make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land-or else, worse, I will only hang them; that's all."

He burned Edward Wightman and Bartholomew Legate for upholding Unitarian ideas. The opinions of the latter, the royal buffoon tried to overcome by argument, but, being worsted therein, issued against his opponent the writ "de hæretico comburendo," which closed the argument at the stake. Even worthy Thomas Fuller, in his history, exults over this performance, and claims that it was quite a different thing from the burning of the Protestant martyrs in the days of Bloody Mary. He blasphemously says, "God seemed well pleased with this seasonable severity."

Under Charles I., Prynne, Bostwick, and Burton-men of high social standing and culture-had their ears cut off at the public pillory; and Prynne was branded on both cheeks, for what were called libels on the established discipline of the Church of England.

This monarch's savage primate of Canterbury, Laud, was as great a tyrant over the mind and conscience as was his master over the civil rights of his subjects.

"Under Laud's direction," writes Macaulay, "every corner of the realm was subject to a constant and minute inspection. Every little congregation of Separatists was tracked out and broken up. Even the devotion of private families could not escape the vigilance of his spies."

Another annalist of these times remarks: "Laud and his prelates were abject in their dependence upon the Crown. They erected the most dangerous pretentions of the monarchy into religious dogmas. Their model, Bishop Andrews, had declared James to have been inspired by God. They preached passive obedience to the worst tyranny. They declared the person and goods of the subject to be at the King's absolute disposal, and turned religion into a systematic attack on English liberty."

During this comparatively modern reign, the Courts of High Commission and the Star Chamber were used as a standing means of attack against Puritan ministers; and

holy and wise men were whipped, pilloried and maimed for any question of the powers of the prelacy.

Ceremonies most offensive to Puritan feeling were enforced in every parish; Geneva Bibles were suppressed; preachers were compelled by royal will to read the declaration in favor of Sunday pastimes from the pulpit; and hundreds of ministers, favoring simplicity of worship were cited before the High Commission and deprived of their

cures.

One of Charles's truckling prelates, in preaching the doctrine of passive obedience to the King's behests, thundered out that to resist his will was to incur eternal damnation !

There is little lament, now, even from English historians, as Clio analyses and groups the incidents of this disgraceful reign, that Strafford, Laud, and King Charles "the martyr," as he is styled in the prayer-books-all conspirators against the mind and body of the subject-met with the stern retribution that they did from the humanity they had outraged and trampled upon.

THE CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND.

What wonder is there, amid these persecutious, that those professing a simple faith, and desiring to be freed from an oppressive hierarchy, should have turned their backs upon their ancient home and sought, in a distant wilderness, freedom to worship God in peace, and that liberty of thought and action which has always been an aspiration of humanity?

Unlike those who settled the Southern continent, for this mere liberty of conscience and from no hope of gain, the Protestant pilgrims sorrowfully abandoned their native land, battled in frail barks the tempestuous ocean, encountered famine, and fought for very existence with the forces of nature and a savage foe.

Godly people in England, it was said, "began to apprehend a special hand of Providence in raising this plantation in Massachusetts, and their hearts were generally stirred to come over."

People of intelligence, wealth and culture flocked over, the more numerously as the oppressive hand of prelacy weighed stronger on life and conscience.

Three thousand colonists emigrated to New England in a single year.

The sense of a grand moral obligation, an earnest aspiration for truth, a firm, conscientious conviction, and a lofty enthusiasm, which had been transmitted through a century of persecution, sustained the hearts and nerved the arms of the noble bands who planted themselves as pioneers on New England's desolate coasts.

Even amid unexpected hardship and misery, Winthrop wrote: "We now enjoy God and Jesus Christ, and is not that enough? I thank God, I like so well to be here, as I do not repent my coming. I would not have altered my course, though I had seen all these afflictions. I never had more content of mind."

The clergymen that came over from England, and established themselves in the New England colonies, were generally men who had been connected with the English Church, of Calvinistic principles, but who were obliged by law to conduct public worship in conformity with the English statutes, and to withhold their own opinions when in conflict with the views prescribed by ecclesiastical convocation.

It is a strange illustration of human weakness that these victims of religious persecution should have, in turn, sought to shackle conscience and oppose toleration.

The practice and the principles of the Puritan fathers became far from harmonious. The rigid lines of their established faith were drawn as strictly and maintained almost as ruthlessly as in the father land, and the governing authority exacted conformity in spiritual matters as the condition of civil freedom.

Those who had been branded as heretics stigmatized others as heretics for differences on theological abstractions, and even for non-conformity to church routine.

The persecuted, in turn, turned persecutors, and visited

upon others the treatment against which, as an outrage upon human rights, they had solemnly protested.

The State, too, as in the country they had abandoned, was retained as comptroller in ecclesiastical affairs, and given power to punish ecclesiastical offences.

In an address by the elders, in convention, to the General Court at Boston, the claim is made that it belongs to the civil powers "to exercise care and authority in matters pertaining to religion and public worship, and to suppress enormities and heresies."

In the introduction to the laws of the colony of Plymouth is found the following declaration :

“It being a duty to restrain or provide against such as bring in dangerous errors or heresies tending to corrupt or destroy the souls of men, whoever is convicted of this offense, and continues obstinate therein, shall be fined, banished, or otherwise severely punished, as the court of magistrates shall udge meet.

We read of one who was condemned to fine and banishment, and to have his ears cut off, for speaking disrespectfully of the Church at Salem, and of another who was sentenced to fine, banishment and seizure of all his goods and the burning of his house for adherence to Episcopacy and a maypole,

It was evident, too, says one of their ancient historians, not only by Mrs. Ann Hutchinson's trial, but by many other public proceedings, that inquisition was made into men's private judgments as well as into their declarations and practice.

Toleration was preached against as a sin in rulers, which would bring down the judgment of heaven upon the land.

In the pocket of Governor Dudley, when he died, was found a copy of verses written with his own hand, of which the following were two of the lines:

"Let men of God in court and churches watch

O'er such as do a toleration hatch."

The use of the book of common prayer was forbidden by the Salem Church as a "deadly and pestiferous book ;" and by the laws of Connecticut the punishment was as severe

for reading that book as for making mince pies, dancing, or kissing the baby on Sunday.

Nonconformists were scourged and fined for their ideas, no matter how mildly expressed; and even if they met together privately to partake of communion, they were disfranchised and imprisoned.

Ann Hutchinson and those who thought with her on the abstractions of sanctification and justification were banished the Commonwealth; and Roger Williams found hospitality from the Wampanoags and the Dutch, which had been denied him by his fellow-colonists.

Any sympathy expressed for the sufferings of the victims, or criticisms made on the severe action of the magistrates, was visited with fines and scourging. Any questioning of the authority of any part of the Biblical history was visited with scourging, and a second offence with death. These things, at times, provoked the criticism of the wise and liberal men of the New England colonies. Sir Richard Saltonstall, in a letter to Cotton and Wilson, two of the most bigoted of the New England clergymen, in alluding to their intoleration, says:

"It doth not a little grieve my spirit to hear what sadd things are reported daily of your tyranny and persecution in New England, as that you fyne, whip and imprison men for their conscience. First, you compell such to come into your assemblyes as you know will not joyne with you in worship; and when they shew their dislike thereof and witness against it, then you styrre up your magistrates to punish them for (such as you conceive) their public affronts."

When Dr. Robert Child and others, who were compelled to contribute to the support of the church, applied to the Massachusetts authorities, in 1646, to be allowed to partake of Christian ordinances in the Congregational churches, or else to be allowed to set up an Episcopal church for themselves, their reasonable application was deemed subversive and seditious, and they were imprisoned and heavily fined.. Hutchinson says: "Bigotry and blind zeal prevailed among Christians of every sect and profession. Each denied to each other what all had a right to claim-liberty of conscience."