priests of the new religion, the spiritual keepers of the royal idol, should have been found among the clergy of a church, perhaps as pure and enlightened as any other in Christendom. Their genius and their learning gave them claim to an office much higher than that of being the magnifiers of royal prerogative in that age, or the standard of slavish retrogression in this.

Robert South, whose name we have placed at the head of this article, and whose works are undergoing a course of republication, under the able superintendence of Mr. Basil Montague, was first heard of in his generation as the author of an ode on the victories of Cromwell over the Dutch, more remarkable for its adulation than its spirit. Very much the friend of established government, he exerted himself with great ductility to be made the Poet-Laureate of the Protectorate; but Cromwell by his forgetfulness overlooked him, which hardened him almost into an opposition to the republic. Fortunately, however, for him, there were other men who were willing to bear the brunt; and one morning he was aroused, after dreams of a very doubtful character, which had followed a day of moderate republicanism, by the cannon which welcomed the arrival of Charles the Second. It was in the reign of the two last Stuarts that his genius shone forth. Blessed with a disposition, far more pliant than that of his brethren who had suffered with the King in his exile, he wound himself before long into the affections of the Court, and became its favorite preacher, whenever he was permitted by his conscience to pass by its sins. But Dr. South was a bigoted Churchman, though a slavish royalist; and the qualms, which the former quality occasionally gave him, prevented him from grasping tightly the mitre which the other would have secured. Like Thomas à Becket he might have grown from an humble admirer of the King's majesty, to a bold excommunicator of the King himself, and King Charles thinking so, kept him in an intermediate state between the palace and a parsonage. It was in the transition that his sermons were preached; which, after having been classed as the most brilliant efforts of the age which produced them, have been brought forward of late as the reclaimers of the apostasy of the times that have succeeded.

The discourse in the volumes before us, on which most stress is laid, is the one entitled "Ecclesiastical Policy the best Policy." (Vol. 1. p. 155.) It commences with a lively delinea

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tion of the situation of the Protectorate at the time when Cromwell was under the bans of the Episcopal bench. A parallel character being sought for out of Scripture, to illustrate the stubborn malignity of the Protector, Jeroboam is selected as the most suitable for the occasion. The analogy is carried out with the most patient industry. Jeroboam was an innovator, and so was Cromwell. Both succeeded in overthrowing the established government and the established hierarchy, and both also succeeded in filling the seats which they had emptied. At first, it is true, the likeness is only shadowed forth; the preacher deals in frowning generalities; a monster is vaguely outlined, whose atrocity was very similar to that of Jeroboam, but whose feats were still too recent to allow of their open censure; but before long the hand of the artist grows bolder, the portrait becomes more historical, till at length to ensure its recognition, that great name, Oliver Cromwell, starts forth. Two grand moral reflections are drawn from the " righteous " overthrow of the commonwealth, and on which the remainder of the sermon is based.

"1. The surest means to strengthen, or the readiest to ruin the civil power, is either to establish or destroy the worship of God in the right exercise of religion.

"2. The next and most effectual way to destroy religion is to embase the teachers and dispensers of it." Vol. I. p. 166.

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Now,

"The reason of the doctrine" laid forth in the first head may be drawn from the necessary dependence of the very principles of government upon religion. And this I shall pursue more fully. The great business of government is to preserve obedience and keep off disobedience; the great springs upon which those two move are rewards and punishments, answering the two ruling affections of man's mind, hope and fear. therefore, that which proposes the greatest and most suitable rewards to obedience, and the greatest terrors and punishments to disobedience, doubtless is the most likely to enforce the one, and prevent the other. But it is religion that does this, which to happiness and misery joins eternity. - Were not these (sanctions) frequently thundered into the understandings of men, the Magistrate might enact, order, and proclaim; proclamations might be hung upon walls and posts, and there they might hang, seen and despised, more like malefactors than laws; but when religion binds them upon the conscience, conscience will either persuade or terrify men into their practice. For, put the case, a man knew, and that upon sure grounds, that he might do

advantageous murder or robbery and not be discovered; what human laws could hinder him, which he knows cannot inflict any penalty, where they can make no discovery? But religion assures him, that no sin can either escape God's sight in this world, or his vengeance in the other. Put the case also, that men looked upon death without fear, in which sense it is nothing, or at most very little; ceasing, while it is endured, and probably without pain, for it seizes upon the vitals and benumbs the senses, and where there is no sense there can be no pain. I say, while a man is acting his will towards sin, he should also thus act his reason, to despise death; where would be the terror of the magistrate, who could neither threaten nor inflict any more? Hence an old malefactor in his execution, at the gallows made no other confession but this, that he had very jocundly passed over his life in such courses, and he that would not for fifty years' pleasure, endure half an hour's pain, deserved to die a worse death than himself. Questionless this man was not ignorant before, that there were such things as laws, assizes, and gallows; but had he considered and believed the terrors of another world, he might probably have found a shorter passage out of this. If there was not a minister in every parish, you would quickly find cause to increase the number of constables; and if the Churches were not employed as places to hear God's law, there would be need of them as prisons for the breaking of the laws of men. Hence 't is observable, that the tribe of Levi had not one place or portion like the rest of the tribes; but because it was their office to dispense religion, they were diffused over all the tribes, that they might be continually preaching to the rest their duty to God; which is the most effectual way to dispose them to obedience to man; for he that truly fears God cannot despise the magistrate." -(Vol. I. pp. 169 – 172.)

We do not wish to be understood as dissenting from the position thus expressed. We go even farther; for as the author maintains that the united sanction of religion and of civil government is necessary to the welfare of a nation, we believe that the influence of the former, if exerted in its purity and strength, would alone be amply sufficient. Human governments, be they ever so complete, can never exhaust the whole catalogue of crimes. There will always be some offences left out from the calendar; for vice is by nature multiform, and like the water chosen by the Florentine Academicians for their great experiment, when pressed the most closely in its assigned limits, will find a place to exude before it is annihilated. Besides, the strictest government can do nothing but prevent wrong, it

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can never command right. Further, its very tendency would be to emasculate the mind; for the man, who is innocent from compulsion, is tame from necessity. Men can only be tied down to a prescribed course of conduct in two ways; either by the operation of external force, or by the individual action of their own determination. If the former be the case, the compulsion must be complete, to ensure their obedience, in the latter, the agreement must be sincere, to preserve their integrity. To perfect his plans of entire subordination, the ruler of the bodies of men must call in the aid of an established Church, to give him the command over their souls. Give to the King unlimited power, give him for subjects an ignorant and disheartened people, tell him that the pulpit is his, and that he may preach in Arabic or Latin if he chooses, give him a loyal body guard, and above all prudence to hold the Globe you place in the hollow of his hand, and you will create a system of machinery of exquisite perfection; one in which there is a motive power with many wheels, but which moves not a single pulse without the consent of the heart that propels it. But above all, give him the Church for a conductor, and the chain will be complete. He can send a shiver to the vitals of the remotest pauper in his kingdom. The old order of things will be stereotyped, and the idiocy of second childhood will be the only change which can be expected. We leave it to the preacher and his editor to explain the advantages of such a position and of such a prospect.

"Government, we see, depends upon religion, and religion upon the encouragement of those, that are to dispense and assert. it. For the further evidence of which truth we need not travel beyond our own borders; but leave it to every one impartially to judge, whether from the very first day our religion was unsettled, and Church government flung out of doors, the civil government has ever been able to fix upon a sure foundation. We have been changing even to a proverb. The indignation of heaven has been rolling and turning us from one form to another, till at length such a giddiness seized upon government, that it fell into the very dregs of Sectaries, who threatened an equal ruin both to Minister and Magistrate. And how the State has sympathized with the Church, is apparent. For have not our princes, as well as our priests, been of the lowest of the people ? Have not cobblers, draymen, mechanics, governed as well as preached? But God has been pleased by a miracle of mercy to dissipate this confusion and chaos, and give us some openings,

some dawnings of liberty and settlement. But now let not those, who are to rebuild our Jerusalem, think that the temple must be built last; for if there be such a thing as a God, and religion, as, whether men believe it or no, they will one day find and feel, assuredly he will stop our liberty, till we restore him his worship. Besides, it is a senseless thing in reason, to think that one of these interests can stand without the other, when, in the very order of natural causes, government is preserved by religion. But to return to Jeroboam with whom we began. He laid the foundation of his government in destroying, though doubtless he colored it with the name of reforming God's worship. But see the issue. Consider him cursed by God, maintaining his usurped title, by continual vexatious wars against the Kings of Judah; smote in his posterity, which was made like the dung on the face of the earth, as low and vile as those priests whom he had employed. Wherefore, the sum of all is this; to advise and desire those, whom it may concern, to consider Jeroboam's punishment, and then they will have little heart to Jeroboam's sin." - Vol. I. 212-215.

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If the prominent feature in the Scriptural delineation of Jeroboam was his godlessness, we are inclined to believe that Charles the Second would have answered the likeness much better than Cromwell. The latter respected his God, though he slighted the church; the other reverenced neither. Cromwell was also a worshipper at the altar of domestic love, a just and faithful priest in the temple which, next to that which the Almighty has constituted invisibly for the spirits of those who love him, is the most holy; - Charles Stuart prostituted his home to his passions, and erected round his heart strange and heathenish gods, whom he worshipped himself, and made his people worship. For Lady Russel found she need not go to Clarendon for mercy to her noble husband; that the ministers of justice were the tools of prerogative; that through the gilded ear of a favorite alone, could her prayer reach the king; and in the saddest of all hours, she was ushered into the presence of the last French importation, who dispensed the king's favors from a menagerie of milliners and monkeys. Once a month the monarch changed his mind, and immediately afterwards the new candle was lit, and placed in his council chamber, there to be flitted about by courtier-like moths, or petitioning beetles. Turn back to Cromwell in the grandeur of his familiar hearth! A royal culprit was at the stake, and there hung around the knees of the Protector, his only favorites, his wife and daughter, asking for mercy.