Peters: the rest, let them look after, who affect such company! a It was once under consultation of the Chief Physicians who were to take especial care of the Church's [of England's] health, to send a We give the following as a sample of the usage to which those who were compelled to abandon their country were subjected; from the "Rump: or, An exact Collection of the Choicest Poems and Songs relating to the late times.-By the most eminent Wits, from anno 1639, to anno 1661. 1662." 12mo. 2 parts, pp. 576. p. 1. 86 "THE ZEALOUS PURITAN. 1639. 'My Brethren all, attend ye! And list to my relation; This is the day,-mark what I say, Tends to your renovation. Stay not among the wicked, Lest that here, with them, you perish; But let us to-New-England go, And the Pagan people cherish. Then for the Truth's sake, come along; come along; Leave this place of superstition: Wer't not for we-that Brethren be, You would sink into perdition! "There you may teach our hymns too, Then for the Truth's sake, &c. "For company, I fear not; There goes my cousin Hannah, And Ruth, no doubt will come after; "Tom' tyler, is prepared; The smith, as black as a coal; Ralph' cobbler too-with us will go, For he doth regard his soul; The weaver, honest Simon, With good Prudence, JACOB's daughter, And Sarah, she;-and Barbary, Who professeth to come after. Then for the Truth's sake, &c. "When we, that are elected, Arrive in that fair country, E'en by our faith,-as Brethren saith, Bishop over to them, for their better government; and to back him with some forces, to compel, if he were not otherwise able to persuade, obedience but this design was strangled in the first conception, by the violent breaking out of the troubles in Scotland."a One of these singular characters, concerning whom it is remarked that "it was found difficult, to check the spirits of men who placed both their honour and their conscience in suffering," requires our attention, at this place. Lilburne stands forth as the offspring of disordered times. From his youth upward he was ardent, acute, and intractable; and has acquired the reputation of being "the most turbulent, but the most upright and courageous of human kind!" a description emanating from a pen not accustomed to overflow with excessive ingenuousness. He opposed, in his own person, the entire mass of authority exercised by Ecclesiastics; and resisted what he deemed the excesses of secular power, by whom and whensoever they were employed. We shall confine ourselves to the only one out of a surprising number of publications under his name, which bears on its front any direct applicability to our own design; our memorial of him will, therefore, be concise in quantity, but ample enough to exhibit the kind of spirit which reigned within him; for we have neither the disposition nor the opportunity here to examine and set down such palliations as his own excesses may seem to need; we remark only that the pains and penalties inflicted on him did not proceed, especially at first, from judges in whose breasts mercy was a darling attribute. Come out of her, my people :' or, An Answer to the Questions of a Gentlewoman,-a Professor in the Antichristian Church of England, about Hearing the Public Ministers: Where it is largely discussed and proved to be sinful and unlawful. Also, a Just Apology for the Way of Total Separation;-commonly, but falsely, called 'Brownism,'-That it is the Truth of God, though lightly esteemed in the eyes of the world. With a Challenge to dispute with them publicly before King and Council, to prove whatsoever I said, at the pillory, against them: viz., That the calling of them is jure Diabolo; even from the Devil himself.d By me, John Lilburne, close Prisoner in the Life of Laud, p. 366-368.-"July, 1637, the 23rd day, there was great disturbance in Edinburgh, about a new Service-book endeavoured to be obtruded on the Scots by the King and Canterbury. . . It admitted unto the people, as I remember, the Communion but in one kind! . . In May, or April [1638], new tumults arose; and truly I may almost say that that corrupt Common-PrayerBook was the sole and whole occasion of all the miseries and wars that since have happened in both nations. Had his Majesty first endeavoured the imposition of that lame book upon the English, most men did believe we had swallowed it, and then the Scots must have done it afterwards; for the clergy, at that time, generally were such idle and lazy lubbers, and so pampered with court-preferment, and places temporal in every shire in England, and such flattering sycophants, that, doubtless, the great hand of God was in it, that those rude Scots first broke the ice, and taught us the way to expel an insulting priesthood, and to resist the King, he endeavouring by unwarrantable means, to intrude things contrary to the Divine law of Almighty God, upon our consciences." Lilly, p. 207, 208; ubi sup. vol. i. p. 554. b Hume, Hist. chap. lii. an. 1637. Ibid. chap. lx. an. 1651. "A Work of the Beast; or, a Relation of a most Unchristian Censure executed upon John Lilburne,-Now Prisoner in the Fleet,-the 18th of April, Fleet, for the cause of Christ. My sheep hear my voice;'-' for they know not the voice of strangers.' John x. 27, 5.-Printed in the year of hope of England's Purgation, and the Prelates' Dissolution. 1639." 4to. pp. 35. Anno With such a preliminary, this subsequent strain is but consistent: "But now for my judgment. For my own part, if I should never hear a sermon while I live, yet I should never dare to hear one from any man, good or bad, that is made a Minister by the Prelates, or any of their creatures, or by virtue of any of their muddy Antichristian laws; neither dare I have any spiritual communion with them, so long as they stand in their calling, in regard I am persuaded that he that heareth them sinneth, having no warrant out of the Book of God to do it. And, by necessary consequence, I will prove it, That whosoever hears them, so long as they officiate by virtue of their calling and power which they have received from the Bishops, to preach, doth hear the devil for the Holy Ghost saith, the subjects of the kingdom of the Beast, worshipped the Dragon,'-that is to say, the devil, which gave power unto the Beast; and they worshipped the Beast, saying, Who is like to the Beast? who is able to war with the Beast ?' Now let us not think that they did fall down to the devil himself, and do homage to him, face to face; for we never read of any that did this: but the Holy Ghost doth here declare, That all those that stoop or yield, in the least, to the laws of the Beast, do worship and serve the devil, from whom he hath received his power."t In accordance with what has been produced, and with what is contained in the tract itself, Lilburne states his challenge; "I will, if you please, dispute with you all, face to face, before the King and State, for life and liberty; upon the ensuing propositions. First, To prove that the Pope's power, is from the Devil. Secondly, That your calling, power, authority, and jurisdiction, are from the Pope. Thirdly, That 1638. With the Heavenly Speech uttered by him at the time of his suffering. Very useful for these times, both for the encouragement of the Godly to suffer, and for the terror and shame of the Lord's adversaries.-Heb. x. 36; xi. 36.Printed in the year the Beast was wounded: 1638." 4to. pp. 32. "The Publisher," F. R., writes, "To speak what I think, my mind gives me that the Lord is now upon extinguishing the bloody Prelates out of our land. For whereas they have not, in some late years, showed the cruelty which they did before, but now increase in persecution; methinks this is a clear foregoing sign that-like a snuff in the socket-their end and ruin are at hand." In p. 20, Lilburne is represented to have said, "I am the son of a gentleman, and my friends are of rank and quality in the country where they live, which is two hundred miles from this place; and I am, in my present condition, deserted of them all, for I know not one of them [that] dare meddle with me in my present estate, being I am stung by the Scorpions-the Prelates! And, for anything I know, it may be I shall never have a favourable countenance from any of them again; and withal, I am a young man, and likely to have lived well and in plenty, according to the fashion of the world; yet notwithstanding, for the Cause of Christ, and to do Him service, I have and do bid adieu to father, friends, riches, pleasures, ease, contented life; . . and lay all down at the footstool of Jesus Christ... And I am so far from thinking my affliction and punishment which this day I have endured, and still do endure and groan under, a disgrace, that I receive it as the welcome Cross of Christ, and do think myself this day more honoured by my sufferings than if a crown of gold had been set upon my head." Rev. xiii. 4. b P. 8. all God's people are bound, under pain of eternal damnation, to withdraw from spiritual obedience and subjection from your spiritual law and kingdom. "Now upon these propositions, will I dispute with you all, and venture life for life, before the King and State, upon these terms: First, That you shall lay aside club-arguments, which are, 'Take him, jailor, and lay him in irons;' and 'lock him up close prisoner;' and, keep him in safe custody!' Secondly, That the Book of God, which is an infallible Truth, shall be the sole judge of the controversy. Thirdly, That I may have liberty, without being gagged, to speak my mind freely and boldly. Fourthly, That I may have the use of some books which I shall choose... Also, be it known unto you, that I will, at Paul's Cross, dispute with all your Priests and Deacons, upon these propositions: First, That they are all of them servants and ministers of Antichrist. Secondly, That in the place and standing they are now in, at this present, they have no authority from God, to preach his Word, nor administer any of his sacred ordinances to the people; nor the people any ground or warrant out of the Word of God, to hear the Word from, or partake with them. Thirdly, That the Church of England, as at this day it stands, is Antichristian in power, in matter, in ministry, in form, and in worship. Fifthly, That all God's people are bound in duty and conscience, to separate away from it, and to have no communion with it."a So wrote Lilburne; be it, however, not forgotten, that to him the present generation are, perhaps, unconscious debtors for what is, from the year 1792, the Statute Law of Libel; but which was in his case first claimed, if not declared, to be the common law of the land. He was tried for transgressing the new Statute of Treasons, enacted by the Commonwealth, but acquitted. When the verdict was pronounced Westminster Hall resounded with acclamations; and a medal was struck, to perpetuate the victory; the obverse bears his head, with this inscription, John Lilburne, saved by the power of the Lord, and the integrity of his Jury, who are judges of law as well as fact, October 26, 1649." On the reverse, are the twelve names of the Jury.c To assist in gaining as full an insight as may be into the whole state of the controversy between those who asserted, as some even yet assert, and those who disallowed, as their successors disallow, a predominance to belong of right, because inherent, as is alleged and self-perpetuated through a class appertaining to but an insignificant few compared with the multitude of implied subordinates, the two treatises annexed hereto are advantageous. The first, bears the title of "The Trial of our Church-Forsakes: or, A Meditation tending to still the Passions of unquietBrownists; upon Heb. x. 25. Wherein is justified, against them, 1. That the Blessed Church of England is a True Church; 2. hath a True Ministry; 3. hath a True Worship.-By Robert Abbot, Vicar of Cranbrook, in Kent. 1639." 16mo. pp. 249.d ■ P. 34, 35. b 32nd Geo. III. cap. lx. Evelyn's Numismata, 1697. Fol. 171. No. 93. In fo. 170, Evelyn writes, "Whose medal is a Record." A brother of Archbishop Abbot, named Robert, who died in 1618, was In the Epistle to his Parishioners, he imputes to the "Brownists that they "pretend to two things; to the Scriptures, and to Conscience;" and he goes on to say, "I know a third thing in them, Weakness!' Further, he says, "And because they are weak, I have not showed myself a man, in giving them any bitter language, or exasperating terms... Indeed I have taken their affected name out of their mouths Separatists,'-and given their right one unto them, 'Brownists' and this I have done out of conscience. I find, by experience, that the word 'Separation' doth win to their cause; for, when people of strong affections and weaker judgments do read of the necessity of separation, in the Scriptures, and cannot discern how we have made separation from Heathenism; and when we [who] have been thrust out of Rome, because we were unwilling to be so bad as she,-have maintained our just standing from her, in a divided way, they have been willing to hearken to a separating plot. Therefore Browne being the leader amongst us, to this breach,-if now time hath not made it worse than he intended it,-I cannot nick-name, but in conscience call the child after the father's name. It was Christ's course, Ye are of your father the devil,' his children 'b ye are ; and so must I. It is true also, that afterwards, ye may find some opinions gone against that are held by some that keep communion with our Church as of a true Church. But I am sure they are the Brownists' opinions also, to whom I speak." a strongly affected towards the Puritans, as appears from some of his works, particularly his Sermon on the 110th Psalm, 1601; his 'Antichristi Demonstratio,' 1603; and his Treatise against Bishops.' .. Being Vice-Chancellor that year [1614] he preached a sermon, in which he made allusions to Laud, which were at once understood. Laud, then President of St. John's, was not present on this occasion, but he was persuaded. . to attend at St. Mary's Church on the following Sunday, when the sermon, according to ancient custom, was again to be delivered. He complied, and heard Dr. Abbot abuse him for nearly an hour from the pulpit, and in such an undisguised manner, that he was actually pointed at by the auditors. . . 'Some,' said Dr. Abbot, are partly Romish, partly English, as occasion serves them, that a man might say unto them, noster es, an adversariorum? who, under pretence of truth, and preaching against the Puritans, strike at the heart and root of the religion now established among us. They cannot plead that they are accounted Papists because they speak against the Puritans, but because, being indeed Papists, they speak nothing against them. If they do at any time speak against the Papists, they do but beat a little about the bush, and that but softly too, for fear of waking and disquieting the birds that are in it.'.. After defending Presbytery for a considerable time, he then exclaimed 'Might not Christ say, What art thou? Romish or English? Papist or Protestant? Or, what art thou? A mongrel compound of both; a Protestant by ordination, a Papist in point of free-will, inherent righteousness, and the like. A Protestant in receiving the sacrament, a Papist in the doctrine of the sacrament. What? Do you think there are two heavens? If there be, get you to the other, and place yourselves there, for unto this where I am ye shall not come.'" and Times of W. Laud, D.D., etc. By J. P. Lawson, M.A. 1829. 8vo. vol. i. p. 155-158. Our readers will be amused, seeing the bias of this author, at his ill-fortune in attributing to the Archbishop's brother a "treatise against Bishops," which should have been "A Defence of the Reformed Catholic,' of William Perkins, against the Bastard Catholic' of Dr. Bishop, Seminary Priest.-Lond. 1606-11. 2 vols. 4to. The remarkable coincidence between Abbot and others, with Hall, concerning their judgment of Laud's leaning towards Popery, is not to be treated lightly! a John viii. 44. b Matt. xiii. 38. Life |