N.B.  In the above I speak of the Bishops as men interested in a litigated estate.  God forbid, I should seek to justify them as Christians.

Ib. p. 369.

  ‘Quaere’.  Whether in the 20th Article these words are not
  inserted;—­’Habet Ecclesia auctoritatem in controversiis fidei’.

Strange, that the evident antithesis between power in respect of ceremonies, and authority in points of faith, should have been overlooked!

Ib.

Some have published, That there is a proper sacrifice in the Lord’s Supper, to exhibit Christ’s death in the ‘post-fact’, as there was a sacrifice to prefigure it in the Old Law in the ‘ante-fact’, and therefore that we have a true altar, and not only metaphorically so called.

Doubtless a gross error, yet pardonable, for to errors nearly as gross it was opposed.

Ib.

  Some have maintained that the Lord’s Day is kept merely by
  ecclesiastical constitution, and that the day is changeable.

Where shall we find the proof of the contrary?—­at least, if the position had been worded thus:  The moral and spiritual obligation of keeping the Lord’s Day is grounded on its manifest necessity, and the evidence of its benignant effects in connection with those conditions of the world of which even in Christianized countries there is no reason to expect a change, and is therefore commanded by implication in the New Testament, so clearly and by so immediate a consequence, as to be no less binding on the conscience than an explicit command.  A., having lawful authority, expressly commands me to go to London from Bristol.  There is at present but one safe road:  this therefore is commanded by A.; and would be so, even though A. had spoken of another road which at that time was open.

Ib. p. 370.

  Some have broached out of Socinus a most uncomfortable and desperate
  doctrine, that late repentance, that is, upon the last bed of
  sickness, is unfruitful, at least to reconcile the penitent to God.

This no doubt refers to Jeremy Taylor’s work on Repentance, and is but too faithful a description of its character.

Ib. p. 373.

A little after the King was beheaded, Mr. Atkins met this priest in London, and going into a tavern with him, said to him in his familiar way, “What business have you here?  I warrant you come about some roguery or other.”  Whereupon the priest told it him as a great secret, that there were thirty of them here in London, who by instructions from Cardinal Mazarine, did take care of such affairs, and had sat in council, and debated the question, whether the King should be put to death or not;—­and that it was carried in the affirmative, and there were but two voices for the negative, which was his own and another’s; and that for his part, he could not concur with them, as foreseeing what misery this would bring upon his country.  Mr. Atkins stood to the truth