ed applicable to the church of Rome.. He was particularly gravelled with that triumphant argument of the Catholics, built upon the concluding promise of our Saviour to his church, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world," and the insulting tone with which her votaries demanded of the Protestant, What becomes of this promise, if, as you say, the visible church of Christ for more than a thousand years has been universally plunged in damnable error, so as to deserve to have applied to her the description of "Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth?" Against this attack Mr Bradford had no other resource, than an attempt to trace in ecclesiastical history, the "two witnesses clothed in sackcloth, that were to prophecy one thousand two hundred and sixty days;" and to show that, in the intervals of greatest darkness and most universal apostacy, God "had yet reserved to himself seven thou

sand men, who had not bowed the knee to

But the study to

the image of Baal." which the reverend Hilkiah most indefatigably applied himself, was the " number of the beast, which is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixtysix." This he had turned in a thousand ways; he had tried it in arithmetic; he had essayed it in anagram; every way it af forded him conclusions, that seemed to point at the latitude of Rome. Still my preceptor had a secret misgiving, that he had not arrived at the right solution. We were at one time not without some apprehension, that, by the severity of this inquiry, his wits would have been unsettled, and that he would have been rendered a qualified can didate for the cells of Bedlam.

A book that my preceptor particularly recommended to my attention, was Fox's Acts and Monuments of the Church; nor did I need much persuasion to a study, to which my temper inclined me, and which

occasions that sort of tingling and horror, that is particularly inviting to young persons of a serious disposition. In this tremendous volume the engravings eminently help to inforce the dead letter of the text. The representation of all imaginable cruelties, racks, pincers and red-hot irons, cruel mockings and scourgings, flaying alive, with every other tormenting method of destruction, combined with my deep conviction that the beings thus treated, were God's peculiar favourites, the ornaments of the earth, the boast and miracle of our mortal nature, men "of whom the world was not worthy," produced astrange confusion and horror in my modes of thinking, that kept. me awake whole nights, that drove the colour from my cheeks, and made me wander like a meagre, unlaid ghost, to the wonder and alarm of the peaceable and well-dis posed inhabitants of my uncle's house.

CHAPTER VI.

IN advancing thus far, I have, for the sake of presenting in one view ideas of a particular kind, outrun the course of my narrative, and must now return to bring up some smaller anecdotes of my early years, which, by this method of arranging my materials, have been put somewhat out of their place. Amidst the dreary uniformity of my uncle's residence, every arrival of a stranger was hailed, like a festival day in a school-boy's almanack. It promised some novelty it was solemnly announced; and with no less effect, than when the pedant, from his eminence apart," and in his own

dimension like himself," makes proclamation of a holiday. Though I was of a gloomy and saturnine cast, it is not to be understood that my heart did not beat, and my blood did not tingle, like those of my fellow-creatures. There was this difference between me and my uncle, though in the gravity of our dispositions we considerably resembled each other. To judge from appearances at least, he desired no novelty, or none of an extrinsic sort, and shrunk from all disturbance. He was used up as to the views and prospects of life, and cherished hope in his bosom no longer. Not such was the condition of my existence. I hoped for, and I dreamed of, pleasures yet untasted. I was no friend to light laughter and merriment; but my heart was susceptible of attention and curiosity; and the novelties that presented themselves to my senses I was well disposed to investigate.. The world to me was yet in its nonage,-had all the freshness and vigour of youth; I