It is no wonder, therefore, that Humphreys wrought himself into a most patriotic resolution, no longer to submit to tyranny and priestcraft, and to vow that the next time the Doctor admonished him, he would retort with "Ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi."

People who resolve to speak their minds, seldom wait long for an opportunity. Farmer Humphreys's zeal for the holy covenant, which he was a.s.sured confirmed these privileges, not only induced him to take it himself, but to insist on his carter, Jobson's, subscribing to it also.

Not that he intended the blessed panacea should work a similar change in the situation of Jobson, who, he discovered, was predestined to hard work and hard fare; but, as the good cause might want an arm of flesh in its defence, the muscular strength of the ploughman, like that of the ox, would help to drag the new ark into the sanctuary. For this purpose, he carefully concealed from Jobson the latent privileges and immunities that were vested in these cabalistical words, nor did he think it any infringement of his principles to inforce by his own behaviour the abominable doctrine of pa.s.sive obedience, and to insist that Jobson should either become a covenanter, or quit his service, and forfeit his wages. Jobson had once heard the _rigmarole_, as he called it, read over, and by a strange perverseness of understanding, fancied these indentures of faith and unity, to be no other than binding himself to the Devil, to pull down the church and curse the King, and he preferred persecution and poverty to such servitude. As he resisted all Davies's attempts to enlighten him, and met his master's threats with a stedfastness which these friends to liberty called contumacy, the alternative was dismissal from his present service, without any remuneration for his past.

He applied to Justice Morgan for redress, who, anxious to disprove the suspicions that were circulated of his disposition to favour disorganizing principles, enjoined Jobson to obey his master, and reproved him for thinking that his soul could be endangered by following the example of so many great men, who had taken the covenant. It inopportunely happened, that at this moment Jobson recollected a sermon of Dr. Beaumont's, against the sin of following a mult.i.tude to do evil, in which every man's responsibility for his own offences, and the attention of Omniscience to individual transgressions, were ill.u.s.trated by proofs drawn from the minute watchfulness of Providence, which superintends the heedless flight of the sparrow, and adorns the lilies of the field with more than regal magnificence. In reply to Morgan's enumeration of the Dukes, Marquisses, Lords and Squires, G.o.dly Ministers and staunch Common-wealth men, who had taken the covenant, Jobson shook his head, and said, none of them would answer for his soul. "I heard,"

said he, "last Sunday in church, that all the Princes of a great nation worshipped a golden image, and three men would not, so every body went against these men, and threw them into a burning furnace. But the men were right after all in the end of the story; and so, please Your Worship, I'll not sign the Devil's bond for any body."

Davies, who was present at the examination, now remarked that Jobson had not only forfeited his wages as an hireling, by his disobedience to a believing master, but deserved to be committed for slandering the holy covenant; and Morgan, though he knew this had not yet been made an offence by statute, yet relying on the temper of the parish, the ignorance of the culprit, and the protection he would be sure to meet from a faction, whose violence had driven the King from his capital, and usurped the government, made out a Mittimus. Some remaining sense of justice, and a dislike of oppression when exercised against one of their own rank, induced the peasants to shew their disapprobation. A crowd collected around Morgan's door, determined to exercise their rights and to rescue the prisoner. The tears and cries of his wife and children had just roused them to the a.s.sumption of that summary mode of vengeance, so gratifying to an English mob, when the appearance of Dr. Beaumont suspended their fury. The long-formed a.s.sociations of habitual reverence were not so intirely abrogated as to allow them to continue their riotous conduct under the influence of that mild eye, which had often silently reproved their faults, or that benevolent countenance, which had pitied their wants, and confirmed their virtues; they stood in suspence, involuntarily waiting for his opinion.

Dr. Beaumont severely condemned their misconduct in taking justice into their own hands, and a.s.sured them he would use all proper means for the liberation of Jobson. A confused murmur arose, as he entered the house.

Some wondered if he knew that Morgan was his enemy, supposing that, if he did, he never would have objected to their breaking his windows; others said that the Doctor and Davies would now have it out. Davies had often said the Doctor was a Babylonish trafficker in works, an Alexander the copper-smith; and they wondered what names the other would invent.

All were amazed how he dared venture among them, as they wanted something on which to accuse him to the new government.

Personal safety, and a regard to his own peculiar contests, were the last things that suggested themselves to the mind of Doctor Beaumont.

Forgetful of the injuries and insults he had received, he addressed his opponents with graceful manners, and in conciliatory language. He requested to know what was Jobson's offence, expressing a hope that it was of such a nature as to admit of his urging the extenuating plea of his former good conduct.

Many voices spoke at once. Humphreys exclaimed, that he had disobeyed his orders, and was an eye-servant. Davies said, that he had dared to speak slanderously of the holy covenant. Dr. Beaumont declared himself an enemy to slander and disobedience, but in order to afford a pretext for the commitment of Jobson, Humphreys must shew his commands were strictly lawful, and Davies that the covenant was holy.

Both answered at the same time. The powerful lungs of Humphreys enabled him to thunder out, that the time was now past when he cared for the Doctor, that he knew he was as good as he, would do as he liked, and ere long meant to shew him he had the best right to the glebe, where he would no longer moil and toil for a caterpillar, that fattened on his labours. The shrill pipe of Davies issuing from his meagre form in a still higher key, insisted that the covenant was our only defence against malignant men, and evil counsellors, Arminians and Jesuits, and that if this G.o.dly bond was trampled on, the nation would be overrun with popery and formality.

When his antagonists, in striving to drown each other's voices, had mutually exhausted their powers of utterance, Dr. Beaumont answered, that since temporal endowment was no essential mark of a true church, but rather an adjunct springing out of a right feeling in the public for their spiritual advisers, the depriving him of his emoluments by the strong arm of power, would not degrade him from the office to which he had been divinely appointed. "It will, therefore," said he, "friend Humphreys, be always my duty to advise and a.s.sist you, and if you violently deprive me of what the most ancient of our laws has made mine, the necessity of my interference to convince you of your fault will become more evident. As for the wonderful efficacy which our neighbour Davies attributes to what I consider as a mere party-engagement, I must observe that popery received a blow from the labours of our first reformers, which would ere now have proved mortal, had not the divisions and subdivisions, the schisms and sects, that have originated in the importunate spirit of puritanical objectors, afforded leisure and security for the Hydra to heal her deadly wounds. In the early part of the reign of our late Queen of glorious memory, the Papists generally attended their several parish-churches, listened to our Liturgy and services with devotion, and seemed in a fair way to be won over by the moderation and decency of our worship. But the intemperance of those who, for the merest trifles, quarrelled with the establishment, who rejected even apostolical usages, because they had been practised by the catholics, who, instead of allowing Rome to be a church in error, denied that its followers could be saved, and thus raised the dark cloud of schism against the sun of the reformation; their rashness, uncharitableness, and fastidious scruples, in purifying what they owned to be non-essentials, have, I say, imped the dragon's wings, and placed the scarlet abomination, as ye call it, in a tower of strength, which the artillery of your covenant, lighted as it is by the flame of treason and civil commotion, can never overthrow.--The champions of these sects in the reign of Elizabeth, countenanced by that most flagitious courtier and tyrannical governor, the Earl of Leicester, accused Hooker, the great bulwark of the Protestant cause, of leaning towards popery, because he refused to consign the souls of our ancestors to perdition; and a most uncharitable outcry was raised against a Bishop for the same bias, because he trusted that the grandmother of our good King would experience the mercies of our Saviour, on whose merits, in her last moments, she declared she relied.--Thus did these ill-advised persons, by a breach of that charity and unity, which Scripture every where enjoins, prevent the Protestant church from exhibiting the surest marks of Christian verity. Instead of alluring people to come out of the mystical Babylon, these most lamentable divisions and controversies about trifles have driven thousands into the perilous labyrinths of a persuasion, which admits no difference of opinion, or into the yet more dreary dungeons of Atheism, whose most formidable objection to our faith, is the ill blood which it foments. Never have these enemies to G.o.d and man made such progress, as since the time when spiritual pride, turbulence and ambition, united under the name of perfect reformation, to pluck down an edifice constructed in moderation, defended by the doctrines, beautified by the labours, and cemented by the blood of its founders."

The fiery zeal of Davies would not permit Dr. Beaumont to finish his harangue. "And ye planted in your edifice," said he, "a poisonous scion, an abominable branch of the tree of evil; but our friend Humphreys speaks not unadvisedly, or at peradventure. Your Anti-christian bishops are all sent to prison; they are caged vultures, jackdaws stripped of their Babylonish trappings, their robes and square caps, their lawn formalities, their hoods and scarfs, and mitres, and crosiers, and thrones, by which these Diotrepheses lorded it over the faithful, and made the land stink with idolatries which Scripture forbids. But the blood of that Popish inquistior, Laud, will soon flow on the scaffold, and be a cleansing stream over a foul garment; and with him episcopacy shall be coffined up and buried without expectation of a resurrection."

"It is strange," observed Dr. Beaumont, "that the Papacy should rejoice at his degradation, and consider his present sufferings as a judgment upon him for composing a treatise which exposed their fopperies with a strength of reasoning to which their most able divines know not how to reply."

Morgan here interposed, and, with a smile of condescension, advised Dr.

Beaumont to reflect on his own situation, and consider his temporal advantages and personal security. He spoke in praise of his learning, benevolence, and inoffensive conduct, and desired him, by a timely conformity to the prevailing doctrines, to avoid being implicated in the ruin of a falling church.

"A true branch of the Catholic church," replied the Doctor, "may be shaken, but cannot fall, because it has the promise of resisting the attacks of the powers of darkness to the end of the world. But you mistake me, Sir, if you suppose that policy was the schoolmaster who taught me my creed, or that I will desert that Church in adversity who fed me with her bread, and graced me with her ministerial appointments.

The pastoral office she intrusted to me may be wrested from my grasp by force; my body may be imprisoned, my goods confiscated; you may drag me to the flames, like Ridley, or to the scaffold, like Laud, but you cannot change truth into falsehood, or make that right, which, though successful, is intrinsically wrong. Whether the doctrines of the Church of England be branded as those of a declining sect, or set by the throne as a light to guide our hereditary Princes, they must be tried by other criterions than popularity, I mean, by reason, Scripture, and apostolical usage. I trust she will ever have sons equal to the task of defending her, men uncorrupted by sensuality when she basks in sunshine, undaunted by danger when tempests threaten her destruction. And with all your boasts of making this land a Zoar and a Zion, I will tell you that you will never make it the Jerusalem which is at unity with itself and therefore meet for the residence of the Holy One, until it shall please 'G.o.d to bless the common people with sense to see that there is such a sin as schism, and that they are not judges what schism is.' Peace is not promoted by yielding to captious objections, but by subduing the spirit, which is more p.r.o.ne to dispute than to obey. Those who dissent from us say they only crave liberty, but when the church is overthrown they will find that it is the spirit of domination which they mistook for zeal in the cause of freedom. This will make every sect strive for pre-eminence, and the hatred they now shew us will, if we are subdued, be diverted from a superior whom they cease to fear, to equals whom they wish to depress; the anarchy and discord they will then experience will lead the moderate and well-informed to remember with regret the mild government of the deposed church."

"How, Sir?" said Morgan; "do you defend a church that has ever been a determined enemy to liberty, an ally to tyrants; a church that has vindicated forced loans and ship-money, and a.s.serted those popish doctrines, pa.s.sive obedience in the subject, and infallibility in the sovereign, dividing mankind into despots and slaves? All men are born free and equal; and he, who taxes my fortune, restrains my conscience, or confines my person without my leave, or, which is the same thing, against those laws to which I or my representative have consented; is my enemy and a tyrant, whom I may treat as Jael did Sisera. But you Episcopalians say, 'Oh no, the persons of Kings are sacred, and they can do no wrong;' so it follows that subjects are slaves whom they may crush, and trample, and grind as they please."

"Part of these doctrines," replied the Doctor, "are not held merely by the Church, but form a branch of that ancient const.i.tution of the kingdom which no subsequent acts of the whole legislature can change, without, at the same time, endangering the safety and property of every individual. Much less can they be legally infringed by a packed junto of men, calling themselves the House of Commons, but in which, according to your own system, not a tenth of the nation is nominally represented. As to the inference you draw from what I call the fundamental principles of our government, prove that the Anglican church holds them, and I will allow her to be an ally of despotism; but you shall bring your proofs from her canons, articles, and liturgy, not from the servants of court-chaplains, or the flatteries of those who forget the priest in the sycophant. Wolves and worldlings creep into every church. The apostolic age had its Demas, and ours has its Williams. Remember it has its Andrews too. But since your principles of freedom will be best exemplified by your practice, I trust you will recollect the case of Jobson. He has neither by himself, nor by his representatives, consented to the Covenant; and his equal and free rights allow him to reject it.

No ordinance has yet made it law; and the liberty of conscience you require for yourself will not allow you to force it upon him as gospel, seeing he cannot think it so."

Davies, whose extravagance had been checked by the admonitory frown of Morgan, took advantage of the dilemma to which Dr. Beaumont's application of his own principles had reduced him, and renewed his deafening declamations, to which (as neither argument nor fact were regarded, and the length of the harangue depended on his bodily strength,) the attention of his hearers might be dispensed with.

Humphreys endeavoured to impress his neighbours with an idea of the advantages that would result from supporting the Covenant. "It was better than the law," he said, "because if any one came upon them for taxes they had only to go to a brother-covenanter, and be he a peer or parliament-man, he was bound to support them." Davies, in the mean time, turning up the whites of his eyes, raved against so carnalizing a spiritual bond as to apply it to the protection of temporal goods.

"This," he said, "was making the gospel a post-horse to ride their own errands; stopping the entrance of an oven with a King's robe royal; and making a covenant with Heaven a chariot and stirrup to mount up to the height of carnal and clay projects. By the Covenant," added he, "I am enabled to preach the true gospel in spite of my persecutor in a surplice, who would starve the lambs with formality, and forbid me to feed them. He that opposeth me hath in his dwelling idols of wood and stone, and painted symbols of men and women whom Antichrist made saints, and Pagan books treating of false G.o.ds, and moral treatises without one word of saving faith in them, and musical instruments, and Jewish contrivances; and he goes into his study, not to wrestle with the Spirit, but to consult the evil one; and then he goes into the steeple-house, and, instead of the milk of the word, pours ladles-full of leaden legality among ye, till ye all look like his own dumb idols, instead of faithful souls overflowing with illumination."

This specimen of Davies's oratory is sufficient. The tumult he excited allowed Morgan to put in practice a safer plan than that of committing Jobson to prison, namely, to remove him privately to Hull, where Sir John Hotham was raising men for the service of Parliament, and he thought the threat of sending him to the plantations would prevail on him to enlist. Affecting, therefore, to be convinced that the liberty of a brother-man should be respected, he tore the warrant for Jobson's commitment, and ordered that he should be set at liberty. Jobson, however, could not be found. It was suggested that he had probably run away during the confusion; and Dr. Beaumont returned home, hoping his interference had been of some use.

[1] Several pa.s.sages in this and the next chapters are extracted from fanatical sermons on public occasions.

CHAP. VI.

He could not bear the slightest mention of the incorrigible guilt of the nation without dissolving into tears; especially when he happened to advert unto the impudence of that hypocrisy which reconciled goodness and villainy, and made it possible for men to be saints and devils both together; whereby religion became ruinous to itself, and faith became instructed to confute and baffle duty.

Bishop Fell's Life of Dr. Henry Hammond.

Morgan could not soon forgive the insult of being contradicted and confuted when seated on the magisterial bench; nor could Davies pardon the attack on the holy Covenant, and the principles on which it was founded. They jointly determined, therefore, to take the first opportunity of exciting the villagers to acts of violence, that might either provoke Dr. Beaumont to some step on which an accusation to Parliament might be founded, or drive him away through fear for his personal safety. A public rejoicing was ordained on account of the fleet's declaring against the King; and Morgan's liberality to the populace spread a general intoxication through the town, which Davies hoped, at such a good time, might be overlooked.

Since the death of Mrs. Beaumont the Doctor had mixed little with the world, seeking, in his library and clerical functions, that calm tranquillity and self-sustained content which const.i.tute all the earthly enjoyment that remains to a heart that has once been happy. The late ungrateful, rebellious behaviour of his flock tended still more to circ.u.mscribe his pleasures; yet though the painful feelings of rejected kindness and undeserved contumely made his village walks and sacerdotal functions a penance instead of a gratification, he considered the probability of disappointment as no apology for relaxing his endeavours to do good. The morning and evening sacrifices were offered in the temple; the ignorant were instructed, the bad reproved, and the decent commended with his wonted zeal and meekness, though only his own family and dependants joined in his orisons, though the foolish and the guilty laughed at his exhortations, and the well-disposed could derive no stimulus to perseverance from his praise. Satisfied with labouring faithfully in his vocation, the good man committed his cause to G.o.d, and found, in the refreshing recollections of self-satisfaction, and in the calm repose that followed a hara.s.sing day, spent in the performance of his manifold duties, a reward which might be termed a foretaste of heaven.

He had many true enjoyments of which the malice of his foes could not deprive him; such were, the steady affection of his sister, the gradual improvement of his daughter, and the philosophical and literary regale which his library afforded. The contests to which he was exposed, when he went out, rather grieved than irritated him; and he returned to his books and experiments to raise his spirits, not to allay the ferment of his pa.s.sions. He cared little for exteriors; he knew his body could subsist without the vanities and luxuries of the world; and he depended on the promise, that the righteous should not be utterly forsaken.

During his seclusion from society, he had cultivated and improved the powers of that never-dying mind which was destined to expatiate for ever amid the unveiled glories of creation, and to enjoy, after its probationary trials in this laborious world, a Sabbath of endless rest.

Mrs. Mellicent often advised him to remove from this disaffected neighbourhood, and seek the protection of the King's quarters; but Dr.

Beaumont always strenuously insisted, that the period of his usefulness on his present station must not be determined by himself. The conversation was renewed on the night appointed for rejoicing, when the riotous exultation of the villagers disturbed the tranquillity which used to reign at the Rector's fire-side. "Fear," said he to his sister, "magnifies danger. At present, nothing has happened to prevent my continuing where I am now fixed in the cure of souls; and when my Master prescribes my dismissal, he will send some awakening providence that shall indicate his will. Report magnifies every thing, especially the foul language of our enemies, and often changes dissensions into feuds.

I know not how long my residing here may be useful to others, nor whom I may yet be able to reclaim, by shewing that I can bear injury and encounter opposition without renouncing my own principles, or calumniating my opponents; but this I know, I am labouring at my post like a faithful subject, and had all men done the same, our good King would not now have been seen s.n.a.t.c.hing his meal under a hedge like a common mendicant, nor would the great seal of England have had to be secretly carried to him like the booty of a cut-purse.

"The King's quarters, my dear Mellicent, will be filled with those court-flies who fed on the goodly vine till they had sucked all its juices, and, now winter is come, care not for its nakedness, but seek some covert where they may skulk till summer returns. You and I should make a notable appearance among those who call splendor, life; and subtlety, knowledge; we could neither speak their language nor enter into their views.--While we pined with desire to see the beauty of holiness restored, and the King's throne re-erected in judgment, they would be moaning for their masques and revels; for the royal grants and largesses; for their past enjoyments and present privations.--Or, perhaps, they would be scheming how they might creep into the confidence of the Parliament, while we wept the desolation of Zion. When the Church reposes in safety, gladdened by the favours of her spiritual bridegroom, let her officials then fear lest a worldly spirit should seize on them unawares, and convert them into hirelings more intent on the wages than on the service. Our enemies say such have been the effects of the long prosperity we have enjoyed; if so, a purifying fire must go forth among the sons of Levi. The dross will be consumed, but trust me, Mellicent, our venerable mother will rise like a phoenix, not consumed, but renewed and consecrated by the ordeal of adversity."

Mrs. Mellicent here reminded him, that he had other ties beside that of a Christian pastor, and she pointed to the young Constantia, who, overcome with watching, had fallen asleep in the great wicker-chair.

"Look at that girl," said she; "consider her warm heart, and melting sensibility, her unusual beauty, delicate frame and tender years.

Surely, brother, she wants a father, as much as the Church of England a friend."

Dr. Beaumont turned his head, recollected his lost Alicia at that age, and thanked Heaven that she had "safely pa.s.sed the waves of this troublesome world." "Had Rogers or Taylor, my dear sister," said he, "been drawn to the earth by such a magnet, we should have lost those shining examples of true fort.i.tude, and should have gone on, still stumbling in the darkness of papacy.--The torch of truth was kindled at the penal fires which consumed the martyrs, and its light illuminated distant ages and nations. He who bears the sacred character of amba.s.sador of G.o.d should constantly remember that all other t.i.tles yield to its glorious superiority. It was the boast of the church of Rome, that her clergy acted not as individuals aiming at their own benefit, but as a compacted body actuated by one impulse and towards one object, the advantage and supremacy of the church. For this end they fed the poor at the convent-gates, the monastery was an asylum to the afflicted, and the middle orders were conciliated by that lenient treatment which procured them respect as mild masters and most indulgent landlords. At a time when tyranny and rapacity reigned in the castle, the clergy were a chain binding the great to their inferiors. We know by what unnatural restraints the Romish clergy were made thus superior to private interest, but let us not give them cause to say, that celibacy is necessary to prevent the man of G.o.d from becoming a man of the world.

The ties of nature which he owns in common with others, must not supersede those duties which bind him to his congregation. He does not profess, like the priest at ma.s.s, to be a mediator between G.o.d and man, but he pleads to the rich in behalf of poverty; to the powerful for those who require protection. He instructs the indigent to be grateful; he stops the arm of oppression; he curbs avarice, by reminding it of the state where riches avail not; he comforts affliction, by proving that temporal distress, however great, may be supported. Our calling requires us thus to preach, and shall not our lives be a living comment on our doctrines? Shall our conversation prove that our unsanctified hearts are devoted to sensuality and aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, that we hold the censers with unhallowed hands, and in reality love the riches and pleasures which in our pulpits we affect to renounce."

"You have wandered from the subject, my good brother," said Mrs.

Mellicent; "I was not talking of riches and pleasures, but of preserving a father for a poor girl, who, if any evil befall you, will have no protector. It is a long time since we heard from the mountains, and Isabel's last letter gave no hope that poor Evellin would ever be able even to take care of himself. She says that their dwelling is comfortable, their farm equal to their support, and that the disturbers of the world have not got among them. She writes cheerfully, but her writing is much altered. I was thinking we might take shelter there whenever those awakening providences, which my forebodings tell me are at hand, shall compel you to own that you are discharged from the care of ungrateful Ribblesdale."

The conversation was interrupted by Dame Humphreys, who rushed abruptly into the house, lamenting that things should come to this pa.s.s, and conjuring his reverence not to think any of her family were concerned in it. It was with difficulty that her agitation permitted her to state, that a mob bent on mischief were coming to the rectory; whether the house or the life of the pastor was threatened she could not discover, but the purport of her visit was to put them on their guard. A riotous crowd, inflamed alike with liquor and fanaticism, is a formidable object to the most determined courage; but escape was now impossible, and remonstrance would be utterly unavailing; there was only time to put up the slight fastenings to the doors and windows, which, as they corresponded to the peaceful and unsuspecting character of the owner of the mansion, could not long resist the infuriate attack of the besotted populace.

But their rage was pointed at another object, the Doctor's library, which was placed in a detached building in the garden, and fell an undefended sacrifice to their rage. The voice of Davies was heard, encouraging the destruction of a treasure which he had long envied, and the flames soon afforded him sufficient light to point out the objects of his particular abhorrence to which his ignorance gave false or exaggerated descriptions. A cast of Apollo destroying Python, he termed Moses and the brazen serpent, and named himself the Hezekiah who would break it in pieces and call it Nehushtan. "See, my Christian brethren,"

said he, "how truly I spake when I called this slumbering watchman, this dumb dog, a worshipper of idols of wood and stone. This is his oratory; but instead of a G.o.dly laboratory which should turn carnal lead into spiritual gold, what see we but provocatives to sinful thoughts. Here are no sackcloth and ashes, camel's hair and leathern girdles; this prophet's chamber has its silks and sattins, stuffed cushions and curtains, screens and wrapping gowns. The walls are hung with paintings of fair Jezebels, whom he calls Mary and Magdalen, though it is well known, they were G.o.dly women, who never braided their hair or put on gorgeous apparel. See you that bust? It represents Diana of the Ephesians, the very Diana who endangered Paul's life; and did I not rightly call this malignant priest Alexander the copper-smith? And here are necromancing figures," (taking up the Doctor's mathematical exercises,) "squares and triangles, and the sun, moon and stars, which Job said he never worshipped.--And here is that unrighteous Babylonish instrument, an organ, which proves he is either a Jew or a Papist, as none but the favourers of abominable superst.i.tion make dumb devices speak, when they might chaunt holy psalms and hymns with their own voices. And here are similitudes of Nero and Domitian, b.l.o.o.d.y persecutors, my brethren; which shews that he loved tyrants, and would have made us fry a f.a.ggot, had not the light of my preaching broke in upon his darkness, and made him like a rat with a bell, a scarecrow to the unconverted. Touch not his books, dearly beloved, they will prove the Devil's bird-lime, teaching you to despise my G.o.dly ministry; they will teach you nothing but Pagan fables or Romish ceremonies. Can Aristotle preach the Gospel? Do those church-histories tell us about saving faith? I tell you nay; therefore burn them altogether, and break the idols in pieces, and tear away the paintings, and demolish the Jewish instruments that send forth sounds of levity when the player upon them is disposed to provoke his hearers to wanton dances and vain mirth.

So let us purify the place with fire, that the slumbering watchman may be awakened to a consideration of his offences and learn to repent," &c.

&c.

An harangue so well adapted to inflame the minds of a drunken mob, produced a destruction as complete as Davies could desire, in whose mind zeal had produced a similar intoxication. At this instant Mr. Morgan arrived with a band of constables to protect Dr. Beaumont and his property. As the rescue came too late, the magistrate conceived it to be his duty to reprove the rioters, and dismiss them with an a.s.surance, that if ever they again presumed to let their holy joy at the prosperity of the good cause stimulate them to actions which the law did not justify, he must resort to severer measures than censuring their misconduct. He then advised them to go quietly to their own houses, and as it was their first offence, he would endeavour to soften their behaviour to the commissioners whom Parliament had appointed conservators of the peace of the county.

He now inquired after the health of the family, sent in his service to the Doctor, and expressed his intention of coming in to comfort him in his misfortunes. Every drop of Mrs. Mellicent's blood rushed into her face at the effrontery of his proposal, and the familiar terms in which it was couched; but her brother begged her to consider that since no good could arise from appearing to feel an insult which they had not power to punish, the best way would be to seem to regard it in another light; Morgan therefore was admitted.

He began with expressing his concern for Dr. Beaumont's pecuniary loss, and inquired at what sum he valued his books and paintings. The Doctor answered, he would endeavour to make out an estimate, which he would present at the quarter-sessions, and pray for indemnification. He added, the severest part of his loss consisted in ma.n.u.scripts and other valuables, inconceivably precious to himself, but of which (as money would not replace them) he should say nothing.

"My mother's picture and letters," said Constantia, lifting her head from Mrs. Mellicent's bosom, where she had sunk, from the extreme languor that succeeded the violent hysterics into which the terrors of this alarming night had thrown her. A more lovely or interesting object could scarcely be conceived than this charming girl, just ripening into woman, her mind mature beyond her years, and her heart agitated by the finest feelings of filial distress. Morgan gazed with involuntary approbation, while she threw her glossy ringlets from her face with one hand, and held out the other to welcome one whom she thought a pitying friend and protector of her father.

Mrs. Mellicent hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed back the offered hand, and whispered, "Hush! child, you will bring on a return of your fits."

Morgan distended his broad face with a smile, which looked extremely like a grin, and talked of Dr. Beaumont's happiness in possessing what would always put him in mind of his wife. He then enlarged on the crosses and losses people often met with, and on the duties of patience and content. He made a swift transition to his own prosperous situation; declared when he began business he but just knew how to read and write, and had only a quire of paper and a case of pens; yet he was now worth ten thousand pounds. He thought the world would be a very good one as soon as a few lordlings were pulled down, such, for instance, as the Earl of Derby, who turned up his nose at people of fortune, and prevented even him from hunting on his manors, though exercise was good for his health, and he was very fond of hare and partridge. He talked of the influence he possessed at the quarter-sessions; a.s.sured Dr. Beaumont he would use it in his favour; then shaking Constantia by the hand, bade her not spoil her pretty face with crying, and thus concluded his _friendly_ visit.

"A vulgar knave," said Mrs. Mellicent, pushing-to the door. "Such visitors are more provoking than loss of property. If you are of my mind, brother, you will lose every shilling sooner than owe retribution to the son of your father's shoemaker."