With Bedell's assistance, Father Paul acquired such a knowledge of the English language, as to be able to translate the book of Common Prayer into his vernacular tongue. This he did, it is thought, in the intention, should the existing quarrel with the pope terminate in separation, of making it the model for a new ritual. While at Venice, Bedell acquired an intimate knowledge of the Hebrew, by the aid of the rabbi who was at the head of the Jewish synagogue in that place.

After eight years' stay at Venice, Bedell returned to England, and assumed his parochial duties. He also assisted in publishing a translation of Father Paul's History of the Council of Trent, his History of the Interdict, and also that of the Inquisition. Soon afterwards he was presented to the living of Honingsheath, in the diocese of Norwich, on which occasion he successfully resisted an exorbitant demand by the bishop for induction fees. At this latter place Bedell remained for twelve years, wholly devoted to his pastoral duties, and such was the retirement in which he lived, that Diodati, an eminent Genoese divine, who had known him at Venice, visiting England at that time, in vain inquired for him, and at last met with him merely by accident. His worth and talents, however, gradually became known, and in 1626 he was unanimously elected provost of Trinity college, Dublin. In this new office he sedulously set himself to correct existing abuses, and undertook particularly the religious instruction of the college. In 1624, he had published a controversial correspondence betwixt himself and a Mr Wadsworth, who had been a fellow-student of his own, and had also held a living in the same diocese, but who, having gone to Spain as chaplain to the English ambassador, had renounced Protestantism and embraced the Catholic faith. A 2d edition of these letters was published in 1685.

In 1629, he was appointed bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh, in the province of Ulster. When he entered upon his diocese, he found it in a great disorder; its revenues had been dissipated, its cathedral and parish churches were in a state of dilapidation; more than nine-tenths of the people were papists; and of the few clergymen who were capable of assisting him, each had several parishes to serve. In this state of matters, he fearlessly applied himself to the work of reformation. His first step was to abolish pluralities, and having set the example himself by resigning the see of Ardagh, which had been united to that of Kilmore, on account of the scantiness of the revenues of both, his clergy, with a single exception, relinquished their pluralities also. With great difficulty he accomplished the reform of his own spiritual court; he also abolished various oppressive exactions which his predecessors had practised. For the instruction and conversion of the natives, he caused a short catechism of the elements of Christianity in English and Irish, to be printed and widely circulated; he also established schools in every parish of his diocese, and having himself acquired the Irish language, he composed a complete grammar of it. The New Testament, as well as the Book of Common Prayer, had been already translated into Irish: Bishop Bedell was desirous that the people should possess the whole Bible in their native tongue, and with this view employed a person of the name of King, a converted papist, who was deemed the best Irish scholar of his day. King was then about 70 years of age, but the bishop finding him qualified for the clerical office,

admitted him to orders, gave him a benefice, and employed him in the projected translation, himself revising the work. Having finished it in a few years, he was about to print it at his own expense; but, strange to say, was thwarted in his noble design by the opposition of some of his clerical brethren, among whom was Archbishop Laud; and so bitter was the hostility excited by this effort of our bishop, that on the ground of some trivial delinquency on the part of King, the translator, he was instantly deprived of his living, which was bestowed on the informer. The bishop would now have printed the Bible in his own house, but before he could put his design into execution, the rebellion broke out, and tranquillity was not restored to the country when Bedell himself was called to a better world. The manuscript copy of his translation, however, was saved amidst the general confusion, but was not printed until the reign of King William, when the Hon. Robert Boyle, into whose hands the manuscript had fallen, besides reprinting the New Testament, printed King's translation of the Old, both at his own expense.

A few years before his death, Bishop Bedell was engaged in an amicable controversy with Dr Ward on the subject of baptism. The bishop was a Calvinist in sentiment, but took a warm interest in the design of reconciling the Lutherans and Calvinists. He died on the 7th of February 1642, in the 71st year of his age. Great numbers of the natives attended his funeral, and fired a volley over his grave, crying out at the same time, "Requiescat in pace ultimus Anglorum !" In his person, Bishop Bedell was tall and graceful, he wore a long and broad beard, which gave him a very venerable appearance. His eyesight sustained no decay from age, and his judgment and memory continued unimpaired to the last.'

Archbishop Laud.

BORN A. D. 1573.—died a. D. 1645.

WILLIAM LAUD, archbishop of Canterbury, was the son of a clothier at Reading, in Berkshire, where he was born in the year 1573. He received the elements of instruction at the free school of his native place, whence he removed to St John's college, Oxford, in 1590. He took priest's orders in 1601, and in the following year preached a divinity lecture in his college, in which he maintained the perpetual visibility of the church of Rome till the reformation, a doctrine which, he conceived, was necessary to support that of the perpetual visibility of the church of Christ upon earth. His sentiments on this point were strongly censured by Abbot, then vice-chancellor of the university, which laid the foundation of that animosity which Laud afterwards exhibited towards the archbishop. His first preferment was the vicarage of Stamford, in Northamptonshire, which he obtained in 1607. In the following year, he commenced D.D., and was appointed chaplain to Neile, bishop of Rochester. He was made king's chaplain on the 3d of November. 1611. In 1616, the king made him dean of Glou

cester.

Life by Burnet.-Christian Observer, vol. xv.- Bayle and Ed.

On the 29th of June, 1621, he was advanced to the see of St David's, with express permission, on the part of the king, to hold the presidentship of St John's in commendam, but he resigned the latter office the day before his consecration. Next year, at the king's command, he held a conference with Fisher, the jesuit, which was soon afterwards published. It seems but fair here to notice the terms in which Laud speaks of the church of Rome, and the manner in which he rejects the accusation under which he knew he laboured at this period. "Should I practice, (he says himself,) to superinduce Romish tyranny and superstition over the true religion established in England, I have taken a very wrong way to it. For I have hindered as many from going to the Roman party, and have reduced as many from it, and some of great quality, and some of great learning and judgment,' [among whom the famous William Chillingworth,] "as I believe any divine in England hath done. And is this the way to bring in Romish superstition? To reduce men from it? Or is this the reward from the state which men must look for that have done these services?" Again, in reference to his work against Fisher, which was printed in April, 1623, he says: "The book which I have written against Mr Fisher, the Jesuit, must of necessity either acquit me of this calumny, or proclaim me a villain to the world. And I hope I have so lived as that men have not that opinion of me; sure I am I have not deserved it. And had this book of mine been written according to the garb of the time, fuller of railing than reason, a learned Jesuit would have laughed at it and me, and a learned Protestant might have thought I had written it only to conceal myself and my judgment in those difficulties. But being written in the way it is, I believe no Romanist will have much cause to joy at it, or to think me a favourer of their cause. And since

I am thus put to it, I will say thus much more: This book of mine is so written (by God's great blessing upon me) as that whensoever the church of England (as they are growing towards it apace) shall depart from the grounds which I have therein laid, she shall never be able, before any learned and disengaged Christian, to make good her difference with and separation from the church of Rome. And let no man think I speak pride or vanity in this, for the outrages which have been made against me force me to say it; and I am confident future times will make it good, unless profaneness break in, and overrun the whole kingdom, which is not a little to be feared."-Troubles, &c. p. 160. Under the date February 4, 1622-3, page 9th of his Diary, we have this entry; "Wednesday, my conference held with Fisher the Jesuit, May 24, 1622, and put in writing at the command of King James, having been before read to the king, was this day put into the press, being licensed by the bishop of London. I had not hitherto appeared in print. I am no controvertist. May God so love and bless my soul as I desire and endeavour that all the never to be enough deplored distractions of the church may be composed happily, and to the glory of his name." Dr Grey has added the testimonies of Mr Edward Deering and Limborch to the negative evidence of Fisher's answer, in order to make out an exculpatory proof for Laud. But it is quite impossible to clear Laud, when archbishop, of the serious charge of symbolizing with the church of Rome in its two leading features, superstition and intolerance. May says, "not only the pomps of cere

monies were daily increased, and innovations of great scandal brought into the church; but, in point of doctrine, many fair approaches made towards Rome. Even Heylin says, the doctrines are altered in many things; as, for example, the pope not anti-christ, pictures, free-will, &c. the thirty-nine articles seeming patient, if not ambitious also, of some catholic sense."

On the death of James, in 1625, Laud was appointed to supply the place of the dean of Westminster at the coronation of the new king. Lake, bishop of Bath and Wells, died in May, 1626, and in July Laud was appointed to succeed him. On the 17th of June, 1628, he was advanced to the see of London. One of the bishop's first enterprises, after his translation to London, says Neal, was to stifle the predestinarian controversy, for which purpose he procured the thirty-nine articles to be reprinted, with the following declaration at the head of them. BY THE KING.

"Being by God's ordinance, and our just title, defender of the faith, &c. within these dominions, we hold it agreeable to our kingly office, for the preservation of unity and peace, not to suffer any unnecessary disputations which may nourish faction in the church or commonwealth: we, therefore, with the advice of our bishops, declare, that the articles of the church of England which the clergy generally have subscribed, do contain the true doctrine of the church of England, agreeable to God's word, which we do therefore ratify and confirm, requiring all our loving subjects to continue in the uniform profession thereof, and prohibiting the least difference from the said articles. We take comfort in this, that all clergymen within our realm have always most willingly subscribed the articles, which is an argument that they all agree, in the true usual literal meaning of them; and that in those curious points, in which the present differences lie, men of all sorts take the articles to be for them, which is an argument again, that none of them intend any desertion of the articles established: wherefore we will, that all curious search into these things be laid aside, and these disputes be shut up in God's promises, as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scriptures, and the general meaning of the articles according to them; and that no man hereafter preach or print to draw the article aside any way, but shall submit to it, in the plain and full manner thereof, and shall not put his own sense or comment to the meaning of the article, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense that if any public reader in the universities, or any other person, shall affix any new sense to any article, or shall publicly read, or hold disputation on either side; or if any divine in the universities shall preach or print any thing either way, they shall be liable to censure in the ecclesiastical commission, and we will see there shall be due execution upon them."1

'This declaration, Dr Harris observes, has been produced and canvassed in the famous Bangorian and Trinitarian controversies, which engaged the attention of the public for a great number of years. Life of Charles I. p. 183–190. Dr Blackburne has at large discussed the validity of it, and is disposed to consider James I. as the first publisher of it. He shows that it has been corrupted by the insertion of the word now; as, "we will not endure any varying, or departing, in the least degree, from the doctrine and discipline of the church of England now established;" a language, he justly observes, inconsistent with the principles of our present constitution. Confes sional, p. 131-143. 3d edit.—Toulmin.

· Surely," exclaims Neal, and with good reason, "there never was such a confused and unintelligible declaration printed before!" It was made to serve its purpose, however: "In pursuance of his majesty's declaration, all books relating to the Arminian controversy were called in by proclamation and suppressed, and among others, Montague's and Manwaring's, which was only a feint to cover a more deadly blow to be reached at the Puritans; for at the same time Montague and Manwaring received the royal pardon, and were preferred to some of the best livings in the kingdom (as has been observed), while the answer to their books, by Dr Featly, Dr Goad, Mr Burton, Ward, Yates, and Rouse, were not only suppressed, but the publishers questioned in the star-chamber. The king put on the same thin disguise with regard to Papists; as proclamation was issued out against priests and Jesuits, and particularly against the bishop of Chalcedon; orders were also sent to the lord-mayor of London, to make search after them, and commit them to prison, but at the same time his majesty appointed commissioners to compound with them for their recusancy; so that instead of being suppressed, they became a branch of the revenue, and Sir Richard Weston, a notorious Papist, was created earl of Portland, and made lord-high-treasurer of England."

name.

In 1630, occurred the disgraceful prosecution and sentence of Dr Alexander Leighton, the father of the worthy and celebrated prelate of that "This divine," says Neal, "had published, during the last session of parliament, an Appeal to the parliament; or, Zion's plea against prelacy,' wherein he speaks not only with freedom, but with very great rudeness and indecency against bishops; calling them 'men of blood,' and saying, 'that we do not read of a greater persecution and higher indignities done towards God's people in any nation than in this, since the death of Queen Elizabeth.' He calls the prelacy of the church antichristian.' He declaims vehemently against the canons and ceremonies; and adds, that the church has her laws from the Scripture, and that no king may make laws for the house of God.' He styles the queen a daughter of Heth, and concludes with saying, what a pity it is that so ingenious and tractable a king should be so monstrously abused by the bishops, to the undoing of himself and his subjects. Now, though the warmth of these expressions can no ways be justified, yet let the reader consider whether they bear any proportion to the sentence of the court. The cause was tried June 4, 1630. The defendant, in his answer, owned the writing of the book, denying any ill intention; his design being only to lay these things before the next parliament for their consideration. Nevertheless, the court adjudged unanimously, that for this offence, the doctor should be committed to the prison of the Fleet for life, and pay a fine of £10,000; that the high-commission should degrade him from his ministry; and that then he should be brought to the pillory at Westminster, while the court was sitting, and be whipped; after whipping, be set upon the pillory a convenient time, and have one of his ears cut off, one side of his nose slit, and be branded in the face with a double S. S. for a sower of sedition: that then he should be carried back to prison, and after a few days be pilloried a second time in Cheapside, and be there likewise whipped, and have the other side of his nose slit, and his other ear cut of, and then be shut up in a close prison for the remainder

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