the everlasting pain_, if by their end we may judge.”[441] The man who could write thus can scarcely lay claim to our credence; for his prejudice has evidently stifled in him every sense by which a regard for truth can be guaranteed. It is not thought out of place to introduce here this brief vindication of a book, which, so far as it is a contemporary history, has been, both of old, and of late an object of unfair depreciation, but from which no right-hearted Protestant can rise, without being at once a sadder and better man;--a book, out of which we shall now fearlessly draw our information, whilst we offer to our readers a few examples of those terrible sufferings which it is at once humiliating to think that man could inflict, and animating to think that man could so nobly bear. The first called to take up his cross was John Rogers. He had been brought up in Cambridge, and afterwards became chaplain of the factory at Antwerp, where he fell into the company of Tindall and Coverdale, and helped them to produce that translation of the Bible, which goes by the name of Matthew’s translation. He thence removed to Wittenberg, where he had the charge of a congregation for many years, till Edward’s accession having rendered it safe for those who held his opinions to return to their native land, he repaired thither with his wife and children (for he was married), and was soon preferred by Ridley to a prebend of St. Paul’s and to the divinity lectureship in that cathedral. Thus was he in a situation to attract the attention of Mary, and to be smitten by her evil eye. Accordingly, he was soon brought before the council to answer for his doctrine; and having been first confined to his house, where he remained half a year, and from which he took no pains to escape, he was afterwards, by the tender mercies of Bonner committed to Newgate, and lodged amongst the common desperadoes of a gaol for twelve months more. In his examinations before Gardiner and the council he played his part with the intrepidity of one who felt strong in the righteousness of his cause, and with a force of reasoning which it required the scoffs and brutal laughter of his judges to smother, for answer it they could not. Kneeling on his knees, he reminded them of their own acquiescence in the laws of Henry and Edward; one amongst them, and he, the chief, having been the open advocate of the King’s supremacy as opposed to that of the Pope. He defended his own marriage, as being originally contracted in a country where marriage was permitted to priests; and said that neither did he bring his wife into England till the laws of England permitted it too. With regard to service in an unknown tongue, and the doctrine of the mass, he stayed himself upon Scripture. Gardiner exclaiming against him, that “he could prove nothing by the Scripture, for that Scripture was dead, and must needs have a lively expositor.” But all was in vain, for they were bent to have his life, and having been on