PURITAN PERSECUTIONS.—A TIMELY. WARNING.—From a Correspondent).
By the word Puritan is meant the Dissenter who lived two hundred years ago; and consequently Puritan persecutions are Dissenting persecutions : for when dissenters had the power, they used it with a vengeance ; and should they ever again gain the ascendancy, as sure as Churchmen live will they feel the weight of that power ! The Rev. Mr. Bartlett, rector of Yetminster, was fined, his family beggared, and himself twice immured in a vile prison on the charges—1st, of not observing a fast appointed by the Rump Parliament, —2ndly, of reading common prayers on Thursday and Saturday after receiving the "Directory" ; 3rdly, of having been present at a bon-fire three years previously ; 4thly, of taking as his text—"If God be for us, who can be against us?" which, though the sermon had been preached twenty years before, and contained no allusion to the dissenting legislators, was interpreted into an invective against those in power. Absurd as was the charges, the first two were disproved. The fast was observed, but the rector did not go into the pulpit; he only read prayers. The two days prescribed in the Directory were not, on the evidence of the whole parish, observed, but two puritan agents, out of it, swore that prayers had been read. The bon-fire was made in front of the rectory, and the reverend inmate only went out to ascertain its meaning. Nevertheless the accused was thrown into a jail, where he pined many months, as he refused to perjure himself by admitting the justice of his sentence. Writing—from prison, Oct. 18, 1846, he complains, I have not one penny to pay, or to relieve, either myself or my family. I have £20 owing me upon arrears, and that I cannot get ; neither will the Committee give me any authority to receive it, I have but little household stuff left me by the plunderers, and that will yield me nothing. Howbeit, God is all sufficient, and I depend wholly upon his goodness, who never has failed those who trust in him."
The Puritans were enormous pluralists. One Swain, who served Cranford, in the county of Suffolk, had about seven or eight livings. The ('independent") intruder into the Prestland's Church of Market Deeping, with that living held West Deeping and Sawtrey. Harris, one of the "Oxford visitors," held Hanwell, Bishopgate, Hanborough, Buriton, and Petersfield, producing together more than £1,300 a-year, besides his pay of four shillings a day for "Westminster Assembly" membership, aud ten shillings a-day for "Apostleship," at Oxford!! When the "able and godly ministry" drafted from the Dissenting ranks supplanted the regular parochial clergy, the principal champions for the cause of "gospel preaching" made choice of the best and fattest benefices. Some had three a-piece, and some four ; and where any small benefice was, there the church doors were shut up. An "Assembly" man, on being appealed to on behalf of one of these closed churches in the West of England, asked what the yearly value of the benefice amounted to, and hearing it was only £50, replied—"If it be no better worth, no godly man will accept of it." Lord William Paget went to "good Mr. Nye," and desired him to recommend a godly man to a church in a similar predicament. Mr. Nye asked the value of the living ; his Lordship told him it was between £60 and £80 a year ; to which Mr. Nye replied that he was afraid he could not help him to a very godly man for such a place." —Who, it may be asked, strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel?—the Churchman or the Dissenter? It grieves one to see so much hypocrisy.—Church Magazine.