UNITARIAN MARTYRS.

UNITARIANISM too, has had its martyrs. There have been learned and virtuous men, aye, and women also, who have preferred bonds, imprisonment, death, rather than deny the glorious doctrine of Jesus of Nazareth, that the "Father is the only true God." Fervent, indeed, was that attachment to faith and a good conscience, which prompted them to endure the dreariness of the dungeon, the horrors of the scaffold, or the tortures of the stake, rather than worship the Tri-une idol of the school of Plato. They possessed a love for "the Lord that bought them," stronger than suffering, and deeper than the grave. May we not reasonably indulge the hope, that these confessors are now enrolled among the glorious company mentioned in the visions of the Apocalypse :-"And one of the elders answered, and said unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, sir, thou knowest. And he said unto me,

THESE ARE THEY WHICH CAME OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION."-Rev. vii. 13, 14. The following particulars are chiefly taken from the ii. chap. of Lindsey's "apology on resigning the vicarage of Catterick, Yorkshire." Theophilus Lindsey was a vicar in the Established Church; but upon becoming convinced that Unitarianism is the doctrine of the gospel, he resigned his situ ation in the fiftieth year of his age, relinquishing all his earthly possessions, and all his earthly prospects. The succeeding extracts should be interesting to all readers of the Bible Christian.

JOAN BOCHER.

"One Joan Bocher," says Bishop Burnet, called Joan of Kent, denied that Christ took flesh of the substance of his mother;" and she most probably also rejected a Trinity of persons, and the Divinity [Deity] of Christ. For the Bishop immediately before mentions those as connected with the denial of "Christ taking flesh of the Virgin;" and they were the sentiments of those called Anabaptists, of which there were many at that time in England as well as upon the Continent. She was (says the Bishop) out of measure vain and conceited of her notions, and rejected all the instruction that

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was offered her with scorn; so she was condemned as an obstinate heretic, and delivered to the secular arm. But it was very hard to persuade the king (Edward VI.) to sign the warrant for her execution; he thought it was an instance of the same spirit of cruelty for which the Reformers condemned the Papists. It was hard to condemn one to be burnt for some wild opinions, especially when they seemed to flow from a disturbed brain. But Cranmer persuaded him, that he, being God's Lieutenant, was bound in the first place to punish those offences committed against God. He also alleged the law of Moses for punishing blasphemers; and he thought errors that struck immediately against the apostles' creed, ought to be capitally punished. These things did rather silence than satisfy the young king. He signed the warrant with tears in his eyes, and said to Cranmer, that since he resigned up himself in that matter to his judgment, if he sinned in it, it should lie at his door. This struck the Archbishop; and both he and Ridley took her into their houses, and tried what reason, joined with gentleness, could do. But she was still more and more insolent, so that at last she was burnt, and ended her life very indecently, breaking out often into jeers and reproaches, and was looked on as a person fitter for bedlam than a stake.”—Burnet's Abridgment of the History of the Reformation, vol. ii. pp. 81, 82.

[We must remember that this picture is drawn and coloured by the enemies of the martyr. Hence her "vanity, conceitedness, obstinacy, and refusal of instruction," may signify no more than that she adhered steadily to her own opinions, not seeing any thing to convince her understanding in the arguments and threats of Cranmer and Ridley. In breaking out into "jeers and reproaches at the stake, she may have done no more than Elijah did in his contest with the priests of Baal. "And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, cry aloud, for he is a God; either he is talking, or he is perusing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure be sleepeth, and must be awaked."-1 Kings, xviii. 27. No doubt these idolaters charged the prophet of the true God with "breaking out into jeers and reproaches." If, however, this account of her behaviour be literally true, we may repeat the question of Lindsey-" What will not oppres

sion drive us to?" Joan Bocher seems to have agreed with the Mennonites, and indeed with the Anabaptists in general, in believing that the "body of Jesus was not derived from the substance of the blessed Virgin, but created in her womb by an omnipotent act of the Holy Spirit." I believe some of the general Baptists in England hold the same opinion to the present day GEORGE VAN PARRE.

"Some time after that, a Dutchman, George Van Parre, was also condemned and burned for denying the Divinity [Deity] of Christ, and saying that the Father only was God. He had led a very exemplary life both for fasting, devotion, and a good conversation; and suffered with extraordinary composedness of mind. These things cast a great blemish on the Reformers. It was said they only condemned cruelty, when it was exercised on themselves, but were ready to practise it when they had power. The Papists made great use of this afterwards in Queen Mary's time; and what Cranmer and Ridley then suffered, was thought a just retaliation on them, from that wise Providence that dispenses all things justly to all men."-Bp. Burnet's Abridg. of Hist. Ref., vol. ii. pp. 79, 82.

[If the apostle Paul had lived at this period, he would have suffered even more severely under Edward VI. in Christian England, than he is supposed to have done under Nero in heathen Rome. It is he who writes, "There is none other God but one."-1 Cor viii. 4. "To us there is but one God, the Father,"1 Cor. viii. 6. "God is one,"-Gal. iii. 20. One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all,"-Eph. iv. 5, 6. "For there is one God; and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,"-1 Tim. ii. 5. Any one of these five declarations, whether uttered or written, would have subjected him to the inquisition of Cranmer and Ridley, who would have condemned him to be burned, with the Epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and Timothy, suspended round his neck. If he failed to change his opinions before the arguments of the Archbishop and Bishop, he would have been pronounced "vain and conceited of his notions, and receiving all the instruc

tions that were offered him with scorn;" and if, at the place of execution, he condemned the Polytheism of his murderers, and died rejoicing in his own glorious creed, it would have been recorded by historians "that he ended his life very indecently, breaking out often into jeers and reproaches, and was looked on as a person fitter for bedlam than a stake."]

Dromore.

(To be continued.)

R. E. B. M.

THE REFORMATION AND THE BIBLE.

(From Martineau's Rationale of Religious Inquiry.)

THAT was a noble fight, which was fought by Luther and his printing press, when they rescued the Bible from the grasp of priests, and turned it from the charter of an incorporated tyranny, into the patent of universal freedom. If the most solemn era of the world's history was that, in which Christ himself walked its fields in Palestine, and refreshed its weary heart with the living spectacle of heavenly virtues, and entered death that he might illustrate life, and, as he ascended, bequeathed to all generations the dignity and responsibility of an immortal hope; the next in interest is the period, when the true record of those things was brought again beneath the eye of men, and to the ear of thought the voice of Christ was made to speak once more, and the image of his mind was sent round the homes of the people, and went about, like himself, doing good. If that book is to fulfil its appointed function, as the sinner's conscience, and the mourner's friend, and the oppressor's foe, it must be accessible to all men, in all stations of life and moods of mind; not dealt out only in the place of pulpits, and spoiled by the voice of preachers, and selected by the will of priests; but abandoned, whole and entire, warning and promise, history, parable, miracle, and prophecy, to the reason and the heart of all whom it may concern.

The en

quirer must have it, whenever the anxiety of doubt, or the spirit of speculation, urges him to its page; and he can borrow from it the solution of some perplexity, or shed on it the illumination of fresh thought. The sorrowing must have it, whenever the waywardness of

grief may make it welcome, and to the touched heart there may be a gentleness in its voice of comfort, and a brilliancy in its scenery of hope, that may make them saered to the memory for ever. The proud must have it, that, when no eye is on him, but that of God, he may hear the withering words with which Christ could blight the Pharisee, and witness how mean is every distinction, compared with that moral dignity, which could raise the outcast from the dust, and seek the friendship of the publican, and praise the virtues of the Samaritan. The penitent must have it, that at the happy moment, the eye of Christ may look into his heart, and bid it sin no more; and when the first effort is tempted to relax, his spirit of untiring duty may put weariness to flight; and when the self-gratulation of victory creeps in, the immense ambition of future progress may absorb the silly vanity of present attainment. The tyrant must have it,—he that tramples on happiness and life for his own vile greatness, and hews a way of guilt and woe to an eminence of praise and hate; that he may learn of a tribunal above, which frowns while it forbears, and waits only till the last drop of his brother's blood shall have cried to it from the ground. The slave too must have it,-to tell him the incredible story of his origin and his end,-to whisper to him (if he can but believe so strange a thought to be a truth and not a mockery) the equal responsibility of all men ; to persuade him that the end is not yet, nor this earth an image of the skies; that while here he is degraded, abandoned to an animal nature, sometimes pampered, and sometimes tortured, left without duties because without rights, he goes in the great multitude of bond and free to that world, where he will discover what he is worth in the creation of God, feel the mighty stirrings of a moral nature within him, and find in verity, that of one blood, of one law, of one destiny, has God made all nations.

So far then as the Reformation effected the diffusion of the scriptures,-the book of duty, the book of liberty, the book of life; it should be regarded with gratitude by all times. But there is room for much delusion, and there is much affectation, in the fashionable panegyrics on the Reformation. In order to produce its beneficent, the Bible must be left to its natural effects; must fairly come in contact with the open and