book v

. p. 31. Neal’s Hist. of New England, ii. p. 301.]

[217] [Mr. Henry Ainsworth, the most eminent of the Brownists, was the author of a very learned commentary on the Pentateuch and Canticles, as also of several other minor works. “He was,” says Mr. Cotton, “diligently studious of the Hebrew text, hath not been unuseful to the church in his exposition of the Pentateuch, especially of Moses’s rituals.” Way of Cong. Churches, p. 6. Stuart’s edit. of his Two Treatises, p. 55.]

[218] [The composition of the first book of Homilies is generally attributed to Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hopkins, and Becon. Jewel is said to have had the largest share in the second, although Archbishop Parker speaks of them as “revised and finished, with a second part, by him and other bishops.” The first edition of the first book appeared in July, 1547, 1 Edward VI. The use of the Apocrypha in the church service was an early complaint of the Puritans. The apocryphal books were commanded to be bound up with the other books of scripture by Archbishop Whitgift. Short’s Hist. of Church of England, p. 239. Strype’s Whitgift, i. 590. Neal, i. 427.]

[219] [A Letter of many Ministers in Old England requesting the judgment of their reverend brethren in New England concerning nine positions: written A.D. 1637. Together with their answer thereto returned, anno 1639, &c. Published 1643, 4to. pp. 90. For a condensed view of it, see Hanbury’s Hist. Memorials, ii. pp. 18-39.]

[220] [Sentiments precisely similar to the above were embodied in the seventeenth chapter of the Cambridge Platform, and continued to be for many years the ruling principles of the congregational churches of New England. See C. Mather’s Magnalia,