with the Apostles, which like all such conferences, produced "much disputing," till Peter rising up, and having announced his successful conversion of the Gentiles, protested against a return to their obsolete rites. The Apostle rested his salvation, not on a Ritual, but "on the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ." Proceeding as they now were, with such great success, the Apostle exclaimed, "Now therefore why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our Fathers, nor we were able to bear?" This open confession of the Apostle is remarkable. The rites, or rather the ceremonies of Judaism, had sunk into an inextricable mass of the minutest and most harassing superstitions. Religion looked like witchcraft- and the Pharisees, ostentatiously austere, with inquisitorial terror, had inflicted on their people the brutalizing bondage of passive obedience. The attempt to renew these multiplied ceremonies was thwarting the spirit of the mighty Reformation of Judaism, Knox discovered that the Apostolical toleration was pointed against his own unrelenting conduct to those who however inclined to the new Reformation, yet still looked on the mass with religious emotions. How true is it that men in parallel situations necessarily move on similar principles.--Knox Hist. Ref. of Scotland, i. 143. (Ed. 1814.)

and would have contracted the influence of that more beautiful system which initiated its votaries on far easier terms. A baptism of blood was changed to a baptism of water: mercy and not sacrifice was now the hope of man; the Revelation which had remained incomplete was now accomplished by "the Saviour who had abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light." The early proselytes to Christianity unquestionably would have been diminished in number, had they been compelled to return to the old Jewish bondage.

The leading object of St. Paul's reform was to do away "all the differences of days and times," such as "Sabbaths, new moons, circumcision with distinctions of meat and drink. The whole code of Moses was repealed, the rites and ceremonies were declared to be but "a shadow of things to come," ""* types of the new Revelation, Judaism was but an adumbration of Christianity.

In the East, Christians chiefly of Hebrew descent still lingered in their old customs; the Jewish Sabbath, and even the rite of circumcision were permitted as indifferent matters, that, as we are told, "the Mother Synagogue might

* Colossians ii. 17.

writers of the history of the United Provinces trace their foundation "to the prevalent opinions of Luther and Calvin." The long-protracted civil war of Spain with her Provinces, was declared against heresy and psalm-singing! A great political revolution was now operating throughout Europe, in the establishment of the potent Republic, which their first leaders had never contemplated; and in the Reformation in Germany, which had penetrated far into France. England was yet to be tried. Religion had been converted into politics, and politics was now inextricably connected with religion. Whenever a party struggles for predominance in the state, it necessarily becomes a political body. There remains one more investigation—the history of the English Puritans. They were the friends and the martyrs of civil liberty; but how happened it, that they proved to be its greatest enemies? This historical enigma remains to be solved, and as we shall see, it has perplexed our most critical historians.

CHAPTER XIII.

CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE PURITANS CONPERPLEXING CONTRA

CLUDED. OF THE

DICTIONS IN THEIR POLITICAL CHARACTER, AND WHY THEY WERE AT ONCE THE ADVOCATES, AND THE ADVERSARIES, OF CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

RAPIN, although a foreigner, had been conversant with our language and our country. He had the sagacity to detect an obscure and indefinable line which seemed to separate these Puritans among themselves; and without taking the most comprehensive view of such important actors in our history, he drew this result, that there were, as he calls them, religious Puritans and state Puritans.

A recent French writer of our history, as a foreigner, is at a loss to adjust the contradictory statements, and the opposite results he found among our own writers, in regard to our Pu

ritans. He is himself struck by men whose piety was so seriously occupied by the most frivolous objects, yet who maintained their cause by the magnanimity of their heroic sufferings. He perceived that this extraordinary race eagerly rejected all "superstitions" with the very spirit of superstition itself. He is delighted at their aspirations after freedom, but he is startled at their open avowal of intolerance. In truth, the history of the Puritans, as connected with the religion and the government of England, is a history peculiar to ourselves; nor is it for the foreigner to comprehend, what even the natives themselves have frequently been at a loss to define.

Honest Fuller, in his Church History, felt a peculiar tenderness in the adoption of the very term Puritan, as being a name subject to several senses; much like the modern term Evangelical; it was ridiculous and odious in profane mouths, yet often applicable to persons who laboured for a life pure and holy. To prevent exceptions, he requests his reader to recollect that should the name casually slip from his pen, he is only to understand by it, Non-conformist. However he divides them into two classes, the mild and moderate, and