The English are the most forgiving people upon the face of the earth. Their oppressor had sat down in the dust; and that alone was enough to extinguish in their bosoms every recollection of his tyranny and crimes. From the moment that sentence was pronounced, liberty fell prostrate at the feet of loyalty, as though kings came into the world with crowns upon their brows to dazzle and stultify mankind. Feeling that they were, as they really were, a small minority, that a change, by no means improbable in parliament, might send them, one and all, to an ignominious scaffold,-that the dagger of incensed fanaticism, or royalism, or levelism, hung over their heads by a single hair, like the sword of Damocles, as was soon afterwards demonstrated in the assassination of more than one of their number-it certainly proved that they believed themselves engaged in the mighty cause of advancing the best interests of their species; and that therefore, cost whatever it might, they would never draw back. Of course, we now speak only of those among them, whose courage was genuine, and whose conscientiousness was beyond suspicion; of such men as Ludlow and Hutchinson, names ever dear to all true patriotism. Algernon Sidney and Sir Henry Vane, who would have preferred the deposition to the decapitation of their late sovereign, were beyond a question wiser than their fellows in holding that opinion. But the demonstration of this could only be given after the game had been played; besides which, despotism, we may depend upon it, has never read the last hours, or rather moments of Charles the First, without considerable paleness and palpitation. The masked executioner, who held up in public view that severed visage, which he denounced as having belonged to a traitor, could have probably discovered not a single echo of approval, amongst the assembled thousands and myriads, who groaned, and wept, and wailed before the windows of Whitehall. Yet surely, if treason be correctly defined by jurisconsults, or if history be suffered to give an impartial verdict, the rising voice of ages pronounces a very similar sentence! Grievous beyond calculation, as was the inexpediency of that awful execution, (and the ghost of Strafford himself could have exacted no bitterer vengeance from posterity,) the party thus suffering had trampled under foot the most solemn social compact-had carried fire and sword over the fair face of three. kingdoms to set up absolutism, and put down liberty-had forfeited his pledged honor and word, until both were mocked at and scorned had deceived friends and foes, so that victory had come to be considered on either side almost as perilous as defeat,-and after all, had surrendered episcopacy itself, that last talisman whereby he kept the Church of England by his side in life, and won from her the honors of a canonization when the axe had done its work. It is not our purpose to dwell now on his indecency towards ladies in public, although he has been pourtrayed

in legends as the chastest husband of his species; nor on the ordered murder of Lord Loudon in the Tower, an unquestionable fact, though his admirers have vainly suppressed, or feigned to disbelieve it; nor on some of his military cruelties, such as the massacre of Leicester, during the war, which alienated so many of his own adherents, until public opinion compelled him to admonish Rupert that he ought not to anticipate the divine wrath upon his rebellous subjects;' nor on his supporting Laud in his fierce wishes to have Felton put on the rack of torture; nor upon his perfidy with regard to the Irish insurrections, the intrigues with Lord Glamorgan, or as displayed in the contents of his Naseby cabinet. But we merely recall to the recollections of our readers, that after having sworn and promised never to desert that form of ecclesiastical government to which we believe he was really and conscientiously more attached than to aught else in the world, he nevertheless did, in the Isle of Wight, sign a secret treaty with the Scots, by which he bound himself to renounce episcopacy, and accept the covenant in solemn parliament for both kingdoms! That his treachery reaped no reward, beyond an abundant harvest of shame, we conceive, can have no effect in alleviating the dark shadows of guiltiness, which would have buried in oblivion any other name, nor have failed to do so, even as to his own, had not the bauble of a diadem floated it down the stream of time, and a church, in unhallowed communion with the State, enrolled it among the memorials of her martyrology!

In sober sadness, what an outcry would have been made had nonconformity ever patronized, or even winked at such an office as that in the Church of England appointed for the thirtieth of January. Our beneficed clergy are obliged to avow solemnly and publicly their ex animo assent and consent to all and every word and thing' in this form of prayer contained; they are bound to use it on the day appointed, and to fast on that occasion; the entire object being to implore the mercy of God, that neither 'the guilt of that sacred and innocent blood, nor those other sins by which God was provoked to deliver up both us and our king into the hands of cruel and unreasonable men, may be at any 'time hereafter visited upon us, or our posterity.' Throughout this profane, and we had almost written, blasphemous office, there is a parallel drawn inferentially between a hypocritical tyrant beheaded by his aggrieved people, and the divine Saviour of the world who died for the transgressions of mankind. The second lesson is the twenty-seventh chapter of St. Matthew; and the second prayer is the following fair average specimen of the general genius, so to speak, and tendency of the whole matter: 'Blessed "Lord, in whose sight the death of thy saints is precious, we 'magnify thy name for thine abundant grace bestowed upon our 'martyred sovereign, by which he was enabled so cheerfully to

6

6

follow the steps of his blessed Master and Saviour, in a constant 'meek suffering of all barbarous indignities, and at last resisting 'unto blood; and even then, according to the same pattern, praying 'for his murderers. Let his memory, O Lord, be ever blessed amongst us, that we may follow the example of his courage and constancy, his meekness and patience, and great charity! In another prayer occurs the following, in reference to his son and successor, where God is blessed for not leaving us for ever, as 'sheep without a shepherd, but, by his gracious providence didst miraculously preserve Charles the Second from his bloody. 'enemies, hiding him under the shadow of the divine wings, until their tyranny was overpast;' and again, that he was set upon 'the throne of his father to restore true religion, and settle peace 'amongst us!' It is afterwards supplicated that according to the example of the royal martyr, we may press forward to the prize of the high calling set before us, in faith and patience, humility ' and meekness, mortification and self-denial, charity and constant 'perseverance unto the end.' The gospel in the morning is the parable of the husbandman killing the son of the householder. Instead of the venite exultemus is used a selection of thirty-two verses, taken both from the canonical and apocryphal scriptures, amongst which such portions as these are applied to the unfortunate, and certainly not innocent monarch; The people stood up, and the rulers took counsel together against the Lord, and against his anointed;' or again, from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, Now the sins of the people, and the iniquities of the 'priest, they shed the blood of the JUST in the midst of Jerusa'lem; thus throwing a vicarious character over the execution of poor fallen creature. These are but specimens, it will be remembered; but upon the whole, (with the exception of a similar office for the twenty-ninth of May, wherein the most heartless profligate that ever corrupted the morals of a nation, is lauded before God with adulation, false as it is fulsome,) we must declare our unfeigned belief, that nothing more offensive is contained in the Roman breviary; when, we mean to say, that degree of superior light is taken into the account, with which it has pleased the Holy Spirit to favour our episcopal church. Surely our evangelical friends of the establishment, instead of almost literally bringing death itself into Exeter Hall, by their exciting accusations of that communion, (whence their own ordination and sacraments, in their view of the subject, if they are consistent, derive their validity,) would be far better employed, were they to begin their reformation at home, and purge their common prayer-book from stains which public opinion could never have endured for an hour, had not an unhappy alliance between Church and State secularized the one, without sanctifying the other. The persecutors of Maynooth, with the whole train of those who listen to and applaud

certain anti-catholic orators in the present day, are either sincere or not so; but if the former, as we are quite willing to take for granted,-why should their protestantism expose a vulnerable heel to the shafts of an acute and able antagonist, as the poets say Achilles did to Paris in the temple of Apollo? They very possibly imagine that these things are not known, or, if known, are permitted to pass unobserved; yet let them rest assured that this is far from being the case. It is admitted, that, as between the archbishop of Canterbury and the pope of Rome, the latter, to say the least, is not losing ground in these kingdoms. We ought indeed to state the affair more accurately, as lying between her Majesty and his Holiness; our gracious queen being the recognized head of the Anglo-episcopalian church, as by law established. Alas! had the nation been only educated for a century, how different would be the aspect of society. We concur in the animated remarks of a living authoress, which we recommend to those who are more ready to spout hot speeches from a safe bench in parliament against Socialism or Chartists, than to mend their own ways: If you must blame, blame the selfish monarchs, the temporizing ministers, the barbarous aristocracies, the vainglorious generations of the people, that have passed away, rather than the descendants on whom they have entailed the 'consequences of their mutual follies. The spirit of barbarism 'lingers about its mortal remains! Barbaric wars are hushed, the dead having buried their dead; barbaric shows have faded in 'splendor, and are as much mocked at as admired; barbaric 'usurpations are being resisted and supplanted day by day; but the infatuation, which upheld them so long, is not altogether dispelled; and if we rashly suppose that it is, we deserve to suffer 'for coming within its reach!"

6

Art. II. Lectures on Biblical Criticism; exhibiting a Systematic View of that Science. By S. DAVIDSON, LL.D. Professor of Biblical Literature in the Royal Academical Institution, Belfast. Edinburgh, T. Clark; London: Hamilton and Co. 8vo. pp. 411.

THE integrity of the sacred records is a matter profoundly in

teresting to all believers in divine revelation. The authority of the word, as the rule of faith and practice, though resting exclusively for its support on the evidences of divine intervention, would yet be practically nullified, if we could not satisfactorily establish the general integrity of the text, which has been made the vehicle of the mind of God. It must hence be a subject of deep regret, that there should appear among Christians in general so little knowledge of a subject which involves the reasonableness of their faith, and the foundation of their hope. It might, even

with the strictest justice, be affirmed that a large portion of professed believers are not merely ignorant of the method employed for settling the canon of scripture, and of the principles on which the literal integrity of the text is to be determined, but that they evince an utter distaste for such inquiries, and a contemptuous indifference to the invaluable labors of the men who critically pursue them. Few Christians among us,' says the admirable Baxter,* for aught I find, have any better than the popish implicit 'faith in this point, nor any better arguments than the papists have, to prove the scriptures the word of God. They have received it by tradition, godly ministers and Christians tell them so; it is 'impious to doubt of it; therefore they believe it. Though we 'could persuade people never so confidently, that scripture is the 'very word of God, and yet teach them no more reason why they 'should believe this than any other book, to be that word, as it 'will prove in them no right way of believing, so it is in us no right way of teaching. It is strange to consider how we all abhor that piece of popery, as most injurious to God of all the 'rest, which resolves our faith into the authority of the church; and yet that we do, for the generality of professors, content 'ourselves with the same kind of faith; only with this difference, the papists believe scripture to be the word of God, because 'their church saith so; and we, because our church, or our leaders 'say so. Yea, and many ministers never yet gave their people 'better grounds, but tell them that it is damnable to deny it, but help them not to the necessary antecedents of faith. It is to be 'understood, that many a thousand do profess Christianity, and 'zealously hate the enemies thereof, upon the same grounds, to the same end, and from the same inward corrupt principles, as the Jews did hate and kill Christ. It is the religion of the 'country, where every man is reproached that believes otherwise; 'they were born and brought up in this belief, and it hath increased in them upon the like occasions. Had they been born and bred in the religion of Mahomet they would have been as zealous for ' him. The difference betwixt him and a Mahometan is more 'that he lives where better laws and religion dwell, than that he hath more knowledge or soundness of apprehension.'

The ground that still exists for applying these severe strictures, even very extensively, to the Christian church, must be our apology for entering somewhat at length into this subject. Though we feel fully persuaded that the dissenting communities are more awake to its importance, and contain a larger measure of acquaintance with it, than is to be found among the same number and the same rank of persons within the Established Church, yet we are deeply impressed with the necessity of inviting to it more

Saints' Rest, part ii. sect. 1.