Dury was now at Stockholm, where was a large meeting of Swedish divines. The main question, said they, is that of the Holy Eucharist; if the Reformed will agree with us in that, all will go well. And the pacificator endeavoured, by producing the documents which he had brought from Edinburgh and from Aberdeen, to show, that even between Lutherans and the most rigid of Calvinists, the question was only one of words. On the 7th of February, 1638, the assembled divines, as Dury tells us, agreed that his proposals were not such as could be accepted; he forgets or omits to mention that, on this day, a royal edict came forth to the following effect:-It is the pleasure of Queen Christina that John Dury, a British preacher, who has resided in this country for some months, not without the great scandal ' of our ecclesiastics, should depart without any delay from this 'kingdom.' Our hero did so; but, from the chagrin consequent on this edict, he fell ill at Stockholm, and his life was for some time despaired of. While on that which promised to be his death-bed, he made a vow that, if he were spared, he would devote the remainder of his existence to the cause which he had already taken in hand; that he would spare neither time nor trouble in its prosecution; that he would not be turned aside from it by any motive whatsoever; and that he would very willingly spend and be spent, to the utmost, for its success. He recovered, and visited in turn Bremen, Stâde, Brunswick, and Lunenburg. Duke Augustus, of Brunswick Lunenburg, assembled a Synod of his divines to consult with the stranger; on their approval of the design, he gave him commendatory letters to his cousin, Duke Augustus, who resided at Hildesheim. By this prince he was even more favourably received. Another Synod was assembled, and Dury, with the other divines, was lodged and boarded for fourteen days at the duke's expense. It was here agreed that Calixtus-and this is the first time that his name occurs in Dury's history-should write in defence of the pacification, and that letters should be sent to the Lutheran Universities of Wittenberg, Jena, Leipsic, and Helmstädt; as well as to the States of Brandenburg, Hesse, and Bremen. This being settled, our pacificator betook himself to Duke Frederick, the brother of Duke George, who held his court at Zelle; his divines agreed to what had been done at Brunswick and Hildesheim. Armed with their recommendations, Dury proceeded to Glückstadt, to join his old friend, Sir Thomas Rowe,-a personage nearly as ubiquitous as himself, by whom he was presented to the King of Denmark. In the meanwhile great disputes broke out at Hamburg and Lübeck, on the subject of the novel mission; having done what he could to pacify these, Dury visited Statius Buscherus, the

great opponent of Calixtus and himself, with whom, to use his own expression, he dealt.' Thence he went back to Stâde, and, as he says, 'insinuated some writings into the chief preacher of that place;' and from hence he sent a treatise written by Calixtus, into England. He went back again to Bremen, where he stayed fourteen days, and visited all the pastors in the town; crossed the country to Oldenburg, and had a long interview with the Superintendent; travelled through Hanover, and visited Emden; crossed the Dollart Gulf, entered Holland, disputed at Gröningen, and so made his way to Amsterdam; whence, by way of resting himself, he addressed letters to all the Presbyteries of North Holland, and, via the Hague, wrote to his friends in France. Thence he went into Zealand, and so returned to England, where he arrived in 1640. Here he found the division between the King and Parliament on the point of breaking out into open war; and all hope of obtaining fresh documents to be employed on his mission was at an end for the present. He seems, however, to have attached himself still to the King, who selected him as the tutor for the Princess Royal, at the Hague. In this office he remained till 1643, when he was summoned to the Assembly of Divines. The Prince of Orange would not allow him to accept the invitation; and other causes of disagreement occurring between them, Dury threw up the office, and became chaplain to the Company of Merchants Adventurers at Rotterdam. As the Assembly still continued to demand his services, he again returned to England, and we find him, November 20th, 1645, preaching before the House of Commons a sermon, which was afterwards published under the title of Israel's Call to come out of Babylon unto Jerusalem.' It is nowise to be distinguished from the lengthy discourses of the Calamies, the Youngs, and the Marshalls of the period; except that the ruling passion of the orator exhibits itself in the preface, where he sets forth the advantages which would arise to what he calls Jerusalem, and the heavy blow which would be inflicted on Babylon, if Protestant states and princes could be brought to agree.

Our hero's employment from 1645 to 1654 it is not easy to determine. He merely informs us that he was residing in England, promoting domestic peace,' and keeping up a foreign correspondence. It would seem, however, from a passage in the Unchanged Peacemaker,' that before 1650 he was married, and that his wife had considerable property in Ireland. As there is no trace of his marriage during the course of either his earlier or his later travels, it probably occurred during his present sojourn in England; and perhaps we shall not do him great injustice, if we imagine that the fortune of his wife

afterwards of great assistance to him in carrying out his plans, was one of his inducements to enter into a state for which his continued journeys must have rendered him very ill suited. It is a curious example of human inconsistency, that our pacificator, who was for unlimited liberality abroad, would have no such thing as toleration in his own country. In 1644 he published An Epistolary Discourse against Toleration,' addressed to Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, and his old and staunch friend, Samuel Hartlib. Four years later, he exerted his utmost efforts to save the King. Afterwards, as he had willingly taken the Covenant, he, with as little scruple, set his hand to the Engagement; hence, in 1650, he was attacked in a pamphlet entitled, The Time-serving Proteus, and Ambidexter Divine, uncased 'to the World.' To which he replied by the tract which we have so often quoted, The Unchanged, Constant, and Single'hearted Peacemaker, drawn forth into the World; in a Letter to 'Samuel Hartlib, May 30th, 1650.' The war between England and Holland threw further obstacles in the way of Dury's designs; as soon as peace was made, he procured letters commendatory from Cromwell and from the principal divines in and near London, and again left England, April 5th, 1654. Having hitherto found greater success among Calvinists than among Lutherans, he determined on labouring in a hitherto untried portion of the same field. He reached Zurich on the 18th of May, and was delighted to find that a general meeting of the Protestant Cantons was to be held at Arau on the 13th of June. There he of course presented himself, 'dealt with' all the theologians who assembled in the place, and managed to procure from them a document in which they set forth what in their opinion was necessary to be done. Back he went to Zurich, in order to interest the civil authorities of that place. They recommended him to prosecute his endeavours at Berne; to Berne he accordingly betook himself, and thence to St. Gall and Basle. Hearing that the Reformed congregations among the Grisons were anxious to take part in the movement, he appointed a place where their deputies might meet him in safety; and to that place,' as he cautiously writes in 1657, he went in December, and spent one day in a satisfactory conference. Having thus shown his friends at Zurich that his scheme was likely to be taken up by the other Cantons, he repaired thither again; and, in a series of visits to Berne, Biel, Neufchatel, and Lausanne, he prosecuted his endeavours, besides, as he tells us, calling on the preacher of every considerable town in or near those places. He had not yet seen a city which must have excited his earnest veneration, Geneva. To this he had especial letters of recommendation from the Lord

Protector; and, as we learn from other sources, he here obtained a considerable sum of money in furtherance of the pacification.' On February 7th, 1655, he was at Berne again, where he stayed to print something, to be dispersed in France.' Another Synod at Arau gave him a second opportunity of meeting the assembled Swiss divines, when, finding that the cities of Zurich and Berne were not acting together with cordiality, this most indefatigable man posted to the former, where he stayed 'during March, April, and May, to expect the promised decla'ration of the Church, to print some preliminary information 'to be sent before into Germany, to settle the course for theo'logical correspondence, and to receive the answer of the Pro'testant cantons to his highness's letter.' Having achieved all that he thought possible in Switzerland, he set forward by way of Basle for Germany, intending to visit Heidelberg. But the Elector Palatine, he says, 'for some reason would not receive him;' that reason, of course, being that he was on terms of such intimate friendship with the murderers of the Elector's near relation, King Charles. He therefore went to Stuttgard, where he arrived at an unfortunate moment, as the duchess was on her death-bed; the duke, however, despatched some of his ministers to hear Dury's plan. It must be confessed that the general sentiments with which our hero was regarded in Germany were not favourable. Thus, a Lutheran nobleman writes of him about this time: Johannes Duraus, tum Lutheranos inter et Calvinistas inanis proxeneta, nunc vero inter Puritanos ubique et ipsos Independentes conator operosissimus, &c. However, not discouraged, he again travelled through all the Wetterau, and attended a general meeting of Protestant deputies at Frankfort, July 1655. All this time he was keeping up a correspondence with Hottinger, the principal ecclesiastical authority of the Elector Palatine, whom he represents himself as having satisfied. Hottinger, himself anxious for a pacification, mentions Dury in his Meletemata Irenica,' but so as to show that he felt no great confidence in that divine's powers. Dury next entered the territories of the more insignificant German princes, and 'dealt with' the Counts of Yssenburg, Buddenheim, Solms, and the Prince of Nassau, as well as with the counsellors of the Count of Wetzenstein, who was the director of the circle of Wetterau. Thence, in October, to Marburg; his exploits in that place are related by Schenk, in his Vitæ Professorum Theologiæ:' so to Cassel; and so, in the beginning of 1656, to the princes of Anhalt: from him of Anhalt-Köthen (the German

2

1 This part of Dury's history is also related by Gesselius, Historia Ecclesiastica,' ii. 773; and Ancillius, Mel. Crit. ii. 244.

2 This is quoted in Struvius's Fasciculus ultimus Librorum rariorum,' p. 54.