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turer of that city, and in 1588 was appointed to the rectory of All Saints. About the same time, or shortly after, his eloquence at St Paul's cross so fascinated John Stanhope, Esq. that by him he was presented to the rich benefice of Bingham, in Nottinghamshire. In 1594 he published a book against a romanist, entitled "The mirror of popish subtilties," and in 1597 he took his degree of D.D. On the accession of James I. he was appointed chaplain to his majesty. The king was so much pleased with a work of Abbot's, entitled “Antichristi demonstratio contra fabulas pontificias et ineptam Rob. Bellarmini de Antichristo disputationem," that he had his own commentary on the Apocalypse bound up with it. In 1606 he published his Defence of the reformed Catholic of Mr William Perkins lately deceased, against Dr Bishop, seminary priest," of which the second part appeared in 1607, and the third in 1609 in the latter year he was elected master of Baliol college, which by his learning and his example, was raised to great distinction in the university. It is recorded of him that he never absented himself from college chapel morning or evening, though the mornings were never so dark or the season never so bitter. This would be little to say of a sound churchman: but in a puritan and a calvinist it was a triumph of personal religion over principles which would have led him to slight a place of worship when only prayers were said, and on any other day than Sunday. Indeed we shall have occasion to remark, towards the close of his life, that Robert Abbot was in many things better than his party and their principles.

Abbot's character is generally reported to have been the reverse of his brother's; the moroseness of the archbishop being tempered by the kindly disposition of Robert; yet, as vice-chancellor of Oxford, his conduct was both unbecoming and unjust. Through the influence of his brother, preferments had been heaped upon him. In 1610 he was made prebendary of Normanton, in the church of Southwell, having been appointed also one of the fellows of Chelsea

college, then newly founded as a school for controver sial divinity; and in 1611 he became regius professor of divinity in Oxford. Although his calvinism was less obtrusive than that of his two predecessors in office, yet he was a strong party man, and, to please his brother, was hurried into conduct which cannot be too strongly censured. Our readers will be surprised to hear that as vice-chancellor, he actually suspended Dr Howson, a grave and reverend divine, one of the Church, who had himself been vice-chancellor of the unicanons of Christ versity, for this notable reason, that in preaching at St Mary's he took occasion to speak of the Geneva (calvinistic) notes on the bible, accusing them as guilty of misrepresentation touching the divinity of our blessed Lord and his office as Messiah, as if symbolizing with the Arians and Jews against them both. Whereupon he was suspended by Dr Abbot, "for some public sermons being less orthodox than they ought to have been." This was rather a strong measure, but he was not contented with one victim: Dr Corbet, "preaching the passion sermon at Christ Church, anno 1613, insisted on the article of Christ's descent into hell, and therein grated upon Calvin's manifest perverting of the true sense and meaning of it; for which he was so rattled up by the repetitioner, not without Abbot's setting on, as it was generally conceived, that if he had not been a man of a very great courage it might have made him ashamed of staying in the university. So dangerous a thing was it to touch at any thing in which Geneva was concerned.

cannot wonder at the rebellion which soon after took place, One when heresies so grievous were so violently maintained at the university, and the religion adapted only for a republican supported.

Dr Abbot's next service to his brother, to whom indeed he owed every thing, was an attack on the celebrated William Laud. The mode of proceeding is thus described by Heylin:

"It happened that Laud, preaching on Shrove-sunday, anno 1614, insisted on some points which might indifferently be imputed either to popery or arminianism, (as about that time they began to call it) though in themselves they were no other than the true and genuine doctrines of the Church of England; and having occasion in that sermon to touch upon the presbyterians and their proceedings, he used some words to this effect, viz. that the presbyterians were as bad as the papists; which being so directly contrary to the judgment and opinion of this Dr Abbot, and knowing how much Laud had been distasted by his brother when he lived in Oxon, conceived he could not better satisfy himself, and oblige his brother the archbishop, than by exposing him (on the next occasion) both to shame and censure, which he did accordingly; for being vice-chancellor for the year, and preaching at St. Peter's upon Easter-day in the afternoon, he pointed at him so directly that none of the auditors were so ignorant as not to know at whom he aimed. Laud not being present at the first preaching of the sermon, was by his friends persuaded to shew himself at St Mary's on the sunday after, when it should come to be repeated, (according to the ancient custom of that university) to whose persuasions giving an unwilling consent, he heard himself sufficiently abused for almost an hour together, and that so palpably and grossly that he was pointed to as he sate; some of the passages of which sermon I shall here subjoin, because howsoever they might bring to him [Laud] some present and personal disgrace, yet they redounded at the last to the great good and benefit of the university.

"Some (said the doctor in his sermon) are partly romish partly english, as occasion served them, that a man might say unto them, Noster es, an adversariorum? who under pretence of truth, and preaching against the puritan, strike at the heart and root of the faith and religion now established amongst us, &c. That they cannot plead they are accounted papists, because they speak against the puritan, but because, being indeed papists, they speak nothing

against them; if they do at any time speak against the papists, they do but beat a little about the bush, and that but softly too, for fear of waking and disquieting the birds that are in it: they speak nothing but that wherein one papist will speak against another; as against equivocation, and the pope's temporal authority, and the like; and perhaps some of their blasphemous speeches: but in the points of free-will, justification, concupiscence being a sin after baptism, inherent righteousness, and certainty of salvation, the papists beyond the seas can say they are wholly theirs, and the recusants at home make their brags of them. And in all things they keep themselves so near the brink, that upon any occasion they may step over to them. Now for this speech, that the presbyterians are as bad as the papists, there is a sting in the speech, which I wish had been left out, for there are many churches beyond the seas which contend for the religion established amongst us, and yet have approved and admitted the presbytery, &c.

"After which, having spoken somewhat in justification of presbyteries, he proceeded thus:

Might not Christ say, (saith he) what art thou, romish or English? papist or protestant? or what art thou? a mongrel or compound of both: a protestant by ordination, a papist in point of free will, inherent righteousness, and the like. A protestant in receiving the sacrament, a papist in the doctrine of the sacrament? What, do you think there are two heavens? if there be, get you to the other, and place yourselves there, for into this where I am ye shall not come.

Whatever may have been the truth of this assertion, the quotation does not impress one with an idea of the Christian temper or gentlemanlike feeling of the vice-chancellor. But censures, the effect of party violence, are seldom injurious to the persons persecuted. The government could be just, though the vice-chancellor was the reverse, and Dr Howson, who had been suspended, became bishop of Oxford, in which see he was succeeded by Dr Corbet,

and Dr Laud received the crown of martyrdom, at the hands of the puritans, as archbishop of Canterbury. The reader will be probably interested with the account of the university of Oxford at this period, which is given us by Heylin in his life of archbishop Laud.

"Know then, that Mr Lawrence Humphrey, one of the fellows of Magdalen college, being deprived of his fellowship there in queen Mary's time, betook himself to the city of Zurich, a city of chiefest note amongst the Switzers, remarkable for the preachings and death of Zuinglius; from whence, and from the correspondence which he had at Geneva, he brought back with him at his returning into England on queen Mary's death, so much of the calvinian, both in doctrine and in discipline, that the best that could be said of him, by one who commonly speaks favourably of all that party, is, that he was a moderate and conscientious nonconformist. Immediately on his return he was by queen Elizabeth made president of Magdalen college, and found to be the fittest man (as certainly he was a man of very good parts, and the master of a pure Latin style) for governing the divinity chair, as her majesty's professor in that faculty; in which he continued till the year 1596, and for a great part of that time was vice-chancellor also. By which advantages he did not only stock his college with such a generation of nonconformists as could not be wormed out in many years after his decease; but sowed in the divinity schools such seeds of calvinism, and laboured to create in the younger students such a strong hate against the papists, as if nothing but divine truths were to be found in the one, and nothing but abominations to be seen in the other. And though Dr John Holland, rector of Exeter college, who succeeded Humphries in the chair, came to it better principled than his predecessor, yet did he suffer himself To be borne away by the violent current of the times, contrary in some cases to his own opinion.

And yet as zealous as Dr Humphries shewed himself