of England, the palm of popularity and public usefulness must be awarded to FOXE the martyrologist. Whilst an exile at Frankfort, in the days of

at Boston, Lincolnshire, 1517: died in London, April 18, 1587. the olden time, there is no spot so inexhaustible as the old One bright evening of last summer,-it was a Friday even

Queen Mary, he began to compile, from friends and eye-witnesses, all the particulars which they could recall regarding the lives and closing hours of the English martyrs; and by means of extensive correspondence, and by ransacking the public registers after his return to England, he brought together a prodigious mass of the most authentic information. The first volume of these "Acts and Monuments" appeared in 1563, and by order of Queen Elizabeth a copy was ordered to be placed in the common halls of bishops, deans, and heads of colleges, as well as in all churches and chapels throughout the kingdom. To what extent the order was carried out can scarcely now be ascertained; but the fact that the edition of 1684 is the ninth (in three volumes folio) is sufficient to prove that, considering its bulk and cost, its circulation had been prodigious. With its minute and affecting details, and with

ing, for our tour included three Hebrew synagogues,—a friend, whose fresh and catholic mind combines the love of olden worth with a hearty appreciation of our modern advantages, carried us the round of some favourite haunts-Sion College, the remaining bastions of London Wall, Barbers' Hall, with the wonderful picture by Hans Holbein, which its guardian assured us the late Sir Robert Peel used to visit almost every year. Knocking at the door of the sexton's house, beside St Giles's Church, Cripplegate, when it was already beginning to be dusk, we asked the old gentleman, "Can we see the church?" "No; you can't see it, for it is dark. But if you please you may come in." And through "the dim religious light" we found our way to the grave of Milton. After gazing a while at the bust erected over the spot by Mr Whitbread, we asked our conductor what else his church was famous for. "Well, at these altar-rails Oliver Cromwell was married, and Ben Jonson the player." "And have you the grave of any other great man besides Milton?" "Yes; that tablet near the altar is the monument of Speed the historian, and that other is Foxe the martyrologist." Many of our readers will also recollect that it was in Cripplegate Church-and the present edifice is one of the few old churches which escaped The Fire-that the famous series of morning lectures was delivered by the divines of the Commonwealth: "The Morning Exercise at Cripplegate;" and in the solemn "shut of day" it seemed easy to people the venerable fabric with the shades of Baxter and Matthew Mead, and the other great departed.