' without any manner of doubt, be entitled to it.' Nor have the Danes much mended the matter. They celebrate their Almindelig Bededag on the Friday which follows the fourth Sunday after Easter, according to the institution of King Christian V., in 1686.

Without entering further into other Lutheran observances, such as auricular confession and absolution, exorcism and baptism, and the like, we have said enough to show how much external similarity there is between their rites and those of the Roman Catholic Church. So far as outward observances go, the gulf lies, not between Catholics and Protestants, (we use the latter word in the strict sense,) but between Protestants and Reformed. We must now for one moment glance at the ecclesiastical position of the latter.

Their communion may be conveniently divided into four portions; those of Scotland, France, Switzerland, and Holland: for the few German States, such as the Palatinate, which embraced this religion, were merely fac-similes of the Swiss movement. The three first named seemed to vie with each other in desecrating churches; the French Calvinist, for example, exulted in destroying the most undoubted relics, such as those of S. Martin; the Scotch, as every one knows, have (when not restrained by the law) reduced their ecclesiastical buildings to the level of pigsties; and the Swiss are not much better. Honourable exception must be made in favour of Holland. The Dutchman's two sacraments are, preaching and psalm-singing, and he shows his estimation of them by the magnificent pulpits and organs which abound in that country. The expense of such an organ as that of Haarlem, and of such pulpits as are to be found at the Hague, or Amsterdam, or Rotterdam, is hardly calculable. Not content with this, it has also pleased them to erect rood-screens at an almost fabulous expense; any one who has visited Holland will have been struck with the elaborateness and massiveness of the brass, which is their usual material. This, however, is the exception; the majority of European Calvinists have always delighted in making their churches as plain and as filthy as possible. While Lutherans never, for one moment, dreamt of reconsecrating Catholic buildings, Calvinists delighted to do so; and in some cases went through the same process with regard to churches which had been intermediately occupied by Lutherans. The political struggle between the two heresies was never more strikingly developed, than when the Calvinist Elector Palatine, son-in-law of our James I., went to take possession of his new kingdom of Bohemia. Acting upon the suggestions of his favourite preacher Scultetus, he tore down the images, and defaced the decorations, of the Lutheran

churches at Prague; and to the hatred of his tenets thereby engendered among that powerful body, may be, in a great measure, ascribed the loss of his kingdom. Any one who wishes to see this remarkable episode of ecclesiastical, as well as civil history, strikingly set forth, cannot do better than read Mr. James's romance of Heidelberg.

But notwithstanding the fury of the contest between Lutherans and Reformed, there arose, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, more than one divine who was determined to reconcile the two bodies. Of these, the first, and deserving to be the most famous, was John Dury.'

2

John Dury, whose name was afterwards to be mixed up with the religious parties of Europe for nearly half a century, and who did and suffered more for the cause of peace-such as it was-than probably any other man, was born at Edinburgh, towards the end of the sixteenth century. His father, of the same name, was an apostate monk, and became a celebrated preacher of the school of Knox, in that neighbourhood. Some

1 The sources from whence the history of John Dury, better known by his Latin name of Duræus, may be learnt, are in part given by Mosheim, vol. v. p. 277: he has, however, omitted the most important of all; namely, the English writings of Duræus himself. Of these the following are most to our purpose: 1. A Brief Relation of that which hath lately been attempted to procure Ecclesiastical Peace among Protestants. Published by Samuel Hartlib. London. 1640. 2. A Summary Account of Master John Dury's former and latter Negotiations for the Procuring of true Gospel Peace, with Christian Moderation and Charitable Unity among the Protestant Churches and Academies. London printed for the Author in 1657. These two are identical down to page 32 of the former, which is the same as page 23 of the latter. The Brief Relation' has three more pages, containing a sort of epilogue, which concludes that portion of Dury's labours. 3. The Unchanged and Single-hearted Peacemaker. London. 1650. 4. Consultationum Irenicarum podiopowσis. Amsterdam. 1664. Of Biographies, the best are; 1. G. Arnoldus; Historia Johannis Durai, an university thesis, delivered under the presidency of J. C. Kohler, and usually quoted as that of Colerus. Wittenberg, 1716. 2. Benzelius; Dissertatio de Johanne Durao, maximeque de Actis ejus Suecanis; a thesis delivered before the celebrated Mosheim, and generally called from him. The proceedings of Duræus at Marburg are said to be related by Schenk in his Vita Professorum Theologiæ Marburgensium, page 207; but this book the writer has not been able to see. Jablonski has recorded his attempts in Prussia and Poland, in his Historia Consensus Sendomiriensis. His journeys in the Palatinate, Switzerland and Denmark are related in Seelen's Delicia Epistolarum; in the Museum Helveticum, and in the Fasciculus Epistolarum Theologicarum of Elswitch. Of all single works, that of Benzelius is incomparably the best; the thesis of G. Arnoldus, besides containing many mistakes, extends no further than to 1657, and is written in so flippant a style that it is a trial of patience to labour through it. Beside these, the present writer has examined more than twenty pamphlets of Duræus himself, from most of which something may be gleaned as to his personal history. Should any reader be curious enough to compare the account given in the text with those of Arnoldus and Benzelius, he may rest assured that any departure from their statements is based on the accounts of the subject of their biography, who must have been best acquainted with the details of his own life.

2 Arnoldus tells us that he was a Scotchman; and adds 'Reliqua si desideres merum σkóros.' But the truth is, that 'John Dury, the father, was by no means an unimportant personage in his day.

without any manner of doubt, be entitled to it.' Nor have the Danes much mended the matter. They celebrate their Almindelig Bededag on the Friday which follows the fourth Sunday after Easter, according to the institution of King Christian V., in 1686.

Without entering further into other Lutheran observances, such as auricular confession and absolution, exorcism and baptism, and the like, we have said enough to show how much external similarity there is between their rites and those of the Roman Catholic Church. So far as outward observances go, the gulf lies, not between Catholics and Protestants, (we use the latter word in the strict sense,) but between Protestants and Reformed. We must now for one moment glance at the ecclesiastical position of the latter.

Their communion may be conveniently divided into four portions; those of Scotland, France, Switzerland, and Holland: for the few German States, such as the Palatinate, which embraced this religion, were merely fac-similes of the Swiss movement. The three first named seemed to vie with each other in desecrating churches; the French Calvinist, for example, exulted in destroying the most undoubted relics, such as those of S. Martin; the Scotch, as every one knows, have (when not restrained by the law) reduced their ecclesiastical buildings to the level of pigsties; and the Swiss are not much better. Honourable exception must be made in favour of Holland. The Dutchman's two sacraments are, preaching and psalm-singing, and he shows his estimation of them by the magnificent pulpits and organs which abound in that country. The expense of such an organ as that of Haarlem, and of such pulpits as are to be found at the Hague, or Amsterdam, or Rotterdam, is hardly calculable. Not content with this, it has also pleased them to erect rood-screens at an almost fabulous expense; any one who has visited Holland will have been struck with the elaborateness and massiveness of the brass, which is their usual material. This, however, is the exception; the majority of European Calvinists have always delighted in making their churches as plain and as filthy as possible. While Lutherans never, for ou moment, dreamt of reconsecrating Catholic buildings, Calvin delighted to do so; and in some cases went through the process with regard to churches which had been inter occupied by Lutherans. The political struggle betw heresies was never more strikingly developed, Calvinist Elector Palatine, son-in-law of our take possession of his new kingdom of Boh the suggestions of his favourite preach down the images, and defaced the deco

political sermons of his having enraged the Government, he thought it prudent to fly into Holland, became a pastor at Leyden, and there spent the rest of his life. Here our hero was educated, embraced independent views, and, in 1628, settled as pastor to the English factory at Elbing, in Prussia. It was the period of that tremendous struggle between the Reformation and the Church of Rome, which, after promising to render the former triumphant throughout Europe, concluded by driving it back in all quarters, by cooping it up in countries with which, at the commencement of the century, it would have disdained to be satisfied, and by causing its great antagonist to make efforts which recalled her former struggle with the Emperors of the world, and to send forth saints who might rival the Gregories and the Leos of her earlier days. Sweden and Austria, the never-conquered king' and Oxenstiern on the one side, Wallenstein and Tilly on the other, fought out, so far as human arms were concerned, the contest. At that time Elbing formed part of the dominions of Gustavus Adolphus, and was the residence of Dr. Godeman, one of his privy counsellors. This person contracted an intimate friendship with Dury, and was the first to suggest to him that whoever should be able to bring to pass a general inter-communion throughout Protestant Christendom would indeed deserve the blessing of the peacemakers. This was the utmost pitch to which the imagination of the Swedish privy counsellor soared; it was that, also, which occupied the greater part of the life of Dury. For the second phase of these tendencies to reconciliation, that, namely, which included Rome in the general peace, had its rise, as we shall see, in George Calixtus, and did not occupy the mind of his predecessor till nearly the conclusion of his life. Dury instantly caught at the idea, and offered to devote himself to the work, if he could see any hope of being enabled to carry forward his scheme. It chanced that, at this period, Sir Thomas Rowe (whose history is so intimately mixed up with that of the celebrated patriarch of Constantinople, Cyril Lucar) was sent ambassador extraordinary to Gustavus, and happened to take Elbing on his way back to England. He heard of the plan from Dury, communicated it to the Chancellor Oxenstiern perhaps, on the whole, the greatest man whom Sweden ever produced-and agreed with him in thinking that both Gustavus and Charles I. should render all the support that might lie in their power for so excellent an object. On his return to England, Sir Thomas communicated the proposals to several of his friends, by whom they were much relished; but by none more so than by the Lord Chancellor. This was in 1630; and by the advice of those interested in the matter, Dury was invited