from the free mercy of God in Christ" --which he often prayed for.

After a slumber, he waked and said, "I shall rest from my labour." A minister then present said, " And your works follow you;" to whom he replied, "No works; I will leave out works, if God will grant me the other." When a friend was comforting him with the remembrance of the good many had received by his preaching and writings, he said, "I was but a pen in God's hand, and what praise is due to a pen?"

His resigned submission to the will of God in his sharp sickness was eminent. When extremity of pain constrained him earnestly to pray to God for his release by death, he would check himself: "It is not fit for me to prescribe;" and said, "When thou wilt, what thou wilt, how thou wilt."

Being in great anguish, he said, "O how unsearchable are his ways, and his paths past finding out! the reaches of his providence we cannot fathom;" and to his friends, "Do not think the worse of religion for what you see me suffer."

Being often asked by his friends, how it was with his inward man, he replied, "I bless God I have a wellgrounded assurance of my eternal happiness, and great peace and comfort within;" but it was his trouble he could not triumphantly express it, by reason of his extreme pains. He said flesh must perish, and we must feel the perishing of it; and that though his judgment submitted, yet sense would still make him groan.

Being asked by a person of quality whether he had not great joy from his believing apprehensions of the invisible state, he replied, "What else, think you, Christianity serves for? He said the consideration of the Deity in his glory and greatness was too high for our thoughts; but the consideration of the Son of God in our nature, and of the saints in heaven, whom we knew and loved, did much sweeten and familiarize heaven to him. The description of heaven in Heb. xii. 22, was most comfortable to him; that he was going to the "innumerable company of angels, and to the general assembly and Church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven; and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New

Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel." That Scripture, he said, deserved "a thousand thousand thoughts." He said, "Oh, how comfortable is that promise, 'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things God hath laid up for those who love him!'"

At another time he said that he found great comfort and sweetness in repeating the words of the Lord's Prayer, and was sorry that some good people were prejudiced against the use of it; for there were all necessary petitions for soul and body contained

in it.

At other times he gave excellent counsel to young ministers that visited him, and earnestly prayed to God to bless their labours, and make them very successful in converting many souls to Christ; and expressed great joy in the hopes that God would do a great deal of good by them, and that they were of moderate peaceful spirits.

He did often pray that God would be merciful to this miserable distracted world; and that he would preserve his church and interest in it.

He advised his friends to beware of self-conceitedness, as a sin that was likely to ruin this nation; and said, "I have written a book against it, which I am afraid has done little good,"

Being asked whether he had altered his mind in controversial points, he said, "Those that please may know my mind in my writings;" and what he had done was not for his own reputation, but the glory of God.

I went to him with a very worthy friend, Mr. Mather, of New England, the day before he died, and speaking some comforting words to him, he replied, "I have pain; there is no arguing against sense, but I have

peace, I have peace." I told him, You are now approaching to your long-desired home." He answered, "I believe, I believe." He said to Mr. Mather, "I bless God that you accomplished your business; the Lord prolong your life."

F

He expressed a great willingness to die, and during his sickness, when the question was asked, how he did, his reply was, "Almost well." His joy was most remarkable when, in his own apprehension, death was nearest,

M 2

the three great features of the German Reformation which took place nearly two hundred and fifty years afterwards!

From that day to this-through the Divine mercy-the light of truth has never been entirely quenched in our country. Times there have been when, through appalling persecution, and the tireless efforts of the Romish priests to completely destroy every soul that followed its guidance, it has appeared ready to die out, when, fed afresh from above, it has burst forth with renewed effulgence, and shed its rays upon the remotest borders of the land.

Under various names, and with various fortunes, those who embraced the principles promulgated by Wiclif, and afterwards by Tyndale and Bilney of Cambridge University, continued to preach repentance towards God, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the necessity of obedience to the teaching of the Bible in opposition to the authority of the Roman pontiff, and the belief of the ridiculous legends of the monks and priests. The quarrel between Henry VIII. and the court of Rome, the countenance which, in consequence, he gave to Protestant opinions, and the suppression of the convents and monasteries, opened a way for the further diffusion of the principles of scriptural Christianity. Never was there a more signal instance of the manner in which "the Judge of all the earth" overrules the designs of the wicked, than that presented to us in the case of Henry VIII. With Christ's Gospel he never had any sympathy; his life was a violation of its plainest commands; he died without the hopes with which it inspires and consoles the penitent believer; and if he sheltered and aided the progress of the Reformation, it was not because he loved its principles, as his persecution of many of its devoted adherents proves, but because he knew that by so doing he struck his enemy, the pope, in a vital part. You are, doubtless, aware that Henry divorced his wife, Catherine of Arragon, and prevailed upon his parliament to pronounce his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, to be illegitimate; consequently, at his death, in 1547, Edward VI., the son of Queen Jane Seymour, was called to the throne. His brief reign was like a day of sunshine after a long season of cold and gloom. "Let nor hindrance" there was none in the path of the reformers. At the bidding of the privy council, John Knox and others itinerated to fully instruct the people in the truths of revelation. The articles of religion were compiled by Cranmer. The book of Common Prayer was revised to meet the transition state of the nation. All things bid fair for the well-being and advancement of the truth, when Edward sickened and died. His sun went down while it was yet day, and with its setting, darkness again gathered thick and heavily around all who had renounced the communion of the church of Rome, and professed their faith in the Redeemer according to the Scriptures.

On the 6th of July, Mary I., the daughter of Catherine of Arragon, ascended the throne. She was educated by her mother in the Roman Catholic faith, and from an early period had been led to associate Protestantism

with her mother's wrongs and her own, and to attribute to it all the evils which both had suffered at the hands of her father, Henry VIII. These views were carefully fostered by the ecclesiastics by whom she was surrounded, and who cherished the hope that, through her, the "old religion would one day regain the ascendancy in England. That for which they hoped was now an accomplished fact; hence the unfeigned joy with which her accession was hailed by the church of Rome. They were not deceived in their pupil. Scarcely had Mary grasped the sceptre, when she manifested her determination to spare neither rank, nor sex, nor age, but to destroy, without mercy and without remorse, all who refused to recant, and embrace the doctrines of Roman Catholicism. Immediately all the laws against the see of Rome were repealed. Cardinal Pole soon arrived in England, with the authority of papal legate. Romanism was declared to be the religion of the state; the preaching of the Gospel and the reading of the Scriptures were prohibited; a commission was created for the trial and punishment of any known or suspected to favour the reformed doctrine. It is impossible to describe the sanguinary horrors that ensued; but some idea of the bloodthirsty and demoniacal fury with which the restored priesthood hunted down their prey, may be gained from the fact that during the six years that Mary reigned the astounding number of two hundred and eighty-eight persons were burnt to death! Among the most eminent of these sufferers were Hooper, bishop of Gloucester; Ridley, bishop of London; Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury; and Dr. Rowland Taylor, of Hadleigh.

Dr. Taylor was a native of Rothbury, in Northumberland. He was born near the close of the fifteenth century, probably about 1486. At an early age he exhibited a taste for learning, and his after life proved how assiduously he cultivated his natural tendency. We know scarcely anything of his home-life, or of the kind of influences by which he was surrounded before he proceeded to the University of Cambridge. There he rapidly rose to distinction, and was eminent not only for his severe application to study, but for the variety and depth of his attainments. Strype, the annalist, in speaking of him, says, "He had read over, which was rare in those times, all Augustine's works, Cyprian, Gregory Nazianzen, Eusebius, Origen, and divers others. He professed the civil law, and had read over the canon law also." The period during which Taylor was at Cambridge was not one of quietude. The seeds sown a century before by Wiclif, had not perished in the earth. The spirit of inquiry was struggling throughout Europe against the thraldom of authority; it was aided by the character of the age, which was one of great intellectual activity; the revival of learning, the study of the Scriptures and the declaration of their contents by eminent persons at home and abroad, the agitation of questions affecting the principles and status of the church of Rome, did not escape the notice and were not without their influence upon Taylor. His sincere and thoughtful mind perceived at a glance that these ques

tions were not matters, merely, on which a man might display his dialectical skill or patristic learning, and then trouble himself no further respecting them. They affected the foundation of human hopes, they touched the interests of eternity. Was it true that the Scriptures clearly condemned the teaching of the church, and that to obey the bishop of Rome was to renounce the authority of the inspired volume? His soul trembled at the issue; but doubt was no longer endurable; he would judge for himself: and so he did.

Similar convictions had been awakened in other minds in the University. Many of them had, however, reached the goal before he entered on the course. Latimer was attracting large audiences by his exposition of the Scriptures; Bilney was engaged in the same work with no less success; Dr. William Turner lent the aid of his well disciplined controversial power and ardent piety to expose the frauds which the Roman church practised upon its disciples, and to unfold the great doctrines of atonement and justification by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The state of Taylor's mind became known to Bilney and Turner, and their conversation, and the preaching of Latimer, deepened the conclusions to which his own investigations had led him, and, through the grace of the Divine Spirit, became the means of his conversion to God. The change he underwent was as manifest as it was real. "Old things passed away, and all things became new." This was about 1527-8. From this period to 1539, it is supposed that he continued to reside in Cambridge, discharging, with exemplary fidelity, the duties of the offices he filled, and actively co-operating with Bilney and others in the evangelization of the neighbouring counties. His complete separation from the Church of Rome was further attested by his marriage; and then we next find him lodged in the palace of Lambeth, as the chaplain of Archbishop Cranmer, who honoured him alike for his piety and learning. By Cranmer he was presented to the living of Hadleigh; and Fox, the martyrologist, in referring to this, says, in his quaint but striking language: "Entering into his benefice (Dr. Taylor) did not, as the common sort of beneficed men do, let out his benefice to a farmer, who should gather up the profits, and set in an ignorant and unlearned priest to serve the cure, and so that they may have the fleece, little or nothing care for feeding the flock; but contrarily, he forsook the Archbishop of Canterbury, and made his personal dwelling and abode among the people committed to his charge, where he was a good shepherd." His life was worthy of his teaching. He might have stood as the model for Baxter's "Reformed Pastor." He had the piety of Howe, and the logical force of Barrow. Instant in season and out of season was he in his endeavours to instruct the ignorant, to reclaim the straying, to console the sorrowful, to relieve the poor. Void of all pride, and as gentle as a little child, he endeared himself to the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood, over whose interests he watched with the vigilance and solicitude of one who kept in clear, full view

the scrutiny of the great day. Thus he continued to fulfil his mission, as a shepherd of souls, till the death of Edward VI., when persecution was inaugurated by Queen Mary, under the direction of Cardinal Pole, and with the sanction and benediction of Pope Julius III.

The sequel is soon told. Dr. Taylor was too eminent a man, and too devout a Christian, to escape the vengeance of the papacy. Moreover, it was the policy of the Catholic party to endeavour to intimidate the leaders of the reformed movement by imprisonment and condemnation to death, and thus cause them to recant; or, failing in this, by their sufferings, to strike terror to the heart of the nation, and thereby render its reconquest by Catholicism less difficult. Scarcely had Cardinal Pole presented his credentials at court, when the Reign of Terror commenced. The prisons were crowded with eminent persons, whose only crime was that they "loved the Lord Jesus Christ in truth and in sincerity." The lingering torture to which they were subjected by their merciless persecutors, is detailed, with painful exactitude, by one of the sufferers-Coverdale, in his preface to the "Letters of the Martyrs" (p. 36, edit. 1837.) "Some," he says, "being thrown into dungeons, dark and loathsome; other some lying in fetters and chains, and loaded with so many irons that they could scarcely stir; some in the stocks, with their heels upwards; some having their legs in the stocks, and their necks chained to the wall with gorgets of iron, sometimes the right hand with the left leg, or the left hand with the right leg, fastened in the stocks with manacles and fetters, having neither stool nor stone to sit on, to ease their woeful bodies withal; some standing in most painful engines of iron, with their bodies doubled; some whipped and scourged, beat with rods, and buffeted with fists; some having their hands burned with a candle, to try their patience, or force them to relent; some hunger-pined, and most miserably famished." Surely, "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." Dr. Taylor was not indifferent to what was taking place. Some of his most attached friends had been arrested. He knew that his time was at hand. His friends advised him to seek safety in flight, as hundreds of others had done; but such was not his mind. He would abide faithful to the charge which he had undertaken. He counted not his life dear unto him, that he might finish his course with joy, and the ministry which he had received of the Lord Jesus. One of the earliest acts of Mary's reign was to send special orders to this district, in addition to the general prohibition, forbidding the preaching of the Gospel, and commanding the restoration of the Mass. Of this interdict, Dr. Taylor took no further notice, than that it led him to seize every opportunity to instruct his flock in the Scriptures, that he and they might be prepared against the hour of trial. The crisis took place.

Two persons in the parish, named Foster and Clerk, who had always been secret favourers of Romanism, evidently acting under secret directions from the Council, secured the services of the priest of the

neighbouring village of Aldham to enter the parish church of our town, and there celebrate the Mass. In this attempt they were resisted by Dr. Taylor, who denounced their act as sacrilegious and idolatrous, and appealed to the Word of God in justification of his statement. With his wife he was thrust out of the church by the armed men who accompanied Foster and the priest. The end sought by them was attained. They had snared the innocent. Immediately afterwards, on the 26th of March, 1554, a citation, at the instance of those two men, was issued by Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Lord Chancellor, to Dr. Taylor, to appear before him to answer the charge of having resisted the Queen's authority in not re-establishing the Roman Catholic worship in the church of Hadleigh. This was accompanied by a warrant, addressed to Sir Henry Doyle, the chief magistrate, authorising him to arrest Dr. Taylor, and deliver him to the Council. He appeared before Gardiner, and gave a reason for the hope that was in him, and the work which he had done. In return, he received mockery and insult, and the conference closed by the enraged prelate turning to the officers in attendance, and saying, "Have this fellow hence, and carry him to the Queen's Bench, and charge the keeper that he be straitly kept." To this, the venerable pastor replied by kneeling down, and, lifting up his hands, he exclaimed, "Good Lord, I thank thee; and from the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome, and all his detestable errors, idolatries, and abominations, good Lord deliver us!" He was then dragged to prison, where he lay for ten months. But he was not alone. In that wretched place there were many confessors of the truth, who cheered its gloom and forgot its misery by mutual exhortation and supplication to God. The martyr Bradford became especially attached to Taylor; and he so enjoyed his companionship, that he was accustomed to say, "that God had most graciously provided for him in sending him to that prison, where he found such an angel of God to be in his company to comfort him."

In common with his fellow prisoners, he was repeatedly brought before the Bishop, hoping that suffering would weaken his determination, and induce him to recant. One after another of his companions were condemned, and he was numbered with them. On the 4th of February, 1555,-the day on which John Rogers was burnt in Smithfield, -Bishop Bonner, of infamous memory, the Jeffreys of the period, came to the prison where Taylor lay, to degrade him from his office, and to deliver him up for execution. That night, by the kindness of the jailor, his wife and son were admitted to his cell. What that parting scene was, you may easily imagine. The wife was worthy of the husband. Liberty and honours were to be had by renouncing what he believed to be true. She strengthened his determination to endure by her constancy, while he comforted her in her sore affliction by sweet words of counsel and encouragement, and by solemnly commending her and the children to the care of Him, in defence of whose truth he

was about to yield up his life. Deeming it likely that he would be led forth that night, or early in the morning, she left the prison, and proceeded to the porch of St. Botolph's Church, Aldgate, and there, with her children, she waited hour after hour in the cold and darkness, hoping to catch another glimpse of her husband, as the sheriff led him past on his way to Hadleigh, where he was to be burnt to death. Just before the break of day, the tramp of feet announced the approach of a company of men, and as they passed the church, Elizabeth Taylor cried out, "Oh! my dear father. Mother, mother, here is my dear father led way!" They could not recognise each other in the darkness. "Row.. land! Rowland! where art thou?" exclaimed his wife. "Here, dear wife," he replied. The guard would have hurried him away from the clinging embraces of his wife and children, when the sheriff and many with him being moved to tears, permitted him to pause for a few moments. He took the youngest child in his arms, and, kneeling down with his wife, prayed for them; and then rising up he embraced them, and said, "Farewell, my dear wife, be of good comfort, for I am quiet in my conscience;" and kissing his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, he said, "God bless thee, and make thee his servants. God bless thee! I pray you all stand strong and steadfast unto Christ and his word, and keep you from idolatry." The procession moved on, and four days afterwards it passed through Hadleigh, towards Aldham Common, where preparations were made for the death of the martyr.

When the officers and their prisoner entered the town, the streets were thronged with the inhabitants, and with multitudes from the surrounding villages, who waited to catch a last look, and to hear a last word from him who had so long and so faithfully taught them "the words of eternal life." When they beheld him in the midst of the armed men, with his face close covered with a hood, their affection and pity found utterance in tears and lamentations. To which, as he passed through them, he replied, "I have preached to you God's word and truth, and am come this day to seal it with my blood." As the cavalcade went by the almshouses, he distributed among the poor and aged persons at the doors what little money he had. At the last house, not seeing any one at the door, he enquired, "Are the blind man and woman that dwelt here alive?" and being answered in the affirmative, he placed the last few coins he possessed in his glove, and threw it in at the window. The act was characteristic of the man. Aldham Common was soon reached. On the spot appointed for his execution he alighted from his horse, and with both hands tore the hood from off his face. It presented an altered appearance to that which it wore when he was last in Hadleigh. The ten months imprisonment, with its loathsome and unutterable misery, had done its work, and his hair had been cut and disfigured by Bonner at the ceremony of his degradation. "When the people," says the chronicler of the sad scene, 66 saw his reverend and ancient face, and his long white beard, they wept afresh, and exclaimed, 'God save thee, good Dr. Taylor! Jesus Christ