be false they obtained everything which they desired. They were absolute; the person and property of every man, woman, and child, in the kingdom, were at their entire disposal; they could mutilate the body, and banish from the realm, and confine in a dungeon, or hang on a gallows: if parliaments censured, then they were dissolved, while those members who had made themselves conspicuous in arraigning their arbitrary measures were heavily fined and imprisoned. The king would hear nothing against them. He was their dupe. They were his panders. From the royal palace to the meanest hut which held a subject, their boundless and despotic influence extended like a wide-spread pestilence.

There was one man who was a great favourite with the king: to his disastrous influence over the royal mind may be attributed very many of the subsequent calamities to which the Stuart family were exposed. This man was Archbishop Laud. A review of his character and conduct will bring before us all the great transactions of those times, for in most of them he played a very conspicuous part. There are two aspects which we may take of this man's conduct, viz. as it related to the personal liberty of the subject, and to his liberty of conscience. To both of these he was the bitter and rancorous enemy: every action of his life will resolve itself into opposition to them. But we will now consider in what way this arrogant priest acted towards any who differed from him in their religious opinions.

There was a court, called the High Commission Court, originally instituted for reformation of manners; i. e. if a man's manners were in any respect disagreeable to a bishop, he was subject to a heavy fine by way of reformation. It was at first an ecclesiastical court; it afterwards grew into a court of revenue: but it is in its great inquisitorial character-the dark and bloody divan of prelates with Laud at their head-that we will regard it at present. This court was above all law. No judge dared at his peril to traverse their decrees with the veto of the English common law. But there was little danger that the judges would act in this way. They prided themselves in twisting the laws of the land into conformity with the villainous decisions of the court. Lord Clarendon says that they were scandalous to their profession. With a very weak and bigotted king at their head, and with Laud to guide them, the high

commissioners became guilty of the most frightful excesses of arbitrary power.

Disputes in those days ran very high about ceremonies and doctrinal points. With respect to the first, Laud, who was very fond of pomp and show, determined that every clergyman should wear the prescribed garments, should kneel when he was told to kneel, should make the sign of the cross in baptism, and bow at the name of Jesus. With respect to the second, Laud, who was an Arminian, determined that the church of England should likewise be Arminian, and therefore ministers were publicly, repeatedly, and under heavy penalties, commanded never to preach on the subject of predestination or election, although in the seventeenth article of the church, to which they had subscribed, these doctrines are confirmed. Then again Laud, who was an archbishop, resolved that no man should differ from him about the government of a church. He was a little man of a very quick temper, who could not brook contradiction: according to him the government of the church had always been episcopal : the bishops were always just such bishops as the bishops of England; they could not have been otherwise, because they were lineal descendants of the apostles. All this must not be doubted; but if it were-if some unhappy scholar or divine perceived, or thought he perceived, a flaw in the above line of argument, and ventured to publish it in a pamphlet, instantly the bishop was grievously desirous of rectifying his mistake in his own way. For this purpose he dispatched a messenger or two to the writer's house, to beg his company to meet a few lords at his table in the High Commission Court. As the letter was generally very pressing, and the messengers very importunate, the writer usually accompanied them. Then he was brought before the court; although it frequently occurred that a man was suddenly seized and imprisoned for months, without even being informed of the fault alleged against him; then he was subjected to a mock trial; sometimes he had a defender, at other times he was not permitted to defend himself-he was accused, convicted, condemned in a breath: although the House of Commons had pronounced that the conduct of the court was intolerable and unwarrantable-although that great legal authority, Sir Edward Coke, declared that the court "could fine in no case❞—yet they would after such a summary trial immediately proceed to pass the most rigorous sentences.

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For instance, the cathedral church of St. Paul's required to be repaired therefore when any person was accused of puritanism, or scandalous life, or heterodoxy (whatever Laud might denominate by that word), he was fined according to his property or his station, one, five, or ten thousand pounds, and the money was applied to the repairs of the church. This court had their agents and spies all over the land; neither learning, nor virtue, nor rank, could save a man from their clutches. "They brought in," says Clarendon, "the greatest and most splendid transgressors persons of honour and great quality were every day cited into the High Commission, upon the fame of their incontinency or scandal of life, and very heavy fines were levied upon them, and applied to the repairing of St. Paul's cathedral."

Of this wretched protestant inquisition Laud was the very life and soul if any of its members flagged, he stimulated and inspired them: he would go to the court and procure a poor minister's utter ruin by robbing him of all his money, for writing or speaking against the ceremony of signing the sign of the cross in baptism; he would stand up and exult in brutal triumph over the broken-hearted man at the bar, whose family, if he had any, were now mendicants; then he would-all complacent, sleek, and contented-go home and write in his diary, "God be praised." He would give in his diary a minute account of a poor prisoner's exquisite punishment, apparently for his own private amusement, as if to renew and double the gratification of inflicting suffering by reconsidering and specifying every circumstance of horror with his pen and ink. Thus he kept himself in spirits, and wetted the edge of his appetite for blood.

There was another court in that time, called the Star chamber. It received this name from the representation of a star wrought into the tapestry of the room in which the council sat. It was composed of the members of the king's council-table, which in those days, when parliaments were only called to be dissolved, was the legislature of the kingdom. Thus, if the king wanted money, the council, would issue a proclamation to that effect, to which the arbitrary nature of the government gave the strength of law, while the Star chamber had the management of any who refused to obey these proclamations which were very frequently contrary to the law of the land. This chamber left a subject no right, or charter, or fundamental rule to which to appeal. It

recognized no law. It dispensed with all trial by jury. It summoned a man for showing disrespect to any act of the state, or to any statesman, and burdened him with ruinous fines which were often attended with the severest bodily punishment. As Laud was a member of this chamber he very soon made it a scene of despotism and suffering: he made it an inquisitorial court to punish the enemies of the Establishment. This chamber dealt especially with cases of contempt. So Laud, finding an unlucky man writing a book in contempt of prelates, brings him instantly within the cognizance of this chamber. This was the famous case of Dr. Leighton, father of the great archbishop of Glasgow. He wrote a work, entitled "Zion's Plea against Prelacy," in which he uses the language of truth and soberness, when he writes, that "we do not read of a greater persecution and higher indignities done towards God's people in any nation than in this, since the death of Queen Elizabeth." For writing this book he was cited to appear in the Star chamber: and this was his sentence. He was to be imprisoned for life, and pay a fine of £10,000. He was to be set in the pillory, and have one of his ears cut off, one side of his nose slit, and be branded in the face with a double SS for a sower of sedition. Then he was to be carried back to prison, and after a few days be pilloried again in Cheapside, and have the other side of his nose slit, and his other ear cut off, and then be shut up in close prison for the remainder of his life. This horrible sentence was so pleasing to Bishop Laud, that he pulled off his cap in the presence of the council, and gave God thanks!

Let this suffice for the present: we have many severities to relate, illustrative of that ruthless defiance of the rights of conscience ever manifested by Laud. We shall have particularly to lay before our readers his ferocious treatment of the puritans, his tender regard and imitation of the papists, and his conduct with respect to the civil rights of Englishmen.

THE REASONABLENESS OF THE CONGREGATIONAL SYSTEM.

There is a beautiful simplicity and reasonableness in our principles which mark their divine origin, and commend them

to every unprejudiced inquirer. They are within the grasp of the meanest intellect, and at the same time command the admiration of the most gifted minds. God addresses us in his word as rational beings. We discover in his book of revelation the essential principles of a christian church—which may be regarded as the outlines of the drawing-the filling up being left to the judgment of his people. St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians on the ordinances he had given them, asks if nature itself doth not teach them the propriety of certain rules, plainly intimating that the servants of God are to be guided by the fitness or reasonableness of things, in their application of the principles of the divine word.

Dr. Watts, in his Rational Foundation of a Christian Church, gives a striking and beautiful illustration of the manner in which our churches are founded upon the plain nature and reason of things. "Permit me," he says, "to give a little specimen, by way of similitude, how naturally a christian church is formed, when we suppose there are several christians within the reach and knowledge of one another in this sinful world. It is raised in the same manner as any other civil society may be formed among men, especially among several natives of one country meeting together in a foreign land. And while I am representing their procedure, you may carry your thoughts of the formation and constitution of a christian church along with you in the simile, and apply it all the way.

"Suppose three or four Englishmen, who have their residence in a city of China, happen to meet one another, and by conversation finding that they speak the same language, they make it known to each other that they are natives of the same country; they all profess allegiance to the same king; and though they sojourn for a season in a foreign land, and are engaged in many secular affairs there, yet they declare their resolution to behave as becomes Englishmen, while they are waiting for a call from their sovereign to return home. They hereupon agree to meet once a week, in order to converse about the affairs of their own nation, to learn some tidings from it, to pay some special honours to their absent king, to learn further notices of his will, and to prepare for their return homeward.

"The day which they appoint for their assembly, is the day of the accession of their king to the throne, in its weekly