cense; let them daub and undershore her, build and reform her-until the storm of the Lord's wrath break forth, the morning whereof all these divines shall not foresee . . . until the wall and the daubers be no more. But let the wise, that are warned and see the evil, fear and depart from the same; so shall they preserve their own souls as a prey, and the Lord shall bring them among his redeemed to Zion with praise,' and 'everlasting joy' shall be upon their heads; 'they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.""

Another reply to Giffard was prepared by the two prisoners, and was printed (1591) at Middleburg, in Zealand. Barrowe's part of it purported to be, "A Plain Refutation of Mr. Giffard's Book, intitled 'A Short Treatise against the Donatists of England:' Wherein is discovered the Forgery of the whole Ministry, the Confusion, False Worship, and Antichristian Disorder of these Parish Assemblies called 'The Church of England.' Here also is prefixed, A Sum of the Causes of our Separation, and of our Purposes in Practice." Greenwood's contribution to the volume was, “A Brief Refutation of Mr. Giffard's supposed consimilitude betwixt the Donatists and us: Wherein is showed how his arguments have been and may be, by the Papists, more justly retorted against himself and the present estate of their church." The "Epistle Dedicatory to the Right Honorable Peer and grave Counselor," Lord Burleigh, was subscribed, "Henry Barrowe and John Greenwood, for the testimony of the Gospel, in close prison." In that dedication of their work to perhaps the only member of the queen's government whom they could reasonably regard as a possible friend and protector, they complained of the hardships they had suffered, and apologized for the "bold presumption" of defending themselves and the truth, for which they were God's witnesses. "Our malignant adversaries have had full scope against us, with the law in their own hands." "They have made no spare or conscience to accuse, blaspheme, condemn, and punish us."

"Openly in their pulpits and in their printed books-to the ears and eyes of all men-they have pronounced and published us as damnable heretics, schismatics, sectaries, seditious, disobedient to princes, deniers and abridgers of their sacred power.'" "No trial has been granted us: either civil, that we might know for what cause and by what law we thus suffer (which yet is not denied the most horrible malefactors and offenders), or ecclesiastical, by the word of God, where place of freedom might be given us to declare and plead our own cause in sobriety and order." "They have shut us up, now more than three years, in miserable and close prisons, from the air, and from all means so much as to write, ink and paper being taken and kept from us." "We have been rifled from time to time of all our papers and writings they could find.” "While we were thus straitly kept and watched from speaking or writing, they suborned, among sundry others, two special instruments-Mr. Some and Mr. Giffard-to accuse and blaspheme us publicly to the view of the world, the one laboring to prove us 'Anabaptists,' the other Donatists."" "Wherefore we addressed ourselves, by such means as the Lord administered, and as the incommodities of the place, and the infirmities of our decayed bodies and memories would permit, to our defense; or, rather, to the defense of that truth whereof God hath made and set us his unworthy witnesses."

At the time when these partners in testimony and in suffering had overcome "the incommodities of the place," and notwithstanding the vigilance of their enemies had their book ready in some sort for the printer, and when their manuscripts were smuggled "beyond seas" to be printed, Francis Johnson was ministering as chaplain to the English merchants at Middleburg, being supported by them with a commendable liberality. Like most of the English clergymen who found employment of that sort in foreign ports, he was an advanced Puritan, zealous not only against superstitious vestments and ceremonies, but against the govern

ment established in the Church of England. At the University of Cambridge, two years before, he had given offense to the ruling powers by a sermon, after the manner of Cartwright, maintaining that the church ought to be governed by teaching and ruling elders, and implying that any other government in the church is unauthorized. For that sermon he was summoned before the vice-chancellor and the heads of the colleges, and was by their authority committed to prison. Being required to make a public recantation, and refusing to make it in the terms prescribed, he was expelled from the university. He appealed against that sentence, and was then imprisoned again because he would not go away till his case had been decided. The result was that, after a twelvemonth of academic agitation between the Conformist and Reformist factions, he withdrew from Cambridge, and we next find him "preacher to the Company of English of the Staple at Middleburg, in Zealand." The fact came to his knowledge that a book by two Separatists so notorious and so obnoxious as Barrowe and Greenwood was in the hands of printers there; and, as a loyal though Puritan member and minister of the Church of England, he was alarmed at the thought of how much harm might be done by the circulation of that book in England. He communicated the alarming information to the English embassador, and was employed to "intercept" the publication, and to take care that the edition should be destroyed. He waited till the last sheets had gone through the press; and then he executed his commission so thoroughly that he permitted only two copies to escape the fire" one to keep in his own study that he might see their errors, and the other to bestow on a special friend for the like use.' So the great labor of the two prisoners, amid “continual tossings and turmoils, searches and riflings, and with no peace or means given them to write or revise what they had written," seemed to have been in vain.

Yet it was not entirely labor lost. It took effect in an unexpected way, first on the overzealous Puritan who had "in

I

tercepted" and destroyed the edition. "When he had done this work, he went home, and being set down in his study, he began to turn over some pages of this book, and superficially to read some things here and there as his fancy led him. At length he met with something that began to work upon his spirit, which so wrought with him as drew him to this resolution, seriously to read over the whole book; the which he did once and again. In the end he was so taken, and his conscience was troubled so, as he could have no rest in himself until he crossed the seas and came to London to confer with the authors, who were then in prison."

Fourteen years later, the "intercepted" book was reprinted at Amsterdam. Francis Johnson, banished from England as a Separatist, had become the pastor of a banished church which had found a refuge in that city; and there "he caused the same books which he had been an instrument to burn, to be new printed and set out at his own charge."1

1 Hanbury, i., 39–70; Bradford, in "Chronicles of the Pilgrims," 424, 425; Strype, "Annals," iii., pt. ii., 589-592; App., 267-269; Book ii., 89-96.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MARTYR CHURCH: THE JAILS AND THE GALLOWS.

WHEN Francis Johnson returned to England that he might confer with Barrowe and Greenwood in prison, he committed himself to the cause of the Separatists in London, and shared thenceforth in their testimony and in their sufferings. They could not but be encouraged by the accession of a clergyman who had lately been a fellow in one of the colleges at Cambridge, who as a Puritan had suffered imprisonment and loss for conscience' sake, and who, having been as zealous as Giffard against Separation, had given up safety and a comfortable support from an English congregation in the Netherlands for the sake of helping the cause he had opposed. Soon after his coming among them, they proceeded to institute, under his leadership, a formal organization.

Before that time they had held their "secret conventicles" or prayer-meetings, such as we may suppose the Lollards to have held in the foregoing ages. By the government they were held to be a "wicked sect" with "wicked opinions," and, to detect their wickedness, they were watched as if they were a gang of thieves. Some of them were subjected to examination; and from their "confessions," together with certain pamphlets of the time, a statement was drawn up, by the queen's attorney-general, to show how dangerous a sect they were, and how detestable were their opinions. The grave annalist of the Church of England, writing while the facts were less significant than they now are, and when passion had not yet cooled, deemed that paper so important that he inserted it in his history; and so it has come down