appearance "The Philistine may go forth with his helmet of brass on his head, and his coat of mail weighing five hundred shekels of brass, and his staff like a weaver's beam; he will be met by a youth from the mountain side, in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel."

The forces of truth consist of knowledge, of the power to communicate it and the spirit by which they are animated; the desire to proceed in melius not in aliud; the desire which animated Franklin, Washington, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Romilly.

Such are the conflicting armies. Error conscious of its impotence. "We must destroy the press," said Wolsey, "or the press will destroy us." Knowledge conscious of its power, and that sooner or later it must prevail. "Hitherto," says Fuller, "the corpse of John Wickliffe had quietly slept in his grave about forty-one years after his death, till his body was reduced to bones, and his bones almost to dust. For, though the earth in the chancel of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, where he was interred, hath not so quick a digestion with the earth of Aceldama, to consume flesh in twenty-four hours, yet such the appetite thereof, and all other English graves, to leave small reversions of a body after so many years. But now such the spleen of the council of Constance, as they not only cursed his memory

as dying an obstinate heretic, but ordered that his bones (with this charitable caution,-if it may be discerned from the bodies of other faithful people) be taken out of the ground, and thrown far off from any Christian burial. In obedience hereunto, Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, diocesan of Lutterworth, sent his officers (vultures, with a quick sight scent, at a dead carcase) to ungrave him. Accordingly to Lutterworth they come; sumner, commissary, official, chancellor, proctors, doctors, and their servants (so that the remnant of the body would not hold out a bone amongst so many hands), take what was left out of the grave, and burnt them to ashes, and cast them into Swift, a neighbouring brook, running hard by; thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over."

IV.

Has he any vantage ground of situation by which the dominion of prejudice may be more speedily subdued? is his next consideration.

"Power to do good," said Lord Bacon, “is the true and lawful end of aspiring ;" and he was no sooner appointed attorney-general, than he dedicated to the king his proposals for compiling and

amending the laws of England. "Your Majesty," he says, "of your favour having made me privycouncillor, and continuing me in the place of your attorney-general, I take it to be my duty not only to speed your commandments and the business of my place, but to meditate and to excogitate of myself wherein I may best by my travels derive your virtues to the good of your people, and return their thanks and increase of love to you again; and after I had thought of many things, I could find in my judgment none more proper for your majesty as a master, nor for me as a workman, than the reducing and recompiling the laws of England."

So too, Sir Samuel Romilly was no sooner promoted to the office of solicitor-general, than he submitted to parliament his proposals for the improvement of the bankrupt law and the criminal law. "Long," he says, "has Europe been a scene of carnage and desolation: a brighter prospect has now opened before us."

Peace hath her victories,

Not less renowned than war.

So too when Lord Brougham was appointed chancellor, he exerted himself to reform every species of law with a zeal which will never be forgotten.

V.

He resolves to advance, not rashly but cautiously.

However regardless of personal danger a brave commander does not rashly expose himself to his opponents; he does not forget that with his own he commits the lives and fortunes of a multitude, or consider it a proof of valour to stake the safety of other men upon the success of a perilous or desperate enterprize. When Chares displayed to the Athenians the wounds he had received, Timotheus said, "When I besieged Samos I was ashamed to see a dart thrown from the walls light hard by me; I felt that I was a rash young man and more venturous than became a general of so great an army."

VI.

If the times require it, he exposes himself to any calamity.

The biographer of Barnard Gilpin says, "When satisfied of the right way, he hesitated not out of the fear of troublous times, to fulfil an office in that bishopric which brought him into contact with the abuses of the church, against which he testified with all his might, and was not restrained by the plottings of his enemies, in the fearful times of the bloody Mary, who laid hands upon

him, and brought him to testify with Cranmer, and Latimer, and Ridley.

During the French Revolution, when an attempt was made to destroy the liberty of the press in England, and several persons were indicted for high treason, for speaking with freedom, William Godwin, during the trials, fearlessly published his work on Political Justice. In his manly preface, he thus speaks: "The period in which it makes its appearance is singular. The people of England have assiduously been excited to declare their loyalty, and to mark every man as obnoxious who is not ready to sign the shibboleth of the constitution. Money is raised by voluntary subscription to defray the expense of prosecuting men who shall dare to promulgate heretical opinions, and thus to oppress them at once with the authority of government and the resentment of individuals. This was an accident unforeseen when the work was undertaken; and it will scarcely be supposed, that such an accident could produce any alteration in the writer's designs. Every man, if we may believe the voice of rumour, is to be prosecuted who shall appeal to the people by the publication of any unconstitutional paper or pamphlet; and it is added, that men are to be punished for any unguarded words that may be dropped in the warmth of conversation and debate. It is now to be tried, whether in addition to these alarming encroachments upon our liberty, a book is to fall