them on, he took fire and was burnt 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 national Church. But all would have been insufficient, if the country had remained in peaceable subjection to its sovereign; 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, however, 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 in Ireland 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 the 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, es

pecially 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 income 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 century. The Romish party exercised cruelties on their opponents, which led to their own downfal. The reformed, headed by Knox, were turbulent and irregular in their proceedings. They at first, in 1560, adopted a temporary church-government, which in some degree resembled the episcopal, and in 1572 agreed that bishops should be constituted; but soon afterwards, under the influence of Melville, 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 government. When Charles II. was restored, in 1660, the 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 in 1690 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 repealed; but during this period they had been much reduced in numbers.

A flourishing branch of the Catholic Church, derived from England, exists in AMERICA. When Virginia, and other provinces in 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 independent, 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 by our missionaries in India and North America.

CHAPTER XXIII.

FRUITS OF FAITH IN THE BRITISH CHURCHES.

A.D. 1530-1839.

MONGST that noble army of martyrs, who in the sixteenth century contended even to death for Christian truth against Roman 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 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 following 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 thereof 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 commission; and thus incurred the risk of offending most grievously the chief ruler of England. Such resolution was an earnest of that firmness and piety with which he afterwards faced death for his conscience towards God.

On the deposal of Bonner for contumacy, Ridley was installed bishop of London in his place. In this high station he behaved with great dignity, benevolence, mildness, and goodness. He was of a mortified spirit, given to prayer and contemplation, and useful and instructive to all his family. His day was divided between private prayers, family devotions, (in which he every day gave a lecture. on the