BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 FROM THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 1891 
 
 Ag-.<?.<^.f<?.g ^s/.i/iqo^.. 
 
 5901 
 
_„ Cornell University Library 
 
 BX5199.D24 F96 
 
 '-''^•■,!f;lS!*i!%„.^„.'!y,''Jin9S of <'ohn Davenan 
 
 ,. 3 1924 029 449 752 
 olin 
 
c^l 
 
 Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029449752 
 
THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 OUR ESTABLISHED CHURCH 
 
 OUR TITLE DEEDS 
 
 PAN-ANGLICANISM 
 
 THE THRONE OF CANTERBURY 
 
 COURT OF FINAL APPEAL 
 
 THE LIFE OF THOMAS FULLER, D.D. 
 
RIGHT REV. JOHN " ■ Jf ? ,,.;„i„a 
 
 DAVENANT, D.D 
 
 li^-^:-d 
 
 LOKD BISHOP OF SALISUURV, 1621. 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE LETTERS & WRITINGS 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN DAVENANT D.D. 
 
 1572-1641 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY 
 
 BY 
 
 MORRIS FULLER B.D. 
 
 VICAR OF S. MARK S, MARVLEBONE ROAD, W. 
 SOMETIME FOUNDATION SCHOLAR, EXHIBITIONER, CLARK'S SCHOLAR AND LIBRARIAN 
 
 or queens' college, Cambridge 
 
 METHUEN & CO. 
 
 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 1897 
 
"In his grave writings he (the Good Bishop) aims at God's glory and the 
 Church's peace, with that worthy prelate, th£ second Jewell of Salisbury^ whose 
 comments and controversies will transmit his memory to all posterity.*' 
 Whose dying pen did write of Christian union^ 
 How Church with Church might safely kee^ Communion^ 
 Commend his care, although the care do imsse : 
 The woe is ours, the happiness is his : 
 Who finding discords daily to encrease, 
 Because he could not live, would dy in peace." 
 
 —Fuller's Holy State^ the Good Bishop. 
 
TO THE 
 
 BISHOP, DEAN, AND CHAPTER 
 
 OF THE "famous AND PARAMOUNT" CHURCH OF SALISBURY 
 
 THIS SKETCH 
 
 OF AN ANGLICAN PRELATE OF THE 17TH CENTURY 
 
 THE "GOOD," "EXCELLENT," AND "LEARNED" 
 
 JOHN DAVENANT, D,D. 
 
 BISHOP OF SALISBURY 
 
 PRESIDENT OF QUEENS' COLLEGE AND MARGARET PROFESSOR 
 OF THEOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 (ANGLICAN DEPUTY AT THE SYNOD OF DORT) 
 
 ONE OF THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS 
 
 OF A LONG LINE OF ILLUSTRIOUS BISHOPS 
 
 WHO HAVE FROM TIME TO TIME ADORNED THAT EMINENT SEE 
 
 "the SECOND JEWELL OF SALISBURY" 
 
 AS HE HAS BEEN LOVINGLY AND ADMIRINGLY CALLED 
 
 IS 
 
 Dedicated 
 
 WITH EVERY FEELING OF DUTIFUL RESPECT 
 
 BY 
 
 THEIR FAITHFUL AND HUMBLE SERVANT 
 
 THE AUTHOR 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. The Davenant Family and Pedigree . . . i 
 
 II. John Davenant's Birth, Early Years, and Student 
 
 Life (1572-1594) 13 
 
 III. DavenAnt's Academical Career at Cambridge (1594- . 
 
 1614) 3S 
 
 IV. The Synod of Dort, or Dordrecht (i), (1618-1619) . 64 
 
 V. The Synod of Dort, or Dordrecht (2), (1618-1620) 92 
 
 VI. Davenant's Return to England (1620)— Made Bishop 
 
 of 'Salisbury (1621) ..... 110 
 
 VII. John, Bishop of Salisbury (1621-1641) . . .132 
 
 VIII. Davenant's "Exposition of the Epistle to the 
 
 Colossians" (1622) ..... 159 
 
 IX. Davenant's "Opinion" on the Gallican Contro- 
 versy — Diversity of Degrees (1627) . . 192 
 
 X. Davenant's " Dissertation on the Death of Christ" 
 
 (1627) ....... 214 
 
 XI. Davenant's Letters to Bishop Hall on "the old 
 
 Religion " (1628), and to Dr Ward . , 241 
 
 XII, Bishop Davenant's Fast Sermon at Westminster 
 
 Abbey (1628) ...... 269 
 
 XIII. Bishop Davenant Preaches before the Court — His 
 Troubles as a Court Preacher— Birth of a 
 Prince (1630) ...... 303 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XIV. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate 
 
 OF ALL England and Metropolitan (1631) . 332 
 
 XV. Davbnant's Prelbctiones (Civil Judge and Right- 
 eousness) — Treatise on Justification . . 354 
 
 XVI. Davenant's Determinations, or Resolutions of 
 certain Theological Questions (xlii.), and Trac- 
 tate " DE PACIS ECCLESIASTICiS RATIONALIBUS " 
 • (1634) 383 
 
 XVII. Ritual Conformity — Laud's Canons — Convocation 
 
 (1638-40) . . . . . .411 
 
 XVIII. Davenant's Animadversions upon Hoard's Treatise, 
 
 intitled " God's Love to Mankind " (1641) . 444 
 
 XIX. Ecclesiastical Affairs during the last Years of 
 
 Bishop Davenant's Life (1637-1640) . . 475 
 
 XX. Bishop Davenant's "Golden Tractate," — Last 
 Days, Illness and Death — Will — Views and 
 Character — Biographical Notices, &c. (1640-1) 503 
 
 APPENDICES— 
 
 A. Bishop Davenant's Will. 
 
 B. Bishop Davenant's Explanation of the Etcetera Oath. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This volume contains the " Life, Letters, and Writings of 
 Bishop Davenant "—an Anglican Prelate of the seven- 
 teenth century — who has been not under-rated, but over- 
 looked. It is an attempt to rescue from comparative ob- 
 scurity a great and good man, who deserves to be better 
 known, and to pourtray the characteristics of an eminent 
 and typical theologian of the age in which he lived. It 
 emphasises an aspiration to recover and keep alive a 
 precious memory, and has been undertaken as a work of 
 love. Short biographical sketches of this worthy divine 
 have been before written, but this is the first serious 
 effort at a critical and connected biography. As such it 
 illustrates, and is meant to be an ideal picture of, the via 
 media of the Anglican Church. 
 
 The "Life of Bishop Davenant" is intended to be a 
 companion volume to the " Life, Times, and Writings " of 
 Dr Thomas Fuller, the Church historian, whose maternal 
 uncle he was, which the present writer published some 
 time ago in two volumes. The two biographies — which 
 necessarily overlap in some degree — yet cover a period of 
 nearly a century, i.e., from 1572-1661^ one of the most 
 critical periods in the history of our institutions in Church 
 and State. The method adopted in this Life is the same as 
 that employed in the former one — and which received the 
 emphatic approval of the late Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 The method consists of giving precis of the various pub- 
 lications of the subject of the memoirs in chronological 
 order, and then making the life to hang, as it were, round 
 these productions in orderly sequence. Thus the whole 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 life is preserved as a matter of course, and a complete 
 word-portrait is presented. 
 
 One special feature of the work is the number of Dave- 
 nant's letters, which have now been published for the first 
 time. They have been collected at great trouble and 
 expense from the various public libraries, and it is believed 
 that they will prove — especially the Laudian Epistles — 
 very valuable in throwing a side-light upon the ecclesias- 
 tical and ritual troubles of contemporary Church history. 
 
 Another important item. It was known that Bishop 
 Davenant's celebrated " Fast Sermon " at Westminster 
 Abbey, preached at one of the National Fasts during the 
 Troubles, was extant, but it could nowhere be found. 
 After a prolonged search, the writer was at length re- 
 warded by finding it in the archives of the British Museum. 
 It is reprinted at length, and will be found full of the 
 "strong meat" and flavour of the theology of that contro- 
 versial period — and " there were giants in those days." 
 
 Considerable attention has been directed to the Synod 
 of Dort, and two chapters have been devoted to the dis- 
 cussion of that celebrated Conference of members of the 
 Reformed Communities. King James — after the fashion 
 of the English Monarch? of those days — sent five of our 
 most illustrious theologians as British representatives to 
 attend its deliberations. Of these, Davenant was certainly 
 the leading spirit of the College. Of this number, Bishop 
 Carleton was reputed a most rigid Calvinist, but the re- 
 mainder may be classed among the moderate Augustinians. 
 They were all opposed indeed to the peculiar notions of 
 Arminius with respect to the Divine decrees; but as we 
 argue from their language on the benefits of infant baptism, 
 or on the reception of regenerating grace by some who may 
 not afterwards have persevered, their general doctrine had 
 been drawn exclusively from Hippo, in contradistinction 
 from Geneva. It is quite clear that Davenant and his 
 fidus Achates, Dr Seth Ward, upheld the doctrine of 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 " Augustinianism " as the received doctrine df the Church 
 of England, and in this they were agreed with their mutual 
 and learned friend Archbishop Usher. " In the course of 
 the discussions, from the opening of the Synod to its close, 
 we cannot fail to notice," says the late Archdeacon Hard- 
 wick, "that the influence of the English Deputies^and 
 more especially of Davenant and Ward — was always on 
 the side of primitive truth and Christian moderation" 
 {History of the Articles, p. 196). 
 
 One word more anent the Synod. The British College 
 laboured, and with success, to prove to the Foreign Repre- 
 sentatives that the episcopal regimen of our Church was 
 the more excellent way. This they seem to have been 
 fully convinced about, but averred that they had had no 
 chance to conserve the Succession, which they deplored. 
 An interesting question arises whether we could not offer 
 the. Orthodox Reformed Churches of the Continent ; that 
 which they deplored the loss of, viz., the Historic Episco- 
 pate and the Divine Liturgy, although, be it remembered, 
 they have retained the three Creeds of the Undivided 
 Church in their symbolical writings. And this might be a 
 first step in the reunion of Christendom. " If ever," said 
 De Maistre, *' a divided Christendom is to be reunited, it 
 must be through the instrumentality of the Anglican 
 Church — for the good sense of the English has preserved 
 the Hierarchy." The eloquent author of " Du Pape " 
 could not fail to see that the Church of England only can 
 touch Rome on the one side, and the Reformed on the 
 other. Such a beginning might also tend to promote that 
 Home Reunion which is so desirable among ourselves. 
 
 In this work, the Laudian Revival — in which Davenant 
 played an important part — has been carefully treated, and 
 in this the writer has had the benefit of the advice and 
 supervision of his old friend, the late Rev. James Bliss, 
 M.A., editor of Laud's works in the Anglo-Catholic Library, 
 and who had made Laudian subjects his life's study. 
 
jiiii PREFACE 
 
 The writer is conscious that in his analyses of Davenant's 
 works he has done scant justice to the intellectual acumen 
 and subject matter of these learned treatises, which have 
 been the admiration of the theological world for so many- 
 years. 
 
 It is no small effort to reduce to the limitations of a few 
 chapters a, precis of those voluminous and exhaustive works, 
 which have arrested the attention, and won the commenda- 
 tion, of a Bellarmine, a Bull, and a Newman. 
 
 In fact no one realizes the imperfections of the present 
 work more than the writer himself, but the critics will 
 please to remember that it has been put together during 
 the intervals of a busy pastorate, and in vacation and other 
 off times. 
 
 It may, however, be stated that it is from first to last 
 a labour of love. The present Bishop of Salisbury, who 
 has kindly looked over some of the proof-sheets, but who 
 is in no way responsible for their contents, writes me under 
 date January 2 1st, 1897 : " I wish the book all success, and 
 thank you for the labour of love sp^nt in illustrating the 
 life of a good man, who deserves to be better known." 
 
 M. F. 
 St Mark's Vicarage, Marylebone Road, W., 
 Festival of S. Matthias, 1897. 
 
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 
 BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE DAVENANT FAMILY AND PEDIGREE 
 
 "There is a secret Z<»a&^(»«« in every man's native soyle effectually attract- 
 ing them home again to their country, their center." — Fuller's Abel Redi- 
 vivus, p. 21. 
 
 AMONG the signs which seem to prove the presence 
 of God in history, and more especially in the history 
 of His Church and people, we must reckon the appearance, 
 at critical periods, of some great man — or galaxy of great 
 men — who, themselves imbued with the spirit of the age, 
 know how to give to religious and political movements a 
 practical and permanent shape. The end of the sixteenth 
 century and beginning of the seventeenth century were 
 fertile in such leaders. If we take 1571 as the date of the 
 Elizabethan settlement — synchronising with the publica- 
 tion of the thirty-nine articles in their final shape — and 
 1662 as the last settlement of the Anglican Reformed 
 Churth, we must consider that time as one of the most 
 important epochs in our national history. It marks the 
 gradual crystallisation of the National Church, it covers 
 the struggles of the two contending parties in its bosom, 
 it reduces an Anglo-Catholic theology to a system, it 
 brings into prominence the peculiar characteristics of 
 Anglicanism, it emphasises, by a vivid contrast, the differ- 
 
 A 
 
2 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 ence between the pre-Reformation and post-Reformation 
 eras. It accentuates the Reformation settlement. 
 
 We must never forget that from the outset of the 
 Reformation in England, about 1533, till the final settle- 
 ment in 1662, there were two nations — like Jacob and 
 Esau-^contending within the womb of the English Church, 
 the men of the Old Learning, who desired to maintain the 
 organic continuity, historical, legal, theological and litur- 
 gical, of the post-Reformation and the pre-Reformation 
 Church — to remoye all real abuses, but to retain everything 
 which could be justly entitled Catholic by a fair appeal to 
 Scripture and primitive antiquity ; and those of the New 
 Learning, whose one aim was the entire destruction of 
 everything ancient, as in Scotland and Geneva, and the 
 formation of a sect, whose purity was to be gauged by its 
 qualitative divergence from the discipline and doctrine of 
 Latin Christendom. It is quite clear that this latter 
 section — the dominant party under Edward VI, — consisted 
 for the most part of very unscrupulous men — cruel.'greedy, 
 and sacrilegiotis — though a very few of the better stamp 
 abetted them. When the reaction under Queen Mary 
 took place, many persons of this particular sect fled 
 abroad, but some of the more respectable reformers, such 
 as Matthew Parker and Roger Ascham, were left unr 
 -molested in England. But the impolitic cruelties of the 
 Queen, instigated by her husband and Cardinal Pole, as 
 narrated in the pages of Foxe, created a counter-reactioni, 
 and made the Puritan faction once more popular again). 
 When the Marian exiles returned on the accession of 
 Elizabeth some of the worst among them were advanced 
 by the influence of Walsingham and Leicester, to the vacant 
 bishoprics and deaneries — offices which, as a rule, they 
 , abused, by embezzling church property for their own gain, 
 *an(i fostering Calvinism and Nonconformity amongst the 
 fclergy. And as the Church was also freely plundered, 
 two processes went on all through her reign, the gradus^l 
 
THE DAVENANT FAMILY 3 
 
 disappearance not only of Catholic worship, but of Catholic 
 faith and practice, and the steady lowering of the status 
 and education of the clergy, owing to the scantiness of the 
 funds for their maintenance. 
 
 Thus when James I. ascended the throne, the Church of 
 England, although it possessed the historic Episcopate and 
 the Old Liturgy, in its main essentials, was in danger of 
 becoming a Calvinist sect, much below the level of 1553, 
 when, although things were outwardly worse, yet the 
 majority of the Clergy and Laity were Catholic. When; 
 for instance, as was brought vividly before us during the 
 recent Laudian Commemoration, William Laud entered 
 St John's College, Oxford, in 1589, he found the univer- 
 sity given over to Calvinism; and there was hardly the 
 nucleus of a High Church school of thought visible. It 
 must not, however, be fbrgotten that Hooker was writing 
 in 1 590, and there were also Whitgift; Bilson, the author of 
 the Perpetual Government of Christ s Church, and Bancroft, 
 about the same period. We all know how Laud set himself 
 to combat this state of things, how he did it with the help of 
 Buckeridge, with consummate tact, good temper, and reso- 
 lution : making new precedents when he had not old ones to 
 fall back upon, and step by step eliminating the dominant 
 error from Oxford. We can hardly realise this in our day 
 when the collapse of Calvinism has been so complete, even 
 in its own chosen homes and centers. Nor was this all, 
 Elizabeth's Bishops, too faithfully seconded by the Pres- 
 byterian Archbishop Abbot, under James I. had brought 
 the Church of England to the lowest depths of repute and 
 efficiency. An ignorant, hetferodox, and unconforming 
 clergy filled the benefices in many parts of the country : 
 in the parish churches the most disgraceful squalor and 
 irreverence prevailed: the Prelates, in too many cases, 
 were busy in impoverishing their sees for personal : gain : 
 and every vanity of abuse, nepotism, and scandal, was^ 
 rampant. All this has been forgotten in an age which has 
 
4 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 been so intent on the recovery of the "six points" of 
 Ritual, as not even to know the " five points" of Calvinism, 
 once so dear to the hearts of our countrymen. 
 
 The period when the subject of our memoir flourished, 
 1 572-1641 — the last thirty years of the sixteenth century 
 and the first forty of the seventeenth century — may be 
 regarded as one of the most critical in the development of 
 the National Church. It was then that the Archbishop 
 just alluded to lived and died. William Laud was born 
 1573 and died 1645. John Davenant was born 1572 and 
 died 1641. It will be noticed that these two great men 
 went through life and their official experience pari 
 passu, and were colleagues in the Episcopate, Davenant 
 being one of Laud's suffragans, and assisting him in carry- 
 ing out some of his ceremonial reformations, although 
 belonging to another school of thought. But it was em- 
 phatically the age of great men — it was the age of Andrewes, 
 Jeremy Taylor, Hall, Fuller, Bedell, Duppa, Peter Heylin, 
 Hornecke, Juxon, Overall, Usher, Montagu, Wren, Mede, 
 Herbert, Hammond, Sanderson, Cbsin, Hales and Chilling- 
 worth. There were indeed giants in those days. Perhaps 
 it is owing to the fact that his lot was cast among such 
 Titans, that Davenant has, not taken that prominence in 
 people's interest and consideration, which was his due. 
 Yet some of our greatest divines have appreciated him at 
 his real value. No other testimony needs to be adduced 
 than one of Bishop Bull, who, however differing from 
 Davenant with regard to the ground of their doctrine, has 
 passed, in the following judgment, the highest eulogiium 
 upon his treatise (on Justification) for sterling worth, 
 scholastic ability, and practical soundness. Thus, says he, 
 on drawing to a close of his own discussion of the subject, 
 'm\C\^ Harmonia,^' is a conclusion to this undertaking, I 
 will subjoin a remarkable testimony of a man of most 
 extensive learning, and a most worthy Prelate of the 
 Anglican Church, who well knew and faithfully maintained 
 
THE DAVENANT FAMILY 5 
 
 the sound and orthodox doctrine of our church in this 
 controversy, and who, in short, most successfully, if ever 
 man did, exposed the subtleties and devices of Bellarmine 
 and of others of the Popish party; I mean the great 
 Davenant, Bishop of Salisbury, who in his most learned 
 Disputations concerning actual and imputed righteousness, 
 cap. 31, thus explains and confirms in two short, but indeed, 
 most learned theses, all the statements made in these 
 Dissertations concerning the necessity of good words." ^ 
 " What a pillar he was," says Bishop Hacket, " in the Synod 
 of Dort, is to be read in the judgments of the British 
 Divines inserted among the public acts ; his part being the 
 best in that work ; that work being far the best in the com- 
 pliments of that synod." Archbishop Usher — and Davenant 
 was on close terms of intimacy with him — would say, 
 " Davenant understood those controversies (the Quinquar- 
 ticular) better than any man ever did since St Austin." 
 
 Few men appear to have been more honoured and 
 venerated by all parties than Bishop Davenant. In all the 
 works of friends and opponents, there is not to be found a 
 single sentence approaching even to disrespect, much less 
 any thing that can tend to cast the slightest reflection upon 
 his deportment in any measure of his public and private 
 life. His profound learning, acuteness of intellect. Catholic 
 spirit, active benevolence, and meekness, are constantly 
 adverted to ; and the phrases, " the good Bishop Davenant," 
 "the excellent Bishop Davenant," "the learned Bishop 
 Davenant," &c., are the usual appendages to his name, 
 even in the writings of those who took up the pen in 
 express hostility to certain of their theological views. 
 Even that eminent nonconformist Dr E. Calamy, in 
 his lecture room at Salters Hall, recommends his 
 hearers to consult the learned and peaceable Bishop 
 Davenant. 
 
 The translator of his works on the Colossians and on 
 ' Bishop Bull's Harmonia Apostolica, Disp. II. cap. xviii. sec. la 
 
6 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Justification, remarks, "As respects our author himself when 
 collecting materials for some suitable account of him, it 
 became requisite to search the lives and writings of his 
 contemporaries, and wade through the history of their 
 time; and I soon discovered, that, however neglected in 
 the present age, he enjoyed, in his own, a reputation among 
 the first ; and anxious to do justice to his merits — an 
 anxiety augmented by the efforts of some modern oppon- 
 ents of him, and of his faith, to revive and propagate old 
 misrepresentations, in order to disparage the value of his 
 works — my investigation and search were redoubled." ^ 
 
 It may be asked with such testimonies to the value and 
 importance of Bishop Davenant's writings, and the opinion 
 of such a Prelate as Bishop Bull, who was complimented 
 by the Pope on his work on the Nicene Creed, how it has 
 happened that his works have been so little known among 
 us ? The comparative oblivion into which the works of 
 Bishop Davenant have fallen, notwithstanding the high 
 estimation in which they were formerly held, must be 
 imputed to the language in which they are composed, for 
 certainly rich as our church is in theologians, she has none 
 perhaps, who in the union of acute and correct argument, 
 solid judgment, scriptural depth, and profound patristic 
 and scholastic erudition, are to be named with him. 
 
 Dr Newman, when in the Anglican Communion, 
 wrote an elaborate work on Justification — in vindication 
 of the view maintained by Bishop Bull. To each of 
 these writers the power of Davenant's treatise on the 
 same subject, as amongst the most formidable to be 
 assailed, is felt and acknowledged. The testimony which 
 Bishop Bull has borne to the "great" writer, whose 
 views it was his object to subvert, we have just placed 
 before the reader. Dr Newman, sustaining Bull's view, 
 scarcely refers to any other opponent among the English 
 divines than Davenant ; but whilst he labours in the un- 
 
 ' Rev. Josiah Allport's Preface to Colossians. 
 
THE DAVENANT FAMILY 7 
 
 seemly and ineffectual task of upholding the Roman cham- 
 pion, Cardinal Bellarmine, against the powerful attacks 
 of the learned defender of the doctrine of his own church 
 at that time, he is compelled to bow to his talent and 
 acknowledge that the work he would disparage " abounds 
 with noble passages." But although his principal works, 
 — that on Justification and his Commentary on the Epistle 
 to the Colossians — have now been translated, we fear that, 
 even in their English dress, they would be regarded as too 
 " strong meat " for present day Churchmen. 
 
 The Davenants were an ancient family, which seems to 
 have been seated in the Eastern Counties for a considerable 
 period. Some have thought that Sir William Davenant, the 
 eccentric poet-laureate of the period, was a member of this 
 family, but this is not the case. They were also connected 
 with the commerce of the metropolis. The father of the 
 subject of these memoirs — ^John Davenant — was one of the 
 merchant princes of the City of London, and evidently a 
 person of consideration among its citizens. 
 
 His wife, Margaret Clarke, was the daughter and co- 
 heiress of John Clarke, who resided at Farnham Castle, 
 near Guildford, in Surrey. Of the wife of the latter (her 
 maiden name is not given) we have the following interest- 
 ing biographical notice in Fuller's Church History, where 
 there is a paragraph entitled : The Author's Gratitude to 
 Stephen Gardiner: — 
 
 " However (as bloody as he was) for mine own part, I have parti- 
 cular gratitude to pay to the memory of this Stephen Gardiner, and 
 here I solemnly tender the same. It is on the account of Mrs Clarke', 
 my great-grandmother by my mother's side, whose husband rented 
 Farnham Castle, a place whither Bishop Gardiner retired, in Surrey, 
 as belonging to his See. This Bishop, sensible of the consumptions 
 state of his body and finding physick out of the kitchen more benefi- 
 cial to him than out of the apothecary's shop, and special comfort from 
 the cordials she provided him, did not only himself connive at her 
 heresy, as he termed itj but also protected her during his life from the 
 fury of others. Some will say that this courtesy to her was founded 
 
8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 on her kindness to himself. But, however, I am so far from detaining 
 thanks from any, deserved on just cause, that I am ready to pay them 
 where they are but pretended due on any colour." ' 
 
 This little incident shows that Bishop Gardiner is not so 
 black as he is painted. Fuller no doubt believed most of 
 what is set down in Foxe; but the recollection of the 
 humane feeling on the part of the Bishop towards Fuller's 
 ancestor, the particulars of which he, when a child, had 
 often heard from his grandmother, led him to regard 
 Mar}''s Bishop favourably. This passage bears witness, in 
 the next place, to the early attachment of the family to the 
 Reformed religion. It was this old lady's grandchild, 
 Judith Davenant, who became the mother of Dr Thomas 
 Fuller, the celebrated author. Another daughter of Mar- 
 garet Davenant was Margaret, wife of Bishop Townson, 
 who preceded his brother-in-law, Dr Davenant, in the See 
 of Salisbury. 
 
 Under an altar tomb on the south-east side of St Peter's, 
 Aldwinckle — where Mr Thomas Fuller, the father of the 
 Church Historian was vicar, and where he was born — is 
 buried Margaret Davenant, sometime wife of John Daven- 
 ant, Esq., citizen of London. She departed this life March 
 30th, 161 3. When Fuller was about five years old, this 
 Margaret Davenant — who was his grandmother — had 
 come to be near her daughters, and to live with or 
 near them, where she died. How precious a memory she 
 left is seen by the perpetuation of her name in the families 
 of her two daughters. Three years later a tablet was put 
 up to her memory on the south wall. It contains the arms 
 of Davenant and Clarke. Upon the tomb is the following 
 inscription : — 
 
 " Many and happy years I lived a wife, 
 Fruitful in children, more in godly life : 
 
 ' Church History, book viii. p. 17. When writing the life of Foxe, Fuller 
 terms Gardiner (who persecuted him) " that cruel bloodhound." 
 
 {Abel Redivivtts.) 
 
THE DAVENANT FAMILY 9 
 
 And many years in widowhood I past, 
 Until to heaven I wedded was at last. 
 In wedlock, children, widowhood ever blest, 
 But most in death, for now with God I rest." 
 
 In this church there are some stained glass windows, 
 and around the border of one of them is a dog and hare 
 alternately. The dog seems to suggest that this window 
 was the gift of one of the Lords Lovell. In heraldry a 
 white dog is called a ''lovell" and it was by this very 
 cognizance that in the celebrated satirical verses upon 
 Richard III., reference was made to one of the lords of 
 this manor, Francis Viscount Lovell. These well-known 
 verses are thus given by Fuller : — 
 
 " The Rat and the Cat, and Lovell the dog. 
 Do govern all England under the Hog" ' 
 
 i.e., Ratcliffe and Catesby under King Richard, " who gave 
 a boar for his crest." It was in this church Fuller's baptism 
 took place, on the 19th June 1608. He had as his god- 
 fathers, his two uncles Drs Davenant and Townson, "Both 
 these persons were my godfathers and uncles, the one 
 marrying the sifter of, the other being a brother to, my 
 mother." 2 
 
 Robert Townson, a native of Cambridge, was entered 
 at Queens', and became a fellow of that Society, with his 
 future brother-in-law, Davenant, in 1597. He was after- 
 wards beneficed at Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, 
 and married Margaret, elder daughter of John Davenant, 
 the merchant of London, being born in 1585. Living in 
 the same neighbourhood, the families of Townsons, and 
 their cousins the Fullers, both very numerous, would natur- 
 ally have been thrown much together, and there are proofs 
 of an intimacy between the younger Townson and Fuller. 
 To this period belongs Fuller's recollection of his uflcle, 
 Dr Townson, who was "of a comely carriage, courteous 
 
 1 Worthies (Northamptonshire), p. 207. ' Worthies (Camb.), p. 154. 
 
lo THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 nature, an excellent preacher," and "becoming a pulpit 
 with his gravity." Like Fuller himself and the rest of that 
 family, Dr Townson had a very retentive faculty, and when 
 made D.D. he could repeat the whole of the second book 
 of Virgil's .iEneid without missing a single line. Sub- 
 sequently he became Bishop of Salisbury in 1620, succeed- 
 hig Martin Fotherby. These two divines — Davenaht and 
 Townson — being Fuller's uncles, and beneficed in the same 
 county, were frequent guests at his father's rectory, and 
 he not only saw much of them, but entertained for them 
 the greatest regard. 
 
 Besides his two sisters, Judith and Margaret, Davenant 
 had three brothers, — Edward, William, and James. Edward 
 married Anne, daughter of John Symmes of London. 
 Their son, Edward Davenant, was one of Fuller's tutors 
 at Queens', according to the register of Sydney College. 
 Edward was the President's nephew, and therefore Fuller's 
 cousin. His father, who is described as a merchant of 
 London, was a distinguished mathematician, and "a better 
 Grecian than the Bishop," adds Aubrey, who further says 
 that "he was an incomparable man in his time, and deserves 
 to be remembered." The son was born at his father's house 
 at Croydon, Surrey. He was of Merchant Taylor's School, 
 and coming to Queens' had shown great scholarly ability, 
 excelling also as a mathematician, to which his genius 
 inclined him. He was B.A. 1614, and M.A. 161 8, Fellow 
 also of his College. Aubrey, who knew him well, and ob- 
 tained from him part, or all of the particulars of Dr Fuller,^ 
 said that he " had excellent notes of his father's in mathe- 
 matiques, as also in Greeke, and 'twas no small advantage 
 to him to have such a learned father to imbue mathematical 
 knowledge into him when a boy, at night times when he 
 came home from school." When his uncle, the President 
 of Queens', went to the Synod of Dort, as one of the 
 
 i"Fr6 Dr Edward Daven' " is added in margin of his notice of 
 Fuller. 
 
THE DAVENANT FAMILY ii 
 
 representatives of the Anglican Church, Edward Davenant, 
 then Fellow of the Society, went with him, as the following 
 order implies (October 6, 1618). Leave granted to Mr 
 Davenant to go into Holland, and all his allowances, till 
 his return, as yf hee were at home. — J. D.^ 
 
 Upon his uncle's accession to the bishopric of Sarum, 
 Edward Davenant received a prebendal stall therein (1623), 
 and afterwards the treasurership (1630), "the best dignity." 
 He dwelt mostly at the vicarage of Gillingham, in Dorset. 
 Gillingham is commended as being a retired place, where 
 he was not much troubled with visits. Here his large 
 family was born. Walker^ has an account of his suffer- 
 ings and losses during the troubles, stating that, at the 
 time of his sequestration, he had seven sons and five 
 daughters. After holding the vicarage fifty-three years 
 he died. Other patronage came in his way, for he was 
 made Archdeacon of Berks (1630), and received Poulshot 
 Rectory, near Devizes, the latter post he resigned during 
 the troubles to his wife's brother, Mr Grove. Edward 
 Davenant is described as being " not only a man of vast 
 learning, but of great goodness and charity." Aubrey 
 says, " He was my singular good friend. He was very 
 ready to teach and instruct. He did me the favour to 
 inform me first in Algebra; his daughters were algebraists." 
 Sir C. Wren, whose father was Rector of East Knoyle, 
 near Gillingham, spoke very highly of Edward's mathe- 
 matical abilities. Into his tutor's favourite study, Fuller, 
 we may suppose, like his General Scholar, entered " with 
 great contentment ; using it as ballast for his soul, yet 
 to fix it, not to stall it : nor suffers he it to be so un- 
 mannerly as to jostle out other arts." * 
 
 It was under this tutor, too, most likely Fuller cultivated 
 his memory, the exercise of which faculty brought him, in 
 latter days, an extraordinary fame. Aubrey makes refer- 
 
 1 Old Parchment, reg, fo. 9.6.7. ^ Stifferings, pt. ii. 63. 
 
 2 Holy State, p. 67. 
 
12 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 ence to a rough and ready' method practised by Davenant, 
 who, no doubt used it among his College pupils. It is 
 said that he had an excellent way of improving his 
 children's memories : he would make one of them read a 
 chapter, &c., and then they were sur le champ Xo repeat what 
 they remembered, which did exceedingly profit them : and 
 so for sermons, he did not let them write notes, which 
 jaded their memories, but give an account viva voce. 
 When his eldest son came to Winton School (where the 
 boys were enjoined to write sermon notes) he had not 
 wrote : the master askt him for his notes — he had none, 
 but sayd : " If I do not give you as good an account as 
 they that do, I am much mistaken." Doubtless, therefore, 
 this method of his tutor was in Fuller's mind when he 
 afterwards wrote his essay on Memory. To his nephew, 
 Edward, Bishop Davenant left the bulk of his property, 
 including as much of his library as he wished to have : this 
 Edward Davenant, it is said, in consequence of his being 
 the heir, gained more by the Church at Sarum than ever 
 any man did by the Charch since the Reformation ; and it 
 was taken ill that he left it nothing or about £^o}- 
 ' Aubre/s Letters, ii. loo-i. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 davenant's birth, early years, and student life 
 (1572-94) 
 
 " And if the scholar to such height did reach, then what was he who did 
 that scholar teach ? " — Fuller's Worthies, Hartfordshire, p. 26. 
 
 THE Davenants were a family of great antiquity 
 and respectability, as we have said in our last 
 chapter, residing from the time of Sir John Davenant, 
 in the reign of Henry III., on a domain called Dave- 
 nant's Lands, in the parish of Sible-Heningham, in the 
 county of Essex. His descendants followed "in a wor- 
 shipful degree " till we come to William Davenant, who 
 married Joan, daughter of John Tryer of Clare in Suffolk. 
 Their son was John Davenant, a merchant tailor of Watling 
 Street, who was, says Fuller, " wealthy and religious." Our 
 prelate, John Davenant, was a younger son of the John 
 Davenant, the eminent merchant of the city already 
 alluded to, and was born May 20, 1572, in Watling Street, 
 London. 
 
 The descent of the family, given as from Mr Wm. 
 Holman of Halstead, 1722 in MS., Baker, xxx. 452, is as 
 follows on next page. 
 
 " I will but speak of the father," says Cassan, "for he was an in- 
 comparaMe man in his time and deserves to be remembered. He 
 was of a healthy complexion, rose at 4 or 5 in the morning, so that he 
 followed his studies till 6 or 7 o'clock, the time that other merchants 
 go about their business, so that stealing so much and so quiet time, in 
 the morning he studied as much as most men. He understood Greek 
 and Latin perfectly, and was a better Grecian than the Bishop. He 
 
 •3 
 
Pedigree Chart of the Davenant Family. 
 
 A 
 
 pq 
 
 O 
 
 !z; 
 
 a 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 H 
 H 
 
 M, ■ 
 IZl 
 ^ ' 
 
 a 
 o 
 
 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 c 
 
 c 
 
 ■a w 
 
 3 Q 
 
 11— § 
 
 O 
 
 Vi. 
 
 II- 
 
 H 
 
 11—" 
 «• 1 
 
 i s 
 
 w 
 
 a, 
 -S 
 
 C > 
 
 ^ a 
 
 o 
 II— . 
 
 en 
 
 5? a 
 
 jS 
 
 a 
 
 g 
 
 a 
 11- 
 
 o 
 U 
 
 a Pi 
 
 a 
 
 II- 
 
 § 
 
 Q 
 O 
 l-l 
 
 n 
 c 
 
 •§ 
 
 'S 
 •O 
 
 d" 
 
 II- 
 
 Q 
 
 -C 
 
 n 
 
 % 
 
 11^ 
 
 p 
 
 •a 
 
 e 
 
 
 II- 
 
 a 
 en 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 M 
 
 o 
 
 •a 
 
 § 
 
 CD 
 U 
 
 O 
 
 s 
 
 c3 
 
 a 
 
 -I" 
 «l 
 
 > n 
 
 »-* o 
 
 ■< to 
 
 e u 
 Q e S 
 
 Wt3 
 
 Pi! 
 II 
 
 e 
 
 a 
 
 2 Q S 
 
 -SI 
 
BIRTH, EARLY YEARS, STUDENT LIFE 15 
 
 writt a rare Greek character, as ever I saw. He was a great 
 Mathematician and understood as much of it as was known in his 
 time. Dr Davenant his son hath excellent Notes of his Father in 
 Mathematiques, as also iii Greeke and 'twas no small advantage 
 to him to have such a learned father to imbue arithmetical knowledge 
 into him when a boy at night time, when he came from school 
 (Merchant Taylors)." i 
 
 The subject of our memoir was one of a numerous family, 
 and some detailed account of his connexions and relatives 
 will be given during the course of this biographical sketch. 
 He was "remarkably born," says one of his biographers, 
 " in the seventh month of his conception, and remarkably 
 preserved in the first half seven years from his birth, falling 
 down a high pair of stairs, and rising at the bottom with so 
 little harm that he smiled. God and His good angels 
 keeping him for further service in the Church." ^ " When 
 a child," says his nephew Fuller, " he would rather own his 
 own frowardness than another's flattery ; and when soothed 
 by servants that ^not John, but some of his brothers did 
 cry,' he would rather appear in his own face than wear their 
 disguise, returning, ' it was none of his brothers, but John 
 only did cry.' " 
 
 In July 1587 he was admitted of Queens' College, Cam- 
 bridge. Fuller, his nephew, and Ball, both by mistake, 
 make him a fellow-commoner. He was, according to 
 Chalmers, matriculated as pensioner on July 4th, 1587. 
 We are not informed why the ancient and royal foundation 
 of St Margaret and St Bernard, Cambridge, was selected 
 for him ; as there was every antecedent probability that he 
 would have been sent up from Merchant Taylors School * 
 
 1 Cassan's Bishops of Salisbury, p. 125. "^ Lloyd : Memoirs, p. 281. 
 
 'With regard to the probability of the Bishop having been educated at 
 Merchant Taylors School, The Rev. Charles J. Robinson, when Rector of 
 West Hackney, writes me : " I think it very likely that John Davenant 
 (Bishop of Salisbury) was at Merchant Taylors ; but our lists till 1607 are 
 imperfect, and, strange to say, Edward Davenant (about whom there is no 
 doubt of his being there) certainly does not occur in them. I have noted this 
 fact in the Merchant Taylors Registers (vol. i. p. 83). You will find a copy of 
 
i6 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 to St John's College, Oxford, the College of his future friend 
 and metropolitan, William Laud. Possibly family connec- 
 tions had something to do with it, as he was probably a 
 College friend of the elder Fuller, who subsequently married 
 his eldest sister Judith, and settled down at St Peter's, 
 Aldwinkle, near Oundle, where their son Thomas Fuller, 
 D.D., the Church historian, was born. At all events, at 
 the early age of fifteen, John Davenant b^an his student's 
 life at Queens', for in those days there were not only boy- 
 bachelors, but necessarily boy-students. Under excellent 
 teachers, and equally good examples, Davenant's life was 
 spent. He entered zealously upon his studies. It may be 
 said of him, as was said of his nephew Fuller by his eulo- 
 gist, " the College was a sphere in which his translucent 
 abilities had room to exert themselves, so that he filled the 
 eyes of that University with a just expectation of his future 
 lustre." 
 
 It was then to Queens' College, Cambridge, our "hope- 
 ful slip " was sent, full of promise and great expectations. 
 The history of this College is particularly interesting from 
 the fact that it is the only house in Cambridge founded by 
 
 my book in Sion College Library. In the second volume several Davenants 
 
 occur." 
 On reference to Mr Robinson's Register of Scholars admitted to Merchant 
 
 Taylors School (1562- 1 874), vie find : — 
 
 1615. Robert Davenant, b. 10 Mar. 1602. Robert Davenant, of Oxford^ 
 elected to S. John's Coll., Oxford. l6lo, D.D. Prebendary of Sarum, 
 if he has not been confounded with Edward Davenant, of Queens' 
 College, Cambridge. B.A., 1614 ; M.A., 1618. Prebendary and 
 Treasurer of Sarum, 1623-1634 ; and Archdeacon of Berks, who 
 is said (by Aubrey) to have been at Merchant Taylors School, but 
 whose name does not occur on the Probationer's List (vol. i. p. 5), 
 
 1619. John Davenant, b. 1607. 
 
 i6i8. Nicholas Davenant, b. i6il. 
 
 1639. Richard Davenant, b. 1646. 
 
 1574. William Fuller, son of John Fuller, Gent., b. 6 Mar. 1574. 
 
 1645. Benoni Fuller, only son of Thomas, born at Upton Gray, in Hants, 
 16 July 1620. 
 There were also the names of several Fullers at M.T.S., relations of 
 the Davenants. 
 
BIRTH, EARLY YEARS, STUDENT LIFE 17 
 
 one of our queens. In their present form most of the 
 Colleges in the old Universities of England are the result of 
 many successive enlargements, for at first their foundations 
 were often very humble. They were also not unfrequently 
 derived from small previous Colleges or halls : Gonville 
 and Caius College, Trinity College, Mary Magdalene 
 College, Christ's College, are examples of this ; but 
 the one whose early history most nearly resembles that 
 of Queens' College is the neighbouring King's College, 
 where, on the site of St Nicholas hostel, among others, 
 the small foundation of St Nicholas, for one rector and 
 twelve scholars, soon expanded into the magnificent one 
 of the King's College of our Lady and St Nicholas, with its 
 Provost and seventy scholars. In a similar way, the exist- 
 ing College of St Margaret and St Bernard had a prede- 
 cessor in the College of St Bernard, named probably after 
 the still earlier St Bernard's hostel. As it existed only 
 sixteen months, its history is necessarily a very short one ; 
 but since (as will be seen) the two foundations were in- 
 timately connected, what is known of St Bernard's College 
 will fitly come first. 
 
 Of the history of St Bernard's hostel — whose head, 
 Andrew Doket, was the first principal of Queens' College 
 — nothing is known previous to the middle of the fifteenth 
 century. Andrew Doket may have been the founder of 
 the hostel, as he was certainly the owner of it, but the date 
 of its establishment and erection have not come down to 
 us. After the foundation of the College, the hostel became 
 a mere appendage to it, and though it is mentioned by 
 Fuller among the larger hostels for "Artistse," as hav- 
 ing a considerable number of Regents, besides non- 
 Regents, above them and young students beneath them, 
 residing in it, yet the particulars concerning it that are 
 recorded are very few in number, and as besides this 
 the hostel had no share in the foundation of the 
 College, an account of it will be found with the his- 
 
 B 
 
1 8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 tory of the other hostels that belonged to Queens' 
 College. 
 
 The date of this first foundation of the College of 
 St Bernard is 3 December 1446, and it lasted till 30 
 March 1448. A careful search has failed to bring to light 
 any earlier document or papers referring directly to this 
 short-lived College than the charter of King Henry VI. 
 for its foundation. The deed itself is not preserved, but 
 there is an enrolment of it in the Public Record Office, 
 and the loss of the charter is the less to be regretted as its 
 contents may also be known from a subsequent deed (21st 
 August 1447). 
 
 By the first charter the King Henry VI. did "to the 
 glory and honour of Almighty God, in whose hands are 
 the hearts of kings, and of the blessed Virgin Mary, 
 the Mother of Christ ; and of the glorious confessor St 
 Bernard, for the extirpation of heresies and errors, the 
 augmentation of the faith, the advantage of the Clergy, 
 and the stability of the Church, whose ministry ought to 
 be entrusted to fit persons, who should shine like stars in 
 their courses, and by learning and example alike, instruct 
 the people " — on 3rd December 1446 found a College for a 
 president and four fellows, more or less, according to the 
 increase or decrease of their means, in the University of, 
 Cambridge by the name of St Bernard's College. 
 
 The site whereon the College was proposed to be erected 
 was a plot of ground described as situate in the parish of 
 St Botolph, between messuages of the nuns of Radegundis, 
 Andrew Doket, clerk, and others on the south side ; and 
 messuages of the Convent of Sawtry, and Benet Morys, 
 dyer, on thd north side, abutting on the east side oi 
 Trumpington Street ; and on the west on the street lead- 
 ing towards the Carmelite friars ; the length from east to 
 west was 277I feet, and its breadth from 72 to 75 feet. It 
 had been made over to the King for this purpose of 
 founding a College by Richard Andrewe, burgess of 
 
BIRTH, EARLY YEARS, STUDENT LIFE 19 
 
 Cambridge, by a deed of the previous 8th November 
 1446. 
 
 To this document the College seal is appended. It is 
 round, nearly two inches in diameter. The field is divided 
 into three compartments. In the centre one is seen St 
 Bernard under a canopy, holding a book in his right hand, 
 and in his left a pastoral staff; beneath him is a shield 
 bearing the royal arms of England and France quartered. 
 On each side of the saint are elaborate canopies^ beneath 
 that on the dexter side are four kneeling figures, and 
 beneath that on the sinister is one kneeling figure — doubt- 
 less to represent the four fellows and the president of the 
 College. Behind the president is a standing figure of an 
 angel in an alb, swinging a censer. The inscription is in 
 small Gothic letters, " Sigillum eor President et socior 
 CoUegii St berjnardi de Cantebrig," 
 
 . The society also returned the foundation charter into the 
 King's Chancery with the petition that it might be can- 
 celled, and another charter granted, refounding the College 
 on the new site, next to the house of the Carmelite friars ; 
 for this seemed to the president and fellows more favour- 
 able to the prosperity of their new CoUegej in giving greater 
 scope in their deed of surrender referred to in the charter 
 (21 Aug.). 
 
 The messuage and tenements thus conveyed to the King 
 form the site of the first court, of the Cloister Court, and 
 of part of the fellows' building. The tenements belonging 
 to John Thorys, Thomas Foster, and Corpus Christi 
 College, which occupied the positron of the " return " of the 
 fellows' building, were not acquired till later. 
 
 The King acceded to the request of the society, and 
 the charter of the following 21 Aug. [25 Henry VI. 1467] 
 revoked the former charter, and refounded the College of 
 St Bernard on the new site. It is by this deed, still' 
 remaining in the College treasury, that we are made 
 acquainted with the charter of Dec. 3, 1446. 
 
20 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 The name of the College, the president, and the four 
 fellows constituted by it, are the same as in the earlier 
 charter, but as in the meantime John Langton, Chancellor 
 of the University, and Gilbert Worthington had died, 
 other framers of the statutes were appointed in their stead. 
 
 The College was empowered to hold lands and advow- 
 son and other ecclesiastical property in mortmain, to the 
 amount of ^loo per annum, a licence which was soon 
 after greatly extended. 
 
 In this charter the King appears in some degree to 
 claim the credit of being founder of the College, as the 
 reason for its exemption from all corrodies, pensions, &c. 
 (which might be granted by the King, "ratione dicte 
 fundationis nostra "), is expressed in the words, " eo quod 
 Collegium predictum de fundatione nostra ut pre-mittitur 
 existit." 
 
 The witnesses to this charter were John Stafford, Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, Lord High Chancellor ; William 
 Booth, Bishop of Lincoln; John Moleyns, Bishop of 
 Chichester, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal ; Richard, Duke 
 of York, father of Edward IV., four earls, and two others. 
 
 About this time, Margaret of Anjou,^ the queen of 
 Henry VI., addressed a petition to him, begging to have 
 the foundation and making of the College. It is here 
 given from the original, preserved among the College 
 muniments : — 
 
 Margaret, 
 
 R. H. To the King my souveran lord : Beseecheth meekly 
 Margarete quene of England youre humble wif. Forasmuch as youre 
 
 * Margaret of Anjou was daughter of R&e, Count of Anjou and Provence, 
 Duke of Bar and Lorraine, and titular King of Sicily and Jerusalem, and was 
 bora 23 Mar. 1428-9. She was espoused to Henry VI. in Nov. 1444 ; 
 married to him at Southwick, Hampshire, 22 April, and crowned at West- 
 minster, 30 May 1445. She was then, at the time when she accepted ot 
 assumed the patronage of the College, only in her 19th year, but in spite of her 
 youth was becoming rapidly the most important personage in the realm. 
 
BIRTH, EARLY YEARS, STUDENT LIFE 21 
 
 moost noble grace hath newely ordained and stablisshed a Collage of 
 Seint Bernard in the Universite of Cambridge with multitude of grete 
 and faire privileges perpetually appertenying unto the same as in 
 your Ires patentes thereupon made more plainly hit appereth, In 
 the which universite is no Collage founded by any quene of Englond 
 hidertoward, Plese hit therefore unto youre highnesse to geve and 
 graunte unto youre seide humble wif, the foundacon and determi- 
 nacon of the seide Collage to be called and named the Queenes Collage 
 of Sainte Margarete vergine and martir and Sainte Bernard Confessor, 
 and thereupon for ful evidence hereof to have licence and pouoir to 
 ley the first stone in her owne persone or ellis by other depute of her 
 assignment so that beside the most noble and glorieus Collage roial 
 of our Lady and Saint Nicholas founded by your highnesse may be 
 founded and stablisshed the said so called Queenes Collage to con- 
 servacon of our feith and augmentacon of pure clergie namely of the 
 imparesse of alle sciences and facultees theologic . . to the ende there 
 accustumed of plain lecture and exposicon botraced with docteurs 
 sentence authentig performed daily twyes by two docteurs notable and 
 wel advised upon the bible aforenoone and maistre of the sentences 
 aftemoone to the publique audience of alle men frely both seculiers 
 and religieus to the magnificence of denominacon of such a Quenes 
 Collage and to laud and honneure of sexe feminine, like as two 
 noble and devoute Contesses of Pembroke and of Clare founded two 
 Collages in the same universite called Pembroke halle and Clare halle 
 the wiche are of grete reputacon for good and worshipful clerkis 
 that by grete multitude have be bredde and brought forth in theym. 
 And of your more ample grace to graunte that all privileges im- 
 munities profites and commodites conteyned in the Ires patentes 
 above rehersed may stande in their strength and pouoir after forme 
 and effect of the conteine in theym. And she shall ever preye God 
 for you. 
 
 This document is written on parchment, 13 inches by 
 7 inches. The Queen, as a royal personage, puts her name 
 on the top, and the letters R. H. are the King's own sign 
 manual, by which he countersigned the petition on return- 
 ing it to the Queen granted. Its date must be between 
 21 Aug. 1447 and 30 Mar. 1448. 
 
 What prompted Queen Margaret to undertake the 
 patronage of the College— whether (as Fuller says) "as 
 Miltiades' trophy in Athens would not sufifer Themistocles 
 
22 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 to sleep, so this Queen, beholding her husband's bounty in 
 building King's College was restless in herself with holy 
 emulation until she had produced something of the like 
 nature, a strife wherein wives without breach of duty may 
 contend with their husbands which should exceed in |)ious 
 performances — or whether Andrew Doket, finding the 
 King too busy with the affairs of State and the manage- 
 ment of his own two foundations, King's College and Eton 
 College, contrived to engage the Queen's interest in a 
 similar work — there is no forthcoming evidence to shew." 
 
 Anyhow, the College gladly accepted the Queen as their 
 patroness, and a second time returned their charter into 
 chancery to be revoked, and resigned into the King's hands 
 all the lands which they possessed, with the petition that 
 he would grant them to Queen Margaret, together with 
 the licence to found " another Collage in honour of the 
 glorious virgin St Margaret and St Bernard, on the ground 
 late of John Morys of Trumpington, Esquire." The King 
 acceded to the joint request of the Queen and the College, 
 and so St Bernard's College finally disappears. Its only 
 memorials are the Charters, a few deeds referring to its 
 sites, and its seal : for though the will of John Caraway of 
 Cambridge, contains a bequest to St Bernard's College, it 
 really belongs by its date (21st May 1449) to Queen Mar- 
 garet's College. 
 
 Letters patent under the great seal were issued on 30th 
 March 1448, granting to Margaret of Anjou the lands of 
 St Bernard's College, and license to found another — the 
 Queens' College of St Margaret and St Bernard (30th 
 March 1448). It is printed in the documents relating 
 to the University and Colleges of Cambridge in the 
 Inspeximus charter of Henry VIII. 
 
 In the letters patent which, in pursuance of this per- 
 mission, the Queen issued on isth April '26, Henry VI. 
 1448, she first recites the King's Charter of 30th March, 
 and then repeating the provisions of it in her own name, 
 
BIRTH, EARLY YEARS, STUDENT LIFE 23 
 
 with little or no variation, proceeds,. " in the name of the 
 Holy and undivided Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, 
 and of the glorious Virgin Mary, and of St Margaret, and 
 St Bernard, by virtue and authority of the King's licence 
 to found a College for one President and four Fellows, by 
 the name of the Queens' College of St Margaret and 
 St Bernard," or in Latin, " Collegium Reginale Sancte Mar- 
 garete et Sancti Bernardi." As this charter contains no 
 new points, the Queen's own words only are transcribed 
 from the original in the College treasury — indeed, this 
 charter is quite ignored in the confirmed charters of 2 
 Henry Vin. and 2 Edward VI., where the King's charter 
 alone is recited. 
 
 This deed, 37 in. by 23 in., bears appended the seal 
 of the Queen, which is circular, 3J in. in diameter, and 
 shews the Queen's Arms crowned and supported by a 
 griffin and an eagle surrounded by the inscription " Sigil- 
 lum Margarete Dei gratia regine Anglie et Francie et 
 domine hibernie filie regis Sicilie et lerlm." 
 
 The prevalence of the plague at Cambridge, 1446-7, 
 doubtless prevented Henry VI. from laying the first stone 
 of King's College Chapel on Michaelmas 1447 — and a like 
 reason may have deterred Queen Margaret from laying 
 the first stone of the Chapel herself, "pro forma primi 
 operis fundationi iilius," and compelled her to do it by 
 proxy. Though the Queen was not present, we may — 
 from the general custom of that age, the fact of the College 
 claiming her patronage, and the number of persons of high 
 rank and position who are recorded among its benefactors 
 — conjecture that the foundation stone was not laid without 
 much pomp and state. The Queen's commissioner was Sir 
 John Wenlock, her Chamberlain, who, on isth April 1448, 
 the very day on which her own charter of foundation was 
 executed, laid the first stone at the south-east corner of 
 the Chapel. Her commission to him for this purpose, 
 dated at Windsor, 8th April, '26, Henry VI. 1847, is 
 
24 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 extant. Sir John Wenlock, Kt, who acted as Queen's 
 Commissioner for the purpose of laying the first stone of 
 the College Chapel primaria petra ecclesie collegii illius, 
 is described as the Queen's Chamberlain. 
 
 In a brief account of the foundation of the College, 
 which was written about 1470, we find some lines composed 
 on the occasion of laying the foundation stone. According 
 to the same authority, "this stone bore the inscription, 
 ' Erit domine nostre Regine Margarete dominum in 
 refugium et iste lapis in signum.' " In all accounts of the 
 College from Dr Caius (1572) downwards, this inscription 
 has been printed, " Erit dominse nostrse Reginae Mar- 
 garetse Dominus in refugium et iste lapis in signum." 
 And Fuller translates it thus — "The Lord shall be a 
 refuge to Lady Margaret, and this stone for a sign," and 
 makes the following reflections on it. " Indeed, poor 
 Queen, soon after she needed a sanctuary to shelter her- 
 self when beaten in battle, and the aforesaid (since Lord) 
 Wenlock slain at Tewkesbury, when no doubt her soul 
 retreated to Divine protection, the only succour left unto 
 her." The meaning is more probably, " the power of our 
 Lady Queen Margaret shall be our refuge, and this stone 
 (laid in her honour) the sign of her protection." 
 
 From the words " auctoritate apostolica et regia," and in 
 a document transcribed from it, it would seem that beside 
 the Royal Charter, a Papal Bull was procured for the 
 foundation of Queens' College, as was the case in most 
 colleges and universities in those days. If this were the 
 case the Bull was sent to London, 1538, together with all 
 charters, statutes, &c., of the University and Colleges, and 
 possibly destroyed, as a very diligent search was unable to 
 find it in the Public Record Office. Nor is there any 
 transcript of it in the Vatican papers of the British 
 Museum. However, Archbishop Parker, in the account 
 of the Colleges appended to this work, " De Antiquitate 
 Britannicse Ecclesiae," and written about 1571, has, in his 
 
BIRTH, EARLY YEARS, STUDENT LIFE 25 
 
 notice of Queens' College, placed the words "ex diplomate 
 pontificio " opposite the document ; that Andrew Doket, 
 the founder of the College, may be conjectured from this, 
 that he saw the Papal Bull for the foundation, in the post- 
 Reformation era, and therefore it may be yet in existence. 
 
 In these two charters of Henry and Margaret, the same 
 society was constituted as the early ones of St Bernard's 
 College — with Andrew Doket as president and four fel- 
 lows. They were to form a corporation able to sue and 
 be sued, with a common seal, and having license to hold 
 property in mortmain to the amount of ;6^200 per annum. 
 
 When the crest of the College was granted by Sir J. 
 Cooke Clarencieux, King of Arms, 1575, the arms of 
 Queen Margaret, with a green border, were in use. In 
 his warrant the Queen is stated to have granted to the 
 College "her own arms to be used in the said College." 
 Of this, however, there is no evidence, though we might 
 reasonably expect it to be so, as the King, by letters 
 patent, assigned a coat of arms to this College. The 
 first seal of the College bears, indeed, the Queen's arms, 
 but they were on the second seal replaced by that of 
 Elizabeth Wydeville and of England. A seal temp. 
 Henry VIII. has only the latter, and the present one, 
 engraved 1625, none at all.^ 
 
 Such is the history of this ancient and royal foundation 
 of Queens' College. It took its name, as we have seen, 
 from Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI., who began to 
 build it in 1448 ; and from Elizabeth Wydeville, wife of 
 Edward IV., who completed it ; " so that," says Fuller, 
 who invariably sees a coincidence where others would 
 never think of looking for one, " the two houses of Lan- 
 caster and York had their first amity in that foundation." 
 It is entered by a covered gateway, upon which are em- 
 
 1 The writer is indebted for this account of the history of the Queens' 
 College to the valuable contributions of Rev. W. G.' Searle, M.A. (Fellow 
 of the College), to the Cambridge Antiquarian Series, 1851; ' 
 
26 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 blazoned the arms of Queen Margaret ; it had, however, 
 other coats " laid up in her wardrobe." The gateway is 
 said to contain the oldest brickwork in England, and there 
 is still an air of austere antiquity about it and the rest of 
 the buildings — except the new buildings in the Walnut 
 Tree Court, and the handsome new chapel by Bodley, 
 which have quite recently been added to the ancient pile. 
 Humphrey Tyndall was the President when Davenant 
 went into residence, having been elected to that office in 
 1579. In Davenant's youth. Queens' was a prosperous 
 College, having (including tutors, &c,) a quota of about 
 230 persons, only four other colleges possessing a larger 
 number. In 1655 the number had decreased to 190, but 
 this may have been owing to the trouble during the Common- 
 wealth, which paralysed education as well as disestablished 
 the Church. The College was famous as that in which 
 Erasmus — " who no doubt," says Fuller, in a parenthesis, 
 " might have picked and chosen what house he pleased, 
 either invited thither by the fame of the learning and 
 love of his friend. Bishop Fisher, then Master thereof, or 
 allured with the situation of the College, so near the river 
 (as Rotterdam, his native place, to the sea), with pleasant 
 walks thereabout " — was a student. Aubrey says, " He 
 studied sometimes in Queens' College in Cambridge ; his 
 chamber was over the walls. He mentions his being 
 there in one of his Epistles." This great scholar — of 
 whom Queens' men are deservedly proud — was often 
 talked about by old Cantabs, and his study " on the top 
 of the south-west tower in the old Court," Fuller tells us, 
 " still retaineth his name." Erasmus' tower, on the south- 
 west corner of the old Court, is in the Fellows' buildings." 
 This gossiping writer further tells us that (in his Church 
 History, sub anno 1 504) " about this time Erasmus came 
 first to Cambridge (coming and going for seven years 
 together and having his abode in Queens' College) "and 
 that Erasmus' labours to mount so many stairs was rer 
 
BIRTH, EARLY YEARS, STUDENT LIFE 27 
 
 compensed by a pleasant prospect, which would put him 
 in mind of his own country. " No traces of his residence," 
 says Mr Searle, "are to be found in the bursary book, 
 nor in any other document belonging to the College. It 
 has, however, been a constant tradition at Queens' College 
 that he was for some time resident in it, and as no other 
 has any tradition on the subject, or puts forward any claim 
 of having sheltered the great scholar within its walls, 
 in spite of the want of contemporary evidence on the 
 subject, beyond the dates of the three above letters, he 
 must still be regarded, if belonging to any college at all, 
 as having belonged to Queens'." 
 
 Samuel Knight, in his Life of Erasmus, has the fol- 
 lowing : — 
 
 " As Erasmus then was first invited down to Cambridge by Bishop 
 Fisher, Chancellor of the University, and head of Queens' College, 
 so it was to this Prelate that he ascribes all the advantages he 
 found in that place, being accommodated by him with everything 
 needful in his own lodgings at Queens', and promoted by this means 
 to the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity, and afterwards 
 to the Greek Professorship Chair, which places, though they were 
 more honourable than profitable, yet were of great service to the 
 University." 
 
 Across the bridge, now called the " Mathematical Bridge," 
 are extensive gardens, in which are some fine old elm 
 trees and a walk named after Erasmus, but now called the 
 Undergraduates' Walk — it being given up to them, and 
 from this walk excellent views are to be obtained of King's 
 and Clare bridges and Colleges. 
 
 " Desiderius often complained," says Fuller, " of the College ale — ■ 
 Cervisia, hujus loci, mihi mullo modo placet, as raw, small and windy, 
 whereby it appears (i) Ale in that age was the constant beverage 
 of all the Colleges before the innovation of beer (the child of hops) 
 was brought into England. (2) Queens' College cervisia was not 
 vis Cereris but Ceres vitiata. In my time (when I was a member 
 of that House) scholars, continued Erasmus his complaint : whilst 
 the brewers (having, it seems, prescription on their side for long 
 
28 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 time) little amended it. The best was, Erasmus had his lagena or 
 flagon of wine (recruited weekly from his friends at London), which 
 he drank sometimes singly by itself, and sometimes incouraged his 
 faint ale with the mixture thereof'' ' 
 
 Fuller, as was natural, had a hearty appreciation of 
 the great scholar ; and he makes frequent mention of 
 him in his writings. The Adagia and Colloquia were 
 perhaps the books to which Fuller was most inclined, for 
 these he most often quotes. To a Roman exorcist he 
 somewhere says, " Satan's language was as familiar as 
 Erasmus' dialogues are well known to men, or those of 
 Corderius to schoolboys." He justly remarks that Eras- 
 mus was a greater scholar than divine. He was Lady 
 Margaret Professor of Divinity in 1511. The Dining Hall 
 of the College contains a portrait of Erasmus, the royal 
 foundresses of the house, and others. 
 
 In this austere building — surrounded by such a stimu- 
 lating entourage — young Davenant's student life passed 
 quickly and pleasantly away. The daily routine of 
 College life at the period when he went into residence 
 was very different to what it is now. There were first 
 prayers in the College Chapel at five o'clock, with an 
 occasional sermon. Then after breakfast came the regular 
 work of the day. " It consisted of two parts — the College- 
 studies — or the attendance of students on the lectures and 
 examinations of the College tutors, or lecturers in Latin, 
 Greek, Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy, &c., and the Univer- 
 sity-Exercises, or the attendance of the students, together 
 with the students of other Colleges, in the ' public schools ' 
 of the University, either to hear the lectures of the 
 University-professors of Greek, Logic, &c., which, however, 
 was not incumbent on all students of all the Colleges 
 who were preparing for their degrees." After dinner (12 
 o'clock) there was a further shorter attendance required at 
 the disputations, &c. The students were further required 
 
 ^ Hist. Univ. Camb., 1$,*^ 48, p. 87. 
 
BIRTH, EARLY YEARS, STUDENT LIFE 29 
 
 to attend evening service ; also supper at 7 o'clock, the 
 intervals and the time after supper, up to 9 or 10 o'clock, 
 being at their own disposal.^ 
 
 According to the University statutes, the indicated 
 course of study in " the Liberal Arts " extended in 
 Davenant's day over about seven years. It was divided 
 into two periods, the first of which occupied ten or eleven 
 terms, or about four years. The curriculum is not in- 
 correctly sketched by Dr. Fuller in his character of The 
 General Artist^ which is here given from that author's 
 Holy State. 
 
 " I know the general cavil against general learning is this, that 
 aliquis in omnibus est nullus in singulis .-he that sips of many arts, 
 drinks of none. However, we must know that all learning, which is 
 but one great science, hath so homogeneal a body that the parts 
 thereof do, with a mutual service, relate to, and communicate strength 
 and lustre each to other. Our artist, knowing language to be the key 
 of learning, thus begins : — 
 
 " I. His tongue being one by nature, he gets cleved by art and in- 
 dustry. Before the confusion of Babel all the world was one continent 
 in language, smce divided into several tongues, as several islands. 
 Grammar is the ship by benefit whereof we pass from one to another 
 in the learned languages generally spoken in no country. His mother 
 tongue was like the dull music of a monochprd, which by study he 
 tumeth into the harmony of several instruments. 
 
 " 2. He first gaineth skill in the Latin and Greek tongues. On the 
 credit of the former alone he may trade in discourse all over 
 Christendom. But the Greek, though not so generally spoken, is 
 known with no less profit and more pleasure. The joints of her com- 
 pounded words are so naturally oiled that they run nimbly on the 
 tongue, which makes, though long, never tedious, because significant. 
 
 "3. Hence he proceeds to Hebrew, the mother tongue of the world. 
 More pains than quickness of wit is required to get it, and with daily 
 exercise he continues it. Apostacy herein is usual to fall totally from 
 the language by a little neglect. 
 
 ^ Masson's Milton, i. p. 112. 
 
 2 "An artist, in its earlier acceptation, was one who cultivated not ^q fine, 
 but the liberal arts. The classical scholar was eminently the artist " (Trench, 
 Select Glos. p. 9). 
 
30 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " 4. Then he applies Ms study to Logic and Ethics. The latter makes 
 a man's soul mannerly and wise ; but as for logic, that is the armoury 
 of reason, furnished with all offensive and defensive weapons. They 
 are syllogisms, long swords : euthymenes, short daggers : dilemmas, 
 two-edged swords that cut on both sides ; sorites, chain-shot j and for 
 the defensive, distinctions, which are shields ; retortions, which are 
 targets with a pike in the middest of them, both to defend and oppose.^ 
 From thence he raiseth his studies to the knowledge of Physics, the 
 great hall of nature ; and Metaphysics, the closets thereof; and is 
 careful not to wade therein so far, till by subtle distinguishing of 
 notions he confounds himself. 
 
 " 5. He is skilful in rhetoric, which gives a speech colour, as Logic 
 doth favour, and both together beauty. Though some condemn 
 rhetoric as the mother of lies, [[speaking more than the truth in 
 hyperboles, less in her meiosis, otherwise in her metaphors, contrary 
 in her ironies : yet is there, excellent use in all these when disposed 
 of with judgment. Nor is he a stranger to Poetry, which is music in 
 words, nor to Music, which is poetry in sound. 
 
 " 6. Mathematics he moderately studieth. . . . 
 
 " 7. Hence he makes his progress into the study of History. Nestor, 
 who lived thred ages, was accounted the wisest man in the world. 
 But the historian may make himself wise by living as many ages as 
 have past since the beginning of the world. His books enable him to 
 maintain discourse, who, besides the stock of his own experience, may 
 spend on the common purse of his reading. This directs him in his 
 life, so that he makes the shipwrecks of others sea-marks to himself : 
 yea, accidents which others start from for their strangeness, he 
 welcomes as his wonted acquaintance, having found precedents for 
 them formerly. Without history a man's soul is purblind, seeing only 
 the things which almost touch his eyes. 
 
 ' Of Logic he has also thus written : " Logic of itself is of absolute 
 necessity, with which- St Paul could never have disputed ' two years ' (no, not 
 two hours) daily in the School of Tyrannus (Acts xix. 9). So highly did the 
 Apostle prize it that he desires to be freed oVA tUv aroiriav (from men who 
 have no topics) from absurd men who will fix in no place to be convinced 
 with reason " {Hist. Univ. Cambridge, Dedication). He here also alluded to 
 the subjects taught in the University in his time as being useful in divinity ; 
 and he defends them against " a late generation of people, professed enemies to 
 all human learning. True Philosophy thus considered in itself is, as Clement 
 Alexandrinus termeth it, ^ternce veritatis sparaginon (a spark or splinter of 
 divine truth), lies Dei ratio, saith TertuUian, God Himseilf being, in a sort, 
 the great grandfather of every Philosophy Act." 
 
BIRTH, EARLY YEARS, STUDENT LIFE 31 
 
 " 8. He is well seen in Chronology, 
 
 " Thus taking these sciences in their general latitude he hath found 
 the round circle or golden ring of the arts ; only he keeps a place for the 
 diamond to be set in, I mean that predominant profession of Law, 
 Physic, Divinity, or State-Policy, which he intends for his principal 
 calling hereafter." "• 
 
 It was by the aid of the course of training here indicated 
 that young Davenant became so general a scholar that it 
 was his insight into everything he had reiad, together with 
 his thinking and meditative nature, made his fancy so 
 nimble, that as soon as he heard any subject, he was able 
 to speak to it, not taking overmuch time to recollect him- 
 self for his sermons. 
 
 While our young student is walking through the groves 
 of academies, we may take a passing view of the condition 
 of the town and University in his day. From Fuller's 
 (Davenant's nephew) history of his Alma Mater we can only 
 gather a few particulars for our purpose ; for in that work 
 the author deals with the years of his college life in a very 
 perfunctory way, but in the Church History he is more 
 gossipy and loquacious, and therefore there is more infor- 
 mation to be gleaned. 
 
 The students formed a larger body now, and " exact " 
 survey, taken in the year 162 1, quoted in Fuller's History ^ 
 gave 2998 as the full number.? The town population was 
 about 8ooOi A writer speaks of the University as being a 
 tedious horse-journey of two days from London, and 
 destitute of any better conveyance of letters than its well- 
 known carrier Hobson.^ It was, however, "still one of the 
 great centres of the literature, the science, the talent, and, 
 unhappily, the religious strife of the nation." Fuller thus 
 concisely and felicitously hits it off in his Worthies : — 
 
 " Cambridge is the chief credit of Cambridgeshirej as the Univer- 
 
 1 Holy State, pp. 65-8. ^ § viii. IT 8, p. 163. 
 
 ' Ed. of Thomdyke's Works, vi. p. 170. 
 
32 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 sity is of Cambridge. It is confessed that Oxford far exceeds it for 
 sweetness of situation ; and yet it may be maintained that though 
 there be better air in Oxford, there is more in the Colleges of Cam- 
 bridge, for Oxford is an university in a town, Cambridge is a town in 
 an university, where the Colleges are not surrounded with the offensive 
 embraces of streets, but generally situated on the outside, affording 
 the better conveniency of private walks and gardens about them." ' 
 
 It is evident from the various notices in the literature of 
 the period, as well as from notices in Fuller's History of the 
 University, that Cambridge was then by no means a dull 
 place. The king, who used to spend much of his time 
 in hunting at Newmarket and Royston, was " almost as 
 often," says Herbert, " invited to Cambridge, where his 
 entertainment was comedies suited ,to his pleasant humour." 
 Dr Gauden informs us that the king made the learned 
 exercises of scholars the greatest and best part of this royal 
 entertainment. 
 
 In common with many other scholars, Davenant, in his 
 juvenile days, must have derived great pleasure in attend- 
 ance at the Latin plays, which, besides occurring in con- 
 nection with royal visits, were allowed to be commonly 
 acted by the students. Whether so grave a temperament 
 allowed him so far to unbend and participate in them, we 
 have no means of knowing. At all events it was a great 
 dramatic age, and the parent of some of our greatest 
 dramatists. Attempts were often made to abolish these 
 theatrical entertainments — which received so much royal 
 patronage and appreciation. When Davenant was study- 
 ing at Cambridge, " some grave governours," records Fuller, 
 " maintained the good use thereof, because in twelve days 
 they more discover the dispositions of scholars than in 
 twelve months before." 
 
 " There have been more in some one play. 
 Laughed into wit and virtue, than have been 
 
 ^ § Cambridge, p. 149. 
 
BIRTH, EARLY YEARS, STUDENT LIFE 33 
 
 By twenty tedious lectures drawn from sin 
 And foppish humours." 
 
 But notwithstanding these College theatricals and other 
 attractions, Davenant, with characteristic energy/plunged 
 into those studious and theological pursuits which became 
 the delight of his life. If he found these wearisome at first 
 — for much study is a weariness to the flesh — they soon 
 came to be (as they were to John Milton) " else so smooth, 
 so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sound 
 on either side that the harp of Orpheus was not more 
 charming." That he was exceedingly diligent at this, as 
 at all other periods of life, is shown by the early age (18) 
 at which he took his first degree (1590). Like all other 
 candidates he had to follow the usual series of studies. 
 For this degree, moreover, students were required to take 
 part in two public disputations before a Moderator. Each 
 candidate had to be " Respondent," and to give in three 
 propositions to be maintained in debate, in Latin, " Oppo- 
 nents," called also " Sophisters," being selected from other 
 students ; they were to appear twice as " Respondents," and 
 twice as " Opponents." Other examinations in the public 
 schools were required, and these included questions out of 
 Aristotle's Prior Analytics. This and all other work being 
 done satisfactorily, the candidates were pronounced by the 
 Proctor on the Thursday before Palm Sunday to be full 
 Bachelors of Arts.^ 
 
 Accordingly on Commemoration day, at the end of the 
 Lent term 1590-1, Davenant's undergraduate career came 
 to an end. Having creditably performed the prescribed 
 duties, and subscribed his name in the University subscrip- 
 tion book, to the newly introduced Thirty-nine Articles of 
 1571, he, with many other students of Queens', received his 
 B.A. degree. It is expressly stated that he took it with 
 unusual credit, and attracted the notice of some learned 
 
 ' See Masson's Life of Milton, I. cap. iv. 
 C 
 
34 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 theologians, and hence it showed that he had done good 
 work, and being very assiduous in his studies. Nine or ten 
 terms were before him before he could take the next 
 higher degree. 
 
 Davenant commenced M.A. in 1594, after giving such 
 testimony, and such an earnest of future eminence and 
 maturity that the profoundly learned Dr Whitaker, Master 
 of St John's, and Regius Professor of Divinity, hearing him 
 dispute, uttered the prediction and pronounced that he 
 would in time prove the honour to the University which 
 afterwards came to pass, and as such we shall soon meet 
 with him. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 DAVENANT'S academical career at CAMBRIDGE 
 (1594-1614) 
 
 "Epistles are the calmest communicating truth to posterity, presenting 
 History to us in her night-clothes, with a true face of things, though not 
 in so fine a dress as in other kinds of writings."^ — Fuller's Worthies, 
 Middlesex, p. 129. 
 
 WHETHER Davenant was entered at Queens' 
 College, and educated as a fellow - commoner, 
 according to Fuller and Ball, or not, according to the 
 high authority of Mr Searle, who, as fellow, has had the 
 privilege of inspecting the College archives and muni- 
 ments, he was soon offered a Fellowship in that society. 
 But Fuller states the elder Davenant would not allow the 
 young student to accept it, " as conceiving it a bending of 
 these places from the direct intent of the founders, when 
 they are bestowed on such as have ample means." Fuller, 
 however, expresses his opinion that " such preferments are 
 appointed as well for the reward of those that are worthy, 
 as the relief of those who want." 
 
 Nevertheless, on 2nd September, 1597, Davenant be- 
 came a member of the society, and was admitted appa- 
 rently about Easter, 1598, but he inherited his father's 
 objection, as the following anecdote will show. At a 
 public election he gave a negative vote against a near 
 kinsman (John Gore, Esq., Gilesden, Herts), afterwards 
 knighted, and most excellent scholar. " Cousin," said he, " I 
 will satisfy your father that you have worth, but not want, 
 enough to be of our society." 
 
 35 
 
36 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 "Inkis election, the good Master of a College [said Fuller afterwards, 
 probably in reference to Davenant] respecteth merit, not only as the 
 condition, but as the cause thereof. Not like Leofricus, Abbot of St 
 Albans, who would scarce admit any into his convent, though well 
 deserving, except he was a gentleman born. He more respects litera- 
 ture in a scholar than great men's letters for him. A learned Master 
 of a College in Cambridge (since made a reverend Bishop, and to the 
 great grief of good men, and great loss of God's Church, lately 
 deceased) refused a mandate for choosing of a worthless man Fellow, 
 and when it was expected that at the least he should have been ousted 
 of his mastership for this his contempt. King James highly com- 
 mended him, and encouraged him ever after to follow his own con- 
 science when the like occasion should be given him." ' 
 
 It is probable that at the time, when Fellow, he was the 
 College associate of the elder Fuller, who married his 
 sister, Judith Davenant, and was the father of the witty 
 Church historian. On his elevation to the episcopate Bishop 
 Davenant gave to the elder Fuller, Rector of Aldwinkle 
 (1622), the prebendal state of Highworth, Wilts, in the 
 Cathedral of Sarum. Hence the Church historian, who 
 also himself was made Prebendary of Salisbury, used to 
 call himself Prebendarius Prebendarides, alluding to this 
 coincidence. 
 
 When Davenant was ordained has not been ascertained, 
 but it was probably about 1597. In 1597-8 he was ex- 
 aminator; in 1598-99 and 1 599-1600, he was made Lector 
 Graecus ; and in 1600-1, Decanus SacelH, but he does not 
 seem to have held any other College offices. 
 
 He took his first degree in Divinity (B.D.) in 1601. 
 Richard Parker, in his Sketches, states him to have been 
 
 Rector of , in the county of Lincoln, without giving 
 
 the name of the parish. But Mr Gorham, in his Collec- 
 tions (now in Lord Spencer's library at Althorp), mentions 
 him as Rector of Leyke (Leake), Nottinghamshire. He 
 probably did not reside in College, as we find only two 
 members of his family admitted pensioners under him, 
 
 1 Holy State, p. 80. 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 3^ 
 
 George Davenant, 24th May 1602, and Edward Davenant, 
 1 8th December 1609. 
 
 On July 1608, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, being 
 Chancellor of the University, wrote to the Vice-Chancellor 
 to the following effect : — 
 
 " When I understand your permission to proceed to the election 
 of the Divinity Reader of the Lady Margaret, though I have no 
 purpose to prevent Mr Playfayer, formerly interested in the same, 
 yet I have thought to recommend unto you one Mr Davenant, B.D. 
 and Fellow of Queens' College, well known among you, and do 
 request that if the reputation of his parts and learning be equal 
 with his competitor, you would acknowledge my inclination and 
 suffrage with him, and make choice of him to the Readership." 
 
 Of this, Thomas Playfere Fuller says : " The counsel 
 of his foe, friends commending of him, and his own con- 
 testing of himself, made too deep an impress on his 
 intellectuals." 
 
 It added to his distemper that when his re-election to 
 his place (after his two years end) was put into the Regent 
 House, a great doctor said, Detur digniori. This was pro- 
 bably the time when Mr Davenant was his competitor. 
 Dr Playfere had ^.t this, time outlived his great reputation, 
 yet was he re-elected. However he did not long hold the 
 professorship, as he died 2nd February 1608-9. On the 
 following day, the Vice-Chancellor (Dr Jegon), master of 
 Corpus Christi College, wrote to the Earl of Salisbury, 
 arinouhcihg to him the death of Mr Playfere, and also that 
 the University was well affected towards Mr Davenant 
 for his successor, and he was accordingly elected Lady 
 Margaret Professor on 13th February 1608-9. To this 
 office he was re-elected loth July 161 2, and held it with 
 great reputation till 1622, when he was succeeded by his 
 old friend and colleague at Dort, the celebrated Dr Seth 
 Ward. 
 
 In 1609 he was created D.D., and was one of the 
 
38 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 University preachers, 1609-1612. On 31st March i6i2, 
 Dr Davenant was presented by the College to the Vicarage 
 of Hockington (Oakington), Cambridgeshire, a village not 
 far from the University, and was instituted 8th April. He, 
 however, soon resigned it, as his successor was instituted 
 30th November the same year. 
 
 Thomas Fuller, Dr Davenant's nephew, relates the 
 following amusing anecdote of him belonging to this 
 period : — 
 
 "A reverend doctour in Cambridge, and afterwards bishop of 
 Sarisbury, was troubled at his small living, Hoggington (Oaking- 
 ton), with a peremptory anabaptist, who plainly told him : ' It goes 
 against my conscience to pay you tithes, except you can show me 
 a place of Scripture whereby they are due to you.' The Doctour 
 returned : ' Why should it not go as much against my conscience, 
 that you should enjoy your nine parts, for which you can show no 
 place of Scripture?' To whom the other rejoined, 'But I have, 
 for my land, deeds and evidences from my fathers, who purchased 
 and were peaceably possessed thereof by the laws of the land.' 
 ' The same is my title,' said the Doctour ; ' tithes being confirmed 
 unto me by many statutes of the land, time out of mind.' Thus 
 he drave that nail, not which was of the strongest metal or 
 sharpest point, but which would go best for the present. It was 
 argumentum ad hominem, fittest for the person he was to meddle 
 with, who afterwards peaceably paid his tithes unto him. Had 
 the Doctour engaged in Scripture-argument, though never so preg- 
 nant and pertinent, it had been endless to dispute with him, who 
 made clamour the end of his dispute, whose obstinacy and ignorance 
 made him incapable of solid reason ; and, therefore, the worse the 
 argument, the better for his apprehension." * 
 
 It was when Davenant held this living, and when 
 yet a private fellow of Queens' College, as we remarked, 
 he was chosen Margaret Professor of Divinity. He had 
 become widely known as a writer of much research and 
 erudition, and few excelled him even in that age of great 
 divines. 
 
 I ^ Church History, ii. 112. 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 39 
 
 This Margaret Professorship was founded 1 502 by Lady- 
 Margaret, mother of Henry VII., and it is curious to notice 
 how many Queens' men have filled this very important 
 office. What the meaning of this may be, the writer cannot 
 ascertain ; but the first Professor was John Fisher, D.D., 
 Queens', in 1502. In 1511, the erratic but accomplished 
 Desiderius Erasmus was elected to the chair, and seems to 
 have held it off and on for four years, when he was suc- 
 ceeded by J. Fawne, D.D., Queens', 1515, who held it till 
 1532. The next Queens' man who filled the office, and 
 with such distinction, was John Davenant, B.D., Queens', 
 1609. When we consider what an important factor Eras- 
 mus was in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and 
 what the influence his Greek Testament and paraphrase 
 on the New Testament, with his notes on the Gospels and 
 Epistles produced at that critical era — and he was hard at 
 work on these during his stay at Cambridge — we may 
 safely say he was one of the most illustrious and interesting 
 occupants of the chair. 
 
 We have already seen in a previous chapter that the 
 College ale did not agree with him ; but if we are to trust 
 the la;te Mr Froude, Erasmus must have been very uncom- 
 fortable at Cambridge. 
 
 To Ammonius — an Italian agent of the Pope in London 
 — Erasmus wrote on reaching London to the following 
 effect : — 
 
 " I have no news for you except that piy journey was detestable, 
 and that the place does not agree with me. I have pleaded sickness 
 so far as an excuse for postponing my lectures. Beer does not suit me 
 either, and the wine is horrible. If you can send me a barrel of Greek 
 wine, the best which can be had, Erasmus will bless you. Only take 
 care it is not sweet. Have no uneasiness about the loan, it will be 
 paid before the date of the bill. Meantime I am being killed with 
 thirst. Imagine the rest. Farewell." 
 
 The Cambridge letters generally are in the same tone. 
 They show little interest in the University, or in Erasmus' 
 
40 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 occupations, or the eminent persons whom he must have 
 met. We have no intellectual symposia such as had de- 
 lighted him at Oxford, no more Colets or Grocyns, though 
 we can fancy he must at least have encountered Cranmer 
 there, and possibly Latimer. He writes chiefly about his 
 discomforts, and on the chance of getting away for a week 
 or two to visit Colet in London. The Greek wine was 
 duly sent, and paid for, with a set of ardently grateful 
 verses. The cask was soon empty and the thirsty soul had, 
 he said, but the scent of it left to console him. 
 
 He went up to London to see Mountjoy, but disappointed 
 in the object of his journey, he returned to the University. 
 There were highwaymen on the road, and though he 
 escaped plunder, he did not escape a fright. A fresh 
 supply of Greek wine was provided. The carriers found 
 out its quality, drank half of it, and filled up the barrel 
 with water. His only happiness was in his work. He 
 lived, he said, as a cockle in his shell. Cambridge was in 
 solitude. The plague was spread there, and the students 
 had mostly gone down. Even if they had been in residence, 
 he would have seen but little of them, for his lecture-room 
 was thinly attended.. The cost of living was intolerable. 
 In the first five months of his stay he had spent 60 roubles, 
 and had received but one.^ 
 
 Archbishop Warham was a great friend and patron of 
 Erasmus — in short, his Maecenas. But if Warham's ten 
 angels had been ten legions of angels, as the Archbishop 
 said he wished they had been, they would not have com- 
 forted the sensitive Erasmus for his captivity among the 
 fogs and dons of Cambridge. He pined for Italy and 
 Italian wines and sunshine, and cursed his folly for leav- 
 ing Rome. The Cambridge purgatory lasted for many 
 months, and the pain of it did not abate. His impatience 
 bubbled over in restlessness. 
 
 An evident bitterness, says Mr Froude, runs through 
 
 ' Life and Letters of Erasmus, by James Anthony Froude, 1894, p. iii. 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 41 
 
 these Cambridge letters. He regretted Rome. He had 
 been led, he said, to form extravagant expectations in 
 England. He had looked for mountains of gold, and it 
 had been all illusion. He was now poor as Ulysses, and 
 like Ulysses, he was longing for a sight of the smoke from 
 his own chimney .'^^ 
 
 The postscript of one of his letters (to Colet) contains 
 the only glimpses which we have of Erasmus' intercourse 
 with the Cambridge dignitaries. It is curious and 
 characteristic. 
 
 " Here (he adds) is something to amuse you. I was talking to one 
 of the masters about the junior teachers. One of them, a great man 
 in his way, exclaimed, ' Who would spend his life instructing boys, if 
 he could earn a living in any other way ? ' I said that instructing the 
 young was an honest occupation. Christ had not despised children, 
 and no labour was so sure of a return. A man of piety would feel 
 that he could not employ his time better thkn in bringing little ones 
 to Christ. My gentleman turned up his nose, and said if we were 
 to give ourselves to Christ, we had better join a regular order and go 
 into a monastery. ' St Paul,' I replied, considers that religion means 
 works of charity, and charity means helping others. He would not 
 have this at all. Religion meant nos reliquimus otnnes, that was the 
 only counsel of perfection. I told him that a man had not left every- 
 thing, who refused to undertake a useful calling, because he thought 
 it beneath him. And so our conversation ended. Such is the wisdom 
 of the Scotists."" 
 
 It would appear that at that time Erasmus had not 
 gained much of a footing at Cambridge, and that he was 
 disappointed of making a position in England. Hence his 
 bitterness — for he was as needy and impecunious as erratic. 
 Yet he lived to change his note about England and all 
 things English. During his sojourn at Cambridge he had 
 been hard at work on his Paraphrase on the Gospels and 
 Epistles, which were subsequently published. This it was 
 which brought a hornet's nest about him, and made him 
 famous in Europe. 
 
 '^'FroMae's Erasmus, no. ^Froude, p. 112. 
 
42 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 He had attacked the monks, and the monks were 
 ubiquitous, so that it would be useless for him to fly. 
 There was no spot on the Continent where he could get 
 away from their resentment. In England he had pined for 
 Rome, or if not for Rome, for a sight of the smoke of the 
 chimneys of his own land. He had left England, meaning 
 never to see it again. He now looked back upon it with 
 passionate regards, and would fain return to the land of 
 freedom and truth, 
 
 " Oh, splendid England (he writes from Louvain^ to his friend Dr 
 Pace),^ oh splendid England, home and citadel of virtue and learning ? 
 How do I congratulate you on having such a Prince to rule you, and 
 your prince on subjects which throw such lustre on his reign. In no 
 country would I like better to pass my days. Intellect and honesty 
 thrive in England under the Prince's favour. In England there is 
 
 ^ The University of Louvain, founded in 1426, was regarded as the most 
 famous in Europe in the i6th century, and the theological faculty in particular, 
 for its inflexible adherence to the orthodox dogmas of the Church. The num- 
 ber of students is said to have exceeded 6000 at the period when the celebrated 
 Justus Lipsius (1606) taught there. Under Joseph II. its reputation somewhat 
 declined, but it continued to exist until the close of the last century. So 
 extensive were its privileges that no one could formerly hold a public appoint- 
 ment in the Austrian Netherlands without having taken a degree at Louvain. 
 After having been closed by the French Republicans, the University was 
 revived by the Dutch Government in 1817, a philosophical Faculty was 
 afterwards instituted, notwithstanding the determined attitude of the clergy, 
 and complaints to which the innovation gave rise are said to have contributed 
 in some degree to the Revolution of 1830. Since 1836, the University has 
 been reorganised, and has assumed an exclusively ecclesiastical character. It 
 possesses five faculties, and is attended by. 1500 students, many of whom live 
 in 4 large colleges (Pedagogies du St Esprit, Marie Th^r^se, Adrian VI., and 
 Juste Lipse). Most of the best of the R.C. Priests in England were, 
 till recently, educated at Louvain. 
 
 We were assured by one of the Professors — who courteously entertained us 
 and shewed us round the Establishment, the Rev. L. Abb6 J. Leussen, 
 Docteur en Sciences, College du Pape — in our recent visit (Sept. 1S95), t^*' 
 the University still maintained its old reputation for orthodoxy, and never was 
 there such eagerness on the part of the young men to enter the Priesthood. 
 But the people, continued the Professor, are not "bons" — in fact, they are 
 drifting into socialism and indifferentism, if not scepticism. 
 
 " Ep. ccxli. 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 43 
 
 no masked sanctimoniousness, and the empty babble of educated 
 ignorance is driven out or put to silence. In this place I am torn by 
 envenomed teeth. Preachers go about screaming lies about me 
 among idiots as foolish as themselves." And again he writes, " The 
 King of England invites me back, and his Achates the Cardinal of 
 York." 
 
 All this is very different to what Erasmus had written 
 before, but circumstances alter cases. And Erasmus, as 
 Fuller reminds us, "was a badger in his jeers, when he did 
 bite, he would make his teeth meet." 
 
 It must have been shortly after writing this above letter 
 that Erasmus returned to England, and went for the third 
 time to Cambridge, and resided. It was there he lectured 
 as Lady > Margaret Professor, and where he busied himself 
 in his writings. 
 
 But it must not be forgotten that Erasmus was probably 
 the first Regius Professor of Greek in Cambridge (date 
 not given in the Calendar) before he held the Divinity 
 Professorship. The date is uncertain, but he was invited 
 then by Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who was President of 
 Queens' College (1505-1508), and Chancellor of the Uni- 
 versity in 1 504, and he seems always when in Cambridge 
 to have resided at Queens' College. " That great scholar 
 but graceless man," writes J. H. Blunt, " was appointed to 
 the Greek Professorship by Fisher's influence." There can 
 be no doubt that the famous clerk, " Master Erasmus of 
 Rotterdam," had a very potential influence upon the 
 Reformation in England,^ whether he had any hand in the 
 preparation of the " Institution of a Christian Man " or no. 
 
 "The great yet vain and petulant Erasmus," says Mr Blunt, 
 "undoubtedly deserves the credit of having aroused the educated 
 world of Europe, and especially of our own country, from this torpor. 
 It is an absurd mistake to suppose that he originated the study of 
 Greek in England, for it was at Cambridge that he learned that 
 language,^ but his enthusiastic Ipve for it stirred up the languid 
 
 ' Reformation of Church of England, p. 65. 
 
44 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 scholarship of both our Universities, and his enterprise in printing the 
 text of the New Testament led many to study the original who would 
 otherwise have been content with the Vulgate. The. mind of Erasmus 
 was, too, of a decidedly independent and original character ; and to 
 him we must trace the growth of that disposition to search deep into 
 the foundations of received dogmas which had so great an effect upon 
 the theology of the Church of England which were in the habit of 
 settling down on a rather superficial tradition, and the habit became 
 so strong that the spirit of enquiry began to be looked upon as 
 identical with a spirit of heresy. Erasmus taught his generation the 
 habit of looking below the surface ; and notwithstanding the tone of 
 irreverence and scornfulness with which his own writings are too much 
 adulterated, and which his followers too often caught up, this habit of 
 research and spirit of enquiry proved a gain to the theological world, 
 as well as to the world of thought at large. 
 
 " It may be concluded that although it is difficult to point out any 
 definite work by which Erasmus influenced the English Reformation 
 beyond the publication of his Greek New Testament, he really did 
 influence it in two particulars ; first, by the revival of scholarship ', 
 and secondly, by stimulating men to the use of their reasoning powers. 
 His influence was directly exerted only upon the higher clergy and a 
 few of the higher laity ; but it was of a kind which would soon extend 
 downwards by these intermediate channels, and thus the results of it 
 
 ' Mr Blunt is not correct in saying this. Erasmus learnt the Greek language, 
 when he was a student at the University of Paris, at the age of twenty-five. 
 " Greek was then a rare acquisition, and was frowned on by the authorities — 
 but the disapproval of authorities sends young ardent students hunting after 
 the forbidden. Erasmus learnt for himself the elements of Greek, and in- 
 structed his pupils in it. Young and old came about him to be helped over 
 the threshold of the new intellectual world." — Froude, p. 21. 
 
 Again, " He toiled harder than ever at his Greek in competition with his 
 friends in England. He studied the Greek Christian Fathers, he translated 
 Greek plays, translated Plutarch, and translated Julian, all under various diffi- 
 culties." — Ibid., p. 54, 
 
 "There is proof that he was lecturing on Greek in Cambridge in 1506, 
 though again we have no particulars of what he did then, or of how long he 
 stayed." — Ibid., p. 78. 
 
 Again, " It must have been shortly after writing this letter (to Colet, cii.), 
 that Erasmus went for a third time to England, about the close of 1505, and 
 resided and lectured for some months at Cambridge."— /iiaf., p. 82. 
 
 Lastly, Mr Froude says, "Of his earlier experience in 1506 we know 
 nothing beyond the fact that he was some months resident and teaching Greek 
 there." — Ibid., g. 105. 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 45 
 
 ■were spread over a much wider area than that traversed by the great 
 scholar himself." ' 
 
 Erasmus' connection with Cambridge lasted for some 
 ten years off and on. During this period he visited the 
 great Augustinian Priory of " our Lady of Walsingham " 
 twice. His first visit (May 11, 15 11) was productive of an 
 elegant votive offering of a Carmen — a copy of Greek 
 Iambics — ^which much mystified the sub-prior. This pious 
 invocation to the Virgin in Greek Iambics he translated 
 when he revisited Walsingham at the request of the sub- 
 prior. No one could read it, and the Canons all thought 
 it was Hebrew. " Iste quidquid non intelligunt, Hebraicum 
 vocant," he says in his Peregrinatio religionis ergo. 
 
 in his letter to Ammonius — afterwards Latin secretary 
 to Henry VIII. — Erasmus mentions his visit to Walsing- 
 ham and this votive Carmen. It commences thus — 
 
 ' fl X<up 'lijerou juLtJTep evXoytj/ULevri, 
 
 and it was printed by Frobenius as early as 1518. The 
 first edition of the " Colloquies " appeared but a few 
 years later, and even had it been otherwise, no one could 
 venture to gainsay the freshness and truth of the descrip- 
 tion. In that spirited dialogue, "Peregrinatio religionis 
 ergo," a quondam Augustinian Canon is drawing a picture 
 of his fraternity, and after a lapse of more than three 
 hundred years the numerous pilgrims to Walsingham can 
 find no better handbook than that of the jesting Cantab, 
 whilst enjoying his long vacation in 15 13 or 1514. Among 
 the Cambridge men whom he had made his friends, he 
 mentions (Ep. cxlii.) the names of the following Fellows 
 of Queens'. Henry Bullock (Bovillus), John Fawne 
 (Phaunus), who succeeded him in his Professorship ; John 
 Vaughan (Vachunus) and Humphry (Umfridus) Walkeden. 
 Some ninety-four years after the Chair of the Margaret 
 
 ' Reformation, p. 428. 
 
46 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Professorship of Divinity had been vacated by this illus- 
 trious scholar — during which time Erasmus' influence ^ was 
 still being felt in the Church of England — and, taking 
 1 57 1, as the date of the Elizabethan settlement, when 
 the 39 Articles were put forth in their final shape — during 
 which time the Anglo-Catholic theology was being reduced 
 to a system, and technically formulated — another Queens' 
 man, as we have seen, was elected to the same Chair, again 
 become vacant. 
 
 It was in this capacity of Margaret Professor of Divinity 
 that Davenant attracted such marked attention, and de- 
 livered those various lectures upon the most abstruse doc- 
 trines which can affect the Christian consciousness, which 
 were the delight of his University, and the admiration of 
 Europe, at least to all theologians, both friends and adver- 
 saries. His works, though in Latin, were read with the 
 keenest interest by the members of the Reformed Church. 
 
 His Commentary on the Epistle to the Colossians soon 
 became a standard text-book on the subject, more of which 
 we shall see presently. His treatise on Righteousness is 
 spoken of with approval by no less a person than Cardinal 
 Newman in his learned work on "Justification," and is 
 referred to as eminently trustworthy. Large quotations 
 are made from it again and again, with a footnote to the 
 effect that " Davenant's statement on the subject {i.e., actual 
 righteousness) may be entirely received," which has been 
 added, I believe, to the re-issue of his works since he became 
 a Roman Catholic. Hervey speaks of the perspicuity of its 
 style and accuracy of method of his Exposition in his 
 " Theron and Aspasia." Whereas Bridges, in his " Chris- 
 
 ^ A copy of Erasmus' paraphrase was ordered to be placed in the parish 
 churches. Erasmus composed an ." Institution of a Christian Man " — which 
 was probably the germ of, if he had not a hand in, the " Institution" put out 
 by convocation in 1536. And " as Erasmus and Colet were very intimate, it 
 is not improbable," says Blunt, "that this Catechism (the latter part) may 
 have originated with the former, who was a great authority at the time of the 
 Reformation." — Annotated Prayer Book, p. 44. 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 47 
 
 tian Ministry," avers that he knew no Commentary " that 
 will compare with it on all points." Other lectures which 
 will be considered in their proper place on the " Death of 
 Christ," the " Rule of Faith," Praelections on the " Office 
 of the Civil Judge," " Determinationes," and " Epistolae," 
 followed in quick succession, all of which produced a 
 profound sensation upon the age in which he lived, and 
 covered his Professorial duties with glory and success. 
 A luxurious age like the present, which prides itself 
 upon being unrelated to any severe theology, may affect 
 to be amused at the heavy Divinity in vogue in those 
 days, when there were theological giants, arguing the 
 most abstruse subjects which are patient of discussion, 
 and providing "strong meat" for those of riper years. 
 The very terms then used have become almost obsolete, 
 or at least "not understanded of the people," in these 
 degenerate days of shallow and popular divinity, in this age 
 of unreasoning and unphilosophic religious thought. The 
 backbone seems to have gone out of the old theology, and 
 left a surface-like residuum of emotions and transitory im- 
 pressions, a veneer of sound theology. Where is the learn- 
 ing of a Jeremy Taylor .' where the true Catholicity of a 
 Laud .' where the analytical teaching of an Andrewes ? 
 the casuistry of a Sanderson? or the incisive logic and 
 comprehensive grasp of a Davenant .■' The " doctrines 
 of grace," as they were called, have now passed out of 
 the arena of controversy and even discussion, and departed 
 from the region of practical honiiletics. And yet, if Dave- 
 nant lectured upon these grand old verities of the Primitive 
 Faith and original " deposit " with the luhiinousness of an 
 Augustine, and almost with a dialectical skill of St Paul 
 himself, it must be borne in mind that people themselves 
 in those days took the keenest interest in all these deep 
 things of God. But we have changed all that. They had 
 all the "five points " at their fingers' end. They could hold 
 their own either on the Calvinistic or Arminian platform. 
 
48 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 The division between supralapsarian and sublapsarian 
 was rigidly demarcated. Final perseverance and effectual 
 calling were " familiar in their mouths as household 
 words." Men in those days argued the points concern- 
 ing " Justifying Faith " with the feverish excitement with 
 which people now approach a question of ritual, and the 
 discussion on predestination and election, original sin 
 and particular redemption, on " God's sovereignty " and 
 "man's free-will," was as hotly contested as the legiti- 
 macy of the " Court of Final Appeal for . Ecclesiastical 
 Causes " at the present time — by the common people as 
 well as the clergy, by prince as well as professor or pre- 
 late. When the Royal Family visited Cambridge from 
 time to time, whether it was James I. or Charles I., these 
 theological disputations, according to the custom of the 
 age, were always an invariable part of the programme 
 mapped out for their entertainment. Foreign theologians, 
 as in the case of the great Heidelberg Professor, Scultetus, 
 would occasionally join these forensic and stimulating exer- 
 cises, and dispute with the English divines, who, at that time, 
 enjoyed a world-wide reputation. Davenant, owing to his 
 official position of Margaret Professor, from his well-known 
 fairness and assured efficiency in all matters connected 
 with the theological sphere, was repeatedly called upon 
 to act in the capacity of moderator on these occasions. 
 He was selected to act as such at the Royal visit in 1613, 
 on occasion of the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth with 
 the Prince Palatine Frederic, and also again at the critical 
 contest with the Heidelberg Professor, Abraham Scultetus, 
 when the " temporal power of the Papacy," the " Rule of 
 faith," and other cognate subjects came under discussion. 
 The questions discussed, as we learn from NichoU's Pro- 
 gresses of James /., were these three: (i) Nulla est tem- 
 poralis Papa potestas supra reges, in ordine ad bonum 
 spirituale ; {2) In/allibilis fidei determinatio non est annexa 
 Cathedrce papali ; (3) Cosca obedientia est illicita. 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 49 
 
 It is amusing to hear the cordial and persistent anima- 
 tion with which the excellent but pedantic Bishop Hacket, 
 in his Life of Archbishop Williams, records these acade- 
 mical feats. Speaking of one super-eminent disputant, Dr 
 Collins, he thus proceeds (p. 26) : — 
 
 " He was a firm bank of earth, able to receive the shot of the 
 greatest artillery. His works in print against Eudaemon and Fitz- 
 herbert, sons of Anak among the Jesuits, do noise him far and wide. 
 But they that heard him speak would most admire him. No flood 
 can be compared to the spring-tide of his language and eloquence but 
 the milky river of Nilus, with his seven mouths all at once disem- 
 boguing into the sea. Oh, how voluble ! how quick ! how facetious 
 he was ! What a Vertumnus when he pleased to argue on the right 
 side, and on the contrary. Those things will be living to the memory 
 of the longest survivor that ever heard him. In this trial, where he 
 stood now to be tried by so many attic and exquisite wits, he strived 
 to exceed himself, and shewed his cunning marvellously that he could 
 invalidate every argument brought against him with variety of answers. 
 It was well for all , sides that the best divine, in my judgment, that 
 ever was in that place, Dr Davenant, held the reins of the disputation. 
 He kept him within the even boundals of the cause ; he charmed him 
 with the C^ducsean wand of dialectical prudence ; he ordered him to 
 give just Sveight, and no more. Hnat, 1. i, od. 3 : Quo non arbiter 
 Adriee major tollere, seu ^onere vult frgta. Such an arbiter as he 
 was now, such he was and no less, year by year in all coniitial dis- 
 putations : wherein whosoever did well, yet constantly he had the 
 greatest acclamation. To the close of all this exercise I come. The 
 grave elder opponents having had their courses, Mr Williams, a new- 
 admitted Bachelor of Divinity, came to his turn last of all. Presently 
 there was a smile on the face of every one who knew them both, and a 
 prejudging that between these two there would be a fray indeed. Both 
 jealqus of their credit, both great masters of wit : and as much was ex- 
 pected from the one as from the other. So they fell to it with all quick- 
 ness and pertinency : yet, thank the Moderator, with all candour ; like 
 Fabius and Marcellus : the one was the buckler, the other the sword 
 of, that learned exercise. No greyhound did ever give a hare more 
 turns upon Newmarket Heath than the replier with his subtleties gave 
 to the respondent. A subject fit for the verse of Mr Abraham Hart- 
 well, in his Regina Uterata, as he extols Dr Pern's arguments made 
 before Queen Elizabeth : Quisfulmine tanto telajacet? tantofulmine 
 nemo jacet. But when they had both done their best with equal 
 
 D 
 
so THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 prowess, the marshal of the field, Dr Davenant, cast down his warder 
 between them, and parted them." 
 
 It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Davenant, 
 being, as he was the centre and figurehead of all these 
 academical feats, in which both prince and professor took 
 such keen delight — to say nothing of the theological cur- 
 rent setting in from all sides — found his opinions strongly 
 tinctured with the then prevailing tendency of the age. It 
 was the very atmosphere in which he lived and had been 
 brought up. It was the daily food of his matured theolo- 
 gical being. We may say that he sucked in these ideas on 
 the " Doctrines of Grace " with his mother's milk, and in 
 them he " lived, moved, and had his being," from the cir- 
 cumambient bias of his early education and the force of his 
 university surroundings and academical circumstances. It 
 was what he " saw, heard, handled, looked upon and tasted " 
 of the good " Word of Life." But if he leant so strongly to 
 the " Doctrines of Grace " in his doctrinal views, we must 
 not forget that he ever remained within the four corners of 
 the 17th Article of our Church. Archbishop Lawrence 
 has proved by the confession of the suggested Lambeth 
 Articles that that crucial Article inclines rather to the 
 confession of Augsburgh than that of Geneva, to the 
 teaching of Melancthon rather than Calvin's severer method ; 
 that it is Augustinian, if not Pauline. Our divine never 
 came within even a measurable distance of the supra- 
 lapsarian hypothesis, and if he was sublapsarian in his 
 teaching, it was of an exceedingly mild character. He was 
 all along a firm upholder of the Episcopal form of church 
 government. He was a staunch and loyal son of his 
 spiritual mother, the national church of this country. He 
 inclined neither to Rome nor Geneva, but was abundantly 
 satisfied with the Church in which he found his regenera- 
 tion, purified upon the Reformation settlements. He 
 firmly believed in the old Catholic Church of the country, 
 and held to the doctrine of the Apostolical succession and 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 51 
 
 teaching of the Anglican Ordinal, as handed on to us in 
 post-Reformation times. But beyond all this he had a 
 thorough and comprehensive grasp of the position of the 
 Anglican Church in her two-fold appeal — Scripture and 
 primitive antiquity : Scripture as interpreted by primitive 
 tradition — the unerring Word of God side by side with the 
 concurrent testimony of the old Catholic Doctors and 
 Fathers — the consensus of the universal and undivided 
 church as formulated by that Vincentian apothegm, " Quod 
 semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus." 
 
 Fuller drank in his theology both from his father and 
 his uncle Davenant, who were both of the same school of 
 thought, and he eagerly listened to their conversation.^ 
 From the nephew's writings, therefore, we may get a clue 
 to the doctrinal standpoint of Davenant as from an outside 
 and independent witness. The writings of one are a sort 
 of commentary on, or corollary from, those of the other. 
 Of the nephew, Aubrey, who was very intimate with 
 various members of his family, says : " He was a boy of a 
 pregnant witt, and when the bishop {i.e., Dr Davenant) and 
 his father were discoursing he would be by and hearken, 
 and now and yn putt in, and sometimes beyond expectation 
 or his years." Here, then, we have a clue to the bishop's 
 divinity, for the nephew's opinions were much about the 
 same as, and were in point of fact an echo of, those of 
 both his father and uncle, who saw " eye to eye " in these 
 matters. Collating, then, the works of the one with those 
 of the other, we shall get a very fair idea of the theological 
 
 ' " In the high topics of predestination, he adhered to the doctrines in 
 which he was brought up, the doctrines taught in his youth at the University 
 of Cambridge by his uncle Davenant, a man in whom piety and sound learning 
 were united, and to a degree perhaps rarely excelled. For he moved not with 
 the times, but pursued his upright and even path, as before God, and not to 
 please men. He valued Episcopacy and the liturgy, and that equally with the 
 clergy who preceded Laud, as Andrewes, Downane, Whitgift, Fulke, Ridley, 
 and our English Reformers." — ^Russell's Memorials of T7iomas Fuller, D.Z>iy 
 p. 203. 
 
52, THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 basis of Davenant's Professorial teaching, and his doctrinal 
 position aU round. 
 
 It may be thought that undue prominence was given to 
 the " Doctrines of Grace," as they were called, and we must 
 confess that the harmony or proportion of faith was not 
 well kept in those days. There may have been a want of 
 scale in their dogmatic teaching. Still, side by side with 
 these there have been no more doughty champions for 
 Episcopacy and the Church of England, as by law estab- 
 lished, than the giants of those theological days. They 
 were equal to all comers in the ecclesiastical encounters of 
 the age, and utterly routed the Romanists on the one 
 hand and the Brownists, Anabaptists, and Separatists on 
 the other, by weapons which were not carnal. 
 
 Now, by referring to Fuller's essay on " The True Church 
 Antiquary," in his " Holy State," we shall be able to get 
 behind the theology of the divines of the period, and to 
 see the sure foundation upon which they built up their 
 system of dogmatic theology. We shall get at their 
 principles, or springs of action, which gave such potential 
 vitality to their dogmatic platform. We must discover their 
 philosophic method to account for all this, and it will be 
 found that it has the true Anglican ring about it. They 
 endeavoured in point of fact the method of historical 
 criticism, or the bifurcated iappeal to the infallible Word of 
 God as interpreted by primitive antiquity, by the decisions 
 of the four first general councils and the creeds of the undi- 
 vided Church — the only true method among all the various 
 competing systems for discovering the old Catholic faith 
 and the faith of the first six centuries, and which is coming 
 into acceptance more and more every day. It will be also 
 further seen that the Margaret Professor in those days 
 adopted the same method as Dr J. J. Blunt has so success- 
 fully done in our own with such luminous perspicacity, 
 and in that nervous style which was so peculiarly his own, 
 in his lectures on the " Right use of the Early Fathers," 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE S3 
 
 " The Church of the First Centuries," and the '• Liturgy of 
 the Church of England." 
 
 " He is a traveller into former times, this true Church Antiquary, 
 whence he hath learnt their language and fashions. If he meets with 
 an old manuscript, which hath the mark worn out of its mouth, and 
 hath lost the date, yet he can tell the age thereof either by the phrase 
 or character. 
 
 " I. J/e baits at middle antiquity, but lodges not till he comes at that 
 ■which is ancient indeed. Some scoure off the rust of old inscriptions 
 into their own souls, cankering themselves with superstitions, having 
 read so often orate pro anima, that at last they fall a-praying for the 
 departed : and they more lament the ruine of monastereryes than the 
 decay and ruine of monk's lives, degenerating from their ancient piety 
 and painfulnesse. Indeed a little skill in Antiquity inclines a man to 
 Popery, but depth in that study brings him about to our religion. A 
 nobleman who had heard of the extreme age of one dwelling not farre 
 :off, made a journey to visit him, and finding an aged person sitting in 
 the chimney corner, addressed himself unto him with admiration of 
 his age, till his mistake was rectified. Oh sr (said the young old man) 
 / am not he whom you seek for, but his sonne, my father is farther of 
 in the field. The same error is daily committed by the Romish 
 Church adoring the reverend brow and gray hairs of some ancient 
 ceremonyes, perchance of some seven or eight hundred years standing 
 in the Church, and mistake those for their fathers, of farre greater 
 age in the Primitive times. 
 
 " 2. He desires to imitate the ancient Fathers, as well in their piety 
 as in their postures, not only conforming his hands and his knees, 
 but chief his heart to their pattern. O the holiness of their living 
 and painfulnesse of their preaching ! How full were they of mortified 
 thoughts, and heavenly meditations ! Let us not make the cere- 
 moniall part of their lives onely canonicall, and the morall part 
 thereof altogether apocrypha, imitating their devotion not in the 
 finenesse of the stuff, but onely in the fashion of the making. 
 
 " 3. He carefully marks the declination of the Church from the primi- 
 tive purity, observing how sometimes humble devotion was con- 
 sented to be done, whilst proud superstition got on her back. Yet 
 not only Frederick the Emperour but many a godly Father some 
 hundreds of years before, held the Pope's stirrup, and by their well- 
 meaning simplicity gave occasion to his future greatness. He takes 
 notice how their rhetorical hyperboles were afterwards accounted the 
 just measures of dogmaticall truths : how plain people took them at 
 their. word in their funerall apostrophes to the dead: how praymg 
 
54 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 for the departed brought the fuel, under which after ages kindled the 
 fires of Purgatory : how one ceremony begat another, there being no 
 bounds in will-worship, wherewith one may sooner be wearied than 
 satisfied : the inventions of new ceremonies, endeavouring to supply 
 in number what their conceits want in solidity : how men's souls, 
 being in the full speed and career of the historicall use of pictures, 
 could not stop short, but must lash out into superstitions : how the 
 fathers veiling their bonnets to Rome in civill courtesie when making 
 honourable mention thereof, are interpreted by modern papists to 
 have done it in adoration of the idole of the Pope's infallibiUty. All 
 these things he ponders in his heart, observing both the times and 
 places when and where they happened. 
 
 " 4. He is not zealous for the introducing of old uselesse ceremonies. 
 The mischief is, some that are most violent to bring such in, are most 
 negligent to preach the cautions in using them ; and simple people, 
 like children in eating of fish, swallow bones and all, to their danger 
 of choking. Besides, what is observed of horsehairs, that lying nine 
 days in water they turn to snakes : so some ceremonies, though dead 
 at first, in continuance of time quicken, get stings, and may do much 
 mischief, especially if in such an age wherein the meddhng of some 
 have justly awaked the jealousie of all. When many Popish tricks 
 are abroad in the countrey, if these men meet with a ceremonie which 
 is a stranger, especially if it can give but a bad account of itself, no 
 wonder if the watch take it up for one on suspicion. 
 
 " 5. He is not peremptory but conjecturall in doubtfull matters, not 
 forcing others to his own opinion, but leaving them to their own 
 libertie : not filling up all with his own conjectures, to leave no room 
 for other men ; nor tramples he on their ci'edits, if in them he finds 
 slips and mistakes. For here our souls have but one eye (the Apostle 
 saith we knoiv in part), be not proud if that chance to come athwart 
 thy seeing side, which meets with the blind side of another. 
 
 " 6. He thankfully acknowledgeth those by -whom he hath profited. 
 Base natured they, who when they have quenched their own thirst, 
 stop up, at least muddy, the fountain. But our antiquary, if he be not 
 the first Founder of a commendable conceit, contents himself to be 
 a Benefactor to it in clearing and adorning it. 
 
 " 7. He affects not fanciful singularity in his behaviour, nor cares 
 to have a proper mark in writing of words, to disguise some peculiar 
 letter from his ordinary character. Others, for fear travellers should 
 take no notice that skill in Antiquity dwells in such a head, hang out 
 an antique hat for the signe, or use some obsolete garb in their gar- 
 ments, gestures, or discourse. 
 
 " 8. He doth not so adore the Ancients as to despise the Moderns. 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 55 
 
 Grant them but dwarfs, they stand on giants' shoulders, and may see 
 the further. Sure, as stout champions of Truth follow in the rear as 
 ever marched in the front. Besides, as one excellently observes,* 
 Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi. These times are the ancient times, 
 when the world is ancient : and not those which we count ancient, 
 ordine retrograde, by a computation backwards from ourselves." ^ 
 
 It was in the year 1614, just five years after he had been 
 chosen Margaret Professor of Divinity, and made such a 
 figure before the world in that r61e, both academical and 
 collegiate, that he was unanimously elected by the Fellows 
 of the Society to the Presidentship of Queens' College, and 
 was admitted the same day (Oct. 20th). He succeeded 
 on his death Dr Humphrey Tyndall (Dean of Ely), who 
 had been Master for thirty-five years, his predecessor, 
 again, being Dr William Chaderton, Regius Professor of 
 Divinity, who was made Bishop of Chester, 1579, having 
 been President for eleven years. 
 
 In Thomas Ball's Life of John Preston is the following 
 curious and characteristic account of the way in which the 
 election to the Presidentship, on the death of Dr Tyndall, 
 was managed by him : — 
 
 "And so he (Preston) went on in his work untill Doctor Tyndall 
 (Master of the CoUedge) died. He was an old man, and that prefer- 
 ment of the Mastership of Queens was more accounted of than now 
 it is. There were very many that had their eyes upon it, but Doctor 
 Mountain in a special manner, who was often heard for to professe he 
 would rather be Master of that CoUedge than Dean of Westminster. 
 But Master Preston had another in his eye. Doctor Davenant was 
 a gentleman descended, and was a Fellow-Commoner when under- 
 graduate, but very painfull, and of great capacity, and grew accord- 
 ingly in learning and reputation, and for his work and parts was al- 
 ready chosen Margaret Pro/essour, and read in the Schools with much 
 applause those excellent Lectures upon the Colossians which are now 
 printed. Him Master Preston pitched upon, but knew it must be 
 carried very privately : for the Mountain was already grown into some 
 
 ' Sir Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning, p. 46. 
 ^ The Holy State, book ii., chap. 6. 
 
56 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 bignesse, was one of parts, and first observed in acting Miles Gloriosus 
 in the CoUedge, and had been Chaplain unto the Earl of Essex, but 
 like the Heliotrope or flower of the Sun, did now adore Sir Robert 
 Carr, already Viscount Rochester, the only Favourite. 
 
 " When it was agreed among the Persians, that he should reign, 
 whose horse first saw the rising sun, and neighed at it, one turned his 
 horse head towards the mountains, believing the sun would first arise 
 there ; but it fell not out so here. Master Preston having laid his plot 
 beforehand, and seen what mountain was in his way, had taken care 
 that word should be daily^brought him how the old Doctor did, and 
 when he found him irrecoverable, laid horses and all things ready ; 
 and upon notice of his being dead, goes presently and was at London, 
 and in White-Hall before any light appeared upon the mountain-top : 
 the Court was quiet and he had some friends there. His businesse was 
 only to get a free Election, which he made means for to procure : but 
 knowing also with whom he had to do, makes some addresses unto 
 Viscount Rochester in behalf of Doctor Davenant, who being un- 
 acquainted with his Chaplain's appetite to that particular, was fair 
 and willing to befriend a learned enterprise. So Master Preston 
 returns unto the CoUedge before the Master's death was much took 
 notice of : and assembling Doctor Davenanfs friends, acquaints them 
 with what had passed at Court, and so they went immediately to 
 Election, and it was easily and fairly carried for Doctor Davenant, 
 who being called was admitted presently. But when Doctor Moun- 
 tain understood that Doctor Tyndall was departed, he sends and 
 goes to Court and CoUedge for to make friends. But alas the game 
 was played and he was shut out. Never did /Etna or Vesuvius more 
 fume, but there was, no cure : only he threatens and takes on against 
 the actors, but they were innocent and not obnoxious. This Doctor 
 had made great promises, gave a very goodly piece of plate into the 
 CoUedge, with this inscription : sic indpio, but now he vowed it should 
 be : sic desino. However the CoUedge for the present was well paid, 
 and grew in reputation very much : and because they wanted room to 
 entertain the number that flocked to them, built that goodly fabrick 
 that contains many fair lodgings both for Scholars and Fellows to- 
 wards King's CoUedge." — (Thos. Ball, Life of Dr John Preston in 
 Clarke s Lives, 1677. 
 
 Who the very many were that wished the place, as Ball 
 says, or the " three others " before whom he was preferred, 
 as Lloyd states, does not appear, with the exception of Dr 
 George Mountain, and perhaps Dr George Meriton. 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE S7 
 
 George Mountain, mentioned as Dr Davenant's com- 
 petitor for the Presidentship, was born " honestis penati- 
 bus " at Cawood, Yorkshire, in 1 569 ; was elected Fellow of 
 Queens' College, 1592 ; he was Dean of Westminster, 1610, 
 and Bishop successively of Lincoln, 1617, of London, 1621, 
 of Durham, 1627, and finally Archbishop of York, 1628, in 
 which year he died. He must have known of the death of 
 Dr Tyndall almost as soon as Preston, as on the following 
 day he addressed the following letter of condolence to the 
 Society, in which, strangely enough, he recommends thie 
 same course to be taken as that adopted by Preston, viz. : 
 procuring freedom of election to the fellows. The letter is 
 preserved in the College. 
 
 Salutem in Xhro. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 Having lived long in that CoUedg, and brought up in the same 
 under Dr Tindall, I could do no lesse than condole his death with 
 youe, and y" CoUedg, from whome whilst I lived ther, not only my- 
 self but the whole CoUedg receaved so much good, and therefore I 
 am bold to entreat you all, as youe are all bound unto him so to strive 
 every one how youe may best honor him, either by sepulture in the 
 Chappell, or other funeral solemnities, w'^'' as I will not prescribe unto 
 youe, of whose wisdomes I am so well assured, so if you wil be pleased 
 to let me understand what course youe think meet to be holden in the 
 same, I wil be ready to joyne with y" CoUedg and w* you especially in 
 the point of expens and chardg, for I desire very much to bring one 
 stone myself unto his monument. 
 
 And because I have begun to write unto youe, I pray youe give me 
 leave to proceede a httle further and first to crave y' good interp'ta- 
 tion for that I shall write, proceeding (I protest to God) of no other 
 humor but a zeale I have for y" good of youe all and of ye CoUedg. II 
 I were wishing to advise you, the first thing I would have done should 
 be an humble supplication to his Ma"° for a free election, w'^'' who 
 desires not loves not the CoUedg, and then, if that be granted, I, no- 
 thing doubt but God will bless the rest so as y' w*out all partiality and 
 faction, he shal be chosen, w* is the likeliest most to advaunce ye 
 good of ye CoUedg, w* I desire and wish with all my heart : and so 
 craving pardon if I have been to bold to show my desires and zeale 
 
58 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 for y good of that Colledg, I remain to that working society and 
 
 CoUedge 
 
 A faithful servant and friend, 
 
 George Mountaigne. 
 Westminster, this 13th of October, 1614. 
 
 To the Right Worshipp" the senior fellow of Queenes Colledg now 
 at home, and y* rest of that worthy society d.d. 
 
 This Dr Mountain was Dean of Westminster, but he 
 said he would be rather President of Queens' College. 
 However he was not elected — the College preferring Dr 
 Davenant as their new Master. Notwithstanding his 
 resentment against the College, which Ball imputes 
 to Montain, he was soon reconciled to it, as in 161 8 he 
 bestowed a house in Cambridge on it, for the purpose of 
 endowing two scholarships. 
 
 Davenant was now forty-two years of age, and he was 
 the sixteenth President of the College in order, the first 
 Master being Andrew Docket, the founder of the Society, 
 who held office in 1448 and following years, till 1484. 
 
 Davenant remained head of his College for seven years, 
 during which he discharged his duties with exemplary 
 faithfulness. His qualifications for the position were 
 exceedingly high. By interesting himself in the progress 
 of his students he acquired great influence among them. 
 The secret of his great success is seen in a characteristic 
 anecdote told by his nephew. He relates that 
 
 " taking his leave of the College, and one John Rolfe, an ancient 
 servant thereof, he desired him to pray for him. And when the other 
 modestly returned that he rather needed his lordship's prayers, ' Yea, 
 John,' said he, ' and I need thine too, being now to enter into a call- 
 ing wherein I shall meet with many and great temptations.' Prafuit 
 qui frofuit was the motto written in most of his books, the sense 
 whereof he practised in his conversation." ^ 
 
 During the mastership of Davenant, Queens' College was 
 in a very efficient state, and ably officered in regard to its 
 Fellows and Tutors. The College was crammed to over- 
 
 ' Worthies, Londoti, p. 207. 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 59 
 
 flowing, and it got so high a name that it was difficult to 
 get rooms therein, which were mostly obtained through the 
 kindness of the President himself, Davenant was con- 
 nected long enough with the College to give it the reputa- 
 tion of a distinct theological tone. New buildings had to 
 be erected towards King's College in the Walnut Tree 
 Court for the accommodation of both scholars and Fellows. 
 Like mjany of the Divines who received preferment during 
 the reign of James I., Davenant had strong Calvinistic 
 leanings, and had a great dislike to the doctrines of the 
 Papacy, but was supposed at the same time, by some men, 
 to have Arminian tendencies. Moreover, he treated the 
 Puritans with kindness and tolerance, was a gentle presser 
 of Conformity when Bishop, and, as a rule, kept to the old 
 Canonical ceremonies of the early part of the reign of 
 James L He strongly advocated the doctrine of universal 
 Redemption. His opinions were of a practical character, 
 and he contrived to firmly implant them in Queens' Col- 
 lege as its President, and in the University as Margaret 
 Professor of Divinity. His nephew. Fuller, whose connec- 
 tion with his uncle throughout his boyhood and early man- 
 hood was pretty close, held him in great respect, entering 
 Queens' College while he was still President ; and to the 
 Bishop's school of churchmanship he (with the very large 
 circle of Davenant's connections), ever tenaciously clung, 
 and did very much to perpetuate it. Mr Russell (Vicar 
 of Caxton), one of Fuller's biographers, justly says 
 of Davenant that he was "a man in whom piety and 
 sound learning were united to a degree perhaps rarely 
 excelled." 
 
 The Tutors at Queens' at this time were Mr Edward 
 Davenant, nephew of the President, and Mr John Thorpe. 
 With regard to the former he has been already noticed in 
 the account of the Davenant family. He is described as 
 "a great mathematician, and not only a man of great 
 learning, but of great goodness and charity." Sir C. Wren 
 
6o THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 is also reported to have had a very high Opinion of his 
 mathematical abilities. 
 
 Probably Mr John Thorpe was the Classical Tutor, and 
 young Fuller, who was under himi as a student of the 
 College, speaks gratefully of him about forty years after 
 this time. For when speaking of Dr John Thorpe, a 
 violent piersecutor of the Wickliffites, he adds : 
 
 " His name causeth me to remember his namesake of modern 
 times, lately deceased, even Mr John Thorpe, B.D., and Fellow of 
 Queens' College in Cambridge, my ever-honoured tutor : not so much 
 beneath him in logic as above him in the skill of Divinity, and an 
 holy conversation." ^ 
 
 Among the celebrities who were, or had been connected 
 with Queens' College, in addition to those mentioned else- 
 where, were also Weaver of the Funeral Monuments; John 
 Fisher ; and Mountaine (or Montaigne), Bishop of London 
 (162 1 -7). 
 
 One of much note at this time was Dr John Preston, a 
 Fellow whose name is found in after years in connection 
 with Fuller. Preston's skill in philosophy was held in 
 great respect. " He was," says his friend, " the greatest 
 pupil-monger^ in England in man's memory, having six- 
 teen fellow-commoners (most heirs to fair estates) admitted 
 in one year in Queens' College, and provided convenient 
 accommodation for them." It was commonly said in the 
 College that every time when Master Preston plucked off 
 his hat to Dr Davenant, the College-master, he gained a 
 chamber or study for one of his pupils ; amongst whom 
 one Chambers, a Londoner (who died very young), was 
 very eminent for his learning. Being chosen (1622) Master 
 of Emanuel College, he (Preston) removed thither with 
 most of his pupils ; and I remember when it was much 
 admired where all these should find lodgings in that 
 College which was so full already. "Oh," said one, 
 " Master Preston will carry chambers along with him," 
 
 ' Worthies, Norfolk, p. 257. * Not used as a term of contempt. 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 6i 
 
 At the time of Fuller's admission to the University, 
 Preston had got into trouble, being suspected of inclina- 
 tion to Nonconformity. He became Preacher at Lincoln's 
 Inn; and refused the Bishopric of Gloucester, preferring 
 the preachership at Trinity dhurch, offered him by the 
 townspeople of Cambridge. From a reference made to 
 him in a letter of Dr Davenant to Dr Ward, master of 
 Sidney Sussex College, we may conclude that he was well 
 acquainted with both uncle and nephew. 
 
 That fine - tempered controversialist, John Goodwin, a 
 Locke before Locke, in respect of his advocacy of religious 
 toleration, also belonged to Queens'. He was elected a 
 Fellow in 1617, during Davenant's headship, and although 
 they were not en rapport in their ecclesiastical opinions, 
 there were many points in this old Independent's char- 
 acter that the latter could appreciate. 
 
 Another well-known pupil-monger at Queens' was pious 
 Herbert Palmer, who became a Fellow in 1623, and ulti- 
 mately President (1644) in place of the ejected t)r Martin. 
 Though a Puritan, Palmer meanwhile had been presented 
 by Laud to the Vicarage of Ashwell, Herts. " He took 
 many pupils," says Clarke, " of whom he was more 
 than ordinary careful, being very diligent, both in praying 
 with them in his chamber, and instructing them in the 
 grounds of religion ; as also helping them to their studies, 
 and the performance of disputations, and other exercises 
 of learning privately in his chamber, besides the more 
 public exercises required of them by the College, to the 
 great benefit of those who were his pupils." Palmer be- 
 came one of the assessors of the Assembly of Divines, in 
 whose proceedings he figured very prominently. He is 
 described as a man of uncommon learning, politeness and 
 generosity. He died in 1647. Such are some of the 
 worthies who adorned the College during the Headship 
 of Dr Davenant, a few of those stars who revolved round 
 that brilliant sun in the academical firmament. 
 
62 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 As it is commonly believed, and with reason, that Fuller 
 had his uncle Davenant in his eye, when he touched in that 
 word-picture of " The good master of the College," in his 
 essay on that head, we will conclude this chapter with some 
 quotations therefrom. He begins — 
 
 "The Jews, anno 1346, were banished out of most countrys ot 
 Christendome, principally for poysoning of springs and fountains. 
 Grievous therefore is their offence, who infect Colledges, the fountains ot 
 learning and religion ; and it concerneth the Church and State, that 
 the Heads of such Houses be rightly qualified, such men as we come 
 to character. < 
 
 "i. His leaming,ifbenetttheminency,isfarre above contempt. Some- 
 time ordinary scholars make extraordinary good masters. Even one 
 who can play well on Apollo's harp cannot skilfully drive his chariot, 
 there being a peculiar mystery of Government. Yea, as a little alloy 
 makes gold to work the better, so (perchance) some duUnesse in a 
 man makes him fitter to manage secular affairs ; and those who have 
 climbed up Parnassus but halfway, better behold worldly business, as 
 lying low and nearer to their sight, than such as have climbed up to 
 the top of the mount. 
 
 " 2. He not only keeps the Statutes in his study, but observes them. 
 For the maintaining of them will maintain him, if he be questioned. 
 He gives them their true dimensions, not racking them for one, and 
 shrinking them for another, but making his conscience his daily 
 Visitour. He that breaks the statutes, and thinks to rule better by his 
 own discretion, makes many gaps in the hedge, and then stands to 
 stop one of them with a stake in his hand. Besides, thus to confound 
 the will of the dead Founders, is the ready way to make living men's 
 charity, i.e. (like Sir Hugh Willoughby in discovering the Northern 
 passage) to be frozen to death, and will dishearten all future Bene- 
 factours 
 
 " 3. He is principal porter and chief chapell-monitour. For where the 
 master keeps his chamber alwayes, the scholars will keep theirs sel- 
 domer, and perchance, may make all the walls of the Colledge to be 
 gates. He seeks to avoid the inconvenience when the gates do rather 
 divide than confine the scholars, when the College is distinguished 
 (as France, into cis et transalpina) into the part on this and on the 
 other side of the walls. As for outlodgings (like galleries, necessary 
 evils in populous churches) he rather tolerates than approves them." 
 
 " 6. He is observant to do all due right to Benefactors. If not piety, 
 policy would dictate this unto him. And though he respects not 
 
ACADEMICAL CAREER AT CAMBRIDGE 6^ 
 
 benefactours' kinsmen, when at their first admission they count them- 
 selves born 'heirs-apparent' to all preferment which the house can 
 heap on them, and therefor grow lazy and idle, yet he counts their 
 alliance, seconded with mediocrity of desert, a strong title to Colledge 
 advancement. 
 
 " 7. He counts it lawfull to enrich himself, but in subordination to the 
 College good. Not like Varus, Governor of Syria, who came poore 
 into the countrey, and found it rich, but departed thence rich and left 
 the Countrey poore. Methinks 'tis an excellent commendation which 
 Trinity Colledge in Cambridge in her records bestows on Doctour 
 Still, once master thereof. Se ferebal Patrem-familias providum, 
 dyaffiv KovpoTpo'^of, nee Collegia gravis fuit aut onerosus. 
 
 " 8. He disdains to nourish dissension amongst the members of his 
 house. Let Machiavill's maxim, Divide et Regnabis, if offering to 
 fenter a Colledge-gate, sink thorow the grate and fall down with the 
 dirt. For besides that, the fomenting of such discords agrees not 
 with a good conscience, each party will watch advantages, and Pupils 
 will often be made to suffer for their Tutour's quarrells. Studium 
 ■partium will be magna pars studiorum, and the Colledge have more 
 rents than revenues. 
 
 " 9. He scometh the plot to make only dunces Fellows, to the end lie 
 may command in chief. As thinking that they who know nothing, will 
 do anything, and so he shall be a figure among cyphers, a bee amongst 
 drones, yet oftentime such masters are justly met with, and they find, 
 by experience, that the dullest horses are not easiest to be reined, that 
 our Master endeavours so to order his elections, that every scholar 
 may be fit to make a Fellow, and every Fellow a Master." * 
 
 "^ Holy State, book ii., chap. 14. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORTRECHT (l). (1618-9) 
 
 " (Hildegardis] never learned word of Latin, and yet therein- would she 
 fluently express. her Revelation to those notaries that took them from her 
 mouth ; so that throwing words at random, she never brake Friscian's head : 
 as if the Latin had learned to make itself true without the speaker's care. 
 And no doubt, he that brought the single parties to her, married them also in 
 her, mouth, so that the same spirit which furnished her with Latin words, made 
 also the true syntaxis." — FolI-br's Holy State, p. 38. 
 
 ABOUT four years after he had been chosen President 
 of his College, and standing now in the highest 
 rank of English Divines for learning, eloquence, and judg- 
 ment, Dr Davenant was selected in 1618 by King James I., 
 with four other theologians of the first name in the King- 
 dom, to represent the British Church, and assist at the 
 deliberations of the Synod of Dort ; to which assembly His 
 Majesty had been requested to send deputies. 
 
 This may be regarded in modern days as a great 
 stretch of the Royal Supremacy, but we must not for- 
 get the high-handed methods of the Tudor Kings and their 
 successors even in ecclesiastical affairs. Elizabeth fre- 
 quently acted the tyrant towards the Church. The suspen- 
 sion of Grlndal, the famous letter to Cox, are cases in 
 point. James I. took a leading part in deciding the 
 questions at issue with the Puritans at the Hampton Court 
 Conference, He sent, as in this case, English Bishops 
 and Divines by his own authority to the Calvinistic 
 Synod of Dort. Charles I. issued the declaration pre- 
 fixed to the articles by Royal authority alone. During 
 the irregularity of Archbishop Abbot, he authorised 
 64 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 65 
 
 other Bishops to exercise the metropoHtical jurisdiction 
 by Royal authority alone. Besides Which the Sovereigns 
 in those days took a more personal interest in the 
 National Church than they have seemed to do in later 
 times. It is the change from this which has made the 
 strain upon the alliance between Church and State in our 
 day. For the Church, which formerly enjoyed her privi- 
 leges under the personal influence of the Crown, is now 
 virtually under the control of Parliament, which so far 
 from consisting of members of the Church, is by successive 
 changes of the law, no longer even an exclusively Christian 
 body. Yet the above are merely instances of high-handed 
 proceedings on the part of Kings over the Church, some 
 prompted by good motives, some by bad, of which the 
 pages of history are full : and they do not in the least 
 really affect the question of the nature and extent of the 
 -Royal supremacy, though they are frequently used by con- 
 troversialists for that purpose. And if it is urged that the 
 timid and supine acquiescence of the Church in this high- 
 handedness proclaims her subserviency as well as her 
 cowardice, it should be remembered that that is a gibe little 
 felt by a Church which stood in the forefront of the Con- 
 stitutional battle at the end of the century, when James II. 
 was endeavouring to overthrow the Constitution in Church 
 and State alike, by an exaggerated use of the Royal 
 supremacy. It was by means of the ecclesiastical suprem- 
 acy of the Crown that James attempted to re-establish the 
 High Commission Court, and publish the Declaration of 
 Indulgence. It was by her opposition to such a use of 
 the supremacy, that the national Church saved the 
 liberties of Englishmen. 
 
 That Davenant was most helpful to that assembly, in 
 restraining the extravagant action of some of its mem- 
 bers, and in firmly upholding the regimen of his own 
 Church and the episcopal order, is allowed on all hands, 
 and his deportment thereat much enhanced his growing 
 
66 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 reputation. In fact, Davenant appears to have been 
 peculiarly eminent in these proceedings. Speaking of him, 
 Hacket says, " What a pillar he was in the Synod of Dort, 
 is to be read in the judgments of the British divines 
 inserted among the public acts : his part being the best in 
 that work ; and that work being far the best in the compli- 
 ments of that Synod." 
 
 And here it will be necessary to take a general survey 
 of the circumstances which led to the convening of that 
 famous Council — a council which not only affected the 
 future of the reformed Churches on the Continent, but 
 which marked the dividing line and point of departure 
 between those Churches and the reformed Anglican 
 Church. 
 
 The States of Holland had no sooner established their 
 freedom from the Spanish yoke, than they began to be 
 embroiled in theological disputes which soon became inter^ 
 mingled with political cabals. The mysterious and awful 
 doctrines anent the Divine decrees, had been formulated by 
 the Belgic Confession and Catechism, in common with most 
 of the other creeds of the Reformed Churches, in the 
 sacred and undefined simplicity of the Scriptures them- 
 selves. But in the post-Reformation period, the prying 
 curiosity of man, anxious to be wise above what is written, 
 rashly proceeded to the vain attempt of accurate and pre- 
 cise explanation, not to say definition, of what is, from the 
 nature of the case, inexplicable. God's sovereignty and 
 Man's free-will — ^both clearly revealed in Holy Scripture 
 — the two opposite poles of the same truth, how can the 
 finite capacity reconcile these ? Parallel Hnes they cannot 
 meet in this world, but we doubt not they will be seen 
 to meet in the next. When; therefore, the supralapsarian 
 scheme began to take the place of the moderate system 
 hitherto adopted, it was vehemently opposed on the other 
 side by those who, in their eagerness to sustain the freedom 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 6^ 
 
 of the human will, dangerously entrenched on the freedom 
 of Divine grace. 
 
 " The disputes," says Lingard, in his History of England, " which 
 divided these theologians" (Arminians and Gomarists, i.e., high 
 Calvinists) " were not more useful ; they were certainly less innocent 
 than the subtleties of the ancient school-men. For the subjects of 
 their studies they had taken the doctrines of grace and predestina- 
 tion, universal redemption and free-will ; and plunging fearlessly 
 into the abyss, persuaded themselves that they had sounded the 
 depth of mysteries which no human understanding can fathom. Had 
 they indeed confined themselves to speculative discussion, the mis- 
 chief would have been less ; but the heartburnings, the excommuni- 
 cations, the persecutions to which these controversies gave birth, 
 were evils of the most alarming magnitude. In Holland the first 
 Reformers had established the Calvinistic creed in all its rigour. 
 Arminius, the pastor of the great church of Amsterdam, and after- 
 wards Professor at Leyden, had adopted another system, which he 
 deemed more conformable to the benevolence of the Deity, and less 
 revolting to the reason of man. War was soon declared between 
 the partisans of these opposite opinions : each sought the support 
 of the temporal power ; and the followers of Arminius addressed a 
 remonstrance, the rigid Calvinists a contra-remonstrance, to the States 
 of Holland."! 
 
 These technical disputes, upon such abstruse points of 
 theology, however, led up to no important consequences, till 
 in the year 1591 they centred in, and gathered round the 
 person of, the famous Professor of Divinity in the Univer- 
 sity of Leyden, alluded to, a man of a clear and acute 
 judgment, joined to unquestionable piety and meekness of 
 spirit. This divine had obtained no slight eminence by 
 the talent with which he had extricated the doctrines of 
 Christianity from the dry and technical mode in which they 
 had been hitherto stated and discussed. But his very 
 celebrity placed him in a situation ill-suited to his habits 
 and temper. As one of Beza's pupils, he had accepted 
 more extreme views to which that divine had carried the 
 
 1 Lingard's History of England, vol. vii., p. 78. 
 
68 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 tenets advocated by the powerful pen of Calvin, It so 
 happened that one Coornhert had advanced some opinions, 
 which, if not loose in themselves, were externalized in a 
 most unguarded way. To these a reply was published by 
 the ministers of Delft, in which the moderate and generally 
 received ja^lapsarian ^ hypothesis was sustained ; which 
 gave little less offence to the high Calvinists {i.e., those who 
 held JM/nzlapsarian views) than did the heterodox lan- 
 guage of Coornhert. Arminius, therefore, as the most 
 talented divine of the day, was applied to, by both sides, 
 to take up his pen. On the one hand, his friend, Martin 
 Lydius, solicited him to write a vindication of the supra- 
 lapsarian views of his former tutor, Beza, against the reply 
 of the ministers of Delft ; and, on the other, he was invited 
 by the Synod of Amsterdam to defend this same reply 
 against Coornhert. Placed in this ambiguous and com- 
 promising situation, Arminius felt it incumbent upon him 
 to enter into an examination of the whole question — all 
 along the line of debate — and was induced to change his 
 sentiments, and to adopt that view of the Divine Dispensa- 
 tion, which now bears his name. His chapge, however, 
 was very gradual, but appears to have been hastened by 
 the publication in Holland of the Aurea Armilla of 
 Perkins, a very powerful supralapsarian divine of the 
 Church of England. This alteration of opinion would not 
 have led to any very serious consequences, had Arminius 
 and the moderate part of the Church been left to them- 
 selves. The fundamental point of justification by faith, 
 with the doctrine of assurance, and even of final per- 
 severance, were held by him to his death ; and his 
 exemplary piety and humility secured for him the attach- 
 
 ^ So called from their different views on the lapsus or Fall of Man. The 
 first held that God only permitted the Fall, and that His predestination of 
 individuals dates from thence. The other ascending higher, that God had 
 absolutely predetermined and decreed the Fall. The latter are therefore 
 called "high Calvinists." 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 69 
 
 ment even of those who, when the dispute subsequently 
 extended, became his most zealous opponents. The 
 following are the famous five points of Arminius, contain- 
 ing the views of his followers : — 
 
 (i) That God from all eternity determined to bestow 
 salvation on those whom He foresaw would persevere unto 
 the end in their faith in Christ Jesus : and to inflict ever^ 
 lasting punishment on those who should continue in their 
 unbelief, and resist unto the end His Divine succours. 
 
 (2) That Jesus Christ by His death and sufferings made 
 an atonement for the sins of all mankind in general, and of 
 every individual in particular ; that, however, none but 
 those who believe in Him can be partakers of their divine 
 benefit. 
 
 (3) That true faith cannot proceed from the exercise of 
 our natural faculties and powers, nor from the force and 
 operation of free-will : since man, in consequence of his 
 natural corruption, is incapable of thinking or doing any 
 good thing : and that, therefore, it is necessary to his con- 
 version and salvation that he be regenerated and renewed 
 by the operation of the Holy Ghost, which is the gift of 
 God through Jesus Christ. 
 
 (4) That this Divine grace or energy of the Holy Ghost, 
 which heals the disorders of a corrupt nature, begins, 
 advances, and brings to perfection everything that can be 
 called good in man, and that, consequently, all good works, 
 without exception, are to be attributed to God alone and 
 the operation of His grace : that, nevertheless, this grace 
 does not force a man to act against his inclination, but 
 may be resisted and rendered ineffectual by the perverse 
 will of the impenitent sinner. 
 
 (5) That they who are united to Christ by faith are 
 thereby furnished with abundant strength, and with 
 succours sufficient to enable them to triumph over the 
 seduction of Satan and the allurements of sin and tempta- 
 tion : but that the question whether such may fall from 
 
70 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 their faith, and forfeit finally this state of grace, has not 
 yet been resolved with sufficient perspicuity, and must, 
 therefore, be yet more carefully examined by an attentive 
 study of what the Holy Scriptures have declared on this 
 important point 
 
 With regard to the last article, the Arminians sub- 
 sequently held the positive sentiment that " a man may 
 fall from a state of grace." 
 
 The five points of Calvinism, as they are called, 
 are: — 
 
 (i) Predestination, including Predestination or election 
 to life eternal : and Reprobation {the supralapsarian tenet) 
 or Predestination to damnation. 
 
 (2) Particular Redemption, i.e., that Christ died only for 
 a chosen few. 
 
 (3) Original sin, 
 
 (4) Irresistible grace, or effectual calling, the opposite to 
 which is Free-will. 
 
 (5) Final Perseverance. 
 
 It will be now seen at a glance where the two systems 
 were bound ultimately to collide. 
 
 The demands of the Arminians were moderate enough, 
 and the points in dispute had not been settled by any 
 dogmatic utterance in any of the Reformed Churches. 
 But the heat of the less discreet part of the Church, and 
 the dangerous opinions of some of the Arminians, who 
 leaned to the Socinian and Pelagian heresies, such as 
 Episcopius, Grotius, Limborch, and Barneveldt, being, as 
 is no uncommon case at present, confounded with the 
 tenets of Arminius, led up to some violent and unchari- 
 table controversies, by which the peace of the Church was 
 grievously broken in upon. Still the question might have 
 been amicably settled, but that, at the annual meeting of 
 the Synods in 1605, the Class of Dort unwisely fanned the 
 embers into a flame, by transmitting the following griev- 
 ance to the University of Leyden. " Inasmuch as rumours 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 71 
 
 are heard tfeat certain controversies have arisen in the 
 Church and University of Leyden, concerning the doctrine 
 of the Reformed Churches, this Class has judged it 
 necessary that the Synod should deliberate respecting the 
 safest and most speedy method of settling these contro- 
 versies : that all the schisms and causes of offence which 
 spring out of them may reasonably be removed, and the 
 union of the Reformed Churches preserved inviolate against 
 the calumnies of adversaries. 
 
 When this officious document reached Leyden, it gave 
 offence, as might have been expected, to the moderate 
 men of both sides, and met with the following reply from 
 the Professors there : — " that they wished the Dort Glass 
 had, in this affair, acted with greater discretion, and in a 
 more orderly manner: that, in their own opinion, there 
 were more disputes among the students than was agreeable 
 to them as Professors ; but, that among themselves, the 
 Professors of Theology, no difference existed that could be 
 considered as affecting, in the least, the fundamentals of 
 doctrine ; and that they would endeavour to diminish the 
 disputes among the students." This was signed by 
 Arminius, then Rector of the University, by Gomarus and 
 others. 
 
 From the signature of Gomarus to this reply, it is 
 evident that his subsequent bitterness against the Remon- 
 strants at the Synod of Dort, was the outcome of that 
 acrimony which controversy so often gefnerates : and that 
 at the period before us, he neither considered the views of 
 •his colleagues as affecting the vitality of their faith, nor 
 even interrupting their friendships ; although unhappily, 
 afterwards, he denounced the former, as upsetting the 
 basis of the gospel : spoke of the latter, when deceased, in 
 very harsh and uncharitable terms — forgetting the golden 
 tnaxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, and fomented these 
 persecuting measures against his followers, which have 
 rendered the name of the Synod of Dort so odious, and 
 
72 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 earned for it the sobriquet of " disgraceful " ^ from the pen 
 of Robert Southey, in his Book of the Church. 
 
 This " meddling and muddling " action on the part of 
 the Class of Dort having brought the whole question 
 before the public, kindled a flame through the United 
 Provinces, which it was difficult to extinguish. In the 
 height of it, Arminius died, in the year 1609, with a spirit 
 completely crushed by the calumny and rancour with 
 which he had been assailed. There is certain in all such 
 cases to be a deflection from the original platform, and 
 disciples either abandon^ tenets or push forward pretensions 
 which the master never dreamt of. It was so in this 
 case. His followers abandoned mariy of the views whicH 
 Arminius held in common with Calvin, particularly on the 
 vital point of Justification. They became also, par con' 
 sequence, universally lax, both in their opinions and their 
 society: and, that which has been the frequent result, 
 aversion from Calvinism, became a general bond of union. 
 Having presented a strong remonstrance to the States 
 General in 1610, they became known by the name of 
 Remonstrants, and their opponents having presented a 
 counter-remonstrance, were called Contra-Remonstrants. 
 
 "At this time," says Fuller, in his quaint language, 
 " began the troubles in the Low Countries, about matters 
 of religion, heightened between two opposite parties, Re' 
 monstrants and Contra-Remonstrants: their controversies 
 being chiefly reducible to five points: of Predestination, 
 and Reprobation, of the Latitude of ChHsVs Death, of the 
 Power of Man's Free-will, both before and after his con- 
 version : and of the Elect's perseverance in grace. To 
 decide these difficulties, the States of the United Provinces 
 resolved to call a National Synod at Dort." But at first 
 they were not so minded. To settle these disputes, the 
 Remonstrants demanded a general Council of the Pro- 
 testant Churches, in a Protestant Synod. This the States 
 ^ Southey's Book Of the Church, p. 433. 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT Tt> 
 
 refused, but it was at length determined by four put of the 
 seven Provinces that a National Synod should be held at 
 Dort, or Dordrecht — a town eminent for its hostility to the 
 Arminians. 
 
 Dordrecht occupies an important page in the History of 
 Holland, and especially that of the Protestant Faith. In 
 1 572, the first Assembly of the Independent States of 
 Holland was held there, and resulted in the foundation of 
 the Republic of the United Dutch Provinces. A century 
 later, William III., Prince of Orange, was appointed 
 Stadtholder, Commander-in-Chief, and Admiral of Holland 
 for life, by the States at Dordrecht. In 161 8 and 1619, 
 the Dutch Protestant Theologians assembled at a great 
 Synod at Dordrecht, with a view to effect a compromise 
 between the adherents of the austere tenets of Calvin 
 (Gomarists) and those of the milder doctrines of Zwingli 
 (Arminians). In 1610 the latter had addressed a "Re- 
 monstrance " (whence their name " Remonstrants," which 
 is still used by the States General), in defence of their 
 doctrines. Differences of opinion existed between the 
 two sects regarding the doctrine of Divine Grace — the 
 Gomarists held that the greater part of the human race 
 was excluded from grace, which the Arminians denied. 
 Although these differences were now to be discussed, the 
 Calvinists, who formed the great majority of the Assembly, 
 refused to give the Remonstrants a hearing, and unani- 
 mously condemned them. Deputies from England and 
 Scotland, Germany and Switzerland had been invited to 
 assist at the meeting, which lasted nearly seven months, 
 and is said to have cost the States a million florins. The 
 resolutions of the Synod were long regarded as the law 
 of the Dutch Reformed Church.^ 
 
 The great Bogerman said, at its conclusion, of this 
 " famous Synod " which was to settle, once and for all, the 
 knotty question of Predestination and Grace — that "its 
 ' Baedeker's Holland, p. 393. 
 
74 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 miraculous labours had made Hell tremble " ; but a witty 
 and caustic epigram composed at the time took another 
 view of its results — 
 
 " Dordtrechti synodus, nodus : chorus integer asger ; 
 Conventus ventus, sessio stramen, Amen." 
 
 Letters were sent to the French Huguenots, and to the 
 different Protestant States of Germany and Switzerland, re- 
 questing them to send deputies to assist at the deliberations. 
 " And to give the more lustre," says Fuller, " and weight 
 to the determinations thereof, desired some foreign Princes 
 to send them the assistance of their divines for so pious a 
 work." Among others the King of England, James I., was 
 solicited in the same manner, and he, partly from political 
 motives, and partly from his love of theological contro- 
 versy, which characterised our kings in general in those 
 days, and in particular James I., complied with the request, 
 and selected for this purpose five of the most eminent 
 theologians in his realm. "Especially, they requested," 
 continues Fuller, " our King of Great Britain to contribute 
 his aid thereunto ; (being himself as forward to do, as they 
 desire anything conducible to God's glory and the Church's 
 good), who out of his own princely wisdom, and free favour, 
 made choice of five of the most eminent theologians of his 
 realm : — 
 
 Dr George Carleton, Doctor of Divinity, then Bishop of 
 Landaff, and afterwards Bishop of Chichester. 
 
 Dr Joseph Hall, Doctor of Divinity, then Dean of Worcester, 
 and afterwards Bishop of Exeter and Norwich. 
 
 Dr John Davenant, Doctor of Divinity, then Margaret- 
 Professor, and Master of Queens' College, in Cam- 
 bridge, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury. 
 
 Dr Samuel Ward, Doctor of Divinity, then Master of 
 Sidney College in Cambridge, and Arch-Deacon of 
 Taunton. 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 75 
 
 Subsequently they were joined by Walter Balcanqtial^ 
 a presbyter of, and to represent, the Church of Scotland, 
 and when Dr Hall returned home on account of ill-health, 
 the vacancy was filled up by Dr Goad, Precentor of St 
 Paul's, and Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and 
 Primate, Abbot. 
 
 These selected divines, according to their summons, 
 repairing to His Majesty (James I.), at Newmarket, re- 
 ceived from him these following instructions,^ concerning 
 their behaviour in the Synod, and therein especially is 
 seen his high-handedness. The Archbishop also gave his 
 directions, or concurred in these instructions : — 
 
 " 1. Our will and pleasure is, that from this time for- 
 ward, upon all occasions, you inure yourselves to the prac- 
 tice of the Latin tongue ; that, when there is cause, 
 you may deliver your minds with more readiness and 
 facility. 
 
 " 2. You shall, in all points to be debated and disputed, 
 resolve amongst yourselves before-hand, what is the true 
 state of the Question, and jointly and uniformly agree 
 thereupon. 
 
 ' "3. If, in debating the cause by the learned men there, 
 anything be emergent, whereof you thought not before, 
 you shall meet and consult thereupon again, and so 
 resolve among yourselves, jointly, what is fit to be main- 
 
 * " On i6th December, Gualter Balcanquall, Bachelor of Divinity, and 
 Fellow of Pembroke Hall, came into the Synod, where his credential letters 
 from King James were publicly read. Whose pleasure it was that he should 
 be added to .the four English Colleagues, in the name of the Church of 
 Scotland^ The President of the Synod welcomed him with a short Oration, 
 which by Mr Balcanquall was returned with another, and so was he conducted 
 to bis place : a place built for him pairticularly, as one coming after all the 
 rest, so that bis seat discomposed the uniformity of the building, exactly 
 regular before. But it matters not how the seats were ordered, so that the 
 judgements of such as sate therein, were conformed to the truth of the 
 Scriptures." — Fuller's Church Hist., Bk. x. p. 79. 
 
 ' Fuller says, in a note : " These instructions I saw transcribed out of Dr 
 Davenant his Own Manuscript." — Church Hist,, Bk. x. p. 77. 
 
76 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 tained. And this to be done agreeable to the Scriptures, 
 and the doctrine of the Church of England. 
 
 " 4. Your advice shall be to those churches, that their 
 ministers do not deliver in the Pulpit to the people, those 
 things for ordinary doctrine, which are the highest points 
 of schools, and not fit for vulgar capacity, but disputable 
 on both sides. 
 
 " 5. That they use no Innovation in Doctrine, but teach 
 the same things which were taught twenty or thirty 
 years past, in their own churches ; and especially that 
 which contradicteth not their own Confession, so long since 
 published and known unto the world. 
 
 "6. That they conform themselves to the public Con- 
 fession of the neighbour-reformed churches, with whom 
 to hold good correspondency shall be no dishonour to 
 them. 
 
 " 7. That if there be main opposition between any, who 
 are over-much addicted to their own opinions, your en- 
 deavour shall be, that certain Propositions be moderately 
 laid down, which may tend 'to the mitigation of heat on 
 both sides. 
 
 " 8. That, as you principally look to God's glory, and the 
 peace of those distracted churches ; so you have an eye to 
 our honour, who send and employ you thither, and con- 
 sequently, at all times consult with our Ambassador, there 
 residing, who is best acquainted with the form of those 
 Countreys, understandeth well the Questions and differ- 
 ences among them, and shall from time to time receive 
 our Princely directions, as occasion shall require. 
 
 " 9. Finally, in all other things which we cannot foresee, 
 you shall carry yourselves with that advice, moderation, 
 and discretion, as to persons of your quality and gravity 
 shall appertain." 
 
 These royal instructions were judicious, and appear to 
 have been carefully acted upon. The gravity and modera- 
 tion of the English deputies were of the utmost value in 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT ^^ 
 
 the synod, and went far towards preventing some of the 
 wild extravagances into which the heated controversialists 
 were eager to run. 
 
 Doctor Davenant and Dr Ward presented themselves 
 again to His Majesty, at Royston, October the 8, where 
 His Majesty vouchsafed his familiar discourse unto them, 
 for two hours together, commanding them to sit down 
 by him, and at last dismissed them with his solemn 
 prayer that God would bless their endeavours, which made 
 them cheerfully to depart his presence. 
 
 Addressing themselves^ now with all possible speed to 
 the seaside they casually missed that Man of Warre, which 
 the States had sent to conduct them over (though they 
 saw him on sea at some distance), and safely went over 
 in a small vessel, landing October 20, at Middleburgh. 
 We are writing, it must be remembered, of days long 
 before the introduction of steam navigation. There was 
 not then, as now, daily communication between the East 
 Coast and Belgium, between Harwich and the Hook of 
 Holland. On the 27th of the same month they came to 
 Hague, where they kissed the hand of his Excellency, 
 Grave Maurice, to whom the Bishop (Davenant) made 
 a short speech, and by whom they were all courteously 
 entertained. Hence they removed to Dort, where, 
 November 3, the Synod began, and where we leave 
 them with the rest of their fellow - divines when first 
 every one of them had taken this Admission-Oath at 
 their entrance into the Synod. 
 
 " I promise before God, whom I believe and adore, the 
 present Searcher of the heart and reins, that in all this 
 Synodal action, wherein shall be appointed the examination, 
 judgment, and decision, as welt of the known five Articles 
 
 ^ Edward Davenant, Fellow of Queens', and nephew of the President, went 
 with his uncle, as the following order implies : — 
 
 Octob, 6th, l6i8. — Leave granted Mr Davenant to go into Holland, and 
 all his allowances till his return, as yf hee vrer at home.— J. D. (Old Parch- 
 ment, reg. fo. 9. b.) 
 
78 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 and difficulties therein arising, as of all other Doctrinals, 
 that I will not make use of any Humane Writing, but only 
 of God's Word for the certain and undoubted Rule of Faith, 
 and that T shall propound nothing to myself in this whole 
 cause, besides the glory of God, the peace of the Church, 
 and especially the preservation of the purity of Doctrine 
 therein. So may my Saviour fesus Christ be merciful unto 
 me. Whom I earnestly pray, that in this my purpose, He 
 would always be present with me with the grace of His 
 Spirit." 
 
 " I say, we leave them here with their fellow-divines. 
 For, should my pen presume to sail over the sea, it 
 would certainly meet with a storm in the passage, the 
 censure of such who will justly condemn it for meddling 
 with transmarine matters, especially doctrinal points, 
 utterly alien from my present subject. Only a touch 
 of an historical passage therein, confining ourselves to our 
 own countrymen ; " so writes the witty Church Historian. 
 
 On their arrival in Holland and first public audience, 
 Bishop Carleton addressed the States - General and the 
 Prince of Orange, in an eloquent and impressive speech, 
 urging them to the preservation of truth, and the cultiva- 
 tion of peace and unity. In all the documents and 
 histories of this Synod, it is allowed that the British 
 divines conducted themselves with equal talent, dignity 
 and judgment. It had been strictly enjoined them be- 
 fore their departure, both by the King and Archbishop 
 Abbot, to allow of no meddling with the doctrine or 
 discipline of the English Church, and to be peremptory 
 on the point of introducing into the decisions of the 
 Synod, the Universality of Christ's Redemption. To this 
 they religiously adhered, and were extremely tenacious of 
 the honour of their own Church, enforcing her modera- 
 tion as a model on these subjects. 
 
 " These four divines had allowed them by the states ten 
 pounds sterling a day : threescore and ten pounds by the 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 79 
 
 week: an entertainment far larger than what was appointed 
 to any other foreign Theologues (theologians) ; and poHtickly 
 proportioned, in grateful consideration of the greatness of 
 His Majesty who employed them. And these English 
 divines, knowing themselves, sent over, not to gain wealth 
 to themselves, but glory to God, and reputation to their 
 Sovereign, freely gave what they had freely received, 
 keeping a Table general, where any fashionable foreigner 
 was courteously and plentifully entertained. 
 
 " They were commanded by the King to give him a 
 weekly account (each one in his several week, according 
 to their seniority) of all memorable passages transacted 
 in the Synod. Yet it happened that for a month or more, 
 the King received from them no particulars of their pro- 
 ceedings, whereat His Majesty was most highly offended. 
 But afterwards, understanding that this defect was caused 
 by the countermands of an higher King, even of Him who 
 gathereth the wind in his fist, stopping all passages by 
 contrary weather; no wonder if He, who was so great 
 a peace-maker, was himself so quickly pacified ; yea, after- 
 wards highly pleased, when four weekly despatches (not 
 neglected to be orderly sent, but delayed, to be accordingly 
 brought) came altogether to His Majest^s hands." ^ 
 
 Our theologians were thus handsomely treated by the 
 states and with the greatest consideration. Meanwhile, 
 Sir Dudley Carlton, English Ambassador at the Hague, 
 dispatched his Chaplain, Mr John Hales, Fellow of Eton, 
 to be present at their discussions, soon after the opening of 
 the Synod. It is from his letters and those of Mr 
 Balcanquall (subsequently sent to the Synod to represent 
 the Church of Scotland), that we glean the fullest informa- 
 tion touching the proceedings of the conclave. It was 
 not till after the Synod had been opened for a considerable 
 time that the Arminian divines put in an appearance ; 
 indeed, at first, it was very doubtful if they would come 
 ■■ Yw\W% Church History, Bookx. p. 79. 
 
8o THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 at all. They had their forebodings that they were not 
 summoned to take their part in the Synodal proceedings, 
 or to have any real voice in the decisions, but simply to 
 be put on trial for their tenets and to have them con- 
 demned. It was probably a salutary fear only which 
 brought them to Dort. 
 
 " The Calvinists," says Heylin, " had been invited from all parts of 
 Christendom, and yet, not thinking themselves strong enough to 
 suppress their adversaries, they first disabled some of them by 
 ecclesiastical censures, from being chosen members of the Synod." ^ 
 
 For the assistance of the able allies thus disqualified, the 
 Arminian party petitioned when they had come to the 
 Conference, but they were not allowed to obtain their 
 request ; and to while away the time, pending their arrival, 
 the Calvinistic divines discussed the preliminaries for a 
 new translation of the Bible, catechizing and catechism. 
 
 On November 29, " the Synod being met together, Mr 
 Dean of Worcester (Hall) made in the Synod-house a 
 polite and pathetical sermon on Ecclesiastes vi. Mr 
 Prseses (Bogerman) had requested the foreigners that they 
 would be pleased to bestow in their courses some Latin 
 sermons to entertain the Synod till the Arminians made 
 their appearance. My Lord Bishop refused it because of 
 the sudden warning, but Mr Dean would needs undertake 
 it." "^ 
 
 " Meantime," says Mr Motley, " the Synod had met at Dordrecht. 
 The great John Bogerman, with fierce handsome face, beak and eye of 
 a bird of prey, and a deluge of curly brown beard reaching to his 
 waist, took his seat as President. Short work was made with the 
 Arminians. They and their five points were soon thrust out into outer 
 darkness. 
 
 " It was established beyond all gainsaying that two forms of Divine 
 worship were forbidden by God's Word, and that henceforth, by the 
 
 * Heylin's Presbyterians, p. 403. 
 2 Mr Hale to Sir D. Carlton. 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 8i 
 
 Netherland Law, there could be but one religion, viz., the Reformed or 
 Calvinistic Creed."— (Motley's Life and Death of John Barneveld, 
 P- 3090 
 
 At length, on December 6, the long expected Arminians 
 arrived. They could see at a glance the treatment they 
 might expect. " There is in the midst of the Synod-house '^ 
 a long table set as it would seem for them : for it hath 
 hitherto been void, no man sitting at it ; here chairs and 
 forms being set, they were willed to sit down." Then 
 Episcopius, upon whom the mantle of Arminius had fallen. 
 Professor of Divinity at Leyden, a man of much learning 
 and great eloquence, stood up and made a speech on 
 behalf of the new comers, declaring that according to the 
 words of their citation, they were now come " to hold a 
 Conference." This word " Conference " was the spark that 
 quickly ignited the smouldering elements. " It is good 
 that they should be informed," says Polyahder, " that they 
 come not to Conference, but to propose their opinions, 
 with their reasons, that the Synod judge of them." Not 
 only were they not allowed the same footing as the other 
 divines, but even the Utrecht deputies, who were supposed 
 to ' have Arminian proclivities, were told that they were 
 summoned to be tried, not to judge; and they were 
 compelled to range themselves on the side of the Arminian 
 
 1 There is a fine picture of this famous Synod of Dordrecht by P. Wtyts, 
 which the writer saw in his recent visit to Dort (September 1895) — but it is not 
 to be found in the Stadhuis, as Baedeker says, in his Handbook, 392 — but in 
 the Museum of Antiquities, though in a bad light. No engraving of this 
 picture could be obtained at Dort, but through the courtesy of the President, 
 Mr S. Van Gyn, his large private collection of engravings of the Synod was 
 placed at our disposal from which a photograph has been taken. Since this 
 visit the writer was fortunate in procuring from Messrs MuUer (of Amsterdam) 
 a few engravings with the names of the representatives appended. Our illus- 
 tration is taken from the best of these. It will be seen that Bogerman and 
 five of his colleagues occupy ,seats at the head of the Synod Hall. The 
 Remonstrants all stand in the centre at the long table — and the British 
 deputies are in the right hand corner of the picture by themselves. 
 
 F 
 
82 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 party. Finding that everything had been carefully 
 arranged for the condemnation and not the lawful hearing 
 of the Arminians, Episcopius, in their name, delivered a 
 long speech, denouncing the Calvinists as guilty of schism 
 in separating themselves off from their brethren, and initiat- 
 ing a hard and fast, and tyrannical conformity ; reproving 
 them for acting the role of judges upon points they had 
 already decided, and concluding by giving his ideal sketch 
 of a truly national Synod, to the definitive sentence of 
 which the Arminians would " bow and obey." For this 
 speech the President warmly reproved Episcopius, and the 
 Arminians were given to understand that no further delay 
 would be tolerated, and that they must at once proceed 
 to give in their written opinions on the Five Points and 
 then the Synod would proceed to examine them. Thus 
 pressed, they gave in opinions, or theses, upon the first 
 pointj and afterwards on the other, signed by the whole 
 body. 
 
 Another plan, however, was now hit upon. The Calvin- 
 istic party were determined to examine the Arminians on 
 their theses one by one. It would appear that this was a 
 design for displaying a contrariety of sentiment between 
 the different divines, and for causing the timid and less 
 learned to falter or blunder, which would not fail to be 
 turned to the prejudice of their cause. This plan, therefore, 
 was resisted manfully. Being called upon for their con- 
 siderations on the Catechism, they handed in a paper, 
 signed by six of their number, professing that all agreed 
 in their wording. Several others, however, gave up single 
 replies ; but neither these nor the theses satisfied the re- 
 quirements of the Synod. " Two things were misliked," 
 says Mr Hales : " First, their propounding so many nega- 
 tives ; secondly, their urging so much to handle the point 
 oi Reprobation, and that in the first place." Here was the 
 real difficulty, for the Calvinists wished to keep their 
 sweeping tenets on this subject in the background. They 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 83 
 
 were well aware that they were not fit for the care of the 
 uninitiated, and their tendency was to fearful consequences. 
 On the other hand, Episcopius knew the strength of their 
 cause lay here, and that his opponents would scarcely 
 venture to defend the logical conclusions of their teaching 
 on this head. And it was upon this ground he hoped to 
 snatch his triumph. But the Calvinists were too wary. 
 They ruled that not his, but their method, was to be 
 followed, and that the first point of discussion was the 
 doctrine of election. Being asked by the President if 
 they would submit to this method, the Arminians replied 
 that they would not. This certainly looks like being over 
 contentious ; but they had examined their grounds, and 
 evidently thought that their only hope of success lay in 
 handling that tenet first. There was much to say for the 
 one, what defence could be set up for the other? But 
 Gomarus, the great enemy of the Arminians, could now 
 no longer contain himself, and cried out : " Episcopius 
 hath falsified the tenet of Reprobation : no man teaches 
 that God has absolutely decreed to cast away men without 
 sin ; but as He did decree the end, so did He decree the 
 means — that is, as He predestinated man to death, so He 
 predestinated him to siri, the only way to death." " And 
 so he mended the question," says Hales, " as tinkers mend 
 kettles, and made it worse than before." ^ 
 
 Upon this they determined to put certain interrogations 
 to the Arminians on the five points, drawn up by the Presi- 
 dent, and to require their separate answers. " This thing 
 they much disdained, as being too paedagogical." Matters 
 were, in point of fact, coniing to a synodal dead -lock. 
 The Calvinists were determined to make the Arminians 
 answer in their way. The Arminians were equally resolved 
 
 * 
 1 Mr Hales to Sir D. Carlton. " It is meet that God, when men will be 
 too curious in prying into His secrets, should involve them in errors inextric- 
 able, or give them over eis dSoKt/ioy vow, adoranda nonscnttanda mysteria." — 
 Dr Young to Dr Ward. 
 
84 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 to choose their own way. It was in vain the foreign divines 
 tried to smooth over and facilitate matters. A bitter 
 quarrel had broken out between the rival disputants which 
 nothing would appease. It was therefore resolved to dis- 
 miss the Arminians as incorrigible, and to put a good face 
 on it, the President, Bogerman, artfully made a catspaw of 
 the foreign divines. " The foreigners," says Hales, " think 
 themselves a little indirectly dealt with, in that it being 
 proposed to the whole Synod to pass their judgment con- 
 cerning the behaviour of the Arminians, the provincials 
 were not at all required to speak : and by these means 
 the envy of the whole business was derived upon the 
 foreigners ; whereas, on the contrary, when the like ques- 
 tion was proposed formally, and the foreigners had spoken 
 very favourably in the Arminians' behalf, the provincials 
 stept in, and established a rigid sentence against the 
 foreigners' liking." " The trick that was put upon us," 
 said Mr Balcanqual,^ " was only too palpable. The Theo- 
 logici exteri gave suffrages for their dismission. Only one, 
 to wit, Steinsius, gave a bitter sentence, and their voices 
 being asked only who are not above a third part of the 
 Synod, the Arminians were called in, and dismissed with 
 such a powdering speech, as I doubt not your Lordship 
 hath heard with grief enough : I protest I am much afflicted 
 when I think of it," The violence of the President did not 
 escape censure even from some of his own followers ; but 
 it is possible that he worked himself up into a passion de- 
 signedly to avoid giving temperate reasons. " It was a 
 bitter oration," says Heylin,^ " uttered with fiery eyes and 
 most virulent language." 
 
 Having thus got rid of their troublesome opponents, the 
 Calvinists then proceeded to discuss, and of course to con- 
 demn, their opinions. The plan they adopted was to 
 read extracts out of the Arminian works and invite dis- 
 
 ^ Mr Walter Balcanqual to Sir D. Carlton. 
 "^ Heylin's Presbyterians, p. 403. 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 85 
 
 cussion, which could only end in one way. A fierce pas- 
 sage of arms took place between Martinus of Buden and 
 Gomarus, who lost all self-control. The English Divines 
 were " still the most moderate, reasonable and charitable 
 of the assemblage." ^ Dr Hall ^ had been obliged to go 
 home on account of ill health, and the Precentor of St 
 Paul, Dr Goad, had taken his place. The four English 
 and the Scotch Deputy (Balcanquall), formed a Col- 
 lege, and agreed upon joint opinions among themselves, 
 which they proposed to the Synod.^ As a rule their 
 
 ^ The learned William Bedell had written to them this good advice. 
 " Consider if it be not the best course, contenting yourselves to set down 
 in the very words of Scripture the confessed doctrine, and inhibiting all new- 
 fangled forms : for the rest, to give as much scope to opinion as maybe." — 
 Bedell to Ward. 
 
 * " Doctor Joseph Hall, being at the Synod of Dort, and finding much 
 indisposition in himself, the air not agreeing with his health, on his humble 
 request obtained His Majesty's leave to return home. Whereupon composing 
 his countenance with a becoming gravity, he publicly took his solemn farewell 
 of the Synod with a speech. Thus returned Dr Hall into his own country, 
 since so recovered (not to say revived) therein, that he hath gone over the 
 graves of all his English colleagues there, and (what cannot God and good air 
 do?) surviving in health at this day, three and thirty years after, may well 
 with Jesse go amongst men for an old man m these days, and living privately, 
 having passed through the Bishoprics of Exeter and Norwich, hath now the 
 opportunity in these troublesome times, effectually to practise there his pre- 
 cepts of patience and contentment, which his pen hath so eloquently recom- 
 mended to others." 
 
 "On the 7th January, Thomas Goad, Doctor of Divinity," chaplain to 
 George, Archbishop of Canterbury, came into the Synod, sent thither by His 
 Majesty of Great Britain. The President entertained him vyrith a solemn 
 oration, highly commending King James's care, not recalling one divine till 
 he had substituted another. The Doctor requited him with a pithy oration, 
 promising the utmost of his assistance to the general good. A promise by him 
 well peirformed, giving afterwards ample testimony of his general learning 
 and solid judgment in Divinity, nothing being wanted in Mm, but that he came 
 hither too late to this employment." — Fuller's Church Hist., book x. p. 80. 
 
 * Upon most points they seem to have been pretty unanimous. Upon the 
 " Extent of Redemption," however, they differed. Bishop Carleton and Dr 
 Goad held that Christ died only for the elect ; Drs Davenant and Ward, that 
 he died for the whole world. See Bishop of Llandafi's letter to Sir D. 
 Carlton ; Dr Davenant on Extent of Redemption ; Appendix to Hale's 
 Golden Remains. 
 
86 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 views seem to have been received with marked deference. 
 Gomarus, however, — whoni nothing could daunt, and 
 seems to have acted the r61e of the enfant perdu — gave 
 an irreverent answer to the Bishop of Llandaff, who 
 ventured to remind him that there was such a thing as 
 charity and moderation : but this appears to have been 
 generally condemned. The other divines were also formed 
 into colleges according to their country, and composed 
 in common written judgments on the several points, 
 which were read publicly in the Synod. However, when it 
 came to the making and promulging of canons, the Eng- 
 lish Deputies were by no means pleased with the method 
 adopted. The President formulated the canons, and pro- 
 posed them to the Synod to vote placet or non placet. As 
 he had an obedient following of provincial deputies, by 
 this means he could carry anything he pleased. It was 
 the cldture he had unwittingly adopted, and he applied 
 the gagging method when required, that is, when he liked. 
 Mr Balcanquall writes to Sir D. (Carlton, entreating him to 
 interfere. " If your Iprdship do not procure good counsel 
 to be sent here for the constructing of canons, we are 
 like to make the Synod a thing to be laughed at in after 
 ages.i They would have their canons so full charged 
 with catechetical speculations, as they will be ready to 
 burst." Again, " They are so eager to kill the Arminians 
 that they would make their words have that sense which 
 no grammar can find in them. All I can say is, me 
 thinketh it is hard that every man should be deposed 
 from the ministry who will not hold every particular 
 canon : never did any Church of old, nor any reformed 
 Church, propose so many articles to be held 'sub poena 
 
 ^ His Majesty will cause letters to be written to his Ambassador there, to 
 signify his pleasure to the Synod, as you desire, that in their canons they 
 would have a special eye to the definitions of ancient councils against the 
 Pelagians, and the constitution of other reformed Churches." — Dr Young to 
 Dr Ward. 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 87 
 
 excommunicationis.' " Yet this drastic piece of persecution 
 was carried out to the letter, 
 
 ' " Presently, upon the ending of the Synod, the Arminians were 
 required : to subscribe to their own condemnation : and for re- 
 fusing to do so, they were all banished by a decree of the States- 
 General, with their wives and children (to the number of seven 
 hundred families or thereabouts), and forced to beg their bread even 
 in desolate places." ^ 
 
 Such was the first attempt at a Pan-Protestant Con- 
 ference, let us hope when next all the Protestant Churches 
 shall "come together into one place" to take synodal 
 action, greater wisdom, moderation and charity will char- 
 acterise the proceedings of a Council, whose fiat may go 
 forth with the good old canonical words, heard for the 
 first time in the Council of Jerusalem, " It seemeth good 
 to the Holy Ghost and to us." 
 
 " It is almost unnecessary," says Mr Perry,^ " to say 
 that the decisions of the Synod do in no way bind the 
 English Church, The divines who attended it from 
 England were merely deputed by the King, and not 
 commissioned by the Church, or empowered to act for it. 
 Nor was it possible for them consistently to agree with 
 all the proceedings of the Synod, even supposing them 
 not to dissent on the matters of predestination and grace. 
 The Belgic Confession of Faith was brought in, in one of 
 the sessions, to be subscribed by the Dutch, and approved 
 by the foreign Divines. In this Confession of Faith it is 
 distinctly asserted that the Ministers of Christ have all 
 the same * character, jurisdiction, and authority.' This 
 of course could not be admitted by members of an Episco- 
 pal Church. Accordingly, Bishop Carleton formally pro- 
 tested in the Synod against " the strange conceit of parity 
 of ministers " ; and afterwards in a conference, which he 
 held with some divines of the Synod, told them that the 
 cause of all their troubles was having no Bishops, To 
 
 ^ Heylin's Presbyterians, p. 405. 
 
 ' Perry's History of the Church of England, vol. i. 277. 
 
88 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 this (according to Bishop Carleton/) their reply was, 
 " That they heartily wished that they could establish 
 themselves on the model of the Church of England, but 
 they had no prospect of such a happiness : and since the 
 civil government had made their desires impracticable, 
 they hoped God would be merciful to them." ^ 
 
 This has been the usual remark among the Continental 
 Reformed Churches, that they would have had Bishops if 
 they could. They could not, because none of the Con- 
 tinental Bishops joined the Reformation, which was almost 
 wholly on the part of the laity. With ourselves, however, 
 the case is widely different, all "orders and estates" of 
 men joined the Reformation, Clergy and Laity, and so we 
 Anglicans have conserved the episcopal regimen, and 
 handed on the apostolical succession. "The good sense 
 of the English," says De Maistre, "hath preserved the 
 Hierarchy." With regard to doctrines the difficulty at 
 the Synod was greater. The determination of the 
 British Deputies to have general Redemption admitted 
 into the decrees, or else to withdraw from the Synod, 
 led to some heated discussion. Carleton came into 
 direct collision with Gomarus upon the subject of our 
 seventeenth Article, and upon other points. The testy 
 Hollander could not help exclaiming, Reverendissime 
 Prcesul non auctoritate sed ratione agendum est : for which 
 intemperance an apology was afterwards exacted. How- 
 ever, the doctrine of Redemption as a blessing to be 
 universally proposed and offered to all men, was so little 
 
 ' Collier's Church History, vii. 416. 
 
 ' Carleton, having consulted with his colleagues, entered unexpectedly into 
 a direct refutation of it ; observing that the assertion was in opposition to 
 the example of Christ, and to the precedent of the age, of that of the Apostles, 
 and of every subsequent period ; and that the argument by which it was de- 
 fended was singularly inconclusive : for the twelve apostles and the seventy 
 disciples were a// «y«a/^ ministers of Christ, "yet the latter had not equal 
 power and authority with the former." And though all men are equally men, 
 yet it follows not that one man \\a&-aa\ justly power and authority mer another. 
 To these observations no reply was made. 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 89 
 
 relished by the Synod of Dort, that it is clear, nothing but 
 the threatened loss of the English deputies induced its 
 insertion. In fact it led to so much unpleasant discussion 
 that it appears that once Bishop Carleton would have given 
 way, but Dr Davenant declared he would sooner cut off his 
 hand than rescind any word of it : in which he was sup- 
 ported by Ward, and it was ultimately agreed to. Our 
 author, who was looked upon as " the pillar of the Synod," 
 assigned his reasons at length ; and they are reprinted in 
 John Hale's "Golden Remains" at the end of the "letters 
 concerning the Synod of Dort." The following important 
 epistle about Dr Davenant is from Balcanqual in Hale's 
 letters : — 
 
 To the Rt. Honourable Sir D. Carlton, L Embassador. 
 
 My very good Lord, 
 
 Doctor Davenant his coming to your L. saveth me the trouble of 
 writing any news here : for he will perfectly relate them to your L. 
 We are full of trouble about things altogether unnecessary — for they 
 are so eager to kill the Remonstrants that they would make their 
 words have that sense which no grammar can finde in them ; upon 
 Tuesday in the afternoon we had a Session in wh. were read the 
 canons of the first and second Article, and were approved, except the 
 last of the second Article, which we never heard of till that houre, 
 and the second heterodox in that same article, what they were Dr 
 Davenant will inform your L. The last was such as I think no man 
 of understanding would ever assent unto. On Thursday morning we 
 had another Session in which nothing was done, but it was reasoned 
 whether that last heterodox should be retained : our College in that 
 whole Session maintained dispute against the whole Synod. They 
 condemned the thing itself as a thing most curious, and yet would 
 have it retained only to make y= Remonstrants odious, though they 
 find the very contrary of that they would father upon them in their 
 words. . . . Yesterday there was no Session, but the Deputies met for 
 taking orders about y® preface and epilogue of the Canon, and mend- 
 ing these things in the Canon which were thought fit to be amended, 
 and have sent them worse than they were — in case we stand, and 
 what need of counsel we have, this worthy Dr will sufficiently inform 
 your L. — Your L. in all true respect, and service, 
 
 Walter Balcanqual. 
 
 Dort, this -i\ of April. 
 
90 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 The Synod ended April 27th (1619), and at the close of 
 the business they received the public thanks of the States- 
 General and the Prince of Orange. The English divines 
 received ;£'200 to pay their expenses home, and a gold 
 medal ^ commemorative of the Synod. They then started 
 for a pleasure trip through the principal cities of the Low 
 Countries, where they were everywhere well received and 
 f^ted except at Leyden, the stronghold of the Arminian 
 opinions, and having received letters of commendation 
 from the States-General, they returned home, where they 
 were very graciously welcomed by the king with every 
 mark of high and royal approbation. More substantial, 
 rewards followed, which we shall presently notice. It 
 is evident, however, that their unwearied labours in 
 softening the synodal decrees, and the moderation of 
 their conciliar conduct, had rendered them objects of 
 suspicion to many in the Synod. Dr Ward, in a letter 
 to Archbishop Usher says : — 
 
 " We had somewhat to do when we came to frame canons with the 
 provincials, and some of the exteri touching some points, especially 
 touching the second Article. Some of us were held by some half 
 Remonstrants, for extending the oblation made to the Father to all, 
 and for holding sundry effects thereof offered serio, and some really 
 communicated to the reprobate : I had somewhat to do with a 
 principal man on this point : somewhat passed between us privately. 
 We were careful that nothing should be defined which might gainsay 
 the Confession of the Church of England, which was effected, for that 
 they were desirous to have all things in the Canons defined unanimi 
 consensu. We foreign divines, after the subscription of the Canons, 
 and a general approbation of the Belgic Confession, and Catechism, 
 
 ' The medal is 2tii ins. in diameter : on the obverse is a representation of 
 the Synod with the inscription, Asserta Religione, on the reverse, a mountain, 
 on the summit of which is a temple, to which men are ascending along a very 
 steep path. The four winds are blowing with very great violence against the 
 mountain. Above the temple is written Din*. The inscription is Erunt ut 
 moDs Sion ciaiocxix. It is engraved in Van Loon ii. 105, and (the obverse 
 only) in Walton's Lives, London (Washbourne) 1857. — {History of the Queens' 
 College, by Rev, W. G. Searle, p. 413.) 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 91 
 
 which is the Palatine's, as containing no dogmata repugnant to the 
 Word of God, and a decree against Vorstius's doctrine, chiefly that in 
 his book De Deo, were dismissed. In our approbation of the Belgic 
 Confession, our consent was only asked for doctrinals, not for matters 
 touching discipline. We had a solemn parting in the Synod, and all 
 was concluded with a solemn feast. 
 
 "On 23rd April 1619, the Canons were signed by all the members 
 of the Synod. Arminians were pronounced heretics, schismatics, 
 teachers of false doctrines. They were declared incapable of filling 
 any clerical or academical post. No man was thenceforth to teach 
 children, lecture to adolescents, or preach to the mature, unless a sub- 
 scriber to the doctrines of the unchanged, unchangeable orthodox 
 Church. On the 30th April and ist May, the Netherland Confession, 
 and the Heidelberg Catechism, were declared to be infallible, no 
 change was to be possible in either formulary, schools and pulpits 
 were inexorably bound to the only true religion (p. 310). 
 
 " On the 6th May," continues Mr Motley, "there was a great festival 
 at Dordrecht in honour of the conclusion of the Synod. The Canons, 
 the sentences, and long prayers and orations in Latin by President 
 Bogerman, gladdened the souls of an immense multitude, which were 
 further enlivened by the decree that both Creed and Catechism had 
 stood the test of several criticisms, and come out unchanged by a 
 single hair. Nor did the orator of the occasion forget to render 
 thanks to the most magnanimous King James of Great Britain, 
 through whose godly zeal, fiery sympathy, and truly royal labour 
 God had so often refreshed the Synod in the midst of their toil. 
 
 "The Synod held 180 sessions between 13 Nov. 161 8 and 29 May 
 1619, all the doings of which have been recorded in chronicles in- 
 numerable, so there need be no further mention of them here." — 
 (Motley's Life and Death of John of Barneveld, vol. ii. p. 31 1.) 
 
 Thus far the historical Synod. But the strife which our 
 Anglican divines were sent to Holland to quell, soon burst 
 out and began to rage in England, and the unwise inter- 
 ference, although solicited, in the unhappy disputes of our 
 Continental neighbours, soon brought these hopeless ques- 
 tions of Calvinism and Arminianism to be the subject of 
 fierce quarrels among ourselves, breeding discord, and 
 leading up, among other causes, to the civil troubles of 
 the coming age. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT (ll.). (1618-19) 
 
 " Lofty fancies in young men will come down of themselves, and in process 
 of time the overplus will shrink to be but even measure." — Fuller's Holy 
 State. Of Phancie, p. 165. 
 
 WE have been induced to enter somewhat largely into 
 the proceedings of an assembly whose results were 
 alike disgraceful, and injurious to the cause it was designed 
 to support. For, first there is a good deal of ignorance 
 about the Synod in general, and in particular much mis- 
 apprehension exists as to the expediency of members of an 
 Episcopal Church fraternizing with those of a body where 
 such regimen did not obtain, and in fact, the question has 
 been asked, what business they had to be there at all ? 
 From what has been said, it will be seen that our divines 
 attended as a matter of fraternal courtesy, having been 
 solicited to send deputies by the "powers that be," and 
 hoping to be helpful, as indeed they were, to their brethren 
 of the Reformed Churches. The subject, too, under discus- 
 sion was no matter of discipline, but one of doctrine, or 
 rather, speculative thought, on questions which might well 
 agitate the members of both the Roman and Reformed 
 Communion. Nor did the cause of Episcopacy, or their 
 " reverend mother the Church," to quote their own words, 
 suffer in their hands. On the contrary, they liberated their 
 souls on that subject, spoke out the truth in love, showed 
 their brethren a more excellent way, and truthfully pointed 
 out that most of their troubles were owing to the absence of 
 the Episcopal form of church government, set them longing 
 for what they had not got, and desiderating that which the 
 92 
 
Illliii |! I 
 
 
 ^^ ^g 
 
 SS 
 
 fi{^ kMm 
 
 mMMm 
 
 1 t?lp2il|tll = 
 
 sjlilflsillilisjilili 
 
 3 .E 
 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 93 
 
 force of circumstances had deprived them of. Our repre- 
 sentatives carried themselves in a very dignified attitude, 
 and the rationale of the Anglican standpoint did not receive 
 detriment in their keeping. They were true to their prin- 
 ciples. They proved themselves worthy exponents of the 
 English Re-formation Settlements, and evidently their 
 labours, and especially those of Davenant,^ were much 
 appreciated by their confr6res in synod assembled. This 
 is illustrated by the ovation they received from the States 
 themselves, and the special welcome accorded them by the 
 king on their return, and the leading office-bearers of the 
 realm, both in Church and State. 
 
 The Synod indeed was objectionable in its constitution, 
 and overbearing^ and persecuting in its proceedings. It 
 was not to be heard, but to be condemned, that the 
 Remonstrants were summoned, and this was scarcely 
 attempted to be concealed. The council had been packed, 
 and consisted mainly of those whose views were well known. 
 Bogerman, its President, had long been distinguished for 
 his extreme bitterness against the followers of Arminius, 
 and the bitterness between Calvinist and Arminian is pro- 
 verbial, exceeding even that of Romanist and Protestant ; 
 and the official details of the Synod are palpably regard- 
 less, not merely of charity, but candour. Whilst this is 
 fully allowed, for truth requires no less, it must also be 
 admitted that the Remonstrants gave their opponents 
 every advantage by insisting that the crucial doctrine of 
 Reprobation should be first discussed, and afterward that 
 they should proceed to that which is the leading point — 
 
 1 " Bogerman " (the President) " confessed that Dr Davenant's experience 
 and skill in the laws and histories gave them directions for the better ordering 
 of their debates and votes." 
 
 ^ " The proceedings of this Synod were very disgraceful, and they are repre- 
 sented, perhaps, even worse than they were. 'Zia.nAt's History of the Reforma- 
 tion of Holland treats fully of it. What was here done had probably a 
 considerable effect in changing the opinions of the people of England, and 
 introducing greater moderation." — Bp. Short's History of the Church of Eng- 
 land, p. 301. 
 
94 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 the doctrine of Election. Persisting in this demand, they 
 were driven out of the Synod with much anger and violence. 
 Whereupon the Synod commenced to frame their own 
 decrees, with the rejection of the errors of their opponents. 
 And here let it be remembered to our credit that the work 
 of the British Deputies happily terminated, as they had no 
 share in the subsequent transactions. The Synod fell to 
 persecution after the fashion of all mechanical majorities, 
 and immediately followed up its decision by a senteiice 
 against the Remonstrants, depriving them of all their 
 offices, and interdicting them from all ecclesiastical ser- 
 vices and academical functions. Borrowing a page out of 
 Rome's book, they appealed to the secular arm to enforce 
 these canons in the States-General. Nor was the recom- 
 mendation allowed to slumber, for politics had got mingled 
 up with their proceedings. Grave Maurice, the Prince of 
 Orange, who had so graciously received the Anglican 
 deputies, was aiming at despotic authority, and found the 
 Arminians the principal hindrance in the way of the 
 accomplishment of his designs. Maurice was really an 
 Arminian at heart, but he sided with the Synod, and 
 from secular motives of "high politics" seconded their 
 views. Thereupon followed a series of disgraceful perse- 
 cutions, as we have seen, in which some of the most 
 virtuous and patriotic blood of Holland was shed, and this 
 doubtless contributed to make the Synod itself generally 
 odious, and by a reflex action upon ourselves helped to 
 promote that decline of (/orfn«a/ Calvinism — which we may 
 call it for want of a better name, and we might almost 
 call it Augustinianism, which is so commonly said to have 
 been the logical outcome of that Convention.^ 
 
 ^ Of an Assembly of which so little commendable may be said, it must be 
 noted that they ordered a new translation of the Bible, with annotations, " In 
 which work they were assisted by many eminent and able divines, from most 
 of the Reformed Churches, and particularly from England by Dr G. Carleton, 
 Bishop of Chichester ; Dr J. Davenant (our author). Bishop of Sarum ; Dr 
 Hall, Bishop of Exeter ; and Dr Samuel Ward of Cambridge ; by whose great 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 95 
 
 " Of all assemblies," says the Rev. Josiah Allport, in 
 his short sketch of Bishop Davenant prefixed to his 
 exposition of St Paul's Epistle to the Colossians, " Reli- 
 gious Councils are most likely to be misrepresented. As 
 few were more open to attack, so there are scarcely any 
 which have been more grossly and unfairly assailed than 
 the Synod of Dort. By a series of authors in succession, a 
 treacherous copy of its decrees, under the shape of an 
 abridgment, has passed current. For instance, the Synod 
 cap. I, art. i, asserts that ' God hath elected out of the 
 common mass of sinners a certain multitude of m.en — quo- 
 rundam. hominum certa multitudo, &c., but that he hath left 
 the rest to condemnation, not only on account of their 
 infidelity, but also their other sins — non tantum propter in- 
 fidelitatem. sed etiam cetera omnia peccata,' &c. The 
 popular copy thus states this : that God hath elected to 
 salvation 'a very small number of men' &c., and appointed 
 the rest to condemnation ' without any regard to their 
 infidelity and impiety' " This garbled statement, or rather 
 "deliberate falsehood," as it has been correctly termed, 
 originated with Daniel Tilenus, who, being a Remonstrant, 
 and harshly used in common with his friends, repaid his 
 sufferings by falsifying the documents of his enemies, and 
 publishing his desperate effort under the cloak of a 
 "favourable abridgment." From him it was copied by 
 Bishop Womack, from Womack by Heylin, and from 
 Heylin by Bishop Tomline ; and thus passing current 
 through so many hands it continued to exasperate the 
 enemies of the Synod, and even to excite the unqualified 
 condemnation of its friends. Thus the late Mr Scott, in 
 the first edition of his reply to Dr Tomline, not doubting 
 
 and assiduous labour, jointly for many years together, the said Annotations 
 were completed and came forth in print, first, ann. 1637." — A. Wood's 
 Athenee, 4toj iv. 279. This Bible, with the notes, was translated into English 
 and published 1657, in two vols, folio, by Theodore Haak, under the title of 
 " The Dutch Annotations upon the whole Bible: together with the Transla- 
 tion, according to the direction of the Synod of Dort, 1618." • 
 
96 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 the genuineness of the decree, exclaims, " Who told these 
 presumptuous dogmatists that the elect were ' a very small 
 number of men'?" However, in 1804, the University of 
 Oxford published the Sylloge Confessionum, being a Col- 
 lection of Confessions made about the period of the Refor- 
 mation ; at the end of which are subjoined the genuine 
 Canons,^ in full, of the Synod of Dort, as a contrast to the 
 moderation of the early Protestant Churches, and of the 
 length to which " men, even publicly and solemnly assem- 
 bled, may proceed, when inflamed by long controversy and 
 embittered hatred." From this publication the corruption 
 was discovered, and exposed. Yet in a much later publi- 
 cation by Dr Copleston, late Bishop of Llandaff, in his 
 "Enquiry into Necessity and Predestination," the forged 
 copy is given, with the observation that " in order that the 
 wide disagreement between these (i.e. the Calvinistic) doc- 
 trines and the Articles of the Church of England may be 
 seen at one view, I have subjoined in a note the Lambeth 
 Articles, together with that summary of the decrees of the 
 Synod of Dort, which Heylin has given from Tilenus, as 
 the most moderate and impartial account of their proceed- 
 ings." This is evident enough, that the interpolation is 
 not yet sufficiently public, since it had escaped the notice 
 of this learned and candid Prelate. And here one cannot 
 but feel surprise that Mr NichoUs, whilst discussing these 
 points in the notes to vol. i of his edition of the Works of 
 Arminius, and inveighing against every flaw in the con- 
 duct and opinion of ancient and modern Calvinists, should 
 not utter a single sentence of disapprobation of one of the 
 
 ^ " Whatever opinions the reader of this work may entertain on any of these 
 abstruse topics, I am convinced that every Christian mind will agree that the 
 decisions of this Synod are far too peremptory, inasmuch as they define beyond 
 what the revealed word of God has declared. Whoever will compare them with 
 the corresponding Articles of our Church will have abundant reasons for admir- 
 ing the cautious manner in which the same subjects are there laid down, and 
 for approving the nearer approach to the spirit of the Bible, which her tenets 
 exhibit as they are there publicly displayed. " — Bp, Short's History of the Church 
 of England, p. 301, 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT ^^ 
 
 most audacious corruptions (abundant as they are) which 
 literary history presents, and should complain of the queru- 
 lousness of Mr Scott on a subject which ought to excite 
 the indignation of every honest man, especially the advo- 
 cate of one who was himself the victim of calumny and 
 injustice. 
 
 On the other hand, it ought not to be concealed that the 
 account of the Synod of Dort, published by Mr Scott, is a 
 mere translation of the Synod's own narrative of its pro- 
 ceedings ; and their whole conduct entitles them to little 
 respect when stating their own cause, even were it less 
 evident that truth is not very strictly adhered to. The 
 venerable editor was probably not deeply acquainted with 
 the history of the Council, nor well versed in the volumes 
 of Carleton, Hales, and others who were present; or, in 
 the detailed, though perhaps somewhat prejudiced, account 
 of Brandt. Yet agreeing, as he undoubtedly did in the 
 main, with the Canons of the Synod, and receiving their 
 statement with a partial eye, his concluding observations 
 are characteristic of the piety and good sense of that 
 admirable man. 
 
 Speaking of the persecuting conduct of other Churches, 
 he finally remarks — " The proceedings of the Synod of 
 Dort, and of the rulers of Belgium at that season, were 
 more exceptionable than those of any other ; at least as 
 far as I can judge." 
 
 It is in truth a melancholy reflection, that in reading 
 the history of religious convocations, as well ancient as 
 modern, Protestant as well as Papal,^ we cannot but 
 
 1 How truly these words apply to the late Vatican Council, which decreed 
 Papal Infallibility and the Syllabus. And it must be so where only a fraction 
 of Christendom is represented and deliberates. Not till there be s.fair repre- 
 sentation of the whole of Christendom coming together into one place, dan 
 we expect a different state of things, not till then will the Holy Spirit 
 speak in His fulness, and the Council be enabled to sum up its deliberation 
 in the old conciliar language of Primitive antiquity, " It seems good to the 
 Holy Ghost and to us." 
 
 G 
 
98 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 observe how little equity, not to say sacred truth, has been 
 regarded in their proceedings ; how few proofs appear of 
 the presence of the Holy Spirit in such assemblies ; and 
 how difficult it is for a candid mind to avoid approving 
 the conclusion of an ancient Father df the Church : " / 
 mver saw any good in ecclesiastical councils and am well 
 nigh inclined to attend no more!' ^ 
 
 To compress the whole of our author's concerns with the 
 Synod of Dort, we must now turn to an attack which was 
 made sometime afterwards for their conduct at that Con- 
 ference. At this time Davenant was holding the See of 
 Sarum, to which he had been subsequently preferred ; 
 Carleton that of Chichester, which he held at the Synod, 
 and Balcanquall the Deanery of Rochester, likewise sub- 
 sequently promoted. It is well known that King James 
 in his declining years modified many of his opinions on 
 religious matters. Among the rising divines of that 
 period was Dr Richard Montague,^ a],very learned and able 
 theologian, but as opposed to Puritanism as Laud himself 
 In a controversy with the Papists he had let fall some 
 disparaging remarks upon the doctrines advocated at Dort. 
 Thereupon two English clergymen, Yates and Wood, 
 gathered out of his writings sundry propositions, which 
 they presented to the House of Commons, as impugning 
 the Established Faith, and savouring of Popery, Arminian- 
 ism, &c., and cognate errors. Upon this, Montague was 
 summoned to the House of Commons, and held to bail. He 
 then betook himself to King James, who was quarrelling 
 with his Commons, and obtained leave to appeal from 
 
 ' Allport's Life of Davenant, p. 20. 
 
 * This Dr Richard Montague was the one who applied to the Homilies the 
 soubriquet of Homely — Homely Homilies, He seems at one time to have 
 laboured at a project of a Church ijistory, but was unable to mature it. 
 " Had it been finished," says Fuller, " we had had Church annals to put into 
 the balance with those of Baronius, and which would have swayed with them 
 for learning, and weighed them down for truth" {^Worthies, Bucks, p. 132). 
 He was, however, a moderate Calvinist, having declared himself ready to 
 assent to Bishop Hall's Via Media. 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 99 
 
 them to his Majesty. In consequence of this permission 
 he prepared a defence; but the King dying before the 
 book was published, permission was again sought and 
 granted by his successor, Charles I., and it came out 
 addressed to him, under the title of " Appello Ctssarem, a 
 Just appeal against two unjust Informers." In this work, 
 not content with attacking the doctrine established at 
 Dort, he positively asserts, with an attempt at proof, that 
 " the discipline of the Church of England was condemned 
 in that Assembly." 
 
 One bishop (Carleton) instantly replied to this gross 
 and unprovoked attack ; but, as the whole of the British 
 Deputies were affected by that charge, they united in a 
 distinct denial and refutation of it. This was printed with 
 their several signatures appended, and being a scarce 
 document on an important subject, we have thought it 
 would not be unacceptable to the reader in this place, 
 having been copied out some time ago verbatim from the 
 archives of the Bodleian Library, in " which the pen of 
 our author and divine will be distinctly read between the 
 lines." 
 
 ■" A joint attestation of several Bishops and learned Divines of the 
 Church of England, avowing that her Doctrine was confirmed, 
 and her Discipline was not impeached, by the Synod of Dort. 
 
 "It behoveth him that pretendeth to frame a just appeal from 
 unjust informers therein to keep himself clear from the just imputa- 
 tion of unjust informing. Yet the Author of the Treatise styled 
 Appello Csesarem hath rashly, and without ground, cast a foul blow 
 upon the Synod of Dort in general ; and consequently, in common 
 reputation, upon all the members thereof ; among whom those Divines 
 that were by King James sent thither, and concurred in the con- 
 clusions of the National Synod, are particularly aimed at, as having 
 "betrayed or impeached the government of their reverend mother. 
 ' The discipline of the Church of England,' saith he, ' in that Synod 
 is held unlawful,' and again 'the Synod of Dort in some points 
 condemneth, by the bye, even the discipline of the Church of 
 England.' 
 
loo THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " Was that distressed Church/ in the midst of her distraction about 
 matters of doctrine, so wily in her intentions, as to make preposterous- 
 use of their neighbour's assistance, and to draw them in for concur- 
 rence, in matters of discipline, with a foreign sister against their own 
 mother? were those that then aided that Church, tarn naris pbesce, so 
 dull of apprehension, as not to perceive the interest of their own ? 
 or did they demean themselves, tarn sublesta fide, so perfidiously, as 
 to suffer the government of this renowned Church, so much as ' by the 
 bye ' to be condemned by others there, and to sit down by it ? 
 
 " Had there been any color for such surmise, it might have pleased 
 the Appealer or Appe^cher, before he recorded in print such his odiouS' 
 information, tendered to his Majesty's own hands, to have demanded, 
 in private, such a question of some of those, from whom, in all likeli- 
 hood, he might have received' particular satisfaction. Civil correspon- 
 dence required no less of him, towards those whose persons he 
 professeth to respect, for ancient acquaintance, and other causes. 
 
 " The best is, though himself, for his own part, doth often salute with 
 the Comphments called in Rhetoric lik&it'-aiiiti and /wrrninairiiis, ' non 
 equidem invidio,' and such flowers strewed along his treatise : yet, in- 
 his indulgeijce, he giveth others as cause, so leave, to speak on their 
 own behalf, ' let them look to it, and answer for it whom it concerneth ' ; 
 and again, ' let them that are interested plead for themselves.' We, 
 therefore, who have hereunto subscribed our names, being ' interested ' 
 in that Synod, and withal deeply in this crimination of ' Puritanism,'^ 
 can do no less than answer, and clear, in some public manner, this 
 slander published against us. 
 
 " And first, in general, to remove the often objected suspicion of 
 complication between ' Foreign Doctrine ' and ' Foreign Discipline ' : 
 whereby is intended that there is a kind of natural consanguinity 
 between that Doctrine which odiously he styleth ' Foreign,' subscribed 
 unto by that Synod, and the Presbyterian Discipline established in 
 that and other Foreign Churches : 
 
 " We answer, that in the Netherlands, the party opposite to that 
 Synod, and most aggrieved with the conclusions thereof, concerning 
 the points controverted, are, notwithstanding, as vehement and 
 resolute maintainers of Ministerial Parity, as any that concluded or 
 accepted the judgment of that Synod. 
 
 " Moreover, in our private conversation with the most eminent of 
 the Ministry there, we found, divers times, upon occasion of our declar- 
 ing to them the order and manner of our Church Government, that 
 they were more ready to deplore than defend their own condition : 
 
 ^ Meaning the Belgic Church. 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT loi 
 
 and wished ra&sx than hoped, to be made like the Church of England. 
 Nor were these, therefore, the less ready to concur for the Dort Con- 
 ■clusions, but were rather of the principal and forward actors therein. 
 
 " Secondly, in special, we plead against a supposed act of condemn- 
 ing our own Episcopal discipline : which indictment, in a fair accusa- 
 tion, should have been laid more particularly. What action, what 
 session, what conclusion now are we put to seek, not so much our 
 defence as our fault ? And for such surmise, we can find no other 
 footing than possibly in the approbation of the Belgick Confession, 
 propounded to the consideration of the Synod, about a week before it 
 broke up. 
 
 "This Confession, composed anno 1550, and received in their 
 Church and in the Walloon Churches, ever since the first Reformation 
 of Religion is unto them, for consent in doctrine, a rule, not much 
 unlike to our Article of Religion here established. Which, as it was 
 formerly, anno 1583, accepted and approved by the French Church, in 
 2. National Synod at Vitry, so upon the opportunity of this National 
 Synod, the State and Church there recommended the same to more 
 public judgment for further ' Establishment. 
 
 "And because two or three articles thereof concerned Church 
 discipline, and avowed a parity of ministers, they, prudently fore- 
 seeing that the British Divines would never approve, but oppose the 
 same, did, therefore, provide that, before the examination or rpading 
 thereof, protestation should be made by the President of the Synod, 
 that nothing but the doctrinal points was to be subjected to their 
 consideration and suffrages, and, for the surer preventing opposition or 
 dispute, the articles concerning discipline were accordingly retrenched 
 and suppressed in the reading of that Confession in the Synod. 
 
 " If, therefore, the British College had, in their suffrages, only 
 answered ad quasita concerning doctrine, and uttered no opinion at 
 all de non quasitis concerning discipline, they think they had not 
 herein been wanting to their Synodal duty and calling ; the rather for 
 that, 
 
 " I. They were sent to endeavour peace and composure of that 
 distracted Church, by expressing their judgments in the points here 
 already controverted, not by intruding in matters not at all questioned 
 among them. 
 
 "2. Among the instructions given them by His Majesty, they had 
 jione to meddle with the discipline there established : but had charge 
 to use moderation and discretion and to abstain from multiplying of 
 questions beyond necessity. 
 
 " 3. In that subject there was no hope or possibiUty of prevailing by 
 argument or persuasion : especially in that Church, where the civil 
 
I02 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 government is popular, and so compete more easily with ecclesiastical 
 parity. 
 
 "Yet we thought not fit to content ourselves with warrantable 
 silence ; but upon our return from that Synodical Session to the place 
 of our private collegiate meeting, we diligently perused the Confession, 
 not only for points of doctrine referred to our judgments, but also for 
 those accepted (excepted) articles touching discipline ; and consulting 
 together what was fit to be done in delivering our opinions next day, 
 we jointly concluded, that howsoever our church discipline had not 
 been synodically taxed, nor theirs avowed, yet it was convenient for us, 
 who were assured in our consciences, that their presbyterial parity 
 and laical presbytery was repugnant to the discipline established by the 
 Apostles and retained in our own Church, to declare, in a temperate 
 manner, our judgment, as well concerning that matter, though by 
 them purposely excepted, as the other expressly referred to us. 
 
 " Accordingly, the next morning, when suffrages were to pass con- 
 cerning the doctrine comprised in that Confession, we, having by our 
 place the prime voice in the Synod, gave our approbation of the sub- 
 stance of the doctrinal articles, with advice touching some -incom- 
 modious phrases ; and withal, contrary to the expectation of the whole 
 Synod, we added express exception against the suppressed articles, 
 with some touch also of argument against them. Which our con- 
 testation, or protestation, for so it may be styled, was principally 
 performed by him, whom for priority of age, place and dignity, it best 
 became; and from whose person and gravity it might be better taken, 
 by the civil deputies of the States then present. 
 
 " Therein he professed and declared our utter dissent on that point ; 
 and further shewed, that by our Saviour a parity of ministers was 
 never instituted ; that Christ ordained 12 apostles and 70 disciples : 
 that the authority of the 12 was above the others ; that the Church 
 preserved this order left by our Saviour : and therefore when the 
 extraordinary authority of the apostles ceased, yet their ordinary 
 authority continued in Bishops who succeeded them ; who were by 
 the apOstles themselves left in the government of the Church to ordain 
 ministers, and to see that they who were so ordained should preach 
 no other doctrine ; that, in an inferior degree, the ministers that were 
 governed by Bishops, succeeded the 70 disciples ; that this order hath 
 been maintained in the Church from the time of the apostles ; and 
 herein he appealed to the judgment of antiquity, or of any learned 
 man now living, if any could speak to the contrary. 
 
 " In giving our several suffrages, the same exception was seconded 
 by the rest of us colleagues, partly by other allegations, and partly by 
 brief reference to this declaration, made Communi nomine by oitf 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 103 
 
 leader. To this our exception and allegation, not one word was 
 answered by any of the Synodicks, either strangers or provincials : so 
 that herein we may seem to have had either their consent implied by 
 silence, or, at least, approbation of our just and necessary performance 
 of our bounded duty to that Church whereunto they all afforded no 
 small respect, though differing in government from their several 
 Churches. 
 
 " Herein, perhaps by some we might be deemed to have gone too 
 far in contestation and upbraiding, quasi in os, the Civil Magistrate 
 and ministry there, with undue form of government of that Church, 
 whose doctrine only was offered to our opinions. 
 
 " But on the contrary part, it had been suggested here at home by 
 some, that herein we came short of our duty ; that we ought to have 
 stepped yet farther, by exhibiting in writing a formal Protestation, to 
 be entered and kept by the actuary of the Synod : — whereto we answer, 
 
 " First, that the course there taken, for the manner of delivering 
 our judgment, was not, as in the fifth question, controverted by sub- 
 scription, but only by vocal suffrage ; which gave no opportunity of 
 putting in a written protestation ; whereas if we had submitted our 
 names unto that Confession, we would infallibly have added, with the 
 same pen, our exception against the articles concerning discipline. 
 
 " Secondly, in that vocal proceeding, had we been overborne by the 
 multitude of their voices, or received any grievance or affront from 
 them, touching discipline, we would have relieved our just cause, 
 either by written protestation or better means. But whereas neither 
 the Civil Magistrate, in whose hearing our exceptions were constantly 
 uttered, did gainsay us, nor any of the divines in the Synod once 
 opened their mouths, either in offence of our government, or defence 
 of their own, what needed we to redouble our stroke upon those that 
 turned not upon us 
 
 " ' Rixa suum finem, cum silet hostis, habet.' 
 
 " Peradventure some hot spirits would not have rested in a formal 
 recorded protestation neither, but would have charged those Churches 
 to blot those articles out of their Confession, and forthwith to reform 
 their government : otherwise not have yielded approbation to any 
 article of doctrine, as there comprised : but renounced the Synod, 
 and shaken off from his feet the dust of Dort— ' I have nothing to do 
 with your conclusions, I have no part nor portion in them : what ends 
 you have, how things are carried, I cannot tell, nor care.' 
 
 " We confess we were and are of another mind : our own dis- 
 positions, and the directions of our blessed peace-making King, kept 
 us from kindling new fires where we had work enough to quench the 
 old. We then thought, and so still in our consciences are confident 
 
I04 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 that we forgot not our duty to our venerable and sacred mother, the 
 Church of England, but took a course conformable to the rules as 
 well of filial obedience, as of Christian moderation. 
 
 " And even then according to our custom of weekly transmitting 
 into England brief narrations of the proceedings in each several 
 session, to be imparted to His Majesty, we, by the next messengers, 
 sent our relation hereof, as no whit ashamed of our department 
 herein : which, because it was then framed when we did not imagine 
 that any quarrel would be picked against us, for more impartial and 
 impassionate attestation, is here inserted, as much as concemeth the 
 particular. 
 
 '"1619, April 29, Stilo novo, Sessione 144, Pomeridiana. 
 " ' Gregorius Martin, unus ex politicis ad Synodum delegatis. 
 Hagk jam, recens reversus, narrat quanto Domini ordines gaudio 
 afficiantur, de singulorum in canonibus sanciendis unanimi consensu. 
 Eo nomine Theologis cum exteris tum provincialibus gratias habere 
 eorum Dominationis ob labores Synodicos exantlantos. Proximo in 
 loco postulare ut Confessio Belgica perlustretur ; ita tamen ut sine 
 gravi causa nihil immutetur, nee phrasium grammaticarum argutiis 
 curiose insistatur. In eadem judiciis synodicorum subjiciuntur tantum 
 ea quae doctrinam spectant, omissis prorsus eis quae disciplinam. 
 Intercurrit qusestio de authentico exemplari ; sumitur illud quod in 
 ecclesiasticarum reformatarum confessionibus habetur. Totum per- 
 legitur praetermissis qui disciplinam ecclesiasticam attinent articulis.' 
 
 " ' Sessio. 14s, April 30, Antemeridiana. 
 " ' Rogantur de hac confessione suffragia. Dom. Episcopus Landa- 
 vensis omnia doctrinae capita probat, interea tamen de discipline 
 paucis monet ; " nunquam in ecclesia obtinuisse Ministrorum pari- 
 tatem : non tempore Christi ipsius : tum enim duodecim Apostolos 
 fuisse discipulis superiores : non Apostolorum setate, non subsecutis 
 saeculis ; nee valere rationem in hac confessione usurpatam, nempe 
 quia omnes sunt aeque ministri Christi : nam et 70 discipuli erant 
 Ministri Christi asque ac Apostoli, non tamen inde Apostolis asquales : 
 ut omnes omnino homines stmt aeque homines, non inde tamen homo 
 homini non debet subesse." Haec non ad harum ecclesiarum offen- 
 sionem, sed ad nostras Anglicanas defensionem, se substurnuisse 
 professus est. Et reliquis Britannis non nulla alia sunt subnotata de 
 libero arbitrio, de passiva Christi obedientia : prassertim vero de phrasi 
 nimis dura et generali, cum dicatur de canonicis libris nuUam unquam 
 fuisse controversiam ; quas quidem incommoda phrasis vitio interpretis 
 irrepserat, cum originale Gallican ^ bene se habeat. Item exceptioni 
 
 ' Evidently the Latin original of our Articles is the document referred to. 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 105 
 
 de discipline adjicitur a reliquis Britannis similis exceptio, siquid contra 
 legitimes ritus externos generaliter ibidem statuatur. Britannorum 
 interpellationi a synodicis responsum ne ypv quidem.' 
 
 " About a year after our return, the acts of the Synod were published 
 in print : wherein, among other particulars, the Belgic Confession is at 
 large set down in 37 Articles, whereof two or three contain matter of 
 discipline received in those churches ; these belike our censurer view- 
 ing, prout Jacent in terminiSy thereupon without any further search, 
 concluded that Synod guilty and condemnable, as concerning 'the 
 discipline of the Church of England.' But still we hold ourselves to 
 stand clear, and therefore prosecute our appeal from the rash sentence 
 of this Appellant, alleging for ourselves, 
 
 " I. Though all and singular the articles there comprised had passed 
 synodical scrutiny, and been approved canonically, yet will it not 
 follow that all and every one of the Synodicks there gave consent 
 thereto. For this approbation might have passed by the votes of the 
 major part, etiam reclamantibus Britannis, who for number were not 
 considerable among so many others, both strangers and provincials, 
 and so a favourable construction might have exempted the British 
 divines from being thought to reach forth their hand to the striking 
 their mother. 
 
 " 2. We deny that, upon view of these synodical acts, we, by pre- 
 sumption in law, need to be put upon purgation herein, as members 
 involved in a capitular decree of the whole body. For, in point of 
 discipline, there followed no act at all ; there was no proposition 
 made, as evidently appeareth by the same book of the " Synodical 
 Acts " in the narration of the proceedings about this Belgick Con- 
 fession, where the matter, subjected to deliberation, is recorded with 
 limitation — first, positive, ' quee ad dogmata et doctrinas essentiam 
 pertinerent' : points dogmatical, and pertaining to the essence of 
 doctrine; then, exclusive, ' Monitum prdinde fuit eo tempore 
 articulum trigesimum primum et secundum non esse examinandiim, 
 quia in utroque de ordine ecclesiastico quem extero nonnuUi a nestro 
 diversum habent, ageretur.' Declaration was accordingly made at the 
 same time that the thirty-first and second Articles were not to be ex- 
 amined, because in them ecclesiastical order or Church government was 
 handled, wherein some strangers, namely, the Church of England, differ 
 from ours, namely, from that of the Church of the Netherlands. This 
 recorded testimony of so expressly withdrawing from the eye of the 
 Synod all view of Church discipline, might demonstrate to any in- 
 different peruser of those acts, that whereas no possibility of Synodical 
 condemning, so much as by the bye, the discipline of the Church of 
 England, in such examining the Belgick Confession. 
 
 " As for our manner and judging thereof, though it be not so par- 
 
io6 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 ticularly set down in the said printed acts as we could have wished 
 and would have provided for had we been made acquainted with any 
 intent of their publication ; yet is it in some sort touched in the same 
 page in that very narration of the next session, testifying a cautelous 
 delivery of our judgments. ' Declarant clarissimi Magnae Britannicaa 
 Theologi, se confessionem Belgicam diligenter examinasse, nihilique 
 in ea deprehendisse, quod ad fidei quidem dogmata attineret, quod 
 verbp Dei non consentiret,' The very illustrious divines of Great 
 Britain declared that they had diligently examined the Belgick Confes- 
 sion, and that therein, for as much as concerned dogmatical points of 
 faith, they found nothing that agreed not with the Word of God — 
 which reservation implieth that somewhat else which did not ' concern 
 points of faith,' but other matter, received not their approbation, it 
 may be said, and so we ourselves say, that the disposers and publishers 
 of these Synodical acts had done more right to the British divine if 
 special mention had been made of other matter not approved by them, 
 and of their particular exception against the articles which concerned 
 Church government. 
 
 " But it seemeth, as in most other local passages in this Synod, the 
 actuary here intended abridgment in what he set down, and meant 
 not to express in particular what was said by any, concerning points 
 not propounded to Synodical deliberation, especially touching upon 
 so tender a thing as the open impeachment of their own established 
 discipline ; and so they think they have given us our due herein : 
 partly by thus pointing afar off to what we did in our own defence, 
 leaving the reader to find it by implication ; and partly by recording 
 that all Synodical proposition and approbation of this Confession was 
 confined to matter of doctrine only. 
 
 " According to reserved form of expression, the President of the 
 Synod, in the great Church of Dort, immediately after the publica- 
 tion of the Synod's judgment upon the five controversies notifying 
 the approbation of this Confession, said, not that the whole 
 and every parcel was approved, but ' Doctrinam in Confessione 
 comprehensam, in Synodo relectam atque examinatam, ut ortho- 
 doxam fuisse approbatam.' Which style of speech excludeth whatso- 
 ever is there comprised, not concerning doctrine, but discipline ; what- 
 soever was not examined Synodically, nor so much as read in the Synod ; 
 whatsoever in common understanding admitteth the title of orthodox, 
 which, attribute is proper to dogmatical points. In this sense, and of 
 this subject, they did, and well might there alledge the concording 
 judgment, 'omnium tamexterorum quam provincialium Theologorum.' 
 
 " Nor had we cause to expect that, in such publication of the wholq 
 Synod's doctrinal; consent, they should trouble their own people, 
 ivith expressing the dissent of some few of the exteri in the matter of 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 107 
 
 Church discipline : which dissent of ours they have delineated in their 
 re'cord of their acts, though over-veiled for their own peace, yet trans- 
 parent enough for their own defence. 
 
 "But it was our rnisfortune, perhaps, that he who turned over all 
 the leaves, of the Belgic Confession there set forth, to find the articles 
 concerning discipline, coiild not extend to cast his eye upon the page 
 next foregoing that Confession, to view the limited manner of both 
 propounding and approving that body of articles. Which limitation 
 had he seen and considered, so confident are we of his ingenuity, he 
 would not have cast this hard imputation upon us. 
 
 "And now being better informed by this our true account of the 
 carriage of that business, he that hath traduced us will, we hope, make 
 some competent satisfaction by acknowledging his oversight, and re- 
 calling what he hath unadvisedly^ written to our prejudice. 
 
 " As for ourselves, in the ingenuity of our conscience, we herein do 
 not decline the judgment of any indifferent impassionate man ; and 
 such we hope this true and plain narration will satisfy. But above 
 all, according to oui: duty and desire, we humbly submit this and all 
 other our actions, concerning our calling, to the judgment of our 
 }nost , venerable mother the Church of England, from whose sacred 
 rule, we vow that we have not swerved, nor any whit impeached her 
 discipline, or authorized doctrine, either abroad or at home. And as 
 in that Synod our special care and perpetual endeavour was, to guide 
 our judgments by that sound doctrine which we had received from the 
 Church of England; so were we far, and ever shall be, from usurping 
 our mother's authority, or attempting to obtrude upon her children 
 any of our Synodical conclusions, as obligatory to them ; yet re- 
 maining ourselves nevertheless resolved, that whatsoever there was 
 assented unto, and subscribed by us concerning the five Articles, 
 either in the joint synodical judgment, or in our particular Collegiate 
 suffrage, stiled in the acts of the Synod, ' Theologorum Magnae 
 Britannicse sententiae,' and at large extant there, is not only warrantable 
 by the Holy Scriptures, but also conformable to the received doctrine 
 of our said venerable mother; which we are ready to maintain and 
 justify against all gainsayers, whensoever we shall be thereunto called 
 by lawful authority. 
 
 " Georgius, Cicestrensis Episcopus. 
 " Johannes, Sarisburiensis Episcopus (Davenant). 
 " GuALTERius Balcanqual, Decan. Roif. 
 "Samuel Ward, Pub, [Profess. Theol. in Acad^ 
 
 Cant, et Coll. Sid. Prefect. 
 " Thomas Goad, Sacrse Theol. Doctor." 
 
io8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 We have given this rare and interesting document in 
 extenso, as it is possible for the reader to come to only 
 one conclusion upon its perusal — that our Anglican repre- 
 sentatives' department at the Synod of Dort was all that 
 could be desired. On their part there was no paltering or 
 hesitancy when the discussion turned on first principles,^ 
 The decree of that Council affected doctrine not discipline, 
 i.e., Church polity or regimen, nor did their synodical deci- 
 sions bind the Church at home. Their helpful action was 
 one of paternal courtesy only. Moreover, it is evident that 
 neither did the cause of the English Church nor Episcopacy 
 suffer in their keeping. With our deputies this latter was 
 not a mere ornamental or decorative appendage, but a 
 living fact, and potential energy ; nor was the Church with 
 them, more than 250 years ago, a sort of ideal abstraction 
 or department of the Home Office, but a breathing sentient 
 organism, of which they formed constituent parts. What 
 their Church principles were, such phrases scattered up and 
 down this " Apologia " abundantly illustrate — "the govern- 
 ment of our reverend mother," " our venerable and sacred 
 mother, the Church of England," " striking their mother." 
 The Church government they affected was " the discipline 
 established by the apostles and retained in our Church." 
 They averred that "this order hath been maintained in 
 the Church from the time of the apostles," and appeal 
 herein was made "to the judgment of antiquity, and with 
 regard to their action and teaching they bow to the 
 authority of the Church," " we humbly submit this and all 
 our other actions, concerning our calling, to the judgment 
 of our most venerable mother the Church of England, 
 from whose sacred rule we vow that we have not swerved 
 
 ' At the same time Davenant's eagerness to establish union among the 
 •Reformed Churches may be inferred from the animated language with which 
 he has expressed himself on this subject. " I had rather a millstone were 
 hanged about my neck and I cast into the sea than that I should hinder a 
 work so acceptable to God, or should not with my whole mind support it." — 
 Zouch's Walton. 
 
THE SYNOD OF DORT OR DORDRECHT 109 
 
 nor any whit impeached her discipline and authorized 
 doctrine " ; and again, " it was our special care to guide 
 our judgments by that sound doctrine which we had re- 
 ceived from the Church of England, so were we far, and 
 ever shall be, from usurping our mother's authority." 
 This is the true Church's imprimatur. It has got the old 
 Anglican ring about it. It is quite Vincentian. And 
 lastly our divines not only frankly explained the difference 
 between the standpoint of the Anglican Church and that 
 of the Reformed Churches abroad, explaining clearly the 
 dividing line of demarcation between the Churches, to the 
 provincials of Holland, but they set them thinking and 
 desiderating and longing for that which they had lost, 
 and which they could not regain, owing to the political 
 action of the civil power, the divine order of Church 
 government by "Bishops, Priests, and Deacons" which 
 orders it is evident, as the preface to our Ordinal says, 
 "unto all men diligently reading Holy Scripture and 
 ancient authors, that from the Apostles' time there have 
 been " ; and to conclude this chapter in the words of 
 Robert Southey : — 
 
 " When the first National Synod of the Protestants was held at 
 Dort, it was owing to the influence of the English divines that its 
 sanctions were not given to the monstrous doctrine of the Supralap- 
 sarians. The proceedings of the Synod were sufficiently disgraceful 
 without coming to such a conclusion ; nevertheless, the abominable 
 doctrine that the Almighty has placed the greater part of mankind 
 under a fatal necessity of committing the offences for which He has 
 pre-determined to punish them eternally, from that time lost ground. 
 But it became the distinguishing tenet of the Nonconformists } it in- 
 creased their strength, because those clergy who agreed with them at 
 first in this point alone, gradually became political, as well as doctrinal 
 puritans ; and it exasperated the implacable spirit of dissent, by filling 
 them with a spiritual pride as intolerant as it was intolerable ; for 
 fancying that they were the favourites and elect of the Almighty, they 
 looked upon all who were not with them as the reprobate ; and pre- 
 suming that heaven was theirs by sure inheritance, they were ready 
 on the first opportunity to claim the earth also by the same title." '■ 
 
 * Book of the Church, p. 433-4. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 DAVEN ant's return (1620) — MADE BISHOP OF 
 SALISBURY (1621) 
 
 " Our minister compounds all controversies betwixt God's ordinances by 
 praising them all, practising them all, and thanking God for them all. He 
 counts the reading of Common Prayer to prepare him the better for preaching; 
 and as one said, if he did first toll the bell on one side, it made it afterwards 
 ring out the better in his sermons." — Fuller's Holy State, The Faithful 
 Minister, p. 74. 
 
 AFTER an absence of seven months at the Synod of 
 Dort and in the Netherlands, Davenant returned 
 with the other members of the British College to England, 
 where they , soon met with their well-merited rewards. 
 They had been decorated with a golden medal, repre- 
 senting the Synod in Session, before their departure, and 
 more substantial rewards, in the shape of early Church 
 preferment awaited them at the hands of their gratified 
 and well-satisfied king on their home-coming. When 
 Davenant came back to Cambridge, he betook himself to 
 his " constant labours in the schools " in connection with 
 his Professorial duties in the Chair of his Margaret 
 Professorship, in addition to the magisterial duties of his 
 " Collegiate Cure," as President of Queens'. His Divinity 
 Lectures and masterful labours were more than ever— 
 as we might have expected in the case of one of such 
 theological eminence, and who had returned home flushed 
 with success, and with an assured European reputation — 
 appreciated and attended with an eager crowd of listeners. 
 He potentially impressed his hearers with his own views. 
 
MADE BISHOP OF SALISBURY in 
 
 " I was present," said a gentleman of the period, '' oftentimes also 
 in the piiblic lectures in the schools, upon points of controversy, 
 especially those of Dr Davenant ... in which he most clearly con- 
 futed the blasphemies of Arminius, Bestius, and the rest of that rabble 
 of Jesuited Anabaptists ; by all which my knowledge was much in- 
 creased." 1 
 
 The College more than ever got the reputation of a 
 distinct theological tone, with strong Calvinistic pro- 
 clivities, although withal combined with sound if moderate 
 Churchmanship. He valued Episcopacy and the liturgy. 
 Then were delivered with a rare charm of predicatorial 
 eloquence those profound and, to his enraptured auditory, 
 fascinating discourses, which were subsequently touched 
 up and published during the intervals of his episcopal 
 leisure. His lectures would naturally, after his recent ex- 
 perience at Dort, become flavoured with a more distinct 
 utterance against the platform and conclusions of the 
 Professors at Leyden. Yet with his strong feelings against 
 the Arminians, he was powerfully advocating the doctrine 
 of Universal Redemption. If, too, he was inclined to 
 treat the Puritans with kindliness and tolerance, allied 
 as they were doctrinally as well as disciplinary with 
 the Presbyterate of the Dutch and other Reformed 
 Churches, he was a stickler for conformity, and held 
 fast to those ritualistic observances and canonical cere- 
 monies in vogue in the Anglican Church at that epoch. 
 Yet he ever evinced a strong dislike to everything dis- 
 tinctly Roman or foreign, and his connection with the 
 Cathedral Church of St Osmund, would naturally incline 
 him to the Sarum or national rite — the famous Use of 
 the pre-Reformation era. The influence he had upon the 
 students is evidenced by the fact that he so won their 
 respect, and that of the large circle of friends and connec- 
 tions, including young Fuller (afterwards to be celebrated 
 as the " Church Historian " and writer of the Worthies, 
 
 ^ Autobiography, i. 120. 
 
112 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 who came up to his uncle's College of Queens' just at 
 this time), that they not only ever clung tenaciously to 
 Davenant's School of Churchmanship, but did a great 
 deal to perpetuate it. 
 
 "For in the high topics of predestination," says Mr Russell, "he 
 (Fuller) adhered to the doctrine in which he was brought up, the 
 doctrines taught in his youth at the University of Cambridge by his uncle 
 Davenant, a man in whom piety and sound learning were united, and 
 to a degree perhaps rarely excelled. For he moved not with the times, 
 but pursued his upright and even path, as before God, and not to 
 please men." ' 
 
 Indeed, in his Essays in the Holy State, the author has 
 gi-aphically touched in some word-pictures from his uncle's 
 different and many-sided related attitudes, taking him for 
 his inspiring model and stimulating original. Brought up 
 in a very atmosphere of theological controversy, and, being 
 a frequent listener to the conversations of his uncle and 
 father — who were bosom friends — in which were discussed 
 the great . political and theological questions of the day 
 in general, and the recent Synodical conclusions of Dort 
 in particular, no wonder the nephew was able in after days 
 to sketch from the living model his ideal of "the Con- 
 troversial Divine," selections from which we now propose 
 to transfer to our pages for the edification of our readers, 
 
 " He is Truth's Champion to defend her against all adversaries, 
 atheists, heretics, schismatics, and erroneous persons whatever. His 
 sufficiency appears in opposing, answering, moderating and writing. 
 
 "i. He engageth both his judgment and affections in opposing of 
 falsehood. Not like country fencers, who play only to make sport, but 
 like duellers indeed, as if for life and limb ; chiefly if the question be 
 of large prospect, and great concernings, he is zealous in the quarrel, 
 yet some, though their judgment weigh down on one side, the beam of 
 their affections stands so even, they care not which part prevails. 
 
 " 2. In opposing a truth he dissembles himself her foe, to be her better 
 friend. Wherefore he counts himself the greatest conqueror when 
 truth hath taken him captive. With Joseph, having sufficiently sifted 
 the matter in a disguise, he discovereth himself. / am Joseph your 
 
 1 Memorials, 303. 
 
MADE BISHOP OF SALISBURY 113 
 
 brother, and then throws away his vizard. Dishonest they, who though 
 the debt be satisfied will never give up the bond, but continue 
 wrangling when the objection is answered. 
 
 " 3. He abstains from all foul and railing language. What make the 
 muses, yea the graces scold. Such purulent spittle argues exulcerated 
 lungs. Why should there be so much railing about the body of Christ, 
 when there was none about the body of Moses in the act kept between 
 the devil and Michael the archangel. 
 
 " 4. He tyrannizeth not over a weak and undermatched adversary, but 
 seeks rather to cover his weakness if he be a modest man. When a 
 Professor pressed an answer (a better Christian than Clerk) with a hard 
 argument : Reverend Professor (said he), ingenue confiteor me non posse 
 respondere huic argumento. To whom the Professor, Recte respondes. 
 
 " 5. In answering he states the question and expounds the terms 
 thereof, otherwise the disputants will end where they ought to have 
 begun, in difference about words, and be barbarians each to other, 
 speaking in a language neither understand. If the question also be 
 of historical cognizance, he shews the pedigree thereof: who first 
 brewed it, who first broached it, and sends the wandering error with a 
 passport home to the place of its birth. 
 
 " 6. In taking away an objection, he not only puts by the throat, but 
 breaks the weapon. Some rather escape than defeat an argument ; 
 and though by such an evasion they may shut the mouth of the 
 opponent, yet may they open the difficulty wider in the hearts of the 
 hearers. But our answerer either fairly resolves the doubt, or else 
 shews the falseness of the argument, by beggaring the opponent to 
 maintain such a fruitful generation of absurdities as his argument 
 hath begotten ; or lastly, returns and retorts it back upon him again. 
 The first way unties the knot : the second cuts it asunder : the third 
 whips the opponent with the knot himself tied. 
 
 " 7. What his answers want in suddenness they have in solidity. 
 Indeed the speedy answer adds lustre to the disputation, and honour 
 to the disputant ; yet he makes good payment who, though he cannot 
 presently throw the money out of his pocket, yet will pay it, if but 
 going home to unlock his chest. Some that are not for speedy may 
 be for sounder performance. When Melancthon at the disputation of 
 Ratisbon was pressed with a shrewd argument by Ecchius, ' I will 
 answer thee,' said he, ' to-morrow.' ' Nay,' said Ecchius, ' do it 
 now, or it's nothing worth.' 'Yea,' said Melancthon, ' I seek the 
 truth, not mine own credit, and therefore it will be as good if I answer 
 thee to-morrow by God's assistance.' * 
 
 ' Melchior Adam, in Vitis Germ. Theolog., p. 339. 
 H 
 
114 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " g. In writing, his Latin is pure so far as the subject tvill allow. 
 For those who are to climb the Alps are not to expect a smooth and 
 even way. True it is that schoolmen, perceiving that fallacy had too 
 much covert under the nap of flourishing language, used threadbare 
 Latin on purpose, and cared not to trespass on grammar, and tread 
 down the fences thereof, to avoid the circuit of words, and to go the 
 nearest way to express their conceits. But our Divine, though he 
 useth barbarous school-terms, which like standers are fi.xed to the 
 controversy, yet in his moveable Latin, passages and digressions, his 
 style is pure and elegant. 
 
 " lo. He affects clearness and plainness in all his writings. Some 
 men's heads are like the world before God said unto it, Fiat lux. 
 These dark lanterns may shine to themselves, and understand their 
 own conceits, but nobody else can have light from them. Thus 
 Matthias Farinator, Professor at Vienna, assisted with some other 
 learned men, as the times then went, was thirty years making a book 
 of applying Plato's, Aristotle's and Galen's rules in philosophy, to 
 Christ and His prophets.* And it is called lumen animce; quo tamen 
 nihil est caliginosius, labore magno, sed ridiculo et inahi. But this 
 obscurity is worst when affected ; when they do as Perseus, of whom 
 one saith,** Legi voluit qua scripsit, intelligi noluit qua legerentur. 
 Some affect this darkness that they may be accounted profound, 
 whereas one is not bound to believe that all the water that is deep 
 is muddy. 
 
 "II. He is not curious in searching matters of no 7noment. Captain 
 Martin Forbisher fetched from the farthest northern countries a 
 ship's lading of mineral stones, as he thought, which afterwards were 
 cast out to mend the highways.' Thus are they served and miss their 
 hopes, who long seeking to extract hidden mysteries out of nice 
 questions, leave them off as useless at last. Antoninus Pius, for his 
 desire to the least difference, was called lumini sector, the carver of 
 cummin seeds. One need not be so accurate ; for as soon shall 
 one scour the spots out of the moon, as all ignorance out of man. 
 When Eunomius the heretic vaunted that he knew God and his 
 divinity, St Basil* gravels him in twenty-one questions about the body 
 of an ant, or pismire"; so dark is man's understanding. I wonder, 
 therefore, at the boldness of some, who, if they were lord marshals of 
 the angels, place them in ranks and files. Let us not believe them 
 here, but go to heaven to confute them. 
 
 ^ Mercator Atlas in the Description of Austria. 
 ^ Scaliger de Arte Poet, lib. 6, c. 6. 
 ' Cambden's Elizab., Anno 1576. 
 * Epist. 169, qujE est ad Eunomium. 
 
MADE BISHOP OF SALISBURY 115 
 
 " 12. He neither multiplies needless, nor compounds necessary contro- 
 versies. Sure they light on a labour in vain * who seek to make a 
 bridge of reconciliation over the v^ta xaajw. betwixt Papists and Pro- 
 testants : for though we go ninety-nine steps, they (I mean their 
 Church) will not come one to give us a meeting. And as for the 
 offers of Clara's " and private men, besides that they be more of the 
 nature of baits than gifts, they may make large proffers without 
 any commission to treat, and so the Romish Church is not bound to 
 pay their promises. In Merionethshire, in Wales, there are high 
 mountains, whose hanging tops come so close together that shepherds 
 on the tops of several hills may audibly talk together, yet will it be a 
 day's journey for their bodies to meet, so vast is the hoUowness of the 
 valley betwixt them.' Thus upon sound search shall we find a grand 
 distance and remoteness betwixt Popish and Protestant tenets to 
 reconcile them, which at the first view may seem near, and tending to 
 an accommodation. 
 
 " 13. He is resolute and stable in fundamental points of religion. 
 These are his fixed poles and axle-tree about which he moves, whilst 
 they stand immoveable. Some sail so long on the sea of controversies, 
 tossed up and down, to and fro, pro and con, that the very ground to 
 them seems to move, and their judgments grow sceptical and unstable 
 in the most settled points of Divinity. When he cometh to preach, 
 especially if to a plain auditory, with the Paracelsians he extracts an 
 oil out of the driest and hardest bodies ; and, knowing that knotty 
 timber is unfit to build with, he edifies people with easy and profitable 
 matter.* 
 
 Thie author of this Essay entered his uncle's College 
 during the last year of his Mastership, and therefore had 
 many opportunities of observing the subject of our memoir 
 not only in private, in his father's rectory at Aldwinckle, 
 but also in public, both as to his department in the College, 
 and his bearing and carriage in the Schools — as Divinity 
 Professor — rwhere he was the beau ideal of a " Controversial 
 Divine." 
 
 But at the time when Fuller's college life began, Dr 
 Davenant, the President of Queens', very probably; or 
 
 ' See this illustrated by Dr Pusey's " Eirenicon, the Truth and Office of 
 the English Church," in a letter to the author of The Christian Year. 
 2 Sancta Clara's (Ch. Davenport's) Exposition of the XXXIX Articles. 
 <■ Giraldus Camb. in Descripi. of Wales. * Holy State, p. 54- 
 
ii6 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 soon after, had become Bishop-designate of Salisbury, so 
 that they were not a great many months, possibly not 
 more than a year, together at Queens'. However, Dr 
 Davenant was thoroughly acquainted with his nephew's 
 brilliant parts, and before leaving the University, he would 
 naturally interest himself, in conjunction with his brother- 
 in-law, the "painful and pious" priest of St Peters, in 
 providing for the efficient supervision of the future studies 
 of this promising young scholar, showing himself as ready 
 now as heretofore to foster his already remarkable talents. 
 It was doubtless owing to Davenant's connection with 
 Queens' that Dr Fuller, though formerly Fellow of Trinity, 
 entered his son as a member of that royal and religious 
 foundation. This "hopeful slip" must have gone up to 
 Cambridge somewhere about the time of the death of 
 his uncle Townson, Bishop of Sarum, and he had been 
 educated by Rev. Arthur Smith (who subsequently be- 
 came Vicar of Oundle), at a private school kept by him 
 in his native village. He went up to the University at 
 the early age of twelve, and when he entered his uncle's 
 College he was placed under the tutorship of Mr Edward 
 Davenant (his cousin, the accomplished scholar and 
 mathematician) and Mr John Thorpe.^ Another member 
 of the Bishop's family, George Davenant, was entered at 
 Queens', admitted pensioner under him, 24th May 1602. 
 Before quitting Cambridge with our Bishop-designate 
 
 1 " Thomas Fuller filius Thomse Fuller, SS. Theol. bacal. et quondam 
 Collegii S. et indiv. Trinitatis apud Cantabrigienses Socii. Rectoris Ecclesise 
 S"- Petri in villa de Aldwinckle in Comitatu Northamptoniensi, Uteris gram- 
 maticis in Schola privata in dicta paraecia praeceptore Mro. Arthuro Smith, 
 Oundaliensis Ecclesise post vicario per quadrennium plus minus institutus, 
 admissus .est in Coll. Reginali Ann. 1622 :sub tutela Reverendissimi viri 
 Jo. Davenantli, SS. Theol. professoris, Sarisburiensis et Collegii magistri 
 avunculi siii : usus dein tutoribus Mro. Edvardo Davenantio, et Mro. Thorpe. 
 Ibidem gradu baccalaureatus prime, postea magisterii in artibus insignitus 
 admissus est in hoc collegium ad convictum sociorum Ann. 1629. Nov. 5, 
 Tutore et fidejussore Reverendo Collegii prsefecto Samuele Ward, SS. Theol. 
 Professpre." — (Sidney-Sussex College Register.) 
 
MADE BISHOP OF SALISBURY 117 
 
 of Salisbury, it may not be uninteresting to refer to a few 
 of the leading events which are referred to in the Annals 
 of the College during his Mastership. On 7th March, 
 1614-5, James I., accompanied by his son Charles, Prince 
 of Wales, visited the University and remained in Cam- 
 bridge till the nth. Acts in divinity, law, physics and 
 philosophy were held, and four plays were performed in 
 the hall of Trinity College, which was arranged to ac- 
 commodate 2000 persons. In the divinity act, Bishop 
 Harsnet, the Vice-Chancellor, was moderator, Dr John 
 Davenant, Lady Margaret Professor, was respondent, and 
 Dr Richardson, Regius Professor of Divinity, and others, 
 the opponents. One of the questions was "Nulla est 
 temporalis Papae potestas supra leges, in ordine ad bonum 
 spirituali ? " The negative was maintained in the negative 
 concerning the excommunication of kings. Dr Richardson 
 vigorously pressed the practice of St Ambrose excom- 
 municating of the Emperor Theodosius ; insomuch that 
 the King in some passiori returned, " Profecto fuit hoc ab 
 Ambrosio insolentissime factum." To whom Dr Richard- 
 son rejoined, " Responsum vere regium et Alexandro 
 dignum. Hoc non est argumentim dissolvere sed dissicare," 
 and so, sitting down, he desisted from any further dispute.^ 
 In the philosophy act Dr Matthew Wren, afterwards 
 Bishop of Ely, was respondent, and John Preston (Fellow of 
 Queens') first opponent. The subject was, whether dogs 
 could make syllogisms. The opponent urged that they 
 could : " An Entkimeme," said he, " is a lawful and real 
 Syllogisme, but dogs can make them": He instanced in an 
 hound who had the major proposition in his mind, namely. 
 The Hare is gon either this or that way ; smels out the 
 Minor with his Nose, namely, She is not gon that way ; and 
 follows the conclusion. Ergo, this way, with open mouth." 
 The instance suited with the auditory. The respondent, 
 drawing a distinction between the sagacity and the 
 
 ^ Fuller, Worthies, Cambridgeshire^ 
 
ii8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 "sapience" of dogs, Preston replied with another syllo- 
 gism, and the King was so excited with the sport, that 
 when the moderator interposed his authority and silenced 
 Preston, he stood up for the reasoning power of dogs, and 
 speaking of one of his own dogs who showed great sagacity 
 in procuring assistance while pursuing a scent, asked 
 " what the Moderator could have done in that case better ? 
 and desired him that either he would think better of his 
 dogs or not so highly of himself." The moderator con- 
 trived to bring the argument to an end with a compliment 
 to the King, " That he would consider how his illustrious 
 influence had already ripened and concocted all those 
 arguments and understandings, that whereas in the morn- 
 ing the reverend and grave Divines could not make Syllo- 
 gisms, the Lawyers could not, nor the Physitians, now 
 every dog could, especially his Majestie's," and the King 
 went off well pleased with the businesse. 
 
 In this act Preston acquitted himself so well, that his 
 preferment in the Church would have been certain, had not 
 his inclination to Puritanism in royal eyes been a bar in 
 his way. Having received some strong religious impres- 
 sions from a sermon by John Cotton, fellow of Emmanuel, 
 a Puritan preacher, which had the effect of making him all 
 his life a strong adherent of Calvinistic tenets and Puritan 
 church-forms, he made it his business to train up the young 
 men committed to his charge in the same principles, and 
 became conspicuous in^the University by the Puritan tone 
 of his public lectures and sermons. 
 
 " On the second night (8 March) was a comedy at Clare 
 Hall, with the help of two or three good actors from other 
 houses." This was the celebrated Latin Play of Ignora- 
 mus, by George Ruggles, Fellow of Clare Hall, " wherein 
 David Drummond, in a hobby horse, and Francis Brakin, 
 the recorder of the town (who had made himself obnoxious 
 to the University by the part he took with reference to the 
 dispute between the Vice-Chancellor and the Mayor as to 
 
MADE BISHOP OF SALISBURY 119 
 
 precedency), under the name of Ignoramus, a common 
 lawyer, bare great part. The thing was full of mirth and 
 variety, with many excellent actors, among whom the Lord 
 Compton's son, though least, was not worst, but more than 
 half marred with extreme length." 
 
 In this play the following Members of Queens' College 
 took part : — 
 
 Dulman, ..... Mr Towers. 
 
 Rosabella, virgo, .... Mr Morgan. 
 
 Dorothea, itxor Theodori, matrona, . Mr Norfolk. 
 
 Surda, nana ancilla, \ m r t 
 Vince, puer Dorothese, / ' ' >- P • 
 
 Mr Compton was the Hon. Spencer Compton, after- 
 wards second Earl of Northampton. He was born 1601, 
 and so was at the time about 14 years of age. He was 
 killed fighting on the king's side at the battle of Hopton 
 Heath, 19 March 1642-3. 
 
 Mr Towers was Fellow of Queens' and afterwards Bishop 
 of Peterborough. Many years after, when King James 
 heard him preach at Castle Abbey, he recognised behind 
 the episcopal habit one of the actors in his favourite play. 
 
 Mr Morgan was Thomas Morgan, who was adrtiitted 
 Fellow - Commoner under Preston, being then B.A. Of 
 Mr Morgan's acting on this memorable occasion we find 
 the following notice in Ball's Life of Preston :— 
 
 " Men thought him meet for to be trusted with the care of youth : 
 and many had their eyes upon him, for their Sons or Friends. Master 
 Morgan, q{ He^fords had been some time dead, and had left his son 
 and heir an orphan, in trust with some that were his Kinsmen,'and like 
 to manage his Estate to most advantage. This Master Morgan's son, 
 under whose shadow these Prestons had for some time lived, was by 
 his Guardians no-w commended to hiacare ; not, only for that relation 
 he had to Heyfords, his native town, and to the Family, but also that; 
 by that means the young Gentle-man might be preserved from the 
 influence of his other friends, who were many of them Popish. King 
 James had been so well pleased at the Commencement held before 
 him lately, that be resolves Upon another visit. The Heads agree to 
 
I20 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 entertain him with a Comedy. There was one, Ruggles of Clare Hall, 
 that had made a jeering Comedy against the lawyers called, Ignoramus, 
 This was resolved on to be acted before the King, and great care was 
 taken for to furnish, and all parts with Actors answerable. Master 
 Morgan was a comely modest gentleman, and it was believed would 
 well become a woman's dresse, atid accordingly his Tutor (Master 
 Preston sent to) that he would give way and all encouragement unto the 
 service. He liked not the notion, could not believe that his Friends 
 intended he should be a Player, and so desired to be excused. But the 
 Guardians were not so exact and scrupulous, but thought if he played 
 this Game well he might win more than could be hoped for elsewhere ; 
 and so Master Morgan was allowed by his Guardians to play his part, 
 and afterward removed unto Oxford, and suflfered to play what part he 
 would, and so relapsed into Popery, which hath proved fatal and un- 
 fortunate to him and his." 
 
 The king indeed was so pleased with the Comedy of 
 Ignoramus, that he desired to see it again, and being unable 
 to prevail upon the actors to come to London, he made a 
 second visit to Cambridge, arriving Saturday, 13 May, and 
 departing on Monday, 15 May 1615. Ignoramus, with the 
 same actors, was represented on Saturday evening, and on 
 Monday an act was performed. " Mr Roberts Trinitatis," 
 one of the disputants, is supposed to be William Roberts, 
 Fellow of Queens' and ultimately Bishop of Bangor. 
 Another disputant was Edward Bigland, B.D., Fellow of 
 Queens'. The others were Th. Comber, afterwards Master 
 of Trinity College, and Wm. Chappell of Christ's, afterwards 
 Bishop of Cork.' — (Cooper, Ann. iii. 85-89.) 
 
 From this time John Preston became a notable member 
 of the University, and a leading man among the Puritans. 
 He continued residing uninterruptedly in the College, 
 chiefly occupied with pupils and with preaching, but taking 
 little share in College or University business. " This faith- 
 fulness to Master Morgan . . . increased his reputation 
 in the country, so that now he was accounted the only 
 Tutor, and was careful to read unto them and direct their 
 studies." "^ 
 
 * Searle's History of Queens' College, p. 433. 
 
MADE BISHOP OF SALISBURY 12 1 
 
 " He was," says Fuller, " the greatest pupil-monger in England in 
 man's memory, having sixteen Fellow-commoners (most heirs to fair 
 estates) admitted in one year in Queens' College, and provided con- 
 venient accommodation for them. As William the popular Earl of 
 Nassau was said to have won a subject from the King of Spain to his 
 own party, every time he put off his hat ; so was it commonly said in 
 the College that everytime when Master Preston plucked off his hat to 
 Doctor Davenant the College-Master, he gained a chaniber or study 
 for one of his pupils." ^ 
 
 Respecting which paragraph Mr Searle observes — 
 
 " The above statement of Fuller it has not been found possible 
 entirely to verify, however, between i8 April 1618 and 28 April 1619, he 
 entered in the College books as his pupils 13 Fellow-commoners, 5 
 pensioners and 2 sizars. This number of Fellow-commoners, however, 
 was quite exceptional. Among the Fellow-commoners were Sir Henry 
 Slingsby and Sir Arthur Capel, both beheaded during the Civil 
 Wars.'"" 
 
 In the diary of Sir Henry Slingsby of Scriven, bart, 
 edited by the Rev. Daniel Parsons, M.A., we find several 
 letters written by him to his father from Queens' College, 
 and by his father to him. He was admitted Fellow- 
 commoner on 2 January 161 8-9, and his letters belong to 
 that year, except one of 162 1. Unfortunately his letters 
 are very short, a fact of which his father complains, and we 
 are in consequence deprived of what might have been a 
 source of much valuable information as to the studies and 
 habits of the undergraduates of the time of James I. In a 
 letter of 3 May 1621, his father had requested him to find 
 out whether Preston would take a young man, Robert 
 Talbot of Worcestershire, who was connected with the 
 Slingsby family, as his pupil, and on 13 June he wrote as 
 follows on this point : — 
 
 " As for that Gentilman you writt of, I have spoken to my Tutor 
 about him, and he gave me this answer, that he never tooke Pupill 
 
 ^ Fuller, Worthies, Northamptonshire. 
 ^ Searle's Queens' College, p. 474. 
 
122 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 but upon two conditions. First, that they should be an elder brother, 
 secondly, of a stayd sober cariage : upon these two conditions he is 
 ready to doe him all the good he can." 
 
 This corroborates Fuller's statement. 
 
 In 1616 Dr Davenant caused an account of the founda- 
 tion of the College and of its Endowments to be drawn up. 
 Of this there are several copies in the University Library 
 and in Queens' College Library. 
 
 Sir Capel Bedel of Huntingdonshire, grandson of Sir 
 Arthur Capel of Hadlam, Hertfordshire, was admitted 
 Fellow-commoner of Queens' College on 5 July 1617, being 
 matriculated in March following. He was Preston's pupil, 
 as many of Sir Arthur's sons had been. He got acquainted 
 with Jane, the daughter of Dr Newcome, " a civilian, and 
 Commissary to the Chancellor of Ely," who lived in St 
 Botolph's parish, " a very proper well-bred gentlewoman." 
 As it seemed likely they might very shortly become con- 
 tracted, Preston took Sir Capel and other Fellow-commoners, 
 his pupils, for a journey to Saffron Walden and Audley 
 End, and either by design or accident one of the young 
 men proposed to go on to Hadham, Sir Arthur's seat, 
 where Preston told him the circumstances. On his advice 
 the grandfather, who was also his guardian, kept Sir Capel 
 back, and then persuaded him to go abroad upon his 
 travels.^ 
 
 In 1617, Dr George Mountain, Dean of Westminster and 
 formerly Fellow of Queens' College, became Bishop of 
 Lincoln, being elected 20 October, and consecrated. Not- 
 withstanding the resentment against the College for not 
 electing hith to the vacant Mastership of the Society, in 
 1614, on the death of the President, Dr Tyndal, and pre- 
 ferring our author, which Ball imputes to Mpuntaigne, he 
 must have been soon reconciled to it, as four years after- 
 wards, in 16 1 8, we find him bestowing a house in Cambridge 
 
 ^ Searle's History of Queens^ Collegi, p. 435. 
 
MADE BISHOP OF SALISBURY 123 
 
 on it, as we have seen, for the purpose of endowing two 
 scholarships. 
 
 On 13 March 1617-8 died Dr John Jegon, Bishop of 
 Norwich. He had been Fellow of Queens' College from 
 1572 to 1590, and was chosen Master of Corpus Christi 
 College 1 590. Some of his pupils removed with him from 
 Queens' College to Corpus. During his Mastership, and 
 under his discipHne and good management, the College 
 was in a very flourishing condition. He became Bishop 
 of Norwich in 1603. 
 
 During the term of Dr Davenant's Mastership the in- 
 creasing number of students induced the College in 1618 
 to erect a new building for their accommodation — both for 
 scholars and fellows. It was built on some of the land 
 formerly belonging to the Carmelites, and is described as 
 " in the friars." The architect of the new buildings was 
 Mr Gilbert Wigge, who was one of the architects of the 
 second court of St John's College, in 1602. 
 
 In 1618 John Scot, notary public, drew up an account 
 of the foundation "of the University, with a catalogue 
 of the founders, benefactors, officers and members of 
 the several Colleges. A copy, with the coat of arms 
 beautifully drawn in proper colours, was inscribed to the 
 President (Davenant) and the whole society, and is 
 preserved in the College archives. 
 
 The number of members of the University was 2998. 
 The number of students in Queens' College from 1600 to 
 16 1 2 was, on an average, 28 a year: while Preston was 
 Fellow, and under the Presidentship of Dr Davenant from 
 1612 to 1622, the average rose to 41 : the number of 
 admissions for the year Michaelmas 161 8 to Michaelmas 
 1619 being 55, viz., 20 Fellow-commoners, 16 pensioners, 
 and 19 sizars; while from 1622 to 1640 the average was 
 30. This was the period when Fuller, the Church his- 
 torian, was member of the College. Of the 454 students 
 entered in Preston's time, 104 were entered as his pupils. 
 
124 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 In Ball's Life of Preston we find the following account 
 of his labours as Dean and Catechist, College offices which 
 he held in the year 1618-9 : — 
 
 " It was not long before it came to Master Preston's course for to 
 be Dean and Catechist, which he resolved to improve by going through 
 a Body of Divinity : For it was not his opinion that others should do 
 as he had done — ^that is, peruse the schoolmen first, and then come to 
 the modern writers : but first read Summes and Systemes in Divinity, 
 and settle their opinions and judgments, and then read Fathers, school- 
 men, or what they had a mind to. This being known, and some honest 
 Townsmen hearing him at first by chance, there came the next day 
 every man for to hear him, and the next day more, both Townsmen 
 and Schollars from other CoUedges, so that the outward Chappel would 
 be often full before the Fellows came. Master Preston was of a very 
 ipeek and quiet spirit, never resented injuries, nor provoked any unto 
 aversness, yet had some enemies : Si injuria multos libi fecit inimicos 
 facief invidia multos. What had Paul done (Acts xiii. 4, 5) for to 
 deserve so sharp an opposition, but envy moved them. There had 
 been other Deans and Catechists before this gentleman, yet no such 
 crowding. Complaint was made to the Vice-Chancellor of this un- 
 usual kind of Catechizing : it was assured not only that Townsmen and 
 Scholars mingled, but other CoUedges intruded also, that the Fellows 
 for the crowd and multitude could not get through, and come to 
 Chappel to their places : that it was not safe for any man to be thus 
 adored, and doted on, unless they had a mind to cry up Puritanism'., 
 which in short time would pull them down : that the Crosier staff 
 would not support them long, if such assemblies were encouraged : 
 Obsia principiis, sera medicina paratur, &c. 
 
 " Well, upon the whole an order was agreed on in the Consistory, 
 and sent unto the Colledge, that the Scholars and Townsmen should 
 be confined to their proper preachers, that no stranger, neither Towns- 
 man nor Scholar, should presume, on any pretence whatsoever, to come 
 unto these Lectures, which were proper only to the members of the 
 Colledge. The Edict was observed punctually, and the Auditory by 
 it much impaired. Had strangers still been suffered to attend, those 
 sermons had been printed as well as others ; for there were divers 
 that exactly noted, and wrote out all fair, unto the time of this restraint, 
 but no one after that could go on with it, and so it rests. But he went 
 on and was assiduous unto the year's end, and waded through it, which 
 was a great help unto many of his pupils, who made the greater 
 benefit of these things, because they were not common and in 
 print." 
 
MADE BISHOP OF SALISBURY 125 
 
 It should be mentioned that the old Ante-Chapel is only 
 20 feet wide, and is now but 17 feet long. In 1773 it was 
 shortened 2 or 3 feet to lengthen the Chapel, but the 
 present passage to the Walnut- Tree Court, before alluded 
 to in connection with Dr Davenant's new buildings towards 
 King's College, must have existed at the date of Preston's 
 Deanship, as his new buildings, under the superintendence 
 of the architect Mr Gilbert Wigge, were finished by May 
 1619. The handsome new Chapel by Bodley — on the 
 King's College side of the Walnut-Tree Court — has been 
 opened lately during the late Master's time — Rev. Canon 
 Campion, D.D., who preached an admirable sermon on 
 the memorable occasion. 
 
 On the death of Queen Anne in 1619, the University 
 published a collection of verses, entitled Lacryma Can- 
 tabrigienses in obitum ser. Regince Annce. It contains some 
 verses by John Goodwin, Fellow of Queens', the celebrated 
 Arminian controversialist. 
 
 The following two extracts are the last we find with 
 Davenant's name appended as Master of the College, in 
 the archives of the Society : — 
 
 " Sept. 2nd, 1619. — It was agreed that only fellowes and Masters of 
 Arts in fellowes comons should be tied to execute Chappel, and that 
 the fellow cofBoners should bee free from that burden, w'^h for some 
 years past by Custome they were liable unto. — J. Davenant." 
 
 It was decreed by the Master and Fellows, January the 
 19th, 1620, 
 
 " That the bacheler Coinencers shall make no breakfast at all, but 
 only to allow for the fellowes and Master of Arts uppon the friday at 
 dinner two shillings a messe, and a quart of wine over and above to 
 every messe.— JOHN Davenant. (Old Parch. Reg. fo. 11 b.) 
 
 Enough, we trust, has been said to show that the College 
 under the Presidentship of Dayenant was in a most efficient 
 state, officered with particularly able tutors and lecturers, 
 was in a very flourishing condition, and reached such a 
 
126 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 climax of success, which has never since been surpassed, or 
 even equalled. 
 
 We have now come to the time when Dr Davenant had to 
 sever his connection with Cambridge, to resign the Presi- 
 dentship of his College, and lay down his office as Margaret 
 Professor. It is not to be wondered at that a man of such 
 theological eminence, one who had been so successful in 
 ruling a College, and distinguished in the discharge of 
 the professorial duties, should have been marked out for 
 higher preferment. He was evidently much admired at 
 Court by the royal family, and King James seems to have 
 had a very sincere regard for him. Moreover, his success- 
 ful bearing at the Synod of Dort secured him, with his 
 other colleagues, quick and substantial rewards, on their 
 return from the Conference, Bishop Carlton was trans- 
 lated from Llandaff to Chichester. Dr Hall was selected 
 for the Bishopric of Exeter, and subsequently translated to 
 Norwich. Dr Balcanquall was made Dean of Rochester, 
 and Dr Davenant was raised to the Episcopate as Bishop 
 of Salisbury (1621). This necessitated, as a matter of 
 course, the severance of his connection with the College. 
 Dr Davenant had now beep President since 1614, and upon 
 his advancement he seemed at first disinclined to entirely 
 break off this connection with the College, for he desired to 
 retain the Presidentship with his Bishopric, and wrote to 
 Dr Ward to that effect ; and even when made Bishop 
 he sends (Nov. 7, 162 1) directions for the Moderation at 
 the approaching commencement, so deeply attached was 
 he to the Foundation which he had dominated so many 
 years, and with such marked success. 
 
 Bishop Davenant was a great benefactor to his College. 
 
 " The good Bishop," says Fuller, " is thankful to that College whence 
 he had his education. He conceiveth himself to hear his mother- 
 College always speaking to him in the language of Joseph to Pharoah's 
 butler. But think on me, I pray thee, when it shall be well with thee 
 (Gen. xl. 14). If he himself hath but little, the less from him is the 
 
MADE BISHOP OF SALISBURY 127 
 
 more acceptable : a drop from a sponge is as much i as a ton of water 
 from a marsh. He bestows on it books, or plate, or lands, or building j 
 and the houses of the prophets rather lack watering than planting, 
 there being enough of them if they had enough." ' 
 
 In 1626 he gave ;^ioo for the use of the librarian, with 
 which 130 volumes were purchased, and in 1637 he gave 
 rent-charge on an estate at Eastchurch, Isle of Sheppey, 
 out of which two scholars were to be maintained, and, 
 besides, £10 per annum out of the same estate to be em- 
 ployed in increasing the library; The library of Queens' 
 is now a very valuable one, and contains some very old 
 manuscripts, missals, and other service books. It is served 
 by a librarian, who gives out books twice a week, to which 
 is attached Clark's Scholarship, an office kindly bestowed 
 by the President and Fellows upon the writer during his 
 undergraduate career, in consideration of his descent from 
 the illustrious subject of this memoir, and his nephew. In 
 addition to this, he gave to the College in 1637 two livings, 
 the Rectory of Cheverell Magna, Wiltshire (exchanged in 
 1774 for the Rectory of Seagrave, Leicestershire), and the 
 Rectory of Newton Toney, Wiltshire, one of the best in 
 the gift of the Society, and usually held by one who had 
 been Tutor or Prelector of his College. 
 
 Dr Davenant's portrait is in the lodging of the President 
 of Queens' College. It represents him full face, in the 
 episcopal habit, with a skull cap and small double ruff, 
 with beard and moustache. It has been engraved by 
 Garner. Looking at it, we may indeed say that his very 
 form drew the eye. That square forehead, large and 
 lustrous eyes, fine aquiline nose, and expressive counte- 
 nance, all suggest the ideal of a thoughtful theologian and 
 grave divine. 
 
 Taking leave of the College> and of one John Rolfe, an 
 ancient servant thereof, he desired him to pray for him ; 
 and when the other modestly returned that he rather 
 ' Fuller's ffoiy Slate (The Good Bishop, p. 270). 
 
128 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 needed his lordship's prayers : " Yea, John," said he, " and 
 I need thine too, being now to enter into a calling wherein 
 I shall meet with many and great temptations." " Praefuit 
 qui profuit," adds his nephew, " was the motto written in 
 most of his books ; the sense whereof he practised in his 
 conversation." " John Rolfe is probably a missprint," says 
 Mr Searle, " for John Roise or Rosse, who had been in 
 the service of the College for more than twenty years." 
 
 Thus our good divine left his College, resigned his 
 Mastership, and quitted, at least ofScially, his Alma Mater. 
 He was succeeded in his Margaret Professorship by Dr 
 Ward, Master of Sidney-Sussex College, his great friend 
 and former colleague at the Synod of Dort. Naturally 
 synchronizing with his theological proclivities, he would 
 perpetuate Dr Davenant's views and opinions in the Chair 
 of Divinity. They remained ever after the best of friends, 
 and we shall hear more of Dr Ward presently, in the 
 correspondence between, him and the Bishop, respecting 
 the Fellowship which Dr Davenant was anxious to obtain 
 for his nephew. It was in accordance with the wish of 
 Davenant himself, that Dr Samuel Ward should be chosen 
 to succeed him as Professor, and he was elected 23 Feb. 
 1622-3, before Dr Davenant resigned his Mastership. His 
 mind was therefore put at rest that the same teaching, 
 and especially on the doctrines of Grace, would go on just 
 as before, upon his leaving Cambridge. 
 
 Sir, — I am pfitly weary of London, and yet know not how to get 
 out. The next week (as I suppose) y" answerer for y' Bachelors of 
 Divinity is chosen, & propounds his Questions. Let my absence bee 
 no cause of delay, in y° appoynting of y" questions. I hope to bee 
 at Cambridg vppon Saturday or moonday, come senight at y" fartherst. 
 Yf for surenes sake you provide your selfe of a Moderator against 
 y" second day, I shall be glad of it. But yf you bee vnprovided, and 
 I can possibly bee ther by Moonday come senight, I will vndertake 
 it. The Saturday before you shall hear from mee againe. Now 
 y" speech goes y' y' Bishop of Lincoln shall have London, y« Dean 
 of Westminster Lincolne, and Doctor Laud Westminster. The Bishop 
 
MADE BISHOP OF SALISBURY 129 
 
 of Saint Davids shall goe to Carlile. Doctor Gwin to Saint Davids, 
 and M' Sinews shall be Master of Saint Johns. My Sister y« last 
 week set out towards Yviechurch, and came thither vppon Saturday. 
 I hope y^ change of air, company of her children, and howshould 
 busines, will bee a good means to recover her health, & to refresh 
 her minde. I dined yesterday with my Lord of York, who is now in 
 very good health, and did kindely remember you. Thus wth remem- 
 brance of my love to your selfe, & y° rest of my good freinds I coiiiit 
 you to God. 
 
 Your very loving freind 
 
 John Davenant. 
 Westminster, June y= 7th, 1621, 
 
 This letter was no sooner written, but Mr Mikelthwait delivered 
 
 mee yours. I pceav it is lost labour to write news vnto Cambridg ; 
 
 for you know it sooner there, then wee do heer. ffor y* reteining of my 
 
 Mastership awhile, as also of my Lecture, wee will advise further at 
 
 our meeting. I pray send the Questions. Mine own men come vp 
 
 hither vppon Wednesday. 
 
 [Endorsed : — 1 To y" Right woor' his very loving freind Doctor 
 
 Ward Vicechancelor & Master of Sidney CoUedg in Cambridg 
 
 give this. 
 
 June 7, 1 62 1. 
 My L. Bp. of Sarum his Lett'- 
 
 When Dr Davenant was made Bishop of Salisbury,^ 
 there was at first a report that Dr Balcanqual was to be 
 the new master of Queens' College, but afterwards it was 
 believed that the king would grant the Fellows a free 
 election in the choice of their president. 
 
 Dr Walter Balcanqual was a " Scottish man," Fellow of 
 Pembroke Hall, 161 1. Ordained deacon, 20 Sept. 1612, 
 at Downham, and priest, i8th Dec. 1614, at Ely House, 
 by Lancelot Andrews, Bishop of Ely. He was Vicar of 
 Harston, 1615, and of Waterbeach, 1617. This living he 
 resigned on being sent to the celebrated Synod of Dort as 
 representative of the Church of Scotland, and seems to 
 
 1 " Electus die Junii 1621, confirmatus, 17 Nov. et die crastino consecratns in 
 Capella infra Palatium Episcopale, London : ab. Epis. London : Wigorm : 
 Elien : Cicestr. and Oxon. virtute commissionis ab Asepo, data 17 Nov. 
 1621," Reg. Abbot. 
 
 I 
 
I30 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 have had decided views upon theological questions. He 
 was Chaplain to King James, 1618, Master of the Savoy, 
 1619, succeeding the Dean of Westminster, Dr Mountain, 
 when he was made Bishop of Lincoln ; Dean of Rochester 
 in 1624, and of Durham, 1639. 
 
 " Hi^ promotion was, no doubt, owing to his fidelity to Buckingham, 
 of which he makes boast in a letter to Conway in 1627, and to his 
 persistence in asking. He was always asking ; and by dint of flying 
 at high game, succeeded in pitching upon the lower at last. In 1626, 
 Conway, the Secretary of State, wrote to Balcanqual, then Master of 
 the Savoy, calling his attention to information given that there was a 
 place within the Savoy, ' where mass is usually sayd, and much resort 
 of people to it.' The Master is desired to find out the truth of the 
 report, to cause the priest or other ecclesiastical persons to be appre- 
 hended, and to seize upon ' all the Popish bookes and massinge stuff 
 that shall be found there.' " » 
 
 He was a staunch royalist, and was forced to fly from 
 the pursuit of the parliamentary party. In his wanderings 
 from place to place, he caught a disease of which he died 
 on Christmas day 1645, and was buried at Chirk, Denbigh- 
 shire.^ 
 
 " The appointment of Davenant to the bishopric of Salisbury 
 created Master Prestotfs cares. Doctor Davenant had been his con- 
 stant and faithfull Friend, and gives countenance upon all occasions 
 to him and all his pupils. But now who should succeed ? and when 
 should Master Preston find another shelter ? The Fellows for the most 
 part were not his Friends, envied his numbers, and great relations, 
 and there was no man like so to befriend him. Besides, the Margaret 
 Professors place would be void also by this remove, and many able 
 stirring Batchelors in Divinity proposed unto him that place, and 
 assured him the Election would be easily carried for him. The truth 
 is, he had no great hope to do any great good in the Election of the 
 Master of the CoUedge, and one Doctor Mansel being named, a very 
 moderate good natured man, he let that care fall, and was more 
 anxious about the Professor's place. He had a long time been success- 
 full in the way of pupils, but Doctor Davenanfs leaving of the CoUedge 
 
 ^ Memorials of the Savoy, by Loftie, p. 142. 
 ' Vi3.\)^eT's Sufferings of tUe Clergy, ii. 19. 
 
MADE BISHOP OF SALISBURY 131 
 
 troubled him. A great Tutor hath much occasion to use the Master's 
 influence, for accommodation and advancement of his pupils, which 
 now he saw he could not promise unto himself." ^ 
 
 John Mansel was of the County of Lincoln, entered 
 Queens' College, 1594; wasB.A. 1597-8, was made scholar, 
 1598, and elected fellow of the College, 13 June 1600. 
 He was descended from an ancient family. 
 
 " I have seen," said Weeves, " a pedigree of the Mansels from Philip 
 de Mansel, who came in with the Conqueror, untill our times. Of this 
 name and familie is that orthodoxall sound Divine and worthy master 
 of Queenes Colledge in Cambridge. John Mansel, Doctor of Divinitie, 
 and a general scholar in all good literature. 
 
 " He commenced M.A. in 1601, and was B.D. in 1609. From the 
 year 1604 to the year 161 7 (during Davenant's Presidentship) he seems 
 to have been in residence, as he held various College offices and 
 College lectureships in every year of that period. He was senior 
 bursar for the two years 1609-10 and 1610-11. He was Vicar of Hock- 
 ington from 2 Sept. 1614 to May 1616. He vacated his Fellowship in 
 the course of the year 1616-17, receiving his stipend for 34 weeks in 
 the third quarter, so that he ceased to be fellow towards the end of 
 July 1617. He became D.D. in 1622. He was elected President of 
 his College, 29 April 1622." ^ 
 
 When Dayenant finally quitted Queens', he left his 
 young nephew under Dr Mansel's care and tuition, but 
 for some unexplained reason the Doctor does not seem to 
 have befriended young Fuller, for he would not elect him 
 to a vacant fellowship, in spite of the Bishop's repeated 
 instigations to that effect. A new President had arisen 
 who knew not Joseph (our Thomas), and he continued so 
 during Fuller's residence.. His name, it will be seen, 
 occurs in unfavourable connection with Fuller, whose pro- 
 spects in life he could not be induced to advance. 
 
 ^ Ball's Life, 921. "^ Searle's Queens' College, 412. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 BISHOP OF SALISBURY (1621-1641) 
 
 "Reader, for the matter what I have -written, I require thee in God's 
 name do me justice : for the manner, method, or words thereof I request thee, 
 as I am a man, show me favour. Think not the worse of the Truth for my 
 sake, but think the better of me, for the Truth's sake, which I have defended. 
 And conceive me not to be of a brawling and controversial disposition, who 
 so desire and will pray for an agreement from my soul, so long as my speech 
 shall serve me. Yea, if I should chance to be striken dumb, 1 would with 
 Zacharia ' make signs for table books,' and write that the name of that which 
 I desire above all earthly things is Peace. God send it." — Fuller's TruiA 
 Mainiained, pp. 77-8. 
 
 THE elevation of Dr Davenant to the Episcopate was 
 the necessary result of his theological eminence. 
 " He had for twelve years," says his animated eulogist 
 Hachet, " been public reader in Divinity in Cambridge, and 
 had adorned that place with such learning that no Professor 
 in Europe did better deserve to receive the labourer's 
 penny at the twelfth hour of the day." Accordingly, in 
 1 62 1, he was nominated to the See of Salisbury, vacant 
 by the premature death of his brother-in-law, Dr Robert 
 Townson, through the influence of Dr John Williams, then 
 only Dean of Westminster, but soon after he became Bishop 
 of Lincoln, and Lord Keeper. Fuller (who in his com- 
 mendation of those who were dear to him, may as usual be 
 relied upon, since his affection does not render him partial) 
 expresses his indignation at a passage in Welldon's Court 
 of King James, "a satire" (he terms it) "rather than a 
 history," where Townson and Davenant are spoken of as 
 being preferred gratis to blow up the Buckingham party, 
 paying nothing in fine or pension : it being customary for 
 139 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 133 
 
 the Bishops to pay certain fees to the King on receiving 
 their Sees : — ^ 
 
 " Now, although both these persons here praised were my god- 
 fathers and my uncles, and although such good words seem a rarity 
 from so railing a mouth ; yet shall not these considerations tempt me 
 to accept his praises on such invidious terms as the author doth 
 proffer them. Oh ! were these worthy bishops now alive, how highly 
 would they disdain to be praised by such a pen, by which King James, 
 their lord and master, is carelessly traduced ! How would they con- 
 demn such uncharitable commendations, which are (if not founded on) 
 accompanied with the disgrace of others of their order. Wherefor I, 
 their nephew, in behalf of their memories, protest against this passage, 
 so far forth as it casteth lusteth on them, by eclipsing the credit of 
 other prelates, their contemporaries. And grant corruption too common 
 in that kind, yet were there besides them at that time many worthy 
 bishops raised to their dignity by their deserts without any simoniacal 
 compliances." ^ 
 
 He was one of four, whose advancement Williams, " being 
 warm in favour," procured at the time of his own pro- 
 motion. The others were Dr Carey to Exeter, Laud to 
 St David's (and subsequently to become Primate of all 
 England and Metropolitan), and Dr Donne, the "poet- 
 preacher." In a letter to Dr Ward, Master of Sidney 
 College, and his successor in the Chair of Margaret Pro- 
 fessor of Theology, at Cambridge, dated May 27th, 1621, 
 he mentions his appointment to the See of Salisbury. The 
 con£;-^ cf/ltre was dated 29th May 1621. He was elected 
 nth June, and received the royal assent, loth August, but 
 he was not confirmed till November 17, nor consecrated 
 till the following day. 
 
 The following letters were penned by Davenant before 
 he left Queens' College for his bishopric at Salisbury, and 
 are extant at the Bodleian. 
 
 1 A document is in the existence of the State Paper Office, which refers to 
 "the restitution of temporalities " to Dr Davenant.— Calendar Dom. Ser., 
 Nov. 21, 1620, 
 
 ' Worthies, Camhidgeshire, p. 154. 
 
134 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Good Sir, this day my Sister is setting forward towards Yvie- 
 church: and y* broad scale putt to y° Conge d'eslire, is also sent 
 down to y= Dean & chapter at Salisbury. The election will bee 
 returned about a fortnight hence, and then yf y* Royall assent bee 
 once had, I shall bee at liberty to return to Cambridg. ffor moderation 
 at y" Coinencement, I shall bee willing to pform my woonted service 
 to y* Vniu'sity, yf I can gett from hence in any time, ffor y* Divinity 
 lecture it is a busines y' fitteth not a young hend, & therefore my 
 desire is y' of all men your selfe would vndertake it ; wch I know will 
 bothe bee for y^ Honor & Profit of y° vniu'sity. ffor ability of vnder- 
 going it, leave that to bee iudged by others, to whome you are so well 
 known, y' yf your self bee not vnwilling to vndergoe y* place, I doubt 
 not but y* vniv'sity will bee forward enough to conferr it vppon you. 
 But more of this when wee meete. I hope in regard of y= excessive 
 chardges of ffirst fruits. Subsidies and Tenths, (wch amount as I am 
 tould to above 600I. yeerly) I shall obtein leav to hould my Master- 
 ship some time, wch yf I doe, (& it bee so thought fitt,) I shall not 
 bee vnwilling to continew my payns in y° Lecture-reading for a time. 
 My body may bee tossed vp and down to other places, but Cambridg 
 will alwaies have my heart. The Bishop of Carlile died vppon tewsday 
 last, who is like to succeed him as yet 1 hear not. The bishopricq of 
 London stands still as it did : y" speech now runns y' y" Dean of 
 Westminster is vnwilling to accept ; and rather desires to hould some 
 smaller Bishopricq together wth his Deanry. The Parlament breaks 
 vp vppon moonday ; y" Howses would willingly have had it continewed 
 
 Thomas 
 
 vntill Midsomer. S' John Bennet was brought to his answer vppon 
 Wednesday, & (it is said) shall receav his censure vppon friday or 
 Saturday. And thus I coinend you to y= Protection of y' Highest, 
 resting ever 
 
 Your assured loving freind 
 May ij (?) 1621. John Davenant. 
 
 S' Thomas Bennets Censure is differd till y« Session of Parlament 
 next following. 
 
 Coinend mee (I pray) to those friends of mine whome you speci- 
 fied in your letter, as also to M' Provost, and y' rest, as you finde 
 opportunity. 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To y" Right woortt liis very loving freind Dr Ward 
 Vicechancelor of Cambridg, & Master of Sidney Colledg 
 deliver this. 
 
 1621. 
 My L'^ Bp. of Sarum, his lett'- 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 135 
 
 Sir,'! have spent heer many dayes in much sorrow; and could 
 wish my selfe at Cambridg, y' wth necessary busines my minde might 
 bee wthdrawen from y" running vppon y° matter of our greife. My 
 Sister is still but weak in body,, & troubled in minde ; yet I have 
 psuaded her to goe down into y° country amongest her children, & 
 so shee resolves to doe towards y= end of y° next week. I never 
 desired any of those eminent places in y^ Church, w"='' I thought 
 alwaies required men of more active spirits, & greater endowments 
 then I finde to bee in my selfe. Yet y* providence of God as heerto- 
 fore, so now calls me to those places, wch are beste suiting to mine 
 own disposition or desire. His Maiesty vppon friday last signed 
 y= Conge d'esUre for Salisbury, and I suppose y" broad seal will bee 
 passed vppon Wednesday. I must stay heer to expect y" return of 
 y= election, & y= Kings Royal assent, & then I hope to bee sett at 
 liberty, & return to Queens CoUedg. In regard of y= great chardges 
 wch will lie vppon y" Bishopricq, I hope to obteine some reasonable 
 time for houlding my Mastership, but what will bee granted as yet I 
 know not. I was no suitor for y° Bishopricq, nether shall I bee for 
 y° other : but I suppose those Honorable freinds, who prevented my 
 desires in y° one will consider what is iust & reasonable in y^ other. 
 I am afrayd it will bee yet a fortnight, ere I shall come down. I have 
 sent my minde to M' Turner, concerning pricking of Lectures ; & 
 have advised him to take his direction from you. I know not how 
 soon I may resigne y° divinity Lecture, I pray bethink your selfe of 
 a Successor, & yf you would vndergoe y'' payns, I doubt not but 
 y* whole vniu'sity would bee gladd of it, & never look after any other. 
 Thus desiring Gods blessing in all Estates & Courses wherein his 
 providence shall place us, I rest 
 
 Your very loving freind 
 
 Westminster, JOHN Davenant. 
 
 May 27th, 162 1. 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To y° Right Woor" his very loving freind Doctor 
 Ward vicechancelor of Cambridg, & Master of Sidney CoUedg 
 deliver this.. 
 
 May 27, 1621. 
 my L. Bp. of Sarum his lett'- 
 
 S'', I will take y" best care I can about M' Buffeilds prebend ; to 
 morrow I will dispatch away a letter vnto M' Packer : and vppon 
 Wednesday I will write to M' Ireland to make enquiry whether M' 
 BufFeild be living or dead. My consecration depends vppon my Lord 
 Keepers ; but yf I perceive hee will differ his overlong, I will not stay 
 
136 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 vppon him. I suppose wee shall bee bothe consecrated betwixt this 
 & Michaelmas, but the day is not yet resolved vppon. I am gladd 
 you have had so good succes in your law busines : and I hope to see 
 you heer before my consecration ; w* will not bee till y' later end of 
 this moneth at y° soonest. I suppose I shall not hould y* Mastership 
 beyond y" next Audit : and for my Lecture I purpose to give it over 
 at y' end of Michaelmas terme ; I wish your speedy return bothe in 
 regard of that, and of y" Vicechancelorship. Thus with remembrance 
 of my harty love I coinit you to God, and rest alwaies 
 Your very loving freind 
 Queens CoUedg, JOHN Saru, Elect- 
 
 August s°, 1621. 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To y° Right woortt his very loving freind Dr Ward 
 vicechancelor of y* vniversity of Cambridg, M' of Sidney 
 CoUedg & Archdeacon of Taunton deliver this. 
 
 August s, 1621. 
 my L. of Sara his Lett'- 
 
 This delay was due to a very untoward circumstance, 
 which happened to Dr Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 As he was using a cross-bow in Lord Zouch's park, the 
 Primate accidentally shot the keeper. Being on a visit to 
 Lord Zouch at Bramshill Park, in Hampshire, his Grace 
 was prevailed on to attend a hunting party to the field, 
 and even to take a cross-bow in his hand. His bad marks- 
 manship, though not at all discreditable to his sacred pro- 
 fession, was, unhappily, fatal to one of the keepers ; for in 
 shooting at a deer it so chanced that " he missed the beast 
 and shot the man." The accident was one which might 
 have befallen the most experienced sportsman. But it 
 was an awkward incident in the life of a Churchman : more 
 especially of one who was at the head of a party professing 
 more than ordinary strictness of conversation. 
 
 Four Bishops-elect, and designated to their respective 
 Sees, were then waiting for Consecration. Of these, Dr 
 Williams, elect of Lincoln, who, as Heylin tells us, had an 
 eye to the Primacy in case it became vacant ; and Laud, 
 elect of St David's, who had a personal hatred to Abbot, 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 137 
 
 stated an insuperable aversion to be consecrated by a man 
 whose hands were stained with blood.^ Davenant does not 
 seem to have shared the overstrained scruple of " some 
 squeamish and nice-conscienced elects," as young Fuller, 
 who regarded his uncle in all things as the true pattern of 
 clerical propriety, calls them. He did not join in this un- 
 happy cavil, but kept altogether aloof. 
 
 The scandal occasioned by the circumstance will scarcely 
 be credited in these days. Many of the learned and con- 
 scientious divines lamented it with bitter tears. They 
 considered our Church as dishonoured by it, in the eyes of 
 all Christendom. It was a matter of serious doubt among 
 them, whether the shedding of blood, although purely 
 accidental, did not utterly disqualify a Bishop for the per- 
 formance of any sacred office. Nay, the matter afforded 
 matter of officious discussion to the foreign universities.^ 
 The Doctors of the Sorbonne in Paris, after three solemn 
 disputations, resolved that it amounted to a clear canonical 
 irregularity : in other words, to a fatal incapacity for the 
 exercise of all ecclesiastical authority or jurisdiction ! The 
 Archbishop himself was nearly inconsolable. He retired 
 to Guildford, to await the issue of this disastrous mis- 
 adventure. The circumstances, of course, produced con- 
 siderable agitation throughout the Court of James. It 
 was generally surmised that the eye of Dr Williams was 
 steadily fixed upon the Primacy ; and the irregularity of 
 
 ^ " Neither Williams nor Laud would receive consecration from a primate 
 whose hands, as they said, were stained with human blood, and they were 
 consecrated by a commission of bishops, selected by the King. 
 
 " To the Puritans, who rejected all measures in episcopal consecration, 
 these scruples seemed ridiculous and superstitious. By men who were engaged 
 in maintaining against Roman Controversialists the genuine character of Eng- 
 lish orders, and the purity of the Apostolical succession in the English Church, 
 they were felt to be most serious ; nor were they despised by that widespread 
 class of thoughtful and devout laymen whose influence is so conspicuous 
 through these troubled times." — Simpkinson's Life and Times of William 
 Laud, p. 45. 
 
 ^ See Le Bas' Life of ArMishop Laud, pp. 44-5. 
 
1 38 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Abbot, if judiciously established, might probably make 
 straight the way for the aspirations of that ambitious 
 Churchman. An immensity of erudition was expended 
 upon the question by the Civilians and the Canonists ; and 
 for some time it was uncertain if the See of Canterbury 
 would not be vacated by " the hunting of that day." The 
 Canons, on examination, were found to be so vaguely 
 worded, are open to so much subtilty of distinction, that 
 the Commissioners, to whom the matter was referred, pro- 
 tested that they were " unable to return to his Majesty 
 any unanimous resolution or opinion." In one thing, how- 
 ever, they were all agreed : not only that a restitution or 
 dispensation might be granted by his Majesty ^ under the 
 Great Seal ; or (which, in all humility, they recommended),, 
 by the hands of certain clergymen, delegated for that 
 purpose. And, at all events, they were of opinion that the 
 Reverend Father should sue unto his Majesty for such 
 dispensation, as a measure of needful precaution, lest there 
 should have been any irregularity incurred. Conformably 
 to this report, the dispensation was applied for, and 
 obtained, in the shape recommended by the Commissioners. 
 And this proceeding received afterwards the sanction of 
 that great oracle of the common law, Sir Edward Coke. 
 When the question was put to him, by Sir Henry Saville, 
 whether a Bishop might hunt in a park by the laws of the 
 realm ? — he replied, " That a Bishop might do so by this very 
 token, — that there is an old law that a Bishop, when dying, 
 is to leave his pack of dogs to the king's use and disposal. 
 And it might reasonably be concluded that, if the king 
 was to have the dogs when the Bishop died, the Bishop 
 might make use of them when he was alive." ^ 
 
 ^ On the Royal Supremacy, see Fuller's Appellate Jurisdittion of the Crown 
 in Ecclesiastical Cases, pp. 159-207. 
 
 ^ Heylin, pp. 87, 88. Collier, Eccles. Hist., vol. ii. 221, 722. — ^The Royal 
 Dispensation is in the same volume ; in the Collection of Records, 
 No. cviii., Collier is evidently much scandalised, and not altogether with- 
 out reason, at the royal assumption of power on this occasion ; for whatever 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 139 
 
 In justice to the kindness of James' nature, it should be 
 mentioned that on hearing of Abbot's misfortune, he is 
 said to have exclaimed, " An angel might have miscarried 
 in that sort." He further addressed a letter of consolation 
 to the Archbishop, in which he assured him that " he 
 would not add affliction to sorrow, or take one farthing 
 of his goods and moveables which were forfeited by 
 the law." ^ But neither the benevolence of his Majesty, 
 nor the prospect of his royal edict, were sufficient 
 to pacify the scruples of Laud, and the other Bishops- 
 elect who were waiting for consecration. In common 
 with others of their brethren, they said, — " God forbid 
 that those hands should consecrate bishops, and ordain 
 priests, or administer the sacrament of Christ, which 
 God, out of His secret judgments, had permitted to 
 be imbrued in human blood." Some of the prelacy went 
 so far as solemnly to declare that " if they had fallen into 
 the like mischance, they would never have dispaired of 
 God's mercy, for the other life : but, from this world they 
 would have retired : and besought his Majesty for a pension 
 to support them in their sequestered sadness, where they 
 might spend, their days in fasting and prayer." Besides, 
 
 might be the merits of the case it virtually overbore the Ecclesiastical and 
 Civil Judicature. 
 
 ^ The remarks of Hacket on this affair are very sensible and acute. " The 
 Decretals and Extravagants un-bishop a man that killed a man, and meant a 
 beast ; nay, further, if a bishop's horse did cast the groom that watered him 
 into a pond and drowned him ! But if we appeal from them to a higher and 
 better learning, their rigour will prove ridiculous. Irregularities in the super- 
 stitious Latin Church are above number. But what have we to do with 
 them ? That we did cut them off; we did not name it, Indeed in our refor- 
 mation under Edward VI. for they were thrown out, with scorn, as not fit to 
 be mentioned, among ejected rubbish. But we perceived they were never 
 meant to bind, but to open, — I mean the purse. He that is suspended may 
 disentangle himself from the censure with a bribe. The Canonists are good 
 hone-setters, for a hone that never was broken. These Rubrics are filled with 
 punctilios, not for consciences but for consciuncules, haberdashers of small 
 faults, and palpable brokers for fees, and mercenary dispensations." — Racket's 
 Life of Williams, p. 65. 
 
I40 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 there was urgent cause to apprehend that the succession of 
 our hierarchy would be impeached more loudly and 
 maliciously than ever, by the Romanists/ if the continua- 
 tion of it were committed to hands of questionable power.^ 
 These misgivings were respected by the king. A com- 
 mission was directed by him to the Bishops of London 
 (George Mountain), Worcester, Chichester, Ely, Llandaff, 
 and Oxford, to discharge the archiepiscopal function in 
 this case, and from them, by virtue of this commission, 
 Williams was consecrated on November the i ith : and 
 from them Davenant, William Laud, Bishop of St David's, 
 and Carey, Bishop of Exeter, received episcopal consecra- 
 tion, in the chapel of London House, on Sunday, November 
 1 8th, 1 62 1. The royal dispensation to the Archbishop, 
 which Laud himself had joined in recommending, was not 
 issued till the following December.* 
 
 Fuller describes Laud to us as " of low stature but high 
 parts, piercing eyes, cheerful countenance, wherein gravity 
 and pleasantness were well compounded, admirable in his 
 naturals, unblamable in his morals, being very strict in his 
 conversation " * — evidently a person well equipped for the 
 great task which he believed God had set him. 
 
 On the next day after their consecration, the new Bishops 
 took their seats in the House of Peers. Davenant received 
 restitution of the temporalities, 23rd November 1621, and 
 took plenary possession of that See, which had been held 
 by his brother-in-law for so short a time. 
 
 1 See this matter fully discussed in the author's Our EstMished Church, 
 chapter viii., "The Anglican Ordinal," p. 465. 
 
 ^ It is remarkable that Hacket does not ascribe the scruples of Laud and 
 his brethren to any feeling of malevolence towards Abbot. He frankly ac- 
 knowledges that it became the Bishops-elect to be " most circumspect in this 
 matter : and to be informed whether they should acknowledge the power of 
 the Archbishop to be integral and unblemished, in a casual homicide, and 
 to submit to have his hands laid upon their heads." — Hacket, pt. i. p. 66. 
 
 'Collier, vol. ii. p. 721, and the No. cviii. 
 
 ■* Fuller's Worihies, i. 90. 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 141 
 
 Though benevolent and cheerful, Davenant never seems 
 to have lost sight of the consistent dignity and gravity 
 of his character. Upon one occasion, as Fuller records, 
 being invited to dine with Field, Bishop of Hereford — the 
 learned author of that valuable work " on the Church," and 
 not well pleased with the lax and somewhat boon company 
 he met there, nor well pleased with the roysting company, 
 he embraced the earliest opportunity of departing after 
 dinner: and when Field would have lighted him with a 
 candle downstairs, "My lord, my lord," said he, " let us 
 enlighten others by our unblam^eable conversation." 
 
 " For which speech,'' says Fuller, " some since have severely cen- 
 sured him, how justly I interpose not. But let others unrelated to 
 him write his character, whose pen cannot be suspected of flattery 
 which he when living did fuite, and dead did not need'' ^ 
 
 At the same time he is spoken of as remarkably void of 
 harsh or unkind judgment, as " more sensible of his own 
 infirmities than others, being humble in himself and there- 
 fore charitable to others. Upon no one occasion does he 
 appear to have forgotten consistency of conduct. 
 
 Fuller records that after Davenant's consecration, 
 
 *' being, to perform some personal service to King James at Newmarket, 
 he refused to ride on the Lord's Day : and came, though a day later to 
 the Court, no less welcome to the King, who not only accepted his 
 excuse, but also commending his seasonable forbearance." 
 
 Davenant afterwards " magnified King James' bounty to 
 him, who from a private master of a college in Cambridge, 
 without any other immediate (intermediate) preferment, 
 advanced him by an unusual rise to the great and rich 
 Bishopric of Salisbury."^ We are told by Aubrey that 
 many leases of the lands of the See " were but newly 
 expired when Davenant came to this See ; so that there 
 tumbled into his coffers vast summes." 
 
 His predecessor in this See was his brother-in-law, as 
 1 Worthies, London, p. 207. ' Fuller's Church History, bk. xi. p. 139. 
 
142 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 we have seen, Robert Townson, formerly fellow of Queens' 
 College, who had been promoted from the deanery of 
 Westminster to this bishopric in July 1620, but had died 
 on May iSth, 162 1, leaving behind him a wife and fifteen 
 children, " neither plentifully provided for, nor destitute 
 of maintenance," which rather hastened than caused the 
 advancement of his brother-in-law. Dr Townson is said 
 to have been a man of singular piety, eloquence and 
 humility, and died a few months after his consecration, 
 being the fourth bishop of that diocese who had been 
 cut off in the space of seven years. As soon as (if not 
 before) Dr Townson died^ Dr Davenant's friends began to 
 bestir themselves to procure his promotion,^ in pity and 
 commiseration for Mrs Townson's case, that he was " a 
 single man and well deserving, he might succeed his 
 brother (in-law) in the bishopric, and so make some 
 provision for his children." According to Joseph Meade, 
 their success seems however to have been at first some- 
 what doubtful ; but there can be no doubt that Davenant 
 was a favourite with King James, a fact which appears 
 again and again, and for more reasons than one, and more 
 than ever after his return from the Synod of Dort, and his 
 preferment was, with his other colleagues, a foregone 
 conclusion. So marked a man in his College, so brilliant 
 his career at Cambridge, such an European reputation 
 he acquired at that great Protestant Synod, he was bound 
 to be advanced and that quickly in the Church. " Coming 
 events," in his case, "-.cast their shadows before them." 
 
 " It was probably on account of the domestic burden, that there 
 devolved upon him, rather than from his merit, that our Bishop was 
 excused the payment of the introductory fees, and of the annual 
 pension which was then, it seems, customarily paid to the Crown on 
 all similar appointments, proportionate to the wealth or poverty of the 
 individual." " 
 
 » Thos. Ball, Life of Preston. 
 
 * Weldon, ZftX^ry of the Court of King James, by an eye-witness. 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 143 
 
 Upon his final removal to Salisbury, his widowed sister, 
 Margaret, and her children took up their abode with 
 him, finding in his palace, as her epitaph in Salisbury- 
 Cathedral records, " Consolation and a home," and 
 lived in his house till her death in 1634. The Bishop 
 exerted himself to advance these children in life, and we 
 shall find him especially solicitous to settle his nieces,^ most 
 of them marrying clergymen, and two Bishops of Sarum. 
 He himself was never married. According to Camden 
 {Annals, 1 621), when he was made Bishop, the King 
 " charged him not to marry." 
 
 Of the fifteen children that Bishop Townson is said to 
 have had, there are only nine mentioned in Bishop 
 Davenant's will, which was made in 1637, viz., three sons 
 and six daughters. As we have already alluded to them 
 in our first chapter very fully, we need not recapitulate 
 their careers in this place. But though Dr Davenant was 
 consecrated Bishop of Sarum at the close of the year 162 1, 
 he does not seem to have finally resigned the Presidentship 
 of Queens' College till 22nd April 1622. He was certainly 
 back again at Cambridge in the early part of that year, for 
 we read in Baker's St John, "On 10 Jan. 1621-2, Bishops 
 Davenant and Carey were invited to St John's College, 
 where, after supper, the two Bishops, with Dr Richardson, 
 Master of Trinity, and Dr Gwyn, Master of St John's, 
 came down into the Hall, and played at cards " (Mayn's 
 Edition, 6j6). 
 
 The following letter was penned by the newly conse- 
 
 1 " When Bishop Caldwell came to this bishoprick, he did lett long leases, 
 which were but newly expired, when Bishop Davenant came to this See — so 
 that there tumbled into his coffers vast summes. His predecessor married his 
 sister, continued in the See but a little while, and left several children unpro- 
 vided for, so that K. or rather D. of Bucks gave Bp. Davenant the bishoprick 
 out of pure charity. ' S' Anth. Weldon (in his Court of King James) says, 
 • 'Twas the only Bishoprick y' he disposed of without simony, all others being 
 made merchandyze of for the advancement of his kindred. Bp. Davenant, 
 being invested, married all his nieces to Clergie-men, so he was at no expense 
 for their preferment.' " — Aubrey, Lives, ii. 300. 
 
144 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 crated Bishop of Salisbury about this time, and refers to 
 the lectures which Davenant had delivered in his official 
 capacity as Margaret Professor of Divinity : — 
 
 Good Mr Dr Ward ; I thank God I never had my health better 
 then I have had heer all this Winter ; and therefore though I have 
 been sick and dead at Cambridg, it does not much trouble mee. For 
 my readings I could willingly vndergo y* payns of pvsing them ; but 
 when I come to review them, they seem vnto mee so rough and 
 tedious (espetially in y* first question) that I fear they will not abide 
 the impartiall censure of others, wch satisfy not y^ partiall affection 
 of ther Author. But it may bee in time I shall polish that wch is 
 rough, & cutt away that wch is supfluous ; and then dispose further of 
 it, as by my friends (and your selfe espetially) I shall be advised. For 
 my Book, (it beeing kept to your selfe), I am content to expect y* return 
 therof when you shall think fitt. I am att this time intangled wth 
 divers businesses, and therfore coinitting you to y gracious protection 
 of y' highest, I alwaies rest 
 
 Your very loving freind 
 
 Febr. 20, 1622. Jo. Saru. 
 
 [Endorsed; — ] To y= right woorll. his very loving freind Dr Ward 
 Master of Sidney CoUedg, &c., &c. 
 
 Febr. 20, 1622. 
 My L. of Sarums Letter. 
 
 When Bishop Davenant entered upon his long episcopate 
 at Salisbury of twenty years, he found the state of the 
 diocese far from satisfactory, and in a chronic state of 
 lethargy, following upon the reaction which settled down 
 after the earnestness and zeal of the Reformation era. The 
 See of St Osmund had passed through many changes and 
 vicissitudes, and not only had the grand old " Sarum Use " 
 given way to a slovenly state of things at the " paramount " 
 Cathedral itself, but throughout the diocese there was great 
 laxity, even of morals, and a general state of spiritual torpor. 
 It was between the years 1570 and 1640 (the last twenty of 
 them being under Bishop Davenant), that the results of the 
 Reformation on the Church of Sarum were seen. There 
 were many difficulties to compete with consequent on the 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 145 
 
 new order of things^-the unsatisfactory staple of the candi- 
 dates for ordination : the strong Puritan bias of Elizabeth's 
 Pa,rliament and chief advisers (which was hardly to be 
 wondered at under the circumstances) : the sympathy 
 with foreign Protestants after the massacre of St Bartholo- 
 mew's day ; and the national indignation felt at the " bull " 
 of dejiosition issued against Queen Elizabeth by Pope Pius 
 V. All these events helped to generate that wave of 
 Puritanism which swept so fiercely over the whole country. 
 It became the right thing to do, a mark of true patriotism, 
 to abjure anything and everything that savoured in the most 
 remote degree of Rome. Hence arose that Puritan dislike 
 which became engrained in the very English character, of 
 anything at all savouring of ritualistic eventuation, which 
 ended in the neglect of seemly and necessary ceremonies, 
 and so came at last to slovenliness arid baldness in carry- 
 ing out the ordinary services of the Church. 
 
 " The chapter registers," we are told, " are full of in- 
 dications of the growth of this feeling, which increased 
 year by year until it culminated in the ■ temporary . over- 
 throw of the Church, as much from the apathy of her 
 nominal friends as from the activity of her avowied 
 enemies," 
 
 How far the bishops ^ that ruled the Church of Sarum 
 during the seventy years that followed the episcopate of 
 Jewel, were equal to coping with these difficulties is a. 
 matter of question. Several of them — there were seven in 
 all — had but a very short tenure of the See, to say nothing 
 of its having been actually vacant during this period for 
 some five years. The only one who had anything like a 
 lengthened episcopate was our Bishop Davenant, and able 
 and devout as he undoubtedly was, it must be borne in mind 
 that he had great " lee-way " to make up, and even twenty 
 
 ^ The Bishops were Edmund Gheast, 1571 ; John Piers, 1577-89 ; John 
 Coldwell, 1591-96 ; Henry Cottons, 1598 ; Robert Abbot, 1615 ; Martin. 
 Fothetby, 1618 ; Robert Townson, 1620 ; John Davenant, 1621-1641. 
 
 K 
 
146 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 years is not a long period (especially in the old times before 
 railways) to lift up a whole diocese out of the slough of 
 neglect and slovenliness on to the platform of energic 
 potentiality. Then perhaps his antecedents as a " contro- 
 versial divine," in a particular direction, may have had a 
 tendency to divert his critical attention from those Catholic 
 truths and usages which the impulsive zeal against Rome 
 placed especially in jeopardy. Not but what his whole 
 subjective nature swung round steadily to the pole of 
 Catholic truth, in its broadest sense, and primitive practice. 
 But in rejecting truths and ceremonies, which Rome had 
 abused, men were at this time in danger of casting over- 
 board also many which, as a branch of the Catholic Church, 
 we had ourselves retained as part of our common heritage. 
 
 But there were other troubles which awaited the transla- 
 tion of Gkeast, Jewel's immediate successor, from Rochester 
 to Sarum. The poverty consequent upon the suppression 
 of the religious houses began to make itself felt, and 
 necessity urged the passing of the first Poor Law, for their 
 relief. Then there was the impoverished condition of 
 many of the beneficed clergy themselves, and that peculiar 
 trial — ^which has been felt ever since the Reformation, the 
 penalty of the via media — the fact that the Church has 
 been all through wedged in, so to speak, between the two 
 extreme parties, the sectaries with Genevan proclivities on 
 the one hand and the partisans of the intruded Mission 
 of Rome on the other, the Italian cult — the two extremes 
 making common cause against the old Catholic and his- 
 torical Church of the Country, whose centre is Canterbury. 
 
 Against such elements of restlessness, the short rule of 
 Bishop Gheast would not have made much progress. He 
 was certainly a very learned divine — and had stood by 
 the side of Jewel as one of the Protestant disputants in 
 1 559, but he seems to have lacked the earnestness and 
 activity of preaching, which characterized his predecessor. 
 His name will be remembered in connection with the 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 147 
 
 Eucharistic controversy, the 20th Article "of the Lord's 
 Supper " having been drawn up by him.^ 
 
 It would appear that Bishop Gheast, who made a visita- 
 tion of his Cathedral in 1571, superadded his authority to 
 that of the chapter respecting the sermons to be preached 
 by the various canons each on those days appropriated 
 to the " Prebend " which they held. Their number then 
 was forty-seven. The earliest decree concerning those 
 "preaching turns," which obtain at this day, is supposed 
 to reach back to Jewel's day. It would almost seem as 
 if the old duty of being the "hebdomary," or canon specially 
 charged with the ministration for the week in pre-Re- 
 formation times, had afterwards been commuted to a 
 preaching turn. 
 
 As an illustration of the state of things which was 
 possible, though we may hope was not general, we may 
 give an extract from a Court Book of the Archdeacon of 
 Berks, in the year 1583, the manuscript of which is pre- 
 served in the Bodleian Library. They refer to a present- 
 ment made to a state of things in Binfield, Berks, diffi- 
 cult indeed to deal with, but which, from similar records 
 relating to other parishes, it is to be feared, were not 
 exceptional. 
 
 " Certayne articles concernynge the abuse of the Persone (Parson) 
 of Bynfylde, Barkes. 
 
 " Our Persone, being utterly unlerned, sometymes taketh upon him 
 to expounde whenne he rather perswadeth the people to sedition than 
 otherwise, as of late in his exposition he shewed the people that no 
 man should honor or reverence any ryche man or gentelman, except 
 he was a magistrate. Our Persone doth not, neither ever hath, called 
 the youthe of the parishes to examine them of the faith ; neither hath 
 catechysed to anye of the youthe in the parish, which ought to be 
 looked on, for we have muche youthe and rudely brought upp and not 
 in the knowledge of their duties towards God, 
 
 ^ In the " Calendar of State Papers," A.D. 1566, there is mention of a letter 
 ifrom him when Bishop of Rochester to Cecil, in which he says that he "sup- 
 posed tidings had reached him of the Bishop of Gloucester's objection to the 
 adverb ■ only ' being placed in the article respecting the Holy Sacrament." 
 
148 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVEN ANT 
 
 "Our P&rsone-and his wyffe be people of evill disposition, sedition 
 and full of brawles, and unquiet with their neighbours, slanderers and 
 evil speakers, both openlie and publicklie, a matter to be carefully- 
 looked to, and himselfe doth minister the Communion when he hath 
 given occasion of great offence to his neighbours, and doth not seeke 
 before he goethe to the administration of the sacrament to be in love 
 and charitie, but doth persist in his lewde proceeding. 
 
 " Our Persone neither had studied the Holye Scripture, neyther yt 
 doth, butt will rather leade an evyle lyfe than take any paynes that way. 
 
 " Our Persone hath been a Fiyar in his younge tyme, and so in 
 parte continueth still in that profession, for we have heard him say yt 
 ever we had masse agayne he would say it, for he must lyve. 
 
 "Our Persone is a common hunter of ale-houses, a greate swearer, 
 a carder, a table-player, and a brawler." 
 
 There appears to have been, from the index to the 
 " Wiltshire Institutions " as printed by Sif T. Phillips, a 
 number of deprivations during the two episcopates of 
 Jewel and Gheast — very probably owing to disaffection 
 or disloyalty to the reformed faith. There must have 
 been from the nature of the case, at the commencement of 
 this period of seventy years, many Parsons,^ like the 
 "Personne of Binfield," at heart Romanists, though not, 
 let us hope, as he was, in so many respects unworthy his 
 sacred calling. 
 
 Within some thirty or forty years a change had taken 
 place both in clergy and laity. What were deemed super- 
 stitious observances had ceased, but in their place we find 
 either cold indifference, or unseemly disorders and strife. 
 Thus in an account of Archbishop Laud's visitation of the 
 Cathedral, during Bishop Davenant's episcopate, in 1634, 
 we have under the head " A remembrance for the Church 
 of Sarum, in very many necessary particulars," the follow- 
 ing noteworthy statement : — 
 
 ^ Parson or Person, from the Latin word Persona (a personando) one who 
 represented a certain character — like actors with a mask on their faces, speak- 
 ing through it. A Person therefore is a representative character, and so 
 " Parson" is both persona Christi, and persona ecclesiee — representing Christ 
 and the Church. 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 149 
 
 " You may please to take notice that hi most parishes in Wiltshyre, 
 Dorsetshire, and the westerne partes, there is still a Puritane and an 
 honest man chosen churchwardens -together. The Puritane always 
 crosses the other in repayres and adorning the church, as also in the 
 presentments of unconformities, and in the issue puts some trick or 
 other upon the honest man, to put him to sue for his charges hee 
 hath been at for the Church. You shall find it at this instant in the 
 parish of Beaminster in Dorsettshyre, between Crabb and EUery : 
 the suit now depending." * 
 
 And with regard to attendance at the cathedral by the 
 civic authorities we are told, — 
 
 " The seates in the nave of the church, graunted not long since to the 
 mayor and corporation for their convenience to hear sermons, are now 
 lately forsaken by a great parte of the company who are of the faction 
 agaipst the church, and now the seates do rather pester than adorne 
 the assembly. Dr Barnston can well enforme upon what conditions 
 those seates were erected, and how they are broken and the church 
 service abused by sufferance of lectures at unseasonable houres." 
 
 A few more extracts may be added by way of showing 
 the state of neglect and disorder in which the cathedral 
 and its services were at this time. 
 
 At a session held at the Guildhall, April Sth, 1630, 
 at which Edmund Mason, the Dean, was present, the 
 following directions were given : — " Divers persons were 
 ordered and enjoined to look to disorders in the church in 
 the time of divine service, and to apprehend the offenders, 
 or certify their names to one or more justices, on Sundays 
 and Holydays." And in a similar session, held on October 
 5th in the same year, we have "sundry orders touching 
 divers persons presented for disorders in the Church." 
 
 There was an order of chapter issued about the same 
 time that the " sacrists (or vergers) in their surplices walk- 
 ing up and down in the church in service time, according 
 to their office by law and patents, should be in the quire at 
 the beginning of service and so continue to the end, and in 
 sermon time should see good order kept in the church." ^ 
 
 1 See 'R.^^ox'i.oi Historical MSS. Commission, Append., p. 133. 
 " Shuter Reg. 26. 
 
I50 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 The complaint of John Lea, then treasurer of the 
 cathedral, in answer to the articles of enquiry in 1634, is 
 long, and though tinged evidently with an animus against 
 some of his brother residentiaries, reveals, nevertheless, a 
 state of things by no means creditable, either to themselves 
 or to the cathedral of which they were the appointed 
 guardians. One extract — the concluding sentences of his 
 answer — must suffice : — 
 
 " Then both of the better and meaner sorts, mechanicks, youths, 
 and premises, do ordinarily and most unreverently walk in our church 
 in the tyme of devine service, and within hearinge of the same, with 
 their hattes on their heads, I have seen them from my seate, and not 
 seldome, so walkinge or standinge still, and lookinge in upon us when 
 we have ben on our knees, at the letany and the commandments. I 
 earnestly and humbly desire some effectual course may be taken for 
 redresse. And also for the ordinarie trudging up and down of youths 
 and clamours of children to the great disturbance of the preachers in 
 their sermons. The vergerers and other officers have had a charge to 
 look to this : but to little or no purpose. Dr Barnston, Dr Hench- 
 man,' and myself have been fayne to ryse and goe out of our seates to 
 see and stay the disorders. But I never to my uttermost remem- 
 brance sawe Barfoot, the vergerer, who sits in my sight to ryse at the 
 greatest noyse." '^ 
 
 But it was not only in the cathedral that Puritan dis- 
 orders manifested themselves during Davenant's episco- 
 pate. We must refer to a well-known instance of the 
 fanaticism of one of its professors, who held an important 
 office at Salisbury. There was one Henry Sherfield, a 
 bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and recorder of Salisbury, an 
 uncompromising Puritan, who took grave offence at the 
 imagery of a painted window in the parish church of St 
 Edmund, in the city, and having previously obtained the 
 consent of the vestry of that parish to take down the said 
 window, " inasmuch as God is painted in many places as 
 
 1 This Dr Humphrey Henchman, precentor of Salisbury, married Ellen, 
 third daughter of Bishop Townson, and niece of Bishop Davenant. He was 
 made Bishop of Salisbury 1660-63, ^"^ °f London 1663-75. 
 
 " Hist. MSS. Com., App. to Report, iv. p. 138. 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 151 
 
 if He were creating the world," and, moreover, " it is very 
 darksome,'' whereby such as sit near the same cannot read 
 in their books," promptly commenced proceedings by 
 " breaking the same with his staff." His object was doubt- 
 less to show open contempt for ecclesiastical authority : 
 the more so, as when Bishop Davenant, having heard of 
 his design, sent a message to Sherfield admonishing him 
 to abstain, the expostulation was altogether unheeded, 
 and only answered by a defiant threat that the act itself 
 was but the precursor of other similar acts, and that in due 
 course all the other stained glass windows in that church 
 would be destroyed. 
 
 Subsequently in the Star Chamber^ an information 
 was exhibited against Sherfield in February 1633. The 
 recorder was convicted at the end of this trial, who was 
 sentenced to be committed to the Fleet, to be fined £$00, 
 and to make an acknowledgment of his offence to Dr 
 Davenant, Bishop of Salisbury, before such persons as 
 Bishop Davenant should choose to be present with him on 
 the occasion. Archbishop Laud, in pronouncing his con- 
 currence in the judgment, for which he gave his reasons at 
 some length, added, " There was a time when Churchmen 
 were as great in this kingdom as you are now. Let us be 
 bold to prophesy that there will be a time also when you 
 
 ^ " The Star Chamber, Camera Stellata, so called from the room where the 
 council sat, being emblazoned with stars, was a court of very ancient origin, 
 but now modelled by Stat. 3 Hen. VII. c. I, and 21 Hen. VIII. c. 20. 
 It consisted of divers lords, spiritual and temporal, being ' Privy Councillors,' 
 and other judges. Its jurisdiction was so extended beyond all due bounds 
 that the greatest enormities were practised under its authority. Mr Hallam 
 does not scruple to say that it rendered our courts of justice little better than 
 the caverns of murderers {Const. Hist. i. 231). 'For which reason,' says 
 Blackstone, ' it was finally abolished by Stat. 16 Car. I. c. 10, to the general 
 joy of the whole nation ' (iv. 264). Lord Bacon extolled the use of this court, 
 but men began to feel even in his day that so arbitrary a jurisdiction was in- 
 compatible with liberty, ' and it fell before the grovring independence of the 
 nation' (Hume, iii. 418)." — Vid. Author's Appellate Jurisdiction of the 
 Crown in Ecclesiastical Cases, p. 27, note. 
 
152 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 will be as low as the Church is at present, if you go on 
 treating it with contempt." ^ 
 
 And yet, during all this time of reaction, through these 
 long years of unrest and disquietude, God left not Him- 
 self without a witness. Men were being raised up in this 
 very diocese, men of faith and piety, who were not only an 
 ornament to the Church of their own days, but have cast 
 a lustre on their branch of the Church Catholic, to which 
 they belonged, both by their example and writings to the 
 end of time, as long as the Anglican Church shall last. At 
 the beginning of this period, we come across John Foxe, 
 the martyrologist, and William Camden, the historian, 
 called the " lay Prebendary " of Ilfracombe, and that bosom 
 friend of the immortal Jewel, to whom he left the principal 
 part of his manuscripts, John Garbrand, and who in many 
 ways assisted Laurence Humphrey in his life of his friend 
 and patron ; and also Tobias Matthews, one of the divines 
 employed in the Hampton Court Conference, who ultim- 
 ately became Archbishop of York. After this, at a short 
 interval, followed the "judicious Hooker," the author of the 
 world - renowned Ecclesiastical Polity, and who, for per- 
 manent influence on the future teachers of the National 
 Church, and in vindication of her Catholic character, stands 
 unrivalled in the worthies of the Sarum diocese. When 
 the See of Sarum became vacant by the translation of 
 Bishop Piers to the metropolitical See of York, and it re- 
 mained so for some three years, the administration of the 
 diocesan or capitular patronage seems to have fallen into 
 the hands of the Primate, who at that time was John Whit- 
 gift. He it was who conferred on Richard Hooker the 
 vicarage of Boscombe, and also the prebendal stall of 
 Netheravon, as well as the sub-deanery in the Cathedral 
 Church. He was the ablest champion of our Church 
 against the Puritan faction and Anabaptist sectaries, as 
 Jewel had been its most brilliant vindicator against the 
 ' See Hatcher and Benson, p. 373. 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 153 
 
 claims of the intruded mission of Rome. It was at Bos- 
 combe that the first four volumes of the Ecclesiastical 
 Polity were either wholly written, or at least completed. 
 There are, as Keble remarks in the preface to the intro- 
 duction of that work, critical periods and turning points in 
 the history of our Church, of which undoubtedly the close 
 of the sixteenth century was one. And it was so over- 
 ruled that the insight of Archbishop Whitgift in selecting 
 Richard Hooker for preferment, was the means of raising 
 up the most efficient instrument in contending with its 
 special difficulties and dangers. 
 
 " The current," he says, " was setting strongly in favour of the 
 Puritan party, or innovators, up to the time when Whitgift became 
 Archbishop. Acute and indefatigable as he was in his efforts to pro- 
 duce a reaction, not only by his official edicts and remonstrances, but 
 by his disposal of preferment also, and the literary labours which 
 he encouraged, there was no one step of his to be compared in wisdom 
 and effect with his patronage of Hooker, and the help which he pro- 
 vided towards the completion of his undertakings." ' 
 
 But the name must also be mentioned of one, who, dur- 
 ing Bishop Davenant's episcopate, and who must therefore 
 have known him well, was beneficed in Wiltshire, and that 
 within a couple of miles of the Cathedral. This was 
 George Herbert, who, when " only a deacon," was preferred 
 to the living of Bemerton, a cure which he accepted " after 
 much spiritual conflict and great apprehension, lest he 
 should prove unequal to the work." The simple and 
 touching account of this poet-pastor is familiar to most 
 from the thrilling description given by the gentle Isaac 
 Walton. It is sufficient to say that not only was he in his 
 daily life the faithful disciple of his spiritual charge, but 
 by his verses he is allowed to be the poet of the Church. 
 
 " He never wearies," says Adams, " of pouring out his deep love 
 and admiration for it. He reverences every emblem, every nook and 
 corner of the sanctuary, every external grace, every rite, form and 
 
 ' Keble's Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, p. Ixiv. 
 
154 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 observance connected with it, or related to it. It is the loadstone of 
 his thoughts, the well-spring of his admiration, the living fire that 
 kindles his heart and mind. He loved it for what it was, and for what 
 it symbolised, and upon its symbols he threw a new and wondrous 
 light of poetry and devotion. He consecrated to it and its Founder 
 all that he had and could : his genius, and the expression of it." ' 
 
 The influence of this faithful servant and witness of the 
 National Church, at that very critical time, when men were 
 rapidly drifting away from their old moorings, and loosening 
 their hold on the old doctrines and canonical discipline, 
 must have been very great all round, both with clergy as 
 well as laity. His verses, in which he pours out his 
 soul-passion for his spiritual maker, as distinguished from 
 Rome on the one hand and Geneva on the other, are well 
 worth quoting here, as illustrating the peculiar value of his 
 life and teaching at this critical period in our Church's 
 history. 
 
 " I joy, dear mother, when I view 
 Thy perfect lineaments and true. 
 
 Both sweet and bright. 
 Beauty in thee takes up her place. 
 And dates her letters from thy face. 
 
 When she doth write. 
 
 ' She on the hills,' ^ which wantonly 
 Allureth all in hope to be 
 
 By her preferred. 
 Hath kissed so long her painted shrines, 
 That e'en her face by kissing shines, 
 
 For her reward. 
 
 ' She in the valley " is so shy 
 Of dressing, that her hair doth lie 
 
 About her ears : 
 While she avoids her neighbour's pride. 
 She wholly goes on th' other side 
 
 And nothing wears. 
 
 ^See Adam's Lives of Great English Churchmen (S.P.C.K.), p. 270. 
 ^ The Church of Rome. " Puritanism. 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 155 
 
 But, dearest mother, what thou miss 
 The mean, thy praise and glory is. 
 
 And long may be ; 
 Blessed be God, whose love it was 
 To double-moat thee with His grace. 
 
 And name but thee." 
 
 It has been beautifully said of George Herbert that 
 " his life was one continued Sunday." And the noncon- 
 formist, Richard Baxter, author of that beautiful spiritual 
 treatise, The Saints Everlasting Rest, bears this striking wit- 
 ness to the calm and beautiful spirituality of his poems : — 
 
 " Next to the Scripture poems, there are none so savoury to me as Mr 
 George Herbert's. I know that Cowley and others far surpass him in 
 wit and accurate composure (composition) : but as Seneca takes with 
 me above all his contemporaries, because he speaketh things by words 
 feelingly and seriously, like a man that is past jest, so Herbert speaks 
 to God like a man that really believeth in God, and whose business in 
 the world is most with God : heart-work and heaven-work make up 
 his book." 1 
 
 While Bishop of Salisbury, Dr Davenant and the 
 chapter had a controversy with the corporation of the 
 town, in consequence of the pretentions advanced by the 
 latter over the former. James I. had given them a charter, 
 which was in itself an infringement of the feudal rights 
 of the Bishop, and subsequently they had begun to inter- 
 fere with the privileges of the Close. Hence Dr Dave- 
 nant opposed the renewal of the charter in 1630, and the 
 jealousy which their contending claims created, was 
 manifested in a way not altogether dignified. This 
 contention lasted from 163 1 to 1636, when it seems to 
 have been amicably settled.^ 
 
 But towards the end of this period, which we have 
 been discussing, there were also others of note who held 
 preferment in this diocese of Salisbury, and during Bishop 
 
 1 Quoted by the Rev. W. H. Jones, Vicar of Bradford-on-Avon, in his 
 Diocesan History of Salisbury (S.P.C.K.), to whom the writer is indebted 
 for many facts in this chapter. 
 
 " Hatcher's Sanmi, 377. 
 
156 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Davenant's episcopate. Amongst them we may mention 
 Edward Gough, the editor of Camden's Britannia : 
 William Chillingworth, who had joined the Romish 
 Church, but had been persuaded by unanswerable argu- 
 ments to return, the author of the Religion of Pro- 
 testants : and Dr John Pearson, who succeeded Fuller 
 as one of the lecturers at St Clement's, Eastcheap, in 
 the city, where he preached those admirable lectures 
 (" the very dust of whose writings is pure gold ") on 
 " the Creed," and was afterwards Bishop of Chester. To 
 these two worthies, and Bishop Brian Walton, a memorial 
 window was placed, some five years ago, in the City 
 Church, where Pearson delivered his famous lectures. Nor 
 must we fail to mention a nephew and namesake of the 
 Bishop, Edward Davenant, formerly Fellow and Tutor 
 of Queens' College in Cambridge, as we have seen, on 
 whom was bestowed not only the treasurership of the 
 Cathedral, " the best dignity," but the valuable living of 
 Gillingham, besides other preferments. He is described 
 by Aubrey as not only " a man of vast learning, but of 
 great goodness and charity." He was executor to Bishop 
 Davenant's will, and also the inheritor of most of his 
 property, insomuch that it was said that " he gained 
 more by the Church of Sarum than ever any man did 
 by the Church since the Reformation." 
 
 But another and more distinguished nephew of the 
 Bishop's graced the chapter in those days, the accom- 
 plished Church Historian and author of the Worthies 
 of England and many other works, Thomas Fuller. He 
 was a " Prebendary of Sarum," and it is very remarkable, 
 as illustrating the vitality of even the capitular endow- 
 ments of the Church, that in all the subsequent trials 
 and disquietude of the civil disturbances he always re- 
 tained this designation, though the revenues thereof were 
 for a long time sequestrated. By referring to his numerous 
 works, although the oflSces which he held from time to 
 
BISHOP OF SALISBURY 157 
 
 time — Minister of the Savoy, Rector of Broadwinsor, and 
 City lecturer — disappear from the title page and become 
 effaced, this style, " Prebendary of Sarum,'" is that by 
 which he was designated to the very last, and is in 
 point of fact his one legal and official characteristic. 
 Fuller's writings have been much admired. The philo- 
 sophic S. T. Coleridge and his accomplished son Hartley 
 read and re-read him with delight. The former says of him, 
 " Next to Shakespeare I am not certain whether. Thomas 
 Fuller, beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the 
 sense and emotion of the marvellous. . . . He was incom- 
 parably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man 
 of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men." Charles 
 Lamb, perhaps recognising in him a kindred spirit of 
 tlended seriousness and humour, spoke of him with en- 
 thusiasm, and brought together some choice extracts from 
 his writings. Robert Southey called him "his prime 
 favourite author." We here give one or two quotations 
 from his writings as A specimen. The first is that memor- 
 able one in which he makes the indignities offered to the 
 body of Wickliffe, by order of the Council of Constance, 
 suggest an allegory of the spread of the Reformation. 
 After describing, in terms of withering sarcasm, how the 
 exhumers of the unconscious remains took them out of the 
 churchyard of Lutterworth, he continues, " They burnt 
 them to ashes and cast them into the Swift, a neighbouring 
 brook, running hard by. Thus this brook hath conveyed 
 his ashes 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 the 
 world over." 
 
 Two others, which I am about to adduce, exhibit the 
 readiness with which he turned the surroundings of the 
 place of his abode to instructive account. We have just 
 noticed that he was Prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral 
 during the time of his uncle Davenant's episcopate. 
 
158 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " Travelling on the Plain (which notwithstanding hath its risings 
 and fallings) I discovered Salisbury steeple many miles off. Coming 
 to a declivity, I lost the sight thereof; but climbing up the next hill, 
 the steeple grew out of the ground again. It fareth thus with us whilst 
 we are wayfaring to heaven. Mounted on the Pisgah top of some 
 good meditation, we get a glimpse of our celestial Canaan. But when 
 we are either on the flat of an ordinary temper, or in the fall of an 
 extraordinary temptation, we lose the view thereof. Thus, in the sight 
 of our soul, heaven is discovered, covered, and re-covered : till, though 
 late, at last, though slowly, surely, we arrive at the haven of our 
 happiness." 
 
 The latter will tell its own tale as to the place where it 
 was written. It is taken from his Occasional Meditations, 
 and is headed, " Upwards, Upwards." 
 
 " How large houses do they build in London on little ground ! 
 Revenging themselves on the narrowness of their room with store of 
 storeys. Excellent arithmetic ? from the roof of one floor to multiply 
 so many chambers ! And though painful the climbing up, pleasant 
 the staying there, the higher, the healthfuUer, with clearer light and 
 sweeter air. Small are my means on earth. May I mount my soul 
 the higher in heavenly meditations, relying on Divine Providence. — 
 Higher ! my soul ! higher ! In bodily buildings commonly the 
 garrets are most empty, but my mind, the higher mounted, will be the 
 better furnished. Let perseverance to death be my uppermost 
 chamber, the roof of which — grace — is the pavement of glory." 
 
 But all these worthies belonged rather to that period of 
 trouble and confusion to the Church which was immedi- 
 ately at hand. They were all in turn " sequestrated " from 
 their benefices, whether in the diocese or the Cathedral. 
 Bishop Davenant did not live to see the troubles that were 
 so soon to come upon the Church, though he must often 
 have discerned the gathering clouds that foretold the 
 approaching storm. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 davenant's exposition of the epistle to the 
 colossians (1622- 1627) 
 
 " A learned Master of a College in Cambridge (since made a reverend 
 Bishop, and to the great grief of good men and great loss of God's Church 
 lately deceased), refused a mandate for choosing of a worthless man, Fellow. 
 And when it was expected that at the least he should have been ousted of his 
 mastership for this his contempt, King James highly commended him and en- 
 couraged him ever after to follow his own conscience when the like occasion 
 should be given him." — Fuller's Holy State, Master of a College, p. 94. 
 
 WE may now consider Bishop Davenant fairly in- 
 stalled in his new quarters, and settling down to the 
 great work of his life, for which all his previous experience 
 had been preparing him.'^ His household was not a small 
 one, though pledged to a celibate life, for there continued 
 to live on with him in his palace, his widowed sister 
 Margaret, with her three sons and six daughters (if not 
 more) which must have made his domestic relationships 
 sufficiently bright and cheerful. The physical surround- 
 
 ^ In Hatcher's History of Old and New Sarum, being Vol, V. of Hoare's 
 Wiltshire, we find the following reference to Bishop Davenant, p, 351 : — 
 
 " On the 28th of September (1625) we find the King and Queen at Wilton, 
 where their Majesties were entertained by William, the third Earle of Pem- 
 broke. The Council were commanded to meet (at Salisbury), and the Episcopal 
 Palace was required for the a,ccommodation of Blainville, the French envoy, 
 but the Bishop, Dr Davenant, refused to relinquish his residence." 
 
 In Hatcher's Sarum we find (p. 335) — 
 
 "July 14, 1628, At this Court it is ordered, that a piece of silver and gilt 
 shall be provided and given to the Lord Bishop of Sarum, at his coming to 
 this city, the same not exceeding £\a." 
 
 " The weight of the silver cup, given unto the Reverend Father in God, 
 Robert, Lord Bishop of Sarum, is twenty-six ounces, at seven shillings the 
 ounce." 
 
 159 
 
i6o THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 ings, too, must have been very picturesque : the Cathedral 
 Close, with the different canons' and other official residences, 
 with their beautiful gardens, and in the centre of all the 
 magnificent pure unmixed Gothic Cathedral itself, with its 
 striking air of simplicity, lightness and grace, the pervading 
 harmony of its several parts and proportions, the admira- 
 tion of every beholder, with that singular uniformity of 
 style and design from the intersection of whose grand 
 archiepiscopal cross springs — 
 
 " The lessening shaft of that aerial spire," 
 
 to the astonishing height of 400 feet from the ground, the 
 most lofty building in the kingdom — all combined to give 
 it a romanesque charm peculiarly its own. 
 
 Have any of our readers ever visited the northern front 
 when the morning sun lights up one side of the tower and 
 eastern transepts; or when the summer sun is declining 
 to the west, and throws its rays on the north face of the 
 transepts ? Have they, beyond all, taken the trouble to 
 " visit it by the pale moonlight " ? The effects of light 
 produced by the inequalities and projections of the build- 
 ing are at once picturesque and solemn. Parts buried in 
 deep, massive shadows, the illuminated parts standing out 
 in the soft effulgence — the aspect of the western front, 
 lifting its head amid the interposing umbrage of lofty, 
 venerable trees — the " elfin spire " that in the deeper hue 
 of night seems to lose itself among the stars, and rather to 
 hang from the sky than ascend from the earth — the fair, 
 calm scene around — all conspire to excite in the mind of 
 the beholder a delighted admiration, subdued by " a deep 
 feeling that absorbs and awes." 
 
 " They dreamt not of a perishable home 
 Who thus could build." 
 
 Speaking of the Buildings of Wiltshire, Fuller, in his 
 Worthies, says : — 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS i6i 
 
 " The Cathedrall of Salisbury (dedicated to the Blessed Virgin) 
 is paramount in this kind, wherein the Door and Chafipelh equal the 
 Months, the Windows the Days, the Pillars and Pillarets of Fmill 
 Marble (an ancient art now shrewdly suspected to be lost). The 
 hours of the year, so that all Europe affords not such an Almanack of 
 Architecture. ^ 
 
 " Once walking in the church (whereof then I was Prebendary) I met 
 a countryman wondring at the structure thereof. / once (said he to 
 me) admired that there could be a church that should have so many 
 Pillars as there be Hours in the year : and now I admire more, that 
 there should be so many Hours in the year as I see Pillars in this 
 church. 
 
 " The Cross Isle of this church is the most beautifull and lightsome 
 of any I have yet beheld. The Spire Steeple (not founded on the 
 ground, but for the main supported by Four Pillars) is of great 
 height and greater workmanship. I have been credibly informed 
 that some Forraign artists beholding this building brake forth into 
 tears, which some imputed to their admiration (though I see not how 
 wondring can cause -weeping. Others to their envy, grieving that they 
 had not the like in their own land. 
 
 "Nor can the most curious (not to say cavilling eye desire anything 
 which is wanting in this Edifice, except possibly an ascent, seeing such 
 who address themselves hither for their devotion, can hardly say with 
 David, I will go up into the house of the Lord. 
 
 " But the curiosity of the criticks is best entertained with the tomb in 
 the north of the nave of the church, where lieth a monument in stone, 
 of a litle boy habited in episcopal robes, a Miter upon his head, a 
 Grosier in his hand, and the rest accordingly. At the discovery 
 thereof (formerly covered over with pews) many justly admitted, that 
 either a Bishop could be so small in person, or a child so great in 
 clothes : though since all is unriddled. For it was fashionable in that 
 chvurch (a thing rather deserving to be remembred, than fit to be 
 done) in the depth of Popery, that the choristers chose a boy of their 
 society to be a Bishop among them, from Saint Nicholas till Innocents 
 day at night, who did officiate in all things Bishop-like, saying of 
 Mass alone excepted, and held the state of a Bishop, answerably 
 
 ^ "As many days as in one year there be;. 
 So many windows in this church we see : 
 As many marble pjllars here appear 
 As there are hours throughout the fleeting year : 
 As many gates as moons one year does view — 
 Strange tale to tell ! yet not more strange than true. •' 
 L 
 
1 62 THE LIfE OF BISHOP DAVEN ANT 
 
 habited, amongst his fellows the counterfeit Prebends : one of these 
 chancing to die in the time of his mock-Episcopacy, was buried with 
 Crosier and Miter as is aforesaid. Thus superstition can dispence 
 with that which! religibn cannot, making piety pageantry, and 
 subjecting what is sacred to liisory representations." 
 
 Fuller calls himself Prebendarius Prebendarides, because 
 his father was a Prebend of this cathedral before him. 
 In 1622, Bishop Davenant^ preferred his brother-in- 
 law, Thomas Fuller of Aldwinckle, to the prebendal stall 
 of Highworth in his Church of Sarum, then vacant by 
 the decease of Henry Cotton. This stall Fuller's father 
 held till his death in 1632, upon which Bishop Davenant 
 presented to it John Townson, the eldest son of his 
 predecessor in the See. 
 
 The following letters were written by our Bishop during 
 the first few years of his episcopate at Salisbury, and refer 
 to the publication of his various works, and of his exposi- 
 tion of the Colossians. They are addressed to his old 
 friend Dr Ward, Master of Sidney Sussex College, and 
 his successor as Margaret Professor of Divinity, 
 Cambridge : — 
 
 Salute in Christo. 
 
 Good Mr Dr Ward ; Y" opportunity of this bearer, hathe made 
 mee Salute you wth these few lines. I have nothing to impart vnto you 
 Woorth y* writing ; but only to lett you vnderstand, y' according to 
 your motion I have run over y' part of y* nth chapter of Spalatensis 
 his 7th book, wherin hee disputes of Freewill, & y* Generality of 
 grace. In my opinion hee is as farr gone in Pelagianisme, as ever was 
 Pelagius himselfe ; In y° Reading of his Discourse, I have sett down 
 some cursory animadversions vppon such poynts as I took to be 
 vnsound. When God shall graunt vs our next meeting, wee will have 
 further conference vppon these matters. In y= mean time wishing you 
 health & happiness, I comitt you jind your labours to y= blessing of 
 y* Almighty, resting ever 
 
 Your assured loving freind 
 
 Decemb. 9, 1624. Jo. Saru. 
 
 ' Worthies, Willshire, p. 144, 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 163 
 
 [Eneiorsed :—] To y"= right woorB his very loving freind Dr Ward Mr 
 of Sidney CoUedg in Cambridg give this. 
 
 Decemb. 9, 1624. 
 My L. of Sarii his Lett'. 
 
 Good Mr Dr Ward ; We are now so wholy taken up w* the 
 Court, as y' I can hardly find leysure to write these few Lines much 
 less to Sett myselfe about any more serious business, It is thought the 
 King, Queen, Court & Councell will continew heere this month at the 
 leste. To morrow I expect my L. Keeper (who has not been here as 
 yet, but when he comes is to lodge in my howse). In regard of these 
 incumbrances I would not have Leonard Green come over till some 
 pretty time after y Court is removed. For I have appointed my 
 Chaplain to run over my Readings, and to take notice as hee goes of 
 such faultes. as the transcriber has cozhitted y' soe ther may be the 
 lesse trouble when it comes unto you. I will have those other readings 
 of mine upon the 2 first Articles transcribed with as much speed as 
 Vincent can dispatch them. Concerning your 2 Theses, I am abso- 
 lutely of your opinion in them both, and it is most certain that the 
 cleering of them will bring much light to y* question of pseverance. I 
 have many times thought of them, and drawen some observations 
 tending to that purpose, but they are yet altogether indigested. When 
 I have leisure you shall hear further from me concerning' this matter ; 
 in the mean time your * payns taken in illustrating & confirming them, 
 gives good satisfaction. Your vindicating of those y' were at the 
 Synod of Dort, from the rash & false imputation layd on us by 
 Mr Mountague was a laudable and necessary work I could wish for 
 his own good that he had a more modest conceat of himself, and a less 
 base opinion of all others — who jump not with him in his moungrell 
 opinions. He mightily deceaves himself in taking it for granted, 
 y' Dr Overal, or Bucer, or Luther were ever of his mind in the point 
 of prasdestination, or falling from grace, the contrary may evidently 
 be shewn out of their writings, but the truth is hee never understood 
 w' Bucer or Luther mean, when they speak of extinguishing Faith or 
 loosing grace and as little does he understand y' Canon of our church, 
 which he makes his main foundation, whether ReprObus. may be vere 
 justificatus, verum ei uivum membrum sub 'Ckristo Capite,- vere 
 adoptatus, I confess may out oi Aug: &.prosp: be probably held both 
 ways but yet let all places w"^"" seem to imply contradiction about this 
 matter be layd together, and such other as may serve for Intrexation 
 be also cast into y" ballance, and in my opinion it will be found 
 
 • MS. yours. 
 
i64 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 y' St Augustine does more incline to y' opinion that only y« pre- 
 destinate attein unto a tru Estate of Justification Regeneration and 
 Adoption. But I am call'd of. I coihitt you to God and rest alwaies 
 
 Your very Loving Freind 
 Oct. loth, 1625. Jo. Saru. 
 
 To the right worthy his very Loving Piiend Dr Ward Mr of Sidney 
 CoUedge, and one of the publicq professors of Divinity in 
 Cambridge give this. 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Good Dr Ward ; I should have been very gladd to have seen you 
 heer at Sarii ; and shall bee alwaies when your leysure will serve you 
 to take such a iorney. Leonard Green came in good time ; for my 
 Chaplain had newly revised my readings vppon y° Coloss. wch nether 
 mine eyes, nor busines would suffer me to have done. Yf y* volume 
 will conveniently bear it, I desire they may bee printed in Folio : as 
 also, that your selfe would survey every sheet, as they are printed. I 
 am tould Mr Buck will have a care, that as few faults as may bee 
 escape in y' printing. When y" book is finished, I suppose it will bee 
 an easy and necessary labour, to make an Index to it. Yf in pervsing 
 it, you finde any thing defective or erroneous, spare not to send mee 
 your free Censure, wch I shall take kindely, and readily reforme what 
 is faulty, or subscribe to your reformation. As for Leonard Green, I 
 perceive hee supposeth y= printing of my book will bee beneficiall 
 vnto him ; and in yt regard hee is not vnwilling to shew some kinde 
 of thankfulnes. But for that matter, I leav it wholy vnto you ; when 
 you shall see whether y° sale of y° Book will answer his expectation 
 or no. 
 
 I am afrayd Mr Mountague his book will breed himselfe and others 
 much trouble, whensomever a Parliament shall bee called. His opinion 
 concerning Predestination, and Totall falling from Grace, is vn- 
 doubtedly contrary to y" Comon Tenet of y= English Church ever 
 since wee were borne : : Against our next meeting, you shall have 
 opinion concerning y* 2 Theses. For Dr Overall I know not to 
 y= contrary, but it was his opinion that some Not elected by y' woork- 
 ing of vniv'sall sufficient grace did or might sometimes attein to an 
 Estate of Justification and Regeneration, and yet Fall away and perish. 
 But for Luther and Bucer I am resolved, that they never thought any 
 Reprobat, to have ever obteined y= State of a truly FaithfuU Justified 
 Adopted & Sanctified man. But they affirm that Faith & y' grace of 
 y= Spirit cannot stand together with Impoenitency in any mortall 
 Sinne ; meaning therby y" Act of Faith apprehending Justification, 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 165 
 
 and y' wporking , of y° Spirit sealing vnto vs our Justification, but 
 y' y' State of Regeneration, or Adoption ; or Justification (as it respects 
 all Sinnes Forepassd was therby Dissolved, they never thought, my 
 leysure will not give mee leav at this time to enter further into these 
 
 questions. , I coinitt you to God and rest ever 
 
 Your very loving freind 
 Decemb. 8°, 1625., Jo. Saru. 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To y" woor" his very loving freind Dr Ward, Master 
 of Sidney College give this. 
 
 Decemb 8, 1625. 
 My Lord of Sarum his Lett'- 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 I AM sorry that y' Copy sent to Gambridg should bee so impfect, as 
 y' it hinders y" printing of those Readings thus long. Yf I should 
 send you mine own book, I am afraid it would stand you but in small 
 stead ; it is so badd written, & so much blurred & interlined. The 
 best and speediest course I can think of, is to send mee back again 
 y° Copy, wth y* severall defects noted on y" blank side : wch I will 
 presently correct or supplie, & so return it to you again. And thus 
 coinitting you & all your indevours to y° blessing of y° Almighty, I 
 rest alwaies 
 
 Your very loving freind 
 
 Febr. 13, 1626. Jo. Saru. 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To y" right wporH his very loving freind Dr Ward 
 Mr of Sidney CoUedg, & Reader of Divinity at Cambridg 
 deliver this. 
 
 Salute in Christo. 
 Dr Ward, you wrote vnto mee in your last letter, to send my 
 book vnto Cambridg, yt so many things that bee defective in the Copy 
 may bee amended. I sent you an answer, wch because I doubt 
 whether it came to your hands or no, I have taken this opportunity of 
 writing again by this bearer. My book is so blurrd an[d] ill written, 
 as I have no hope of having y* Copy amended by help of that, vnles 
 my selfe were there : I therefore wished you to send mee y= Copy 
 down hither, wth a Note of y* places y' are to bee supplied or cor- 
 rected, & I will soon dispatch it, & send you y= Copy back again. Yf 
 you think this a fitt course, this bearer Mr Waller will bee a fitt & 
 trusty messenger to send y' Copy by. I pray let Mr Love know yt I 
 take notice of his good pains in pvsall of my Readings ; & shall bee 
 
1 66 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 ready vppon any occasion to shew my good acceptance thereof, ffor 
 publishing any thing more of mine, I shall not bee over hasty, till I 
 see what entertainment y' first woork shall finde abroad. I doe not- 
 wthstanding continually imploy a Scholler in transcribing one thing 
 or other : but mine own eyes grow so badd, yt it is a penance to mee, 
 to read what my selfe has written, ffor Spalatensis ; in my Tract con- 
 cerning Predestination, I have answered moste of his obiections, 
 before I ever saw them ; yet yf I can gett leysure & opportunity, it 
 may bee I shall inlardg and perfitt those rude & short animadv'sions 
 wch I made vppon y" 1 1 chap of his 7 Book. And thus wishing you 
 Health & Happiness, I coinitt you to God, & rest ever 
 
 Your assured loving freind 
 March 6, 1626. JO. Saru. 
 
 I have vppon further consideration thought good to send you my 
 Readings vppon y" Colossians : yf you can by the help of them, pfitt 
 y' woork in hand I pray doe it. Yf not, doe as I before advised. 
 
 [Endorsed : — ] To y= right woortt his very loving freind Dr Ward 
 Mr of Sidney Colledg, & publicq Reader of Divinity, at Cam- 
 brig give this. 
 
 March 6, 1626. 
 My L"* of Sarum his Lett'- 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Good Dr Ward ; Mr Henchman acquainted mee wth your desire 
 that I should publish my Readings vppon y* Colossians. .1 confesse I 
 have alwaies ,been, and am very backward to putt any thing of mine 
 in print ; because in all kindes there are extant score of writers, who 
 have bestowed better pains then I could doe, and vppon whome y* 
 Readers pains may better bee bestowed. And besides, I cannot 
 revise them as were fitt ; mine eyes not serving mee to read mine 
 own hand. Yet that you may see how easy I am to yield vnto y* 
 psuasions of my freinds though contrary to mine own minde ; I have 
 caused my scholler Vincent to transcribe those my readings vppon 
 y* Epistle to y= Coloss : wch hee has now finished. Yf you shall iudg 
 them fitt for y' presse, I will coinitt them to your disposition. I have 
 appoynted my Chaplain to pervse them and yf hee meet with any 
 wants or faults to bee supplied or corrected to give mee notice thereof. 
 As for my selfe, I have neither eyes nor leysure to runn them over 
 again. The king is expected very shortly heer at Wilton : and y* 
 Counsel! (as it is sayd) will spend ye greater part of y° Winter hear at 
 Sarii, that so they may bee nigh at hand to his Maiesty. The Har- 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 167 
 
 bengers are this very day taking yp our Howstes. Wee have been 
 and are all cleer from y' infection ; wch is it yt drawes y= Court and 
 Councell vppon vs at this time. Omnis coinoditas, etc. And thus 
 wth remembrance of my best love ; I comitt you to G6d, & alwaies 
 rest 
 
 Your very loving freind 
 
 Jq. Saru. 
 Septemb. 26, 1625. 
 
 [Endorsed: — } To y= right woortt his very loving freind Dr Ward 
 Mr of Sidney Colledg in Cambridg give this. 
 
 Septemb. 26, 1626. 
 My L. of Sarum his Letter. 
 
 Good Dr Ward, this troublesome and fruitles Parliament 
 beeing ended I am now at length ready to sett out for Salisbury. I 
 read y* Testimonies wch you sent vp, beeing for y= moste part col- 
 lected out of St Augustine, and very direst for prooving our Tenet. 
 My selfe has had no leysure to doe any thing to y' purpose. Ther is a 
 proclamation lately come out wch inhibits broching of new opinions, 
 & multiplying of intangled questions. How farr those of Durresme ' 
 howse will stretch y° meaning therof I know not. I hear say wheras 
 a question was propounded by y° Answerer concerning Absolute Elec- 
 tion, you have since been coinanded to recall it, & take another in 
 stead therof. As things now stand, yf our Judgment bee published, 
 I think it were best, to doe it wth out additions. They will serv for 
 our defense heerafter, yf it should bee gainsayd. I will not trouble 
 you any longer from your serious busines. God have you in his 
 keeping. Thus I rest 
 
 Your very loving freind 
 
 Jo. Saru. 
 June y"= 22th, 1626. 
 
 [Endorsed i — ] To y" right woortt His very loving freind Dr Ward ; 
 Mr of Sidney Colledg in Cambridg, these dd. 
 
 June 22, 1626. . 
 
 My L"" of Sarum his Lett'. •<..,, 
 
 During the intervals of his episcopal duty Bishop 
 Davenant turned his attention to the revision and publica- 
 tion of his various theological works and different writ- 
 ings. His Expasitio Epistolce to Paul's ad Colossenses had 
 iBp.,Neale. . 
 
1 68 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 been delivered in a series of lectures which he delivered 
 when occupant of the Chair of Margarfet Professor of 
 Theology to^ the students at Cambridge. This is the 
 most valuable of his lucubrations, and it was the first which 
 he issued.^ It was published at Cambridge 1627, repub- 
 lished in 1630, and ran into a third edition in 1639, each 
 edition being in small folio. There is also a quarto 
 edition published at Amsterdam in 1646. The character 
 of this book has been happily expressed by the well- 
 known author of the " Meditations among the Tombs " in 
 the following terms : — 
 
 " For perspicuity of style and accuracy of method : for judgment in 
 discerning and for fidelity in representing the Apostle's meaning : for 
 strength of arguments in refuting errors, and felicity of invention in 
 deducing practical doctrines, tending both to the establishment of 
 faith, and the cultivation of holiness, it is inferior to no writing of the 
 kind : and richly deserves to be read, to be studied, to be imitated, by 
 our young divines." ^ 
 
 We may also subjoin the testimony of the late Rev. C. 
 Bridges of Weymouth, author of that very valuable book 
 " The Christian Ministry," who observes, " I know no 
 exposition upon a detached portion of Scripture (with, 
 perhaps, the single exception of Owen, on the Hebrews) 
 that will compare with it on all points. Leighton is 
 superior in sweetness, but far inferior in depth, accuracy 
 and discursiveness." 
 
 The translator of the Exposition, the late Rev. Josiah 
 Allport, alludes to an anonymous testimony, if only as 
 illustrating the utility of occasionally annexing notices in 
 the front of valuable and rare books. 
 
 ^ The work on The Colossians was intended to be exhibited to the king " to 
 shew a specimen of our printing, both for good letter and good paper, of which 
 his Majesty had complained in printing the Bibles in London," but the inten- 
 tion was hindered by " my Lord of Winchester," i.e. Andrewes. — Ward to 
 Usher, Parr, p. 394. 
 
 ^Hervey's Thfiron and Aspasia, Let. iii. 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSI ANS 169 
 
 "A copy was received,"' he says, "sometime ago by a Clergyman 
 (the Rev: J. Garbett, Rector of St George's-, Birmingham) from one 
 of his parishioners, who having bought it with a lot of other old 
 volumes; and not being able to read it, had been repeatedly on the 
 point of tearing it : but was as often deterred by the following 
 monition on the title-page : and, at length, conscientiously surrendered 
 it safely into the hands of his Pastor. 'Don't abuse this good old 
 book ; for it is an extraordinary piecCj and the best exposition upon 
 St Paul's Epistle to the Colossians that ever was published to this 
 present year 1749, arid I am afraid there will never be a better so long 
 as the world endures. H.G.' Idem testor, J.E." 
 
 Bishop Davenant thus dedicates "this good old book" 
 to his Alma Mater : — 
 
 to his benignant mother 
 ' ■ The University of Cambridge, 
 at all times held in highest renown for virtue, piety, 
 and the acknowledgment of sound doctrine, 
 these first fruits of 
 his theological professorship, originally composed therein 
 and now again revised, 
 are willingly and deservedly given, 
 dedicated and inscribed, in token of affection 
 and honour, 
 by her most devoted son, ^ 
 
 John Davenant. 
 ^ J. 
 According to the fashion of the times he has an address 
 " To the Christian Reader " couched in the following 
 persuasive terms :■ — 
 
 " Receive with indulgence these Commentaries on the Epistle of 
 Paul to the Colossians, which I formerly delivered at the commence- 
 ment of my Theological Professorship in the celebrated University of 
 Cambridge. I have with difficulty brought myself, among such a 
 number of very learned interpreters, to permit this my feeble perfor- 
 mance to go ' before the Public ? but at length the importunity of 
 friends, who thought- that some benefit might accrue from this my 
 work to the Church of Christ (to which it is fit that myself, and all 
 that is mine, should be subservient) overcame me. Use now (if it 
 seem good to thee) kind reader, this labour of mine : but on condition 
 
I70 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVEN ANT 
 
 that thou neither expect any highly wrought diction from the ex- 
 pounder of an Apostle who avowedly renounces all enticing words : 
 nor in the Exposition itself, require anything remarkable from him, 
 who acknowledges himself to be but one Expositor amongst many, and 
 desires rather to be hid in the thick crowd, than stand conspicuous. 
 If I shall have brought any light to the clearer understanding of 
 the mind of the apostle : if in any way I shall have aided Tyros in 
 Theology, by this my lucubration, my design, and (I imagine) my 
 expectations, are answered. Whoever from this my writing shall 
 derive any profit, let him render all the glory to God : from whom we 
 have freely and gratuitously received our sufficiency (however much or 
 little it may be) to accomplish this work. To this supreme God, the 
 Giver of all good, commend me in thy prayers, and fare thee well in 
 the Lord." 
 
 In his " Preface " the Bishop gives the design or scope of 
 the whole Epistle, and then fully explains the subordinated 
 parts. 
 
 " In compliance with custom," says he, " I have a few things to 
 premise, which may render the access to the explication of the context 
 itself more easy ; and then I shall refer to four heads. First I shall 
 say something of the Colossians, to whom this Epistle was written ; 
 next, of the occasion or cause of this writing ; then, of the particular 
 design of the whole Epistle ; and lastly, the distribution of it into its 
 parts. We now proceed to those points in the order in which they are 
 proposed. 
 
 "Some' seek for Colosse at Rhodes, induced by this argument, that 
 it is evident the great Colossus of the Sun was in that island ; from 
 which they will have the Colossians to have derived their name. But 
 the opinion of Jerome and Chrysostom is far more probable, who write 
 that this city was situated in Phrygia, not far from Hierapolis and 
 Laodicea. This St Paul himself seems to intimate, since in the fourth 
 chapter he commands this Epistle to be read in the Church of Laodicea : 
 whence we may be allowed to conjecture that these two Churches were 
 near each other ; but no one places the Laodiceans among the 
 Rhodians. Moreover, Xenophon bears attestation to this, who in 
 lib. i. De Expeditione Cyri, writes, that after he had entered Phrygia, 
 he went direct to Colosse, a populous, wealthy and g^eat city. Besides, 
 Eusebius in his Chronicles relates that three cities of Asia (Laodicea, 
 Hierapolis and Colosse) fell by the same earthquake. Add to these 
 testimonials Pliny, who in lib. i,' Natur. Hist. cap. ■ 32, has not 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 171 
 
 placed Colosse in any Island, but reckoned it among the towns of 
 the Continent. But we need not anxiously enquire after those things 
 which are the province of another, and may be sought from Geo- 
 graphers. Whoever the Colossians were, we may be firmly persuaded 
 of this; that the benefit of this Epistle ought to extend to ourselves as 
 well as to them.i 
 
 Now as to the occasion of the writing, we must recollect that the 
 Church of Colosse was founded in purity, and rightly instructed in the 
 mystery of the Gospel by Epaphras, and other faithful ministers of the 
 Word. But there soon sprang up ministers of Satan, whose great aim 
 was to obscure the Gospel and trouble the Church. Some of these, 
 as though the simplicity of the Gospel were unworthy the wisdom of 
 man, obtruded philosophical subtleties upon the Colossians : others, 
 as though Christ were not sufficient for Salvation, recalled the 
 abrogated ceremonies of the Law. Thus, whilst they attempted to 
 confound Theology with Philosophy, Christ with Moses, they threw 
 that Church into the greatest danger. The devout minister of Christ 
 
 ■^ There seems no doubt that Colosse was situated in Phrygia, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Laodicea and Hierapolis, in whose destruction, as stated above, 
 it is said to have participated. The Rev. F. Arundel in his Visit to the Seven 
 Churches, made a point of investigating the actual site of Colosse, whose 
 scanty ruins he seems to have clearly ascertained in the immediate vicinity of 
 the present town of Khoras,' which appears to have sprung up from its ashes, 
 for we find the Bishop of Chonae present at the second Nicene Couhcil. 
 "Having crossed," said he, "a small river (probably the Asopus) flowing 
 down to the plain, about half past two, our course nearly west, we were 
 overtaken by a heavy shower, or rather, a torrent, which lasted a full half- 
 hour. Nothing could exceed the grandeur of the scene just before the rain 
 began to fall, and at the moment when it ceased. On the left were the lofty 
 peaks of Mount Cadmus, of the darkest hue, with a few streaks of snow along 
 their sides, clouds of a whitish colour rolling beneath those peaks, whilst the 
 atmosphere above them was one mass of condensed clouds, black as night. 
 On the light hand was the ridge of Mount Messogis, partly in dark shadow 
 and partly bright with patches of sunshine, while the terrace on which were 
 the ruins of Hierapolis, glittered with the reflexion of the white masses of in- 
 crustation, resembling sheets of water, or of ice falling over the edge. A 
 rainbow of the most vivid colours I ever beheld, with an outer one as vivid as 
 rainbows commonly are, extended over the whole of the sites of Hierapolis 
 and Laodicea. This said, or seemed to say, ' Dark and gloomy as the prospect 
 now is, and has long been, in these once highly favoured regions, the bow of 
 mercy is again shining : and soon shall the rays of the gospel-sun dispel all 
 recollections of the days of pagan darkness.' " — (Arundel's Visit to ike Seven 
 Churches.) 
 
172 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 could not patiently bear these troubles : he hastens, therefore^ to Paul, 
 then a prisoner at Rome ; he gives an Epitome of the Evangelical 
 doctrine which he had been preaching : he shows the errors and 
 impostures of the new teachers. Upon that the Apostle, under the 
 impulse and direction of the Divine Spirit, confirms the doctrine of 
 Epaphras, by his own authority, and exhorts the Colossians to 
 persevere constantly in the same, despising the foolish subtleties 
 and absurdities of all heretics — such was the occasion of his 
 writing. 
 
 The design of the whole Epistle is this, that all hope of human 
 Salvation is to be reposed in Christ alone: therefore, that we must 
 rest entirely on the faith of Christ, and live according to the rule of 
 the Gospel, rejecting Mosaic Ceremonies, and Philosophical specula- 
 tions. 
 
 Of the parts of this Epistle it would be out of place to say much. 
 When we come to particulars these will be developed more advan- 
 tageously : I will now exhibit only a cursory view of them. If, 
 therefore, we set aside the title or inscription, the Epistle contains 
 five parts: A congratulatory Exordium, in which he commends the 
 faith and other virtues of the Colossians, and desires for them ad- 
 vancement in faith and holiness. To this he immediately subjoins a 
 lively description of Christ and his benefits ; declaring him to be the 
 true Son of God, the only Head and Saviour of his Church. Having 
 firmly established this doctrine, in the third place he attempts a 
 refutation of the seducers who were thrusting philosophical fooleries 
 and antiquated ceremonies upon the Colossians. The fourth part 
 contains instruction in morals : wherein he roots out vices, inculcates 
 virtues, and lastly, forms the life of Christians, both in duties common 
 to all, and to their domestic relations in life. The conclusion contains 
 some private matters and salutations directed to different persons. 
 
 This preface gives us a very good idea of the work, and 
 besides this, the Bishop has also introductions to some of 
 the chapters. He then leads off at once in his commentary, 
 taking the Epistle verse by verse. 
 
 We propose now to give our readers some extracts from 
 this valuable commentary, that they may form their own 
 opinion not only of our Bishop's style and diction, but 
 also of the scope and range of his sound church teaching. 
 Indirectly they will throw a light upon some of the vexed 
 questions of our own day. It must, however, be borne in 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 173 
 
 mind that all our Bishop's writings were in Latin, except 
 his last work, Animadversions upon a Treatise intitled God's 
 Love to Mankind, by S. Hoard, and that the translation 
 which is offered, though faithfully and lovingly ; made, 
 does not so fully reproduce the author's mind as the 
 original. Still it will be found sufficient for all practical 
 purposes. 
 
 We have heard a good deal in our own time not only of 
 the Pope's supremacy, but of Papal Infallibility, and we have 
 been told by the Vatican Council, which passed the Sylla- 
 bus and other decrees, that the Pope is in himself infallible 
 in faith and morals when he speaks officially fro.m his chair 
 {ex Cathedra) of St Peter. Let us turn to our author and 
 see how Bishop Davenant, more than two hundred and 
 fifty years ago, disposed of the previous question, and in 
 fact all Papal claims, as based on St Peter's Primacy in 
 the Apostolate, beginning as they did in supremacy, and 
 culminating as they have in personal and official infallibility, 
 contravening by such action the very facts of history, which 
 Cardinal Manning treated with so light a heart now-a-days. 
 He was matched with those giants of that day, those 
 champions of the Papacy, Bellarmine (who had a great 
 personal regard for Davenant, and kept his portrait hang- 
 ing up in his study at Rome), Cajetan, and others — men 
 who, for logical acumen and theological knowledge, were 
 well worthy our author's steel. 
 
 St Paul opens his Epistle to the Colossians with these 
 words : " Paul an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of 
 God." Here, then, the word Apostle gives our divine a 
 fine opening for definition of terms, which he is not slow to 
 avail himself of, and he at once girds himself for a doughty 
 onslaught upon the Papal claims to Apostolic dignity and 
 other cognate privileges. " Now, in the last place," he says, 
 " it will not be foreign to our purpose to scrutinize that 
 Apostolic dignity which the Pope claims to himself For 
 on all occasions he vaunts about the Apostolic See, Apostolic 
 
174 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Benedictions, Apostolic Anathemas— in. short, boasts of every- 
 thing Apostolic. Wherefore, from what has been explained 
 above concerning the nature of an Apostle, this question 
 arises: Whether the Pope of Rome has or has not the 
 Apostolic dignity and authority ? " 
 
 Bellarmine, DePontif. Rom. lib. i, cap 9^ asserts the 
 Apostolic authority to be permanent in the successor of 
 Peter alone, because supreme and universal power was 
 given to Peter as to an ordinary ^ pastor who should have 
 successors ; but to the other Apostles, as to delegates, who 
 should not. The Pope of Rome is therefore alone the 
 Apostolic Pontiff, his only the Apostolic See, and his office 
 that of an Apostle.^ 
 
 ' It is necessary for the reader not versed in technical terms to bear in mind 
 here the ecclesiastical meaning of the word ordinary. Williams, in his Laws 
 of the Clergy, thus defines it : " Ordinary, ordinarius (which is a word we have 
 received from the Civil Law), is he who has the proper and regular jurisdiction 
 as of course, and of common right, in opposition to persons who are extra- 
 ordinarily appointed." 
 
 2 Jhe greatest champion of the Church of Rome, whose folio volumes have 
 been an exhaustless armoury whence her modern defenders have supplied 
 themselves with weapons, though they have found it convenient seldom to 
 imitate his ingenuousness ; for his works are honourably distinguished for the 
 full and candid way in which the Protestant views are stated. The celebrity 
 of his labours may be evinced by the circumstance that all the most learned 
 and eminent of the Reformed advocates deemed it right to direct their powers 
 against this famous controversialist. Yet, notwithstanding his pre-eminence 
 among her vindicators, it was rightly observed by a late Bishop of Durham 
 that " Bellarmine was not in the best odour with the See of Rome, his notion 
 of the Papal prerogative not being sufficiently high to reach the views there 
 entertained of the Pope's supremacy" (Bp. Van Mildert's Speech before the 
 House of Lords, 1825). Bellarmine was a Jesuit of Tuscany, raised first by 
 Clement VIIL in 1599 to a Cardinalate, and afterwards to the Bishopric of 
 Capua, which See he resigned to be near the Pope's person, and devote him- 
 self entirely to the affairs of the Church. He died in 1621 (the year when 
 Davenant became Bishop of Sarum), in his seventy-first year, " bequeathing 
 one-half of his soul," says Du Pin, "to the Virgin, and the other to Jesus 
 Christ," thus affording a melancholy testimony of the power with which the 
 superstition of the Church of Rome enchains, her members ; for this same 
 strenuous defender of the doctrines of Ms Church, in the tranquillity of private 
 meditation, comes to this conclusion in his book, De Just. lib. v. p. 3 : 
 " Because of the uncertainty of our own righteousness, and the danger of vain- 
 
EXPOSITION OF CdLOSSIANS 175 
 
 But, on the contrary, the nature of an Apostle demands 
 that a man be immediately called by God to that office; 
 that he ble also instructed in evaftgelical truth immediately 
 by the infallible inspiriatioh of the Holy Spirit; but this 
 is more than the advocates of the Papacy themselves dare 
 arrogate to the Pope. He is not immediately called by 
 God, but chosen by the cardinals, and that very often 
 through the intervention of intrigue and by the basest 
 fraud. His knowledge of sacred learning (if he have any) 
 is acquired by study and industry, not inspired like that of 
 the Apostle. Therefore, though they may call him an 
 Apostle, we shall conclude with Tertullian, Advers Marc. 
 lib. I : The name is assigned in mockery to him to whom, the 
 nature implied in the name is denied. 
 
 Secondly, an Apostle is bound to the preaching of the 
 Gospel {;woe is me if I preach not the Gospel), and that not 
 in any one particular Church, but everywhere ; but the 
 Roman Pontiffs do not think themselves obliged to preach 
 through all the world, neither do they exercise that office 
 at all ; therefore they either lie when they call themselves 
 Apostles, or act wickedly in neglecting to discharge the 
 peculiar functions of an Apostle. 
 
 But perhaps it will be said they send out preachers by 
 their authority, and gather new Churehes in the Indies and 
 in the most remote parts of the world ; and this properly 
 belongs to Apostolic authority. 
 
 I answer. Nothing is less Apostolic than to remain at 
 home at ease and send out others to labour ; the Apostles 
 indeed had inferior ministers under them, whose assistance 
 they made use of, but they themselves in the meantime did 
 not omit the preaching of the Gospel. Since, therefore, the 
 
 glory, it is the safest way to place our entire trust in the alone mercy and 
 benignity of God." His devotional Writings evince him to have been a man 
 of undoubted piety ; and at his death, so impressed were the people with the 
 idea of his sanctity, that it was necessary to place guairds to keep off the crowd 
 which pressed round to touch his body or procure some relic of his garments. 
 
176 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Apostolic work is not foiind in the Pope, neither is the 
 Apostolic, nature, for everything evinces its own proper 
 nature by its operations ; add to this that he hath neither 
 the power of working miracles nor of conferring the Holy 
 Spirit ; and yet these were united in all who received 
 Apostolic authority from Christ. When the advocates of 
 the Pontiflfs are pressed with these clear reasons, they are 
 compelled to shuffle, and to attribute a sort of half and 
 mutilated Apostolic authority to their Pope. 
 
 So Bellarmine, lib, ii. De Rom. Pont., c. 12, says : Three 
 things are comprised in the Apostleship — First, that a man 
 be immediately called and taught of God ; and this he con- 
 fesses his Romish Apostle hath not : secondly, that he 
 should establish Churches in those places where they never 
 were : thirdly, that he should have the chief power over all 
 Churches, and be the ordinary of the whole Church ; and 
 he says these two ma;-ks of the Apostleship do meet in the 
 Roman Pontiff. But Cajetan, in tract 3, De Rom. Pont, 
 institut., confesses : If we must speak formally and exactly, 
 Peter hci^d no successor in his Apostleship more t/ian the rest 
 of the Apostles ; but beyond this Apostleship, he was the 
 ordinary pastor of the whole world ; in this office of super- 
 intending the universal Church the Pope succeeds him, and so 
 far his chair is called Apostolic.^ 
 
 But neither must we concede this to the defenders of 
 the Papacy. First, because God doth not set over the 
 Catholic Church any universal bishop fortified with apos- 
 tolic authority, who may err and draw those under him 
 
 ^ Cajetan, otherwise Thomas de Vie, of Gaeta, another eminent defender of 
 the Papacy, who flourished prior to Bellarmine. Besides the work above- 
 mentioned, he wrote notes on Aristotle and Aquinas, and an exposition on 
 almost all the books of the Old and New Testament, which Mosheim describes 
 as brief and judicious. Though an amiable man, he entertained such lofty 
 ideas of Papal authority that in his efforts to reclaim Luther, he became a 
 strenuous opposer of that Reformer ; and in his proceedings he greatly lost his 
 temper, and threw a cloud over his other excellencies. He was made a 
 Cardinal, and afterwards Archbishop of Palermo, and accounted by the 
 Roman Catholics the oracle of his day. 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 177 
 
 into errors. With this argument Gregory checked the 
 pride of John of Constantinople. He says, Epist. lib. 4, 
 cap. "](>, The Catholic Church must needs miscarry when he 
 falls who is called universal} But it is agreed amongst the 
 Papacy themselves that the Pope may become an heretic, and 
 in such case ought to be deposed. Distinct. 40, can. 5, Papa. 
 Secondly, he is not the universal pastor of the Church, 
 who, by virtue of his ordination, is bound to his own par- 
 ticular See: but the Roman Bishop, like any other, is 
 bound down to his See, and to his Church of Rome ; or 
 if he hath any more extended authority prerogative, he 
 hath it by human, not by divine right. And yet it is not 
 of men, but of God alone to confer apostolic authority. So 
 Cyprian : No one of us appoints himself a Bishop of bishops. 
 Be he whom you will, he has but the free control over his own 
 jurisdiction. Afterwards he subjoins that the authority of 
 
 ^ The well-known letter in which this sentence was given by Pope Gregory, 
 commonly styled the Great, may be found at the end of all the complete 
 copies of Brent's Translation of F. Paul's History of the Council of Trent. 
 It must be admitted that, viewed with reference to his character, there appears 
 as much of personal ambition as of piety in this famous epistle ; for Gregory 
 was remarkable in exalting his See. Hence it has been justly remarked that 
 "there is no word in all the writings of Gregory wherein he more proudly 
 boasts of the greatness of his supremacy than where he says that he knew no 
 Bishop who was not subject to the See apostolic." Nay, this very letter is filled 
 with assumptions of the same lofty kind, as when he asserts that " to St Peter 
 was given the care and principality of the whole Church," and that " the title 
 of Universal Bishop was offered to the Bishop of Rome by the Council of 
 Chalcedon and refused," which appears to be altogether untrue. It is evident, 
 however, that although pride and ambition were beginning to work in the 
 Church on either hand, the grand principle upon which all is built that has 
 since brought the Church of Rome into such melancholy distinction was not, 
 up to this period, admitted, for Gregory in arguing with John, the Faster, of 
 Constantinople, against this adoption of the obnoxious title CEcumenicus or 
 Universal, urges, that it was never given to St Peter ; none of the Bishops of 
 Rome had ever assumed it, it was contrary to the Canons, to the Decrees of 
 the Fathers, and an affront to Almighty God Himself." But in fact, through 
 the letter, whilst he quarrels with the usurpation of the Name by his rival 
 prelate, Gregory unreservedly claims the Thing both for himself and his See, 
 to secure which he did not scruple to stoop to base flattery of the bloody 
 usurper Phocas. 
 
 M 
 
178 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 the African Church is no less than that of the Roman. 
 If, however, they will not hear Cyprian,^ yet they will not 
 reject the Council of Nice, which restricts that CEcumenical 
 Bishop within his own limits. Vide canon 6.^ 
 
 Lastly, an universal and apostolic Bishop may every- 
 where ordain Bishops and pastors of his own right ; but if 
 the Pope should ordain a Bishop out of his own province, 
 that would not be a lawful ordination ; for so it was held 
 by the synod above mentioned. It is quite clear that if 
 anyone be made a Bishop without the consent of the 
 Metropolitan, that synod determined him not to be a 
 Bishop.* Cajetan meets this argument ridiculously by 
 
 ^ Cyprian was Bishop of Carthage about the middle of the third century. 
 The whole passage from which the above sentence is cited runs thus : " Neque 
 enim quisquam nostrum Episcopum se Episcoporum constituit, aut tyrannico 
 terrore ad obsequendi necessitatem coUegas suos adiget." It contains, as 
 Bishop Kaye in his Ecclesiastical History, p. 239, well observes, " remark- 
 able expressions," and is evidently " aimed at some Bishop who had called 
 YaxasAi Episcopiis Episcoporum." 
 
 ^ Council of Nice, Canon 6 : " Let ancient customs prevail ; as for instance, 
 those in Eygpt, Lybra, and Pentapolis. That the Bishop of Alexandria have 
 power over all these, since the same is customary for the Bishop of Rome. 
 Likewise in Antioch and other provinces, let the privileges be secured to the 
 Churches. This is as manifest as anything at all, that if any be made a Bishop 
 without the consent of his Metropolitan, this great Synod hath determined 
 that such an one ought not to be a Bishop. If any two or three, out of affecta- 
 tion of dispute, do contradict the suffrage of the generality, when duly passed 
 according to ecclesiastical canon, let the votes of the majority prevail." — 
 Translation of Canons from the original Greek by John Johnson, M.A., 
 Proctor for the clergy of the Diocese of Canterbury, in Clergyman's Vdde 
 Mecum, 1714. 
 
 ' The celebrated translator of Josephus and Eusebius from the Greek into 
 Latin, Ruffinus, a priest who flourished a little after this period at the close 
 of the fourth century, in giving his sense of the 6th canon of this synod, is 
 admitted to have stated it truly and clearly, viz., that the ancient custom be 
 kept both in Alexandria and Rome, that he (the Bishop of Alexandria) have 
 the care of Egypt; the other (the Bishop of Rome) of the Suburbicary 
 Churches, i.e., over all those places in Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, &c,, 
 over which the Praefect or the Vicar of the city of Rome had jurisdiction in 
 temporal affairs, and even the old Latin paraphrastical version of these canons 
 confirms the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome to the Suburbicary Churches, 
 and not only these two editions of the canons, but those of other writers upon 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 179 
 
 saying : It is one thing to speak concerning authority and 
 another thing concerning the execution of it : that the Pope 
 hath the authority of ordaining in the province of other 
 Bishops : but that custom has established his non-execution 
 of this authority. If he hath this authority by right, it 
 could not be so abolished by custom as to make that 
 ordination actually unlawful which he might effect without 
 the Consent of the Metropolitan ; for custom doth not pre- 
 scribe where a thing is forbidden by an express law, says 
 Hostiensis.^ We do not deny that prerogatives have 
 been conceded to the Roman Church and to the Bishop 
 of Rome by the ancients, not because of his being the 
 ordinary pastor of the whole Church, and armed with 
 apostolic authority by divine right, but on account of 
 
 them, call the several districts in which the Bishops of Rome and Alexandria 
 exercised their jurisdiction, Provinces ; whereas the district of a patriarch was 
 always called his Diocese, that of an inferior Bishop his Parish ; and, there- 
 fore, by Metropolitan here must be meant those who had the largest Provinces, 
 or were the most remarkable on account of the largeness of cities, and had a 
 proportionable deference paid to them. The reason why such particular care 
 was taken of the privileges of the Bishop of Alexandria was, that Meletius, 
 Bishop of Lycopolis, being deposed about twenty years before this Council by 
 Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, in a provincial synod, for idolatry and other 
 crimes, did yet ordain several bishops and clergymen in Egypt without the 
 consent and in opposition to the sentence passed against him by the Bishop 
 and Synod. Against him the fourth canon of the Council was probably 
 framed. " A Bishop ought to be constituted by all the Bishops that belong to 
 the province ; but if this be not practicable, by reason of urgent necessity, oi 
 the length of the way, three must by all means meet together, and when they 
 have the consent of those that are absent, signified by letter, then let them • 
 perform the ordination, and the ratification of what is done must be allowed 
 to the Metropolitan in every province." Let it be further observed that the 
 authority of Metropolitans must have been much older than this synod, for 
 here their privileges are Qs}i\sA ancient customs. — f%fe Johnson's Clergymar^s 
 Vade Mecum. ' 
 
 ^ Hostiensis. The author here cited by Bishop Davenant is Henry de Suza, 
 a celebrated civilian and canonist of the thirteenth century, of such repute as 
 to have been called "the source and splendour of the law." He was first 
 created Archbishop of Embrun and then Cardinal Bishop of Ostia in 1262, 
 whence he derived the appellation of Ostiensis or Hostiensis ; under which title 
 he is frequently cited, and by Davenant in the latter mode of orthography. 
 
i8o THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 the consistency, the sobriety, and the distinguished learn- 
 ing of those who in the earliest times were set over that 
 Church ; on account of the dignity of the city of Rome, 
 which was the seat of empire ; and lastly, as Gerson says, 
 by the gracious and voluntary concession of other Churches. 
 
 Now let us sift a few arguments of our opponents. 
 
 I. Bellarmine, lib. 2, De Rom. Pont. cap. 12, says Peter 
 had the government of the whole Church committed to 
 him, but some one ought to succeed him therein as 
 supreme head by divine right, and this successor can be 
 no other than the Pope. 
 
 I answer: There is nothing solid in this argument. 
 First, as regards Peter, to whom they say the govern- 
 ment of the whole Church was committed, when it was 
 said to him alone, John xxi. 15, Feed my sheep. I con- 
 fess in his character of apostle, the power of feeding the 
 flock of Christ was everywhere given to Peter, but this 
 was common to him with the rest of the apostles, to whom 
 also it was said. Go teach all nations, Matt, xxviii. 19. 
 Secondly, we deny that successors were appointed in this 
 apostolic power either to Peter or any one of the apostles, 
 for not fresh apostles, but bishops, succeeded to apostles. 
 Thirdly, if we allow a successor to Peter in apostolic 
 power, he will not be, by divine authority, the Roman 
 Pontiff; because no divine authority appropriated the 
 Roman See to Peter. Whence even Cusa ^ does not hesi- 
 tate to confess that if a Bishop of Treves should be chosen 
 
 ^ Cusa was a profound lawyer and divine, created a Cardinal by Pope 
 Nicholas V. in 1448, and afterwards Bishop of Brixia. It is said that he was 
 the author of a refutation of the Koran, addressed to Pius II., and highly 
 esteemed as a very learned production. A treatise of his concerning " Learned 
 Ignorance," in which he aimed to correct and reform the disorders and abuses 
 which the scholastic divines had introduced into the seminaries, is still extant. 
 Yet this erudite man, notwithstanding this bold admission also above made, 
 in order to sustain the Papacy, set up the notion of a running sense of 
 Scripture, which might be suited to the various occasions of the Church, and 
 adapted to every new rule. — Vide Dr Wright's sermon, "Salter's Hall, or 
 Scripture and Tradition," I734-S- 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS i8i 
 
 for the head of the Church, he would be more properly tlte 
 successor of Peter than the Roman Bishop. 
 
 2. They argue the Church is one body, and hath one 
 head on earth besides Christ ; but any other head on 
 earth besides the Pope is assigned by no one, therefore he 
 is the head and sovereign of the whole Church, and that 
 it hath a head on earth, he (Bellarmine) proves from these 
 words, I Cor. xii. 21, The head cannot say to thefeet,ye have 
 no need of me, but Christ can say this ; therefore there is 
 a head in the Church besides Christ. 
 
 I answer: Although the Church be one body, and 
 militant here in earth, yet no necessity obliges us to 
 confess any earthly head of the whole Church, because 
 Christ, who is ascended into heaven, is also in the world 
 by His spirit, and quickens and rules the whole Church : 
 but he forms particular Churches, and governs them by 
 particular prelates and ministers. The plea, however, 
 which he brings from the Scripture is futile and childish : 
 for the Apostle means not by the head and the feet, the 
 Pope and the Church, but by tJte head any man in the 
 Church endowed with eminent gifts : by the feet, any 
 humble or inferior person. This will readily appear if 
 we weigh the scope of the passage. For he is not 
 cautioning Peter against lording it over the Church, but 
 he is warning those who were distinguished by spiritual 
 gifts among the Corinthians, gainst despising their in- 
 feriors : as Chrysostom, Ambrose and Aquinas explain it. 
 
 3. The Church would not be governed in the best way 
 unless it were governed by one supreme spiritual head : 
 but Christ left the Church instituted and governed in the 
 best manner : therefore by one. 
 
 I answer : Christ alone is the spiritual sovereign of the 
 whole Church: but to institute an earthly sovereign, on 
 whose will the whole Church should depend, would be 
 the worst mode of governing the Church : because no 
 mortal can discharge that office even moderately well. 
 
1 82 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 For how shall the Pope, sitting in the Vatican, take care 
 of the Churches of the Indians or the ^Ethiopians. But that 
 Pontiff does not aim at the care of Churches, but at 
 empire. 
 
 4. The Church is always increasing, and it must increase 
 until the Gospel be preached in all the world : but this 
 cannot be done unless there be one chief president, on 
 whom the apostolic charge and trouble of preserving 
 the whole Church and of extending it may devolve : for 
 no one ought to preach unless he be sent, and no 
 particular Bishop can send beyond his own province. 
 
 I answer : To send preachers to infidel nations is not 
 now the work of apostolic power, but of Christian charity. 
 Every Bishop, therefore, in the vicinity of any heathen 
 nation, may, from the duty of charity, either by himself, 
 or by others, preach the Gospel to them : and, if they 
 should embrace the Christian faith, what is to hinder 
 Bishops and ministers being set over them (if they require 
 it), legitimately ordained by any other Bishop. To extend 
 the Church, therefore, there is no need of a new Apostle. 
 
 We conclude, then, since the Pope of Rome is not 
 immediately called by Christ — nor imbued with Evan- 
 gelical knowledge by direct and extraordinary inspiration 
 of the Holy Spirit — nor endowed with universal power over 
 the whole Church, he can by no mode of reasoning be 
 styled an Apostle, or Apostolic Bishop. 
 
 We commend this fine piece of Davenant's close and 
 logical reasoning to the critical attention of our readers, 
 for it goes right home to the core of the whole controversy 
 with Rome. The question between ourselves and our 
 opponents is not so much a matter of doctrine or dis- 
 cipline — it is not a question of transubstantiation or 
 mariolatry — it has not to do with a cult or the syllabus 
 —but this, the question of Infallibility. Is there such a 
 thing as a visible universal Pastor on earth, and that 
 Pastor infallible, when he speaks from his chair on faith 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 183 
 
 or morals.^ Prove this, and the whole Papal system, as 
 a matter of course, follows. 
 
 But, like the swing of the pendulum, men's minds are 
 prone to oscillate between two opposite extremes. By a 
 sort of rebound, men will go with one step from believing 
 everything to believing nothing, or rather disbelieving 
 and misbelieving everything. Thus the sceptic or ma- 
 terialistic philosopher of yesterday will become the 
 Infallibilist of to-day, and vice versa, by a kind of 
 ricochet, or reflex action. We have seen persons who 
 would not believe in a revelation, or the first chapter 
 of Genesis, or the Incarnation, or even in the Supreme 
 Being, take one bold leap into the arms of Rome, and 
 within the space of a single day, believe everything the 
 Roman Pontiff may propose to their allegiance, whether 
 the Immaculate Conception, or the Vatican Decrees. Be- 
 tween the Theism of F. W. Newman and the Romanism 
 of his brother, the eminent Cardinal, is indeed a great 
 gulf fixed, but not unfrequently may be seen the spectacle 
 of the disciple of the one passing over to the teaching of 
 the other by a single bound, nor will they pause a moment 
 en passant to consider the claims of the via media of 
 historical Anglicanism. Yet the to f^ia-ov may be nearer 
 the true old Catholic platform than these philosophers 
 dream of. There is, in point of fact, a chronic cartel of 
 exchange going on between Rome and infidelity. 
 
 We have seen what Bishop Davenant has to say about 
 the claims of the first, now let us turn to what he incul- 
 cates about the dupes of the latter — the scientist and 
 secularist of our day. Commenting on the eighth verse 
 of the second chapter. Beware, lest any man spoil you 
 through philosophy and vain deceit, to which the igno- 
 minious brand /cef?? aTrarj?? is affixed, he discusses the 
 difference between true and false philosophy. There is 
 
 ^ See Author's Voice in the Wilderness (Sermon, " The Educational Work 
 of the Church on Peter's Primacy,") pp. S33-7. 
 
1 84 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 a true philosophy indeed to be commended, but the 
 philosophy the Apostle condemns is both vain and 
 deceitful. 
 
 '' Now truly, philosophy," he says, " or human reason, which is the 
 mother of philosophy, is always found vain and deceitful when carried 
 beyond its proper bounds, that is, when it attempts to determine con- 
 cerning those things which cannot be judged of by the criterion 
 of natural reason ; and of this kind are those which concern the wor- 
 ship of God and the salvation of men. Philosophy is, therefore, to be 
 listened to when it pronounces about things subject to itself, accord- 
 ing to the light of right reason, but when it would determine about 
 human justification, reconciliation with God, the mode of divine wor- 
 ship, or of other matters relating to faith, it is to be exploded : be- 
 cause, in those things which are beyond the grasp of reason, and 
 depend wholly on the revealed will of God, it brings nothing solid or 
 true, but betrays itself to be altogether vain and deceitful. The 
 apostle hath elsewhere alleged the cause of this, viz.. Because the 
 natural man receiveth not the things which are of God: for they only 
 are discerned by the Spirit of God, i Cor. xi. 14. But a philosopher, 
 considered as a philosopher, is nothing more than a natural man : and 
 reason itself, not illuminated by faith, pertains to this natural con- 
 dition ; it cannot therefore extend to the knowledge of salvation ; and 
 if it should attempt, it miserably spends itself in vain. Here then, we 
 renounce philosophy and human reason and confess with Justin 
 Martyr, a theologian and philosopher, Parcen at Grascos, that, neither 
 poets nor philosophers are fit authors for instituting a Religion, but God 
 alone by Revelation. Which also Prudentius has expressed in very 
 elegant verse, which it will not be irksome to annex. In lib. 2, Cont. 
 Symmach., he is showing that reason cannot but fail, if it intrude it- 
 self into Divine things : 
 
 Quippe minor natura aciem si intendere tentet 
 Acrius, ac penetrare Dei secreta supremi ; 
 Quis dubitet victo fragilem lassescere visu, 
 Vimque fatigatae mentis sub pectore parvo 
 Turbari, invalidisque hebetem succumbere curis ? 
 Sed facihs fidei via.,> &c. ( Vide Hilar, I. de Trin.) 
 
 ^ " Should man, inferior in his nature, strive 
 Into the secrets of his God to dive, 
 O, who can doubt his feeble sight would fail, 
 And bis weak pow'rs of mind confounded quail 
 Beneath the vain attempt : 'Tis faith alone 
 Can easy make her way — to mysteries yet unknown." 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 185 
 
 Neither ought this to seem wonderful. For if brute 
 animals can judge very well concerning those things which 
 relate to sense, such as their meat and drink, yet cannot 
 judge of human affairs ; then, by a parity of reasoning, 
 neither can man pronounce by natural light respecting 
 heavenly doctrine and divine worship, although they 
 may determine, by the aid of it, what is good and right 
 in human concerns. 
 
 That we may therefore accommodate these points to the 
 matter in hand : The false apostles, under the pretext of 
 a certain secret wisdom, endeavoured to obtrude upon the 
 Colossians certain new doctrines about the worship of 
 angels, the expiation of souls, drawn no doubt from the 
 writings of the Platonists. What says St Paul to these 
 things ? Believe not, he replies : fallacious ahd vain is 
 philosophy when it prescribes about religion. It behoves 
 you to learn how God the Father would be approached, 
 how your sin can be expiated, not from Plato and human 
 reason, but from God and His word. Let us explode 
 therefore, and condemn philosophy promulgating direc- 
 tions concerning these things. 
 
 But it is objected that divine and spiritual things are 
 known to human reason, and that by the natural light of 
 the same ; For then, says the apostle (Rom. i. 19-20), that 
 which may be known of God is manifest in them : — the invis- 
 ible things of Him from the creation of the world being under- 
 stood. If reason comprehends divine things, then may it 
 determine respecting them, neither will it therefore be 
 called vain. 
 
 It is answered : The natural knowledge of spiritual 
 things is obscure and feeble, extending only to the existence 
 of those things. As, for instance, that there is a God, that 
 there is a worship of God, that there is a blessedness for 
 souls, reason and philosophy perceives ; but how God 
 is to be worshipped, how happiness is to be obtained, it 
 discovers not: whilst therefore it attempts to determine 
 
i86 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 respecting these things and the like, it is vain and deceitful. 
 This knowledge may render a man inexcusable, but it can- 
 not render him a competent teacher, unless knowledge 
 infused by grace be added. 
 
 3. Let us approach to what we proposed to treat of in 
 the last place, viz., to show the use and abuse of reason or 
 philosophy in the business of religion. For they who per- 
 petually cry out for the exclusion of human reason from 
 treating of sacred things, without discrimination, seem to 
 require that men should engage in the greatest affairs 
 without reason : when, indeed, they cannot rightly manage 
 the least, if that natural light of reason be extinguished. 
 
 The abuse of natural reason or philosophy, in the cause 
 of religion, is manifold — (i) when it attempts to deduce 
 the fundamentals themselves of religion from its principles. 
 For although the principles of right reason are true in 
 themselves, nevertheless, there cannot be elicited from 
 them what is to be determined concerning the mystery of 
 the Trinity, the Incarnation of Christ, the justification of a 
 sinner, invocation of God, and His worship : all which 
 things are to be deduced from higher principles, viz., from 
 the Will of God revealed in the Word. Reason is the dis- 
 cursive power which proceeds from principles to conclusions: 
 but it does not possess in itself the principles of those 
 things which are apprehended by faith ; therefore it dar- 
 ingly builds conclusions upon the sand of its own opinions. 
 
 (2) When it opposes its own principles, which are true 
 in the order of nature, to theological principles, which are 
 far above the order of nature. For example : It is true 
 that out of nothing, nothing can be made : it is true that dis- 
 similar species cannot be predicated of each other, and cannot 
 unite in the same subject ; it is true there is no return from 
 privation to possession ; but all these things are to be 
 understood according to the course of nature and the 
 power of a finite agent. Philosophers therefore err when 
 they think that they can hence conclude against the 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 187 
 
 Creation of the world, the Incarnation of God, and the 
 resurrection of the dead : all which the Scriptures teach 
 as done, or to be done, not by natural causes, but by the 
 almighty power of God. Here, therefore, that rule of 
 Aquinas, Qucest. disp. de fide, art 10, is to be retained. 
 Theology can never contradict true natural reason, but often 
 rises above it, and thus appears to oppose it. For true reason 
 does not affirm that those superior things cannot be effected 
 absolutely; but cannot be effected by any finite power: 
 and this theology likewise confesses. In those matters, 
 therefore, which are of this VxuA, philosophy, as says Clemens, 
 Strom. I, should submit itself to theology, as Agar to Sarah, 
 should allow itself to be advised find corrected : but if it be 
 unwilling to be obedient, cast out t/ie handmaid. 
 
 (3) When it obtrudes for legitimate conclusions, its errors, 
 drawn sometimes by false consequences from true premises. 
 Thus the Stoics, Epicureans, Aristotelians, and as many as 
 come under the denomination of philosophers, do not 
 always teach the dictates of right reason, but the dreams 
 of their own fancy. But, truly, if one should attempt, 
 under the name of philosophy, to introduce those errors 
 into theology, he commits a double sin : first, inasmuch as 
 he resolves the corruption of philosophers into the dogmas 
 of philosophy itself; next, because he even thinks to 
 subject theology to the rules of philosophy. And the 
 Fathers appear to me strictly to have reproved this abuse 
 in the ancient heretics, and sometimes to have declaimed 
 severely, on that account, against true philosophy and 
 philosophers. Nothing is more frequent in TertuUian. A 
 philosopher is the creature of boasting. They affect truth, 
 and in affecting it tltey mar it. Every heresy is engendered 
 by the devices of philosophers. All heresies consist of the 
 vtaxims of philosophers. All the dogmas of heretics when 
 they grow frigid and stiff, and therefore caunot take wing, 
 find a place of settlement and repose among the thorns of 
 Aristotle. Nor is Lactantius more mild towards them : 
 
1 88 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 for in Instit. lib. 3, cap. 2, and in many subsequent places, 
 he continually attacks philosophy and philosophers. But, 
 as I said, these respect not true and sober philosophy, 
 keeping within its bounds ; but that bold and deceitful 
 counterfeit, which dares to mingle itself with things beyond 
 its reach, or which publishes the opinions of private men 
 for the decrees of truth itself You perceive the abuse : 
 now let us shew the use of true philosophy, and this is 
 manifold. 
 
 It might hardly have been expected that a theologian 
 of Calvinistic proclivities would speak very strongly about 
 Baptism, although Calvin's own doctrine on the sacraments 
 is not what is usually called Calvinistic ; and yet this is 
 the way he refers to that first of the twin sacraments 
 {gemina sacramentd) of the Church, as St Augustine calls 
 them. The Bishop is discussing the word " saints " in 
 the second verse, and he explains the term thus : — 
 
 Saints. — That is, sanctified by the laver of Baptism, whence says 
 the Apostle, i Cor. vi. 11, '■'■Ye are washed, ye are sanctified^ But 
 when the Apostle calls baptized persons saints, he speaks accord- 
 ing to the rule of charity, which directs us to presume good of every 
 one, unless the contrary be shown. And for the very best reason bap- 
 tized persons are called saints. For saintship imports two things : 
 First, cleansing from impurity, whence Isidore' writes : That a 
 saint is so called from two words, sanguine tinctum, i.e., to be, as it 
 were, tinged with blood: because anciently they who wished to be 
 purified, were sprinkled with the blood of sacrifice. Secondly, because 
 it denotes a special dedication to the Divine worship ; whence we call 
 not only men, but temples and vessels, holy ; because they are set 
 
 ^ Isidore, usually styled Isidore Pelusista, to distinguish him from two 
 other eminent divines of the same name in 4th and 5th centuries. He was a 
 distinguished disciple of St Chrysostom, a monk, and priest of Damieta, 
 anciently called Pelusium, in Egypt. He Ieff20l2 letters, said to be written 
 in a very superior style, on Scripture doctrine, discipline and morals. Mosheim 
 commends him as avoiding the allegorical mode of interpretation, so prevalent 
 in that age ; and asserts that his epistles discover more piety, genius, erudi- 
 tion and wisdom, than are to be found in the voluminous productions of many 
 other writers. An edition of his letters in Greek and Latin, in folio, was 
 published in Paris 1638. 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 189 
 
 apart to sacred uses in the worship of God. In both these respects a 
 baptised Christian is rightly called a saint. 
 
 For first he is in Baptism cleansed fi-om original corruptions and 
 the imputation of all sins. Whence it is called in Titus iii. s, The 
 laver of regeneration. And in Acts ii. 38 it is said, Be baptized every 
 one of you for the remission of sins. Hence also that saying of Nazi- 
 anzen, The water cleanses the body visibly ; the spirit accompanying 
 it also invisibly cleanses the soul. Hence also that ancient custom of 
 putting white robes upon baptized persons — by which ceremony they 
 signified the purification of their souls effected by virtue of holy 
 Baptism. As Lactantius expresses in that line, De Pascha, v. 93 — 
 
 " Fulgentes animas vestu quoque Candida signat." 
 
 Likewise the white raiment betokens their resplendent souls. 
 
 Neither does this purification consist alone in the washing away of 
 sins, but in the combined infusion of spiritual graces : of which subject 
 Parisiensis^ elegantly writes, Like as a royal treasurer gives the gifts 
 promised by the king to him who produces the royal signet, so the Holy 
 Spirit, the dispenser of spiritual ^fts, imparts spiritual graces to those 
 whom He beholds bearing the sign of Holy Baptism. Peter promises 
 this to the baptized ; Acts ii. 38, Be baptized every one of you in the 
 name of Christ, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. And 
 this is the first reason why Paul calls baptized persons saints. 
 
 Secondly, they are called saints because in Baptism they are in a 
 special measure dedicated to the service of God. For in Baptism a 
 covenant is entered into with God. He receives us under His pro- 
 tection : we acknowledge Him for our Lord, and renounce all other 
 lords, viz., the world, the flesh and the devil. We are therefore, as it 
 were, certain consecrated vessels, set apart from profane uses to the 
 sacred service of God. 
 
 In this respect Nazianzen calls Baptism, The covenant of a more 
 holy life with God. And Peter, i Epist. iii. 21, "The answer 
 (iTepilnrrjiia) of a good conscience towards God." 
 
 Again, in chapter iii., v. 3, " They grievously sin who suffer their 
 
 ' This writer, here quoted under the epithet " Parisiensis," was William of 
 Auveme, created Bishop of Paris in 1228. He was one of the most learned 
 schoolmen of his time ; being eminently skilled in theology, philosophy and 
 mathematics : he was also distinguished for his piety ; and was perhaps the 
 most useful writer of the 13th century; for whilst his contemporaries were 
 occupied in verbal quibblings and metaphysical intricacies, his works were 
 directed to the promotion of practical godliness, the least understood of all 
 sciences in that age of erudite ignorance and theological wrangling. 
 
I go THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Baptism to be rooted from their memory, as a transient ceremony : 
 for this sacred mystery, although once performed, should be per- 
 petually revolved in mind, and expressed in conduct." 
 
 We shall also find the Bishop speak out just as strongly 
 when he comes to speak about the visible Church, upon 
 true membership in the one Holy Catholic Church, into 
 which the saints are admitted by virtue of the Covenant 
 of Baptism, ver. i8 : — 
 
 " The term church is derived from a word signifying to call out : it 
 is therefore an assembly or multitude of those called out. And this 
 calling is effected by the ministry of the Gospel, and other means 
 which God has appointed for bringing men out of a state of ignorance 
 and misery, and leading them to a state of glory. In this sense we 
 call any assembly of men whatever, professing the doctrine and 
 religion of Christ, under legitimate pastors, a Church. Such were 
 those seven Churches to which St John sent his Apocalypse : such the 
 Roman, Corinthian, Colossian, and all other visible and local Churches. 
 These assemblies are called Churches, and those who live in them are 
 members of those Churches, and are to be regarded, in the judgment 
 of charity, as members of the Holy Catholic Church as well, because 
 those means are offered to them on God's part, by which men are 
 called to the participation of eternal life ; as because in their part, in 
 outward act and profession, those means are received and employed 
 for salvation. 
 
 " This external vocation through the proffered grace of the Gospel, 
 and the external adoption and profession of Christianity under legiti- 
 mate pastors, constitutes the outward and visible Church: and the 
 professors of it are visible members of the Church. But there is also 
 another more effectual vocation joined to this external one, in some 
 persons, namely, by grace implanted and impressed through the power 
 of the Spirit in the hearts of the called ; by means of which they not 
 only enter upon the external profession of Christianity, but are joined 
 to Christ Himself by the natural bonds of faith and the spirit. Many 
 are called, but few chosen, says the Saviour." 
 
 The following extract on the 12th ver. of 2nd chapter, 
 buried with Him in Baptism, will show how consentaneous 
 our Bishop's teaching is with that of the Collect for Easter 
 Even : — 
 
 " Not only in the person of our Head, but even in ourselves, our 
 
EXPOSITION OF COLOSSIANS 191 
 
 sins are said to be buried in baptism ; because that mortification and 
 burial of sin is not only performed sacramentally in one moment in the 
 act of baptism ; but really also is carried on by the spirit of grace 
 received in Baptism, through the whole life of a Christian. For the 
 case of bodily death and burial is different from that which is 
 spiritual. The former hath no degrees because it is pure privation ; 
 he, therefore, who is dead cannot daily die more and more. But the 
 latter is in process, not in act past ; therefore it hath degrees, so that 
 he who is dead to sin may die more ; he who is buried may be buried 
 more, inasmuch as the work itself is to be perfected in man, although 
 as to the sacramental representation and sealing of it, it wanted 
 nothing." And again, chap. iii. ver. 2, he also writes, " Therefore as 
 in common language we say that he is already a dead man, against 
 whom sentence of death is passed ; so we rightly say that they who 
 are born again are dead, or that sin is already dead in them, because 
 in their baptism the sentence of death was, as it were, passed against 
 sin ; the execution of which sentence is forthwith begun, is daily pro- 
 ceeding, and at length completed." 
 
 These extracts from the Exposition will suifice to prove 
 that our Bishop as a Commentator was as sound as he was 
 learned, as orthodox as he was evangelical, and as primi- 
 tive as he was scriptural. 
 
 On the 27th March 1625, King James I. died after a 
 short illness, and the news reached Whitehall while the 
 Bishop of St David's was preaching before the Court a 
 Lenten sermon, which the sobs of the Duke of Buckingham 
 and his own emotion terminated abruptly.^ 
 
 1 Diary, 27th March, 1625. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 DAVENANT'S OPINION ON THE GALLICAN CONTKO- 
 VERSY — DIVERSITY OF DEGREES (1627) 
 
 " In answering, he states the question and expounds the terms thereof, other- 
 wise the disputants shall end where they ought to have begun, in differences 
 about words, and be barbarians each to other, speaking in a language 
 neither understand. If the question also be of historical cognizance, he shews 
 the pedigree thereof : who first brewed it, who first broached it, and sends 
 the wandering error with a passport home to the place of its birth." — 
 Fuller's Holy State, Controversial Divines, p. 55. 
 
 WE have already alluded to the high respect enter- 
 tained for the judgment and theological opinions 
 of Bishop Davenant by members of the Reformed 
 Churches on the Continent. None stood higher than 
 he did at the Synod of Dort, as we have seen, and he 
 stood, from a theological standpoint, head and shoulders 
 (eioxos avSpwv) higher than any of his compeers thereat. 
 Bogerman, its President, "confessed that Dr Davenant's 
 experience and skill in the laws and histories gave them 
 directions for the better ordering of their debates and 
 votes." And Lloyd, in giving his epitaph on our Bishop, 
 which contains a good summary of his genius and char- 
 acter, avers — 
 
 " Quse in concionibus dominata est. Scholis 
 Imperavit, et Synodis leges dedit 
 Prudens pariter ac simplex." 
 
 The outcome of that visit to Holland was that Dave- 
 nant's name stood high and deservedly so, not only among 
 the Dutch, but those of other nations who had taken their 
 share in the Reformation, and he returned home with 
 192 
 
ON THE GALLICAN CONTROVERSY 193 
 
 flying colours and an assured Continental reputation. 
 When a controversy arose amongst them anent the 
 " Doctrines of Grace," there was an antecedent probability 
 that it would be referred to his arbitrament, and so it 
 turned out to be the case. We will now discuss the 
 points of the controversy which led up to the question at 
 issue, and Bishop Davenant's judgement hereon. 
 
 The tractate before alluded to is headed "On the con- 
 troversy, among the French Divines of the Reformed 
 Church, concerning the gracious and saving will of God 
 towards sinful men." 
 
 The points at issue are set out in the following terse 
 manner, and a reply, with full discussion, carrying with 
 it the individual opinion of the divines and their general 
 concensus, is solicited in settling the debated topics. 
 
 " There are some ''who so contend for the particular election in 
 Christ, through the mere good pleasure of God, of some certain 
 persons, and their effectual and irrevocable calling to grace and glory, 
 that at the same time they assert, that Christ having died for all 
 men individually, '^with some general intention^ "^God, by His universal 
 grace, founded on His death, which was sufficient in itself, and by a 
 suitable invitation, and calling to repentance, although in different 
 ways, gives to all individually that they may be saved if they will : 
 'so that it arises from themselves alone, and the hardness of their 
 heart repelling the means of salvation, if they are not saved. Which 
 was the opinion of D. Cameron,* B.M., and, as it appears to them, 
 
 ' John Cameron was an eminent divine among the French Protestants, born 
 at Glasgow about the year 1580. After completing his literary education at 
 his native place, he was in 1600 induced to visit Bordeaux, and by the 
 minister of that city was appointed to teach the learned languages at Bergues. 
 He was subsequently appointed Professor of Philosophy at Sedan, and after 
 remaining in! that capacity two years returned to Bordeaux, and engaged in 
 the study of Divinity. In 1608 he assumed the office of minister of that town, 
 and then accepted of the Divinity Chair of Saumur, where he continued until 
 the dispersiott of that academy in 1621. He then removed to England, and 
 was made by King James, Master of the College and Divinity Professor at 
 Glasgow ; but found the appointment so disagreeable that he returned to 
 France, where the disputes between the two religions were now bringing on a 
 civil war. Cameron, whose principles disinclined him to violence, having 
 opposed the emissaries of the Duke de Rohan, who endeavoured to induce the 
 
 N 
 
194 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 of the Deputies from England and the Republic of Bremen at the 
 Synod of Dort. 
 
 " There are, on the other hand, those who deny that Christ died 
 for all men individually, -with the intention of saving them, and that 
 God really wills that all men individually should be saved. They 
 wish that the opinion of the Deputies from England and Bremen on 
 this subject should be rejected by the Synod of Dort, or referred to 
 an opposite Synod : and think the opinion of Cameron and his 
 disciples as pure Arminianism, a hydra of errors, opposed to the 
 Synod of Dort, a subversion of the nature of the Divine law, of the 
 Gospel, of the necessity of the Christian religion, to be expelled from 
 the Reformed Churches.^ 
 
 The Opinion of the Divines of England, the most celebrated in the 
 whole Christian world, is requested on this controversy, as it appears 
 that this might conduce not a little towards confirming the peace of 
 the Reformed Church in France." 
 
 We propose now to give " The Judgment of Bishop 
 Davenant " in extenso, which we must allow to be sound, 
 critical and exhaustive, nor can the trumpet be accused of 
 giving " an uncertain sound." 
 
 ^ The gracious and saving will of God towards sinners is to be con- 
 sidered as effectually applying to some persons, of His special mercy, 
 the means of saving grace, according to that saying of the Apostle, 
 
 people of Montauban to take arms, was attacked by a zealot of the party in 
 the streets, and severely beaten ; and such was the effect upon his mind and 
 body that he died soon after, aged 46. According to Bayle he was a man 
 of great parts and learning, but insufferably long-winded and vain. He was 
 the author of an attempt to reconcile the doctrine of predestination with a 
 more consoling notion of the Divine justice and benevolence, a theory which 
 was more fully developed in the " System of Universal Grace " by his disciple 
 Amyraut, but which Mosheim says, after examination, he was persuaded was 
 no more than Arminianism or Pelagianism artfully dressed up, and ingeniously 
 covered with a half-transparent veil of specious but ambiguous expressions. 
 Cameron's theological lectures are printed in three vols. 4to, Saumur, and in 
 one vol. folio, Geneva. 
 
 ' "The judgment" is said to be that "of the National Synode of the 
 Reformed Belgique Churches, assembled at Dort (1618-9), to which Synode 
 were admitted many divines of note, being of the Reformed Churches of Great 
 Britain : of the Countie Palatine of Rhene : of Hessia : of Helvetia : of the 
 Correspondence of Weterar, of Geneva: of Breme : and of Embden (con- 
 cerning the five articles of Controversie in the Belgique Churches)." 
 
ON THE GALLICAN CONTROVERSY 195 
 
 He hath mercy on whom He will : or as appointing sufficiently for all, 
 of His common philanthropy, the means of saving grace, applicable 
 to all for salvation, according to the tenor of the Covenant of grace, 
 as the Evangelist has said, God so loved the world, etc. Those whom 
 the Divine Will, or good pleasure embraces under the first description, 
 on them it always confers the means of saving grace in this life, and 
 the end of grace, that is life eternal, or glory in the world to come 
 (Rom. viii. 28-9 and Eph. i. 3-5, etc.). Those whom the Divine Will 
 embraces only under the latter description, on them it sometimes 
 confers the means of saving grace, and sometimes does not : but it 
 nevers confers the end of grace, that is, eternal life. 
 
 ^ In this opinion, which is said to have been that of D. Cameron, 
 the first member of the sentence is legitimately constructed, if he 
 understands that particular election, mere good pleasure, and effectual 
 calling to grace and glory, depend in such a manner on the Divine 
 Will, that it does not separate this Divine Will from the foreseen acts 
 of the human will. For he who does this, falls into the errors of the 
 semi-Pelagians. 
 
 ■^ The second member of the sentence is involved and perplexed 
 with so many ambiguous forms of speaking, that it is difficult to 
 determine its truth or falsehood, without first dividing it into 
 portions. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Christ died for all men individually with some general intention. 
 
 Christ is rightly said to have died for all men, inasmuch as on 
 His death is founded a covenant of salvation, applicable to all men 
 while they are in this world. Nor can He be said to have died for 
 each individtially, inasmuch as His death may profit each for salvation, 
 to the tenor of the new Covenant, none being excluded. On the other 
 hand, it cannot profit any individual, contrary to the tenor of that 
 Covenant, although he should be of the elect. If Cain or Judas had 
 believed and repented, he would be saved through the benefit and 
 merit of the death of Christ. If David or Peter had not believed, nor 
 repented, he would not be saved. In this sense the death of Christ 
 may be understood to be set before all men individually. 
 
 What is added in the last place, concerning the general intention of 
 God, by which He wills that all men individually should be saved 
 through the death of His Son, needs explanation. It must be observed, 
 therefore, that according to the custom of the Scriptures, the Divine 
 Will or Intention sometimes denotes merely the appointment of means 
 to an end, although there is no determinate will in God of producing 
 that end by those means. And the schoolmen refer this intention or 
 
196 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 will of God to the common order of Providence. In this sense He 
 willed and intended the obedience and salvation of the angels who 
 apostatised, inasmuch as he furnished them with gifls, fit in themselves 
 and suitable, to perform obedience, and obtain salvation. And in this 
 sense God, with a general intention, wills life to all men, inasmuch as 
 He willed the death of Christ to be the fountain and cause of life to 
 all men individually, according to the tenor of the evangelical cove- 
 nant. But we must observe, that the Scriptures mention another will 
 or intention of God, and that properly so called, which never fails in 
 producing the good intended, and which the schoolmen refer to the 
 order of special predestination of this intention or Will of God. 
 Augustine rightly says from the Psalmist (Ench. cap. 97), In heaven 
 and in earth t}iere are some things which God did not both will and 
 perform : there are some things which he willed and did not perform, 
 though He hath done all things whatsoever He would. And Aquinas "^ 
 
 1 Thomas Aquinas, noticed by our author, sometimes under the one name 
 and sometimes under the other, was bom at Aquino in Italy in 1224. The 
 number of his works is prodigious, amounting to seventeen volumes folio, 
 though he died as early as the age of 50. He is styled "The Angelical 
 Doctor," and his authority among the schoolmen was almost decisive in 
 Theology. Like our own Hooker he was little less eminent for his self- 
 denying humility, than for his wide erudition and deep reasoning powers. It 
 is said that when Pope Clement IV. shewed him a vast heap of wealth, 
 observing, "You see the Church cannot now say, "Silver and Gold have I 
 none.' " "True," replied the great schoolman, " neither can she now say to- 
 the sick: 'Take up thy bed and walk.' " Though like otherifellible men, and 
 especially voluminous writers, he is sometimes found in error, yet Protestant 
 divines and scholars have done justice to the vast attainments of this wonder- 
 ful man. Our Bishop Davenant, especially in his exposition to the Colpssians 
 frequently quotes him as authority in points of importance. The late Bishop of 
 Exeter, Dr Philpotts, says : " I do not affect to be deeply versed in his 
 writings : but I have read enough of them to bear testimony to the uncommon 
 vigour and astonishing acuteness of mind" (Letters to Charles Butler, Esq.). 
 And Mr Southed, author of the Book of the Church speaks of him as " a 
 man whose extraordinary powers of mind few persons are competent to 
 appreciate " ( Vindiciiz Ecc. Ang.). As calculated in an especial manner to 
 stamp the character of the man, and as a hint to those who forget that " 6ene 
 ordsse est bene studuisse" it may not be improper to insert here 
 
 The prayer of Thomas Aquinas before commencitig study : " Ineffably 
 wise and merciful Creator ! Illustripus Source of all things I True fountain of 
 light and wisdom ! Vouchsafe to infuse into my understanding some ray of 
 Thy brightness : thereby removing that twofold darkness under which I was 
 born, the darkness of sin and ignorance. Thou that makest the tongues of 
 infants eloquent, instruct, I pray Thee, my tongue likewise ; and pour upon^ 
 
ON THE GALLICAN CONTROVERSY 197 
 
 (i qu. 10 art. 6), Whatever God simply wills He performs. If, there- 
 fore, by this general intention of God to procure the salvation of all 
 men by the death of Christ, they wish to exclude the special will, and 
 special and effectual operation of God in effecting the salvation of the 
 elect ; or if they would infer from thence, that the benefit of the 
 death of Christ, that is, the grace of God and eternal salvation of men 
 (as far as relates to God) is intended for all men individually with the 
 same kind of will, and is applied by the same mode of operation, 
 really and actually to be had and obtained by each individual, accord- 
 ing as he makes a good use of his own free will ; they bring forward 
 semi-Pelagianism. But if by this general intention they mean nothing 
 more than a general aptitude and sufficiency in the death of Christ to 
 effect the salvation of all men individually in the mode of an universal 
 cause, or a general appointment of God concerning the salvation of all 
 men individually, who, through the grace, duly apply to themselves this 
 universal cause : then there is no need to reject this form of speaking. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 ^ That God by His universal grace founded in the death of Christ 
 •which was sufficient in itself and by a suitable invitation and calling 
 to repentance^ although in different ways, grants to all men individu- 
 ally, that they may be saved if they will. 
 
 The term universal grace does not sound well with the orthodox ; 
 for those gifts which are bestowed upon all men individually (although 
 they are given to the unworthy and the undeserving) are not referred 
 to that which is called the grace of Christ, but to the common philan- 
 thropy of God. From whence the opinion, That the grace of God is 
 universal, or is given to all individually, seemed to be erroneous to 
 Augustine,! Prosper, Fulgentius, and the other adversaries of the 
 
 my lips the grace of Thy benediction : Give me quickness to comprehend, and 
 memory to retain : Give me a facility in expounding, an aptitude in learning, 
 and a copious eloquence of speaking. Prepare my entrance into knowledge : 
 direct me in my pursuits, and render the issue of them complete : through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 
 
 ^ Bishop Davenant so often refers to St Augustine in his writings and his 
 " Expositio," that some remarks may be made respecting him. At an early 
 age Augustine was instructed by his pious mother, in the principles of Chris- 
 tianity ; but being a youth of great vivacity he was led into extreme dissipa- 
 tion, and gave himself up to licentious pleasure without restraint. For this, 
 however, he afterwards made ample reparation to society, in the most ingenuous 
 manner, by his book of Confessions, so often cited by our Bishop. Moving 
 from place to place, in the study and profession of rhetoric and polite litera- 
 ture, and having taught at Carthage and Rome, his mind in. the meanwhile 
 
198 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Pelagians. If, therefore, this author means by universal grace, that 
 the grace of God is given and actually communicated to every indi- 
 vidual of the human race, I do not see by -what means this form of 
 speech can be defended. For the saving grace of Christ (if we believe 
 the Apostles), is communicated to individuals by the preaching of the 
 Gospel (Markxvi. 15, 16 ; Rom. i. 16 ; i Cor. i. 18-21). From whence 
 Prosper says, They live without grace, and are not partakers of ' 
 Christian grace, to whom Christ was never preached. The Apostle 
 affirms the same thing of the Ephesians, before Christ was preached 
 unto them (Eph. ii. 12). But if by universal grace, he means nothing 
 more than an universal capacity of salvation in all persons living in 
 this world, or an universal propensity in God, to save every man, if 
 he should believe in Christ, he ought to correct his language, lest by 
 unusual, and a less sound form of words, he should give offence to 
 the orthodox. Further, this universal grace of some kind being 
 admitted, that which he adds. That God, through this universal 
 grace, by an invitation suitable and sufficient in itself, calls all men 
 to repentance, is refuted by the experience of time, and the contrary 
 event of things. For if he speaks of repentance, which remission of 
 sins and eternal life follows, that invitation or calling is not apt or 
 sufficient of itself for such repentance, which does not send the peni- 
 tent to Christ. But that which sends the penitent to the death of 
 
 thirsting after truth, he came at length under the preaching of St Ambrose at 
 Milan, a circumstance which led to his thorough conversion at the age of thirty- 
 two ; soon after this his life became devoted to piety and religion ; and, says 
 a competent judge of his writings, " the humility, devotion, and unction of 
 this father ; the acute, lucid, and happy way in which he meets his objectors ; 
 and the heavenly wisdom running through his remarks — ^will always, notwith- 
 standing the excess of allegorical interpretation, and the defect of a clear state- 
 ment of justification, make his writings valuable " (Bickersteth's Christian 
 Student). Perhaps, as Milner has remarked, "the doctrine of justification 
 was never fully and clearly exhibited to the Church (after the times of the 
 Apostles) until the days of Luther." Yet it is somewhat remarkable that, ex- 
 cepting this defect, Augustine has been deemed to accord mostly in doctrinal 
 sentiments with Calvin. But another critic (Mr Conybeare, Bampton Lectures), 
 has observed, " he who is insensible to the beauty, the piety, and the devotion 
 and spiritual feeling which are to be found in almost every page of Augustine's 
 Commentary, must be, to say no more, both uncandid and fastidious." Augus- 
 tine was consecrated Bishop, of Hippo in 395, and died in 430, aged seventy- 
 six. His works form ten vols, folio. His City of God, his Confessions and 
 Meditations, his Sermons on the New Testament, and Commentaries on the 
 Psalms and St John have been included in the Library of the Fathers, pub- 
 lished at Oxford, 
 
ON THE GALLICAN CONTROVERSY 199 
 
 Christ for the expiation of the sins of men, is altogether unknown out 
 of the Church, where the Gospel of Christ is not known. Therefore 
 an invitation and calling apt and sufficient for saving repentance is 
 not given to all men. Moreover, neither ought this opinion to be 
 approved, That God by His universal grace grants to all men 
 individually that they may be saved if they will. For first it is 
 foolish to assert, that infants, who are born the children of wrath, and 
 die out of the Church, can be saved if they will ; since they have not 
 the use of reason and free will. By the same rule it might be said, 
 that they could walk and join themselves to any Christian church, if 
 they would. But I ask, as to adults, what is this, that every indi- 
 vidual of them can be saved, if they will ? Are they not willing to be 
 saved ? Without doubt they are. For to be saved is nothing else but 
 to be happy, which all men individually desire. But perhaps these 
 words are to be understood. If they are willing to believe in Christ, 
 they may be saved. I do not dispute that all men individually may be 
 saved, who are rightly willing to believe in Christ ; but I also assert 
 that every individual who thus believes cannot be damned. Yet I 
 add, that universal grace is not proved by a power of obtaining 
 salvation, conceived by those who are in a state not yet purified, nor 
 ever to be purified. It is therefore evident, that the condition. If they 
 are willing to believe in Christ, cannot be fulfilled by many, unless God 
 wills to send to them preachers of the Gospel (Rom. x. 14, 15). For 
 as no one can see a visible object when it is absent, so when a credible 
 object is absent, no one can exercise the act of believing. There are, 
 therefore, multitudes who cannot be saved, because they cannot 
 believe in Christ. They cannot believe in Christ for obtaining re- 
 mission of sins, because the act of believing pre-supposes the object 
 having been proposed to the sinner, in which he may believe, as may 
 be collected from Romans iii. 25, 26. 
 
 Part III. 
 
 It is through men themselves alone, and the hardness of their hearts 
 that they are not saved. 
 
 " It is true, that the corruption and hardness of the human heart is 
 the real and positive cause which drives the wicked from salvation, 
 and thrusts them into perdition. It is moreover certain, that God 
 neither will nor can work in those to whom He designs to grant the 
 means of grace, a contempt or abuse of those means. For as the sun 
 cannot cause darkness, or cold in the air ; so God cannot cause malice 
 and wickedness in the human heart. This, however great it is in 
 repelling the means of grace, is wholly to be imputed to man alone ; 
 in no way to God. But it ought to be added, in the last place, that 
 
200 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 there is no hardness in the human will so obdurate, that God 
 cannot soften it if He will, and which He will not at length soften 
 in all the elect, by that special mercy of which the Apostle speaks. 
 He hath mercy on -whom He will, &c. 
 
 I think, therefore, that the opinion of Cameron here was badly 
 expressed. 
 
 ' I know that the opinion of the English Divines given at the 
 Synod of Dort, neither establishes universal grace, nor acknow- 
 ledges that apt and sufficient means of salvation are granted to all 
 men individually upon whom the Gospel hath not shone. 
 
 ^ Lastly, I think that no Divine of the Reformed Church of sound 
 judgment, will deny a general intention or appointment concerning 
 the salvation of all men individually by the death of Christ, on this 
 condition — If they should believe. For the intention or appointment 
 of God is general, and is plainly revealed in the Holy Scriptures, 
 although the absolute and not to be frustrated intention of God, con- 
 cerning the gift of faith and eternal life to some persons, is special, 
 and is limited to the elect alone. 
 
 So I have maintained, and do maintain. 
 
 JOANN. SaRISBURIENSIS. 
 
 It must be confessed that this judgment of our Bishop 
 is both critical and judicious, and set out upon the lines of 
 the 17th Article of our Church. It is also consonant to 
 the teaching of the Church Catechism, which avers touch- 
 ing the work of the third Person of the ever blessed 
 Trinity, " Thirdly, I learn to believe in the Holy Ghost, 
 who sanctiiieth me, and all the elect people of God; for the 
 accomplishing of the number of whose elect, and hastening 
 of whose kingdom we pray in the burial service for the 
 dead. And with regard to the former official declaration 
 of the Church's mind, Dr Barry has these very pertinent 
 remarks : — 
 
 " These lead on to Art. xvii.. On Predestination and Election, which 
 grapples directly with the primary question. To this there is nothing 
 to correspond either in the Augsburg or Wurtemberg Confessions. 
 What were the tenets of the Calvinistic school therein may be seen in 
 the Lambeth Articles. Now, on this subject it is to be noted that, in 
 the description of the doctrine, the article, avoiding the technical 
 language of the schools, follows accurately the words of Holy Scripture, 
 and therefore speaks of Predestination to life, and not to death, and 
 
ON THE GALLICAN CONTROVERSY aor 
 
 closely connects this with God's call Consciously received and man's 
 co-operation, without attempting to solve the insoluble mystery of the 
 reconcilement of God's sovereignty and man's freedom. Next, it 
 disclaims the doctrine as the keystone of teaching and system, de- 
 claring it fit only for the meditation of those who feel in themselves 
 the grace of God, and ' dangerous to curious and carnal persons.' 
 Lastly it asserts the generality of God's promises, and declines to 
 speculate on any will of God except that which is revealed to us." * 
 
 And even more to the point are the words of one of 
 our most trusted and revered Divines (the late Lord 
 Bishop of Winchester) : — 
 
 " Deep learning and fervent piety have characterized many who have 
 widely differed in these points of doctrine. It is well for us, disre- 
 garding mere human authority and philosophical discussions, to strive 
 to attain the simple sense of the Scriptures of God. But it is not well, 
 when we have satisfied ourselves, we should condemn those who 
 disagree with us ; nor, because we see practical dangers in certain 
 doctrines, to believe all who embrace those doctrines must of necessity 
 fall into evil, through the dangers which attach to them. Discussions 
 on subjects such as this do not, perhaps, so much need acuteness and 
 subtilty, as humility and charity." " 
 
 What effect this "judgment" of Bishop Davenant had 
 upon the Reformed Church of France, we are not told, but 
 this we know, that after 250 years it is still remarkable for 
 its orthodoxy and simple enunciation of the Evangel of 
 Christ. It may have had its fluctuations and movements 
 like othei^ religious bodies, but in the main the tendency 
 of its teaching has been sound. 
 
 The names of Vinet and Pressens^, of Dorner, Adolphe 
 Monod, and Eugene Bersier, the late popular pastor of 
 the French Church at Paris will occur to most. The 
 homiletics of the first named are a standard work : the Life 
 of Christ of the second, is remarkable for its elegance, and 
 his History of the Three First Centuries of the Christian 
 Church, for its accuracy : Adolphe Monod's Discourses at 
 
 ^ Barry's Teacher's Prayer Book, p. 280. 
 
 * Exposition of the XXXIX Articles, Harold Browne, p. 434. 
 
202 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Mantauban, Lyons and Paris have run through several 
 editions. But the last is the most remarkable of all — he 
 had not only a large auditory in his church at Paris, but 
 the most extraordinary thing of all is, that he has published 
 no less than six volumes of Sermons, and some of them 
 have run into four editions in this the gayest and most 
 volatile and fashionable city of Europe — sermons, admired 
 not only for the purity of their style, but uncompromising 
 preaching of the plain, simple Gospel of the New Testa- 
 ment. He does not lay claim to originality, he had read 
 Vinet, and was familiar with the Sermons of Robertson of 
 Brighton. But the best book he had read was the human 
 heart. The late Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr Tait) and 
 Dean of Westminster (Stanley) both called upon him in 
 Paris, and thanked him for his successful advocacy of 
 Divine Truth. One of the greatest preachers of the 
 Anglican Church at our Metropolitan Cathedral has 
 acknowledged his indebtedness to the simple French 
 " Pasteur." The discourses have been partially trans- 
 lated in English, German, Swedish, and Russian. Nor 
 have the members of the Catholic Church of France 
 been slow in thanking him for his homiletic efforts. In 
 the preface to his fourth volume, he says : — 
 
 " En publiant le quatrieme volume de mes Sermons, je remercie le 
 public de I'accueil/avorable qu'il a fait aux trois premiers, dont plusieurs 
 Editions se sent rapidement dcoulees. Se conserve avec reconnaissance 
 des lettres nombreuses qui me prouvent que ces discours ne sont pas 
 rest^s sans fruit. Plusieurs personne attribuent a cette lecture leur 
 retour a la foi Chrdtienne, dont les prejugds leur avaient form6 I'accfes, 
 et, d'un autre c6th, j'ai et^ heureux de recueillir, au sein de I'eglise 
 Catholique, de prdcieux temoignage qui prouvent la r&litd de I'unitd 
 spirituelle de tous les vrais croyants. Qu'il me soit permis de citer ici 
 les noms de trois hommes ; le due de Broglie, le Comte Montalembert 
 et I'abbd Martin de Noirlieu, tous trois enlevds cette annde (1870) a la 
 France, et dont je n'oublierai pas les paroles d'encouragement et de 
 sdrieuse sympathie." 
 
 It was to the opinion of the divines of the Church of 
 
ON THE GALLICAN CONTROVERSY 203 
 
 England, to the judgment of Bishop Davenant, and that of 
 the Deputies from Bremen, that the Reformed Church of 
 France looked for peace and guidance two and a half 
 centuries ago. And it is not without significance that we 
 find the traditions of this Church conserved in the person 
 of this, one of her most cultured and earnest sons, when 
 called upon to deliver the inaugural discourse at Amster- 
 dam in the " old Walloon Church, i8th August 1867," at the 
 opening of the fifth universal assembly of the Evangelical 
 Alliance. It was on that occasion he delivered that magni- 
 ficent sermon on " The Ruins of Jerusalem," in which these 
 words occur — 
 
 "Jerusalem, pour nous, est I'Eg-lise — I'Eglise, c'est i dire cette 
 famille dont Dieu seul connait les metnbres, cette grande cit^ des ames 
 dont nos Eglises diverses ne sent que d'imparfaites rfelisations . . . 
 Enfant de I'eglise reformde de France, qui serait la premiere dans 
 i'histoire des temps modernes si I'on mesurait la valeur des Eglises au 
 sang qu'elles out vers6 pour Jdsus-Christ, je sais ce que vaut un pareil 
 heritage, et ce n'est pas moi qui le mdconnaitrai : aimons done I'Eglise 
 a laquelle nous appartenous, aimous la mieux que les autres, c'est notre 
 droit, c'est notre devoir : mais au-dessin d'elle maintenant cette 
 grande reality qui s'appelle I'Eglise universelle et qui doit Stre pour 
 nous un objet de foi." 
 
 We might multiply quotations from this eloquent 
 preacher of the French Reformed Church, but enough has 
 been said to show that the good seed sown so many ages 
 ago has in our own days brought forth such rich and 
 abundant fruits.^ 
 
 ■^ As an illustration of the interest which the Church of England still feels 
 for the Reformed Church of France, we may mention the remark which the 
 late Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Benson made at the luncheon at the 
 Cathedral Library, the Dean presiding, subsequent to the proceedings of the 
 enthronisation of the new Primate. ' ' Referring to the embracing capacity of 
 the Church, his Grace spoke of the sympathy accorded by the Cathedral of 
 Canterbury to the French Protestants, who have their Church in its crypt," 
 and in the ceremony itself we read, "After the clergy came the Senior Verger 
 of St Paul's Cathedral escorting the Prolocutor of the Convocation of Convo- 
 cations (Lord Alwyne Compton), Dean of Worcester, with the five assessors. 
 
204 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 But to return to our Bishop and his writings on some of 
 the " burning questions " of his day. There is no point of 
 the Anglican armour which has been more fiercely assailed 
 than the Ordinal of the National Church — round this ques- 
 tion the battle has fiercely raged. In Bishop Davenant's 
 days, the Puritans, who rejected the apostolical succession 
 of Bishops, and in fact the Episcopal regimen altogether, 
 were coming rapidly to the front. Presbyterians and 
 Independents alike repudiated Episcopal ordination upon 
 the same principle — the former regarding ordination by 
 the presbyters or second order sufficient, and the later that 
 of the simple pastorate for the exercise of the Christian 
 ministry. The attacks against the Anglican Ordinal ^ on 
 the part of the Recusants, as they were called, or 
 Romanists, beginning with the Nag's Head ^ story, and 
 which have continued more or less down to the present 
 time, are too well known to be more than referred to in this 
 place. The recent Papal Bull is still fresh in our minds. 
 
 Our Bishop addresses himself to this subject in his usual 
 trenchant manner, and fully discusses the difference between 
 the Episcopal and Presbyterian forms of ordination. What 
 the Church teaches is formulated in these remarkable words 
 — taken from the Preface to the Anglican Ordinal : " It is 
 evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scripture 
 and ancient authors, that from the Apostles' time there 
 have been these orders of ministers in Christ's Church^ 
 Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." It will be seen that 
 Davenant's teaching as to Church principles is again fully 
 in accordance with this statement as to disciplinary 
 matters, as it was in a question of doctrine. It is entitled, 
 
 Sub-Dean Clements, Canons Butler, Sumner, Douglas, and Bree, after whom 
 walked the pastor of the French Church, in black gown over a violet cassock" — 
 Morning Post, March 30th, 1883, 
 
 ^ See Author's defence of the "Anglican Ordinal" (Established Church: 
 its History, Philosophy, Advantages and Claims, pp. 465-555). 
 
 ^ " Presbyterianism is simply this — the government of a religious society 
 without Bishops " (vide The Church's Broken Unity, Presbyterianism, p. 75). 
 
DIVERSITY OF DEGREES 205 
 
 " Diversity of Degrees " in the ministers of the Gospel is 
 not repugnant to the Word of God, and is taken from the 
 42nd of his " Determinationes," delivered when he was in 
 the chair of Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, 
 and which we will now consider. 
 
 After putting on one side the position of the Papists 
 with regard to the minor orders he goes on to say — 
 
 " My only dispute is concerning Episcopacy and Presbytery. Nor 
 shall I here subtilly contend, whether Episcopacy be a distinct order 
 from Presbytery, or only another and higher degree in the same order. 
 William of Paris distinctly affirms that Episcopacy is not an order, but 
 an honour: which is also maintained by Gerson, whose words are 
 these. There is not another power of order in Bishops than in Pres- 
 byters, but the same is there in a more perfect mode^ 
 
 Finally, Durandus (lib. iv., dist. 24). is of the same 
 opinion — 
 
 " Episcopacy i' says he, " is not an order strictly distinct from the 
 simple Priesthood, but the distinction between them is of Perfect and 
 Imperfect. Hither tends the arguments of the schoolmen, that the 
 Episcopate as distinguished from the simple priesthood is not another 
 order : but a more eminent power and dignity of certain who are in 
 the same sacerdotal order. It is sufficient for us (laying aside this 
 verbal contention) to show that those who are peculiarly called Bishops 
 have a higher dignity, greater power, and more excellent offices an- 
 nexed to them than other Presbyters have, and this is not repugnant 
 to the Word of God. But it were trivial to say not repugnant : for it 
 is easy to demonstrate, that in the Divine Word, this eminence of 
 Bishops over Presbyters is shadowed out, delineated, and by the 
 apostles themselves established." 
 
 Bishop Davenant's argument then branches out into a 
 fourfold division, which we will give the reader in the 
 Bishop's own words. 
 
 I. For first, that which was instituted in the Jewish Church by the 
 most wise God that a High Priest should be set over the other priests, 
 and the priests over the Levites (Numbers iii. and iv.), was prelusive 
 to the establishing a like order in the Christian Church. Hence the 
 remark of Jerome, that we may know that the apostolical traditions 
 were taken from the Old Testament, what Aaron and his sons and the 
 
2o6 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Levites were in the temple, the bishops, presbyters, and deacons claim 
 for themselves in the Church. It was the will of God that a certain 
 order should flourish among the ministers of the Old Testament ; the 
 Church willed that an order hot dissimilar should be found among 
 hers. But where all are equal in dignity and power, there not even a 
 shadow of becoming order is retained. For order is nothing else than 
 the disposal of equals and unequals, assigning to each its place. Take 
 away the inequality and by the same act you leave among sacred 
 ministers all order thrown into confusion. 
 
 2. Secondly, it is evident that Christ Himself, for the edification of 
 His Church, constituted ministers not endued with equal authority, 
 •but distinct in degree of dignity aud power. For the Twelve Apostles 
 were superior to the Seventy Disciples, and were placed above the 
 same, not in excellency of gifts alone, but in amplitude of authority 
 and power. Moreover, it is the constant doctrine of nearly all the 
 Fathers, that the bishops succeeded the apostles in the ordinary govern- 
 ment of the Church, as the presbyters also succeeded the seventy dis- 
 ciples. Let one of them, Augustine,' speak for all upon these words of 
 
 1 "As an interpreter of the Word of God," says the late Rev. Charles 
 Marriott, "St Augustine is acknowledged to stand at an elevation which few 
 have reached, and none surpassed. It detracts but little from his merits to 
 say that the external helps which enabled Origen and St Jerome to fix the 
 sacred text with greater exactness were wanting to the Bishop of Hippo, and 
 that his Latin and Septuagint occasionally led him into interpretations which 
 cannot he justified on grounds of criticism, not that he was careless of such 
 helps, or slighted the philological element in sacred exegesis. Indeed, in his 
 treatise i3«Z>flrf«KO Christiana, or "The Instruction of the Christian Teacher," 
 he has enunciated the principles of sacred hermeneutics and hence deducted a 
 mechod and rules which, even in respect of the technical processes of interpre- 
 tation, are still most profitable to be studied and borne in mind. But the 
 distinguishing qualities of St Augustine as an interpreter are to be seen in his 
 profound religious earnestness, his heart-felt appreciation of perfect harmony 
 and Unity of the Word of God, his firm persuasion that nothing there is acci- 
 dental and unnecessary, but every utterance fiill of truth and power for all 
 ages ; that to believe is the way to understand j that things obscure, startling, 
 and apparently contradictory to the Scriptures, are not only useful as a dis- 
 cipline of faith, but breathe of the presence, it may be, of some deep spiritual 
 significance, therefore not to be shrunk from or slurred over, but to be searched 
 into, until that which furnished the infidel with matter of cavilling shall yield 
 to the belfever's edification and spiritual joy. Therefore, even in his popular 
 preaching he is not withheld from the discussion of scripture difficulties, by 
 the fear of unsettling the minds of the less-instructed believers." — Preface to 
 Homilits on St John's Gospel (" Library of the Fathers "). And to the same 
 effect vmtes the late Dr Pusey : " On his directly practical teaching it will be 
 
DIVERSITY OF DEGREES 207 
 
 the Psalmist, " Instead of thy fathers thou shalt have children" (Psalm 
 xliv.). What is this? says he. Instead of thy fathers thou shalt have 
 children f The apostles ivere sent as fathers. Instead of the apostles, 
 sons were born to thee : Bishops were constituted. For those who are 
 at this day Bishops through all tfie world, whose children were they? 
 The Church herself calls them Fathers; but she herself gave them 
 birth, and she herself constituted them in the seats of the fathers. 
 The same is the sentiment of Jerome, Ambrose, and Theodoret, all 
 of whom agree in acknowledging Bishops to be the successors of the 
 Apostles, not in their extraordinary privileges, which were necessary 
 to lay the foundations of the Church, but in that ordinary superiority 
 which is required for her perpetual conservation and extension when 
 founded. Add to this, that immediately after the ascension of Christ, 
 the Church was adorned and distinguished by evangelical ministers 
 who differed from each other, not merely in variety of gifts, but in a 
 certain imparity of dighity and power (i Cor. xii. 28, 29). God hath 
 set in His Church first apostles, secondly prophets, then teachers, 
 &'c. Are all apostles ? Are all prophets? They who will have all 
 ministers to be of equal power appear either not to know what Christ 
 did, or account it unfit for His Church to imitate the same. 
 
 3. Let us descend in the third place to the apostles themselves, and 
 we assert that, before they departed from earth to heaven, they placed 
 in the great cities a Bishop, in authority superior to, and in power 
 greater than the other presbyters. He was Chief Pastor of that city ; 
 he possessed a superiority, not only over the laity, but over the clergy 
 
 borne in mind that to him the Church is mainly indebted for the overthrow of 
 Felagianism, and the vindication of the doctrine of the free grace of God. 
 When thus he insists, as he does so frequently, on the value of good works 
 and especially almsgiving, to which he seems to recur with such especial 
 sympathy, it will not be hastily thought that so deep and consistent a thinker, 
 and so embued with divine truth, was at variance with himself and with it, 
 and we may in his teaching gain more constraining motives to encourage our- 
 selves and pthers, if so one great stain of our times, the neglect of Christ's 
 poor, may be mitigated or effaced. On. the other hand, when he speaks of 
 heresy, he speaks of what he had himself been ;, of the nothingness of this 
 world's pleasures and applause, of what he had himself, when unbaptized, too 
 miserably tasted ; of Christ's power to save out of them, what he had himself 
 felt; of the grace of God, what he had himself used; of the value of alms as 
 having himself given up what was his ; of humility, as showing it in the very 
 language in >yhich he praises it ; of the joys of heaven and the love of God, as 
 that for which he had abandoned freelyand for ever all on earth, for which he 
 was daily labouring, enduring, sighing." — ^Advertisement to Sermons on New 
 Testament by St Augustine (" Library of the Fathers "). 
 
2o8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 or presbyters of the same city. Such was Titus at Crete, Timothy 
 at Ephesus, James at Jerusalem, Euodias at Antioch, Amianus at 
 Alexandria, Polycarp at Smyrna, not to mention others, who, it is 
 most certain, were exalted to the Episcopal seat, the apostles being 
 alive, and seeing, approving, nay, even directing, that very thing. It 
 is also certain that, throughout the Universal Church of Christ, the 
 successors of these also held a certain eminent authority over their 
 own flock and over inferior ministers ; and it is equally certain that 
 there was a perpetual succession of the same. This is attested by the 
 very titles which the ancients continually apply to these bishops and 
 to their successors. They were called the Great Pastors, Prelates, 
 Head Princes of the Church?- If the power and dignity of all 
 ministers were equal, they would never have dignified, or rather 
 derided, bishops above others with these empty titles. Nay, Christ 
 Himself gave to these chief Pastors of His . Churches, whom we call 
 bishops, the especial appellation of angels (Rev. xi.). In the Church 
 of Ephesus, of Pergamos, and the rest, there were many Presbyters ; 
 but there was in each one angel, or bishop, whom Christ addresses 
 singly. If he had been one of the body of presbyters, neither in 
 dignity nor power greater than the rest, there was no reason why 
 Christ should address him, as it were, by name. Beza not inaptly 
 expounds these words (Rev. xi.). To the Angel of the Church of 
 Ephesus, that is, to the President; which term very well suits a 
 bishop, who presides not only over the laity, but the other clergy. 
 But what he adds about the office of this President not being perpetual, 
 is so clearly refuted by ecclesiastical history, that it is wonderful to see 
 it asserted by a learned man not unacquainted with antiquity. " Be 
 this, therefore, fixed and established, that among many Presbyters 
 who in some one city administered the Word and sacraments, there 
 was one set over the rest by the apostles themselves, and armed with 
 a peculiar dignity and power. These bishops, being thus established 
 by the authority of the apostles, it is certain were succeeded in a per- 
 petual series by those who were substituted in the same cities, and 
 when it seemed good to the Church, new ones also were constituted in 
 other cities after the same example." 
 
 4. But in the last place we must observe in what consisted this 
 excelling dignity and power of Bishops, by which they were dis- 
 tinguished, not by their own presumption, but by Apostolical ordina- 
 tion, from other inferior Presbyters. And here it must be candidly 
 acknowledged, that Bishops have certain privileges above Presbyters, 
 which are derived, not from the primitive constitution of the apostles, 
 
 ' By Nazianzen and Hilary. 
 
DIVERSITY OF DEGREES 209 
 
 but either from the especial beneficence of Christian Princes, or from 
 the authority of Councils J and of such we say with Jerome, in his 
 dialogue against the Luciferians, These are rather Jor honour to the 
 Priesthood than of legal necessity. 
 
 But of Bishops there are three peculiar marks by which they. are 
 readily distinguished from other Presbyters, and recognized as 
 superior. 
 
 I. The first is that in cities, however large and populous, wherein 
 many Presbyters were created, the Apostles ordained one Bishop 
 only, at whose decease another succeeded singly in the same See. 
 Hence that decree of the Council of Nice, Let there not be two 
 Bishops in one city. Hence Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, reproaches 
 Novatus for ignorance for not acknowledging the singleness of epis- 
 copal succession : This Vindicator of the Gospel is ignorant that there 
 must be one Bishop in that Churchy in which he is not ignorant there 
 are forty five Presbyters (Euseb. vi. 42). If the Apostles approved a 
 parity of all ministers, why would they have one to be distinguished 
 from all the rest, by this singleness of succession ? Jerome, who is 
 esteemed not very favourable to episcopal dignity, nevertheless con- 
 fesses, that with this singleness of succession, a singular dignity and 
 eminence was joined. For thus he writes (in Epist. ad Evagriuni) 
 concerning the Bishop of Alexandria : At Alexandria, from the Evan- 
 gelist Mark down to the Bishops Heraclas and Dionysius, the Presbyters 
 always having elected one from themselves and placed him in a higher 
 degree^ named him Bishop. From this eminent authority of one 
 Bishop in one city or diocese, the most wise and holy Father saw that 
 the place and unity of the Church depended, and they have left their 
 testimony to us. Cyprian, a man far removed from all pride and 
 ambition, shows that this sacerdotal authority of one Bishop was 
 confirmed by the divine approbation, and immediately adds. From 
 no other quarter have heresies arisen, or schisms sprung up, than from 
 this, that they would not render obedience to the Priest of God, 
 nor think that in the place of Christ, there is one Priest in the Church 
 at the time, and one judge at the time {Epist. lib. l, Epist. 3). 
 Which words are most impudently wrested by the Romanists to 
 establish the Monarchy of the Pope, when it is clearer than the 
 meridian light that the blessed Martyr was speaking of himself, not 
 of the Roman Pontiff. If, in the cause of Bishops, the testimony of a 
 Bishop be suspicious, let us again hear St Jerome, who was not wont 
 to depress Presbyters, or exalt Bishops unduly. Thus speaks he 
 against the Luciferians (Cap. iv. p. 199) : — 
 
 The safety of the Church depends on the dignity of the Chief Priest, 
 to whom if a certain peculiar and eminent power be not granted by 
 
 O 
 
2IO THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 all^ there will be formed in the Churches as many schisms as there are 
 Pf tests. This vefy singleness of episcopal succession, always joined 
 with a certain amplitude of authority, is sufficient of itself to crush 
 the modern error of the parity of all ministers. 
 
 2. But we are to add the second mark of Episcopal dignity, by the 
 light and power of ordination, which was transmitted by the Apostles 
 themselves to Bishops, but denied to inferior Presbyters. Both which 
 is clear from hence, that we see the Apostles sent Timothy and Titus 
 to Churches in which there were many Presbyters, viz., to Ephesus 
 and Crete, that they might ordain Presbyters where there was need. 
 Lay hands suddenly on 710 man, is the admonition of Paul to Timothy 
 (l Tim. V. 20), who was endued with the power of ordination. For 
 this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the 
 things that are wanting and ordain Presbyters in every city, are 
 the words of the same Apostle to Titus (i. 5), and referring to the 
 same thing.' Why could not the Ephesian Presbyters ordain others 
 before the arrival of Timothy ? Why was it not lawful for the ministers 
 of Crete to do the like before Titus came ? No adequate reason for 
 this can be assigned, unless the power of ordaining resides in those 
 alone who discharge the Episcopal function. Jerome (whom some 
 suppose to have agreed with Aerius ') yet admits {Epist. ad Evag.) 
 that ordination is so precious to Bishops, that it is not lawful for 
 Presbyters to exercise it. What does a Bishop do, ordination excepted, 
 which a Presbyter does notf In this Apostolic Institution the 
 Catholic Church always acquiesced, and did not acknowledge any 
 other ordination lawful than that which was solemnized by a lawful 
 Bishop. We find a remarkable example of this in the works of 
 Athanasius. One Colythus, a Presbyter in the Church of Alexandria, 
 presumed to ordain other Presbyters. But what was afterwards done ? 
 This ordination of his was rescinded, and all the Presbyters made by 
 him were reduced to the rank of laymen (Athan. Apolog. 2). It is 
 therefore certain that the power of ordaining belongs to the office of 
 Bishops only, and does not belong to inferior Presbyters, which is 
 a manifest proof of. Episcopal dignity and Presbyterial inferiority. 
 
 But here in passing we have to solve a doubt which was not omitted 
 by the schoolmen themselves j*" for it is often questioned, whether, 
 besides a Bishop, who by his office dispenses sacred orders, can one 
 inferior to a Bishop confer the same in case of necessity ? To which 
 I answer, seeing that to confer holy orders is by apostolical institu- 
 tion an act of the Episcopal office, if Presbyters in a well constituted 
 
 ' Vide Medin. lib. i., deSacr, horn, cont., cap. 5. 
 * Vidt Durand, lib. iv., disp. 7, qusest. 3. 
 
DIVERSITY OF DEGREES 211 
 
 Church do that, their act is not only unlawful but null and void. For 
 here obtains the axiom of Hugo, What is performed contrary to the 
 institution is accounted null. But in a disturbed Church where all the 
 Bishops have fallen into heresy or idolatry, where they refuse to 
 ordain orthodox ministers, or where they account those alone to be 
 worthy of Holy orders who participate in their error or faction, if 
 orthodox Presbyters be compelled to ordain other Presbyters, that 
 the Church may not perish, I could not venture to pronounce ordina- 
 tion of this kind vain and invalid. For if the danger that threatens 
 a single infant be sufficient to transfer the office of baptizing to any 
 layman, which, by institution, belongs to ministers alone, why is not 
 danger impending over a particular Church sufficient to transfer the 
 office of ordaining to simple priests, which, by institution belongs to 
 Bishops alone ? Necessity has been aptly called temporary law : and 
 in such case it defends that to which it compels. It is the opinion 
 of Armachanus,^ that if all Bishops were dead, inferior priests could 
 ordain. Certainly the consideration is much alike, when all have 
 become sworn enemies to the truth. For as a commonwealth, so a 
 particular Church, has a certain extraordinary power for the necessary 
 preservation of itself. If then certain Protestant Churches, which 
 could not look for ordination from Popish Bishops, have, under this 
 necessity, ordained Presbyters, they are not to be judged as having 
 injured the episcopal dignity, but to have yielded to the necessity of 
 the Church. 
 
 3. The last token of episcopal dignity remains, which exalts these 
 above Presbyters, and allows them not by any means to be accounted 
 equal in degree. This is the power of jurisdiction, not only over the 
 laity, but the clergy, who are also by apostolical institution subject to 
 Bishops. It is a saying as true as it is common, Equal hath not 
 power over equal. But Bishops have power over the clergy : not 
 indeed a regal or lordly power, but one that is Pastoral or Paternal : 
 which is inconsistent with all kind of parity or equality. To say 
 nothing of others, excommunication, which is the spiritual staff, is 
 delivered into the Bishop's hand, to chastise, not only the vicious or 
 •contumacious of the laity, but also Presbyters that deserve this cen- 
 sure. This is most evident from the Epistles of Timothy and Titus, 
 of whom one was constituted Bishop of the Church of Ephesus, and 
 the other of Crete, by St Paul. They are commanded to enjoin 
 some not to preach diverse doctrines, to stop the mouths of deceivers, 
 to reject heretics, and other points, implying jurisdiction and authority. 
 It is also evident from the language of Christ to the Angels of the 
 
 ^ Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh. 
 
212 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Asiatic Churches. The Angel (i.e., the Bishop) of the Church of 
 Pergamos is reproved (Rev. ii. 15) because he had in his Church 
 some who held the doctrine of the Nicolaitans. Thus also the Angel 
 of the Church of Thyatira (Rev. ii. 20), because he permitted the 
 woman Jezebel to teach and seduce the people. Therefore, in the 
 judgment of Christ Himself, the Bishop hath authority to restrain 
 and reject heretics out of the Church. 
 
 I do not say that a Bishop was accustomed to do this without the 
 consent of Presbyters ; for what Cyprian declares of himself {Episf, 
 lib. 3, epist 10) that from the beginning of his episcopate he had de~ 
 termined to do nothing of his own private opinion without advice, was 
 probably observed by other pious Bishops. Nevertheless, it is mani- 
 fest that the censure proceeded from the Episcopal authority alone, 
 and passed as an act of Episcopal jurisdiction upon offenders. For 
 excommunication is called the Episcopal Sword. In the case of 
 excommunication, there was an appeal from the Episcopal judgment 
 to a Synod ; which confirmed the Bishop's censure, if it had been 
 rightly denounced, or rescinded it if otherwise. Therefore in the 
 act of excommunication, not the people, nor the Presbyters, are the 
 acknowledged judges, but the Bishop alone. That this was the 
 discipline of the primitive Church, can be made clear from ancient 
 Councils. Let the Council of Nice, can. 5 ; of Antioch, can. 6 ; of 
 Sardium, can. 14, be inspected. Nay, Jerome himself does not 
 doubt that the power of excommunicating Presbyters belongs to the 
 Bishops. Hence he writes thus to Riparius {Epist. 53) concerning 
 Vigilantius, an heretical Presbyter, / wonder that the holy Bishop, 
 in whose diocese he is said to be a Presbyter sits quiet at the frenzy of 
 the man, and does not break this unprofitable vessel with the apostoUcat 
 andiron rod, and deliver him to the destruction of the flesh, that Ms- 
 spirit may be saved. These things shew clear enough, that from the 
 very Apostolical times. Bishops were superior in power and degree to 
 Presbyters, and that a parity among ministers of the Gospel never 
 obtained." 
 
 Bishop Davenant, having thus clearly stated his case^ 
 proceeds to answer the three following arguments, which 
 are alleged to the contrary, and he does it most logically 
 and luminously : — 
 
 fi) Christ Himself seems to prohibit this inequality among Gospel 
 ministers (Matt. xx. 25, 26). (2) It is objected that in the Acts and 
 Epistles of St Paul, Presbyters are called Bishops, and vice versa. 
 Hence some labour to prove not only that Presbyters are equal ta 
 
DIVERSITY OF DEGREES 213 
 
 Bishops, but that they are altogether the same with Bishops. (3) 
 They also object that though it be acknowledged they were superior 
 to the other ministers of the Gospel, yet as their vocation was extra- 
 ordinary, so also was their power. Bishops therefore cannot claim 
 superiority or power over other Presbyters, because this excelling 
 power being annexed to the persons of the Apostles, did not pass 
 over to the Bishops and their successors. 
 
 These objections having been carefully considered by 
 our Bishop, and critically answered in a most convincing 
 and exhaustive manner, Davenant thus concludes his 
 argument : — 
 
 " As to the last objection of Jerome, viz., that Bishops are greater 
 than custom, more by custom than any true appointment of the Lord, 
 it appears to press somewhat closer. But we answer first, that his 
 -words are not to be too closely pressed : for he writes differently in 
 different places, and inconsistently on this same subject. Neverthe- 
 less, his words mz^y be allowed in a sound sense : since he may be 
 understood to speak oi the titles, noi oi the offices: for custom, and not 
 any appointment of the Lord or His Apostles, hath made the title 
 of Bishop greater than that of the Presbyter ; or Jerome may be 
 understood to speak of that authority which Bishops had obtained 
 over Presbyters in his age. For this was considered in a great degree, 
 in privileges which had been conceded to them, by custom and the 
 authority of Councils ; but was not founded in any constitution of the 
 Apostles. Finally, Jerome perhaps intended by the expression, true 
 appointment of the Lord, an express command of our Lord in Scrip- 
 ture ; and by custom, a practice begun by the Apostles, and perpet- 
 ually observed in the Church. But in whatever way his words be 
 expounded, it is certain that Jerome acknowledged a diversity of 
 degrees among the clergy, which is sufficient to refute the equality 
 of ministers.'' 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 BISHOP DAVENANT'S "DISSERTATION ON THE DEATH 
 OF CHRIST" (1627) 
 
 " In his grave writings he aims at God's glory and the Church's peace. With 
 that worthy prelate, the second Jewel of Salisbury, whose comments and con- 
 troversies will transmit his memory to all posterity : 
 
 " Whose dying pen did write of Christian union. 
 How Church with Church might safely keep communion. 
 Commend his care, although the cure do miss : 
 The woe is ours, the happiness is his : 
 Who finding discords daily to increase. 
 Because he could not live, would die in peace." 
 
 Fuller's Holy State, The Good Bishop, p. 270. 
 
 THE writer of these Memoirs has set himself the 
 pleasing task of showing that Bishop Davenant, 
 though he had, like so many Prelates of the early part of 
 the 17th century, somewhat Calvinistic proclivities, of a 
 mild, or sub - lapsarian type, was for all that a sound 
 Anglican Divine formed upon true Church principles. He 
 understood, no man better, the platform of the Reformed 
 Church of this country, its historical basis, and its bifurcated 
 appeal to the Word of God and Primitive Antiquity — i.e~ 
 the Word of God as interpreted by the Primitive Church. 
 Ours is the only Church so reformed, both as to discipline 
 and doctrine, and her mind could be easily seen from the 
 very words (ipsissima verba) of the Church herself. In 
 recasting our liturgical offices, the Reformers were guided 
 by these words, that they should " draw an order of Divine 
 Worship, having respect to the pure religion of Christ 
 taught in the Scripture, and to the practice of the primitive 
 Church." And accordingly, when they had completed 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 215 
 
 their work, they recommended it to the people, in a 
 preface which is still retained, saying, " here you have an 
 Order for Prayer, as touching the reading of Holy Scripture, 
 much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old Fathers^ 
 In another preface, that to the service for the Ordering of 
 Deacons, we are told " it is evident to all men diligently 
 reading the Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from 
 the Apostles' time there have been these orders of 
 ministers." 
 
 In the 24th article the language used is this, " It is 
 a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the 
 Primitive Church, to have^ public prayer in the Church, 
 or to minister the sacraments in a tongue not under- 
 standed of the people." Again, in her Commination 
 Service, "Brethren," says she, "in the Primitive Church 
 there was a godly discipline, that at the beginning of Lent, 
 such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin, were put 
 to open penance, and punished in this world, that their 
 souls might be saved in the day of the Lord." Bishop 
 Davenant would of course be familiar with these words, 
 but he was also well aware of the perpetual reference 
 made in the Homilies to the Primitive Church, nor would 
 he be unversed in the "Apology for the Church of 
 England," by his predecessor in the See of Salisbury, 
 Bishop Jewel, which proceeded upon the same lines. 
 Naturally, so erudite a divine would never lose sight of 
 the Canon of 1571, enjoining that preachers should teach 
 nothing but what is agreeable to the Old and New Testa- 
 ment, and what the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops 
 have gathered out of that very doctrine. With these argu- 
 ments the churchmen repelled the attacks not only of the 
 Recusants,^ but of the Puritans and Socinians. They went 
 
 ' That part of the declaration of the good Bishop Ken, contained in his 
 last will maybe recalled by the reader. "As for my religion I die in the 
 Coinmunion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from all 
 Papal and Puritan innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross." 
 
2i6 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 for their weapons to the armoury of the Primitive Church, 
 witness the writings of Hooker, of Taylor, of Hammond, 
 of Sanderson, of Bull, and many more : a class of divines 
 to whom the works of the most ancient Fathers of all 
 were even more familiar, perhaps, than they were to the 
 Reformers themselves.^ And it was to the same fountain- 
 head that our Bishop betook himself, and furnished himself 
 with those precise arguments of his drawn from Holy Writ, 
 and the writings of the old Catholic Fathers and Doctors. 
 
 What then is meant by this appeal to Scripture and the 
 Primitive Church which is the platform of the Anglican 
 re-formation ? Let us hear that great Patristic divine, the 
 late Dr Pusey. " The Fathers, then," he says in his Preface 
 to the Confessions of St A ugustine, " are not, as some 
 mistakenly suppose, equalled, much less preferred, to Holy 
 Scripture, but only to ourselves, i.e., the ancient to the 
 modern, the waters near the fountain to the troubled 
 estuary rolled backward and forward by the varying tide 
 of human opinion, and rendered brackish by the continued 
 contact with the bitter waters of this world, unity to dis- 
 union the knowledge of the near successors of the 
 Apostles to that of these latter times." 
 
 And again he adds, " Tke appeal of our Church is not 
 to the Fathers individually, or as individuals, but as wit- 
 nesses : not to this or that Father, but to the whole body, and 
 agreement of ' Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops.' " The 
 appeal is not to St Athanasius, or St Cyprian, or St Basil, 
 much as we have reason to venerate those blessed servants 
 of God, but to " the Church universal throughout the 
 world," to whose belief these are eminent, but still single, 
 witnesses. We could not tell from any single Father, 
 unless where he directly avers it, whether any sentiment 
 or statement of doctrine be peculiar to himself or his own 
 Church, or some particular Churches ; or whether, finally, it 
 belongs to the belief of the Holy Church universal. . . . 
 
 ' Blunt's Introductory Lecture to tke Study of the Early Fathers, p. 30. 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 217 
 
 The words then of an individual Father may be only 
 those of an enlightened man ; it is only by their harmony 
 or unity with others, that we ascertain them to be part of 
 the Catholic verities. By comparing them with those of 
 other members of his Church (who have ever been quoted 
 as of eminence in each Church) we should ascertain them 
 to be the doctrines of that Church : by comparison with 
 other Churches, to be part of the teaching of the Church 
 Catholic. Each Father is, in the first instance, probably 
 a witness for the doctrine of his own Church, and indi- 
 rectly and ultimately through his Church, of the Church 
 Catholic, if so be his Church herein agree with the other 
 Churches. For some things we find in the African, some 
 in the Latin Church, peculiar to those Churches; some 
 things again in two or more Churches, which yet we have 
 no proof that they were ever Catholic. Things so held, 
 or practices so received (such as the re-baptizing of heretics, 
 held in the Churches of Africa proper, Egypt, Asia Minor), 
 would, of course, be entitled to their degree of weight, in 
 that they were so entertained in ancient or apostolic 
 Churches, and would claim the more respect, if it should 
 appear that there was no positive evidence on the other 
 side (as in case other Churches knew not of them, but 
 knew of no authority positively opposed to them) — still 
 they would be to be regarded very differently from what 
 was universally received. It is this only which, according 
 to Vincentius' invaluable rule, was received " by all, in all 
 Churches and at all times" (i.e., that, whose beginning 
 cannot be traced, so that it should appear that the Church 
 ever knew not of it, and in the evidence of whose reception 
 there are no flaws, as if it should appear not to have been 
 held either by distinct Churches, or by eminent individuals 
 in each Church) which has the degree of evidence, upon 
 which we can undoubtedly pronounce that it is apostolic.^ 
 
 ' Dr Pusey's Preface to the Confessions of St Augustine, p. 8 (Translation 
 " Library of the Fathers "). 
 
4i8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 And again the Doctor says, on the use of this appeal to 
 Scripture and Primitive Church : 
 
 " Thus as far as any appeal is made to antiquity, as in the other 
 case, it is made not to the disparagement of Scripture (God forbid !), 
 but against modern interpretations of Scripture, so here it is made not 
 against our Church, or as wishing to superadd anything to it, but 
 against modern interpretations of her meaning. . . . The object then 
 of recalling men's attention to the Fathers, so far as relates to the 
 establishment of doctrine or practice, is subordinately to Scripture to 
 bring out the meaning of Holy Scripture, and with respectful defer- 
 ence to our Church, to lead people to see the Catholic and Primitive 
 character and meaning of the treasures which she possesses. To 
 those who doubt whether there be any such thing as Catholic agree- 
 ment, having been accustomed to partial statements of the variations of 
 the Fathers, it can only be said, as of old time ' Come and see ' : and 
 we doubt not that they who have the candour of Nathanael, will, under 
 the guise of flesh, find Him whom they seek, will in His Church see 
 Him who promised to be with His Church ' even to the end of the 
 world,' pervading by his spirit men of different temperaments, intel- 
 lectual powers, learning, speech, discipline or depth or acuteness of 
 mind, but fitting them alike, by docility and holiness, to carry on His 
 message to the Church, and keep and transmit to us that one good 
 thing committed unto them." ' 
 
 And with regard to the objection as to diversity among 
 the Fathers, Bishop Beveridge well retorts : 
 
 " All the dissensions which have been raised among them on certain 
 points take nothing from their supreme authority on those points on 
 which they agree, but rather in an eminent degree confirm it. For the 
 fact that in other things they have differed most plainly, manifests 
 that those things on which they have agreed they have handed dovra, 
 not from any compact or agreement, not from any party formed, not 
 from any communication of design, nor, finally, from their own 
 private opinions, but naked and unadulterated, as derived from the 
 common and general interpretation of the Universal Church. And, 
 indeed, although on certain less necessary points, as well of faith 
 as of discipline, the ancient Fathers do in some little degree differ 
 from one another, yet that very many things have been received with 
 the fullest agreement by all, is so clear, that we may judge of it 
 
 ^ Dr Pusey's Preface to translation of Confessions of St Augustine (" Library 
 of the Fathers "), p. 9. 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 219 
 
 with our own eyes. For there are many things which we see have 
 been defined by the Universal Church in Councils truly cecumenical, 
 many things which have been approved by the consent of several, 
 many things by the consent of all the writers of the Church : many 
 things, finally, concerning which there was in ancient times no con- 
 troversy moved ; some of this class have been mentioned by us above, 
 to which very many others may be added : those especially, which 
 although not definitely prescribed in Holy Scripture, have yet been 
 retained by our very pious and prudent reformer of the English 
 Church." 1 
 
 It will be remarked in all his writings, both as to 
 doctrine and discipline, how freely and perpetually our 
 Bishop goes for his arguments and appeals both to 
 Scripture and the old Catholic Fathers and Doctors. 
 This will account for the soundness of his teaching, and 
 it laid the foundation of his brilliant career at Cambridge 
 as Divinity Professor, which attracted the notice even of 
 his European contemporaries. 
 
 The tractate which we propose to consider is called " A 
 Dissertation on the Death of Christ," as to its extent and 
 special benefits. It contains a short History [of Pela- 
 gianism, and shews the agreement of the, Doctrines of the 
 Church of England, on general Redemption, Election and 
 Predestination with the Primitive Fathers of the Christian 
 Church, and above all with the Holy Scriptures. It is by 
 the Right Reverend John Davenant, D.D., Deputy to the 
 Synod of Dort, etc. The title page has also a text and 
 patristic quotation. The first is from St John vi. 39-40, 
 " And this is the Father's will, which has sent Me, that of 
 all which he has given Me I should lose nothing, but should 
 raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of 
 Him that sent Me, that every one which seeth the Son, 
 and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life, and I 
 will raise him at the last day." And the second is from 
 Prosper, " Ipse est (ut ait Apostolus) salvator omnium 
 
 ^ See Bishop Beveridge's most valuable preface to the Codex Canonum. The 
 translation prefixed to the Translation of Vincentius of Lerins' Commonitory, 
 Oxford, 1836, has been employed. 
 
220 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 hominum, maxime, fidelium. Quce sententia, si tranquiUo 
 consideretur intuitu, totam controversiam dirimit" (De 
 Vocat Gentium, lib. ii, cap. 31). 
 
 This is followed by an address^ to the kind Reader 
 which is as follows : — 
 
 " It is not of much consequence to know whether the author 
 delivered this Dissertation to his auditors in the Public School, before 
 he was sent to the Synod of Dort by His Majesty, the King of Great 
 Britain, or immediately after his return : whichever it might be, the 
 work certainly shews that he was a man of great genius, and most 
 acute judgment, a Doctor who was truly an ornament to the School 
 and the Professor's Chair, which indeed he left vacant "^ to the great 
 loss and grief of the University, when he was promoted to the 
 Bishopric of the Church of Salisbury. 
 
 " It is to be attributed to the iniquity of the times that this Disser- 
 
 ^ This address is taken from an edition of the Dissertatio de Morte Christi, 
 published in i2mo in 1683, and is the substance of a much longer one (as far 
 as applicable to this piece) prefacing the edition published in folio in 1650, 
 together with the Dissertatio de Predestinatione et reprohatiotte. 
 
 ^ It may be wondered how it was that Davenant was able to produce such 
 numerous dissertations and voluminous works while he held his Chair of 
 Theology. But it must be borne in mind that there has been a great change 
 since his time, when lectures were going on almost all the year round, with 
 few intervals, and these very short. 
 
 This is what the late Margaret Professor (Blunt) says of the altered state of 
 things in his introductory lecture from that Chair : — 
 
 " Until the Margaret Professorship of Divinity became actually vacant by 
 the death of the distinguished Prelate who last held it, and I was called up to 
 Cambridge as a candidate for the Chair, and looked into the conditions of the 
 endowment, I was not adequately aware of the character or extent of the 
 duties it imposes. On perusing, however, the deed by which the Margaret 
 Professor is bound, I could not but see that a state of things was contem- 
 plated by the Foundress very different from that which now obtains — 
 residence in the University almost throughout the year : studies nearly uninter- 
 mitted : the professors the directors of those studies : hours at their disposal : 
 attendance at lectures, perhaps compulsory : the age of the pupils, tender : their 
 attainments, moderate : books scarce and costly— accordingly the Professor 
 was to read some work on theology approved by the authorities of the times, 
 week after week, and term after term : and if to comment on it at all, the 
 comment we must suppose to be such as would be consistent with perhaps a 
 fortnight's preparation (such being the whole interval which would sometimes 
 elapse between his election and commencement of lectures) for a duty of 
 almost daily recurrence and little cessation." — (Lecture, pp. i, 2.) 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 221 
 
 tation did not come to light sooner, for then under the pretence of 
 restraining the itching desire of some, who it was exclaimed exposed 
 nothing else scarcely to the people but the most profound decrees of 
 God, and especially of Reprobation, to the great prejudice of piety, 
 some persons obtained from the King a prohibition, that no one 
 should publish anything in writing or preaching on the questions con- 
 troverted between the Galvinists and the Remonstrants. 
 
 " These knotty and thorny questions, Whether the death of Christ is 
 a universal remedy — that is, applicable to all, or whether it is a 
 particular remedy, destined for the elect alone ; whether there is an 
 election of some persons to glory, and, on the contrary, a pretention 
 of others ; whether election is from the mere good pleasure of God, or 
 only from merits foreseen and conditionally — these knotty points, I 
 say, no one hath explained better than this author. Therefore take 
 and read him, and I am much deceived, indeed, if you will not confess 
 that he has satisfied you. Why should I say more ? To give you a 
 foretaste, you have here in 
 
 " Chap. I : an historical and not unacceptable narrative of the rise 
 and origin of the question which is to be discussed concerning the 
 death of Christ and its intended latitude or extent. Then, in 
 
 " Chap. 2 : a Thesis concerning the death of Christ as a universal 
 cause of salvation applicable to all men is confirmed by arguments. In 
 
 " Chap. 3, it is vindicated from the objections of adversaries. In 
 
 " Chap. 4, you will find a most lucid explanation of the distinction, 
 for all men sufficiently, for the elect effectually. I omit the other 
 chapters, which you will understand better by reading the work itself. 
 
 " Another tract is added w^ich was written on occasion of a contro- 
 versy which arose among the Reformed Divines of France. On the 
 gracious and saving will of God towards sinful men. The opinion of 
 the Divines of England was desired on that question, because it 
 seemed likely to contribute not a little towards establishing peace. 
 In the Appendix, therefore, is the opinion of Dr Davenant on that 
 Galilean controversy, which, having been written with his own hand, 
 and presented by his nephew to the Most Rev. Archbishop of Armagh, 
 we have taken leave to place at the end of the book. Enjoy them, 
 Candid reader, and farewell." 
 
 The following is the account of this work, as given by the 
 Rev. Josiah Allport, in his short sketch of Bishop Davenant : 
 
 " In 1650 was published a thin folio, zcpaSscadti%,Dissertationes duce: 
 prima de Morte Christi : altera de Predestinatione et electione, &»c., to 
 which is appended Sente'ntia de Gallicana Controversial de gratiosa et 
 
222 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 salutari Dei erga homines Peccatores voluntate, &c. These treatises, 
 selected from our author's papers, had been sent to Archbishop Usher 
 by Dr Edward Davenant for the purpose of publication. But the 
 wretched state of the times prevented their appearing for some years ; 
 and it does not seem that the Archbishop was the Editor, for the 
 preface is signed with the initials T. B. The French controversy had 
 arisen upon the opinions of Cameron, a divine of the Gallican Pro- 
 testant Church : Davenant's sentiments were applied for, and are here 
 given. At the end of this volume, but not named in the title-page, 
 is Sententia Ecclesim Anglicana de Predestinatione et capitibus annexis, 
 ab eodem {ut fertur) authore,jussu Regis Serenissimi conscripta. How 
 this can be imputed to Davenant, and received as such by the Editor, 
 is inexplicable. It is manifestly the production of an inferior pen, and 
 is decidedly adverse to his views, as stated through the rest of the 
 volume. The Editor, T. B., I conceive to be one Thomas Bedford, 
 who, in the same year (1650), at the suggestion of Archbishop Usher, 
 published, along with two Divinity Theses of his own, a letter of 
 Bishop Davenant to Dr Ward, entitled, Epistola de Sacramentis. 
 
 " In sending up the two Dissertations above mentioned to Arch- 
 bishop Usher, Dr Edward Davenant says, ' I have sent up that elabor- 
 ate work of the Bishop of Salisbury, which being committed to my 
 charge, your Grace has done me unspeakable favour to undertake the 
 publishing of it. . . . The short answer of his unto the French Divines, 
 which I found scattered among his papers, is sent up in this book.' ' 
 The regard of Usher and Davenant appears to have been reciprocal. 
 The former, in writing to Dr Ward, says, ' For the Arminian Ques- 
 tion, I desire never to read more than my Lord of Salisbury's Lectures 
 touching Predestination and Christ's Death.' And again, ' I thank 
 you most heartily for communicating my Lord of Salisbury's Lectures. 
 They are excellent : learnedly, soundly, and perspicuously performed ; 
 and I hope will do much good for the establishing of our young 
 divines in the present truth.' " ^ 
 
 In the first chapter of this admirable work our Bishop 
 gives an excellent historical account of the rise and origin 
 of the question to be discussed concerning the death of 
 
 ^ In 1641, the year of the Bishop's decease, the learned Dr Gerard Langhame 
 published, at Oxford, a book, entitled, ^'Episcopal Inheritance, or a reply to 
 the humble examination of' a printed abstract, and the answers to nine reasons 
 of the House of Commons against the votes of Bishops in Parliament. To 
 which is added a Determination of the late learned Bishop of Salisbury, Eng- 
 lished." This was reprinted in 1680 in London. 
 
 2 AUport's Life of Davenant, p. 49. 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 223 
 
 Christ and its intended latitude or extent, and he begins 
 the discussion as follows : — 
 
 "It is truly a matter of grief and exceedingly to be deplored, that 
 either from the misfortune or the disorder of our age, it almost always 
 happens, that those mysteries of our religion, which were promulgated 
 for the peace and comfort of mankind, should be turned into materials 
 for nothing but contention and dispute. Who could have thought that the 
 death of Christ, which was destined to secure peace and destroy enmity, 
 as the Apostle speaks, (Ephes.ii. 14-17, and Coloss. i. 20, 21) could have 
 been so fruitful in the production of strife ? But this seems to arise 
 from the innate curiosity of men, who are more anxious to scrutinize 
 the secret counsels of God, than to embrace the benefits openly offered 
 to them. Hence it comes to pass that from too much altercation on 
 the points. For whom did Christ die and for <whom did He not die? 
 little is thought by mankind individually of applying to ourselves the 
 death of Christ, by a true and lively faith, for the salvation of our own 
 souls. It is my intention in treating of this subject to endeavour 
 rather to appease strife than to excite it." Continuing in this pertinent 
 strain Davenant then states the controversy in certain propositions and 
 counter propositions, and at once plunges into his appeal to Primitive 
 Antiquity, about which allusion has been already made. " But before 
 I bring forward the above-mentioned propositions, I shall premise 
 some things concerning the origin of this controversy, and the senti- 
 ments of the Fathers respecting it, and other similar matters, which 
 may seem necessary to the thorough understanding of the history of 
 the controversy." 
 
 He then applies himself to a concise elucidation of this business. 
 " I think, then, it may be truly affirmed, that before the dispute between 
 Augustine and Pelagius, there was no question concerning the death of 
 Christ, whether it was to be extended to all mankind, or to be confined 
 onlyto the elect. For the Fathers, when speaking of the death of Christ, 
 describe it to us as undertaken and endured for the redemption of 
 the human race ; and not a word (that I know of) occurs among them 
 of the exclusion of any persons by the decree of God ; they agree that 
 it is actually beneficial to those only who believe, yet they everywhere 
 confess that Christ died in behalf of all mankind. Thus Clemens 
 Alexandrinus (Pedag. cap. ii.) says : That Christ freely brings and be- 
 stows salvation to the whole human race. And of the same opinion is 
 Origen (Ub. 5, contra Lib.), Jestis is declared to have come into the 
 world for the sake of all who ever were sinners that they might leave 
 their sins and give themselves up to God. With whom agrees 
 
224 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Primasius* on l Tim. ii. on the words, Wko gave Himself a ransom 
 for all, he says : For all men indeed the blood of Christ has been shed, 
 but it is beneficial only to those who believe. From which disciplie of 
 Augustine we may conjecture, what was the doctrine of Augustine 
 himself. Their adversaries were nevertheless accustomed to object 
 to Augustine, and others, who embraced the doctrine of predestina- 
 tion, that they taught thj^t Christ was crucified for the predestinate 
 alone, and from this objection of the Pelagians, some in succeeding 
 ages seized a handle for kindling the afore-mentioned controversy. 
 This is manifest from the objections of the Vincentians, in which this 
 takes the lead. That our Lord Jesus Christ did not suffer for the 
 salvation and redemption of all men. It is manifest from the answers 
 of Prosper to the Capitula of the Galilean ' Divines, where their ninth 
 objection is given after this manner : that the Saviour was not 
 crucified for the redemption of the whole world. The semi-Pelagians 
 objected to this as new, invidious, and erroneous. But Prosper meets 
 these objections, not by maintaining that Christ suffered only for the 
 elect, but by showing whence it arises that the passion of Christ is 
 profitable and saving to the elect alone ; namely, because these only, 
 through the benefit of special grace, obtain preserving faith, whereby 
 they are enabled to apply to themselves the death of Christ. All 
 others, without the assistance of this special grace, through their own 
 
 1 Primasius, a Catholic bishop of the sixth century, a native of Africa, who 
 obtained the See of Adrumetum, also known by the name of Justianopolis, in 
 the Province of Byzacene. About the year SSo he was one of a deputation 
 which was sent to Constantinople on the aifairs of the African Churches, and he 
 was at that city in 553, when the fifth General Council assembled there by 
 order of the Emperor Justinian. He refused, however, to take any share in 
 the deliberations of that assembly, though repeatedly invited, and he sub- 
 scribed to the constitution which Pope Vigilius issued in defence of the three 
 chapters ; i.e. the three pieces in the writings of Theodorus of Mopsuestia on 
 the subject of the human and divine natures in Christ. Primasius was looked 
 upon as a commentator on Scripture and a writer of some note in that age, 
 and his commentary upon the Epistles of Paul, as also a book of his concern- 
 ing Heresies, is yet extant ; but the former Mosheim regards as nothing more 
 than a compilation from the works of Augustine, Jerome, and others. 
 
 ^ Capitula Gallorum, or objections of the Galilean Divines. These were 
 chiefly the priests df Marseilles, about whose series of objections (which, 
 probably, were those attributed to Vincentius) Prosper wrote to Augustine 
 propounding those objections, and praying him to answer them. This letter 
 is among Augustine's Epistles, and his reply to it in his Books of the Saints' 
 Predestination and of the gift of Perseverance, proved so satisfactory to 
 Prosper's mind, that he became the zealous defender of Augustine against 
 those who attacked his opinions. 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 225 
 
 fault, either remain altogether in unbelief, or draw back from faith 
 received, and therefore fail of the benefits of redemption. This is the 
 tendency in the points to the answer to the afore-mentioned objection 
 of Vincentius.^ That as far as relates to the magnitude and virtue of 
 the price, and to the one cause of the human race, the blood of Christ is 
 the redemption of the whole world; but those who pass through this 
 life without the faith of Christ and sacrament of regeneration, do not 
 partake of the redemption. A little afterwards : The cup of immor- 
 tality, which is cmnposed of our infirm,ity and divine goodness, has 
 indeed in itself what is profitable for all, but if it be not drunk, it does 
 not heal. Not dissimilar are the remarks brought forward in answer 
 to the ninth objection of the Galilean Divines. For there it is con- 
 fessed, although Christ may be said to have been crucified for those only 
 whom His death profited, that is, for the regenerate and those that 
 believe to the end, it may also be said, that the Redeemer of the 
 world gave His own blood for the world, and the world would not be 
 redeemed. Lastly, it clearly proves that Augustine did not teach that 
 
 ^ Vincentius Lirinensis or St Vincent of Lerins. He was by birth a Gaul 
 and a contemporary with Augustine, entering the monastery in the island of 
 Lerins from the storms of a military life, about the middle of the fifth century, 
 and from the place of his retirement and great sanctity became known to the 
 Catholic world. In his retreat he composed a treatise entitled Commonitorium 
 adversus Hcsreticos, in which he undertook to show the folly of all novel 
 opinions. There is not a more convincing writer than he against the modern 
 claims of the novel Roman Papafcy, for he is the author of that touchstone 
 (and it is an infallible one) against all novelties in doctrines, and in favour of 
 the true old Catholic doctrine of orthodox antiquity — quod semper, quod 
 ubique, quod ab omnibus (that which has been believed or received always, 
 everywhere, and by all). His production obtained celebrity, and was often 
 reprinted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An English translation of 
 it was published in 1709 by the Rev. William Reeves, together with translations 
 of the early Christian Apologists in 2 vols. ; the whole is preceded by an 
 able dissertation of above 100 pages in correction of Daille's work Upon the 
 right use of the Fathers. The work here mentioned seems to be the only 
 production of his pen, and the object of it is to show that men should prove 
 the orthodoxy of their faith, first by the authority of Holy Scripture, and 
 secondly by the doctrine of the Catholic Church. So far from Vincentius 
 upholding the claims of the modern Roman Church, his translator has justly 
 observed in his "Preliminary Discourse" to the treatise, "had Vincentius 
 been assisted with a prophetic vision of the future corruptions in the Church 
 of Rome, he could not have expressed himself more clearly against it. The 
 whole design and bent of his book is directly against all innovations in the 
 faith and for cleaving inevitably to the creed as there explained, and always 
 understood by the Apostolic Churches." 
 
 P 
 
226 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Christ died for the predestinate alone, because Prosper, from his 
 opinion, extends the peculiar benefit of His passion, namely, the 
 remission of original sin to infants even not predestinated (Resp. ad 
 obj. 2 Gall, and Sentent). He who says that the Grace of Baptism^ 
 being received, does not take away original sin from those who are 
 predestinated to life is not a Catholic, which opinion was embraced by 
 the Synod of Valence,^ even some ages after Augustine, as it appears 
 by the fifth canon. From these things it is evident, that although the 
 seeds of this controversy were sown, yet that Augustine and his 
 disciples would never be the patrons of the doctrine, that Christ 
 suffered for the predestinated alone. But dismissing Augustine, let us 
 come to Pelagius and his followers, and here it is worth while to 
 observe that in the late discussion of this controversy, two errors con- 
 trary to each other have been attributed to Pelagius, but falsely. 
 For those who contend that Christ died for the elect alone say that 
 the opposite opinion, namely, That Christ died for all, is one of the 
 Pelagian errors. On the contrary, those who are on the opposite side 
 exclaim that it is mere Pelagianism to exclaim that Christ did not die 
 for all men. But they do injustice to both sides, to Pelagius and to 
 themselves. With respect to the first, a certain learned man says 
 that this opinion concerning universal redemption and limited deliver- 
 ance was attributed to the Pelagians and semi-Pelagians, and sup- 
 ported by a certain passage of Augustine against Julian (lib. iii. cap. 3), 
 where he attacks the Pelagian in this manner : Go on still, go on/ 
 and as you say. In the sacrament of the Saviour infants are baptised, 
 but not saved J are redeemed, but are not liberated; are washed, but are 
 not absolved; so also say, blood is shed for them for the remission of 
 sins, but they are not cleansed by the remission of sins. These are 
 marvellous things which you say, they are new things which you say, 
 
 ' This Synod, or Council as it is termed by Du Pin, was held in the year 
 ^llt hy the management of Remi, Bishop of Lyons, in order to confirm bis 
 opinions about Grace. It was composed of fourteen bishops of the Province 
 of Lyons, Aries, and Vienne, in which the three Metropolitans presided, 
 and Ebbo, Bishop of Grenoble, was present. They made six canons in this 
 Synod concerning Grace, Freewill, and Predestination. They rejected four 
 canons made at the preceding Council of Quierey, held under Hincmar, 
 Archbishop of Rheims, on the doctrine of Predestination, as idle, vain, and 
 false ; and condemned a treatise of Scotus on the same subject as a silly book. 
 Hincmar afterwards wrote a treatise of thirty-eight chapters, which he dedi- 
 cated to Charles the Bald, to defend his four articles and confute the canons of 
 the Council of Valence. In this treatise he sets out with a view of the origin 
 of the heresy about predestination, and to prove that it commenced after the 
 time of Augustine. 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 227 
 
 they are false things which you say, and so on. But in this place 
 Augustine disputes about infants only ; nor does he do this in order 
 to show that it is to be set down as Pelagianism. That Christ died 
 for those who on account of their own belief are not saved, but that 
 He died for those, or redeemed those who were not subject to sin, 
 and therefore had no guilt from which they should be freed. For as 
 it respects infants, Pelagius acknowledged in words that they were 
 redeemed, but taught in reality that they had no need of redemption ; 
 as it is evident, since he contended That there was nothing depraved 
 in them, nothing held under the power of the devil; in one word, 
 nothing which could be redeemed by so great a price (August. Epist. 90). 
 This, therefore, is what Augustine finds fault with in him, not that he 
 taught that Christ suffered for all, which opinion of Pelagianism it 
 can be shown was not condemned in any council that was formed 
 against the Pelagians, nor in any work of Augustine written against 
 the semi-Pelagians. He professedly writes against the errors of the 
 semi-Pelagians in his books on the Predestination of the Saints and on 
 the Benefit of Perseverance ; yet he never attempts to infringe the 
 proposition That Christ died for all men. Whatsoever, therefore, 
 may be concluded respecting the truth of the proposition (which will 
 be seen hereafter), it is certain that it was never accounted a Pelagian 
 dognia, as some persons, leaning on weak foundations, have con- 
 fidently affirmed." 
 
 Bishop Davenant then comes to the contrary proposition, 
 and he sums up the errors of the Pelagians under three 
 heads. 
 
 " I. For there is one who affirms that this also savouKs of Pelagian- 
 ism, and writes that Pelagius taught that Christ did not die for oilmen. 
 Thus Grevinchovius,^ in a Dissertation on the death of Christ, with 
 our countryman Ames," says, Pelagius taught (as Faustus of Ries 
 
 ^ Grevinchovius, a Dutchman who flourished in the beginning of the 17th 
 century as a Pastor of Rotterdam, and was eminent among the Remonstrants. 
 He is largely noticed in Brandt's Reformation in the Lorn Countries, vol iii., 
 
 p. I9S- 
 
 " Dr William Ames, born of an ancient Norfolk family in 15761 and 
 educated at Cambridge under the celebrated William Perkins, fled from the 
 persecution of Archbishop Bancroft, and was invited by the states of Friesland 
 to the' Divinity Chair, in the University of Francker, which he filled with 
 great reputation daring the space of twelve years, after which he removed to 
 Rotterdam, at the invitation of the English Church there, and became their 
 pastor. He was at the Synod of Dort, and informed King James' Ambassador 
 
228 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 testifies), (lib. i. cap. 17), That Christ did not die for all men. Know 
 therefore and consider, that this error which I have objected to you is 
 common to you and Pela^us. But I know not whether through design 
 or ignorance he produces the egregious prevaricator Faustus ^ of Ries, 
 as a witness against Pelagius, who under the pretence of opposing 
 Pelagius, strenuously maintained his cause, and everywhere attacked 
 the Catholic Doctors, concealing their names." 
 
 After fully discussing this point, in the consideration of 
 the question he says : . 
 
 " 2. Secondly, the Pelagians or semi-Pelagians erred in explaining 
 the universality of the death of Christ by joining with it an absurd, 
 false, and very obscure condition. For thus Prosper describes their 
 opinion in an Epistle to Augustine : That our Lord Jesus Christ died 
 for the whole human race, and that no one is altogether excepted from 
 redemption by His blood, even if he should pass all his life in a disposi- 
 tion most alienated from it ; of the same kind is that assumption, of 
 which mention is made by the Church of Leyden in their book on the 
 three Epistles, If any person can be found who should say that the 
 Lord was crucified for the wicked who shall remain in their wicked- 
 ness, it is wonderful and incredible if they are able to prove this from 
 direct testimonies of the Divine Scriptures. The orthodox thought that 
 a conditional addition of this kind should deservedly be rejected." 
 
 After combating this view, and asserting that Augustine 
 never attempted to impugn that proposition of the semi- 
 Pelagians That Christ died for the whole human race, the 
 Bishop passes to — 
 
 "3. The third and most grievous error of the Pelagians about the 
 death of Christ, which respects the primary cause of a different event, 
 
 at the Hague, from time to time, of the debates of that Assembly. Besides 
 his controversial writings against the Arminians, he published the following : 
 Medulla Theologise ; Manuductio logica ; Case of Conscience ; Analyses on 
 the Psalms ; Notes on l and 2 Epistles of St Peter. (Maclaine, in Mosheim.) 
 1 Faustus, a learned Prelate, was a native of Britain, first became a monk 
 of the monastery of Levins, then Abbot of the same, and in 455 was chosen 
 Bishop of Riez, or Ries, in Provence. He wrote against the doctrines of 
 election and reprobation, which pieces have been abridged by Du Pin. His- 
 character is drawn by Milner as opposite to the view here given of it, as. 
 Milnei;'s representation of Pope Gregory the Great is to the views and testi- 
 monies of other historians and writers. Faustus was banished from his See in 
 481, and died soon after. — ( Vide Cavi. His, Lit. vol. i. p. 453, A.D. 472 ; and 
 Du Pin, Eccl. Hist. Cento., vol. iv.) 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 229 
 
 namely, that this death of Christ infalUbly brings eternal life to certain 
 persons and does not bring it to others. They referred it to the 
 hiiman will as the primary cause of this difference, presuming that 
 God equally willed the salvation of all men in Christ, nor by a special 
 decree of predestination, endued some persons with that faith and 
 perseverance through which they should apply to themselves the 
 death of Christ for salvation. On the contrary, Augustine with the 
 orthodox contended that that persevering faith, by means of which 
 the death of Christ brings salvation to individuals, is extended to the 
 elect by a singular gift of mercy, and does not arise from the good use 
 of free will in the one, rather than in the other. Here the controversy 
 directly regards the grace of predestination and free-will, and obliquely 
 touches upon the death of Christ, inasmuch as the orthodox, assigning 
 a reason why it eventually brings salvation to , some persons, always 
 ascend to the divine predestination, the Pelagians descend to the 
 human will." , , 
 
 This error also Prosper attacked in his poem "on the 
 Ungrateful," in which he teaches from the ppinion of. the 
 Pelagians, that God equally willed the redemption of all 
 mankind by the death of Christ. 
 
 " But each the voice of his free will obeys, 
 And of his own accord sends forth his mind 
 T' embrape the offefd light." ^ 
 
 After the death of Augustine and Prosper,' Lucidus, a 
 Presbyter, seems to have stirred up this qiiestion, which 
 had been some time laid asleep. He taught in plain words 
 tliat Christ died not for all mankind. Against him rose 
 Faustus, Bishop of Ries, the ringleader of the semi-Pela- 
 gians. The matter was referred to the Synod of Leyden, 
 which added some things to the decree of the former 
 council. The discussion on the two counter-propositions 
 appears to have gone on warmly, and the Pelagian error, 
 advocated by one Godeschalcus, a monk, was condemned 
 by the celebrated Hincmar^ Archbishop of Rheims, who 
 assembled another Synod, which anathematized the 
 doctrine. 
 
 Our Bishop then, in a most masterly manner, and with 
 
 ^ Cap, 10. 
 
230 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 keen and penetrating analysis, having traced the question 
 historically through the reformed period, and made some 
 pertinent quotations from Philip Melancthon and even 
 Calvin, concludes this chapter as follows : — 
 
 " Hitherto we have briefly surveyed those things which relate to 
 the historical knowledge of this controversy, from which it is manifest, 
 that not only that the ancient Fathers, but also our modem divines 
 confessed that the death of Christ pertained in some manner to the 
 whole human race. Yet in our age it hath pleased some divines to 
 pass over these limits, and openly to defend in exclusive terms this 
 proposition, That Christ died for the elect alone, to whom on the 
 opposite side others reply, That Christ offered Himself to God the 
 Father to redeem all individuals equally. That we may throw some 
 light upon this question, we will now enter upon that twofold con* 
 sideration of the death of Christ, of which we have before made 
 mention, and will reduce it to certain propositions." 
 
 II. In the second chapter our Bishop considers the death 
 of Christ as an universal remedy, appointed by God, and 
 applicable for salvation to the whole human race, and then 
 passes on to discuss it as ^particular remedy, by the special 
 decree of God to be efficaciously and infallibly applied to 
 the salvation of particular persons. He states and ex- 
 plains his thesis in these formulated propositions, which he 
 then defends by appeal to Scripture and the Fathers. 
 
 " I. The death of Christ is represented in holy Scripture as an uni- 
 versal remedy by the ordinance of God and nature of the thing itself 
 applicable to all and every individual of mankind. 
 
 " With respect to the explanation of the terms, when we speak of 
 the death of Christ, we comprehend in it the whole obedience of Christ, 
 active and passive, the completion of which and as it were the last act, 
 was effected in His death ; on which account Divines are accustomed 
 by synecdoche to attribute to His death what relates to His entire 
 obedience. Whatever therefore Christ did, and whatever He suffered, 
 from the cradle to the cross, the whole of the meritorious and satis* 
 factory work of the Redeemer we comprehend in our proposition to 
 be allied to and connected with His death. Thus the Apostle in 
 Rom. Y- 19 makes the obedience of Christ universally considered, the 
 cause of man's salvation. By the obedience of one shall many be Oiade 
 righteous. And in Philipp. ii. 7, 8, when it is said. That He humbled 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 23 i 
 
 Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the C^oss, 
 the Apostle does not exclude from His meritorious work any part of 
 the antecedent obedience of Christ, but rather considers it included, 
 and teaches that this meritorious obedience of Christ began at that 
 time when He took the form of a servant, and was consummated when 
 He offered Himself on the Cross. Under the word death, then, we 
 comprehend that infinite treasure of merits which the mediator between 
 God and men, the man Christ Jesus, by doing and suffering, procured 
 and laid up for our benefit. Again, when we say that this death or 
 this merit is represented in the Holy Scriptures as the universal cause 
 of salvation, we mean. That according to the will of God explained in 
 His Word, this remedy is proposed indiscriminately to every indi- 
 vidual of the human race for salvation, but that it cannot savingly 
 profit any one without a special application. For an universal cause 
 of salvation, or an universal remedy, includes these two things : first, 
 of itself that it can cure and save all and every individual ; secondly, 
 that for the production of this determinate effect in each individual it 
 should require a determinate application. Not unaptly, therefore, did 
 Aquinas say. The death of Christ is the universal cause of salvation, 
 as the sin of the first man may be said to be the universal cause of 
 damnation. But it is necessary that an universal cause should be 
 applied particularly to each individual, that its proper effect may be 
 experienced. But of course this remedy, though universal, is not 
 applicable (as far as we know by revelation) to the apostate angels — 
 to every man under every state or condition, to the dead or damned, 
 but only to Believers." 
 
 The Bishop then marshals his testimonies, and a goodly 
 array of texts is ushered in by references. 
 
 " I. I John iii. 16, God so loved the world, that He gave His only 
 begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but 
 have everlasting life. This is naturally a most famous place of Scrip- 
 ture in the controversy, and, as is well known, forms the second of 
 those ' Comfortable Words, which our Saviour Christ saith unto all 
 that truly turn to Him,' in the liturgy of our Church." 
 
 In elucidating this portion, and in making the special or 
 particular application, Davenant has such a pregnant illus- 
 tration, which puts the whole matter, as it were, in a 
 nutshell, that we cannot forbear quoting it even at the 
 risk of being tedious to our readers. 
 
232 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " Suppose that all the inhabitants of a certain city laboured under 
 some epidemic and mortal disease ; that the king sent to them an 
 eminent physician furnished with a most efficacious medicine, and 
 caused it to be publicly proclaimed, that all should be cured who were 
 willing to make use of this medicine. Doubtless we might truly say 
 of this king, that he so loved that city, as to send his own most skilful 
 physician to it ; that all who were willing to attend to his advice, and 
 take his medicine, should not die, but recover their former health. 
 But if any should object that this physician was sent only to those 
 who should follow his prescriptions, and that his medicine was applic- 
 able by the appointment of the king only to those who were willing to 
 take it, he would in reality not only make the beneficence of the king 
 appear less illustrious, but affirm what was evidently false. For 
 medical assistance was offered to all, without any previous condition 
 on the part of the person sent, or of the sick ; healing medicine 
 applicable to all, without exception, was provided. The willing[ness 
 to receive the physician and take the medicine had no connexion with 
 the intention of the sovereign in sending the medical assistance, but 
 with the certain restoration to health. 
 
 " The Antient Fathers seem to have been much pleased with this 
 similitude. Prosper has respect to it, when Vincentius objected. 
 That according to the opinion of Augustine, Our Lord Jesus Christ 
 did not suffer for the salvation and redemption of all men, he replies, 
 For the disease of original sin, by which the nature of all tnen is 
 corrrupted, the death of the Son of God is a remedy. And a little 
 after, This cup of immortality has indeed in itself this virtue that it 
 may benefit all men, but if it be not taken it will not heal. Our faith 
 therefore is required not merely to assent to the proposition, that 
 God has given or ordained His Son to be a remedy for us, but that 
 being given or ordained. He should be received by us to the obtaining 
 of eternal life. Rhemi and Haimo enlarge the aforesaid similitude on 
 these words, Hebrews ii.. That He by the grace of God should taste 
 death for every man!' 
 
 Five other testimonies are then adduced from Holy 
 Scripture, viz., John iii. 17, 18; Acts xiii. 38; and 2 Cor. 
 V. 19, 20; Heb. ii. 3; 2 Cor. v. 14, which are most fully- 
 considered in all their bearings, but which are obviously 
 too long for insertion in a work of this character. 
 
 From Holy Scripture our Bishop passes to eight logical 
 arguments, which are treated in the form of syllogisms, 
 which Davenant maintains are very solidly founded in the 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 233 
 
 Scriptures, and these are fully and critically discussed, the 
 logical conclusions being rigorously verified. 
 
 " I. That death, which brings some spiritual advantages even to 
 those who are not saved, is not applicable to the elect alone ; but the 
 death of Christ brings advantages even to some who will not be saved." 
 By the death is included all that accumulation of the meritorious 
 obedience of Christ. 
 
 " 2. He who by undergoing death by the ordination of God, sus- 
 tained of God, sustained the punishment due not only to the sins of 
 certain individual persons, but of the whole human race ; His Passion, 
 by virtue of the same ordination, is applicable not only to certain 
 definite persons, but to every individual of the human race. 
 
 " 3. Whosoever from, the ordination of God may be called to believe 
 in the mediator, and they who by believing may obtain eternal life, to 
 them the death of Christ from . the previous ordination of God is 
 applicable for salvation. 
 
 " 4. If all men, as soon as the doctrine of the gospel concerning 
 Christ the Redeemer enduring death on account of the sins of man- 
 kind is made known to them, are bound to be grateful and obedient 
 to Christ, then it is certain that this work of a Redeemer in offer- 
 ing Himself as a sacrifice to God, is to be considered as a benefit 
 generally applicable to all : for there is no cause why we should say 
 that they are bound to gratitude, or to the duties of obedience, on 
 account of the death of Christ, who are altogether excluded from that 
 benefit. But an apostle testifies that every man may be excited to 
 obedience by this argument. 
 
 " 5. That work which truly and deservedly, as soon as it is under- 
 stood to have been agreed upon between God the Father and the Son, 
 gives to Christ the name of the Redeemer of the world and Saviour 
 of the world, is to be acknowledged as an universal cause of salva- 
 tion, or an universal remedy, applicable to the whole human race. 
 But such was the work of the obedience of Christ unto the death of 
 the Cross : Therefore it is applicable to the whole human race. 
 
 " 6. If it was the counsel and will of God that Christ by dying should 
 pay to Him a most full, perfect and sufficient satisfaction, not only to 
 deliver those who believe in the benefit of God, and thus eventually 
 are saved, but also for those who continue in unbelief through their 
 own fault, and thus eventually are condemned, then it must be con- 
 fessed that this death of Christ is a remedy from the nature of the 
 thing, and the ordination of God, applicable to all : But such was the 
 counsel and will of God ; which is evinced from the Divine promises, 
 which make known His will to us. 
 
234 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " 7, If according to the order and nature of things themselves, and 
 our consideration of them, the death and merit of Christ is to be 
 assumed as a thing ordained and destined by God for the good of the 
 human race before it can be understood for whom faith was destined, 
 then it is necessary to consider it as a cause of salvation applicable to 
 all before it be determined that it is applied or infallibly to be applied 
 to this or that person." 
 
 Under this heading Davenant makes a reference to the 
 Synod of Dort. He is speaking of faith in this way : — 
 
 " Faith, like all other saving gifts, is conferred upon men on account 
 of Christ and through His merit ; therefore in the order of the Divine 
 decrees the death of Christ precedes the faith of every Christian. . To 
 this those words of the Divines of the Palatinate refer, in their judgment 
 exhibited at the Synod of Dort {Art. Synod Dordrecht, page 88). The 
 Faith of the elect does not precede, but follows the death of Christ, because 
 His death is the cause of faith, on account of which the elect are given 
 to Christ, and the object of faith which it beholds and embraces^ 
 
 " 8. The last argument is taken from a comparison of the two-fold 
 covenant, and according to it of a two-fold ordination to salvation. 
 As therefore in the covenant of nature, that is, the agreement with 
 Adam at the time of Creation, salvation was procurable by Adam and 
 all his posterity under condition of obedience to be paid to the law of 
 nature, and to the express commandment of God ; so in the covenant 
 of grace, which was confirmed by the blood of the Mediator, salvation 
 is also understood to be procurable by all men under the condition 
 published in the Gospel, that is, of faith in this Mediator who hath 
 made satisfaction for the sins of the human race. 
 
 " Moreover, as in the first covenant, God who ordained salvation as 
 procurable for Adam and his posterity, yet did not predestinate that 
 either Adam himself or any of his posterity should be really saved 
 by that covenant ; so God, who in the second covenant, ordained 
 salvation as procurable for all under the condition of faith, yet hath 
 not predestinated to give to all men individually this faith, by 
 which they might infallibly obtain salvation. But lest the Blood of 
 the Son of God should flow, and through the fault of the human will 
 the same should happen in the second covenant which had happened 
 in the first, namely, that no one should enjoy the benefit of it, God 
 resolved with Himself a more deep and secret counsel, and determined 
 of His mere and special mercy to give to some persons the ability and 
 will to fulfil the aforesaid conditions of faith, and further that they 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 235 
 
 should actually and infallibly fulfil it. But now as he would be unjust 
 towards God who should deny that salvation was ordained by God 
 as procurable for Adam and his posterity under the covenant of nature ; 
 so he is more unjust towards Christ, who denies that His death was 
 ordained by God as a remedy for salvation, applicable to all under 
 the condition of the new covenant, although many do not obtainsalva- 
 tion by means of it. God Himself gave to the world this remedy 
 applicable to all men individually ; let the world concede to God the 
 liberty of applying it as it may seem good to His wisdom and justice. 
 Those who think in this manner of the death of Christ do not take 
 away that common loving-kindness of God, of which the Scripture 
 testifies ; and yet at the same time they contend, that as many as are 
 saved by the merit of the death of Christ, are saved by special and 
 undeserved grace ; and that as many as are not saved, perish through 
 their own unbelief, or, at least, through their own fault." 
 
 III. In the third chapter Davenant considers no fewer 
 than seventeen objections, which are fairly and tersely 
 stated, and the replies are a formidable battery of theo- 
 logical artillery, and we can well understand Archbishop 
 Usher saying, " As for the Arminian qqestion, I desire 
 never to read more than my Lord of Salisbury's lectures 
 touching Predestination and Christ's death." The replies 
 are luminous and to the point. " They are excellent ; 
 learnedly, soundly, and perspicuously performed." 
 
 IV. In the fourth chapter the Bishop takes up his second 
 proposition, and lucidly expounds that received distinction 
 of Divines, That Christ died for all sufficiently, but for 
 the elect effectually. But he recasts this proposition into 
 another form, which, if somewhat prolix, is perspicacious : 
 
 " The death of Christ is the universal cause of the salvation of man- 
 kind, and Christ Himself is acknowledged to have died for all men 
 sufficiently, nor by reason of the mere sufficiency or of the intrinsic 
 value, according to which the death of God is a f rice more than suffi- 
 cient for redeeming a thousand worlds ; but by reason of the Evan- 
 gelical Covenant confirmed with the whole human race through the 
 merit of this death and of the Divine ordination dependent upon it, 
 according to which, under the possible condition of faith, remission of 
 sins and eternal life is decreed to be set before every mortal man who 
 will believe it on account of the merits of Christ!' 
 
236 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 In handling this proposition, Davenant does two things. 
 First, he explains some of the terms. Secondly, he divides 
 his proposition into certain parts, and he establishes them 
 separately by forcible and suitable arguments and illustra- 
 tions. We will select one or two, and it shall be on the 
 term sufficiently. 
 
 " Suppose my brother were detained in prison for a debt of a 
 thousand pounds. If I have in my possession so many pounds, I can 
 truly affirm that this money is sufficient to pay the debt of my brother, 
 and to free him from it. But while it is not offisred for him, the mere 
 sufficiency of the thing is understood, and estimated only from the 
 value of it, the act of offering that ransom being wanting, without which 
 the aforesaid sufficiency effects nothing. For the same reason, if 
 many persons should be capitally condemned for the crime of high 
 treason, and the king himself, against whom the crime was committed, 
 should agree that he would be reconciled to all for whom his son 
 should think fit to suffer death ; now the death of the son, according 
 to the agreement, is appointed to be a sufficient ransom for redeeming 
 all those for whom it should be offered." 
 
 V. In the fifth chapter, the third Proposition, which is as 
 follows, is clearly elucidated : — 
 
 " The death or passion of Christ, as the universal cause of the salva- 
 tion of mankind, hath, by the act of its oblation, so far rendered God 
 the Father pacified and reconciled to the human race, that he' can be 
 truly said to be ready to receive into favour any man whatever as soon 
 as he shall believe in Christ: yet the aforesaid death of -Christ does not 
 place any one, at least of adults, in a state of grace, of actual recotidlia- 
 tion, before he believes'' 
 
 VI. In the last chapter, the fourth and last Thesis is 
 stated in the following words : — 
 
 " The death of Christ being granted to be applicable to all men on 
 condition of faith, it is consistent with the goodness and justice of God 
 to supply or to deny either to nations or to individuals the means of 
 application, and that according to the good pleasure of His own will, 
 not according to the disparity of human wills." 
 
 All these four propositions are most logically proved. 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 237 
 
 and the objections fairly considered and suitably met. 
 The appeals to Scripture and the Fathers to confirm his 
 arguments, or illustrate his position, are incessant and most 
 learnedly applied. In fact Davenant covers patristic 
 ground, which in extent is truly appalling, and fully bears 
 out the remarks made at the beginning of this chapter, that 
 he was a true Anglican divine, and fully understood the 
 double appeal of our Church to Scripture and the Primitive 
 Church or " orthodox antiquity." He quotes largely from 
 Clemens, Jerome, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, 
 Ambrose, Athanasius, Prosper, Lactantius, Basil, Piscator, 
 Parens, Aquinas (and schoolmen), very frequently, Domini- 
 cus Banes, Melancthon, Calvin (but not so often as we 
 might have expected), Alvarez, Abelard, Lombard, Arnold, 
 Theodoret, Bernard, Huber, Albertus, Cajetan, Bradwar- 
 dine, Fulgentius, Corvinus, Paschasius, Gregory, and many 
 others. He presses into his service Dutchmen like Estius 
 on the one hand, and Jesuits like Suarez and Vasques on 
 the other, and after making free use of our own standard 
 divines, he thus sums up this work, which may be truly 
 described in Usher's words as " excellently, learnedly^ 
 soundly, and perspicuously profound " : — 
 
 " Therefore let this be the sum and conclusion of this whole contro- 
 versy of the death of Christ, that Jesus Christ, the Mediator between 
 God and man, in confirming the evangelical covenant, according to 
 the tenor of which eternal life is due to every one that believeth, made 
 no division or separation of men, so that we can say any one is ex- 
 cluded from the benefit of His death, if he should believe. And in 
 this sense we contend, in agreement, with the Scriptures, the Fathers, 
 and solid arguments, that Christ suffered on the Cross, and died for 
 all men, or the whole human race. We add, moreover, that this 
 Mediator, ^hen He had determined to lay down His life for sin, had 
 also this special intention, that, by virtue of His merits, He would 
 effectually and infallibly quicken and bring to eternal life some persons 
 who were specially given to Him by the Father. And in this sense 
 we contend that Christ laid down His life for the elect alone, or in 
 order to purchase His Church : that is, th^t He died for them alone; 
 with the special and certain purpose of effectually regenerating and 
 
238 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 saving them by the merit of His death. Therefore, although the merit 
 of Christ equally regards all men as to its sufficiency, yet it does not 
 as to its efficacy : which is to be understood, not only on account of 
 the effect produced in one and not in another, but also on account of 
 the will, with which Christ Himself merited, and offered His merits, in 
 a different way for different persons. Now, the first cause and source 
 of this diversity was the election and will of God, to^which the human 
 will of Christ conformed itself. And from hence Suarez rightly de- 
 duces — That this merit of Christ is the very cause of spiritual regenera- 
 tion, and gives it efficacy, and produces its effect, and at the same time 
 is the cause why that man is regenerated, on account of whom He 
 specially offered His merit (in 3. 9. 19, disp. 41). For our divines, let 
 that eminently learned man of pious memory, Robert, Bishop of Salis- 
 bury,i speak. Thus he says (in Thomson Diatr. p. 94) : — Although 
 
 1 Robert Abbot, elder brother of the celebrated Archbishop. He emerged 
 into notice by his talent in preaching, for which he became noted in the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford, not long after he took Orders in 1581, and which first 
 obtained him preferment in Worcester, and in a short time the living of Bing- 
 ham, in Notts, to which he was presented by John Stanhope, Esq., on hearing 
 him preach at St Paul's Cross, He soon became no less eminent on account 
 of his writings than he had been for his pulpit oratory, particularly against Dr 
 William Bishop, Bishop of the Diocese of Chalcedon, in partibus, on the sub- 
 ject of the Sacrament. In 1597 he proceeded D.D., and soon after the accession 
 of James I., that monarch appointed him one of his chaplains in ordinary, and 
 formed so high an opinion of his writings that he ordered his own commentary 
 upon part of the Apocalypse to be printed in 1608, with the second edition of 
 Abbot's book De Antichristo. In 1609 he was chosen Master of BaUol College, 
 Oxford, at which he had matriculated, and which rose into distinction by his 
 exertions. In 1620 he was nominated by the king one of the first Fellows of 
 the Royal College at Chelsea, then newly founded for the encouragement of 
 Polemical Divinity, and, as Fuller in his Church History remarks, ." engarri- 
 soned with the ablest champions of the Protestant cause." Robert was, like 
 his brother, a truly zealous opponent of Popery. This his subsequent ap- 
 j)ointment as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford afforded him public 
 opportunities of evincing, and on this account mainly he was in 1615 selected 
 by King James to fill the vacant See of Salisbury, as was declared by His 
 Majesty on his being presented to do homage. He was consecrated by his 
 own brother, who had been rapidly advanced from Lichfield to London, and 
 to the Primacy of Canterbury about five years before ; and it is worthy of 
 remark that this is the Only instance of two brothers occupying the Episcopal 
 bench in England, till the time of the late two Bishops (Sumner) Winchester 
 and Chester. Robert filled the See'Uttle more than one year, dying in March 
 1617, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, but universally, lamented by the in- 
 habitants of Salisbury, having endeared himself to them by every trait which 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST 239 
 
 we do not deny that Christ died for all men, yet we believe that He died 
 specially and peculiarly for the Church, nor does the benefit of redemp- 
 tion pertain in an equal degree to all. And from the peculiarity of this 
 benefit, and from the human will, in some degree depends the efficacy of 
 all means, that they are for those only, and for their use, whom Christ 
 redeem,ed with some peculiar regard to their being elected in Him. Nor 
 do they obtain the effect because of being willing, but because God, accord- 
 ing to the purpose of His own grace, works in the elect and redeemed to 
 will that to which he chose them. Therefore He, who by His death 
 merited eternal life sufficiently for all men, so as that it is to be given 
 to all, according to the Evangelical Covenant, if they believe, also 
 merited most effectually for some, by the peculiar application of His 
 merits, that they should believe, and that they should receive eternal 
 life from the gratuitous gift of God, through and on account of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the peculiar lot of the elect : Of whom 
 may the Father of Mercies make us all partakers. To whom, with 
 the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be honour, praise, and glory, now and 
 for ever. Amen." 
 
 In the following letter to Dr Ward, our Bishop mentions 
 his probable temporary change of residence, as the sanitary 
 condition of the Palace at Salisbury was not very satisfac- 
 tory. He also, hints that he may pay his friend a visit in 
 the west country, where Dr Ward held the Archdeaconry 
 of Gloucester : — 
 
 could adorn the Episcopal office. The Bishop, both in manners and talents, 
 was superior to the Archbishop, who was himself no common man. His pub- 
 lished works were very popular in that age, but mostly controversial. The 
 one referred to above was a reply to a work of Richard Thomson, a Dutch- 
 Arminian of English parents, and educated at Clare College, Capibridge.' The 
 Bishop finished his book only the day before he died, and it was published by 
 his chaplain, the celebrated Dr Fealtey, under the direction of the Archbishop, 
 the full title running thus : — In Ricardi Thomsoni Anglo-Belgici diatribum 
 de retnissione et intercessione justificationis et gratice, animadversio brevis. 
 Londini, qto, l6i8. He left many things in MS., among which was a Latin 
 commentary upon the Epistle to the Romans, now in the Bodleian Library, 
 left by its author in a state quite ready for publication. This work has not yet, 
 we believe, been translated and given to the world. 
 
 Abbot was therefore Davenant's almost immediate predecessor in the See 
 of Salisbury, there being only Martin Fotherby between Abbot and his brother- 
 in-law, Robert Townson— Abbot, 1615 ; Fotherby, 1618 ; Townson, 1620 ; 
 Davenant, 1621-1641. 
 
240 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Good Dr Ward ; I like well of your advice, and have accordingly 
 drawen a short dedication vnto y= Vniv'sity. I am not well skilled in 
 such Formalities, and therefore I leav it to your iudgment, to bee 
 enlarged, or altered yf you see cause. I am afrayd it will not bee save 
 for mee to return vnto y° Pallace, and therfore I am thinking of taking 
 a howse in some other part of my Diocese. Yf I can finde one to my 
 minde, I think tb bee going from hence about y' middle of Auguste. 
 My hope is to see you heer before my departure, or at least in your 
 passage to y° West country ; yf I bee setled in Wilshire not farr out 
 of your way, as I hope to bee. And thus in y" mean time leaving you 
 to y" protection of y° Almighty, I rest ever 
 
 Your very loving freind, 
 
 Hamersmith, July 27th, JO. Saru. 
 
 16-27. 
 
 Almas Matri Academiae, Cantabrigiensi 
 Virtute, Pietate, Sacrasq Doctrinae Professione 
 
 Semper Celeberrimas. 
 Hasce Theologicae Suae Professionis Primitias. 
 In Ea Olim Natas, Jam Denuo Renatas ; 
 
 Amoris et Honoris Erg6, 
 Johannes Davenantius Devotissimus Alumnus, 
 Libens Merito Dat, Dicat, ConsecrStque. 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To y" right woortt his very loving freind Dr Ward, 
 Master of Sidney CoUedg, and one of the Divinity Readers in 
 Cambridg give this. 
 
 Leave this at Mr Jpstins shop in pukridge, For to be Conuaid to 
 Munden Parsonage to the party aboue said with all sp'd. 
 
 Wth a kitle 
 
 p. Thomas Turner. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 BISHOP DAVENANT'S LETTERS TO BISHOP HALL ON 
 "THE OLD RELIGION," AND TO DR WARD (1628) 
 
 " Worse before better. England doth lie desperately sick of a violent dis- 
 ease in the bowels thereof. Many messengers we dispatch (monthly fasts, 
 weekly sermons, daily prayers) to inform God of our sad condition. He still 
 stays in the same place, yea, which is worse, seems to go backward, for every 
 day less likelihood, less hope of health. May not this be the reason that our 
 land must yet be reduced to more extremity, that God may have the higher 
 honour of our deliverance." — Fuller (Good Thoughts in Worse Times-: 
 Meditations on the Times, xiv. 130. i). 
 
 THE Church of England boasts that she is the true 
 via media, that she is equally removed from the two 
 extremes, that she holds a middle position between the 
 intruded mission of Rome on the one hand, and the sec- 
 taries on the other, that she is equidistant between private 
 judgment and Church authority, and that in ascertaining 
 religious truth she has gone to the fountain-head, which is 
 fresh, though the access thereto may be rough and rugged. 
 " It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England," she 
 says in her preface, " ever since the compiling of her Pub- 
 lick Liturgy, to keep the mean between the two extreams, 
 of too much stiffness in refusing, and of too much easiness 
 in admitting any variation from it." And again, " In 
 which Review we have endeavoured to observe the like 
 moderation, as we find to have been used in the like case 
 in former times." " As for my religion," says good Bishop 
 Ken in his last will, " I die in the communion of the 
 Church of England, as it stands distinguished from all 
 Papal and Puritan innovations, and as it adheres to the 
 doctrine of the Cross." And to the same effect the im- 
 
242 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 mortal Bishop Pearson, the dust of whose writings is as 
 fine gold, in one of the conciones addressed to the clergy 
 from the pulpit of our universities, contained in his most 
 valuable Minor Theological Works, published not a great 
 while ago : " Ye who are devoting your labours to the 
 divine study of theology : who are growing pale over the 
 sacred Scriptures above all : who either already fill the 
 venerable office of the priesthood, or aspire to doing so: who 
 are about to undertake the tremendous care of souls : — 
 rid yourself of that itch of the present time : flee from that 
 love of novelty which besets us : seek after that which was 
 from the beginning : take counsel at the fountain head : 
 have recourse to antiquity : return to the Reverend Fathers : 
 have respect to the primitive Church : that is (to use the 
 words of the prophet from whom I have taken my text) 'Ask 
 for the old paths ' (Interrogate de semitis antiquis) Jer. vi." ^ 
 It is because these principles have taken a growing hold 
 upon churchmen generally, and a greater intelligence as to 
 these first Church principles has been , disseminated 
 among our people,^ it is owing to this fact that the great 
 
 ^ " Juvat integros accedere fontes 
 
 Atque inde haurire." — Lucretius, 
 
 ^ There is no doubt that during the last fourteen years the position of the 
 Church in this country has been greatly strengthened. Some will attribute 
 this satisfactory result to one cause, and some to another, and opinion will pro- 
 bably vary as to its actual extent. But whatever be the cause, and whatever 
 the desire, few persons will dispute that there is an appreciable difference 
 between the prospects of the Church of England as they appeared at the 
 former, and as they appear at the latter of these dates. How much of it is 
 owing to the character of the late Archbishop, how much to the better infor- 
 mation which has been diffused among the people, and how much to the 
 energy and self-devotion displayed by the clergy themselves, we will not 
 undertake to say. But many people are of opinion that the Church of England 
 has weathered a crisis not unlike that which threatened the House of Lords 
 immediately after the Reform Bill, and that she is safe from all the efforts of 
 her enemies, at least for another generation. If we cannot quite say, with the 
 Bishop of Winchester, that Archbishop Benson now succeeds to " the most 
 important position in Europe," we readily admit that the See of Canterbury 
 has, of late years, come to represent somethirlg more than the Primacy of all 
 England, and that the Archbishop is no longer merely the chief ecclesiastic in 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" 243 
 
 National Church of this country has begun to understand 
 her true position in a way that she has never done before, 
 that, to use the words of the Bishop of London at the late 
 meeting of the Upper House of Convocatiofl, " under the 
 benevolent rule of the late Archbishop the Church became 
 more popular than it had been previously for more than 
 250 years." No doubt, as the then Bishop of Winchester 
 remarked, "the actions of the late Archbishop were a 
 simple exemplification of the Christian life, and the steady 
 progress the Church had made in the hearts of the 
 people of England had not been the limit of his good 
 influence, which had widely extended over the world." ^ 
 But we must not ignore the fact, this time there had been 
 a recurrence to first or true Church principles ; people had 
 taken an intelligent interest in, and had tried to grasp, 
 their own system, which had generated faith in the work- 
 ing of those iriherent prerogatives of our Church, if left to 
 do her own work in her own way. 
 
 It was about this time (1628) that Bishop Hall, who had 
 (then being Dean of Worcester) accompanied Davenant to 
 the Synod of Dort as one of the deputies but, as we have 
 seen, had to return home before his colleagues, as the air 
 did not agree with his health, on his humble request ob- 
 taining His Majesty's leave to do so, and who had been 
 promoted first to the See of Exeter, and afterwards to that 
 of Norwich — ^had tried his hand in explaining the true posi- 
 tion of the Church, claiming for her the inheritance of the 
 ancient deposit of faith, and to be the true representative, 
 in this country, of the old Catholic Christianity. In this ex- 
 cellent treatise on the " Old Religion," as it was called, and 
 
 these islands, but the Head of the Anglican Communion throughout the 
 world. The Established Church must gain largely, both in dignity and in- 
 fluence, by this recognition of her hegemony, and reasons might be assigned 
 to show that it considerably increases the obstacles which lie in the way of 
 Disestablishment. — Standard, April l6th, 1883. 
 
 ' Proceeding of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, Upper 
 House, as reported in The Moi-ning Post, April nth, 1883. • 
 
244 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 explaining the notes and marks of the true Churchy it appears 
 he had, in common with every other considerable divine, 
 admitted that the Church of Rome, though miserably cor- 
 rupt, was still a true visible Church. He had learned, with 
 John Keble, to "speak gently of our sister's fall." He 
 affirmed, with every reasonable man, the True Being and 
 Visibility of the Roman Church, but as Bishop Hall was a 
 man remarkable for his extreme moderation "and sweet 
 reasonableness," this admission gave great offence. The 
 extreme Puritans took great umbrage at the concession, as 
 they called it, for they looked upon Rome as the Scarlet 
 Lady, enthroned upon the Seven Hills, and the Mother of 
 all abominations.^ 
 
 »The full title of this valuable little work is " The Old Reli^on,'' a Treatise 
 wherein is laid down the true state of the difference betwixt the Reformed and 
 Roman Church, and the blame of that schism cast upon the true authors. For 
 the vindication of our innocence, for the settling of waverer's mindes, for a 
 preservitive against Popish insinuations, 1628. Owing to the excitement con- 
 sequent upon the publication of this "little pamphlet," the learned author 
 published a third Edition, with an Advertisement now added for such Readers 
 as formerly stumbled at some Passages in his Booke, by Jos. Hall, B. of Exon, 
 Bulther and Hawkins, 1630. It is addressed " To my new and dearely affected 
 charge, the Diocese of Exeter, all grace and benediction," and there is an 
 " Epistle Dedication." It is divided into 18 chapters, and subdivided into 
 28 sections, in which all the salient and modern dogmas of Rome are proved 
 to be novelties, when brought to the bar of antiquity, and that we of the Re- 
 formed Church have got " The Old Religion " professed in early days by the 
 undivided Church of Christ. 
 
 In the third edition there is an apologetical advertisement to the Reader, 
 It contains 24 pages, and besides references to our Bishop, it has quotations 
 from Luther, Junius, Dr Raynolds, Parseus, Hooker, Crakeiithorpe, Field, and 
 Master Perkins. In this edition Bishop Hall reports the charges which had 
 been brought against him by using the words " true and visible" in regard 
 to the Church of Rome. " That she is truely visible," he says, " abates nothing 
 of her abominations (i.e. Rome's). For who sees not, that visible referres to out- 
 ward profession. Tnte to some essential! principles of Christianitie, neither of 
 them to soundnesse of Eeleefe : so as these two may well stand together, a 
 true visible Church in respect of outward profession of Christianity, and an 
 heriticall, apostaticall, anti-christian synagogue, in respect of doctrine and 
 practice. Grant the Romanists to be but Christians, how cornipt soever, and 
 we cannot deny them the name of a Church. Outward visibility gives them 
 no claim either to truth or salvation," And again, " The difference is in the 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" 245 
 
 Bishop Hall therefore appealed to the judgment of some 
 of the most eminent theologians of the day, and among 
 others, addressed the following letter to our author : — 
 
 " To the Right Reverend Father in God, 
 
 John, Lord Bishop of Salisbury. 
 
 " My Lord, — I send you this little pamphlet for your 
 censure. It is not credible how strangely I have been 
 traduced, everywhere, for that which I conceive to be 
 common opinion of Reformed Divines, yea, of reasonable 
 men, that is, for affirming the True Being and Visibility of 
 the Roman Church. You see how clearly I have endea- 
 voured to explicate this harmless position, yet I perceive 
 some tough understandings will not be satisfied. 
 
 acceptation of true and Church, both of which they have much latitude and 
 varietie of sense. Which by true they mean right believing, and by Church a 
 companie of faithfull, which have the Word of God rightly understood and 
 sincerely preached, and the sacraments duly administered, it is no marvel if 
 they say that the Church of Rome is neither true, nor Church, who would, who 
 can say otherwise." (p. 195). Bishop Hall concludes his Advertisement to the 
 Reader in the following terms of warning : " neither think to go away with an 
 idle impression; we are a true visible Church, what neede we more ? Why should 
 we wish to bee other than wee are? Alas ! poore soules, a true visibility may, and 
 doth stand with a false beleefe ; ye may bee of a true visible Church, and yet 
 never the nearer to Heaven. It is your interest in the true mystical body of Christ 
 that must save your soules, not in the outwardly visible ; your errors may bee, 
 and are no lesse damnable for that yee are by outward profession Christians, 
 ye so much the more, wo is me, your danger is more visible than your Church. 
 If ye persist wilfully in these gross corruptions, who do by consequent raze 
 that foundation, which yee professe to lay, ye shall be no lesse visible spectacle 
 of the wrath of that just God whose truth and spirit ye have so stubbornly 
 resisted. The God of Heaven open your eyes to see the glorious light of His 
 truth, and draw your hearts to the love of it, and make your Church as truly 
 sound as it is truly visible. 
 
 " Thus in a desire to stand but so right as I am in all honest judgments, 
 I have made this speedy and true apologie, beseeching all readers in the feare 
 of God (before whose barre we shal once give account of al our overlashings) 
 to indulge wisely and vprightly of what I have written, in a word to doe mee 
 but justice in their opinion, and when I begge it as a fauour. 
 
 "Farewell, reader, and God make us wise and charitable." (Pp. 213-4,) 
 
246 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " Your Lordship hath, with great reputation, spent many 
 years in the Divinity-Chair of the famous University of 
 Cambridge. Let me therefore beseech you, whose learning 
 and sincerity is so thoroughly approved in God's Church, 
 that you would freely, how shortly soever, express yourself 
 in this point : and if you find that I have deviated but one 
 hair's breadth from the truth, correct me ; if not, free me 
 by your just sentence. 
 
 " What need I to entreat you to pity those whose desires 
 of faithful offices to the Church of God are unthankfully 
 repayed with suspicion and slander ? Whose may not this 
 case be ? I thought I had sufficiently, in all my writings, 
 and in this very last book of mine whence this quarrel is 
 picked, shewed my fervent zeal for God's truth against that 
 Anti-Christian Faction of Rome : and yet I doubt not, 
 but your own ears can witness what I have suffered. 
 
 "Yea as if this calumny were not enough, there want 
 not those whose secret whisperings cast upon me the 
 foul aspersion of another sect, whose name is as much 
 hated as it is little understood. 
 
 " My Lord, you know I had a place with you, though 
 unworthy, in that famous Synod of Dort : where, howso- 
 ever, sickness bereaved me of the honour of a conclusive 
 subscription : yet your Lordship heard me, with equal 
 vehemency to the rest, crying down the unreasonableness 
 of that way. God so love me, as I do the tranquillity 
 and happiness of His Church, yet can I not so over-affect 
 it, that I would sacrifice one dram of truth to it. To that 
 good God do I appeal, as the witness of my sincere heart 
 to His whole truth, and no-less-than-ever-zealous detesta- 
 tion of all Popery and Pelagianism. 
 
 " Your Lordship will be pleased to pardon this impor- 
 tunity, and to vouch your speedy answer to 
 
 " Your much devoted and faithful brother, 
 
 "Joseph Exon." 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" 247 
 
 This letter drew from Davenant the following reply, 
 which is truly and eminently characteristic of his cautious 
 scholastic mode of discussing such topics : — 
 
 " To the Right Reverend Father in God, 
 
 Joseph, Lord Bishop of Exon. 
 
 " My Lord, — You desire my opinion concerning an as- 
 sertion of yours, whereat some have taken offence. The 
 proposition was this — 'That the Roman Church remains 
 yet a true visible Church.' 
 
 " The occasion which makes this an ill-sounding pro- 
 position in the ears of Protestants, especially such as are 
 not thoroughly acquainted with school distinctions, is the 
 usual acceptation of the word ' true ' in our English tongue : 
 for though men skilled in metaphysics hold it for a maxim, 
 ens, verum, Bonum convertuntur, yet with us, he, which 
 shall affirm such a one, is a true Christian, a true gentle- 
 man, a true scholar, or the like, he is conceived not only to 
 ascribe trueness of being to all these, but those due quali- 
 ties or requisite actions whereby they are made commend- 
 able or praiseworthy in their several kinds. 
 
 "In this sense, the Roman Church is no more a true 
 Church in respect of Christ, or those due qualities and 
 proper actions which Christ requires, than an arrant whore 
 is a true and loyal wife unto her husband. 
 
 "I duirst, upon mine oath, be one of your compurgators, 
 that you never intended to adorn that strumpet^ with the 
 title of a True Church in that meaning. But your own 
 writings have so fully cleared you herein, that suspicion it- 
 self cannot reasonably suspect you in this point. 
 
 ^ It must be confessed that this is very strong language, but some allowance 
 must be made for those times of bitter controversy, when men indulged in 
 unmeasured abuse and vituperation of their adversaries. Such language is sure 
 to recoil upon the heads of those who use it, and cannot be too severely de- 
 precated. It will be remembered that a certain eminent Cardinal of the Anglo- 
 Roman Church used equally strong language before his perversion, which he 
 ha£ since excused by saying that he was only adopting the usual and official 
 
248 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " I therefore can say no more respecting your mistaken 
 proposition than this, If, in that Treatise wherein it was 
 delivered, the antecedents or consequents were such as 
 served fitly to lead the reader into that sense, which under 
 the word True comprehendeth only Truth of Being or Ex- 
 istence, and not the due qualities of the thing or subject, 
 you have been causelessly traduced. But on the other 
 side, if that proposition comes in ex abruptOy or stands 
 solitary in your discourse, you cannot marvel though, by 
 taking the word True according to the more ordinary 
 acceptation, your true meaning was mistaken. 
 
 " In brief, your proposition admits a true sense, and in 
 that sense is, by the learned in our Reformed Church, not 
 disallowed ; for, the Being of a Church does principally 
 stand upon the gracious action of God ; calling men out of 
 darkness and death unto the participation of light and life 
 in Christ Jesus. So long as God continues this Calling 
 unto any people, though they, as much as in them lies, 
 darken this light, and corrupt the means which should 
 bring them to life and salvation in Christ ; yet, when God 
 calls men unto the participation of life in Christ by the 
 Word and by the Sacraments, there is the true Being of a 
 Christian Church, let men be never so false in their exposi- 
 tion of God's Word, or never so untrusty in mingling their 
 own traditions with God's ordinances. 
 
 " Thus, the Church of the Jews lost not her Being of a 
 Church, when she became an Idolatrous Church. 
 
 " And then, under the Government of the Scribes and 
 Pharisees, who voided the Commandments of God by their 
 own traditions, there was yet standing a True Church,, in 
 
 phraseology of the Anglican Church as used in the 17 th century. How much 
 sweeter is the spirit of our Christian Poet, who says in his poem on Gun- 
 powder Treason : 
 
 ' ' Spealc gently of our sister's fall ; 
 Who knows but gentle love 
 May win her at our patient call, 
 The surer way to prove?" — {Christian Year), 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" 249 
 
 which Zacharias, Elizabeth, the Virgin Mary, and our 
 Saviour Himself was born, who were members of that 
 Church, and yet participated not in the corruptions thereof. 
 
 "Thus, to grant that the Roman was and is a True 
 Visible Christian Church, though in Doctrine a False, and 
 in Practice an idolatrous Church, is a true assertion ; and 
 of greater use and necessity in our controversy with Papists 
 about the perpetuity of the Christian Church, than is under- 
 stood by those who gainsay it. 
 
 " This in your Reconciler is so well explicated, as if any 
 shall continue in traducing you in regard of that proposi- 
 tion so explained, I think it will be only those who are 
 better acquainted with wrangling than reasoning, and 
 deeper in love with strife than truth. And, therefore, be 
 no more troubled, with other men's groundless suspicions, 
 than you would be in like case with their idle dreams. 
 
 " Thus I have enlarged myself beyond my first intent 
 But my love to yourself, and the assurance of your con- 
 stant love unto the truth, enforced me thereunto. I rest 
 always 
 
 " Your loving Brother, 
 
 "Jan. 30, 1628. "John Sarum." 
 
 In this very judicious and scholastic reply it will be seen 
 that Bishop Davenant's language exactly synchronizes 
 with that of the official standards of our Church, and 
 especially with our XlXth Article "of the Church"; in 
 which it is said : 
 
 " The Visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in 
 which the pure Word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly 
 ministered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of 
 necessity are requisite to the same. As the Church of Jerusalem, 
 Alexandria and Antioch have erred ; so also the Church oiRome hath 
 erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in 
 matters of faith." 
 
 In the Institution of a Christian Man, our Reformers say 
 (Henry VIII.) :— 
 
250 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " I do believe that the Church of Rome is not, and cannot worthily 
 be called the true Catholic Church, but only a particular member 
 thereof ; ' and I believe that the said Church of Rome, with all the 
 other particular CTiurches in the world, compacted and united 
 together, do make and constitute but one Catholic Church or body.' 
 So the necessary Doctrine : ' The Church of Rome being but a several 
 Church, challenging that name of Catholic above all other, doeth 
 great wrong to all other Churches, and doeth only by force and main- 
 tenance support an unjust usurpation.' " 
 
 So then, although the English, like the foreign Reformers, 
 frequently called the Papal power Antichrist, the Man of 
 sin, the Beast, the Scarlet Lady, we deplore and condemn 
 the idolatrous state of the Church before the Reformation, 
 and of the Church which continued in union with Rome 
 after the Reformation ; and in consequence often use lan- 
 guage which appears to imply that the Church of Rome 
 was no true Church at all ; still they often speak, as this 
 Article does, of the Church of Rome as yet a Church, 
 though a corrupt, degenerate and erring Church. Accord- 
 ingly the XXXth Canon declares : 
 
 " So far was it from the purpose of the Church of England to 
 forsake and reject the Churches of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or 
 any such like Churchies, in all things that they held or practiced, that 
 as the Apology of the Church of England confesseth, it doth with 
 reverence retain those ceremonies which do neither endamage the 
 Church of God, nor offend the minds of sober men ; and only departed 
 from them in those particular points wherein they were fallen both 
 from themselves in thdf ancient integrity, and from the Apostolical 
 Churches, which were their first founders." 
 
 The tone and temper therefore of the Church of England 
 appears to be that of a body earnestly and stedfastly pro- 
 testing against Romanism, against all the errors, abuses, 
 and idolatries of the Church of Rome, and the usurpation 
 of the See of Rome ; but yet acknowledging that, with a 
 fearful amount of error, the Churches of the Roman Com- 
 munion are still branches, though corrupt branches of the 
 universal Church of Christ. 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" 251 
 
 The divine who has been commonly considered as the 
 most accredited exponent of the principles of the Church 
 of England, thus speaks in her behalf: — 
 
 " In the Church of Christ we were {i.e., before the Reformation), and 
 we are so still. Other difference between our estate before and now 
 we know none ; but only such as we see in Judah ; which, having 
 some time been idolatrous, became afterwards more soundly religious 
 by renouncing idolatry and superstition. . . . The indisposition of the 
 Church of Rome to reform herself must be no stay unto us from per- 
 forming our duty to God ; even as desire of retaining conformity with 
 them could be no excuse if we did not perform our duty. Notwith- 
 standing as far as lawfully we may, we have held and do hold 
 fellowship with men. For even as the Apostle doth say of Israel that 
 they are in one respect enemies, but in another beloved of God (Rom, 
 xi. 28) in like sort with Rome we dare not communicate touching her 
 grievous abominations, yet, touching those main parts of Christian truth 
 wherein they constantly still persist, we gladly acknowledge them to 
 be of the family of Jesus Christ."* 
 
 " This is not," says the late excellent Bishop of Winchester, " the 
 language of one great man, but most consistent with it have been the 
 statements of almost all those eminent writers of our Church who are 
 known and reverenced as the great types of Anghcah piety, learning 
 and charity.2 It is infinitely to be desired, that there should be no 
 relaxation of our protest against error and corruption ; but the force 
 of a protest can never be increased by uncharitableness or exaggera- 
 tion. Let Rome throw off her false additions to the Creed, and we will 
 gladly communicate with her ; but so long as she retains her errors, 
 we cannot but stand aloof, lest we should be partakers of her sins." * 
 
 " So many of our articles," concludes this much revered 
 divine, " specially entei" upon the errors of the Church of 
 Rome, that the subject may require very brief notice here. 
 By ' matters of faith,' probably it is not intended to 
 express articles of the Creed. Had the Church of Rome 
 rejected the Creeds, and those fundamental articles of the 
 
 * Hooker, Eccles. Pol., iii. i-io, 
 
 * The student may consult Palmer On the Church, ch. xi., where he will 
 find quotations from Bishop Hall, Archbp. Usher, Hammond, ChlUingworth, 
 Field, &c. 
 
 " Exposition of the XXXIX. Articles, Harold Browne, p. 458. 
 
25? THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Faith contained in them, the Church of England would 
 probably have considered her distinctly as a heresy, and 
 not as a corrupt and erring Church. But there are many 
 errors which concern the faith of Christ besides those, 
 which strike at the very foundation, and would overthrow 
 even the Creeds themselves. 
 
 Amongst these we may reckon all those novelties and 
 heterdoxies contained in the Creed of Pope Pius IV., or of 
 the Council of Trent. They are thus reckoned up by Dr 
 Barrow 1; — i. Seven Sacraments, 2. Trent doctrine of 
 Justification and Original Sin. 3. Propitiatory sacrifice of 
 the Mass. 4. Transubstantiation. 5. Communicating 
 under one head. 6. Purgatory. 7. Invocation of saints. 
 8. Veneration of relics. 9. Worship of images. 10. The 
 Roman Church to be the mother and mistress of all 
 Churches. 11. Swearing obedience to the Pope. 12. Re- 
 ceiving the decrees of all Synods and of Trent — (and we 
 might now add the modern ones of the " Immaculate Con- 
 ception," Decrees of Vatican Council, the Syllabus, and In- 
 fallibility of the Pope when he speaks officially from his chair. 
 
 " It is true these do not involve a denial of the Creeds, but they are 
 additions to the Creeds, and errors may be shown in excess as well as 
 defect of belief. They are to be received by all members of the 
 Church of Rome as articles of faith. They are not with them mere 
 matters of opinion. Every priest is required to swear that they form 
 parts of the Catholic faith, without which no one can be saved.' Now 
 the Church of England holds all of them to be false ; several of her 
 Articles are directed against these very doctrines as fabulous and 
 
 ' Barrow on the Pope's Supremacy, p. 190. 
 
 ^ The Creed of Pope Pius IV. begins with a declaration of firm faith in the 
 various articles of the Nicene, or Constantinopolitan Creed, and then con- 
 tinues with a like declaration of firm faith in the twelve novelties contained ia 
 the text. It finally rejects and anathematizes all things rejected and anathe- 
 matized by the Council of Trent, and concludes with a solemn vow and pro- 
 fession of all this as "the true Catholic Faith," out of Which no one can be 
 saved. " Hanc veram Catholicam fidem, extra quam nemo salvus esse potest — 
 sponte profiteer ac veraciter teneo, spondee, voveo, et juro. Sic me Deus 
 adjuvet, et hsec sancta Dei Evangelia." — Concil Trident, Canones et Decreta, 
 pp. 370-373- 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" 25^ 
 
 dangerous ; atad therefore she must conclude that the Church of Rome 
 hath erred, not only in living, and manner of ceremonies, but also in 
 those very points which she herself hath declared to be ' matters of 
 faith."'* 
 
 But we will conclude this matter with a quotation from 
 Mr Russell's Memorials of Fuller, anent the point in 
 question. " Bishop Davenant," says this biographer, " as 
 able a controversial divine as the Church of England ever 
 produced, places among the fundamental points as well 
 the Decalogue as the Creed, and, in respect of the Deca- 
 logue remarks : " Viderit itaque Romana ecclesia, quae fun- 
 damenta Fidei Christianae su& potissimum operi gloriatur 
 fuisse hactenus conservata, an in fundamentalibus Decalogi 
 non erraverit crasse et damnabiliter : ut de erroribus aliis 
 nihil dicam " ^ (ad Fraternam Communionum inter evan- 
 gelica Ecclesias restaurandam adhortatio, p. 98, Cantab., 
 1646). 
 
 The following three letters from our Bishop to Dr Ward 
 are important as illustrating contemporary political his- 
 tory. The first contains a reference to the action of 
 Parliament, touching tonnage and poundage — one of the 
 burning questions of that day — and the King's feeling on 
 the subject ; the second announces his dissolution of the 
 Parliament ; and the third combats his Arminian view of 
 Election. The two first were written in the spring of 
 1628. It was about this Parliament that Fuller says : 
 " Bishop Laud \\3A no great cause to be a mourner at the 
 funeral of this Parliament, having entered it in his Diarie, 
 that it endeavored his destruction." ^ 
 
 It will be remembered that when our Bishop was ap- 
 pointed to the See of Salisbury in 1621, his young nephew, 
 the future accomplished Church historian, had just come 
 into residence at the College df which Davenant was then 
 
 ; 
 
 > XXXIX. Articles, p. 468. 
 
 ^Memorials of Fuller, by A. I. Russell, p. 256. 
 
 • Church History, Cent, xvii., book ii., p. 133. 
 
254 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVEN ANT 
 
 President. Thomas Fuller, who had been educated four 
 years at a private schobl at Aldwinckle (where his father, 
 the Prebendary of Salisbury, was Rector), under the Rev. 
 Arthur Smith, was admitted on June agtli, 1621, at Queens' 
 College, Cambridge, the tutors being Mr Edward Dave- 
 nant, the Bishop's nephew, and Mr John Thorp. He had 
 gone through the regular curriculum of arts and sciences, 
 under these eminent iand distinguished men, during the 
 last four years, and his career had been a very brilliant one, 
 taking his first degree of Bachelor of Arts with flying 
 colours. It is expressly stated that he took it with un- 
 usual credit, and hence it was the result of assiduous 
 application to his studies. This was in 1624-5, ^"^^ '^^ the 
 same year Fuller's cousin and fellow - student, Robert 
 Townson, who had taken the Bachelor's degree along with 
 Fuller, was elected, doubtless through the influence of his 
 Uncle Davenant, to a Fellowship at Queens' College 
 (November 2Sth). But no such good fortune attended 
 young Fuller. His anonymous biographer relates that he 
 would have been elected to a Fellowship at Queens' 
 College, but that the statutes forbade two fellowships to 
 be held together at the same time by natives of his county. 
 The same writer adds that he might have had a dispensa- 
 tion, but declined it. The following correspondence, how- 
 ever, of his uncle. Bishop Davenant, would lead us to infer 
 that this account was altogether unfounded. 
 
 Our Bishop, still manifesting great interest in the 
 progress of the most promising of his many nephews, 
 Thomas Fuller, was now, amidst the cares of his bishopric, 
 making earnest entreaty by letter with his successor in the 
 President's office, Dr Mansel, of Queens' College, to obtain 
 a Fellowship for the young bachelor, Davenant's auto- 
 graph letters, now preserved in the Bodleian, refer to this 
 matter. They are addressed to his very intimate friend 
 Dr Ward, Master of Sydney-Sussex College, and his sue- 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" 255 
 
 cesser in the Divinity Chair of the Margaret Professorship, 
 Cambridge. The first letter which makes mention of 
 Fuller is dated July 17th, 1626, and is as follows : — 
 
 To y* right woortt his very loving friend Dr Ward, Master of Sydney 
 Colledg, and one of y" PubUcq Readers in Divinity give this. 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Good Dr Ward, I hope you will make a jorney this summer into 
 these Western parts ' and visitt us here in Salisbury on your way. Had 
 not God taken from vs our woorthy friend I might perchance have 
 accompanied you unto Wells ; but now those viadges are with mee at 
 an end. I would intreat you to cast about, where I may have y° best 
 likelihood for preferring my nephew Sr^ ffuUer to a fellowship, yf 
 hee cannot speed in Queens Colledg. Dr Mansel has yet given mee no 
 answer one way or other, but I think ere long hee will. I pray when 
 you come down this way, so cast your business yt I may enjoy your 
 company here as long as your occasions will p'mitt ; you cannot doe 
 mee a greater kindeness. And thus wth my harty commendations 
 I comitt you to God, and rest alwaies 
 
 Your very loving friend, 
 
 Jo. Saru. 
 
 Fuller's name does not appear in the correspondence for 
 upwards of a year ; the next letter which mentions him is 
 dated 23rd September 1627. It was written from Lacham, 
 near Chippenham, in Wilts, the seat of James Mountagu 
 (third son of Henry Mountagu, created, 1626, Earl of Man- 
 chester), who had acquired the estate by marriage ; and 
 from him descend the Mountagus of Wiltshire. The 
 Fullers were intimate with the Mountagus, and this cir- 
 cumstance may in part account for the presence of our 
 Bishop at Lacham. The letter she;ys that the subject of 
 it was still at present in writer's mind, as when he last 
 wrote. 
 
 1 Dr Ward, Master of Sidney College, was also Archdeacon of Taunton. 
 ^ The academic title " Sir" was at the time applied to those who had taken 
 degrees or were in holy orders. 
 
256 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 To y' right woor" his very loving friend Dr Ward, M' of Sidney 
 Colledg : and one of y' Divinity Professors in Cambridg give 
 this. 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Good Dr Ward,' So soon as I have opportunity, I shall think of 
 these points w* you mentioned unto mee in your last letter. But I 
 am at this present unfurnished of bookes, and am like so to continew 
 till I return to Saru. The number of those who die weekly is not 
 great, but y" danger is that ever and anon some new howse is infected. 
 I pray God wee may savely return thither at Christmas. I am now 
 going to y* Bath, to try yf I can gett away y* noise in my head. I 
 have writt unto the Master of Queens Colledg, to know what likelihood 
 ther is for y" preferment of my nephew Thomas ffuller vnto a fellow- 
 ship. Hee is to be Master of Artes next commencement (11 July 
 1628) : and therfore I am resolved (yf ther bee no hope ther) to seek 
 what may bee done els-where, and herein I must crave your favour and 
 assistance. I pray therfore (yf you can prefer him in your own colledg) 
 let mee intreat your best assistance therein : or yf you have no means 
 to do it there, make trial what Dr Preston thinks may bee doune in 
 Immanuel Colledg. In briefe, I should bee gladd to have him spedd 
 of a fellowship in any Colledg, and should not be vnthankful towards 
 that Society, w"^"" for my sake should do him y= favour. I am un- 
 willing to write vnto any but your selfe, unles I first might vnderstand 
 
 1 " Dr Samuel Ward was one of the most learned theologians of this truly 
 theological period. From a fellowship in Emmanuel College he was chosen 
 to the mastership of Sidney College in 1609. He was with Dr Collins, Pro- 
 vost of King's College, and Dr Brownrigg, much in request at Buckden, at 
 the table of the most munificent, learned, and hospitable Williams, the too 
 obsequious servant of King James, and one who would have been truly great 
 if he had been less ambitious." 
 
 Dr Ward was with Davenant deputed to represent the Church of England 
 at the Synod of Dort. In discipline he inclined to the Puritan. He was 
 remarkable for his gravity of deportment and for the integrity with which he 
 discharged the duties of his, mastership. 
 
 " His Theses whilst Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity attest his readi- 
 ness in the scholastic theology of those times, now peradventure too lightly 
 esteemed." — Russell's Memorials of Fuller, p. 77. 
 
 " He turned with the times," says Fuller in his Worthies, " as a rock iiseth 
 with the tide; and for his uncomplying therewith, was imprisoned in St John's 
 College, in Cambridge. In a word, he was counted a Puritan before these 
 times, and Popish in these times, and yet being always the same, was a true 
 Protestant at all times. He died anno 1643, and was the first man buried in 
 Sidney College Chapel." — Fuller's Worthies, Durham, voL i. p. 334. 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" 257 
 
 from you wher is y* best likelihood of prevailing : and then I should 
 write willingly, vnto any whome you finde willing at my motion to doe 
 him good. Thus w* remembrance of my love, I comit you to God, 
 and rest alwaies 
 
 Your very loving friend, Jo. Saru.^ 
 
 On the 25th of the following month Dr Davenant, from 
 the same place, again writes to his friend, and expresses 
 his impatience with the President of Fuller's College. He 
 also admits us into other interesting family matters. 
 
 To y= right woor" his very loving friend Dr Ward M' of Sidney 
 Colledg, and one of y° Divinity Professors in Cambridg give 
 this 
 
 Salutem in X/kjj. 
 Good Dr Ward, I have spent some time in considering those 
 pointes concerning ffreewill w'= you mentioned in your last letter. But 
 I am altogether destitute of my bookes, and cannot possibly bee 
 furnished w* them, unless myselfe (w* I am yet loath to doe) should 
 goe over to Salisbury. I am therefore loath to send you my bare con- 
 ceat of those questions ; but so soon as I can have y° help of my 
 books, to advise w* all, you shall have my opinion. 
 
 Dr Mansell has not yet given mee a resolute answer : whether 
 S ffuUer bee in possibility of beeing chosen at their next election or no. 
 But I have now writt unto him and expect a full and finall answer 
 yf ther bee no hope of speeding in Queens' Colledg : I should thinke 
 my selfe behoulding vnto you (as I formerly writt) yf you would take 
 pains to inquire in what other Colledg hee might be spedd. Wher- 
 somever that favour should bee doune him : I should not forgett to 
 take some opportunity of requiting it : I once motioned another 
 matter unto you, w* I would desire you.still to think of. It was this, 
 that when you know any discreet man, competently provided for, who 
 intends marriadg, you would (as from your selfe), wish him to bee a 
 suiter unto some of our maidens (,i.e. the Townsons, of whom there 
 were six young ladies) wherof two are now marriadgable (Margaret " 
 and Gertrude were the two eldest). My sister (the widow, Mrs Townson, 
 who lived with the Bishop at the Palace till her death) will give reason- 
 able portions, and I shall bee ready to doe somewhat for any woorthy 
 
 1 Tanner MSS., vol. Ixxii. fol. 207. 
 
 2 Margaret married John Ryves, LL.D., Archdeacon of Berks (1634-1665). 
 Gertrude married James Harris, Esq., of the Close, Serum, the ancestor of the 
 Earls of Malmesbuty. — Searle's Queens' College, p. 416. 
 
 R 
 
258 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 man that shall match w'" any of them, as occasion is offered mee. 
 The sicknes continues so at Salisbury, that I doubt, I shall keep my 
 Christmas here at Lacock. Thus comitting you to y* protection of 
 y= Almighty I rest alwaies 
 
 Your very loving friend 
 Lacham, Jo. Saru.^ 
 
 Oct. 25th, 1627. 
 
 Dr Ward seems accordingly to have busied himself in 
 the young student's behalf, all the more willingly when he 
 found the brilliant youth deserving of it. But the Bishop, 
 finding that his application to Dr Mansel and the Fellows 
 of Queens' is not likely to be successful, although he seems 
 to have received a kind of promise from the former, urges 
 Fuller's father to see what he can do in the matter. The 
 next letter, dated Nov. 28th, 1627, also from Lacham, and 
 containing further particulars of his nieces, the Townsons, is 
 as follows : — 
 
 To y= right woor his very loving friend Dr Ward, Master in Sidney 
 
 CoUedg, in Cambridg give this. 
 Leave this at y= Bull in Bishopsgate Street, given unto the carrier 
 
 {i.e., Hobson^) of Cambridg. 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Dr Ward, I hartily thank you for your mindefulness of my nephew 
 S' ffuUer : what Queens Colledg. will doe for him I know not : I have 
 writt unto his father to make a jorney to Cambridg, and to see 
 whether anything is likely to be done in our own Colledg, y' yf bee 
 no hope there, wee may seek abroad in time. As for my nieces y= elder 
 is seventeen yeer ould : a maide of a sober and gentle disposition, and 
 every way fitt to make a good wife for a divine. The next is but fifteen 
 yeer ould, not yet ripe for marriadg, but will bee by that time a good 
 husband bee found for her : and I doubt not but shee will in all good 
 qualities match her sister. The greatest portion which my sister gave 
 was £yio : and in truth it is by y" one halfe more than ther due por- 
 tions amount vnto : ffor what shee gives w"" any of them above 1 50, 
 shee gives freely out of her own estate : w'=''widowes vse not to doe. 
 
 ' Tanner MSS., Ixxii. p. 213. 
 
 ' This was the celebrated Hobson — from whom comes the phrase Hobson's 
 choice — that or none. 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" 259 
 
 Her two younger daughters had not so much as y« eldest : yet I think 
 for those that are now vnmarried, shee will bee brought to give ;£3oo 
 apeece or fast uppon it so y"= time of payment bee reasonable : and 
 y^ parties w* shall match w* them, will make them assurance of any 
 competent estate other in money or otherwise, in case they should be 
 left widowes. . . . (The remainder of the letter takes up a theological 
 argument — " How farr y" preparatory acts unto conversion are pleas- 
 ing unto God.") 
 
 When our Bishop's nephew, Fuller, took his M.A. degree 
 (which he received with great applause) at the annual 
 commencement, ist July 1628, two hundred and sixteen 
 Masters of Arts graduated on this occasion. Both his de- 
 grees were (we are told) "taken with suCh general com- 
 mendation, and at such unusual age, that such a commence- 
 ment was not within memory." But his course of studies 
 was soon to be modified, and he had to betake himself to 
 that queen of sciences, theology, and to prepare for the 
 responsible duties of a parish priest. 
 
 The long continued endeavours of our Bishop to obtain 
 for his nephew a Fellowship were of no avail : for at the 
 election of 1628, he was passed over, perhaps from the 
 want of inclination on the part of the President (Dr Han- 
 sel) to advance his promising scholar. But this action, or 
 rather inaction, on Hansel's part has never been yet satis- 
 factorily cleared up. Fuller's future now came under the 
 immediate consideration of his friends, having completed 
 his seven years' study. His father probably began to feel 
 the burden of the expense of maintaining him at the Uni- 
 versity, for he had others now dependent on him. And 
 ypt it was necessary for his son, being intended for the 
 Church (like the majority of the Fuller family), to continue 
 at Cambridge to qualify himself for the degree of Divinity. 
 Before the first of these (B.D.) could be taken, it was re- 
 quired by the Statutes that Hasters of Arts should remain 
 in full residence for a further term of five years. There is 
 evidence to show that Fuller's friends and relations had it 
 under their consideration how they might keep up his con- 
 
26o THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 nection with the University. The prospects of the young 
 Master of Arts are fully set forth in the following import- 
 ant letter, dated Oct. 21, 1628, from the pen of Dr Davenant : 
 
 To his very loving freind Dr Ward professor of Divinity and Master 
 of Sidney Colledg deliver this. 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Dr Ward, I am informed they have made a late election at 
 Queens' Colledg, and utterly passed by my nephew. I would'the 
 Master had but doune mee that kindenes, as not to have made mee 
 expect some kindenes from him. I should have taken it much better, 
 then his dooing of lesse than nothing, after some promise of his favor- 
 able assistance. I am loat Mr ffuUer should be snatched away from 
 y° Vniversity before hee bee growen somewhat riper. His {father is 
 p'swaded to continew him there, vntill I can provide him some other 
 means : but hee think it will bee some disparagement and discour- 
 agement to his Sonne to continew in that Colledg, where he shall see 
 many of his punies stept before him in preferment. In w* respect 
 hee is very desirous that hee should remoov vnto your Colledg, there 
 to live in fellowes coinons till hee shall bee otherwise disposed of. 
 Wee nether intend nor desire to make him fellow in yours or any 
 other Colledg, but only that hee may bee conveniently placed for 
 y® continuance of his studyes. I pray doe him what kindenes con- 
 veniently you may in helping him to a chamber and study, and in 
 admittance into fellowes coinons, w"" as litle chardg as y= orders of 
 your howse will give leave. In Queens' Colledg, M"^ of Art had 
 many times y* favour granted to come into comons w*out giving 
 plate or any other such like burdens w'^'' lay uppon young gentlemen 
 fellow cbinoners. I make no doubt of your readines to doe him any 
 lawful favour : but y^ cheife thing w'^'' I am at in his remooval is, 
 that hee may also have your sup'vision and direction bothe in ye 
 course of his life and study. And thus w* remembrance of my love 
 I comitt you to God and rest alwaies 
 
 Your very loving friend, 
 
 Jo. SarC* 
 
 Fuller's anonymous biographer gives, as we have seen, 
 another account of the reason why he did not obtain his 
 much coveted Fellowship. Referring apparently to the 
 same circumstances, he states that during Fuller's stay at 
 Queens', a Fellowship fell vacant, and that the young 
 ^ Tanner MS.S. vol. Ixxii. p, 296. 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" 261 
 
 student, " prompted thereto by a double plea of merit and 
 interest besides the desire of the whole house," became a 
 candidate for it. But one of the College statutes was to 
 the effect that two fellows could not be admitted on the 
 foundation at the same time, being natives of one and the 
 same county. Now there had been already one student 
 elected from the County of Northampton, of which he was 
 a native. In all probability, it was Fuller's own cousin 
 Robert Townson (whose father, formerly of Queens' Col- 
 lege, and subsequently Bishop of Salisbury, Davenant's 
 immediate successor, had been beneficed near the Fuller's 
 at the Vicarage of Willingborough, and the Rectory of Old 
 or Wold, near Brixworth, in Northampton) elected two 
 years before, who, we may assume, stood more in need of 
 it than Fuller. It will be remembered that these Fellow- 
 ships at Queens' were given to the more needy, and for 
 this reason, Davenant himself being in affluent circum- 
 stances, for a long time refused the offer of one. Fuller 
 accordingly "quitted his pretensions and designation to 
 that preferment." The biographer adds that he " totally 
 declined " though he was assured that a special dispensation 
 could be obtained in his particular case by which the elec- 
 tion might have been assured. Thus rather than the 
 statutes of the College should be altered on his account, 
 and that an irregular precedent should be formed, he 
 allowed his own merits and interests to suffer, " not willing 
 to owe his rise and advancement to the courtesy of so ill a 
 precedent that might usher in more immodest intrusions 
 upon the privileges and laws of the College." 
 
 Be this as it may, his connection with Queens' was soon 
 after severed. His course of study had begun with eagert , 
 ness and bright anticipations, and finished with credit all 
 round, and he must have left his associates and the time- 
 honoured walls of the old royal College of St Margaret and 
 St Bernard with a mind well informed, and a memory 
 (and he had a wonderful reputation for a retentive faculty) 
 
262 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 well stocked. His seven years had been well spent, and it 
 laid the foundation of that marvellous and successful career 
 of his. As the quaint epitaph on his monument at Cran- 
 ford states, he spent his life making others immortal, and 
 thereby attained immortality himself. At this time he 
 must have been something more than a mere "general 
 scholar." In after years he ever looked back with a 
 grateful recollection to those critical seven years he had 
 spent within the College walls. He thus affectionately 
 concludes his notice of the house in the Annals of his 
 University^ : "And thus I take my farewell of this founda- 
 tion wherein I had my education for the first eight years 
 (1621-8) in that University. Desiring God's blessing to 
 be plentifully poured on all the members thereof." 
 
 In November Fuller was admitted at Sydney-Sussex 
 College, not as a " Tanquam socius," as has been stated by 
 one of his biographers (Mr Russell), but only " ad con- 
 victum sociorum," i.e., as a fellow commoner, under the 
 tutorship of Dr Ward, the master, and Mr Richard Dugard. 
 Fuller says, in Pembroke Hall " a Tanquam?' it seems, is a 
 Fellow in all things save the name thereof." 
 
 * Sect, v., If 39, p. 82. As to period of time here mentioned, we find him 
 again saying of Queens' College : "to which I owe my education for my first 
 seven years in that University " (Holy War, bk. v. chap. xxiv. p. 270). The 
 latter period of time noticeably agrees with that given in the register of 
 Sydney-Sussex College. Fuller probably took a long holiday in the country 
 before entering his new College in the following year. 
 
 ^ So Dr Dove, Bishop of Peterborough, was many years previously retained 
 at Pembroke College, in the same University, as a "Tanquam Socius." 
 "He (Dove) was afterwards chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, who made him 
 Dean of Norwich, being much affected with his Preaching, as wont to say that 
 The Holy Ghost was again come down in the Dove. He was a constant 
 Housekeeper and. Reliever of the Poor, so that such who in his life time con- 
 demned him for covetoasnesse have since justly praised his Hospitality. Now, 
 though Doves axe generally said to want gall, yet the Non-Conformists in his 
 Diocesse will complain of his severity in affecting Ecclesiastical Discipline, 
 when he silenced five of them in one morning, on the same token that King 
 James is said to say it might have served for Jive years. He was an aged man, 
 being the only Queen Elizabeth's Bishop of that Province, which died in the 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" 263 
 
 And he again defines the word as " a fellow's fellow." To 
 acquire the privilege of a fellow commoner higher fees had 
 to be paid, the necessary annual charges being about £60 
 or £70} The extra expense in Fuller's case was perhaps 
 defrayed by Bishop Davenant. Fuller refers to his College 
 maintenance in one of his Cambridge Sermons, making an 
 appeal to " us who are or should be scholars, whom our 
 Parents have bred up at Fountains of Learning and 
 Religion, till our Portions are almost shrunk into our 
 Education." ^ 
 
 Fuller was not ordained by his uncle, Bishop Davenant, 
 as his anonymous eulogist informs us. 
 
 One more letter from Bishop Davenant's pen is extant, 
 with which we will conclude this doniestic series. Fuller's 
 brother, John, after the lapse of the usual terms, took his 
 master's degree in 1639, when his uncle, in addition to his 
 annual allowance, proposed to make him a gift of ;^2o. 
 John Fuller does not seem to have wished to enter the 
 Church as a clergyman, for which so many of his relations 
 had been educated ; and he induced his uncle to allow him 
 to study for the law. A letter dated "Salisbury, Oct. 29, 
 1639, thus mentions his request : 
 
 " My nephew, John FfuUer, is resolved to betake himself to y'= study 
 of y° Civil Law : and albeeit I could in likelihood doe him more good 
 in another way {i.e., of course by advancing him in the Church) yet I 
 love not to force any of mine vnto a calling whereunto they stand not 
 affected above others. I conceav it will bee moste fitting for him to 
 converse w* men of y* same profession : and therefore I have him to 
 remove unto Trinity Hall (evidently then as now the /aw College, par 
 excellence). What favour you can doe him by your coinendation to 
 y= master or any of y* ffellowes I pray let him have it : And thus wish- 
 
 reign of /iTtng' Charles, living in a poor Bishoprick, and leaving a pUntifull 
 estate : to shew that it is not the moisture ai the place but the long lying of the 
 stone, which gathereth the great mosse therein." — Fuller's CImrck History of 
 Great Britain, book xi., p. 141. 
 
 ^ Dr Ewes' Life. ^ Sermon of Assurance, p. 15. 
 
264 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 ing your good health and Happiness, I comend you to y° Giver thereof, 
 
 and rest ever 
 
 " Your verie loving friend, 
 
 «Jo. Saru."i 
 
 It will be seen that our Bishop took a warm and lively 
 interest in his relations to the very last, and in the welfare 
 of his nephews as well as his nieces, our maidens, who 
 lived at the Palace. But it must be borne in mind that he 
 remained a celibate for this very purpose, at the request, 
 some say the command, of his royal master (King James I.), 
 Who advanced him to episcopal honours. 
 
 Salute in Christo. 
 Good Doctor, I have receaved bothe your letters ; but I cannot 
 yet finde time to pforme that wch I promised concerning y"= State of 
 Infants baptized, and not Elected : but I hope to doe i ere long 
 Williams his sermon was preached at Sleeford in Lincolneshire, & not 
 at Buckden as you suppose. Dr Goad has shewed mee y" proposi- 
 tions, wch 3'e ministers of that country tooke exceptions against & I 
 have now ioined them, wth Dr Overalls Censure, whervnto they give 
 some light. For y" order wch wee spake of, sent to y' Vniversity. by 
 King James ; wherin Arminius his doctrine was taxed ; mee thinks 
 Mr Harrison should bee a likely man to help you to it, or at least to 
 remember y" effect of it. Yf Dr Jacksons book bee published, it is 
 contrary to my Lord of Lichfields liking, & wthout his knowledg, as 
 hee constantly avoucheth. I my selfe saw divers Censures vppon 
 sundry passages of that book, wch the Bishop himselfe had sett by 
 in y^ margent therof. Yf they goe on contrary to his Mai[e]sties 
 Declaration, it is not like others will bee silent. Dr Goad had your 
 letter y° last week. Vppon Moonday last y' howse of Coinons 
 adiorned them selfes till Wednesday : but when they were mett 
 again vppon Wednesday, there came a message from y* King 
 bothe to their Howse & ours, for a further Adiomment vntill 
 moonday next. An abrupt end of y° Parliament was much feared ; 
 and what y* event will bee God knowes. It should seeme his Maiesty 
 is not well pleased, wth their proceedings in y' matter of Tonnage & 
 
 1 Dr Davenant to Dr Ward. Tanner MSS., Bodl. vol. Ixvii., p. 147. This 
 John Fuller did not marry Anne Townson, his cousin, as some have said. 
 Mr Townson's fourth daughter married one "Cooke." (See Searle's History 
 of Queens' College, p. 416.) 
 
LETTERS OiST "THE OLD RELIGION" 265 
 
 Poundage. And I must needs say, I verily conceaved, that vppon 
 y° fair declaration wch y* King made concerning that busines, it would 
 have been presently setled to y^ contentment of all. For y° poynts of 
 Doctrine controversed, I see not how the Howse of comons can of 
 themselfes doe any good in setling of them. But I am still confident, 
 that yf either y= Doctrine of Election vppon prasscience of psevering 
 Faith, or of the Total or Finall falling away of men truly Justified 
 adopted & sanctified, should come to bee handled in y= convocation 
 howse, none would so much disparadge their own reputation, as to 
 maintein that ether of them * was ever since Queen Elizabeths time 
 receaved or reputed for y° coinon Doctrine of our Church. Nay I dare 
 further add, that bothe those opinions, whensomever they were publicly 
 broched were taxed for y' singular & erronious fancies of y^ brochers : 
 and that this is Notorious to all that were not asleep, when such 
 doctrines were on foot. Thus wth my best love remembred, I 
 comitt you to God, & rest 
 
 Your loving friend, 
 
 Feb. 27, 1628. Jo. Saru. 
 
 [Endorsed : — ] To y^ right woorlt his very loving freind Dr Ward 
 Master of Sidney Colledg in Cambridg give this. 
 
 Feb. 27, 1628. 
 My L"* of Sarum his Letf- 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 I am sure y" sadd newes of y° Parliaments suddain dissolution, has 
 outrunn my letter ; what badd effects it may produce heerafter God 
 only knowes. It is somewhat strange to mee that any of your Cam- 
 bridg Doctors should incline to y" Arminian predestination (ex praevisa 
 fide,) so cleerly reiected in our 17th article. Their distinction of Elec- 
 tion to glory & election to Grace cannot shelter : for our article does 
 manifestly diduce election to effectual grace, from Gods election of 
 y" same psons vnto glory : as out of y' very tenour of y° article may 
 easily bee collected. As for y° Lambeth articles, they were not only 
 subscribed unto by D' Overall, but (as appears by a letter written 
 from y" Bp. of Cant: to D' Goad) [were shewed by y'' sayd Bp. vnto 
 D' Baro : Who although hee seemed to make some frivolous & childish 
 obiections against one or two of them only, yet hee did confesse, that 
 they were all true ; and added thervnto, that they did not impugne 
 
 1 MS. then. 
 
266 THE LIFE OK BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 any of his assertions.] These are y' expres woords in y' Archbishops 
 letter. And to say y* truthe, yf D' Baro his sermon conteined no 
 woorse matter, then it comprised in his assertions wch you inclosed in 
 your letter ; hee might well avouch that they were not contradictory 
 to y= Lambeth articles. I will see yf I can gett Bp. Hooper vppon 
 y° comandments ; and then you shall have my opinion concerning his 
 Doctrine. Thus leaving you to y° protection of y" Almighty I rest 
 alwaies 
 
 Your very loving freind, 
 March 6, 1628. JO. Saru. 
 
 {Endorsed : — ] To y= right woortt his very loving freind Dr Ward 
 Master of Sidney Colledg in Cambridg give this. 
 
 March 6, 1628. 
 My L'=' of Saru his Letter. 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Good Mr Dr Ward, I have receaved y= letter you sent from 
 London ; that likewise wch you sent from Ambrose-bury came to my 
 hands long since. By y° conference you had wth my Lord of Carlile, 
 I am induced to think, y' those wch countenanced Mr Mountagues 
 book, have now at length looked into it, & finding it in some poynts 
 flatt opposit to y" receaved doctrine of our Church, are desirous to 
 have those poynts buried heerafter in silence. It was ever my opinion, 
 that no Bishop would undertake y* approoving ether of that Con- 
 ditional Post-destination wch y* Bishop of Chichester seems to strive 
 for, or of that Total falling away from Grace vppon y" cofiiission of 
 every mortall sinne, wch hee indevors to proov ; or last of all, of 
 y° Finall falling away, & eternal damnation of any who having be- 
 leived once in Christe were thervppon iustified, sanctified, & made 
 y° Adopted children of God. Those three positions (to let all other 
 lighter matters passe) are so manifestly contrary to y* receaved doc- 
 trine of the Church of England, as yt none of them were ever broched, 
 but they were presently censured, and coinunis opinio Doctorii ac- 
 knowledged to stand for y= contradictory. Why that should now 
 bee esteemed Puritane doctrine, wch those held who have done^ our 
 Church y* greatest service in beating down Puritanisme, or why men 
 should bee restrained from teaching that Doctrine heerafter, wch 
 
 ' MS. dome. 
 
LETTERS ON "THE OLD RELIGION" ^^^ 
 
 hitherto has been generally, & publiquely mainteined, (Wiser men 
 phapps may) but I cannot vnde[r]stand. As for y° Synod of Dort, 
 wee may bouldly affirm, that there is no one of y° 5 points there deter- 
 mined, but iumps wth y" doctrine wch our Professors in y= Chair, 
 & our Preachers in the pulpit have coinonly taught with y^ approba- 
 tion of our Church. And y= contradictory to any of them, has never 
 gained further amongest vs, then to bee reputed a singular & erroneous 
 opinion, whosomever held it. For D' Jacksons book (yf it concern 
 these Arminian controversies) I am afrayd it will give some new cause 
 of offence. In his former book concerning the Divine Essence & 
 Attributes ; hee so speaks of Gods Love & Mercy, that (for ought I 
 can see) hee acknowledgeth No special love, or special free grace, 
 wherby some are Specially and Infallibly brought vnto Salvation. 
 And yet this Special! free grace, is a doctrine Evidently grounded in 
 y" Articles, wch wee all subscribe vnto. I woonder y= Bishop of Ely, 
 should require an vnvsual subscription from M' Goodwin : I durst not 
 doe it in y° like case. For y"= reprinting of our Suffrage, I think it not 
 amisse : that so notice may bee yet more generally taken, that wee 
 favour not those absurd opinions, wch some falsly conceav to have 
 been allowed in y= Synod of Dort : though wee oppose those new- 
 fangled opinions, wch some would father vppon our Church. For 
 y' additions wch you intend to make, I think they will bee to good 
 purpose. I would have somewhat more added. As before your Pro- 
 positions 1 Shew y' y= Justification or Regeneration of Infants pteins 
 not vnto this controversy, or yf it doe not it makes not at all for them, 
 or against us. I think this may easily bee cleered, & I can affoord you 
 some rude materialls, so you will bee y° workman in framing them. 
 
 As for your second proposition, I think it will bee fitt not only to 
 shew it out of St Augustin, but to shew some way of reconciling 
 y° contrary testimonies, as also to add ye testimonies of some late 
 writers (espetially such as they conceav to favour their opinion)] as 
 Luther, Bucer, etc., and of our own Overall, Hooker, or any other of 
 Note. My Readings de Morte Christi, are ready for y° presse : but 
 those other concerning Predestination are not. Wee will advise heer 
 after concerning the Publishing of them. For y man of your CoUedg 
 (wch I take to bee Mr White) I rely so farr vppon your comendation 
 as I shall willingly intertein him for my howshould Chaplain, so soon 
 as I can provide for Mr Thorp who is now wth mee. And for y 
 other matter wch you mentioned, I think him very fitt ; and when you 
 have opportunity, yf you bring him over hither, hee may see, & bee 
 
 ^ A line is, after this one, crossed through. 
 
268 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 seen, & further proceedings may follow in due time. Thus I comitt 
 you to God, & rest 
 
 Your very loving freind 
 Nov. 4°, 1628. Jo Saru. 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To y^ right woorB his very loving freind Dr Ward 
 Mr of Sidney CoUedg, in Cambridg give this wth speed. 
 Leav this at y" Cambridg carriers in Bishopsgate street. 
 For the porter to send It to cambreg carier. 3d. 
 
 4 Novemb. 1628. 
 My L. of Sarum. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 BISHOP DAVENANT'S FAST SERMON ^ AT WESTMINSTER 
 ABBEY (1628) 
 
 ^^ Pottage for milk. . In these licentious times, wherein religion lay in a 
 swoon, and many pretended ministers (minions of the times) committed or 
 omitted in Divine Service what they pleased j some, not only in Wales, but 
 in England, and in London itself, on the Lord's Day (sometimes with and 
 sometimes without a psalm) presently popped up into the pulpit, before any 
 portion of Scripture, either in the Old or New Testament, was read to the 
 people. Hereupon one in jest-earnest said that formerly they put down 
 Bishops and Deans, and now they had put down Chapters too. It is high time 
 that this fault be reformed for the future, that God's word, which is all gold, 
 be not justled out to make room for man's sermons, which are but parcel-gilt at 
 the best." — Fuller's Meat Contemplations, xxxiv. part 1. 
 
 ONE OF THE 
 
 SERMONS 
 
 Preached at Westminster 
 
 The fifth of Aprill, (being the day of the Publike Fast ; ) 
 
 Before the Right Honourable I^rds of 
 
 the High Court of PARLIAMENT, and 
 
 set forth by their appointment. 
 
 By the Bishop of SARVM. 
 
 ri^ 
 
 LONDON, 
 Printed for Richard Badger, and are to be sold hy John Stempe 
 at his shop at the East end of S. Dunstan's Church-yard in 
 Fleet-street. 1628. 
 
 1 This sermon was preached on occasion' of one of the Public Fasts, on April 
 Sth, 1628, at Westminster Abbey, by Dr Davenant. The writer of the short 
 biographical sketch of his life says: — " In the following year (1628) our author 
 printed in London a sermon on Jeremiah iii. 22, on the occasion of a Fast, 
 but of this the Editor has vainly endeavoured to procure a sight, and pro- 
 bably there is now no copy in existence. " The writer of these memoirs has been 
 more successful, and, after a long search, has been fortunate enough in dis- 
 
 269 
 
1^o THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 JEREMIE iii. 22 (the latter part of the verse). 
 Behold, wee come unto thee, for thou art the Lord, our God. 
 
 SOME wonderfull sight out of all quetion was heere to be 
 scene, or else men never durst have been so bold, as to 
 have called to the great God of heaven to behold it, Some 
 pleasing spectacle out of all doubt was to be exhibited, or 
 else the great God of heaven would never have vouchsafed 
 
 covering it at the British Museum. For the first time it is therefore put hefore 
 the puhlic, and, being the only one of his sermons extant, it is printed accord- 
 ing to the author's own spelling. As a rule the writer has followed Arch- 
 Hshop Trench's advice, or rather his custom, to modernise the spelling after 
 the time of Elizabeth. This being Davenant's only sermon extant the rule 
 has been for this reason deviated from. During the Civil commotions these 
 public fasts were frequent, to deprecate the wrath of God, and by way of 
 humiliation. But as these troubles increased they became more frequent and 
 ■stated. Thus in Fuller's time there were two fast days, one ordered by the 
 Royalists and one by the Parliamentarians. In the early part of the commo- 
 tions a monthly fast was held by order of the King. " Our general fast," says 
 Fuller, "was first appointed to bemoan the massacre of our brethren in Ire- 
 land." It was appointed January, 1642, the last Wednesday in each month 
 being devoted to it ; and it was ordered to continue as long as the condition of 
 the country indicated that the Divine displeasure rested upon it. Some of 
 Fuller's best sermons were preached on these fast days. His great sermon on 
 Reformation was preached at the Savoy Chapel on a Fast day appointed by 
 the Parliament, which was kept on a Friday. After a time the Friday began 
 to be kept as a Fast day by the Royalists. The old Wednesday Fast day 
 originally appointed by the King (8th Jan. 1641-2) continued to be kept with 
 increased rigour by the Parliament, who intended that the King's appeal to 
 arms should be regarded as an indication of the increase of God's displeasure 
 to the nation — to avert which was the chief intention of the fast. The King 
 accordingly ordered that fast to be discontinued (Oct. 5th, 1643), but the 
 RoyaHsts continued to observe that day as a festival. In the new proclama- 
 tion reference was made to the ill use that the Wednesday fast had been put 
 to by "many seditious lecturers," and it was commanded that a solemn 
 monthly fast should be religiously observed on the second Friday in every 
 month, in all churches, chapels, &c. , with public prayer and preaching where 
 it may be held, to the end that a happy peace might result. He had there- 
 fore caused devout forms of prayer to be composed and printed for that 
 service. Upon ^^ first of these new fast services (Oct. 13th, 1643) Chilling- 
 worth, who was not a Royal Chaplain, preached before the King a sermon on 
 2 Timothy iii. I, which, after his death in the year ensuing, was published 
 by Royal command. 
 There were thus then two monthly fasts being observed. Fuller writes in 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 271 
 
 the casting downe of his gratious eye upon it. It was so, 
 indeed. A wonder above all other wonders : the stony 
 and rebellious hearts of men suddenly turned into soft and 
 obedient hearts. A joyfuU spectacle unto God above all 
 other spectacles ; runnagate . servants returning unto the 
 service of their Sovereigne Lord ; rebellious children re- 
 penting, and running as it were into the bosome of their 
 gratious God, and loving Father. If wee will beleeve him 
 who is Truth it selfe, this is the principall, if not the onely 
 sight upon earth, which gives contentment, and brings joy 
 unto Heaven, unto the Saints, unto the Angels, yea unto 
 the blessed Trinity it selfe.^ I have chosen this, as a Text 
 fitting the present occasion, because we are now doing the 
 very same thing, which the Israelites then did : For tell 
 me, I pray, what doe we intend by this solemne generall 
 Assembly, or what doe we pretend by this publique Fast- 
 ing, Praying, and humbling our selves under the hand of 
 Almighty God, but this serious protestation; Behold, we 
 come unto thee, for thou art tJte Lord our God? Bold, pro- 
 fane, and wretched men we are if wee deride our Maker, 
 and call unto him, that he would out of heaven behold a 
 Sight heere upon earth when in truth there is no such 
 Sight to bee scene. Dutifull, holy, and happy men we are 
 if God looking downe frbm heaven, behold in us, that 
 which we pretend and he expects. Now that we may the 
 better understand what this is, let us come to a particular 
 consideration of the Text ; which is nothing else, but a 
 short and direct answer of God's people, unto a Proposition 
 which God had made unto them in the words immediately 
 going before. God's proposition was this : {O retiime yee 
 
 1647, in reference to them : " During these Civil Wars Wednesday and 
 Friday fasts have been appointed by different authorities. What harm had 
 it been, if they had both been generally observed ? . . . Do not our two 
 lasts more peremptorily affirm and avouch our mutual malice and hatred? 
 God forgive us. We have cause enough to keep ten, but not care enough to 
 keep one monthly day of humiliation." — Fuller's Good Thoughts in Worse 
 Times, No. xvii. 
 ' Luke XV, 7. 
 
272 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 backsliding children, and I will heale your rebellions). The 
 Israelites answer hereunto, is very punctuall and direct. 
 {Behold, we come unto thee for thou art the Lord our God.) 
 In which answer, we may observe these two generall parts : 
 
 1. A protestation of their sincere obedience, {Behold, wee 
 come unto thee), 
 
 2. A declaration of the motive inducing them thereunto. 
 For thou art the Lord, our God. 
 
 This protestation consists not of many words, and yet it 
 containes many matters of great importance ; which I will 
 speake of in order, as the words shall offer them unto me. 
 
 (i.) The first is the inward Obedience of their Hearts, 
 implied in the word, Ecce, Behold: For howsoever the 
 Heart bee not expressly named, yet this Ecce, calls as 
 it were upon God, to take notice of the secret resolution 
 of their hearts, and to behold their obedience, in bowing 
 and bending of them, unto his most just, and holy com- 
 mands. In all acceptable obedience unto God, the Heart 
 must be the ringleader : if that be wanting, the seeming 
 good actions of a Heajrtlesse Christian, are but like the 
 walking or stirring of a liveless body, which affrights many, 
 but pleaseth no beholder. Omnia honesta opera volunt as 
 inchoat)- It is the Heart or Will, which gives the begin- 
 ning unto every good action : and this is it which in the 
 first place the Israelites presented unto God : And surely 
 there was good reason, and a just cause of their so dooing. 
 
 First, because their unfaithfuU and stubbome heart was 
 it, that had led them out into open rebellion against God, 
 and therefore it was necessarily required, that a loyall and 
 obedient heart should also be their Leader, in this their 
 Submission, and comming in unto Almighty God. Againe, 
 whensover God calls unto a Sinner to returne, his meaning 
 is, that his heart should first answer unto the call. My 
 Sonne give me thy heart; and Hebrewes the x. 22, Let us 
 draw neere unto God with a true heart. As good stay 
 
 ' Seneca. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 273 
 
 behinde ; as come when God calls, and leave our hearts 
 behinde. Last of all, it is the Heart upon which God's 
 eyes are principally fixed, whensoever we present our 
 humble service unto him : and it is one of his Royall Pre- 
 rogatives, to be the Discerner of Hearts. Wee may there- 
 fore well suppose, that these Israelites durst never have 
 called God to Behold their comming, had not their hearts 
 beene their leaders. For they could not be ignorant of 
 that peremptory conclusion [If I regard wickednesse in my 
 heart, the Lord will not heare me)} Now if any man aske 
 me whence came this admirable change, that men of brasen 
 foreheads, and iron hearts, are so suddenly become men of 
 humble, soft, and religious hearts, all that I can answer is 
 this : The same God that had long called unto them for 
 their hearts, had now at length given them new hearts, and 
 a new spirit, and had taken the stony heart out of their 
 body, as the Prophet Ezekiel speakes.^ Bona volunt as est 
 hominis propria, sed Deo inspirante concepta? "A good will, 
 or a good heart, is a man's owne when he hath it : but it is 
 the divine inspiration from whence hee hath it." Let us now 
 for a while leave the consideration of these Israelites, and 
 their new hearts, and come to consider our owne. We all 
 make the same protestation this day, of our obedient and 
 penitent hearts which they did. Wee all in effect intreate 
 GOD to looke downe from heaven, and to Behold this un- 
 feined and sincere resolution of our Hearts. Take heede 
 of drawing neere unto GOD with your lippes, and remoov- 
 ing your hearts farre from him. Be sure of that constant 
 resolution, which was in holy David, when he made this 
 profession : / desire to doe thy good will (0 my God) yea 
 thy law is within my heart} Pars prima bonitatis est velle 
 fieri bonum. " The first part of goodnesse, is to have the 
 Will of beeing good." I cannot pierce into your hearts, and 
 see your secret intentions and purposes : God can, and doth, 
 
 \ Psal. Ixvi. 18. ' Chap, xxxvi. verse 26. 
 
 » Prosper. * Psal. xl. 
 
 S 
 
274 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 and your owne hearts also can and doe take notice of your 
 inward resolutions. Hath any man therefore had a filthy, 
 lustful 1, and adulterous heart; aske it whether it bee now 
 resolved to keepe it selfe a pure, chaste, and undefiled 
 heart. Hath any man had a covetous or an ambitious 
 proud heart, let him search into it, and see whether it now 
 be resolved, to renounce the world, with all the vaine 
 pompe and pride thereof. Hath any man had an uncharit- 
 able , contentious, and malicious heart ; let him examine 
 himselfe, whether hee bee fully bent to purge out this old 
 and sowre leaven of maliciousnesse or no. 
 
 If our outward humiliation be sever'd from this inward 
 resolution, What is it but (as Tertullian speakes) Impietatis 
 secreta superficialibus officijs obumbrare} " To hide the depths 
 of wickednesse under a Superficies of holiness" I hope there 
 is none such here ; but if there be, let them know, that a 
 dissembling Nation is stiled, TAe People of Gods wrath ;^ 
 because hypocrites are (to use the Philosopher's phrase), in 
 ultima and proxima dispositione, " in the last, neerest and 
 fittest disposition," to take fire at the devouring flame of 
 Gods wrath. In this day therefore of our solemne Fast, 
 and of our professed new obedience, it much imports us to 
 be sure that wee are sound, and not rotten at the heart; 
 least when wee shall come hereafter to pleade with God, as 
 those hypocriticall J ewes did ; wky have we fasted, and thou 
 seest it not? Why have wee punished our selves, and t/wu 
 regardest it not?^ Wee receive the same answer. Behold, 
 in the day of your fast, yee seeke your owne will ; Behold,you 
 fast to strife and debate. If there be in our hearts a re- 
 solution onely of abstaining from meate and drinke for 
 certaine howres, but no purpose of waining our selves from 
 our owne wills, all outward shews of intended reformation, 
 will but make to our deeper condemnation. Qui laudatur 
 ■ab hominibus vituperante Deo, nan saluabitur ab hominibus 
 damnante Deo, " He who is praised of men^ whilst God 
 * Adversus Marc, 4. ' Esay 10, verse 6. ' Esay 58. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 275 
 
 accuseth him, cannot be saved by men, when God will con- 
 demne him." But I am charitably perswaded, that every 
 one of us, who this day present our selves unto the view 
 of God, hath brought with him a new heart, fully resolved 
 upon a new and holy life, 
 
 2. There is a second point now to bee considered in this 
 Protestation of their obedience ; and that is, the outward 
 performance answerable to the inward resolution and pur- 
 pose of their hearts : wherein I will first speake briefly of 
 the Act it selfe, and then of the severall circumstances 
 considerable in the same Act. This Act God expresseth 
 by the name of returning {0 returne yee disobedient children). 
 The Israelites terme it Comming. {Behold, we come unto 
 thee). Both words note unto us one and the very same 
 thing ; to wit, the forsaking of our wicked and sinnefull 
 waies and the walking in the undefiled way of God's Com- 
 mandments. For as sinne, is Aversio d Creatore & ad 
 creaturam, an inordinate turning from God unto the 
 creature ; so on the contrary, Godlinesse or righteousnesse, 
 is a turning from the vaine creature, and a Returning pr 
 comming unto God our Creator. Ad Deum nan locis 
 monemur sed moribus?- " We come unto God, not by shift- 
 ing of places, but by changing of our manners and prac- 
 tises." Comming unto the Church (as now we doe) is but 
 comming unto the materiall house of God : ceasing to doe 
 evill, practising to doe well, that is our true returning 
 unto God. Let the wicked forsake his waies and the un- 
 righteous his owne imaginations, and returne unto the Lord? 
 If there be not this outward practise, answerable unto the 
 pretended inward obedience of our hearts ; out of question 
 the former pretense was but false and counterfeit. Nemo 
 veraciter dicit volo qui nonfacit illud quod potest? " No man 
 truely sales: I am in Will and Heart resolved, unlesse 
 according to his ability, he indeavour to perform his re- 
 solution." 
 
 1 August. 2Es. SS. 7. 'Parisiensis. 
 
2.76 THE LIFE OF BISHOP/ DAVEN ANT 
 
 But every man will alleage fo^himselfe, that he is none 
 of those that come unto God ijPi pretended resolutions of 
 obedience; hee comes in deedjfthat is, in the practise of a 
 Godly life. Let us examin^^ Httle the truth of this alleg- 
 ation. There is but onej^ay of comming unto God ; there 
 are many crooked b}|p^aths (yet broad and beaten waies 
 too) which carry us qjuite away from him. He who walkes 
 in the way, which Good's Word hath chalked out unto him, 
 he, and none but h«, is comming unto God ; and how few 
 bee there that cajre either to finde or follow ;this way ; 
 They which follow the guidance of their own corrupt and 
 crafty reason, maw come unto wealth or worldly preferment, 
 but certainly by uhis way they can never come unto God : 
 and how many b4e there that wander in this way all their 
 life long. But th^ Apostle hath given them their doome. 
 The naturckl mam perceives not the things which are of God, 
 neither can^ he, npr they are foolishnesse unto him?- They 
 which follow th* bent of their owne sensuall appetite may 
 wallow in oodilly and filthy pleasures ; but by this way 
 they can rievehfcome to God, nor to those pleasures which 
 are at his right) hand for evermore. Last of al, they which 
 walke in the wiay wherein the Multitude walkes, and follow 
 onely the fashions of the present time, they may at length 
 arrive at thatt place, where they shall meete with most 
 company, but never there where they shall meete with 
 God, and tjxe best and most blessed company. Tritissima 
 quceque vm maxi^ne decipit? " The most beaten and broad 
 way, leads us farthest out of the right way." What there- 
 fore.yremaines, but onely this? If thou wouldest have 
 assS#'.nce, that thou art in the number of those that truely 
 conM" unto God, see whether thou takest his word for a 
 lanterne unto thy feete, and a light unto thy paths ; for this 
 alone is thfe straight way chalked out by God and bringing 
 men untojGOD. And let this suffice for the Act of our 
 
 / ^ I Cor. ii. 14. ' Seneca. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 1']^ 
 
 comming unto God ; the Circumstances of this act must 
 now bee handled, which are in number three. 
 
 I. The first, is the Generality of the persons returning 
 or comming unto God, implied in the word. Wee ; that is, 
 AH wee, the whole Congregation, Behold, wee come. Had 
 not there comming beene a joynt and genferall comming, 
 they could not thereby have obtained that which they 
 sought for. What was that? The removall of such heavie 
 judgements as lay upon them, and the averting of more 
 heavie, which by the Prophets were threatned against 
 them. A particular man by returning unto God, may 
 turne away a particular judgement hanging over his owne 
 head ; but where the rebellion have beene generall, and 
 where the judgement prepared is some generall calamity, 
 there it must bee a generall conversion and comming unto 
 God, that must turne away his wrath. Noah, Daniel, or 
 Job} may deliver their owne soules by their particular re- 
 pentance, but they shall save neither sonnes, nor daughters, 
 they onely shall be delivered, but the land shall be wasted. 
 If the sea roare and swell, threatning to breake downe the 
 banks, and overflow some large plaine ; it is not the care 
 of one or two in keeping or repairing their banks, that can 
 prevent the inundation : even so when God, (that I may 
 use the phrase of the Prophet Jeremy) shall roare Jrom 
 above against a nation, and be ready to swallow them up: 
 If there be not a generall indeavour in stopping him from 
 making a breach, the indeavours of some few cannot pre- 
 vent the deluge of his wrath. Would we therefore (the 
 people of this land) prevent a generall calamity, which out 
 of doubt hangs over our heads for our generall impiety ; let 
 us troope together, and one call upon another : Come let us 
 returne unto the Lord, for he hath spoiled us and he will heale 
 us, he hath wounded us, and he -will binde us up againe.J Let 
 the children of Israel and the children of Juda Come Together, 
 
 ^ Ezet. xiv. 14. '"'■ Hos, vi. 
 
278 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 and weeping seeke the Lord their God:^ In briefe, let us all 
 joyning together, hands, hearts, and voices, say truely and 
 unfeinedly unto God, Behold wee come unto thee ; and then 
 there is no doubt to be made, but he will turne away his 
 fierce wrath from us. But alasse, what hope or likelihood 
 is there of such a joynt and generall returning unto God ? 
 Every man indeed seems willing that others should turne 
 from their sins and come unto God, but the most are 
 desirous to stay behinde themselves, or to be the very last 
 in this returne. The Laity are much troubled, and heartily 
 grieved at the Scandalous sins of the Clergy, and by all 
 meanes they would have us forced to come unto God 
 joyntly and generally, without leaving any one stragler of 
 our company behinde us. But when the matter concernes 
 themselves, I see no such generall displeasure against their 
 owne sins, no such care or indeavour to returne joyntly 
 and generally unto God in their owne persons. And I am 
 afraid wee of the Clergy are quit with them in the same 
 kinde : inveighing mightily against their sins, and crying 
 aloud unto them, Returne, and yet in the meane time 
 going on in our own. I might say the same of the great 
 and mighty men of the land, compared with the poorer 
 and meaner sort of people. Both have their proper and 
 knowne faults ; each of them are wondrous earnest that 
 the other might be reclaimed, and neither so forward as 
 they should be in reforming themselves. I see but one 
 way to make us come joyntly and Generally unto God ; 
 and that is, if we can fall amongst ourselves at an un- 
 wonted and unheard of, but most allowable and happy 
 strife, who shall be the first in comming unto God. I am 
 sure there is every where strife more then enough for 
 worldly precedence : I would I were able to kindle in your 
 hearts a spirituall ambition about this Holy Precedence, in 
 comming unto God. Let us of the Clergie begin the con- 
 tention ; and as we have a prerogative of more neere and 
 speciall attendance upon God in regard of our sacred 
 
 ^ Jer. 1. 4. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 279 
 
 function : so let us strive to come first and neerest unto 
 him in holiness of conversation. If we proove dull and 
 slacke herein, you the Nobles, the Magistrates, the great 
 men of the kingdome, step forth and claime your privi- 
 ledge. The high Officers of the Kingdome in Civill 
 matters challenge a right of precedence before other men : 
 but this is not all ; take notice I pray, of your full right 
 You are stiled and inroUed Officers of Gods Kingdome^ 
 and therefore you must hold your precedence, as well in 
 the Service of God as of the King. If neither Priests nor 
 Nobles, Ministers nor Magistrates, will put in for this 
 right of precedence : you of the commonalty, you of the 
 lowest and meanest of the commonalty, strive to get the 
 precedence from us both. It is neither pride nor evill 
 manners, in this case to thrust before your betters. Nay, 
 in so doing, you make your selves more holy then your 
 Priests, more noble then your Princes. It was the saying 
 of a Philosopher ; Philosophia inspicit. The Divine may 
 say as truly ; Theologia stemma non inspicit ; " Divinity 
 lookes not upon pettigrees." Hee is nobly borne, who is 
 borne againe of the Spirit ; he is honourable, who makes 
 it his honor, to be one of the first and formost in Gods 
 service. There is a seede of man which is an honourable 
 seede : and this honourable seede are tliey which feare the 
 Lord? Now my wish and prayer unto God, and my 
 earnest exhortation unto you is this ; that you would all 
 grow ambitious of this honour, that you would lay aside 
 ail other strife, and make this your onely strife, who shall 
 first leave his sinnes, who shall first come unto God. If 
 this strife were once a foot amongst us, no doubt but we 
 should come jointly and generally unto God, as the Israel- 
 ites here did. 
 
 2. The second Circumstance observable in this Com ming 
 of the Israelites unto God, is now to be considered ; which 
 is, the Celeritie or present haste used in this their Comm- 
 
 ^ Wisd. vi. 4. * Eccl. x. 20. 
 
28o THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 ing. ( Wee Come) in the present tense ; not wee will come 
 ere long ; not we will consider upon it when will bee our 
 fittest time to come unto thee. No such matter. Here is 
 obedience without delay, present comming, answerable 
 unto Gods present calling. When God calls upon sinfull 
 men to repent and returne unto him, the most give him 
 an answer, not unlike that which Felix gave unto Paul, 
 Goe thy way for this time and when I have convenient time, 
 I will call for thee againe} But we must not refuse God's 
 convenient time, and thinke to make him waite upon our 
 convenient time. No, the practise of these Israelites must 
 bee our patterne and instruction. Obedientia non dis- 
 cutit Dei mandata, sed facit.^ True obedience doth not 
 debate the case when God commands, but presently falls 
 in hand with executing his command. Excellent is that 
 example of faithful Abraham. God saith unto him, Get 
 thee out of thy countrey, and from thy kindred, and from, thy 
 Father's house, unto the land that I will shew thee? And so 
 Abraham presently departed. Even so when GOD bids 
 the true seed of faithfuU Abraham, to leave their corrupt 
 affections, to forsake their wonted wicked courses, and 
 come into that land of Righteousnesse which hee shewes 
 unto them, they presently leave the one, and come into the 
 other. Delay is alwaies dangerous in matters of import- 
 ance, but in this our comming unto God, it drawes three 
 Mischiefes after it, and they are mighty mischiefes too. 
 
 The first is, an unspeakable and intolerable Indignity, 
 offered unto the Sacred Majestie of God himselfe. For 
 when God calls us to come unto him. What stales us from 
 comming, upon whom doe we waite in the Interim ? upon 
 whom (as much as in us lies) doe wee make the great God 
 of heaven to waite ? I will tell you. It is our owne base 
 and sinfull lusts which stay our comming unto God. For 
 as the new married man answers in the Gospell unto Gods 
 invitation ; / have married a wife, I cannot come : * so sin- 
 1 Acts xxiv. 26. 2 Prosp. ' Gen. jiii. * Luke xiv. 20. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 281 
 
 full men answer when God invites them to come unto him 
 by true repentance ; We are wedded to our owne lusts ; 
 wee cannot come. But who hath made this marriage be- 
 twixt thine owne heart, and thy sinfull lust ? Who is it 
 that perswades thee, to forsake the commands of God thy 
 Father, and of Holy Church thy Mother, and to cleave 
 unto this strumpet, which thou callest thy wife ? Sure the 
 Author of this is neither better nor worse, but even the 
 divell himselfe. Now consider seriously ; is the infinite 
 Majesty of the great God of heaven, a fit Subject to have 
 such a scorne and contumely put upon him ? What earthly 
 King would not storme and rage at the Indignity, if calling 
 one of his servants to come unto him, he should answer. 
 Sir, I am sporting with some of mine idle companions, and 
 therefore your Highnes must bee content to waite my 
 better leisure. But if hereunto hee should adde; heere 
 is an old Rebell and Arch-traitor against your Majesty, 
 who perswades me not to come at your call, and I must be 
 ruled by him ; this would aggravate the matter, and make 
 it bee taken farre more hainously. This in effect is all 
 that the Fornicator, the Drunkard, the Covetous, the Am- 
 bitious person hath to say for himselfe, why upon Gods 
 call he comes not presently unto him. His sinfull lusts 
 intreate him to imbrace them yet a little while longer: 
 and the divell whispers unto his heart; Da mihi quod 
 prcBsens est, Deo quod fiiturum est, Tnihi florem etatis, illi 
 reliquias} "Give mee the present time, allow God the 
 future, give mee the flower of thy youth, let God have 
 the bran of thine old age." Thus wretched men to the 
 infinite dishoriour of their Creator, let the divell take his 
 choice, and put God to waite for his leavings ; which in all 
 likelihood will in the end prove either nothing, or worse 
 then nothing. 
 
 2. The second Mischiefe which foUowes upon it, when 
 wee come not presently at Gods call, is the manifold 
 
 ' Nazianzen. 
 
2 82 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 wrongs and Hurt which thereby wee doe unto our owne 
 soules. Wicked men whilst they linger on the time of 
 their returning unto God, thinke that they doe their Soules 
 great pleasure, at least that they doe them no great harme : 
 but they consider not that whilst the Soule takes her sin- 
 full pleasure, shee withall takes her deadly bane. Shee 
 falls into a Consumption of spirituall grace, if ever shee 
 were indued therewithall : and is not a Consumption a 
 dangerous disease. Shee contracts a Schirrus, or spirituall 
 hardnesse, which makes the soule scarcely penetrable by 
 the dew of grace whensoever it falls upon it : and is not 
 this a grievous malady ? Last of all (if God be not wonder- 
 fully mercifull) shee comes to have a cauterized conscience, 
 and to be given over unto a Reprobate sense, which is 
 ultimum Terribilmin, the last and most terrible evill that 
 can befall a man, who is not yet in hell. These things 
 considered should make a Christian who hath any care of 
 his own soule, to beware of the divels Dilemma, who 
 alwaies adviseth men in the point of Repentance, as the 
 Philosopher did in the case of marriage. If a young man 
 aske his counsell ; when shall I repent, and returne unto 
 God ? his answer will be Nondum, not yet, it is a great 
 deale too soone. If an old man aske him the same ques- 
 tion, his answer will bee, Nunqudm, not at all, it is now 
 much too late. But we may build upon it, that whenso- 
 ever God calls unto us, (as at this very present hee doth 
 unto us all,) it is neither too soone nor too late, and therefore 
 let young and old presently come unto him. 
 
 3. The third and last Mischiefe, which attends upon 
 Delay, is a number of unknowne dangers, whereupon such 
 men put themselves, every moment that they continue im- 
 penitent in their sins. They trifle away their time, and 
 delay their comming unto God ; but in the meane time 
 who can assure them that God's vengeance will delay the 
 comming unto them ? It is safe and wise counsell ; Make 
 no tarrying to turne unto the Lord, and put it not off from 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 283 
 
 day to day : for suddenly shall the wrath of the Lord breake 
 forth, and in thy security shalt thou be destroied} The longer 
 thou makest the patience of God, expect thy returne, the 
 heavier will the load of God's judgments light upon thee, 
 for not returning Quo diutius expectat durius damnat. ^ " The 
 longer he waites, the harder he strikes:" Dost not thou 
 tremble to thinke, that whilst thou are sporting with thy 
 sinfull lusts, God may be Swearing in his wrath, that thou 
 shalt never enter into his rest ? * What was it but delaying 
 to come when God called, which drowned the old world, 
 which consumed Sodom with fire and brimstone, and 
 which at length carried away the Jewes into the Baby- 
 lonian Captivity ? And why may not England feare, lest 
 by the same fault, wee suddenly draw upon us the like de- 
 struction ? Consider this, yee that forget God, least he teare 
 you in pieces, and there be none to deliver you.* O consider 
 this yee that feare God ; and that he may imbrace you 
 within his armes of mercy, say presently unto him from an 
 unfeined resolution ; Behold, wee come unto thee. 
 
 Having spoken of the Generality of the Persons which 
 must come, and of the Present haste to bee made in com- 
 ming ; the last Circumstance remaines ; which is, the 
 Direct Course heere used : ( Wee come unto Thee). They 
 come in a most Direct line unto God himselfe. And in 
 this streight line, they moove not onely towards him, or till 
 they come somewhat neere him, but they come up close 
 unto him ; never resting, untill they come to rest, as it 
 were in his very bosome. This alone is the Streight, 
 Short, and perfect way of comming unto God ; other 
 courses, are but crooked by-paths, or circular compassings, 
 and will not answer the expectations of the Commers, as 
 shall be cleered to you in the particulars. 
 
 It is a rule in naturall Philosophic, Omnis motus est prop- 
 ter indigentiam ; " Everie thing moves for supplying some 
 
 1 Eccles. V. 7. ^ Gregory. 
 
 5 Heb. iii. verse II. * Psal. 1. verse 22. 
 
284 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 "want wherein it stands." Now the sinner by this motion 
 -which we call Repenting, Returning, Converting or Com- 
 ming (for all is one) seekes after three things, whereof no 
 one can be had, but by comming directly unto God htm- 
 selfe for it. And the least of these three things is of more 
 worth than all the wealth, all the honour, yea all the 
 world besides : and therefore must be duly sought. 
 
 The first is Venia, Pardon for all our sinnes passed; 
 for obtaining whereof, who can imagine a more proper 
 and direct course, then to come immediately and directly 
 unto God the Father, by the True Way, God the Sonne, 
 taking for our guide God the Holy Ghost ? In this motion 
 there is no crooked turning into by lanes, no circular and 
 frivolous running in a round, but a most direct and streight 
 comming unto God. And this is just as God would have 
 it. O Israel, if thou returns, returne unto mee, saith the 
 Lord: I, even I am hee, that putteth away thine iniquities for 
 mine owne sake} And therefore Tertullian said well in this 
 case ; Quo fugiam poenitendo, nisi ad eius misericordiam 
 cuius potestatem contempseram peccattdo ? ^ " Unto whom shall 
 I flie for pardon in repenting, but unto his mercy, whose 
 power I contemned in sinning ? " and as for pardon of faults, 
 so likewise for Release from Punishments which we feele or 
 feare, the same direct course unto God must bee holden. 
 For the same hand which hath wounded us, can onely 
 heale us, the same mighty arme which hath broken us, can 
 onely binde us up agaihe,^ as the Prophet speakes. The 
 young Prodigall when he came to his right minde, imder- 
 stood that none but his Father could ^ either pardon his 
 faults, or free him from his miseries : and therefore his 
 resolution is ; / will arise, and goe to my Father, and say ; 
 Father I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,* &c. 
 You know the gratious entertainment which hee found. 
 Shall wee then when wee find our selves troubled in con- 
 science with the guilt of our sinnes, hope to get absolution 
 
 ^ Jeremie iv. * Esay 43. ' Hosea vi. * Luke xv. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 285 
 
 and remission from sinnefuU men, standing in as much 
 need of remission as our selves ? By no meanes : For, 
 albeit the ministery of Reconciliation ^ be committed unto 
 men ; yet there was never man invested with the Authority 
 of Remission, but onely the man Christ Jesus,^ -who was God 
 and Man in unity of Person. Shall wee when wee feelS 
 the smart of God's scourges, or tremble for feare of some 
 future punishments, hope to cleere the score by purchas- 
 ing some plenary Indulgence from Christ's pretended 
 Vicar. Away with such foolery. Let the Pope first 
 proove that he needs no pardon for his owne sins, or that 
 he can pardon himselfe, and then let him trie what good 
 his pardon can doe unto others. And as for release from 
 any punishment:, whereunto God hath adjudged a sinner, I 
 am sure that if it were but one fit of a burning ague, the 
 Popes plenary Indulgence, with that most favourable and 
 liberall clause, Quantum se extendunt claves Petri, can doe 
 him no helpe or good at all. Doe wee therefore seeke to 
 be freed from the burden of sin which presseth our con- 
 sciences, or from the burden of punishment which lies upon 
 our backs, or hangs ever our heads ; let us take the onely 
 streight and direct way, which is, by a true Faith, and a 
 new life to come unto God; and in so doing wee assure 
 our selves of finding that which we come for. 
 
 2. There is a second want, to wit, of sanctifying Grace, 
 which the penitent soule hopes to have supplied ; for 
 supply whereof there is no other possible way, but onely 
 this, to come directly and immediately unto God. For 
 this grace whereby wee are enabled and strengthened to 
 leade a godly Righteous and Sober life, is a gift that. comes 
 from above from the Father of Lights ; * and therefore if any 
 man lacke this heavenly gift let him, come to aske it of God, 
 which giveth to all men liberally, and reprpacheth no man, 
 as the same Apostle speaketh. To imprint this lesson in 
 our hearts. Blessed Saint /*««/ makes it a usuall Salutation 
 I 2 Cor. V. 18. ^- Matt. ix. 6. ^ James i, 17, 
 
286 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 in the forefront of his Epistles ; Grace and Peace from God 
 our Father, and from the Lord fesus Christ.^ The very 
 heathen Philosopher had some glimmering of this Truth, 
 that man's goodnesse is God's gift : which made him say 
 Bonus vir sine Deo nemo est. Nulla sine Deo bona meus? 
 " There is no good man ; nor no good minde in any maii 
 without God." Doth the soule therefore of any man hunger 
 and thirst after righteousnesse, doth it long to be refreshed 
 with the dew of divine grace, seeke it at the Fountaine of 
 living waters, and not in broken pitts, which can hold no snda. 
 precious water? Some are so foolish as to thinke spirituall 
 grace may bee found in holy water, in Reliques and such 
 like superstitious observations. Some hope to fetch it from 
 Rome, Loretto or Jerusalem by a tedious and long pilgrim- 
 age. Some suppose the directest and readiest way, is to 
 begge it of the Saints, and especially of the Blessed Mother 
 of our Saviour Christ. But God conveigheth not his grace 
 into the soules of men, thorough any of those channels. 
 Wee must come unto him for it, and in the use of his 
 ordinances, we shall receive heavenly grace immediately 
 from the hand of our heavenly Father. Gratia immediate 
 exipso Fonte descendit in cor humanum, alium alveum, out 
 aliam causam non habet.^ " Grace doth immediately descend 
 into the heart of a man, from God the fountaine of grace ; 
 other course or other cause it hath none." All therefore 
 that thirst after this sanctifying grace must come directly 
 unto God for it. Here every man will be ready to say ; 
 there is none of us so wretched and profane that comes 
 not directly and daily unto God, for this gift of heavenly 
 grace. I will shew you what manner of men refuse to do 
 this, and then I will leave it to every man's own conscience 
 whether hee be in the number, or no. Those who finde not 
 themselves over-pressed, and wearied under the burden of 
 their sinnes : Those who feele not in themselves a hungring 
 and thirsting after righteousness, those that care not for the 
 1 Rom. L 7. " Seneca. = Jer. ii. 13. * Parisiensis. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 287 
 
 meanes of obtaining grace ; to wit, Prayer, the Word, the 
 Sacraments : In briefe, those that are more desirous to 
 enjoy their sinfull lusts, then to subdue and conquer them : 
 these, and all these refuse to come unto God for his sanc- 
 tifying grace. Nay, I may goe a step further ; If God 
 come and offer his grace unto any thus disposed, they are 
 ready to thrust it backe ; and had much rather obtaine from 
 God (if it were possible) a dispensation to live still after 
 the sinnefuU lusts of their owne hearts, than a power and 
 strength to overcome the sinnefull lustes of their owne 
 hearts. If GOD should presently offer unto us all, our 
 choice of these two : how many of us would be at a stand 
 which to choose? How many may we justly suspect 
 would choose the latter, and the worser part ? I presse this 
 no further ; let every man judge of himself by that which 
 hath been sayd, whether he say unto God, as these 
 Israelites did. Behold I come unto thee, for thy sanctifying 
 grace. 
 
 3. Now there remains the third and last thing which a 
 sinner returning seekes after, and that is Glory, or Eternall 
 life. There were no great benefit by comming unto God 
 for pardon of our misdeedes, and grace to live well, if these 
 two drew not after them the benefit of eternall life. But 
 when we have truly repented, obtained pardon, and 
 indevoured our best to lead a new and holy life ; for all 
 this our consciences will tell us, that we fall short of 
 deserving eternall life. Surely then there is but one 
 direct course to obtaine it, and that is by addressing our 
 selves as humble petitioners unto God, and saying : Behold 
 wee come unto thee} to begge that which we know wee 
 cannot merit. For all have sinned, and are deprived of 
 the glory of God, and have no other hope to obtaine it, but by 
 way of free gift, through Jesus Christ our Lord?' And yet 
 let me tell you this ; that if we come unto God for it as we 
 
 1 Rom. iii. ' Rom. vi. 
 
288 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 should, that is, by faith and holinesse of life: this verie 
 comming is a most certain leading way thereunto, though 
 not a deserving cause thereof. It is a short but a sound 
 determination of S. Bernard ; that good works, or a godly 
 life is. Via regni, non causa regnandi. The Apostle hath 
 taught us the same doctrine ; that by continuance in well 
 doing, wee seeke glory and honour, and immortalitie and 
 eternall life? But, alas, how manie be there in the world 
 that dream they seek after eternall life, and yet never take 
 this direct course of comming unto God for it ? Will your 
 proud Papistical merit-mongers come to God for it and 
 begge it at his hands ? No sure. They will rather urge 
 God to bring it unto them, and paie it as a due debt, 
 which by their condigne merits they have long ago de- 
 served, secundum cequinalentiam reiadrem, as their Jesuiticall 
 Doctors have taught them to speake. Doe prophane 
 Epicures, and ungodly worldlings seeke it by comming 
 unto God for it ? No questionlesse : They rather seeke it 
 from the divell ; as if they beleeved not onely that boast- 
 ing lye of his, All the kingdomes of the earth are mine, and 
 to whomsoever I will, I give them : ^ But as if they beleeved 
 that which the Father of lyes durst not afifirme ; that the 
 Kingdome of Heaven was at his dispose, and that by his 
 service it might be gained. Last of all. Doe hypocrites 
 (thinke you) and dissemblers come to God for eternall 
 life? Nothing lesse. They make a shew sometimes of 
 comming towards God, and drawing very neere unto him, 
 but in their hearts they are resolved never to come to him. 
 It should seeme they thinke to get into heaven, not by 
 comming unto God in the plaine and direct way of a lively 
 Faith and a holy life, but by deceiving God, and slipping 
 in some blinde back-dore of their owne making. But to 
 shut up this point, and withall the former part of my Text. 
 Let every man that desires either pardon of his sins or 
 release from Gods judgements, that hopes either for infusion 
 
 ^ Rom. ii. 7. ^ Luke iv. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 289 
 
 of isanctifying grace here, or participation of eternail glorie 
 hereafter; come to God for all thJese, and come to him in 
 that direct way which he hath appointed. And thus much 
 for the Israelites' protestation of obedience. 
 
 We are now come to the other branch of riiy Text, which 
 containes a Declaration of those Motives which induced 
 them to obey ; in these words, {For thou art the Lord, otir 
 God.) Heere is a double chaine to binde men unto obedi- 
 ence. The strong chaine of Gods infinite Power and 
 universall dominion, which ties all men alike. {For thou 
 art the Lord) The pleasant golden chaine of God's 
 speciall love and mercy, which in speciall manner tied 
 these Israelites unto him. {Our God.) He that acknow- 
 ledgeth God to be the universall and Omnipotent Lord 
 over all the world, feare should drive him to obey his com- 
 mands. He which beleeves him to be His God, love should 
 draw him to obey his commands. He whom this double 
 chaine cannot binde unto obedience, is in a , farre worse 
 case then that Demoniaek in the Gospell, Whom no man 
 could binde, no not with chaines.^ Let us begin with the 
 former. 
 
 God is heere ackriowledged, The Lord. Not a Lord, 
 over this or that Nation within the precincts of this or that 
 place ; but The Lord over all nations, over all countries, 
 over all Lords, over all Creatures. / am the Lord, this is 
 my name, and my glory I will not give to another, Esay 
 xlii. 8. Now God is such an universall Lord, in three 
 respects. 
 
 First he is the Lord Creator, that makes all his subjects^ 
 that makes the subjects of al other Lords, yea, that 
 makes the Lords themselves and that out of Nothing. 
 Our bodies with all the members thereof, our soules with 
 all the faculties thereof, are of his making. It is hee that 
 made us, not we our selves. Not our earthly parents ; who 
 
 ' Marke v. 3. 
 T 
 
290 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 were unable to frame the least part of our bodies, much 
 more unable to breath into us living soules. Qui filium 
 general non Imbet potestatetn ut concipidtur, ut nascdttfr, ut 
 vivaty " He which begets a childe, hath neither the con- 
 ception, the birth, nor the life of his owne childe, within 
 the limits of his power." If our Parents had ; beene our 
 Makers, wee had beene but like dead idols, which have eyes 
 and see not, eares and heare not, hands and handle not, 
 feet and walke not. This ground worke beeing now laid, 
 that God, is the Lord of all men by creation, let us con- 
 sider what force this ought to have in drawing us to obedi- 
 ence. First, I am sure, that God himselfe judgeth it a 
 most forcible motive. Why else should he set such a 
 Memento upon it? Remember thy Creator in the daies of 
 thy youth? Out of doubt God knew that it was impossible 
 even for a young man to grow rebellious, whilst he remem- 
 bers the Lord to be his Creator. , Why should God charge 
 every wicked and ungodly man, with an Oblitus es Domini 
 Creator is tui, Thou hast forgot tite Lord thy Maker f but 
 that he knowes, if this were not forgotten, his commands 
 would never be disobeyed. Not onely God, but all good 
 men have conceived the force of this motive to be so great, 
 that 1 upon the apprehension thereof, they presently con- 
 clude in their owne soules : Come let us fall downe and kneele 
 before the Lord our Maker. If Grace were wanting, yet 
 Reason is able to make this inference : If , God be my 
 sovereigrie Lord by right of Creatioil, I cannot resist him 
 but to mine owne destruction. For woe will be unto him 
 that strives with his Maker^ This reason makes all 
 creatures though devoid of reason, ready to obey at God's 
 beck. God made the Sunne ; and therefore if hee bid it 
 stand still in the firmament, it dares not but stand, if he 
 bid it goe backe so many degrees, it dares not but goe 
 backe ; though in its own nature it rejoyceth like a Gyant 
 to runne his perpetugill course. God made the fire ; there- 
 'Lactantius. 'Eccles. xii. ^Deut. xxxii. i8. ^Esay4. 9. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 291 
 
 fore if he forbid, it dares not burne the three children, no 
 not singe so much as one haire of their heads. The like 
 obedience to their Creator hath shewetl it selfe in the most 
 fierce beasts, in the most ravening birds, in the most venom- 
 ous Serpents. What shall we say then is the cause, that 
 this most forcible reason, hath so little force in mooving 
 reasonable men unto obedience ? That whereas every 
 childe if he bee asked who made him, can presently answer, 
 God ; yet few men when GOD who made them askes for 
 their obedience, have learned to answer from the heart, 
 Behold, we obey. I can give no better reason hereof then 
 this : that men deceive themselves, whilest they suppose 
 they firmely beleeve that as an Article of their faith, which 
 they onely assent unto for comjiany or fashion sake, because 
 other Christians hold it for an Article. Such a beleefe is 
 but a slight opinion swimming in the brain e, it is no true 
 and lively faith, rooted in the heart. Such men when they 
 call God their Creator, deale with him as the Jewes did 
 with Christ ; who clothed him in a royall robe, and salute 
 him with the royall title of a King, and yet at the same 
 time they scorne him, buffet him, and spit in his face. 
 Doth not the Drunkard, the Fornicator, the Swearer, and 
 in a word every bold and rebellious sinner deale with God 
 in the same manner > He calls him his Creator, he bowes 
 the knee unto him as to his Malker, and yet he feares not 
 to cast the filth of his sins into the very eyes of this his 
 Lord and Maker. Cuires nomini subj'ecta negatur, nomine 
 UluditMr> It is but a flat mockery to give God high titles, 
 and to denie him answerable duties : and those which doe 
 itj are but Christians in name, and Infidels in deede and 
 truth. The true Christian that beleeves from a sound 
 heart God to be his Maker, cannot but in some good 
 measure from the heart obey God his Maker. 
 
 2. Secondly, GOD is not onely The Lord Creator, but 
 also The Lord High Protector, or Generall Preserver of 
 
 ' TertuUian. 
 
292 THE UFE QF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 all his creatures, and more especially of mankinde. For 
 God is not like an artificer ; who when hecThath finished 
 his worke, quits his hands of it, and leaves it for-lasting or 
 perishing to the strength of the materials, whereof it con- 
 sists. No ; we must conceive a perpetuall Manutenentia 
 divina (as the Schoolemen ; terme it) without which, men 
 and Angels, heaven and earth, with all the creatures in the 
 world, would in a moment fall backe into that Nothing out 
 of which they were at first made Something. Upoq this 
 ground Durandus maintaines ; Verum est dicere de quavis 
 creatura, quod quamdiu est, creatur d Dev} " We may truely 
 say of any creature, that so long as it Is, so long God 
 Creates it." His meaning is, that Creation and this Con- 
 servation are the same action being considered in God ; 
 and only differ thus : That Creation respects the Being of 
 the Creature, as newly produced out of Nothing by Gods 
 infinite power : and this Preservation respects the Beeing 
 of the same creature^ as continually supported from falling 
 into nothing, by the same infinite power of GOD. But 
 to let Schoole-speculations passe ; the Scripture can best 
 teach us how this title of Universall Lord Protector be- 
 longeth unto the Almighty. He is before all things, and 
 in him all things Subsist^ saith the blessed Apostle. And 
 againe. Omnia portat, Hee beareth up all things by his 
 mighty power.^ So that if this our great Supporter, should 
 but for a moment withdraw his Preserving power, the 
 whole world in the twinkling of an eye, would vanish into 
 Nothing. Neither is it our Being only, which depends 
 upon God's continuall preservation ; but all our well-beeing 
 is also derived from his gratious providence and protec- 
 tion. It is this bountifull Lord which opens his hand, and 
 filleth us with his blessings ; which holdeth his hand over 
 us, and keepes us out of manifold dangers, which stretcheth 
 out his helping hand unto us, and pluckes us out of all our 
 miseries. Such a Generall Powerfull and Careful! Lord 
 1 Durand. ' Colos. i. 17. ^ Heb. i. 3. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 293 
 
 Protector, is our God unto us. Now this being granted, is 
 it not an effectuall motive to make all men dutifuU and 
 obedient unto such a Lord? I am sure that our Sove- 
 reigne Lords upon earth, for this very cause of protecting 
 their subjects, and maintaining them in peace and safety ;^ 
 challenge emd justly challenge, both obedience and tribute 
 at their hands. How much more then may the Sovereigne 
 Lord of Heaven, who protects both Prince and People, 
 challenge the tribute of obedience fro them both ? Out of 
 doubt he will and doth require it, and therefore it is our 
 best to pay it. The wise Solomon tells us, There is no 
 rising up against the King.^ And the Hebrewes have a 
 Proverbiall saying : Migrandum ex loco in quo Rex non 
 timetur. " It is time to leave that Countrey where the 
 King is not feared " as if alwaies some great judgement 
 were hanging over it. What then may we think is like to 
 befall that Nation, which is up in rebellion against their 
 heavenly King, which deny obedience to their omnipotent 
 Lord, and gratious Protector ? I am either much de- 
 ceived, or this matter doth very neerely concerne us. No 
 Nation in the world hath scene more apparent effects of 
 God's admirable protection over them, then we have done. 
 No Nation in the world hath been more laded, and over 
 laded with plenty of all manner of blessings, then we have 
 been : And (which 1 am sorrie may truly be added) no 
 Nation in the World hath shewed themselves more care- 
 lesse, and thanklesse and gracelesse, towards so gratious a 
 Lord, and Mighty Protector then wee have done. I can- 
 not thinke of the gerierall impietie of the.se times, but me 
 thinkes I see withall a terrible blacke storme gathering 
 over our heads: Mee thinkes I see God withdrawing his 
 wonted favourable protection from us, and suffering us to 
 be overwhelmed with such judgements, as our fdlly and 
 impiety hath long agoe deserved. There is but one 
 meanes to prevent those miseries which hasten towards 
 ^Rom. xiii. 6. "Pro, iii. 
 
294 THE- LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 us ; and that is, betimes to cease from farther provoking 
 our mighty and gratious Protector. Provoke me not to 
 anger by. the workes of your hands, and I will doe you no 
 harme:^. it is God's owne promise, by the mouth of the 
 holy Prophet. 
 
 3. I am now come to the third and last Reispect, wherein 
 God is truely stiled The Lord ; that is the Universal! Lord 
 over all mankinde. And this is, in regard of his Judiciary 
 Office and Power, which makes him the true Lord Chiefe 
 Justice through the whole world; For the Office ; it is in 
 expresse termes Jiscribed unto him by the Psalmist. The 
 Lord hath prepared his throne for judgement ; for he shall 
 judge the world v^ith righteousnesse, and the people with 
 equity.^ And this Office, ;doth Hot onely extend it selfe to 
 the punishing of the. wicked who hate God ,; but to Gods 
 owne children also when they disobey him. / will visit 
 their transgressions with the rodde, and their iniquity with 
 stripes.^ None but such prophane Atheists, who wish God 
 out of this Office, durst ever denie it to belong unto him. 
 Marcion was anciently branded in the fore-head for this 
 heresie. Judicis officium a Deoremonet, & ei solum, boni- 
 tatem adscribit, saith Tertullian. But no doubt long since, 
 his owne experience hath made him recant this error in 
 hell. It may be, though God have this Office of an uni- 
 versal! Judge over all the world, yet this Circuit is so large, 
 that he wants Power or Meanes fully to execute it. This 
 cannot be imagined ; the contrary so evidently appears 
 thorough the whole Scripture. When all flesh had corrupted 
 their waies upon earth,^ an end of all flesh is presently deter- 
 mined by the Judge , of heaven ; and the whole world is 
 sentenced to be drowned ; and the sentence is as easily 
 executed, as if it had beene pronounced but against some 
 one particular man. When the crie of Sodome and Go- 
 morrah had pierced Ike heavens, God adjudged them to be 
 
 ' Jereihie xxv. 6. "Ps. ix. 7. 
 
 " Ps. Ixxxix. 32. < Gen. vi. 12. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 295 
 
 burned tOith fire and brimstone ; ^ and presently he rained 
 fire and brimstone upon their hfeads. I will not trouble 
 you with heaping up more examples of Gods power in this 
 kinde ; I had rather stirre you up to feare and obedience, 
 upon consideration of the unresistable power of this Sup- 
 reame and Universall Judge. Shall the 1 Lyon roare and 
 shall not the beasts of the field quake ? Shall the great 
 Judge of heaven threaten vengeance against rebellious 
 sinners, and shall not dust and ashes fall downe at his 
 feetej and humbly sue for mercy? Shall the Divell him- 
 selfe upon the knowledge of Gods supreame Judiciary 
 power beleeve and tremble, and shall men more Divelish 
 then the Divell beleeve God to be an Omnipotent Lord 
 and Universall Judge, and yet never tremble at the matter? 
 It were hard to thinke there were any such Gyants in the 
 world, who durst fight against God, and despise both the 
 Office and Power of this Soveraigne Lord, and Universall 
 Judge, but that wee see them daily with our eyes, and 
 heare them with our ears. Is not the strong Church- 
 robber one of these Gyants, who dares openly say ; Come 
 let us take the houses of God into possession; ^ never fearing 
 that which followes : O my God, make them like a wheele, 
 and like stubble before the winde. Is not the abominable 
 swearer one of these Gyants, who dares tosse and tumble 
 the reverend name of God in his foule mouth, though God 
 have threatned that for such irreligious oathes the land 
 shall mourne. Is not every filthy fornicator, every beastly 
 drunkard, and in a word, every shamelesse and daring 
 sinner of the race of these Gyants; who knowing and 
 confessing that this great Judge hath already passed a 
 sentence of death against these sinnes,* yet sport them- 
 selves with them and gibe at the Judge himselfe. Tush, 
 the Lord shall not see it, neither will the God of facob regard 
 it. But I hope there is none heere of this rebellious rout : 
 nay I hope every man heere present is in all humility & 
 ' Gen. xviii. ^ Ps. Ixxxiii. ' i Cor. vi, 9. 
 
296 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 obedience ready to say unto this great Lord and Judge, as 
 the Israelites doe in the Text. Behold, wee come unto thee, 
 for thou art the Lord our God. And now let us passe from 
 the Generall Motive, unto the more speciall in the two last 
 words, {Our God.) 
 
 (Our God :) The former Motive was common to the 
 Israelites with all other nations: for God is the Creator, 
 Protector, and Judge of all men : but this is proper unto 
 them, as they made the Body of Gods visible Church, 
 for it is the Church alone, which can challenge God by 
 peculiar right to bee her God. And this shee may doe in 
 a double respect. Jure Confederationis, Jure redemptionis. 
 By right of Covenant, or confederation ; and by right of 
 Ransome or Redemption. 
 
 I. First, by right of Covenant established betwixt God 
 and the seed of Abraham, I will establish my Covenant 
 betwixt mee and thee, and thy seed after thee} And for 
 further ratification of this covenant, God would needs have 
 the scale of circumcision put unto it. If this bee not enough, 
 God over and above hath confirmed it, by swearing there- 
 unto. / sware unto thee, and entred into a covenant with 
 thee and thou becamest mine? In respect of this speciall 
 Covenant, God claimed the J ewes for his speciall inherit- 
 ance & peculiar people ; and they challenged him for Their 
 God, in a more speciall manner then all the world besides 
 could doe. Now as God was by a speciall covenant God 
 of the Jewes under the Old Testament, so now he is be- 
 come God of the Christians under the New. Our Baptisme 
 is the sealing of this Covenant, wherein the blessed Trinity, 
 Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost, receive the party Baptized 
 into speciall favour and protection: and the party there 
 indents with the same blessed Trinity, so soone as he shall 
 come to understand this Covenant, presently to forsake the 
 Divell and all his workes, constantly to believe Gods holy 
 
 ' Gen. xvii. 7, lo. ^ Ezek. xvi. 8. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 297 
 
 Word, and obediently to keepe his commandments. Now I 
 have shewed the Nature and quality of this Covenant, 
 which then warranted the Israelites, and now warrants us 
 Christians, to call God, Our God; let us consider how 
 forcible it is, or ought to be to draw us all unto obedience. 
 
 First, this very Covenant must put us in minde of obedi- 
 ence ; because otherwise wee loose the Benefit thereof, 
 for not Taking hold of the said Covenant. The Prophet 
 Esay^ hath taught us, that the keeping of Gods command- 
 ments, and chusing the things that please him ; is the very 
 taking hold of this Covenant : and therefore it will follow 
 from the contrary, that he despising of Gods Command- 
 ments, and doing those things which he hates, is the loosing 
 of this hold. 
 
 Againe, we are farther to consider, that all our happi- 
 nes or unhappines in this life, and after this life, depends 
 upon the keeping or breaking of this Covenant. If yee 
 will consent and obey, you shall eat the good things of the 
 land? But if you will not obey, but despise mine Ordinances, 
 and breake my Covendnt, then I will set my face against 
 you^ &c. It is a Chapter worthy of our most diligent 
 perusall. For in it as in a glasse we may cleerely see, 
 how it comes about, that we the people of this Land, who 
 were sometimes crowned with all Gods blessings, begin of 
 late to be stripped out of them one after another, and are 
 in danger of being deprived of them all. We may like- 
 wise see, from whence it comes that wee have beene con- 
 sumed at home with plague & pestilence, that abroad wee 
 have fallen before the sword of the enemy ; in these and 
 all other judgements which have or shall light upon us, we 
 must take notice of Our God, as avenging the quarrel of 
 his Covenant* What quarrell can God have against us 
 about this Covenant ? He hath a double quarrell. First, 
 for our Hypocrisie ; in that we call him Our God and make 
 
 1 Chap. Ivi. 4. ^ Esay i. 19. 
 
 ' Levit. xxvi. 15. * Levit. xxvi. 25. 
 
298 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 shew as if we were his peculiar people ; in that we call him 
 Our Father, asid pretend that wee are his true children, 
 and yet in the meane time wee will neither serve him as 
 Our God, nor love him as Our Father. It is Gods agree- 
 ment with' his' people: Thou skalt call mee, saying, My 
 Father, anii shalt not turne from meJ: He that will needs 
 call God: Father, iand yet will turne away from; him in 
 the course of his wicked life : If God call him sonne, it 
 will be- no more to his comfort, then when Abraham said 
 to the glutton: in. hell, Sonne, Remember thou in thy life 
 time tookest thy sinneful pleasures, and therefore now thou 
 must be content to undergoe eternall torments? 
 
 But yet God hath a farther quarrell against these Cove- 
 nant breakers, and that is not only for their hypocrisie, but 
 for their plaine treacherie. For as if it were not bad 
 enough to i forget the Covenant established betwixt God 
 and them, they most traiterously account, the bloud of this 
 Covenant as an unholy things and make a new confederacy 
 with Gods knowne enemies, the world, the flesh, and the 
 divell. They shame not to boast and brag of this their 
 new league. We have made a Covenant with death, and 
 with Hell we are at an agreement.^ But let every man 
 that by vertue of the Covenant calls . God his God, detest 
 all hypocrisie, abhor all treachery ; and remember that 
 his happinesse depends not upon the entring into a Cove- 
 nant with God, but upon the true keeping of the Covenant. 
 And for the more effectuall stirring up of every man here 
 present to repentance and newnes of life, according to the 
 tenor of the Covenant, I wil adde this one thing. That 
 whatsoever our carriage hitherto hath been, this very 
 Covenant may assure us, that Our God, and Our Father, 
 neither will nor can refusis gratiously to accept us into 
 favour, upon our submission and amendment. He is 
 ingaged by speciall promise. If my people, among whom 
 
 ^ Jeremie iii. 19. * Luke xvi. 
 
 ' Heb. X. 29. * Esayxxviii. 15. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 299 
 
 my natne is called upoii, doe humble themselves and purne 
 from their wicked waies^ then will I heare in heaven and be 
 mercifull ,ti} their sinne, and heak their land?- Promissa 
 heec tua sunt, &• quisifalli timeat cum promittit ipsa 
 Veritas?? "These are thy ipromises, ; O Lord, arid who 
 needs doubt the performance, where Truth it selfe makes 
 the Promise ? " But if any man should doubt, whether this 
 Promise be strong enough to binde God, to accept the 
 submission of a rebellious tservant ; yet there is no doubt, 
 but his tender fatherly affection is strong enough, to make 
 him accept the -submission of a Repenting Childe. Ephraim 
 is my deare sonne, therefore my bowels are troubled for him ; 
 and. I will surely have compassion itpon him,'Saith the Lord? 
 Let us therefore now at last come unto our God, with 
 humble,' lowly, and penitent hearts, and then wee shall 
 speede no worse then the Pro^igdll childe did : That is, 
 our loving Father will have compassion upon us, hee will 
 run and fall upon our neckes, hee will kisse us, and put tlu 
 best Robe, even the rich Robe of his wel-beloved Sonnes 
 righteousnes upon us* 
 
 There remaines the other title of Redemption to be 
 briefly touched, in regard whereof the Israelites terme God, 
 their God, and on the other side God also termeth them 
 his peculiar people : And this Redemption was twofold : 
 God was called their Strong Redeemer, and they were 
 stiled the people whom God had Redeemed, in regard of that 
 famous and miraculous deliverance out of the Egyptian 
 thraldome. God esteemed this; Temporall and Corporall 
 redemption so great »■ benefit, and so forcible an induce- 
 ment to Obedience, that hee thought it fit to bee ingraven 
 in the fore-front of his ten Commandments, Yet this is 
 not it which I pufpose now to insist' upon. There is there- 
 fore another Redemption wrought by the bloudy Passion 
 of the Messias; obscurely represented in the Leviticall 
 
 1 2 Chron. vii. 14'. ' August. 
 
 ^ Jer, iii. 14. 1 Luke xv. 20. 
 
300 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Sacrifices, more plainly described by the Prophets, but 
 most evidently pointed out unto us by the holy Apostles. 
 This is our Spirituall and eternal! Redemption, whereby 
 we are redeemed out of the jawes of the divell, from 
 eternall Death and Damnation of body and soule, which 
 otherwise, we must have undergone, and indured world 
 without end. Now albeit the Generall Power of this re- 
 demption extend it selfe unto the whole world, yet the 
 Declaration and Application thereof belongs in speciall 
 manner unto the Church ; & therefore it is the Church 
 which out of this respect calls God her God ; and it is 
 likewise the Church, which for this cause God owns as his 
 peculiar people. This is the Redemption whereof every 
 member of the Church ought with holy Job, to take speciall 
 notice. Scio quod Redemptor mens vivit. I know that my 
 Redeemer livetk?- And not onely so : but I know that this 
 my Redeemer hath ransomed both my body and soule, not 
 with gold or silver, but with his owne precious bloud ; to 
 the end that being thus Bought with a price, I may glorifie 
 him both in body and soule? If all which hath beene 
 formerly urged, cannot perswade men to returne to the 
 obedience and service of God, yet this Motive, that he is 
 Our God, and that by Right of Redemption should inforce 
 us thereunto. Our Creation out of nothing was an infinite 
 benefit, and ties us straitly to God our Creator. But this 
 our Redemption at such an inestimable price, when we 
 were worse then nothing, is infinitely greater then that 
 other infinite benefit, and ties us in a more strait band 
 unto God our Redeemer. Our Creation cost God no more 
 but the word speaking, Dixit & factum est, hee said it, and 
 hee did it ; but our redemption was not so easily wrought ; 
 Multa tulit fecit que Deus, sudavit & alsit. What man so 
 thanklesse that would not for ever acknowledge him for 
 his good Lord and Patron, and strive to doe him all 
 acceptable service, who had but redeemed him from the 
 ' Job xix. - I Cor. vi. 20. 
 
FAST SERMON AT WESTMINSTER 30 1 
 
 Turkish Slavery, and rowing chained in their: gallyes. 
 How much more then stand we obh'ged in all duty and 
 service unto our God, who hath redeemed us from being 
 the Slaves of Sathan, f?om the chaines of darknesse, and 
 everlasting damnation.. 1 They have no senSe of this Re- 
 demption nor no part as yet in it, who are, not inflamed 
 thereby to serve God in holinesse and righteousnesse, and to 
 become a fecitliar people unto him, zealous of good workes} 
 But alas, where shall God our Redeemer finde such ziealous 
 servants; amongst millions of men that confesse and pro- 
 fesse themselves to be redeemed with his blood? The 
 World and the Flesh have a world of Servants at com- 
 mand ; nay the divell himselfe is so well attended, that 
 Saint Cyprian brings him in, thus bragging against our 
 Saviour Christ, and insulting over us silly and sinfull 
 wretches. Ego pro istis nee sanguinem fudi^ &c. I have 
 spilt no one drop of blood for any of these, I have taken 
 no paines to doe them any good ; nay all my study and 
 paines ever was, and ever shall be, to bring them to 
 death, and eternall damnation. Notwithstanding all this ; 
 Tuos tales demonstra mihi Christe^ " O Christ, (if thou canst) 
 shew me so many, so busy, so painefull, so dutifull ser- 
 vants of thine," as I am able to shew unto thee every where 
 of mine. O what a shame is it unto us all that beare the 
 name of Christians, Hac did potuisse, &■ nonpotuisse refelli: 
 " That such things may truely bee objected against us by 
 the divell, and cannot truely be denied, or confuted by us." 
 O what a griefe is it unto our Lord Christ, that a cursed 
 Murtherer should be able to entise away so many servants, 
 from a blessed Redeemer ? This point should rather be 
 prosecuted with teares, then words ; nothing now remaines, 
 but that every man heere present, search into his owne heart 
 and life, inquire and finde out his owne proper sinnes, turne 
 speedily from his wicked waies ; and that all of us say with 
 a joynt and constant resolution as these Israelites did : 
 1 Tit. ii. 14. "Senn. de Ele^mosyna. ^Ibid. 
 
302 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Behold, wee come unto thee, for thou art the Lord, our 
 God. 
 
 That Almighty God who hath this day called us unto 
 him by his word, draw us unto him by the effectual! opera- 
 tion of his holy Spirit ; that so renouncing the service of 
 the World, the Flesh, and the Divell, and returning unto 
 the service of our true Lord ; wee may recover his favour 
 here, and enjoy his everlasting favour hereafter. Grant 
 this Most Mercifull Father, for the infinite merits of thy 
 wel-beloved Sonne, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost, 
 be ascribed all Praise, Power, Majesty, and Dominion, this 
 day and for ever. Amen. 
 
 Finis. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 DAVENANT PREACHES BEFORE THE COURT — HIS 
 TROUBLES AS A COURT PREACHER — BIRTH OF 
 A PRINCE (CHARLES II.),' 163O 
 
 " I appeal to the moderate men of these times (1651-5) whether, in the 
 height of these wofal wars, they have not sometimes wisht (not out of pas- 
 sionate distemper, but serious recollection of themselves) some such private 
 place to retire unto, where, out of the noise of this clamorous world, they 
 might have reposed themselves and served God with more quiet. — Fullkr's 
 History of Abbeys in EnglcMd, Church History, bk. vi. 263. 
 
 IT will be remembered that Bishop Davenant preached 
 a sermon in London at Westminster Abbey, on the 
 occasion of a Fast, from the words of Jeremiah iii. 22, 
 which we have given in extenso, as it is the only known 
 extant sermon of our Bishop, and about which the writer 
 of the! short sketch of Bishop Davenant's life says': "Of 
 this the editor has vainly endeavoured to procure a sight, 
 and probably there is no copy in existence." After several 
 attempts, the writer of these Memoirs at length had his 
 search rewarded by discovering a copy in the British 
 Museum, which is given at length in a previous chapter. 
 It must be owned that the Bishop did not shrink from 
 stating his opinions on "the Doctrines of Grace" very 
 boldly, and evidently had the courage of his convictions. 
 It contains very unmistakably' what might be termed 
 " strong meat," and its doctrinal weight fully comes up to 
 the required standard, "sixteen ounces in the pound." It 
 was strong even for those days of dogmatical strength] and 
 hardly suited the tastes of some of the new rising generation 
 of Churchmen. The Church was passing through a crisis, 
 and a reaction was taking i place in men's minds. People 
 
 303 
 
304 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 had had a good " dose " of teaching on the subjective side, 
 or pietetic phcise, of religion, and now by the usual reaction 
 were swinging round towards something more objective — a 
 platform more tangible and realistic. Thus it has ever been. 
 Some people's very temperairtents incline them either to 
 an internal or external development of Christianity. From 
 the nature of the case it must be so. And when men's 
 minds have been dwelling too much on the Contemplative 
 side of Religion, they will, as with the measured beat of 
 the pendulum, swing over to a more practical exhibition of 
 their principles. Coleridge used to say that all men were 
 born either Flatonists or Aristotelians^ — the men of ideas, 
 i£. correlated with the platform of private Judgment, and 
 the men who acknowledge some outward Controlling 
 Authority, i.e. the Church. Thus in our day the Cam- 
 bridge movement, .'which had regard to doctrine^ was by 
 a; logical necessity followed by the Oxford movement, 
 which took into its purview discipline, the externals of 
 Church observance, which were indeed its supplement. The 
 Cambridge movement was remarkaible for its preaching of 
 the Doctrines of Grace, the Atonement, Justification by 
 Faith, the work of the Spirit on the individual soul; 
 whereas that of Oxford brought out more clearly and 
 fully the Dogma and tact of the Incarnation, with the teach- 
 ing of the Sacraments as its development and extension. It 
 also made its appeal more stringent to the old Catholic 
 Fathers and Doctors, as the former had gone straight to 
 the unerring^ Word of God. Both movements were neces- 
 sary. The one was corrective and correlative of the other. 
 Each was required to make a perfect equipoise, both as 
 tp doctrine and discipline, and the two together set the 
 Anglican, system, viz. Evangelical truth and Apostolical 
 order, before the eyes of Church people. 
 
 Something of this sort was going on in these days, and 
 men wes passing from a subjective to a more objective way 
 of looking at Divine truth. The school of Davenant and 
 
PREACHES BEFORE THE COURT 305 
 
 Usher and Hall was merging into that of Laud, Jeremy 
 Taylor, and Heylin. A new king had arisen. Charles I. 
 had succeeded his theologically-minded predecessor, James 
 I., and great changes had taken place in men and measures, 
 in civil and ecclesiastical matters, and greater still were 
 pending.. The muttering of the coming storm could even 
 then be heard, and those pregnant' commotions were then 
 coming to the birth — the preludings of the final crash— ^the 
 fall of the Monarchy and the humiliation of the Church — 
 the destruction of Crown and Mitre — to end with the death 
 of the King and that of his Archbishop. 
 
 Charles I. had ascended the throne under the most 
 favourable auspices. The new king was known to be 
 scrupulously conscientious and devoutly religious. It was 
 noted that, unlike his father, at the special request of Bishop 
 Laud, he joined in the prayers of the Royal Chapel, instead 
 of expecting the sermon to be commenced immediately 
 upon his entrance. They heard with approval how sternly 
 he rebuked an Irish Romanist noble who interrupted the 
 royal devotions by loud conversation in the ante-room. 
 Men whispered about the story that the prince had said to 
 his favourite bishop that he could never be a bishop, since 
 nothing would induce him to plead the cause of a rascal. 
 
 Scholars and writers and artists were captivated with 
 a sovereign who was not only a patron, but was also a 
 genuine admirer of all that was beautiful and well written ; 
 arid who himself was no mean student in literature, " a 
 competent judge in music," and in art an accomplished 
 critic of the styles, of the great painters of the Renaissance. 
 Rubens and Van Dyck painted for him ; Milton wrote 
 masques and pastorals for his courtiers ; Walter Davenant 
 (not the divine, but the poet), Crashaw, and Herbert were 
 among the band of graceful and devotional poets who 
 expressed the feelings and aspirations of the dominant 
 party. Manuscripts of Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew were 
 added to the. libraries ; and, the royal collection of pictures 
 
 u 
 
3o6 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 was said to be the best in Europe ; while the faultless 
 architecture of Inigo Jones was ready to construct palaces 
 and porticoes and galleries for the refined pleasures of 
 an educated society delighted by the revival of art and 
 learning. 
 
 Dignified and silent, passionately fond of England, loving 
 order and decent economy, upright in all his dealings, and 
 a pure and dutiful husband, Charles seemed to be the king 
 exactly suited to the mind of the serious Englishlmen who 
 formed the bulk of the middle classes. He had none of 
 the pedantry, and none of the insolence of his father. He 
 was brave, and intent on making his country play a chief 
 part in the affairs of the world. 
 
 All these changes naturally affected our Prelate. And 
 three years after writing his scholarly letter to Bishop Hall 
 (of Exeter), Davenant, whose principles (though very popu- 
 lar, as well as his person, with James) had long been out of 
 favour at Court, fell under the open displeasure of the 
 head of it.^ Laud was now the dominant fact, and supreme 
 in ecclesiastical matters, and was carrying out his reforms, 
 which were indeed much needed, with a high and strin- 
 gent hand. To silence all disputes upon the Predeis- 
 tination controversy, Charles, under Laud's advice, had 
 prefixed " His Majesty's Declaration," which still remains 
 
 ^ And yet "Judging from frequent royal visits to Sarum, Bishop Davenant 
 must have been highly esteemed by both James I. and Charles I. The for- 
 mer was staying at the Palace in 1623, and the latter in 1625 and 1632. On 
 the last occasion Charles I. was at Salisbury, and attended the daily service in 
 the Cathedral. Fuller, at this time Prebend of Netherbury, speaks of having 
 had the honour to see the King solemnly ' heal,' i.e., ' touching for the evil ' 
 in the Choir of Salisbury." — S.P.C./C. Diocesan Histories, Salisbury (Jones), 
 note, p. 204. 
 
 "James I. was frequently in Salisbury, as the guest of the Bishop, for many 
 days at the time. These visits occurred 1609, 161 1, 1615, 1618, 1620, 1623. 
 No notice apparently exists of his touching for the evil, in the Cathedral 
 Church. Charles I. also was in Salisbury in 1629 and in 1632, for some days, 
 and attended the daily service at the Cathedral, but there is no record of his 
 healing — most likely both the Kings touched, but, being usual, is not men- 
 tioned."— ^(MVe/j Life of Themas Fuller, D.D., note, p. 88. 
 
PREACHES BEFORE THE COURT 307 
 
 at the head of the Thirty-nine Articles, requiring "all 
 curious search " on that subject to be laid on one side. 
 These Articles had been agreed upon by the Archbishops 
 and Bishops of both Provinces, and the whole clergy, in 
 the Convocation holden at London in the year 1 563, for 
 the avoiding of diversities of opinions, and for the estab- 
 lishing of consent concerning true religion : reprinted by 
 His Majesty's commandment, with His Royal declaration 
 prefixed thereunto, &c. 
 
 In " His Majesty's Declaration " these words occur, 
 which, as it will be seen, cover the ground of complaint, 
 and gave our Bishop's adversaries the opportunities they 
 required : — 
 
 " That therefore in these both curious and unhappy differences, 
 which have for so many hundred years, ih different times and places, 
 exercised the Church of Christ, we will that all further curious search 
 be laid aside, and these disputes shut up in God's promises, as they 
 be generally set forth to us in the Holy Scriptures, and the general 
 meaning of the Articles of the Church of England according to them. 
 And that no man hereafter shall . either print, or preach, to draw the 
 Article aside any way, but shall submit to it in the plain and full 
 meaning thereof, and shall not put his own sense or comment to be 
 the meaning of the Article, but shall take it in the literal and gram- 
 matical sense." 
 
 This was the point upon which the action of our 
 Bishop's adversaries turned. 
 
 When the Royal injunctions were published by Laud it 
 brought upon him a storm of unpopularity, which raged 
 fiercely for a considerable time. To compensate him, how- 
 ever, for this, there came to him in April this year (1630) the 
 pleasing news that he had been elected Chancellor of the 
 University of Oxford ; and soon after, the Queen having 
 been delivered of, a son, the King paid him the high com- 
 pliment of allowing him to baptize the infant, although 
 this had been always esteemed the special privilege of the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury. King Charles, indeed, seems 
 to have regarded Laud with a real and sincere affection,. 
 
3o8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 and to have adopted his opinions oh theological matters 
 and doctrinal topics so that any, even the least, divergence 
 from them excited his indignation. Thus our Bishop, 
 preaching this Lent before the Court, ventured to enlarge, 
 somewhat on the " thorny " points of Predestination and 
 Election. The sermon was preached on one of the Sun- 
 days in Lent, at Whitehall, before the King and his Court. 
 His text was the latter part of Romans vi. 23 : " The gift 
 of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord " ; the 
 former part of the verse, "The wages of sin is death," 
 having been the subject of a discourse in the previous year. 
 He touched on the matter of election, and some of his 
 adversaries at Court thought "to make him fall totally 
 and finally from the King's favour," as the King's Declara- 
 tion, which is still prefixed to the Thirty-nine Articles 
 (as we have just seen), seemed to forbid preaching on pre- 
 destination and the difficult cognate points of theology. 
 The King was much displeased at this boldness, not only 
 infringing (it was said) His Majesty's declaration lately 
 prefixed to the Articles, but before his own face, and in 
 his own hearing. Bishop Davenant was informed by 
 Archbishop Harsenet, Bishop Neile, and the Lord Cham- 
 berlain, that the King was very angry at his sermon, and 
 he was summoned to attend the Council-table on the 
 following Tuesday. The Bishop, who was not aware that 
 he was at fault, appears to have been overcome with terror 
 at the summons. He presented himself on his knees, 
 before the Privie Councill, "and so," says his nephew, 
 " had still continued from any favour he found from any 
 of his own function there present {{.e.^ the spiritual Peers). 
 But the Temporall Lords bad him arise and stand to his 
 own defence, being as yet only accused, not convicted." 
 "Then," says Davenant, " the Archbishop of York (Har- 
 senet, deputed by the King to manage the whole business) 
 made a speech half-an-hour long, aggravating the boldness 
 of mine offence, and showing many inconveniences it was 
 
PREACHES BEFORE THE COURT 369 
 
 likely to draw)- after it." Tiie Archbishop appears to have 
 been very- vehement against him, but Bishop Laud (who 
 was, it will be remembered, consecrated the same day as 
 Davenant) walked by all the while in silence, and spiake 
 not one word ; and he was, some say, the real mover in 
 the affair. The accused Bishop defended himself,' with 
 much force of manner and argument, by saying that he 
 had only treated on the matter of Article XVH., but he 
 was told in reply " that the King's will was that for the 
 peace of the Church these high questions should be for- 
 borne." Upon this he answered that he was sorry that he 
 had not understood his Majesty's intention, but he would 
 conform to it in future. The Lords of the Council seem 
 eagerly to have caught at these words as a means of end- 
 ing the unseemly dispute. They had been sitting all the 
 time in silence, while Harsenet had been seeking to justify 
 his promotion by his violent oration, arid Laud remained 
 silent. Bishop Davenant was dismissed, and the next 
 day, being admitted to kiss the King's hand, was told by 
 the Bishop of London's (Laud) royal pupil that " he would 
 not have this high point meddled with or debated one way 
 or other, that it was too high for the people's understand- 
 ing, and the points which concern reformation and new- 
 ness of life were more needful and profitable." Whatever 
 opinion may be entertained as to the soundness of the 
 King's sentiments, it may excite the astonishment of some 
 to find him thus quietly assuming the rdle of universal 
 Bishop. The affair made a great noise at the time, and 
 created no little stir in clerical cii'cles. It has also been 
 very much discussed in all its bearings since that time. 
 By the lengthy reference to this unfortunate episode, it is 
 clear that Puller exerted himself to clear his uncle's fame; 
 and Davenant's own account of the matter to his loving 
 friend Dr Ward shows the excitement the incident was 
 causing both in Church and State. With the increasing 
 infliibnce of Laud, 'Davenant (who, however, as one of his 
 
3IO THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 suffragans, appears to have been on very good terms 
 with him when made Primate) henceforth could have had 
 little hope of favour from the Court, and the remaining 
 part of his life was probably spent in his own diocese. 
 To this examination of Davenant, Dr Ward thus alludes 
 in a letter to Archbishop Usher : " I suppose your Grace 
 has heard of my Lord of Sarum, how he was questioned 
 before His Majesty in the beginning, of Lent last, the 
 particulars of which you shall understand by the enclosed 
 parcel of a letter he wrote me. I am right sorry the 
 established doctrines of our Church should be thus ques- 
 tioned." 
 
 Davenant, however, was not the only Prelate who was 
 annoyed by the Court at this time. Not to mention the 
 long and bitter persecution with which Williams was 
 harassed for so many years, and which is detailed in all 
 its disgraceful features by Bishop Hacket : who can hear 
 without indignation, one of the most illustrious ornaments 
 of the English Church, Bishop Hall (whose book on the 
 " Old Religion " we noticed in a previous chapter), Bishop 
 of Exeter and then of Norwich, complain that he was 
 brought three several times on his knees before the 
 Council, to answer false and idle criminations, and that 
 he only escaped further worrying by plainly telling the 
 Archbishop that he would rather resign his mitre than be 
 subject to such persecutions. So that our Bishop was 
 not a solitary instance. 
 
 However, the incident in question created such a stir at 
 the time, and has been so frequently canvassed since, in 
 discussing the possible re-adjustment of the relations of 
 Church and State (more especially with regard to the 
 action of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 
 which accidentally became the ultimate Court of Appeal 
 for cases Ecclesiastical, more than sixty years ago), that it 
 may not prove unacceptable to our readers to hear the 
 whole account of the transaction, from the pens of those 
 
PREACHES BEFORE THE COURT 311 
 
 most interested in the case before us. Fuller labours hard 
 to put matters straight with his Uncle the Bishop (and 
 who was the original of his word-portrait of " The Good 
 Bishop "), and Davenant tells his own version of the story 
 to his loving and tried friend Dr Ward, Master of Sidney 
 College. 
 
 " Dr John Davenant, Bishop of Salisbury," says Fuller in his Church 
 History, " ■pitaxii^d. his course on a Sunday in Lent at White-Hall, 
 before the King and Court, finishing a text, Rom. vi. 23, the former 
 part whereof he had handled the yeer before. In prosecution whereof 
 it seems he was conceived to fall on sorae forbidden points, in so much 
 that his Majestie (whether at first by his own inclination, or others 
 instigation, is uncertain) manifested much displeasure thereat. Sermon 
 ending, his Adversaries at Court hoped hereby to make him fall totally 
 and finally from the King's favour, though missing their mark herein, 
 as in fine it did appear. 
 
 " Two daies after he was called before the Privie Councill, where he 
 presented himself on his knees, and so had still continued for any 
 favour he found from any of his own function there present. But the 
 Temporall Lords bad him arise and stand to his own defence, being 
 as yet only accused, not convicted. Dr Harsenet, Archbishop of York, 
 managed all the businesse against him {Bishop Laud walking by all 
 the while in silence spake not one word) making a long oration uttered 
 with much vehemency to this effect : — 
 
 " First, He magnified King James his bounty unto him (Davenant) 
 who from a private Master of a Colledge in Cambridge (without any 
 other immediate preferment) advanced him by an unusuall rise to the 
 great and rich Bishoprick of Salisbury. 
 
 " Secondly, He extolled the piety and prudence of King Charles in 
 setting forth lately an useful! Declaration, wherein he had commanded 
 that many intricate questions tending more to distraction than edifica- 
 tion of the people, should utterly be forbom in preaching, and which 
 had already produced much peace in the Church. 
 
 " Thirdly, He aggravated the hainousnesse of the Bishops offence, 
 who so ill requited his Majestie's favour unto him, as to offer in his 
 own presence, in so great an Auditorie, to break his Declaration, 
 inviting others by his example to doe the like. 
 
 " Fourthly, that high contempt was the lowest tearm could be given 
 to such an offence, seeing ignorance could in no probability be pre- 
 tended in a person of his reputed learning and eminent Profession. 
 
 " What the other answered hereunto will best appear by his own 
 
312 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 letter written tb his worthy friend ■ Doctor Ward} 'giving him an exact 
 account of all proceedings herein in manner as foUoweth : — 
 
 " 'As for my Court businesse, though it grieved me that tlie estab- 
 lished Doctrine of our Church should be distated, yet it grieved me 
 the lesse, because the truth of what I delivered was acknowledged 
 even by those which thought fit to have me questioned, for the deliverie 
 of it. Presently after my sermon was ended, it was signified unto me 
 by my L. of York, and my L. of Winchester, and my L. Chamberlain 
 that his Majesty was much displeased, that I had stirred this question 
 which he had forbidden to be medled withall, one way or other : My ■ 
 answer was that I had delivered nothing but the received Doctrine of 
 our Church established in the 17 article; and that I was ready to justify 
 the truth of what I had then taught. Their answer was, the Doctrine 
 was not gainsaid,but his Highnesse had given command, these questions 
 should not be debated, and therefore he took it more offensively that 
 any should be so bold, as in his own hearing to break his royall com- 
 mands. And here my L. of York aggravated the offence, from many 
 other circumstances. My reply was only this.- That I never under- 
 stood that his Majesty had forbid a handling of any Doctrine Com- 
 prised in the Articles of our Church, but only raising of new questions, 
 or aidding of new sense thereunto, which I had not done, nor ever 
 should doe. This was all that passed betwixt us on Sunday night 
 after my sermon. The matter thus rested and I heard no more of it, 
 till coming unto the Sunday Sermon, one of the Clerks of the Couricell 
 told me, that I was to attend at the Councell-Table, the next day at 
 two of the Clock. I told him I would wait upon their Lordships at 
 the hour appointed. When I came thither, my L. of York made a 
 speech welnigh of half an hour long, aggravating the boldnesse of 
 mine offence, and shewing many inconveniences it was likely to draw 
 after it. And he much insisted upon this, what good effect his 
 Majesties Declaration had wrought, how these controversies had ever 
 since been buried in silence, no man medling with them one way or 
 other. When his Grace had finished his speech, I desired the Lords, 
 that since I was called thither as an offender, I might not be put to 
 answer upon the suddain, but that my Lords grace would be pleased 
 to charge me point by point, and so to receive my answer, for I did 
 not yet understand wherein I had broken any commandement of his 
 Majesties, which my Lord in his whole discourse took for granted. 
 Having made this motion I gave no further answer, and all the Lords 
 were silent for a while. At length my Lords Grace said I knew well 
 enough the point which was urged against me, namely the breach of 
 
 1 Mar. 16, 1629. (Bodleian Lihrary, xliii., Tanner MS. 290, fol. 86, b.) 
 
PREACHES BEFORE THE COURT 313 
 
 the King's declaration. Then I stood upon this defence, that the 
 Dodtrine of Predestination which I taught^ was not forbidden by -the 
 Declaration. First, .because in the Declaration all the Articles are 
 established, amongst which the Article of Predestination is one. 
 Secondly, because all Ministers are urged to subscribe unto the truth 
 of the Article, and all subjects to continue in the profession of that 
 as well as the rest. Upon these and such like grounds, I gathered, 
 it could not be esteemed amongst forbidden, curious, or needless 
 Doctrines : and here 1 desired out of any clause in the Declaration it 
 might be shewed me, that keeping myself within the bounds of the 
 Article, I had transgressed his Majesties command ; but the Declara- 
 tion was not produced nor any particular words in it ; onely this was 
 urged that the King's will was, that for the peace of the Church these 
 high questions should be forborne. My answer then was, that I was 
 sorry 1 understood not his Majesties intention, which if I had done 
 before, I should have made choice of some other matter to intreat of, 
 which might have given none offence ; and that for the time to come, 
 I should conform myself as readily as any other to his Majesties 
 command. The Earle of Arundell seemed to approve of this my 
 answer, and withall advised me to proceed no further in my defence. 
 This is in substance all which was done or said in this matter, and so 
 I was dismissed. The Lords said nothing either- in approbation of 
 what I had alleadged, to shew that I had not wittingly broken the 
 King's known command or in confirmation of the contrary, urged 
 against me by my Lords Grace. At my departure I intreated their 
 Lordships to let his Majesty understand, that I had not boldly, or 
 wilfully and wittingly, against his Declaration, medled with the fore- 
 named point ; and that now understanding fully his Majesties minde, 
 and intention, I should humbly yeeld obedience thereunto. This 
 businesse thus ended, I Went the next day to my L. Chamberlain, 
 and intreated him to doe me the favor, that T might be brought to 
 kisse the King's hand, before I went out of Town, which his Lordship 
 most readily promised and performed. When I came in, his Majesty 
 declared his resolution, that he would not have this high point medled 
 withall or debated, either the one way or the other, because it was too 
 high for the people's understanding : and other points which concern 
 Reformation and newness of life, were more needful! and profitable. 
 I promised obedience herein, and so kissing his Majesties hand, 
 departed. I thought, fit to acquaint you with the whole cariage of 
 this business, because I am afraid many false reports will be madp of 
 it, and contrary one to another, as men stand contrarily affected. 
 I shewed no letter or instructions, neither have any but these generall 
 instructions, which King James gave us at our going to Dort, which 
 
314 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 make little or nothing to this business. • I sought amongst my papers, 
 but could not finde them on the suddain, and I suppose you have 
 them already. As for my sermon, the brief heads were these : £ier- 
 nail life is the gift of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. As in the 
 former part I had spoken of the threefold miserie of the wicked : so 
 here I expounded the threefold happiness of the Godly to be con- 
 sidered. 
 
 " I. Happy in the Lord whom they serve : God in Christ Jesus. 
 
 " 2. Happy in the reward of their service : Etemall life. 
 
 " 3. Hap^y in the manner of their reward : xi.pi.aiia, or gratuitum 
 donum in Christo. 
 
 " The two former points were not excepted against. In the third 
 and last I considered Eternall life in three divers instances ; in the 
 eternal destination thereunto which we call election, in our Conver- 
 sion, Regeneration or Justification, which I termed the Embryo of 
 etemall life. John iv. 14. And last of all in our coronation, when 
 full possession of eternall life is given us. In all these I shewed it to 
 be x(i/»<r/ia or the free gift of God through Christ, and not procured or 
 premerited, by any special acts depending on the free-will of men. 
 The last point wherein I opposed the Popish Doctrine of Merit was 
 not disliked. The second wherein I shewed the effectuall Vocation or 
 Regeneration (whereby we have Etemall life inchoated and begun 
 in us) as a free gift was not expressly taxed. Only the first was it, 
 which bred the offence : not in regard of the Doctrine it self, but be- 
 cause (as my Lords Grace said) the King had prohibited the debating 
 thereof. And thus having let you know the carriage of this business 
 I commit you to the protection of the Almighty.' " ' 
 
 What Dr Ward's answer was to our Bishop's letter, 
 the writer has not been able to ascertain. But it is cer- 
 tain we do not hear much of Davenant being at Court 
 again after this, and he seems to have retired to his 
 bishopric, and to have thrown himself heart and soul into 
 the work of his important Diocese, correcting abuses and 
 reforming morals. 
 
 During our Bishop's sojourn in London, he received 
 two letters from his friend Dr Ward, but which he was 
 unable to answer till his return to Salisbury. 
 
 Here Davenant wrote the four following letters — the 
 
 ' Fuller's Church History of Great Britain, book xi., section 16, pp. 138- 
 141. 
 
DAVENANT RETURNS TO SALISBURY 315 
 
 first discussing Melanchthon's views ; the second, our 
 XVIIth Article ; the third, the probable new Dean and 
 the Arminian position ; and the last, the abstruse doctrine 
 of Praeterition. 
 
 They were written in the early part of 1629, and the 
 originals are to be seen at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 
 
 On his return, too, Dr Davenant and the Capitular Body 
 had a controversy with the Corporation of the town, in 
 consequence of the pretensions advanced by the latter 
 over the former. James L had given the Cathedral 
 Chapter a Charter, which was in itself an infringement of 
 the feudal rights of the bishop, and subsequently they 
 had begun to interfere with the privileges of the Close. 
 Hence the Bishop opposed the renewal of the Charter in 
 1630, and the jealousy their contending claims created, 
 was manifested in a way not altogether dignified. The 
 contention lasted from 163 1 to 1634, when it seems to 
 have been amicably settled.^ 
 
 The Chancellorship of the Order of the Garter pertained 
 to the See of Salisbury from 1450 to 1539. Henry VHL 
 and his successors made a practice of conferring the office 
 on laymen. In 1636 Dr Davenant petitioned the King 
 to restore the office to his See, and the matter was debated 
 till 1640, when the troubles in Scotland caused the Bishop 
 to relinquish his suit.^ Several papers relating to this mat- 
 ter are among the Ashmote MSS. In 167 1 Dr Seth Ward, 
 who succeeded Alexander Hyde as Bishop of Salisbury 
 on his decease, who had married Maria,* the youngest 
 daughter of Dr Townson, and one of our bishop's nieces, 
 procured this recovery of the Chancellorship.* Dr Seth 
 Ward was translated from the bishopric of Exeter and 
 
 1 Hatcher, Sarum, iij. 80 (quoted in Searle's Queens' College). 
 
 " Ashmote, History of the Garter, p. 24. 
 
 ' Another sister Ellen, Dr Townson's third daughter, married Humphrey 
 Henchman, precentor of Salisbury, Bishop of Salisbury 1660-63, and of 
 London 1663-75. — (Searle's Queens' College, p. 416.) 
 
 * Cassan, Bishops of Salisbury. 
 
3i6 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 held the See of Sarum from 1667 to 1689, being succeeded 
 by Dr Gilbert Burnet, the author of an " Exposition of 
 the 39 Articles of the Church of England," and on the 
 " Pastoral Care," a book frequently put into the hands 
 of the younger clergy. 
 
 It was about this time that an interesting event took place 
 of great national and political importance, which was des- 
 tined to affett in many w^ys the future fortunes of the royal 
 house. When the Cambridge students were being dismissed 
 to their respective homes on account of the spread of the 
 plague, which was raging in that locality, a royal prince 
 (Charles II.) was born on May 29th. " Great," says Fuller^ 
 "was the general rejoicing thereat. The University of 
 Oxford congratulated his birth with printed poems : and it 
 was taken ill, though causelessly by some, that Cambridge 
 did not do the like : for then the wits of the University 
 were sadly distracted into several counties, by reason of 
 the plague therein ; and I remember Cambridge modestly 
 excused herself in their poem made the year after, at the 
 birth of the Lady Mary ; and it will not be amiss to insert 
 and translate one tetrastic, made by my worthy friend. 
 Master John F, Borth, of Corpus Christi 'College, Gam- 
 bridge. 
 
 ' Quod fuit ad nixus Academia muta priores 
 Ignoscat princeps Carolus, segra fuit 
 
 Spe veniente novS. si tunc tacuisset ainores 
 Non tantum morbo digna, sed ilia mori.' 
 
 (' Prince Charles forgive me that my silent quill 
 Joy'd not thy birth : alas ! sore sick was I, 
 New hopes now come : had I been silent still, 
 I should deserve both to be sick and die ' )." ^ 
 
 The birth of this young prince, as it gave cause of 
 rejoicings to all good subjects, so it gave no small matter 
 of discouragement to the Puritan faction; who had laid 
 their line another way, and desired not that this King 
 
 ' Fuller's Worthies, Westminster, p. 239. 
 
BIRTH OF A ROYAL PRINCE 317 
 
 should havei had any children ; insomuch that at a feast 
 in Friday Street, when, some of the company showed 
 great joy at the news of the Queen first being with child, 
 a leading man of that faction (whom I could name were 
 it worth the while) did not stick to say, that, he couldsee 
 no such cause of joy as the others did. Which said, he 
 gave this reason for it, that God had already better pro- 
 vided for us than we had deserved, in giving such a 
 hopeful progeny by the Queen of Bohemia; whereas it 
 was uncertain what religion the King's children would 
 follow, being to be brought up under a mother so devoted 
 to the Church of Rome.'^ 
 
 The birth of the Princess Mary (afterwards mother of 
 William III.) occurred on Nov. 4th, 163 1 (the following 
 year). This event, as we see from Fuller's words just 
 quoted, exercised the brains of the poetically minded 
 Cantabs, who determined to celebrate the births of the 
 two royal infants by the publication of their efforts with 
 the Muses. They accordingly produced Genethliacum 
 Illustrissimorum. Prindpum Caroli et Marice. a musis 
 Cantabrigiendbus celebratum, Cantabrigia, 163 1 (4to). 
 As might have been anticipated, the name of " Tho. 
 Fuller, Coll., Sid. Suss, appears as a contributor, loyally 
 labouring in a Latin piece of six verses, " ad serenissimum 
 regem,' to set forth that, since the month of November 
 was in many ways associated with important events con- 
 nected with Charles, the year would now begin better 
 with November than January." 
 
 Heylin, in "Wis Life of Laud i^ will be seen from the 
 quotation already given), to iftstance the disloyalty of the 
 Puritans, tells us that on a birth in the Royal family, they 
 stood aloof from the rejoicings, saying that they looked 
 toward the Bohemian branch, that illustrious branch which 
 even now flourishes, whilst Divine Providence has swept 
 away the Stuarts from the throne of this kingdom. Thus 
 1 Heylin's Life of Laud, p. 209, 16.68. 
 
3i8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 the Puritans were true prophets; they knew that a family 
 which had united itself to an idolatrous interest was not in 
 the way of blessing ; they knew better than their oppo- 
 nents the essential evils of Romanism, and its spiritual 
 mystery. We speak, of course, of the right - minded 
 amongst them ; of men who, like Dr Sibbes, seemed to 
 have been far better judges of such questions than some of 
 those who were more immediately mixed up with these 
 matrimonial transactions. 
 
 Meanwhile, in his Cambridge parish of St Bene't, Fuller, 
 spite of his poetical sallies, continued to discharge his 
 pastoral duties with faithfulness, success, and credit to him- 
 self. He had not only endeared himself to his parishioners, 
 but he was attracting considerable notice as a popular 
 preacher, and winning fame as a rising divine, even in a 
 wider area than his parish, among the members, especially 
 the younger ones, of the University itself. It may be 
 presumed that his uncle, the Bishop, was waiting till some 
 vacancy occurred in his gift, which his nephew might 
 suitably occupy, instead of, or in addition to, his pastoral 
 charge. When, therefore, on the i8th June, 1631, Dr John 
 Rawlinson, Prebendary in the Cathedral of Sarum, died, 
 the vacant post was bestowed on Fuller.^ The Preben- 
 dal stall was that of Netherbury-in-Ecclesia, Beaminster, 
 Dorsetshire. It was regarded as a valuable piece of pre- 
 ferment. " The manor of Netherbury, now called Nether- 
 bury-in-Ecclesia, together with the impropriation of the 
 whole parish, constitute the prebend in the Church of 
 Safum so named. The Prebendary grants the farm for 
 three lives, and presents to the Vicarage." ^ Hence Fuller 
 
 ^ Davenant Registers — Saium. 
 
 " Hutchin's Dorset, i. 263. The value of the prebend (of " Nytherbniy and 
 Beyminster " ) was ;£6o in 1621. In 1379, temp. Richard II., it was certi- 
 fied to be worth by theyear, jf 106, 13s. 4d. (Foxe, quoted in Brewer's edition 
 of Fuller's Chunk History, ii. 351). It was returned (26 Henry VIII.) to be 
 of the annual value of £^'i, 12s. 6d. (Hutchin's Dorset, ii. 105). Fuller's 
 composition for ;f39, Ss. 3d., dated 25th November 1631, and paid in four 
 
FULLER MADE PREBENDARY OF S ARUM 3 1 9 
 
 himself, alluding to its value, said of it that it was " one of 
 the best prebends in England." ^ Fuller's subscription to 
 the Articles, in his own writing, is still preserved in the 
 Bishops' registers, and his composition for first-fruits, &c., 
 in the Record office. 
 
 Fuller's eulogist makes the following incorrect statement 
 with respect to this gift : — " This being the King's Donation 
 was some further reason for abandoning his most pleasant 
 studies and conversation in Cambridge, for that also by 
 the statutes of both Universities it is provided that no 
 person who shall have £10 per annum in the King's books 
 shall be capable of a fellowship in either of them." ^ He 
 here overlooks the fact that Prebends, or Honorary 
 Canons, as they are called in some Cathedral chapters, 
 are invariably in the gift of the Bishops. The King as 
 yet knew nothing of Fuller (although presently he was 
 destined to be tutor to the young Princess, and Chaplain- 
 in-ordinary to Charles H.), and as his uncle, the exemplary 
 Bishop Dayenant, was now, as we have just seen, owing to 
 his predicatorial escapade, in disgrace at Court, it is not 
 likely that it was obtained at the King's request, or 
 through his intervention. 
 
 Fuller's anonymous biographer just as carelessly tells us 
 that his herb " retired from the University," upon receiving 
 this Prebend. Bishop Davenant did not forget his favourite 
 nephew in the disposal of the patronage of the See of Sarum. 
 " That Prebend of Salisbury,'' says his biographer, " was 
 a commodious step to a more profitable place." This was 
 the Rectory of Broadwinsor, which fell vacant in the year 
 1634, on the death of Francis Isaac. He did not, how- 
 ever, permanently leave for some years, for he was still 
 in possession of the Incumbency of St Bene't. Having 
 
 equal sums, every six months (the last on 1st August, 1633) is in the Kecocd 
 office. His sureties are his relations, " Edwardus Henchman, paroch. Sancti 
 Andrea in le Wardrobe London, et Maurit. Henchman de eadem generos." 
 » Appeal, i. 286. * Page 6. 
 
320 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 in view, moreover, his next degree (that of B.D.), he kept 
 up a nominal residence at his College^ in accordance with 
 the Statute; by the terms of which students were allowed, 
 after seven years from the time of commencing the M.A. 
 degree, to proceed to the higher degree. This would bring' 
 us down to the year 1635, when he actually took his 
 degree in Divinity. Possibly he left Cambridge for a short 
 period,; to enter on the possession of his stall, and to 
 familiarise himself with its extra duties. From this time, 
 also, there is no doubt but that he spent a greater part of 
 his leisure time at Salisbury as the guest of his uncle, and 
 with his aunt, Mrs Townson, and the cousins. 
 
 The same eulogistic biographer, who seems ignorant of 
 the events of this period of his life, now states that when 
 betaking himself to his priestly function [(the Prebend) he 
 was " ordained by the Right Reverend Father in God the 
 Bishop of Salisbury ; " ^ but he was already in Orders when 
 he received the Prebend, and, as can be easily proved, his 
 ordination must have taken place the previous year, in the 
 diocese of Ely, and before he could have taken the pastoral 
 sole charge of St Bene't's, a church and parish in Cambridge. 
 
 To his position in the Cathedral of Sarum at this time. 
 Fuller thus alludes in his controversy with Dr Peter 
 Heylin, who had charged him (Fuller) with being unjust in 
 his Church History to Bishop Wrenn. " My extraction— 
 who was Prebendarius Prebendarides, and relation (as the 
 animadverter knows) to two (no mean) bishops, my uncles 
 — may clear me from any ecclesiastical antipathy. I 
 honour any man who is a Bishop ; both honour and love 
 him who is a religious and learned Bishop." ^ 
 
 This " Prebendary and son of a Prebendary " retained 
 his Prebend at Salisbury all through those momentous 
 and troublous times, during the Civil Wars, the Anarchy 
 in Church and State, and the downfall of the Church and 
 Monarchy, and it is a pregnant illustration of the vitality 
 
 ' Life, p. 6, 2 Appeal, pt. Hi., p. 614. 
 
FULLER PREBENDARY OF SARUM 321 
 
 of capitular institutions, supposed to be the weakest and 
 most vulnerable point in the Church's armour — in fact its 
 tendon Achilles — that although the distractions of those 
 times were the most severe and trying which could come 
 upon any country, or could possibly strain the relation- 
 ship of both Church and State, Fuller was enabled to 
 hold his Prebendal stall and official status in the Chapter 
 through the whole crisis, and retain it to the day of his 
 death, It is true that its revenues were sequestrated, and 
 he did not regain them till late in life, and at the Restora- 
 tion, but the wonder is that the office still remained intact. 
 He had to fly from his post as " Minister " of the Savoy, 
 he was compelled to give up his living at Broadwinsor 
 in Dorset, he became a mendicant Divine and cavalier 
 parson, he assisted at the defence of Basinghouse, and 
 was tutor to the young princess (Henrietta) at the siege 
 of Exeter, in turn, but the Prebend never really passed out 
 of his grasp. Turn to which of his celebrated writings we 
 will, early or late, there is but one style by which he is 
 invariably recognised in them all, from first to last, and 
 that designation is " Prebendary of Sarum." 
 
 We have said that the Capitular Institutions have been 
 always taken for granted as being the weakest and most vul- 
 nerable part of the Church's armour, and yet the very reverse 
 is the fact. " Thirty years ago," said the late lamented 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Benson, at the opening of 
 Truro Diocesan Conference, " Cathedral bodies were in the 
 very depth of unpopularity. Nothing but some heaven- 
 born instinct in the English people then prevented their 
 extinction. They were mutilated, yet that 'there was 
 some good thing to be found in them ' in these ancient and 
 universal societies, was still believed. Even then a foreign 
 liberal minister shared with England's most liberal Church- 
 man and educationalist his horror at the Parliamentary 
 mania which was bent on dribbling away the Cathedral 
 funds which ought to be kept together for such Church 
 
322 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 purposes as had grandeur and greatness in them." " The 
 Cathedrals," wrote Bunsen to Arnold, "ought to be the 
 fountains both of practical and theoretical divinity." " The 
 Chapters," he wrote again, " ought to share in the govern- 
 ment of the Church, as the book of Canons intends them 
 to do, and as they do in other countries." Towards such 
 large and noble views the Church reaction moves slowly 
 but surely. The Cathedrals have long regained their place 
 in public interest. Their mutilation is a subject of grief to 
 men who now see what they might have done. Victimised 
 first by the Ministers of George II., who, in an age of bribery, 
 found them the least costly kind of bribes ; next farmed 
 by men of business, who by birth or political connection 
 stood within reach of them, who took Orders with a view to 
 accumulate their leases on themselves and their families, 
 under a vicious system now impossible ; who regarded 
 their commanding positions as otium cum dignitate, and 
 who often amassed large sums of wealth by unscrupulous 
 pluralism : these old mother churches became mere camps, 
 and entrenched alike bishops and parishes. Up to the 
 period of which I speak there is scarcely a name of any 
 Church author, or thinker, or preacher, theologian, philo- 
 sopher, commentator, antiquarian, or sacred poet who was 
 not a member of some Cathedral or Collegiate Church; 
 after that, until quite recently again, such names are few 
 and far between upon their lists. So that their defenders, 
 when short work seemed likely to be made of them, only 
 urged that they were venerable places of retirement for 
 worn-out scholars and clergy, and that they were schools 
 of sacred music. Strange that it had to be rediscovered 
 that their one ancient character and intent were in exact 
 harmony with the most practical of modem needs, that 
 first they were intended to invest the bishop with a council 
 of his learned and experienced clergy ; and secondly, that 
 they had been provided with a staff of diocesan officers, 
 who, at the fcentre of the diocese, were charged with 
 
CAPITULAR INSTITUTIONS 323 
 
 functions corresponding to those of our secretaries of civil 
 government. The Cathedrals of the new foundation (j>., 
 Henry VIII. and his time) were less complete in their 
 adaptation ; but those of the old foundation, of which 
 Exeter was an admirable type, were simply perfect in 
 their organisation. Man's wit has never devised a more 
 sensibly practical kind of institution. 
 
 " Singular it seems," again remarks the late Primate, " that when 
 these magnificent establishments, instead of being really substantively 
 utilized, were virtually desiccated, the four offices were everywhere 
 left, and even enriched sometimes. At Exeter itself (and there alone) 
 a fifth canonry was allowed to remain, but was allowed (I may be per- 
 mitted to observe), on the urgent solicitation of the far-seeing Bishop 
 Philpotts, with an especial view to Cornwall. The prebendal stalls 
 (like Fuller's at Sarum) though rifled, were everywhere left as names 
 of honour, with their old local titles, with their rights and duties of 
 voting and assembling unimpaired ; and even in the Cathedrals of the 
 new foundation, where no prebends had been founded, there were in 
 1852 attached to each Cathedral a body of twenty-four honorary 
 canons. About honorary canons, it should be remarked that every 
 great writer on ecclesiastical jurisprudence in all centuries has laid it 
 down that the possession of endowment is not an essential element 
 (however convenient an adjunct) to a Cathedral canonry. In the his- 
 tory of the Church many a time canons had no property ; have held 
 common property ; have been some of them endowed, some un- 
 endowed, in the same church ; have had every farthing confiscated, 
 have even had no daily or common service at all, and yet their status 
 was unaffected, because their position had relation to the council of 
 the bishop and to diocesan affairs, which were unaffected by the acci- 
 dents of their funds and property. ' There now ' (the nation virtually 
 said to the Cathedrals in 1852) ' we divert your property to other 
 uses ; but we leave you your lines of existence, nay, we even bring 
 them out more clearly and fully. Resume, if you will, your place in 
 our respect ; win your way to confidence again as your predecessors 
 did.' It might have been supposed that the dispossessed stalls would 
 remain vacant. It was so supposed. The clause v\^hich (framed by 
 Bishop Blomfield) preserved those stately outlines, when the endow- 
 ments were confiscated, was passed by the Commons with contemptuous 
 laughter. ' What Churchman,' it was said, ' will ever accept a penni- 
 less post ? ' When some one asked that at least the fees of institu- 
 tion might be remitted to encourage the maintenance of the old rank, 
 
324 
 
 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 ' No,' said Lord Melbourne, ' if gentlemen like to wear feathers, they 
 shall pay for them.' Yet there have never been wanting men to keep 
 up the tradition, and support its burden, until better times came. It 
 is said no stall has ever been declined in England." '■ 
 
 The following four important letters from the pen of 
 Bishop Davenant, never before published, are those re- 
 ferred to, p. 315. 
 
 Salute in Christo. 
 
 I receaved two letters from you, whilest I was at London ; but 
 could finde no leysure to answer either of them. Now beeing quietly 
 setled at Salisbury I will return a breif answer to them both. For 
 Melancthons opinion concerning Praedestination, I make no question 
 but hee fully agrees with vs, in acknowledging Faith Perseverance & 
 all Grace infallibly bringing men to Salvation, the proper effects or 
 fruits of eternal election. This is enough to overturn y' Arminian 
 Tenet ; though it bee granted that all Comfortable knowledg or 
 pswasion of a mans own particular election does Follow Faith, & 
 effectual Grace : and though it bee further gran[ted] that God from all 
 eternity Forsees Faith & Perseverance, in all those who are to bee 
 made partakers of eternal life. For how is it possible that God 
 Freely electing men unto Salvation, should not forsee in them those 
 Graces wch hee Decrees to woork in them, as y° means wherby they 
 must bee brought vnto Salvation? The Distinction betwixt the 
 Order of Execution, & Intention, does fully satisfy y' Arminian obiec- 
 tions concerning y* Antecession of Faith and Perseverance, in regard 
 of our Introduction into Eternal life. Ariba his speculation may serve 
 to shew, that Gods praedestination does not infringe or alter y' proper 
 operation of mans will ; but how from it should bee deduced, that 
 Faith Perseverance, & all Saving Acts & Qualities grow out of mans 
 Freewill by y' Help only of Comon Grace, I doe not conceav. Who- 
 somever fetcheth Faith & ^severance from Predestination, & not 
 Predestination from Faith & ^severance, turns vp Arminianisme by 
 •f Roots . Bee it granted, that God in y° Nunc aeternitatis wch never 
 passeth, does Decree y° Salvation of all men wch are Saved or to bee 
 saved ; I see no advantage that y* Arminians, can make out of it, to 
 proov that Praevisa Fides is it, wch drawes election of pticular psons 
 after it. Concerning Dr Jenysons opinion, who makes y"" Promise of 
 Giving Faith & Giving Persevei:ance to y* Elect, an absolut Promise, 
 
 ^ Paper on the " Cathedral Body," by Dr Benson (when) Bishop of Truro, 
 read October 26th, 1877, at the first Truro Diocesan Conference. 
 
LETTERS OF BISHOP DAVENANT 325 
 
 though y Promise of Salvation bee conditionally propounded ; in my 
 opinion it must thus bee explicated. Not that in Scripture there is 
 an Absolute Promise of God revealed, concerning his intent of Giving 
 Faith or Repentance to this or that particular person — for no Minister 
 or Preacher can say Certitudine fidei, to this or yt man, thow art one 
 of them to whome God has made an Absolute Promise of Giving 
 Faith & Perseverance : But because God has revealed in holy scrip- 
 ture, that hee has Promised a Faithful Seed vnto his sonne Ch. our 
 Saviour ; & Gods promises to Ch. <5r» his Church, have their Absolute 
 Certainty from Gods powrful Sf infallible operation, & not from 
 mans contingent & vncertain Freewill. I woonder Dr Beal or any 
 man els who vnderstands y° Doctrine of our Church, should make it 
 a question whether God gives Ipsa velle, as well as Posse, or inviiare. 
 Now to come to your other letter ; I am of opinion that where 
 somever y* Gospel is preached, & attentively heard, there goes wth 
 it such a Spiritual effect as Illuminates the Minde, & mooves the 
 Will so farr, as makes all prophane psons & Revolters guildy of 
 Positive Infidelity & Impoenitency, though y° Special Gift of Faith 
 Sr' Repentance bee not given vnto such. As for y" woords Elegit nos in 
 Christo, I think y" Tru & proper meaning of them is not as our New 
 Dutch Doctors would have it, elegit nos Existentes in Christo p 
 Fidem et pseverantia praevisam ; but, God who Appointed his sonne 
 for a Saviour Appointed also certain psons to bee Saved by him ; who 
 beeing geven vnto him by his Father, receavd from him all such 
 Graces as are necessary vnto y° obteining of eternal life. As for your 
 question, whether men bee elected in Ch. propter meritii Christi 
 praevisii, I remember a saying of Scotus, hoc est prEecipuQ in merito 
 Christi, quod meduit vt non vnita membra sibi vnirentur. What- 
 somever Grace therfore is Imparted vnto any member of Christ, (even 
 y° first Grace whereby they are made Members, wchis Faith) depends 
 vppon Christes merit. But as for y" Decree of Election it selfe, as it 
 is antecedent to y° Donation of Grace, & is an eternal and secret pur- 
 pose of Preparing Effectual Grace for y° elect I think it is more pro- 
 perly referrd to y= Liberty & free will of God, then to y"= Forseen 
 Merits of Christ. For Dr Jacksons obiections, against y° Truth of 
 Exhortations admonitions etc. where wee pre suppose a sentence of 
 Reprobation ahready passed ; they are but idle, & y° Arminians are 
 as much bound to answer them as wee, who defend Augustins opinion 
 receaved & allowed by our Church. For all who know what they 
 speak of, when they speak of Gods eternal decrees acknowledg them 
 liiiutable : so that whether Judas were left Inter Non electos by God's 
 decree Forseeing his Infidelity & Impoenitency 'tanqua antecedaneis 
 ad Non elections or by for seeing his Infidelity & Impoenitency, as 
 
326 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Consequents though not as Effects of his Decree, all is one, & there 
 is y= selfe same vse of exhortations, & y" selfe same Truth in exhorta- 
 tions. As I remember moste of these questions forementioned, are 
 touched vppon in my Treatise of Predestination, wch is now in your 
 Custody. And I pray keep it privat to your selfe. For, by exceptions 
 wch now taken against my sermon lately preached at y" Court, I 
 vnderstand, that howsomever y' Doctrine of our Church is not dis- 
 claimed in y" poynt of Predestination, nor y doctrine of y= Arminians 
 allowed, yet for peace sake his Maiestyes resolution is, that this high 
 poynt should neither by Preaching nor Writing bee Debated one way 
 or other; Thus having breifly & suddainly answered your questions 
 I coSiitt you to God, & rest 
 
 Your loving freind 
 Febr. 23, 1629. Jo. Saru. 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To y« right woorll. his very loving freind, Dr Ward, 
 Mr of Sidney CoUedg in Cambridg give this. 
 Leave this w* the Cambridg Carrier in Bishopsgate Street. 
 
 23 Febr. 1629. 
 My L"'* of Sarum. 
 
 Salute in Christo. 
 
 I perceave by one of y° letters wch I receaved from you, that some 
 are of opinion, that y* composers of our 17th article favored y° Doc- 
 trine of prsedestination. Ex fide praevisa. I am sure what somever 
 they did inwardly they shewed litle favour towards it in y" Article 
 it selfe ; where every clause crosseth it. First, Prasdestination is an 
 Everlasting Purpose of Gods secret councel ; but Ego servabo Cre- 
 dentes et Perseverantes is that Open and known Will of God, wch 
 stands Reveled in y° Gospel. Secondly, Predestination is a secret 
 Decree of effectual delivering some pticular psons from Damnation ; 
 but Ego servabo Credents et Perseverantes is an Open Decree or Law, 
 of Delivering & saving every man, who shall pforme those conditions. 
 Thirdly, Prsedestination in our Article, is of those whome God hathe 
 Chosen in Christ out of Mankinde ; but the Arminian prsedestination 
 is of those that had in God's prescience first chosen Christ & adhaered 
 vnto God even to y* last gasp, & that Before this gratious decree of 
 Prsedestination, Fourthly, Prsedestination (as it is conceaved in our 
 Article) is a Decree of bringing men chosen in Ch. by Christ vnto 
 Salvation : but in y° Arminian tenet. Predestination does not give or 
 bring any man either vnto Christ, or vnto Salvation by Christ ; but 
 when vppon tender of coinon sufficient grace, a mans own Freewill 
 has brought him to Christ, kept him in Christ, & ledd him vnto 
 
LETTERS OF BISHOP DAVENANT 327 
 
 y" Gate of heaven, then Prae4e5tination laies hould vppon him, &, 
 p modu legis, setts it down, This man must bee receaved into heaven. 
 Fiftly, Praedestination is there supposed, to bee an Excellent Benefit 
 of God, from whence flowes our (Calling according to Gods Purpose, 
 Effectual Conversion, Justification, Adoption, Sanctification, Glorifica- 
 tion : but in y' newfangled opinion of Arminius Praedestination is no 
 Special Benefit Guiding a man in y' way to life, for it imbraces no 
 man before hee bee considered as at y° End of his way. It is y' Cause 
 of no mans Special vocation. Effectual conversion. Justification, etc.: 
 because (yt wee believe Arminius) it foUowes all those in Order of 
 consideration, & does come in only at y° very last moment of Perse- 
 verance, & before y' first moment of Glory. Sixtly, Praedestination (as 
 our Article describes it) is a poynt full of vnspeakable comfort to Godly 
 & Regenerated psons, Who feel in themselfes the woorkingof y* Spirit 
 of Christ : but y' Arminian praedestination following vpon y° condition 
 of Perseverance in Faith & obedience vnto y* end of a mans life, can 
 bring no such vnspeakable comfort vnto a Regenerat man though 
 Feeling y° effectual operation of y* spirit in himselfe ; because not- 
 withstanding this feeling, hee may bee in y* Number of y® Reprobate, 
 & those wch were Forseen as Falling away from Grace, & so never 
 vnder y° Decree of Election ; Lastly, the Doctrine of Praedestination 
 as it is laid down in our article is vnto curious & carnal psons a 
 dangerous downfall ; but Arminius his Praedestination, wch is com- 
 prized in this Decree, Quisquis crediderit et pseveraverit salvus erit, 
 has no such Danger in it, though it bee conti[n]ually before y" eyes of 
 psons never so carnal. To bee breife, the Arminians have vtterly 
 mistaken, The Revealed doctrine of y° Gospel with ex aequo apperteins 
 vnto all men : for y° Concealed Decree of particular Election, wch 
 makes a Difference betwixt men, in whome it found none. — Now for 
 M' Hoopers praeface, I see nothing in it wch makes for Praedestina- 
 tion coming after Faith and Perseverance : Hee shewes that y° Evan- 
 gelical Promise, Crede et salvus erit is General ; & that no man is 
 Excluded from reaping y= benefit therof but by Infidelity nor Included 
 but by Faith ; wch y" very Tenour of y* Covenant implies. Further 
 hee truly teacheth, that God does not violently wth necessity or ruse 
 pull one by y" hair into heaven, & thrust another headlong into hell : 
 lastly hee setts it down, that no man can bee Partaker of Election, 
 vnles hee Receave y* Promise in Christ by Faith, nor no man Judg of 
 his election but by y" true signe therof, wch is y* Apprehending of 
 Gods Mercy promised in Christ, by a lively Faith. In all wch asser- 
 tions hee foUowes Melancthons manner of speaking ; but never Denies 
 that Faith or Perseverance are effects of Gods eternal election, [some 
 words crossed through here] nor ever affirmes that men are considered 
 
328 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 as in y* last moment of pseverance, before y* gratious Decree of Pr«, 
 destination passed vppon them. I have thought vppon y" Argument 
 drawn from Infants, wch is vsed against our Doctrine of pseverance 
 & have in some Propositions indevored to cleer yt poynt ; but I can 
 not send it now, because I want my schoUer who should transcribe 
 it. M' White has been wth vs heer, & I have interteined him into 
 y* Number of my Chaplains ; I expect him again before y^ Coinence- 
 ment & have hope of pleasuring him shortly wth some good Prebend. 
 Good Benefices are so scarse wth mee, that I could wish some of his 
 other freinds were able to pleasure him in yt kinde ; because I know 
 not how long it will bee, ere any fall in my gift. Thus coinitting you 
 to God, I rest alwaies 
 
 Your very loving freind 
 May y° Sth, Jo. Saru. 
 
 1629. 
 
 {Endorsed : — ] To his very loving freind D' Ward Master of Sidney 
 CoUedg deliver this. 
 
 5 May 1629. 
 My L"* of Sarum. 
 
 Salute in Christo. 
 
 Wee know not yet, who shall bee our Dean : the speach hath lately 
 runn much vppon Dr Beal. I should bee gladd of a Cambridg man, 
 so wee might have him Resident amongest vs, as by Oath and Statute 
 hee is moste strictly tied. Concerning Praedestination ex prsevisa 
 Fide, I dare say Luther houlds it not ; and for Melancthon, and 
 y= Augustan confession (in my opinion), they rather shew, by what 
 way men are to come vnto y" comfortable knowledg of their election, 
 and their eternal salvation, then by what Way or in what Order God 
 does Elect. I can never think that Melancthon, or any Melancthonist 
 had hee been asked, whether conversion, Justifying Faith Persever- 
 ance were Fruits or Effects of God's eternal Prasdestination or noe, 
 that hee would have defended the Negative as Arminians are inforced 
 to doe. Neither doe I believ, that yf Melancthon had been asked, 
 whether vppon y' Administration of universal Grace, some men are 
 Forseen of God, as Repenting Beleiving, Persevering vnto y° last 
 gasp, in Order of consideration, before hee Elects them, that ever hee 
 durst have avouched it. The truth is ; Melanchthon did purposely 
 avoyd y° Question of Gods eternal and secret Praedestination, and 
 instead of yt Decree, called men to behold y° General Revealed 
 Decree of God published in y= Gospel, wch is ; Hee yt Repents 
 Beleivs & Perseveres to y° end, shall bee Saved. Corvinus in his 
 answer ad Notas Bogermanni, confesseth as much. Pro decreto 
 
LETTERS OF BISHOP DAVENANT 329 
 
 Prsedestinationis, ponit ipsu Evangelij decretu. And out of y" Saxon 
 confession, hee bringeth these woords. Quia conscientijs in poeni- 
 tentia consolations ponimus, non addimus hie qusestiones de prae- 
 destinatione, seu de electione : sed deducimus omnes ad verbu Dei, 
 et iubemg vt voluntate Dei ex verbo eius discant. For my part I am 
 of opinion, that there is no save or possible Way for any singular 
 person to attein y" comfortable psuasion, that hee is Elected vnto 
 Salvation, but a Posteriori ; that is by finding y» Effects of Praedesti- 
 nation in himselfe ; but to inferr (as the Arminians doe) that therefore 
 these effects of serious Repentance, lively faith constant pseverance, 
 were forseen in men as springing from coiiion grace, & drawing after 
 it y= Special Grace or Benefit of Election, I hould it erroneous, & 
 contrary not only to y" Judgment of our Church, but of Melancthon 
 himselfe. Read him vppon ye 8 & 9th to y= Romans both in his 3 & 
 4 part, & you shall finde, that hee makes not Forseen Faith to draw 
 after it Gods eternal election ; but Present Faith, to draw after it 
 y' knowledg and assurance of our Election vnto Life. Yf y° Arminian 
 opinion were tru that men were Predestinated vppon their Forseen 
 faith, and ^severance, it foUowes vnavoidably, that Praedestination is 
 ex meritis, in yt sence, wch Meritu was taken bothe by Augustin, & 
 y" Semipelagians themselfes. Take for proof heerof, these axiomes 
 of their Ringleader Faustus Attrahentis Dei misericordia Dignis 
 datur, quia studio humanas servit impendetur. More plainly. Prae- 
 scientia gerenda prasnoscit, Prsedestinatio retribuenda describit. Illis 
 pr£evidet Meritis, haec Praeordinat prasmia. Hee yt Denies Praedesti- 
 nation to bee y' Antecedent Cause from whence our Good Acts of 
 converting Believing Persevering have their original ; as Faustus did 
 & y° Arminians now doe : must (vnles hee will crosse himselfe) grant 
 that Antecedent Repentance Faith & Perseverance, are Merits of 
 Praedestination, in the same sense wherin Faustus & y" semipelagians 
 used y" woord merit. Hence Faustus willingly grants, y Praedestina- 
 tion, do6s ptinere ad Justitiam. Justitia Dei periclitabitur, si Absq 
 Merito indignus eligatur. Concerning your determination about 
 y° Effect of Baptisme (vnles there were great necessity of defending 
 your selfe), I would not advise you to sett yt controversy on foot. 
 Though it be y° opinion of Antiquity, & to mee appears more 
 probable then y' contrary, yet at this time when y* Arminians cleav 
 so close one to another, it is not convenient to bee at open contro- 
 versies amongest our selfes. Thus wanting paper, & further leysure, 
 I cease to trouble you. 
 
 Yours ever 
 
 Jo. Saru. 
 
 Decemb. 15°, 1629. 
 
3^0 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 [Endorsed : — ] To y" right wor" his very loving freind Dr Ward 
 Master of Sidney Colledg. 
 
 15 Decemb. 1629 
 My L"' of Sara his lett' 
 
 Salute in Christo. 
 
 I receaved a good while since both a letter from you, & a paper 
 inclosed, conteining certain propositions concerning y' order of Pras- 
 destination & Praeterition. When wee meet I shall willingly conferr 
 wth you about them, but to sett down or define any thing touching 
 those Diversa Signa Rationis, I professe I cannot doo it to satisfy my 
 selfe, & therfore much lesse to satisfy others. The thing is meerly 
 Imaginary : & therfore as men's Imaginations are divers, & some- 
 times quite contrary one vnto another ; so are all y° Delineations of 
 Priority & Posteriority in God's inward or secret Decrees, wch I have 
 yet seen or read. I know not two that agree in all poynts, but either 
 in y* Order, or in y* Number they vary. There is one certain Fun- 
 damental truth, Wch S' Augustine out of y° Apostle has invincibly 
 prooved against all Pelagian and erroneous fancies, namely : That in 
 y' obteining effectual Grace, & Eternal life Gods Gracious Decree, 
 [words crossed out here] & special manner of operation according 
 to that decree, procede[th] & causeth all such special Acts or 
 Qualites as are found in those wch Infallibly are conducted vnto 
 y° Kingdome of glory. And as for those wch fail or come 
 Short of Eternal life, & consequently fall into y'= gulfe of 
 Eternal Death : Original sinne alone is sufficient to make them Re- 
 probabiles : the Negation of y' former decree makes them Reprobates 
 or Prseteritos : the Damnable Guilt wherin they die makes them 
 iustly Damnatos, & Cruciables Whosomever goe about to finde any 
 Forseen Good in men, wherby they are Distinguished before hand, & 
 as it was fitted for y" gratious Decree of Election to lay hould vppon 
 them : in my opinion cannot free themselfes from Pelagianisme, And 
 whosomever will needs finde men Vnder y" Divine Decree of 
 Eternal Death & Damnation, before they bee considered vnder a 
 Just Demerit or Guilt of Damnation are as farr wide from Truthe as 
 y' other. Gods Election is a ffree act, & y= Cause of all Saving good 
 in y' elect : his Praeterition or nonelection is also a Free act, & Imports 
 y' Not causing of Effectual or Infallible grace, in y* Nonelected. But 
 his. Praedamnation is an act of Justice, and respects y subiect as 
 liable vnto his vindicative Justice : either in regard of his Inhaerent, 
 
LETTERS OF BISHOP DAVENANT 331 
 
 or actual sinns, or bothe. Thus much without Curiosity may bee 
 affirmed ; further I am not willing nor able to Goe. Thus wishing you 
 health & happines I rest alwaies 
 
 Your Loving freind 
 
 Jan. 24th, 1630. Jo. Saru. 
 
 [Endorsed : — ] To y' right woorH: his very loving freind Dr Ward 
 Master of Sidney Colledg deliver this. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 WILLIAM LAUD, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, PRIMATE 
 OF ALL ENGLAND AND METROPOLITAN, 1631 : BORN 
 
 1573, DIED 164s 
 
 " Grand is the difference betwixt an hireling whose mind is merely mer- 
 cenary and him that works for his hire." — Fuller's Pisgah Sight, ii. 277. 
 
 THE character of William Laud has been long before 
 the world, whether for praise or blame. From the 
 time of William Prynne downwards to the days of Hallam 
 and Macaulay, the pen of bitter malignity has been wielded 
 against him, and probably he himself, in the line which he 
 took, was not over-anxious to make himself popular, and 
 was quite prepared for the calumnies which pursued him- 
 self when alive, and have since clung to his memory. 
 Some of the charges brought against him are answered 
 by the patent logic of facts. Hallam, e.g., speaks of his 
 talents as being hardly above mediocrity, and Macaulay 
 even more sneeringly remarks that he wrote nothing which 
 was above the comprehension of any old woman. Now it 
 seems to be utterly incredible that he could have overcome 
 all the difficulties of his birth and early position, and have 
 raised himself to what was virtually the position of Prime 
 Minister of England, if his abilities had not been of a very 
 remarkable order. And when we add to this that he was 
 the author of one of our most valuable theological treatises, 
 and that he compiled it at the very time when he was fully 
 occupied with State affairs of every kind, and that this 
 volume contains specimens not only of close theological 
 reasoning, but also of very powerful and eloquent writing, 
 I do not think that we can, without grave injustice, regard 
 his abilities as other than pre-eminently great. His great 
 33a 
 
WILLIAM LAUD 333 
 
 opponent and bitter enemy, W. Prynne, did not thus under- 
 value him ; nor would the King and the nobles of his 
 Court have been disposed to defer to him as they did, if he 
 had been a mere scheming adventurer, ungifted with any 
 remarkable abilities. Macaulay's sneer, with reference to 
 his smallness of stature, that Strafford was like a fallen 
 angel, but Laud only like a little imp, may be passed by as 
 a futile effort to raise a poor jest at his expense. 
 
 The character of Laud may of course be viewed in many 
 aspects, as a politician, a courtier, an earnest and unsparing 
 corrector of abuses, as a generous benefactor, and patron 
 of literature and literary men, or as a theologian, and as 
 having by his own teaching, and the school of learned men 
 which he gathered round him, made a marked, and for 
 more than two centuries a permanent impression, on Eng- 
 lish theology. It is in this latter respect that I propose 
 to regard him in this chapter. 
 
 His birth took place at Reading in 1573, being the child 
 of respectable, but by no means wealthy parents. His 
 father was a clothier, but his mother, Lucy Webbe, was 
 somewhat more highly connected, as her family bore arms, 
 and her brother Sir Wm. Webbe had been Lord Mayor of 
 London. The Puritans were very fond of reproaching him 
 with his humble origin, and even exaggerating it. " He 
 was born of poor and obscure parents in a cottage," says 
 Prynne. " He was born between the stocks and the cage," 
 says the Scots Scout. " A courtier," he adds, " one day 
 chanced to speak thereof, whereupon his Grace removed 
 them thence, and pulled down his father's thatched house, 
 and built a fair one in the place," a gratuitous and some- 
 what ungracious mode of stating the simple fact that Laud 
 built and endowed an almshouse in his native town. 
 " Libel after libel," he said, " raked him from the dung- 
 hill." Not that it made him ashamed either of his origin 
 or of his native place, as one of the very last acts of his 
 life, when a Prisoner in the Tower, was to provide further 
 
334 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 due administration of his charities which still preserve his 
 memory in that town. Laud was in danger of death in 
 infancy from a severe sickness, and indeed, suffered from 
 ailing health riearly all through his life. His schoolboy 
 education was at the Grammar School at Reading, where 
 he had the good fortune to be under a sharp and severe 
 master, who, however, had sufficient discernment to anti- 
 cipate for his pupil no ordinary career. " When you are 
 a little great man, remember Reading School." Laud 
 was noted, even at this early age, for untiring industry, 
 methodical habits of study, surprising faithfulness of 
 memory, and almost premature solidity of judgment. So 
 bright were the anticipations of his friends that consider- 
 able sums were offered for his maintenance at the Univer- 
 sity, upon no other security than those early indications of 
 his ability. Laud, in his MS. notes to Prynne's Breviati, 
 admits his poverty, which Prynne with his usual spitefulness 
 casts in his teeth. " I was poor enough, yet a Commoner 
 I was till I was chosen a scholar of that house." He was 
 nominated to his scholarship by the Corporation of Read- 
 ing, as a tribute of respect to his father, " who had borne 
 all offices in the town, except the Mayoralty," but whose 
 circumstances appeared to have been reduced at this time. 
 It was likewise a testimony to the credit he had already 
 gained in the College as a successful student. He was for- 
 tunate in being placed under the tuition of John Bucke- 
 ridge, subsequently a divine of considerable and deserved 
 reputation, and to whom probably we owe it that Laud's 
 theological studies were directed into an orthodox channel. 
 It is not uninteresting to remark that Buckeridge suc- 
 ceeded Andrewes in his London Parish, succeeded him next 
 but one in the See of Ely, preached at his funeral, and in 
 conjunction with Laud, edited his sermons. Buckeridge 
 must, in his own line of study, have been an exception to 
 the ordinary Oxford rule in those days. 
 
 Oxford then was by no means like the Oxford of the 
 
WILLIAM LAUD 335 
 
 present, or even of the last generation. It was neither 
 wildly Latitudinarian, nor tentatively Catholic. It was 
 purely Calvinistic. The theology which the Marian exiles 
 had brought back with them was intensely and strongly 
 developed. It carried everything before it. It impreg- 
 nated the whole theological atmosphere. And it was more- 
 over most intolerant and exclusive. Genevan doctrines 
 were the regular authorised teaching and standard of the 
 place. It was a heresy to dissent from them. Hum- 
 phrey, the Regius Professor of Divinity was virtually a 
 Nonconformist. In the early part of Elizabeth's reign he 
 had sturdily refused to wear the academical habits, and ex- 
 cited the displeasure of even so moderate a Prelate as Jewell, 
 who had some difficulty in bringing him to conformity. 
 In the University he was true to his Calvinistic traditions. 
 " He sowed in the Divinity Schools such seeds of Calvinism, 
 and laboured to create in the younger men such a strong 
 hatred against the Papists, as if nothing but divine truths 
 were to be found in the one, and nothing but abominations 
 to be seen in the other." The Margaret Professor is said to 
 have been a man of like views (though I can learn nothing 
 about him), and in order to increase the strength of the 
 party, and to prevent the possibility of any reaction, a 
 third divinity professorship was founded by Sir F. Wal- 
 singham ; and Dr John Rainolds, subsequently the leader 
 of the Puritans at the Hampton Court Conference, was 
 appointed Professor. These points are dwelt upon in order 
 to show the extreme difficulties which must have beset Laud 
 in his theological studies, and what great external obstacles 
 he must have had to overcome. The doctrines which we 
 now term orthodox had no place in the University. They 
 were simply proscribed. The true doctrines of the Church 
 were overlaid with a thick incrustation of modern traditions, 
 and to remove those modern accretions, and to bring the 
 truth to light, was almost as difficult and as delicate a task 
 as to remove the several coats of paint with which some 
 
336 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 wall portraits have been daubed over, and to restore to 
 view the lineaments which were originally painted. But 
 Laud knew the grave necessities of the case, and he had 
 a full confidence that he was equal to the necessities of 
 the task, which he had voluntarily, and by a kind of 
 chivalrous devotion, assigned himself. There were very 
 few like-minded with himself. There was indeed his old 
 patron and tutor Buckeridge, who most probably appointed 
 him to a Divinity Lectureship in the College — in which 
 post he struck his first blow. It was a bold act for a 
 young M.A., who had only just been ordained Priest. It 
 was a very strong blow, and it was felt at the time to be 
 one. He evidently " fluttered the dovecotes," and the 
 vigorousness of his first onslaught was marked by the hos- 
 tility it provoked. The act was as memorable as the pub- 
 lication of the first Tract for the Times, and it brought 
 upon him the opposition of Abbot. The subject of his 
 Thesis was "the constant and perpetual visibility of the 
 Church of Christ derived from the Apostles to the Church 
 of Rome, and continued in that Church, as in others of the 
 East and West until the Reformation." This bold act 
 made him at once a marked man, and Abbot looked on the 
 whole proceeding as a rebellion against the authority of 
 him and of his party. The common belief in those days 
 was that " the Pope was Anti-Christ, Romish orders were 
 the mark of the beast, the Church of England was entirely 
 separated from all connection with her mediaeval existence, 
 and the very idea of deriving her authority from a Roman 
 fountain head savoured, to the post-reformation theologians 
 of that day, of simple pollution instead of the dignity of 
 antiquity." ^ 
 
 Laud's next step did not tend to make him more popular 
 or improve his position in the University. But he con- 
 sistently persevered in the line he had adopted. In the 
 exercises for his degree of B.D., he maintained the doctrine 
 ^ Christian Remembrancer, No. xlvii. 
 
WILLIAM LAUD 2>?>1 
 
 of Baptism Regeneration, and that there could be no true 
 Church without bishops. Both these topics were exceed- 
 ingly distasteful ; and so long did this ill savour remain 
 to his prejudice, that his thesis on Baptism was brought 
 against him forty years after at his trial. He was accused 
 of having, taken his arguments from Bellarmine, a charge 
 which would not be a serious one if Bellarmine's arguments 
 were sound ones. But he stated in his defence that he had 
 taken nothing out of Bellarmine but what he cited for his 
 own advantage against him. Laud had up to that time 
 retained a copy of his paper (probably in consequence of 
 what was said against it at the time) ; but having been 
 seized with the rest of his papers by Prynne, it has been 
 lost. For his vindication of Episcopacy he was vigorously 
 assailed by Holland the Professor of Divinity. 
 
 Two years afterwards he got himself into another scrape, 
 as cautious men would say, and was convented before 
 the Vice-Chancellor for a sermon containing in it sundry 
 scandalous and Popish passages ; and so great was the 
 outcry made about it that it was almost made a heresy 
 for any one to be seen in his company, and a misprision 
 of heresy to give him a civil salutation in the streets. 
 His very friends seemed inclined to cast him oif as a 
 dangerous, or at least an injudicious, man. But he was 
 not diverted from his purpose by the cold looks of friends, 
 or by the suspicions and sinister insinuations of enemies. 
 He knew what he was aiming at, and kept his eyes steadily 
 fixed on it. It is a matter of surprise that he should at 
 this time have resigned his fellowship and retired to a 
 benefice in Kent. Perhaps he required rest ; perhaps he 
 was tired out by the perpetual struggles in which his 
 University life had involved him. 
 
 But he was soon to return to Oxford as the President 
 of his College. Abbot the Archbishop made the most 
 strenuous efforts against him, representing him to the 
 Chancellor (Ellesmere) as " at least a Papist at heart and 
 
 Y 
 
338 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 cordially addicted unto Popery." He said himself (answer 
 to Lord Saye) : " When I was chosen President there was 
 a bitter faction both raised and countenanced against me. 
 (I will forbear to relate how and by whom.) " But he adds 
 after the election : " I made all quiet in the College, and 
 governed it in peace without so much as the show of a 
 faction." The College might well have been proud of its 
 head, who did not hesitate to use his new position and 
 influence (he had been likewise appointed one of the 
 King's Chaplains) in promotion of the great work he 
 kept steadily in view. 
 
 About three years after his appointment, in a sermon 
 on Shrove Tuesday, he reflected severely on some of the 
 Puritan doctrines. Robert Abbot, the Archbishop's brother, 
 who was then Vice-Chancellor, "bottled up his indignation 
 all through Lent, but burst out on Easter Day." Laud 
 was away from Oxford, but at the advice of his friends, and 
 with true courage, made a point of attending on the follow- 
 ing Sunday, when the sermon, according to custom, was 
 repeated. Of course he knew what he had to expect, as 
 such a virulent attack must for a whole week have been 
 the talk of the Common Rooms, and the news of it had 
 got into the country. Just imagine a preacher inveighing 
 openly and without any disguise against a Brother Head 
 of a College. Might not Christ say, " What art thou, 
 Romish or English, Papist or Protestant, or what art thou ? 
 A mongrel compound of both. What, do you think there 
 are two heavens .' If there be, get you to the other, and 
 place yourself there, for unto this, where I am, ye shall not 
 come." Laud writes to his patron. Bishop Niel, that " he 
 sat patiently and heard himself abused almost an hour 
 together, being pointed at as he sat." " Perfect coolness 
 and calm temper" exhibited itself not only at the time, 
 but when he was cited to London on the subject ; for he 
 not only returned uncensured, but both the Abbots (the 
 Archbishop and his brother) had to own their mistake. 
 
WILLIAM LAUD 339 
 
 Laud had now, through the instrumentality of his op- 
 ponents, obtained the very position he would most have 
 coveted, if he had been simply an ambitious and scheming 
 man. No doubt he was ambitioiis ; he sought for power, 
 but he sought it not for his own sake, but for that of the 
 Church, which he felt, both in doctrine and discipline, to 
 be in a st^te of depression.^ He had now been twice 
 brought under the notice of the Court as one who had been 
 unfairly dealt with, and in both instances he came forth 
 triumphantly. His enemies gained nothing by their moves; 
 they only brought him more immediately under Royal 
 notice and patronage. This was, of course, exactly what 
 he wanted : a place on which he could firmly set his foot, 
 and from which he could carry on the great reformation 
 which all along he had in view. He had, however, to wait 
 patiently, for Royal favour was kept back by the influence 
 of Abbot and his party, who knew too well the command- 
 ing abilities and the determined resolution of their rising 
 opponent. 
 
 The Royal favour came at last in the grant of the 
 Deanery of Gloucester, " a shell without a kernel," as the 
 King termed it. But there was a very great work to be 
 accomplished in that Cathedral, which demanded a vigorous 
 and unflinching hand. The King, in making the appoint- 
 ment, informed Laud that that church was more or as 
 much out of order as any church in England, and he re- 
 quired him to reform all that was amiss without delay. No 
 time was accordingly lost. Early in the next year he pro- 
 ceeded to Gloucester, obtained the consent of the Chapter 
 for the repair of the church, which was much decayed, and 
 for placing the Communion table, which stood almost in 
 the midst of the quire, at the east end of the church, where 
 the high altar had stood. Due reverence was also ordered 
 to be made at coming into the church, the early service in 
 
 " The Church has been low these hundred years, but I hope it will flourish 
 :^gain in another hundred," was a saying brought against him at his trial. 
 
340 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 the Lady Chapel was restored, and an appeal, as we should 
 now call it, issued to the gentry of the county for the 
 purchase of a new organ. All this created a great hubbub 
 in the place, the whole city was in an uproar ; libels were 
 circulated, and even thrown into the pulpit. The Bishop 
 himself. Miles Smith, a very learned man, arid one of the 
 translators of the Bible (ever to be spoken of on other 
 accounts with respect), headed the malcontents, and re- 
 solved that if the innovations were persisted in he would 
 never again enter his Cathedral, a resolution which, it is 
 said, he faithfully kept to the day of his death, being full 
 eight years. Laud respectfully addressed him, but all to 
 no purpose. There were even riots in the city, and puritan 
 zeal was exhibited in the form it usually takes. Laud, 
 however, remained firm, he .conceded nothing, and after a 
 few months of turbulence, order was restored. 
 
 The next important business in which we find him em- 
 ployed is his attending the King to Scotland as one of his 
 chaplains. His fellow chaplains were Bishops (James) 
 Montague and Andrewes. James was not ashamed of his 
 religion. He was not a Presbyterian on one side of the 
 Border and an Episcopalian (as they term it) on the other. 
 He was resolved that the Church should assume her noblest 
 appearance. An organ and furniture for the chapel, de- 
 signed by Inigo Jones, were consequently sent down. 
 Weldon says that they threatened to pull down the graven 
 images after the King's departure, but adds humorously 
 that the organs would find mercy, there being some affinity 
 between them and the bagpipes. Great offence was given 
 at the burial of one of the King's Guard, when the Dean of 
 St Paul's desired the people to join with him in commend- 
 ing his soul to God, for which he had to apologise, and 
 Laud said the office in his surplice, for which he did not 
 apologise. Five years now passed away with only xine 
 recorded piece of Popery, the erection of an organ in St 
 John's College Chapel, to which Prynne spitefully refers in 
 
WILLIAM LAUD 341 
 
 his Breviati.- Laud defended himself by saying that it was 
 given to the College by Sir W. Paddye. 
 
 Laud's advancement had hitherto been slow. He had 
 been King's Chaplain for ten years before he was nominated 
 to St David's, being now forty-eight years of age. He 
 resigned at once his Presidentship, a fact which Prynne 
 was mean enough to omit. St David's was not exactly 
 the diocese for Laud. It was likely to take him away, 
 in great measure, from Court, where, for the sake of the 
 Church, it was important that he should remain ; and it 
 was probably for this reason that he was appointed to it. 
 He, however, visited the diocese in the summer following 
 his consecration, which, for those days, was a waste of 
 remarkable energy, and gave a charge which was certainly 
 very uncommon at that period. We have a record in his 
 diary of a second visitation of the diocese, at which time 
 he consecrated the chapel he erected at Abergwili House. 
 So innocent an act as this could not escape censure. It 
 was gravely brought against him at his trial, and Prynne 
 is full of bitter jests at so Popish and superstitious a prac- 
 tice. Laud defended himself, as though the practice 
 needed any grave defence, by the authority of Bishop 
 Andrewes. Prynne exhibited a paper with great triumph, 
 which Laud admits greatly troubled him, He requested 
 to see it. He found it was not, as was alleged, a list of his 
 own Chapel furniture. He pointed to the endorsement in 
 his own hand, which shewed that it was Andrewes' Chapel 
 and furniture. Prynne looked at it, must have been much 
 ashamed, took it back, and finally printed it without the 
 slightest reference to the unfair use which had been made 
 of it. This paper is still preserved, with that endorsement, 
 in the British Museum. The. reader must have frequently 
 seen copies of it in the well-known descriptions of that 
 great Bishop's Chapel, the arrangements as to its furniture, 
 and the ornaments, e,g., cross and candles, of the altar. 
 
 It was in the interval between these two visitations that 
 
342 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 he was busily engaged at Court in theological controversy.^ 
 Fisher, the Jesuit, had succeeded in drawing away the 
 Countess of Buckingham (the Duke's mother), and these 
 public conferences, after the fashion of the times, were 
 held in the hope of bringing her back. In the third of these 
 conferences Laud took part at twenty-four hours' notice, as 
 he tells us. He had had no experience in the arts of con- 
 troversy, though he had carefully studied the question, as 
 appears by his notes on Bellarmine, in a copy now preserved 
 in Archbishop Marsh's Library in Dublin. Laud's share in 
 the matter appeared in print, as a kind of appendix, and 
 with the initials of R. B., one of his chaplains. In his pre* 
 face to the enlarged edition of the book, which appeared 
 in 1639, and which is the book generally known as Laud's 
 Conference, he explains that he did not think his first brief 
 sketch substantive enough to stand alone, nor yet worthy 
 of the great duty and service which he owed to his dear 
 Mother, the Church of England. Being such as it was, 
 it nevertheless was considered worthy of a reply. Fisher 
 answered in 1626, though the volume, having been printed 
 abroad, did not reach Laud's hands for some years after- 
 wards. He read it over, and found himself not a little 
 wronged in it, but the Church of England, and, indeed, 
 the cause of religion, much more. This, of course, set him 
 upon thinking of a second and enlarged edition, which he 
 was hindered from undertaking by occasions of State, for 
 he had now become a Statesman as well as an Ecclesias- 
 tic, and several severe illnesses. His silence was mis-^ 
 interpreted, and " the scandalous and scurrilous pens of 
 some bitter men" were turned against him. His friends 
 came to him one by one, and urged him, for the sake of 
 his own reputation, to reply. He had resolved to do so, 
 and he was confirmed in this resolve by a command which 
 the King put upon him at the Council Table. He gives 
 the date, Michaelmas term, 1637, and early in 1639 the 
 volume had passed through the press. We mention these 
 
WILLIAM LAUD 343 
 
 points because we deem it specially worthy of notice that a 
 volume which ranks so deservedly among English theo- 
 logical treatises should have been composed in compara- 
 tively so short a time by one who was not only fully 
 occupied with the cases of State, but who was, at the time, 
 virtually Prime Minister, and Charles' chief adviser and 
 confidant, but who was also personally assailed, almost 
 every day, by the coarsest and most virulent libels. As 
 Laud's theological reputation rests on this book, it may 
 be well to mention in this place (though out of chrono- 
 logical order) the method he pursued in handling the 
 Roman controversy, with some few passages as illustra- 
 tive of his style, which, it must be admitted, is most clear 
 and vigorous. We will take, i^ the first place, one or two 
 passages from his Epistle Dedicatory to the King. " In 
 this discourse I have no aim to displease any, nor any 
 hope to please all. If I can help on to truth in the 
 Church, and the peace of the Church together, I shall be 
 glad, be it in any measure. Nor shall I spare to speak 
 necessary truth out of too much love of peace, nor thrust 
 on unnecessary truth to the breach of that peace, which, 
 when once broken, is not so easily soldered again. And if 
 for necessary truth's sake only, any man will be offended, 
 nay take, nay snatch, at that offence which is not given, I 
 will take no farce for that. It is truth, and I must tell it. 
 It is the gospel and I must preach it. And far safer it is 
 in this case to bear anger from men than a woe from God." 
 Take again the following passage respecting the English 
 Church : — " It is in a hard condition. She professes the 
 ancient Catholic faith, and yet the Romanist condemns 
 her of novelty in her doctrine. She practises Church 
 government as it hath been in use in all ages, and in all 
 places, where the Church of Christ hath taken any rooting, 
 both in and since the Apostles' times, and yet the Separ- 
 atist condemns her for Antichristianism in her discipline. 
 The plain truth is, she is between these two factions as 
 
344 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 between two mill-stones, and unless your Majesty look 
 to it, to whose trust she is committed, she will be ground 
 to powder, to an irreparable both dishonour and loss to 
 this kingdom." " To the Romanist I shall say this : — The 
 errors of the Church of Rome are grown now, many of 
 them, very old, and when errors are grown by age and 
 continuance to strength, they who speak for the truth, 
 though it be far older, are ordinarily challenged for the 
 bringers-in of ' new opinions.' And there is no greater 
 absurdity stirring this day in Christendom than that the 
 Reformation of an old Church, will we nill we, must be 
 taken for the building of a new. And were not this so, 
 we should never be troubled with that idle and imperti- 
 nent question of theirs, ' Where was your Church before 
 Luther ? ' for it was just there, where theirs is now. One 
 and the same Church still, no doubt of that ; one in sub- 
 stance, but not one in condition of state and purity." 
 " Much talking there is on both sides, till both lips and 
 pens open like a purse without money, nothing comes 
 out of this, and that which is worth nothing out of them. 
 And while the one faction cries up the Church above the 
 Scriptures, and another the Scriptures to the neglect and 
 contempt of the Church, which the Scripture itself teaches 
 man both to honour and obey, they have so far endan- 
 gered both the belief of the one and the authority of the 
 other, as that neither hath its due from a great part of 
 men ; whereas, according to Christ's institution, the Scrip- 
 ture, where it is plain, should guide the Church, and the 
 Church, where there is any doubt, should explain the 
 Scriptures." Take another passage. " No one thing hath 
 made conscientious men more wavering in their minds, or 
 more apt to be drawn aside from the sincerity of religion 
 professed in the Church of England, than the want of 
 uniform and decent order in too many Churches of the 
 Kingdom. And the Romanists have been apt to say the 
 houses of God could not be suffered to lie so nastily as in 
 
WILLIAM LAUD 345 
 
 some places they have done, were the true worship of God 
 observed in them, or did the people think that such it 
 were. It is true the inward worship of the heart is the 
 great service of God, and no service acceptable without it, 
 but the external worship of God in His Church is the 
 great witness to the world, that our heart stands right in 
 that service of God. These thoughts are they, and no 
 other, which have made me to labour so much as I have 
 done for a decency and orderly settlement of the external 
 worship of God in the Church ; for of that which is inward 
 there can be no witness among men, nor no example to 
 men." 
 
 It is difficult to compress into a few words the argu- 
 ment of a large and closely reasoned volume. But we are 
 not far from right in stating that the general argument of 
 the book is that the authority of the Church is to be found 
 not in Roman infallibility, but in a true, free and general 
 council, by which alone the present divisions of Christen- 
 dom can be settled : that the Church is indefectible in 
 fundamentals rather than inerrant in all details. The line 
 of argument is in truth thoroughly Catholic, and barring 
 expressions here and there, it might be accepted almost 
 in its entirety by the great body of German and French 
 theologians, who have been raising their protest against 
 the decrees of the late Vatican Council to elevate into 
 a dogma the Pope's personal infallibility, but without 
 effect, to say nothing of the Syllabus itself. There was no 
 one who sorrowed more than Laud over the divisions of 
 Christendom, which at that very time were deluging Ger- 
 many with blood : and no one who would have been better 
 pleased if a true Catholic basis could have been found 
 for the reconcilement of differences. No one felt more 
 thoroughly than himself both the strength and the import- 
 ance of the line of defence which he adopted. He says 
 repeatedly in substance, " Being written in the way it is, 
 I believe no Romanist will have much cause to joy at it, 
 
346 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 or to think me a favourer of their cause. And since I am 
 thus put to it, I will say thus much more : this book is 
 so written (by God's great blessing upon me) as that when 
 the Church of England (as they are growing towards it 
 apace) shall depart from the grounds which I have therein 
 laid, she shall never be able, before any learned and disen- 
 gaged Christian, to make good her difference with, and 
 her separation from the Church of Rome." The book 
 evidently created a great sensation ; for in the passage 
 of his defence which has been just quoted, he added 
 the names of a long list of English divines, including the 
 well-known names of Ussher, Hall, Bedell, Bramhall, who 
 had thanked him for his production. " But this list was 
 never published," says Mr Bliss, " till I collated the printed 
 volume of his defence with the original MS., from which 
 I extracted the passage which Laud had endeavoured to 
 erase, but which I was enabled to decipher. These testi- 
 monies, moreover, were not coniined to English divines. 
 Sir Edward Deny, a sturdy Puritan, said that he had 
 smitten the Jesuit under the fifth rib, that St Paul's would 
 be his monument, and his book against Fisher his epitaph." 
 But we must go back to Laud's history. He was, after 
 having held St David's for five years, advanced to Bath 
 and Wells, to the Deanery of the Chapel Royal on the 
 death of Andrewes, and very shortly afterwards to London. 
 This brought him back into direct contact with the politi-. 
 cal as well as the ecclesiastical world. One or two 
 important affairs here occupied him. One of them was 
 the overthrow of the scheme for the purchase of Impro- 
 priations. This had been used in the most marked party 
 spirit, and for the furtherance of the Puritanical interest. 
 Laud had had his eye upon it for a long time, and now 
 succeeded in suppressing it. His other great work in 
 connection with the See of London was the restoration 
 of St Paul's. That most beautiful Early English Church, 
 with a wooden spire taller than any in England, which 
 
WILLIAM LAUD 347 
 
 had been burnt temp. Elizabeth, and had never been re- 
 stored, was in most fearful disrepair. Inigo Jones was the 
 architect, and though his additions and restorations were 
 hideous enough, yet this does not detract from the merit 
 of Laud's energy and self-denial. It was a pet scheme 
 of his, and many fines levied in the High Commission 
 were appropriated to the work. He gave largely himself. 
 But even this did not secure him from the malevolence 
 of the Puritans, who declaimed against the whole affair 
 as the adorning of a rotten relique. And as his power 
 increased he used it entirely for the service of the Church. 
 The prevalent Calvinism was his special objection. He 
 had suffered under it, and he resolved to restrain it. He 
 would reform doctrine as well as restore Church cere- 
 monial and external worship. The Articles (or rather 
 the popular interpretation of them) stood in his way ; 
 and he boldly met the difficulty by claiming for them, 
 by means of the royal declaration, which is still affixed to 
 them, only their merest and barest grammatical meaning. 
 The smallest amount of meaning was to be attached to 
 them. They were to be interpreted in their driest and 
 hardest, like a legal document, or an Act of Parliament. 
 Little resulted at the time from this measure but the 
 silencing of Calvinistic preachers ; but we may trace in 
 it the germ of the principle which has been more fully 
 .developed in our own days, and which has not only 
 claimed, but established for the Articles the right of a 
 Catholic interpretation. 
 
 Laud was now virtually Primate. All obstacles had 
 been swept away from his path : he was the King's chief 
 adviser, the Chancellorships of Dublin and of Oxford fell 
 into his hands, and there remained only the death of Ab- 
 bot to place him on the Archiepiscopal throne. This took 
 place shortly after the King's return from his coronation 
 in Scotland, whither Laud attended him. He went to 
 Lambeth with a heavy heart. In reply to Strafford's 
 
348 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 congratulations he writes, " I look not for many days 
 there, for I am in years, and have had a troublesome life, 
 nor for happy ones, because I have no hope to do the 
 good I desire." It was evidently his intention not to spare 
 himself. His work was cut out for him, and he resolved 
 to go through with it. He seemed to possess a kind of 
 official ubiquity with which he was himself amused. He 
 says to Strafford, " I think you have a plot to see 
 whether I will be universalis Episcopus, that you and 
 your brethren may take occasion to call me Antichrist." 
 All this did not make any addition to his personal dignity. 
 Strafford at first treated him somewhat ceremoniously in 
 his letters ; for which he mildly lectures, or as we should 
 say nowadays, " chaffs " him. " Now, my Lord, why may 
 you not write as you did whilom to the Bishop of London. 
 The man is the same, and the same to you ; but I see you 
 stay for better acquaintance, and till then you will keep 
 distance. I will not write long letters and leave out my 
 mirth. It is one of the recreations I have always used with 
 my friends, and 'tis hard leaving an old custom, neither do 
 I purpose to do it, though I mean to make choice of my 
 friends to whom I will use it." In another letter, " There 
 is not one word of your wonted recreation, so it ma^ be, 
 either you are not well acquainted enough at Lambeth, 
 or else you are afraid that some sour ghost walks there." 
 
 It was a high sense of duty to the Church which led 
 Laud to accept the Chair of Canterbury. His predecessor 
 Abbot had been most careless and remiss. His own 
 Chapel at Lambeth was in a filthy state. " It lay nastily, 
 all the time I served in that house," said one of his chap- 
 lains. " It laid more indecently than is fit to express," says 
 Laud, when censured at his trial, for the very moderate 
 restoration he made of it. And what was the case at Lam- 
 beth was equally the cases with most parish churches in 
 the Kingdom. In the last published Calendar of Docu- 
 ments in the State Paper Office (1837) there is a minute 
 
WILLIAM LAUD 349 
 
 account of the state of the Church in Bucks. Altars are 
 pulled down in the North of England, and communion 
 tables thrown out of the broken windows of the chancel ; 
 the surplice prohibited, no organs allowed. At Plymouth 
 the Mayor sold the pews in the Church, appointed the 
 churchwardens who carried off the oblations, and would 
 not account for them ; and these kinds of delinquencies were 
 probably only too common. Cock-fightingwas allowed in the 
 churches, which were everywhere miserably out of repair. 
 The holy table was used for all sorts of purposes. Church- 
 wardens kept their accounts upon it; parishioners de- 
 spatched parish business at it. Schoolmasters taught the 
 boys to write at it ; boys had their hats, satchels, and 
 books upon it ; men sat and leant irreverently against it 
 at sermon times ; glaziers knocked it full of nail holes. 
 Laud resolved to remedy these evils, and as the centre 
 round which everything turned, he put the holy table 
 back to its proper place ; he would not suffer it to be 
 moved without the authority of the ordinary ; ordered it 
 to be raised on steps, to be protected with rails ; and pews 
 in the chancel, which obstructed the sight of it, to be 
 pulled down." 
 
 He made a noble stand for the decency and dignity of 
 public worship. He spoke of the holy table as the great- 
 est place of God's residence on earth, and looked upon the 
 Holy Eucharist as "the crown of public service, the most 
 solemn and chief work of Christian assemblies." This 
 work of reformation was carried on through his ' whole 
 province. Each bishop in turn had his jtirisdiction sus- 
 pended, and the Archbishop's visitors went from diocese to 
 diocese, not excluding^ even the Cathedrals and Colleges of 
 Eton and Winchester from their enquiries. In the diocese 
 of Lincoln there had not been an Episcopal visitation since 
 the Reformation : the clergy did exactly as they pleased : 
 the surplice, and even the Prayer Book was disused : the 
 lives of the clergy were almost everywhere at a low ebb. 
 
3SO THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 and the immorality of the lay people was very fearful. It 
 was a laborious and thankless task to cleanse out such an 
 Augean stable. But Laud was stern and impartial. Both 
 clerical and lay offenders fell under his censure. The 
 punishment of gross vice kept pace with the restoration 
 of copes and candlesticks, and other altar furniture in the 
 Cathedrals and principal Parish Churches. 
 
 The Church at large assumed a new aspect, and felt in 
 its remotest dioceses the keen eye and the stern hand of 
 the vigorous reformer. Many of the laity were brought 
 before the High Commission and were heavily fined, the 
 fines going to the restoration of St Paul's Cathedral, 
 which Laud had commenced when Bishop of London, 
 and on which he had set his heart. He intended that the 
 discipline of the Church should be felt as well as spoken 
 of, and that it should be applied to the greatest and most 
 splendid transgressor. "He punished the laity, and ruled 
 with an iron hand over the bishops, obtaining mandates 
 from the King to send them into their dioceses, instead of 
 hanging about Court, and restraining their power of grant- 
 ing leases on lives, to the great damage and detriment of 
 their successors. Laud had in these matters the peculiar 
 quality of a just mind, a capacity for entering into minute 
 details, as well as of grasping great general principles, 
 which was equally remarkable in the Duke of Wellington. 
 Laud, in all this, used very freely the authority of the 
 King. He found it a power ready made to his hand, and 
 he wielded it vigorously for the good of the Church. He 
 used the secular power to free the Church from the secu- 
 larity in which it had been immersed, a policy in direct 
 contrast to that of the Roman Curia, which by an abuse 
 of ecclesiastical power completely secularized the Church, 
 Laud's object was to raise the Church, not to depress it, and 
 for this end he used the power which came the readiest to 
 his hand. Laud, we may be sure, did not intend to estab^j 
 lish a tyranny over the Church : but to free the Church 
 
WILLIAM LAUD 351 
 
 which was so bound up in the forms of the common law, 
 that it was not possible for him to do that good which he 
 would or was bound to do." The same outward act may- 
 result from different motives ; and the best proof of what 
 was the true motive of the Laudian was in its develope- 
 ment into the school of the Nonjurors, which certainly can- 
 not be accused of Erastian tendencies. We will quote but 
 one passage to show that he was no Erastian, and that he 
 resented as strongly as any man lay interference in mat- 
 ters of doctrine. " If it come to be matter of Faith, he 
 (the king) cannot commit the ordering of that to any lay 
 assembly. Parliament or other, for them to determine that 
 which God hath intrusted into the hands of his Priests." ^ 
 The whole bearing of his book against Fisher is clearly 
 anti-Erastian. 
 
 Laud then had at this time attained the highest position 
 which a subject could hold, and wielded the power which 
 that position conferred on him, not for his own aggrandize- 
 ment but for the good of the Church. And in so doing, he 
 gathered round him a very large body of able and learned 
 men. Some of these fully sympathized with him in his 
 ecclesiastical proceedings. Others were less favourably 
 disposed towards them. But all of them, of whichever 
 school, contrast most advantageously with the divines 
 who held sway when Laud began his theological studies. 
 With the (doubtful) exception of Jewell, there is not a theo- 
 logian worth naming of the Elizabethan school. Hooker 
 and Bancroft, and Bilson, and Andrewes, were the fore- 
 
 ^ Answer to Ld. Saye, vol. vi. p. 142. ";The Supremacy which the King hath 
 in causes ecclesiastical reaches not to the giving him power to determine points 
 of Faith, either in Parliament or outjor to the acknowledgement of any such 
 power residing in him, or to give him power to make liturgies or public forms 
 of prayer, or to preach or to administer sacraments, or to do anything which is 
 nierely spiritual. But in all these things which are of a mixed cognizance 
 sudras^are all those which are properly called ecclesiastical and belong to the 
 Bistop's external jurisdiction, the Supremacy therein, and of all things of like 
 nature, is the Kiug's."—/6id., pp. 144, 145. 
 
352 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 runners of the great Catholic school, which grew up under 
 Laud, which clustered around him, and which survived 
 after his death. He began almost, if not quite, single- 
 handed. He had few, if any, sympathizers. He had to 
 found a school for himself, not to follow on in the tradi- 
 tions of a school already founded. And what a remark- 
 able body of men he gathered about him. Lindsell, the 
 best Greek scholar of his day, Montagu, the learned 
 Church historian, Cosin, the patient studier of liturgies. 
 Wren, the grave ceremonialist, Mede, the reviver in England 
 of the doctrine of the Christian Sacrifice, George Herbert, 
 the sweet and quaint Christian Poet, the gentle Ham- 
 mond, the casuist Sanderson, the poetical Jeremy Taylor 
 (the Shakespeare of divines), Hall, the defender of Epis- 
 copacy, and the logical, acute and excellent Davenant, Hall's 
 fellow-deputy at Dort ; the profoundly learned, but unduly 
 depreciated Thorndike, the ever-memorable John Hales, 
 the acute Chillingworth, and the great orientalist Edward 
 Pococke ; Bramhall, the acute controversialist. Bedell, the 
 translator of the Bible into Irish ; and to pass from learned 
 divines, the mild and munificent Juxon ; and among laymen 
 the learned jurist Selden, and Whitelock, the historian of the 
 Commonwealth ; while of celebrated foreigners, the younger 
 Casaubon and the elder Vossius were among his corre- 
 spondents. This school we must remember was created by 
 the untiring resolution of one man, who began as the 
 unfriended and even slighted scholar of a small College, 
 and ended by holding Court at Canterbury, surrounded 
 and respected by all the learned of his age. 
 
 The Laudian revival resulted in the crushing of the Cal- 
 vinistic schopl, in recalling the Church of England to a 
 recollection of her true principles, in abolishing abuses, in 
 raising the standard both of religion and ceremonial, and 
 in stamping in fact a new character on the English Church, 
 which so far from having lost, it continues to develope, and 
 may it still continue to develope, as a witness amid con- 
 
WILLIAM LAUD 353 
 
 tending opponents to Catholic and Apostolic truth. And 
 if we specially owe it to any one that the Church of Eng- 
 land was raised from being little better in doctrine and 
 discipline than a Calvinistic sect, to a recognition of its 
 own high privileges as an inheritor and maintainer of 
 Catholic truth, that one man was William Laud.^ 
 
 ^ The writer was assisted in this chapter by the late Rev. James Bliss, M.A., 
 editor of Laud's works in the Anglo-Catholic Library, and one of the greatest 
 Laudian scholars of our day. It was composed some time before the appear- 
 ance of the recent biographies of Laud by Mr Hutton and Mr Simpkinson, and 
 it has had the benefit of that learned scholar's careful and matured supervision. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 BISHOP DAVENANT'S TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION (1631) 
 
 " There is a sinless, yea lawful and necessary agreeableness to the Times, 
 insomuch that no meaner Father than St Ambrose, or worse critic than Eras- 
 mus, read the text, Romans xii. II, dovXeiovres rif Katpif ' serving the time,' 
 a reading countenanced by the context, ' Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribu- 
 lation, continuing in prayer, ' all being directions of our demeanour in danger- 
 ous times, and even those who dislike the reading as false, defend the doctrine 
 as true ; that though we must not be slaves and vassals, we may be servants 
 to the times, so far forth as not to dis-serve God thereby. — Fuller's Appeal 
 of Injured Innocence, ch. xiv. p. 12. 
 
 DURING this year our author published at Cambridge, 
 Praelectiones de duobus in Theologii controversis 
 capitibus : De Judice Controversiarum, primo : De Justitia 
 habituali et actuali, altero. These "knotty and thorny" 
 points are discussed in a most ample and exhaustive man- 
 ner, and form a thick folio volume, much more considerable 
 in size than his Exposition of the Epistle to the Colossians. 
 This noble, standard, and masterful work he dedicated to 
 the King, and it would seem from this that the breach in 
 the matter of the Whitehall sermon had been healed be- 
 tween them, as the Bishop would not have been allowed 
 to dedicate a thedrogical work to the King without the 
 permission of His Majesty, and the giving of this permis- 
 sion implies an assured rapprochement. The full title of 
 the work (which was translated from the orginal Latin by 
 the late Rev. Josiah AUport, of Birmingham) is as follows : 
 " A Treatise on Justification, or the Disputatio de Justitia 
 habituali et actuali, of the Right Rev. John Davenant, 
 D.D., Bishop of Salisbury, and Lady Margaret's Professor, 
 Cambridge, delivered to the divinity students in that 
 University. Published first in the year 1631. 
 354 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION 355 
 
 " Our righteousness (if we have any) is of little value ; it is sincere 
 perhaps but not pure ; unless we believe ourselves to be better than 
 our fathers, who no less truly than humbly said, All our righteous- 
 nesses are as filthy rags. For how can that righteousness be pure 
 which cannot yet be free from imperfection." 
 
 Bernard, Serm. 5 de Verbis Esaiae Prophetse, vi. 1-2. 
 
 The doctrine of Justification is of prime importance in 
 the Christian system, since the clear apprehension of it lies 
 at the bottom of all proper conceptions of the God with 
 whom we have to do, and is therefore essential to the peace 
 and comfort of the soul of man. In a more expansive view 
 still, the due maintenance of it with fidelity of adherence 
 has been pronounced by the voice of warning, of which 
 history has abundantly developed the truth as " the mark 
 of a standing or falling Church." Hence the full and ex- 
 plicit exposition of the doctrine and its disentanglement 
 from all erroneous and mistaken exhibitions by those who 
 are appointed to minister in the word and doctrine is of 
 vital consequence in clearly apprehending the Philosophy 
 of Salvation. 
 
 " It is one thing to be justified," says the writer of these 
 memoirs, " and another thing to understand the philosophy 
 of the process of justification. Let us take the instance of 
 anatomy. The ignorant peasant moves his arm in his daily 
 toil, and yet he understands nothing of the action of the 
 will on the nerves, of the nerves on the muscles. Yet he 
 moves it as he pleases. But let any part of the wondrous 
 machinery get out of order, and it is only the man of 
 science, the anatomist, who understands exactly the position 
 and function of every part, and who can restore the arm to 
 its proper state. So it was valuable to the Christian Church 
 in subsequent ages, that St Paul should have analysed, 
 faith, and said it out to the world. Secondly, the doctrine 
 of Justification by faith was no unimportant doctrine to 
 St Paul's mind. With him it was a vital point, it was the 
 very essence of the Gospel. This subject has been the 
 
356 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 battle-field in which Roman Catholic and Protestant, Tri- 
 dentine divines and Lutheran, Calvinist and Arminian, 
 Jansenist and Jesuit, have met to wage hot warfare. But 
 to St Paul it was no arena for intellectual wrestling, it was 
 no trivial afifair, but the "question of questions" to the 
 human soul." ^ The doctrine of the Church is clearly laid 
 down on this subject in her eleventh article,^ and the whole 
 subject is fully and ably discussed by the late Dr Harold 
 Browne in his work on the Thirty-nine Articles, to which we 
 would refer the reader who desires to go more fully into it. 
 But one of the best and most logical treatises is that of 
 Bishop Davenant. A distinguished Prelate of our Church 
 once observed that the work, if brought within easy access 
 to candidates for Holy Orders, would induce them to read 
 deeply, and lead them to think correctly, " on the all im- 
 portant subject of Justification discussed in the following 
 production," which, no doubt, would have been one of our 
 standard theological works, if not a text-book on this 
 difficult subject, if it had been composed in the vernacular, 
 instead of Latin. 
 
 1 Author's " Voice in the Wilderness," sermons preached on Dartmoor, p. 23. 
 
 ^ For the doctrine held by our Church and her divines on this most im- 
 portant subject, we would refer the reader to Bishop Harold Browne on Art. 
 xi. "of the Justification of man," the Homily on Salvation, parts 1, 2, 3 ; 
 Homily on Prayer, part 3 ; Homily on Almsdeeds, end of Homily on Passion j 
 Homilies on Faith and Good Works ; Edward Vlth Catechism (Encheiridion 
 Theologicum, 1-3S) ; Noel's Catechism (En. Th. i. 281) ; Jewel's " Apology" 
 (En. Th. i. 131) ; Hooker's learned sermon on Justification against Rome's 
 doctrine of infusion of righteousness (vol. iii., Keble's Edition, 483) ; Bull's 
 "Harmonia Apostolica," who takes the forensic sense (iii. 11); Barrow's 
 " Five Sermons on the Creed " (ii. 122), who takes justification to be a forensic 
 term ; Dr Waterland's very valuable tract on the same (Works, ix. 427). He 
 argues that the causes of justification are (i) the moving cause, God's grace 
 and goodness ; (2) The meritorious cause, Christ ; (3) The efficient cause, the 
 Holy Spirit. That its instruments are (l) Baptism, (2) Faith; that its colj- 
 ditions are (i) faith, and (2) obedience : also Dr Newman's most logical treatise 
 which isteers a middle course between the Tridentine and Lutheran doctrines 
 (written before his secession). He also takes the forensic view, asserts that it 
 is conferred in baptism, maintained by faith, consists in the indwelling of the- 
 spirit of God, and being made members of the body of Christ. 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION 357 
 
 That this work of Davehant is pre-eminently adapted 
 for the purposes alluded to, no other testimony need be 
 adduced than that of Bishop Bull, who himself gave much 
 consideration to this very point, and who, however differ- 
 ing from Davenant with regard to the grounds of their 
 doctrine, has passed, in the following judgment, the high- 
 est eulogium upon_this treatise for sterling worth, scholastic 
 ability, and practical soundness. 
 
 Thus, says he, on drawing to a close of his own discus- 
 sion of the subject in his Harmonia, " as a conclusion to 
 this undertaking, I will subjoin a remarkable testimony of 
 a man of most extensive learning, and a most worthy 
 Prelate of the Anglican Church, who well knew and faith- 
 fully maintained the sound and orthodox doctrine of 
 our Church in this controversy, and who, in short, most 
 successfully, if ever man did, exposed the subtleties of 
 Bellarmine, and of others of the Popish party, I mean 
 the great Davenant, Bishop of Salisbury, who, in his 
 most learned Disputation concerning actual and imputed 
 righteousness, cap. 31, thus explains and confirms, in two 
 short, but indeed most learned theses, all the statements 
 made in these Disputations concerning the necessity of 
 good works." ^ 
 
 " Of a less Catholic spirit," says Mr Perry, in his History of the 
 English Church, " than Hall or Morton, and more committed to the 
 peculiarities of the Calvinistic theology, was Dr John Davenant, 
 Bishop of Salisbury. He, like Hall, had been at the great Protestant 
 meeting at Dort, and had appeared on the side of Bogerman and the 
 Calvinists (but not supralapsarian) against the Arminians. But he had 
 honourably distinguished himself by an earnest advocacy of the tenet 
 of universal redemption, and was the principal cause of the English 
 College giving in a view favourable to that doctrine! Bishop Carlton 
 was anxious to alter some expressions in the opinion to which .the 
 English divines had agreed in order to promote unity with the Dutqh 
 Calvinists, but Davenant declared earnestly that he would rather ha.ve 
 his right hand cut off than that they should be altered, and he pre- 
 
 ' Bishop Bull's Harmonia Apostolica, disp. ii. cap. xviii. sec. lo. 
 
358 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 vailed with his colleagues.* As Divinity Professor at Cambridge, 
 Davenant's prelections obtained considerable renown.^ The best 
 known are those which are published in the form of Commentaries on 
 the Epistles to the Romans and Colossians. Though by no means 
 free from the usual faults of commentators, and rather inclined to talk 
 about a difficulty instead of fairly meeting it, these writings display 
 much talent and learning. Bishop Davenant's Latin is not so classical 
 or so vigorous as that of Crakanthorp, or Hall, but his composition is 
 clear, and his reflections valuable. He was very strongly opposed to 
 the Romish Church, and was not willing to grant that she was a true 
 Church in error, but rather regarded her as utterly apostate and 
 essentially antichristian.^ In this Davenant agreed with the learned 
 James Usher, Primate of Ireland, and went further than his friend 
 Hall, who, being called upon by Laud to alter some places in his 
 treatise on Episcopacy, where he had styled the Pope Antichrist, was 
 willing to do so." * 
 
 It may be asked, with such testimonies to the value and 
 importance of Bishop Davenant's writings as have been 
 adduced, and especially the opinion of Bishop Bull — who 
 received the commendation of the Pope himself for his 
 great work on the defence of the Creed drawn from ante- 
 Nicene authorities — ^how it has happened that his works 
 have been so little known among us, and not brought 
 before the Church at large, like other works of Anglican 
 divines, as they ought to have been, well worthy as they 
 are to stand on the shelves side by side with the standard 
 works of Anglican theology. 
 
 The comparative oblivion into which the works of Bishop 
 Davenant have fallen, notwithstanding the high estimation 
 in which they were formerly held, must be imputed to the 
 language in which they are composed ; for certainly rich as 
 our Church is in theologians, she has none perhaps who, in 
 the union of acute and correct argument, solid judgment, 
 
 * Letters of Carlton and Davenant, in appendix to Hales's Golden Remains. 
 
 * " Your lordship hath with great reputation spent many years in the 
 Divinity Chair in the famous University of Cambridge." — Hall to Davenant, 
 Hall's Works, ix. 319. 
 
 » See Davenant's letter to Hall, Hall's Works, ix. 32. 
 ^ Perry's History of the Church of England, vol. i. p. 436. 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION 359 
 
 scriptural depth, and profound patristic and scholastic 
 erudition, are to be mentioned with him. It may therefore 
 be doubted if this treatise on Justification, which we have 
 now under consideration, had existed in the vernacular 
 tongue, whether Bishop Bull would have ventured on the 
 publication of his Harmonia Apostolica, or doing so, would 
 have been so successful in popularising his views thereon. 
 The authority of Bishop Bull, established permanently by 
 his eminent defence of the ante-Nicene faith — i.e., the creed 
 proved by reference to the Fathers of the Nicene period — 
 gave, in a cold and formal era, a currency to his Harmonia 
 which was greater than might have been anticipated, al- 
 though we cannot go so far as to say, " from the publica- 
 tion of which," to use the late Professor Garbett's language 
 in his Bampton lectures,^ " may be dated a gradual lowering 
 of the theology of the Church of England." Bishop Bull, 
 in his Harmonia Apostolica, admits that sense of justifica- 
 tion by faith which, he says, all the sounder Protestants 
 have attached to it, viz., salvation by grace only. He takes 
 justification in the forensic sense, the meritorious cause of 
 which is Christ, the instrument or formal cause being fides 
 formata, or faith accompanied by good works." ^ 
 
 Dr Newman, in his work on Justification, goes over the 
 same ground as Bishop Bull, as it is intended as an elabo- 
 rate vindication of the views maintained by him. In this 
 very logical treatise, which was composed not very long 
 before his secession to the Church of Rome, and which he 
 has since edited with fresh notes, the author professed " to 
 steer a middle course between the Roman and Lutheran 
 doctrines." He takes the forensic sense of the term justi- 
 fication, and asserts that "it is conferred in baptism, is 
 maintained by faith, and consists in the indwelling of the 
 Spirit of God, and the being made members of the Body 
 of Christ." 
 
 ' Professor Garbett's Bampton Lectures. The fourth of the series contains 
 a most searching and powerful statement of the whole controversy. 
 
 ^ Harold Browne, Thirty-nine Articles, "On the Justification of Man, ''p. 294. 
 
360 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 By each of the above writers the power of Davenant's 
 treatise as amongst the most formidable to be assailed is 
 felt and acknowledged.. The testimony which Bishop Bull 
 has borne to the "great" writer, whose view it was his 
 object to criticise, we have just placed before the reader. 
 Dr Newman, sustaining Bull's argument, scarcely refers 
 to any other opponent among the English Divines than 
 Davenant; but while he is arguing against the powerful 
 logic of the learned defender of the doctrine of the Church, 
 he is compelled to bow to his talent, and acknowledge that 
 the work he would disparage " abounds with noble pas- 
 sages." Newman had said in his work on Justifica- 
 tion : " Imputed righteousness is the coming in of actual 
 righteousness. They whom God's sovereign voice pro- 
 nounces just, forthwith become in their measure just. He 
 declares a fact, and makes it a fact by declaring it He 
 imputes not a name, but a substantial Word, which being 
 ' ingrafted ' in our hearts, ' is able to save our souls.' " ^ To 
 this is appended a note by Dr Newman. Davenant, though 
 a Calvinist, says : " Cum Deus ineffabili amore complec- 
 tatur filios suos, necesse est, ut notam seu characterem paterni 
 sui amoris illis imprimat et insculpat. Hoc autem aliud 
 non est quam imago quaedam et similitudo sanctitatis 
 suae"^ {De Habit. Just., c. 3). Nay, Calvin himself: 
 " Fatemur ergo simul atque justificatur quispiam, neces- 
 sario renovationem quoque %ta^\" ^ {^Anted. p. 324). But 
 then he adds it is only as a necessary accident. " Denique 
 ubi de causi quceritur, quorsum attinet accidens inseperabile 
 
 - 1 Newman, " Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification." Primary sense of 
 the term (section viii. p. 80). 
 
 ^ " Therefore, since God embraces his children with an ineffable love, he 
 must necessarily impress or engrave the mark or character of his paternal love 
 upon them. But this is nothing else than a certain image and resemblance of 
 his holiness. " 
 
 ' "Therefore we confess that as soon as anyone is justified, renewal also 
 follows." 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION 361 
 
 obtrudi."^ This then it seems, after all, is the point at 
 issue : God speaks, and a new Creation follows ; is this 
 new Creation involved in the essence of the justifying act, 
 or only joined as a necessary accident} "(Cordis renovatio) 
 justificationis obtentae non causa (no one says it is a ' cause' 
 except in the philosophical sense, that whiteness is the cause 
 of a white wall, to take the common illustration) sed comes 
 simul tempore adveniens, sed ordine causalitatis subsequens" ^ 
 (Davenant, De Habit. Just. c. 24). 
 
 Again (in section 10) Dr Newman says, " On the whole, 
 then, from what has been said, it appears that justification 
 is an announcement or fiat of Almighty God, which breaks 
 upon the gloom of our natural state as the creative word 
 upon chaos : that it declares the soul righteous, and in that 
 declaration, on the one hand, conveys pardon for its past 
 sins, and on the other makes it actually righteous. That it 
 is a declaration has been made evident from its including, 
 as all allow, an amnesty for the past ; for past sins are 
 removable only by an imputation of righteousness. And 
 that it involves an actual creation in righteousness has 
 been argued from the analogy of Almighty God's doings 
 in Scripture, in which we find his words were represented 
 as effective. And its direct statements most abundantly 
 establish both conclusions ; the former from its use of the 
 word just or righteous : showing that in matter of fact he 
 who is justified becomes just, that he who is declared 
 righteous is thereby actually made righteous." This is 
 Newman's own note upon the passage. Davenant's state- 
 ment on the subject may be entirely received, though he 
 was a Calvinist : " Ex usu quotidiani sermonis, qualitas 
 inhaerens, praesertim si prsedominans sit, denominat sub- 
 
 ^ Lastly, when it is debated about the cause, to what intent it appertains for 
 an inseparable accident to be obtruded. 
 
 ^ The renewal of the heart is not the cause of the justification which is 
 obtained, but the companion, arriving together in time, hut following after in 
 the order of causality. 
 
562 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 jectum, licet simul inhaereat aliquid contrariae qualitatis. 
 Dicimug enim non modo nivenri album, aut cygnum 
 candidum esse, sed Candida tecta vocamus at vestimenta 
 Candida quibus tamen saepissime maculae aliquae offusae 
 sunt, et aspersiones nigredinis. Sed etiam aquam calidam 
 vocamus, non modo eam quae ebullit prae fervore, sed 
 etiam quae aequisivit gradus aliquot caloris, frigore nondum 
 totaliter expulso. Ex quibus patet eadem ratione renatos 
 omnes ab inhaerente justitia vere nominari et censeri justos, 
 quamvis ea inchoata ad hue sit et imperfecta. Justos dieo 
 non justificatos, quia justi vocabulum ut non loquimur de 
 justo, nihil aliud designat quam praeditum infuso habitu 
 seu inhaerente qualitate justitiae, et justificati vocabulum 
 includet absolutionem ab omni peccato et acceptationem 
 ad vitam aeternam"^ {De Habit. Justit., c. 'itfif^-)- 
 
 It must be carefully kept in view that the object pro- 
 posed in these citations, from divines of very various senti- 
 ments, is that of showing how they one and all converge 
 and approximate to one main, clear and consistent 
 
 ^ " Lastly, from the ordinary use of language, the inherent quality (especi- 
 ally if it predominate) is used to characterize the subject, although something 
 of a contrary quality may adhere to it at the same time. For we not only say 
 that snow is white, or a swan ■white, but we call coverings white,* and gar- 
 ments white, on which, nevertheless, oftentimes some spots of dirt and 
 sprinklings of black are scattered. Thus also we call water hot, not only that 
 which boils with heat, but also that which has acquired some degree of heat, 
 although the cold be not yet totally expelled. From which it is plain, by 
 the same reasoning, that all the regenerate are rightly named and esteemed 
 righteous, from inherent righteousness, although as yet it is only begun and 
 imperfect. I say righteous (justos) not justified, because the word righteous 
 (as we are now speaking concerning the word righteous) denotes nothing else 
 than one endowed by an infused habit or inherent quality of righteousness ; 
 but the word justified includes acquittal from all sin, and acceptance to life 
 eternal." 
 
 * Tecta Candida, roofs, perhaps of houses, in allusion probably to the practice 
 general throughout the Kingdom in Davenant's time, though now confined to 
 some parts of Wales, Pembrokeshire, for instance, and some parts of N. 
 Devon and Cornwall, of whitewashing the roofs of houses. 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION 36.3 
 
 doctrine, whatever be the precise language of their re- 
 spective schools.^ 
 
 Again, Dr Newman, treating on " faith as the instrument 
 of justification," says : "And they answer, as if by way of 
 escaping from the dilemma, that to enquire what it is in 
 faith which makes it justifying, as distinct from all other 
 kinds of faith, is all one with asking what it is in faith on 
 account of which faith justifies: that the discriminating 
 mark is the same as the meritorious cause ; and therefore 
 Christ Himself, and He alone, the Object of the faith, is 
 that which makes the faith what it is — and to name, to 
 hint, to look for what it is in faith — which makes it lively, 
 is to open the door to what Luther calls ' The cursed gloss 
 of Sophists.' " This is Newman's note : " Pereant itaque 
 sophistae cum sua maledicta glossa, ut damnetur vox ilia 
 fides formata : et dicamus constanter ista vocabula, fides 
 formata informis, acquisita etc diaboli esse portenta, nata 
 in perniciosi doctrinal et fidei Christianae.^ See Gal. iii. 
 12. Bishop Bull, on the contrary, holds the doctrine of 
 fides formata. So does Bishop Davenant in Col., i. p. 28., 
 saying that faith precedes love naturd, not in fact. Again 
 Newman writes on the secondary sense of the term justifi- 
 cation. When, for instance, they (the Homilies) declare 
 that " justification is not the office of man but of God, they 
 adopt its active sense; yet elsewhere they speak of this 
 justification or righteousness, which we so receive of God's 
 mercy and Christ's merits embraced by faith," as being 
 "taken, accepted and allowed of God for our perfect and 
 full justification," where the word denotes our state of 
 acceptance or that in which acceptance consists.* After 
 giving in his note on these words a list of passages in 
 
 ^ Newman's Lectures on Justification, Primary Sense of Term, p. 84. 
 
 * "Therefore let the sophists perish with their accursed gloss, and let that 
 word faith which has been formed be condemned : and let us say constantly 
 that those words faith, formed, unformed, acquired &c., are the portents of 
 the devil, generated for the destruction of Christian faith and doctrine." 
 
 ^liie.-iKTD3.Vi's Justification, p. 13. 
 
364 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 which the word justification is ta.ken passzve/y, he gives the 
 following in which it is taken actively, " Justificatio est 
 remissio peccatorum, et acceptatio coram Deo, cum qua 
 conjuncta est donatio Spiritus sancti " (Melancth., Catech. 
 Art de Justif.). " Nos justificationem simpliciter interpre- 
 tamur acceptationem qua nos Deus in gratiam receptos pro 
 justis habet " (Calvin, Justif. iii. 2). " Apparet justifica- 
 tionem . . . nihil aliud esse quam gratuitum Dei actum,^ 
 &c." (Bull. Harm. Diss. i. i, 4). Vide also Perkin's Ref. 
 Cath. 1 1 ; Bishop Davenant, de Just. Habit. 34, p. 329 ; 
 Barrow, vol. ii. Serm. v. p. 5 5. And again, in the " misuse 
 of the terms Just or Righteous," Newman says, " This 
 they (Protestant divines) maintain ; and as if distinc- 
 tions would serve instead of proof, they lay down as a 
 principle to start with, that there are two kinds of right- 
 eousness, the righteousness of justijication or intrinsic 
 acceptableness, which Christ alone has, and the righteous- 
 ness of sanctification, which is the Christian's." ^ To which 
 he has appended the following note : " It is deeply to be 
 regretted that a work like Davenant's de Justit. Habit. 
 should have been written under the influence of the same 
 theology. Yet with him it is in a great measure a matter 
 of words. He lays it down as an axiom that the words 
 righteousness and just cannot be used except in that sense 
 in which they belong to God (/.e., to denote the highest 
 possible perfection) and therefore when applied to us they 
 must have a different sense. He allows that in Christians 
 righteousness is begun, but says it cannot be called right- 
 eousness till it is perfected, which it is not while on 
 earth." 3 
 
 •* " Justification is the remission of sins, and acceptance before God, with 
 which is joined the gift of the Holy Spirit." ..." We simply interpret 
 justification as the acceptance with which God considers those received in 
 grace as just." . . . "It is evident that justification is nothing else than the 
 gratuitous act of God." 
 
 ^VievtraaxCs Justification, p. 97. 
 
 ^iievnaan's Justification, p. 109. 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION 365 
 
 Again, speaking of " Righteousness viewed as a gift and 
 as a quality," Dr Newman says : " There is nothing precise, 
 nothing to grapple with, when we are told, for instance, 
 that faith justifies, independent of its being a right and 
 good principle — that it justifies as an instrument, not as a 
 condition — that love is its inseparable accident, yet not 
 its external criterion — that good works are necessary, but 
 not to be called so in controversy or popular preaching, 
 and that nothing in us constitutes our being justified," 
 to which he affixes this note — " Davenant, de Justit. 
 Hab. 31, who observes also Multi qui recipiunt hanc 
 propositionem." " Bona opera sunt fidelibus necessaria," 
 rejiciunt et damnant eandum si hoc additamentum ap- 
 ponatur "sunt necessaria ad justificationem vel" sunt 
 necessaria ad salutem. . . . E contra reperirentur a Pro- 
 testantibus non nulli, qui haud verentur concedere, bona 
 opera esse ad salutem necessaria,^ and more to the same 
 effect. And again Newman quotes Davenant : " And if 
 they go on to say that obedience justifies, it never occurs 
 to them to suppose that they can be taken to be speaking 
 of anything but the state of soul in which the heavenly 
 gift resides, and by which it is retained, not that which 
 really causes, or procures, or purchases it." ^ Davenant 
 grants as much as this. " Bona opera justificatorum sunt 
 ad salutem necessaria, necessitate ordinis non causalitatis, 
 vel planius, ut via ordinata ad vitam mternam non ut causae 
 meritorise vitse aeternse.^ He also freely grants that they 
 are "media seu conditiones sini quibus Deus non vult 
 
 ^ " Many who accept this proposition, ' Good works are necessary to the 
 faithful,' reject and condemn the same if this addition is made, ' are necessary 
 to justification,' or ' are necessary to salvation.' ... On the contrary, some 
 Protestants may be found, who are not afraid of conceding that good works 
 are necessary to salvation." 
 
 ^ Newman's Justi/ication, p. 182. 
 
 3 " The good works of the justified are necessary to salvation, in the necessity 
 of order not causality, or more clearly; as the ordained way to life eternal, 
 not as (the way) of the meritorious cause of eternal life." 
 
366 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 justificationis gratiam in hominibus conservare," c.31.^ That 
 is, we are saved neither by faith, nor by works, but as 
 walking in the way both of faith and of works." ^ 
 
 Thus frequently does Dr Newman refer to Bishop 
 Davenant, and in his Appendix he makes the following 
 references to him and his great work. " Davenant (de 
 Just. Hub. fin.) determines with more candour that 
 Christus (Christ), or the obedientia Christi (the obedience 
 of Christ) is the matter of Justification. It is remarkable," 
 he adds, " that Davenant animadverts on Bonaventura's 
 making the merits of Christ the matter of justification, 
 which he says at once throws us upon inherent righteous- 
 ness " * {De Just. Hob. ch. 28 fin.). Again, further on he 
 says : " He (Gerhard) protests against the notion that the 
 Protestant doctrine of justification is nominal, shadowy, 
 and putative. Davenant makes a similar complaint ; yet 
 desirous as one may be to be fair to the theory, it is 
 difficult to speak of it in any other terms. Davenant's 
 words are these : Imputatio non fictionem cogitationis 
 humanse denotat, sed efficassimam Dei ordinationem et 
 validissimam rei donationem. Si Bellerminus nolit adver- 
 tere quid intersit inter fictionem et donationem justitias 
 Christi, dignus est qui coram tremendo illo tribunali 
 sistatur, non alia justitia indutus quam sua inhaerente," c. 
 34.* This surely is unfair as well as severe : a gift or 
 possession is of two kinds, personal and for use and enjoy- 
 ment : gold or jewels put into one's hands is the former, 
 and landed property is the latter. Davenant means that 
 
 1 " Means or conditions, without which God is not willing to preserve the 
 grace of justification in men." 
 
 " 'Sevrmanh /ustt^caliojt, p. 183. 
 
 " 'i'ievimaah Justification, p. 360. 
 
 'i " Imputation doesn't denote the fiction of human thought, but the most 
 efficacious ordinance of God, and the most powerful gift of the thing. If 
 Bellarmine is unwilling to see what is the difference between the fiction and 
 bestowal of the righteousness of Christ, he is worthy to stand before that 
 tremendous tribunal, clothed in no other righteousness than his own inherent 
 righteousness." 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION ^6^ 
 
 the justitia Christi is ours in the latter sense. He says 
 (c. 2% fin), "Christi justitia imputata nihil aliud est quam 
 Christi justitia applicata et donata nobis ad spiritualem 
 aliquem effectum producendum." ^ He does not regard it at 
 all as a personal possession : and Calvin grants as much 
 when he considers the formal cause of justification, not the 
 justitia Christi, but remission of sins, that is, the spiritual 
 consequence of His righteousness. Bellarmine then assumes 
 no more than Calvin grants : that we are said to be or 
 named as having Christ's righteousness, in order to have 
 the fruits of that righteousness. Only he goes on to argue 
 that such a mere nominal and not real gift, or to make 
 use of the foregoing distinction, a gift not personal, cannot 
 be called a formal cause. Yet Davenant dispenses very 
 different justice to his acute opponent and his clear- 
 headed and candid master. While he uses language 
 which one would wish to forget, because Bellarmine says 
 that the imputation which is by faith, by the very force 
 of the terms used, cannot be a personal characteristic of 
 the soul, yet when Calvin says that Christ's righteousness 
 is but the matter, not the form of justification, and only 
 is applied to us in its effects, in the remission of sins, he 
 says, " ut itaque separamus philosophicas speculationes de 
 natura causae formalis &c.^ Yet he is just beginning a 
 dissertation of eight chapters upon it ! The subject may 
 be treated in a philosophical or common-sense way : but 
 must not be taken up and put down in one or the other 
 at pleasure. All this ambiguity, as I must call it, is to be 
 imputed not to Bishop Davenant, whose work is full of 
 noble passages, but to his system.^ Again, Dr Newman says, 
 " Davenant, for instance, grants the doctrine of ' justitia 
 
 1 " The Righteousness of Christ imputed is nothing else than the righteous- 
 ness of Christ applied and given to us to produce some spiritual effect." 
 
 2 " That therefore we may distinguish philosophical speculation from the 
 nature of the formal cause." 
 
 s THsmas.v!% Jwstifi'cationi Appendix, pp. 362-3. 
 
368 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 inchoata.' ^ He grants that it is true righteousness in the 
 same sense in which a white wall, though not perfectly 
 white, has whiteness, and he grants that inherent righteous- 
 ness is justification in a passive sense, or what he ciSSs justi- 
 fication, c. 22 : that is, in fact, we have two righteousnesses, 
 a perfect and an imperfect, Christ's and our own ; the 
 point in which he differs being merely this, whether this 
 inchoate righteousness can be said to tend towards justi- 
 fication, or to serve us in any stead in God's sight. And 
 this would seem very much a question of words, for if he 
 means to deny it is such as we can trust to, Bucer con- 
 fesses this distinctly ; but that there is something good in 
 it he surely cannot deny unless he will contend there is no 
 whiteness in a wall that is partially white. Nay, in one 
 place, he confesses as to a kindred point : Non igitur cum 
 Patribus, neque cum hisce senioribus Pontificiis lis ulla 
 nobis erit de nudo meriti vocabulo (quamquam multo melius 
 et tutius est ab hoc vocabulo abstinere) sed contra nuperos 
 Papistas dimicabimus " ^ {De Just. Act., c. 53) ; and again, 
 Dr Newman says : ^ "In the foregoing Lectures a view 
 has been taken substantially the same as this, but 
 approaching more nearly in language to the Calvinists, 
 viz., that Christ indwelling is our righteousness ; only 
 what is with them a matter of words, I would wish to use 
 in a real sense as expressing a sacred mystery ; and there- 
 fore I have spoken of it in the language of Scripture, as the 
 indwelling of Christ through the Spirit. For Davenant 
 speaks thus : " Christi Mediatoris in nobis habitantis atque 
 per Spiritum sese nobis unientis perfectissima obedientia est 
 formalis causa justificationis nostrae."* {De Just. Habit., 22). 
 
 1 Inchoate righteousness is righteousness in its inception or beginning. 
 
 2 " Therefore not with the Fathers, nor with these old PontifiFs, will there be 
 any strife about the bare terms of merit (although it is much better and 
 safer to abstain from this word), but our contest will be with recent Papists." 
 
 ' 'SevimsxCs Justification, Appendix, p. 374. 
 
 * " The most perfect obedience of Christ the Mediator dwelling in us, and 
 by the Holy Spirit uniting Himself to us, is the formal cause of our justifi- 
 cation." 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION 369 
 
 One more quotation must suffice from Dr Newman's great 
 work.i Chamier, after speaking of St Bernard's doctrine, 
 says, '* Concedam justificationem intelligi pro infusione : 
 quod etsi crebrum est apud Patres, non est ex stilo Pauli."^ 
 Davenant more cautiously, but to the same effect. " Si 
 aliquis Patrum propter arctam illam cognatam et individ- 
 uam concatenationem gratiae infusae sive inhaerentis cum 
 gra;tia rettiissionis ac imputatione justitiae Christi, hsec inter 
 se commiscere videatur, non debemus nos idcirco ilia confun- 
 dere, quae Spiritus Dei in Sacris Scripturis accurate solet 
 distiriguere. . . . Neque huic sententiae nostrae reclamare 
 patres illico judicandi sunt. Si justificandi vocabulum 
 ad justitiae infusionem aliquando referant : non idem voca- 
 bulum diverso sensu, non modo a Patribus, sed etiam ab 
 ipsis Scripturis quandoque usurpatur. Non itaque jam 
 quaerimus de diversis hujus vocabuli justificationis apud 
 Patres significantibus : sed (quod theologicae disquisitionis 
 proprium est) de ipso dogmate justificationis quid illi sen- 
 serint indagamus"* {De Just. Hab„ c. 25). 
 
 Throughout this great and noble work on " Justification,"* 
 it will be observed that Dr Newman's quotations from 
 Davenant are both, full and frequent, and he is more often 
 referred to than any other English writer, or Anglican 
 
 ^ Newmaxi's /miificalion, p. 382-3. 
 
 ^ " I will concede that justification is to be understood for infusion, which 
 although it is frequent with the Fathers is not after St Paul's style." 
 
 ' " If then any of the Fathers, on account of that close affinity and insepar- 
 able connexion of infused or inherent grace, with the grace of remission and 
 the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, seem rather to confuse the one 
 with the other, we ought not on that account to confound those things which 
 the Spirit of God is accustomed accurately to distinguish in the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. . . . Neither are the Fathers to be considered as opposed to this our 
 opinion, if sometimes they refer the word justification to the infusion of 
 righteousness ; for the same word is used sometimes in a different sense, 
 not only by the Fathers, but in the Scriptures themselves. Onr enquiry 
 therefore now is not concerning the divers signification of this word justifi- 
 cation in the Fathers, but what sentiments they hold on justification itself 
 (which is the point of theological investigation)." 
 
 ^'Sev/man's /ustification, p. 395. 
 
 2 A 
 
370 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 divine. What does this show? That whatever opinion 
 his, own countrymen or fellow-churchmen may take of 
 Bishop Davenant and his contributions to theological 
 literature, Dr Newman refers to him as one of our most 
 capable writers, and this work as a standard work ; he 
 places him in the front rank of theologians, and avers that 
 this work " abounds in many noble pass^es." Dr New- 
 man is no mean authority, for he was one of the most 
 cultured and accomplished writers of our day, a man of 
 assured European reputation, and these notes with refer- 
 ence to Davenant have been written for his new edition, 
 since his secession to the Church of Rome, of which he was 
 till lately one of her greatest ornaments, as a controver- 
 sialist, his Eminence having been a Prince and Prelate of 
 that Church. 
 
 Our Bishop gives his own account of his work on Justi- 
 fication in the Preface .which we lose no further time in 
 laying before our readers. 
 
 " When reflecting upon the several topics which are controverted 
 between us and the Papists,* I find there is scarcely one in which our 
 opponents do not maintain that side which immoderately exalts man, 
 
 ^ The Bishop generally uses the term " Papists " in speaking of the members 
 of the Church of Rome. Upon which term Heylin, no harsh opponent of their 
 system, after objecting to their appropriation of the term Catholic, makes the 
 following remarks in his exposition of the Apostles' Creed, book iii. chap. 2, 
 " Since they have no mind to be called Christians, nor reason to be called 
 Catholics, let us call them, as they use, by the name of Papists, considering 
 their dependence on the Pope's decision for all points of faith, and possibly 
 we may gratify them as much in this as if we did permit them the name of 
 Catholics. For Bellarmine {de Not Eccl. 1. iv. c. 4) seems very much delighted 
 with the appellation; flattering himself that he can bring in Christ, our 
 blessed Saviour, within the catalogue of Popes, and that he hath found a 
 prophecy in St Chrysostom (in Act. Apost. horn, xxxiii. 3, 4) to this efifect, 
 quondoque nos Papistas vocandos esse, that Papists in the time then following 
 should be the style and title of a true Professor. Great pity it is, but he and 
 his should have the honour of their own discovery, and Papists let them be, 
 since the same so pleaseth." However, it no longer pleaseth them to be 
 called by this term, and modern courtesy commonly disuses it, but we do not 
 consider ourselves at liberty to adopt a different term where this is employed by 
 our author. 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION 371 
 
 and everything of human attainment ; while leaving it to us to main- 
 tain the cause of God in opposition to the pride of man. This, I am 
 desirous, should be observed, in order that we may be induced to en- 
 gage the more carefully with these opponents, who, whilst they are 
 elevating and extolling dust and ashes, can never look to receive 
 Divine help. 
 
 " The truth of my remark will appear both from the discussion which 
 we lately concluded concerning the Judge and Rule of Faith, and from 
 this on which we have now resolved to treat, concerning inherent 
 righteousness and the righteousness of works. In the former case 
 what else appears to be the doctrine of Papists than that God cannot 
 be the supreme judge of faith, but that the Roman Pontiff both can 
 and ought to be ; that the Divinely inspired prophets and apostles 
 have committed to writing the doctrines of the Christian Religion in 
 an obscure and imperfect manner ; but that the Roman Pontiff with 
 his Prelates contains them all in his integrity in the escritoire of his 
 own breast,^ and is able perspicuously to define them when necessary ! 
 Thus they speak degradingly of God : but have set the Pope With his 
 coadjutors on the throne of supreme authority. Good right have we 
 therefore to renew that old complaint of Lactantius (De Ira Dei, 
 caput 32). So preposterously do they act, as to make what is human 
 to give authority to what is Divine, whereas, rather, that which is 
 Divine ought to give authority to what is human. 
 
 " Now what they have done in the question on determining Faith and 
 Religion, the same they take great pains to effect, in the case of 
 attainment of justification. For they absolutely scorn a justification 
 arising from the mercy of God, remitting the sins of believers for the 
 sake of Christ, and accepting them to life eternal in Christ ; but they 
 admire and extol that justification which consists in their own personal 
 virtues and inherent qualities. Thus, to have life eternal from the 
 free gift of God, they do not think sufficiently honourable to them, but 
 to obtain it by their merit of condignity and good works, this seems 
 glorious enough to proud men. 
 
 " And the way in which they maintain this position, though most 
 false, is yet quite worthy of such patrons. For those who seek their 
 faith,' not from Christ or the Scriptures, but from the crazy brain and 
 doting decrees of some individual, are acting consistently while they 
 place their justification and salvation, not in the mercy of God and the 
 obedience of Christ the mediator, but in their own personal righteous- 
 ness and merits. 
 
 1 " Of his own breast," the language of a Papal Constitution of Boniface VIII. 
 See the Canon Law, Sexti Decret., lib. i. bk. ii. cap. i. 
 
ZJ2 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " It is evident how difficult and miserable a task the Papists have 
 taken upon themselves, and how easy and desirable ■ a part they leave 
 for us. It rests with them to endeavour to prove, that wretched man, 
 encompassed with this mortal and corruptible fleshy is nevertheless 
 furnished with so perfect a righteousness, that he can present this his 
 inherent righteousness, even before the scrutinising eye.of God, for 
 the purpose of receiving a plenary justification. ■ i 
 
 " Nay, more, they must also maintain this point, that from this 
 infused righteousness flow works so purified from all defilement, so 
 free from all stain of. sin, that any regenerate person can say truly 
 to God, ' If I have deserved it, give me the kingdom of heaven : if my 
 works do not deserve it. on principle of condignity,^ refuse me ! ' O 
 intolerable pride ! O desperate madness ! How much more wisely, 
 how much more truly said William (Bishop) of Paris, Take care in 
 your wrestling with God, not to lean upon a weak and fragile founda- 
 tion, which they, do who trust in their own merits. .... For as he who 
 
 ^ It is not to be supposed that the sohoolmen denied or doubted that such 
 justification sprang primarily from the grace of God, and meritoriously firom 
 the death of Christ, The faulty charged upon their system are, that they 
 looked for merit de congruo and de condigno, that they attached efficacy to 
 attrition, that they inculcated the doctrine of satisfaction, and' that they 
 assigned grace to the sacraments ex opere operato. 
 
 Luther especially insists, that these scholastic opinions were directly sub- 
 versive of the doctrine of St Paul, and of the grace of God. " They say," he 
 writes, " that a' good work before grace is able to obtain grace of congruity 
 (which they caXi mefitum de congruo), hecsiase it is meet that God should 
 reward such a work. But when grace is obtained, the work following de- 
 serveth eternal life of debt and worthiness, which they call meritum de con- 
 digno. For the first God is no debtor : but because He is just and good, He 
 must approve such good work, though it be done in mortal sin, and so give 
 grace for such service. But when grace is obtained God is become a debtor, 
 and is constrained of right and duty to give eternal life. For now it is not 
 only a work of free-will, done according to the substance, but also done in 
 grace, which makes a man acceptable to God, that is to say, in charity." 
 " This is the divinity of the kingdom of Antichrist : which here I recite that 
 St Paul's argument may be the better understood : for two things contrary to 
 one another being put together may be the better understood" (LuUier, 
 Gal. ii. l6). 
 
 Again, "the compunction for sin, which might be felt before the grace of God 
 was given, was called attrition: compunction arising from the motions of 
 God's Spirit being called contrition. Now contrition was considered as a 
 means, whereby God predisposed to grace. So that it had in it some merit 
 de congrtio, and so of its own nature led to contrition and justification " 
 (Quoted by Bishop Harold Browne, Article xi., p. 281). 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION 373 
 
 leans only upon his own strength and merits, deprives himself of the 
 aid and strength of God: so he who puts ,avtay.all confidence in him- 
 self , and leans only upon grace and mercy, brings doivn upon hiwself 
 the aid and power of God (Parisiensis, De Rhetor. Divin., cap. 91, 
 
 P-385). 
 
 " You see how impious and wretched is the cause which the Papists 
 have to maintain. Now let us consider how holy, easy and obvious 
 is ours. We have then to shew, that God imparts to the justified the 
 first-fruits of the spirit and certain eminent gifts of sanctification, yet 
 so that we are entirely dependent upon Ilis mercy and the grace of 
 our Mediator ; but that sin is not so entirely rooted out from this 
 mortal body, as that we can derive from that infused and inherent 
 righteousness a ground for justification before God. This also we 
 have to shew, that the works which flow from this inchoate righteous- 
 ness, however pleasii>g and acceptable to God, are still not in them- 
 selves so absolutely perfect, as that life eternal should be not the gift 
 of God in Christ (Rom. vi. 23), but a reward paid on the principle of 
 cbndignity to these our works. 
 
 " We are certainly greatly indebted to the Romanists, who, as in all 
 other controversies, so especially in this, desire us to prove, what 
 Scripture manifestly sets forth, What the conscience of every indi- 
 vidual dictates within him, and to what, in fine, the confession of all 
 saints publicly testifies. 
 
 " It is not, therefore, more difficult to shew that the" doctrine of a 
 free justification is true, and to exhibit the deficiencies of man's right- 
 eousness, than it is to point to the light of the sun, or the spots on a 
 cloud. , : ■ 
 
 " I will enter then upon the subject, premising merely that it is not 
 my purpose to take up the whole subject in controversy as respects 
 justification and works; but to select certain special parts, by the 
 explanation and determination of which, a way will be opened for 
 readily forming an opinion of the rest. You see then to what points 
 the present discussion is limited." 
 
 The work itself, which is composed in Latin, and has 
 no notes, is divided into sixty-six chapters. In the first 
 chapter the heads of the subsequent discussion are an- 
 nounced, three primary being propounded concerning 
 Habitual Righteousness, and four concerning Actual 
 Righteousness. The first question, " Whether a certain 
 Habitual or Inherent Righteousness is infused into all the 
 justified, whence they may be called just .' " is proposed 
 
374 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 and explained irt the third chapter. In the fifth chapter 
 is discussed the second question, "Whether this inherent 
 Righteousness is so perfect as to exclude original Sin?" 
 In this discussion, which is continued to the end of the 
 twenty-first, arguments are brought forward, supported by 
 scripture and the Fathers, and objections answered. The 
 charge of the Heresies of the Origenists and Messalians, 
 brought by the Jesuits, is answered. Bellarmine's argu- 
 ments are sifted in the ninth chapter, and testimonies of 
 Fathers and schoolmen are pressed into his service. The 
 third question, which is propounded in the twenty-first 
 chapter, is continued to the end of the twenty-ninth, viz.. 
 Whether inherent Righteousness (whatever it be) formally 
 justifies believers in the sight and judgment of God ? 
 Bellarmine is again our Bishop's chief opponent, and the 
 reference to the Fathers in support of our Author's 
 arguments are both pregnant and frequent. The term 
 " Justification " in this division is fully examined, and 
 the Imputation of Christ's obedience proved to be the 
 formal cause of our Justification in twenty-eighth, the 
 term " imputation " and " formal cause " having been 
 explained in a previous chapter. We come now to the 
 second great division of the subject of " Actual Righteous- 
 ness, or the Righteousness of Works," and this occupies 
 the remaining portion of the work. The Discussion con- 
 sists of four parts, for it respects (i) the necessity, (2) the 
 reality, (3) the perfection, and (4) the merit of Good 
 Works. Question the first, of the necessity of Good 
 Works, in the thirtieth and two following chapters ; the 
 Author's opinion being partly explained in this proposi- 
 tion — good works are necessary in all believers who have 
 the use of reason, and are of an age to practise them. 
 The second question. Reality of Good Works, is discussed 
 in the thirty-third and five following chapters, and is ex- 
 plained in three propositions. T/te first proposition con- 
 sists of three members, namely, that the good works of 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION 375 
 
 the regenerate have in them (i) a supernatural goodness, 
 (2) are pleasing and acceptable to God in a supernatural 
 way, (3) are destined by his Covenant or promise for the 
 most gracious rewards. The second preposition is. That 
 the good works of the regenerate are imperfectly good^ 
 being stained by the adhesion of sin, and need to be 
 accepted by God of his paternal mercy. The third pro- 
 position is, That the aforesaid works, although imperfect 
 and stained by the contagion of indwelling sin, are yet 
 not to be regarded as mortal sins, nor are so regarded 
 by Protestants. Bellarmine's arguments against these 
 propositions are again answered. Beginning chapter 
 xxxii., the third question, of the perfection of good works, 
 is explained in two propositions. The first consisting of 
 three members, (i) that there are no works of counsels 
 more excellent than the works commanded in the Divine 
 Law : (2) neither is there granted in this life a state of 
 perfection consisting in the observance of such counsels : 
 nor does the regenerate man supererogate^ by any work of 
 holiness or righteousness. The second proposition is, no one 
 of the regenerate can observe and fulfil the law of God per- 
 fectly : but falls short of the perfection of the law through 
 the whole course of his life. The argument, including 
 the appeal to Antiquity in forty-third chapter, is continued 
 down to the end of the fifty-second. Chapter liii. concludes 
 the fourth and last aspect of the subject " of the merit " 
 of good works. In treating which, some things from the 
 Fathers concerning the words merit and meriting are 
 premised, c. Ixvi. ; from the sounder schoolmen, c. Ixix. ; 
 the Jesuits, c. Ixx. ; and the different opinions of the 
 Romanists, whence the worthiness of works arises, are 
 examined. The opinion of our divines is set forth, 
 c. Ixxviii. ; and comprised in two propositions : i. That 
 the good works of the regenerate flowing from the 
 
 1 " Voluntary works besides, over and above, God's commandments, which 
 they call Works of Supererogation," — (Article xiv. of Works of Supererogation. ) 
 
376 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 grace of the Holy Spirit are not meritorious of life 
 eternal ex condigno : neither do they make this reward 
 due to the workers as a matter of justice ; 2. That the 
 good works of the regenerate which are considered in 
 themselves are not worthy of life eternal, neither do 
 they oblige God on the score of justice to the pay- 
 ment of such a reward ; nor can they from any con- 
 tract or promise of God acquire either a meritorious 
 worthiness, or the power of obliging God to make recom- 
 pense as regards justice properly understood. In the last 
 chapter (Ixvi.), which concludes this noble work, the 
 arguments are refuted, by which Suarez and Bellarmine 
 endeavour to prove that on the principles of commuta- 
 tive justice, God is, by virtue of the promise, bound to 
 render a reward of life eternal in return for our works. 
 
 It will be remembered that Bishop Bull, speaking of 
 this work, remarks, " I mean the great Davenant, Bishop 
 of Salisbury, who, in his most learned Disputations con- 
 cerning arfwa/ and imputed righteousness, cap. 31, thus 
 explains and confirms in two short but indeed most lucid 
 theses, all the statements made in these Dissertations con- 
 cerning good works." As it may prove not unacceptable 
 to our readers to have an illustration of the way in which 
 Davenant handles this subject, we will conclude this 
 chapter with one or two extracts from the above. " The 
 second question which is now to be handled by us is — 
 Whether good works can be said to be necessary to our justifi- 
 cation or salvation. Some of our divines affirm it, some 
 deny it : differing in the forms of words, yet agreeing as 
 to the substance of the matter. But that the truth may 
 be more evident, we shall comprise our views of the sub- 
 ject in the following conclusions : — 
 
 I. In contending with the Romanists about justification, 
 it is not wise or safe to use or admit these propositions, 
 that good works are necessary to justification or that good 
 works are necessary to salvation. 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION m 
 
 But even though they may by means of explanation be 
 reduced to a sound sense j yet when they are nakedly 
 propounded, the Papists always understand by them, that 
 works are necessary as being, from their real and instrinsic 
 worthiness, meritorious causes of man's, salvation, which is 
 most false. Since then use determines the meaning of 
 language, and in formularies of words attention is always 
 paid, not so much to the speaker, as to what he means : we 
 ought not to afford this occasion for error to the Papists, 
 who are accustomed to distort these expressions to an 
 heretical sense. 
 
 That this caution is necessary, when treating with the 
 enemies of the truth of the Gospel, is evident from the 
 example of the ancient Fathers, who abstained from cer- 
 tain forms of speaking solely on account of the perverted 
 application of them by the heretics. Jerome has noticed 
 this in his comment on Hosea ii. i6. An expression may 
 be correct, and yet on account of some ambiguity, it may 
 sometimes be inexpedient to use it. Thus, in the contro- 
 versy with Nestorius, although it is said with perfect truth 
 that the Blessed Virgin is the Mother of Christ, yet the 
 Holy Father? were unwilling to use that expression, lest 
 they should appear to make a concession to Nestorius, who 
 denied her the title of Q^otoko's or Mother of God. So 
 Damascenus, lib. iii. cap. 12, observes : We do not call the 
 Holy Virgin xpiarTOTOKOi, or mother of Christ, because the 
 impious Nestorius invented that title for the purpose of 
 rejecting the title QeoroKOs, or Mother of God. ¥ or a 
 similar reason, as often as we engage in argument with the 
 Romanists, we ought not, on any account, to affirm that 
 works are necessary to salvation, because the perversity of 
 Papists is accustomed to make use of this form of speech 
 in order to deny gratuitous justification. 
 
 The schoolmen themselves entertained the same senti- 
 ments about the' use of words, and were unwilling that we 
 should even use the same words as heretics in cases where, 
 
378 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 from using the same terms, a handle might be taken for 
 spreading false doctrines. , Thus Thomas (Aquinas), Contra 
 gent, libj'iii. cap. 93, and Durandus, lib. i. cap. 4. It is to be 
 observed {says he) that there are certain terms which are not 
 received in theology, more because they have sometimes proved 
 the occasion of error, than because of the unsuitableness of their 
 signification. Since thence this mode of speaking adminis- 
 ters occasion of error to the Romanists, if we are to attend 
 to the Fathers and Schoolmen, we ought to abstain from it. 
 
 The subject is fully discussed on its negative and positive 
 side under the following heads : — 
 
 " 3. Good works are not necessary to our salvation, if by 
 good works we are to understand works exactly good and 
 perfect according to the rule of the Law, &c. 
 
 "4. No good works are necessary to the regenerate for 
 salvation or justification, if by necessary we understand 
 necessary in the sense of a meritorious cause, &c. 
 
 " 5. Some good works are necessary to justification, as 
 concurrent on preliminary conditions, although they are 
 not necessary as efficient or meritorious causes, &c; 
 
 " 6. Good works are necessary for retaining and pre- 
 serving a state of justification, not as causes, which by 
 themselves effect or merit this preservation, but as means 
 or conditions without which God will not preserve in men 
 the grace of justification," &c. 
 
 This sound and excellent chapter concludes with the 
 following section : — 
 
 "7. Good works are necessary to the salvation of the 
 justified by a necessity of order, not of causality, or more 
 plainly, as the way appointed to eternal life, not as the 
 meritorious cause of eternal life." (See Newman's Justifi- 
 cation, p. 202.) 
 
 We have before established the negative part of this 
 conclusion. We will briefly elucidate the affirmative. 
 
 " When I say good works, I do not mean works perfectly 
 good, which cannot be performed by man not yet perfectly 
 
TREATISE ON JUSTIFICATION 379 
 
 renewed ; but those works of inchoate holiness, which 
 through the efficacy of grace are wrought by the regener- 
 ate. Moreover, these very works L do riot determine to be 
 so necessary to salvation, as that he who, for a time, should 
 become remiss in the practice of good works, or be hurried 
 away by any temptation to the commission of any evil 
 work, should be wholly excluded from salvation: but 
 that it is impossible to reach the goal of salvation, when 
 the pursuit of good works is altogether evaded and rejected, 
 and a loose rein is uninterruptedly given to the lust 
 after evil w'orks. The necessity for this is shown from the 
 saying of Christ, Matt. vi. 14, Straight is the gate and narrow 
 is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that 
 find it. Hence it is plain, that a certain sure way is laid 
 down to the Kingdom of Heaven by God Himself, and 
 that the same is a narrow way, namely, that of virtue and 
 holiness and not the broad way of iniquity and lust. As, 
 therefore, if here is a certain, only and prescribed way 
 which leads to , any city, it is necessary to all who wish to 
 enter that city, to take this way ; so since by the Divine 
 appointment the way of good works leads to the goal of 
 eternal glory, he must inevitably enter upon and hold this 
 way who desires to arrive thither. But what if a believer 
 should wander from this path of good works (which often 
 happens) and should fall into the bye-paths of his lusts ? 
 I say that whilst treading this bye-way, he is proceeding 
 straight to hell, and that he will never arrive at the heavenly 
 city, unless he recover himself and return into the same 
 way. So says the Apostle, i Cor. vi. 9-10 ; Gal. v. 19-21. 
 
 " Although then the justified may halt in the way of good 
 works, and sometimes wander out of his way, falling into 
 the precipices of their lusts, still without letting go their 
 state of sonship ; yet, for the attainment of their salvation 
 and the heritage of sons, it is necessary that they should 
 return into the same through penitence, and persevere in it 
 to the end." 
 
380 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 During the years 1632-3, we find Davenant writing to 
 his friend Dr Ward, three letters from Salisbury : in the 
 first he alludes to Dr Twisse's book against the received 
 doctrine of the Church ; in the second, he discusses the 
 subject of this chapter, " Justification " ; and in the last he 
 refers to the vacant Mastership of St John's College, Cam- 
 bridge. They are to be found in the Tanner Manuscripts 
 at the Bodleian. 
 
 Salute in Christo. 
 
 Good Dr Ward ; In your last letter, you mentioned vnto mee Dr 
 Twisses book, wherof I have read some part. Mee thinks hee be- 
 stowes too much pains in arguing against y° receaved opinion, wch 
 presupposeth mans fall, considered as antecedent to Predestination 
 and Reprobation. Since in this Presupposal, Praedestination & y' 
 Fall are not conceaved as End & Means, but as Act & Obiect. To 
 say y« truth, hee shewes himselfe a scolastical Divine, & of a good 
 iudgment ; yet I have mett wth some particular conclusions, wch I 
 doe not assent vnto. As for St Avjgustins meaning concerning, 
 Gratia Christi, I make no doubt, but y" Illumination of mens mindes 
 by y' Preaching of ye Gospel, & divers other effects wrought vppon 
 y" Non-electi, may bee comprised truly vnder that general terme. 
 But I am further of opinion, that St Augustin in opposing Pelagius 
 his error, who made y* Grace of Ch. Monitrice voluntatis, & not 
 Creatricem bona voluntatis, does by way of Excellency, as it were 
 appropriat Gratiaim Christi, to that Effectual Grace, wch from Ch. is 
 derived to all y* members of Christ ; investing them heer wth Saving 
 Grate, & bringing them heerafter to eternal glory. This hee stiles 
 Prbpria Gratia. Contr. 2 ex Pelag. lib. 4 cap. 5. And in his book de 
 Gratia Christi, this Effectual Saving Grace is it for wch hee contends, 
 as evidently appears 8, 9, 10 chapters & thorough that whole treatise. 
 And Prosper de ingratis at y 14th chapter seemes to make this 
 effectual Grace only, Nova Gratia Christi. And in y' 4th Canon of 
 y Milevitan Councell, Effectual Grace is also termed Gratia Christi. 
 But I hope this suiner to see you heer, & then Plura coram. I coinitt 
 you to God, & rest ever 
 
 your loving freind 
 
 May y"= 32th, 1632. ' Jo. Saru. 
 
 {Endorsed: — ] To y' right woortt his very loving freind Dr Ward, 
 
 Master of Sidney CoUedg in Cambridg give this. 
 May 22, 1632. 
 
 My Ld. of Sarum his Lett'- 
 
LETTERS ON JUSTIFICATION 381 
 
 Salute in Christo. 
 
 I am sorry y' y" Peaceablienes of thbsie who cleav to y° True & 
 established doctrine of our own Churfch, should bre^d so rriuch bould- 
 nes in those that fancy y" Errors & Novelties of forreign Divines. 
 That Propositions' Reliquiae peccati in renatis non sunt peccata does 
 not only Icrosse, Mbdiim loqiidiidi, but y° Receaved & coinon doctrine 
 of orthodox Protestant Divines, & of our gth Article. That other; 
 Renatus potest prsestare pfecta opera in quib, nihil est peccati, and 
 yt to y° same effect. Renatus potest implere legem are contrary to y* 
 General Tenet of our Diviries, and in effect conteiri y= Popish Errors of 
 Justification by woorks, of Condign Merit & air other cohaerent & con- 
 nexd wth these. And (as I conceav) y* forenamed propositions will 
 never stand either wth those woords of y" 9th Artie. ,[Lust hathe of 
 it selfe y° Nature of Sinn.] nor wth those of y° nth [Wee are not 
 accounted righteous for our own woorks & deservings.] N6r with those 
 of y* i2th [Good woorks wch follow Justification cannot putt away our 
 sinns, and endure y° severity of Gods iudgment.] As for that last pro- 
 position [Justification non est ex sola fide.] what shiffts & ?huffells som- 
 ever may bee vsed in y" defense therof, yet it is evidehtly contradictory 
 to our nth Art. and it casts an aspersion vppon all Protestant 
 Churches as well Lutherans as others ; who ever since y= Reformation 
 have stood for y° particle Sola, ever as stiffly as y" Popish sort have 
 gainsayd it. Touching Dr Simsons ould busines, I can assure you, 
 that all y" Heads who were at home subscribed to the Censure of his 
 sermon, after they had iointly and diligently pvsed y* same ; And wee 
 all went over & tendred it to his Maiesty at Roiston ; where Mr 
 Simson was also called, who after y' pvsal of y° sayd censure, & some 
 deliberation, yeelded thervnto. ' And was further inioyned (as I re- 
 member) to preach again before y« King about a fortnight after. This 
 is all I know concerning this matter. I hope to see you heer, & in 
 ye mean time comit you to y' divine protection. 
 
 Yours 
 
 July 23, 1633. Jo. Saru. 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To y° right woortt his verie loving freind Dr Ward 
 Mr of Sidney Colledg in Cambridg give this. 
 
 July 23 [x. X.] n. D. 1633. 
 My L*" of Sarum his Lett'- 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Good Dr Ward ; I hoped to have seen you heer this summer in 
 your passage vnto Wells ; but it should seem y' Dean was not strong 
 
382 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 enough to draw you thither. Wee woonder much heer in y' Country, 
 that y' Mastership of St Johns should lie so long voyd, the choice 
 standing betwixt two men so well & thoroughly knowen as they bee. 
 Wee vsually say Trueth may sometimes bee lost, Nimium altercando ; 
 I pray God in this busines it fall owt otherwise. When your leysure 
 serves I would gladly bee informed of y° whole matter. I am still 
 more and more behoulding vnto you, for your care & kindenesse 
 towards my two Nephewes, and I hope y° younger will tread in 
 y' stepps of his Elder Brother, espetially beeing directed by your 
 authority & good counsail. Thus wishing your good Health & hap- 
 pines, I coinitt you & yours to y" Author therof, resting ever 
 
 Your very loving freind 
 
 Salisbury, Octob. 23th, 1633. Jo. Saru. 
 
 [Endorsed : — 1 To y^ right woorft his very loving freind Dr Ward, 
 Master of Sidney Colledg, and Reader of Divinity in Cambridg 
 give these. 
 
 Octob. 23, 1633. 
 My Lrd of Sarum his Lett'- 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 BISHOP DAVENANT'S "DETERMINATIONS," OR "RESOLU- 
 TIONS OF CERTAIN THEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS " (1634) 
 
 " As for the Censure of Baronius (on Josephus) it is too harsh and uncharit- 
 able, charging him with absuriJa et portentosa mendacia, seeing that it cannot 
 appear that Josephus willingly and wittingly made those mistakes. Wherefore 
 such chance-medley amounts not to manslaughter, much less to wilful murder ; 
 not to say that the charitable Reader ought to be a City of Refuge to such 
 authors, who, rather unhappy than unfaithfuU, fall into involuntary errours. In 
 a word, historians who have no fault are only fit to write the actions of those 
 princes and peoples who have no miscarriage, and only an Angel's pen, taken 
 from his own wing, is proper to describe the story of the Church triumphant." 
 — Fuller's Pisgah Sight, ii. 148. 
 
 THREE years after publishing his treatise on " Justi- 
 fication," our Bishop put out his " Determinations," 
 or " Resolutions of certain Theological Questions." Deter- 
 minationes Quaestionum quorundam Theologicarum. It is 
 a small folio, and is often found bound up with the second 
 edition of the Expositio, i.e. the Exposition of St Paul's 
 Epistle to the Colossians. It consists of a discussion of 
 forty-nine subjects which are matters of controversy be- 
 tween Romanists and Protestants, or between Protestants 
 of different views. They are all handled, as there was 
 every antecedent probability that they would be, with 
 great acuteness, critical learning, and well-sustained moder- 
 ation. To one of these, Quaestio XL, the remarkable and 
 erudite Archbishop Williams referred upon a memorable 
 occasion, a short time after Davenant's decease. A Bill 
 having been introduced to deprive Bishops of their seats 
 in the House of Lords, it was so ably opposed by Williams 
 as to lead to its rejection for that time. In this masterly 
 speech, the Primate refers to our Prelate as an authority 
 entitled to veneration in that assembly, and was at a time 
 
 383 
 
384 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 when those troubles and civil dissensions were commencing 
 which preceded the downfall of Church and Monarchy. 
 
 " The civil power," said he, in the course of his address, 
 " is a Divine ordinance, set up to be a terror to the evil, 
 and an encouragement to good works. This is the whole 
 compass of the civil power, and' therefore I do here demand, 
 with the most learned iishop Davendnt, that within a few 
 days did sit by my side, in the eleventh question of his 
 Determ'inationes, What is there of impiety, what of unlaw- 
 fulness^ what unbecoming either the holiness or calling of a 
 Priest, in terrifying the bad or comforting the good subject : 
 in repressing of sin, or punishing of sinners ? For this is 
 the whole and entire act of civil jurisdiction. It is in its own 
 nature repugnant to no persons, to no function, to no sort or 
 condition of men ; let them hold themselves never so holy, never 
 so seraphical, it becomes them very well to repress sin, and 
 punish sinners ; tlmt is to say, to exercise in a moderate 
 manner civil jurisdiction, if the Sovereign shall require it" 
 This is by no means an exact quotation of the passage in 
 Davenant, its language is considerably softerted, and 
 perhaps of the whole volume it is the Quaestio which 
 would perhaps be least readily acceded to in these 
 days of unbridled toleration and unrestrained licence 
 on the right hand and on the left; in these days of 
 " Liberationalism^" "Sectarianism," " Salvationalism," Law- 
 lessness, and every form of fanatical excess. It is needless 
 to add that the subject of civil right and jurisdiction was 
 by no means distinctly understood at that period. There 
 was great confusion between the Pontificale and the 
 Regale,^ the things of Caesar and the things of God, as 
 indeed there is in our own time. But we will give the 
 passage in its entirety as it stands in Davenant's resolu- 
 tions, only premising once more that it is a' translation of 
 
 1 See author's Court of Final Appeal, ch. v., " Royal Supremacy," p. 159 ; 
 also author's "Appellate Jurisdiction of the Crown" (a paper read at the 
 Norwich Church Congress), p. 26. 
 
DAVENANT'S "DETERMINATIONS" 385 
 
 the original, which is in Latin. " We must remember that 
 each jurisdiction is occupied in promoting righteousness 
 and restraining iniquity : but with this difference, that 
 merely spiritual jurisdiction endeavours to effect this by 
 spiritual means, while to this the civil adds the coercive 
 measures and external punishments, such as imprison- 
 ments, fines and bodily chastisements. I ask, therefore, 
 what is there either impious or unlawful, or contrary to the 
 sanctity or office of the priesthood, in its repressing, not 
 only by spiritual punishments, but also, where authority is 
 granted, by civil, and corporal in addition — heretics, schis- 
 matics, and all obstinate offenders and disturbers of the 
 Christian state. To resist and restrain impiety by either 
 mode is surely a good and praiseworthy action, and in its 
 own nature by no means unsuited to any character, however 
 sacred. The blessed Angels, at the command of God, do 
 not think it contrary to their sanctity to inflict corporal 
 punishments on the guilty : why then should the Angels of 
 the Church {i.e., the Bishops) think it unlawful to adjudge 
 the same offenders to deserved punishment, when their 
 Sovereign, who is God's vicegerent in the land, so decrees 
 it. For an act of civil jurisdiction is not in its own nature 
 unsuited to any person, however sacred, nor is it incon- 
 sistent with the office of the Priesthood." It will be 
 noticed that the Archbishop has considerably condensed 
 and toned down Davenant's language — which is certainly 
 strong as to the coercive or coactive power of the sovereign 
 or state. But the Archbishop's allusion to our Bishop on 
 such an occasion, and his citing him in such a distinguished 
 assembly proves the opinion at that time entertained of 
 his works, his character, and his learning, and that he was 
 evidently regarded as one of the most capable theologians, 
 and sound divines, of the day in which he lived. Williams' 
 opinion is no slight one, for he was one of the most ac- 
 complished theologians of his time, although his character 
 was much marred by his insatiable ambition — "one who 
 
 2B 
 
386 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 would have been truly great," as Mr Russell says, "if 
 he had been less ambitious." ^ It will be remettibered that 
 it was partly due to his influence, when Lord Keeper, and 
 just after his advancement to the See of Lincoln^ that Laud 
 was appointed Bishop of St David's, Carey, Bishop of 
 Exeter, and Davenant, Bishop of Salisbury, all being conse- 
 crated on the same day, and King James w£is much under 
 his influence and that of good Bishop Andrewes. And 
 it was under his influence that a Committee of the Lords was 
 appointed to settle peace in the Church (March 21, 1641), 
 the scheme to be submitted, when ready, to Parliament. 
 Williams, who had at this time been restored to his Deanery,^ 
 was chairman of both Committees, and indeed all through 
 the' Davenant period of the Church History was a very 
 shrewd and prominent figure, both in Church and State, 
 and undoubtedly a most able man. He entertained the 
 Committee, as was his wont, with such bountiful cheer as 
 well became a Bishop., " But this," adds Fuller sadly, 
 " we may behold as the last course of all public episcopal 
 treatments, where guests may even now put up their 
 knives, seeing soon after the Voider was called for, which 
 took away all Bishop's lands and most of English hospi- 
 tality." His Committee, which met in the "Jerusalem 
 Chamber in the Dean of Westminster's house," comprised 
 such representative men as Archbishop Ussher, Bishop 
 Morton, Bishop Hall, Drs Ward, Fealty, Twisse, Brown- 
 rigg, Holdsworth, Hachet, Saunderson — " names all of 
 interest from their connection with Fuller," as his bio- 
 grapher says. The testimony, therefore, of this "most 
 
 * Russell's Memorials of Fuller, p. 25. 
 
 ^ " Williams was now parson, prebend, dignitary, dean, and bishop, and all 
 five in one " (Heylin). It was on the occasion of his return hither that his old 
 antagonist, Heylin, preached. After his manner he was falling foul of one of 
 the Puritan party when Dean Williams, who sat in the pew immediately beneath 
 him, striking the pulpit with his staff, said, '* No more on that point, no more 
 on that point, Peter." To whom Heylin : " I have a little more to say, my 
 lord, and then I have done," and continued in the same strain. The Dean 
 afterwards sent for the sermon. 
 
DAVENANT'S m DETERMINATIONS " 387 
 
 munificentj learned and hospitable Williams," is one by 
 no means to be despised, and the " good word " of such an 
 authority is worthy of the highest respect and deference. 
 
 Th6 paternal kindness of Bishop Davenant was again 
 evinced in his nephew Fuller's biehalf, whom, in 1634, he 
 collated to the rectory of Broad-Windsor, near Bea- 
 minster.iin the county of Dorset The parish of Broad- 
 Windsor, consisting for the most part of a rich vale of 
 meadows and orchards, watered by small brooks and 
 bounded by bold hills (of which Leweston aind PiUesdon 
 are well known), is from five to six miles in length, and 
 from two to three in breadth. The village is nearly at 
 the south-east extremity. The living, however, was 
 sequestered in the time of the Commonwealth, and an- 
 other minister, Penney, a local man, thrust in in his 
 place. Here Fuller's eldest son was born, and baptised 
 in the name of John, at Modurun Church, after his great 
 uncle, and he lived to edit that part of the Worthies 
 which was published after the death of the author. At 
 the Restoration Fuller recovered his Prebendary at Salis- 
 bury, but did not dispossess Penney, whom he heard preach 
 and approved of his sermon, and, finding him doing good 
 work, and a moderate man, left him in peace. 
 
 The work of Davenant's we are considering in this 
 chapter is called The Determinations, or Resolutions of 
 Certain Theological Questions, publicly discussed in the 
 University of Cambridge by the Right Rev. John Dave- 
 nant, D.D., Bishop of Salisbury, formerly Lady Margaret's 
 Professor, first published A.D. 1634. On the title page 
 there is an apt quotation from one of the ante-Nicene 
 Fathers — Davenant's great storehouse for his patristic refer- 
 ences. The real is to be sepdrated from the apparent truth 
 by comprehensive insight and masterly reasoning. Clemens 
 Alexandrinus, Stromata, lib. 7. Davenant also appended a 
 preface to his work, which reached a second edJtiort, to 
 this effect : " Professors of Theology, at the close of Dis- 
 
388 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 putations, are accustomed to pass their sentence on the 
 questions agitated before them. In the discharge of this 
 office at Cambridge, I had to treat with more or less 
 copiousness many theses on various occasions. I was 
 usually compelled to do this in rather an ofT-handed 
 manner: so that any one will look in vain for either 
 exactness of method, or accuracy of diction, in these my 
 treatises. In each of them I have deemed it enough to 
 have laid the foundation for a correct judgment, and to 
 have shewn the weakness of the principal reasons of the 
 adversary. I neither value them so much as to desire to 
 impose them on the public, nor so little as to shame my 
 friends who urged me to do so. If this imperfect work 
 should serve, in a small degree, to form the judgment of 
 the student, I am more than satisfied. For this purpose 
 they were all originally drawn up, and for this they are 
 now designed. This, good reader, is my only preface. In 
 Christ Jesus I bid you farewell, and beg you to commend 
 me in prayer to the same Lord." 
 
 In Mr AUport's translation (1846) from the corrected 
 and enlarged edition of 1639, there is a quotation from the 
 Tavistock Lecture " as specially applicable to the subsequent 
 discussion, and equally suited to shew the object of the 
 republication of them in their present form." 
 
 " We must ever maintain and hope fully to prove that 
 the direct tendency of the Roman Catholic system is to 
 render void the law^ of God — is to substitute other sacrifices 
 and intercessions in the room of that one propitiation, and 
 that one Mediator between God and man, the Lord Jesus 
 Christ — is to produce a narrow and scanty system of morals 
 in the place of that love to God and that love to our 
 neighbour which true Christianity requires. In this cor- 
 
 ^What Bishop Davenant's opinion was on this subject he has thus ex- 
 pressed — " Viderit itaque Romana ecclesia, quae fundamenta fidei Christianae 
 sua potissimum opera gloriatur fuis^e hactenus conservata, an in fundamental- 
 ibus Becalogi non erraverit crasse et damnabiliter : ut de erroribus aliis nihil 
 dicam." — Adfraternam Communionem, p. 98. 
 
DAVENANT'S "DETERMINATIONS" 389 
 
 rupt system, in this defective faith and practice, Roman 
 Catholics are kept, by the practically withholding from 
 them the Word of God, and by the vain and sophistical 
 reasonings with which the obvious declarations of that 
 word are explained away. If once the Roman Catholic 
 can be roused to think — to enquire into the character of 
 his own system — into the authority on which that system 
 is founded — ^^into the plain and obvious meaning of the 
 sacred Scriptures — we are fully persuaded that a most 
 important point is gained, and a great advance made 
 towards his moral, social and religious improvement. And 
 we would therefore earnestly endeavour, by every legiti- 
 mate means, to excite his attention, and to assist him in 
 the fair and full examination of these topics on which 
 we, as Protestants, cannot but apprehend that he is 
 grievously mistaken." — {Tavistock Lecture, lect. i. p. 11, by 
 Rev. Thomas Webster. London, 1836.) 
 
 There were originally in the first edition (1634) forty- 
 nine Questions, which are discussed. But in the second 
 (1639) a fiftieth Question is appended, under this title: 
 " The Roman Church has unjustly taken away the cup 
 from the Laity," and this note has been added : " This 
 important question, a pricis of which we will give our 
 readers, is added to the second edition of the Determina- 
 tions of Bishop Davenant, published at Cambridge in 1639, 
 and to the index of the questions, to which the following 
 note is appended : — Postremam hanc Determinationem, 
 quae serius in Typographi manus venit quam ut una cum 
 caeteris in lucem antea exiret, huic saltern editioni adji- 
 ciendam curavit, ne hie parte literati ulterius frauda- 
 rentur." ^ 
 
 We will now present our readers with a few extracts 
 
 I " This last Determination, which came too late into the printer's hands to 
 permit its seeing the light together with the rest (forty-nine), he has taken 
 care, however, to add to this edition, to prevent the learned being further 
 defrauded of this part." 
 
390 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 from these discussions as illustrations of the way in which 
 Davenant handles his subject. And, first, let us look at 
 Question V., where our Bishop puts forth this thesis — " An 
 infallible determination of faith is not annexed to the Papal 
 chair." We have been told in our day, by the late Roman 
 or Vatican Council, that the Pope is infallible when he 
 speaks from his chair (ex cathedra) on faith or morals. 
 Of course, grant this Papal Infallibility, cadit qucestio, the 
 matter is settled, and all other Roman doctrines must be 
 accepted. This is then the one point of discussion, and 
 this dogma is the pivot doctrine of the whole Romish 
 system, on this the whole Papal edifice is built. Let us 
 hear what Davenant says : — " The Papists think that in the 
 Christian Church there must always exist some external'^ 
 judge, who is able to pronounce infallibly concerning all 
 controversies of faith, and to whom all Christians may sub- 
 mit their belief without doubt or examination. But they 
 expressly exclude God, or the Holy Spirit, speaking in the 
 Scriptures, from this judicial authority ; and they maintain 
 that it belongs to some human being, who is efficient by 
 his presence among the faithful themselves in all ages, who 
 sits in some visible {external, literally) and known tribunal ; 
 and lastly, who can viva voce clearly and publicly define 
 and determine the matters in dispute. After laying down 
 these positions, they are audacious enough to assert ^ that 
 their Roman Pontiff, let him be who he may, is this very 
 judge, to whom this right of determination and this privi- 
 lege of infallibility is annexed." 
 
 Davenant then commences his proof that this Roman 
 Pontiff is not infallible. 
 
 But let us now concern ourselves with the Roman Pon- 
 tiff, to whom we shall show that this privilege of infallible 
 judgment does not belong. 
 
 " For, first, he could not obtain this universal judicial 
 authority over the whole Churph, and that top an alto- 
 
 ' i.e. some judge known by external mark. ^ Greg. Mag. de Valent., lib. 7. 
 
DAVEN ANT'S « DETERMINATIONS " 391 
 
 gether infallible judgment, except by the gift of God ; but 
 God has neither subjected all Christians to this Roman 
 tribunal, nor annexed this privilege of infallibility to the 
 Roman Pontiffs. For if God had desired that the Church 
 should have recourse to the Oracle of Rome in doubtful 
 controversies of the faith. He would undoubtedly have 
 declared in the Holy Scriptures that such a judge had 
 been appointed by Him ; He would have pointed out the 
 Bishop of Rome by name to us ; and lastly, would have 
 ordered us to acquiesce in his decision, as in a voice from 
 heaven. For it is wholly incredible that God should have 
 wished the faith of the whole Church to be dependent on 
 the responses of the Roman Pontiff, and yet not have given 
 Christians any notice about these Pontiffs, their successors, 
 or their See, even so much as by a single word." 
 
 Again — " Besides, if on account of the privilege annexed 
 by Divine power to the Roman Chair, the Bishops of that 
 See were, so to speak, the perpetual dictators of the Uni- 
 versal Church, what reason can our adversaries assign why 
 God Himself should not now, as well as of old, designate 
 this new apostle and supreme judge of the faith by His 
 own immediate and extraordinary call." Is it right that a 
 modern and equivocal race of clergy, of their own free-will 
 and inconsiderate presumption, should assign to the whole 
 world a supreme and infallible judge, about whose decisions 
 it is a sin even to hesitate ? If they mean that their Pontiff 
 is endowed with an extraordinary— -that is, an apostolicdl — 
 privilege of freedom from error, and that too by the ap- 
 pointment of God, they ought to permit God Himself to 
 choose this judge after an extraordinary manner, and to 
 set him over the Church ; for the Spirit bloweth where it 
 listeth itself, and not where the Cardinals of the Roman 
 Church please. 
 
 Davenant then continues his argument. " It appears also 
 from the following argument that the Roman Pontiff is 
 not constituted supreme and infallible judge of the whole 
 
S92 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Church, namely, that he has not received all things neces- 
 sary for exercising this infallibility of judgment. For in 
 order to perceive and find out truth, it is necessary that the 
 mind should be sanctified, illuminated, humble, and'studious 
 of the Divine law, Jbrike natural man receiveth not tke'things 
 of the Spirit of God} and God resistetk the proud, but giveth 
 grace to the humble? But it is a matter fairly confessed by 
 all that some of the Roman Pontiffs, after obtaining posses- 
 sion of the Chair of St Peter, remain natural (animalos) 
 men, blinded, impure, proud, and despisers of the Word of 
 God: to whom, one might more justly affirm a spirit of 
 vanity (vertigo) and error is annexed, than of truth and 
 infallibility." 
 
 Our Bishop then proceeds to show, in the second place, 
 that if such a judge is necessary, that the Church, in con- 
 troverted matters, may have something to rely upon, if this 
 judge be admitted, the Church of God loses all certainty of 
 faith. And here I ask, " First, what must be said of those 
 remote Christians whom neither Papal decrees nor Legates 
 a latere have ever reached, and to whom perhaps the very 
 name and fame bf the Roman Pontiff is entirely unknown } 
 For^ that there are Christians who neither have, nor can have 
 had, any intercourse with the Roman Pontiff, and who have 
 never been acquainted with the canons established by him, 
 is a plain matter of fact. If, then, the Roman Pontiff be 
 the only judge who directs infallibly the whole Church in 
 matters of faith, it is clear that nations remotely placed, 
 and inhabiting countries, but little known (incognita), can 
 receive no advantage from this judge : and therefore that 
 God has not sufficiently provided for their faith and salva- 
 tion, a conclusion which is inconsistent with the Provi- 
 dence of God." It must be confessed that these words 
 were written long before the days when the Roman 
 Catholic bishops can be conveyed from all parts of the 
 
 ^ I Cbi, ii. 14. "James v. 6. 
 
 * Gerson, part i., Serm, in die Ascension. 
 
DAVENANT'S "DETERMINATIONS" 393 
 
 world to Rome to attend a pseudo-CEcumehical Council in 
 a very short time, and the Pontiff can flash his Papal bene- 
 diction by telegraph, but this has only been of late years. 
 
 But leaving the remote parts of the globe, and to come 
 to the limits of Europe itself, the Church has often been 
 without its infallible judge (if the Pope be' that), or at least 
 has not known who he was, or where he was to be found. 
 
 " For Onuphrius," our Bishop observes, " enumerates 
 thirty schisms to be found in this very Roman Church, 
 of whom one lasted fifty years. But during the whole of 
 this interval^ the Roman Church was double : each Pontiff 
 had his own Cardinals and supporters, set himself up as 
 successor of St Peter, and at length the whole Church 
 was plunged into so great uncertainty, that it was utterly 
 unable to determine which of the two was the possessor 
 of the Chair of St Peter.^ Where then was that visible 
 judge? where that sure tribunal? where that infallible 
 settler of controversies ? If God had appointed the cer- 
 tain determination of the faith to rest upon the Roman 
 Pontiff, ' he would have taken care, above all things, that 
 the Church should not be thus uncertain about this very 
 Roman Pontiff. But even granting the Pope to obtain 
 his Chair without a rival, yet there will be no certainty 
 in our faith, if it depend on his infallibility. For the 
 privilege of freedom from error, according to the doctrine 
 of the Romanists, is only his, inasmuch as he is the legiti- 
 mate successor of St Peter. Therefore the assertion that this 
 or that Pope cannot err, pre-supposes the truth of this pro- 
 position. This Pope is the legitimate successor of St Peter? 
 But how slippery and frail a foundation is this ! How un- 
 fit to form the foundation of the certainty of the Catholic 
 faith ! For, first, this very opinion, that the Roman Pon- 
 tiffs are the successors of St Peter, is founded on the faith 
 of history, and not on that of the Scriptures. Wherefore 
 
 . ? Gerson, part i., De signis ruituB Eccles, 
 2 If St Peter's primacy over the Apostolic Church is granted. 
 
394 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 I assent to this succession, but by the ordinary mode of 
 acquiring belief in any matter of human knowledge (credu- 
 litate humana et acquisita, literally, by a human and 
 acquired credence^ not. with a Catholic and theological faith. 
 Moreover, granting it even certain, as an article of Catholic 
 Faith, that the Popes are the successors of St Peter in the 
 See of Rome, yet it cannot be believed, even as a matter 
 of historical faith, that this gift of infallible judgment, 
 which was personal to St Peter, is transmitted to his 
 successors : for historians, who have mentioned many 
 heretical Popes, appeal against such a decision. Lastly, 
 let us assume that this privilege is annexed to the true 
 and legitimate successors of St Peter ; yet since to the 
 true succession a canonical election is required, which is 
 free from every kind of compact, simony and other acts, 
 too familiar to the Court of Rome, who can guarantee, 
 who can believe, that any Pontiff is elected without some- 
 thing to vitiate this succession (absque vitio)." But if he 
 is raised to that See simoniacally, he receives not the 
 spirit of Christ, but the spirit of falsehood} What a 
 wretched mockery of certainty, therefore,' must the faith 
 of Christians have, which rests upon the good faith and 
 integrity of the Cardinals ! For if they are guilty of any 
 corruption in electing a Pope, they set over the Christian 
 world, not an infallible judge of the faith, nor a true suc- 
 cessor of St Peter, but a robber, and a successor of Simon 
 Magus, Away, then, with so uncertain a source for the 
 certainty of others." 
 
 " I will now add in the third and last place, that this 
 very Roman Pontiff, whom they wish us to acknowledge 
 as an infallible judge, was inot' acknowledged as such by 
 the Papists themselves in old times, nor indeed is he yet * 
 acknowledged by them. For the opinion of those who 
 
 ' Gratian, caus. i. qusest. I. 
 
 ^ It must be remembered that these words were written more than 250 
 years ago. 
 
DAVENANT'S "DETERMINATIONS" 395 
 
 taught that a Council is superior to the Pope has always 
 obtained great reputation among the Romanists them- 
 selves ; and the whole of this class have destroyed the 
 primacy of the Pope and his fictitious privilege of infalli- 
 bility. Wherefore they thought that an appeal would lie 
 from the Pope to a Council in matters of faith : ^ they ex- 
 pressly declared that the decisions of Popes did not oblige 
 to believe : and lastly, they demonstrated that the Pope 
 was a member of the Church, who might err, and might 
 be corrected, or even', deposed by a Council. It is there- 
 fore most worthy of observation that this very citadel of 
 the Roman faith was not first stormed and levelled with 
 the ground by Luther and Calvin, but long^ ago by most 
 learned Romanists : and also by two most celebrated 
 Councils, those of Constance and Basle. How miserable 
 then is it, in modern Papists, to endeavour to extort the 
 certainty of their faith, in controverted matters, from one 
 who, their predecessors have not hesitated to affirm, may 
 be a member liable to mistake, erroneous and even an 
 heretic, in the very Chair itself. Let us add, that the 
 whole of the schoolmen in theology (quod tota schola 
 theologorum docet) teach,^ that the Church does not 
 manifest the same faith in the successors of the 
 Apostles, which she is wont to do in the Prophets and 
 Apostles themselves," 
 
 After comparing the authority of the. Popes * and that 
 of the Apostles, Davenant goes on to say, " therefore the 
 Papal decrees are received by the old Romanists them- 
 selves under this MmitaXion^-rif they are not against God, 
 if they are not opposed to the Gospel!'^ And again, 
 " Gregory de Valentia ^ teaches that the Pope as a 
 private person may err in clear matters, and wish to 
 
 ' Gerson, "Serm. coram Cone. Const. iX.Kn.'ltasA. An liccat a Papa afpellare." 
 
 "^ Aquin., qusest. disp. De fide, art. 10. 
 
 ' Gerson, part 3, De Vit spirit, sect. 2, coroU. 7. 
 
 * Mirand Theor. 16. ° Anal., Jib. 8, cap. 3. 
 
396 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 obtrude his error on the Church ; but in controverted 
 matters, as a public person, that he cannot determine 
 against the Faith. How absurd and puerile is such a 
 sentiment ! For what the Pope thinks as a private 
 person, he will bring forward when he enters on the 
 public seat of judgment, and he who is liable to error, 
 in matters which are manifest and clearer than the sun, 
 would be far more likely to be blind in obscure things 
 which have never before been elucidated. But an inti- 
 mation which we find in the same Gregory will prevent 
 us submitting our faith to this judge : for he (Gregory) 
 informs us that the Pope, if he falls into secret heresy, 
 loses his Pontifical authority. If he falls from his Papal 
 authority, and is deposed in the sight of God, he loses 
 the Chair (of authority), if he had any such before, and 
 also the infallible assistance of the Holy Spirit. Since, 
 therefore, the faithful, who are unable to search the 
 hearts of others, do not know for certain whether the 
 Pope cherishes some secret heresy within him or not, it 
 follows of necessity that they cannot know whether he has 
 the infallible authority of determining in matters of faith." 
 " Nor has Bellarmine^ defended this privilege very stren- 
 uously, for he grants to us that the Pope, as Pope, even 
 with his assembly and counsellors, may err in questions of 
 fact ; and secondly, as a private Doctor, he may err in 
 questions of faith. Lastly, he confesses that many Roman- 
 ists maintain ^ that the Roman Pontiff, making a deter- 
 mination with any particular Council, may err ; nor does 
 he himself dare to affirm that this proposition ought to be 
 considered contradictory to the Catholic Faith. What 
 then ! shall I acknowledge him to be an infallible judge 
 whom the Catholic faith does not acknowledge to be free 
 from the danger of error, not only when alone, but even 
 when supported by a particular Council ? But at last, 
 they come down to this proposition, that the Pope sup- 
 
 ^DePontif. Rom,, lib; ii. cap. 2. ^De Coueil., lib. ii. cap. 5, 
 
DAVENANT'S "DETERMINATIONS" 397 
 
 ported by a general Council cannot err in defining doctrines 
 of faith. The Pope, then, will be an, infallible judge, at least 
 if the assistance of a General Council be afforded him." 
 
 Bishop Davenant then goes into the arguments for and 
 against General Councils which he says are " not absolutely 
 necessary," because " for the first three hundred years the 
 Church was without General Councils,''^ and yet it remained 
 safe against heresies, persecutions, schisms, defects, and all 
 the machinations of devils and men." But it must be 
 borne in mind since the late Vatican Council decreed the 
 personal infallibility of the Pope when he speaks from his 
 chair (ex cathedra) on faith and morals, it is no longer a 
 quration of Pope or Pope and Council — either particular 
 or general, i.e. oecumenical, for that matter is settled once 
 for all as far as the Roman Church is concerned. The final 
 infallible arbiter in faith and morals is the Pope for the 
 time being, whoever he may be, who fills St Peter's chair, 
 which by-the-bye (if there be such an authority) should 
 rather have been set up at Antioch, where St Peter certainly 
 was, than Rome, about which no such certitude exists. 
 
 " If then," Davenant concludes this question, " the Pope 
 does not enjoy his infallible judgment without the assist- 
 ance of an oecumenical council, the infallible determination 
 of the faith neither was for many ages, nor is now, residing 
 in the Papal Chair — nay, the Church may last to the very 
 end of the worldwithout such a judge." 
 
 Our author pursues the same subject again in his 28th 
 Question, in which this thesis is maintained : " The juris- 
 diction of the Pope is not universal." During the discus- 
 sion he meets the claims of the Roman Pontiff to decide 
 matters of faith, and that this decision is binding on all 
 Christians, as that true and infallible oracle of the Holy 
 Spirit, with the following arguments : — 
 
 "The privileges which are the right of the supreme 
 Lord alone, those a servant cannot usurp without the guilt 
 
 ^Bellarmine, De Condi., lib. i. cap. lo. 
 
398 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 of treason, and to wish that his voice should be heard by 
 all the sheep of Christ, without any exception ; to wish 
 that his command should be obeyed by all Christialns, 
 without any refusal,-^pertains' alone to the dignity of Him 
 who heretofore said. My sheep hear My voice (John x. 29). 
 Be ye not called Master, because one is your Master, even 
 Christ. The Catholic Church does not admit the doctrine of 
 decrees of any others concerning faith, merely on the ground 
 of their assertion, but because they have been able to prove by 
 Canonical Authors that Christ so meant^ 
 
 " Moreover, he who prescribes the faith to the Catholic 
 Church,^ and that by the ordination of Christ, ought to be 
 himself altogether precluded from a possibility of erring. 
 For should he err (and this may happen to a Pope), he 
 would endeavour to obtrude his heresy upon others : and 
 since it is not allowable for subjects to judge of the sen- 
 tence of the Universal Judge, Christians must fall into the 
 depths of the errors with their blind leader. Gregory the 
 Great employs this very argumerit against John (the Faster) 
 of Constantinople, If one bishop be called Universal, this one 
 falling, the Church will fall with him.?' 
 
 " Add to this, that Christ was not accustomed to delegate 
 to His ministers, by special command, a jurisdiction, the 
 power of administering which he knew that they would 
 never exercise. And here, let the Jesuits answer me, who 
 of the Pontiffs could ever determine and define all contro- 
 versies of faith, arising everywhere in the world, by his 
 judicial authority?" for the Church is widely extended, 
 and many Christians may not have even heard of the 
 name of Rome. 
 
 " Lastly, if Christ had seen fit to bind the faith of 
 Christians by the definitions and decrees of Popes, who can 
 doubt but either Christ himself, or Paul, or surely Peter, or 
 at all events some one of the Apostles, would have adver- 
 tised the Church, by one word at least, concerning this 
 
 1 Augustine, epistle 19. ^Epist., lib. vi. epist, 24. 
 
DAVENANT'S "DETERMINATIONS" 399 
 
 judge in ordinary to^ the whole Church. . . . But most 
 unluckily for Rome, there is not a word about the Bishop 
 of Rome having, the government of the whole Church, nor 
 of his prescribing the rule of faith. If Christ had intended 
 this, Pontiff to be acknowledged for such an one, surely He 
 wotild have announced him as such to His Church.'' 
 
 This subject is still furrier pursued in Question xlvii., 
 in which Davenant discusses the thesis : " Neither Peter 
 nor the Pope of Rome was constituted by Christ supreme 
 head of the whole Church." Speaking of " the keys," 
 Davenant observes — 
 
 " But we deny that a supremacy^ of power is conveyed 
 in these words : we deny, moreover, that they were directed 
 to Peter alone, for at that time Peter, as an individual, 
 represented the Church, so that the keys are promised to 
 the other apostles, just as they had been to Peter. In 
 short, if the keys had been promised to Peter alone, they 
 would have been delivered to him alone. But that they 
 were delivered equally to all is plain from Matt, xviii. 
 18, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in 
 heaven. And still more clearly in John xx. 22-3, Receive 
 ye the Holy Ghost ^ whose soever sins ye remit they are 
 remitted. The keys, therefore, are not given to Peter, 
 either aldne or principally, but to all the apostles equally 
 and in common." And again, " What have the keys of 
 Peter to do with a supremacy at all? What have the 
 keys given to all the apostles to do with establishing the 
 supremacy of the Bishop of Rome alone ? " 
 
 ' If St Peter's primacy over the Apostolic College cannot be maintained, 
 still less can the Pope's supremacy. But shall we say to the " new Vatican 
 doctrine which gives to the Pope absolute authority (totam plenitudinem 
 potestatis) over the whole Church, priests and bishops, as over every indivi- 
 dual layman — an authority which is td be at once truly episcopal and specifi- 
 cally papal— ■which is to comprehend in itself everything affecting only faith, 
 morality, the duties of life, discipline — which can immediately seize, punish, 
 command and prohibit everyone, the monarch as well as the day-labourer " ? 
 — DoUinger's letter to the Archbishop of Munich on the Infallibility of the 
 Pope, p. II. 
 
400 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 In the remainder of this Question Davenant proves that 
 Peter was not head over the rest of the apostles de jure, 
 nor did they yield any subjection to him as a sovereign 
 over them de facto. As to the fact of Peter ever having 
 been at RomCj there is the greatest uncertainty about it, 
 and as to building any theory, it is simply absurd. For 
 that (and this is the main point in the dispute) the pleni- 
 tude of Peter's power should descend, to the Bishops of 
 that city in which he should die, and that on them, alone, 
 it was firmly bolted for perpetuity as if with a skip-nail^' 
 so far from being built upon the faith of historians " that 
 they are but vain conjectures, and weak reasonings of the 
 advocates for the papacy. Owing to this, Bellarmine 
 himself begins to waver, and at last confesses that this 
 supremacy of the Roman Pontiff is mo^ founded on Divine 
 right.-^ It must be observed (says he) that although 
 "PERHAPS" it is not by Divine right, that the Roman 
 Pontiff, as Roman Pontiff, succeeds Peter, yet that it apper- 
 tains to the Catholic faith (to believe as much). If it is 
 "perhaps" not of Divine right, "perhaps" also it has no 
 necessary connection with the Catholic faith ; more, it is 
 "perhaps'' even opposed to the Catholic faith. For (let 
 Bellarmine contradict it as much as he pleases) it is no 
 more deducible from the Scriptures that the Bishop of 
 Rome, or anyone else, is the rightful successor to Peter in 
 the Presidency of the whole Church, by Divine right, than 
 he is to Paul, John, James, or any one of the apostles, who 
 (as we have before shewn) equally with Peter, obtained a 
 universal power over the Church." 
 
 It comes, then, to this, that the members of the Latin 
 obedience have only a "perhaps" to build their colossal 
 system, which hinges on the Roman supremacy, upon. 
 Their great champion Bellarmine avows that "perhaps" 
 there may be Divine right, but there is no certitude. 
 Imagine staking one's salvation on a "perhaps." Yet 
 
 ^ De Pontif, Rom., lib. ii, cap. 12. 
 
DAVENANT'S « DETERMINATIONS " 401 
 
 this is the crucial point of the whole system, it is its 
 central hinge and it breaks down. This connecting link, 
 which should have been the firmest, strongest; tightest, 
 the most consistent and persistent, and which should have 
 soldered and welded together the chain of evidence with 
 adamantine links and indissoluble bonds, grappling the 
 whole argument together with hooks of steel, and about 
 which there should not have been a shadow, or scintilla- 
 tion, of a doubt, is found to be the Iveakest and most 
 brittle, and snaps asundfer At the first breath of a touch. 
 In fact, instead of being a chain of conclusive reasoning it 
 turns out to be a rope of sand— an e'lSwXov and Kevij 
 (TKia (an empty shadow), and the whole Roman edifice 
 crumbles into dust. The " missing link " is gone and can 
 nowhere be found, so that the chain breaks in two in 
 our hands — for in reasoning a single flaw destroys the 
 whole chain of argument. Well may Davenant conclude 
 this Question in the following words : — " Let us run 
 through every age of the Church, and I think there will be 
 found none in which there does not exist some public 
 testimony of the Church against this despised and deserv- 
 edly opposed Roman supremacy. More than this, in the 
 Council of Constance, and that of Basle, the same doc- 
 trine was settled by the unanimous votes of the Roman 
 Church itself, wherein it was taught, that a Pope may err 
 both in faith and morals : and it was decreed in both that 
 he ought to yield submission to a General Council, and all 
 these were censured as heretics who should resist this decree.^ 
 
 " All Papists, therefore, who vehemently hold and obsti- 
 nately maintain that their Pontiff is not to be subject to 
 the Universal Church, but ought to preside over it as the 
 Commander-in-Chief, are the real heretics." 
 
 Having exposed the sophistry of the Roman Supremacy 
 
 — that " Question of Questions," as Mumford, S.J., calls 
 
 it — details may be regarded of little account, but it may 
 
 iSee L'Enfant's Council a/ Constance, vol. ii. p. 336. 
 
 2 C 
 
402 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 not prove unacceptable to our readers to hear what our 
 Bishop has to say about that unaccountable piece . of 
 Church discipline, and a most serious detriment and de- 
 privation, the withholding the cup from the laity. It is 
 Davenant's fiftieth Determination, and is only found in the 
 last (1639) edition. The title of it is " The Roman Church 
 has unjustly taken away the Cup from the Laity," and is 
 most comprehensive and exhaustive, full of trenchant logic 
 In it he says — "The argument, derived from the (original) 
 Institution, and the act of the Institutor Himself has so 
 perplexed Romanists, that they have been compelled to 
 allow ^ that the receiving of both kinds is necessary, as far 
 as regards the sacrament itself, being instituted under both 
 kinds ; but their quibble is, that it is not necessary, as far 
 as the receivers generally are concerned : but that it is suf- 
 ficient if it be taken entire by some, namely, by the Priests. 
 But this distinction of Bellarmine destroys itself. For sacra- 
 ments are not instituted for their own sakes, seeing that they 
 are corporeal things, and, as regards themselves, incapable 
 of sense, and consequently of spiritual grace; but with a 
 view to men endowed with reason, and made partakers of 
 grace through the Sacraments. Seeing, therefore, that the 
 sacraments were instituted for the sake of the receivers, as 
 this is an ingredient essential to the character of a sacra- 
 ment, it possesses this, its essentiality, for the advantage of 
 all those who have a right to participate in the sacraments. 
 The very words, moreover, of Christ, Drink ye all of this, 
 were themselves used in reference to the receivers, and not 
 the sacrament itself, and they take in all those for whom 
 the blood of Christ was to be shed. To presume, then, as 
 Bellarmine does, to exclude any who are right partakers 
 from a reception of the blessed cup, is equivalent to main- 
 taining that they are to be excepted also from the benefit 
 of the blood shed. In short, since the Romanists confess 
 that some, and that by virtue of the institution are bound 
 
 ' Bellarm., De Ewh., lib. iv. cap. 27. 
 
DAVENANT'S "DETERMINATIONS" 403 
 
 to partake in both kinds, it rests with themselves to show 
 us the existence of a twofold institution of the Lord's 
 Supper : one which necessarily obliges the Priests to receive 
 in both kinds : another which prescribes, or at least permits, 
 Priests to exclude the people of God generally from a 
 participation of the cup. But hitherto there is only one, 
 and an uniform institution of the most holy Eucharist 
 known to the Church : and this, if it has an obligatory 
 power, is either binding on all equally, or none. They, 
 therefore, who in spite of the institution of Christ exclude 
 some (namely, all tbe laity) from the communion of the cup, 
 are equally at liberty to make the same exceptions as to 
 their partaking of the Communion of the Body : and at 
 length the matter will come to this — that is, the Priests 
 alone, who are under obligations to be partakers of the 
 Lord's Supper, by virtue of the institution : all the rest to 
 be admitted by favour, and at the pleasure of ecclesiastics. 
 The pretence usually made in reference to this point that 
 the Apostles were Priests, and received both kinds, because tJtey 
 were Priests, and not as a portion of the faithful, is frivolous 
 and contrary to the Roman Church. It is a frivolous and 
 vain notion, because the cup was administered to them on 
 the same grounds, and witih the same view as the Bread was 
 in the first, instance ; now the Bread was given, not because 
 they were Priests, but because they were believers : as the 
 Papists do indeed ackhowledge, seeing that they allow the 
 Bread, not only to some of the laity, but even to females, 
 who are altogether excluded from assuming the sacerdotal 
 rank. But Bellarmine is, in this case, upholding a notion 
 at variance with the institution of the Roman Church, and 
 contrary to received custom. For if the cup is due to 
 Priests because they are Priests, why is it denied to the 
 clergy just as much as the laity when they are not person- 
 ally officiating ? ^ The Apostles, in this instance of the 
 first supper, were not officially engaged, but were recipients 
 
 ' Concil. Trid. Sep. xxi. (which is fifth under Pius IV.), can. 2. 
 
404 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 merely : Christ, however, made it evident that the Eucharist 
 was to be communicated to them under both kinds." 
 
 Meeting the argument of the Romans that in the Corin- 
 thian Church the sacrament was in two kinds, but in that 
 of Jerusalem — St James' Church — only in one kind; our 
 Bishop says : " I answer that there is no evidence to this 
 effect, nor do the adherents of Rome themselves, who point 
 us to the liturgy of James,^ think so ; for in that there is a 
 clear mention of the cup as well as the bread being ex- 
 hibited to the people. But the Romanists are not agreed 
 amongst themselves whether those words should be con- 
 sidered to refer to sacramental or to common bread. Lyra^ 
 makes the words accommodate both. If we were to grant 
 (which, however, is not so very likely) that thp,t passage 
 should be understood to relate to the sacred supper, yet we 
 have an answer ready. As in reference to an ordinary 
 meal. Scripture, by a figure of speech,* under one term 
 bread (Gen. xliii. 45), includes all that is necessary for the 
 perfect refreshment of the body ; so in this celestial banquet 
 (it includes) all that is necessary to a perfect sacramental 
 refreshment. If they admit in the foregoing words this 
 figurative mode of expression is made use of, the whole 
 strength of the argument is gone." 
 
 Again he observes, "The Papists are accustomed to 
 summon to their aid, as a support of their forlorn cause, 
 certain other customs of the ancient church ; which it is not 
 
 1 Biblioth, Pair., torn. i. p. 19. (See Faber's Difficulties of Romanism, 
 p. 522.) 
 
 * Lyra, a learned Jew, who embraced Christianity, flourished about 1300, 
 wrote many learned comments on the Bible, in which he reprehended many of 
 the reigning abuses of the times. It is said that Martin Luther borrowed from 
 his works much of that light which ushered in the Reformation. Hence that 
 distich — 
 
 " Si Lyra non lyrasset, 
 Lutherus non saltanet." 
 
 " If Lyra had not harped on profanation, 
 Luther had never planned the Reformation." 
 ' Synecdoche, when a part is put for the whole. 
 
DAVENANT'S "DETERMINATIONS" 405 
 
 however, necessary to refute seriatim. It is enough for us 
 thatin the solemn and ordinary partaking of the Eucharist, 
 so far were the andient fathers from sanctioning the peoples 
 being deprived of the blessed cup by any law which the 
 Tridentine Fathers have done, that they considered that a 
 dividing of this one and the same mystery could not take 
 place without a person's incurring the charge of having 
 committed a great crime." 
 
 Bishop Davenant brings another grave charge against 
 this disciplijie, and discusses the perfect constitution of the 
 sacrament, "and here a twofold perfection comes under 
 our consideration ; one is that which we call essential or 
 integral; the other we ^zS}LCsX!i signification ox representa- 
 tion. Neither of these is it allowable, by enacting any set 
 law, to violate ; as regards the former, all sound theologians 
 are agreed that the form was prescribed by Christ, that 
 the matter made use of by Him, in the holy Eucharist, is 
 altogether essential to the complete perfection of sacra- 
 ment." If there be not the right /bn« and the right ^natter 
 there cannot be a valid sacrament ; and as there were two 
 kinds conjointly, not one only, the two must be made use 
 of, as a unit. Besides which, the tw6 kinds exhibit to the 
 faithful the thihgs so signified, and the sacrament was 
 instituted for spiritual refreshment — bread and wine being 
 the outward visible sigris, ordained by Christ, which the 
 Lord hath commanded to be received. The wine poured 
 out represents: the blood-shedding, and commemorates the 
 death of Christ. 
 
 Davenant passes on to the argument that there can be 
 no right to deprive the laity of their just inheritance, as 
 they; equally with all believers, have a right to the privileges 
 of this sacrament.' Nor have the clergy, who ^x& ministers 
 •not lords over Gods heritage, any more right to keep back 
 part of the sacrament than they have to preach a mutilated 
 gospel, and not declare the whole truthof Christ's message. 
 
 These are the more popular arguments *^hich Davenant 
 
4o6 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 discusses, but there are others of a more recondite char- 
 acter, which he passes under review by the equality of the 
 laity with the clergy, and the danger to those who have 
 thought otherwise, if the cup were restored, and that people 
 might be led to think more of in the taking than the con- 
 secration of the Eucharist. But we are convinced that the 
 real reason is the unchangeableness of the Roman system 
 — this is the last and greatest argument — ^'For" (as Gerson 
 remarks very truly) " it would follow that the Roman Church 
 has hitherto been niistaken in her decisions concerning this 
 sacrament, and that general Councils have erred in faith 
 and good manners" 
 
 " I answer," says Davenant, " the consequence Gerson 
 feared would indeed follow, and however true as it is, the 
 Roman Church ought not to err for ever in not confessing 
 that she has erred. ... In short, every Church ought to 
 be more solicitous about divine truth than for maintaining 
 its own authority. Let Augustine^ advise us. If the 
 Church Jiave erred in any provincial Council it ought to be 
 amended by that of a fuller assembly ; if any error have been 
 committed in a full and general Council, the error of the 
 former must be amended by the authority of the latter. 
 
 We may then come to the conclusion that the Church 
 of Rome had not, even from the beginning, any just reason 
 for taking away the cup from the laity ; nor does there 
 exist any good reason now, why she should not, in 
 justice, restore what has been unjustly withheld." 
 
 The different reasons alleged by the Tridentines for 
 withholding the cup to the laity are then considered 
 seriatim, and fully replied to at some length. 
 
 Their first great reason is the danger of spilling the 
 wine — a hazard probable where there are a great number 
 of communicants. To which our Bishop replies that, grant- 
 ing that great respect is due to the visible signs and due 
 reverence, yet he says, " When we are inquiring about the 
 ^ Lib. ii,, De Bapt. contra Donat., cap. 3, 
 
DAVENANT'S "DETERMINATIONS" 407 
 
 reverence which ought to be manifested in the use of the 
 sacred Eucharist, it is absurd to urge the disuse and with- 
 drawal of the cup, under that pretext, from the whole 
 believing people of Christ. Reverence towards the sacra- 
 ment consists of partaking of it in a religious manner 
 agreeably to the intention of Him who instituted it : not in 
 a necessity of abstaining according to the tyrannical regula- 
 tion of the Romish Church." Besides, in the early ages/ of 
 TertuUian, and after Constantine's conversion, the spacious 
 temples were filled with worshippers, and it is absurd to 
 suppose that suifficient care could not be taken. 
 
 Another objection made is that communion under two 
 kinds is less profitable when the fervour and devotion of 
 Christians has become wealk. As if depriving people of 
 religious privileges would make them more religious. So 
 did not the Primitive Church act. " For though she might, 
 when the fervour of the people began to grow cold, omit 
 assembling the laity, or admitting them; to daily com- 
 munion, as used to be the custom of the Primitive Church ; 
 yet she never forced the people by any set law and the 
 terror of punishment to relinquish frequent communion." 
 
 The next objection may interest the " total abstainers" 
 or members of the Blue Ribbon Army. " Many persons 
 have a dislike to wine, and are abstinents either by nature or 
 education. What, therefore, are such persons to do ? Must 
 they abstain from the communion altogether ? " " I answer," 
 says Davenant, " never was there a more unjust or foolish 
 scheme thought ofi It is unjust that, merely for the sake 
 of one man in a thousand, who is abstemious, the whole 
 multitude of believers must be deprived of a participation 
 in the cup bestowed by Christ. It is foolish to reason thus. 
 There are some few abstemious persons to whom it is diffi- 
 cult to determine how the Eucharist is to be administered, 
 therefore the Council of Trent did rightly in making a law 
 not to allow the cup to any of the laity ^ at all. Innocent 
 
 ' Bellarmine, JJe EucAar., lib. iv. cap; 24, 
 
4o8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 VIII. acted somewhat more justly, when, on account of 
 deficiency of wine among the Norwegians, he did not 
 forthwith interdict the use of the cup to all Europe, but 
 allowed the Norwegians to communicate without wine." 
 The Primitive Church did not do so. Any abstainer could 
 risk enough for the purposes of the sacrament 
 
 Another objection of Bellarmine regards the popular 
 scarcity of wine, and he instances the Japanese. " To which 
 we reply," says Davenant, " that the point in question is 
 not whether the Japanese, or any other nations who find it 
 impossible to procure wine for the service of the Eucharist, 
 do right in celebrating it in one kind only; but whether 
 the Roman Church was acting justly, when, under an 
 anathema, she deprives the Italians, French, Germans, 
 English, and of course all the Christian world, of a par- 
 ticipation of the cup, because of the scarcity of wine in 
 Japan." 
 
 In the Tanner Manuscripts at the Bodleian, we find two 
 letters of Bishop Davenant, written from Salisbury in 1634. 
 The first about some books he had received, and complaints 
 as to his chaplain's sermon, and the second relates the 
 death of his sister, With whom he resided at the Palace, 
 Mrs Townson. The first was written in January, and the 
 second in December. 
 
 Salute in Christo. 
 
 I receaved from London since I last wrote vnto you, twentie bookes, 
 wch I suppose came from Mr Daniel ; they were directed vnto mee, 
 but no letter came wth them. When y other shall bee delivered to 
 Mr Ireland, I have alreadie given him direction how to bestow them. 
 For those wch are to bee sent back to Cambridg by Mr Daniel, I 
 desire they may bee bestowed as you think fitt. I would have one 
 handsomly bound vp given to Queen's Colledg Librarie ; for y« rest 
 you may give them, Vnbound. Let my nephew Fuller pay for y' bind- 
 ing.' In yP Determination wch .1 sent after y^.rest, there is a passage, 
 wherii^ I coniecture a certain iniracle quoted out of Hales to be:e 
 foisted in to his woorkes by some who desired to countenance y' devise 
 of Concomitancy ; hut I have since viewed y* place in a verie ancient 
 
BAVEN ANT'S "LETTERS" 409 
 
 edidon wch Dr Barmston ;has,,& I finde y^ miracle there related, iust 
 as it is in y= new editions. Yf therfore you shall reserv that Deter- 
 jnination for another impression,, I would have those few lines wherin 
 toy toriieqture is expressed dashed out ; vnles you cann in y" mean 
 time learn that in some more ancient written Copie there is no such 
 miracle mentioned. I pray when you write to mee again let mee 
 know y° particular, wch you conceaved to bee offensivein my Chaplains 
 sermon, that I may conferr with him about it, at his return. Thus 
 wth my love remembred to your selfe, I comitt you and yours to 
 y' protection of y* Almightie, and rest ever 
 
 Your verie loving freind 
 Jan. 27, 1634. • Jo. SARtJ. 
 
 [Endorsed; — ] To his woorthie freind Dr Ward Master of Sidney 
 CoUedg in Cambridg give this. 
 
 Let this letter bee sent to the Carrier of Cambridg wth Speed. 
 
 Salute in Christo. 
 
 I pswade my selfe you have heard ere this, of y= death of my dear 
 Sister ; wch as it has been a iust cause vnto mee of much sorrow ; so 
 has it interrupted those businesses wch I had begunn to take in hand. 
 Notw[ith]standing to satisfie your desire, I have finished & now sent 
 vnto you another Determination, in stead of Gratia iustificans non 
 amittitur. I have also sett vppon y= back of it, a short epistle to 
 y° Reader, wch I hould to bee preface enough to a woork of small 
 importance. I am afraid I have extended y* Determination vnto a 
 greater length then is fitting : yf you think fitt, I give you full power 
 to prune away what is supfluous. When my Book is printed, I must 
 desire you to bestow some copies there in my name, as formerly you 
 have donne wth y° two other : and to procure mee a competent num- 
 ber to bee sent vp to M' Irelands, yt I may bestow them vppon my 
 freinds here, & elswhere. My hand and mine eyes are so badd, as I 
 much doubt You will bee troubled in reading y^ Determination : but 
 I had much adoe to gett it finished thus soon, & no possibility of 
 getting it fairlie transcribed. For divers of y* Quotations I took them 
 out of mine own Notebooks, and wanted time to search all y' pticular 
 authors ; what errors in that kinde or any other, you meet wthall, I 
 pray refer me, before y= Printer goe in hand wth it. !And thus wishing 
 Health and Happines to you & all yours, I rest alwaies 
 
 Your verie loving freind 
 Salisburie JO. Saru, 
 
 Decemb. 8th, 1634. 
 
410 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To his assured loving friend D' Ward Master of 
 Sidney CoUedg and Divinity Professor in Cambridg these. 
 
 [On outside sheet : — ] To his verie loving freind D' Ward Master of 
 Sidney CoUedg and Divinity Professor in Cambridg these. 
 
 Decemb: 8, 1634. v 
 
 My L'* of Sarum his Lett' 
 
 The Chancellorship of the Order of the Garter pertained 
 to the See of Salisbury from 1450-1539. Henry VIH. and 
 his successors conferred the office on laymen. In 163(5 Dr 
 Davenant petitioned the King to restore the office to his 
 See, and the matter was debated till 1640, when the troubles 
 in Scotland caused the Bishop to relinquish his seat (Ash- 
 note, Hist, of Garter, 24). In 1671 Dr Seth Ward procured 
 the recovery of the Chancellorship (Cassan, Bishops of 
 Salisbury). 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 RITUAL CONFORMITY — LAUD'S CANONS— CONVOCATION 
 
 (163S-40) 
 
 " In such matters wherein property was concerned, the Canon must say to 
 the Common Law, 'By your leave, sir.'" — Fuller's Appeal of Injitred 
 Innocence, pt. ii. 420. 
 
 IN 1638 was published a little volume in 241110, en- 
 titled De Pace inter Evangelicos procuranda Sententice 
 quatuor, &c. It consists of the opinions of Bishops Morton, 
 Davenant and Hall, artd of certain eminent French divines, 
 on the subject of Catholic unity. They were addressed 
 to Duraeus, a Scotch divine, presumably a Presbyterian, 
 who had laboured to unite the Lutheran and Calvinistic 
 Churches, and with this object had solicited the opinions 
 of these Anglican Prelates on the subject. Having been 
 previously published at Amsterdam, they were now re- 
 printed, with a list of various authors who had written 
 upon the same point. Of this little book the opinion 
 of Davenant forms the principal part, and is in every 
 respect, both in style and thought, decidedly superior to 
 either of the others : it is written with great force of 
 argument and in a very spirited style. It will be re- 
 membered that Davenant and Hall were great friends, 
 and synchronized in most theological points. They were 
 not only at the Synod of Dort together, but kept up 
 their intimacy in after life, when they were promoted. 
 Certainly Hall had a great opinion of Davenant's judg- 
 ment, and deferred to him on more occasions than one, 
 and about his book on " The Old Religion." 
 
 In his twentieth Question, our Bishop lays down this 
 
 4" 
 
412 TEE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 thesis, which he proceeds to prove. " The English Church ^ 
 is fully competent to bend to the observance of ceremonies." 
 In order to demonstrate this, he says, " three things must 
 be made plain : first, that the Church is which is obli- 
 gatory : secondly, that there is a propriety in these cere- 
 monies : thirdly, that there is equity in the mode itself 
 of requiring it 
 
 " I. As respects the first, the authority of the Church in 
 prescribing ceremonies needs no laboured proof. First, it 
 is incumbent upon her, on the score of motherly care and 
 authority, to provide that all things be don^ decently and in 
 order (i Cor. xiv. 40) in her holy assemblies : on the other 
 hand, it concerns the children of the Church, not to despise 
 the commands of their mother,, but to obey them and yield 
 subjection (Heb. xiii. 17). 
 
 "This power of instituting public cerenionies all the 
 Churches have exercised, even from the times of the 
 Apostles. Hence originated that rule of Augils^ine 
 (Epist. iiS): A prudent Christian ought to act in the 
 manner in which the Church acts to which he has united 
 himself. There is no doubt then concerning the power 
 of instituting ceremonies : but of the nature and quality 
 of the ceremonies themselves there is some doubt 
 
 " 2. We must show,, then, in the second place, that the 
 ceremonies instituted by the English Church are allow- 
 able and proper. And here, that we may not be drawn 
 aside by the prevalence of vulgar error, it should be 
 understood that ceremonies are not, therefore, unlawful 
 because they are significant. For the holy kiss, respecting 
 
 ^ In Pauzani's Memoirs, p. 246, Davenant is described by Bishop Montague 
 as violently bent against the Church of Rome. He was strongly opposed to 
 this Church of Rome;, and was not willing to grant that she was a;true Church 
 in error, but rather regarded her as utterly apostate and essentially anti- 
 Christian (Davenant to Bishop Hall, Hall's Works, iic. 320).- In this, 
 Davenant agreed with the learned James Ushier, Primate of Ireland, and went 
 further than his friend Bishop Hall, who being called upon by Laud to alter 
 some places in his treatise on Episcopacy, where he has styled the Pope Anti- 
 christ, was willing to do so. — Feiry'sffisi. of Church of England, i. 638. ' 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 4 1 3 
 
 which mention is made in Rom. xvi. 16, was a sign by 
 which they wished to signify the fraternal love and union 
 of all Christians. . And even the learned Peter Martyr is 
 so far from rejecting ceremonies because they are signifi- 
 cant that he says, they are the more laudable if, in the way 
 of sermons, they admonish us of some duty. Above all, it 
 must be observed that ceremonies are not unlawful, because 
 they are adopted by the Papists also. For not only may 
 Papists; by the light of natural reason, but sometimes the 
 very heathen themselves, entertain correct notions eon- 
 cerning the decorum which is required in external rites. 
 Lastly, it must be added, that because some have super- 
 stitiously abused them, ceremonies are not, on that account 
 to be reckoned unlawful. For the Church could retain no 
 rite long, if everything is forthwith to be rejected, which 
 has been distorted into superstitious and impious usage 
 by others. : What then, in fact, is it which proves cere- 
 monies to be impious and unlawful ? I answer, briefly. 
 If it can be shown that they are repugnant to the Word 
 of God,, for rightly says Cyprian,^ Whatever is appointed 
 by human passion, and leads to a disturbance of the Divine 
 economy, is spurious, mere impiety and sacrilege. If it can 
 be shown also that the rites which have been instituted 
 to form part of Divine Worship are in effect thrust upon 
 God and men, in the place of works of righteousness and 
 holiness (for God is worshipped in vain by the com- 
 mandments and ordinances of men, Matt. xii. 9), or, if 
 they who iiftpose them require us to ascribe to them a 
 supernatural efficacy of imparting grace, of warding off 
 spiritual evils, or taking away sins,; or other things of that 
 kind ; lastly, if by their number and multitude they lead 
 Christians away from the internal exercise of true piety, 
 and bring them back to a Jewish servitude under cere- 
 monies: for, although they may not be contrary to the 
 faith, yet if they should too much increase, they become 
 
 » Epist., lib. i. ep, 8. 
 
414 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 very ofifensive, from, loading the Christian Religion {which 
 the mercy of God would have to be free) with servile burdens, as 
 Augustine complained (Epist. 119). On all these accounts 
 we justly disapprove of many of the Romish ceremonies. 
 But if anyone should measure ours (Anglican) by these 
 rules, he will find nothing bad or distorted in them : hence 
 it follows they are in their own nature lawful and proper." 
 
 If these wise and sober counsels had prevailed with re- 
 gard to the ritualistic controversies of our own day, how 
 many heartburnings could have been avoided — what compli- 
 cations, entanglements, and misunderstandings might have 
 been prevented from disturbing the peace of our Jerusalem ! 
 
 3. " It remains that we say something concerning the 
 mode of binding ; for, if the English Church errs in this, 
 she acts unjustly in making them obligatory." After point- 
 ing out the difference between the requirements of the 
 Papal Church and our own, he goes on to say : " But our 
 Church acknowledges that these her regulations on points 
 which are indifferent and relate to ceremonials, are, both as 
 regards the author, the matter, and the end, very different 
 from the obligations of the Divine Law ; and that where 
 there is such a disparity in every respect, they cannot be 
 equally binding upon the conscience. For since every law 
 binds according to the just measure of the Lawgiver who 
 looks for obedience to it, it is not the intention either of 
 the Supreme Lawgiver, or of any pious Prelate, that the 
 consciences of men should be laid under obligations by the 
 constitution of the Church, respecting things in their own 
 nature indifferent, just as they would by the precepts of the 
 Decalogue, respecting things absolutely good or evil. The 
 Church, then, thinks that consciences should be bound to 
 the observance of ceremonies, only so far as the supreme 
 law of love requires. Now that requires, that in these 
 respects there should be neither commission of offences, nor 
 omission of duty, so as to bring contempt on Prelates, or 
 cause scandal to others . . ." 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY . 415 
 
 Our Bishop thus concludes this important Question, 
 which throws so much side-light on one of the " burning 
 questions of the day," and admits us into the true theory 
 and practice of the Anglican Church as to ritual, confor- 
 mity, and ceremonies more than 350 years ago : — 
 
 " The nature of the obligation, accordingly, which the Church of 
 England imposes, as regard ceremonies, consists with her admitting 
 at the same time that they are not, as affects their obligatory power, 
 equal to the Divine laws— that is, they are not in every case to be per- 
 formed under the penalty of incurring the guilt of sin : nay, although 
 obedience be not rendered to what is enjoined in some cases, yet the 
 intention of the party is satisfied if the law of charity be not trans- 
 gressed in those cases where submission is paid to it. 
 
 '" I 'Will conclude in one word: The Church lays an obligation on 
 conscience by its own laws, though not precisely, and in every case, as 
 regards points which are indifferent : merely guarding the intention of 
 the Lawgiver from contempt, and giving an occasion for scandal — 
 duties which necessarily appertain to charity, and are of perpetual 
 obligation, being commands of the Divine Law. 
 
 " Whether, then, we regard tlie power which enforces, or the nature 
 of the ceremonies, or the mode of enforcing obligation, the English 
 Church is fully justified in requiring submission to ceremonies." 
 
 We have made these copious extracts from Bishop 
 Davenant's Determinations on ritual conformity, as an 
 introduction to the great controversy which disturbed the 
 peace of the Church at the time, but settled once and for 
 ever in the Anglican Church the position of the "Holy 
 Table," in which Davenant played a conspicuous part 
 
 " The publication of the Book of Sports," says Perry ,^ " was 
 followed almost immediately by an Order in Council, 
 which had an important bearing upon the subsequent 
 history of the Church." There had been a dispute as to 
 the position of the Communion Table, between the parish- 
 ioners of St Gregory's, a church adjoining St Paul's Cathe- 
 dral, and the Dean and Chapter, who were its Ordinaries. 
 The case was heard by an appeal to the King in Council, 
 i.e. by the High Court of Delegates. It was then ordered, 
 1 Perry's History of the Church of England, \o\. i. p. 470. 
 
4i6 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 after a full hearing, that the Table should be set Altar-ivisCf 
 as the Dean and Chapter had directed. The decision 
 afterwards became a precedent and rule to all Ordinaries 
 in their judgment on the matter. It was declared in the 
 order that the liberty which appeared to be left in the rubric, 
 and the eighty-second Canon (in Convocation 1603-4) to 
 " place the Table where it may stand with most fitness and 
 convenience," is not to be interpreted as though it gave a 
 liberty of judging in the matter to the parishioners, but that 
 the ordinary alone was to decide in all cases.^ When the 
 matter was first mooted some six years before, in the case 
 of Grantham, Bishop Williams had decided that the Table- 
 was to be removed when it was not needed for use, and not 
 stand continually y4/if«r-zc/j«, and this view he had enforced 
 in a learned letter to the Vicar of Grantham. The judg- 
 ment in the matter of St Gregory's may, therefore, be con- 
 sidered as an authoritative reversal of the decision of the> 
 Bishop of Lincoln. 
 
 But it is time to review the whole history of this contro- 
 versy, and its important consequences to the Church. At. 
 the beginning of the year 1624, Archbishop Laud resolved 
 upon a metropolitical visitation of the whole province in 
 Canterbury, in other words, upon a course of warfare 
 against the manifold indecencies and abominations which 
 for a long period had disfigured the Church. One of his. 
 first cases ^ was for the proper position of the Holy Table, 
 
 * Rushworth, ii. 207. 
 
 ' " There is an anecdote in Heylin's Life of Latid, where the same thing is 
 mentioned, very remarkably the same phrase which now prevails among us, of 
 " innopations, innovations," , is reiterated ' as the watchword of alarm, quite 
 forgetting that where neglect and omission have been, for some time the 
 character of a lax Church, and revival of discipline takes place, there must be- 
 an appearance of novelty, but renovation is not innovation. 
 
 •' For the removing of these evils, he (Archbishop Laud) fell upon the courses-, 
 before mentioned, which being renovations only of some ancient usages, were 
 branded by the odious name of innovations, by some of those who, out of cunning 
 and design, had long disused them. Some zealous Protestants behdd his 
 actings with no small fear, as biassing too strongly towards Rome, the Puritans 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 417 
 
 and for its due protection from irreverence and desecration. 
 From the moment of the Primate's first promotion, this had 
 always held a foremost place in his thoughts, and it has 
 been thought by many that it occupied a disproportionate 
 share of his attention. But in order to estimate his con- 
 duct rightly, it will be our duty to take into consideration 
 the consequences which had resulted from a neglect of this 
 department of ecclesiastical discipline. In the Cathedral 
 Churches, then, and in the chapels of the nobility, that, 
 which we how scruple not to call the Altar, was usually 
 placed, where we now uniformly see it, close to the eastern 
 wall of the Church, guarded by a decent railing from de- 
 filement and profanation. But in many of the Parish 
 Churches the case was widely different. It was dragged 
 by Puritanical scruple, or caprice, into the body of the 
 Church, and treated as if no peculiar sacredness be- 
 longed to it. It often served the churchwardens for a 
 parish-table at the vestry meetings, the schoolboys for a 
 desk to do their lessons, and the carpenters for a working- 
 board. In one place, we are told, a dog had run away 
 with the bread set apart for the Holy Communion, and in 
 many instances, the wine had been brought to the Table 
 in pint-pots and bottles, and so was distributed to the 
 
 exclaimed against him for a Papist, and the Papist cried him for theirs, and 
 gave themselves some flattering hopes of our coming towards them. But the 
 most knowing and understanding men amongst them found plainly that 
 nothing could tend more to their destruction than the introducing some cere- 
 monies which by late negligence and practice had been discontinued. For I 
 have heard of a person of known nobility, that at his being at Rome with a 
 Father of the English College, one of the novices came in and told him with a 
 great deal of joy that the English were returning to the Church of Rome ; that 
 they began to set up altars, to officiate in their copes, to adorn their churches 
 and to paint the pictures of the saints in the church windows. To which the 
 old Father made reply with some indignation, that he talked like some ignorant 
 novice ; that these proceedings rather tended to the ruin than to the advance- 
 ment of the CathoUc cause ; that by this means the Church of England, coming 
 nearer to the ancient usages, the Catholics there, would sooner be dramn off 
 from them, than anymore of that nation would fall off to Home."— Msylva's 
 Laud, p. 391. (Quoted in Bennett's Principles of the Comtnon Prayer, p. 121.) 
 
 2 D 
 
41 8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 people.^ Such were the effects of an indiscriminate aver- 
 sion for the practices of Rome. It can be hardly thought 
 surprising that any man, whose mind was rich in the know- 
 ledge of the Primitive practices of Christian antiquity, and 
 whose heart was warm with zeal for the glory of God, 
 should look upon these mean and slovenly usages with 
 loathing and indignation ; more especially when it was 
 found that, by such practices, the Reformed usage of the 
 National Church was identified with positive impiety in the 
 estimation of the most sincere and sober-minded Roman 
 Catholics of those days. 
 
 Archbishop Laud felt it to be his duty, as we have seen, 
 to attempt a reform of these unseemly abuses. And when 
 he was finally called upon at his last trial to answer 
 for his action and proceedings, he solemnly averred that 
 his motive was not a stupid attachment to Popish mum- 
 meries, but solely for the restoration of external and 
 visible Religion.^ Of course he had much resistance to 
 encounter when he undertook the almost herculean task, 
 and the opposition was rendered more formidable and 
 vexatious by the aid and countenance of Williams, Bishop of 
 Lincoln, who, in the Grantham case, had taken a different 
 line. That Williams, for he was too cultured a theologian, 
 had no serious objection to the ancient practice of the 
 Church, is manifest from these facts, that the Holy Table 
 occupied the place, for which the Primate contended, in his 
 own Cathedral of Lincoln, in the Abbey Church of St 
 Peters, Westminster, of which he was Dean, and in his 
 private chapel at Buckden Palace, and further, that he had 
 liimself prevailed on the inhabitants of St Martin's, at 
 Leicester, to place their Communion Table in a similar 
 position. Nevertheless, on a representation from the 
 vicar, churchwardens, and others of that same parish, he 
 issued letters in December 1633, granting them permission 
 to bring the Table back to its former situation in the body 
 
 iHeylin, p. 283. = Troubles, &•€., p. 150. 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 419 
 
 of the church. And this he did in spite of the order in 
 Council, already referred to, to the contrary effect, made 
 with reference, as we have seen, to the Parish Church of 
 St Gregory's in St Paul's Churchyard, which order was 
 dated only in the preceding November.^ 
 
 Laud considered this proceeding of Williams as little less 
 than a signal of hostility. The Primate therefore resolved 
 to make the Diocese of Lincoln the scene of his first 
 Visitation ; and to inhibit the Bishop and his Archdeacons 
 from the exercise of their official jurisdiction, so long as the 
 visitation lasted. The almost princely Bishop Williams 
 was not one of those who yield tamely to a first assault. 
 He contended that his own jurisdiction had been exempted 
 from such suspension, by certain Bulls obtained from 
 Pope Innocent the Fourth, on the procurement of Bishop 
 Grosthead, and he moreover insisted that the threatened 
 inhibition would operate by a reflex action ruinously to 
 himself, by diverting into another channel those fees and 
 procurations which then formed the staple and chief source 
 of the Bishop's maintenance.^ The Archbishop was some- 
 what staggered at the first blush by this timely remon- 
 strance. But on further investigation of his own rights, 
 he determined to have the question argued out before the 
 Lords of the Council. The claim of the Archbishop was 
 established by their [appellate decision. Laud's visitation 
 accordingly proceeded, and the churchwardens throughout 
 the Diocese of Lincoln were ordered forthwith to transpose 
 the Table to the east end of the chancel, and to fence it 
 round with suitable railings. But although Williams was 
 thus, for the moment, defeated, he touched the earth only 
 to rise up from it with undiminished strength and unabated 
 vigour. The moment he was relieved from his suspension 
 he proceeded to visit his diocese in person. On meeting 
 
 1 Heylin, pp. 359, 260, 285, 287. 
 
 ^ Williams' Letter to the Archbishop on the subject may be seen in Hacket, 
 pt. ii., p. 98-9- 
 
420 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 with Dr Bret, a grave and reverend man, but of the school 
 of Geneva — a Calvinian, as Heylin would call him in 
 doctrine — he accosted him with the gracious words of the 
 great St Augustine, " Although a Bishop is greater than a 
 Presbyter, yet is Augustine inferior to Jerome;"^ thus 
 gratifying the Puritans with a confession that Bret was as 
 much greater than Williams, as a Bishop is above a Pres» 
 byter. And, still further to win them, he gave order for 
 placing the Communion Table in the middle of the Church 
 with a rail about it ; and not at the east end, with a rail 
 before it.^ 
 
 This official encounter between Archbishop Laud and 
 his former rival Williams, tended, of course, to widen 
 the divergent breach between them. But the Bishop of 
 Lincoln lived to taste the luxury of retribution. If the 
 powers of the Diocesan of Lincoln were suspended, for a 
 time, by Laud, the favour was amply repaid in after days 
 by the Archbishop of York. For Williams was the man 
 who, subsequently to his promotion to that dignity, insti- 
 gated the Lords to inflict the sequestration of his juris- 
 diction upon the Primate of all England and Metropolitan! 
 The more immediate result of the present conflict was a 
 series of learned controversial writings between the Bishop 
 of Lincoln and Dr Peter Heylin (the biographer of Laud, 
 and Fuller's doughty antagonist, who replied to Heylin's 
 Animadversions (1639) in his beautiful Appeal of Injured 
 Innocence) which the limits of these memoirs forbid us to 
 notice in detail, and which, at the present day, would be 
 
 ^Quamvis Episcopus major est Presbytero, Augustinus tamen minor est 
 Hieronymo. 
 
 ' Heylin, p. 286, 289. In the church where the writer served his first 
 curacy, Buckland Monachorum, Devon, the Holy Table was placed away from 
 the East Wall, and out in the body of the chancel, with a rail round it. Com- 
 municants knelt all round, on the four sides, and even between the officiating 
 clergy and the east end of the chancel — facing, of course, the Holy Table, but 
 back to the east. This haSj it may be added, all been altered by, and since, 
 the restoration of the fabric a few years ago, but the practice obtained till it 
 was restored. 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 421 
 
 almost entirely destitute of interest^ except to liturgio- 
 logically-minded students. But surely without the assist- 
 ance of such profound liturgical erudition, the essential 
 merits of the controverted case may be summed up in 
 very few words. "That the sacramental table," says the 
 late esteemed Professor at the East India College, Herts, 
 the Rev C. W. ,Le Bas, " should be protected from pro- 
 fanation, will not, for a moment, be disputed. Whether it 
 should be called a table, or an altar, becomes a matter of 
 comparatively trifling importance, when once the Sacra- 
 mental doctrine had been brought back to its original 
 simplicity. Its position in the church would be fitly 
 regulated, partly by considerations of convenience, but 
 chiefly by a reference to the practice of primitive anti- 
 quity. In the earliest ages, beyond all question, its 
 situation was the eastern end of the church, and what- 
 ever might be its appropriate position, nothing but con- 
 fusion would be the effect of leaving the matter to be 
 decided by the caprice of ministers, who might be ignorant 
 of ecclesiastical history ; or of churchwardens who were 
 often ignorant of everything, their own secular trade and 
 mystery excepted." ^ 
 
 About this time Archbishop Laud continued his metro- 
 polital visitation for the purpose of reforming abuses with 
 respect to the fabrics and ornaments of churches, and the 
 
 , * Williams had thrown together his thoughts, in the form of a " letter to the 
 Vicar of Grantham," so long before as 1627. The visitation of 1634 tempted 
 Heylin to publish this letter, together with an answer, un4er the title of " A 
 Coal from the Altar." Williams replied in 1637 by a treatise entitled The 
 Holy Table, name and thing, &'c., and Heylin rejoined by his Antidoium 
 Lincolniense. The Bishop was preparing for his further vindication when he 
 was prevented by his troubles in the Star Chamber, in consequence of which 
 his library was seized. " And how," says Hacket, " could he fight without 
 his arms ? or how could the bell ring when they had stolen away the clapper ? " 
 Those who may be curious about the whole history of this contest will find it 
 in Hacket, pt. ii. pp. 99-100. It may be observed that Hacket ascribes Laud's 
 earnestness about this, and siihilar matters, to nothing worse than an excess of 
 piety iveppoK'i t^s eiaepelas, p. 100. 
 
 " Le Bas' Life of Archbishop Laud, p. 188. 
 
422 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 habits of the clergy, many of whom had discarded the 
 outward distinctions of their order. The report for Salis- 
 bury was as follows: — ^^"For Salisbury he found the 
 Bishop (Davenant) had taken a deal of care about his 
 Majesty's instructions, and had caused copies of them to be 
 sent to most of the ministers ; " but he adds, " the greatest 
 part of Wiltshire was overgrown with the humours of those 
 men who do not conform." How strong the same feeling 
 of opposition was in the city of Salisbury itself, the subse- 
 quent history clearly proves. 
 
 There can be no doubt that few points occasioned more 
 dispute than Laud's insisting upon the communion-table 
 being placed universally altar-wise at the east end of the 
 chancel of the church, " an evil beginning," says Bishop 
 Racket, " to distract Conformists who were at unity before, 
 and to make them fight like cocks which are all of a 
 feather, and yet never at peace with themselves." Yet 
 Davenant, when the matter came officially before him as 
 Bishop of Salisbury, decided in favour of carrying out 
 the Primate's injunction on the subject, in the case of 
 Aldbourne in his own diocese, where his order is still 
 preserved in the parish register, directing the table to be 
 placed altar-wise, inhibiting the churchwardens from 
 meddling in the arrangement, and referring them to the 
 " first article not long since inquired of in the visitation of 
 our most reverend Metropolitan." "Nor," says Heylin, 
 " did the Archbishop stand alone in point of judgment 
 as to these particulars. He had the testimony and assent 
 of two ^ such Bishops, than which there could be none 
 more averse from Popery, or anything that tended to it. 
 A difference happening between the minister and church- 
 warden, in a parish in Wilts, about the placing of the 
 
 ^ The other was Morton, Bishop of Durham, who " had written in defence 
 of bowing towards the Holy Table, and was eagerly quoted by his High 
 Church brethren as having lent the great weight of his authority to the prac- 
 tice." See Parry's Church of England, vol, i. p. 581. 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 423 
 
 table, which the minister desired to transpose to the end 
 of the church, and the churchwardens to keep it as it stood 
 before, the business was referred to Davenant, then Bishop 
 of Salisbury, who, on a full consideration of the matter, 
 decided in favour of the incumbent ; and by a decree, under 
 his episcopal seal, settled the table in the place where the 
 altar stood, as the minister desired to have it. In which 
 decree there are these two passages to be observed — first, 
 that " by the injunction of Queen Elizabeth, and by Canon 
 xxxii. under King James, the communion-table should 
 ordinarily be set and stand with the side to the east wall 
 of the chancel " ; ^ and secondly, that " it is ignorance to 
 think that the standing of the Holy Table in that place 
 doth relish of Popery." 2 Here, then, we perceive the cool 
 judgment of our Bishop opposed, in a point of discipline, to 
 those with whose doctrinal tenets he presumably agreed, 
 and supporting Laud, with whose views and conduct he 
 did not, we may imagine, entirely synchronize. Few 
 
 ^ " The removing the Communion table out of the body of the Church," 
 says Clarendon; " where it had used to stand, and used to be applied to all uses, 
 and fixing it to one place in the upper end of the chancel, which frequently 
 made the buying of a new table to be necessary : the enclosing it with a rail of 
 joiner's work, and thereby fencing it from the approach of dogs, and all servile 
 uses : the obliging of all persons to come up to those rails to receive the sacra- 
 ment, how acceptable soever to grave and intelligent persons, who loved order 
 and decency (for acceptable it was to such) yet introduced first murmurings 
 amongst the people, upon the very charge and expense of it, and if the minis- 
 ter were not a man of discretion (as too frequently he was not, and rather in- 
 flamed and increased the distemper) it begat suits and appeals at law. The 
 opinion that there was no necessity of doing anything, and the complaint that 
 there was too much done, brought the power and jurisdiction to impose the 
 doing of it to be called in question, contradicted, and opposed. Then the 
 manner, and gesture, and posture, in the celebration of it, brought in new dis- 
 putes, and administered new objects of offence, according to the custom of the 
 place, and humour of the people ; and these disputes brought in new words 
 and terms (altar, and adoration, and genuflexion, and other expressions), for 
 the more perspicuous carrying on those disputations. New books were written 
 for and against this new practice, with the same earnestness and contention for 
 victory, as if the life of Christianity had been at stake." — Clarendon's History 
 of the Rebellion, p. 41. 
 
 ^ Heylin's Life of Laud. 
 
424 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 measures were more unpopular than this enforced confor- 
 mity about the position of the Lord's table ; and there is 
 nothingjanalogous to it in our times, except perhaps the 
 matter of vestments and discussions upon the " Ornaments 
 Rubric " at*the beginning of the Book of Common Prayer. 
 Be that as it may, when Laud first introduced the altera- 
 tion in Gloucester Cathedral upon being appointed Dean, 
 his diocesan, the venerable and learned Miles Smith, never 
 entered the Cathedral Church afterwards. 
 
 The document of Bishop Davenant's — to which we have 
 just referred — respecting the Church and Parish of Aid- 
 bourne, in N. Wilts, is now quite a classical quotation, and 
 is of so much interest as throwing light on what was 
 deemed the proper position of the Holy Table in 1637, 
 that we venture to give a copy of it. The direction con- 
 tained in it, to the effect that Holy Communion should 
 be administered on four successive Sundays, (and that no 
 more than two hundred persons should communicate at 
 one time, is to say the least, a remarkable one respecting a 
 parish that we can hardly think was ever a popular one. 
 
 Bishop Davenant's order is as follows : — 
 
 " John, by Divine Providence Bishop of Sarum, 
 
 " To the Curate ^ and Churchwardens with the Parish- 
 ioners of Awborne, in the County of Wilts, and our 
 Diocese of Sarum, greeting : — 
 
 " Whereas his Majestie hath beene lately informed that 
 some men factiously disposed have taken upon themselves 
 to place and remove the Communion Table in the Church of 
 Awborne, and thereupon his highness hath required me to 
 take present order therein : These are to let you know that 
 both according to the injunction given out in the Reigne 
 of Queen Elizabeth for the placing of the Communion 
 
 ■^ " Curate " means one " who has cure of souls," and may be either a rector 
 or vicar. This is the technical meaning in the Prayer Book, and it is synony- 
 mous with " parish priest." In the case of Aldbourne he was a vicar. 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 425 
 
 Tables in Churches, and by the 82 Canon,^ agreed upon in 
 the first yeare of the Raigne of King James of blessed 
 memory, it was intimated that these Tables should ordin- 
 arily be sett and stand with the side to the east wall of the 
 Chancell.2 I therefore require you, the Churchwardens, and 
 all other persons not to meddle with the bringing doune 
 or transposing of the Communion Table, as you will an- 
 swer it at your own perile. And because some doe ignor- 
 antly suppose that the standing of the Communion Table 
 where altars stood in time of superstition hath some relish 
 of Popery, and some perchance may erroniously conceive 
 that the placing thereof otherwise when the Holy Com- 
 munion is administered savours of irreverence, I would 
 have you take notice from the forenamed Injunction and 
 Canon, from the Rubricke prefixed before the admistration 
 of the Lord's Supper, and from the first Article not long 
 since inquired of in the Visitation of our most Reverend 
 
 1 The 82nd Canon (1603) runs as follows : — " A decent communion-table in 
 every church, whereas we have no doubt but that in all churches within the 
 realm of England convenient and decent tables are provided and placed for 
 the celebration of the Holy Communion, we appoint, that the same tables shall 
 from time to time be kept and repaired in sufficient and seemly manner, and 
 covered, in time of Divine Service, with a carpet of silk or other decent stuff, 
 thought meet by the Ordinary of the place, if any question be made of it. And 
 with a fair linen cloth at the time of the ministration, as becometh that table, 
 and so stand, saving when the said Holy Communion is to be administered ; 
 at which time the same shall be placed in so good sort within the church or 
 chancel, as thereby the minister may be more conveniently heard of the com- 
 municants in his Prayer and Ministration, and the Communicants also more 
 conveniently, and in more number, may communicate with the said minister ; 
 and that the Ten Commandments be set up on the east end of every church 
 and chapel, where the people may best see and read the same, and other 
 chosen sentences written upon the walls of the said churches and chapels, 
 in places convenient : and likewise that a convenient seat be made for the 
 minister to read service in. All these to be done at the charge of the parish." 
 
 ^ The Rubric at the beginning of the Prayer Book stands thus : — " The 
 Morning and Evening Prayer shall be used in the accustomed place of the 
 Church, Chapel, or Chancel ; except it shall be otherwise determined by the 
 Ordinary of the place. And the chancels shall remain as they have done in 
 times past, " 
 
426 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Metropolitan (Laud), that tlie placing of it higher or lower 
 in the Chauncell or in the Church is by the judgment of the 
 Church of England a thing indifferent, and to be ordered 
 and guided by the only rule of convenience. 
 
 " Now, because in things of this nature to judge and 
 determine what is most convenient belongs not to private, 
 persons, but to those that have ecclesiasticall authority, I 
 inhibit you the Churchwardens and all other persons 
 whatever to meddle with the bringing doune of the Com- 
 munion Table, or with altering the place thereof at such 
 times as the Holy Supper is to be administered, and I 
 require you herein to yield obedience unto what is already 
 judged most convenient by my Chauncellor, unless, upon 
 further consideration and viewe it shall be otherwise 
 ordered. Now, to the end that the minister may not be 
 overtoyled, nor the people indecently and inconveniently 
 thronged together when they are to drawe neire and take 
 the Holy Sacrament, and that the frequent celebration 
 thereof may never the lesse be continued. I doe further 
 appoint that thrice in the yeare at the least there be pub- 
 lique notice given in the Church, for fower communions, to 
 be held on fower Sundaies together, and that there come 
 not to the Communion in one day above two hundred ^ at 
 the most. For the better observance whereof, and that 
 every man may know his proper time, the curate shall 
 divide the parishioners into fower parts, according to his 
 discretion, and as shall most fittingly serve to this purpose. 
 And if any turbulent spirits shall disobey this our order, he 
 shall be proceeded against according to the quality of his 
 fault and misdemeanour.^ 
 
 ^ According to this computation there would be 800 communicants in round 
 numbers in a parish which at the present time Crockford returns 1500 popula- 
 tion, and which Mr Jones (author of the Salisbury S.P. C.K. Diocesan History), 
 avers could never have been a large one. This number is simply astound- 
 ing from our present standpoint, although there has been such a revival of 
 Eucharistic privileges, and increase in the number of confirmations and com- 
 municants. 
 
 " This injunction is entered in the Aldbourne Parish Register, and is printed 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 427 
 
 " In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand Seale 
 Episcopall, this seventeenth day of May 1637, and in the 
 yeare of our consecration the sixteenth." 
 
 This document is always referred to as conclusive as to 
 the position of the Holy Table, in the same manner as the 
 letter of the late Bishop of Exeter (Dr Phillpotts) to the 
 churchwardens of Helston, Cornwall, with regard to the use 
 of the vestments.^ 
 
 in the Oxford edition of Laud's Works, by the Rev. J. BUss (vol. vi. p. 60), 
 who supervised the fourteenth chapter of this work. It is referred to by the 
 Archbishop himself in Laud's " Speech at the censure of Basterwick," ibid. 
 ii. p. 80. See also Wilis Arch. Mag., vii. 3. 
 
 1 Judgment of Dr Phillpotts (Bishop of Exeter) re W. Blunt (Helston), 23rd 
 Oct. 1844. — The rubric, at the commencement of " The order for morning 
 and evening prayer," says, " That such ornaments of the Church, and of the 
 ministers thereof, at all times of their ministrations, shall be retained, and be 
 in use, as were in this Church of England by the authority of Parliament, in 
 the second year of the reign of King Edward VI." — in other vifords, "a white 
 albe, plain, with a vestment or cope." These were forbidden in King Edward 
 VI. 's second book, which ordered that " the minister at the time of the com- 
 munion, and at all other times of his ministration, shall use neither albe, vest- 
 ment, nor cope, but being an archbishop or bishop, he shall have and wear a 
 rochet ; and being a priest or deacon, he shall have and wear a surplice only." 
 This was a triumph of the party most opposed to the Church of Rome, and 
 most anxious to carry Reformation to the very furthest point. But their 
 triumph was brief — within a few months Queen Mary restored Popery — and 
 when the accession of Queen Elizabeth brought back the Reformation, she, 
 and the Convocation, and the Parliament, deliberately rejected the simpler 
 direction of Edward's second book, and revived the ornaments of the first. 
 This decision was followed again by the Crown, Convocation, and Parliament 
 at the Restoration of Charles II., when the existing Act of Uniformity estab- 
 lished the Book of Common Prayer, with its rubrics, in the form in which they 
 now stand. From this statement it will be seen that the surplice may be 
 objected to with some reason ; but then it must be because the law requires 
 " the albe and the vestment or the cope." 
 
 Why have these been disused ? Because the parishioners — that is, the 
 churchwardens, who represent the parishioners — have neglected their duty to 
 provide them ; for such is the duty of the parishioners by the plain and express 
 canon law of England (Gibson, 200). True, it would be a very costly duty, 
 and for that reason most probably churchwardens have neglected it, and arch- 
 deacons have connived at the neglect. I have no wish that it should be other- 
 wise. But be this as it may, if the churchwardens of Helston shall perform 
 
428 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Towards the close of Davenant's Episcopate, Arch- 
 bishop Laud held a metropolitical visitation, for the pur- 
 pose of reforming abuses with respect to the fabrics and 
 ornaments of the churches and the habits of the clergy, 
 many of whom had discarded the outward distinctions of 
 their order. The report for the Diocese of Sarum was as 
 follows : — " For Salisbury he found the Bishop (Davenant) 
 had taken a deal of care about his Majesty's ^ instructions, 
 and had caused copies of them to be sent to most of the 
 ministers ; " but he adds, " the greatest part of Wiltshire 
 was overgrown with the humours of those men who do not 
 conform." How strong the same feeling of opposition 
 to the Church was in the city of Salisbury at that time 
 may be gathered from a perusal of the immediate and 
 subsequent history of that diocese. 
 
 During this year (1638) we find four letters of Davenant 
 to Dr Ward from Salisbury — in the first he alludes to 
 Dr Ward's induction to the living of Terrington ; the second 
 to Mr Hasell's appointment to Martinstow, the third of oral 
 manducation, and the fourth to his nephew John Fuller. 
 
 this duty, at the charge of the parish, providing an albe, a vestment, and a 
 cope, as they might in strictness be required to do (Gibson, 201), I shall 
 enjoin the minister, be he who he may, to use them. But until these orna- 
 ments are provided by the parishioners, it is the duty of the minister to use the 
 garment actually provided by them for him, which is the surplice. The 
 parishioners never provide, nor, if they did, would he have a right to wear it 
 in any part of his ministrations. For the gown is nowhere mentioned or 
 alluded to in the rubrics. Neither is it included, as the albe, the cope, and 
 three surplices expressly are, among " the furniture and ornaments proper for 
 divine service," to be provided by the parishioners of every parish (Gibson, 
 ubi supra). 
 
 ' Judging from frequent royal visits to Sarum, Bishop Davenant must have 
 been highly esteemed by both James I. and Charles I. The former king was 
 at the Palace in 1623, the latter in 1625 and 1632. On the last occasion 
 Charles I. was for some days at Salisbury, and attended the daily service in 
 the Cathedral. Fuller, at the time Prebendary of Netherbury, speaks of having 
 had the honour to see the king solemnly "Ijeal," i.e., " touching for the evil," 
 in the choir of Salisbury. 
 
DAVEN ANT'S LETTERS 429 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Good Dr Ward, I am glad to heer that you are inducted into 
 Terrington, and I wish you much ioy of it. Whensomever you come 
 down, you shall bee welcome hither ; and I am sorrie Mrs Ward is so 
 hindred from accompaning you, I pray desire Mr Buck when hee 
 reprints my Determinations, in a line or two, to expres, that my minde 
 was to have had that single one added in y" first addition : and that 
 it was sent vnto him by mee, though it came then a litle to late. 
 This I would have signified : because otherwise y' adding of onely 
 one Determination will seeme to sleight a cause of reprinting all 
 y° rest. I hope Mr Hasell will now come down wth you and Settle 
 vppon his Benefice, and thus remembring my love to your selfe, & 
 Mrs Ward, I coinitt you to y"= gratious protection of y* Almightie, & 
 rest 
 
 Your verie loving freind 
 
 Salisburie, ffeb. 23, 1638. Jo. Saru. 
 
 [Endorsed : — ] To his verie loving freind Dr Ward Mr of Sidney 
 College and one of y' Divinity Readers in Cambridg give this. 
 
 Good Dr Ward, I promised vnto you long ago, that I would re- 
 member Mr Hasell with some small Benefice when opportunity should 
 serve. When you were heer last, y° Vicar of Martinstown neer 
 Dorchester, lay a dying (as was then thought) but now he is certainly 
 dead. Yf Mr Hasell bee yet vnprovided, and bee willing to setle 
 vppon it, let him come vnto mee with as much speed as conveniently 
 hee may, and I will for your sake presentlie conferr it vppon him. 
 It is woorth about 40I yeerlie, a small maintenance for a Minister ; 
 and yet there has been no small impportunity vsed to obtein it. Yf 
 Mr Hasell bee alreadie better fitted (I pray) let mee vnderstand so 
 much from you ; for then I will bestow it otherwise. Wee hear that 
 Dr Bromrick is y° King's Chaplain; I could wish hee were also 
 y= King's Professor ; so mine ould freind & CoUegue Mr Provost 
 were preferrd to some good Bishopricy. I pray coiiiend mee to them 
 bothe. And thus coiiniitting you and all yours to y= blessed protection 
 of y° Almightie I rest ever 
 
 Your assured loving freind 
 
 Salisburie, March 27th, 1638. Jo. Saru. 
 
 I receaved not long ago a letter from y' Bishop of Durresme, 
 Wherin hee signified vnto mee, that y' Erection of a Library was now 
 intended at Cambridg. Hee promised his own assistance in further- 
 ing that good woork, and desired mee to write vnto him what I 
 
430 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 thought were y" fittest course to bee taken for y« reall & speedie 
 effecting therof. But for mine own part though I shall bee alwaies 
 willing and readie to promote any thing wch tends to y° good and 
 honour of my ever-honoured Mother. Yet I answered his Lordship, 
 that I am vnable to give counsail what Course must bee followed 
 therin ; and therfore (in my opinion) that must bee left to y* deliber- 
 ation of you that are Heads of y' University. I wish y° proiect all 
 good succes ; and according to my power, when time serves, will 
 amongst others gladly lay to my helping hand. 
 
 [Endorsed : — ] To his verie loving and much respected freind Dr 
 Ward Master of Sidney CoUedg, and publicq Professor of Divinity in 
 Cambridg give these. 
 March, 27, 1638. 
 
 My L"* of Saru, his Lett'' 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 Good Dr Ward, This day Mr Hasell came to Salisburie and de- 
 livered mee your letter as also y° written Tractat. Hee is not sure of 
 his coming back this way ; wch makes mee take y= opportunity of 
 this Bearer Mr Hide. Att our Lady next, I shall expect, that Mr 
 Hasell should make his setled residence vppon his Vicaridg ; wch hee 
 has promised mee to doe. It is true, that y° very phrase of oral man- 
 ducation applied vnto y= bodie of Christ, cann hardly be freed from 
 more then an Impropriety ; I mean, not from a grosse absurdity. But 
 considering that y^ Lutherans hould y= woords, & denie y= thing ; I 
 was willing to costrue y= woords, not according to their own signifi- 
 cation, but according to y^ Interpretation and limitation wch themselfs 
 annex thervnto. Wch you might easily observ out of those woords of 
 mine. (Vtcunq illis visum est retinere hanc loquendi formulam Nihil 
 tamen p hanc Oralem Manducationem intelligunt, q* cu Capernaitica 
 car) in Christi laniena sit coniunctu, aut cu ipsa significatione voca- 
 buloru (provt sonant Latinis aurib) connexum. Wch is in effect, as 
 yf I had said, though they will not bee beaten of from y« woords, lest 
 they should seem to oppose their Master, yet they renounce in expres 
 terms whatsomever Oral .Manducation implies, so y' y' reteining of 
 y" bare phrase, is rather a matter of peevish stomach, then of pnitious 
 heresie. When you shall think fitt to resign y° Lady Margaret's 
 Lecture, I shall be heartily gladd, to hear y' Dr Bromrick is chosen 
 your Successor. Dr Love is a man of whome I have a special good 
 opinion ; but yf you knew how many of nriine own are vnprovided as 
 yet, and are like to bee I know not how long ; and how vppon this 
 only ground, I have lately answered y importunity of some great 
 psonadges. You would not think much yf I promise not that, wch I 
 
DAVEN ANT'S LETTERS 431 
 
 see not how or when I am like to performe. I am gladd to heare that 
 your dispersed Vniversity is now vppon y^ Return. I pray God con- 
 tinew you all, in Health & Happiness ; to whose protection I leav 
 you, & rest 
 
 Your verie loving freind 
 
 Salisburie, Octob. vlt. 1638. Jo. SarC. 
 
 [Single leaf. No endorsement^ 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Good Dr Ward, I shall expect from Mr Burk y Bille, with my 
 new-printed Determinations. What somever is to bee payd, I desire 
 you to lay out and I will repay it you. Mr Hasell brought mee Kemp 
 de Imitat. Christi. I have looked into it and finde it answerable to 
 your comendation. Though y* language bee course, and y° methode 
 not verie accurate ; Yet y° Substance of y' matter is good ; & it stirrs 
 vp devotion never y^ woorse, for y° want of Eloquence, & Art. Such 
 Bookes please mee much better now in mine ould age, then bookes of 
 another Stamp ; wherin I have worn out my youth, & mine Eyes, 
 wth lesse profit to mine own soule. My desire now is to confine my 
 self, to that Vnii Necessariii wch is moore woorth, then all y° rest. 
 
 I wish Wee could All content our selfs, wth that Doctrine and those 
 Rites, wch our Predecessors have left vnto us. I can see nothing 
 Altered^ or Augmented, for y* Better. Wee want Confirmation in 
 these, both Ould and Young ; and hee does an Episcopal Act, who 
 labours to hould others in that Doctrine & Discipline, where hee 
 Found them setled by This Church. 
 
 Octob. 29, 1639. . .. , 
 
 My L"* BPPof Saru's Lett'- 
 
 De devotion 
 
 My L.'of Armagh his booke. 
 
 Meanwhile Thomas Fuller's brother, John, after the lapse 
 of the usual terms, took the Master's degrees in 1639, 
 when his uncle Davenant, in addition to his annual allow- 
 ance, proposed to make him a gift of a20. John Fuller 
 does not seem to have wished to become a clergyman (the 
 usual vocation of the family) for which so many of his 
 relations had been educated, and he induced his uncle to 
 allow him to study for the law. A letter, dated Salisbury, 
 Oct. 29, 1639, t'^us mentions his requests : — 
 
432 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " My nephew John Ffuller is resolved to betake himself to y= studie 
 of y= Civil Law ; and albeeit I could in likelihood doe him more good 
 in another way {i.e. of course by advancing him in the Church) yet I ' 
 love not to force any of mine vnto a calling, wherunto they stand not 
 affected above all others. I conceav it will be most fitting for him to 
 converse w"* men of y= same profession ; and therefore I have advised 
 him, to remove unto Trinity Hall. What favour you can doe him by 
 your coinendation to y= master or any of y= ffellowes, I pray let him 
 have it ; And thus wishing your good health, and Happiness, I comend 
 you to y° Giver thereof, and rest ever 
 
 Your verie loving friend 
 
 Jo. Saru.> 
 
 One of the last occasions in which we hear of Davenant 
 in public was in 1640, the year before his death, when the 
 Convocation of 1640 — one of the most interesting and 
 critical episodes in the history of our Church — under the 
 direction of Archbishop Laud, passed certain canons, prin- 
 cipally for the enforcement of uniform clerical discipline ; 
 which, although unobjectionable in themselves (and on 
 another occasion might have been extremely useful, as 
 supplements to the Canons of 1604), were considered, 
 under the circumstances, ill-timed, being at a moment 
 when the Church was scarcely able to sustain even her 
 existence ; and so it was the passing of these canons was 
 made a handle to hasten her destruction. Our Bishop was 
 present with his nephew Fuller, and Dr William Fuller, 
 Dean of Ely, Fuller's uncle, at these deliberations, and 
 was the means of inducing others to sign the canons when 
 passed. 
 
 We have the relations of several persons who were 
 present at the meeting of this convocation, but not so full 
 as they might have been, "for," says Fuller^ (who was one 
 of the proctors for the Diocese of Bristol, in which his 
 
 1 Dr Davenant to Dr Ward. Tanner MSS. Bodl., vol. Ixvii. p. 147. 
 
 ^Ch. Hist, xi. iii. 11. Besides Fuller's account — which was the first full 
 account of the assembly — we have Heylin's (in his Life of Laud), who was a 
 principal person in the lower House. But this came out many years after 
 Fuller's, and Archbishop Laud's own account, in the TrotibUs. 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 433 
 
 pastoral charge lay, Broad-Windsor,^ which had been 
 conferred upon him by his uncle Davenant in 1634, not 
 forgetful of his favourite nephew in the disposal of the 
 patronage of the See of Sarum), " it was orderedihat none 
 present should take any private notes in the house ; 
 whereby the particular passages thereof are left in great 
 uncertainty. However, as far as I can remember, I will 
 faithfully relate, being computed with this consideration, 
 that generally he is accounted an impartial arbitrator 
 who displeaseth both sides." The Convocation met, April 
 14th, in St Paul's Chapter-house, and "waited upon his 
 Grace and the rest of the bishops, to hear the sermon in 
 the choir." The sermon was preached by Dr Turner, 
 Chaplain to the Primate, and Residentiary of St Paul's. 
 His text was Matt. x. 16, " Behold I send you forth as 
 lambs in the midst of wolves," " which," says Heylin, " he 
 followed home to the purpose." In the close of his ser- 
 mon^which was in Latin — he made a sharp attack upon 
 some of the more tolerant bishops, complaining of the 
 injustice they did to their stricter brethren by allowing all 
 the odium to rest upon them for the enforcement of disci- 
 pline and good order, which all the bishops were equally 
 bound to maintain. After the sermon the clergy unani- 
 mously elected Dr Richard Stewart, Clerk of His Majesty's 
 closet, and Dean of Chichester, to be their Prolocutor. 
 Meeting again the next day in Henry VII.'s chapel in 
 Westminster Abbey, Dr Shelden, Warden of All Souls, 
 presented the prolocutor to the Archbishop, and the Arch- 
 bishop received him," each of them delivering his conceptions 
 in elegant Latin speeches, as the custom is, but the Arch- 
 bishop's longer than both the rest." ^ Fuller says " the Arch- 
 
 1 "That Prebend of Salisbury," says Fuller's anonymous biographer, "was 
 a commodious step to another more profitable place," p. 7. 
 
 ^ Heylin's Laud. Dr Sheldon is said to have been the first who publicly 
 denied the Pope to be Antichrist at Oxford. The Doctor in the Chair 
 (Prideaux) wondering at it, said : " Quid, my fill, negas Papam esse Anti- 
 christum." Dr Sheldon answered : " Etiam, nego." Dr Prideaux replied : 
 
 2 E 
 
434 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 bishop's speech was well nigh three-quarters-of-an-hour 
 long, gravely uttered, his eyes oft-times being but one 
 remove from weeping. It consisted most of generals, 
 bemoaning the distempers of the Church, but concluded 
 with a special passage, acquainting us how highly we 
 were indebted to his Majesty's favour, so far intrusting 
 the integrity and ability of their Convocation^ as to em- 
 power them with his commission, the like whereof was not 
 granted for many years before, to alter old, to make new, 
 canons for the government of the Church." ^ 
 
 With this introduction the Archbishop produced the 
 King's commission under the great seal, authorizing the 
 Convocation to make Canons. It was six-and-thirty years 
 since (1604) this licence had been given to the repre- 
 sentatives of the Church, and we may ask the question 
 why in these troublous times, a privilege so long withheld 
 should have been conceded. The explanation will be found 
 in the document by which the King ratifies the Canons, 
 and in an attentive consideration of the Canons them- 
 selves. Perhaps Archbishop Laud found that he had 
 been going too far in pressing ritual conformity all round. 
 That in strictly enforcing tables altar-wise, rails, bowing 
 towards the altar, special articles of visitation, and divers 
 other matters, he was not borne out by the Canons of 1604. 
 It was intended therefore to make a body of ecclesiastical 
 laws, which should have a retrospective force, and also 
 make discipline, which had now for some years been 
 exacted, be more easily and legally enforced for the future." 
 " For the procuring of this commission," says Heylin, 
 who was in Laud's fullest confidence, "the Archbishop 
 had good reason as vi&Wfor countenancing and confirming 
 his former actings, as for rectifying many other things 
 which required reformation," ^ and this fully appears in 
 
 "Profecto multum tibi debet Pontifex Romanus, et nuUus dubito quin pileo 
 cardanilitio te denobit." — Masson' Life of Milton, i. 497. 
 ^ Fuller's Church History, xi. iii. 13. ' Heylin's Laud, p. 424. 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 435 
 
 the King's' declaration. " Forasmuch as we are given to 
 understand that many of our subjects being misled against 
 the rites and ceremonies now used in the Church of Eng- 
 land, have lately taken offence at the same upon an unjust 
 supposal, that they are contrary to our laws" &c. The 
 declaration goes on to assert that they were used by the 
 Reformers, but had lately begun to fall into disuse, and 
 having recited the powers given to this Convocation to 
 make Canons, it ratifies and confirms the Canons made.^ 
 
 It was evidently intended by a politic stroke to make 
 the ground firm and sure, for practices which some regarded 
 as innovations, but others as renovations, or the recoveiy 
 of a discipline which obtained in an earlier and more 
 healthy condition of things — but these moot points, as in 
 our times, are always provocative of excited discussion. 
 The very enacting of new laws seemed to imply that the 
 former practice had had no law to rest on, and the con- 
 ciliatory tone manifested in the Canons themselves, though 
 by some it might be received as condescension, by others 
 might be treated as betraying the endeavour to escape 
 easily from a false position.^ Compare, for instance, the 
 concluding sentence of Canon VII., with the previous prac- 
 tice of Laud and some of his suffragans : " Let not those 
 who use this rite (bowing towards the altar) despise those 
 who use it not; and let not those who use it not, con- 
 demn those who use it."^ If this rule of Christian charity 
 had indeed been the Canon of the High Church Prelates, 
 then truly they have been maligned even by their friends. 
 "Some wise men," says Fuller, "in the Convocation began 
 now to be jealous * of the event of new.Canons, yea, became 
 
 1 Sparrow's Collection, 337-346. 
 
 ' Perry's Hist, of Church of England, vol. i. 603. 
 
 * Sparrow's Collection, 363. 
 
 ^" These ecclesiastical enactments," says Dr Lingard, "added to the 
 ■general excitement. The right of the convocation to sit after the dissolution 
 of Parliament, and of the King to authorize it to make laws, which might 
 affect the interests of laymen, was called in question ; exceptions were taken 
 
436 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 fearful of their own selves, but having too great power lest 
 it should tempt them to be over-tampering in innovations. 
 They thought it better that this Convocation, with its 
 predecessors, should be censured for laziness, and the 
 solemn doing of just nothing, rather than to run the hazard 
 by over activity to do anything unjust. For as waters 
 long dammed up, oft-times flownce, and flie out too violently, 
 when their sluices are pulled up, and they let loose on a 
 sudden ; so the judicious feared, lest the Convocation, 
 whose power of meddling with Church matters had been 
 bridled up for many years before, should now, enabled 
 with such power, over-act their parts, especially in such 
 dangerous and discontented times. Yea, they suspected 
 lest those who formerly had out-runne the Canons with 
 their additional conformitie (ceremonizing more than was 
 enjoyned), now would make the Canons come up to them, 
 making it necessary for others, what voluntarily they had 
 pre-practised themselves." ^ Heylin, indeed, says that the 
 Commission " was exceedingly acceptable to the greatest 
 and best affected part of the whole assembly," ^ and thus 
 the Convocation was divided between the eager discipli- 
 narians, and the more prudent ones who wished to leave 
 things as they were, and let well alone, according to the 
 precedents of the last thirty and six years. 
 
 " Matters began to be in agitation," said Fuller, " when 
 on a sudden Parliament was dissolved . . . and from this 
 very time did God begin to gather the twiggs of that rod 
 (a civill warr) wherewith soon after He intended to whip a 
 wanton nation." 
 
 " Next day," continues Fuller, " the Convocation came 
 together, as most supposed, meeting to part, and finally 
 to dissolve themselves. When, contrary to general ex- 
 
 and petitions presented against the form of oath imposed upon the clergy ; and 
 religionists of every description, with the exception of churchmen, complained 
 of several of the Canons as highly oppressive and unjust." — Lingard's History 
 cf England, vol. vii, p. 223. 
 ' Fuller's Church Hist., xi. 111-14. '^ Heylin's Lartd, 425. 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 437 
 
 pectation, it most motioned to improve the present 
 opportunity in perfecting the new Canons which they 
 had begun. And sOon after a new Commission ^ was 
 brought from his Majesty, by virtue whereof we were 
 warranted still to sit, not in the capacity of a Convoca- 
 tion but of a Synod, to prepare our Canons for the Royal 
 assent thereunto. But Doctor Brownrigg, Doctor Hacket, 
 Doctor Holesworth, Master Warmistre, with others to the 
 number of thirty-six (the whole House consisting of about 
 six score), earnestly protested against the continuance 
 of the Convocations." ^ The judgment of the lawyers, 
 however, so far prevailed with the dissentients that they 
 did not " dissever themselves, nor enter any act in scriptis 
 against the legality of this assembly, the rather because 
 they hoped to moderate proceedings with their presence." 
 " Surely some of their own coat," observes Fuller, " which 
 since have censured these dissenters for cowardly com- 
 pliance, and doing no more in this cause, would have done 
 less themselves if in their condition." The assembly now 
 no longer sat as a Convocation but as a Synod. " Thus 
 was an old Convocation," says Fuller, " converted into a 
 new Synod." A new writ was issued, dated May 12, 
 repeating the old commission, and continuing the Con- 
 vocation during pleasure, instead of during the present 
 Parliament. The Convocation of the Province of York 
 was continued in the same way. 
 
 " Expect not of me," says Fuller, " an exemplification 
 of such Canons as were included of in this Convocation. 
 
 ' To silence the scruples of the members a written opinion was obtained 
 from Finch, an obsequious lawyer, lately made lord-keeper, and from some 
 of the judges, that the Convocation could legally continue its sittings : and a 
 new Commission — the last had evidently expired — was issued, empowering 
 it to alter and improve the laws of the Church. Amidst the alarm and mis- 
 givings of the more timid, and under the protection of a numerous guard, the 
 work rapidly proceeded : and seventeen new Canons, approved by the mem- 
 bers, received the royal assent. — (Lingard's Hist, of England, vii. 222.) 
 
 ^ Fuller's Church Hist., xvii. iii. 16. 
 
438 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Partly because being printed they are " publique to every 
 eie," but chiefly because they were never put in practice 
 or generally received. The men in Persia, did never look 
 on their little ones till they were seven years old (bred 
 till that time with their mothers and nurses)^ nor did they 
 account them in their genealogies amongst their children 
 (but among the more long-lived abortives) if dying before 
 seven years of age. I conceive such Canons come not 
 under our cognizance, which last (at least) an apprentice- 
 ship of years in use and practice, and therefore we decline 
 the setting down the acts of this Synod. It is enough for 
 us to present the number and titles of the several Canons.^ 
 
 Concerning the Regal power. 
 
 For the better keeping of the 
 Day of his Majesty's most 
 happy Inauguration. 
 
 For suppressing the growth of 
 Popery, 
 
 Against Socinianism. 
 
 Against Sectaries. 
 
 An oath enjoined for the 'pre- 
 venting of all Innovations 
 in doctrine and government. 
 
 A declaration concerning some 
 rites and ceremonies. 
 
 Of preaching for Conformity. 
 
 One book of articles of inquiry 
 to be used at all parochial 
 visitations. 
 
 10. Concerning the Conversation 
 
 of the Clergy. 
 
 1 1. Chancellors' patents. 
 
 12. Chancellors alone not to cen- 
 
 sure any of the Clergy in 
 sundry cases. 
 
 13. Excommunication and abso- 
 
 lution not to be pro- 
 nounced but by a Priest. 
 
 14. Concerning the commuta- 
 
 tions and the disposing of 
 them. 
 
 15. Touching concurrent juris- 
 
 diction. 
 
 16. Concerning licences tomarry. 
 
 1 7. Against vexatious citations. 
 
 As for the oath concluded on in this Synod, because 
 since the subject of so much discourse, it is here set forth 
 at large, according to the true tenour thereof, as follows : — 
 
 " I., A. B., do swear, that I do approve the Doctrine and 
 Discipline or Government established in the Church of 
 England as containing all things necessary to salvation : 
 and that I will not endeavour by myself or any other, 
 directly or indirectly, to bring in any Popish Doctrine 
 
 " Fuller's Church Hist., xi. iii. 19. 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 439 
 
 contrary to that which is so established : nor will I ever 
 give my consent to alter the government of this Church 
 by Archbishops, Bishops, Deans and Archdeacons, &c., as 
 it stands now established and as by right it ought to stand, 
 nor yet ever to subject it to the usurpation and supersti- 
 tioi^s of the See of Rome. And all these things L do 
 plainly and sincerely acknowledge and swear, according 
 to the plain and common sense and understanding of the 
 same words, without any equivocation or mental evasion, 
 or secret reservation whatever. And this I do heartily, 
 willingly and truly upon the faith of a Christian. So 
 help me God in Jesus Christ." 
 
 The Canons against the Papists, Socinians and Brownists 
 were mere makeweights, the real gist and force of the new 
 body of laws lies in the first and seventh canons, and the 
 sixth,^ which was designed to enforce for ever an exact 
 conformity and obedience by the imposition of what was 
 so well known afterwards by the name of The Et Cetera 
 oath, and which gave so much umbrage at the time. The 
 oath was to be taken before November by all men in 
 Orders and all graduates (except sons of noblemen). 
 
 * In this declaration (sixth) it was affirmed the standing of the Communion 
 Table side-way under the East window of every chancel or chapel is in its 
 own nature indifferent, but that it is adjudged fit and convenient that all 
 churches and chapels do conform themselves in this particular, to the example 
 of the Cathedral or Mother-Church, saving always the general liberty left to 
 the Bishops by law during the time of the Holy Communion: "And we 
 declare that this situation of the Holy Table doth not imply that it is or ought 
 to be esteemed a true and proper altar, whereon Christ is again really sacrificed : 
 but it is, and may be called an altar by us, in that sense which the Primitive 
 Church called it an altar and no other." 
 
 The Communion Table was to be railed to prevent the irreverent use of it, 
 the putting of hats upon it, common amongst those who abhor reverence ia 
 worship. 
 
 Obeisance is also commended to all upon entering and before leaving the 
 church or the chancel, " according to the most ancient custom of the Primitive 
 Church in the present times, and of this Church also, for many years of the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth. The receiving therefore of this ancient and laud- 
 able custom, we heartily commend to the serious consideration of all good 
 people, not with any intention to exhibit any religious worship to the Com- 
 
440 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Of all the proceedings of this Synod, therfe was none 
 which drew upon the Church a heavier load of obloquy 
 than the insertion of this oath, which was to be imposed, 
 not only on all the clergy, but on many of the laity : and 
 by which they were to declare that they never would con- 
 sent to any alteration in the government of the Church by 
 Bishops, Deans, Archdeacons, &c. Everyone in his right 
 senses must have seen that this et cetera had been in- 
 troduced solely for the purpose of avoiding a needless 
 enumeration of offices. Nevertheless an insane and almost 
 universal outcry was raised against it by the agitators of 
 the day. It was spoken of as a snare and pitfall. It was 
 denounced as the entrance into a yawning abyss of perjury. 
 It was held up to universal detestation, under the name of 
 the et cetera oath ; and by that term it has ever since been 
 known. But further, the whole oath itself was furiously 
 censured as " wicked and ungodly," and was afterwards 
 condemned by the Commons, as devised by the Arch- 
 bishop for the purpose of " confirming the unlawful and 
 exorbitant power which had been usurped over his 
 Majesty's subjects. It was lastly contended that the 
 imposition of any oath whatever was an act beyond: the 
 legal power of the Convocation. This outcry, though 
 plausible enough, was purely the dictate of malijgnity 
 and faction. For as Laud affirmed on his trial, even if 
 the law was against the Bishops on this point, still there 
 were various precedents, hitherto unquestioned, decidedly 
 in their favour, so that, at the very worst, their delin- 
 
 munion Table, the East, or Church, or anything therein contained, in so 
 doing : " to perform the said gesture in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, 
 upon any opinions of the corporal presence of the body of Christ on the Holy 
 Table, or in the mystical elements; but only for the advancement of God's 
 Majesty, and to give Him alone that honour and glory 'that is due unto Him, 
 and no otherwise. And in the practice and omission of this rite we desire 
 that the rule of charity, prescribed by the Apostle, may be obsferved, which is, 
 that they which use this rite, despise not them which use it not ; and that they 
 who use it not, condemn not them that use it." 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 441 
 
 quency amounted to no more than a mistake of the law, 
 and not to a wilful and treasonable violation of it.^ Never- 
 theless the attempt was insisted on as conclusive of the 
 malicious and despotic temper which pervaded the whole 
 hierarchy. 
 
 Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, made his pro- 
 test against the proceedings of the Synod, stating that he 
 did not intend to agree to any canons which it might pass, 
 but merely to the grant of subsidies ; and in May 29, when 
 the seventeen canons which had been agreed upon, were 
 to be subscribed by all, he refused to subscribe, being a 
 Papist in heart, on account of one of them being formulated 
 for the suppression of Popery. In the morning before the 
 time of subscription, he had called on the Archbishop 
 at Lambeth, and expressed his determination not to sub- 
 scribe, saying, "He would be torn with wild horses before 
 he would subscribe that canon." Laud remonstrated with 
 him, but could not convince him. " When it came to 
 the Bishop of Gloucester's turn," says Laud, "his Lordship 
 Would neither allow the canons nor reject them, but pre- 
 tended as he had once done about a week before, that we 
 had no powfer to make canons out of Parliament time. 
 But this was but a pretext to disgrace our proceedings, the 
 better to hide his unwillingness to subscribe that Canon 
 against the Papists, as appeared by that speech which he 
 had privately used to me in the morning, and which I 
 publicly charged him with upon this occasion, and he did 
 as publicly acknowledge {Troubles, 81). 
 
 " However, the next day," says Fuller, " when we all sub- 
 scribed the Canons (suffering ourselves, according to the 
 order of such meetings^ to be all concluded by the majority 
 of votes, though some of us in the Committee privately dis- 
 senting in the passing of many particulars), he alone utterly 
 refused his subscription thereunto, whereupon the Arch- 
 bishop, being present with us in King Henry VHth his 
 
 1 Troubles, p. 380-83. 
 
442 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 chappell, was highly offended at him. * My Lord of 
 Gloucesterl said he, ' I admonish you to subscribe ' ; and 
 presently after, ' My Lord of Gloucester, I admonish you the 
 sicondtime to subscribe'; and immediately after, 'I admonish 
 you the third time to subscribe] — to all which the Bishop 
 pleaded conscience, and returned a denial. 
 
 " Then were the judgments of the Bishops severally 
 asked^ whether they should proceed to the present sus- 
 pension of Gloucester for his contempt therein. Davenant, 
 Bishop of Salisbury, being demanded his opinion, con- 
 ceived it fit some lawyer should first be consulted with, 
 how far forth the power of a Synod in such cases did 
 extend. He added, moreover, that the threefold admoni- 
 tion of a Bishop ought solemnly to be done with some 
 considerable intervals betwixt them, in which the party 
 might have time of convenient deliberation." The Arch- 
 bishop thanked him for his opinion and acquiesced in its 
 propriety. The result was Goodman, to avoid conse- 
 quences, signed the Canons. " However, some days after 
 he was committed (by the King's command, as I take it) 
 to the Gate-house, where he got by his restraint what he 
 could never have gained by his liberty, namely, of one 
 reputed Popish, to become for a short time popular, as the 
 only confessor suffering for not subscribing the canons. 
 Soon after, the same Canons were subscribed at York, 
 where the Convocation is but the hand of the Diall, moving 
 and pointing as directed by the Clock of the Province of 
 Canterbury. And on the last of fune following, the said 
 Canons were publiquely printed, with the Royal assent 
 affixed thereunto." ^ 
 
 Heylin tells us that there had also been a design in de- 
 liberation touching the drawing and digesting of an English 
 Pontificale, to be approved by this Convocation, and tended 
 to his Majesty's confirmation. Which said Pontificale 
 was to contain the form arid manner of his Majesty's late 
 
 > Fuller's Church Hist., bk. xi. iii. 23. 
 
RITUAL CONFORMITY 443 
 
 Coronation, to serve for a perpetual standing rule on the 
 like occasions, another form to be observed by all Arch- 
 bishops and Bishops, for consecrating churches, church- 
 yards and chapels; and a third for reconciling such 
 Penitents as either had done open penance, or had revolted 
 from the faith to the law of Mahomet. Which three, 
 together with the form of confirmation, and that of order- 
 ing Bishops, Priests and Deacons, which were then in force, 
 were to make up the whole body of the book intended. 
 Another scheme that failed was the introduction of the 
 service in Latin into all Colleges and Halls, at least in the 
 morning prayer, as Heylin appears to intimate.^ 
 
 "On the first publication of these canons," says Mr 
 Le Bas, " they were received with general approbation. 
 Letters were addressed to the Archbishop from the remot- 
 est parts of the kingdom, expressive of this sentiment. 
 But within a month after they were printed, the London 
 ministers began to whisper against them ; then to clamour 
 loudly ; and lastly to circulate their complaints in writing, 
 till at length the whole body of ordinances was vehemently 
 cried out upon, and, as usual, the main fury of the tempest 
 fell upon the head of the Archbishop." ^ 
 
 The Canons were disallowed in the succeeding Parlia- 
 ment. The oath also fell to the ground, Sanderson himself 
 being amongst those who regarded the imposition of it 
 as tending to endanger the Church. 
 
 ^Life of Laud, p. 442. ^ Life of Laud, p. 266, by Rev. C. W. Le Bas. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 BISHOP DAVENANT'S " ANIMADVERSIONS " UPON 
 HOARD'S TREATISE (1641) 
 
 " In all State alterations, be they never so bad, the Pulfit will be of the 
 same wood with the Councii-board." — Yxnx.KS.'s Church History, iv. 153. 
 
 IN 1639 and 1640 we find three letters from Bishop 
 Davenant to Dr Ward. The first refers to the Arch- 
 bishop of Armagh's (Usher) bopks, the second to his own 
 new work De Fundamentalibus, and the third about the 
 presentation copies, 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 Good D" Ward, 
 
 I received your letter from London of y' aith of November, to- 
 gether wth all y= bookes mentioned therin. For y° bible, I must bee 
 your Debtor, till I cann either send y" monney to Cambridg, or pay it 
 you heere. You wrote vnto mee that my Lord of Armagh had sfent 
 vnto mee his Antiquitates Britannicae, with y' Pelagian history inserted. 
 I hear nothing of them as yet ; and yf you know whome hee trusted to 
 send that book vnto' mee, certefie mee therof, and I will call for it. I 
 esteem so highly bothe of y= Giver & y" Gift, that I will not negligently 
 loose it. As for Animadversions vppon y* Pelagian historie, or for 
 writing vppon y' two later Arminian Articles, Nostra stas iam acta 
 est : Eysight memorie and all so failes, that I dare not attempt any 
 such thing. Our suffrage in y" Synod of Dort conteins my Judgment 
 concerning those points. Some other short & rough notes I have wch 
 I made vppon those points in Collatione Hagrensi, before our going to 
 Dort, but I hear they are scarse woorks any other mans pvsing. For 
 my Animadversions vppon [Gods Love to mankinde] you know that 
 at y* first I intended nothing but breif marginal Notes, and afterwards 
 finding that this would not serve y" turn I inlardged my discourse 
 somewhat further. Yet I never made a continued cohaerent discourse 
 of it ; but sett down my minde in disiointed Notes, as that Authors 
 Woords gave me occasion. This makes it hard to finde vnto what 
 
 444 
 
DAVENANT'S LETTERS 445 
 
 woords of his, mine have relation. But for some help heerin in 
 y* Transcribing of my Animadvrsions, I divided both them & his 
 book into twenty Chapters. Yf you send my Notes vnto his Lord- 
 ship, (wch I am content you shall, for I know no man to whose Judg- 
 ment I would rather submitt them) I pray send him y" Booke, and my 
 Animadvrsions so divided. For publishing these Animadvrsions, I 
 can give no way vnto it ; bothe because it may bee interpreted as 
 crossing his Maiesties declaration, and also because y° Discourse is 
 not Cohserent ; wch though it may affoord Materials vnto him who 
 would make a pfect Answer vnto that Booke, yet in it selfe, is impfect. 
 For y" Tractat De Fundamentalib., ' or any thing of mine, I shall never 
 bee vnwilling they should bee imparted to any of my Brethren whether 
 of England or Ireland, and to my Lord of Arniagh, (whose accurate 
 Judgment in these points is well known) as willingly as to any what- 
 somever. Only yf you send them vnto him, I pray him to amend 
 what is Defective, and himselfe to make a pfect Treatise of that 
 wherof mine is but a Rude Essaie. 
 
 You desired my Judgment concerning this Proposition [Vbi Sp. 
 Sanctus inspirat sancta Cogitations, Bona Voluntatem, piu Affecta et 
 desideriii, ibi simul indit eiusdem Certam Notitiam]. I am not at 
 leisure to enter into a full discourse therof: in breif, thus I first 
 conceav that the Threefold woork of y* Spirit mentioned in your 
 proposition, contains in it y° Justification, Adoption & Sanctification 
 of a Sinner. Secondly (this presupposed; I conceav that by the 
 woords, Certa Notitia, you mean the App[r]ehension of this Proposi- 
 tion. Ego sum Justificatus, Adoptatus, Sanctificatus, ad vita Desti- 
 natus. Now my Judgment is ; that albeeit in all Gods Justified, 
 Sanctified, and adopted Children, there bee such an Act, wch y' Scrip- 
 tures Calls Knowledg or Assurance, of y' Gratious Benefits wch God 
 has bestowed vppon vs. Yet this Act is not of that Constant Per- 
 petuity ^ wthy Act of Faith wherby a Believing Christian apprehends 
 y= Theoretical Articles expressly sett down in Scriptur. The Appre- 
 hension of Truth in these is not lost vnles a man turn Heretic or 
 Dubius in Fide : but y= livelie apprehension of ; Ego sii Justificatus, 
 Adoptatus, ad vitam aeterna ordinatus, Taayfor a Time bee suppressed, 
 and vnable to come into Act, even in him, whome God knowes to bee 
 Soe. I take therfore these reflexed Acts to bee (according to y' phrase 
 of Scripture) Acts of knowledg or Faith, Testified vnto y« Soules of 
 private persons, by a privat Testimony of y Holy Ghost actually 
 shining vppon their soules : but not such Acts as any man can as 
 ordinarily Elicit, as hee may y* Act of Beleeving y" Resurrection, or 
 
 » Fol. 160. *. 
 
446 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 any other article of Faith ; whervnto hee gives a full consent, so often 
 cu hee thinks vppon them. In these it is somewhat otherwise : for 
 vnles a Childe of God, bee in that present Disposition, as yt it is for 
 y* good of his soule to have such Comfortable Apprehensions, y* Spirit 
 of God will not Bear Witnes therof vnto his Spirit ; wch yf it doe not, 
 hee cannot have Certam Notitiam therof, bee the thing never so certain 
 in it selfe. But manii de Tabula, I wish you Health and Happines, 
 and coinitt you to y" Author therof, resting alwaies 
 Yoiir very loving freind 
 Salisburie, Jo. Saru. 
 
 Dec. 3, 1639. 
 
 \a bit torn out here] qre did especially ayme, att Gods preventing 
 grace; potissimu qretam gratia prseveniente efficaci, q opetur fidem 
 et poenitentia et reliqua opa preparatoria, Et bona opa ; n' de eor 
 dem effectib. Davenanti ipse videtur affirmative statuere in comm. ad 
 Coloss. pag. 18 Vbi Sp. Sa. inspirat illam gratiam, q elicit hunc actu, 
 ego credo in Xpum Redemptorem ob remissionem peccators. 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To his woorthie & much respected freind D' Ward, 
 Professor of Divinitie, & Master of Sidney CoUedg in Cambridg 
 give this. 
 
 Leav this with y° Carrier of Cambridg. 
 
 Decemb. 3, 1639. 
 My L'* BPP- of Saru his Lett'- 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 Good D^Ward, 
 
 I have since y° dissolution of y" synod pvsed my treatise De Fun- 
 damentalibus ; and have added thervnto those things wherof Dr 
 Bromrick putt mee in minde. 
 
 My desire is that it bee now printed wth as much Speed as con- 
 veniently it may. Yf my former discourse wch I sent to Durseus, bee 
 ioined therwthall, I suppose they will make a book full as bigg, (yf not 
 bigger) then y' wherin all y" Fower were printed together. I would 
 have them in as fair a Roman letter as those were ; and in somewhat 
 a larger paper, for fear of growing overthick. I hope y' Printer will 
 not think much to bestow vppon mee a Competent number of Bookes. 
 For y= Distribution wherof in Cambridg, I leav it wholy to your self ; 
 desiring that none of my friends there, vnto whome you gave any of 
 my former Bookes bee now forgotten. As for those wch my self am 
 to bestow, amongest my other freinds, I, would have six (at y* least) 
 verie handsomlie bound, for person's of extraordinary quality. The 
 
DAVENANT'S LETTERS 447 
 
 rest may be bound or stitched vp after y" ordinary fashion. Let them 
 all bee sent to Mr Harrisons where I now lodg, and as soon as may 
 bee after they shall be finished. I would desire you when you cann 
 guesse about what time they will come forth, to give mee some notice 
 therof beforehand, y' so I may give Mr Harrison present direction 
 for y* bestowing of some of them in London, and y° sending down of 
 y' rest vnto Salisbury. The Supervising of my written Copie I coHiitt 
 to your selfe, & D' Bromrick, intreating you to look it over before it goe 
 to y" Presse ; & to mend what you finde faul[t]y or defective. Thus 
 comitting you to y" protection of y= Almighty, I rest 
 
 Your assured loving freind, 
 Westminster, Jo. SarO. 
 
 June 1°, 1640. 
 
 [Endorsed: — 1 To his reverend and much respected friend D Ward, 
 Professor of Divinity and Master of Sidney Colledg in Cam- 
 bridg, give this. 
 
 June I, 1640. 
 My L'* of Saru his lett'- 
 
 Salutem in Christo. 
 
 Good D'^ Ward ; When my book is printed ; for so many as are 
 to bee bestowed in Cambridg vse your own discretion : onlely let one 
 fairly bound, bee sent in my name for Queens Colledg Library. My 
 purpose is to tender one of them to my Lords Grace, another to my 
 Lord of London, and to such other of my Brethren y* Bishops as are 
 about y° City. I shall likewise have occasion to tender some others, 
 vnto frinds of Quality heer in y° Country. For this vce I would have 
 a doozen at y* least sent bound : some fairly for y= Bishops, all hand- 
 somely. Besides these, I desire to have sent onlie stitched vp, or in 
 quires ; about 20 or thirty. Let the two Packets bee made vp severally 
 (because y* Books wch are bound must be taken out at London) and 
 these Distributed. I would have them all directed to Mr Harrisons 
 howse in Westminster Church yard. 
 
 I receaved letters from y 'three Doctors of Breme to the same pur- 
 pos wch you and D Bromrick have donne, about 9 or 10 weeks agoe : 
 and I returned them All their several answers. My Lord of Exceter 
 also had letters from them about y" same time and hathe also made 
 answer vnto them. Hee and I were bothe of opinion, y' it was rather 
 Formes of Speech, then Substance of Doctrine, wch had mooved 
 y' sharp contention : and that the three Doctors (might their woords 
 have but a fair Interpretation) could not iustly bee chardged wth 
 
448 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Pelagianism, Socinianism, Arminianism, or any other false Doctrine 
 contrary to the Receaved doctrine of y.= Protestant Churches. — The 
 badd Northern newes perplexeth everie man ; I pray God wee may 
 All join iny= Right Course for preventing further Mischeifs. But it 
 is God that can doe it : wthout whose Help, vain is y=help of man. 
 To his gratious protection I coniitt you, and rest 
 
 Your assured loving freind, 
 
 Jo. Davenant ' Saru. 
 Salisb., Septemb. 12th, 
 1640. 
 
 [Endorsed: — ] To his verie loving and much respected freind Dr 
 Ward, Master of Sidney Colledg and one of y' Divinity Readers 
 in Cambridg give this wth Speed. 
 
 Septemb. 12, 1640. 
 My L"' of Sarum his lett'- 
 
 In 1641 our venerable author published a treatise in 
 support of his former views on the subject of Predestina- 
 tion, and in reply to a work which had appeared some 
 years before. The Rev. Samuel Hoard, B.D., Rector of 
 Morton, in Essex, put out a tractate in 1633, entitled: 
 God's Love to Mankind, manifested by disproving His 
 absolute Decree for their Damnation, and it appears to have 
 been the earliest treatise in this country, in opposition to 
 what may be termed the " Calvinian " platform, or the 
 Calvinistic tenet or opinion.^ Davenant penned a reply 
 entitled Animadversions written by the Right Rev. Father 
 in God, John, Lord Bishop of Salisbury, upon a treatise 
 intituled: God's Love to Mankind. We are not told why 
 our Bishop published it no earlier than after the lapse of 
 eight years. But it is a book written with all the powers 
 of his mind, and not in Latin, like his others (which is no 
 doubt the reason why Davenant's works have been so, I 
 will not say under-x^t^A but over-XooV&A), but in nervous 
 English and incisive diction. The whole of Hoard's book 
 is incorporated in it, and he appears to have been no con- 
 
 ' \qu. in the same hand ?] ^Life ef Laud, p. 442. 
 
"ANIMADVERSIONS" UPON HOARD 449 
 
 teinptible adversary in point of argument. His work is in 
 the form of an Epistle, from which we find that he origi- 
 nally, held the views he there took up his pen to refute, 
 for he commences with this remark : " I have sent you 
 here my reasons which have moved me to change my 
 opinion in some controversies of late debated between the 
 Remonstrants and their opponents." ^ These treatises; 
 thus united in one publication, seem to compress all that 
 has been said in so many volumes on this subject. Hoard 
 accumulates all the arguments in opposition to the Cal- 
 viiiistic views, and presses them home with considerable 
 ability and energy, but in no work is the logical acuteness 
 of Bishop Davenant's powerful mind more exhibited than 
 in his reply. It is brimful of ratiocination, it bristles with 
 the most trenchant logic, it teems with patristic and other 
 authorities, and it pulverises his opponent's lucubrations 
 with the massive strength of a lion. Surely there were 
 giants in those theological days, and the Anglican reformed 
 Church may well be proud of such sons. 
 
 In 1703 Dr Calamy, preaching in the lecture-room at 
 Salter's Hall, discoursed from the text Rom. ix. i6^—So 
 then it is not of him that willeth — and afterwards published 
 his discourse at the request of his auditors, under the title : 
 Divine mercy exalted, or Free grace in its glory, in the 
 preface to which he complains that "some have given 
 themselves a liberty to reflect on their brethren who 
 adhere to the suffrages of the British Divines in the Synod 
 of Dort," and recommends those "that would see the 
 doctrine of particular election maintained, consistently 
 with a general love of God to the world, to consult the 
 learned and peaceable Bishop Davenant's Animadversions 
 
 ^Thus Whiston in his Memoirs, vol. i. p. Ii, speaking of his father said : 
 " I also remember his observation on Mr Hoard's book, concerning GocC's 
 Love to Mankind, as the first that began to set aside the Calvinists' unhappy 
 scheme of election and reprobatioii in England, which, till then, was the cur- 
 rent opinion of the members of the Church of England, as it is still the 
 doctrine of the Thirty-nine Articles." 
 
 2 F 
 
450 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 upon. Hoard's Treatise, a book not valued according to its 
 worth." 
 
 Davenant maintains, with extraordinary force and elo- 
 quence, the unconditional decree of election, and whilst he 
 contends that this admits of sufficiency of grace given to 
 all, he likewise maintains that reprobation is of necessity 
 involved in election,^ and his view of it is thus expressed : 
 " Reprobation is not a denial of sufficient grace, but a 
 denial of such special grace, as God knoweth would in- 
 fallibly bring them to glory." The book abounds with 
 striking passages, yet who that duly appreciates the sim- 
 plicity of inspired truth does not, after reading this, or any 
 other treatise of the kind, gladly return to the sacred 
 volume, and feel his mind relieved and comforted with the 
 plain infallible assurance that " God is love," that salva- 
 tion is His free gift, and that He " will have {i.e. wills to 
 have) all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the 
 truth." It is no reproach to the Church of England that 
 men of different views in this abstruse subject have been 
 found in her communion, for the controverted doctrines 
 have been as hotly debated between the Dominican and 
 Franciscan orders,^ between Jesuit and Jansenist, in the 
 
 ^ Whitby's book on the " Five Points " opens with a memorable extract from 
 this work of " good Bishop Davenant," as he calls him. 
 
 ° This broke out in the ninth century, in which Godescalcus, a monk, was 
 severely used by Hincmar, and by the Church of Rheims, for asserting some 
 of St Austin's doctrines, against which Scotus Erigenia wrote, as Bertram, or 
 Ratramne, wrote for them. Remigius, Bishop of Lyons, with his Church, 
 did zealously assert St Austin's doctrine, and without great sharpness against 
 Scotus. After this the matter slept, till the school-divinity came to be in 
 great credit, and Thon^as Aquinas being accounted the chief glory of the 
 Dominican Order, he not only asserted all St Austin's doctrines, but added 
 this to it : that whereas formerly it was in general held that the providence of 
 God did extend itself to all things whatsoever, he thought this was done by 
 God's concurring immediately to the production of every thought, action; 
 motion or mode ; so that God was the first and immediate cause of everything 
 that was done. And, in order to the explaining the joint production of every- 
 thing by God as the first, and by the creature as the second cause, he thought, 
 at least, as his followers have understood him, that by a physical influence the 
 
"ANIMADVERSIONS" UPON HOARD 451 
 
 so-called infallible and unchangeable Church of Rome. 
 And if we have to take the seventeenth Article as repre- 
 senting the Church's teaching on this head» we must 
 neither forget its prudent conclusions, nor the warning 
 clauses of the " Declaration " which prefaces the Articles, 
 Besides both doctrines, "man's free agency and will," and 
 " God's sovereignty or election," are undoubtedly found in 
 the Bible itself, side by side, and what we know not now, 
 such is the promise, we shall know hereafter. "God is 
 His own interpreter," as old Hart, the Calvinist poet, 
 sings, " and He will make it plain." 
 
 These Animadversions were printed at Cambridge, by 
 Roger Daniel, Printer to the ; University, 1641, and the 
 Bishop adds these words at the back of the title-page. " I 
 have perused these Animadversions upon a Treatise, intitled 
 God^s Love to Mankind, and now acknowledge them thus 
 corrected for mine own. Signed, Jo. Sarum." From which 
 it would appear that there was some doubt as to whether 
 "John, Lord Bishop of Salisbury," referred to our Bishop 
 Davenant. The title-page is embellished by an allegorical 
 figure of "Alma Mater" (Cantabrigiensis),i holding a sun 
 emitting light in the right hand, and a cup in the left, 
 with this circumscribed inscription, " Hinc lucent, et pocula 
 
 will was predetermined by God to all things, whether good or bad, so that the 
 will could not be said to be free in that particular instance in sensu composito, 
 though' it was in general still free in all its actions in sensu divina, a distinction 
 so sacred, and so much used among them, that I choose to give it in their own 
 terms, rather than translate them. To avoid the consequence of making God 
 the author of sin, a distinction was made between the positive act of sin, which 
 was said not to be evil, and the want of its conformity to the law of God, 
 which, being a negative, was no positive being, so that it was not produced, 
 And thus, though the action was produced jointly by God as the first cause, 
 and by the creature as the second, yet God was not guilty of the sin, but only 
 the creature. This doctrine passed down among the Dominicans, and con- 
 tinues to do so to this day. Scotus, who was a Franciscan, denied this 
 predetermination, and asserted the freedom of the will. Durandus denied 
 this immediate concourse, in which he has not had many followers, except 
 Adda and some few more." — ^Burnet's Exposition of the XXXIX. Articles, 
 Article xvii. 
 
452 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 sacra" There are also two very pregnant and illustrative 
 texts on the same page. One from Hosea, " O Israd, thou 
 hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thy help " (xiii. 9); and 
 the other from the Apocrypha, "Seek not death in the 
 err our of your life ; and pull not upon yourselves destruction 
 with the works of your hands. For God made not death ; 
 neither hath He pleasure in the destruction of the living" 
 (Wisdom i. 12, 13). 
 
 Our Prelate ^ thus speaks. Concerning the title of this book, 
 "The general love of God towards mankind is so clearly 
 testified in Holy Scripture, and so demonstrated by the 
 manifold effects of God's goodnesse and mercy extended to 
 every particular man in this world, that to doubt thereof 
 were infidelity, and to denie it plain blasphemie ; yet for 
 all this, if any shall go about to magnifie the common love 
 of God, extended promiscuously to all men, that thereby 
 he obscureth the speciall love and mercy of God, prepared 
 from all eternitie and bestowed in due time upon elect 
 men. This may lead the ignorant and unlearned in a 
 dangerous errour; and therefore obliquely to oppose the 
 eternall, free and absolute decree of Predestination or 
 Election under colour of disapproving an absolute decree 
 for any man's Damnation, befitted not any Divine who 
 ackno^vledgeth the truth of that doctrine which the scrip- 
 tures have delivered, St Augustine cleared, and the Church 
 of England established in the seventeenth Article. But if 
 the authour of this treatise had no other aim then the over- 
 throwing of such an eternall decree of Predestination and 
 Preterition as is fondly supposed will save men whether 
 they repent or not repent, believe or not believe, persevere 
 
 * "And, indeed, the learned will never fail," says Mr Russell, "to acknow- 
 ledge the great acuteness and depth of Davenant. What praise can suffice for 
 his Animadversions upon Hoard, on. the Universal love of God? A work in 
 which Davenant enters, with a mind as fully prepared for such enquiries as 
 can fall to the lot of man, into the most mysterious disputes that have ever 
 divided philosophers and theologians." — (Memoriais of Thomas Fuller, p. 
 121.) 
 
"ANIMADVERSIONS" UPON HOARD 453 
 
 or not persevere, and such an absolute decree of Repro- 
 bation as will damne men though they should repent and 
 believe, or will hinder any man from repenting and believ- 
 ing, or will cause and work any man's impenitency or 
 infidelity; we both wish, and shall endeavour together 
 with him to root such erroneous fansies out of all Christian 
 minds. 
 
 " The place cited out of Hosea, with many others which 
 might be alledged, will easily prove that man is the authour 
 of his own sinne, and the procurer of his own damnation, 
 and God onely the Judge and punisher. But withall they 
 prove as clearly that man is not the procurer of his own 
 Predestination, nor the deserver of his own Salvation by 
 his foreseen faith and perseverance ; but God is He who 
 according to His absolute and infallible purpose giveth in 
 time that grace unto His elect which before all time He 
 decreed should be an effectuall means to bring men to 
 glory." 
 
 The whole of Sam Hoard's book. Gents Love to Man- 
 kind, is, as we remarked before, incorporated in this work, 
 his treatise being printed in small type, and Davenant's 
 rejoinder in large. This has a double advantage — the 
 author to be criticised is allowed to have all his own words 
 quoted as he wrote them, without having garbled extracts 
 or weak points selected for animadversion, apart from their 
 context, and the different size of type at once arrests the 
 vision. 
 
 Our Bishop then gives an answer to the {Hoards) Preface, 
 •with some propositions concerning the true nature of Predes- 
 tination and Election. 
 
 " The Title of the Book justly rejecteth an absolute 
 Decree for the damnation of any particular person ; for 
 such a Decree was never enacted in God's eternall counsel, 
 nor ever published in His revealed Word. But for absolute 
 Reprobation, if by this word be understood onely that 
 Preterition, non-Election, or negative decree of Predestin- 
 
454 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 ation, which is contradictorMy opposed to thfc decree of 
 Election, the one is as absolute as the other, and neither 
 dfependeth upon the foreseen difference of men's actions, 
 but upon the absolute will of God. For if God from 
 eternitie absolutely elected some unto the infallible attain- 
 ment of Grace and Glory, we cannot but grant that those 
 who are not comprised within the absolute decree are as 
 absolutely passed by as the other are chosen. The decree 
 of Damnation therefore must jiot be confounded with the 
 decree of negative Predestination, which (according to the 
 phrase of the School rather then of the Scripture) is usually 
 termed Reprobation. By which term of Reprobation some 
 understand onely the deniall of Election or Predestination. 
 And because the negation is to be measured by the affirm- 
 ation, except we be agreed what is meant when we say, 
 Peter was predestinated before the foundations of the world 
 were layd, we can never rightly judge what is meant when 
 on the contrary we avouch fudas was reprobated before the 
 foundations of the world were layd. Some others under the 
 name of Reprobation involve not onely the negative decree 
 of preparing such effectuall grace as would bring men most 
 certainly unto glory, but an affirmative decree also for the 
 punishing of men eternally in hell-fire. 
 
 " So farre forth as this authour seemeth to oppose the ab- 
 solute decree of Predestination, and the absolute decree of 
 negative Reprobation or non-Election, reducing them to 
 the contrary foreseen conditions of good or bad acts in 
 men, he crosseth the received Doctrine of the Church of 
 England. But if he intend onely to prove, that the adjudi- 
 cation of men unto eternall life or eternall death, and the 
 temporall introduction of men into the kingdome of heaven, 
 or casting . of men into the torments of hell, are always 
 accompanied with the Divine prescience or intuition of 
 contrary acts or qualities in those which are to be saved or 
 cohdemned, we hold it and acknowledge it a most certain 
 truth. Yet we must here adde, that Predestination and 
 
" ANIMADVERSIONS " UPON HOARD 455 
 
 Pretention are eternall acts immanent in God the Creatour, 
 whereas Salvation and Damnation are temporall effects 
 terminated unto the creature ; and therefore the latter may 
 be suspended upon many conclusions, though the former 
 be in God never so absolute. 
 
 " The Treatise insuing would have had much more per- 
 spicuitie, if the authour had briefly and plainly set down 
 what he understandeth by this word Predestination or 
 Election, and whether he conceiveth it to be an absolute or 
 a conditionall Decree. If conditionall, he should have 
 showed us with whom God conditioned, upon what, terms, 
 and where the conditions stand upon record. If he grant 
 absolute Predestination, his plea for conditionall Pretention 
 will be to little purpose with those who understand that 
 ,the absolute Election of such a certain number doth 
 in eodem signo rationis imply a certain number of men not 
 elected. 
 
 " The wisdome of our Church of England in the XVIIth 
 'Article layeth down the doctrine of Predestination, and 
 <ioth not so much in one word meddle with the point of 
 Reprobation, leaving men to conceive that the one is the 
 bare negation or deniall of that speciall favour and benefit 
 which is freely intended and mercifully bestowed in the 
 other. Would to God the children of the Church had 
 imitated the wisdome of their Mother, and had not taken 
 quite a contrary course, balking the doctrine of Predestin- 
 ation, and bre^aking-in abruptly upon the doctrine of 
 Reprobation." These words should surely satisfy any 
 reasonable churchman. 
 
 " I know not whether r should think him more defective, 
 :whd, in disputing about Reprobation, runneth out into 
 impertinent vagaries, or him that undertaketh the handling 
 of this question without premising and opening the true 
 nature of Predestination. 
 
 " And no man need fear but (with all that are judicious, 
 . religious, and loving their own salvation) that manner of 
 
456 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 handling this controversie will be best accepted, which so 
 reduceth man's Sinne and Damnation to himself, as withall 
 it forgetteth not to reduce his justification, sanctification, 
 glorification, not to any foreseen goodnesse spring out of 
 man's freewill, but to the free mercy of God, according to his 
 etemall purpose effectually working in men those gifts and 
 acts of grace which are the means to bring them unto glory. 
 
 "Having thus briefly spoken of the Title and Preface, I 
 will lay down such fundamentall doctrines concerning 
 Predestination or Election as I conceive are grounded upon 
 the XVIIth Article, and have always been taken for the 
 common received doctrine of our Church ; the contradictory by 
 our Universities and reverend Bishops (when they were 
 broached) having been always held and censured for errone- 
 ous. This done, I will go along with the Treatise itself, 
 not intending to defend the particular opinions of any 
 forrein or homebred Divines, exorbitant from the doctrine 
 of our own Church, but onely to defend our well-settled 
 doctrine against all opposers of what names or sects soever." 
 
 Our Bishop then proceeds to lay down three Proposi^ 
 tions concerning the nature of Predestination, and wherein 
 it properly consisteth, with certain corollaries appertaining 
 thereunto. He then combats the contention of Arminius 
 with his " new-devised platform of Predestination upon 
 foreseen faith and perseverance," which he calls false, vain, 
 and " disagreeing from the notion of Predestination rooted 
 in the hearts of all CatJiolick and orthodox Christians" 
 
 In the early part of this Treatise our Bishop sets out 
 what he conceives to be the Church's doctrine of Election, 
 which unfortunately has been nicknamed " Calvinian " or 
 ' Calvinistic," thereby drawing with it all the peculiarities 
 of Calvin's system and drawbacks of Calvin's name (which, 
 by the way, is not so black as is painted, for he held the 
 highest notions of sacramental grace, and if correlated 
 himself with the Presbyterian regimen or form of church 
 government, it was because he could not get any other, no 
 
"ANIMADVERSIONS" UPON HOARD 457 
 
 continental diskqps having joined the Reformation), but 
 Avhich ought to have been called Augustinian, its true 
 origin, or, better still, Pauline. It will be seen, like a true 
 Anglican Churchman, he appeals to Scripture and the 
 Fathers. 
 
 Prop. I. " Predestination," Davenant says, " is an eternal 
 decree or purpose of God, in time causing effectually grace 
 in all those whom He has chosen, and by this effectual 
 grace bringing them infallibly to glory." 
 
 For proof of this proposition these places of Scripture 
 might serve — Rom. viii. 29, 30; Ephes. i. 4, 5, etc.; Luke 
 xii. 32 ; Matt. xxiv. 24. 
 
 The definitions of Predestination prove the same. As 
 that of St Augustine, De Bono Perseverantice, c. 14 ; of the 
 Schoolmen, Preeparatio gratice inprasenti etglorice infuturo} 
 Amongst the rest of Aquinas, Prcedestinatio est ratio ordinis 
 aliquorum in salutem cetemam in mente Divina exsistens; ^ of 
 the Jesuite Vasquez, Prcedestinatio est propositum cetemum 
 Dei quo gratiam alicui prceparat in vitam atemam? And 
 lastly, Arminius himself giveth us this description, Prcedes- 
 tinatio est decretum beneplaciti Dei in Christo quo apud se ab 
 cetemo statuit, fideles quos fide dqnare decrevit vitd cetemd 
 doTtare.* In all these descriptions. Predestination conteineth 
 an eternally, absolute, infallible decree, as well for the 
 giving of grace effectually unto certain persons here, as 
 the bringing of the same persons unto glory hereafter. 
 Arminius perceiving this, in his private disputations wipeth 
 out these words, quos fide donare decrevit, which he had 
 used in his publick. 
 
 1 "The Preparation of grace in the present and glory in the future." 
 
 2 " Predestination is the cause of the decree of some to life eternal, existing 
 in the Divine mind." 
 
 ' " Predestination is the eternal purpose of God by which He prepares for 
 a certain man eternal life." 
 
 * " Predestination is a decree of God well-pleased in Christ, by which with 
 Himself He has determined from eternity to give eternal life to those whom 
 He decreed to give through faith." 
 
458 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Appended to this first Proposition our Bishop deduces 
 this following corollary — " Predestination being an imma- 
 nent act of the Divine understanding and will, cannot be 
 conceived as dependent upon any foreseen temporall acts 
 of man's free-will. 
 
 "A prime and eternall caiuse cannot depend upon the 
 selfsame temporall effects which are thereby caused. If, 
 therefore, Predestination be the prime and eternall cause 
 from whence Peter's faith, repentance and perseverance were 
 derived, his foreseen faithj repentance and perseverance can- 
 not in any good: sense be imagined antecedent causes, merits, 
 conditions, or motives unto the Divine Predestination." 
 
 Davenant then goes on to show that the Jesuit Vasquez 
 was sounder than Arminius on these points, and appeals to 
 Dr Overall's (the learned Bishop of Norwich) gloss on the 
 XVIIth Article, who was the author of the sacramental 
 additions ^ to the catechism of our Church — whose words 
 are, "Nostra Ecclesia conjungit particulare decretum al> 
 solutum non ex praescientia humanae fidei aut voluntatis 
 dependens, sed ex proposito Divinae voluntatis et gratise 
 de his quos Deus elegit in Christo liberandis, cum generali 
 et conditionata voluntata, seu generali promissione," &c.^ 
 
 When he (Bishop Overall) evidently acknowledgeth an 
 eternall, secret, absolute Decree, predestinating particular 
 persons unto eternall life without all dependency upon their 
 foreseen faith or perseverance, though therewithal! he con- 
 joyn an open, revealed and Evangelicall Decree of bringing 
 
 ^ "The composition of this latter {i.e. the addition of an explanation of the 
 Sacraments) is generally attributed to Bishop Overall, who was the Prolocutor 
 of the Convocation, and at that time Dean of St Paul's. It was added by 
 royal authority, ' by way of explanation,' in compliance with the wish which 
 the Puritans had expressed at the Conference at Hampton Court, and with two 
 emendations was afterwards confirmed by Convocation and Parliament in 
 1661." — Procter, On the Book of Common Prayer, p. 369. 
 
 ' Our Church joins together a particular absolute decree, not dependent on 
 a foreknowledge of human faith or will, but on the purpose Of the Divine will 
 and favour in the case of those whom God elected in Christ to free, with a 
 general or conditioned will, or general promise, &c. 
 
"ANIMADVERSIONS" UPON HOARD 459 
 
 men into the possession of eternall life by the way and 
 upon the condition of their faith, repentance and persever- 
 ance." > 
 
 Our Bishop passes on to account for the difference be- 
 tween some men being holy and happy, and others the 
 reverse, which he lays down in his second Proposition. 
 
 Prop. 2. " Election or Predestination findeth or con- 
 sidereth all mere men in one and the selfsame condition : 
 and it is the grace prepared for them in Predestination 
 which maketh the predestinate become holy and happy 
 men. 
 
 " If Predestination be conceived as antecedent to the fall, 
 then it taketh all men in statu innocentis and so alike. If 
 it be considered in statu lapso, then it also findeth all the 
 sources of Adam alike miserable and damnable." 
 
 Deducing therefrom a corollary, that those are in error 
 who believe that God only elected those whom He foresaw 
 were " believing and persevering in faith arid holiness unto 
 the last gasp," Davenant advances to his third. Pro- 
 position. 
 
 Prop. 3. " The grace prepared for the Elect in God's 
 eternall Predestination, and bestowed upon them in the 
 temporall dispensation, so causeth their belief, repentance, 
 perseverance, as that it imposeth no necessity or violent 
 co-action upon the wills of men, but causeth their free and 
 voluntary endeavours. 
 
 " That the grace prepared in Predestination is an infalli- 
 ble cause producing faith and perseverance in all the elect, 
 appeareth from the nature and essence of Predestination; 
 which being a speciall part of the Divine Providence, is 
 distinguished from that more generall providence, by 
 appointing and applying such means as never fail to pro- 
 duce the end whereunto they are fitted. 
 
 " So that St Augustine feareth not to inferre, that if the 
 grace prepared for the Elect in their Predestination should 
 not work the intended end, which is their glorification : 
 
46o THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 aui vinceretur aut falleretwr Deus. God Himself must 
 either be overcome or deceived. Yet he withall defendeth. 
 That this effectual grace hath no violent coactive operation 
 upon the will, but causeth it to work by its own freedome. 
 Stat libertas arbitrii cum Divina motione voluntatem nos-. 
 tram ad id quod vult applicanteh And St Augustine to the 
 same purpose, Deus omnipotentissimd facilitate convertit, 
 ac volentes ex nolentibus facit.^ In which few words he 
 conjoyneth the invincible operation of the grace of God 
 with the free operation of man's will. Nay, the grace 
 flowing from the decree of Predestination is so farre from 
 putting a necessitation upon the will, as that it is the verj' 
 cause which freeth the will from the slavery of sinne, and 
 maketh it freely to move and work in all good acts. It 
 givetk the will and the deed, and therefore it implyeth a 
 contradiction to say, it maketh a man do any good by way 
 of necessitation, ubi consensus, ibi voluntas ; ubi voluntas, 
 ibi libertas? When as therefore God had eternally pre- 
 destinated Peter to believe in Christ to repent, to persevere, 
 he did by speciall grace move him and work him to the 
 most free and willing performance of all these things ; 
 according to that of St Augustine, Cum Deus vult fieri 
 quod nan nisi volentibus hominibus oportet fieri, inclinat 
 eorum corda ut hoc velint* They who refuse to acknow- 
 ledge this power of God's Will over man's will, do not 
 perceive how they stumble at the first article of the 
 Apostles' Creed" 
 
 Our Prelate chargeth Arminius with novelty. And the 
 platform which he and the Remonstrants tried to set up at 
 the Synod of Dort w^zw-devised. But the old is true, and 
 
 * " The freedom of the will with the Divine motion applying our wills to 
 that which it wishes." 
 
 ^ " God with the most all-puissant facility converts, and makes the willing 
 out of unwilling." 
 
 ' " Where the consent is, there is the will ; and where will is, there is liberty." 
 
 * " When God wishes that to be done, which ought not be done except by 
 willing men. He inclines their hearts to wish (will) this." 
 
"ANIMADVERSIONS" UPON HOARD 461 
 
 the new false, accordihg to the Vincentian Canon, Quod 
 semper; quod ubique, quod ab omnibus (always, everywhere 
 and by all believed). Davenant says Arminius', Predes- 
 tination, as formulated at Dbrt, "is settled upon these 
 foure pillars. 
 
 " I. The first is, an absolute decree of giving Christ for 
 a Mediatour and Redeemer unto mankind considered as 
 fallen, in the state of sinne. 
 
 " 2. Another absolute decree, to receive into favour all 
 such as shall repent and believe, and to save them per- 
 severing unto the end; as also, to leave the impenitent 
 and unfaithfull under God's wrath, and to condemn them 
 as men out of Christ. 
 
 " 3. The third decree, Effectually to afford and administer 
 unto all men suflScieht and necessary means of breeding 
 faith and repentance. 
 
 " 4. The fourth and last, a decree, To save or condemne 
 certain singular persons, groiinded upon the Divine fore- 
 sight who will repent, believe and persevere and who will 
 not. 
 
 " To this platform in generall we say, That the marshall- 
 ing of the efternall immanent acts of the Divine under- 
 standing or will into First, Second, Third, Fourth, is a 
 weak imagination of man's brain, and so uncertain that 
 amongst twenty who give us such delineations of God's 
 eternall decrees, you shall not find two who agree between 
 themselves in numbering them and ordering them, but 
 where one maketh foure, another maketh five, six, or 
 seven, &c., and that which one man setteth in the first 
 place another setteth in the last, and in brief every man 
 ordereth them secundum suum modum imaginandi. To 
 build therefore any doctrines of faith upon the Prioritie 
 or Posterioritie of such decrees, is to build castles in the 
 aire. For as Hilarius s^s:akdi\, omnia penes Deum cequa- 
 biliti aternitatis )infinitate consistunt (all things with God 
 abide with an equal infinity of eternity).; . 
 
462 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 After the Propositions and Corollaries concerning Pre- 
 destination have been laid down or deduced, and the 
 decrees of Arminius discussed and rejected, our author 
 then proceeds to review " The Question Stated," in which 
 Davenant plainly tells Mr Hoard that " the Remonstrants 
 (or Arminians) have not onely the Contra-remonstrants for 
 their opposites, but the Church of England also : which 
 holdeth the middle way, as the learned Bishop of Norwich 
 (Hall) hath plainly shewed : The change of your opinion, 
 therefore, is not to be blamed, unlesse where from one 
 extremity you have run into the other. 
 
 "A friend might have been satisfied in this kind by 
 private conference, or writing, though his Majestie's De- 
 claration {i.e., prefixed to the XXXIX. Articles) had not 
 been broken by printing and publishing such controversial! 
 points." 
 
 The Calvinists have been divided, as is well known, into 
 two sections or schools of thought — the Sublapsarian or 
 the Supralapsarian — i;e., those who refer God's absolute or 
 eternal decrees to a period posterior or anterior to Adam's 
 fall and prevarication. 
 
 Let us see our Bishop's definition upon these two im- 
 portant sections, bearing in mind that Davenant belonged 
 to the moderate party, or Sublapsarian section, which was 
 strongly opposed to Bogerman and the extreme party or 
 Supralapsarian at the Synod of Dort ; and that all the 
 Anglican representatives synchronized with Davenant, 
 whose sound and commanding influence at the Synod, 
 as we saw in a former chapter, was very great. 
 
 " As for those whom you (Hoard) term Sublapsarian, you 
 should have taken notice that in this number, you must in- 
 clude all who imbrace St Augustine's doctrine, and who have 
 subscribed to the XVIIth Article of our Church. Now 
 these do as well oppose themselves against the conditionate 
 Election and Pretention, built upon the foresight of men's 
 good or bad acts, lately brought in by Arminius (the Re- 
 
"ANIMADVERSIONS" UPON HOARD 463 
 
 monstrants), as unto the extreme harsh opinions of Piscator, 
 Gomarus, or whomsoever. So that by joyning yourself 
 with the Remonstrants, you have as clearly forsaken the 
 doctrine of the Church of England, as of Beza, Zanchius, or 
 Piscator.^ 
 
 " The description of their opinion whom you term Sub- 
 lapsarians will not agree unto all who reject the conditionate 
 Predestination and Reprobation of the Remonstrants. For 
 many with St Augustine and our Church, condemne this 
 as erroneous, who notwithstanding make no absolute decree 
 adjudging men to hell-torments with an excluding of all 
 preconsideration of sin : But they grant an absolute decree 
 of not effectually freeing many men from their estate of 
 sinne, and an absolute decree of permitting many men to 
 want the joyes of Heaven, and an absolute decree of pub- 
 lishing such mens foreseen sins voluntarily committed and 
 voluntarily continued by eternall torments in Hell. 
 
 " Those who are passed-by in the eternall decree of God, 
 are not by any force of the decree left without the benefit 
 which the Scriptures promise upon condition of repentance, 
 no more than those whom God hath eternally elected are 
 by virtue of that decree freed from the punishment which 
 supposing their impenitency must light upon them, not- 
 withstanding the absolute eternall decrees of Election and 
 Reprobation, the revealed Evangelicall decrees stand in 
 their full force. If Cain repent, and live well, he shall be 
 pardoned and saved ; If Peter repent not, and persevere in 
 his sinne, he shall be damned. And yet farther (not to 
 determine whether sufficient grace be offered to every par- 
 
 ' Piscator or Fischer (John), a German Protestant, born at Strasburg in 
 1 546. He was successively a Lutheran, a Calvinist, and an Arminian. But 
 his attainments in divinity became so celebrated that he was invited to accfept 
 the Professor's Chair at Herborn, which he filled with such effect as to draw 
 many students thither from different parts of Europe. He was very diligent 
 and laborious, translated the Bible into German, and was the author of com- 
 mentaries on the Old and New Testament, which are said to be valuable. 
 His works were collected in four volumes, folio. He died in 1626. 
 
464 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 ticular person in the world or no) we may resolutely deter- 
 mine that the distinct absolute decree of electing some 
 infallibly unto perseverance in grace and atteinment of 
 glory, and of Passing-by and rejecting others, is no good 
 argument to prove that therefore the non-elected are left 
 without all remedy or sufficient means of Salvation. Adam 
 was not predestinated to stand in the state of his innocency, 
 yet he was not thereby excluded or bereft of sufficient 
 means of standing. From the decree of Pretention or 
 Reprobation, it well followeth Judas is reprobated : There- 
 fore he will not use the remedies or means which God 
 offereth for his salvation. But it is not good consequence 
 to say, Therefore God hath not given him sufficient reme- 
 dies or means to escape damnation, were not his own wicked 
 will the only hindrance." 
 
 Dr Davenant played a very conspicuous part — perhaps 
 the most conspicuous of all the Anglican representatives'-^ 
 at the Synod of Dort, and his reference here to an historical 
 fact connected with it may prove not unacceptable. 
 
 " The Synod of Dort injoyned men to set down their 
 particular judgements concerning Predestination and Re- 
 probation : and therefore they had no reason to forbid any 
 man to set down plainly his own opinion. And since the 
 Divine understanding doth not consider or behold this after 
 that, but all together in one instant of eternitie, there is no 
 cause why men should stiffly contend about these Priorities 
 and Posteriorities, which are humane ims^inations, or in- 
 tellect's nostri fictiones (fictions of our intellect) as some 
 truly term them. 
 
 " Maccovius was upon a by-occasion brought before the 
 Synod, and the businesse betwixt him and Lubbertus was 
 committed to the examination of some few Delegates, 
 according to whose report he was dismissed. 
 
 " For his denying of a will in God for the saving of all 
 men, he understood it of the absolute effectuall operative 
 will, not of the conditional! and approbative will of God. 
 
"ANIMADVERSIONS" UPON HOARD 465 
 
 " They both confesse that the Divine understanding could 
 not but eternally foresee the originall and actuall sinne which 
 should finally cleave unto every particular man who should 
 aftervvards, :be bprn into this world : but they for all this 
 deny that the moving cause, whereupon God distinguished 
 men into elect or non-elect, was the foreseen faith of some, 
 and the foreseen infidelitie and iijipenitency of others. The 
 state of men under sinne was common to all : the mercy of 
 God in effectually freeing from sinne was due to none "(p. 31). 
 
 Continuing the same subject, "The absolute decree 
 cleared," he proves that Luther and the Greek Church agree 
 with the teaching of the Church on this head. 
 
 " As for the Lutherans that bring in a conditional Pre- 
 destination, no man can look into Luther's works but 
 must needs see that they have forsaken their own Master : 
 and therefore they are lesse to be regarded when they rail 
 upon the Calvinists." 
 
 "For the Greek Churches, If they tread in the steps 
 of the learned and ancient' Greek Fathers they may found 
 Predestination upon Prescience, but not upon the Pelagian 
 or Arminian Prescience, which they make merely intuitive, 
 and caused by the object foreseen ; but by a Prescience 
 practical! or /active of that good which it foreseeth in the 
 Elected, and permissive of those voluntary evil actions 
 which are foreseen in the Non-elected, and also preparative 
 of their just punishment.^ 
 
 * The second opinion (the third being Remonstrants, Arminians or Uni- 
 versalists, and the fourth Socinians] is of those called the Sublapsarians, who 
 say that Adam having sinned freely, and his sin being imputed to all his 
 posterity, God (I'd consider mankind, thus lost, with an eye of pity ; and 
 having designed to rescue a great number out of this lost state. He decreed 
 o send His son to die for them, to accept of His death on their account, and 
 to give them such assistances as should be effectuall both to convert them to 
 Him, and to make them persevere to the end ; but for the rest, He framed 
 no positive act about them, only he left them in that lapsed state, without 
 intending that they should have the benefit of .Christ''s death, or of efiScacious 
 and persevering assistances." — (Bxxrnet'sS xpesiiien of the XXXIX. Articles 
 of the Church of England, Art. xvii.) 
 
 2 G 
 
466 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 " The sublapsarian way of considering this high mystery 
 of Predestination and negative Reprobation, is the way 
 which the Church of England taketh, as the more easy for 
 our understanding. And it so walketh in this way, that 
 it maketh Predestination an absolute decree of giving 
 grace and glory unto the predestinate, and Hot a con- 
 ditionate decree foreseeing their gracious actions, and 
 thereupon predestinating them : and by this it silently 
 teaches what to think of negative Reprobation, which 
 cannot be severed from Election. 
 
 " If you {i.e. Hoard) embrace the late Lutherans opinion, 
 and bring within the compasse of the Predestinary Pesti- 
 lence the doctrine of Predestination, which they disallow, 
 you manifestly brand the Church of England with this 
 note of infamy, and might as well charge us with the 
 SAcramentary Pestilence for denying their feigned Consub- 
 stantiation and Orall manducation of the flesh of Christ, 
 as with the Predestinary pestilence for denying their con- 
 ditionall Predestination upon foresight of men's belief in 
 Christ. The Lutherans make Predestination or Election 
 nothing else but a revealed decree of bestowing eternal 
 life upon those which shall perseverantly believe in Christ : 
 and consequently they make Reprobation nothing else but 
 the revealed will of God to condemne all those who shall 
 continue in their infidelity and obstinacy. Our Church 
 acknowledgeth the truth of such decrees ; but it placeth 
 not Election or Reprobation in such generall conditionate 
 decrees. The decree of Election or Predestination is by 
 us conceived an act of God's absolute will by effectuall 
 grace mercifully ordaining certain persons unto the in- 
 fallible atteinment of glory. In this decree. Faith, Per- 
 severance, and all saving graces are not in order of nature 
 the foreseen conditions, but the afterseen effects of Pre- 
 destination (p. 60). 
 
 "So likewise," continues Davenant, "our Church con- 
 ceiveth Reprobation to be negativus actus prcedestinationis 
 
" ANIMADVERSIONS " UPON HOARD 467 
 
 (the negative act of Predestination), a free act of the 
 Divine will denying the special benefit or favour of Pre- 
 destination (which is the preparation of grace, infallibly 
 bringing men unto glory) to some certain persons. As for 
 positive Reprobation (which is eternal damnation) this our 
 Church foundeth upon the guilt and demerit of man's 
 sinne. We say, therefore, with a learned writer of the 
 Romish Church (to whom you (Hoard) think this opinion 
 to be so odious), omnibus hominibus consideratis stib esse 
 possibili prius ratione quam prcedestinarentur aut repro- 
 barentur, nulla fuit ratio discriminis qiicB potuerit Divinam 
 voluntatem inclinare ut prmdestinatiohem Judm negaret 
 potius quam Paulo. And again, nulla scientia visionis 
 ultimo formaliterque constituit reprobationem, sed potius 
 totam reprobationem, supponit ex parte objecti. So that all 
 they, whether Lutherans or Remonstrants, who make 
 Predestination nothing but the will of God to save 
 believers, and Reprobation or Preterition nothing else 
 but the will of God to damne unbelievers, retain for 
 fashion's sake the old words, but obtrude a new notion of 
 those words upon the Christian Church. 
 
 " In vain, therefore, is it to dispute with those about 
 Election and Preterition who reject all the definitions or 
 descriptions given by ancient divines, and bring new 
 ones of their own coyning " (p. 63). 
 
 The discussion is further continued under the two heads 
 of " 5«/ralapsarians charge God with man's destruction," 
 and " Supralapsarians charge God with men's sinnes, which 
 gives our Bishop an opportunity of giving his opinion, and 
 enlarging upon the moot points " of the Supralapsarian 
 distinctions" 
 
 "This term of Supralapsarian, Davenant, who, if any 
 body did, must have thoroughly understood the subtleties 
 of this abstruse and intricate subject, says, " which is truly 
 fastened upon some Protestant divines, but falsely upon 
 Calvine, if it designe all those who place the decrees of 
 
468 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Election and Reprobation before the decree of Prevision 
 or decree of permitting originall sinne, it taketh-in Scotus ^ 
 and all his followers, it taketh-in a great number of the 
 Romanists, for (if Suarez say true) it is the more common 
 opinion amongst them. This I note to show the private 
 spleen which our Remonstrants carrie against some 
 Protestant writers of good desert in God's Church, whom 
 they fouly handle for the self-same opinion which they 
 wink at in the Romanists. But to come to their dis- 
 tinction : — 
 
 " The first Distinction of the Su/>rala,psana.ns^ whereby 
 they clear themselves from making God the true cause of 
 men's sinnes, though they teach absolute Election and 
 
 '■ Davenant here cites from Duns Scotus, a famous scholastic divine who 
 flourished in the fourteenth century : a Briton by birth, educated first in the 
 Convent of Franciscan Friars at Newcastle, and then sent to Oxford, where 
 he made rapid progress, and was soon distinguished. It is said that not less 
 than 30,000 students came to Oxford to hear his lectures. This led co his 
 transfer, by his Order, to Paris, where he was appointed Regent of the 
 Divinity Schools. He was considered one of the first wranglers of his time, 
 and was an indefatigable writer. Such was his acuteness and ability as to 
 obtain for him the epithet of Doctor Subtilis ; but differing with his Master 
 Aquinas about the efficacy of Divine grace, he gave rise to a controversy which 
 engaged the learned in eager and trifling disputes for years ; and of the twelve 
 folio volumes which resulted from all his labour and study, how small a por- 
 tion would probably repay the trouble of perusal, 
 
 2 "The first" (of the four opinions) "is of those commonly called Stipra- 
 lapsarians, who think that God does not only consider His own glory in all 
 that He does, and whatever is done arises, as from its first cause, from the 
 decree of God ; that in this decree God, considering only the manifestations 
 of His own glory, intended to make the world, to put a race of men in it, to 
 constitute them under Adam as their fountain and head ; that He decreed 
 Adam's sin, the lapse of his posterity, and Christ's death, together with the 
 salvation or damnation of such men as should be most for His own glory ; 
 that to those who were to be saved He decreed to give such efficacious 
 assistance as should certainly put them in the way of salvation, and to those 
 whom He rejected He decreed to give such assistance and means only as 
 should render them inexcusable ; that all men do continue in a state of grace 
 or of sin, and shall be saved or damned according to that first decree ; so that 
 God views Himself only, and in that view He designs all things singly for His 
 own glory and the manifesting of His own attributes." — Burnet's Expsition 
 of the XXXIX. Articles of the Church of England, Art. xiii. 
 
"ANIMADVERSIONS" UPON HOARD 469 
 
 non-Election or negative Reprobation considered before 
 the Fall, is^ that God's decrees may be Operative ox Per- 
 missive. This; dedree of Reprobation is not a decree to 
 work any man's sinfull actions whereby he ; incurreth 
 damnation, but to let them come to passe by the free 
 operation of his own will. This Distinction of God's 
 decrees is not denied; but it is objected by this authour 
 (Hoard), that God standeth in no need of man's sinne for 
 setting forth of His glorie, as if the doctrine of the Supralap- 
 sarians concerning absolute Election and absolute Non- 
 election or Reprobation made sinne so absolutely need- 
 full that God's glory must suffer an eclipse if sinnes be not 
 committed by his own procuring and working. But abso- 
 lute Reprobation implieth onely, that God knew He could 
 turn the sinnes of men and angels (yea, and their damnar 
 tion) unto His own glorie : and that he decreed so to do 
 in some, not out of any necessitie of setting forth His 
 glorie by permitting or punishing their sinnes, but out of 
 His Free-will determining so to manifest His glorie. The 
 glorie which eternally and essentially belongeth unto God, 
 needeth not the creature itself, much lesse then the sinne 
 of the creaturci God's glorie had been' the same that it is 
 if man had never been made: and so consequently if he 
 never have sinned, if he had never been condemned iinto 
 Hell for sinne. Nay further, if no man had ever been 
 elected, sanctified, or saved, God's glorie is a thing 
 w* could not possibly have been lessened or any way 
 blemished. The outward and temporall manifestation of 
 God's glorie being in it self a thing of no necessitie in 
 regard of God, it is fond to imagine that God standeth in 
 need of any such means for setting-forth of His glory, 
 seeing the very temporall setting-forth of His glory. is, a 
 thing no way needful! unto Him. We agree, therefore, 
 that God stands in no need of sin either for His glory as 
 it is considered in it self, or as it is to be manifested unto 
 the creature : For God. in His infinite wisdomq could 
 
470 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 (without the permission of sin) have found means enough 
 for sufficient illustration of His own glory" (p. 159). 
 
 Davenant then cites S. Augustine, Prosper, Fulgentius 
 and even the schoolmen as represented by Thomas 
 Aquinas as being all " defenders of absolute Election and 
 Non-Election, and adverssiries to that Election and Repro- 
 bation which the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians founded 
 upon contrary good|and bad actions foreseen in men, yet 
 all of these disclaimed this necessitation." ..." And there- 
 fore we conclude," he says, " that it is not yet proved that 
 the Doctrine of Reprobation maketh God the authour 
 of sinne." 
 
 Space would fail to give such extracts from this most 
 logical and weighty treatise, as would do justice to the 
 Bishop's arguments, bristling with Patristic and other refer- 
 ences, which are conducted under the following heads : " The 
 Sublapsarian (the moderate Calvinian platform) {i.e., our 
 Author's, as opposed toj^the 3'«/f^a:lapsarian) contradicted 
 not Scripture " (209-229) ; " The Sublapsarian Doctrine op- 
 pugneth not God's Holinesse " (240-272) ; " The Sublap- 
 sarian Doctrine opposeth not God's mercie" (277-310); 
 " The Sublapsarian Doctrine opposeth not God's Justice" 
 (319-342) ; " The Sublapsarian Doctrine robbeth not God 
 of His Truth and sincerity " (349'362) ; " The Sublapsarian 
 doctrine taketh not away the use and end of God's gifts " 
 (374-404) ; " The Sublapsarian doctrine hindreth not Pietie 
 and a godly life" (413-440); " The Sublapsarian doctrine 
 is no means of despair" (467-491); and lastly, "Of the 
 abuse and use^ of the doctrine of Predestination and 
 Election" (492-536). 
 
 ^ The following are Davenant's seven uses of Predestination ; — 
 
 1. It serveth to illustrate many of God's attributes, and exceedingly mani- 
 festeth those Divine properties which every Christian ought rightly to know 
 and acknowledge, and which they who impugne this doctrine can never 
 acknowledge as is meet, &c. 
 
 2. The doctrine of Predestination doth serve to kindle in the hearts of the 
 faithful! a most ardent love towards Godj &c., &c. 
 
"ANIMADVERSIONS" UPON HOARD 471 
 
 The Bishop closes his powerful and erudite book with 
 what he conceived to be the " uses " of election ; and doubt- 
 less speaks the result of his own experience, with these 
 which may be deemed almost his final words — the last 
 legacy of a dying saint and child of God-r-a voice froni the 
 Border-land — and it proves what has been often averred, 
 that although at first sight this doctrine looks only a mere 
 speculative opinion — it has an objective side, and is most 
 practical in its effects, and is " full of sweet, pleasant, and 
 unspeakable comfort to godly persons," as our Article says, 
 if rightly viewed)- 
 
 " Lastly (7), it is manifest that when the doctrine of 
 Predestination is rooted in our hearts, it doth exceedingly 
 enable us patiently and meekly to sustein all adversitie. 
 Neither is this use lightly to be esteemed seeing that 
 Patience, as TertuUian ^ saith, is a grace so necessary in all 
 religious duties, that he that wanieth it can neither keep any 
 commandments nor perform any work acceptable to the Lord. 
 Now the consideration of Predestination doth work patience 
 
 3. This doctrine is a great spUrre and encouragement to the study of true 
 godlinesse unto all those who are affected with a lively sense of their election, 
 &c. 
 
 4. The fourth use of this doctrine is this, that it is a speciall means to bear 
 down the pride of man, and to beget in him true humility, &c. 
 
 5. Fifthly, this orthodox doctrine of Predestination and Reprobation doth 
 arm the faithfuU against diffidence, and against all the temptations and assaults 
 of Satan whereby he laboureth to throw them into despair, &c. 
 
 6. Sixthly, The consideration of election doth stirre up the faithfuU to 
 cohstahcie in prayer, &c. 
 
 7. It is manifest when the doctrine of Predestination is rooted in our hearts, 
 it doth exceedingly enable us patiently and meekly to sustein all adversitie, &c. 
 
 1 " Aquinas speaketh very learnedly and soundly. The Elect ought to labour 
 in good works and in prayer ; for hereby their Election is ascertained and 
 accomplished. For as naturall effects, though foreseen by God, yet are 
 brought into act by naturall causes, without which they cannot come to passe ; 
 so the salvation of the Elect being decreed by God, whatsoever furthereth the 
 same falleth under the same decree, as prayer, care to live godlily, and the like, 
 without which the Salvation of the Elect will never be accomplished." — (Part 
 I. quest. 23, art. 8.) 
 
 2 De Patientia. 
 
472 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 in the Elect three manner of wayes. First, because from 
 thence they conceive certain hope that their momentarie 
 afflictions being endied they shall infallibly attein life ever- 
 lasting. Now what man into whose breast this perswasion 
 is entred, that he was elected to life eternall before the 
 creation of the world, can be of so low and cowardly a 
 spirit as to be moved to impatience by the crosses and 
 troubles of this temporall life ? The Apostle encouraged 
 herewith crieth out thus in the midst of his adversitie : 
 That the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to 
 be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us} 
 Holy Prosper, a disciple of St Paul, susteineth himself 
 with the same prop. / weigh, saith he, what I suffer with 
 what I hope for, and my hopes do incomparably exceed all my 
 suffering? Again, the Apostle, Heb. x. '34, alledgeth the 
 knowledge that the saints had of being elected to eternall 
 life as a special cause of their patience in enduring afflic- 
 tions. Ye had compassion of me in my bonds and took 
 joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing that ye have in 
 Heaven a better and enduring substance. As though he 
 had said, Those onely do patiently endure the losse of 
 these earthly goods, who know that there be heavenly 
 goods appointed and prepared for them. Secondly, The 
 consideration of Predestination doth wonderfully conduce 
 to the begetting of patience in the minds of the faithfull, 
 because whosoever understandeth this doctrine aright, 
 understandeth withall that he was elected not straight to 
 be carried into Heaven on a bed of down, but to become 
 conformable unto the Head of the Elect Christ Jesus as 
 well in the crosse as in the cfbwn. For so saith the 
 Apostle, If so that we suffer with Him, we /shall be also 
 glorified together. And S. Peter, Rejoice in as much as ye 
 are partakers of Christ s sufferings, that when His glory shall 
 
 ^ Rom, viii. 18. 
 
 'In Sent., Appendo quod potior contra id quod sfero et incopiparabiliter 
 majus est quod speratur quam quod infertur. 
 
"ANIMADVERSIONS" UPON HOARD 473 
 
 be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. Afflic^ 
 tions therefore do not onely not tire the patience of the 
 Elect, but they beget within them a secret and spirituall 
 joy. For being afflicted they rejoyce, and embrace their suf- 
 ferings like reliques consecrated by the touch of Christ. And 
 from this their conformitie with Christ here in suffering 
 the miseries of this life they do assuredly gather their con- 
 formitie with Him hereafter in the fruition of everlasting 
 joyes; according' to that of Gregorie, The more grievous 
 and heavie my pressures are for the present, the greater is 
 my certaintie of future joyes. Hence not patience alone, 
 but joy also in affliction doth spring up unto the pre- 
 destinate. Thirdly, by the doctrine of Predestination the 
 faithfull are trained up unto patience, because from thence 
 they learn that all crosses and troubles fall out unto them 
 not by chance, but by God's determinate appointment, 
 not according to the fury of the wicked, but according to 
 the will of their Father in Heaven, not for their hurt but 
 for their advantage. No man hath thoroughly learned the 
 doctrine of Predestination, but he also acknowledgeth all 
 this; and no man is firmly perswaded of this, but he 
 patiently endureth whatsoever misfortunes can befall him. 
 But if at any time any impatience be found in the breast 
 of the faithful, it is because they either do not sufficiently 
 believe or not attentively consider this most comfortable 
 doctrine of Predestination. For if this perswasidri be 
 rooted in our hearts, that no man can do anything against 
 us but what the counsel of God determined before to be done, 
 we shall never impatiently grumble because God doth not 
 alter His eternall decrees that so we might escape our 
 momentary evils. Further, if this also be added, That the 
 wicked are onely as rods in the hand of God, and cannot 
 scourge us as much and as they please, but as much and as 
 long as seemeth good unto God our heavenly Father, who 
 will not meekly suffer himself to be chastised by the power- 
 full hand of so gracious a Father .' Lastly, if we take-in 
 
474 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 this also, That those very things which seem hard and 
 sharp to be suffered do undoubtedly work together for our 
 good,, who would take I will not say impatiently but 
 unwillingly a potion which, though bitter, yet is tempered 
 and prepared for him by so wise, so loving a Physician ? " 
 
 (P- 534). 
 
 " And thus you see how many excellent uses do flow 
 from the orthodox doctrine of Predestination. What re- 
 maineth shall be dispatched in a word or two. If we will 
 shew that we have not a fleeting or uncertain conjecture 
 only, but a true and solidly knowledge of our Election, 
 we must have recourse to the forenamed uses, and by them 
 make triall, whether our conceit of our Election be a 
 deceitfull illusion or a true perswasion springing from faith. 
 We are to account it false and deceitfull if it prove idle 
 and unprofitable, much more if we find it to be the per- 
 nicious mother of presumption ; But if it hath taught us to 
 conceive worthily of God, if it hath enflamed our hearts 
 with the love of Him, if it hath kindled in us a zeal of true 
 godliness, if it hath beaten down our pride and begot in us 
 true humility, if it defend us against despair, if it stirre us 
 up to frequent prayer, if it encourage us to patience under 
 the crosse, then we may be assured of our Predestination 
 and of our future possession of eternall life through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord." 
 
 Thus far the " Animadversions." We leave Mr Hoard 
 to Bishop Davenant-— and his fate . 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS DURING THE LAST YEARS OF 
 DAVENANT'S LIFE (1637-1640) 
 
 * ' God's Calendar is more complete than man's best martyrologies : and 
 their names are written in the Book of Life, who on earth are wholly for- 
 gotten." — Fuller's Worthies. 
 
 " TN the summer of 1637," says Dr Gardiner, "more 
 X. than eight years had passed away since a Parlia- 
 ment had met at Westminster. During those years, in 
 spite of threats of war, which Charles had neither the 
 nerve nor the means to carry out, peace had been main- 
 tained, and with the maintenance of peace the material 
 prosperity of the country had been largely on the increase. 
 But the higher aspirations of the nation remained unsatis- 
 fied. England had been without a government, in the 
 best sense of the word, as truly as she had been without 
 a Parliament. That pacification of hostile ecclesiastical 
 parties, which Charles had undertaken to bring about, 
 was further off than when the doors closed upon the 
 Commons after the last stormy meeting in 1629. The 
 attempt to restore harmony to the Church by silencing 
 Puritan doctrine, and by the revival of obsolete cere- 
 monies, had only served to embitter still more that spirit 
 of opposition which was bitter enough already. The en- 
 forced observance of rites enjoined by external authority 
 had not as yet produced a temper of acquiescence. Yet 
 it was in the firm belief that in this way alone could the 
 spiritual welfare of the nation be promoted, that men like 
 Laud and Wren were labouring against the stream which 
 
 475 
 
476 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 threatened to sweep them away.^ "The foundation of 
 holiness," wrote Wren, who as Bishop of Norwich found 
 himself in charge of one of the most Puritan districts in 
 England, " is the Holy Spirit, God blessed for ever. God 
 the Holy Ghost breathes not but in His Holy Catholic 
 Church. The Holy Church subsists not without the 
 Communion of Saints — no communion with them without 
 union among ourselves — that union impossible unless we 
 preserve a uniformity for doctrine, and a uniformity for 
 discipline." ^ 
 
 There can be no doubt that Chui-chmen, especially in 
 the Laudian days, have had a great deal to do, not only 
 in putting their own spiritual house in order, but to fight 
 the Church's battle in this country since the Reformation. 
 Wedged in as she is between the^ intruded mission. of 
 Rome on the one hand, and the Sectaries on the other, 
 she has had to . fight against the . two extremes for her 
 platform of via we^/a— ^Evangelical truth and Apostolic 
 order — based as it is on her bifurcated appeal to Scripture 
 and Primitive antiquity. " For the builders, , every one 
 had his sword girded by his side, and so builded " (Neh. 
 
 1 Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I., by Sattiuel Rairisom Gardiner, L-L.D. 
 
 (p. 2). • ... . ■ 
 
 ''■ Wren to , May 27. Tanner MSS., Ixviii., fol. 92. The following 
 
 passage from the same letter shows how Wren' was prepared to carry out his 
 principles in detail:-^"' Here, I must be bold to say plainly, the breach of 
 that unity and uniformity in the Church hath principally been caused . . , 
 by lectures and lecturers. . . . Now, therefore, for the advancing of the holy 
 discipline of the Church, and for preserving uniformity therein, I am resolved 
 to let no man preach in any place where he is not also charged with the cui-e : 
 thereby to put a straiter tie upon him to observe and justify the rites and 
 ceremonies which the Church enjoyneth : and I shall be very' careful, if any 
 man be found opposite or ijegligent in the one,, without any more ado to 
 render him unfit and unworthy, of the other. .For the preserving, of uriity of 
 doctrine I dare promise myself nothing where the preacher shall be forced to 
 suitliis business to the fancy of his auditors, and to say'nothing but what 
 pleases them, at leastwise nothing that: may displease them : and, this needs 
 he must do, if his means have not some competency in it, and if a competency, 
 then so much the worse if no certainty, but wholly dependent on the will and 
 pleasure of the hearers." 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 477 
 
 iv. 18). Then again, even among her professed members, 
 there is the tendency to gravitate towards one or other 
 of the extreme wings, the natural tendency, of the human 
 mind either towards authority, or opinion, and a leakage 
 there has ever been, both on the side of Rortie, and Geneva. 
 So that side by side with this opett conflict on the right 
 and on the left, there has been the difficult task of 
 geneifating in her own members an intelligent interest 
 in their own system, preserving that moderation which is 
 so needed, and producing that unity which is so desirable. 
 
 All these difficulties came to a head in Davenant's days 
 in a way they have never done before or since, and per- 
 haps may never be the case again. The times were 
 troublous, restless spirits were abroad. Churchmen had 
 not yet fully learnt to grasp their own system. A factious 
 temper was stirring. Men who were tasting the sweets of 
 liberty, forgot that that word did not spell licence. In- 
 ternal divisions, external difficulties^ — ^such was the con- 
 dition of the old ship, " Church and State," . when Laud 
 was at the helm,, steering her through the foaming waters 
 of sedition, heresy, and every kind of schism. "Without 
 were fightings, within were fears." 
 
 Certainly greater stress was laid upon uniformity in 
 those days than in our own, and Laud and Wren were 
 attempting to reach unity through it. They seem to have 
 
 ^ Their own immediate difficulties, too, soon engaged their thoughts ; when 
 the depths of society are once broken up, it is not until after a long lapse of 
 time, and many heavings to and fro, that they can settle down again in peace 
 and order. Thus internal strife and gainsayings, hostilities from without 
 fomented by Rome, and perplexities within, exhausted the energies of Church- 
 men during the reigns of Elizabeth and James, and for one hundred and 
 fifty years no definite attempt was encour^ed for extending the Church into 
 the distant wilderness of the world. T^ioughts, indeed, and crude proposals 
 were entertained from time to time, but they serve only to bear witness to the 
 state of unripeness in whicli Christians found themselves, t9 eijter upon so 
 high a work of evangelical duty and enterprise." — (Fuller's S.P.G. Sermon, 
 " Where are the Men ? or the Call of Heathendom to England's Church and 
 Nation," p. 20.) 
 
473 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 tried the effect of seizing upon the bodies of men because 
 they were unable to convince their understandings, or to 
 touch their hearts. And if we may form our judgment on 
 the avowed ecclesiastical literature of the day, they were 
 everywhere triumphant. Writers, like White and Dow, 
 Peter Heylin and Shelford, used their prolific pens in 
 defence of the festive character of the Lord's Day, or of 
 the new position, altar-wise, assigned to the Holy Table. 
 But no writer was able to make himself heard who thought 
 otherwise, that it was sinful to shoot at the butts on Sun- 
 day, or to kneel at the reception of the Lord's Supper. 
 As was to be anticipated, indignation found a way. 
 There were presses at Amsterdam which would print any 
 thing, and there were also secret presses in London. The 
 risk to which unlicensed authorship was exposed, generated 
 an acerbity of style, and many a biting and caustic pam- 
 phlet was eagerly circulated from hand to hand. The 
 Primate soon found himself the object of fierce and angry 
 vituperation. No misstatement was too gross, no charge 
 too insulting, to be believed against a man who refused to 
 his adversaries all chance of speaking in their own defence, 
 and without the approval of others. 
 
 There appeared to Laud no other course than to per- 
 sist in the path which he had hitherto followed, and he 
 was resolved to put. the terrors of the Star Chamber^ 
 
 1 The Star Chamber, Camera Stellata, so called from the room where the 
 Council sat, being emblazoned with stars, was a court of very ancient ori^nal, 
 but new modelled by Stat. 3 Henry VII., c. I, and 21 Henry VIII., c. 20. 
 It consisted of divers lords, spiritual and temporal, beii^; " Privy Counsellors," 
 and other judges. Its jurisdiction was so extended beyond all due bounds 
 that the greatest enormities were practised under its authority. Mr Hallam 
 does not scruple to say it " rendered our courts of justice little better than the 
 caverns of murderers " (Const. Hist., i. 23r). " For which reason," says 
 Blackstone, " it was finally abolished by Stat. 16 Car i., c. 2, to the general 
 joy of the whole nation " (iv. 264). Lord Bacon extolled the use of this 
 Court, but men began to feel even in his day that so arbitrary a jurisdiction 
 was incompatible with liberty, " and it fell before the grovfing independence 
 of the nation" (Hume, iii. 418). — Fuller's Appellate Jurisdiction of the 
 Crown in Ecclesiastical Cases, note to p. 27. 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 479 
 
 and the High Commission Court against the unlicensed 
 misleaders of public opinion. Three typical pamphleteers 
 — "they were," said Clarendon, "of three several pro- 
 fessions which had the most influence upon the people, 
 a divine, a common lawyer, and a doctor of physic," 
 — William Prynne, Henry Burton and John Bastwick 
 were selected for punishment. The history of the trial 
 and punishment of these three men is too well known to 
 require us to go into their details. Suffice it to say that 
 the first was condemned for his book A Divine Tragedy 
 lately Acted, a collection of God's judgments upon Sabbath- 
 breakers, which was the natural outcome of the King's 
 Declaration of Sports : the second, for his two sermons For 
 God and The King, in which the alterations of the position 
 of the Holy Table, and its ornaments, were vehemently 
 assailed ; and the third for his Flagellum Pontificis — an 
 argument in favour of Presbyterianism, published in Hol- 
 land. In the last case, Bastwick composed his Litany, in 
 which these words occur, "From bishops, priests and 
 deacons, good Lord, deliver us." The Prelates were the 
 enemies of God and the King — the tail of the Beast. 
 They had opened "the very schools of ungodliness and 
 unrighteouBiless, impiety and all manner of licentiousness." 
 The Church was " as full of ceremonies as a dog is full of 
 fleas." " To speak the truth, such a multitude of trum- 
 peries and grollish ceremonies are brought in by the 
 Prelates as all the substance of religion is thrust out." 
 Churchwardens were ordered to inform "about capping, 
 ducking, standing and kneeling." As for the Ecclesiastical 
 Courts they were altogether abominable. "I shall ever be 
 of opinion," wrote Bastwick, "that there is never a one of 
 the Prelates' Courts but the wickedness of that alone and 
 their vassals in it is able to bring a continual and perpetual 
 plague upon the King's three dominions." All manner of 
 wickedness was there vendible, so that if men would open 
 their purses, " remission of sins and absolution with a free 
 
48p THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 immunity from all dangers would be with facility granted 
 them," and more to the same effect. On June 14th, 1637, 
 the three assailanjts of the Bishops^ appeared before the 
 Star Chai]fiber to answer to a charge of libel, and were 
 condemned. The sentence was a severe one, even for those 
 days, the loss of their ears, a fine of;^5ooo, and incarceration 
 for the rest of, their natural days in the Castles of Carnar- 
 von, Launceston and Lancaster. At Finch's suggestion., 
 Prynne's cheeks should be further branded with the letters 
 S L,^ as a seditious libeller, which Prynne in a Latin 
 distich interpreted as Stigmata Laudis, the scars of Laud. 
 The way in which the sentence was carried out, and the 
 sufferings of the unha,ppy men, may be seen in the graphic 
 pages of Fuller's Church History of Great Britain. 
 
 Laud delivered a long and argumentative speech in 
 Court, being put on his defence. The main charge against 
 him was that these Church ceremonies were innovations on 
 established usage. His answer was in effect that they were 
 notinnovations of the established usage, but onlyrenovations. 
 
 Even Dr Gardiner — ^who, as descendant of Cromwell 
 and Ireton, writes with a strong Puritan bias — admits " on 
 many points of detail he had far the better of the argu- 
 ment."^ As to the removal of the communion table to the 
 east end of the chancel, he averred that it was a mere 
 matter of convenience, and to promote decency and order ; 
 and he quoted most triumphantly, and with telling effect, 
 an expression of Bishop Davenant, well known for his 
 
 "'So various were men's fancies in reading the same letters, imprinted in 
 his face, that some made them to spell the guiltiness of the sufferer, but 
 others the cruelty of the Imposer. Of the latter sort, many for the cause, more 
 for the man, most for humanity's sake, bestowed pity upon him, and now, and 
 all three were remanded to their former Prison, and Mr Prinne, as he returned 
 by water to the Tower, made this Distich upon his own Stigmatizing — 
 
 S L 
 
 Stigmata maxillis referens, insignia Laudis, 
 
 Exultans revieo, victima grata Deo. " 
 
 (Fuller's Church History, bk. xi. p. 155.) 
 ^ The Fall of the Monarchy of Charles /. (the Religious Opposition)^ p. 8. 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 481 
 
 Calvinistic proclivities : " 'Tis ignorance to think that the 
 standing of the Holy Table there " {i.e., against the east 
 wall of chancel) " relishes of Popery." These are our 
 Bishop's own words, and he could not' be supposed to 
 have ritualistic tendencies, Laud defended his own prac- 
 tice of bowing.^ : " For my own part," he said, " I take 
 myself bound to worship with body as well as soul when- 
 ever I come where God is worshipped : and were this 
 kingdom such as would allow no Holy Table standing 
 in its proper place — and such places some there are — 
 yet I would worship God when I come into His house." 
 He flatly denied that he had compelled any one to follow 
 his example. " Yet," he said, " the Government is so 
 moderate, 4hat no man is restrained, no man questioned, 
 only religiously called upon : ' Come, let us worship.' " It 
 must be remembered that the statutes of the Cathedrals 
 and Chapels,^ both College and Royal, inculcated the prac- 
 tice of bowing upon entrance into the sacred building. 
 
 To the question of the King's jurisdiction in ecclesias- 
 tical matters. Laud answered with equal firmness. It was 
 charged against the Primate that he was undermining the 
 
 1 Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, p. 41. 
 
 ^ " The Archbishop, guided purely by his zeal and reverence for the place 
 of God's service, and by the canons and injunctions of his Church, with the 
 custom observed in the King's Chapel, and in most Cathedral Churches, 
 withou,t considering the long intermission and discontinuance in many other 
 places, prosecuted this affair more passionately than was fit for the season ; 
 and had prejudice against those who, out of fear or foresight, or not under- 
 standing the thing, had not the same warmth to promote it. The Bishops 
 who had been preferred by his favour, or hoped to be so, were as solicitous to 
 bring it to pass in their several dioceses : and some of them with more passion 
 and less circumspection than they had his example for, or than he approved, 
 prosecuted those who opposed them very fiercely, and sometimes unwarrant- 
 ably, which was kept in remembrance ; whilst other Bishops, not so many in 
 number and not so valuable in weight, who had not been beholding to 
 him, nor had hope of being so, were enough contented to give perfunctory 
 orders for the doing it, and to see the execution of those orders not intended, 
 and not the least pleased to find that the prejudice of that whole transaction 
 reflected solely upon the Archbishop."— Clarendon^ p. 41. 
 
 2 H 
 
482 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Royal Authority by laying claim to a Divine right for his 
 own Order. On this point the speech was most emphatic. 
 " Though our office," Laud said, " be from God and Christ 
 immediately, yet may we not exercise that power, either of 
 order or jurisdiction ; but as God hath appointed us : that 
 is not in his Majesty's or any Christian King's kingdoms, 
 but by and under the power of the King given us to do." 
 The language of the Archbishop gave such pleasure to 
 Charles that the King ordered the immediate publication 
 of his speech. The King also referred the question to the 
 Judges whether the Bishops had infringed on his prerogative 
 by issuing processes in their own names, and the Judges 
 unanimously decided that they had not^ 
 
 The three men, victims to Laud's terror rather than his 
 hatred, went through their sufferings with great fortitude, and 
 the place of their incarceration was removed further afield, 
 to the Scilly isles, Guernsey and Jersey ; but other pens 
 took up their parables. Some libels were picked up in the 
 streets, charging the Archbishop with being the Captain of 
 the Devil's army in his war against the saints. Unseen 
 hands nailed a copy of the Star Chamber to a board. Its 
 corners were cut off as the ears of Laud's victims had been 
 cut off, when standing in the pillory at Westminster. 
 Round his own name a broad ink mark was drawn, and 
 an inscription declared that "The man that puts the Saints 
 of God into a pillory of wood stands here in a pillory of 
 ink." 
 
 As the result of all this, stricter measures were called 
 for, and the original decree of the Star Chamber as to press 
 regulations, passed in the time of Elizabeth, was reinforced 
 by a more stringent one. This limited the number of 
 licensed printers in London to twenty, and even books 
 formerly published were not to have new editions printed 
 without a fresh scrutiny. Any man outside the magic circle 
 of twenty who ventured to print a book was " to be set in 
 » Rymer, xx. 143, 156. 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 483 
 
 the pillory and whipped through the City of London."^ 
 But men's appetite for unlicensed literature would not be 
 baulked, and clandestine presses continued to pour forth 
 biting and pungent political squibs and stinging pamphlets, 
 which were read with avidity by the lower orders. This 
 attempt at silencing his opponents only added fresh zest to 
 the banquet of libel and invective. The licensed press ^ 
 replied in tones of decorous rejoinder, bewailing the folly 
 and ignorance of the time, but it convinced none who were 
 not convinced already. It is almost impossible in our own 
 enlightened days to comprehend any attempt to muzzle 
 the press of a free country, and under no circumstances 
 was the attempt of repression likely to take permanent 
 root in such a country as England. And to give it any 
 chance of even temporary success, it was bound to be fairly 
 applied all round — Papist as well as Puritan. This Laud 
 clearly saw himself. But he was anxious to put himself 
 right before the world, for he knew full well that his 
 enemies looked upon him as a secret emissary of Rome, 
 and his action as being papalistic in its motive power ; 
 about which, however, his conscience was entirely free. 
 This made him desire to meet out evenhanded justice to 
 both parties, and if he persecuted the Puritan to show he 
 had no love for Geneva, by parity of reasoning he should 
 do the same by the Papist, to prove that he had no 
 leanings to Rome. 
 
 No doubt one great difficulty stood in Laud's way in 
 
 ^ Rush worth, ii. 430, App. 306. Lambe's List of Printers— July, S.P. 
 Dom. cccxliv. ill. 
 
 ' The licensed press received its official imprimatur in the following way. 
 Thus Fuller's sermon at the Savoy on " Reformation " came into the hands of 
 John Downam, one of the licencers of the divinity publications, and he added his 
 imprimatur in the following terms: "I approve the sermon as orthodox and 
 useful. John Downam." Some of Fuller's works were published " under the 
 hands of Mr Downam." There were, of course, several other licencers, but 
 most of Fuller's publications received his official approbation. Not to have 
 received the official imprimatur would have relegated a book to the Index 
 Expurgatorius ! 
 
484 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 carrying out his scheme, and that was the indecision on 
 the part of Charles with regard to any distinctive line of 
 policy. His objections to the two schemes — both Papist 
 and Puritan — savoured more of the well-bred man of the 
 world than of the theologian ; and Laud looked at the 
 problems of the age through ecclesiastical spectacles of 
 the most orthodox pattern, and tinted with the colours 
 of Patristic antiquity. The King liked the persons of his 
 subjects, and set more loosely than the Primate to their 
 opinions, which he regarded as merely subjective, and 
 not in themselves dangerous, even if delusive. Hence 
 the " veiled obstruction " which lay in the way of Laud. 
 
 The Papal intrigues at the English Court at this time are 
 matters of history, and the Roman party was even more 
 ably led by Con, the Scotchman, who succeeded Panzani 
 at the Queen's Court. Con's influence with the Queen 
 was very great, and he managed to get her to take an in- 
 terest in his schemes for individual proselytizing, although 
 it was undertaken spasmodically from time to time. 
 Many members of the Court fell away to the " intruded 
 mission " of Rome, and the protection of Henrietta Maria 
 was invaluable to Con. But the soul of the proselytizing 
 movement was Mrs Porter, the wife of that Endymion 
 Porter, who had been employed in so many secret mis- 
 sions by James and Charles. She was a niece of Bucking- 
 ham, and inherited from her mother the quick decision 
 arid prompt impetuosity of the splendid favourite. She 
 gained over to Rome her father, Lord Boteler, and the 
 beautiful Marchioness of Hamilton. Converts, mostly 
 ladies, followed in no inconsiderable numbers, and at last 
 the world was startled with the news that even Lady 
 Newport, the great Protestant champion, had gone over to 
 Rome. 
 
 This provoked the greatest indignation on the part of 
 her husband, and Lord Newport hurried to Lambeth to 
 adjure Laud to punish the instruments of his misfortune. 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 485 
 
 He named Walter Montague and Sir Toby Matthew; as 
 well as Con. This gave Laud the opportunity he wanted, 
 for he knew that he would be held accountable for these 
 defections from the English Church/ and he was therefore 
 eager to do as Newport wished. On the next Council day 
 Laud spoke of the unusual favours granted to the Roman- 
 ists, begged the King to forbid Montague's access to 
 Court, and recommended proceedings being taken against 
 him in the High Commission Court. He seemed to carry 
 all before him, for Charles was much displeased with what 
 had occurred, and promised a remedy. But Laud had 
 reckoned without the Queen and Con, and upon hearing 
 the language at the Council Table, when the King came 
 to visit the Queen in her apartments that evening, she 
 spoke of the insolence of the Archbishop, and stood up 
 stoutly for her religion. 
 
 What could Charles do under the circumstances .■' In 
 his distress Laud appealed to the King, but he was only 
 referred back to the Queen, so the battlefield was nar- 
 rowed to a single-handed combat between the Archbishop 
 and the Queen. The latter, backed up by Con, evinced great 
 displeasure, and delayed the publishing the proclamation 
 which had been agreed upon. Great excitement was the 
 result of all this struggle, which lasted for some time, and 
 the Chapel of the Queen was thronged by devotees, the 
 Blessed Sacrament being kept on the altar till noon to 
 satisfy their devotion. The Queen felt it was a struggle 
 for influence between herself and Laud, and she threw 
 herself into it with all the energy of which she was capable. 
 The King looked on aghast. Con tried to irritate him 
 against Laud, but he replied that he was not following his 
 
 '"Though the nation generally," says Clarendoti, "was without any ill 
 talent to the Church, either in point of the doctrine or the discipline, yet they 
 were not without a jealousy that Popery was not enough discountenanced, and 
 were very adverse from admitting anything they had not been used to, which 
 they called innovation, and were easily, persuaded that anything of that kind 
 was but to please the Papists." — History of the Rebellion, p. 40. 
 
486 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 advice alone, but that of the whole Council, and besides, 
 the Proclamation would be moderate enough. In fact Con 
 subsequently learnt that he had promised to omit anything 
 which might give the Queen offence. 
 
 Thus manipulated, the proclamation was issued Dec. 
 20th, and in its final shape could hardly give offence to 
 anyone. Even Con described it as " so mild as to seem 
 rather a paternal admonition to the Catholics than a 
 menace," and the Puritans, he added, were of the same 
 opinion. It contained, in point of fact, nothing more than 
 a threat that those who persisted in withdrawing his 
 Majesty's subjects from the Church of England would do 
 so " under pain of the several punishments '' provided by 
 the law, and that all who gave scandal by the celebration 
 of Masses would be punished according to their offence. 
 No definition, however, was given of the amount of 
 notoriety which constituted a scandal. 
 
 Still, gentle as was the admonition, Henrietta could not 
 resist the temptation to treat it with contempt. All her 
 recent converts, with Lady Newport as their head, were 
 marshalled on Christmas Day to Somerset House to 
 receive their first Communion. And when the Queen 
 returned to her apartments she called Con to her side and 
 said to him triumphantly, " You have now seen what has 
 come of the proclamation." ^ 
 
 Every Roman priest in England took his tone from the 
 Queen's open defiance of the proclamation. Never were 
 Masses more publicly celebrated in the Ambassador's 
 chapels, or with less concealment in the houses of the 
 Roman Catholic laity, 
 
 " Before you came," said Lady Arundel to Con, " I 
 would not for a million have entertained a priest at my 
 table, and now you see how common a thing it is." The 
 proclamation had, in fact, been only wrung from Charles 
 
 ^ Con to Barbeiini, j|j^' 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 487 
 
 by Laud's insistence, backed up by the special annoyance 
 caused by the bravado of the Spanish ambassador. 
 The King felt too sure of his own position, too blind to 
 the real dangers by which it was environed, to sympathise 
 with Laud's perception of the risk which he would incur 
 by holding the balance uneven between Puritan and 
 Papist. " The Archbishop," he said to Con, " is a very 
 honest man, but he wants to have everything his own 
 way."^ 
 
 Whether it would have been better for Laud to have 
 had his own way we cannot at this distance determine, and 
 perhaps the danger on the side of Rome was less serious 
 than it seemed. The question is. Was there any real acces- 
 sion of political strength to the Papal party ? As for the 
 gay Court ladies, whose life had been one round of empti- 
 ness and frivolity, it was possibly far better for them to 
 submit to a sterner discipline than any to which they had 
 been accustomed ; and if they would not be guided by the 
 Anglican clergy — their legitimate pastors — to be at all 
 events under some restraint. Among the gentlemen, it 
 was only such fantastic speculators like Sir Kenelm Digby, 
 or such witty intriguers like Montague, who were got over; 
 but such men as William Cavendish, the Earl of Newcastle, 
 the governor of Charles' eldest son, were beyond the reach 
 of Con. Enough, however, was done to alarm English Pro- 
 testants. Roman Catholic books were passed from hand to 
 hand. To all those who took their tone from Whitehall, 
 Puritanism was an object of derision and of stern repression 
 
 ^Con to Barberini, June j^, July J|, 1638. Laud's bewilderment at the 
 charge brought against him of being recently a Roman Catholic is well ex- 
 pressed by some words which he made use of nearly two years previously, 
 " Because," he said, " he strove to maintain the old Orders of the Church, the 
 common people, who were enemies to all order and government, proclaimed 
 him a Papist ; but (if he had been one) be had had reason enough — besides 
 his ill-usage he had when he had no fripnd at Court but the King — to have left 
 the Church and have gone beyond seas." — Charles Lewis to Elizabeth, May 
 31, 1636, Foster MSS. in the South Kensington Museum. 
 
488 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 in the Ecclesiastical Courts. Even men who had no 
 Calvlnistic tendencies were attracted by the stern 
 morality, which rebuked the solemn trifling which went 
 on at Charles' Court- 
 It was to give expression to feelings such as these the 
 nobler spirits of Puritanism took their rise. This cause, 
 which at first was taken up by " certain lewd fellows of the 
 baser sort," became at last dear to men of cultured minds 
 and poetic imaginings. The unhappy state of things was 
 put down to the practical outcome of the Laudian influence, 
 and therefore it was thought its overthrow would promote a 
 more healthful spiritual life. Hence Milton's lofty satire, 
 which burst forth, as if from a suddenly raised volcano, out 
 of the smooth and' graceful lamentations of Lycidas, which 
 took everyone by surprise. Not that he had any distinct 
 insight into the difficulties of government, for he was quicker 
 in detecting the evil than suggesting the remedy. Before 
 the imagination of the great poet rose the Apostle Peter 
 addressing the dead Lycidas, lost too early for earthly ser- 
 vice, and thus he shaped his thoughts and emphasized his 
 indignation. "The Pilot of the Galilean Lake," he says, 
 
 " Shook his mitred locks and stem bespake : 
 ' How well could I have spared for thee, young swain ; 
 Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake. 
 Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold. 
 Of other case they little reckoning make, 
 Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast 
 And shove away the worthy bidden guest. 
 Blind mouths, that scarce themselves know how to hold 
 A sheep-hook, or have learnt ought else the least 
 That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 
 What recks it, then ? What need they ? They are sped ; 
 And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
 Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ; 
 The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed. 
 But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw. 
 Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
 Besides what the grim wolf, with privy paw, 
 Daily devours apace, and nothing said.' " 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 489 
 
 And having thus denounced the system, he predicts its 
 speedy downfall, and concludes in these words : 
 
 " That two-handed engine at the door 
 Stands ready to smite once and smite no more," 
 
 a prophecy which was purposely left vague and mysterious, 
 but about its general intention there were not two opinions. 
 
 When Puritanism was advocated by such men as Milton 
 and John Hutchinson — men of the noblest character, who in 
 their patience possessed their souls, and condescended to no 
 scornful scurrility or pitiful anger — then the more sober part 
 of the nation began to take up the cause with greater 
 seriousness. The contrast between the stern lives of these 
 really religious men and the gaieties of the Court would not 
 redound to the credit of the latter. And it was their per- 
 sistent refusal to countenance this state of things which 
 generated a nobler class of religionists, who, however wrong- 
 headed in theory, were better in practice than their creed, 
 " as deceivers and yet true." And it was the attitude of 
 such men as these which really gave weight to those forlorn 
 hojpes which from time to time dashed themselves, and appa- 
 rently in vain, against the defences of the Government. 
 
 But as in all similar cases there is sure to be a large 
 middle party — a tertium quid — who hate extremes and 
 love only moderation. These are men who are content 
 with the union of Church and State ^ which obtained when 
 they were born, provided no great demand is made upon 
 their consciences, and the relationships are not overstrained. 
 This middle party was represented by George Wither, a 
 popular verse-writer, who was neither a Laudian nor a 
 
 ' " For without doubt, many who loved the established government of the 
 Church, and the exercise of religion as it was used, and desired not a change 
 in either, nor did dislike the order and decency, which they saw mended, yet 
 they liked not any novelties, and so were liable to certain jealousies that more 
 was intended than was hitherto proposed; especially when those infusions 
 proceeded from men unsuspected to have inclination to change, and from known 
 assertion of the government both in Church and State." — Clarendon's History 
 of the Rebellion, p. 42. 
 
490 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Puritan. Men of this stamp, and no doubt the great 
 middle classes of the time were much of this opinion, 
 would have formed, if properly tractated or skilfully 
 manipulated, a firm barrier against the rising Puritanism, 
 instead of which they have been allowed to fall away to 
 the ranks of non-Conformity. This class never could 
 understand the Church's real platform as formulated by 
 Laud — the bifurcated appeal to Scripture and primitive 
 antiquity, and hence it came to pass that Laud's proceed- 
 ings irritated them in every possible way till they forgot 
 that Puritanism could be irritating at all. 
 
 If Bishop Williams had been a different man in moral 
 respects, and had not made himself obnoxious both to the 
 King and the Archbishop, he was the man who from his 
 mental qualification could have undertaken the task of 
 mediation in those dark days which were now so rapidly 
 approaching. But he lay under a cloud. For many years 
 he had been an object of a star-chamber prosecution, 
 because he had betrayed some secrets which had been 
 entrusted to him as a Privy Counsellor. And now he Weis 
 being prosecuted a second time on a charge of subornation 
 of perjury in the same court. Seeing his danger he asked 
 Laud to mediate with the King on his behalf, and owing to 
 the iniportunity of his friends, he was in great hopes of a 
 pardon. But Charles hesitated and withheld the boon. 
 
 It was when smarting under his failure to bribe his way 
 to impunity, that Williams ^ threw himself once more into 
 that ecclesiastical controversy, which we noticed, in our 
 last chapter. Peter Heylin (Laud's chaplain) had written a 
 book, " A Coal from the Altar," attacking Williams' well- 
 known views about the position of the Communion Table, 
 To this he replied anonymously, although it was an open 
 secret, in a work entitled " The Holy Table, Name and 
 Thing." This book advocated the compromise that it 
 should remain at the east end of the chancel at all other 
 1 Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, p. 42. 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 491 
 
 times, but be brought down into the body of the church or 
 chancel during the celebration of the Holy Communion. 
 This he had maintained from the very first was the only 
 legal arrangenxent. 
 
 Heylin replied to this work, which preserved all the 
 courtesies of debate and was the more galling on that 
 account, and Laud^ referred to it bitterly in the speech 
 which he delivered at the censure of Prynne. Thus 
 Williams, who had before tried to escape by the assistance 
 of the Roman Catholic party at Court, now once morfe 
 thrdw in his lot with the Puritans and semi-Puritans. This 
 change of front however availed him but little, and his c£ise 
 was called on in the Star Chamber the next Court day after 
 the sentence had been passed on Prynne, Burton and 
 Bastwick. He was condemned, his sentence being a par- 
 ticularly heavy one, especially on the fiscal side, and he 
 was sent to the Tower. Terms of a more lenient character, 
 however, were offered him by Laud, at the command of 
 the King, but many weary months passed over the prisoner's 
 head before he was prepared to accept the new conditions, 
 which were sufficiently hard, even in part. 
 
 ^ Clarendon thus speaks of the disgraceful state of things when Laud be- 
 came Primate : "The remissness of Abbot, and other bishops by his example, 
 had introduced or at least connived at, a negligence that gave great scandal to 
 the Church, and no doubt offended very many pious men. The people took 
 so little care of the churches, and the parsons as little of the chancels, that, 
 instead of beautifying or adorning them in any degree, they rarely provided for 
 their stability and against the very falling of very many of their churches ; and 
 suffered them at least to be kept so indecently and sloVenly, that they would 
 not have endured it in the ordinary offices of their own houses ; the rain and 
 the wind to invest them, and the sacraments themselves to be administered 
 where the people had most mind to receive them. This profane liberty and 
 uncleanliness the Archbishop resolved to reform with all expedition, requiring 
 the other bishops to concur with him in so pious a work : and the work sure 
 was very grateful to all men of devotion ; yet, I know not how, the prosecution 
 of it with too much affectation of expense, it maybe, or with too much passion 
 between the ministers and the parishioners, raised an evil spirit against the 
 Church, which the enemies of it took much advantage of, as soon as they had 
 opportunity to make the worst use of it."'— History of the Rebellion, p. 41. 
 
492 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 The spirit of compromise was the genius ofWilHams' 
 character, and but for his moral defects, he might have 
 formulated them with potential efficacy. But there was a 
 group of men who were working their way in the same 
 direction, about whom no complaint could be made, and 
 who, by their actions and writings, were accentuating the 
 new doctrines which had been so ably initiated by 
 Williams — ^viz. those of compromise or moderation. These 
 men, if they were unable to mould the age in which they 
 lived, have been looked upon by later generations as the 
 pioneers of thought. These were Falkland, Chillingworth, 
 and John Hales, of Eton, and they may be regarded as the 
 fathers of the Latitudinarian school or party. 
 
 Lucius Gary was the son of the Lord Deputy who had 
 preceded Wentworth in Ireland. When he was only twelve 
 years old he was sent by his father to Trinity College, 
 Dublin, and at the conclusion of his academical career was 
 bred to a soldier's life. But his mother — a violent and 
 overbearing woman, the daughter of Chief Baron Tan- 
 field, having become a Roman Catholic, her father was so 
 annoyed, that he passed her over in his will, and left his 
 estates directly to his grandson. The result was young 
 Gary found himself, when he came of age, master of Great 
 Tew in Oxfordshire. Here he settled down and devoted 
 himself to his books and friends, having inherited the 
 Scottish title of Falkland. His house was the trysting 
 place of wits and poets, and of scholars and divines, 
 Falkland himself playing the host to perfection. All 
 those who had any serious matter to be discussed, found 
 a hearty welcome at Great Tew. University men from 
 Oxford " found their lodgings there as ready as in the 
 colleges ; nor did the lord of the house know of their 
 coming or going, or who were in his house, till he came to 
 dinner or supper, where all still met : otherwise there was 
 no trouble, ceremony or restraint to forbid men to come 
 to the house or to make them weary of staying there : so 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 493 
 
 that many came there to study in a better air, finding all 
 the books they could desire in his library, and all the 
 persons together whose society they could wish, and not 
 find it in any other society." ^ 
 
 Falkland's character was of the highest, and his mind 
 was quick to detect the salient points of a case, and to 
 attach itself to the positive side of truth. He was in the 
 highest sense of the word a seeker after truth, and for a 
 thing to be true, it must be pure arid of good report. 
 His virtues had their attendant defects, and he was quicker 
 in detecting defects than providing a remedy. He was 
 too large a mind to be trainmelled by party, and yet not 
 big enough to stand alone. He missed indeed being a 
 great man by a little, but that little was enough. He 
 swayed to and fro on some neutral zone as the special 
 evils of the extremes struck him most vividly. His 
 favourite poet was Ben Jonson, and in the poetic gifts 
 with which he credited him — " wit, judgment, learning, art 
 or industry " — he omits the supreme gift of imagination, 
 in which his own versification was deficient. Too clear- 
 sighted to be a party leader, he had not the power to push 
 a special political principle to its logical consequence. 
 His gentle loving spirit longed to compose the differences 
 of the world, and to bid party weapons fall from antagon- 
 istic hands. But the comprehensiveness of his brain did 
 not give effect to the comprehensiveness of his heart. H is 
 desire for reconciliation was followed by a petulant attitude, 
 rather than the commanding thought which should have 
 arrested reasonable men. If he did not know the faults of 
 a side when he joined it, he did not know half its merits 
 when he left it 
 
 Falkland had not yet thrown himself into opposition, 
 and in 1637 had gone out of his way to eulogise the King, 
 complimenting him on the sovereignty of the seas, not 
 very consistent with his strong feelings as to ship-money. 
 
 '' Clarendon's Life, i.41. 
 
494 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Ben Jonson had just been carried to his grave full of years 
 and honours. He, says Falkland, would have told in be- 
 fitting verse 
 
 " How mighty Charles, amidst that weighty care 
 In which three kingdoms as their blessing share 
 (Whom as it tends with ever watchful eyes, 
 That neither power may face nor art surprise. 
 So, bounded by no shore, grasps all the main, 
 And far as Neptune claims extends his reign), 
 Found still some time to hear and to admire 
 The happy sounds of his harmonious lyre." • 
 
 It was on a question of religion that Falkland was first 
 drawn into the controversies of the world around him. 
 His mother, having turned Romanist, was endeavouring to 
 bring all her friends and acquaintances over to her newly 
 adopted faith. She plied the usual stock arguments that 
 certitude of faith could only be obtained from an infallible 
 Church — that there was no assured belief outside infalli- 
 bility and " extra ecclesiam nulla salus." These arguments 
 would naturally be weighed by. a mind so open to con- 
 viction as Falkland, and though all his tendencies of 
 thought were his own, and his convictions not another's, 
 yet the very gentleness of his nature would lead him to 
 lean on a stronger will, especially at any important crisis of 
 his life. He had leant on Hampden or Pym in different 
 phases of his political life, and now he once more turned 
 to his old friend Chillingworth in his religious difficulties. 
 
 In Chillingworth, Falkland, who may have been his 
 superior in moral perceptions, found a man of profound 
 thought, vast erudition, and a most logical brain. He was 
 in fact, above all things, a thinker. His clear incisive 
 intellect cut its way through all difficulties, and brushed 
 away all sympathies and antipathies. Whence, once he had 
 made up his mind that a thing was logically true, nothing 
 but sheer force of argument and the clearest reasonings 
 
 1 Falkland's Potms, ed. Grosart. 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 495 
 
 could force his convictions or alter his resolutions, Born 
 at Oxford in 1602, he had Laud for his godfather. He 
 received a good education there, and became in 1628 a 
 Fellow of Trinity College. But to the consternation of his 
 friends they suddenly learned that he had gone off to the 
 College at Douai, and become a pervert to the Roman 
 Catholic Church. The Jesuit Fisher — who was Laud's 
 doughty antagonist in that marvellous conference which 
 bequeathed to the English Church that immortal work of 
 Laud, whose arguments have never yet been answered — 
 had put before him the argument that an infallible guide 
 was necessary to salvation, and that the only infallible 
 guide on earth was the Roman Church — in fact that no 
 other Church claimed to be such. Chillingworth could see 
 no escape from the conclusions of this argument, and as the 
 result in following a superior argument, he " went over " as 
 the phrase is. But a brief sojourn at Douay convinced him 
 that he had not gone to the bottom of his subject, or got 
 behind the argument. Books of Jesuit casuistry were in 
 the habit of applying the test of probability to moral 
 action, and Chillingworth, no doubt, came to the reason- 
 able inference that if we might act upon the mere pro- 
 bability that an action was right, it would be enough to 
 believe, on the mere probability that the belief was true. 
 There was no further need of an infallible guide if he 
 accepted this as the best theory to be adopted. 
 
 In making up his mind to return to the English Church, 
 Chillingworth had been much assisted by letters from 
 Laud. The logical positions assumed by the two men 
 were, for the most part, identical. In his celebrated 
 conference with Fisher, just alluded to, Laud had declared 
 that it was unnecessary to require assent to more than the 
 fundamental articles of the Christian faith,^ i.e., those of 
 
 ' Such a sentence as the following, for instance, has a very Chillingworthian 
 ring. " The Church of England never declared that every one of her articles 
 are fundamental in the faith : for it is one thing to say, ' No one of them is 
 
496 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 the historic Creeds of the Church, but that any argument 
 would fare exactly in Laud's hands as it would in Chilling- 
 worth's. Still for all that we must give Laud the credit of 
 bringing Chillingworth back to the faith of his fathers.^ 
 Being then Bishop of London, he " was too faithful to the 
 office of a sponsor to leave him in the toils of the Romish 
 Church without a vigorous effort for his deliverance. He 
 commenced a correspondence with him, which endedi in 
 Chillingworth's return to England and retirement to 
 Oxford, for the free and undistracted prosecution of his 
 enquiries. And four years afterwards the cares of his 
 friend and patron were rewarded by the appearance of a 
 book, which has ever since been extolled as one of the 
 most perfect models of controversial writing." 
 
 It is by no means unlikely then that Chillingworth had 
 braced himself up to his task at Laud's own instigation, 
 although we have not direct evidence to that effect. At 
 all events before the book was published — and much of it 
 was;: done in the library at Great Tew, where Falkland's 
 intimacy soon ripened into the greatest friendship — Laud 
 had ample reasons to look upon it with interest. In a 
 short pamphlet, Knott, the Jesuit, and author of Charity 
 Mistaken, sought to discredit by anticipation the answer 
 in reply to his work which he expected. His satire was 
 no doubt pungent, and it was certainly unscrupulous. His 
 
 superstitious or erroneous,' and quite another to say, ' Every one of tbe;m is 
 fundamental, and that in every part of it, to all men's belief.'" — Laud's 
 Works, ii, 60. 
 
 ^ The honour of recovering, Chillingworth is expressly claimed by Laud in 
 his answer before the Lords, on the first day of his trial. " Mr Chillingworth's 
 learning and abilities," he says, " are suflSciently known to your Lordships. 
 He was gone and settled at Douay. My letters brought him back, and he 
 lived and died a defender of the Church of England. And that this is so your 
 Lordships cannot but know. For Mr Prynne took away my letters, and all 
 that concerned him, and they were examined at the Committee." — Treublts, 
 etc., p. 222. Prynne, however, would have it, that after all Chillingworth 
 died a desperate apostate Papist. — Rev, Henry Wharton's note. (Quoted Le 
 Bas' Life of Laud, p. 242.) 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 497 
 
 words were gleefully caught up by the Puritans, who 
 averred that it was exactly what they had been reiterating 
 for years. No wonder Laud and Charles were deeply 
 annoyed by so unexpected an attack. Charles weakly 
 allowed Winderbank to apply to Con to visit with dis- 
 pleasure this audacious Jesuit, but Con said he was 
 powerless. Laud, with greater wisdom, turned his atten- 
 tion to hastening the appearance of Chillingworth's reply. 
 Towards the end of 1637, in the very heat of the excite- 
 ment generated by Lady Newport's conversion, The 
 Religion of Protestants was issued to the world. 
 
 In the main argument, that " nothing is necessary to be 
 believed but what is plainly revealed," ^ Chillingworth 
 did little more than put in a clearer and more logical 
 form the contention of Laud in the conference with Laud 
 with all its excrescences cleared away. That which marks 
 the pre-eminence of the younger writer is his clear sense 
 of intellectual conviction to moral effort. If men, he says, 
 " suffer themselves neither to be betrayed into their errors, 
 nor kept in them by any sin of their will : if they do their 
 best endeavour to free themselves from all errors, and yet 
 fail of it through human frailty, so well am I persuaded 
 of the goodness of God, that if in me alone should meet a 
 confluence of all such errors of all the Protestants of the 
 world that were thus qualified, I should not be so much 
 afraid of them all as I should be to ask pardon for them." ^ 
 
 Not in the counter dogmatism of the Puritan but in 
 these words lay the true answer to the claim of infalli- 
 bility, which was so ostentatiously flaunted before the 
 world by Roman emissaries. It was, under happier 
 auspices, the old doctrine of Sir Thomas More, and the 
 men of the new learning coming to the front once more. 
 In the midst of intellectual differences it breathed the 
 very spirit of mutual respect for zeal and earnestness. As 
 Chillingworth pointed out, it became men to be very 
 
 1 Worh, i. 230. " Work, i. 8i. 
 
 2 I 
 
498 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 careful how they set up the creations of their own 
 imaginations, as if they were the veriest certainties of 
 Divine revelation. "This presumptuous imposing of the 
 senses of men upon the general words of God," he writes, 
 " and laying them upon men's consciences together, under 
 the equal penalty of death and damnation ; this vain con- 
 ceit that we can speak of the things of God better than 
 in the words of God, this deifying our own interpretations 
 and tyrannous enforcing of them upon others ; this re- 
 straining of the Word of God from that latitude and 
 generality, and the understandings of men from that 
 liberty wherein Christ and the Apostles left them — 
 is and hath been the only fountain of all the schisms of 
 the Church, and that which makes them immortal ; the 
 common incendiary of Christendom, and that which tears 
 into pieces, not the coat, but the bowels and members of 
 Christ ... Take away these walls of separation and all 
 will quickly be one. Take away this persecuting, burning, 
 cursing, damning of men for not subscribing to the words 
 of men as the words of God ; require of Christians only 
 to believe Christ, and to call no man master, but Him 
 only; let those leave claiming infallibility that have no 
 title to it, and let them that in their words disclaim it 
 disclaim it also in their actions." " Christians," he says 
 again, " must be taught to set a higher value upon those 
 high points of faith and obedience, wherein they agree 
 than upon those matters of less moment wherein they 
 differ, and understand that agreement in those ought to 
 be more effectual to join them in one communion than 
 their differences in other things of less moment to divide 
 them. When I say in one communion, I mean in a com- 
 mon profession of those articles wherein all consent, a 
 joint worship of God. After such a way as all esteem 
 lawful, and a mutual performance of all those works of 
 charity which Christians owe to one another." ^ 
 
 * Works, ii. 39. 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 499 
 
 Space forbids our criticism of the defects of Chilling- 
 worth's system, but we turn our eyes to one who was in 
 his own estimation less than the two just mentioned, but 
 of whom those who knew him best loved to speak as the 
 ever-memorable John Hales. 
 
 This genial recluse, endowed with a prodigious memory, 
 and a keen rapier^like thrust of argument, was the most 
 loving and tender-hearted of men. He was Fellow of 
 Eton, and found a congenial home under the president- 
 ship of the large-hearted Sir Henry Wotton. His views 
 were in the main those of Chillingworth, but he ap- 
 proached the subject on the other side, and began where 
 the former left off. In Chillingworth the logical faculty 
 was dominant, but in Hales it was at the service of a sin- 
 gularly gentle and affectionate heart. "He would often say 
 that he would renounce the religion of the Church of Eng- 
 land to-morrow, if it obliged him to believe that any other 
 Christian should be damned, and that nobody would con- 
 clude another man to be damned that did not wish him so."^ 
 
 " Every Christian," he wrote, " may err that will : for if 
 we might not err wilfully, then there would be no heresy, 
 (heresy being nothing else but wilful error. For if we 
 account mistakes befalling us through human frailties to 
 be heresies, then it will follow that every man since the 
 Apostles' times was an heretic." ^ Hence he cared little 
 about Chillingworth's search after fundamental truth. " If 
 truth and goodness," he wrote, "go by universality and 
 multitude, what means the prophets and holy men of God 
 •everywhere in the Scripture so frequently, so bitterly . to 
 complain of the small number of good men careful of 
 God and truth? Neither is the complaint proper to 
 Scripture ; it is the common complaint of all that have 
 left any records of antiquity behind them. Could wishing 
 do any good I could wish well to this kind of proof; but 
 
 * Clarendon, Life, i. 54. 
 
 ^ "On the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper,'' Works, i. 63. 
 
5O0 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 it shall never go well with mankind that the most shall be 
 best. The best that I can say of argument and reason 
 drawn from universality in multitude is this : such reason 
 may perchance serve to excuse an error, but it can never 
 serve to warrant a truth." 
 
 Yet for all this the investigation of truth was the highest 
 work of man. The words of the apostle, " Be not deceived," 
 were spoken not only to the wise and learned, but " to every 
 one, of whatever sex, of whatever rank or degree and place 
 soever," from him that studies in his library to him that 
 sweats at the plough-tail. But the command is not obeyed 
 by those who content themselves with storing their memo- 
 ries with opinions learnt by rote. He that would not be 
 deceived must not only know " what it is that is com- 
 manded," must not therefore take his duties on trust from 
 a Church claiming to be infallible, or from a venerated 
 teacher, but must also know " wherefore — that is, upon 
 what authority, upon what reason."^ At last the new 
 thought had reached its full and clear expression, which 
 was to form the modern world. 
 
 Hales too, like Chillingworth, had his dream of Utopian 
 harmony of worship. " Were liturgies and public forms of 
 service so framed," he argued, " as that they admitted not 
 of particular and private fancies, but contained only such 
 things as in which all Christians do agree, schisms in 
 opinion were utterly vanished. For consider of all the 
 liturgies that are or ever have been, and remove from them 
 whatsoever is scandalous to any party, and leave nothing 
 but what all agree on, and the event shall be that the public 
 service and honour of God shall nowise suffer ; whereas to 
 load our public forms with the private fancies upon which 
 we differ is the most sovereign way to perpetuate schism 
 unto the world's end. Prayer, confession, thanksgiving, 
 reading of Scripture, exposition of Scripture, administra- 
 tion of the sacraments in the plainest and simplest manner, 
 
 ■■ Sermon on private judgment in religion. Works, iii. 141. 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 501 
 
 were matter enough to furnish out a sufficient liturgy, 
 though nothing else of private opinion, or of church pomp, 
 of garments, of prescribed gestures, of imagery, of music, 
 of matter concerning the dead, of many superfluities which 
 creep into churches under the name of order and decency, 
 did interpose itself." ^ 
 
 The tract on schism from which these words are taken 
 was circulated in manuscript in the spring of 1638. At 
 last it came into the hands of the Archbishop, who dis- 
 covered in it with much regret some positions which he 
 regarded as false and dangerous. On learning that his 
 grace was dissatisfied. Hales addressed to him a letter of 
 apology and explanation, which appears to have produced 
 an interview at Lambeth, of which the following curious 
 account is given by Dr Heylin, who was at the Palace when 
 the interview took place. Hales having been invited to a 
 conference with the Archbishop, attended at the time ap- 
 pointed, to know his Grace's pleasure. The Archbishop 
 " took him into his garden, commanding that none of his 
 servants should come to him on any occasion. There they 
 continued in discourse till the bell rung to prayers ; and 
 after prayers were ended, till the dinner was ready, and 
 after that too, till the coming in of Lord Conway, and 
 some other persons of honour, put a necessity upon some 
 of his servants to give him notice how the time had passed 
 away. So in they came, high-coloured, and almost panting 
 for want of breath : enough to show that there had been 
 some heats between them not then fully cooled. " It was 
 my chance," says Heylin, " to be there that day either to 
 know his Grace's pleasure or to render an account of some 
 former command ; but I knov/ not which. And I found 
 Hales very glad to see me in that place, as being himself 
 a mere stranger in it, and unknown to all. He told me 
 afterwards that he found the Archbishop (whom be knew 
 before for a nimble disputant) to be as well versed in 
 
 ' Tract concerning schism. Works, i. 1 14. 
 
502 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 books as business ; that he had been ferreted by him from 
 one hole to another, till there was none left to afford him 
 further shelter ; that he was now resolved to be orthodox, 
 and to declare himself a true son of the Church of England 
 both for doctrine and discipline ; that to this end he had 
 obtained leave to call himself his Grace's chaplain, that 
 naming him as his Lord and Patron the greater notice 
 might be taken of the alteration." ^ 
 
 Whatever doubt may have been thrown on this con- 
 ference, this much at least is certain, that the Archbishop 
 was sufficiently satisfied, either with the written explana- 
 tion, or the personal conference, or both, to procure for 
 Hales a Canonry of Windsor. 
 
 " In the days of conflict," says Dr Gardiner, " Falkland 
 and Chillingworth and Hales would be found on Charles' 
 side. In the long run the spirit which inspired them would 
 be found a more powerful dissolvent of Laud's system than 
 the Puritanism which he dreaded. Its time was not yet 
 come. Two theories of the religious life were in presence 
 of one another, and those theories were entwined with a 
 whole mass of habits which could not readily be shaken 
 off. The strife was approaching, and it was not till the 
 combatants had measured their strength with one another 
 that they would be ready to listen to the words of peace. 
 Even when that time came, the solution would not be alto- 
 gether such as Hales would have approved. The religious 
 conscience would demand a more definite creed, and a more 
 definite ceremonial, than that for which he had asked. By 
 the side of the idea of comprehension would arise the idea 
 of toleration. The one would soften down asperities, and 
 teach the assured dogmatist to put on something of that 
 humility in which the controversialist of all periods is so 
 grievously deficient. The other would prepare room for the 
 unchecked development of that individuality which is the 
 foundation of all true vigour in Churches and in nations." * 
 
 * Heylin, p. 361-2. ^ Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I., p. 54. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 BISHOP DAVENANT'S "GOLDEN TRACTATE "—LAST DAYS, 
 ILLNESS, AND DEATH — HIS CHARACTER, OBITUARY 
 NOTICES, AND WILL (164O, 1641) 
 
 "The death of the godly ought to put life in the godly; the loss of pious 
 men in former generations ought to enrich such of the age present to succeed 
 in their places, take up their arms, and valiantly acquit themselves in their 
 room. Let those, therefore, who have read over the life of this worthy man, 
 now gathered to God, summon their strength, and unite their forces, according 
 to the distance of their parts and places, to discharge themselves to the glory 
 of God and good of His Church. For it is high time when such Pauls set, for 
 other Timothies to rise." — Fuller's Abel Redivivus, Life of Junius, p. 449. 
 
 THE troubles which preceded the downfall of the 
 Monarchy and the overthrow of the Church were 
 deepening and gathering thick and fast above the heads of 
 those who were the principal actors in those stormy days. 
 The political outlook was of the gloomiest, and that of 
 the theological sphere was by no means reassuring. The 
 Archbishop was doomed ; the King's days were numbered, 
 and the fierce waves of revolution were rolling up, which 
 would carry all before it, and before which crown and 
 mitre — which have so many times risen and gone down 
 together in our nation's history — would be laid in the dust. 
 Some men, like our good Bishop, were being taken from 
 the evil to come. The storm was beginning to burst at 
 last, and " coming events cast their shadows before them." 
 "March" (1641) "began very blusteringly," says Fuller 
 in his Church History, "on the first day \i\\QX&oi Arch- 
 bishop Laud was in Mr Maxfield his coach cariried to the 
 
504 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Tower, and not long after the Lords appointed a Committee^ 
 of their own members for settling of peace in the Church. 
 What hopefull opinion the aforesaid Archbishop had of 
 their proceedings will appear from the following note, which 
 he entered into his Diarie : — ' A Committee for Religion 
 settled in the upper house of Parliament, Ten Earles, ten 
 Bishops, ten Barons. So the lay votes will be double to 
 the Clergy. This Committee will meddle with doctrine 
 as well as ceremonies, and will call some divines to them 
 to consider of the businesse, as appears by a letter hereto 
 annexed, sent by the Lord Bishop of Lincoln (Williams) 
 (who in the preceding year had been released from the 
 Tower, and restored to his place in the House of Lords) 
 to some Divines, to attend this service: upon the whole 
 matter, I believe this Committee will prove the Nationall 
 Synod of England, to the great dishonour of the Church, 
 and what else may follow upon it, God knowes.' " 
 
 "At the same time," continues Fuller, "the Lords 
 appointed a Sub-Committee, to prepare fit for their cog- 
 nizance (the Bishop of Lincoln having the Chair in both) 
 authorised to call divers Bishops and Divines, to consult 
 together for correction of what was amisse, and to settle 
 peace. Jerusalem-Chamber, in the Dean of Westminster's 
 (Williams) house, was the place of their meeting (where 
 they had solemn debates six severall dayes), alwaies enter- 
 tained at his Table with such bountiful chear as well 
 became a Bishop. But this we behold as the last course 
 of all publick Episcopall-Treatments, whose Guests may 
 
 ' The names of the Committee were as follows : — 
 
 The Archbishop of Armagh. Doctor Ralph Brownrigg. 
 
 ,, 'BX^o'p oi Durham. „ Richard Holdsworth. 
 
 ,, ,, Exeter, ,, John Hacket, 
 
 Doctor Samuel Ward. , , Cornelius Surges. 
 
 „ John Prideaux. Mastei John White. 
 
 ,, William Twisse. „ Stephen Marshall. 
 
 „ Robert Sanderson. „ Edmund Calamy. 
 
 ,, Daniel Featley. „ Thomas Hill. 
 
DAVENANT'S LAST DAYS 505 
 
 now even put up their knives, seeing soon after the Voider 
 was called for, which took away all Bishops^ lands, and 
 most of English-Hospitality. 
 
 " First, they took the Innovations of Doctrine into con- 
 sideration, and here some complaihed, that all the tenets 
 of the Councell of Trent had (by one or other) been 
 preached and printed, abating only such points of State- 
 popery against the Kin^s supremacy, made treason by the 
 Statute. Good-,works co-causes with faith, by justification : 
 private confession by particular enumeration of sinnes, need- 
 full necessitate medii to salvation, that the oblation (or, as 
 others, the consumption) of the Elements, in the Lord's 
 Supper, holdeth the nature of a true sacrifice, prayers for the 
 dead, lawfulnesse of monasticall vowes, the grosse substance 
 oi Arminianism, and some dangerous points oi Socinianism. 
 
 " Secondly, they enquired into prceter-canonicall confor- 
 mity and innovations in discipline; advancing candlesticks in 
 parochiall churches in the day-time, on the Altar so called ; 
 making canopyes over, with traverses of curtains (in imita- 
 tion of the Vaile before the Holy of Holyes) on each side 
 and before it. Having a credentia, or side table (as a Chappel 
 of Ease to the Mother Altar), for divers uses in the Lord's 
 Supper ; forbidding a direct prayer before sermon, and 
 ministers to expound the Catechism at large to their parish- 
 ioners ; carrying children (when baptized) to the altar so 
 called, and then offering them up to God, pretending for 
 some of these innovations ; the injunctions and advertisements 
 of Queen Eliz., which are not in force, and appertaining to 
 the printed Liturgy secundo et tertio Edwardi sexti, which is 
 reformed by Parliament." ^ 
 
 It will be seen that there were ritualistic troubles and 
 disputes in those days as well as in our own, and that the 
 high ritual party relied upon the injunctions and advertise- 
 ments of Queen Elizabeth in support of their ceremonial. 
 Yet in our own difficulties these advertisements have been 
 
 ^ Fuller's Church History, bk. xi. p. 135. 
 
5o6 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 T'opealed to, and their judgment was based upon them by 
 of e Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for putting 
 '^wn ritual, as the maximum not the minimum, — the very 
 'opposite conclusion they were intended to have. Yet Fuller, 
 no mean authority, and a contemporary historian, informs 
 us, and he must have known, as historical fact, that they are 
 no good for appellate reference, nor can they be relied on 
 as being defunct or effaced, for in the year 1640, nearly 240 
 years before the Ridsdale judgment, " they are not in force." ^ 
 It will be remembered that the sixth canon of the Canons 
 of 1640 referred to the question of innovation. It runs 
 thus : " An oath injoyned for the preventing of all Innova- 
 tions in Doctrine and Government." This oath was not 
 allowed to remain a dead letter, and the Primate gave 
 orders at once to the Suffragans to take it, and then adminis- 
 ter the same to their own clergy. Laud would naturally 
 wish to know the effect of this oath, and from the letters in 
 Lambeth Library it would seem that most of the Suffragan 
 Bishops wrote very fully on the subject, and explained the 
 mode of administering the oath and the way in which it had 
 been received in their respective dioceses. The following 
 letter of Davenant, touching the administration of the oath 
 in his diocese, is to be found in the manuscripts at Lambeth. 
 It follows the letter of the Bishop of Ely, and it precedes 
 that of Robert Saunderson, and is to the following effect : 
 
 " To the Most Reverend Father in God y° Lord Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury. Most Reverend Father in God : my very good Lord. 
 
 " I received yo' Grace's letter, in w"'' you are pleas'd to signify that 
 some Exceptions have been taken to y" oath required by the late 
 Canon. I have lately seen y= effect (as I guess) of those objections, 
 and in my poor judgement, there is no one of them w'^'' in full satisfac- 
 tion may not be given to any minister who is not unwilling to be satis- 
 fied. Upon y* Receit of y° Broad Seal, I promptly took the oath 
 myself, and administered it unto y" Dean and some of y= Residen- 
 tiaries. As for y" country ministers, I intended to have called them, to 
 
 * See Author's letter on the Advertisements of Queen Elizabeth and the 
 Ridsdale Judgment, p. 14. 
 
DAVENANT'S LETTER J05 
 
 take y' same after Harvest be ended. But now I shall guide my^er 
 ceedings in y° Business, according to your Grace's letter. I have Ind 
 one or two come unto me for Institution, who have made no ffl; 
 scruple of taking y= oath than of y* Benefice. And I verily hope th, 
 when they have well and duly considered, few or none in y^ Diocesv 
 (Sarum) will refuse to take it. If any hereafter out of any point of con- - , 
 science stagger thereat, I will labour in y° best and mildest fashion I 
 can to remove y° Doubts. 
 
 So committ*' yor. Lorship to y' blessed protection of y= Almighty, \ 
 
 I rest ever \ 
 
 
 Salisb., Aug. 28, Yo' Grace's in all duty, 
 
 1640. Jo. Sarum.1 \. 
 
 But the administration of the oath could do nothing to 
 arrest the onward course of events, and the storm-cloud 
 was soon to burst in all its fury on Church and State. 
 Soon after the Archbishop's commitment to the Tower, 
 the work of vengeance and confiscation went vigorously- 
 forward, of the doom which awaited him he speedily re- 
 ceived a mournful warning, in the trial and execution of 
 his illustrious friend the Earl of Strafford. Next year his 
 own trial came on, and at length he was consigned to the 
 hands of his inveterate adversary, William Prynne, who 
 repaired to the Tower with full powers to search and seize. 
 Everything was taken, even to his diary, and the Arch- 
 bishop's book of private devotion. Laud's sufferings during 
 his imprisonment were intense, and he has himself given 
 us a history of them in his Troubles. Additional articles 
 were filed against him, and then ensued his trial, and the 
 elaborate defence of himself and conduct. He was con- 
 demned as is known by an ordinance of the two Houses, 
 and was executed at the Tower, the scene at his execution 
 being most affecting, and his conduct on the scaffold most 
 exemplary. "Thus fell Laud," says Heylin, "and the 
 Church fell with him"; the Liturgy whereof was noted 
 
 1 Lambeth MSS. 577, p. 259. (Quoted in Searle's History of Queens' Col- 
 lect Cambridge, p. 426.) 
 
5o8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 -down about the same time that the ordinance was passed 
 for his condemnation. 
 
 To return to our Bishop. Our author's final work was 
 well suited to his whole life and truly charitable and 
 Christian character, which was marked with so much love 
 and paternal regard. It was a small volume written with 
 a view of uniting the Evangelical Churches; under the 
 title of Ad pacem ecclesice adhortatio, &c., which was trans- 
 lated into English with the title of An Exhortation to 
 Brotherly Love, %lc?- It contains the imprimatur of Tho. 
 Wykes, and is dated April 8, 1641, just twelve days before 
 its author entered into his well earned rest, literally " dying 
 in harness." Of this beautiful little work, Bishop Hall in 
 his "Peace-Maker," laying down the principles of Church 
 Unity, says : " None hath so fully cleared the point, as 
 the late honour of our schools, the learned Bishop 
 Davenant, in that last Golden Tractate which he wrote, 
 now breaking towards the Gates of Heaven ; his pious and 
 pithy exhortation of the Evangelical Churches to a happy 
 peace; wherein the fundamentals of our faith are so 
 evidently laid open, that it is not hard to judge by that 
 unfailing rule, whom we may and must admit to the 
 Communion of Christ's Church, and whom we ought to 
 exclude from that Holy Society." 
 
 " He " (that is the good Bishop), says Fuller, " ever makes 
 honourable mention of foreign Protestant Churches, even 
 when he differs and dissents from them. English charity 
 to forein Protestant Churches is payment of a debt : their 
 children desire to be our welcome guests, whose grandfathers 
 were our loving hosts in the days of Queen Mary." It is 
 the above work which Fuller is alluding to, an English 
 translation of which was published just before Davenant's 
 death, from the later edition, Cantab. 1640. 
 
 ^ It was printed for R. B., for Richard Badger and John Williams, and are 
 to be sold at the shop neare St Dunstane's Churchyard, and in St Paul's 
 Churchyard. 1 64 1. 
 
DAVENANT'S "GOLDEN TRACTATE" 509 
 
 Bishop Davenant did not live to see the troubles that 
 were so soon to come upon the Church, though he must 
 often have discerned the gathering clouds that told the 
 approaching storm. Just as the long Parliament met, and 
 for a few months only before it began its work of destruc- 
 tion, by depriving its bishops of their titles and offices, and 
 confiscating the revenues of the Church, Bishop Davenant 
 died. 
 
 On the 20th April 1641, our good Bishop was summoned 
 to his rest, in the full vigour of his faculties and piety, at 
 the age of seventy-one, having presided with such good 
 effect over the See of Salisbury twenty long and eventful 
 years. He was an active working bishop, as well as a 
 learned theologian, two qualities not often combined. The 
 immediate cause of his decease was an asthma, with which 
 he had been long afflicted ; but his death is said to have 
 been much accelerated by the melancholy forebodings of 
 his mind, as to the sad prospects of the nation both in 
 Church and State — the downfall of the monarchy and the 
 overthrow of the Church — to the support of which great 
 constitutional principles he gave up all his life, and those 
 rare powers of mind and gifts of grace, with which he has 
 been so abundantly blessed. " The righteous is taken away 
 from the evil to come." 
 
 " In the midst of these troublesome times," says Thomas 
 Fuller, his nephew, in the concluding obituary notice of his 
 uncle, and who was present at his death, "John Davenant^ 
 Bishop of Salisbury, ended his life. His father was a 
 wealthy and religious citizen of London, but born at 
 Davenani s-lands in Sible Heningham in Essex. Where his 
 ancestours had continued in a worshipfuU degree from Sir 
 John Davenant, who lived in the time of King Henry the 
 Third. He bred his sonne, a Fellow Commoner in Queens' 
 Colledge, in Cambridge, and would not suffer him to accept 
 a Fellowship, though offered, as conceiving it a bending of 
 these places from the direct intent of the Founders, when 
 
5IO THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 they are bestowed on such as have plenty. Though, 
 indeed, such preferments are appointed, as well for the re- 
 ward of those that are worthy, as the relief of those that 
 want ; and after his Father's death was chosen into that 
 society. In his youthfull exercises, he gave such an earnest 
 of his future maturity, that Dr Whitacre, hearing him dis- 
 pute said. That he would in time prove the Honour of the 
 University — a prediction that proved not untrue ; when 
 afterwards he was chosen Margaret Professour of Divinity, 
 being as yet but a private Fellow of the Colledge, 
 whereof some years after he was made Master, and last 
 Bishop of Salisbury. Where with what gravity and 
 moderation, he behaved himself, how humble, hospitable, 
 painfull in preaching and writing, may better be reported 
 hereafter, when his memory (green as yet) shall be mel- 
 lowed by time. He sate Bishop about twenty years, and 
 died of a consumption, anno 1641, to which, sensiblenesse 
 of the sorrowfuU times (which he saw were bad, and fore- 
 saw would be worse), [Archbishop Laud had been on ist 
 March 1641, sent to the Tower; the Commons had on 
 lOth March passed a vote against the Bishops sitting in 
 Parliament, and the trial of the Earl of Strafford had be- 
 gun] did contribute not a little. I cannot omit, how some 
 few hours before his death, having lyen for a long time 
 (though not speechlesse, yet) not speaking, nor able to 
 speak, (as we beholders thought, though indeed he hid that 
 little strength we thought he had lost, and reserved him- 
 self for purpose), he fell into a most emphaticall prayer for 
 half a quarter of an hour. Amongst many heavenly pas- 
 sages therein. He thanked God for this His fatherly cor- 
 rection, because in all his life time he never had one heavie 
 affliction, which made him often much suspect with himself, 
 whether he was a true child of God or no, untill this his last 
 sicknesse. Then he sweetly fell asleep in Christ, and so we 
 softly draw the curtains about him." ^ 
 
 ^ Fuller's Church History, book xi. p. 176. 
 
DAVENANT'S ILLNESS AND DEATH 511 
 
 Thus died this man of God at his Palace in Salisbury, 
 in the presence of his relations — the Davenants, the Town- 
 sons (which family he had given a home to for twenty long 
 years), and the Fullers — his two favourite nephews Edward 
 Davenant and Thomas Fuller being present. He sweetly 
 fell asleep in Jesus, and received his reward in the Paradise 
 of peace and rest. 
 
 " Now the labourer's task is o'er : 
 Now the battle day is past : 
 Now upon the farther shore 
 Lands the voyager at last. 
 Father, in Thy gracious keeping 
 Leave we now Thy servant sleeping." 
 
 (Rev. John Ellkrton.) 
 
 He died, as it has been correctly said, at " a truly con- 
 venient season ; that he might neither see nor suffer those 
 bitter calamities which speedily overwhelmed both Church 
 and State," ^ and which his old friend Dr Ward — to whom 
 so much of his epistolary correspondence is addressed — 
 keenly experienced, being persecuted with great severity 
 for his ,steady adherence to the Church and King by the 
 Puritan leaders, notwithstanding his piety and the sound- 
 ness of his doctrinal views. Similar also was the treatment 
 experienced by their colleague Balcanqual, now Dean of 
 Durham, who literally fell a victim to the fury of the 
 Puritans ; being driven from all he possessed, and dying 
 at Chirk-Castle, Denbighshire, in consequence of the 
 severity he met with. The like persecutions, although in 
 a slighter degree, involved our author's nephews Arch- 
 deacon Davenant, Dr Fuller and Prebendary of Sarum, 
 whose benefices were sequestered. The latter became 
 quite a mendicant divine, assisting at the sieges at Basing- 
 house and Exeter, in the capacity of Cavalier parson, 
 retaining, however, his title of Prebendary of Sarum, but 
 losing everything till the Restoration, when he was made 
 
 ^ Bp. Godwin, de Prasulibus, Richardson's. 
 
512 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Chaplain Extraordinary to King Charles II., and was 
 offered a Bishopric (that of Exeter). 
 
 Bishop Davenant was buried with a solemn funeral 
 in his own Cathedral, Dr Nicholas, afterwards Dean of 
 St Paul's, preaching an excellent sermon at his interment. 
 At this time Nicholas was a Prebendary of Salisbury. 
 
 " We read of the Patriarch Israel" says Fuller in his 
 Worthies^ that the time drew nigh that he must dye. 
 Must, a necessity of it. Such a decree attended this 
 Bishop, happy to die, before his Order (for a time) dyed 
 April 1 64 1. 
 
 He was interred in the South Aisle of the Choir of his 
 own Cathedral, where there is a mural tablet to his 
 memory. He bequeathed ;^200 for the benefit of the 
 Cathedral : and he left to Queens' College the perpetual 
 advowson of the Rectories of Cheverill Magna and Newton 
 Toney, Wilts: and a rent-charge of £'>,\, los. per annum 
 to found two bible-clerkships, and buy books for the 
 Library of the same College. 
 
 The following is the inscription on his monument : — 
 
 MONUMENTUM OMNIUM 
 
 JOHANNIS DAVENANTII 
 
 Minime perenne, quid loquatur audi. 
 
 Natus Londini Anno Christi 1572, Maii die 20 
 Cantabrigiae in CoUegio Reginali 
 Bonis literis operam felicem dedit 
 Cujus cum Societate esset meritissime donatus 
 ^tatemque et doctrinse et morum gravitate superaret, 
 Cum nondum plures quam 36 annos numerasset 
 D. Margaretas in S. Theologii Professor est electus. 
 Celebremque prius Cathedram longe ornatiorem reddidit. 
 Intra quadriennium mox CoUegii sui Praesidens fectus est. 
 Cui dubium Rector an Benefactor profuerit majis 
 Tum vero a serenissimo et in rebus Theologicis 
 Perspicacissimo Rege, Jacobo, honorifice missus 
 
 ' Fuller, Worthies, London, p. 207. 
 
DAVEN ANT'S MONUMENT 5 1 3 
 
 Synodo Dordracensi magna pars interfuit, 
 
 Tandem hujusce Dioeoeseos Saribus Episcopus 
 
 Anno 1621, die Novembris viii.' consecratus est. 
 
 Cui velut vivum exemplar antiquitatis venerandae 
 
 Universas Primitivi Prsesulis partes explevit 
 
 Atque ita per 20 pene annos huic Ecclesias praefuit 
 
 Summo tum bonorum omnium turn etiam hostium 
 
 Consensu optimus et vel inde, felicissimus 
 
 Quod ruinam sedis, cum superesse per aetatem non potuit, 
 
 Priusquam oculis conspiceret, vivere desierit, 
 
 Anno scilicet Christi MDCXLI, Aprilis die xx. 
 
 " As a living example of venerated antiquity," says the 
 inscription, "he discharged all the duties of a primitive 
 bishop ; and thus during his twenty years oversight of this 
 diocese he was honoured by all good men, and even by his 
 enemies." The monument is set up against the south wall 
 of the Cathedral, near the eastern transept, being flanked 
 and supported by two Corinthian pillars, and surmounted 
 with the Bishop's arms. The family coat, which has been 
 variously stated, was, Gules, three escallops, arg. between 
 light cross-crosslets, fitches, or a crescent for difference.^ 
 Upon the south wall of the eastern transept of the 
 Cathedral is a monument to the memory of Davenant's 
 elder brother, Edward, of Whiddly Island, Co. Cork, who 
 died June 2nd, 1639. He also left by his will legacies to 
 the Fullers, etc. 
 
 The most marked feature in the Bishop's character was 
 his piety. Regetn venerabatur, says an elaborate epitaph 
 quoted by Lloyd, sed et timebat Deum. On one occasion, 
 when commanded to preach at Court, he came a day too 
 late, because he would not ride on Sunday- 
 
 Davenant was succeeded by Dr Duppa, Bishop of 
 Chichester, and formerly Chancellor of the Cathedral, 
 being promoted by Charles I., who, despite of the remon- 
 strances of the Commons House of Parliament, filled up this 
 and several other vacant bishoprics), who held a brief pos- 
 
 1 Rectius xviii. * Cole's MSS., Brit. Mus. Add. 5, 808. 
 
 2 K 
 
514 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 session of the See. He became a fugitive to Oxford, and 
 in after years was associated with Fuller and others of the 
 clergy in meetings to consult ne ecclesia aliquid detrimenti 
 Capiat. During the troubles, the Bishop's palace was sold 
 to a person who pulled down part of it, and turned the 
 rest into an inn. As to the Cathedral, the biographer of 
 Dr Seth Ward says it was to the eternal honour of the 
 local gentry of the diocese, that during the civil war, 
 when there was neither bishop nor dean to take care of 
 it, they employed workmen to keep the magnificent pile in 
 repair. 
 
 Bishop Brian Duppa was the trusted friend of the king, 
 and to him had been committed the guidance and educa- 
 tion of his son, afterwards Charles II. But it was a poor 
 heritage to which he now succeeded, for already the Parlia- 
 ment had begun its work against the Church. In this 
 same year we have the Commons impeaching no less than 
 thirteen bishops for their share in the Canons of 1640, and 
 passing votes against their sitting in Parliament at all ; 
 ordering, moreover, that commissions be sent into all 
 counties for the " defacing, demolishing, and quite taking 
 away of all images, altars, or tables turned altar-wise, cruci- 
 fixes, superstitious pictures, monuments, and reliques of 
 idolatry, out of all churches or chapels." In truth, scarce a 
 speech was made in Parliament but the bishops and the 
 Church were the chief if not the only subjects of it : nor 
 was scarce any petition presented unless alleged super- 
 stition and popery filled the greater part of it. Within but 
 a few months indeed of Bishop Duppa's entry on the 
 Diocese of Sarum, the Commons had deliberately resolved 
 that " the government of the Church by archbishops and 
 bishops was a great impediment to reformation, and pre- 
 judicial to the State, and fhat the same should be taken 
 away." 
 
 At the restoration in May 1660, Brian Duppa returned 
 once more to Sarum as its bishop, but in a few months 
 
DAVENANT'S CHARACTER 515 
 
 afterwards was translated to the See of Winchester. He 
 was succeeded as Bishop of Sarum by Humphrey Hench- 
 man, precentor of Sarum, one of the three surviving 
 members of the chapter of residentiaries, who had married 
 Ellen, Bishop Davenant's niece, third daughter of his 
 sister, Mrs Townson. He was author of the " Gentleman's 
 Calling," and one of the numerous persons to whom The 
 Whole Duty of Man has been ascribed. His episcopate 
 here was but a brief one, as in 1663 he was translated to 
 the See of London. Nevertheless, great events happened 
 in it, inasmuch as in 1662 the Act of Uniformity was 
 passed, by the operation of which the Diocese of Sarum, as 
 elsewhere, lost some of her best men. Another of Bishop 
 Davenant's nieces, Maria Townson, married Alexander 
 Hyde, who succeeded John Easter, the successor to Hum- 
 phrey Henchman. His episcopate, however, was very 
 short, 1665-1667, only two years. 
 
 " His discharge of his episcopal functions, on the part of 
 Bishop Davenant, is allowed on all hands to have been most 
 exemplary, and it would not be easy to find a more decided 
 testimony than that afforded by the Lord Keeper Williams, 
 whom we have had so often to mention in the course 
 of this work, a man eminent for his learning and official 
 attainments : for his long exercise in all the functions of 
 public business, and for his penetration in divining into the 
 characters of men. Upon resigning the great Seal and 
 retiring to the more consistent duties of the See of Lincoln, 
 he took Bishop Davenant for his pattern, and framed his 
 measures upon what he considered the most wise and suc- 
 cessful example in these times of peculiar difficulty and 
 danger; and it is confessed by his enemies that the 
 episcopal conduct of Williams was remarkably temperate, 
 discreet, and conscientious. By all parties, indeed, the 
 Bishop was spoken of with respect, his contemporaries 
 giving him the soubriquet of " the good Bishop." In Fuller's 
 delineation of that character in his Holy State, references 
 
516 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 seem to be made to his uncle throughout, and he appears 
 to be the original of that word-portrait, which the author 
 of the Worthies so wittily sketches. 
 
 " And as Diogenes," says Fuller, " confuted him who 
 denied that there was any motion, by saying nothing, but 
 walking before his eyes ; so our Bishop takes no notice of 
 the false accusations of people disaffected against his 
 order, but ' walks on ' circumspectly in his calling, really 
 repelling their cavils by his conversation. A Bishop's 
 bare presence at a marriage in his own diocese is by the 
 law interpreted for a license ; and what actions soever he 
 graceth with his company, he is conceived to privilege 
 them to be lawful, which makes him to be more wary of 
 his behaviour. He is loved and feared of all, and his 
 presence frights the swearer either out of his oaths or into 
 silence ; and he stains all other men's lives with the clear- 
 ness of his own " (13). 
 
 There is an anecdote of Davenant, illustrating the fore- 
 going remarks, in Fuller's Worthies: " He was humble in 
 himself and (the consequence thereof) charitable to others. 
 Indeed, once invited by Bishop Field,^ and not well 
 pleased with some roisting company there, he embraced 
 the next opportunity of departure after dinner. And 
 when Bishop Field proffered to light him with a candle 
 downstairs, ' My lord, my lordl said he, ' let us lighten others 
 by our unblameable conversation ' ; for which speech some 
 have since severely censured him, how justly I interpose 
 not. But let others unrelated to him write his character, 
 whose pen cannot be suspected of flattery, which he when 
 living did hate, and dead did not need." ^ 
 
 The sixth maxim of Fuller's character of The Good 
 Bishop, that he is careful and happy in suppressing of 
 heresies and schisms, illustrates the mild sway of Dave- 
 nant in his diocese. " He distinguisheth of schismatics as 
 
 ' Theophilus Field, of St David's, 1627-35, ^"d of Hereford, 1635-6. 
 ^ TVorthies, London, p. 207. 
 
DAVENANT'S CHARACTER 517 
 
 physicians do of leprous people ; some are infectious, 
 others not ; some are active to seduce others, • others 
 quietly enjoy their opinions in their own consciences. The 
 latter, by his mildness, he easily reduceth to the truth ; 
 whereas the chirurgeon's rigorously handling it, often 
 breaks that bone quite off, which formerly was but out of 
 joint; towards the former he useth more severity, yet 
 endeavouring first to inform him aright before he pun- 
 isheth him. To use force first before people are fairly 
 taught the truth, is to knock a nail in a board without 
 wimbling a hole for it, which then either not enters, or 
 turns crooked, or splits the wood it pierceth." 
 
 Again (10), "He meddlethas little as may be with temporal 
 matters, having little skill in them, and less will to them. 
 Not that he is unworthy to manage them, but they un- 
 worthy to be managed by him. Yea, generally the most 
 dexterous in spiritual matters are left-handed in temporal 
 business, and go but untowardly about them. Wherefore 
 our Bishop, with reverend Andrewes, meddleth little in civil 
 affairs, being out of his profession and element. Heaven 
 is his vocation, and therefore he counts earthly emiploy- 
 ments avocations ; except in such cases which lie, as I may 
 say, in the marches of divinity, and have connection with 
 his calling ; or else, when temporal matters meddle with 
 him, so that he must rid them out of his way." 
 
 In the same sketch (s) the essayist commends " worthy 
 Bishop Lake," whose hand had the true seasoning of a 
 sermon with law and gospel, and who was most fatherly 
 grave in inflicting church censures ; such offenders as were 
 unhappy in deserving, were happy in doing penance in his 
 presence." 
 
 We have seen during the course of this work how hospi- 
 table our Bishop was in providing a home for his sister, 
 Mrs Townson (the late Bishop of Salisbury's widow) till 
 the end of her days, and her numerous family, so that 
 " hospitality " is another note (as St Paul teaches) of the 
 
51 8 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Episcopal character. " He (the Bishop) is hospitable in his 
 housekeeping according to his estate. His bounty is with 
 discretion to those that deserve it ; charity mistaken, 
 which reh'eves idle people, like a dead corpse, only feeds 
 the vermin it breeds. The rankness of his housekeeping 
 produceth no riot in his family. St Paul calls a Christian 
 family well ordered, a church in their house. If a private 
 man's house be a parochiall, a Bishop's may seem a 
 Cathedral church, as much better as bigger, so decently all 
 things therein are disposed." ^ 
 
 Such was our " Good Bishop " in his nephew's own 
 words, " An overseer of a flock of shepherds, as a minister 
 is of a flock of God's sheep." Divine Providence and his 
 prince's bounty advanced him to the place, whereof he 
 was no whit ambitious ; only he counts it good manners 
 to sit there where God hath placed him, though it be 
 higher than he conceives himself to deserve, and hopes 
 that He who called him to the office hath, or will in some 
 measure fit him for it." ^ 
 
 The following extract from Dr Hume's life of that zeal- 
 ous Churchman * and excellent Christian, Bishop Hacket, 
 prefixed to his sermons, is worthy of citation, as well 
 for its good sense as the testimony it bears to the worth 
 of our author. "In matters of doctrine," he (Hacket) 
 embraced no private and singular opinions, as many great 
 men delight to do, in vetere via novum semitam qumrentes, 
 says the father (Jerome) : but was in all points a perfect 
 
 1 Fuller's Holy State, p. 270. = Fuller's Holy State, p. 265. 
 
 ^ Dr Hacket is recorded as the last man in England who persisted to read 
 the Liturgy in public, after it had been proscribed by the Parliament : and 
 the following well-known anecdote is given by his biographer, illustrative alike 
 of his attachment to the Church and of his holy courage. " One Sunday, 
 while he was reading the Common Prayer in his Church, a soldier of the 
 Earl of Essex came and clapt a pistol to his breast, and commanded him to 
 read no further. The Doctor smiled at his insolency in that sacred place ; 
 and, not at all terrified, said, ' he would do what became a divine, and he 
 might do what became a soldier ' ; so the tumult for that time was quieted, 
 and the Doctor permitted to proceed." 
 
DAVENANT'S VIEWS 519 
 
 Protestant, according to the Articles of the Church of 
 England : always accounting it a spice of pride and 
 vanity to affect singularity in any opinions or exposi- 
 tions of Scripture, without great cause : and withal 
 very dangerous to affect precipices, as goats use, when 
 they may walk in plain paths. In the Quinquarticular 
 Controversy he was very moderate: but, being bred 
 under Bishop Davenant and Dr Ward in Cambridge, 
 was addicted to their sentiments. Bishop Usher would 
 say, Davenant understood these controversies better than 
 ever any man did since St Austin. But He used to say he 
 was sure he had three excellent men of his mind in this 
 controversy : (i) Padre Paulo,^ whose letter is extant to 
 Heinsius, anno 1604 ; (2) Thomas Aquinas ; (3) St Austin ; 
 but beside and above them all, he believed in his con- 
 science. St Paul was of the same mind likewise : yet 
 would profess withal he disliked no Arminian, but such a 
 one as reviled and defamed every one that was not so ; and 
 would often commend Arminius himself for his excellent 
 wit and parts, but only tax his want of reading and know- 
 ledge in antiquity : and ever held that it was the foolishest 
 thing in the world to say the Arminians were Papists, 
 when so many Dominicans and Jansenists were anti- 
 Arminians ; and so again to say the anti-Arminians 
 were Puritans or Presbyterians, when Ward and Dave- 
 nant, and Prideaux, and Brownrig were anti-Arminians, 
 and also stout champions for Episcopacy : ^ and Arminius 
 himself was ever a Presbyterian — and, therefore, he much 
 
 ' The famous Historian of the Council of Trent. 
 
 " To which might be added Hooker, Whitgift, Bancroft, Hall, Saunderson, 
 Beveridge, and innumerable others. In fact, some of the ablest defences of 
 our Church have proceeded from the pens of writers of these views. So true 
 is the remark of Bishop Horsley : " If we would look for warm advocates of 
 Church authority in general, and for able writers in defence of our own form of 
 Church government in particular, such we shall find among those Divines 
 of our Church who were called in their day the Doctrinal Calvinists " (Charge 
 at Rochester, l8oa). 
 
520 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 commended the moderation of our Church, which made 
 not any of these nice and doubtful opinions the resolved 
 doctrine of the Church: this, he judged, was the great 
 fault of the Tridentine and late Westminster Assemblies ; 
 but our Church was more ingenuous, and left these dark 
 and curious points to the several apprehensions of learned 
 men, and extended equal communion to both." 
 
 That the views of Davenant were moderate Calvinian, 
 or such as bear the name of .Sa^Iapsarian ^ Calvinism, all 
 his writings prove. In short they were Augustinian. 
 
 It has, however, been said that, with respect to the doc- 
 trine of Universal Redemption, he was led by Archbishop 
 Usher. This is distinctly stated by Baxter ; and from this 
 it has been inferred by many that the views of Davenant 
 underwent a change, and that he declined to the opinion 
 that redemption is attainable by all. In fact the extra- 
 ordinary endowments of the Irish Primate, his stupendous 
 and universal erudition, his extreme moderation, humility, 
 fervent piety, and judgment, placed him in correspondence 
 with all the learned men of Europe of all Churches,^ who 
 appealed to him for information and advice upon almost 
 every topic of learning and theology. When in London 
 the most eminent divines were wont to apply themselves 
 
 * Yet Cassan tells us (Lives of Bishops of Salisbury, pt. ii. p. 113) " Davenant 
 had adopted the Supralapsarian hypothesis, i.e., of unconditional predestina- 
 tion in the utmost sense." This writer's definition of doctrine is well-suited 
 to his accuracy of assertion. He has, however, favoured the world with more 
 than one choice specimen of his theological attainment : suited indeed to 
 what might be expected from a man who in narrating a witty story of Bishop 
 Thomas, concerning a Lutheran divine who refused to bury a Calvinist, sagely 
 observes : " Although the Calvinism of the dead be not contagious, it may 
 fairly be doubted whether a known heretic is entitled to have the service read 
 over him, and to receive the same honour with one dying in the true faith of 
 the Church. In this case, no doubt, the clergyman was acting in conformity 
 to the spirit of the Rubric. For a Calvinist must, ispo facto, be ' excommuni- 
 cate ' : and such, we know, are not entitled to Christian burial." 
 
 ' We need go no farther than a mere glance at the invaluable selection of 
 letters which his chaplain, Dr Parr, selected from the vast mass of his corre- 
 spondence, and published at the end of his life. 
 
DAVENANT'S OPINIONS 521 
 
 to him as to a father.^ Among others, Davenant was on 
 close terms of intimacy with him, as was his nephew 
 Thomas Fuller ; and to this the following passage of 
 Baxter refers, in the year 1658, seventeen years after our 
 author's death : " In the time of my abode at Lord Brog- 
 hill's, fell out all the acquaintance I had with the most 
 reverend, learned, humble, and pious Primate of Ireland, 
 Arbp. Usher, then living at the Earl of Peterborough's 
 house in St Martin's Lane. Sometimes he came to me, 
 and oft I went to him. And Dr Kendal, who had wrote 
 pettishly against me, about Universal Redemption and the 
 specification of Divine Grace, desired me (when I had 
 answered one of his invectives, and had written part of 
 the answer to the other) to meet him at Bishop Usher's 
 lodgings, and refer the matter to him for our reconciliation 
 and future silence ; which I willingly did. And when the 
 Bishop had declared his judgment for that doctrine of 
 Universal Redemption which I asserted, and gloried that 
 he was the man who brought Bishop Davenant and Dr 
 Preston to it, he persuaded us, who were both willing, to 
 silence for the time to come " (p. 205). In the same book, 
 referring to the same conference, he delivers his opinion 
 more fully: " In mybookcalledi?(ichard)^(axter)j/a^/«^«? 
 adout the Perseverance of Believers, I showed the variety of 
 opinion about Perseverance, and that Augustin and Prosper 
 themselves did not hold the certain perseverance of all 
 the elect ; but held that there are more sanctified than are 
 elect, and that perseverance is affixed to the elect as such, and 
 not to the sanctified as such ; which Bp. Usher averred to Dr 
 Kendal, before my face, to be most certainly Austin's judg- 
 ment, though both he and I did incline to another. From 
 hence, and many other arguments, I inferred that the sharp 
 censures of men against their brethren, for not holding a 
 point which Austin himself was against, and no one author 
 can be proved to hold from the Apostles' days till long after 
 
 ^ Dr Bernard's Funeral Sermon on Usher. 
 
522 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Austin, doth argue less of judgment and charity than many 
 of the censurers seem to have." 
 
 " Upon a topic so important," says the Rev. Josiah All- 
 port, in his short biographical sketch, " a few observations 
 may be made. That Usher became less partial to the 
 strict points of Calvinism in later life, rests upon evidence 
 too distinct to be questioned ; and Mr Todd, in his Life of 
 Bishop Walton, has given some interesting letters on the 
 subject. Nevertheless, so early as 1617, when yet a private 
 divine, he maintained Universal Redemption, and his cor- 
 respondence contains two powerful letters on the subject. 
 But then, perhaps, he would not then have so fully allowed 
 what he afterwards maintained in one of his last conversa- 
 tions, when, having preached what he called ' a soul-saving ' 
 sermon upon the words, ' Whom He called, them He justi- 
 fied^ ; and being asked by Walton whether ' God, with His 
 Word, doth give internal grace to all that are called by it, 
 that they may repent if they will ; and that they certainly 
 can will ? ' he answered, ' Yes, they all can will ! and that 
 so many will not is because they resist God's grace,' adding, 
 ' Bishop Overall was in the right, and I am of his mind.' 
 
 " It is from this that a supposed change in Davenant's 
 opinion has been inferred. Hence, Mr Jackson, in his able 
 life of the great Puritan divine, John Goodwin (the most 
 profound Arminian theologian that this country has pro- 
 duced) tells us (and Mr Nicholls, in the preface to his Works 
 of Arminius, repeats the remark), that ' Bishop Davenant 
 appears to have undergone a change of sentiment similar 
 to that of Baxter.' 
 
 "There is no difficulty in refuting this, but there is much 
 difficulty in reconciling Baxter's remark with the fact. 
 Davenant's views at the Synod of Dort, prior to his ac- 
 quaintance of Usher, are distinctly stated in his ' Reasons,' 
 and in many of his works, and his reply to Hoard, just 
 before his death, is in strict accordance with them. He 
 held Universal Redemption, as we have seen, at Dort, but 
 
DAVENANT'S CHURCHMANSHIP 525 
 
 he held it as inseparable from Reprobation or Pretention ; 
 and he maintained against Hoard the same doctrine and 
 the same inseparable Pretention. The truth, or error, of 
 the doctrine is, of course, not affected by this ; but, as a 
 matter of fact, the evidence is too distinct to be doubted 
 for a moment, that not a shadow of change occurred in his 
 opinions. How, therefore, to understand Baxter's remark, 
 I know not." ^ 
 
 But though Davenant held what are called j«^lapsarian 
 views on the " doctrines of grace," he was most firm and 
 persistent in his opposition to the j«/ralapsarian hypo- 
 thesis, and set his face like a flint against the extreme 
 party at Dort. And in what did he differ from the Jan- 
 senists in these views, or the Dominicans, or Aquinas, or 
 Augustin, or Prosper, or Fulgentius, or, for the matter of 
 that, St Paul himself .' But side by side with these pre- 
 destinarian opinions, he was a doughty champion of the 
 Episcopal regimen, and clearly pointed out to the foreign 
 Protestants what they had lost in giving up Episcopacy, 
 which at last they frankly owned themselves. Davenant 
 had the greatest reverence for his spiritual mother, the 
 Church of England : he held to what are called Church 
 principles, baptismal grace, and the spiritual presence of 
 Christ in the Eucharist, and the power of the Keys. He 
 clung to the creeds of a Catholic and undivided Christen- 
 dom, and had the greatest respect for the old Fathers of 
 the Early Church^ — in short, he fully understood, what we 
 have endeavoured to illustrate in this work, the true Angli- 
 can platform, the twofold appeal to Scripture and primitive 
 Antiquity. But call him by what name you please, it is the 
 Churchman, not only of the Anglican Reformed Church, 
 not merely of England, and of the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries after Christ, but of Catholic Christendom, 
 
 ^ Life of Bishop Davenant, by Rev. Josiah Allport, and prefixed to the 
 translation of the Exposition of the Epistle to the Colossians (p. 48), a sketch 
 to which I beg to acknowledge my indebtedness in composing these memoirs. 
 
524 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 and of the first three centuries, every feature of him finding 
 within that period (in which the loving voice of Christ and 
 His apostles was actually heard, or had so recently ceased to 
 be) its faithful exemplar. Nor can we afford to lose sight 
 of these principles in the present crisis, when the old con- 
 troversy with Rome is opened afresh — a controversy which 
 we can only carry on successfully by taking up our ground, 
 like Davenant did, with great good heed (ground which our 
 Reformers and their followers — men experienced, as Laud 
 and Davenant and Chillingworth, in that most delicate 
 warfare — in general marked out for us) ; and standing fast 
 by the Church of England as she stands fast by the Primi- 
 tive Church ; being in fact that Church, in the main, restored, 
 which the Papist has corrupted, and the Puritan thrown into 
 disorder. For it is certain that any man professing himself 
 of the Church of England, and yet in his honest but im- 
 provident zeal adopting the line of argument of the 
 Protestant Latitudinarian, will not long contend with a 
 Romanist of common sagacity (and such champions are 
 not wanting to Rome at this moment) without discovering 
 that his position is untenable, without finding out that, 
 whilst tilting at his foe, he has over-reached himself, and 
 laid open his own guard. Whereas, let him be true to 
 the moderate principles of his own Church, and he may 
 not only defend himself against the Romanist, but turn on 
 him and smite him down. In Davenant we have done our 
 best to pourtray the typical Churchman — the Churchman 
 of the Primitive Church — combining something both of the 
 High and Low party of more modern times — ^the moderate 
 Anglican — a tertium quid, nearer to our Reformers and to 
 the great worthies of our Church than either — the disciples 
 of the via media, one who has found the old paths and 
 walks therein. 
 
 Few men appear to have been more honoured and 
 venerated by men of all parties than Bishop Davenant. 
 In all the works of friends or opponents there is not to 
 
NONCONFORMIST TESTIMONIES 525 
 
 be found a single sentence approaching even to disrespect, 
 much less anything that can tend to cast the slightest re- 
 flection upon his deportment in any measure of his public 
 or private life. His profound learning, acuteness of intel- 
 lect, Catholic spirit, active benevolence, and meekness, are 
 constantly adverted to ; and the phrases — " The go6d 
 Bishop Davenant," the " excellent Bishop Davenant," the 
 "learned Bishop Davenant," &c., &c., are the usual appen- 
 dages, or ordinary epithets, to his name, even in the 
 writings of those who took up the pen in express hostility 
 to certain of his theological views. 
 
 A distinguished Nonconformist, Dr Edmund Calamy — 
 whose father, Master E. Calamy, formed one of the Sub- 
 Committee under the presidency of Bishop Williams in 
 1640-1 — in the memoirs of his own life, gives an account 
 of a conversation which he had with Bishop Burnet ^ (the 
 author of the Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles already 
 referred to in connection with the seventeenth), who par- 
 ticularly requested to know the opinion of the Dissenters 
 upon his explanation of that seventeenth Article. " I 
 told his Lordship," says Dr Calamy, " that as for those 
 whom his Lordship particularly enquired after, though 
 they were very thankful to his Lordship for his pains, 
 and for his charity to those of different sentiments : yet, 
 on the head of Predestination, which he had so laboured, 
 they could not but be surprised to find that, when he had 
 been at such pains, nicely to state the two extremes, he 
 should quite overlook the middle way, where truth 
 commonly lies. He told me that the true reason of 
 that was because he could not see how that called the 
 middle way differed from one of the extremes. I freely 
 told him this seemed more strange to several among us, 
 because the learned Davenant, one of his Lordship's pre- 
 decessors in the See of Sarum, had not only vigorously 
 asserted and defended that middle way in the Synod of 
 
 1 Gilbert Burnet was Bishop of Salisbury from 1689- 171 5. 
 
526 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Dort, in opposition to Remonstrants and Supralapsarians, 
 but had also been at no small pains to support it in several 
 of his writings ; of which his Lordship took not the least 
 notice. This led into a pretty close discourse of two hours' 
 length, in which his Lordship endeavoured to convince me 
 that such as declared for the middle way must at last, when 
 pressed, fall into the Arminian scheme ; while I, on the 
 contrary, asserted, and endeavoured to prove, that such as 
 were in that way of thinking were no more obliged to fall 
 in with the Remonstrants than with the rigid Predeter- 
 minants " (vol. i., p. 276). 
 
 " We may add fittingly enough," says the author of the 
 Diocesan History of Salisbury, " a few words respecting 
 Bishop Davenant, to whom the difficult task was assigned 
 of ruling and guiding the Church of Sarum in those 
 dangerous and anxious times. He succeeded Bishop 
 Townson, his brother-in-law, who, after having held the 
 Bishopric for barely Un months, died, leaving behind him 
 a widow and fifteen children, by no means plentifully pro- 
 vided for. He accepted the See, it is said by Camden, 
 with an implied pledge that he would remain unmarried, 
 and so be able the better to provide for his nephews and 
 nieces. He certainly redeemed his pledge fully, for during 
 the twenty years that he was Bishop of Sarum he bestowed 
 dignities, prebends, or livings on all who had any claim of 
 kindred. Like many of the divines who received their 
 advancement in the Reign of James I., he had a strong 
 dislike to everything connected with Rome,i and also 
 
 ' His opinion on this subject he thus himself expresses, as Mr Russell says in 
 his Memorials of Fuller, p. 256, " as able a controversial Divine as the Church 
 of England ever produced, places among the fundamental points as well the 
 Decalogue as the Creed, and in respect of the Decalogue remarks : Viderit itaque 
 Romana Ecclesia, quae fundamenta fidei Christianse sua potissimum opera 
 gloriatur fuisse hactenus conservata, an in fundamentalibus Decalogi non 
 «rraverit crasse et damnabiler ; ut de erroribus aliis nihil dicam " (Adfratemam 
 Communionem, p. 98). In Fauzani's Memoirs, p. 246, he is described by 
 Bishop Montague as violently bent against the Church of Rome. 
 
DAVENANTS EPITAPH 527 
 
 strong Calvinistic sympathies. The Puritans were treated 
 by him with much kindliness and tolerance. " Fuller," says 
 Bailey, in his life of that historian, " whose connection with 
 his uncle throughout his boyhood and early manhood was 
 pretty close, held him in great respect, and to the Bishop's 
 school of Churchmanship ever tenaciously clung, and did 
 very much to perpetuate it." Fuller's biographer justly 
 says of Davenant that he was " a man in whom piety and 
 sound learning were united to a degree perhaps rarely 
 excelled " {Life, p. T])> 
 
 Lloyd, in his Memoirs, has given an epitaph on our 
 Bishop, which, as giving a good summary of his character 
 and genius, we here subjoin — ^ 
 
 " Hie jacet omnigenae eruditionis modest8e 
 Epitome. Cui judicium asservit 
 maxime discretiorum. 
 
 quicquid uspiam est literarum Hebraicarum 
 Ethnicarum, aut Christianarum 
 omnes linguas, artes et historias 
 quicquid prsedicarunt 
 patres, disputarum scholastici 
 
 decreverunt consilia 
 in sobriam pacificam, et practicam concoxit 
 Theologiam. 
 
 ■^ History of Salisbury, S.P.C.K. Diocesan Histories, by Rev. W. H.Jones, 
 Vicar of Bradford-on-Avon, p. 204. 
 
 * Lloyd, Memoirs, 283. The following is a translation of this epitaph, 
 which was recorded very incorrectly. It may, perhaps, have been one of the 
 epitaphs placed, as was usual, upon the coffin when lying in state : — 
 
 " Here lieth the epitome of all solid learning. His judgment, assisted by 
 his profound acquaintance with the entire range of Hebrew, Heathen, and 
 Christian lore, converted all tongues, arts, histories, every maxim of the 
 fathers, every disputation of the schoolmen, every decree of the Councib into 
 sober, peaceful, and practical divinity. He swayed the Schools in so far as 
 they are ruled by assemblies, and he gave laws to Synods. As wise as simple, 
 he, whose austerity of life was little known, for he was more strict in practice 
 than in profession (being by his learning a great light to the Church, by his 
 example a greater) — whose books were all marked with this posy, ' Prefuitqui 
 
528 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Quas in concionibus dominata est, Scholis 
 Imperayit, et Synodis leges dedit 
 Prudens pariter ac simplex, 
 ille, ille cui severior vita quam 
 opinio : ut pote strictius vitam 
 agens, quam sententiam (Doctrina 
 magna lux Ecclesiae, exemplo major) 
 Cujus libri omnes una hac notabantur 
 
 Inscriptione Prcefuit gut Profuit, 
 qui Regem venerebatur, sed et timebat 
 Deum, non tam sue, quam publico morbo 
 Succubuit Aprilis 3, 1641, extremam 
 in hasc verba agens animam : — 
 
 ' Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.' " 
 
 " Bogerman, the eloquent President of the famous Synod 
 of Dort, a Dutchman, confessed that Dr Davenant's ex- 
 perience and skill in the laws and histories of Councils 
 gave them directions for the better ordering of their debates 
 and votes." 
 
 There is an autograph of Dr Davenant in the album of 
 Sir Thomas Cuming of Scotland, which may be seen in 
 the MS. Addit., fo. 108 (special), in the British Museum. 
 
 Bishop Davenant's printed works were — 
 
 1. Expositio Epistolae D. Pauli ad Colossenses. Fo., Cantabr., 1627, 
 
 1630, 1639 ; 4°,Amst., 1646. 
 
 2. A Fast Sermon on Jer. iii. 12. 4°, Lond., 1628. 
 
 3. Prselectiones theologicae de duobus in Theologia Controversis 
 
 capitibus, de judice controversiarum primo : et de justitia 
 habituali et actuali altero. Fo., Cantabr., 1631. 
 
 4. De pads ecclesiasticas rationibus inter Evangelicos usurpendis et 
 
 de theologorum fundamentali consensu in Colloquis Lips inito, 
 trium in ecclesia Anglicana episcoporum Tho. Mortoni, Job. 
 Davenantii, Jos. Halli sententias Jo. Duraeo traditas. 4to, 
 1634, s.l. 
 
 profuit^ who while honouring the king feared God — yielded rather to the 
 public malady than to his own complaint, died on the 3rd of April 1641, 
 repeating with his last breath the words, ' Tantum religio potuit suadere 
 malorum. ' " 
 
DAVENANT'S WRITINGS 529 
 
 5. Determinationes (xlix.) quaestionum quarundam theologicarum per 
 
 Joannem Davenantium publici disputatarum. Fo., Cantabr., 
 1 634- 1 639. 
 
 6. De Pace inter Evangelicos procuranda sententise quatuor. Tho. 
 
 Morton, Dunclemensis Episcopi : Jo. (Davenant) Sans- 
 buriensis Episcopi : Josephi (Hall) Exoniensis Episcopi : et 
 quorundam EcclesisE Gallicanae Pastorum. Amst., i8°, 
 Lond., 1638. 
 
 7. Ad fraternam Communionem inter evangelicas ecclesias restauran- 
 
 dam adhortatio : cui prefixa est de pace ibidem ecclesiastica 
 commentatio Jo. Duraso non ita pridem missa. 8°, Cantabr., 
 1640. 
 
 8. Animadversions on a treatise lately published and entitled, " God's 
 
 love to mankinde, manifested by disproving his absolute decree 
 for their damnation (by Samuel Hoard). 8°, Cambridge, 1641. 
 
 9. An exhortation to brotherly communion betwixt the Protestant 
 
 Churches. 12°, London, 1641. 
 
 10. Dissertationes duas : prima De Morte Christi, quatenus ad omnes 
 
 extendatur, quatenus ad solos electos restringatur, altera de 
 Prasdestinatione et Reprobatione, quibus subnectitur ejusdem 
 D. Davenantii sententia de Gallicana Controversia se de gratiosa 
 et salutari Dei erga homines peccatores voluntate. Fo., Cantabr., 
 1650. 
 These treatises, selected from our author's papers, had been sent to 
 Archbishop Usher by Dr Edward Davenant for the purpose of pub- 
 lication. But the wretched state of the times prevented their appear- 
 ing for some years ; and it does not seem that the Archbishop was 
 the editor, for the preface is signed with the initials T. B., probably 
 Thomas Bedford, mentioned below. (AUport.) 
 
 11. A letter to Dr Samuel Ward prefixed to T. Bedford, Vindicia; 
 
 gratise sacramentalis. 8°, Lond., 1650. 
 
 In the Bodleian library is a series of letters of Dr 
 Davenant to Dr Samuel Ward, Master of Sidney College ; 
 the following list is taken from the Tanner MSS., of which 
 they form part : — 
 
 Ixxiij. 25, May.i63i. Referred to above. 
 
 Ixxiij. 31. 27 May. do. 
 
 Ixxiij. 36, 7 June. Directions for the Moderations at the approachmg 
 commencement ; rumoured translations in the Episcopal Bench. 
 
 Ixxiij. 66, S Aug. Day of his Consecration to the Bishopric of Salis- 
 bury not fixed. 
 
 2 L 
 
530 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 Ixxiij. 273, 20 Feb. 1622-3. His readings not- in a fit state for publi- 
 cation. 
 Ixxiij. 497, 9 !'«<=• '^^4- Pelagianism of Mark Antonio De Dominis, 
 
 Archbishop of Spalatro. 
 Ixxij. 52, 26 Sept. 1625. Consents to publish his Readings on the 
 
 Colossians. 
 Ixxij. 61, 5 Dec. 1626. Directions for printing the Readings ; Richard 
 Mountagu's opinions on Predestination contrary to the doctrine 
 of the Church of England. 
 ccxc. 81, 10 Oct. Progress made in describing the Readings. Ap- 
 proval of Ward's theses, as also his vindication of the Synod of 
 Dort from the charge of Mr Mountagu. 
 Ixxij. 13s, 312 ; Ixxi. 5, 26, 37, 41, 64, 140, 153 ; 1626-32. Letters on 
 
 the Predestination controversy. 
 Ixxij. 146, 17 July 1626. Desires a fellowship for his nephew Thomas 
 
 Fuller of Queens' College. 
 Ixxij. 172, 174, 13 Feb., 6 March 1626-7. Two letters to same, relating 
 
 to the imperfect transcript of the readings. 
 Ixxij. 205, 27 July 1627. Sends the dedication for his readings. 
 Ixxij. 207, 213, 230, 23 Sep., 25 Oct., 28 Oct. 1637. Three letters to 
 Dr Ward on the plague at Salisbury, and the fellowship for 
 Thomas Fuller. 
 Ixxij. 296, 21 Oct. 1628. Removal of Thomas Fuller to Sidney College 
 
 on being passed over at the election at Queens'. 
 
 Ixxij. 298, 4 Nov. 1628. Mr Montagu's book contrary to the doctrine 
 
 of the Church ; notice of Dr Jackson's treatise of the Divine 
 
 essence ; approval of Ward's pubUshing the Suffragium CoUegiale. 
 
 Ixxij. 310, 27 Feb. 1628-9. Notice of a sermon preached by Mr 
 
 Williams at Sleaford ; the Bishop of Lichfield disapproves of 
 
 Dr Jackson's book; controverted points in the doctrine of 
 
 Election. 
 
 ccxc. 86, 16 March 1629-30. Account of his appearance before the 
 
 Council for preaching on predestination. 
 Ixxi. 105 ff., 27 Sept., 12 Oct. 1631. Draught of the Epistles dedica- 
 tory to the King and of that to the reader, prefixed to the "Pre- 
 lectiones^' with two letters to Dr Ward touching the same. 
 Ixxi. 164, 23 July 1633. On various controverted points of theology : 
 
 censure of a sermon preached at Cambridge by Mr Simson. 
 Ixxi. 172, 23 Feb. 163I. Surprize at the delay in filling up the Master- 
 ship at St John's College. 
 Ixx. 41, 8 Dec. 1634. Sends one of his Determinations for publication. 
 Ixx. 48, 27 Jan. 1635-6. Sends presentation copies of his Determina- 
 tions ; passage to be omitted in the Determination last sent. 
 
DAVEN ANT'S LETTERS 531 
 
 Ixvij. I, 27 March 1638. Offer of the Vicarage of Martinston to Mr 
 
 Hasell ; design of building a library at Cambridge. 
 Ixvij. 40, 31 Oct. The doctrine of oral Manducation. 
 Ixvij. 55, 23 Feb. 1638-9. Directions in reprinting the Determinations. 
 Ixvij. 147, 29 Oct. 1639. Notice of Thomas k Kempis de imitatione 
 
 Christi ; advises John Fuller to remove to Trinity Hall for the 
 
 study of the law. 
 Ixvij. 160, 3 Dec. His age too great to allow of his writing on the 
 
 controversies of the day ; notice of his animadversions upon Sam 
 
 Hood's " God's love to mankind." 
 Ixv. 80, I June 1640. Directions for publishing his treatise de Funda- 
 
 mentalibus. 
 Ixv. 118, 12 Sept. Presentation Copies of the de Fundamentalibus ; 
 
 the deputies at Dort from Bremen accused of heresy, 
 cclxxix. 267 ff. Notes concerning predestination, election, and grace, 
 cclxxix. 300. Annotata ad concionem Pauli Micklethwaite. 
 cclxxix. 301. De baptismi effectu in parvulis. 
 
 The following are some other of the MS. remains of the Bishop : — 
 Bishop Davenant's answer to queries propounded by certaine 
 ministers concerning the oath in the sixt Canon (of 1640), MS. Cai. 
 Coll. Lib. No. 291, p. 274 ff. 
 
 Letter of Davenant to Archbishop Laud touching the administration 
 of the oath in his Diocese (1640). Lambeth MSS. 577, p. 259. 
 
 His will is in the office of the (late) Prerogative Court of 
 Canterbury (Evelyn, p. loi). An abstract of it is given 
 with considerable inexactness in Cassan's Bishops of Salis- 
 bury (ii. 121). The document is valuable as giving particu- 
 lars inter alia of the state of the Fuller family and its con- 
 nexions at that period. Most of the family names, also, will 
 be found in the pedigree at the end of first chapter, p. 14. 
 It bears date 29th January 1637, and was proved 23rd July 
 1641. He directs his body to be buried in the Cathedral, 
 bequeaths to it ;^200, rings to the Dean and each of the 
 residentiaries, and gowns to forty poor persons. In it he 
 makes a great number of bequests to his brothers and 
 sisters, and to their childrfen, and ratifies his gift of the 
 rectory of Newton Toney to the College. However, Dr 
 Humphrey Henchman (afterwards Bishop of Sarum), who 
 had married his niece, Ellen Townson, and Thomas Clark, 
 
532 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 who were seized in fee of the advowson of the living, were 
 to have the presentation at the next avoidance of it. 
 
 Bishop Davenant was a great benefactor to his College. 
 In 1626 he gave ;^ 100 for the use of the library,^ with which 
 130 volumes were purchased, and in 1637 he gave a rent- 
 charge on an estate at Eastchurch, Isle of Sheppey, out of 
 which two scholars were to be maintained, and besides ;^io 
 out of the same estate to be employed in increasing the 
 library. 
 
 1665, May 30. Granted by the M' and Fellows (Queens'), 
 to Mr Pedley 10/., to Mr Court 5/., for their services at the 
 Coll. in the sute about Shepey rents, B"" Davenant's gift to 
 the Coll. (Old Parch. Reg. 139). 
 
 In addition to this he gave to the College, in 1677, two 
 livings — the rectory of Cheverell Magna, Wiltshire (ex- 
 changed in 1774 for the rectory of Seagrave, Leicestershire), 
 and the rectory of Newton Toney, Wiltshire. 
 
 His arms were — ^gules sem^e of cross crosslets, or three 
 escallop shells, arg. a crescent, or for difference. 
 
 His portrait (not the one in this volume) is in the lodging . 
 of the President of Queens' College. It represents him full 
 face, in the Episcopal habit, with a skull cap and small 
 double ruff, and with beard and moustache. It is engraved 
 by Garner, and prefixed to Allport's work, a biographical 
 sketch appended to Davenant's Exposition to the Colossians. 
 
 FINIS 
 
 ^ The writer of these memoirs takes this opportunity of recording his grati- 
 tude to the honourable Society of Queens' College, Cambridge, for electing 
 him Clark's Scholar, to which was attached the Librarianship of the College, 
 soon after his matriculation, when he went up to Cambridge as Captain of his 
 school from Brighton College. He was therefore a scholar of his College 
 (enjoying the perquisites of a scholar) many months before the men of his own 
 standing, which would not be till the end of their first year. Being lineally 
 descended from Dr Thomas Fuller, the celebrated church historian, whose 
 maternal uncle was Bishop Davenant, it was a very graceful act on the part of 
 this Society in electing him (as -a. guasi-!o\i3i6iei's kin) to the Custodianship of 
 that Library, now a most valuable one, for which Davenant had done so much 
 in interest and by bequests. 
 
APPENDIX 533 
 
 BISHOP DAVENANT'S WILL. 
 
 In the name of God, Amen. The nyne and twentith day of January, 
 one thowsand six hundreth thirtie seaven, in the thirteenth yere of the 
 raigne of our Soveraigne Lord Charles, by the grace of God of Eng- 
 land, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Kinge Defender of the faith, &c. 
 I, John Davenant, Bishopp of Sarum, beinge at this tyme in good 
 health and perfect memory (praised bee God) weightinge with myselfe 
 the frailtie of this mortall life and the certainetie of my death have 
 therevpon judged it fitt and expedient to order and settle myne estate 
 without delaies. And doe therefore, make, declare, and pulalish this, 
 my last Will and Testament in manner and forme followinge. First, 
 I coffiitt and comend my soule into the handes of Almightie God, 
 relyinge vpon the mercy in Jesus Christ for the free pardon of all my 
 sinnes and for the free guift of eternall life through the same my Lord 
 Saviour : and as for my earthlie Bodie I bequeath it to the Earth 
 to bee buryed in the Cathedrall Church of Sarum in such decent 
 manner as myne executor shall thinke fitt, assuredly hoping for a 
 joyful resurrection thereof at the great and last daie of judgment. 
 
 Item, I give to my loving brother, Edward Davenant, Esquire, my 
 fower coach horses and the coach and furniture therevnto belonginge, 
 Item, I give vnto him my greater gold ringe with a deathes heade. 
 Item, I give to my lovinge brother William Davenant one of my saddle 
 geldinges, fortie pounds in money, and my lesser gold ringe with a 
 deathes heade. 
 
 Item, I give to my nephewe, John Davenant, of Whiddy, in the 
 Countie of Corck and Realme of Ireland, Esquire, one hundred 
 poundes. Item, I give to my neices, Margaret Palmer and Anne 
 Onslowe, fiftie pounds a peece. Item, I givee unto John Davenant, 
 the Sonne of my brother, WiUiam Davenant, twenty poundes to be 
 paid vnto him when hee shall take the degree of Master of Artes. 
 
 Item, I give unto William Davenant, brother ^ unto the same John, 
 twentie poundes, to bee paid vnto him at the age of three and twentie 
 yeres, or when he shall have taken the degree of Master of Artes. 
 
 Item, I give unto William Davenant, brother unto the same John, 
 twentie poundes, to bee paid vnto him at the age of three and twentie 
 yeres, or when he shall have taken the degree of Master of Artes, 
 which shall first happen. Item, I give vnto Marie Davenant, sister 
 vnto the said John and William, one hundred poundes, to bee paid 
 
 I These two brothers, Edward and William, the one a merchant-taylor, the 
 other a draper, were of Bread Street, London, and were the sureties for the 
 payment of the first-fruits of Dr Townson with respect to his vicarage of 
 Wellingborough, 13 April 1604. 
 
534 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 to her at the dale of her marriage or at her age of twentie yeres which 
 shall first happen. 
 
 Item, I give to my nephewe, Thomas Fuller, Batchellour of 
 Devinitie, the sonne of my sister, Judith Fuller, deceased, tenn 
 poundes, and to his youger brother, John Fuller, twentie poundes, 
 which I will haue paid vnto him when hee shall take the degree of 
 Master of Artes. 
 
 Alsoe I give to the three daughters of my said sister Fuller, Elizabeth, 
 Margarett, and Anne, to each of them, fiftie poundes a peece, to be 
 paid within six monethes after my death. Item, I give to John Town- 
 son, (the elder sonne of my sister, Margaret Townson, (deceased) tenn 
 poundes, and to Ralfe Townson} her youger sonne, twentie poundes, 
 to bee paid vnto him when hee shall take his next degree in schooles. 
 Moreover I give vnto the Daughters of my sister Townson,^ as sever- 
 ally foUoweth, vizt. to Margarett Rives, featherbedd, boulster, pillowe, 
 redd rugge, two blanchettes, one paire of sheets, together with the 
 beddstedd, redd vallence, and curtaines of Phillip, and chenie* thereto 
 belonginge, alsoe one of my silver colledge pottes, one brasse pott 
 and a wainscott chest. To Ellen Henchman, one bedstedd, with a 
 canopie, curtens and vallence of Say printed yellowe and blacke, a 
 feather bedd, a boulster, a pillowe, a yellowe rugge, two blanckettes, 
 one paire of sheets, a silver colledge pott, and a paire of brass and- 
 irons. To Anne Cooke, one halfe headed bedstedd, with canopie and 
 curtaines of Dornix,* a feather bedd, a boulster, a Dornix coverlett, a 
 rugge, a paire of sheets, the great leather chaire standinge in the 
 dynionge parlor, a halfe backed chaire with the leather stooles which 
 are all suteable, one silver beaker, and a nutmegg coUour cupp gar- 
 nished. To Judith White, a featherbedd and bowlster, a rugge, a 
 paire of sheets, a great chaire of Bendado leather, with all the lesser 
 chaires of like leather standinge alsoe in the dyninge parlour, a beaker 
 and paire of andirons standginge in my lodginge chamber, with the fire 
 shovell and tonges. To Bridgett Rogers one feather bedd, one boul- 
 ster, one rugge, one pillowe, a paire of sheetes, one brasse pott, one 
 chaire of Bentado leather which stands in my said lodginge chamber, 
 two lowe stooles suteable thereunto, six ioyned stooles and a breaker. 
 
 ' It was this Ralph Townson who is mentioned by Walker [Sufferings, ii, 
 no) as being ejected from a scholar's place in' Christ Church, Oxon. His 
 burial there is noted by A. Wood (Colleges, Oxon, ed. Gutch.'p. 476) who 
 states that he died on the 8th Sept. 1678, aged 65, being then Senior Student 
 of the house. 
 
 * Particulars of six of these nieces will be found at pp. 147, 148. 
 ' An old-fashioned material, formerly in extensive use. 
 
 * A kind of damask. 
 
DAVENANT'S WILL (APPENDIX) 535 
 
 To Gertred Townson, a feather-bedd, a boulster, a pillowe, two paire of 
 sheets, the one flaxon, the other canvas, a rugge, a diaper table cloth 
 with a dozen of napkins suteable to it, a greene carpett, a greene cup- 
 board cloth, a brasse pott and a silver beere bowle. Item, I give unto 
 her fortie poundes to bee paid vnto her at the daie of her marriage. 
 To Marie Hide, the featherbedd, boulster, pillowe, and quilted matteres 
 vsed in myne bedchamber, with the curtaines, rugg, and two blanckettes 
 therevnto belonginge ; and alsoe the cubboard with drawers, and 
 the broad lynnen box standinge there. Item, I give vnto her a trumb- 
 worke chair with eight stooles suteable to it, which stand in the 
 parlor, an iron bound greene chest, and a dozen of knobbed silver 
 spoones. Item, I give unto Grace Shaplie, the daughter of my brother 
 James Davenant, deceased, fiftie poundes and a silver tankard. 
 
 Item, I give to Elizabeth North, the daughter of my brother Ralphe 
 Davenant, deceased fiftie poundes and a silver tankard. Ite7n, I give 
 unto Katherine Davenant, the wife of my nephewe Edward Davenant, 
 Doctor of Diyinitie, tenne poundes to buy her a paire of bracelettes, 
 and the like soiiie unto Anne Davenant, the wife of my said nephewe 
 John Davenant of Whiddie. Also I give unto the eldest sonne of the 
 saiAJohn and Anne, thirtie poundes to bee bestowed in a bason and 
 ewre, and to be delivered vnto him at his age of twentie and one yeres. 
 
 Item, I give unto Ellen Fuller, the wife of my said nephewe Thomas 
 Fuller, Batchellor of Divinitie, a dozen of my silver spoones and a 
 beere bowle. Item, I give unto Anne Townson, the wife of my ne-phewe 
 John Townson a guilt tankard ymbossed. Item, I give to the Hus- 
 bandes of my neeces as followeth : to Humfrey Henchman,* Doctor 
 of Divinitie, a good serviceable geldinge and my Greeke Concordance 
 of the Newe Testament and Dronisius Areopagita in two volumes. 
 Item, to John Rives, Archdeacon of Berks, one of my gownes, and 
 one of my cassockes, which himself shall make choice of I give to 
 him also my lattine Chrisostom in fower volumes, and twentie shillings 
 for a ringe. Item, I give to Alexander Rede, sub-deane of the Church 
 of Sarum, one of my saddle geldinges, Bernard in two volumes, and 
 twenty shillings for a ringe. Item, I give Xa James White, Batchellour 
 of Divinitie one other of my saddle geldinges, Kircherus Hebrewe and 
 Greeke Concordance in two volumes, and twenty shillings to make 
 him a ringe. Item, I give to John Rogers ^ on of my gildinges, Bar- 
 
 ' The Maurice Henchman who was surety for the payment of the first-fruits 
 of Fuller's prebend, p. 139, was Bishop Henchman's brother ; his co-surety, 
 Edward, being perhaps a nephew. 
 
 ^ Rev. John Rogers was prebendary of Chute and Chesingbury, having been 
 appointed thereto by Dr Davenant in 1634 in the place of Edward Davenant. 
 (Walker, ii. 66). He was the husband of Bridget Townson. 
 
536 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 radius Concordance upon the Gospells in two volumes folio, and 
 twentie shillinges for a ringe. Item, I give unto John Cooke, a gild- 
 inge, Sir Walter Rawleighe's Historie, and twentie shillings for a ringe. 
 
 Item, I give to Edward Onslowe,* a Lattine Concourdance of the 
 Bible, Szegedine's Coifion Places, Catalogus Testium Veritatis, and 
 twentie shillinges for a ringe. Item, I give to Edward North? one of 
 my gownes, a cassock, Marlorates' Expositio Ecclisiastica in fower 
 volumes and twentie shillinges for a ringe. Item, to Bartholomew 
 Shapley? Chemnitius, his Examen in folio, his Comon places in 
 three volumes in quarto, and twentie shillinges for a ringe. Item, to 
 Mathewe Huit, Doctor Whitaker's Workes, whereof two volumes are 
 in folio, one in quarto, one in octavo, and twentie shillinges for a ringe. 
 Item, to Vincent Palmer, twentie shillinges for a ringe. 
 
 Item, I give unto these my loving Cozens twentie shillinges a piece 
 to make them ringes : — 
 
 vizt. ; to the Ladie Elizabeth Jermie, Abigail Hales, Anne Coope, 
 and Catherine Sowth. And in like manner to theis my welbeloved 
 Friendes, Samuele Ward, Professor of Divinitie in the Universitie of 
 Cambridge ; Robert Pearson,* Doctor of Divinitie and Parson of 
 Creak, in Norfolk ; Thomas Clarke, Doctor of Divinitie and Viccar of 
 Longe Sutton, in Lincolnshire ; Thomas Clarke,^ Parson of Manning- 
 ford ; Robert Davenant? Parson of Westkemton. I give alsoe unto my 
 
 ^ Rev. Edward Onslowe was also connected with the diocese and was pre- 
 ferred to a prebend just before the death of the Bishop, March 1641. He 
 married Miss Anne Davenant, the Bishop's niece (Walker, ii. 66). 
 
 ^ Rev. Edward North was the husband of the Bishop's niece, Miss Elizabeth 
 Davenant. 
 
 ' Rev. Bartholomew Shapley (or Shipley) held the prebend of Winterbouru 
 Earles, to which he was presented in 1640, He was married to one of the 
 Bishop's nieces Grace Davenant (Walker, ii. 69). 
 
 ■• This Dr Robert Pearson was the father of the celebrated Bishop Pearson. 
 He was an old associate of the Bishop, having been admitted at Queens' 
 College in 1587, Fellow 1592, and he was also tutor at the College. He was 
 presented to North Creake, Co., Norfolk in 1607. He died Archdeacon of 
 Suffolk 1639. 
 
 " Rev. Thos. Clarke (or Clark), Rector of Manningford Abbots, in Wilt- 
 shire, is described as " a man of that humility, piety, charity, and universal 
 goodness, that his name is not yet mentioned in those parts without particular 
 regard." Davenant made him a prebendary in 1634 ; but he was ejected from 
 his rectory in 1634 (Walker, ii. 227 ; 69). 
 
 ^ Rev. Robert Davenant of West Kempton was brother to Sir W. D'Ave- 
 nant, Poet Laureat. He was born of St John's College ; and in 1660, when 
 he was made D.D., he was prebend elect of Salisbury (Shennet). 
 
DAVENANT'S WILL (APPENDIX) 537 
 
 lovinge friendes, Mr William Ireland of Westminster,^ and Mr Hugh 
 Grove, the elder, of Chisenburie, twentie shellinges a peece for ringes. 
 
 Item, I give to the Deane of Sarum ^ and to each of the residen- 
 tiaries in remembraunce of our mutuall love, and good accord, twentie 
 shillinges a peece to make them ringes. 
 
 Item, I give unto the Cathedrale Church of Sarum, the seine of two 
 hundred poundes to be imployed for the benefitt of the said Church, 
 in such manner as shall seeme most expedient to the Deane and 
 Chapter. Item, I give unto the cittie of Newe Sarum, one hundred 
 poundes to be added to the stock which they have alreadie, and to be 
 ymployed onlie for settinge the poore on worke in the new workhouse. 
 Itefn, I give the soine of thirtie poundes to bee divided by equal 
 portions betweene eight poore viccars or curates within the diocese 
 of Salisbury, such as my executor shall thinke fittest. Now for my 
 Howshould Servauntes : — I give unto them as foUoweth in perticuler, 
 vizt., unto my auntient servaunt John Greene, fiftie poundes. 
 
 Item, to my servaunt Henry Wilkinson, twentie poundes ; to Rich- 
 ard Bisbie, five poundes, and one of my cart horses ; to Edward 
 Read, five poundes, and my great olde coach ; to Roger Humphrey, 
 twentie nobles ; to James Harris^ five poundes ; to John True and 
 Edward Burford, three poundes a peece ; to my cooke, fortie shillings ; 
 to the boy in the stable, to the kitchen boy, to the widdowe, to the 
 porter, and to the carter, thirtie shillings a peece. All which somes 
 unto my servauntes my will is shall be paid to them before my 
 howshould bee dissolved. Item, I will that my funerall fortie poore 
 men at the least shall have gownes bestowed upon them, as for other 
 mourners or morninge cloathes with other solemnities, I leave them 
 wholly to the descrecoii of meyne executor, whome I advise to avoide 
 herein all needlesse pompe and superfluous trouble or charge. More- 
 ouer, whereas by severall deeds, bearinge date the five and twentith 
 daie of October, in the thirteenth yere of the raigne of our Souveraigne 
 Lord Kinge Charles, I have given teiin pounds a yere to Anne Cooke, 
 duringe her life ; and tenn poundes to Ralph Townson duringe the terme 
 
 ^ His name occurs as one of the sureties for the payment of the first-fruits 
 of Thomas Fuller the elder, with respect to his prebend of Highworth, gth 
 April 1623, being described as "gen." he attests the codicil. The other 
 surety was John Stogdell, yeoman, also of Westminster. 
 
 " Richard Baylie, D.D., who was Dean 1635-67. He was president of St 
 John's College, Cambridge, 1627, became Dean through his kinship with 
 Laud, whose executor he was. There is a long account of him in Walker, 
 ii. 117. 
 
 ' Perhaps the same James Harris mentioned page 148. 
 
538 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 of tenn yeres, and twentie poundes a yere to John Davenant (sonne of 
 my brother William Davenant) for seaven yeres, and sixteene poundes 
 a year to William Davenant (sonne of my said brother William) duringe 
 the terme of twelve yeres ; and sixteene poundes a yere to John Fuller 
 duringe the terme of seaven yeres, All the said yearlie paymentes to 
 beginne ymediately from and after my decease. Nowe I doe here by this, 
 my last will, ratifie them all, and will that the said deedes shall bee de- 
 livered with all fitt expedicon to every one of them respectivelie to the 
 end that every of them male trulie enjoye the same accordinge to the 
 tenour of my deedes. Item, whereas I have given the Rectory and 
 Parsonage of Newton Toney for ever to the Master and Fellowes of 
 Queene's College, in Cambridge, by a deed, bearinge date the six and 
 twentith daie of October in the thirteenth yere of the raigne of our 
 Soveraigne Lord, Kinge Charles, I doe by this my will ratifie the 
 same, and appoint that all deedes, evidences, writinges concerninge 
 the said Rectory beinge delivered unto them with all fitt expedicon.' 
 Item, I do likewise by this my will ratifie a conveyance of the manor 
 of Bictam, made betweene me and Edward Davenant, bearinge date 
 the sixe and twentith daie of October in the thirteenth yere of the 
 raigne of our Soveraigne Lord, King Charles. As for my bookes not 
 formerly bequeathed, my will is that none of them shall bee sould, but 
 that the said Doctor Edward Davenant shall take of them forhimselfe, 
 such whereof hee is not already provided, as hee shall thinke good. 
 
 And out of my English bookes, hee male give one to anie of my 
 neeces, kindred, or friends, as a token of remembrance. As for the 
 rest of my bookes, such shall remayne, my will is that they be distri- 
 buted not by equall number of value, but whoUie accordinge to the dis- 
 crecon of the forenamed Doctor Edward Davenant to the aforesaid 
 Thomas Fuller, John Townson, John Davenant (sonne of my brother 
 William Davenant) Ralfe Townson and John Fuller. The rest and 
 residue of all and singular my moneys, debtes, goodes, chattelles, rights, 
 and estate ,whatsoever, not befoire by mee herein disposed (my debts 
 beinge first paid) I doe fully and wholly bequeath vnto my wel-beloved 
 nephewe, the said Edward Davenant, Doctor of Divinitie, and I doe 
 hereby appoint, constitute, and ordaine him to bee the full and sole 
 executor of this my present last will and testament, revokinge and dis- 
 annuUinge all former wills by mee made. In witness whereof, I have 
 to theis presentes sett my hand and seale, the daie and yere above 
 written. Jo. Sarum. 
 
 Subscribed, sealed, and published by John Davenant, Bishopp of 
 
 ' Fuller, curiously, does not include this among the Queens' College livings. 
 See the CodiciL 
 
DAVENANT'S WILL (APPENDIX) 539 
 
 Sarum, the Testator, as his last Will and Testament in presence of 
 The. Sadler, Will. Buckner, Antho. Hillary, Fran. Robertes. 
 
 Codicil. 
 
 Bee it knowe that whereas I, John Davenant, Bishopp of Sarum, 
 haue made my last Will and Testament in writinge, and whiche nowe 
 resteth in the Custodie of Hugh Grove the elder, in the close of 
 Sarum, Gent. Nowe forasmuch as I have changed my mynde onlie 
 concerninge some certaine thinges in the said last will conteyned, I 
 doe by this present Codicill confirme and ratifie the said last Will in 
 and concerninge all Thinges in the said last Will menconed other 
 then in thus foUowinge perticulers, in which pointes onlie I revoke my 
 said former Will, and dispose as followeth. And First, whereas by 
 my last said Will I have beqeathed and appointed to Mrs Anne 
 Cooke an annuitie or annual pencon of eight poundes, forasmuch as 
 since the makinge of my said Will I have otherwise provided for the 
 said M'"^ Anne Cooke, I doe hereby revoke and make voide this 
 legacy or request of eight poundes per annum. And secondly, 
 whereas Humphrey Henchman, Doctor of Divinitie, and Thomas 
 Clarke, clerke, stand seized in fee of and in the advowson of Newton 
 Tonie in the Countie of Wiltes, in trust for mee, my hieres and 
 assignes ; and whereas by my said last will I doe give and deuise 
 vnto Queenes College in Cambridge in fee and for ever all my right, 
 title, interest, use or trust in and to the said Advowson ; my will nowe 
 is that the said Humfrey Henchman and Thomas Clarke, their 
 Executors and Assignes, have the first presentation to the said church 
 of Newton Tonie, and the disposicon thereof at the next avoydance 
 that shall happen after my death : and the fee and inheritaunce of the 
 said Advowson, and all my right, interest, trust and vse in and to the 
 same (the said first avoydance excepted), I doe as formerly will and 
 devise to Queens' Colledge in Cambridge. And my will is that this 
 Codicill or Shedule bee, and bee adjudged and taken to bee, parcell 
 of my said last Will and bee annexed to the same, and to bee of force 
 in the best manner that maie bee. In Witnes whereof to this present 
 Codicill I have subscribed my name, the sixth dale of ApriH, in the 
 yere of our Lord One Thowsand Sixe Hundreth fortie and one. 
 
 Jo. Sarum. 
 
 Signed, sealed, and published in the presence of John Harrison, 
 Rob. Grove, Wm. Ireland. Proved 13 July 1641, by Edwd. Davenant, 
 S.T.P., the E.xecutor. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 (From MS. 291 in Caius College Library, Cambridge.) 
 
 BiSH'' Dauenants Answer vnto the Queries propounded by 
 CERTAiNE Ministers concerning y^ Oath in y= sixt Canon. 
 
 The desire to bee fully satisfied in conscience concerning y* lawful- 
 nesse, & true meaning of y= oath, w* wee are enjoined to take, is 
 both a coinendable & religious desire : If y'fore any minister 
 vnfaynedly desire it to this end, y' hee may y= more heartily, & 
 willingly take it w" y= lawfulnesse, & meaning therof shall be 
 cleared vnto him, it is a worke of charity herein to afford him an 
 helping hand, & not to suffer him to take y° oath w* a doubting & 
 pplexed conscience : But w" both y= lawfulnes, & meaning of y* oath 
 may easily appeare to any man of ordinary discretion, and vnder- 
 standing, men will still shutt their eyes, this is a shrewd signe of a 
 factious mind, not of a religious conscience : I conceiue better of all 
 those y' haue made y° aboue mentioned Queries, & I suppose they 
 may breed the same scruples in other mens mindes w* they haue 
 done in theirs : I take not y'fore vpon mee out of mine owne priuate 
 Judgment to Interpret y* oath by way of authority, or to give satisfac- 
 tion to y' Clergy of another Bp' Diocesse : but out of y' duty of charity 
 to cofiiunicate to those of mine owne, w' I conceiue to bee y^ meaning 
 of y" oath, & w' may be truely said [vnto those Queries, w* as they 
 haue troubled others elsewhere, soe in likelyhood may also trouble 
 many here. 
 
 To y= first Querie. 
 
 It is asked whether this oath be legally imposed soe as to bind all 
 y^ Clergy to take it : This question is propounded concerning an 
 obligation or binding of men, onely of y' CoSion law, or of some parti- 
 cular statute Law : but y' proper Question now should have been, 
 whether this oath bee by y* authority of y* king, & the church soe 
 imposed, as y* y" clergy w'^out violateing y' duty w* by diuine Law, 
 & the law of charity they stand bound vnto, cannot refuse it : for 
 ministers, & all X"™ may stand bound in diuers cases, & vpon diuers 
 
 S40 
 
APPENDIX 541 
 
 iust causes to submitte vnto y" performance of particular actes, w'vnto 
 by noe humane positiue law they stood formerly bound ; and amongst 
 others, y° submitting to a lawfuU oath enjoined, made by lawfull 
 authority vpon consideracions of such moment, as well beseeme 
 y= reuerence due vnto an oath, is one, & a principall one : Now 
 w' considerations to ground an oath vpon can be imagined of greater 
 importance the y° preseruing of truth, & peace in this church, & 
 giueing assurance both to Prince, & people, y' wee will neuer per- 
 fidiously revolt from y® doctrine of y" gospell vnto Popery, nor fac- 
 tiously consent to y° alteration of y° government, & discipline, wvnto 
 we haue subscribed. As for y° ground of this first Querie taken out 
 of the Statute of the 25 of H. 8 : my answer is, Quam quisq norit arte 
 in ei se exerceat. I leaue it to y* professours of y' comon law, & 
 could wish y' they would leaue y= determination of matters of con- 
 science to y° professours of a higher law. I say y' same concerning, 
 the answer to y" petition of right : I knowe Bpp^ in convocation are 
 bound from decreeing, or executeing ought repugnant to y' custome, 
 lawes, & statutes of this Realme : But I cannot vnderstand how 
 y° kings royall assent, approbation, & coinand signified vnder the 
 great seale, to administer this oath, should be repugnant either to law, 
 or custome, neither ought wee to imagine y' his Ma'''' would by his 
 royall assent, & spale haue ratifyed, & comanded y'' takeing of this 
 oath, had his reuerend Judges, & learned Counsayle, conceiued it to 
 be repugnant vnto his lawes. Howsoeu' it being consonant to Gods 
 Law, ye priuate opinion of some lawyers, who thinke it repugnant to 
 y" "statute of H: 8: cannot trouble greatly any discreet, or religious 
 mans conscience. The newnesse of this oath, & new Imposition of it, 
 prooues it not to be contrary to y' customes of this Realme : if oathes 
 of like kind & like nature haue formerly by y° same authority been 
 enjoined. Neither does it crosse y° title of y' Canon whereby it is 
 enioined w'"" is for preuention of all Innouations in doctrine & gouern- 
 ment : for though it bee in it selfe now newly conceiued, yet it is 
 manifestly subordinate, & subservient vnto y= end specifyed in y' title, 
 & y'fore not crossing it, or repugnant to it : New lawes made & 
 intitled for y= preuenting of all new inconveniences in such, & such 
 particulars, doe not yby crosse y""selues, or y' titles because they are 
 new : Now w'as it is further alleadged ex concilio cabilonensi 2° sub 
 car: mag: cap: 13° (that such an oath as this was condemned, & 
 cashered, quia periculosii). It is true, an oath was there condemned, 
 and casheered : but not such an oath as this : that was an oath 
 w'^'' some particular B^P^had thrust vpon clergymen of y' Diocesse out 
 of their owne priuate discretion : This is an oath w'='' by y= ioynt & 
 generall consent of y= Bp=, y= King also ratifying, and comanding it : 
 
542 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 is lawfully enioined. That was an oath w'^in (to let all y= rest 
 passe) they enioined men to sweare their owne worthinesse, or 
 sufficiency to bee receiued into Sacred orders, w"^"" stands not 
 w"" y" vertue of X'™ humility, & modesty besides w'as y* end 
 of an assertory oath, is to give y* best assurance y' may bee 
 of the truth vnknowne, this affirming, and protesting of a mans 
 owne worthinesse makes it rather more to bee doubted of: pride, 
 & self loue being many times most strong in men of weakest 
 abilities, and least worth. Lastly, it was iustly casheered quia peri- 
 culosu for in all likelyhood it would haue multiplied periuries, since, 
 few or none, how vnworthy soeuer of sacred orders would bee kept out, 
 if their owne testimony concerning y' owne worth might haue helped 
 them in ; but in this our oath noe man can shew any one clause which 
 carries a repugnancy to any X''™ vertue. No man can deuise how to 
 giue better assurance y' he will not revolt from the true doctrine 
 taught in our church, nor attempt y° alteration of y° established 
 gouernment yrof, then by a religious oath. Last of all this oath is 
 soe farre from being dangerous, as y' noe man is likely to violate it, 
 vnlesse it be such as are already disposed to Popery, or faction, of w'^'' 
 kind charity bids vs hope y' wee haue few, or none placed in y* 
 ministry. So y' all in y' oath being quite contrary to this, as y' was 
 iustly inhibited, soe this is iustly enioined. And (me thinkes) as much 
 in effect is confessed by themselues who made this Querie, for when 
 they say they doe not scruple y* oath of Canonicall obedience to yr 
 particular diocesan, they haue lesse reason to scruple an oath of 
 obedience to y* doctrine, & gouernment established, & approued Ijy 
 y' King, y* Church, & Com on wealth. 
 
 The second Querie. 
 
 It is in y° Second place demanded (w' is meant by y» doctrine, & 
 discipline, & gouernment established in y* Church of England) It is 
 somew' strange y' ministers who haue for soe many years subscribed 
 both to y° doctrine, & gouernment of y° Church, vnto y« truth of 
 y= one, & lawfulnes of y° other should now (as newly awakened out of 
 a long sleepe) ask w' is meant by this doctrine, & government, or 
 discipline, and if they have not learned it hitherto, it is much to bee 
 feared they will neuer well, & willingly learne it hereafter : but. 
 y= reason of this Querie is, they knowe not w* articles of religion they 
 are to sweare vnto, I suppose y' 39 Articles of 1562 ratified by 
 y» Kings declaration 1629, is y° doctrine w"^"" by this new oath they 
 approoue, & promise neuer to endeavour y° bringing in of any Popish, 
 doctrine contrary thervnto. I see noe reason why they should stumble- 
 
APPENDIX 543 
 
 at this : but they seeme to suspect y' this oath tend to some new 
 doctrines, not comprised in y* 39 articles, though they w*all confesse 
 they knowe not yet w' these other doctrines are, I must confesse no 
 more doe I, & yrfore I know not well how to free y"" from yr vn- 
 grounded feares & suspitions. Let y" shew y' by vertue of this oath 
 they shall be bound to approue any other doctrine y"" w' has bene 
 already established in y» Church of England, & y" they yeeld some 
 reason of yr scrupulous feare, if they thinke y' y= doctrine is enlarged 
 w* any new articles since his Ma''°= late comission vnder y« great 
 Seale, was directed to y= Convocation, let y"" insist in y= new doctrines 
 added to y= old articles of religion, tell us w' they are in particular, & 
 w' to bee seene. It may bee pressed in y° first of our new constitu- 
 tions ; if this be y' meaning they should not haue said (they knowe 
 not w' y' other doctrine is, & yrfore cannot sweare to it) for their is 
 noe question but by this time they haue seene y' new Canons, & haueing 
 seen this declaration they could not but see, y' it brings in noe new 
 doctrine into y° Church of England, nor any conclusion w"^"" is not 
 cleerly, and strongly grounded in holy Scripture, & w* was not 
 formerly declared to be y' doctrine w* all ministers in y= Church of 
 England ought to acknowledge, and maintaine, as euidently appears 
 by the first of those Canons, or constitutions w* were set out Anno 
 1612, and by sundrey other lawes & ordinances : Now for the discip- 
 line they say, (wee knowe not wether by discipline is meant onely the 
 Cannons, & constitutions of the Church or the thinges besides y" word 
 government being coupled w* the word discipline as an explication 
 yrof shews y' nothing yrby is to bee vnderstood but w' y* governours 
 have for decency, order & the good of y' Church see enjoined, & 
 prescribed, y' every minister may, & ought to take notice of y"* 
 of this nature are not onely w' is enjoyned by the Cannons, but also 
 w' is prescribed in y' Liturgy, or service booke : being ratifyed, and 
 published by y° same authority, if any can truely alleadge invincible 
 ignorance in any of these things prescribed by humane authority : non 
 est transgressor legis, neither on the esteeme of God, nor man, as 
 Diuines generally agree ; but if it bee a wilfull, or willing ignorance, 
 let such looke a little better vnto y' conscience ; for nemini licet ea 
 nescire quot spectant ad officiu propriu, crassa ignorantia reputatur in 
 fraudem, it is further objected (they knowe not w' Cannons they are 
 w'='^ they approued by this oath) and they giue two reasons hereof, 
 (some of y° ancient ones are growne out of vse, and some others are 
 altered) to y^ former reason I answer, y' y° oath binds noe man to 
 a further approbation of any Cannons, then they be approoued by 
 y" authority of those who first established y", and yrfore if w* their 
 knowledge, and w*out yr contradiction, they bee growne out of vse, 
 
544 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 iudicanda sunt per non vsu amisisso vim obligationis as Gerson 
 (p. 2° fol. 2CX)) truely, and other schoolmen define : for if y* magistrate 
 saw not iust reason to permitt y" to growe out of vse, it is to be sup- 
 posed he would quicken, and reuiue y"; w'as tis further obiected 
 y' some other Canons "are altered) I answer againe, y' humane con- 
 stitutions or Canons are of an alterable nature ; and yrfore by wise 
 magistrates, variantur secundum varietates temporu, et occasionii, 
 w' this is done, former constitutions being either quite abolished, or in 
 part altered by new Canons, y= old must be content to giue place 
 vnto y" new : and men must be content to let goe y" old, and subiect 
 y™selves vnto y° new ; y' is one thing more w'in satisfaction is ex- 
 pected, namely how the gouemours of the Church could permitt any 
 Canons to growe out of or to be in any part altered (if y" discipline be 
 necessary to salvation) for (as they conceiue, and y' truly) yr ought to 
 be noe alteration, much lesse an abrogation in necessarijs ad salute, 
 they did not well heed the wordes of y" oath who reason after this 
 manner, and yrfore they haue deceiued y^selues by a false conversion, 
 ye proposition in y* oath is this (in the doctrine, and discipline of the 
 Church of England, all things are contained w* are necessary to 
 saluation) yr proposition falsly conceiued, and converted is this (all 
 things w'"" are contained in y' doctrine, and discipline of y^ Church of 
 England are necessary to saluation) y' first proposition is true, and 
 contained in y° oath, y= other is false, and to be found onely in yr 
 brains who conceiued it, in y' very doctrine established wee doe not 
 defend euery particular conclusion is dogma ad salutem necessariu, 
 thouge wee maintaine it to bee true, and y" knowledge yrof to be 
 profitable, much lesse will wee maintaine y' euery Canon, order, or 
 Ceremonie pertaining to our discipline, is to be reckoned among 
 things necessary to Salvation : If I should affirme, all things necessary 
 to y* essense of a man are to be found in y° Americans, he y' would 
 hence inferre y' all things w* are found in y' Americans are necessary 
 to y' essense of a man, alters my proposition, and make euery accident 
 in a man to be necessary to y* essense of a man, w*^*" was neuer 
 affirmed by me : Lastly, w'as they obiect y" Canons to bee see many, 
 and made at soe many different tymes y' they knowe not how to sweare 
 vnto y™, till they be altogether in terminis set forth ; It may be 
 answered, y' oath is not to knowe all y' Canons, or to performe and 
 keepe all y° Canons, but onely they approue y^ discipline established 
 in y" Church of England ; If y' bee any part of it w'^'' you knew not 
 doe your endeauour to knowe it and in the meanetime approue the 
 discipline and obey it, as farr as you know it : this being done y" oath 
 doth neither endanger, nor intangle any man's conscience, for (in my 
 judgment) it is a rule grounded in reason, and equity, non plvis 
 
APPENDIX 545 
 
 obligant huiusmodi iuramenta quam Legislatores voluerunt, aut ration- 
 abiliter velle debuerunt ; noe Lawmakers are soe vnreasonable as to 
 intend y' binding of a X"*" by oath to approue a particular order, 
 w* yet he does not knowe, or cannot come to the knowledge of. 
 
 The third Querie. 
 
 Whether it is meant y' y" doctrine and discipline containe all things 
 necessary to salvation, conjunction, or diuision, this demand, and 
 y* discourse w"^"* followes upon it, for y* most part fauours of 
 y" mistake w'"" was spoken of in y" former Querie : but y° meaning 
 of y« wordes will best bee cleered by sheweing y= marke they ayme at, 
 w'of these question makers seem to take notice : it has been feared by 
 many, y* Jesuites Seminaries and others of y stampe, are dayly labour- 
 ing how to bring vs backe to y* Romish Religion, their most forcible 
 Engyne is y' lowde clamours, y' in our church y' are two damnable 
 defects, one in our doctrine (w""" they say) is vnsufficient to saue vs, 
 because wee take not in the Tridentine additions ; another in our 
 gouerment : because wee refuse subiecting our selues to X*^ Vicar (as 
 they terme him) and soe are depriued of y^ vnion w* y° ministeriall 
 Head of y' Catholicke church, w'"* in yr conceit is absolutely neces- 
 sary to Saluation : in opposition to these Popish errours wee sweare 
 y' y' doctrine established in our church containes all things necessary 
 to salvation, though the Tridentine Creed (in a great part yroQ by 
 y* Church of England bee reiected, ag wee sweare, y' in the gouernment 
 established in our church all things necessary to Saluation are con- 
 tained, though noe such Vicar, Pope, or ministeriall Head be placed 
 ouer vs soe y y° suine of those wordes w'w* they quarrel, take 
 y coniunction or diuision import onely this : y in the doctrine of our 
 church yr js wanting noe point of faith necessary vnto y' saluation of a 
 Xtian and in y" gouerment of our church y is wanting noe order of 
 ecciall persons, noe performance of any ecciall duties, or sacred actions, 
 w'" are necessary for y= procureing of y= Salvation of X'''° people : hee 
 y« thinkes otherwise is bound to proue y' a Popes Lay Elders, or some 
 other peice of gouerment yet vnknowne to vnnamed is a thing neces- 
 sary to Salvation : to y" reason of y Querie I answer in breefe : y' 
 quoad credenda all things necessary to salvation are comprized in 
 y" articles of religion : but quoad agenda, as preaching y« gospell of 
 Saluation, administring y' Sacraments, & performing all other sacred 
 acts w* are ordinary meanes of bringing men to saluation, it is y" dis- 
 cipUne & gouernment of our church by w'" both y« persons are ordained, 
 by w" such actions must be performed, & y' due manner how they 
 ought to be performed is regulated, & enjoined : hee y' in y« discipline, 
 
 2 M 
 
546 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 or gouerment of our church, sees all necessary sacred orders conferred : 
 all necessary sacred actions performed is but divine sighted, if hee can- 
 not see somew' in y' discipline, (as distinct) from the doctrine neces- 
 sary to y° procureing of mens saluations, I am sure y Apostle was of 
 this mind Rom. lo: 14: 15: & Ephes: 3.12. 13: v: here's noe feare 
 yrfore of coasting vpon periury by takeing this oath : & as for y two 
 heapes of sand, I see not imployment for y" in this matter and yet if 
 any desire further satisfaction let him suppose y' a prisoner is to be 
 ransomed, & 1000/. is necessaryly required vnto his Ransome : now let 
 a freind of his who had laid 1000/. in 2 heapes of sand : should shewe 
 him y° 2 heapes, and sweare vnto him, in these 2 heapes of sand is con- 
 tained all y money necessarily required vnto your ransome : though 
 in those heapes of sand y' were some stones, or leases' to bee found, 
 w"^*" were noe ways necessary to y" prisoners ransome, though in y' one 
 heape y' were neuer soe little money, in y other neuer soe much, yet 
 hee would bee deemed an vndiscreet & vnthankful man, who vpon 
 such pretences should giue out, y' his freind in y" forenamed oath 
 had coasted vpon periury, y* application is soe easy y I leaue it to 
 every one's owne makeing. Secondly, w= as it is vrged y' diuisitn, 
 &c. : these different respects haiie bene shewed, namely y' all doc- 
 trinall articles absolutely necessary vnto Saluation, are contained in 
 y' doctrine of our church : and all orders of euangelicall ministers, 
 & all sacred actions, of y" to be performed for y* bringing of X"™ 
 people into the State Of Saluation, are contained in the gouvernment, 
 and enjoined by y= discipline of o' church : neither was yr any need to 
 put such an explication into y° body of y' oath, seeing it was reason- 
 ably, and charitably presumed y' noe minister of God's word was so 
 ignorant as not to knowe in w' respect y° doctrine of y' gospell is the 
 power of God vnto Salvation, & in w' respect, y' gouernment, & dis- 
 cipline of y° church is a necessary instrument, for applying y« doctrine, 
 y° Sacraments, & all ordinary meanes of Saluation vnto y* souls of 
 X"'" people here is nothing y'fore in y* oath to be casheered, nor 
 nothing enjoined to be sworne, for w* important, and iust reasons 
 may not bee alleadged. The Canonists, and Casuists are very 
 scrupulous in Imposing Oathes"^ vpon Clergymen, yet they grant 
 willingly y' in some Cases, possunt & debent iurare, y* mayne ones 
 are, profide, pro pace, pro debiti obedientiS,, and ther is another 
 more generall, w'^'' may comprize y= many other, Quando homines 
 pigri sunt Credere, quod ijs vtile est credere, now let vs see if all these 
 doe not concurre in this oath soe much stucke vpon ; ffirst in swearing 
 our approbation of the established doctrine, it is granted wee sweare 
 
 1 Sayr. li. J, c. 3, N. II. Gratian caus., 22. 9. 1395. Sum Ang., p. 86. 
 
APPENDIX 547 
 
 profide recti., & in swearing our approbation of y° discipline, or 
 government established, it will not bee denyed by those who haue 
 subscribed & conformed yrvnto, y' they sweare nothing,' but y' w"*" w* 
 a good, & safe conscience they may, a'^ it is plaine y' this oath, in y' 
 part w^*" concerns y"' discipline or gouerment, directly conduceth vnto 
 y" peace of y" church & obedience vnto y* gouernours yrof & is euery 
 moment in danger of being disturbed, if y' ministers disallow the 
 present gouernment to affect new platformes, Lastly, lawful! gouer- 
 nours cannot bee well assured of yr obedience vnto y' established 
 gouernment, soe long as y" ministers subiect yrvnto shall make a 
 question whether something necessary to y° Saluation of men's Soules 
 be not yet wanting in it ; to all these add, y' as y' state of things now 
 stands, vtilitas proximi, & vtilitas propria does as it were call vpon 
 ministers to take this oath more y" it did in former times. Our 
 gracious Soueraigne seeing the disallowance of episcopall gouern- 
 ment, to have produced this dangerous, and wofuU effectes, elsewhere, 
 has reason to require from y' ministers of this our Church y" best 
 security they can possibly giue him, that they approoue it & will not 
 practise the vndermineing of it heere, w' greater or better security 
 y" this oath ? Secondly our people, & many of y" ministers ymselues 
 haue bene distracted w* feares, & suspitions y' this Church was in 
 great danger of being subiected to Popish doctrine, & Tyranny, Now 
 Charity on our parts & vtilitas proximi on yr parts, who were thus 
 perplexed w* feare, made vs consider w' was y* readyest & best 
 meanes to free y" out of these perplexities & agonies, This oath taken 
 by the Bpp= y'^selues (who were most suspected & traduced) & y^ 
 whole body of y' Clergy, should in our Judgment free both Laity, 
 and such of y= Clergy as haue been hitherto ouer Jealous and 
 Suspitious from y' false feares, & will doe it, if they haue but soe 
 much charity as to bee perswaded, y' y= Bpp= would not enjoine 
 an oath to periure ymselues, & damne y' owne soules ; But it is 
 yet further obiected (y' enjoining all to sweare y' our gouernment, 
 or discipline is necessary to salvation, Implyeth a condemnation 
 of all Protestant Churches abroad, y' have not y° same discipline, or 
 gouernment, as wanting somew' necessary to saluation, & y= essentiall 
 being of a church) : wee enjoine noe man to sweare y' all orders^ rules, 
 officers, in our ecc+iall discipline, or gouernment, are things necessary 
 to y" salvation of riiens' soules ; or to the essentiall being of a Church 
 (this is too grosse a mistake). But our oath is y' in y" discipline, or 
 gouernment established in our church, nothing is wanting necessary 
 to y" saluation of men's soules. These men who make these pbjec- 
 
 1 Constitut., 6, 7. 
 
548 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 tions must either acknowledge y* same for true, or defend y' for all 
 y* time wherein our church hath bene vnder this gouernment, and 
 discipline, it hath ben out of y" state of saluation, for there can be noe 
 saluation in y' church w' any one thing is wanting in y' discipline, 
 w'* is necessary vnto saluation ; but they should have considered 
 y' as he y' says this kingdome of England has in it, all times, things 
 necessary to y= sufficient, & plentiful maintenance, or orderly gouern- 
 ment of her people, does not imply y' other kingdomes w* have not 
 the same lawes & y" same comodities w'='' wee have, want all things, 
 or anything necessary to the iust gouernment, and sufficient main- 
 tainence of y' people. Even soe in saying y" gouernment, or Lawes 
 of our English Church containes all things necessary to the saluation of 
 y' people, wee deny not but y° gouernment, & discipline of y* French, 
 & Dutch Churches may doe y' same ; If wee had sworne y' w'so- 
 euer is established in y= Church of England is necessary unto salva- 
 tion, or vnto y' essential being of a true church we had implyed y" 
 condemnation of other churches : But no such matter being said, or 
 thought, the inference is false, & frivolous, & these men were affi-ayd 
 onely at y" shaddow of y' owne conceit. Wee return y'fore y' owne 
 wordes vpon y^selves (wee have neither read, nor heard any such 
 position soe much as asserted in those termes) w'"" they would father 
 vpon y" oath. The ancient constitutio of Archbishop Arundell was 
 directed against priuate doctours,* Inferiour graduates, or any other 
 priuate persons w soeuer, who in y disputations would boult out, & 
 maintaine conclusions sounding contrary to y° Catholicke faith, & then 
 thinke to salue y" matter vp with some intricate curious distinction, 
 but it was neuer imagined thus this constitution should be vrged by 
 priuate ministers ag°' propositions, or conclusions established in a 
 Synod by publicke authority : yet if they can shew any conclusion 
 in y" oath (besides y" Imaginery one Invented by y^selves) w* sounds 
 either in credendis, or agendis contrary to y= Catholicke faith wee 
 shall be well content y' ArchbP' Arundell constitution, & Hugoes 
 testimony be alledged ag' vs. 
 
 The fourth Querie. 
 
 (W is meant by y' clause, nor will I euer give my consent to alter 
 ye government of this church by ArchbP' B^" &c.). The meaning is 
 as the wordes Import, you shall never give your voluntary consent, 
 neither shall you imply your voluntary endeavours vnto a pragmaticall, 
 or schismaticall alteration of the gouernment, by combineing, con- 
 senting, & practiseing w"" any private persons, to change it in such 
 
 ^ Lynwood,.'U. 5, de magistris, fol, 155. 
 
APPENDIX 549 
 
 parts as are disliked, without & contrary to y* authority of lawfull 
 Superiours who have established it. The first reason of this Querie is 
 weake, & insufficient, for if iust, & lawfull authority shall hereafter 
 make some alteration in things alterable : y« consenting of Infer- 
 iours vnto such changes is noe way contrary vnto this oath, or 
 to ye oath of Allegiance, Supremacy, or any other, and I marvell 
 how men y« seeme to bee soe well versed in y« Canonists, & 
 Casuists, should not out of y" have learned y' w'in they all agree. A 
 promissory oath' in things subject to humane authority sayes Angelus 
 de Clauisio, ceaseth to bind when lawfull authority enjoines y' contrary 
 quia in omni iuramento intelligitur,^ saluo uire superior!, Sylvester to 
 y' same purpose : promissory oathes giuen by singular persons for 
 y" obseruing of humane ordinances, and constitutions, bind noe longer, 
 w" such statutes are taken away by those y' made them, our countrey- 
 man Sayr' in his cases of conscience sets it downe for a rule, impletio 
 iuramenti cuiuscunqae facti in fauorem tertij, licit^ amitti potest ex 
 solo consensu illius cui iuratu est ; now these wordes (I will neuer 
 consent) being sworne in obedience vnto superiours, and to giue 
 y™ satisfaction, y' wee will not consent to alter y' ordinances lawfully 
 established, looses y' power of binding w" y"'selues first consent to the 
 alteration, & afterwardes to enjoine others to admitte of it, y' forme 
 of wordes though seeming neuer soe peremptory, cannot hinder 
 y= weakest vnderstanding from conceiuing y"= true intent of those who 
 haue enioined y* oath : neither are such expresse limitations either 
 needfuU, or vsuall in oathes w* concerne things of this nature, & 
 w' reason, & cofnon sense teacheth men y' they are always intended, 
 I dare boldly say y' none of those who make these objections, & 
 call for such limitations, are soe simple as to thinke y' y° K^, & y* Bp' 
 intended by those peremptory wordes (as they terme y™) to abridge 
 y">selues for y" time to come of y' lawfull power in altering things of 
 an alterable condition, or to binde y" Clergy to resist their authority, 
 if thfey should happen hereafter soe to doe : seeing yrfore they knowe 
 y° intent & meaning of those who require y' oath, they may w"'out all 
 rashnesse, nay they must sweare vnto it according as tis understood 
 by those who have enjoined it : quicunq arte verboru iuratur, deus 
 sic iuramentu accipit, sicut ille cui. iuratur, intelligit : those who tender 
 it vnto others will not haue it vnderstood to y" preiudice of y' owne 
 lawfull authority : nor to y° binding of any man to resist it, and' yrfore 
 God will not haue it vnderstood soe, and yrfore those who will needs 
 wrest it vnto such a meaning, might haue done better to haue let this 
 Querie alone. 
 
 > Siima Angelli. * Verbo unam, p. 79. ^ Li. 8 + 7, p. 275 & 263. 
 
550 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 The fifth Querie. 
 
 Whether y' be y' same reason of not consenting to y" alteration of 
 gouernment by Deanes and Archdeacons, as yr is of not consenting to 
 alter y' of Bi" : Their is not altogether y° same reason though y' be a 
 comon reason w* forbids men subiect to y° authority of y° Prince, & 
 y' Church, to consent vnto, or practise y° alteration of either ; this 
 comon reason is because both stand now established by y" same 
 lawfuU authority ; but a peculiar reason why y' Order of Bp= as it now 
 stands in dignity, & power aboue presbiters, ought not to be altered, 
 as y' of Deanes, & Archdeacons may is this : because y° order of 
 B^ has been settled in the Catholicke Church by the Apostles 
 y"selues, directed by y" wisedome of Gods spirit, and has by the 
 church of God been hitherto preserued through y" X"™ world, as 
 w'out w"^"" peace, & truth cannot soe easily and conveniently be main- 
 tained : nor sacred Orders so lawfully as they should bee, conferred 
 vpon ministers w'^'' are to succeed one another vnto the worlds end : 
 as for Deanes, & Archdeacons (as they are distinguished from other 
 priests) though wee defend y' superiority to be lawfull, & vsefuU, yet 
 wee acknowledge y' they cannot deriue it from the Apostles as B''^ 
 doe : nor plead any other right y" meerly ecciiall, soe y' w' they tell 
 us (they see no case to riuett y" into an inalterable order by y* sacred 
 bond of an oath) wee answer, these officers being of humane con- 
 stitution are nof soe riuetted by this oath, but y' such as haue power, 
 & authority in things of this nature may alter y" ; whensoeuer they 
 shall see, & iudge such an alteration to be expedient,^ & for the 
 good of y' Church : albeit therefore promissory oaths are not vsually 
 clog'd & stuffed with conditions, yet y' are conditions which reason 
 & right hath taught vs must be vnderstood. As, for example, nisi 
 contrariu praecipiat superior in eis rebus quae eius authoritati subjectae 
 sunt : & this is a principal!, and perpetuall condition, another is, si 
 res in eodem statu permanserit, w* it does not after lawfull authority 
 has altered it, and takan it away : soe y' by this oath priuate persons 
 obedience is riuetted vnto such constitutions, soe long as they stand 
 in force, & life, but w" they are dead (lawfull authority having 
 abolished y") men vnder subiection continue no more bound vnto y"", 
 y" y" wife does vnto her husband after hee is dead and buryed ; Lastly, 
 w'as they say (bare subscriptions w'out an oath might haue serued well 
 enoughe) they must knowe y' w" y' are on all parts Jealousies and 
 feares, y« an alteration of y" present gouernment is by many much 
 longed after, by diuers couertly, and craftyly practised ; some sus- 
 
 ' Sayr, 1. 5 to 8, p. 263. Sylvester Juram, p. 76. 
 
APPENDIX 551 
 
 pected desire our church were subiected vnto y« Popish gouernment : 
 some vnto y° presbiteriall, I say in suph a case, if bare subscription 
 will not giue y' satisfaction vnto Prince, and people, as to , make 
 y™ beleeue noe such thing is intended, either by y' Bp', or inferiour 
 clergy : Duty & Charity should mooue y" both willingly to submitte 
 vntQ this oath, ffor though swearing in it selfe & for it selfe bee not an 
 act desireable,' yet w" wee see men w'^out an oath, will not easyly 
 beleeue concerning vs, y' w'"" is true, & fit, or profitable by y" to bee 
 beleeued. Heer is an Important reason for y" vse of an oath, & 
 w" tis vsed to this end, it is well vsed. 
 
 The sixth Querie. 
 
 W is meant by, &c. : nothing else is meant or can be meant by an 
 etc. in this place but such other persons or things, as stand now estab- 
 lished by y" same lawfuU authority, w' by Archb^P', Bp% Deanes and 
 Archdeacons stand established : It is true an etc. is not conueniently 
 put into y° body of an oath, & I thinke it fell vnawares from the pen 
 of y' Actuary : for I cannot remember y' euer I heard of it in y' read- 
 ing of this 6. Cation : but yet y' need noe such exaggerations since it 
 can point at noe other persons, or things, y" such as are lawfully, & 
 publiquely established by y" authority of y" church, vnlesse y'fore men 
 will professe y^selues ignorant of things w'"" haue been publiquely ap- 
 pointed & established, & w'vnto they have solemnly subscribed, y' is 
 noe such obscurity, or ambiguity in this etc.: although I thinke y= pro- 
 nouncing of y" words (et csetera) was neuer intended by y° actuary 
 hiniselfe, much lesse by y° Synode (w'='' for ought I knowe, or remember) 
 neuer appointed it to bee put into the body of y" oath. 
 
 The seauenth Querie. 
 
 What is meant by y' clause (as it stands now established, and as by 
 right it ought to stand) I suppose vnder this clause (now established) 
 are comprized all establishments of y° present gouernment, whether 
 made by Queene Elizabeth, King James or K^ Charles, who haue all 
 three consented in establishing y" same episcopall Gouernment, 
 w^"^ now stands in force, As for y" late Synode, is has estabhshed noe 
 new gouernment, nor gouernors, & yrfore I see noe reason why the t4 
 vOv should breed any feares, or suspitions ; their is yet a further 
 exception taken against these words (as it now stands, & as by 
 right it ought to stand) (It stands say they by positiue Law, and 
 it ought soe to stand, & yrfore hefer is a meere Tautology) The 
 
 ' Gratian cans., 22, 9, I : ex Aiigustin's.. 
 
552 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVEN ANT 
 
 ioining of two wordes, or phrases in the same sentence express- 
 ing y* selfsame thing is not to be condemned as an Idle Tauto- 
 logy, w" yrfore to a more full expression in y" holy Scripture it selfe, 
 in one period, or sentence y" same sense is twise expressed in diuers 
 wordes, yet noe man is soe censorious as to tax y" of meere Tauto- 
 logy : But wee deny y' heere is any such Tautology, for y" former 
 clause (as it stands now established) intimates onely matter of fact, 
 but y" latter (and as by right it ought to stand) ioines y'vnto an 
 assertion of y* right, or lawfulnesse yrof. In Queene Mary's tyme 
 Popery stood established by the positiue Law of y* Kingdome, but it 
 ought not by right soe to have stood, because y' is in men noe lawfull, 
 or rightfuU power, to establish any doctrine, or gouernment repugnant 
 to y'law of God, In the ioyning yrfore of these two forementiqned 
 phrases together, we imply two seuerall things. The former w* euery 
 man sees, aud knows to bee true. That our Episcopall gouernment 
 stands at this Present established by y" positiue Lawe of y" Kingdom. 
 The latter, whereof wee are affrayd some may doubt, y' it not onely 
 stands thus established, but y' iustly, rightfully, & w"'out any crosse- 
 ing of God's Lawe it stands thus established. Had not our gouef- 
 ment as well an establishment de iure, as de facto, it were ouer hard 
 to bind men by oath, neuer to give y"^ consent to the alteration yrof : 
 The conclusion of is this, In y' gouerment of our church as now it 
 stands established, y' are some orders of ecclesiasticall persons, some 
 sacred actions of those persons, w"^'' haue not onely humane authority 
 to support y"", but diuine also, & these are, & ought to bee perpetuall 
 & unalterable, Their are some others w* haue been introduced iure 
 tantum Ecclesiastico, & yet are convenient, & noe ways repugnant to 
 diuine Lawe, & these ought not to bee opposed, much lesse abolished 
 by priuate persons. Soe long as publicke authority thinkes it expe- 
 dient, & for y' good of y° Church to have y" stand established. And I 
 verily beleeue y' if (w^out moueing or resolueing any doubtfull Ques- 
 tions) our Clergy will be content to sweare y' they will not consent to 
 alter y* gouerment of this church, as now it stands by the positive 
 Lawe of this Kingdome, y' Bp' will bee very well content to leaue y" 
 to y° liberty of y' owne Judgment in any question about gouernours, 
 or gouernment vr"^ has neuer yet been decided in this Church. The 
 last clause in the oath is noe other y" ought to bee obserued by euery 
 man y' takes an oath, whether it had been their expressed, or noe. 
 The craft, & malice of Jesuites w* others of y' strayne, has occasioned 
 such clauses to bee put into oaths, but this should occasion none to 
 rayse needlesse doubts, nor to quarrell w* oaths tendred by lawfull 
 authority, vnlesse they be made soe cleare, & plaine y noe make can 
 mistake y° meaninge. It will be a harder taske to frame such an 
 
APPENDIX 553 
 
 oath then men are aware of : & y'fore it should content discreet, & 
 moderate men, when words, or sentences in an oath may be drawne 
 to diuers seuerall meanings, to take w^"" they hold to be good, true & 
 according to the intention of y* lawgiuer : If they cannot resolue 
 y^selues herein, they must with modesty, & humility desire resolution 
 from those who made y" oath, who should best vnderstand y' owne 
 meaning, eiusdem est interpretari, cuius est condesre. , 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 The Opinion of the English Doctors and Divines at 
 THE Synod of Dort, concerning Episcopacy and Lay- 
 Elders. 
 
 We thought not fit with warrantable silence, but consulting together 
 what was fit to be done, in delivering our opinions. We joyntly con- 
 clude that howsoever our Church Discipline had not been synodically 
 taxed, nor theirs avowed, yet it was convenient for us (who were 
 assured in our consciences that their Presbyteriall Parity, aiid Laical 
 Presbytery was repugnant to the Discipline established by the 
 Apostles, and retained in our Church to declare our judgment. 
 
 We therefore professed anVi declared our utter dissent in that point, 
 and further showed that byj our Saviour a Parity of ministers was 
 never instituted. That Christ ordained Twelve Apostles, and seventy 
 Disciples ; That the authority of these Twelve was above this other ; 
 That the Church preserved this order left by our Saviour. And .". 
 when y* extraordinary authority of the Apostles ceased, yet their 
 ordinary authority continued in Bishops who succeeded them,, who 
 were by the Apostles themselves left in the Government of the Church 
 to ordain ministers, and to see that they who were so ordained should 
 preach no other Doctrine. That in an inferior degree the ministers 
 who were governed by Bishops succeeded the 70 Disciples. That 
 this order hath been maintained in the Church, from the time of the 
 Apostles. And herein we appealed to the judgment of antiquity, or 
 of any learned man now living, if any could speak to the contrary. 
 To this our exception and allegations, not one word was answered by 
 any of the Synodiques either strangers or Provincialls, moreover in 
 our Private conversing wth the most eminent of the ministery there, 
 we found divers times (upon occasion of our declaring unto them the 
 order and manner of our Church Government) that they were more 
 
554 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 ready to deplore then, defend their own estate ; and wished rather 
 then hoped to be made like ihefltmrishing Church of England. 
 Ita Testamur. 
 Georgius Caleton. John Davenant. 
 
 Gualter Balcanquall. Samuel Ward.' 
 
 Thomas Goad. 
 London. Printed for J. T. 1642. 
 
 
 T.isT OF THE Bishops of New Sarum. 
 
 1217. 
 
 Richard Poore, trans. 
 
 1571. 
 
 Edmund Gheast, trans. 
 
 1229. 
 
 Robert Bingham. 
 
 IS77- 
 
 John Piers, trans. 
 
 1247. 
 
 William of York. 
 
 1591. 
 
 John Coldwell. 
 
 I2S7. 
 
 Giles de Bridport. 
 
 1398. 
 
 Henry Cotton. 
 
 1263. 
 
 Walter de la Wyle. 
 
 1615. 
 
 Robert Abbot. 
 
 1274. 
 
 Robert de Wykehampton. 
 
 1618. 
 
 Martin Fotherby. 
 
 1284. 
 
 Walter Scammel. 
 
 1620. 
 
 Robert Townson. 
 
 1287. 
 
 Henry de Braundeston. 
 
 1621. 
 
 John Davenant. 
 
 1289. 
 
 William de la Corner. 
 
 1641. 
 
 Brian Duppa, trans. 
 
 1292. 
 
 Nicholas Longespde. 
 
 1660. 
 
 Humphry Henchman. 
 
 1297. 
 
 Simon of Ghent. 
 
 1663. 
 
 John Earles, trans. 
 
 1315- 
 
 Roger de Mortival. 
 
 1665.. 
 
 Alexander Hyde. 
 
 1330- 
 
 Robert Wyville. 
 
 1667. 
 
 Seth Ward. 
 
 1375- 
 
 Ralph Erghum. 
 
 1689. 
 
 Gilbert Burnet. 
 
 1388. 
 
 John Waltham. 
 
 1715. 
 
 William Talbot, trans. 
 
 1396. 
 
 Richard Mitford, trans. 
 
 1721. 
 
 Richard Willis, trans. 
 
 1407. 
 
 Nicholas Bubwith, trans. 
 
 1723. 
 
 Benjamin Hoadley, trans. 
 
 1408. 
 
 Robert Hallam. 
 
 1734. 
 
 Thomas Sherlock, trans. 
 
 1417- 
 
 John Chandler. 
 
 1748. 
 
 John Gilbert, trans. 
 
 1427. 
 
 Robert Neville. 
 
 1757- 
 
 John Thomas, trans. 
 
 1438. 
 
 William Ayscough. 
 
 1761. 
 
 Robert Hay Drummond, 
 
 1450. 
 
 Richard Beauchamp, trans. 
 
 
 trans. 
 
 1482. 
 
 Lionel Woodville. 
 
 1761. 
 
 John Thomas, trans. 
 
 1485. 
 
 Thomas Langton, trans. 
 
 1766. 
 
 John Hume, trans. 
 
 1494. 
 
 John Blythe. 
 
 1782. 
 
 Hon. Shute Barrington, 
 
 1500. 
 
 Henry Deane, trans. 
 
 
 trans. 
 
 1502. 
 
 Edmund Audley, trans. 
 
 1791. 
 
 John Douglas, trans. 
 
 1524. 
 
 Lorenzo Campegio, ap- 
 
 1807. 
 
 John Fisher, trans. 
 
 
 pointed. 
 
 1825. 
 
 Thomas Burgess, trans. 
 
 1535- 
 
 Nicholas Shaxton. 
 
 1837- 
 
 Edward Denison. 
 
 IS39- 
 
 John Casson (or Salcot), 
 
 1854. 
 
 Walter Kerr Hamilton. 
 
 
 trans. 
 
 1869. 
 
 George Moberley. 
 
 1560. 
 
 John Jewel. 
 
 1885. 
 
 John Wordsworth, D.D. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 5JS 
 
 List of Lady Margaret Professors of Divinity, Cambridge 
 
 1502. John Fisher, D.D., Queens'. 
 
 1504. Thos.iDosyn,D.D., Christ's. 
 
 1 506. Wm. Burgoine, D.D., Pem- 
 broke. 
 
 1511. Desiderius Erasmus, D.D., 
 Queens'. 
 
 1515. J. Fawne, D.D., Queens'. 
 
 1531. T. Ashley, D.D., King's. 
 
 1532. W. Buckmaster, D.D., 
 
 King's. 
 
 1538. J. Redmayn, D.D., John's. 
 
 1542. W. Skete, D.D., King's. 
 
 1544. W. Glynn, D.D., Trinity. 
 
 1549. J. Redmayn, D.D., Trinity. 
 
 1554. T. Segiswicke, D.D., Pem- 
 broke. 
 
 1556. G. Bullock, D.D., John's, 
 
 1559. R. Beaumont, D.D., Pem- 
 broke. 
 
 1 561. M. Hutton, B.D., Trinity. 
 
 1563. J.Whitgift,B.D., Pembroke. 
 
 1567. W. Chaderton, D.D., 
 Christ's. 
 
 1 569. T. Cartwright, B.D., John's. 
 
 1570. J. Still, B.D., Christ's. 
 
 1573. J. Hansom, D.D., Christ's. 
 
 1574. P. Baro, D.D., Christ's. 
 
 1596. J. Playfere, D.D., Christ's. 
 
 1609. John Davenant, D.D., 
 Queens'. 
 
 1622. Samuel Ward, D.D., Sid- 
 ney-Sussex. 
 
 1643. R.Holdworth,D.D., John's. 
 
 1649. R. Love, D.D., Clare. 
 
 1660. P. Gunning, Clare. 
 
 1 66 1. J. Pearson, King's. 
 1672. R. Widrington, Christ's. 
 1688. H. Gower, John's. 
 
 17 1 1. R. Jenkins, John's, 
 1727. J. Newcome, John's. 
 1765. Zach. Brooke, D.D., John's. 
 1788. J. Mainwaring,B.D., John's. 
 1807. Herbert Marsh, B.D., 
 
 John's. 
 1839. John James Blunt, B.D., 
 
 John's. 
 1865. Wm. Selwyn, B.D., John's. 
 1875. J.B.Lightfoot,D.D.,Trinity. 
 1879. C. A. Swainson, D.D., 
 
 Christ's. 
 1887. F. A. Hort, D.D., Emman. 
 1892. J. R. Lumby, D.D., 
 
 Catharine. 
 1896. A. J. Mason, D.D., Trinity. 
 
 List of Presidents of Queens' College, Cambridge. 
 
 1448. Andrew Docket. 
 
 1484. Thomas Wilkinson. 
 
 1505. John Fisher. 
 
 1508. Robert Bekenshaw. 
 
 1518. John Jennins. 
 
 1525. Thomas Fournam. 
 
 1526. William Franklin. 
 1528. Simon Heynes. 
 1537. William Mey. 
 1553. William Glynn. 
 
 1556. Thomas Peacock. 
 
 1559. William Mey. 
 
 1560. John Stokys. 
 1568. William Chaderton. 
 1579. Humphrey Tyndall. 
 1614. John Davenant.i 
 1622. John Mansell. 
 1631. Edward Martin. 
 1644. Herbert Palmer. 
 1648. Thomas Horton. 
 
556 THE LIFE OF BISHOP DAVENANT 
 
 1660. 
 
 Edward Martin. 
 
 1788. 
 
 Isaac Milner. 
 
 1662. 
 
 Anthony Sparrow. 
 
 1820. 
 
 Henry Godfred. 
 
 1667. 
 
 William Wells. 
 
 1832. 
 
 Joshua King. 
 
 1675. 
 
 Henry James. 
 
 1857. 
 
 George Phillips. 
 
 I7I7. 
 
 John Davies. 
 
 1892. 
 
 William Magan Campion, 
 
 1731- 
 
 William Sedgwick. 
 
 
 D.D. 
 
 1760. 
 
 Robert Plumptre. 
 
 1896-7 
 
 . Herbert Ryle, D.D. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbot, Dr, Accident to, 136-139, 
 
 Abbot, Robert, 238. 
 
 Acts and Comedies, 118. 
 
 Allport, Rev. Josiah, 95, 222. 
 
 Altar-Tables, 349. 
 
 Altar-wise, 416. 
 
 Ames, Dr William, 227. 
 
 Andrewes, Bishop, 334, 340, 341, 517. 
 
 Antiquary, the true Church, Essay on, 
 
 53> 54- 
 Appello Csesarem, 99. 
 Apologia of the Church of England, 
 
 108. 
 Aquinas, Thomas, 187, 196, 470. 
 Arminius, Professor, of Leyden, 67-69, 
 
 460. 
 Arms, Davenant's, 532. 
 Article "XVIIth," 200, 456, 465. 
 Article XIX. of the Church, 249. 
 Ascham, Roger, 2. 
 Attestation, Joint, of several Bishops, 
 
 etc., 99. 
 Augsburgh, Confession of, 50. 
 Augustine, St, 197, 206, 459, 460,463. 
 Augustinianism, 41, 94, 462. 
 Awbome, Davenant's Letter to the 
 
 Curate and Churchwardens of, 424. 
 
 Ballarmine, 4, 174-176, 180, 374, 375. 
 
 Ball's Life of John Preston, 56-124. 
 
 Balcanqual, Dr, 129. 
 
 Balcanqual, Letter of, 89. 
 
 Balcanqual, Walter, 75. 
 
 Bancroft, 3. 
 
 Barberini, 487. 
 
 Barrow, Dr, 252. 
 
 Barry, Bishop, 201. 
 
 Bastwick, John, 479 
 
 Baxter, Richard, 520-521. 
 
 Bedell, 352, 
 
 Belgic Confession of Faith, 87. 
 
 Bellarmine, 402, 403, 
 
 Benson, Archbishop, 321. 
 
 Bernard, St, College of, 23. 
 
 Bersier, Eugene, 202-203. 
 
 Beveridge, Bishop, 218-219. 
 
 Beza, Dt, 67. 
 
 Bishop's Fees, 133. 
 
 Bishops, Government by, 88. 
 
 Blunt, Professor, 220. 
 
 Bogerman's opinion of Davenant, 93. 
 
 Bogerman, Prseses, 80, 462, 528, 
 
 Bramhall, 352. 
 
 Browne, Harold, XXXIX. Articles, 
 
 251, 372. 
 Brownri^, Dr, 437, 
 Buckeridge, 334. 
 Bull, Bishop, 4. 
 
 Bull's Harmonia Aposlolica, 357. 
 Burnet's Exposition of XXXIX. 
 
 Articles, 451, 465, 468, 525. 
 Burton, Henry, 479. 
 
 Cajetan, 176, 179. 
 
 Calamy, Dr, 5, 449. 
 
 Calvinism, 3, 214. 
 
 Calvinists, 83. 
 
 Cambridge, Flays at, 32. 
 
 Cambridge poems, 316, 317. 
 
 Camden, 152, 526. 
 
 Cameron, John, 193. 
 
 Canon, XXXth, on Church of England, 
 
 250. 
 Canons, Laud's, 416. 
 Canons, New, 435. 
 Canons (1640), Titles of, 438. 
 Capitula Gallorum, 224. 
 Capitular institutions, 321. 
 Carleton, Bishop, 74, 
 Caiy, Lucius, 492. 
 
 SS7 
 
558 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Casaubon, 352. 
 
 Chancellorship of the Order of the 
 
 Garter, 315. 
 Charles I.'s visits to Davenant at 
 
 Salisbury (1625, 1632), 306. 
 Chillingworth, William, 156, 352, 492, 
 
 494-496. 
 Church, Definition of, 190. 
 Churchwardens, 149. 
 Clarendon, 423, 481, 489, 491. 
 Clarke, Margaret, 7. 
 College life, 28. 
 College studies, 29, 
 College, Queens', 17. 
 Colosse, 171. 
 
 Communion in one kind, 402-405> 
 Constance, Council of, 401. 
 Con, the Scotchman, 484-487. 
 Contra-Remonstrants, 71. 
 Convocation of Canterbury (1640), 
 
 434- ■' 
 Copleston, Dr, 96. 
 Cosin, 352. 
 Cusa, 180. 
 Cyprian, 177-178, 212. 
 
 D 
 
 Davenant, John (bom 1572), 4. 
 Davenant, Edward, 10, 513. 
 Davenant, William, 13. 
 Davenant Pedigree, 14. 
 Davenant, John, 13. 
 Davenant's lands, 13. 
 Davenant's degrees, 33. 
 Davenant, Dr, Whitaker's opinion of, 
 
 34- 
 Davenant, Fellow of Queens', 36. 
 Davenant, Lady Margaret Professor, 
 
 37- 
 
 Davenant, Vicar of Hockington, 38. 
 
 Davenanti .Commentary on Colossians, 
 46. 
 
 Davenant's theology, 50. 
 
 Davenant, President of Queen's Col- 
 lege, SS. 
 
 Davenant sent toDort, 65. 
 
 Davenant's return, ill. 
 
 Davenant's opinions and views, III, 
 520-524. 
 
 Davenant made Bishop of Salisbuiy, 
 126. 
 
 Davenant, legacies and portrait, 127. 
 
 Davenant, Letters of, 129, 134-136, 
 144, 162-165, 167, 240, 247, 255- 
 258, 260, 263-266, 324, 326, 328, 
 330, 380, 381. 408, 409. 429-431. 
 444. 446-447- 
 
 Davenant, Removal to Salisbury, 143. 
 
 Davenant's Exposition of Colossians, 
 169. 
 
 Davenant's Fast Sermon at West- 
 minster Abbey, 270. 
 
 Davenant preaches before the Court, 
 303. 
 
 Davenant as a Court preacher, 308. 
 
 Davenant, Walter, the Poet, 305. 
 
 Davenant before the Privy Council, 
 308. 
 
 Davenant's letter to Dr Ward, 311. 
 
 Davenant's treatises on Justification, 
 
 3SS- 
 Davenant's Determinations, 383. 
 Davenant's opinion on Dr Goodman, 
 
 442. 
 Davenant's Animadversions on Hoard's 
 
 treatises, 448. 
 Davenant's Golden Tractate, 503- 
 Davenant's last days, illness and death, 
 
 509- 
 Davenant's character, 116, 515, 517, 
 
 518. 
 Dissertation on the death of Christ, 
 
 214. 
 Divines, Allowance to, 78. 
 Divine, The Controversial, 112. 
 Diversity of degrees, 192, 205. 
 Dort, Class of, 70. 
 Pordrecht, Protestant faith of, 73. 
 Dort, Synod of. Results of, 91, 234. 
 Dove, Drj 262. 
 Dort, Synod of, 64. 
 Duppa, Dr Bryan, 514. 
 Durandus, 205, 210. 
 
 Ecclesiastical polity, 153. 
 England, Church of, teaching, 52. 
 Episcopacy, 88, ' 
 Episcopal Regimen, 204. 
 Episcopius, 81. 
 Erasmus, 27, 28. 
 
 Erasmus, Margaret Professor, 39. 
 Erasmus, Letter of, 39, 41. 
 Erasmus, Life at Cambridge, 40. 
 Erasmus, letters, 42. 
 
INDEX 
 
 559 
 
 Erasmus' Paraphrase on the Gospels 
 
 and Epistles, 41. 
 Erasmus Regius Professor of Greek, 
 
 43- 
 Erasmus, Blunt on, 43. 
 Erasmus, Votive Carmen, 45. 
 Erasmus, Colloquies, 45. 
 Erasmus' Paraphrase placed in Parish 
 
 Churches, 46. 
 
 Falkland, 492-494. 
 
 Faustus, 228. 
 
 FfulJer, John, 263. 
 
 Field, Dr, on Davenant, 141. 
 
 Fisher the Jesuit, Conference with 
 
 Laud,: 342, 495. 
 Foxe, 8. 
 
 France, Reformed Church of, 201. 
 Fulgentius, 470. 
 FuUfer, Thomas, 8. 
 Fuller's theology, 51. 
 Fuller's College life, 115, 516. 
 Fuller, Prebendary of Sarum, 156^157, 
 
 318-321. 
 Fuller, Fellow of Sydney-Sussex, 262. 
 Fuller, Dr. W., Dean of Ely, 432. 
 Fuller on the new Canons, 436. 
 
 Gallican Controversy, 192. 
 Gardiner, Stephen, 7, 8. 
 Gardiner, Dr, 476, 480. 
 Gerson, 205. 
 
 Gheast, Bishop, 146, 147. 
 Goad, Dr, 85. 
 Gomarus, 71. 
 
 Goodihan, Godfrey, Bishop of Glou- 
 cester, 441, 442. 
 Goodwin, John, 61. 
 •Grantham case, 418. 
 Grave Maurice, 94. 
 Greek Churches, opinion of, 465. 
 Gregory, Pope, 177. 
 
 H 
 
 Hacket, Bishop, S, 518. 
 Hague, Deputies at the, 771 
 Hales, Mr John, 79. 352. 492- 
 
 Plall, Bishop, 243, 244. 
 
 Hall, Bishop, Letter to Davenant, 245. 
 
 Hall, Dr Joseph, 74. 
 
 Hammond, 352. 
 
 Harsenet, Archbishop, 30S. 
 
 Henchman, Humphrey, 415. 
 
 Henry the VI., Charter of, 18. 
 
 Herbert, George, 153.- 
 
 Heylin, Dr Peter, 96, 4ZO, 478, 490. 
 
 Hilary, 208. 
 
 Hincmar, 229. 
 
 His Majesty's Declaration, 307. 
 
 Holy State, Fuller's, 518. 
 
 Holy Table, Position of, 417,425-426, 
 
 481. 
 Hoard's treatises, 448, 453, 466. 
 Hooker, Richard, 152. 
 Hugo, 211. 
 
 Hutchinson, John, 489. 
 Hyde, Alexander, 515. 
 
 Isidore of Pelusium, 188. 
 
 Institution of a Christian man, 43, 250. 
 
 Instructions to British deputies, 75. 
 
 James L, 65, 117, 133. 
 
 James I., Death of, 191. 
 
 James I. 's visits to Davenant at Salis- 
 bury (I609, 1611, 1615, 1618, 1620, 
 1623), 306. 
 
 James, King, at Newmarket, 77. 
 
 Jerome, 212, 213. 
 
 Jurisdiction, Archiepiscopal, 419. 
 
 K 
 
 King Charles the I., 305. 
 King James at Royston, 77. 
 King's declaration of sports, 479. 
 King's jurisdiction in ecclesiastical 
 matters, 481. 
 
 L 
 
 Lactantius, 188. - 
 Lambeth Articles, 50, 90. 
 Laud, Dr W., 140. 
 
56o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Laud, Bishop of St David's, 341. 
 Laud, Bishop of London, 346. 
 Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 322, 
 
 348. 
 
 Laud's visitation of Sarum, 148. 
 
 Laurence, Archbishop, 50, 
 
 Lea, John, Complaint of, 150. 
 
 Le Bas, Rev C. W., 421, 443. 
 
 Letters, Davenant's series of, in Bod- 
 leian Library, 529-531. 
 
 Lingard, Dr, History of England, 67, 
 
 96, 436, 437- 
 Lloyd's Epitaph on Davenant, 527. 
 Lucidus, 229. 
 
 Louvain, University of, 42. 
 Lutherans, 465, 466. 
 Lyra, 404. 
 
 M 
 
 Mansel. Dr J., 131. 
 
 Margaret of Anjou, Petition of, 20. 
 
 Master of the College Good, 62. 
 
 Mede, 352. 
 
 Melancthon, Philip, 230. 
 
 Memory, Fuller's, 12. 
 
 Milton's (John) Lycidas, 488. 
 
 Montague, Dr, 98. 
 
 Monthly fast during the troubles, 270. 
 
 Monument, Davenant's, in Salisbury 
 
 Cathedral, 513. 
 Morton, Bishop, 422, 
 Motley's Life and Death of John 
 
 Barneveld, 80. 
 Mountaigne, Dr, Letter of, 57, 122. 
 
 N 
 
 Natural Reason or Philosophy, Abuse 
 
 of, 186. 
 Nazianzen, 189, 208. 
 Nestorius, 377. 
 
 Newman, Dr, 6, 359-361. 363-37°. 
 Newmarket, academical discussions, 
 
 49- 
 Nice, Council of, 178. 
 Nonjurors, 351. 
 
 O 
 
 Oath, Et Cetera, 439, 440. 
 Ordinal, Anglican, 109, 204. 
 Overall, Dr, 458. 
 
 Padre Paulo, 519. 
 
 Palmer, Herbert, 61. 
 
 Papal infallibility, 173. 
 
 Papists' term, 370. 
 
 Parisiensis, 189, 205. 
 
 Patristic authorities, 237. 
 
 Pearson, Dr John, 156. 
 
 Pelagius, 227. 
 
 Perry, Mr, 87. 
 
 Perverts Aristocratical, 484, 485. 
 
 Philpotts, Dr, Letter to the Church- 
 wardens of HelstoD, 427. 
 
 Piscator, 463. 
 
 Pococke, 352. 
 
 Poems on the Church of England, 
 G. Herberts, 154. 
 
 Pontificale, English, 442. 
 
 Portrait, Davenant's, 532. 
 
 Predestination, 470, 471, 474. 
 
 Preston, Dr John, 60, 120. 
 
 Prideaux, 519. 
 
 Primasius, 224. 
 
 Prince Charles II., Birth of, 316. 
 
 Printers licensed, 482, 483, 
 
 Procter (B. C. P.), 458. 
 
 Prosper, 228, 229, 470, 472. 
 
 Prudentius, 184. 
 
 Prynne, 334, 479, 480, 496. 
 
 Puritanism, Rise of, 145, 150, 417. 
 
 Pusey, Dr, on the Fathers, 216-218. 
 
 Queen Henrietta Maria, 484-486. 
 Queens' College, E., 26. 
 Queens' College new buildings, 123. 
 Queens' College new Chapel, 125. 
 Queens' College, State of, 59. 
 Quinquarticular Controversy, 519. 
 
 R 
 
 Rainolds, Dr John, 335. 
 Reform, Church, 350. 
 Religion, the Old, 241, 242. 
 Remonstrants, 72. 
 Revival, Laudian, 352, 417, 
 Ritual conformity, 415, 434. 
 Roman Controversy, 182, 183. 
 Romanism, 388, 389. 
 Roman Pontiff, 390-397, 399, 4C50. 
 
INDEX 
 
 561 
 
 Royal supremacy, 64. 
 Royal visits to Cambridge, 13, 16, 48. 
 Russell's Memorials of Fuller, 253, 
 452, 526. 
 
 Saints, Definition of, 188. 
 
 Salisbury Cathedral, 158, 160-162. 
 
 Salisbury Cathedral Charter, 315. 
 
 Salisbury, State of Diocese, 422. 
 
 Sanderson, 352, 
 
 Scott, Rev. T., 97. 
 
 Scotus, Duns, 468. 
 
 Scultetns, Professor, Heidelberg, 48. 
 
 See of St Osmund, ' ' Sarum Use," 144, 
 
 Selden, 352. 
 
 Sherfield, Henry, 151. 
 
 Smith, Miles, 340. 
 
 Southey, Robert, 109. 
 
 Sports, Book of, 415. 
 
 Star Chamber, 478. 
 
 States of Holland, Religion of, 66. 
 
 St Paul's Cathedral, Restoration of, 
 
 347- 
 Suarez, 468. 
 SublapsarianandSupralapsarian terms, 
 
 462, 468-470. 
 Supremacy, Royal, 351. 
 Syllogae Confessionum, 96. 
 Synod, New, 437. 
 Synod, Picture of, 81. 
 
 TertuUian, 187, 471. 
 
 Thomdike, 352. 
 
 Tilenus, 96. 
 
 Tithes, Story about, 38. 
 
 Townson, Dr Robert, 9, 142, 526. 
 
 U 
 
 Usher, Archbishop, 5, 235, 310, 519- 
 522.' 
 
 Valence, Council of, 226. 
 Vasquez Jesuit, The, 457. 
 Vincentius Lerinensis, 225. 
 Visitations, Episcopal, 349. 
 Vossius, 352. 
 
 W 
 
 Walsingham, Erasmus's visit to, 45. 
 Walsingham, Handbook to, 45. 
 Walsingham, Our Lady of, 45. 
 Walton, Bishop Brian, 156. 
 Ward, Dr, Letter of, 90. 
 Ward, Dr Samuel, 74, 128, 239, 255- 
 
 258, 260, 310, 519. 
 Warham, Archbishop, 40. 
 Welbe, Sir William, 333. 
 Wenlock. Sir John, 24. 
 Whitlock, 352. 
 Will, Davenant's, S3I. 
 Williams, Bishop, 418, 490, 492. 
 Wiltshire, State of, 428. 
 Wither, George, 489. 
 Works, Printed, of Bishop Davenant, 
 
 528. 
 Wren, 352, 476. 
 
 York, Convocation of, 442. 
 
 2 N 
 
PRINTED BY 
 TURNBULL AND SPEARS, 
 
ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Lately Puilished. 
 Crown 8vo, pp. 72. Price is. 
 
 THE ANGLICAN ORDINAL, 
 
 BEING A REPLY TO THE PAPAL BULL ON ANGLICAN ORDERS. 
 
 PRESS NOTICES. 
 
 ' ' The theological writings of the Rev. Morris Fuller are always worth studying, for 
 there are few who combine so well-ripe learning with a pleasant style. At the present 
 day this pamphlet deserves a wide circulation. ... It is impossible, in a short 
 notice, to mention half the weighty arguments which Mr Fuller presses on the subject. 
 We can recommend the book to the clergy especially, and also to those of the laity, who 
 are troubled about the Bull. The Appendices add to the value of one of the best replies 
 we have yet met to the Papal Bull." — The Church Seview. 
 
 ' ' Mr Morris Fuller is well known as an able controversialist on all questions affecting 
 the constitution and history of the Church, and his pamphlet on ' The Anglican Ordinal ' 
 is not unworthy of his reputation. . . . This is a very useful pamphlet." — The National 
 Church. 
 
 "Mr Fuller here gives his reasons for disagreeing with the Papal conclusions, and, 
 as it is a subject which he has carefully studied, his shilling pamphlet may be taken as an 
 acceptable and trustworthy statement of the question from the English stand-point." — 
 Bookseller. 
 
 "The Rev. Morris Fuller has just published a valuable little treatise on 'The 
 Anglican Ordinal,' showing much research, and bringing into prominence points hitherto 
 little noticed. . . . Mr Fuller examines, at some length, most of the main points of the 
 controversy, and has no doubt added a good quota to its elucidation." — The Church in 
 the West. 
 
 "The laudatory reference made by Mr T. T. Bucknil, Q.C., M.P., at the Devonian 
 dinner, at Birmingham, the other evening, to the author of this valuable little work, was 
 richly deserved. The Rev. Morris Fuller merits a high place amongst the living 
 'Worthies of Devon.' . . . In dealing with such a question as that with which he grapples 
 in this book now under consideration he can shew what is in him — his historical research, 
 his far-reaching and comprehensive erudition, his virile grasp of his subject, and his 
 abilities as a theological controversialist. To all who possess a keen desire to learn what 
 can be said in reply to the recent Papal dictum,, we recommend this volume, which is a 
 thorough vindication of the validity of Anglican orders." — North Devon Herald. 
 
 "In 'The Anglican Ordinal we have the position of the Established Church 
 championed against the Pope and all his followers with true British pluck. It is a really 
 notable little work. The author of this interesting pamphlet has gone to the very root 
 of the controversy, and has treated it in so exhaustive and so admirable a manner that we 
 very much question whether a better or more complete reply could be penned. . . . He 
 defeats the opponents of the Established Church in the most conclusive manner, very 
 often, indeed, by their own weapons. Churchmen are very much indebted to the Rev. 
 Morris Fuller for his really able reply. It is marked by careful research, is eloquent and 
 learned, yet beautifully simple and direct in treatment, and no reader will, we think, 
 carefully peruse it without being convinced of the thoroughly stable foundation upon 
 which the Orders of our Church are &x.ed."— Brighton Gazette and Sussex Telegraph. 
 
 "Although a London vicar now, the Rev. Morris Fuller is a very well-known man in 
 the West, where so many years of his life were spent. Ever a busy man with his pen, 
 Mr Fuller is just now turning his attention to the Pope's 'Bull' with which his latest 
 pamphlet deals. ... It must be admitted that the arguments used by Mr Fuller in this 
 clever resistance of the Papal aggression are well and clearly stated in terse and vigorous 
 language. The tone of the pamphlet too is admirable, and devoid of the bitterness 
 which mars so many utterances of a similar chsLincier:'— Western Daily Mercury (Ply- 
 mouth), 
 
 LONDON: G. STONEMAN, 39 WARWICK LANE, E.O. 
 
ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 Second Edition, in 2 vols. Price 6s. each, crown 8vo, with Frontispiece. 
 
 THE 
 
 LIFE, TIME5, AND WRITINGS 
 OF THOMAS FULLER, D.D. 
 
 THE CELEBRATED CHURCH HISTORIAN 
 (1608-1661). 
 
 PRESS NOTICES. 
 
 "We are glad to note that Mr Morris Fuller's "Life of Thomas Fuller the Church 
 Historian," reviewed in our columns in the early part of last year, has reached a second 
 edition. This fact shows as conclusively as possible that the biographical method adopted 
 by the old historian's descendant has been appreciated by his readers. The publishers 
 of the work are now Messrs Swan Sonnenschein & Co."— The Church Times (second 
 notice). 
 
 "■This is the second edition of a work for which all lovers of the grand old Church 
 historian (i6o8-i66i), and quaintly humorous writer- will be grateful. The author is a 
 descendent of Fuller, and has spared no pains to do justice to his famous ancestor. Not 
 only has he given us as full a biography as it was possible to produce, but he has provided 
 a complete literary history of Fuller's writings, and a vivid picture of the times in which he 
 flourished. . . . Fuller's works are a storehouse of quaint humour, spiritual wisdom, 
 and poetic imagery. . . . We thank both author and publishers for this deeply 
 interesting memorial of his life and labours." — Christian Age. 
 
 ' ' The witty old churchman, Dr Thomas Fuller, who is declared by Henry Rogers to 
 be 'one of the most original writers in the language,' has found a worthy biographer in 
 his descendant, the Rev. Morris Fuller. The Fuller of to-day is, perhaps, not less dis- 
 qualified for his task because he shares the ' Church and King ' prejudices, and almost 
 superstitions of his ancestor. There is a lingering flavour of the old Cavalier ways of 
 thought about these volumes which seems to become them, and if we smile when we read 
 of Charles I., as ' the saint, king, and martyr,' we yet hardly wish the amiable delusion 
 absent. The two volumes form a very interesting memorial to the old divine, and we do 
 not wonder that they passed into a second edition." — Christian World. 
 
 " That this compilation has attained to the honour of a second edition speaks well at 
 any rate for the popular interest in excellent Th'omas Fuller. The author, a descendant 
 of the wise old humourist, had made up his mind, not without reason, that there was room 
 for a new biography of Fuller. . . . These faults he has endeavoured to avoid, and 
 we will do him the justice to say that his volumes are not dull. His leaves shine with 
 little bits and larger bits of Fuller, varied wiih illustrative scraps ; and he exhibits much 
 diligence in stringing his extracts on to the thread of Fuller's life. This is the most work- 
 manlike feature of the book. It is a book to dip into ; a gossiping kind of book, but still 
 a book that pleases ; it is easy to see how the author composed or rather accumulated it, 
 letting it jog on with an unfeigned, artless, babbling delight." — Inquirer. 
 
 "A descendant Of the renowned clerical wit has now, with great devotion and careful 
 pains, given many years to the preparation of two crowded volumes, dealing with the life, 
 times, and writings of his distinguished ancestor. The gentleman to whom this pleasant 
 lot and duty has fallen is the Rev. Morris Fuller, M.A., the author of several previous 
 works. Mr Fuller has executed his task with the natural pride and enthusiasm of a cultured 
 man, and has done much to revive and increase an interest in his ancestor. . . . All that 
 the author could get together so as to make his readers acquainted with the life, writings, 
 friends, contemporaries, and circumstances of Fuller's career he has industriously set 
 down in these pages. . . . These volumes could be quoted from very largely, so as to 
 afford considerable interest to our readers. In fact, tlie book is full of information, not 
 only concerning Fuller himself, but many other people about whom one is easily led to 
 desire to know something. . . . We commend the book to those who wish to make the 
 closer acquaintance of one who was certainly a notability in eventful times, and whose name 
 has classic interest for students of seventeenth century literature." — Literary World. 
 
 LONDON: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. 
 
A CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 
 
 AND ANNOUNCEMENTS OF 
 
 METHUEN AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS : LONDON 
 
 36 ESSEX STREET 
 
 W.C. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FORTHCOMING BOOKS, . 
 
 POETRY, 
 
 ENGLISH CLASSICS, 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, . 
 
 HISTORY, . 
 
 BIOGRAPHY, 
 
 8ENERAL LITERATURE, 
 
 SCIENCE, 
 
 PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 THEOLOGY, 
 
 LEADERS OP RELIGION, 
 
 FICTION, 
 
 BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS, 
 
 THE PEACOCK LIBRARY, 
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION SERIES, 
 
 SOCIAL QUESTIONS OF TO-DAY, 
 
 CLASSICAL TRANSLATIONS, 
 
 EDUCATIONAL BOOKS, 
 
 14 
 
 18 
 19 
 
 31 
 
 32 
 32 
 
 34 
 35 
 36 
 
 NOVEMBER 1896 
 
November 1896. 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 Poetry 
 
 EUDYAKD EIFLING 
 
 THE SEVEN SEAS. By RuDYARD KiPLiNG. Crown 2,vo. 6s. 
 150 copies on hand-made paper. Demy Svo. 21s. 
 30 copies on Japanese paper. Demy %vo. ifls. 
 The enormous success of ' Barrack Room Ballads ' justifies the expectation that this 
 volume, so long postponed, will have an equal, if not a greater, success. 
 
 GEORGE WTNDHAM 
 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. Edited, with an Introduction and 
 Notes, by George Wyndham, M. P. Crown 8vo. 3^.6^. 
 
 [English Classics. 
 
 W. E. HENLEY 
 ENGLISH LYRICS. Selected and Edited by W. E. Henley. 
 Crown Svo. Buckram. 6s. 
 
 Also IS copies on Japanese paper. Demy Si)0. £2, 2s. 
 Few announcements will he more welcome to lovers of English verse than the one 
 that Mr. Henley is bringing together into one book the finest lyrics in our 
 language. The volume will be produced with the same care that made *Lyra 
 Heroica ' delightful to the hand and eye. 
 
 'Q' 
 
 POEMS AND BALLADS. By ' Q,' Author of Green Bays, 
 etc. Crown 8zio. Buckram. 3s. 6d. 
 
 History, Biography, and Travel 
 
 CAPTAIN HINDE 
 
 THE FALL OF THE CONGO ARABS. By Sidney L. 
 HiNDE. With Portraits and Plans. Demy Svo. 12s. 6d. 
 This volume deals with the recent Belgian Expedition to the Upper CongOj which 
 developed into a war between the State forces and the Arab slave-raiders in 
 Central Africa. Two white men only returned alive from the three years' war — 
 Commandant Dhanis and the writer of this book, Captain Hinde. During the 
 greater part of the time spent by Captain Hinde in the Congo he was amongst 
 cannibal races in little-known regions, and, owing to the peculiar circumstances 
 of his position^ wa& enabled to see aside of native history shown to few Europeans. 
 The war terminated in the complete defeat of tjle Arabs, seventy thousand of 
 whom perished during the struggle. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 3 
 
 3, BARING GOULD 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. By S. Baring 
 
 Gould. With over 450 Illustrations in the Text and 13 Photo- 
 gravure Plates. Large quarto, 36^. 
 
 This study of the most extraordinary life in history is written rather for the general 
 reader than for the military student, and while following the main Imes of 
 Napoleon's career,_ is concerned chiefly with the development of his character and 
 his personal qualities. Special stress is l^d on his early life — the period in which 
 his mind and character took their definite shape and direction. 
 
 The great_ feature of the book is its wealth of illustration. There are over 450 
 illustrations, large and small, in the text, and^ there are also more than a dozen 
 full page photogravures. Every important incident of Napoleon's career has 
 its illustration, while there are a large number of portraits of his contemporaries, 
 reproductions of famous pictures, of contemporary caricatuses, of his handwriting, 
 etc. etc. 
 
 It is not too much to say that no such magiiificent book on Napoleon has ever been 
 published. 
 
 VICTOR HUGO 
 
 THE LETTERS OF VICTOR HUGO. Translated from the 
 
 French by F, Clarke^ M.A. In Two Volumes, Demy Svo. 
 
 loj. 6d. each. Vol, L 1815-35. 
 
 This is the first volume of one of the most interesting and important collection of 
 letters ever published in France. The correspondence dates from Victor Hugo's 
 boyhood to his death, and none of the letters have been jpublished before. The 
 arrangement is chiefiy chronological, but where there is. an interesting set of 
 letters to one person these are arranged together. The first volume contains, 
 among others,, (i) Letters to his father ; (2) to his young wife ; (3) to his confessor, 
 Lamennais ; (4) a very important set of about fifty letters to Sainte-Beuve ; (5) 
 letters about his eanly books and plays. 
 
 J. lU. BIGG 
 
 ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY: A Chapter in the 
 
 History of Religion. By J. M. Rigg, of Lincoln's Inn, 
 
 ' Barrister-at-Law, Demy Svo. 7s, 6d. 
 
 This work gives for the first time in moderate compass a complete portraitof St, 
 Anselm, exhibiting him in his intimate and interior as well as in His public life. 
 Thus, while the great ecclesiastieo-political struggle in-which he played so prominent 
 a part is fully dealt witii, unusual prominence is given to the profound and subtle 
 speculations by which he permanently influenced theological and metaphysical 
 thought ; while it will be a surprise to most readers to find him also appearing as 
 the author of some of the most exquisite religious poetry in the Latin language. 
 
 EDWARD GIBBON 
 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
 By Edward Gibbon. A New Edition, edited with Notes, 
 Appendices> and Maps by J. B. Bury, M.A., Fellow of Trinity 
 College,, Dublin. In Seven Volumes^ Demy Svo, gilt top, 8j. bd, 
 emh» Crown' Svo, 6s, eaeh. Vol, II. 
 
4 Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 
 
 W. M. FLINDERS FETRIE 
 
 A HISTORY OF EGYPT, from the Earliest Times to 
 THE Present Day. Edited by W. M. Flinders Petrie, D.C.L., 
 LL.D., Professor of Egyptology at University College. Fully 
 Illustrated. In Six Volumes, Crown 8vo. 6s. each. 
 
 Vol. II. XVII.-XVIII. Dynasties. W. M. F. Petrie. 
 
 * A history written in the spirit of scientific precision so worthily represented by Dr. 
 Petrie and his school cannot but promote sound and accurate study, and supply a 
 vacant place in the English literature of Egyptology.' — Times. 
 
 3. WELLS 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF ROME. By J. Wells, M.A., Fellow 
 
 and Tutor of Wadham Coll , Oxford. With 4 Maps. Crown %vo. 
 
 Zs. 6d. 350//. 
 
 This boolc is intended for the Middle and Upper Forms of Public Schools and for 
 Pass Students at the Universities. It contains copious Tables, etc. 
 
 H. DE B. 6IBBINS 
 ENGLISH INDUSTRY: HISTORICAL OUTLINES. By 
 H. DE B. GiBBiNS, M.A. With S Maps. Demy%vo. 10s. 6d. Fp. 450. 
 
 This book is written with the view of affording a clear view of the main facts of 
 English Social and Industrial History placed in due perspective. Beginning 
 with prehistoric times, it passes in review the growth and advance of industry 
 up to the nineteenth century, showing its gradual development and progress. 
 T^e author has endeavoured to place before his readers the history of industry 
 as a connected whole in which all these developments have their proper place. 
 The book is illustrated by Maps, Diagrams, and Tables, and aided by copious 
 Footnotes. 
 
 MRS. OLIPHANT 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS. By Mrs. Oliphant. Second Edition. 
 Crown Svo. y. 6d. [Leaders of Religion. 
 
 Naval and Military 
 
 DAVID HANNA7 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ROYAL NAVY, FROM 
 
 Early Times to the Present Day. By David Hannay. 
 
 Illustrated, Demy %vo. 15^. 
 
 This book aims at giving an account not only of the fighting we have done at sea, 
 but of the growth of the service, of the part the Navy has played in the develop- 
 ment of the Empire, and of its inner life. The author has endeavoured to avcHd 
 the mistake of sacrificing the earlier periods of naval history — the very interesting 
 wars with Holland in the seventeenth century, for instance, or the American 
 War of 1779-178^ — to the later struggle with Revolutionary and Imperial France. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 5 
 
 GOL. COOPER KINa 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ARMY. By Lieut.- 
 Colonel Cooper King, of the Staff College, Camberley. Illustrated. 
 Demy Svo. 'js. 6d. 
 This volume aims at describing the nature of the different armies that have been 
 farmed in Great Britain, and how from the early and feudal levies the present 
 standing army came to be. The changes in tactics, uniform, and armament are 
 briefly touched upon, andj the campaigns in which the army has shared have 
 been so far followed as to explain the part played by British regiments in them. 
 
 G. W. STEEVENS 
 
 NAVAL POLICY: With a Description of English and 
 Foreign Navies. By G. W. Steevens. Demy Svo. 6s. 
 
 This book is a description of the British and other more important navies of the world, 
 with a sketch of the lines on which our naval policy might possibly be developed. 
 It describes our recent naval policy, and shows what our naval force really is. A 
 detailed but non -technical account is given of the instruments of modern warfare — 
 guns, armour, engines, and the like — with a view to determine how far we are 
 abreast of modern invention and modern requirements. An ideal policy is then 
 sketched for the building and manning of^ our fleet ; and the last chapter is 
 devoted to docks, coaling-stations, and especially colonial defence. 
 
 Theology 
 
 F. B. JEVONS 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. 
 
 By F. B. Jevons, M.A., Litt.D., Tutor at the University of Durham. 
 Demy Svo. los. 6d. 
 This is the third number of the series of 'Theological Handbooks' edited by Dr. 
 
 Robertson of Tfurham, in which have already appeared Dr. Gibson's ' XXXIX. 
 
 Articles ' and Mr. Ottley's ' Incarnation.' 
 Mr. F. B. Jevons' ' Introduction to the History of Religion' treats of early religion, 
 
 from the point of view of Anthropology and Folk-lore ; and is the first attempt 
 
 that has been made in any language to weave^ together the results of recent 
 
 investigations into such topics as Sympathetic Magic, Taboo, Totemism. 
 
 Fetishism, etc., so as to oresent a systematic account of the growth of primitive 
 
 religion and the development of early religious institutions. 
 
 W. TOBEE FAnSSETT 
 THE DE CATECHIZANDIS RUDIBUS OF ST. AUGUS- 
 TINE. Edited, with Introduction, Notes, etc., by W. YoRKE 
 Faussett' M.A., late Scholar of Balliol Coll. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 
 
 An edition of a Treatise on the Essentials of Christian Doctrine, and the best 
 methods of impressing them on candidates for baptism.^ The editor bestows upon 
 this patristic work the same care which a treatise of Cicero might claim. There 
 is a general Introduction, a careful Analysis, a full Commentary, and other useful 
 matter. No better introduction to the study of the Latin Fathers, their style and 
 diction, could be found than this treatise, which also has no lack of modem interest. 
 
6 Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 
 General Literature 
 
 C. F. ANDREWS 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE LABOUR QUESTION. By 
 C. F. Andrews, B.A. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 
 R. E. STEEL 
 
 
 
 MAGNETISM AND 
 
 ELECTRICITY. 
 
 By R. 
 
 Elliott 
 
 Steel, M.A., F.C.S. 
 
 With Illustrations. 
 
 Crown 8off. 
 
 4J. 6d. 
 
 6. LOWES DICKINSON 
 
 THE GREEK VIEW OF LIFE. By G. L. Dickinson, 
 Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Crown Svo. zs. 6d. 
 
 [ University Extension Series. 
 
 J. A. HOBSON 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE UNEMPLOYED. By J. A. 
 HoBSON, B.A., Author of 'The Problems of Poverty.' Crown Svo. 
 2s. 6d. [Social Questions Series. 
 
 S. £. BALLY 
 GERMAN COMMERCIAL CORRESPONDENCE. By S. 
 E. Bally, Assistant Master at the Manchester Grammar School. 
 Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. [Commercial Series. 
 
 L. F. PRICE 
 ECONOMIC ESSAYS. By L. F. Price, M.A., Fellow of Oriel 
 College, Oxford. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 This book consists of a number of Studies in Economics and Industrial and Social 
 Problems. 
 
 Fiction 
 
 MARIE CORELLI'S ROMANCES 
 
 FIRST COMPLETE AND UNIFORM EDITION 
 Large crown Svo. 6s. 
 Messks. Methuen beg to announce that they have commenced the pub- 
 lication of a New and Uniform Edition of Marie Corelli's Romances. 
 This Edition is revised by the Author, and contains new Prefaces. The 
 volumes are being issued at short intervals in the following order : — 
 
 I. A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS. 2. VENDETTA. 
 3. THELMA. 4- ARDATH. 
 
 5. THE SOUL OF LILITH. 6. WORMWOOD. 
 
 7. BARABBAS. 8. THE SORROWS OF SATAN. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 7 
 BAsmc 60DLD 
 
 DARTMOOR IDYLLS. By S. Baring Gould. Cr. %vo. 6j. 
 GUAVAS THE TINNER. By S. Baring Gould, Author of 
 
 'Mehalah,' 'The Broom Squire,' etc. Illustrated. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 THE PENNYCOMEQUrCKS. By S. Baring Gould. 
 
 New Edition." Crown Svo. 6s. 
 A new edition, uniform with the Author's other novels. 
 
 LUCAS MALET 
 
 THE CARISSIMA. By Lucas Malet, Author of ' The Wages of 
 
 Sin,' etc. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 This is the first novel which Lucas Malet has written since her very powerful ' The 
 Wages of Sin.' 
 
 ARTHUR mORRISON 
 
 A CHILD OF THE JAGO. By Arthur Morrison. Author 
 
 of ' Tales of Mean Streets. ' Crown Szio. 6s. 
 
 This, the first long story which Mr. Mortison has written, is like his remarkable 
 * Tales of Mean Streets,' a realistic study of East End life. 
 
 W. E. NORRIS 
 CLARISSA FURIOSA. By W. E. Norris, 'Author of 'The 
 Rogue,' etc. Crown 8t>o. 6s. 
 
 L. COiZ CORNFORD 
 CAPTAIN JACOBUS : A ROMANCE OF HIGHWAYMEN. 
 By L. Cope Cornford. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 6;. 
 
 J. BLOUNDELLE BURTON 
 
 DENOUNCED. By J. Bloundelle Burton, Author of ' In 
 the Day of Adversity,' etc. Crowfi%vo. 6s. 
 
 J. IVEACLAREN COBBAN 
 WILT THOU HAVE THIS WOMAN? By J. M. COBBAN, 
 Author of ' The King of Andaman.' Crown &i)o. 6s. 
 
 J. F. BREWER 
 
 THE SPECULATORS. By J. F. Brewer. Crown 8va. 6s. 
 
 A. BALFOUR 
 
 BY STROKE OF SWORD. By Andrew Balfour. Crowti 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
8 Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 
 
 U. A. OWEN 
 
 THE DAUGHTER OF ALOUETTE. By Mary A. Owen. 
 Crswn Svo. 6j. 
 A story of life among the American Indians. 
 
 BONALD BOSS 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF STORM. By Ronald Ross, Author of 
 ' The Child of Ocean. ' Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 A romance of the Sea. 
 
 J. A. BABBT 
 
 IN THE GREAT DEEP : Tales of the Sea. By J. A. 
 Barry. Author of ' Steve Brown's Bunyip.' Crown 8m. 6s. 
 
 JAMES GOKDON 
 
 THE VILLAGE AND THE DOCTOR. By James Gordon. 
 Crown 8v0. 6s, 
 
 BEBTBAM SIITFOBD 
 
 THE SIGN OF THE SPIDER. By Bertram Mitford. 
 Crown 87)0. $s. 6d. 
 A story of South Africa. 
 
 A. SHIELD 
 
 THE SQUIRE OF WANDALES. By A. Shield. Crown 8vo. 
 
 3J. 6d. 
 
 6. W. STEEVENS 
 MONOLOGUES OF THE DEAD. By G. W. Steevens. 
 
 Foolscap 87)0. y. 6d. 
 
 A series of Soliloquies in which famous men of antiquity — Julius Cssar, Nero, 
 Alcihiades, etc., attempt to express themselves in the modes of thought and 
 language of to-day. 
 
 S. GORDON 
 A HANDFUL OF EXOTICS. By S. Gordon. Crown %vo. 
 y. 6d. 
 
 A volume of stories of Jewish life in Russia. 
 
 F. NEUMANN 
 THE SUPPLANTER. By P. NEUMANN. Crown %vo. y. 6d. 
 
 EVELYN DICKINSON 
 
 THE SIN OF ANGELS. By Evelyn Dickinson. Crown Svo. 
 y. 6d. 
 
 H. A. KENNEDY 
 
 A MAN WITH BLACK EYELASHES. By H. A. Kennedy. 
 Crown Svo. y, 6d. 
 
A LIST OF 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's 
 
 PUBLICATIONS 
 
 Poetry 
 
 Rudyard Eipling. BARRACK- ROOM BALLADS; And 
 
 Other Verses. By Rudyard Kipling. Ninth Edition, Crown 
 Svo. 6s. 
 
 ' Mr. Kipling's verse is strong, vivid, full of character. . . . Unmistakable genius 
 rings m every line.' — Tzfnes. 
 
 ' "Barrack-Room Ballads" coiitains some of the best work that Mr. Kipling has 
 ever done, which is saying a good deal. " Fuz2?y-Wuzzy," *' Gunga Din," and 
 "Tommy," are, in our opinion, altogether superior to anything of the kind that 
 English literature has hitherto produced.' — Athenmum. i 
 
 ' The ballads teem with ima^nation, they palpitate mth emotion. We read them 
 with laughter and^ tears ; the metres throb in our pulses, the cunningly ordered 
 words tingle with life ; and if this be not poetry, what is?' — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "Q." THE GOLDEN POMP : A Procession of English Lyrics 
 from Surrey to Shirley, arranged by A. T. Quiller Couch. Crown 
 ?ivo. Buckram. 6s. 
 ' A delightful volume : a really golden * ' Pomp, " ' — Spectator. 
 
 " Q." GREEN BAYS : Verses and Parodies. By " Q.," Author 
 of ' Dead Man's Rock,' etc. Second Edition. Crown Zvo. y.6d. 
 ' The verses display a rare and versatile gift of parodyj great command of metre, and 
 a very pretty turn of humour.' — Times. 
 
 H. 0. BeecMng. LYRA SACRA : An Anthology of Sacred Verse. 
 Edited by H. C. BeecHing^ M.A. Crown Svo. Buckram. (>s. 
 'An anthology of high excellence.' — AtheniBuvt. 
 ' A charming selection, which maintains a lofty standard of excellence.' — Times. 
 
 W. B. Yeats. AN ANTHOLOGY OF IRISH VERSE. 
 
 Edited by W- B. Yeats. Crown %vo. 3j. 6d, 
 
 * An attractive and catholic selection.' — Times. 
 
 * It is edited by the most original and most accomplished of modern Irish jjoets, and 
 
 against his editing hut a single objection can be brought, namely, that it excludes 
 from the collection his own delicate lyrics.' — Satw^day Revie-w. 
 
 E. Mackay. A SONG OF THE SEA : My Lady of Dreams, 
 AND OTHER PoEMS. By Eric Mackay, Author of 'The Love 
 Letters of a Violinist.' Second Edition, Fcap. Svo, gilt top, ^s, 
 
 * Everywhere Mr. Mackay displays himself the master of a style marked by all the' 
 
 characteristics of the best rhetoric. He has a keen sense of rhythm and of general 
 balance; his verse is excellently sonorous.'— G^o^^. 
 ' Throughout the book the poetic workmanship is fine.* — Scotsman. 
 
 A 2 
 
lo Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 Ibsen. BRAND. A Drama by Henrik Ibsen. Translated by 
 William Wilson. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 'Xhe greatest world-poem of the nineteenth century next to "Faust." It is in 
 the same set with " A^amemnoHj" with "Lear," with the literature that we now 
 instinctively regard as high and holy.'—Daily Chrcmiclt. 
 
 "A.G." VERSES TO ORDER. By "A. G." Cr.?,vo. is.M. 
 net. 
 A small volume of verse by a writer whose initials are well known to Oxford men. 
 'A capital specimen of light academic poetry. These verses are very bright and 
 engaging, easy and sufficiently witty.' — St. James's Gazette. 
 
 T. Langbridge. BALLADS OF THE BRAVE: Poems of 
 Chivalry, Enterprise, Courage, and Constancy, from the Earliest 
 Times to the Present Day. Edited, with Notes, by Rev. F. Lang- 
 bridge. Crown 8vo. Buckram, y. 6d. School Edition. 2s. 6d. 
 'Avery happy conception happily carried out These "Ballads of the Brave" are 
 intended to suit the real tastes of boys, and will suit the taste of the great majority. ' 
 ^Spectator. ' The book is full of splendid things.' — World. 
 
 Lang and Oraigie, THE POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 
 Edited by Andrew Lang and W. A. Craigie. With Portrait. 
 Demy 8vo, gilt top. 6s. 
 
 This edition contains a carefully collated Text, numerous Notes, critical and textual, 
 a critical and biographical Introduction, and a Glossary. 
 
 'Among the editions in one volume, Mr. Andrew Lang's will take the place of 
 authority.' — Times. 
 
 * To the general public the beauty of its type, and the fair proportions of its pages, as 
 well as the excellent chronological arrangement of the poems, should make it 
 acceptable enough. _ Mr. Lang and his publishers have certainly succeeded in 
 producing an attractive po_pular edition of the poet, in which the brightly written 
 biographical introduction is not the least notable feature.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 English Classics 
 
 Edited by W. E. Henley. 
 
 *Very dainty volumes are these; the paper, type, and light-green binding are all 
 
 very agreeable to the eye. Simplex mundiiiis is the phrase that might be applied 
 
 to them.' — Glade. 
 ' The volumes are strongly bound in green buckram, are of a convenient size, and 
 
 pleasant to look upon, so that whether on the shelf, or on the table, or in the hand 
 
 the possessor is thoroughly content with them.' — Guareiian. 
 ' The paper, type, and binding of this edition are in excellent taste, and leave 
 
 nothing to be desired by lovers of literature.' — Standard. 
 
 THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 
 By Lawrence Sterne. With an Introduction by Charles 
 Whibley, and a Portrait. 2 vols. Is. 
 
 THE COMEDIES OF WILLIAM CONGREVE. With 
 an Introduction by G. S. Street, and a Portrait. 2 vols. Js. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List h 
 
 the adventures of hajji baba of ispahan. 
 
 By James Morier. With an Introduction by E. G. Browne, M. A., 
 and a Portrait. 2 vols. Js. 
 
 THE LIVES OF DONNE, WOTTON, HOOKER, HER- 
 BERT, AND SANDERSON. By Izaak Walton. With an 
 Introduction by Vernon Blackburn, and a Portrait, y. 6d. 
 
 THE LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS. By Samuel 
 Johnson, LL.D. With an Introduction by J. H. Millar, and a 
 Portrait. 3 vols. los. 6d. 
 
 Illustrated Books 
 
 Jane Barlow. THE BATTLE OF THE FROGS AND MICE, 
 translated by Jane Barlow, Author of ' Irish Idylls,' and pictured 
 by F. D. Bedford. Small /[to. 6s. net. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES retold by S. 
 Baring Gould. With numerous illustrations and initial letters by 
 Arthur J. Gaskin. Second Edition. Crown %vo. Buckram, ds. 
 
 'JVIr. Baring Gould has done a good deed, and is deserving of gratitude, in re-writing 
 in honest, simple style the old stories that delighted the childhood of ** our fathers 
 and grandfathers." We do not think he has omitted any of our favourite stories, 
 the stories that are commonly regarded as merely * ' old fashioned." As to the form 
 of the book, and the printing, which is by Messrs. Constable, it were difficult to 
 commend overmuch. —Saturday Review. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. OLD ENGLISH FAIRY TALES. Col- 
 lected and edited by S. Baring Gould. With Numerous Illustra- 
 tions by F. D. Bedford. Second Edition. Crown %vo. Buckram. 6s. 
 
 * A charming volume, which children will be sure to appreciate. The stories have 
 
 been selected with great ingenuity from various old ballads and folk-tales, and, 
 having been somewhat altered and readjusted, now stand forth, clothed in Mr. 
 Baring Gould's delightful English, to enchant youthful readers. All the tales 
 are good.' — Guardian. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. A BOOK OF NURSERY SONGS AND 
 
 RHYMES. Edited by S. Baring Gould, and Illustrated by the 
 Birmingham Art School. Buckram, gilt top. Crown %vo, 6s. 
 
 * The volume is very complete in its way, as it contains nursery songs to the number 
 
 of 77, game-rhymes, and jingles. To the student we commend the sensible intro- 
 duction, and the explanatory notes. The volume is superbly printed on soft, 
 thick paper, which it is a pleasure to touch ; and the borders and pictures are, as 
 we have said, among the very best specimens we have seen of the Gaskin schooL' 
 — Birmingham Gazette, 
 
12 Messrs, MeThuen's List 
 
 H. 0. BeecMng. A BOOK OF CHRISTMAS VERSE. Edited 
 by H. C. Beeching, M.A., and Illustrated by Walter Crane. 
 Crown 8z/o, gilt top, f,s. 
 
 A collection of the best verse inspired by the birth of Christ from the Middle Ages 
 to the present day. A distinction of the book is the large number of poems it 
 contains by modern authors, a few of which are here printed for the first time. 
 
 'An anthology which, from its unity «f aim and high poetic excellence, has a better 
 right to exist than most of its fellows.' — Guardian. 
 
 History 
 
 Gibbon. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN 
 EMPIRE. By Edward Gibbon. A New Edition, Edited with 
 Notes, Appendicesj and Maps; by J. B. BuRY, M.A., Fellow of 
 Trinity College, Dublin. In Seven Volumes. Demy %vo. Gilt top. 
 %s. bd. each. Also crown Siio. 6s. each. Vol. I. 
 
 ' The time has certainly an^ived for a new edition'of Gibbon's great work. . . . Pro- 
 fessor Bury is the right man to undertake this task. His learning is amazing, 
 both in extent and accuracy. The book is issued in a handy form, and at a 
 moderate price, and it is admirably printed.' — Times. 
 
 ' The edition is edited as a classic should be edited, removing nothing, yet iiidicating 
 the value of the text, and bringing it up to date. It promises to be of the utmost 
 value, and will be a welcome addition to many libraries.' — Scotsvian. 
 
 ' This edition, so far as one may judge from the first instalment, is a marvel of 
 erudition and critical skill, and it is the very minimum of praise to predict that the 
 seven volumes of it will supersede Dean Milman's as the standard edition of our 
 great historical classic* — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 ' The beau-ideal Gibbon has arrived at last.' — Sketch. 
 
 * At last there is an adequate modem edition of "Gibbon. . . . The best edition the 
 
 nineteenth century could produce.' — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 Flinders Petrie. A HISTORY OF EGYPT.fromthe Earliest 
 Times to the Present Day. Edited by W. M. Flinders 
 Pbtrie, D.C.L., LL.D., Professor of Egyptology at University 
 College. Fully Illustrated. In Six Volumes. Crown 8vo. 6s. each. 
 
 Vol. I. Prehistoric Times to XVI. Dynasty. W. M. F. 
 Petrie. Second Edition. 
 
 * A history written in the spirit of scientific precision so worthily represented by Dr. 
 
 Petrie and his school cannot but promote sound and accurate study, and 
 supply a vacant place in the English literature of Egyptology.' — Times. 
 
 Flinders Petrie. EGYPTIAN TALES. Edited by W. M. 
 Flinders Petrie. Illustrated by Tristram Ellis. In Two 
 Volumes. Crown &vo. y. 6d. each. 
 ' A valuable addition to the literature of comparative folk-lore. The drawings are 
 really illustrations in the literal sense of the word.'— Gloie. 
 
 * It has a scientific value to the student of history and archasology.' — Scotsfhan. 
 ' Invaluable as a picture of life in Palestine and Egypt. '—Z)*!/)! 2fews. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 13 
 
 FUnders Petrie. EGYPTIAN DECORATIVE ART. By 
 W. M. Flinders Petrie, D.C.L. With 120 Illustrations. Crown 
 
 * Professor Flinders Petrie is not only a profound Egyptologist, but an accomplished 
 
 student of comparative archseology.^ In these lectures, delivered at the Royal 
 Institution, he displays both qualifications with rare skill in elucidating the 
 development of decorative art m Egypt, and in tracing its influence on the 
 art of other countries. Few experts can speak with higher authority and wider 
 knowledge than the Professor himself, and in any case his treatment of his sub- 
 ject is full of learning and insight.' — Times. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. THE TRAGEDY OF THE C^SARS. 
 The Emperors of the Julian and Claudian Lines. With numerous 
 Illustrations from Busts, Gems, Cameos, etc. By S. Baring Gould, 
 Author of ' Mehalah,' etc. Third Edition. Royal Svo. 15J. 
 ' A most splendid and fascinating hook on a subject of undying interest. The great 
 feature of the book is the use the author has made of the existing portraits of the 
 Caesars, and the admirable 'critical subtlety he has exhibited in dealing with this 
 line of research. It is brilliantly written, and the illustrations are supplied on a 
 scale of profuse magnificence.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 ' The volumes will in no sense disappoint the general reader. Indeed,^ in their way, 
 there is nothing in any sense so good in English, . . . Mr. Baring Gould has 
 presented his narrative in such awayas not to make one dull page.' — Athetusum. 
 
 A. Clark. THE COLLEGES OF OXFORD : Their History, 
 their Traditions. By Members of the University. Edited by A. 
 Clark, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Lincoln College. Zvo. 12s, 6d. 
 
 * A work which will certainly be appealed to for many years as the standard book on 
 
 the Colleges of Oxford.* — AiheneEum. 
 
 Perrens. THE HISTORY OF FLORENCE FROM 1434 
 TO 1492, By F. T. Perrens. Translated by Hannah Lynch. 
 %vo. 1 2 J. 6d. 
 
 A history of Florence under the domination of Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de 
 
 Medicis. 
 ' This is a standard book by an honest and intelligent historian, who has deserved 
 
 well of all who are interested in Italian history.' — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 E. L. S. Horsburgh. THE CAMPAIGN OF WATERLOO. 
 
 By E. L. S. Horsburgh, B.A. With Plans. Crown Svo. Ss. 
 
 * A brilliant essay — simple, sound, and thorough.' — Daity Chronicle. 
 
 ' A study, the most concise, the most lucid, the most critical that has been produced.' 
 
 ' A careful and precise study, a fair and impartial criticism, and an eminently read- 
 able book.' — Admiralty and Horse Guards Gazette. 
 
 H.B. George. BATTLES OF ENGLISH HISTORY. ByH.B. 
 George, M.A., Fellow of New College, Oxford. With numerous 
 Plans. Third Edition^ Crown Sva. 6s. 
 
 • Mr. George has undertaken a very useful task — that of making military affairs in- 
 telligible and instructive to non-military readers — and has executed it with laud- 
 able intelligence and industry, and with a large measure of success.' — Times. 
 
 ' This book is almost a revelation ; and we heartily congratv^l£^te the awthor on his 
 work and on the prospect of the reward he Has well d^serv^d for so much con- 
 scientious and sustained labour.' — Defily Chronicle. 
 
14 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 0. Browning. A SHORT HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ITALY, 
 A.D. 1250-1530. By Oscar Browning, Fellow and Tutor of King's 
 College, Cambridge. Second Edition. In Two Volumes. Crown 
 Svo. Si. eacA. 
 
 Vol. I. 1250-1409. — Guelphs and Ghibellines. 
 
 Vol. II. 1409- 1 530. —The Age of the Condottieri. 
 
 'A vivid picture of mediaeval Italy.' — Standard. 
 
 * Mr. Browning is ^to be congratulated on the production of a work of immense 
 
 labour and learning.' — Westtninster Gazette. 
 
 O'Grady. THE STORY OF IRELAND. By Standish 
 O'Grady, Author of * Finn and his Companions.' Cr. %vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 * Most delightful, most stimulating. Its racy humour, its original imaginings, 
 
 make it one of the freshest, breeziest volumes.* — Metkodist Times. 
 ' A survey at once graphic, acute, and quaintly written.* — Times, 
 
 Biography 
 
 R. L. Stevenson. VAILIMA LETTERS. By Robert Louis 
 
 Stevenson, With an Etched Portrait by William Strang, and 
 
 other Illustrations. Second Edition. Crown%vo. Btukram. Js,6d. 
 ' The Vailima Letters are rich in all the varieties of that charm which have secured 
 
 for Stevenson the affection of many others besides "journalists, fellow-novelists, 
 
 and boys." '—Tke Times. 
 * Few publications have in our time been more eagerly awaited than these "Vailima 
 
 Letters," giving the first fruits of the correspondence of Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 But, high as the tide of expectation has run, no reader can possibly be disappointed 
 
 , in the result.' — St. James s Gazette. 
 ' For the student of English literature these letters indeed are a treasure. They 
 
 are more like " Scott's Journal" in kind than any other literary autobiography.' 
 
 — National Observer. 
 
 F. W. Joyce. THE LIFE OF SIR FREDERICK GORE 
 OUSELEY. By F. W. Joyce, M.A. With Portraits and Illustra- 
 tions. Crown Svo. 'js. 6d, 
 
 ' All the materials have been well digested, and the book gives us a complete picture 
 ,of the life of one who will ever be held in loving remembrance by his personal 
 friends, and who in the history of music in this country will always occupjj a 
 prominent position on account of the many services he rendered to the art.' — 
 Mttsical News. 
 
 ' This book has been undertaken in quite the right spirit, and written with sjrmpathy, 
 insight, and considerable literary skill.' — Times. 
 
 W. a. Collingwood. THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN. By 
 W. G. Collingwood, M. A., Editor of Mr. Ruskin's Poems. With 
 numerous Portraits, and 13 Drawings by Mr. Ruskin. Second 
 Edition, 2 vols. Svo, 32^. 
 
 * No more magnificent volumes have been published for a long time,' — Times. 
 
 * It is long since we had a biography with such delights of substance and of form. 
 
 Such a book is a pleasure for the day, and a joy for ever.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 ' A noble monumeat of a noble subject. One of the most beautiful books about one 
 of the noblest lives of our century,' — Glasgow Herald. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 15 
 
 0. Waldstein. JOHN RUSKIN : a Study. By Charles 
 Waldstein, M.A., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. With a 
 Photogravure Portrait after Professor Herkomer. Post 8va. ^s. 
 ' A thoughtful, impartial, well-written criticism of Raskin's teaching, intended to 
 separate what the author regards as valuable and permanent from what is transient 
 and erroneous in the great master's writing.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 W. H. Hutton. THE LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. By 
 W. H. Hutton, M.A., Author of ' William Laud.' With Portraits. 
 Crown 8w. 5^-. 
 
 ' The book lays good claim to high rank among our biographies. It is excellently, 
 even lovmgly, written.' — Scotsman. 
 
 ' An excellent monograph.' — Times. 
 
 ' A most complete presentation.'— i3az^ Chronicle. 
 
 M. Kaufmann. CHARLES KINGSLEY. By M. Kaufmann, 
 M.A. Crown 8vo. Buckram, ^s. 
 A biography of Kingsley, especially dealing with his achievements in social reform. 
 ' The author has certainly gone about his work with conscientiousness and industry. — 
 Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 
 
 A. F. Bobbins. THE EARLY PUBLIC LIFE OF WILLIAM 
 EWART GLADSTONE. By A. F. Robbins. With Portraits. 
 Crown Swo. ds. 
 
 * Considerable labour and much skill of presentation have not oeen unworthily 
 
 expended on this interesting work.' — Times. 
 
 Clark RusselL THE LIFE OF ADMIRAL LORD COL- 
 LINGWOOD. By W. Clark Russell, Author of ' The Wreck 
 of the Grosvenor.' With Illustrations by F. Brangwyn. Third 
 Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 ' A most excellent and wholesome book, which we should like to see in the hands of 
 every boy in the country,' — St. James's Gazette. 
 
 * A really good book.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 Southey. ENGLISH SEAMEN (Howard, Clifford, Hawkins, 
 Drake, Cavendish). By Robert Southey. Edited, with an 
 Introduction, by David Hannay. Second Edition. Crown %vo. 6s. 
 
 * Admirable and well-told stories of our naval history.' — Army and Navy Gazette. 
 ' A brave, inspiriting book.' — Black and White. 
 
 ' The work of a master of style, and delightful all through.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 General Literature 
 
 S. Baring Gould. OLD COUNTRY LIFE. By S. Baring 
 Gould, Author of ' Meh'alah,' etc. With Sixty-seven Illustrations 
 by W. Parkinson, F. D. Bedford, and F. Masey. Large 
 Crown %vo. los. 6d. Fifth and Cheaper Edition. 6s. 
 "Old Country Life," as healthy wholesome reading, full of breezy life and move- 
 ment, full of quaint stories vigorously told, will not be excelled by any book to be 
 published throughout the year. Sound, hearty, and English to the core. '— World. 
 
i6 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 S. Baring Gould. HISTORIC ODDITIES AND STRANGE 
 EVENTS. By S. Baring Gould. Third Edition. Crown%vo. 6j. 
 ' A collection of exciting and entertaining chapters. The whole volume is delightful 
 reading.' — Times. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. FREAKS OF FANATICISM. By S. Baring 
 GODLD. Third Edition. Crown %vo. 6s. 
 'Mr. Baring Gould has a keen eye for colour and effect, and the subjects he has 
 chosen give ample scope to his descriptive and analytic faculties. A perfectly 
 fascinating haoW— Scottish Leader. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. A GARLAND OF COUNTRY SONG : 
 
 English Folk Songs with their Traditional Melodies. Collected and 
 arranged by S. Baring Gould and H. Fleetwood Sheppard. 
 Demy 4/0. 6j. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. SONGS OF THE WEST: Traditional 
 Ballads and Songs of the West of England, with their Traditional 
 Melodies. Collected by S. Baring Gould, M.A., and H. Fleet- 
 wood Sheppard, M. A. Arranged for Voice and Piano. In 4 Parts 
 (containing 25 Songs each). Parts I., II., III., y. each. Part 
 IV., 5^. In one Vol., French morocco, l^s. 
 ' A rich collection of humour, pathos, grace, and poetic fancy.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. YORKSHIRE ODDITIES AND STRANGE 
 EVENTS. Fourth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. STRANGE SURVIVALS AND SUPER- 
 STITIONS. With lUustraUons. By S. Baring Gould. Crown 
 Svo. Second Edition. 6s. 
 * We have^read Mr. Baring Gould's book from beginning to end. Itis full of quaint 
 and various information, and there is not a dull page in it' — Notes and Queries. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN 
 FRANCE. By S. Baring. Gould. With numerous Illustrations 
 by F. D. Bedford, S. Hutton, etc. 2 vols. Demy Svo. ^zs. 
 
 This book is the first serious attempt to describe the great barren tableland that 
 extends to the south of Limousin in the Department of Aveyron, Lot, etc., a 
 country of dolomite cliflFsj and canons, and subterranean rivers. The region is 
 full of prehistoric and historic interest, relics of cave-dwellers, of mediaeval 
 robbers, and of the English domination and the Hundred Years' War. 
 
 ' His two richly-illustrated volumes are full of matter of interest to the geologist, 
 the archaeologist, and the student of history and manners.* — Scotsman. 
 
 ' It deals with its subject in a manner which rarely fails to arrest attention.' — Tivies. 
 
 R. S. Baden-Powell. THE DOWNFALL OF PREMPEH. A 
 Diary of Life with the Native Levy in Ashanti, 1895, By Lieut. -Col. 
 Baden-Powell. With 21 Illustrations, a Map, and a Special 
 Chapter on the Political and Commercial Position of Ashanti by Sir 
 George Baden-Powell, K.C.M.G., M.P. Demy Svo. 10s, 6d, 
 
 ' A compact, faithful, most readable record of the campaign.' — Daily News, 
 ' A bluff and vigorous narrative.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 ' A really interesting book.' — Yorkshire Post. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 17 
 
 W. E. Gladstone. THE SPEECHES AND PUBLIC AD- 
 DRESSES OF THE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 
 Edited by A. W. Hutton, M.A., and H. J. Cohen, M.A. With 
 Portraits. Svo, Vols, IX, and X, 12s. 6d, each. 
 
 Henley and "WMbley. A BOOK OF ENGLISH PROSE. 
 Collected by W. E. Henley and Charles Whibley. Cr. 2>iJo. 6s. 
 
 'A unique volume of extracts— an art gallery of early prose.' — Birmingham Post. 
 
 ' An admirable companion to Mr. Henley's "Lyra Heroica.'" — Saturday Review. 
 
 ' Quite delightful. The choice made has been excellent, and the volume has been 
 most admirably printed by Messrs. Constable. A ^eater treat for those not well 
 acquainted with pre-Restoration prose could not be imagined. '—A tkenaum. 
 
 J. Wells. OXFORD AND OXFORD LIFE. By Members of 
 the University. Edited by J. Wells, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of 
 Wadham College. Crown Svo. ^s. 6d. 
 This work contains an account of life at Oxford — intellectual, social, and religious — 
 a careful estimate of necessary expenses, a review of recent changes, a statement 
 of the present position of the University, and chapters on Women's Education, 
 aids to study, and University Extension. 
 
 * We congratulate Mr. Wells on the production of a readable and intelligent account 
 
 of Oxford as it is at the present time, written by persons who are possessed of a 
 close acquaintance with the system and life of the University.' — AthemBum. 
 
 W. M. Dixon. A PRIMER OF TENNYSON. By W. M, 
 
 Dixon, M.A., Professor of English Literature at Mason College. 
 Crown Bvo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 ' Much sound and well-expressed criticism and acute literary judgments. The biblio- 
 graphy is a boon.' — Speaker, 
 
 ' No better estimate of the late Laureate's work has yet been published. His sketch 
 of Tennyson's life contains everything essential ; his bibliography is full and con- 
 cise ; his literary criticism is most interesting.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 W. A. Craigie. A PRIMER OF BURNS. By W. A. Craigie. 
 
 Crown 8zfo. 2s. 6d. 
 This book is planned on a method similar to the * Primer of Tennyson.' It has also 
 
 a glossary. 
 'A valuable addition to the literature of the poet.' — Times. 
 ' An excellent short account,' — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 ' An admirable introduction. ' — Globe. 
 
 L. Whibley. GREEK OLIGARCHIES : THEIR ORGANISA- 
 TION AND CHARACTER. By L. Whibley, M.A., Fellow 
 of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Crown ^o. 6s. 
 
 ' An exceedingly useful handbook : a careful and well-arranged study of an obscure 
 subject.' — Times. 
 
 ' Mr. Whibley is never tedious or pedantic.'— Pa// Mall Gazette. 
 
 W. B. Worsfold. SOUTH AFRICA : Its History and its Future. 
 By W. Basil WORSFOLD, M.A. With a Map. Crown Zvo. 6s. 
 
 * An intensely interesting book.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 ' A monumental work compressed into a very moderate compass.' — World. 
 
 A 3 
 
1 8 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 0. H. Pearson. ESSAYS AND CRITICAL REVIEWS. By 
 
 C. H. Pearson, M.A., Author of * National Life and Character.' 
 Edited, with a Biographical Sketch, by H. A. Strong, M.A., 
 LL.D. With a Portrait. Demy %vo, lOj. dd, 
 
 'These fine essays illustrate the great breadth of his historical and literary sym- 
 pathies and the remarkable variety of his intellectual interests.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 * Remarkable for careful handling, breadth of view, and thorough knowledge.*— -5"cff^J- 
 Tnttn. 
 
 ' Charming essays.' — Spectator. 
 
 Ouida, VIEWS AND OPINIONS. By Ouida. Crown Zvo. 
 Second Edition, 6s. 
 ' Ouida is outspoken^ and the reader of this book will not have a dull moment. The 
 book is full of variety, and sparkles with entertaining matter.' — Speaker. 
 
 J. S. Shedlock. THE PIANOFORTE SONATA: Its Origin 
 and Development. By J, S. Shedlock. Crown Svo. 5j. 
 ' This work should be in the possession of every musician and amateur, for it not 
 only embodies a concise and lucid history ot the origin of one of the most im- 
 portant forms of musical composition, but, by reason of the painstaking research 
 and accuracy of the author's statements, it is a very valuable work for reference.' 
 — A tkenaum. 
 
 E. M. Bowden. THE EXAMPLE OF BUDDHA: Being Quota- 
 tions from Buddhist Literature for each Day in the Year. Compiled 
 by E. M. Bowden. With Preface by Sir Edwin Arnold. Third 
 Edition. i6mo. 2s. dd. 
 
 J. Beever. PRACTICAL FLY-FISHING, Founded on 
 Nature, by John Bebver, late of the Thwaite House, Coniston. A 
 New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author by W. G. Collingwood, 
 M.A. Crown ivo. y. 6d. 
 A little book on Fly-Fishing by an old friend of Mr. Ruskin. 
 
 Science 
 
 Freudenreich. DAIRY BACTERIOLOGY. A Short Manual 
 for the Use of Students. By Dr. Ed. von Freudenreich. 
 Translated from the German by J. R. Ainsworth Davis, B.A., 
 F.C.P. Crown Svo. 2s.6d. 
 
 Chalmers MitcheU. OUTLINES OF BIOLOGY. By P. 
 
 Chalmers Mitchell, M.A., F.Z.S. Fully Illustrated. Crown 
 Svo. 6s. 
 A text-book designed to cover the new Schedule issued by the Royal College of 
 Physicians and Surgeons. 
 
 G.Massee. A MONOGRAPH OF THE MYXOGASTRES. By 
 
 George Massee. With iz Coloured Plates, /loyal Svo. iSs. net. 
 
 ' A work much in advance of any book in the language treating of this group of 
 
 organisms. It is indispensable to everjr student of the Myxogastres. The 
 
 coloured plates deserve high praise for their accuracy and execution.'— iVa<»«. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 19 
 
 Philosophy 
 
 L. T. Hobhouse. THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. By 
 
 L, T. Hobhouse, Fellow and Tutor of Corpus College, Oxford. 
 Demy Svo, 2IJ. 
 
 * The most important contribution to English philosophy since the publication of Mr. 
 
 Bradley's " Appearance and Reality." Full of brilliant criticism and of positive 
 theories which are models of lucid statement.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 ' An elaborate and often brilliantly written volume. The treatment is one of great 
 freshness, and the illustrations are particularly numerous and apt.' — Times. 
 
 W. H. Fairbrother. THE PHILOSOPHY OF T. H. GREEN. 
 
 By W. H. Fairbrother, M.A., Lecturer at Lincoln College, 
 Oxford. Crown Svo. ^s. 6cl. 
 
 This volume is expository, not critical, and is intended for senior students at the 
 Universities and others, as a statement of Green's teaching, and an introduction to 
 the study of Idealist Philosophy. 
 
 * In every way an admirable book. As an introduction to the writings of perhaps the 
 
 most remarkable speculative thinker whom England has produced in the present 
 century, nothing could be better than Mr. Fairbrother's exposition and criticism.' — 
 Glasgow Herald. ^ , 
 
 F. W. Bussell. THE SCHOOL OF PLATO : its Origin and 
 its Revival under the Roman Empire. By F. W. Bussell, M. A. , 
 Fellow and Tutor of Brasenose College, Oxford. Demy Svo. Two 
 volumes, los. 6d. each. Vol. I. 
 
 * A highly valuable contribution to the history of ancient thought.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 ' A clever and stimulating book, provocative of thought and deserving careful reading. ' 
 
 — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 F. S. Granger. THE WORSHIP OF THE ROMANS. By 
 F. S. Granger, M.A., Litt.D., Professor of Philosophy at Univer- 
 sity College, Nottingham. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 The author delineates that group of beliefs which stood in close connection with the 
 Roman religion, and among the subjects treated are Dreams, Nature Worship, 
 Roman Magic, Divination, Holy Places, Victims, etc. Thus the hook is also 
 a contribution to folk-lore and comparative psychology. 
 ' A scholarly analysis of the religious ceremonies.beliefs, and superstitions of ancient 
 Rome, conducted in the new instructive light of comparative anthropology.'— 
 Tzwes. 
 
20 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 Theology 
 
 E. 0. S. Gibson. THE XXXIX. ARTICLES OF THE 
 CHURCH OF ENGLANI?. Edited with an Introduction by E. 
 C. S. Gibson, D.D., Vicar of Leeds, late Principal of Wells 
 Theological College. In 7'wo Volumes. Demy %vo. *js, 6d. each. 
 Vol. I. Articles I.- VIII. 
 
 ' The tone maintained throughout is not that of the partial advocate, but the faithful 
 exponent. ' — Scotsftian. 
 
 'There are ample proofs of clearness of expression, sobriety of judgment, and breadth 
 of view. . . . The book will be welcome to all students of the subject, arid its sound, 
 definite, and loyal theology ought to be of great service.' — National Observer. 
 
 ' So far from repelling the general reader, its orderly arrangement, lucid treatment, 
 and felicity of diction invite and encourage his attention.' — Yorkshire Post. 
 
 R. L. Ottley. THE DOCTRINE OF THE INCARiSTATION. 
 
 By R- L. Ottley, M.A., late fellow of Magdalen College, Oxon., 
 Principal of Pusey House. In Two Volumes. Demy Svo. i^s, 
 
 ' Learned and reverent : lucid and well arranged.' — Record. 
 
 * Accurate, well ordered, and judicious.' — National Observer. 
 
 * A clear and remarkably full account of the main currents of speculation. Scholarly 
 
 precision . . . genume tolerance . . . intense interest in his subject — are Mr. 
 Ottley's merits.' — Guardian. 
 
 S. K. Driver. SERMONS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED 
 WITH THE OLD TESTAMENT. By S. R. Driver, D.D., 
 Canon of Christ Church, Regius Professor of Hebrew in the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 * A welcome companion to the author's famous 'Introduction.' No man can read these 
 
 discourses without feeling that Dr. Driver is fully alive to the deeper teaching of 
 the Old Testament.' — Guardian. 
 
 T. K. Cheyne. FOUNDERS OF OLD TESTAMENT CRITI- 
 CISM : Biographical, Descriptive, and Critical Studies. By T. K. 
 Cheyne, D. D. , Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scrip- 
 ture at Oxford. Large crown Svo. Js. 6d. , 
 This important hook is a historical sketch of O. T. Criticism in the form of biographi- 
 cal studies from the days of Eichhorn to those of Driver and Robertson Smith. 
 It is the only book of its kind in English. 
 ' A very learned and instructive work. ' — Times. ' 
 
 O.H. Prior. CAMBRIDGE SERMONS. Edited by C. H. Prior, 
 M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Pembroke College. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 A volume of sermons preached before the University of Cambridge by various 
 
 preachers, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop Westcott. 
 ' A representative collection. Bishop Westcott's is a noble sermon.' — Guardian. 
 
 H. C. Beeching. SERMONS TO SCHOOLBOYS. By H. C. 
 
 Bbeching, M.A., Rector of Yattendon, Berks. With a Preface by 
 Canon ScoTT Holland. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Seven sermons preached before the boys of Bradfield College. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 21 
 
 E. B. Layard. RELIGION IN BOYHOOD. Notes on the 
 Religious Training of Boys. With a Preface by J. R. Illing- 
 WORTH. By E. B. Layard, M.A. iZmo. is. 
 
 2Djtiotional Boofe0. 
 
 With Full-page Illustrations. Fcap. %vo. Buckravi. "^s. 6d. 
 Padded morocco, t^s. 
 THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. By THOMAS A Kempis. 
 With an Introduction by Dean Farrar. Illustrated by C. M. 
 Gere, and printed in black and red. Second Edition. 
 'Amongst all the innumerable English editions of the "Imitation," there can have 
 been few which were prettier than this one, printed in strong and handsome type 
 by Messrs. Constkble, with all the glory of red initials, and the comfort of buckram 
 binding.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. By JoHN Keble. With an Intro- 
 duction and Notes by W. Lock, M.A.,Sub-Warden of Keble College, 
 Ireland Professor at Oxford, Author of the ' Life of John Keble.' 
 Illustrated by R. Anning Bell. 
 
 ' The present edition is annotated with all the care and insight to be expected from 
 Mr. Lock. The progress and circumstances of its composition are detailed in the 
 Introduction. There is an interesting Appendix on the MSS. of the " Christian 
 Year," and another giving the order in which the poems were written. A " Short 
 Analysis of the Thought" is prefixed to each, and any difficulty in the text is ex- 
 plained in a note. — Guardian. 
 
 ' The most acceptable edition of this ever-popular v/oA.'—GloSe. 
 
 Leaders of Religion 
 
 Edited by H. C. BEECHING, M.A. PVitk Portraits, crown Svo. 
 
 A series of short biographies of the most prominent leaders i /' 
 
 of religious life and thought of all ages and countries. O / Q 
 
 The following are ready— w/ 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN. By R. H. Button. 
 JOHN WESLEY. By J. H. Overton, M.A. 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. By G. W. Daniel, M.A. 
 CARDINAL MANNING. By A. W. Hutton, M.A. 
 CHARLES SIMEON. By H. C. G. Moule, M.A. 
 JOHN KEBLE. By Walter Lock, M.A. 
 THOMAS CHALMERS. By Mrs. Oliphant. 
 LANCELOT ANDREWES. By R. L. Ottley, M.A. 
 
22 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY. By E. L. Cutts, D.D. 
 WILLIAM LAUD. By W. H. Hutton, M.A. 
 JOHN KNOX. By F. M'Cunn. 
 JOHN HOWE. By R. F. Horton, D.D. 
 BISHOP KEN. By F. A. Clarke, M.A. 
 GEORGE FOX, THE QUAKER. By T. Hodgkin, D.C.L. 
 Other volumes will be announced in due course. 
 
 Fiction 
 
 SIX SHILLING NOVELS 
 
 Marie Corelli's Novels 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. each. 
 A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS. Fourteenth Edition. 
 VENDETTA. Eleventh Edition. 
 THELMA. Fourteenth Edition. 
 ARDATH. Tenth Edition. 
 THE SOUL OF LILITH. Ninth Edition. 
 WORMWOOD. Eighth Edition. 
 
 BARABBAS : A DREAM OF THE WORLD'S TRAGEDY. 
 
 Twenty-fijth Edition. 
 
 ' The tender reverence of the treatment and the imaginative beauty^ of the writing 
 have reconciled us to the daring of the conception, and the conviction is forced on 
 us that even so exalted a subject cannot be made too familiar to us, provided it be 
 presented in the true spirit of Christian faith. The amplilications of the Scripture 
 narrative are often conceived with high poetic insight^ and this " Dream of the 
 World's Tragedy " is, despite some trifling incongruities, a lofty and not inade- 
 quate paraphrase of the supreme climax of the inspired narrative.' — Duhlin 
 Review. 
 
 THE SORROWS OF SATAN. Twenty-ninth Edition. 
 
 ' A ver^ powerful piece of work. . . . The conception is magnificent, and is likely 
 to win an abiding place within the memory of man. . . . The author has immense 
 command of language, and a limitless audacity. . . . This interesting and re- 
 markable romance will live long after much of the ephemeral literature of the day 
 is forgotten. ... A literary j^henomenon . . . novel, and even sublime.' — W. T. 
 Stead in the Review of Reviews. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 23 
 
 Anthony Hope's Novels 
 
 Crown %vo. ds. each. 
 THE GOD IN THE CAR. Seventh Edition. 
 
 ' A very remarkable book, deserving of critical analysis impossible within our limit ; 
 brilliant, but not superficial; well considered, but not elaborated ;. constructed 
 with the proverbial art that conceals, but yet allows itself to be enjoyed by readers 
 to_ whom fine literary method is a keen plecisure ; true without cynicism, subtle 
 without affectation, humorous without strain, witty without offence, inevitably 
 sad, with an xmmorose simplicity.'— The World. 
 
 A CHANGE OF AIR. Fourth Edition. 
 
 'A graceful, vivacious comedy, true to human nature. The characters are traced 
 with a masterly hand.' — Times. 
 
 A MAN OF MARK. Third Edition. 
 
 * Of all Mr. Hope's books, "A Man of Mark " is the one which best compares with 
 
 *' The Prisoner of Zenda." The two romances are unmistakably the work of the 
 same writer, and he possesses a style of narrative peculiarly seductive, piquant, 
 comprehensive, and— his own.' — National Observer. 
 
 THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO. Third 
 
 Edition. 
 'It is a perfectly enchanting story of love and chivalry, and pure romance. The 
 outlawed Count is the most constant, desperate, and withal modest and tender of 
 lovers, a peerless gentleman, an intrepid fighter, a very faithful friend, and a most 
 magnanimous foe. In short, he is an altogether admirable, lovable, and delight- 
 ful hero. There is not a word in the volume that can give offence to the most 
 fastidious taste of man Qr woman, and there is not, either, a dull paragraph in it. 
 The book is everjrwhere instinct with the most exhilarating spirit of adventure, 
 and delicately perfumed with the sentiment of all heroic and honourable deeds of 
 history and romance.' — Guardian. 
 
 S. Baring Gould's Novels 
 
 Crown %vo. 6s. each. 
 
 'To say that a book is by the author of *' Mehalah" is to imply that it contains a 
 story cast on strong lines, containing dramatic possibilities, vivid and sympathetic 
 descriptions of Nature, and a wealth of ingenious imagery. —Speaker. 
 ' That whatever Mr. Baring Gould writes is well worth reading, is a conclusion that 
 may be very generally accepted. His views of life are fresh and vigorous, his 
 language pointed and characteristic, the incidents of which he makes use are 
 striking and original, his characters are life-like, and though somewhat excep- 
 tional people, are drawn and coloured with artistic force. Add to this that his 
 descriptions of scenes and scenery are painted with the loving eyes and skilled 
 hands of a master of his art, that he is always fresh and never dull, and under 
 such conditions it is no wonder that readers have gained confidence both in his 
 power of amusing and satisfying them, and that year by year his popularity 
 widens.' — Court Circular. 
 
 ARMINELL : A Social Romance. Fourth Edition. 
 URITH : A Story of Dartmoor. Fourth Edition. 
 
 *The author is at his hezt.*~Times. 
 
 * He has nearly reached the high water-mark of " Mehalah. —National Observer. 
 
24 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. Fifth Edition. 
 
 'One of the best imagined and most euthralling stones the author has produced.' 
 — Saturday Review. 
 
 MRS. CURGENVEN OF CURGENVEN. Fourth Edition. 
 
 ' A novel of vigorous humour and sustained power.' — Graphic. 
 ' The swing of the narrative is splendid.' — Sussex Daily News, 
 
 CHEAP JACK ZITA. Third Edition. 
 
 ' A powerful drama of human passion.' — Westminster Gazette. 
 'A story worthy the author.' — National Observer. 
 
 THE QUEEN OF LOVE. Fourth Edition. 
 
 'The scenery is admirable, and the dramatic incidents are most striking.' — Glasgow 
 Herald. 
 
 * Strong, interesting, and clever.' — Westminster Gazette. 
 
 ' You cannot put it down until you have finished it.' — Punch. 
 
 ' Can be heartily recommended to all who care for cleanly, energetic, and interesting 
 fiction.' — Sussex Daily News. 
 
 KITTY ALONE. Fourth Edition. 
 
 * A strong and original story, teeming with graphic description, stirring incident, 
 
 and, above all, with vivid and enthralling human interest.' — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 * Brisk, clever, keen, healthy, humorous, and interesting.' — National Observer. 
 ' Full of quaint and delightful studies of character.* — Bristol Mercury. 
 
 NOJfeMI : A Romance of the Cave-Dwellers. Illustrated by 
 R. Caton Woodville. Third Edition. 
 
 ' " No^mi " is as excellent a tale of fighting and adventure as one may wish to meet. 
 
 All the characters that interfere in this exciting tale are marked with properties 
 
 of their own. The narrative also runs clear and sharp as the Loire itself.' — 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. - 
 ' Mr. Baring Gould's powerful story is full of the strong lights and shadows and 
 
 vivid colouring to which he has accustomed us.' — Standard. 
 
 THE BROOM-SQUIRE. Illustrated by Frank Dadd. 
 Third Edition. 
 
 ' A strain of tenderness is woven through the web of his tragic tale, and its atmosphere 
 is sweetened by the nobility and sweetness of the heroine's character.' — Daily News. 
 
 ' A story of exceptional interest that seems to us to be better than anything he has 
 written of late.' — Speaker. ' A powerful and striking story.' — Guardian. 
 
 ' A powerful piece of work.' — Black and White. 
 
 Gilbert Parker's Novels 
 
 Crown Svo. 6s, each, 
 PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE. Third EdiHon. 
 
 ' Stories happily conceived and finely executed. There is strength and genius in Mr. 
 Parker's style.' — Daily Telegraph. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 25 
 
 MRS. FALCHION. Third Edition. 
 
 ' A splendid study of character.'— ^/A««(S»»2. 
 
 ' ^"ii'',','lS ''^'^'"'^ ™y''^'"g "'^' •»»= been done by any writer of our time.'— />«;/ 
 
 mallGazeiie. 
 ' Avery striking and admirable novel.'— Ji!. James's Gazette. 
 
 THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE. 
 
 'The plot is original and one difficult to work out; but Mr. Parker has done it with 
 great skill and delicacy. The reader who is not interested in this original, fresh, 
 
 ^ and well-told tale must be a dull person indeed.'— Dailji Ckronide. 
 A ?"ong and succes.sful piece of workmanship. The portrait of Lali, strong, 
 dignified, and pure, is exceptionally well dravin.'— Manchester Guardian. 
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD. Fourth Edition. 
 
 'Everybody with a soul for romance will thoroughly enjoy "The Trail of the 
 Sword.' '—St. James's Gazette. 
 
 ' A rousing and dramatic tale. A book like this, in which swords flash, great sur- 
 prises are undertaken, and daring deeds done, in which men and women live and 
 love in theold straightforward passionate way, is a joy inexpressible to the re- 
 viewer, bram-weary of the domestic tragedies and psychological puzzles of every- 
 day fiction ; and we cannot but believe that to the reader it will bring refreshment 
 as welcome and as keen.' — D/iih Chronicle. 
 
 WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC : The Story of 
 a Lost Napoleon. Third Edition. 
 ' Here we find romance — real, breathing, living romance, but it runs flush with our 
 owntimes, level with our own feelings. Not here can we complain of lack of 
 inevitableness or homogeneity. The character of Valmond is drawn unerringly ; 
 his career, brief as it is, is placed before us as convincingly as history itself. The 
 book must be read, we may say re-read, for any one thoroughly to appreciate 
 Mr. Parker's delicate touch and innate sympathy with humanity.'— i'a// Mall 
 Gazette. 
 'The one work of genius which 1895 has as yet produced.' — New Age. 
 
 AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH : The Last Adven- 
 tures of * Pretty Pierre.' 
 
 *The present book is full of fine and moving; stories of the great North, and it will 
 add to Mr. Parker's already high reputation.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 ' The new hook is very romantic and very entertaining — full of that peculiarly 
 elegant spirit of adventure which is so characteristic of Mr. Parker, and of that 
 poetic thrill which has given him warmer, if less numerous, admirers than even 
 his romantic story-telling gift has ^qtiq.' —Sketch. 
 
 THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY. Illustrated. Fourth 
 
 Edition. 
 
 * The best thing he heis done ; one of the best things that any one has done lately.' — 
 St. Jameses Gazette. 
 
 'Mr. Parker seems to become stronger and easier with every serious novel that he 
 attempts. . . . In " The Seats of the Mighty " he shows the matured power which 
 his former novels have led us to expect, and has produced a really fine historical 
 novel. . . . The' great creation of the book is X)oltaire. . , . His character is 
 dra,wn with quite masterly strokes, for he is a villain who is not altogether a villain, 
 and who attracts the reader, as he did the other characters, by the extraordinary 
 ' brilliance of his gifts, and by the almost unconscious acts of nobility which he 
 
 performs Most sincerely is Mr. Parker to be congratulated on the finest 
 
 novel he has yet written.' — Athefueunt. 
 
26 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 'Mr. Parker's latest book places him in the front rank of li^^ng novelists. "The 
 Seats of the Mighty" is a great hook.'Siack and White. 
 
 ' One of the strongest stories of historical interest and adventure that we have read 
 for many a day. . . . Through all Mr. Parker moves with an assiured step, whilst 
 in his_ treatment of his subject there is that happy blending of the poetical with the 
 prosaic which has characterised all his writings. A notable and successful book.' 
 — Speaker. 
 
 * The story is very finely and dramatically told. ... In none of his books has his 
 
 imaginative faculty appeared to such splendid purpose as here. Captain Morayi 
 Alixe, Gabord,^ Vauban — above all, Doltaire — and, indeed, every person who takes 
 part in the action of the story are clearly conceived and finely drawn and indivi- 
 dualised. — Scotsman. 
 ' An admirable romance. The glory of a romance is its plot, and this plot is crowded 
 with fine sensations, which have no rest until the fall of the famous old city and 
 the final restitution of love. ' — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 Conan Doyle. ROUND THE RED LAMP. By A. Conan 
 Doyle, Author of 'The White Company,' *The Adventures of 
 Sherlock Holmes,* etc. Fourth Edition. Crown %vo, 6s. 
 ' The book is, indeed, composed of leaves from life, and is far and away the best view 
 that has been vouchsafed us behind the scenes of the consulting-room. It is very 
 superior to "The Diary of a late 'Ph.ysicxsn."* ^Illustrated London News. 
 
 Stanley Weyman. UNDER THE RED ROBE. By Stanley 
 Weyman, Author of * A Gentleman of France.' With Twelve Illus- 
 trations by R. Caton Woodville. Eighth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 ' A book of which we have read every word for the sheer pleasure of reading, and 
 which we put down 'v^ith a pang that we cannot forget it all and start again.' — 
 Westminster Gazette. 
 
 * Every one who reads books at all must read this thrilling romance, from the first 
 
 page of which to the last the breathless reader is haled along. An inspiration of 
 manliness and courage." — Daily Chronicle. 
 ' A delightful tale of chivalry and adventure, vivid and dramatic, with a wholesome 
 modesty and reverence for the highest.' — Globe. 
 
 Mrs. Clifford. A FLASH OF SUMMER. By Mrs. W. K. 
 Clifford, Author of * Aunt Anne,' etc. Second Edition. Crown 
 Svo. 6s. 
 
 * The story is a very sad and a very beautiful one, exquisitely told, and enriched with 
 
 many subtle touches of wise and tender insight. It will, undoubtedly, add to its 
 author's reputation — already high — in the ranks of novelists.' — Speaker.^ 
 
 * We must congratulate Mrs. Clifford upon a very successful and interesting story, 
 
 told throughout with finish and a delicate sense of proportion, qualities which, 
 indeed, have always distinguished the best work of this very able writer.' — 
 Manchester Guardian. 
 
 Emily Lawless. HURRISH. By the Honble. Emily Law- 
 less, Author of ' Maelcho,' etc. Fifth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 A reissue of Miss Lawless' most popular novel, uniform with ' Maelcho.' 
 
 Emily Lawless, MAELCHO : a Sixteenth Century Romance. 
 By the Honble. Emily Lawless, Author of * Grania,' etc. Second 
 Edition. Crown Svo. 6s, 
 
 ' A really great book.' — Spectator. 
 
 ' There is no keener pleasure in life than the recognition of genius. Good work is 
 commoner than it used to be, but the best is as rare as ever. All the more 
 gladly, therefore, do we welcome in " Maelcho " a piece of work of the first order, 
 which we do not hesitate to describe as one of the most remarkable literary 
 achievements of this generation. Miss Lawless is possessed of the very essence 
 of historical genius.' — Manchester Guardian. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 27 
 
 J. H. Findlater. THE GREEN GRAVES OF BALGOWRIE 
 
 By Jane H. FiNDLATER. Third Edition. Crown ^o. 6j. 
 ' A powerful and vivid sXor^.'— Standard. 
 
 \ ■^ ''^^V'''?' s'O'T. sad and strange as truth itself.'— f'aMzVi' Fair. 
 A work of remarkable interest and originality.'— iVa/,o»a/ Obsenier. 
 A really original novsV— Journal oj Education. 
 A very charming and pathetic taXe.'—Pall Mall Gazette. 
 1 JTtv^o y original, clever, and beautiful story.'— Guardian. 
 
 The Green Graves of Balgowrie" reveals to us a new Scotch writer of undoubted 
 ^ faculty and reserve im<x.' —Spectator. 
 
 ^ An exquisite idyll, delicate, affecting, and beautiful.'— P/«/6 and White. 
 Permeated with high and noble purpose. It is one of the most wholesome stories 
 we have met with, and cannot fail to leave a deep and lasting impression.'— 
 
 E. F. Benson. DODO : A DETAIL OF THE DAY. By E. F. 
 Benson. Sixteenth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 ' I A delightfully witty sketch ot society. 'Spectator. 
 _ A perpetual feast of epigram and pa.r!idox.'—Speaker. 
 , £X,?. writer of quite exceptional ability.'— .4 thenaum. 
 Brilliantly \it\VLe.n.' —World. 
 
 E. F. Benson. THE RUBICON. By E. F. Benson, Author of 
 'Dodo.' Fifth Edition. Crown %vo. 6j. 
 
 ' Well written, stimulating, unconventional, and, in a word, characteristic.'— 
 
 Birmingham Post. 
 ' An exceptional achievement ; a notable advance on his previous vioik.'— National 
 
 Ooserver. 
 
 M, M. Dowie. GALLIA. By M^nie Muriel Dowie, Author 
 of 'A Girlin the Carpathians.' Third Edition. Crown 8zio. 6s. 
 
 ' The style is generally admirable, the dialogue not seldom brilliant, the situations 
 surprising in their freshness and originality, while the subsidiary as well as the 
 principal characters live and move, and the story itself is readable from title-page 
 to colophon.* — Saturday Review. 
 
 ' A very notable book ; a very sympathetically, at times delightfully written book. 
 — Daily Graphic. 
 
 Mrs. Olipliant. SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE. By Mrs. 
 Oliphant. Crown 8va. 6s. 
 ' Full of her own peculiar charm of style and simple, subtle character- painting come 
 her new gift, the delightful story before us. The scene mostly lies in the moors, 
 and at the touch of the authoress a Scotch moor becomes a living thing, strong 
 tender, beautiful, and chs.ngeluV— Fall Mall Gazette. 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant. THE TWO MARYS. By Mrs. Oliphant. 
 Second Edition. Crown Szio. 6s. 
 
 W.E.Norris. MATTHEW AUSTIN. By W. E. Norris, Author 
 of ' Mademoiselle de Mersac,' etc. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 * "Matthew Austin " may safely be pronounced one of the most intellectually satis- 
 factory and morally bracing novels of the current year.' — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 W. E. Norris. HIS GRACE. By W. E. Norris. TMrd 
 Edition, Crown %vo. 6s. 
 ' Mr. Norris has drawn a really fine character in the Buke of Hurstbournej at once 
 unconventional and very true to the conventionalities of life, weak and strong in 
 a breath, capable of inane follies and heroic decisions, yet not so definitely por* 
 trayed as to relieve a reader of the necessity of study.' — Athenaum, 
 
28 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 W. E. Norris. THE DESPOTIC LADY AND OTHERS. 
 
 By W. E. NoRRis. Crown %vo. 6s. 
 ' A budget of good fiction of which no one will tire. ' — Scotsmax. 
 'An extremely entertaining volume — the sprightliest of holiday companions.' — 
 
 Daily Telegraph 
 
 H. G. Wells. THE STOLEN BACILLUS, and other Stories. 
 By H. G. Wells, Author of 'The Time Machine.' Crown 
 Svo. 6s. 
 
 ' The ordinary reader of fiction may be glad to know that these stories are eminently 
 readable from one cover to the other, but they are more than that ; they are the 
 impressions of a very striking imagination, which, it would seem, has a great deal 
 within its reach.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 Arthur Morrison. TALES OF MEAN STREETS. By Arthur 
 Morrison. Fourth Edition. Crown %vo. 6j. 
 ' ToW with consummate art and extraordinary detail. He tells a plain, unvarnished 
 tale, and the very truth of it makes for beauty. In the true humanity of riie book 
 lies its justification, the permanence of its interest, and its indubitable triumph.' — 
 A thencBUfn. 
 ' A great book. The authar's method is amazingly effective, and produces a thrilling 
 sense of reality. The writer lays upon us a master hand. The book is simply 
 appalling and irresistible in its interest. It is humorous also ; without humour 
 it would not make the mark it is certain to make.'— W^^or/*:^. 
 
 J. Maclaren Cobban. THE KING OF ANDAMAN : A 
 Saviour of Society. By J. Maclaren Cobban. Crown Svo. 6s * 
 
 ' An unquestionably interesting book. It would not surprise us if it turns out to be 
 the most interesting novel of the season, for it contains one character, at least, 
 who has in him the root of immortality, and the book itself is ever exhaling the 
 sweet savour of the unexpected. . . . Plot is forgotten and incident fades, and 
 only the really human endures, and throughout this book there stands out in bold 
 and beautiful relief its high-souled and chivalric protagonist, James the Master 
 of Hutcbeon, the King of Andaman himself.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 ' A most original and refreshing story. James Hutcbeon is a personage whom it is 
 good to know and impossible to forget. He is beautiful within and without, 
 whichever way we take him. ' — Spectator. 
 
 ' "The King of Andaman," is a book which does credit not less to the heart than 
 the head of its author.' — Atkemsuw. 
 
 * The fact that Her Majesty the Queen has been pleased to gracefully express to the 
 
 author of " The King of Andaman" her interest in his work will doubtless find 
 for it many readers.' — Vanity Fair. 
 
 H. Morrah. A SERIOUS COMEDY. By Herbert Morrah. 
 Crown %vo. 6s. . 
 
 * There are many delightful places in this volume, which is well worthy of its title. 
 
 The theme has seldom been presented with more freshness or more force.' — 
 Scotsfftati. 
 
 L. B. Walford. SUCCESSORS TO THE TITLE. By Mrs. 
 
 WalforDj Author of 'Mr. Smith,' etc. Second Edition. Crown 
 Svo. 6s. 
 
 ' The story is fresh and healthy from beginning to finish ; and our liking for the two 
 simple people who are the successors to the title mounts steadily, and ends almost 
 in respect. — Scotsman. 
 
 'The book is quite worthy to be ranked with many clever predecessors. It is ex- 
 cellent reading. ' — Gla^ow Merald. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 29 
 
 T. L. Paton. A HOME IN INVERESK. By T. L. Paton. 
 Crown Svo, 6s. 
 ' A distinctlY fresh and fascinating novel.' — Montrose Standard. 
 ' A book which bears marks of considerable promise.' — Scotsman. 
 ' A pleasant and well-written story.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 John Davidson. MISS ARMSTRONG'S AND OTHER CIR- 
 CUMSTANCES. By John Davidson. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 'Throughout the volume there is a strong vein of originality, a strength in the 
 handling, and a knowledge of human' nature that are worthy of the highest praise.' 
 — Scots-man. 
 
 J. B. Burton. IN THE DAY OF ADVERSITY. By J. 
 Bloundellb Burton. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 ' Unusually interesting and full of highly dramatic situations.' — Guardian. 
 ' A well-written story, drawn from that inexhaustible mine, the time of Louis XIV. 
 —Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 H. Johnston. DR. CONGALTON'S LEGACY. By Henry 
 Johnston. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 ' The story is redolent of humour, pathos, and tenderness, while it is not without a 
 touch of tragedy.' — Scotsman,^ 
 A worthy and permanent contribution to Scottish creative literature.' — Glasgow 
 Herald. 
 
 Julian Corbett. A BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS. By 
 Julian Corbett. Crown Zvo. 6s. 
 
 ' In this stirring story Mr. Julian Corbett has done excellent workj welcome alike 
 for its distinctly literary flavour, and for the wholesome tone which pervades it. 
 Mr. Corbett writes with immense spirit, and the book is a thoroughly enjoyable 
 one in all respects. The salt of the ocean is in it, and the right heroic ring re- 
 sounds through its gallant sidventuies.'—S^eaAer. 
 
 C. Phillips WooUey. THE QUEENSBERRY CUP. A Tale 
 of Adventure. By Clive Phillips Woolley, Author of ' Snap,' 
 Editor of ' Big Game Shooting.' Illustrated. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 ' A book which will delight boys : a book which upholds the healthy schoolboy code 
 
 of morality.' — Scotsman. 
 ' A brilliant book. Dick St. Clair, of Caithness, is an almost ideal character— a com- 
 bination of the mediaeval knight and the modern pugilist.' — Admiralty and Horse- 
 guards Gazette. 
 
 Robert Barr. IN THE MIDST OF ALARMS. By Robert 
 
 Barr. Third Edition. Crown %vo. 6s. 
 ' A book which has abundantly satisfied us by its capital humour.'— Daily Chronicle. 
 ' Mr. Barr has achieved a triumph whereof he has every reason to be proud.' — Pall 
 
 Mall Gazette. 
 
 L. Daintrey. THE KING OF ALBERIA. A Romance of 
 the Balkans. By Laura Daintrey. Crown Zvo. 6s. 
 
 ' Miss Daintrey seems to have an intimate acquaintance with the people and politics 
 of the Balkan countries in which the scene of her lively and picturesque romance 
 is laid. On almost every page we find clever touches of local colour which dif- 
 ferentiate her book unmistakably from the ordinary novel of commerce. The 
 story is briskly told, and well conceived.'— Glasgow Herald. 
 
30 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 Mrs. Pinsent. CHILDREN OF THIS WORLD. By Ellen 
 F. Pinsent, Author of 'Jenny's Case.' Crown %vo. (>$. 
 
 ' Mrs. Pinsent's new novel has plenty of vigour, variety, and good writing. There 
 are certainty of purpose, strength of touch, and clearness of vision.* — Athenaufn. 
 
 Clark RusseU. MY DANISH SWEETHEART. By W. 
 Clark Russell, Author of 'The Wreck of the Grosvenor,' etc. 
 Illustrated. Fourth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 G. Manville Fenn. AN ELECTRIC SPARK. By G. Manville 
 Fenn. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 * A simple and wholesome story.' — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 R, Pryce. TIME AND THE WOMAN. By Richard Pryce, 
 Author of ' Miss Maxwell's Affections,' 'The Quiet Mrs. Fleming,' 
 etc. Second Edition. Crown Stio. 6s. 
 ' Mr. Fryce's work recalls the style of Octave Feuillet, by its clearness, conciseness, 
 its literary reserve.' — Athenaum. 
 
 Mrs. Watson. THIS MAN'S DOMINION. By the Author 
 of ' A High Little World. ' Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. • 
 
 Marriott Watson. DIOGENES OF LONDON. By H. B. 
 
 Marriott Watson. Crown 8vo. Buckram. 6s. 
 
 * By all those who delight in the uses of words, who rate the exercise of prose above 
 
 the exercise of verse, who rejoice in all proofs of its delicacy and its strength, who 
 believe that English prose is chief among the moulds of thought, by these 
 Mr. Marriott Watson's book will be welcomed.' — National Observer. 
 
 M. Gilchrist. THE STONE DRAGON. By MURRAY Gil- 
 christ. Crown Ztio. Buckram. 6s. 
 
 ' The author's faults are atoned for by certain positive and admirable merits. The 
 romances have not their counterpart in modern literature, and to read them is a 
 unique experience.' — National Observer. 
 
 E. Dickinson. A VICAR'S WIFE. By Evelyn Dickinson. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s, 
 
 E. M. Gray. ELS A. By E. M 'Queen Gray. Crown 8w. 6s. 
 
 THREE-AND-SIXPENNY NOVELS 
 
 Crown Hvo. 
 DERRICK VAUGHAN, NOVELIST. By Edna Lyall, 
 MARGERY OF QUETHER. By S. Baring Gould 
 JACQUETTA. By S. BARING GoULD. 
 SUBJECT TO VANITY. By Margaret Benson. 
 THE MOVING FINGER. By Mary Gaunt. 
 JACO TRELOAR. By J. H. Pearce. 
 
 3/6 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 31 
 
 aut diabolus aut nihil. by x. l. 
 
 THE COMING OF CUCULAIN. A Romance of the Heroic 
 Age of Ireland. By Standish O'Grady. Illustrated. 
 
 THE GODS GIVE MY DONKEY "WINGS. By ANGUS 
 Evan Abbott. 
 
 THE STAR GAZERS. By G. Manville Fenn. 
 
 THE POISON OF ASPS. By R. Orton Prowse. 
 
 THE QUIET MRS. FLEMING. By R. Pryce. 
 
 THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN. By F. Mabel Robinson. 
 
 DISENCHANTMENT. By F. Mabel Robinson. 
 
 MR. BUTLER'S WARD. By F. Mabel Robinson. 
 
 A LOST ILLUSION. By Leslie Keith. 
 
 A REVEREND GENTLEMAN. By J. M. Cobban. 
 
 A DEPLORABLE AFFAIR. By W. E. NORRIS. 
 
 A CAVALIER'S LADYE. By Mrs. Dicker. 
 
 2/6 
 
 HALF-CROWN NOVELS 
 
 A Series of Novels by popular Authors. 
 
 1. HOVENDEN, V.C. By F. Mabel Robinson. 
 
 2. ELI'S CHILDREN. By G. Manville Fenn. 
 
 3. A DOUBLE KNOT. By G. Manville Fenn. 
 
 4. DISARMED. By M. Betham Edwards. 
 
 5. A MARRIAGE AT SEA. By W. Clark Russell. 
 
 6 IN TENT AND BUNGALOW. By the Author of ' Indian 
 Idylls.' 
 
 7. MY STEWARDSHIP. By E. M'Queen Gray. 
 
 8. JACK'S FATHER. By W. E. NORRIS. 
 
 9. JIM B. 
 
 Lvnn Linton. THE TRUE HISTORY OF JOSHUA DAVID- 
 SON, Christian and Communist. By E. Lynn Linton. Eleventh 
 Edition. Post 8vo. is. 
 
 Books for Boys and Girls oj^ 
 
 A Series of Books by well-known Authors, well illustrated. *-'/ 
 I THE ICELANDER'S SWORD. By S. Baring Gould. 
 2! TWO LITTLE CHILDREN AND CHING. By Edith 
 
 E. CUTHELL. 
 
3/6 
 
 32 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 3. TODDLEBEN'S HERO. By M. M. Blake. 
 
 4. ONLY A GUARD ROOM DOG. By Edith E. Cuthell. 
 
 5. THE DOCTOR OF THE JULIET. By Harry Colling- 
 
 WOOD. 
 
 6. MASTER ROCKAFELLAR'S VOYAGE. By W. Clark 
 
 Russell. 
 
 7. SYD BELTON : Or, The Boy who would not go to Sea. 
 
 By G. Manville Fenn. 
 
 The Peacock Library 
 
 A Series of Books for Girls by well-known Authors, 
 handsomely bound in blue and silver, and well illustrated. 
 
 1. A PINCH OF EXPERIENCE. By L. B. Walford. 
 
 2. THE RED GRANGE. By Mrs. MOLESWORTH. 
 
 3. THE SECRET OF MADAME DE MONLUC. By the 
 
 Author of ' Mdle Mori.' 
 
 4. DUMPS. By Mrs. PARR, Author of ' Adam and Eve.' 
 
 5. OUT OF THE FASHION. By L. T. Meade. 
 
 6. A GIRL OF THE PEOPLE. By L. T. Meade. 
 
 7. HEPSY GIPSY. By L. T. Meade. 2j. dd. 
 
 8. THE HONOURABLE MISS. By L. T. Meade. 
 
 9. MY LAND OF BEULAH. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 
 
 University Extension Series 
 
 A series of books on historical, literary, and scientific subjects, suitable 
 for extension students and home-reading circles. Each volume is com- 
 plete in itself, and the subjects are treated by competent writers in a 
 broad and philosophic spirit. 
 
 Edited by J. E. SYMES, M.A., 
 
 Principal of University College, Nottingham. 
 
 Crown Stio. Price (with some exceptions) 2s. 6d, 
 
 The following volumes are ready : — 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By H. de 
 B. GiBBiNS, M.A., late Scholar of Wadham College, Oxon., Cobden 
 Prizeman. Fourth Edition. With Maps and Plans, y. 
 'A compact and clear story of our ndustrial development. A study of this concise 
 but luminous book cannot fail to give the reader a clear insight into the principal 
 phenomena of our industrial history. The editor and publishers are to be congrat- 
 ulated on this first volume of their venture, and we shall look with expectant 
 interest for the succeeding volumes of the series. ' — University Extension Journal. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 33 
 
 a history of english political economy. by 
 
 L. L. Price, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxen. Second Edition. 
 PROBLEMS OF POVERTY : An Inquiry into the Industrial 
 Conditions of the Poor. By J. A. Hobson, M.A. Third Edition. 
 VICTORIAN POETS. By A. Sharp. 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By J. E. iSvMES, M.A. 
 PSYCHOLOGY. By F. S. Granger, M.A., Lecturer in Philo- 
 sophy at University College, Nottingham. 
 THE EVOLUTION OF PLANT LIFE: Lower Forms. By 
 
 G. Masske, Kew Gardens. With Ilhtstrations. 
 AIR AND WATER. Professor V. B. Lewes, M.A. Illustrated. 
 THE CHEMISTRY OF LIFE AND HEALTH. By C. W. 
 
 KiMMiNS, M.A. Camb. Illustrated. 
 THE MECHANICS OF DAILY LIFE. By V. P. SELLS, M.A. 
 
 Illustrated. 
 ENGLISH SOCIAL REFORMERS. H. DE B. Gibbins, M.A. 
 ENGLISH TRADE AND FINANCE IN THE SEVEN- 
 TEENTH CENTURY. By W. A. S. Hewins, B.A. 
 THE CHEMISTRY OF FIRE. The Elementary Principles of 
 
 Chemistry. By M. M. Pattison Mum, M.A. Illustrated. 
 A TEXT-BOOK OF AGRICULTURAL BOTANY. By M. C. 
 
 Potter, M.A., F.L.S. Illustrated. 3j. (>d. 
 THE VAULT OF HEAVEN. A Popular Introduction to 
 Astronomy. By R. A. Gregory. With numerous Illustrations. 
 METEOROLOGY. The Elements of Weather and Climate. 
 
 By H. N. Dickson, F.R.S.E., F.R. Met. Soc. Illustrated. 
 A MANUAL OF ELECTRICAL SCIENCE. By George 
 
 J. Burch, M.A. With numerous Illustrations, y. 
 THE EARTH. An Introduction ^to Physiography. By Evan 
 
 Small, M.A. Illustrated. 
 INSECT LIFK By F. W. Theobald, M.A. Illustrated. 
 ENGLISH POETRY FROM BLAKE TO BROWNING. By 
 
 W. M. Dixon, M.A. 
 ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT. By E. Jenks, M.A., 
 Professor of Law at University College, Liverpool. 
 
34 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 Social Questions of To-day 
 
 Edited by H. de B. GIBBINS, M.A. 
 
 Crown %vo. 2s. 6d. | X 
 
 A series of volumes upon those topics of social, economic, ^ | \J 
 and industrial interest that are at the present moment fore- • 
 
 most in the public mind. Each volume of the series is written by an 
 author who is an acknowledged authority upon the subject with which 
 he deals. ' 
 
 The following Volumes of the Series are ready : — 
 
 TRADE UNIONISM— NEW AND OLD. By G. HowfeLL, 
 Author of ' The Conflicts of Capital and Labour.' Second Edition. 
 
 THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT TO-DAY. By G. J. 
 HoLYOAKE, Author of ' The History of Co-operation.' Second 
 Edition. 
 
 MUTUAL THRIFT. By Rev. J. Frome Wilkinson, M.A., 
 Author of ' The Friendly Society Movement.' 
 
 PROBLEMS OF POVERTY : An Inquiry into the Industrial 
 Conditions of the Poor. By J. A. HoBSON, M.A. Third Edition. 
 
 THE COMMERCE OF NATIONS. By C. F. Bastable, 
 M.A., Professor of Economics at Trinity College, Dublin. 
 
 THE ALIEN INVASION. By W. H. Wilkins, B. A., Secretary 
 to the Society for Preventing the Immigration of Destitute Aliens. 
 
 THE RURAL EXODUS. By P. Anderson Graham. 
 
 LAND NATIONALIZATION. By Harold Cox, B.A. 
 
 A SHORTER WORKING DAY. By H. de B. Gibbins 
 and R. A. Hadfield, of the Hecla Works, Sheffield. 
 
 BACK TO THE LAND : An Inquiry into the Cure for Rural 
 Depopulation. By H. E. Moore. 
 
 TRUSTS, POOLS AND CORNERS : As affecting Commerce 
 and Industry. By J. Stephen Jeans, M.R.I., F.S.S. 
 
 THE FACTORY SYSTEM. By R. CooKE Taylor. 
 
 THE STATE AND ITS CHILDREN. By Gertrude 
 
 TUCKWELL. 
 
 WOMEN'S WORK. By Lady Dilke, Miss Bulley, and 
 Miss Whitley. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 35 
 
 MUNICIPALITIES AT WORK. The Municipal Policy of 
 bix Great Towns, and its Influence on their Social Welfare. Bv 
 Frederick Dolman. ^ 
 
 SOCIALISM AND MODERN THOUGHT. Bv M Kaup- 
 
 MANN. ' 
 
 THE HOUSING OF THE WORKING CLASSES. By R 
 
 F. BOWMAKER. ' 
 
 MODERN CIVILISATION IN SOME OF ITS ECONOMIC 
 ASPECTS. By W. Cunningham, D. D. , Fellow of Trinity CoUeee, 
 Cambridge. ^ 
 
 Classical Translations 
 
 Edited by H. F. FOX, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Brasenose 
 College, Oxford. 
 
 Messrs. Methuen are issuing a New Series of Translations from the 
 Greek and Latin Classics. They have enlisted the services of some 
 of the best Oxford and Cambridge Scholars, and it is their intention that 
 the Series shall be distinguished by literary excellence as well as by 
 scholarly accuracy. 
 
 jESCHYLUS— Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides. Trans- 
 lated by Lewis Campbell, LL.D., late Professor of Greek at St. 
 Andrews, ^s. 
 
 CICERO— De Oratore I. Translated by E. N. P. Moor, M.A., 
 Assistant Master at Clifton, y. 6d. 
 
 CICERO— Select Orations (Pro Milone, Pro Murena, Philippic ii., 
 In Catilinam). Translated by H. E. D. Blaktston, M.A., Fellow 
 and Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford. Sj. 
 
 CICERO— De Natura Deorum. Translated by F. Brooks, 
 M. A., late Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford. 3^. dd. 
 
 LUCIAN — Six Dialogues (Nigrinus, Icaro-Menippus, The Cock, 
 The Ship, The Parasite, The Lover of Falsehood). Translated by 
 S. T. Irwin, M.A., Assistant Master at Clifton ; late Scholar of 
 Exeter College, Oxford, y. 6d. 
 
 SOPHOCLES— Electra and Ajax. Translated by E. D. A. 
 MORSHEAD, M.A., late Scholar of New College, Oxford ; Assistant 
 Master at Winchester. 2s. 6d. 
 
 TACITUS— Agricola and Germania. Translated by R. B. 
 TowNSHEND, late Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. 2s. 6d, 
 
36 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 Educational Books 
 
 CLASSICAL^ 
 TACITI AGRICOLA. With Introduction, Notes, Map, etc. 
 By R. F. Davis, M.A., Assistant Master at Weymouth College. 
 Crown SvB. 2s. 
 
 TACITI GERMANIA. By the same Editor. Crown 8vo. 2s. 
 
 HERODOTUS: EASY SELECTIONS. With Vocabulary. 
 
 By A. C. LiDDELL, M.A., Assistant Master at Nottingham High 
 
 School. Fcap. 8vo. is. 6/i. 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE ODYSSEY. By E. D. Stone, 
 
 M.A., late Assistant Master at Eton. J'cap. Svo. Is, 6d. 
 
 PLAUTUS : THE CAPTIVI. Adapted for Lower Forms by 
 J. H. Freese.'M.A., late Bellow of St. John's, Cambridge, is. 6d. 
 
 DEMOSTHENES AGAINST CONON AND CALLICLES. 
 Edited with Notes, and Vocabulary, by F. Darwin Swift, M.A., 
 formerly Scholar of Queen's College, Oxford ; Assistant Master at 
 Denstone College. Fcap. 8va. zs. 
 
 GERMAN 
 A COMPANION GERMAN GRAMMAR. By H. de B. 
 
 GiBBiNS, M.A., Assistant Master at Nottingham High School. 
 
 Crown S7J0. is. 6d. 
 GERMAN PASSAGES FOR UNSEEN TRANSLATION. 
 
 By E. M'QuEEN Gray. Crown Svo. zs. 6d. 
 
 SCIENCE 
 THE WORLD OF SCIENCE. Including Chemistry, Heat. 
 Light, Sound, Magnetism, Electricity, Botany, Zoology, Physiology, 
 Astronomy, and Geology. By R. Elliot Steel, M.A., F.CS. 
 147 Illustrations. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 * Mr. Steel's Manual is admirable in many ways. The book is well calculated to 
 attract and retain the attention of the young.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 ' If Mr. Steel is to be placed second to any for this quality of lucidity, it is only to 
 Huxley himself; and to be named in the same breath with this master of the 
 craft of teaching is to be accredited with the clearness of style and simplicity of 
 arrangement that belong to thorough mastery of a subject.' — Parents^ Review. 
 
 ELEMENTARY LIGHT. By R. E. Steel. With numerous 
 Illustrations. Crown Svo. 4s. 6d. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 37 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
 ENGLISH RECORDS. A Companion to the History of 
 
 England. By H. E. Malden, M.A. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 
 
 A book which aims at concentrating information upon dates, genealogy, officials, 
 constitutional documents, etc., which is usually found scattered in different 
 volumes. ' 
 
 THE ENGLISH CITIZEN : HIS RIGHTS AND DUTIES. 
 By H. E. Malden, M.A. is. 6d. 
 
 ' The book goes ever the same ground as is traversed in the school books on this 
 subject written to satisfy the requirements of the Education code. It would 
 serve admirably the purposes of a text-book, as it is wellg based in historical 
 ' facts, and keeps quite clear of party TaAtters.'-~Scoisma». 
 
 METHUEN'S OONIH/I ERCI AL SERIES. 
 
 Edited by H. de B. GIBBINS, M.A. 
 
 BRITISH COMMERCE AND COLONIES FROM ELIZA- 
 BETH TO VICTORIA. By H. de B. GibBins, M.A., Author of 
 ' The Industrial History of England,' etc. etc. 2s. 
 
 COMMERCIAL EXAMINATION PAPERS. By H. de B. 
 
 GiBBlNS, M.A. IS. 6d. 
 
 THE ECONOMICS OF COMMERCE. By H. de B. Gibbins, 
 M.A. IS. 6d. 
 
 A MANUAL OF FRENCH COMMERCIAL ' CORRE- 
 SPONDENCE. By S. E. Bally, Modern Language Master at 
 the Manchester Grammar School. 2s. 
 
 A FRENCH COMMERCIAL READER. By S. E. BALLY. 
 
 COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY, with special reference to Trade 
 Routes, New Markets, and Manufacturing Districts. By L. W. Lyde, 
 M. A. , of the Academy, Glasgow. 2s. 
 
 A PRIMER OF BUSINESS. By S. Jackson, M.A. is. bd. 
 COMMERCIAL ARITHMETIC. By F. G. Taylor, 
 M.A. IS. 6d. 
 
38 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 works by a. m. m. 8teduan, u.a. 
 
 INITIA LATINA : Easy Lessons on Elementary Accidence. 
 Second Edition. Fcap. %vo. is. 
 
 FIRST LATIN LESSONS. Fourth Edition. Crown2,vo. is. 
 
 FIRST LATIN READER. With Notes adapted to the 
 Shorter Latin Primer and Vocabulary. Second Edition. Crown %vo. 
 IS. 6d. 
 
 EASY SELECTIONS FROM CAESAR. Part I. The Hel- 
 vetian War. iSmo. is. 
 
 EASY SELECTIONS FROM LIVY. Part I. The Kings of 
 Rome. iSmo. is. 6d. 
 
 EASY LATIN PASSAGES FOR UNSEEN TRANSLA- 
 TION. Third Edition. Fcap. Swc. is. 6d. 
 
 EXEMPLA LATINA. First Lessons in Latin Accidence. 
 With Vocabulary. Crown Svo. is. 
 
 EASY LATIN EXERCISES ON THE SYNTAX OF THE 
 SHORTER AND REVISED LATIN PRIMER. With Vocabu- 
 lary. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. Issued with the con- 
 sent of Dr. Kennedy. 
 
 THE LATIN COMPOUND SENTENCE : Rules and 
 Exercises. Crown 8vo. is. (td. With Vocabulary. 2s. 
 
 NOTANDA QUAEDAM : Miscellaneous Latin Exercises on 
 Common Rules and Idioms. Second Edition. Fcap. 8z/o. is. 6d. 
 With Vocabulary, 2s. 
 
 LATIN VOCABULARIES FOR REPETITION : Arranged 
 according to Subjects. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. is. (sd. 
 
 A VOCABULARY OF LATIN IDIOMS AND PHRASES. 
 l%mo. IS. 
 
 STEPS TO GREEK. i%mo. \s. 
 
 EASY GREEK PASSAGES FOR UNSEEN TRANSLA- 
 TION. Fcap. 8m is. td. 
 
 GREEK VOCABULARIES FOR REPETITION. Arranged 
 according to Subjects. Second Editiom. Fcap.. 8va. is. 6d. 
 
 GREEK TESTAMENT SELECTIONS. For the use of 
 Schools. Third Edition. With Introduction, Notes, and Vocabu- 
 lary. Fcap. 8vo, 2s. td. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's List 39 
 
 STEPS TO FRENCH. iBmo. M. 
 
 FIRST FRENCH LESSONS. Crown 8vo. is. 
 
 EASY FRENCH PASSAGES FOR UNSEEN TRANSLA- 
 TION. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. is. 6d. 
 
 EASY FRENCH EXERCISES ON ELEMENTARY 
 SYNTAX. With Vocabulary. Crown Szio. zs. 6d. 
 
 FRENCH VOCABULARIES FOR REPETITION : Arranged 
 according to Subjects. Third Edition. Fcap. Svo. is. 
 
 SCHOOL EXAMINATION SERIES. 
 
 Edited by A. M. M. STEDMAN, M.A. 
 Crown Zvo. zs. 6d. 
 FRENCH EXAMINATION PAPERS IN MISCELLANE- 
 OUS GRAMMAR AND IDIOMS. By A. M. M. Stedman, M.A. 
 Sixth Edition. 
 
 A Key, issued to Tutors and Private Students only, to.be had on 
 application to the Publishers. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. net. 
 
 LATIN EXAMINATION PAPERS IN MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 GRAMMAR AND IDIOMS. By A. M. M. Stedman, M.A. 
 
 Fourth Edition. Key issued as above, 6^. net. 
 GREEK EXAMINATION PAPERS IN MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 GRAMMAR AND IDIOMS. By A. M. M. Stedman, M.A. 
 
 Third Edition. Key issued as above. 6j. net. 
 
 GERMAN EXAMINATION PAPERS IN MISCELLANE- 
 OUS GRAMMAR AND IDIOMS. By R. J. Moeich, Man- 
 chester. Third Edition. Key issued as above. (>s. net. 
 
 HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY EXAMINATION PAPERS. 
 By C. H. Spence, M.A., Clifton Coll. 
 
 SCIENCE EXAMINATION PAPERS. By R. E. Steel, M.A., 
 F.C.S., Chief Natural Science Master, Bradford Grammar School. 
 In two vols. Part I. Chemistry ; Part li. Physics. 
 
 GENERAL KNOWLEDGE EXAMINATION PAPERS. 
 By A. M. M. Stedman, M. A. Second Edition. Key issued as 
 above, "js. net. 
 
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press