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ago, not only by the Socinian ministers and magistrates, but by the Socinian mob of Switzerland-but this explanation is not applicable. The king was evangelical-and a great body, the largest number of the evangelical ministers and professors, are not persecuted. They are allowed to retain and propagate their evangelical sentiments unchallenged. The question turns upon the reception or rejection of a new liturgy which is acknowledged to be evangelical. Those who receive it, enjoy all the rights of toleration-those who refuse it, are the victims of fine and imprisonment. The persecution then is, strictly speaking, not an Evangelical, but an Erastian persecution, and it is well to see that there may be different grounds of persecution even in the nineteenth century, and that Erastianism, or the usurped power of the civil magistrate over sacred things, may be one, and that not an unlikely form. However unexceptionable the liturgy may be in itself—and I believe there are few complaints on this head-what the faithful men in Prussia object to is, that the king or civil power interfere with ecclesiastical things in such a way as the Scriptures condemn, in short, prescribe to the Church in what manner she is to worship God. It is Erastianism of which they complain; and well may they do so. It is the curse of their country; nay, it is one of the most serious evils of the age. Dr. Pye Smith, in his preface to "Guido and Julius," remarks, of Prussia—“ To other causes of evil is to be added, the ubiquitous meddling of Government with all private and public life; the difficulty, amounting to almost an impossibility, of holding any meeting for a religious purpose, except with the permission of Government a permission not very readily granted, and to ask for which would not always be safe; the utter prostitution of religious liberty; the acts of the civil power for admission to the requisite studies, for ordination, for induction, and for permanence in a parish or in any situation; the summary ejection of any clergyman without reason assigned, or trial, or remedy; these, and other causes allied to them, cannot but secure a supply of unbelieving and ungodly young men who will lay waste the Church of God. That such a man as Tholuck should have only the alternative of supporting this system, or of suffering expatriation, is a melancholy reflection. The governors of those nations little think what they are doing. They may for a time stop up the vents of the volcano; but they are only compressing its forces, that the inevitable burst may be at last the more terrible. In the

meantime, the proceedings of the king of Prussia attract great observation. To support evangelical truth, to unite the two Protestant communions, and to recommend his new liturgy, he is employing both smiles and frowns-the expectances of favour on the one hand, and on the other, ejectments, banishments, imprisonment, and military force. The genuine friends of the Gospel are confounded with those who are so only in appearance, and the evangelism of all is ascribed to the sunshine of court favour, while men of neological or infidel views, and profane men generally, are revolted, disgusted, and hardened in their guilt."

Erastianism is, in a great measure, the fruit of the degenerate Christianity of the last century, both on the Continent and in Britain, and wherever it prevails it goes far to keep true religion in a low and weakly condition. If men have relaxed and slender views of the honour of Christ as King, and of the rights and privileges of the Church which he has bought with his blood, they will not entertain very exalted views of other doctrines, of his offices, and of the Church's duties. Hence the importance of maintaining the headship of Christ, and the spiritual independence of the Church at all hazards. Persecution in any circumstances is most melancholy, it is essentially antichristian; but it is peculiarly affecting when it appears in the form of evangelical men oppressing evangelical men, and driving hundreds and thousands from their native land, simply because they resist that Erastianism which the Word of God requires them to resist. But if it has the effect of drawing public attention, in this and other countries, to the evils and dangers of Erastianism, and more resolutely arming men against its spirit and practices, the Christian Church will have little cause to regret even the privations and sufferings of the many faithful German Lutherans who are now emigrating to the shores of America. Nor will there be much harm though the king and kingdom of Prussia, which were perhaps unduly extolled, should henceforward be rated at a lower and juster estimate.

CONTEMPORANEOUS HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, FROM 1715 TO 1755.

WE have seen that the Revolution Church of Scotland had various difficulties with which to contend, and these of a

serious character; but that she made the most pleasing progress, and that her labours were crowned with gratifying success. The most formidable injury which she sustained was the passing of the Act of Lay Patronage, in 1711, under Queen Anne. This was at once a breach of the Articles of Union, and an invasion of her rights, seriously affecting her character and best interests. But the poison worked slowly and secretly. Viewed externally, the Protestant aspects of Great Britain became more favourable than they had been. In the latter years of Queen Anne, there was a growing tendency towards Jacobitism and Popery. Many believe that the Queen was inclined to the succession of her brother, the Pretender; some are of opinion that she herself leaned to Popery. It is certain that the Popish party were full of life and energy in her latter years, and that they hoped for an overturn of the Protestant succession, to which the proceedings against the Scottish Church were steps. In the providence of God, these schemes and hopes were blasted, by the death of the Queen, and the calling to the throne of the Hanover family, in the person of the Protestant George I.*

Many of the circumstances connected with the succession of the present royal family to the throne of Britain, indicate the presence of the providential and moral government of God. It is through the Princess Sophia Elizabeth, a daughter of James VI., that they are connected with the former family, and hold their title. Sophia was a Protestant, of strong mind and amiable manners, and married Frederick, Elector Palatine of Bohemia and the Rhine, who was also a Protestant. Ere long they were called upon to suffer for their religion, and they nobly endured the trial. Popish Austria refused to fulfil the edicts in behalf of the Protestants-rose against their prince, and drove him, his queen, family, and many of his subjects, to Presbyterian Holland, at that time the refuge of the oppressed. There they remained for twenty-eight years, while the Protestant cause was wellnigh destroyed in their dominions. At the end of this period they regained part of their possessions, and were restored to the throne, but considerably shorn of their resources. In process of time, however, after many changes in this country, they were found nearest to the British throne, and were called to it in the person of George I., who was the great-grandson of James VI. The fortunes of the male and female branches of James' house are remarkably diverse. The male, in the person of Charles I., and under the miserable guidance of his Queen and Laud, encouraged a restoration of Popery. The foreign Protestants were frowned upon. The English ambassador to France was not allowed to worship with the French Protestants, or to acknowledge them as a part of the true Church; and those of the number who had found their way into this country, were ill used by Laud. Ten congregations of Dutch and French Protestants, of six thousand communicants, who had been publicly recognized from the

Wodrow, in his unpublished MS., notices the remarkable death of a number of the friends of Jacobitism and Popery at the same time:-The French King (Louis XIV.,) just before the contemplated Popish invasion of Britain-the Duke

time of Edward VI., were broken up, and three thousand manufacturers were thus driven out of the kingdom, from the bishoprick of Norwich alone, some of whom employed one hundred people. The Mayor of Canterbury, on interceding with the king, stated, that twelve hundred of their people were supported by the foreigners. The effects of Charles' measures, civil and religious, were, that he and his counsellor raised a civil war in Great Britain, and both lost their heads upon the scaffold. After the usurpation of twenty-years, the exiled son of Charles was brought back to the throne, in the person of Charles II., and the providence of God gave the family a new opportunity of recovering themselves, and blessing their conntry; but untaught by their own experience, and that of the usurpation, viz., that Protestantism is the only safety of the Crown, and of this land, Charles went back to Popery in a more offensive and flagitious form than his father, blending with this the most shocking persecution of the saints of God. He dies without an heir: his brother James ascends the throne a thorough and avowed Papist. In three short years a great and glori ous Protestant Revolution takes place, and he is driven for ever from the palace of his ancestors. His son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, is called in as a decided Protestant, and, though a Dutch Presbyterian, receives the crown of Britain. As if to teach the nation its absolute dependence on the providence of God, he dies without an heir, and so does his successor Queen Anne, another daughter of James. In the meantime, her brother, the Popish Pretender to the throne, still lives, and, aided by France, is eager to return, and bring back Popery along with him. These were alarming circumstances, and the Prince of Orange laboured, through the latter years of his reign, to meet them. By an Act of Parliament in the Commons, carried by a single vote, it was resolved, on the death of Anne, to settle the succession to the throne upon the FEMALE branch of the family of James VI., as the male branches might now be said to be exhausted or destroyed by their connection with Popery. Even this solemn act of the Legisla ture was attempted to be set aside at an after day, and the attempt was well nigh successful. A Popish succession was prevented only by a few votes. On this kind interposition of Providence, George I., a Protestant, and the representative of a severely tried Protestant family, was called to the throne. His successors have not only been of the same faith, but they swear allegiance to it at their coronation, and would forfeit their right to the crown by its abandonment. How striking, then, the contrast between the male and female branches of the Stuart family! The former favour Popery, and, after the warning of various reverses, are, in sixty years, dethroned and expelled. The female branch clings to Protestantism for a season-suffers for it-is gradually restored to its continental possessions, and, in eighty-five years from the death of James VI., is unexpectedly and honourably rewarded with the crown of Britain, the noblest crown in the world, which, we trust, they are destined for ever to wear, and that expressly

of Hamilton, immediately before going to France, where his influence would have been exerted on the Popish sideQueen Anne, when the schemes of the party were becoming mature-the King of Sweden, when setting out to Norway to use his influence against Britain. These were providential events, which damped the enemies of the Church; and the succession of a Protestant king was most important. George I., during his short reign of thirteen years, may be said to have held the balance of power in Europe, while he crushed Popish rebellion at home, and maintained peace among his own subjects. The Evangelical Dissenters were indebted to him for various favourable changes in the laws, which pressed heavily upon them; and distressed and persecuted Protestants, in foreign lands, owed much to him, for his counsels, the orders he gave to his ambassadors, and various letters which he directed to be written in their behalf, all intended at once to protect and unite their interest. It need scarcely be said that the Church of Scotland was warmly attached to the Hanoverian family. After the proclamation by Marr, in favour of the Pretender, all the ministers next day, some of them in the face of no small danger, prayed for George I. by name; and their Irish brethren felt in a similar manner. The celebrated Francis Hutcheson, afterwards Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, and an able writer against lay patronage, informed Wodrow, as related in his unpublished Analecta, that his father was a Presbyterian minister in Ulster, and suggested

on Protestant principles. Such is the reward of a faithful adherence to Protestantism. It may be mentioned, as tending to illustrate the moral government of God the more, that the Bohemian or German family, and their Protestant subjects, were so much reduced in pecuniary circumstances, when obliged to sojourn in Holland, that the Princess Sophia begged her brother, Charles I., to appoint a public collection for her poor people. The king did so; but the terms in which the appointment was made having, by recognizing the German Protestants as members of a true Church, offended the semi-Papist tyrant Laud, the collection was first discouraged, and then stopped by him; and in the same spirit he left out the names of Sophia, and her husband and family, from the Collect for the Royal Family, in a new edition of the Book of Common Prayer, not judging such sufferers for the Reformed Church good enough Christians. Strange, that in God's good time and way, those who had been thus insulted and depressed, should be raised to honour, and that their children should now be seated on the British throne, while the memory of Laud has perished, except as the dangerous counsellor, who, by his Popish per. versity, brought himself and his sovereign to the scaffold.

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