of "indulgence," succeeded by another period of hostility. Under such alternations, made more or less penal by the political aspect of affairs, dissent first developed itself; and, what is more, it enlarged its borders, even before it received a statutory existence by the Act of Toleration in 1689,-the great charter of the liberties of the Nonconformists.

The puritan divines had always been distinguished for their piety. They had striven to excite within the church, and especially amongst the clergy, a deeper reverence for religion. A strict and even

severe standard of duty was insisted on. Plays, cards, dice, games, and amusements of almost every description, came under their condemnation. Their desire was to awaken the sympathies of the people to a more profound sense of their obligations and prospects as spiritual and immortal beings. With the Bible in their hands they visited the houses of their flocks, expounded its truths, and administered its consolations. And if their views of life and its responsibilities may now be deemed too narrow and rigid, let it be remembered how great were the corruptions of that age, how low its morals, how vicious its principles; that the Scriptures had been till a recent period almost a sealed book, and that learning had done little amongst the masses to remove vice and ignorance! Religious faith and ordinances were almost the only instruments at hand for working a reformation of life and manners.

Upon this theory of faith, life, and duty, the pilgrim fathers who emigrated to New England founded their churches; and upon this theory the ejected divines pursued their ministry, as the founders of nonconformist congregations in this country. Ever ready to preach the word and to do the work of evangelists, their visits from house to house, while they wandered about as outcasts in their own land, were the signals for a gathering and an exposition. Every vicissitude of health and condition in a family was the subject of a prayer, while every great event, as a birth, a marriage, or a death, furnished a theme for exhortation. The very frame-work of society, in their view, required for its security the ministrations of the pastor and the pulpit.

This is the solution of the frequent week - day services among the protestant dissenters of that period. Lectures, fast - days, and humiliation services are peculiarly the institutions of those times. They were, at once, the seed and the fruit of the religious character of the people.

In accordance with this spirit, Mr. Nathaniel Hulton, a native of Breightmet, but then a resident in London, established a lecture in "the Meeting Place" in Bolton, in his own life-time, and left an ample bequest for its maintenance, and also for providing catechetical instruction for the young. The lecture was to be preached on the market day (Monday,) and obtained considerable celebrity as

"the Bolton Lecture." The commencement of this lecture was probably as early as 1681. The first preachers were all ejected ministers, and good service has it rendered to the cause which it was designed to benefit!

This completes the history of the state of Nonconformity in Bolton at the period of the Revolution. Three of the silenced divines who had gathered their followers around them in the Meeting Place in Deansgate were gone to "the house appointed for all the living," and another was come in the very decline of his days to be their successor. The relaxation of the penal laws, together with the establishment of the Monday lecture, no doubt so increased the number of attendants on the public services as to call for a more spacious place of worship.

The time had now arrived when the Nonconformists could assemble for public worship without the dread of violating the law. Their Meeting Houses were licensed. Their dissent from the established religion was no longer illegal. Not that all the penal statutes enacted against them had been removed, for it was still only a limited toleration that was granted. To deny the Trinity was deemed blasphemy, and was a punishable offence. Subscription to the doctrinal articles of the Church of England was still required. The Roman Catholics were left unprotected in their worship. And the Test and Corporation Acts still

enforced participation in the Lord's Supper in a parish church as a legal qualification for civil offices and social trusts.

In this altered and more favourable state of the law, the generous zeal of the Nonconformists supplied the funds for the erection of Meeting Houses in every part of the country. And to this period -the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century-may be traced almost all those religious foundations which were established for protestant dissenting worship, and thus necessarily became centres for the dissemination of the principles of Nonconformity. Looking back at the long and noble struggle for religious freedom carried on through so much suffering and sacrifice, it is impossible not to admire the resolution and fortitude of these early adherents. English Presbyterianism never displayed a braver or bolder spirit. The Independents bore their part with equal consistency. They had drunk of the same cup of bitterness and drunk it to the dregs. There was now, indeed, apparently little to prevent a fusion of the two parties. The moderate men, on both sides, approximated closely in opinion, and a union was attempted. But it failed: the tendencies of the doctrinal views of the Independents being towards a dogmatical profession of faith, founded on the Assembly's Catechism; those of the Presbyterians being against all restrictions either of creeds or confessions. The Independents had embraced

Calvinism in all its strictness. The Presbyterians, opposed to predestination, and with secret reservations on many other points of orthodoxy, decidedly inclined to Arminianism.

It was this attempt to unite the two great parties of Nonconformists soon after the Revolution that led to the revival of the Provincial Assembly in this county. The first public General Meeting of this body was held at Bolton on the 3rd of April, 1693. The ministers of the neighbourhood gave their support to the project for a union. But, as I have stated, it failed. The extreme views of the predestinarians could brook no compromise. Their influence, as it has ever since continued until recently, proved sufficiently powerful to render nugatory the efforts of the more enlightened and moderate of the party. From this time a more distinct line of separation sprung up between the Independents and the Presbyterians orthodoxy being the shibboleth of the one, and heterodoxy the reproach of the other.

Reverting for a moment to the constitution of the early Nonconformists, we trace in the proceedings of the Provincial Assembly, at this date, the spirit and some of the forms of presbyterian discipline. The congregations of the district sent representatives to the assembly. Cases of immorality came under the consideration of that body. Disputes and dissensions were referred to their decision. And, above all, great care was taken by enquiry