follow such advices, yet he hated those who gave them. His reign both in peace and war, was a continual series of errors. He minded little things too much; and was more concerned in the drawing of a paper, than in fighting a battle. He had a firm aversion to popery: but was much more inclined to a middle way, between protestants and papists, by which he lost the one without gaining the other. At his death, he showed a calm and composed firmness, which amazed all people; and that so much the more, because it was not natural to him.' We beg leave to recommend to those of our readers who may wish for a summary of the evidence on this question, a little work written by an author whose name we almost fear to pronounce over a Velvet Cushion;'-Micaiah Towgood. It is entitled "An Essay towards attaining a true idea of the character and reign of King Charles the First." For our own parts, we feel very little interest in this resuscitated controversy; we have nothing staked on its issue; and we would leave those who will have him to be a martyr and a saint to the quiet possession of their understandings and consciences. Only we cannot permit ourselves to pass over in a man of real piety so flagrant an inconsistency as that of bestowing on Charles the First these sacred appellations. In what sense was he a witness to the truth? What an unwarrantable profanation is this of the honours of Christianity! Even if we allow the use of the term in conjunction with some qualifying epithet,--if he be styled a political martyr, to what principles did he fall a victim, unless to those of tyranny and lawless aggression? Neither the injustice of his death, nor any personal virtues, nor all the false splendours with which the affection or the artifice of his adherents has encircled his name, can justify from the charge of absurdity and impiety the application of the title of saint, or even that of martyr, to King Charles the First. From the lips of a Christian minister such language is revolting: it betrays a worse than pitiable weakness.

It is to the Christian minister-for we cannot be mistaken in attributing both the character and the office to the Author of the present volume,-it is to the Christian minister only that we should think it at all worth our time to make an appeal on subjects connected with the following pages. We can easily account, from other circumstances than the unlikely one of ignorance, in respect to historical details, and we can make allowance, for some misrepresentations in point of fact of the occurrences of those times. The Author evidently would court the reputation of candour. He tells us, and it is no other than the truth, that indiscriminate censure of the Puritans would be highly unjust.' They were men,' he adds, who had little perhaps to condemn in them, except a superstitious alarm at Popery. Their

doctrines were in general pure, their practice correct; and some of them were not merely among the best Christians, but the finest gentlemen of the day.' This is more than we have been accustomed to hear admitted in certain quarters: but he afterwards speaks of the apostles of this new system, which is described in terms so indefinite as to render it applicable to men of any character, and appropriate to none, as deserving the name of Puritans,' by which he would still describe them as little as any of their contemporaries.' For the Royalists' he tells us, though many of them without religion, generally. retained the form. Many of the Puritans had neither form nor religion.' The convenient indeterminateness of the pronoun is probably meant to give the air of temperance to the statement, but in fact it answers all the purpose of indiscriminate reproach.

The times,' he adds, were truly awful. In common times men sin against their principles, and then one hopes their principles may mend them. But these men rebelled upon principle,-shed royal blood for conscience sake. What, therefore, could mend them?' p.44.

We have seldom been pained by perusing in the same compass of lines, so great an aggregate of pernicious falsehood, as the thoughtlessness or the prejudice of the writer has here assembled. With what eyes must he have read the history of that period? It is insinuated that the Puritans were the agents in the civil commotions of those times ;-that they excited a rebellion,-a rebellion, it seems, founded on religious principles ;that Puritanism is chargeable with the crimes and troubles of that period; and, to crown the whole, with the guilt of murder aggravated by the plea of conscience! We can scarcely refrain from the strong language of indignation on recording afresh these false and bold assertions. We do not care whom the Author means to designate by the term Puritans, which he would thus abandon to the vulgar obloquy of the profane and the dissolute. Whoever they may be, the facts will apply to no description of persons. Rapin says, All those who were not submissive enough to the king were looked upon as Puritans, and frequently oppressed as such. So, by a fatal policy, men ' well affected to the Church of England, but enemies to arbitrary power, were driven, in spite of themselves, to side with the Puritans, in order to strengthen their party, and enable them to oppose the designs of the Court.'

No man (says Lord Clarendon), can shew me a source from whence these waters of bitterness more probably flowed, than from the unreasonable, unskilful, and precipitate dissolution of parliaments, especially as the king had publicly declared, That he would account it presumption for any man to prescribe any time to his Majesty for parliaments.'

In another part of his history, Vol. I., p. 184., his Lordship says, In the house of Commons were many persons of wisdom and gravity, who being posse sed of great and plentiful fortunes, though they were undevoted enough to the court, had all imaginable duty to the king, and affection to the government established by law; and without doubt the MAJOR PART of that body consisted of men who had no mind to 'break the peace of the Kingdom, or to make or to make any considerable alteration in the government of church or state. The general temper and humour of the kingdom,' he elsewhere assures us, ( was little inclined to the Papist and less to the Puritan. The murmur and discontent that there was, appeared to be against the excess of power exercised by the crown, and supported by the judges in Westminster Hall.' Towgood, in the Essay to which we have referred, has assembled a mass of collateral evidence to the same effect, we shall quote only one paragraph more, which might seem to be decisive; and it is given with all the authorities.

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They were, therefore, gentlemen, members of the Church of England, who beg n the quarrel with the king, and first drew the sword against him. The Earl of Essex, the parlia'ment's general, and whose very name raised an army, was episcopal. Lord Clarendon says of him, that he was rather displeased with the person of the archbishop, and some other bishops, than indevoted to the function; and was as much devoted as any man to the book of Common Prayer, and obliged all his servants to be constantly present with him at it. Of the admiral who seized the king's ships and employed them in the service of the parliament, the same noble historian says, he never discovered any aversion to episcopacy, but 6 professed the contrary. Sir John Hotham, who shut the gates of Hull against the king, and was the first man pro' claimed a traitor by him, he declares to have been very well affected to, and to have unquestioned reverence for the 6 government, both in church and state: the same of Sir Hen. Vane, and of Lenthall the Speaker; and of Pym, a person of the greatest influence in the house, that he pro'fessed to be very entire to the doctrine and discipline of the church. Nay, we are told, by the same great author, that 'all those who were countenanced by the Earl of Essex, or in his confidence, were such as desired no other alteration in the church or government, but only of the persons who acted in it. And Mr. Baxter says, That the great officers in Essex's army were CONFORMISTS; and some of them so zealous for • the liturgy and diocesans, that they would not hear a man · as a minister that had not EPISCOPAL ordination. It is also 'known that a noted clergyman, Dr. Williams, Archbishop of

York, accepted a commission from the parliament, and went into the army,* (and did, in person, assist the rebels, as Lord Clarendon expresses it, to take a castle of the king's, in which there was a garrison, and which was taken by a long siege.) So that it is, I think, past dispute with reasonable men, if there was any fault in opposing the king's measures and taking up arms against him, it must be imputed to the Church of England, for they were first and the deepest in the quarrel.' Burnet's Memor. p. 287. Clarend. Vol. I., p. 223., Vol. IV., p. 564., Vol. II., p. 389, Vol. III., p. 214., Vol. IV., p. 620., ‹ Vol. I, p. 63, Vol. III., p. 462., Vol. II., p. 350.'

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That the death of the king was either compassed or sanctioned by the Puritans, if by that term any religious denomination or body of men be intended, is an assertion equally gratuitous and scandalous. The presbyterians and the body of the city,' says Bishop Burnet, were much against it; and were every where fasting and praying for the king's preservation. It was the crime of but a few hot-headed enthusiasts, or ambitious sol'diers. Many of the most considerable dissenters did even then, when it was not so safe to do it as it is now, openly declared against it both in their sermons and writings. This is what in justice cannot be denied them,' and Clarendon testifies, that the nation and parliament were most innocent of his death; which was the act only of some few ambitious and bloody men.' Further, a solemn protest was drawn up and signed by about fifty of the principal presbyterian ministers, which was accompanied by a very bold remonstrance in a letter to the general and council of war, dated Jan. 18, 1648, and delivered to his excellency by some of the ministers. (Vide Towgood's Essay, pp. 177-181.) And, finally, 'Doctor Lewis du Moulin, history professor in Oxford, who lived through those times, says, "That no party of men, as a religious body, were the actors of this tragedy, but it was the con'trivance of an army; which was a medley and collection of all parties that were discontented; some courtiers, some presbyterians, some episcopalians; few of any sect, but most of none, or else of the religion of Hobbes; not to mention the Papists, who had the greatest hand in it of all." Neal, Vol. III., p. 551.'

Will not the curate of St. John's, Hackney, discover in this monstrous coalition of opposite sects, another coincidence to assist his parallel between those times and the present, and to prove the identity of the spirit and object which actuated the

He was commander in chief of the parliament forces in North Wales.

Puritans of that age with those which now actuate the fanatical members of the British and Foreign Bible Society? Yes, doubtless; and in the next Number of the British Critic, he, or his friend Nolan, will notice with pleasure the fresh testimony which is borne by this Velvet Cushion, to the important fact, notwithstanding the schismatical and methodistical sentiments which may be found in the volume. We congratulate the Author on the honours which, we are persuaded, must await his brow. Those Puritans also made a stir about the Bible; but their only design was, we see, to subvert the Establishment. Religion was the cloak which the conspirators wore; therefore, whosoever now wears the cloak, conceals a dagger, and is to be marked as an assassin. It was upon religious principle that they rebelled against their king;-upon religious principle he was murdered, O! beware of religious principles, and keep to the peaceable tenour of established forms. Of this nature, without any forced perversion of our Author's meaning, appear, to us, to be the tendency of his remarks; and we deem them the more reprehensible, because he knew that insidious attempts have recently been made with malignant industry, to distort the features of the Puritan character, and to exhibit the caricature as a portrait of the spirit of modern Dissent, which is represented as the hidden spring and vital principle of the Bible Society.

We have purposely avoided discussing the political sentiments connected with this subject; but may just observe that to term the stand made against the arbitrary and illegal measures of the king, rebellion, in any sense which excludes from the word the idea of virtue and of sacred duty, betrays either a strange ignorance of historical fact, or a secret disaffection, to the constitution of our country. It was a rebellion produced by a similar cause, prompted by the same principles, and differing only in its more glorious and permanent results, that effected the Revolution of 1688. In this sense of the term, it has always been the proud distinction of Englishmen to be rebels. By such rebellion, they have achieved all that has rendered their country an object of admiration to surrounding nations, the school and the sanctuary of Europe; her very soil possessing an inherent efficacy, by means of which every one that presses it becomes free. By rebellion, if we must so apply the term, was Magna Charta wrung from King John; and by rebellion was our second charter, the Bill of Rights, obtained. Our Established Church herself was a rebel against the Pope ;--and Luther, and Wickliffe, and Huss, were rebels;-and what is still worse, they were religious rebels;-rebelled for conscience sake, what then could mend them?' But we protest altogether against the use of a term of so invidious and alarming a sound to loyal ears; we contend only that in all these cases it would be no

and