finite _naivete_, he relates what happened to himself. This
honest divine was puritanically inclined, but there can be no
exaggeration in these unvarnished facts. He tells a remarkable story of
the state of religious knowledge in Lancashire, at a place called
Cartmel: some of the people appeared desirous of religious instruction,
declaring that they were without any minister, and had entirely
neglected every religious rite, and therefore pressed him to quit his
situation at Lymm for a short period. He may now tell his own story.

"I found a very large spacious church, scarce any seats in it; a
people very ignorant, and yet willing to learn; so as I had
frequently some thousands of hearers, I catechised in season and out
of season. The churches were so thronged at nine in the morning, that
I had much ado to get to the pulpit. One day, an old man about sixty,
sensible enough in other things, and living in the parish of Cartmel,
coming to me on some business, I told him that he belonged to my care
and charge, and I desired to be informed of his knowledge in
religion. I asked him how many Gods there were? He said he knew not.
I informing him, asked again how he thought to be saved? He answered
he could not tell. Yet thought that was a harder question than the
other. I told him that the way to salvation was by Jesus Christ,
God-man, who as he was man shed his blood for us on the cross, &c.
Oh, sir, said he, I think I heard of that man you speak of once in a
play at Kendall, called Corpus-Christ's play,[282] where there was a
man on a tree and blood run down, &c. And afterwards he professed he
could not remember that he ever heard of salvation by Jesus, but in
that play."

The scenes passing in the metropolis, as well as in the country, are
opened to us in one of the chronicling poems of George Withers. Our
sensible rhymer wrote in November, 1652, "a Darke Lanthorne" on the
present subject.

After noticing that God, to mortify us, had sent preachers from the
"shop-board and the plough,"

----Such as we seem justly to contemn,
As making truths abhorred, which come from them;

he seems, however, inclined to think that these self-taught "Teachers
and Prophets" in their darkness might hold a certain light within them:

----Children, fools,
Women, and madmen, we do often meet
Preaching, and threatening judgments in the street,
Yea by stra