the sweating sickness towards the close of the fifteenth century, with the most approved method of treating it. We are not aware of any forms of prayer having been issued on this occasion, or during the times of Popery. In the year 1486, a new kind of sickness invaded suddenly the people of this land, passing through the same from the one end to the other. It began about the 21st of September, and continued till the latter end of October, being so sharp and deadly that the like was never heard of to any man's remembrance before that time. For suddenly, a deadly burning sweat so assailed their bodies and distempered their blood with a most ardent heat, that scarce one amongst an hundred that sickened did escape with life; for all in manner, as soon as the sweat took them, or within a short time after, yielded up the ghost. Beside the great number which deceased within the city of London, two mayors successively died within eight days, and six aldermen. At length, by the diligent observation of those that escaped (which marking what things had done them good, and holpen to their deliverance, used the like again, when they fell into the same disease, the second or third time, as to divers it chanced), a remedy was found for that mortal malady, which was this :-If a man in the day time were taken with the sweat, then should he strait lie down with all his clothes and garments, and continue in his sweat twentyfour hours after so moderate a sort as might be. If in the night he chance to be taken, then should he not rise out of his bed for the space of twenty-four hours; so casting the clothes that he might in no wise provoke the sweat, but to lie temperately that the water might distil out softly of its own accord, and to abstain from meat, if he might so long suffer hunger, and to take no more drink, neither hot nor cold, than would moderately quench and assuage his thirsty appetite. And thus, with lukewarm drink, tempe rate heat, and measurable clothes, many escaped. Few which used this order after it was found out died of that sweat. One point diligently above all others, in this cure, is to be observed, that he never put his hands or feet out of the bed to refresh or cool himself, which to do is no less jeopardy than short and present death. Thus this disease, coming in the first year of king Henry's reign, was judged (of some) to be a token and sign of a troublesome reign of the same king." Hume says of this sickness, referring to Rymer as his authority, that "it seemed not to be propagated by any contagious infection, but arose from the general disposition of the air and of the human body." In less than twenty-four hours the patient usually died or recovered. In a few weeks, whether from alterations in the atmosphere, or by regimen and improved treatment of the disease, it abated its violence. We might have noticed an earlier pestilence in the year 1349, in the reign of Edward III. at the very time of the institution of the order of the Garter. "A sudden damp," says Hume, was thrown over this festivity and triumph of the court of England, by a destructive pestilence which invaded that kingdom, as well as the rest of Europe; and is computed to have swept away near a third of the inhabitants in every country which it attacked. It was probably more fatal in great cities than in the country; and above fifty thousand souls are said to have perished by it in London alone. This malady first discovered itself in the north of Asia, was spread over all that country, made its progress from one end of Europe to the other, and sensibly depopulated every state through which it passed. So grievous a calamity, more than the pacific disposition of the prince, served to maintain and prolong the truce between France and England." In perusing this passage, our readers will probably have formed a parallelism in their minds, which may lead to salutary reflections. That de- save their own souls, or the souls of structive pestilence, like the disorder those around them, who by their now impending, came from the East, prayers and warnings are led to turn working its deathful way across to their offended God. But whatEurope; it attacked and humbled ever may be the event, the Christian England at the very height of her is safe: he is sheltered in the arms pomp and festivity: and it had at of infinite mercy, and may welcome least one beneficical effect, that it poverty, disappointment, sickness. kept two jealous rival nations from or death itself; the last most of all, resorting to arms. May it not be as being a messenger to convey him that, in the present season of strife, to the bosom of his Redeemer, and when the nations are looking upon the long-sought rest of an eternal each other with hostile jealousy, and world. We will only add, that if the all Europe is but one armed truce, purpose of such a visitation caused a liable to be broken by the most tri- truce between two hostile nations, it vial casualty, this visitation may be may well bring nigher together the designed to curb the outbreaking scattered and contending members of animosity, and to lead each to forget the body of Christ. Oh, what would its jealousies towards its neighbour be our estimate of the amount of in its own impending calamity. And half the matters that now separate at home also, still more, may it not chief friends, if each duly felt that be designed either to silence our the Bridegroom is at the door: and bitter contentions, or to punish us what more calculated to impress such for them? If any thing could quell a conviction, than knowing that the party warfare which is raging death hovered on every side around throughout the land, it would surely us, and that hundreds who smiled be a visitation which brought death gaily on this morning's rising sun and eternity nigh to every house; shall never behold its setting beam. which forced its ravages into our families, and left every man to carry his life in his hand from day to day, not knowing what to-morrow might bring forth. This is, indeed, true at all times; but it is more peculiarly and impressively so at seasons of great mortality. Then we feel strongly the frailty of life, and are taught, if happily we listen to the voice that speaks from above, to apply our hearts to wisdom. Not that there is any thing in sword, or famine, or pestilence, sufficiently potent of itself to soften the hard heart of fallen man, or to take it away and to give a heart of flesh; but as means they have often been used by Divine Providence for that purpose, and sometimes with blessed effect, as in the case of Nineveh; but, alas! often without any such result, as in many other instances mentioned in Holy Writ. Then comes the wrath deferred, with tenfold vengeance; then in vain Noah, Daniel, and Job shall pray for an impenitent and devoted land. They shall but In 1551, as we learn from Strype's Cranmer, letters were issued July 18, to all the bishops, from the Council, exhorting all the people to pray during the pestilence which that year broke out; but no special form of prayer is known to have been used. The disease was the sweating sickness, and the mortality was so great that eight hundred persons, it is said, died in a week, in the then comparatively small population of London. In the year 1563, the sixth of the reign of Elizabeth, and the year when the memorable Council of Trent broke up, after eighteen years' session, a dreadful plague devastated England, and especially the metropolis, where twenty thousand persons died of it in the course of a year. It had been imported by the English soldiers who returned home after the loss of Havre. It had been either generated, or greatly increased, by their severe fatigue, bad diet, and mental depression: one proof among innumerable on record, that the typhoid disorders, jail distempers, and similar scourges, which have swept off in different countries large numbers of the human race, have arisen, or been fearfully aggravated, by causes which, under the blessing of God, may be kept greatly in check, especially in a rich country, where the people are well fed, well clothed, and well housed, and where there are no peculiarly depressing circumstances to facilitate the susceptibility to disease. A contented and happy spirit-happy from the best of causes, peace with God as a reconciled Father in Christ Jesus, with confidence in his love and goodness, and his willingness to make all things work together for our good, is no mean check to the progress of communicative disorder. At the breaking out of this contagion of 1563, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Parker, was very anxious that seasons of humiliation, fasting, and prayer, should be publicly appointed. Strype gives the following circumstantial account of the matter, which we copy, as it affords some curious particulars relative to the state of the Church of England at that early period, and the difficulties of form, etiquette, and political scruple which had to be surmounted before so proper and religious a proposal could be carried into effect. "In the latter end of the month (July 1563), I find our archbishop, at his house at Brakesbourn, near Canterbury, a place of retirement, healthfully and pleasantly seated, which he took a great deal of delight in. Here he piously considering how the nation was at this time afflicted universally by war, and the pestilence broken out at London, and a famine at Canterbury, the people wanting necessary provisions, as was reported to him; he thought good to call upon the Mayor of Canterbury, and his commonalty, to meet him on Friday, at the cathedral church, where he did himself exhort them to prayer, and then appointed Friday for the future to be set apart for prayer and preaching in the cathedral, and Mondays and Wednesdays in the parish "These prayers, after the archbishop had accommodated them to the present occasion, he prescribed now to be used in Canterbury. This he did, not enjoining the like to the rest of his diocese, nor to the rest of his province, for want of sufficient warrant from the prince or council, lest he might otherwise run into some transgression of the laws. But he writ to the secretary, that he marvelled he had no advertisement from above, enjoining him to take order for so pious a purpose, in a time that so much required it. And lest it might be objected to him, and the rest of the bishops, that they by their vocation should have had special regard of such matters, he answered, that they were holden within certain limits by statutes, and so might stand in doubt how it would be taken, if they should of themselves have given order herein.' This was the cause that he thought it prudent not to charge the rest of his diocese with injunctions for fasting and prayer, but left them to their own liberty to follow them in the city for common prayer, if they would. But withal the archbishop desired a warrant from the council for the same; that he might direct his precepts, as he thought it very necessary, to exercise the said public prayers. For this the those letters also. archbishop thanked him; and keeping the copy by him about a week, altered some parts thereof, not in substance and principal meaning, but in the circumstances; and that for this reason: Because,' as he said, he saw offence grew by new innovations; and he therefore doubted whether it were best to change the established form of prayer appointed already by law, in this alteration of prayer for a time, as that formular (of Bishop Grindal) would infer, which directed all the service to be said in the body of the church. Which being once in this particular order devised, he judged they abolished all chancels, and therefore the Litany, with the new Psalms and Collects, he judged might be said, as Litany is already ordered, in the midst of the people.' But the other parts, containing a second service, he approved to be celebrated in the chancel. In short, the archbishop said, he had no otherwise altered the book and orders used. And whereas the Collects were some. what long, he wished they had been shorter; fearing the service to be too long, as he said, for their cold devotions.' But the composers had designedly made them long; for this reason, that the people might continue in prayer till four in the afternoon, and then to take one meal. And this also, the archbishop seemed not to like, saying, that all things agreed not every where. This book was soon printed, and began to be exercised in London in the month of August, and so likewise in all the provinces." "The archbishop having made this good motion, Cecil, the queen's secretary, immediately acquainted the queen therewith, and recommended the devising a form of solemn prayer and fasting, unto Grindal, Bishop of London, chiefly for the judgment of the plague, then lying upon the nation, brought over from Newhaven, in France, when the English surrendered it. This very matter that careful and pious bishop had already thought on, and made some progress in, before the secretary's letter came to him for that purpose; having sent to the Dean of St. Paul's, Alexander Nowel, to open an homily meet for the time; which the said dean accordingly did. But that bishop meant it at first, but for his own cure,' to use his own expression; meaning, I suppose, thereby, his cathedral, or the city of London, or at most his diocese. But since the secretary had admonished him to prepare a form of prayer to be used more generally, he proceeded further, by the help of the said dean; and having finished it, he sent the secretary a copy of it; advising him after he had perused it, to send it speedily by one of Jug the printer's men to the archbishop. Accordingly, the secretary having reviewed it, and adding somewhat in divers places thereof by his own hand, without delay dispatched it to Canterbury; desiring the archbishop's last review thereof, and so to remit it to be printed. And withal procuring, according to the archbishop's request, the queen's letters to the archbishop, to authorise him to publish a public form of prayer and fasting to be observed through the nation, he sent Such were the circumstances under which the form of 1563 was composed. Strype goes on to analyse its contents at some length, and too tediously for citation; but as we have the form itself now before us, we will notice a few of its observable passages. The form, long as it was, much longer than popular modern week-day or Sunday devotion would approve, was to be read twice every week, and a fast was to be observed every Wednesday; and this continued from August 1563, till the beginning of the next year, when, the plague abating, a form of thanksgiving was appointed in its place. The Queen's letter to Archbishop Parker, authorising him to set forth a form, and enjoining the clergy and laity to comply with it, is dated "At our Manor of Richmond, August 1;" but we find, in Strype, a letter written some days before (dated Fulham, July 22), by the Bishop of London (Grindal) to his Archdeacon, telling him that "great assemblies of people for public prayer and preachings, in this contagious time, might be occasion to spread the infection of the disease," but directing him to give orders to all pastors and curates and ministers" in his archdeaconry to exhort the people to repair diligently to their respective parish churches on Sundays, holidays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and also" in their private persons and families to use private prayers, fasting, and abstinence, with other the fruits of faith and true repentance; most earnestly praying to Almighty God that it may please him to remember us in his mercy, and to turn away from us, if it be his blessed will, this his plague and punishment, most justly poured upon us for our sins and unthankfulness." Grindal himself composed "certain suitable prayers " for the occasion; which we presume he incorporated into the public service of August 1. Sir William Cecil had this book of prayer printed as a manual for private use. The service opens, as we have said, with the queen's letter to the archbishop, which commences with a solemn preamble, perfectly scriptural, but by too many now-a-days forgotten, that "like as the Almighty God hath of his mere grace committed to us next under him the chief government of this realm, and the people therein, so hath he of his like goodness ordered under us sundry principal ministers to serve and assist us in this burden." The purport of the CHRIST. OBSERV. App. letter is authoritatively to enjoin upon the clergy and laity to follow the good order prescribed by the archbishop. Her majesty does not say a word of "with the advice of her privy council." Then follows a preface, declaring the causes of national punishments, and the duty and encouragement to national humiliation under them. This preface and various other portions of this service were used on similar occasions afterwards, particularly in 1603. Our extracts shall therefore be here, where the passages first occur. The preface thus commences: "We be taught by many and sundry examples of Holy Scriptures, that upon occasion of particular punishments, afflictions, and perils, which God of his most just judgment hath sometimes sent among his people, to shew his wrath against sin, and to call his people to repentance, and to the redress of their evil lives; the godly have been provoked and stirred up to more fervency and diligence in prayer, fasting, and alms-deeds, to a more deep consideration of their consciences, to ponder their unthankfulness and forgetfulness of God's merciful benefits towards them, with craving of pardon for the time past, and to ask his assistance for the time to come, to live more godly; and so to be defended and delivered from all further perils and dangers. So king David, &c. [the passage goes on to cite the cases of Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Judith, Esther, and Daniel, and then continues:] Now, therefore, calling to mind that God hath been provoked by us to visit us with the plague and other grievous diseases, it hath been thought meet to set forth by public order, some occasion to excite and stir up all godly people within this realm, to pray earnestly and heartily to God to turn away his deserved wrath from us, and to restore us as well to the health of our bodies by the wholesomeness of the air*, as also to godly In this preface, as slightly altered in the form of 1608, there is nothing said. 5 K |