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been an open, honest, noble face, remained bent steadfastly over the open page.

To any one who may question the perfect modesty and humility of this attitude of Anne Ascue's, which had at the same time something of the half-sublime, half-foolish daring of youth, I might say that she was by this action vindicating the right which the King had granted to the humblest of his subjects to read the English Bible, and asserting her own innocence in the deed which she performed thus publicly. It may be also that, in spite of the warning she had received, she fancied that she, a woman and a lady, could challenge a denial of the people's right with less danger than must have been incurred by a man or a person of meaner station.

The particulars of Anne Ascue's different trials are contained in notes furnished by her in the intervals of her examination, and preserved by Foxe.*

Anne Ascue was arrested in March, 1545, and examined before Christopher Dare, in Saddler's Hall, on her belief as to the sacrament. Occasionally she refused to answer, or met the questions by a counter question; as when she was asked if she did not believe that the sacrament hanging over the altar was really the very body of Christ—when she replied with another inquiry, wherefore was St. Stephen stoned to death? And when her examiner said he could not tell, she declared that no more would she "assail his vain questions." But for the most part her answers were direct-even when they were strongly tinged with disdain. Thus when he said there was a woman who did testify that Anne Ascue "should read how God was not in temples made with hands," and she showed him chapters vii. and xvii. of the Acts of the Apostles, what Stephen and Paul had said therein. Whereupon he asked her how she took these sentences? And she replied, "that she would not throw pearls before swine, for acorns were good enough."

The result was that she was carried before the Lord Mayor and subjected to further cross-questioning, some of it marvellously foolish. "Besides that my Lord Mayor laid one thing to my charge," Anne records,

But unquestionably Anne Ascue was not left without clear evidence of the end to which course was tending in the reaction against the Protestants with which Henry VIII.'s reign was closing in England, and in the heat of the persecution of the Reformers, under the regency of Mary of Guise, in the sister kingdom of Scotland. Fearful tragedies which were not done in a corner could not but have come to Anne's knowledge, and been loudly discussed in her hearing. Two heretics, according to what even most English Catholics regarded as the heresy of denying the Real Presence in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, were burnt to death in Lincoln in 1540, when Anne was twenty years of age. In 1541 Patrick Hamilton, of such rank that" which was never spoken of me but by he was nephew to both Arran and Albany, was burnt before St. Salvador's College, St. Andrews, and the smoke of such a burning did not fail to be wafted swiftly to smart in the nostrils of the English Reformers. Patrick Hamilton's sister Katherine was arrested and had nearly shared his fate. It was only after making various concessions and by receiving special favour that she escaped. In 1545 George Wishart-like Hamilton, of gentle birth, and who had studied for a time at Cambridge, was burnt to death at St. Andrews, and in fierce revenge St. Andrews Castle was stormed and Cardinal Beatoun slain.

The same year saw the beginning of Anne Ascue's public prosecution, when she was still not more than twenty-four years of age. With Henry's breaking health, vacillating spirit and jealously irritable temper, power had passed largely into the hands of the Roman Catholic party led by Wriothesly and Rich, the Lord Chancellor, and the Solicitor-General, and by Bishops Gardiner and Bonner, with the six Articles which formed a statute against heresy for them to go upon.

them, and that was whether a mouse eating the host received God or no? This question did I never ask, but indeed they asked it of me, whereunto I made them no answer but smiled." Next Anne states, "The bishop's chancellor rebuked me, and said I was much to blame for uttering the Scriptures; for St. Paul, he said, forbade women to speak or to talk of the word of God. I answered him that I knew St. Paul's meaning as well as he, which is in 1st Corinthians xiv., that a woman ought not to speak in the congregation by way of teaching. And then I asked him how many women he had seen go into the pulpit and preach? He said he never saw any. Then said he ought o find no fault in poor women, except they had offended the law."

The end was that Anne was put in ward in the Compter and kept there eleven days,

I should like to quote what Mr. Froude, as an impartial witness, says of these notes: "These were printed by Foxe; though he does not say by what means they came into his hands, there is no reason to believe them forgeries; and the utmost value which can belong to internal evidence must be allowed to their unaffected simplicity."

with no friend admitted to see her, but a priest sent to speak with her, to get into her confidence, and to bring her to a better frame of mind. With him, for the most part, she refused to have any communication, either apprehending treachery or heartsick of the endless altercation. When he put it to her whether she were content to be shriven, she told him yes, so that she should choose the priest, naming several whom she said she knew to be men of wisdom, and one of whom at least was then notoriously on the reformed side in the great religious schism. "As for you or any other," she added courteously, "I will not dispraise, because I know you not." But when he pressed his claim on the ground that if he were not honest the King would not suffer him to preach, she rejected it unceremoniously, quoting, with less prudence than liveliness, from the Proverbs of Solomon: "By communing with the wise I may learn wisdom, but by talking with a fool shall take scathe." Indeed it is plain that Anne Ascue, in her sincerity and unworldliness, was careless to recklessness as to making friends or enemies.

In the course of her first imprisonment occurs the only mention of a relation coming to her aid: "On the 23rd of March," she writes, "my cousin Brittayn came into the Compter unto me, and asked me whether I might be put to bail or no?" And this cousin faced personal risk, and exerted himself to the utmost to procure her release. She could not be "bailed" without consider able difficulty, so she was brought before the Bishop of London (Bonner) and a whole company of doctors and bachelors of divinity, including several persons who were friendly to her. Indeed Mr. Froude is of opinion that Bonner himself was so far influenced in her favour as to desire to treat her well, and even to try to furnish her with a loop-hole by which she might escape the consequences of her convictions. He said he was sorry for her trouble, and he did not insist on an explanation when she replied only in the words, "I believe as the Scripture doth teach me," to different questions put to her on her faith. Certainly he asked her—as it reads, ironically, why she had so few words? When she answered, with a bright

However, Burnet says, " 66 great applications were made by many of her friends to have her out on bail.'

flash of her ready woman's wit, "God hath given me the gift of knowledge, but not of utterance; and Solomon saith that a woman of few words is the gift of God." But she incensed him at last by observing, after he had read to her the paper which he had drawn up for her to sign, and which was neither more nor less than a confession of her belief in the Real Presence in the sacrament-an important part of the creed held by the orthodox of the time, "I believe so much thereof as the Holy Scripture doth agree unto, wherefore I desire you that you will add that thereunto." He protested that she should not teach him what he should write.

In the sequel Anne, who, with all her courage and the grace given her, stood there a young and sorely tried woman, was, as she says, "inveigled" by the audience to set her hand to the declaration. She was told that she had favour shown her; and the bishop asserted, with apparent roughness, that she might thank others, and not herself, for the favour that she had found at his hand, for he considered that she had good friends, and also that she came of worshipful stock.*

And

So, partly persuaded, partly coerced, she wrote the manifest evasion-"I, Anne Ascue, do believe all manner of things contained in the faith of the Catholic Church." Anne writes that Bonner, "at the words, 'the Catholic Church,' flung into his chamber in a great fury." He was followed by her cousin Brittayn beseeching, "for God's sake, to be a good lord unto the prisoner." The bishop said she was a woman, and he was nothing deceived in her. On which her defender pled that he might take her as a woman and not set her weak woman's wit to his lordship's great wisdom. And after some further apology, the judge was appeased.

Mr. Froude thinks that Bonner may have suffered the evasion to pass, and may even have entered into his register that Anne Ascue had made an adequate profession of belief, rather as an act of forbearance towards her, than as a deed of deliberate treachery against the Reformers. Be that as it may, and he can have the benefit of the doubt, after a little more wearing delay and anxiety, Anne Ascue was, as she records with devout thankfulness, "delivered," but not for long.

This reads as if some of Anne's nearer kindred were at this date moving in the dark on her behalf.

THE

THE DIVINE YOUTH OF NAZARETH.*
By J. R. MACDUFF, D.D.

HE sunrise and bright morning of the Great Divine Life were now merging into noontide-those still, peaceful hours which precede the burden and heat of the day.

Did the dawning conviction that Jesus was the Son of God and the Messiah of Israel make Him love less His home and His calling, His relatives and friends at Nazareth?

Oh, what a beautiful example for youth, this Heavenly, heaven-born child-obedient, dutiful, loving, submissive as ever-looking up still with fond filial reverence and devotion to those who stood to Him in the most sacred of earthly relations, "He was subject unto them." Subject too, I may add, to Mary, not as she is sometimes falsely represented as "the Queen of Heaven," with the moon at her feet, and a cluster of stars round her brow, but Mary the lowly mother of a lowly earthly home.

I think Joseph must have died soon after this. If so, I have no doubt the first tears which Jesus, wearing our human nature, shed would be over the grave of one who had proved so good and kind to Him. A great painter has touchingly represented Joseph laying his head on the bosom of the youthful Saviour at the moment of his death.

We can certainly conclude that He would continue still at His trade in order to support His widowed mother. I like to dwell on this picture of Jesus before He began His great public work, being a comfort to her who had loved Him so long and so tenderly; speaking dutiful words to her, and doing little acts of kindness for her. Yes, I like much to think of Him thus, for eighteen years (more than half of all the time He spent on earth) living in this quiet home among the green hills, while good and gentle to every one, devoted specially to His best earthly friend. As the Christian poet says

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* We have pleasure in informing our readers that this

paper will be found in a forthcoming Life of Christ for the
Young, under the title "Brighter than the Sun: or, Christ
the Light of the World" (J. Nisbet and Co.). The following
headings of the different sections will give an idea of the
freshness of treatment-"Early Dawn," Morning,"
tide," "Meridian Brightness," "Gathering Clouds," "Even-
ing Shadows," "Gleams before Sunset," Night Watches,"
Midnight," "The Great Sunrise," "Dawn of the Eternal
Day."-ED.

"Noon

glory! How honoured, too, the workingman in every town and every village on earth who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, that the Saviour of the world-the great "Son of the Highest "-came and lived, not in halls of splendour, but toiled as a carpenter; living for about twenty years the simple life of a tradesman among the peasants of Syria, shaping planks and oars, preparing timber for floor and roof and lattice-chips of wood lying about the cottage door-the drops of labour standing on his brow!

Does He not wish to teach all, young and old, that it is a good thing to work and a bad thing to be idle? I was reading a book not long ago, called "The Dignity of Labour.” Jesus, by His life at Nazareth, wrote surely in golden letters, the brightest and best page in that book. Never need any boy or girl be ashamed of a humble and lowly occupation, when they know that Jesus, at one time, stooped to do rough common work.

And I would like you further to note that He continued in the trade He had been brought up to, and was contented and happy in it. There are many who would like to be in some other place and lot than God has given to them. Not so the Divine Son of Mary. He did not say to His mother, "I dislike all this hard toil in this dusty street. Knowing my future high destiny, I should like to go back to the Temple and live with the Doctors and Rabbis there, and join in the solemn worship. I would feel far more than I can ever do here, that I am in my Father's house, and about my Father's business. Or, if that be impossible, I should like better some other trade. I should like to be a shepherd, like David; to go out with the flock, and climb unese beautiful hills all day long; or, under some spreading tree, or by some joyous brook, warble sacred strains on the shepherd's pipe. I should like thus to live in the great sanctuary of nature among the wild flowers, and feel the cooling breeze this dull ungenial workshop." fanning my temples. Anything rather than

No, He felt that the Heavenly Father He loved had placed Him there, and in this, as in everything else, He sought to do His Father's will. Although called afterwards "The Man of Sorrows," I doubt not these must have been happy years to Him in Nazareth,-loving His Father in heaven, and being good and gentle to all about Him.

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