THE HISTORY OF THE PURITANS; OR, PROTESTANT NONCONFORMISTS; FROM THE REFORMATION IN 1517, ΤΟ THE REVOLUTION IN 1688: COMPRISING AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR PRINCIPLES; THEIR ATTEMPTS FOR A FARTHER REFORMATION IN THE CHURCH; THEIR SUFFERINGS; AND THE LIVES AND CHARACTERS OF THEIR MOST CONSIDERABLE DIVINES. BY DANIEL NEAL, M. A. A NEW EDITION, IN FIVE VOLUMES; REPRINTED FROM THE TEXT OF DR. TOULMIN'S EDITION, WITH HIS LIFE OF THE AUTHOR AND ACCOUNT OF HIS WRITINGS. REVISED, CORRECTED, AND ENLARGED. VOL. III. LONDON: Y PRINTED FOR WILLIAM BAYNES AND SON, THE NEW YORK 205261 ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. R 1901 G. BROWN-GOODE COLLECTION Printed by J. F. Dove, St. John's Square. AUTHOR'S PREFACE R TO THE THIRD VOLUME. No period of civil history has undergone a more critical examination than the last seven years of king Charles I. which was a scene of such confusion and inconsistent management between the king and parliament, that it is very difficult to discover the motives of action on either side: the king seems to have been directed by secret springs from the queen and her council of Papists, who were for advancing the prerogative above the laws, and vesting his majesty with such an absolute sovereignty as might rival his brother of France, and enable him to establish the Roman-Catholic religion in England, or some how or other blend it with the Protestant. This gave rise to the unparalleled severities of the star-chamber and high-commission, which, after twelve years' triumph over the laws and liberties of the subject, brought on a fierce and bloody war, and after the loss of above a hundred thousand lives, ended in the sacrifice of the king himself, and the subversion of the whole constitution. Though all men had a veneration for the person of the king, his ministers had rendered themselves justly obnoxious, not only by setting up a new form of government at home, but by extending their jurisdiction to a neighbouring kingdom, under the government of distinct laws, and inclined to a form of church-discipline very different from the English: this raised such a storm in the north, as distressed his majesty's administration; exhausted his treasure; drained all his arbitrary springs of supply; and (after an intermission of twelve years) reduced him to the necessity of returning to the constitution, and calling a parliament; but when the public grievances came to be opened, there appeared such a collection of ill-humours, and so general a distrust between the king and his two houses, as threatened all the mischief and desolation that followed. Each party laid the blame on the other, and agreed in nothing but in throwing off the odium of the civil war from themselves. The affairs of the church had a very considerable influence on the welfare of the state: the episcopal character was grown into contempt, not from any defect of learning in the bishops, but from their close attachment to the prerogative, and their own insatiable |