Page images
PDF
EPUB

ship. They were commonly stricter about the qualification of church membership than scripture, reason, or the practice of the universal church would allow, not taking a man's bare profession as credible, and as sufficient evidence of his title to church communion, unless either by a holy life, or the particular narration of the passages of a work of grace, he satisfied the pastors and all the church that he was truly holy; whereas, every man's profession is the valid reason of the thing professed in his heart, unless it be disproved by him who questions it, by proving him guilty of heresies, or impiety, or sins inconsistent with it.'

ber of a Christian church, than a corpse is to be a dination. They also had their office of lay eldermember of a corporation. I disliked, also, some of the Presbyterians, that they were not tender enough to dissenting brethren; but too much against liberty, as others were too much for it; and thought by votes and numbers to do that which love and reason should have done.' Baxter's candour here is the more manifest, as his connections and opinions were, at that period, more identified with the Presbyterians than any of the other parties. His enlightened views of the distinction between civil and ecclesiastical power, and the absurdity of coercion in matters of conscience, are also strongly and distinctly expressed, though in some other parts of his writings these things are not so happily expressed. Though he was the friend of liberty, yet he seemed at times to be afraid of too much of it.

There are several other things alleged of the Independents, against which Baxter expressed his disapprobation, some of which might or might not be correct. Their principles were unpopular—they were much in the minority-they were deemed ultras in religion-some misapprehended, and others misrepresented, their sentiments-a good deal of his information had been obtained by hearsay—and Baxter, with all his candour and straightforward honesty, was sometimes credulous and rash in his conclusions. Both in spirit and sentiment he approached nearer to this despised sect than he was himself aware of. The above is only a brief specimen of the general outline which Baxter has drawn of the celebrated Assembly at Westminster. Of its general fairness no party have much cause of complaint. His impression of the men who composed it was certainly favourable. For solid learning, fervent piety, zeal for the interests of religion, and concern for the good of their country, there has seldom, if ever, been such an Assembly of great and good men. There were portions of alloy among all parties; but with all these deductions, there was a vast preponderance of excellence. It was a period of great excitement. The best men in the nation felt that much was at stake. Their civil privileges, and religious liberties, had been but recently torn from the fangs of kingcraft and ecclesiastical tyranny a determined appeal had been made to the sword-the elements of society were put in a state of fusion-the social, civil, and ecclesiastical systems underwent an ordeal—the errors and misrule of centuries had to be cleared away— the science of government was but imperfectly learned-but piety and patriotism guided their footsteps in the midst of the paths of judgment, amid sects and schisms, which intimidated the weak, and alarmned the selfish.

Baxter was less friendly to the Independents than to some other of the sects then prevalent. As some of the most powerful minds which figured on the political arena during the commonwealth, were considered, either from religious or political predilections, to lean to this minor party, he very possibly was suspicious of their moderation, if, as a party, they came into power. Many of them, also, were prepared to go further than Baxter in curing acknowledged corruptions, pruning away human inventions from the worship of God, and carrying forward the principles of reformation. He had possibly some jealousy, that some, in their dislike to ecclesiastical tyranny, and others, in their zeal for a purer and better order of things, might run either too fast or too far, and injure the peace of the church, and the tranquillity of the commonwealth; yet the opinions he expresses of this minor section of the Assembly is alike honourable to the candour of the writer, and the character of the man. He says, Most of the Independents were zealous, and very many learned, discreet, and godly men, fit to be very serviceable in the church. In the search of scripture and antiquity, I found that in the beginning a governed church, and a stated worshipping church, were all one, and not two several things; and that though there might be other bye meetings in places like our chapels, or private houses, for such as age or persecution hindered to come to the solemn meetings, yet churches there were, no bigger, in respect of number, than our parishes now. These were societies of Christians, united in personal communion, and not only for communion by meetings of officers and delegates in synods, as many churches in associations; but I saw if once we go beyond the bounds of personal, as the end of particular churches, in the definition, we may make a church of a nation, or of ten nations, or what we please, which will have none of the nature and ends of the primitive particular churches. I saw also a commendable care of serious holiness and discipline in most of the Independent churches; and I found that some Episcopal men, as bishop Usher himself, did hold, that every bishop was independent as to synods; and that synods were not pro-ginated more controversies than ever they have comper governors of particular bishops, but only for their concord.'

He however adds: But in the Independent way I disliked many things. They made too light of or

Much more was expected from the sessions of the Assembly than it was in their power, or that of any other, to achieve. The idol of uniformity was 'cast down, but not destroyed.' A portion of the old leaven' still lurked in the minds of some of these good men. It is very little that large Assemblies have been able to accomplish in composing religious differences; and when they have called in the civil sword to enforce their decisions, they have done infinitely more mischief than ever they did good-ori

posed-made more hypocrites by terror, than cordial believers by love—and given birth to more sects and schisms than they have found it politic to extirpate, or possible to convert.

[ocr errors]

During the interregnum, or period of the com- They are better to be without any, than have you monwealth, the minds of many good men were di- to preach to them.' It is not to be wondered at that vided upon the propriety of past proceedings to the such rude cavalier treatment should have for ever late king, and the present principles of government, severed him from the church of England; and alas well as upon religious subjects and matters of ec- though he neither lusted after her honours nor emoluclesiastical regimen. Baxter had no more friendly ments-for he afterwards refused from Lord Chanfeelings to what he deemed usurpation on the part cellor Clarendon the bishopric of Hereford-yet he of the Protector, than to the despotism and reckless lingered for a season after her altars, and was an ocstretches of arbitrary power in his predecessor, as casional conformist. The two following years of his if a legitimate king had a divine right' to oppress life he spent chiefly in London. He was looked upon his subjects, and establish iniquity by law.' He as a friend to monarchy, and was chosen to preach signed, or entered the submission' to Cromwell and before the Parliament in April 1660, which was the the Parliament; but his predilections were in favour day preceding that on which they voted the king's of monarchy. He had little personal attachment to return. By his years, his intelligence, his standing, Cromwell, and no great partiality for several measures and weight of character, he gave an impulse to the of his government, though, like many others, he returning tide of loyalty to the banished prince of found the most exceptionable of these preferable to the house of Stuart. He soon afterwards preached the state of things subsequent to the Restoration. a thanksgiving sermon at St Paul's, for General He does not appear to have had much confidence in Monk's success. After the Restoration he became the Protector; nor does the Protector appear to have one of the king's chaplains in ordinary, and preached reposed much confidence in him. Through the in- before him once. But Baxter was not a courtly fluence of Lord Broghill and the Earl of Warwick, man. He had too much conscience and principle to he was once brought to preach before him. He get far into the confidence of such a king, or ever chose for his text 1 Cor. i. 10, and expatiated upon to become popular in a profane court. He, however, the divisions and distractions of the church, showing was appointed one of the commissioners at the Sahow mischievous it was for politicians to maintain voy, took part in the conferences, and drew up the such divisions for their own ends, that they might reformed liturgy. He was exceedingly anxious for fish in troubled waters. Sometime afterwards Crom- a comprehension between the church of England and well had a long private interview with him, during the nonconformists. He laboured late and early for which he gave expression to some sentiments which it. He used all his influence and arguments with could not be palatable to Oliver. It was a part of the most unyielding of each party, and with the king his policy to gain and attach influential and talented himself; but it proved labour in vain. They were men by patience and moderation, and probably passed heterogeneous materials-they could not be amalover what was unpalatable to himself in forbearance gamated. Baxter's motives were pure, his intenand dignified silence. At all events, Baxter does not tions were upright; but the ardour of his zeal surappear to have been a favourite or confidential per- passed the soundness of his judgment, in imagining son at the Protector's court. Whatever was objec- that such discordant elements could cordially coalesce. tionable in the Lord Protector's private character or Some of his nonconforming brethren, much inferior public administration, it must be allowed that he had to him in talent, saw the impracticability of such a a difficult part to act. The agitated jarring materials scheme. The king himself never honestly wished, of which the commonwealth was composed, required nor intended it. Sheldon, and several of the bishops, a master mind to ride in the whirlwind and rule the were equally hostile to any alteration in the liturgy, storm.' His discrimination, decision, and the liberal or any concessions to the nonconformists. The policy which he in general pursued, reflect honour whole ended very like a farce; and the king seemed upon his memory, after the heat of party feeling had determined to dragoon his subjects into conformity subsided. This, Baxter was candid enough to con- to the church, or compel them to leave the kingdom. fess. The first fruits of the Restoration were bittter disappointment and grief; the full harvest filled up the drama with the Act of Uniformity, which, like the prophet's roll, was filled with lamentation, mourning, and woe.'

The commonwealth men who had lived under the first Charles, and during the administration of the second Charles, were furnished with ample materials for painful contrast between what preceded, and what succeeded, the portion of civil liberty and religious freedom enjoyed by all parties under the alleged fanaticism and republican usurpation of Oliver Cromwell.

The Restoration banished Baxter from his beloved flock at Kidderminster for ever; but the happy effects of his labours lingered there for more than a century. The Restoration issued in the expulsion of the faithful pastor, and the restoration of the old vicar. Gladly would he have remained among them as his curate; but this, bishop Morley would by no means tolerate, nor allow him, under the wing of the church of England, to labour in any part of his diocese. When he requested liberty to labour in a village that had no endowment, Morley replied,

All Baxter's attempts towards a comprehension having proved abortive, being precluded from labouring near his former flock, and having no stated charge, he preached occasionally in and about London. In order to obtain this liberty, he procured a license from bishop Sheldon, for which he had to subscribe a promise not to preach any thing against the doctrine and ceremonies of the church.' He occasionally assisted Dr Bates at St Dunstan's, and preached sometimes at Blackfriar's. His principles, character, and deserved celebrity, both as a preacher and writer, might have been deemed a sufficient passport for him into any pulpit in Great Britain; but Baxter, now in the maturity of his intellectual and moral vigour,

ried a Miss Charlton, a pious young lady of his native county, not much more than a month after the Act of Uniformity came into operation. It occa sioned a considerable deal of speculation for a time, as did that of Luther the German reformer. This arose chiefly from two circumstances. While engaged in his pastoral labours at Kidderminster, his whole soul was absorbed in his work, and he, perhaps, seldom thought of such an act. He considered the marriage relation as lawful and 'honourable,' though in his own case he for a long time deemed it inexpedient. His remarks upon ministers who saw and acted differently from him, were too free. This afforded some ground for retaliation when he married himself, at the age of forty-seven, a young lady only in her twenty-third year. The disparity of years between Baxter and the object of his choice, fur

after more than sixteen years' faithful service, and unexampled success in winning souls to Christ, and in feeding and ruling the Lord's flock, must be restrained as a suspected heretic newly landed from Rome or Spain, and gagged by pledges to a bishop, as if he were a fierce fiery novice who plotted the overthrow of church and state! Could any thing be more preposterous? Great guilt must fall somewhere, for either restraining or interdicting such a man from preaching the gospel freely, when thousands were 'perishing for lack of knowledge.' He preached a farewell sermon at Blackfriar's in May, 1662. He afterwards retired to Acton in Middlesex, where he usually went to the church one part of the Lord's day, and spent the remainder of it with his family, and any of his poor neighbours who chose to come unto him. The vexations and annoyances to which he was subjected during the rigid reign of | nished some materials for idle speculation and priterror, subsequent to the passing and enforcing the vate gossip. He says himself, that the news of it Act of Uniformity, were neither few nor small. Like rung about every where, partly as a wonder, and most of his brethren, he drank deeply into the bit-partly as a crime; and that the king's marriage was ter cup of persecution. By mulcts, fines, successive imprisonments, spoliation, and loss of goods, he suffered much in body, in mind, and in substance. One of his imprisonments lasted upwards of two years. Yet all these he bore with the equanimity and meekness of a Christian. Even then his active mind was meditating on executing something for the glory of God, the good of the church, or the benefit of his species

The Act of Uniformity, which was passed in May, 1662, took effect on Bartholomew's day, the 24th August following. It naturally awakened painful associations in the minds of many of the best men who ministered at the Episcopal altars. It reminded them of the French massacre which occurred on the same day, when upwards of forty thousand Protestants perished by the hands of the Roman Catholics. That barbarous and sanguinary act formed an arbitrary and gloomy sequel in England to its prototype of Catholic cruelty and French fury. If the one resembled the reckless havoc of Robespierre, the other, equally intolerant in its character, under forms of an unrighteous law, was calculated to wear out the saints of the Most High.' This atrocious deed, chiefly concocted by Hyde and Sheldon, and passed by the British Parliament, led to the ejection of two thousand of the most conscientious ministers of the Church of England, and entailed countless calamities and intolerable grievances upon thousands of the most useful and inoffensive subjects that ever trod the British soil. Of these, Baxter, while he survived, had an ample share. He seldom preached in public but he was surrounded with spies. Rarely could he commend the principles of the common salvation to the consciences of his auditors, or condemn the common vices of fallen humanity, without being taxed with sedition, heresy, and schism. Little relaxation was to be expected, and less was realised, while such a libertine as Charles II. and his infatuated brother, and successor, swayed the British sceptre. It was the revolution of 1688 that brought them effectual relief.

An event of considerable importance occurred about this time in the history of Baxter. He mar

scarcely more talked of than his.' Subsequent to the death of Miss Charlton's father, she and her mother came to reside in Kidderminster before Baxter left it. Her mother seems to have been a pious woman. 'She was a blessing among many of the poor weavers in Kidderminster, and preferred their society above all the vanities of the world. The preaching of Baxter appears to have been blessed to Miss Charlton when about eighteen years of age. She was one of the many fruits of his efficient ministry. She had cause to love him as her spiritual father, counsellor, and friend. They seem to have enjoyed a larger portion of connubial comfort than is common where there is such a disparity in years between the husband and the wife, and when her family and fortune had raised her a grade above her husband in society. Decided piety was the basis and bond of their union. It kindled and kept alive between them reciprocal affection. Her deep-toned devotion, sound discretion, talents, and industry for family management, her services too, and well-timed sympathies with her husband in his various chequered fortunes, proved her to be a fit companion in life to Richard Baxter. She was an eminent blessing to him in his advanced years. They lived together as heirs of the grace of life, and their prayers were not hindered' by internal discord. Like 'Zacharias and Elisabeth, they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless,' as far as the temper of those turbulent times would admit. More than once they were called, for the sake of a good conscience, to take joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing in themselves that they had in heaven a better and more enduring substance.' It does not appear that they had any family. His 'Breviate of the Life of Mrs Baxter' is highly creditable to the piety and domestic character of both. This small volume, which forms a concise outline of the religious character of Mrs Baxter and her mother Mrs Charlton, is not the least valuable of the author's minor productions, and affords an admirable specimen of the stainina and strength of female piety among the nonconformists of old England. In every respect she

[ocr errors]

the Grand Turk, the doctrine of 'passive obedience and non-resistance' and pledge themselves, with the solemnity of an oath, never to endeavour any alter

was a suitable 'help meet for him' during nineteen | ciple, and had faith and fortitude to keep a good conof the most trying and eventful years of his life. science. To be compelled, right or wrong, to worShe soothed his sorrows-tenderly sympathized with ship at the Episcopal altars, when Ichabod was legihis bodily sufferings-softened some of the as- bly inscribed upon thousands of her pulpits-to swear perities of his natural temper-supplemented and eternal and unalterable allegiance to her semi-popish balanced some of his minor defects-shaded his in-service-book-swallow in silence, like the slaves of firmities afforded him every facility to pursue his proper labour and displayed a moral courage in taking up the cross, and cheerfulness in bearing it, every way worthy of the wife of Richard Baxter.ation in the then existing condition of the church and She frequently followed him to jail, and contributed to render his cell a little Bethel, where they frequently had more Christian visitors than in the calm current of every-day life. He says himself, My poor wife made nothing of prisons, distrainings, reproaches, and such crosses; but her burden was most inward, from her own tenderness, and next from those whom she over loved.'

state-such oaths, promises, and pledges, they justly considered as a distinct assumption of the popish principle of infallibility, and on their part as a dereliction of the great principle of Christian liberty, an invasion on the unalienable rights of conscience, and an abject abandonment of their civil duties to their country and posterity as Englishmen. It is not to be wondered that there were then many thousands in Britain who would not bow the knee to this image of Baal, nor, to escape the gloom of a dungeon, worship this golden image' which the king, the intolerant part of the prelates, and a servile Parliament, had been pleased to set up. Baxter was a person of much too tender a conscience to take such an oath. He consulted some of his legal friends upon its implications

submitted some queries as to its bearing, to which he received lengthened replies; but to his mind they proved unsatisfactory. He drew up certain strictures unon the Act,' with a distinct avowal of loyalty to the king, subjection to government where their enactments did not interfere with obedience to Christ, and special reasons for not taking the oath. These he showed to some of his friends, whom he considered better versed in legal matters than himself. They dissuaded him from giving publicity to them, as they would, in all probability, only make bad worse; and that the only remedy which he and his brethren like-minded had, was to bear all with

Baxter drank deeply into the cup of calamity from the period of the Restoration, till the Revolution afforded him enlargement at the eleventh hour.' Through nineteen years of that dark, dreary, perilous period, Mrs Baxter's domestic services and society were an incalculable blessing to him. He, with hundreds more of faithful devoted ministers of Christ, could for a length of time only preach publicly by stealth. Their peaceful and useful labours were viewed by the jealous eye of the church as schism, and by the jaundiced eye of the state as sedition. The Act of Uniformity was soon followed by the Oxford, or Five Mile Act, the principle of which was more fitted for the meridian of Rome or of Spain in the palmy days of the inquisition, or for the abject slaves of an oriental despot, than to the souls and circumstances of free born Englishmen in the middle of the seventeenth century, who had previously tasted some of the sweets of civil and religious liberty under the Commonwealth. The oath ran in the following terms: 'I, A. B., do swear, that it is not law-silence and patience. ful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take up arms against the king; and that I do abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his authority, against his person, or against those who are commissioned by him in pursuance of such commission; and that I will not at any time endeavour any alteration of the government, either in church or state.'

While these intolerant and arbitary principles were carried into effect with relentless rigour, Divine Providence saw meet to visit the metropolis and some parts of the country with severe judgments. The plague raged in London and its vicinity in the most fearful and appalling manner. It commenced at Acton, where Baxter resided, in the end of July, 1665, These sanguinary enactments were designed to and continued till the month of March following. silence every faithful minister of Christ without the Being absent from his family for a time, on his repale of the Church of England, and were calculated turn he found the churchyard in the neighbourhood to grieve every humane and honest-minded man of his dwelling ploughed like a field with graves,' within it. Sheldon, the archbishop of Canterbury, and many of his neighbours numbered with the dead; Seth, the bishop of Salisbury, and chancellor Hyde, but by the protection of a kind providence, he found the accredited directors and keepers of the king's his own family safe, and his habitation uninfected. conscience, obtained the credit of framing and car- He made the Lord his refuge, and the Most High rying through Parliament those despotic principles his habitation,' therefore no evil befel him,' nor did which were long a deep disgrace to the statute book the plague, in an infected atmosphere, come near of Great Britain. Many, or most of the noncon- his dwelling.' The court, and a large portion of the formist flocks 'fainted' for the lack of wholesome pas-conforming clergy, fled, and left their suffering feltures; the waters of the sanctuary had been poisoned, low-citizens and flocks to the ravages of the pestiand agitated from the bottom by the breath of in-lence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction tolerance; and the poor people, hungering and thirst- that wasted at noon-day. Their own shepherds ing for the bread and the water of life, were 'scat- pitied them not.' The moral heroism, however, distered abroad as sheep that had no shepherd.' Spoli- played by not a few of the silenced ministers on that ation and distraint spread in every corner of the mournful and perilous occasion, reflects immortal country where the people possessed a vestige of prin- honour upon their memories. The names of Vin

[ocr errors]

6

6

cent, Chester, Janeway, Turner, and many others, were conspicuous in those labours of love. While the judgments of Heaven were consuming the people by hundreds and thousands, these intrepid men fearlessly stood between the living and the dead,' and 'preached the unsearchable riches of Christ,' that there was still balm in Gilead, and a Physician there' capable, in the prospect and the agonies of death, of healing the hurt of the daughter of the people.' He sent his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions. O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, for his wonderful works to the children of men!' Baxter and his generous partner in life had too much Christian principle in their hearts, and too much of the milk of human kindness in their bosoms, to shun the post of danger and duty in the day of peril, and remain as idle spectators of such heart-rending scenes of human woe. It has been calculated that upwards of 100,000 of the population, on that occasion, fell victims to that dreadful scourge. But when the Lord's hand is lifted up, many of the most guilty are the most blind and obdurate, and will not see; but they shall see, and be ashamed for their envy at the people; yea, the fire of thine enemies shall devour them.'

[ocr errors]

a thing, can have a right apprehension of the dreadfuluess of it.' *

·

These sweeping judgments, and disastrous dispensations, were, to some extent, over-ruled for good. By pestilence and fire the Lord pleaded the cause of his oppressed people, and, under the pressure of public calamity, for a short time set before the silenced ministers 'an open door. The most of the parish churches were burned to ashes, or reduced to a pile of rubbish. The hireling' part of the clergy ‘fled, because they were hirelings, and cared not for the flock,' and for a season simply suspended their hostility. The nonconformist ministers now resolved more than ever to preach to the houseless, homeless multitudes who had escaped' the ravages of the flames with the skin of their teeth,' till they were imprisoned. Their bowels yearned over the multitudes who fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. Several of them, whose names are familiar to the annals of nonconformity, opened their houses, fitted up rooms, some of them erected plain temporary chapels, and booths, &c., to accommodate the people, who, stripped of their all, many of them were anxious to hear the gospel, and seemed disposed to seek indemnification in the unsearchable riches of Christ.' The people had none other to hear, save in a few churches, that could hold no considerable part of them; so that to forbid them to hear the nonconformists, was all one as to forbid them all public worship-to forbid them to seek heaven when they had lost almost all that they had on

The plague had not long subsided till the great fire' broke out in Loudon, on the 2d September, 1666, the ravages of which, for three days and three nights, within and without the walls of the city, spread universal consternation among the people, and entailed untold calamities upon thousands of home-earth-to take from them their spiritual comforts less, houseless inhabitants. Our author, in his Life and Times, gives copious and minute details of these unexampled scenes of devastation and consequent wretchedness. Thus,' he says, 'was the best, and one of the fairest, cities of the world turned into ashes and ruins in three days' space, with many scores of churches, and the wealth and necessaries of the inhabitants. It was a sight which might have given any man a lively sense of the vanity of the world, and of all its wealth and glory, and of the future conflagration, to see the flames mount upward to wards heaven, and proceed so furiously without restraint to see the streets filled with people, so astonished, that many had scarcely sense left them to lament their own calamity-to see the fields filled with heaps of goods, costly furniture, and household stuff, while sumptuous buildings, warehouses, and furnished shops, and libraries, &c., were all on flames, and none durst come near to secure any thing-to see the king and nobles ride about the streets, beholding all these desolations, and none could afford them relief to see the air, so far as it could be beheld, so filled with the smoke, that the sun shined through it with a colour like blood; yea, even when it was setting in the west, it so appeared to them that dwelt on the west side of the city. But the dolefulest sight of all was afterwards to see what a ruinous confused place the city was, by chimneys and steeples standing, only standing, in the midst of cellars and heaps of rubbish, so that it was hard to know where the streets had been, and dangerous, for a long time, to pass through the ruins because of the vaults and fire in them. No man that seeth not such

after all their outward comforts were gone. They thought this a species of cruelty so barbarous, as to be unbeseeming any man who would not own himself to be a devil.' Baxter further adds: 'But all this little moved the ruling prelates, saving that shame restrained them from imprisoning the preachers so hotly and forwardly as before. The Independents also set up their meetings more openly than formerly. Mr Griffiths, Mr Brooks, Mr Caryl, Mr Barker, Dr Owen, Mr Philip Nye, and Dr Goodwin, who were their leaders, came to the city; so that many of the citizens went to those meetings called private, more than went to the public parish churches.' This was only a brief breathing time to those excellent men who had been restrained by gagging statutes, and intolerant enactments, from speaking to the people. The pressure of these public judgments was no sooner alleviated, than the king returned to his guilty pleasures, and the exercise of arbitrary power, which formed his native element, and the High Churchmen to their intolerance and cruelty. Though you should bray a fool in a mortar, with a pestle, among wheat, yet will he not be wise, nor will his folly depart from him.' The degree of connivance shown to the nonconformists and their meetings about that period, arose out of casual circumstances, not from any alteration of the laws, or respect to their property, their persons, or their principles. The attempts at a comprehension, and their failure, discovered the spirit by which the dominant party were actuated; and the Act of Indemnity' seemed more designed for the benefit of the * Life, part i. pp. 98---100.

« PreviousContinue »