no good in any form of Christian profession but that which they themselves adopt. He could see good in all forms and modes of Christian profession, and undoubtedly good there is in them all, and hard is it to say in what form it exerts itself the most successfully to produce what is the great end of all forms and all professions, lives of holiness and virtue.

But these two celebrated lines are not the only part of the poem which may seem to have relation to the first Founders of New Plymouth. In the persuasion that the passage is less known than it ought to be, I place in this appendix an extended extract. At the same time it must be owned that there are allusions in what follows to the Spanish conquests in America : and the great argument of the whole poem, The Church Militant, is the westward progression of Christian Faith.

"But as in vice the copy still exceeds

The pattern, but not so in virtuous deeds;
So though Sin made his latter seat the better
The latter church is to the first a debtor.
The second Temple could not reach the first:
And the late Reformation never durst
Compare with ancient times and purer years;
But in the Jews and us deserveth tears.
Nay, it shall every year decrease and fade;
Till such a darkness do the world invade
At Christ's last coming, as his first did find :
Yet must there such proportions be assigned

To these diminishings, as is between
The spacious world and Jewry to be seen.
Religion stands on tip-toe in our land
Ready to pass to the American strand.
When height of malice and prodigious lusts,
Impudent sinning, witchcrafts and distrusts
(The marks of future bane) shall fill our cup
Unto the brim, and make our measure up:
When Seine shall swallow Tiber, and the Thames,
By letting in them both, pollutes her streams:
When Italy of us shall have her will

And all her calendar of Sins fulfil;

Whereby one may foretell, what sins next year
Shall both in France and England domineer :
Then shall religion to America flee:

They have their times of gospel, e'en as we.
My God, thou dost prepare for them a way,
By carrying first their gold from them away :
For gold and grace did never yet agree;
Religion always sides with poverty.
We think we rob them, but we think amiss
We are more poor and they more rich by this.
Thou wilt revenge their quarrel, making grace
To pay our debts, and leave our ancient place
To go to them, while that which now their nation
But lends to us, shall be our desolation.

Yet as the Church shall thither westward fly
So Sin shall trace and dog her instantly:

:

They have their period also and set times
Both for their virtuous actions and their crimes.
And where of old the Empire and the Arts
Ushered the Gospel ever in men's hearts,

Spain hath done one, when Arts perform the other,

The Church shall come, and Sin the Church shall smother. That when they have accomplished the round,

And met in the east their first and ancient sound, Judgment may meet them both, and search them round."

VII.

How the case of SEPARATION appeared to an eminent PRESBYTERIAN NONCONFORMIST.

This view of the case of Separation and of the character of the divines who were leaders in it, is copied from a manuscript of John Shaw, a Puritan minister of great eminence, but who sought reformation of the church, as precluding the necessity of separation from it. Yet he was compelled to withdraw himself by the operation of the act of Uniformity in 1662. The manuscript was written in 1664, for the special instruction and benefit of his only son. When he wrote it he had returned to Rotherham, where he had been Vicar, from Hull where he had a benefice, from which he was removed. See Calamy's Account, &c., p. 823. He referred his own conversion to a more religious life to the preaching of Mr. Weld, who afterwards went to New England. There is a copy of the Life of Shaw by himself, spoken of by Calamy, amongst the Additional Manuscripts in the British Museum. He was born in the year of the Scrooby Emigration.

"Those that separate from our Churches, both with a privative separation (not joining with us in any Ordinances) or with a positive separation, setting up and gathering distinct opposite assemblies, these think that they have reason for it. About the year of Christ, 253, lived one Novatus, first under Cyprian, after at Rome, who denied any benefit by repentance to such as had denied Christ, though for fear and in the heat of persecution, or had fallen into any gross sin after baptism; and he drew many after him, men well conceited of themselves above others, who therefore were called Cathari (or Puritans, a name very basely given to the best of men, of late, by way of reproach): and after that about the year of Christ, 331, one Donatus drew a great party after him, though both these are reported to have made those separations out of discontent and for by-ends, as missing some expected preferments, &c., and did separate from the church upon this pretence that in the church, wicked were mingled with the godly, who did defile the godly in the communion of the Sacrament; and affirmed the true church to be nowhere, nor any true baptism anywhere, but only in their church in Africa; and therefore re-baptised all (as the Anabaptists now do), that came to join in communion with them: they said that Sacraments were onlyholy when they were administered by holy persons; and when they were pressed by the Emperor to reform, they said Quid Imperatori cum Ecclesia? as the Anabaptists and Separatists say now, when opposed by the civil magistrate, Magistratui Christiano nihil cum sacris (say they), the civil magistrate hath nothing to do in matters of religion, as if he was not Custos utriusque tabulæ. Afterward about the year of Christ 371, one Audens, a Syrian, pretending great strictness of life, and zeal, got a company of followers, who separated

from the Church, and would not pray with other Christians (almost like those Isa. lxv. 5), crying down Bishops for their riches, &c. (vituperabant Episcopos, Divites ipsos appellantes); and gave this reason for their separation, because (said they) Usurers and other impure livers were suffered in the bosom of the Church (were there not as bad in the Jewish Church when Christ joined with it? and as foul errors in the churches of Galatia, Gal. i. 6, and iii. 1-4, and Corinth, I. Cor. ii. 18-22, and xv, 12, &c.?). In the days of Queen Elizabeth these opinions did much start up in England, as not long before they had done at Munster, and up and down in Germany, amongst a sort called Anabaptists (though the errors grew and were multiplied) : one BOLTON made a great separation upon the fore-mentioned principles, yet afterwards he recanted at Paul's-Cross, and in the end hanged himself. After that, one Barrow held up those opinions, and writ bitterly against others not of his opinion: whom Queen Elizabeth (though I no way commend that fact) caused, therefore, to be hanged on Tower Hill. But especially one ROBERT BROWNE rose up, and maintained and practised this separation (from whom his followers are called Brownists). Browne was a gentleman of a very ancient family in Queen Elizabeth's days, but of a very crabbed nature, and no great clerk (as Tully said of some in his days that they were boni quidem viri, sed non admodum literati), it was not much learning that made him mad, Acts xxvi. 24. He was schoolmaster in Southwark, and after preacher at Islington, near London; and about the year 1580 went oversea with his gathered followers, unto Middleburgh in Zealand; yet there his Church (having no superior government in church-matters above themselves to direct and correct them) fell to jar