omparison with the priest's, and who in their
own practice do a great deal to bring the former into something like
contempt. If the sermons preached before the eight brethren did not
convince or edify them, they at least amused them, and gave them
practice in the Christian virtue of patience. Dr. Barlow's was not the
worst, though his hearers regarded it as an admirable '_confutation_' of
the text. The preacher, among the four, who reached the climax of
absurdity was Dr. Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester. He was one of the
extreme High Churchmen of his time: no man urged the doctrine of passive
obedience to a more abject degree, or did more to support with the
sanction of religion the most extravagant pretensions of the Crown. It
was Andrewes who at the Hampton Court Conference declared that James was
inspired by God--the same man who made it his nightly prayer, as he
tells us himself, that he might be preserved from adulating the King! Of
all the sermons preached to, or rather _at_, the eight brethren, his,
as we have said, was the most preposterous, consisting as it did of a
deduction of the King's right to call Assemblies of the Church, from the
passage in Numbers which describes the blowing of the trumpets by the
sons of Aaron to summon the congregation to the tabernacle! Well might a
Scottish lord, who heard Andrewes preach before the Court on the
occasion of James's visit to Scotland in 1617, say of him as he did,
when asked his opinion by the King, that he played with his text rather
than preached upon it. The last of the series of the discourses was the
most candid, and pointed most directly to the object at which they were
all aiming; for the preacher reached the close of the attack upon the
Presbyterians by turning round to the King and exclaiming, 'Downe, downe
with them all!'

On Monday, 22nd September, the ministers were brought to confer with the
King in presence of the Scottish Council. Two points for discussion came
up: First, the proceedings of the Aberdeen Assembly; and, second, the
proposed holding of an Assembly in which order and peace might be
restored to the Church. James Melville spoke for the brethren with great
courtesy, and at the same time with great decision. He declined, in name
of all, to discuss these questions till they had had an opportunity for
consultation among themselves. Other matters were brought forward by the
King, but not formally discussed. One of these was a letter that had
been