shone suddenly about me: it came by a heavenly means, the Word: it opened heaven and discovered heavenly things; and its whole tendency was heaven-ward. It was a true light, giving true manifestations of the one God, the one Mediator between God and man, and a true view of my state with respect to God, not according to my foolish imaginations. It was a distinct and clear light, not only representing spiritual things, but manifesting them in their glory, and in their comely order. It set all things in their due line of subordination to God, and gave distinct views of their genuine tendency. It was a satisfying light: the soul absolutely rested upon the discovery it made; it was assured of them; it could not doubt if it saw, or if the things were so as it represented them. It was a quickening, refreshing, healing light: it arose with healing in its wings. It was a powerful light: it dissipated that thick darkness which overspread my mind, and made all those frightful temptations that before tormented me, instantly flee before it. Lastly, it was a composing light: it did not, like a flash of lightning, fill the soul with fear and amazement, but it quieted my mind, and gave me the full and free use of all my faculties. I need not give a larger account of this light, for no words can give a notion of light to the blind: and he that has eyes (at least while he sees it) will need no words to describe it."

This is a high mystic strain. But in the account of his death there are passages of the truest and finest feeling. When a long illness had well nigh done its work, he said, "I could not believe that I could have borne, and borne cheerfully, this rod so long. This is a miracle, pain without pain! Blessed be God that ever I was born. I have a father, a mother, and ten brothers and sisters in Heaven, and I shall be the eleventh! O blessed be the day that ever I was born!"-A few hours before he breathed his last, he said, "I was just thinking on the pleasant spot of earth I shall get to lie in beside Mr. Rutherford, Mr. Forrester, and Mr. Anderson. I shall come in as the little one among them, and I shall get my pleasant George in my hand, (a child who was gone before him,) and oh! we shall be a knot of bonny dust!" I hope there are but few readers whose hearts are in so diseased a state as not to feel and understand the beauty and the value of these extracts.

NOTE XXIV. Page 243.

Ravings of the persecuted Hugonots.

ONE of the Camisards is said to have "declared that God had revealed to him that a temple of white marble, adorned with gold fillets, and the tables of the law written on it, would drop down from Heaven in the midst of the valley of St. Privet, for the comfort of the faithful inhabitants of the Upper Cevennes."-Hist. of the Camisards, 1709.

Burnet says (vol. iv. p. 15.) they had many among them who seemed qualified in a very singular manner to be teachers of the rest. They had a great measure of zeal, without any learning; they scarce had any edu- · cation at all. I spoke with the person who by the Queen's order sent one among them to know the state of their affairs. I read some of the letters which he brought from them, full of a sublime zeal and piety, expressing a courage and confidence that could not be daunted. One instance of this was, that they all agreed that if any of them was so wounded in an engagement with the enemy that he could not be brought off, he should be shot dead rather than be left alive to fall into the enemy's hands.

He says also that a connivance at their own way of worship was offered them, but "they seemed resolved to accept of nothing less than the restoring their edicts to them."

NOTE XXV. Page 266.

The Druidical Superstition cherished in a later age.

The Druids are spoken of in Irish hagiology as possessing great influence in Ireland in St. Patrick's time. Bad as this authority is, it may be trusted here:-but the reader may find proofs, as convincing as they are curious, of the long continuance of the superstition in Wales, in Mr. Davies's Mythology of the Druids.

NOTE XXVI. Page 266.

Preaching at a Cross.

-Mos est Saxonica gentis, quod in nonnullis nobilium bonorumque hominum prædiis, non ecclesiam sed sanctæ crucis signum, Domino dicatum, cum magna honore almum, in alto erectum, ad commodam diurnæ orationis sedulitatem, solent habere.

Hodoeporicon S. Willibaldi, apud Canisium. t. 2. p. 107.

"The ancient course of the clergy's officiating only pro tempore in parochial churches, whilst they received maintenance from the cathedral church, continued in England till about the year 700. For Bede plainly intimates that at that time the Bishop and his clergy lived together and had all things common, as they had in the primitive church in the days of the apostles." Bingham, book 5. ch. 6. § 5.

NOTE XXVII. Page 269.

The Papal System.

THERE is a most fantastic passage upon this subject in Hobbe's Leviathan, one of the last books in which any thing so whimsical might be expected.

"From the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for Bishop Universal, by pretence of succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy, or kingdome of darkness, may be compared not unfitly to the kingdome of fairies; that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits, and the feats they play in the night; and if a man consider the originall of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Romane empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof; for so did the Papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruines of that heathen power.

"The language, also, which they use, both in the churches, and in their publique acts, being Latine, which is not commonly used by any nation now in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Romane language?

"The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, Prince of dæmons. The ecclesiastiques, likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universall king, the Pope.

"The ecclesiastiques are spirituall men, and ghostly fathers. The fairies are spirits and ghosts. Fairies and ghosts inhabite darkness, solitudes, and graves. The ecclesiastiques walke in obscurity of doctrine, in monasteries, churches and church-yards.

VOL. I.

50

"The ecclesiastiques have their cathedrall churches; which, in what town soever they be erected, by virtue of holy water, and certain charmes called exorcismes, have the power to make these townes and cities, that is to say, seats of empire. The fairies also have their enchanted castles, and certain gigantique ghosts, that domineer over the regions round about them.

The fairies are not to be seized on, and brought to answer for the hurt they do; so also the ecclesiastiques vanish away from the tribunals of civill justice.

"The ecclesiastiques take from young men, the use of reason, by certain charmes compounded of metaphysiques, and miracles, and traditions, and abused Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else, but to execute what they command them. The fairies likewise are said to take young children out of their cradles, and to change them into natural fools, which common people do therefore call elves, and are apt to mischief.

"In what shop, or operatory, the fairies make their enchantment, the old wives have not determined. But the operatories of the clergy are well enough known to be the universities, that received their discipline from authority pontifical.

"When the fairies are displeased with any body, they are said to send their elves, to pinch them. The ecclesiastiques, when they are displeased with any civil state, make also their elves, that is superstitious, enchanted subjects, to pinch their princes, by preaching sedition: or one prince enchanted with promises, to pinch another.

"The fairies marry not: but there be amongst them incubi, that have copulation with flesh and blood. The priests also marry not.

"The ecclesiastiques take the cream of the land, by donations of ignorant men, that stand in awe of them, and by tythes: so also it is in the fable of fairies, that they enter into the dairies and feast upon the cream, which they skim from the milk.

"What kind of money is currant in the kingdome of fairies, is not recorded in the story. But the ecclesiastiques in their receipts accept of the same money that we doe; though when they are to make any payment, it is in canonizations, indulgencies, and masses.

"To this, and such like resemblances between the Papacy and the kingdome of fairies, may be added this; that as the fairies have no existence, but in the fancies of ignorant people, rising from the traditions of old wives or old poets, so the spiritual power of the Pope without the bounds of his own civil dominion, consisteth onely in the fear that seduced people stand in, of their excommunications upon hearing of false miracles, false traditions, and false interpretations of the Scripture.

"It was not, therefore, a very difficult matter for Henry VIII. by his Exorcisme; nor for Queen Elizabeth, by hers, to cast them out. But who knows that this spirit of Rome, now gone out, and walking by missions through the dry places of China, Japan, and the Indies, that yeild him little fruit, may not return, or rather an assembly of spirits worse than he enter, and inhabite this clean swept house, and make the end thereof worse than the beginning ?"

NOTE XXVIII. Page 271.

Plunder of the Church at the Reformation.

"My Lords and Masters, (says Latimer, in one of his sermons,) I say that all such proceedings, as far as I can perceive, do intend plainly to make the yeomanry slavery, and the clergy shavery. We of the clergy

had too much, but this is taken away, and now we have too little. But for mine own part I have no cause to complain, for I thank God and the King I have sufficient, and God is my judge, I came not to crave of any man any thing; but I know them that have too little. There lyeth a great matter by these appropriations, great reformation is to be had in them. I know where is a great market town, with divers hamlets and inhabitants, where do rise yearly of their labours to the value of fifty pound; and the vicar that serveth (being so great a cure) hath but 12 or 14 marks by year; so that of this pension he is not able to buy him books, nor give his neighbours drink; and all the great gain goeth another way."

"There are three Pees in a line of relation,-Patrons, Priests, People. Two of these Pees are made lean to make one P fat. Priests have lean livings, People lean souls, to make Patrons have fat purses." Adams's Heaven and Earth reconciled, p. 17. Thomas Adams had as honest a love of quips, quirks, puns, punnets, and pundigrions, as Fuller the Worthy himself. As the old ballad says,

No matter for that,

I like him the better therefore :

he resembles Fuller also in the felicity of his language, and the lively feeling with which he requently starts, as it were, upon the reader.Upon this subject he often gives vent to his indignation.

"As for the ministers that have livings," he says, "they are scarce liveons, or enough to keep themselves and their families living; and for those that have none, they may make themselves merry with their learning if they have no money, for they that bought the patronages must needs sell the presentations; vendere jure potest, emerat ille prius: and then, if Balaam's ass hath but an audible voice, and a soluble purse, he shall be preferred before his master, were he ten prophets. If this weather hold, Julian need not send learning into exile, for no parent will be so irreligious as with great expenses to bring up his child at once to misery and sin. Oh think of this, if your impudence have left any blood of shame in your faces: cannot you spare out of all your riot some crumme of liberality to the poor needy and neglected gospel? Shall the Papists so outbid us, and in the view of their prodigality laugh our miserableness to scorn? Shall they twit us that our Our Father hath taken from the Church what their Pater Noster bestowed on it? Shall they bid us bate of our faith, and better our charity ?”

Adams's Heaven and Earth reconciled, p. 22..

In another of his works he says, “They have raised church livings to four and five years' purchase; and it is to be feared they will shortly rack up presentative livings to as high a rate as they did their impropriations, when they would sell them. For they say few will give above sixteen years' purchase for an impropriate parsonage; and I have heard some rate the donation of a benefice they must give at ten years: what with the present money they must have, and with reservation of tythes, and such unconscionable tricks; as if there was no God in Heaven to see or punish it! Perhaps some will not take so much but most will take some enough to impoverish the Church: to enrich their own purses, to damn their souls.

"One would think it was sacrilege enough to rob God of his main tythes; must they also trimme away the shreds? Must they needs shrink the old cloth (enough to apparel the Church) as the cheating

* Leavings Lot Livings, says the marginal note.

taylor did to a dozen buttons? Having full gorged themselves with the parsonages, must they pick the bones of the vicarages too?— Well saith St. Augustine, multi in hac vita manducant, quod postea apud inferos digerunt: many devour that in this life, which they shall digest in Heil.

"These are the Church briars, which (let alone) will at last bring as famous a Church as any Christendom hath to beggary. Politic men begin apace already to withhold their children from schools and universities. Any profession else better likes them, as knowing they may live well in whatsoever calling save in the ministry. The time was that Christ threw the buyers and sellers out of the Temple: but now the buyers and sellers have thrown him out of the Temple. Yea, they will throw the Church out of the Church, if they be not stayed."

Adams's Divine Herball, p. 135.

"The Rob-Altar is a huge drinker. He loves, like Belshazzar, to drink only in the goblets of the Temple. Woe unto him; he carouses the wine he never sweat for, and keeps the poor minister thirsty. The tenth sheep is his diet: the tenth fleece (O'tis a golden fleece, he thinks) is his drink but the wool shall choke him. Some drink down whole churches and steeples; but the bells shall ring in their bellies." Adams's Divine Herball, p. 27. "He provides

"What an unreasonable Devil is this!" says Latimer. a great while before hand for the time that is to come; he hath brought up now of late the most monstrous kind of covetousness that ever was heard of; he hath invented a fee-farming of benefices, and all to delay the offices of preaching; insomuch that when any man hereafter shall have a benefice, he may go where he will for any house he shall have to dwell upon, or any glebe land to keep hospitality withall; but he must take up a chamber in an alehouse, and there sit and play at the tables all day."-Latimer.

NOTE XXIX. Page 272.

Cures given to any Person who could be found miserable enough to

accept them.

"I will not speak now of them, that being not content with lands and rents, do catch into their hands spiritual livings, as parsonages and such like, and that under the pretence to make provision for their houses. What hurt and damage this realm of England doth sustain by that devilish kind of provision for gentlemen's houses, knights' and lords' houses, they can tell best, that do travel in the countries, and see with their eyes great parishes and market towns, with innumerable others, to be utterly destitute of God's word, and that because that these greedy men have spoiled the livings, and gotten them into their hands: and instead of a faithful and painful teacher, they hire a Sir John, who hath better skill at playing at tables, or in keeping of a garden, than in God's word; and he for a trifle doth serve the cure, and so help to bring the people of God in danger of their souls. And all those serve to accomplish the abominable pride of such gentlemen, which consume the goods of the people (which ought to have been bestowed upon a learned minister) in costly apparel, belly cheer, or in building of gorgeous houses."

Augustin Bernher's Epistle Dedicatory, prefixed to Latimer's Sermons. "It is a great charge," says Latimer, "a great burthen before God to be a patron. For every patron, when he doth not diligently endeavour himself to place a good and godly man in his benefice which is in his