desire to secure the quiet and conformity of her papal subjects, than to promote the purity of religion, and bring it back to a pure Scripture standard. They felt that the Queen's exercise of power in these things was purely arbitrary, and, therefore, to be resisted by the servants of God, on the ground that we ought to obey God rather than men. They began to see and feel that subjects owe no obedience where kings and princes have no right to command; and that God himself not only allows, but requires in subjects disobedience to kings, when the edicts of kings contravene the word of God. And John Knox began to maintain the position "that if kings refuse to reform religion, inferior magistrates and the people, being instructed in the truth by their preacher, may lawfully reform within their own bounds, themselves." There were many other points of disagreement between the Court Reformers and the stricter Protestants. But these are sufficient to indicate the nature of them all, and the importance of the principles for which the Puritans were contending. In the above-mentioned things we see what it was that aroused their minds and consciences, and what caused to spring up in that day the grand debate which drew after it, and into it, the great questions of the limits of civil and ecclesiastieal power, and of religious freedom-a debate in which the Court Reformers were so fairly, yet so manifestly beaten in the argument. But when vanquished in the argument, the Queen and her Reformers had other resources upon which to fall back-power was on their side; and, therefore, the Reformation was settled upon the principles of the Court party, and they carried out their views and measures with decision of purpose and great rigor of execution-going even beyond the authority of the laws enacted in their favor, and inflicting censures, fines, imprisonments, and inquisitorial oaths, to such degree as wrung the heart of the nation in pain and affliction, and wore out the patience of the saints of the Most High.

When Scripture argument failed to influence the Queen and her Court party, the Puritans petitioned for indulgence-protesting loyalty to the Queen and the civil laws-but asking not to be required, upon pain of civil penalties, to observe in the worship of God things which, in their candid view, were sinful. But their petition was rejected; and the Queen and

[June, Court Reformers took the ground that the Puritans should not be allowed to think for themselves as to matters of the Queen's prerogative, and the rites and ceremonies which she had ordained; also, they required the Puritans to confess under oath that her claims of spiritual power, and everything in the prayer-book, and her injunctions, were agreeable to the word of God, and such as refused to make the confession were deprived of place and license, and thrown into prison. These rigors caused ministers and people to forsake their parish churches, and meet in private places for God's worship. The Queen attempted to compel their attendance at the parish churches, by fines and imprisonments. But they denied the authority of the civil power to command in such things, and insisted that a, superior regard was due to the word of God above what was due to the will of the Queen in these things. Parliament interposed, and made efforts to give relief to the Puritans by law. This alarmed the Bishops and offended the Queen, and caused her to strain her prerogative and strike a blow at the freedom of Parliament. "Many of its members were aroused by her course-had a brave spirit of liberty awakened in them, and many free speeches were made." But the Queen triumphed-carried things her way-and sent these speakers to the Tower. Though the hearty sympathies of the House of Commons was with the Puritans, the Queen and Court party held the power through the upper House, and prevented legislation contrary to their views, and made the Puritans suffer the full extremity of the legal penalties for non-conformity. But these severities against men of pious and holy lives raised the compassion of the great mass of the common people, and brought them over to the interests of these persecuted men, and led them to resort to their prisons, and, standing in the streets, hear them preach the Gospel through prison bolts and bars, and many people of rank encouraged them in it. The more stringently the Queen had the penalties of non-conformity inflicted, the more did the people of all ranks sympathize with them and espouse their cause, until the Queen was made to realize that the hearts of her subjects were becoming alienated from her. And, though much chagrined and mortified over this fact, she relaxed nothing and conceded nothing to her Puritan subjects, and asserted

and exercised all her high powers in the Church to the last. She was nothing deterred nor diverted from her purpose to keep the Church in subserviency to her will and pleasure, by the way the Lord oftentimes and so manifestly turned her hands against herself, and made her stringent measures for enforcing conformity signally efficacious in defeating her aim, and in increasing the numbers and influence of the party whom she was laboring to extinguish. Though her efforts to coerce conformity did but have the effect to drive the Puritans to the establishing of separate communions, and to extend prophesyings over the country, and increase Scriptural knowledge among the people, and establish private presbyteries and assemblies for the recovering of the discipline of the Church to a more primitive standard, she never swerved from her purpose, and in the face of the great and decided revolution which was rapidly progressing in the knowledge and sentiments of her people, "she refused to permit prophesyings and assemblies for reading the Scriptures, and all things else tending to invite free inquiry after truth-being of opinion that knowledge and learning in the laity would only endanger their peaceable submission to her absolute will and pleasure. (To be Continued.)

ART. VI.-The True Mission of the Church.*

GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND BRETHREN OF THE SYNOD:

On entering, in this formal manner, upon the duties of the office to which I have been appointed, under the sanctions of the writing which I have subscribed in your presence, I may

*This article is an inaugural address, delivered in Paris, Kentucky, May 2, 1863, before the Synod of Kentucky and the Board of Directors of Danville Theological Seminary, on the induction of the author into the office of Professor of Church Government and Pastoral Theology in that institution.

be allowed to say that this is one of the most solemn moments of my life. To be called to take part in instructing the rising ministry of the Gospel, to be called to this work by the supreme judicatory of the Church, and to assume the obligations which such a position imposes at a time when the overturnings among the kingdoms of the earth betoken the near approach of the Son of Man with power and great glory, serve to invest the occasion on which we are assembled with peculiar interest to me; and in all this I doubt not I but share the sympathies of this venerable synod, in the bosom of which the General Assembly has established one of the seminaries of the Church, for whose prosperity your prayers, and labors, and contributions have been so well and so freely bestowed.

The department of instruction assigned to me in this seminary that of Church Government and Pastoral Theologycomprehends what more immediately enters into the current experience and duties of the Church in the actual and constant working out, in real life, of Jehovah's grand designs of mercy for men. From this stand-point it has been termed the department of Applied Theology, to which the Exegetical, the Dogmatic, and the Historical look forward, in a measure, as their end. In this view, nothing can be more important than the general subject-matter which this department embraces, nor more weighty than the responsibility which it imposes. To attempt the work of instructing those who are to become instructors of the people; in the preaching of the Gospel, both in the matter and manner of the service, and in conducting all parts of the worship of the Lord's house, so as to fulfill his gracious designs of saving, out of all people, his own chosen ones, and holding forth "this Gospel of the kingdom in all the world for a witness unto all nations;" in the pastoral watch and care of the Church, composed of imperfect, erring men, in the midst of an ungodly world, so as to preserve "the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace," reaching the salutary ends of all discipline in the edification of true believers and the severance of the profane and reprobate; and in the exercise of the functions of government in all the courts of the Church, from the parochial through the presbyterial and synodical up to the general assembly of the whole body, so as to promote love and concord, and the preventing or healing of schism,

and maintain the body of Christ intact "in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God," in order "that they all may be one," and that thereby "the world may know," as Christ declares they should, that he is sent of the Father, and that his Church bears a testimony to which all men should give heed; all this is a work which no man should covet, and from which any one may justly shrink. In undertaking this work, at the call of the General Assembly, I can only cast myself upon the indulgence of my brethren and upon the grace of God.

General custom, as well as the manifest proprieties of the case, suggest that I should engage your attention with some theme connected more especially with the department com. mitted to my care. Dr. Blair, in his elaborate work on rhetoric, when classifying the several kinds of public speaking with reference to their object, puts down "inaugural orations" in the category of those "which aim only at pleasing the hearers." But in such a service and in such a presence as this, something higher should be attempted. If my aim be not to instruct these venerable fathers and brethren-with whom, for such a purpose, we might well change places-the occasion on which we are convened may justly lead us all into regions of contemplation, and to communion upon themes which have a far nobler aim than to afford a momentary pleasure.

If the Scriptures are a revelation from God, no duties which are imposed upon men are more solemn in their execution, more glorious or awful in their results, and, at the same time, none may be discharged with a more cheerful spirit and bring a higher reward, than those which fall to the lot of the ministers of Christ. They are the gatherers, the guardians, the instructors of his blood-bought Church. And as no other society on earth, nor all mankind besides, can bear any comparison with this spiritual body for importance in the world or to the world, as doing even the generations of the ungodly unspeakable good; and as nothing else which God has made or done in all the eternity of the past, so far as revealed to us, for setting forth his glory, either among men or before the principalities and powers above, may vie with what he is unfolding through the successive ages of his Church, and will consummate in the end; so the true body of Christ, in all its