the Great to the Emperor’s deputy: ‘That none trained up in Holy Scriptures would suffer one syllable of Divine truth to be betrayed; but were ready, if it be required, to suffer any death in the defence thereof.’ People, he maintained, are ever carried on by the example of their governors. ‘How,’ he asks, ‘was the Eastern Empire polluted with execrable Arianism, whilst yet the Western continued in the truth? The historians give the reason of it. Constantine, an Arian, ruled in the East when at the same time Constans and Constantius, sons to Constantine the Great, treading in the steps of their pious father, adhered to the truth professed by him, and so did as far ennoble the Western Empire with the truth as the other did defile the Eastern with his countenancing of error and heresy.’ The preacher here asks his hearers to make no laws against religion and piety, and ‘recall such as have been made in time of ignorance against the same, and study to uphold and maintain such profitable and wholesome laws as have been formerly enacted for God and His people. Improve what was well begun by others before you, and not perfected by them.’ Under this latter head he dwelt on the possible abuse of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and the irreligious profanation of the Lord’s Day. In 1643 the Earl of Manchester ejected many of the Royalist clergymen from their livings who were scandalous ministers. Dr. Sterne having been deprived of the mastership of Jesus College, Cambridge, the Stowmarket Vicar was placed there in his stead. He held the situation till 1654, when, on his refusal of the engagement, Government deprived him of his office. At the time the sermon was preached Dr. Young was one of the far-famed Assembly of Divines which met in Henry VII.’s chapel in accordance with the Solemn League and Covenant, which proposed three grand objects: ‘To endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy superstition, heresy, and profaneness; to endeavour the preservation of the reformed religion in Scotland and the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government according to the Word of God and the example of the best Reformed Church; and to endeavour to bring the Churches of God in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion—confession of faith, form of Church government, directory for worship and catechizing; that we and our posterity after us may as brethren live in faith and love, and that the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us.’ A clause was inserted to the effect that it was English prelacy which they contemned; and thus modified, after all due solemnities, and with their right hands lifted to heaven, was the Solemn League and Covenant sworn to by the English Parliament and by the Assembly of Divines in St. Margaret’s Church, September 25, 1643. It was, writes a Presbyterian divine, too much the creature of the Long