whom certain religionists of our own time would hold up to us as the model for a Christian priest and ruler. They may depend upon it, that new Lauds would find new parliaments of the people quite able and prepared to deal with them. And we may here observe, that those good, easy men, who are not disposed to look under the surface of the time, or take note of any events that do not shout out their nature

and presence into the great ear of the world, by some unmistakable cry, may, perhaps, often wonder why it is that the apparently insignificant question of vestments, and bowings, and genuflexions, should create so much heart-burning in so many of the parishes of England. It is because these practices were peculiarly Laud's practices, and

not listen, charm he never so wisely. So when the Parliament granted him a veto on bills touching liberty of conscience, they expressly excluded such power over bills passed for the suppression of heresies. This was something like what a permission to play the tragedy of Hamlet would be to a manager, on the condition that he excluded the principal part. The wide divergence between Cromwell and the men of his time is shown, perhaps, even more strikingly in another-because individual—case, and one, therefore, less liable to be determined upon extrinsic considerations. While we find the Parliament, in 1655, ordering the books of Biddle, the father of Unitarianism, to be burned, we find the Protector, a little later, pensioning the same man. No wonder that when the hand of death conquered him, whom nothing else could, matters soon relapsed into the old train of strife and bigotry.

At first, Charles II. appeared to have learned something in the Protector's school. In his declaration from Breda, he pledged himself to the principle of toleration, when he used or signed these words:" And because the passion and uncharitableness of the times have produced several opinions in religion by which men are engaged in parties and animosities against each other, which, when they shall hereafter unite in a freedom of conversation, will be composed, or better understood, we do declare a liberty to tender consciences; and that no man shall be called in question for difference of opinion in matters of religion, which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom; and that we shall be ready to consent to such an Act of Parliament, as, upon mature deliberation, shall be offered unto us, for the full granting that indulgence." And this manifesto was followed up by the "Healing Declaration," happily so called, which suggested a kind of compromise between the High Church party, and the Presbyterians, who, kept in check while Cromwell ruled, by him and his adherents the Independents, were now in a position of great strength. But that Church party wanted the old pre-eminence;—which the Presbyterians, who had considered themselves as the true Church, during the Commonwealth, might possibly have granted; but then, there were the Independents, who would, necessarily, gain a share of the advantages flowing from the proposed measure, which, undoubtedly, would have proved one of immense help to the cause of religious liberty. So the proposed legislation was thrown out by the Parliament. Two years later, the Presbyterians received their logical punishment-by the en

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forcement of the Act of Uniformity, which caused no less than two thousand clergymen to be excluded from their livings; and these were chiefly Presbyterians.

And even then they would learn nothing from, repent nothing of, their former errors and failures. When the Earl of Digby planned a law of toleration that should let in together Catholics and Nonconformists, under cover of a law for the benefit of the latter, the Presbyterians actually preferred persecution to sharing relief from it with the Catholics. But it must not be forgotten, in justice to them, that the suspicions of a leaning to the old faith that had so constantly accompanied the rule of each sovereign since the time of Henry VIII. (unless that sovereign's entire policy and character prevented, as was the case with Edward VI. and Elizabeth) became now more rife than ever: we shall see with what justice as applied to Charles II. So when this king continued to issue declarations of indulgence, from time to time, notwithstanding the practical measures of administration that intervened, Parliament not only refused to go with him, but actually forced legislation into the exactly opposite path. The famous, or rather infamous, Conventicle Bill was now passed. It was Scotland that originated the ideas expressed by the word "conventicle," and a royal proclamation, issued by James I., in 1624, explains the matter very clearly :-" We have of late known, to our unspeakable grief, that a number of our subjects, some of them misled by the turbulent persuasions of restless ministers, either deprived of their functions or confined for just causes, or such as leave the conduct of their own flock to debauch and seduce their neighbour's many affecting hypocritically the glory of purity and zeal above others, and some corrupted by the bad example of the former-have casten off the reverent respect and obedience that they owe to our authority royal and to their pastors, contemned and infringed their doctrine, disobeyed and controlled their ordinary discipline, abstained to hear the Word preached, and to participate of the sacrament ministered by them in their own parish, and have disorderly strayed to other congregations, and in the end numbers of them have assembled themselves in private houses in Edinburgh, and other places, to hear from intruding ministers, preachings, exhortations, prayers, and all sorts of exercises fitting their unruly fantasies, many times at the very ordinary hours when their own pastors were, according to their lawful calling, preaching in their parish kirks." To worship God, therefore, when and where one's own inclinations suggested, was, in the govern

mental and established opinion of James's time, a heavy offence. And now, in the time of the second Charles, after all the experience of the religious liberty granted by the Commonwealth, an English Parliament was ready to deal with it as a matter deserving condign punishment. So Nonconformists were at once peremptorily forbidden to frequent conventicles, or places of worship not belonging to the Established Church, and exposed to a graduated scale of imprisonment for those who disobeyed, ranging from three months' simple imprisonment up to seven years' transportation! And this was no law to be merely held over the heads of the people, it was enforced, and with the most terrible sufferings to all the unhappy Christians who persisted in the crime of worshipping God in their own way.

The Scottish Parliament followed the guidance of the English, and then Archbishop Sharp set to work. The great persecution of the Covenanters, which history, works of fiction, and national and local traditions have invested with a terrible charm, began. There was a kind of poetical fitness between the facts of the origin and of the persecution of the Covenanters. As it was Laud whose hot-bed theories of religious rule and discipline had first plunged Scotland into the grave contest between Prelacy and Presbyterianism, and so brought on the Covenant, in 1638-that solemn instrument by which the people of Scotland undertook to maintain, at all hazards, their old faith- so was it now another Laud who undertook, in a kindred spirit, a similar work, in rooting out the Conventicles, and punishing those who resorted to them. The end was no less significant in both cases. While Laud died legally on the scaffold, Sharp perished at the hands of the Covenanters, who were armed with no authority to kill him but such as their own maddened natures gave. Let us not forget the sort of treatment the Covenanters had received from this holy minister of God. After their defeat in arms on the Pentland Hills, in 1666, when forty were killed, and one hundred and thirty taken prisoners, Sharp caused ten to be hanged at Edinburgh, and thirty-five hanged before their own doors, in their own localities. The modes of discovering such criminals were quite worthy of the modes of punishing them when discovered. Not only was torture used, but the amiable Archbishop and his worthy ministerial coadjutor, Lauderdale, actually had an altogether new species of torture brought into use, being, we suppose, dissatisfied with all previous sources of available pain. The boot was now used. This was an instrument for crushing the leg, by

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a wedge driven between the bone and a case of iron that enclosed the limb. Think of the physical anguish we all feel from the slightest injury to the shin, and we can then, perhaps, though it is difficult, get some revelation into the state of the mind and heart of the wretch who first invented this torture! Yet what was he who laboured without responsibility, in comparison to the man who took his infernal invention, and applied it to the extinction of religious liberty? Miserable

men! They might as well have applied it to the extinction of the Creator himself.

It was at this time that another man rose into an equally infamous notoriety-Graham of Claverhouse. Who could suppose, as they look upon his youthful, elegant features, that they represent a man who did not scruple to pour out the blood of his fellow-men like water