take the dung of men, horses, wolves, dogs, asses, boars, sows, hares, mice, swallows, hens, doves, geese, against various diseases, and Galen entitled one chapter of his book of Simples Kómpos, which signifies Dung. When such things-and more as repulsive that are here recited-men will swallow if told that it will profit their bodies, "insomuch as the using of these helps to lengthen our life is many times a means to hasten our death; shall we be so nice, or rather negligent, that our courage cannot climb over a few difficulties in meditating upon those things which will be an occasion, so surely, so safely, both to purge and preserve our souls from sin.”

And if no reasons can stir up our reason to leave all and follow Christ, and dwell on the last things, "then the last remedy only remains: by often exercise to acquaint our nature with them; and, as one who maketh a fire of green wood, not to be tired with blowing until our devotion be set on flame." At first these exercises of devotion are neither pleasant nor easy; "yet by our persistence and the assistance of God, who is more strong and liberal than we can either ask or understand, they will in short time seem unto us very easy and pleasant, and in the mean season not only maintain, but increase our strength for continuance in that happy course." This is the author's argument as to the use of his book of devotions. A second part of the Advertisement to the Reader is "concerning the pleasure of a virtuous life."

The essence of the whole work is meditation and prayer. It is in Two Parts, of which the first by a series of Meditations, each closed with a Prayer, contemplates the Hour of Death, the Day of Judgment, Pains of Hell and Joys of Heaven; the second, in like manner, after representing God's wrath against sin, dwells, in the form of prayerful meditation, upon Christ as the sacrifice for sin, his agony in the Garden; how He was sold, betrayed, and apprehended; how He was carried before Annas, before Caiaphas, before Pilate, before Herod, and lastly before Pilate again; how He was scourged; how He was crowned with thorns, clothed in purple, openly scorned, and presented to the Jews; how He was condemned, and forthwith led to the place of execution; how He was crucified; how He was mocked and reviled, and how He prayed for His enemies; how He pardoned the Thief, how He tasted the vinegar, and how He cried to His Father; how He died, and how they opened His side with a spear; and then again of the grievousness of sin, and what means God useth to withdraw us from sin. The completed book, a growth of years, then closes with two prayers, of which the last thus opens:

"O my God! most mighty, and yet most mild, whose Justice shineth to us through Thy love, whose Majesty is seated in the Throne of Mercy: O invisible and indivisible God, Who canst not be expressed, Who canst not be understood.

"Whatsoever Thou art, I invocate and adore Thee; for I know Thou art a most High and Holy Thing: if it be lawful to call Thee a Thing, Who art the Cause of all things; if it be lawful also to call Thee a Cause, upon Whom all causes depend. I know not by what name I should express Thee;

and therefore I come stammering to Thee like a little child. For Thou art above all things; Thou art all things that are in Thee. Thou art Thy Holiness, Thy Happiness, Thy Wisdom, Thy Power, and whatsoever else is said to be in Thee. Seeing therefore that Thou art merciful, it followeth also that Thou art Mercy; and I am so exceedingly miserable, I am nothing but mere misery. Behold therefore, O Thou who art Mercy! Behold, misery is before Thee. What now shouldest Thou do? Verily Thy proper work; even to take away my misery, and to relieve my distressed state.

"Have mercy upon me, O my Mercy! O God, which art Mercy, have mercy upon me! declare Thy nature, shew Thy power; take away my misery, take away my sins, for this is my extreme misery. One depth calleth another: the depth of misery calleth unto the depth of mercy; the depth of sin crieth unto the depth of pardon and grace. Thy mercies are incomparably deeper than are my miseries. Let one depth therefore swallow up another. Let the infinite depth of Thy mercy and grace swallow up the great depth of my sin and misery.

"And that I may not, by returning to my former courses of life, plunge myself again in Thy displeasure; touch my soul, I beseech Thee, with continual remembrance and remorse of my sins: that I may spend all the time of my life which is to come in lamenting the time thereof that is gone. For our sins do never condemn us, if we be not either contented in remembering, or content to forget them."

Sir John Hayward wrote also a tract "Of Supremacie in Affaires of Religion," which was published in 1624, and dedicated to Prince Charles It within a year of his succession to the throne. maintains the right of the sovereign to supreme power in ecclesiastical affairs to be of the nature of all sovereign power, perpetual and absolute; argues that it is dangerous to place ecclesiastical supremacy elsewhere, by reference to Jews, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and ancient Rome, before and under the heathen and Christian Emperors. Emperors called and confirmed the eight general councils of the Church. From strife between the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople, Sir John Hayward traces development of the absolute power of the Bishops of Rome over ecclesiastical affairs, which brought the Western Empire into a state of vassalage to the See of Rome. The Bishops of Rome then claimed sovereignty over divers principal kingdoms in Europe, and generally over all states in the world; whence came divers distresses.

Hart Hall, went to London and made law his profession. He had a keen appetite for the study of history and antiquities, not as dead things of the past, but as foundations of right knowledge of the present, and in that sense was the very type of a true antiquary. In 1607, at the age of twenty-three, he finished, in two books, a summary of public occurrences and events affecting the development of civil government in this country before the Conquest. It was dedicated to Sir Robert Cotton, and printed nine years afterwards. In 1610 Selden published a sketch of the development of English law from the earliest times to the reign of Henry II., and also a study of the history of the custom of Duelling, then one of the familiar institutions of society. In 1613 Selden applied his learning to the provision of notes for his friend Michael Drayton's poem on his native land, the "Polyolbion." In 1614 his knowledge of the past interpreted the present in a book upon Titles of Honour. In 1616, year of Shakespeare's death, John Selden edited Sir John Fortescue's Latin tract in praise of the laws of England, which showed how the constitutional life of the country was felt even in a disastrous time of civil war. In 1617, an interesting Latin book on the Gods of the Syrians illustrated the idolatries described in the Old Testament. In 1618 he applied his learning to a question of the Church in his own day, the divine right of tithes. King James looked on denial of this as akin to the denial of his own supremacy. Selden's "Historie of Tithes" proposed to give an impartial statement of the evidence as to the divine or human institution of the tithes paid for support of the Church. His book was

JOHN SELDEN. (From the Portrait prefixed to his "Tracts," 1683.)

dedicated to his friend Sir Robert Cotton, from whose precious collection of rare books and MSS. he had drawn part of his knowledge. The practical purpose for which true students acquire the knowledge to be drawn from such old sources is expressed in this dedication with the pithy wisdom that abounds in Selden's writings :--

PAST AND PRESENT.

To have borrowed your help, or used that your inestimable library (which lives in you), assures a curious diligence in search after the inmost, least known, and most useful parts of historical truth, both of past and present ages. For such is that truth which your humanity liberally dispenses; and such is that which by conference is learned from you: such indeed, as if it were, by your example, more sought after, so much headlong error, so many ridiculous impostures, would not be thrust on the too credulous, by those which stumble on the road, but never with any care look on each side or behind them; that is, those which keep their understandings always in a weak minority that ever wants the authority and admonition of a tutor. For, as on the one side, it cannot be doubted but that the too studious affectation of bare and sterile antiquity, which is nothing else but to be exceeding busy about nothing, may soon descend to a dotage; so, on the other, the neglect or only vulgar regard of the fruitful and precious part of it, which gives necessary light to the present in matter of state, law, history, and the understanding of good authors, is but preferring that kind of ignorant infancy, which our short life alone allows us, before the many ages of former experience and observation, which may so accumulate years to us as if we had lived even from the beginning of time.

The sort of fable that vanishes before strict search into the sources of our knowledge may be illustrated by a legend told in the tenth chapter of Selden's "Historie of Tithes: "

HOW SAINT AUGUSTINE SHOWED THAT A LORD OF THE MANOR MUST PAY TITHES.

For the practice of payment among Christians, both Britons and Saxons; might wee beleeue the common tale of that Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterburie Prouince, his comming to Cometon in Oxfordshire, and doing a most strange miracle there, touching the establishing of the Doctrine of due payment of Tithes, wee should haue as certain and expresse autorities for the ancient practice of such payment, as any other Church in Christendome can produce. But as the tale is, you shall haue it, and then censure it.1 About the yeer (they say) DC., Augustine comming to preach at Cometon, the Priest of the place makes complaint to him, that the Lord of the Mannor hauing been often admonished by him, would yet pay him no Tithes. Augustine questioning the Lord about that default in deuotion: hee stoutly answered, That the tenth Sheaf doubtlesse was his that had interest in the nine, and therefore would pay none. Presently Augustine denounces him excommunicate, and turning to the Altar to say Masse, publiquely forbad, that any excommunicat person should be present at it, when suddenly, a dead Corps, that had been buried at the Church doore, arose (pardon me for relating it) and departed out of the limits of the Churchyard, standing still without, while the Masse continued. Which ended, Augustine comes to this liuing-dead, and charges him in the name of the Lord God to declare who hee Hee tells him, that in the time of the British State he

was.

1 Censure, form an opinion upon. The sense of the word has been degraded by the notion common among ill-trained men that in expressing opinions they exalt themselves by finding fault. This passage is quoted without change of spelling, stops, italics, &c., as an example of the English of 1618. Paper and print in the reign of James I. were excellent.

Dead corpse. Corpse only means body, and use of the word was not yet limited to the dead body.

was huius villa Patronus,' and although he had been often vrged by the Doctrine of the Priest to pay his Tithes, yet he neuer could be brought to it; for which he died, he says, excommunicat, and was carried to Hell. Augustine desired to know where the Priest that excommunicated him, was buried. This dead shewed him the place; where hee makes an inuocation of the dead Priest, and bids him arise also, because they wanted his help. The Priest rises. Augustine askes him, if he knew that other that was risen. He tells him, yes; but wishes he had neuer known him, for (saith hee) he was in all things euer aduerse to the Church, a detainer of his Tithes, and a great sinner to his death, and therefore I excommunicated him. But Augustine publiquely declares, that it was fit mercie should be vsed towards him, and that he had suffered long in Hell for his offence (you must suppose, I thinke, the Autor meant Purgatorie): wherefore hee giues him absolution, and sends him to his graue, where hee fell againe into dust and ashes. Hee gone, the Priest new risen, tells, that his Corps had lien there aboue CLXX. yeers; and Augustine would gladly haue had him continue vpon earth againe, for instruction of Soules, but could not thereto entreat him. So he also returns to his former lodging. The Lord of the Town standing by all this while, and trembling, was now demanded if hee would pay his Tithes; but he presently fell down at Augustines feet, weeping and confessing his offence; and receiuing pardon, became all his life time a follower of Augustines. Had this Legend truth in it, who could doubt, but that payment of Tithes was in practice in the Infancie of the British Church? The Priest that rose here from the dead, liud (if he euer liud) about CCCXXX. after Christ, and would not surely haue so taxed the Lord of this Mannor only, if the payment had not been vsually among other good Christians here, not taught only, but performed also.

Neither need I admonish much of the autoritie of it; the whole course of it directs you how to smell out the originall. Beside the common Legend of our Saints, it is in some Volumes put alone, for a most obseruable Moniment, and I found it bound vp at the end of the MS. life of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterburie, writen by Iohn de Grandisono, and it remains in the publique Librarie of Oxford. There also you haue it related in Ioannes Anglicus his Historia Aurea, and, in the Margine, are noted to it these words: Hoc miraculum videbitur illis incredibile qui credunt aliquid Deo esse impossibile, sed nulli dubium est quod nunquam Anglorum duræ ceruices Christi iugo se submisissent nisi per magna miracula sibi diuinitus ostensa.2 But let the truth be as it will, I doe not beleeue, that the fable can be found, nor any steps of it, aboue CCCC. yeer old at most.

divided (with allowance of about twenty years more or less to every part), takes up the next four chapters, in which the practice of payment of tithes, arbitrary consecrations, appropriations, infeodations, and exemptions of them, establishment of parochial right in them, as also the laws, both secular and ecclesiastic, with the opinions of divines and canonists touching them, are, in their several times, manifested; but so only, that whatsoever is proper to this kingdom of England, either in laws or practice, either of payment or of arbitrary consecrations, appropriations, or infeodations, or establishment of parochial right, together with a corollary of the ancient jurisdiction whereto they have been here subject, is reserved all by itself to the next seven chapters. But every of the fourteen have their arguments prefixed, which may discharge me of further declaration in this place. By this time, I trust, you conceive what the name of History in the title pretends; and the Tithes spoken of purposely in it (for perhaps it is needful to admonish that also) are only such as either have been paid, vowed, or dedicated to holy uses, or else give light to the consideration of the performance or omission of such payment."

King James was displeased with a book that, while it professed to put all due evidence into each scale, had not weight enough on the scale he wished to see heaviest. He caused Selden to be brought to him that he might reason with him; and his reasoning was heard with the outward deference due from a subject to a king. But also the king caused Selden to be interrogated by the High Court of Commission, which had despotic power of inflicting severe penalties on those who fell under Church censure. Selden escaped by signing a declaration in which he did not retract anything in his book, but humbly acknowledged his error in publishing it, "especially in that I have at all, by showing any interpretation of Holy Scripture, by meddling with Councils, Fathers, or Canons, or by what else soever occurs in it, offered any occasion of argument against any right of maintenance, jure divino, of the ministers of the Gospel beseeching your lordships to receive this ingenuous and humble acknowledgment, together with the unfeigned protestation of my grief, for that through it I have so incurred both his Majesty's and your lordships' displeasure, conceived against me in behalf of the Church of England." Of this he said afterwards, "I did most willingly acknowledge that I was most sorry for the publishing of that History, because it had offended, and I profess still to all the world that I am sorry for it; and so should I have been if I had published a most orthodox catechism that offended; but what is that to the doctrinal consequences of it?" The king ordered Richard Montague, then Dean of Hereford, to answer Selden, and forbade John Selden to reply again, saying, "If you or any of your friends shall write against this confutation, I will throw you into prison." Montague's "Diatribe upon the First Part of the History of Tithes" appeared in 1621, and pleased the king so well that his Majesty suggested other literary work to him. Richard Montague became a bishop, but not until 1628. Other men answered Selden's history, and in a letter to Sir Edward Herbert, afterwards Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who was then serving as ambassador in France, Selden complained that, while

he was forbidden to defend himself, all who pleased were free to attack him as viciously as they pleased. In 1621, also, the king came into conflict with the Parliament called in that year to provide for his necessities. It offered him advice which he resented as presumptuous meddling with affairs of state, and the House of Commons was bidden to avoid touching the king's prerogatives; what privileges it claimed it held from the crown as "rather a toleration than inheritance," and if members forgot their duty, privileges would be disallowed.

On the 18th of December the house entered a protest on its journals declaring "that the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdiction of Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritances of the subjects of England." The king held a privy council, sent for the Commons' journal, and with his own hand erased that entry. John Selden, for his knowledge of past history, had been sent for by the house and asked what were its privileges. He had replied as a sound English constitutional lawyer, in whom the love of a just liberty was strong, and the terms of the protest of the house were framed in accordance with his counsel. The king dissolved the Parliament and imprisoned some of its members. Selden also was, for his part in the contest, placed in custody of the sheriff. After five weeks of durance, he was questioned before the Privy Council and discharged. He owed some relief from difficulties at court to the good offices of Bishop Launcelot Andrewes, who was, Selden tells us, the only bishop who approved of the "History of Tithes." Towards the close of his reign, James needing, in February, 1624, again to summon a Parliament, Selden entered it as member for Lancaster.

James I. made Bishop of Meath, and nominated at the close of his reign Archbishop of Armagh. Usher, born in January, 1581, was about four years older than Selden. He was the son of Arnold Usher, one of the six clerks of the Irish Court of Chancery, and had, like Selden, an inborn aptitude for antiquarian research, to be applied to living uses. He is said to have had his tendency of work stimulated early by dwelling on a sentence of Cicero, which says that "To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be always a child."1 As a boy he made chronological tables. He was one of the first students who entered Trinity College, Dublin, which owed its foundation partly to the energies of members of his family. He was still studying when his father died, and then he divested himself of the estate that fell to him as eldest son, providing at once for the other children, and keeping only as much as would maintain him in a quiet college life, and enable him to buy books necessary for his studies. He proceeded to the degree of M.A. in 1600, and was ordained at the age of twenty-one. Some English troops having subscribed £1,800 for the library of the new College, Usher was sent to London in 1603 on a book-buying expedition. He obtained a piece of Church preferment in Ireland, the Chancellorship of St. Patrick's, Dublin, before he came to England again, in 1606, in search of books for his University. In London he became known to Sir Robert Cotton and Sir Thomas Bodley. In 1607 he took the degree of B.D., and soon afterwards, at the age of twentyseven, was made Professor of Divinity at Trinity College. In 1609 he was again in England, and added Selden to the enlarging number of his friends. At the age of thirty-two he was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In 1613, Dr. Usher was in London, and published his first book. It was virtually a continuation of Jewel's "Apology for the Church of England," written in Latin, and dedicated to the king. In the same year he married an heiress, the daughter of his friend Dr. Chaloner, who had charged her on his death-bed to marry no one but Dr. Usher, if he offered himself. They lived happily together for forty years. In 1615, Dr. Usher was the member of the Irish Church most active in drawing up a set of 104 Articles of Religion for that Church, which proposed to itself an independent constitution. Usher's theological opinions agreed with those of Calvin, and the tone of his articles caused it to be suggested to the king that Dr. Usher was a Puritan. When he went next to England, in 1619, he took with him testimony to his orthodoxy upon all points touching the royal supremacy over the Church, and made that, furthermore, so clear, in an interview with his Majesty, that James named him for the next vacant bishopric, that of Meath, and distinguished him as his bishop. Usher was zealous against the Roman Catholics, and, as a bishop of the Reformed Church in Ireland, had inevitable dealings with them. A sermon of his, in October, 1622, on the

JAMES USHER. (From the Portrait before his "Bodie of Divinity," 1653.)

Another man who passed with a high reputation for learning into the reign of Charles I., and who also contributed his thought to the controversies which then gathered intensity, was James Usher, whom

1 "Nescire autem quid antea quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum." (Ciceronis ad M. Brutum Orator.)

Lord Deputy's receiving the sword of office, had for its text, "He beareth not the sword in vain," and was thought to be too offensive in its tone. In the following month, he was admonishing of their duty Roman Catholics of rank, who were summoned to the Castle Chamber in Dublin for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy. This was

DR. USHER'S SPEECH, DELIVERED IN THE CASTLE CHAMBER, CONCERNING THE OATH OF SUPREMACY. What the danger of the law is for refusing this oath, has been sufficiently opened by my lords the judges; and the quality and quantity of that offence has been aggravated to the full by those that have spoken after them. The part which is most proper for me to deal in is the information of the conscience, touching the truth and equity of the matters contained in the oath; which I also have made choice the rather to insist upon, because both the form of the oath itself requireth herein a full resolution of the conscience (as appeareth by those words in the very beginning thereof, "I do utterly testify and declare in my conscience," &c.), and the persons that stand here to be censured for refusing the same have alleged nothing in their own defence, but only the simple plea of ignorance.

That this point, therefore, may be cleared, and all needless scruples removed out of men's minds, two main branches there be of this oath which require special consideration. The one positive, acknowledging the supremacy of the government of these realms, in all causes whatsoever, to rest in the King's Highness only. The other negative, renouncing all jurisdictions and authorities of any foreign prince or prelate within his Majesty's dominions.

For the better understanding of the former, we are, in the first place, to call unto our remembrance that exhortation of St. Peter: "Submit yourselves unto every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be unto the king, as having the pre-eminence; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him, for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well." By this we are taught to respect the king, not as the only governor of his dominions simply (for we see there be other governors placed under him), but is inepéxovra, as him that excelleth and hath the pre-eminence over the rest; that is to say (according to the tenure of the oath), as him that is the only supreme governor of his realms. Upon which ground we may safely build this conclusion, that whatsoever power is incident unto the king by virtue of his place, must be acknowledged to be in him supreme; there being nothing so contrary to the nature of sovereignty as to have another superior power to overrule it. Qui Rex est, Regem (Maxime) non habeat.1

In the second place, we are to consider that God, for the better settling of piety and honesty among men, and the repression of profaneness and other vices, hath established two distinct powers upon earth: the one of the keys, committed to the Church; the other of the sword, committed to the civil magistrate. That of the keys is ordained to work upon the inner man, having immediate relation to the remitting or retaining of sins. That of the sword is appointed to work upon the outward man, yielding protection

1 "Maximus, let him who is a king, not have a king." The last line of an epigram of Martial's (bk. ii., ep. 18) "In Maximum," which bids men avoid servility. Its sense is, "I flatter you and earn & supper; you flatter elsewhere for your profit; nay, then, we are equals, and I will not bow to you: let him who is a king not have a king."

to the obedient, and inflicting external punishment upon the rebellious and disobedient. By the former, the spiritual officers of the Church of Christ are enabled to govern well, to speak, and exhort, and rebuke, with all authority, to loose such as are penitent, to commit others unto the Lord's prison until their amendment, or to bind them over unto the judg ment of the great day, if they shall persist in their wilfulness and obstinacy. By the other, princes have an imperious power assigned by God unto them, for the defence of such as do well, and executing revenge and wrath upon such as do evil; whether by death, or banishment, or confiscation of goods, or imprisonment, according to the quality of the offence.

When St. Peter, that had the keys committed unto him, made bold to draw the sword, he was commanded to put it up, as a weapon that he had no authority to meddle withal. And on the other side, when Uzziah the king would venture upon the execution of the priest's office, it was said unto him, "It pertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but unto the priests, the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense." Let this, therefore, be our second conclusion-that the power of the sword and of the keys are two distinct ordinances of God; and that the prince hath no more authority to enter upon the execution of any part of the priest's function, than the priest hath to intrude upon any part of the office of the prince.

In the third place, we are to observe that the power of the civil sword (the supreme managing whereof belongeth to the king alone) is not to be restrained unto temporal causes only, but is by God's ordinance to be extended likewise unto all spiritual or ecclesiastical things and causes; that as the spiritual rulers of the Church do exercise their kind of government, in bringing men unto obedience, not of the duties of the first table alone (which concerneth piety and the religious service which man is bound to perform unto his Creator), but also of the second (which respecteth moral honesty, and the offices that man doth owe unto man): so the civil magistrate is to use his authority also in redressing the abuses committed against the first table, as well as against the second; that is to say, as well in punishing of an heretic, or an idolater, or a blasphemer, as of a thief, or a murderer, or a traitor; and in providing, by all good means, that such as live under his government may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all piety and honesty.

And howsoever by this means we make both prince and priest to be in their several places Custodes utriusque tabulæ, keepers of both God's tables, yet do we not hereby any way confound both of their offices together. For though the matter wherein their government is exercised may be the same, yet is the form and manner of governing therein always different: the one reaching to the outward man only, the other to the inward; the one binding or loosing the soul, the other laying hold on the body and the things belonging thereto; the one having special reference to the judgment or the world to come, the other respecting the present retaining or losing of some of the comforts of this life.

That there is such a civil government as this in causes spiritual or ecclesiastical, no man of judgment can deny. For must not heresy, for example, be acknowledged to be a cause merely spiritual or ecclesiastical? And yet by what power is an heretic put to death? The officers of the Church have no authority to take away the life of any man: it must be done, therefore, per brachium seculare; 2 and conse

By the secular arm.