matters:―he would have seen one common object sought, as well as one common effort made by them, for the subversion of that noble Establishment, which, in having a religion pure and primitive, is a standing evidence against Romanism; and in having a church scriptural and apostolic, is enabled to look down upon dissent as it grovels in that precise position to which all that is truly religious and sober in the land has long since consigned it.

This is not the first time, however, that this "solemn league and covenant" was entered into and sealed between these parties. In times long since gone by, we find them mutually assisting each other in the same object. Both before and after the fearful yet glorious struggle of the Revolution, we find the Romanists, when in power, endeavouring to weaken the church of England by conferring privileges and giving encouragement to the dissenters, and the ill-fated and bigoted James extending to them all the patronage and countenance of the court. While on the other hand we see the dissenters at the same period endeavouring to thwart every measure for the advancement and settlement of Protestantism in connexion with the established Church; and actually withdrawing from the field of controversy, and, just as they are doing at the present day, leaving the great conflict between scriptural Protestantism and traditional Romanism to be fought by the church of England.

There never was a period in the history of the church of Christ in which the controversy between Protestantism and Romanism was so intensely and ably contested, as at the period of the Revolution; and the fact of the dissenters having refused to take part in the glorious struggle for all that is dear to the Christian and precious to the Church, has left a stain upon this body, which the stream of ages cannot efface; while at the same time it has enabled the church of England to claim and to wear, as she has well deserved, the laurels of that noble triumph. The God of the armies of Israel was in her host of defenders, and they were more than conquerors through Him that loved them.

When the last of the house of Stuart was set upon establishing popery in this land, he proceeded in precisely that course which was suitable to the character of popery. His grand obstacle was the power and influence of the established Church; and he felt that all his efforts were unavailing, so long as that Church remained shrined in the hearts of the people of England. He felt too that the spirit of Protestantism was abroad; and that, so long as Protestantism was identified with the established Church, there was an innate power, which might to be sure seem inert for a season, but which, when occasion demanded its movement, might be wielded with a power with which even the throne could not contend;-as he lived to experience. It was necessary, therefore, for him to fling some apple of discord among the

Protestants of England-to create some great division among them to raise up and cherish some potent rival to the established Church; and thus, by setting the rivals to consume and devour each other, he might succeed in withdrawing the vigilance of Protestants in general from the development of his designs of establishing popery upon the ruins of the contending parties.

"The maxim that the king set up," as Burnet informs us, "and about which he entertained all that were about him, was the great happiness of a universal toleration. On this the king used to enlarge in a great variety of topics. He said, nothing was more reasonable, more christian, and more politic; and he reflected much on the church of England for the severities with which dissenters had been treated. This, how true or just soever it might be, yet was strange doctrine in the mouth of a professed papist; and of a prince, on whose account and by whose direction the church party had been, indeed, but too obsequiously pushed on to that rigour. But since the church party could not be brought to comply with the design of the court, applications were now made to the dissenters; and all on a sudden the churchmen were disgraced and the dissenters were in high favour. Chief Justice Herbert

went the western circuit after Jefferies's bloody one; and now all was grace and favour to them; their former sufferings were much reflected on and pitied. Every thing was offered that could alleviate their sufferings; their teachers were now encouraged to set up their conventicles again, which had been discontinued, or held secretly for four or five years. Intimations were everywhere given, that the king would not have them or their meetings disturbed. Some of them began to grow insolent on this show of favour. But wiser men among them saw through all this, and perceived the design of the papists was now to set on the dissenters against the Church, as much as they had formerly set the Church against them; and, therefore, though they returned to their conventicles, yet they had a just jealousy of the ill designs that lay hid under all this sudden and unexpected show of grace and kindness; and they took care not to provoke the church party." (Book 4.)

Thus the king endeavoured to evoke a potent rival to the established Church. He assumed the profession of liberalism, and wore the garment of conciliation in reference to the dissenters; and they, for their own selfish interests, and the advancement of their petty communities, yielded to his blandishments. They conceitedly imagined that they could compete with the intrigues of Rome; and thought that they were using the papists, while in reality the papists were using them. It was at the period of which we write, precisely as in our own times. The spirit of faction and of selfishness seized on the dissenters; they cared not how popery increased, if only the protestantism of the established Church was diminished; and they became the veriest tools, the unprincipled and selfish tools of the court party,

wielded and managed by all the consummate policy of the Church of Rome.

It was therefore that the dissenters and the papists affected to blend their sentiments and interests together, so that when the clergy of the church of England and the popish emissaries entered upon the arena of controversy-when the established clergy on the one hand, and the government on the other, contended about the faith once delivered to the saints,-the whole body of the dissenters withdrew, even as at the present day; their protests against popery were concealed, if indeed they ever felt. any ancient hatred for the apostasy of Rome; and they muffled their conscience-stricken faces, while they declined to stir a hand, or move a tongue, or utter a voice against the church of Rome.

In reference to this controversy, Burnet informs us that

"Many of the clergy acted now a part that made good amends for past errors. They began to preach generally against popery, which the DISSENTERS did not. They set themselves to study the points of controversy; and, upon that, there followed a great variety of small books, that were easily purchased and soon read. They examined all the points of popery with a solidity of judgment, a clearness of arguing, a depth of learning, and a vivacity of writing, far beyond any thing that had before that time appeared in our language.'

"They had a mighty effect on the whole nation: even those who could not search things to the bottom, yet were amazed at the great inequality that appeared in this engagement. The persons who both managed and directed this controversial war were chiefly Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Tenison, and Patrick. Next them were Sherlock, Williams, Claget, Gee, Aldrick, Atterbury, Whitby, Hooper, and, above all these, Wake, who having been long in France, chaplain to the Lord Preston, brought over with him many curious discoveries, that were both useful and surprising. Besides the chief writers of these books of controversy, there were many sermons preached and printed on those heads, which did very much edify the whole nation. And this matter was managed with that concert, that for the most part once a week some new book or sermon came out, which both instructed and animated those who read them. There were but very few proselytes gained to popery, and these were so inconsiderable that they were rather a reproach than an honour to them. Walker, the head of the University College, and five or six more at Oxford, declared themselves to be of that religion; but with this branch of infamy, that they had continued for several years complying with the doctrine and worship of the church of England after they were reconciled to the church of Rome. The popish priests were enraged at the opposition made by the clergy, when they saw their religion so exposed and themselves so much despised."

Thus, while this noble band of churchmen contended, like the Cranmers, and Latimers, and Ridleys, of earlier times, against the church of Rome, the whole body of the dissenters treacherously withdrew from the conflict, and calmly looked upon the

great struggle for all that is precious in religion, as if they felt they had neither part nor lot in the matter. But it was then as it is now. The church of England stands on the loftiest vantage ground in her struggle with popery, when she stands unshackled by the presence or the interference of the dissenters. One has a church without a religion, and the other has a religion without a church; and they are alike removed from that dispensation of God which has eternally bound up a religion and a church together.

At the period to which we have been alluding, and which is so strikingly parallel to the present times, the aim and policy of the court, or popish party, was of the true Machiavelian character. It was not simply divide et impera, but it was divide that we may devour; and in the development of this system they first, as already seen, divided the churchmen and the dissenters. They then set themselves to separate the episcopalians from the presbyterians; and, to consummate the perfection of their diabolical policy, they finally compassed, with a melancholy success, that great climax of their measure, a division in the very bosom of the Church, by awakening uncalled for strife between a high-church party and a latitudinarian section.

Peter Walsh-himself a popish priest, but nevertheless an honest man-describes the policy of his church, as detailed by Burnet :

"He was an honest and able man, much practised in intrigues, and knew well the methods of Jesuits and other missionaries. He told me often there was nothing which the whole popish party feared more than a union of those of the church of England with the Presbyterians. They knew we grew the weaker the more our breaches were widened; and that the more we were set against one another, we would mind them the less. The papists had two maxims, from which they never departed; one was to divide us, and the other was to keep themselves united. And he observed, not without great indignation at us for our folly, that we, instead of uniting among ourselves and dividing theirs, according to their maxims, did all we could to keep them united, and to disjoint our own body."

This has always been the policy of the Jesuits in this country. They have arranged for a perfect union of council and action among their intriguing partizans; and have ever, and even at this our own day, successfully laboured to alienate the several sections of Protestants from each other, and even to divide the very Church herself.

Burnet well describes the character of those divisions. In the times immediately after the Revolution, when the only possible prospect of success to the papists could be found in the jealousies, and schisms, and distractions, that might be raised in the very bosom of the Church herself, the jesuitical policy was deeply at its work, and the results are described by the able

bishop, who witnessed himself the very heats and contentions of which he writes:—

"The king was suspected by the clergy, by reason of the favour showed to dissenters, but chiefly for his abolishing episcopacy in Scotland, and his consenting to the setting up presbytery there. This gave some credit to the reports, that were with great industry infused into many of them, of the king's coldness at least, if not his aversion, to the church of England. The leading men of both universities, chiefly Oxford, were possessed of this; and it began to have very ill effects over all England. Those who did not carry this so far as to think, as some said they did, that the church was to be pulled down, yet said, a latitudinarian party was like to prevail and to engross all preferments. These were thought less bigoted to outward ceremonies; so now it was generally spread abroad, that men zealous for the Church would be neglected, and that those who were more indifferent in such matters would be preferred. Many of the latter had managed the controversies with the church of Rome with so much clearness and with that success, that the papists, to revenge themselves and to blast those whom they considered as their most formidable enemies, had cast aspersions on them as Socinians, and as men that denied all mysteries. And now some angry men at OXFORD, who apprehended that those divines were likely to be most considered in this reign, took up the same method of calumny, and began to treat them as Socinians."

But the matter did not stop here. A certain section of the Church, which had always been opposed to the Revolution, and who secretly favoured those principles, which, when fully developed, necessarily lead to popery, assailed the more moderate divines; and while they accused them as tending to latitudinarianism, and Socinianism, and dissent, shot off themselves, and began to disport themselves on the very verge of

popery.

"There appeared at this time," continues Burnet, an inclination in many of the clergy to a nearer approach towards the church of Rome. Hicks, an ill-tempered man, who was now at the head of the Jacobite party, had in several books promoted a notion that there was a proper sacrifice made in the Eucharist, and had on many occasions studied to lessen our aversion to popery. The supremacy to the crown in ecclesiastical matters, and the method in which the Reformation was carried, was openly condemned. One Brett had preached a sermon in several of the pulpits of London, which he afterwards printed, in which he pressed the necessity of priestly absolution, in a strain beyond what was pretended to even in the church of Rome. He said no repentance could serve without it, and affirmed that the priest was vested with the same power of pardoning that our Saviour himself had. made in the lower house of convocation to censure this, but it was so ill supported, that it was let fall. Another conceit was taken up of the invalidity of lay-baptism, on which several books have been writ; nor was the dispute a trifling one, since, by this notion, the teachers among the dissenters passing for laymen, this went to the rebaptizing them and their congregation.

A motion was