[Religious Improvement.] ventured to unbowel my-mittee of English gentlemen went over to self, and to lay open the Paris for the purpose of taking steps to very inmost thoughts of my supply the French with the Bible in their heart in this sad business own language. Of this committee Mr. H. before God and the world; I shall hope to (Hardcastle) was one, and he assured me find so much charity from all my Christian that the fact which was published was litebrethren as to show me my error, if in any rally true-that they searched Paris for thing I have now said I be mistaken, that several days before a single Bible could be I may retract it; and to pardon those ex- found."-SILLIMAN's Travels, vol. 1, p. 167. cesses in modo loquendi, if they can observe any such, which might possibly, whilst I was passionately intent upon the matter, unawares drop from my pen;-civilities which we mutually owe one to another, damus hanc veniam, petimusque vicissim, considering how hard a thing it is, amid so many passions and infirmities as our corrupt nature is subject to, to do or say all that is needful in a weighty business, and not in something or other to over-say and over-do: yet this I can say in sincerity of my heart and with comfort, that my desire was (the nature of the business considered) both to speak as plain, and to offend as little as might be."-Preface to Sermons. IN a dialogue or familiar talk by Michael Wood, 1554, it is said "Who could twenty years agone say the Lord's prayer in English? Who could tell any one article of his faith? Who had once heard of any of the Ten Commandments? Who wist what Catechism meant? Who understood any point of the holy baptism? If we were sick of the pestilence we ran to St. Rooke, if of the ague to St. Pernel, or Master John Shorne. If men were in prison they prayed to St. Leonard. If the Welshman would B WORDSWORTH-ADAMS-STRYPE-BINGHAM. have a purse he prayed to Darvel Gathorne. that pleaseth God, nor that God requires; If a wife were weary of her husband, she but is a thing that God doth tolerate for offered oats at Poules, at London, to St. the weakness of men. For as the father Uncumber."-WORDSWORTH's Ecc. Biog. contenteth his child with an apple or a vol. 1, p. 166. hobby-horse, not because these things do delight the father, but because the child, ruled by affections, is more desirous of these things than the father is rejoiced in the deed; so Almighty God, condescending to the infirmities of man and his weakness, doth tolerate material churches, gorgeously built and richly decked, not because he requires, or is pleased with such things.' STRYPE's Cranmer, p. 108. [Dr. Martin and Dr. Luther.] "I HAVE read of two that meeting at a tavern, fell a tossing their religion about as merrily as their cups, and much drunken discourse was of their profession. protested himself of Dr. Martin's religion, One the other swore he was of Dr. Luther's religion,-whereas Martin and Luther was one man."-ADAMS's Divine Herbal. [Chancels no Popery.] "THE use of the Chancel for the Communion service is so far from being Popery that the Papists and Popish Impropriators in England permit the Chancels where they are concerned to lie the most disorderly and ruinous of any other, as I myself have seen in several places, they are not careful to repair or clean them; nor can they be | brought to contribute to the Reformation of Churches but by mere compulsion, and they would be well enough satisfied to see all the Chancels and Churches in England lye in ruin, for this would be the most certain way to overthrow the Reformation and bring in Popery, which being planted again by Authority would soon oblige that party to rebuild the Churches." BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S Charge, 1697, p. 22. [Necessity of speaking in a Tongue understood by the People.] "there is a diligens ST. AUGUSTINE E says, negligentia, an useful negligence, proper in this case to Ecclesiastical teachers, who must sometimes condescend to improprieties of speech, when they cannot speak otherwise to the apprehensions of the vulgar. As he notes that they were used to say ossum instead of os, to distinguish a mouth from a bone in Africa, to comply with the understanding of their hearers. reason, I doubt not, there are so many Africanisms, or idioms of the African tongue, in St. Austin, because he thought it more commendable sometimes to deviate a little from the strict grammatical purity and propriety of the Latin tongue, than not to be understood by his hearers."-Bingham, vol. 14, p. 4. § 19. And for this Uniformity in Religion preserved by Force. [Drum's Idea of a Material Church.] "Do they keep away schism? if to bring "DRUM, one of the six preachers, and a numb and chill stupidity of soul, an unwho afterwards 'fell away into Papistry,' active blindness of mind upon the people was presented to Archbishop Cranmer for by their leaden doctrine, or no doctrine at preaching among other erroneous and dan- all; if to persecute all knowing and zealous gerous notions, that the material church Christians by the violence of their Courts, is a thing made and ordained to content be to keep away schism, they keep away the affections of men, and is not the thing schism indeed: and by this kind of disci |