United Kingdom, the same version, without a single interruption, has continued to be the Bible of Great Britain and Ireland, or wherever the language is spoken.

In looking back, however, from the commencement, even down to this period, it must be very evident, that no space whatever is left for self-complacency. No inhabitant of Britain can now say, that the Revelation of the Divine Will was received by his forefathers generally, with any ready or cordial concurrence. On the contrary, the point to which the Sovereign disposer of all events had now brought our country, was precisely that with which he had begun so long before. It was the Bible, but without note and comment, which was now at last received, whether in England or Scotland; but, then, such had been the original movement of Divine providence. This it was, which Tyndale had laid down to Henry the Eighth, as the sole or exclusive terms of combat, above one hundred and twenty years ago! Through the medium of his Word, the Almighty had been striving with the nation ever since, and "the long-suffering of God had waited, and long it had waited, as in the days of Noah."

The season and circumstances, therefore, in which this general consent took place, it would be criminal to overlook, or ever forget. The event was one of moment to unborn generations, and every one must be eager to mark the time. Both the season and circumstances, it is true, may be humbling to our national vanity, but for this we have been fully prepared; after having had such frequent occasion to observe, that independence of human authority, patronage, or power, has been one distinguishing feature of this history throughout. By far the most remarkable display of this, however, was reserved to the close. There was a moral significance, others will say sublimity, in the season chosen. It was at a crisis altogether sui generis, when God, by his providence, as all agree, was speaking loudly to every corner in Great Britain and Ireland.

It was at a period when there was no earthly throne in the island to invoke; no King in Britain to enjoin such consent. It was when there was no primate of Canterbury, or St. Andrews, to enforce it, or any House of Lords in being. Even the office of "Licenser of the press" had been abolished, nor must the existing legislature of the day for once interfere. No voice of human authority was raised, when a nation, in other respects

greatly divided, became of one consent, and a consent unbroken to the present hour; nor did any one thing in which man was then engaged, concur to produce an effect, then first felt by the whole kingdom, and since enjoyed for nearly two hundred years!

In those unprecedented and tumultuous times, certainly the main consolation of those who feared God, and loved the Scriptures, must have run in very much the same channel; and perhaps at no preceding era in this country, had they more frequently closed their mutual communications in the same expressive terms-THE LORD REIGNETH. But we who live, though at such a distance, can now see this event in greater perfection, as by far the most conspicuous proof that He did reign, as still He does. It was the solitary eminent public occurrence, which was to admit of no mutation for two centuries to come.

The kingdom itself may yet be moved, from its centre to its shores, and be greatly agitated. The civil power may change its aspect. The monarchy may be restored, only to be dealt with providentially, as the Pontiff had been. The line of succession may be broken, and the existing dynasty even be banished from the soil. Yet better days are coming, and no weapon, though employed by a future Sovereign, shall prosper against the Bible of his subjects: though among the causes of removal from his crown and kingdom, should hostility to the Sacred Volume be discovered, this is not to be buried in oblivion amongst other provocations.

THE HISTORY OF

THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

BOOK V.-GREAT BRITAIN.

From the Commonwealth to Queen Victoria.

SECTION I.

THE COMMONWEALTH TO GEORGE III.

BRIEF SURVEY-DOWNWARD PROGRESS OF THE STUART DYNASTY-OPPOSITION AT HOME INEFFECTUAL-LEAGUE, IN WHICH EVEN THE PONTIFF AND GERMANY CONCURRED AND ASSISTED-THE LINE OF SUCCESSION IN BRITAIN BROKEN-THE REVOLUTION OF 1688-9-PRECEDING OPPOSITION TO THE SCRIPTURES BY JAMES II., AN ADHERENT OF THE OLD LEARNING -CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION-STATE OF THE BIBLE PRESS IN ENGLAND CANNE'S BIBLE-GUY'S BIBLES-BASKERVILLE'S-BLAYNEY'S BIBLE-STATE OF THE BIBLE PRESS IN SCOTLAND-JAMES II. EQUALLY BUSY IN OPPOSITION THERE-THE NUMBER OF BIBLES IS NOW PAST ALL HUMAN COMPUTATION-THE RESULTS, IF BUT TOO FEEBLE IN BRITAIN, MUST BE LOOKED FOR ELSEWHERE.

HIS period, extending to one hundred and thirty years, from 1650 to the twentieth year of the reign of George the Third, or 1780, involved many changes in the sovereignty of the kingdom, namely—

The new title given to our native land we have not before employed, but since, after a season of misrule and depression, occasioned by its own sovereigns, it was about to assume a position quite worthy of its name, it becomes the more appropriate. By the way, it is nothing more than a vulgar mistake which ascribes the invention of this title to the first of the Stuarts. Before that James had set his foot in England it had been mentioned by a monarch of far superior powers. In the month of August 1601, it was expressed, and perhaps not for the first time, by the lips of Elizabeth herself, in conversation with Rosny, afterwards Duke of Sully, when she disclosed such views of Continental politics as filled even him with astonishment, and, of course, such as were far above the comprehension of James the First. "Neither the whole, nor any part of these (Low Country) states need be coveted," she said, " by either herself, the King of France, or the King of Scotland, who would become one day King of Great Britain."

Glancing back for a moment at the commencement of the Stuart dynasty, though there was some expression of apparent momentary interest by James I., in reference to the Scriptures, as this was never followed up by any substantial or recorded proof of continued zeal, it was ominous of all that followed in the times of his son and grandsons. That king, it is notorious, in his latter years, had discovered a decided leaning towards the gentlemen of "the old learning ;" and, at all events under the successive reigns of his descendants, we witness such neglect in the printing and publishing of the Sacred Volume, not to say open contempt; that if the eye has once fixed on this history throughout, one cannot help anticipating the approach of some great national crisis. What were dignified with the title of “public affairs” had frequently in this kingdom, before now, been treated as subordinate to one other. Among the elements of our national changes, it is true, any reference to the Sacred Oracles, though first given to us after such an extraordinary manner, has seldom, if ever, found a place. And yet, in reference to the Scriptures in the language of the people, a contrast is forced upon us between the house of Tudor and that of Stuart. The princes of the former, from Henry to Elizabeth, had been overruled, and to this they submitted—those of the latter were at last banished from the soil. Among the

"It surely ought not to have been forgotten that it was Queen Elizabeth, herself, who gave to that prospective empire the name of Great Britain."-See Miss Strickland's Elizabeth, vol ii., pp. 271-272.

impelling causes of this final step, the treatment of the Divine Record may have had more to do than has hitherto been observed. But the state of the kingdom first demands our notice.

One of the earliest indications of the downward progress of the Stuart kings became very evident, in their contributing so plentifully to emigration from the entire kingdom, whether to the American colonies or even to Poland, where about thirty thousand families from Scotland had taken up their abode. This might operate for a season as a safety valve, but in the end the entire kingdom was but ill at ease.

In the course of the reigns of Henry VIII. and two of his children, the deliverance of this country from foreign mental despotism had been accomplished and prolonged, through the sovereign disposer of all events. Yet, after this, Britain was to suffer at the hands of her own kings. Not only religious but civil liberty were to be alike in jeopardy, and amidst the perils of the nation at that period, he must be blind as a sceptic who cannot distinguish the hand of Providence raised in favour of our country once more. It wears much more of the character of a final measure, or finishing stroke, than any thing which had occurred in the days of Henry VIII. The despotic power of monarchy had then been overruled in favour of our first deliverance; but now, if Britain is to be favoured with a race of constitutional monarchs, limits must be set to the power of the monarchy itself. A period being fixed for abolishing absolute power in the temporal order, as had already been done in what was styled the spiritual; it was at last glaringly evident that the princes of the house of Stuart were not the men who could ever be moulded to any such desirable end. But if, in order to confer on this already favoured kingdom the consolidation of its liberties and welfare, there was not sufficient power within its shores, then what was to be done? The whole of the adjoining continent itself must be moved. For sooner than Britain shall not inherit her greatest national blessings, namely, civil and religious liberty, even the power of Rome itself, from which she had withdrawn, or against which, others would say, she had rebelled, nay, and that of Romish votaries with whom Britain was at variance, shall not be wanting to concur in establishing her government on a far more solid, and even on an unprecedented basis. Nothing is more worthy of observation in the Revolution of 1689 than this, and especially when it is once remembered that the prejudices of the last two Stuart kings were so recklessly in favour of " the old learning." How the last, especially, would have rejoiced in bringing back the nation to the days of Mary the First, or even of her grandfather, Henry the Seventh! The prejudices and infatuation of these two monarchs, however regretted by some authors, were the preludes to that memorable change which was