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the allurements and subtlety of his enemies. day or two, he was again examined concerning the mass. Another interval and another examination followed, in which he was pressed with the recantation of others. Again on Shrove-Tuesday, again at Easter, did his tormentors ply him with alternate threats and promises; but he answered that he leaned only to the Scriptures, and objected to do as they wished, out of a reverent fear of God. More examined him many times very sharply, plied him with all the resources of learning and logic, lent him books, and ended by rebuking him as intractable and conceited. Poor Marsh answered, that, as for learning, he aimed principally at knowing Jesus Christ, and him crucified; and that his faith was grounded on God's Holy Word. After remaining some time longer in prison at Chester, he was conveyed to Lancaster Castle, and at the sessions held up his hand with the common malefactors at the bar. In Lancaster Castle he was sometimes comforted by the friendly visits of those who sympathized, and at others distressed by the vain attempts of opponents to get him to recant. He and a fellowprisoner, "every day kneeling on our knees, did read morning and evening prayer, with the English Litany every day twice, both before noon and after, with other prayers more; and also read every day certain chapters of the Bible, commonly towards night and we read all these things with so high and loud a voice, that the people without in the streets might come and hear us, and would oftentimes-namely, in the evenings-come and sit down in our sight under the windows and hear us read."

Then came the bishop, and complained of the gaoler for being too indulgent, and of the schoolmaster for speaking to such a heretic. After a while, he had to submit to two further examinations, in which every rule of evidence and all courtesy and humanity were violated by the bishop, and at length the fatal sentence was pronounced against him. He was handed over to the city authorities, his former gaoler weeping, and saying, "Farewell, good George!" and consigned to a dark dungeon, communicating with the outer world by a hole in the city wall. At this hole would friends station themselves, as at the windows of the Bishops' prison, and try to exchange sentences of consolation with the forlorn man. "He would answer them most cheerfully, that he did well; and thanked God most highly, that He would vouchsafe of His mercy to appoint him to be a witness of the truth, and to suffer for the same." He was brought out to die; walked through the city with his book in his hand; was offered pardon at the stake if he would recant, but sealed his testimony with his blood. His examinations and prison letters show him to have been a man of singleness of mind, genial loveable disposition and useful abilities, full of all the motive power and philanthropy of the glorious Gospel. Such men did not live or die unto themselves. The people gathering round the prison walls afford the true index to the value of these servants of the Most High. The pulses of spiritual life flowed high and fast in their veins, and, in spite of death, the movement was transmitted onward and outward to an ever-widening circle. Marsh's letter from Lancaster gaol to his brethren

advises them "cleave you fast unto Him which was incarnate, lived, wrought, taught, and died for your sins; yea, rose again from death and ascended into heaven for your justification." Amidst the dismal scenes then being enacted in the professing Church, he might well say that he rejoiced only in Christ, "the glory of whose Church, I see it well, standeth not in the harmonious sound of bells and organs, nor yet in the glistening of mitres and copes, neither in the shining of gilt images and lights, but in continual labours and daily afflictions for His name's sake." To such men might well be said, as was sung to some of them,

"This prison where thou art,

Thy God will break it soon,
And flood with light thy heart,
In His own blessed noon."

After allowing for the state of excited and exalted feeling produced by the apprehension of martyrdom, there still remains a solid substratum of intelligent personal evangelical piety exhibited by these illustrious sufferers. Very superior are they in this respect to the martyrs of the early Church, whose ecstasies led them to court martyrdom as the highest honour. The men and women of England bore it bravely as good witnesses, but did not ignore their own domestic sympathies in the flights of spiritual heroism.

One of the men, educated only in that knowledge which elevates and refines the moral nature by the process of sanctification through the truth, was a Suffolk tailor named George Eagles. During the sunny days of good

King Edward, he, "being eloquent and of good utterance," went about preaching. In the dark days of Queen Mary he forsook not his profession, but went from place to place seeking out the scattered sheep of the flock, in order to instruct and comfort them. We are told that often he spent the night in the woods, or under the open canopy of heaven. The homely name by which he was usually known, "Trudgeover," expresses his habits, and was so well fixed that he was actually indicted as 'George Eagles, alias Trudgeover-the-world." He was fervent in faith, strong in prayer;-a representative man, of a Jong subsequent succession of faithful, useful lay labourers who have ministered the Gospel to their perishing fellowcountrymen. He was cruelly put to death at Colchester in 1557.

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During the whole of this fearful period, there were not wanting many who made it their special mission to travel about the country for the purpose of "visiting the professors of the Gospel, and comforting and exhorting them to stedfastness in the faith." Among these were Laurence, of Barne Hall, and his servant; William Pulleyn, otherwise known as Smith; and William "a Scot," who dwelt, Foxe says, at Dedham Heath. These also regularly ministered to a congregation at the King's Head, Colchester, which constantly assembled during the whole period of the persecution, "and, as a candle upon a candlestick, gave light to all those who for the comfort of their consciences came to confer there from divers parts of the realm."*

David's "Annals and Memorials," 1863, p. 53, from Strype.

In Ridley's most affecting and eloquent "Farewell," written after his sentence, we see the tenderness of his whole nature mingled with unalterable resolution. After sending special loving messages to his kinsfolk by name, he continues "I warn you all, my well-blessed kinsfolk and countrymen, that ye be not amazed or astonied at the kind of my departure or dissolution; for I ensure you I think it the most honour that ever I was called unto in all my life, and therefore I thank my Lord God heartily for it, that it hath pleased Him to call me of His great mercy, unto this high honour, to suffer death willingly for His sake and in His cause: unto the which honour He called the holy prophets, and His dearlybeloved apostles and His blessed chosen martyrs. For know ye that I doubt no more that the causes wherefore I am put to death are God's causes, and the causes of the truth, than I doubt that the Gospel which John wrote is the Gospel of Christ, or that Paul's Epistles are the very word of God. And to have a heart willing to abide and stand in God's cause and in Christ's quarrel even unto death, I ensure thee, O man, it is an inestimable and an honourable gift of God, given only to the true elects and dearly-beloved children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven."

It is true that we are no longer attracted by the romance of the early struggles. Then so much of marvellous novelty was there in the upburst of the truth, that we feel as though it might at any moment become the dominant profession; but now all conclusions are foregone; places are taken, not for deliberation, but for sentence

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