New,' by John Brown, B.A., D.D. Dr. Mackennal assures the reader that the writers of these tracts understand their [the Congregational martyrs] historical position,' and that the tracts are sent out with the fullest confidence in their historical accuracy.' His own volume is thickly crowded with proof that he is no competent judge of 'historical accuracy,' as we shall show. The ignorant reader is given to understand that he will find facts and truths in these tracts which have been omitted by 'the general historian,' or which 'the general historian has been diffident in treating,' and that 'there is all the more need, therefore, that the subject should be taken up by men who understand these ideas." Whom precisely he means by 'the general historian' Dr. Mackennal does not tell us. He may mean Hallam or Strype or Burnet, or the editors of the Parker Society volumes, to whom he and his colleagues are indebted for some of their unverified quotations; he may mean Hanbury or Waddington or Dexter, to whom they owe most of their lazily adopted, maimed, and unexamined quotations. The unsceptical credulity with which all the seven have quoted the partial quotations of 'the general historian,' never once going behind the general historian' to compare his conclusions with his sources, is a thing to wonder at, and all the more so in their case because some of the seven are disciples of that vague comparative which is known as 'the Higher Criticism.' There is not an atom of criticism, in the honest meaning of the word, throughout the two volumes; nor does one of the seven writers manifest the primary instinct of the critic-that is, the habit of constant reversion to the original text. So far as we can see, there is no sign whatever that either of them has thought it worth while to read through even one of Barrowe's, Greenwood's, or Penry's writings. It is certain that none of them has made such conscience of his work as to read all their writings. Dr. Mackennal knows that this is what he and his colleagues ought to have done, and he seems to pretend that he at least has done it. For he says (in the Preface to his own volume) that 'the study of these sources' is 'a task full of interest. In no way can we get so near the men of the sixteenth century as by reading their own writings. The toil of deciphering old manuscripts and mastering old arguments is nothing in comparison with the pleasure we have when we find the image of living persons impressing itself on our minds.'2 Why in the world, then, did Dr. Mackennal and his col1 Preface to Early Independents, p. vi. 2 Story of the English Separatists, viii.

VOL. XXXVI.-NO. LXXII.

H H

leagues forego this profitable 'toil,' and deny themselves this delightful 'pleasure'? Why have they rested content with such printed driblets and patches as they could find ready to hand in Dr. Dexter, or in the confused Hanbury, or in the ridiculous Brook, or in the singularly inaccurate Waddington, of whose facility in making mistakes Dexter himself complains? 'Mr. Hanbury's book,' observes Dr. Mackennal, 'is full of quotations from contemporary sources, with accurate references, so that it is a pleasure to pursue the subject under his guidance.' How can the blind lead the blind? Unless Dr. Mackennal has turned from Hanbury's quotations to the books which he quotes, how can he be certain that they are' accurate'? Or how can he master old arguments,' especially if they be as involved and detailed as those of Barrowe and Penry are, unless he makes himself honestly familiar with them in their integrity and entirety? These Congregationalist martyrologists would have honoured their martyrs much more by reading their books than they have honoured them by their lazy compilation of second-hand excerpts from other men's reading, and by concealing their defect of research under diffuse and windy sermonisings about the Barrowe, Greenwood, and Penry legend. There is an instructive family likeness discernible in these seven quasi-historians. They all have the habit of flying off at a tangent from fact to sentiment and rhapsody. They all delight in the stringing together of antithetical generalizations.

We have deliberately made a charge against these quasihistorians. We shall now justify it by citing them as our witnesses to the shoddy character of their workmanship. Both the volumes are so crowded with glaring proofs of their carelessness and inaccuracy that it is bewildering to choose a par. ticular example for arraignment and conviction. So we will simply begin at the beginning, and quote the very first statement of the first tract in the first volume, Professor Adeney's account (in 'The Church in the Prisons') of the notorious gathering at Plumbers' Hall on June 19, 1567. We need hardly say that Mr. Adeney means by the Church' a company of men and women who had separated themselves from the actual historical Church, founded once for all by Jesus Christ, and who claimed by virtue of that separation to be the true Church.' We take this episode the more readily because it is told thrice over in this absurd collection, and each time it is told falsely. The series opens with an ignorant and blundering relation of it by Mr. Adeney; next it is told a second time, though with somewhat more caution, by Dr. Brown;

lastly, it is told by Dr. Mackennal as ignorantly as by Professor Adeney. The object of all three is to show the antiquity of Separatism from the Church, which needed no showing, and that 'Fitz's Church,' as they call this concrete segregation, was older than Robert Brown's abstract theory of Separatism. If this gathering of Fitz's hundred followers in Plumbers' Hall be of such unspeakable moment to modern English Congregationalism as they hold it be, why did they not one and all go to the original sources for their account of it? Surely 'the young Congregationalists,' whose ignorance they deplore, and whom they are so anxious to instruct in the principles of Congregationalist Separatism, have a right to demand that at least this very slight and easy trouble should have been taken by their instructors. Nevertheless, each of these three blind leaders of the blind gives his scholars nothing better on this point than the empty and inadequate quotation of other men's quotations. Professor Adeney gives no authority whatever; but takes his narrative with charming credulity from Nobody-knows-who. Dr. Brown, who is more careful and discreet, borrows it from 'Strype,' but from which of Strype's many volumes he does not say. Dr. Mackennal, who cares less for facts than for sermonizing upon his own caricatures of facts, cites the Parker Society's Remains of Archbishop Grindal as his authority. Their unlimited confidence in Nobody-knows-who, in Strype, and in Mr. Nicholson is very edifying as a witness to their own capacity as historical critics. But for the sake of 'the young Congregationalists' who are growing up in ignorance of the history and principles of their sect, as well as for the disarming of the wicked critical churchman, they might have turned to the original common document used by Dr. Brown's Strype, by Dr. Mackennal's Parker Society editor, and by Professor Adeney's Nobodyknows-who. Whence did Strype, Mr. Nicholson, and Nobodyknows-who get the information which the three quasi-historians have appropriated? As neither of them can answer, we will tell them.

The original account of the examination of the prisoners taken at the pretended meeting for a wedding in Plumbers' Hall was written by one or more of the prisoners themselves, and therefore it is an early document which we should have imagined to be peculiarly sacred in the eyes of their hagiologists, and to have merited some of that 'toil of deciphering' and mastering old arguments' which the editor pretends

Edited by Rev. W. Nicholson, 1842.

that he and his colleagues have undergone in the service of the sect. 'An Examination of Certayne Londoners before the Commissioners, about 1567,' is the fourth in that extremely instructive collection of forty-two documents, 'written by divers godly and learned in our time—that is, by Nonconformist and Separatist Puritans—and published without date or printer's name under the general title of A Parte of a Register. Our three quasi-historians do not know what they have lost through their indolent neglect to verify Strype, Mr. Nicholson, and Nobody-knows-who, by turning from their quotations to their source. The writer of the first of the fortytwo tracts claims a far greater antiquity than the reign of Mary for the origin of Separatism. He says that he will begin at the beginning, and proceed from time to time and age to age.' He discovers that the original Dissenter was not Richard Fitz, but the martyr Abel; and the first Dissenting meeting-house, after the whole world had been drowned in the destructive flood of catholic error, was Noah's Ark, wherein 'onelie eight persons were found in whom God's Church and Congregation remayned' (fol. 1).

This opening of A Parte of a Register is a fit preface to the opening of Mr. Adeney's essay. 'One June day, in the year 1567,' he begins, 'a wedding party was assembled at Plumbers' Hall, in the City of London. There were grave men present, who had not been attracted solely by their interest in the nuptial ceremony.' If Mr. Adeney possessed enough of the critical instinct to turn from his own Nobodyknows-who to the original narrative of these 'grave men,' he would have learned that there was no 'wedding,' and no 'nuptial ceremony.' The 'wedding,' 'the nuptial ceremony,' and 'the marriage festivities' upon which he pours out his absurd imaginations are all imaginary. He is nearer the truth than he is aware when he says that these people were now gathered together, on the excuse of the marriage festivities, for the further purpose of worshipping God after the manner of their own convictions.' Only, instead of saying 'the excuse,' he ought to have said 'the lie.' For the imaginary wedding was a casuistical invention of the Nonconformist conscience.' There was no wedding. The sectaries hired 'Plummers' Hall,' as they confessed to their patient Father-inGod, the Bishop of London, for the sole purpose of holding a Separatist meeting, after the custom of their virtual allies the Jesuit Separatists from the Church of England. The woman who had the letting of the Hall was afraid to let it to them for a purpose which she knew to be illegal. She it was, as

they told the Bishop at their examination, who suggested to them that they should pretend they did not want it for a religious meeting, but merely wanted it for a wedding. This astute Eve persuaded the Separatist Adam to adopt her falsehood. The woman tempted them, and they did lie. There is no escape from the ugly fact that this early' Congregationalist Church,' this one pure Church of Christ' in London, which pretended alone to have and to hold 'the Truth,' and of whose sanctity and glory our three quasi-historians utter such braggart words, was deliberately 'gathered together' upon a lie! But in case any reader should think that we do them injustice, we will let them tell the story in their own words. The account of their examination before the Lord Mayor and the Bishop of London, and others, was not written by their prosecutors, but by themselves; neither were they seized by the Bishops, as the Dissenting historians pretend, or by 'the keen agents of the Church,' as Mr. Adeney maliciously says, but by order of the Privy Council and in virtue of an Act of Parliament.

The kindly Bishop, who afterwards pleaded with Cecil for their release, was naturally scandalized at the amazing evidence given by the sheriffs. He asked them whether it was true that they hired the Plumbers' Hall saying they 'would have it for a wedding.' But we will quote their own

account:

'Bishop: Did you hire the hall ?

'One of us saide: In that we saide to the Sherieves, It was for a wedding, we did it to save the woman harmles, and at hir request. Bishop: Yea, but you must not lye. That is against the admonition of the Apostle, Let every man speake the trueth to his neighbour. And herein you have put the poore woman to great blame, and ynough to lose hir office. This is against the order of Charity.'

These 'wedding guests,' as Mr. Adeney persists in calling them, 'these good Churchmen,' 'these devout prisoners,' as he imaginatively names them, were driven by their imprisonment, as he guesses, 'to form themselves into a Church.' He owns that Dr. Dexter, on the contrary, 'is scarcely able to admit that the wedding guests actually constituted themselves into a Congregational Church.' If Professor Adeney will read 'the simple documents they left behind them,' and which he professes to cite, he will see that they had already made themselves into what he calls 'a Church,' and were arrested for having 'gathered togither and made assemblies, using prayers and preachings, yea, and ministring the Sacramentes among