FROM JAMES THE FIFTH TO THE COMMONWEALTH.

REIGN OF JAMES V. 1526.

State Of Scotland-The First Introduction Of The New Testament In The English Language-Earliest Arrivals At Edinburgh And St. Andrews-Singular Condition Of The Country, And Especially Of Its Primate, At The Moment.

THE first introduction of the New Testament into England, by Tyndale, has been fully described, and it must have been felt how much the existing state of the country deepened our interest in that ever memorable event: the state of Scotland immediately before, and at the same moment, will complete the picture as to the entire island. For nearly eight, years longer, it is true, the inhabitants of both countries regarded each other with no amicable feeling. Monarch and people considered the interests of the two kingdoms to be perfectly distinct, and far from being disposed to union, they viewed each other with proverbial jealousy, and fought accordingly. In the year 1526, therefore, more especially after England had gained such influence in the north, the idea that the monarch of the inferior state would ultimately become the sovereign of the whole island, must have been treated with disdain; but that the change, when it did take place, whatever was the character of that King personally, would be overruled for introducing, to all alike, that Sacred Volume, which has been read ever since, is a result which would then have been regarded with equal scorn by both parties. Yet thus early, and whatever might be the feelings entertained, or sentiments then held, on either side of the Tweed, it seems as if the Governor among the nations, regarding them as only one people, had begun to act accordingly. If it shall turn out that the highest gift which He has ever bestowed upon both countries, was conveyed to them both at the same period; if the only effectual cement or remedy, for all local and petty antipathies, was then first supplied to both, however imperceptibly, and hitherto unnoticed, certainly the fact well deserves to be traced out, and will, it is presumed, fully reward attention.

In 1526, when the New Testament in English was, as far as is known, first introduced into Scotland, that kingdom was in a state of the greatest distraction. On looking over the criminal trials of the day, we see but one continued series of slaughter and theft, treason and deadly feud. James V. was yet a minor, and three parties had been struggling for the mastery; one, under the Earl of Arran and the Queen Mother, sister to Henry VIII.; another, under the Duke of Albany and James Beaten, Archbishop of St. Andrews; and the third, under the Earl of Angus and the Douglases, in the pay of England. The last of these soon gained the ascendency and seized the person of the young king, who, against his will, was kept in thraldom by this party. The other two parties united and did what they could to obtain the person of James. An appeal at length was made to the sword, but in the battle of Linlithgow, Angus was victorious, the Queen Mother had to esccape in disguise, and Beaton, the counsellor of the party, was compelled to provide for his personal safety, assuming the garb of a shepherd, and remaining on the hills for several months.

The news, on reaching the English court, were hailed with joy by Henry and his Cardinal; and from a letter of Sir Thomas More to the latter, it is evident that it was the policy of Wolsey to get Benton into his power, and that instructions were sent to Angus and his party to “provide and see so substantial order taken, that none evil weed have power to spring up too high.”f107 Archbishop Benton having exchanged his palace or castle for the hills, and his crosier for a shepherd’s crook, it had been well for himself, as well as the interests of humanity, had he abode by his occupation to the day of his death. At present, however, he could do nothing, and must keep as quiet as possible; but it will not be out of place or uninstructive to observe what was doing in England at the same moment.

Wolsey, as a politician, was evidently playing one of his double games with Scotland, as well as with the Continent; a proof of his consummate talents for worldly business all round him, in every direction; but he was now also enraged at the existence of Tyndale’s Testaments, recently detected in Antwerp, and straining every nerve to get them burnt; while Tunstal, Bishop of London, was not only authenticating the book for this end, but he and Warham of Canterbury, in October and November, were thundering out their injunctions against the Sacred Volume as “pestiferous poison.”

Now, after all that we have witnessed in England; while they were thus up in arms, and while Benton, the grand enemy in Scotland, was laid aside -wrapped up in his shepherd’s disguise, or tending his sheep on the hills-it would certainly be a curious and memorable coincidence, if the same sacred treasure was then arriving in Scotland at different ports, not excepting St. Andrews itself; if indeed the earliest copies had not secretly arrived in the course of the summer! But we shall see presently.

With regard to the first introduction into Scotland of the Sacred Volume in a printed form, the historian has never yet been able to proceed farther than a shrewd conjecture. It has been supposed that the translation of Tyndale may or must have found its way there; but when, how early, or by what recalls, we have never been told. If it can now be proved that the book was conveyed to Scotland as well as England, not only by the same method, but nearly about the same time, and certainly within the compass of the same year, the reader cannot fail to return with fresh interest to the period. This would be sufficient to render the year 1526 equally memorable in Caledonia, as in Old England.f108 In their commercial intercourse with the Continent, Scotland and England were altogether independent of each other, and the trade of the former with the Low Countries was of equally ancient standing; but it is of importance to observe, that, by this period, and by the authority of Parliament, the Scottish merchants generally went along with their goods, and that none were allowed to do so, but persons “able and of good fame.” So much the better, or more in favour of what was now to take place.

The reader can scarcely fail to remember what a battle was fought in Antwerp respecting the New Testaments of Tyndale, when first detected there, and how the Ambassador of England, John Hackett, got himself so embroiled in the business; Wolsey and Tunstal being not more fierce at home than he was abroad. Hackett’s object was to “see justice done” upon all such English books as were entitled “The New Testament.” By “justice done,” he meant burning them; and this he said was for “the preservation of the Christian faith.” Now it is in the very midst of this, the first onset in that long war, that we have positive information as to Scotland; and while it must be new to the reader, it happens to be fully as distinct as any we have read in the history of England, if not more so. Hackett was in busy correspondence both with Cardinal Wolsey and Brian Tuke, the Secretary of State. It was to the former he addressed a letter, dated from Mechlin, on Wednesday the 20th of February, 1526, that is, 1527; from which the following is an extract:- “Please your Grace to understand that since my last writing to your Grace, I have received none of yours. I trust by this time that your Grace has ample information of such execution and justice as has been done in the towns of Antwerp and Barrow (now Bergen-op- Zoom) upon all such English books as we could find in these countries, similar to three such other books as your Grace sent unto me, with my Lord the Bishop of London’s signature. “By my last writing to Mr. Brian Tuke (4 January, 1527) I advertised hint how that there were DIVERS merchants of Scotland that bought many of such like books, and took them into Scotland; a part to Edinburgh, and most part to the town of St. Andrews. “For the which cause, when I was at Barrow, being advertised that the Scottish ships were in Zealand, for there the said books were laden, I went suddenly thitherward, thinking, if I had found such stuff there, that I would cause to make as good a fire of them, as there has been done of the remnant in Brabant; but fortune would not that I should be in time; for the foresaid ships were departed a day afore my coming. So I must take patience for all my labour, with leaving My Lady Margaret’s letters, and good instructions with my Lord of Bever, and the...... Mr.... off...concerning the foresaid business”f109 Mons. de Bever, who was Lord of Campvere, and Admiral of Flanders, had been in London only in March 1525, as Ambassador from Lady Margaret, Regent of Flanders, and must have been fully aware of Wolsey’s imperious temper, as he had then insulted himself; but it is not a little remarkable, that, at this very moment, confidence in the Court of England was failing, if not gone; the double dealing of the Cardinal on the Continent had been detected, and for some time to come, no attention will be paid to any request from that quarter. The Lord of Campvere was not so likely therefore to quarrel with the Scottish traders at their own staple port; nor is there the slightest, evidence of Wolsey having conveyed the intelligence he had received to Scotland, a circumstance the more remarkable since he was so annoyed with the subject. He had, it is true, far higher game in prospect.

The sack of Rome itself first, and then his own splendid embassy to France, engrossed him; but, besides, when these last ships arrived, Beaten lay under his frown, and in concealment! Hackett, however, certainly refers to importations as already past; and as more business was done in summer than in autumn, the probability is, that even these were not the first Testaments. At all events, here the channel of conveyance was opened.

Besides Leith and St. Andrews, there were the ports of Dundee, Montrose, and Aberdeen, which all traded with Zealand; and as in Scotland there were no official steps taken against the New Testament by name, for at least five years after this, the book must have arrived, again and again, at all these ports. This is easily understood, after the scene we have witnessed in England, in the face of far greater and more vigilant opposition. But farther evidence awaits us.

Thus, although England and Scotland were washed by the same sea, the one country was to be, in no degree, dependent upon the other for the Word of Life; either at first, or for years to come. Into both, it was to be imported, and both were to stand alike on the same humble ground, as recipients. Nor when first conveyed, in either case, was it to be by some one man of great mental energy rising up, and rousing the attention of his countrymen to the truth of God. Quite the reverse. But having once made of the Scottish Primate a fugitive, in terror of his life, it was the God of Providence himself finding His way into the very metropolis of superstition, as well as other sea-ports; pouring contempt upon the crafty, and saying, in effect to the people of Scotland, as well as England, at the same moment-“From henceforth let no man glory in men; let veneration for foreign names, or for that of any man, who shall afterwards rise in either country, never be carried to an undue or idolatrous extent.”

For a number of years the same providential course of supply was steadily pursued; so that afterwards should any boasting or vain-glory, in connexion with Christianity, ever be heard, whether in the south or the north, a most singular foundation had been laid, for replying as Paul once did to his Corinthians, “What came the Word of God OUT from you, or came it UNTO YOU ONLY? For who made thee to differ? And what hast thou which thou didst not receive? ”-among all the other nations of Europe, by way of eminence, receive? Petty or narrow-minded rivalry has too often been evinced between England and Scotland, as to priority in smaller matters; but there was to be no room left for boasting in regard to the greatest of all. That such coincidence should never have been observed before, may indeed seem strange; but once pointed out, it certainly was not intended to be simply noticed, and so forgotten. Let it rather be improved, even at this late hour, to the praise of Him, who thus, in spite of every species of hostility, so signally conveyed His own word to the very camps of the enemy-to the north as well as the south, about the same period-to Edinburgh as well as London-to the mouth of the Eden at St. Andrews, and no doubt other places, as well as to the mouth of the Thames, or to Oxford and Cambridge! In this point of view, the year 1526 becomes by far the most remarkable in the annals of our common country. The New Testament thus conveyed to both countries, was dreaded and deprecated by both alike, and as an evil of the greatest magnitude. More than ten years, passed away in England, before their greatest national blessing was accepted or allowed by the sovereign; it was seventeen years before a similar allowance occurred in Scotland. Where then, ever since, has there been any ground for boasting? It is excluded; and that by the simple and authentic history of the Sacred Volume itself.

The Scriptures, however, once introduced, one is curious to inquire after the Archbishop. To an ambitious mind no punishment could be more severe than that of retirement and disguise, and Beaton was soon thoroughly sick of both; but he was very rich, and must now therefore try what money could effect. The Queen first ventured from her concealment, and approaching to Edinburgh on Tuesday the 4th of November, or two months after the fatal battle, was met on the road at Corstorphine by her youthful son, the King, and other Lords, who conducted her to Holyrood.

This so far paved the way for Beaton’s release, but as Angus had all men in his power, “to fine and ransom at his pleasure,” mere personal influence was not to avail, and least of all that of the Queen Mother. David Beaton, therefore, the primate’s nephew, the future Cardinal, was now in Edinburgh, negotiating for the fugitive; and through the noted Sir Archibald Douglas, Provost of the city, an uncle of the Earl of Angus, he at last succeeded. To the Earl of Arran the Archbishop had to present the Abbey of Kilwinning; to Angus himself, in money, two thousand marks Scots; to George and Archibald Douglas, one thousand each, and to Hamilton, the murderer of Lennox, one thousand. Five thousand marks and an abbey was certainly no trifling ransom in those days. After all, though Beaton was released by the end of the year, and was keeping Christmas with the Queen in Edinburgh, he was but barely forgiven, and not to be trusted. Soon after, both the Queen and he had to withdraw from the seat of the Court, and to Stirling once more. Restored, however, to his episcopal functions, we shall see, only too soon, the base and ungrateful use which he made of his power. But so ended the year 1526. 1527.-1528 Consternation Of The Authorities In Scotland-The New Testament Soon Followed By One Living Voice, That Of Patrick Hamilton-His Martyrdom-Alexander Seton, The Next Witness, Persecuted He Escapes To England-The New Testament Goes On To Be Imported, ONCE more the analogy between England and Scotland is presented to our view. Under the English history we had occasion to observe, that as early as 1520, some alarm had been felt respecting what was calledLutheranism, the phrase of the day for any approach to Scriptural truth, even though the party molested might never have heard of Luther’s name, or, at least, read a page of his writings. So Scotland was soon seized with similar alarm, and by the 17th of July, 1525, an Act of Parliament had passed, enacting, that “no manner of persons, strangers, that happen to arrive with their ships, within any part of this realm, bring with them any books or works of the said Luther, his disciples or servants,” on pain of imprisonment, besides the forfeiture of their ships and goods. Now, whether what was taking place last year as to books imported was known, we have no positive evidence; but at all events, by the autumn of this year there was fresh alarm, and that not owing to strangers. In the month of August 1527, the Earl of Angus having got himself appointed to be Chancellor, with Dunbar, the Bishop of Aberdeen and uncle of Dunbar the Archbishop of Glasgow, to assist him; Angus and the Lords of Council added the following clause to the Act of 1525 :-“ And all other, the king’s lieges, assistaries to such opinions, be punished in seemable wise, and the effect of the said Act to strike upon them.” Thus, between July 1525 and September 1527, as it was determined to extend those penalties to natives of Scotland, we have sufficient proof that importations by them had been going on; but while there were, very probably, some other publications, it is not a little extraordinary, that the only books which can now be traced, or distinctly specified, should be those of the New Testament itself of Tyndale’s version.

Never, then, let it be overlooked, that if the provisions of this Act were followed out, there existed a time in the history of our country, when, if a vessel arrived at Leith or St. Andrews, at Dundee, Montrose, or Aberdeen, with copies of the New Testament on board, the ship and cargo were liable to confiscation, and the captain to imprisonment! A battle was now to be fought and won, in the north as well as in the south of Britain.

But again, as in England, serious and long-continued persecution did not commence till after the Scriptures had arrived; so it was in Scotland.

Copies had soon found their way, and not in vain, to the canons of Cardinal College, Oxford; but so they had to the canons of St. Andrews, as well as other parties. The explosion at Oxford occurred in February 1526, and by February 1528, at the very moment when Tunstal and his vicargeneral were sitting in severe judgment on the book in London, the New Testament will now be very pointedly referred to, and condemned, within the walls of the Metropolitan Church in Scotland.

The occasion of this, the first storm, is well known. It followed the arrival from abroad, about the autumn of 1527, and the subsequent exertions of one of the loveliest and most interesting of all characters in early Scottish history-Patrick Hamilton. Of the noble army of Martyrs on British ground, during the sixteenth century, he was to be the youthful and heroic leader.

He was born in 1504, the son of Sir Patrick Hamilton of Kincavil, a son of Lord Hamilton who was brother-in-law to James III. His mother was a daughter of John Duke of Albany, brother to the same monarch, so that by both parents he was related to the royal family of Scotland. His father was killed in the High Street of Edinburgh in a feud between the Earls of Arran and Angus. Patrick, intended for the Church, was educated under the wellknown John Major at St. Andrews. There receiving the knowledge of the Word of God, he could not conceal his sentiments, and had to leave with several others for the Continent. This was ia 1525, and he was about two years abroad. That he visited Luther and Melancthon at Wittenburg, though not certain, is probable. But at Marburg, from which he returned direct to Scotland, he was intimate with Francis Lambert, John Fryth, and William Tyndale. Though affectionately warned by these friends, and dissuaded from rushing into certain danger, he was pressed in spirit to revisit his country, which he did in 1527. While at Marburg, he wrote his well-known treatises in Latin, “De Lege et Evangelio,” and “De Fide et Operibus,” called afterwards, “Patrick’s Places.” These, soon after his departure, Fryth translated into English, as he says, “to the profit of my nation; to whom I beseech God to give light, that they may espy the deceitful paths of perdition, and return to the right way which leadeth to life everlasting.” He speaks of his friend as “that excellent and well-learned young man Patrick Hamilton, born in Scotland, of a noble progeny, who, to testify the truth, sought all means, that he might be admitted to preach the pure Word of God.”

Hamilton, on his arrival, had proceeded first to his brother’s house in Linlithgowshire, Sir James having succeeded his father as Sheriff of that county; and here, as the sequel proved, he had preached, and conversed not in vain, as well as elsewhere. On the one hand, it has been said of him, that he did not fail to lay open the corruptions of the Church, and the errors by which the souls of men were ruined; but, on the other, that he had not attacked the hierarchy as an Establishment, nor its claims to infallibility, He certainly had not commenced with denunciation, but by preaching the truth itself, by enforcing the reading of the Scriptures, with the necessity of repentance towards God, and faith in Christ in order to good works. His discrimination as to the Law and the Gospel, as to Faith and its fruits, was evidently of the first order, very far above the age in which he suffered; and as to his mode of procedure, it seems to have exactly corresponded with the counsel which Tyndale gave to Fryth himself, five years after, as already explained. The Bellum Sacramentarium, or the bitter strife about ordinances, had commenced on the Continent in 1524, or before Hamilton’s reaching Germany, and it was still raging there; but the zeal of our first martyr was not to be spent on the ceremonial or outward form of Christianity. His was a controversy with tho heart, addressed to the soul and spirit of man within him; and for proof we only need to observe the points which he regarded to be “undoubtedly true,” and from which all the terrors of the stake could not, for one moment, move him. They were simply these” 1. That the corruption of sin remains in children after their baptism. 2. That no man by the power of his free will can do any good 3. That no man is without sin so long as he liveth. 4 . That every Christian may know himself to be in a state of grace. 5. That a man is not justified by works, but by faith only. 6. That good works make not a good man, but that a good man doeth good works; and that an ill man doeth ill works; yet the same ill works, truly repented of, make not an ill man. 7. That faith, hope, and love, are so linked together, that he who hath one of them, hath all; and he that lacketh one, lacketh all.”

All others he denominated “disputable points,” though such as he could not condemn; but the above he regarded as vital truths.

The youth of Hamilton and his rank, his fine talents and his views of Divine truth, had all combined in producing an immediate impression; while the power of his family, of which the Earl of Arran was the chief, and who had so resented the death of Patrick’s father, must have rendered any open hostility more difficult. The recent union also of Arran with the Earl of Angus, the present possessor of all power, to say nothing of Beaton himself, so lately in disgrace, and Lord Chancellor no more, one should have imagined would have still farther increased the difficulty. These circumstances, however, clearly show the height to which alarm had been excited, or, in other words, the powerful result of this young man’s exertions. After the Scriptures had come, it was like a voice crying, “Arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” the panic among the leaders of “the old learning” must have been both great and general, before decided steps were taken; and these, at last, were accordingly distinguished, not only by deep dissimulation, but Satanic haste.

Invited to St. Andrews by a special message from the Primate, who, with solemn promises of safety, said, he only wished to converse with him, Hamilton went without hesitation. Beaton received him with a hypocritical show of kindness, assigned him a lodging in the city, and so left him to be fully ensnared by a Dominican friar, Alexander Campbell, with whom he had come in contact before his departure for the Continent. Only a very short time was required to draw from the ardent and zealous youth ample ground for accusation to the Archbishop; more especially as Campbell, who was the Prior of his order, had pret tended to admit the force of all that Hamilton advanced. In fact, he had been only a few days in St. Andrews, when, under night, he was apprehended in bed and carried to the Castle; and the very next day he was before Beaton, with thirteen different articles laid to his charge, by the man who seems to have long thirsted for his blood. Though drawn into some general conversation at this moment, the youthful martyr, with the finest discrimination, separating the truths from the errors, had evidently resolved to die for the confession of the.former, rather than the denial of the latter, and therefore he abode by the seven points already mentioned. So Fox informs us that “learned men who communed and reasoned with him, do testify, that these were the very articles for which he suffered.” Meanwhile, with a hypocritical show of moderation, Beaton remitted the articles entire to the judgment of fourteen theologians, such as they were, not forgetting, however, to include among the number his base persecutor, Campbell. Within only a day or two more, these men returned their censure, condemning the whole articles as heretical, before a solemn meeting in the Cathedral. This happened on Saturday the 28th of February, 1528; and now, on the same day, the prisoner, after all that had been promised by Beaton, was to be tried, condemned, and reduced to ashes, before the sun went down! They trod in the footsteps of the Pharisees of old, for the next day was the Sabbath!

That no small sensation had been created by the youthful and heroic martyr, we only need to glance at the mighty array brought together to condemn him, after a mock trial. Beaton durst not send to the King, and say, as Amaziah the priest did of Amos to the King of Israel, “The land is not able to bear all his words;” but it really seems as if he had sent round, and said something of similar import to his brethren; for here we have more than twenty judges, and all assembled to doom this young man to death.

Here, there were the two Archbishops and three Bishops, two Priors and four Abbots, five Rectors and three Deans, a Sub-dean and a Canon, including friars black and friars grey.

The trial, such as it was, formed but a very summary proceeding; but we must not omit part of the brief dialogue between the Martyr and Campbell his accuser, in presence of his judges; as it forms the first evidence on record that the New Testament in English, by way of eminence, had become a subject of alarm; the mere reading of it, involving all that the hierarchy already feared and deprecated. It seems as if, this Testament having arrived, Hamilton’s enforcing the reading of it by all, had formed the head and front of his offending; for the articles being read over by his determined prosecutor, with this he commenced :- Campbell.- “ Heretic, thou sayest it is lawful to any man to read the Word of God, and in special the New Testament?” Hamilton. - “I said not so (to you) to my knowledge; but I said, and say it now, it is lawful to all men that have a soul, to read the Word of God, that they may understand the same, and specially the latter will and testament of Jesus Christ, whereby they may acknowledge their sins and repent of the same, whereby they may amend their lives by faith and repentance, and attain salvation by Christ Jesus.” Campbell. -“Now, heretic, I see that thou affirmest the words of thy accusation.” Hamilton.-“ I affirm nothing, but the words which I have spoken in presence of this auditory.”

The auditory to whom he addressed these, and other like words, all condemned him to be guilty of death; and delivering him over to the secular power, on the afternoon of the same day, he was led forth to a stake placed, in terrorem, before the gate of St. Salvator’s College. On the scaffold, turning affectionately to the faithful servant, who had long attended him, and slept in the same apartment, having divested himself of his gown, his coat, and his bonnet-“ These,” said he, “will not profit in the fire; they will profit thee. After this thou canst receive no commodity from me except the example of my death, which, I pray thee, bear in mind. For, although it be bitter to the flesh, yet is it the entrance into eternal life, which none shall possess that deny Christ before this wicked generation.’’ When bound to the stake, far from exhibiting any fear, he fixed his eyes towards heaven, commending his soul unto God. The executioners setting fire to the pile, it would not burn, but merely scorched the left side of their victim! In this excruciating state, obliged to send some distance to the Archbishop’s Castle for gunpowder, as well as elsewhere for more combustible materials, an immense crowd having assembled, some of whom loudly denounced the persecutors, while others implored the martyr to recant and save his life, he thus addressed them :- “As for my confession, I will not deny it for fear of your fire, for my confession and belief is in Jesus Christ; and therefore I will not deny it. I will rather that my body be burnt in this fire for confession of my faith in Christ, than that my soul should suffer in the unquenchable fire of hell, for denying of my faith. But as for the sentence and judgment pronounced against me this day, by the bishops and doctors, I here, in the presence of you all, appeal against the said sentences and judgment given against me, and betake myself to the mercy of God.” Then turning to Campbell, who had acted in the threefold character of traitor, judge, and executioner, as he even now satanically assailed his victim, and reviled him as a heretic, Hamilton closed by adding, “Wicked man! thou kuowest the contrary; to me thou hast confessed. I appeal thee before the tribunal seat of Jesus Christ.”

Amidst the noise and fury of the flames now kindled, and the tumult of the multitude, his last words were distinctly heard-“How long, O Lord, shall darkness cover this realm! How long wilt thou suffer this tyranny of men!

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

Thus gloriously fell, as far as we know, the first native of Scotland as an unspotted martyr for the truth, for the Word of God itself, as well as our right to read it.

The powerful consequences resulting from this martyrdom can never now be fully traced; but if we follow them out as far as they may be, it will be evident, that, hitherto, the event has been greatly underrated. The New Testament Scriptures had arrived in Scotland, and they had been reading in secret for at least a year and a quarter. These were God’s own providential gift, at a period when the country was full of strife and feud, ferocity and murder. This it was which is to be regarded as the commencement of decided blessing from God; and now came the bold and loud summons from the believer’s lips, to rouse the dead in sin, and embolden them to read, believe, and live. A space equal to nearly three generations had passed away since anything so truly horrible had occurred in Caledonia, however stern and wild. Besides, in 1432, it was a foreigner who had suffered; but here was a native, of the most amiable character, and high birth. The report of the martyrdom speedily ran through the kingdom, promoting a spirit of inquiry into the cause, as well as the cause itself. For as truly as Antipas, the faithful martyr of old, so God’s most faithful servant had now been “slain among them where Satan dwelt, even where his seat was ;” and yet no place was so deeply affected as the spot where the deed was done.

Of the extent of the sensation now produced, it is impossible to judge with accuracy, but of its depth there can be but one opinion, since it actually so far changed the character of this metropolitan city, the Rome of Scotland.

From being the stronghold of the Prince of Darkness, it became the seat of deep inquiry and indomitable discussion, among not a few of the students in the different colleges, the canons of the Cathedral, and even the friars.

The sufferings endured will furnish the evidence of this.

Another human voice was now demanded; but where shall one be found?

Campbell, the prior of the order of St. Dominic, or the Black friars, had betrayed this heroic young man, ,and who so proper to speak next, as a brother of the same fraternity? The Friar who had been appointed to preach throughout Lent, in the Cathedral itself, it might seem far too much to expect, but in truth it was no other! He was the first to sound again the trumpet of truth, and that almost immediately after the Martyr had gone to receive his crown. Opening his lips, they found he was no other than what they denominated a heretic! Standing on the very spot where the murderers had sat in judgment, this, as the prophet once expressed it, was as if “the stone had cried out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber had answered it.” Nor was the preacher himself, from his official character, less remarkable. The Archbishop, as well as all under his authority, were afraid to touch him, he being actually the Father Confessor of the King himself-that King whom Beaton had not consulted, and who had therefore not consented to the counsel or deed of these bloody men. This was Friar ALEXANDER SETON, brother of Ninian Seton, or Seytoun of Touch.

In discharging his duty, and following the example of his deeply lamented predecessor, Seton now saw that in the truth itself there was enough to convict all its enemies, and produce dismay; and that no wise man will ever commence his labours by merely attacking superstition, or pulling at prejudices, as he would at a cart-rope; an egregious mistake, into which many have since fallen. Taking for his subject the law of God itself, Seton insisted much on the following points :- “That the Law of God is the only rule of righteousness; that if God’s Law be not violated, no sin is committed; that it is not in man’s power to satisfy for sin; that the forgiveness of sin is no otherwise obtained than by unfeigned repentance and true faith, apprehending the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. Of purgatory, pilgrimage, prayer to saints, of merits and miracles, the usual subjects of the friars’ sermons, not a word he spake.” F111 It is remarkable that he should have been permitted to repeat his sentiments; but having been appointed to preach during Lent, this, together with his official character, may have been his safeguard, until he had given his auditory line upon line, and proof after proof. About the end of that season, however, having occasion to go northward to Dundee, he was there informed that a friar of his own order had been set up to refute his doctrine, He then returned to St. Andrews, and the King’s Confessor, not to be resisted, confirmed his former positions, adding, from Scripture, the qualifications required for a good and faithful bishop.

This last subject could not be passed over, and soon brought him before the Archbishop; but he, knowing Seton to be of a bold spirit, dissembled his anger. Upon another martyrdom he dared not venture so soon, a negative testimony to the power of Hamilton’s death; nor could the Primate resolve upon trying any expedient, except that of first undermining Seton’s character in the estimation of the young King. This was easily effected, and very soon after. Poor young prince! His natural powers were of no inferior order, but these men, whether nobility or clergy, had allowed him to grow up in a state of comparative ignorance, and of self-indulgence, even to licentiousness: the nobility, that they might rule him as a puppet, which his high spirit could not endure; the clergy, that he might one day fall into their hands, and move only in subservience to their designs. Now, at this very period a crisis had arrived, of the King’s emancipation from the one party, and his falling under bondage to the other. His Highness had groaned from day to day under the iron yoke of the Earl of Angus, who, supported by the influence of England, was the absolute governor of the nation still, though James had been crowned in 1525. Next year the King had applied to some of his nobles to relieve him from bondage, and hence the battle of Linlithgow in 1526. On the watch ever after, at last, on the 22nd or 23rd of May, 1528, he himself dexterously succeeded, by his escape from Falkland to the castle of Stirling; soon after which Angus and the Douglas party were overcome and banished. In part indebted for his escape to Archbishop Beaton, at this moment the young monarch must have been ready to listen to whatever he said, and hence it was no difficult task to destroy all respect for Seton; while this was rendered still more easy, not only from his having been the Confessor of his Highness in the wearisome days of his thraldom, but because Seton, much to his credit, had warned him respecting his licentiousness.

From what had happened in February, and observing the confidence or respect of the monarch to be on the decline, Seton well knew what must ultimately await him, and seeing no safety on the spot, he fled to Berwick.

From thence, however, he wrote to his royal master, a faithful letter, warning him of the men under whose influence he had now fallen. He here explained that the authority of the Bishops, and by no means that of his Highness, was what he dreaded.

They behaved, he said, as kings, and would not allow any man of whatever state or degree, if once they pronounced him to be a heretic, to speak in his own defence. Nevertheless, if he might but have audience before the king, he now offered to return and justify his cause. Like a faithful adviser, he then informed James, that in duty he ought to see that every subject accused of his life, should be allowed to use his lawful defences; since the Prelates held that such matters did not fall under the cognizance of the Prince, and if only once heard, he would demonstrate the contrary by their own laws. He then besought his Highness not to be led any longer by their informations, lint to use the authority committed to him by God, and not to suffer these tyrants to proceed against him, till brought to his answer. This he would not refuse to give, if once assured of the safety of his life.

At Berwick he waited for some reply, but waited in vain. Before this time Angus had been banished, and his estates forfeited; Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow, had been appointed Chancellor in August, as his successor, and Beaten, though not yet in power, had been recalled to the Council by the end of November. Seton, therefore, retired into England, where he became chaplain to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. As if to show how equally balanced the two countries, England and Scotland, were, with regard to their progress in Divine truth; about thirteen years after, or in 1541, Seton was called before Stephen Gardiner, and examined, but denied not any point which he had formerly taught. He even continued to preach the truths with which he had been charged, and died, it has been said, next year, or 1542.

In the meanwhile, or before the close of 1528, it is pleasing to find any information whatever, bearing on the Scriptures, and their continued importation. The friars now were more busy everywhere than they had ever been, since friars were in fashion. The reader may recollect of one, under our history as to England, Friar John West. Earnestly charged, by Wolsey, with despatches to Counsellor Herman Rincke of Cologne, their united efforts were to be employed in the apprehension of Tyndale himself, and of William Roye, once his amanuensis; or, at all events, their books. With regard to the men they entirely failed, but a number of what Rincke calls “their books,” he had found out and secured. These must have included copies of the New Testament, as well as Roye’s celebrated Satyre on the Cardinal, a personal affair, which the latter so deeply resented. One short passage in Rincke’s reply to Wolsey, dated the 4th of October, 1528, and sent by West, deserves to be repeated here- “But these books, unless I had found them out and interposed, must have been pressed together with parchment, and concealed; and enclosed in packages, artfully covered over with flax, they would in time, without any suspicion, have been transmitted by sea, into Scotland and England, as to the same place; and would have been sold as merely clean paper; but as yet, few or none of those, carried away and sold, have been found.”

Here then we have distinct mention of a continued traffic going on, and of one of the asserted methods of transit, for there must have been various; nor is it less worthy of repetition, that the Jews are to be supposed as having had some concern in these importations, whether “to Scotland or England, as to the same place.” 1529.-1534. All-Important Period, Hitherto Unnoticed-Alexander Ales-Cruelly Persecuted By Hepburn, The Prior Of St. Andrews-At Last Escapes By Sea, From Dundee, First To France, And Then To Germany-His Epistle Addressed To James V.; Or The Commencement Of The First Regular Controversy In Britain Respecting The Scriptures Printed In The Vulgar Tongue-The Abusive Publication Of Cochlaeus In Reply -The Representations Of Ales Confirmed By The State Of The Country, And The Second Martyrdom-Answer Of Ales To The Calumnies Of Cochlaeus-Ales Pleads For The New Testament To Be Read-But Especially In Families-Cochlaeus Addresses James V.-And Is Rewarded -The Persecutions And Martyrdoms Of 1534 Again Confirm The Statements Of Ales-Who Is Now Standing By Himself Alone In Defence Of The Truth.

WE are now arrived at a very memorable period in the history of Scotland.

It involves a space of five years, from the year 1529 to 1534 inclusive, and yet it has been treated by all our historians as a sort of chasm, or calm in the annals of persecution. No author has informed us that there was, at such a time, one fragment of distinct information in existence, respecting the Sacred Volume; its importation into the country; its being bought, or sold, and read by the people; or that such reading was being so bitterly opposed. This is the more surprising, since, upon this subject, it forms one of the most interesting periods in the early history of the entire island.

Commencing seven years before Henry the Eighth had decidedly broken off from Rome, and while both the South and North were still under the dominant power of “the old learning;” yet was it the season of the first regular controversy in Britain, though carried on with Scotland, respecting the Sacred Volume in our native language; as well as the undoubted right of every one, “both low and high, rich and poor together,” to read the Scriptures for themselves.

The first individual who took up this argument, one of the highest which can occupy the tongue or the pen of man, wasALEXANDER ALES, whose name does occur in our histories, as an exile from his native land, and a professor at Leipsic, where he died, but his chief claim to his country’s grateful remembrance seems to have been altogether overlooked. Fond recollections of his native city while in a foreign land, led him to write a description of it, which is the only work of his reprinted in modern times; but his exertions in reference to the free circulation of the Scriptures in the language of the people, call for some notice here.

He was born in Edinburgh on the 23rd of April, 1500. His father was a burgess of the city, and gave his son such education at home as fitted him for entering the University of St. Andrews. At that seat of learning, having completed the usual course of study, he took priests’ orders, and became one of the Canons of the Cathedral Church in that city, then the largest in Scotland. We hear nothing more of him, however, till he had reached the twenty-eighth year of his age. Then, as a proof that the alarm of the bishops and monks in 1525 and 1527, respecting the introduction of “the new learning” into Scotland, was not without grounds, it turned out that the canons and students were, through the medium of certain books, studying the grand controversy of the times. But whatever might be the object of other young men, that of Ales was, that he might be qualified to oppose all innovation. When Patrick Hamilton, therefore, four years younger than himself, was “drawn unto death” at St. Andrews, and now “ready to be slain,” far from disposed to “deliver” him, and confident in his own scholastic powers, Ales actually undertook to reclaim the suspected heretic. For this purpose he held several conferences with his more enlightened junior, little dreaming that the attempt was about to change the current of his whole life. But staggered by the reasoning of that young gentleman; then hearing his noble testimony, in a full house, or within the very walls where Ales himself was accustomed to engage in services which the Martyr had so exposed; and finally, beholding the heroic constancy with which he maintained his integrity in the flames, amidst the rage, and more than savage cruelty of his enemies, the scene, as well as the sentiments, were never to be forgotten. In short, the heart of Ales was pierced by convictions, which ended in his conversion to the faith he had laboured in vain to destroy. St. Andrews was not now to sleep in quiet, after the smoke of Patrick’s funeral pile had been blown upon the spectators, and scorched the Benedictine friar, his persecutor. Seton, as we have seen, was the first victim soon after, but severer trials awaited Ales, the very next year.

Almost all the inhumanity of these times has been heaped upon David Benton, the nephew of the Archbishop and future Cardinal; but in this early stage at least, the lasting odium was largely shared by another man, of whom we are about to hear. Ales, as we have seen, had been a Canon in the Priory of St. Andrews, of which the Superior was Patrick Hepburn.

Named after his father, the first Earl of Bothwell, and then frequently styled “the young Prior of St. Andrews,” he had succeeded his uncle John, in 1522. He soon became one of the most wicked men of his time, as far as licentiousness and unbridled passion could go. A veteran in crime, long before the prime of life, the public registers bear testimony to his enormous profligacy. Witness the legitimation of at least eleven children, seven sons and four daughters. The man had gloried in destroying the peace of many a family. It is but an imperfect idea that can now be formed of the immorality in which these official men rioted life away, and frowned on every attempt to reform a Church that winked at such enormities in her priesthood.

In a Latin oration delivered by Ales at the command of Archbishop Benton before the Synod of Bishops and Priests, the preacher bore hard in his strictures on the debauched clergy, bat avoided all personalities, Hepburn thought himself aimed at, and as, about the same time, the whole college had com:-plained to the King of the Superior’s cruelty, he rushed with armed men into the hall of the Chapter, and twice attempted to stab Ales, from which he was only held back, first by the other Canons, and then by his own guards. He then seized the whole of the Canons and threw them into prison, from which they were all, without exception, commanded by the King to be immediately released. Ales, however, was retained, and thrown into a dungeon under the Bishop’s Castle in St. Andrews, among the ruins of which it is still shown. It is hewn in the solid rock in the shape of a bottle, its only entrance being from the top or mouth, from which the prisoner was let down. The orifice is 7 feet, but at the depth of 8 feet it widens to 17 feet in diameter, and is in all 23 feet deep. Here Ales might have died, had not his friends and fellow-canons raised a cry against the Superior’s cruelty and disobedience to the royal mandate; then, on the twentieth day, the sufferer was brought up, and shown to the magistrates, who were assured that he would forthwith be set at liberty. He was, however, remanded to prison, and lay there for nearly a year. The Canons, during the absence of the Superior, got him out, and restored him to his office. But the infuriated man, returning one day unexpectedly, and finding him officiating at the altar, flew into a rage, and would have dragged him at once to the dungeon, had not the Canons once more interfered. That night, by the advice of his deliverers, who assured him his death was determined on, he escaped alone to Dundee, where he was received on board a vessel by a kind relative, and sailed next day for the Continent. Whither he went at first, it is impossible now to say, but certainly not to Wittenberg, since, even in 1534, he tells us that he knew not Luther, nor had acquired the German language. He had, however, “traversed part of the coast of France and many other places,” and some time after he speaks of being in Cologne.

After the escape of Ales, an edict or order of the Bishops was promulgated, prohibiting the New Testament in English from being read or sold. The alarm of the enemy is one decided proof of progress in this cause, and the writings of Ales, still untranslated, throw much additional light on this history. Indebted to James V. for his kind interposition in favour of himself and the other Canons, Ales writes under the impression that the royal youth is the same in 1533 that he had been in 1529, little aware how rapidly he was sinking under the baneful influence of the hierarchy, till at last they brought him to sanction, by his own personal presence, the burning of his subjects.

His first work was addressed “To the renowned King of Scots, James the Fifth, Duke of Albany, Prince of Ireland and the Orkneys, his most compassionate lord, Alexander Ales, S.D.” It is entitled “An Epistle of Akxander Ales, against a certain Decree of the Bishops in Scotland, which forbids to read the books of the New Testament in the vernacular tongue.” In this he earnestly expostulates with the King for permitting this prohibition of the Divine Word to take effect, using, for the first time, all those arguments which have often been repeated since, for an unfettered Gospel, and showing how this would tend to heal many of the woes under which his unhappy country then laboured. He implores the King, as one to whom God had committed all departments of the State, to interpose,-describes the advantages which must accrue to the people, and especially the children and youth, from being trained up by such domestic reading and instruction,-that they would prove better subjects and better citizens, which otherwise they could not be. He quotes the Scripture to show that this is an imperative duty, and warns his Highness of the evils which must arise from the interdict. He reminds him of those who in former times had stood between the Message of Heaven and those to whom it was sent. Here occurs the remarkably prophetic passage :- “When Antiochus attempted to destroy religion in Judea, he commanded the books of the prophets to be sought out everywhere, to be burned. And he suffered indeed the just punishment of his madness. With his ruined arvey, be himself was consumed with grief of mind. Nor was God satisfied with this punishment, but destroyed also his posterity, that He might set forth an example of the punishment described in the decalogue, where God says that punishment for iniquity should travel through all posterity.”

How sadly parallel were the conduct and fate of unhappy James, though thus warned! Persisting in burning the best of his subjects, and closing the best of books, he, literally, “with his ruined army, was consumed with grief of mind,” and died of a broken heart at the early age of thirty-one. After pleading for himself as an exile unjustly banished from his country, but willing to endure this if the Scriptures were but free to his country, Ales concludes- “The histories of all ages, of all nations, teach what end cruelty shall experience, especially that against the pious and the priests or ministers of a church. Wherefore, I shall not cease to beseech thee, most gracious Sovereign, that you would carefully examine these matters, and not grant this unbounded licence to the chief priests and monks, which Christ will not long endure; and surely it is opposed to your justice and clemency. This, therefore, I desire to obtain, if what I ask be equitable, just, worthy of yourself, and profitable to the Church and the State. May Christ preserve thee, and direct thy mind to the public welfare! Anno 1533.”

Thus it appears, at this early period, that Scotland was not behind England in point of progress made. The New Testament had been given to her in the same year.-She could already point to her proto-martyr-and an advocate rising out of his ashes, was now as earnest with her King, and against her bishops, as John Fryth now was with similar parties in London.

Had Ales only been forthcoming, he had expired in the flames this year, as certainly as Fryth did in England.

In reply to this letter, as far as is yet known, there was not one man in Scotland able to move his tongue; but there was one abroad, who, though abundantly ready in reply, could never answer any argument; and who, when engaged in furious wrangling, was never so much in his element.

This, the reader may anticipate, was no other than John Cochlaeus, the same who raised the alarm respecting the New Testament, at first, in 1525.

Stung with disappointment, at his having no reward assigned to him by Wolsey, or Henry VIII., he now did his utmost to procure notoriety and a pension, by addressing King James V. of Scotland. The epistle of Ales could scarcely have been read in his own country, before this indefatigable opponent must have been at the press, as his tirade is dated on the 8th of June, 1533. There is nothing whatever of sound argument in the book, though professing to answer Ales, paragraph by paragraph. It abounds in different parts with virulent abuse, and in others with blasphemy. There is no lack of positive falsehood as to Luther, the writer’s perpetual eye-sore; and Ales, though unknown to Cochlaeus personally, comes in for his full share, upon one hundred and sixty pages, in reply to twenty-six! The object in view was to mystify and alarm the young King; and the title is perfectly expressive of the great point in hand-“ Whether it be expedient for the Laity to read the books of the New Testament in the vernacular tongue.” f114 At the commencement, Cochlaeus owns that he was shooting in the dark, not knowing whether this name of Alexander Alesius was a real, or only a fictitious one; but though ignorant of his man, and equally so of the state of Scotland, he artfully insinuates that the representation of the country, as drawn by Ales, was altogether incredible. That the Bishops of Scotland could act towards any subject whatever, in tho manner described, without the consent of his Highness, he pretends to think impossible. The exile, he asserts, must either falsely praise the King to stir him up against his Bishops, or else feign the King’s wonderful clemency to himself, to render him suspected abroad, with regard to the orthodox faith. Ales, too, he insists, must be a Lutheran, of course, and the epistle itself must come from Wittenberg, the common asylum of fugitives and apostates; while “the whole is concocted with such skill, that readers may believe that the gospel of Luther is already propagated to the most remote Scots, as far as Ultima Thulae.” It is here that Cochlaeus repeats, by way of warning, the groundless falsehood of Tyndale and his amanuensis having come to Wittenberg, acquired the German language, and then translated the New Testament of Luther into English; adding, what was true, that he found them at Cologne, and forewarned Henry VIII.; though he takes care to conceal that he had received no thanks for his pains, and now entertained a very bad opinion of the English monarch.

Not aware that the New Testament had been introduced into Scotland as early as 1526, and boasting of his own exploit of 1525, he warns the King of similar snares preparing for his kingdom, and dissuades him from reversing the Bishops’ edict against the reading of the Scriptures, by dwelling on “the accumulation of evils which have sprung up among the Germans within a few years from such reading, to say nothing of the loss of property suffered from this Gospel; while for these mischievous books, the people have squandered an incalculable sum of money, for so many hundreds of thousands of copies printed and sold! From these they have got no good, but a deal of harm; artizans neglecting their shop and their work from whence they ought to procure a subsistence for their wives and children. Nor will I mention those evils which many have endured in their body through this, while, in opposition to the edicts of the magistrates, they read the prohibited books; and for this offence were shut up in prisons, confined in towers, fined, banished from their country, and suffered other bodily inconvenience.”

Cochlaeus then fortifies the royal youth, originally disinclined to deeds of blood, not only against all the cruelties which might ensue in Scotland, and the counter advice of any of his councillors, but against all the odium that was sure to follow. His bishops ought to act with just severity against a few transgressors in order to preserve the souls of many; nor was the New Testament of Luther, as he artfully calls every vernacular version, to be considered the Gospel of Christ, but of Satan! Therefore, if the King desired to preserve among his people concord in the faith and unity of the Church, agreement in piety and worship, fixedness of faith, and all the benefits of ecclesiastical discipline, let him “desist from this business of translation, especially at this time.” He then proceeds to inform the King that any translation of the New Testament, “the best and most undoubted,” if it be “in the vulgar tongue,” must produce all imaginable evil, and closes with the warning that copies may soon be secretly transmitted, “through merchants, by the Elbe to Hamburg, which looks over to Scotland”! Such was the advice with which this persecutor sought to fill the ear of the young and thoughtless Scottish monarch. With Cochlaeus abroad, and such men in power at home, both bishops and monks, a Prince once averse to all cruelty, and still given to deeds of kindness in regard to the bodies of his subjects, was driving on to ruin, by yielding to the sophistry of the hierarchy, with respect to opinions which could neither be gainsaid nor resisted. At the same time, let the chief blame rest where it actually did. Had the King, unmolested, been allowed to pursue his pastime, humanly speaking, there had been no such cruelty as still ensued. But the ecclesiastics, led on at present by Patrick Hepburn, the young Prior of St. Andrews, as they were afterwards by David Beaton, Abbot of Arbroath, were perpetually insisting that heretical opinions, as they styled them, did not belong to the King’s jurisdiction; while, in justice to the Prince himself, there is reason to believe, that he. by no means yielded without a struggle, and did actually interfere again and again, as Ales has represented. The King and the ecclesiastics had formed two parties quite distinguishable in the estimation of many more than the writer of this epistle: but soon after that Ales had done his best in addressing his former benefactor, not only did Cochlaeus follow, but it so happened, that an ambassador or legate from the Pontiff had been perambulating the country in company with the King and the Queen Mother. They terminated their journey by visiting St. Andrews, where they were all entertained in style by Beaton and Prior Hepburn. In short, the year 1533 seems to have been about the turning point in James’s course and character. He was even now only twenty-one years of age, but in early life, “a stranger to pride, easy of access, and fond of mingling familiarly with all classes of his subjects; with a generosity and warmth of temper, which prompted him, on all occasions, to espouse with enthusiasm the cause of the oppressed;” f115 what wonder that Ales should have so addressed him? The change was most melancholy not only for himself, but his kingdom. The year before this, or 1532, he had been sinking deep into the licentious course which he afterwards pursued, for to this the hierarchy had no objection; and now he is giving himself up to the counsel of these unprincipled, and far more licentious, ecclesiastical men.

Before the end of the year 1533, and just as if to confirm every word that Ales had so faithfully written, the second martyrdom took place at St. Andrews, and this also was but a young man. Hamilton’s death was sufficient to have roused both priests and canons, which it certainly had done, but the monks had also responded to the call. Seton was the first, Ales was the second, but here was a third, who seems to have been moved by Patrick’s earliest exertions on his return from abroad, as well as his subsequent death. Henry Forrest of Linlithgow, a Benedictine monk, had contracted such an admiration of Patrick Hamilton as he could not suppress. He thought that he had been wrongfully put to death, that the articles for which he suffered were not heretical, and might be defended.

This much, however, they could not fully establish against him, till they resorted to the same base method which they had pursued with the first martyr; and one Friar Walter Laing was ready to act over again the same part which Campbell had done. Another specific charge however was, that he had in his possession a copy of the New Testament in English; now, of course, deemed to be a crime far more heinous after the edict or decree.

There must have been considerable hesitation about proceeding to extremity, as Forrest had been for some time kept a close prisoner “in the tower” or Castle of St. Andrews; and at last the spot on which he died at the stake, was at once expressive of the truth having extended far beyond the bounds of St. Andrews, and of the fear entertained as to its further progress. “He suffered death,” says the manuscript, “at the north church style of the Abbey church of St. Andrew, to the intent that all the people of Forfar or Angus might see the fire, and so might be the more feared from falling into the like doctrine which they call heresy.” On such a mode they had at last ventured, though far from being according to the counsel previously given by one John Lindsay, a man of wit, familiar with the Archbishop. “If you burn any more of them,” said he, “take my advice and burn them in cellars; for I assure you that the smoke of Patrick Hamilton has infected all upon whom it blew.” The first molestation of Henry Forrest appears to have commenced about the year 1530, but his death cannot be stated earlier than 1538; a circumstance which may account for his martyrdom being ascribed to both years.

Only a very short time, however, now elapsed, before there arrived front abroad, an all-sufficient exposure of Cochlaeus, and of other men at home besides the calumniator. the slander and falsehood which had been emitted, had, it is probable, not been seen by Ales for some months, but early in 1584 he was ready with his Response. It is entitled-“ The answer of Alexander Ales, Scotsman, to the calumnies of Cochlaeus.” It is addressed to the King as before, and as it has been equally unknown to the English reader, with his first letter, no apology is necessary for giving some account of this very rare book. Among other information, it contains the full account of his own personal treatment, besides some valuable particulars with regard to the Scriptures of the New Testament, still read by stealth, and hid with anxious care. Cochlaeus had questioned the veracity of Ales-had insisted that he was a Lutheran had approved highly of the interdict as to reading of the New Testament-had tried to terrify the King by a bold endeavour to identify the translation of the New Testament into German by Luther, with the independent English version-had strongly deprecated the New Testament being presented to any man in the vernacular tongue, however correct, and represented this as the only source of all evil, national and domestic; warning his Highness to succumb, or by all means yield to the advice of his ecclesiastics, those determined enemies of Divine truth. Every one of these points was now met by this first and able advocate of the people. As Ales, even still, could not be aware of any alteration in the King’s character and conduct, he writes under the impression of these being yet unchanged. Addressing the King once more, as his most gracious Sovereign, before answering the main argument of Cochlaeus, he defends himself from the double charge of being an exile and a Lutheran, with which he is reproached by his adversary. He sorrowfully confesses his exiled state, in which there was more evil than could be expressed in words, calling for sympathy rather than for calumny. As for the cause of his banishment, he appeals to the King’s memory to confirm the truth of the narrative which follows of the circumstances which led to his flight. IIe appeals to the testimony of his own college at St. Andrews, by the fidelity and constancy of whom his life was preserved; and then leaves it to the judgment of all good men, whether he had done anything worthy of punishment; for if free from blame, exile ought not to be his reproach. He then comes to the charge of being a Lutheran, and of wishing to introduce Lutheranism into his country. In reply, he disclaims connexion with any sect, avowing only his covenant with the Church of Christ, and offering, either before the King, or in the presence of other good men, “simply and clearly to give a reason of my faith. I believe the writings of the Prophets and Apostles, and embrace the consent of the holy Fathers, of whom the Church approves. I also reverence the authority of the Church, and its judgment in doubtful cases, as that which chiefly I do, and will freely follow. Does Cochlaeus require more than this?” He disclaims undertaking the defence of Luther, but states his strong disapprobation of the dreams of the Monks, and their persecution of those who question these. He had seen the burning of Patrick Hamilton in Scotland, and subsequently the martyrdom of two very good men at Cologne, whose death afflicted him with grief for the Church, and horror at such cruelty. He had conversed with “one of the highest learning and authority,” who was himself much grieved at the confusion and corruption of the Church, and whom he exhorted to interpose his opinion, and use his influence with both prince and people toward a reformation, but he could only draw from him an apologue, which seemed to intimate that the prudent should keep silence, because, on the one hand, truth is greatly disliked, and, on the other, flattery injures both the state and the flatterer. f117 Ales proceeds to answer “those who set the title of the Church in opposition to the Word of God, who vociferate, like Cochlaeus, there had been no Church for ages, but for the doctrine of the Monks. For there was a Church, though the Word of God was very obscure, and there were a few who taught more correctly than did the bulk of the Monks. There exist some writings of almost all ages, which smell sweetly of the pure doctrine of the Apostles. Hence, when Cochlaeus adduces the authority of the Church, why should we not inquire what the ancient Church thought?” He then states his own views on several subjects, proving them from the Scriptures, and confirming them by quotations from Augustine, Hilary, Ambrose, Ireneous, and Epiphanius. “These men,” he maintains, “never teach that Christian perfection is placed in human traditions; never do they sell works of supererogation.” The subjects of repentance and faith; of reliance on mercy alone, and the forgiveness of sins; of supererogation, of invocation of saints, “beclouding the glory of Christ ;” the Mass; public idolatry and vows,-are touched on, with a defence of the “new learning” from the charge of causing sedition. He then shrewdly concludes: “If the causes of that tumult were to be collected, we should somewhere discover, that the minds of men were provoked by the unrighteous cruelty of certain persons. Then after discord once commenced on account of religion, it is very probable that many evils followed, which accompany civil commotions. Covetous men, on either side, take advantage of the public disturbance for their own purposes.”

The sentiments of this writer, at this early period, and so well expressed, must occasion surprise to all those readers who have never before heard of such a man; but the chief importance of this Response, as well as of the previous Epistle, consists of this grand point, which, at this early day, and by himself alone, he urged with such zeal and ability, for the benefit of his native land. Both England and Scotland owe everything to the Bible, and if proof be still sought, we need not look far to find it, so long as we see Ireland lying, as it were, in the lap or bosom of Great Britain. The first translator, therefore, and the first advocate, though alike standing at a distance in a foreign land, and under the frown of their respective countries, occupy such high ground, that they never can be overshadowed by any other men who followed in their wake. But if the countrymen of Ales be bound to cherish his memory with becoming gratitude, as their first able intercessor for unlimited access to the Sacred Volume in their own tongue; he enjoys a second claim, which sets him before us as a man possessing wisdom or sagacity, very remarkable for his own time, and but too uncommon still. He had evidently felt assured that, in the melancholy condition of Scotland, personal religion could not possibly be promoted, if the Scriptures were withheld, and for this he first pled, as lying at the foundation of all that he desired. What then, with him, was the next argument? What the next measure, which lay with such weight on his mind? Was it an immediate refutation of all existing errors? Was it a direct attack upon the existing hierarchy, as to the ceremonial of their false and hideous system? No; neither the one nor the other. Had he any plan, as men now speak? Any scheme or platform to propose, or lay before the King, which was to bring order out of confusion? No; nothing of the sort.

With a shrewdness and Christian simplicity far superior to many since his time, he earnestly urged a more excellent way. For although public exercises of religion, when properly conducted, possess a happy tendency to prepare the mind for those of a more private nature, there were then no public exercises, save such as were pernicious in the extreme. Through them, as a regular system covering the land, Ales saw that its baneful roots, had struck into the bosom of every family there. The ecclesiastical rulers, so called, were the very curse of society, and especially of that “only bliss of paradise, that has survived the fall,”-domestic happiness and peace.

Every other social bond in which men were united, being but loose and incidental, when compared to this, the heart of this man now panted after the immortal interest of every circle round the household fire. Nor did he, like some in modern times, fix his eye upon children only, but upon parents. That venerable character in the eye of domestics, with which the reading of the Scriptures is sure to invest them, he regarded as sufficient to discomfit even the Prince of Darkness! If every chimney that smoked in his native land was liable to Peter’s pence; by this time he must have felt assured, that the simple exercise of domestic reading would deliver from the imposition, and soon cause the smoke to ascend freely to the skies.

Only grant him access to the families of his country, and he saw that out of these would rise the morning of a better day. And although he now pleads for that which neither the King, nor, above all, his hierarchy will allow; this was the path which an overruling Providence had already opened and afterwards pursued, and to a far greater extent than can now be told.

Evidence, indeed, presently, will not be wanting; but at all events here was the secret hinge on which the future well-being of the entire island was then turning. At many a fireside, therefore, Ales ought to have been not only better known, but highly respected, long before this late day. What would the Scotland, which he left with such reluctance, have been, but for the practice for which he first pled? He reminds his readers that the Divine Lawgiver, in Deuteronomy, requires the fathers of families to read the law themselves, that they may inculcate it upon their children; that domestic reading of the Scriptures was now the custom in Germany, even beyond the circles that favoured the Reformation, and boys and girls in almost all the more respectable families read the New Testament, and learned the Psalms; that so far from preaching setting aside the necessity for the study of the Scriptures, the best preachers greatly encouraged the practice, and only the ignorant suppressed it. Thieves, they say, hate noise. Hence the monks close the New Testament, lest comparisons should be made of their doctrines with the Gospel. He vindicates himself from the charge that he was about to translate Luther’s version. “I do not know the German,” says he, “and speak of that version which now, for some time past, exists in the country, and against which that decree was made.” Though not called on to defend Luther’s New Testament, he reminds Cochlaeus that Emser, who first censured, afterwards published it with a few verbal alterations as his own. Difficulties there might be in the interpretation of some few texts, but not more than in any other ancient author. The general fidelity of the Scottish version, as he now calls Tyndale’s, the only one then in existence that could be read in Scotland, was unimpeached. “I have heard,” he adds, “even the chief among our preachers declare, that this same version gave them much more light than the commentaries of many.”

Cochlaeus had denied that “noble men and honourable citizens were not prohibited, but only inquisitive people who read that they may bring into question received opinions.” Ales replies that the edict he complains of is equally severe “against the best men of all ranks, andPROHIBITS THE NEW TESTAMENT FROM BEING IMPORTED INTO THE ISLAND,-from being sold, and consequently from being bought by any, even the most honourable; but the Sacred Scriptures were designed for all, for ‘the wise and the unwise,’ and adapted to the capacity of either, teaching ‘all ranks of life what is great and honourable for assisting and protecting society ;’ but is silent respecting those trifles which the Monks sell under the most specious pretences. For this cause they do not wish the Gospel to shine forth, as they are afraid both for their character and for theirKITCHEN.” He closes with a powerful appeal to the King, reminding him of his royal father’s noble conduct, when the Monks would have deprived some of his subjects of their Bible, warning him of the sycophants, who, on account of their own lusts, cannot bear the light of the Gospel, and carry on everywhere a horrible warfare against those who are pious, and who desire to show forth the glory of Christ; concluding with a prayer that God would guide his mind to the glory of Christ, to his own salvation and that of the Church.

Naturally impetuous, and delighting in war, Cochlaeus was now in a perfect rage, and though evidently confounded by the talent displayed against him, as he could, at any moment, make lies his refuge, he lost no time in replying to Ales, by again addressing the King. f118 He commences with one of his bold shifts or assumptions, which he reiterates as a fact, throughout his quarto pamphlet. It was no less than this, that Ales was not the author, either of the Epistle or the Response! He now ascribes the whole to no other thanPHILIP MELANCTHON; a very plain proof of the ability displayed, and an unwilling eulogy upon our Scottish exile, then and even still so little known.

In writing his Response, however, this year, it so happened that Ales had informed his readers that he was not as yet acquainted with Luther personally; and it corroborates his state:-ment, that as for Melancthon, there is not one shadow of evidence that he had become acquainted with him, till after his answer to Cochlaeus had been sent to Scotland. It is not at all improbable, that the calumny now raised might bring them into contact; which appears to have happened about the close of 1534, perhaps the spring of 1535. But be this as it may; formerly, Cochlaeus had no idea whether Alexander Ales was a real or supposititious character: now, that this will no longer serve him, both compositions must, it seems, be the production of Melancthon, to whom, as well as to Luther, Cochlaeus bore such invincible hatred! The traducer, of course, could not foresee that, in two years hence, Ales would display equal talent upon English ground, and before all the bishops assembled; when he was far removed from the ear of Philip Melancthon. Nor could he foresee, that seven years hence he would meet with Ales, and at the same time, apparently, be afraid even to address him.

But our German canon was equally dexterous, whether in making facts, or in feigning ignorance of what he must have known. Thus, after even the Doctors of Louvain, in a body, had made such boast, and sent such congratulations to Scotland in 1528, over her proto-martyr Hamilton, he pretends to be profoundly ignorant of the event, nay, and still of the state of Scotland, as well as of the facts now stated by Ales with regard to himself. He must therefore set himself to spy out some discrepancy between the Epistle of Ales to the King, and his Response to the calumnies already published. In this, however, he signally fails; but mentions a Scotchman, “of no small authority and trust with the King, appointed to England,” who had declared Ales’s book to be one continued lie.

No sooner than he had finished at press, Cochlaeus afforded a striking proof, not only of his fury, but his thirst after some remuneration for all this gross scurrility. His book was finished on the 13th of August, and by the following month, his confidential servant was safely arrived with copies in Edinburgh itself. The man “of no small authority and trust,” of whom he had spoken, Stewart, Bishop of Aberdeen and Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, had gone as Ambassador into France; but there were those under him, who were not slow to welcome the servant with his master’s production. Of this we have full evidence in the Register Office of this, the native city of Ales, or in the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer himself.

Thus, the indefatigable opponent of the Scriptures in our native tongue, has, at least, discovered to us, the grave importance which was then attached to the single-handed efforts of Alexander Ales. f119 All this verbiage of Cochlaeus, however, goes for nothing, when compared with the melancholy facts, which were attesting at the moment, the truth and importance of all that Ales had written; and this the servant, if he was not as blind as his master, must have seen, immediately on reaching the end of his journey to Scotland. It was while this man was actually on the road to Edinburgh, that the flames of persecution had been kindled for the third time. The martyrdom of last year confirmed the Epistle of Ales; those of this year his Response. The flames had hitherto blazed at St. Andrews; now, for the.first time, they had done so at Edinburgh. Those of the year 1533, in effect, told us that the truth was extending beyond the boundaries of the metropolitan city; and we shall now have proof, by the flames of 1534, that it had reached far beyond those of the capital. The former were kindled, to be seen at a distance, as a terror to the people of Angus; those of this year so as to be seen by the inhabitants of Fife. One martyr at a time had served hitherto, but now two men were consumed at the same stake, on the afternoon of Thursday the 27th of August, 1534. There were two, also, out of a nameless number, who had been summoned, from various quarters; and as if the death of the proto-martyr, so lamented by Ales and many others, was now to be followed up, and the family exterminated, his brother and sister had been ordered to appear. In short, here was a band of selected witnesses; and unquestionably we are to regard them as the representatives of many other individuals, not only in Angus and Fife, Clackmannan, and Linlithgowshires, but in Edinburgh and Leith.

On Tuesday the 7th of July, Parliament had met at Edinburgh, and by Wednesday the 26th of August, an ecclesiastical court, of unwonted solemnity, assembled in the Abbey of Holy-rood. The infatuated young King, in the face of repeated warning and entreaty, from an Exile, whom he had once rescued out of the paws of the persecutor, was now about to take his first ominous step. To lend greater importance to this occasion, he had agreed to preside, and clothed in scarlet,-the judicial Scottish dress, in matters of life and death, down to the present day. A number of persons had been summoned, and among them there appears to have been more than the following :- Belonging to Edinburgh-Mr. William Johnstone, Advocate, Mr. Henry Henderson, Master of the Grammar School; but the “Diurnal” adds, “with sundry others, baith men and women in Edinburgh.” From Leith-Henry Cairns, skipper, Adam Dayes or Deir, shipwright, John Stewart, indweller, and a married woman. From St. Andrews-Gavin Logie, John Fife, John M’A1pine, - M’Dougal From Angusshire-Mr. David Stratoun. From Linlithgowshire-Sir James Hamilton, the hereditary Sheriff; and Katharine Hamilton, his sister, besides Norman Gourlay and William Kirk, two priests, whose residence is not mentioned by any historian. With the exception of Hamilton and his sister, all these were disposed of before the Court rose. Several had already fled, and others abjured; but Mr. David Stratoun or Straiton and Norman Gourlay were reserved for execution.

The martyrdom itself took place next day. Of Gourlay we know nothing more than that he was a man of “reasonable erudition,” having been abroad. He said there was no such state as purgatory, denied the authority of the Pontiff in Scotland, but he had also married a wife, and this was an unpardonable crime. Mr. Straiton’s was a far more interesting case. He was a gentleman of landed property, at the confluence of the North Esk with the sea, in the parish of Ecclesgreig, (Ecclesia Gregorii,)now called St. Cyrus, in the shire of Angus. His property included the scat of a productive fishery; and whether one refers to the present proprietor of the soil, to the present fishermen of Milton, or to the limestone quarrymen there, in the history of their predecessors above three hundred years ago, they have not a more interesting subject for remembrance than the present. Laurieston Castle, built in the tenth century, where Straiton was born, and part of which still re:-mains, had, before and after his day, continued in the same family for four hundred years. The martyr appears to have been brother to the last laird or baron of Laurieston, and uncle to the present, then a young man. The Straitens, for several generations, were equally distinguished for stature and strength, and the martyr’s temper had once been both rough and imperious. In former days, he had resolutely resisted one tythe claimed by the vicar, Robert Lawson of Ecclesgreig; who exacted the tenth fish from those which his servants had taken out at sea. Straiten had said, “If he would have them, he must go and take them where the stock was taken;” and this had given great offence. “Before,” says Calderwood, “he had been very stubborn, and despised all reading, specially of good purposes; now he delighted in nothing but reading, although he could not read himself, and exhorted every man to peace and concord, and contempt of the world. He frequented much the company of John Erskine, Laird of Dun,” (the Provost of Montrose, who had recently returned from the Continent,) “a man marvellously enlightened in respect of these times.”

One day “when the Laird of Laurieston, being then a young man, was reading to our martyr the New Testament, (so much hated by many,) he chanced to read this sentence of our Master-‘ He that denieth me before men, I will deny him in the presence of my Father, and before his angels.’ At these words, as one revived, he suddenly cast himself upon his knees, extending his hands, and looking constantly with his visage to the heavens a reasonable time, he burst forth at length in these words-‘ O Lord, I have been wicked, and justly mayest thou abstract thy grace from me; but, Lord, for thy mercies’ sake, let me never deny Thee, nor thy truth, for fear of death, or bodily pain!’” It becomes evident, that Straiten was fully prepared for such a time as the present. When brought before the King, on the 26th, great pains were taken to move him, and procure his recantation; but all efforts failing, he was adjudged to the fire. He then applied to his Highness, but the Bishops answered, proudly, that “the King’s hands were bound, and that he had no grace to give to such as were by law condemned.” It was after dinner next day that Mr. Straiten and his companion Gourlay were led forth to death.

The spot was evidently chosen for effect, whether near or afar off, on the northern brow of the Calton-hill, above the rood or cross at Greenside. The stake was planted so far up the hill as that not only the surrounding crowd from the city, whether below or above, might see; but “to the intent,” says Calderwood, “that the inhabitants of Fife, seeing the fire, might be stricken with terror and fear, not to fall into the like.”

Not satisfied with these flames, the ecclesiastics, with the King at their head, assembled at Holyrood once more, on the 28th or next day, and by way of conclusion to this headstrong burst of cruelty, brought forward the persons of highest rank; Sir James Hamilton and his sister, both of whom were related to the King. By advice of his Highness, however, the former had fled, so that the scene closed with the appearance of the lady, his sister.

The Bishops gathering courage by their progress, neither her rank or sex could shield her. Mr. John Spens of Condy, the lawyer, and future King’s Advocate, or one of the men who had sat in judgment on her brother Patrick in 1528, held a long discourse respecting works, telling her there were divers sorts; “works of congruity and works of condignity.” Katharine, disturbed with the length and nicety of the argument, at last out of all patience, cried out before them all, the King also sitting by-“ Work here, work there, what kind of working is all this? I know perfectly that no works can save mo, but, the works of Christ, my Saviour.” Hi s Highness, amused with the very brief manner in which she had disposed of the lawyer’s tedious harangue, interposed, and saved her from death.

The visible and decided progress of Divine Truth is, however, to be observed, not only in those who suffered, but in the character and station of those who had fled. The teacher of the grammar-school, and the advocate, Johnstone of Edinburgh, must have been men of some talent and influence. The former died in England. His house forfeited, was given to James Bannatyne, W.S. The property of the latter, also falling to the King, was sold for a trifling consideration, chiefly to Reid, abbot of Kinloss, afterwards President of the Court of Session, and Bishop of Orkney, and partly to another individual. Johnstone, however, returned some years after, when he was permitted to live in a single chamber of that house which had been once his own; though, at his death, his body was not allowed to be interred in any churchyard!

But the refugees from St. Andrews, the former associates of ALES, were among the most eminent for literature then in the country; and they prove that the disciples of “the new learning,” far from being weak men, as some one has grossly asserted, were duly appreciated elsewhere. Of Logie we know nothing afterwards, but having been the Rector or Principal of St. Leonard’s College, he had so imbued the minds of the students, that when any of them was suspected, it was said that “he had drunk of St. Leonard’s well.” M’Alpine, who changed his name to M’Bee, or Maccabaeus, as he was called on the Continent, became a favourite of Christiern, King of Denmark, Professor in the University of Copenhagen, and one of the translators of the Danish Bible. He was the brother-in-law of Miles Coverdale, and to this expatriated native of Caledonia and translator of the Danish Scriptures, that of the English was indebted for his life, as already explained. Fife accompanied Ales to the Continent, though not when he first fled from Scotland, but afterwards from England, in 1539; as soon as “the bloody Statute,” or that of “the six articles,” had passed. At Leipsic he continued to teach as a professor for years; but he returned finally to his own country, acted as a minister, and died at St. Leonard’s, soon after the year 1560, or about five years before Ales. f120 The state of Scotland and England, at the close of 1534, was, in one sense, directly opposed to each other, and in another, exhibiting precisely the same aspect. Scotland profoundly attached to the rule of the Pontiff, and England proclaiming throughout the country hostility to Rome: but amidst all the turmoil of political affairs, both governments had found time to be alike enraged, and for the same cause; both alike imagining a vain thing-that they should be able successfully to stem the introduction of the Divine Word. Again, both countries had furnished their respective martyrs in this single-handed struggle, though neither of them at home could show even one open, bold, and determined advocate for the Scriptures. John Fryth, it is true, had come home from abroad, and shown the people of England how to die, rather than deny the truth; as Patrick Hamilton and others had nobly done in Scotland. But the present was distinguished as the moment when TYNDALE on behalf of England, and ALES on the part of Scotland, occupied a position all their own, and one which was singular throughout Europe. “Say not,” said Tyndale upon one occasion to England, “Say not that ye be not warned ;” and so might Ales have now said to his King and countrymen. With a nation on one side, and a solitary exile on the other, in reference to both countries; while the Sacred Volume had been actually reading in both, and for eight years, in spite of their respective rulers; perhaps no cause was ever more evidently exhibited to be that of God, and not of man. No exact resemblance to this was then to be found in any land. 1535.-1537. State Of Scotland-Provincial Council Of The Prelates-Agitation-Reading Of The New Testament Forbidden By Proclamation-Progress Of The Cause.

In the course of our English history, these three years, from 1535 to 1537, abounded with interesting details, as including the year before and after Tyndale’s martyrdom; the first being that of his imprisonment, the second that of his death, and the third so distinguished for the arrival of his Bible in London. On turning to Scotland, the interest is deepened. We there discover throughout, increasing alarm at the progress of “the new learning,” and determined opposition to the Sacred Volume, as translated by Tyndale, and already so powerfully enforced by Ales.

As nations, England and Scotland were far from being on sound terms with each other, yet were they firmly united in hostility to the Word of God; while in reference to Scotland, the cruelties of last year seem to have only strengthened the determination to obtain the Sacred Volume. The hollow device of representing the English New Testament to be the production of Luther or his disciples, which Cochlaeus had done all in his power to promulgate, continued to be fostered by the priests for years to come: but by this year it must have been well known, both by friends and foes, in Scotland, that Tyndale was the author. In the Castle of Vilvorde, he was now contending for the truth with the Doctors of Louvain, who, since the days of Patrick Hamilton, had their eye on Scotland. Ales, it is true, all along, and with great propriety, had mentioned no names. But how is this to be accounted for, that we now see Dr. Buckingham, Prior of the Black Friars at Cambridge, a most determined enemy to the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue-the man whom Latimer so successfully opposed, and who had for some time been living with his brethren in the Monastery at Edinburgh-leave that city, with a brother friar as his companion, and direct for Louvain? This occurred at the close of March, 1535; and the object of this hitherto mysterious movement, we have already explained. We have seen how he wrought, in conjunction with Gabriel Dunne and Phillips, in the persecution of Tyndale, throughout this very year. Buckingham, unquestionably, would not leave his old friends, the friars in Edinburgh, ignorant of what was going on, whether at Louvain or Brussels, as to the prisoner in Vilvorde, with whom all the doctors now wrangled, though in vain.

Meanwhile, the alarm of the Scottish government shows that books were still coming into the country. The Act of Parliament in 1525, against all importation by strangers, had been strengthened in 1527, so as to apply to the native importers; but by the language of Ales, it seems as if there had actually been attempts at selling the New Testament in book-shops; and certainly if the Act was now to be repeated, and with greater severity, it lends countenance to all his remonstrances. Parliament, at all events, opening in the summer of 1535, and on the 8th of June, farther degraded itself by not only repeating the Act, but now all persons having any such books were commanded to deliver them up to their Ordinary within forty days, under the penalty of confiscation and imprisonment. As a decided evidence of no small progress made, even “discussion of opinions” was now sternly prohibited by the Parliament! Happily, however, there was an exception, or, as some would say, a flaw in the Act, as there has often been since, in many such feats of human legislation. An exception was made in favour of clerks in the schools, who might read, in order to refute. The consequence was, that a number of these clerks, by reading and discussion, sincerely embraced the same sentiments, or the reverse of those which were intended by the indulgence.

In the year 1536, with regard to the Scottish monarch himself, now sinking under the power of licentious habits, and to which the clergy offered no objection, his situation was one which might well excite pity. The language of Ales has clearly shown, that, as a youth, there were generous and humane feelings within him; and the banishment of the Douglas family, with Angus at their head, was owing to a burst of emotion perfectly natural. But now the King was beset by no less than three parties. The family of Angus, though not in Scotland, were ever on the watch, having sold themselves to England. James, still unmarried, and without a direct heir, had the Hamiltons near him, not without an eye to the throne; while, as the clergy’s kingdom of this world seemed to be in danger, the guidance of the monarch had become, with them, a subject of supreme and intense interest. The erratic course of the King’s uncle, Henry VIII., had also raised Scotland in the scale of importance in the eye of Rome; so that, in conjunction with the hierarchy, James, being the man he was, had no chance of escape from vexatious thraldom.

On the one hand, Henry’s eager desire to have a personal interview with his nephew, must be thwarted. the Queen-Mother, Henry’s sister, in conjunction with Lord William Howard, strove for this at present, but in vain. At the same time, in the spring of 1536, the needle seemed to be still quivering in the beam, as to what course the King would pursue. In 1534, the clergy, with the concurrence of the Pontiff, Clement VII., had granted a tenth part of their revenues to James for three years, to encourage him, it has been supposed, in following their advice with regard to the suppression of heresy. Clement had ceased to live in September, 1534, and this grant would expire in 1537. But whatever was the cause, the monarch appears to have been dissatisfied, and especially with the exactions of the priests at large. The clergy were in motion throughout the kingdom, and from the 11th to the 17th of March, 1536, a provincial council of the Prelates was held in Edinburgh. Once assembled, they received a message from the King. Of its purport, we have one account from the Earl of Angus- “These,” he writes to his brother, “were the points of the King’s charge, as I was advertised-bidding the clergy give over the corps.present and the upmost cloth through all Scotland, that they should be no more taken; and that every man should have his own teind (tythe), paying for his tythes, such like as he pays to his landlord of his maills (rents), and no more, for his whole tythes. If they granted not that, at the King’s command, there should be a charge laid to them, that he would get (make) them set all the temporals that the kirk have, to leu (fee), and to have for it, but the old rent, such as the old rentals bear. The Kirkmen of Scotland were never so ill content.” f121 If this intelligence was substantially correct, it was certainly indicative, thus early, of very general dissatisfaction on the part of the common people throughout the country; although the grounds of complaint were not removed for twenty-four years after this, or eighteen after James was in his grave. The King himself, however, was evidently ill at ease, and it might seem, at the moment, as if he were on the point of following his uncle’s footsteps. How he became pacified does not fully appear, though it be evident that the power of the hierarchy-the counsel of the chief priests-had prevailed. The Queen-Mother was writing to her brother in England, while these prelates were yet sitting, and she informs him on the 16th of March, that the King, her son, had got counsel of the Kirkmen to desire of him these points: That he will promise not to desire his nephew to take his new constitutions from the Scriptures; not to labour for the Earl of Angus; to desire the meeting-place should be Newcastle, not York. In April, Lord Howard finds also that the time of the meeting had been prorogued to Michaelmas; he had had an interview with the King himself, at Stirling, on the subject, and being disgusted, wished to return home. In May, Henry expresses to his nephew his surprise at their meeting being changed, both as to place and time; when James, on the 20th of that month, by way of prolonging the game, replies in a letter, sweet as summer. “Dearest uncle, trust firmly, that it shall not be in the power of any wicked person to make us believe anything of you, but to repute and hold you our most faithful and kind uncle, and we to be semblable, an heartful and true nephew, ever ready to do unto you all honour and humanity to us possible.” In short, the entire communication is pregnant with hypocrisy, as it was not possible for James to be ignorant, that already John Thornton, the protonotary apostolic, had passed through England on his way to Rome, for the Pontiff’s brief, charging the Scottish King to have no meeting whatever with the King of England. Of this fact, Henry had been informed a week before, so that on receiving his nephew’s letter, he could only learn with what celerity he was following his own footsteps, in a course of perpetual dissimulation.

But we have not yet ffone with this council of prelates. Both Howard and Barlow were present at their discussions and sermons; and whether the latter had, or had not, been the author of the Satyre on WOLSEY or “The Burial of the Mass ;” his language now certainly borders on it, in point of violence, He was still Prior of his monastery, and did not resign till next year; but he had recently been made Bishop of St. David’s, and was extremely anxious to try his powers for the first time in Scotland. Having alluded to the troubled state of the borders, when writing to Crumwell, he adds- “Also, I am sure that the Council, which are only the clergy, would not willingly give such advertisement to the King, for due execution upon thieves and robbers; for then ought he first of all to begin with them, in the midst of iris Realm, whose abominable abused fashion, so far out of frame, a Christian heart abhorreth to behold. They show themselvcs, in all points, to be the Pope’s pestilent creatures, very limbs of the Devil, whose popish power violently to maintain, their lying friars cease not in their sermons, we being present, blasphemously to blatter against the verity, with slanderous reproach of us, which have justly renounced his wrong usurped papacy. Wherefore, in confutation of their detestable lies, if I may obtain the King’s licence (otherwise shall I not; be suffered) to preach, I will not spare for no bodily peril, boldly to publish the truth of God’s Word among them. Whereat though the clergy shall repine, yet many of the lay people will gladly give hearing.” f124 Such was the state of things in March, 1536, at least in Barlow’s estimation, and his testimony on behalf of “the lay people” may be received as evidence that they already knew much more than such clergy had either told them, or knew themselves.

Nor was this all. In only two months more, a more important fact, because referring to the manifest progress of Divine truth, comes out, nor is the name of Luther or Lutheranism mentioned in connexion with it. In May, 1536, the reading of the Sacred Volume in the vulgar tongue was publicly prohibited. Lord Howard and Barlow, in their joint letter of the 13th, give this information- “Though we have not brought to such final pass the contents of our INSTRUCTIONS, according as we have confidence, to the King’s Highness’ pleasure, yet there wanted in us no diligent endeavour, which nevertheless is not so in vain, but that we have necessarily tried out the Scottish dissembling mutability; which known and mistrusted, can do little displeasure, whereas their feigned untrusty amity intendeth us no farther pleasure but their own profit: except hereafter God give them a more faithful heart, grounded on knowledge of His Word, which, to be read in their vulgar tongue, is lately prohibited, by open proclamation.”f125 Now, in our English history we have already always found, that every such measure as this, within the country, was only indicative of still greater pressure from without, and so it must have been in Scotland. Thus, then, before Tyndale expired, so powerful had his exertions proved, that his translation had been publicly denounced by the authorities in the north, as well as in the south; while all the time it was making its way, in unknown directions, and in both countries.

Barlow must have written in this style simply to please Crumwell, and perhaps the King, though he uses language actually at the expense of both. tie could scarcely be ignorant that a similar prohibition lay on the same version in England; nor was it till a full year after this that Crumwell obtained the removal of all restriction. But he was soon to hear from Latimer, in Convocation, how little the English Bench could take credit over their brethren in the North; and to learn from Fox of Hereford, that the Bishops of England were “in danger of being laughed to scorn by the common people (who knew more of the Scriptures than they did), as having not one spark of learning or godliness within them;” and to witness a native of that same Edinburgh, from which he wrote, on the point of adjusting the balance more correctly between the English and the Scottish bench, putting Stokesly, Bishop of London, in a rage, though simply pleading for the authority and all-sufficiency of Scripture with a power and point which excited the fear of even Crumwell and Cranmer, who shrunk from the responsibility of allowing him to fight the battle out. These equal reminiscences show that the Clergy in both countries were equally hostile, and at the same moment, to the highest favour which Heaven had ever bestowed on them both, while “the lay people” alike in Scotland as in England were far ahead of them. 1538.-1542. STATE OF Ttie COUNTRY-BEATON A CARDINAL AND PERSECUTION REVIVED-THE MARTYRDOMS OF 1538-DEAN FORRET-THE CAUSE OF.ALL THE TUMULT IN OPPOSITION TRACED TO THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE NATIVE TONGUE-ANOTHER MARTYRDOMMEN ESCAPING-THE CRUEL PROGRESS OF CARDINAL BEATON-DEATH OF THE KING JAMES V.-GLOOMY STATE OF TIIE COUNTRY AS TO ITS GOVERNMENT AT THIS MOMENT. THROUGHOUT these five years ensuing, or from 1538 to 1542 inclusive, just as though it had been intended by Divine Providence to be the more observed by the people as such, and at all events by posterity, the only cause that looked upward was that which was most hated; the only progress towards improvement, in any department, was in that of Divine Truth. At the close of this period the King is to die, and even now, whether in relation to himself or the country at large, every movement was from bad to worse. All things went the downward road.

David Beaton, Prior of Arbroath, a nephew to the Archbishop of the same name, was now rising into power. As licentious and ambitious as Wolsey, he was far more unrelenting in his disposition. He had been sent to France tc bring home the young and amiable Queen of James; but she having died within fifty days after her arrival, Beaton was sent again to France to negotiate another marriage. He returned in May, 1538, with Mary of Guise, an alliance perfectly agreeable to the clergy, but most injurious to the best interests of the counry. While at the French Court, Beaton had contrived to be made Bishop of Mirepoix in Languedoc; but this was only a step to higher promotion. He applied to the Pontiff for the office and power of a Cardinal, and though but an Abbot in his own country, he succeeded at the Court of Rome, and was actually raised to that honour by Paul III., on the 20th December, 1538.

Throughout the year 1538, the “new learning” having made very manifest progress, the disposition to persecute was about to be fully gratified. The secret of Beaton’s zeal for power could not long remain hid, and since James was both so married, and too far gone to profit by any warning; his character as a man must “smart for it,” as Henry, his uncle, had predicted.

Nothing improved by his former visit to France, gay, licentious, and thoughtless, James was as much in want of money as his uncle always was, and money he must have. In younger life he had shrunk from the shedding of blood, but now, in order to beguile him from an eye to clerical wealth and the accumulated treasures of the monasteries, the property of all who should either die for their opinions, or abjure, was held out as the base incitement to the enslaved and infatuated monarch. If, therefore, among the subjects of James there were those who would “take joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing that they had in heaven a better and an enduring substance,” and if their attachment to the Word of God as such should thus become apparent, a better evidence of progress made could not be wished.

At the same time, the course about to be pursued by the enemy, is worthy of notice, on another account. It was the choice plan of Stephen Gardiner in England to hunt after such as he styled “the head deer ;” and as the persecutor in Scotland is about to gratify not merely his own malice, but supply the King’s necessities; the poor believer, who had nothing to forfeit or leave behind him, not being a subject suitable to the miserable end in view, must have been, most providentially, passed over. The poor, often the richest in faith, were below notice, merely because not worth the trouble and expense.

Before, however, noticing any instances of persecution, it must be remembered that “the New Testament in the vulgar tongue” had been pointed out since May, 1536, by public proclamation. There may have been some other English books suspected of heresy already in Scotland, but even still, no other book is expressly named. The presumption therefore is, that in all these proceedings, the Scripture chiefly, if not solely, were now aimed at, and all opinions grounded on the Sacred Volume.

Beaten once a Cardinal, there was no farther occasion for troubling either the Lords of the Privy Council, or those of the Justiciary, in prosecution for heresy. Wherever his cross was borne before him, there he reigned as lord paramount over the conscience, and the suspected will not now easily escape. By the 10th of January, 1539, we find Robert Forrestcr, brother to the Laird of Arngibbon, William Forrester, son of John, burgess of Stirling, Walter Cousland, David Graham, and James Watson, all of Stirling, were seized for books, suspected to be heretical; “for breaking his Highness’ proclamation, in having and using such books as are suspected of heresy, and are prohibited by the KIRK.” Observe the altered phraseology, or how soon and slily they were interposing their own authority. The caution at once exacted from these parties amounted to no less than 3,100 marks, so that the entire property must have been considerable. The first gentleman, we shall find die at the stake; the second and third, as well as another, a burgess of Edinburgh, Robert Cant, were all entirely forfeited in March.

Similar forfeitures extended to Perth, as well as to Stifling, where John Stewart, son to Henry, Lord Methven, was among the number; and so far as the seizure of property was concerned, the persecution lay very heavy upon Dundee.

Two parties had now fully engrossed the mind of Beaton, namely, the Kirk and the King. The former was to be defended by fire, the latter to be cajoled by fines; and this month of March served to unfold his character, as equally busy in both departments. The most fearful week was the first in this month, and Saturday the 1st its most shocking day. The country hitherto had witnessed no scene so outrageous. The trial, such as it was, and the sentence to death being all overtaken before the sun went down, it must have been intended to strike with terror, not Edinburgh alone, but every other place. Not fewer than five different men appeared; John Keillor and John Beveridge, two Benedictine monks or Black Friars, nor improbably from the same monastery in Edinburgh where Prior Buckingham had lodged till 1535, when he set off to the persecution of Tyndale; Sir Duncan Simpson, so called as being a priest, from Stifling; Mr. Robert Forrester, notary, a gentleman of the same place; and last, though not least, a Dean of the Kirk, Thomas Forret, canon regular in the Monastery of St. Colm’s Inch, and Vicar of Dollar. Having been summoned before Beaton, and Chisholm, Bishop of Dunblane, men equally notorious for licentious habits and bigoted attachment to their system, no mercy was in store for any of the five, while the last was treated with characteristic reproach and barbarity. The trial soon over, the fire was prepared on the esplanade of the Castle, visible at once far and near, to two counties, Mid-Lothian and Fife.

The King, too, must proceed one step farther on the present occasion. In 1534 he had presided in a red dress at the trial of Straiton, but his authority on the bench was now not consulted. It had, in fact, been superseded by that of this Cardinal, but still his Majesty must sanction all. He must follow the footsteps of his father-in-law Francis I., in 1535, and himself be present to see the red flames on the Castle-hill, when five of his best subjects were consumed to ashes before his eyes, on the lst of March, 1539. f126 From the record of Dean Forret’s trial, it appears that his official accuser, John Lauder, having demanded a proof of some statement made, he produced a New Testament, which Lauder snatched out of his hand, and holding it up, cried, “Behold, Sirs, he has the book of heresy in his sleeve, that MAKES ALL THE DIN AND PLAY IN OUR KIRK!” “Brother,” said the Dean, “God forgive you! Ye could say better, if ye pleased, nor to call the book of the Evangel of Jesus Christ, heresy!” But he was immediately interrupted by his accuser with, “Knows thou not, heretic, that it is contrary to our acts and express commands, to have a New Testament or Bible in English, which is enough to burn thee for?” Then proceeds the record, “The Council of the Clergy gave sentence on him to be burnt, for the having and using of the same book-the New Testament in English” No attestation could be more distinct than that which was here given by those unprincipled and wicked men. No other book is once named. All the healthful and life-giving commotion is ascribed to one source, and that the Book of God. This alone, it is confessed and deplored, was that which gave such great annoyance, and, in their style, occasioned all the din and play throughout the country!

Not satisfied with this horrible scene, Beaton must look westward, where it seems to have been resolved there should be another martyrdom by way of terror. Here, however, he was to meet with some temporary obstruction from Gavin Dunbar, who was not only an Archbishop (of Glasgow), but at the same time possessing the highest civil authority, as the Lord Chancellor. The fact was that Beaton, though nominally a Cardinal, had not even yet received the “instrument of possession” to his title, nor did he do so till October; but though he had been in fun power, Glasgow as well as Ross would have demurred to his authority, and objected to his cross being borne there. He will provide for all this presently, but now, being still only an Abbot in Scotland, if resolved to push his way over the head of Dunbar, it will only display the arrogance and fury of this man’s ambition.

Two individuals-Jerome Russell, a Grey Friar, and Ninian Kennedy, a young man, only eighteen, of good education and poetic genius-were brought to trial. The Archbishop would gladly have saved them, but the Cardinal was not to be checked in his course of cruelty and ambition; Dunbar was threatened, and not liking to come into collision with this power so new to Scotland, he yielded. The martyrs died in triumph.

Another suffered at Cupar-Fife. Many fled the country, and Berwick was crowded with refugees. “Daily cometh to me,” writes Norfolk from that place to Crumwell, “some gentlemen and some clerics (priests), which do flee out of Scotland, as they say for reading of Scripture in English, saying that if they were taken they should be put to execution.”

Such was the result of the influence and title, newly imported from Italy, but at the same time the storm has again cleared the moral atmosphere, giving decided proof that a great and unwonted power had been introduced into Scotland. In other words, we have before us the veritable progress of all the scriptural Christianity which has been in the country ever since; and however feeble and unpretending in its commencement, the work, since 1526, was now of thirteen years standing.

With such a second Queen as the Cardinal had procured, and with this increase of tyrannical power to such a man, it was to be expected that James’s uncle, the King of England, would take alarm. Through his own rude violence of language, however, to say nothing of his liecntious character, and the undermining policy he had pursued, all influence over his nephew was now gone; but for his own, sake, he must try the effect of warning, through his herald or ambassador, once more.

His letter, however, was too late, and he might have saved himself the trouble. James had already “smarted” in his character, by yielding to Beaton, who was by no means to be interrupted in his career after higher authority still. In the autunm of 1539, by the death of his uncle, he had become Primate, but even this, and the red hat of a cardinal to boot, would not satisfy. The western Archbishop, the Lord Chan:-cellor, still sitting, like Mordecai in the King’s gate, must be fully, or without question, overruled. The Primate’s mind, by this time, was soaring after all power, whether over the King or the country, as he will prove before long.

Meanwhile, he felt, at this moment, that there was still a technical flaw in the authority for which he panted. He must carry his cross triumphantly over broad Scotland, and no man shall gainsay or plead exemption. In short, though both an Archbishop and a Cardinal, he must not only be Legate a natus, which, as Primate, he was already, but Legate a latere, or plenipotentiary, and enjoy as much or more power than any primate had done before him. Hence Oliphant, his most willing agent, who had been to Glasgow, was then dispatched to Rome, and by the 16th of November, 1539, we have Beaton writing from Kelso, urging him on to “diligence and to labour at his power.” “Attour,” says he, or, “Besides, ye shall incontinent get us a brief, that we, as Primate of the realm, may bear our cross before us, through the whole kingdom of Scotland, both in the diocese and province of Glasgow, and all other places whatsoever exempt.” And again, in December from Edinburgh, he adds- “Make the best and most honourable persuasions ye can, or may, to induce his Holiness to the granting of the said legation.” f127 The fact was, that the Pontiff himself faltered and hesitated, but, at last, Beaton’s agent was successful; and since he was the last individual in Scotland to be clothed in such high and shocking authority, we can now see a propriety in the Pontiff being permitted to put forth all his power, and lift his head as high as he possibly could in the person of this man, a little before his authority in Scotland was to be broken for ever. It will be remembered, that precisely the same thing had been permitted to take place in England.

Whether, however, it was infatuated policy, or rather profligate extravagance, in the Scottish King, there could be no excuse for the guilt of persecution; though still we are not to imagine that James was a true son of the Kirk. He did not care one straw for their system, and held the persons of his ecclesiastics in profound contempt. In the drollery and satire which was played off against, them, he would himself indulge, and even listen to it for hours, with the keenest pleasure. An instance had occurred at this very time, on the 6th of January, 1540, at Lithgow, whore an interlude was played before the King and Queen and the whole Council, spiritual and temporal. The subject of the play, according to an eyewitness, was “the naughtiness in religion, the presumption of the Bishops, the pollution of their courts, and misusing of priests.” At the close the King called on the Archbishop of Glasgow and other Bishops present to reform their manner of living, saying that, unless they so did, he would send six of the proudest of them to his unck of England, and as those were ordered, so he would order all the rest that would not mend.

But then upon such an occasion as that of this play, what has become of Beaten? He was not there, and as long as he carried his cross so high, all this was nothing more than idle talk. James might amuse himself, but he must live and die, the mere shadow of a King. This scene at Lithgow, however, was not a solitary or unwonted affair. Such plays and poems and satires were repeatedly acted; and though the most eminent scholar in Scotland, George Buchanan, had to fly, there was another man who never did, and whom the Cardinal never was allowed to touch. Here was a second Mordecai, far more obnoxious than Gavin Dunbar had been, who was long to survive all the fury of this period, and write his “Tragedie of the late Cardinal,” after he had gone to his account. This was no other than the Lord Lyon King at Arms, Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, Fifeshire.

He had been the official keeper and companion of the King, in the days of his infancy; and now, the author not only of the interlude referred to, but of other satirical pieces, bearing with such force and effect on the superstition of the day,, and especially on the ignorance and immorality, or vices of the Kirk, as to render its officers, both high and low, most contemptible in the eyes of many. Yet must he never be molested, nor Beaton ever wave his cross over his head. So far from it, the Queen having been lately crowned, Sir David had been not the least conspicuous figure. We find a sum of not less than a thousand marks had been actually paid to him and his with, for their official services on that occasion.

Mary of Guise was scarcely crowned Queen, when Sir Ralph Sadler was down once more to visit the King. He tried, but in vain, to shake the confidence of James in his Cardinal and Legate; at least so the King pretended, by the manner in which he continued to rally Sadler in reply.

But in May, clothed in all his honours thick upon him, Beaten, as Legate a latere, proceeded in grand entrance to St. Andrews, with an unwonted array of nobility, and there delivered his first oration.

It was on the 22nd of this month, from his Abbey of St. Andrews, that the King informed Henry of his having become a father, by the birth of James his eldest son: but from this period, it may be added, the gay but enslaved monarch was hastening rapidly to his ruin. One cause of molestation or perplexity now followed the other in quick succession. By the sudden death of Thomas Scott, Lord Justice Clerk, the King had been not a little disturbed, but the execution of Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, for high treason, appears to have shaken his nervous system. Jealousy of his nobility preyed on his mind, and there were those who were ever ready to promote the feeling.

In April 1541, his second son Arthur was born, but he survived only a few days, and in a few more his elder son and heir followed his brother to the grave. In December the Queen Mother, Henry’s sister, died at Perth, and the reign of discord between England and Scotland began. The battle of Solway Moss, so fatal to the King’s reputation and so ruinous to the kingdom, was fought in the year following. Slow fever, the result of distraction with the deepest melancholy, preyed on the vigorous constitution of the unhappy monarch. He lived only to hear of the birth of his daughter, the equally misguided and unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, and seven days after died of a broken heart. Did he remember in his last hours the warning of Ales, pointing to Antiochus, who, “with his ruined army, himself was consumed with grief of mind”?

Meanwhile the Word of the Lord grew and multiplied. Beaton had drawn up a list of victims for his intended Inquisition, most of them men of rank and property; and the number shows the extent to which the principles of truth were embraced. Sir Ralph Sadler, Henry’s Ambassador, computes them at 360 “gentlemen, all well minded to God’s Word.” But against the horrible proscription here meditated, the mind of the King revolted, and he could not stand even the sight of the list, and the bloody intention was frustrated. Still it discovers the extent to which the Scriptures were read and prized, while Buchanan speaks of “many thousands who did not hesitate to peruse the books of the Old and New Testaments.” An important question now is-How, or by what instrumentality, had this mighty change already been effected?

Seven years after the Scriptures of the New Testament in English had been first conveyed into Scotland, there had, indeed, been an able and wellsustained controversy, though hitherto buried in oblivion, as to the right and duty of the people to read the Scriptures for themselves, and at home in their own dwellings; but there had been no ministry of the Word, properly so called. One man, Forret, in a very limited district, for a short time had spoken out; but he was almost immediately silenced, and then burnt to ashes. There had been no son of thunder lifting up his voice, nor had any such means been employed as to account for this confessedly great change. Two or three men from England may come down afterwards, and make some impression; but we now speak of the past, and of what had been already effected. Putting the presumptive heir to the crown entirely out of view, as a weak and vacillating man, have so many round about him been so shaken in mind, as to involve themselves, by Beaton’s casuistry, in the deadly sin of what he called heresy? Then, as far as the art of printing, or English books were concerned, nothing can be ascribed to either cause: and of books imported from abroad, we find not upon record a single titlepage, save one. But that one has been proclaimed in open court, by Lauder, in 1538, as having been the great, nay, the only source of annoyance. He denounced it as heresy. “God forgive you,” said Forret, “that ye should call the book of the Evangel of Jesus Christ heresy.” But he insisted that it was, and that it was this which had occasioned “ALL the din and p/ay in their Kirk,” or throughout Scotland. Certainly it was intended, that posterity should observe this, and no event of the day has been more distinctly marked, if so much so.

The ministry of the Word, though of Divine appointment, has all along, so grievously neglected, which now at last engaged notice. The destitution of the native Irish, was almost like the destitution of life itself. They had then no one to speak for them, and Britain, like the hard-hearted Levite of old, had ever passed by on the other side. On the other hand, the scarcity so complained of by the Welsh, was actually the result of previous supplies.

But upon inquiry respecting these, we are led back, not to any authoritative or national movement, but simply, as in other cases, to individual benevolent exertion?

It was in December 1802, that Thomas Charles, of Bala, happened to be in London, lamenting, as he had often done, the scarcity of Welsh Bibles throughout the country. On Tuesday, the 7th of that month, at a meeting of the Tract Society, of which the Rev. Joseph Hughes of Battersea was Secretary, Mr. Charles was present, and the subject was introduced. Mr. Hughes, a member of the same community with Carey, had been acquainted with every step of his progress from the beginning, ten years before. After a long conversation, he stood up, and suggested whether it would not be desirable to awaken the public mind towards a general dispersion of the Sacred Scriptures in all languages, or throughout the world. The proposal was warmly greeted, and at the request of all present, Mr. Hughes drew up his tract or pamphlet of thirty pages, on “The excellence of the Holy Scriptures, an argument for their more general dispersion.” Of this tract, two editions were circulated throughout 1803, and, after various consultations, the result was, that on the 7th March, 1804, that institution was formed, with whose title not a few are perfectly familiar in the four quarters of the globe.

In the first instance, it will be understood that it is mainly in its connexion with the English Scriptures that we are now called to notice the operations of the British and Foreign Bible Society; while, at the same time, the reader need scarcely be apprised, that the field now opening before him, in the history of the English Bible, embraces a far larger surface. Before and since the formation of that Society, the printing of the Sacred Volume in our vernacular tongue has proceeded to an extent which was never foreseen, never once contemplated, and that extent has now reached a point, of which but very few persons are at all aware. This extent, indeed, may, at first, be viewed by some with astonishment, but, unlike many other events, it never can be with regret; not only as having been ordered by more than human wisdom, but because in conclusion, we shall find there is a moral involved, which will be found to demand the notice of the Christian community, individually and entire; and in the present day especially, more than any other to which it can be directed. The sphere occupied by the British and Foreign Bible Society, in the ENGLISH department, has been delightfully large, and this has been dwelt upon in a variety of ways so frequently, that it is in danger of diminishing the rate or pace of exertion, if not of filling the whole field of vision. But as it regards the English Scriptures printed within the last forty-four years, the field we now contemplate is far greater. Independently of whatever number of English Bibles and Testaments may have been dispersed through that one medium, we have to include those which have been printed in Scotland, and the general sale throughout the kingdom from 1800 to 1844. From these three sources we come to the following aggregate of English Bibles and New Testaments separately :- The British and Foreign Bible Society have issued... 9,400,000 There have been printed in Scotland, independently, above. 4,000,000 The general sales, besides these, have been considered to be more, but cannot have been less, than 9,000,000 or above twenty.two millions in round numbers! Now, wherever these volumes have gone,-whether throughout England, Scotland, or Ireland, or to the British dependencies at the ends of the earth,-we have here to do at first simply with the remarkable fact, and it may well serve to regulate exertion for years to come. But having once pointed it out, we are the better prepared to take up the institution referred to, as not merely an important subject of review, but as forming one index to the plain path, or the special course of future duty. f128 To those who are old enough to remember, with any interest, the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and its immediate effects, the recollection must ever prove one of the most pleasing in their past lives. Its simple or exclusive object being to circulate the Sacred Volume; “the Bible, without note or comment,” being its only motto, the effect was such as should be pondered still. Well does it deserve, and in these days demand, reconsideration; for no proposal on British ground had ever gone so directly to the heart, nor to the hearts of so many, throughout the empire.

Founded on a principle so simple, so intelligible, so unexceptionable, the formation of the Society produced an effect altogether unprecedented; indeed the mere announcement ran through every denomination in the kingdom, and conveyed an impulse, at once the most powerful and the most extensive under which the Christians of this country had ever come.

Unquestionably it was the most powerful, in its visibly drawing to itself parties who, ever since their origin, had lived in estrangement from each other, if not in a degree of prejudice; though in their apprehension, of conscientious or consecrated separation. Many wondered why the proposal had never been before made, since it was one to which there was but one response. The most estimable and useful members of every community discovered the same cordiality, and vied with each other only in their zeal to advance a cause, which they all alike felt to be their privilege and duty.

Upon British ground there never had been an association of greater moral power. There might, indeed, be many others drawn in, as by a vortex; but still they were Christians, and these the most eminent and consistent, who led the van and formed the strength of the institution. No combination ever so earned for itself the title of British, for although the proposal first emanated from London, the Bible Society has never been a local, or merely a metropolitan institution, up to the present hour, and less now than ever it was. Its resources have been drawn from every corner of the empire; its strength has ever lain in its auxiliaries; forming, on the whole, the largest Christian circle that had ever existed in this country. To that circle, its single but sublime object conveyed a degree of invigorating warmth, which, as separate bodies, the Christians thus united had scarcely, if ever, before enjoyed. It was the discovery of a new influence. It was as if a finer sun had risen. Nor was this all. The institution had assumed the name of “The British and Foreign Bible Society;” and this one word, charged as it was with more disinterested feeling, brought with it a degree of animation greater still; and one beyond anything of the kind, ever since Christianity had an existence within the shores of this favoured Island. But for this word, which, at that time, came like a refreshing breeze over the whole land, the number of contributors, the collections made, and the sums subscribed, had never been what they were, then or since. Hence it was that the most powerful impulse became the most extensive.

The title assumed was, in short, tantamount to this,-that the Sacred text, the Divine Record, standing by itself, as it always ought to have done from the beginning, and ought in due reverence to do, in all time to come; or, in other words, thatTHE BIBLE,WITHOUT NOTE OR COMMENT, was not only all-sufficient for the people of Britain, but for every OTHER nation under heaven, or for all the world, far as the curse was found. British Christians had seized at last, upon a simple principle, of imperative and infinite value to our common humanity, in all its dialects; and in these days, by solemn, public, and often repeated acknowledgments, they were never to stop short of its UNIVERSAL application.

The men who then lived are now rapidly passing away, but those early friends who yet survive certainly owe it to themselves, in connexion with the generation they are so soon to leave, to inform it dilly of the deep sensation then felt, and the joy with which this simple proposal respecting the Sacred Volume was then hailed throughout the kingdom. They can explain to their families to what extent this proposal was felt by every denomination of British Christians, as conveying life to themselves and sympathy for the world; how it smoothed the asperity of discordant sentiment, and absorbed the best feelings of the heart in favour of the Oracles of God. They can toll them, that no sooner were the terms simply announced, than they were felt as a summons from on high, far above the regions or spirit of party; for all right-hearted men came out to obey the call. But why need we thus speak? The palpable results are now before us, and with these the existing generation of Christians have to do. They speak in language which our countrymen, less than forty years ago, would have regarded but as some visionary prospect or pleasing dream. Of these results then, they had no more expectation than they had of those of steampower, or of the benefits about to spring from the atmosphere around them, by the discovery of gaslight. We repeat, therefore, that there is no subject to which the attention of ALL Christians can be more profitably RECALLED; none upon which, in the present state of our country, and of the world, it can be more profitably fixed.

To give any history of the British and Foreign, or of any other Bible Society, is here altogether unnecessary; but there are several statements which are now essential to our knowing with some degree of accuracy the present position of this cause, whether in relation to this Island, or its very singular connexion with the rest of the world. Independently of the general sales, as there has been already expended in money, even by these Bible Societies, considerably more than three millions sterling, it is time to report progress, and far more than time to mark the relative proportion, or rather disproportion, between home and abroad; or between the Scriptures printed merely in the languages of Britain or Ireland, and those in the languages of all other nations put together.

There has been received by the British and Foreign Bible Society, from every source of supply, up to May 1844, the total sum of £3,083,436 18s. 8 3/4d.; of this amount, not less than £3,036,698 Os. 3d. have been expended, according to the last or Fortieth Report, leaving a balance, upon which the Committee were under engagements to the amount of £41,469 12s. 7d. f129 For all the purposes of comparison, the entire receipt may, we presume, with sufficient accuracy, be thus stated, viz. : f130 - Received by the Parent Society £537,831 5 5 3/4 “ from Auxiliary Societies 2,432,948 0 “ from abroad, chiefly Europe 112,657 13 £3,083,436 18 8 3/4 But whatever else might be said respecting the amount received, it is to the declared expenditure that every one must look as to the guide for all future operations. Gathered as the supplies have been from the kingdom at large, it may be supposed, that not only in the character, but the direction of their outlay, the contributors at large will now be interested.

The entire expenditure, according to the last or Fortieth Report, has been £3,036,698 Os. 3d. Naturally enough, one of the first questions will be; “how much has been spent in the British and how much in the Foreign department?” Or, in other words, “How much has been spent upon the Scriptures in the languages of Great Britain and Ireland only, and how much on the Sacred Volume in the languages of all Foreign nations, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America?” To these questions the following may be received as the first reply :- Expenditure in the British department, on the languages spoken within Great Britain and Ireland. £2,004,726 12 l0 Expenditure in the Foreign, department, upon languages spoken throughout all the rest of the world, no more 1,031,971 7 than..... £3,036,698 0 At an early stage in these exertions, a cry was heard, not unfrequently, as to the folly of collecting and sending such large sums out or THE COUNTRY, and that more attention ought to be paid to our own. But it must now be confessed by all, that the somewhat altered now, if we may judge from the Cash Account in the Report for 1861.

Received by the Parent Society :- In Legacies, Subscriptions, Collections, &c.£30,373 By Sales 7,660 By Dividends and Drawbacks 3,935 41,968 Received from Auxiliary Societies:- Free Contributions · £52,165 For Bibles and Testaments. 46,322 98,487 From abroad, for Scriptures 27, £167,943 British Lion has, all along, enjoyed the Lion’s share. Such a disparity as this, however, courts inquiry, and, for futurity’s sake, it may be supposed to interest the great body of contributors.

It is not then to be supposed that these two sums entire have been spent upon the Scriptures themselves. The expenses of management and distribution, of course, remain to be deducted, and these involve a material reduction of the total amount.

For if the whole amount of expenditure has been.. £3,036,698 0 The expenses referred to, turn out to have been. 433,284 8 7 1/2 Leaving for the Scriptures, whether at home or abroad, not £2,603,413 11, 1/2 more to be accounted for than.....

The positive expenditure on theSCRIPTURES themselves, as now reduced, and to be explained, is, therefore, l 2,603,413 11s. 7 1/2d.; of which there appears to have been spent On languages spoken in Great Britain and Ireland.. £1,691,940 14 7 1/2 On all others spoken throughout the world, only . 911,472 17 As soon as this is observed, the extraordinary disproportion will probably excite regret in those who are truly interested, that so very little, comparatively, has yet been done, for destitute foreign nations, or the world at large. But, at this moment, the eye must on no account be diverted from the history of the English Bible. Let that subject, above all, be here first fully understood, and then no mystery will remain as to the imperative obligations of British Christians for many years to come.

Before, however, looking at the broad surface of England and Wales, it would be doing injustice toLONDON and its immediate vicinity, as the centre of action, were we to pass unnoticed the sum spent upon the Scriptures by the auxiliary societies even there. What share have they enjoyed in this general expenditure? It is only twenty-eight years since the distinction was drawn between money contributed, and Bibles received in return, but since then more than seventy-six thousand pounds, or £76,704 15s. 8d., have been expended by them, in the distribution of the Sacred Volume, and at the reduced prices. And all within the compass of London and Middlesex alone! What a contrast is presented here toPARIS,VIENNA, MADRID, or indeed any other city in Europe!

If we now turn from the Parent Society and these London auxiliaries, to the kindred Societies throughout England and Wales, we find that, independently of their free contributions, or l 1,128,762 7s. 8d., they have spent on the Sacred Scriptures, in their various localities, not less than £962,803 3s. 8d. Additional supplies for England, Scotland, Ireland, and the British Colonies, will account for the entire amount defrayed by the parent institution, in its British or home department.

But the general reader must be perfectly aware, that there are many Bible institutions, in Scotland and Ireland, which, during almost all these years, have been exerting themselves independently of the British and Foreign; while, at the same time, their main strength has been spent upon our native land and colonies, through the medium of the English Scriptures; so that, look wherever we may, in regard to money spent, precisely the same echo is heard.

And even still, justice is not yet done to the subject before us, except we turn from pounds sterling, to the Scriptures themselves. Confining the statement, therefore, to this British and Foreign Society; in their Report for 1844, they tell us that they have issued fifteen millions, nine hundred and sixty-five thousand, and twenty-five volumes of Bibles and Testaments.

But then of these, how many have been in the languages of our own diminutive country alone? More than ten millions and a half; or 10,523,157! Thus leaving for all the world besides, not equal to five millions and a half; or 5,441,868! And even with regard to the home department, or the languages spoken within this kingdom, what proportion of these Scriptures have been in the English tongue alone? Not fewer than nine millions, seven hundred and thirteen thousand, seven hundred and sixteen Bibles, Testaments, Psalms, and Gospels.

In addition, moreover, to the disparity exhibited by these millions, as compared with the scanty and inferior supply yet sent to all other nations; it is greatly heightened by another consideration. Every one must be aware that an English Bible or New Testament has never cost so much, as almost all in foreign languages; and that, consequently, every single pound has gone much further at home, than it could by possibility have ever done abroad.f131 Thus, at the distance of not less than forty years from its commencement, or more than the space of an entire generation, it is now evident, that the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society, with that of all its auxiliaries, as well as all the kindred institutions in Scotland and Ireland, was a movement, not so much with regard to foreign lands. It was one, up to the present hour, mainly, though not foreseen, with reference to the Scriptures in the English language, throughout the United Kingdom and its colonies. It was, in truth, the same gracious Being, whom we have beheld from the beginning, still pursuing his own wondrous way towards this country, which he had pursued so long; and stirring up a part of the population to accomplish that of which not one among them had the slightest intention at the outset! So entirely providential, because above the purpose of the original movers, has the result been, that if any one man, in the room at London, on the 7th of May, 1804, had proposed to do, what has actually been done; whatever might have been thought of the state of his judgment or reason at the moment, the proposal must have been viewed, as not only the height of extravagance, or selfish policy, but altogether absurd. Had any person risen and said- “ Gentlemen, you have met to make a commencement indeed, but it is mainly in order that you should print the Scriptures in your own English tongue, and that not for sale at their original cost only, which they never have been before, but for distribution at a reduced price, and to the extent of more than nine millions of Bibles and Testaments.” Would not such an announcement have been fatal to this, the very first meeting, and consequently to the design of the secret mover of them all? Is it to be imagined, that the speaker would have found any person present ready to second him, since no one there or elsewhere had any such purpose in view? Meanwhile, all were unanimous, cordially unanimous, as under one impulse, and they obeyed it, having no conception whither it would lead them, and thousands more. They began, but least of all imagining that they had combined to do more for their native land only, than for all the world beside!

Such an amount however having been expended on the whole, it is evident that the proportion of Scripture in the English tongue has been immense; and yet though many may wish that a larger share had fallen to nations in far greater need, let this only operate the more powerfully after we have done; but in the meanwhile actually no room is left for regret as to the English proportion, when the entire subject, or field of operation, comes into view. This money is gone, it is true; it has been so spent, and yet considered as an event past, perhaps its most extraordinary feature is this, that it is an event, for which, as no particular person is to be blamed, so no one can be applauded, since not a single individual either foresaw, or ever intended it! It may be true, that there is absolutely nothing precisely similar to this in the history of British expenditure, during the last forty years, if ever before; for certainly it is not usual for an institution to work in a direction, by no means originally contemplated; and more especially to such an extent as to swallow up the great proportion of its funds. This, however, should only win for the event itself now, the more deliberate consideration.

In relation to the Scriptures in English, therefore, let it now be specially observed, that, in the operation of these Bible institutions, there has been actually nothing which can, correctly speaking, be denominated excess; since, all along, in the usual current of national affairs, Divine Providence has been going far beyond it, and effecting far more by men separately than by men combined. The latter, it is true, have issued above nine millions of English Bibles and Testaments, but the former, without its being annually noted in any way, have produced a larger number. The men combined may have spent a million and a half sterling, and in the English tongue alone, but this is far from approaching even the half of what has actually been expended on the whole. Besides, in the latter case, the Scriptures have been sold, they have been purchased at a price, yielding to the bookseller his profit; in the former, they have been dispersed at reduced rates; but when both methods are combined, they form a retrospect, certainly of the most commanding character. The Divine blessing has, without doubt, rested on these united voluntary effort; but still the hand of Him who “instructs the ploughman to discretion,” has been upon the printer, and the purchaser also, and even to greater extent all the time! There is a vast difference between even ten or eleven millions of volumes issued according to the former method, and above twenty-two millions on the whole, as already explained. In conclusion, if we look at this subject with reference to money, how few persons throughout the kingdom have ever observed, or been aware of the fact, that since the present century commenced, an amount equal, at the least, to four millions sterling has been spent upon the Sacred Volume in the English tongue?

Such might have been the conclusion of the present work, and, but little more than four years ago (1841), probably must have been, but for an event, altogether unprecedented, which then took place. Happening without any previous intimation, it took every man by surprise; though now it forms, if not the top-stone to the present history, that which, in a few years hence, will be regarded as the stone next to it. But even now, or rather every moment since it took place, it has added more than double emphasis to all that has been stated, respecting that immense mass of English Scripture printed and circulated in our day. The event conveys a meaning, from which there is no possibility for any Christian, or even the nation, to escape.

Long before this time, the reader is perfectly aware, that for many generations back, the English Bible has been printed by the authority of what has been styled a Patent from the Crown. Now, whatever may be said respecting the merits or demerits of patents in general, or of the benefit or injury resulting from such royal grants; it will certainly be singular enough, if, on looking back, it should be found that all these Bible Patents have taken their rise from what was once distinctly understood, and pronounced to be illegal; in other words, if it shall be found that these Patents actually rest upon one grained by Queen Elizabeth in 1577, and then styled a PATENT OF PRIVILEGE. It was upon the strength of this that Christopher Barker first printed the Bible for nearly twelve years. But that was a description of patents, which, when submitted to the Attorney-General of the day, he distinctly ruled that they could not stand with the laws and statutes of the realm. Various such patents, therefore, fared accordingly.

They became null and void, though, by way of marvellous exception, this of Barker’s remained untouched! But more strange still, Elizabeth, either not recollecting, or not adverting to, the distinction already drawn, but quoting the patent of privilege by way of precedent, granted another with her own hand in 1589. Thus, the course began, which has been discussed, an rediscussed, in courts of law, not unfrequently, at great expense, both in England and Scotland, again and again.

It is something to be able to record, at the close of such a history as the past, that her Majesty’s printer, in the spring of 1841, came forward and reduced the value of his patent, to date a degree as to create astonishment.

It would be saying too much, that it became of no more value than waste paper, or a piece of old parchment; for still he is secure of certain advantages, with relation to the Scriptures, in large size. But in regard to many smaller editions, as it appears now that as he could, so he actually did, nearly merge the trade in the nation, by placing them almost on the same footing. “There is no occasion for any minute detail here, in proof of a fact so very well known to many. But by way of brief illustration, it may be stated, that in the close of 1840, the patentee advertising five different sizes of the Bible, viz., twenty-four mo, duodecimo, octavo, quarto, and folio; and thus presenting a Bible in twenty-four distinct editions, the united price charged was £20 ls. 6d. Early in 1841, he came forward, and by a list of prices, offered the whole for £9 14s. 5d.! The largest, or folio Bible, for which before he charged £4, he had now reduced to £1 10s.! The smallest, formerly charged 8s., was now only 3s. That which before cost 5s. 6d., was now to be no more than 1s. 2d.! A similar reduction was advertised upon nineteen editions of the New Testament. Single books, gospels or epistles, printed separately, which had bcen charged sixpence, were now to be sold for three half-pence! So much for February 1841, but even this would not suffice for the very next month of March. The surprise and satisfaction felt at the former reductions had not subsided, when there came farther reduction still, and upon ten different books. Thus, the edition which in January was nine shillings, and in February only six, was now down to four shillings and sixpence! And so in proportion with various other editions of the English Bible.

Inquire not how this could possibly be done. The patentee himself best knows this. WHY it was done, is another question, and admits of a brief historical reply.

It was in the year 1831 that Parliament began to inquire into the working of this patent, and abundance of evidence was taken, yet all this died away, or was permitted to sleep for years. It was afterwards to be of value, but this was to be in other hands, and of these but very few.

The patent of Mr. Spottiswoode was not to expire till the year 1860, but that granted for Scotland was then near its end. Evidence was, therefore, called for in reference to it; and wise, at last, in the doctrine of noninterference, but without foreseeing what were to be the very remarkable results, the patent was allowed to expire, without renewal, on the 19th of July, 1839. This printing establishment being at the moment in possession of many advantages as such, to her Majesty’s former printers for Scotland was thus transferred the honour of being the first free-traders in that part of the kingdom since the days of Andrew Hart, or two hundred and thirty years ago, nay, and the first inBRITAIN, since the reign of EDWARD THE SIXTH. As, then, when any respectable house applied for a licence to proceed, it was forthcoming, so it came to pass now in Scotland, simply by an application to the Lord Advocate; a mode of procedure of which other printers immediately availed themselves.

Only a few months had elapsed when the Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society began to wonder at an impulse, for which, they informed their subscribers, in May 1840, they “could scarcely account.” It arose from an earnest desire for the Scriptures, and at a more moderate price. This led to an offer on their part, of a Bible and a New Testament, separately, at a much lower rate than they had ever been presented; but the stop they had taken showed, and in a very short time, that if persisted in, it would, at the prices then paid to the English patentee, soon swallow up their free income entire. In six months, by this single step, they had thus spent, or lost, £13,000! They paused, and suspended the offer. Meanwhile, the free-trade prices in the north could not remain a secret, and before the close of the year, the people of England were paying for their English Bibles, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred per cent more than those in Scotland.

In England, however, all parties still remained actually dormant. The pressure from without happening not to have originated there, so long as no voice was raised against the enormous difference between the two sides of the Tweed, the English patentee held fast by his prices, affirming, in print, before all his countrymen, and that even so late as November 1840, that “equal efficiency and cheapness could not be obtained upon any other system. ” The people of London, also, or of the south generally, still appeared as though they believed this, even though her Majesty’s Board for Scotland were reporting the reduction of prices there, and the advantages which had arisen from the happy change. “Besides,” said they, “it is not merely a question as to the amount of reduction, but whether a vast number of individuals are, or are not, to be put in possession of the Sacred Scriptures? The difference of a single penny in the price of a Bible, determines, year after year, whether the Word of God is, or is not, to enlighten and gladden thousands of families.”

The royal Patentee, it is true, might speak, or even print, as he had done in November, but without saying more, he was to act very differently, and in little more than eight weeks, or in February 1841, as already stated. When reviewing, another day, what will appear very remarkable, the sudden and prodigious fall in the prices of the Sacred Volume, posterity, if net informed, might be apt to conjecture that the monopolist must have been roused to act so by the nation at large,-but no; nothing more was requisite than that three individuals only should move, and the unprecedented reduction followed,-followed also very quietly, and, contrary to all custom in this advertising age, without any boasting, or the slightest ostentation on the part of the Patentee himself. Since the day that business of any moment was done in Britain, such a thing, in business, was never so done. One Englishman, indeed, with two natives of the north, must, it is granted, feel deeply interested in the subject, and to many now it may be unnecessary to mention their names,-Mr. Childs, of Bungay, the Rev. Dr. Thomson, of Coldstream, and the Rev. Dr. Campbell, of London. The first gentleman had corresponded with the second, but, without further detail, it so happened, that into his mind had come the idea, that as these “Living Oracles” had been originally committed in charge, as a sacred deposit, to the people of God as such; so it ought to be an object with them to present the Scriptures to any, or to all, at no higher price than the simple cost of their production; or, in other words, that they ought to be redeemed out of the usual channels of commerce altogether. But in these days, when it seems as if no individual expects to accomplish any enterprise singlehanded, what was styled a Board must be formed. In the present instance, but for the artificial state of society into which Britain has wrought herself, this might have been dispensed with, and it appears to have been of no other moment than that of directing attention to the efforts of an individual.

The prices of Bibles and Testaments, then, thus advertised, were so low as to appear incredible; while the London patentee became so adventurous as to affirm that under the whole affair there lurked some fallacy. Meanwhile, all that became necessary was that this gentleman should move from the banks of the Tweed to visit the north of England, where, having once explained his views, and exhibited certain specimens of’ Bibles and Testaments, at their aflixed prices, many eyes were opened. The reception given was cordial, nay, enthusiastic; nor did he require to visit the metropolis at all. The third individual, however, who was residing there, was now required, and both meeting at Liverpool, and elsewhere, both spoke and wrote, and both were listened to, and read. Nothing more was required, and though neither of these friends to the cause they advocated could expect to meet with that applause which, in our day, has been so often awarded to men for doing little or nothing, an impulse more powerful had been felt than either the one or the other had anticipated. The royal Patentee evinced penetration and wisdom to a degree seldom, if ever before, exhibited in such circumstances. He had spoken out once, as already mentioned, but proceeding no farther, he presently issued his delightful and most extraordinary reduction of prices. The patent itself, it will be remembered, has not been abolished, but, sixteen years before its natural termination, it has been, to a great degree, effectually neutralised.

Ever since, competition has been at work, and all in favour of the purchaser. Into the merits or demerits of this competition as to price between the patentee and the free-trader, there is no necessity for us to enter here; though it must be evident to all, that so long as the patent, and these concurrent rights of Oxford and Cambridge, continue, the sales throughout the Kingdom cannot arrive at a healthy or natural and desirable condition. Meanwhile, the public at large is happily left to judge for itself; but that such an immense circulation as that which had taken place should have been suddenly followed up by such a vast and unprecedented reduction in price is an occurrence far from being the least remarkable among the multitude of events which it has been our aim throughout impartially to record.

Such then have been the mysterious, and, compared with every other nation under heaven, the majestic outgoings of Him who has been with this cause, all along and so evidently, from the beginning; and who having now brought it to this stupendous height, will, to a certainty, not leave it in its present state or position, or ever be turned aside from His own high purpose and ultimate design. We have said, mysterious outgoings, because the cause, as such, may be compared to a path without an end; that is, an end worthy of the path; an end in unison with the present condition of a nation, where the number of the copies of the Sacred Record actually outnumbers the souls that are in it, but where thousands still contemn the proffered gift! The reader of the previous history, it is true, has travelled a very singular and eventful journey, and all the while, for more than three hundred years, he has been ascending to the eminence, on which he now stands; so that according to this time, he may be exclaiming-“ What hath God Wrought!” Yet the exclamation is no sooner uttered, than it seems to excite in every considerate mind but one question-WHAT IS HE ABOUT TO DO?

Were the public mind in this kingdom once brought to such a state of watchful inquiry, although to answer such a question is not within the province of human foresight; yet there is one point connected with the present position of our English Bible, and only one, to which we may advert, before bidding adieu to the history itself. Whatever Providence intends to accomplish, and whatever obscurity may rest on the future, it is already evident that an Almighty hand has been, and is now proceeding, on a scale far beyond the limits of our sea-girt island. Some of our legislators have recently begun to ruminate over what they call systematic emigration; but that Providence, which perfectly foresaw what would be the condition of the inhabitants of Britain for some years back, in which every time the clock struck twelve, another thousand has been added to our population-that Providence has already and long been at work, with His own word, for such as go away, or have gone, never again to see their native land; and the printing-press, which is now more busy than ever it was, both in England and Scotland, can very easily keep pace with the emigration, let it increase as it may. Now this, it is confessed, so far as the Scriptures in the English tongue only are still to be concerned, may be the next legitimate sphere of action; but, at the same time, every one must perceive, that this can never involve more than a fraction, or not so much as approaching to a tithe of our future and imperative obligations.

In point of responsibility as a nation, we have been exalted into circumstances of which many before had little or no conception; nor had thcy been at all aware, that we have been placed in a condition, involving duty and obligatons, from which there is no escape. The very rich supply of Sacred Scripture peculiar to our country, even before this century began, will be held in remembrance; more than twenty-two millions of volumes have since been added to the number, and still the printing-press is as urgently plied as before; so that an amount of above four millions sterling has been spent upon our own version! After an entire generation has been thus so peculiarly distinguished, that there is nothing approaching to it, on the face of the earth; to rouse us from slumber, as but too visible, in our unequal dealing with the world at large; all at once, and in the quarter where it was least of all, or last of all, to be expected, there comes, in one day, a great, an immense reduction of price with regard to the Sacred Volume in English, and let it be particularly observed, in English ALONE.

What though no real voice, no sound, was heard? No man accustomed to think at all, will presume to say that in an event so unexpected, and altogether so unprecedented, there was nothing intended for the ear, or rather the heart of those who are daily deriving light and counsel from the sacred page. Taking the entire previous history into account, and the broad field of action now full in view; is it not, to say the least, as if Providence had sounded a pause?-an authoritative pause, calling upon us to do the same; and, at last, review his footsteps? Calling upon us to observe, more deliberately, His procedure, and then putting the all-important question-“ How, or in what manner, will it become the Christians in Britain to act NOW?”

We are perfectly aware, that some of our men of “profit and loss” may be disposed to detain us, by fretting over this prodigious fall of price.

Something, indeed, may be mooted in reply, as to a gradual fall in the price of paper, if not other materials, but this will, by no means, satisfy others, who have looked more deeply into the circumstances. “Why, at these present prices,” says one, “we might have dispersed more than double the number of Bibles and Tcstaments, and is there any man who can now deny it?” “But what is more to be deplored,” says another, “at these prices, we might have been, all these years, expending upon destitute foreign nations, eight or nine hundred thousand pounds, more than we have done!” While, independently altogether of these former high prices, a third party meets us with his complaint, as to the expenses incurred at home, throughout England and Wales, and more especially within the last twenty years. But weighty as these murmurings may appear to some minds, they are actually of no consequence, when compared with the solemnity of our present obligations, or that momentous position in which Providence has now placed us. In truth, they only press our one question with greater urgency.

Besides, standing, as we do, in the midst of a nation, which has but recently paid twenty millions of money, for the liberation of not nearly one million of men in bondage; it would be idle to suppose that, as a people, we have been thus strikingly summoned to pause, merely for the purpose of murmuring over the past. Certainly they are not to be envied, who exacted such prices from the benevolent public; but as for those who have paid them, every moment now is lost, if spent merely in lamenting over the outlay. The supremely important, the urgent, and the only question at present is-How, or in what manner, and to what extent, will it become the Christians of Britain to act Now?

At the close of the present history, therefore, it so happens that there are several points left for deliberate and general consideration, every one of which will be found to bear with accumulating force on this one question.

CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM THE PRECEDING HISTORY.

THERE is a frequent propensity in the mind of man to run every thing into one thing. But even after all that has been said, it will not be supposed that the renovation of man is anticipated by the present author, from the mere multiplication and dispersion of the Sacred Volume throughout any country whatever. If but one native of Britain has ever so dreamed, the present state of his own land may now awaken him to the painful reverse.

No nation has ever enjoyed such opportunities of discovering its devotion or hostility to the Book of God, and in none is there to be found the two extremes in greater strength. Yet, if the past history has referred to only one subject, it has been because of its supreme importance as the basis or ground-work of all moral improvement. To prevent confusion, we have proceeded on the principle that it is necessary to consider only one thing at a time; and that in applying tho same incumbent remedy to the world around us, it, is of importance to understand what has been the history of Divine Revelation in our own tongue, and what is the existing condition of our native land.

In surveying the cause to which this volume has been devoted, from an origin of the most unpretending character, it has grown to a magnitude which meets us in the very threshold to all reflection. One leading feature of the history itself will then invite some notice. After this, the visible and uninterrupted progress, or effect produced, must not escape observation.

Thus, as a community, however dispersed, yet the most important, because most influential upon earth,-“ the present readers of the English Bible” naturally come before us; for here, and in these times most happily, they must be regarded in the light of but ONE body. Though, after this, the responsible position of this wide circle, but especially at its centre, on British ground, cannot fail to lend a tone of deeper solemnity to the unwearied footsteps of that gracious Providence, which so visited at first, and has so watched over this land ever since. In conclusion, only one question will remain,-How, or in what manner, shall becoming gratitude to God be expressed and proved, by far more vigorous action?

ONE LEADING FEATURE IN THE PRECEDING HISTORY, visible in a long and uninterrupted series of events, was its superiority to all human sanction in its commencement, and of all human control in its progress. All along, the integrity of the history of the English Bible has been most singularly preserved, and the distinct line of an overruling Providence has been quite visible from first to last. In holding on, throughout its entire course, ever independent of all associated bodies, as such, even the history of our Sacred Volume comes clothed with a prerogative, or sovereign authority, above everything else, in the shape of religious history. It has been kept distinct, or, as it were above, yet among, this people, for more than three hundred years; and never was the highest favour which God has bestowed so long, more conspicuous and abundant than at the present moment. If, at such a time, there should be any, or too many, who seem to be wholly engrossed, whether by ecclesiastical self-righteousness, or mere party spirit; still, it is altogether in vain for any Community, as such, within the shores of Britain, to talk of its superior importance here. All other questions are absolutely local, and subordinate. All communities offer to the eye, but a section of the people, or an inferior circle. Every one of them is here not only spoken to direct, but all alike are here providentially overarched.

Not one, without exception, can rise and lay claim to the glory of that bow in the clouds.

Changes in sublunary things, there have been many; divisions and subdivisions as to its meaning; but never has it been permitted to fall under the power, much less into the keeping of any one circle. Never has it been allowed to become the badge or the partisan of a single party. Not one could ever address another in the style of the Venetians to the Roman pontiff, and say-that Book is ours. An historical event, therefore, extending over three centuries, with immediate reference to our vernacular Bible, may certainly be presumed to carry some significance beyond the external fact. But if so, that cannot be anything of trivial moment, which speaks to all alike, and for so long a period. It is true, only one simple principle may be all that is involved, though it must be one worthy of this high and longcontinued course of procedure. After all this then, some, if not every intelligent observer, may now be disposed to pause a little, having verified this anomaly in our national history. The boon bestowed he has long felt to be Britain’s best hope; and if the peace and tranquillity of his country has been supposed to depend upon the harmony and stability of the Institutions within her shores, he may begin to apprehend that season, if not past, may be passing away. But again he turns to the highest gift bestowed on all alike. In its history it now appears as if it had been uninterruptedly calling upon every circle, without exception, to look up for superior light; or in waiting for its own peculiar place in the wide community below-waiting for a supremacy to which it has been all along entitled.

Three hundred years ago, in many parts of Europe, but particularly in this country, both in England and Scotland, the high and keen dispute was, whether what they called the Church, or the Sacred Scriptures, were uppermost, or which was to be regarded as supreme in point of authority.

For ages proceeding, it had seemed to be the former. At least, a body, usurping that name, had long wantonly reigned over them; and the use they made of that daring assumption is well known. It brought on that night of pitchy darkness which so long brooded over Europe. They had taken away the key of knowledge, and substituted other keys. They had not only closed or contemned the Sacred Volume; they denied to the people at large the use or even the possession of it. But the time to favour Zion, the set time was come. The Almighty vindicated His own cause in this our native land, by way of eminence; and after a peculiar manner, by the power of His own Word, rescued it out of the hands of those, the profane rulers of darkness. This was His first note of interpretation, which, for illustration’s sake, we ventured to compare to the key-note in music; and it really seems to vibrate in the ear now, as distinctly as it did in August 1537.

Now, in this kingdom, where so much has been said about the Church, ever since, perhaps more than in all the world besides, at present it becomes worthy of universal observation, that God, by His high providence, has, all along, never permitted his Word, in a single instance, to fall into, much less under, the power of any Church, so called, of whatever form, or whatever name. The supreme authority of the Scriptures He has visibly demonstrated, before the eyes of the nation at large, by carrying them, in point of numbers and dispersion, far, very far above the capacity, and beyond the narrow bounds, of any Church so named, or of any single community within our shores. The supremacy of the Divine Word, though still far from being understood even on British ground, a watchful Providence has not left to expositors, to spell out or explain. God has been His own interpreter, and He has made it plain. This is one great lesson, which the Sovereign Ruler has been reading to this kingdom entire, for more than three hundred years.

Hence it is, at the present most eventful crisis, whatever may betide the country as a whole, or whatever may await any of its more limited interests, that His own cause stands out before us, healthy and strong, and in vigorous operation; far more vigorous than at any previous period, and by far the highest undertaking of our day.

Of the VISIBLE EFFECT produced by the arrival of Tyndale’s first edition of the New Testament on our shores there was one, by way of eminence, which imperatively demands our notice.

Almost immediately after the introduction of the Sacred Volume in our native language, we saw it at once divide the people, whether in England or Scotland, into two bands. Scarcely a month seems to have passed away, before this result became visible. At first, indeed, one of these divisions embraced but few in number, and an appearance so feeble as to be doomed to destruction. It will now be remembered, that in those early days the names given to these two parties were, “the Friends of the Old Learning,” and “Friends of the New.” They are titles, to which we had not only no objection, but adopted them, and we prefer them still. They serve perfectly well to indicate by far the most momentous division of this empire. In observing it, we need to fetch no compass, for in a straight and uninterrupted line, we have still the two parties standing before us. They are, as they have ever been, for and against the Sacred Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, and their being given to all, without note or comment. This division, as being the first, and therefore the most ancient, is one from which the public mind ought never to have been diverted. It possesses the advantage of great or perfect simplicity, nor, throughout the long war of opinion, is there any other by which a more distinct understanding can be obtained.

In the beginning, or from the first moment, the friends of the old learning were opposed to the importation of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue, and above all things deprecated their being given to the people.

They hunted after them; they ordered them to be given up; burnt them, and even those who read them, or possessed them and refused to surrender. On the other hand, the friends of the new learning eagerly sought after the hated book; they read it with insatiable avidity, and cleaved to it in the face of threatening, cruelty, and bitter death. By them it was prized, as the book of life and salvation, as the voice of God, as the book of the soul; and still it, went on to prove, as it had declared, “mighty in operation.” The common people heard, or read gladly.

In process of time, however, the gentlemen of “the old learning,” finding that all threatening and denunciation were in vain; having failed to exterminate the Scriptures themselves, and failing in power to consign their opponents to the flames, it was not long before they had brought forward what they styled other authorities to be obeyed, beside that which was daily proving itself, and so powerfully, to beSUPREME. They talked learnedly about antiquity. They mooted the authority of the Church, even such as it had been in their own hands, and the authority of ancient doctors, styled the Fathers; upon which, for too many of their opponents with blind simplicity followed them; whethcr by way of argument or in the way of compliance, to prove their skill in polemics. Certainly these, though the professed friends of the “new learning,” had never intended to weaken or betray the rising cause for one moment, and much less for generations to come; but in thus acting, they but little knew what they were about, or what they had done. The Sacred Volume, it is true, had been given to the people providentially, and independently of all these men, and its progress to the present hour has been conducted after a similar fashion; but it is to this sad, this heedless and mistaken movement, that we are to ascribe in a great degree the history and mystery of these two classes within this kingdom. Thus it was in the beginning, that, under the show of argument, the adherents of the old learning contrived to maintain their ground, nay, and prolong the existence of their “learning ;” for precisely so have they acted, from time to time, as occasion has offered, ever since. The party, indeed, cannot now boast that they are one and indivisible, any more than their opponents, for it is under more names than one, that the old learning has still lingered throughout the land. From generation to generation, its votaries have survived, and certainly they have been overruled to serve one valuable purpose; that of ever and anon recalling, if not driving, the friends of the new learning, to their first fundamental principle. That principle was the supreme authority and all-sufficiency of the Sacred Volume; and had this only been regarded as the pole-star, and followed fearlessly, long before the present day, though not upon a sea which knows no storms, the natives of Britain must have been under a clearer sky. On the contrary, too many of the adherents of the now learning, though never done with repeating their favourite maxim respecting the Bible, and the Bible alone, have ever since treated it chiefly as a sheet anchor, and as if it were to be resorted to only when assailed by a storm; though it was given them also as a chart to guide through all the perils of the deep. Such was the first great controversy in Britain, and as it took precedence of all others in point of time, so, as first in point of importance, even in our own day it is abundantly manifest, that all subsequent, all subordinate points of difference, submissively wait upon its progress, and upon its decision even still.

When one is constrained to turn his eye to that particular quarter, in England, from whence this sympathy with “the Old Learning” has, in our own day, proceeded, what associations are these which crowd upon the mind! It seems as if the spot had been selected, in order to rouse the public mind. Among all the cities in Britain, was this that one which became the seat of the very first printing-press set up in this kingdom? So it has been affirmed; but be that as it may, there are other associations more than sufficient to awaken the mind and rivet the eye of every reader of his Bible in the land. Here it was that the morning star first rose in England, and so, over Europe; when our own Wickliffe first opened to the people of his country the treasures of Divine Truth in their mother tongue. Here it was where the immortal Tyndale first gave his lectures on Scripture, and then proceeded on his way. It would, however, be doing great injustice to Oxford, and that throughout our own times, did we not discover something there in which there is neither “mystery” nor “reserve,” nay, something happily far superior to any testimony from men. If sympathy with “the Old Learning’’ has been oozing out from a certain class, through the medium of the press, and though the friends of the New may have been bordering upon slumber, has there been no overwhelming echo from the Oxford press itself? It is in this locality, for more than ten years, that certain anonymous writers have been very busy; but has nothing been doing there, in multiplying the Sacred Record of which they have thus dared to speak? On the contrary, above every other spot on earth there has been a work proceeding, from week to week, in favour of those Scriptures. Among the cities of this kingdom, or of the world, the point of distinction at Oxford is confined to one, and that one connected with the English Bible, without note or comment! During these years it has been affirmed to be within the power of its noble printing-press, that they could print a Bible entire, in one minute! But be this as it may, the power possessed has been employed in giving existence to the Divine Record, in our native tongue, and to such an amount, that it has exceeded that of the presses of all the cities in continental Europe put together! Even London and Cambridge, with all their myriads of copies, have not been able to keep pace with Oxford alone!

If, then, there has been an enemy in this quarter, threatening, however feebly, to come in like a flood, is no significance to be attached to the singular fact now stated? Or rather, in the very camp where he has been so long sounding his trumpet, has not a standard every morning been lifted up against him? The stress of battle, before long, must bear on this one point-the Sacred Volume and its all-sufficiency, whether for “the plainest rustic,” or “the deepest philosopher;” then will it be remembered, as at least some encouragement, that no spot on the face of the earth has been so distinguished as Oxford, the school of Wickliffe and Tyndale, for the multiplication of the English Bible.

If, however, the ancient contest between the Old Learning and the New is ever to be revived, not only must all “mystery” and “reserve” be dismissed, but all other consequential points be lost in the grand one. By the New Learning, as in days of old, is to be understood,-the Bible, without note or comment, in our vulgar tongue; and surely, if the history of the past is admitted to be any guide for the future, and if there be any tide, or any voice, in human affairs, the Ruler of nations appears to be summoning the mind of Britain, and above every other nation, to His own highest movement. If, then, this summons is ever to be obeyed, if the devoted admirers of Divine Revelation are once more to be favoured to engage in this, the highest of all warfare, might it not, as a preliminary, prove to be the exercise of a sound discrimination or discerning wisdom, if the British mind were afresh directed, with unmitigable energy, to that one division of the people which has in reality existed throughout all the past, or from the beginning? At first, in the sixteenth century, this division soon became palpable or visible to every eye. As if it had been expressly intended to explain to all posterity its infinite importance, to save from all delusion or mistake in time to come, it was marked in a manner never to be forgotten.

It was a division of the community then accompanied by distress in every form of persecution, of imprisonment, and death by fire. It seemed meet to Infinite wisdom to permit, that this line should be drawn in blood, by the awful instrumentality of the rack and the stake, by the flames and their ashes, or pining death in prison; and though all these horrors have passed away, this line now stands out, thus glaringly, in authentic history, as a division of the entire community, from which the eye of Omniscience all along has never removed, nor ever will.

At such a crisis as the present, therefore, when not one intelligent Christian, of whatever persuasion, can imagine that his party, as it stands, like Aaron’s rod, will ultimately swallow up all others; what can be the existing purpose or intention of an overruling and ever-watchful Providence? Full, to overflowing, with Divine revelation, the mere multiplication of the Scriptures in English cannot possibly be the main intention now. The identical course pursued from 1804 cannot now be pursued. We have been brought forward to an advanced stage, but it is a stage only in preparation for what is to come. We may look back, but must look forward. It is only a breathing time, which now calls for some vigorous and corresponding exertion, but it must beELSEWHERE. In the dispersion of the Scriptures Britain has been distinguished for thirty years, both for persistence and perseverance. There has been no lack of persistence in her continual efforts, as to the English Bible. But has there been any relaxation of perseverance in her separate efforts, throughout her own foreign dominions, or the world at large? We must, of necessity, immediately inquire.

So far as the present history is concerned, the actual state of things appears to be this :-There is no sectarian movement now before us, nor does anything which can be so denominated come in our way. But with all her imperfections in the administration of the affair, still Britain, by her activity in multiplying and dispersing the Sacred Record, has drawn the eyes of the world uponn her, or, happily, far more than the eye of old Europe. With what have been styled “missions,” therefore, conducted by whomsoever they may, the Pontiff, personally, does not seem to interfere. These he may counter-work, he imagines more effectually, without a bull. But it is the SACRED VOLUME in the vernacular tongue anywhere and everywhere, upon which, in our own day, he discharges his gall of bitterness entire.

Thus it is, whether British Christians become more alive to the fact or not, that three different Pontiffs, out of four, in regular succession, have been permitted to signify to them, above every other people, where lies the strength, the best or the chief hope and mainstay, of Britain, and the only ground of security as to her vast dominion.

Time there was, when the thunder of one bull would have, sufficed to fix attention in this country, but though three in succession have failed to excite much notice, and many have never heard of one; still, if there be any relaxation, if anything bordering on mere party-spirit, within our shores, these documents may well be regarded as so many distinct intimations, that we are neglecting the highest of all duties, and one which ought to be common, as well as dear, to every circle in the land. There may be those, it is true, whether few or many, even within this country, who are sympathising with the enemy of truth beyond seas; but in reality the friends of Divine truth may feel obliged to these three successive Pontiffs. It is allowable to derive instruction even still from the old European enemy. His opposition once contributed to the supply of Britain herself, and why may it not now help to the supply of even the world in general? No believer in Divine revelation, it is true, need to feel any undue apprehension at these things, but it is strictly within his province, to observe the signs of the times. His only question must ever be,-“ What is the duty of the day?” And if he tread only in the footsteps of the Word of God, he need not to fear any mere ripple in the waves, any apparent reflux in the advancing tide.

On the devout READERS OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE, whether at home or abroad, all our hope for future exertion must depend. At present we regard them all as but one community, and the most united upon the face of the earth; possessing certain points of attraction to each other, for which we search in vain throughout the world. Although the most widely diffused branch of the family of man, except the Jews, yet they alone are in firm possession of the entire Sacred Volume; and once contemplated as a community-before the eye of Him who never slumbers, it cannot be said, at any given moment, that its members have ceased to peruse or to search the same Divine Record. At any hour of the twenty-four, or rather any minute, the eyes of some among this body are in the act of resting on the same Book of Life, and that, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year! To be found in the midst of a people of the same tongue, now approaching to fifty millions, and in possession of Divine Revelation to an extent which serves as a contrast to the world; these favoured individuals, of both sexes, from youth to old age, are hourly drawn to the same heavenly centre of attraction; and however far apart, there alone they all alike find their best and their happiest moments.

The present age, with all its faults, has been designated “the age of Bibles;” but then, in the readers we now address, having this divine and sovereign authority before their eyes, every page has reached the heart; and no people upon earth so feel the necessity for the Author’s presence; or in other words, for special influence to accompany and sanction their reading.

Already, however, the Divine Spirit has been with His Word, and as a preliminary to every other step, the observance of which is fitted to diffuse a friendship, or mutual interest, never yet felt; let us, whether at home or abroad, near or afar off, turn to that more distinguished weekly homage paid to the Volume we alike revere. Here is the point, the one point, in which we all meet, and it is enough. Even in times such as the present, it is all-sufficient. Our common centre of attraction, is the only immovable centre of repose. As one Community, we may turn to one day in seven, and in the view now to be presented, distinguish it as the SABBATH OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

That period of time to which we now advert, as recurring at every seventh revolution of the sphere, embraces one day and night entire; and once begun, to the admiring readers of the English Bible, considered as a body, in some resemblance to the sun in the firmament, there is no twilight; no evening shade. Before the Sovereign Author of this extraordinary distribution of one people, in possession of the same Sacred Record, it can in truth be affirmed-there is no night there. Nor is He ever more present with them all, than when they look to Him through this Divine medium.

It will, of course, be understood, that we now cast an eye not at Britain alone,-a light in which no intelligent man of the present day should ever regard this kingdom. We look also at her dominions, now held by but one imperative condition, or that of being subservient to the designs of Providence. And here, as the day we contemplate is a day of rest and reading, of worship and inquiry, it has no parallel in any other tongue. The great majority of reflecting admirers is, no doubt, to be found in Britain, but long before they have ceased from the cares of business, at the end of the week, the Lord’s-day has already begun; and long after they have once more drawn the curtains and retired to rest, there are many in the far west, who are yet to go on for hours, exploring the same sacred page. We have traced the English Bible as being certainly in perusal above an hundred and seventy degrees east, and about an hundred and eighty west, of Greenwich.

The half-hour out of twenty-four, which may yet easily be ascertained, is, for the present, of no moment.

Should this very memorable day, however, be thus taken into frequent consideration, there is another which will not be forgotten, and it is of equal length. It is the day before. This is perfectly well known, and even to the most influential members of this singular community. With them it is a day of research as well as of reading the same common standard. Here there is a positively ascertained effort of mind, of twenty-four hours’ duration, an uninterrupted mental aim after “rightly dividing” the same “word of truth.” The object in view is that the trumpet may give one certain sound, for these men are to lead the devotion of myriads on the following day. The ascertained fact, therefore, is this, that for a space equal to not less than forty-eight hours, every week, the devoted attention of the same people is directed to the same Sacred Volume.

Now, it cannot be that such a community, whom it is possible thus to select, and thus address, has yet fulfilled the providential purpose of its wide extension. By no means; for here may already be descried the twilight of a brighter day than Britain has ever witnessed. Whether they be in Old England or New England, in Scotland or Nova Scotia, in Middlesex and Braidalbin at home or Middlesex and Braidalbin abroad, in Canada or the Cape of South Africa, in India or Burmah, in the Indian Archipelago, the Pacific, or on the coast of China, this favoured people of one language, have been thus scattered, certainly not in wrath, but in mercy to mankind. “Thou hast scattered us among the heathen” was the mournful complaint of the ancient Jew to his God, because this was the token of His frown-the ruin or the death of Judaism; but this unprecedented dispersion of one Gentile nation may, and probably will, prove the life of Scriptural Christianity. It was the providential dispersion of the first community at Jerusalem of old which gave birth to the very name of Christian; and in this vastly greater dispersion of one people, why may not untold or unprecedented good be involved?

There is only one circumstance which remains to be glanced at, in reference to this select day, so observed by one people on both sides of the globe. Their common language happens to be the only one in Europe in which the doctrine of the seventh part of time, as well as the joyful occasion of its observance, has been so fully comprehended and observed.

For these three hundred years the day has been differently regarded by all the nations on the Continent; so that, with all our faults, there has been, as remarked by Guizot, a moral as well as an insular separation. Let us hold fast by the distinction, and improve it now in both hemispheres. The neighbouring nations may have smiled at these Sabbaths, and wondered at our weakness or simplicity in having so multiplied the vernacular version of our Bible; but they will not deny, that to a people remarked for these peculiarities, there has been conveyed an empire far more extensive than any that has ever existed. But for these, there had been no such singular community as that which it has been our object to address, and our desire to interest more deeply in each other, and then, in the world around them.

After this, would it not be well for the adjoining Continent, were these nations now to take both the Volume and the Day into more thoughtful consideration?-The circulation of the one?-the observance of the other? f132 Our existing circumstances as a nation, in connexion with the Sacred Volume, whether relating to the height of privilege, or the amount of duty, we have all along felt our inability to describe, or express in words. There is a certain crisis in the history of nations, as well as in the life of man, fitted and intended to provoke or draw forth the activity and force of every agent. That our present circumstances are critical, is the persuasion of all thinking men. But then they are the critical circumstances of a strong and favoured nation, when so far from repose, or even relaxation, the condition of other countries never so favoured, must be taken into consideration, after another manner than they have ever yet been.

The present times are distinguished by a number of peculiarities. This, it has been said, is “the age of improvement-the age of social advancement,-it is a mercantile age, and the wealth of the world is poured into the lap of Britain, while its inhabitants are living in the midst of discoveries which have almost given life and breath to material nature.” In all this the enlightened Christian patriot cannot but feel and take an interest. But still, in his sober and deliberate judgment, by far the most momentous and significant point in the state of this country, consists in the abundant possession of Divine Revelation, however lightly it may be regarded, and the prodigious reduction in price of the Sacred Volume.

Consequently, the question which he desires to be resolved is this-What is the present duty? What are the obligations thus imposed on British Christians?

This subject of inquiry, as the final question, is one which, on the part of the author, it is here confessed, has never been absent from his mind for years past. And though it was to be amidst a thousand interruptions by professional engagements, it seemed to be above all things else desirable, to ascertain the actual state of our country; not as containing this or that particular form of ecclesiastical polity; but the state of Britain as the distinguished depository of Divine Revelation: and consequently the paramount duty of a people so enriched by the possession of the Sacred Volume. It then occurred to the writer that there was no other method so likely to present in their due force, the imperative obligations of his country to the rest of the world, as a distinct and impartial record of what had actually been done for it, from the beginning. Out of the wide and wonderful wilderness of “religious privileges” so called, in the possession of which so many seem to be satisfied to live and die, there appeared to be no way of escape, but by fixing upon the Sacred Volume itself, without note or comment; and following it rigidly as the day-star, or surest index, far above all party, all local, narrow, or limited considerations; following it, till one could see clearly, and look round on the state of our native island as such. A more certain clue to the responsible condition of its inhabitants he did not know, and he may now, perhaps without presumption, be permitted to suppose, that, in this point of view, our real position among the nations has never before been fully understood.

In seeking for a wide and imperative field of future exertion there is no necessity, in the first instance, for going even out of the Empire.

Looking at that Britain in which we dwell, and to which this previous history has immediate regard, finished as it has been with the truth of God, the real position of the Island cannot be too strongly enforced. By the Sovereign Disposer of all events it has been gradually encompassed by an area more than thirty times the size of itself, an area peopled by above one hundred and-forty millions of our own species, the great proportion of whom are our fellow-subjects! The sails of the mother-country whiten every sea; the smoke of her steam-vessels has filled with astonishment the people of many lands. Our men of commerce, brought into contact with all these parts, breathe after more free and frequent intercourse; while the sons of science are not less eager after an accurate acquaintance with the earth, and especially with the whole Eastern World. The measurement of the meridional are, extending to more than 1500 miles, from Cape Comorin to the Himalya Mountains, begun in 1822, after twenty years’ application, has been completed. In India itself, under the present Governor-General, the leading aim of his policy is peace. But above all, there is a renewed attention to education in the vernacular tongue. The principle is openly admitted by the authorities, that the instruction of the body of the people through the medium of their own tongue is one of the essential duties of Government: a body amounting to above thirty millions in Bengal, with fifty millions more adjoining. And there too comes CHINA, with her three hundred millions, and the adjoining nations, all, as it were, stretching out the hand especially to Britain-a happy and an amicable arrangement which is still the subject of wonder to men of all opinions. All this is at once propitious and animating. But can it be here at home imagined by any one, that an Overruling Power has brought these vast regions into such intimate connexion with this distant Isle, for any lower purpose than that of presenting them with a faithful rendering of His own Sacred Word in all their different vernacular tongues?

When reflecting on this peculiar, this untransferable responsibility, of our country, but especially of all within it who believe inDIVINE REVELATION; in any man’s vision there must be some great defect, if he cannot discern what is involved in her dominion. Upon the manner in which this is conducted, her actual safety must now depend. Britain has not received authority, or even influence, over so many millions of our species, with liberty to act by them as she pleases. Nor does she hold in North America, an area double the size of all France, to neglect or foster it, just as fancy or ambition may suggest. No, if property at home has its duties affixed to it, so ALSO HAS DOMINION ABROAD. The world entire, it is true, demands the swell of pity, and it is not without special claims upon us; but to avoid being lost in generality, let us at least endeavour to understand the dominion which Providence has affixed to our native land, whether in Asia, Africa, or America, and allow no power on earth to beguile us from its cultivation. Dominion, therefore, we repeat, and however distant, has its duties affixed to it. But distance, which twenty years ago, used to be stated as accounting for the apathy of Britain, can now be mentioned no more. To this country has been granted not only the knowledge, but especially the application, of the power of steam, by which the whole Island is growing into one vast Metropolis, while a path in the sea has been given to her.

Whether we look to the west, or to the east, regular communication is now brought nearly within the compass of every week, or four times a month, and a monthly intercourse with China has already commenced. Providence is introducing us to the wide earth, or causing the World to draw near and come, but especially to this island. Its position is altogether unprecedented, and enough to rouse the most unthinking stupidity. Dominion so vast, and brought so near at hand, the world has never witnessed. In all previous history there is no resemblance. Space and time were never so abridged to the hand of any earthly power. Every other acquisition of territory or dominion by any nation, shrinks before it. The conquest of South America by Spain was not equal to a fourth of the extent, in which more of human blood was shed in a short time, than there may have been in India from the beginning. The Roman or Mahometan conquests will not bear comparison.

To this vast field of action, over which an overruling Providence has given us influence, not to mention other frequent opportunities of intercourse, we have forty-eight direct or stated channels of communication every year.

These, like so many distinct incitements, call us to go out, or send out, and double our diligence in conveying to all these populous regions, certainly not the peculiarities of our different indigenous religious systems, upon which some are so blindly bent, but the unsophisticated BOOK OF GOD, without our notes or comments, but in translations, if possible, at least equal to our own. This, we cannot but imagine to be the highest end for which such wide dominion has been bestowed, and the duty, by way of eminence, assigned to this country.

Such has been the history of our English Bible, and such appears to be the paramount duty imposed upon all, who have so long and so richly possessed it. If to thousands around them, that Sacred Volume be of no more utility than a sundial in the dark,-if others esteem those lines not worth reading, which God himself deemed worthy of His inspiration, and if many more are eager after the adjustment of merely certain local interests upon British ground; all this only forms a more powerful proof of the necessity for invoking the Divinc Spirit, and, in present circumstances, a stronger argument need not, perhaps cannot, be adduced. But nothing whatever can weaken our obligations to go forward in this high path, or justify the hands hanging down, in a single instance. The all-sufficiency of the Divine Record, and now, especially the Ministration of the Spirit, form the two great themes, calling for universal and supreme regard throughout our native land; but, at the same time, not unmindful of the beneficial reflex influence of foreign operations, before the commencement of this century, and during a season of great national peril, we have thus written; as well as from a full persuasion that the permanent interests of this country, her surest protection and best defence against all aggression, are now in a state of dependence upon the general diffusion of Divine Truth, properly so called. Separate from all systems of human opinion, removed from the din of disputation and the strife of tongues, this appears to be the preeminent duty to which the Christians of Britain are now invited, as by a voice from above. They have been favoured beyond those of any other nation; but this should only lead them the more to remember that there is a favour higher still than that of being blessed, nay, blessed by God himself. It consists in their being made a blessing to others. His object, in the first instance, is to be adored, but let us beware, above all things, of forgetting His intention, or, as it were, retarding the flow of the Divine benignity to mankind, His fixed purpose, uttered again and again, in the face of open rebellion, disscusion among His professed followers, and even the people at large labouring in the fire, or wearying themselves for very vanity, is still the same,-“The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” The Divine Record, therefore, by itself considered, must visit every land. In the various languages of our world, here is the highest object to which the human mind should address itself; and were the collective zeal in this kingdom, now, at last, to awake and take this one direction, through all our principal sea-ports, it would be nothing more than the very extraordinary procedure of the Almighty towards this nation, for more than three hundred years, and the aspect of these times, demand.

At a moment when, in every other walk pursued by British Christians, the seeds of mutation are so thickly sown,-a season, in which Divine Providence is in the act of bringing down the self-importance of all collective bodies,-drawing with unwonted solemnity over the entire kingdom, and to be more deeply venerated, the line of distinction between His own revealed Word, and all the opinions of men respecting it; and demonstrating to the humblest capacity, that no Church, yet in existence, is to prove the ark of this nation; even at such a period, whatever these signs portend, or come what may, what is the actual state of this greater cause?

Its prospects were never, by half, so encouraging, its claims never so imperative! Thus strikingly, by every calm intelligent observer, may this undertaking be seen at present, rising far above the regions of party, or of mere party zeal.

Meanwhile, if everything in the condition of mankind indicates the approach of some great crisis, is it not more than observable, that in this our eminently favoured land, all things else appear as though they had conspired chiefly to render more conspicuous or glaring, and certainly far more inviting, one solitary path, left open by God to British Christians as such? A path, indeed, to which, as far as they regard their common standard, they appear to be now very nearly hedged up, just as they were above forty years ago, by the fear of infidelity. A path, however, in which they may proceed in the largest body, and by the smallest groups, or rather by both methods, in perfect harmony. That path, in which those who revere Divine Revelation as their common charter to the skies, or their sheetanchor in every storm, can still meet; and meeting with success their common foe, however divided on some points, can only the more triumphantly repel the charge of sectarianism. That path, where, as the asperities of discordant sentiment can have no place, so every acrimonious or noxious controversy, is left to wither down to its root; and where, though they confute no heresies, they may effect what is better still, cause them all to be neglected or forgotten. In that plain path, where diffusion, seems to be the one idea that cometh out from the Divine throne daily, dispensing with a bountiful hand “the sovereign balm for every wound,” through other and distant clinics, the parties so engaged are in the way of being twice blessed: and there, while working in the rear of the Almighty’s most determined purpose and highest end, ultimate success is no less certain, than in the course of nature. “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater: so shall my Word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”

What, then, although many things around us say, or seem to say, Trust not in man? let the heart of no Christian fail him for one moment. With more profound reverence for the Divine Word as the appointed instrument, a clearer perception of its adaptation to its end, a firm reliance on the Divine veracity, and a habitual reference to the Holy Spirit of God, let this path only be pursued as its supreme importance demands, it must end in consequences which are not left to human conjecture, and such as the earth we inhabit has yet to enjoy.-“ For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree: and this shall be unto Jehovah for a memorial, for an everlasting sign, which shall not be abolished.”