is found introducing supplies of men, money, and arms from Spain for the relief of the insurgents. Another schismatic, assuming the title of archbishop of Armagh, came with orders from the King of Spain that the Irish should revolt; and having excited a rebellion, he fell in battle with the royal troops. Ohely, called archbishop of Tuam, was sent afterwards, by one of the Irish chieftains, to the King of Spain, whom he exhorted to invade and subdue Ireland. When the next insurrection broke out, we find Maceogan, a titular bishop and vicar of the Roman pontiff, issuing an excommunication against all who should give quarter to the prisoners taken from the queen's army. Maceogan caused all such persons to be put to death in his presence; and he himself at last fell in battle against the royal army, leading a troop of horse, with his sword in one hand, and his breviary and beads in the other!

The ignorance and superstition of the lower orders of the Irish at this time made them unhappily an easy prey to the emissaries of Rome, who came from Spain, Italy, and Flanders, and vehemently declaimed against the Churches of England and Ireland as heretical. Amongst the arguments used to delude this unhappy people, we find many lying wonders, visions, and miracles. It was said that on one occasion St. Columbkill took the form of a wolf, and carried a torch into the powder-magazine of a garrison of English "heretics," who were of course all destroyed. Another tale was, that a certain "heretic" converted a priest's vestment into a pair of trousers; but as soon as he had drawn them on, he took fire and was burned to ashes. An English governor, very much hated by the popish party, was said to have been heard conversing with the devil; presently after, an explosion was heard, and he was found lying frightfully distorted and insane, and soon after died. By such arguments were the Irish taught to hate their pastors, and to separate from their na tional Church. But all would have been insufficient, if the country had remained in peaceable subjection to its sove

reign; and therefore the Popes Pius V. and Gregory XIII. promoted insurrections in Ireland against the royal authority ; and the people were compelled by their chiefs to forsake the communion of their legitimate bishops, and to become obedient to the usurpers whom the popes sent over to occupy their places. It was only by a long series of rebellions that the schism in Ireland was consolidated and became so widely extended. The reign of Queen Elizabeth sufficed for this lamentable catastrophe.

King James I. wisely discouraged the Roman schism, and forbade the residence of its bishops, priests, and Jesuits, in his dominions; but under his successor, Charles I., a relaxation of this wholesome severity encouraged the schismatics to insult and disturb the Church, and ultimately, in 1641, to massacre in cold blood a hundred and fifty thousand of its adherents, and to break into insurrection.

The Church was now dreadfully persecuted by papists and by the English parliament; but on the return of Charles II. resumed its rights. Persecution was renewed under James II., in 1690, when the Romish party obtained power; and in the rebellion of 1798. From that period, the Romish party has acquired great political power, and the Church has been almost continually persecuted, especially within the last few years, in which the clergy have been reduced nearly to starvation; some have been murdered, and many placed in peril of their lives. To add to their afflictions, the government, in 1833, suppressed ten of the bishoprics, on pretence of requiring their revenues for the support of ecclesiastical buildings ; although the bishops of Ireland, in a body, protested against such an act, and offered to pay the amount required from the incomes of their sees, provided that so great an injury were not done to the cause of religion.

SCOTLAND, had also become subject to the pope about the twelfth century; but the Reformation was not so soon or so happily introduced there as in England. There is room for censure of both parties in that country during the sixteenth

A.D. 1560.

century. The Romish party exercised cruelties on their opponents, which led to their own downfall. The reformed, headed by Knox, were turbulent and irregular in their proceedings. They at first adopted a temporary church government, which resembled the episcopal, and in 1572-agreed that bishops should be constituted; but soon afterwards, under the influence of MelA.D. 1580. ville, who had imbibed a taste for the Genevan discipline, they rejected episcopacy, and established presbyterianism. In the beginning of the following century, these disorders ceased; and in 1612 the Church of Scotland was provided with lawful bishops and pastors, who were consecrated in England.

In 1638 the presbyterian party again became predominant, and took an oath or covenant to exterminate episcopal gov ernment. When Charles II. was restored, the A.D. 1660. Church again was protected by the state, and bishops were consecrated in England for all the vacant sees.. A party of Covenanters, however, separated from the Church, esteeming episcopacy anti-Christian, and set up conventicles; and the Scottish bishops having scrupled to take the oaths of allegiance to King William, this monarch caused the bishops to be expelled from their sees, and episcopacy to be abolished by act of parliament; and recognised the sectarians as the established Church. From this time the bishops, and the rest of the Scottish Church, were most sorely and cruelly persecuted by the Presbyterians, till -1788, when the penal laws were repeal ed; but during this period they had been much reduced in numbers.

A.D. 1690.

A flourishing branch of the Catholic Church, derived from England, exists in AMERICA. When Virginia, and other provinces of North America, were settled by the English, early in the seventeenth century, the Church took root there, and for a long time was supported by the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Efforts were often made

to obtain bishops for America, but they failed through the influence exerted by sectaries over the government. At length, after the United States had been declared independ A.D. 1784.

ent, Dr. Seabury was ordained bishop of Connecticut, by the primus and bishops of Scotland; and other prelates were ordained for America, in England, in 1787 and 1790.* The American Church is now governed by twenty bishops, and is rapidly increasing. Bishops have also been consecrated for many of the British possessions in India, North America, and the West Indies; and the limits of those Churches are continually enlarging. Many of the heathen have been converted in India and North America.

CHAPTER XXIII.

FRUITS OF FAITH IN THE BRITISH CHURCHES.

A.D. 1530-1839.

AMONGST that noble army of martyrs, who in the sixteenth century contended even to death for Christian truth, against Romish errors and superstitions, none merits a more conspicuous place than NICHOLAS RIDLEY, bishop of London. He was born in Northumberland, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and studied at the University of Cambridge, where he was distinguished for learning and piety. He afterwards pursued his studies in theology at Paris and Louvain; and returning back again, was senior proctor of the University of Cambridge in 1533, when the decree was made by

1

*[The Romish episcopacy was introduced into the United States in 1789. The Methodists in America have a spurious episcopacy, derived from the pretended ordination of Dr. Thomas Coke, a presbyter, by John Wesley, another presbyter, in 1784. The United Brethren have also bishops residing in America.-AM. ED.]

that university, as well as by all the Church of England, "that the bishop of Rome has not, by the word of God, any jurisdiction in this realm." He also became a celebrated preacher, and was remarkable for his knowledge of Scripture and the fathers; so that in 1537 Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, appointed him one of his chaplains, and associated him with his family. Soon after, being made vicar of Herne, he diligently instructed his flock in the doctrines of the Gospel, and his preaching attracted multitudes of people from all the surrounding country. In 1540 he was elected master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he had been educated, and where he had been a most diligent student of the Scriptures, as we may collect from the follow ing words of his Farewell; where, apostrophising his college, he says, "In thy orchard (the walls, butts, and trees, if they could speak, would bear me witness,) I learned without book almost all Paul's epistles, and the canonical epistles too, save -only the Apocalypse: of which study, although in time a great part did depart from me, yet the sweet smell thereof, I trust, I shall carry with me into heaven; for the profit there. of I think I have felt in all my life-time ever after."

About 1545 Ridley, by reading the book of Bertram,* a presbyter of the ninth century, was induced to forsake the erroneous opinion of transubstantiation; and he was instrumental in bringing Archbishop Cranmer and Bishop Latimer to the same mind. In 1547 he was consecrated bishop of Rochester, and was most zealous in promoting the reformation of abuses; but he evinced great firmness in resisting such measures as he judged injurious to the cause of justice or religion. When he was appointed, without his knowledge, on a royal commission, for the suppression of Clare Hall at Cambridge, and found, on examination, that this society would not dissolve itself, he wrote to the lord protector, declaring that his conscience would not permit him to act further in the com mission; and thus incurred the risk of offending most griev ⚫ [Or Ratramn.-AM. ED]