to arrange for the course to be taken after the king, his eldest son, and the Parliament had been struck away, and the conspirators, now become thirteen in number, were masters of the situation. It is enough to recall with a word or two how a note warning Lord Monteagle to absent himself from the meeting of Parliament led to suspicion; how the terms of the note being held to suggest danger of gunpowder, search was quietly made, as if for stuff of the king's that might have been left in the cellar which was known to be under the Parliament House; and how on the 4th of November, 1605, the powder was discovered that was to have blown up king and Parliament on the following morning. While this plot was in progress, the king had found the number of recusants increased by ten thousand after the remission of the fines. In November, 1604, fines were again levied, and in the following February the king required that all penal laws against the Roman Catholics should be enforced; but that the priests should be expelled, not executed. Discovery of the Gunpowder Plot led to increased severity of the laws against recusants. Roman Catholics were not to escape fine by attendance at a parish church; they were to be tested also by requirement of attendance at the sacrament. The enforcement of this test, repugnant to religious feeling on both sides, happily soon fell into disuse. Recusants did not escape with fine alone. They had to submit to various civil disabilities. It was at this time that a new Oath of Allegiance was devised for distinguishing those Roman Catholics who refused to abjure the Pope's claim to a deposing power. Roman Catholics who refused that oath incurred penalties of a præmunire in addition to the burdens laid upon all recusants. This Oath of Allegiance was one that many Roman Catholic Englishmen could honestly take, for it repudiated only a recognition of the Pope's claim to depose a sovereign and release his Roman Catholic subjects from all ties of obedience to him. But on the other hand, the Pope, in September, 1606, formally declared that the oath could not be taken by English Roman Catholics without peril to their souls. In August, 1607, he reiterated this. In 1608 King James replied to the two briefs of the Pope, and to the remonstrance of Cardinal Bellarmin addressed, on the 28th of September, 1607, to the Roman Catholic Archpriest Blackwell. Blackwell (being imprisoned in the Gate House) had himself taken the oath, and advised others to do so; an act for which he was deprived of his office by the Court of Rome. The king, with the strained ingenuity of the time, entitled his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance "Triplici Nodo Triplex Cuneus" (To the Triple Knot a Triple Wedge). The triple knot was represented by the three letters: two from the Pope, and one from Cardinal Bellarmin. triple wedge was the answer King James gave to each after quoting it in full. Cardinal Bellarmin replied; writing under the name of his secretary, Matthew Tortus. To Matthew Tortus Lancelot Andrewes replied for the king, also in Latin, with a volume called "Tortura Torti." Bellarmin added in 1610 an Apology" for his Reply to King James, which was The nearly twice as long as the Reply itself. In the same year, 1610, John Donne first commended himself to James's hearty goodwill by adding to the controversy, on the king's side, an English book, which suggested in its title that the English Roman Catholics who suffered through refusal of the oath were idly making of themselves false martyrs. book was called " Pseudo-martyr. Wherein out of certaine Propositions and Gradations, this conclusion is evicted. That those which are of the Romane Religion in this Kingdome, may and ought to take the Oath of Allegeance." The John Donne when he wrote the book was about thirty-seven years old, and not prosperous. He and his wife and family were indebted much to the kindness of Sir Robert Drury, by whom they were housed in a part of that town mansion which has left its whereabouts marked by the name of Drury Lane. Influential friends who appreciated Donne's genius sought to advance him at court in some secular employment, for he had not yet entered the church. The king liked his presence and conversation, but gave him no substantial help until " Pseudo-martyr" appeared. The book had an ingenious dedication to his Majesty, which is here given as specimen of the written English of its time, without alteration in its spelling, punctuation, and use of capitals. To the High and Mightie Prince James, by the grace of God King of Great Britaine, France and Ireland, defender of the Faith. Most mightie and sacred Soueraigne, As Temporall armies consist of Press'd men, and voluntaries, so doe they also in this warfare, in which your Maiestie hath appear'd by your Bookes. And not only your strong and full Garisons, which are your Cleargie, and your Vniuersities, but also obscure Villages can minister Souldiours. For, the equall interest, which all your Subiects haue in the cause (all being equally endanger'd in your dangers) giues euery one of vs a Title to the Dignitie of this warfare; And so makes those, whom the Ciuill Lawes made opposite, all one. Paganos, Milites. Besides, since in this Battaile, your Maiestie, by your Bookes, is gone in Person out of the Kingdome, who can be exempt from waiting vpon you in such an expedition? For this Oath must worke vpon vs all; and as it must draw from the Papists a Profession, so it must from vs, a Confirmation of our Obedience; They must testifie an Alleageance by the Oath, we, an Alleageance to it. For, since in providing for your Maiesties securitie, the Oath defends vs, it is reason, that wee defend it. The strongest Castle that is, cannot defend the Inhabitants, if they sleepe, or neglect the defence of that, which defends them; No more can this Oath, though framed with all aduantagious Christianly wisedome, secure your Maiestie, and vs in you, if by our negligence wee should open it, either to the aduersaries Batteries, or to his vnderminings. The influence of those your Maiesties Bookes, as the Sunne, which penetrates all corners, hath wrought vppon me, and drawen up, and exhaled from my poore Meditations, these discourses: Which, with all reverence and deuotion, I present to your Maiestie, who in this also haue the power and office of the Sunne, that those things which you exhale, you may at your pleasure dissipate, and annull; or suffer them to fall downe againe, as a wholesome and fruitfull dew, vpon your Church and Commonwealth. Of my boldnesse in this addresse, I most humbly beseech your Maiestie, to admit this excuse, that hauing obserued, how much your Maiestie had vouchsafed to descend to a conuersation with your Subiects, by way of your Bookes, I also conceiu'd an ambition, of ascending to your presence, by the same way, and of participating, by this means, their happinesse, of whome, that saying of the Queene of Sheba, may bee vsurp'd: Happie are thy men, and happie are those thy Seruants, which stand before thee alwayes, and heare thy wisedome, For, in this, I make account, that I haue performed a duetie, by expressing in an exterior, and (by your Maiesties permission) a publicke Act, the same desire, which God heares in my daily prayers, that your Maiestie may very long gouerne vs in your Person, and euer, in your Race and Progenie. an escape. Your Maiesties most humble and loyall Subiect: IоHN DONNE. The book began by distinguishing between the dignity of true martyrdom and the inordinate and corrupt affectation of it. It then argued that the Roman religion encouraged this vicious affectation of danger, by erroneous doctrines: as the interference with secular magistrates, the undue extolling of merits, especially the merit of martyrdom, and by the doctrine of Purgatory, from which martyrs are promised It set forth that the Jesuits especially encouraged this corrupt desire of false martyrdom; and that they could not have the comfort of honest martyrdom because they obeyed the Pope, if they disobeyed other laws. Then Donne proceeded to the question of the several obediences due to princes and claimed by the Roman Church. The way was thus laid open for detailed argument in support of the Oath of Allegiance. In the course of his Preface to the Priests and Jesuits and to their Disciples in this Kingdom, Donne says of THE POPE'S TEMPORAL JURISDICTION. This doctrine of temporal jurisdiction is not only a violent and dispatching poison, but it is of the nature of those poisons which destroy not by heat nor cold, nor corrosion, nor any other discernible quality, but, as physicians say, out of the specific form and secret malignity and out of the whole substance. For as no artist can find out how this malignant strength grows in that poison nor how it works, so can none of your writers tell how this Temporal Jurisdiction got into the Pope, or how he executes it, but are anguished and tortured when they come to talk of it, as physicians and naturalists are when they speak of these specific poisons, or of the cause and origin thereof, which is Antipathy. And yet we find it reported1 of one woman, that she had 1 Forester, "De Venenis." Peter Forester, born at Alcmar in 1522, became Professor of Medicine at Leyden, and died in 1597. so long accustomed her body to these poisons, by making them her ordinary food, that she had brought herself and her whole complexion and constitution to be of the same power as the poison was, and yet retained so much beauty as she allured kings to her embracement, and killed and poisoned them by that means: so hath the Roman faith been for many years, so fed and pampered with this venomous doctrine of temporal jurisdiction that it is grown to some few of them to be matter of faith itself; and she is able to draw and hold some princes to her love because, for all this infection, she retains some colour and probability of being the same she was. And as that fish which Elianus speaks of, lies near to the rock, and because it is of the colour of the rock surprises many fishes which come to refresh themselves at the rock; so doth the Roman doctrine, because it can pretend by a local and personal succession (though both interrupted) that it is so much of the colour of the rock, and so near it, as Petrus and Petra, inveigle and entrap many credulous persons, who have a zealous desire to build upon the rock itself. Donne even now condemned rather the worldly than the spiritual element in the creed to which he had been bred. Of his "Divine Poems" part certainly were written while he was a Roman Catholic, and when King James, delighted with his "Pseudomartyr," urged him to enter the ministry of the English Church, he held back for almost three years, during which he gave himself to such study of divinity as should assure his conscience and fit him for the work if he found that he could undertake it. The result was that he did at last enter the ministry of the church, with his whole heart in its duties. King James then made him his Chaplain in Ordinary; the University of Cambridge, at the King's wish, made him a Doctor of Divinity; and Dr. Donne became one of the greatest preachers of King James's reign. His wife died, leaving him with seven children, just as the days of their adversity were at an end. mourned her loss deeply, and did not marry again. The Benchers of Lincoln's Inn made Donne their lecturer; the King made him Dean of St. Paul's; the Vicarage of St. Dunstan's in the West fell to him also. After the age of fifty his worldly means became very easy. He provided for the future of his children, and was liberal to the poor during the next nine or ten years of his life; and then he died, in the reign of Charles I., in April, 1631. In a former sickness Donne had written a hymn to God, which afterwards he set to a solemn tune, and caused frequently to be sung, especially at evening service, when he was present at St. Paul's. was this He It HYMN. To God the Father. Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun, Which was my sin, though it were done before? Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run, And do run still, though still I do deplore? When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done, For I have more. Wilt Thou forgive that sin, which I have won Others to sin, and made my sin their door? Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun A year or two;-but wallow'd in a score? When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done, For I have more. I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun I fear no more. In his last illness Donne wrote also this HYMN TO GOD, MY GOD. Since I am coming to that holy room I tune the instrument here at the door, Whilst my physicians by their love are grown I joy, that in those straits I see my West, For though those currents yield return to none, What shall my West hurt me? As west and east In all flat maps (and I am one) are one, So Death doth touch the Resurrection. Is the Pacific sea my home? or are All straits, and none but straits are ways to them, We think that Paradise and Calvarie, Christ's cross and Adam's tree, stood in one place: Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me! As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face, 1 Anyan, the Mozambique Channel, named from the island of Anyouam, Anjouan, or Johannes at its northern entrance. The Mozambique Straits lead to the "eastern riches" of Africa, dwelling of Ham. The Straits of Magellan are a way from the Atlantic into the Pacific, which ocean is bordered on its west by the Asiatic home of those who were regarded as the sons of Shem. The Straits of Gibraltar led into the Mediteranean those who sought the sons of Japheth, and made voyage to the Holy Land, So, in His purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord! Donne's last sermon was preached on the first Friday in Lent, according to an appointment which his friends in vain sought to dissuade him from keeping, telling him that the effort to preach would shorten his life. Izaak Walton, in telling of Donne's life, says upon this that He passionately denied their requests, saying "he would not doubt that that God, who in so many weaknesses had assisted him with an unexpected strength, would now withdraw it in his last employment; professing an holy ambition to perform that sacred work." And when, to the amazement of some beholders, he appeared in the pulpit, many of them thought he presented himself not to preach mortification by a living voice, but mortality by a decayed body, and a dying face. And doubtless many did secretly ask that question in Ezekiel (chap. xxxvii. 3), "Do these bones live?' or, can that soul organise that tongue, to speak so long time as the sand in that glass will move towards its centre, and measure out an hour of this dying man's unspent life? Doubtless it cannot." And yet, after some faint pauses in his zealous prayer, his strong desires enabled his weak body to discharge his memory of his preconceived meditations, which were of dying; the text being, "To God the Lord belong the issues from death." Many that then saw his tears, and heard his faint and hollow voice, professing they thought the text prophetically chosen, and that Dr. Donne had preached his own Funeral Sermon. Being full of joy that God had enabled him to perform this desired duty, he hastened to his house; out of which he never moved, till, like St. Stephen, "he was carried by devout men to his grave." To this may be added Walton's account of the manner in which the dying man stood for the portrait from which the effigy was made that marks his interment in St. Paul's2: A monument being resolved upon, Dr. Donne sent for a carver to make for him in wood the figure of an urn, giving him directions for the compass and height of it; and to bring with it a board, of the just height of his body. "These being got, then without delay a choice painter was got to be in readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as followeth. -Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into their coffin, or grave. Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside as might shew his lean, pale, and death-like face, which was purposely turned towards the East, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus." In this posture he was drawn at his just height; and when the picture was fully finished, he caused it to be set by his bed-side, where it continued and became his hourly object till his death, and was then given to his dearest friend 2 The marble statue of Donne was one of those recovered after the Fire of London from the ruins of the old cathedral. and executor Dr. Henry King, then chief Residentiary of St. Paul's, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white marble, as it now stands in that Church. EFFIGY OF DR. DONNE IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL. The marble, vividly suggestive of mortality, is in the cathedral of which he was dean, but the ruin caused by the Fire of London made it impossible again to mark the place where the dust lies of the poet who, in one of his latest sermons-preached in March, 1629-thus expressed a thought old as mortality : ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST. The ashes of an oak in the chimney are no epitaph of that oak, to tell me how high or how large that was. It tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons' graves is speechless too; it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou would'st not, as of a prince whom thou could'st not, look upon, will trouble thine eyes if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the churchyard unto the church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce-this is the patrician, this is the noble, flour; and this the yeomanly, this the plebeian, bran. We have left the controversy of the Oath of Allegiance, which gave rise to the "Pseudo-martyr," to follow John Donne to his grave. Another writer who maintained the argument of James I. in that controversy was Lancelot Andrewes, the author of "Tortura Torti." Lancelot Andrewes was but a year or two younger than Spenser, was his schoolfellow at Merchant Taylor's School, and followed him to the same college at Cambridge, Pembroke Hall. He became skilled in controversial theology, and was the first English Churchman in Elizabeth's day who qualified himself to engage Roman Catholic controversialists with their own weapons. It was the common fate of Protestant theologians to seem worsted in argument because they dwelt on study of the Bible alone, and were unprepared to meet attacks weighted with erudition drawn from a long study of the Fathers by men trained to casuistry. Andrewes himself became a casuist to whom many applied for counsel; and when he was taken to the North of England by the Earl of Huntingdon, he was skilled enough in argument to convert some Roman Catholics. Lancelot Andrewes rose in Elizabeth's reign, through two or three church livings, to be Master of Pembroke Hall, Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen, and Dean of Westminster. He would have been made a bishop by her, but for some opinions which would have caused him to resist all alienation of episcopal revenues. He was pious and profoundly learned, gifted also with an intellectual ingenuity that, coloured with his learning, greatly pleased a cultivated audience of the time of James I. an audience delighted in tricks of thought, quaintness of speech, and scraps of Latin that showed learning in the speaker and assumed it in his hearers. The style of Andrewes, like that of Donne, illustrates Later Euphuism in the pulpit. divided reputation with Donne as a preacher, but was not also a poet. The excess of ingenuity and pedantry of the time were less forced than they seem to readers of books written in simpler style. acquired fashion of a time becomes to most men a second nature. Lancelot Andrewes prayed in Latin and Greek, and the private prayers which he fashioned for himself, almost wholly founded upon texts of Scripture, expressed, though in dead languages, a living faith, in words of Christian humility. King James made Andrewes, in 1605, Bishop of Chichester, and that was his rank in the Church of England when his skill in controversy with the Roman Catholics caused him to be chosen as the answerer of Bellarmin's retort upon the king. Such He The Bellarmin was the great controversialist upon the side of Rome. In 1605 he had resigned the Archbishopric of Capua that he might give all his energy to battle for Rome on the vital questions of the day. Lancelot Andrewes was then the one man of mature age in the English Church who, against such an antagonist, could fitly be named as its champion. James Usher, who was fairly on his way to as familiar a knowledge of the use of the arms with which Rome often had prevailed, was twenty-five years younger. In the year of his answer to Bellarmin (1609), Andrewes was made Bishop of Ely and a Privy Councillor. In 1618 he was made Bishop of Winchester. He held then the richest of the bishoprics, from which one of its holders was unwilling to be promoted because, said he, "Canterbury has the higher rack, but Winchester the better manger." Lancelot Andrewes died in 1631, after his years had completed the number of three-score and ten. From the evil of the day preserve me, O Lord, and me from doing evil in it. LANCELOT ANDREWES. From a Portrait taken in 1618, Engraved for his Works. The Private Prayers of Lancelot Andrews, compiled by him for his own use from the Scriptures and the writings of the early Fathers, but chiefly from the Scriptures, were said to have been found after his death in a little MS. book, "worn in pieces by his fingers and wet with his tears." A literal translation of them from the Greek and Latin into English was published in 1647, from which I take the following: MORNING PRAYER. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, the God of our fathers, which hast turned the shadow of death into the morning, and hast renewed the face of the earth. Which hast made sleep to depart from mine eyes and slumber from mine eyelids. Which hast lightened mine eyes that I sleep not in death. Which hast delivered my soul from the night fears, from the pestilence which walketh in the dark. Which makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to praise Thee. For I laid me down and slept, and rose again, for it was Thou, O Lord, which didst sustain me. For I waked and beheld, and lo, my sleep was sweet. O Lord, do away as the night, so my sins; scatter my transgressions as the morning cloud. Make me a child of the light and of the day; cause me to walk soberly, chastely, and decently, as in the day-time. O Lord, uphold us when we are fallen into sin; and raise us up when we are fallen, That we harden not our hearts, as in the provocation, or with any deceitfulness of sin. Deliver us also from the snare of the hunter; evil allurements, gross words, the arrow which flieth by day. EVENING PRAYER. Having passed through this day, I give my thanks to Thee, O Lord. The evening approacheth, O bless that also to me: an evening there is of the day, so of our life; that evening is old age, and age hath now surprised me; Lord, prosper thou that likewise unto me. Tarry with me, O Lord, for the evening grows upon me, and my day is much declined. Cast me not off now in mine age; forsake me not now when my strength faileth me. But rather let Thy strength be made more perfect in this my weakness. O Lord, the day is vanished and gone; so doth this life. The night doth now approach; so doth death also; death without death, the end both of our day and of our life, is near at hand. Remember this, therefore, we beseech Thee, O Lord; make the end of all our lives Christian-like and acceptable to Thee, peaceable, and, if it like Thee, painless, translating us, among Thine elect, unto Thy heavenly kingdom. O Lord, Thou hearest prayer: to Thee shall all flesh come. In the morning, at noon, and in the evening, will I call; I will cry out, and Thou shalt hear my voice. In the night will I lift up my hands to Thy Sanctuary, and will bless Thee, O Lord. The Lord hath shewed His mercy in the day; therefore at night I will sing of Him, and pray unto the God of my life. Thus will I praise Thee all my life long; and in Thy Name will I lift up my hands. O let my prayers be directed as the incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. Blessed art Thou, O Lord my God, the God of my Fathers. Which hast created the changes of night and of day. Which givest rest to the weary and refreshest the weak. Which givest songs in the night; and makest the outgoing of the morning and evening to praise Thee. Which hast delivered us from the malice of this day; and cuttest not off our lines, like a weaver, neither from morning to evening maketh an end of us. As we add days to our days, so we add sins to our sins. The just man falls seven times a day, but we wretched sinners seventy times seven times: But we return to our hearts; and with our hearts we return to Thee. To Thee, O Lord, we return; and all that is within us saith, O Lord, we have sinned against Thee. But we repent; alas, we repent. Spare us, good Lord. Be propitious to us. Have pity upon us, and spare us, O Lord. Forgive us the guilt. Take out the stains. Cure the faintness in us by reason of our sins; and heal our souls, O God, for we have sinned against Thee. Deliver me from mine unavoidable sins. Cleanse me from my secret offences. And for my communion with the transgression of others, pardon Thy servant, O Lord. All our good deeds Thou hast wrought in us. If we have done anything well, mercifully regard it, O Lord. Our sin and our distraction is from our own selves. |