[403] Husband's Coll., 404.
[404] In the State Paper Office are additional instructions, (dated March 6th, 1643-4,) to the Earl of Rutland, Sir W. Armyn, Bart., Sir H. Vane, and others, to declare to our brethren of Scotland that the Parliament have settled a course for taking the late Solemn League and Covenant throughout this kingdom and dominion of Wales, "we do hereby give you full power and authority by yourselves, or such as you shall appoint, to cause the said League and Covenant to be taken throughout the several places and counties where you shall come."
Vane, on the scaffold, said, respecting the Covenant: "The holy ends therein contained I fully assent to, and have been as desirous to observe; but the rigid way of prosecuting it and the oppressing uniformity that hath been endeavoured by it, I never approved."
Wood states, (Ath. Ox., ii. 84), that Strode made a motion to the effect, "that all those that refused the Covenant, (being certain ill-wishers to the laws and liberties of this kingdom,) might, therefore, have no benefit of those laws and liberties." He adds, "that motion being somewhat too desperate, was waived for the present, and took no effect."
[405] See Sermon on Solemn League and Covenant, by Saltmarsh.—Tracts in Brit. Mus., vol. 253.
[406] These also are in the British Museum; I think in the same volume as the former.
[407] Bishop Hall went on ordaining Episcopal clergymen in spite of the Covenant. He says: "The synodals both in Norfolk and Suffolk, and all the spiritual profits of the diocese were also kept back, only ordinations and institutions continued awhile. But after the Covenant was appointed to be taken, and was generally swallowed of both clergy and laity, my power of ordination was with some strange violence restrained; for when I was going on in my wonted course, which no law or ordinance had inhibited, certain forward volunteers in the city, banding together, stir up the mayor, and aldermen, and sheriffs, to call me to an account for an open violation of their Covenant."—Hard Measure, Hall's Works, p. xvii.
[408] Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson, 143-191.
[409] Mant's History of the Church of Ireland, i. 580.
[410] Eusebius observes, in his Epistle respecting the Nicene Creed, that he and his friends did not refuse to adopt the word ὁμοούσιος, "peace being the end in view, as well as the not falling away from sound doctrine." He excused the damnatory clause, simply on the ground that it aggrieved none by prohibiting the use of unscriptural phraseology.—Socrates' Ecc. Hist., b. i. c. 8.