refusal. It was found solely among the persons who had been implicated in the late conspiracy.' Among the recusants were Sir T. More and Bishop Fisher, who were sent to the Tower.

Half measures were now at an end, and a Royal order was issued that from all prayers, rubrics, canons of mass-books, and all other books in which it could be found, the Pope's name should be erased. The bishops were required to instruct their priests, and the priests the people, and the people their families and each other, on the cause of separation from Rome, that the nation might be informed accurately and faithfully of the grounds on which the Government had acted.'

'The ordnance stores were examined, the repairs of the navy were hastened, and the garrisons were strengthened along the coast. Everywhere the realm armed itself for the struggle, looking well to the joints of its harness and to the temper of its weapons.'

Outside the purely political aspect of the subject before us there are three persons who figure prominently in the events we have had under review Henry, Catherine of Arragon, and Anne Boleyneach of whom has caused much discussion, and been the subject of sympathy or otherwise according to the prejudice of the person or party interested in the subject. Anne has been the heroine of the Protestant party; and partly on account of her personal beauty and tragical end, and partly on account of her having been the mother of Queen Elizabeth, has always evoked the most sincere sympathy from all English people favouring the Reformation. Catherine has been the heroine of true Catholics, who have recognized in her the most exalted virtues a woman can possess, and seen in the treatment she received the most consummate cruelty, inflicted with barbarous persistency and relentlessness: while Henry himself has been hated alike by Protestants and Catholics, having been considered the common enemy of each. And no doubt there are, in his dealings with each party, circumstances calculated to foster such feelings. That during the early years of his reign he was one of England's most popular kings no one will doubt. That this popularity was owing to something more than his handsome person, his cultivated mind, his clear intellect, his consummate business ability, and his open affability, is equally clear. The fact is he was a true, generous, brave Englishman; he was a wise and lenient ruler; he sympathised with every pastime, as well as with every graver pursuit, of his subjects, and made himself the father of his people, who, in return, called him 'good King Hal.' Had the divorce never turned up and divided the nation, Henry's name to-day would have been fragrant with the sweetest memories; as it is, his character and deeds are capable of a very different construction from that usually put upon them, and which will relieve

them of the odium which generations of prejudice and misrepresentation have heaped upon him.

Take, for instance, the case of the divorce, and we shall find that a very easy explanation of his motive in seeking it has been offered and popularly accepted, namely, that he had grown tired of Catherine, and had set his heart on Anne Boleyn. This answer may satisfy those who desire it to be so, but will not satisfy those who study carefully the history of our country, and want to get at the truth. It has been already shown that, over and above the theological question of the Pope's ability to dispense with what was believed to be a Divine law, which disturbed Henry very materially, and over and above all personal feeling in the matter, the political necessity for the divorce was most pressing, and was thought by the most eminent statesmen, the most exalted churchmen, the most learned divines, and the most pious saints of the day, to be an absolute necessity, if the peace of the country was to be preserved and a war of succession avoided. Even the Pope's Legate who was trying the cause in England said, 'It was mere madness to suppose that the king would act as he was doing merely out of dislike to the queen, or out of inclination for another woman.'

For Catherine all persons must have the most sincere sympathy, though we may deplore the persistency with which she refused to listen to the advice of all parties, and the antagonism in which her firmness placed the chief actors in the cause. She was not an Englishwoman either by birth or sympathy, and her stern, unbending nature would never allow her to make a sacrifice so great as that which the Pope urged upon her, namely, to retire into a convent and allow Henry to marry again in peace. The attitude she at first assumed she maintained to the end. Her court became the centre of intrigue and treason, and had Henry been the blood-thirsty man usually represented, very easily could he have collected evidence which would have convicted her and her daughter and every member of her household, and thus ended the divorce in blood. But the government was bent upon forbearance; and with an ample allowance, a sufficient establishment and unrestricted liberty, this unfortunate, haughty, virtuous and queenly woman, passed the remainder of her days. In 1536, just as the dark shadows were gathering round her rival, she breathed her last, and Henry, who had learnt by this time to prize her virtue, was much affected, ordered the Court into mourning, and had her buried with royal honours.

The early years of Anne Boleyn were passed in a Court whose moral tone was decidedly low. When but a child, seven years old, she went to Paris, and remained there for nine years to become accomplished in the graces, if not contaminated with the vices of

X

that Court, and while there she could not fail to see and hear many things calculated to weaken any fine sense of virtue she possessed. On her return to England in 1525, she became maid of honour to Queen Catherine, and was distinguished at Court for her talents, accomplishments, and beauty. To the Court of England she transferred many of the light and questionable graces imbibed at Paris. She accepted the attention of many admirers and was actually contracted or bethrothed to young Lord Percy. About the time the King was seeking for a divorce from Catherine she became the subject of his Majesty's attention, and from that time during the six years following was looked upon as England's future Queen. Her position, though one in which the King never desired her to surrender her personal honor, was one of extreme delicacy, in which she did not acquit herself with credit, and in which she betrayed a coarseness hardly to be expected from one so beautiful and talented. After years of weary waiting she obtained the prize she had striven so hard to gain; all went well for awhile, but in 1536 rumours got afloat that the Queen was suspected of grave inmoralities both before and after her marriage. The Privy Council was making secret investigations; several arrests had been made, and those arrested had made confessions of guilt; the Queen was sent to the tower; Courts were constructed and her accomplices tried and executed for treason against the King. Then came the trial of the Queen herself, before a Court composed of many whose interest it was to find her 'Not Guilty' of the foulest crimes which stain human nature; this, however, they could not do, and sentence of divorce and death were passed, and in due time carried out with all the relentlessness of that iron age. The Parliament which assembled soon after confirmed the judgment; declared Elizabeth illegitimate and cut off from the Succession; and gave Henry power to dispose of the crown by will.

Mr. Froude, after stating the case at considerable length, and weighing the probabilities for and against the queen, says: "Turning to the positive facts which are known to us, we have among those which make for the Queen her own denial of her guilt; her supposed letter to the king, which wears the complexion of innocence; the assertions of three out of five other persons who were accused up to the moment of their execution; and the sympathising story of a Flemish gentleman who believed her innocent, and says that many other people in England believed the same. On the other side we have the judicial verdict of more than seventy noblemen and gentlemen, no one of whom had any interest in the death of the accused, and some of whom had interests the most tender in their acquittal; we have the assent of the judges who sat on the Commission, and who passed sentence, after full opportunity of examination, with all the evidence before their eyes; the partial

confession of one of the prisoners, and the complete confession of another, maintained till the end, and not withdrawn upon the scaffold.'

We have thus traced the political aspect of the great struggle which issued in the Reformation. We have seen how intensely Catholic the country was at the commencement of the sixteenth century, and how at the death of Queen Anne a complete political separation from the See of Rome had been effected; how the king was now supreme head of the Church of England; how Parliament had undertaken to dictate to Convocation and deal with the property of the Church; how the Commons had begun to correct abuses in the ecclesiastical courts, and laymen were fast rising and shaking off the terror and superstition which generations of Papal teaching had foisted upon them.

The measures passed by the Parliament of 1529, though by no means aimed at the spiritual overthrow of the Papacy, rendered that overthrow possible when the proper time came, and, in fact, laid the foundation deep, broad, and strong upon which statesmen, divines, and moralists in after years reared that splendid edifice now known as the REFORMATION.

JOHN GAIR.

THE

ART. II.—MATTHEW HENRY.

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THE late Andrew Fuller says somewhere that in attending to written lives those narratives should be selected which represent persons who were distinguished by unerring wisdom-for gifts, graces, and usefulness. If we accept this counsel, then there is perhaps no one whose life is more worthy of our consideration than that of the subject of this paper. It will not, indeed, be attractive to those who are interested merely by what is striking and romantic in human conduct; but there are many who will turn from the contemplation of the doings of statesmen and warriors to a life of quiet goodness, of prayerful study of the Word of God, and unwearied labour for the salvation of men's souls, with a refreshment of feeling such as one has often experienced in leaving the busy haunts and crowded thoroughfares of life for some scene of rural beauty and repose. His Exposition of the Old and New Testament, which as a popular commentary has never been, nor is ever likely to be, surpassed, has, moreover, made him a friend and counsellor to many who, nevertheless, know little of the religious life and experience of which it was the fruit. An acquaintance with the facts of his life cannot fail, we think, to augment our interest in his writings, and make them a source of greater light and joy to the soul.

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Matthew Henry was born October 18th, 1662, at Broad Oak, a farmhouse situate in the township of Iscoyd, in Flintshire. His father, Philip Henry, M.A., was as distinguished for learning and piety as his illustrious son. His mother also was a woman who united to superior mental gifts a cheerful and active piety. He remarked that in her sphere and capacity she was not inferior to what his father was in his.' The year of his birth was memorable as being that in which, by the Act of Uniformity, his father and about two thousand other ministers, the most learned and pious of the clergymen of the Church of England, were driven from their homes and flocks and prohibited from preaching the Word of God. His persecuted parents had, indeed, after their ejection from Worthenbury, just settled at Broad Oak when his birth took place. He was baptized the following day by Mr. Holland, the rector of Malpas. Mr. Henry desired him to omit the sign of the cross; but, its indispensableness being urged, he replied, 'Then, sir, let it lie at your door.' Matthew Henry was thus a connecting link between the old Puritans and the modern Nonconformists. Born in a season of trouble, he was destined, however, to exercise his ministry in more peaceful days. His mind began very early to manifest its vigour and acuteness. He could read, it is credibly stated, distinctly and with understanding at three years of age. Under the careful training of his father and a Mr. Turner, afterwards Vicar of Walburton, he advanced rapidly in his early studies, applying himself to them with such closeness that his mother, afraid that his health would suffer, was often forced to call him out of his closet, and advise him to take a walk in the fields. Writing to his father, then in London (when Matthew was only nine years old), he says:- Every day since you went I have done my lesson, a side of Latin, or Latin verses, and two verses in the Greek Testament. I hope I have done all well, and so I will continue till you come.' This letter, the first specimen of his epistolary writing, evinces also the early bent of his mind to religion. Referring to tidings which had been communicated respecting one of his relatives, he says:- By this providence we may see that sin is the worst of evils, for sickness came by sin. Christ is the chief good; therefore let us love him. Sin is the worst of evils; therefore let us hate it with a perfect hatred.'

The hopes which his precocious talents and application awakened were, however, soon afterwards almost blighted. He was seized in his tenth year with a lingering fever, which was for a time so violent as to induce daily fear of his death. But his parents trusted in God, and called upon Him in the day of trouble. His father, not forgetting the counsel he gave to others- that weeping should not hinder sowing-attended as usual to the duties of his ministry. At a time when hope was almost gone he left home to fulfil a