England and

Ireland, though hitherto we have beene most sparing to meddle with anything concerning them, yet now since yee put us so hardly to it wee cannot dissemble any longer our hearty wishes that since the Bishops there, beside the manifold evils that is in the Office which they do use and defend, and the needlesseness of it; since I say their Bishops have beene the first fountaine of all our Churches trouble, since they are the prime instruments which now infect this Isle with Arminianisme and Poperie..... wee professe it our wish to God, that the king and this present Parliament might consider if it were not for the good of the Crowne, for the welfare of their nation, for the peace of their Church that England after the example of all the Reformed should rid themselves at last of their Bishops' trouble."-A Postscript to the foregoing.

It has been seen above how this advice was followed by the Rebel Parliament in regard to the Bishops and Cathedrals. The following passage from a well-known

and valuable author will show how the plan against the Church was fulfilled in

all parts.

"At the breaking out of the Rebellion the Clergy of the Establishment did in a manner unanimously adhere to the cause of the King and the Church. On this account therefore the faction soon perceived it impracticable to carry on their joint designs against both the one and the other of them, whilst those Malignant Ministers [i. e. the Clergy of the Church] continued possest of the pulpits; and therefore determined by all possible methods of violence and oppression to ruin and destroy them. Pursuant to which resolutions those factious and Puritanical Ministers who had revolted to the Parliament (and were by them thrust into as many pulpits as they could fill) had it in their instructions to traduce the Episcopal Ministers as Papists or Popishly affected; and to represent them to the people as lazy, idle, ignorant Curates, enemies to godliness, and over-run with the foulest and grossest immoralities. As this As this poy

son worked throughout the kingdom, committees were appointed in Parliament for imprisoning and sequestering those ignorant and scandalous (that is, Loyal and Episcopal) ministers. These made a considerable progress with the best of the Clergy. But for the greater ease and encouragement of informers, and thereby to compleat the Reformation, it was judged further necessary to erect committees in all the counties, cities, and greater towns of the kingdom; and to furnish them with a power of sequestering as well the temporals (whether real or personal) as the spirituals of the Malignant Clergy. And this work prospered so well in their hands, that soon after, they proceeded to abolish the Church government itself, to put down all the Cathedrals, and to seize the whole revenues of those ancient and learned bodies. Nor did they stop here; but divers other sorts of committees and commissioners were from time to time appointed, as well to perfect the ruine of the Clergy, as to purge the universities of all persons

who had any pretence, either to learning or loyalty. Both which purposes they so far effected by a continued course of well near twenty years' persecution, that errors, heresies, and blasphemies without number, filled many of the pulpits; and the ministry itself was at last esteemed AntiChristian."-Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, Preface, pp. xvi, xvii.

In pursuance of this plan, upwards of seven thousand Clergy were dispossessed of their benefices and property, and suffered in their long persecution, hardship and violences, which, were they not substantiated by the most unquestionable testimony, would be with difficulty believed. The reader is referred, for a detail of them, and the Christian heroism with which they were endured, to the work last quoted.

The Independents, a motley body of religionists, completed the sad havoc which the Presbyterians had begun; and having mastered the Presbyterians, murdered the King, and erected a military despotism, were finally, by God's mercy,

dispossessed of their power by the happy Restoration in 1660.

At the Revolution, the Church in Scotland was once more, for its unconquerable devotion to the then Sovereign, dis-established by the Prince of Orange, and the Presbyterian Kirk became, and has since continued the religious establishment of the country. The reader is referred to the present Bishop of Glasgow, (the Right Reverend Dr. Russell's)" History of the Church of Scotland," for a relation of the persecution, which followed this event, and was revived and continued late in the last century. The limits of this preface will not allow the author to do more than state the fact that Presbyterian persecution existed till then.

And this seems to be the proper place for introducing, as an answer to those who are hardy enough to claim the Church as not speaking against the Presbyterians and Independents, and their heresies and schisms, the places in which she declares her mind of them decisively