How different this from the views of their great reformer Beza, who addressing Queen Elizabeth, says: -- "But you, O Queen, and your people, by your means, enjoy what perhaps no other kingdom does -- the complete profession of the pure and sincere doctrine of the Gospel. To which, if you add (what all good men hope for, and the most faithful Bishops of your kingdom have long desired,) the

0 New York, MSS. from archives nt Fnlhnm, vol. i., pp. 564-5. (Hawks.)

h Smith's Hist, of N. Y., pp. 166, 167. " About the middle of the last century," the Historian of New York says, '■ the French Church of New York by the contentions, in 1724, and the disuse of the French language U now reduced to an inconsiderable handful."

THE TOWN OK NEW ROCHELLE.

63r

full restoration of ecclesiastical discipline also ; in truth I do not see what England can desire more of you, or your majesty can confer more upon it."a Here are none of those home-bred charges of superstition, idolatry, anti-Christianism, or popery, brought against the liturgy ; but it is owned to be the pure worship of God, purged from the filth and dregs of anti-Christianism.* As the poet Cowper well observes: --

" All zeal for reform, which gives offence To peace and charity, is mere pretence."

But there is one thing which it will not be amiss to mention here, which is, that these seceders not only proscribed the established Liturgy of the Church of England, but altogether discarded the public Liturgy or Form of Prayers and Administration of Sacraments, which all ministers of the French church were obliged to use in their daily service. Calvin gave this advice to the heads of the English Reformation in King Edward's days, and we do not doubt but he took care to put it in practice in his own country : -- " As to what concerns a form of prayer and Ecclesiastical rites," says he, " I highly approve of it, that there be a certain form, from which the ministers be not allowed to vary; that first, some provision may be made to help the simplicity and unskillfulness of some.