supplies of his Holy Spirit; and instead of thinking that invitations to his table come too often, they will wish, and, in the firm reliance that with God all things are possible, fervently pray, for an universal return to that more frequent administration for which our Church has provided. S. S. ROGER HOLLAND.* ROGER HOLLAND was first an apprentice to one Mr. Kempton, at the Black Boy, Watling Street. He was, in every sense of the word, licentious-a lover of bad company, and, more than all, a stubborn determined papist: one of whom it might be said, that a miracle could only effect his conversion. Dissipated as he was, his master had the imprudent confidence to trust him with money; and having received thirty pounds on his master's account, he lost it at the gaming-table. Knowing it was impossible to retain his character, he determined to withdraw to France or Flanders. With this resolution, he called early in the morning on a discreet servant in the house, named Elizabeth, who professed the Gospel, and lived a life that did honour to her profession. To her he revealed the loss his folly had occasioned, regretted that he had not followed her advice, and begged her to give his master a note of hand from him acknowledging the debt, which he would repay, if ever it were in his power; he also entreated his disgraceful conduct might be kept secret, lest it should bring the grey hairs of his father with sorrow to a premature grave. The maid, with a generosity and Christian principle rarely surpassed, conscious that his imprudence might be his ruin, brought him the thirty pounds, which was part of a sum of money recently left to her by legacy. "Here," said she, "is the sum requisite. You shall take the money, and I will keep the note; but expressly on this condition, that you abandon all lewd and vicious company-that you neither swear nor talk immodestly, and game no more; for should I learn that you do, I will immediately shew this note to your master. I also require that you shall promise me to attend the daily lecture at Allhallows, and the sermon at St. Paul's every Sunday; that you cast away all your books of popery, and in their place substitute the Testament, and the Book of Service, and that you read the Scriptures with reverence and fear, calling upon God for his grace to direct you in his truth. Pray also fervently to God to pardon your former offences, and not to remember the sins of your youth, and ever dread to break his laws, or offend his majesty; so shall God have you in his keeping, and grant you your heart's desire." We must honour the memory of this excellent domestic, whose pious endeavours were equally directed to benefit the thoughtless youth in this life, and that which is to come. May her example be followed by the present generation of servants, who seek rather to seduce by vain dress and loose manners the youths who are associated in servitude with them! God did not suffer the wish of this excellent domestic to be thrown upon a barren soil; within half a year after, the licentious Holland became a zealous professor of the Gospel, and was an instrument of conversion to his father and others, whom he visited in Lancashire, to their spiritual comfort and reformation from popery. His father, pleased with his change of conduct, gave him forty pounds to commence business with in London. Upon his return, like an honest man, he paid the debt of gratitude; and rightly judging that she who had proved so excellent a friend and counsellor would be no less amiable as a wife, he tendered her his hand. They were married in the first year of • From "Milner's Fox's Martyrs." Queen Mary's reign, and a child was the fruit of their union, which Mr. Holland caused to be baptised by Mr. Rose, in his own house. For this offence he was obliged to fly; and Bonner, with his accustomed implacability, seized his goods, and ill-treated his wife. After this, he remained secretly among the congrega. tions of the faithful, till the last year of Queen Mary, when he, with six others, was taken not far from St. John's Wood, and brought to Newgate upon Mayday, 1558. He bore testimony with firmness, before the cruel Bonner, to the sincerity with which he had come from the service of sin and ignorance to embrace the cause of Christ, and take his yoke upon him. Finally, with his associates, he was condemned to the flames, and therein finished his course with constancy and unshaken faith and charity. The day they suffered, says the historian, a proclamation was made, prohibiting every one from speaking or talking to, or receiving any thing from them, or touching them, upon pain of imprisonment, without either bail or mainprize. Notwithstanding, the people cried out, "God strengthen them!" They also prayed for the people, and the restoration of His word. Embracing the stake and the reeds, Holland said these words: "Lord, I most humbly thank thy majesty that thou hast called me from the state of death unto the light of thy heavenly word, and now unto the fellowship of thy saints, that I may sing and say, 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts! And, Lord, into thy hands I commit my spirit! Lord, bless these thy people, and save them from idolatry." Thus he ended his life, looking towards heaven, praying to and praising God, with the rest of his fellow-saints. These seven martyrs were consumed June 27, 1558. THE TRIAL OF THE SEVEN BISHOPS.* "One of those tragic spectacles of justice violated, of religion menaced, of innocence oppressed, of unarmed dignity outraged, with all the conspicuous solemnities of abused law, in the persons of men of exalted rank and venerated functions, who encounter wrongs and indignities with mild intrepidity."-Sir James Mackintosh. Or all the studies calculated to engage the attention, to enlarge the mind, and to strengthen and purify the heart, there is none more delightful or instructive, than the biography of the worthies of the Anglican Church. There is no species of the highest human excellence, of which these holy men have not left us an exemplar; there is no field of learning or science which they have not extended and adorned; there is no rampart of the Christian faith which they have not either reared or fortified by their matchless and accumulated erudition; and so great and so various are the treasures of theological literature which they have bequeathed to the world, and more especially to their fellow-countrymen,- for they spoke in the common tongue, that were the writings of dissent entirely consumed by some modern Omar, and the works of the divines of our English Establishment, alone remained extant, the loss would be but little felt, and but a mere stone would have been dislodged from the unshaken fortress of Christianity. Reverse the case, however; suppose the literature of dissent preserved, and that of the Church destroyed, where would be the glory of our English theology?- where those noble and impregnable defences, constructed by the hand of a Pearson, a Bull, a Waterland, a Butler, and a Magee, From "The (Coburg) Church." against which the infidel and Socinian level their objections and cavils, only to be shivered into a thousand fragments? Take our divines from the cloistered study, and the halls of learning, and observe how they demean themselves in times that prove the temper of a man, and refine, or consume him, in the fires of persecution. Behold the fabric of our reformed Church slowly rising under the patient care of Cranmer, and subsequently | watered by his blood. How beautifully, as we sit abstracted from the external world, with our eyes open but not employed, and with our mental vision thereby rendered the more intense, do a thousand mitred and crosiered forms glide across our path, and suffuse the surrounding imaginary scene with a mellow and celestial light! Meekly and thoughtfully, the kindred spirits of Usher, Leighton, and Sancroft seem to hold solemn converse. Juxon irradiates his martyred monarch's scaffold with the mild lustre of faith and hope. Jeremy Taylor, the earliest champion of toleration, indulges in his divine contemplations, and hangs not his harp upon the willows, though he weeps, and remembers Zion. The much-calumniated, the munificent, the sincere, the good Laud lays his grey hairs upon the block, committing his soul to God, and his fame to the charitable judgment of posterity. Hall, the assertor of the divine right of episcopacy, is buffetted by indignities, which his learning, moderation, and piety provoked. Ken and Lake withstand the tyrant James, and oppose their crosier and "unsullied lawn" to the axe and blood-dyed garments of Jefferies. Wilson traverses the Isle of Man, and the deserted Manxmen are only restrained by the bishop himself from bursting the prison-doors, within which a godless and arbitrary governor had dared to thrust him. Barrington, Burgess, and Van Mildert, appear before us, laying the foundations of institutions dedicated to the service of Christ, and expending sums, such as monarchs might give, noiselessly and secretly in the alleviation of human misery. But where would be the limit, if we were to recount each name that has adorned the annals of our English hierarchy? Here and there a solitary exception,-a worldly, an ambitious, or an unlearned prelate is thrust unworthily, by court-favour, or some sinister means, into the apostolic seat; worse even than this, there have been bishops, but few, very few indeed, fit compeers for Judas Iscariot, but in no greater proportion to the rest of their brethren than he to the twelve disciples: yet making all these deductions, and recollecting that the chief pastors of our Church are, after all, but frail men like ourselves, we may safely assert that the bishops of the Church of England, as a body, by their courage at the stake, their learning in the closet, their eloquence in the pulpit, their labours in their dioceses, and their presence in the senate, have faithfully discharged the duties of their awful calling, and drawn down the blessings of Heaven upon their country. It would be difficult to say which is the brightest period of our episcopal annals,—whether the reign of Mary, when five of the bishops joined the "noble army of martyrs' in heaven; whether the era of the grand rebellion, when our venerable and loyal prelates, with their inferior clergy, were either incarcerated, compelled to fly or abscond, and in many in stances harassed unto death; or whether the crisis of the Revolution, when the holy fathers of our Church resisted the king in his might, and yet, rather than violate their conscience, involved themselves in his downfall, to which their firmness had mainly contributed. The details of the two former periods are perused with more of a painful and shuddering interest, and more strongly excite our horror, indignation, and compassion; but the latter is a spot in English history, on which we can gaze with not less of interest, albeit of a nature different and not so harrowing; while at the same time we can survey it with a degree of rejoicing and patriotic exultation, to which we could not give way when recalling the Popish fires of Oxford, or the Puritan atrocities of the tyrannical Long Parliament. James II., in his infatuated attempt to subvert the civil and religious liberties of England, was fully aware that the principal barrier to his unhallowed project was the Church of England. Having therefore assumed the guise of toleration, as a mask to his designs, and as a snare to entrap the Dissenters into his support, he issued, on the 27th April, 1688, the celebrated Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, in which he claimed the illegal power of dispensing with the penal laws against Dissenters and Roman Catholics, and which had for its real object the destruction of the Protestant faith, and the restoration of Popery to its long-lost ascendency and power. A subsequent order from the king was directed to the bishops, commanding them to cause his declaration to be read at the usual time of divine service, by the clergy in their respective dioceses. The bishops, as the sentinels of the national religion, took alarm at this arbitrary violation of the laws, and after due consultation determined not to comply with the royal mandate, but presented a respectful petition to James, remonstrating against the illegality of the power which he had assumed. The days appointed for the reading of the declaration soon drew nigh, and so nobly and faithfully were the bishops sustained by the great body of the clergy, that "not more than two hundred in all," states Sir James Mackintosh, "are said to have complied out of a body of ten thousand." Irritated at this disobedience, the king, on the 8th June, ordered the seven prelates who had signed the petition to be committed to the Tower, on the plea of having published a seditious libel against the sovereign and his govern ment. The names of these venerable champions of our faith are William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury; William Lloyd, bishop of St. Asaph; Francis Turner, of Ely; John Lake, of Chichester; Thomas Ken, of Bath and Wells; Thomas White, of Peterborough; and Sir Jonathan Trelawney, of Bristol. Had they but lifted up a finger, the people would have risen in a mass to their rescue. But in meekness and lowliness, without any attempt to excite the popular sympathy, nay, with the strongest desire and effort to suppress it, they proceeded to the barges that were to convey them to the Tower. The populace expressed their feelings in tears and prayers. Thousands begged the blessing of the bishops, even running into the water to implore it. Multitudes, kneeling and supplicating Heaven for their deliverance, lined the banks of the Thames as they passed. On landing at the Tower, several of the guards, and even some of the officers, knelt down to receive their blessing: and it was observed at the time, and deemed a mark of special providential interference, that on the evening of the bishops' commitment, when they attended divine service in the chapel of the Tower, the second lesson was the sixth chapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, wherein they were exhorted, "to approve themselves ministers of God, with patience, in afflictions, in imprisonments." The same manifestation of popular feeling continued unabated throughout the following days. The nobility, of both sexes, hastened to proffer their solace and assistance to the venerable prisoners, and to beg their blessing; the soldiers on guard, despite the reprimand of their commanding officer, drank their healths; and dense masses of true-born Englishmen thronged around the Tower, as if ready, should occasion arise, to do battle for the passive guardians of the common liberties. Even the dissenting ministers, though so long silent in behalf of the Protestant cause, now came forward in many instances, with a noble forgetfulness of all past dissensions, and sent a deputation to visit and encourage the prelates, whom they had before opposed. On the 15th June, the bishops were brought before the Court of King's Bench, by a writ of habeas corpus; and after having pleaded" not guilty" to the charge alleged against them, were liberated on their own undertaking to appear on the trial, which was appointed to take place on the 29th of June. On this occasion, both when repairing to, and when leaving the court, they were greeted with undiminished symptoms of the general affection and enthusiasm in their favour. Weeping crowds kneeling in a lane to receive their apostolic benediction-twenty-nine peers offering to be their sureties, and, together with numerous gentlemen, attending them in court-shouts and huzzas unrestrained even in the presence of the judges -the bishop of St. Asaph, detained in Palace-yard by a multitude, who kissed his hands and garments-the archbishop received with military honours and on bended knees by the soldiers posted at Lambeth to guard him the bells of Westminster Abbey ringing out a jubilant peel, and bonfires and festivities in the streets at night, and outrages offered to Roman Catholics, all these were prophetic incidents which were doubtless conveyed to the bigot king. How great, therefore, must have been the infatuation that led him to disregard the MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN, which the hand of a nation was writing on his palace-walls! The day of the ever-memorable TWENTY-NINTH OF June beheld the bishops entering the court, supported and attended as before. The four judges were on the bench; the attorney and solicitor generals, and two other eminent lawyers, appeared for the crown; while among the counsel retained for the prisoners were the names, so dear to every Protestant, of Finch, an ancestor of the present Earl of Winchelsea, and of Somers, afterwards the great lord chancellor and statesman. The trial, which proceeded in the usual form and lasted during the whole day, was frequently interrupted by unusual and irrepressible outbreaks of the feelings of the audience. On every turn of the case unfavourable to the prosecution, "a triumphant laugh, or a shout of joy," which the chief-justice soon gave over attempting to check, rang ominously through the court. Lord Sunderland, the king's prime minister, who had already become a secret Romanist, appeared as a witness; and after having gone through the ordeal of being hooted and hissed, and denounced as a "Popish dog" by the clamorous multitude around the doors, came into the court colourless, trembling, downcast, bowed beneath a load of public obloquy and self-reproach. Williams, one of the crown lawyers, on making some indiscreet allusion, was also received with a general hiss. At length the counsel on either side had done their part, and the chief-justice proceeded to sum up the evidence to the jury. Two of the bench, Wright (the chief-justice) and Allybone, considered that the petition amounted to a libel; Holloway and Powell pronounced it to be no libel. The jury retired in the evening, and could not concur in a verdict until six o'clock on the following morning. At ten the prelates were brought into court, and the jury, through their foreman, delivered in their verdict-NoT GUILTY. The shouts that arose within the court at the annunciation of this glorious result, were instantly caught up by the assembled thousands from without. With the rapidity of the fiery-cross-the war-sign of the Highlands-stunning acclamations of triumph rushed from one end of the metropolis to the other, and were not long before, swelled by the thousand voices of the soldiers, they thundered in the ears of the monarch himself, then occupied in the camp at Hounslow. The jurors were caressed as national deliverers, with a warmth of gratitude that it would be cold-hearted to call extravagant. The bishops, preserving the same equanimity which they had evinced throughout every stage of the proceedings, and inculcating submission and respect to the higher powers, escaped as privately as possible from the overwhelming gratulations which the exultant metropolis was desirous of pouring upon them. Some renegade and faithless churchmen fared according to their deserts, and were assailed with the reproaches and derision of the multitude. Nothing could stem the tide of universal joy. Its first ebullition was such as did honour to the piety of a Protestant nation for the people, grateful for so signal a deliverance, crowded to the churches, and performed their devotions with an earnestness and ecstacy, and vehemence of gesture, unwonted in the character of English worship. Other more usual exhibitions of public rejoicing succeeded in the evening. Bonfires blazed even before the king's palace, and were not quenched till the morning of Sunday; windows were illuminated; bells pealed; the Pope was burnt in effigy; feasting filled the streets; fire-works and firearms added to what a witness of the scene described as "a very rebellion in noise ;" and the excessive exuberance of delight, as might have been expected, in too many instances ran over into license and disorder. The country was infected with the contagious and boisterous transports of the city; the principal towns in the kingdom shared in the triumph; and the grand jury of Middlesex, although sent out no less than three times, refused to find bills against several persons who had been indicted for the disorderly kindling of bonfires. Thus was frustrated the attempt of James to bring back England under the papal yoke! From this failure did the nation take courage, and steel its heart for the struggle that it perceived was so rapidly approaching to a consummation! We all know how that struggle ended in the virtual dethronement of the monarch, and the preservation of our religion and laws: and though the politician who bases his principles upon the precepts of Scripture, must ever regret that the safety of the Church involved the dis-crowning of its temporal head, yet God, in his infinite mercy, grant, that should the folly and wickedness of the second James be re-enacted in our day, seven bishops may be found ready to lay down their lives in maintenance of our religion, our liberties, and our Church! Five of the venerated prelates who suffered and who triumphed in 1688, conscientiously refusing to transfer their allegiance to William of Orange, were deprived of their bishoprics; and whether we consider them as right or wrong in this respect, we cannot but point with the honest pride of churchmen to their sorely tempted but incorruptible integrity. England has still the worthy successors of her Sancrofts and her Kens, fraught with a spirit that would teach them to resist meekly, and to suffer courageously; and the English people-let the hour of trial, of imminent Protestant danger arrive-will again be found faithful to the divinely authorised bishops of the national Establishment. THE DEVICES OF SATAN: BY THE REV. GEORGE SPENCE, LL.B. "Lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices." THE one great object of our spiritual enemy is the destruction of souls; and this object he pursues with industry the most unwearied, and by artifices the most subtle and ingenious. It is not merely when we feel ourselves moved to the commission of some gross and palpable sin, that we are to suspect his presence; we are to be at all times vigilant, "because," as the apostle Peter warns us, our adversary the devil, as a roaring lion," greedy of his prey, "walketh about seeking whom he may devour." If we take, for example, the occasion on which the caution presented to us in the text was suggested to the Corinthian Church, it will require an attentive consideration of the circumstances to discover in what way the adversary would be likely in respect of it to "obtain an advantage over" them; yet the practised eye of the apostle could detect, even in the performance of an act of neces Preached at St. Clement's Church, Cambridge, on July 22, 1838, being the Sunday following a confirmation, held in Cambridge, by the Lord Bishop of Ely. sary, though painful duty, the possibility that, without much circumspection, Satan would avail himself of it to the prejudice of the Gospel and the detriment of the infant Church. It will be profitable, in this view, briefly to consider what these circumstances were. We may, indeed, have little direct interest in them; there may be scarcely a possibility that the offence, which the apostle had been called upon to notice in terms of censure, and visit with exemplary severity (incest with a near relation), should be found amongst ourselves; but yet in this, as in many similar cases which the Spirit of God has recorded for our learning, we may be deeply interested in the experience which it furnishes and the admonition which it conveys. It had been reported to St. Paul (1 Cor. v. 1) that a member of the Church at Corinth had been openly living in the commission of great and grievous wickedness; wickedness so scandalous, that it was never even named amongst Gentile unbelievers without the most indignant expressions of detestation: but though such conduct was thus reprobated by the heathen, it would seem that it had escaped the condemnation and the censure which it so richly merited from those who, having "named the name of Christ," were of all men the most obliged to "depart from all iniquity." Nay, they were puffed up with a vain conceit of inward gifts and outward advantages, and were not concerned about it. Possibly a most erroneous notion of Christian liberty secured the offender from the censure of the Church. The apostle therefore, though personally absent, yet as present in spirit," having the whole affair clearly before his mind, and being full of zeal for the honour of Christ and the welfare of the Church,determined on the case, and passed sentence on the criminal as if upon the spot. charged them in the name, by the authority, and for the honour, of Christ, that when they met together as a Church, they would consider him as present among them (to ratify their sentence by his delegated authority, and to enforce it by the authority of Christ), and would expel the incestuous person from their communion; that he might no longer be considered as a Christian, but as a heathen -a subject of Satan's kingdom. Yet this justly merited act was not to be done in hatred, or for the offender's ruin, but in the hope that it might be the means of bringing him to repentance, and the mortification of his fleshly lusts; that so, as it is expressed in 1 Cor. v. 5, "his soul might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." He Such was the apostle's determination, which, as I have said, you will find on reference to the 5th chapter of his 1st epistle to the Co rinthians. From the chapter now before us (the 2d chapter of the 2d epistle to the same Church), we learn that they had obediently attended to his directions. The rebuke and excommunication which had been inflicted on the transgressor by the Church (acting according to the sentence and command of the apostle) had produced a salutary effect; and now therefore, "lest such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow," he entreats for him, as he had before protested against him," sufficient to such a man (says he) is this punishment." "I beseech "I beseech you" that ye would "restore him to your communion;" that ye would "forgive him and comfort him," and "confirm your love to him :" and then he assigns as a motive for his entreaty, "lest Satan should get an advantage over us;" lest overmuch sorrow should unfit the erring brother for his duty, or give Satan an opportunity of tempting him to hard thoughts of God and religion, to apostacy, or even to despair, which might swallow him up, and occasion the final and everlasting ruin of his soul; "for," he goes on to add, "we are not ignorant of his devices." So subtle is he, that, on the one hand, he can persuade men so far to pervert the grace of God, as to continue in sin under the pretext of magnifying that grace, and making it to abound; and, on the other hand, when sin has, in some measure, met with its merited, though merciful, condemnation, he can induce men to an undue severity; thus bringing an evil report on the Christian character, as rigorous and unforgiving, and keeping the erring brother without the pale of Christian charity and comfort. 8 There is nothing Satan hates so much as the mercy which extends forgiveness to a wandering sinner, and rescues from his dominion one whom he had hoped irrevocably to have retained within his grasp. Should there be here one whom he has tempted to the commission of wilful and deliberate sin, to the dishonour of the Christian name, and whom he would seek to keep from returning to the God whom he has offended by hard thoughts of his heavenly Father, -let such an one beware of his devices; let him listen to the gracious words of the Sovereign whose laws he has transgressed, and turn a deaf ear to the tempter, who has well nigh ruined him. "Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways; for why will ye die?" (Ezek. xxxiii. 13.) Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy on him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon" (Isaiah, lv. 7). But, my brethren, it is not to either of the classes whom the apostle had immediately in view, that I desire at the present moment more particularly to address myself; neither to those who presume upon God's goodness, to whom the apostle, in his epistle to the Romans, indignantly replies, in answer to the question," Shall we, then, continue in sin, that grace may abound?... God forbid;" nor yet to those who, having grievously offended the holiness of God, in the words of the preacher, "go about to cause their heart to despair" (Eccles. ii. 20). My address is designed for those who, we hope, are not to be found in either rank; to those who have recently presented themselves as, we trust, "a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is their reasonable service" (Rom. xii. 1). Our desire is, being ourselves " not ignorant of Satan's devices," to guard them against some of those temptations to which they will be subject, that "Satan may not obtain an advantage over them." Attend, then, to me, my young friends, as unto one who has sought, in solicitude and prayer, to prepare you for the engagements on which you have lately entered, and who now entreats of God, that he would further honour his servant by enabling him to assist you in faithfully observing them. I have already in private warned you, that you must expect temptations. They who, whatever they may before have done, have now, at least, ceased to halt between two opinions, and have openly declared themselves on the Lord's side, are those who will be likely to experience the most ingenious exercise of the enemy's devices. There are many who are willingly his slaves, who feel no desire, and therefore make no effort to release themselves from his thraldom: upon these he bestows little pains; they give him little trouble. If at any time they manifest dissatisfaction with the wages which he bestows, he will not object that they should amuse themselves with half-formed resolutions of repentance, or distant purposes of amendment; he knows that to-morrow's resolutions never lost him a single captive; therefore, leaving them, he devotes his utmost energies, and he sets the myriads of fallen spirits, who do his bidding, in array against those who, like yourselves, have dared to promise that you will renounce the devil and all his works;" and if such shall be the consequence, I may surely say unto you, "Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations" (James, i. 2). Yes; fear him not. 66 Could I now cause your eyes to be opened, as Elisha caused the eyes of his servant to be opened that he might see, it is not improbable that you would behold, as he did, " that they that be with you are more than they that be with him." You have |