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Fuller, and according to him, the majority of the learned in his day were against the opinion that the Jews would again be put in possession of their antient territory. The negative of this opinion he grounds upon the ninth chapter of Amos as interpreted in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts. The opinion of the general conversion of the Jews he shews to be conformable to scripture and to have been maintained in the four first centuries.

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He proceeds to treat of the hindrances that opposed their conversion. The first he notices is our want of civil society with their nation. There must be first conversing with them before there can be converting of them. The gospel doth not work (as the weapon salve) at distance, but requires some competent familiarity with the persons of probationer-converts. Whereas the Jews being banished out of England, France, and Spain, are out of the call of the gospel, and ken of the Sacraments in those countries." This is no plea for the insane liberality of those who plead for what they miscall the emancipation of the Jews. But it was a degree of genuine liberality beyond the age in which Fuller wrote. The Jews were still under the ban of those laws which forbad their setting foot upon our shores; and this state of utter outlawry they could not escape even by an appeal to Cromwell, who long deliberated on this point, but would not, or at least, did not commit himself to a measure in his time so unpopular as the mere toleration of the Jews.

He notices also the scandal of image worship in the Church of Rome; "and to speak out the plain

truth, the Romanists are but back-friends to the Jews' conversion, chiefly on this account, because the Rabbins generally interpret Dumah (especially on the burden of Dumah, Isa. xxi. 11.) or Edom to be Rome, and Edomites Romans, in their expositions on the Old Testament. And therefore all those passages have (by order no doubt from their superiors) been lately purged out and expunged the Venetian edition of the Rabbins. * Yea, there is a constant tradition, current time out of mind, that after the destruction of the city of Rome, their nation shall be put into a glorious condition. No wonder then, if cold and dull the endeavours of the Romanists for the conversion of the Jews, who leave that task to be performed by Moses and Elias, whom the papists fondly fancy, shall toward the end of the world, personally appear, and by their powerful preaching, persuade the Jewish nation unto the Christian religion."

He then complains of the cruel dissensions of his own age; men of the same faith shedding one another's blood, and exhorts to prayer for the conversion of God's antient Israel, observing that when he shall put to his hand, all impediments shall instantly be removed, as in the days of Hezekiah, that king quickly effected it, because "God had prepared the people, and the thing was done suddenly.+"

He adverts to the great joy of the godly Jews at the conversion of Cornelius, and the probable ex

* Set forth by Daniel Bambergius. + 2 Chron. 29.36.

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pectation of the scriptures themselves being better understood, when both Jew and Gentile shall unite their labours to the illustration of them.

Upon whatsoever subject our author treated, his piety was always ready to edify the heart as his industry was incessant to instruct the mind of his reader. Witness his admirable chapters on "The Land of Moriah," and on "the Mysteries of Mount Calvary."

Some there are in our own age who hold no kind of property sacred except their own, that is private property. The property of the church they tell us, is the property of the state, and the property of the state is the property of the people, so that, if the parliament do but alienate, there can be neither wrong nor robbery. "Indeed," says Dr. Fuller,

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some hold that under the gospel the sin of sacrilege cannot be committed. If so, it is either because nothing under the gospel hath been given to God's service, or, because God hath solemnly disclaimed the acceptance of any such donations; which, when, and where it was done, will be hardly produced. If this their position be true, we have cause, first, to rejoice in regard that God and his members are now-a-days grown so rich that they need not addition of human gratuities to be bestowed upon them. Secondly, we may congratulate the felicity of ours above former ages, being not in a capacity of committing the sin of sacrilege, to which those were subject who lived before the time of our Saviour. Lastly, we may silently smile to see how Satan is defeated, having quite

lost one of his ancient baits and old temptations; men now-a-days being secured from this sin, and put past a possibility of being guilty thereof. But before we go thus far, let us first be sure we go on a good ground; otherwise, it is the highest sacrilege to steal away sacrilege itself, and to deny that (which formerly was a grievous) to be any transgression."

On December 23, 1650, was buried at St. Bennet's, Paul's Wharf, Mr. Edward Norgate, of the Herald's Office. "Exemplary," records Fuller, "his patience in his sickness, (whereof I was an eye-witness) though a complication of diseases, stone, &c. seized upon him." He was the son of Dr. Robert Norgate, Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was born. His mother surviving his father, was married to Dr. Felton, Bishop of Ely, who permitted him to follow his inclination toward painting and heraldry. He was employed in Italy upon the purchase of pictures by the Earl of Arundel. He was afterward made Bluemantle Pursuivant, and then Windsor Herald.t

pp. 403, 404.

+ Worthies, vol. i. p. 167, Ed. Nichols.

CHAPTER XI.

Fuller's Abel Redivivus.

ULLER, never more at home than in the department of biography, appeared in 1651 as a contributor to the Abel Redivivus. He wrote the Epistle to the Reader, and the Lives of Berengarius, Hus, Jerome of Prague, Cranmer, Fox, the martyrologist, Perkins, and Junius. As in his Church History, so here, he blames the too great flexibility of Cranmer. So far was his moderation from that party zeal which finds an apology for every defect in the objects of its idolatry. In his life of the martyrologist, John Fox, he cannot overlook how our Fox was indeed a sheep, and suffered accordingly. In his memoir of Perkins, he gives him his full measure of praise, commending his critical skill and learning in the Fathers, as also his judicious handling of cases of conscience, and the practical nature of his public discourses, made up as well of instruction as of exhortation. Perkins, in his Problems, anticipated Birkbeck in his Protestant Evidence, as both in

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